All Paths to One Mountain Top

    Basic meditation instructions usually guide us to de-armor mentally, emotionally & physically, to allow us to open up to ultimate reality. We do this by: Relaxing (letting go of efforting); Simply "being" (letting go of "doing mode" - trying to control everything) - allowing the belly to soften, allowing the heart area to soften, allowing the mind to open (transcending habitual thought loops, must haves & must avoids). Part of us (our heart / right hemisphere) clearly wants to open up to ultimate reality.
    But another part of us (ego mind / left hemisphere) resists because we fear losing control & being overwhelmed by our shadow. This resistance is the main obstacle to peace & joy. Asking us to let go of our fearful avoidances, defensiveness & distractions is like asking a drowning person to let go of the scraps of wood they're hanging onto for dear life. We resist letting go as if our life depended on it. Our shadows are the scary-looking gargoyles "guarding" the entrance to holy places of transformation. Our usual "ordinary unhappiness" level of life does indeed depend on maintaining protective armoring; while our awakened life waits for us beyond this.
    One way or another, awakening out of universal human suffering involves learning to approach (rather than avoid), accept (rather than reject), and actually befriend & become intimate with our own personal "darkness" or shadow. And the result is transformational.

    “The process of unlocking your higher purpose is one of turning the authority of your mind over to your heart. This alone will transform your life.”
    Richard Rudd “The Gene Keys. Embracing Your Higher Purpose.” Watkins, 2009.

    Below, Richard Rudd's brief summary of his Gene Keys path towards Awakening :

    "Through the Gene Keys ... I’ve looked at DNA through a poet’s eyes, because I’m essentially a poet (which) means I attempt to live a poetic life and I see things poetically. And to see things poetically is to see beauty basically, in as many places as you can, especially in ugly places.
    And so we have to start by looking at the ugly places inside us, which in Gene Keys we call the shadow state. Everyone kind of knows these places. If you just close your eyes for a moment and think, ‘Where is the ugliest place inside me right now? Where’s the big challenge? What is it?’ And you know what it is, where it is, instantly. Somewhere something that you’re grappling with that is a grain in the oyster - that shadow pattern, which you are attempting to resolve, or trying to distract yourself from. 

    IF you give it space inside your being, IF you give it time, IF you allow it some compassion, IF you treat yourself gently, IF you watch it, IF you bring mindfulness & awareness to it, you will see it begin to transform. That’s the case with any shadow pattern, any victim pattern that we are playing out, going round-and-round in circles in the samsara loop.
    You have to recognize that this is the point of meditation, the point of contemplation. Contemplation is the word / technique I use, because it doesn’t necessarily involve closing our eyes – you can create the contemplative state, while doing absolutely anything in your daily life, and so through the art of contemplation, I teach how to bring that state, that interior awareness, into everything in your life, beginning by taking little pauses throughout your day so that you can begin to create that space. Lots of little pauses, interconnected, starts to create quite a lot of space, and it also creates more time throughout your day, which is an irony really, because you’re pausing, so you might think that you’re losing time, but actually you’re pumping time into your day. It’s a strange paradox, because you’re stopping, pausing. When I say pause, you can still be in motion. You’re pausing in your mind loops, in your struggles, your old patterns, so that you can see them clearly. And you’re creating space, compassion & gentleness around them.

    That begins to create this ... kind of flower which begins to open out of the shadow, out of the very thing that you’ve been avoiding, ends up being this great gift. 

    So in the Gene Keys are all 3 levels: the seed is the shadow; the flower is the gift that’s hidden in the seed & the shadow – every shadow, every difficulty in life is really asking us to do some alchemy. There’s something powerful in that. The most difficult thing in your life has the most potential if you have the courage to give it some space, and really look at it. You have to be authentic, so honest with yourself. That’s a process, and you might need support as well.
    And then the final aspect is the siddhi – a Sanskrit word, you could say Divine Essence, Divine Treasure. It’s the genetic enlightened expression of a specific part of your nature. So everyone, when they become fully awake, has a completely different expression. So when you look at the Gene Keys, there are 64 of them, and you look down the line of the language for the siddhis, you see all these words for compassion, rapture, ecstasy, perfection, beauty, humility … they’re all describing the same state, but through a slightly different lens. So understanding that every shadow contains one of those siddhis inside it, it’s hidden in there, it’s the fruit, in the seed. And you might think it's a long way away – the seed is tiny, and it’s going to grow into a tree, and it’s going to have to go through all this, and then you get this beautiful fruit, and the fruit of course contains another seed, which is a beautiful metaphor in itself. But that is in there, and that metaphor is life. 

