"Try It - You'll Like It!"

    Step 1
    Regularly check in to see which Operating system (OS) is running your life. 

    The default OS that is usually running your life in this stressed-out world - and we're usually unconscious of this - is the fight-flight-freeze (FFF) instinct. We're basically just trying to survive, to get by, day-to-day. Our understanding (worldview), again mostly subconscious, is that we're essentially alone (personally, as a family, or 'tribe') in a competitive, and at times hostile relationship with other humans, animals, environment, life itself. This worldview includes the materialist belief that life is nothing more than a meaningless accident & that we're meat-machines which die, end of story.
    This OS helps lower life forms survive occasional, brief life-or-death situations, but is an awful, unsustainable way for humans to exist. The associated nihilist worldview is the underlying cause for our profound personal & societal unhappiness & dysfunction.
    The FFF OS feels unpleasant, stressful, anxious & depressing.

    But the OS in which we feel wonderfully peaceful & truly at home in is the tend-and-befriend (T&B) 'instinct.' We find ourselves in this OS when hugging a loved one, looking into the eyes of a baby or puppy, standing in awe of a sublime sunrise that 'takes our breath away,' and whenever the noisy, fear-based FFF OS isn't drowning out our peaceful, silent, love-based T&B OS. In this OS we experience loving intimacy, even oneness with whomever / whatever we're with, life itself. As we learn to live more & more in this OS, we increasingly resonate with the great sages, mystics & saints of every civilization throughout history: http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/10/true-nature-perennial-philosophy-and.html .
    This is the OS with which evolving humans can awaken, heal, thrive / flourish and with which our environment can recover.

    Step 2
    As soon as you feel the discomfort of being in the FFF OS - rarely useful for humans - learn to let it go & keep returning to & re-embodying the T&B OS.

    I HIGHLY recommend freeing yourself from the unnecessary suffering of FFF OS, and return home to & stabilize in True nature.

    There are excellent current spiritual teachers and others to help guide you in this awakening process. Their message is strikingly similar, but their style unique to their individual personalities, so find the most compatible one(s) with whom you resonate.

    My current favorite guides & my blogs quoting them:

    Amoda Maa http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Amoda+Maa 

    Eckhart Tolle http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Eckhart+Tolle

    Helen Hamilton http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton

    Adyashanti http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Adyashanti

    Michael A. Singer http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Michael+Singer

    Henry Shukman http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman

    Louise Kay http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Louise+Kay

    Richard C. Schwartz - Internal Family Systems (IFS) http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Schwartz

    Iain McGilchrist - Hemisphere Hypothesis http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Iain+McGilchrist

 Rose Cousins - "Let the Light Come In"

Wise Hope

    Many today feel hopeless & try not to think about the desperate state our world is in. This is entirely understandable, but like many of our other behaviours, hopeless resignation is recklessly unsustainable.

    We must remember that we are no longer unloved, abandoned, afraid & helpless children. We may appreciate how that feels BUT now realize we are so much more than that! We are the wise, peaceful, spacious source of safety & unconditional love, and are now in the powerful, privileged position to join together to nurture & help ourselves & others flourish in this critical time in human history.

    Messages of wise hope:

    “Wise hope includes the aspiration to manifest our full potential, individually and collectively, and the trust that this is possible. Especially in stressful times, this hope gets clouded over by fear. When it is alive, wise hope energizes and guides all spiritual transformation. Three practices help us nurture hope:
    Aspiration for what we love,
    Attending to what we love, and
    Actively serving what we love.” Tara Brach - please watch her wonderful short video below.

    “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right inside it, under its roof. What I want is so simple, I almost can’t say it. Elementary kindness.” Barbara Kingsolver, quoted by Tara Brach

 

"Notes from My Couch this Morning" by Joan Benner

"Let me hold you said the couch
    As you re-member yourself into loving awareness.
No more than this is needed.
    You, present to this moment is enough.
It has always been this way.
    You just forget,
And allow confusion, delusion, and frustration move you
    Into the false dreams of who you are.
The very presence of loving awareness is so much more than the illusions
    You so often crave.
Sink into this now
As you honor yourself by not getting caught in your thoughts.
Treasure them, then let them fly by,
    Refusing to allow yourself to be dragged or tossed by their fleeting visits.
Welcome the truth that this awesome awareness itself is more than enough.
    Embrace the expansiveness of clear boundless loving awareness.
Rest in the truth of this, my precious love.
    Rest, only rest will lead you to your healing.
The need to shine outward is over.
    Melt yourself back into the timeless space of loving awareness,
And dance in the knowing that you have come home.

