The State of Illusion

Finally got a chance to see Austin Vickers film People vs The State of Illusion. As a former lawyer, he sets the story of the film in a trial and prison as metaphors for the prisons of belief we build for ourselves.

Like the film What the Bleep, it’s a series of experts talking about our personal reality, interspersed with the story of a man jailed for causing a fatal accident. The information comes fast, with quick edits from commentary to commentary. Also like What the Bleep, the (few) film critics generally hated it while the audience loves it. Anything that suggests we can have a direct effect on our reality is rejected by some outright.

We got Vickers himself for a Q&A afterwards. Judging by the questions, many people missed some of the main points in the deluge of info, but the subtlety of the message was also unfamiliar to many.

The key message is recognizing the difference between content and process. Most of the time, we ignore how we are relating to people and events, focusing on the what or content. What is being said, what is happening, and judging the what as good or bad. But if we’re unconscious of the process underlying the content, we’re unable to separate ourselves from it and are caught in a reactive mode. We feel like a victim.

If we take a step back and notice the process of the interaction, and under that, the process of how we’re internally responding, we begin to have choice in how we’re responding. I’ve spoken about this in a number of ways before. A deeper stepping back means the observer or witness mode. Then recognizing ourselves as the awareness in which the process is taking place. Then we see the meaning and judgements are what we add to it, our story, not what is actually taking place.

Unlike the film, he also framed it as learning to listen. What are we being called to do? This is aligning with the universe, God or whatever you’d like to call it.

The various speakers illustrated how we see the world says more about us than the world. Two you may have met in What the Bleep. Two others were a part of Princeton’s PEAR (“Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena”) project.

He noted (and the story illustrated) that if we see our behaviour as negative, it won’t change. We’re focused on the problem. Whereas if we ask what value the negative behaviour has for us (eg: drinking to mute feelings), we can see it as it is and can change. If we believe ourselves to be broken, we will remain so. Healing is much easier when we see ourselves as whole rather than broken.

Vikers observed that the clothes we’re wearing all started as an idea. And the chair we were sitting in, and the building, the city, the province, the country – all ideas. He said the Law of Attraction (The Secret) did not work from simple intention alone but rather from belief. Watching our process reveals what the underlying beliefs are. Expectations also point to beliefs.

On several questions, Vickers turned the question back on the questioner as they were not recognizing their own process [story] and resulting assumptions. Like using “we” to assume everyone thinks like me. It’s so ingrained that we may not even realize we’re doing it, assuming our stories about the world to be true. And because we identify with our beliefs, we associate them with ourselves. When they’re questioned, this can trigger ego defenses. We take it personally and are emotionally reactive. If we notice we’re reacting, it’s a good sign there’s something to notice and resolve. We can follow the feeling back to its assumption.

It’s the kind of film you may want to see more than once to digest. There’s a lot of information, some of which is framed uniquely. And it doesn’t summarize main points. The DVD evidently has another hour of footage from the source interviews too.
Davidya

Life Purpose in 5 Minutes

Here’s an interesting TEDx talk by Adam Leipzig on “How to Know Your Life Purpose in 5 Minutes.“

He skims over the profundity of some things like Know Thyself, which can make further answers more obvious. But he makes some interesting points. Here’s a few for reference:

151 thousand books on Amazon on life purpose. But if you’re just examining, you’re not living.

5 Steps:
1 – Who you Are  (name)
2 – What you do (love to do – single words)
focus down: what is the one thing you feel supremely qualified to teach others.
3 – Who you do it for
4 – What do they want or need? (one or 2 words)
5 – How do they change as a result?

Put it all together into a kind of sentence. You’ve just done something people who have gone to Yale couldn’t figure out in 25 years.

Note that 2 of the questions are about me and the other 3 are about the people I serve. Focus on those you serve. If you make others happy, you will be taken care of.

When someone asks what you do – use the last answer – how you change people.
Good one 
Davidya

The Process is the Goal

During a talk today I heard a quote from Oprah I thought excellent. I can’t confirm its source but it’s worth sharing.

