Writing on Spirit

What is the value of writing about spirit, something that cannot be described? What is the value of words about reality when each of us has a unique one? When words are dead things, symbols for concepts we have about things? Concepts that may be only somewhat shared.

There is an old Vedic saying, “Knowledge in books remains in books”. Often, any given teaching simply leads to more concepts. A more complicated conception of the world. We may attempt a “Unified Field Theory”, an overarching concept that explains everything. But it never really works. Partly because there are so many contributing parties and partly because who we are, and thus our reality, is in a constant state of flux. It is organic, growing and morphing.

Here and there though, we’ll run into words that reach us at the right time. Someones story finds a resonance, enlivens a deep memory. We relate.

When we relate, we find a synchronicity between realities. Our world opens up a bit larger. Sometimes, the light bulb goes off. In the most ideal form, the mere presence of the other person is like a meditation. It brings peace and liveliness. Love flows. We find God in the details.

There may be some concept that we are separate persons and one persons journey has no relation to another. But in reality, there is only one journey, with many ways of relating to it.

The experience of the human is like a focal point for infinity, for boundless awareness. The awareness is not constrained by the human. It simply sees through the human into form. Form for perceiving form. A window of perception. But without which, awareness perceives nothing.

More interestingly, it does this simultaneously in all beings. When we step back into Self or transcendence, in silence, peace, we stop looking through the window for a moment. When our attention steps back enough and we become That, we are no longer the focal point but rather that which observes the point. Then we can shift our attention from one point to another.

That’s when we can really get a sense of how grand God really is. While we may look out of this set of eyes or that, God sees through all at once.

There is no separate persons. This is why relating has value. It reminds us of our commonality. This is the widening road to unity. Indeed, it is the unity itself that calls the person home. Through seeing, through feeling, through words. Through Itself, it comes to Itself.
Davidya

Choices

Today while I was at a street vendors, I had a chat with a fellow in his ’60′s who lives off the streets. This was not obvious as he was clean and carried new shopping bags rather than the ubiquitous shopping cart. He gets the very modest government dole, enough to cover a sleeping room in a run down part of town, overlooking one of the worst places in the city. The alley were the most lost addicts end up. Hell.

He doesn’t spend much time there as he finds it depressing. Instead, he “shops” the garbage of the city. He had an assortment of finds he was showing us. A CD he said was the biggest seller of all time in Britain. A half used jar of some strange coloured salt that looked like bacon bits. A shopping card with $25 on it. And so on.

On weekends, he sells jokes – 3 for a ‘twonie’. He gave me 6 for mine, all on a theme and all I’d never heard before. I suspect they were his own.

His parents, he tells me, worked for Philips in Holland. We traded products they’ve made – radio tubes, light bulbs, shavers, TVs. In fact, he was full of facts and observations.

I commented that the city was looking into getting rid of commercial garbage bins, like another city had. He didn’t think it would happen as the garbage companies make too much on them.

He estimated that he gives away about 50% of the food he finds. Indeed, while we were chatting, he gave a hamburger to a passing man who was most appreciative. He was eating what looked like grilled chicken, neither of what the vendor was serving.

He told me he loves the lifestyle. No boss to control him. No rules – he walked straight out into traffic when he left.

In recent community discussions around providing housing for street people, this detail had become clear and was not what social services were offering. Street people often value freedom, don’t want bed begs, and want to keep their stuff with them. The shelters were the opposite so they actually feel safer on the street. The excellent recent film The Soloist certainly gives you another look at why.

He did however have 6 rules of his own he lived by. The first was be kind. The last was be happy. He said he was happy, mostly because he felt free. He saw many people as trapped in their homes and lives, the rat-race.

When I worked in the rough part of town many years ago, the street people I knew ended up there after catastrophic change. Their lives fell apart and they lacked or resisted the support of family and friends. Some worked their way out. Some adapted and thrived in this semi-nomadic lifestyle. Many ended up on a slide into oblivion. It takes a great deal of creativity to live successfully like that. And not fall into addictions, although that’s what got many of them there in the first place.

It’s interesting to consider how our choices take us down paths that always fork forward, never back. Even if we somehow manage to circle back to where we once were, it is never the same.

Making major changes in reality – ending up on the street, getting off the street, or awakening – are often precipitated by crisis. Some people describe this as being the purpose of pain, to push us out of a rut. To be willing to make changes.

Once you’ve made those shifts, there is no turning back. There can only be a looking forward. This is all much easier when we’re doing it consciously. But it is still never what we expect.

Fortunately, we can find freedom anywhere. No need to live as a renunciate on the street.
Davidya

Allowing to Clear

On the recent Fear post, Uzma asked about allowing vs going into fear. It seemed useful to share the response and go into it a bit more.

Many in fields such as psychology advocate going into your experience to release the pain. While this can help, the problem is that it is also going into your story and can be traumatic in itself. Going into your story can amplify it and make it more real. You’ve probably heard stories of issues created when people dug too much into their muck. The medicine can sometimes be worse than the disease.

The key thing to understand is that there is emotions and then there is our stories about those emotions. As we step out of the story, our relationship with feelings changes completely.

