Remembering, Forgetting and Remembering

    We've all noticed how some of us have certain hard boundaries we firmly believe that we cannot step beyond. Some of these seem reasonable, perhaps even life-saving eg a recovering alcoholic refusing to have any alcohol ever again. 
    However, most remarkably firm boundaries are just quirky oddities that needlessly slow or even prevent normal spiritual maturation. These are tied to our rock-solid "story of me" - "my identity" - "it's who I am!!" "I've always hated ... I've always loved ... I could never ... I was always good at ... I've always belonged to ..." We have the free will choice to resist any inner change.

    We also have the free will choice to evolve spiritually - we can choose to awaken! 
    The people I admire and try to emulate become progressively more unconditionally loving, non-judgmental, forgiving, flexible, open-hearted and open-minded. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/successful-aging.html and http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=stages+of+faith 

    “Many people have intimations of their true nature in childhood – the sense of a benevolent presence guiding their life, a radiance that shines forth from all things, or a current of love that unites us all. …
    But we lose touch with this luminosity as we age … we forget who we really are and succumb to the way others see us...
    By adulthood we've more or less forgotten who we truly are, and have passively absorbed the current cultural fad of being frozen in the armor of materialism, meaninglessness & cynicism. Not surprisingly, something in all of us 'continues to weep over the barrenness of modern life.'"
    Stephan Bodian. “Wake Up Now. A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening.” 2008.

    “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin 

    In other words, our personal worldview & self-concept - be that more materialistic & cynical - OR - tending more towards kindness & unconditional love - is our "state" which determines our experience of life. 

        “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

     Jonathan Ashford - from my current perspective - clearly & concisely expresses the most useful spiritual teachings. Below, an excerpt from a recent interview: "A Near-Death Awakening: 'I Came Back Without a Self'" Jonathan Ashford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY

    “I could tell you what I was shown and what I understand. I guess you would say what I understand to be true, or truth as it was defined for me, is that we are an expression of unconditional love, here to remember that very thing. So you could say time, through the process of the spiritual awakening, simply exists for you to experience the memory, or the event, or the set of circumstances, that remind you that you are an expression of unconditional love.

            So it (“the Divine,” “Source,” “God,” etc) has a very interesting sense of humor. The sense of humor is you are unconditional love manifest into this form, and now you’re going to forget, and go through everything which is just trying to wake you up to that fact, but you’re going to see it with different eyes. So it’s kind of like the joke is: it’s always been right in front of you. It’s always been right in front of your face, but you’ve always been looking a hundred yards out. You’re always looking to tomorrow, or you’re thinking I need 12 years of schooling to get me there. I need something, when it’s actually been in the mirror the whole time.

            Every circumstance serves you in your awakening to that very fact. And we live several lifetimes, because we miss it. We might live a thousand lifetimes because we just keep missing it. It’s just floating right by us, instead of catching that glimpse in the mirror. Understanding that unconditional love is what we are, and the second we wake up to it, it’s like feeling for the first time every time.

            As it was shown to me, there is nothing to do here. There is nothing to ever change here. There is nothing to ever fix. There is only to live consciously in a way to understand, I am unconditional love being expressed in this moment.

How does that play out? If I remember it, my life plays out to reflect that. If I don’t remember it, then my life plays out to reflect that.

So really, it was the two paths, if you want to call them paths, playing out simultaneously, based on your state.

As it was shown to me, everyone’s like, ‘What’s my life path? What’s my purpose?’ I’m like, ‘Well, just think of it this way. You have choice A or B, all day, every day. And based on choice A or B, you will affect the state in which you affect your existence.

Beyond that, everything else was just shown to either point you to it – or – pull you away from it. So all spiritual belief systems, every book, every definition, every word that we use, every language, everything either points us to it – or – away from it.

