Being Empathic

I’ve mentioned Judith Orloff before – she’s very intuitive and understands it well. This longer interview covers a wide range of subjects, from her own history to practical application of empathic skills. Notably she mentions Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue as issues often related to not knowing how to manage and protect ones energy. She speaks of avoiding conflicts that feed controllers and energy drains. Better coping mechanisms than fat, not shouldering it. Breathe, stay centred, water, meditate. She describes a few energy personality types or archetypes: Intellect, Empath, Rock, Gusher and Floater (out of body) and how to balance each.

An Intro – to see if you like it: (4 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePESrsCJQoE

The full interview: (46 min)
http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/members/jorloff.htm
(a PDF transcript is linked)

Are You An Emotional Empath? With a brief quiz.

I spoke about this in relationships prior.

Beyond I Am

Another great question, this on the basics of our existence.

“My spiritual journey is driven by one main question I had from the very beginning: How and why did I and this world come to existence? After reading so many books, ok, I can accept that the world is an illusion, so I can take it out of the question. But how about “I”? My admired spiritual teachers all say:

The only thing I know for certain is I AM and I don’t know anything else.

Is this I AM knowledge so strong that it dispels the urge to ask the question about how and why the Spirit comes to existence?”

Some people use “I Am” to describe soul realization. The awakened inner spirit. But this is not Self realization as the me remains. The deeper sense of Self or “Amness” becomes clear either before or after Self realization – that’s why the name. Self realization itself is when we not just experience it but become it. Some describe this as the end of the seeker, when self-knowledge dawns. It’s not learned knowledge but rather more knowingness.

While this is a worthwhile “goal”, some people suggest this is the end of inquiry. Not in my books. It is not the end of knowledge. In fact, this is one of the things I harp on. It’s just the beginning. That’s partly why they call it being “reborn”. If you consider “I Am” and the surrender of knowing the end of wisdom, you’ve missed the discovery of reality itself. Fundamental reality is beyond I and Am. There are many teachers who are realized but fewer who have reached the highest truths of fully embodied unity. While a realized person can offer great value, they cannot take you where they are not. Only in unity is the fundamental reality revealed, after transcending even God’s dream.

As a side note, not everyone will use terms like “I Am” because there can be a sense of the end of “I”, either with the end of the ego or with the end of identity prior to unity. However, it’s difficult to use English without using “I”. (laughs)

Ultimate reality cannot be described as it has no qualities or characteristics. In fact, it is beyond even being. We can use words like silence, source, or unmanifest. Brahman or Tao. Within that unmanifest nature is 2 unexpressed principles, what Lorne calls liveliness and alertness. When alertness becomes lively, the silence becomes aware and then becomes aware of itself. When awareness becomes aware of itself, there is a recognition, then explosion of expression. Being becomes, existence then is.

How that expression is perceived depends on from where you are looking, your perspective. One may see an explosion of love that flows, creating and sustaining everything. One may see Shiva and Shakti making love. One may see the unfolding of pure knowledge and intelligence into structure. One may also feel, hear, or know or may not see, just feel or hear or know. Thus, the diversity of descriptions of the details. But the fundamental process remains. Until you experience it for yourself, it will not make a lot of sense. But it is you who is doing this. You are that awareness, that lively alertness that infuses everything, that causes being to become.

Everything we know and experience is a derivative of that process. Often, a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. As above, so below. The world is frequently described as an illusion and this is found true at a certain point. But the deeper truth is that it’s a dream. The imagination of God, at play in the field of love and wisdom.

Certainly, our experience of life quite often does not match that experience. This is understandable. We’re perceiving it through a pretty heavy load of filters – resistance and expectation of what it ‘should’ be and an unwillingness to see it as it is. Ironically, we fear only ourselves.

As far as why you are here – first thing is that you are never separate from the whole. It only appears that way. Infinity has drawn it’s attention to a point, what we might call the soul. That focus unfolds the completeness into what we describe as space and time so that your focus can experience it incrementally. Go into the detail. A means for the unexpressed Self to know itself. For love to experience its breadth and depth. You as an apparent individual are here to experience a specific aspect for/of the whole. Consciousness creates and shifts for a specific sequence of experiences to occur.

