Take is Easy!

    Above and beyond life's inevitable challenges, we give ourselves a hard time. We CAN reduce our suffering by 95% by NOT getting sucked into unnecessary suffering eg wallowing in & trying to change the PAST, and catastrophizing about & micromanaging the FUTURE. 

    A more advanced practice is "self-inquiry" where we ask ourselves, 'WHO is suffering?' If we really go deep with this open question, we eventually come to realize that we are non other than sparks of the Cosmic Intelligence that dreams this Cosmos into being in the eternal now. So, 

        "All shall be well,
        and all shall be well,
        and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic 

     “Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.” The Buddha

    "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and it's ALL Small Stuff!" Richard Carlson 

 

Pure Love

 

From Choppy Waves - To Still, Silent Depths

    From our usual (left-hemisphere-dominant) perspective, Mystics sound strange, unreasonable, even disturbed. One famous mystic's quote - which in light of today's escalating wars in the Ukraine & middle East, and rapidly-worsening environmental crises - comes across as counterintuitive & wildly optimistic:

"All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic

    We have many clues to why mystics see things so differently than we typically do:

    “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete. Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.”
    Philip Kapleau. “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998.

 "Without the arising and subsiding of thoughts,
there is a naturally limpid, pristine state,
like the unwavering evenness of a limpid ocean.
Free of the occurrence of or involvement in thoughts,
free of hope or fear,
you abide within the state of naturally occurring timeless awareness,
the true nature of which is profoundly lucid."
    Longchenpa

    We usually conflate "thinking" with "reason," our "internal dialogue" ("self-talk") AND EVEN our actual identity - who we are!! But then we can also be poets, musicians, artists, meditators, mystics & saints. It's as if we are two very different people, depending on HOW we attend to our environment, others & ourselves.
    WHEN we assume that we are separate individuals, competing to survive alone in a hostile, chaotic, meaningless dead world, our attention becomes narrowly focused on trying to control our (mostly uncontrollable) material environment. This is left-hemisphere dominance. In this mode of attending, which is almost universal in our present day, stressed-out, materialist society, we lock into quick & dirty black & white thinking for survival & pleasure, dismissing & disregarding anything complex, subtle, or nuanced, like spirituality & mysticism.
    On the other hand, WHEN we're able to use BOTH hemispheres of our brain in a BALANCED way, then we can control what is controllable AND are able to enjoy life in context of the BIG PICTURE, and thus experience Oneness with other human beings, animals, plants & the cosmos (Universal Consciousness or Self) in a kind, loving, collaborative manner.

    "There’s some very nice research which shows, at least implicitly, that our thinking begins ((in the right hemisphere)) at a pre-linguistic level which is a sense of a gestalt, in other words of a shape or form, an analogy, a metaphor of something, that our thinking is embodied in a, if you like, nonverbal, visual, or kinesthetic way, bringing all our senses to bear.
    And the next stage is that we allow the left hemisphere’s language centers to process that in language. But that’s only an intermediate step.
    In order to understand it fully, whatever has been made explicit, then has to be reabsorbed or taken up again by the right hemisphere’s global understanding and made sense of again in context.”
    Iain McGilchrist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD7BHJHkufY .

    Most of us are unknowingly completely lost in, hypnotized by, & identified with the internal dialogue (self-talk) - as if in 'arrested development,' at the noisy, most obvious, intermediate phase of the thinking process (mentioned above). Meditation teachers & mystics consistently try to help us release our obsession with mind chatter, COMPLETE OUR THINKING PROCESS, and THUS be able to embody our far wiser, silent, witnessing Universal Intelligence. This is often compared to shifting from the choppy waves on the surface to the deep silent still depths of the ocean.
    More on "self talk": http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=self-talk and http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Weber .

    Self-inquiry is an advanced spiritual practice specifically to dis-identify from all those sticky phenomena which cause unnecessary suffering but are actually transient, and do not represent who we truly are: wise, silent, witnessing Universal Intelligence. More on "self-inquiry": http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry
    I HIGHLY recommend the first 23 minutes of Helen Hamilton's : “The Shortest Path to Freedom!” to help you shift from mere intellectual understanding (& flipping back & forth between peace & suffering) to directly experiencing Self (progressively deeper, more stable peace & joy) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiyxRc9CMlY

 

Heart - Art by Jean-Pierre Weill from "The Well of Being"

Balance

     What is reasonable, appropriate, balanced, is context dependent. When a wildfire is closing in on their home, people should rush to gather family, pets, their most precious belongings, and escape as quickly as possible. However, a family going on vacation behaving as if a wildfire were closing in would clearly be unreasonable, inappropriate, unbalanced.

