What was --WAS
What is -- IS
What will be?
Listen to what you tell yourself
When the restraints are off
And you think no-one else is listening.
You'll discover,
You are, and have always been,
The best predictor of your own future.
Friday, August 06, 2010
VALUE -v- RENOWN
Attend to the value within what you do
Rather than in your rewards for doing it.
Come what may,
Let reputation, renown and fame be the result,
Rather than the purpose for what you do.
Rather than in your rewards for doing it.
Let every act be the beginning of something,
The middle of something else,
And the end of something else again.
And spread it around.......
Any act terminating in itself
Turns to poison.
Come what may,
Let reputation, renown and fame be the result,
Rather than the purpose for what you do.
BUSTING OUT
A human being is part of a Whole,
That we call, variously, "existence", "nature", "creation", "the universe".
We each are a part, limited in time and space,
Of an unlimited, timeless, spaceless Whole.
But....
We each experience our self and the thoughts and feelings we have
As something separated from the rest of it all.
We live in a kind of optical delusion.
This delusion is a prison for us,
Restricting us to our personal decisions and desires
And to the affection of a few like-minded persons nearest to us.
We can free ourselves from this isolation
By widening our circle of compassion
To embrace all creation and the whole of nature,
All that of which we are....
Unconditionally in the beauty of "us" all.
That we call, variously, "existence", "nature", "creation", "the universe".
We each are a part, limited in time and space,
Of an unlimited, timeless, spaceless Whole.
But....
We each experience our self and the thoughts and feelings we have
As something separated from the rest of it all.
We live in a kind of optical delusion.
This delusion is a prison for us,
Restricting us to our personal decisions and desires
And to the affection of a few like-minded persons nearest to us.
We can free ourselves from this isolation
By widening our circle of compassion
To embrace all creation and the whole of nature,
All that of which we are....
Unconditionally in the beauty of "us" all.
THE LAW OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RECIPROCITY
Manipulators know...
Any time you give credit to another for his/her intelligence
They are morally and subconsciously bound
To give you credit for the next thing you say.
Victims know.....
Any time you buy into praise from someone,
You're gonna get hurt when they criticise you.
This is the Law of Psychological Reciprocity.
How to genuinely handle praise --
Any time you give credit to another for his/her intelligence
They are morally and subconsciously bound
To give you credit for the next thing you say.
Victims know.....
Any time you buy into praise from someone,
You're gonna get hurt when they criticise you.
This is the Law of Psychological Reciprocity.
How to genuinely handle praise --
- Acknowledge it is so
- Thank the reflection for the reflection -- find gratitude and express it
- Let it go
How to handle criticism --
- Acknowledge it is so
- Thank the reflection for the reflection -- find gratitude and express it
- Let it go
THE GIFT OF PROBLEMS
There is no such thing in life
As a problem unaccompanied by the Gift of Learning.
One reason we create problems for ourselves
Is because we secretly enjoy the gift.
As a problem unaccompanied by the Gift of Learning.
One reason we create problems for ourselves
Is because we secretly enjoy the gift.
POINTS OF VIEW
In a finite existence, such as being human,
Taking a point of view is inescapable.
Being finite, we cannot encompass the infinite --
Not all at once anyway.
The stupidity of sticking to one opinion, one perspective, one belief, one point of view,
Was never better displayed than a radio interview a few minutes ago
With a medical expert on the subject of lung cancer:-
Interviewer: Why do some people who smoke not get lung cancer, and why do some people who don't smoke contract the disease?
Expert: We don't know. (We assume) it's because they breathe in other people's smoke.
That was it. End of discussion. No further correspondence. His point of view is that "Lung cancer is caused by smoking". No other possible causes can be investigated.........
Well, righteousness makes life conveniently simple. I guess that's why it's so popular. OK, if you're happy to go through your entire life simple-minded.
The trick with dealing with the limitations of a Point of View
Is to change it,
As often as possible --
Certainly more often than your other underwear.
Taking a point of view is inescapable.
Being finite, we cannot encompass the infinite --
Not all at once anyway.
The stupidity of sticking to one opinion, one perspective, one belief, one point of view,
Was never better displayed than a radio interview a few minutes ago
With a medical expert on the subject of lung cancer:-
Interviewer: Why do some people who smoke not get lung cancer, and why do some people who don't smoke contract the disease?
