To my surprise, a little farther down the river from Tacomi, Shiva appeared as a goddess instead of as the male deity revered in India today. She was the most beautiful female I had ever seen: her long-black hair was adorned with sparkling blue beads. She was wrapped in a silk sari that appeared to be made of intertwining blue and white scarves.
She looked up and smiled as I stood before her. A shiver of excitement shot through my body as our eyes met. She handed me a silver-bladed knife with a golden handle studded with jewels: rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The knife symbolized the ability to cut through the illusion of our seeming separation from the Divine. She helped me cut myself loose and set myself free from gender and the duality of male and female and all other divisive dualities such as reason versus emotion.
Right after my visionary meditation, I thought I must be making up what I had seen. First, Jesus appears as a Reiki Master guide? Tacomi made sense, he was Tibetan. Then, Shiva as a goddess? "Come on, Jack?" I thought to myself, "I must be full-of-it. I must have made all this up. Creative imagination. Anybody who knows anything, knows that Shiva is a male deity. "
But then, two days later, I read in Diane Stein’s book Essential Reiki that Buddha and later Jesus were connected to Reiki. During the lost years, Jesus had been seen in India. In addition, Stein referenced the evidence that Jesus also lived in India after the Resurrection. As radical and as far out as it sounds, I offer the following to you as food for thought. Consider the synchronicity as you read what psychic and medium, Laurel Steinhice, revealed to Diane Stein during a channeling session on the origins of Reiki.
"She [Laurel] described Reiki as having originated with the planet that also brought the many-armed gods and goddesses, to Earth, the root culture of what became pre-patriarchal India. The Indian god we know today as Shiva, female at that time, was responsible for bringing Reiki here, and she wants to be remembered for the gift. When the human body was designed, Reiki was incorporated into the genetic coding as a birthright of all people.
"Reiki is part of everyone of us. It was once universal and was never meant to be lost. Children of early Earth in the civilization we call Mu today, received Reiki training at the beginning of grade school. They received Reiki II at what we would define as junior high school age. Reiki III, the Teacher/Master’s training was required for educators and for anybody who wanted it."
"When the people of its root culture left the mainland of Mu to colonize India and Tibet, Reiki continued with them, though Mu was eventually lost. The Earth changes that destroyed first Mu and then Atlantis resulted in a severe cultural disorganization, causing the healing system to remain the knowledge of only a select few. When in the nineteenth century a Japanese man sought the origins of Jesus’ and the Buddha’s method of healing, he found them in the ancient remnants of Shiva’s early culture in the esoteric teachings of India."
Okay, Toto, let’s get back to Kansas. As out of the ordinary as the information I read in Diane Stein’s book is to conventional thinking, it was synchronistic for me. And I consider synchronicity as one of the ways the Divine communicates with us. But why does the Divine not just come right our and say things to us directly? Why is the truth not always out in the open? Why is there esoteric knowledge? Why do we have to seek the truth? How come the truth isn’t just handed to us on a silver platter if God so loves us? Why does the Divine play the peek-a-boo, I love you game? I'll share some possible answers to these questions for a future posting.
• Today, remember God is often winking at us with synchronicity. The daily dialogue with the Divine may take you into unexpected territory, and what is important is discerning the meaning for you. [Parts of the above are found in Words Become Flesh. See www.drsrj.com].
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tacomi's Gift of a Golden Lotus
When I first saw Tacomi, he was kneeling by a river. The Tibetan Buddhist monk, looked up at me and, before any words were exchanged, handed me a golden lotus.
Tacomi’s golden lotus was a harbinger of things to come not only in the inner world of my spiritual growth but in the outer world as well. Six years after he gave me this lovely flower, I was divinely directed to meet with a publisher who wanted to publish my first book. My jaw dropped in disbelief when I discovered that his publishing house in Philadelphia was named Golden Lotus. I did not stay with Golden Lotus as they ran into some financial difficulties.
Nonetheless, Golden Lotus proved to be a blessing. I learned how to independently publish my books. This meant no catering to the marketing concerns of a major publishing house. No trends to truncate the truth of my message. I could present the message I wanted to convey without compromise. Golden Lotus showed me that the important thing was to get a major distributor. And I did. Later on, I could consider allowing a major house to pick up my work undiluted as James Redfield and others had done.
Years after meeting Tacomi, he appeared to me again. This time in a dream in we went to a small hut and began our dialogue. Tacomi discussed the importance of mindfulness. “First, we must become mindful of our breath. With each breath, we come home.”
“You mean we can soothe ourselves by changing our breathing from rapid shallow breathing to slow deep breathing,” I said as I knew breathing was essential to managing our stress.
“Our tendency to look outside of ourselves for relief starts in our mother’s arms,” I said.
“Ah, but therein lies our solution,” he said. “By focusing on our breath, we learn to embrace, to cradle, our painful emotions: anger, fear, sadness, and hurt. Our breath is like the loving mother who gently cradles her baby in her loving arms to soothe her baby when the baby cries.”
“So we can cradle and contain our pain in the arms of our awareness as a mother cradles her precious baby,” I said.
• Today, when negative emotions arise, use the image of a mother holding her distressed infant in her arms. We create more pain by tensing against our painful feelings. Relax and soften the space around the area in your body where you feel the tension associated with your negative emotions, e.g., anger, anxiety, sadness.
Tacomi’s golden lotus was a harbinger of things to come not only in the inner world of my spiritual growth but in the outer world as well. Six years after he gave me this lovely flower, I was divinely directed to meet with a publisher who wanted to publish my first book. My jaw dropped in disbelief when I discovered that his publishing house in Philadelphia was named Golden Lotus. I did not stay with Golden Lotus as they ran into some financial difficulties.
Nonetheless, Golden Lotus proved to be a blessing. I learned how to independently publish my books. This meant no catering to the marketing concerns of a major publishing house. No trends to truncate the truth of my message. I could present the message I wanted to convey without compromise. Golden Lotus showed me that the important thing was to get a major distributor. And I did. Later on, I could consider allowing a major house to pick up my work undiluted as James Redfield and others had done.
Years after meeting Tacomi, he appeared to me again. This time in a dream in we went to a small hut and began our dialogue. Tacomi discussed the importance of mindfulness. “First, we must become mindful of our breath. With each breath, we come home.”
“You mean we can soothe ourselves by changing our breathing from rapid shallow breathing to slow deep breathing,” I said as I knew breathing was essential to managing our stress.
“Our tendency to look outside of ourselves for relief starts in our mother’s arms,” I said.
“Ah, but therein lies our solution,” he said. “By focusing on our breath, we learn to embrace, to cradle, our painful emotions: anger, fear, sadness, and hurt. Our breath is like the loving mother who gently cradles her baby in her loving arms to soothe her baby when the baby cries.”
“So we can cradle and contain our pain in the arms of our awareness as a mother cradles her precious baby,” I said.
• Today, when negative emotions arise, use the image of a mother holding her distressed infant in her arms. We create more pain by tensing against our painful feelings. Relax and soften the space around the area in your body where you feel the tension associated with your negative emotions, e.g., anger, anxiety, sadness.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
More on 1995 Meditation
The following is in response to requests for more details about the meditation that set the stage for my life-changing experience than I presented in Monday's posting.
After passing through seven gates, I saw before me a large white, classical-style temple with a gold dome and a large thick gold door. When I opened the thick (it appeared to be a foot wide in thickness) gold door, I saw Jesus standing before me in a white robe. Instantly, I dropped to one knee and bowed my head as a knight does before his king. I felt as though I were a knight who had just found the Holy Grail.
I was so surprised to suddenly find myself overcome by a deep and abiding love for Jesus. Tears filled my eyes. No words were spoken. Communication took place telepathically. My thoughts burst forth from the wellspring of love I felt as I silently declared to Jesus, "I’ve served you as a soldier." My mind flashed on an image of ancient Rome. I saw a man in my mind’s eye with whom my heart felt a deep kinship. Somehow the man seemed to be me in a different body. The man was wearing a metal helmet with a tightly-cropped red plume that was more brush-like than feathered. He also wore a form-fitting breastplate; it resembled the armor I had seen in movies about Roman times. The men under my command as this Roman soldier had followed my lead and become followers of Jesus the Christ.
I continued the telepathic communication by silently saying to Jesus, "I’ve served you as a healer of emotional problems. (I was referring to my current work as a psychologist). And now, presumably, I can serve you as a healer of physical problems.”
