Spaciousness and Contraction

    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)."

         One of these 'dances' is our tendency to AT TIMES contract into our "small self," into self-concern: sadness, anxiety, basically a low mood or "ordinary unhappiness" AND AT OTHER TIMES, expand into our "true Self" or wisdom, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding," experiencing uncaused joy, awe, gratitude, awareness, concern for, and even Oneness with, all of creation!

    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":

Feelings are Important

    "Our feelings are a barometer of how our thoughts are being utilized." 
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

     How am I? Seriously - check in with yourself! Why? Because the whole gamut of BAD feelings are caused by "thinking." It's NOT what happens to us, but how we THINK about it that causes MOST of our suffering. And we're OFTEN caught - much like whales entangled in fishing nets - in useless thinking (self-talk, internal chatter). We're almost constantly talking to ourselves in our heads, and 90-95% of it is useless, even harmful. We innocently but WRONGLY assume that this steady chatter tells us the objective truth, who we actually are and provides evidence that we're alive & thinking rationally. NO! The vast majority of self-talk is old, repetitious bits of "the story of me" - a poor, wronged, separate me, barely surviving in a crazy, hostile world.

    Whenever we're caught up in self-talk, we actually feel BAD: stressed, overwhelmed, out of control, contracted, sad / angry, lonely & disconnected. Our "mind racing" is not normal. "Multitasking" is not productive. There's often a real sense of "time crunch" - not nearly enough time to get everything done, even in a "half-assed" way. You may be thinking, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' This is just rushing towards burnout.  

    “Every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health and they don't know it.” Sydney Banks

    So we can't stop the world, BUT each one of us CAN let go of the actual cause of most of our unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering - we CAN let go of self-talk!  

    We can easily detect when we're caught up in self-talk because it makes us feel BAD. So we first notice self-talk going on AND we drop it, just let it go, stop supplying energy that sustains noise. EVERYONE CAN DO THIS. Then repeatedly bring awareness to the silence that is always there between, behind, underneath the words & other noises. Be curious, "listen for" & enjoy resting, luxuriating in the silence. 

    Quickly you'll begin to appreciate all that comes with silence: peace (instead of stress & time-poverty); wisdom & calm competence (instead of feeling overwhelmed & out of control); spaciousness & relaxation (instead of contraction & tension); intimacy & oneness (instead of loneliness & disconnectedness). Within this peaceful silence we effortlessly connect with deepest intelligence or wisdom & creativity which far exceeds our personal (egoic) intelligence. We operate FAR more wisely, efficiently, empathically, and joyfully when we're acting from the depth of who we truly are.

    "When mind and soul are in unison, you will experience mental well-being."
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

DO listen to this EXCELLENT 56 minute Michael Neill interview

 

Love and Live!

    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” John W. Gardner  

    We are, as Bruce Cockburn sang, "lovers in a dangerous time." We anxiously twitch to echos of the worn out phrase, "It's Do or Die!" in far too many, far too popular blow-em-up action movies, in our own tortured imaginations, and even in the reality of war-torn lands.
    Most of us have almost forgotten our true nature, which is always gently whispering encouragement, "Love and Live!"

“And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts;
a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky,
and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that impels
all thinking things, all objects of thought,
and rolls through all things.” William Wordsworth 

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.” William Wordsworth

    “How can an Ego that is lost & entangled … find its way out and recover the right relationship to the Self (Universal Consciousness, Ultimate Reality)? The answer is this: since the Ego has become lost through forgetfulness & fear, it can find its way home through the opposite of these two: mindfulness & trust. In its innermost heart, the Ego never fully forgets the Self – the puppeteer – but its memory is dulled, as in sleep. The Ego can be aroused from that sleep and return home to the Self – becoming ‘I myself’ again, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
    It is important to remember that the Ego is not a third entity in addition to the I and the Self. The Ego always remains the I, but it is an I all shriveled up, because it lacks the expansive awareness of the Self that unites it with every other I.”    David Steindl-Rast. “You Are Here. Keywords for Life Explorers.” Orbis, 2023. EXCELLENT, PROFOUND & PRACTICAL!

    Iain McGilchrist's 2021 two-volume book, "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" covers in masterful detail, how we deal with reality in two very different, complementary ways: left-hemispheric dominance (essentially serving the "Ego") and right-hemispheric dominance, with an appropriately subordinate supportive role for the left hemisphere, (essentially serving the "Self").

