Pure Gold

    While striving to survive or to "make it big" in any job, business or profession, we tend to see a less effortful path as at least strange, if not a frightening, lazy waste of time.

    But at some stage, we may start to experience a surprising ambiguity about, & increasing independence from our belongings, status, accomplishments, experiences & relationships. At the same time, we start knowing a profound peace, loving connection & wholeness, that is minimally influenced by our health, financial situation, social status or time left to live.

     While still in the striving 'go getter' stage, we're repeatedly devastated by threats / loss / damage to our health / life, financial situation, social status, belongings, status, accomplishments, experiences & relationships. We may rely entirely on growth, or at the very least stability, in income, health, possessions. At the same time - at least subconsciously - we know that 'perpetual growth / stability' is consumer-society's fairy tale. In fact, changes of every kind happen constantly, and unless we die young, aging, sickness & death are inevitable & universal.

    Eventually, we all will let go of fairy tales, face reality & learn how to live in harmony with what's real. Mystics, saints, & increasingly, 'ordinary people' around the world are 'awakening' and leave pointers - infinitely more precious than pure gold - to help the rest of us awaken to the profound peace, loving connection & wholeness that is independent of ever-changing circumstances:

 

"There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, 

beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. 

This is the light that shines in your heart."  

Chandogya Upanishad

When the Buddha lay dying in a forest grove in Kushinagara,
surrounded by five hundred of his disciples,
he said to them with his last breath:
"It is in the nature of all things that take form
to dissolve again.
Strive with your whole being to Awaken."

"You may imagine that there are many things you need to learn
and realize in order to attain enlightenment. That’s okay.
But essentially, there’s only one thing you absolutely must realize — 

the essential nature of your mind.”
Lama Tharchin Rinpoche

"In search of balance in the relative world, it is helpful to think of everything
— every quality, action, or object — as inseparable from its opposite: 

male and female; night and day; inside and outside. 

No matter how much you might like to have only the positives in life — 

freedom, peace, love — 

if you are seeking a static state, 

you will always be disappointed.

For every thing also contains its opposite and 

both sides must be balanced:
form & space, creativity & receptivity, activity & rest, growth & decay, 

manifest creation & the unmanifest source of all creation.

The good news is that, as your sense of balance grows, you’ll find it easier
to integrate the other side, ‘the negatives,’ into your life; 

you’ll discover the clarity in the midst of confusion, 

the stillness at the center of motion, 

and the love that waits behind fear & anger.

If you can learn to dance with the innumerable paradoxes of your life 

while staying anchored in an extraordinary suppleness & flexibility, 

you will create the stability necessary to actually find balance in your life."
Michelle & Joel Levey

 "Living in Balance: A Mindful Guide for Thriving in a Complex World."
Divine Arts, 2014.

"Thus shall ye think on all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream,
a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp, a phantom,
and a dream."
Gautama Buddha

"Diamond Sutra"

“This is essentially our practice, to be conscious & awake moment to moment, and to embody the enlightened values of love, wisdom, & compassion to whatever degree we are capable and willing.”  

Adyashanti

“May we meet in the silence of the heart, may our practice be committed and joyful, and may we encourage the light and goodness in others 

whenever and wherever we encounter them.” 

Adyashanti 

 

    Dive even deeper into independence from dukkha: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/08/towards-maturity-that-surpasses-common.html

 

by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

 