    For a variety of reasons, many have a distortedly pessimistic perception of their current & future context.
    Past traumas & ongoing traumas: racism, bullying, poverty, etc, lead to perceiving mainly danger, to great difficulty trusting anyone / anything, and being trapped in survival mode.
    News media almost exclusively focus on tragedy: murders, mass shootings, wars, fires, landslides, losses & misery of every kind. "Human interest stories" have devolved to this. The tremendous amount of kindness, good will, forgiveness, generosity & collaboration just to keep our busy transportation systems, factories, health-care systems & businesses running smoothly never seem to be newsworthy.
    Advertising firms earn billions convincing us that our only chance for happiness is through buying advertised products & services.
    Many unwittingly turn legitimate science into a fundamentalist religion. Secular materialist dogma preaches that science can & very soon will know EVERYTHING, & be able to control EVERYTHING. They furthermore assume that everything, including human beings, are nothing more than machines, arisen by chance, meaningless, and will inevitably disintegrate, end of story.

     A leading PTSD expert wrote: “If you feel safe & loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation; if you are frightened & unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment." Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.  

    “William Blake said, ‘As a man is, so he sees.’ ... the way a person sees or understands him or herself deeply conditions the ways he or she sees & understands objects, others & the world.” Rupert Spira

     These potent influences (above) in which we are SATURATED have produced our profoundly unhealthy, unsustainable, toxic, left-hemisphere-dominant culture. Historically, whenever cultures became left-hemisphere-dominant, they quickly collapsed.
    Whenever the right hemisphere is dominant, cultures thrive and the left hemisphere serves an important but limited, supportive role. Iain McGilchrist spent 30 years researching, writing & speaking about hemispheric differences. From one of his many SUPERB interviews: Iain McGilchrist: "Wisdom, Nature and the Brain" - The Great Simplification #85 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dogVQDydRGQ 

    "... the most important parts of religious experience & practice, the consensus is, seem to be underwritten by the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is sort of necessary for systematizing it and turning it into a durable phenomenon such as Christianity or whatever it may be, Islam. But in doing so, it often over legalizes, makes over-certain, over-fixed what should be less certain, more fluid, more awe-inspiring, in fact.

    ‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical & professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by being obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ William James

    I think we’ve lost the capacity for three very important things: a sense of awe or wonder; a sense of our own humility, or the humility we should have; and compassion. And I think these are the things that most religions that are real religions, or spiritual traditions that are true spiritual traditions, have in common, that they induce and rekindle in us a sense of wonder. They make us feel appropriately humble about what we can do & what we can know, and they increase our sense of oneness with and compassion towards the rest of the created world.
    Now I think that is what’s going wrong. I think we’ve completely failed to understand that religion is not about a matter of propositional belief, but dispositional belief. Belief is a matter of a disposition of your consciousness towards the world in a certain way. It’s not about propositions or six impossible things that you have to believe before breakfast. That’s not what religion’s about.
    And what I want to do in my work is take people from a standpoint where they will almost certainly be part of the culture that believes that only somebody rather simple or uneducated would think that there was a divine realm, to a position where they will see that only somebody who’s rather simple or uneducated would just want to rule that out. I’m not saying would become suddenly religious, but I think it’s extremely clear that people who either are fundamentalist religious or fundamentalist atheists are on the wrong track, and that they have more in common with one another than they have with true believing people. In any case, I just think that business of the ever-evolving, deeper relationship, a loving relationship with the world in all its manifestations, IS the secret of human wellbeing & happiness.
    And you say that there is now a different religion, that of economic growth and so on. … I’m sure you’re broadly right, and it reminds me of something that GK Chesterton said, that ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything.’ ((DJT became a Republican "because Republicans will believe anything.")) And that ‘anything’ for them ((and DJT)) is their own power, to become more & more rich, powerful, wealthy. And that leaves out of the count just about everything that sustains human happiness. And in the seeking for it, they will never find happiness. As a psychiatrist, I can tell you that the most successful people, the richest people, the most powerful people are not the world’s happiest people.”
    Interviewer, Nate Hagens: “As a former high-net-worth stockbroker on Wall Street, I totally concur with that assessment.”
    Iain McGilchrist: "Wisdom, Nature and the Brain" - The Great Simplification #85 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dogVQDydRGQ

    Despite the US's second relapse into cave-man rule, wisdom & decency CAN & WILL prevail!

