Wisdom, Depth and Meaning

    Discernment is in short supply these days - leaving too many of us drowning in negativity, cynicism, meaninglessness, anxiety & depression, externalizing our unresolved, unprocessed inner conflicts onto other people, living creatures and the Cosmos.

"Despair is only for those 

who see the end beyond doubt. 

We do not."

J.R.R. Tolkien

    A radically different, infinitely healthier, wiser perspective is that of the mystics as well as an increasing number of intelligent AND wise scholars like Jeremy Lent ("The Web of Meaning" 2022), Iain McGilchrist ("The Matter with Things" 2021), etc who masterfully integrate science and traditional wisdom to help us feel at home in our Universe. 

    A wonderful living example of a highly-evolved mystic is James Finley, author of the exceptional biography, “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation” 2023 - which I highly recommend! 
    An excerpt from an excellent recent James Finley interview: "A Momentary Mystic" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQtvkwu2jA :

    "One of the Holy Cross brothers, teaching at the high school I went to, talked about monasteries in religion class. He spoke of monasteries as places where people go to seek and to find and give themselves to God, who’s fully poured out and given to us in each passing moment of our life. And they believe that their hidden life of fidelity to that search touches the whole world in ways we don’t understand.

    Thomas Merton in ‘The Sign of Jonas’ on the very first page wrote, ‘As for me, I have but one desire, the desire for solitude, to disappear into the secret of God’s face.’ At age 14, I didn’t know what it meant, but something in me said, ‘Me too.’ That is the depth from which he spoke of his own longing for God, awakened that depth in me. And for the next four years, I read that book over and over. And later, I lived in the cloistered monastery for almost six years - it had a profound effect on me. 
    And then Merton, as a novice master, guided me in the search. And he led me into the classical texts of the mystics – St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Meister Ekhart, Julian of Norwich, etc. I was so radicalized by this sense of communion, this deep experience of incarnate Infinity intimately realized, like the divinity of standing up & sitting down, and how reflective prayer becomes words of wordless silence and oneness, and so on. And Merton once said in one of his talks to the novices, that monastic life is carefully crafted to nurture and protect that oneness. But there are people in the world who are being led to it and they don’t understand what’s happening to them, and have no one to guide them. 
    So when I left the monastery, I found that that was true. I still wanted to live that way - my meditation practice and the mystics … So I started giving meditation retreats.

    I had a chance to study medieval philosophy under Daniel Walsh, who taught philosophy at Columbia, and was influential in Merton’s coming to the monastery. I was very affected by the philosophical theology of the Middle Ages. So when I was writing ‘Merton’s Palace of Nowhere’ on the true self, I said I don’t know how to communicate this to people out here, that we subsist in God like light subsists in flames – the Oneness. And Walsh wrote back. He said you can’t communicate it. But it will communicate itself through you if you’re convinced in what you say. And he said, if you are what you say. And you know it will communicate itself because there’ll be a response in the listener that knows, something very deep inside of them that matters very much is being awakened.

    I think that’s what I do. I try to speak from my heart about this oneness. I try to help people look for little moments where they had a glimpse of it, in the midst of nature, in the arms of the beloved, or reading a child a good night story, or lying in the dark listening to your breathing - how it washes over you like a taste of it, and how in that taste, you get the intuition that in these awakening moments, not that something more was given, but like a curtain opened and that you tasted momentarily the abyss-like divine nature of every moment of your life. 
    And so then ... What’s the way of life in which I can be liberated from what hinders me, from habitually abiding in the divinity of the immediacy of my life? And I get the feeling that people come to the retreat when they hear that it’s in silence and about the mystics, that they’re in some way been touched by that. Like how do I deepen that? Or how do I be faithful to that? How do I understand it? How do I live by it?
    For me where it started was because of the (childhood) trauma that was going on, a lot of the arguments with my father was about Catholicism (but) they fought about all kinds of things. So (my mother) would take us (6 children, I was the oldest) to mass on Sunday. And she would ask us to pray to God to give us the strength to get through the things that happen when daddy gets mad. 
    And so I was lying in my bed at night – I was maybe 4 – and I could hear my father screaming at my mother outside the door. And maybe earlier that day he had hit me. I knew tomorrow he wanted to do it again. And so I took my mother’s word and I prayed to God to give me the strength. I was lying there in the dark, and the experience I had was that God heard my prayer, came to me in the dark and in a moment I can’t remember merged with me. 
    So when I woke up the next morning, the trauma still went on. But when I came out into the living room, it was different, because if my father hit me, he thought he was hitting me, but he didn’t know he was hitting that other me, that other people could see. My father didn’t know that the real me was secretly carried by God into a secret place (my father) didn’t know about.