But you will only know that if you’re walking in a state of awareness, which is part of the spiritual awakening process. You grow your awareness. I’m now more aware than I was yesterday. And because of my awareness, I choose this particular state. And I might do it a couple of times today, and maybe a couple of more times tomorrow.

Or, I might slip out of it. I might forget it completely. And then those circumstances will reflect that, and try to point me back to remembering it again. So it’s really an exercise in awareness.

Unconditional love is, yes, we are unconditional love. We walk in it, we hold it, we forget it. But the exercise is the awareness, because without the awareness, you won’t remember that you are unconditional love.”

    Jonathan Ashford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY 

 

 

Oneness and Othering

     The way we imagine ourselves, our self-concept, depends on what we're looking at and how engaged we feel. 
    If it's a beloved person, pet, activity or even object, we may well feel at-one-with them. Neither we nor our beloved seems to have boundaries. This has been called a Unitive experience or Oneness. It's primarily a felt experience - as one hugs or kisses a beloved, stares into a baby's or very young child's eyes, holds a puppy's head and stares into its eyes, there is simply unconditional love flowing unimpeded both ways. 
    However, the more different, cautious, afraid, angry or especially hostile we feel, the thicker & more impermeable the protective walls we erect. Often we feel superior in some way than the other. We are right, others are wrong. This "othering" is supercharged when there is a perceived or actual power imbalance - "might makes right." The swaggering bully, be it in the playground, school, workplace, bar or political arena, displays psychosocialspiritual immaturity. When such delusion of superiority is capped by "God is on OUR side" - religious exclusivism / narcissism - then ANY behaviour becomes not only justified but "sanctified!" When any leader consistently behaves destructively AND is allowed to get away with it, we're dealing with a dangerous cult. Sadly cult members often remain ardent followers to the bitter end. 

    "Tom was in his mid-thirties when a truck he was working under fell and crushed his chest. He had a very elaborate near-death experience (NDE). There were many parts of it, but one part was his life review. He went back over every event in his life in minute detail. He said, ‘I could count the number of mosquitoes that were buzzing around me at this time, which he couldn’t have done during the event, but in the NDE he did. And he said, ‘Not only that, but I experienced everything through my eyes and through the eyes of other people involved in the scene.’ He described one incident in particular, when he was a teenager, driving his truck down the street, when a drunk man wandered out in front of him. He jammed on the brakes, and was furious at the man for almost denting his truck. So he rolled down the window and started yelling at the man. And the man, being quite intoxicated, reached his hand in the window and slapped Tom across the face. You don’t do that to an angry teenager.
    So Tom got out of the truck, and started beating the man up. And he left him a bloody mess on the median strip. Now Tom tells me, when he relived this in his life review, he felt it through his own eyes – the adrenaline rush, the rage. And he also felt at the same time, through the eyes of the drunk man – the humiliation of being beaten up by this kid, the 32 blows of Tom’s fist in his face. Now Tom couldn’t have told you it was 32, but reliving it anew in an NDE, he felt 32 of them. He felt the man’s nose getting bloodied, he felt the man’s lower teeth going through his lower lip. And he came back realizing we’re all the same thing. There’s no difference between me & that man. It’s like if you’re looking at your fingers, they look like they’re separate things, but they’re really connected, and you can’t cut one off without hurting them all. So the Golden Rule for near-death experiencers is not a guideline, it’s the way things are.”
    Dr. Bruce Greyson - "After" 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViCWJWHR0a8

    Before his NDE, Jonathan Ashford had nothing to do with religion / spirituality. During his NDE, he like most ND experiencers, was welcomed with unconditional love. He now understands that the Divine has no interest whatsoever in which quirky little religion, if any, you belonged to. The Divine likely inspired Emo Philips' comedy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78

    “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Confucius 500 BCE

    Increasingly, people understand the Golden Rule from a non-dual perspective ie that my neighbour, myself & the Divine are one & the same - ONE entity manifesting as infinite variety of appearances, including everyone & everything: spiritually independents, scientific materialists, agnostics, atheists, theists, "president-for-life" dictators, drug dealers, petty crooks, mosquitoes, dogs, birds, fish, trees, rocks, mountains, oceans, earth, sun, moon, clouds, sky & cosmos. Divine non-dual infinite potential self-reflecting by manifesting as & exploring duality - the material world of opposites.