What was this? I was surprised. I had not thought of organizing my life around serving Jesus except on a few occasions. The first time was when I was in my early adolescence. It lasted for a few months before, during, and after receiving the sacrament of confirmation in the Episcopal Church at thirteen years old. Another time occurred when I was serving in the National Guard after I had returned home from basic training in the regular U.S. Army. Yet here I was spontaneously communicating these thoughts to Jesus from the depths of my heart and soul. Uncensored. Pure. Unqualified. No if’s, and’s or but’s, as my mother would say.
I may not have had the clear thought that I was serving Christ in my life as a psychologist; however, I loved my patients no matter how obnoxious the patterns of thinking and acting that brought them to therapy. I truly loved them unconditionally. In this sense, I practiced the commandment of love which Jesus gave us.
For example, Karen, one of my adult patients once said to me, chuckling as she spoke, “Dr. J., I could come in here and tell you I killed someone this week, and you would say, ‘That’s understandable, you were very upset.’” As ludicrous as this comment sounds, it reflected her feelings. She knew I would not condemn her, but be understanding and validating of her feelings. She felt accepted by me no matter what.
My graduate-school-trained mind was questioning why I was seeing Jesus since Reiki was originally Tibetan and later Japanese. I was puzzled. I thought, “Am I making this up? Why am I not seeing an Asian teacher? I was raised Episcopalian. Was that why I saw Jesus?” No. It was much more than that; I felt a deep love for and complete devotion to Jesus.
I felt as if I really did know and love Him in the flesh during Roman times as deeply as one knows and loves the members of one’s family. And it was a love and gratitude mixed with the devotion one feels for an admired and revered teacher whom one has gotten to know personally. Intermingled with these feelings was the loyalty as well as the readiness and willingness to die that a knight feels for his king.
It was with this feeling of deep, reverential love that I sipped the red wine from the Holy Communion Cup when He leaned forward and held out the Chalice for me to drink. The moment I swallowed the wine, the scene shifted and I was by a river. This was the first of three gifts I was to receive. In the next postings, I'll go into the significance of the next two spiritual teachers to appear in my meditation: the Tibetan monk Tacomi and Shiva as a goddess.
• Today, consider sharing any spiritual experiences you've had, no matter how unconventional or unusual. For we are entering an era where we are called to go beyond divisive dogma and doctrine to see where the daily dialogue with the Divine leads us.
After passing through seven gates, I saw before me a large white, classical-style temple with a gold dome and a large thick gold door. When I opened the thick (it appeared to be a foot wide in thickness) gold door, I saw Jesus standing before me in a white robe. Instantly, I dropped to one knee and bowed my head as a knight does before his king. I felt as though I were a knight who had just found the Holy Grail.
I was so surprised to suddenly find myself overcome by a deep and abiding love for Jesus. Tears filled my eyes. No words were spoken. Communication took place telepathically. My thoughts burst forth from the wellspring of love I felt as I silently declared to Jesus, "I’ve served you as a soldier." My mind flashed on an image of ancient Rome. I saw a man in my mind’s eye with whom my heart felt a deep kinship. Somehow the man seemed to be me in a different body. The man was wearing a metal helmet with a tightly-cropped red plume that was more brush-like than feathered. He also wore a form-fitting breastplate; it resembled the armor I had seen in movies about Roman times. The men under my command as this Roman soldier had followed my lead and become followers of Jesus the Christ.
I continued the telepathic communication by silently saying to Jesus, "I’ve served you as a healer of emotional problems. (I was referring to my current work as a psychologist). And now, presumably, I can serve you as a healer of physical problems.”
What was this? I was surprised. I had not thought of organizing my life around serving Jesus except on a few occasions. The first time was when I was in my early adolescence. It lasted for a few months before, during, and after receiving the sacrament of confirmation in the Episcopal Church at thirteen years old. Another time occurred when I was serving in the National Guard after I had returned home from basic training in the regular U.S. Army. Yet here I was spontaneously communicating these thoughts to Jesus from the depths of my heart and soul. Uncensored. Pure. Unqualified. No if’s, and’s or but’s, as my mother would say.
I may not have had the clear thought that I was serving Christ in my life as a psychologist; however, I loved my patients no matter how obnoxious the patterns of thinking and acting that brought them to therapy. I truly loved them unconditionally. In this sense, I practiced the commandment of love which Jesus gave us.
For example, Karen, one of my adult patients once said to me, chuckling as she spoke, “Dr. J., I could come in here and tell you I killed someone this week, and you would say, ‘That’s understandable, you were very upset.’” As ludicrous as this comment sounds, it reflected her feelings. She knew I would not condemn her, but be understanding and validating of her feelings. She felt accepted by me no matter what.
My graduate-school-trained mind was questioning why I was seeing Jesus since Reiki was originally Tibetan and later Japanese. I was puzzled. I thought, “Am I making this up? Why am I not seeing an Asian teacher? I was raised Episcopalian. Was that why I saw Jesus?” No. It was much more than that; I felt a deep love for and complete devotion to Jesus.
I felt as if I really did know and love Him in the flesh during Roman times as deeply as one knows and loves the members of one’s family. And it was a love and gratitude mixed with the devotion one feels for an admired and revered teacher whom one has gotten to know personally. Intermingled with these feelings was the loyalty as well as the readiness and willingness to die that a knight feels for his king.
It was with this feeling of deep, reverential love that I sipped the red wine from the Holy Communion Cup when He leaned forward and held out the Chalice for me to drink. The moment I swallowed the wine, the scene shifted and I was by a river. This was the first of three gifts I was to receive. In the next postings, I'll go into the significance of the next two spiritual teachers to appear in my meditation: the Tibetan monk Tacomi and Shiva as a goddess.
• Today, consider sharing any spiritual experiences you've had, no matter how unconventional or unusual. For we are entering an era where we are called to go beyond divisive dogma and doctrine to see where the daily dialogue with the Divine leads us.
Monday, May 24, 2010
My Life-Changing Experience
When I was in Budapest, Hungary in 1999, I learned that today is a holiday called Holy Spirit Monday, the day after Pentecost Sunday. In the daily dialogue with the Divine, I realized this was the perfect day to share my life-changing experience with you. {A more detailed description of all aspects and implications of my experience is found in The Space Between Stars and Words Become Flesh. See www.drsrj.com].
In the late fall of 1995, I was staying at an inn in Rockport, Massachusetts. It was situated right on the rocky coast. On Friday afternoon, I met Mercedes. She was a teacher of the ancient Tibetan and Japanese healing art of Reiki (rei means universal and ki means energy). She was offering a Reiki class that weekend. I felt drawn to take the class but, as a clinical psychologist, I did not see how I could use it in my practice.
Later that night, I was awakened by a purple light pulsating in the middle of my forehead. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. Sure I had had dreams but no light that seemed to be internal and external. The next day, I spoke to Mercedes. Mercedes indicated that it was part of a spiritual awakening taking place within me; it was related to the opening of my heart as a man. She referred to it as the rising of the kundalini, which is what the Hindu and the Tantric traditions call this awakening of the spiritual energy. I decided to take the class.
As part of the Reiki class, the students were brought face-to-face with their Reiki Master Guide in a guided meditation. I saw Christ and other people saw other spiritual teachers known or unknown. I had an unexpectedly emotional experience. I felt how I had first served Christ as a soldier, pictures of ancient Rome flashed in my mind (I'll go into the benefits and drawbacks of focusing on past lives for our spiritual growth in a future posting), and later as a healer of emotional problems. Now, with Reiki, presumably, I would be able to ease physical suffering as well. I tried to keep an open mind, but at the same time, I remained skeptical. I was raised Episcopalian, so was I simply seeing Christ because of my background?
Two other Reiki Master Guides appeared: Tacomi, a Buddhist monk, and Shiva as a Hindu Goddess and not as a male deity. I began to doubt what I had experienced. However, a week later I read in a book on Reiki that in the ancient civilization of India, Shiva was a Goddess and she was credited as bringing Reiki to the planet. The synchronicity stunned me.
That night at three o’clock in the morning, I was again awakened by the pulsating purple light in the middle of my forehead. Following my Reiki teacher’s advice, I called on my Reiki Master Guide saying, “I call on my Reiki Master Guide, Lord Jesus Christ. If this is good for me as my Reiki teacher says, I surrender to it. If not I ask you to protect me from it.” With that, it was as though a dark cloud passed over my eyes. I later learned it was my fear leaving. What followed was the most beautiful white light; it fluttered like a huge butterfly, and, being biased by my current setting, an inn by the sea, I thought it to be about the size of a sea gull.
The light had a loving consciousness and presence about it, as it hovered in front of me. Suddenly, it struck me in the forehead in the area some sacred spiritual traditions call the third eye. I felt a sudden surge of electrical energy that shot down my body from head to toe and then back again.
