Waking Up from the Trance

    Many of us, without realizing it, bring our driven, perfectionistic energy to spiritual practices. For decades we may fail to realize that the goal of spirituality is not a perfectly-polished, shiny version of our personality nor even a consistently happy life - which are just goals of the ego. Who we think we are is as simplistically inaccurate as a stick-figure drawing of a human being, or humanity's conception of Divinity.

    Eighty-three-year-old “teacher, author, & spiritual leader Gangaji, offers Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Poonjaji's radical invitation to stop the search for fulfillment & enlightenment and to fully recognize the truth of one's being, which is already completely whole and permanently at peace. 
    Her radical invitation is to: 
        Examine your own life. 
        Choose to wake up from the trance of who you think you are and experience the truth of who you really are. 
        Resolve not to go back into the trance by turning away from that essential experience of waking up. 
        Freshly inquire anew as thoughts or feelings of separation arise.

    Gangaji's invitation is radical in part because it is not based upon a particular philosophy or religion. There are no prescribed practices or rituals, unless one considers self-inquiry or self-observation a practice. Most radically, it calls into question the very structure of who we've believed ourselves to be.  
    Who you are is not separate from God or Love or Truth or Freedom or Peace or Silence, whatever one chooses to call it. 
    Therefore, there is nothing you have to do to 'get there.' No merit to be earned. Who you are is already here, has always been and will always be.
    The invitation is to wake up and be Yourself.” 
    Gangaji. “Freedom and Resolve: Finding Your True Home in the Universe.” Hampton Roads, 2014.   

    Below, Gangaji reads & comments on a letter written to her:
    Letter:    “I experience full being ecstasy when I see someone crack open, when the ‘aha’ shines from their face, when their tears leak the truth that has been bottled so long. I simultaneously experience the ‘aha,’ the tears, the nowness. I have experienced these moments in my own heart too. So many times now that it seems normal. 
    And it is this normalcy that I wonder about. When I stop, am I stopping too soon? I always have the feeling that there must be just one more hidden attachment or contraction to notice.”

    Gangaji: “Well, that’s the hidden attachment. ‘There must be one more’ - that’s the hidden attachment.” 

    Letter:    “There must be one more hidden attachment to unburden my heart from. I am like a dog looking for that last morsel of food that rolled under the refrigerator out of reach, but well within smell.” 

    Gangaji: “So then, you’ve had the experience, you see the play of the mind, and then the play of the mind gives this ‘scent of more nourishment.’ That’s when, are you willing to stop, right there, to die? Because that’s what this is about."

    Letter:    “Well, I just need to get a little more of something, so I don’t die in the stopping. I mean, I don’t want to stop until I have all my goods handled."

    Gangaji: “So it has to do with ‘unburdening,’ and so forth. But you have to see it through the wiliness of the mind. It’s still a postponement of stopping. It’s still a postponement of death. 
    You can spend your whole life like that, having been graced with exquisite moments of truth, and then getting on with the business of accumulation.” 

    Letter:    “If I can just get that one last tidbit of untruth, then I can rest.” 

    Gangaji: “There is always more untruth. You get that one last tidbit, it’ll only make you hungry for the next last tidbit. Haven’t you had enough of the lies? Haven’t you had enough of untruth? When is the point when you say, 'Stop!'? 
    This is such a trap of the mind. This trap of the mind is psychological sophistication. ‘Well, I’m sure I have to clean up a little more. So best not to stop now.' 
    Stop and die. That’s what it’s about. Stop and die imperfect as you are, without any hope of being cleaned up and shiny, and presented to God as some pure vessel. Just as you are right now, you present yourself, fully, nakedly, with all your imperfections and no hope of cleaning them up, and see what welcomes that as you are, not as you will be, if you follow this little morsel, this stink under the refrigerator. 

    Letter:    “It just feels like, ‘There’s something I must be missing.’” 

    Gangaji: “You see, here we go. This is the rebirth now. So if it feels like that, feel like that fully and completely missing the boat. Missing it all. You are missing it. It’s true. When there’s this feeling, ‘I’m missing,’ – that’s right. That feeling is a Divine feeling. 
    But our tendency is to get rid of that feeling. So, we find one little bit of spiritual morsel, one little way to clean up the act a little better, so that we’ll be ready to stop next time. 
    If you are feeling that you are missing something, recognize I am missing something, and be that missing fully and completely. BE the pain of that, the horror of that, the self-betrayal of that, the lie of that, all the spiritual and psychological maneuvering around that is a way to escape that. 
    But as you can quite clearly see, you may sense or feel that you escape it in the moment, because you take the morsel and there’s some alleviation of the hunger. But it arises. It will haunt you until you meet it. And be glad it will haunt you until you meet it. Be glad that you haven’t fully learned how to deny. This is the pain of anything less than full self-recognition, and it is quite reliable. 

    Letter:    “I feel like I must be absolutely clean sometimes before I can present this who I amness to the world.” 

    Gangaji: “‘Who I amness’ is nothing! It’s not clean. It’s not dirty and it’s not clean. So when you are thinking I have to be absolutely cleaned before I can present this who amness to the world, you’re still thinking about this object called you. This is now me, as who amness! This is a big thought. The thought I amness. You are not who you think you are, whether that’s I am notness or I amness. 

