LOOKING FOR MEANING?

What , for you, is the meaning of life?
What is your purpose?
Why are you here?

It's a question that comes up a lot in counseling, for a very good reason. Humans need a strong sense of meaning, if for no other reasons than it grounds us, gives us a pretext for being here, and some idea of what to do while we're waiting for Godot. If we lose touch with Meaning for long enough, we  can become  unhinged, and can actually become quite ill.

Meaning is required by the Mind: it demands meaning for itself. Heart and spirit couldn't care less -- they really couldn't. So the perception of a "lack of meaning" is coming from your mind, and so is all the ensuing carry-on. This does not demean or diminish its importance in any way, but I say this now just so that we can be clear about where the Need for Meaning comes from. How we experience that addiction to meaning gives us an insight into how our mind works, and how it goes about getting its way with us.

So, what - for you - is the meaning of life? Write down now a list of things that occur to you. This is important. Please don't read on until you have got at least 5 things down on paper. Scan all the areas of your life -- relationships, money, career, recreation, spirituality, health -- What is the meaning of your experience in each of these life areas? If you haven't got at least 5 things down, you're wasting your time: hit the "Exit" button and do something else.

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You're back? Good. Look at your list now. Of all that you have  written there, which  meanings are inherited from your family, your religion or spirituality, and your culture? Don't get defensive about it -- those influences don't in any way invalidate the things that are important to you. We're just getting a handle, firstly, on which of your values are there by default, and which have been created by you, for you, in the light of experiences that have forced you to question and validate your inherited values.

OK. This list is not hard and fast. As we proceed with this game, feel free to add to and alter your list in any way.

Look at your list again now. Look at each Meaning in turn. Ask yourself "Is this Meaning what I think my life IS about, or is it what I think my life SHOULD be about, or WOULD be about if things were going better for me?" If you come across any meanings that fall into the "Should-be" or "Would-be" categories, don't delete them, but add to each one the Meaning that actually is so for you right now. Be honest. You may strike some reluctance here, because you ego wants to look good -- to itself and to you. Your ego is not going to voluntarily give you what you need to know here. Feel into the question rather than think about it. What is actually going on in your space? If you're experiencing - say - anxiety, then that should be on your list: anxiety (if you have it) is part of what your life means to you -- at this moment. Put it on your list.

The beginning of any journey means starting from where you are, not from where you think you'd rather be or where you think you ought to be. And if you have got this far into this blog, you are about to go on a journey. Don't worry, you have all that you will need for the trip.

To give you some help here, I'm going to list from my work with callers, some of the more popular negative meaning-realities experienced by people who feel their lives are less than they could be. Stay with me on this; we'll get to the positive balance shortly. For now, just pick any that you find relevant to your present condition and add them to your list................ if you're feeling any of the below, either within yourself of from other people who show up in your face, they are part of what life means for you at the moment...............

MEANINGS AROUND SECURITY

Fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, terror, lostness, nervousness, horror, disappointment, hurt, grief, apprehension, jealousy, emptiness, confusion, sadness, embarrassment, humiliation, trapped-ness, inadequacy, torment.

MEANINGS AROUND SENSATION

Frustration, disappointment, boredom, disgust, jealousy, stupidity, envy.

MEANINGS AROUND POWER

Anger, resentment, annoyance, hatred, irritation, frustration, rage, disgust, fury, hostility, indignation, jealousy, impatience.

MEANINGS WE'RE SEARCHING FOR

Understanding, approval, attention, honour, forgiveness, direction, glory, help, belief, acknowledgment, recognition, friendship, devotion, validation, agreement, respect, encouragement, superiority, support, feeling wanted, trust, Dad's love, Mum's love, kids' love, appreciation, admiration.

These are just some of the places that we go to, looking for Meaning. But what ARE we looking for?

Go through your list now (getting long, isn't it?), and find the positive or negative opposite of each Meaning on your list. Write them down, too, side by side. 

Now prepare for a damn good laugh!

Let's say one of your meanings is "anger" and the opposite of that, for you, is "equanimity". Say to yourself now "I choose to experience anger in order to find equanimity". Go through the rest of both lists now, and you'll begin to see -- 1) how we get tied up six ways from Sunday in conflicting meanings;  2) how we hold meanings that don't work in our best interests;  and  3) why we get a bumpy ride. We got into this bind of diminishing returns because we had no choice but to adopt many of the Life-Meanings that pre-existed us -- the ones we showed up into. That's OK.  This is how we grow. We first experience what DOESN'T work, so that we can  come to a point of crisis, then make some different, conscious choices and begin to create a life full of meanings that work for us. This process of finding out what doesn't work before we can know what does work is a roller-coaster ride we all go through. It's the name and nature of the game called Being Human. Welcome to The Club!

OK. Now this next bit is for the truly adventurous. This is a bungee-jump!

How much do you want to be free?

How much are you willing to give up to get freedom?

Are you still with me? Good. Stand in this possibility for at least 21 days, not because it is "right", or "wrong", or "The Truth", but simply because it is somewhere you may never have stood before, and there is a view to be seen from here that may well knock your socks off!

Ready? Hold my hand. I've been here before, and I'm still alive to tell the tale. I'll bring you safely back....................

LIFE HAS NO MEANING

AND IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING THAT IT HAS NO MEANING

LIFE IS MEANING-LESS

AND IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING THAT IT'S MEANINGLESS

Life has no meaning, and human beings need meaning...... What do we do?

Make it up. Life has no meaning, but it offers to humans a smorgasbord of  possible "pretend" meanings. Pick what you want. Better still -- make up your own. 

Whatever you do, though, pick or make up pretend-meanings that are more likely to work FOR you. Haven't you had enough of clinging on to meanings that work against your well-being?

Most folk stick with umpteenth-hand, socially sanctioned meanings they picked up from others off the streets, meanings that contract and limit their possibilities.

You might like to consider this -- it works for me......   

That the meaning of life is Life itself. The meaning of my experience is the Experience itself.

It's what I came here for.

Everything else is just waffle. 

That's just my stuff, but if it works for you, too, help yourself. You're welcome.

Your mind needs meanings, 

and you do need a mind. 

Give it what it  needs, 

but choose meanings that appeal to your intrinsic urge for Expansion and Freedom. Those are human needs. If and while your meanings work, keep them around for your mind's reassurance; when one ceases to work, ditch it and find some others to test-drive.

Now, that is Freedom!

EXPRESSING = SUPPRESSING

We assume that a person who is expressing his/her feelings is intimately in touch with them. I'd like to seriously call that assumption into question.

Language is a function of the mind, and the mind is not a "feeling" device. Mind "thinks". So language cannot "feel", it can only talk -- about the thinking that Mind is doing about feeling. Thinking about a feeling is not feeling the feeling. No more than eating a restaurant menu, or its press reviews, tastes like eating the meal.

Pure feeling and awareness have been available to us long before we were born. We can "remember" in-the-womb experiences through dreams, meditations or under hypnosis, but we cannot recall them verbally or describe them because we didn't have the language at the time with which to tag them, so they are beyond the reach of the conscious mind. A Languaging function was developed after birth, and inserted somewhere after the perception of a thought or feeling, so that our we can give a verbal expression of that experience and file it away for easy access -- by the Mind. Along with our ability to communicate with others through language, we also developed the same ability to talk to ourselves. The vocabulary and the grammar were, and remain essentially the same. The level of sophistication and authenticity we show when we talk socially is the same level as our self-talk, and vice versa.

While we are languaging, we are in mind. We may be talking out of a feeling, we may be talking about a feeling, but we are not having the feeling, not while our lips are moving. When a genuine feeling wells up that either we want to have, or that overwhelms us -- we stop talking, hadn't you noticed? Languaging can take us to threshold of that place, and can help us take others to a similar threshold in their experience. But in order to allow the experience to be felt, we have to --

shut up.

When someone is mouthing off angrily, they are expressing their feelings, of anger but they are not HAVING them. No transmutation of the feeling can take place. Nothing is going to change. That feeling will come up again and again and again, and that person will keep on mouthing off, ramping up the rhetoric and the volume in a vain attempt to get rid of it. Little does he/she realise  that, with every replay, the feeling is being driven deeper and deeper into the wound. If you want to have done with a recurrent feeling that is doing you damage --

give yourself space,

SHUT UP

and

HAVE THE FEELING

Don't be embarrassed. If there's someone with you, ask them to wait while you Have it. Most people will be glad to give you the space, rather than have you dump your feelings onto them.