    All you have to do, is create that contemplative space inside you, those pauses, so you can begin to look at these difficult patterns. That’s all the ancients actually ever taught. Now we can go off into quantum realities and describe it all ((as Robert Grant does in the earlier part of this interview)), but actually, it comes down to just that, just that mindfulness, just that spaciousness, so that the pattern has space to transform, and then it can transform really quickly as well. You can go from a seed to a tree really fast because awareness is the water, the nutrition & the nourishment that allows that whole process to happen, and then you’re left with this fruit, the juicy ecstasy of biting into this mango, or whatever your favourite fruit is.
    And it was there all along, that golden thread, that golden awareness, that awakening. It was there all along. It was in the numbers, it was just hidden in the thread, in the stream, and we just had to unlock it. And that’s what the Gene Keys are. And that’s what the Keys of Enoch were. And that’s what all these ancient teachings are about – the I Ching, Shakras, and the Vedic systems, the Kerala system, all the systems. You get to see the same golden thread in every single one, but just in a totally different way. Look at the Sufis in the Middle-Eastern deserts, they had more words for love than any other tradition. Like the Eskimos have different words for snow, the Sufis had different words for love – just layers and layers of different words to describe different aspects of love, because that’s all they wanted to see was love. There’s love that’s full of angst, desire & misery, but it’s still love. And then there’s love that’s at the highest level of divine annihilation and oneness with the cosmos – that’s also love. So it’s all about love ultimately. It begins with self-love.
    So creating space in your life through a contemplative practice, and I would say ultimately learning to be gentle with yourself is the greatest secret I’ve ever learned.
    And I learned one day ... what awakening is ... It’s a series of softenings. That went into me so deep. Wow. You just have to go on softening your heart, and then the mind opens, and everything begins to just kind of transform. And then those higher states are just there, are revealed, they’re underneath.” Richard Rudd
    “A Meeting of Brilliant Minds - Richard Rudd & Robert Grant on a Collective Awakening” - DejaBlu Ep109 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/a-meeting-of-brilliant-minds-richard-rudd-robert/id1480169551?i=1000617036026

    An excellent free app to help practice the Gene Keys is: "Tripple Flame"

Technologies of the Sacred

“The mystery, the essence of all life
is not separate from the silent openness
of simple listening.”

Toni Packer

    "Awe gives you this big picture, it makes you open up, it makes you creative, it makes you think outside of the box — everything we need in doing good work." Dacher Keltner PhD

     "Fear, suffering, and focus … enable adventurers to release hidden powers and access other realms of experiences. … extreme adventure is not only a spiritual search, but also a spiritual tool. And it is the same for all of us, adventurers or not. The hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives can enrich our existence, revealing our true identity, awakening us to a greater awareness of our own potential, and opening us to the infinite beauty of the universe.”
    Maria Coffey. “Explorers of the Infinite. The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes – and What They Reveal About Near-Death Experiences, Psychic Communications, and Touching the Beyond.” Jeremy P. Tarcher / Penguin, 2008.

