This blog is only about awakening, nothing more, nothing less. Anything that will contribute to the possibility of complete liberation from the dream, or from the mass hallucination of humanity, or from the mental matrix, or from the false self, or from the lie, or any other label you want to call it, is welcome here. The key words are FREEDOM and JOY. Sometimes I think this reporting about stuff just keeps the false story going and only adds to the insanity, and there's too much of that already. But something is trying to pry the lid off still, something awaits to be seen. We are all in this boat together, so here we go......have fun!


Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts

Friday, July 2, 2021

Sat Yoga Immersion - Diving into the Infinite

 


For the past two weeks I have been joining the Sat Yoga Sangha in 4am meditations, wisdom school classes, encounter groups, guided meditation, asanas, pranayama, and a daily commitment to my own self realization. All of this was offered online, and I must admit it was so smooth and effortless that I felt always completely included and a part of the activities. Other participants came for this Immersion from all over the world, including South Africa, Europe, and the U.S., and I joined from Costa Rica, which is the home of Sat Yoga Institute.

Why was I not there in person? Well, there was the matter of my sick cat, WuWei. Her sister Haiku had passed on the month before and she fell ill just before the Immersion; I could not abandon her. The vet said all her organs were compromised and suggested euthanasia, but I decided as long as she showed any inclination to want to live, I would be there for her. So my immersion experience was infused by daily administrations to WuWei of liquified food and oral medicines, as well as gentle massage. And so I tended both to my deepest soul and the simple functions of life as it is.

How I came to this miraculous Ashram I do not believe was anything but Divine Grace. My life has always been about the journey towards Oneness. From the time I was a child, I called to God to take me home, away from the earthly plane of suffering. I even pledged my life if it would do away with the evil I saw all around me. And so I began, in fits and starts, to stumble toward God and the Love I felt he pointed to, in the form of Jesus.

It was when I met my first teacher in 1975, that I truly realized what Divine Love meant, for I surrendered fully to the teaching of Satsang, Service, and Meditation. Living with other “premies” (Prem=love) in self-established households was the focus I needed to make the practices a concrete aspect of my daily life. I became grounded in silent meditation, where my Spirit soared in Love, but I was still unhealed from family trauma, which effected my relationships with misconceptions and distortions. I was fortunate to marry a man who also had embraced God and we had 4 amazing children while building our own community of Devotional Singing and Rebirthing.

Unfortunately, the unhealed ego is a tenacious downward vortex that begs one’s attention. If one isn’t aware of one’s conditioned tendencies, they can play havoc in one’s life, creating unnecessary drama. The end of my marriage was a huge rift in my heart, as it uncovered betrayals and lies from lack of transparency and vulnerability. I thought I had enough tools in my healer’s kit to unearth the core wounds of childhood, but instead of fully facing my fear, I filled my life with distractions and failed relationships. Still, God’s Presence overshadowed and kept track of me. Though I was still stumbling in the dark, I offered my life over and over again to the Truth through daily meditation and study.

When Swami entered my life, I had been a single mom for 8 years and had just graduated cum laude from university. All was relatively stable at the time, though I still longed for the beloved to appear in my life. Swami, and the non-dual teachings he shared with me opened my mind to God as Self, I am That, the One without an Other, Not Two. I wanted more. We talked about creating a healing center in Costa Rica. The obstacles began to fall away, even the impossible became possible as my eldest children entered college and the younger two were housed and safe with friends and family. My house sold at a premium price. We were good to go.

Yet the center never materialized. Swami waffled between his talks on nonduality and his attempts to sell his idea to the highest bidder. It did not end well. He finally had a melt down when all his attempts to keep his multiple investors happy failed. I sent him back to his family in Florida. I remained in Costa Rica.

I know, I know, how could I not see the pattern? I was seeking outside for what was always there from the beginning, the intrinsic Self, the Source Point, That from which the Dream of Life emanates, the very One looking through these eyes! And yet even Swami did not reflect that infinite Heart of Love that arises when I take the deep dive into innermost Being. Grasping onto the dream will never quench a thirst for the true God, the source of all dreaming, both form and formless.

But of course, I had to stumble into the trap one more time before it sunk in; one more failed relationship before I suddenly ripped wide open and I saw my identification with a false egoíc belief that had within it built in failure because I was projecting onto my partner an unmet childhood need. It was truly shocking to realize that I had once again been sucked into a delusion that almost cost me a friend in whose eyes I recognize the flame of Consciousness. It was profoundly humbling, stunningly painful, and awe inspiring. To keep one’s heart open in the midst of searing pain, to remain honest and vulnerable, to stand in the fire and not flinch, is the culmination of a heroic journey.