If we feel into them, words like "Love", "Peace" and "Energy" can help us access the states of being that they symbolise. Without taking a moment to feel into them, however, those same words will suppress and form a resistance  to the experience. And this "feeling into" is not something that can be faked. It  has to be a genuine, willing enquiry to access and explore the experience.

Choose a word for the context or condition you find yourself in right at this moment. Say the word to your self. Meditate into its essence -- let yourself go into what experience the word symbolises.  If images or memories come up, be with them until they leave of their own accord. Let the word lie there in the light of your question -- "What does it feel like, and what do I need to learn in order to experience ...............?" 

Give yourself the space to experience (without language) whatever comes up as you stand in  your question. If language intervenes, don't resist that -- feel into those words for the experience. Whatever comes up will be exactly what you need.

Allow the words to grow in depth and significance

Day by day.

As you progress, your words will gather real meaning 

and the authority of real experience.

THE GATEWAY OF VULNERABILITY

One magical night in Africa I witnessed a firelight festival of dances from the various tribes that traditionally inhabited the area now known as Zimbabwe. Every dance had its own rhythm, its own theme, its own story, its own origins, its own costumes, and its own music. For the finale, all the groups came together and, in turn began again, improvising on their signature dances. At first, to my Western ears, the seemingly conflicting tempos, rhythms and tunes appeared to be descending toward chaos. Then a magical pattern began to emerge, in which every individual song and dance took its place, weaving and interweaving together a spectacular tapestry of colour, light and sound.  After half a lifetime in inspirational music, this was music as I had never experienced before. I still get goosebumps when I recall it.

I learned something that night. The best way I can describe that is - that Simple Harmony  comes from energies that sing on the same scale -- the same key-signature. Rich Harmonies come from the melding of all signature energies. No matter how discordant some of them may seem to be at first to the untrained ear, there is an organising influence, a cosmic conductor, that will fold every new sound into an ever-enriching symphony.

The process I witnessed that night in Zimbabwe was wonderfully re-created in The Homeland Suite, a sequence in the movie "The Power of One", when the young hero created a concert that combined and celebrated the songs of all the different tribes represented in the prison where his friend was incarcerated. 

It's not until we enter chaos as a deliberate act that we discover the subtle patterns that become available when we say "Yes" to the whole of experience. Without any compromise, everything finds its place, everything fits in, and what emerges is the self-organising principle of the whole of creation.

But we miss that experience because we baulk at what we call "anarchy.". Even if catastrophic circumstances  force us into chaos, we're too panicked to gain anything from the encounter. The human mind is terrified of apparent chaos. Like someone who's been tossed into a pond full of crocodiles , our feet don't touch the bottom -- they hardly skim the surface in our mad scramble to get the hell out.. That's a pity, because it prevents many of us from ever experiencing anything grander than the moth-eaten scraps that will actually fit through the censoring  screens of tiny mind.

There is a way through, though. There's a way to get out of your mind. And, unless you want to, it doesn't involve chanting "Om" or even "Three Blind Mice" for hours on end.......

The first step is to get that your mind is something that you have; but it is not what you are. I've just reached into my pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys, a bus ticket, and a handkerchief. All three things are handy for enabling me to have a range of possible experiences; but they are not Who I Am. I Am that which has them and carries them around so that I can use them. But they do not define what I am, and I can put them down or pick them up at will. So it is with our mind. We have it to use, but it is not who we are.

The second step is for you, the CEO of Your Life Inc., to come back from the world's longest lunch-hour, make an executive decision to take back the reins of your life, bust you mind back to its office as Head of the IT Department, and call in your Heart to find out what's been going on for him/her in your absence. Then bring everyone together (including your mind).and get some fullness and balance back in your life.

To embrace your Greater Self, however, you MUST go through Vulnerability. Now, I didn't make this rule up. It's just the way it seems to be for everybody -- even Jesus the Christ had to go through this portal., and he told his followers about it, too. We all have to take a deep breath and open ourself  up to everything our mind has formerly said "No" to. 

Say "Yes" and feel into the flows of thought and feeling. Some of them may seem quite irrational, wrong, stupid, even downright dangerous to your emotional  ease. At first you may experience tremendous discomfort. That is indeed a good sign; it means you are getting out of your "comfort zone". Nothing new or transformational was ever found in the Comfort Zone. Look back at your own life experience -- did you ever learn anything much when things were going well for you? Were your greatest spurs to growth easy times, or tough times?

This is the greatest challenge to counseling. Most callers come to you because they are 'way out of their Comfort Zone and, like a person drowning, they are fixated on scrambling back by any means possible, even if it means drowning you in the process. Our challenge is to engineer a shift of perception for them, a shift that will allow them to see the possibility that the Comfort Zone has a lid on it, and as the emotional tide continues to rise, they will surely drown in their own Comfort. Chaos and Uncertainty are signs of hope.

Beset as we are by seeming disharmony outside of the familiar rap-thunk of the comfort-able, we hiccup.  We hesitate long and hard. 

Leap in. You have to jump in. Just as you cannot learn to swim by standing on the beach, you have to wade  into Life if you're ever going to learn how to Live it. Be willing to get out of your depth. You're not going to drown! 

YOU - CAN - SWIM.

Honour the urge to Leap in. That urge to get out of your depth is your Destiny calling you!! It's as old and true as Creation itself. It is our evolution calling. The false mind that keeps us back, stuttering all over with fear, does not know -- has no idea whatever -- of why we came here. The mind is concerned with one thing, and one thing only -- its own supremacy. And where you and I are called to go, our minds  are going to be as supreme as a minnow in an ocean full of whale-sharks. Our tiny minds will dis-solve into the ThoughtForce of  All -That-Is that awaits us there.

As we surrender the need to control and protect our egos, as we submit to Vulner-ability, as we release into the intrinsic harmony of all energies, we find empowerment, vitality, and tremendous peace.

And then ......... life goes on.

THE PRICE OF WISDOM

The price of Happiness is Suffering

 The price of Peace is Challenge

The price of Wisdom is Not-Knowing

There's no free lunch

The trick is not to get upset about it.

FINE-TUNING AWARENESS

Whenever energy signals are transmitted (eg. TV), there are actually two sets of energies working together. One is the set of signals that translate into what we see and hear; the second is a "carrier wave", a signal that carries the first set through the ether to its destinations.

I have a hunch that something similar is happening further up the frequency scale, in the arena of thoughts and feelings.Underlying what we think and feel at the level of ego, I'm aware of something else going on . Flowing through the coarser elements of emotions, thoughts, ideas and events, there is a finer energy that is of immense help in accessing deeper levels of inner and outer space. I choose to call this finer energy Pure Awareness. I get the feeling that this Pure Awareness is close to what underpins and energises the whole of life.

See if you can sense it. While you find yourself emoting and intellect-ing, try "sensing into" the heavier elements of what's going on in your experience, "feeling into" the languaging. Open up and respond to the finer energy that coincides with it . Open yourself up to resonate with it.

It is this finer energy within Self that connects and engages our inner spirit with the outer, coarser experience, and makes it OK. This is the connection that dissolves the separation between "subject" and "object". This finer carrier-energy is the common link, unifying  the universe within to the outer universe that we formerly thought of as separate and objective. Once we "sense" into it, we find there is no separation between inner and outer; they aren't even two sides of the one coin, they are one singular expression of a governing ThoughtForce that embraces everything and rejects nothing. This ThoughtForce is the "I" that has no "Not-I"; the "Me" that has no "Not-Me"".

Direct, uncensored experience of whatever is signified by words like "life", "love" "energy", and "God" evokes a full-bodied feeling that engages every level of our Self. If what you're feeling isn't all-pervasive, if it doesn't blow your tiny mind and magnificent heart wide open, if there's the slightest hint of hold-back or contraction, then it ain't Love. It is a limited form of life and energy, and a narrowed-down experience of god-ness, but it ain't capital "L" Love.

When we hone our awareness and fine-tune it to All Awareness, life reality becomes a dance of energies from one end of the spectrum to the other, and beyond. Through these energies we are connected --
To all experience
And to each other.
All of it is available to us,
And everything we experience adds to it.

When energies sweep through us (as they are wont to do)
And we drop any temptation to resist that ebb and flow,
When we take our awareness into them, without judging them as either good or bad,
Heavier perceptions of being a victim of their effect on us begin to evaporate.
The more practice we give ourselves of diving naked into experience,
The more we become both the Lover and the Beloved of Life.