Expert: We don't know. (We assume) it's because they breathe in other people's smoke.
That was it. End of discussion. No further correspondence. His point of view is that "Lung cancer is caused by smoking". No other possible causes can be investigated.........
Well, righteousness makes life conveniently simple. I guess that's why it's so popular. OK, if you're happy to go through your entire life simple-minded.
The trick with dealing with the limitations of a Point of View
Is to change it,
As often as possible --
Certainly more often than your other underwear.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
SELF-MOTIVATION TECHNOLOGIES -- JUNK-FOOD FOR THE SOUL
A professor was taking tea with zen master Nan-In.
As the first cup filled and began overflowing,
Nan-In continued pouring.
Tea trickled all over the table and onto the floor.
Finally, the professor could contain his discomfort no longer --
"Master", he said tentatively, ""The cup is filled."
"So it is," replied Nan-In
"Like this cup
You are full of your own opinions and expectations.
How can I show you anything
Unless you first empty your cup?"
I am grateful to the likes of Wayne Dwyer, Jim Rohn, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar. Deepak Chopra, Stuart Wilde, Norman Vincent Peale --
They opened up gates of possibility
At a time when I was drowning in my own ordure.
I found that their philosophies and techniques worked -- except sometimes;
And then they stopped working for me -- except sometimes.
I seemed to be always, almost back where I started;
Nothing much had changed,
Except I now had an extended vocabulary in more high-fallutin' bullshit.
What had gone wrong?
Nothing.
I was simply about to make another discovery,
Another blinding flash of the bloody obvious.......
Another blinding flash of the bloody obvious.......
There is more.
Aways.
Aways.
When we find ourselves seemingly back where we started,
It's a sure sign that there is more to "get".
Got it?
Good.
Everything is an invitation to deeper, wider Awareness
The question is --
Am I going to come home and be present for this,
Or stay out on the world's longest lunch-break?
At its core,
The religion of self-motivation, self-reliance and self-service
Relies on integrity, shared humanity and alignment
For it to work.
That is, in and of itself, an enormous leap forward.
It's not deep, but it isn't silly either;
It's a lot more intelligent than the conditions of ignorance it replaces.
It awakens an awareness of Spirit
That is usually a lot more practical than that provided by traditional religion --
One of the reasons why many pentecostal churches have jumped on board
And integrated the techniques with their fundamentalist interpretations of scripture.
One of the reasons why many pentecostal churches have jumped on board
And integrated the techniques with their fundamentalist interpretations of scripture.
It's a lot easier, too, to go deeper
If the more basic needs of life -- food, shelter and some measures of intimacy and achievement are taken care of,
And you can manage a higher level of competence and success.
If the more basic needs of life -- food, shelter and some measures of intimacy and achievement are taken care of,
And you can manage a higher level of competence and success.
I also re-discovered some Hope in Personal-Growth-erism.
After years of covering up a sneaking, growing despair,
The simple possibility that there IS a way out, was liberating,
Even if that wasn't it.
And it wasn't. The despair didn't go away:
It just got covered over and driven deeper.
The adage "Fake it until you make it" doesn't work;
No matter how often or how earnestly we try,
Nothing fake will ever become genuine
After years of covering up a sneaking, growing despair,
The simple possibility that there IS a way out, was liberating,
Even if that wasn't it.
And it wasn't. The despair didn't go away:
It just got covered over and driven deeper.
The adage "Fake it until you make it" doesn't work;
No matter how often or how earnestly we try,
Nothing fake will ever become genuine
The core problem I eventually identified with motivational whoop-ups
Arose from their lack of deep-soul nutrition.
The content of most of the seminars and conferences I took part in
Was junk food for the soul,
[Junk food being that which satisfies the act, but not the purpose of eating.]
To me it's a perfect irony that one of the breakfast groups I became involved with met in Maccas' stores.
The limitations of the teachings begin to show up when we reach the limitations of the mind.
Arose from their lack of deep-soul nutrition.
The content of most of the seminars and conferences I took part in
Was junk food for the soul,
[Junk food being that which satisfies the act, but not the purpose of eating.]