Nurturing Our Troubled World

     “A beautiful prophecy they tell in the Andes and in the Amazon is called the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. They say that this is the time when the Eagle People – people like you & I, who perceive life primarily through the mind – at this time in history will reach a kind of zenith. They’ll use the mind, and tools to even extend the capacity of the mind. That’s probably a prophecy about computers & artificial intelligence. And we will be materially rich beyond any previous generation’s imagination. But we will be spiritually impoverished to our peril and our very survival will be at risk. While the Condor People – which refers to indigenous people, who live primarily through the wisdom of the heart, the five senses, and inhabit the spirit world as their primary home – they will have reached a kind of zenith & sophistication in their skills & their way of life, but they will be materially impoverished to their peril and encounter with the Eagle world, and their survivability will also be at risk. And they say that at this time in history – the beginning of the third millennium (this is the 1st century of the 3rd millennium) the Eagle People and the Condor People will begin to fly together in the same sky, and the world will come back into balance.
     But the change after hundreds of years of domination of the Eagle People over the Condor People, from the 4th pachakuti, the pachakuti of dominance & darkness, (between ~1492 to 2000), changing to the 5th pachakuti, the pachakuti of balance & light (a pachakuti is a 500-year period of time). This change from the 4th to the 5th pachakuti will take, they say, 25-50 years, and during that time, Pachamama (their name for Mother Earth) will humble all her creatures with huge climactic events – earthquakes, temperatures rising, fires, floods, tsunamis – to humble all her creatures so they remember their rightful role in relationship with her, going into the pachakuti of balance & light. So this time of climactic turmoil and huge crisis with our climate has been predicted for thousands of years by the indigenous people as a way that the Mother is humbling us, in some cases destroying us, but humbling us so that we will find a rightful role of integrity with her as we go into the 500 years of balance & light, where the Eagle and the Condor fly together – the prophecy about the Pachamama Alliance. They say that this is a huge transitional period, this roughly 25 to 50 years, where we are receiving massive feedback from the Mother. They say the pandemic is part of this feedback, an announcement from the Mother. So everything comes from the earth, everything – the computer, the pen I’m writing with, everything we know, including the pandemic. That virus impacts only one species, of the millions of species on the planet, only one species gets sick from it, and that’s us. Why is that?
     They say that the pandemic is an announcement, it’s not a punishment. It’s an ally, it’s halting us, interrupting our way of life so we have to stop and think, re-source, re-check, re-generate who we are for the next 500 years.
     I call it morning sickness for our pregnant species, that’s pregnant for its own rebirth. When a woman is pregnant but doesn’t know she’s pregnant, and she’s vomiting in the morning, and feeling tired by 2 o’clock, and wanting weird things, and feeling very out of sorts, she actually considers herself sick.
     But if she finds out she’s pregnant, then she’s no longer sick – she’s having a baby. She’s still throwing up, but delighted that she’s going to have a baby. And I say that the pandemic is our morning sickness for a pregnancy that we’re entering into as a species, to re-birth ourselves, co-labour, both men and women collaborate into our next evolutionary leap, into what it means to be a human being. All pregnancies do not produce a baby. There are miscarriages, there are stillbirths, all kinds of things. This is a metaphor. The indigenous people say how we hold this interruption – the pandemic, the climate crisis – is not happening to us, it’s happening for us as feedback, so that we will make the changes necessary to survive. And if we don’t we’ll go extinct. These changes are harsh, but gentler than they could be, but are forcing a transformation."
     Lynne Twist (1hr 35min) interview: https://batgap.com/lynne-twist/

The Butterfly Story - A Metaphor for Humanity in Crisis
by Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolution Biologist & Futurist
http://www.sahtouris.com/#5_3

     “A caterpillar can eat up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, continuing to eat until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep, its skin hardening into a chrysalis. Then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the dormant caterpillar, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. This confused biologists for a long time. How could a different genome plan exist within the caterpillar to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of insect species, but it was not known until quite recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genome/protein configurations in early evolutionary times. Cells with the butterfly genome were held as disc-like aggregates of stem cells that biologists call 'imaginal cells', hidden away inside the caterpillar’ all its life, remaining undeveloped until the crisis of overeating, fatigue and breakdown allows them to develop, gradually replacing the caterpillar with a butterfly! 
     Such metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for the great changes globalisation, in the sense of world transformation, is bringing about, as Norie Huddle first used it in her beautiful book Butterfly. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the vision of a new and very different society, long held by many 'imaginal cell' humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, representing our solutions to the crises of predation, overconsumption and breakdown in a new way of living lightly on Earth, and of seeing our human society not in the metaphors and models of mechanism as well-oiled social machinery, but in those of evolving, self-organizing and intelligent living organism.
     If you want a butterfly world, don't step on the caterpillar, but join forces with other imaginal cells to build a better future for all!”

