Fear to Love

    Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." It is indeed sad, stressful, disgusting and terrifying that a 'crime boss' is ruling, at his whim, over the most powerful military & financial gang in the world. Many around the world must surely be amazed at the psycho-social-spiritual level of a nation that would not once, but twice elect such a leader.

    “Worryin' is just prayin' backwards."    David Chethlehe Paladin

    Fortunately, a proportion of us also intuitively understand that there is ultimately only one real force or form of energy, and that is love. Like darkness is the lack of light, fear is the lack of love.
    There is an old Jewish legend that every generation has 36 saints (lamedvavnikim) on whose piety the fate of the world depends. By now, our world must surely have millions of awakening evolved human beings!

    So when we witness consistently irrational, heartless, uncivilized behavior, it is best for us & everyone else to consider, 'What if this perpetrator were my only child? How would I want them to be treated?' Not beaten or murdered. We'd certainly want them to be arrested & securely restrained, and ideally, if at all possible, rehabilitated to become as functional as possible, & if possible, safely re-introduced into a decent, law-abiding society.

“If this world is to be healed through human efforts,

I am convinced it will be by ordinary people

whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”

Joanna Macy

 

    Poetry, along with other arts, has the wonderful potential to connect us with our heart, right-hemisphere, body, the now, others, Nature and the Divine.

 

When she was a garden spider
Terry Ofner

and she hovered improbably above the patio
on that autumn morning, she caught me
with a filament across the brow.

Now, here comes the longest night.
People gather around solstice fires
as sparks drift into whatever comes next.

Angels, too, must have a ritual for this,
the moment of perfect imbalance
when the dark is collected in one place.

They must lean into it, their weightlessness
floating us through gravity’s fingers.
For me, I need a face. One I can recognize.

Take this photograph of my aunt Claudia
who died in childbirth years before I was born.
How do you know what’s no longer there?

Or take the field mouse that nibbled on a seed
under the feeder that late November evening.
A blink of owl-white and it was gone.

What we don’t know comes out of nowhere,
takes us up to the other side of doubt.
She’s gone, but traces of her remain.

A dun-shaded egg sac tucked in a corner
out of sight, full of now and hereafter.
Or light. Or wings.

Or that which floats or falls
when let go into our cousin night.


Winner of the Thomas Merton Grand Prize in the annual Poetry of the Sacred Contest www.centerforinterfaithrelations.org published by Parabola, Winter 2024-2025 www.parabola.org

Each individual's Loving Zest for Life is the Real Power

What Can We Do?

    “I’m often asked, ‘So this is all very fascinating about hemispheres and your analysis of how we got to be where we are. But it’s pretty important isn’t it? What are we going to do about it?’
    I think people can easily become overwhelmed by the thought of the scale of, for example, the ecological crisis that threatens, but almost the most helpful thing of all is that you can begin in the inner temple, which is you. You can begin with the one thing you do have control over, which is what you do, how you think, what you value. And that can be done here & now, and doesn’t involve persuading other people necessarily.
    If we start to ensure that we are at least aligning our own lives, with the things that are deep and important, then a lot of things will follow instinctively, and they won’t need to be formulated in the way that people want to formulate. ‘Well, I think what we should do is change the curriculum, and we should …’
    Those things are important, but once you begin to see the world differently, you begin to act differently, to prioritize things differently, and different things follow effortlessly because it is a stream. A stream that is currently blocked in us, and it’s a stream that can become unblocked.”
    Iain McGilchrist — Aligning with the Creative Impulse of the Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCtPDS5AVSo

Carefully listening to this 66-minute Iain McGilchrist interview in its entirety is imho time very well spent.

 

 

Unconditional Love

     Most of us underestimate how DESPERATELY we NEED acceptance, approval, respect - ok LOVE - throughout life. As soon as we're born we cry out for attention, "Look at me! I'm alive & I NEED to belong to & be cared for by this family / tribe!" But conditioning very quickly teaches us to change our cry to, "Look, I am USEFUL to this family / tribe!" This is a shift from rightly seeing ourselves as worthy of unconditional love simply because we're alive to begging for scraps of attention.
    Sadly some, unable to attract even such 'conditional love,' will then pour their energies into attracting negative attention. Being alone, ignored does not seem to be a viable option. 

