Separation, Connection, Intimacy

     After consuming alcohol, many feel (for a few minutes at least) that they love everyone in the world - and tend to say so! Tragically, expressing universal unconditional love - our healthiest, most noble, most authentic characteristic, is considered by many as an embarrassment. Keeping this repressed is "normal" in our society - the proper thing!

     Sometimes during meditation retreats, people (unaided by substances) experience a "heart opening" - a blissful sense of unconditional love for everyone. The associated feeling of warmth radiating from the chest is probably the result of physical & psychological "de-armoring" in the process of healing from trauma. This blissfully unburdened state can persist for weeks after the retreat, and can re-occur. 
     A hardened, armored heart is comparable to a petrified tree; an open, de-armored heart, to a healthy willow tree. Which has the required resilience to survive, much less thrive, in life's constantly shifting climate?


     “By giving ourselves unconditional kindness and comfort while embracing the human experience, difficult as it is, we avoid destructive patterns of fear, negativity, and isolation. At the same time, self-compassion fosters positive mind states such as happiness and optimism. The nurturing quality of self-compassion allows us to flourish, to appreciate the beauty and richness of life, even in hard times.
     ... you are only being asked to relax, allow life to be as it is, and open your heart to yourself. It’s easier than you might think, and it could change your life.” 
       Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.

     “I would define love very simply: as a potent blend of openness and warmth, which allows us to make real contact, to take delight in and appreciate, and to be at one with – ourselves, others, and life itself.
     ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together and allows it to function."
       John Welwood. "Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. Healing the Wound of the Heart." Trumpeter, 2006.

     "Scientific objectivity" is considered to be an important stance in science as well as health care. In the latter, the term "boundaries" is substituted, because it includes privacy & other moral/legal implications. But boundaries do not only protect patients & clinicians. Like most other "positive" things, boundaries also have a shadow side (potentially negative aspects) eg "armoring." (See: Ken Wilber. "No Boundary. Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth." Shambhala, 1979.)

 
     "You learn about a thing ... by opening yourself wholeheartedly to it. You learn about a thing by loving it." Barbara McClintock - Nobel prize-winning geneticist

     "Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." George Washington Carver 

     According to Zen, the ultimate level of psychosocialspiritual evolution is "awakening" or "enlightenment," defined as "intimacy with all things."  

     We've known how the power of love allows us to understand things for as long as shamanism has existed - at least twenty to thirty thousand years: 
     “The learned aspect of the SSC (Shamanic State of Consciousness) involves a deep respect for all forms of life, with a humble awareness of our dependence on the plants, animals, and even inorganic matter of our planet. The shaman knows that humans are related to all forms of life, that they are ‘all our relations,’ as the Lakota Sioux say. In both the SSC and the OSC (Ordinary State of Consciousness) the shaman approaches the other forms of life with familial respect and understanding. He recognizes their antiquity, relatedness, and special strengths. 
     The shaman accordingly enters the SSC with a reverence for Nature, for the inherent strengths of the wild animal and plant species, and for their tenacious abilities to survive and flourish through eons of planetary existence. Approached in an altered state of consciousness with respect and love, Nature, he believes, is prepared to reveal things not ascertainable in an ordinary state of consciousness.” 
     Michael Harner. “The Way of the Shaman.” HarperCollins, 1980.

     "The truth is, what one really needs is not Nobel prizes but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that's how. Wanting it so bad one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It's a consolation prize. 

     What matters is love." George Wald - Nobel prize-winning biologist from Harvard

Love Itself

at some point
we perceive
that we lack perfect love

we become
consciously
hungry

at some point
we realize
that we are perfect love


 
     "The mind creates the abyss 
and the heart crosses it."                               Nisargadatta


     "I was born 
when all I once feared
I could love.”                                                 Rabia Basri



     “I would define love very simply: as a potent blend of openness and warmth, which allows us to make real contact, to take delight in and appreciate, and to be at one with – ourselves, others, and life itself.
     ... love is the central force that holds our whole life together and allows it to function."
      Welwood J. "Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart." Trumpeter, 2006.

