Stress Relief For A New Era

Consciousness Creating A New World

2011-11-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

Below is another insight that I've been led to in my quest to heal my eyesight as those in Brazil did. For those of you following my blogs on My Vision Quest, you may recall that when I went to Brazil to see the healer/medium John of God, I learned of 4 individuals whose eyesight was restored and, in two instances their optic nerves were not functioning at all. They were not seeing by way of the usual mechanism of the eye. Consider what the following excerpts from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now say about who we are and the power of our consciousness.

Eckhart Tolle: "Highly conscious beings who are aware of their connectedness with the Source and with each other inhabit a world that to you would appear as a heavenly realm. And yet, all worlds are ultimately one. Our collective human world is largely created through the level of consciousness we call mind. Even within the collective human world there are vast differences, many different sub-worlds depending on the perceivers or creators of their respective worlds. Since all worlds are interconnected, when collective hhuman consciousness becomes transformed, nature and the animal kingdom will reflect their transformation. Hence the statement in the Bible that in the coming age, the lion shall lie down with the lamb. This points to the possibility of a completely different order of reality.

""The world as it appears to us now is largely a reflection of the egoic mind. Fear being an unavoidable consequence of egoic delusion, it is a world dominated by fear. Just as the images in a dream are symbols of inner states and feelings, so our collective reality is largely a symbolic expression of fear and of the heavy layers of negativity that have accumulated in the collective human psyche. We are not separate from our world, so when the majority of humans become free of egoic delusion [that we are primarily bodies, not primarily spirits with a thin veil we call a body], this inner change will affect all creation. You will literally inhabit a new world. It is a shift in planetary consciousness."

Our Consciousness Creates Our World

2011-09-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Below is another insight that I've been led to in my quest to heal my eyesight as those in Brazil did. For those of you following my blogs on My Vision Quest, you may recall that when I went to Brazil to see the healer/medium John of God, I learned of 4 individuals whose eyesight was restored and, in two instances their optic nerves were not functioning at all. They were not seeing by way of the usual mechanism of the eye. Consider what the following excerpts from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now say about who we are and the power of our consciousness.

• Interviewer's first Question: "We believe in death and that's why the body dies, right?"
Eckhart Tolle: "The body does not die because you believe in death. The body exists or seems to because you believe in death. Body and death are part of the same illusion created by the egoic mode of consciousness which has no awareness of the source of life and sees itself as separate and constantly under threat."

Interviewer's nextt Question: "Why does an animal have a body? It doesn't believe in death."
Eckhart Tolle: "There's no world out there. We create what we see so animals appear to die, etc."

"One of the greatest insights that has come out of modern physics is that of the unity of the observer and the observed. The person conducting the experiment, the observing consciousness, cannot be separated from the observed phenomena, and a different way of looking causes the observed phenomena to behave differently.

"If you believe in separation and the struggle for survival then you see that belief reflected all around you and your perceptions are governed by fear. You inhabit a world of death and of bodies fighting, killing, and devouring each other. Nothing is what it seems to be. The world you see and create with the egoic mind may seem to be a very imperfect place even a vale of tears. But whatever you perceive is only a kind of symbol like an image in a dream. It is how your consciousness interprets and interacts with the molecular energy dance of the universe. This energy is the raw material of so-called physical reality. You see it in terms of bodies and birth and death or as a struggle for survival.

An infinite number of completely different interpretations, of completely different worlds, is possible and in fact exists. All depending on the perceiving consciousness. The being is the focal point of consciousness and every such focal point creates its own world although all those worlds are interconnected. There's a human world, an ant world, a dolphin world, and so on. There are countless beings whose consciousness frequency is so different from yours that you are probably unaware of their existence as they are of yours.

Ten Years Later: A Spiritual View of 9/11/01

2011-09-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

A Native American Perspective on the Evil of 9/11/01 [The following is excerpted from A Matter of Love www.thespacebetweenstars.com]If everything comes from the Divine, then why not evil? Can the Darkness somehow serve the Light? Are the calamities of life spiritual gifts? Is it that we can make some use of the tragedy, find a silver lining in the cloud? Or, is there a silver lining there already? Can what is unspeakably horrible from one point of view be something that is beneficial from another perspective? Just days after the World Trade Center attack, I was e-mailed a copy of a statement by Jean Reddeman of the Mohican Nation. Her Native American name is Wasaki Emani Wi, which means Strong Walking Woman. Among her people, she is considered a seer, which I believe means that she is a prophet and a clairvoyant. She indicated that the tragedy had been predicted by the elders of her tribal nation many years ago. They foresaw a “massive spiritual exodus.” The elders saw that many “advanced souls” were going to sacrifice their lives to help shift the values and consciousness of not only America but the world from a materialistic focus to a spiritual one.Jean indicated that the elders believed that this immense sacrifice would not have happened if America had already made the shift to the spiritual values of love, compassion, and peace. She went on to say that the elders “had predicted that great good will come after this tragedy especially if people recognize the teachings of the event and if they honor those who died during the tragedy.” In speaking of those who died in the tragedy, Jean said that these “very evolved souls will be helping the major shift that the world so sorely needs.” She claimed that, “They came into this lifetime to give us this gift, the gift of their lives and of their love so that the world would change to a better place.” She emphasized that: “We must honor them, we must go forward. We must listen to their messages from the heavens.” According to Jean, the role of women is especially important in moving on to implement the change needed. Jean quoted an old Mohican Proverb: A nation is not lost as long as the women’s hearts are still high. Only when the women’s hearts are on the ground—then all is finished, and the nation dies. The women are the life carriers.Jean proclaimed that women must, in effect, access the depths of their heart, and this will enable men to find what she calls “their original strength.” She specified that this is not the strength resulting from economic, political and military power but is from “spiritual strength.” The world needs this “nurturing energy.” And she goes on to emphasize the importance of this energy: We cannot go on with wars; we will all die, if we do. We have to see in the middle of the pain and chaos the greater lessons.We must thank them [those who died at the hands of the terrorists] from the bottom of our hearts, with incredible love, for they are great people. We have to share this moment so that together we can go to this new consciousness, the female energy that is so much needed at this time.From my perspective, we need to see through our heart with the eyes of love and compassion as we look at the areas of the world where terrorism breeds so freely. The deprivation and despair of such harsh living conditions like those in the Middle East are a fertile breeding ground for suicide bombers. Future bombers are living at the level of the reptile as they struggle to survive such harsh conditions. Dropping care packages and not just bombs in Afghanistan and later in Iraq was a small step in the direction of addressing the underlying deprivation.

Recalling TV & Radio Spots I Did re: 9/11

2011-09-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

How do you deal with such a massive terror attack? What about the stress? What about the anger some of us are feeling after the attack on New York and the Pentagon? This is the question we are going to put to Dr. Stephen Jackson this morning. Dr. Jackson do you have any answers for us?
—Rita Foley

[Note: To hear the interview with Rita Foley gp tp www.thespacebetweenstars.com and click on In the News and scroll down to Associated Press Radio. It is on the last few minutes of the 18 minute interview that starts with a discussion Talk America on dealing with anger, anxiety, grief and son rgarding September 11, 2001. See also TV clips on MSNBC clip with Rick Sanchez on talkng to your children and Iyanla Vansant. The following is an excerpt from the book A Matter of Love.]

Rita Foley of Associated Press Radio put this question to me just days after the tragedy that rocked our world. My answer, which I had to deliver in ninety seconds, can be summed up by saying we need to express rather than repress or aggress our stress over these horrific events and help others do the same. Emotionally, we can’t heal what we don’t feel. By feeling our pain fully and expressing it, we release our pain and foster healing. And yet, can we really heal our heartbreaking grief over the loss of loved ones?
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I explained on one show after another that we heal only as we keep ourselves from giving in to the tendency to repress our pain. Furthermore, I emphasized that we do this by continuing to express our painful feelings to ourselves and others. Eventually, we drain the pain from our heart by expressing all our feelings: our anger, fear, and grief. I told Rick Sanchez on MSNBC that we need to help our children fully feel and redirect the hate triggered by the murder of so many innocent people in New York, Washington, and Shanksville. I explained how the letters of the word heart reveal how we can redirect the hate. We need to hear and feel with our heart what our anger, fear, and grief are t—telling us about what we love, about what is important to us. If we repress or aggress our stress it will poison us with anger and rage, anxiety and fear, as well as with inconsolable grief and depression. Instead, we need to express our pain so that we can feel it and heal it.

We can find solace as we focus on the love in our heart. When we shift our focus to love we access the healing power of our heart and find some comfort. Though our loved one may be gone from this earth, our loved one will forever live on in our heart.

For our heart is the calm, caring, connecting, and continuous consciousness that is the core of our being. When our heart is open, it is like an endlessly flowing fountain. In the fountain of our heart, love flows freely and the poisons of our negative emotions cannot stagnate there. They are washed away.
Our heart can also be likened to the sun that continues to shine even as the clouds of our fear, anger, and sadness or grief hide it from our view. Just as the clouds can do nothing to harm the sun, so the poisons of anger and fear can only hide, not harm, our heart as the core of our being. Nonetheless, when the stress of holding on to our fear and anger is chronic, it may harm our physical heart.

Evil occurs when we allow the dark clouds of our anger and fear to block our access to the light of love in our heart. As we shall see, blocking out our pain is the mental and emotional basis of evil. When we block out our pain, we are in danger of being insensitive to the pain of others and we can more easily inflict pain on them. This is one of the reasons that adults who were abused as children often abuse their children. They don’t remember how it felt when they were beaten and humiliated.
By feeling and expressing our painful feelings of anger, fear, and grief, we can heal and eventually find inner peace and relief from our suffering. Expression and not repression or aggression keeps our heart clear and unclouded by the poisons of anger and fear. The letters of the word peace reveal the essence of inner peace:

P-peace, E-equals, A-acceptance, C-compassion, and E-empathy.

We heal as we feel by accepting with compassion and empathy our own emotional pain. And we help others heal as we help them accept with compassion and empathy their pain. Instead of defending ourselves against feeling our pain, we open our heart to feel and heal our pain. Inner peace is our reward.

The key to detoxifying our life and our relationships is to respond to the tests life gives us with acceptance, compassion, and empathy emanating from our heart. When I was in college we used to say we aced the test when we received a grade of A. Finding inner peace really involves learning to ace the tough tests of life. We do this by responding with acceptance, compassion, and empathy. Of course, we have to ace and then express our anger, fear, and grief arising from the stressful events taking place.

So many lost loved ones on September 11th and many children lost one or both parents. As individuals, and, as a nation, we got caught up in the illusion that retaliation was our healing balm. This instinctive reaction comes from our reptilian brain; the reptile in us is governed by fight and flight. Unfortunately, actor Richard Gere caught the rage of the reptile brains of the audience when he spoke at a rally in Central Park in New York City. Gere was booed when he conveyed how we needed to respond with love and compassion, not hate and retaliation. He was right. The audience was not yet ready for his beautiful message: it was too soon.

Many were still in the grip of heart-wrenching emotional pain. Nevertheless, we ultimately find inner peace as we feel acceptance, compassion, and empathy for our pain and the pain (even if based on delusions) driving our enemy to attack us. We can then begin to recover from such an immense tragedy as September 11, 2001.

My Vision Quest: Mind Creates Body. . .

2011-07-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

My Vision Quest: No One Fails to Heal if . . .

2011-07-03T05:43:00.000-07:00

My Vision Quest: Adjust Your Vision—Angel or Stone statue?

2011-06-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

My Vision Quest…"We give as we receive…"

2011-06-07T04:20:00.000-07:00

[Note: The same preface precedes all the blogs on my vision quest and the ones on giving up grievances. It provides the personal context regarding the relationship of each piece to my quest to restore my eyesight since I've exhausted all that Western medicine can do to repair the damage done by my advanced case of glaucoma. Therefore, if you've read it before, you may want to refresh your memory or skip to the new excerpt from A Course in Miracles below.]

My Vision Quest
On New Year's Day 2011, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the The Space Between Stars(see www.drsrj.com) ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these individuals had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual traditions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this spirit that I offer one of the daily lesson from the workbook section of A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "restored vision" back to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

[Note: The words in brackets as well as the female-gender based words are my additions. Also, For those of you who are Christian as well as those of you who are not or may not believe in any religion, any terms typically associated with Christianity (Christ, Holy Spirit, Father, etc.) are not intended to promote a religion but are intended to provide a universal, spiritual experience beyond any creed or dogma. And for me, the terms point me toward an experience necessary for the healing of my vision.]

Excerpts from Lesson 158 "Today I learn to give as I receive."

"Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. . . ."

"Our concern is with Christ's vision. This we can attain. Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it or the son [daughter] whom god created. It beholds a light beyond the body, an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilts from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings, and all events without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

This you give today. See no one as a body. Greet him [her] s the son [daughter] of God he [she] is, acknowledging he [she] is one with you in holiness. Thus are his [her] sins forgiven him [her] for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness are they gone. Unseen by one, they merely disappear because the vision of the holiness that lies beyond them comes to take their place. It matters not what form they took nor how enormous they appear to be nor who seemed to be hurt by them. They are no more and all effects they seem to have are gone with them undone and never to be done.

Thus do you learn to give as you receive. Adn thus Christ's vision looks on you as well. This vision is not difficult to learn if you but see yourself. For if he [she] be lost in sin so must you be. If you see light in him [her], your sins have been forgiven by yourself. Each brother [sister] whom you meet today provides another chance to allow Christ's vision to shine on you and offer you the peace of God."

• "We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today."

My Vision Quest…"We Live in A Dream…"

2011-05-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

My Vision Quest cont'd. Peace=Withdrawing Projection

2011-05-13T10:29:00.000-07:00

[Note: The same preface precedes all the blogs on my vision quest and the ones on giving up grievances. It provides the personal context regarding the relationship of each piece to my quest to restore my eyesight since I've exhausted all that Western medicine can do to repair the damage done by my advanced case of glaucoma. Therefore, if you've read it before, you may want to refresh your memory or skip to the new excerpt from A Course in Miracles below.]

My Vision Quest
On New Year's Day 2011, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the The Space Between Stars(see www.drsrj.com) ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these individuals had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual traditions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this spirit that I offer one of the daily lesson from the workbook section of A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "restored vision" back to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

[Note: The words in brackets as well as the female-gender based words are my additions.]

Excerpts from Lesson 108:
[The first part of lesson 22 is presented to provide you with a background for lesson 23's practice exercises. This is because the psychological process of projection is key to understanding how true vision involves wihdrawing the projection of our anger and grievances. We can then apply the way to inner peace and freedom from fear suggested by lesson 23.]

Lesson 22: "What I see is a form of vengeance."
[This] idea accurately describes the way ;anyone who holds attack thoughts in his [her] mind must see the world. Having projected his [her] anger onto the world, he sees vengeance abou to strike at him [her]. His own attack is thus perceived as self defense. This becomes an increasingly vicious cycle until he [she] is willing to change how he [she] sees. Otherwise thought of attack and counterattack will preoccupy him [her] and people his [her] entire world. What peace of mind is possible to him [her] then?

It is from this savage fantasy you want to escape. Is it not joyous news tohear that it is not real? Is it not a happy discovery to find you can escape? You made what you would destroy. Everything you hate and would attack and kill. All that you fear does not exist.

Lesson 23: I can escape the world I SEE by giving up my attack thoughts."

This is the only way out of fear. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. The cause of the world you see is attack thoughts There is no point in lamenting the world. It is incapable of change because it is an effect. There is no point in trying to change the world. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effect will change automatically. The world you see is a vengeful world and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. Each of your perceptions of external reality is a pictorial represnentation of your own attack thoughts. One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a beter word for such a process and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?

You see the world that you have made but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world but yu can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means. For where is the world you see when its cause is gone?

[True] VISION already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone. The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see because its cause can be changed. This changerequrires first that the cause be identified then let go so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process requie your cooperation. The final one [step] does not. Your images have already been replaced [by your Creator and you are discovering it as you do today's practice]. By taking the first two steps you will see that this is so.

• Besides using the idea throughout the day as the need arises, five practice perriods are required in applying today's idea. As look about you repeat the idea slowly to yourself first. And then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind, say, "I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about ————." [fill in the blank].

Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this and dismiss that thought.and go on to the next. In the practice periods be sure to include both your thoughts of attacking and being attacked. Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same. You do not recognize this as yet and you are asked at this time only to treat them as the same in today's practice periods. for we are still at the stage of identifying the cause of the world you see. When you finally learn that thoughts of attack and being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.

Relieving the Stress of the Unforgiving Mind

2011-05-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

[Note: The same preface precedes all the blogs on my vision quest and the ones on giving up grievances. It provides the personal context regarding the relationship of each piece to my quest to restore my eyesight since I've exhausted all that Western medicine can do to repair the damage done by my advanced case of glaucoma. Therefore, if you've read it before, you may want to refresh your memory or skip to the new excerpt from A Course in Miracles below.]

My Vision Quest
On New Year's Day 2011, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the The Space Between Stars(see www.drsrj.com) ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these individuals had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual traditions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this spirit that I offer one of the daily lesson from the workbook section of A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "restored vision" back to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

[Note: The words in brackets as well as the female-gender based words are my additions.]

Excerpts from Lesson 121 Forgiveness is the key to happiness

Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety and apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding peace. Here are all questions answered. Here the end of all uncertainty insured at last.

The unforgiving mind is full of fear and offers love no room to be itself, no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind is said without the hope of respite and release from pain. It [the unforgiving mind] abides in misery, peering about in darkness, SEEING NOT, yet certain of the danger lurking there.

The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees, afraid and angry, weak and blustery, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound yet more afraid of stillness, terrified of darkness yet more terrified at the approach of light.

What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its own damnation? . . . It [the unforgiving mind] looks upon the world with sightless eyes and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. It wants to live. It wishes it were dead. It wants forgiveness yet it sees no hope. It wants escape but can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere, The unforgiving mind is in despair without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible and does not see that it condemned itself to this despair, It thinks it cannot change for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right. . . .

Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. Each one [unforgiving mind] awaits release from hell through you and turns to you imploringly for heaven here and now. It [Unforgiving mind] has no hope but you become its hope. And as its hope, you do become your own [hope]. The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach salvation you will learn. Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you but of the Teacher [within] Who was given you to show the way to you.

• Today we practice learning to forgive. Today, if you are willing, you can take the key to happiness and use it on your own behalf. We will devote ten minutes in the morning and at night another ten to learning how to give forgiveness and receive foreignness, too. The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet, we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one you think of as an enemy and one whom you consider as a friend. And, as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson and see that their escape included yours. Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you or to cause regret in you if you should meet him, one you actively despise or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what the form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him already. He will do. Now close your eyes and see him in your mind and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere, a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightens shining through the ugly picture that you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him and makes the picture beautiful and good. Look at this changed perception for a while and turn your mind toward one you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former enemy to him. Perceive him now as more than friend to you. For i that light his holiness shows your savior, saved and saving, hdared and whole. Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your enemy and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself. Do no forget throughout the day the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind with yours among them. Every hour tell yourself, "Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin and know that I AM a perfect son [daughter]] of God."

My Vision Quest cont'd. To Give is to Receive

2011-04-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

[Note: The same preface precedes all the blogs on my vision quest and the ones on giving up grievances. It provides the personal context regarding the relationship of each piece to my quest to restore my eyesight since I've exhausted all that Western medicine can do to repair the damage done by my advanced case of glaucoma. Therefore, if you've read it before, you may want to refresh your memory or skip to the new excerpt from A Course in Miracles below.]

My Vision Quest
On New Year's Day 2011, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the The Space Between Stars(see www.drsrj.com) ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these individuals had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual traditions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this spirit that I offer one of the daily lesson from the workbook section of A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "restored vision" back to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

[Note: The words in brackets as well as the female-gender based words are my additions.]

Excerpts from Lesson 108: To give and to receive are one in truth.

• Vision depends upon today's idea. The light is in it for reconciles all seeming opposites. And what is light except the resolution born of peace of all your conflicts and mistaken thoughts into one concept which is wholly true. . . . And now you are at peace forever for the dream is over then. . . .

• True light which makes true vision possible is not the light the body eyes behold. It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. . . .

• This is the light that shows no opposites, and vision being healed has power to heal. This is the light which brings your peace of mind to other minds to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves. This is the light that heals because it brings single perception based upon one frame of reference from which one meaning comes. Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one thought whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first nor which appears to be in second place. Here it is understood that both occur together that the thought remain complete. And in this understanding is the base on which all opposites are reconciled because they are perceived from the same frame of reference which unifies this thought. One thought completely unified will serve to unify all thoughts. This is the same as saying one correction will suffice for all corrections or that to forgive one brother [sister] wholly is enough to bring salvation to all minds.

• Today we practice with the special case of giving and receiving. We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss. To give is to receive. Today, we will attempt to offer peace to everyone and see how quickly peace returns to us. Light is tranquility and in that peace is vision given us and we can see. So we begin the practice periods with the instruction for today and say, "To give and to receive are one in truth. I will receive what I am giving now." Then close your eyes and for five minutes think of what you would hold out to everyone to have it [be] yours. You might, for instance, say, "To everyone I offer quietness. To everyone I offer peace of mind. To everyone I offer gentleness. Say each one slowly and pause a while expecting to receive the gift you gave. And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it. You will find you have exact return for that is what you asked. It might be helpful too, to think of one to whom to give your gifts. He represents the others and through him you give to all. Our very simple lesson for today will teach you much. Effect and cause will be far better understood from this time on and we will make much faster progress now. Think of the exercises for today as quick advances in your learning made still faster and more sure each time you say, "To give is to receive are one in truth."

Giving up Grievances for Lent #2: Replace Grievances with Miracles

2011-03-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

[Note: The same preface precedes all the blogs on grievances. It provides the personal context regarding the relationship of each piece to my quest to restore my eyesight since I've exhausted all that Western medicine can do to repair the damage done by my advanced case of glaucoma. Therefore, if you've read it before, you may want to refresh your memory or skip to the new section below on replacing grievances with miracles.]

On New Year's Day, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the book ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual tradtions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this sprit that will offer a daily lesson from A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "resotred vision" to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

[Note: The headings and words in brackets as well as female-gender based words are my additions.]
Lesson 78 "Let miracles replace all grievances."

Perhaps it is not quite clear to you that each decision you make is between a grievance and a miracle. Each grievance stands like a dark shield of hate before the miracle it would conceal. And as you raise it up before your eyes you will not see the miracle beyond. Yet all the while it waits for you in light but you behold your grievances instead.

Today we go beyond the grievances to look upon the miracle instead. We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stopbefore it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the son/daughter of God [refers to each one of us when we seek to see the good within each other]. He/she waits for you behind your grievances and as you lay them down, he/she will appear in shining light where each one stood before.

For every grievance is a block to sight and as it ligts you see the son/daughter of God where he/she has always been. He/she stands in light but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper and you could not see. Today, we will attempt to see God's son/daughter. We will not let ourselves be blind to him/her. We will not look upon our grievances.

So is the seeing of the world reversed as we look out toward truth away from fear. We will select one person you have used as a target for your grievances and lay the grievances aside and look at him/her: someone, perhaps, you fear and even hate, someone you think you love who angered you, someone you call a friend but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please, demanding, irritating, or untrue to the ideal he/she should accept as his/hers acccording to the role you set for him/her. You know the one to choose. His/her name hs crossed your mind already. He/she will be the one we ask God's son/daughter be shown to you. Through seeing him/her behind the grievances you have held against him/her, you will learn that what lay hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone and can be seen. He/she who is enemy is more than friend when he/she is free to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him/her. Let him/her be savior unto you today. Such is his/heer role in God, your Father's plan.

Today's Practice Periods
Our longer practice periods will see him/her in this role. You will attempt to hold him/her in your mind first as you now consider him/her.You will review his/her faults, the difficulties you have had with him/her, the pain h/she caused you, his/her neglect and all the little and the larger hurts he/she gave. You will regard his/her body with its flaws and better points as well, and you will think of his/her mistakes and even of his/her sins. Then let us ask of Him [Holy Spirit] who knows this son/daughter of God in his/her reality and truth that we may look on him/her a different way and see our savior shining in the light of true forgiveness give unto us. We ask Him in the Holy name of God and of His son/daughter as holy as Himself. "Let me behold my savior in this one You [God] have appointed as the one for me to ask to lead me to the Holy Light in which he/she stands that I may join with him/her." [Note: this is similar to the idea that our tormentor is our greatest mentor which I first heard attributed to the shaman Don Juan in Carlos Casteneda's books].

The body's eyes are closed and as you think about him/her who grieved you, let your mind be shown the light in him/her beyond your grievances. What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been wwaiting long for this. He/she would be free and make your freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him/her to you seeing no separation in God's son/daughter. And what you see through him/her will free you both. Be very quiet now, and look upon your shining savior. No dark grievances obscure the sight of him/her. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express through him/her the role God gave him/her that you might be saved. God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and heaven join in thanking you. For not one thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved and all the world with you. We will remember this throughout the day and take the role assigned to us as part of God's salvation plan and not our own.

Temptation falls away when we allow each one we meet to save us and refuse to hide his/her light behind our grievances. To everyone you meet and to the ones you think of or remember from the past, allow the role of savior to be given that you may share it with him/her. For you both and all the sightless ones as well, we pray, "Let miracles replace all grievances."