To me it's a perfect irony that one of the breakfast groups I became involved with met in Maccas' stores.
The limitations of the teachings begin to show up when we reach the limitations of the mind.
The religion of self-motivation and positive thinking is (mostly) head-stuff.
It works on the mind.....
It is, in fact, the mind ....working on the mind.
It focuses on change for the better, instead of transformation.
Instead of first clearing the clutter and detritus of past, outdated beliefs and habits,
It adds more and "better" ones to the pile,
Then attempts to organise and control
The dog's breakfast that results.
The hot pursuit of Personal Growth is still based on:
- a belief in, and fear of Lack,
- A delusion-creating resistance to the inherent negative side of everything,
- A constant addiction to produce,
- An assumption of Scarcity, and
- A compulsion to Earn (money, love, forgiveness...), arising from an inability to get that Deservingness is our birthright. (I am, therefore I deserve.)
Self-motivation tempts it's followers to compete, rather than create.
It's goal is Achievement,
Often at the expense of peace, happiness and balance.
It allows achievement and success to substitute for fulfillment.
It allows achievement and success to substitute for fulfillment.
It is ultimately self-defeating,
Since a fear of scarcity and lack
Will never produce a harvest of abundance....
Thistle seeds do not grow wheat.
From within the scientific technologies of personal growth
Material, emotional and, yes, even spiritual attainments
Become the measure of how well we're doing.
We begin to define ourselves by one or more of the following --
- My career
- My social status
- My family status
- My possessions -- material and non-material
- How I feel
- What I think
(Thou shalt have no other gods but "Me")
In the midst of a burgeoning business life,
I found myself, more than ever,
Still a victim,
And a victim of more pressures --
- A victim of a need for More, Better and Different
- A victim of a need to Succeed
- A victim of a need to Achieve
- A victim of a need to be Right
- A victim of a need to be Positive
- A victim of Social Consciousness; and
- A victim of Ego, my own and those of everyone I wanted something from.
May I proffer some notions that you may like to sit with for a while? --
- Ideas have an inherent tendency to transmute themselves into being and into experience, which then becomes your reality. Sometimes a little personal input is called for; sometimes it works better if we get out of the roadway.
- All achievement began as an idea.
- All lasting achievement began as an idea evolving from a desire to create an experience, not from an urge to avoid another, feared experience.
- If you're getting what you don't want, part of the reason is that you're unknowingly harbouring an idea that is overriding the idea of what you want. There's an experience you need that you will not acknowledge. Your wheels are spinning. Traction begins with acknowledging and owning both positive and negative ideas.
- Creating is the act of producing something out of nothing -- out of no-mind.
- At the higher vibrational levels, it is the subconscious no-mind that is connected most closely to the forces of the Infinite Intelligence -- the Intelligence that is so creative that it created all that is. Maybe, if we looked at how that Intelligence goes about the job of creating, we might learn something?
- You are not the thinker. Thoughts are not yours to own.
- The Source is abundant. The range and variety of available ideas and thoughts is infinite. Any perception of limitedness or lack is self-generated, an impoverishing state of affairs that Abundance allows us to indulge in.
- Lower-level thoughts appear out of the soup of thoughts we swim in.
- We surround our self with a "mood" -- a filtering atmosphere that lets through thoughts that reflect and reinforce the emotional condition we've set up for our self. Whether the atmosphere is "heaven" or "hell" is down to each of us.
- The thoughts we adopt and entertain have the power to open us up, or close us down to contact with the sources of abundance.
- The sources of abundance and freedom often come heavily disguised. There's a good reason for that. Go figure for yourself.
- Our internal self-image acts like a thermostat. We live up to our own most deeply felt expectations, and no further. Unless and until we deal with that, we're always going to be hauled back, kicking and moaning, to where we're coming from.
- Our past and our present environment -- physical, mental, cultural, and emotional -- do not fully determine our present behaviour. There is always a Point of Choice, a point at which the cycle can be broken. Just because we cannot see that point at the moment does not mean that it's not there. If you cannot see it, get help; there's plenty available.
- Our present environment is useful feedback on the nature of our deep, unconscious levels of self-image.