    Letter:    “There seems to be a shadow and veil separating me from me.” 

    Gangaji: “Yes, it is. And that shadow and that veil, is this lie: ‘I am separated from me.’ That’s the shadow. That’s the veil. Dive into it and see how thick it is. 

    Letter:    “And I spend much of my time looking for confirmation of my separation in the world. 

    Gangaji: “That’s right. And you will find it. 

    Letter:    “Looking for a wink, or a twitch, or a glance that will confirm this doubt that I am not here yet. 

    Gangaji: “That’s right. ‘You’ aren’t here yet, because ‘you’ don’t exist. ‘You,’ who are thinking has to get somewhere, doesn’t exist. It’s a thought in your mind. It will never get there. It will never get there! 
    If you can appreciate the pain of that, the frustration of that, the absurdity of that, that you can die to that. (Fully process all of it physically http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=physical+processing)
    It’s not about ‘you’ getting somewhere. It’s not about ‘you’ becoming clean or you becoming the I am that. That ‘you’ does not exist. It’s a thought. It’s made up. It’s illusion. Investigate it for yourself and see. That’s what self-inquiry is. 
    Rather than continuing this pursuit of satisfaction for this madeup you, now it’s like this. This messy image of me, I don’t like. I want this squeaky-clean image of me. They’re both just images – the clean and the messy. Both just images. Both made up in the mind to keep the mind entertained, spinning, weaving, moving, deflecting, imagining. ‘Stop’ has nothing to do with stop so that you get clean; stop so that you wake up. 
    Stop so that you can see that who you think you are, you are not! Stop so that you can see that when the thoughts of who you are stop, you remain! You don’t need thoughts of who you are to be, whether the latest thought is squeaky clean or filthy dirty. Neither are needed. You exist independently from any thought. No thought exists independently from you. Every thought needs you for its thought. But you exist independently of any thought.” 
    Gangaji "The Lie that Keeps You Searching" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DepjSGrRjL8

    We're so STRONGLY identified with our small, narrow-minded personal and group stories (MY country, MY race, MY religion, MY dogmas, MY political party, MY skin color, etc) that we rarely if ever remember the infinitely wiser, greater spirit we actually are. Being trapped in any story is being confined to a small, cold, dark prison cell that we ourselves maintain by continuously engaging with self-talk. 

    STOP engaging repetitive, circular self-talk in your head. Learn to shift awareness to your heart center and live authentically - spacious, free, loving, nurturing, warm, peaceful. 

 

Basic Meditation Practice

    Meditation practices pre-date organized religions by thousands of years. All major religions adopted; then - except for Hindus, Buddhists, Eastern Orthodox Christians & Quakers - forgot about; then over the past 50 years or so, most progressive religions re-introduced meditation practices. 
    Nowadays, even outspoken atheists, like Sam Harris, proudly practice meditation. Zen, a branch of Buddhism, is seriously practiced by, and even officially taught by, some Roman Catholic nuns & priests, Jewish Rabbis and atheists.  
    Meditation is profoundly beneficial, even "transformational," regardless of what, if any, belief system one holds. Avoiding meditation is easy. Practicing meditation regularly, like regular physical exercise, takes a bit of effort, but is very wise.

    Basically, meditation practice is about cultivating the courage to remain present to anything your mind & body throws at you, resisting the urge to turn away from pain by turning this physical felt sense into an abstraction, a mental & emotional concept – which actually causes suffering. The pain alone causes less than 10% of the suffering, our attempts to resist feeling it & dealing with it directly causes over 90% of the suffering.
    (In meditation,) face physical as well as emotional & intellectual discomfort, as merely data (simply information) coming from the senses. Be curious about it, 'lean into it' & learn from the data. This practice is designed to teach equanimity, or self-control & awareness, no matter what arises in life – pleasure, pain, boredom, jealousy, anger, lust, longing, sadness. It's designed to interrupt the common habitual impulse – to turn from pain and toward pleasure as fast as we can, … which in the long run leads to greater ignorance & suffering.
    Keith Martin-Smith. “A Heart Blown Open. The Life and Practice of Zen Master Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi.” Devine Arts, 2011. A REAL EYE-OPENING READ!    

    As with other challenges, it's best to start with baby steps. When starting meditation practice, we're advised to remain still & silent (not engage in internal conversations) even when we feel some minor physical discomfort, like a tickle on our nose. We simply stay with the physical sensation of the tickle, only observing the physical sensation of the tickle, not moving, not talking to ourselves, simply observing JUST THIS physical sensation. We learn experientially that everything ends, so we don't have to immediately react to unpleasant physical sensations. Succeeding in this, gives us the confidence to face more difficult challenges with equanimity.

    As we steadily face whatever unpleasantness we've always avoided & run from before, remain fully-present to the physical feeling of discomfort, the degree of discomfort will progressively diminish, until it disappears, and we are suddenly rewarded. In the long run, this same issue, that we just physically processed, will either recur in progressively milder & milder manifestations, or might only recur without any negative charge at all, as only a powerless memory. This physical processing - remaining with only the physical feel of whatever we're averse to, is a powerful DIY way to disarm psychological baggage.
    If you can't do this on your own, the right meditation teacher, and possibly, the right mental health professional, can definitely help you with this essential healing.