    Later, when I became a psychologist, I learned that I was dissociating, that I had borrowed the religious imagery of my mother to give meaning to dissociating. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t merge with me in the dark. And so I had a lot of moments like that. I had a lot of these unitive moments. 
    So when I read Merton, I saw monasteries as places where you can actually go and live all the time, because I was like a flame flickering in the wind, it was very much in the heart of me. But I thought the monasteries were built so people can surrender themselves over to that.
    If we think of the word trauma, the root of the word means a wound or a source of suffering. So we might say that all of us are subject to traumas great & small that can and sometimes do occur in our life together. Small traumas are the slights and the insults, the abandonments, the accidents, the hurts. But the point is, the center holds. 
    Big trauma gets so intense you kind of disappear into the trauma – kind of a psychic death really. If you survive the incest or the beating, whatever, you’re so glad you survived, but not quite, because it got inside of you. And then a triggering event is anything in the present that resembles the original trauma, your autonomic nervous system, you’ll re-experience the trauma – post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And so then as a clinician, that needs to be dealt with in its own right. That’s the therapy.  

    Sometimes we get this feeling that we’re skimming over the surface of the depths of our own life, and our own woundedness is carrying us along, as part of that. And we realize somewhere that we’re suffering from depth deprivation. 
    And we know of depth deprivation because we can single out certain moments when we tasted depth: in the midst of nature, in the middle of the dark, or in the arms of the beloved, telling a child a good night story, a pause between two lines of a poem that shimmered & shined. So you know it’s there.

    So then the question is, what are the ways where that depth dimension starts shining out of the therapy itself?
    Let’s say you call me for therapy, and I really don’t know what you want to talk about other than the little bit you told me on the phone. But I’ve done it so much, I already know what’s going to have to happen between us, if the healing you’re looking for is going to occur. And here’s what happens. 
    It’s like a liturgy or a ritual. We’ll both sit down. You’ll talk and I’ll listen. At a certain point, I’ll ask you a question and it’s a real question. I want to understand you better. And the question is such that you can’t respond without pausing for a moment to listen to yourself. And in that moment, you’re becoming more present to yourself in my presence. And it’s already started. 
    You don’t say it. You’re not ready yet, but it’s already begun. So little by little, this way of growth forms an alliance. 
    And in that trusting alliance, the person goes through their work. So one of my theses is that, when we risk sharing what hurts the most, in the presence of someone who will not invade us or abandon us, we can be re-parented in love. Sometimes you get the feeling you’re in the presence of someone who is more present to you than you are. And they see a value in you you’re not yet able to see. And you have faith in their faith in you. And little by little by little, it arcs over and becomes internalized and so on.

    But there’s another level to this. In that process, there is the opening up of what Jesus called ‘the pearl of great price.’ And what opens up within the person is a depth of presence that’s abyss-like. They might start laughing or they might tear-up. It’s deeper than simply freedom from symptoms. 
    And so sometimes at the end of therapy, people are grateful that they have less anxiety with panic or self-cutting, whatever it is. But often they’ll say something like this: ‘Something was given to me and I’m so grateful for it. I matter. I didn’t know that I mattered. I have a value that cannot be calculated. There’s a preciousness about me that came shining out through my woundedness, and no one can take that away from me.’ 
    And that’s the spiritual dimension. I think that starts to put words to that dimension.

    'Sometimes, when having to endure the worst, yet finding God in the darkest place, you are liberated from the tyranny of shame over your heart. Where anguish and ecstasy intersect, it becomes incandescent — it becomes oneness.' James Finley  

    Being a therapist was a good fit for me. I felt so grateful for it - to experience the unrelenting courage of the human spirit. Sometimes people would say something to me like, ‘I feel so safe in here.’ I’d say, but notice I’m not doing anything to you. And I think what it is, when you’re in my presence, you’re more present to yourself. And if you can be more present to yourself in my presence, you can literally be more present to yourself (also) when you’re not in my presence. And you keep sifting it out and sifting it out. I felt so honored by that process."