So when Sat Yoga whispered to me I listened. I was ripe. And the message was cleanly delivered: Thou Art That, the One without a Second, the original “I”, the only True Self. If you ask yourself  “Who is the Seer?” before what is seen, that is a pointer. It is Consciousness Itself, looking through your eyes, aware of your thoughts, and actually not separate at all. This body is an emanation from the Mind of God, a frequency shimmering into time and space directly from the Source, and it has a brief and beautiful life. I aim to make the most of it. And if you listen, truly listen, to the words of Shunyamurti, whose wisdom resonates and illuminates with every word, you might also find the inspiration to enter your own journey of awakening to the Self and thereby find the unfathomable Peace and Joy of emergence with your own Divine Nature, and thereby assist in the upliftment of humanity and the healing of the world.




P.S. The last day of the immersion, WuWei failed to show up for breakfast. She has not reappeared. I do not know what impels an animal to go into the wilds when their life is coming to an end, but it is like abiding in the unknowing. Continue on to your next adventure, my little feline friends. You were much loved.



Wednesday, June 16, 2021

LOSE YOURSELF

 



LOSE YOURSELF

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.
Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King.
When you lose yourself
before the King
you will become the King.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloud
that surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.
This is the surest way
to lose yourself. . . .

What is your life about, anyway?—
Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.

~RUMI


Monday, September 14, 2020

9 Ego Defense Mechanisms That Kill Self-Growth

 


September 14th, 2020

By Mateo Sol

Guest writer for Wake Up World

You’re hopeless, useless, burdensome. Nothing will ever go well, everyone is always better than you, you’ll never be perfect. You want to be liked, but you’re unlovable, and a failure at life. Sound familiar?

To the majority of people this language does. Mental traps – or ego defense mechanisms – serve as the rusty cogs that continue the mechanic cycles of pain, toxic shame, and hopelessness within us. In many instances, they are so deeply ingrained in the mind, that we are completely oblivious of their existence.

The most important thing to realize about these cognitive errors is that they’re maladaptive ways of dealing with the world and the self. In fact, living in the world of mental distortions is like living a lie. Your perception is constantly tainted with melancholic negativity that brings forth unrealistic and untruthful thoughts.

But it’s not your fault and there is a way of moving through this feeling of stuckness.

In this article, my goal is to help you identify, reframe, and deprogram these ego defense mechanisms. Doing so will allow you to experience more inner peace, self-love, groundedness, trust, and spiritual connectedness with life.

What Are Ego Defense Mechanisms?

Ego defense mechanisms (or mental traps) are psychological strategies that help us deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity of existence. When a painful truth or reality is too much for us to bear, you can be sure that an ego defense mechanism will jump in to save you. Think of it like a knight in shining armor that protects your sanity. The only difficulty is that, often, this inner knight is unwilling to let go of its desire to protect us due to fear and trauma. When this happens, we are left with old, outdated, and dysfunctional inner programming that runs on repeat, wreaking havoc in our lives.

17 Signs Your Ego Defenses Are Harming You

Pay attention to the following signs:

  • You suffer from low self-esteem and self-worth
  • You constantly get into fights with people
  • You feel on-edge around others for no apparent reason
  • You often feel like an innocent victim
  • You feel like the world is against you
  • You see the world in black and white (“good or bad,” “right or wrong,” “friend or enemy,” “us or them,” etc.)
  • You tend to jump to extremes in relationships, i.e., one day you love your partner, the next you hate them
  • You tend to be critical and sarcastic
  • You rarely accept blame (because you “haven’t done anything wrong”)
  • You are a cynic but at the same time an idealist
  • You have high expectations for yourself and others
  • You feel dissatisfied with yourself/life a lot of the time
  • You have an addictive personality
  • You tend to be obsessive
  • You overthink everything
  • You often feel like a phony/fake
  • You feel disconnected from your true self and life

How many signs can you relate to?