 

Trajectory of Consciousness

     “Teilhard de Chardin said that complexity of consciousness is the direction of travel of human evolution. Now if you say that, then you ask yourself, ‘What are the qualities of more complex consciousness?’ And he would say, ‘At its core – and this is what people experience – the deepest structure of reality is love and light. And so the mystical experience, the near death experience is an immersion in love and light, so that you are actually that. You are love, you are light. You realize that, and you realize that is the essence of what a human being is. It’s not a kind of computer program.

     And so that is why I say that we have to have a multidimensional model of the human being. We have to bring back the heart into all of this. Julia Mossbridge, a scientist … recently attended an artificial intelligence meeting – there were 50 people there, and she was the only woman. That, I think tells you something about the field. And this is where we go back to Iain McGilchrist, author of “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” He says that we are dominated by this left-hemisphere analytical view, which of course you see going straight into artificial intelligence. And we’ve neglected the right-hemisphere creative, intuitive, holistic side of ourselves. For him, the master hemisphere, in terms of his book’s title, is the right hemisphere, not the left hemisphere, because the right hemisphere is what gives us an idea of the whole, then information is sent to the left hemisphere for analytical elaboration, and then it should be sent back to the right hemisphere for a higher level of integration. So he never says we only need one hemisphere. He says we must create a culture in which these hemispheres are working together and we therefore re-establish our balance. Watch the excellent 12-minute summary of Iain McGilchrist's 20 years of research & 600-page book: "The Divided Brain" RSA Animate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI
     So for instance, notice all the accounting mentality in public institutions that has come in over the past 30 years. Bean counters, inspections, reports, all of this is left hemisphere stuff, and it’s aimed at control. You can control a machine, but you can’t control human beings – except to the extent you reduce them to this kind of mechanistic idea. And this is what the Chinese state is trying to do in terms of developing their technology, their surveillance and their point system. They’re really just treating human beings as kind of pawns in their big system.

      We obviously have to work together, and we are doing that. Each person has to ask themselves what they can do in their own, as it were, backyard, their own context, their own scope. But the principles for me are love and wisdom. So what we need to be pointing our compass to is a culture of love & wisdom, to care for each other, & enlightenment. 

     I think we underestimate the power of love. I think we totally underestimate this and it’s the most powerful force in the world. And if we realized its force and applied it, there could be huge changes. But I do also think that we need, at the same time, an expanded and deepened metaphysic where we understand that we are all one, that there is no ultimate separation, and I talk about this in my book ‘Resonant Mind.’ We need to act out of an ethic of interconnectedness, because we are all one at that deep level. So what we do to someone else, we are doing to ourselves. What we’re doing to the planet, we’re effectively doing to ourselves. But we just don’t seem to realize this. We’re so intent on this individualism and separation. ... we need to bring back the community. Not the collective, because that implies uniformity to me, but community implies diversity within and tolerance and openness to each other.”
     David Lorimer - the entire 23min interview below is well worth watching

 

David Lorimer “The Skeptics Have No Clothes”