    “A mystical experience is experiencing God’s presence in your life.” James Finley

    "The question is, ‘what does that mean?’ I’ll give some examples from Thomas Merton and all the mystics. 
    This is from the last chapter of Merton’s ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’: ‘The world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast.’ So there he’s bearing witness to the already perfectly holy nature of what is – this dance. 
    And then Merton said a stunning thing. He said, ‘We don’t need to go very far to catch echoes of that game and of that dancing.’ And he gives very simple examples. He said, ‘You’re out walking alone in the midst of nature, and you turn to see a flock of birds descending, and as if out of the corner of your eye, you catch something in their descent that’s primordial, vast and true.’ 
    And then, to use faith language, although the person might not explicitly say it in faith language, you know that the presence of God is the infinity of their descent. And their descent is the incarnate immediacy of God. ((Self realizing that it's looking in the mirror)) And God is the infinity of your awareness of their descent. And your awareness of their descent is the concrete immediacy of God. And that’s the experience of God.’ ((Perhaps it's just a matter of remembering - remembering our True Nature, our Self, our ‘Original Face before our grandparents were born’ as we co-create the Cosmos))

    Another one is, there are moments between two people, in moments of loving union with each other, when they sense something within their love that’s beyond what words can say. It is a boundaryless quality. And in faith, you say, ‘God’s the infinity.' The infinite love of God is the infinity of their love. And the infinity of their love is incarnate in the midst of God. 
    You’re reading a child a good night story. You sense that in the presence of the child you’re in the presence of God. That’s why they’re so disarming. 
    And then what I’m saying also then, in love lost, as painful as it is, if you just sit with it very quietly, you can sense something of God’s sustaining presence guiding you through the loss. And when you come out the other side, you’re grateful to get your balance back, but you know, it’s so important to never forget what was learned in the dark – about fragility, the delicacy of life, grace."
    James Finley interview: "A Momentary Mystic" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQtvkwu2jA :

    "Although we all have a fundamentally pure nature, it is not easy to get in touch with it. The gross way our mind ordinarily functions drowns out this deeper, more subtle vibration to such an extent that we generally remain unaware of its existence. 
    If we truly want to connect with this subtle essence, we need to quiet all distractions and loosen the hold our ordinary appearances & conceptions have on us. In other words, we need to create space, space in which our essentially pure nature can function uninterruptedly. Then. . . we will be bringing to the surface the inner, divine qualities that have always existed within the depths of our being.” Lama Thubten Yeshe

“Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, 
vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, 
unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.  
Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; 
only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure & silent merge with formless truth.  
As soon as you find it, you are free; you have found yourself; 
you have solved the great riddle; your heart forever is at peace.  
Whole, you enter the Whole.  
Your personal self returns to its radiant,  
intimate, deathless source.” 
Mundaka Upanishad

    "To have the radiant calm and unswayed balance of mind that we call equanimity is to be like the earth. This is to be at home in our own lives. We see that this universe is much too big to hold onto, but it is the perfect size for letting go." Sharon Salzberg

 

        "The clouds are thin, the wind is light, 
         the sun is nearly overhead. Past the flowers, 
         through the willows, down along the stream. 
         People don't see the joy in my heart. 
         They think I'm wasting time or acting like a child." Cheng Hong, Chinese poet

 

Beyond Time - photograph by David A. Lovas

 

How We Look and What We See

     We have ALL EXPERIENCED the day-and-night, or heaven-and-hell difference between looking at anyone or anything - with loving, trusting eyes INSTEAD OF fearfully, competitively or aggressively.