    There's no way to shortcut the essential step of emptying our closet of 'skeletons.' No matter how religious or spiritual you become, significant remaining untreated psychological baggage will continue to sabbotage your life, resulting in needless suffering for yourself and all those around you. 
    Avoiding needed psychological / psychiatric treatment, and instead choosing religion or spirituality, is a common serious form of avoidance called 'spiritual bypassing.'

    Only after we're able to deeply face our small self (personality) - the fictional 'story of me' we've been telling ourselves & others; and have forgiven & accepted this perfectly imperfect small self with kindness, are we able, with an established meditation practice, to repeatedly, lovingly, recognize whenever we relapse into small self behaviour, and effortlessly & lovingly shift back into our true Self (shared aliveness, Buddhanature, Christ consciousness, etc).
    Sitting wishing, hoping, to eventually become awakened takes us further away from awakening (shared aliveness, Buddhahood, Christ consciousness). But as soon as we embody our true Self, we ARE sitting AS shared aliveness (AS the Buddha, AS Christ consciousness).
    Getting hijacked by the tired old 'story of me' pulls us right back into unnecessary suffering. 
    Becoming aware that we're lost in our self-talk / 'story of me' drama, we learn to immediately choose to return to our true Self.

    The more we practice awareness of when we're lost in the old story, the more kindly & effortlessly we remember & re-embody our true, original Nature, the more we stabilize in embodying our original Nature, and the more difficult external circumstances need to be to pull us back into our old story of a separate adversarial self.

     Our awakened shared aliveness is the 'home' - we all look for, first in all the wrong places ie outside of ourselves - money, possessions, experiences, addictions, etc. BUT embodying who / what we truly are, always have been, and always will be is the ONLY 'place' or state that provides real, lasting, peace, satisfaction, contentment, stillness, silence, real happiness - it is our only home.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI8oH2I-iLg   

Wayne Boucher "The Well at Heaven's Gate" www.harvestgallery.ca

Choice, Choice, Choice ...

     We might recall traumatic events, particularly from childhood, when we helplessly endured something that even now fills us with raw anger, and perhaps we sometimes even fantasize wishing we had immediately reacted with entirely justified fury and power. 

    The toxic energy surrounding such events remains hidden, yet active in our bodies and subconscious, adversely affecting every aspect of our daily life. 

    If our life is severely compromised, we might require help from a trauma therapist. 

    But if we can function reasonably well, putting up with 'ordinary unhappiness,' then we can do 2 things to 'physically process' and gradually purge or unburden our system from these toxins. 

1)    When we're alone in a quiet, safe place, we can intentionally recall, in detail, a specific traumatic incident from our past - perhaps not the worst one to start - that even now causes us to react with anger. 
    We then resolve to allow ourselves to simply physically feel the unpleasant emotions that arise. Although we're very used to reacting to unpleasant feelings by quickly escaping, our mission now is to physically digest, as it were, this entire unpleasant plate-full ie to stay present & curious to the physical feel, as it gradually diminishes in power.  
    Just feel into it. Nothing more.
    Stay with ONLY the physical feeling - no words, no stories, etc.
    Avoid escaping into thoughts, and other distractions.  
    Feel this emotion until it looses its power over your life. You might need to re-visit this same traumatic event and do another physical processing to fully extinguish its power. 

2)    A wonderfully inspiring & useful imho interview between Christina Guimond & Angelo Dilullo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuqmDYYnLSA includes a recommendation (between 32:30 & 44:19) for a potentially very useful body-based adjunct to the above instructions, called TRE - Tension or Trauma Releasing Exercises (a simpler, self-help complement to Peter Levine's deeper, longer-term Somatic Experiencing therapy). 
    If you have Parkinson's or other neurological conditions it's prudent to consult your health-care provider before trying TRE.
    An excellent intro to TRE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoB9wpuO688

    We have the tools to unburden ourselves from all that has ever held us captive. NONE of us have time to waste by remaining timidly imprisoned by our fears. The spiritually independent path is challenging, but WE'RE HERE TO DISCOVER WHO / WHAT WE TRULY ARE and thus be able to BEHAVE like SPIRITUALLY MATURE, RESPONSIBLE HUMAN BEINGS.

Suffering - a MUCH Bigger Perspective

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

    "Man is not destroyed by suffering, he is destroyed by suffering without meaning." Victor E. Frankl

    “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor E. Frankl, "Man’s Search for Meaning" 

 

     “Dear ones, you who are trying to learn the miracle of love through the use of reason, I am terribly afraid you will never see the point.” Hafiz

    "The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners." Hafiz

    Most feel the need for strict boundaries to feel safe from life's uncontrollable changes. Prisoners are known to re-offend just to get back into the tightly structured life of a prison. It takes deep self-reflection to become aware of the invisible, yet tightly constraining prison walls - cages - others have built around us, as well as ones we've built for ourselves & carefully maintain, as if these could protect us. The only thing they "protect us" from is growing up - especially spiritually!
     
