Discipline and Freedom

Tom Stine has written a new post, Discipline and Freedom, basically on how to get through the maze of techniques of awakening.

I’ve said some similar things in a little different way. Worth a read.

“Eventually, all the techniques, all the practices, gave way to the only real practice there is: stillness. When the Infinite begins to awaken through you, it increasingly wants nothing to do with techniques or practices. It has one seeming agenda: to shine it’s light on everything in your mental-emotional system, to open every dark corner and shine a light into it. And what you discover is that it is operating on its agenda and its program, not yours. As a matter of fact, yours never mattered in the slightest. It has always been the Infinite doing its thing.”

Everything Wakes

There is an interesting aspect of awakening that is not too often covered. Awakening is not about what you or I are doing, it’s what everything is doing. Everything wakes.

Of course, it’s not possible for a rock to meditate. And a bird may have moments of insight but they don’t have enough time to awaken.

So how do the birds and trees awaken? Through consciousness.

The key thing here – consciousness is not a you or I thing. It’s a we thing. We’re in this together. The “me” does not wake up, Self wakes to Itself.

It is easiest for Self to do this through a human nervous system that has been prepared. But there are examples in the old books of other forms of life who become awake teachers.

For humans, the first stage is Self Realization. This is a more localized thing, a person wakes and begins to much more directly express the silence in their life.

As more and more people waken (as is happening these days), the group consciousness is pulled up with them. People close to them benefit more, but also things around them. Pets, home, work, and so forth.

In India, they have a term called Darshan. It’s kind of like presence or charisma. But as it’s more subtle, it may not be noticed. But you may notice subtle shifts in how you feel.

I’ve also noticed what might be called soul resonance. Where we notice the effect more with some than with others, even though they are equally awake.

As the awakening deepens, the silence goes deeper plus the alertness of that becomes more manifest. As Unity unfolds, the silence moves more and more into the world. The presence becomes stronger.

All of this moves everything in consciousness forward. As has been in the past, at first the movement seems slow and sluggish. But as the momentum builds and more movement is happening, the speed begins to build. We may be experiencing a sense that time is speeding up for example.

As we express the qualities of the divine more and more, they become more fully known, awake. But equally, as we experience these qualities in our ordinary life, we awaken those divine aspects in what is perceived. We awaken the objects of perception. We become the vehicles for the divine to awaken all of Itself to Itself.

In more advanced stages of unity, we are awakening our environment, our history – in short, everything we have ever perceived. As we sit in an infinite space, all of it is being “raised up”.

Can you imagine a world were most everything is awake? Where the walls glow with liveliness, the trees sing, the very air tickles with life. Every gesture is rich with meaning. Every building hewn from solid peace. Where the world is your family. Everything is deeply intimate and only a thought away.

It may seem a silly fantasy. But it’s not so hard to describe. The reality is within memory of many of us.
Davidya

Coming Home

Some describe the experience of the spiritual journey as a coming home. This is surprisingly literal. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to use the phrase “mother is at home” to describe the security one felt in the peace of being.

But there is a deeper aspect to this in the way creation and expression arise from silence. We know any experience has 3 parts – the observer, the process of observation, and the object of perception.

But it is also all mirrored. What is above is repeated below. As above, so below.

God the observer is the “male” or father aspect, the witness or subject. The 3rd eye mirrors this.

God the creator is the “female” or mother aspect, the object of perception, the heart. She is known by many names – Mother Divine, Mother Mary, Shakti… in fact there are texts that list 1,000 names for the divine mother. The richness of the divine heart is immense.

The connection between them is the flow, the process, the throat. Thus arises speech.

Another aspect of this is the alertness and the liveliness, basic principles of silence. Or awareness (which is lively alertness) and intention (which is directed liveliness, focused awareness), the 2 requirements for becoming or expressing. When these 2 are brought together, creation ensues. The process of creation is the process of perception – awareness, intention, and result.

Because we are a mirror of the divine, we are our own vehicle home. As we clear the way and come to know each aspect of ourselves more closely, we find the divine that underlies what is mirrored. We find the divine in the ordinary, the copy. We find the mirror is none other than That itself.