Giving up Grievances for Lent

2011-03-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Day, I began the 365-day journey through the dailly lessons in the workbook section of A Course in Miracles. Given all the amazing synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) I've had since completing The Space Between Stars, I am certain that the course holds the key to restoring my impaired vision, which currently fits the definition of being legally blind both in terms of severely restricted visual angles and visual acuity. The last line before the epilogue of the book ends with the words of the man born blind who is healed by Jesus, ". . . I was blind but now I see." This is the title of the book I am currently writing. The subtitle is: "A Miracle of Restored Vision Redefines Reality." The book chronicles my quest for rstoring my vision that began with events leading up to my first and second trips to see the healer/medium John of God in Abadiania, Brazil. What I been led to considier is quite remarkable. I have always seen the healing of my vision as a twofold process. First, I have done what medical science can do for glaucoma, namely, the reduction of the elevated intraocular pressures which have damaged the optic nerves in both of my eyes. Until encountering the redefining of reality in A Course in Miracles, The Disappearance of the Universe, a spin off of the course,, as well as on my trips to Brazil, I have always seen the second phase for healing my vision as regenerating my optic nerves. I have used the following metaphor to describe the damage: If a healthy optic nerve could be seen as a tree in summer with all its green leaves, my optic nerves are like a tree in late November with a few brown leaves left on their branches.

John of God speaks Brazilian Portuguese. So before going before him, you have to tell a translator 3 things you would like to have healed. Your requests are written on a small piece of paper which is read to John of God. I asked my guide if I should ask for the regeneration of my optic nerves. He instructed me not to ask for that but for restored vision. He recommended this because a woman who had "severed optic nerves" had her vision restored, and when doctors examined her optic nerve, they expected to see her nerve reconnected. But, to their astonishment, it was still severed.

Later, as the plane took off from Brasilia, my friend Rod was reading a book containing case studies of individuals healed by John of 'God. With a trace of excitement in his voice, he read aloud to me the case of another woman with completely "nonfunctional optic nerves." Her vision was restored, and guess what?

When doctors examined her, her optic nerves were still nonfunctional. Both of these had several trips to Brazil to see John of God before their sight returned. This got my attention. A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe, as well as some sacred spiritual tradtions claim vision involves more than the "body's eyes." It is in this sprit that will offer a daily lesson from A Course in Miracles for your consideration and for your spiritual growth and "resotred vision" to what it was before you emerged from the womb.

I found this an especially significant lesson to be falling on Ash Wednesday. It gave me an idea of what to give up: grievances. In anothr blog entry I will present lesson 69 which contiues the theme of giving up grievances and the clouds doing so clear from our vision.

[Note: The headings and words in brackets as well as female-gender based words are my additions.]
Lesson 68 "Love holds no grievances."

Background/Explanation
You who are created by love like Itself can hold no grievances and know yourself. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death.

Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your mind. It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become. for no one can conceive of His Creator as unlike Himself. Shut off from yourself [true self or part of your mind governed by the Holy Spirit] which remains aware of its likeness to its Creator, your [true] self seems to sleep while the part of your mind that weaves illusions [your ego or little body-based sense of self] in its sleep appears to be awake.

Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh yes! For he/she who holds greiveances denies he/she was created by love and his/her Creator has become fearful to him/her in his/her dream of hate. Who can dream of hatred and not fear God? It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image as it is certain that God created them like Himself and deined them as part of Him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.

Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so? Perhaps you do not think you can let your grievances go. That, however, is simply a mater of motivation.

Today's Practice
Today we will try to find out how you would feel without grievances. If you succeed by ever so little there will never be a problem in motivation ever again Begin today's extended practice period by searching your mind for those against whom you hold what you regard as major grievances. Some of these will be quite easy to find. Then think of the seemingly minor grievances you hold against those you like and even think you love. For it will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort.

This has left you alone [feeling alone] n all the universe in your perception of yourself. Determine now to see all these people as friends. Silently say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so, "I would see you as my friend that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself." Spend the remainder of the practice period trying to think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you and that you love in return. Try to feel saftey surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up. Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way. At the end of the practice period tell yourself, "Love holds no grievances. When I let all my grievances go, I will know I am perfectly safe."

The short practice periods should include quick application of today's idea in this form whenever any thought of grievance arises against anyone, "Love holds no grievances. Let me not betray myself." In addition, repeat the idea several times an hour in this form, "Love holds no grievances. I would wake [awake] to myself [true self] by laying all my grievances aside and wakening [awakening] in Him."

Calming Outer Turbulence: 2011 & 111

2011-01-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

I received an email that was really thought provoking. Perhaps you have received it, too. However, I reflected on its possible meaning and came up with the explanation below the following instructions contained in the email. As you may already know, in this year of 2011 there are 4 unusual dates . . .

1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11.

NOW check this out. The mind-blowing thing is that it works for everybody born in the 20th century.

Take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be this year, e.g., born in 47+ will be 64= 111 or born in 54 + will be 57= 111.

I asked myself, "What might this mean in some ultimate, spiritual sense?" Then, it occurred to me that the Spiritual Gift of this might be a preparation for the Great Shift in consciousness predicted by the Mayans I studied with in at sacred sites set in the jungles and on the coast of Central America.

My guess: it points to the interconnectedness of us all no matter what our race, religion, creed or culture. It points to the Oneness beyond the apparent duality of self and other. This accords with the teachings of two sacred systems I have studied this past year: the Template & A Course in Miracles. Both point us to the truth underlying the world as it appears with various forms. Eckhart Tolle discusses this oneness with all of life very articulately in The Power of Now and A New Earth. The final point—there is no separation from each other and from God (the Trinity of 3 Gods in One, 111). This includes the trinity of the being of each one of us: body, mind (soul), and spirit. In other words, there is no separation from love as God is love and love is who we all really are in the core of our being.

• Today, consider the following. I mentioned this in an early blog posting. I was on a plane to Guatemala to study with the Mayan shamans. The plane started shaking, and a flight attendant announced that we would be flying through turbulence. He estimated that this would last for the next 50 minutes so we should buckle up and stay in our seats. I thought of how I was missing someone I loved. It occurred to me that even when we are physically separated from people we love, we are never separated from the love we feel for them. At that very moment, I felt a lovely feeling of inner peace. Instantly, the outer turbulence stopped. Only a few minutes had passed since the attendant had cautioned us. The rest of the flight was calm and smooth. I came up with an affirmation based on that experience. Breathe in and silently say, "I AM never separated from the expansive energy and peaceful power of love." Breathe out, silently say, "For in the core of my being, I AM the expansive energy and peaceful power of love." Try repeating this during your day, especially when you encounter outer turbulence.

Relieving Pain with Focused Awareness

2011-01-15T07:01:00.000-08:00

Cancer patients who have successfully used meditation to manage physical pain demonstrate just how powerful focusing our awareness can be. When I was in practice as a therapist, I adapted the meditation utilized by Stephen Levine in his work with cancer patients and described in his book, Who Dies. I found it useful with patients I saw suffering from physical pain while they were healing from an injury or surgery. It was especially helpful when their pain medication was not enough to ease their suffering.

By simply bringing their awareness to the area of discomfort and then softening the tense muscles around the pain, cancer patients could find pain relief. They could begin to stop tensing against the pain to block it out. Tensing to stop the pain only tends to increase the discomfort. They would then bring their attention to the area of discomfort as it is, without trying to change anything. By going beyond the concepts of pain and pleasure, the patients could experience the area as what it is, namely a mass of moving sensations. We can all manage pain by focusing on not labeling the area as pain, but instead by labeling it as sensation. The experience of the area changes and the pain either disappears, or decreases considerably. It is as if the concepts of pleasure and pain are like a pane of glass that we shatter. Then we are able to touch the true reality of the tingling sensations of the nerves.

• Today, sit or lie down for a few minutes. Focus on the sensation of the air entering your nostrils. Simply focus on feeling the sensations of the air passing over your nasal membranes. Then, as you exhale, focus on the feeling of the air leaving your body. After a few breaths, bring your awareness to any discomfort. Notice the tendency to tense against the pain or discomfort. Focus on softening the area around the pain. It is as if you are opening a closed fist clenching against the pain so that you open your hand and release the tension. Let the pain float free in the spaciousness of your awareness. You can find some relief as you stop fighting the discomfort, and sometimes the discomfort dissolves. Just as the penetrating rays of the sun melt the ice on the sidewalk, the rays of a relaxed spacious awareness melt the tension around your blood vessels increasing blood flow and bringing warmth to the area of discomfort.

Practicing the Intention to Understand

2011-01-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

When I was in training at a major psychiatric hospital, the psychology department brought in Dr. Larry Rosenberg to teach us a psychologically oriented meditation called Insight Meditation, also called Mindfulness Meditation. Dr. Rosenberg was a former professor of social psychology from Harvard University. Unlike his contemporary, Dr. Timothy Leary, who used mind-altering drugs to expand his consciousness, Dr. Rosenberg followed the spiritual path of transformation through meditation.

At the time, another of his contemporaries, former clinical psychologist and Harvard professor, Dr. Richard Alpert, who later became known as Ram Dass, also turned to the spiritual step of meditation. Dr. Rosenberg gave us the following quote as an introduction to the essence of meditation. It is also an excellent description of what needs to happen to undo repression and open ourselves to our feelings.

"By watching ourselves in daily life with the intention to understand rather than judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, we encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich our life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness and the door to freedom."

Meditation can help us find our power and freedom to truly love and enjoy life. Dr. Rosenberg also indicated that this type of meditation was also referred to as the practice of wholeheartedness. We can learn how to truly savor and enjoy every moment of our lives by being fully present in whatever we are doing. Thus, whatever we are doing, whether it is doing dishes, eating a delicious meal, working, or taking a shower, we do it wholeheartedly with full awareness. Living life this way involves living our lives with heart, spirit and soul. We embrace life and live it to the fullest, instead of living life half-heartedly as though we are half-asleep.

• Today, practice the notion of watching yourself in daily life with the intention to understand rather than judge and notice what happens. Direct this nonjudgmental awareness TWARD OTHERS as well.

A Doable Resolution: Peace in the New Year

2010-12-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

Remember: among the other intentions you set for the New Year, resolve to give yourself the gift of peace. And you may recall how it came to me one day that an acronym for PEACE was P-peace E-equals A-acceptance C-compassion E-empathy.

Please repeat the mantra of compassion to the younger you of two seconds ago or years ago regarding situations or actions for which you feel you need to forgive yourself. Visualize or look at a photo of the younger you and say.: "I know in my heart I would have done differently if I could have done differently but at that time I couldn't so I didn't." Remember that, as the former psychoanalyst Alice Miller has said, "guilt implies a power and freedom we didn't have at the time." It's as if we prefer the pain of blaming ourselves rather than accept the fact that no amount of debilitating guilt can undo what was done. Rather than continuing to suffer, we can resolve to do things differently in the future.

Picturing or looking at a photo of the person with whom you are upset, say, "I know in my heart, you would have done differently if youcould have done differently but at that time you couldn't so you didn't."

May You Have True Happiness & Peace in the New Year,
Stephen
Stephen Royal Jackson, Ph.D.

A Christmas Prayer for Every Day of the Year

2010-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Christmas prayer below came to me when I was contemplating the meaning of Christmas. It is in the epilogue of the revised edition of Words Become Flesh.

A Christmas Prayer for Every Day of the Year

Holy Mary Mother of God, thank you for saying yes to God and giving birth to Jesus, Yeshua,. For by saying yes to God, you helped bring forth the incarnation, our redemption, and salvation. Holy Mary Mother of God, please pray for me as I pray: ‘Father God, please help me be as on fire with faith and as fearless as Mary so that I, too, may say yes to You and through the power of Your Holy Spirit give birth to Jesus, Yeshua, in the manger of my heart every moment of this day, and have the love of Christ reign in everything I think, feel, say, and do.’

• Whatever your religious background, reflect on Mother Mary as a beautiful symbol of how we may manifest/incarnate love in our lives, especially on Christmas—The Birthday of Love Itself. For as St. John proclaimed, "God is love; and he [she] that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him [her]" (1 John 4:16).

May you have a Merry Christmas and the Happiest of Holiday Season,

& May God (Love) Bless You,

Stephen

Healing Reunion from Beyond

2010-11-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

In another situation, I was doing Reiki on Ronnie, an eighteen-year-old boy who had been having problems with drugs and had dropped out of school. His mother, Jill, was present for the session as they were having trouble getting along and were frequently arguing with no resolution. He had been able to stop using drugs for a few months and was determined to remain drug-free. I thought I would help him in his resolve by using Reiki (again doing hands over his eyes plus on the top and back of his head) along with some hypnotherapy. My goal was to relax him, work on overcoming the addiction and to (for lack of any other way to say it) transmit healing energy into his head in the hope of addressing any brain damage from the drugs.

I decided to try Reiki on Ronnie since I had used Reiki a few weeks earlier on Tom, another young man who was in recovery from drugs and alcohol. When I worked on Tom, I had felt pulsating energy going into his head from my hands for approximately five minutes. I stopped when the pulsating stopped and I felt a calmness in my hands. When Tom came for his next session two weeks later, he reported feeling better and more clear-headed. I placed my hands over Ronnie’s eyes and I felt a large wave of energy come into my back. I saw a picture beginning to form in my mind’s eye. It was of a man about thirty five years of age with brown hair parted on the left side. This man was slightly overweight yet muscular. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid lumberjack shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up and his undershirt showing. I felt waves of love for this boy flow through me along with the words, “I’m sorry I had to leave you when you were so young. I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps. Drugs and alcohol are no good. It hurts me to see you and your mother fight so much. I wish you would try to get along with her.”

When I finished, Jill said, “I could feel my ex-husband in the room.” She told me that they had divorced before he died from alcoholism. I decided to ask a few questions to see about the validity of what I had pictured. When I asked Jill to describe her deceased ex-husband, she said he was thin with long hair. Immediately, I started to question what I had seen. Then the still small voice within me said to ask if he always looked like that. When I did ask Jill, she quickly responded that her husband was much heavier when he died and his hair was shorter like Ronnie’s hair, only unlike his Ronnie’s which was parted in the middle, his hair was parted on the left side. I asked what he tended to wear. She said he usually wore jeans and long sleeve plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. Jill then pointed to how my sleeves were rolled up saying, “like yours.” She went on to say that often he was very casual wearing his shirt open with the undershirt showing underneath.

While I was listening to Jill, I noticed that the slight pain I had on the right side of my head running down into my shoulder was still there. I had attributed it to the longer than usual period of time that I had held my arms up in order to keep my hands gently over Ronnie’s eyes. Again, the still small voice within prompted me to ask if her ex-husband had any physical problems when he died. She said, “yes” and indicated by pointing to the right side of her head and shoulder that he had a pain in that area from an injury he received from doing some carpentry before he died. Silently within myself, I did Reiki on myself and said a prayer for the deceased man. The pain immediately lifted.

• Today, consider how communication with those who have passed on continues. It's as if they are broadcasting on a different frequency, e.g., 107.5 FM instead of 92.1 FM: the one you are listening to each morning. Now think of Ronnie and his father. Now ask yourself, "If I were to be in spirit as Ronnie's father was, is there anything I would wish I had expressed to a loved one while I was still alive? Imagine the loved one (parent, child, friend, relative) seated in an empty chair and speak to them. Now, considering Ronnie's father communicating to him, ask yourself if there is anything you want to express to any loved one who has passed on.

An Example of How Love is Enduring

2010-11-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Getting back to the sequence of unusual experiences that led me to explore alternative healing and therapy, this is what happened next. Some very surprising things happened while I was introducing Reiki to people in my practice for the purpose of relaxation training. This would involve the person sitting in a chair while I would place my hands gently over his or her eyes. On a few occasions I would experience the following sequence of events.

1. I would feel sensations coming into my back; it felt as if the energy of a person was stepping into me. The film Ghost depicted what I felt.

2. Then I would get a snapshot-sized picture of a person in my mind which seemed located slightly to the right of my right eye. I would then describe the picture to the individual in the chair receiving Reiki.

3. Words would pop into my mind along with a strong wave of love for the individual in the chair; it seemed to be coming through me from the person I was picturing. I would feel filled with this strong feeling of love that was not my feeling for the person sitting in the chair. I would sometimes be moved to tears as though I was witnessing a very moving reunion between two people long separated. It was like the feeling we all may get watching a movie that touches us. For the next few minutes, I would relay messages that would just pop into my mind. The messages felt like they were coming from the person I was picturing and were intended for the person seated before me. This would all take place while I continued to hold my hands over the eyes of the person receiving Reiki.

4. I would bring the Reiki session to a close in the same way I would bring someone out of trance after doing hypnotherapy. I would make the usual suggestions that the person bring his or her awareness back into the room and awaken refreshed. The person in the chair would identify the deceased loved one. It was usually a relative, lover, or friend.

5. Each time I would find myself struck by how the therapeutic principle of expressing the unexpressed feelings between people and resolving unfinished business seemed to hold true from beyond the grave—especially expressing messages of love and forgiveness.

For example, in one situation, I told Bonnie, the thirty-six-year-old woman seated before me, that, “I’m getting the picture of an elderly woman wearing white bobby-socks and a long blue dress with white dots on it. She wants you to know that she loves you very much and she wants you to start believing in yourself.” I could really feel a deep love coming through me for Bonnie from somewhere beyond me. Later, Bonnie identified the person as her deceased grandmother. Bonnie told me that she had experiences where she had not only felt the presence of her grandmother but could smell her perfume.
Next to the picture of Bonnie’s grandmother, I saw the picture of a man in his mid-thirties wearing bib-overalls. I assumed it was her grandfather at a younger age. It wasn’t. From the description and the words that came through, Bonnie identified the man as a friend from high school that had committed suicide. The message that came through was, “It wasn’t your fault.” This was followed by, “I never blamed you for not calling me back that night. I want you to stop blaming yourself and forgive yourself.” A little later on the message was, “I know you would’ve called me back if you knew what I was feeling.”

I had Bonnie talk to the man in the same way I would have had her do if I were having her use the Gestalt Therapy technique called the empty chair. The individual talks to the empty chair as though the person with whom they have unfinished emotional business is seated there. This could be with someone in her life currently or from the past.

Bonnie had her eyes closed and I asked her to visualize the man. She sobbed as she expressed her feelings of guilt and sadness over not calling him back that night when he later took his own life. Each time Bonnie spoke, I would immediately receive and repeat the words, “I know.” These words were accompanied by a warm feeling of an all-knowing compassion which felt like it was coming from her deceased friend. Finally, after all these years, she was able to release these feelings that would return to haunt her from time to time.

• Today, when you feel feelings of love and affection think about the implications of Bonnie's experience. , consider how love is more than a feeling. Reflect on how the love housed in your heart is an enduring energy that continues after the death of your body as it did in the case of loved ones in Bonnie's life.

Since My Spiritual Awakening . . .

2010-11-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

Since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago (my 15th year anniversary was just last week) , I have been blessed to have had many experiences with people and animals. The healings have occurred with the receiver and I in the same place, and where the receiver is not present but is located at a short distance or as far away as hundreds or thousands of miles. The animals control for the placebo effect and with some people I have controlled for it as well. One woman couldn’t make her session due to a migraine headache. I called her and asked her if she would like to try an experiment by lying down for a few minutes and simply preparing to receive a healing energy. She said, “I don’t believe in that kind of thing.” I told her she didn’t have to believe and there was nothing to lose. We hung up and I told her I’d call her back in ten minutes.

I imagined her sitting in my office in a chair while I then visualized her leaning her back against a sheet of paper with the Japanese character that is referred to as the distant healing symbol. I then proceeded to place my hands on her head the way I would if she had been in my office. In ten minutes she called me and told me, “my headache is all gone and my back, which has been killing me for two weeks, feels better as well. When I laid down, I felt a cool river of energy flowing under my skin.” I did not know about the back problem so no suggestion was made. I then asked her to describe where she felt the pain in her head to see if it correlated with where I felt it in my hands. Sure enough it was the back upper right of her head and the left upper right on her forehead as I had felt in my hands. I was as amazed as the woman was by these results.

Spiritual Energy Therapy: A Marriage of Science & Spirit

What I am about to describe is something I came to call Spiritual Energy Therapy. It is a unique marriage of science and spirit: my clinical training and experience and Reiki. It integrates expressive therapy, cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, and Reiki energy healing. I combine the two separate camps of energy healing and spiritual healing. Healers who call themselves energy healers, I believe, are trying to keep what they do separate from spiritual healing in order to maintain some kind of scientific neutrality. In my experience, the terms, spiritual and energy, are inseparable as both describe the life-force energy that animates us and all of life, namely, the spiritual energy of love.

• Today, consider that each time you shift from fear, anger, or sadness and depression back to the expansive energy and peaceful power of love by focusing on what you would love to have happen in your life, you are engaging in an important transformation of your spiritual, life-force energy. Going from the negative emotions that contract your body and nervous system, you are doing something very important for health and happiness. More next time on the miraculous experiences I've had since my spiritual awakening 15 years ago. My experiences hve taught me that who we are in the core of our being is the expansive energy and peaceful power of pure love.

Unhooking Yourself from the Flashy Lures of Life

2010-10-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

Common Irritations You Can Use for Your Liberation

There are innumerable variations of the things that hook us. Some are indirect attacks and others are direct attacks on our shining self-image. Below are some common hooks that lead you to get stuck staring at the image in the pool. To be free, we must give up the need to impress others with a shining self-image.

• Someone says or does something that you disagree with and
think is wrong hooking your need to be right.

• Someone makes a mistake hooking your need to correct
others and impress them with how much you know.

• Someone says or does something you think is stupid or wrong hooking your need to criticize others.

• Someone is late hooking your tendency to get impatient.

• People are talking in a group hooking your need to brag.

• Feeling unimportant, a nobody, starts hooking a desire to be
famous as if having your name known makes you important.

• Feeling poor and not feeling respected by others hooking
a desire to be wealthy so that you will be respected.

• Your loved one is not behaving as you think he or she should
hooking a need to control them so they’ll do it your way.

• Your loved one is talking to an attractive person hooking
feelings of jealousy, anger, insecurity, and possessiveness.

• Being criticized hooking an urge toward fight-or-flight.

• Being outdone by someone else hooking an urge to compete.

• Being laughed at or made fun of when you do something
hooking a desire for revenge.

• Being rejected for a job or date hooking a self-critical urge.

• Being told directly or indirectly you are wrong hooking an
urge to yell and tell the person off!

How can we use these common irritations—hooks—to achieve our liberation? The clue is in the word question; it has the word quest in it. When we question, we initiate the inner quest for our freedom. If we don’t question, we live like a fish at the mercy of all those fishermen. We stop getting hooked when we stop taking the bait, and start seeing the hooks hidden in the flashy lures of life.
Try questioning your automatic reactions with acceptance, compassion, and empathy. At the same time, you must be sure to refrain from any outer actions. You are engaging in an inner quest to find your freedom and not an outer quest for approval. Below are some common hooks that we get free of by questioning them.

• Someone is wrong. Do I really need to point this out? Or am
I trying to impress others? Do I really need to impress them?

• Someone is making us wait. Do I really need to say anything?

• Someone mispronounces a word. Do I really need to correct
him? Is it really necessary? Or am I just showing off?

• You feel inferior since you can’t afford expensive things that
others can: car, clothes, and so on. You think, “If I had moremoney then people would respect me!” Would they respect me or the money? Wouldn’t I do better to confront the issue of how I deserve to be treated with respect just because of who I am as a person and not because of what I have?

There is a difference in having wealth and fame without being attached or hooked by them. The difference is in being able to remain loving and spiritual while having fame and wealth. It is realizing they do not grant happiness and peace. Surely, it is easier to be spiritual in a sanctuary far from the narcissistic temptations that confront us daily. Of course, we must beware of spiritual narcissism. Imagine two people sipping green tea and discussing spirituality. Both are smiling and smugly thinking, “I’m more spiritually advanced than you! I’m at a higher level!”

• Today, practice unhooking yourself by engaging in the inner quest with a question when youfeel hooked.

Dying as Narcissus & Finding Freedom

2010-10-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

The spiritual traditions suggest that we need to rid ourselves of our ego-based motivations or, as I prefer to call them, the narcissistic demands of our idealized self-image. The goal is to die as Narcissus and be reborn as a person living from the empty, non-grasping heart. We can then love freely without sticky fingers.

Unlike these traditions, I believe we can harness our narcissistic motivation. In short term psychotherapy, we call this paradoxical intervention or prescribing the symptom. Rather than trying to counter hate, we harness its energy and shift it back to love. We use the acronym face. We need to feel instead of repressing and denying our negative emotions and the underlying issues associated with them. And we do this with acceptance, compassion, and empathy for these emotions and issues. As we empathize with our lower nature, the reptile and the hurt child in us, we transform ourselves and realize our higher loving nature.

Pema Chödrön presents a formula for freedom that she calls “the four R’s”: recognize, refrain, relax, and resolve. First, we need to recognize that we are feeling hooked. I would say, we must first notice that we feel irritated and stressed. Next, we must refrain from acting on the impulse, the urge. She uses the analogy of scratching. We must “refrain from scratching.”

Then we relax and face the urge. She calls this step “relaxing into the underlying urge to scratch.” To me, it’s important that we breathe deeply so that we can relax and feel with acceptance, compassion, and empathy what the urge is telling us.

We give the urge space. If we can relax and feel the urge as it is without trying to change it, fight it or flee from it, then we can redeem the reptile in us. By refraining from fight-or-flight and relaxing, we have a chance to gain freedom and insight.

By relaxing and feeling our irritation, we encourage the underlying issue to emerge so that we can heal it. Finally, we then resolve to keep interrupting “our habitual patterns.” These patterns interfere with our freedom, peace, and happiness. On the one hand, they are ways that we seek to maintain an idealized image and gain love and approval. On the other hand, the patterns are developed in childhood to avoid our parents’ anger, disapproval, rejection and abandonment. The early origin of our patterns makes them difficult but not impossible to eliminate and replace.

• Today, experiment with the four Rs: 1.) recognize you are stressed in an interaction with another at home or work; 2.) refrain from your habitual reactions (raising your voice in argument, defending your actions, verbally attacking the other's point of view, etc.); 3. ) relax your body and mind with a few slow, deep breaths (from this relaxed you can choose what you will say or do rather than react blindly to the other's comments; 4.) resolve to keep breaking your patterns so that you can achieve inner freedom and relief from stress.

