Getting Beyond the Thinking Mind

 ...Develop the ability to always have your presence, attention, anchored in the present moment rather than in your thinking mind.

Eckhart Tolle

That is what we need to do to transcend this sense of suffering so prevalent in most of our lives. We need to realize it is not the life situation causing the problem, but the thinking that is happening around it.  

When it comes to the thinking...it is more our attachment to what we are thinking, our identifying with it, that leads to suffering...not the actual thinking  or challenge we are facing.  Life is simply doing what Life does.  The mind is simply  doing what the mind does. The "Me and My story", that you created around this life event and this accumulation of thought,  is not real. Awakening is not about changing Life and getting this or that out there in order to eliminate challenge or to enhance this "me-ness". It is all about transcending this identification we have with that which we created and called "Me and My Story." 

When you awaken spiritually it doesn't mean it is the end of challenges but you no longer transform the challenges of life into ...an unhappy sense of self...into a dissatisfied person. Eckhart Tolle

Two questions we need to ask, according to Eckhart Tolle in the below linked video, when we are experiencing a sense of suffering as we face a life challenge:

• Could it be that the narrative I created around this situation is causing the unhappiness and not the situation?  
• How would I experience this situation if I did not add the unnecessary burden of thoughts to it?

Hmm! Something to think about.

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle ( January, 2024) Navigating Life's Challenges with Spiritual Awareness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUsxlR2RSeQ

Particularly Efficient Publishing Technology?

 Blogging is just writing-writing using a particularly efficient  type of publishing technology.

Simon Dumenco

Particularly Efficient?

I don't know about that.  It is efficient for writing, offering a quick way of getting ideas down and out there but for reaching readers? I don't know.  Well, at least not in my case and truth be told I do little here but the writing.  I am not actively trying to promote this blog. It is all on me.

Numbers spiking in the stats page, but only one viewer in the google analytics page. What do these bots do?  Do they take material? ( Why would they take material lol?) or are they just searching and crawling?  I have a lot of entries showing up read...is that because of this one person truly doing a read through of my blog?  Or is it bot activity randomly creeping?  The big numbers are from Singapore again and that is not showing up on Google...the second biggest is "Other" and I don't know how that would show up on Google. Then there is the random reader who may be actually reading...or maybe not? ...showing up on Google. How does one determine the publishing efficiency of the blogging experience ?  And does it matter?

I guess, my question is, how does one determine if the publishing technology is not only inefficient, but unwholesome for the writer.  Is it possible, as I ask every time I see this spike in numbers...that something less than wholesome is happening and I should do something to protect my material? Well, I know it is mine and I can prove it in a flash if it comes to copy right infringement but...I don't want to have that thought in my head as I come here everyday.  I just want to write lol. This is not the type of stuff a scraper would want is it? I don't know...it is all confusing to me. 

Regardless...beautiful day out there.  And I open up and come here every morning, regardless of the efficiency of this technology. 

All is well

He, Beneath it All

 God is still, established upon His own majestic changeless Self. You and I try to be one with Him, but plant ourselves upon nature, upon the trifles of daily life, on money, on fame, on human love, and all these changing forms in nature which make for bondage. When nature shines, upon what depends the shining?  Upon God and not upon the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. Wherever anything shines, whether it is the light in the sun or in our own consciousness, it is He. He shining, all shines after Him. 

Vivekananda, Complete Works ( Kindle Edition) Location 6718

He who is the colouring in the wings of the butterfly, and the blossoming of the rosebud, is the power that is in the plant and in the butterfly. He who gives us Life is the power within us. 

Vivekananda, Location 6728

So Close! so Close!

 

The spiritual progress of the aspirant is measured by the extent to which he[she, they] receives inner tranquility.

Sivananda

Contemplating  where I am on this spiritual path is something I often catch myself doing. It seems to be a slippery slope I am climbing.  I want to go up as high as I can and reach the peak.  I do.  I see myself progressing upwardly, and I see myself slipping back into unconsciousness...I pull myself back up or away only to soon realize I fell back again and again. I do not know how close I am to the summit.

I practice all limbs of yoga, I do, committedly and devotedly if not perfectly. I study and listen.  I write and I teach (as a part of my practice...again imperfectly and without ever knowing to whom I am teaching or reaching with my words.) I serve in other ways...sometimes with ego ( I know it is ego when I say "I serve") and sometimes with Self ( I know it is Self when whatever I do happens naturally, despite "me",  as if I am pulled to do it without any attachment to outcome or this idea of "service"...like with what I do here.) I know what I want: to reach that summit and at the same time I know there is no reaching, no getting anywhere, because I am already there. It gets confusing.

Anyway, I had a dream last night.  And as I often dream, I dreamt about being in some type of school with some type of test to write.  (I, because I spent so many years in the school system, personally and professionally, often dream of school or relate my awakening process to the learning done in academia.) Someone next to me is showing me their test result that they are quite proud of...a "B-" , and explaining that they just worked on the take home exam a few hours before it was due and were not expecting such a mark.  They relay to me that the teacher is not  as difficult as we thought she was. In my heart, I know I am willing to put more work in and therefore get a better mark than B-, and at the same time I know, in the dream, it isn't about the mark...it is about the learning.  I am willing to try harder than this person beside me did because I truly want to learn. I also discovered from this person with the B- that I have a teacher that is not there to make my life difficult but  only to encourage my learning. Just as I realized that, I heard out of nowhere the familiar female voice that often speaks to me in dreams.  "You are so close!  You are so Close!" It was so clear and I instantly knew, as I do now, that the speaker was talking about my spiritual progress. 

Hmm! 

Spirituality isn't about getting somewhere else.  It is about falling back into that which was always there. It is not something "I" do.  It is something "I am." We do not need to go anywhere. The process is simply a realization and remembering the inner tranquility of who we are.  "Me" and its need to do, fix, control, climb, and get somewhere is often in the way. Without this "me" and its drama that pulls our consciousness down, we would realize that we are already at the summit; we have always been at the summit. We just forgot that because we were  looking down at that which we are not, becoming addicted to the play it was performing in, becoming identified with it. 

The spiritual process is about looking away and remembering that the "me" and its drama is simply an object of consciousness.  We are the consciousness that is staring down at it...we are not it.  When we fall back into this consciousness we will find the inner tranquility we are seeking .

All is well in this world I erroneously refer to as "mine." 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (January 18, 2024) Understanding Levels of spiritual Growth. https://tou.org/talks/

Out of the World of Relentlessly Ticking Clocks

 Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I have been listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of the world of relentlessly ticking clocks.

Alan Watts

From Where We Desire

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe, to know what he ought to desire, and to know what he ought to do.

Thomas Aquinas

I am more inclined to believe that we need to know from where we desire.  Ego or Self?

Just as the universe does, humans participate in life's s desire to create. Desire is simply the wish, conscious or unconscious, to bring into the world of form something that was not here before.  The ego motivated desire differs from the Deeper Self's motivation.  Ego wants to get, and "Deeper I" wants to give.

Hmm! Where is your desire coming from?

All is well

 Eckhart Tolle (January, 2024) What is the True Nature of Desire? /Ego vs Presence with Eckhart Tolle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53Xet8fAT0

How High You Really Are

 

Thus, in this body the soul is reflected.  The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within himself, and each one must show his divinity sooner or later.

Vivekananda Location 6624

Michael Singer, and many of the great spiritual teachers of the past, teach that we are very high and  great beings staring down at something that is not so great. We are focusing all this amazing consciousness down on  the dramas of a self created "me" with all its thoughts and feelings, its endless  and fruitless quests to make everything "out there" okay so we can feel good "in here". We are constantly trying to distract ourselves from the mess we created and we erroneously believe those distractions that lift us up a tiny bit to be our "highs" in Life. We become so focused on our inner drama, our quests for distraction and more highs; we get so  pulled in by our thoughts and emotions, that we get lost  in them and start to identify with them,  

The amazing powerful and very high consciousness that we are gets narrowed and constricted to a tiny little beam of light as it looks down, way down, onto this tiny speck of a thing we are focusing on. We believe we are that which this light is shining on. We do not see we are actually the light that is shining. We do not see the natural, inherent high state within us, that which we are. Then something starts to wake us up.  We realize what we have been doing isn't working. We just can't stay high.