In the story:
“That guy hurt me badly by such and such, etc etc.”
Big long story, oft repeated. Suffering and drama, pain, blame.

In ego, the me:
“I am hurt”
Still taking it personally, so some suffering remains but without the drama.

In presence:
“hurt”
Which is now only briefly and with little or no suffering.

In the open heart:
“feeling”
All is an aspect of love and happiness.

How far down this list we go depends on the clarity we have at the time. Presence becomes normal after Self realization and an Open Heart as that matures. This is why awakening is described as the end of suffering.

At first, the story and emotions can seem inextricably entwined. They seem one and the same. But if we culture allowing what is, as it is, we find moments when the emotions will arise and we can simply be with them, without the added story. Or maybe the story is there but we pay it less heed. We simply experience what arises.

This ‘being with what is’ lets the resisted emotions wash over us and resolve. It’s usually very quick. With the emotion no longer present, the story is no longer energized and dissolves. Once we see it, it’s easy and fast. We dump eons of baggage in moments.

Mind thinks it needs to DO something. But what it needs to learn is to allow. To just let it be. Be aware, yes. Because awareness is seeing, stories is illusion.

If you look under “Key Posts” on the right, there is links to other posts on this subject under “Clearing”. Culturing Gratitude was huge for me around this.

You can go into the story to heal, but it’s much more difficult. This way is faster and easier, but a bit more subtle, a bit less obvious at first.

This process also makes it very clear how the story exists only because of the resisted feelings. This helps make the mechanics of illusion clearer and is also removing the foundation of ego. That of course opens the way for awakenings. Thus – its not just about lightening the load but turning the load into light (laughs)

Be aware of unity if it is your experience. Or aware of presence or being aware. Or gratitude for what is – anything that draws you into the present. That’s what’s real, what dissolves illusion, and what makes things happen. Everything else is memory or projection, the story, the drama.

Mind likes to understand, likes to have a story. But mind is fooled by illusions, caught be stories. Stories don’t make sense, which confuses mind. Mind concludes the world is irrational when it’s just seeing its own stories, not reality. Moving into the present shifts us out of mind, out of stories, out of memories and projections, past and future. Into what is.

Work on love? One does not work on feeling love. Love is. One feels it or does not. But one can give attention to allowing love. Then love will begin to be seen more and more, even in what has seemed to be pain.

You may enjoy Takuins recent post on Grief.
Davidya

Fear

The mechanism of suffering is quite simple.

We experience a shadow or cloud that obscures the experience of love. There is no change in the flow of love, only in our awareness or perception of love. This is very much like a child in a store when they suddenly realize they can’t see their mother. Mother is still there but perception has changed. Fear arises.

If we become involved in our experiences, we may forget how to experience that which has no qualities. Only what we can see, hear or touch seems real. Without a sense of source, we loose center and fear arises, hiding the love.

As we don’t wish to experience fear, we resist the experience and instead experience anxiety or anger or shame. This resistance actually amplifies it and leads to a resistance to what is. In trying to avoid fear, we resist love. It also sustains the fear rather than relieving it. This is the cloud.

Curiously, even when the fear trigger is no longer present, we continue to resist in fear of experiencing fear. Even when mother is seen, we fear her later loss. While you may think childhood examples no longer apply, fear is very primal. And we use a surprising amount of energy sustaining it.

If you don’t think you carry fear, it is just well covered. There’s a simple test. If you don’t feel immersed in love, you have a fear shadow. It even has a name. That name you call yourself, your identity. We even issue ID cards to certify our fear. (laughs)

As the mind likes to explain everything, it will make a story for why we’re experiencing something. Mommy abandoned us. I was bad and deserved punishment. My girlfriend thinks I’m an idiot. My boss thinks I screwed up. The story doesn’t require logical evidence, it simply wishes to justify your emotions, whatever the circumstance. And of course, blame something else for our experience.

We confuse what happens with how we respond. Suffering does not arise in what happens but how we see it happened to me. The current recession is a classic example. Some difficult events, but much amplified by how many are responding, making the recession worse. We see ourselves as separate and thus fail to see how our responses are related to the whole.

When we have a story about our emotions, it reinforces the feelings and makes them concrete, real. The sense of separate person becomes stronger. Most of us live in a bubble of what we think is real but is actually a complex story, a kind of waking dream. Real to us but a shadow of what is actually real.

The issue in all of this is not the fear but rather that it’s not experienced. Once it’s experienced, the fear can be quickly resolved. But to do that, we may have to see through some resistance first. To do that, you have to take the story a little less seriously. See that your story is not as real as you thought.

This process may not be obvious to you. But it is the underlying driver of much of our other “negative” emotions (the ones we resist) and all the places in our life where we are unsatisfied, anxious, restless, and otherwise unhappy.

Very simply, if it’s not love, it’s fear. Fear is the absence of love. Like darkness, it is lack, not real.

Love is real. There is only love. Really.
Davidya

Leap!