ALSO: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/06/root-cause-of-our-grievence-against.html

AND: http://jglovas.wixsite.com/awarenessnow/single-post/2017/04/06/Feeling-Safe

Best Buds

 

Intimacy

     "I am part of the sun as my eyes are part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the water."                D.H. Lawrence 


      “... love, peace and happiness are not something that come and go any more than our self, aware presence, comes and goes. However, they are sometimes seemingly veiled.”
     Rupert Spira. “Presence, Volume II: The Intimacy of All Experience.” Non-duality Press, Salisbury, UK, 2011.

Impeccability OR Half-heartedness?

     “A man or woman of knowledge is impeccable. There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don’t have time. Therefore their acts have a peculiar power. Acts have power, especially when the person acting knows that those acts are their last battle. There’s a strange, consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing, may very well be one’s last act on earth. What matters to a warrior is that they become impeccable - that every act counts.
     This is also the quality of mindfulness or awareness. It’s the quality of learning to live completely in each day, in each hour, in each action, in each communion or touching of another person.
     For Don Juan it means taking Death as an advisor – ‘Death over your left shoulder’. Realizing that [this year] may be it! That may be it for this particular dance for you - or even for the whole world. We don’t really know. And somehow to realize the shortness and the preciousness of it. And with that say – ‘How do I want to live?’

     The opposite of impeccability is half-heartedness. Think about it. Think of how many things in our lives we’ve done half-heartedly. We went to school half-heartedly some of us; or do our work, or some relationships which we ‘kind-of do’, or various other things. Those are the big ones. And then the little ones: of going for a walk in the woods and being so caught-up in a thought or worry or memory, we don’t smell the pine trees or see the ice as it glistens on the branches. It’s like it goes by and we’re on automatic pilot. Think again, for yourself, of the times you’ve lived most fully in your life.
     Those times when you’re really whole-hearted and you did something with all your energy, all your attention, all your body and spirit – all together. It doesn’t even matter how it comes out, when you live in that fashion. Just the quality of living and doing it completely itself is fulfilling. Think about the things you really put yourself into, and how they taste to you – they have a certain taste of sweetness from that fullness.
     This is the central quality of a spiritual warrior, of a man or woman of knowledge, is awakening this capacity to be full or impeccable or careful in relationship to the body, to breath, to movement, to all the physical elements, in relation to our emotions, to be aware and present with our desires, our actions. 
     And we can practice it in all kinds of ways. You can come to a retreat and be silent, and sit and walk, and sit and walk, and sit and walk, and sit and walk, and gradually, you know, very slowly, in it’s way, it gets nourished. And you find that on the fifth day of the retreat you’re reaching to take a cup of tea, and for a moment it becomes like the Japanese Tea Ceremony. And you’re just there taking a cup of tea. And it’s the only thing in the world, and you’re really there. It makes all those five miserable days worth it just even to have a moment like that. At least I think so. But it can be trained in all kinds of other ways – it’s not just through sitting."


Jack Kornfield. “Awakening is Real. A Guide to the Deeper Dimensions of the Inner Journey.” Sounds True (Podcast #2 The Way of the Warrior), 2012. 

 

Just an Interest OR a Real Commitment?

     "Being a spectator is easy and safe; being an active participant in your own awakening to Truth is neither easy nor safe. The way forward is unpredictable, the commitment absolute, the results not guaranteed. Did you really think that it could be any other way?"

        Adyashanti "The Way of Liberation" 2012 ebook,

        which may be downloaded: http://www.adyashanti.org/library/The_Way_of_Liberation_Ebook.pdf

 

 

Monet's Garden

Deep Engagement with Matters of Ultimate Concern

     "You can be musically tone deaf and have no understanding of music, just as you can be spiritually 'tone deaf' and not understand what people are doing when they engage deeply with matters of ultimate concern. But that deficit is simply an individual’s own lack of awareness, not the absence of this fundamental domain of human life. In this regard, the religious dimension of human culture is no more optional than politics or an economy. That was Tillich’s point, and even if all religious institutions are currently inadequate to dealing with these issues, the human questions themselves don’t go away, just as widespread political corruption doesn’t get us out of politics. Instead of denying or ignoring the religious dimension of life, we should seek to find ways to cultivate and develop it, so that in our time it can be rediscovered and reenvisioned."

       Dale S. Wright. "Religion Resurected. A secular Buddhist, recoiling from the ills of both theism and atheism, suggests that we move beyond both." Tricycle, Summer 2015. 

