Spaciousness and Contraction

    There is a back-and-forth rhythm or dance between (apparent) opposites to many aspects of life, as popularized by Pete Seeger's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."

         One of these 'dances' is our tendency to AT TIMES contract into our "small self," into self-concern: sadness, anxiety, basically a low mood or "ordinary unhappiness" AND AT OTHER TIMES, expand into our "true Self" or wisdom, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding," experiencing uncaused joy, awe, gratitude, awareness, concern for, and even Oneness with, all of creation!

    Expansion can occur spontaneously, because 'everything is perfect as it is' as experienced & understood by shamans, saints, prophets & mystics of all wisdom traditions throughout the ages. Expansion usually occurs when we're able to relax, self-reflect, and finally allow ourself to deeply listen to our inner wisdom's whisperings. 

    Today's mystics agree: 
    "... happiness is our default setting. That’s the way we come wired from the factory. It is our natural state. ... quieting of your mind allows that natural state to come back to the surface." Interview of Chip & Jan Chipman on The Three Principles and Relationships https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmqLI8_9pko
     “All we are is peace, love & wisdom, AND the power to create the illusion that we’re not.” Jack Pransky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4 . 

    Contraction can be very easily triggered & maintained by stress. BUT, the WEIRDEST CAUSE IMAGINABLE is that WE are used to thinking shitty thoughts, which invariably CAUSE our shitty moods - our "ordinary unhappiness." YES, WE habitually choose to continuously re-tell & thus continuously re-suffer the sad "story of me," the sad story of my tribe, and visualize in gory detail horrible future events, which, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "never happened!" The QUALITY of OUR MOODS are ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE! Though we habitually blame our moods on our external circumstances, they have almost nothing to do with it! 

    “The simple truth is this: We’re living in the feeling of our thinking, NOT the feeling of our circumstances.” Michael Neill 

    “The original, shimmering Self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. 
    Instead, we live out of all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on & taking off like coats & hats against the world’s weather.” Frederick Buechner 

    “Stories are prisons we choose to live inside.” Bob Falconer  

    "How we experience life depends on our level of consciousness." Sydney Banks 

    “You can’t be in fear and curiosity at the same time.” John Clarke 

    WHEN you've had enough of being trapped in sad & anxious stories and wallowing in 'ordinary unhappiness' or depression, burnout or worse: 
1) realize self-talk's destructiveness,  
2) recognize self-defeating self-talk within seconds,
3) let it go,
4) immediately bring attention back to the present moment. 
5) cultivate the courage, perseverance & curiosity to remain, rest in, live in & savor the present moment. THIS is the HEART of Mindfulness Training & Practice! 

    You are cultivating PRESENCE - being fully awake, alive, free, engaged with whomever you're with, whatever you're doing - whether in motion or at rest. 
    While in presence, you will feel free, light, peaceful, relaxed, warm, loving, competent no matter what is going on, including a painful medical procedure!

    As soon as you start to feel down, anxious or otherwise troubled, DROP the shitty old thinking habits, go to #4 & 5 above.

    From Jack Pransky's excellent book: “Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well" 2011. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
    “I realized that if we deeply understood three spiritual facts or principles, how these facts work together and how our use of them gives us every experience we can possibly have in life, with this perspective we can move through life with peace of mind, well-being, mental health and psychological freedom. … The Three Principles point to ten little (but huge) points about life and relationships that would be extremely helpful for people to understand. … Each takes exploration and reflection. Thus a full chapter is devoted to each:

I. Our thinking is our life 
II. Wisdom is always available to guide us, if we know how to access it 
III. If someone’s thinking doesn’t change, they can’t change 
IV. When our mind clears our wisdom appears 
V. We don’t have to think our way out of our problems (or to happiness) 
VI. The feeling is what counts, and it’s foolproof 
VII. What we see is what we get 
VIII. In low levels of consciousness, it is unwise to believe, trust or follow our thinking 
IX. To deeply listen to others instead of to our own thinking gives us a richer experience 
X. We’re only as stuck as we think we are

    To deeply understand the meaning of these statements is to live in a different world, and inside-out world. You may never see yourself or the world in the same way again.