    “I found out from robots the most crucial rule of all for living. Human minds are constantly being thrown off the track by complications. The picture is rarely clear. We are told everything has buddhanature (Divine Nature), and we try to act accordingly. But then we discover that someone we know has done something perfectly execrable (dreadful, appalling), and we begin to doubt. ‘How,’ we ask ourselves, ‘could anybody who would do an evil thing like that have the Buddha (Divine) inside him?’ We feel that our trust has been betrayed, and we resent the person even more.
    But robots are simpler than people. So are mountains and rivers and plants and animals and insects. Suppose these less complicated creatures begin to cause us difficulty. In that case, we have no trouble seeing that the fundamental cause is our failure to function in accordance with the principles of the universe. The machines, the mountains, the rivers, the plants, the animals, the insects all tell us that we, filled from head to toe with the buddhanature (Divine Nature), have nevertheless not succeeded in being what we ought to be.
    When we forget to respect the buddhanature in the wind and the water, typhoons and floods inform us of our lapse and show us in no uncertain terms how we have not lived up to the buddhanature within ourselves. When we forget the buddhanature in automobiles and other machines we have created, a warning comes to us in the form of accidents or pollution. Everything in the universe constantly tells us that the way to perfect our buddhanature is to respect the buddhanature in other things & people.”
    Masahiro Mori. “Does a Robot Have Buddhanature? A Leading Figure in the Field of Robotics Investigates.” Tricycle March 21, 2023.

    “All that we behold is full of blessings.” William Wordsworth

    When we sit and meditate, the Ego does its best to retain control by chattering on, the same circular "story of me" we endure day in and day out.
    Mercifully by relaxing, remaining still, and listening deeply to the silence, we periodically return home, disappearing in Mystery. Each time we return with a mind-heart a little bit more open & wiser.

"Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan

 

Technologies of the Sacred

“The mystery, the essence of all life
is not separate from the silent openness
of simple listening.”

Toni Packer

    "Awe gives you this big picture, it makes you open up, it makes you creative, it makes you think outside of the box — everything we need in doing good work." Dacher Keltner PhD

     "Fear, suffering, and focus … enable adventurers to release hidden powers and access other realms of experiences. … extreme adventure is not only a spiritual search, but also a spiritual tool. And it is the same for all of us, adventurers or not. The hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives can enrich our existence, revealing our true identity, awakening us to a greater awareness of our own potential, and opening us to the infinite beauty of the universe.”
    Maria Coffey. “Explorers of the Infinite. The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes – and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communications, and Touching the Beyond.” Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2008.

    “The importance of non-ordinary states of consciousness for ancient and aboriginal cultures is reflected in the amount of time and energy that the members of these human groups dedicated to the development of technologies of the sacred, various procedures capable of inducing them for ritual and spiritual purposes. These methods combine in various ways drumming and other forms of percussion, music, chanting, rhythmic dancing, changes of breathing, and cultivation of special forms of awareness. Extended social and sensory isolation, such as a stay in a cave, desert, arctic ice, or in high mountains, also play an important role as means of inducing this category of non-ordinary states. Extreme physiological interventions used for this purpose include fasting, sleep deprivation, dehydration, use of powerful laxatives and purgatives, and even infliction of severe pain, body mutilation, and massive bloodletting. By far the most effective tool for inducing healing and transformative non-ordinary states has been ritual use of psychedelic plants.
    Mainstream psychiatrists initially dismissed and even ridiculed native ritual events as products of primitive superstition based on ignorance and magical thinking. They relegated non-ordinary states of consciousness of any kind into the domain of psychopathology. This situation gradually changed in the course of the twentieth century, particularly in its second half, when Western scientists actually made some major contributions to the armamentarium of the technologies of the sacred. Clinical and experimental psychiatrists and psychologists had the opportunity to acquire firsthand experience with chemically pure psychedelic substances and with a variety of laboratory mind-altering procedures from sensory deprivation to biofeedback. They also witnessed the effect of non-ordinary states of consciousness in various forms of experiential therapeutic techniques using breathwork and bodywork, such as neo-Reichian approaches, Rebirthing, and Holotropic Breathwork. Those open-minded enough to take on the challenge of these revolutionary tools thus had a chance to discover their power and their great therapeutic potential.
    When we recognized the unique nature of this category of non-ordinary states of consciousness, we found it difficult to believe that contemporary psychiatry does not have a specific category and term for these theoretically and practically important experiences. Because we felt strongly that they deserve to be distinguished from altered states of consciousness and not be seen as manifestations of serious mental diseases, we started referring to them as holotropic. This composite word means literally ‘oriented toward wholeness’ or ‘moving toward wholeness.’
    The name holotropic suggests something that might come as a surprise to an average Westerner – that in our everyday state of consciousness we identify with only a small fraction of who we really are and do not experience the full extent of our being. Holotropic states of consciousness have the potential to help us recognize that we are not ‘skin-encapsulated egos’ – as British philosopher and writer Alan Watts called it – and that, in the last analysis, we are commensurate with the cosmic creative principle itself. Or that – using the statement by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and philosopher – ‘we are not human beings having a spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences.’
    This astonishing idea is not new. In the ancient Indian Upanishads, the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is ‘Tat tvam asi.’ This succinct Sanskrit sentence means literally: ‘Thou art That,’ or ‘You are Godhead.’ It suggests that we are not namarupa – name and form (body/ego), but that our deepest identity is with a divine spark in our innermost being (Atman) that is ultimately identical with the supreme universal principle (Brahman). And Hinduism is not the only religion that has made this discovery. The revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the mystical core of all great spiritual traditions. The name for this principle could thus be the Tao, Buddha, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Great Spirit, Sila, and many others. Holotropic experiences have the potential to help us discover our true identity and our cosmic status.”
    Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof. “Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy.” State University of New York Press, 2010. 

