There is a back-and-forth rhythm or dance between (apparent) opposites to many aspects of life, as popularized by Pete Seeger's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."
Expansion can occur spontaneously, because 'everything is perfect as it is' as experienced & understood by shamans, saints, prophets & mystics of all wisdom traditions throughout the ages. Expansion usually occurs when we're able to relax, self-reflect, and finally allow ourself to deeply listen to our inner wisdom's whisperings.
Today's mystics agree:
"... happiness is our default setting. That’s the way we come wired from the factory. It is our natural state. ... quieting of your mind allows that natural state to come back to the surface." Interview of Chip & Jan Chipman on The Three Principles and Relationships https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmqLI8_9pko
“All we are is peace, love & wisdom, AND the power
to create the illusion that we’re not.” Jack Pransky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4
.
Contraction can be very easily triggered & maintained by stress. BUT, the WEIRDEST CAUSE IMAGINABLE is that WE are used to thinking shitty thoughts, which invariably CAUSE our shitty moods - our "ordinary unhappiness." YES, WE habitually choose to continuously re-tell & thus continuously re-suffer the sad "story of me," the sad story of my tribe, and visualize in gory detail horrible future events, which, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "never happened!" The QUALITY of OUR MOODS are ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE! Though we habitually blame our moods on our external circumstances, they have almost nothing to do with it!
“The simple truth is this: We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, NOT the feeling of our circumstances.” Michael Neill
“The original, shimmering Self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.
Instead, we live out of all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on & taking off like coats & hats against the world’s weather.” Frederick Buechner
“Stories are prisons we choose to live inside.” Bob Falconer
"How we experience life depends on our level of consciousness." Sydney Banks
“You can’t be in fear and curiosity at the same time.” John Clarke
WHEN you've had enough of being trapped in sad & anxious stories and wallowing in 'ordinary unhappiness' or depression, burnout or worse:
1) realize self-talk's destructiveness,
2) recognize self-defeating self-talk within seconds,
3) let it go,
4) immediately bring attention back to the present moment.
5) cultivate the courage, perseverance & curiosity to remain, rest in, live in & savor the present moment. THIS is the HEART of Mindfulness Training & Practice!
You are cultivating PRESENCE - being fully awake, alive, free, engaged with whomever you're with, whatever you're doing - whether in motion or at rest.
While in presence, you will feel free, light, peaceful, relaxed, warm, loving, competent no matter what is going on, including a painful medical procedure!
As soon as you start to feel down, anxious or otherwise troubled, DROP the shitty old thinking habits, go to #4 & 5 above.
From Jack Pransky's excellent book: “Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for
Living Well" 2011. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
“I realized that if we deeply understood three spiritual facts or principles, how these facts work together and how our use of them gives us every experience we can possibly have in life, with this perspective we can move through life with peace of mind, well-being, mental health and psychological freedom. … The Three Principles point to ten little (but huge) points about life and relationships that would be extremely helpful for people to understand. … Each takes exploration and reflection. Thus a full chapter is devoted to each:
I. Our thinking is our life
II. Wisdom is always available to guide us, if we know how to access it
III. If someone’s thinking doesn’t change, they can’t change
IV. When our mind clears our wisdom appears
V. We don’t have to think our way out of our problems (or to happiness)
VI. The feeling is what counts, and it’s foolproof
VII. What we see is what we get
VIII. In low levels of consciousness, it is unwise to believe, trust or follow our thinking
IX. To deeply listen to others instead of to our own thinking gives us a richer experience
X. We’re only as stuck as we think we are
To deeply understand the meaning of these statements is to live in a different world, and inside-out world. You may never see yourself or the world in the same way again.
Our innate Health and its natural intelligence is always hidden within us, just waiting to rise to the surface. All we have to do is allow what we think we know to drop away, or no longer take it seriously, and this wisdom will speak to us. It is so close to us that we have forgotten it is there – like the air we take for granted – yet it holds the key that unlocks the potential in everyone.” Jack Pransky
Spiritual porosity refers to one of the qualities of Self: openness, connectedness, inter-relatedness or "interbeing," and ultimately Oneness with everyone & everything - nonduality. An old saying, "No man is an island."
“I’ve had the honor of being able to work with some of the Northern Plains indigenous peoples here - the Crow, and Sue, and the Northern Cheyenne. And I think they were much more comfortable with ‘porosity of mind.’ When they talked about the world around them, it was ‘all my relations.’ That’s a porous attitude toward the world. And I also think if we really could get back to that different attitude, we wouldn’t be able to treat the world around us so badly anymore.” Robert Falconer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSa9hvEgWpk WONDERFUL INTERVIEW
Simon & Garfunkel sing about the opposite of porosity, the "small self":