“When you make the process the goal, the dream reveals itself.”
–Oprah

Look to the journey rather than the destination and everything you seek will be found.
Davidya

Making a Living through Precession

In 1927, R. Buckminster Fuller committed himself and his family to working as he saw nature working. He documents this process, and the spiritual experience he had that  started it, in his book Critical Path (1981), along with ideas like global power sharing, the origins of man, and much more.

“How do you obtain the money to live with and to acquire the materials and tools  with which to work? The answer was “precession.”"

“Precession is the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion.” It operates at 90 degrees (right angle) from the force. For example, the sun’s gravity causes us to orbit around it at right-angles to the gravitational pull.

“The successful regeneration of life growth on our planet Earth is ecologically accomplished always and only as the precessional—right-angled—”side effect” of the biological species’… preoccupations.” For example, the honey bee enters a flower in search of nectar to make honey. Inadvertently, it collects pollen at right angles to its nectar-seeking efforts and goes on to pollinate other flowers. The bees activity supports its own species and unintentionally, the flowers that feed it.

“Humans, as honey-money-seeking bees, do many of nature’s required tasks only inadvertently.” Our side-effects must be nature’s intended effects. He gives the example of weapons-making inadvertently developing  performance-enhancing technology that “can provide a sustainable high standard of living for all humanity, which accomplished fact makes war and all weaponry obsolete.” We’ve been a little slow to recognize this threshold has been reached.

“…since precession governs the interbehaviors of all bodies in motion, and since human bodies are usually in motion, precession must govern all socioeconomic behaviors.”

“In 1927 I reasoned that if humans’ experiences gave them insights into what nature’s main objectives might be, and if humans committed themselves… toward direct, efficient, and expeditious realization of any of nature’s comprehensive evolutionary objectives, nature might realistically support such a main precessional commitment and all the ramifications of the individual’s developmental needs…”

He notes that the effort has to be unique as nature doesn’t support competition or redundancy. It does however support “several angularly nonredundant forces at a given time.” Or, I notice, similar efforts that are distributed in other locations. Cooperatively networked is another of natures modalities.

His particular direction was to raise peoples awareness by improving their designed environment. Something quite attuned to his skills. “Since nature was clearly intent on making humans successful in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe, it seemed clear that if I undertook ever more humanly favorable physical-environment-producing artifact developments that in fact did improve the chances of all humanity’s successful development, it was quite possible that nature would support my efforts…”

“I must so commit myself and must depend upon nature providing the physical means of realization of my invented environment-advantaging artifacts.” He notes that no other human could validate the choices but it would instead require close attention to feedback from nature – what was supported and what not.

“I assumed that nature would “evaluate” my work as I went along. If I was doing what nature wanted done, and if I was doing it in promising ways, permitted by nature’s principles, I would find my work being economically sustained — and vice versa, in which latter negative case I must quickly cease doing what I had been doing and seek logically alternative courses until I found the new course that nature signified her approval of by providing for its physical support.” I referred to this as Nature’s Support here.

He then details the commitment he made, including “paid no attention to “earning a living”" and “found my family’s and my own life’s needs being unsolicitedly provided for by seemingly pure happenstance and always only “in the nick of time,” and “only coincidentally.” He spoke only when asked, never tried to persuade, and committed unreservedly.

“…only the “impossible” continued to happen…” He mentions intuition, frequent course correction, and paying attention to what was evolving. This is not something we attune to once but rather is an ongoing tuning to the shifting flow of life.

For the devotional, this is the same as allowing God to work through oneself. Nature is but the expression of God. St. Francis of Assisi comes to mind.

This does require a significant change in how we look at work roles, the economy and so forth. We cannot understand precession by looking at usual models of human activity or labour nor at personal desires or goals. We have to learn to look at what nature is organizing around us and how our actions seem to be in tune (supported) or not by this. We often have to break through our established, habitual roles and reactions and be willing to let go of various shoulds, musts and expectations. Sometimes, we may even be pushed into circumstances that require a reevaluation. Of course, all this is immensely helped by spiritual evolution.