    “The importance of non-ordinary states of consciousness for ancient and aboriginal cultures is reflected in the amount of time and energy that the members of these human groups dedicated to the development of technologies of the sacred, various procedures capable of inducing them for ritual and spiritual purposes. These methods combine in various ways drumming and other forms of percussion, music, chanting, rhythmic dancing, changes of breathing, and cultivation of special forms of awareness. Extended social and sensory isolation, such as a stay in a cave, desert, arctic ice, or in high mountains, also play an important role as means of inducing this category of non-ordinary states. Extreme physiological interventions used for this purpose include fasting, sleep deprivation, dehydration, use of powerful laxatives and purgatives, and even infliction of severe pain, body mutilation, and massive bloodletting. By far the most effective tool for inducing healing and transformative non-ordinary states has been ritual use of psychedelic plants.
    Mainstream psychiatrists initially dismissed and even ridiculed native ritual events as products of primitive superstition based on ignorance and magical thinking. They relegated non-ordinary states of consciousness of any kind into the domain of psychopathology. This situation gradually changed in the course of the twentieth century, particularly in its second half, when Western scientists actually made some major contributions to the armamentarium of the technologies of the sacred. Clinical and experimental psychiatrists and psychologists had the opportunity to acquire firsthand experience with chemically pure psychedelic substances and with a variety of laboratory mind-altering procedures from sensory deprivation to biofeedback. They also witnessed the effect of non-ordinary states of consciousness in various forms of experiential therapeutic techniques using breathwork and bodywork, such as neo-Reichian approaches, Rebirthing, and Holotropic Breathwork. Those open-minded enough to take on the challenge of these revolutionary tools thus had a chance to discover their power and their great therapeutic potential.
    When we recognized the unique nature of this category of non-ordinary states of consciousness, we found it difficult to believe that contemporary psychiatry does not have a specific category and term for these theoretically and practically important experiences. Because we felt strongly that they deserve to be distinguished from altered states of consciousness and not be seen as manifestations of serious mental diseases, we started referring to them as holotropic. This composite word means literally ‘oriented toward wholeness’ or ‘moving toward wholeness.’
    The name holotropic suggests something that might come as a surprise to an average Westerner – that in our everyday state of consciousness we identify with only a small fraction of who we really are and do not experience the full extent of our being. Holotropic states of consciousness have the potential to help us recognize that we are not ‘skin-encapsulated egos’ – as British philosopher and writer Alan Watts called it – and that, in the last analysis, we are commensurate with the cosmic creative principle itself. Or that – using the statement by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and philosopher – ‘we are not human beings having a spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having human experiences.’
    This astonishing idea is not new. In the ancient Indian Upanishads, the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is ‘Tat tvam asi.’ This succinct Sanskrit sentence means literally: ‘Thou art That,’ or ‘You are Godhead.’ It suggests that we are not namarupa – name and form (body/ego), but that our deepest identity is with a divine spark in our innermost being (Atman) that is ultimately identical with the supreme universal principle (Brahman). And Hinduism is not the only religion that has made this discovery. The revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the mystical core of all great spiritual traditions. The name for this principle could thus be the Tao, Buddha, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Great Spirit, Sila, and many others. Holotropic experiences have the potential to help us discover our true identity and our cosmic status.”
    Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof. “Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy.” State University of New York Press, 2010. 

    Psychiatrist Stan Grof (above) spent 50 years doing pioneering research on the use of entheogenic plant medicines (ayahuasca, psilocybin, peyote, etc.) and Holotropic Breathwork. Holotropic Breathwork, which uses circular breathing, music & bodywork, harnesses the intrinsic healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Grof's book explores the healing, transformative, & evolutionary potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness accessed through Holotropic Breathwork, and their great value as a source of new revolutionary data about consciousness, the human psyche, and the nature of reality. 

    One-day, experiential courses : https://holotropic.ca/events/

 

Transformative Power of Deep Acceptance

      Most of us define ourselves in terms of what we can & cannot accept, and are fairly rigid about these opinions. We all realize, at some level, that deeply meaningful aspects of life powerfully influence us. BUT instead of deeply investigating these via self-reflection, self-inquiry, meditation etc, most of us do whatever we can to avoid such topics, even sliding into nihilism, denying that life has any meaning at all!

     "Existential crisis (existential dread) ... when individuals question whether their lives have meaning, purpose, or value, and are negatively impacted by the contemplation. It may be commonly, but not necessarily, tied to depression or inevitably negative speculations on purpose in life such as the futility of all effort (eg 'if one day I will be forgotten, what is the point of all of my work?')" en.wikipedia.org

      Avoidance is beneficial only when we're too young, or otherwise unable to consciously deal with reality. But avoidance so easily becomes an automatic reaction to challenges, that distraction becomes a way of life. As soon as we feel the slightest discomfort, we immediately try to escape. We rationalize our constant compulsive busyness by blaming external factors, choosing to ignore our fearfully immature inner life.