His work was his prayer - Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris

Individual Liberation AND Social Transformation

     "As we start to wake up and realize that we are not separate from each other, nor from this wondrous earth, we also begin to realize that the ways we live together, and the ways we relate to the earth, need to be reconstructed as well. That means not only social engagement as service, but finding ways to address the problematic economic and political structures - the institutionalied forms of greed, ill will, and delusion - that are deeply implicated in the eco-crisis. Within such a notion of liberation, the path of personal transformation and the path of social transformation are not really separate from each other. We must reclaim the concept of awakening from an exclusively individualistic threrapeutic model and focus on how individual liberation also requires social transformation. Engagement in the world is how our personal awakening blossoms. 
     It just so happens that the Buddhist tradition provides a wonderful archetype that can help us to do that: the bodhisattva. We overcome deep-rooted self-centered habits by working compassionately for the healing of our societies and the healing of the earth. This is what's required for the Buddhist path to become truly liberative in the modern world."

       David Loy. "Awakening in the Age of Climate Change." Tricycle, Spring 2015.                               ww.tricycle.com

Bringing Enthusiasm, Energized Engagement - & WISDOM - back into Academia

“I’m struck by how suppressed the life energy of many students in my current undergraduate class seems to be. … I keep sensing something is somewhat missing: perhaps the ‘primordial confidence’ …

Students are not given much opportunity to attend to their inner lives, to explore their unfathomable riches, to plummet the depth, and to be nourished deeply by such engagements. Yet, it is only through such engagements that energetically charged awareness deepens and expands, connecting self with cosmos, and fully reconciling us with life and universe.

The self is unable to nourish itself with awareness and energy when its attention is continuously siphoned out: attention is needed to access awareness and embedded and embodied energy. The result of the continual drain of attention while knowledge is being accumulated is that we may be knowledgeable but are not intelligent, in the sense of being wise. Jiddu Krishnamurti also talks about our capacity to be aware as intelligence and points to the relationship between that and knowledge. He writes, ‘Intelligence uses knowledge. Intelligence is a state in which there are no personal [conditioned] emotions involved, no personal opinion, prejudice or inclination. Intelligence is the capacity for direct understanding’. For Krishnamurti, intelligence is not an intellectual realization or a constructed assimilation of thoughts and ideas, conventionally known as knowledge, but is a capacity to be aware, sensitive, and clear; is a capacity to love, to act, and to be present to transformation of life from moment to moment.

Similarly, David Geoffrey Smith distinguishes wisdom from knowledge, showing that the former requires, as its precondition, the ‘essential unity between thought and emotion,’ and points out that such unity requires the discipline of mindfulness or contemplation. (The Chinese character usually translated as ‘mind,’ ideographically shows this unity, and should be translated as ‘heart-mind.’) Smith further illuminates the aims of education in various Eastern wisdom traditions:
'In Taoism it involves finding ‘the stillpoint’; in Buddhism, returning to your ‘original face.’ The practice of Way – and here the key word is practice, as one never quite reaches the goal completely, finally – leads to an awareness of how the smallest details of life play into the largest consequences and effects, and that it is therefore highly important to maintain vigilance over the details of one’s conduct, because how we get to her, today, depends on what happened yesterday, or indeed the moment just passed.'


The greatest educational challenge today is not downloading more, better, sophisticated knowledge and skills into students but helping them to cultivate the unity of heart and mind (and let’s not forget the embodied nature of this cultivation) through the work of awareness, and bring this unity fully into all contexts of their personal, communal, academic, and professional lives. The challenge is to infuse knowledge with awareness or mindfulness of which love and sensitivity are a part, and the result is, in short, wisdom. Can our schools, from kindergarten to university, be institutions of wisdom?”       Bai H, Cohen A, Culham T, et al. “A Call for Wisdom in Higher Education. Contemplative Voices from the Dao-Field.” in:
       Gunnlaugson O, Sarath EW, Scott C. eds. “Contemplative Learning and Inquiry Across Disciplines.” State Univ of New York Press 2014.

 

rwstanley   www.dpreview.com

Distracted? Unable to Focus?

    "There were several drug and alcohol addicts in the class ... Other self-harming, addictive habits in this class included: self-cutting, shopping themselves into deep debt, sexual promiscuity, disordered eating, uncontrollable rage, workaholism, and relational addiction.

