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

Physical Processing & Energy Shifts

     At times during meditation practice - including loving-kindness meditation, we can experience considerable discomfort, even physical pain without a direct physical cause. The pain may be severe enough to cause profuse sweating & crying, so emotions can definitely be involved. And when the process is over, one feels a sense of relief akin to having worked something to a satisfactory conclusion (rather than mere relief that discomfort has ended). Such experiences can be called physical (vs intellectual) processing of trauma or of psychological problems (karma?). It's a type of catharsis - purification & cleansing of emotions, resulting in renewal & restoration.
      At other times, one can experience surprisingly rough, even bumpy shifts of energy through the spinal column area - dismantling of energy blockages / melting of psychological armor. These can simply feel surprising & odd, but no other emotions may arise. These latter energy shifts seem more like physical adjustments to accommodate deeper, non-physical shifts that had recently taken place.

      "Sometimes there's an experience of actual heat in the body of burning. It feels uncomfortable. The mind will want to get rid of it, but when we're being anything that is arising, we're not separate from it. We can be the discomfort, we can be the fear. We can be the fire that feels like it's burning in your gut. Because our awareness has no boundaries whatsoever. This is boundless, timeless awareness. It can go anywhere and it is not separate from any experience or any moment. We're just inviting that which we are, this heart of awareness that both is aware but also compassionate into the center of this discomfort or this feeling. It could be a feeling of rage, or jealousy, or fear. It could be lots of things that come up, not to be judged, but they come up to be seen and to be liberated back into the wholeness of our being. 
      When we're not separating ourselves from them, we'll feel there's a softening that happens. There's a deeper acceptance that what's here is just what's here. It's not a judgment about a self. It's just an expression. We're not the victims of life necessarily, we're its expressions, and so often we feel like a feeling or even bad weather or whatever that we become victims of life. I'm not saying there aren't moments where we truly have felt victimized, but that's on the relative plane. In the deeper dimension, we're not victims of life, we're expressions of it."
         Dorothy Hunt "Entering the Heart’s Cave" very fine interview with Tami Simon of Sounds True, Feb 13, 2018. https://www.soundstrue.com/store/weeklywisdom?page=single&category=IATE&episode=12991&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N180218-WW&utm_content=This+Week:+Featuring+Dorothy+Hunt+and+Wim+Hof

 Lynn Ellis photograph - used with permission, copyrights reserved

Physically Processing Bad Things

     “When you're born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you're lucky as you travel forward through time, you'll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it's alive. Trapped forever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.”
       Michael Marshall Smith, from: "Only Forward" http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12339.Michael_Marshall_Smith

     Mindfulness practice involves physically processing "Bad Things", as they surface. We do so by meeting all the various challenging physical feelings (that naturally arise, stay a bit, then dissipate), with curiosity, acceptance, patience, and if need be, perseverance. It's important not to weave stories about these physical sensations. Physical discomfort is much, much easier to accept & manage than mental/emotional suffering.
     Mental/emotional suffering is created when we decide to create a long, painful story (self-talk) about the physical sensations. This unskillful, yet extremely common addition can maintain both physical and mental/emotional suffering for as long as we "keep picking at the scab".
     So instead, we intentionally let go of words & images, and directly experience with curiosity, and kind acceptance, all phenomena - which then behave naturally - ie are transient.
 

Physical Processing & Neuroscience

     "primates have a distinct cortical image of homeostatic afferent activity that reflects all aspects of the physiological condition of all tissues of the body. This interoceptive system, associated with autonomic motor control, is distinct from the exteroceptive system (cutaneous mechanoreception and proprioception) that guides somatic motor activity. The primary interoceptive representation in the dorsal posterior insula engenders distinct highly resolved feelings from the body that include pain, temperature, itch, sensual touch, muscular and visceral sensations, vasomotor activity, hunger, thirst, and 'air hunger'. In humans, a meta-representation of the primary interoceptive activity is engendered in the right anterior insula, which seems to provide the basis for the subjective image of the material self as a feeling (sentient) entity, that is, emotional awareness." 
     Craig AD. Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Curr Opin Neurobiol 2003; 13(4): 500-5.