If you think this is difficult, the reverse is actually the case. It’s actually much easier to work with nature than with artificial economic systems. If you’re doing the right thing now, life is smoother and feels better. But you do have to learn new “listening” skills. You probably already know people living like this, though you may not have framed it that way. The form may even appear as a business, but one that succeeds with little effort. And then there are those people who haven’t had anything resembling a job or income in years but live very comfortably. What they need or the means just shows up. From wherever it is now, as one teacher said.

However, it’s important to recognize the difference between someone working with nature or the divine and someone living off their accrued credits or good karma. The trust account kid who never grows up would not be a good example of the first. But even they will be unintentionally seeding what is needed. This is the nature of living in the field. The idea here is to start doing it consciously so we’re more effective and much happier. As Joseph Campbell famously said, follow your bliss.
Davidya

Natural Solutions – part 2

<Part 1

Nature’s Support
Nature’s support is what some call synchronicities or coincidences or law of attraction. It’s the effect of devata being able to support what we have our attention on. There are 2 general types of devata relative to us. Those assigned to us and those attracted by the environment we offer them. The second kind have prescribed roles but flexibility where they perform them. They tend to be more experienced and thus more useful to attract.

There are others who are assigned to projects. They depart when the job is done. I noticed quite a few on the up-link left after awakening. Apparently, that was a large job.

If we’re energetically unpleasant to be around, those that can will leave or avoid us. Those obliged can be made more sluggish and ineffective. Others who like that stuff (often pests) may come instead. In other words, like attracts like and we get more of the same. Or what we put our attention on grows stronger. In general, our “nature’s support” is lower.

This doesn’t mean we get dumped when we have a bad day. It’s more about long-term trends – what are we feeding our team?

If we culture (favour) gratitude and higher emotions, the reverse is the case. We attract or “feed” the more highly skilled ones. We improve the working environment for the others. Life gets better not just because of what we put our attention on but because of what that attracts. As we progress further in sattva, our body begins to produce a subtle substance called soma or amrita, the “nectar of the gods.” With that on the table, we attract the best available.

Of course, this does not mean we should make a mood of feeling good. Faking it doesn’t work with these guys or ourselves. It does mean doing your healing work so you can have clear feelings, notice subtle feelings and intuition, and can choose to lightly favour the positive.

Note that we all have a small “support team” who are quite accessible, often called  guardians and guides. It’s mutually useful if you’re able to communicate so you can be on the “program”, for example. They’re more likely to have a sense of humour that’s not at your expense too. Some people, like singer Denise Hagan, do occasional workshops to help people connect with their guardians.

It’s also useful to note that asking for stuff a lot is what dependent children do. They want to give you support, not dependency. Surrender is a much deeper form of prayer that creates an openness for things to flow in.

Comprehensive
One of the things that will strike you about nature’s support is how comprehensive it is. What shows up is often far better than what we might have thought we wanted.

How they do this is actually much simpler than it appears. While there are apparently individual, locally-assigned devata taking care of this or that specific thing, this is not where their intelligence operates from. While the intelligence comes through the hierarchy, it is not the King’s either. Devata themselves recognize they are conduits and are thus naturally grateful.

The intelligence comes through the divine via the cosmic body. The cosmic body is the ideation of the divine and contains the entire creation, including our universe. It structures the experiencer and our mechanism, the physiology. The first layer of that is the devata body which structures the process of experiencing. This body is composed of zillions of light beings in close relationship, each managing a function in all manifest bodies simultaneously. Do once, done everywhere.

That activity expresses through creation into apparent individual beings doing things here and there, like the daisy devata. What the Celts and Bardic tradition call Elementals. While the expressed beings are highly coordinated, the true comprehensiveness arises in the devata body of which they are all composed. And that flows from the divine.

The higher devata or devas recognize their divine essence more fully and can thus be apparently in multiple places at once. Archangels, for example, can converse with thousands at the same time making them ever available.

