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.

The One’s Reunion With Itself

Reflections - The Headless Way

Ultimately sex doesn't come into its own till it is revealed as an aspect of the One's own joy in discovering and reuniting with Itself, disguised as the not-self or other - as one very special other. (Douglas Harding. Quoted in Seeing Who You Really Are by Richard Lang.)

Who after all, is here? Who is this Present-absent One, this No-thing, this 1st Person Singular, present tense? Haven't we decided that He is the one eyeless Seer, the one earless Hearer, the one tongueless Taster? He is also the one bodiless Lover! And just as the lover sees the beloved's face through a conceptual fog while he thinks he sees it with his eyes, and muffles the sound of her voice while he thinks he hears it with his ears, so he hardly begins to love her body while he thinks he loves it with his body. Only when he submits to being the One he really is - and she really is - does he know how to love that body, and know what sex is really about. In order to love it is necessary to be God, for God is love - and, not least, physical love. In order to be truly one with another it is necessary to be the One who is that other. (Douglas Harding. Quoted in Seeing Who You Really Are by Richard Lang)

Every Thought, Etched Upon the Sky...

 

by Geneen Marie Haugen at Soulcraft Musings

Friday, January 8, 2021

A band of wanderers who traveled by thumb[1] or caravan to places they regarded as spiritually potent once gathered in the Tetons to Omfor world peace. They asked around for a tipi to use for the Om circles and somehow found me, and thus my tipi was enlisted for their mission. Among them was a songwriter whose haunting voice I can still hear, many decades later. Although her name is lost to me in the far canyons of memory, I still remember the lyrics she sang, which were something like this: “The world outside is a reflection of within. / We have the power to change it. / We can rearrange it.” Attempting to rearrange the “world outside” was the intent of those Om circles. 

When I was not on Teton trails or paddling the river, I joined the wanderers to Om a few times, entranced by the harmonics through which I sometimes heard clear voices that I could never identify, saying puzzling things like: I found them. Over here. Here they are. The seeming dedication of these wanderers to serving the world was so strong that when Anwar Sadat — the Egyptian president who had won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a treaty between Egypt and Israel — was assassinated, at least some of the Om folks took it personally, rededicating themselves to “rearranging” the world within that gives birth (in this view) to the world “outside.” As far as I could tell, from their perspective, rearranging the world within was mostly supposed to happen on the “inner planes,” through Om-ing. 

From my viewpoint four decades later, I could not say that these wanderers were psychospiritually — or emotionally — mature (nor could I say that I was), though the Om practice did seem to offer, at least for moments, a palpable sense of peace and generosity of spirit, even compassion, toward others. The wanderers were the first spiritual seekers I’d encountered who believed — or who wanted to believe — that they were intimately connected with the unfolding of greater consciousness in the world, or with the devastating unraveling. Though even in those days, I recognized a shadow dissonance that I could not name when the seekers were soliciting money or food or airline tickets from folks with jobs rather than enacting their Om practice, I also found deep resonance with a possibility that my own manner of presence might be reflected in the “world outside” — a possibility that I was entangled in not only unspeakable beauty, but also in the aggression, rage, and divisiveness of human beings.

***

At the time, I was not familiar with the (apparently true) story that Jung was fond of telling about an old Taoist rainmaker who was called to a drought-stricken area in China. Upon arrival, the rainmaker asked to be left alone in a cottage outside the village. His meals were left outside the door. After three days in solitude, the clouds opened. When the old rainmaker was asked how he had delivered not only rain but also unseasonable snow, he declined to take credit for it. When further pressed, he offered his own explanation: “You see, I come from a place where the people are in order; they are in Tao; so the weather is also in order. But directly I got here, I saw the people were out of order and they also infected me. So I remained alone until I was once more in Tao and then, of course, it snowed.”[2]

***

I write these words the day after the U.S. Capitol building was breached by throngs of enraged people. I am enraged, too — and feel a strong, practiced impulse to loudly demean and violently condemn all those whose viewpoints and actions I find abhorrent. The “outer world” is in utter disarray with a radically divided populace, an on-going pandemic, climate instability, social and economic inequities, and more. It is easy to furiously believe that “those other people” are the ignorant, the deluded, the power-hungry, the “deplorables” or whatever other distinction I can identify separates them from me.  