9 Basic Ego Defense Mechanisms

The nine basic ego defense mechanisms are:

(TO CONTINUE READING CLICK HERE)



Saturday, August 8, 2020

11 NEW SYMPTOMS OF THE COLLECTIVE AWAKENING



Dylan Charles, Editor

During the run up to 2012 the world was fascinated by the idea of the shift, that is, an awakening that first takes place within the individual, then radiates outward into our communities and societies at large, changing the world for the better.
At that time, attention was mainly focused around the personal dynamics involved in this, including the work of navigating the upheaval and turmoil that precedes inner peace and profound transformation. Much of this shift was triggered by newfound awareness of the corruption and deception in our political and social institutions. The pain of realizing that the material world is built on lies left us with no place to go but inward.
We explored meditation and energy healing, radically altered our diets, opened our minds to different ways of thinking and relating to the world, embraced ancestral wisdom, and we fearlessly answered the call to purge, heal and connect. The energy around this was very intense, but it inspired a tremendous sense of wonder and creativity.
But, as all things do, the flow in this new space began to ebb, and since around 2016 it has felt like a major regression happened, taking us back into the dense, murky energies of cognitive dissonance and willful ignorance. So much so, that the last few years has had many of us wondering what the hell the point was in all of this. We began to doubt that our willingness to change had any real value in a world so hopelessly shipwrecked in the shallow end of the pool.
When 2020 began, nothing had substantively changed in the world around us, and for many of us, this muddled our sense of purpose and direction. Many of us fell back into old habits and old pursuits. Business and pleasure.
And then all of a sudden, boom! Here we are.
No denying it now, the train has left the station and everything is being exposed. All of the darkness, depravity and evil that we’ve been collectively covering up and ignoring for generations is squealing and squirming in this flash of bright light. The powers that be see what’s happening, they’ve revealed their hand, and they’re pulling out all the stops in order to maintain the illusion of control.
Indeed, we find ourselves in quite a vulnerable position, and since we’ve been quarantined from all of the distractions that’ve helped to blanket us from reality, we can no longer avoid the truth. A new awakening is happening now, and this time it is global. We can no longer numb ourselves to this.
“We numb vulnerability — when we’re waiting for the call… This is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability…
And I think there’s evidence — and it’s not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it’s a huge cause — We are the most in-debt … obese … addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is — and I learned this from the research — that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.” ~Brené Brown
As the awakening rolls forward, it’s taking everyone with it. How it ends is anyone’s guess, and since we’re all along for the ride, it may be insightful to connect some of what we’re feeling to the bigger picture of the change that is coming our way.


Monday, July 27, 2020

Solitude vs Loneliness In Our Pandemic



This virus has taught us something profound, and what that is is a reflection of what motivates us. We have spent some rare moments alone, and some have come away with depression, feelings of negative isolation, while others have found a sense of self-worth, with an elevated and positive revelation. Everything is attitude, isn’t it? While a lot of people ate and drank excessively, becoming a couch potato, others studied, exercised, and lost weight… some stayed at their businesses and tried to save them in methods that had never occurred to them before…
“Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the world of loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” -Paul Tillich
We all have known loneliness. Those who know it well, know it isn’t just being alone, but a negative state of mind. It can be a dull sense that something is missing, or that something is not quite right, and it saps both joy and happiness from our lives. It is in fact a form of depression.
It can be described as a hungry feeling, and dull empty mood deep inside, and this is the primary reason people gorge themselves with food, take drugs, or smoke. They want to fill that void.
Being alone has nothing to do with loneliness, as we can feel alone in a crowded room, even with friends and family, and this might be the most bitter form of loneliness of all.
So let’s start off with a broad, and yet very unexplored statement that we have been taught: solitude is chosen, and loneliness is not.
We are taught that solitude is a state of being alone, without being lonely, that it can produce a positive and fulfilling state. That with time, it can construct an opportunity to replenish both mind and spirit. It is a state where we can depend on ourselves entirely for both company and motivation, and all of our decisions too. Yes, there is truth here, but an important factor must be considered… both loneliness and solitude are choices.
It is often stated that loneliness is a burden others impose on us, but the reason for this truth mostly alludes us, and it is a very important concept. Loneliness, you see, is the affect of relinquishing responsibility for self, and is the power that we have given to others, trustworthy or not. It is the control we have given them to impose their state of being on us. The old adage, “No one can hurt you unless you let them.” is a classic example of how loneliness can grip our hearts, souls and minds. And just as loneliness stems from the relinquishment of responsibility, so too does solitude create it. Now stop here and take pause…One cannot be lonely and accept responsibility of self. Loneliness is an inability to cope, whereas the responsibility we learn in solitude, if we so choose, is the ability to cope.
Your solitude might suggest peacefulness, an inner dialogue stemming from a state of inner richness, but there is no guarantee. A quiet surrounding does not mean it will quell a noisy and cluttered mind, in fact, it may have just the opposite effect. One might think that solitude is refreshing, an opportunity to renew and replenish ourselves, but there is no assurance this will occur. You see, first off, there must be a place that you have previously developed inside of your mind, a quiet place, a place you can withdraw into or from… It is doubtful that this can be developed in a solitude experience, and those who do not previously possess it, or realize how to access it, may become more confused, and disoriented… Some people are just too dependent on outside influences…

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Observe, Examine, Investigate





First observe, examine, and then start looking into the roots. Why does a certain thing happen again and again? You become angry again and again: examination will simply show you that anger comes and goes. Investigation will show you the roots of anger, from where it comes -- because it may be, it is almost always so, that anger is only a symptom of something else which is hidden. It may be your ego that feels hurt and you become angry, but the ego keeps itself hiding underground. It is like roots of the trees: you see the foliage but you don't see the roots.

