Life – The Projection From Within

Marcela Cruz, Contributor
Waking Times

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

All of the people, things and activities which comprise our daily lives seem to take varying-sized pieces of ourselves, or at least our peace of mind, as a mortgage against the space and time they occupy in our lives. Many individuals experiencing life in this way create a society which reflects unhealthy results. We see a progressive and alarmingly accelerating increase in emotional and psychological problems, crimes and physical illness. We live in such a fast-paced, complex and demanding reality that we constantly experience stress. Unfortunately, since there appears to be little relief from these realities, we also tend to become habituated to living in such stress, accepting it as inevitable.

The greater truth is, of course, that we cannot separate individuals from their society, or mind and emotions from the body, without affecting the health of the whole. Each is an integral part of the whole – a fact which admittedly is less apparent at some times than others. The patterned response, or “common knowledge” about all of these dynamics is that this reality we are living can hardly be lived otherwise. It is, after all, “reality”, whether we like it or not, and who is going to argue with that? The greater reality is, in fact, otherwise. What if, for the moment, we choose to interpret reality and how we experience it from an altogether different perspective? And it should be noted that the operand word is “choose”.

We tend to perceive reality as something that exists outside ourselves and is separate from us, thus making ourselves its victims. Why don’t we choose to proceed from a totally different premise? What if reality exists the way we experience it, and the way it appears to be, precisely because we created it that way, from within ourselves, whether consciously or not? What if each of us is the point of origin, not a hapless passenger on this seemingly unpredictable, uncontrollable and often painful ride we call life?

Across thousands of years, we have taught each other to think of ourselves as relatively powerless creatures who can only make the most of the world we are born into at birth. In such a world, we must learn the unfeeling and often ruthless rules “out there”. We do this in order to maximize health, happiness and success, and to postpone or avoid our pain and losses. We have done this for so long, and so well, that we as human beings have lulled ourselves into a sleep that accepts powerlessness as inevitable.

With the advent of the New Physics (which of course has existed all along) one subatomic particle can occupy two places at the same time, and a particle of light instantaneously converts into a wave, simply because it is observed by a human being (Consciousness). Perhaps it is time to seriously rethink and re-feel, who and what we are, and what “reality” truly is.

Happily, many of us have started to wake up to such possibilities, and have given ourselves permission to take back our power. Some of us have begun to have experiences which fly in the face of “reality”. There are new moments of grace in which problems seem to find their answers out-of-the-blue. Painful misunderstandings are resolved in unexpected ways. Tricky timing in a harried schedule unaccountably falls smoothly into place. A chronic pain which has persisted despite extensive medical intervention is suddenly cured because the intent to heal is focused upon it. These things increasingly comprise the fabric of our daily lives. The common thread in such moments of grace is that they begin inside ourselves, with a shift. They are the result of our conscious desire and re-connection with the potential of our own power to change things.

The truth is that what we experience “out there” is a direct result of what we first perceive, and therefore what we empower to express, from within ourselves. We are far more powerful beings than what we have been led to believe by our cultures and our society down through the ages. We are capable of creating a different, beautiful and beneficent reality “out there”, from within ourselves. This does not mean that life will be bereft of challenges that stimulate our growth, as individuals and societies. It can mean that those challenges will be met with creative empowerment, rather than in the fear which has become a reflex.

Understanding that can make all the difference in the world. A world and reality projected from inside ourselves in a consciousness of love and beauty fully empowers us. We can then trump the current world of fear and conflict that is the sources of such deep and worldwide pain. Our choice is, at every moment, between love or fear. A world projected from love is truly a world apart from the one currently projected from fear. We can take responsibility for our power, individually and as a society, and live first from within ourselves. In doing so, we consciously choose love with every step. We will then quite literally begin to transform our world into one of beauty and grace. We all know inside, in our hearts, that such a reality was what was originally intended.