 As we start to wake up, we begin to want more and our quest becomes all about getting out of this low energy state...of moving up a bit from our conditioned way of approaching Life.  As we begin to move up and away from the mess, disidentifying with the drama of "me" a bit...we certainly feel better.  But there is still so much more to us that we cannot grasp or understand. 

It is isn't until we let go of this "me" and fall back into the seat of Awareness that we get to experience what we truly are.  What we truly are is so much more than what we imagine ourselves to be. Realizing Self  is a process, a beautiful process. 

Vivekananda puts the process of spiritual growth  this way (and it may or may not include a religious practice): 

First, we see God in the far beyond, then we come nearer to Him and give Him omnipresence so that we live in Him; and at last we recognize we are He. 

Once we reach this state we will experience Sat Chit Ananda ( which is also a name for God in some translations)- Eternal-Conscious-Bliss

All is well!

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (January 14, 2024) Learning to Maintain Your Center. https://tou.org/talks/

The Complete Works of Vivekananda. Kindle Edition

Striking the Light and Cleaning Out the Mess in the Way

 The only way to realise the light above you is to strike the spiritual light within you, and the darkness of sin and impurity will flee away.  Think of your higher self, not of your lower. 

Vivekananda Location 6580. 

Why does life feel so dark and heavy?

You are having a problem with your mind. (Singer) It is focusing on the lower self...the personal mind and this entity we call "me." 

Say what, Crazy Lady? 

We are allowing our mind to run the show and the mind is just not capable of doing that. It is in the way of us experiencing the Light of the Higher Self.  

The personal mind is  a closet full of stored  junk ( all the sensory impressions we cling to, most of them very painful, emotional experiences we are doing whatever we can to not experience again.  And some of this junk is also made up of  very pleasant experiences or impressions we crave experiencing again).  This chaos of stored junk forms the personality, the sense of "me" that the mind is intent on protecting, the lower self,  and it is a mess! We, as awareness, or the Higher Self, jump behind this closet of junk. We identify as the "me" and say, "Okay protect me, be my shield! Only allow what I want in.  Life has to go through you before it gets to "me" ".  

We attempt to experience Life from there.  For the average, "normal" person...this  mind they allow to run the show is a completely disturbed mess, leading to great suffering. 

Besides being a complete mess, with a habit tendency of picking up more and more junk and stuffing it inside this mental closet, the mind is suffering from "delusions of grandeur."  It believes it can control, manipulate, grasp from and push away life events as they pass before us. It actually thinks it has that ability to control Life so we can feel comfortable inside. We fail to realize that  Life has been doing what it has been doing for billions of years before our puny little personal minds have come into existence.  We fail to realize that we cannot control Life!

The Buddha taught that we all suffer ( all of us) because we desire.  We desire how the world should be and the messy, and disturbed  mind we have given the reins to, tries to give us what we want.  So it constantly tells us, besides the stern instructions not to open the closet door more than a crack to stuff new things in,  we have to go out  and fix, manipulate, cling to the pleasant that soothes  the junk in this closet, and push away the unpleasant that rattles the junk in this closet. We are instructed to open the door only a crack for the pleasant, and bar it shut for the unpleasant. The mind's instructions creates a never ending and never successful mission for us. We suffer, suffer, suffer. 

If the door is closed most of the time and we are hiding behind it...how is Life and Light going to get through to our awareness.  How are we going to experience it? All we are going to see is the mess in this dark and heavy closet. We will become obsessed focusing on the "me" and the drama the mind creates by attempting to manipulate Life based on the junk in this closet. We will become so focused on what is in front of us...we will not see the Light that shines behind us. We will live in darkness.  We will suffer.

Yoga teaches we do not need to live this way. Without the junk filled closet in the way we can experience an amazing life. All we have to do is open the door, "strike the light" and clean up the mess in this mind.  We cannot, of course, keep stuffing  more in if we want a clean closet. We need to put away our preferences, our meager and fruitless attempts to fix it out there, so it suits us in here,  and accept and allow Life as it is.  We need to stop stuffing and clinging to the good, the bad, or the ugly. Let it all just pass by. If we stop stuffing more in, the stuff inside will keep rolling out until someday the entire closet is clean and purified. Until there is no junk between Life and who we are. 

Without the mess, all there is is light. 

Our desiring and expecting the world and Life to be the way that soothes the disturbed mind is not the way to go . To end suffering...let it go. We don't want to get what we want...we need to get rid of the reason we want so we are healthy and okay no matter what. (Singer)

Explore the essence of your being. This is the spiritual path.  Spend your life purifying and freeing yourself from this messy closet mind. You are not the disturbed and messy mind. You are not the events it is trying to control. You are the One behind, observing it all. Stop focusing on the dark and heavy in front of you.  Light the match that will allow you to focus on the part of you that is okay no matter what...the higher Self, not the lower. Clean out the mess inside...purify...and be free!

Heaviness and darkness belong to the messy mind, not the Light of who you really are.

If the room is dark, do you go about beating your chest and crying, "It is dark, dark, dark!" No, the only way to get the light is to strike a light, and then the darkness goes. 

Vivekananda, location 6580

Michael A. Singer/ Sounds True ( January, 2024) Everyday Gets Lighter When You Let Go of Yourself./ Michael Singer Podcast: New Year's Special Season 3: Episode 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qd_oz0krVI

Vivekananda (n.d.) The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Kindle Edition.

Sitting in the Deeper Seat

Spirituality is simply sitting in a deeper seat within and observing Life from there...how can anything be a problem...all that is asked of you is to be aware of it..you don't have to do anything...everything is happening by itself ...

Michael A. Singer (Somewhat paraphrased)

Hmm!  I want to remove the woo-woo from the word spiritual.  I have always had a bit of a problem with the connotation that people tend to attach to that word. They either see it, (and the person who talks about it),  as religious, (even evangelical).  And they, if they are not religious, or evangelical, shut down and resist. Even if they are religious, they judge the person talking about the spiritual  as being blasphemous or crazy  if what they are saying differs greatly from the doctrine or dogma of their religion. Or they see "spirituality"  as referring to the supernatural, magical, and mystical..,dealing only  with things that are "non-scientific miracles"  like astro-projection, talking to ghosts, or reading people's energies. I am not saying these things are not possible...not at all ...but they do not define the word spirituality,

 Spirituality is just a word used to describe something that isn't woo-woo or "mambo-jumbo" as Singer, in the below video describes the way it is erroneously thought of as. It is simply the process of viewing the world and experiencing Life from from a deeper seat of consciousness, from a higher awareness. It isn't restricted to  supernatural phenomena  It takes place in the everyday natural world. It isn't a one time happenstance  experience.  It is an everyday practice of developing a greater understanding. A so called "spiritual" person  is simply committed to observing the outerworld and the inner world and noticing how the two are relating. 

They ask these questions: 

"What is happening inside this " me",  when that is happening outside this "me"?  Why? "

"What is happening outside of this "me", when this happens inside this "me"? Why? "

Yoga is a spiritual practice that isn't woo-woo or "mambo-jumbo".  It is not there to teach you how to leave your body so you can float around the room ( though it could lol...but a true yogi doesn't seek those powers or cittis).  It is to teach you to live peacefully  and with a sense of Oneness. It is going to teach you to live life freely, undisturbed by any of it....as you allow it to be exactly what it is. It can show us that Life is not the problem, how we respond to it is. And if we learn to stop reacting and resisting it...we can be at peace and be free. 

Spirituality is a solution to the problematic way of living like we have to fix, control and do so much in order to find peace inside.  It teaches us we do not have to do anything but "be" as we observe and experience  this amazing and miraculous Life we have been given. 

All is well! 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( January 12, 2024) Seeing Past It All. https://tou.org/talks/

What We Are Truly Longing For

Without knowing it people are longing to become free of themselves...there is a longing...and this is built into the evolution of the human being. This longing for self transcendence is built into the evolution of human consciousness. Every person experiences this but they look for the solution for this longing in the wrong way, in completely the wrong places. 

Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle echoes what I have been saying about the need for getting beyond the personality in the below linked video. Not that he has been listening to me and regurgitating what I say, lol, but I over the course of my long awakening, have been regurgitating what I was learning, and assimilating after  listening to him and many others. It just so happened that what I wrote in the last few weeks was echoed in this video that came out yesterday, and that I happened upon today.  All in perfect timing. You may not listen or trust what I say, (and that is truly okay) but I am sure when it comes from Tolle, it  will resonate with you. 

Self transcendence involves taking our obsessive attention away  from our conditioned focus on  what the little me, the "surface I" , the problematic personality is experiencing to what the Deeper I is experiencing.  It involves going from our obsession with focusing on thought, emotion,  word, and object to noticing the space that surrounds these things of form. It involves removing our fixation  from the clouds in the sky, so we can see the blue sky behind them. It involves recognizing that this surface I is just a little ripple on the ocean of Deeper I. It isn't who we are.

As the quote above reminds us what we really want, what we are on a mission to attain whether we know it or not, cannot be found out there.  It can only be found in here.  Many of us are trapped in this identification with the personality and spend our lives trying to serve it by getting from the outer world what we assume it needs to be comfortable and safe.  We fail to see beyond the personality which is built on thought, and conditioning...to that which is real and can only be experienced. Awakening is all about falling back from the grip of personality with its problems, needs and incessant seeking...to the only thing that is truly real and important ..higher consciousness or what Tolle refers to often in this video as "space consciousness." 

Hmm! Have a listen.

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (January 10, 2024) Transcending the Ego for Lasting Fulfillment/ Eckhart Tolle Wisdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_wTckHOyeE

Snow Day

Nature is our greatest teacher of surrender, of allowing, of simply being....This moment, this present...this is where Life is.

Alexandra Domelle

 Getting our first real snow storm, which is a latecomer in this Canadian climate. It was a snow day at school.  I had forgotten how much I love snow days. It is like nature is whispering, "It is okay.  You don't have to go out and "do" today.  You just have to stay comfortable and warm inside ( that is until you have to go out and shovel and snow-blow lol) .  For now, just be!"

There is just such comfort in surrendering to the what is of  nature.

All is well.

Challenge the Mind: Not a Reliable Friend

Life is 10 % what you experience and 90%  how you respond to it.

Dorothy Neddermeyer

I am presently coaching (that word sounds so strange here) someone I care about, who is dealing with major depression, to go from a state of very unhealthy inactivity to a state of a healthy activity. We are working on getting one walk and one 20-60 minute yoga session in a day.  It is challenging considering that somedays getting from the bed to the shower is a challenge for her.  Seems like such a small task for most of us but for those with a  mind that is constantly saying "Down! Too tired!  Too dark!  Too heavy!! Too scary out there! Not worth the effort! Just stay here!" It isn't easy. 

Most of us listen to our minds,  don't we? We believe everything they tell us.  They say "sit"...and we sit.  They say "jump"...and we ask, "How high?" They tell us to respond to the world based on what they and their cousin "heart" are saying...and we do. Sigh! How well is that working for us?

We erroneously rely on the mind and heart to guide us, using thoughts and feelings as a metre to point us in the right direction.  But do they? In the case of depression, that obviously doesn't work? 

The mind is an amazing tool that sincerely wants to help protect this sense of me we built up over the years but how reliable is it when it becomes overidentified with  that which is unfolding in front of us or through us. We are not that "me" we built up, are we? We are not the experiences we are having, are we? We are simply the Observer of it all.  If this me is identified with depression, assuming it is depressed, then the mind will protect the depression, won't it?   The consciousness behind the mind, that which does the observing, will be so focused on the mind's experience of depression, the mind's  over identifying with it, it will not see the possibility of healing with movement.  We will start saying things like "I am depressed.", rather than "I have depression" or "I am experiencing depression." 

One of the things I keep reminding her to do is, "Ignore the mind, or at least don't believe everything it has to say. Sometimes it is going to do its best to convince you that you do not have the ability to get up out of bed. Don't believe it.  But when you do believe it, following its advice, it is going to tell you how much of a loser you are for not getting up...Don't believe it then either. The mind  may mean well, but it isn't a reliable friend." It is very mixed up.

I also tell my loved one that she is not depression.  She is simply watching her sense of "me" deal with depression.  Depression is not something we are, it is simply something we have or are experiencing at certain time.  The mind tries to convince us otherwise.  We know though that it isn't a reliable friend. We do not need to believe it or follow its demands. 

Recognizing this truth...that we are not that which the mind tells us we are is a crucial first step in moving ourselves from stuck positions. The second, is detaching  bit from the story we are being told. We are not depressed...we are simply observing the mind dealing with a period of depression.  The mind, in depression, often resists that which could alleviate some of that pain because it takes effort it is convinced we don't have.  The next step then, is to push past tis position. I tell this person, "When you feel the urge to resist a walk, or a yoga session, or some activity that will ease the mind...don't.  Don't resist. Push past this resistance temptation  and do exactly that which the mind is telling you, you can't do because you are too depressed: 

Move the body! 

Well it has only been 8 days...but she has put in eight practices and eight walks...and she even had a smile on her face through some of them. I think that is amazing!

All is well 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( January 8, 2024) Keeping Your Bearings on a Spiritual Path.https://tou.org/talks/

A Constitutional Necessity of the Human Mind

 Many thought the case hopeless and the cause of religion lost once and forever. But the tide has turned and to the rescue has come what? The study of comparative religions. By the study of different religions we find that in essence they are one.... I studied,   the Christian religion, the Mohammed, the Buddhistic, and others, and  what was my surprise to find that the same foundation principles taught by my religion were taught by all religions...What is the truth? ...We know that man has a body, eyes, ears, and he has a spiritual nature which we cannot see. And with his spiritual faculties he can study these different religions and find that whether a religion is taught in the forests and jungles of India or in a Christian land, in essentials all religions are one. This only shows us that religion is a constitutional necessity of the human mind. 

Vivekananda 

These words were taken down way back in 1898. How many of us have opened our minds to do what this great sage has done. 

I often tell people that I am in the process of discovering the unifying truth in all religion.  Like Vivekananda, I do believe there is one. Doing so opens my mind and my heart and it helps me to see so much more clearly. 

I wasn't always this open. I was raised with this ideation that the only real religion was Christianity and the only real Christian church  was the Roman Catholic church.  After highschool I went to a university that was considered "Catholic". We were required to take at least one religious studies course...with the intention that all Catholics would take courses related to Catholic theology.  There was one course on the agenda, however,  that was different from all the potentially boring courses taught by the priests.  It was called "Religious Experiences: East and West." I took that.  Not because I wanted to study comparative religion like Vivekananda had done....I just thought it would be different.  So I sat in class throughout that term to simply escape boredom.  I brought my conditioning, my closed mind into the lecture hall with me.  I got very little out of  the class even though the professor, who was like the Ram Dass of the university-probably even hung out with him at one time-  was excellent and the material was so interesting.  My conditioning closed my mind.  Part of me, even thought that it was a sin that I was studying other religions.  I couldn't even tell my father about it. Imagine! 

Wind forward 40 years and here I am just totally immersed in the process of understanding these religious experiences east and west. I have done some serious deconditioning and have opened up to see things much more clearly.

Hmm! I am reminded of a line I read in a translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras by Swami Satchidananda: "Truth is One, Paths are many." 

The messages that are coming down to us from the prophets and holy men and women for all sects and nations are joining their forces and speaking to us with the trumpet of the past.  And the first message it brings us is: Peace be unto you and to all religions.

Vivekananda Loc 6446

All is well!

Swami Vivekananda ( n.d. 1889??) The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Volumes 1-9. Kindle Edition.1.4 Lectures and Discourses.

When they say "Complete Works"...they are not kidding lol.  I have been reading from this book every night for close to six months now and I have yet to get past 10% of the reading, less than halfway through Volume 1.

Tzu-Jan: The Natural Spontaneity of Life

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes [Tzu-Jan]. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. 

Lao Tzu

The inspiration for today's entry was sparked by hearing Michael A. Singer mention Tzu-Jan and explaining that it means "that which happens by itself".