     Of course the opposite of avoidance & intolerance, is simply accepting life, as it is.

     "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." Marie Curie

     "In time we hate that which we often fear.” William Shakespeare

     "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." Marcus Aurelius

     "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." Sigmund Freud

     "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Joseph Campbell

     "Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire." Dan Brown

     “You take up the spiritual path only when you feel you cannot do otherwise.” The Mother

      “Most people go to their graves believing suffering is unavoidable. How sad that is. If you turn from the possibility that it could be otherwise, you will suffer needlessly until the day you die. But here is something: the end of suffering would be the least of the benefits, if you become free. The real miracle is not the profound undoing of anguish, but the riches that would flood the freed-up ‘space.’” Jan Frazier, “When Fear Falls Away”

      Eckhart Tolle had a very difficult childhood & severe depression, however, as a result of acceptance, his life transformed into a lasting, profoundly positive, meaningful experience. His description:

     “In my case, grace erupted into a bad karma situation: unhappy childhood, parents continuously fighting, no harmony in the environment, often lack of money, then my parents divorced which was uncommon at the time & I felt great shame about it, my Dad was like an unexploded bomb that was always ready to & did periodically explode. So the young adult became unhappy. He had absorbed unhappiness from the environment.
     So all that’s not good karma, and because of that, suffering became unbearable, and then a surrender happened (choiceless acceptance), and then there was an eruption suddenly of grace. The fact that surrender happened in the midst of the suffering, is probably grace. So, surrender happened, and with surrender, grace could suddenly flow in fully. Grace is the essence of who you are, coming through the form (physical body & personality). So in grace then, you’re not the density of the form – the form’s density lessens. As it lessens, grace is able to flow through. The density of the form lessens through surrender or acceptance of the present moment as it is, as a spiritual practice. If you can make that your spiritual practice, you may not succeed all the time. That’s fine. Have compassion with yourself. So you have another level of acceptance behind the non-acceptance. If you don’t succeed in accepting what is, then accept that at this moment I can’t accept what is. Allow the emotion to be there, you still have space then, and grace is space.
     Grace can enter – grace is the spaciousness of the unconditioned, the divine (primordial) consciousness. The quickest way of inviting grace to into your life is by becoming friendly with the 'isness' of this moment - no matter what form it takes. It already is anyway, so why not say yes? It doesn’t mean you can’t take action, but at the moment, it is. So you ‘go with the flow’ of life. The flow is always here & now. You never go against it. The starting point is the isness of this moment.
     With that acceptance, the gate is open for grace to come in. If you complain about difficulties or the unsatisfactory nature of this moment, the gate or the shutters are closed so the sunlight can’t come in. It doesn’t mean you’re more powerful than the sun. The sun isn’t concerned about your shutters. So when you are somehow against the present moment, or you treat it only as a means to an end because there’s a more important place you want to get to, grace can’t operate in your life, or you only get a trickle, just to keep you going. Occasionally, for example when you’re in awe of a beautiful sunset, just for a moment the ‘complaining entity’ subsides, and in that moment grace can come in, and you can live on that one sunset for three weeks. But of course that’s only a trickle. To go from form to formlessness, is done by accepting whatever form arises in the present moment, whatever form this moment takes. With the acceptance of form, the formless opens up in you.
     And the ultimate truth of that is in the image of the crucifixion, which I see as going beyond religion. Some people dislike it. They say it’s all to do with suffering, and it’s unhealthy, and so on. But there is a deep meaning there, that for a long time, perhaps could not be expressed in an abstract way. That meaning is that here you have the image of complete suffering of a human. He is nailed to the cross, which is a torture instrument, and this human is able to surrender & accept, ‘Not my will but thy will be done,’ and then suddenly the torture instrument becomes a symbol of the divine. Isn’t that strange? The torture instrument has become a symbol of the divine. So through acceptance, whatever looks like an obstacle, or even a dreadful thing, becomes transformed.
     Every situation that’s accepted deeply – and if it’s a very big thing like a crucifixion, there needs to be very deep acceptance – and immediately, there’s a transformation. So grace is hiding also in that which looks dreadful. The dreadful sufferings we see all around us - they are there, but grace is hiding there. And you can only see the truth of this in yourself. I’m not saying anybody should believe in that. You have to find out for yourself that grace is hiding in what the seemingly dreadful things – even in little things that go wrong – but even more so in big things that go wrong.
     And ultimately you see it’s not wrong, it didn’t go wrong – what it looked like in the moment when you judged it. So that’s inviting grace into your life, through bringing this deep yes to the present moment. Then your evolution accelerates. And the more you do that, the less you need the disasters, because you can operate with the flowering of consciousness. Consciousness wants to flower into this dimension, in this dimension. So it’s really welcoming what is.”
     Above transcribed from the superb video below:

What's This All About?

     All of us experience varying degrees of hardship & pain in life. Far more of us have endured major traumas than we realized, as shown in the ACE studies. And, I suspect most if not all of us become at least somewhat wiser by the end of our life. Some of us are fortunate enough to undergo a profoundly transformative, liberating shift in consciousness - a radical change in self-concept, worldview AND how we relate to life.

      "The long term poor health outcomes in people who have experienced multiple adverse events in childhood have been well documented since the original CDC-Kaiser study in the late 1990's. Those people who have experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are at significantly increased risk of chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes as well as mental illness and health risk behaviours."
     M Boullier, M Blair. "Adverse Childhood Experiences." Pediatrics and Child Health 2018; 28 (3): 132-7.

     "… harsh, unpredictable environments in childhood (may well be) the common node of psychiatric disease. ‘If you look at every disorder, the core of each disorder is some sort of aberrant way of viewing or seeing the world,’ he says. ‘It’s that paranoid ideation.’ There’s the boy who thinks that everyone is out to get him and is later diagnosed with a conduct disorder. The skinny girl who looks in the mirror and thinks that she’s fat – eating disorder. The teenager who thinks that they’re guilty for their parents’ disputes and drinking – depression.
     ‘One of the most interesting origins for much of this aberrant thought comes out of harsh & inconsistent & unpredictable early environments,’ Caspi tells me. ‘Those kinds of experiences that set up the anticipation of bad things happening, or they set up the anticipation of being rejected, they set up the anticipation of being violated, they set up anticipation of constantly being threatened, and things going wrong. Things ... being unalterable. And thereby spiraling out of control. So I think a lot of it is about what those early experiences do – they distort our expectations about the future. And that’s why they’re so consequential.’"
     Alex Riley. “The seed of suffering. The p-factor is the dark matter of psychiatry: an invisible, unifying force that might lie behind a multitude of mental disorders.”
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-p-factor-says-about-the-root-of-all-mental-illness

     Clearly, therapy by competent mental-health specialists, as early in life as possible is ideal for those who've experienced major trauma, or even lesser trauma that to highly sensitive children, may be equally damaging. With adequate therapy, such children have the chance to see themselves & their surroundings not as victims in a cruel, random universe, but in a progressively more balanced, realistic light. Then, a lifetime of self-reflection & meditation can proceed relatively unhindered.

     "When all the layers of false identity have been stripped off, there is no longer any version of that old self. What is left behind is pure consciousness (rigpa). That is our original being. That is our true identity. Our true nature is indestructible. No matter whether we are sick or healthy, poor or wealthy, it always remains divine and perfect as it is. When we realize our true nature, our life is transformed in a way we could not have imagined before. We realize the very meaning of our life and it puts an end to all searching right there." Anam Thubten

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon
if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates
us from ourselves?”