    Our innate Health and its natural intelligence is always hidden within us, just waiting to rise to the surface. All we have to do is allow what we think we know to drop away, or no longer take it seriously, and this wisdom will speak to us. It is so close to us that we have forgotten it is there – like the air we take for granted – yet it holds the key that unlocks the potential in everyone.” Jack Pransky

     Spiritual porosity refers to one of the qualities of Self: openness, connectedness, inter-relatedness or "interbeing," and ultimately Oneness with everyone & everything - nonduality. An old saying, "No man is an island." 

    “I’ve had the honor of being able to work with some of the Northern Plains indigenous peoples here - the Crow, and Sue, and the Northern Cheyenne. And I think they were much more comfortable with ‘porosity of mind.’ When they talked about the world around them, it was ‘all my relations.’ That’s a porous attitude toward the world. And I also think if we really could get back to that different attitude, we wouldn’t be able to treat the world around us so badly anymore.” Robert Falconer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSa9hvEgWpk WONDERFUL INTERVIEW

     Simon & Garfunkel sing about the opposite of porosity, the "small self":

One Love

    We all function at 2 very different levels of consciousness (ways of being) on different occasions.
    How often do you recognize this in yourself?
    Why is differentiating between these important?

    Too often, most of us are striving to control our external world – ‘just trying to get by’ – not only in the present, but even in the future or the past! This feels stressful. No matter how well we manage situations, we feel it should have gone better, and there’s a nagging sense of lack or emptiness inside – ‘I can’t get no satisfaction.’ At this level of consciousness, we feel alone & at least somewhat alienated from everyone & everything else in the world. To some extent at least, most of us have been conditioned to perceive the world as uncaring, at times even hostile to us. As a result, this fear-based, survivalist (FBS) level of consciousness / way of being - often referred to as the ‘small self’ (Eckhart Tolle’s ‘pain body’) – dominates our way of being in the world.

    “All of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one’s training.” Jubal, in ‘Stranger in a Strange Land,’ by Robert Heinlein

    At times, however, you may feel deeply immersed, ‘at one with’ an activity - alone or with one or more people. There’s no thought of yourself, time, or anything outside of this one activity. You, the activity & other participants are a single, pleasantly flowing process, like a wonderful dance or joyous celebration. You feel gratitude, intimacy with everyone & everything. Psychologist Csikszentmihalyi named such common but sporadic, universal human experiences ‘flow.’
    However, when this sense of (‘true self’) Self becomes increasingly dominant in one’s life, spiritual teachers refer to this sense of unity or oneness as ‘Universal Consciousness’ in the process of ‘awakening.’

    Our deeper intelligence tells us that we're profoundly interconnected & interdependent with everyone & everything - AND - science shows that we're only truly happy while intimately engaged with whoever / whatever we're dealing with in each successive present-moment. Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind.” Science 2010; 330(6006): 932.

    “When we quit thinking (excessively) about
ourselves & our own self-preservation, we undergo
a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” Joseph Campbell

    "… the greatest antidote to insecurity & sense of fear is compassion. It brings one back to the basis of one's inner strength. A truly compassionate person embodies a carefree spirit of fearlessness, born of the freedom from egoistic self-concern." The Dalai Lama