    “A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.” Joan Z. Borysenko PhD

     On manifesting as humans, we tend to forget our true nature, AND also forget most of our wisdom. Awakening is remembering who we truly are - and - how to live appropriately as 'dual citizens' of non-duality & duality.

    So, no matter who we think we are, let's be kind, humble & pull together like wise, nurturing grandparents.

 

Awakened Perspective

    “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Jonathan Haidt & Dacher Keltner

    “The only service you can do for anyone (including yourself) is to remind them of their true nature.” Stephen Levine

 

    This information Jonathan Ashford brought back will resonate, uplift and help guide when you're ready to hear it:

    “It was made very clear to me on the other side, that the information that I have is for those who are ready to receive it. One of the messages which was very clear is that it’s for the one, not the 99. And coming back, it’s kind of like, well, who’s that one? Who’s that one person this is for? But you get to this understanding that the information is catered to each individual. It’s for the one, the one, the one, the one. And everybody hears it in a way that helps them. 
    But the message is, if I could say there is one message, is everything that I was shown was based on love. It’s the glue that holds together who we are, what we are, reality, the formless. It’s understanding that everything can be boiled down to love. Even the worst day of your life is a loving day. But you can only get there when you wake up. You can only get there if you make the free will choice to try and remember what you are and live consciously. Otherwise, it will never make sense.

    There are a few reasons (why we come here over and over again). I like to remind everybody that if you chose to come back here, you came to serve. You serve the whole with your next breath. There’s not anything you need to do or change. But you do serve the whole. We’re all tools in the garden that get picked up to be used appropriately when they’re needed to be used. So, we all experience what we need to experience through others, through our circumstances, through what we experience in life. If you lived in that cave your entire life, you wouldn’t experience much. The reason we come down is to remember. You could say it’s to remember love. And you could say we turn away from the sun so that we can remember that there’s a sun behind us, and turn back and experience it. So, it’s always going out to return. And most people try to intellectualize their way there, but it’s more about the free will choice of remembering love, not intellectual love, not conditional love, but unconditional love.

    And unconditional love is saying there’s nothing to worry about. I go on forever. Death isn’t death. Unconditional love is knowing that there’s a benevolent force in the room with you at all times. It doesn’t sit in a throne somewhere. Unconditional love is recognizing everybody here has the same amnesia and they’re just doing what they’re doing because of the amnesia. And when you wake up, you can grow in compassion in ways that are beyond measure, just recognizing that that neighbour you don’t like just doesn’t remember.

    (Our future depends on) 2 possibilities (according to) the visions I’ve had recently. Those 2 possibilities are right back to that free will choice: whether I choose to live as an awakened being OR I’m asleep. And that directly affects what we will experience.

    Everybody asks me how to change the world. How can we help? And I give everybody the same answer. ‘Wake up.’ You awake changes the world. I was shown this on the other side. Imagine that the billions of people in the world all wake up tomorrow and everybody’s awake and are loving beings. What happens? Well, the earth stops. This whole reality stops. The whole reality here is based on contrast, because the contrast is the sandpaper that wakes you up to what you are. And if you no longer need it, what’s the point of contrast? 
    But it’s the understanding that it’s not about volume, it’s about authenticity. So, it isn’t well, if we only get 3 million people to wake up, we’re safe. It’s more about there’s a hand that moves pieces on a board, and we’re the pieces. Are we giving it the opportunity to move us in a way that benefits the whole? Or are we fighting the hand? When you wake up, you don’t fight the hand. You know that the hand is there for you. You know that the hand is there for all others. But if we’re in our intellects and our egos, we fight the hand because we’re viewing reality through our own intellect and our intellect has its own lens of what it thinks is right, wrong, good, bad, where we want to end up. 
    So, it’s a time of surrender. Surrendering to the fact that you’re something more. Does everybody need to wake up? No. But those who are close to waking up, should.