And thus we come home and find mother is at home.  Right there in the heart.
Davidya

Habits of Ignorance

The mind is a habit machine. That’s how we learn to ride a bike, drive a car, and read. But it’s also how we respond automatically and inappropriately to some circumstances. Like learning to spell certain words wrong. Or reacting negatively to someones presence, irrespective of circumstance.

Some cats have an uncanny tendency to associate certain experiences with food and thus set themselves up to repeat them. Like positioning themselves to be bumped by the fridge door or get under foot at mealtime. The ego is rather the same way. It is constructed of habit mind so tends to like to repeat things, even things that don’t serve us.

After awakening, some of those old habits of mind can still be around, even with the core ego released. It may sometimes seem like the ego is back.

The Brahma Sutras are an ancient text that discusses post-waking. In another discussion, it was observed that they suggest old habits of mind can be removed by enjoying them.

This is similar to the idea of forgiveness – letting go of resistance to our emotional baggage to allow them to resolve. But in this case, we are seeing mental garbage arise to the neutral witness.

While it varies, the mind stuff tends to be subtler. There may be no emotional flag. It is simply a thought-form like any other thought. But it stands in resistance so can be recognized by its effects. Perhaps even its “tone”.

When the old junk comes up, we may at first be annoyed or frustrated. But when the silence is deep enough, we settle into bliss. Then habits of limited thinking can be more amusing. Without the resistance there, they can be released as they’re no longer taken seriously.

Some teachers, like Robert Scheinfeld, talk of life being a game. Treat it like an amusement park and it’s not only more fun, one can make easier progress.
Davidya

Flow Gratitude

In this holiday season, I am reminded over and over again the importance of gratitude. In a recent post, Deep Forgiveness, I mentioned the value of gratitude in creating the space for forgiveness and the release that allows.

But more deeply, gratitude is an inherent quality of love, the love that sustains life and existence. In fact, we can say it’s an aspect of that initial recognition that gives rise to all of creation.

When we’re feeling grateful, we’re tuning ourselves to the flow of love through our life. Rather than fighting what is, we’re tuning in to it.

This allows us to feel more happiness, see more success, and otherwise have a far more problem-free life. That process may not be obvious at first as it may take a little time to shift the energy. But the more we’re coming from gratitude, the smoother life will be.

Thank you,
Davidya

Seasons Greetings

A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi:

“To you on this day: I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing that I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much that while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today.  Take heaven. No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in the present little instant. Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There’s a radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see we only have to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, heavy, or hard.

Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor woven of love by wisdom and with power. Welcome it, grasp it and you will touch the angel’s hand that it brings to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, a duty, believe me that the angel’s hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence is there.

Our joys too: be not content with them as joys. They too conceal diviner gifts. Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty, and beneath its covering you will find earth but close to it your heaven. Courage then to claim it. That is all. But courage you have and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together winding through unknown country, home.

And so at this Christmastime I greet you my future friend: not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”

– Fra Giovanni Giocondo, in 1513
This was first published in the 1930′s but the British Museum was unable to verify it’s origin. The attribution may be an urban myth but it remains an excellent message.

Merry Christmas and Joyous New Year!
Davidya

Choose Silence

More on the theme of letting go.

Choose silence, and love is apparent

When we choose silence, we choose to give up the reasons not to love, which are the reasons for going to war, or continuing war, or separating, or being a victim, or being right. In a moment of silence, in a moment of no thought, no mind, we choose to give those up. This is what my teacher invited me to.

Just choose silence. Don’t even choose love. Choose silence, and love is apparent. If we choose love we already have an idea of what love is.

But if you choose silence, that is the end of ideas. You are willing to have no idea, to see what is present when there is no idea, past, present, future. No idea of love, no idea of truth, no idea of you, no idea of me. Love is apparent.
– Gangaji

Choose silence, and love is apparent

Complete Forgiveness

Today, a series of articles on several blogs were posted on Forgiveness. This is a response to some of the feedback I’ve received. In no particular order.