Thomas Merton

 

Ostriches, Chickens and Eagles

     “A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
     All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
     Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
     The old eagle looked up in awe. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
     ‘That’s the eagle, the king of birds,’ said his neighbor. So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.” Anthony de Mello SJ

     When women and children are rescued from an abusive home, and can choose between a safe shelter or returning "home", most choose the hell they know rather than face a freedom they've never experienced. It's so easy to rigidly imprison ourselves in nihilism, hoping that this tiny self-created prison (the hell we know) will protect us against possible disappointments (unknown freedom). Dark humor: 'No sense being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway!' Even false optimism has been shown to work better than pessimism. But by far the most effective, balanced & intelligent approach is "leaning in" with curiosity, into ALL aspects of our life, especially those we fear ***, to learn as deeply as possible about ALL that life has to offer.
      *** “Jung said that it is exactly where you feel most frightened and most in pain that your greatest opportunity lies for personal growth.”
     Robert A. Johnson. “Inner Work. Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.” HarperOne, 1986. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

     "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." Marie Curie

     “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with those we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.” Gus Speth

     "Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry asleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know, all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare."
     Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, 1992.

     “Ultimately, however, your path is unique to you, and it begins in the darkness of not knowing and the simple yearning of your own heart. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, ‘You must find your own way. Unless you find it yourself, it will not be your own way and will take you nowhere.’ You need to be willing to sit in this darkness, recognizing that the truth is hidden here, without immediately leaping to claim easy answers or proven practices. ‘To live in the know is bondage,’ adds Nisargadatta. ‘To live in the unknown is liberation.”
     Stephan Bodian. “Wake Up Now. A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening.” McGraw-Hill, 2008.

“As we travel through life, we are all seekers
after something larger than ourselves…”
Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer PhD

Alysha Brilla "Immigrant"

 

Chakras & Core Strength

     “We are heading into a new era, one in which humanity is being initiated into a higher state of being. That higher state is not a fairy-tale transformation that happens with the wave of a wand but a slow metamorphosis in how we understand the life force: how it is organized, how it flows through us, what it means, and how best to utilize it.
     One aspect of this initiation is to fully occupy our bodies and live in the center of our core – our sacred center – the vertical column of energy that rises from base to crown. This axis mundi, which Leadbeater calls the ‘axis of creation’ or ‘rod of Meru,’ is our personal connection between heaven and earth. In ancient myths, it is said that doomsday will approach as heaven and earth become disconnected. In a world where doomsday is precariously close, we are called to this core connection as a way of healing, not only ourselves, but also our fractured world in which spirituality and everyday life have become dangerously dissociated.
     The core is common to all living things – every blade of grass, every tree, every person’s vertical channel, including the core of our legs, arms, fingers, and toes. To come from our core is to occupy the most direct access to Source that we have: the Source within, aligned between heaven and earth.
     The chakras exist as sacred centers strung like jewels along the axis of our vertical core. When the chakras are aligned, we become that connection between heaven and earth. From this place we are capable of co-creating heaven on earth, from a place of consciousness, wisdom, sensitivity and compassion. Perhaps with this connection intact, we have a means to avert doomsday and continue the evolutionary experiment into its potential glory.
     Few people actually live in their core. Because it is the source of vital, divine energy, we learn at any cost to protect it as we grow up through the twists and turns of childhood. We create necessary defenses, but they come with a cost. Later, our vital life energy becomes more engaged with those defenses than with the precious core we were trying to protect! We no longer feel our aliveness, our vitality, our raison d’etre. The chakra system brings us back to our core.
     Leadbeater explains … the important link between vitality and health, how we are nourished by the light of the sun from above and the rising serpent power from the earth. It is the confluence of these two forces above and below that energizes and awakens the chakras. In a world where we remove ourselves from the earth and shield ourselves from the sun’s rays with walls and rooftops, spending the bulk of our time indoors, it is no wonder we are ailing. 
     The chakras come from the Tantric period of yoga philosophy, circa 500-1000CE. Tantric spirituality is a weaving of dualities: heaven and earth, masculine and feminine, inner and outer, mind and body. The emphasis is on incorporating everything rather than rejecting any one aspect of reality in favour of another. In this way, the chakras represent seven essential elements of our existence – not that the lower chakras are bad and the upper chakras are good, but that each level represents both light and shadow and must be balanced in order for us to be healthy, thriving individuals.
     The chakras represent a map for our healing, a profound formula for wholeness and a template for transformation. They describe the soul’s architecture, just as we study the bones, muscles, and organs of the body’s physical architecture, the chakras enable us to study the subtler energies of the soul. Like the human face, this architecture varies from person to person, yet it has elements common to all.
     The elements of the chakras – from bottom to top, earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, and thought – describe a spectrum of creation from the physical world to pure consciousness. The energies of the soul run both ways, in the rising current of liberation that comes about as matter transforms into subtler energies of consciousness, and in the descending current of manifestation that begins in thoughts or ideas and gains density as they progress downward into the manifested plane. The chakras are stepping stones along this pathway.
     As human beings we need to have both the upward and downward channels available. We need to be able to liberate from limiting or destructive patterns, which is a function of consciousness we call realization. To realize is to see with ‘real eyes,’ to see what is real, the energy behind the material representation.
     We also need to be able to manifest our visions into reality, to actualize our life purpose and take higher consciousness into its full outward expression to evolve the world around us. The chakra system is a map for that process. It is at best an integrative system, one that can bring us back into wholeness once again.” Anodea Judith PhD
       C.W. Leadbeater. “The Chakras. An Authoritative Edition of the Groundbreaking Classic.” Quest Books, 1997.