By examination you will see the tree, by investigation you will see the roots. And it is only by seeing the roots that a transformation is possible. Bring the roots to the light and the tree starts dying. If you can find the root of your anger, you will be surprised that the anger starts disappearing. If you can find the root of your sadness you will be again surprised.

-Rajneesh


Sunday, June 22, 2014

Downloading Information from the Field Through Inner Silence






“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.” - Nikola Tesla

Inner silence is the key to penetrating this core of knowledge in the universe.

Human beings are like onions. We have layers which are mental/emotional energetic layers within us with obscure our genuine self. As children and babies we have no layers. We are pure and unadulterated infinite consciousness. Then as we are filled with information over time, this clutters up our mind and we lose awareness of our inner truth and our natural ability of processing energy (emotional processing) is diminished or halted altogether and we start to form layers and layers of ego.

Ego is our separate, individual identity that manifests itself in contradiction to our universal self. It is formed out of necessity in order to deal with all of this information/energy which we have taken in, but have not processed properly.

This is directly related to our educational system, and how we have learned to live and perceive the world from our parents, teachers, the media, and basically everyone that we have met, simply by observation.

To dissolve the layers of the ego over time we need only to learn to live from inner silence instead of mind.

And by doing so we tap into our innate intelligence, our inner truth, and knowledge will begin to come through us directly from the field. As information comes through us the reverse happens: instead of layers forming that hold us in, our energy radiates, penetrates these layers, pushes them to the surface, and ultimately dissolves them.

When we learn in this fashion we are free to learn from external sources such as books and so on, but eventually we won’t even need those and we will be able to channel all information directly from source. Which is where all books, movies, songs, works of art, and ideas came from anyway.

This shift will not take hundreds or thousands of years, but will occur within a few generations … and this shift has already been underway dramatically for the past century. Just look at how the world has changed. We already see this evolution taking place right now within all individuals.

The information age is occurring now just outside of ourselves, but also within ourselves. We went from print, to being able to download information (books, movies, you name it) from the internet wirelessly in a few short decades. Now in this internal information age we are also going from print to being able to download information within ourselves from the galactic internet also within a few short decades.

All those alive have the potential to make this shift within ourselves if we commit to a meditative, energetic, and consciousness raising practice.

As the energetic layers of your ego are pushed to the surface and dissolved through this practice, you will find not only more intelligence, power, imagination, and stupendous learning and creative abilities within you, you will also resonate more with truth itself. Then you will become completely open to the universe, and the universe will be completely open to you, and we will be one.

Interpreting Energy Through Inner Silence

In order to do this, above all we must empty ourselves and become acutely aware of what is taking place within us. This is done by cultivating inner silence. When we become fixated by the idea of learning from external sources of information as the only way to learn, as we all have been to a certain degree by our educational conditioning, then we disregard the wisdom and true knowledge that is inherent within us all.

There is wisdom and knowledge inherent within each of us, but in order to access it we must unlearn everything that we have learned. We must become open in order for this knowledge to become apparent to us. We do not need to read thousands of books in order to discover this understanding. Just a select few of the right ones in order to make those necessary shifts in our perception along the way. What is more important is that we embody these new perceptual understandings and experience them through inner silence.

When we learn to download information from the field, what we are dealing with primarily is energy. Everything has energy. In fact, everything is energy. And within the energy of everything (from books, to music, to art, to another human being) lies encoded all information about that thing. I believe we can get to a point where we do not need to read a book, we can simply hold the book, feel its energy, and by feeling that energy we can perceive all the information of the book which is encoded within it’s energy.

Much like conversations are encoded within energy to be transmitted through vacuum energy into your cellphone, the same is already true with everything. Everything in the universe radiates energy at a specific frequency and all that there is to know about that thing is encoded within that energy wave.

With our technology we can detect the frequency of objects in the universe, but only with our consciousness can we interpret and decode the information within that energy.

The energy of everything is radiated into the vacuum, and it is available everywhere simultaneously. To read this energy, we must become subtle through inner silence to allow these impressions to become consciously available to us.

