Glimpses Beyond the Veil

    We label "fanatics" others who are enthusiastic about experiences we've never enjoyed. We can't imagine ourselves ever doing certain things like them eg climbing Everest, assume we'll never get to experience whatever lures them to extreme adventures, and quickly dismiss it as "madness."
    Early in her fascinating book, Maria Coffey wonders, “Was it possible … that as these adventurers tune into the natural world, they unwittingly open channels to hidden powers and realms of experience that we call mystical and paranormal? That these channels lie dormant in us all, shut down beneath layers of insulation? And that the process of risk-taking strips away that insulation, opening the way to spiritual transcendence?
    … I became increasingly convinced that extreme adventurers break the boundaries of what is deemed physically possible by pushing beyond human consciousness into another realm.
    … reaching a spiritual state of being is the principal lure of extreme adventure …"
    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.

    There are of course many other, more direct, more efficient & infinitely safer ways ("to the top of the mountain") of reaching spiritual states of being than via extreme sports. One of the wildest danger addicts, Kristen Ulmer - for 12 years was the best female big mountain extreme skier in the world; voted by the outdoor industry as the most extreme 'fearless' woman athlete in North America - finally realized that it didn't make sense to continuously risk her life for something better achieved through well-established spiritual practices, which for her happens to be Zen meditation.

    Kristen Ulmer. “The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won’t Work and What to Do Instead.” Harper Wave, 2018.

    Nevertheless, Coffey's book is inspiring & insightful, filled with heroic yearning & striving often required to pull oneself out from the powerful gravitational pull of comfort & conformity. With apologies to Star Trek, let us boldly read about where few men & women have gone before!:

    “In 1993, Marshall Ulrich was running the Badwater course ("for ultra-marathoners, the toughest race of all"), trying to break his own record. He set out at six pm, watched the sun go down, and carried on running into the night. At some point, around the forty-mile mark, he felt himself leave his body. Suddenly the effort of running was gone – from above, he watched his lone figure pounding along the road, he could hear his footfall and see his support team waiting at certain stages with food and water. He saw himself eating and drinking as he ran.
    ‘It was like watching myself on a movie screen,’ he says. ‘I lost all sense of time. It could have been only ten minutes that had passed, but then I realized that dawn was coming, the sun was about to rise. I knew it was time to go back into my body.’
    He was reluctant to tell anyone about this, particularly other runners. ‘I was sure they’d think I was nutty.’ Then he met Yiannis Kouros, the legendary, world-record-breaking Greek ultramarathoner, who now lives in Australia. Kouros is unabashed about the spiritual component to his running.
    ‘It is not easy,’ he writes, ‘to grasp what is taking place in the mind and the soul, in the senses and beyond the senses of a runner due to the refusal of the body. Only if the runner achieves his transcendence, and especially in the metaphysical level, he is then able to continue.’
    When he heard Ulrich’s story, he fully understood. And he told him how to get back to that place.
    ‘He said I have to break myself down until there’s nothing left – until I transcend the limits of my physical body and enter a new realm of existence.’

    “We must live in the free fall of infinity. Standing at the edge, the heart opens." Thomas Moore

    It is often the hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives that crack us open. For some people, these experiences are chosen, or accepted as a consequence of risk-taking. For others – for most of us – they come without warning. Unlikely gifts that rip away our layers of insulation, allowing us glimpses of the mysterious, the ineffable – the infinite realms of human consciousness.”

    Then for the finale, Coffey recounts her own dramatic near-death experience (NDE) - her own glimpse 'beyond the veil' past our consentual, mundane, physical reality to the transcendent, helping her grok the insights of extreme adventurers & many, many others.
    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.

 Short (8min) Oscar-nominated Canadian film "The Flying Sailor" about a real person in Halifax :

Beyond Fear

    Most of us like to have some control over our lives - some freedom. To actually exercise this freedom, we need courage. Fear can block all of this. Fear can keep us stuck as if in quicksand - for lengthy periods, even for life. 

    Caution is entirely reasonable. Climbing into a shopping cart on a city street, on top of a steep hill, then riding it down to see what happens is guaranteed to result in severe injury, pain or death.
    Extreme sports are far less ridiculous, yet offer transcendence: 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.” 2008. My blogs quoting this SUPERB book: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Coffey

    Mercifully, deep spiritual practices eg deep meditation, are the safest, most tried-and-true paths by which seekers have, for thousands of years, attained transcendence - gone beyond ordinary limitations. ... a spiritual or religious state or condition of moving beyond physical needs & realities.
    The height of spiritual transcendence is described as a state of continuous, unshakable peace, joy, love & oneness that is independent of external circumstances - BEYOND FEAR!
    Again mercifully, regular meditation practice gradually brings about progressive felt improvements in our life reassuring us that we are indeed making progress along this well-trodden path.