    Psychiatrist Stan Grof (above) spent 50 years doing pioneering research on the use of entheogenic plant medicines (ayahuasca, psilocybin, peyote, etc.) and Holotropic Breathwork. Holotropic Breathwork, which uses circular breathing, music & bodywork, harnesses the intrinsic healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Grof's book explores the healing, transformative, & evolutionary potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness accessed through Holotropic Breathwork, and their great value as a source of new revolutionary data about consciousness, the human psyche, and the nature of reality. 

    One-day, experiential courses : https://holotropic.ca/events/

 

Fourth State of Consciousness

     Most of us are surprisingly USED TO feeling: stressed, unsafe, "not myself", upset, uptight, angry, stingy, grumpy, reactive, rigid, confused & at least vaguely homesick. This is our normal waking state of consciousness.
     WHY do most of us ONLY RARELY & BRIEFLY feel: at ease, safe, authentic, peaceful, spacious, unconditionally loved & loving, nurturing, joyful, equanimous, creative, wise & at home?
    Could feeling pleasantly at ease, safe & loved be a sign of being in a different state of consciousness?
    Could then the opposite, being grimly certain that life is nothing more than stress & "ordinary unhappiness" lock us into our (stressful) normal waking state of consciousness?
    Could even a bit of flexibility, curiosity, or inkling that there might be more to life than "ordinary unhappiness" open the gate, allowing a shift into a different, more pleasant state of consciousness - one which most people only rarely & briefly experience?

  “Whether you think you can,
               or you think you can't
               feel at home & at ease in this world – you're right!”                     Henry Ford, slightly modified 