Times
In the current time, not only are more people having spiritual awakenings but more of the devata have been awakening too. In this case, it means something a little different. We’ve come out of a dark period in global consciousness. During such a time, some laws of nature or devas go into a kind of hibernation. In the current time, such laws have been waking up. I’ve been told a few really big ones recently.

These laws awaken in the cosmic body and begin to express as devata in our experience. The dominance of others will also shift. Thus, the rules are literally changing.

Finally, there’s a good principle to abide by: Highest First. The lower emotional range aka the astral plane is where a lot of the crud is. This is not the best place to explore and is definitely not a place to get advice from. There’s an old Indian parable – Capture the Fort. Don’t go after the diamond mine or gold mine. Instead, go for the fort and capture it, then all the mines will be yours. The Fort, in this case is spirit or the divine. Stay out of the muck.

None of this is something you should believe. It’s just how I’ve come to understand this mode. But it’s good to be open to the possibility of it. We don’t have to experience them directly to interact – it’s simply in how we feel and focus that makes all the difference. Experiencing them is not something you need to seek although it can be useful to connect to your guardians. It will develop as a natural byproduct of spiritual development. It’s not something to spend a lot of time on. It’s rather another little something in a good spiritual toolkit for living the best life possible.
Davidya

Bad Habits?

One of the more ironic expectations of enlightenment is something like “enlightenment will fix it” or “enlightenment will fix me.” Now, loosing identification with the ego in awakening can be a big change. But in other ways, nothing changes. Awakening is a deep recognition of who we are beneath the ego. But it doesn’t necessarily change much about the person.

When the centre falls out of the me-concept and then remnants (shrapnel) fall away, certain tendencies may fall away with them. Motivations driven by attachment wind down but others may come to the surface. We’re less likely to be so harsh on ourselves but also may be appalled at the now-conscious internal stories we’ve been running. We’re less attached to certain outcomes but may raise our personal standards of behaviour. But none of this means our “problems” go away – just that our relationship with them changes. We’re less gripped by them and easier about life as a whole.

This can certainly make a huge difference in the feel of life. Our problems become much less of a problem. And, over time, the momentum of the past can begin to wind down. Our life can simplify quite a bit, at least internally.

As for bad habits, on the one hand being more conscious can make it easier to change. But on the other hand, being more accepting and OK with what is may make us less inclined to bother. In a sense, it can make them more entrenched as you may no longer care.

This doesn’t mean you become incompetent or that enlightenment is not a good thing. There are many reasons it’s the best possible. But if the expectation is a magical fix, you may be  creating unnecessary barriers.

If you have bad habits, deal with it. Habits are formed by repetition and can be overwritten or replaced with repetition. Don’t wait for some future magical point. The longer you keep them, the more entrenched they become. That’s why we don’t have to think about walking or talking or driving a car. Even the biology reinforces regularly used pathways.

Think of enlightenment like puberty. Puberty is not the goal, it’s the transition into a lived adulthood. In the same way, enlightenment is not the goal. It’s the transition into an embodied state of being. One that will continue to grow and evolve over time.

The better you live life well now, the better your life will be. Simple.
Davidya

Expectations and Experience

Expectations can have a strong effect on our experience of life. If we have heavier feelings about life, we’ll tend to have lower or darker expectations. Because what we put our attention on grows stronger, our experiences will tend to mirror our expectations. In a sense, we’re intending what we don’t want.

Similarly, if we culture positive expectations and gratitude, our experience of day-to-day life will be more positive. Or at least, we’ll take it more positively. Taking life less personally similarly helps.

Somewhat related, when our senses refine and subtler values begin to be perceived, our expectations will influence how we perceive finer values. If we expect angels to have wings, for example, they will. I refer to this as personalization.

The stages of awakening though are a different animal. Expectations are born of mind but awakening happens from beyond mind. As a result, expectations do not guide the unfoldment of our awakening but they can be a barrier to it. For many, the last barrier to awakening is our ideas about it. Once we let those go and have that moment of allowing, the awakening can poke through.