    How can we tell when we’re in fear-based survivalist (FBS) mode?
    It’s pretty fast & easy when we learn to focus on & thus refine awareness of our thoughts & feelings. Physically FBS mode feels tight & cold. Mentally / emotionally FBS feels insecure, repetitive, unpleasantly stressful & unsustainable. It’s easy to recognize the re-run of old internal conversations we’ve heard way too many times before: ‘I’m no good at this,’ ‘I can’t handle this,’ ‘When will this be over?’ ‘I hate this,’ ‘Are we there yet?’ ‘If only I could have x, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only I could avoid y, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only z never happened, THEN I’d be happy,’ ‘If only so & so could change, THEN I’d be happy,’ etc, etc.
    Habitually worrying about ourselves almost non-stop, is simply failing to realize that far from being helpful, it is the cause of most of our unnecessary suffering.
    Even in the worst possible situations – the death by suicide of one’s child or the loss of one’s family, home & all possessions in fires or floods – the most healing thing people who’ve sustained such unimaginable losses can possibly do, is to help others who’ve just suffered these same losses. This is the all-important shift from preoccupation with self to concern for others.

    It’s impossible to be happy when we fail to be authentic / true to our Self, just as it’s impossible for a fish to be happy flopping about on dry land; or for a healthy eagle to remain stuck in a small cage. It’s largely up to us WHETHER we remain stuck in the rat race – OR – be authentic to our true nature. Re-discovering who we truly are is primarily an intuitive journey, not something we can think our way to. Thinking is based on theories & models of reality. Who we truly are must be directly experienced, in the moment.
    Gangaji skillfully points us to directly experience our true nature:

    “I really try to direct people into just discovering there is a direct experience and then there is a narrative about that direct experience. Because we’re so attuned to the narrative (our internal conversations, opinions, judgments), we often follow the narrative as if it were reality, as if it were the direct experience. (BUT our narrative is based on our past experiences & how these have conditioned us to react. So, as Anais Nin has keenly observed, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ie we see & react to memories from our past, triggered by the present, rather than being able to directly experience & thus respond appropriately, to what we encounter right here & now.)  
    So even a superficial experience like feeling anger, or irritation not even anger. You feel irritation, we have a narrative about that. We’re righteous in our irritation because somebody cut me off on the freeway. Or, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t feel that way, I should let them do what they have to do. I shouldn’t feel this.’ And we get caught up in our internal conversation and we don’t get to experience the depth of what is here.
    Even if it starts as something superficial, like an irritation, in the willingness to experience that without the narrative about that; without good or bad judgment; just to for a moment be absolutely, completely irritated. And without a narrative, irritation can’t last. But it can reveal something deeper – maybe it’s true anger, maybe fear, maybe bliss, and finally, maybe, this radiant, unspeakable, indefinable presence of your own being.”
    Gangaji interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSVtlpsN58k - POWERFUL 81-year-old female spiritual teacher

    "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ

Shifting from Isolation towards Wholeness

     At around two years of age, we create the idea of a "self" that is separate from other people & everything else ("individuation").
     With a "quiet ego" the individual can competently pursue meaningful short- & long-term goals, equally valued by herself (appropriate self-care), society (allocentric), and the natural world (ecocentric). This self-concept & associated worldview appears to be optimal, and in fact is one secular definition of "wisdom." Exemplars include wise, loving grandparents; the many "unsung heroes" - solid, decent, completely trustworthy people who quietly go about their business without ever drawing attention to themselves; mystics & saints.
     With a "noisy ego" the individual is primarily driven by self-concern, disregarding the welfare of others & the environment. This is the opposite end of the spectrum. The most extreme form of this is Antisocial Personality Disorder, exemplified by amoral political & business leaders, serial killers etc.
     As we mature, our egos naturally tend to quieten, as we become somewhat less rigidly, fearfully self-centered, and become increasingly outwardly-focused, generous, concerned for the welfare of others & the natural world. This shift in self-concept & worldview is markedly disrupted, or even prevented by attachment injury & other forms of major trauma. Profound transformation from a somewhat fearful "me-alone-against-a-hostile-world" identity, towards an open mind-hearted, loving, nurturing embrace of everyone & everything - of life itself, is normally slow, gradual & tentative even if we were spared from major trauma, and even if we're working towards this full-time (eg as a monk or nun).
     Perhaps the ultimate level of psychosocialspiritual evolution is "awakening" or "enlightenment" - the Zen understanding of "wisdom." Enlightenment has been defined as "intimacy with all things."
     Buddhist meditation practice is one of a number of ways to achieve this clarity of experiential understanding of ultimate reality. Regardless of one's chosen path of maturation - another wisdom tradition or a purely secular path - I suspect that the profound shift in self-concept & worldview is key. Given the disturbing prevalence of major trauma, many of us need psychotherapy to allow this shift to happen at all. Instead of merely "getting by," we then have the chance to flourish, expressing our full human potential.