Acceptance and Discretionary Suffering

     The core of meditation practice IMHO is carefully investigating the difference between unavoidable vs discretionary suffering: investigating how we can minimize our tendency to unwittingly cause LOTS of unnecessary problems for ourself & those around us.
     A reasonable starting point is 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. 

     Let's look at the rather large & often frustrating "things I cannot change" category. Many people suffering with chronic pain, as well as a variety of mental health issues including addictions, can potentially benefit greatly from the following teaching:

     “Accepting and releasing into just what is, is the homeopathy of Zen. Being willing to settle into just this experience – this is the teaching of saying yes to our life, not giving in to thoughts of another life. We learn that our resistance strengthens whatever we want to avoid.
     Trying on the attitude of yes is the not-knowing mind, whereas the conditioned mind creates conditions. This is too much (or not enough). No way am I going to stay in this situation. The not-knowing mind is willing to know and feel whatever is happening.
     Recently I was thinking about a difficult situation in my life, trying to find a way to make it acceptable. For days I would think about it, invite my mind to reimagine it in a less painful way. After weeks of trying, I realized, I’m helpless. I can’t solve this by myself: I just have to be it. That realization was an enormous relief. Like Ram Dass saying, I’m going to be on this train forever, I settled into my own circumstances: There isn’t anything I can do about this situation. There is no way to escape it. I must live with it and let it become digested and transformed internally on its own. Thinking I had to solve the problem became the problem.”
        Katherine Thanas. “The Truth of This Life. Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is.” Shambhala, 2018.

Releasing from the Tyrrany of Thoughts

     The practice below works wondrously well when one is ready. Readiness is absolutely key.

     “Consciously bringing into awareness the impermanent nature of conditions is the gateway into emptiness.

     The transformative power of a conscious, mindful thought is that it reveals its own transiency. For example, the thought ‘Who is thinking?’ is an invitation to make contact with the present moment. In doing so, the thinking process is recognized for what it is. When we’re not so enchanted by our thoughts, we notice something else, something quite simple. We notice that all thoughts manifest and dissolve back into silent listening. This is a great relief. We don’t have to become shaped by our thinking. We can be liberated from its bondage. In seeing thought as ‘just thought,’ the sky of the heart is revealed, with no footprints. ‘You won’t find the sage out there.’ When there is wisdom, the endless searching for happiness ‘somewhere else’ vanishes. Where is there to go? Beautiful thoughts and ugly thoughts, all arise and cease in awareness, and yet awareness remains unmoved.
      In a moment of letting anxiety, or out-of-control worry, be just what it is – not fighting or getting swept away by it – the heaviness disappears. Right where there was suffering, peace appears. Sometimes in those moments, painful sensations may still be experienced in the body, but the added distress of believing ‘it shouldn’t be this way’ vanishes."

       Kittisaro & Thanissara. "Listening to the Heart. A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism." North Atlantic Books, 2014.

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