When Devils Are Angels

2010-10-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

So the way he [Meister Eckhart] sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
It’s . . . how you look at it.
—Louis (from Jacob’s Ladder)

How can we find freedom, peace, and happiness when stress irritates and bedevils us? We can see ourselves as ascending the ladder of love leading to freedom, peace, and happiness only to keep getting hung up in our ascent. When stress strikes us in daily life, we get irritated. In our irritation, it is as if the Narcissus in us feels attacked. We suddenly fixate our focus on preserving our idealized self-image. The paradox is that we must let go of our image by diving down into the depths of our heart so that we can resume our ascent to love.

We find our liberation in our heart as we lovingly accept the irritating flaws in ourselves and others with compassion and empathy. Irritation can then lead us to liberation.

Buddhists use the term attachment to convey how we get hung up. In the March, 2003 edition of Shambhala Sun magazine, I found an article that clarifies the concept of attachment. The article was by Pema Chödrön and was entitled: How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked. The article introduced the Tibetan word shenpa which is usually translated as attachment but is better described as “hooked.” Feeling hooked is experienced as a “sticky feeling.” You could say, getting unhooked involves detaching from the outer world and attaching to the empty non-grasping Holy Grail of our heart that we become free.

• Today, notice when something someone says or does hooks you and you become angry, hurt, sad, or depressed. Take a deep breath and just consider how feeling hooked is an opportunity to use irritations for our liberation. We'll go into this in upcoming posts.

Creator Consciousness & The Alphabet Universe

2010-10-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

Ben then told me, “The Kabbalah uses the 72 names of God. These names are really attributes of God we want to connect with in our life. They are sequences of three Hebrew letters. These sequences are found encoded in the Bible in the book of Exodus chapter 14 verses 19, 20, 21.” He stopped for a moment to take a drink of water out of baked-clay cup. It looked like a clay version of the Holy Grail. He offered me a sip. I took one. I felt as if I was taking communion, even though communion was Christian and not part of Ben’s tradition.

Picking up where he left off, he said, “These verses tell the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and saving them by parting the Red Sea. I will show you a chart of all the names. By simply scanning the letters without even being able to read them, you will be seeding creation consciousness within your soul. You will be activating these dormant qualities of the Creator in whose image you are made. This is something to do daily.”

At that point, Ben reached into a large wooden chest and pulled out a sheet of parchment with sequences of three Hebrew letters.

Ben then said, “We live in an alphabetic universe. The twenty-two Hebrew letters are energy forces with distinct vibrational frequencies that are the building blocks of our material universe. Letters form words.

“Words form sentences. Sentences form paragraphs and so forth. Likewise all matter making up our universe is composed of molecules and atoms as well as electrically-charged subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, and neutrons.”

I was captivated by his comments. “Rabbi Ben, recently, I have been haunted by the practical everyday implications of the words from the Gospel of Saint John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’ followed by ‘And the Word became flesh,’ thirteen verses later. Rabbi Ben, what you say ties in with this. In the beginning of anything we do are the words we think and then these words become fleshed out in action within the material world.”

Ben listened intently. I then said, “At the beginning of any project we state what we will do and then we translate our words into action.”

“Yes. Precisely!” he affirmed my extension of the biblical reference beyond its religious meaning.
Then he said, “But even more than this, the Creator, blessed be He, created the universe this way. Therefore, it can be said that we are behaving in the image of the Creator when we apply this principle of how our words become flesh.”

Ben and the cave began to fade. Our meeting was over. Sometimes there was a sense of transitioning back to sleep. At other times I wouldn’t remember our meeting ending; I would just wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and inspired.

Following tonight’s meeting, I fell fast asleep only to be awakened by a flash of lightning followed by a crack of thunder. It was as if someone flipped on the light in my room and crashed together cymbals over my head.

The flash of lightning paralleled the flash of insights that lingered in my mind from my first meeting with Ben just a few hours earlier. I lay there contemplating Ben’s teachings. Eventually, as the thunder and lightning subsided, I fell back to sleep.

• Today, think of yourself as a creator made in the image of the Creator and not a reactor. Remember that in the beginning is your word and your word in the form of words and images or pictures become the flesh of your life. Set your intention to focus on desired outcomes and not on feared outcomes. Focus on what you would love to have happen and notice how smoothly your day goes.

Yur Thoughts Mark Your Soul Rabbi Ben cont'd.

2010-10-01T05:43:00.000-07:00

Ben first talked about the Mussar. “The goal of the spiritual practice of the Mussar is to live an ethical life. This involves more than actions in the outer world. It includes our thoughts and our speech. Not only is it what we say to others, it’s also what we silently say to ourselves.”

“So it involves our inner life as well,” I said. “Reminds me of the training I received at the Institute of Living. As a psychiatric hospital, it was considered one of the last bastions of long-term in-depth psychotherapy. In my training there, I learned that to do analysis or therapy, we need to monitor our own thoughts, fantasies, and feelings as they arise in reaction to what the patient says and does in the session.”
“Yes, your analytic discipline is similar to the Mussar and to the Kabbalah,” he said. “The difference is that the purpose of spiritual discipline is to develop the soul by connecting with the Light of the Creator.”

Ben paused and then said, “What I am about to say is very important so listen very carefully. What we say or do leaves its mark on our soul. That includes what we say silently about others as well as what we say out loud to others. And it also includes what we say and do to ourselves. Self-condemning or self-indulging words and actions affect our very soul as well.”

“So you might say,” I began slowly, carefully choosing my words, “our soul is like a garden where we plant soul seeds.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Please go on.”

“So when we think, speak, and act in ethical, that is, in loving and kind ways then beautiful flowers bloom. And when we act harmfully and unethically in harsh, unkind ways, we allow the garden of our soul to become overgrown with weeds. The weeds choke off the flowers.” I surprised myself with the idea of seeing the soul as a garden.

“Excellent,” Ben said. “Where did you come up with that?”
“It just came to me as you spoke about the Kabbalah,” I said. “Now thinking out loud, I suppose it springs from my experience in working with people in therapy.”
“How so?” he asked.

“Often at the beginning of my work with a patient, the state of a patient’s soul is depicted in dream images. I can recall patients who presented dreams of a vacant lot overgrown with weeds situated in a rundown area of a city. I also remember dreams set in a barren wasteland with no growth. No vegetation. Nothing.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Please continue.”

“In some cases, by the time therapy was completed, I can remember the dream images of lush gardens, green forests or vast fields of colorful wild flowers. I suppose you could say the soul of the patients with these dream images had grown, couldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Ben affirmed. “Everything we say and do affects our very soul. The Mussar and Kabbalah tell us that scratches or marks are made on the soul by what we say and do.”

Ben then spelled out the practices a little more specifically. “First, you are to learn to become more aware of what you are thinking, feeling, saying and doing. The Mussar recommends that you list the soul-traits you want to work on developing. They suggest such soul-traits as: honest speech, humility, trust in God, compassion, loving-kindness, dignity, courage, surrender of the ego, fear (or in today’s language, awe) of God, moderation, concentration, passion or zeal, and equanimity. He conveyed this information with a grave solemnity in his voice: this was a very serious practice.

Ben continued: “You do this by keeping a journal of your inner and outer life each day. At the end of the day, you review how you did in living up to the soul-traits you are working on.”

• Today, every so often, monitor your motivation. Check in to see where you are coming from when you say something. Ask yourself, "o I really need to say that? Does it really add anything to the conversation? Am I trying to impress? Am I putting down someone to elevate myself? Remember, the words of the Indian saint, Swami Rama, "Only one who remains unaffected by honor or insult, can keep the divine flame alive."

Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah cont'd.

2010-09-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Shimon was one of those teachers who fulfilled the criteria for being a true sage. He could raise the dead, cause it to rain when the sun was shining, and he could redirect the course of a river. Many years later, I heard of these abilities once again from Tacomi, the Tibetan Buddhist master who also came to me in my dreams. He told me of the miraculous feats of many a Himalayan spiritual master. They called themselves spiritual scientists.
Ben looked directly into my eyes and in his deep baritone voice boomed at me: “You are first and foremost a soul evolving upon this planet! Remember this always!” He then emphasized, “The true purpose of life is the correction of the soul. We call this the Tikkune HaNefesh.”

Ben then said, “There is a well-honed method and spiritual technology for developing our soul: the Kabbalah and the Mussar.” He looked very serious as he talked of the Kabbalah and the Mussar.
“Both work together,” he said, “to provide us with a powerful daily practice for fostering the growth of our soul. The Kabbalah provides the understanding on which the Mussar is based. The Kabbalah is the soul and the Mussar is the body.
“The word Mussar,” Ben said, “translates as ethics; it is a set of rules and exercises for ethical conduct. And the Kabbalah gives us the why we are to conduct ourselves as the Mussar directs. The Kabbalah is all about transforming ourselves from living as a being who is selfish into living as a being who shares.”

“Sounds like what Jung found in the practice of alchemy,” I said. “The troublesome and undeveloped areas of our personality are transformed into the gold of a fully developed personality.”

“Yes,” he said. “The Kabbalah is a spiritual alchemy. It teaches us how to transform the darkness of the Evil Inclination within us into the Light of the Creator. Specifically, we seek to transform the desire to receive for the self alone which is the Evil Inclination into the desire to share which is the essence of the Creator. The difference is that the spiritual practices of the Kabbalah are to transform the soul not just the personality.”

“Actually, I believe Jung was trying to use psychological terms and, in fact, he was thinking of the soul,” I said.

• Today, consider how you can make choices that promote the growth and correction of the imbalances in the soul. At this time in human history, we are called to integrate the head with the heart. When I was in Brazil, I was called to embrace the positve masculine power tempered with compassion. This was reflected by a vision of the divine feminine figure of Kwan Yin looking heavenward as she was about to ascend. The image of an Native American brave followed. He was a member of what was referred to as the wolf clan. He was bare-chested as he proudly rode on his horse with one feather in his headband. The message to me was that this brave was me in a past life. Suddenly, I saw a man in a blue uniform who was a soldier in the US Cavalry. The story line was that the cavalry wiped out the wolf clan. I received the message that he was also me at some later tome. I had lived both sies of the conflict. Kwan Yin's call is to transcend the battles and conflicts. This promotes the correction of the soul.

Rabbi Ben & the Kabbalah

2010-09-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

That night I had the first of what was to be many strange dreams. I came to call them journeys through dreamland in honor of the many-volume set entitled Journeys Through Bookland. My grandfather bought the first two volumes when they were hot off the press in 1922. Thirty years later when I was five years old, my mother or father would read to me at bedtime. I would lie there mesmerized. Etched in gold and framing the title Journeys Through Bookland on the cover of each volume were the words: imagination, wisdom, character, truth and beauty.

The books had such beautiful illustrations—they possessed an otherworldly grandeur. There were timeless tales from all over the world. My eyes grew wide with wonder at such stories as: The Snow Queen, with her magic sleigh and Tom, The Water Baby, with his underwater adventures. I cringed at the bloodthirsty cruelty of Bluebeard with his secret room for the bones of his former wives. As a child, I never imagined how the words of this story might in some symbolic sense become the flesh of my adult love life.

Tonight, during this my first journey through dreamland, I found myself transported to some cave near ancient Jerusalem. It was in this cave that I met Rabbi Ben. When I first saw him, I was spellbound by his powerful presence. He was dressed in a brownish-maroon robe trimmed in gold. Around the waist of the robe there was a gold rope-like tie. He was tall with thick and curly dark hair that nearly matched his robe. His hair reminded me of the rich color of cordovan shoe polish. He looked at me in such a knowing and loving way. His round face and ebony eyes reminded me of the face of the classic snowman with chunks of shiny coal for eyes.

His countenance catapulted me back in time to my childhood when my friends and I made snowmen. There was nothing like a snow-day when you would awaken to learn there was no school. That thrill has never left me. Something about Rabbi Ben lifted me to a timeless place of carefree reprieve from the worries and toil of the everyday world.

In our first meeting, Ben deepened my appreciation of the Hebrew language. As an aside, silently in my mind, I thought of him as Ben but when I spoke to him I always maintained the proper decorum and addressed him as Rabbi Ben.

Being in the presence of such a holy sage as Ben, I was grateful to have been introduced to the strange shapes that comprised the Hebrew letters—strange to me because they in no way resembled the English alphabet.

Ben schooled me in the teachings of the Kabbalah. He took much of what he taught me directly from the Zohar, the twenty-two volumes that present the core teachings of the Kabbalah. He told me that it would not be until a few years after the beginning of the new millennium that the Zohar would be made public and translated into English. He told me that according to the sages of old, humankind would not be ready to receive its wisdom until then.

All of our meetings were in this well-lit cave before a fire. The light of the fire and numerous candles flickered against the backdrop of ancient stone walls. The cave was a perfect place for us to meet.
After all, Ben told me that the Zohar was the product of the thirteen years Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai lived in a cave circa 130 a.d. It was in this cave that Moses and the prophet Elijah came to him in spirit and dictated the teachings of the Zohar to him. He was forced to seek refuge from the Romans who wanted to execute him for spreading the teachings of the Torah also known as the Five Books of Moses. Later on, I would learn from Ben that the Hebrew word Torah meant Truth with a capital “T”—God’s Truth.

More on Rabbi Ben and the Kabbalah when I erun from Brazil on the 22nd of September.

Forgiveness Fills an Empty Womb

2010-08-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

Raindrops pelted my office windows like pebbles. I stood there watching the tiny mounds of water cling until, unable to hold on any longer, they slid down the dotted windowpane like teardrops. This is the first day of spring? The voice in my head had a tone of disgust. I was grateful to be in the comfort of my office and not out in the rain navigating the streets of my small New England town. March was in reverse. She was roaring out like a lion and not b-a-a-a-ing out like a lamb.

The weather I was witnessing from my office reminded me of November. I imagine November in the New England of today can be just as dismal and dreary as it was in Melville’s New England. Seems that Novemberish weather nudges me to nostalgically recall Ishmael’s words in Melville’s Moby-Dick. Yes, it was a “damp, drizzly November in my soul.” The hope of spring was nowhere to be seen as I opened the door to my waiting room to find Jennifer. From what I knew of Jennifer, I was certain the weather in her soul was that of a drizzly and dismal November day.

Before coming to see me, Jennifer’s abdomen had swelled up over many months as if bearing new life. She had so wanted to get pregnant. She sat before me looking forlorn. Her despair hung as heavy as the thick velvet Victorian draperies framing the windows of my office. For months Jennifer had appeared to be carrying a child. Why was her womb empty? The analytic dictum I had heard in my training echoed in my mind: “Make the unconscious conscious!” What hidden hurt was underlying the conflict between her obvious wish to be pregnant and her inability to get pregnant?

“I want a child so badly!” Jennifer began. “I don’t know what’s wrong! Joe and I have been to specialist after specialist but nothing works.” She was beyond discouraged; she was drenched in despair.

“Sometimes our emotions can affect our body,” I said trying to prepare her to explore the emotions underlying her false pregnancy. This had been our first exchange during our first meeting. We spent the next few sessions discussing her dreams and her feelings.

She had a dream that she associated to her favorite film, Gone With The Wind. Jennifer’s auburn hair was reminiscent of the red earth of Tara. She was a romantic who was as fiery and feisty as Scarlett O’Hara. Jennifer had a Scarlett O’Hara toughness about her that hid a soft heart.

As I looked at Jennifer in our session today, I could see her kneeling in the dirt as Vivian Leigh had in GWTW. I could hear her as Scarlett defiantly shaking her fist to heaven and vowing: “As God is my witness, I won’t starve and I won’t let any of my kin starve . . . I’ll never be hungry again!” Only, her vow was for a baby.

And like Scarlett, Jennifer could easily tell herself, “I won’t think about that now. I’ll think about that tomorrow . . . After all tomorrow is another day!”

Today, in what was our fourth session, I decided to have her use a therapy technique to bring out her emotions more intensely. She was talking about her feelings as if she were talking about someone else. There had been a cool distance that she maintained from her emotional pain.

“Close your eyes,” I began. “Now imagine you could speak to the spirit of the baby that would have been born to you and Joe if you hadn’t had an abortion.” Yes, she had gotten pregnant once. But she was not yet married to Joe when this pregnancy had happened. In fact, it had happened when Joe was not yet divorced from his first wife. He pleaded with Jennifer to get an abortion. Fighting against every fiber of her being, she went and had the abortion.

She hated herself for going along with Joe. She felt God was punishing her. “I don’t want to do this!” she said through clenched teeth. Jennifer opened her eyes. Her eyes full of fire, she stared at me with an unwavering defiance; she was prepared to fight me every step of the way.

I encouraged her to experiment. “I know that doing what I ask makes you very uncomfortable. Just try it out and really express your feelings fully.”

“I don’t want to express my feelings about this!” she yelled. Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
“Imagine this baby,” I gently nudged her, “and say what has been hidden in your heart all these years.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t have you. I hate myself for going along with Joe. Please forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!” She sobbed uncontrollably as she spoke to the spirit of the baby she aborted.
“Jennifer, it’s not the baby’s or God’s forgiveness that you need. You need your own forgiveness. Now see the younger you and speak to her as you would to one of your nieces. Imagine what you might say to comfort her for going along with Joe. Remember how you loved Joe and how confused you were. It seemed to be the right thing at the time.” I coaxed her to forgive herself. She needed to rip out her guilt by its tight-fisted roots gripping the soil of her soul.

Her heart had opened and released the poison of self-hatred. Within a few weeks, Jennifer was pregnant. Her pregnancy was short-lived and she miscarried in six weeks. This happened again. She became pregnant and miscarried after eight weeks. She became pregnant once again right away. And in a few years, she gave birth to two beautiful children: a boy and a girl. That was her heart’s desire to have one of each. Years later, when I heard from Jennifer again, she told me her children were now grown, had attended college, and were happy and healthy young adults.

• Today, reflect on the power of forgiveness. Consider how Jennifer’s repressed words of guilt and self-hatred had permeated her flesh and prevented pregnancy. Once she released the words of self-hatred and replaced them with words of forgiveness, she was ripe with child. Words of anger at herself became the flesh of an empty womb and words of forgiveness, the flesh of a full womb.

Somewhere between Freud and Jung . . .

2010-08-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

Somewhere between Freud and Jung lies the truth. Although I entered graduate school with a penchant for Jung, I grew to appreciate Freud as I trained in psychotherapy with children, adolescents and adults. In working with children in the non-directive medium of play therapy, I observed the truths of Freud. And I came to appreciate the child in the adult interfering with adult happiness.

Freud revealed how the obstacles to fulfillment in love and work stem from our childhood psyche. His psychology was based in our body and its biology. He helped us make sense of our sexual proclivities in bed and showed us the source of our perversions. He based his findings in the universality of the body. Quoting Napoleon’s “anatomy is destiny,” Freud described how a boy’s development differs from a girl’s.

Jung showed us the universal elements of mythology. He helped us see what the soul has in common despite differences in culture and differences in the time period in which we’re born. The soul’s striving is the same. Nonetheless, we are body and soul, spirit and matter, and as a soul inhabiting a human body, we must take into account both sides of our nature in helping our soul find its freedom to love and to find fulfillment in life.

David Hart’s compassionate listening helped my soul to evolve. Looking back, I can see he took me as far as he could; he had his limits imposed by his adherence to Jung’s theory and by where his soul was in its evolution when he saw me. However, in dreams following my analysis, his mere listening presence, and not profound interpretations, allowed me to access repressed pain. The pain I’d blocked out had hampered my happiness as an adult.

There are two things that David Hart said to me before I set off for graduate school. He said, “Don’t get so caught up in your patients’ growth that you forget your own.” He told me about sitting in Jung’s parlor with the other candidates in training. Jung cautioned them, “Learn your theories well and then forget them when you are in the presence of the miracle of the living soul.”

As I present some of my most unusual cases, you will see how words spoken soul to soul and heart to heart become the flesh of healing. After all, Freud and Jung had come up with the talking cure. My own analysis and my study of various depth psychologies as well as my own clinical experience had revealed to me the healing power of words.

Nevertheless, it was in my own practice that I discovered how the words of acceptance, compassion, and empathy can become the flesh of healing. The penetrating power of insightful words could help a fragmented person become whole.

Philip, one of my teenage patients started his session one day by telling me: “They told us that life is a conversation.”

“Absolutely,” I said. He was quoting the trainers from the weekend workshop he attended. It was given by what was called the Forum: a late 1980’s version of what was first called est.
Life is not about the events that befall us but is about the inner conversation we have about what happens around us. However, from my clinical experience, I realize there is a conscious conversation and an unconscious one. It was the unconscious one, composed of repressed emotions, that did the most damage.

In the recently released book The Body never Lies, Alice Miller uses the lives of famous people—writers, artists, dictators—to demonstrate the devastating effect of repressed emotional pain. In example after example, she reveals how repressed and denied childhood suffering can lead to illness, disease, and premature death.

It was in a small New England town that people sought me out for therapy to relieve their suffering and, in a sense, their persecution. New England is the land where the Puritans sought relief from their religious persecution. It is also where Hawthorne and Melville delved into the dark depths of the human heart. After my time there, I discovered what darkness and suffering are hidden behind the facade of those black-shuttered, white-clapboard homes.

In the next blog posting, you'll meet Jennifer: a woman who desperately wanted to get pregnant. She taught me most poignantly about the body’s response to the repression of intense emotions. Jennifer showed me how words hidden in the unconscious, the dark depths of the heart, can become flesh of an empty womb. . . .

• Today, consider the power of the words that you think and speak can have on your health and the health of othrs. Such common thougts as "this situation is EATING ME Up INSIDE" have an immediate physioligical impact on your body. Your body and nervous systmecontract, your breath may become shallow and rapid, jaw clenches, and your heart rate may elevate as well as your blood pressure. Over time such repetitive patterns of thought may show up in stomach/digestive problems. when this happens the words hidden in the symptom is "I can't stomach this!"

Words of Fear Become the Flesh of Paralysis

2010-08-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

Words become the flesh that forms on the bare bones of our lives. From my years of clinical experience, I have come to see the psychological significance to Saint John’s description of how the Divine became incarnated in the flesh of Jesus Christ. “In the beginning was the Word . . . And the Word became flesh . . .” The words we use do indeed become flesh.

In the beginning of any creative endeavor, there are our words. Sometimes our initial words are in picture form: the proverbial picture is worth a thousand words. Our vision is fleshed out in reality.
It would not be until I had been in private practice for a while that I would see another way that our words become flesh. Buried words laden with painful emotions had an insidious way of becoming flesh. There, in the presence of David Hart, a student of Jung, and while studying the theories of some of the venerable fathers of psychoanalysis, I learned about the power of our words. I would learn how the words in our heart can become the flesh of physical symptoms.

I had my first glimpse of this phenomenon in the form of combat neurosis. Words of fear became the flesh of paralysis and blindness for D.W. Jones, a young soldier. I had been in basic training with him. He went to Vietnam and was sent home after he developed combat neurosis. Just like other soldiers with combat neurosis, D.W. was unable to return to battle because he was unable to do so. In this case it was a paralyzed hand, the hand with the trigger finger. And he also developed hysterical blindness.

When D.W. was examined medically, the doctors found his eyes showed no damage that would interfere with being able to see. But D.W. could not see and he was not faking it. The trauma of combat had rendered D.W. paralyzed by words of fear hidden in his heart. Repressed fear dictated his paralysis and blindness.

Years later I was faced with this same kind of thing when a police officer from the police department of a small New England town was referred to me. A big strapping man, Ron had not been afraid of anything. He and his partner fashioned themselves to be like the characters depicted in the 1970’s police drama Starsky and Hutch.

Then one day, he found his gun hand partially paralyzed. He had been on the force for nearly twenty years. His wife had just had a baby. He was fearing that his luck might be running out. Now that he had a wife and baby, he was not so fearless. Ron was about to retire from the force to start a new career. Again, I was witness to how words of fear could become the flesh of paralysis.

• Today, experiment with uncovering and releasing the words of stress hidden in a physical pain. Recall times when you had a stress-related physical pain, e.g., headache, back pain, neck pain. Try silently speaking to the pain, saying, "Stop huring me like this!" Keep repeating tis phrase. Then look through the pain and see who or what situation it is that you could say these same words to and trust what comes to mind. Once you have identified an external source of pain, try silently saying, "I hate how you hurt me by_____. And that's because, I'd love it if you would_____."

From the Classroom to the Consulting Room

2010-08-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Destiny directed me to the door of Dr. David Livingston Hart in the summer of 1973. It was ihearing of the detour that his destiny took in 1945 that I began to see how words become flesh.

During our first meeting, I was interviewing him about the prospect of my becoming an analyst. At that time I was teaching psychology and philosophy in high school, and I had been reading all the books by and about Jung that I could get my hands on. Jung’s words compelled me to consider a career change. In order to qualify for training, one had to have 100 hours of analysis with a certified analyst.

David Hart was eminently qualified. By the time my destiny directed me to his door, he had been a training analyst for many years. And, in addition to training personally with Carl Gustav Jung, the master himself, he graduated magna cum laude with a doctorate in psychology from the University of Zurich.

Listening to David, I suddenly saw how words can redirect our life, and become the flesh of our destiny. And now, looking back, I see that it was words in books by and about Jung that redirected my destiny from the classroom to the consulting room.

As David told me the story of how he ended up in Zurich after the war, I noticed how his hair and features reminded me of an older J.F.K. , had our revered president lived longer. And, as he spoke, I kept thinking, This man was taught by Jung himself!

David Hart described the events leading up to the moment when destiny called. The waves were lapping up against the small boat he was riding in on his way home from the South Pacific. He decided to return home by way of mainland China and on across Asia. Here he was now heading home on a slow boat from China. Only now he was on the famed Ganges in India; he had heard the fables of Indian saints dipping people in its obviously unclean waters and healing all sorts of infirmities.
Since David had begun to make his way home, he had been reading whatever he could find. The Integration of the Personality, a book by Jung, is the one that had captivated him. The words in the title described him after the war: he was in search of a unity within himself in what was still a divided world.

