Freedom

Increasingly we restrict our life to the self-talk swirling in our own head. The more time we spend online, the more we're swept up in the global mind storm. It's as if humanity has unwittingly found itself immersed in one huge hot tub, filled not with healing salts, but neuroses. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-highest-service.html

“A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.” Joan Z. Borysenko 

A seeker once asked a Sufi Master to teach him “What is Heaven?"

The Master replied, “Heaven is Love in your heart.”

The student then asked: “And what is Hell?”

to which the Master responded,

“Hell is the absence of that.”         Sufi story as told to us by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

"Imagine love wants to see
your true face

Imagine that nothing matters
except love

Imagine love as you

Imagine love as everything
you’ve ever given attention to

Imagine love abides in difference

Imagine love as a force
that gives us meaning

Imagine love abhors a vacuum

Imagine love wants to know love

Imagine everything matters
because love is real

Imagine love is a power
uncontainable & inconceivable

Imagine love as language, as selfless action,
as water, as purslane, as voles, as dragonflies, as wind

Try to imagine a love
able to rise whole into thin air,
invisible to our eyes
holding our entire awareness
on the thin new blade
of a brightness soon to come

Imagine the imperfections of love
that love adores

Imagine love imagining
your radical truth &
trusting your courage
your vision
your journey
to recognize
your self
in vastness"                                Poem by Qayyum Johnson


“Inside the chaos, build a temple of love.”           Rune Lazuli

Ideology, Identity & Science

     From outside the US, it's hard to understand how a majority of American politicians, and those who elected them, could care more about partisanship (group egoism) than the welfare of their fellow human beings & the environment. 

     Katharine Hayhoe (KH): “We as people have become increasingly polarized over the past two decades - not as much in Canada as in the United States... We’re becoming increasingly polarized, and climate change is one of the biggest casualties of that political polarization because one party has decided – and these are in the words of Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma, who is famous for writing a book about how climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on mankind, in his own words in 2012 he said, ‘I used to agree with you that this was real when I headed the Senate Environment Committee, until I found out how much it would cost to fix it.’ 

     … arguing over the science (only) deepens the divide between people who are convinced that this isn’t real, not because of any scientific arguments they’ve been presented with, nor even because of any pseudo-scientific arguments they’re bringing to the table. They’ve been convinced because they can’t be who they are and agree that climate change is real. It’s an identity issue. 
     Social science has actually shown that arguing the science like that does end up with people who are more firmly convinced. In ‘The Years of Living Dangerously’, an excellent series on Netflix or Amazon, one of the episodes is about my friend Anna-Jean, whose father is a conservative pastor in the South-East United States, who is quite convinced that climate change isn’t real. The episode was about Anna-Jean trying to convince her father, marshalling all the evidence to convince him that yes, this is real and that as Christians we should care about it even more because it effects the poor and the vulnerable. That episode is a fantastic example of ‘the backfire effect,’ because he ended up more convinced that he was right at the end, than he was at the beginning. It’s a textbook case."
     Michael Enright (ME): "Then we’re all doomed aren’t we? I mean, if you can’t present empirical data and facts and so on to someone and get them to change their minds, where do you go from there? What’s the endpoint of that?" 
     KH: "We’re not doomed. And that’s what I’ve spent the last ten years trying to figure out. … What I’ve learned is, talking science, science, science, isn’t what changes peoples’ minds. But what does is, first of all genuinely connecting and bonding over shared values, or shared concerns, or shared loves. So understanding whomever it is we’re talking to enough to where we can say ‘Yah, let’s talk about this thing that we both really care about, whether it’s our family, our faith, fishing, water, farming, the economy, national security, skiing … And then, sharing from the heart here’s why I’m concerned about climate change is because it effects this thing that we both agree on. 
     And it’s really fascinating because my friend Anna-Jean who I mentioned before with the father who’s very convinced that this isn’t real, she recently told me that they actually had a great conversation the other day where they got to the level where they were talking about their genuine fears and concerns. And she realized that on their fears and concerns, she and her Dad weren’t hardly that far apart at all. In fact they were very close. It was just where they went from those fears and concerns that ended up in completely different places. 
     So if we can connect on that level, which is hard to do to be honest, then at that point we can share from the heart why we are concerned, but then always, always, always bring that to solutions.
     Because if we feel that there’s nothing we can do, to fix this massive global problem, our defense mechanisms psychologically is just to shut down, dissociate, disengage and deny. 
     Whereas if we feel like ‘Hey, did you know that in Texas so far this year we already got almost a quarter of our energy from wind? Isn’t that amazing?’ Next time I turn on my lights, I realize that’s a quarter wind, we’re doing great, let’s do more. 
     So there are different ways we can engage. And by talking solutions that are already in place, solutions that we can be part of, solutions that we can engage in in our daily lives ourselves – one of those big solutions just being simply talking about this issue – because hardly anybody ever does, we feel like we’re part of the solution. And that actually changes our perspective on the issue too."

