#757 Intimacy with Oneself

Rain
No umbrella, getting soaked.
I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.               Daito Kokushi

      "Facing yourself intimately and without judgment is like finding yourself in a sudden downpour without an umbrella or a shelter. You try to escape the cold and wet by huddling into your clothes, head down, but there’s no way to move away from the rain, just like there’s no way to move away from your own issues, sorrow, or anger. If you can just let go of trying to escape and acknowledge, ‘This is me, and this is what I’m experiencing,’ the need to escape vanishes. You are free to be truly there for yourself and others. It’s like standing in the rain with nothing to lose: your self is the raincoat that will protect you and protect your loved ones through your honesty. If you can see that you are not the world, but that the world is actually you, then you can begin to experience an intimacy with all things. The key is to train yourself to see this in your moment-to-moment life, to consciously dissolve the made-up boundaries between self and other, to appreciate that we are all linked together in this magic circle of relationship.
     This might sound rather airy-fairy, but it is what gives us freedom, and freedom is what we really want. We want to be spontaneously alive, not stuck in our old habits of body and mind. So we flow with change; we nurture awareness; we listen with open heart-minds to ourselves and to each other. We recognize our own ‘selflessness’ and our own ‘self-fullness.’
     It is the fulcrum of our relationships – with family, friends, coworkers – that can lead us to this continuous path of awakening. The key is to train ourselves to recognize how we are in our moment-to-moment lives and to honestly connect with others without fear or shame. Because, strange as it may seem, we learn more from relationships than from any other source. And they are not always easy! Buddha’s teachings tell us that suffering arises from grasping for things to be different than they are, from not meeting the moment just as it is. We’re so preoccupied with the idea of what we want, that we miss what’s really alive in the present moment. We always want to be safe and happy and to avoid any suffering, so we try to control our own lives and the lives of those close to us. We don’t feel safe enough to just let things fall apart and reassemble. We try to ‘fix’ the other people when that’s not needed, and so we create more suffering.

      It may sound strange, but even when we are struggling, we can find appreciation in the struggle itself. If we are willing to experience others and ourselves as evolving beings, we may realize that even the most disturbing insight into our self may be exactly what we need. At that moment, we can appreciate our willingness and courage to take the step into reality.”

       Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. “Most Intimate. A Zen Approach to Life’s Challenges.” Shambhala, 2014.


     "You need not worry about your worries. Just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make 'being quiet' into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about 'being quiet', miserable about 'being happy'. Just be aware that you are and remain aware - don't say: 'yes, I am; what next?' There is not 'next' in 'I am'. It is a timeless state." Nisargadatta

#720 Quality of Life = Quality of Consciousness

     Many of us have a strong, recurrent tendency to waste a lot of time, energy & heartache on external events that have already passed, or are unlikely to happen in the future. In no way is this useful or practical such as seriously deciding to change our behavior, or drawing up a real action plan. 
     By obsessing over the contents of consciousness like this, we inflict tremendous unnecessary suffering on ourselves.

      “We are all prisoners of our minds.
     This realization is the first step on the journey to freedom.”         Ram Das

     “When water is still it is like a mirror ….
      And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness,
      How much more the faculties of mind?
      The mind of the sage being in repose
      Becomes the mirror of the universe.”                    Chuang Tzu

     We're free to effortlessly shift from attending to the contents of (our noisy egoic) consciousness to directly experience the depth of stillness & silence within - the vast field of consciousness itself.
     Contents can be compared to clouds, while (transpersonal post-symbolic) consciousness is the sky in which clouds occasionally float by.

    See: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Two-Levels-of-Consciousness/c17jj/56f14e0c0cf266a292561f27

#696 Freedom

     “We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.”

        Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine. “Tales of Wonder. Adventures Chasing the Divine. An Autobiography.” HarperOne, NY, 2009.

#684 A Bird in the Hand Koan

     My daughter-in-law recounted a Tibetan teaching about having a wise relationship with transient moments of perceived happiness. 
     Consider a precious dove landing, briefly, on your open palm. And the moment the dove starts flying away ... can you truly love it, while letting it go?

     What if the dove's total freedom & happiness is not different than yours?

Agricola Street, Halifax, NS

#672 Black-Box Life

     For most people, life is a black-box: imagined to be solid, unchanging, indestructible, impenetrable, dark, not to be looked at closely. Never mind the wise counsel that "a life unexamined is not worth living." 
     Most of us do our utmost to keep feverishly busy, precisely so we won't have to ponder the two most meaningful questions: "Who am I?" and "What is this?" Avoidance, magical thinking, dogmatism and rigidity go hand-in-hand. A quick hard response to complex questions keeps things simple & controllable - but only in fairy tales.