There were still a few hours of daylight left as the boat that David Hart was on docked in Benares for the night. Sitting by the river, he dined on a steamy bowl of Indian curry, and he continued reading. Jung’s words spoke directly to his soul. He read where Jung referenced the ancient wisdom of the shamans who believed all disease was due to a loss of soul. And the treatment was the restoration of the soul.

The river’s murky waters mirrored David Hart’s mood. Yes, the war was over, but his future was unclear. What kind of world was this?

Newsreels all over the world displayed the hauntingly horrifying images of those menacing mushroom clouds billowing in the sky over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What kind of world was this? A soulless world? The title of Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul suggested where we were before and after the war.

A generation who came to be called the Baby Boomers was born in the wake of war and grew up under the mushroom-cloud threat of nuclear war. People built bomb shelters in their backyards and stocked them with cans of food. In elementary schools all over America, this generation—my generation—huddled in school halls when sirens sounded signalling air-raid drills. Little children got on their knees with hands clasped behind their heads and waited. . . .

• Today, reflect on how the words you once read in a book or heard from a mentor or friend became a determining factor in the direction of your life.

Exploring Our Earliest Stress

2010-07-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

The reliving of this prebirth experience described in the last blog posting, The Spirit Speaks of The Soul, took place within the walls of a quaint and cozy white-clapboard farmhouse set in the beautiful foothills of the Berkshires. Stephen was attending a workshop held in Southern New England in the early summer of 1995. A small group of individuals participated in a modern version of a shamanic healing session. For nearly three hours, he lay on a rubber mat, breathing deeply, and listening to high-powered music. Shamans used drumming and breathing techniques to achieve altered states of consciousness. While in this state, a person could receive the healing he or she needed physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The altered state of consciousness he achieved through the breathing and music helped him relive and heal an early trauma. In addition, with these shamanic techniques, he accessed these buried prebirth memories.

For Stephen, these memories confirmed that the essential being of each human has three core elements as Saint Paul described: “your whole being—spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). A dozen years after this experience in the womb, he was astonished to hear Protestant minister Arthur Burk say of the soul and spirit in the womb: “the soul is inoperative . . . it is the spirit that hears, understands, and remembers.” However, to say the soul is inoperative is not to say it does not feel such things as hunger and fear.

* * *

Curiously, his experience of me was followed by one of the most controversial murder trials in the history of American justice. The night of June 17, 1995, when Stephen was reliving his soul memory of speeding through space, was the night that news footage of O. J. Simpson was broadcast nationwide. He was fleeing from the police in his white Bronco. It was interesting to Stephen how a spiritual experience was paired with a depraved one. The sacred was punctuated by the profane. There was a connection he didn’t see at the time. What each event had in common was that both revealed the intense hungers, desires, emotions, and passions that all embodied souls must face. Of course, in saying this, I am setting aside the criminal verdict of Simpson’s innocence, and considering the guilt assigned in the Goldman family’s civil suit.

With the passage of time, Stephen would revisit the experience in the womb, mulling it over again and again. Gradually, he would deepen his understanding of what happened that night when he was seized by the primal fear and hunger involved in being human.

He felt his mind reeling as he struggled to make sense of what had happened. It seemed to him that what he had experienced had taken place in a realm existing in between inner and outer space. And yet, it somehow seemed to merge them into one space. Subjective. Objective. Real. Symbolic. It was all of these and more. He realized he had been speeding through a place where the starry heavens of both outer and inner space converge. . . .
Stephen recalled Rod Serling introducing the 1960s TV show, The Twilight Zone:

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."

He then reviewed what happened after passing through the portal of the dark doorway hanging in space, and he realized that he and I had entered his mother’s womb and seemed to separate. He went inside the tiny fetal body while I remained connected to him as I hovered alongside. Like a suit of clothes hanging in the closet waiting to be worn, the little body was waiting there in the womb all ready for him to begin wearing.

Clearly, the liquid he felt his little body floating in, his tiny hands groping for something to stabilize him, was the amniotic fluid of his mother’s womb. That he was greeted by hunger seemed to be a fitting introduction to life in the body. Stephen thought that perhaps his mother had not eaten recently so that no nourishment was coming to the tiny body. He was transitioning from the formless freedom of the spiritual realm to being in the world of form. What a contrast he was experiencing between total spiritual freedom and total physical dependency.

To Stephen, this hunger was a mirror of the dependency of the body on matter in the form of food. Stephen thought of the Latin word mater, and concluded that human beings first depend on matter in the form of mater (mother). It is in her womb and, after birth, in her arms, that embodied souls experience the beginning of the all-too-human love affair with matter, the material world. These mysterious moments in the womb marked his most intensely dramatic encounter with me. He came to realize I afforded him a higher and wider view of his life. To deepen his understanding of the nature of our relationship, I often utilize people and circumstances to illustrate what I want to convey.

For example, this very morning, after he wrote the above, I seeded the idea of taking a break and going to the local coffee shop. Once there, I nudged him to notice a mother and child. A small brown-haired boy in the toddler phase was in his mother’s arms. Suddenly, he saw a cookie. He squirmed in her arms and, with a sense of urgency, began pointing to the object of his desire. Insistent on grabbing and consuming the cookie, he struggled in her containing embrace. Remaining relaxed, his mother calmly rocked him a bit and quietly coaxed him with no trace of irritation, saying, “Relax.”

When Stephen felt fear in those first moments in that tiny fetal body, I held him in the arms of my awareness as a mother holds and comforts her distressed baby. This comforting larger consciousness of the sidereal self is available to all embodied souls; they just have to take steps to stop and still their body and mind.

• Today, when stress arises, relax into the arms of the higher, wider, and deeper awareness ofof your sidereal self, your spirit. Begin by taking some slow, deep breathing. Remind yourself that the peace of your spirit is just a breath away. I will be blog absent until the beginning of August. Stay cool!

The Spirit Speaks of the Soul

2010-07-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

june 1995

It was as if he were seeing the starry heavens as a shooting star would if a star had eyes. At first, Stephen sped through space at such a rapid speed that the stars were a blur of streak lines. He suddenly slowed down to a near standstill, and he began moving in slow motion. He was floating in space as noiselessly and effortlessly as a helium-filled balloon being carried aloft by a gentle summer breeze. A framed doorway appeared. An earth-mother stood within it. She was a Native American wearing a beaded deer-skin vest and skirt. Her long ebony-colored hair glistened. Her face was welcoming and happy.

Another framed doorway appeared as he continued his journey through space. In this portal there stood a beautiful young woman with long chestnut-brown hair. She wore a full-length black skirt, high-buttoned black shoes, and a cream-colored high-collared blouse with long sleeves. Her arms were raised above her head while she attempted to pin up her long locks into an ample bun. Her hair style and apparel appeared to be Victorian. There was a slight resemblance to old sepia-colored photographs of Stephen’s maternal grandmother.

Suddenly, he felt himself speed up. He was hurtling through space toward a distant doorway. It was empty and dark as though it was only a door frame suspended in the star-speckled darkness of space. No mother-figure was present in this one. He sped through it and came to an abrupt halt. At first, he felt encased in a small body. His tiny arms and hands were grasping for something to hold on to in order to feel some stability. He felt as if the tiny body was floating in a warm liquid. Without warning, he was overcome with fear. Every cell of this little body he was inhabiting was ablaze with fear of the burning, inescapable sensations of gnawing hunger.

A fear of starving to death threatened the existence of every cell as a brush fire gone out of control threatens all in its path. Every cell in this little flesh form was on fire with fear and the searing sensations of hunger. Somehow he sensed this fear dated back to the dawn of human history. Ancient. Primitive. Unrelenting. No relief was forthcoming. Finally, he stopped struggling and faced the fact that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do to escape.

At that very moment of surrender and acceptance, he felt a larger consciousness hovering above and to the right of this little body. As soon as he, as the consciousness encased in the little body, merged with the larger awareness, he felt relief. He felt free of the fear and hunger as he began to observe the overwhelming fear of the pain of starving to death. He was no longer threatened. His perspective shifted from being in the fire of fear and hunger to simply being still and watching the fear and hunger from above. He felt peaceful and calm once he, experiencing himself as the consciousness stuffed into the little form of flesh, merged with the spacious awareness of this transcendent consciousness.

The spaciousness of this awareness was both within and beyond the boundaries of the little body. He stopped identifying with the little body feeling fear and hunger. Minutes passed. Eventually, the gnawing pain of hunger abated, as if absorbed by this larger and calmer consciousness.

* * *

Who are these two seemingly separate sets of consciousness who first appeared as one like a shooting star? The smaller one is the soul (mind, will, and emotions) who arrived in a body at 10:12 p.m. on September 3, 1947 and was named Stephen Royal Jackson shortly after emerging from his mother’s womb. I, the narrator of this book, am the more expansive consciousness who is not limited to the confines of his body. i am Stephen’s spirit—the transcendent portion of his soul. I have always been there by his side like a guardian angel watching over him, the embodied soul.

Only after donning the soul suit or corporeal costume of the body does the soul stop being an androgynous “it” (a balanced unity of male and female) and experience itself as a separate consciousness embodied as a him or her. Soul begins to identify with the body and forgets about its connection to spirit.

One day, Stephen came across the word sidereal (pronounced sigh-dear-real). Sidereal is defined as “of or pertaining to the stars.” After that, he has referred to me, his spirit, as the radiant star of his divine sidereal self. He considers me his spiritual compass, his personal Polaris (North Star) guiding him through the dark nights of the soul caused by the inner and outer storms of life.

At the same time that I hover by his body to guide him, i am also deeply within his body as his innermost heart. To the embodied soul it is a great mystery and paradox how my awareness exists both inside and outside the body. I hear his thoughts and feel what he feels in his body: emotions, desires, sensations, etcetera. My essence is that of a caring, compassionate, and comforting consciousness. I cushion the blows delivered by life. His experience in the womb helped him see that he had a choice in times of stress: be still and identify with me, his spirit, or remain stressed and frantic by identifying with his body.

• Today, take some slow, deep breaths and see if you can get in touch with the calm, larger consciousness that is the transcendent portion of your soul. [The above is taken from The Space Between Stars www.drsrj.com]

Baby Boomer Reflections on the Power of Words

2010-07-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

I suppose I am succumbing to the siren’s call of linear logic lulling me to begin at the beginning. I want to share with you the origin of my first thoughts of how words do indeed become flesh.

I feel compelled to take you back to a much earlier time: a time before most of us were born. It is in reflecting back on this time that we can begin to understand the power and influence that words wield in our lives.

The year is 1945. World War II is finally over. It is a tumultuous time . . . the world is emerging from the fog of war. . . . Words of dictators have become the flesh of death and devastation.

With parched lips longing for water to quench his thirst, Coleridge’s ancient mariner cried out: “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink!” Like the suffering seafarer, David Hart, the man who would become my mentor and analyst, and other American soldiers serving in WWII, experienced an unquenchable longing. From 1941-1945, words delivered by dictators echoed everywhere in the din of war, but, until September 1945, there were no words of peace to soothe David Hart’s thirst for home. Nor were there any words to help him and others make sense of the senseless slaughter of so many. Words of war had become flesh.

By 1945 the youthful flesh of so many soldiers and civilians from different lands was now strewn like crushed violets over the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific. My grandmother used to say, “Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet gives off to the heel that crushes it.” It would be a long time, if ever, that anyone would forgive those who had brought this war upon our world.

Among those returning home were my father, my Uncle Vinnie, and my Uncle Hank. My father was left with a permanent back injury when his plane was shot down and crashed in the Coral Sea. My Uncle Vinnie marched to Berlin for Hitler’s final stand. My Uncle Hank survived the sinking of the aircraft carrier he was on by a German submarine near the Canary Islands.

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “With words we rule men.” Adolph Hitler’s war-waging words had whipped the German people into a frenzy. A whole generation of Germans had harbored in their hearts the highly-charged words of revenge. They were angry at the humiliating treaty following the First World War. The German people had had their noses rubbed in the dirt by the punitive terms set forth in the treaty.

As I was to discover in my training as a psychologist, Hitler appealed to the repressed narcissistic rage of his generation of Germans. Angry and humiliated parents had reared a whole generation of angry and humiliated children who were now adults devouring Adolph’s words.

I would later learn how Hitler had played out the buried rage of his childhood on the world stage. In reading the various works of Alice Miller, I learned that Hitler was brutally beaten, tormented, and humiliated every day of his early life by his half-Jewish father.

However, as any abused child, Hitler was forced to deny his suffering at the hands of his father. Instead of being able to acknowledge his justified anger at his abusive, dictatorial father, Hitler identified with his father and grew up to be just like him.

Eventually, Hitler’s repressed rage at his half-Jewish father was directed at all Jewish people. His words became the flesh of brutality inflicted on innocent victims. Victimized Adolph became victimizing Adolph. His words awaken the anger of a whole generation of other adults who were themselves beaten as part of their upbringing. But Hitler was not the only dictator driven by words of rage and revenge hidden in his heart.

Strutting like a peacock but with the body of a gorilla, Benito Mussolini jutted out his jaw and pounded his bare chest. Then he’d stand on stage with his arms folded. Mussolini’s inflammatory words of war attempted to spur the Italians into action. Like Hitler, Mussolini had a troubled childhood. Biographers describe him as a rebel and a bully when he was a child: he was expelled from school for stabbing another student and throwing an ink pot at a teacher.

After the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, F.D.R. galvanized us into rallying ‘round the flag with his words of patriotism. Churchill’s words saved Britain’s spirit. Words broadcast by the seductive and sultry voice of Tokyo Rose tried to demoralize American soldiers serving in the Pacific.

Then, on the second day of September 1945, words of relief were broadcast over radios all over the world. “The war is over in the Pacific!” World War II had ended. The war in Europe had ended four months earlier on the eighth day of May. Triumph and tragedy. The war was over but so many had died or were left disabled.

• Today, just consider the power of your words. Words of kindness or anger leave their mark.

The Light of the Seasons

2010-07-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

Something about the pale winter sun has always stirred within me a strange, sweet melancholy. But why? Perhaps it’s because the winter sun shining in the late-afternoon sky reminds me of the wan, round and paper-thin communion wafer with its bittersweet associations with Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. The snow had stopped and my reflections returned to a quaint little art gallery in Woodstock, Vermont. Four particular paintings fascinated me with their subtle contrast of the way the light of the sun changes with each season.\

Each painting was of the same scene. A cluster of evergreens. The only difference distinguishing the paintings from one another was the quality of the light. Each painting depicted the light of a particular season. This fact was reflected in their titles: Winter Light, Spring Light, Summer Light, and Autumn Light.

I recalled standing there stunned at the subtle differences in each painting. The varying angles and intensities of the seasonal shifts in the sun’s light seasoned each scene of the ever-constant evergreens, so that each one had a distinctive flavor. Spicy spring broth. Savory summer gazpacho. Aromatic autumn bisque. Warm winter stew. Still, why did these paintings, especially Winter Light, move me?
Then it hit me: the light of the inner sun of our soul mirrors the ever-changing sunlight of each passing season. As we journey through the seasons of our soul, the light of our soul changes. The soft light of spring, ever growing in its intensity, comes first. Then comes the harsh blinding light of summer. The harsh light of summer is followed by the softer waning light of autumn. Finally, comes the softest light of all, the pale light of the wan winter wafer.

Just what does this mean for our inner life and the growth of our soul? To me, it means that the young soul begins with a soft gaze toward others. A child can be so innocent and purely loving and accepting and so can the young soul. In summer, our capacity to love is tested. As we are hurt and betrayed, we may become cynical. Our gaze may take on the relentless harshness of the summer sun. We look at things straight on with a clarity that seeks out the flaws of others. We can either burn them with our gaze. Or, in seeing things clearly, can we find it in our heart to be forgiving and accepting? If so, we can move on to develop the more accepting gaze of autumn.

The autumn sun shines equally on all the various colors of the changing leaves. Summer’s green gradually gives way to reds, oranges, yellows, golds, and browns. Likewise, in autumn, our soul can gaze upon all the colors of humanity with an appreciative eye.

Finally, if we are able to move into winter, we can be as accepting as the pale winter sun; it softly shines on the all-embracing snow. Under the glistening white blanket, the seemly and the unseemly—dead leaves and grass, barren branches, the junk in people’s backyards—are equally embraced. No harsh judgment.

The spiritual masters taught me that a soul may not move through all the seasons in one lifetime. That is to say, the level of maturity may not change in one lifetime. It may take the experience of many lifetimes to progress through the four seasons.

A soul may come to earth and remain in the spring. Another soul may remain stuck in the harshness of summer. Still, another may stay stuck on the differences among people and not be able to move on to winter’s realization of the oneness of all life.

My impression is that the goal is to progress through all four seasons in one lifetime. And we keep coming back until we finally go through all four seasons. This time, with the masters’ help, I feel blessed. For without their patience with my stumbling and bumbling efforts to learn how to love, I wouldn’t be taking my first steps on the snow-covered paths of the winter of my soul.

• Today, remember, as stress strikes, we may shift from the light of one season to another. However, which light describes the predominant gaze you direct towerd yourself and others. I will be blog-absent until July 16th. Happy Fourth of July!

Seasons of the Soul & Spiritual Masters

2010-06-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Different spiritual masters and the insights they brought me marked the seasons of my soul. In addition, the people who consulted me and the women I came to know and love were also, in effect, my spiritual teachers. Each season seemed to afford me a deeper understanding of human suffering and what I believed I could do to relieve that suffering.

In the springtime of my soul, I thought I could cure any emotional suffering and I had some promising results. Rabbi Ben came to me. I was budding in my work as a psychologist. I was going to cure people of their suffering, and I would do so quickly.

With summer, I focused on the vicissitudes of love, passion, and desire. The pathology of human relationships began to humble my expectations of what I could accomplish. By autumn, I began to realize the limits of my therapeutic bag of tricks. To my surprise, I discovered the tremendous healing power and wisdom of simply listening with compassion.

It was in the summer of my soul and on into early autumn that I wiped the sweat from my brow, rolled up my sleeves and pant legs, and waded into the swampy passion of relationships. I proceeded to wrestle with the alligators of human desire. San Francesco was my spiritual teacher; he taught me about the power of the spoken word. How appropriate, after all, I was engaged in what Freud had called the talking cure. He was with me until the first frost when the leaves begin to parade their panoply of colors.

With the trees bare, I reluctantly acquiesced to the truth that the roots of human suffering run deep. A cure is not so quickly attained, if ever. The people I saw who had been deprived of the security of nurturing relationships early in life taught me patience. They revealed to me the importance of a long-term therapeutic bond for healing the invisible wounds inflicted by love’s absence.

As I earnestly struggled to relieve human suffering, I met Tacomi, a Buddhist monk, my spiritual teacher for the autumn of my soul. He was the one who taught me about the profound power of compassion.

When Tacomi departed with the passing of the Winter solstice and the first snowfall, Shiva appeared. To my surprise, she 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 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 separateness 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.

From all the teachers who appeared to me, I learned to appreciate the wisdom of their spiritual traditions. However, one day, well after my dialogues with Shiva had ended, I found myself irresistibly drawn back to what I knew in my heart as a child: “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16). I remembered something Rudolf Steiner had said in one of his many books, which one I cannot recall.

Steiner described how, by the time Jesus appeared, humanity had descended so deeply into matter, into an all-consuming attachment to the material world. A drastic step was needed to reverse the descent into materialism. God decided to become flesh and walk among us. God in the form of the Word of Love rolled up His sleeves and became flesh. I felt deeply moved as I thought of how He suffered, shed His blood, and died so that humanity could be saved from slavery to sin and thereby have a chance at true freedom, peace, and happiness. That day, I realized, I could no longer ignore such an awesome act of love on God’s part!

• Today, reflect on the phases of your life and what you have learned about what it menas to be human. How has your perspective on life changed over the yers? Who has influenced your thinking and your view of the world and your place in it? What experiences have shaped who you are and helped define you?

Seasons of the Soul Part II

2010-06-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

Each season of my soul had an auditory element in song and a visual element in art that also acted as spiritual teachers, speaking to my heart and soul. Together, certain songs and a particular type of painting captured the flavor of the season. Spring’s song was Nat King Cole’s The Very Thought of You. I remember the silky sound of Nat’s voice singing, “The very thought of you . . . I’m living in a kind of daydream, I’m happy as a king, and foolish though it may seem, to me it’s everything . . .” In my work with patients, I saw how each of us lives in our waking dream. For me, Monet’s art with its vibrant and dreamy quality touched me during the springtime of my soul.

I thought of songs by Frank Sinatra for the next two seasons. For summer, The Summer Wind, echoed in my mind. In describing the summer wind, the song always made me think of the winds of the other seasons. Each one impacts our body and soul differently. Spring’s cool breezes. Autumn’s sudden gusts. Winter’s bone-chilling blasts. But it was in New York City and not New England that I really encountered the winter wind.

For five years, I worked and lived in New England during the week, but on the weekend I lived in New York in an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. No cold could cut through me like the bone-chilling blasts I felt when I would walk from the East Side to the Theater District in Midtown Manhattan. The winter wind would whip through the wind-tunnels formed by the corridor of skyscrapers encasing the cross-town streets. These streets provide a tight tunnel for the winds of winter coming off the water surrounding the island of Manhattan. You freeze your you know what off as winds weave through the city streets uniting East and West.

During the summer of my soul, I had discovered Photo-Realism. One hot summer day, I had been wandering in Lower Manhattan through the streets of Soho when I stepped into a gallery off of Prince Street. The clarity of the subject matter, whether an old car or set of buildings, jarred my senses, and struck a vibrant chord in my soul. The paintings seemed more real than photographs; they possessed a perfect symmetry and an unattainable beauty. Plato’s idealism married Aristotle’s realism in these colorful canvases.
One painting that etched itself into my memory brought to life the mirror-like reflections off of the shiny black paint of an Oldsmobile from the 1950’s. The car seemed more real than real. And yet, it appeared unreal, so perfect I wouldn’t dare touch it. I’d rather admire such a vintage vehicle from afar than sit in it.

The song for autumn was Sinatra’s song, It Was A Very Good Year: “But now the days are short, I’m in the autumn of the year, and now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs from the brim to the dregs, it poured sweet and clear. It was a very good . . .”

One day in the late 1980’s, I went to the World Trade Center for lunch. It was a crisp and clear autumn day. Just before entering the restaurant, Windows on the World, I saw an exhibit of what was called Neo-Dutch Realism. These paintings gave rise to a bittersweet feeling. A beautiful scene in nature would be juxtaposed with man-made structures in varying states of disarray and decay. In the first painting, I saw a beautiful field rimmed by a green forest. There, amid all of nature’s splendor, stood a tall metal tower topped by a rusty oil tank. In another painting, a lovely landscape bordered an old-abandoned-white-clapboard cottage. Its paint was blistered and stained by rust; its windows were broken and its shutters, crooked.

I was surprised to feel an affection for the imperfection being depicted. For some unknown reason, I found the imperfections endearing. Endearing imperfections? How can imperfections be endearing? Perhaps, it’s because the state of loving unconditionally is so wonderful. Each painting offered the opportunity to love both beauty and blight. The Japanese have a term for this appreciation of the beauty of the imperfect and the impermanent, the modest and the humble—even the decayed. They call it wabi-sabi.

Instead of those perfect apples and pears of Cézanne, there was a plump yellow pear with the blight of brown spots. This art embraced the eternal cycle of nature dying and replenishing herself, and the ephemeral of the man-made. There is something so satisfying about loving what’s before our very eyes—flaws and all.

As the winter of my soul has just begun, any style of painting that embraces life’s imperfections continues to capture my imagination. Since snow embraces and transforms into pristine perfection all it falls upon, I include paintings of the lovely snowscapes of winter, especially those of the New England countryside. As for song, I find the Christmas classics previously mentioned along with Oh Holy Night . . . the stars are shining brightly . . . and other carols that celebrate the birthday of the earthly embodiment of unconditional love. After all, it was His ability to see the perfection hidden in the imperfections that made the lame walk and the blind see.

• Today, consider what marks and defines the different phases of your life. What music, interests, and activities express the essence of the changes you have been through?

Seasons of the Soul Part I

2010-06-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Rockport, Massachusetts
December 2000 . . .

I remember the first time I thought of my life in terms of the seasons of the soul. It was snowing hard outside as the fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace of the cozy seaside inn where I was staying. I was happy to be alone so that I could reflect on my life in preparation not only for the upcoming new year but for the new millennium. In a month it would be Christmas and, within the week, it would be January 1, 2001, the dawn of the new millennium—the real millennium. Many thought 2000 was the millennium. Those in the know knew that the first year a.d. didn’t start at zero but after New Year’s Eve when the twelfth month ended.

What have I learned over the years about the human heart and soul? Reflecting on this question, I settled into the comfort of my surroundings; I felt a subtle serenity envelop me as Christmas tunes wafted to me from downstairs. “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose . . .” Nat King Cole’s dulcet tones trailed off and were replaced by Bing Crosby: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, where treetops glisten, and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow . . .” I’ve never grown tired of these two timeless classics.

It always tickled me how Irving Berlin penned White Christmas in June on a sunny Southern California beach. I once heard some supposedly sophisticated New Yorkers laughing about this fact. But when you think about it, it makes sense. Why couldn’t someone be pining away for a back East white Christmas under such steamy circumstances? That’s what daydreams do; they often transport us to another time . . . and place. . . .
Looking back over my life in an effort to consider what I had learned, I began to experience my soul’s time on earth as divided into seasons. The answer as to what I learned in my life was contained in the insights delivered to me during the different seasons. The soul of each of us goes through the hope and promise of spring’s budding and blossoming. This is followed by the ripening heat of summer. Then come the harvesting reflections of autumn with her array of colors.