“So long as one is
merely on the surface of things,
they are always
imperfect, unsatisfactory, incomplete.
Penetrate into the substance and
everything is perfect, complete, whole.”
Philip Kapleau

“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

 
    "Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” Anthony de Mello SJ

    What takes us far too long to realize is that BEING in a loving, trusting state, is what allows us to perceive the Divine Nature of everyone, everything, life itself. Namaste! This - our True Self - is what all the shamans, mystics, saints, poets & other deeply spiritual people throughout history keep telling us to remember & live from, in 'languages' most understandable for their times, philosophies & cultures - hence the term "perennial philosophy" http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial

    “Many people have intimations of their true nature in childhood – the sense of a benevolent presence guiding their life, a radiance that shines forth from all things, or a current of love that unites us all. …
    But we lose touch with this luminosity as we age … we forget who we really are and succumb to the way others see us...
    By adulthood we've more or less forgotten who we truly are, and have passively absorbed the current cultural fad of being frozen in the armor of materialism, meaninglessness & cynicism. Not surprisingly, something in all of us 'continues to weep over the barrenness of modern life.'"
    Stephan Bodian. “Wake Up Now. A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening.” McGraw-Hill, 2008.

    Indeed, under conditions when we feel safe, relaxed, "at home" in our immediate surroundings, perhaps even feel generous, our eyes become relaxed, softly-focused, taking in a wide field of vision. We can feel peaceful, trusting, loving, open and connected not just to whom or what's directly in front of us, but our wider surroundings, perhaps everyone, everything, to life itself.

    However, too many, even in objectively safe situations, are always anxiously ready to deal with impending trauma assumed to be lurking just around the next corner. PTSD & its variants are a terrible drain on individuals & society, crying out for healing with expert professional help. 

    “IF you feel safe & loved, your brain is specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation;
     IF you feel frightened & unwanted, it is specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment."
     Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. 

    But well beyond even what's generally considered normal & well-adjusted ie "ordinary unhappiness," we CAN learn to recognize, & remember to embody our True Self and thereby ALWAYS feel safe, relaxed, peaceful, open, loving, connected, generous, "at home" INDEPENDENT of our objective circumstances.

    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" Krishnamurti 

        "The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."
    David Foster Wallace 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

    It's becoming increasingly clear that a key spiritual practice is what has long been called "self-inquiry" (also spelled "self enquiry"). Whenever we find ourselves unhappy, sad, down, ie suffering, we are called to ask ourselves, "WHO is suffering?"
    Initially we give our society's typical description of our identity: name, age, gender, address, education, job, hobbies, relationships etc. Gradually we realize that this is just summarizing our tiresome "story of me" and is nowhere near adequate!
    Our most basic, unchanging True Nature, is timeless, formless, loving, awareness - a mystery beyond description & labeling. Nevertheless, it's been referred to as Spirit, Source, Force, Soul etc.

    So, 1) repeatedly notice the unhappy / anxious / angry / fearful story & assumed identity we continuously tell ourselves in our heads, 2) examine these with curiosity, without judgment, and realize how these have NO stable reality, then 3) let them go, and repeatedly RETURN HOME to True Self which is LIBERATING!

“In this choiceless, never ending flow of life
There is an infinite array of choices.
One alone brings happiness -
To love what is.”
Dorothy Hunt

SUPERB, CONCISE 14-minute video:

Rupert Spira "How Do I Practice Self Enquiry?"

 

RELATIONSHIP

        Our most important relationship is with our self-concept. It makes ALL the difference WHEN we can recognize & embody intimate creative Oneness with everyone & everything, Universal Consciousness or Self (pantheism / panentheism) - TRANSCENDING the common stage when we reduce our self to an accidental, meaningless, meat machine, separate from everyone & everything else, competing against everyone & everything to survive, headed for inevitable decay & decomposition (materialism).

    Below, my transcript of Helen Hamilton's valuable talk about this critical shift from concepts to integrating mature spirituality as lived experience, "Running on Empty?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cly6vNwIUyc Within ((double brackets)) are my comments.

    “You may have found, as I did, that if you had some measure of clarity about what you actually are – that you’re indivisible, formless, that you are before birth & after death, still here, completely everywhere, omnipresent – to whatever degree you’ve seen that, it can have this effect on your relationships that they begin to, some of them for me began to become more full of friction, more problematic & challenging to navigate than ever before. In fact it was really the opposite of what I thought would happen.
    I thought I’d have this seeing, you know naively like I guess we all do, and everything in my life would magically start looking perfect in this way. But it really wasn’t like that. It was more a question of having to really apply what I’d seen about myself to my relationships. So even theoretically, we can know that in any relationship there isn’t really two. There is the one being that is expressing itself as two human beings, in whatever relationship that is, whether it's a friendship, a romantic relationship, family friendship, a boss and an employee. Whichever way it’s showing up, it will have this particular dynamic to it.
    And one of the things that wasn’t really obvious to me was that I would be asked to make a shift over in the way I functioned in my relationships from how it is as a separate being, to how it is as the Self, as the awakened condition itself, as the noumenon, the silence, whatever you want to call it. And it wasn’t obvious immediately how to do that, because even theoretically we know, or actually know that we’re not separate to this other being in the relationship. But how do we come to allow the Self to express itself fully as this relationship? The Self experiencing itself as a relationship can be an ever-deepening intimacy between yourself and this other being instead of what we tend to experience as human beings is this kind of back & forth, both of you wanting something different, and you end up making some kind of compromise. It can be a much deeper intimacy than that.