BEYOND LOGIC AND OUT OF CONTROL

In response to the challenges and contradictions of life,
we go looking for Certainty and Control.

We reject anything that appears to be irrational and unreasonable.

The ploy is understandable, but far too limited to support life for the long haul.

Life is -- and offers --  more than just being Secure and Reasonable........

Much more.......

Life holds the chance to discover

The Security of Insecurity, and

The Reasonableness of Irrationality

Logic and Control are both possible and valid 

BUT

Only inside Conditions that are themselves carefully defined and reasonably controlled,

Which narrows the field down quite a bit!

Outside of that, at times when all hell breaks loose, or you have teenagers --

Definition and control go out the window

And Logic and Reason are as much  use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

Awakening, possibility, transformation and growth do not fall into line in the familiar parade-grounds of Logic and Reasonableness;

They dance in the boundless realm of possibility, in the certainty of not-knowing, in the innocence ("I-know-sense") of nonsense,

Where boundaries and definition evaporate

And Uncertainty and Insecurity reign supreme.

Evolution is more than a single, linear development of incremental changes;

It is also a bewildering dot-dash maze of quantum sideways leaps.

Doesn't the logical human mind hate it when that happens!!??

It demands, from the unexplainable, an explanation that it can then argue with

Don't fret. your spirit understands,

And has been waiting patiently for you you get bored of playing in the fenced-off quadrangle of your mind

And come, instead, for a run in the meadows.

Where your heart and spirit reign --  boundary-less.

A NEW ENERGY

"Energy" has another  dimension, in addition to the old Newtonian perception.

When I was at school, my physics teachers talked about an unseen force which is measurable in the effects it produces. We discussed measurable things like the amount of energy required, generated and used to lift a 1 kg brick.

When I moved on to more spiritual learning, we talked about the unseen energy that is Pure Thought in motion, that we can not see or feel, but whose effects we can see and feel, where and when it has been..

Now, Energy refers also to a force of thought, operating at a particular instant, that allows us to experience a particular reality. The quality of the ThoughtForce we select out of the entire spectrum determines the quality of the Reality we will experience. I spoke briefly about this aspect of Energy in an earlier posting about Vibration. Energy has Frequency and Intensity that present in an infinite variety of combinations.

Such a state of energy in less-aware human beings can only be experienced indirectly. It shows up in the quality of their behaviour, and how they judge the behaviour of others. It is evidenced in the kinds of limited and limiting beliefs  and opinions they harbour, how they feel about themselves and life generally, their general sense of vitality and, to the more perceptive observer, in the kind of event patterns they seem to attract and get embroiled in..

As individuals become more aware and sensitive, they are  able to discern pure energy more directly through their feelings, attitudes, impressions, passions, and their awareness of the kinds of thought patterns that they give attention to.

Validated now by the relatively new science of Quantum Physics, we are now reaching a more general discovery for ourselves of something that the sages have been trying to tell us for centuries past -- that we are each a bag of interacting thought-fields, which are themselves part of a cosmic Thought/Force that transcends what we formerly knew ourselves to be. We still have no idea of how big or powerful we actually are, and could yet become, but we're getting the idea that this thing is probably a lot bigger than we can possibly imagine right now.

By the way, we have always been this powerful (however powerful "this" might be), but because we didn't know it, or even know of the possibility of it, we had no way of accessing it. It is a given of being human that we can only ever live up to our expectations. We live up to our beliefs, and to our labels. No further. Our expectations and stunted perceptions of What's Possible have been holding us back here in the Dark Ages.

Our one-ness with the ThoughtForce of all creation is so close there is no room any longer to contemplate a relationship with it. For a relationship, there have to be at least two entities. But there is no separation from his ThoughtForce; it is what we are. encapsulated in a skinbag of imagined powerlessness. This ThoughtForce is alive and real. In my limited experience, it is the ONLY aliveness and realness. Without this realisation, we walk around upright and dead.

This new realisation has the power to dissolve and transform the old and the limited into the New and the Infinitely Possible. Once we let go of our attachments to the self as ego, and re-define our Self, and every other Self around us as the same ThoughtForce in action, there comes a radical shift in how we perceive life as it is, and as what it possibly could be. Even if nothing changes, we get a transforming perspective -- a wholly different point of view from the way we used to think "things are".

We see ourselves less and less as the victims of creation,

And more and more as the co-creators of it all.

GROWING

Retain the energies we already feel comfortable with

and

Expand our availability to include every new energy that presents itself.

Without resistance

YES

Sometimes it feels like flying

YES

Sometimes it feels like I'm dying.....

YES

HOW TO KILL LOVE

Shut down

Close off

any part of possible experience.

BANG

A SCALE OF LOVE

In one sense, Love just Is..
What is? ....  Love is. that's just what-is.

In another sense, Love moves on a scale, from Doing to Being.......
In ascending order of frequency --

SEX

ACCEPTANCE

REVERENCE

GRATITUDE

TRUST

DEEP APPRECIATION

WONDERMENT

AWE

UNCONDITIONAL EMBRACE

RELATIONSHIP -- SEPARATION AND ADDDICTION

My grateful thanks to Ron Smothermon for inviting me to stand here for a while. 

What follows is glimpses of the view I get from this place.

A core benefit of relationship is an increased level of co-operation in the game of life. This applies whether the relationship is with another person, an event or process, or with our selves.

Why do we get so hung up, though, on the need for a "special" relationship, especially with someone else? Why does a healthy human preference for connection with someone else become an intensified addiction -- an addiction that carries within it the seeds of the souring of that relationship?

Well, with good reason we all come from a Presumption of Separation. In our reality it is a given that "we" will be separated. Where did we get that idea? Well, our first , universal, intensely traumatic experience of life was one of separation  -- Birth! We don't get more separated than that (though we seem to spend a lot of our lives trying to beat it). Later on, at some time in our first 7 years of life we got further separated, this time from our Self, and we've felt Lost  and a Certain Emptiness ever since. In the process of trying to please our "betters", we bought the notion that there was something "wrong" with us.  Because these people were essential to our survival, we pushed our natural being aside and created something we thought would go down better with our parents, grandparents, families, teachers, priests and - later- bosses, colleagues, partners..... we ditched our Self  in order to survive, and we assumed it wouldn't matter. How mistaken we were!

THE PRESUMPTION OF SEPARATION

We had now unconsciously and erroneously put it together that Separation is a fact and an inescapable part of what it means to be alive. We didn't (and still don't) like it that way, and we resist it, which all goes to ensure that our Presumption  of Separation is going to persist, forever and ever, Amen!

Later on, feeling a growing sense of incompletion, we went looking for something and someone else to fill that gap. School buddies and Princess Snow-White showed up. Yipppeee! We thought we'd found what we were looking for. We suckered onto them and leaned on them for emotional support. When they moved away (and they usually will move away -- only a masochist wants that kind of burden for life!!) we fell over -- big time. The payoff was that we got to be right -- "See? I can't be happy on my own, and no-one's gonna stay with me forever -- I'm not worth it!"

OK, so that hadn't worked either, but  did we learn anything from that experience? Did we ever question the basic assumption  of Separation-As-Fact? No, we keep plugging away, trying anything but reconnect with what was never lost in the first place, just mislaid -- our Self.

To be separated from anything is painful. But we manage somehow for that pain to languish outside of our awareness and, frankly, we'd like to keep it that way.

But...

The pain continues, and presses for admission to our awareness in any way that might get our attention. Dis-ease is one way. Mental illness is another. Repetitive patterns of freedom-sapping behaviour are another. And so, too, are Addictions.

All addiction is attempt to keep pain unconscious and un-experienced.

An Addiction is a Condition

Defined by an acute onset of pain

(always present and un-experienced)

when the addictive substance, circumstances or person

is removed.
Any pain arising from the Addiction
Is judged to be preferable
To the imagined pain of whatever it is
We're running away from.

When we look for a Special Relationship, we literally vow to the other -- "I can't live without you because I think there's something wrong with me, and you now have to try and prove me wrong every day for the rest of your life. As part of that, I have this hurting hole inside me from where I evicted myself. I  need you now to fill this gap for me every day of my life and, if you can't, I'll evict you, too!" Then we walk down the aisle, and say it to each other in front of witnesses! And they applaud. If the priest in the middle had half a gram of common sense, he'd say "Hang on you two. Find the bits you threw out, put them back where they belong and where they fit perfectly by the way, then come back and see me again.We'll talk then about you two becoming partners, instead of emotional gap-fillers!" But that doesn't happen, does it?. We're addicted to the suffering that follows the welding together of two defective beings, each looking to the other for fast relief.