It is not a practice of working hard, because the harder we think we have to work to achieve something, the lower the level of consciousness we are operating from and attempting to manifest from. You see, we are already doing this all of the time. This is what our thoughts are. We are tuning ourselves as vibrational beings to a certain frequency with our perception, and then the thoughts that manifest within us from the infinite intelligence of the universe are thoughts which are of the same frequency as the frequency we are tuned to.

To download new information from the field, tune yourself to a higher frequency.This new information will effectively give us a brand new experience of life, of reality, and it will also give us the perception of downloading information from the field because the thoughts and ideas that will come to us will be so new and truly inspiring and intelligent that we may conclude that we are downloading information from the field. But in reality we will be tapping into what was already available inside of us all along.

As Bruce Lipton put it, “we are part of the field being downloaded into our minds and bodies”. We don’t realize that we are already downloading information from the field in each moment because for the most part we are operating at ordinary levels of consciousness.

We are doing the same things day in and day out and we are keeping up a steady stream of thoughts that narrate our life story and the nature of our world to us perpetually. What we have to do is break that narrative with inner silence, and as soon as we open up these gaps we will find new information coming through us.


To continue reading CLICK HERE.


Monday, May 13, 2013

A Delicate Balance - Miyoko Shida Rigolo


Consciousness operates within a delicate balance, poised in awareness, following the energy of attention. Where is your attention now?




Friday, March 29, 2013

Infinite Self – Reclaiming Your Inner Power




Monday, February 25, 2013

Mastery of the Expanded Self




By Chris Bourne

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

To truly realize the depth and majesty of our expanded self, we have to master the direct confrontation of the moment. It’s all about performing inner alchemy. There’s essentially two forms of consciousness that make up our existential being: the separation consciousness that forms the bodymind, and the unity consciousness that forms the soul. If you include various disruptive energies of society’s matrix, everything we experience from thoughts, to emotions and feelings are caused by the interaction of these various flows of consciousness. How might ‘we’ – as presence – be able to positively influence the internal dynamic?…

Creating Your Own Reality?

Some speak of shaping the thoughts in order to master beingness, but to me, this is simply a case of the tail wagging the dog. The same goes for ‘creating your own reality’. Sure, we do create our own reality, but what do we mean exactly by ‘our’? In most cases the identity doing the manifestation is just a more subtle form of ego – a spiritual identity – that wants to control the situation in some particular way because it cannot accept what is already unfolding.

We are already shaping and creating everything we experience. Either the true self - the soul - is shining through and creating harmonious experiences or else the false self is influencing the show, by resistance to what’s currently happening, denial or just plain insensitivity. We might feel a creative impulse for something to happen, only for the flow to get derailed by internal eddy currents of life’s conditioning.

In which case you can’t simply ‘paper over the cracks’, by manipulating the outer pieces on the game board without first uncovering and unwinding what’s really happening inside. To do so, is simply to perpetuate the disharmony through our lives. Even though the circumstances may change – our jobs, relationships or location – the patterns remain the same. Instead, we need to look deeply into the outer mirror we’re already creating. This includes our most intense and intimate feelings towards it, no matter how challenging or painful. Then there’s a requirement to notice the blind spots, the grey areas in these points of attachment where presence closes down and gets drawn into the fray through identification.

Grasping the Hot Coals

The only way out is through. We have to feel the fullness of these retractions from the moment. You have to grasp the hot coals and feel the heat before you drop them. If you retract in the face of the heat or the pain or the heartache, be it emotional, physical or mental, then in that moment, you have reconfirmed your identification with the heat and with that your separation from the all that is. You have made yourself a victim of the sense of separation and crystalised that as your reality.

The key is transcendence: feeling through the heat of the moment until the coals define you no longer. You become the heat, the pain, the tension, the discomfort and soften into it. You become so totally at-one with it, that you no longer build internal references, structures and judgments around the situations. It is in these totally lucid moments you become absolutely authentic and free. You have transcended the limitation of identification and dropped into the void of infinite potential. From here, anything can happen. The authentic flow of the soul ignites, fueled by the unstoppable force of the universe.

To master such transcendence is to increase our inner intimacy – to bring absolute attention into our bodily field, to know when we retract, resist and deny. Bringing presence into these blind spots automatically begins to unwind them, liberating the soul as a free flowing spontaneity through the moment. There is nothing that feels better, more harmonious or complete. This is truly living.

