Awakening the Heart-Mind

     "I began by asking myself, “What do I want out of life?” And the answer was happiness. Investigating further, I went into the moment when I was feeling happiest. I discovered something which to me was startling at the time. It was when I was loving that I was happiest. That happiness equated to my capacity to love rather than to being loved."
     Lester Levenson

     “The main thing is to be aware of being comfortable within. If you can do that, you can observe things which come in and produce a little discomfort, and examine why they produce the discomfort. You can quietly observe them and then return to the comfort. It’s surprising – the comfort in here is already out there with you in everything you see. This is the real nature of things: the comfortable area of being ‘part of’ rather than ‘separate from.’”
     Russel Williams, edited by Steve Taylor. “Not I, Not other than I. The Life and Teachings of Russel Williams.” O-Books, 2015.

     “… in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or you will soften, open and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the latter regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost.
     This does not necessarily carry over into an outer state of surrender, or ‘rolling over and playing dead.’ On the contrary, interior surrender is often precisely what makes it possible to see a decisive action that must be taken and to do it with courage and strength. To ski down a hill or split a piece of wood, you first have to relax inwardly; only then can you exert the right force and timing. It’s exactly the same in the emotional world. Whether it’s a matter of holding your ground in a dispute with your boss, handling a rebellious teenager with tough love, or putting your life on the line for an ideal you believe in like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., action flows better when it flows from nonviolence, that is, from the place of relaxed, inner opening.
     Remember that memorable scene in the first Star Wars movie when young Luke Skywalker had to guide his space cruiser through a narrow passage and release his missile at exactly the right time? ‘Feel the force, feel the force’ – that powerful mantra his teacher Obi-Wan-Kenobi had impressed on him – captures perfectly the relationship between inner surrender and effortless action. It’s a secret the great spiritual masters have always known.

     Modern science has come to understand that matter is only condensed energy. … Sooner or later, science will also discover that what it calls ‘energy’ is only condensed psychic force – which discovery will lead in the end to the establishment of the fact that all psychic force is the ‘condensation,’ purely and simply, of consciousness, ie spirit.” Valentin Tomberg
     In other words, there is an energetic continuum running through all of creation, beginning in the virtually vibrationless awareness of pure consciousness and ending in the solid world of rocks and tables. In contrast to the more traditional theological model, which views God and creation as rigidly separate, the Wisdom model stresses the fluidity of movement along this energetic continuum, and the presence of divine consciousness at every level, regardless of the outward form.”
      Cynthia Bourgeault. “The Wisdom Way of Knowing: Reclaiming An Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart.” Jossey-Bass, 2003.

     “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
      Martha Graham, (1894-1991) American dancer & choreographer, regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance, and widely considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

      “I would say that we live in a panpsychic, ensouled universe; that it’s intelligent and spiritually-informed, and at some deep level conscious, though not every expression of the cosmos is equally conscious as we all know.
     I don’t think that we’re living out a blueprint that has every single detail predetermined. I think we live in an open universe and, as I understand it, the cosmos is itself a continuing, evolving, creative act. That creativity brings in a certain amount of unpredictability. It’s bringing together multiple movements and infusions and impulses in each moment of our consciousness as well as in every other part of the cosmic panoply of other consciousnesses.
     So there’s a play in the system. There’s a kind of creative unpredictability that is crucial, in my understanding, to the human adventure. If we were just living out a kind of predetermined structure of fate, that would be a less interesting adventure for sure. Even though I think that there’s a constant interplay between underlying karmic factors, underlying archetypal & cosmological structures, & evolutionary stages, and so forth, that take place collectively as well as individually - there are all sorts of structures that we’re working within, but it’s more like jazz music or rock & roll or blues, where you have certain formal structures, chordal structures, harmonic architecture as it were, and then within that larger architectural structure, it’s up to us what melodies we sing, what dances we dance.
     Perhaps the genres are somewhat shaped by our culture and the epoch we’re living in, but I deeply believe there’s a certain element of human agency of autonomy, of creative freedom, and that’s where our moral responsibility comes in, as well as the playful dimension artistically and so forth.”
     Richard Tarnas interview https://batgap.com/richard-tarnas/

     "We are The Mystery awakening to Itself.
      You are not alone but in good company...."    Joel Levey