Breathe in the comfort of this place,
And when ready, circle back as a wave in the ocean.
Rest here in this new place where the shimmering hologram of life shines though.
Take the hands offered by those who know this seamless mandala of wholeness,
And acknowledge together the beautiful core of loving awareness you all share.
    Nod to your sameness in suffering when you forget who you truly are.
Reach out to all as you bow to the deep equality you share.
    And pray as one that all beings truly awaken
And live fully in the joy that is beyond sorrow.
    The dance of loving awareness is meant for all.
May this be so…

    Terry Patten inspiring, energizing (62min) interview, author of “A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries - A Guide to Inner Work for Holistic Change.” : https://drmichaelwayne.com/leadingedge/terry-patten-author-a-new-republic-of-the-heart/

    Steve McIntosh (63min) a bit scholarly but excellent interview, author of “The Presence of the Infinite - The Spiritual Experience of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.” : https://drmichaelwayne.com/leadingedge/interviews-with-the-leading-edge-steve-mcintosh-author-the-presence-of-the-infinite/

 

“Please may I live from love.” Tara Brach’s prayer

 

 Tara Brach's WONDERFUL (50min) video : Three Practices for Nurturing Wise Hope

 

The Vital Shift

     Our usual way of doing things is obviously NOT working. Despite our wealth & scientific advances, quality of life continues to decline as seen by rising rates of depression, anxiety, misogyny, divorce, racism, antisemitism, trauma, burnout, addictions, homelessness, suicide, violence, incarceration, wars, hunger, climate change, populism, partisanship, white nationalism, extinction of species, etc etc etc. Life, as we know it, is UNSUSTAINABLE!
     So we must change for our own sake, but especially for the sake of our children & grandchildren. A part of us resists change, even a change we all know is urgently essential. One bright fellow's thoughts on this:

     “Of course I’m romanticizing prehistory here, but we went from a matriarchal society: Nature-honoring society, mother-honoring society – both actual biological mothers, but also The Mother as our archetype of reality, and probably with the onset of agriculture, everything shifted to a patriarchal religion. And Judaism is at the pinnacle of patriarchy, as is Christianity & Islam. But we moved to this patriarchal & parochial kind of religion, and that has brought us ecological devastation, pandemics, “storms of the century” recurring yearly, fires and all this stuff – the earth is trying to shake us off. But all of this I think is because we’ve lost the wisdom of the Divine Mother in Jungian archetypal terms. And that wisdom is the wisdom of interconnectedness, the wisdom of interdependence, the wisdom of cooperation, mutuality. All those things are in patriarchal religions, but they’re just not emphasized. And that devolution into patriarchy is, I think, the root cause of 90% of our problems. And the solution is going to be a radical shift, but it’s not going to be comfortable, it’s not going to be graceful, it’s not going to be slow. It’s going to entail a collapse of the norms that we have lived by for centuries. And the questions we have to ask ourselves are: ‘Are we going to collapse mindfully or mindlessly?’ ‘Are we going to collapse compassionately or cruelly?’ and ‘Are we going to collapse with a sense of grace, or just a sense of horror?’ And I think it’s all about horror, cruelty and mindlessness. That’s what it looks like to me, but it doesn’t have to be that way. But I think that’s where we’re at at the moment.
      If you asked me what would be part of playing our cards right, it would be for individuals to take on a kind of spiritual practice that would, in Hebrew terms they talk about being of two minds: one is narrow or egoic mind, where it’s us against them, me against you, and I’m apart from nature, God & everything else; and the other is spacious mind, where I’m a part of the whole. And spiritual practices - every religion has them, and I’m not talking about formal liturgical, go to church, go to mosque, go to temple, go to synagogue. I’m talking about meditative practices, which doesn’t have to be silent sitting cross-legged on a mat, but contemplative practices that allow the egoic mind to drop of its own accord, and for you to experience something greater – that direct experience of the vastness of which we are a part. I think that has got to be a part of the mix. And if it is, I think that shifts us (out of our current downward spiral) and toward a more ideal future.”
     Rami Shapiro March 14, 2021 EXCELLENT (2hr) interview: https://batgap.com/

What Best Serves?