- No-one can change either his self-image or the resulting environment until he has deeply recognised his responsibility in it. The extent of change is directly proportional to the level of that acceptance.
- Others are worthy, too. All of them.
- Justified or not, resentment is an expensive emotion. It costs the sufferer everything -- happiness, power, freedom and possibility are just some of the goodies thrown out to make room for more resentment, victimness, inhibition, anger, frustration, guilt and righteous justificating.
- Emotions are neither good nor bad. How we use them determines how appropriately and effectively we respond to the present.
- Resentment, fear and guilt fixate us on a past that is dead, forcing us to disinter the body every moment in an effort to change that which cannot be changed. They are, therefore, inappropriate. They also cause inhibition.
- Worry and anxiety fixate us on an imaginary future which, in turn, is inexorably pre-ordained by our present state of mind-thinking/feeling.
- All separating emotions pull us out of the the only reality there is -- the present.
BEYOND THE RAH-RAH-RAH....
If we haven't already done so,
Some time before death, life will see to it that we move
Beyond the sciences of motivation and success
Some time before death, life will see to it that we move
Beyond the sciences of motivation and success
And into grander experiences of Growing;
We will shift focus from personal development
To Evolving as human beings.
My choice is to do it now and take time to really experience these transitions,
Rather than be forced to whip through them just before "lights-out"
While my life flashes before my eyes.
My choice is to do it now and take time to really experience these transitions,
Rather than be forced to whip through them just before "lights-out"
While my life flashes before my eyes.
There's a bonus to doing moving on now rather than leaving it to the last half-minute --
People who are healthy, interdependent and developing as human beings
People who are healthy, interdependent and developing as human beings
Are naturally fulfilled in all that they choose to do
To express who and what they think they are.
They don't need to go looking for success;
Because there's no emptiness to fill.
Personal development systems in the pursuit of success
Are just a spring clean and paint job.
They are technologies for tinkering around with one's ego --
Moving ideas, beliefs and concepts around the house
And slapping on a new coat of varnish
And maybe hanging some new curtains,
While the house and all its lean-to's are leaking every time it rains,
And crumbling at the foundations.
Personal growth is not intrinsically bad;
It just doesn't go nearly far enough.
It just doesn't go nearly far enough.
It's just an ego-devised short cut
That fails when it takes no account of Real Self.
Satisfaction is intrinsic in living the Whole of Self.
It cannot come from little fragments of self-ishness,
Or from anywhere else.
If the mechanisms of personal development are exercised
In a context of Conscious Exploring,
They can be invaluably enlightening.
When they work,
They succeed, not because of what they are,
But because of the willingness, purpose and integrity
Of the person.
Without that willingness to know all of self,
The mechanics are of very limited value.
When they produce a modicum of success,
That very success, without self-realisation, becomes destructive of Self.....
We all know stories of people who have acquired sudden fame and success,
Only to self-destruct.
Most of them come through to the other side,
But not all.
Some don't make it.
Outside of the ranks of the highly-publicised and famous,
The force-fed growth of personality without a commensurate growth in awareness of self
Has produced the kind of monstrous ego-freaks
That show up at stock exchanges, parliaments, pentecostal churches,
And phony TV "reality" productions like "Survivor", "The Apprentice" and "The World's Greatest Race",
And other sideshows.
Closer to home,
Personal development programmes can trigger a spurt of growth for us,
But if we start to believe in them and hang on for too long,
They'll stunt the same growth,
Well short of ripe maturity.
There is more.
Always.....
A realising Self does not take positions of right/wrong, or good/bad;
Real growth is not personal, therefore it does not traffic in offence -- giving or taking.
True Self chooses to respond creatively,
Rather than react robotically.
Success and Motivation teachings and disciplines
Gave me some sense of relief, hope, purpose and gratification:
I thought "This is it". I thought I'd got it. But I hadn't.
Some situation would arise, or someone would say or do something
That I would react to self-destructively.
I lost it, in more ways than one.
What's the difference between development and growth (in this context)?
Gratification doesn't last;
Satisfaction always Is,
Whether we realise it or not.
Gratification is a filling-up;
Satisfaction is an emptying-out, creating space.
The switch from gratification to satisfaction
Is a switch from Mind to True Self.