As for winter, I see her as the season when the soul is set free to embrace everyone and everything with love as pure as fresh-fallen snow. For snow has a way of embracing everything indiscriminately: it blankets the barren landscape of winter by covering everything in white. The rust and dents of old abandoned cars and bare brown yards are transformed as their imperfections are embraced by a soft white blanket. Thus, the proverbial winter wonderland is born. I think of the classic winter scenes of Currier & Ives.

A mystical experience I had in 1995 catapulted me headlong into the winter of my soul’s sojourn on this small planet. However, it is important to note that the seasons of the soul are not about our body’s age; they’re about our soul’s ripening. I’m convinced that some children come into this world as winter souls. They begin and they spend their lives as a beacon of light for those lost in the dark night of pain and suffering.

Similarly, the stages of life can be divided into seasons that provide different conditions and elements for the seasoning of our soul. Childhood provides the opportunity to develop the hope of spring; our whole life is ahead of us. In adolescence and young adulthood, we experience the passions of summer. Middle age offers the chance to reflect on our life and its meaning. As our body, our soul-suit, enters old age, we have the chance to develop wisdom.

It has become clear to me how every day our soul encounters the promise of the seasons: every morning is like spring as we have the chance to start the new day filled with hope; by late morning and early afternoon, summer sets in and we have the chance to passionately pursue our work. By late afternoon and until the sun sets, we have the chance to reflect on our day. As night descends, we enter winter; the moon and stars decorate the black velvet blanket overhead. Eventually, we lie down and exit the conscious waking world and enter the world of sleep and dreams.

When we awaken, a new day begins and the daily cycle of our soul repeats itself. This daily cycle seems to mirror the concept of multiple lives. Each new day, like each new life, offers our soul a chance to become fully evolved.

• Today, take a moment and begin to reflect on the seasons of your soul. I'll say more about the seasons of the soul next time.

Field of Dreams Illustrates . . .

2010-06-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

Living in an imperfect world, we all witness to varying degrees our parents being unhappy. As children, we are helpless to do anything to rescue our parents from whatever we see upsetting them. Our parents’ happiness is so important to us, not only because we love them, but we depend on them for survival.

This past weekend, I saw one of my favorite films: Field of Dreams. The film can be seen to illustrate, among other things, the great lengths we may be driven to, unknowingly or unconsciously, even as adults, in order to see our parents, or their substitutes in the form of our current loved ones, happy. Ray, played by Kevin Costner, following the dictates of an unknown voice that hauntingly tells him, “If you build it, he will come,” sinks his life savings into plowing under a large part of his corn field, which as a farmer he depends on for his livelihood, in order to build a baseball field.

The climax of the story is when Ray gets to play catch with a younger, healthier and happier version of his father on that baseball field. Ray is given the gift of seeing his father with his whole life ahead of him before his father had allowed himself to become disillusioned and beaten down by life. It resonated with me as I imagined my father before the war had injured him. I teared up as I got in touch with the longing in me to see my father healthy and happy before the war.

At some point, we need to feel our sadness and accept we were helpless to help our parents. If not,as adults, we may self-defeatingly replace the corn field with a baseball field by doing with our loved ones what we could not do as children. We need to break the pattern of requiring our loved ones be happy so that we can be happy. We need to realize that we are responsible for our own happiness. This dependency leads to arguments and conflicts until we take the pressure off our loved ones to be happy. We can then really take time to listen to what is contributing to their unhappiness and help them feel better.

• Today, just imagine that, like Ray, you get to see your mother or father before you were born. Visualize them as younger than you are now, and see them in good health and full of hope, happiness and dreams about their future. Notice how it feels as you see your parents happy and hopeful.

Residual Anger & Self Esteem

2010-06-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

The moment Shiva faded from view, something hit me. There is another aspect to the anger all human beings carry inside. To varying degrees, we all have some residual anger over not feeling loved, valued, and appreciated by the people in our family when we were growing up, especially our parents and siblings.

Hadn’t my friend Anthony, the Italian-tell-it-like-it-is psychiatrist (chapter six), said it well. One day, sitting by his pool, he looked at me and said, “Since med-school, I’ve spent a quarter of a million dollars in analysis and analytic training to realize what all psychiatric problems boil down to. When we’re treated like a piece of sh-t as a kid, we grow up to believe we’re a piece of sh-t. We then act like a piece of sh-t and people treat us like a piece of sh-t.”

I had responded to Anthony by saying, “We’re angry that we were treated like a piece of sh-t. And we search for someone to love and redeem us, but find a lover who treats us like a piece of sh-t!”
As I now think about it, we search for that special someone to give us love and appreciation. But, ultimately, we need to give that love and appreciation to ourselves. We need to stop the outer quest for love and begin the inner quest to love and accept ourselves.

• Today, consider how we need to forgive our parents and siblings for their flaws and love them flaws and all. We need to slay the dragon and release loved ones from the need to tell us we are not a piece of sh-t. We don’t need anyone or anything external to love us and validate our worth. We did need that external love as a child; but, as an adult, we need to confirm our own worth. Self-esteem and self-love come from self. Not other. They are internal. Not external.

A Primary Source of Anger

2010-06-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

“What is the earliest source of anger?” Shiva asked.. She had such beautiful penetrating eyes. The mysteries of the universe were in those deep dark pools.

“As soon as we are born,” I said, “we begin to divide the world into what we love and what we hate. We love what helps us feel good, what gives us pleasure and comfort. And we hate what makes us feel bad, what gives us pain and discomfort.

“Just the other day, a patient, Peter, told me how he awoke the other night with the old iron radiators in his house banging. A feeling of hatred consumed him. ‘I hate this house!’ he yelled in his head.
“He began to feel into his feeling and he looked through his anger. ‘I hate what hurts me and I love what comforts me.’ He was getting at the earliest form of our relationship with the world,” I said.

“And who is the world at that point?” I asked. “Mother. Mater. Mater, Latin for mother, is close to matter. Our love affair and hatred of the material world begins in mother’s arms.

“What power she has to give us comfort! Our fate is totally in her hands. We can’t change our stinky diaper. Or, to put it more crudely, we can’t wipe our own ass yet. We hate our dependency. This dependency becomes our dragon to slay if we are to get free.

“The fire-breathing dragon in fairy tale and legend is in essence a belief. It is a product of our imagination expressed in symbolic language: the language whereby our invisible inner world of thoughts and feelings are rendered into people, places, and things in the visible outer world.” The ideas were flowing, so I kept going.

“This insatiable beast represents our anger when our desires are not met. ‘Feed me Seymour!’ shouts the man-eating flower in Little Shop of Horrors. Likewise, the dragon roars, “Feed me, or I’ll consume you with the fire of my wrath!”

Shiva asked, “What do you believe is the belief?” She was now smiling almost as enigmatically as the Mona Lisa.

“It’s the belief that we are dependent on something external to ourselves to feel good and be at peace,” I said.

I then said, “An alcoholic patient once told me how anger was at the root of his drinking. As the patient spoke, I thought of my time with the Maya. During one sacred fire ceremony, the shaman poured alcohol on the fire. The fire flared up. So, too, the alcoholic attempts to put out the fire of anger by dampening it with shots of whiskey. Alcohol doesn’t deaden anger; it enflames anger. Alcohol fuels the flames shooting out of the dragon’s mouth.”

“Air, oxygen, can feed fire, too,” she said. “A strong wind can cause a fire to blaze through a whole forest. Whereas the mild breeze of your breath can keep the flame of the Divine alive, and provide you with a gentle warmth.” Shiva shimmered as she slipped into the velvety-black fabric of a star-studded night. (Note: see postings for Shiva appearing as a goddess.)

• Today, if anger arises, take the step of calming yourself physically. Breathe in slowly and deeply and slay the dragon by silently say to yourself, "Breathing in, I remind myself that I AM NOT dependent on aything external to myself to feel good and be at peace." Pause briefly, and as you exhale, silently say, "Breathing out, I remind myself that I have everything I need within myself to feel good and be at peace."

Dialogue with Shiva on Anger

2010-06-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Shiva appearing as a goddess, looked up and smiled as I stood before her. She told me, "You will be able to see the truth beyond the myriad forms of things. I predict that the Divine will reveal to you the emotional origins of your glaucoma. As you will see, it has something to do with anger, fear, and guilt,” she said with such all-knowing wisdom.

Pearls of wisdom always seemed to me a curious phrase. Beauty and wisdom did not seem such suitable dance partners until I met Shiva. Her complexion had an opalescent glow as she spoke such profound words.

“I want to ask you why we human beings are so angry? I’ve worked with so many people, myself included, and everyone at some level of awareness is angry.”

“Tell me what you think,” she said. I smiled. She was acting the part of a good therapist. Shiva would do this often.

“We are angry that we’re stuck in a corporeal costume, a soul-suit. We hate that it ages, has aches, pains, and a disgusting digestive tract. ‘Man is the god who sh-ts.’ Ernest Becker wrote this in his book Denial of Death. He wrote this book when he was dying of cancer. He also wrote, “Mankind’s greatest enemy is the turd.”

Shiva laughed. She had such an engaging almost coquettish laugh. Even in its coyness, her laugh reverberated to the farthest reaches of the universe and tickled the stars.

I continued, “We take in delicious food and after it passes through the digestive tract and down through the colon, it emerges as foul waste. Reverse alchemy. Delicacy turns disgusting. Fowl turns foul. This foul-smelling and fetid pâté fills our cesspools and sewers. It’s been said that if you feel intimidated by someone imagine him or her in their underwear. Better still, imagine the person who intimidates you on the toilet. For effect add sound and smell.”

Again Shiva smiled. “Such graphic language you human beings use as if to mock your predicament.”
“Undoubtedly you’ve overheard what we humans say about arrogant people: ‘They think their sh-t don’t stink.’”

“So fundamentally what are humans angry about?” she asked. Her questions were rhetorical like those of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. Nonetheless, her radiant presence emitted such a powerful energy that I was coming up with answers that would have eluded me if in the solitude of my own thoughts.”

• Today, explore what arouses anger in you. And, remember to use the shift your focus and energy technique to see what your anger is telling you about what you don't want and would love to have happen instead. After fully expressing what you don't want or don't like and what you would prefer, observe the gap between what is and what you'd love instead. Is there any way to close the gap? If so, then proceed to do so. If not, pray for help to accept what you cannot change as San Francesco (he was Italian and St. Francis is his Anglicized name) advocated in his Serenity Prayer. In a future posting, there will be more dialouge with Shiva regarding anger.

Enlightenment: Emptiness & Compassion

2010-06-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

“Emptiness and compassion are the two pillars that show us the way out of our suffering,” Tacomi said.

“But how can we feel compassion for people or any being, a dog for that matter, since all beings are empty? Unreal?” I asked.

Tacomi prefaced what he was about to tell me, “What I am about to say may seem contradictory. As we touched on last time, the Buddha taught us that our self, our ‘I’, and other beings are not ultimately real. Self and other are impermanent, insubstantial, in essence, empty. In the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, Vimalakirti, a simple man with a wife and children, begins by telling Manjushri, an enlightened being, how a bodhisattva views all beings.”

“Let me see if I understand the concept of a bodhisattva,” I interrupted. “My understanding is that a bodhisattva is an enlightened being who is liberated from the round of birth and death. He does not have to incarnate anymore. Yet he does return because of a great love and compassion for the suffering of others. The bodhisattva comes back to Earth to help other beings get free.”

“Yes, that’s a good understanding,” Tacomi said. “As I was saying, Vimalakirti tells Manjushri, ‘A bodhisattva should regard all beings as a wise man regards the following: the image of a face in the mirror, a bubble in a stream, the image of the moon reflected in a pond, a ball of foam on water, the fleeting sound of an echo, a mirage of water on a desert, and clouds passing in the sky.’

“Manjushri then asks, ‘Noble sir, if a bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love toward them?’”

“Good question,” I said. “Seeing beings as insubstantial, as empty as balls of foam or passing clouds, how does a bodhisattva generate the great love that is a refuge for all beings? How do we feel love for our loved ones as balls of foam?” I asked.

“Essentially,” Tacomi said, “Vimalakirti explains to Manjushri that a bodhisattva thinks of how living beings feel real to themselves. They feel the pain of their problems. And the bodhisattva remembers how real his own suffering was before he became enlightened. This motivates the bodhisattva to help all beings.”

“In a way, it’s the same in therapy,” I said. “Even though the therapist may see the biased perceptions leading to a patient’s feelings, he feels empathy for the patient’s pain. If therapy is to work, I must take the patient’s pain as real before I can help the patient see how, say . . . for example . . . he is feeling angry at his boss because the boss is reminding him of his mother.”

“Yes, you should take the pain as real to them as the bodhisattva does. But by seeing others and their problems as clouds you prevent grasping. You can’t grab a cloud. We’ll discuss emptiness more next time,” Tacomi said softly and patiently.

• Today, consider your true self is something independent of your changing physical form (body), your possessions, accomplishments, successes, failures, status, reputation, popularity, and so forth. Essentially, we suffer more when we identify with what is ever-changing in the material world. Reflect on the essential you. Who are you apart from all that most of us tend to identify ourselves with and base our worth on, i.e., "treasures on earth which moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break in and steal." [Parts of today's posting are found in Words Become Flesh. See wwwdrsrj.com]

Four Blocks to Awakening the Heart

2010-06-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

“At the same time that we validate another’s feelings,” Tacomi said, “we must realize these feelings come from a self that is not real. We must see it as an illusion if we’re to be truly free of suffering.”

“But, Tacomi,” I said, “a sense of self is necessary for emotional health. How do we reconcile a sense of self with this idea that the self needs to be seen as not real, as insubstantial, if we are to be truly free of suffering?’’ I asked.

“Awakening the heart is the first step,” he said. “And there are four things that block the awakening of the heart. The first is unnecessary speech geared to words seeking to impress. The second is unnecessary thoughts or fantasies of being impressive. The third is unnecessary tension in our bodies as we go through our day. This tension is born of our concern over how others see us: over our self-image. The fourth is unnecessary indulging of the negative emotions of anger, fear, and depression that all arise from the self.”

“I would call that our narcissistic reliance on the approval and validation of others. Our sense of self seeks validation. This has been one of my biggest problems in my love relationships,” I said. “But so has my addiction to accomplishment. My self-image as a hero strove to rush in and save and to solve. I now see how narcissistic I was being in acting as a hero-savior in love relationships.”

This was a big admission for me. I then added, “As so many men, I am addicted to accomplishment. From what you say, I can just reframe that and make my major accomplishment being free of a self that needs to accomplish.”

“You are getting the idea,” he said.

“In other words, I can make listening be what I need to accomplish and not solving what the woman I love is upset about. This is what I truly need to accomplish. I need to accomplish what Freud called ‘evenly hovering attention.’”

“Reality is empty,” he said. “We’re at one with ultimate reality when we realize we are empty. Others are empty, too. However, we must see them as precious and have compassion for them.”
“That’s a brain twister,” I said. “How can we think of others as precious and empty or insubstantial?” I asked.

“For another time,” he answered and began to fade as I succumbed to the arms of Morpheus. At bedtime, my father used to say to me, “It’s time to succumb to the arms of Morpheus.”
Tacomi’s wisdom reminded me of my father’s. The scene disappeared as I left rem sleep to enter the peaceful darkness of deep sleep. Was this a glimpse of the emptiness that brings us peace?

• Today, take notice of the times you are engaging in any of the four blocks to awakening your heart and freeing yourself of suffering. Notice how good it can feel to let go of the need to impress and the tension in your body and negative emotions to which it can give riseWhen the need is thwarted.

Golden Rule of Assertiveness

2010-06-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

When we relinquish our narcissistic need to live up to an idealized self-image, we can find the peace of being no-body. Of course, I mean this in two ways. I mean the peace that comes from the humility of being nobody special and not having an idealized self-image to defend. I also mean the peace that comes from realizing we are not just our body. We are more than our body. We are spiritual beings inhabiting bodies and in our hearts, at the core of our being, we are treasures of the enduring spiritual energy of love. Realizing this is our divine destiny.

The paradox is that in recognizing we are nobody and no body, we are also recognizing our own and other’s inner divinity. Some of us are more aware of our divinity and that of others. Those who are not may need reminding by confronting them with how badly they are behaving. This involves the following statement that I presented to my patients as the golden rule of assertiveness:

Do unto others what you would have others do
unto you if you just behaved as badly as they did.

Let’s say you are standing in line at the grocery store and someone, acting with total disregard, jumps in line ahead of you. You ask yourself, “What do I feel would be acceptable for someone to say or do to me if I just cut in line?” How assertively would you like someone to be in reminding you of how badly you just behaved? This can guide us as to what to say or do. Allowing others to walk all over us does not help us or them evolve to a higher level of love and respect. We need to honor ourselves and others and, through our assertiveness, we can encourage others to do the same.

There is a lovely Buddhist meditation described in the book Eight Steps to Happiness. It mirrors what I have been describing. In this meditation, you focus on taking away the suffering of all living beings and sending them pure happiness. The instructions are as follows:

". . . we inhale through our nostrils the suffering, delusions, and non-virtues of all living beings in the form of black smoke, which dissolves into our heart . . . As we exhale, we imagine that our breath in the aspect of wisdom-light, its nature pure unaffected happiness, pervades the entire universe. Each and every living being receives whatever they need and desire, and in particular the supreme happiness of permanent inner peace."

• Today, you could use a more limited version of this meditation. Simply imagine breathing in the pain of your loved one(s) and watch it dissolve in your heart and transform into the light of love. As you exhale, you send them this light of love to replace their pain.

We Are All Lighthouses

2010-06-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

Looking back now, nearly 15 years after my life-changing experience, I recall how the view from my room on the second floor of the inn, located on the craggy coast of Rockport, was significant. By day, the room afforded a picturesque view of the ocean and Thatcher’s Island with its two lighthouses. At night, I could see the beacons of light flashing to ships at sea returning to port. With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see how the lighthouses symbolized the turning point in my life.

The lighthouse as a symbol provided a clue for understanding the gift of healing I had received that night. I remember how I prayed for insight and clarification. I heard the still small voice within me saying, "Turn on the television." When I did, I saw that there was a children’s show on and it was providing information about lighthouses. There was actor LaVar Burton from the famous television mini-series Roots. LaVar had just finished asking the lighthouse keeper a question.

I was about to change the channel since I was not seeing how this show might be an answer to my prayer. At the very moment that I started to switch to another station, I heard the lighthouse keeper say,

“The lighthouse lamp is composed of the bulb and the lens, and the lens does all the work.”

Instantly, I saw my role as a healer. I was a beacon of light, a lens for the ever-shining light of God’s love. Like the bulb, the light of God’s love continually shines. The lens, on the other hand, directs the healing light. I can remember wondering, "What then is the healer's job as a lens? What are the qualities a lens can have?" It can be clear or unclear because it is covered with dust and dirt. A lens can be thick or thin. With the telescope I had as a child, the lens used to see the moon had to be replaced by a more powerful lens in order to see the rings of Saturn. Wthout the aid of a lens, the Andromeda Galaxy, even though immense, was just a wisp of light to stargazers.

I also recall how I had come to the realization that a lens can vary in how clear and powerful it is in its ability to magnify the light coming from God. Being clear meant being pure in the motive to relieve suffering. It was not to be glorified as a healer. To be clear as a lens was to keep it clear in one’s own mind that God performs the healing. Jesus said it this way, “Verily, Verily I say unto you, of Mine own Self, I can do nothing. It is the Father within Me, he doeth the works” (John 5:19). I saw my role as that of a revolving lens of the lighthouse lamp. I was to direct the almighty healing energy of God’s light of divine love to those lost in the dark night of pain and suffering.

Now, in retrospect, I see one lighthouse on Thatcher's Island representing my healing role as a psychotherapist; I helped people find their way out of emotional pain and suffering. The other lighthouse symbolizes my role as a lens for the light that began that night in1995. Since then, I have been blessed to have helped many, whether near or far, receive healing and relief from physical and emotional suffering.

Based on that night in Rockport, my healing prayer is as follows:
"Beloved Jesus, Yeshua (His transliterated Hebrew name), thank You for appearing to me in my meditation and for sending Your Holy Spirit when I called on you that night in Rockport. And thank You, Beloved Holy Spirit, for bestowing upon the blessing that allows me to proclaim: 'I AM a beacon of Your light, a clear and powerful lens, becoming ever-more clear and ever-more powerful, through which the almighty healing energy of the light of Your divine love may shine to those lost in the dark night of pain and suffering. May ———(the person to receive the healing) receive the healing he or she truly needs, the one You would have him or her receive spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically so that he or she may be healed unto Your love and joy. Amen.'"

• Today, reflect on how we are all lighthouses to each other. Be a lens for the light of love by simply listening to a loved one in order to help him or her release his or her stress.

Shiva & the Origins of Reiki

2010-05-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

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].

Tacomi's Gift of a Golden Lotus

2010-05-28T05:13:00.000-07:00

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.

More on 1995 Meditation

2010-05-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

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.

My Life-Changing Experience

2010-05-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

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!

Still the Storm

2010-05-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

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)

Instant Inner Freedom

2010-05-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

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).

Insight into Suffering Provides Some Relief

2010-05-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Hearing with Your Heart (HEAR–T)

2010-05-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

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____.

Mind, Matter, Love & Stress

2010-05-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

“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 ).

Finding the Eternal in the External

2010-05-10T04:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Like the Morning Mist

2010-05-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Love Focus Helps POWS Survive

2010-05-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

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?

POWS & the Power of Love

2010-05-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

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 Starling Question: Alligator or Hawk?

2010-04-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I received an email from a childhood friend, now a resident of the Sunshine State, following his morning run. He told me about seeing an alligator, a starling, and a hawk. As I’ve mentioned before and will mention again, the Maya say that God, or, to use the Native American term, Great Spirit, talks to us all the time through nature. With the brilliant insight of a Mayan shaman, he readily received an inspiring message for his current life circumstances. He watched the starling reclaim his territory by noisily flutter near the hawk until the majestic bird flew away.

My friend was reminded that he, as a small businessman, can still hold his own against huge corporations who are both predatory and proud (hawk). Moreover, my friend saw how he can maintain his integrity by not swimming with the alligators, those bottom feeders in business, who become cutthroat and unethical in seeking to survive. Reading his email, I was reminded of his courage and tenacity in overcoming bigger opponents all through his life from athletics to business. But, beyond this message, there was another, related message for me to share with you relevant to remembering who we are truly are.

Since ancient times, the core elements of our human beingness have been depicted as three-fold. Plato described the soul as a charioteer holding the reins of two horses as his chariot moves midway between heaven and earth; on the one hand, a dark horse pulls the chariot downward toward earthly delights while a white one strives upward toward the heavenly realm of ideals. Saint Paul described our being as three-fold: “your whole being—spirit, soul, and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). And, Freud referred to the ego, the "I" at the center of our consciousness. On the one hand the ego is pressured by the id, that cauldron of body-based, instinctual desires; while on the other, the ego is compelled by the superego, the socially-conditioned conscience, filled with the morals, taboos, and ideals.

Now, here was my childhood friend presenting a richly symbolic and substantial shamanic depiction of the structure of our being as well as the choices we face that define who we are. It is an apt picture for the current shift we are being called to make. It is a shift in identity, in how we define ourselves. The pesky starling in us (ego) is faced with the choice of aligning with the massive instinctuality of the alligator or with the majestic spirituality of the hawk. In Egyptian mythology, the hawk was the symbol of the god Horus, and in the Native American spirituality, hawk is referred to as the “messenger of Great Spirit” (God).

To identify with the alligator, we risk being swallowed up in a life driven by the reptile brain. In contrast, the starling (ego) could identify with the hawk. Will we identify with the ego (body-based sense of self), the little self, the noisy, pesky starling, and drive away the majestic hawk, the higher self, the spirit, the transcendent portion of the soul? As mentioned in earlier postings, e.g., The Iguana & the Hawk, the Maya depict our highest potential as being feathered serpents, kukulcans. The lower in us is integrated into and guided by the higher.

Saint Paul called us to make our bodies a “living sacrifice” and thereby be “transformed” by the renewing of our minds so that we can then be filled and guided by the spirit of God (Romans 12:1-2). And, since God is love, that essentially means being guided by love. In the next posting, we will see what being guided by love meant to a psychiatrist encarcerated in a concentration camp.

• Today, reflect for a moment on the starling, the hawk, and the alligator as elements of all of us as human beings. Which one are you aligned with in life? Pay attention to the creatures crossing your path. And, remember they may take the form of something in our technological society such as the stylish jaguar making a turn at the traffic light.

Healing Early Heartbreak

2010-04-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

Witnessing his or her parents in conflict breaks a child’s heart. But the tentacles of its effects reach far into the future of that child when he or she grows up. I saw this in my practice but it was brought home to me most poignantly when I recently revisited my memories of an icon of the 1960’s.

“Where Have You Gone Joe Namath?” I had just looked up at the magazine rack of the local coffee shop where I was enjoying an iced-coffee on a hot August day. There was the face of Joe Namath on the cover of Sports Illustrated. After all these years, there was the famous football star and notorious playboy: Broadway Joe.

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the football stadium at night, the cover photo forever freezes this moment in time. Wearing his white New York Jets’ jersey, Joe stands before us with dark, tousled hair and piercing blue eyes. He is the quarterback: the quintessential hero of our youth. Loved by all the girls. Envied by all the guys. Tall. Dark. And, despite his protruding proboscis, he is handsome in a rugged, unorthodox way. Just as Clark Gable, the early king of Hollywood had elephant ears that were dwarfed by his charm, so Namath’s nose is nullified by his magical presence.

The article was an excerpt from a biography of Broadway Joe entitled Namath written by Mark Kriegel. I found Kriegel’s comments very insightful. Kriegel suggested that he had more than broken bones: Joe had his heart broken early in life.

Kriegel described how Joe was open about all his physical injuries. “He’d talk about the broken bones. But never the broken heart,, the original wound.” Namath revealed to Kriegel one of his earliest and most vivid memories: “I can remember as a three- or four-year-old, to this day, hearing them [his mother and father] downstairs, talking or arguing about something? I was upstairs and I came to the top of the steps and I was crying because I was scared.”