    So it began to become clearer to me that I was still dividing myself from this other being, separating myself from this other being in the relationship, with what I actually wanted from them. All of my relationships when I looked, as I began to examine them, I was looking for something from that being. In all of my relationships I was looking for approval – from my parents, my siblings, my children. I wanted to feel worthy, loved, safe, valued, appreciated. These are pretty much everything that everyone is looking for.
    When I thought I was a separate being, it really worked mostly, for the most part, that I would play my role in a relationship, and the other person would play their role, we both learned what we wanted from each other, on some subconscious level. If you give me some sense of being like, I’ll make you feel safe. It’s kind of what we’re all doing with each other. If you’ll approve of me, I’ll approve of you. I’ll validate you, if you validate me. (('transactional relationship'))
    I’m not judging a class. It’s just the way our separate sense of self works. It feels incomplete. And it’s always looking for something. ((sense of 'lack,' 'emptiness')) And even in my relationship with my work, I was looking for validation. I was looking for worthiness. And you can say well everybody’s looking for something. And these mechanisms will work relatively well as a separate being, but as you begin to wake up more, you might begin to find that they’re breaking down, this trying to get something from another being. And really, we might have to relearn all of our ways of being in a relationship. ((ALSO our relationships with food / drink, digital devices, & all other distractions / addictions we use trying to escape our sense of lack / emptiness.))

    So for myself, I had to ask, what I was trying to get from this person, and maybe, what are they trying to get from me as well? So if I’m approaching a relationship, still functioning from my old way of being in this relationship, where I’m asking another being, - of course we don’t really say this verbally do we, ‘I want you to make me feel safe.’ Or, ‘Please make me feel loved.’ Or, ‘Make me feel accepted.’ Or, ‘Please like me, and then I’ll feel better about myself.’ But, whatever it is we’re seeking, we don’t really say it verbally, but our whole behaviour, our whole way of being, even the reason for the relationship can be to get something out of it. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, except it doesn’t really work does it? We’re asking people to give us something when they don’t have what we’re asking for anyway. It’s hard for someone to give us approval & recognition when they’re looking for their own sense of worthiness too. They’re looking for a sense of security from their relationships too. They’re also coming to this relationship with you with a list of things they would like to fulfill by you. And so most relationships tend to settle into this push-pull, very gentle, sometimes not so gentle tug of war – ‘I’ll give you what you want if you give me a little bit of what I want.’
    All of that began to break down in a spectacular way. Relationships that had been fairly harmonious, began to become very unharmonious, let’s just say. And it forced me to stop and take a look at what am I asking for from this being?
    And if you have a relationship that isn’t functioning so well in your life right now, you can stop and ask yourself, ‘What am I looking for from this person?’ Maybe you know what that is. And the two staple ones that everybody wants is to feel loved, to feel safe, and you can throw in worthiness into that too, and feeling valued, needed, approved of. And if you can’t quite figure it out, you could ask yourself, ‘When this relationship’s going well, how do I feel that I don’t feel when it’s not?’ Sometimes that gives us a clue. ‘If this relationship disappeared out of my life today, what would I seem to lose in that?’
    So recognizing what it was that I was looking for, it began to become clear that I was asking for something, on an energetic level, from a being that didn’t exist. They’re not separate to me, not outside of me. They are my own Self.
    The more clearly I began to see that the more this mechanism of push-pull began to really break down. So I had to find a different way to get whatever I was seeking from someone else. It really took me some time to figure out, that I had to allow this to come from the inside out.