I love the idea of embracing the flow of Life, what Taosist might refer to as the Way, trusting that this flow knows what it is doing...that it is far greater and wiser than our puny little minds with their very limiting "me-me" focus.

Life is happening all around us and we are only focusing on such a tiny little speck of the life that  just happens to be unfolding in front of us.  We are so focused on this speck...putting all our energy into trying to control it, fix it, make it work for this "me" we assume we are, that we miss out on all the rest. We get so caught up in our efforting and struggles to do, that we  lose the spontaneity and naturalness of the Life experience. We lose Tzu-Jan. We resist what is and we suffer. We suffer when we do not live in the Tao. Wu Wei, effortless action or no action, is often associated with the term Tzu-Jan.  We lose the sense of that as well. We fail to see that we do not need to interfere with Life.  When will we realize that our way of doing and being is not The Way to go? 

Sitting in stillness, allowing, embracing, and honoring the flow of Life...trusting that after billions and billions of years, it knows what it is doing, would be very freeing for all of us. We do not need to interfere with the flow of Life...we can simply lay back and float in it, honoring all of it. 

Hmm! Anyway, that was on my mind today.  All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( January 7, 2024) Why personal decisions are so difficult?https://tou.org/talks/

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (January 4, 2024) You are the Light of the World. https://tou.org/talks/

Liu Xiaogan ( June 28, 2008) On the Concept of Naturalness (Tzu-Jan) in Lao Tzu's Philosophy. In the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1540-6253.1998.tb00523.x

 Sorry. Lost my cover photo and feel so lost without it lol. I was trying to remove the Facebook link and accidently took the pic out.  Don't know quite how to get it back. Will figure it out.  Have an amazing day. If you can't find me here...I am over on Medium: Practicing Sitting Quietly. All of humanity’s problems stem from… | by Nancy Daley; Waking Up with Mindful Serenity Yoga | Jan, 2024 | Medium

The Two Sided Mirror of the Mind

 On one side of the mind the external world, the seen, is being reflected, and on the other, the seer is being reflected.

Vivekananda (on Patanjali's Sutra 22/Book 4)

So the mind is reflecting the external world that we have been conditioned to see as everything, and at the same time , on the other side of it, it is reflecting the Seer.  We just need to focus a little more on the Seer side and from there the mind will become conscious of everything.  We will see what we are doing and how it doesn't work.  We will see how the  inward side holds the answers to everything we perceive as a "problem" on the outward side.   We can make the mind wise.

Colored by the seer and the seen the mind is able to understand everything.

Vivekananda (n.d.) Complete Works.  Kindle Edition

The No Body; the No-Self

There is no self but there is the cycle or rebirth, there is inter-continuation and the nature of all inter-continuation is inter being 

Tenant 32  for Plum Village/Deer Park Monastery- as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh

Tathagata is a term used in Buddhism to refer to 'no identity' or 'no-self'. There is no self.  Do you believe that or are you still caught up in Descartes axiom that " I think therefore I am"? 

In this amazing dharma talk from Thay Phap Luu of Deer Park Monastery, the idea of no-self is discussed based on Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings and the above tenant 32. In reflection on this tenant we are asked not to argue or debate the idea of there being a no self but of concentrating on it by understanding the impermanent nature of the five skandhas (form/body, feelings, perceptions [of solidity, concepts,place and ownership,time,andSelf], mental formations[thoughts,emotions,moods,and mind state], and consciousness).  Please note that in yogic philosophy consciousness is eternal, not impermanent.

Concentrating on the Impermanent, Ever Changing Nature of Things

Concentrating on the ever changing nature of these skandhas can help us realize that we are not a permanent self. A permanent self is just an idea we have and we do not need to be on hyper alert all the time to protect this idea, like so many of us are.  In fact, our identification with self and its story as perpetuated by the five skandhas , as I mentioned many time before, obscures the reality of what is in this present moment. Infact, in direct contrast to Descartes' "I think therefore I am," a Buddhist would say, " I think therefore I am not really here."

Questioning Descartes' Assertion: "I think therefore I am."

Though thinking is simply a part of one of the five skandhas and all skandhas are impermanent ...coming and going, ever changing...part of the never ending cycle of rebirth, Thay Pap Luu focuses a lot on the impermanent nature of thinking and perception to help us to see that  we are no-self. He questions Descartes' assertion and wonders how the conclusion of "I am" can be drawn simply from the fact that thinking is taking place and we are observing it. Thinking he says is a process just like raining is.  Just because it is raining, does there have to be a rainer?  It is our perception that creates the Rainer (the cloud)...the Rainer is just a mental  concept or construct.  It isn't real. And like all things it is ever changing. This "Rainer"  is also going through several transformations from the fluffy white cloud we see in the sky, to the rain it produces, to the water in the river that flows to the water in the ocean, which gets evaporated and becomes the mist that goes back into the cloud and once again the cloud.  There really was no "cloud", no "rainer"...just this ever changing process. 

Is the self a thinker? Does there have to be a Thinker?

Thinking is real...we can observe thinking taking place; it is a process; but just because there is thinking does there have to be a thinker? The "thinker" is this idea of a me or self  who thinks...this perception, this belief there is a "self" doing the thinking when really there is just the process of thinking ever changing, impermanent thoughts. It gives us the false perception of solidity and permanence. Who is this so called  thinker of these thoughts, the maker of these perceptions? The body? Just like the cloud  is a process, forever changing, every minute we are in a new body. The body is  constantly going through the process of rebirth.  You are not in the same body now that you were in forty years ago, nor are you in the same body you were in forty minutes ago. There is a profound saying that applies here. "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man." ( Heraclitis). So the body cannot be self, can it?  

Perceptions, feelings, mental formations, can not be self either, can they? Now the question of  consciousness being Self is a little murky for me in this perspective.  The Buddhists teach that consciousness too is ever changing and impermanent, so therefore there is no self while the yogis teach that Self is  eternal consciousness bliss. For that reason, I will not embrace the concentration on the skandha of consciousness here. Though I do equate, in my mind, the inter-continuation from the tenant with consciousness.

Clinging to the Story of "me"

I like to think of it this way. The (little) self is the idea of me we adhere to and seek to defend and protect throughout our lives.  It is a perception, a concept, a thought. It is what we might call our personality. It is not who we are.  And this idea of self and its story gets in the way of who we are and in the way of us experiencing reality for what it is right here and right now. We are too stuck in our heads trying to figure out how to protect and keep this thing alive, filled with stress, anxiety, and worry, taht we seldom settle down into life to experience it completely and fully for what it is. As self, I see other and I do not see the interconnection between me and the other, I do not see the inter-continuity of life. I miss out on so much. Thay Phap Luu reminds us that sticking to the story of self and what should be for self restricts so much of what we could potentially experience if we were free of it, if we would simply flow with life.

Letting go of the story of "me", of self is what will free us. 

When we are able to reflect on and see the ever changing and inter-continuity of nature, of all forms and see ourselves as a part of that nature rather than the observer of it ( again...this interferes a bit with my yogic understanding of things) we will will feel deep calm, deep ease, deep peace and joy, according to this teaching.

We need to let go of this "me" and its story in order to embrace what is. Instead of focusing on our perceptions, our thinking, our reactivity...we can change our focus to something as simple as breath or body sensation.  We can feel the feelings as they arise and observe the thoughts as they pass by like driftwood floating on the river of our minds.  We do not have to follow them or get all caught up in them. We can simply be. 

Hmmm! That was my study practice for the day. So grateful for all these amazing teachers I have the honor of listening to.

All is well. 

Joseph Goldstein (2013) Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. Boulder: Sounds True (Pages 169-202)

Thay Phap Luu/ Deer Park Monastery (2023) (Class #32), The Concentration of No-Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxsmVc2Adyg&t=4178s

 

Inner Growth: the Day for the Introspective Sage

What all beings consider as day is the night of ignorance to the wise, and what all creatures see as night is the day for the introspective sage. 

The Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2, Verse:69

Huh? What is that suppose to mean, crazy lady? 

Well maybe this makes more sense:

Getting what you want is so overrated it is ridiculous; avoiding what you don't want is so overrated it is ridiculous....What you are needing is not outside!