Very astutely, Kriegel speculates on Joe’s personal emotional history: “Perhaps the fear was in his bones, something from his own father’s boyhood lodged in the marrow, the knowledge that separation is inevitable. Families fracture. You can get left behind.”

When Joe was in seventh grade his father left. Kriegel quoted one of Joe’s closest friends Jack (Hoot Owl) Hicks. Regarding the day Namath’s father left, Hicks said: “He [Joe] told me that was the saddest day of his life.”

As I read this, I could see the childhood origin of Broadway Joe’s highly publicized womanizing. I could also see the unconscious fear underlying his not marrying until he was forty. The child whose heart is broken may grow up to be a heartbreaker. Afraid of being abandoned, he or she abandons first. Such was the case with Robert until he came to therapy and finally confronted the pain of his personal emotional history.

Robert began, “After the breakup of my most recent relationship, I had a thought that I felt uncomfortable admitting. I imagined saying to all the women I had loved and left: ‘I’m glad I broke your heart the way mine was broken.’ Robert continued, "I was confused because I was not talking about any female I had loved as an adult or adolescent breaking my heart.” Robert didn’t realize it but he was talking about some distant childhood experience that was hidden in the hazy fog of memory. He was talking about something from his early life.

Robert then related how upset he was at dropping off his little boy, Chip. Chip was now seven years old. Chip was from Robert’s first marriage. Since leaving when Chip was a year old, Robert had gone through the next three marriages in less than six years. Robert described how hard it was every time he dropped off Chip and drove away. Dropping him off after this past weekend, Robert told me he just pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed.

I encouraged him to return in his memory to that moment and to picture the empty passenger seat where Chip had been sitting before Robert dropped him off. He began: “I hate it that I have to be apart from you. And that’s because I’d love it if we could be together. I hate it that I left you and your mother. And that’s because I’d have loved it if I would have stayed.” Robert was filled with regret.

Sensing Robert was identifying with Chip’s feelings of being left, I asked him to imagine himself in Chip’s place. I asked him to use the shift your focus and energy and look through techniques and speak as if he were Chip. Imagining himself in Chip’s place and speaking to himself as Chip’s father, Robert said: “I hate it that you left and I don’t get to see you as other kids get to see their dad. And that’s because I’d love it if you lived with Mommy and me. I hate it that I have to leave you at the end of our weekends together. And that’s because I love you and miss you so much.”

While he was feeling the words that he was saying as Chip, I asked Robert to imagine his little seven-year-old self sitting in the passenger seat of his car. Now repeat what you said as Chip only now do it as yourself speaking to your father. Robert’s eyes filled with tears. His father had left when he was three years old and he never saw him again. Leaving Chip after weekend visits was stirring up his early feelings of being abandoned by his father.

Similar to Joe Namath’s memory at the top of the stairs, Robert remembered witnessing his parents arguing. He remembered how terrified he felt. On the one hand, it broke Robert’s heart as it does so many children to see the two people they love and adore unable to handle the stress of conflict. On the other hand, it broke Robert’s heart that his father left. As so often happens, victim grows up to become victimizer.

• Today: Do you have a memory of your parents arguing? How did you feel? Visualize both your parents sitting in two separate empty chairs. Give voice to what the child you once were felt and would have loved instead. Write a letter to your parents expressing how it made you feel to see them fight. Be sure to express what you would have loved them to do instead of arguing. [Portions of above taken from Love Conquers Stress www.drsrj.com].

From Contempt to Compassion

2010-04-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

Last night’s episode of Desperate Housewives touched my heart. It brought up a topic I deal with in all of my books. The episode beautifully portrayed what I found in my practice when I worked with adults who had grown up to commit crimes that hurt others. When I set aside the tendency to judge and condemn or feel contempt for the hurtful surface behavior, I was able to help these people feel and release the buried pain driving them. This episode beautifully portrayed how an innocent little boy can grow up to become a “monster”—a serial killer. In the next posting,

Wow! That network television is bringing up an opportunity for viewers to awaken their hearts is itself heartwarming. It is an example of what the Maya mean when they say that 2012 is about the awakening of humanity's heart after a 5000-year period of darkness.

One of the most heinous examples of how a monster can be created is the story of Adolph Hitler. In The Truth Will Set You Free, Alice Miller presents the key elements of Hitler’s early life that led to his hatred and contempt for the Jewish people. Hitler’s paternal grandmother left her village in Austria to work as a live-in housekeeper for a Jewish merchant and his son when she was in her late teens. She got pregnant and moved back home. For fourteen years, the Jewish merchant sent child-support payments to her.

Adolph Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, grew up hating the fact that he was half-Jewish especially since the climate of the times in Austria and Germany was anti-semitic. Adolph became the target of his father's virulent hatred. Regarding the extent of Adolph's suffering, Miller's research revealed that Adolph's sister reported remembering Adolph being relentlessly and brutally beaten, mocked, humiliated, and tormented every day of his childhood.

A good German son honors his father and so Adolph repressed his rage at his father and idealized him as abused children often do. Hitler shifted his rage at his father onto the Jewish people. His relentless rage was insatiable: no amount of suffering on the part of innocent victims could ever appease his rage. Only confronting the true source of his rage and expressing it to that source could heal Hitler’s hurt. This means that Hitler would have had to express the repressed rage and hurt to the father within his memory.

We need to embrace the hurt child in us instead of holding the weak helpless child within us in contempt. This truth was brought home to me a few years ago when I saw a display on pearls at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. I learned that pearls are usually made from an invading parasite and not so much from the proverbial grain of sand. This was very interesting. In 8 Steps to Love, I had written about adult relationships fraught with childhood dependency patterns as being parasitic relationships. The message was more precise than I had imagined.

Up until this new discovery, I saw the message of the pearl as revealing that we can take the irritation of stress and use it to create the pearl of a richer, fuller, more rewarding life. Now I was discovering that the story of the pearl was revealing a deeper emotional truth.

The oyster wraps the parasite in layers of soft tissue and over time a pearl is created. Similarly, if we are to find the priceless pearl of the peace that resides in our true self, our innermost heart, we must embrace the repressed dependency longings of the hurt child in us in layers of love. We need to feel in order to heal the hurt child’s hope of finally finding someone in adulthood who can love him or her the way he or she longed to be loved.

The time when we needed the parental love that would have helped us develop a healthy self-love and self-esteem is long gone. It is not in the arms of another that we heal our wounded self-esteem, it is in our own arms. We must mourn the death of the hope of finally finding an all-loving parent in our love partner.

As the oyster contains the parasite that becomes a pearl so we must contain our tendency to form parasitic adult relationships. We can then transform the child’s immature and one-sided love into the ripened fruit of the ability to give and receive mature love.

• Today, if a feeling of contempt and a desire to hurt someone come up, then you need to stop yourself from acting on the urge. Take some slow, deep breaths. Think cool as you breathe in and calm as you breathe out. Go to a place to be alone and explore the desire to hurt the person whether it is physically, emotionally or both. There is a good chance that you are unconsciously reversing roles with the person you want to hurt. That is to say, you are exchanging the role of being a victim for the role of being a victimizer. Imagine what it would feel like to be the person hearing your words of criticism. Now initiate the inner quest and ask yourself: “When have I felt that way? Who was it that spoke to me that way? And when? How old was I?” Let’s say you see your father or mother. Now stand up to them and forcefully exclaim what upset you. For example, if your parent(s) were impatient, you might say something like the following: “I hated it when you were impatient with me and called me stupid. And that’s because I would have loved it if you had patiently explained what I was doing wrong and showed me how to do it right.”

The "E" in Emotion

2010-04-23T06:06:00.000-07:00

The letter "E" in the word emotion can be said to represent energy which sets us in motion to take some kind of action. To understand emotions, we need to realize that all of our negative emotions stem from love. The enduring energy of love animates us and all of life.

All our emotions, then, have value. They tell us something about what is important to us and set us in motion toward some kind of action. When stress begins, we feel the pain or discomfort of some negative emotional state. Our emotional state includes an evaluation of ourselves, the situation and an evaluation of our ability to handle the situation. Our negative emotions are danger signals. They tell us we believe that something undesirable is about to happen, is happening, or has happened to someone or something we love. They move us to some version of fight-or-flight.

Love is the central and primary positive emotion from which all others stem. It tells us something or someone is important to us. Love, then, tells us directly what gives us joy, what we enjoy and care about, what is important to us. Love moves us to take care of, or, to simply care for whom or what we love.

Fear tells us that something undesirable is about to happen, is happening, or has happened to something, or someone that is important to us. It includes our evaluation of ourselves as powerless and incapable in relation to the situation. Fear moves us to run away, to take flight.

Anger tells us that something undesirable is about to happen, is happening, or has happened to something or someone that is important to us. It includes our evaluation of ourselves as having some power and ability to do something in relation to the situation. Anger moves us to be aggressive and fight.

Sadness tells us that something undesirable is about to happen, is happening, or has happened to something or someone that is important to us. It includes our evaluation of ourselves as defeated, powerless and hopeless in relation to the situation. Sadness moves us to tears and then acceptance of whatever we have, or think we have lost.

Since our stress today is not so much a physical threat, but is primarily emotional and mental, it is important to understand the logic of emotions. I found this very helpful to the men who consulted me. This was especially helpful to the men who were either dragged in for marital therapy by their wives, or had been sent in by their wives to see me as an ultimatum: “Either go to therapy or I’m leaving.”'

Hopefully, by taking a look at the logic behind our feelings, we will be encouraged as men to recognize just what these emotions are that women want us to share. Perhaps, we can then break free and by embracing the logic of emotions, become more comfortable being expressive.
On the other hand, I encountered women whose husbands were upset that their wives were distant and had trouble expressing their feelings. These women seemed to be more identified with their male side. These women also found the logic of emotions helpful.

• Today, practice recognizing your negative feelings are telling you something improtant about what you value and love. When anger (irritation, resentment), fear (anxiety, worry), sadness (grief, feeling down) arise, just do the inner quest with a question: "What is my anger, fear, sadness or depression telling me about what I love?"

Our Thoughts Really Matter

2010-04-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

Our Thoughts Matter Because They Impact Matter: The Radical Implications of “We Are All One”

One cold, gray Sunday in March, two years after my trip to Tikal, I was to give a talk to the Philadelphia chapter of The Holistic Nurses Association. My talk was on how to use stress to heal ourselves. While I was driving in my car on my way to the meeting, I turned on the radio to hear Jackie Wilson singing, “Your love is taking me higher, higher than I’ve ever been taken before!” This song was followed by the group called Soul Survivor, singing the words, “I’m going to take an expressway to your heart.” These songs seemed to be messages to me from God as the Divine Beloved. I felt I was being guided regarding my talk.
That morning of the talk my car battery was dead and I had to get it recharged. I had come to associate the car battery with the heart. For just as our car is a lifeless mass of matter without the spark provided by the battery, so our body is a lifeless mass of matter without the spark provided by our innermost heart, the core of our being. It is this spark that makes our physical heart beat.

I took the battery being dead as a sign that I needed to emphasize the connection between love and stress. I thought it meant that I needed to emphasize that to truly master stress we need to access the peaceful power of love in our heart as the core of who we are. For a moment, I had a sense of how each one of us looking out of our eyes is the center of his or her universe. And yet I am part of your inner world of meaning and you are part of my inner world of meaning. I began to see how for each one of us everything that happens out there in the outer world is part of our inner world. And all that happens is to help us evolve spiritually.
As I sat with don Serillo after being in Tulum, I was introduced to the idea that we are evolving. He stressed that we were on our way to a major shift to a higher more loving and peaceful state of consciousness and perspective. In bringing about this change, don Serillo emphasized “Let not one of us be left behind.” It is our responsibility to help each other. And since we are all one, helping another is helping ourselves and vice versa. It is a matter of enlightened self-interest.
As we realize that all of us are part of a collective consciousness, we need to start taking responsibility for our thoughts. For example, so often I hear people complain about the government. They express contempt for the red tape and for taxes. The Department of Motor Vehicles and the people who work there are often the brunt of the jokes of many comedians. All these thoughts become more significant if we consider the idea that we are all one.
Right before going on MSNBC to discuss the issue of teenage runaways, I watched a news segment on Timothy McVeigh. He was awaiting his sentencing for blowing up a government building in Oklahoma City and killing so many innocent people.
Considering that we are all one can make us see the importance of facing and releasing the negative feelings we harbor in our heart. Could Timothy McVeigh be one of those impulse-ridden people who act out our collective disdain for and anger at the government? Sure he has his own emotional dynamics and agenda. But think of it, we know that there is truth to the psychoanalytic observation that children tend to express what their parents repress.
An anthropology professor told me of two instances of how his four-year-old son picked up on his hidden negative feelings. The professor and his wife and son were staying in an inn in a small village in Mexico. One day the professor was walking with his son along the street when the professor spotted a man walking his dog in the distance. Thinking he was successfully hiding his fear, the professor started to show his son the flowers on the side of the street. In just seconds, the little boy looked up and said, “Daddy, why are you afraid of the dog?”
On another occasion the little boy picked up on the professor’s hidden irritation about the housekeeper of the inn. After returning to the inn from his field study for the day, the professor was surprised by what his wife had to say about their little boy. She told him that the little boy had gone up to the housekeeper and asked, “Why doesn’t my daddy like you?”

• Today, consider the ethical implications that our thoughts matter, i.e., they impact matter in terms of the material world of people, places, and things. Just as children express what parents hold back, so immature impulse-ridden people may act out the collective feelings being held in the privacy of the minds of the rest of us. If, as the Maya and quantum physics claim, we are indeed all one and connected in some way in our consciousness, then, is it not our responsibility to monitor our negative thoughts and feelings? We can do our part not to contribute to the collective hate of one race or culture against another race or culture. Thoughts driven by strong feeling have a way of becoming manifested in concrete material reality. How we think and feel eventually become action. Our thoughts are like pebbles tossed into a pond causing ripples that travel across the face of the still waters. [Some of the above comes from A Matter of Love. See www.drsrj.com.]

"You Are Everything . . ."

2010-04-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

The Problem and the Solution: “It’s All About Me”

One particular teaching of the Maya that I heard again and again from different shamans was “We are all one.” God is in everything and so we are all one in God. It was a few years after I had been to the land of the Maya that this teaching came back to me in an interesting way. I was at a little café where I was talking with a friend of mine, another Reiki Master.

We discussed the spiritual understanding that we are all one and not disconnected as it appears. And we also talked about how God’s energy is in everything. We finished our talk and went to our cars. I turned on my car radio as I drove out of the parking lot and onto the street. The very first words I heard were from a song by the Stylistics, a group from the 1970s. The words I heard captured the essence of what we had discussed: “You are everything and everything is you.” It was the refrain of the song and it was repeated four times.

In the weeks to follow, this happened three more times at the precise moment that I turned on my car radio and once in the post office. I was mailing my book, 8 Steps to Love to a radio show host so she could read it before I was to be a guest on her show. Out of nowhere, I heard the Stylistics singing: “You are everything and everything is you.” It seemed that the Divine was making sure that I got the message loud and clear: we are all interconnected.

Ellen, a woman who works at a facility for assisting cancer patients, was telling me a funny story. Her boss was complaining and in her complaints she was sounding very self-centered. She was good-natured and so the staff put on her desk a sign that read, “It’s all about me!” As I heard this story, I thought to myself this is the problem of our narcissistic self-centeredness and it is the solution if we extend the definition of who this me is when we say “It’s all about me.”

When we consider that we are all one then we extend the boundaries of me to include the world. We can do this by changing the song words of the Stylistics, “You are everything and everything is you” to the following:

“I AM everything and everything is me!”

When you go to the coffee shop, the man or woman taking your order is you. As you drive along in your car, the other drivers are you even the driver who cuts you off. Consider this during the course of your day. As you look at anything, people, trees, animals, road, sidewalks, sky, clouds, sun and so forth, you can think to yourself, “It is all me!”

For in the depth of our heart, we discover that indeed we are all one. This being the case, we can begin to identify with all of humanity. If we extend our sense of me, we realize that we are the waiter at the restaurant. We are the taxi driver. We are the barking dog in our neighborhood. We are the screaming baby in the movie theater. As we see a plane overhead, we are the pilot and the passengers on that plane. We are also the blue sky and the clouds.

• Today, extend your sense of yourself. Consider how we are the world and the world is us. Me is extended beyond a cherished separate self-image to include all of life. Laboratory experiments done by quantum physicists have demonstrated that everything is "entangled" at the suatomic level of the all-pervaisve quantum field. Walt Whitman intuited this. He attempted to extend his sense of himself in his Song of Myself found in his famous volume, Leaves of Grass.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me
As good belongs to you.

Meaning of Life: Not in Scrolls

2010-04-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

"Jacob had a dream: a ladder was there, standing on the ground with its top reaching to heaven; and there were angels of God going up it and coming down. And Yahweh was there standing over him" (Genesis 28:12).

The fourteenth century Dominican priest and mystic, Meister Eckhart, emphasized that the kingdom of God is not apart from us but is within us and all around us. In Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox reveals how Eckhart does not separate God from His creation. Really feeling the presence of the Divine in nature became a daily experience for me during my time in Tikal. As I sat with the Mayan shamans and walked through the jungle near Tikal, I found my heart awakening to the Divine in everything.

For centuries, Jacob’s ladder has been a major symbol for Christian mystics. Meister Eckhart reveals that the true essence of the ladder is not as a way to leave Earth and literally ascend to God. To him, it is about how when we awaken our consciousness to the spiritual dimension of life, we realize God is always with us and around us. Matthew Fox points out that Eckhart calls us to be like Jacob and wake up in joyful celebration.

"Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Truly Yahweh is in this place and I never knew it!’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awe-inspiring this place is! This is nothing less than a house of God; this is the gate of heaven!"’ (Genesis 28:16-17)

Jacob’s Ladder can be seen as an ancient bridge between the apparent opposites of heaven and earth. Jacob sees angels both ascending and descending. All we need to do is to wake up like Jacob and see through the eyes of love that the Divine is in the ordinary. The sacred is in the profane. Our journey is one of becoming whole in an inner marriage of body and spirit, of head and heart. It is a journey of becoming practical mystics.

The image of Jacob’s ladder ties in with the Mayan idea that within our heart we are all connected to both heaven and earth. Jacob’s ladder had angels ascending to heaven and descending to earth. It appears that there is a continuous flow of angels. It seems to be a telling image of how there is a continuous energy flow of love, angels, to help us work the magic necessary to make our world a more peaceful and loving place as the Maya urge us to do.

The ladder in Jacob’s dream can be seen to remind us that there are higher and lower levels of consciousness. The angelic energy of love descends to us and returns to heaven. This is a metaphor for the idea that there are levels of consciousness beyond our ordinary state of consciousness. Like a radio tower broadcasting different bandwidths and frequencies for different stations, the rungs of the ladder of consciousness take us into other levels of reality. When we have our radio tuned to 106.1 FM, we do not hear 96.5 FM or 1290 AM. And yet these stations and countless others still exist even when we are not tuned into them. Thousands of stations are broadcasting simultaneously.

The ancient wisdom of the Kabbalah and modern physics concur that reality is made up of ten levels or dimensions. In our metaphor of Jacob’s ladder, we could say there are ten rungs but this is beyond the scope of this book. Nine of the dimensions are said to be beyond space and time: the coordinates of our physical world. These nine cannot be accessed by ordinary consciousness.

Like Eckhart, the Maya believe that awakening to the spiritual dimension of life involves the recognition that God is not separate from His creation. Instead, God infuses everything with His Spirit. God is talking to us through nature. Right after I finished writing this about Meister Eckhart and the Maya, I took a short break and turned on the television. The end of the movie Stigmata was on. A priest was reading aloud from the lost Gospel of Saint Thomas that we are told in a postscript was found in the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels in Egypt in 1945. The passage is right in line with what I was writing. God is not separate from nature but is hidden within nature. Christ is quoted as saying:

"The kingdom of God is within you and all around you
and not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of
wood and I am there. Lift a stone and you will find me."

Now compare the similarity of the following words Gerardo shared with us during one of our meetings with him.

"The angel of life, the meaning of life, is not written in
the scrolls. The living word of the living God is found
in stone, in the rocks, and trees, and within yourself."

• Today, pay attention to the meaningful coincidences in your life. For example, moments after my friend Bill's father died, Bill turned on the car radio to hear the words of a song that summed up his father's approach to life: "Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together . . . gonna love one another right now." A year later, on the anniversary of his father's death, Bill thought of how he had not heard that song all year. Right then, walking into the kitchen, Bill heard "Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together . . . gonna love one another right now." The dialogue with the Divine, the living God, continues even as I write this blog posting. I will keep sharing this part of the journey as it appears. However, I will not be able to share all of the times the messages come as it happens often. I will have to pick and choose the messages that seem most relevant. After all, as the Maya tell us: God talks to us all the time.

After O'Reilly: The Unexpected

2010-04-14T10:48:00.000-07:00

After an appearance on Fox News Network’s nationally televised The O’Reilly Factor, I had an experience that was right out of the movie The Sixth Sense. It was only a few hours after my appearance when I was watching television in my bedroom. The room was well-lighted. During a commercial, I nodded out for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, I saw a striking woman, a brunette, wearing a black suit. She appeared to be in her thirties.

This elegant woman’s beauty was a cross between Gloria Vanderbilt and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. She was seated in the chair at the foot of my bed staring directly into my eyes. I had a thought that she was the spirit of Ann who was a woman in her forties who had died a year earlier. Ann was Gretchen’s friend of twenty years. Gretchen, who was also in her forties, had called me the night before I was to go on The O’Reilly Factor. However, I was puzzled because somewhere I had gotten the impression that Ann was a blonde and not a brunette.

Gretchen was consulting me for help with her continuing pain over the loss of her dear friend Ann. As I looked into the eyes of this brunette in black, I said, “Ann?” With that, I felt the sensation of energy come through the back door to my heart and fill me from head to toe. At the same time, the woman atomized before my eyes the way perfume becomes tiny droplets when sprayed into the air. I say atomized because it was as if her spirit had coalesced into a mass of some kind of misty molecules or atoms.

Immediately after this apparition atomized, I called Gretchen and asked her what Ann looked like. I told Gretchen, “I think I may have had a visitation from Ann’s spirit.” Gretchen said she would e-mail me a picture of Ann.

When I received my e-mail and looked at her picture, I saw it was as I suspected. Ann was blonde. I wrote Gretchen an e-mail to tell her that it was not Ann. I went to e-mail Gretchen but the e-mail would not go through. I tried four times. Then I thought that maybe the visiting spirit was Gretchen’s mother. I added this thought to my e-mail. It went right through. Gretchen called me and confirmed that the description of the woman in black sounded like her mother. Shortly after her mother’s death, Gretchen told me she was visited by the spirit of her mother.

The interesting thing to me was the clinical significance of this vision of Gretchen’s mother. Her appearance gave me insight into what was complicating Gretchen’s bereavement. Gretchen was losing her mother all over again with the death of Ann. For Gretchen, the wound of losing her mother had been ripped open again by Ann’s death.

The other thing I noticed was that Gretchen’s loss of Ann was complicated by what could be termed the ugly ducking syndrome. Just like the ugly duckling in the children’s story, Gretchen did not appreciate her inner and understated outer beauty. From my vision of her mother, I could see that Gretchen grew up in the shadow of a very beautiful mother. Ann stepped in and filled her mother’s shoes as she was flamboyant and charismatic.

Again, Gretchen was overshadowed. Ann was outgoing and popular. Having compared herself first to her mother and then to her friend, Gretchen had never developed a strong sense of self-worth apart from her mother and her friend. This insight helped me help her begin to deal with the loss of her mother and friend as more than the loss of two very important people both of whom she had loved deeply. She experienced the loss of her mother and friend as a loss of the external source of her self-worth.

For Gretchen, feeling good about herself was tied up with Ann’s charismatic qualities. With Ann as her friend, she could borrow a sense of worth—worth by her association with an attractive and dynamic friend.

Gretchen’s situation reveals how time, distance, and even death do not interfere with our being connected to each other. As I mentioned in 8 Steps to Love, I have felt the palpable loving energy of people’s deceased loved ones bringing comforting messages of love during Reiki healing sessions. I would get a small snapshot of the person’s departed loved one. But with Gretchen, the appearance of her mother from beyond the grave was much more dramatic. Her deceased mother appeared to me to be as real as any fully alive full-bodied flesh-and-blood person.

It is interesting to note that just a few hours before this paranormal experience, I had been on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss Dr. Phil McGraw who had made his weekly appearance on Oprah. I was to critique Dr. Phil’s work with individuals and couples. My role was to draw on my clinical experience in my work as a psychologist.

Here I was engaged in trying to help Gretchen only a few hours after my appearance on national television. Then it hit me, my approach could be described as Dr. Phil meets John Edwards. On his show called Crossing Over, John Edwards helps audience members with their grief by communicating with their departed loved ones. I was attempting to use my clinical skills to help Gretchen with her grief only I was blessed with the added benefit of having seen the spirit of her deceased mother. This paranormal event helped me apply my clinical insights.

• Today, consider how love and concern do not die. In this case, a mother returned nearly two decades after she had died to help her daughter through me. Reflect on what this story tells us about who all of us really are in the core of our being? About our true essence?

The Simpsons & The Soul

2010-04-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

When I was coming back from a weekend trip in Maine, I discovered my car starting to slow down mysteriously even though I had a full tank of gas. The battery went dead and the car died. I was surprised because I always thought that once a car was running, the battery would keep recharging.

The mechanic told me that the problem was with the alternator, the electric generator that keeps circulating the electrical energy that charges the battery. It was then that I realized that the most essential part of the car is something that is basically invisible to us, namely, the continuously circulating energy from the alternator. This energy charges the battery so it can ignite the engine and keep it alive. Without this continuously flowing energy, the car dies and cannot be driven.

