Fundamental Energy Crisis

     Very few of us seem to be aware of our real energy crisis. Yes, oil / gas / electricity availability is problematic, but to paraphrase Einstein, the energy / consciousness that got us into this dire mess CANNOT possibly lift us out of it, into a better future. Our estranged, adversarial relationship with our own hearts, each other & Nature is what's so painfully unnatural & unsustainable.

“If a living system
is suffering
from ill health,
the remedy is
to connect it
with more of itself.” Francisco Varela

    “an essential choice … confronts us all: whether to cling to the false security of our fixed ideas and tribal views, even though they bring us only momentary satisfaction, or to overcome our fear and make the leap to living an authentic life. … We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax & embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.” Pema Chödrön, “The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human” Tricycle, Fall 2012

     We must wake up to & follow the consistent silent summons of our true nature to unconditionally love & nurture each another and Nature as the wise elders we are. 

    “Meditation asks, ‘Who am I?’ 

    Therapy asks, ‘How do I heal and become happier?’ 

    Purpose work addresses the question, ‘Where do I belong in the ecology of life?’ Purpose guiding breaks the spell of our default purposes of safety, security, comfort & outward success, and orients us towards our true purpose, which is to embody our unique calling within. When we all have the opportunity to live our calling, we can support our collective true purpose: to become co-creators of our species’ evolution. We may, thus, give birth to more beauty, truth, & goodness into the world.” Jonathan Gustin https://batgap.com/jonathan-gustin/

    “Awakening arises in times of vulnerability and awkwardness between, before, & after where prior identities are canceled and anything is possible and nothing certain.” Lin Jensen

    "Spiritual growth is a fine-tuning of our ear to the needs of our heart. ... Once we abandon the belief that there is a more spiritually useful moment than the one we are in, we have embraced our life and infused it with the energy for awakening." We CAN "recover the sacred in the most remote areas of life, in the midst of difficulty and dissatisfaction, loneliness & despair. The reality of problems is challenged and investigated, and life begins to thrive free of circumstances & conditions. The heart takes over and is resurrected from the conditioned habits of mind.” Rodney Smith

    “Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein

    "One of the gifts of global uncertainty is that it requires us to recognize & release unconscious biases that have been passed down for generations. These include the perception that splits into opposites and values light over dark, speed over slowing down, productivity over attunement, and conclusion over not knowing. Awakening requires that we soften the habit of binary perception & restore our capacity for clear seeing. ... an embodied exploration of luminous darkness (is) our greatest ally in seeing clearly — from the heart." Deborah Eden Tull

    "Try to be mindful, & let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many strange & wonderful things come & go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha." Ajahn Chah

    "We are stars wrapped in skin.
      The light you are seeking
      has always been within." Rumi

Don't Give Up... by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

 

Energy and Mindfulness - Part Two

     Meditation practice (like life in general?) has a tendency to overemphasize practitioners' strengths and further neglect their weaknesses. So it's very easy & common to become progressively more unbalanced. Yet what we're really after, is bringing our own mind, heart & body in harmony with others & the universe - harmonizing the personal with the transpersonal - ideally in a tangibly practical way. Indeed, Adyashanti teaches the importance of awakening at all three levels: head, heart & gut. These correlate with 3 key chakras. A practical, approachable technique is taught by Judith Blackstone: “The Realization Process." Sounds True https://www.soundstrue.com/store/the-realization-process-2436.html

      Judith Blackstone developed the Realization Process, a method of embodied nondual realization and psychological and relational healing. In the Realization Process, the radical openness of nonduality is based on deep contact with the internal space of one’s body. In this way, we discover an authentic, quality-rich experience of our individual being at the same time as we transcend our individuality. We realize ourselves as unified consciousness, pervading everywhere. 
     Below, a small part of her interview by Rick Archer of Buddha At The Gaspump: https://batgap.com/judith-blackstone/

     “I’m making a distinction in this work between matter, energy, and this pervasive space. It’s a distinction in the way we can experience ourselves. 
     So we can experience ourselves as physical matter, and when we do that we feel pretty separate from everything. 
     We can experience ourselves as energy, and most sensitive people do grow up experiencing themselves as energy – as that kind of streaming & pulsing & vibrating. And we can meditate in our energy system, and that will become even more fluid & expanded and so forth. 
     Now we can also attune to ourselves in an even more subtle level than energy, and that’s this pervasive stillness. And that pervasive stillness pervades the body and the environment as a whole. And that means that we then find ourselves in our body as a whole – it’s a dimension of unity, so we experience our whole internal space as a unity. 
     Now when we get there, when we know ourselves as Fundamental Consciousness (it has a lot of different names), then we get to an even more subtle level of our energy system – a very, very fine vibration that seems to be actually inseparable from the stillness, so that we experience the stillness, this radiance from the stillness at the same time. 
     The Japanese philosopher, Yasuo Yuasa, described how the internal space of the body becomes radiant coherence, as it’s pervaded by the transcendent. That means we become whole within ourselves, at the same time as we become one with everything else. It means we don’t have to eradicate our self-experience. We don’t disappear. In fact we become juicier. We become more present, and more aware of ourselves as even as an individual, but not in an abstract way, in an experienced way.” Judith Blackstone

     And this, from one of my favorite books of all time:
     “Samadhi can be conceptualized as the free flow of vital energy both within the body and between the body and the universe.

     Apart from the normal communication between people through language and action there is another quite different sort of mutual influence. It is that of the rhythm of the Original strength which permeates all human beings and all Nature. Through it every individual thing in essence and, as it were, underground is connected with every other. If then one who is further removed from the working of the Primordial Force is close to one who lives more in accord with it, the rhythm of the Primordial Force will certainly be transmitted from the one to the other. The latter without knowing it exerts a good influence on the other.”
     Sayama MK. “Samadhi. Self-development in Zen, Swordsmanship, and Psychotherapy.” State University of New York Press, 1986.

mollycules.podia.com