    Below are excerpts from Tami Simon's recent interview with author & philosopher Christopher Bache, who shares his personal journey through psychedelic exploration and academic research, revealing how these experiences have shaped his understanding of the soul’s evolution. Together, they discuss how embracing the possibility of reincarnation can transform our relationship to suffering, purpose, and each other.

    Tami Simon asked why anyone would choose a life that had so much suffering in it?
    Christopher Bache: "I don’t want to make light of any suffering. I get very angry when I hear people pronounce how suffering works, or make large metaphysical pronouncements on it. 
    I think we have to be very respectful of suffering, and yet at the same time, hold out the hope that this suffering has significance, that this suffering is meaningful in a larger landscape. 
    I take great encouragement as I studied the past life therapeutic literature, and I watched therapists basically following a present pain in a person’s life and letting it unfold into a deeper story that has been moving through several lifetimes up to this lifetime time. 
    People have been able to take their pain to its source in which it’s anchored in experiences that they don’t remember having, but because they come from another lifetime, and in that remembering, it provides a freedom and a release from suffering in their current lifetime. So when you see that happening over and over again, it supports the conclusion that this suffering is - I don’t want to say intentional,*** *** but it’s accepted as a circumstance of learning." 
    *** (Watch Natalie Sudman's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8lQs1MccoU)
    *** (During meditation retreats, I've had a couple of experiences of such intense pain that I assumed it couldn't possibly be just my own 'stuff' I was processing, but that I was surely helping to process all of humanity's 'stuff.' It's essential to state that I was well aware that simply getting up from sitting meditation would instantly have ended the pain ie working through this was entirely voluntary, transcended the personal AND as soon as I recognized the fact that I was no longer alone & it was no longer just about my small, separate self, but about everything - Self, the suffering immediately ended, leaving only joy & ease. 

    “The true significance of (any of) Buddha’s radical instruction ‘Just sit’ cannot be realized except in the context of the vow to save all living beings.” Reb Anderson. “Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. Dharma Talks on Zen meditation.” Rodmell Press, 1999.

    Neither *** or *** above make sense, and may even be met with anger, while lost in separate-self concern ie left-hemisphere dominant perspective.
    However, the shift that occurs from personal suffering to the realization that this must be universal human suffering & willingness to somehow help humanity relieve this IS ALSO the shift from exclusively left-hemisphere to a balanced right-hemisphere dominant way of seeing & being.)

 

     "And then we would ask, why would we ever want to learn? What do we have to learn from those horribly, depleted or compromised lives? And I think we have to make a transition of thinking like a human being and start thinking like a soul or thinking about our lives from God’s perspective, because things that may look meaningless from the human perspective, from the individual life perspective, can be saturated with meaning at a larger metaphysical level, a larger spiritual level. 
    And sometimes I think, for example, some people have voluntarily taken on pain memories, which are not part of their personal karmic lineage sometimes. In my psychedelic practice, I found that a lot of the work I was doing, a lot of the purging of negative karma was not personal. It was collective. And I think many of us are actually living lives, which are serving the release of trauma from the collective psyche, which goes beyond simply healing the personal psyche.
    So I think we have to learn to think in a much more expanded framework to even address suffering.
 

    Ian Stevenson PhD, at the Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia, is considered the Charles Darwin of Reincarnation research. He's had 11 books published documenting 3,000 detailed studies of children from around the world who have spontaneous memories of previous lives. And he was able to document, verify or falsify their memories. That just turned my mind around. And then later, as I began to move into my own self-exploration, both in the LSD work and also with hypnotherapy, I encountered a number of my own former lives and worked with them. So at first it was an intellectual encounter with Ian Stevenson’s work, then later, a personal experiential encounter.
    Despite the very compelling research, it's hard to accept reincarnation first of all because the effects of reincarnation are subtle. The ending of a life at death is definitive. The beginning of life at birth is kind of clear, but the carryover, the continuities of reincarnation are subtle. 
    But I think the most important reason that it’s hard for many of us to see it is because basically science is the religion of our era. And science in its early stages has been wedded to the concept that 'matter is the only thing that’s real.' There is nothing in the universe that we can’t explain by reducing it to its material substrate. And this belief basically suggests that our mind is generated by our brain. And when our brain disappears, our mind disappears too, like a light bulb that goes out. And so with this belief that everything is material, that there is no independent spiritual universe, and that our mind reduces to brain, then we basically undercut any possibility of allowing the existence of reincarnation because reincarnation assumes a parallel dimension of spiritual reality. 
    And that makes it hard for (dogmatic materialists) to even look at the evidence seriously, because they have such countervailing belief systems."

    Tami Simon: "Once seen, reincarnation changes everything. Even now as we’re going deeper into the interviews in this series, I’m noticing the impacts that it’s having on how I view my life ... a level of relaxation that’s starting to come in that previously was unknown. And I’m curious how this taking on of a reincarnation view instead of, as you call it, a one timer’s perspective, how it’s changed things for you?"