    Interviewer Q: Do you fear death?
    Jonathan Ashford (JA): No. Not at all.

    Q: If you met somebody that was grieving over the loss of a loved one, what type of advice would you give?
    JA: I’ve done it many times. I speak to a lot of widows and people who are about to pass. And I tell them, imagine yourself as the ocean. And then a warm or cold air hits the ocean and you turn into fog. And then a warm or cold air comes again and you turn into a cloud. And a warm or cold air shows up again, then you turn into the rain that falls back in the ocean. Were you ever not the ocean? The ocean was always there. Death is nothing more than a change of state. 
    You’re not going anywhere. You’re not lost. You’re not in some other realm. You’re just the fog now or the cloud or the rain. You’re still in the same room. You’re still here. You still have access to everything, to everybody. And I often tell people to just speak to them because they can hear you. Everything here is alive. Everything here is connected. And it’s just understanding that we’re no longer in form. We’re just formless. But we’re not gone.

    Q: How would you explain what God is in all of this? 
    JA: I think God, as I understand it in my experience of it, it’s so many things. It’s love. It’s a binding force. It’s a personality. It does have a personality, and it does have a sense of humour. 
    Can it be a guy with a long beard and a tunic? Sure. Can it be invisible forever? Sure. It can be whatever it wants to be. But, it’s knowing that all things have it within. Your doorknob is God. Your door is God. The paint on your wall is God. You are God. The air is God. Your clothing is God. Everything has it within. It’s the circle from which all things come. And all things are constantly connected to it. Is it one thing? No. Often, I refer to it as they because it is many. It’s many things. It’s all things. If you’re breathing air, you’re breathing God. 
    We try to personify it. We try to make it into a human with a certain level of power that makes certain decisions. And it can be that. But, honestly, it’s much bigger, and it’s much more. And it’s something that moves pieces on this board of existence for something greater. And it’s just the reminder to say your existence was never your own. It was never your existence. It was ours. We’re all together in this. We’re all just holding hands through it. And when you understand God, the All, the Universe, the Source, plays a part in literally every second of your existence. When you wake up to that and acknowledge it, life changes.

    Q: Can you give us some practical ways to live our lives, to make the right choices? 
    JA: Yeah. It’s going to sound really simple, but I just tell everybody to pause for a second before you make a decision. Just 1 second. Just 1 second of pause. We tend to be reactive, right? We’re human, so we’re very reactive based on the inputs we receive, or we’re instant like a calculator. But do the math. Do it longhand. Take your time. And try to make a decision based on the infinite you rather than the desire that the human has.”
    Jonathan Ashford "DEAD for 3 Hours & Who He Saw Changed Everything! (NDE)" 50-minute interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3RJ-DIUiY     

    To appreciate where Jonathan is coming from, invest two & a quarter hours in Rick Archer's excellent, in-depth, recent interview: Jonathan Ashford: C‑Level Executive’s NDE, Life Review, and Radical Spiritual Awakening https://batgap.com/jonathan-ashford/ 
    A 40-minute documentary for a condensed overview: "The near death experience of Jonathan Ashford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSnS2jMY4k

    Other excellent Q&A style interviews also well-worth immersing yourself in:
    Jonathan Ashford "Dead for 3 Hours, What I Learned will Change you" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeHC2wGdAY
    Jonathan Ashford Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRplu6SjXrQ 
    From Zero to Enlightenment: Jonathan Ashford’s Near-Death Experience 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMA8kApZVGk

What CAN We Do?

    I'm sure I'm not alone wanting a wise, big-picture overview of life, so I can live my best life.
    Mystics of all wisdom traditions, passed & living, are connected to & share this wisdom. 