This may sound like determinism or fate, but who is consciousness? You are. You are unfolding as you choose. Free will and determinism are one and the same.

In the end though, this is just words on a screen. They may help you remember, it may mean nothing. It is for you to look within and find out for yourself. When that inner Self awakens to itself, then finds itself in all things, the perception of wholeness dawns. There are no words that can describe it. But one can be it and thus know it. And that knowingness will dispel “the urge”.

As a bonus, you will understand the Upanishads. (laughs)
Davidya

After Death

Recently, I was asked a question I thought would be worth sharing. When I read Adyashanti’s book, “The End of Your World”, this one also struck me as an unusual question to include and a curious answer. I’ve edited my response for the format.

There is an interview Q&A in Adya’s new book “The End of Your World” which I don’t understand. Can I ask you what he meant?

P. 214:

“TS: Do you think there’s any quality of experience that’s available after death that’s not available when you are incarnate?

ADYA: Waking up is dying. That’s what it is. When the awakening happened, I died. Everything disappeared, blanked out. Everything that everybody fears the most is what happened to me. Total blankness. Absolute nonexistence. Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness. At that
moment, no past life, no present life – nothing – no consciousness, no birth, no sickness, no nothing. Zero. It’s everything that everybody is terrified of. That’s what happened to me; that’s death.

And it just so happens that death is itself life. We must die in order to truly live. We must experience absolute non-existence in order to truly exist, in a conscious way.”

Namaste,
J

Hi J

First thing to understand is Adya – he had a big unity-type waking, then settled back into realization, then completed the process. So his waking was high-contrast. It is often more gentle.

Secondly, from what I’ve seen, the reason people fear death is more due to latent sub-conscious memories of bad dying experiences. (starving, drowning, etc.) This may relate to peoples phobias as well.

Actual death is usually quite nice and is a relief. An unburdening. Awakening can be too but the big difference is that awakening is the end of the ego story whereas in death, ego may at most become latent. (journeys after death vary) This is why one can lose the fear of death well before losing the ego.

When you die, the etherial, emotional and lower mind energy dissipate. What some call “ego death” with waking may be experienced in a similar way. Who you thought you were ends. Some call this nothingness and no self but in my experience this is only because the old has ended but the new is not yet seen. For long term meditators, the Self can already be very familiar. Thus, only the small me ends. Also, it is ego that is terrified. If ego has detached or ended, there is no fear. In fact it’s usually more ‘that’s it???’ ‘That’s all it was??’ One of the cosmic jokes. Awakening is very simple and natural.

Most people I know experience awakening gradually. There is the clear shift in the sense of self. A sense of liberation and peace. Then the mind notices who it thought it was is no longer there. Then other aspects of the story or ego construct – what I call ‘ego shrapnel’ – fall away or are seen and fall away.  The less story there is, the less there is to create a fuss or engage it. When the emotional underpinning falls away, this accelerates.

For the last part of the quote, the me must end or die for the we to live. We must be born again*. We become nothing on the way to being everything. The ego fears ending, so it tries to divert us from the truth of our being. Amusingly nothing actually dies or ends – just illusion.

It’s also worth mentioning that fundamental aspects of you are beyond existence. Absolute pure awareness, for example. Thus, to know who you really are, you experience your non-existence. (laughs) From the heart, pure love causes & sustains existence, so this is a good thing. 

I can also note that Adya didn’t actually answer the question. I would say yes. In India, when an awake person dies, they call it maha-samadhi. The great, final transcendence. One is no longer bound by the limits of being human and having a person but one also no longer has the unique vehicle for fast evolution. What happens for any give awake person though seems to vary – as with all things. Some describe dissolving into source, some ascending the highest heavens, and some stick around to help.
Davidya

* more deeply, we become “twice reborn” into Unity.

First, the Truth

don Miguel Ruiz asks us to find our truth.

How do you find your truth?
1) Don’t believe me – but learn to listen.
2) Don’t believe yourself – but learn to listen.
3) Don’t believe anybody else – it is true only for them.

In between all the stories is the truth. You don’t need to believe in truth. You only need to believe in lies. Your word is your magic wand – is it true?