From my background as an Episcopalian, I believed that I had been visited by the pure white light of the divine love that emanates from the Holy Spirit. Years later, an elderly Christian minister from Scotland confirmed my interpretation of my experience with the white light. He exclaimed to me in his heavy Scottish accent, “Goodness, gracious, laddie, ye’ve been anointed with the geeft of healing by the Holy Spirit!” My heart knew what he said but now my head was ready. I thought to myself, "Yes, I see what you mean. You call on Christ for help and a white light in the form of a dove comes, strikes you on the forehead, and sends an electrifying energy through you, after which, you can transmit a healing energy."
Two days after my experience, I was reading a more detailed story of Dr. Mikao Usui who rediscovered Reiki during the 1850’s in Japan. I was astonished as I read that while he was meditating on mount Koriyama, a white light came to him in the dark hours before the dawn. It hovered in front of his face and then struck him in the forehead. Visions of violet-colored symbols flooded his awareness. When he awakened in the morning, he discovered he had the ability to transmit a healing energy to himself and to others. The parallel between my experience and Dr. Usui’s stunned me. I continue to feel humbled and honored by what happened to me.
• Today, consider how the Holy Spirit is availble to all of us. It's not about religion. The Spirit of God is love and love is an energy that is everywhere from the tiniest subatomic particles to the vastness of interstellar space. Each day, we all have the choice to exercise our capacity to transmit the healing energy of love to ourselves and others. Happy Holy Spirit Monday!
In the late fall of 1995, I was staying at an inn in Rockport, Massachusetts. It was situated right on the rocky coast. On Friday afternoon, I met Mercedes. She was a teacher of the ancient Tibetan and Japanese healing art of Reiki (rei means universal and ki means energy). She was offering a Reiki class that weekend. I felt drawn to take the class but, as a clinical psychologist, I did not see how I could use it in my practice.
Later that night, I was awakened by a purple light pulsating in the middle of my forehead. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. Sure I had had dreams but no light that seemed to be internal and external. The next day, I spoke to Mercedes. Mercedes indicated that it was part of a spiritual awakening taking place within me; it was related to the opening of my heart as a man. She referred to it as the rising of the kundalini, which is what the Hindu and the Tantric traditions call this awakening of the spiritual energy. I decided to take the class.
As part of the Reiki class, the students were brought face-to-face with their Reiki Master Guide in a guided meditation. I saw Christ and other people saw other spiritual teachers known or unknown. I had an unexpectedly emotional experience. I felt how I had first served Christ as a soldier, pictures of ancient Rome flashed in my mind (I'll go into the benefits and drawbacks of focusing on past lives for our spiritual growth in a future posting), and later as a healer of emotional problems. Now, with Reiki, presumably, I would be able to ease physical suffering as well. I tried to keep an open mind, but at the same time, I remained skeptical. I was raised Episcopalian, so was I simply seeing Christ because of my background?
Two other Reiki Master Guides appeared: Tacomi, a Buddhist monk, and Shiva as a Hindu Goddess and not as a male deity. I began to doubt what I had experienced. However, a week later I read in a book on Reiki that in the ancient civilization of India, Shiva was a Goddess and she was credited as bringing Reiki to the planet. The synchronicity stunned me.
That night at three o’clock in the morning, I was again awakened by the pulsating purple light in the middle of my forehead. Following my Reiki teacher’s advice, I called on my Reiki Master Guide saying, “I call on my Reiki Master Guide, Lord Jesus Christ. If this is good for me as my Reiki teacher says, I surrender to it. If not I ask you to protect me from it.” With that, it was as though a dark cloud passed over my eyes. I later learned it was my fear leaving. What followed was the most beautiful white light; it fluttered like a huge butterfly, and, being biased by my current setting, an inn by the sea, I thought it to be about the size of a sea gull.
The light had a loving consciousness and presence about it, as it hovered in front of me. Suddenly, it struck me in the forehead in the area some sacred spiritual traditions call the third eye. I felt a sudden surge of electrical energy that shot down my body from head to toe and then back again.
From my background as an Episcopalian, I believed that I had been visited by the pure white light of the divine love that emanates from the Holy Spirit. Years later, an elderly Christian minister from Scotland confirmed my interpretation of my experience with the white light. He exclaimed to me in his heavy Scottish accent, “Goodness, gracious, laddie, ye’ve been anointed with the geeft of healing by the Holy Spirit!” My heart knew what he said but now my head was ready. I thought to myself, "Yes, I see what you mean. You call on Christ for help and a white light in the form of a dove comes, strikes you on the forehead, and sends an electrifying energy through you, after which, you can transmit a healing energy."
Two days after my experience, I was reading a more detailed story of Dr. Mikao Usui who rediscovered Reiki during the 1850’s in Japan. I was astonished as I read that while he was meditating on mount Koriyama, a white light came to him in the dark hours before the dawn. It hovered in front of his face and then struck him in the forehead. Visions of violet-colored symbols flooded his awareness. When he awakened in the morning, he discovered he had the ability to transmit a healing energy to himself and to others. The parallel between my experience and Dr. Usui’s stunned me. I continue to feel humbled and honored by what happened to me.
• Today, consider how the Holy Spirit is availble to all of us. It's not about religion. The Spirit of God is love and love is an energy that is everywhere from the tiniest subatomic particles to the vastness of interstellar space. Each day, we all have the choice to exercise our capacity to transmit the healing energy of love to ourselves and others. Happy Holy Spirit Monday!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Still the Storm
Still the Storm of Stress: Accessing the Peace of Your Spirit . . .
Let your breathing be slow and deep as you affirm the following. Breathe in and silently say, “I AM an extension of God,” and breathing out silently say, “the Almighty I AM.” Breathing in, silently say, “I AM in this world,” and, breathing out, silently say, “but not of this world.
I AM not my hungers and desires. I AM the expanded and formless awareness who is aware of the smaller awareness encased in my body. I AM the expanded, formless me who is aware of the contracted little me feeling the inner storms of hunger, desire, anger, and fear.
I AM the one who experiences all that is occurring within the spaciousness of my awareness without trying to change any of it. I AM still, and from this still space between breaths, I watch and listen, see and hear, whatever thoughts, feelings, desires, and impulses arise in the spaciousness of my awareness.”
Reflect on how stress relief is found in the space between breaths and between desire and satisfaction, between impulse and action, between pain and the relief of pain. Silently say, “I AM the higher consciousness who can provide solace when stress strikes the smaller consciousness inhabiting my body.
I AM the awareness at the apex of the triangle of awareness, looking down on the two points below: the stress and the desire for relief, between desire and satisfaction, between impulse and action, between pain and the relief of pain.
I AM the expanded awareness who is aware of the space between these two states. I watch without reacting to the itch and the urge to scratch and remove the itch. I AM the expansive awareness of all that I experience as an embodied soul through my human form.
I AM the awareness who is experiencing hunger and the desire to eat to remove that hunger. I AM the pure and loving consciousness who is aware of what is and what the little-embodied-soul me would love to have happen.
I AM the awareness who hovers in the stillness of the space between what the embodied soul does not want and what the embodied soul does want. I AM the larger awareness watching over the smaller awareness inhabiting my body. I watch as this smaller awareness is constantly assailed by the endless desires arising in my mind-body impelling me to action.
I AM the loving awareness in the still space between breaths . . . I AM not a mere shadow cast upon the ground . . . I AM a sun . . . a radiant star . . . I AM not an absence of light limited to the contours of my body . . . I AM a light in the darkness shining beyond my body. For God is love, and, since I AM made in the image of God, I AM love extending vertically to touch the stars and horizontally to embrace the Earth!”
• Today, from time to time, still the storm of stress by simply taking a slow, deep breath and remiding yourself, "I AM the spacious awareness who is aware of all I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I AM not the content of what comes into my awareness. I AM the process of being aware of all that arises within and around me. (The above is taken from The Space Between Stars. See www.drsrj.com)
Let your breathing be slow and deep as you affirm the following. Breathe in and silently say, “I AM an extension of God,” and breathing out silently say, “the Almighty I AM.” Breathing in, silently say, “I AM in this world,” and, breathing out, silently say, “but not of this world.
I AM not my hungers and desires. I AM the expanded and formless awareness who is aware of the smaller awareness encased in my body. I AM the expanded, formless me who is aware of the contracted little me feeling the inner storms of hunger, desire, anger, and fear.
I AM the one who experiences all that is occurring within the spaciousness of my awareness without trying to change any of it. I AM still, and from this still space between breaths, I watch and listen, see and hear, whatever thoughts, feelings, desires, and impulses arise in the spaciousness of my awareness.”