     Many times each day, even hourly, a thought, emotion or body sensation will arise that we instinctively don't want! We tend to be much more clearly aware of such events while meditating. 'Not wanting' easily leads to an argument with reality - we assume, 'This is wrong! This shouldn't be happening!' It's perfectly human to instinctively pull away from unpleasant, towards the pleasant, and to ignore neutral stimuli.

     But our highly-evolved heart-mind knows that unwillingness to turn towards & relate with kind curiosity to ANYTHING & EVERYTHING, including negative mind states, is the major cause suffering. Arguing with, instead of accepting, learning from & wisely relating to reality is the basis of suffering. Things are the way they are right now, like it or not. Paradoxically, when we let go of resisting what is, it changes! See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNTXFsC4FJI
     Perhaps the most skillful way of deciding on any course of action is asking ourselves, 'What best serves this moment?' In other words, what would best nurture me in this situation? If my loving, wise grandmother carefully assessed my current situation, what would she advise me to do right now for my long-term benefit?
      Can we learn to adopt an active, empowered, helpful approach - one of wise nurturing - consistently (like a skillful gardener) aiming to provide all the causes & conditions for flourishing?  
     'What best serves right now?' Posing this question to myself I find to be very self-compassionate, encouraging & empowering.

     A part of us feels very young, afraid & helpless. Whenever we find ourselves embodying this fearful child 'part,' we feel alone & vulnerable in what feels like a hostile world. Due to past traumas, we instinctively react to triggers by freezing, running & hiding, or with aggression - the latter an overcompensation for our felt helplessness. This is our ancient 'fight, flight, freeze' instinct.
     But an almost silent part of us feels authentic, mature, peaceful, competent & connected with everyone & everything ('tend & befriend instinct'). When we embody this wise elder 'part' or our true Self, we feel a natural profound bond - 'interbeing' with everyone & everything (how our right hand relates to our left). We relate to ourselves & others with natural, joyful, loving collaboration.
    Useful details about "parts": Richard C. Schwartz. "No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model." Sounds True, 2021. OR for a concise summary of IFS, see p172-176 in David A. Treleaven. “Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.” W.W. Norton & Co, 2018.

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

     The fearful child part in us feels as if there's always something lacking. It craves for 'the right condition' - people, things, experiences - anything at all, to fill an unquenchable thirst. No matter how hard it strives, it just can't.
       David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.

     The wise elder in us feels at peace, grateful, deeply happy - independent of conditions. In this state of abundance (vs 'lack'), we only wish to share what is most precious to us: our ease & joy - by nurturing, by being of service, so that others too may flourish. This blissfulness ('heart opening') can be felt physically as warmth radiating from our body, especially the heart area.

     The most interesting & valuable thing is that we can intentionally cultivate our inherent ability to increasingly embody the wise elder state of being. And whenever we feel the fearful child being triggered in us, we can ask ourselves: 'What best serves me & others, here & now?' With practice - and sometimes with additional help from mental health professionals - the wise elder in us can more & more easily soothe the fearful child by holding it in safety, unconditional love & nurturing it. There is a bond of deep trust - unconditional love - between our inner child & our inner wise elder. This is where wise loving-kindness & self-compassion meet real daily life.
       Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.
 
     All this can be accomplished by patiently practicing generosity, ethics & meditation. 
       Gil Fronsdal. "The Issue at Hand. Essays on Buddhist Mindfulness Practice." 2001. www.insightmeditationcenter.org

