Do You Know You Are In There?

 When you are not being pulled down, there is a force pulling you up.

Michael Singer

Are you in there?

Yes.

Do you have thoughts and feelings?

Yes.

Is something "bothering" you? Are you down?

Yes.

How do you know? 

Your thoughts are something you look down at! You are not what you are looking at. You are the one looking.

If you were capable of being in there, aware of what is going on in there, you would be an enlightened being.

All is well.

Micheal A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( October, 2024) From Thoughts to Awareness/ Reclaiming Your Divine State. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLQvNB92h-A&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=4

Being Love

Once you love all of it, you disappear into being love.  Be love!  Be love! 

Ram Dass

Is our purpose in this lifetime...to "get" whatever we can from the world in order to serve  this idea of 'little me' or is it to remember who we really are...which is love...and to serve ourselves and the world by being that love?  I do think it is the latter, don't you? 

First we must, according to Ram Dass's formless friend Emmanuel, fall back in love with our Selves. Once we remember who we are ...light and love...not seperate little entities with big fat neurotic egos...we can radiate that love and light onto the world.

Hmm! Keep your mind open and have a listen.

Ram Dass ( August, 2014) Ram Dass Webcast with Jo Clarkson/ Emmanuel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfHRTuObTvw&t=1s

Recognizing the Formless 'I Am'

 I am without form; without limit. I am beyond space; beyond time. I am in everything. Everything is in me. Everywhere I am. I am existence Absolute, knowledge Abosulute, bliss Absolute. I am That. I am That.

I am without body or change of the body, I am neither senses, or the objects of the senses. I am existence Absolute, knowledge Absolute, bliss Absolute. I am That.  I am That. 

Swami Ram Tethra ( from: https://www.inner-quest.org/Ramatirtha_I_Am_That.htm)

I basically use this as a mantra when I hold my breath during Kriya every morning.  I say in the center of that held breath "Tat Taum Asi"...then ..."Sat Chit Ananda"...then "Tat Taum Asi" again. 

My intention during every practice is simply to expand my ability to find peace in  what is.

Ram Dass, this morning, echoed my intention and desire in the below linked podcast.  He built his talk around  this mantra "Love it as it is!" from Thaddeus Gollas, in  The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.

Allow "it is as it is"

Who would we be if we could live life in that way?

Dass tells us in order to truly live like that we need to do so from the formless state of "I am". 

Beyond the causal plane there will just be "isness" being.

We are not these forms we have come to identify as.  We are not bodies or personalities. We are simply using these things for a period of so called time. We are not individuals, nor are we the many.  We are not a "me", nor are we an "us". We are simply part of the one "I am".

I seek to find peace in the isness of Life but as long as I identify as a body and personality, as form, I will not truly be able to do that. 

It is only from the place of "I am" that you and I can be here like it is.  It is only from the place of "I am" that you and I can look at Life and death and pain and suffering and see it all as the unfolding of law...the laws of form...because 'I am' has no form.  Who you are has no form

Your container is a lawful container including your thinking mind.  Everything you think is lawful but everything that you are is beyond law.

There is one "I am."

All is well. 

Ram Dass/ Be Here Now ( April 29, 2024) Ram Dass on Accepting Life As It Is- Here and Now Podcast. Ep 250. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTdyVPM_ti4&t=1805s

Steps to Transforming the Lower Self

I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.

Einstein

How do we  handle those lower self energies we tend to push away like anxiety, tension, and insecurity?

1. Pay attention to what is bringing you down and closing your heart. See how you are letting the lower part of your life runn the show...how you are feeding this energy. 

2, Recognize the energy you have expended over the years running from it, hiding it, resisting it, struggling against it only to make it stronger.  

3. Commit instead to work at the root.

4.Intend to work directly with this lower energy, this lower self."I am willing to feel with this."

5. "My intent is that I will do work on this thing that keeps closing my heart,  so I stay open and allowing no matter what happens."

6. Recognize that you cannot ask anxiety or any of these lower energy emotional expereinces to relax.  That is not in their nature.  They are just doing what they do.  It is not anxiety that needs to relax.  It is you that needs to relax.