     Eckhart Tolle on how we ALL CAN realize this deeper state of consciousness:
    “There is an equivalent of dreamless sleep in our ordinary existence, but most people are not aware of that dimension of consciousness that is possible for human beings. And although spiritual teachers have spoken about it, and pointed to it for thousands of years, it still is not common knowledge that there’s a potential in every human being for realizing within him or herself a state of consciousness that is deeper, infinitely deeper than the ordinary state of thinking-and-doing normal life. I sometimes call that state spaciousness, inner spaciousness, presence or stillness. In Indian spirituality, they call it the fourth state of consciousness, turiya. [pure consciousness, the state of enlightenment, the background that underlies & pervades the three common states of consciousness which are: waking state, dreaming state, & dreamless deep sleep] Most humans don’t know that it’s there for them. And that is the greatest tragedy of a human life, to miss the possibility to realize that fourth stage of consciousness.
    There is an assumption by spiritual seekers, even in India, and anybody who hasn’t realized it for themselves, or even had glimpses of it, there’s an assumption that that fourth state is extremely hard to attain and you need countless years of spiritual practice or countless lifetimes to finally achieve the fourth state of consciousness. And that belief actually prevents you from realizing it within yourself because that state of spaciousness is already in you all the time. So if you have the belief that it’s something that you need to achieve at some future point, then that belief, that thought, would continuously prevent you from realizing it now. Mentally, you will always project. You’ll say, ‘I’m going to meditate because at some point I want to achieve the fourth state. That can be a great hindrance in your meditation because it prevents you from going deeper into the present moment which is where the fourth state is. Or one could almost say, it’s not just where the fourth state is, but the present moment is the fourth state – the space of now, not what happens in the now, but the deeper, the space in which it happens. The background to your life is continuously there, and continuously also often seeps through in between two thoughts. You take a deep breath between two thoughts, and for 3 seconds you were free of yourself. And for those 3 seconds you might look at something or whatever, and just experience a moment of peace & aliveness. And then of course you get drawn back into thinking. And then at another time a little space comes in again when you’re maybe tasting something, perhaps there’s just the perception of the taste, without any mental interference, just an aware presence behind the sense perception. And then you notice that the state is always there. Every thought exists in that space – it’s only a wave movement in that space.
    And so it’s not something that you need to attain as if you didn’t have it, because it’s already here. It is essentially who you are. It is intrinsically one with the essence of your being. And if you don’t know that, then your life is very limited to just a little person, with no transcendent dimension to your life whatsoever. And so we are here, in order to deepen our realization of inner spaciousness. That’s all. So you realize something that is already here, rather than needing to look for it. So why do you often not realize it? Because you overlook it, just like the fish may overlook the fact that it’s surrounded by water and starts looking for it. “Where is the water? People keep talking about the water.” And the more the fish looks, the less likely that it’ll find the water.
    So that spaciousness is something that at first may appear in your life as a glimpse. At first, in many peoples’ lives, they don’t know that that is spaciousness. They experience it as heightened aliveness or a deeper sense of peace or joy, an absence of problems for a little moment. ["causeless joy"] So they don’t know that this is a different dimension (or state) of consciousness that has suddenly arisen. They can still confuse it with something else, as I did when the shift happened, and that was a rare thing. In my case, it happened and kind of stayed. For most people, it’s a more gradual thing. It comes gradually for us in glimpses, and then suddenly it’s there for a longer period of time, or you go deeper into it, and there’s a gradual transformation of consciousness. It might be so gradual you don’t even notice it.
    And when it happened to me, I didn’t realize that there was spaciousness. I wasn’t familiar with the word ‘spaciousness.’ I didn’t know anything about the ‘fourth state of consciousness.’ I knew nothing about ‘presence’ or even ‘mindfulness.’ I didn’t realize even that my mind had subsided and become spacious. All I knew is suddenly life is very peaceful. This moment feels so good. That’s all I knew. 'And where does this peace come from?' I asked. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was the depths of who I am. Realizing the depths of who I am was joy and peace. But I didn’t have the words for that. I couldn’t call it ‘the depths of who I am.’ I just thought, ‘Why am I suddenly so peaceful?’ … There was no understanding of where this peace originated. How did this peace come about? The understanding came later.
    Some people are totally, continuously unhappy, anxious, angry, fearful or continuously upset, or continuously in a state of deep discontent - and there are people like that. A not-insignificant proportion of the population live in an almost continuous state of discontent in one form or another. There’s always a residue of anger. They’re just waiting for the next thing to be angry about, to be upset about, [hypervigilance, preparedness to definitively eliminate the next assault, due to history of trauma]. Or they’re totally unhappy & depressed and everything is just dreadful. Or they’re approaching the borderline of what we conventionally call sanity and insanity, and then they step beyond this borderline, and then they’re declared clinically whatever. So there are many people in mental institutions who are so obsessed with their minds, that there is no space between thoughts whatsoever. And people are very unhappy, totally unhappy. They experience virtually no relief from their mind. So no spaciousness at all makes for a very unhappy life.
    Imagine if you could only dream but never reach a dreamless state. You would go insane, because you need the dreamless state. Now in ordinary wakefulness, you also need the spaciousness. And if you have absolutely no spaciousness, you go virtually insane.”
    The Fourth State of Consciousness - Eckhart Tolle (Sub ESP) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bim73icRzCk

    Those who've taken MBSR courses, or have participated in guided meditations might realize that the instructions guiding you to pay closer & closer attention to subtle physical sensations such as posture, muscular tension, temperature in various parts of the body, subtle sounds in the distance, etc are all geared to bring about inner silence (quieting of self-talk) and inner & outer stillness (cessation of physical, mental & emotional restlessness), focus on the present moment, and therefore, allow you to shift into & thereby directly experience this fourth state of consciousness - your true self - which is always present but easily drowned out by self-talk & other restless distractions.

Too Beautiful to Die?