     Sitting still, letting go of self-talk, opening oneself, remaining as open as one can, as long as one can, to actual reality - things as they are - is the opposite of a black-box life. It's a decision to step out of a dark, boxed-in prison, into the light and openness of real life. It's a bit scary at first, but prisoners can and do become acclimatized to, and come to enjoy freedom.

#606 Spacious Awareness

     For most of us, our default level of consciousness is one in which "I" and "mine" are the axis around which the universe turns. In other words, we're normally egocentric, self-absorbed, at times self-obsessed, and thus by necessity, we're stuck in an adversarial relationship with everyone and everything else. It's critical to clearly see this. Self-awareness is humbling, so we compulsively seek distraction - today's "opium of the people".

      “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.”          Daniel Goleman "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships"      www.goodreads.com

     Mindfulness practices help us see clearly and accept our far-from-perfect conditioned selves. The upside is that we also become aware of a qualitatively higher level of consciousness. At this level of awareness, we experience spaciousness, clarity, generosity, freedom, stillness, silence, loving-kindness, joy - the polar opposites of claustrophobically agonizing about "me & mine". Spacious awareness is always at hand - in fact we're it - whenever our "noisy ego" doesn't drown it out. While screaming, a baby cannot appreciate that his loving parents are right there trying to soothe it.
     As we progressively shift from being egocentric to allo- and ecocentric, appropriate self-care & self-compassion remain. We're AS important - not more, not less - as other human beings. Normal, healthy maturation is transcending an unhealthy, exaggerated degree of self-concern ie self-obsession, and opening our heart-minds to embrace & nurture all that we encounter, right here, right now.

Jonathan Shapiro   www.dpreview.com

#591 Perfect Freedom - the Path MIRRORS the Goal

     We can ALL attain the state of perfect freedom described below - but how? 
     In mindfulness, the goal & path are one - a moment-by-moment choice to be mindful (aware), instead of mindless (inhabiting the egocentric "ordinary mind"). 
     We cannot "get to" mindfulness by being mindless, no matter how hard we try. Angry, impatient struggle only buries us deeper into the swamp of mindlessness. We practice mindfulness by resting in awareness, and when we notice that we've drifted off into mindlessness, we skillfully return to resting in awareness. Acceptance, gentleness, kindness are already aspects of mindfulness ie we're already instantly, effortlessly there!: http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/self-compassion.html
 
     A highly accomplished practitioner of meditation has been described as "a person who has actualized that perfect freedom that is the potential for all human beings. The flow of her consciousness is not the fixed repetitive pattern of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously & naturally from the circumstances of the present. The results of this, in terms of the quality of life, are extraordinary: buoyancy, vigor, straight-forwardness, simplicity, humility, serenity, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity, and unfathomable compassion. Her whole being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the present. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a person so developed, is enough change another's whole way of life."

       Jack Kornfield "Transmission - Receiving the Living Wisdom of Spiritual Teachers - In-depth reflections and teachings on the student-teacher relationship."           www.soundstrue.com

 

Antonio Celso Lima Mollo, National Geographic   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com

#568 Freedom of Choice, Moment-by-Moment

          "Between stimulus and response there is a space. 
           In that space is our power to choose our response.
           In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

                                                            Viktor Frankl

Winter Bike, Halifax

#556 Whose Life am I Living?

     Resisting doing what we know is best, is very common, and of course, very strange! It's like the old image of a tiny angel sitting on one shoulder whispering good suggestions, while a tiny devil sits on the other shoulder whispering self-destructive alternatives. We buy into this more than we realize. Regardless of which "voice" we obey, it's NOT really OUR OWN choice. Instinctively we resist conforming to other peoples' ideas - living other peoples' lives. We highly value agency, freedom of choice. 

     So it's worth spending quality time & energy investigating our own deepest values - what precisely gives most meaning to our lives? - then intentionally living life according to this internal compass, as closely & as consistently as possible. In this way, we can live the highest quality, "undivided life".

#481 Why Become Educated - through School AND Meditation?

     To know: "How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. ...
      The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.
     That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."                                           David Foster Wallace

      David Foster Wallace's entire 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Speech (below) is WELL worth 22 minutes of your time.