NOTE – if you land here first, you may find reading Deep Forgiveness (above) useful first, as well as following the links to other posts on the subject. There are several other excellent posts I’ve not cited here.

How do you tell you have complete forgiveness? That you have let go of everything? Your life is wonderful. You are a living embodiment of peace. All your relationships are happy and loving. Your life is smooth and supportive. Money flows easily to you.

Clearly, it is a rare person who has achieved this level of release. I’ve made some progress but certainly have a ways to go. So don’t go getting into blame stories if you have been unable to do some forgiveness. As I wrote in the prior post, Forgiveness is not something you can do. It is something you prepare the ground for. Then it arises spontaneously. From grace we could say.

Gail @ A Flourishing Life wrote Is It Time To Forgive? There, she suggests a forgiveness process that may help. But if you have not yet cultured the ground, you may find it very difficult. Again, it’s not something you can think your way through. And there can certainly be a big “NO” to doing this stuff. That is the resistance embodied, otherwise known as the ego.

As I have said here many times, the key to spiritual progress is to make that inner connection to who you are within. As that silent being becomes more established, the dynamics of forgiveness are much easier to engage.

Another point I’ve touched on in the past – at first, you’ll find yourself noticing how you’ve reacted after the fact. But even there, you can then process the feelings and let them go. With practice and on good days, you’ll begin to see them while it’s happening, during the drama. Sometimes you may even find yourself able to choose, to change the direction of what is already playing out. Catch yourself in the act.

Finally, you’ll begin to notice the reaction as it first arises. Before it has engaged. That’s when you really have choice. But even there, you may find you still want to let the reaction play out. Let it go.

Remember, this is NOT about making feelings bad. That’s just another form of resistance. As Matthew observed over on Urban Monk, even hatred can be a positive force. The key is not the emotions that arise. It is our relationship to the feeling. Are we taking it personally? Are we holding to it, making a story about how it’s justified? Or how that’s a bad feeling? How it’s wrong to feel that way? Or are we simply experiencing what arises and letting it go?

Neutrality to whatever arises. This is equanimity. This is the end of the war within that will see the end of the war without.

For some people, the most difficult to deal with are former mates. For others, parents. Especially if they’re still in our life, reengaging the drama. But always keep in mind that it takes 2 to tango. If you stop taking it personally, trying to figure our who’s right and wrong, and disengage from the story, the relationship can change dramatically. The other party may still make a fuss or may be unhappy you’re not playing your “proper” role. But if you don’t engage it, the drama story will disengage.

Events in my own life recently brought all of my immediate family together in a non-neutral circumstance. While others were quite stressed by it, I tried to stay conscious and not engage the old stories. Not only was I minimally stressed but I soothed others, events went very smoothly and things worked out very well. And I cleared still more. There’s one area I’ve made some progress in at least. (laughs)

Don’t be discouraged if your clearing efforts don’t bear immediate fruit. The process really does work. You may at first find it like peeling the onion, layer upon layer. But as the better forgiving skills arise, it will clear faster and deeper. When you pull the root, that dynamic will finally end.

Watch the expectations. Expectations are a form of holding. We may expect conflict and thus engage automatically. Or we may expect too much of ourselves, then judge ourselves a failure if we don’t seem to succeed. Just remember that even being able to see the process in action is an amazing insight. One that will have profound long-term benefits for you, even if it doesn’t seem to be helping much from day-to-day.

If you notice an inner conflict with what’s right, that is the story, looking for an excuse. Who should I blame? Where feelings are concerned, there is no right or wrong. There is only what is. The weather is not wrong. So why would our inner weather be wrong?

Don’t be surprised if the process brings up mud you had no idea you had. All of us carry horrific and nasty judgments of ourselves and others. Stuff that goes a long way back. If we can see them and let it go, they will end and cease casting a shadow over our lives.

It is true that as the resistance passes, we’ll notice “negative” emotions less and less. But this does not mean we’ll never get angry. Eckhart Tolle gives the example of coming across an animal being abused. Anger is natural, just as joy.