    “The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance. Karl A. Menninger MD, psychiatrist

    The advice to 'be curious,' and instead of avoiding, to 'lean into challenges' cannot be overemphasized.
    The process of facing fears is called exposure. Exposure therapy involves gradually & repeatedly exposing patients to feared situations until they feel less anxious. After a while, anxiety naturally lessens.
    Meditation is a form of exposure therapy. Our basic fear is honestly meeting & being intimate with ‘the other’ - our Self, people, animals, environment, life itself. We use gentle mindfulness practices to slowly ease ourselves back into intimacy with ourselves & others. 

    “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” Helen Keller

    All of life is exposure therapy - if we allow it. It is well-known that people who suffer from anxiety are most anxious about being anxious; those who suffer from depression, are depressed about being depressed. Can we be less afraid of our fear? Can we take all of our neuroses far less seriously, less personally?

     “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

    “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.” Thich Nhat Hanh

    “Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” W. Clement Stone

    “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott

    With loving awareness we do what is appropriate, which is always nurturing whoever & whatever is around us, so that we may all flourish. We must FIRST learn to let go of fearfully obsessing over 'me, myself & I.'
    This is a far more profound step than can be accomplished by a guilt-tripping sermon to stop being so selfish & self-centered. It requires a qualitative shift in consciousness: Dr. Jeffery A. Martin. “The Finders.” Integration Press, 2019. My blog on this PROFOUND book : http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/01/seriously.html .

    “What is fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity & spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.” Maya Angelou

“See how we are called to not run from the discomfort,
and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage
or even fear.
If we can be fearless to be with our pain, it turns.
It doesn’t stay.
It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it.
When we look at it, when we take it in our hands,
when we can just be with it,
when we keep breathing, then it turns.
It turns to reveal its other face.
And the other face of our pain for the world
is our love for the world.
Our absolutely inseparable connectedness
with all life.”
Joanna Macy 

    “Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.” Karl A. Menninger MD, psychiatrist

    “… one of the experiences people have on (meditation) retreats is a very intimate experience with the breath, with the body, with emotions, because there’s no separation. That’s kind of the essence of intimacy: nonseparation. It’s just oneself getting out of the way. The Chinese poet Li Po ended a poem with these words: ‘We live together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.’ So that’s kind of meditative. When we take ourselves out of the picture, then all that’s left is everything. To me, that is the definition of intimacy.” Joseph Goldstein

Artist: Molly Hahn buddhadoodles.com/new-gallery/

Gold in Dark Places

    Our survival instinct helps us reflexively avoid life-threatening danger - "the dark." Add some 'negativity bias' & 'harm avoidance,' and we end up with a very narrow 'learning zone,' immediately beyond which lurks DANGER - KEEP OUT!
    So, instead of being curious & motivated to learn from the vast reality beyond our tiny comfort & learning zones, most of us timidly ignore, discount, dismiss & even ridicule others,' & even our own direct experiences IF these are BEYOND safe, suitable-for-dinner-party, small-talk.
    BUT some intentionally 'take a walk on the wild side' not just once, but repeatedly! WHY?
    Let's briefly gather a bit of courage & curiosity to just consider more adventurous peoples' experiences, that as a DIRECT RESULT of their COURAGE & CURIOSITY, are OUTSIDE our tiny box of assumptions about what can & must not be 'real'!

    "... the most important work you can possibly do is to have a healthy, loving relationship with fear. It simply changes everything." Kristen Ulmer, former world champion extreme skier

    "It is often the hardest, most challenging experiences of our lives that crack us open. For some people, these experiences are chosen, or accepted as a consequence of risk-taking. For others – for most of us – they come without warning. Unlikely gifts that rip away our layers of insulation, allowing us glimpses of the mysterious, the ineffable – the infinite realms of human consciousness.”
    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. FASCINATING & WELL-WRITTEN

    “We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This in the end is the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to find the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that in this sense, people have been cowardly, has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called ‘apparitions,’ the whole so-called ‘spirit’ have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

    “(Meditation) practice is not a matter of learning more & more and studying more & more … It’s a matter of emptying out, peeling off layer after layer to empty out … We need to start peeling off all our opinions, all our ideas, and all our cleverness and just remain very naked, in the moment, just seeing things as they are, like a small child.” Tenzin Palmo
    Maria Coffey. “Explorers of the Infinite." see above for full details