#469 From Stuck to Flying Free

     How much of our life are we "identified with" some negative aspect of "our story"? In other words, how often are we completely immersed in some negative emotion? Recurrent anxious, depressed thoughts of not being good enough, being unloved, being unworthy of love, etc are common in "ordinary unhappiness." This is "as good as it gets" according to Freud, YET this is unnecessary suffering. For some of us this is completely debilitating and requires professional help from mental health professionals. However, the basic aspects of this is shared by every human being. We do not have to remain stuck in this quicksand.
     The moment we observe this happening, we are momentarily free, unstuck. As soon as we see that we have sadness or anxiety, we actually no longer are sadness or anxiety, but in fact observers of these emotions. This is a healing shift from being submerged or drowning in an afflictive emotion (cognitive fusion) to being somewhat objectively aware of the situation (cognitive defusion).
     We gradually begin to observe this as a repeated pattern. This is an additional critical healing shift - to a meta view. We notice how certain environmental and other factors trigger these afflictive emotions to arise, we notice the physical & other effects, and notice how these dissipate. We become aware of the causes & conditions, and the arising & passing away of the mini-drama. We're learning to appreciate a 30,000 foot view of the most difficult aspect of life - our own and others'. No longer stuck in mud, we are free, yet know the mud very well, and the many still stuck in it.

Beauty & Kindness in an Ice Storm

#434 Can We Choose Not to Join the Digital Dead?

     "'I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is - I am out of my senses.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?'                       Henry David Thoreau
 
     'Shake off the village' - what a great way of expressing a vitally important human need. Since Thoreau's time, the village has grown exponentially bigger and become more intrusive and seemingly intimate - giving us the semblance of connection without any of the real benefits of connection. Technology has enabled the village to become exceptionally good at not allowing us to shake it off. With the advent of the smartphone, getting away from it all is no longer as easy as simply getting up and walking away. And, increasingly, people are making the choice not to even try to shake off the village - surrendering to a life of distractions, with the result that, as Thoreau put it, we are living much of our lives out of our senses. Wayne Curtis calls them 'the digital dead, shuffling slowly, their eyes affixed to a small screen in their hands.'"                      Arianna Huffington

The whole article is well worth reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/hemingway-thoreau-jeffers_b_3837002.html

#386 Mindfulness feels like Freedom

     "When true mindfulness arises, one feels as if one is stepping back and observing what is happening in experience, rather than being embedded in it. This does not mean separation or detachment, but is rather a sense of not being hooked by a desirable object or not pushing away a repugnant object. There in the middle, equidistant from each extreme, one encounters a sense of freedom that allows for greater intimacy with experience. It may seem paradoxical, but ... we can take an attitude toward the objects of experience that is at the same time both equanimous and benevolent."                    Andrew Olendzki PhD

#382 Choosing to be Free - Moment-by-Moment

     "The crucial factor influencing how well we can respond in any given situation seems to be the level of mindfulness we can bring to bear upon the moment.
     If we don't care to be present, unconscious decision-making systems will function by default to get us through to the next moment, albeit in the grips of (often flawed and suffering-causing) learned behaviors and conditioned responses.
     If, on the other hand, we can increase the amount of conscious awareness present by manifesting mindfulness, we expand the range of our possible responses. Even if predisposed to anger, we can choose to act with kindness. This is the essence of our freedom in an otherwise heavily conditioned system."                            Andrew Olendzki PhD

 

Kensington Market, Toronto

#381 Each Moment - a New Beginning

     "The goal of becoming a better person is within the reach of us all, at every moment. The tool for emerging from the primitive yoke of conditioned responses to the tangible freedom of the conscious life lies just behind our brow. We need only invoke the power of mindful awareness in any action of body, speech, or mind to elevate that action from the unconscious reflex of a trained creature to the awakened choice of a human being who is guided to a higher life by wisdom."             Andrew Olendzki PhD

     An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. 
     "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
     The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" 
     The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
       http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html

From Kelly McGonigal's YouTube video - see: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/08/384-understanding-willpower-competing.html

#379 Liberating Ourself from Compulsivity

     "Mindfulness practice offers the restraint necessary to overcome the tug of desire upon the senses. As we notice the mind wandering off to explore a gratifying train of thought, or as we notice the body's urging to nudge ourselves into a more comfortable position, we gently abandon the impulse and return attention to the primary object of awareness. We do this again and again, until the mind becomes content being fully present with what is manifesting here and now in the field of experience, rather than rushing off for some other form of stimulation. As the mind settles down it becomes considerably more powerful and thus more empowered."            Andrew Olendzki PhD

#373 How Free is our Free Will?

     In the introduction to his short book “Free Will” (Free Press, 2012), Sam Harris writes: 
    “The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: 1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and 2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false. 
     But the deeper truth is that free will doesn’t even correspond to any subjective fact about us – and introspection soon proves as hostile to the idea as the laws of physics are. Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds. A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.”

     When we devote no more than the odd moment to contemplate who we are, and how we relate to our environment, Harris is correct, we do remain locked into being thoroughly conditioned by our past history, genetics, etc. Conditioning powerfully, predictably programs specific responses to specific stimuli. Our default mode is indeed primitive conditioned reactivity - we live much (ALL according to Harris) of our lives on autopilot. Sadly, most of us behave based on the complex cocktail of causes & conditions of our past - our future 'set in stone' by our past - with no chance of creatively carving out new, qualitatively better possibilities. 