Take the Leap or stay asleep. Leap! is the name of a new film that opened in December to mostly spiritual venues. The filmmakers explore the idea that the world is an illusion, that your life is a dream. Time to leap into reality.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
– Albert Einstein

http://www.leapmovie.com/

In the film, they talk with many, including people seen in prior films like What the Bleep, The Secret, Living Luminaries, and One. Robert Scheinfeld (Busting Loose), Dan Millman (Peaceful Warrior), Peter Russel (From Science to God), Joe Vitale (The Secret), Gary Renard (Disappearance of the Universe), and many more.

The list of speakers here also includes links to a whack of YouTube Video clips.

One example:

Another interesting detail:
“Leap! is designed like a software program. We’ll update it periodically, with small “tweaks” and within a year, we’ll also, release a Version 2.0 with new people added into Leap!. The original version will be put to rest by the start of 2010.”

They’re shipping “version 2″ already.
Looking forward to seeing it.
Davidya

The Quantum Activist

Dr Amit Goswami was one of the scientists in the film What the Bleep? He spoke here at the Bleep conference a few years ago. He was also in Dalai Lama Renaissance.

Recently, he published a book, ‘The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World‘ to counter material like Dawkins ‘God Delusion‘. He proposes scientific evidence for the existence of God.

http://www.amitgoswami.org/scientific-proof-existence-god/

They’ve now completed a film version called The Quantum Activist.

http://quantumactivist.com/

“There is a revolution going on in science. A genuine paradigm shift. While mainstream science remains materialist, a substantial number of scientists are supporting and developing a paradigm based on the primacy of consciousness.

Dr. Amit Goswami, Ph.D, a pioneer of this revolutionary new perspective within science shares with us his vision of the unlimited potential of consciousness as the ground of all being, and how this revelation can actually help us to live better.”

“The work of Goswami, with stunning precision and without straying from the rigors of quantum mechanics, reveals the overarching unity inherent in the worlds major religions and mystical traditions.”

“…this film follows Dr. Goswami as he demonstrates how our mistaken views of reality have led to our current environmental, social, economic and spiritual crisis; as well as the means of correcting these errors. At stake is nothing less than our survival upon the planet.”

“What are you doing to participate in the creation of the reality we all share?”

They indicate a calendar of showings will soon be available.

Sounds worth seeing. Looking forward to it’s availability.
Davidya

It’s Our Duty to Enjoy

In response to feedback, Lucia has produced a beautiful reminder for the awake. Before awakening, being watchful of the mind is an important tool. After awakening, the duty is to enjoy, to bring bliss to the universe.

“Prior to awakening to our real Self some deep self analysis can be valuable. But after awakening to our Infinity, our only responsibility is to enjoy.”

Isira

Today I came across an Aussie teacher named Isira Sananda. She is part aboriginal and clearly awake. In this blog post, she talks about the process of awakening. She speaks of the falling away of the ‘somebody’, liberation, and, with “a saturated state of integration”, Oneness and LOVE. She does not define stages but rather a process.

“Firstly, Awakening has no exact definition. This is because Awakening is about a process of shifting from the unconscious states of the ego driven identity to a conscious and experiencing state of Self as the eternal awareness and Oneness of all life. It is also because it is a state in which we transcend definition and become pure being.”

http://isirablog.com/?p=84

Her biography touches briefly on her own awakening but apparently is in much more detail in her autobiographical book. Links are on the blog.
D

Seeing Through the Illusion

A new video from Lorne and Lucia on post-awakening. This is not on seeing through the illusion of a me but rather the illusion of the nature of the world.

“When individual consciousness has become the Infinite Consciousness that it is, its perception of the person, world and universe begins to refine. It begins to see through the appearance and perceives the refined flow of Divine Intelligence that appears as the world and universe, and experiences this Divine Intelligence as the flow itSelf within its Self.”

Endings

On the journey, there are typically a series of openings that either follow or produce a falling away. The end of the old. Periodically, such falling away has a profound effect on one’s world view and life. Certainly, realizations are such changes, but also when core drivers are seen and end. I mentioned one such awhile back. The falling away of the need to know.

Other such shifts have continued. In the last couple of weeks, a new opening and falling away has been underway. I’ve touched on a few aspects of that in some posts. On the weekend at a writers workshop (it seems like years ago), another grip came to light. And it made conscious an even deeper one.

Curiously, this resistance was energizing the drive to journal and share via this blog. While much of the content has flowed from within, it has been expressed in relationship to a person. What it means to a me rather than a we. A subtle taint.

Around the beginning of the month I was in the middle of a large post (probably a series) on meditation – it’s core value, best approaches, understanding mantras, blah blah. Also an article on some new insights into ego and mind. But the interest simply ended.

As before, this will probably settle out and a new approach will arise. We’ll see what develops.

One small thing though. When we speak of being “In the head” we’re not actually talking about being in the mind. The mind is not centered in the head. What is is the dominant senses – hearing and sight. So when we say ‘in the head’, we mean absorbed in the experiences of our senses. Those experiences are then processed by mind in beliefs and memory. While senses are in the moment, our absorption in their labeling and interpretation brings it into the past.

Thank you for your patience with this journey.
Davidya