The Path to Bodhidharma

It is the Openhand Approach to life and I’ve found it very aligned with some of the ancient eastern teachings such as that of the monk Bodhidharma. I came across his work some years ago through a lovely synchronicity and felt to share a glimpse here…

In the old days in China there was a priest called Master Tozan. A monk asked him “how can we escape from this severe heat and cold?” This is not just a question about severe heat and cold. It is a question about the reality we are always facing – a melancholy and difficult reality, a reality that is full of suffering. People are sick and in pain: people have lost their homes in disasters and wars and have nothing in which to believe any longer and are suffering in their despair. For those whose belongings have all been destroyed, their refuge in the material world has been shown to be empty and meaningless. This kind of pain is always occurring all around us.

Master Tozan answered the monk, “You have to go where there is no hot and no cold!”
The monk continued, “Where is that place where there is no hot or cold? Where is that true place of refuge for the mind?”

The priest answered, “When it is hot, become that heat completely! When it is cold, become one with that cold completely and totally! When it is painful, become that pain completely and totally, and when you are miserable, become that misery totally and completely! In the very midst of that, go beyond all the thoughts you hold in your mind, let go of all the ideas of good or bad or gain or loss – let go of all of these thoughts – and from there grasp that place of your very own vivid life energy! That which directly experiences that ‘ouch’ – feel that life energy directly, grasp that life energy that feels that pain and sorrow.” More important than finding a place out of pain and suffering, or trying to find a place where there is no pain or suffering, is to go directly to that place where the pain and suffering are being experienced, to go where you feel that pain and sadness directly and totally. Touch that life energy directly and with your own experience. Use that actual direct experience which you have grasped as your base, and stand up strong and firm. This is how the master answered the monk.

Phoenix from the Ashes

Of course this advice is not just for the metaphoric physical feeling of hot and cold. We may apply it to every aspect of our lives. Especially in relationships for example where we might suffer emotional or psychological trauma.

As it’s happening, we must not deny it, but rather go into the very heart of the contraction and become as one with it – to soften into it – in the way described above. Then the bubble of identification bursts, the void of silence is touched, the soul rises like a pheonix from the ashes and a new, more harmonious reality takes shape.

Finally, the majesty of the expanded self is realized.


Saturday, February 9, 2013

17 Krishnamurti Quotes That Will Turn Your World View Outside In




Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times 
 
A sage is someone who can put into words the aspects of our mysterious nature that most of us can only feel.

At times in my life I have been overwhelmed by the world and confused about the purpose of it all. I spent much time in anguish, behaving in self-destructive ways, wondering why happiness was so elusive.
In this struggle, I passed many years looking outward for the source of turmoil in my world, trying to tweak, upgrade and replace parts of my life that seemed culpable for my sorrows; a different job, new friends, more education, better stuff. This always led me back, of course, to where I started, still confused, still unsatisfied, still searching for someone and something to blame.

Words are more than just the sum of their meaning, they are powerful incantations, capable of conjuring up great inspiration or of casting damning spells. Philosophy is something that can heal, yet no doctor can prescribe it and no one can predict which words a person must hear to break through to a better place in life.

The potent words of the great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti fell into my life at precisely the right time, ringing true enough in my mind and in my heart to carry me to brighter days.

Until then, no other spokesman of truth had challenged me so bluntly to take personal responsibility for everything that is wrong in my life and everything that is misaligned in the world, pointing out so truthfully that the world is as we create it. None other had demanded so fervently that I look deep within for the answers to suffering, pointing out the inattention I was giving to my own life. No one else had challenged everything I thought I knew about my personal history and my culture, exposing the conditioning of my own mind, compelling me to change.

And for this I share with you these 17 Krishnamurti quotes that will turn your world view outside in, urging you to reconsider your culture religion, politics and family, guiding you towards a new awareness, intelligence and the truest freedom.

Mostly taken from his public talks in the late 1960’s, these quotes have the power to unleash us from our chains and set us free into a powerful new present where our humanity can finally reign supreme over our fearfulness.

I hope you find solace in them as I have, and that you share them with those whom you love, stirring within them the deep truths that can liberate us from the pitfalls of our own consciousness and the fabrications of our culture.

1. Our minds are conditioned – that is an obvious fact – conditioned by a particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains and stresses of relationships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape, if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning.

2. I wonder why we divide life into fragments, the business life, social life, family life, religious life, the life of sport and so on? Why is there this division, not only in ourselves but also socially – we they, you and me, love and hate, dying and living? I think we ought to go into this question rather deeply to find out if there is a way of life in which there is no division at all between living and dying, between the conscious and the unconscious, the business and social life, the family life and the individual life.
These divisions between nationalities, religions, classes, all this separation in oneself in which there is so much contradiction – why do we live that way? It breeds such turmoil, conflict, war; it brings about real insecurity, outwardly as well as inwardly. There is so much division, as God and the devil, the good and the bad, ‘what should be’ and ‘what is.’