The need for a Special Relationship is an Addiction -- a desire that once mushroomed into a Preference, and is now pussed up into an emotional boil.

We fall into romantic love, expecting it to somehow "make" us happy forever. We find instead that living together ramps up the number and intensity of chances to get in touch with a barrage of our other addictions, like where the toilet seat should repose, or which is the right end of the toothpaste tube to squeeze from., or whether picking your toenails or your nose is filthy or just a cultural taboo ......?? In our legitimate yearning for connection , we find separation because we've mistaken Romance ("what I'm looking for is over there in the other person") for Oneness -- Love -- the Real Thing.

If the need for Special Relationship was not an addictive cover-up, we would let go of any notion of "specialness"; we would find and reconnect with our misplaced self, then we could go out and relate with others authentically.   No need for special status. No pressure on the other to fill a gap that was never their responsibility.

But rather than deal with the problem heart-on, the lazy person's remedy for the pain of separation from self is to demand a special, exclusive relationship with one particular person. It's convenient.We go into Special Relationship to protect ourself from the pain of separation; only to find that the pain does not go away. Well, we didn't really expect it to, did we? Coming as we do from a Presumption of Separation, we subconsciously expect the other to leave us -- either through death or divorce. So when the expected does happen, we blame the relationship and/or the other person, and further separate ourselves from our Self, and Nature, and other people.

A Special Relationship looks so attractive because we think it will help resolve the un-felt pain of Separation from Ourself. We think it will complete us. It does an attractive cover-up job, to be sure. But the pain is still there. When the relationship fails to cure the pain (and it usually does fail to do so), we are left even further separated  from our Self than we were before, and with the handy conclusion that our partner (and/or her parents and family) are the cause of the pain. We shift the responsibility for our fear and despair to someone else.

When a Special Relationship transits from being an attempt to cure the pain to being an explanation for it, the dramas begin!

Relationship itself is not a problem. Things go pear-shaped because of the Addiction to having a relationship with someone else in order to make up for a defective relationship we have with our self . Well, in case you hadn't noticed, that doesn't work. And it's highly unlikely that it ever will, because the relationship we have with another is a mirror image of the relationship we have with parts of our self.

We live, along with all our stuff, in a skinbag of flesh and bones. and we are hurting, because we have excised from this skinbag a huge chunk of what we are, and replaced it with bits and scraps of things that are not who we are. But instead of looking inward to find the source of our pain, we look outside this phony skinbag we have defined ourself to be, and project False Cause -- we direct blame anywhere except where it belongs, and primarily onto this Special Relationship with someone we feel has turned feral on us and let us down. Our pain is His/Her fault! 

In a way, the mistake is understandable because the pain resulting from separating from ourself is rarely experienced directly from its source. It is usually experienced through disguises like  uncharacteristic behaviour, illness, accidents, physical pain and emotional pain. In our ignorance, nevertheless, this blaming-out-there process takes personal irresponsibility to new depths.

In the first, heady days of a Special Relationship we seem to be "free" of discernible pain, a phenomenon we credit to our new lover/spouse/partner/significant other..... But we are still separated from our soul; the pain is merely anaesthetised. And, sooner or later, anaesthetics wear off . When pain finally surfaces, we hang the "cause" of it onto the poor unfortunate we wake up with. It's more convenient this way, and our ego can continue to look good to itself. We feel "Just-ified".

FALLING OUT OF LOVE


Despite what it says in the magazines and paperback novels, romantic love is not a healthy basis for involvement with someone. It's great for hors d"oeuvres but, if we're committed to our nourishment and growth, there comes a time when we need to move on to the rest of the banquet. If you really know how to love, there are billions of people out there waiting for you -- and your partner.

In romantic love, we stare fondly into each other's eyes
At the expense of looking where we're going.
Without being aware that we are doing it --
We look at this person we woke up with this morning
And we selectively forget why we first chose him/her.
Behind minor, irrational  irritations over the way he/she behaves
We feel a dull disquiet welling up from deeper inside
And we assume that this person is the source of the ache.
The question arises -- "How is this person at fault?"

You can scan your lover's ego in the present,
find the negative aspects of the very qualities that first attracted you to this person,
pick on the perceived points of "difference" between you,
start an argument
and then blame what he/she says and does in response
for the pain of separation you're now aware of.

If there is nothing happening at the moment that you can readily blame,
Your mind will enter "fault" into its search engine
and willingly trawl back through its memory files,
and trot out a listing of that person's supposed "past crimes" against you
And blame those past crimes for your present pain.
You now feel justified in pushing the pain onto the other.

Either way, it is soon not necessary to even crank up an argument with your lover,
because the argument is already going on
inside your head.
It now turns on automatically any time you need an explanation for, or protection from feeling "off".
The internal argument becomes 24/7 talk-back  radio.

A mass of past incidents accumulates in your head:
All of them together congeal into The Story you put together about this person --
Your story.
In the lunatic parliament of your mind, your story now becomes this person's total identity,
and you lose all track of the whole of who this person really is.
You are now married, not to the other, but to your "story about" the other.
Your story obscures the former reality to the point where it becomes conveniently invisible.
You've changed your mind. You have switched sides.
Another separation has occurred --
a split between who you originally created this person to be
and how you now choose to create him/her
in the light of your disowned pain.

The price we all pay for dis-owning the fact that we are the sole source of the pain of our self-created separations
Is the loss of any remaining ability to experience other people as they are.
We suffer the loss of Love.
We fall out of love.

All the stories we crank out about our family, our lovers, our friends, our workmates, our enemies,
Together make up our paranoid reality.
To our minds, these people really ARE the way we say they are:
"Thems" are doing it to me .
False-Cause -- a substitute for taking responsibility for

• your pain
• your separation
• from your self.

This is one reason why we should be very wary about using relationship for our personal growth. We can continue our growth within a relationship, by working on our own stuff, and leaving our partner to work on his/her stuff. Help out it you're asked to, but only with great care.  Limit yourself as much as possible to actively listening. Keep your advice in check. Otherwise, mind your own business. Notice any addictive urge that your partner should change in some way to fit your models and expectations. Go to work on your own head, and give space to any addictive demands your partner may have on you. Don't get hung up on getting results. Don't set models. There are no accidents -- this person is exactly right for you right now. Check your commitment, not to her though -- to yourself and your growth.

And this, too, is a part of what it means to be human.

So, what hope is there for redemption and clear relationships?

Every possibility.

It is possible to live with another person as part of your overall commitment

to go personally responsible for all your experiences.

But, be your own guru.
No matter how enlightened you think you are, you do not know what is "best" for any other.

No matter how enlightened your partner may appear to be, do not make him/her your god --

False Cause --

Nobody wants or needs that burden.
Be your own guru.

Making anyone outside of yourself a guru puts them at a distance --

More separation.

Choosing a guru can be a turning-point for you: hanging onto a guru will delay the moment of your own enlightenment.

A true guru acts like a sounding board, reflecting your self back to you.

A true guru is like a diving board; eventually you have to get off it -- others are waiting.

Either back off and admit that you're not up to the dive yet 

Get off and do whatever you have to to get ready.

Or get out there and take the Big Leap.

Only you can take the dive, the board cannot do it for you.

Once you leap, the board is gone, and the experience is uniquely and wholly your own.

Standing on the board all your life is not what you got up there for.

Now, if you fancy yourself as any kind of guru, any kind of spiritual adviser, and you want to maintain the guru act,

Don't get married.

She/he will blow the whistle on your act.

And that is not good for the act.

{Watch the wives/husbands of political leaders. Be aware that you're looking at people who have made an agreement with their partner not to blow the whistle on them -- at least not while they're still in office}

The pain of separation is a universal human experience.

The only question is the level of our awareness of it.

Projecting any of our pains onto outside sources is a Delaying Tactic, a Defensive Diversion.

While thus engaged, we function as an isolated, angry false-self in a paranoid, "I'm-the-victim-here" reality...

• hoping for enlightenment to rescue us (that's not what enlightenment is for)
• expecting relationship to fill the gaps (that's not what relationship is designed to do)
• spraying False Cause all over the place
• being "right" about it
• and making any "other" wrong.