(from an interview in the film Living Luminaries)

And that leads of course to The 4 Agreements. (from the book)
1) Be impeccable with your word
2) Don’t take anything personally
3) Don’t make assumptions
4) Always do your best

They sound simple at first, but it’s not so easy. But the rewards are good communication, truth, and freedom.

(The first part before this is the books Introduction.  This appears to be some sort of summary. The background video is unrelated clips from an old movie.)

This post arose from comments over on Why Don’t We.

Why Don’t We Do Our Best?

One of the most curious aspects of the human experience is how much we stray from what we know to be right.

We know that we need exercise, good food, and moderation. We know that we need to listen more than judge to keep a relationship working. We know that if we stay focused on our goals, we’ll get there. We talk of the choices we have in building a good life, yet so often those are not the choices we make. In many ways, it can seem like we’re dealing with an obstinate “inner child”. That’s closer to the truth than it might seem.

Napoleon Hill, in his followup research after publishing “Thing and Grow Rich“, identified a 17th principle, what he called the Cosmic Habitforce. Others speak of ideas like the ego and the sub-conscious.

Here I speak of the mechanism being 3 level. Mind, heart, gut.

There is the surface ego, the idea of being separate, and the constructs and beliefs we build to support that. Our story. The roles we play.

The ego is driven and energized by what are typically called “negative” emotions – anger, shame, blame, jealousy, and so on. What are essentially constricted forms of will and passion.

Those emotions are in turn driven by a deep grip of fear, an attempt to control. The core person.

This mechanism is not usually apparent until after Self Realization simply because before that, we are in the ego. Only when we step out of the ego can the depths of this process become apparent. Over time.

However, we can use mindfulness to look into what arises and see this process while it is happening. With some witnessing or observer value, we can see the emotions arising that trigger thoughts like separation and judgment. When we observe thoughts, we can see the emotional charge or resistance. When we look at the emotion, we can see a more primitive emotion under or within that. And under that, we will often find a simple, childlike fear. And under that, silent peace. Or happiness. This is traveling down the ladder within the experience rather than observing it from outside.

The above is a process of the seeker, how to see, release and clear. We let go of all the old concepts and emotional noise that shadowed our deeper nature. A theme develops about getting rid of stuff. Purge, purge, purge.

When we get down to the core person, there is a new dynamic that must be seen. We exist here as a human because we have a person. That person is the vehicle for the fast evolution of our soul. We can’t get rid of the person if we want the vehicle. But it is an awkward alliance as the person can be quite resistant to change. It is very child-like and insecure. Even when it has been showered with soma and bliss, there can be resistance to more. It is one of the more amusing ironies of being human. The person has been so long living in a place of fear, it runs that out of habit, even in the face of divinity.

We have to learn to be nice to our person, to be patient, to be forgiving. It has given up so much for us, whatever we might think it has gained.
Davidya

The Lost Symbol

Dan Brown is the author of the famous “DaVinci Code” novel and it’s followup “Angels and Demons” that were both made into movies. His most recent mystery, “The Lost Symbol” evidently has as it’s heroine one “Katherine Solomon”, a noetic scientist patterned after real people. Particularly Marilyn Schlitz, the CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).

Here Marilyn writes about Becoming a Fictional Character. IONS summarizes what noetics is for the new books audience.

Of course, the book includes symbologist Robert Langdon. Katherine is evidently the love interest.  And it includes direct reference to Lynne McTaggart, journalist, science author, and the person behind The Intention Experiment. Lynne talks about it here, including the facts.

From the book:
“The shocking discovery, it seemed, paralleled the ancient spiritual belief in a ‘cosmic consciousness’— a vast coalescing of human intention that was actually capable of interacting with physical matter. Recently, studies in mass meditation and prayer had produced similar results in Random Event Generators, fueling the claim that human consciousness, as Noetic author Lynne McTaggart described it, was a substance outside the confines of the body . . . a highly ordered energy capable of changing the physical world. Katherine had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book The Intention Experiment, and her global, Web-based study — theintentionexperiment.com — aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world.”