3. Man has always sought immortality; he paints a picture, puts his name on it, that is a form of immortality; leaving a name behind, man always wants to leave something of himself behind. What has he got to give – apart from technical knowledge – what has he of himself to give? What is he? You and I, what are we, psychologically? You may have a bigger bank account, be cleverer than I am, or this and that; but psychologically, what are we? – a lot of words, memories, experiences, and these we want to hand over to a son, put in a book, or paint in a picture, ‘me’. The ‘me’ becomes extremely important, the ‘me’ opposed to the community, the ‘me’, wanting to identify itself, wanting to fulfill itself, wanting to become something great – you know, all the rest of it. When you observe that ‘me’, you see that it is a bundle of memories, empty words: that is what we cling to; that is the very essence of the separation between you and me, they and we.

4. How is the mind, the brain included to be completely quiet? Some say breathe properly, take deep breaths, that is, get more oxygen into your blood; a shoddy little mind breathing very deeply, day after day, can be fairly quiet; but it is still a shoddy little mind.

5. We look at conditions prevailing in the world and observe what is happening there – the student’s riots, the class prejudices, the conflict of black against white, the wars, the political confusion, the divisions caused by nationalities and religions. We are also aware of conflict, struggle, anxiety, loneliness, despair, lack of love, and fear. Why do we accept all this? Why do we accept the moral, social environment knowing very well that it is utterly immoral; knowing this for ourselves – not merely emotionally or sentimentally but looking at the world and at ourselves – why do we live this way? Why is it that our educational system does not turn out real human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs and finally die? Education, science and religion have not solved our problems at all.

Looking at all this confusion, why does each one of us accept and conform, instead of shattering the whole process in ourselves?

6. This is a very human, ordinary problem, which touches the life of everyone of us, rich and poor, young and old, why do we live this monotonous, meaningless life, going to the office or working in a laboratory or a factory for forty years, breeding a few children, educating them in absurd ways, and then dying? I think you should ask this question with all your being, in order to find out. Then you can ask the next question: whether human beings can ever change radically, fundamentally, so that they look at the world anew with different eyes, with a different heart, no longer filled with hatred, antagonism, racial prejudices, but with a mind that is very clear, that has tremendous energy.

Seeing all this – the wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideal, dividing himself into ‘me’ and ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ – seeing all this, both objectively and psychologically, there remains only one question, one fundamental problem and this is whether the human mind, which is so heavily conditioned, can change. Not in some future incarnation, nor at the end of life, but change radically now, so that the mind becomes new, fresh, young, innocent, unburdened, so that we may know what it means to love and to live in peace.

7. To deny conventional morality completely is to be highly moral, because what we call social morality, the morality of respectability, is utterly immoral; we are competitive, greedy, envious, seeking our own way – you know how we behave. We call this social morality; religious people talk about a different kind of morality, but their life, their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious organization and belief, is immoral. To deny that is not to react, because when you react, this is another form of dissenting through one’s own resistance. But when you deny it because you understand it, there is the highest form of morality.

In the same way, to negate social morality, to negate the way we are living – our petty little lives, our shallow thinking and existence, the satisfaction at a superficial level with our accumulated things – to deny all that, not as a reaction but seeing the utter stupidity and the destructive nature of this way of living – to negate all that is to live. To see the false as the false – this seeing is the true.

8. If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities – would there be these separations?

9. If the mind is unconditioned it is free. So we are going to find out, examine very closely, what makes the mind so conditioned, what are the influences that have brought about this conditioning, and why we accept it. First of all, tradition plays an enormous part in life. In that tradition the brain has developed so that it can find physical security. One cannot live without security, that is the very first, primary animal demand, that there be physical security; one must have a house, food, clothing. But the psychological way in which we use this necessity for security brings about chaos within and without. The psyche, which is the very structure of thought, also wants to be secure inwardly, in all its relationships. Then the trouble begins. There must be physical security for everybody, not only for the few; but that physical security for everybody is denied when psychological security is sought through nations, through religions, through the family.

10. Then there is the question of dying, which we have carefully put far away from us, as something that is going to happen in the future – the future may be fifty years off or tomorrow. We are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an end and being separated from the things we have possessed, worked for, experienced – wife, husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, the books and the poems we have written or hoped to write. And we are afraid to let all that go because we are the furniture, we are the picture that we possess; when we have the capacity to play the violin, we are that violin. Because we have identified ourselves with those things – we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever looked at it that way? You are the house – with the shutters, the bedroom, the furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own – that is what you are. If you remove all that you are nothing.