    Christopher Bache: "Yeah, well, there are lots of spinoffs on that question. It does change everything. And as you live within a Reincarnational worldview, and kind of think through it, live through it and apply it to your life circumstances, it deepens. And so what stands out in the early years is different from what stands out in the later years. 
    It all hinges upon an understanding that we have a vast quantity of time in which to live, develop & grow within the universe. We aren’t simply a 100-year project adjacent to the universe’s multi-billion year project. But we are actually ancient beings who have been reincarnating for millennia, hundreds of thousands of years. 
    And as such, we are part of the universe’s extensive development. As a philosopher, that means a great deal to me because when I look at the magnificent photographs coming out of the Hubble or other space telescopes, and see this magnificent universe massive & vast in its depth and beauty, if I only live one time through, I basically a part-time player in this, a sideshow in this universe. 
    But once we understand that the intelligence within & behind nature has found a way not only to evolve whole species as we think in evolution, but to evolve individuals within certain species, as in human beings. Then I think we have a new starting point. It’s a new starting point. 
    It changes your understanding of your identity because it’s beautiful and it’s important, uh, as our individual body mind awareness is. Our ego is, it’s just one facet of the diamond that the soul is. There are other facets we can encounter, we can meet, and which we will become, uh, part of this larger diamond as we die or even as we wake up. 
    On this planet, it changes your relationships to your children, so you stop seeing them as somehow an extension of your genetic & your wife’s genetic heritage. You begin to see that your genetic matrix is a nest, which catches an incoming soul. And so the child that you’re holding may be thousands of years older than you are in a soul perspective. 
    And so I don’t see children as children anymore, and I don’t see old people as old people anymore. I tend to think in terms of souls and there are some children who are very old souls and some adults who are very young souls in, in their foolishness. So it’s a fresh starting point. Always paired with reincarnation is the concept of karma - cause & effect, and that there is a cause and effect that derives from the choices that we make.
    Extended in our extended lives that those choices carry over and set up the conditions within which I’m living in this lifetime. And then when you explore the data more carefully, you learn that there is a great deal of evidence that suggests that we choose the life that we are born into. And that makes an enormous difference because when we look at our life, and it may be a life of pain & suffering, it may be of unexpected hardship, it may be a life of ease. (Do read at least "The Bus Stop Conversation" - by Sue Morter, in: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html)
    To understand that we chose this life at a time when we knew more than we know now. We chose this life that tends to deepen our commitment to working with the conditions of this life, trusting in a deeper intelligence that brought us into these circumstances. So to me it, it’s, it’s an absolutely fresh starting point in philosophy. 
    Your whole philosophical insights diverge between one road, which says we only incarnate once, and another road, which says, no, we incarnate many times. They go in very different directions."
     "Christopher Bache: Deep Time and the Birth of the Diamond Soul — Sept 23, 2025"
     Audio (at 34-38min): https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/christopher-bache/?utm_source=%5BKL%5D%200-180%20Day%20Engaged&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N250928-Bache%20%2801K60R1QNHVRW70WEMVXPM2EMZ%29&tw_source=Klaviyo&tw_profile_id=JsSQsZ&tw_medium=campaign&_kx=oubFt43NAjNBb0_NppHaGCF951bovtuCAx1o4i41Tys.JMDgaq
    Transcript: https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/christopher-bache-deep-time-and-the-birth-of-the-diamond-soul/

    Curiosity & open mind / heartedness seem to be key even in, and perhaps especially during, the most severely challenging times.

    “... man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment – he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
    Viktor E. Frankl. “Man’s Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy.” ed 3, Simon & Schuster, 1984.

    “What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being 
     whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but 
     whose lips are so strangely formed that when 
     the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound 
     like beautiful music.” Kierkegaard, Either/Or

     Each one of us is a poet.
    Every one of us carries a heavy load.
    And each of us is called to make beautiful music.

    "When a system is far from equilibrium, 
     small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos 
     have the capacity to lift the system 
     to a higher order." Ilya Prigogine - physical chemist and Nobel laureate 

    “The real question is: Are you willing, whether your experience is tranquil, turbulent, ecstatic, tragic, opulent, or austere, to give yourself wholeheartedly to what is truly alive in you?”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED WISE, VALUABLE BOOK

    “What is Buddha’s (OUR) work in the middle of the cold? Have a dialogue with the cold, a dialogue with emptiness. Stare at the cold, stare at the not-you. If you look at it long enough, it will look back at you. The cold mountains will smile.” Reb Anderson. “Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. Dharma Talks on Zen meditation.” Rodmell Press, 1999.

 

AwakeningArtsAcademy.com

 

Pointers from a Wise Elder

    My blogs have been pointing to the importance of directly experiencing how each one of us is far deeper & wiser than we realize. However, our current culture shows no evidence of depth & wisdom, hence our current global situation - as if drug-crazed scriptwriters had written a dystopic Batman movie.

    “If you set out to be less than you are capable of being, I warn you, you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.” Abraham Maslow 

    “The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear; only boldness can deliver us from fear; and if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.” C.G. Jung

    “… the planet’s survival – and evolution – depends on our collective capacity to look within more honestly, and to act more consciously and less defensively in every sphere of our lives.” 
    Tony Schwartz. “What Really Matters. Searching for Wisdom in America.” Bantam Books, 1995. 

     “In the intellectual arena, healthy skepticism produces good sciences, testable procedures, and clearly defined rationales. Those who are overly attached to skepticism, however, can obliterate their own genuine inner life experiences by doubting them out of existence.”
    Tony Schwartz. “What Really Matters. Searching for Wisdom in America.” Bantam Books, 1995. 