    So I began to ask, ‘What am I looking for from this being?’ and ‘Can they really give it to me?’ ‘If they don’t have it, even if they did exist as a separate being, and there really were two beings in this relationship, could they really give it to me if they’re also running on empty, if they’re also trying to get everything they need from the outside in, from their relationships, from their work, from their parenting?’ ‘If everything that we’re doing in life is really to get us something, on some level, that we don’t feel we have, can we get it that way?’
    And as I sat with this more and more this other question began to appear, ‘Why am I so sure it’s not already here?’ So if I’m looking for safety, a feeling of security from a relationship, it must be because I don’t feel safe now. And if I don’t feel safe now, can any amount of trying to get it satisfy me? And it just felt like I was getting these scraps of what I needed, these tiny amounts, just enough to survive emotionally, but didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled. And maybe you can identify with that, can recognize that in your own life.

    To this question, ‘Why am I sure it’s not here?’ began to become really important. Whatever it is I’m looking for, why am I so certain that it’s not here? Why have I spent my entire life trying to get it from the outside in? This is really quite shocking, quite fundamentally shocking for me, the realization that for my entire life … I never really experienced the true unfolding of a relationship, because my behaviour & everything was aimed at trying to please people so that I got what I needed from them.
    And we can be doing this in any relationship, any at all. People even try to do it with their spiritual teacher. It goes right across the board. Right from when we were children, looking for certain things from our parents, siblings, our friends at school, and on and on it goes. I’m looking for something from our education. When I get my education, then I’ll feel a way that I don’t feel now. When I get the right job, when I have a family, when I get a car, and on and on it goes, and then eventually, when I wake up I’ll feel this way. When I realize the Self, I’ll feel this way that I don’t feel now. Again, it’s all based on this assumption that what I want isn’t here right now. I began to see clearer that if I assume something is missing from my experience in this moment, because my body and mind aren’t experiencing that right now, I assume it’s missing. But maybe my body and mind aren’t experiencing that right now because I’m assuming it’s missing, not the other way around.

    So I began to question, ‘What happens when I start from the recognition it must be already here?’ Can I turn my relationships inside out? Can I allow what I want to flow from inside out? What’s it like, when I come to my relationships, feeling already fulfilled, worthy, safe? What’s that experience like as a human being? And what does it do to the other person in the relationship when I do that? When there’s more than enough for myself and for the next person in the relationship? Whatever it is they’re looking for from me, they can have in abundant supply. They can have as much as they want because there’s an endless supply here. It began to transform everything, everything!

    First of all, my relationship with myself – what is it like when I don’t need anything from myself; when I’m not demanding anything from myself; when I’m not withholding approval & love from myself until I reach some stage or something happens; I’m not withholding it at all; when I just allow it to come from the inside? What is that like?
    You know confidence & kindness to yourself, and love, and the simple recognition that there is no good reason ever to withhold love & approval from yourself. If you don’t like yourself, how is the rest of the world going to like you? If all of this is a mirror of you, if you are everywhere, and you don’t like yourself, you won’t give yourself love, it’s going to be very hard for anyone else to show how much they already love you. And even if they do, you somehow won’t be able to accept it or receive it or even see it. It will be momentarily seen, and then kind of blocked from memory. So what are you looking for? And is it true it’s not already here? And what happens when you walk into a room with another being and this push-pull tug-of-war collapses, because you don’t need anything from them? Maybe for the first time ever, you don’t need anything.
    It could be as simple as switching to this question, ‘Why am I sure it’s not here?’ My whole life I’ve run on this assumption that it’s not here, that I have to get it. Can that be true for you, the infinite being, the Self if you are omnipresent, infinitely powerful? Then is it really true that you are lacking anything in this moment?

    We have all experienced not having enough approval, recognition, worthiness, safety, security. Maybe it’s this simple assumption that it’s not here. And what happens if you start from now, with this question, ‘Why am I so sure it’s not here?’ And, ‘Can I be a source of it?’ rather than trying to get it from other beings, which makes them on some level, unconsciously, energetically, stand back from me, and need to defend themselves against my asking somehow on some level, because they don’t have enough of what we’re trying to get from them anyway. ((MORE about becoming the source of love: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=source+of+love))

    What happens when I become abundantly flowing with this love in my energy, kind of silently saying, ‘Have all that you need, take all that you need,' because the more you take, the more is given, the more is supplied. And this simple thing, just changed every single relationship that I had. And it allowed me to just be with somebody for the first time, to really meet someone for the first time. You know even sitting with spiritual teachers, watching satsangs, things like that, I never really met them because I was so desperately trying to get something from them the whole time, as I’m sure we all are. But finally, to rest as the infinite source of everything, where it’s coming from. You are where it’s coming from, and pouring out into the world, showering everyone that you meet. And it changes your entire existence.