The mind and the intellect is a powerful tool. But it has for too long functioned from a premise and projection of fear. It has therefore been programmed to objectify and fragment how we deal with life. Conflicts, by definition, arise from separateness. Yet, in contrast, inside each of us, there resides the true and universal wisdom of the heart. The heart speaks in the language of unity and harmony. From it, all of our answers take on greater meaning, and flow. From within…

About the Author – Marcela Cruz-Gibbons is an organic farmer, Reiki Master Teacher, omnivorous lover of life, and passionate advocate for Humanity’s intrinsic creativity.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact

Tom Kenyon – Transition States of Consciousness

This is one of Kenyon’s channeled Hathor messages, sent out on April 22. Highly recommended. The concept of Transitional States alone is worth the price of the read…

http://tomkenyon.com/transition-states-of-consciousness

Transition States of Consciousness

A Hathor Planetary Message Through Tom Kenyon

Definitions

Chaotic Nodes are clusters of chaotic events. According to the Hathors, Earth has entered a Chaotic Node and, as a result, we can expect ever-increasing levels of chaos—including but not limited to earthquakes, volcanic activity, aberrant weather patterns, ecological distress, as well as economic, social and political turmoil.

Transition States of Consciousness are what the Hathors call the in-between places when a major loss has occurred and we find ourselves temporarily poised between an old reality that has passed away and a new reality that has not yet fully formed.

Perceptual markers are a term the Hathors use to describe how we make sense of our world and navigate through our lives using our five senses.

The Message

By their very nature Chaotic Nodes tend to generate transition states of consciousness. Transition states of consciousness emerge when perceptual markers disappear. And when this occurs you enter a null zone in which your old reality no longer exists, or has changed radically, while your new reality has not yet come into existence.

Due to the fact that you have entered an even more intense phase of the Chaotic Node, we wish to share with you our views regarding transition states, in the hopes that you will be able to utilize this knowledge for your own benefit.

For our purposes we can divide transition states into three primary categories: 1) personal transition states, 2) collective transition states and 3) physical death.

Personal Transition States

Let us turn our attention to personal transition states first, for your personal perception is the pivotal point around which your perceived reality operates.

Your perception of reality is fundamentally a personal creation. It is influenced by the collective perception of your culture, time, place and circumstance, but fundamentally your perception of what is real and not real is a creation—your creation.

Your perception of reality depends upon habits of perception, if you are like most persons. You are used to experiencing certain realities in your life and these tell you where you are, so to speak. You wake up in the morning and you look to the clock and the collective perception of time is immediately before you. Your choice to engage this illusion, or not, is a personal one. Indeed, one of the signs of spiritual mastery is the ability to navigate cultural illusions successfully while clearly understanding their nature.

When a situation in your personal life shifts dramatically there is a tendency for the perceptual markers to disappear or re-organize themselves.

(Continued HERE )

Awakening to the source within that supports us every moment

This is the outline for a workshop presentation:

This information comes from study of a new expression of spiritual teachings that go back at least 2,600 years. This new expression is sometimes called non-dual, meaning that while we experience an obvious seeming split between the observer and the observed there is actually no separation; and direct path, indicating that each of us experiencing this apparent split can always make a direct, experiential approach to the source we arise from.

From a non-dual, direct path perspective, there is a non-physical source that omnipresently supports everything that exists each instant. It’s been given many names, but it’s not a thing that can be captured and held in our minds. This eternal source is deeper than anything we can think of. It’s infinite. It’s alive. Mind is just a tiny, finite fraction of it.

Each of us makes our own approach to what’s true for us about this, and each of us is the only authority on what’s true for him or her. In searching for what’s true for me, I’ve looked through many ideas that simply didn’t resonate as truthful for me at the time. I think we need to feel free to pay attention to what makes sense to us and to set aside what doesn’t.

What I’m presenting here is not meant as any kind of dogma or rulebook. I think this process of awakening to source, sometimes called our essential nature, is unique for each of us. The process is very forgiving of our limitations, mistakes, detours and time-outs. Actually, there are no detours, every experience is essential to the whole of life. As our realization of what’s true for us emerges and deepens, so does our tolerance for the truths of others.