7. You...not it...relax. Relax around the edges.  This nature energy may be taking over your core...so relax around it...hands, shoulders, jaw, feet, arms, legs etc

8. Learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

9. Breathe. "Put a nsotril on your heart and breathe into and out of it."

10. Next, allow yourself to feel what is there. "This is my opportunity for dealing with this lower part of my being that keeps holding me down."

11. Then be kind and compassionate with this lower energy. See it as a suffering entity that was created by your own unconscious need to protect self. Treat the lower self with compassion and understanding...befriend it ...change your attitude about that part of yourself you are most uncomfortable with. See it as something that needs your support. Think of helping it to get better. 

12. Say: "Its okay.  I will take care of you," to the part inside that is freaking out. Reach down and get underneath all that mess and lift it up...bring it higher...bring it to God ...offer it as a gift. 

13. Stop closing and running away from the uncomfortable. Know...you can handle it. 

14. Realize spirituality  is never about running to God or staying open.  It is simply about choosing not to leave God or to close.

All is well. 

Michael A. Singer/ Sounds True/ Temple of the Universe ( September, 2024) Transforming the Lower Self Into Spiritual Liberation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f7EMrI7hvI&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=7

The Practice of Handling Reality

What lies before us and what lies behind us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I woke up thinking about reality.  I was thinking of "this human's" ability to handle it at times, and its inability to handle it at others.  I see now when  this wonderful expanded consciousness within this body and mind is pulled down to lower energy things and when it is focusing up and away from the lower energy.  Two totally different experiences. 

In the first scenario, Life seems to be pollutted with problems and negative things. Consciousness is pulled down and identifies with what it is watching. I see myself as the problematic self then  and I feel afraid, insecure, depressed.   I feel  down. I resist reality.   In the second scenario,  I see nothing but the beauty of this Life experience, allowing and honoring all of it. There is no good or bad...just Life with all its contrasting colours. This human feels "up" or at least not so identified with lower energy, with what is going on. "I am", at those times,  moving towards a higher experience.

 

Which do you think is the most life affirming way to live Life? Being stuck with face down in the mud or standing on a mountain summit with face turned up towards the sun?    I much prefer it when I am not distracted by lower energy. I much prefer it when I am allowing reality to be as it is, when I am accepting and appreciative of all of it. I much prefer the higher energy.

So why do I still get pulled down into the lower energies when Life hands me these multiple things to handle all at once?  Why do I resist and say things to myself like, "This isn't fair. I don't know what to do here to make this better.  I wish thisng were different.?"This amazing consciousness of "I am" still gets pulled down into lower energy things. It still reacts in an unwholesome way to Life. 

I know what I want and need.  I want to learn to accept reality. To allow and appreciate all of it.  I am so tired of building my life around catering to the lower energy vibrations. I want to keep my focus up.  That is why I practice yoga. It is obvious, then, that this practice I have committed myself to is a life-long learning journey. Hmm!

This is what I heard today related to this thought topic from listening to Michael A. Singer

•  God is everything...and everything is everything
• Lower vibrations are just slower vibrations
• All of Creation is God...from the unmanifest (higher vibration) to the grossest manifetsed...(lower vibration)
• It is easy for the lower vibration to bring the higher vibration down...draws consciousness down
• Depression is a very, very low vibration of energy that a person identifies with
• Depression is a down slope we might experience...it is not who you are.
• Spirituality is not about getting rid of the low vibrations. They too are a part of God. The goal is simply to just observe and participate to some degree in these energy flows before letting them pass through
• "I dont wan't to be distracted by this....I do not want to devote my life to the lowest vibration rates inside me, any longer."
• Most of us are devoting life to distracting self from self...
• Consciousness is distracted by the lowest thing going on...because it is often the noisiest.
• Resisting is the yogic term for suppression.
• The answer to Life's so called problems is not in getting what you want so the garbage inside doesn't get disturbed. The answer is getting rid of the garbage. 
• You do not need to manipulate life.
• The life of spirituality is never about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want. It is about allowing Life to be Life...reality to be as it is without resistance. 
• What are you doing with your mind?  You are allowing the lowest vibration rates to distract your consciousness. 
• You are resisting reality.
• Reality cannot be wrong because it is reality
• "I want to learn to handle reality!" Is the mantra of the yogi: person wanting to go deeper. 
• Your job is to honor and respect that things will unfold in front of you...if you can't handle it, then that thing  is for your growth.
• You are welcome to change the level of how you interact with things. 
• RAISE SELF
• Instead of beating up self when it pulls Self down, take self by the hand outside to explore the galaxy.
• When you see yourself condemning self...when you see yourself frightened or afraid...reach down and hug that self ..support that self , be self's mother...(Self -compassion is as important to yoga as it is to psychology).
• Observe yourself when you fear failure. Ask, "What is failure?"  Failure is the inability to handle reality....success is the ability to handle reality.
• Participate in Life fully without concern for outcome. The result is not what matters...what matters is doing the best that you can and honoring what comes back when you do.
• Yoga is a practice of handling reality...