A remarkably explicit reference to Lynne. I would not describe consciousness as a “substance”. And it can interact with matter and energy because they occur within it and of it. Intention IS the world. But it’s good that the ideas are being seeded in popular books. Now we just need to communicate a deeper understanding of how perception of that evolves and what our real foundations are.

Katherine Solomon is said to say “The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It’s a hard-core scientific reality. . . and harnessing it has the potential to transform our world. . . What’s more it’s happening right now. You can feel it all around you. Technology is linking us in ways we never imagined possible: Twitter, Google, Wikipedia and others all blend to create a web of interconnected minds.”

I would not use the word “harness” – if it is universal, it is you also. The key is rather becoming that.

Both Marilyn and Lynne are also in the documentary film The Living Matrix that was recently released. This is a film that focuses on the science of energetic healing. Something I’ve mentioned before.

When awareness rises enough, you never know where the ideas will show up from.
Davidya

Blogging

Well, it seems talk of God is not so popular. (laughs)

I recently passed the 1,000 blog posts milestone. And I’ve begun organizing to come back to the old book project, this time as a series rather than one mega-book. More news, as it develops…

Davidya

[UPDATE - I've had a few questions about the writing. A blog is a great way to talk about specific ideas. But to communicate a larger overview about the evolution of awareness, the nature of reality, and the structure of existence is beyond the scope of a few hundred word article.

While I write in the context of the blog as a whole, unless you are a regular reader, some of it is coming out of context. I've organized some of the main points into "Key Posts" (on the right) but this is sill just snippets and bits rather than a cohesive overview. A longer format allows one to explore the ideas in a broader way.

I spent half of 2007 writing as part of my own process. In fact, this blog started as a way to "test the waters". But the resulting tome was too large and dense. The approach I'm going to try now is a series, focusing on one area, each building on the previous. ]

Do You Believe in God?

When the subject of God comes up in the west, it’s almost always in the context of belief. Do you or do you not believe in God?

People tend to place themselves in one of 3 camps first:

1) I do Believe.
2) I don’t believe, the atheist. The rejection of theism.
3) I don’t know, the agnostic – the unsure, noncommittal or doubtful. ( a- or not gnostic)

The believer usually follows a teaching of what God to believe in. They believe in a specific God. Some faiths in the east ask you to choose the form of God you most relate to, something that may be handed down through families. But many are taught “our” God is the only “real” God – anything else is a mistake or worse.

The atheist will sometimes suggest theirs is the rational view as it is an “absence of belief”. Actually, it is another belief, in this case in the nonexistence of God. If it was not a belief, it would not have a name and conceptual position associated with it. The mind is tricky that way, especially with people who consider themselves “objective”.

The agnostic may suggest that we cannot know God so we cannot know if God exists or not. Some would like to believe but want evidence. Others are closet atheists who want to keep their options open. Or they’ve not thought it through enough to make a decision.

The problem with this entire debate is that it’s all conceptual. It brings a discussion of God into a political debate rather than an exploration of comparative reality. The believer and the atheist are both following beliefs, not exploring reality.

I am not suggesting that if you are an atheist or that if you believe in God you’re wrong. That’s just bringing it back to a conceptual debate again. Belief is a choice we make that is built on our upbringing, our community, and our experience of the world. But fundamentally, belief remains a mental concept that has nothing to do with our transcendent reality. While our beliefs reflect our personal reality and will affect how we experience life, they make no difference to the reality that underlies all experience. Just how we see it.

It’s true that a belief in God may encourage people to behave in more loving ways. All of the major faiths are founded on the love of God. But it’s equally true that those same beliefs are twisted and used as weapons for killing and control in the “name of God”. Completely contrary to their own fundamental teachings.

Here is the key point. What you believe is up to you. It doesn’t matter if you believe or don’t believe in God, even to God. But what you believe will affect your ability to know God directly.

The weakness here is believing in belief, in ideas of the mind. Belief will always fail us as it is not grounded in being. As I have outlined elsewhere, all faith and belief must be outgrown in order to see what is beyond it.

Many atheists and agnostics have chosen their position as they have not seen God through their experience of the world. I can certainly understand why many would reject the vision of God they were given as a child. It’s often not even a healthy belief.