Reconnecting with Our Unconscious Mind

     “Most of us have an intuitive feeling about what is meant when we hear the term unconscious. We correlate this idea with myriads of experiences, small and large, that are interwoven with the fabric of our daily lives. We all have had the experience of doing something unconsciously when our minds were ‘someplace else,’ then being surprised at what we had done. We remember getting worked up during a conversation and blurting out some strong opinion we didn’t know consciously that we held.
     Sometimes we are startled: ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t know I felt so strongly about that.’ As we become more sensitive to the surges of energy from the unconscious we learn instead to ask, ‘What part of me believes that? Why does this subject set off such an intense reaction in that unseen part of myself?’
     We can learn to look at the issue more closely. What ‘comes over me’ is a sudden invasion of energy from the unconscious. If I think I wasn’t being ‘myself,’ it is because I don’t realize that ‘myself’ also includes my unconscious. These hidden parts of ourselves have strong feelings and want to express them. Yet, unless we learn to do inner work, these parts of ourselves are hidden from our conscious view.
     Sometimes these hidden personalities are embarrassing or violent, and we are humiliated when they show themselves. At other times we wake up to strengths and fine qualities without ourselves that we never knew were there. We draw on hidden resources and do things we normally could not have done, say something more clear and intelligent that we’ve ever been able to say before, express wisdom we did not know we had, show a generosity or understanding of which we never knew we were capable. In each case there is a startled reaction: ‘I am a different person than I thought I was. I have qualities – both positive and negative – that I didn’t know were a part of my definition.’ These qualities live in the unconscious, where they are ‘out of sight, out of mind.’
     We are all much more than the ‘I’ of whom we are aware. Our conscious minds can focus on only a limited sector of our total being at any given time. Despite our efforts at self-knowledge, only a small portion of the huge energy system of the unconscious can be incorporated into the conscious mind or function at the conscious level. Therefore we have to learn how to go to the unconscious and become receptive to its messages: It is the only way to find the unknown parts of ourselves.
     To get a true sense of who we are, become more complete and integrated human beings, we must go to the unconscious and set up communication with it. Much of ourselves and many determinants of our character are contained in the unconscious. It is only by approaching it that we have a chance to become conscious, complete, whole human beings. Jung has shown that by approaching the unconscious and learning its symbolic language, we live richer and fuller lives. We begin to live in partnership with the unconscious rather than at its mercy or in constant warfare with it.
     Most people, however, do not approach the unconscious voluntarily. They only become aware of the unconscious when they get into trouble with it. We modern people are so out of touch with the inner world that we encounter it mostly through psychological distress. For example, a woman who thinks she has everything under control may find herself horribly depressed, able neither to shake it off nor to understand what is happening to her. Or a man may find that he has terrible conflicts between the life he lives outwardly and the unconscious ideals he holds deep inside himself where he never looks. He feels torn or anxiety-ridden, but can’t say why.
     When we experience inexplicable conflicts that we can’t resolve; when we become aware of urges in ourselves that seem irrational, primitive, or destructive; when a neurosis afflicts us because our conscious attitudes are at odds with our instinctual selves – then we begin to realize that the unconscious is playing a role in our lives and we need to face it.
     Jung discovered that the unconscious is not merely an appendage of the conscious mind, a place where forgotten memories or unpleasant feelings are repressed. He posited a model of the unconscious so momentous that the Western world has still not fully caught up with its implications. He showed that the unconscious is the creative source of all that evolves into the conscious mind and into the total personality of each individual. It is out of the raw material of the unconscious that our conscious minds develop, mature, and expand to include all the qualities that we carry potentially within us. It is from this treasure trove that we are enriched with strengths and qualities we never knew we possessed.
     Jung showed that the conscious and the unconscious minds both have critical roles to play in the equilibrium of the total self. When they are out of correct balance with one another, neurosis or other disturbances result.”

     Robert A. Johnson. “Inner Work. Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.” HarperOne, 1986. - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

 

Spacious Possibilities Overflowing

     During his first week-long meditation retreat in the 1970s, Guy Armstrong experienced: 
     “so much space in the mind, that anything that isn’t working right, I can eventually figure out a way to be free of it. I just gained that confidence from that very first retreat. 
     The amount of openness that was in the mind had the capacity to settle or understand whatever unhappiness was there. There was nothing in my whole experience that was fixed and had to continue the way it was, which meant that my unhappiness wasn’t fixed. Whatever got built up there could also be taken down. 
     It’s like the first time you move into a new apartment, everything’s empty, and then you bring in the furniture piece by piece. Whatever furniture we brought in, can also be taken out. Well I think largely, whatever conditioning we’ve grown up with, it all came in piece by piece. And whatever has been done and planted there, can also be removed. It’s through the capacity for spaciousness and emptiness that we come to know that.

      ... we’re all familiar with the 5 senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling & touching. But the Buddha talked about a 6th sense, which is the mind. And the objects of the mind are basically our thoughts & our feelings. So in Buddhist meditation, thoughts & feelings are taken up as just another sense object, just like sight, smell, taste, sound & touch are. 
     And the wonderful thing about the quality of mindfulness is that it has this ability to pay attention to those mental experiences in exactly the same way as we can pay attention to physical experiences, like sound etc. 
     When I came to meditation, I was so wrapped up in the world of thinking that I didn’t think it was possible to step out of it. But mindfulness is outside of the thought process, and can observe thoughts, just like it can observe a sound or a breath. So it gives an incredible power when the workings of the mind themselves can be observed just like other sense phenomena. 
     So the implication for meditators is we spend a lot of our time thinking about our life as happening with these concepts of the past: What’s happening to my career? Family? How did I get into the situation? Where does all this sadness come from? But what’s radical about mindfulness practice is it’s only about the present moment, and seeing well what’s creating the suffering or the peace or ease, right now?