     Anxiety sensitivity (AS) ... is the fear of arousal-related sensations, arising from beliefs that the sensations may have harmful physical, social, or psychological consequences. AS is composed of 3 (or 4) dimensions: 
• fear of physical sensations, 
• fear of cognitive dyscontrol,
• fear of publicly observable anxiety reactions ±
• fear of respiratory sensations. 

     AS is a potential common vulnerability factor in PTSD & chronic pain.
     "Interoceptive exposure (IE) is among the most effective methods for decreasing AS. IE involves exposure to feared bodily sensations through harmless, brief exercises (e.g. repeatedly hyperventilating). Through repeated exposure to these sensations, patients learn that the sensations do not lead to catastrophic outcomes, and thus their AS abates." 
       Wald J et al. Posttraumatic stress disorder and chronic pain arising from motor vehicle accidents: efficacy of interoceptive exposure plus trauma-related exposure therapy. Cogn Behav Ther 2010; 39(2): 104-13.

     "Approaching the pain itself, wherever it is most prominent in the body, with bare attention, open-heartedness, and alert interest even for very brief moments, if that is all that we can muster in any moment, can be profoundly healing, restorative, and illuminating. And if practiced over days, weeks, and months, potentially it can make a difference in the quality of your life for years and years going forward. What we are talking about is really befriending your experience at the level of the body and at the level of the mind and heart, and seeing what unfolds.”                           Jon Kabat-Zinn 
       Gardner-Nix, J. “The mindfulness solution to pain. Step-by-step techniques for chronic pain management.” New Harbinger Publications Inc, Oakland CA, 2009.

Photo: Janolus   www.dpreview.com

 

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.

Metabolizing Difficult Emotions in Real Time

     In mindfulness meditation, we practice physical processing: 'leaning into' challenging emotions - WHILE these show up as unpleasant physical sensations. We approach these opportunities with curiosity, interest & equanimity knowing that, what we used to mistakenly consider frightening solid objects, DO with this approach disintegrate into harmless bits of energy.

     “Most people don’t maintain a continuous mindful relationship with their subjective thoughts & feelings, so most people do not have the ability to experience anger, fear, sadness, shame, & confusion without suffering. When an objective problem presents itself, it produces uncomfortable subjective mental & emotional states, and you suffer. A salient feature of suffering is that it distorts behavior. You cannot perform the delicate act of threading a needle while somebody is holding a flame to your body. Your whole body shakes; the objective functioning is distorted because of the internal suffering. In the same way, the delicate act of human interaction is frequently subjected to the distorting influences of (perhaps subliminal) suffering. Because of this subjective suffering, our objective responses to objective situations are often less than optimal, and sometimes horribly distorted.
     When objective responses are nonoptimal, they sow the seeds for new problems – new objective situations that cause distress. Then we respond suboptimally to that new situation. This can create a feedback loop that has the potential to spin out of control at any time.
     Even in situations where the suffering appears to be quite small, the distorting influences can add up. For example, a current cultural norm in the United States is to go from passionate love to acrimonious divorce in just five or ten short years. How does this happen? It happens in dozens and dozens of small daily interactions, some of them a little bit emotionally charged and a few of them charged in big ways. When interactions that are unpleasantly charged are not experienced completely in the moment, they are not metabolized. They leave a ghost, a remnant suffering that haunts the cellar of our own mind. That remnant suffering sinks into the subconscious and distorts our subsequent responses. We make cutting remarks when we merely need to reply. We yell when we merely need to be emphatic. We bite when we merely need to bark.
     The same cycle destroys a relationship here, a career there; leads to a war here, a rampage there; a repressive dictatorship here; an ethnic cleansing there. That is the basic pattern on this planet: People do not understand how to experience pain fully, that is, without suffering. Suffering distorts their response to the source of the pain, and this distorted response can easily lead to more pain and, hence, more suffering.
     Here’s a diagram that sums up the problem.  