    After Amoda Maa experienced numerous major traumas from early childhood on into her 20s, “something started to reveal itself, and that was the abyss. The abyss was experienced as a very barren landscape, like a dark night of the soul where there is no God, there is no life, there is no meaning, there is nothing, it’s devoid. It really is devoid. And yet, my external life at the time was reasonably good – I was teaching a certain method of movement & meditation, and I had a lot of different interactions, it was creative, it was flowing – so it wasn’t to do with the circumstances, it was an inner experience.
    It’s in that, that a deeper surrender happened. In some ways, everything had been a surrender, but this was a conscious surrender. (Before,) the surrender had happened through loss & all these different circumstances that kept changing, but this was a different level of surrender. It was met consciously. I consciously surrendered to the desolation of nonexistence. And that’s when something changed. That’s when something changed.

    ... my discovery was that life is the guru. Life is constantly calling you, like the beloved, into its arms, inviting you, not just to have a blissful experience, but through the darkness, through the difficulties, through the challenges, through the darkest places (it doesn’t have to be terrible on the external), but through the places that we hide from ourselves within ourselves, to surrender to that because everything is love – in the darkest places is light. And somehow that was the wisdom I gained from my own direct experience. ... And that’s what changed everything – it was unexpected.”
    Amoda Maa Talks About Her Life Before Awakening : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4sn-jz-QA0

    We instinctively keep trying to escape even those challenging experiences that are positively transformative - such as 'ego death':

    Amoda Maa experienced a “dark night of the soul, which had nothing to do with my external circumstances. Nothing bad was happening, in fact there was a lot of peace and joy in my life. But it revealed an existential aloneness, an existential abyss, and this went on for several months. ... I'm a practiced meditator, so I’m familiar with that inner landscape if you like, but I noticed a very subtle movement of mind – the subtle movement of mind that pulled me away from being with that existential abyss. And it was so subtle, that it could easily be overlooked. But in seeing it, I felt and sensed that this was a pattern – the archaic pattern of ego-self that is always moving away or moving towards something, never resting fully in presence, because the present is death to the ego. And again I didn’t know this intellectually. I just felt it. It’s like whole lifetimes of practice, and insight, and searching all came to a moment of realization. And so I kept still in my mind, and it was effortless, but it also caused me to meet such an existential terror of annihilation.
    I could easily have just got up and picked a book off the bookshelf. I like to read, and my books were very inspirational at the time. And that was a way of moving away from death – the death of ego-self. Because the book would inspire me, then I feel good. Or it may be as simple as making myself a cup of tea – a very English thing to do. It’s very nourishing, and soothing, and so on. But I just noticed how that was an obstruction to falling into the abyss of emptiness, where there is an end of the self.
    And so I just faced it. And in facing it, I didn’t expect anything. I just knew that was the right thing to do. But in doing that … the sensation was of dying. It was a death, of me, as a separate entity. Because as I met the existential abyss, I also felt the terror of aloneness. Not an aloneness of the personhood, but an existential aloneness – that there’s a me here, and a vast universe of existence, the whole of existence that is spread over time & space. The me is a separate me. It’s a tiny, insignificant and also separate me, in this vastness of existence. And as I sort of died into that, it was like a death, and it did remind me of the attempts of suicide, at least on a psychological level. And this time, I surrendered into it, knowing obviously that there was no physical death in it. But it was a profound psychological death. But the amazing thing was that the sensation, the energetic visceral sensation was of merging into the totality of existence, rather than disappearing into the totality of existence – well it was that, but it was also a merging into it, so I became the totality of existence. So I called it merging into God."
    Amoda Maa - Falling Open in a World Falling Apart : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAqQ6hrj-iE

    “Heaven is this moment.
     Hell is longing for this moment to be different.
     It's that simple.” Jeff Foster

“Emptiness is two things at once:
the absence of self
and the presence of the Divine.
Thus as self decreases,
the Divine increases.”             Bernadette Roberts

    “Life uses us and does not care how we feel about it. It lives through us, as us. We object & resist, or concur & are pleased – it makes no difference either way.
    Only when we surrender our will, and along with it our notions of identity, can we touch our real life, and enter it, and taste, at least a little more intimately, what it is to be alive. As so many masters said on their awakening: ‘Now I am like a person who drinks water and knows for themself whether it is warm or cold.’”
    Henry Shukman https://www.mountaincloud.org/message-from-henry-surrender/

    “All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.” Adyashanti

Discretionary Suffering?