Some suggest if we expect certain things, we’ll experience them during the awakening process. This is true in the sense of what we put our attention on will unfold more. But not in the sense that we’ll experience what our teaching trained us to. I know many, myself included, whose journey did not follow the model of their tradition. But we will tend to resonate with and follow teachers who have a similar orientation and will thus tend to experience more like they do. And the practices we maintain will have an influence on how we subjectively experience the unfoldment. Effortless meditators, for example, will tend to be very familiar with Self long before awakening and thus describe an experience of ego transcendence into Self. Mindfulness practitioners are more inclined to transcend ego into no-self. Same thing – different subjective experience of it.

Many of the sub-stages of awakening are similarly blocked by expectations. Sometimes a step occurs after enough purification. Other times, after we recognize an erroneous expectation and let it go. We can call this a form of mental purification. Purify, refine, and open. Repeat.

Let go and enjoy!
Davidya

Question Affirmations

During Nancy’s workshop, she made an interesting suggestion. She suggested you frame affirmations as a question, placing the future in the present.

For example, “What will I need to accomplish X?” The question assumes it will be done. It asks not If but How. You’re asking what you need to do from your side to help make it happen. This combines both the intention and the acting steps.

Affirmation is closely related to intention and attention, 2 subjects big on this site. They are fundamental principles of the way the world works. If we can tie into that, we can be quite a bit more effective.

Of course, as with any affirmation, it won’t work unless you can accept it as possible. You may want to start with small believable things and build up.

I’ve not played with it much myself yet but thought it worth sharing.
Have fun!
Davidya

Meeting What You Need

I’ve spoken here a number of times about the importance of allowing, of letting ‘what is’ be there, of letting emotions arise and complete. When we resist the flow of energy, we don’t see what is, our feelings and intuition get blocked and it consumes a lot of our energy. We find ourselves “in our heads” or in a drama of reactivity.

When we allow life to be as it is, we move into the flow and find life full of little miracles. We heal our old wounds. Allowing or surrender is also the key to spiritual awakening or enlightenment. This is a natural state that cannot be reached by force or resistance.

Allowing does not mean we should be passive or should not act. Only that we should learn to act in tune with the flow of nature rather than against it. Capturing the wind with our sails is much easier than paddling upstream.

Recently, I attended another of Nancy Shipley-Rubin’s workshops. This one was themed Creating Intentions that Work.

We again explored the experience of being energetically/emotionally open & closed and how closed would amplify conflict with others while open would diffuse it. Also the difference between a healthy (open) no and an unhealthy (closed) no. These are basic skills for life that surprisingly few people know. And yet how we hold our energy has a profound effect on our experience of life and relationships. Because our energy system is distinct from the mind, the mind is often the last one to recognize these dynamics. It requires new skills.

In this workshop, she added something more to the allowing I mention above. Allowing lets us release old emotional traumas and let go of our resistance to recognizing how we feel. Once we have a sense of how we’re feeling, it begins to open us to our power to create.

Often our will, which serves as a protector, creates a barrier between our upper energy centres and our lower ones. Between our love, intuition, & imagination and our vitality & ability to manifest. Many people live in their heads or in ungrounded spirituality. They’re out of touch with how they feel and thus their creative power. Or, they’re caught in an emotional drama of internal conflict that has no ending.

With allowing, many emotions will complete & dissolve. But some will keep coming back as they’re expressing an unmet need. This requires taking it to the next level.

Nancy asks us to notice what we’re feeling. Give the feeling a name. Ask what need the feeling calls for. Intend the feeling from the 6th (not the mind; make it simple and clean like “safe” or “happy”). This instantly creates the field to meet the need. As mentioned above, mind may be the last to recognize the effect though.

Notice how simple it is. The most powerful techniques often are. The results can be immediate.

To put this another way, most of our emotional needs can be met internally. This unencumbers relationships burdened by expecting others to meet our needs. It also illustrates the habit of seeking outside of ourselves. With this process working, we can meet not just our emotional needs but most needs by directly manifesting our intentions.