“Don’t prioritise your looks my friend, as they won’t last the journey.
Your sense of humour though, will only get better with age.
Your intuition will grow and expand like a majestic cloak of wisdom.
Your ability to choose your battles, will be fine-tuned to perfection.
Your capacity for stillness, for living in the moment, will blossom.
Your desire to live each and every moment will transcend all other wants.
Your instinct for knowing what (and who) is worth your time,
will grow and flourish like ivy on a castle wall.
Don’t prioritise your looks my friend,
they will change forevermore,
that pursuit is one of much sadness and disappointment.
Prioritise the uniqueness that make you you, and the invisible magnet that draws in other like-minded souls to dance in your orbit.
These are the things which will only get better."                         Judi Dench

    "The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, & experiences, are marked by three characteristics: impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta). These three marks apply to all conditioned things—that is, everything except for nirvana. According to the Buddha, fully understanding & appreciating the three marks of existence is essential to realizing enlightenment.
    Everything changes, the Buddha taught. This may seem obvious, but much of the time we relate to things as if their existence were permanent. So when we lose things we think we can’t live without or receive bad news we think will ruin our lives, we experience a great deal of stress. Nothing is permanent, including our lives.
    Dukkha, suffering or dissatisfaction, is among the most misunderstood ideas in Buddhism. Life is dukkha, the Buddha said, but he didn’t mean that it is all unhappiness & disappointment. Rather, he meant that ultimately it cannot satisfy. Even when things do satisfy ― a pleasant time with friends, a wonderful meal, a new car ― the satisfaction doesn’t last because all things are impermanent.
    Anatta—not-self, non-essentiality, or egolessness—is even more difficult to grasp. The Buddha taught that there is no unchanging, permanently existing self that inhabits our bodies. In other words, we do not have a fixed, absolute identity. The experience of “I” continuing through life as a separate, singular being is an illusion, he said. What we call the “self” is a construct of physical, mental, & sensory processes that are interdependent & constantly in flux.
    It is the illusion of a separate, permanent self that chains us to suffering & dissatisfaction, the Buddha said. We put most of our energy into protecting the self, trying to gratify it & clinging to impermanent things we think will enhance it. But belief in a separate, permanent self leads to the craving that, according to the four noble truths, is the source of our suffering.
    The Buddha’s teachings, especially the practice of the eightfold path, provide the medicine to cure our illusions, so that we become less self-centered & less attached to impermanent things. As we investigate the truth of the three marks of existence, we develop factors of enlightenment such as equanimity—the ability not to be jerked around by our likes & dislikes — and serenity." https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/the-buddhas-three-marks-of-existence/ 

    Nirvana (above) - which alone is NOT characterized by impermanence, unsatisfactoriness & not-self - is the awakened state or enlightenment.
    The Buddha was a human being who around 500BCE felt the urgent need to end his own & humanity's existential suffering, found the cure for it, and over a 50-year period, taught thousands of others to reach his level of awakening from suffering. His teachings are universal - for everyone, so there are even Catholic nuns & Jewish Rabbis who at the same time are highly accomplished practitioners of Buddhism, especially Zen.
    Below are glimpses of awakening - experiences of a higher dimension than conditioned phenomena, our usual frame of reference, so words are inadequate:

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

    "Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. 

If only they could all see themselves as they really are. 

If only we could see each other that way all the time. 

There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, 

no more greed… I suppose the big problem would be that 

we would fall down and worship each other....

There is no way of telling people that they are 

all walking around shining like the sun...."                                 Thomas Merton

 
    "If we could really, really, really see right now, all that we really, really, really are, we’d see the infinite mystery of God pouring itself out and giving itself away as the intimate immediacy of all that we really are. That vivid state, in the fullness of that state, would be the unitive mystical experience. And then we can learn to be habituated in that state and translate it into love for other people." Jim Finley Interview https://batgap.com/james-finley/

 

     “We are here to find that dimension within ourselves that is deeper than thought.” Eckhart Tolle 

 

    “Carl Jung said, ‘How can we claim the years have taught us anything, if we’ve not learned to sit & listen to the secret that whispers in the brooks?’ 

    So if I look at a fire, for example, with ego-consciousness, I see a fire. But if I gaze into the flames, in that contemplative gazing at the flames, I sense in the flames the intimations of the holiness and the mystery manifesting itself as this flame. 

    That’s why I think when we try to talk about it, we’re trying to grab it in words. But if we sit in meditative silence infused with love, the state of wonder, we intimately taste directly for ourselves for which no words can be found. That’s why we long for the experience to which our words are aluding to, and how to stabilize in it, and how to share it with people.”  Jim Finley EXCEPTIONAL Interview https://batgap.com/james-finley/

“You know you have loved someone
when you have glimpsed in them
that which is too beautiful to die.”                                      Gabriel Marcel

 

by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com