Another point that arose was letting go of all feelings, even joy. We should not try to contain or hold joy or love. They will find their way in freedom. They will die in a box.

Forget about perfection. You’re human. Give yourself a pat on the back for getting this far. Self-blame has to be the biggest weight so many of us carry. If we can ease up on that a little, we’ll find the world a much brighter place.

Brighter, in fact, than you can imagine.
Peace be with you on your journey home.
Davidya

Deep Forgiveness

Takuin and Albert (Urban Monk) decided to post on the subject of Forgiveness on the same day. They invited me and others to do the same. It’s an important subject and a good time of year to consider it.

[podcast version removed]

I’ve spoken here a few times about forgiveness. It is a profound part of the personal journey to wholeness.

But before we understand forgiveness, we need to understand the origins of what we seek to forgive.

True forgiveness is not a concept. It’s not something you do with your mind. In fact, it’s not something you do at all. It’s something you undo, something you release. It is the letting go of what we have long held.

You see, when we have an ego, a sense of being separate from others, we work to feel safe. One of the ways an ego feels safe is by making itself right. And to make oneself right, we have to make other wrong. This is the seed of conflict.

The other aspect of ego is to make it personal – what happens is about ME. It’s happening to ME. When events arise in our life that make ME feel uncomfortable or  threatened, the ego will make it wrong or bad.

The cumulative effect of taking it personally and making it wrong is that we resist life. We push against what shows up in our life, not realizing this resistance is not a prevention. It is a holding on. It keeps what we don’t want with us. Not understanding that like attracts like, we unintentionally amplify what we hate. The world comes to appear as messed up and unsafe. The inner narrative (monkey mind) about this I call the shadow story. This is what keeps it going. The result is what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body.

The solution to this drama is forgiveness. But to understand forgiveness, we have to see this a little deeper still.

When an experience shows up in our life that we deem “bad”, we’ll find two things happen. We will react emotionally. i.e.: we’ll “get” angry or fearful or similar “negative” emotion. And we’ll resist the experience of it, how it feels. We don’t want to feel bad so we push against the “bad” feelings. This mutes the feeling somewhat but does not actually stop it.

This process feeds on itself. Next time a similar experience comes up, it is deemed bad automatically. And we push against what we’ve always pushed against.

We’ve missed 2 key points. It was our reactivity that caused the emotion in the first place, not the event. And in resisting that feeling we caused, we leave the experience incomplete. Unintentionally, the feeling we didn’t want we carry forward with us, unresolved. Do that many times a day for a few decades and you begin to get an idea of the kind of baggage we carry.

All of that resistance requires a lot of energy to sustain. We’re holding back the dam.

It’s no wonder our emotions are a muddle, we don’t know how we feel, and our intuition doesn’t work so well. We’ve been filling the place with trash and most of our emotional energy is spent avoiding.

The less you feel how you feel, the more you are avoiding feeling. This does not mean you are not feeling, only that you are tuning out how you feel to avoid what you’ve resisted. But in avoiding feeling, you also avoid happiness. Oops.

When we begin to connect with who we are within, we begin to find safety without blame. The ego begins to loose its grip. We begin to be able to allow the experiences and feelings that arise. Rather than resisting and holding them, we let them go. We stop adding to the pile.

This gives us enough insight into the process to begin winding down the old stuff. Finishing off the experiences of yor. This does not mean going back in and reliving our traumas. It means noticing when we’re reacting and noticing the feelings behind that reactivity. We can then allow the experience, the emotions flow over us in a brief wave, and it’s done. The resistance that caused the reactivity is over. Resolved.

Clearly though, if we’ve been adding to the pile for decades, clearing the resistances one by one will take a similar amount of time. This is where forgiveness comes in. Forgiveness allows us to release large batches at once, safely.

The reason forgiveness is potent is the role of other – our resistance is around our blame of other. That mate or parent or friend or boss or whatever that was the cause of my misery. So when we forgive who we have blamed, much of the associated resistance can fall away.

But we cannot make a mood of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a surrender, a release, a letting go. We have to step into that space of surrender. That place where everything is OK and we can feel the relationship from peace and love and let the junk go. But for most of us, that’s not a familiar place. So how do we get there?