    "Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all."
    Kristin Neff PhD TedX talk: "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtZBUSplr4

    But self-compassion can only actually take place by undergoing a fundamental identity shift, from the conditioned small needy lonely self, longing for, & 'looking for love in all the wrong places' (“the story of me”) to who we really, truly are, which is the unconditioned, transpersonal Self (Buddha-nature, “Christ within”, etc) - the very source of unconditional love. This is a massive unburdening AND what any transformative maturation ultimately depends on.

    "According to the saints and mystics, love is the very fabric of what we are; we are fashioned out of its warmth & openness. ... 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. 

    Ultimately, the source & central theme of life is Intelligent Unconditional Loving Energy: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=unconditional

    "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek ... to be loved, as to love ..." Portion of Prayer of St Francis 

Namaste 

OVERVIEW

     The purpose of my blogs has been, and continues to be, sharing with you the experiences of people whom I consider to be sincere, wise seekers of Truth. You will find quoted, a very wide range of exemplars & thought leaders, living & dead, from Shamanic, Aboriginal, Advaita, Buddhist, Greek & Roman philosophical, Jewish & Christian Mystical, Sufi, and other traditions, but primarily inspiring current non-dual teachers like Amoda Maa, Louise Kay, Helen Hamilton, Dorothy Hunt, Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, Henry Shukman, and many more.

      Most human beings have the capacity to mature emotionally / psychologically / spiritually well beyond "the average" : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=stages+of+faith .
    Some factors accelerate, while others moderate, slow, (temporarily) stop, or even reverse our maturation process : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=maturation . 

    The greatest roadblocks to healthy maturation / aging are rigid certainty about one's self-concept & worldview http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=certainty and nihilism http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=nihilism . When people cling with a death-grip to their (usually inherited & unexamined) self-concept & worldview, any alternative perspective tends to feel life-threatening, and it is, but only to the ego.

    “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Joe Klaas

    For thousands of years, the few who've taken the search for Truth as their life's central purpose, all seem to reach a common set of conclusions, summarized in the 'perennial philosophy' http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial .

    You'll find many quotations from books, interviews & presentations of mostly people whom I (among many others) consider spiritually-mature & on the life-long path of 'awakening' : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=awakening . All these quotes are "pointers towards the Moon" - metaphors, humor, poems, stories, practices, to help you experience directly the peace, silence, stillness & joy that is well-beyond words & concepts ("surpasses all understanding") - your true Self : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=true+self .

    You'll also find quotations about topics closely related to awakening, such as psychology / psychotherapy eg Trauma theory, Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems (IFS), Iain McGilchrist's Hemispheric theory, etc. This blog has almost 1,400 posts which are quickly & easily searchable - see top left of page.

    “Maturity is the ability to live fully & equally in multiple contexts.” David Whyte, poet & philosopher

    “True adulthood … is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces & cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of.” Toni Morrison

        “There are only two ways to live your life.
         One is as though nothing is a miracle.
         The other is as though
         everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

    “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much, and so to do what best awakens us to love.” Saint Teresa of Ávila

    "... one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.” Ram Dass

    We are called “to serve not our limitations but what’s whole & unbreakable, our true self. It’s easy to identify with all the places we’ve been hurt & abandoned, but can we identify with the timeless wholeness that weathers every condition? If we can’t, we may spend this life protecting ourselves and never risk really living.” Bonnie Myotai Treace

 

    To see my latest blog, simply click : www.johnlovas.com 
    To see previous blogs, scroll down from the latest blog.

    My blog is NOT "monetized."
    I'm simply sharing what I understand to be of greatest value in life.