    Many today are drowning in a dazzling array of challenges: burn-out from overwork / depression from unemployment; anxiety / boredom; overwhelmed by too many people / desperate loneliness; obesity / hunger; adrift in too much choice from wealth / imprisoned by poverty; etc.
    “The Buddha once spoke of what he called the eight worldly winds. Gain & loss, fame & disgrace, praise & blame, and pleasure & pain spin the world, he said, and the world spins after them.
    These eight winds blow through everyone’s lives, no matter how much we have meditated or how accomplished we have become. They challenge us endlessly: we instinctively recoil from the discomfort they create yet chase after the ego gratification they promise.
    The Buddha suggested that this (our recoiling / chasing reaction) ties us unnecessarily to the vagaries of worldly life. The eight winds come and go ceaselessly; as much as we try to pick and choose among them, it is impossible to have some without the others. While we cannot stop them, with enough foresight we can learn to relate to them differently. Desirable things do not have to beguile the mind, and undesirable ones do not have to bring endless resistance. We can let the winds blow through us instead of letting them buffet us about.” Mark Epstein, “How Meditation Failed Me” Tricycle 2022

    MOST of our suffering is "discretionary" - completely unnecessary according to Buddhism! We CAN: learn to gradually accept even the painful challenges that we can't change eg constant change, aging, sickness & death of even our closest loved ones & ourselves. We CAN: find the energy & courage to change the things we can & should. And we CAN: discover our innate wisdom to know the difference between what we can't change & must accept, and what we can & should change.

    Obtaining relief from the bulk of our suffering (as described above), demands radical acceptance! http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/06/too-beautiful-to-die.html

    We underestimate & overlook the EXTREME efforts SO MANY make in their FUTILE attempts to escape relentless suffering:
    • An estimated 703,000 people a year take their life around the world. For every suicide, there are likely 20 other people making a suicide attempt and many more have serious thoughts of suicide.
    • Overdose deaths remain a leading cause of injury-related death in the United States. The majority of overdose deaths involve opioids. 91,799 in the USA in 2020. 3,556 in Canada, between January & June of 2022 - approximately 20 deaths per day.
    • Addictions:
            Psychologists estimate that the prevalence of work addiction in Americans is 10%. Other estimates that range from 15–25% may include people who are committed workers rather than those who have a true addiction to work. Jun 3, 2022
            Chronic phone use is a recently developed form of addiction. The American Psychiatric Association does not officially recognize the condition. Still, it is acknowledged as a behavioral addiction by many medical professionals and researchers worldwide. According to several studies, over time, the devoted use of smartphones can alter and negatively impact an individual much like gambling. The devices are carefully designed to be hard to put down. Through its colors, sounds, & vibrations, the technology purposely keeps its users engaged. According to former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, features like “pull to refresh” were inspired by slot machines & other casino games. Designers & engineers meticulously develop every aspect of the device to create fanatical users.
            Approximately 1 percent of the adult population in the United States has a severe gambling problem. The most recent research estimates that 6 to 9 percent of young people and young adults experience problems related to gambling -- a higher rate than among adults.
            About 10% of all adults admit to having an addiction to sexual content on the internet. This includes 17% of women. Officially, however, about 200,000 Americans meet the classification of porn addiction. Sep 13, 2022
            More than 5% of the population may suffer from food addiction, according to one study. Foods full of fat and sugar can supercharge the brain’s reward system similarly to the way addictive drugs do. They can override the brain’s normal ability to tell an individual to stop eating. When this happens, a person may want to eat more and more.
            Hoarding disorder is now a medically recognized mental health disorder and one which can be greatly affected by addiction. The overall prevalence of hoarding disorder is approximately 2.6%, with higher rates for people over 60 years old and people with other psychiatric diagnoses, especially anxiety and depression.
            More than 3 billion people play video games globally, including 214 million in the U.S. The World Health Organization reports that up to 3% of people who play video games have a video game addiction.
            Some extreme adventurers readily admit to being addicted to their very dangerous sports: "Something larger than you takes over. It’s mysterious and inexplicable. You need to go out there again and again to find it.” Maria Coffey (see below)

    Regarding the use of the term "addiction," one psychiatrist who specialized in treating addictions for over 25 years wrote that there's only a quantitative difference between those addicted to substances and the average person's clinging to the momentum of their sleep-walking life - ie most of us resist living a more consciously evolving life. Gerald May. "Addiction and Grace. Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions." HarperCollins, 1988.
    Even more pointedly, neuroscientist & professor of developmental psychology Mark Lewis PhD, argues that addiction is not a disease, but results from the motivated repetition of the same thoughts & behaviors until they become habitual. https://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2015/08/addiction-not-disease.html

