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.

Your Body is Sacred: 3 Ways to Practice Embodied Spirituality

 

By Aletheia Luna

Guest writer for Wake Up World

Since the very beginning of all religious and spiritual drive, there has been a deep prejudice against the body.

The body has been called carnal, worldly, lustful, sinful, and illusory. At best, it has been thought of as mere dust, at worst, it has been thought of as a doorway to the devil himself.

What’s worse is that when the body has been celebrated (such as in many neo-tantric practices), it has been fetishised and in some ways objectified.

There’s no doubt about it: we’ve had a weird relationship with the body as a species.

On one hand, we either condemn it and try to subjugate it – on the other hand, we indulge it to the extreme. We tend to swing from one side to the other, never seeming to find a middle ground.

Thankfully, times are changing. We’re sick of treating our bodies as flesh suits to be ascetically denied or endlessly satiated. Instead, we’re beginning to understand and respect our bodies’ wisdom, intelligence, and profound connection to the truth of reality.

We’re starting to see that the body is a sacred doorway to the Soul and the sacred wild Spirit of Existence. 

But as always, seeing our bodies as sacred is not easy. There are layers upon layers of inherited beliefs, prejudice, and wounds that obscure our ability to see clearly. Not only that, but modern spirituality – with its tendency to emphasize disembodied “transcendence” – can make it extra hard for us to come into a healthy relationship with our bodies. This is why embodied spirituality is so desperately needed.

What is Embodied Spirituality?

Embodied spirituality refers to a lived experience of spirituality that is grounded in the body. When we embrace embodied spirituality, we come out of our minds and back into our bodies: into that which is visceral, instinctual, and deeply felt through the senses. We see that the body isn’t just a temple of the Divine, but a living expression of Spirit. As such, the body becomes a source of tremendous wisdom and insight: a doorway to the present moment. Not only do we see the body as sacred, but we see it as a microcosm of the macrocosm – it becomes a path to both the transcendent and immanent nature of the Divine.

Your Body is a Storehouse of Trauma 

As psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk writes in his book The Body Keeps Score:

The body keeps the score: … the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems

Renowned psychologist and trauma-expert Peter Levine goes on to write:

Traumatic symptoms not only affect our emotional and mental states, but our physical health as well.

And as psychotherapists C. Zweig and S. Wolf write:

We may forget an abuse, but the body does not. Like shock absorbers, our bodies absorb the wear and tear of emotional experience. We may defend against it, but our bodies take the heat. And slowly, over years, the patterns of stress and trauma accumulate. Inevitably, if we do not become conscious of the shadows lodged in our muscles and cells, they begin to tell their tales. 

As we can see, body and mind are not separate. Whatever painful experiences we undergo in life are stored within our bodies as trauma. This trauma manifests as muscle tension, mysterious aches and pains, ‘body armoring’ and holding patterns, autoimmune disorders, and endless other illnesses.

Without unpacking, exploring, and releasing what’s within our bodies, we remain frozen and unable to move forward. This is the first reason why developing a friendly approach to our bodies is crucial – it is a core element of spiritual healing and transformation.

Your Body is a Gateway to Spiritual Wisdom

Our bodies are also a storehouse of great wisdom.

As the great German philosopher Nietzsche once wrote:

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

And as Buddha once said:

The body is anchored in the here and now while the mind travels into the past and future.”

Although at a core level, we aren’t defined by our physical blood and bones, our bodies are an undeniably powerful gateway to the present moment. Not only do they anchor us into the Eternal Now (hence why many meditation techniques focus on the breath and body), but they are also insanely accurate truth-detectors. They help us to both tune-into what is true and real, on a visceral felt-level, and what is false.

Indeed, our bodies are great and multi-layered gifts. They carry an intelligence that predates the mind and an intuition that is directly aligned with the Soul.

As mythopoetic author and psychologist Marion Woodman writes,

This is your body, your greatest gift, pregnant with wisdom you do not hear, grief you thought was forgotten, and joy you have never known.