At the center of our being, we (and everyone) are always already in direct touch with the undefinable source of Life, which supports us constantly. There is no barrier other than the beliefs we hold, between this vital, living source and what we actually are right now. Many Scientists now confirm they can find no real divisions in what is sometimes called the Unified Field.

These beliefs that we’re separate are driven by many subconscious fears which together form an interlocking structure of emotional defenses. The subconscious fears are held together by identification, the idea that all the experiences that triggered these fears happened to “me,” the person I think I am now, and that they define who I really am, all the time.

This body of emotional defenses, and the beliefs about ourselves that go with them, is what is often referred to by the current use of the word Ego.

One way the development of Ego is often explained is that I had perhaps thousands of experiences during my early development that I didn’t understand or have the skills to cope with effectively – maybe I dealt with them by clenching my body and cutting off my life energy, along with taking on mistaken beliefs about the meaning of what happened, like I was bad or unworthy. I remember clearly feeling how uncomfortable my father was one time when I hugged him when I was maybe five or six. The beliefs I carried about this for years included thoughts that my Dad didn’t love me, and that I was unacceptable in some way.

Countless experiences like this, both apparent failures and successes, become linked together in a story that is a prominent feature of Ego. Thinking about what I believe is my story reinforces my sense of being someone who’s separate from the rest of Life.

The Ego is a powerful, deeply hypnotic self-image built out of millions of often unreliable memories of our life experiences from every stage of our development. It includes our ideas about our bodies and minds and their capabilities.

Ego is a powerful tool. This sense of who we are is vital to performing any task in the 3-D space-time world*(examples). And it seems pivotal to humanity’s development of modern society and technology.

We were also programmed to see ourselves as separate, distinct persons by parents and mentors who believed themselves to be apart from Life. A child looking in the mirror will be told “There’s Johnny,” may be given toys that “belong” only to them, or will be told things like “You have to look out for number one.”

Perhaps the principal phenomenon that the Ego’s sense of separation is based on is Projection – rejected parts of ourselves, seen as bad in our assumptions, get split off and assigned to other people, who then take on a quality of being “The Other.” They’re seen as a threat the Ego needs to defend us from. Holding onto the idea that someone has hurt me gets built into my story of separation. In the end, what I end up defending myself from is from experiencing the love from my fundamental connection to other people through the source of our being. Opening to my connection to source can release powerful flows of joy and love I hold away because of fear.

The Ego is imaginary, built out of mistaken assumptions, yet our tendencies to defend this self-image are mistakenly devoted to its preservation.

Its primary drives are: to control, to get approval and validation from others, and to be secure – and through the development of the Ego in human society this has led to a history of increasing conflict, antagonism, destructive technology, manipulation, and suffering.

It seems probable that anything as apparently powerful and costly for humankind as the Ego must have come into being for very important reasons, but we now seem to have reached a stage in history where its dangers seem to threaten our survival.

My Ego is incapable of  “Attaining Enlightenment” through its own efforts and it can actually strengthen itself by trying, but through grace our essential nature begins to call us to awaken. If any of this seems to make sense, this process may have already started within you.

When we begin to intuitively sense this essential nature, we do it while we’re still largely stuck in our habits of resistance to these deep feelings – dominated by our conditioning. At a certain point I sensed my connection to the peace and love within me, but life still generally seemed difficult, unsatisfactory or wrong. This unsatisfactoriness is always an indication that I’m holding onto a mistaken assumption. Habits from my conditioning caused me to react with negative emotions, resisting the present moment, obscuring its perfection – this is sometimes called “arguing with reality.”

A change came when I started to notice that something felt wrong – perhaps a disturbing thought, someone’s behavior (which I might be blaming them for), something painful physically or emotionally, or something about who I believe I am – I found I could accept the moment anyway, instead of reacting against it.