This is where I found patience (with myself) and technique were the keys. For technique, you want to culture positivity. Acceptance. Gratitude. Then moments of allowing will arise naturally and spontaneously. In that open space, we simply recall a relationship. Seen from love and compassion, our holding becomes conscious and the pain can be released. After a brief wave of emotion, we’ve forgiven that relationship. It’s done. All that energy is released. As it was our doing in the first place, we don’t need the other persons help. And we don’t need to go into the story of why – that’s just the blame, the excuse.

I found that pretty much every relationship had some resistance with it. A few required a couple of rounds. After doing this a few times, the process became automatic. I could step through every relationship in memory. Major loads were released in a few minutes. And then, at the bottom of all the forgiving was the biggest nut. I needed to forgive myself.

Without such healing, having healthy relationships can be deeply compromised. Including your relationship with yourself. If you don’t like yourself, how do you expect to find happiness?

Ironically, after all this forgiving, we discover there was never anything to forgive in the first place. We were the only ones holding the grudge. It was all just a shadow story. An illusion.
Davidya

Other concurrent posts you may enjoy:
Takuin: The Wound of Forgiveness

UrbanMonk: Our Innate Innocence – Reflections on Forgiveness

Tom Stine: There Is Nothing to Forgive

Joyful Days: The Gift of Forgiveness

Other links may be added or show in Comments.
Be sure to add a link in Comments if you’ve posted on the subject.

What’s Real?

Responses to a few questions on reality…

What’s Real?
When we answer questions about reality, we can look at it 2 ways.

Firstly, there is reality that is unchanging, absolute, omnipresent silence. That which cannot be adequately described but is everywhere present. We can never not be in this reality. But how we perceive this may vary.

Then there is what you are experiencing. What is real for you now. We of course fall into and out of what we are experiencing all the time. Nodding off, daydreaming, concentrating, spacing out, etc. etc. This is more contrasty if we experience a major shift or loose a big experience. But all we’re falling into and out of is another way of perceiving. Nothing is ever actually lost.

This point cannot be underestimated. All that is changing is perception. A big part of the evolutionary journey is becoming increasingly OK with what is. The more we allow it to be, that we surrender to life as it is, the faster we progress.

If however, we are caught in a story of experiences we lost, what we once had, what we want that we don’t have, some distant enlightenment, etc. etc. then we are exactly pushing them away.

I would not say any experience is a delusion. It is what is being experienced and we should not be discounting that. Discounting our experience is another form of resistance to what is. But nor should we give any experience too much weight. However grand it may be, it’s just another perception.

The real issue is not in what is being experienced, it is how we RESPOND to that, in this case, discounting or overvaluing. When we can just allow the experience to be as it is, then trust what is being experienced is OK, we let go of enough resistance to start to really feel the grace. And the peace. And the happiness…

Of course, the key is in knowing who you are. When we’re rooted in that inner peace, we can separate what is being experienced from how we’re responding to it. Then we can let go of the reactivity and begin to really trust what is. But that can take time. We have had other habits for so very long.

If you’ve had a decent spiritual practice for a while, you already know who you really are. All you need to do is surrender fully to that for just one moment. That’s all it takes. Then one shifts into being who they know they are. Then we have the key described above.

Holograms?
Some use Holography as an analogy for how reality is structured. The whole image in every part. Holography does reflect certain patterns of nature. But I don’t consider it a good analogy for reality. Reality is not built of interference patterns.

We could say Veda or smriti (memory) is stored in seed form. And attention/perception expresses it. But it does so by unrolling the point form of space-time into expression, not by projecting interference patterns. More like a blossoming flower.

Holography can be a way of exploring the nature of perception though.

Time Travel?
Such a linear view! If we drop the need for moving the body, travel is unnecessary. All time is now. Cast your attention there and it will unroll as above. All experiences are stored completely.

But remember this. Just as you remember your childhood from where you are now, so too you experience all other things. You can never go back. Nor do you want to.
Davidya