There is so much potential for healing, revelation, integration, and regenerative grounding on offer when we honor the body; when we practice embodied spirituality.

But … where do we start?

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LAO TZU’S 2500 YEAR-OLD MESSAGE TO ‘THE PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE’ TELLS HOW TO APPROACH OUR GLOBAL CRISIS

 

Dylan Charles, Editor

Waking Times

The lessons of 2020 just keep rolling in. Everything is being challenged, and so much that had been in the shadows forever is being illuminated by truth. Our system is totally unsustainable. It’s collapsing under the weight of its own hubris, and all of the things we thought brought us security and convenience are turning against us. It’s time to rethink all of it.

My sense is that we have drifted far from the true nature of life, and have grown dangerously out of balance, divided, and fragmented. Over time we have lost our ability to perceive life in its wholeness, and now, in the actual reality of living in a masked, socially distanced, self-isolating world of almost 8 billion people, this truth is unavoidably right in front of our faces.

Humans aren’t as mysterious as we’d like to believe. We’re creatures of habit, predictability and pattern, and we love to follow programs. By carefully observing the patterns in life, the sages and wisdom keepers of generations long gone were able to envision our current predicament.

I came across a passage from Lao Tzu’s the Hua Hu Ching, in which the venerable Lao Tzu seems to speak directly to us today in this time of great crisis. In an oration with a student, Lao Tzu explains how the human mind of the future will deteriorate into fragmentation, specifically noting that the intellectual element of the mind will take over.

“Kind prince, there is great power in an integrated and sincere mind. By keeping their minds whole and untouched, the ancient sages evolved profound mental and spiritual abilities. They understood that intellectual development by itself fragments the mind and can lead a person far from the true nature of life. In the future, humanity will overemphasize the intellectual element of the mind. Instead of recognizing the wholeness of life, people will perceive life as having a worldly aspect and a spiritual aspect that are separate and unrelated to each other. People will also lose themselves in isolated fragments of conceptual information and become the victims rather than the masters of their knowledge.” ~The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching and Hua Hu Ching, translated by Master Hua-Ching Ni

This sounds remarkably similar to the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor which sees the people of North America becoming dominated by the masculine, logical, intellectual mind, as represented by the eagle. The remedy for this is a reunification with the condor of South America, which represents the feminine, intuitive and empathetic qualities of the mind.

Lao Tzu goes on to comment on how we, ‘the people of the future,’ can rectify this situation, noting that we will become dependent on modern ideas which don’t serve us well, while shunning holistic knowledge which may be of great benefit to the times. He offers the following insight.

“The remedy for people of the future age of great confusion lies in the ancient knowledge of the integral way of life that has been passed down from generation to generation. The holistic way of life, practiced by the ancient sages incorporated body, mind and spirit as a whole in all activities. Their clothing, diet and dwellings were in accordance with nature. They relied on their limbs for transportation. Their education was broad and comprehensive; it did not emphasize one element of their being while neglecting the others. They did not seek out special activities for recreation; their work and recreation were one and the same. Their forms of exercise developed not only the body, but the mind and spirit as well, through the harmonization of internal energies. Their music functioned as a bridge between mind and spirit and was not just an emotional release. Their leaders were chosen because they were outstanding models of virtue, not for their financial or military capabilities. Philosophy, science and spiritual practice were incorporated as one whole.” ~The Complete Works of Lao Tzu: Tao Teh Ching and Hua Hu Ching, translated by Master Hua-Ching Ni

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What is Necessary is Conscience

COMPLETE HUMANITY

I know I have been radical with my expression on Facebook and the more time goes by the more I say as is, no pussyfoot around (I got this from my partner :)

It's too many of us in the spiritual, especially nondual circles that are in denial, clicked into a sheep mode, bamboozled, just like anyone else out there on the streets. You thought you are something special? Nope, the life right now shows very clearly that you just like your next door neighbor who will never know what satsang is. He actually has more chances to survive whats coming, he at least can dig, build, and grow stuff, you spent your years sitting around the stage listening to talks.