     Emptiness is kind of an off-putting word. When you think that you’re going to draw people to meditation practice by talking about emptiness – I don’t think so. I think a lot of people have ideas of not just ego death, but also coming into something that is vacant, a loss of meaning, connected with some kind of despair. 
     But that isn’t the way that it feels when you actually start to sense what it is pointing to. What is pointed to is an absence of fixedness. It’s empty of anything that’s fixed or solid. 
     And what that opens us to is number one, a great sense of space, openness, freedom – freedom to move around, and also, as you get more into the moment, and out of the stories about the past & future, it opens to the great beauty of what we’re witnessing. Obviously, when we first come into practice, there often is a lot of emotional conditioning to open to and come to understand and work through, but it opens us to the beauty of the wonderful qualities of heart & mind, of loving-kindness, of compassion, the wisdom that’s possible, balance of mind, equilibrium, not to mention the beauty of nature and the physical world.”

Metta Hour with Sharon Salzberg

Ep. 90 – Guy Armstrong 
https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast-episode-90-guy-armstrong/

"Busy, busy, busy"?

     "To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern times."       Thomas Merton 

     "Saying 'yes' to more things than we can actually manage to be present for with integrity and ease of being is in effect saying 'no' to all those things and people and places we have already said 'yes' to.

     We may be betraying what is deepest and best in ourselves, and we may be betraying our relationships to others, even those we most love, and even our connectedness to places, to being at home where we are and fully in touch with what is most important and required in any moment. We might be losing touch, unknowingly, with our very relationship to the possibilities and the impossibilities of time."
     Jon Kabat-Zinn. "The Infidelity of Busyness." Mindfulness 2019; 10: 588–589.

     "'How is your heart?' I recently asked a friend going through a trying period of overwork and romantic tumult, circling the event horizon of burnout while trying to bring a colossal labor of love to life. His answer, beautiful and heartbreaking, came swiftly, unreservedly, the way words leave children’s lips simple, sincere, and poetic, before adulthood has learned to complicate them out of the poetry and the sincerity with considerations of reason and self-consciousness: 'My heart is too busy to be a heart,' he replied."
       Maria Popova https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/05/23/my-heart-corinna-luyken/?mc_cid=8f44637385&mc_eid=0d773a20c1 

What is the Right Effort?

     An intelligent, highly-engaged participant in an 8-week Mindfulness-based stress reduction program recently asked these questions:
     • Do you have any information (written or pictorial) on how to perform the various meditations/breathing exercises etc? We are “doing” them so there is no time to record exactly what we are doing. I find it difficult sometimes to remember (which hopefully will improve through being mindful) what it was that we did so having a sheet that outlines the steps will help me a lot with home practice.
     • Also I do not understand this: "The type of goal-oriented effort we tend to use to 'get ahead' at school and the workplace is not universally optimal nor even suitable." 
     Can you comment on this statement to make it clearer? I take the “goal-oriented striving effort” to mean you work hard and strive for accomplishment. You have steps you have mapped out to reach your goals. I would take that as ensuring you are doing your daily practice etc. If that is an appropriate example I do not understand why it would not be optimal.
     • Also “psychological health involves skillful balance between goal-oriented effort and acceptance”. What does this mean? Can you offer an example?

My response:
     I hope you’ve received the 10-Minute Guided Meditation audio file, which I hope clearly reviews the key meditation instructions. 
     Ideally, we can patiently follow the instructions as we perform the mindfulness practices together & in this way we effortlessly internalize them - allowing / welcoming them in. If instead, we worry about getting it right or perfect i.e. remain in a future-oriented striving mode, instead of engaging fully in the present-moment practice, we “remain in our heads” & may well become confused & stressed. The urge to use the default goal-oriented effort, & want to write all the steps down on paper, is completely natural, understandable & very common (more on this below).