One part of the Ego is a powerful belief that it’s been my identity every moment since I was born, but this belief is just a mental impression I have. One of the reasons that babies seem so obviously blissful and open is that the conditioning of their identities hasn’t yet taken hold. Also, almost everyone is aware of having moments, or gaps, when the beauty of Life shows through in unquestionable ways that transcend our personalities.

As I let in recognitions that I’m frequently arguing with what is right now, the awareness of these gaps starts to deepen and become more persistent.

Practices:

One way to help allow these gaps is to take three conscious breaths when I become aware of feeling something’s wrong – this brings me into the present, the only moment that’s real. Bringing attention to my awareness of how the energy in my body feels now is also very effective for dropping into the now.

As we cultivate the gaps in thinking, the death-grip of our habits of thinking and holding energy begins to loosen, and our energy and hearts open. The remnants of the stuck egoic energies dissolve. Spiritual practices help to clean out these old, stagnant energies.

I can clean these energies by taking responsibility for my part in creating them, and for my resentments, my projections onto other people. A potent method for this is Ho’oponopono:

Ho’oponopono – means “to make right” in the Hawaiian Huna tradition. It’s a simple four-part ritual that opens an empathetic and healing connection with any person, object, or memory we have any negative feelings toward – the four stages are:

• “I’m sorry”   · “I love you”   · “Please forgive me” and  · “Thank you” – What is important is not the verbal formula, but dropping into the feelings and connections the words evoke.

Meditation: Try simply sitting in silence attentively, allowing everything you’re aware of to be as it is.

A Key Practice: is to develop rigorous honesty about when you’re feeling something is wrong or that something is making you feel anxious, and let yourself simply be with that feeling. Observe what you’re thinking, especially thoughts that are tied to emotions of fear, anger or guilt, without following the thoughts that arise because of these feelings, which can cause you to relive the past or worry about the future. See what happens.

Awakening to our essential nature isn’t a thing that needs to be added to ourselves, but is a natural state that arises in experience when we release our conditioning. The process of opening to this has its own timing and wisdom. It isn’t about making anyone wrong or controlling what happens, but about allowing EVERYTHING to be, just as it is. As Eckhart Tolle has written, “Accept the Present Moment fully and enter into the Perfection that is deeper than any Form and untouched by Time.”

Changes

Do you ever feel that we’re all in the middle of a profound change now?

Everyone I know thinks that something’s going on, though they seem to disagree on just what it is. Maybe a lot of our fellow Americans seem to be in deep denial of what’s really going on and straining to maintain an illusion of normalcy, but I have a feeling that almost everyone has at least a subconscious impression that we’re facing something unprecedented.

The other week my friend Allen said “Seems like it’s one thing after another. First, we had the war on terror, they told us that they were going to keep us safe, but we’re still in danger. Then we have environment and climate change they’re going to protect us from, but that doesn’t get fixed. The economy starts going down the toilet, the Treasury and Congress throw gazillions of dollars at it, but it still seems we’re sliding toward doom. They say our healthcare system is broken and needs their remedy, but it still seems to be terminal. Immigration is in crisis, we build a fence, deport people, send troops, but it’s still a mess. Finally, there’s this oil volcano in the Gulf, they’re doing everything they can, but the end is not in sight. When are we going to solve something for a change?”

One big factor in all of this is that it seems that human institutions everywhere are dominated by hierarchies that are struggling to preserve their status quo at any cost. They seem to be actively resisting any new and hopeful ideas that might help things – particularly solutions that might free people from dependency on their control systems.

One feeling I often hear expressed is along the lines of “I have a feeling that the walls are closing in,” like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. Or, “the center cannot hold” from the I Ching by way of William Butler Yeats. People don’t see how things can continue on within the parameters of changes that seem possible.