Success and Motivation disciplines are highly palatable and reasonable
And may even be inspiring;
Conscious Growth may be un-reasonable and highly intrusive,
But it will be empowering.
The purpose of Human Growth is enlightenment;
The result of Personal Improvement is enheavyment.
Personal Improvement may have its place in your Becoming,
As it did in mine,
But don't dwell there any longer than you need to.
Learn from my mistakes.....
The technologies won't take you where you want to go.
Self-Motivation is a side-street that leads to a heap of stuff you can't take with you;
It's a cul-de-sac you're eventually going to have to back out of.
Sure, it gives you goals to aspire to,
But only filling gaps.
It takes you on a search for fulfillment
When you are already, and always filled-full --
Full of "missing".
You've heard the expression Less is more?
We don't need more of any thing to make life work,
We need less.
Michaelangelo was once asked how he designed his sculptures.
He replied "I don't design them, they already exist within the stone.
I saw The David locked in the block of stone;
I simply chipped away at the not-David,
To reveal the perfection of what lay hidden within,
Of what already was."
In conscious growth there is nothing missing at any point;
We're already full-up.
We've just forgotten who we are, and what we need,
And slathered all of that with layer-over-layer of "Not-Me".
Human Growing is a process of chipping away at the "Not-Me"
To reveal once more the perfection of all that we really are.
If the mechanisms of personal development are exercised
In a context of Conscious Exploring,
They can be invaluably enlightening.
When they work,
They succeed, not because of what they are,
But because of the willingness, purpose and integrity
Of the person.
Without that willingness to know all of self,
The mechanics are of very limited value.
When they produce a modicum of success,
That very success, without self-realisation, becomes destructive of Self.....
We all know stories of people who have acquired sudden fame and success,
Only to self-destruct.
Most of them come through to the other side,
But not all.
Some don't make it.
Outside of the ranks of the highly-publicised and famous,
The force-fed growth of personality without a commensurate growth in awareness of self
Has produced the kind of monstrous ego-freaks
That show up at stock exchanges, parliaments, pentecostal churches,
And phony TV "reality" productions like "Survivor", "The Apprentice" and "The World's Greatest Race",
And other sideshows.
Closer to home,
Personal development programmes can trigger a spurt of growth for us,
But if we start to believe in them and hang on for too long,
They'll stunt the same growth,
Well short of ripe maturity.
There is more.
Always.....
A realising Self does not take positions of right/wrong, or good/bad;
Real growth is not personal, therefore it does not traffic in offence -- giving or taking.
True Self chooses to respond creatively,
Rather than react robotically.
Success and Motivation teachings and disciplines
Gave me some sense of relief, hope, purpose and gratification:
I thought "This is it". I thought I'd got it. But I hadn't.
Some situation would arise, or someone would say or do something
That I would react to self-destructively.
I lost it, in more ways than one.
What's the difference between development and growth (in this context)?
Gratification doesn't last;
Satisfaction always Is,
Whether we realise it or not.
Gratification is a filling-up;
Satisfaction is an emptying-out, creating space.
The switch from gratification to satisfaction
Is a switch from Mind to True Self.
Success and Motivation disciplines are highly palatable and reasonable
And may even be inspiring;
Conscious Growth may be un-reasonable and highly intrusive,
But it will be empowering.
The purpose of Human Growth is enlightenment;
The result of Personal Improvement is enheavyment.
Personal Improvement may have its place in your Becoming,
As it did in mine,
But don't dwell there any longer than you need to.
Learn from my mistakes.....
The technologies won't take you where you want to go.
Self-Motivation is a side-street that leads to a heap of stuff you can't take with you;
It's a cul-de-sac you're eventually going to have to back out of.
Sure, it gives you goals to aspire to,
But only filling gaps.
It takes you on a search for fulfillment
When you are already, and always filled-full --
Full of "missing".
You've heard the expression Less is more?
We don't need more of any thing to make life work,
We need less.
Michaelangelo was once asked how he designed his sculptures.
He replied "I don't design them, they already exist within the stone.
I saw The David locked in the block of stone;
I simply chipped away at the not-David,
To reveal the perfection of what lay hidden within,
Of what already was."
In conscious growth there is nothing missing at any point;
We're already full-up.