And meanwhile, an immense psychospiritual drought withers all of the land. The world outside may be (at least in part) a reflection of within. Just now as I write, I remember a quote that was psychically-implanted long ago: “Think as if your every thought were etched in fire upon the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is.”[3] Do I dare to bring to consciousness the tyrants, insurrectionists, enablers, entitled ones, perpetual victims, indoctrinated conformists, know-it-alls, or heartless ones that are hidden (or maybe not so hidden) in my manner of presence, in my psychic habits, in my way of being in the world? 

Over here. I found them. Here they are.

***

Of course it’s not enough to shudder with recognition when we encounter the deplorable in ourselves; of course it’s not sufficient to only Om for the world. But perhaps when we find the top-secret chambers where the tyrants, victims, conformists and others hide, we might hear and feel the tremendous grief cry that we share with all of those who are broken, lost, betrayed, oppressed, repressed, and trying to survive in worn-out systems that depend on pitting human beings against each other. From that recognition, we might find a way toward common ground.

The Handling of Chaos: Motion Through Stillness

 

Commentary by TLB Staff Author: Lucille Femine

The planet being in terrible turmoil and confusion, what do most people do – myself included, though I strive to overcome it? We accept it while we insist: We will not accept it!

In other words, we resist and that is the road to the acceptance of misery, confusion and unhappiness. How can that be if we resist it? Well, our all too frequent reaction is really emotion of various kinds – anger, fear, hopelessness, grief, etc, exactly what the chaos is designed to create.

What happens then? We feed the chaos with all these emotions and it grows – like raising a child with hate and they become hateful. And the perpetrators of the chaos smile and think they have won. They think they have overcome their own deep-seated and shallow fear and hate has been overcome by holding the “enemy” at bay or destroyed. Now THAT’S a miserable life. Much worse than yours.

We engage in all kinds of activity to beat these evil forces – from reading and commenting with protests, opinions, letters to political leaders, writing articles as I do, etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things and much needed.

But where should these activities come from? That is my gist and I will try to explain it to myself as I write to you. You see, that is part of the plan. The less we think, the more we know, even when putting and trying to put cohesive words on paper and cyberspace. It appears to be very analytical. But truly I had no idea what words and concepts I would write until I began to write them. And I refrain as much as possible from “thinking them up” before I type. 

This practice of reducing thoughts to a bare minimum (needed to wash dishes, go shopping and all that) should never be considered a “blank mind” in the traditional sense of the word – like stupid. That label has been administered by schools and families who stress that we need to accumulate “facts” as the estimation and growth of intelligence and ability to function.

Surely data is needed to get along in our day to day lives. But what comes first? Silence and stillness. In other words, lose your mind with all its pictures, words, worries, pains, conflicts, all from the past. What remains? The powerful essence of you in the present moment. We call it many things – God, the Supreme Being, the spirit, etc. All it is, really, is you in the moment, this moment as you read this.

What do we do in this state of mind – or no mind? We simply know and experience not only our true self but our environment, our world.

What does this mean in terms of the chaos and danger around us? We simply stay in the present moment as we read, study and experience this chaos and not allow ourselves to “be” the chaos, to succumb to it as though it is real or even inevitable. By agreeing to it all, we recreate in our minds and then in our lives and then in our environment and it becomes real.

(CLICK HERE to continue reading)

The Headless Way

Two Wills

I find in me two wills, one that belongs to the pre-mortem life of the one in my mirror, and the other which belongs to the post-mortem life of the one this side of my mirror. The former is quick to say NO! to a good half of what happens to me, while the latter eventually says YES! – SO BE IT! – to it all. And does so with good reason: I see that right here all my resistance is dissolved and I’m burst wide open to receive whatever’s in store for me. Saying Yes! to it is often excruciatingly difficult, of course, but it turns out to be the recipe for the only peace worth having. And so at last the paradox holds: it’s because I have no will that my will is done. Right here, total impotence and total omnipotence come to the same thing.