There is so much energy flowing inside of you, you couldn't handle it until you learned to...That is what happens when you stop being drawn down to negative energies. You are a great being.

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Sounds True/ Temple of the Universe ( September, 2024) Overcoming Lower Vibrations and Embracing Spiritual Freedoms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMF1ZajBIx0&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=8

Testifying to Time's Relentless Melt

 To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs tesitfy to time's relentless melt. 

Susan Sontag

All is well!

Not a Problem

The organism is part of its environment...afterall is an object,a process in nature, in the cosmos just as much as anything in its environment.There really is no way of seperating the two. Instead of speaking in this terminology of doers and done to's, attackers and victims...we simplify things considerably just by confining ourselves to a description of what is happening, and as we do this we get a peculiarly clarified perception of the world without all sorts of ghosts. And it is in this way that we also begin to be able to have some preliminary intuition or sensation of the meaning of the fact that life is not a problem. In other words, not a contest between ourselves and our environments. 

Alan Watts

Hmm! I woke up at four (still on Eastern European time) with a perception of "problems".  Since I have been back from my amazing trip I have had a download of life problems unfolding in front of me. Some of the things were so sad ( involving illness, addiction, depression, death, and loss) and others just frustrating  (like a lengthening to- do list beyond what I feel capable of handling, the loss of luggage, money issues,  and an apparent diagnosis of osteoporosis).  Regardless, there were what appeared to be "many" so called problems to deal with, to solve, to accept.  My little human brain and body felt the pressure of it all. So I lay there at four feeling my usual body symptoms and on top of that the heaviness of this concept of "problem". 

So I meditated and then got up to listen to Alan Watts. I heard him speak this truth...that I am not a reactive human organism on this planet experiencing problems. I am simply just a part of what is happening in nature, and in Life.  Sigh!

I am not a problem ridden human. Life is not a problem.

All is well!

Alan Watts/T&H () Alan Watts for When You Think Too Much/Life is Not a Problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Tv-VfP88&t=656s

Beyond Disappointment

 Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Well there will be no RAW shots. When I had set my camera on jpeg compression I didn't select the "and RAW" choice...so the camera thought it just had to shoot in jpeg.  That is very disappointing but I guess it is what it is.  I will work with what is and do my best not to cling to what could have been. 

Another disappointing thing is that they lost our luggage on the way home. In that luggage I had some dress clothes, my favorite jean jacket ( preference...I know) , shoes, sweaters, jeans, all my sandals and sun dresses, as well as my fitbit watch that I was quite dependent on to get around with. It has been days with no word. Sigh! 

Anyway two disappointing things out of a host of many positive things is not too bad is it? 

All is well in my world. 

Moving Along Like Water

 In reality there are no seperate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source , like the river is connected to the mouth of the ocean. 

Alan Watts

Falling Freely

 Mana eva manusyanam karanam bandha moksayoh

As the mind, so the person; bondage or liberation are in your own mind.

Sanskrit saying found in Satchinanda's translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, page 5.

Or as Michael Singer would say:

If you stare at your mind, your mind becomes a prison.

Michael Singer

Most of us are staring at our minds. We are so focused on the noisy mind as it reacts to everything that unfolds in front of us, clinging and struggling, that it imprisons us.  It imprisons the consciousness that we are by pulling us into its never ending dramas, its preferences, its dislikes. When all of our attention goes there it limits  what we observe and expereince. It traps us.