     Relational addiction plagued five students who were addicted either to a particular person or to constant interaction with other people via texting, calling, or being with others in person. They were so addicted to being in constant contact with others that they were literally not able to leave their cell phones off for an hour or be alone for any length of time.

     One of these students was a texting addict and came to my office to talk, BlackBerry in hand. She continually looked down at her BlackBerry, scanning for new text messages. At two points during our twenty minute conversation, when I was talking to her about an important matter, she typed out and sent text messages. I resisted the urge to criticize, be punitive or sarcastic about it. I could see that she could not stop herself, even though she might have wanted to. Rather than judge it, I wanted to understand the behavior. I was curious why a generally well-mannered and gracious person would do something so lacking in awareness and considerateness.

     The same question arises with any addiction. For Benjamin, I wondered: how can an intelligent, good-hearted young man, seemingly well-loved by his family, be completely unable to stop getting high, even to the point of death or jail? As the medical and psychological communities have known for decades now, it is not a matter of 'willpower.'

     I asked the texting addict: 'I noticed you kept looking at your phone and even sent two texts while I was talking to you. Can you help me understand that? It communicates that you do not care about our conversation, yet I know you do.'

     She shared, 'I know it’s annoying, but I can’t help myself. I can’t let texts just sit there without a quick response. I like to keep everything going . . . I don’t want to miss out on anything.'

     She had no awareness that she had just 'missed out' on being with me in that moment.

     Such craving leads to endless distractedness and an inability to focus on school work. It also makes it extremely difficult for the person to be present with others. The person constantly wants to be elsewhere – to get that next 'fix' of a text, an e-mail, an event, a drink, a cookie, a television show, a high of whatever sort.

     All addictive patterns turn on the same dynamic: the distractive activity is experienced as a welcome relief from real life. The negative behavior or thought pattern, as bad as it is, is believed to provide relief from the normal vicissitudes of real life. I noticed the dynamic in myself in the process of writing this article. When discomfort arose (self-doubt, fear of peer disapproval, stress over deadlines, and so forth), there was the wandering to the kitchen 'for a snack.' What is better than a handful (or two!) of homemade chocolate chip cookies to numb writer’s angst?

     Contemplative pedagogy (eg Mindfulness) is not about a goal, an outcome, or even effort. It is about being alive to the lifelong path of self-evolution – thereby becoming a beneficial presence in the world, to all beings. Isn’t that what any effective pedagogy aims to do?"

       Fran Grace. "Learning as a Path, Not a Goal: Contemplative Pedagogy – Its Principles and Practices." Teaching Theology and Religion 2011; 14 (2): 99-124.

 

One Love, One World

     "In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality."

     "Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."                                                           Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

www.wisdomatwork.com

Genuine Love

     "All genuine love ... is based on the possibility the beloved offers to the lover for a fuller unfolding of his own being by being-in-the-world with her."                      Medard Boss

     "For the first time in history, the relations between men and women lack clear guidelines, supportive family networks, a religious context, and a compelling social meaning."

       Welwood J. "Toward a Psychology of Awakening. Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation." Shambhala, Boston, 2002.

Intention

     Lovingly welcoming everything that enters my life. All events & emotions are transient and nourishing. Without preferences, there's no inner friction, no wasted time & energy externalizing, no unnecessary suffering. Releasing illusory craving, realizing love.

     (I admire and respect Tina Turner and find her song powerful & inspiring. The dancers send a mixed message.)

Agenda?

     When we wonder about a person or organization's "agenda", we're wondering about the self-serving motive that's hidden behind what they pretend is for our benefit.  Assuming that ulterior motives hide beneath apparent beneficent acts is increasingly common. To the extent that people lead "divided lives" ie their thoughts, speech & behavior are fear-driven, egocentric, in adversarial relationship with their own & society's beliefs, their deceitfulness will be proportionate. This includes "faking" honesty, professionalism, compassion, kindness, cleanliness, ... - "whatever sells."

     However, mindfulness practice is about transcending self-centeredness, and becoming fully engaged with a life of morality, integrity & wisdom ie being congruent - no ulterior motives. Mindfulness practice allows people of different or no religion to open to their personal depths, together in a safe space. The best in each of us is the same. If we see this & meet each other there, we can pull together for the common good - for each other - as mature, civilized adults.