     "All shall be well,
      and all shall be well,
      and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic

      “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete. Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.” Philip Kapleau. “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998. 

       "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen 

      "I was born
       when all I once feared
       I could love.” Rabia Basri 

     "Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences." Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

     "... everything yearns to be met. Everything yearns to resolve itself in love – that love being the open space of acceptance, of allowing, of staying resolutely present, and unconditionally open to every nuance of your inner experience." Amoda Maa. "Surfing the Heart of Darkness: Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlUsBYbv0w

      During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda 

 

 All that's obviously alive & seemingly inanimate, awaits our recognition & love, for we are ONE

The Nearly Unforgivables

    It's hard not to be disgusted & angered by the brutality, criminality, war, hunger, poverty, disease, environmental devastation & suffering throughout the world. And even the most fortunate among us will see everyone & everything we love - ourselves included - change, age, get sick & die. To our usual, "normal" way of thinking these are incomprehensible & unacceptable.

    YET throughout the ages mystics, saints & other deeply spiritual people, and now, more & more ordinary people are awakening to a radically different reality:

      "All shall be well,
      and all shall be well,
      and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English Christian mystic 

    "We are one. And we are each perfect, exactly as we are.” Natalie Sudman
        http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/01/all-that-is.html

     How can we have such dramatically opposing perspectives on the state of our world? Perhaps the most comprehensive, detailed research directly related to answering this question has been carried out by former Oxford professor of literature, now psychiatrist, researcher & author, Iain McGilchrist: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/
    Attempting to briefly summarize several thousand pages of McGilchrist's 2 massive books, and many hours of lectures & interviews, is foolish, but here goes.
    Our usual way of thinking - what most of us consider common sense ("left-hemisphere perspective" LHP) - is highly goal-oriented towards controlling our external environment for our survival.
    Our far broader & deeper intelligence ("right-hemisphere perspective" RHP) helps us understand, relate to & be appropriate in context of "the big picture," including the most meaningful aspects of what it means to be a human being: love, values, connection, collaboration, nurturing etc. It is best equipped to deal with complexity, context, metaphor, paradox, the arts, etc - all essential when confronting topics such as spirituality & existential angst.
    So our two major levels of intelligence are both essential, with very different perspectives & competencies: LHP is for linear problem-solving & running practical tasks & procedures to keep us alive; while RHP keeps everything in appropriate perspective of the big picture (our worldview / self-concept / long-term goals). Because LHP has a narrow, task-oriented focus, it can't see any need for RHP's broad perspective; while RHP appreciates many pros & cons of any given task, including LHP's "let's get'er done!" Clearly, both must work in harmony. When only one of these runs the show - eg as seen in major strokes involving either, but especially the right hemisphere - the afflicted person is severely compromised.

    Our man-made ecological/climate disaster is finally forcing us to end this "hyper-rational" phase, where our heavy bias towards LHP was focused on one task: exponential growth in profits. Meanwhile, RHP was almost taboo, so context was completely ignored, devastating the quality of our air, water & soil, and with it the quality of human life, in fact posing an imminent threat to our very existence! It's as if the human race has suffered a devastating right-hemispheric stroke, and is now in the ICU.

    “Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind (RHP) a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind (LHP) was a faithful servant.
    It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” Bob Samples

 
    “Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.” Neils Bohr

    We "Make sense with stories. If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system. The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story." Dave Gray. “Liminal Thinking. Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think.” Two Waves Books, 2016. 

 

The Bus Stop Conversation - by Sue Morter
    "Just imagine you’re going to the bus stop one day, to catch the bus to come to earth, and while you’re there, you strike up a conversation with others at the bus stop. You ask them, 'What are you going to experience when you go in?' And the other person does the same. Somebody else says, 'Well I don’t know, I’ve never been.' 