Reflect on how stress relief is found in the space between breaths and between desire and satisfaction, between impulse and action, between pain and the relief of pain. Silently say, “I AM the higher consciousness who can provide solace when stress strikes the smaller consciousness inhabiting my body.
I AM the awareness at the apex of the triangle of awareness, looking down on the two points below: the stress and the desire for relief, between desire and satisfaction, between impulse and action, between pain and the relief of pain.
I AM the expanded awareness who is aware of the space between these two states. I watch without reacting to the itch and the urge to scratch and remove the itch. I AM the expansive awareness of all that I experience as an embodied soul through my human form.
I AM the awareness who is experiencing hunger and the desire to eat to remove that hunger. I AM the pure and loving consciousness who is aware of what is and what the little-embodied-soul me would love to have happen.
I AM the awareness who hovers in the stillness of the space between what the embodied soul does not want and what the embodied soul does want. I AM the larger awareness watching over the smaller awareness inhabiting my body. I watch as this smaller awareness is constantly assailed by the endless desires arising in my mind-body impelling me to action.
I AM the loving awareness in the still space between breaths . . . I AM not a mere shadow cast upon the ground . . . I AM a sun . . . a radiant star . . . I AM not an absence of light limited to the contours of my body . . . I AM a light in the darkness shining beyond my body. For God is love, and, since I AM made in the image of God, I AM love extending vertically to touch the stars and horizontally to embrace the Earth!”
• Today, from time to time, still the storm of stress by simply taking a slow, deep breath and remiding yourself, "I AM the spacious awareness who is aware of all I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. I AM not the content of what comes into my awareness. I AM the process of being aware of all that arises within and around me. (The above is taken from The Space Between Stars. See www.drsrj.com)
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Instant Inner Freedom
We feel the pressure and pain of stress as we perceive the gap between what is and what we would love to have happen. We then seek relief by attempting to close the gap. The cycle never ends. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a huge rock up a hill in Hades only to have it repeatedly roll back down. This is a beautiful portrayal of the endless cycle that is woven into the fabric of human existence. We are briefly fulfilled only to have the cycle of desire followed by relief return to desire start all over again.
Pain causes us to seek relief and seeking relief causes more pain. Accepting our pain is the first step to true relief. The oyster transforms the painful grain of sand into a pearl by accepting and then wrapping the painful irritation in layers of soft tissue. By accepting our emotional pain, we transform it into the priceless pearl of peace.
Acceptance leads to peace. To accept whatever is happening in our life brings peace. Even accepting our hate of the situation and our wish to change it is a move toward liberation. The first step to peace is accepting what is without trying to change it. As we fully face the gap that leads to stress, we can take steps to close it.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus describes how Sisyphus finds freedom, peace, and happiness by accepting his struggle:
". . . the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory . . . The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Like Sisyphus, we begin to find freedom, peace, and happiness as we accept the fact that each time we seem to successfully close the gap that gives rise to stress, it is only temporary. We must accept life as a creative struggle and just keep rolling the rock up the hill.
• Today, notice that some of the tension in your body is relieved as you accept that the process of desiring is endless. Just the recognition of the desire-satisfaction-desire cycle is liberating. Once we fulfill one desire another follows. The problem is in expecting some kind of final or lasting satisfaction. The rock never stays put on the top of the hill. Meditation (see blog posting Like the Morning Mist 5/7/10) can help us find freedom in being more conscious of the desires/feelings arising moment to moment and the choices we make of which desires to act on. Just take a few minutes to sit quietly somewhere. Turn off the phone. Lock the door to your office, or go to the park. Close your eyes, take some slow, deep breaths, relax, and simply watch and listen, see and hear, what desires (thoughts and feelings) arise in the spaciousness of your awareness. Parts of the above are taken from A Matter of Love. (See www.drsrj.com).
Pain causes us to seek relief and seeking relief causes more pain. Accepting our pain is the first step to true relief. The oyster transforms the painful grain of sand into a pearl by accepting and then wrapping the painful irritation in layers of soft tissue. By accepting our emotional pain, we transform it into the priceless pearl of peace.
Acceptance leads to peace. To accept whatever is happening in our life brings peace. Even accepting our hate of the situation and our wish to change it is a move toward liberation. The first step to peace is accepting what is without trying to change it. As we fully face the gap that leads to stress, we can take steps to close it.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus describes how Sisyphus finds freedom, peace, and happiness by accepting his struggle:
". . . the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory . . . The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Like Sisyphus, we begin to find freedom, peace, and happiness as we accept the fact that each time we seem to successfully close the gap that gives rise to stress, it is only temporary. We must accept life as a creative struggle and just keep rolling the rock up the hill.
• Today, notice that some of the tension in your body is relieved as you accept that the process of desiring is endless. Just the recognition of the desire-satisfaction-desire cycle is liberating. Once we fulfill one desire another follows. The problem is in expecting some kind of final or lasting satisfaction. The rock never stays put on the top of the hill. Meditation (see blog posting Like the Morning Mist 5/7/10) can help us find freedom in being more conscious of the desires/feelings arising moment to moment and the choices we make of which desires to act on. Just take a few minutes to sit quietly somewhere. Turn off the phone. Lock the door to your office, or go to the park. Close your eyes, take some slow, deep breaths, relax, and simply watch and listen, see and hear, what desires (thoughts and feelings) arise in the spaciousness of your awareness. Parts of the above are taken from A Matter of Love. (See www.drsrj.com).
Monday, May 17, 2010
Insight into Suffering Provides Some Relief
In the Woody Allen film Annie Hall, Alvie Singer (Woody Allen) says to Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) that life is made up of “the horrible and the miserable.” The horrible includes people who are suffering from such things as being “blind” or “crippled.” The miserable includes “all the rest of us.” A joke. And yet, it contains a core truth about the pain involved in being human.
In line with this, it was over 2500 years ago that Buddha taught that, “Life is suffering.” He also revealed how to overcome suffering and find enlightenment. Finding relief from our suffering is a central theme of all of my books.
While I was watching the film Life or Something Like It, I found myself reflecting on the human suffering we experience when confronting our mortality. Faced with the prospect of dying in one week, Lanie (Angelina Jolie) is a young, beautiful television news reporter who finds her true self. Her awakening is given a boost by her cameraman Pete (Ed Burns). Pete confronts her by calling her life “a meaningless quest for the approval of others.”
This is our choice: Will we engage in the meaningful inner quest for our true self where we discover our heart? Or, will we engage in the meaningless outer quest for fulfillment in the outer world?
As I left the movie, I felt a deep compassion in my heart for how much suffering there is in the world. I found myself thinking of all the suffering I have seen among my loved ones. Earlier in the day, I was at a store where I saw a little boy, a toddler. His tiny hands were misshapened. They resembled lobster claws. As I watched him toddling along next to his father, I could see how much his father loved and cherished him. And then I felt a clenching in my heart. I imagined how it might be for this innocent little boy as he went through school. Kids can be so cruel when someone is physically different. Then something surprising happened. I felt a twinge of pain in my heart as I contemplated his future along with a peaceful acceptance of how painful life can be.
What causes emotional suffering? Stress. Once again, I define stress as the pressure we feel from the perceived gap between what we would love to have happen in any given situation and our ability to attain it. For example, Robert, a tenth grader I saw when I was giving a seminar in Boston, felt the painful pressure from this gap. He had been confined to a wheelchair all of his childhood and doctors told him he would never be able to walk. Now that he was in high school, he was facing his disability head on. The result was anxiety coupled with a compelling desire to hurt himself.
As he and I talked about it, we uncovered just what his wish to hurt himself was telling him. “I hate myself for being in this wheelchair. And that’s because, I’d love it if I could walk like other kids!” Peace came only after Robert began to accept the truth of the gap between what he would love—the ability to walk—and his inability to overcome his paralysis.
Later today, I saw another toddler, a little girl, grab on to her mother’s leg. She held on for dear life. Her mother was about to go out to her car to turn off the car alarm that had been set off by accident. The woman in line next to them, a stranger, offered to stay with the little girl until the mother returned. However, the mother recognized her child’s need for her mommy and said, “Thanks for offering but she’ll cry even louder if I leave her.”
This clinging is understandable when we are little but so many of us remain clingy as adults. It is no longer our mother whom we cling to, it is her later emotional substitutes: our loved ones, bank accounts, possessions, and so forth. This clinging is the essence of what Buddha meant when he taught that attachment causes suffering. The suffering of the little girl as she clings to her mother is a perfect symbol for human suffering. At various times, we are all in a symbolic sense like that little girl clinging to mommy.