    I try to select useful teachings of respected, intelligent, educated, loving, elder, mystics from different traditions, with strikingly similar visions of our shared meaningful potential.

    James Hollis PhD, 84-year-old highly-respected Jungian analyst & author of 20 books translated into many languages. A transcript of a recent valuable interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIA3oLncnPk

The role of dreams and the potential consequences of not paying attention to them: 

    James Hollis (JH): “Well it might be useful to each of us to recall what sleep research tells us today, that we tend to average in a single night’s sleep, 5 to 6 dreams. And some of us aren’t aware of our dreams or can’t remember them, but the truth is, that activity is going on nonetheless.
    Secondly, if we live to be 80 years old, we will have spent six years of our lives dreaming – not sleeping, that adds up to a third of our lives, repairing, restoring & processing – but six years dreaming. Nature doesn’t waste energy, so we have to say dreaming has some purpose in the whole system that we are as a complex organism.
    Moreover, if we begin to pay attention to our dreams, we begin to see that there is a presence there, another presence. I want to be as vague about that as I can, because we really don’t know – it’s a mystery that is paying attention to our life, and commenting upon it. Jung put it this way, ‘If you had the opportunity to speak to a two-million-year-old sage, wouldn’t you want that opportunity?’ What I think he was suggesting is we carry the wisdom of Nature inside of us, and there’s something in us that knows us better than we know ourselves, because in any given moment we’re likely to be under one sort of influence or another.
    We’re responding to the clamors of the world outside us or responding to intra-psychic components: complexes, drives, fears, etc. And yet there is a constancy that’s been here since our birth, and carries us through this journey, and possibly beyond, who knows. But that presence knows us better than we know ourselves, and again, may not be interested in our comfort but is interested in the truth of Nature, whatever that might prove to be. So over time, if we pay attention to our dreams, we begin to develop a conversation with some place within us that has the wisdom of Nature, which may not fit into our cultural setting at all, but which tells us the pathway that is right for us, and pathologizes us frankly when we get off that pathway.

From the standpoint of analytic psychology, we don’t say, well how quickly do I get rid of my symptoms or my fears. We say why have they come, what are they asking of us, where is it we need to apply some consciousness and perhaps some effort, and what happens over time? 

When we’re born, we have a natural authority – it’s called instinct. But we’re tiny creatures, we’re dependent, we have to respond to the pressures & messages around us, and so forth, so we lose contact with that voice within.

So what I’ve seen in people over long-term therapy through analysis is their sense of the locus of authority in their life begins to move from outside of them – because we’re always having to report to the world in some way – and begin slowly to shift to some presence within. So I could say to you, and I mean this quite sincerely, if I need to know what is the right course for me, right path for me, I sort of have to put it in there (pointing to his heart area), and whatever that presence is, it will speak to me over time. I don’t want to sound woo woo here. Sometimes it comes to us at 3 in the morning a week from now. Sometimes it’s a dream tomorrow night. Sometimes it’s an insight. But there’s something in each of us that I think we know as children, with which we lose contact, as we get adapted to the world around us. So dreams begin to tell us what the right course of life is for us, as seen from Nature’s perspective, not the society that we’re reporting to at all times.

Interviewer: "Palliative care nurse, Bonnie Ware found that the most common regret of dying people was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/ .

What is the relationship between us not paying attention to our dreams and that deep inner voice, and having regrets later on in life?"

(JH): “Well I think the message of childhood is over-learned. It’s a factual lesson that, you are tiny, the world’s big, you are powerless, the world is all-powerful. So we tend, for understandable reasons, to relinquish that linkage to the Voice Within, and therefore instead we’re responding to the most troubled voice out there or the most insistent voice or the one we’re exposed to day-in and day-out.

People get this strange idea that you’re supposed to lie on a couch and complain about mother and father and so forth. That’s not what it’s about. On the other hand, stop and think where your most elemental messages about self & other and the nature of the traffic that goes on between arose, and you realize it came out of those formative experiences where you’re asking basic questions like, ‘Who are you? Who am I? What’s the traffic between us? How am I supposed to – Can I approach you? Oh, and by the way, what do you think of me? Do you think I’m okay as I am – or – do I have to twist myself in some way to fit something that you expect? Or do I just stay in the periphery and not ask anything of my life?’ Those elemental messages get over-learned so to speak. They’re the only game in town until there are other forces that come into our environment. In a sense, what we’re saying here is that, yes, the pressures to fit in, to not be isolated perhaps, not to be punished, are overwhelming. I’ve talked about the two threats to our well-being that all of us have: to be overwhelmed by life or abandoned by it, either of which could not only be hurtful but potentially lethal. So we quickly learn to figure out, ‘What’s the environment asking of me, so I can somehow be in accord with that, so in time I have a compatible relationship?’ But it’s in those day in day out surrenders of personal authority, and of course we do have to be socialized to fit into a family, into a culture and so forth, we’re not talking about self-absorption or narcissism here, quite the contrary. But one also has to learn a certain kind of legitimate respect for what is wishing expression through us.