    One of the wisest quotes I've come across:  
    "The most important question to ask ourselves, according to Einstein: 
    'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." 
    Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993. 

    Even intelligent, educated people seem overwhelmed by mysticism for many reasons. First and foremost, our culture is by and large ignorant about mystics & mysticism. Our "consumer society" trains us to buy as much as possible as fast as possible, "greed is good," even after 9/11 George W. told Americans to show the world what they're made of, "Go shopping!" We're starving on a restricted diet of junk food (shallow materialistic concerns), and don't even know the vocabulary of nutrition (metaphysics, spirituality). We fear what we don't know, and procrastinate & otherwise avoid learning about it.

    "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
    Marie Curie, Nobel Prizes in Physics, & Chemistry 

   "... relax, allow life to be as it is, & open your heart to yourself. It’s easier than you might think, and it could change your life.”
    Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011. 

 
      "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 

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

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

    SO, what CAN we do? Not should, not must - although our time as individual mortal beings, as well as a species is running out - but absolutely CAN do, because wisdom that is IN ALL of US, the wisdom that is in fact who/what we actually are, is amazingly what we mostly, and in some almost entirely, have forgotten.
    Here's some of what I've understood from the many imho wise elders I've been reading about, listening to on the web, occasionally meeting, and more recently, blogging about: 

 

    Don't Judge. Every day we see outrageous, disgusting behavior on the news. It's disorienting to see how almost half of the US population fervently supports behavior, that in a few years (as Germans did after WWII) they will categorically deny having even known anything about it. So it's hard not to judge terrible behavior. 
    But from a much higher, non-dual perspective, what if we're each born to play a certain role, with a certain set of talents, a certain set of limitations & no matter how wonderful or horrible it appeared, we all did our best. And what if most of our ridiculous behavior was because most (but mercifully not all) of us completely forgot that we took on our role freely, including the fact that we are actually producers & executive directors of the entire play - almost identical to the Jesus being fully human and fully Divine story, except the he had almost complete recall of who he actually was, where he came from, and where he would return to.
    Bewildered? This blog & its video might help: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html 

 

     Be Discerning. Many of us spend a great deal of time watching / listening to the news & comments about the news. While it's important to perhaps watch / listen to the CBC or BBC news for 30 minutes a day, much more than that is probably masochistic or even an addiction. Doing more & more of what makes you feel sick is not a recipe for optimal healthy.
    Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like: 

    James Finley: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Finley .

    Helen Hamilton: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton .  

    Rainer Maria Rilke: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rilke . 

    Robert A. Johnson: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Robert+A.+Johnson

    Rami Shapiro: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rami+Shapiro . 

    Richard Rohr: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Rohr .  

    Henry Shukman: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman .  

    John Welwood: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=John+Welwood .

    Toni Packer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Toni+Packer . 

    Ram Dass: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Ram+Dass .

    James Hollis: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Hollis . 

    Roger Walsh: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Roger+Walsh .

    David Whyte: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Whyte .

    Norman Fischer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Norman+Fischer .

    David Steindl-Rast: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Steindl-Rast . 

and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by. 

    It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves in wisdom - OR - in darkness. "Too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, "just too busy" to get into it and learn? You can procrastinate and aim at best for feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life is really about.

 

    Learn & Do Spiritual Practices.  Theory is important BUT not enough. We need to intentionally PRACTICE shifting from being fearful consumer robots to becoming wise elder human beings.
    Our culture is not big on "practices." Some of us might admire the dedication it takes to become world class athletes, dancers, surgeons etc, but most of us just don't have the dedication to put in the time & effort. 
    The ONE area where ALL of us would massively benefit is putting in dedicated time & effort into spiritual practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=spiritual+practice 

 

    Be a Nurturing Presence. Only by waking up to who/what we truly are, can we help instead of hinder others to wake up and help others. 
    “… we have to allow our higher nature to show before we can do anything real, before we can be truly responsible people.” Jiyu-Kennett. “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press. 2002.