We've just forgotten who we are, and what we need,
And slathered all of that with layer-over-layer of "Not-Me".
Human Growing is a process of chipping away at the "Not-Me"
To reveal once more the perfection of all that we really are.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
THE MEDIA
I don't propose here to either criticise or defend "the media".
It is my intention, rather, to question the validity of our assumptions and expectations
That underly a lot of criticisms of the practises and products of those who work in it.
Media mediate;
That is what they do.
They interpose between us and the event.
That is their function.
There is nothing sinister about this;
The process of communication is one of mediation.
The bottom line of all communication is that human beings cannot transfer experience directly from one to the other.
We cannot connect by ethernet radio or cable and download or upload experience.
There has to be some encoding, the use of a suitable medium, and some decoding going on.
This is true even of communication in the extra-sensory realm --
For human beings at least.
No medium, no message.
In general, there are four kinds of communication, classified by their aim --
It's my experience that what we call "The Media" manage to do all four,
In about the same proportions as any other forms of communicating.
The Medium is like a vehicle;
How effective it is is up to the driver and passengers.
Now let's get down to some basic realities about The Media.......
The way that it is.
Do the media manipulate?
Yes, of course.
As I'll demonstrate in a moment, manipulation is inherent in the communicating process.
Are the media manipulated?
Yes, and a lot less than conspiracy theorists love to think.
How do the media manipulate?
Media such as newspapers, television, film, radio, and the internet
Must, of necessity, selectively frame, reflect, select and initiate;
They cannot help but do what we all do when we're experiencing anything for ourself --
They view an event or idea from a particular point of view,
They modify what they experience;
They emphasise and de-emphasise,
According to some sense of importance,
Thus framing and skewing the evenness of pure reality.
I repeat, there is nothing inherently nasty about this;
It's the nature of human perception.
The quirks and weaknesses of human communication can, of course, be exploited and abused
Just as we do every day with our friends, family and people we don't like.
The media, being staffed by humans, are subject to the same condition as we are.
Any resistance to the Is-ness of that may be a useful source of self-reflection.
Why do we feel so vulnerable to "media manipulation"
Since it is simply not possible for us to personally experience
All the events that may affect some aspect of our lives,
We look to the media to tell us about them.
Problems arise, however, when we allow the media
To replace our own responsibilities to listen, read, explore and think for ourselves,
When we ignore the inherent limitations of any mediated experience.
THE STORY IS NOT THE EXPERIENCE --
-- No more than the menu and the press reviews at your favourite restaurant
Are the meal.
I can tell you the story of my heart operation,
But what you experience will be nothing like my experience of the real thing.
It is my intention, rather, to question the validity of our assumptions and expectations
That underly a lot of criticisms of the practises and products of those who work in it.
Media mediate;
That is what they do.
They interpose between us and the event.
That is their function.
There is nothing sinister about this;
The process of communication is one of mediation.
The bottom line of all communication is that human beings cannot transfer experience directly from one to the other.
We cannot connect by ethernet radio or cable and download or upload experience.
There has to be some encoding, the use of a suitable medium, and some decoding going on.
This is true even of communication in the extra-sensory realm --
For human beings at least.
No medium, no message.
In general, there are four kinds of communication, classified by their aim --
- Communication that Entertains
- Communication that Informs
- Communication that Inspires
- Communication that Empowers
It's my experience that what we call "The Media" manage to do all four,
In about the same proportions as any other forms of communicating.
The Medium is like a vehicle;
How effective it is is up to the driver and passengers.
Now let's get down to some basic realities about The Media.......
The way that it is.
Do the media manipulate?
Yes, of course.
As I'll demonstrate in a moment, manipulation is inherent in the communicating process.
Are the media manipulated?
Yes, and a lot less than conspiracy theorists love to think.
How do the media manipulate?
Media such as newspapers, television, film, radio, and the internet
Must, of necessity, selectively frame, reflect, select and initiate;
They cannot help but do what we all do when we're experiencing anything for ourself --
They view an event or idea from a particular point of view,
They modify what they experience;
They emphasise and de-emphasise,
According to some sense of importance,
Thus framing and skewing the evenness of pure reality.
I repeat, there is nothing inherently nasty about this;
It's the nature of human perception.