    What would your family relationships be like, even with your romantic partner, if you didn’t even need them to tell you that they loved you - if you just loved being in love with them, and they felt so completely loved by you, that neither of you needed anything from each other at all, and it was simply about being with each other? And what if all of your relationships were like this? When you came into a relationship already full, what would that feel like?
    Maybe you can get a taste of it where you are that wellspring, that infinite supply, and everybody around you then begins to feel that you’re no longer asking constantly for their energy – please give me this. And they’re no longer defensive then in their energy because they don’t have to guard their limited resources of what you’re trying to get. Of course none of those are doing this consciously, it’s just the ((‘transactional’)) way we’ve been taught to function in relationships, thinking we’re a separate being, cut off from the source of all good things like this.
    So what are you looking for and why are you sure it’s not here? Just because you aren’t experiencing it in this moment, doesn’t mean it’s absent. What happens if you challenge that assumption? Can you really get it from somebody else anyway? Has that ever really worked in a consistent way? For me it was like driving to the nearest petrol station and putting just a pound ($2) of petrol in my car, just enough to get it over the red line, and then I’d drive to the next petrol station, do the same thing, and the same thing, the same thing, just running on empty the whole time.
    Instead, coming out into the world with a full tank, and you can never take anything out of it without immediately being replenished. Apart from the obvious benefits of that, you feel alive, passionate, fulfilled, complete, worthy, loved & loving, compassionate, all of that. ((Such 'heart openings' last longer & longer, and can endure greater & greater challenges)) People begin to recognize that they’re safe with you then, because you’re not demanding anything. You might be the only person they know that isn’t asking anything from them, and they can finally relax. Maybe for the first time in a very long time they can finally relax. They might not even know why, they just feel kind of nice when they’re with you somehow. It’s one of the best things about awakening, being able to turn your relationships from trying to get everything from the outside, into being the inside out source and supply.

    That line in the Bible, ‘God so loved the world that he sent his only son …’ – this is it in action, isn’t it? This is it in action. You want to intuitively pour this love and this infinite supply out to everyone you meet. What would happen if just everyone here now in this meeting did this, and each of us inspired one person to do it, to fill themselves up so full, to not tolerate any idea that there can be anything missing from your experience right now? Identifying what you’re lacking right now, and demanding to see that it’s already here. Staying with that, until your body and your mind begin to experience it. But first, if we’re asking for love, I’m sure it must be here right now. I’m determined to allow it to come from the inside out. First, you’ll notice that just as a sense of relaxation in the body. It might be very subtle at first. Because you stay with this over two or three days, you begin to feel very, very different. And everything around you begins to change as well, because every human being can sense everyone’s aura energy. They might not know they’re doing that. When they touch upon something or someone that is so radiantly full, they know it somehow. It’s like a drink of water after you’ve been dying of thirst. It’s like a warm fire when you’re freezing.
    Just this simple thing allowed me to integrate, to live this. And I really hope I’m inspiring you."
    Helen Hamilton: "Running on Empty?" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cly6vNwIUyc

 

    “what I have discovered after many decades of religious practice (is) that the religious life isn’t about truth as much as it is about relationship. Or that, perhaps, truth and relationship are one and the same. ...
     We all need time to sink back deep into the soul and try to remember who we actually are.” Norman Fischer. “When You Greet Me I Bow. Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen.” Shambhala, 2021. 

    “By giving up our attachments in life, we open ourselves up to more opportunities, more spontaneity, and more chances to cultivate deeper connections with others.” Lama Tsomo

 

        "The thoughts change
         but not you.
         Let go of the passing thoughts and
         hold on to the unchanging Self."         Sri Ramana Maharshi

"We are all connected 

in a great cosmic web of being. 

Our individual actions and choices 

have a ripple effect on the whole."

Jean Houston

 

 

Helen Hamilton: "Running on Empty?"