     “Were one asked to characterize spirituality in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the direct experience, remembering, or felt sense of an unseen order, and our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”
      William James,​ ​“The Varieties of Religious Experience” [italicized words in the text are my substitutions]

 

Wise Grandparents

     Wise grandparents or wise elders are content, at peace, equanimous, unconditionally loving, nurturing, grounded in spaciousness, stillness & silence. There is, of course, an infinite gradient in the aging process - from nasty miserable old cranks, all the way to fully enlightened beings embodying 'pure consciousness.' Most of us can do better - we can't imagine how much better!
     Contentment is very different from the sugar-high we tend to associate with happiness. 'Happiness' compared to contentment is like the sound of metal garbage cans being beaten with sticks in comparison to Beethoven's symphonies. One is 'quick & dirty,' but soon annoys everyone; the other takes a lifetime to perfect, nurturing both the musician & audience to flourish. There are far more air-guitar players around than Eric Claptons.
     Wise grandparents are equanimous - reliably stable, grounded, in good times and even the most challenging times. They're not afraid if they might die; they know death is imminent - no time left to waste. Through lived experience, they also realize that it's not worth sweating the small stuff and, that in the greater scheme of things, it's all small stuff. When a young child breaks a toy, he might be devastated, screaming as if life was no longer worth living. A wise grandparent simply smiles and comforts the child, knowing from lived experience that the event is meaningless, quickly forgotten. Yet in the heat of suffering, even adults are often blind to this critically important 'big picture' perspective.
      "All of the astronauts that have been to the moon have had some similar type of experience ... Frank White called it ‘The Overview Effect’ - I call it “the big picture effect.’ And it’s this notion of wonder & awe at seeing the universe, and seeing life on Earth from that point of view ...” Edgar Mitchell, astronaut

     There's a LOT to 'unpack' here. And today, it takes interest, patience & courage to immerse ourselves in areas beyond materialism. It's ironic that many adults continue to fearfully avoid this territory partially because they dread aging & death. Most of us lack the training, knowledge & experience to refute materialist theory that everything, including consciousness, is no more than a meaningless accident of physical particles.
      "... it’s healthy for scientists to recognize what the scientific method can tell you, and what it cannot, so you can do good science, instead of bad philosophy." Bernardo Kastrup PhD
 
      Especially in academic circles, being jaded, skeptical & cynical tends to be conflated with sophistication & intellectual superiority. If at a meeting, a new creative idea is proposed to solve an existing problem, kudos go to the first one to throw a wet blanket on the idea with, "I hate to be the devil's advocate, BUT ..." If everything is dead matter & everyone is a meaningless machine without free will, what's the point of doing anything? The notion that "life's hard, and then you die" hangs heavily in the air.

     Fortunately, experience can knock some sense into us. Unexpected trauma can in roughly 40% of cases result in post-traumatic growth, a brush with death can cause near death experiences (NDEs), and other 'psi experiences' all clearly show that materialism cannot be a 'theory of everything.'
      • Bruce Greyson. “After. A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.” St. Martin’s, 2021.
      • Jeffrey J. Kripal. “The Flip. Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge.” Bellevue Literary Press, 2019.
      • Bernardo Kastrup. “The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality.” IFFS Books, 2019.
      • Steve Taylor. “The Leap. The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening.” New World Library, 2017.

     Wise aging, meditation-mediated awakening, spiritual-practice-mediated mystical experience, entheogen-mediated experiences, spontaneous awakening, post-traumatic growth, NDEs, etc can all elicit at least temporary shifts into a higher, more evolved level of consciousness. This is not weird magic woowoo, simply glimpses into our next stage of human evolution. Such shifts occur when the noisy ego quietens down to a whisper. Then, temporarily or permanently, the self-centered struggle to get somewhere, to become someone, to compulsively do stuff, all stop. Under these conditions, our more evolved intelligence, wisdom, consciousness, true nature - naturally, spontaneously manifests.

     “… consciousness is our true nature, and when we rest within it, we feel a powerful sense of ease and contentment.”
     • Russel Williams, edited by Steve Taylor. “Not I, Not other than I. The Life and Teachings of Russel Williams.” O-Books, 2015. 