How many times have I seen professionals – many physicians for example, and it pains me to say this, who became physicians because it would fit into their family expectations. The same it true of lawyers and other professionals. We’re always looking around for clues on how to live our lives, and yet we’re flush with clues, but we learn to override them. We all do.
    The feeling function – you don’t choose your feelings, they are autonomous qualitative analyses of how your life is going as seen by the deep psyche. So I can do all the ‘right’ things, achieve all my goals, yet inside it feels empty or I’m depressed or I’m self-medicated.

We have energy systems. When you’re doing what’s right for you, the energy supports you. When you’re forcing it all the time, we all know it leads to burnout and so forth.

We also have dreams, which are often compensatory by saying, your whole world’s pushing you in this direction in terms of your adaptations but you’ve neglected this whole part of your life over here. And then of course we have our old friend, psychopathology. When we push too far to one side or the other, it shows up as an anxiety disorder, as a kind of busyness that keeps us numbed, or a kind of depression that sets in.

That’s [severe depression] what led me to this work. In my early life I was an academic and I enjoyed it and I’m still a teacher. At the same time, I had to ask the question, ‘Why has my psyche autonomously withdrawn its approval & support from the agenda that I pursued?’ And it was a good agenda. At the same time, something reached out and said, ‘Now wait a second Buddy, ‘You know you’re neglecting various aspects of your life. You’ve papered over some issues that we wish to address.’ In those moments, you’re summoned to an appointment with yourself, and that’s what happens when people come in to therapy, they think it’s about their marriage - and of course that’s very important, or they might be thinking about their career, or concerned about their self-medication, or concerned about their course in life, but underneath, the real question is, are you living the life intended by your Nature, not by the culture around you.
    I realize that sounds in the abstract, rather idealistic, but the price again is psychopathology. One can spend one’s entire life adaptive, fitting in, serving what the world asks for, and it will show up in the strangest places. People will think that their trouble is to be treated by the purchase of the latest shiny thing, and its pleasure lasts for days at the most. Or one feels that ingesting a certain substance or something of that kind that one’s life is going to improve. Or you simply change your partner and that’ll fix things. Yet, there’s something inside again that is wanting expression through us.

Another way of putting this, and again this is a deliberate oversimplification but it’s true I believe, in the first half of life we have to develop enough ego strength to step out into the world, leave our parents behind, and sort of say, what’s the world asking of me, and try to meet that. It doesn’t mean you have to do everything the world’s asking, but you have to sort of at least become a presence in the face of that.

But in the second half of life, you really have to ask the question, what is life asking of me, what is the soul asking of me? When I use the word ‘soul’ it’s the literal translation of the Greek word ‘psyche’ – that deepest essence within each of us. What is wanting expression through me?

Now I for example have, from childhood on, adored my teachers because I could see them opening a world that was larger for me. So I became very identified with teaching. That’s the one consistent thread throughout my life. That’s why we’re talking today. And I don’t always find it easy. I’m an introvert. As a child I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I couldn’t have imagined, as a child, spending most of my days listening to people’s suffering. And at the same time, I can’t imagine anything more profound, more meaningful in my life. So I feel that each of us has a vocation, and by that I don’t mean job. I mean a calling in the world as a certain presence, as a value system, what is most deeply true for you and can you mobilize the courage and the consistency to live that over time? And if you do, the world may or may not approve. But it will feel right inside, and it’s a form of service. It’s not inflation, it’s not saying well it’s all about my ego and my resume or my wonderful children or my properties that I owned or whatever that might be. That’s ultimately all out there. It’s like it’ll be confirmed inside. You’ll feel the rightness of it.

I was between 33 and 35 years of age when I became depressed, and I undertook my first hour of therapy at age 35. The two halves of life are metaphorical. In fact sometimes it happens late in life, where a person loses their partner for example, and they didn’t realize the degree that they transferred their dependencies to their partner. Or if a person has been so identified with their work structure, and they’re laid off or forced to retire. Or a serious illness comes to them. It occurs when it occurs.

This is not a new idea. Tolstoy explores this in, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ which was published I think in 1885. In it, a fellow who had completely followed the instructions: went to the right school, married the right person, lived in the right neighborhood, became a lawyer and then a judge - climbing up the ladder, etc, etc. And then one day, there’s a pain in his side that doesn’t quite go away. And to make a long story short, it turns out to be a fatal illness. And all of his presumptions about life just sort of fade away. Then for the first time, after following the instructions and modeling in his culture as well as he could, for the first time he said, ‘What if my life has been wrong?’ And nobody wants to talk about it because it’s his illness, his problem, and they run from it. So he has the first honest conversation about what is my life about with a peasant who’s there to tend to him medically, and then he dies. And of course, Ivan Ilyich is like John Johnson, it’s meant to be in every person’s story. Here’s Tolstoy describing that in detail and goes through all of the stages of denial, anger & bargaining that Kübler-Ross identified and so forth, that tells us that Tolstoy was paying attention and recognizing we all have an appointment with our souls somewhere, and the question is, ‘Have I shown up? Do I keep showing up?’ And frankly, the answer is, ‘No,’ because the Voice within is so easily overwhelmed by the cacophony of noises outside of us, as well as the noises inside of us, about fitting in, being acceptable to others, and so forth."