So the alternatives that present themselves to our imaginations are of catastrophic failure. Some say this is because our entire species has been massively traumatized in the dim reaches of a half-remembered past. Doomsday scenarios abound – we have the pole shift with world-wide tsunamis, atomic warfare, solar coronal mass-ejection, the return of Niburu/Planet X, the arrival of interstellar aliens of dubious intent, the death of the oceans, the failure of our technology, or the establishment of a planet-wide tyranny. Or some mix-and-match combination of the above. Whoa.

But perhaps what’s coming is a shift not of our circumstances, but of our model of what Life actually is -the famous Paradigm Shift. I think that this fundamental transition may be a change in the way we see reality, from living in a world we’re separate from and that ultimately threatens us with annihilation, to living in unity with a process that supports us, in which we are never truly threatened.

The trick question is “How do I know that the experience I’m having is the perfect one for my continued growth and unfoldment?” When it becomes real for us that the experience we’re having now is one of learning and of friendly, loving support, instead of “one damned thing after another,” we’ll be through this shift.

Let’s envision possibilities that we can go through this without being slammed back to the Stone-Age or worse. Maybe then we don’t have to keep looking to the future for some perfect time. Maybe the change will be us realizing that the perfect time is right now.

Liberation, Personal and Political

Video of my 35 minute lecture with slides on the nature of awakening and its relation to facilitating the ongoing shift in consciousness that many of us feel is taking place now in the world of form.

From the intro to the presentation:

If you want to go beyond the habits of thinking and perception that make the world outside you seem separate, foreign or dangerous, you are already well on your way and your success is certain.
The ideas presented here are not “The Truth” – nothing that can be put into words ever is.
But these ideas are signposts that can help point you toward something you may experience as true for you.
In fact, this is a very powerful set of signposts that are meant to work together to help you, as you learn to allow your essence to emerge.

 

Voting With Our Hearts

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

First posted Apr 5th, 2008 on my Zaadz/Gaia blog

In his brief talk on “Nowness” prefacing the final edition of Zeitgeist, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says that perhaps our inability to face the power of the present moment is what accounts for our needs not only for religion, but also for political activity like marching in the streets, complaining to our fellow humans, or voting for the presidents.

Recently, I have been bemused by the extremely emotional flocking of otherwise self-identified progressives to the banner of Barack Obama, falling all over each other to find the the most florid superlatives for him, comparisons to JFK, to Martin Luther King, to Lincoln, FDR, Gandhi, etc. His speeches are being given names, lauded for their frankness, courage and vision. From my close readings, however, they seem shamelessly sanguine, cynically manipulative – pressing all the right buttons, riddled with generalities and inaccuracies, avoiding difficult truths while portentously embracing easy ones, and saying almost nothing specific about the political programs he would implement. Beyond this, examination of his political career suggests that he is a creature, since college days at Columbia, of Zbigniew Brzezinski, and his powerful faction of the Democratic Party/Intelligence nexus which is deeply involved in U.S. foreign Policy.

When I mention any of this to people who are attracted to Obama’s candidacy, I almost always hear something to the effect of “So what do propose to do? Nothing? Where do you hope to find a perfect candidate?” Sometimes, people react very emotionally on having the hope that they’ve now placed in Obama questioned. I tell them that I don’t know WHAT I will do.

If one accepts the precept that s/he is a separate entity, whose actions have an impact on an external reality that we’re responsible for, it seems clear that we must then get involved in recognizable political action that can have some positive effect, at least help select the leaders whose choices and policies shape the world. The emotions surrounding this complex of ego-identified beliefs are very powerful, and driven by the seemingly obvious fears arising from our interpretations of “reality.”

This whole situation is not about institutional positions of power, or about representative democracy. It’s about DIRECT democracy, but not through any organized system of voting, or through information democracy, the control of physical media by popular sentiment. It’s about democracy in the form of inner creativity, the direct, moment to moment consciousness of all of humanity, and more than that, of all of the living beings in our reality continuum. What we see appearing sensorially each instant as the world of form before us is already the perfect effect of how all of us see the world and ourselves.