Michael A. Singer

Man, I cannot get over how much on the same page Singer and I seem to be.  I write about certain things I have been reflecting on and almost immediately after that I open up a podcast where  he is talking about that exact thing. It feels so serendipitous. Rationale minds says..."Duh!  It is all about Yoga and we are both yogis ( him, I am sure, much more of a yogi than me).  What we share, then, is bound to correlate from time to time."  But still, it gets me everytime. I like to think it is serendipity at work  so that I can once again validate that what I do here has meaning.  :)

When we talk about why we are unable to tap into that "river of joy" that is inside us...why we are so unhappy...we have to realize, as hard as it is to, that we are responsible for blocking that flow with our distractions. That we are responsible for following the antics of the personal mind/personality/'little me' with our attention and responses. Our resistance to what is (our avoiding, pushing away, suppression, repression, preferring and clinging) in an attempt to compensate for the not okayness we feel inside, is blocking that River of Joy, Yogananda talked about.  Our attempts to get what we want and avoid what we don't want is not the way to this river.  This outward seeking and avoiding  pulls us away from the river of joy, from our true nature:  Sat Chit Ananda. It distracts us away from truth. It  blocks the flow and prevents us from experiencing "eternal, conscious bliss". 

Yogis know growth  is an inside game, not an outside one . A Yogi knows that the scraps  of  love, peace, and joy we have been grasping or clinging to from the outside world in things and other people, may be  what people here adore, but it is not universal truth. They are just compensatory mechanisms.  There is so much more hidden in the darkness of what we have yet to see. This "outer growth approach" that the average person would call reality, the day, is the night of ignorance to the yogi. 

The personality is an accumulation of these distractions and consciousness is often distracted by the personality . We need to see that what we are needing is inside us already, and instead of spending all our energy fruitlessly trying to compensate for a lack of inner okayness "out there", we need to go inside, past the personality's pull,  and work with the energies from there. We must learn to approach Life like the introspective sage does.

All is well!

Note: I felt compelled to open up a page on Medium and I am going to be moving many of these posts over there.  I will not close this site.  It feels too much like my kitchen table now and though it never really gave me the opportunity to get to know who I was chatting with over tea, (or if I was just talking to my cats and dogs...like I tend to do),   I do feel at home here. Writing is easy here..maybe because I never know for sure if I have a readership, so there is little "performance anxiety" etc. Anyway...I just don't want to get up and leave completely. Oh, I don't know...I am just spreading my wings, I guess, in this new year...I may fly right into a brick wall lol but off I go anyway. Once I get settled over there and then figure out how to, I will invite you over for tea on  my Medium page. :) 

Namaste

This translation of the Gita from https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/2/verse/69

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( January 1, 2024) Outer Growth and Inner Growth.https://tou.org/talks/

Solving the Problem of the Personality

 Psychology attempts to solve  the problems with the personality while spirituality tends to solve the problem of the personality.

"me"

These words came to me when I was meditating this morning.  

Say What? You were thinking while you were mediating crazy lady?  I thought meditating was all about stopping the mind from thinking?

Yes, I was thinking while I was meditating. I have been thinking probably a little more than usual during my meditation practices lately.  My dharana practice (concentration on something other than thought) might be a little off but I am still meditating.  The fact that I notice these thoughts emerge is an indication I am meditating. I have learned not to resist them and I have learned to reduce the amount of time I follow them off into a tangent...or if I do follow them off...I have learned to simply bring myself back again, and again, and again.  I also notice that there is Something in me that is noticing these thoughts when I ask "Who is thinking this?" This is the deeper form of  dhyana practice...consciousness concentrating on consciousness....awareness aware of awareness.

So, yes, I was thinking during meditation and no, meditation  isn't about stopping the mind from thinking. We cannot stop the mind from doing what it does.  Mind thinks. Meditation is about becoming aware that there is Something beyond the thinking and to remove our attention away from distracting  thoughts...the object of consciousness...and to put it back on that which is thinking. It is about removing the light from the object it is shining on and realizing that we are the light that is doing the shining. As Michael Singer reminds us in the below podcast...mind is not really the problem, what we do with it is.

What has that got to do with the above quote, crazy lady?

Well, as I have said I am on a mission to better understand and explain how we need to dismantle the personality in order to go home to who we really are.  The personality is very much linked to the personal mind. So many of us are distracted by the pull of this mind's drama...its thoughts and feelings, its stories and past history, what it has stored and stuffed that keeps getting triggered by "stimulus situations" ( life events)...that we tend not to see anything else.  We are so focused on these objects of consciousness that we forget we are the consciousness that is staring at them. We believe we are the personal mind or personality. This is a collective belief.  So much so we have come up with large fields of study that  are designed to help this personality or personal mind to thrive.  Psychology attempts to find ways to solve the personality's problems.  

Spirituality, on the other hand, doesn't invest in the problems of the personality. It  sees the personal mind or personality as the problem.  It knows the only true freedom path that will bring us to sat chit ananda...our home state of consciousness ( eternal conscious bliss) is obtained by dismantling the personality.

Dismantling the personality?

Let me rephrase that.  When I say "dismantle the personality" I should be stressing that this simply involves removing our conscious attachment from the personality.  The personality itself is harmless to who we really are.  Yet, it creates a filter -veil over our realization of who we really are-awareness itself. The more we are focusing on the drama of personal mind, personality, little me...the less likely we are to realize the Self that is actually the light that is doing the shining on this little me. We are using the amazing power of awareness and contracting and  narrowing its power  to shine down on this puny little entity we call "me" with all its never ending dramas, bringing our life energy down with it. We are not the thought object we are aware of ("me"and its preferences). We are the awareness that is aware of me, personal mind, or personality. We need to simply remove our focus from personality, then,  back to that which is doing the shining. We need to detach from that which we are staring at and fall back into the Seat of consciousness.  Meditation is one thing that can help us do that. Anything that helps us do that, however,  is a  tool of spirituality. 

Michael A. Singer assures us that we are capable of not being addicted to the thoughts of our mind.

A committed spiritual practice...whatever works for you that helps to draw your attention away from personality's needs, desires and aversions and back onto the essence of who you really are...will help you to recover from this addiction. 

Namaste.

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( December 31, 2023) The power of Undistracted Consciousness. https://tou.org/talks/

Disidentifying with the Personality

 Personality is a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations and may vary in strength depending on past conditioning.

B.F. Skinner

All is well!

Be the Nobody Beneath the Busy Personality

 A "life of my own" doesn't exist.  There is only Life.

Eckhart Tolle

I am on another kick to explain the need to dismantle the personality, to remove the filter-veil we created over who we truly are. I am determined to explain to myself and others why we need to do that.  We need to dismantle the personality, the ego, this false sense of who we think we are in order to get back home to who we really are. We need to embrace this reality, "I am a nobody."

"A nobody"? That's pretty harsh crazy lady? "

Being a "nobody" is not a diminishment.  It is that which will set us free.

The Intended Cycle of the Only Life

In the video below, Eckhart Tolle, explains how we...as the One Consciousness... are on a cyclical journey.  We come into these incarnations, this world of form, from a formless, timeless, Source/Consciousness.  One Source/Consciousness manifested in many bodies and minds. The Source wants to experience this world of form through these bodies and minds.  The intention, maybe,  is to experience form for a bit before returning home to Source.  So its like we come from a formless, timeless state, enter a form to experience a world of form and time for abit, and then are to return home to Source after we experienced it.  

Getting Lost in the Filter-Veil of Personality

In order to truly experience this world of form, Tolle reminds us, Consciousness must become completely identified in it.  It must get lost in the dream this world provides. It, therefore, many times becomes so distracted by what is playing out in front of It and through It, It forgets what It is. It starts to believe it is a seperate little  needy identity and builds on this idea of me by storing impressions and past memory (conditioning), creating a way to react or respond to life events in the world of form that trigger this stored stuff so it isn't uncomfortable, creating preferences ( desires and aversions) and ultimately building a thick filter-veil through which the experiences of the world of form must pass.  Things get stuck in that filter veil.  They don't pass through as ultimately intended. We get distracted by these things and get more and more lost in this world of form as the filter-veil/the personality/ the ego/ this idea of me gets thicker and thicker and we get farther and farther away from our return home. We become trapped by our personalities in a Life we were just meant to experience as part of the multi manifestation. 