The trick is, we first need to do some allowing to clear the deck enough so we can sit comfortably with how we feel. It also helps a lot to have a spiritual practice that grounds us in something deeper and supports allowing. If we find we’re making a lot of story & explanations & objections or processing/ churning, that’s the mind – probably trying to control it. Come back to open allowing.

If it’s not working, we either need to clear a little more or there is a lack of congruence between the upper intention and the lower feeling/instinctive body. The feelings don’t believe it or the protector at the 3rd is acting as a barrier – the mind isn’t accepting it and we don’t feel safe. But we can intend safety too.

This is where an experiential workshop is very useful. A good teacher can guide us into correct experience and past the pitfalls of the mind second-guessing and feelings playing their hiding dance.

Being dissonant between our intentions and feelings creates fear. But curiously, it’s the protector that is creating this fear, not the vital (emotional) body. This fear is a little more subtle and unconscious. It responds with force or with uncertainty: that’s a key to recognize. If you’re trying to force this in any way, it’s not going to work. We have to start from open allowing. Perhaps unexpectedly, therein lies our power.

The lower fields are what power our lives so developing internal congruence can be very beneficial. But we’re typically driven by old habits and automatic responses. Most of us walk around closed, wondering why the world is so grumpy. To make this work, we have to be congruent and the intention grounded.

Of course, there was much more. Nancy gives rich, experiential workshops to help you learn this stuff.
Davidya

Prayer of Gratitude

In the past, I’ve written several articles on the subject of prayer. In Deep Prayer I discussed the difference between the Petitionary prayer of asking for something and an Intercessionary prayer of surrender; the prayer of faith, of Thy will be done. Adyashanti called this second kind True Prayer. It’s ideal when you’re approaching a shift and need to let go of the old.

I also explored different 5-step prayers, blending them in a hybrid 7-step process. That can be useful when starting out, to get an idea of the variables, but a big process gets cumbersome in practice. What can we best use for day-to-day living?

Last night I was at a talk by Hannelore and she mentioned a simpler way that rather blended the 2 approaches. First she illustrated that if we’re asking for what we want, the subtle energy that creates is “don’t have”. It feels contracting. She instead suggests a prayer of gratitude, of thanks for already having it. Not asking, thanking.

Hannelore asks we notice what it would be like as ‘already so’ and ‘feel’ the joy of this as already a reality. If you’re a visual person, visualize it in all its detail.

If you have trouble believing you have it, you might want to start with smaller things, like a parking spot. Hannelore also suggests starting from joy. Think about what we love, then from that place, bring in the thanks. This is critical if we want the support of the universe/nature. It is through feelings that we “feed” our support team.

Finally, release it, turn it over to the universe. This step is about letting go, about surrender and trust. if we hold on to expectations of how it should show up or when, we can get in the way of it.

so:
1 – go into joy, think about what you love
2 – prayer of thanks for what you desire, visualize in gratitude
3 – release it, let it go.

If you struggle with this, pay attention to how you feel. If you feel resistance coming up, let your attention go there and allow the feelings. Don’t go into them and don’t engage a story about them. Just allow them to be experienced directly. This will help them resolve quickly and clear the old barrier. If instead your mind is throwing up barriers, you might want to explore what aspect needs attention.

Be sure not to skip the first step. Follow your bliss. It may take a little practice if you’ve not spent much time enjoying. Like Harry Potter had to dig deep to find the feeling needed for a patronus. Coming from love & joy gives power to gratitude. This process also helps avoid the ‘dark side’ of wanting, entitlement. If the desire is driven by something other than the ‘good’, it will fall away in the light of love.

Afterwards, don’t forget to Act as-if. As the sages tell us, if you want results in the world, act in the world. By doing, we create openings for opportunities to arise. As Vasishtha tells us, there is no fate or divine dispensation. What is called fate or divine will is nothing more than the self effort of the past. All action arises from the field of action itself. Hannelore expressed this by quoting Paul J. Meyer:

“Whatever you…
    Vividly imagine
    Ardently desire
    Sincerely believe
    And enthusiastically act upon
will inevitably come to pass.”

Thanks, Hannelore
Davidya