Interviewer: "You saw your midlife depression as a signal that you had maybe made some choices that weren’t fully aligned with who you were on the inside. Tolstoy’s story is about a chap who perhaps was also not listening to that inner Voice, his soul’s calling, and ends up with a physical pain and I’ve heard you in other interviews say that what they’re describing in that book was probably cancer for that individual. So I’m really interested as to how this lack of listening to our psyche, to our soul, whether it be by not paying attention to our dreams, or by not having any solitude each day to actually reflect on our lives, what is the physical impact do you thing on our well-being when we don’t pay attention to those noises, those sounds, those messages that the body is constantly trying to send out to us if we can quiet down for a minute to start paying attention?"

(JH): “Well you know it’s human consciousness that separates our selves. We talk about the mind, we talk about the body, when they’re aspects of the same thing. The word, ‘psyche’ embraces all of that. It includes digesting your food, it has to do with cellular replacement etc, but it has to do with your emotional life, your spiritual life, your conscious intentional life. Would we be able to separate those things? Not really. We do consciously, but whatever occurs to me, affects me in all areas, of the body, my emotional life & my spiritual life. I’m using spiritual life in the most generic sense of that term: whatever speaks to you most deeply with a numinous quality to it, that is to say, something that touches you deeply within and moves you. So yes, the whole field of psychosomatic medicine is hardly new. But it’s only in the last 20 or 30 years that Western medicine has taken it seriously to realize that sometimes the venue of the pathology is in body, sometimes it’s in our unconscious behavior, sometimes it’s in our emotional life, but it always shows up in some way. There’s a best-selling book called ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ so everything that we experience shows up in the body. We know that. So that’s why I’ve said before, it’s not about suppressing a symptoms, it’s rather saying this is a distress signal sent out by the psyche and we have to ask, why has it come to us? What is it asking of us? What corrective do I need to make in my life? And that doesn’t mean every illness is psychological in origin. There are all kinds of toxic and genetic influences as well for sure. At the same time, we have to say, what is the meaning of this? What has this brought me to? To give you what sounds like a trivial example, when I was a college student, I was living frankly for sports. And I had a torn cartilage, and the surgeon went in during Spring break, and when I woke up told me, ‘I’m afraid we found a bone disorder there and we found your bones are disintegrating, and said I don’t think you’ll be walking by the time you’re 40. So I’m lying there as a 19-year-old and thinking, oh, well I never had the body to be a professional, but I had an absorption in sports. What am I going to do? And I remember thinking, well I am in a university, maybe I could become a student. In other words, I had at that moment, unknowingly, an appointment with myself. Where does this energy go now? It had been moved from one field, where’s it going to go? That happens to us all the time, through retirement, or downsizing. People experienced it through the Covid sequestering for example. They didn’t realize the degree to which their emotional needs & structures were being carried by their work office assignments or their colleagues or family members they could not visit at the time. That was an appointment with themselves for a lot of people. And some people really understood that, dug in, and found new aspects of their own personality that were crying out for expression. But again, it’s like, whose life are we living? One of the sentences from Jung that properly haunts me, and I think should haunt all of us, was where he said, ‘The greatest burden the child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.’ And what he meant by that is wherever I’m stuck or blocked, my children will be, OR, they’ll be spending their life trying to break through that barrier. So the best thing that I can show them is not a perfect human being, none of us is capable of that, it’s rather have I faced up to my fears? Have I pushed through, have I stepped into a personal authority? Because that’s the biggest project of the second half of life – the recovery of a personal authority.
    Of the plethora of voices hitting us, the noises outside, the noises inside, a lot of traffic, which voices are yours? That’s a sorting and sifting process, a discernment to use an old-fashioned word that we don’t think about very much. It’s like pulling apart the threads to say, but what is this coming from in me? I often say to clients today of a certain behavior or reaction, ‘all right, the question is not what was right or wrong here, but what was that in service to you inside?’ In other words, it could have come from an old co-dependence, it could have come from a fear-based response, from a need to fit in for example, or be acceptable to the other person. Those are not capital crimes, but they are in some way offences to the autonomy and dignity of the individual human psyche. That very adaptation that helps us survive in life, becomes problematic. The single most important thing I learned in several years of analysis when I was in training in Zurich, which was in the abstract sounds pretty obvious, but at the time was pretty devastating, namely, what you have become, is now your chief obstacle. Because what we’ve become is this adaptive personality, fitting in, climbing a career ladder, playing out social roles - some of which are terrific. I love being a parent for example, or a partner. But some of it is not who you really are, and how do you tell the difference? And that’s where the psyche begins to pathologize. It’s helpful to remember that the word ‘psychopathology,’ if I could be academic for a moment, if you translate it literally means the expression of the suffering of the soul. Once you understand that, the expression of the suffering of the soul, then, even the mildest of physiological conditions becomes, in some ways, a summons: What’s going on here? What’s interrupted the psychospiritual ecology of this organism? We don’t tend to approach that. We bring our scientific armamentarium there, and in good faith. I’m alive because of medical science, and I’m grateful. At the same time, I realize that there is a deeper summons to accountability to the soul in all of our lives."
    James Hollis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIA3oLncnPk

 

But dreamin' just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby
Like sunshine feedin' daisies
Like the love hidden deep in your heart

"Donald And Lydia" by Steve Goodman