Consciousness becomes the "me" and the "we" of our personal minds as we struggle through our own little lives. We rely heavily on thought, ideas, concepts, story and history to get a sense of who we are in this entrapped state. Life becomes a struggle for the "one" because we have forgotten we are actually manifestations of the "One".  There is no "my own life". There is only Life. There is no "me" or "we", there is only the One Consciousness. The personality, this idea of "me", then, is only in the way of us experiencing who we really are.  It is blocking our return home.

You are more truly yourself when you do not remember your past than you are when you do remember your past. ...You get a stronger sense of yourself in your essence when you are not telling yourself who you are. ...You are never more truly yourself than when you are still. 

Eckhart Tolle

When I say the personality has to go so we can return home, I am not really talking about beating up the personal mind and exiling it.  I am talking more about removing our obsessive focus on it, its story and its busy doing etc. Dismantling the personality simply means looking up and away from that which we were so glued to and to realize it isn't who we are. We need to disidentify from it and its story, so we remember who we are.

Being in the World, but Not of It.

As Tolle asks in the below video...Can we be simultaneously in the return journey to the Source of all life...and still be active in this world? 

Jesus taught,  we need to be in the world but not of it. Yes, we need to experience the physical world, enjoy its pleasures, enjoy its struggles...experience all of it...but at the same time we cannot get lost in its dramas,  forgetting where we come from.  We are of Source...and to Source we will return.  Our goal, once we plant our feet on earth's soil, is to  begin the return trip home while we experience what this world has to offer. 

We need to recognize the personality within us, observe it, examine it, notice how it operates and how and why it reacts or responds to certain life events etc. We need to be aware of its presence in our lives but not to identify with it or its stories. We can still have a personality, but we need to constantly remind ourselves that this personality is not who we are, that we are "more than this". We need to do whatever we can to operate from the higher self not the personality, constantly seeking peace and stillness over what this world can give us.The more aware we are of both our "human" dimension and our "being" dimension the more harmony we can create in this experience we erroneously call "my life". 

Being a nobody is simply being who we are.

All is well.

I copied this on to my Medium page

A “life of my own” doesn’t exist. There is only Life. | by Nancy Daley; Waking Up with Mindful Serenity Yoga | Jan, 2024 | Medium

Eckhart Tolle ( December, 2023) New Year, New Goals: Eckhart tolle on Transforming Desire into Fulfillment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rGipsgBfQY

Feeling the Shakti Flow No Matter What

If you wake up in the morning with the Shakti flowing, it doesn't matter what happens for the rest of the day.

Michael A. Singer

Imagine just feeling good no matter what is happening around you, through you, or to you. Imagine feeling love for the person in front of you even when they are spitting in your face as they call you down to the lowest.  Imagine feeling peace even when people are screaming, yelling, running  in circles  as the earth beneath you rumbles and shakes.  Imagine feeling a sense of happiness even when you are told by the bank they are foreclosing on your mortgage.  Imagine feeling joy even though the doctor in front of you is telling you that you have a terminal disease. Imagine feeling gratitude even when the thing or person you worshipped is leaving or being taken away. Imagine feeling good no matter what.

Joy is Our Birthright. 

Most of us don't know this, or even believe it when ancient teachings tell us it is true, but  this "feeling good no matter what" is more than possible.  It is our birthright! There is a "River of joy" ( Yogananda) constantly flowing within us, with the potential to pull and keep us "up".

Then why are so many of us down all the time, crazy lady? Why don't we see or experience this flow? It can't be real?

Oh, it is real.  We catch glimpses of it spontaneously when we catch a beautiful sunset; when we see a baby's face for the first time; or when someone we love tells us they love us etc.  When we come in contact with some very pleasant outer world experience, we feel it. We are tapping into the flow as we open to it and it  leaks out into our conscious awareness a tiny bit.  We notice its reality then.  

Of course, we don't know what it is we are noticing or where it comes from.  We tend to erroneously assume it was the sunset, the baby's face, the "I love you"or anything "out there" that was the source of the flow.  But the flow is and always was inside us.  It is who we  are.   We just do not feel and experience this flow when we are too busy looking elsewhere. We are, for most of our lives, looking elsewhere.

Our attention, our most magnificent awareness, is focusing down through a veil -filter we created.This veil that we see through is the psyche, the "little me" with all its compelling drama. Our attention is pulled downward when we follow the psyche's pull.  The "little me's" drama is dark, often negative and so, so distracting. When we are focusing on it, we do not see the magnificent river flowing behind this veil. We grasp, cling, and push away 'out there' what we assume this "little me" needs to feel good, only adding samskaras ( stored and stuffed emotionally charged memories) to the thickness of the veil that lies over the the experience of this flow, blocking it from our conscious experience.  We get farther and farther away from it. 

At the Beach, Focusing On Rocks

Singer, in the below podcast, uses an analogy. Imagine we are all very thirsty beings who are conditioned to believe the water supply is very limited and something we have to work very hard to get.  We are conditioned to believe that we need to go down to this beach everyday and suck whatever moisture we can get off of the rocks that are strewn haphazardly along the shoreline. As we kneel down before these rocks, grasping and clinging to every drop of moisture, pushing away anything we assume may dry it up, we have our backs to something.  We are so busy putting all our attention on this task, we do not notice what is behind us...a beautiful full, continuously flowing  river. We are so busy trying to grasp and cling for every tiny droplet of joy the outside world may provide, pushing away anything that will strip us of these morsels of joy, we do not notice that there is already a river of abundant joy flowing within us.  This river flow  is Shakti.

Shakti?

Everything is energy right? We went over that so many times.  It isn't woo-woo...it is pure science, that everything is energy.  Emotions are energy. Joy is energy. Shakti is a powerful field of energy that is always moving upward inside us.  Shakti is meant to pull and keep us up. We are naturally meant to be "up". Yet, because all our attention is going towards grasping and clinging for morsels of joy from rocks ( from the outside world) our attention is downward, away from the upward flow, away from the experience of Shakti.  That doesn't mean the river isn't there.  It just means we are not noticing it because we are so distracted by little me's dramatic, often unsuccessful,  quest to get droplets of joy from something that cannot maintain joy...we are not experiencing the joy that is already in us. That is, until we have these tiny opening up experiences where the veil filter thins enough for the Shakti to flow through.  

So what do we do to experience this flow all the time, crazy lady?

First of all, be aware of what you are doing, that you are looking down and away from your potential.  Realize  that you cannot get enough water from these rocks ( from your outer world quests)  to sustain you. Realize  how this pulls you down. Then ask: Do I want to keep doing this or do I want more?

Secondly, realize that there is something greater behind this conditioned reactivity by which you were taught to live your life. What you were doing before was not working in keeping you happy, was it? Choose to look up and fall back.

Look up and fall back? 

Look up and away from the negative drama you are constantly being pulled into. 

Your energy flows where your attention goes. 

To look up and away try:

Positive thinking and a making a commitment to try: Counter negative thoughts with positive ones.  Counter,"This is my life.  Nothing will ever get better." with, "Yes this is my life and I want it to be better. I am willing to do whatever I need to do to make it better." 

Use mantras or other practices that distract you from the compulsion to focus on the rocks. Find a mantra that works for you.  Singer suggests using , "I can handle this" when things get tough.  

I suggest  moving the body...go for a walk using Thich Nhat Hanh's walking meditation mantra, "I have arrived, I am home, in the here and the now.  I am solid; I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell." Or do a set of sun salutations.  Then when the body is discharged a bit you can practice focusing on something neutral or more pleasant.  You can meditate on breath for example or do a visualization picturing a baby you love or even a pet in all their innocence and goodness. . 

Just do what you can to pull yourself from that negative focus. 