We are now ready to see more deeply, to see the formless source of this bountiful creativity within ourselves, to return our attention to that and see the inherent beauty and wonder without the mediation of our interpretations and filters. Then, as we learn to stop projecting blame on ourselves or others for the state of a world we subconsciously demand should be different, our creativity will be freed up to flow into the world unconditionally. We will learn to vote with our hearts.

I Don’t Exist

First posted Feb 28th, 2007 on my Zaadz/Gaia blog

1971. Lost in (not space, but) samsara, baby.  Tripping out in the redwoods at UC Santa Cruz, drenched in world-weary posing, nihilistic attitude, ironic utterance, biting criticism, artistic pretension, sexual apprehension, anxiety and disdain. And on the turntable? The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, loopy rock anti-heroes, equal-opportunity disrespecters with Dada-ist sensibility and affable good humor. A favorite? “I’m the Urban Spaceman,”  chronicle of a young man living the good life on the frontier of the Great Society, free from everything that WE were enmeshed in.

I’m the urban spaceman baby, I’ve got speed
I’ve got everything I need
I’m the urban spaceman baby, I can fly
I’m a supersonic guy

I don’t need pleasure
I don’t feel pain
If you were to knock me down
I’d just get up again
I’m the urban spaceman babe and
I’m making out
I’m all about

I wake up every morning
with a smile upon my face
My natural exuberance
spills out all over the place
I’m the urban spaceman
I’m intelligent and clean
Know what I mean?

I’m the urban spaceman, as a lover second to none
It’s a lot of fun

I never let my friends down
I’ve never made a boob
I’m a glossy magazine
an advert in the tube
I’m the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist
I don’t exist

Bonzo Dog Band, 1968
(c)whatever

So, we thot the whole well-adjusted techno-dude being non-existent thing was way-cool. That went very well with the maximum disdain pose. And totally great to have something over an entire class of social vermin (that we secretly, never to be mentioned, envied as they weren’t losers like us).

Interestingly (from my perspective) it was just around this time, and at a Pink Floyd concert where I synchronously met the caustic chaps who had introduced me to the Bonzo’s while waiting in line, that I first, with a small jet-assist from a tab of orange sunshine (link to mp3 of Nick Sand, maker of this legendary psychedelic, talking at Burning Man <-#54>) slipped on a banana peel into deep voidness. As I looked within to find out what the band were doing to my head, my perceptual world became a swirling mandala of light, scent and sound, and I entered another realm. As Roger McGuinn wrote in the Byrds hit 5D, ” I saw that world crumble and thought I was dead, but I found my senses still working.” It was a timeless loca that I recognized instantly, more real than my experience as who I’d formerly assumed myself to be, and my first overwhelming thought was “How could I ever have forgotten about This?” Sadly (or not) however, “I” was definitively not dead, and to my great chagrin and confusion, sometime later (as viewed within the perspective of time) I found myself lying on the floor at Winterland, reabsorbing my life, karma, vasana’s, opinions, likes, dislikes, fears, attachments, etc., etc., with my brother and another friend, like, freaking out.

The “me” I returned to after this reality break was all about reveling in how the idea of “the successful personality” in the Bonzo’s Urban Spaceman crumbled under the revelation that “I don’t exist.” And that Me amazingly managed to struggle on for success, for recognition, for respect, for love, for more than another 3 decades, decades of growing psychological sophistication, intellectual articulation, and above all, well-reasoned judgements of “The Other” in all of its myriad manifestations. And now, 36 years later, the phrase “I don’t exist” comes back around as a much deeper revelation, every bit as mind-shattering as vanishing from the world to the strains of Pink Floyd. For me, the bottom-line has been that only with the deepening realization that, literally  and unequivocally, the separate persona I conceived myself to be throughout this life (with the occasional reality break quickly taken possession of by the ego) was entirely incapable of solving the problems of “my life.” Those problems were part and parcel of the Me, and could only lose their sticky reality through the Me’s dissolution.