(Douglas Harding. To Be And Not To Be.)

WAKE UP

I made this video 10 years ago and it still is relevant...the way to liberty is to refuse to participate in the lie. 

MAX IGAN - THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

G. Edward Griffin -RED PILL UNIVERSITY

Loneliness: A Health Problem That Could Be Deadlier Than Obesity, Study Says

By

 Richard Enos

For COLLECTIVE EVOLUTION

Loneliness can reliably be linked to a significant increase in the risk of early mortality, according to a study at Brigham Young University. Head author, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, notes that “substantial evidence now indicates that individuals lacking social connections (both objective and subjective social isolation) are at risk for premature mortality.”

Holt-Lunstad believes the risks associated with loneliness are already greater than such established dangers as obesity:

Several decades ago scientists who observed widespread dietary and behavior changes raised warnings about obesity and related health problems. The present obesity epidemic had been predicted. Obesity now receives constant coverage in the media and in public health policy. The current status of research on the risks of loneliness and social isolation is similar to that of research on obesity 3 decades ago… Current evidence indicates that heightened risk for mortality from a lack of social relationships is greater than that from obesity.

Furthermore, she warns that “researchers have predicted that loneliness will reach epidemic proportions by 2030 unless action is taken.”

Why Are We So Isolated From Each Other?

From the long view, it can be said that Western civilization as a whole has fostered a gradual disintegration of our physical and social ties. With an emphasis on individual goals and an almost fanatical regard for personal achievement, the traditional institutions of family and community and their capacity to provide their members with a sense of belonging and shared purpose have become significantly fragmented.

The family unit has gone from large generations-linked mutual support systems to small and immediate units, sometimes involving single parents whose necessities make it very difficult to create a stable home environment for their children. Add to that the fact that more and more people are not even building families, and our society has more people living alone than at any other time in history. This includes the elderly, who are less likely to find a ‘fit’ living within their children’s families than ever before.

The decline of the ‘community’ is perhaps as significant as the disintegration of the family unit. In Western-style communities, people work as a collection of individual units interacting by specific functions rather than as an interrelated whole with a significant shared identity. Naturally, attempts are made today to join or build ‘communities’ all the time, but like the Meetup model, they are founded on the gathering of select people with similar interests and purposes, rather than a shared embrace of all people within a certain geographical area.

(CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING)

Collective Evolution and Individual Enlightening are the Same Thing

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

WAKING TIMES

Revolution–the real kind–is an inside job.

This is not a click-friendly fact to highlight. Whenever I talk about revolution as having more to do with sincere inner work than with demonstrations and pitchforks and the proletariat rising up against the bourgeoisie, I get met with a lot of blank stares and dead air. It’s much more click-friendly to talk about how terrible this or that politician or oligarch or media figure is and how they should be launched into the sun with a giant crossbow.

It’s true though. Revolution is an inside job.

This is not a click-friendly thing to say because it is not an egoically pleasing thing to say. When they ask why the world is screwed up and what to do about it, people want to be told that it’s because of those Bad Guys over there and they need to be put in their place by these Good Guys over here; they don’t want to be told they need to disentangle themselves from egoic consciousness so they can see clearly enough to operate in an efficacious way.

But it’s a fact.

This is not some new agey, metaphysical philosophical position. I’m not saying that there are no villains outside yourself or any of that dopey spiritual woo woo crap; there absolutely are horrible people in the world who absolutely are doing horrible things that have absolutely horrible consequences for all of us. I’m not saying that if you do inner work you’ll magically make the sociopathic elites who are manipulating humanity toward its doom somehow turn into nice people via some esoteric mystical principle or anything like that. And I’m definitely not saying not to organize, demonstrate or take large, decisive actions against establishment power structures.

What I am saying is that the most effective thing you can do to fight the bastards and create a healthy world is to bring clarity to your own inner processes, so that’s where your energy should be most emphasized.