    And somebody else raises their hand and says, 'I’ve been there before, crazy place, super wild. The last time I left, I accidentally, like coincidentally did this thing that they call "forgiveness," and it felt so amazing, that all this energy just rushed through me, and I let go of all these things that I’d been carrying around forever, and boom, I just had this amazing revelation, and it was over, because I was on my way out. So I’m going back, and I’m going to do that again, but I’m going to do it sooner, and do it bigger. So I’m going back for a level-10 forgiveness, and I can’t wait, because what I felt was amazing, and it’s going to be ten-fold of that.' 

    So another person at the bus stop goes, 'Woah, sounds great! How are you going to do that?' 

    'Well,' the first person answers, 'I guess I’ll have to experience something that’s nearly unforgivable. And then I’m going to live with that, be angry about that & frustrated, compress it inside myself, get down the road & feel the physical effects of that, my health is going to decline, I’ll live this contracted & compressed life, and at some point, I’m going to get sick & tired of being that way. I’m going to reach inside myself and going to find some part of me I didn’t even know I had, some in-depth level of forgiveness, reach down and express it out there, and I’m going to have this huge experience of forgiveness, and get to know a part of myself I never would have known.' 

    So the other people at the bus stop are saying, 'Woah, sounds amazing. How can we help?' 

    And the person says, 'Well somebody’s going to have to do something that’s nearly unforgivable – you know, like drink too much at happy hour, get behind the wheel, cross the center line, hit my car, take my loved ones, cripple me – these kind of things that could have been avoided, it has to be completely wrong, the wrong of wrongs. And so who will help me?'

    And everybody’s, ‘Not me! I don’t want to be that guy! Who wants to be that guy?’ 

    And so the conversation goes on, and the guy says, 'Come on, I bought my bus ticket, here I am, here’s my chance, don’t leave me out.' 

    And so finally, somebody in the back raises their hand and says, 'OK, I can see how much this means to you, I’ll be the one, I’ll be the perpetrator, the one that does these nearly unforgivable things.' 

    So this story can be interpreted in many different ways, in many different peoples’ lives. Invariably when I share this, people are crying, recognizing, ‘Oh my God, the person who abused me’ or ‘The person who abandoned me, actually was the one who finally raised their hand and helped deliver this scenario for me that is going to allow me to reach inside and find maybe a level-10 self-love that I never would have found had I been up against the adverse circumstance, the friction that was created from that dynamic.'"

    Interviewer: “Which is not to say that an abuser can say, ‘I’m doing this for your own good.’

    Sue Morter: "No, so, it’s not that we ask for it in that way. And ultimately that abuser is going to have to take inventory on what they’ve come here to learn. So it might be self-forgiveness, it might be redemption, it might be something along those same lines, that they will have to come to terms with, whether it’s now or whether it’s a few lifetimes later, it does resolve, because that is the way the universe works. It does abhor a vacuum, it wants to fill it, it wants flow & unity, so these kinds of concentrated energies that are unresolved cannot maintain themselves. So we’re here to resolve them consciously on the spiritual path so that we don’t have to pay it out karmically in some kind of unconscious manner, we can resolve that right here with our own awareness and intentions. 

    So the Bus Stop Conversation is to allow this understanding on more of a personal note that there is purpose, that nothing is bigger than us, that we managed it, that we requested it so we could awaken ourselves in certain ways, that we are bigger than these individual circumstances that we are facing in this life.” EXCELLENT interview: https://batgap.com/sue-morter/

        "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
         Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet, William Shakespeare

    The 2022 movie, "Father Stu" on Amazon Prime, is imho an excellent, powerfully-portrayed true story of a transformative NDE.

Actual example of a Bus Stop type of conversation:
"My Near Death Experience in Iraq - Natalie Sudman"

 

Sparks of Wisdom Glowing Brighter

    From a very young age, from before I could speak, I've had a calm, intuitive sense of what's right, true & meaningful, and felt a deep empathic connection towards suffering humans & animals. This same sense seems to have given rise to a few sporadic instances of my inexplicably knowing, with a quiet confidence, that an important, specific, future event would turn out well.
    Many get a glimpse of this unusual sense of intimate familiarity or oneness with the cosmos after a few drinks - the feeling of being "in love with the whole world." There's immediate pressure then to quickly dismiss it as "just the booze talking." After all, the only taboo remaining in our Western society is the one against anything that might be deeply meaningful!
    Indeed, by around age 2, we start being conditioned by the prevailing dogmatic belief that human beings & other living "things" are accidental, isolated lumps of matter, in a mechanical, meaningless universe. So, we spend much of our adult lives trying to be as happy as possible given this narrow, stunted worldview.