I did not know the extent of this bamboozling until probably now. I thought I was talking here to minds that can crack open, can discern, to beings that can stand in autonomy of their own being, but probably most just can't. The neurological groves are set too deep for the neurons not to follow the set direction. These are the times of sorting out of whos mind and nervous system can change and not be enslave by social conditioning of submission, who can walk out from the old paradigm being oblivious and live by default into being fully human who is able to stand in the midth of the storm, see, feel and make their own decisions. 

I was a witness of abuse yesterday when a young mother came out with her very little daughter, probably 8y.o, out of the store and the girl pull off her little mask, looking so sweet, like a true little California born angel with blue eyes and white wavy hair. "Pull your mask on", yelled the mother right besides me, she was so laud it hit me right in my heart. I stood there watching how they crossed the street and went into their car and took off. In the masks. I cried today into my partner chest, as I woke up and recalled this. It is not easy for me to see these things. And when people come here and say; there are much more serious atrocities then just wearing a mask, you don't understand that the mask its just a metaphor right now for submission, and it includes for me all the atrocities happening with humans who are naive, asleep, and enslaved by social conditioning. And why would I care so much that I put myself like that here so I alienated so many, even some of my friends? 

Why we care? Because our conscience don't let us not to. G.I.Gurdjieff said something that penetrated me long time ago:

"People are very fond of talking about morality. But morality is merely self-suggestion. What is necessary is conscience."

and:

“You must learn not what people round you consider good or bad, but to act in life as your conscience bids you. An untrammeled conscience will always know more than all the books and teachers put together.”

And yet, the bamboozling is so strong that conscience in a modern 'spiritual' man is almost nonexistent. Gurdjieff did talk about it that it is a great gift if a modern man was able to safeguard his conscience through the years of being conditioned to be a sheep of the society. I did not see it so clearly as through the times of this plandemic. 

People think I am this hard-core woman that can jump on the horse and charge into the battlefield. I am not really made up for the battlefield, I have very strong feminine qualities, developing masculine qualities as I go by exercising courage to speek my truth and be myself in the middle of the world going in the opposite direction. I have a few people who support this here and on my Youtube channel. I very much appreciate you, guys 

And if you are bamboozled: look up the latest CDC report that they released very quietly, maybe this will help, I start to doubt that I can be in any way helpful for you. 

Sending much love to all, bamboozled and free.

Elena

Why It Is Impossible to Prove That Viruses or Bacteria Cause Disease

NEED TO KNOW NEWS

Solitude vs Loneliness In Our Pandemic

Commentary by TLB Contributing Writer: Ken LaRive

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…

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Downloading Information from the Field Through Inner Silence

by Brandon West
Waking Times

“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.

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GRATITUDE

Learning from Indigenous Wisdom and Knowledge – To Change Society a Cultural Revolution in Activism is Needed.

by R. Teichmann

News Beacon Ireland

Foreword

About 30 years ago I met a young woman during a train ride and we began talking. During the conversation I asked her what she was doing and she replied that she was studying indigenous civilizations within her anthropology course. When I asked her why she was interested in this subject she replied (the exact words I do not remember after such a long time but I remember the essence): “We will need their knowledge to sort out the problems we’re faced with.”  I did not understand then what she was saying; or better I dismissed it, because what could it possibly be that these cultures (now barely existing and  still under threat from genocide) could contribute to the solving of modern day problems?

I recently attended a workshop with an Elder of the Wampanoag Nation, Manitonquat (Medicine Story). This article is my personal “digestion” of that weekend. I dedicate this to all fellow men and women who hold a vision for a better future and are working towards reaching that goal and especially to Manitonquat and his partner Ellika.

What is the issue?

Ever since I was a teenager, I realised that something was not right with the way we live and the longing to put things right has never left me. I have been active in quite a few movements and political organisations during my lifetime, trying to make the world a better place. I witnessed sectarianism, splits, infighting, movements getting hi-jacked to serve a certain agenda or co-opted to advance something they were originally opposed to, persons with big egos rising to the top to become “leaders”.