 

One of Helen Hamilton's fine orienting talks:

An Open Invitation

    “A student once asked the spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti what his secret to peace & contentment was. He leaned over & whispered: ‘I don’t mind what happens.’ ” Toni Bernhard

    “Life is this constant invitation to a radical form of simplification, of giving away peripheral complications to get down to the essence of it and carry that essence into the world and to other people. And so there’s always something to be given away.” David Whyte, SUPERB MEANINGFUL Interview: "Everything is an Invitation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsMgGN8jOws

    “Only boldness can deliver us from fear. If the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.” C.G. Jung, “Symbols of Transformation”

     I realize that many habitually shut down & run as soon as they spot anything outside of their own comfort zone. BUT be bold, have courage & allow yourself to see through this, now 70yo, recovering alcoholic woman's wise, funny, deeply perceptive, loving eyes. Below, is a tiny sample from Anne Lamott's GEM of a book, “Small Victories. Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace.” Riverhead, 2014. Savor, enjoy!

    “I learned early in sobriety that there were two points of view about me – how my close friends saw me, and how I saw myself. I figured it was obvious that I was a fraud, and kind of disgusting. My friends thought I was irresistible, profoundly worthy of trust. I thought at first that one view must be wrong, and I made the most radical decision, for the time being, to believe my friends. I welcomed my lovable self back, with a small party, just the cat, me, and imaginary cups of tea, which I raised with an outstretched pinky.
    This welcoming toward myself took a big adjustment, a rebalancing of my soul. There had been so much energy thrown into performance, achievement, and disguise. I felt I had gotten a permission slip for the great field trip, to the heart of myself, in the protection of a few trusted friends.
    Frankly, I was hoping to see more white cliffs and beaches, fewer swamps and shadows, but this was real life, the nature of things, full of both wonder and rot.
    As soon as I was able, my friends encouraged me to go back to reclaim the devious, dark part of me. I invited her in: Pull up a chair at the table, hon. We’re having soup tonight.
    So our families were train wrecks; we’ve ruined the earth; kids die all the time. How do we understand something welcoming remains, sometimes hidden, that we can still trust? When all seems lost, a few friends, the view, and random last-ditch moments of grace, like Liquid Wrench, will do. Otherwise, I don’t know. We don’t exactly solve this problem, or much of anything, although one can learn to make the perfect old-fashioned, or blinis.
    I’ve discovered that offering welcome helps a lot, especially to the deeply unpleasant or weird. The offer heals you both. What works best is to target people in the community whom no one else seems to want. Voila: now welcome exists in you.”

     And David Whyte, in his POWERFUL book, “The Heart Aroused. Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.” Crown Business, 2002. writes:
    “The only real question is not one of winning or losing, but of experiencing life with an ever-increasing depth. … ‘Why not go down … into the lake, consciously”’ Don’t die on the shore. The stakes are very high; the stakes are your life.”

    “A good book should be an axe for the frozen sea within us.” Franz Kafka 

    We naturally try everything possible to achieve a state of perfect, unwavering blissful happiness - AND to FAIL - because Nature, life's external circumstances, are simply not tailor-made to comply with each one of earth's 8 billion individual human desires! Our quest is doomed from the start when we incorrectly assume that we are not good enough, not worthy, too broken, etc AND can only be OK AFTER we have fully controlled the external environment, which is not possible.
    SO, our task is to re-discover our true identity, as Zen puts it, to find "our original face, before we were born." Who we truly are is compared to: the deep, still ocean, whereas who we usually assume we are are the choppy waves on the surface; the movie or TV screen, whereas who we usually assume we are are the movies seen on the screen; the blue sky, whereas who we usually assume we are are the dark clouds.
    Some of these metaphors are skillfully explained & expanded upon by Rupert Spira in this excellent interview :  https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/rupert-spira-the-quiet-joy-of-being/?utm_source=Z-Customer%20Service&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N240512-Spira%20%2801HXCFSXPN2PA95KBJN8QTKYYX%29&utm_klaviyo_id=JsSQsZ&tw_source=Klaviyo&_kx=oubFt43NAjNBb0_NppHaGCF951bovtuCAx1o4i41Tys.JMDgaq Should you prefer to read the transcript : https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/the-quiet-joy-of-being/ 