Playing the Right/Wrong game is also a near-universal addiction. We do it to protect our ego

from the direct experience of guilt, not-knowing, the lack of control, and the pain of separation from our soul.

Here's a handy formula to succinctly summarise what we've been looking at --

Compulsive Involvement  + Addiction  = Romantic Love

No involvement + Addiction  =  A broken heart

No involvement  +  No addiction  =  Casual Acquaintance

Open Involvement  +  No addiction  =  Unconditional Love.

When we heal the faulty relationship we have with missing bits of our self, we're  then able to come clean into a real one-to-one relationship with another. That is a wondrous thing. It is like saying "I like being with you because, when I am with you, I feel safe enough to get in touch with , and share the parts of me that are beautiful, capable and loving."  But words won't do it for you. This has to be experienced.

Having another person around can help you do two things -- to resonate with, and to mirror your self. But don't fall into the trap of crediting the mirror for what you get. So, get off your Sorry Cushion, get out there and put up the "Available"  sign. Trust that the universe will provide you with a  perfect partner (perfect for your growth, that is) when you are ready. In the meantime, work on yourself until you get to a level of awareness and skill where you can select wisely at a higher, as well as lower, level of consciousness. Take full responsibility for the partner you select -- there are no mistakes.

A conscious relationship can be good for your enjoyment, good for your growth, and both!

When I am imposing myself upon others

I am actually reflecting my restrictions

And the lack of freedom

That I feel inside.

I am realising now that how I am toward myself

Is how I am with others

and that

How I am towards others

Is how I am with my self.

I know now

How I would like myself to be with others .

I would like to give them, and myself

Room to grow

 Together

INHIBITION AND RESENTMENT

Are you chronically shy?  If so, what resentments do you harbour? About what? Against whom?

Are your resentments worth more than your freedom?

RESENTMENT

Resentment is a mental and emotional resistance to a limited  perception of what we think happened. The events may be so long ago we may even have forgotten exactly what they were. But we haven't forgotten how we felt, and someone is going to pay for that!! As the years pass, ageing resentments are rarely directed where they belong. Some other poor sod gets to wear what we refuse to let go of and complete with.

Resentment is an emotional re-living, re-creating, re-hashing, or re-fighting of some past experience. It grinds away like a broken record, but one that becomes more potent with each replay. In counseling, when I find a caller re-visiting an old battlefiield, I will often gently interrupt the flow, explain that yet another re-telling may only reinforce a reaction that clearly is not working, and invite him/her to participate in other lines of enquiry that will explore the archeological site of hurt from a fresh trench. The trick is to unearth what underlies the story without driving the whole thing further underground.

Justified or not, resentment is self-damaging. These days, I thankfully care less and less about how right I am. Being right never healed anything for anyone, and never will. But it has taken me a long time -- far too long -- to get the message. Righteousness and Guilt -- the ugly twin sisters,  are the hammer that drives the nails deeper into the wounds. Forget Easter, we crucify our selves daily on the rack of Resentment  and Righteous Guilt..

Resentment prevents us from seeing ourselves as self-reliant and at-cause in our lives. It makes us the victim of circumstances and of other people, and more prone to fail. In resentment, we surrender the reins of our life to the very people we resent, and allow our image of them to dictate how we will feel and act. And they (usually) don't know, and couldn't care less, that we have handed them that power. They know there's something wrong, and that we're acting crazy. And we are. Crucifying ourself in the hope that someone else will feel bad about it -- is NUTS!!!

Resentment nails us to the Cross of The Dead Past, and pushes us to look for further injustices to replace those that have lost their juice or that we may have actually forgotten about. And we always find what we expect to find. In a life that isn't working, Resentment gives us something to feel "right" about,  dragging a rotting corpse into The Present like the family cat with a dead bird. We are so hell-bent on using Resentment to cover up a lousy self-image that we end up validating and reinforcing it.

Resentment is an exceedingly expensive emotion. It may have cost me a ripe old age

What's eating you? Resentment is a cancer.

Are your resentments worth it?

The Antidote to Resentment

Forgiveness. Letting go. Casting off from the rocks where you've been stuck.

Resentment is a stuckness that you just walk out of.
Walk away.
Forgive.

Forgive who? Forgive Ourself. Any resentments I still have are rankling on over here in my space. All your resentments and suffering are going on over there in you. I am doing it to me: you are doing it - to you. And that is the best news you could ever get. If someone else was doing it you you, they would have to get therapy for you to be happy. And you never would get happy, even if they did. But because YOU are doing it to you, you can un-do it any time you're ready.

Forgive your stuckness. Forgive your ignorance, and your stupidity around that. Forgive your hurt. Forgive your limited perception. Let go.

Forgive the "other" in yourself. Let it go.

The act of Forgiving (not to be confused with "pardoning") is acting in your own intelligent best interests.

INHIBITION

Resentment and guilt work in tandem to inhibit the freedom of our natural spirit. This, from my lifelong experience over my father -- a man whom I adored,  feared and resented  in equal measure........

Unable to ever physically or emotionally stand up to my father (until my late teens when I contrived to trap him in a moral bind), I resisted his violently imposed strictures with heavily internalised churning resentment. Because of my concomitant love for him, my resentment triggered torrents of guilt.


Racked with resentment, guilt and an appallingly low self-esteem, I became painfully shy, self-conscious, covertly hostile, nervous, irritable and sickeningly "nice" in my overly needy efforts to get along with everybody. I had no hope of genuinely expressing my self in the world (even if I had known who I was -- and I didn't.) The Playful Adventurer in me was constantly at war with the Irresponsible Danger. But I did not know that at the time. All I noticed was that, under stress I began to "stutter all over", and sometimes throw up. How literal our bodies are! By the time I reached my late 20's I shook so badly I could no longer play the organ in church -- and music had been my rock and salvation up to then. I took up acting as a means to self-discovery and expression. That worked as a therapy and led me indirectly to the journey of inward discovery. But the damage had been done. Now, after 6 decades of stuttering all over, my heart has joined in the dance of arrhythmia, and I can feel my brain succumbing to the effects of interruptions to the blood supply.


Resentment, guilt and inhibition take a terrible toll on the perpetrator. They pull us out of the Present, an absence that is at the root of all dissatisfaction in life. Our emotional thermostats are locked permanently in the Dead Past, onto a fiction that exercises an iron control over the Present, rendering us helpless to respond appropriately to anything in the Here and Now.

Resentment inhibits. Resentment ties us to a dead corpse, forcing us to "shy" away from anything new and fresh. Whenever we are challenged to come out into the open, we wonder in advance and rehearse.

Resentment is the death of creative spontaneity.

The Escape Hatch is Forgiveness.

Nothing is worth hanging onto. Nothing.

And I know you are probably going to have to find that out for yourself. I just thought I'd warn you.

That's all.

PEELING THE ONION

In cross-section, the onion looks a bit like this.......

.7. POSSESSIONS

.6. PERSONALITY

.5. MIND

.4. BODY

.3. SOUL

.2. CONSCIOUSNESS

.1. AWARENESS

The challenge of being human, to this human being, seems to be to embrace all of the above, allowing each layer to interact in harmony. You don't have to get rid of material possessions or forsake bodily pleasures in order to be spiritual. This is just my opinion (and therefore to be taken with a grain of salt), but spirituality that eschews the more earthly pleasures and challenges tends to be esoteric and, frankly, somewhat impractical for those of us baser beings who have to wrestle with a different kind of reality, as well as the reality in which the ascetics live. This doesn't in any way invalidate the ascetic experience; it just puts it into perspective. If you think it's tough hanging upside-down in a mountaintop cave for 30 years contemplating the meaning of existence, try probing for meaning and purpose down here on the flatlands on the daily treadmill of work, career, relationships, health, money, spiritual exploration, social interaction and responsibility..         

It is my contention, 

and one I invite you to stand in long enough to live the experiences that will enable you to make up your own minds (yes, there are more than one of them!)

that......

The purpose of being human is to be human --

As consciously and fully as you can manage to Be.

Your experience of that, whatever it turns out to be, is no more or less valid than the vilest criminal or the greatest saint. (A truth is, you are both those things, anyway.)