 

    Be Humble. The ego is a tricky, sticky, persistent trickster. We must regularly check our own BS-meter. A common problem is assuming a massive group ego - thinking one can do even horrible things because "I'm doing God's work." But such "crazy wisdom" is just crazy. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does." 
    Humility, gentleness, empathy, wisdom & kindness are rarely promoted or even recognized in our consumer culture & partisan religions. 

 

     Learn Self-compassion. The tough, aggressively self-reliant, workaholic individual is venerated these days, while a decent, nurturing, humble person would be branded "a loser" by today's dictators & billionaire CEOs. So decent human beings need to intentionally practice self-compassion, in order to survive & be effective in today's crass, superficial, heartless environment.

 

    Practice Self-awareness. With self-awareness practice, your talk & your walk are kept aligned. Again, humility is crucial. 
    "Self-inquiry" is a specialized, key, self-awareness practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry 

 

    Become More Discerning, More Self-compassionate. The more neuroses & "story of me" burdens we shed, the more clearly we see ourselves & what's going on around us. The more clearly we see, the more magnified our remaining (though diminishing) neuroses & other burdens appear to us, so it can seem like we're regressing instead of "getting ahead." So we need more self-compassion & patience with ourself.
    “Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgments slip away in the tracks of tears. And when we cry, we are revealing our truest, most loving self.” Richard Rohr. “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage” Convergent Books, 2025.

  

     Live in Joy. Gradually, you will be progressively more peaceful & joyful, regardless of the many challenges & sorrows in your own & loved ones' life, as well as that of the human race. The major, even crippling burden that you will shed is your identification with & constant rehashing of your own 'story of me' AS WELL AS its twin, the constant anxiety of 'what will happen to me?' and of course, vividly imagining the worst possibilities. As this HEAVY PSYCHOLOGIC BURDEN starts to lift, you start to experience 'the peace that surpasses all understanding' ie it must be experienced to be understood. Even this has, if you will, a 'dark side': while you'll see as your own past, no matter how miserable, as just a story, your empathy towards others (even actors playing a sad role in a movie) becomes progressively more powerful. Your job now is embodying peace & joy modeling equanimity even in the midst of chaos, when it's the most essential.

    "This is actually instruction from the Buddha, where he says, ‘Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still, free from fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way things are in the Way, the Dharma.' 
    And so this is also a challenge. He doesn’t say, let’s get rid of disease and all these problems, but to find a joyful way to be alive amidst it all.”
    Jack Kornfield - Finding Your Self on the Spiritual Path - Point of Relation with Thomas Hübl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjz7WaTyX4 WONDERFUL MATURE WISDOM - Jack Kornfield at his best

    And some 500 years later, in another incarnation of the Divine, Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us." Fixating on quickly eliminating age-old problems is in itself problematic, akin to "seeing a splinter in another's eye," again from Jesus, advising that we should first address our own significant flaws (‘the beam’ in our own eye) before attempting to correct / "save" others.

“The teachings on Buddha Nature do not mean that there is some nucleus of Buddhhood enclosed in sentient beings 
behind the temporary obscuring stains. 
Rather, our whole existence as sentient beings is in itself 
the sum of temporary stains that float like clouds in the infinite, bright sky of Buddha Nature, the luminous, open expanse 
of our mind that has no limits or boundaries. 
Once these clouds dissolve from the warm rays of the sun 
of wisdom shining in this space, 
nothing within sentient beings has been freed or developed, 
but there is just this radiant expanse without any reference points of cloud-like sentient beings or cloud-free Buddhas." 
Sthiramati, 6th century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk

 

 

     Watching David Ditchfield's 40-minute BBC interview about his Near-Death Experience (NDE) is imho wise use of your precious time: https://www.shineonthestory.com/ 

 

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"