The Felt Sense of Authenticity

     For many of us, it's obvious that addicts to heroin, alcohol, gambling etc are "looking for love in all the wrong places." These people bet everything that the next hit will make them happy, while we who are not addicted (to these substances) are clearly aware that each hit for an addict is just another step closer to 'rock bottom.'
      After meditating for a while, we may notice something truly surprising. During meditation, after the mind has settled down, and our center of gravity has descended from the storm-clouds of our mind, to our heart and or abdomen (hara), we might experience a subtle sense of kind presence, ease, stillness, warmth, silence & peace. Gradually we might learn that we're able to just rest in this wholesome, natural state of being - feeling, experiencing, BEING rightness, authenticity, kindness & joy. We realize that we actually deserve to rest & directly experience: "Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be."
     Then suddenly, we're lost again thinking about our old 'story of me,' concerns, anxieties, etc. Now we experience a tone of 'something's off' - unpleasantly familiar yet not really who / what I really am, stress.
     So in daily life we can be 'clean & sober' OR 'addicted.' During meditation we can be kindly aware - as if we were a loving wise grandmother caring for her only beloved 4-year-old grandchild - OR - regretting the past, fretting about the future, & in the process, forgetting or unable to lovingly care for our own life & that of others.
     We can't 'fight, flight, freeze' at the same time as 'tend & befriend' - the two ways of being are mutually exclusive. The former often feels like a life-or-death emergency, shutting / shouting down our much quieter, gentler 'affiliative sensibility.' Sadly, many of us are predominantly in 'fight, flight, freeze.' This is not by choice; is not helpful; & is definitely not sustainable. This emotional pandemic has been around for decades before the current viral pandemic.
     Meditation has a great deal to teach us about how it feels to be authentic vs how it feels when we're being driven by ancient survival instincts & conditioning that no longer benefit us; and how we can learn to gradually live more & more realistically, authentically, freely & with greater joy. 
     Susan Morgan gave a wonderful talk & guided meditation on this subject on May 29, 2020. This one (& more) can be found here: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/daily-sit/ OR here: https://www.billandsusan.org/copy-of-daily-sit-april-2020

     Humanity as a whole is gradually waking up, evolving. “What we really want … is for humanity to hold nature sacred again. What we want is to move from a society of domination to one of participation, from conquest to co-creation, from extraction to regeneration, from harm to healing, and from separation to love. And we want to enact this transition in all our relations: ecological, economic, political, and personal. That is why we can say, ‘The revolution is love.’” Charles Eisenstein “Extinction and the Revolution of Love.” January 2020 https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/extinction-and-the-revolution-of-love/

Control, Chaos and our Hemispheres

     Clinicians love to cure - definitively fix - the sick, the broken. And many of us, at least when we feel broken, want to be fixed-up once & for all! We all dearly love 'agency,' the sense of control, the ability to reach out, grab & hold onto what we want, and push away what we don't want.
     At some level, we realize that this idea of perfect control over our life & environment is wishful thinking, based on an a childishly unrealistic, simplistic, mechanistic, reductionist model. Life's complexity extends well beyond our comprehension, never mind control.
    However, we dread the idea of being overwhelmed by chaos - being helplessly out of control as our world crumbles around us. So to create some sense of agency, we tend to restrict our attention to manipulating whatever we can. But with this narrowed focus, many of us forget about or even become averse to the big picture that includes the most meaningful dimensions of life that cannot be controlled or even be put into words!
    Our current Western society tends to overuse the perspective of our left hemispheres, and at best ignores, at worse ridicules & actively suppresses the perspective of our right hemispheres.
    This lack of balance causes serious conflicts: rigid partisanship (political, religious, ecological, ethnic, racial, gender, economic, and even academic / educational: 'hard' sciences vs 'soft' sciences & arts) instead of harmonious tolerance, balance & collaboration. It seriously impacts the education of even our health-care professionals: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2012/02/control-and-liminality.html
     Extreme positions eg towards control, often produce unintended, undesired results eg chaos.

     Iain McGilchrist spent 20 years researching & documenting the neurological basis & Western cultural rationale for a healthy balance between the two hemispheres, perhaps summarized in Reinhold Niebuhr's 'serenity prayer':
          Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
          courage to change the things I can;
          and wisdom to know the difference.

     “Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focused, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain.

     Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does – they are both involved in everything – but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans & many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilizing the world, the other better at understanding it.
     Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something – or don’t attend to it – matters a very great deal.
     Because of the way we prioritise the left hemisphere’s take on the world, we have ceased to appreciate the meaning of continuity & flow, instead prioritising discrete chunks of experience we call things. This has serious consequences for how we see our selves as human beings and our relationship with the wider world. … the world in which we live in the West is shaped by a set of beliefs about reality which we know from experience, and feel intuitively, to be almost certainly false. Though the consequences of this are widely deplored, we seem strangely powerless to resist it. We are as if in a trance, whistling a happy tune as we sleepwalk towards the abyss."
     Iain McGilchrist. “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” Yale University Press, 2019. (An exceptionally worthwhile read IMHO)

     “It’s just not compatible with the left hemisphere’s view that there could be anything wrong with itself. It has a polished, perfectionist view of what it’s doing. It’s therefore very unwilling to accept the contrary argument. As a society I would say, I believe we exemplify this mentality in our world. 
     In a nice piece of research ... they sent questionnaires to over two thousand executives to see how much they knew about their own industries. Managers in the advertising industry were 90% confident they were correct, but were actually wrong 61% of the time; people in IT 95% confident they were correct, only 20% were right; 99% of them overestimated their success. This is the world we’re now living in. 
     Now how did we get trapped in this worldview of the left hemisphere, which is that of the static, the fixed, the certain, the isolated, in competition with others, a detached, unempathic, unflowing world, which has only one value – that of utility? As opposed to a world in which things are seen as seamlessly interconnected, flowing, never certain, constantly changing, but with which we have a relationship of care. 
     How did we get into this trap? I think there are briefly a few reasons: one is that it gives us power, it makes us powerful, and that is hugely seductive. This is the hemisphere about getting. The left hemisphere controls the right hand with which we grasp; it controls the bits of language (not all of language) the bits with which we define things and pin them down, and say we’ve grasped them – so it’s the grasping part us. That makes us powerful but it’s version of the world is also extremely simple. It’s that it’s made out of bits which can be understood, and then we’ve got there. And all the bits that don’t fit with that are sheared off from the model. And so it’s possible at the end of the day to go, ‘I’ve explained everything,’ because actually you’ve only explained the things you’ve allowed into your model. Another thing is that it’s what I call ‘the Berlusconi of the brain,’ because it’s the one that controls the media. It’s the one that actually does the talking and constructs the arguments, so it’s a piece of cake for it to make its points, whereas it’s quite difficult for the right hemisphere to express things that are subtle, often contradictory and implicit. And I think the fourth reason, at the moment, why we are trapped in this is because we’ve evolved a world out there which reflects the left hemisphere’s world inside. So all around us we have the rigid, lifeless, fixed, represented world which is that of the left hemisphere.”
       Iain McGilchrist @ Schumacher College: Things Are Not What They Seem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiHStLfjP0
 
      “… we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular object. This dimension is the ground of all the astonishing forms and experiences of which we are aware. Because we are aware, it cannot be unconscious, although we are not conscious of it – as an external thing. Thus we can give it a name but cannot make any definitive statement about it … 
     Our only way of apprehending it is by watching the processes and patterns of nature, and by the meditative discipline of allowing our minds to become quiet, so as to have vivid awareness of ‘what is’ without verbal comment.

     … seen as a whole, the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when it is looked at section by section we find conflict.
                       ‘for the world is a shen vessel 
                        and cannot be forced.’
     ‘Shen’ presents problems for the translator... I take it to mean that innate intelligence (or li) of each organism in particular, and of the universe as a whole, which is beyond the reach of calculation."
       Alan Watts. “Tao. The Watercourse Way.” Pantheon Books, 1975.

'Shen'

It's All about Relating - to Ourself, Others, the Universe

     May these insights intrigue and inspire ...

     The most important question a human being needs to answer according to Einstein: " 'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space.
We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all of its beauty.
The true value of a human being
is determined primarily by the measure and the sense
in which s/he has attained liberation
from the (separate) self....
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking
if humanity is to survive."

Albert Einstein

1934

      “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. 

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

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

     "Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences." Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

      During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda 

     "... everything yearns to be met. Everything yearns to resolve itself in love – that love being the open space of acceptance, of allowing, of staying resolutely present, and unconditionally open to every nuance of your inner experience." Amoda Maa. "Surfing the Heart of Darkness: Suffering as a Doorway to Liberation." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXlUsBYbv0w

     “Your task is not to seek for love,
      but merely to seek and find all of the barriers
      within yourself that you have built against it.” Helen Schueman

      Intimacy is what practice is all about: the realization of the essential lack of distinction between self and other that inevitably leads to wisdom and compassionate action. Intimacy with the depth of our being – authenticity – is the essential first step. Then, with the help of loving-kindness meditation, we bring intimacy into our relationships with others, starting with those dearest to us and moving on to those who don’t seem dear at all. We can grow in intimacy to include everyone around us, all of society, the whole world and all the beings it contains. Pat Enkyo O’Hara “Most Intimate: A Zen Approach to Life's Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014. 