Alan Watts once gave  the analogy of our journey through life as being like this:  When we are born we are pushed off a precipice and we fall to our deaths.  At the same time a large boulder is also pushed off. We spend our life falling as the  boulder falls with us. Instead of enjoying this amazing ride we spend our time terrified and worried. We cling to the boulder with all our might which increases tension and struggle...yet we are so afraid to let go.  We don't realize that letting go will make the inevitable  journey downward pleasant and relaxed, peaceful, and fun. Our struggle is not in the falling but in the clinging to this boulder. The boulder could be the mind or the mental modifications as Patanjali referred to them.

The thing is...with this clinging and preferring, stuffing and storing we tend to do...we create samskaras that lead to a further need to cling and prefer, to stuff and to store. This becomes so distracting and our consciousness gets pulled in to this drama and eventually trapped by it. Each samskara, Singer says, is like a bar in our prison cell.

The thing is it doesn't have to be that way.  We cannot change the fact that we are all falling to our physical deaths in this very temporal world. We cannot change the reality of the things that happened. The world will, afterall, unfold the way it unfolds. This is Life's reality, and has little to do with what this falling little me wants. The mind we cling to with its likes and dislikes, its fears and expectations becomes a prison when we focus like this. If we were, however, to use the mind to contemplate something bigger than us and our puny little fall...than it can actually liberate us. If we use the mind to focus on and explore consciousness rather than the boulder, we can be free.

Spending our time falling emptying and purifying the mind and then using it for higher purposes us can certainly set us free. 

The purified mind is no different than the Self.

RamaKrishna

All is well.

Allan Watts: not sure where or when I heard this

Michael A. Singer/ Sounds True/ Temple of the Universe (October, 2024) The Mind: Prison or Liberator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpU1N80-35w&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=3

Swami Satchidananda (2012) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Integral Yoga Publications. 

A New Way of Seeing

 

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Henry Miller

I am home now and trying to get the Circadian rhythm of body and mind aligned with the clock on this side of the world. I am also processing my experience away. I mentioned before how my mind works like my double card slotted camera. In one slot I shoot in jpeg...and the camera does most of the processing of data to come up with some acceptable picture quickly. In the other slot I shoot in RAW where all details are taken in and stored for me to process later on. I can't see the images clearly but later in Lightroom, I am flooded with detail. I am given the chance to select what details to enhance and what details to diminish.  I get to choose how I will remember this trip. 

I haven't taken the pics to Lightroom yet because that is a big endeavor to begin. It will take days. But I am beginning to process the RAWness of my memories. 

It was truly something else.  I absolutely love experiencing culture, language, history, and landscapes, different from my own. It offers me a wider perspective, a new way of seeing things.  It helps me to evolve.

Sure, it was nice to get away, to relax in the sun and I did.  That was truly healing...but what I truly enjoyed was immersing myself in all the above. I love exploring differences because it always brings me back to similarities...and similarities brings me back to this truth: We are all one. I see how small the world is now...how united all humanity is whether we accept that fact or not.

I do not believe I will ever be a fan of the touristy spots on this globe that offer superficial things.  I will, however, always embrace the depths of history and culture in an area that few see as a travel destination. That is why Croatia was the best place to begin my travelling experience. It is a hidden gem, for sure. I am a different person now because of it.

Anyway, all is well. 

Optimistic Sunshine on the Turgoise Sea

 There is nothing like a sea voyage to restore one's sense of optimism, a sense of being cleansed of your own past. 

Robert D Kaplan from Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age

We did an Adriatic Island tour during our first week in Croatia.  It was amazing!! I felt my optimism restored and my being cleansed with every drop and breeze from the Turgoise water. 

From Trogir

Blue Lagoon

Solta

Coming Back to Trogir

Again, these pics will be so much better when I develop my RAW.

All is well! 

Using Nothing But Time

 

Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but foot prints, and use nothing but time.

Found on wooded placards throughout Croatia's National Park. 

Pure natural beauty that rivals, without surpassing, the Canadian landscape can be found in Plitvice Lakes, Croatia. Words can not do it justice and either can these jpeg photos.  Hopefully you will still get an idea how amazing this spot is to visit. 

                                                    

All is well!

Slovenia! Slovenia! Beautiful Slovenia!

 

God's blessings on all nations who long and work for that bright day!

National Anthem

Most beautiful place I ever seen. The JPEG pics do not do it justice...hopefully when I get into Lightroom with my RAW shots, I can display the true colour and texture of this little country that took my breath away. 

All is well!