In that respect the best example I can think of was the rise of Joschka Fischer to the top of the German Green Party. As such he became Foreign Minister of a coalition government, composed of Social Democrats and Greens, and denounced everything the Greens and he himself previously stood for when he advocated waging war on an independent state, the then Yugoslavia, “on humanitarian grounds of course” without UN Mandate and contrary to international law and the German constitution. It was then that all my hopes to change something by engaging in that party faded and I left it in protest and disgust.  

Many parties and movements and even “alternative” communities seem to be ending in the dustbin of history without ever achieving their initial goals – leaving behind many disillusioned good people; people who invested time, work and money to achieve a better world and tackle the problems we are all faced with. And if they are successful they end up establishing their (or rather their leaders’) way and oppressing and dominating the remainder of society. Why is it that way? 

Fear and Isolation

Most of us agree that the current way society works (referred to throughout this article as ‘the system’) is not only unfit for purpose – i.e. ensuring that the needs of people, plants, animals and everything else surrounding us in the broadest sense are met – but is also based on isolation and fear.

The fear of not passing the test in school is where it begins. The fear of not getting a job comes next. Then the fear of losing that job. The fear of not being able to provide for your family. The fear of not being able to pay the next mortgage rate and losing the roof over your head. The fear of not being taken care of in sickness or old age. And then there is the fear of the unknown. That is why people shy away from consciously acknowledging that the system is unfit for purpose and begin to think about how it can be changed and what they can do, even though deep inside they are aware of this fact.

Any movement aiming to replace the failing system with something better must create an environment where people can lose their fear. How can that be done?

Since humanity replaced tribes with ever larger entities of social organisation, comprising more and more humans, the isolation of the individual human has increased. Instead of living in a society where you knew all members of your tribe on a very personal level, where decisions affecting the community were made together and swiftly implemented, we now live in towns and cities or even hubs where you hardly know your neighbours, let alone on a very personal level.

Our direct interactions with nature, to provide us with what we need to survive, are replaced by factory farms and visits to the supermarket.  Group creativity has been replaced with hours in front of that square screen in our living rooms or with spending hours shaking to synthetic music or with finding thrill in consuming “recreational” drugs. Even in the midst of thousands of other people around us, we have become more isolated than ever before.

Hand in hand with this development came the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Instead of being involved directly in decision making and implementing we now have a vote. A vote that changes nothing. Many begin to realize this as the ever less participation in elections indicates. The real power people once had has migrated to career politicians who are lobbied and sometimes financed by big corporations, which are financed by “too big to fail” banks, which are financed by central banks, which are controlled by a tiny elite who make all the vital decisions behind closed doors.

We may feel connected through the Internet, the so-called social media, but these connections are artificial, virtual. We are living virtual lives instead of real ones. The deep personal connection between humans and between humans and nature has been replaced with the illusion of it. Instead of talking to each other face-to-face and heart to heart we now send twitter messages, smileys and hit “Like” buttons. Instead of actually interacting with nature, we watch “Nature programs” on TV.

Isolation equals disempowerment. Humans feel helpless when isolated. People do not engage to replace the failing system with something better because they feel powerless or perceive the powers that shouldn’t be as being the normal state of affairs that cannot be altered. Resulting from the isolation from nature and fellow human, instead of developing their intrinsic individual spirituality and respect and understanding for everything that is, people follow various religions, look for gurus and ideologies to fulfill their need of spiritual community. This is exploited by those who want control and domination or, even worse, it is used to turn humans against each other.

Any movement aiming to replace the failing system with something better must create an environment where people can connect with one another on a deep personal level as well as with nature, which they are a part of.  How can that be done?

Fear and isolation are the necessary ingredients that allow the current system to linger on, to manipulate most of society, to prevent development and implementation of solutions to most problems and to allow domination, control and destruction on a massive scale.

The creation of an environment where fear and isolation are absent and that encourages direct contact with nature is a prerequisite for any attempt to effect meaningful and lasting change for the better for all of life on this planet. How can we create it?

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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

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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