     "... our agenda is for our intentions to be kind and compassionate, for our minds to be aware of what we are thinking, saying, and doing, and for our experience to tell us as best it can how to craft our life to reflect our intentions."

       Ingram DM. "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book." Aeon Books, London, 2008. 

 

Jelle Ziilstra   www.dpreview.com

Beyond Self & Self-talk

      "... silence and solitude are the very basis for our engagement with the world. They are expressed in the experiences of inquiry and listening, nonviolence and nonduality, patience and concentration, connectedness and intimacy, authenticity and stillness, understanding and compassion, and seeing beyond language and intuition.”

        Halifax J. “Fruitful darkness. Reconnecting with the body of the earth.” HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 1993. 

Nicolas Marino   www.dpreview.com

Simple, but not Easy, Vow

                                   May I engage and nurture this present moment

Morning comes to Eagle Lake

Art is About Us - Meant to be Taken Personally

     "None of the great works of art are about someone else. They're about us. Art is the most personal thing in the world, and we're being asked to take it personally, to receive it personally, to think about it personally. It's challenging us at the most personal levels.

     (Art is TIMELESS. Our sense of separation from previous generations is a relatively new phenomenon.)

     Previous eras have not imagined that they were separate from the flow of history. We, with our invention of photography, video & sound recording can separate this moment from that moment, and lift this moment out as a separate unit. But we're the first generation to do anything like that, or to think of time as anything but the river that we're all in, and sharing with every period in human history."
 
     Peter Sellars, American theatre director, interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on CBC Radio:
     http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Ideas/ID/2442656684/

 

Venice, Italy

Kindness - Heart-Mindfulness - Nurturing

     "Mindfulness is being in wise relationship with everything."

     "What are we doing with the gardens entrusted to us?"           Jon Kabat-Zinn
 

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.                 Naomi Shihab Nye (1953-) 

Where Am I Now? Now? Now? Now?

     At one time, parents were advised to always ask themselves "Do I know where my children are right now?" It's also important to be aware of where my attention is at any moment in time!
     Usually, it makes most sense to be consciously aware of what's going on in the present moment around us and within our mind-body. In this mindful way, we're most likely to behave appropriately - in the best long-term interests of all concerned.
     Mindlessness of various sorts (absent mindedness, distracted, multitasking, catastrophizing, wallowing etc) is generally the shadow side of mindfulness, resulting in much wasted time, loss of productivity, passivity, errors, accidents etc.
     At specific times & places, where mindfulness is not essential, eg relaxing weekend at home, "mind wandering" can contribute to: "self-awareness, creative incubation, improvisation & evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events & experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self & others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, & reflective compassion." 
     Yes, mind wandering has potential short- & long-term personal value, under the appropriate circumstances. But the fact that people spend "up to 50% of their waking hours" at it means that much of the time it has negative consequences, and may be a form of avoidance. Open-hearted engagement, in real time, with whatever is at hand, seems to be optimal. Escape into our heads, or increasingly into our smart phones, is avoidance of what's real & what needs to be addressed. If one is intentionally relaxing in a familiar environment, then one can intentionally, productively engage in mind wandering without negative consequences.

       Scott Barry Kaufman "Mind Wandering: A New Personal Intelligence Perspective." Scientific American September 25, 2013. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/09/25/mind-wandering-a-new-personal-intelligence-perspective/

Daydreamer by Leah Welch   http://fineartamerica.com

Getting Closer to the Source

     "All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws."          John Coltrane

       Enjoy CBC Radio's program Tapestry: "A Love Supreme: God in the Music of John Coltrane" http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/episode/

Sunday morning in Halifax, February 9, 2014

Saying Yes to Life as it Is

     "All you have to do is say 'yes.' Don’t make some big project out of it. Don’t make some big deal out of it. Just say 'yes.' You don’t even know what it means to say 'yes,' but you say it anyway. You’ll never know what it means to say 'yes,' but you do it anyway. Freedom and Love arise when you die into the unknown mystery of being."

     "All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are."                               Adyashanti

At the Cafe - Balzacs by Jane Hunter   www.fogforestgallery.ca