As Einstein said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. The real twist here is that the level in which “we” created our situations was whipped up out of thin air in the same deft movement of inversion that created what has been (also by Einstein) called “an optical illusion of consciousness” – the imaginary me. Once we drink the Kool-Aid (and I’m not talking here about the electric kind) and invest “our” identification into separation from That which we always, couldn’t be anything else, are, you can put a fork in us. I could be clever and sophistrickated, adopt miles of designer attitude and write an award-winning essay on the Void, but nothing could ever solve the problem, compensate for the underlying dissatisfaction, or begin to recapture the innate quality of effortlessness and ease that resting in my true inner nature opens up. Instantly.

Tomorrow Never Knows

First posted Feb 13th, 2007 on my Zaadz/Gaia blog

I’ve been thinking about inclination A LOT recently. Adyashanti talks about it often at satsangs lately, and really hammered on it at the retreat I went to at Mount Madonna Center in January.

When I had a chance to see Byron Katie, on her book tour for her brand new book “A Thousand Names for Joy,” she was also quite specific that when we aren’t holding a thought action just happens, and she would question whether “we” are involved in the least.

Yesterday I was entertaining thoughts for much of the day (I just saw the major tag-line on Byron Katie’s website – “When you argue with reality you lose – but only 100% of the time ;-)”) and was once again feeling my connection with inner awareness dim out some. But then this morning, things started flowing again. I was listening to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth for the Nth time (recommended, recommended, recommended, check it out on audio read by him, listen over and over…), and as I generally do, hearing greater depths to it when the following grabbed me by the throat:

“When you find that truth,
all your actions will be in alignment with it” (somewhere in chap.3)

That’s it! It’s not about “your” inclination at all. Simply let go of thought (and I did and will), and enter into the pristine beauty of the moment. This isn’t a skill, it’s our natural state, meaning it requires no effort or movement. The requisite skill, optional perhaps but highly recommended for anyone having tendencies for falling back into obsession (hello people of the West…) is to be able to observe when thought begins to cloud the experience. That’s what understanding the structural nature of the Imaginary Self (see A New Earth) really helps with, although as one gets clearer this is left behind as the experience of suffering that arises when we go into resistance becomes so “in your face” that there’s no question of ignoring it or hesitation in letting go of that thought.

Move into the center. Observe what’s there. Perhaps nothing but Peace, Beauty, Bliss.

Turn off your mind, relax
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying

Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining

That you may see
The meaning of within
It is being
It is being

That love is all
And love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing

That ignorance and hate
May mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing

But listen to the
color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living

Or play the game
existence to the end
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning

Lennon-McCartney (written by John, too bad he lost IT…)
(c) whatever

Thomas Carlyle and Happiness

Thomas Carlyle

First posted Feb 6th, 2007 to my Zaadz/Gaia blog

This is a comment to Siona’s  blog posting  on Thomas Carlyle on the anniversary of his death. Quoting from her post:

“But this I love more: Carlyle had an unblinkered awareness of the suffering inherent to the world. He believed the point of life is to make man blessed, not happy, and that the pursuit of happiness is one of the things that prevents people from achieving blessedness.”

To which I comment:

“Yes, yes, yes. Carlyle seems amazingly close to the core! – But I wonder if the blessed / happiness distinction doesn’t suffer from issues of definitions of terms. I really like Eckhart Tolle’s idea that unhappiness is any state of identifying who we are with emotions we’re having an aversive reaction to, such as feelings we should have something or shouldn’t be experiencing something else.

When viewed with detachment, the same feelings are clearly seen as an ineffable, invaluable part of the unblemished suchness of each moment. Without the story attached to the feelings, the background of joy emerges, as the content, no longer resisted, merges with the whole mass-of-what-is, penetrated through and through by the vast, spacious awareness. Then we fall into being, consciousness and bliss. How can this not be happiness?