Later, after I returned home, I happened to watch The Simpsons, a television comedy with cartoon characters that pokes fun at American family life. In this episode, Bart Simpson, the school age son, who is always getting into trouble, sells his soul for five dollars to his friend Millhouse. Bart finds himself unable to enjoy life. Things that made him laugh, no longer have any impact on him. He loses his energy and power. For example, when Bart goes to the local convenience store, the automatic doors don’t register his presence and so, don’t open for him. Finally, some other boys come by and let Bart in. Once inside, he can’t even make the glass door to the freezer by the check-out counter steam up by blowing on it as the other boys had done. The other boys laugh at him, calling him, “no breath.”

These two events fit the criteria of synchronicity, which, as was mentioned in the last chapter, refers to meaningful coincidences. It is a scientific way of describing the lessons that we can learn from life or that life may teach us. From a traditional religious perspective, it is a sign from God. In the psychology of dreams, a car often symbolizes our body, that is, it is the vehicle which carries our consciousness, our spirit and soul through life.
The meaningful coincidence led me to the following observation:

A car is a lifeless mass of matter without the continuous current of electrical energy generated by the alternator. This continuous flow of energy is what charges the battery, which, in turn, provides the spark that ignites the engine and keeps it alive. And, like a car, our body is a lifeless mass of matter without the continuous current of the enduring energy of love generated by the core of our being–our heart, spirit and soul. This continuous flow of the enduring energy of love is what charges the battery of our physical heart, which, in turn, provides the spark that ignites the engine of our body and keeps it alive. [Excerpted from 8 Steps to Love. See www.drsrj.com.]

• Today, as you notice cars, think of how all that is visible (metal frame, nuts and bolts, glossy paint, rubber tires, cushy seats, and fancy dashboard) is worthless without the invisible spark and current provided by the battery. Consider how the invisible essence in you cannot be found by a surgeon cutting into your brain or heart. And, remember that it is this invisible essence or "ghost in the machine" (as it is called in philosophical circles) that determines whether what we see and touch is real or whether it is an hallucination. Ask yourself, "What does this say about my true identity? About who I really am?"

I Am Free!

2010-04-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

"I am free! I am free! He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me!"
—Sandor Boytar, M.D.

The red October sun disappeared behind the trees as Gizella gazed out of the window; her teary eyes focused on the beauty of autumn. She momentarily looked away from the couch where her husband, Sandor, lay dying. The array of autumn colors: gold, orange, and red seemed to match the mixture of bittersweet feelings Gizella felt during her husband’s final hours. She was sad as she remembered the good times, and yet, she did not want him to suffer anymore from the ravages of bone cancer.

During Sandor’s final hours, Anna, his stepdaughter, sat by his side sending him Reiki healing energy to ease his pain. He didn’t believe in energy healing but he allowed Anna to lay her hands lightly on the painful areas of his body. Anna got the impression that Sandor was accepting the Reiki with the attitude: “If it makes her feel better to do something for me, why not let her.” He passed away in peace as Anna kept sending him Reiki until his last breath.

Suddenly, Gizella’s peaceful yet painful reflections were interrupted by a swirling energy of golden-speckled light encircling her just seconds after Sandor took his last breath. Within her mind, Gizella heard Sandor’s voice. She felt his energy direct her attention to his lifeless body lying on the couch. He then cried out: “He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me!” She was stunned. Here was his soul proclaiming its freedom. Sandor’s next words were, “I love you and I’m sorry I was not able to show you how much I loved you!” Like so many men, Sandor had found it difficult to express the deep love in his heart.

Gizella felt the energy of her husband’s liberated soul encircle her and she heard the words of his soul in her mind. To whom was Sandor referring when he said to his lovely Gizella, “He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me?” He was referring to his body-mind that had prevented him from believing in the spiritual reality of his soul. In the months before he died, Sandor had often told Gizella, “There is no soul! When I die I will just be chemicals. My body will just go back to the earth, to nature.” All his life, he had refused to believe in the soul.

Dr. Boytar was an otherwise sturdy and physically fit eighty-year-old medical doctor. His physique reminded me of the ageless and forever-fit Jack LaLane. A man of courage, he managed to escape from communist-occupied Hungary in the 1950’s. When I sat with him six months earlier, I silently wondered what, if anything, were the underlying emotional issues related to the bone cancer. As I talked with this distinguished and learned medical doctor, I thought to myself what is eating you to the bone? His very next comment was that: “If Gizella and I had remained in Hungary, I would never have been able to be with her.” Sandor and Gizella met in America years after they left Hungary.
In Hungarian society, Sandor believed his beautiful wife would have been out of his reach. Thrown together by circumstances in America, they had found each other. Strangers in a new land. They had a common bond through their roots in Hungary and both were in the medical field. I could see that he couldn’t believe that she loved him. He seemed to think that she stayed married to him only for convenience and the comfort of a common heritage. Sandor was wrong as Gizella did indeed love him very much.

During his life, Sandor denied the reality of the spiritual dimension of life. His paradigm as a man of science did not allow him to believe in his own soul. The soul is not quantifiable and cannot be seen by cutting someone open with surgery. He believed in the organs of the body and in the chemical processes regulating our health and determining our life and death.

So Sandor’s proclamation after his death is not simply the reaffirmation of cherished beliefs held while he was alive. These were not the words that Gizella would ever have expected to hear. Moreover, Gizella was not one to have spiritual experiences.

Gizella felt Sandor’s presence for two days following his death. On the evening of the second day, Gizella felt Sandor’s energy begin to leave and then she saw him ascending toward the top of the cathedral ceiling of their home. She heard him say, “I have to go. Know that I love you!”

Gizella asked, “Where are you going?” Sandor replied, “I am going to the place where you wait before you are sent to where you are supposed to go next.” In the book entitled, Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Dr. Newton calls the place Sandor was first going to, “the staging area” or “the orientation area.” It is where the soul first goes after death before going where it needs to go for its next phase of learning and evolution.
Sandor had never read any books about spirituality or the after-death experience. Yet, here was the soul of a dyed-in-the-wool scientific materialist ascending and telling his wife that he was heading for the staging area. Throughout his entire career as a medical doctor, he vehemently maintained, “There is no soul! When I die I will just be chemicals. My body will just go back to the earth, to nature.” [More on the above can be found in A Matter of Love. See www.drsrj.com.]

• Today, as you go through your day, ask yourself, "Do I really believe that who I am, my essence, the I who is looking through my eyes at the world, is the product of chemicals and firing neurons?" Consider that, as Dr. Boytar discovered, consciousness or awareness is primary and matter (your body and the material world) is secodary. This is part of what the Maya predicted. It is part of the great shift in understanding ourselves and our world that is taking place as we approach 2012. For more about the power of our consciousness see February 2010 blog entry entitled One Candle Shining.

Hearts Weep & Spirits Smile

2010-04-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

I just learned that my dear friend Joe lost his daughter Nicole to cancer on Easter Sunday. Last fall, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, he lost Cynthia, Nicole’s sister, to cancer. Both were in their late thirties with families and children of their own. How unbearable it must be to be the parent of two inwardly and outwardly beautiful young women cut down in their prime by cancer.

However, Joe’s awareness of the spiritual dimension of life has helped him with his heart-ripping grief. An hour after Nicole died, Joe and other family members were startled by what they saw; Nicole had a smile on her lips. It was not there the moment of her death and did not appear until the funeral director arrived. It was as if her spirit were communicating through her body. “I love you all and I’m glad to be released.” Nicole and Cynthia had suffered hard and long. Both endured the pain of the cancer intensified by all the surgeries, radiation, and painful side effects of the chemotherapy. (In the next posting, I’ll share my experience with a medical doctor that illustrates how the deceased communicate joy at being released, especially when it is from a body wracked with pain.)

“Was there a symbolic message about death here? Thanksgiving? Easter?” I wondered if an aspect of the legacies of these remarkable young women is to teach us all how gratitude, the essence of Thanksgiving, and joy, the essence of Easter, can also be experienced at the loss of a loved one. Then, as so often happens in the daily dialogue with the Divine, I received an answer to my question. “Yes, they can,” I thought as the following passages from 8 Steps to Love came to mind.

Grief, Gratitude & Joy

On a cold and gray autumn afternoon, I was walking in the graveyard of an old country church. The air was especially chilly as the church stood only a few miles from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The winds coming off the Chesapeake bay cut right through my overcoat. Suddenly, I was struck by the following words inscribed on a gravestone.

All that’s bright must fade
All that’s fair, decay
All we loved was made
To bloom and pass away.
[And yet, "our love is here to stay."]
Thank you for those inspiring lyrics, Mr. Gershwin.]

At first, the message seemed depressing, like the coldness and grayness of the day. Then, it was like a ray of sunshine, shooting through those gray clouds as I saw the comfort and significance in these words. When we come to accept the truth of these words then we discover our capacity to love freely. It hit me that there is a primary and a secondary source of human suffering. I now knew what one of my mentors meant when he said, “According to Freud, in order to be emotionally healthy, we must replace neurotic suffering with real suffering.” I thought to myself:

We suffer because we love. This is unavoidable. We suffer
more because we deny the reality of love. This is avoidable.

Repression and denial of the reality of our love and of our essential identity as the enduring energy of love cause us more pain. The emptiness we initially feel when a loved one is lost stems from our holding back our love out of a wish to avoid the pain of our loss. Our restraint is based on a denial and repression of our essence, of that which makes life worth living, namely, our capacity to love.
To ease our suffering, we need to come to terms with how the bodies or the concrete material forms of the people, pets, places and things we love in our lives eventually “fade, decay or bloom and pass away.” Then we can learn to love who or what is in our life while it is in our life with an attitude of gratitude. Rather than grabbing on tightly and possessively to what we love as though our life and internal security, peace of mind and well-being depended on it, we learn to love freely. We joyfully recognize the transitory nature of concrete material reality. As William Blake wrote:

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise…

We transcend the primary source of our suffering when we realize that the important thing, that which lasts, is the process of loving. In remembering that the essence of our heart, the treasure of love in our heart, is the capacity to care and love, we remain in touch with our inner fullness. It is having the courage to love, knowing full well the concrete form will inevitably be lost to us. Hence, we can learn to love freely, without grasping or clinging for dear life to that which we love. We transcend our suffering as we discover the joy of loving freely.

The secondary source of our suffering comes from the fact that our body depends on the external world, on air, food and water to survive. Our spirit, however, can transcend the physical circumstances we find ourselves in as prisoners of war survivors and near-death experience survivors have done. It is when we identify with our body only, that the loss of our loved one leads to aching emptiness. We long for the physical presence of our loved one in order to feel our own fullness again. However, when we identify with our spirit, the treasure of love that we are, we feel a fullness. In reliving our love for our lost loved one, we can forever feel and bring back the joy we felt before we lost our loved one. We can transform our suffering into joy.

Therefore, even though the losses we experience in life may cause us great suffering, it is through the losses that we discover we are not simply our bodies.

• Today, remember, "The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble (or, is it the other way around? Rockies tumble? Oh, well, it works either way.) They're only made of clay. But, our love is here to stay." Now, consider the following Sufi saying. It succinctly describes the joy that comes from loving freely despite the heartache and gnawing pain of loss:

When the heart weeps for what it has lost,
the spirit laughs [smiles, in Nicole's case] for what it has found.

Inner-Freedom Fire Ceremony

2010-04-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

The air was chilly at 5:15 A.M. To the left of the chruch coutyard, just above the roof of the stone chruch, I could see the moon shining brightly in the darkness of the predawn sky. In an instant, I heard the crackling of dry sticks and branches in a large barrel. The priest had lit the fire for the beginning of an ancient ceremony, dating back to those first century Christians. Small white candles were handed out to each of us in the congregation. Standing in a crescent shape by the blazing fire, we watched the priest light the large, white Christ Candle. Eventually, the fire was spread to the single candle held by each and every one of us. First, two of us received the flame directly from the Christ Candle. They both turned to light another’s cnadle who in turn lit the candle of someone else until all of our candles were lit. The ceremony corresponded to the vow we all shared later in the service: “to seek and serve the Christ in others.” Alice Howell’s comment came to mind, “There is one flame but many candles” (see blog entry entited One Flame . . . Many Candles).

What else was God, the Divine Beloved, revealing to me that was a refinement of what I experinced in the sacred fire ceremonies of the Maya? The fire ceremony of Easter morning reminded me that we have within us all a small flame of the all-consuming and, paradoxically, all-embracing, fire of God’s love. I say paradoxically because I find myself remembering the Burning Bush scene with Moses (Charlton Heston) in the Cecil B. DeMille classic The Ten Commandments. Rather than consume the bush by buring it to a crisp, the fire of God simply contained (embraced) the bush. The Christ Candle is a symbol of how the fire of God’s love was exemplified in the life of Christ. His great love, compassion, and capacity to forgive was both all-consuming and all-embracing, by being extended to the discarded and rejected of society—the lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors (April 15th is getting closer), and beggars.

That was it! God, the Divine Beloved, was showing me somethig to share with you about how Christ forgave those who crucified Him. He asked His Father to forgive them in their ignorance of what they were doing. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). Jesus appeals to His Father, the I AM THAT I AM to forgive them. He did not call out from the cross, “I forgive you.”

I wondered what this might mean for us as a model for how we can learn to forgive and find inner peace? Sure, it means we can simply pray and ask God to forgive those who hurt us. And, we can also ask God to help us forgive. To me, it also means that we can place the offending person, object, or situation into the sacred fire of God’s all-consuming and all-embracing love. It struck me that the fire of all the little desires fueling our emotions can be consumed by the fire of the greater desire for inner freedom and peace.

Visualizing the all-consuming aspect of the sacred fire was what I learned from the Mayan fire ceremony. We could place into the fire the stress of our inner life of desires and emotions, especially what Swami Rama called our “psychological trash” (see blog entry entitled Sacred Fire). But today’s ceremony revealed a way to deal with the stress that can arise from surface differences. We can seek to remember the one spirit (flame) of love hidden in the surface diversity of our various shapes and sizes of soul suits, our corporeal costumes as well as the surface differences in race, religion, culture, education, etc.

Moments after the service ended, my reflections on the sacred fire were interrupted. A woman I know, a self-taught biblical scholar, took me by the arm and led me to an icon hanging on the church wall. Excitedly, she told me, “On icons of Christ, you will see Greek words contained in the nimbus, the cloud-like halo. They translate as, ‘The One Who Is.’” I was receiving an answer to my thoughts in the daily dialogue with the Divine. I then thought, this “is” is something fundamental and universal that is beyond the boundaries and forms of any one relgious tradition. “Is” is in Christ (Chr-is-t), Krishna (Kr-is-hna), Vishnu (V-is-hnu), Isis (Is-is), St. Issa (Is-sa), the name given to Christ in India and Tibet, Ishtar (Is-htar), and, let's not forget Islam (Is-lam), though many angry Americans might like to since they mistakingly equate terrorism with this sacred tradition.

“Ah ha!” I thought. “The word ‘is’ contains a message.” Peace comes when we are still, cease striving, and rest in just being, not in doing, getting, or having. Rest is found in aligning with the awareness that I AM. It is the recognition that I simply exist beyond labels and conditions. By bringing our attention to this simple, unadorned truth, we find rest from our hectic schedules. Worn down by wearying days of doing, we find a brief respite in simply being one who “is” with no place to go and nothing or no thing to do in that moment. We enter the timeless of what we might call no-thing-ness. We get out from under all the “things” or “thingness” weighing us down. “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, “ Emerson (Ralph Waldo, that is) once said over a century ago.

• Today, resolve to get back in the saddle by taking a moment to just BE, before you begin your day. Instead of starting your day by praying to God for certain blessings, conduct your very own inner-freedom fire ceremony. Take some slow, deep breaths and visualize a fire on an altar before God, your Divine Beloved. This fire is the sacred inner fire of your being, the flame of the one who simply “is” within you. This fire is the flame of the I AM consciousness within you that is not identified with anything but just being. Now, reflecting on the day ahead, place into this fire all your desires, hopes, dreams, plans, frustrations, fears, anxieties, joys, resentments, loves and hates, and son on. With each breath, imagine you are enflaming the fire with fresh oxygen until all that is left is the fire burning brightly. Feel the peace of being at one with God and the sacred fire of God’s all-consuming yet all-embracing love. Take a moment to repeat this during the day when you feel stressed and remember the one flame of the One Who Is resides in us all despite our surface differences.

Forgiving Nero on Good Friday

2010-04-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday night, I watched a film about the life of the Roman Emperor Nero, entitled Nero. I did so on the recommendation of a close friend, a gifted artist, who is well-versed in ancient Greek and Roman history. He prepared me for a film with a psychological slant on Nero. To my surprise, there was a spiritual message about forgiveness. Just moments earlier, on what was then the eve of Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, I had been reflecting on forgiveness. This was the other synchronicity in the daily dialogue with the Divine (remember that, as the Mayans say, “God talks to us ALL the time”), I alluded to in the previous posting.

In the final scene, Acte, the love of Nero’s life, stands by the unlit funeral pyre where Nero’s body is lying. We hear Acte’s thoughts, “Nero had a dream of Rome, a dream of a better world.” Acte takes a flaming branch and lights the pile of sticks encasing Nero’s body. Referring to the fire that burned Rome during Nero‘s reign, we again hear her thoughts, “He [Nero] did not light the fire but the fire in his soul consumed him. Let us forgive him as we hope to be forgiven.”

What! Forgive Nero who fed all those innocent early Christians to the lions? But how can we? We can because we are all Nero. We are all consumed by the fire of desire to change the world everyday. It is as if we say to ourselves, “I need the world to be different before I can feel good and be at peace. I need my unreasonable boss to see I’m right and he’s wrong before I can feel good and be at peace. I need my wife or husband to agree with my point of view or I will remain disturbed and unhappy.”

Yes, the desire to improve conditions around us is fine but we can do so by taking a breath, relaxing, and doing so as we are strengthened by feeling good first. Then we are inspired to change the conditions around us as we breath freely with less tension. But we do so not because our peace of mind and well being depend on it.

The word spirit in many languages is equated with the breath. When Jesus died on the cross on that first Good Friday, he did so after he commend His Spirit into God’s hands. In little ways each day, we can choose to do the same by exhaling the tension we feel when we want to change the world. We can commend our spirit into the hands of the I AM That I AM awareness within us. It is the awareness that is not dependent on conditions: it is conditionless. What can I say about myself that is not subject to change while I draw breath on this planet? I AM. I exist. I AM this or that, a butcher or baker or candle stick maker is subject to change. Even my gender can be changed if I were to elect to have an operation.

Right now, allow yourself to feel the peace of choosing to cast the fire of the desire to change any conditions into the sacred fire of the all-consuming love of God Whose name is I AM THAT I AM. We can then tap into the peace of that consciousness within us when we become still and cease striving to change the world. Then we stop being consumed by the fire of our desire as Nero was. And, we can stop seeking revenge against those we feel wronged by as Nero did. According to the film, when his pregnant second wife died, Nero asked Saint Paul to raise her from the dead. But when Paul was unable to do so, he told Nero that it was not God’s will. Nero became enraged and thus began his slaughter of Christians.

When Jesus commended His Spirit into God’s hands, an earthquake shook the Earth. The thick curtain barring the way to the inner sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The barrier to intimacy with God was removed. Just as the 8.8 earthquake in Chile shook La Tierra Madre to Her core and shifted the coastline of South America, practicing forgiveness today as Christ did is capable of causing an inner earthquake that can shake each one of us to the core of our usual sense of ourselves. As long as we cling to a body-based sense of ourselves, centered in the reactive reptile brain, forgiveness makes little sense. Revenge makes more sense. “You hurt me verbally or physically, I’ll get you back.” But when we remember that who we are is spirit, and the essence of that spirit is both breath and love, we can aspire to forgive as Christ did those who crucified Him.

• Today, resolve to retain your inner freedom by not allowing anyone or anything rob you of your ability to feel good and be at peace. Reflect on how it is in remembering that who we all are is love, we can learn to forgive the world for not being as we would like it to be at any given moment. Breathing in, commend your spirit to the inner freedom of the I AM awareness within you by silently saying to the offending condition (person, place or thing, e.g., an unreasonable boss, a traffic jam, or unpleasnat weather), “I AM NOT dependent on you being other than you are at this moment for me to feel good and be at peace.” Breathing out, silently say, “I will maintain my inner peace no matter what you do or say.”

Inspiration from the Esoteric

2010-03-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

I cannot emphasize enough the great teaching of the Maya: God talks to us all the time. Still, I am like a child on Christmas morning when synchronicities happen. One occurred on Saturday night, which I'll save for Friday's posting. The other happened on Palm Sunday. I was pondering the topic of my Monday posting: how our capacity to care defines us as human beings. When I checked my email, I found one from a close friend and brother on the spiritual path who now lives in Europe. He and his wife had just visited Dakau, and they were immensely moved by the experience. Instantly, I thought of the inspiring example of concentration camp survivors such as Dr. Victor Frankl and what they taught us. Our capacity to care not only defines us but saves us in the most horrible of circumstances. Focusing on his love for his wife kept him going. I’ll say more about that in a future posting. But for now, below is some inspiration from a little-known volume I discovered one day in my daily diaglogue with the Divine.

The wisdom of the sacred spiritual traditions from all over the world can inspire us further in our quest to live a life that is attuned to the boundless reality of love. This love is both within all and around us. Reflect on the following inspiring words of G. de Purucker taken from the volume entitled, The Esoteric Tradition. Drawing from the secret teachings of different sacred spiritual traditions, he declares:

"We humans are ‘fallen gods’, ‘fallen angels’ with capacities divine, active or latent, enshrined within our minds and souls…We fall to Earth; but we rise again! Indomitable is the spirit within us. Nothing can daunt or conquer it, if only we do use it. It is indomitable, for it is the energy pouring forth through our own individual wills from the very Heart of the Universe; and all evolution, all growth, all achievement, depend upon the degree with which we ally ourselves with this spiritual river of consciousness and force flooding our inmost being. All evil will pass away when men understand this and act accordingly, for evil is the running contrary to the operations of Spiritual Nature… Indeed we are fallen gods, fallen angels, learning, growing, evolving god-sparks. … The urge behind spiritual evolution and the objective which this urge is impelling us toward, is simply the divine hunger in the Universe to grow greater, to advance, to unfold: Excelsior! … and the objective is to become at-one self-consciously with the Boundless–something which never can be reached! Therein is infinite beauty, for there is no final ending for growth in beauty and splendor and wisdom and love and power. The Boundless Universe is our home! All things are latent in the core of the core of the being of each one of us; they are like sleeping powers of the Universe; and this core of the core of the being of each one of us is man’s own inner god, the Cosmic Dhyani-Buddha within him, the Divine Christ immanent within him: the living Osiris of the ways of infinity…"

• Today, consider that the boundless reality of love resides in the core of your bing. Take a slow, deep breath, and silently say, "God is love. Then, as you breathe out, silently say, "and so am I."

The Essence of Being Human

2010-03-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

The Ancient Story of Care

In his searching study of the human condition, the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger described how fundamental and crucial the capacity to care is to our very nature as human beings. There is an old story about care that Heidegger quotes in his main work, Being and Time, which can also be found in Goethe’s Faust. My clinical experience echoed the truth found in this little parable. Whatever problems people presented in therapy, the common theme inevitably involved what they loved and cared about in life.

Once, when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. ‘Care’ asked him to give it spirit and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this and demanded that it be given his name instead. While ‘Care’ and Jupiter were disputing, Earth arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter and he made the following decision, which seemed a just one: ‘Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since “Care” first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called homo [man], for it is made out of humus [earth].

Whatever else we can say about what it means to be human, the idea that, as this little parable suggests, it is from “care” that we originate. It is from care that we are born both physically and spiritually. Physically, we are conceived in an act of love and/or simply desire on the part of our parents. Either way, the sensibility of care is involved at some level, whether it was out of true love or lust. In this sense, care is part of how we came to be. Spiritually, we are born again, as we learn to develop the capacity to open our heart more fully and to care more deeply.

• Today, reflect on how it is care that possesses us for as long as we live. Hence, it is care, or, more precisely, the capacity to care that is the basis of all of our emotions and it is our emotions that then move us to take action in the world around us. It is because we care that we can feel mad, sad , or glad.

Redeem the Reactive Reptile

2010-03-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

In a previous posting entitled the Iguana & the Hawk, I mentioned the Mayan mystical symbol of the feathered serpent which expresses the goal of achieving an inner union of your lower, reactive-reptile nature with your higher, loving nature. One way to do this is by shifting your focus from fear and anger to love. Eventually, you can drop all techniques. Simple mindful awareness will enable you to shift effortlessly. It is as if your awareness becomes like the morning sun dissolving the clouds of night. The clouds of stress and conflict dissipate when you shine upon them the light of love that you are in the core of your being.

[The passage below is taken from 8 Steps to Love: How to Return to Love When You Need it the Most—The Moment Stress & Conflict Begin (www.drsrj.com).

Return to Love: Shift Your Focus & Energy Technique

With the shift your focus and energy technique, you use the sharp-focused awareness that is your sword of love to penetrate into the heart of your stress. You cut through your confusion to see what your stress tells you about what you hate and would love to have happen instead.

Note: It is important to express love with the same or more intensity with which you feel your negative emotions. Exaggerate the movements to really reach into your heart as if to grab your negative emotions and then shift, lift and return them to love. Remember, you are redeeming the reptile, the dragon, your lower nature with your higher loving nature as you hear and feel with your heart what your negative emotions are “t”– telling you. As you open your fists, imagine releasing the butterfly of love, your capacity to love freely without clinging like the caterpillar.

Once you have a feel for this, you can mentally shift the energy of hate to love, by simply visualizing yourself making the movements instead of doing them. You use this technique in the heat of the moment. Practice in your daily life and with your stress list. Use the exact wording until you get the hang of it.The wording is deceptively simple yet very powerful. It helps you accept the message of your negative emotions as valid and valuable and it helps you return quickly to love so you can focus on and move toward what you love and want.