• Today, consider how it is not only that attachment causes suffering because of the loss of the person or object we are attached to. It is the fear of that loss, its imminent possibility, that tortures and torments us. Desire causes suffering since desiring is longing to have something. We feel tension in our body. We long for love and when someone shows us love, we feel momentarily fulfilled. We hunger for food and when we eat, we relax. But when the gap is too great or impossible to bridge, as it was for Robert, we suffer. Next time, we'll see how we can find solace in the recognition that nothing lasts.
In line with this, it was over 2500 years ago that Buddha taught that, “Life is suffering.” He also revealed how to overcome suffering and find enlightenment. Finding relief from our suffering is a central theme of all of my books.
While I was watching the film Life or Something Like It, I found myself reflecting on the human suffering we experience when confronting our mortality. Faced with the prospect of dying in one week, Lanie (Angelina Jolie) is a young, beautiful television news reporter who finds her true self. Her awakening is given a boost by her cameraman Pete (Ed Burns). Pete confronts her by calling her life “a meaningless quest for the approval of others.”
This is our choice: Will we engage in the meaningful inner quest for our true self where we discover our heart? Or, will we engage in the meaningless outer quest for fulfillment in the outer world?
As I left the movie, I felt a deep compassion in my heart for how much suffering there is in the world. I found myself thinking of all the suffering I have seen among my loved ones. Earlier in the day, I was at a store where I saw a little boy, a toddler. His tiny hands were misshapened. They resembled lobster claws. As I watched him toddling along next to his father, I could see how much his father loved and cherished him. And then I felt a clenching in my heart. I imagined how it might be for this innocent little boy as he went through school. Kids can be so cruel when someone is physically different. Then something surprising happened. I felt a twinge of pain in my heart as I contemplated his future along with a peaceful acceptance of how painful life can be.
What causes emotional suffering? Stress. Once again, I define stress as the pressure we feel from the perceived gap between what we would love to have happen in any given situation and our ability to attain it. For example, Robert, a tenth grader I saw when I was giving a seminar in Boston, felt the painful pressure from this gap. He had been confined to a wheelchair all of his childhood and doctors told him he would never be able to walk. Now that he was in high school, he was facing his disability head on. The result was anxiety coupled with a compelling desire to hurt himself.
As he and I talked about it, we uncovered just what his wish to hurt himself was telling him. “I hate myself for being in this wheelchair. And that’s because, I’d love it if I could walk like other kids!” Peace came only after Robert began to accept the truth of the gap between what he would love—the ability to walk—and his inability to overcome his paralysis.
Later today, I saw another toddler, a little girl, grab on to her mother’s leg. She held on for dear life. Her mother was about to go out to her car to turn off the car alarm that had been set off by accident. The woman in line next to them, a stranger, offered to stay with the little girl until the mother returned. However, the mother recognized her child’s need for her mommy and said, “Thanks for offering but she’ll cry even louder if I leave her.”
This clinging is understandable when we are little but so many of us remain clingy as adults. It is no longer our mother whom we cling to, it is her later emotional substitutes: our loved ones, bank accounts, possessions, and so forth. This clinging is the essence of what Buddha meant when he taught that attachment causes suffering. The suffering of the little girl as she clings to her mother is a perfect symbol for human suffering. At various times, we are all in a symbolic sense like that little girl clinging to mommy.
• Today, consider how it is not only that attachment causes suffering because of the loss of the person or object we are attached to. It is the fear of that loss, its imminent possibility, that tortures and torments us. Desire causes suffering since desiring is longing to have something. We feel tension in our body. We long for love and when someone shows us love, we feel momentarily fulfilled. We hunger for food and when we eat, we relax. But when the gap is too great or impossible to bridge, as it was for Robert, we suffer. Next time, we'll see how we can find solace in the recognition that nothing lasts.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Hearing with Your Heart (HEAR–T)
You may recall the transformation of Scrooge, especially as depicted in the 1951 film version of Charles Dickens's classic story, A Christmas Carol. In the beginning of the story, Scrooge’s constricted heart is expressed by his stooped posture and stingy movements. At the end of the story, he is physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually transformed. He is literally jumping for joy as he cries out, “I’m as giddy as a drunken man. I’m as silly as a school boy.” He is so transformed that his housekeeper thinks he has gone crazy.
Stress can cause us to constrict our hearts as we tense up all over. The muscles around our blood vessels tighten and restrict the flow of blood from our heart. The letters of the word heart give us the clue of how to open our hearts and return to love when stress strikes us. We need to hear and feel with our hearts what our anger, fear, sadness are “t”—telling us so we can transform the constricted energy of our negative emotions back into the expansive energy of love.
We simply express from our hearts what the painful negative emotions of fear, anger, sadness and depression tell us. By expressing them fully and shifting them back to love, we transform them back into the expansive energy of love and joy. We release the trapped treasure of love inside our heart. In short, we return to love as we open our hearts to hear what our negative emotions are “t”– telling us.To do this, we start with the negative emotion and then we shift it to hate and then to love in the following manner. Eventually, as in the blog posting Like the Morning Mist 5/7/10, we can simply skip the hate part and go right to stating what we would love to have happen.
• Today, when negative emotions arise, practice hearing with your heart by doing the following. You shift your focus first and your emotional will follow.
My anger, fear, sadness, or depression, etc., is telling me that
I hate it when____. And that’s because, I love it when____.
Stress can cause us to constrict our hearts as we tense up all over. The muscles around our blood vessels tighten and restrict the flow of blood from our heart. The letters of the word heart give us the clue of how to open our hearts and return to love when stress strikes us. We need to hear and feel with our hearts what our anger, fear, sadness are “t”—telling us so we can transform the constricted energy of our negative emotions back into the expansive energy of love.
We simply express from our hearts what the painful negative emotions of fear, anger, sadness and depression tell us. By expressing them fully and shifting them back to love, we transform them back into the expansive energy of love and joy. We release the trapped treasure of love inside our heart. In short, we return to love as we open our hearts to hear what our negative emotions are “t”– telling us.To do this, we start with the negative emotion and then we shift it to hate and then to love in the following manner. Eventually, as in the blog posting Like the Morning Mist 5/7/10, we can simply skip the hate part and go right to stating what we would love to have happen.
• Today, when negative emotions arise, practice hearing with your heart by doing the following. You shift your focus first and your emotional will follow.
My anger, fear, sadness, or depression, etc., is telling me that
I hate it when____. And that’s because, I love it when____.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Mind, Matter, Love & Stress
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, the study of matter, I can say this as the result of my research on the atom: there is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists by virtue of a force that brings the particles of the atom to vibration and holds the minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of matter.
—Max Planck, physicist who received a Nobel Prize for his research on the atom
Consider how your mind, your mental focus, is the matrix of what matters materializes in your life. Now, what is this force that brings the particles to vibration and holds the minute solar system of the atom together? Could it be the following?
“The principle which gives thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object and therefore to master every adverse human experience is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle inherent in all things . . . there is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible.”
—Charles Haanel, author of The Master Key System which presents a system for manifesting what one wants in life
Now, how might the above insights apply to the stress in our lives?
Stress can be defined as the pressure we feel from the perceived gap or space between what is and what we would love to have happen in a given situation. This includes our perceived ability or inability to attain what we would love to have happen. This gap or space is the primary source of human suffering. It hooks our hearts and leads us to feel tense, nervous, angry, anxious, sad or depressed and/or just plain upset. The stress may range from catastrophes like the death of a loved one to the little irritations of daily life such as waiting in rush hour traffic, having a million things to do and not enough time to do them, or having a conflict with someone at home or work.
• Today, will you focus on bringing to vibration the particles of what you would love to materialize in your life? After all, your mind, your mental focus, is the matrix for materializing what “matters” to you. And, love is the underlying energy fueling all of our emotions: fear, anger, and so forth (see blog post The "E" in Emotion 3/23/10). Now, ask yourself, “Do I fill the space between what I would love to have happen and what is happening by focusing on the desired outcome or the feared outcome?” For example, if you were a golfer with a pond between you and the green, would you allow fear to force you to focus on the pond? Or, would you allow love to lift you up by focusing on the ball landing safely on the green? Of course, you may want to clear your fear by doing the shift your focus and energy technique (see previous blog post Redeem the Reactive Reptile 3/26/10 ).
—Max Planck, physicist who received a Nobel Prize for his research on the atom
Consider how your mind, your mental focus, is the matrix of what matters materializes in your life. Now, what is this force that brings the particles to vibration and holds the minute solar system of the atom together? Could it be the following?