     “When we sit in meditation, we can discover a way of being that is very different from our typical interactions with the world. For the period of time that we sit, we agree within ourselves to quiet the familiar internal chatter that goes on most of the time. We sit so that we can discover in ourselves this capability for stillness, for intimacy with our self. We can uncover the heart.
     This process of stilling the mind and opening the heart brings a great feeling of ease that courses through the body, releasing the sensation of holding back, of fragility or tightness, and freeing us to work with the challenges of life. I call that true intimacy. When we can actually feel what we are feeling, experience what we are experiencing, and recognize what we are thinking, then we become intimate with ourselves. This intimacy is a closeness, a quality of interiority, a nearness. To be intimate with yourself is to be so attuned to your own feeling-state and mind-state and perception-state that nothing is hidden, your whole being is available to your life. In this intimacy with self, we begin to recognize the habits of thinking that stop us from living confidently, generously, and vigorously. And we begin to trust ourselves.
     ... To me, intimacy is the underlying liberation of Zen. When I talk about intimacy, I’m talking first about intimacy with ourselves, then about intimacy with our lovers, partners, and close friends. I’m talking about intimacy with the work we do and the colleagues with whom we work, intimacy with our community and with the great earth – intimacy with everyone.” 
        Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. “Most Intimate. A Zen Approach to Life’s Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014. 

The Reality in which We Live

    The reality we can (more or less) manage, is the reality in which we live.
    Based on world events on the nightly news, our "consensual reality" is the chaos caused by a lot of  hurt children, hurting other hurt children, so that they'll stop hurting them, and thereby achieve peace & harmony.

    A good friend, who's fond of the singing group Abba, once seriously asked me to stop playing Abba's greatest hits, because if he heard a certain song, he wouldn't be able to get it out of his head for the rest of the day. Most of us probably have our own "ear worm" songs.

    But by far the most potent ear worm for almost everyone is "the story of me" - the saga of one's personal history, dramatized & edited with every re-telling, mostly to oneself through incessant internal dialogue - "self talk." We're hypnotized by the drama of "me, myself & I," asking why me? why not me? whose fault was that? We demonize - feeling regret, pain, anger, disgust, shame, rage, etc'; OR Disneyfy - wistfully dreaming of "the good old days, gone forever"; OR flip flop between the two, according to "my" needs.
    The bottom line is that self-centeredness, while understandable, especially given the many & varied sources of trauma, is nevertheless the major cause of suffering. Life can easily be a perpetual roller-coaster of emotional highs & lows IF we insist that the causes of our unhappiness are purely external, perpetrated against "me," INSTEAD OF mostly internal - our unprocessed, closed-loop, "story of me."
    Western psychology is very good at helping us step back from & get some perspective on the "noisy ego" (the hurt inner child protesting so loudly, that our, & our loved ones' lives are dominated, distorted & unhappy). A good psychotherapist can help us see our past & present far more accurately, allowing acceptance & self-acceptance, forgiveness & self-forgiveness, compassion & self-compassion to arise, liberating us from a life-sentence in a repetitive story-of-me echo chamber. We become able to function, with increasing consistency, in a truly healthy manner, from a "quiet ego," which is unburdened from anxious / terrified self-concern.