And that is what you are afraid of – of being nothing. Isn’t it very strange how you spend forty years going to the office and when you stop doing these things you have heart trouble and die? You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk or whatever your position is; you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be – that is all. Therein lies sorrow. To realize for yourself that you are that is great sorrow, but the greatest sorrow is that you do not realize it. To see that and find out what it means is to die.

11. Can you observe anything – a tree, your wife, your neighbor, the politician, the priest, a beautiful face – without any movement of the mind? The images of your wife, of your husband, of your neighbor, the knowledge of the cloud or of pleasure, all that interferes, doesn’t it? So when there is interference by an image of any kind, subtle or obvious, then there is no observation, there is no real, total awareness – there is only partial awareness. To observe clearly there must be no image coming in between the observer and the thing observed. When you look at a tree, can you look at it without the knowledge of that tree in botanical terms, or the knowledge of your pleasure or desire concerning it? Can you look at it so completely that the space between you – the observer – and the thing observed disappears? That doesn’t mean that you become the tree! But when that space disappears, there is the cessation of the observer, and only the thing which is observed remains. In that observation there is perception, seeing the thing with extraordinary vitality, its color, its shape, the beauty of the leaf or trunk; when there is not the center of the ‘me’ who is observing, you are intimately in contact with that which you observe.

12. If I think I am very beautiful and you tell me I am not, which may be a fact, do I like it? If I think I am very intelligent, very clever, and you point out that I am actually a rather silly person, it is very unpalatable to me. And your pointing out my stupidity gives you a sense of pleasure, does it not? It flatters your vanity, it shows you how clever you are. But you do not want to look at your own stupidity; you want to run away from what you are, you want to hide from yourself, you want to cover up your own emptiness, your own loneliness. So you seek out friends who never tell you what you are. You want to show others what they are; but when others show you what you are, you do not like it. You avoid that which exposes your own inner nature.

13. Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence. You cannot go out and buy freedom in the market. You cannot get it by reading a book, or by listening to someone talk. Freedom comes with intelligence.

But what is intelligence? Can there be intelligence when there is fear, or when the mind is conditioned? When your mind is prejudiced, or when you think you are a marvelous human being, or when you are very ambitious and want to climb the ladder of success, worldly or spiritual, can there be intelligence? When you are concerned about yourself, when you follow or worship somebody, can there be intelligence? Surely, intelligence comes when you understand and break away from all this stupidity. So you have to set about it; and the first thing is to be aware that your mind is not free. You have to observe how your mind is bound by all these things, and then there is the beginning of intelligence, which brings freedom. You have to find the answer for yourself. What is the use of someone else being free when you are not, or of someone else having food when you are hungry?
To be creative, which is to have real initiative, there must be freedom; and for freedom there must be intelligence. So you have to inquire and find out what is preventing intelligence. You have to investigate life, you have to question social values, everything, and not accept anything because you are frightened.

14. Have you ever thought about why you are being educated, why you are learning history, mathematics, geography, or what else? Have you ever thought why you go to schools and colleges? Is it information, with knowledge? What is all this so-called education? Your parents send you here, perhaps because they themselves have passed certain examinations and taken various degrees. Have you ever asked yourselves why you are here, and have the teachers asked why you are here? Do the teachers know why they are here? Should you not try to find out what all this struggle is about – this struggle to study, to pass examinations, to live in a certain place away from home and not be frightened, to play games well and so on? Should your teachers not help you to inquire into all this and not merely prepare you to pass examinations?

15. So religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true.

16. A conditioned mind is not free because it can never go beyond its own borders, beyond the barriers it has built around itself; that is obvious. And it is very difficult for such a mind to free itself from its conditioning and go beyond, because this conditioning is imposed upon it, not only by society, but by itself. You like your conditioning because you dare not go beyond. You are frightened of what your father and mother would say, of what society and the priest would say; therefore you help to create the barriers which hold you. This is the prison in which most of us are caught, and that is why your parents are always telling you – as you in turn will tell your children – to do this and not do that.

17. Now, there are many people who will tell you the purpose of life; they will tell you what the sacred books say. Clever people will go on inventing various purposes of life. The political group will have one purpose, the religious group will have another, and so on and on. And how are you to find out what is the purpose of life when you yourself are confused? Surely, as long as you are confused, you can only receive an answer which is also confused. If your mind is disturbed, if it is not really quiet, whatever answer you receive will be through this screen of confusion, anxiety, fear; therefore the answer will be perverted. So the important thing is not to ask what is the purpose of life, but to clear away the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man asking, “What is light?” If I try to tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness; but from the moment he is able to see, he will never ask what is light. It is there.

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