“The principle which gives thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object and therefore to master every adverse human experience is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle inherent in all things . . . there is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible.”
—Charles Haanel, author of The Master Key System which presents a system for manifesting what one wants in life
Now, how might the above insights apply to the stress in our lives?
Stress can be defined as the pressure we feel from the perceived gap or space between what is and what we would love to have happen in a given situation. This includes our perceived ability or inability to attain what we would love to have happen. This gap or space is the primary source of human suffering. It hooks our hearts and leads us to feel tense, nervous, angry, anxious, sad or depressed and/or just plain upset. The stress may range from catastrophes like the death of a loved one to the little irritations of daily life such as waiting in rush hour traffic, having a million things to do and not enough time to do them, or having a conflict with someone at home or work.
• Today, will you focus on bringing to vibration the particles of what you would love to materialize in your life? After all, your mind, your mental focus, is the matrix for materializing what “matters” to you. And, love is the underlying energy fueling all of our emotions: fear, anger, and so forth (see blog post The "E" in Emotion 3/23/10). Now, ask yourself, “Do I fill the space between what I would love to have happen and what is happening by focusing on the desired outcome or the feared outcome?” For example, if you were a golfer with a pond between you and the green, would you allow fear to force you to focus on the pond? Or, would you allow love to lift you up by focusing on the ball landing safely on the green? Of course, you may want to clear your fear by doing the shift your focus and energy technique (see previous blog post Redeem the Reactive Reptile 3/26/10 ).
Monday, May 10, 2010
Finding the Eternal in the External
One night, during the period of my spiritual growth I called the autumn of my soul, Tacomi, a Tibetan Buddhist monk appeared in a dream. . . .
Tacomi smiled and said, “There is a teaching that may help you better understand my position on feeling compassion for the Chinese Communists who took over Tibet. It is the teaching of the very beautiful bodhisattva named Sadaparibhuta who is called the Never Disparaging or Never Despising Buddha. He would go up to a person and say: ‘You are someone of great value. You are a future buddha. I see this potential in you!’ Since people were not in touch with the ultimate dimension, the message would be rejected—”
“Excuse me, but what do you mean by the ultimate dimension?” I asked.
“We are like waves on a vast ocean. The ocean is the ultimate dimension; it is our true identity. Whereas the wave that we are is our historical identity as a specific person in a specific body in a particular place and time. In reality, we are interdependent waves that are all equally part of the ocean. Where does one wave begin and the other wave start? It’s silly to compare ourselves. I’m a bigger wave than he is. She is a prettier wave than I am. In this sea of the spiritual energy of love and compassion, we are all one. Our task is to bring our compassion into the historical dimension of our day-to-day life.”
“I see,” I said. “We are waves who think we are separate, apart from each other; instead we are all a part of an endless energy ocean of loving-kindness.”
Tacomi then picked up where he left off. “Unaware of their ultimate nature, people would feel that they were being mocked. They would attack this bodhisattva. When he was persecuted and chased out of a village, he would call back: ‘I do not hold you in contempt! You are all treading the path, and shall all become buddhas!’”
“So, would it be safe to say, that his mission was to help people to get in touch with their ultimate nature?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “By seeing their ultimate goodness, they could live joyfully in peace and freedom. And they could relieve the suffering brought on by fear, despair, and anxiety. We must help people recognize that they are manifestations of the ultimate. We must free others of the suffering of a negative self-image. When we engage in this practice, we are doing the practice of the Never Disparaging Buddha or Never Despising Buddha.”
“We’re not supposed to have a self-image, are we?” I queried.
“True, we are not to identify with, or place our worth on, the impermanent things in the world. I am an awakened one, a buddha inside and I am to manifest this in my life. I am not my job, my car, my wealth, and so on. All that is impermanent and can change. But my inner spiritual nature is unchanging.”
“So we do not base our worth on externals, “I said. “We must not see ourselves as separate waves of different shapes and sizes. We are to base our worth on the eternal energy of the ocean of love and compassion within us. We should recognize our capacity and that of others to become an enlightened, kind, and compassionate buddha, an awakened one.
“Hey, I just noticed something,” I said. “When you remove the letter x in external you get eternal. A divine sign that removing external things from our focus helps us see the eternal? I guess x marks the center of the crosshairs of our external focus. Focused on externals, we are riflemen ready to fire in anger at others. We miss the eternal in ourselves and others. We must x-out (cross out) things to be enlightened. This way, we don’t grasp or harm others?”
Tacomi laughed. “Clever play on words. Now getting back to this buddha,” he said, “we must never give up on a person with low self-esteem and that includes never giving up on ourselves as well.”
“I suppose,” I said, “we should not lose patience with a person with low self-esteem. And we should always help others with low self-esteem see their true nature as essentially good.”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “And as Never Disparaging or Never Despising Buddhas, we must give the message: ‘You are already a buddha in the ultimate spiritual dimension; now you just have to manifest it in the historical dimension of your daily life.’ We must help remove feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem.”
“But so often,” I said, “people feel so bad about themselves.”
“That’s true,” he said, “they think, ‘There is nothing in me except pain and suffering, and I don’t know how to get free of my own suffering, much less help others. I am worthless.’ They also think that they are not as accomplished or as successful as other people.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “So many people are not happy because they are eaten up with envy; they envy the accomplishments and social status of others while regarding themselves as failures.They despise themselves for not having as nice a car, home and/or job as someone they consider successful has.
“This is what I call the ‘I could have been a contender!’ complex. Marlon Brando said these words in the film On the Waterfront. But we don’t need to be prizefighters slugging it out in life, do we?”
Tacomi smiled. “No need to fight,” he said. “We are all already contenders for the ultimate prize of enlightenment.” (Excerpted from Words Become Flesh. See www.drsrj.com).
• Today, when you have a moment, set aside the tendency to be critical and look at others from the perspective of the ultimate dimension as the Never-Despising and Never-Disparaging Buddha does.
Tacomi smiled and said, “There is a teaching that may help you better understand my position on feeling compassion for the Chinese Communists who took over Tibet. It is the teaching of the very beautiful bodhisattva named Sadaparibhuta who is called the Never Disparaging or Never Despising Buddha. He would go up to a person and say: ‘You are someone of great value. You are a future buddha. I see this potential in you!’ Since people were not in touch with the ultimate dimension, the message would be rejected—”
“Excuse me, but what do you mean by the ultimate dimension?” I asked.
“We are like waves on a vast ocean. The ocean is the ultimate dimension; it is our true identity. Whereas the wave that we are is our historical identity as a specific person in a specific body in a particular place and time. In reality, we are interdependent waves that are all equally part of the ocean. Where does one wave begin and the other wave start? It’s silly to compare ourselves. I’m a bigger wave than he is. She is a prettier wave than I am. In this sea of the spiritual energy of love and compassion, we are all one. Our task is to bring our compassion into the historical dimension of our day-to-day life.”
“I see,” I said. “We are waves who think we are separate, apart from each other; instead we are all a part of an endless energy ocean of loving-kindness.”
Tacomi then picked up where he left off. “Unaware of their ultimate nature, people would feel that they were being mocked. They would attack this bodhisattva. When he was persecuted and chased out of a village, he would call back: ‘I do not hold you in contempt! You are all treading the path, and shall all become buddhas!’”
“So, would it be safe to say, that his mission was to help people to get in touch with their ultimate nature?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “By seeing their ultimate goodness, they could live joyfully in peace and freedom. And they could relieve the suffering brought on by fear, despair, and anxiety. We must help people recognize that they are manifestations of the ultimate. We must free others of the suffering of a negative self-image. When we engage in this practice, we are doing the practice of the Never Disparaging Buddha or Never Despising Buddha.”
“We’re not supposed to have a self-image, are we?” I queried.
“True, we are not to identify with, or place our worth on, the impermanent things in the world. I am an awakened one, a buddha inside and I am to manifest this in my life. I am not my job, my car, my wealth, and so on. All that is impermanent and can change. But my inner spiritual nature is unchanging.”
“So we do not base our worth on externals, “I said. “We must not see ourselves as separate waves of different shapes and sizes. We are to base our worth on the eternal energy of the ocean of love and compassion within us. We should recognize our capacity and that of others to become an enlightened, kind, and compassionate buddha, an awakened one.
“Hey, I just noticed something,” I said. “When you remove the letter x in external you get eternal. A divine sign that removing external things from our focus helps us see the eternal? I guess x marks the center of the crosshairs of our external focus. Focused on externals, we are riflemen ready to fire in anger at others. We miss the eternal in ourselves and others. We must x-out (cross out) things to be enlightened. This way, we don’t grasp or harm others?”