    “In everyday life, we normally emphasize the content * of experience at the expense of being.** In mediation or prayer, we simply soften the focus of our attention from the content of experience. We allow being to emerge, as it were, from the background of experience and shine in the foreground.
    In time, we begin to notice that the content of experience loses its capacity to veil or take us away from being. As a result, being shines not just in the background of experience, but in the midst of all experience. And as a result, the distinction between everyday life and prayer or meditation begins to dissolve.” Rupert Spira in: Non Duality Roundtable - Adyashanti, Rupert Spira & John Prendergast : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk

     * The "content of experience" above is "normally" (usually) dominated by self-referential anxiety in the form of continuous self-talk, distorting one's actual live experience.
    ** "Being" is who / what we truly are, usually completely hidden / drowned out by the "noisy ego."

    “Peace & quiet joy are the very nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone & everything. All that is necessary is to understand this, to feel this, and to lead a life to the best of our ability in a way that is consistent with, & an expression of, this felt understanding.” Rupert Spira https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk 

    “None of us are who we think we are. Who & what we are is beyond imagination, beyond comprehension by the ordinary mind, and yet we are this non-separate, seamless reality that pervades everybody & everything. The realization of this is the greatest joy, the most beautiful discovery. And to embody & live this in our ordinary life is the open challenge & invitation to each of us.” John Prendergast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk 

     “I think the mystics are saying, ultimately, we’re addicted to the finite.*** We’re addicted to the finite as being an adequate base of operations.
    And when we learn to break the thread of overly identifying with the finite, the infinity **** that shines out through the finite, can be realized.” Jim Finley https://batgap.com/james-finley/ HIGHLY RECOMMENDED INTERVIEW

    *** "The finite" refers to the material or finite world, or from a non-dual, mystic perspective, "relative reality," "consensual reality," ie how "ultimate reality" appears temporarily.
    **** "Infinity" refers to "ultimate reality" or the non-material source of everyone & everything.

    “One could say that enlightenment is simply the recognition of the nature of our being. The inherent emptiness of being, is experienced as peace. The inherent fullness of being, is experienced as happiness. The shared nature of being, is experienced as love.” Rupert Spira https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk  

by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

Mood, Self-concepts & Time

"Sometimes I go about with pity for myself
and all the while Great Winds
are carrying me across the sky."

Ojibeway Saying

     Regardless of our situation, be it objectively pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, we can embody EITHER 
         • a pleasant, natural, peaceful, authentic, nurturing mood, intimate with whatever is in the present moment OR 
         • dysphoria, in an adversarial or defensive mood (filled with fear, anger, impatience, distractedness, bitterness, cynicism, etc), escaping from the present moment, to the past & future.
     Such dysphoria is caused primarily by our attempts to create & maintain a solid, permanent "self", despite our deep understanding that the "self" is just an ephemeral concept. 
     'Excessive self-concern' or 'noisy ego' is closely tied to another human idea: time. (For a detailed examination, see: David R. Loy. “Lack & Transcendence. The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism.” Wisdom Publications, 2018) 'Time-poverty' is a major stressor these days. Paradoxically, the more anxious we are about not having enough time, the more time we squander by dwelling in the past & future.

     We all know what it's like to have an intimate relationship with people, pets, hobbies, projects, etc. Intimacy means being completely open to & engaged with whomever or whatever we're with. We also know the effect that intimacy has on time - instead of 'time-poverty,' we experience timelessness, 'the eternal now.'
     Being in an adversarial relationship with anyone or anything (eg our job, car, computer etc) clearly feels unpleasant, stressful, unhealthy, unnatural - a situation most of us would like to correct as quickly as possible.