    "similarly to my alcoholism and addiction, I view depression and anxiety as the inevitable result of a consciousness that doesn't take time to turn inward & listen to what needs acceptance. My sanity, like my sobriety, is a daily reprieve born of effort & diligence, rather than a birthright. And, quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way." Josh Korda 

    Former world champion extreme skier, Kristen Ulmer, teaches her workshop participants “to breathe in their fear and breathe out the possibility of ever getting rid of it.
    ‘As humans we have these disowned voices. For years I completely disowned fear; it was not going to help me accomplish being the best woman skier in the world. No fear, no fear – it was like having this screaming child in the basement desperate to get out. At some point it’s going to start tearing you apart.
    Only when you embrace your fear [AND other parts of your "shadow"] can your fear relax. It’s like a child that needs to be listened to. Once it’s listened to, it calms down.’”
    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. FANTASTIC imho

 

                            “The purpose of life is not to transcend the body,
                             but to embody the transcendent.” Dalai Lama 

 

 

Gradual AND Sudden

    VERY serious, DEEPLY committed spiritual seekers, Bill & Susan Morgan, who've spent a good chunk of their lives meditating, including a 3-year silent meditation retreat at the wonderful Forest Refuge (in Barre MA), and who a week ago returned from a 1-year silent meditation retreat, shared some of their insights last night with over a hundred folks who gathered around them for a New Year's online sitting.  

    Bill shared that he had always gone on retreats planning to have the BIG awakening experience - by which he meant the final, once & for all, complete enlightenment, where suddenly, he would be completely transformed forever.  

    But that has not been his experience, and it's certainly not for lack of interest, know-how or effort. Interestingly, and this is important for all of us, Bill & Susan have come to realize that focusing on the goal of an earth-shattering experience can easily overshadow the many, small but meaningful insights we all invariably have on this journey. So while most of us will not experience sudden mind-blowing fireworks, we WILL gradually experience deeper & more abiding levels of calm, peace & gratitude. And this is wonderful!

    Society's present focus is overly self-centered - survival & "success" of our self & closest loved one(s) first & foremost. So it's very counter-cultural & counter-intuitive to shift from striving to achieve a sudden dramatic personal goal and to instead, recognize & value calm, peace, gratitude, equanimity, stillness, silence, interbeing, spaciousness & intimacy with ALL. Even within Buddhism, and some other spiritual disciplines, there is debate over sudden vs gradual awakening (though there is general agreement about the life-long necessity to skillfully integrate spiritual insights into one's daily life).

    Appropriate self-care & self-compassion are important parts of life, in context of the BIG picture, which includes everyone & all else.
    "Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole."
    Iain McGilchrist https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/ - AN ESSENTIAL DEEP DIVE towards WISDOM & BALANCE 

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

    “The inexorable yearning for something beyond the mundane or the explainable runs deep in the human psyche. It arises from an urge to find meaning in existence, for something bigger than ourselves. It also comes from a need to belong, to experience life in terms of a harmonious interaction – with others, with nature, with God, with the universe. An interaction that was once part of the human condition.
    In hunter-gatherer societies, religious belief was always linked to nature. Facing constant danger, people sought ways to live in harmony with the unpredictable environment by worshiping the earth, its elements, its wild animals. Life was shot through with spirituality. And the powers of ESP, or psi – contact with the dead, premonition, telepathy, astral travel – were accepted as an essential part of man’s interconnection with nature.”
    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. FASCINATING!

“We clasp the hands of those who go before us,
and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other’s arms,
and the larger circle of lovers
whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures,
passing in and out of life,
who move also in a dance,
to a music so subtle and vast
that no one hears it except in fragments.” Wendell Berry, “Healing”

“We consist of and are sustained by interweaving currents of matter, energy, and information that flow through us interconnecting us with our environment and other beings.
Yet, we are accustomed to identifying ourselves only with that small arc of the flow – though that is lit, like the narrow beam of a flashlight, by our individual subjective awareness.
But we don’t have to so limit our self–perceptions ...
It is as plausible to align our identity with the larger pattern, interexistent with all beings, as to break off one segment
of the process and build our borders there.”
Joanna Macy

 

     Join Bill & Susan Morgan for their daily sit starting Monday, Jan 2, 2023 : https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/online-programs/

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/