Practicing Gentle Nurturing

     Handling even a cup as gently as if it were an eggshell “is a practice which reflects back on you. The world is a mirror. Whatever quality you put out will be reflected back to you. This is what mindfulness is all about: to be well aware of the condition in here (hara / dan tien - in the center or core of the body, 2 inches above the navel), and make sure that what you give out is of the same nature. If you want to live peacefully, give peace. If you want chaos, put chaos out there and you’ll soon get it back.
     If you are wise, you learn to be very, very gentle in almost everything you do. Then you get that subtlety of feeling, and it is the subtlety that matters most. It means slowing down somewhat. Not allowing immediate response. Wait. Be gentle. Does it really need a response? If it does, take it gently. There’s no need to be tough. And also, whatever you do, give it your full, undivided attention.
     Often you come to know rather than understand. Thought has its place; nobody is denying this. There are times when we need to think about things, but if those times are not present, we don’t have to think. If you stop thinking about them, they will still be there when you need them. But in between thoughts, you can learn to experience what is there. That is where living takes place. In thought there is no living, only delusion.
     If you give your whole attention, your wholehearted attention to any person, if only momentarily, you’ll see how they respond and blossom. They will feel, ‘I am recognized, I am a somebody.’ But if you give half-hearted attention, whilst you’re thinking of something else, they’ll feel, ‘I’m not here; I am not being recognized.’ People need that recognition.
     The same applies to household tasks: dusting, polishing, washing the floor, washing the dishes, and so on. Give them your full attention, don’t think of other things. The now is all there is, so learn to live in it. And surprise, surprise, when you do, all fear disappears. The alternative is to live in fear all the time, through being concerned about what might happen next. But if you are only in the now there is no next moment. Strangely, you can move through time with this attitude – with full attention here, there, there, there, there – but it’s all one continuous moment. There is no tomorrow.
     Am I really saying that you should give your whole attention – with a loving aspect – (even) to a piece of crockery? Yes. As if it were a living creature. In the moment of doing, the object reflects your love back to you by virtue of its mirror action. Try it and see ... Whenever you come to do these tasks, be it washing the dishes or washing your socks or stockings, whatever, do them with your whole attention just for those moments; gently, carefully, as if you’re dealing with a living creature. Observe how you feel and you’ll find it’s really worthwhile. A lot of extraneous thoughts disappear, things that would otherwise worry you, so that you have a contented mind which you carry with you to the next activity. You begin the new task contented, free from agitation, and see things more clearly, so you’re able to deal with every situation better. You don’t have to do anything special, just the things you normally do, but with your full attention.
     You might forget to do it of course – if so, try again and watch how the process works. Once you realise how it works, and once you experience its benefits, you’ll continue to do it. It’ll enter into different parts of your life more and more and you will be much more content. ... You’ll become much more friendly to other people and they will begin to respond, after a period of time, if not immediately. Some people take longer than others. ...
     Generally, this is the way we can begin to change ourselves, in little everyday things that don’t require a great deal of effort at all. Where possible, we should give ourselves a bit of time and sit down for 10 minutes, be still, quiet, and allow things to subside and to feel deep within ourselves the still peacefulness from which the nurturing arises. Just like that.
     There’s a bit of a joke here: it’s been said that Buddhist monks spend their time contemplating their navels. Actually, there is a lot to be said for that, because that’s where that still small space is, deep within the body (hara / dan tien). If you allow your consciousness to drop down into that area and be more peaceful and expansive in consciousness, you find it is very warm and comforting and that it takes you away from the ‘thinking box’ for a while.
     So in that way you can learn to be still. You don’t have to try to stop your thoughts; they will cease on their own when you become complete within that wholeheartedness. They just stop by themselves. If you try to stop them, that would be suppression and not a good thing. But even if they don’t stop, it’s okay because you see them as peripheral, on the sidelines. When you are down there (hara / dan tien), thoughts don’t really matter.
     So we learn to live with our basic nurturing instincts, in a more homely way. We begin to base ourselves there rather than in our thoughts, and then we find that even our thoughts begin to change in their nature into a much better form. We can bring about a great deal of change within ourselves without a great deal of concentrated effort. It doesn’t require effort – just a quiet casual way of doing things, but with full attention.”
     Russel Williams, edited by Steve Taylor. “Not I, Not other than I. The Life and Teachings of Russel Williams.” O-Books, 2015.