     The timeless exhortations to "Know Thyself!" and "A Life Unexamined is Not Worth Living" point to the power of conditioning to enslave, BUT ALSO to the fact that there is A WAY OUT of an otherwise pre-programmed, robotic existence.
     Einstein said, "We cannot solve the problems of today at the level of thinking at which they were first created." Since our "normal" level of thinking is conditioned, it cannot solve the problem of conditioning. Contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation are designed to free us from the prison of conditioning by cultivating a more evolved level of awareness that leads to wisdom.
     "Wisdom is a function of deep insight into, and mature understanding of, the central existential issues of life, together with practical skill in responding to these issues in ways that enhance the deep wellbeing of all those who the responses affect." 
       Walsh R. The varieties of wisdom: Contemplative, cross-cultural, and integral contributions. Research in Human Development 2011; 8(2): 109-127.

eaglevshawk   www.dpreview.com

#372 Direct Perception of the Flow of Experience

     “… healing occurs as we learn to move from the realm of concepts to the world of direct experience. Our mental concepts and ideas about things, about people, objects, or feelings, are static and unchanging. But the reality of experience is an ever-changing river. Direct perception drops beneath the names of things to show us their ephemeral, mysterious nature. When we bring our attention to the direct perception of experience, we become more alive and free.”               Jack Kornfield

#327 Ideas about Happiness vs the Real Thing

     We all hold ideas about what it takes to make us happy. These concepts are cultural, familial, as well as those that are unique to us as individuals. We are constantly comparing current reality with this potent ball of 'must haves' - the closer the match, the greater our happiness ... and vice versa.
     To the extent that these requirements for happiness are unexamined, unconscious, and thus NOT of our own choosing, they have a stranglehold on our life.
     My late aunt repeatedly said that as long as her only daughter remained with her partner (whom my aunt disliked), my aunt could never be happy. This type of vow is common and effective. My aunt died unhappy.
     This is tragic AND completely unnecessary. We need to become consciously aware of all the barriers *** we ourselves erect to keep us from embracing life fully. We need to become consciously aware of all the hounds that chase us, as if we were rabbits - and - all the rabbits that we chase, as if we were hounds. Most of us, most of the time, without any apparent choice in the matter, are in fact flipping between hound and rabbit roles. This is both exhausting and miserable.
     Fortunately, we know the PHYSICAL FEELING of chasing, and also of being chased. When we become aware of this common form of being OUT OF CONTROL, of "being driven" instead of doing what we want to do, we can pause, center ourselves with the feel of our breath in our belly, bring ourselves into the present moment, and choose to do what is appropriate to the present circumstances. FRESHLY EMBRACE THIS VERY MOMENT. This is the definition of sanity by any standards.

***      "Growth fundamentally means an enlarging and expanding of one's horizons, a growth of one's boundaries, outwardly in perspective and inwardly in depth. ... Growth is reapportionment; re-zoning; re-mapping; an acknowledgment, and then enrichment, of ever deeper and more encompassing levels of one's own self."
        Wilber K. "No boundary. Eastern and Western approaches to personal growth." Shambhala, Boston, 1979.

Wong Heng Meng   http://travel.nationalgeographic.com

#259 In-groups, Self-centeredness, Maturity & Wisdom

     "My country - right or wrong!" is a controversial position still held by some. Such "group think" attitudes allow the group to commit atrocities. To permit atrocities to happen, the majority of followers must at least fail to oppose, if not actively participate. Yet, as soon as a leadership falls, the previously silent majority starts to whimper: "We were only following orders"; "We didn't know these things were happening."
     A proportion of the population will ride along with anything that provides easy access to power, wealth and security - ethics and common decency be damned. Too self-centered and weak to care for anyone but themselves, short-term gain is their game. Such opportunists completely identify with whatever group holds power: country, ethnicity, political party, religion, profession, cult, tribe, gang, etc, and against outsiders. 

     Some of us will, instead, actively seek and increasingly grow in wisdom. To do so requires that we outgrow self-serving in-groups.
     Wisdom is “a developmental process involving self-transcendence. Self-transcendence refers to the ability to move beyond self-centered consciousness, and to see things as they are with clear awareness of human nature and human problems, and with a considerable measure of freedom from biological and social conditioning. This ability to move beyond a self-centered perspective is certainly an important component of wisdom. Consistent with this idea, … transcending the self is needed to move beyond ingrained, automatic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, and to connect empathetically with the experiences of others.”

     Le TN, Levenson MR. Wisdom as self-transcendence: What's love (& individualism) got to do with it? Journal of Research in Personality 2005; 39(4): 443-457.

Carsten Krieger Photography   http://www.carstenkrieger.com/