     We spend a disproportionate amount of time & energy, fearing for our life. This is almost always because we're reacting to past traumas (instead of engaging with reality) and/or we're fearing & trying to avoid ego death (instead of accepting & engaging with the unavoidable reality of physical death). 
     To see what a (spontaneous) shift from fear-based, survivalist self-centered, adversarial, fight / flight / freeze "ordinary mind" to an evolved tend & befriend "open heart-mind" level of consciousness looks like, listen to (or read the transcript of) this documentary: CBC Radio, The Current: “This B.C. woman lodged hundreds of 911 complaints about the homeless. Now she's advocating for them.” https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-28-2019-1.5148615/this-b-c-woman-lodged-hundreds-of-911-complaints-about-the-homeless-now-she-s-advocating-for-them-1.5148621

     An overview of Intimacy with the Real World: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/11/intimacy-with-real-world.html

     With due respect to William James, most of our thoughts (self-referential internal narrative) are echos of our conditioning. Better thoughts cannot eliminate discretionary suffering.
     “We are here to find that dimension within ourselves that is deeper than thought.” Eckhart Tolle
     We can access, and can integrate, a deeper, far more evolved level of consciousness than the ordinary discursive thought level. 

Coming Back Home

     Many of us are chronically stressed, anxious ± depressed, so we're prone to react to people & situations with the 3 Fs: flight, fight or freeze.
     “Freud identified what he called ‘the repetition compulsion,’ the drive within us to replicate the old, even if it is painful and leads us to predictable but familiar dead ends.
     Sooner or later, we are each called to face what we fear, respond to our summons to show up, and overcome the vast lethargic powers within us. This is what is asked of us, to show up as the person we really are, as best we can manage, under circumstances over which we may have no control. This showing up as best we can is growing up. That is all that life really asks of us: to show up as best we can.” 
       James Hollis. “Living an Examined Life. Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey.” Sounds True, 2018.

     A clearly more evolved, effective alternative to reacting with the 3 Fs is responding with the fourth F: form friendships ie co-operation, 'pulling together,' working for the common good. Unfortunately, many of us may also feel, to some extent, 'alone in a hostile world,' lacking a solid social support network of extended family, partner, meaningful friendships or meaningful spiritual organizations.

     “Feelings of connectedness, like feelings of kindness, activate the brain’s attachment system. The ‘befriend’ part of the ‘tend and befriend’ instinct has to do with the human tendency to affiliate, to come together in groups in order to feel secure. For this reason, people who feel connected to others are not as frightened by difficult life circumstances and are more readily able to roll with the punches.
     Of course, it’s wonderful when we can get our need to belong met by loved ones such as friends or family. But if you’re someone who has trouble sustaining good relationships, this type of social support may be missing in your life. And even in the best of circumstances, other people aren’t always able to make us feel that we belong and are accepted. In the cavernous halls of our own minds, we may feel isolated in any moment, even if this isn’t the way things actually are. Our fears and self-judgments are like blinders that often prevent us from seeing the hands that are being held out to help us. We may also be ashamed to admit our feelings of inadequacy to those we love, for fear that they wouldn’t love us anymore if they knew the way we really were. Hiding our true selves from others then makes us feel even more alone.
     That’s why it’s so important to transform our relationship with ourselves by recognizing our inherent interconnectedness. If we can compassionately remind ourselves in moments of falling down that failure is part of the shared human experience, then that moment becomes one of togetherness rather than isolation. When our troubled, painful experiences are framed by the recognition that countless others have undergone similar hardships, the blow is softened. The pain still hurts, but it doesn’t become compounded by feelings of separation. Sadly, however, our culture tells us to notice how we are unique from others, not how we are the same.” 
       Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.