 

David Whyte : davidwhyte.com

 

Curiosity, Acceptance & Nurturing

"May I develop complete acceptance and openness
to all situations, and emotions, and to all people.
May I experience everything nakedly, completely
without mental reservations and blockages.
May I never withdraw from life or centralize onto myself.
May my heart be laid bare & open to the fire of all that is."
Reginald A. Ray

 

    Our acceptance & openness needs to INCLUDE the MANY daily random accidents, screw-ups & irritants like stubbing our toe, dropping, spilling & breaking things, losing keys / wallets / phones, burning & ruining meals, crazy random digital errors, loooong 'holds' on the phone, near impossibility contacting health-care providers, trades people & most companies ... We REGULARLY encounter a LOT of situations that very easily annoy, frustrate, irritate & anger us, even if / after we feel we've successfully 'dealt with' (fully processed) the real biggies in our life ie past major traumas.

    But our acceptance & openness ALSO needs to INCLUDE ongoing inescapable major traumas like chronic pain, prolonged disability, incurable illness & death of loved ones, friends and our self! These can & do cause "shipwrecks" - at least one of which is pretty much guaranteed if you live beyond 60. Do see : https://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.com/2013/07/361-beyond-stress-management-resilience.html

    Aversion to all that we fear / dislike / can't control is common & understandable, but is at best only a short-term band-aid. Clinging & chasing after things we like, think we need or must have is also common & understandable, but easily becomes obsessive eg addictions, and there are many "entrepreneurs" to feed our hunger to escape (see the 2023 miniseries "Painkiller" on Netflix). But it's a meaningless delusion to see our identity just a meat-machine that avoids undesirables & chases after desirables. "The one who dies with the most toys wins" is desperately simple-minded.

     Our ONLY WORTHWHILE OPTION is repeatedly remembering our true nature and repeatedly embodying it by BEING a NURTURING PRESENCE to others & the environment no matter how annoying, great or persistent the challenge. This is simply being natural, true to whom / what we are - like birds flying in the air and fish swimming in water. 

    We see great nurturing when parents really know their children and spend quality time with them by providing all that they require to optimally express their natural talents and mature into healthy, balanced, self-sufficient, caring, intelligent, pro-social adults. 

    Nurturing has NOTHING TO DO WITH stuffing them full of candies & fast food; indulging them with as much screen time as they want; throwing money at them to blow shopping online or at the mall; buying them all sorts of toys & clothes - there is no quality time here - just spoiling and creating helpless, hopeless, miserable perpetual infants. The worst fear of wealthy parents is their kids "growing up to be assholes." This fear easily becomes a reality if parents don't have the wisdom & energy to spend quality time with their kids.

    EVERY stage of life has its own challenges. During our youth, we try so hard to learn and become competent & competitive to get by in this fast-moving world. During our middle years, we try so hard to establish a career, a home life, have & raise kids, pay our bills, maybe even live a little, put a bit of money away for retirement ... During our later years, we're dumbfounded that life went by so fast; if we're fortunate enough, we can help raise grandchildren; again, if we're fortunate enough, we have the inclination to devote our time & energies on NURTURING our own & loved ones' spiritual maturation / evolution of consciousness, rather than wasting our time wallowing about our progressively declining physical & mental health.

    “… for each & every one of us, we have circumstances in our lives that are chaotic, out of our control, outside of the box of what we think of as practice. And that is actually your deepest practice.
    The Buddha talked about this precious human birth. It’s precious for all of us, it has the most exquisite balance of dukkha (challenging situations) & easefulness. We’re not so overwhelmed by suffering that we’re lost and drowning, or we’re not so lost in the pleasure, either. It’s got this balance that keeps us needing to find a deeper happiness and having the resources to look.
    This birth the Buddha talked about as the precious human birth is rare and it’s precious. And it’s precious for all of us, even those of us who don’t have the conditions in our lives to go on many or any retreats.
    There’s something about practicing with the chaos of life, & the realities of our difficult, complicated relationships & situations that we’re faced with in day-to-day life that can move us very deeply and force us to feel things we might not otherwise feel. It also helps us see that it’s good to be alive and in the world and feel it and really land in this human experience fully and recognize it as a shared thing.” Cara Lai https://www.dharma.org/cara-lai-dharma-talk/

     Four wise teachers & authors immediately come to mind when I think of inspiring survivors of major trauma. I've quoted them all in my quickly searchable blogs:

    Amoda Maa : “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017.