What they have not realized is that the apparent concrete world, by itself, is just a belief. Unless it’s perception is founded in fundamental reality, the world is seen incompletely. Out of context. And the “hand of God” is missed entirely.

A number of the worlds great scientists have concluded that God is real, but usually in an impersonal way, as a fundamental underlying intelligence. This includes Einstein, Planck, Kelvin, Faraday, Newton, Descartes, and many more.

They have observed that the world behaves in a largely orderly way under the apparent chaos. That laws of nature illustrate an underlying intelligence. Some, like the laws of entropy, illustrate there is an intelligence that transcends even those laws. Otherwise, there would be no laws and no order for entropy to deteriorate. In fact, the idea that we evolved entirely randomly, by accident, conflicts with those same laws. Order requires a continual input of order or else everything devolves into evenly dispersed dust, not complex self-aware beings. Consider how often you have to clean your home and how often the dust bunnies come alive and reproduce. (yeah, it can seem that way)

Exploration by effect is known as inference or indirect knowledge. Some suggest that once the gaps in scientific understanding are filled, there will be no room for God. Yet the deeper we go, the larger the space becomes. Yes, some laws can be inferred from other laws but we still come back to a place of fundamental structure, of underlying order.

In the 6 systems of Indian Philosophy, Nyaya explores inference, perception and other means of knowing and being decisive. But it is Yoga and Vedanta that outline the actual means of direct knowing of reality. And by that, God is directly knowable and experience-able.

God, however, cannot be fully known until we know who we are. Thus, it is after Self Realization that God Realization can dawn. If we are typically western mind-oriented, we may also find God Realization unfolds after Unity, as I outlined here. But God can begin to become known long before this if we stand with an open mind and heart. IF we simply look at what is here, now.

The “true” God is inclusive of everything, including all beliefs. God will be what you want He/She to be. Transcendent but infusing everything. Omnipresent in life. Love incarnate.

God may first become apparent as the fundamental silent reality, called Brahman in Sanskrit. As our experience deepens, the underlying intelligence becomes increasingly obvious. As the deepest values of expression unfold and the heart becomes divine, the capacity to directly experience God in a deeply personal and intimate way unfolds.

And that intimacy is not just within but found everywhere. Oneness with the divine is so far beyond any concept of God. It cannot be conceived, let along believed. But it can be lived.
Davidya

Velcrow’s Calling

Or I could say, Ripping Purpose. Fierce Velcrow. There are lots of playful ways I could describe a workshop with filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. He’s the guy behind the films Scared Sacred and Fierce Light.

The workshop was focused on blending activism and spirituality, of enlivening spirit with passion or deepening passion with spirit. He spoke of the importance of blending insight and compassion, the cool and the warm. How the ultimate bravery is not being afraid of our complete selves.

I’ve spoken before about our calling or gift. How we may not see what we have to offer because it is so close to us. We live it but we may try not to, try to resist it, or be unaware of it. For myself, I was seeking clarity on returning to writing long form.

We used a series of exercises to explore who we are, what has meaning for us, and how we can mobilize our passion. He recommended some of the exercises on Joanna Macy’s site on deep ecology.
http://joannamacy.net/

I’ve also spoken on here before about The Muse and on Sera Beak’s passionate Redvolution. Sera was in the film.

Let’s have fun and do good.
Davidya

The Big Red Book

The collective unconscious. Archetypes. Dream interpretation. Many of the ideas that float around modern “New Age” thinking are derived from the musings of Carl G. Jung in his development of analytical psychology. What we commonly call analysis.

From whence came his ideas? Jung was an avid explorer of mysticism, eastern philosophy, seances, mythology, witchcraft, ufo’s, schizophrenics, and more. But more importantly, he explored his own “unconscious” shadow self or dark side. He journaled this process in a large red book, “filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils.“

After many years hidden away in a Swiss bank vault, the book is being published. The New York Times has produced an interesting article on the background and history of the work and the impact it’s had on the players involved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html

While I don’t agree with Jung’s approach our outlook on some matters, he did help open the door of the west to taking a look at our inner life. Without that, it would have remained largely unconscious.

I can’t say if the book will be beneficial or not, but it is the record of one person’s journey within. Fortunately, we now know of better ways.
Davidya