(CLICK HERE TO READ MORE)

Derrick Broze Presents: How to Opt Out of the Matrix on May 16th, 2020

by THE CONSCIOUS RESISTANCE 

GRATITUDE

Transformation of Humanity: Reclaiming Our Spiritual Power

I deeply resonate with this video. Though I do not believe we are each individually and karmically responsible for the negative aspects playing out in the world today, as a collective we have agreed to go the limit and decide the world we wish to live in. What do we represent? I say not Light or Dark, but wholeness, balance, openness, honesty, and love. We can do this, dear friends, we can turn this ship around and head for open sea. Claim your true self, this pristine Consciousness where war is unknown.

More Videos by Chris Bourne of OpenHand

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?

Violence and Silence: How to Heal the World

by Eric Klein

What is it about tragic events that calls us to silence and stillness?

There's a profound message in this impulse. The message is: remember the sacred nature of life; connect to it; let it guide you.

It's hard to remember the sacred when you're multi-tasking. By stopping, a space opens up within you and around you. It takes stopping and stillness, to see what has been there all along.

Yes, that's what stillness reveals: that the sacred nature of life is ever-present; that all life is sacred.

You don't have to do anything to achieve sacredness.

Nobody does. It's not a prize. Not an award. It's what you are. Me too. Everybody and everything. It's all sacred.

But, the mind has a hard time with stillness; the mind cries, "What about the violence? If life is sacred, where does all the violence come from? And don't we have to do something to stop it?"

There are many ways of analyzing and answering these questions. The mind can take many perspectives: political, historical, economic, religious.

But, before you adopt any perspective, consider this: what is the quality of consciousness that you bring to the perspective?

It's not the perspective that is primary-it&# 39;s the consciousness that "looks" through the
perspective.

Consciousness is primary; perspective is secondary, which is why stopping and stillness are so vital.

Before you analyze, and definitely before you act, be still.

Don't perpetuate the patterns of the past. Be still.

Don't seek answers or even understanding. Be still.

Breathe and let the waves of emotionality settle; be still and reconnect to the sacred essence of life and your life.

How often in a typical day do you stop and become still?

Do you practice stillness or are you constantly on the move?

Do you rest in the sacred nature of life as-it-is or are you perpetually rushing forward?

Straining to make things happen? Controlling people and events?

If so, you're not alone.

We've all been conditioned as perpetual motion machines; this never-stopping compulsion obscures the recognition of life's sacred nature. It's the relentless (and reactive) movements of the mind that create the conditions for violence.

We all need to become better students of stillness. This is not a plea for inaction-there is a need for wise and healing action. An acute, even an urgent need. But wise and healing action only arises from a consciousness that is awake to the sacred.

The scattered, speedy, emotionally fragmented consciousness is blind to the sacred. Actions that arise from a reactive mind only add more violence to the mix. (This is true on a global scale and around the dinner table.)

Which is why stillness is the pre-requisite for healing and helping the world.

By cultivating your capacity for stillness, you serve the world.

By deepening your attunement to the sacred, you heal the world. Today-and every day from now on-make time for stillness and silence. 

Read entire article at Elephant Journal

INSIGHTS

by Anamika

Insights. 

Are they true?  

Or they seem clear and we just assume that 

they are true because there is clarity?

How do we know?   

How do we know anything?

And how can this passion for truth lead to anything anyway, 

as at the end of everything,  when one really goes to the end,  there is nothing.   

Emptiness  

Everything falls apart,  returns to source.  

Void.   

At the end of everything is Nothing.   And at the beginning as well.

All expressions,  all intimations,  insights,  come up and disappear.  

Born out of Emptiness and returns.   

Only Emptiness remains.

Insights can point to the direction of truth at the moment of expression,   

but then they are instantly passed their prime. 

Their moment of glory is immediate, never to return.
 

The pointing to what Is, eternal and unchanging is true,   is real.

Is the golden grail all through the ages,  the alchemist gold,  

the description of nirvana,  the diamond of the sutras.  

But the language used to express becomes 

archaic and out dated in no time.  

As This is ever fresh and new,  and cannot be captured by any word,  

not even the most sublime as it defies all descriptions. 
  

Its beyond the known,  

beyond language,  

beyond labels,  

its always pristine,  

always experienced in the ever present Now.   