The only suggestion that comes with the gift of life is --

Be Aware

And even that is optional, at least until the moment of dying. Then you will have no choice. My suggestion is to get in early. Willing Awareness has a lot to recommend it as a way of living. Enforced Awareness as a way of dying guarantees huge amounts of resistance, despair, anger, regret, and guilt, all under time pressure at a moment when few of us get  the chance of another crack at it.

Either way, you will get all that you came here for.

Do you remember what that is?

MY FAVOURITE VIBRATOR

All life is Vibration, oscillating from negative to positive and back again.

Life is the movement of pure thought (not thoughts), vibrating in balanced cycles from zero to positive, to zero, through negative, and back to zero............
Death is a flat-line. .. Zero....Nothing happening.

Life is both positive and negative, oscillating back and forth in a ceaseless dance of creation.
If we could just get this, half our resistance and suffering would be finished!


SIMPLE VIBRATION

 A simple vibration is represented by a sine wave. The only pure simple vibration is one generated by an electronic tone generator, such as those you hear when audio or TV engineers  are testing their equipment. The nearest naturally-produced pure tone is a bamboo flute.

All Vibration has two characteristics that are worth noting here:-

1. Amplitude
2. Frequency

Amplitude is the distance of the peaks and the troughs from the median zero-point. It is often referred to as the Volume or Intensity of the signal.

The Frequency is the pace at which the vibration is occurring. It is measured either as the distance from the tip of one peak/trough to the next, or as the number of cycles (from zero to positive, to zero, to negative, and back to positive) that happen in one second.

The human perception apparati are fairly clunky, covering only a very narrow spectrum of vibrations around the median zero-line. We simply cannot pick up very high or very low vibrations -- not without artificial assistance. But we can use them, as we do with toys like ultrasounds, x-rays, cinema sub-woofers, radios.

There are things going on around and through us that we don't have the wherewithal to "see", but that doesn't mean either that we're not affected by them, or that we can't do something with them.

We speak of the "quality"of life. In this case, "quality" is a kind of code-word for the general level of frequency at which it is vibrating.. At one end of a sliding scale, high-frequency patterns of thought and feeling produce a reality that is conducive to more spiritual perceptions and pursuits..The laws that govern this end of reality tend to be more esoteric and absolute. Existence feels fast and light, and the experience of an awakening of awareness at this end of the scale is sometimes called "enlightenment". This is the arena and focus of a meditative and contemplative life.

At the lower end of the frequency scale, heavier and denser thought and feeling produce another kind of reality. At this baser level of consciousness we are weighed down by separations, negative beliefs, behaviours, expectations and preoccupations with concerns about security, control and the exercise of power. This is the realm of suffering and Social Consciousness.

Social Consciousness is the sum total of individual  low-level consciousnesses, and is most noticeable when we fly or drive out of the countryside into large cities. You can feel it as you move into it. Social Consciousness drapes itself like a pall over and around the people who create it. Those who live in the city hardly notice it, until they leave the city and move out of it for a while. Why do you think so many people seek ways to "escape" the city every long weekend and holiday?. Don't we feel lighter when we go for a drive to the beach, or the hills?. And heavier as we return to sub-urbia.

High-frequency consciousness is highly directional, and goes where it is pointed. When expressed as light, it tends to be at the blue-white (ultra-violet) end of the colour scale. Low-frequency energy is omni-directional, and spreads all over the place. In light form it is at the infra-red end of the spectrum.

COMPLEX VIBRATION

The same principles apply to complex vibrations. A complex vibration is a bunch of simple vibrations all happening at the same time. For example, a sound is usually made up of one or more dominant vibrations that are overlaid with lesser harmonic vibrations. Harmonics are pure tones that aren't on the same wavelength as the main tone. The harmonics -- or "off tones"  are a product of how the note is produced. A vibrating string, such as a guitar, produces very different overtones to a vibrating reed, like a clarinet. The over-tones give a sound its richness of character. Simple sounds like a flute have relatively few harmonics; complex sounds like a symphony orchestra or the human voice are rich in harmonics. Melodic tones, like a single vibrating string are predominantly basic tones, coloured by characterising over-tones. Harsh sounds like the screech of a cockatoo are heavy with harmonics, and light on core melodic tones..

All vibrations will set off sympathetic vibrations in the environment immediately surrounding the original vibration. This is how the sounding boards of musical instruments like violins, guitars and pianos work. These secondary vibrations reflect the basic character of the original signal, but also impart some character derived from the medium that is vibrating in sympathy. Any form of life/vibration finds and sets up sympathetic vibration in the world around it.

Conversely, every environment has its own "resonating frequency"; that is, a dominant frequency at which it will respond to a particular energy source, vibrate in sympathy with, and amplify it. Actors and singers know this phenomenon, and use it to their advantage. They will find the resonating frequency of an auditorium, and align their voices with their environment in order to amplify the effect of what they are doing. Powerful tenors with perfect pitch (like Enrico Caruso) could detect the resonating frequency of a wine glass and shatter it by simply singing that note into it. The environment is always responding to the vibrations you emit, a phenomenon that could assist you, if you are aware of this law of vibration and get "in tune" with it.

All frequencies in perfect balance have a particular sound. Audio engineers call it "White Noise", and generate it artificially to use as a reference for adjusting the acoustics of sound systems and auditoria. White noise sounds like the noise you get when you hold a seashell to your ear --- "Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-------"


This is the sound of life in balance. when a baby gets upset (out of balance), we instinctively repeat the sound of all sounds ----

Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh...........................

A HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO SUFFERING

Once upon a time.....
A man set out to hike along a section of the Heysen Trail in the Adelaide Hills. Just after 9am on his first day out, he felt a pain in his left foot. Despite his high-sided hiking boots and lambswool bushwalking socks -- the best and most expensive that Ray's Outdoors had on offer, a stone had somehow found its way inside and lodged just under his left ankle. The more he walked, the more the stone irritated him.


By 10 am, he was getting  little discouraged. He rang his loving family on his brand new GPS satellite phone. "I have this pain in my left foot, and it's getting worse," he said. His wife and children were most sympathetic, but knowing how long he had dreamed of, planned and trained for this hike, they urged him on with words of encouragement and hope. "This is what you want. This is your dream. You can do it! We're here for you". He kept going, his spirits a little lifted.


But the pain did not abate for long. The skin started to chafe and blister under his socks. Around noon he limped into a doctor's office in Lyndoch. He described his symptoms to the nurse, who rang his GP back in  Dulwich. They reviewed his medical history looking for some clue from his past that might explain his present pain. There had been times when he had experienced acute pain but, since the man had never done anything like this before, there was nothing much in his history that gave a clue to his present predicament. The man thanked the doctor, got some painkillers from the chemist, and limped on his way. 


He decided to do some Research. He found a shady spot in the park opposite Kauffman Avenue, pulled out his trusty Blueberrry ThinkPad and Googled "shoes", "hiking", "pain", and even "rocks". He found lots of information about everything, but nothing that eased his pain.


In desperation he hobbled over to  a church and located the pastor. He confided his tale of woe and despair, and begged the holy man for a reason Why he should be suffering so. The priest gave him 20 minutes of his knowledge of the scriptures, and what the seminary had taught him about the sanctity of Human Suffering. Together they prayed for the man's deliverance from his agony, and the two parted -- the priest satisfied that he had set yet another soul on the Right Path, and the hiker still in pain.


The man had just reached the edge of town when he met a fellow hiker walking in the opposite direction. The other hiker noticed how badly the man was limping. "What happened to you?" he enquired  kindly. "I am in such pain," the man sighed. "I have this stone in my boot and the pain just won't go away. Now my ankle is blistered and bleeding and, as you can see, I can hardly take another step!"


"Come over here," said the stranger. "Here, sit on this stump. Take your boot and sock off." "Oh, my God, no!" protested the hiker. "These are protecting me and my feet." "Nah, you'll be alright for a minute or two," reassured the stranger. "Let's get them off and we'll get rid of the stone that's crippling you."


The hurting hiker was hesitant.  How could it be that simple?


He removed his protective boots and his comforting socks, and released the offending stone. The pain ceased.


Now, I know that your pain is far more complex than a stone in your shoe. It could not possibly be that simple.

Could it?


If you think this story is ridiculously absurd, take up crisis counselling for a while.

When I was quite young I heard a recording of the great American actor, Walter Brennan, doing a hillbilly song called "Life Gets Teejus, Don't It?" One verse goes like this ----

Houn'dawg howlin'  all forlorn

Laziest dawg that ever wuz born.