     RE: "The type of goal-oriented effort we tend to use to 'get ahead' at school and the workplace is not universally optimal nor even suitable."
     Our usual attitude of mind or level of consciousness is based on ancient survival instincts: if I can achieve X in the future, then I’ll survive, and perhaps even thrive & have offspring. This has allowed the human & less evolved species to survive for a very long time, and is generally beneficial for basic survival. 
     But what if this were the ONLY or STRONGLY DOMINANT attitude of mind or level of consciousness we could access, and: we’re at a romantic get-away, birthday party, massage, wine tasting, poetry reading, music class, fine art exhibition or symphony? OR attending a Mindfulness-based stress reduction course, or silent meditation retreat? How would Sheldon, from the "Big Bang Theory," appreciate / enjoy such events?
     Yes, our usual goal-oriented effort does help us achieve certain goals, but it actually gets in the way of achieving many others, which require a completely different set of attitudes & far more evolved level of consciousness or state of being: acceptance, a quiet ego, quiet mind, stillness, silence, patience. 

     North American society seems to operate almost exclusively on a relentlessly fast-paced schedule of goal-oriented “doing”, mostly ignoring “being” who / what we already are. Silent self-reflection, asking deep questions like “Who am I?”, “What’s going on?” “What is the meaning to all this?” are drowned out by the noise of rushing to get / become more / bigger / faster. Yet, no matter how much fame, money, power etc we amass, we’re no happier, - in fact the opposite. At some level we all know that racing towards goals, and or trying to run from our demons through continuous distraction, only makes us exhausted & frustrated. Quantity simply can’t replace quality.

     The key is a healthy balance between looking after ourselves AND seriously investigating & investing quality time in what brings about real quality of life & deep meaning. We require 2 very different AND complimentary attitudes of mind or levels of consciousness to live full, deeply meaningful lives. As we mature, this healthy balance involves a progressive shift from self-concern, towards concern for others and the environment.

     More about this: http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/10/14/Two-Ways-of-Being

Marc Chagall "I and the Village"

Less Noise, More Meaning Please

     Identification with, and radical allegiance to a caveman leader or any cult-like group are attempts at instantly manufacturing a noisy ego, by those lacking self-esteem. Such allegiances are fear-based, so the ensuing rationalizations are funny.
     “People ... would rather believe in some other reality, even if it is only an illusion, so long as it makes them feel bigger.” Suzy Kassem 

     "The more you listen, the more you will hear. The more you hear, the more and more deeply you will understand, and the more wisdom, harmony, and balance you will bring to your life and world. As you practice mindfulness it is inevitable that you will encounter many aspects of your life and your world that are unsettling or challenging to face or embrace. It takes courage to create and sustain your mindful practice, but staying with it gives you the strength, compassion, and courage to cope with whatever life throws your way. Imagine how different our lives and world would be if we and others were to learn to listen more deeply to ourselves, each other, and the world around us!"
        Joel Levey, Michelle Levey. "Mindfulness, Meditation, and Mind Fitness." Conari Press, 2015.

     Though referring to creativity in visual arts, Keith Haring may just as well have been describing religion / spirituality:
     "When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about."  

Mob Mentality at a Soccer Match

Curiosity & Openness

     If we train ourselves to stay open & curious, internal energies seem to switch between pleasant & unpleasant fairly rapidly - like a turning signal in a car. The average is seems to be fine - equanimity may be based on this experience.
     It's only when we zone in on one particular emotion, & then magnify it, that we wind up stuck in a prolonged, pleasant or unpleasant mood (trance).

     Remaining spacious & curious about the energies that are constantly flowing through us seems to be one of the keys to remaining balanced & open to discovering what reality is about.

Dale Johnson   www.dpreview.com

Wholesome Balancing

     "In Indian tradition, the right side is called Pingala and the left, Ida. In China, Yang and Yin. The right represents the male, the sun, strength, fire, day and action, while the left represents the female, the moon, softness, earth, night and rest.
     Back and forth between Yin and Yang. And it becomes obvious, even if I don’t fully know how to live it, that true strength is not soft or hard, but both. That we need Yang direction, focus, aim and determination but we also need Yin acceptance, endurance and surrender. I believe our bodies contain more information than a thousand books, if we listen, if we watch what they tell us in movement and in stillness. If we watch how this affects our thoughts and feelings. 
     And these same lessons are written in nature, in the strength of the sun to light up the world and the strength of the moon to move oceans."