      "As we learn to balance and harmonize our mindbody, and to become more still within ourselves, and more awake and clear minded within this stillness - we become more empathically attuned to the people we share our lives with and more capable of harmonizing with their state of being in ways that bring greater harmony and balance alive in the field of our relationships, families, teams, organizations, and communities. And, if we find ourselves overwhelmed by our empathic resonance with the inner pain and needs of others that we experience through being in their presence or through encountering media that conveys their state of being, then the greatest protection from that empathic distress will be found in responding to them with actions, words, thoughts, energy, and prayers that flow from compassion and genuine intention to help to ease their pain or to reduce the causes of their suffering." Joel Levey PhD

     “Occasionally we feel movements of pure, awakened consciousness – free of conditioned thought – and we are fully present without separation. This may happen during meditation when the mind chatter stops, when we feel a silent and deep state of intimacy with life and nature, or in a crisis demanding our full attention and immediate response. Awakened consciousness responds from an immediacy that is unaffected by personal history. It is intuitive, spontaneous and direct. Awakened, pure consciousness exists before and continues beyond personal identifications. In this state, we may:
     • have multi-dimensional experiences and also see the simplest creation, like a flower or a child, as wondrous and miraculous;
     • know ourselves as profound stillness; and
     • sense presence without any attachment to the one who is present; it is something that has always been with us, but we have been unaware of it because of the many distractions of the mind and emotions.

     Consciousness can wake up under many circumstances. Before and after an awakening, many of us experience a state that is free of ego, as if there is no ‘me.’ It is a sense of vastness and space, which is commonly described as emptiness. Emptiness can cause us to feel lost and ungrounded because the sense of ‘I’ is gone, but this emptiness is pregnant with potential. Releasing ego-identity is essential as consciousness becomes ready to realize the truth of itself.” 
       Bonnie L. Greenwell. “When Spirit Leaps. Navigating the Process of Spiritual Awakening.” Non-Duality Press, 2018.

Don Penz "Long Point, Green Bay" www.fogforestgallery.ca

The Fear - Love Continuum

     After four or five years of continuous hard training, while awarding the black belt to deserving karate students, a wise karate teacher may tell them that now they're ready to learn karate. What does this mean? Eagerly focusing on the goal of the mythical black belt at least partially obscures important deeper engagement with the martial art itself. Only after the extrinsic reason for training is put to rest, can training purely for the love of the art really begin.
     When obsessed with a goal, we're filled with enthusiastic energy. Energy is necessary to get things done. But when single-pointed zeal takes over, quieter, gentler, more refined qualities like perspective, maturity & depth are often pushed to the side. When obsessed with getting or avoiding, we forget who we are - our authenticity, then everything goes wrong.

     The more we crave a goal, the more we're coming from a place of not having enough, not being enough. "If ONLY I had X, THEN I'd be happy" - is part of the "fight, flight, freeze instinct," at the fear end of the fear-love continuum, where we feel alone, drowning in stress hormones (adrenalin & cortisone). It's very difficult to think clearly and make good judgements in this state. Action arising from this sense of being an animal trapped in a hostile environment is survival based self-centeredness, with no regard for others, the environment or even one's own long-term happiness. A frighteningly large proportion of the population, even in wealthy countries, is stuck in this hellish realm, often for life.
     When we very simply, directly engage with whatever or whomever we're with in this present moment, we are being authentic. This overlaps with the "tend & befriend instinct" at the love end of the fear-love continuum, where we feel our deep connection with everyone & everything, and feel pleasant, partly due to the hormone oxytocin. Authenticity transcends words & concepts, and can only be experienced: profound peace, stillness, silence, ease, awareness. Action from authenticity arises spontaneously as it feels appropriate, nurturing, decreasing suffering and increasing flourishing for all, including oneself.

     Mindfulness practice is a gentle way of gradually releasing conditioned survival strategies (that today are almost always inappropriate & self-defeating), and learning to reconnect with and stabilize in our own, deepest authenticity. Mindfulness practice is a way of getting back to reality & quality of life.

     “Remember we don’t meditate to get anything, but to get rid of things. We do it, not with desire, but with letting go. If you want anything, you won’t find it.” Ajahn Chah 

      "... even one moment of true silence can have a profound impact. When you are truly silent, there are no obstacles between you and the truth." Miguel Chen

www.awakeningartsacademy.com