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.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
An Example of How Love is Enduring
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.
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.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Since My Spiritual Awakening . . .
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.
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.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Unhooking Yourself from the Flashy Lures of Life
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.
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.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Dying as Narcissus & Finding Freedom
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.
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.
Friday, October 15, 2010
When Devils Are Angels
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.
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.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Creator Consciousness & The Alphabet Universe
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.
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.
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