       Rosa Lia        http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/06/what-is-yin-how-can-it-make-you-stronger/

Surfing the Breath ...

     "As each moment, and each breath, streams to us and through us, it is clearly seen, deeply felt, fully registered, and released to reveal the next fleeting flickering bundle of impression that stream our way. We come to live like surfers balancing ourselves on seemingly endless waves of modulating life experiences, like jazz musicians marveling at each nuanced riff of responsive engagement in the streaming jam of life, or like Hildegard of Bingen once said, floating 'like a feather on the breath of God.'

     Joel & Michelle Levey, from their new book "Living in Balance: A Mindful Guide for Thriving in a complex World."   www.wisdomatwork.com

 

Lake Superior by Christine Lenzen   http://www.viewpointgallery.ca/

Opening to Embrace Vastness

     “… the paradox that where opposites met, wisdom might, indeed, be born if a person learned to hold them in balance. This embracing of the contradictory truths, without one canceling out the other, was said by the wise to be the essence of wisdom itself.”

       Matousek M. "Ethical wisdom. What makes us good." Random House, Toronto, 2011.

Kentville, Nova Scotia

Striving, Equanimity & the Middle Way

     The will to accomplish something involves both direction ie the actual goal, what you wish to accomplish, as well as the amount of energy or charge behind it. Interestingly, the ascetics with whom the Buddha first started his spiritual journey were referred to as "strivers." Striving suggests a lot of energy behind the will to accomplish a goal.
     The Buddha found that this striving type of effort could only take one so far. To go beyond, one needed to let go of striving and embrace a middle position - like a well-tuned string musical instrument - not too tight, not too slack - balance, equanimity.
     Intelligent mental effort is not at all like trying to lift a very heavy object. It is effortless, instant, where doing & being meet. By gently, intelligently, reducing the noise of self-talk and reducing the internal friction of clinging to ghosts of the past & future, energy is liberated - there's more energy available to creatively embrace now.

The Tao, Way, Middle Way, Emptiness, Stillness, Equanimity, Centeredness

     “The Way is in the middle because that’s the place where the energies are balanced. But how do you stop the pendulum from swinging to the outer edges? Amazingly enough, you do this by leaving it alone. It won’t keep swinging to the extremes unless you feed the extremes with energy. Just let the extremes go. Don’t participate in them, and the pendulum will naturally come toward the center. As it comes to the center, you will get filled with energy. This is because all the energy that had been wasted is now available to you. 
     If you choose to center and not participate in the extremes, you will come to know the Tao. You don’t grab it; you don’t even touch it. It’s just what the energy does when it’s not being used to swing toward the extremes. It finds its own way to the center of each event that takes place in life and remains quietly in the middle. The Tao is hollow, empty. Like the eye of a hurricane, its power is its emptiness. All things swirl around it, but it is unmoved. The swirl of life draws its energy from the center and the center draws its energy from the swirl of life. All these laws are the same – in weather, in nature, and in every aspect of your life.”

        Singer MA. The untethered soul. The journey beyond self. New Harbinger Publications Inc, Oakland CA, 2007. 

Photo: UncleFai   www.dpreview.com

Buddhist Psychology, Abhidharma, Qualities Crucial to Maturation & Wisdom

     "Buddhist psychology (Abhidharma) describes seven qualities or capacities that are crucial to fostering mental maturation and wisdom: the seven factors of enlightenment. These are composed of three calming factors (calm, concentration, and equanimity) and three energizing factors (effort, energy, and rapture), and a superordinate factor of mindfulness. 

     The calming and energizing factors need to be of comparable strength to balance each other and to avoid the disabling extremes of sleepiness and agitation. Moreover, when all seven are strong and balanced then there is the possibility of a major developmental leap: a leap into transconceptual awareness known as 'cessation' and its resultant transconceptual wisdom."

  

       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

Photo: Evgenia Arbugaena   http://pdn30.pdnevents.com/gallery/2013/index.php?contest=arbugaeva