Its the ever ongoing open experiencing of all that is. 

 

Try as you might,  
you will never not be this, 

As this is All there.

 

http://noname-allthereis.blogspot.ca/2013/04/insights.html

UNIFY // EARTH DAY // GLOBAL FLASH MOB

Join others April 20-22, 2013.....www.unify.org

Dharamsala by Dean Henderson

(excerpted from Chapter 7: Trekking with God: The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries)

 

As a butterfly lost in a flower. As a bird settled in a tree. As a child fondling mother’s breast. For 67 years of this world I have played with God - Sasaki Roshi

In search of a hotel, I wander down a side street and notice a sign that says “Tibetan Guest House”. I walk up a narrow staircase and a pudgy 14-year-old girl comes to the door. Her pleasant demeanor captures my imagination. She and her six brothers and sisters are huddled around a television watching Bill Cosby. I take a room.

The girl brings me a huge bowl of vegetables and noodles with chopsticks, followed by the best coffee I’ve had in India. Her little brother climbs up on a chair, grabs of pack of Four Square cigarettes from atop the refrigerator and offers me one. Their mother brings me a soda. Their father walks in with fluorescent bulbs for the whole house, as if my arrival has brought them spirited rejuvenation. The kids surround him and wait for their turn at a hug. Some are content with a pat on the head. These are people who know intimately the secrets to happiness. I need to stay awhile.

I wonder if praise is not one of our biggest mistakes. When an Ituri Pygmy hunter comes home from having killed a springbuck, he gets no praise from his fellow tribesmen and is the last to receive his portion of meat. Out of this silence the hunter learns humility. He learns that his fate and that of his tribe are one. Praise for his efforts would only create a schism of the whole and fill the hunter with arrogance. In America, when one praises a friend exceedingly, that friend often begins to mistreat his or her admirer. To praise someone is to put them on a pedestal – separate from the masses of un-praised others. It is a product of dualistic thinking athe root of scores of flawed Western philosophical underpinnings.

This conundrum may explain why I always feel that I need to leave America where I treat everyone as if they are intrinsically good. Westerners, trained in dualistic thinking, take this as weakness on my part. They see my kindness as a green light to take, to gain some emotional advantage. I do not find such a dilemma in India or for that matter any other Third World nations I have visited. Here kindness is greeted by reciprocation.

I guess Reagan and his supply-siders are right in one sense about their trickle-down theories. An evil government imparts its paranoid set of values to its citizenry, whose collective denial of a bloody colonial history only reinforces the “taker” mindset. To stop and question the rules of this rigged game would be to risk losing one’s television or VCR or, God forbid, one’s cherished automobile. Westerners live in a state of guilt, shame and fear – knowing in their guts, but never acknowledging, the trail of tears they have left in their wake. Their penance is their work, their half-hearted daily grind, their boring monotonous meaningless assignment from the cruel Great White teacher. Their weekends are spent indulging in a swirl of contradictions that, by gosh, they deserve after spending all week doing penance. They break out their speedboats, gorge at fine restaurants, guzzle copious amounts of alcohol and throw their hard-earned money back into the whirling cogs of the system. They do not deserve freedom. They must repent. They are the system.

No one’s heart is sad at birth. No one is filled with gloom when their tiny eyes first awaken to the world outside their mother’s womb. No amount of phony social Darwinist propaganda can make it so. Charles Darwin, whose “survival of the fittest” terminology is often invoked by wealthy fat Republicans as justification for their callous journey through this life, actually argued that the most important key to human and animal survival was “cooperation within species”. The entire debate over whether man is naturally good or evil is itself a dualistic windstorm that could only take place within the simplistic minds of the colonial West.

Surely man has the ability to do both good and evil. He must choose which path to embark upon – one of fear and greed, or one of love and compassion. Yet his circumstances greatly influence the nature of his soul. His environment plays a much greater role than his DNA. Most pit bulls are socialized to be family protectors or worse – stone cold killers. But some pit bulls are not instructed so, and are as gentle as lambs. A grizzly bear in Kodiak, Alaska – well-fed on salmon and unused to human interaction – is much less likely to maul a person than one in Yellowstone National Park, where his habitat is a tiny island of government protection and where ignorant humans are constantly pestering him for photographs.