Tacomi laughed. “Clever play on words. Now getting back to this buddha,” he said, “we must never give up on a person with low self-esteem and that includes never giving up on ourselves as well.”
“I suppose,” I said, “we should not lose patience with a person with low self-esteem. And we should always help others with low self-esteem see their true nature as essentially good.”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “And as Never Disparaging or Never Despising Buddhas, we must give the message: ‘You are already a buddha in the ultimate spiritual dimension; now you just have to manifest it in the historical dimension of your daily life.’ We must help remove feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem.”
“But so often,” I said, “people feel so bad about themselves.”
“That’s true,” he said, “they think, ‘There is nothing in me except pain and suffering, and I don’t know how to get free of my own suffering, much less help others. I am worthless.’ They also think that they are not as accomplished or as successful as other people.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “So many people are not happy because they are eaten up with envy; they envy the accomplishments and social status of others while regarding themselves as failures.They despise themselves for not having as nice a car, home and/or job as someone they consider successful has.
“This is what I call the ‘I could have been a contender!’ complex. Marlon Brando said these words in the film On the Waterfront. But we don’t need to be prizefighters slugging it out in life, do we?”
Tacomi smiled. “No need to fight,” he said. “We are all already contenders for the ultimate prize of enlightenment.” (Excerpted from Words Become Flesh. See www.drsrj.com).
• Today, when you have a moment, set aside the tendency to be critical and look at others from the perspective of the ultimate dimension as the Never-Despising and Never-Disparaging Buddha does.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Like the Morning Mist
Monitoring Your Motivation: Link it to Love & Let it Go
You are going to do a variation of Insight Meditation also called Vipassana. In this meditation you simply learn to watch your stresses and desires as they float in and out of your awareness. You monitor your motivation by watching your desires, fears, angers, and so forth as they arise and pass away like the evanescent morning mist.
Set aside at least twenty minutes to meditate. Sit or lie down and make yourself comfortable. If you already meditate and have a mudra (hand position) that you use, then use it. Otherwise simply place your palms in your lap with your left hand cupping your right hand and your thumbs just barely touching.
Soften your belly and do what I like to call belly breathing. Breathing in, feel you belly rise. Breathing out, feel your belly fall. Now bring your attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air as you inhale through your nose. Notice the coolness of the air passing over your sensitive nasal membranes. Think the word c-o-o-l as you breathe in. As you exhale, think of how the air has warmed up in your body, and silently say c-a-l-m.
Send a wave of warmth and heaviness down through your body from your neck, down through your shoulders, chest, abdomen, pelvic region and on down through your legs and out the soles of your feet.
dentify your stress, anger, fear, sadness, and depression. Using a quieter and calmer version of the shift your focus and energy technique, you identify your negative emotions. You then link it to love and let it go. For example, you might say: “Ah, there’s my anger over being misunderstood. It tells me that I hate being misunderstood. And that’s because I’d love to be understood.”
Recenter your awareness on your breath. Thinking c-o-o-l as you breathe in and c-a-l-m as you breath out. If you prefer, after silently saying c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m a few times to start the meditation, you may choose to simply focus on the sensation of the air coming in and going out of your nostrils.
Then when another emotion arises, you identify it and do the same as before. You link it back to love and let it go. This is your main operating principle in this meditation. You just keep linking the negative emotion to love and let it go. If it comes up again, you do it again.
You use the word my before the emotions and issues to own them psychologically as a truth about your personal emotional history. But you use my in a relaxed non-grasping way in order to achieve a neutral position with regard to your emotions, desires and issues.
If you are able to stay with the mantra of c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m with no intruding negative emotions, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. Each time a sensation, emotion, thought, memory, concern or issue arises in awareness, you silently say to yourself something like: “Ah, there’s my_____. It’s telling me I hate or don’t like it when_____. And that’s because I’d love it if_____.” Then return to c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m.
You may go straight from the negative to the positive and skip using the word hate. For example, you may remember an incident or anticipate something coming up. “Ah, there’s my desire for approval telling me I’d love it if everyone always liked me.” Or, “Ah, there’s my fear that I might forget to go to the store telling me I’d love to remember to go to the store today.” As another emotion or issue comes up, you once again link it to love and let it go.
• Today, apply the principle of monitoring your motivation and unhooking your heart throughout the day. Eventually, you’ll learn how to be free on a moment-to-moment basis.
You are going to do a variation of Insight Meditation also called Vipassana. In this meditation you simply learn to watch your stresses and desires as they float in and out of your awareness. You monitor your motivation by watching your desires, fears, angers, and so forth as they arise and pass away like the evanescent morning mist.
Set aside at least twenty minutes to meditate. Sit or lie down and make yourself comfortable. If you already meditate and have a mudra (hand position) that you use, then use it. Otherwise simply place your palms in your lap with your left hand cupping your right hand and your thumbs just barely touching.
Soften your belly and do what I like to call belly breathing. Breathing in, feel you belly rise. Breathing out, feel your belly fall. Now bring your attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air as you inhale through your nose. Notice the coolness of the air passing over your sensitive nasal membranes. Think the word c-o-o-l as you breathe in. As you exhale, think of how the air has warmed up in your body, and silently say c-a-l-m.
Send a wave of warmth and heaviness down through your body from your neck, down through your shoulders, chest, abdomen, pelvic region and on down through your legs and out the soles of your feet.
dentify your stress, anger, fear, sadness, and depression. Using a quieter and calmer version of the shift your focus and energy technique, you identify your negative emotions. You then link it to love and let it go. For example, you might say: “Ah, there’s my anger over being misunderstood. It tells me that I hate being misunderstood. And that’s because I’d love to be understood.”
Recenter your awareness on your breath. Thinking c-o-o-l as you breathe in and c-a-l-m as you breath out. If you prefer, after silently saying c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m a few times to start the meditation, you may choose to simply focus on the sensation of the air coming in and going out of your nostrils.
Then when another emotion arises, you identify it and do the same as before. You link it back to love and let it go. This is your main operating principle in this meditation. You just keep linking the negative emotion to love and let it go. If it comes up again, you do it again.
You use the word my before the emotions and issues to own them psychologically as a truth about your personal emotional history. But you use my in a relaxed non-grasping way in order to achieve a neutral position with regard to your emotions, desires and issues.
If you are able to stay with the mantra of c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m with no intruding negative emotions, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too. Each time a sensation, emotion, thought, memory, concern or issue arises in awareness, you silently say to yourself something like: “Ah, there’s my_____. It’s telling me I hate or don’t like it when_____. And that’s because I’d love it if_____.” Then return to c-o-o-l and c-a-l-m.
You may go straight from the negative to the positive and skip using the word hate. For example, you may remember an incident or anticipate something coming up. “Ah, there’s my desire for approval telling me I’d love it if everyone always liked me.” Or, “Ah, there’s my fear that I might forget to go to the store telling me I’d love to remember to go to the store today.” As another emotion or issue comes up, you once again link it to love and let it go.
• Today, apply the principle of monitoring your motivation and unhooking your heart throughout the day. Eventually, you’ll learn how to be free on a moment-to-moment basis.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Love Focus Helps POWS Survive
Prisoner of war survivors, Dr. Frankl and Captain Coffee, were given what is perhaps one of the greatest learnings in life as they were forced to discover their freedom to choose what they thought about. This allowed them to feel and to express what was important to them emotionally at their core, namely, what they loved and cared about.
Frankl thought of his beloved wife. Coffee spent time creatively visualizing doing the things he loved to do with his loved ones. In effect, these men ran movies of their memories in their minds. Despite the abominable environmental conditions, they held on to the conviction that someday they would be free. You could say that both men supplied supporting soundtracks to their movies of hope that involved being with their loved ones again. In Frankl’s case, it involved a vision of seeing himself talking publicly about what he went through in order to prevent this kind of inhumanity from ever happening again.
Two men I had the privilege of knowing personally also indicated that they had survived their experience in Nazi concentration camps by focusing on what they loved. This enabled them to transcend the horrible circumstances.
In the following passages, Frankl described in a very moving way how he survived by accessing the pleasure of the treasure of love within his heart. He recalled marching in the darkness just before the dawn. The chill of the “icy wind,” and the pain of the butts of the guard’s rifles hitting him, kept him moving. Suddenly, his focus shifted.
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth … proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers … that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: ‘The salvation of man is through love and in love.’ I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings …in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
Later on, after the prisoners had reached their work site, Frankl describes how imaginary conversations with his wife kept him going. They helped him overcome the “emptiness” and the “desolation.”