       The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright “Donald Trump versus the climate: a conversation with Katharine Hayhoe.” Sunday April 30, 2017

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/april-30-2017-the-sunday-edition-with-michael-enright-1.4087030/donald-trump-versus-the-climate-a-conversation-with-katharine-hayhoe-1.4087037

Membership's Benefits ... and Drawbacks

     Sometimes we enthusiastically join, support and become strongly identified with certain groups. How completely we become identified with & transformed by the group depends on us, as well as the group. Our level of psychosociospiritual development determines the type of group(s) we wish to join. There's a very broad range of groups from which to choose: from sports teams, charities, political parties, professions, unions, the armed forces, religions, nations, ethnic groups, to outlaw gangs, etc.
     Not surprisingly, we're in a very different place in our life if we choose to join & identify with, say the Hell's Angels instead of Save the Whales. Besides different activities, one group may demand strict obedience ("dogmatic"), while another may be laid back & informal ("liberal"). Interestingly, many of us, at a certain point in our lives, are strongly drawn to dogmatic groups that completely take over our thinking, behavior - our whole lives. The very same person who's a peace-loving humanitarian in their 60s, could have, in their teens, enthusiastically enlisted for combat duty to fight "the enemy" of the day.
     When we feel lost, empty, like a nobody, marginalized, hopeless, angry, without any sense of belonging, as soon as we join a dogmatic group, we instantly feel proud, connected, accepted, have both an identity and a home. A dogmatic group has a strong distinctive brand, and we're thrilled to be branded, wear the uniform, fly the flag, repeat the slogans. For many, this means a radically-improved quality of life. There's no looking back at what we might have given up - our immediate assumption is nothing, since they had nothing. Group-think is demanded and easy to go along with - easier than thinking for oneself. One develops very strong, almost unbreakable emotional attachment to such groups. Many dogmatic groups explicitly teach that leaving the group has catastrophic consequences for the individual - shunning, court martial, eternal hell-fire. So reason is rarely successful against such powerful emotions to extricate oneself (or another) from dogmatic groups. Members tend to be paranoid, and may respond violently to any criticism - feeling as if their very life were being threatened.
     But human evolution of consciousness is an entirely natural process, whereas the core basis of dogmatic groups is a set of fixed ideas - dogmas. Most of us simply outgrow dogmas. 
     "Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values. (But) humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance, as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance 
     So as we mature psychosociospiritually, cognitive dissonance increases. The question then is how much authenticity can I tolerate suppressing while I'm with my dogmatic group? This is a wrenching, quasi-life-or-death decision - a form of ego death, since the group for many of us is/was our core identity. But living a lie - a "divided life", is for some of us, deadening, soul-destroying.
     When we quietly observe the mind during meditation, we notice a huge amount of self-talk - mostly transient, unnecessary ego noise. Our real identity is beyond all this noise: words, concepts, including all dogmas. When the noise from our own or our group's ego settles down, we touch authenticity, freedom.
     

Brant Hansen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rh8uywILZk