He's a-howlin'ços he's settin'on a thorn,

And he's too durn lazy t'git off it.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EXPERIENCE?

The purpose of entertaining the thoughts I think about,
the emotions I feel,
and the behaviour that I do
is.......

• to become aware of my relationship to what I think, feel and do.
• to define the space and shape of my response to the circumstances of my incarnation
• to try out differing levels of engagement and disengagement with the givens of being human; and
• to experiment in it with the self I have created.

The purpose of all my experience

Is to surrender to the Experience itself --

To see how it turns out.

And then........

The purpose of all my experience

Is to evolve and complete

Myself and the experience

Into one continuous Now.

RELATIONSHIP, EXPERIENCE & GRIEF

For Judy

All we ever know about any other person is our experience of that person, ie. as we see them to be through our perceptual filters, lenses and viewpoints. We do not, and can not KNOW any other person as he/she actually is. Good God! we hardly know ourselves, let alone anyone else! 

And our experience of another is our experience, no-one else's. It is unique and personal. If you are in a room of 500 other people, there will be 501 unique experiences of "you" in that room.

Our unique experience of another lives over here in our space, not the other's, or anyone else's for that matter. The immediate presence of another person may bring our experience of that person bubbling to the surface, but that experience still comes from, and belongs, where it has always been and where, as long as we continue to breathe, it will always belong -- with “Me”.

As our Relationship with another person grows in depth and complexity, it is our experience that is growing and becoming more complex, not necessarily the other person. The other person was already deep and complex before we arrived; it is our perceptions that are expanding, and it is that feeling of expansion that we tag with labels like "Chemistry", "Friendship", "Affection" and "Love". 

That brings me now to an area of exploration that is sometimes relevant for people who are going through, or anticipating the imminent experience of Grief. .......

The quality, depth and complexity of our experiences of another person remain intact whether the other is across the room, across the world, or has even passed away in death. Our experience lives and breathes with each of us. When a loved one has passed on, we may have lost  any further opportunity for immediate contact, and that loss will trigger a whole bunch of feelings and other stored-up griefs. But  alongside of that,  there is something we have NOT lost. We still have the only reality we ever did have of that person – our experience -- and we can take that out and play with it any time we wish.

Finally, because our first-hand experience of another is not reliant on second- or third-hand beliefs, concepts, opinions or expectations, it cannot be taken away from us. It is ours, for as long as we remain conscious.

While we live, the other lives – in the only place they ever did live outside of their own experience – they live on in our experience and (uniquely) in the experience of everyone else who  knew him/her. If five people turn up to my funeral there will be five Barries living on in the room!. The recognition of this reality is why, in some cultures, the funeral traditions are a vehicle for both giving vent to Anguish for the Corporeal Loss, and Celebration for the Ongoing Resurrection of the person's Spirit in the hearts and minds of those who remain.

Experience is the only reality. 

Our relationship with our experience is reflected in the relationships we have with others.
Our experience of those who have passed on is a reflection of the relationship we had with them when they were bodily alive.
Now, here is some miraculous news! Because our only reality of another was, and is our experience of him/her......

any unfinished business with this person

can be completed, 

Even although the other person may no longer be physically available --

even if they have deceased.

We can heal anything that remains unhealed between us

In the sanctity of our here/now Living Experience of that person.

Completion is available, without seances, mediums or any other paranormal paraphernalia. All you need is your willingness. If you feel you need other crutches to give yourself permission to access and work with your experience, go ahead. But the danger is that you may credit and give your power away to the assisting media for the connection, when they're really not necessary. 

You are the only healer you need.

That is a miracle, is it not?

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

A RIDDLE

.Q. :- What is it that you will not get until after you already have it?

.A.:-  Enough

Well, you have it. You have enough. Let's go and have a cuppa.

I'm not kidding. That part is taken care of. The bucket is full. Every Now moment is abundantly brimming. Not a shred more can be packed into it. The Past was also full-to-bursting at the time. So perhaps the condition of  Not-Enough, Emptiness or Lack, may be a dis-ease solely of the imagined future.

Here and now there is nothing missing. Fears of Lack are constructs of an Imperfect Mind fixated on a delusion -- of a future "without".

How much is enough for you?
For every person I have ever asked this question, the answer is always different. For each individual person, moreover, the answer will sometimes vary from moment to moment. One thing, though, that there seems to be a lot of agreement about is this -- there is rarely "enough". There will either be too little of something, or too much of something else. And whenever there is too little or too much of anything in one place, things get out of balance.

Someone who has enough is content.

Now, enough of what?

Name it. Love? Money? Happiness? Relationship? Health? Success? etc, etc. etc......

But is Enough-ness a matter of fact? Or merely one of perception? Is there a measurable, definable amount of love, money, happiness, relationship, health, success, etc, etc. etc...... that we can all agree is "enough"? Of course not! The perception of "enough-ness" is so personal, cultural, rubbery and elusive that it defies description.

Your level of Enough-ness, just like mine, is a matter of personal choice. We have Enough whenever we say so, and not a moment before.

Not-enough = Dissatisfaction: Enough = Contentment.

And to him who has enough, more will be given.
From him who has not-enough, more will be taken.
And remember, that the "enough" of which I speak is the Perception of Enough-ness, not some arbitrary level of possession. Enough-ness is a Perception, and our perceptions are always, always, always our absolute  and personal responsibility. Enough-ness has nothing whatever to do with what we have, or don't have: it's not even something we feel or think about. Enough-ness is What-Is. The only question is whether or not we are tuned in to it.

Look at it from this possibility for a moment or three ---
You already have what you came here for.... for now.

If you feel something is missing, maybe you're like the kid whose mother brought him into the lolly shop for a Freddo Frog, and now he wants the whole shop! Life, the ultimate parent, sometimes says "No", without explanation. Programmes like "Airline" are so entertaining because we get to see other people acting out at high decibels the way we do when somebody says "No"to each of us.

Consider this .... In every area of your life, you already have abundant enough-ness; how you are now responding to this notion is precisely how you respond to anyone who has the gall to say "No" to you. If you're inwardly acting like a spoiled brat, learn the lesson. Enough is going to elude you all your life until you do.

Is there something you imagine that you want that you do not yet have? Good. What are you prepared to give up in order to make room for it? And what are you prepared to become in order to keep it? No, stop for a moment. Those are very serious questions that deserve more than a glib answer off the top of your head. What are you prepared to forgo to get what you say you want?

A great operatic singer once performed for a charity function attended by very well-heeled, blue-rinse ladies encrusted in gems, jewels and botox -- perfect advertisements for their husbands' successes. Over drinks and savouries afterwards, one very spoiled and overweight dame came gushing up to the singer and effused "Oh, I would SO love to sing like you do!" The very perceptive diva looked at her for a moment, then said quietly and kindly to her "No, you don't. If that were what you wanted, you would have sacrificed the life you have to undergo the disciplines and necessities of the life that I live."

We already have it the way that we set it up. But ego always wants More, Better and Different -- states that are often mislabeled as "Not-Enough". If you truly want it to be some other way, then it is up to you to un-do what you have constructed and rebuild from the ground up. You already have enough -and - anything else you want is available. But consider the possibility that there is something you already have and are hanging onto that is blocking further delivery. And one of those things might be the perception of "not-enough".

Jesus the Christ is credited with having said once to a rich young ruler on this very subject, "It's a damn sight easier for a camel to squeeze through the Eye of a Needle than it is for a bloke with excess baggage to get to Enough."

If you want to know what "Enough" feels like ---

Downscale your demands;

Lighten up.

JUST JOKING.....

"Joking" is a camouflage we drape around a seriously intentional opinion.

Around the parliamentary chamber of our mind every minister and backbencher says what he or she means, and means what he or she says. But if they don't want to take responsibility for the words that come out of their mouths, they will throw a cover of  "I was only joking"  over it. It is pure political spin to avoid being accountable.

I'm not joking......

I love jokes of all kinds, from fart gags (pun intended) and sight gags to bitingly clever satire. God knows we can all use a good laugh about now.

Just joke responsibly. What you say is what you mean. Which part of you means it? That's up to you to find out.

DESIRE

I have just noticed something........

A few moments ago I witnessed a minor event (on TV actually) that triggered a tug of Desire. Being more than somewhat addictive, that twinge of desire very quickly escalated through the level of Preference, and was nudging the level of Need. when I caught the process and dropped it before it picked up an emotional wallop and launched into Addiction.