The phrase and that’s because is important as it links love and hate which is something we learn to separate in childhood in a primitive attempt to cope with the fear of expressing our anger. As children, we are prone to magical thinking when it comes to anger. We fear that our thoughts will somehow harm or kill our parents. This would leave us alone and abandoned. The other fear is that, since they are bigger than us, they will harm or kill us. Both fears are repressed, but the fear of losing love if we express our anger, stays with us. This phrase is a kind of mantra, a mental device, we can say that can really help us redirect the flow of our energy from our negative emotions back to love.

With this technique we redeem the reptile in us, the dragon, our lower nature driven by fear and anger with our higher nature of love.

1. Make a fist with both hands and pull them to your heart. Round your shoulders. Tighten your body and squat down slightly as you breathe in and then say aloud, “My feeling bad (or my fear, anger, sadness) is telling me that I hate…(breathe out and fill in the blank) __________.”

2. Now open your hands. Expand your chest. Stand up straight and as you extend your arms over your head as though reaching for the sky, breathe out and say aloud, “And that’s because I love…(breathe out and fill in the blank) ______.”

• Today, redeem the reptile by shifting the fear focus of any negative emtions that arise back into a love focus. You zero in on what you would love to have happen (desired outcome) instead of on what you would hate to have happen (feared outcome).

Needing Another to Change

2010-03-24T05:43:00.000-07:00

Empathizing with the person irritating you by seeing the frustrating situation from his or her point of view can save us a lot of stress. It really is true that the person we are upset with is really doing the best he or she can. If he or she could do otherwise, then he or she would. And if the person upsetting us is ever going to be able to change his or her pattern such as being late, we have to approach the issue of change with love. Remember the mantra of compassion. Take a deep breath and silently tell the person:

I know in my heart that you would have done differently if you could have done differently but you couldn’t so you didn’t.

If we are harboring a need for someone to change, then anything we do will not be helpful. Even if unstated, the pressure of our need to change them can be felt by the other person. He or she may actually pick up a slight tension in our body. So we need to relax and accept the person as he or she is. Paradoxically, change can occur when we give up our need to change someone.

In other words, to help someone change, we must feel acceptance, compassion, and empathy for them in the current context and in the context of their overall life. For example, Dennis, a man in his thirties, was having a hard time with his wife, Sue. She was terribly jealous. Sue had a tendency to feel left out if he did anything with his male friends. Sue had grown up as the only girl with four brothers. She was younger than her brothers. When she tried to fit in during the banter at dinner, she was ignored. Sue felt left out and it hurt her deeply. At first, Dennis would get irritated with Sue’s jealousy.

Then, as Dennis considered Sue’s behavior in the context of her life, he could feel compassion for the little girl who felt so hurt and so left out. This didn’t mean he would not help her to heal this hurt. It just meant that he would be more understanding on the one hand when she attacked him with her hurt feelings. On the other hand, he could calmly help her see her pattern and could reassure her that he loved her and that she had not missed out on anything. She used to be so eaten-up by envy of her brothers doing things with her father. Dennis saw how he could help her stop having her old wound ripped open over and over again.

Consider for a moment taking an ultimately radical position of compassion. One of the steps to happiness outlined in the Buddhist book, Eight Steps to Happiness, involves “accepting defeat and offering the victory.” When someone gets upset with you, imagine taking full responsibility for his or her upset. You avoid defending yourself. You accept defeat in the sense that you accept you must have done something to trigger the other person’s upset no matter how minor. This is a very creative, compassionate, and caring position and runs contrary to our reptile reactivity.

This is also an ultimately powerful position. It is not to foster a crippling guilt; it is to practice deepening your compassion and gaining greater freedom, peace, and happiness. You are relinquishing your narcissistic dependency on other people seeing you as good and not bad. No longer are you ruled by the underlying universal issue from childhood that unconsciously is reexperienced through our adult relationships: “Mommy, don’t leave me! Don’t be angry at me! I won’t be bad! I’ll be good!”

Clearly, as with Sue, we all have sensitive areas that provide most of the fuel for the fire of any current upset. Ninety-percent of Sue’s upset with Dennis was because his actions triggered her early pain over feeling left out. When Dennis accessed the compassion and love in his heart, he could genuinely feel bad that he had done even the slightest thing to trigger Sue’s pattern of feeling left out. He could see that if he had been more careful and considerate of her feelings, she would probably not have gotten so upset.

Today, practice creative compassion. Remember, if you open your heart to the person upsetting you with acceptance, compassion, and empathy, then the person is free to change and you are free as well. You move from irritation to liberation as you realize that your peace and happiness do not depend on anyone or anything external to you. For you have everything you need within your heart for your peace and happiness. After all is said and done, it’s all simply a matter of love.

Being Creative vs. Reactive

2010-03-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

As I was sipping an espresso and reading The Power of Kabbalah at a local outdoor café, I had a revelation. I was reading how the Kabbalah stresses the need to stop being reactive and start being proactive instead. Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning! The choice is between being reactive or creative. Suddenly, I saw how the words reactive and creative have all the same letters. The only difference is the location of the letter c within the two words. In creative the c is the first letter. In reactive it is hidden four letters inside the word. I then thought, “What could this symbolize?”

There seemed to be a spiritual truth being revealed. We could think of the letter c as standing for compassion and caring. When we are creative, we put our higher loving nature symbolized by the letter c first and foremost in our life. When we are reactive, we hide our higher loving nature and put our lower reactive reptile nature, symbolized by the letter r, first. Herein lies the clue as to how irritation can lead us to our liberation and ascension.

Our lower nature, the reptile, is reactive and responds to irritation by fight-or-flight. When we are reactive reptiles, we are up and down. Our emotional temperature depends on the emotional climate of those around us. The cold-blooded reptile is at the mercy of the environment. In contrast, our higher spiritual nature is like the eagle who transcends the environment. Truly, the difference between being creative or reactive is a matter of love.

At the heart of most sacred spiritual traditions is the concept of God or the Divine as the Creator. When we are being creative, we are being like God, the Divine. And when we are being reactive, we are hiding our higher loving and divine nature and placing the reactive reptile in us first. Our choice is to be a reactor or a creator. Take a deep breath and try repeating the affirmation: “I am not a reactive reptile! I am a caring and compassionate creator!”

• Today, keep reminding yourself that you are a creator, made in the image of God, and not a reactive reptile.

Formula for Finding Peace

2010-03-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

One afernoon in Tikal, I was sitting in the shade. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. No one was around. In the quiet stillness, I felt deeply peaceful, and I found myself contemplating the word peace. Suddenly, I saw how the letters of the word peace revealed the essence of true peace:

P-peace, E-equals, A-acceptance, C-compassion, and E-empathy.

Often, when we get angry, it is because we believe someone could have done differently. You can find peace when you are upset by someone who is behaving badly by repeating what I have come to call the mantra of compassion. (Mantra is a Sanskrit word meaning mental device.) Take a deep breath and silently tell the person:

I know in my heart that you would have done differently if you could have done differently but you couldn’t so you didn’t.

We don’t let people off the hook; we hold them accountable. At the same time, we recognize they can’t undo what they did. Peace comes along with insight into how to prevent further tragedy as we apply the formula: peace equals acceptance, compassion, and empathy.
This formula holds for the suffering we experience from beating ourselves up with guilt. We need to realize we cannot change the past no matter how much we suffer with guilt. I have always loved how beautifully the futility of trying to correct the past is depicted in the following verse from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam.

The Moving Finger writes
And having writ moves on,
Not all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

With this verse, I have always pictured words appearing in the sands of time as the invisible moving finger of fate writes and then inexorably moves on. The past is gone. And yet, in the future, with firm resolve, we can choose to do differently. As for the present, in order to relieve yourself of paralyzing and unproductive guilt, you can direct the mantra of compassion toward yourself:

I know in my heart that I would have done differently if I could have done differently but I couldn’t so I didn’t.

ª This weekend, practice the mantra of compassion so that you can ACE the tests of anger and guilt.

The Iguana & the Hawk

2010-03-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

The goal of ascending is expressed in the the Mayan symbols of Kukulcan, the feathered serpentt. Kukul translates as feathered and can translates as snake or serpent. When I asked the Maya for an example of someone who embodied this mystical symbol, they mentioned Christ. The book He Walked the Americas describes how Christ appeared to the Maya, and to other Native Americans such as the Apache.

It was a year before I went to Tikal when I was at the Mayan ruins of Tulum that I had an encounter with the Mayan mystical symbol of Kukulcan: the feathered serpent. As I mentioned in chapter two, the feathered serpent embodies the goal of our highest spiritual potential. In this image, we envision the spiritual potential for achieving the integration of the material (serpent or snake) and spiritual (eagle) sides of our nature.
My eyes were fixed on the way the sea and sky seemed to merge seamlessly and become indistinguishable at the horizon. Behind me were the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tulum. I felt a sacred serenity as I was sitting on the edge of a cliff. The sea shimmered from the intense light of the noonday sun while small waves of turquoise water were gently caressing the rocky shore. Each of us in the group had fifteen minutes to pick a spot for participating in a prayer for world peace. It was inspiring to think that at at the very same moment in sacred sites all over the world that day, people would be praying for world peace.
Before seeking a quiet spot, I happened to look down the face of the cliff. There I saw a huge iguana that was about six feet in length. He was seated on some rocks about thirty feet below me. The big lizard was looking up at the sky. As I followed the iguana’s gaze, I saw a hawk hovering about thirty feet above me. Here I was positioned midway between these two creatures. I recalled how the shamans consider the hawk to be a messenger of God, whereas the eagle is considered to be a direct expression of God.

The hawk then flew to my right and, steadying itself in the crosscurrents of wind, hung motionless in the air. With its head down, the hawk’s beak was pointing directly toward the ground. What an unusual sight to see the hawk hanging motionless, its feet aimed at the heavens and its head aimed at the earth.

Moments before I had seen a Mayan sculpture called the descending god. It was set in the stone slab above the entrance to one of the temples in Tulum. The sculpture was the figure of a Mayan male deity with a headdress and his head was pointing to Earth while his feet aimed toward the heavens. The resemblance between the stone sculpture and the hawk hanging in the air was remarkable. Ancient symbols were coming to life before my eyes by manifesting in the natural world surrounding me.

While I observed the hawk suspended in the air, time seemed to stand still. The bird held its position for what seemed to be almost a minute. It was a minute that seemed like an eternity. I got the impression that it was scanning the ground below for its next meal. I waited for the hawk to dive down and snatch up in its beak some unsuspecting prey.

When the hawk finally did dive down, it simply flew close to the ground shooting through the brush and then out to sea. No prey in its mouth. It just disappeared from view and seemed to pass through an invisible portal. I walked over to the spot where it had hovered and I found a small stone temple in ruins hidden in the brush. As I proceeded to meditate there, I had the feeling that the hawk had led me to an extension of the portal that it had disappeared into. Silently, I said to myself, “If indeed this is a portal to the spirit world, to a higher state of consciousness, then perhaps my prayer for world peace would be empowered!”

Right here in front of my eyes, I was witnessing a manifestation of the mystical symbol of the feathered serpent. I felt that I was being given a sign by the Divine of what it means to follow the path of spiritual transformation. Through this concrete symbol of the feathered serpent—the hawk and the iguana—I could now see how the Divine may communicate to us through other living beings. Such a perspective truly does help us heal our relationship with Mother Earth and all living beings. After all, the two creatures came into view right before a prayer for world peace.

As aspiring feathered serpents, we align our lower nature with the peaceful power of love: the dynamic and enduring life-force energy that animates all living beings including plants and animals alike. The goal is to align ourselves with this deeper and truer vision of God, the Divine Beloved, communicating to us through the physical universe and guiding us to practice loving-kindness in all we think, feel, say and do. [Parts of the above were taken from A Matter of Love, featured on www.drsrj.com]

Today, take the opportunity to practice kindness. Say a kind word words, perhaps pay a compliment, to the people who you encounter: the young man or woman taking your order at the coffee shop; the bank teller as you make your deposit or withdrawal; the cashier as you check out at the grocery store, and so on.

Keeping the Flame Alive

2010-03-15T05:29:00.000-07:00

Only one who remains unaffected by honor
and insult can keep the divine flame alive.
—Swami Rama

Keeping the flame of the candle within you burning, the light of love in your innermost heart shining, involves recognizing when you are tempted to tense up and hold your breath when anger arises after someone has insulted or offended you. The flame of the divine in you is fanned by slow, deep breathing. Literally, the incoming oxygen stokes the tiny furnaces (mitachondria) in the cells of your body. As your muscles relax around your blood vessels, your blood flows freely as does your life-force energy. And, by slaying the dragon of dependency, you focus on inner peace. You simply remind yourself that you are NOT dependent on something external to yourself to feel good and be at peace. For you can feel good instantly by taking a slow, deep breath. You remind yourself that the core of your being, your innermost heart, houses love: the ultimate power operating in the universe.

When you feel offended, the anger and subsequent tension that threaten to extinguish the divine flame in you, need not be the result of deeply buried traumas. The stress you feel can be the triggered by the need to prove you are right. This need can cause needless strife and conflict. This is one of heads of the dragon of dependency: “I need, or I am dependent, on others to see that I am right and I need their external validation and/or admiration to feel good and be at peace.” In psychoanalytic terms, such needs fall into the category of narcissistic needs. Like Narcissus in Greek mythology, we can become enamored of the idealized self image we project to the world and want to see reflected back to us. When that self image is challenged, the result can be narcissistic rage: “You make me look bad and I’ll get you back and make you look bad.” In the extreme such rage can lead to murder; in lesser forms it can lead to unnecessary arguments, hurt feelings, and so forth.

Here is an ordinary and trivial example. Last week, a friend picked me up to take me to a meeting. Bob Seger was belting out Old Time Rock and Roll on the radio. I excitedly related to her that this was the song Tom Cruise made even more famous when he danced to it in his underwear in the 1983 film Risky Business. ‘Oh that’s not it,” she said with a dismissive air of condescending certainty. “It was another song that I can’t quite recall.” For an instant, I felt a surge of anger, propelling me to retaliate against the perceived put down. I was allowing myself to be affected by insult. I was certain I was right, and I felt a strong urge to react to her condescending tone. I would show her and prove I was right by suggesting we go on the internet and verify it.

Instead, I curbed my urge and let it go. I took a slow, deep breath, thinking cool as I breathed in and calm as I breathed out. I engaged in the inner quest with a question. “Do I really need for her to see and acknowledge that I was right? No. I don’t It’s not important.” I then slew the dragon of dependency by breathing in and silently affirming, “I AM NOT dependent on you knowing I’m right to feel good and be at peace.” Breathing out, I silently reminded myself, “I feel good and at peace right now as I let go of my need to be right.”

• Today, notice when the need for others to see you as being right comes up and experiment with pairing the words cool and calm with some slow, deep breathing. Then, engage in the inner quest with a question. “Is it important for others to see me as right?” It might be, such as in a business meeting. But by doing slow, deep breathing and questioning yourself, you can center yourself. You can then coolly and calmly assert your position without the emotional charge of feeling insulted or offended when others disagree. You thereby keep the divine flame within you alive.

Sacred Fire

2010-03-12T04:32:00.000-08:00

Everything in the world has come out of one Divine Being, the sacred fire. The sages are the direct manifestation of that fire. Sages do not belong to any culture, religion, caste, or creed. They belong to God . . . Their religion is the religion of love.
—Swami Rama

The bluish-violet flame of the sacred fire was spectacular against the black velvet of the night sky that seemed to blanket our ceremony. The shamans were chanting as they slowly circled the fire. As the shamans made their offerings to the fire, the rest of us followed the shamans’ lead and made our offerings. Here we were on the side of a mountain just before the summer solstice intending peace for our planet and for our individual lives.

We were offering up our lives to be healed in the heat and splendor of the dancing flames. The ancient spiritual tradition of Eckankar tells us that God, the Divine, is li(Today's posting comes from A Matter of Love)ght and sound. The light and sound of the fire and of the shamans’ chanting exercised a hypnotic effect on us all. We were joined in a group trance.

The concept of the sacred fire is found in other spiritual traditions as evidenced in the quote above. For those of us educated in the intellectual tradition of American universities, we have a tendency to look at the fire as symbolic. Although there is some truth to the fire as a symbol pointing beyond itself, the shamans were sure to help us realize the living reality of the sacred fire. In the book At The Eleventh Hour, the Himalayan sage, Sombari Baba, addresses a young Swami Rama. Sombari Baba addresses this tendency to see the fire as only a symbol and not as a living reality.

"You modern children have become slave to your intellect. Instead of experiencing the truth directly, you look for a symbolic meaning in it. Fire is a living truth. It is a link between Earth and heaven. It is divine and resides in everything and everyone. You burn your psychological trash in the fire of knowledge, but you can burn your tangible, physical trash only in a living, blazing fire, that is not a symbol of something else but rather is a self-evident reality. Similarly, you provide nourishment to your soul by offering your love to God, who is beyond names and form. But you provide nourishment to your body, mind, and senses by expressing your love through oblations offered into fire, the manifest form of God on Earth."

The healing energy swirled around us while the flames of the fire danced before us. Warm waves of love surged through us all as the heat of the fire seemed to penetrate our hearts on this cool night. Caught up in the rhythm of the ceremony, our individual hearts merged into one heart. At the same time that we sought healing for the microcosm of each of our individual selves, we sought healing for the macrocosm of our Mother Earth.

Earlier that day, the shamans told us that the sacred fire ceremony seeks to establish an equilibrium and harmony with God, nature, and with each other. Ordinary things that come from nature are used to attain the equilibrium being sought: chocolate, cinnamon, rosemary, sugar, liquor, and candles. Raising his hands above his head as if to touch the stars above, Gerardo began our sacred fire ceremony with the following prayer:

"We thank our God with these things from nature.
We thank Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon,
the wind, Mother Earth, divine water, and fire."

The purpose of the ceremony, Gerardo stressed, is to not only help the people participating find the “right equilibrium” for their lives but also to help them evolve and “ascend spiritually.” This ascension involves attaining a respect for God, nature, and humanity. Gerardo proclaimed to us that, “solidarity among all the peoples of the world” is one of the primary goals of the ceremony. He indicated further that the ceremony seeks the “common good.” He then said: “We ask for life, food, education, and other necessities.” Regarding each of the people participating in the ceremony, Gerardo explained, “For us, the ceremony is for the nurturing of our soul.”

Speaking for the shamans, Gerardo stated that: “We were taught that we must heal the planet. There is a crisis on our planet and we feel we must heal each other through the ceremonies.” Furthermore, he emphasized, “We know God is everywhere and we come together to celebrate God.” Then he reminded us of the Mayan view that “we are all brothers and sisters on the spiritual path.” [Today's posting is taken from A Matter of Love listed on www.drsrj.com.]

One Flame . . . Many Candles

2010-03-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

“There is one flame but many candles.”
—Alice Howell

A friend of mine, a retired Episcopal priest, shared with me these words from author Alice Howell (The Dove in the Stone and Web of the Sea). The various sacred traditions can help us see the light of love, the good, in others. In Christian terms, we remember that, as Jesus taught, “That which you do to the least among us, you do unto me” (Matthew 25:24). Therefore, we need to see Christ in others and treat them accordingly.

In Buddhist terms, it means recognizing the Buddha nature in others no matter how unappealing their surface behavior. This is best illustrated in what is called the practice of the Never disparaging and Never Despising Buddha. No matter how the people of a village treated him, he kept telling each person that he sees his or her Buddha nature.

In Hindu tradition, the gretting "Namaste" involves recognizing the divine in others. When one says, "Namaste" with hands held in front of one's chest as if praying and bends forward slightly, one is saying, "The divine in me acknowledges the divine in you."

• Today, as you go through your day, look past the surface of others and think of them as having a candle shining within them. This candle as the light of love. And, since God is love, think of each candle as the Spirit of God shining the light of love. Contemplate the words of Alice Howell, “There is one flame but many candles.”

The Oscars Bring to Light

2010-03-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

Hollywood honors performances that reflect what the Mayan shamans said would be happening in this time period leading to 2012. What has been hidden in the darkness will be brought into the light. Individually and collectively, core issues are coming into consciousness to be cleared. The issues brought to light included family dysfunction and sexual abuse, alcohol and fading fame, the turn around of the plight of a homeless black teenage boy, the addiction to the emotional rush of war, and the excessive slaughter and suffering of mammals used for food.

The Oscar for Best Supporting Actress went to the comedienne Monique for her dramatic portrayal of a horribly abusive mother in the film Precious, a story about sexual abuse. Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for his portrayal of a washed up, boozing Country Music star. Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for her performance of a mother of two who takes in a homeless black teenager and helps him become a star football player.

The Hurt Locker, the winner for Best Picture, made us aware of the dark, addictive quality of war. It also showed the human side of war: the participants in war are someone’s son or daughter, wife or husband, father or mother. And, for the first time in 82 years of Oscar history, a woman won for Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker. This is one of many ripples on the surface of a larger and deeper process predicted by Carl Jung many years ago. Jung foresaw that after 2000 years of a patriarchal period in human history, the long repressed feminine principle would emerge into the light of collective consciousness.

The Cove won Best Documentary Feature in its depiction of the trapping and slaughter of porpoise for specialty food in Japan. One of its contenders, Food, Inc., revealed the suffering inflicted on female animals (cows and chickens) by the forced production of offspring and excessive quantities of food (milk, eggs, beef, and poultry).

• Today, reflect on what stresseful issues are coming up for you to recognize and release

Let Not One Be Left

2010-03-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

“Let not one be left behind.”
—Mayan shamans don Serillo and Gerardo Barrios

I first heard these words when I was staying at the hacienda of don Serillo, which was set in the beautiful countryside of Guatemala. He was then considered the head of the Mayan shamans of all the Americas: South, Central and North. On this, my second trip to study with the Maya, I would hear Gerardo say these words to a group of us in Tikal. We came from all over the world: Australia, Europe, the British Isles, as well as from different areas of the USA. The key message: humanity and planet Earth are ascending to a higher level of consciousness. The process, we were told, began on 11/11/1992 and would end on 12/21/2012. In this last month of the year 2012, the ascension will be complete and we will be entering an era of light. Now, on this second trip I just given a mythic image of this process: Earth was a dragon that had curled up and fallen asleep. Now the dragon was waking up and resuming its flight. What did the Maya mean by such terms as ascending and ascension?

With the plane now at its cruising altitude, I found myself recalling the work of Teilhard de Chardin, the French philosopher and Catholic priest. Over two decades ago, he had claimed that humanity was evolving toward love. I began to see where the divine destiny of humanity seemed to be heading.

As I now reflected on this, I noted that the first four letters of the word evolve is love spelled backwards. If we add another o after the l we get evol-o-ve. The letter o is like a circle which symbolizes wholeness. Therefore, when we think of evolving spiritually we are evolving toward love, toward where we can love forwards and backwards, that is, where the energy of love moves forward toward others and back toward us.

This higher, loving consciousness was translated into English as the consciousness of ascension. Joshua Stone, author of The Complete Ascension Manual, defines the consciousness of ascension as “total joy” and “total unconditional love.” It is the “feeling of being at one with God at all times.” And, since God is said to be love, being at one with God is being guided by love in what we think, feel, say, and do.

• Today, as you go through your day, try out the following affirmation. Breathe in, pause, and, as you exhale, relax, and silently say to God, “I AM never separated from the expansive energy and peaceful power of Your pure, everlasting love.” Then, breathe in, pause, and, as you exhale, relax and silently say, “For, in the core of my being, my innermost heart, I AM the expansive energy and peaceful power of Your pure, everlasting love.”

The Plane to Guatemala

2010-03-02T02:19:00.000-08:00

The plane to Guatemala stopped for a quick layover in Dallas and a man sat down one seat over from me, and he holds up a book. I think that he is handing me my book that I had left on the empty seat between us. It is The Celestine Prophecy and he points to the book I have with me The Celestine Vision. His name is Ken and I discover that he is going to Tikal to study with the shamans as well. And here we were seated in the same row reading books by the same author. The meaningful coincidences just kept coming.

Ken saw that I had been writing some notes and asked me about what I was writing. I told him it was about the symbolism of the dragon for my book, Slay the Dragon—Not Each Other. Ken tells me of a legend that involves a dragon. It is a legend he heard from a shaman of the Onondaga Indians, one of the seven tribes of the Iroquois Nation.

A dragon was flying through the heavens. After growing tired, it rolls itself into a ball, goes to sleep and becomes the earth. One day the dragon will awaken and resume its journey through the heavens.

Instantly, I am struck by the synchronicity. In addition, it is a beautiful symbol of the idea of the transformation of the Earth at the heart of the Mayan teachings. Suddenly, we hit turbulence and the plane is really shaking for what the pilot cautions us may be for quite a while.
After fifteen minutes of turbulence, I began thinking about my physical separation from the woman I loved. As the thought came to me that although I would love to be with her, I realize that I can handle the physical separation for love continues to exist even when we are not in the physical presence of our beloved.
The turbulence stops immediately as I feel at peace with being apart from my love. Obviously, I can’t say my thought caused the plane to stop shaking but what a message. As I focus on love and not loss, the turbulence within me and around me stops instantly. Then it hits me—there is no separation from love.

As I reflect on how we are never separated from love, I realize that love is the dynamic and enduring energy animating all of life. I then consider that when we are feeling love by being with or even thinking of someone we love, we feel alive all over; and when we are doing something we love, our actions flow effortlessly. (excerpted from the first chapter of A Matter of Love)

• Today, as you go through your day try out the following affirmation. Breathe in, pause, and, as you as you exhale, relax and silently say, “I AM never separated from the expansive energy and peaceful power of love.” Then, breathe in, pause, and, as you exhale, relax and silently say, “For, in the core of my being, my innermost heart, I AM the expansive energy and peaceful power of love.”