Then, most importantly, relax and release. When you feel yourself being pulled into the dramas of little me, into reactivity, observe it happening.  As soon as you are aware you are being pulled into it...relax.  All reactivity is, is resistance...resisting the reality of what is.  Relaxation is the opposite of resistance.  It is a form of sweet acceptance and surrender that says I am not pulling on this tug of war rope anymore...I am releasing and letting go. I am allowing life to be life. I am allowing whatever is in me that blocks the awareness of my Shakti flow to come up and out. I am letting go of "me". 

Then as you continue to practice relaxing and releasing...step back and away from that which you were feeling pulled to react to...to the disturbance...to that struggle of getting water from rocks...until you feel the cool refreshing water of the river that was always behind this psyche on your ankles.  Keep stepping back and away, relaxing and releasing, until you are immersed in this river of joy...bobbing up and down in it....until you are home.

Imagine waking up each morning with the Shakti flowing!

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/Temple of the Universe (December 28, 2923) Learning to Open to Your Natural Energy Flow.https://tou.org/talks/

Be Still: The Cycle of Surrender

 To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

The Cycle of Surrender

Hmm! We know we need to surrender to the universe, right?  Allow reality to be reality?  In order to do that we need to master the mind. This mastering of the mind doesn't mean stopping the mind. It only means being able to look away from the noisy mess and drama it creates, that gets in the way of us perceiving and dealing with the universe as it is. We need to create distance between the busy mind and who we are.  We need to fall back away from the noise and into the quiet stillness. Stillness is everything.  It is who we are. We need to be still!  From stillness, it will appear as if the whole universe is surrendering to us, when in reality it was we who are  surrendering to it. 

All is well

Staying Present When the Other Person Isn't

 

One present person can make a difference in the entire energy field of a group...

Eckhart Tolle

I have to remind myself of that again and again and again, knowing that the opposite is also true.  One very unconscious person can draw everyone around into a very negative energy pull. 

I have been struggling over the holidays to keep my presence.  I have been feeling very scattered and pulled into the unconsciousness of others.  ( Please note: I am aware that ego wants to slip in through the back door and make me appear spiritually superior in my pointing out the unconsciousness of others...but I am  also so aware of the fact that my being pulled indicates a lack of stable consciousness in myself. I am no better than anyone else.)

There has been so much unconscious negativity surrounding me.  That negativity gets expressed outwardly and through behaviours.  Nothing was directed at me other than in constant expressions of unhappiness and hopelessness, self deprecation, guilt and shame. ...  but I see and viscerally feel the heavy pull down ward. I  have, it seems, no choice but to observe the choices in behaviour that are too much for me to even address.  

Yet, others insist on coming to me  to tell me of their choices: " I have to do this...even though it is the worse thing I can do because I have no other choice.  Unless you have other options for me?"  I give them options, wholesome, healthy options, but am told that they are not desirable options or good enough. I refer them again and again to other networks of support...offer to take them here and there, to be there when they call but am told that, because of past experiences which were not positive ( I see that) that they cannot or will not get the help they need.  So an attempt is made to place at least some of the responsibility on me again for the unwholesome  choices that are about to be made because I did not come up with reasonable alternatives. I see the unconsciousness in this.  I do.  I do my best to stay in presence,  not to judge it,  but to view this behaviour as coming from a mind of a child in evolutionary terms.  I am able to stay compassionate and understanding to some degree when I do that ...but my state of presence, consciousness, after a period of time gets pulled down into the muck and mire of this negativity and poor choices. 

Then I turn around. somewhat depleted, to see another form of deep self deprecating negativity in another loved one struggling to get through the holidays, struggling to get out of bed, and my heart breaks.  I do my best to stay present, offering support, referring elsewhere etc to no avail.....Even though I see what is happening from a higher level of consciousness; even though I know that the attention on this pain, the constant commenting on it, the creation of stories around it, the feeding of it  is  just pulling the person down farther....my sharing of this insight is limited as the person is not ready to hear it. Sigh! I then find myself actually feeling  their pain and it is overwhelming. 

Then I turn around to another whose own chaotic energy has always pulled me into it.  I struggle to anchor down and stay still as I love and give but find myself reacting and resisting in  those winds of energy turbulence. After just a short period of time, I am further drained.

Then behind me, I become aware of another whose long term unhealthy, self destructive choices  have become so quiet, nothing but a hum in the background of my life, in comparison to the loud noises right  in front of me. Still I feel the pain...so much stuffed pain. My heart breaks. Presence slips a way a bit more...

And all this is just in my immediate midst. There is so much further out there beyond this proximity to consider. With what have I got left to consider and deal with that? Unconsciousness drags me into the drama right here, I so long to escape from, and I am filled with thoughts of my responsibility in this suffering.  "How could this be? What did you do wrong? What didn't you do?  Why can't you stop it or fix it?" 

I know in my heart of hearts that the solution isn't in anything out there or in "fixing them". It is in me.  I need to be fully  present first.  I know I need to be still and consciously aware of the mess I have inside first...so that I can purify enough to be truly there for another. My presence is the healing element in all of this. 

Your state of consciousness gets reflected in other humans...Sometimes there is a healing effect you may have without wanting to change a situation, but by remaining present in a situation...remaining nonreactive, you may somehow change the environment without feeling like you are doing it. Eckhart Tolle

I want to believe that.  So, I go back to my sadhanna, back to my practice, back to the learning to stay present...again, and again, and again.

All is well. 

Eckhart Tolle ( December, 2023) Navigating Family and Work Situations with Presence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axW-XOY9vfk

Joy and Love Beyond the Filter-Veil Layer

 

"Open", is more important than the word "love". Just stay open . Don't seek love, seek openness, and love and joy will flow.

Michael A. Singer (somewhat paraphrased)

No mind, I won't close.

Michael A. Singer reminds us, in the below linked podcast, that our innate nature is love and joy. 

Joy is an uplifting experience of energy, coming up from somewhere inside you...it raises you up, it never brings you down ...it is an inner experience of upliftment.

If that is true, why do so few of us experience this joy and love all the time? Why are so many of us pulled down into dark and heavy emotional experiences?  

We don't experience it, because we close to it. We close to the "I am" that we truly are, the Source from which this joy flows. When we close to joy we feel pain.  When we close to light, we experience darkness. 

We close because we have built a thick filter-veil between this "I am" and the outside world. This filter layer is our psyche, the sum of our learned experiences, a thick layer of stuffed and stored emotional past experiences.   We perceive and experience all sensory input through this layer and it decides if we should stay open to what life is giving us, and therefore if we should stay open to  the joy within, or if we should close to life and therefore close to joy and love . This filter veil becomes the means by which we experience Life. All of life  experiences that enter must pass through this filter- veil before making their way out.  If we close, they do not pass through. 

It is a habitual tendency for many of us to react to what we deem as life's pleasant or unpleasant experiences based on this psyche layer...this filter-veil we created inside us through which all of Life's events must pass through. If an outside event triggers our samskaras which are the building blocks of this veil-filter, we will either open to the experience (if it is pleasing) or close to the experience (if it is potentially painful).  We probably do more closing in a given life time than we do opening.  We therefore experience less joy and love than we do grief and hardship.  Sigh.

I am discovering that it doesn't have to be that way.   We do not need to react to life events in the way we are conditioned to do so. We can break the lifelong habit of stuffing and storing (pulling in what we deem as soothing to our inside wounds and pushing away what we deem as pain triggers).  We can learn to let it all pass through. How?

First, we need to recognize the filter-veil we created  that all this stuff is getting trapped in as it pushes through.  See this psyche, for what it is. It is something the personal mind  created.  It is not who we are, but in the way of who we are.  We spend so much time and energy focusing on this psyche, believing it to be everything we are, that we fail to see beyond it to who we really are.  We are not this psyche, this "me" with all its dramas and reactivity.  We are that "I am" that not only has the ability to observe the psyche in action, but to be free of it.

Next, we need to create a bit of distance from this samskara ridden drama of reactivity so we can observe it.  Recognize how it doesn't work in keeping us joyful or safe. The more of life events we pull in or push away in an attempt to feel good and avoid pain, the more we repress and suppress, the thicker the layer gets.  The thicker the layer gets, the farther away from joy and love we get.  Joy and love ...are not out there...they are  in here and all we need to do is open to the experience. 