But for the first time I noticed something else. In the millisecond after the stimulus and before the Desire popped up, there was a gap I haven't seen before -- a gap containing something else. I went back and looked into it. In action replay, yes, there was something -- two things actually.....

a) A mini-moment of Recognition, an instant of "Yes". What I had just seen triggered a feeling I already knew, recognised it and affirmed it. It was just a flash, though, before it was wiped out by.....

b) A kneejerk thought of "Missing", quickly followed by a pang of Sadness.(I know that feeling; I often mistake it for love.)

So the full sequence was:

1. The trigger
2. Recognition
3. Affirmation -- "Yes"
4. A thought of Missing
5. A feeling of Sadness
6. Desire
7. Preference
8. Addiction (Preference with an emotional punch)

As I go through this sequence now, I can feel the frequency of each experience in the sequence lowering from high-level affirmation to low-level despair. And the whole descent can happen so fast that we never see it..

But getting back to my slow-mo replay, something else happened also. When I reversed out of Neediness back to that Yes of Recognition, the grab of Preference and Need dissolved and Desire settled into Gratitude for something I now knew I already have.

We know that any Desire for an experience -- like a peach -- has an internal kernel of something very valuable that the desired experience is supposed to give us. This internal kernel is something we already know, otherwise we could not imagine or recall it. But, since we know it, it is still available to us -- either directly from within our internal sense memory, or indirectly through any number of other possible experiences and circumstances, not just the one we're focusing our Desire onto. It is this narrowing of Desire onto a PARTICULAR must-have experience that both heightens the intensity of the Desire, and lessens our chances of getting either it or the kernel of what we're really after..

Could it also be that, when we see something that we know and like, out of sheer habit we admit a thought about Not-Having, and a feeling of Regret that spurs us into Desire, Preference and, finally, Addiction? Could it also be that we can reverse that process and up-level our experience by simply recognising that, if we know it, we have it. No need to desire it. No need to even prefer it. Take the short-cut; simply recall. Receive what you've already got.

Ah, but then we wouldn't suffer, and how hard it is to give up our suffering! So much of our identity is tied up in it.

What do I want? What I already have? Or do I want to suffer a little bit longer? I have a choice.

That's what I've just seen. I'm going to road-test it for a while, and see what happens..

Anybody else?

THE SEDUCTION OF LIMITATION

Human beings possess an inner space and universe that is balanced by the immensity and power of the space and universe around us.

Look out into the night sky. Feel into the immensity of it all. Then open the aperture of your perceptions and look inward. Like Dr.Who's tardis, the inner space belies its modest outer appearance. In fact, the space inside is no less immense than the space out there.

Why would we want to say "No" to that?

We get hooked on the Intensity of Limitation and the Drama of Separation. We become junkies for it.

Faced with the fact of limitless space and energy, we fall back in dismay and opt for restrictions of the cruelest kind.

We limit ourselves to cautious highs and shallow lows. then we seek artificial ways of intensifying what remains within the self-imposed narrow spectrum of what is acceptable.
Both spiritual ascetics and emotional victims fall prey to the same seduction of Limitation. Ascetics form their cocoon at the higher end of the vibrational frequency scale, Victims cower at the lower end. But they are all cocoons just the same. The sin is the same -- a refusal of Magnificence.

Then, having created a "safer" space, we get inured and addicted to it.

You think not? Try challenging someone who wants to be right about his/her limitations, and watch how vigorously they fight to defend what's causing their pain and suffering. Trying to separate a Victim from his/her limitations is like pulling teeth without anaesthetic.

We pay a terrible price for our voluntary exile from The Full Monty. We miss the lurid grandeur of towering mountains and resplendent valleys. We miss the pastel subtleties and nuances of inner knowing. We'll suppress, express, dump or otherwise deny a feeling, anything rather than have it. We will resist any possibility outside of the narrow comfort range we have set for ourselves

By staying safely tucked away inside our self-set limits, we imagine we are in control.

And we miss the greatest discovery of all.

THE ABSOLUTION OF LIFE

What is life?

Any attempt to define the indefinable and limit the limitless is going to be futile

What is life about?
Personal power? Happiness? Honesty? Success? Enlightenment?
Sure. There's a lot of those things around.
It's also about Impotence. Suffering. Ignorance. Failure and Lostness. There's a lot of that around, too.
I've found my life to be about a bit of everything --
This and That
And neither This nor That....
All of This and That and more.....
And none of it really. There is something else.....

Life is what happens while you're living the unsolvable mystery,
Embracing the un-knowable,
Playing with agendas, timetables, plans, goals and expectations
In a medium that has none of the above.

Life could be a living, radiant, flowing  present-ness, but it cannot be confined to that either.

So I make this declaration for myself --

My life is a surrender to not-knowing how it's going to turn out next, and a commitment to embrace as much as I can in the moment, and to journey wherever the flow may take me.

So be it.

Now you make your declaration, for yourself --

What is Life about?

SURRENDER

Outside of one limited condition
There are no "correct" answers.
Inside every condition
There are no absolute, universal truths.

Outside of ego, there is nothing worth fighting for.
Until I have learned right to the deepest core of my being
How to stop opposing and fighting entirely,
There will be no salvation.

It feels like I have a long way to go,
But I know. too. that the switcheroo is this close.
I have to find patience:
The switch is an act of grace, and will not be rushed.
For now, I'm surrendering to my resistances.

If you want something -- create it.
If you've got something that you don't want -- get that you created it
And welcome it home.
What you want is in there somewhere.

THE PARADOX OF POWER

We take the power trip
To discover how power-less we are:
When we surrender to our powerlessness
We discover Power and the nature of it.
It has been available all the while,
Hiding inside Surrender.

Let Go. How powerful we are!

CONTROL & SURPRISE

As much as we might like to think so, Control is not at the core of human experience. Surely there have been enough catastrophic events -- natural and man-made -- for us to have realised long ago that, when the chips are really down, we are utterly powerless.

But old habits die hard. We have tried everything under the sun to manipulate, dominate and control people and circumstances so that things will go the way we want. Where we have felt powerless to directly influence things, we tried bribery. Since time immemorial our ancestors have been trying rituals of appeasement to get on the right side of  the "gods" who supposedly did have their hands on the joystick. Even our Western and some Eastern ideas of God are petitioned and prayed to in the assumptions that a) they have control; and b) they care. It is my jaundiced view that neither are true.

There is a world-wide industry of technologies to exercise physical, emotional, mental and cosmic control over the world we live in. Then a tsunami hits, we look skywards and bleat "Why?"  What do we expect? A booming voice proclaiming "Just trying to make a point!"?

The way of control has turned out NOT to be the way to a deeper realisation of our common humanity. At this plane of existence, we have no more control over life than a surfer has over the ocean. We never did have, nor will we ever have in the future. We can ride the waves of fortune and happenstance, and even have exhilarating fun while we're doing it, but ultimately the ocean has the last word. Always.

One purpose of this trip is to get that we don't have control and relinquish our need for it, so that we can move on to experience the most exquisite of all joys -- Surprise. And the sooner we get off the Control pottie, the better.

Control is the Promise and the Way of Logic -- the playground of the ego-mind. -- the Not-Me that "I" thinks is Me. Control is OK for incremental change, for winning something and for the illusion of Success.. But the exercise of Power and Control (even to create a "better" world) always leads to more conflict, repression, resentment and opposition. The journey of Power is a journey into the experience of Powerlessness.

Control is the way of Change:
Surrendering is the way of Transformation.
(By surrendering, I mean engaging creatively with What-Is, just as it is.)
In control we try to renovate and extend Me;
In surrender we step away from Me, and trust we'll fall beyond logic and reason into a new kind of reality.

But what now will sustain us? All the old sources and props are disappearing.  -- our religious convictions, our beliefs, our values and principles, careers, ambitions, achievements, enlightenments, relationships -- even our bodies, minds and hearts are slowly deserting us.

What now will sustain us?

Am I breathing now?
Am I fed now?
Is there anything missing in this very moment?
Ah! So now is not a problem. Why  then are we concerned? What are we afraid of? There is more -- but this a More that feels like Less.

What is this "something else" that we sense is always there, underlying the darks nights of life's deeper trials,
Through the grief of loss and the assault of infirmity?
It waits patiently, just out of sight.
Seductively humming a harmony so ancient and powerful
We will surrender everything to behold its glory.

That doesn't make it any less scary, though.