    Isira : "Buddha on the Dance Floor." ‎ Living Awareness, 2014.

    Gabor Matte : “The Myth of Normal. Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture.” Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

    James Finley : “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023.

 

    James Finley on the alchemy of transforming the lead of trauma into spiritual gold:
    “(After graduating from high school, I escaped from a lifetime of psychological & physical abuse by my alcoholic father by entering a monastery. But there) I was sexually abused by one of the monks – a priest, my confessor, who Merton thought very highly of - everyone thought very highly of this person. And I had a breakdown. I became extremely dissociative, paranoid.
    I worked (looking after the pigs at the monastery). … The boar walked out on the ice, and it fell through the ice of this little lake in the woods, and drowned. I felt as I was walking around, I felt I was unraveling, and that sanity was like thin ice over icy-cold black water, and it was cracking, and if I fell through, because of my trauma history, I might never find my way back again. So I left (the monastery). I didn’t tell the abbot what happened. I didn’t tell Thomas Merton what happened. I didn’t tell John Hughes, who was a psychiatrist. I just left.
    So here’s a lesson. How can we learn to be healed from all that hinders us from experiencing the steady strong currents of divinity that flow on & on in the bitter-sweet alchemy of our lives? The alchemy is just not how phases of happiness can unexpectedly become precipitously sad – it was frightening. Nor is it something so sad that can suddenly break wide open with liberation, like an unexpected gift, or love, or presence, or a child. It isn’t just the rhythm of darkness and light, or birth and death, or the rhythms of your life, the rhythms of my life. Rather, the alchemist of old were trying to turn lead into gold. And lead into gold is how do we turn the unrelenting, unforeseeableness of life, how can we learn to experience the steady strong currents of divinity that flow on and on and on so unexplainably, that brought me and brought all of you up to this very moment that I’m talking right now? How has this come to pass? And how can I learn to find my way to this groundedness that’s always there? And finding my way to it, how can I abide in it? And how can I learn to share it with others?

 
    So I’d like to end with a story. … This hermit heard a knock at his door, and when he opened it, it was a mother and a father with their little girl. And the parents apologized for intruding on his solitude, but said to the hermit, ‘As you can plainly see, an evil wizard has turned our daughter into a donkey. And we would like you to pray over her, so we can have our daughter back.’
    The hermit said, ‘I see. Come in, come in, come in.’ And he had them sit off to the side, and he asked the little girl if she was hungry and would like something to eat. She said she would like that. And so he was talking to her while he prepared a meal for both of them, and they sat down. And he asked her about herself – about things about her life and so on. 

    And as the parents were watching how lovingly he spoke to the little girl, and how attentive he was to her, they suddenly realized the evil wizard did not cast a spell on their daughter, turning their daughter into a donkey, the evil wizard cast a spell on them to believe that their daughter was a donkey. 

    And so when they left, they were so relieved and grateful, having their daughter back, and the little girl was so relieved because it’s very hard to be a little girl when your parents think you’re a donkey, especially if because you’re a child, and to avoid the confusion, you start believing it yourself. There’s like a shame-based, traumatized place within yourself, that you don’t know what to do about it. 

    The deep healing that that little girl and her parents experienced in this story bears witness to the deep healing that I hope we are exploring together here today.”
    James Finley "Becoming a Healing Presence in a Traumatized World" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu97TxU7mW4&t=6s

 

 

Another glorious morning shines down on us ...