Thirdly, we need to commit to not closing .  It is a choice  we are all capable of making. Make the choice for true joy.

Fourthly, we need to stay mindful and aware, observing each reaction as it starts within us.  We may notice how we are physically and emotionally feeling uplifted by a comment a person makes.  We may notice how our face is blushing in shame, or the knot is starting to twist in the belly, or the body is tensing in reaction to something that is happening out there- recognizing how it is getting tangled up in old painful samskaras.  Notice.

Lastly, don't follow the pull to close when you notice the uncomfortable feelings emerging. Do the opposite of what the mind is telling you to do. Don't resist, don't react.  Relax and let go.

This is a conversation I am committed to having with my mind when I notice that tendency to close in reaction to a person or an event that normally triggers my samskaras in a less than positive way: 

"No mind, I am not going to follow you into reactivity and resistance. This is simply what it is...not good or bad, not right or wrong, not 'should be' or 'shouldn't be'...just is. It happened. Let's accept it and let it go.  

...I see why you are doing this that you do, encouraging me to close; why the part  of you, called 'personal mind',  pulls in and pushes away; why you created this thick veil or filter in the first place.  You want to protect "me". But this habit tendency doesn't work for who 'I am'. The "I am" is not this "me". This  psyche, this sum of learned experiences, this filter-veil  created for protective purposes, is not who "I am". I am doesn't need to be protected.

I am just observing it and unfortunately being so distracted by it, I have dimmed down...I am not shining with the love and joy I am made of. Every reaction, every stored and stuff experience...every time I react, resist= close, just dims me more. 

I don't want to keep doing this.   I want to know I am going to be okay no matter what happens. I want to stay open!!!  I am, therefore, going to stop reacting to stuff. I am going  to stop storing stuff.  Not closing is a process, a life long practice I have yet to master but man, I am committed to it. It is the only way to peace...to joy...to love. 

So, we need to work together to dismantle the veil that everything is getting caught up in. We need to clean out and neutralize the inside...okay? And that starts with not adding more to the mess.  We are not going to resist this that is happening right now nor are we going to pull it in. We are going to hold up our internal hands of will, and let it pass right through.  

I am not going to listen to you when you  tell me through the skip in my heart, or the tightening of my gut, the heat in my face or the tensing up  of my muscles when life unfolds these things, like this one,  before me...that it is time to push away or pull in.  I am going to notice, breathe in, accept, do my best to relax, and observe how this event comes in and how it leaves, okay?  No more closing. I am going to do my best to stay open. You can work with me but even if you don't, I am not going to close!"

Wow! Game changer.

Of course, that is a big long ramble when all you have to say in times of approaching reactivity is,  "It is what it is.  I can handle this. I am not closing."

All is well!

Michaela A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( December 25, 2023) Opening to Unconditional Joy. https://tou.org/talks/

Merry Christmas

 

 

             Merry Christmas to all!

   

                                   May Your Light Shine Brightly!

Relax into Life. Stay Open

The purpose of Life is love.  God is love.

Michael A. Singer

I get Charlie Horses all the time and they can be nasty.  I used to dread them. As soon as I felt the tensing up in my arch and the spreading a part of the toes I would shout out, "Oh no!It is happening again."  My entire body would tense up as the pain crept up from my foot, all the way up to my hip.   In reaction I would jump up and stamp and stamp my foot against the ground in hope that it would put this internal fire out. It never did. My reaction only intensified the pain. I judged it all as excruciating, a painful squeeze from life and it felt that way...lasting up to thirty minutes at a time. 

Hmm!  I used to react that way to Charlie Horses.  I don't anymore.  In this new commitment I have to allowing things "out there" to be as they are as I do the inner work of not closing....I am learning to handle my Charlie Horses, and I am learning to handle life. When I feel that initial tightening in the soul of my foot now, indicating that a spasm is about to happen...instead of resisting it and reacting to it...I gently tell myself to relax....just relax.  I take a deep breath in  and I breathe out...again and again, focusing on the belly rising on the in breath, falling on the out.  The pain  remains but it is almost as if it is in the background of my awareness.  I am more focused on awareness and non resistance in those moments than I am on the pain...it is like the pain is in the distance.  These Charlie Horses only last a few seconds now.  They come into my experience, are experienced, then they are gone.  I don't cling to them anymore as I did when I resisted them.  They simply are...neither good or bad; right or wrong; should be or shouldn't be.  And that makes all the difference

We need to take this approach in response to whatever life gives us.  Relax into it and allow it to be what it is. 

When we do this we are not closing...we are not blocking the flow of Shakti through us.  We keep the peace flowing.  Of course, we also have some work to do in recognizing and then allowing all the stored stuff from our past to come up...all that trapped emotional energy that kept the Shakti from flowing freely, that led to all this emotional turmoil we tend to experience from taking over our lives. When we practice with the small stuff like Charlie Horses...we come to see how relaxing into what is, is the answer.  The less we put on top of our buried stuff, the more room it has to come up on its own.  With each release we will feel freer and freer, more connected to the Love that is our purpose, more connected to God.  

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( December 24, 2023) How Not to Close.  https://tou.org/talks/

Aparigraha: The Non Acceptance of Gifts

 When a man does not receive presents, he does not become beholden to others, but remains independent and free. His mind becomes pure.

Vivekananda 

I am thinking of one of the yamic guidances...rules and regulations for those wanting to be yogis.  A yogi, of course, is just someone who wants to be free of all samskaras and samsaras and who is willing to do the work.  According to the first limb of Patanjali's Eight limbed Raja yoga (Yama), a yogi is not to accept gifts.  

Say what crazy lady?  If I want to be free and happy, I cannot accept gifts...not even at Christmas time?  What do I tell my kid who hands me a beautifully wrapped present on Christmas day that they put so much thought and effort into getting for me, "Thanks but no thanks, I am trying to cut back?" They are not offering me a cigarette, for God sake, they are doing something from their heart!

Hmm! I know I am having a hard time with that.  Christmas is a hard time for wanna be yogis for many reasons...but this one little yamic rule is especially challenging this time of the year.  I have yet to adhere to it and I don't know if I can.

Like most mothers do, I go around for months before Christmas telling my children ( and others) not to waste their money buying me a present.  I don't need anything. Please, donate it elsewhere where it is needed. Then I go out and buy all of them something... I do this for me, not them. I not only  feel better about giving, I still have this conditioned need inside me to satisfy that expectation Christmas arouses in me. They know that I will buy for them, and they feel obligated to buy or make something for me.  ( I do cherish the home made gifts...like photo albums, paintings, crafts etc. or when they donate the money elsewhere, on my behalf! But a gift is a gift), I feel obligated to accept each gift graciously.

Man, Christmas would be so much easier if gifting wasn't a part of it, wouldn't it be? It would be easier for the yogi and it would be easier for the non-yogi. So much stress would be eliminated.  What if we took every bit of money we were spending on each other and donated it to those beings who really needed it...we could do it on each other's behalf if that made us feel better. Better still, do it anonymously without anyone ever knowing where it came from and from whom. So, we were not caught up in the giver gratifications so many us are striving for. 

What about the kids, crazy lady?

I think we can wean down there, can't we?  One gift per child from an unseen giver who gives unconditionally until this tradition weans itself out?  What are we teaching our kids with this giver/ receiver mentality in this very materialistic world?  A true gift is not material, is it?  What about teaching them about service and kindness and giving love this time of year ( and all year)? Wouldn't that be more beneficial to them and to the world in the long run?

If we want to decondition the world from this habit, we need to begin with ourselves.  I need to begin with me.  I need to say outright, "I am not giving or receiving gifts this year, but I will give you my time, my energy, and my love today and throughout the year." I don't know how to wrap that but that is what I hope to do.

This year?

No, not this year.  I did not follow through from my announcement last year. Sigh! I will try better next year. I will make the "Absolutely No Presents Next Year " announcement again...and hopefully we will all follow through. 

 I guess, I wont be getting any yogi badges from Santa in my stocking.

It is challenging to decondition ourselves from these cultural tendencies, isn't it?  Even if we know in our heart how better we would all be if we did.

All is well.