While the Aryans have a lock on colonization, there were rapists among the Zulu and murderers among the Lakota. These bad apples likely were impacted by negative events in their childhood and the like. But Aryan history books exaggerate these anomalies in an attempt to justify colonial endeavors. Tribal peoples treated their offenders much more compassionately. Wrongdoers in tribal cultures were shunned and sent away for a period of time. Wrongdoers in colonial cultures are executed, upsetting the cosmic balance and reinforcing the dualistic thinking that alienates industrialized man from both earth and other cultures. We can kill criminals because we believe in the dualism that they are the bad people and we the good. The fact that tribal cultures did not kill their criminals speaks volumes to their humility, to their lack of dualism-driven fear and to their earth-inspired wisdom. By all accounts the shunning of offenders worked. Recidivism among Lakota offenders was virtually non-existent. The person knew he did wrong, but he also discovered that his life was too valuable to be taken. Thus, the value of all life was reinforced in both his mind and in the collective mind of the culture.

Modern-day prisoners in South Africa, Israel, the US or China – all subject to death at the whim of their governments – hold no such respect for human life. Nor do the people who live in those countries. The nature of human existence holds no relevance in arguments for or against the death penalty. Nor does it matter in any discussion of social policy. Our decision is one of which path we shall take from right here and now. Will we choose a path of darkness and nihilism, or will we choose one that restores balance and harmony to earth and its inhabitants? When we feel good about who we are we do good things. Happiness and justice are two results of harmony – one and the same thing.

McLeod Ganje sits above Dharamsala, which is perched at 6,400’ above sea level. McLeod is a refuge for Tibetans who fled their homes following the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama led them to this new mountain home, also a refuge for travelers to India who grow weary of the hot crowded hassle-ridden lowlands. Here there is much compassion and deafening silence, echoing cheerfully off snow-capped peaks.

Today the 14th Dalai Lama speaks at a three-day celebration of Tibetan culture. His presence is gentle power to an open heart. His message is compassion, which is the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism. This ideal emerged from the philosophies of Ghautama Buddha, who centuries earlier in northern India, recognized that of all the values revered in his native Hinduism, compassion was the only one that really mattered. The Dalai Lama does not blame the invasion by Chairman Mao’s Red Army for his people’s tribulations. He attributes the act to the karma of the Tibetan people themselves. He discourages divisive language of any kind since it creates a reality where dualistic thought becomes the paradigm. Without duality there can be no enemies. He encourages compassionate living as the path to good karma and nirvana. To en-courage is to be courageous. To dis-courage is cowardice.

This tiny village is living peace – heaven on earth. I have not seen a happier, more content or more compassionate people. I feel it in the simple gourmet food, in the sparse spotless hotel rooms that you pay for when you leave, in the suddenly smiling Westerners taken aback by the joy of the place, and in the Himalayan foothills that surround the village and remind me of my smallness – peaks now shrouded in gray-white billowy clouds through which even more remote villages come into view. This evening the sound of Tibetan gongs mingles with the chattering of rhesus monkeys and macaques playing in the surrounding forest. The few cars here carry Indian tourists back down the mountain, leaving in their wake a silence so profound that I feel every dry swallow and breath of air. The sun lays itself to rest over the Changra Valley and the gentle hand of the Buddha blankets McLeod Ganje in starry darkness.

After my usual breakfast of lemon curd cake and mint tea at the Toepa Restaurant, I begin my ascent towards the Tibetan children’s village, where a festival is in its second day. I pass dancing monks in outrageous costumes and a monastery where young monks debate with the fire of Fidel Castro. I can’t stop walking. Soon I arrive at Dal Lake. I turn left on a road heading up into the Daula Dar range. I pass through the village of Niddi, where Gadi nomadic herder girls tend their sheep and goats. At the next village of Talanu the pavement ends. I take a narrow winding dirt path around the side of a majestic mountain and suddenly, I am struck with awe.

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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.