So, the pursuit of happiness is exactly its opposite when we are grasping at any “thing” that we dream will somehow finally complete the image of “Me,” completely impossible within the temporal framework of the world of form. And is utterly transformed when we release attachment to outcomes and to the chronic reaction to the sense of unsatisfactoriness that drives the imaginary self. The pursuit becomes effective and practical when directed by a seeing of what is along with complete acceptance of what’s seen. Then we are truly blessed, but not by anything outside of ourselves. We are blessed by surrender to that to which we are directly connected at the center of our being.”

And as Siona ended, Yes.

The Chinese Finger-Cuff Model of Liberation

First posted to my Zaadz/Gaia blog Feb 23rd, 2007

Chinese Finger Cuffs

Remember These?
In Evelyn’s Zaadzblog for yesterday  (Feb. 22nd) she quotes Lama Surya Das also quoting Trungpa Rinpoche as saying;

”Renunciation means to let go of holding back. Can we let go of holding back? Can we relinquish our fears and defenses?”

Holding back is all the hypnotically enmeshed activity of the Imaginary Self, the entirely mental conflation we have throughout the memory of this, and possibly many, lifetimes assumed to be what we are. Although That which we truly are is infact entirely surrounding and penetrating everything that appears as the content of the mind and senses, we none-the-less feel hemmed in by “reality,” what Eckhart Tolle calls our life situation. We are actually in a chronic posture of clenching onto what is actually and totally a dream.

If you’re of a certain age, perhaps you remember the fairs or carnivals at your school or church, where for a dime or so you could take part in contests requiring questionable skill, for success in which you were gifted with cheezy treasures, prominent among which were the ever-daunting Chinese Finger-cuffs (Dun-Dun-Dun). The thing with these classy little products of some sweatshop in the Far East was that you’d stick a finger from each hand in one end of the little woven tube, and when you’d pull on it hard enough it’d grip the fingers with enough force to dislocate yer dang knuckles. And you could do what you wanted, twist the fingers, shake ’em, whatever, but as long as you kept pulling, you were trapped.

That’s how it is with this clenching that keeps the small self firmly ensconced front and center in our experience. So someone comes along and tells you that you don’t have to stay in states shot through and through with the quality of unsatisfactoriness, which is seemingly ever-recurrent suffering. Or, perhaps they come from a perspective a few notches down and say that the suffering will go away when you meet all your desires (say, through the Law of Attraction(R)…). But whatever catches your attention, the Who-You-Think-You-Are starts out making efforts to get out of your traps in life. There follow the inevitable seminars, workshops, retreats, visualizations, affirmations, yoga intensives, trips to the Spiritual Bookstore, cleansings, rolfings, dietary regimens, and of course lashings of meditations. Still, no matter what you try, the unsatisfactoriness persists relentlessly, in fact seems to increase the harder you try, the more you mind your P’s and Q’s.

With the Finger-Cuffs, the trick was to relax, even push in a little, and then to gently ease out of the suckers. Basically the same thing applies to easing out of the Ego, you just have to let go. I have found this greatly aided by something that Adyashanti’s teacher, Arvis Justi, told him – (hopefully not paraphrasing too much) “Every ego has it’s dance, and it’s just going to dance it out to the end.” Gradually it begins to dawn that there really are no mistakes, every move that presents itself can be followed in the trust that either it’s the right one, or is a brilliant “mistake” that will lead to the perfect, required learning. Things seem to lighten up. People are less threatening, and you’re less inclined to lock horns or hold energy with them. They even kinda seem lovable, not necessarily because you have any liking for them at all.

You may notice that you stop taking yourself so seriously, or not. But one day, the idea that the Imaginary Self is exactly that, an illusion through and through, may become more than theoretical. That which you truly are may, as it is innately suited to do, sees clearly and directly that there was never anybody home.  We find only ease and peacefulness at the center, our heart breaks open with the realization, and we no longer have to hold anything back.

You finessed your way out of the finger-cuffs.

Shanti