    “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts (reductionist left hemisphere), is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole (right hemisphere).” Iain McGilchrist

    “Not only is the universe stranger than we think,
it is stranger than we can think.” Werner Heisenberg

    “There is but one cause of failure
And that is man’s lack of faith
in his true Self.” William James

    "All shall be well,
and all shall be well,
and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich, English Christian mystic

    “So long as one is merely on the surface of things,
they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete.
    Penetrate into the substance
and everything is perfect, complete, whole.” Philip Kapleau

    "You learn about a thing ... by opening yourself wholeheartedly to it. You learn about a thing by loving it." Barbara McClintock - Nobel prize-winning geneticist

    "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." George Washington Carver

    Fortunately, at least a small "spark" of early-childhood's innocent form of unity consciousness survives into adulthood, and many feel that at this pivotal time in human history, this spark is increasingly becoming fanned towards awakening.

    “Spiritual practices are methods that can begin to soften our stance toward our self, toward life in general, and to open us to what transcends the habitual. They are invitations to become intimate with the wisdom of silence & stillness.”
    Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018.

 Two (imho) EXCELLENT 15-minute Eckhart Tolle videos:

Relationship, Relationship, Relationship

     "All shall be well,
      and all shall be well,
      and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich (1342 – 1416) English Christian mystic

      “So long as one is merely on the surface of things, they are always imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete. Penetrate into the substance and everything is perfect, complete, whole.”
        Philip Kapleau. “The Zen of Living and Dying. A Practical and Spiritual Guide.” Shambhala, 1998. 

     How do we feel on reading such statements by saints, mystics & other serious meditators / contemplatives? Where do we land on this spectrum?: 

vehemently disagree
confused & lost
intrigued
intellectually agree
emotionally agree
completely agree (intellectually, emotionally & physically)

     The closer we are to vehement disagreement, the more aversion we have towards some aspects of our life & our selves AND the more craving we experience towards other aspects of our life & our selves. Powerful aversion to all (people, things & situations) that threatens our survival, health, happiness, wealth, status, etc, and craving & clinging to all that guarantees our survival, health, happiness, wealth, status, etc seems absolutely obvious, healthy & reasonable to most of us.
     YET, at the same time, we all know at least subconsciously, that our ability to control constant change, aging, sickness & death is an illusion. So most of us, for most if not all our lives, live "merely on the surface of things." We half-pretend (delusion) we can keep our "self" from changing, aging, getting sick & dying, AND at some level, we experience life as hard, cruel & meaningless.

     But an interesting change occurs when we stop pouring so much energy into aversion, craving & delusion. We start to experience intimacy with who we really are, everything around us, with all of life. This often happens after we suddenly realize that we only have a very short time to live (trauma-associated growth); following other major traumas ('shipwrecks'); during aboriginal sweat lodge ceremonies, vision quests, & other spiritual practices; insights, 'heart openings' & other mystical experiences during serious meditation practice. 
     Many of us have experienced more trauma than we may consciously realize. Psychotherapy would greatly help to free us from a prison of PTSD-like reactivity. Relying on spirituality alone when psychotherapy is necessary ('spiritual bypassing') prolongs needless suffering and obstructs spiritual growth.
     "On the surface of things," life does suck. But when we "penetrate into the substance," when we become intimate with reality, everything changes.

      "You learn about a thing ... by opening yourself wholeheartedly to it. You learn about a thing by loving it." Barbara McClintock - Nobel prize-winning geneticist

     "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." George Washington Carver  

     "When we give our hearts to whatever we do, to whatever we experience, or to what is happening around us, without personal agendas or preferences taking over ... the space of awareness, is exactly the same."
       Amaro Bikkhu "Small Boat, Great Mountain." 2003   www.amaravati.org/downloads/pdf/SmallBoat.pdf 

     "All IS well,
      and all IS well,
      and all manner of things ARE well." Julian of Norwich (modified)