     So where does meditation come in? Meditation allows us to experience pain without suffering and pleasure without neediness. The difference between pain and suffering may seem subtle, but it is highly significant. When physical or emotional pain is experienced in a state of concentration, clarity & equanimity, it still hurts but in a way that bothers you less. You actually feel it more deeply. It’s more poignant but, at the same time, less problematic. More poignant means it motivates and directs action. Less problematic means it stops driving & distorting actions. I appreciate that merely hearing these words may not be enough to clarify the concept. But look back; perhaps you’ve experienced something like this in the past. If not, having read these words here will help you know what to look for in the future.”

       Shinzen Young. “The Science of Enlightenment. How Meditation Works.” Sounds True, 2016.
       *** HIGHLY recommended ***

The Body Keeps the Score

“Yesterday I was clever,
so I wanted to change the world.
Today, I am wise
so I am changing myself.”
Rumi

    An ancient myth tells us of a queen who one day orders her people to cover the earth with leather, so that she may comfortably walk everywhere in her bare feet. A very brave subject gently suggests to her that perhaps covering her feet with leather might be a better solution.

    This metaphor is about our instinctual drive to control the outside world for survival. But in our affluent Western culture, it's almost entirely about 'preferences' seeking comfort & pleasure eg the perfect cup of coffee, and avoiding discomfort eg a disappointing vacation spot. Usually we're totally wrapped up in our preferences because we (wrongly) assume that this will make us feel OK.

    A part of us gets “triggered” many times each day, to varying degrees, even by (to an outside objective observer) trivial daily experiences, which happen to remind us of past events, that at the time we were unable to handle (could not fully ‘physically process’). The physically felt energy of most emotions – happy or sad – can feel disturbing to a very young child. As a result, these intolerable energies are pushed down into our bodies. Bessel van der Kolk describes this in major trauma – ‘the body keeps the score’ – but Singer (below) imho very convincingly argues that this same process occurs with ANY emotion one is unable to fully process while experiencing it.

    Furthermore, Singer argues that much of our life is devoted to attempting to control the external environment so that it will not trigger our many stored blockages. So we are either living our lives as slaves to our unresolved emotional issues (neuroses) - or we can intentionally learn to release these blockages.
    This is NOT common knowledge. Most will continue to chase after happiness from the external world, and settle for "ordinary unhappiness." HOWEVER,

“Everything is workable.”

 

"Only have no preferences." 

    Meditation practice - formal sitting & informal daily life - is essentially about experiencing, learning to stabilize in & live as, that other part of us which CAN objectively perceive & handle ANYTHING the world presents us, AND learn from it.
    We stabilize in this higher Self by intentionally releasing blockages each time these arise. Now, as mature adults, the physically-felt unpleasant disturbed energy associated with a blockage that arises is NOT so difficult.  

    Each time we stay with the physical feel of an old or new emotion, until it resolves naturally (less than a minute to complete the physical processing) we diminish its power over our lives (much like a transient hunger pang while dieting).

    You will deeply appreciate how much better life becomes as you progressively free yourself from the tyranny of blocked emotions. 

     

    While most of us are unfamiliar with & somewhat averse to delving deeply into new, unfamiliar areas, I nevertheless HIGHLY RECOMMEND slow, careful, immersive reading of this imho wise, practical, well-written book:
    Michael A. Singer “Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament” 2022. 

    The Halifax public library has a copy; but well-worth owning $29. from Bookmark on Spring Garden or amazon.ca

Physical Processing

     "When we sit down to meditate, anxiety may arise. Certainly resistance and discouragement will also come up. The practice is to see the thoughts, feel the physical aspects of anxiety, become aware of the breath and environment, and just let it all be there. Whatever our state of mind or body might be, the practice is to really feel what that is; and while staying with the breath and environment, we let it be as it is."

     Bayda E. "Beyond Happiness. The Zen Way to True Contentment." Shambhala, Boston, 2011.

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. 

 

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