"I did not know whether my wife was alive and I had no means of finding out…but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. ‘Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
Exercising our inner freedom does not only mean focusing on people we love, but on anything we love. In the act of loving, even if only in our imaginations, we feel full inside in spite of the circumstances. For example, I also recall the story of a man in a prison camp in Vietnam who loved golf and played golf in his imagination on a daily basis. It was reported that once he regained his physical health after his release from prison camp, and was again physically able to play golf, he played better than he had prior to his incarceration. This not only illustrates how focusing on what we love can save us: it attests to the power of using our imagination to focus on what we would love to see happen. This man focused on playing great golf, something he loved to do, and just focusing on what he loved helped to bring it about.
• Today, consider how, in contrast to Frankl and Coffee, those who did not survive must have run negative movies and soundtracks of hopelessness, e.g., imagining and telling themselves, “I’ll never get out of here; I’m going to die here.” We can imagine them focusing on the bleakness of their surroundings. Clearly, Frankl and Coffee both, in effect, ran hopeful soundtracks or engaged in positive self-talk that enabled them to triumph over the horrible conditions they had to endure for years. Coffee claimed that his faith that God would return him to his loved ones helped him endure. Certainly, by imagining a future where he is going to be reunited with his loved ones, he makes himself feel better and more hopeful; moreover, he also keeps himself healthy since his positive outlook is likely to boost his immune system. Do you think thoughts are likely to boost or depress your immune system?
Frankl thought of his beloved wife. Coffee spent time creatively visualizing doing the things he loved to do with his loved ones. In effect, these men ran movies of their memories in their minds. Despite the abominable environmental conditions, they held on to the conviction that someday they would be free. You could say that both men supplied supporting soundtracks to their movies of hope that involved being with their loved ones again. In Frankl’s case, it involved a vision of seeing himself talking publicly about what he went through in order to prevent this kind of inhumanity from ever happening again.
Two men I had the privilege of knowing personally also indicated that they had survived their experience in Nazi concentration camps by focusing on what they loved. This enabled them to transcend the horrible circumstances.
In the following passages, Frankl described in a very moving way how he survived by accessing the pleasure of the treasure of love within his heart. He recalled marching in the darkness just before the dawn. The chill of the “icy wind,” and the pain of the butts of the guard’s rifles hitting him, kept him moving. Suddenly, his focus shifted.
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth … proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers … that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: ‘The salvation of man is through love and in love.’ I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings …in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
Later on, after the prisoners had reached their work site, Frankl describes how imaginary conversations with his wife kept him going. They helped him overcome the “emptiness” and the “desolation.”
"I did not know whether my wife was alive and I had no means of finding out…but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. ‘Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
Exercising our inner freedom does not only mean focusing on people we love, but on anything we love. In the act of loving, even if only in our imaginations, we feel full inside in spite of the circumstances. For example, I also recall the story of a man in a prison camp in Vietnam who loved golf and played golf in his imagination on a daily basis. It was reported that once he regained his physical health after his release from prison camp, and was again physically able to play golf, he played better than he had prior to his incarceration. This not only illustrates how focusing on what we love can save us: it attests to the power of using our imagination to focus on what we would love to see happen. This man focused on playing great golf, something he loved to do, and just focusing on what he loved helped to bring it about.
• Today, consider how, in contrast to Frankl and Coffee, those who did not survive must have run negative movies and soundtracks of hopelessness, e.g., imagining and telling themselves, “I’ll never get out of here; I’m going to die here.” We can imagine them focusing on the bleakness of their surroundings. Clearly, Frankl and Coffee both, in effect, ran hopeful soundtracks or engaged in positive self-talk that enabled them to triumph over the horrible conditions they had to endure for years. Coffee claimed that his faith that God would return him to his loved ones helped him endure. Certainly, by imagining a future where he is going to be reunited with his loved ones, he makes himself feel better and more hopeful; moreover, he also keeps himself healthy since his positive outlook is likely to boost his immune system. Do you think thoughts are likely to boost or depress your immune system?
Monday, May 3, 2010
POWS & the Power of Love
Ultimately, we are not dependent on anything external to us for feeling good and for our peace of mind and sense of well-being. Only we, and not the environment, have the final power and freedom to determine whether we will feel good or bad.
The realization that we can feel good in spite of our surroundings, no matter how horrible our circumstances, is dramatically illustrated by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Dr. Frankl and Vietnam prisoner of war survivor, Captain Coffee. Even though these two men had contrasting prison experiences, the results were similar. Frankl reported living in overcrowded conditions where prisoners were herded like cattle to their work sites. In contrast to Frankl, Coffee described his situation as being in solitary confinement with no contact with other prisoners and interrupted by random interrogations by the captors. The only communication between prisoners came after they eventually worked out a code by tapping on the walls of their cells.
Both of these men showed us how it is up to us and not the environment to determine what our mental focus will be and how we are going to feel. They also revealed to us how it is up to us to find peace and well-being within ourselves instead of in the external world. Their experience is truly a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Their experiences provide a glimpse of the power that resides in our heart. Only by discovering the power and freedom to choose their focus, were these prisoners of war able to transcend the horror around them and successfully survive their bleak circumstances. In order to survive, they were forced to uncover the treasure of love within their hearts and they realized that this is what makes life worth living.
They both discovered that you can strip a person of everything except the most fundamental of the human freedoms. In his beautiful book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl defined the final freedom as “the freedom to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
As evidence for this, Dr. Frankl related the example of men who did not get caught up in the biological struggle for survival, but who accessed the love within them. He had this to say:
"Those men… who, even though starving like the rest of us, took it upon themselves to go from hut to hut comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread."
From this, Frankl concluded that humankind can retain some “vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” Frankl’s observation demonstrates the truth that who and what we are most essentially is love. It attests to the tremendous power of our capacity to love and care. Focusing on what they loved is what enabled them to survive in such hostile, deprived and bleak environments. I'll say more about how holding a love focus instead of a fear focus saved them in the next posting.
• Today, remember that, like these two men, you have the freedom to think about whatever you choose to focus on, instead of letting the environment dictate the focus. In this way, both men chose to heroically grapple with their extremely stressful circumstances. They maintained the freedom to direct their thoughts to whatever they wanted to think about, instead of remaining helpless victims. This way, they transcended the horrible conditions they were forced to live under in their powerless position as prisoners. [Portions of the above were taken from 8 Steps to Love. See www.drsrj.com].
The realization that we can feel good in spite of our surroundings, no matter how horrible our circumstances, is dramatically illustrated by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Dr. Frankl and Vietnam prisoner of war survivor, Captain Coffee. Even though these two men had contrasting prison experiences, the results were similar. Frankl reported living in overcrowded conditions where prisoners were herded like cattle to their work sites. In contrast to Frankl, Coffee described his situation as being in solitary confinement with no contact with other prisoners and interrupted by random interrogations by the captors. The only communication between prisoners came after they eventually worked out a code by tapping on the walls of their cells.
Both of these men showed us how it is up to us and not the environment to determine what our mental focus will be and how we are going to feel. They also revealed to us how it is up to us to find peace and well-being within ourselves instead of in the external world. Their experience is truly a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Their experiences provide a glimpse of the power that resides in our heart. Only by discovering the power and freedom to choose their focus, were these prisoners of war able to transcend the horror around them and successfully survive their bleak circumstances. In order to survive, they were forced to uncover the treasure of love within their hearts and they realized that this is what makes life worth living.
They both discovered that you can strip a person of everything except the most fundamental of the human freedoms. In his beautiful book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl defined the final freedom as “the freedom to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
As evidence for this, Dr. Frankl related the example of men who did not get caught up in the biological struggle for survival, but who accessed the love within them. He had this to say:
"Those men… who, even though starving like the rest of us, took it upon themselves to go from hut to hut comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread."
From this, Frankl concluded that humankind can retain some “vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” Frankl’s observation demonstrates the truth that who and what we are most essentially is love. It attests to the tremendous power of our capacity to love and care. Focusing on what they loved is what enabled them to survive in such hostile, deprived and bleak environments. I'll say more about how holding a love focus instead of a fear focus saved them in the next posting.
• Today, remember that, like these two men, you have the freedom to think about whatever you choose to focus on, instead of letting the environment dictate the focus. In this way, both men chose to heroically grapple with their extremely stressful circumstances. They maintained the freedom to direct their thoughts to whatever they wanted to think about, instead of remaining helpless victims. This way, they transcended the horrible conditions they were forced to live under in their powerless position as prisoners. [Portions of the above were taken from 8 Steps to Love. See www.drsrj.com].
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