     Being intimate with literally everyone & everything - 'life's 10,000 joys & 10,000 sorrows,' 'the good, the bad & the ugly' - is ideal from a Buddhist perspective, and shared by mystics & saints of all the world's wisdom traditions. Avoiding difficulties is an important primitive biological reflex but is inconsistent with human maturation & wisdom. Acceptance, including self-acceptance, self-compassion & 'leaning in' with kind curiosity to deeply examine & understand all that we once feared, are essential to growing up. (See: Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011) Intimacy feels 'like home,' authentic, natural, healthy, right.

     "I was born
      when all I once feared
      I could love.”                  Rabia Basri 

     “The whole idea of compassion is based on the keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another… 

     The whole purpose of life is to live by love.”            Thomas Merton

 

Going With the Flow

     "Going with the flow" has a far more profound and surprisingly more practical meaning than might be assumed. It involves cultivating continuous respectful mindful curiosity about present-moment reality, moment-by-moment, as it unfolds.
    We block this wondrous capacity as soon as we prioritize "self-concern." The primitive, survivalist part of our brain is meant to take over when our life is in danger. BUT today, our life is rarely if ever in danger. Today, it kicks in many, many times per day, for the most minimal of threats to our ego, and when there's even a chance that our preferences will not be met (Michael Singer). This constant chronic over-reaction has the same negative effect on us as if our lives were actually continuously threatened! This is how most of us live - trapped in the survivalist perspective of "personal mind" (Michael Singer) "separate, small self".

    “It’s our erroneous belief in a separate selfhood, with its insistent refrain of 'I, me, mine,' that keeps us from hearing & seeing directly.” Shinge Sherry Chayat Roshi

    "Taking the backward step," a well-known Zen phrase, is the act of shifting from the usual, "personal mind" (Michael Singer) or "separate, small self" perspective with its "noisy ego," to the transpersonal, Unitive Consciousness perspective. Advanced beings of all traditions are well-known to be able to shift seamlessly, as needed, between the "quiet ego" of optimally-functioning "regular folk" and transpersonal, Unitive Consciousness.
    EVERYONE dearly wish to be happy YET most of us are ignorant of the fact that advanced beings are consistently the happiest of all people.

    The excellent 39 minute podcast (below) delves deeply into this & closely related matters.
    I include a bit of information to hopefully provide a bit of context & perspective. The "noisy ego" of our "separate, small self" is activated very easily, as mentioned above. One of the many triggers for this activation is perceiving anything that makes us feel uncomfortable: something different from our usual experience, something "foreign," something we don't understand, can't be bothered to delve into & investigate, and are apt to immediately label "crap" etc.
    In this category, "spirituality" is right up there among topics that shut us down & make us move on to 'lighter,' more entertaining distractions.

    Spirituality, broadly defined, is “the basic desire to find ultimate meaning & purpose in one’s life.”
    Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit – such as love & compassion, patience tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony – which brings happiness to both self & others.” Dalai Lama
    “The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of intelligence. You also realize that all the things that really matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind.” Eckhart Tolle .
    "Spirituality is the innate human need to connect with something larger than ourselves, something that is considered sacred or divine. Inherent in this definition is the assumption that the need to transcend the limited self is just part of who we are as a species – it is ‘innate.’
    Not everyone ‘wakes up’ to this self-transcending facet of human nature & acts on it. But we tend to be miserably unhappy when we do not address this need. We need an active process – a relationship – with whatever we call the Divine.
    Spiritual intelligence is the ability to behave with altruistic love through wisdom & compassion while maintaining inner & outer peace (equanimity) regardless of the circumstances – coupled with the skill, competence, or ability to comprehend or make sense of things or situations & then bring adaptive, creative approaches to solve problems that humans face.”
    L.W.Fry & C.G Wigglesworth. “Toward a Theory of Spiritual Intelligence and Spiritual Leader Development.” International Journal on Spirituality and Organizational Leadership Vol 1, No 1, 2013, pp47-79. https://www.iispiritualleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/SLTISOL_SI.pdf#page=47

    I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LISTENING TO THIS excellent 39 minute podcast :