The quirks and weaknesses of human communication can, of course, be exploited and abused
Just as we do every day with our friends, family and people we don't like.
The media, being staffed by humans, are subject to the same condition as we are.
Any resistance to the Is-ness of that may be a useful source of self-reflection.
How are the media themselves manipulated?
Obviously by government regulation and political, cultural and religious pressure.
One also has to remember the commercial reality
That our media have to be paid for.
In our free market system
Most media are funded by selling space.
We should not be miffed or surprised then,
That the pipers give some consideration
To those that are paying them.
Don't bemoan it;
Just be aware of possible constraints or hidden agendas
And make allowances in your perceptions
And the levels of trust that you invest in them.
Spread yourself around
And get a range of views,
Then make your own choices and decisions.
In a country where we have the freedom to shop around for truth,
It is our individual responsibility, if we can't actually be present for an event,
To look for as many different viewpoints as possible.
(That is our responsibility in all of life;)
It's not the responsibility of the media to relieve us of our responsibilities.
Why do we feel so vulnerable to "media manipulation"
Since it is simply not possible for us to personally experience
All the events that may affect some aspect of our lives,
We look to the media to tell us about them.
Problems arise, however, when we allow the media
To replace our own responsibilities to listen, read, explore and think for ourselves,
When we ignore the inherent limitations of any mediated experience.
THE STORY IS NOT THE EXPERIENCE --
-- No more than the menu and the press reviews at your favourite restaurant
Are the meal.
I can tell you the story of my heart operation,
But what you experience will be nothing like my experience of the real thing.
The story is no more like the original event,
Than the moon is like the sun it reflects.
To expect otherwise is to invite disappointment.
This isn't something to get bent out of shape about --
It's one of the givens.
All media commuinicators, consciously or unsconsciously
Have no choice but to do a number of things
That distort the full reality of what they're observing:-
- They see it from a limited perspective. That is a given. No matter how widely they research and probe, there is always more to be known than they what they see and hear.
- They report and comment either within an existing context, or in a freshly created one; i.e. a perspective from which to view, explore, describe and report. When a context is changed from one report to another, the experience changes, and so does the story. That is the nature of all perception; make the most of it. Look over someone else's shoulder at another newspaper and get another slant.
- No story can tell the whole of even a limited perspective. And each particular medium itself imposes limitations on the number and extent of the senses that can be used.
- Decisions have to be made about what to include and what to exclude from the story. We may question the integrity and appropriateness of such choices, but those choices must be made.
- Choices have to be made on where and when to cut from one perspective to another.
- Choices have to be made as to which segments or sequences are placed adjacent to each other. All human minds make connections, emotionally and mentally relating things that often have no real connection at all. Juxtaposing images can lead to creating impressions, advertent and inadvertent, that can be far more powerful than the sum total of the parts. Thanks to the bridging function of human minds, editing implies, creates or reinforces links, bridges and connections that may be factual or emotional, accidental or intentional. Serious communicators and media practitioners are very careful, and they can still get into trouble.
- In film and television, choices are made about which images to attach to which sounds. Such decisions can also have an enormous effect on how the story impacts on the audient.
NEWS
By far the largest proportion of so-called news stories originate from the desks of faceless people with axes to grind who've got something to sell, and who want you to experience them or their organisations in a very particular way. In the more serious media, you will find journalists who do not take their blurbs at face value, and ask discomforting questions, which is why pollies and CEO's take classes and surround themselves with minders to deflect and warp questions they don't want to answer. And they're getting daily more brazen about it.
Just about 70% of so-called current-affairs programmes and newsmags emanate originally as "media releases" from PR Spinners or Marketing Managers of corporations and organisations who have something to sell -- the resulting articles are nothing more than advertorials. So-called "info-tainment" travel and lifestyle programmes fall under this heading. I recently watched an episode of a state-based travel programme that has deteriorated into a string of undisguised, paid-for promos for cafes, wineries and B & B's, stopping every 10 minutes or so for a commercial break! Even the ABC is stooping to pass off promos for its programmes as "news" stories in the 7pm bulletin.
Just about 70% of so-called current-affairs programmes and newsmags emanate originally as "media releases" from PR Spinners or Marketing Managers of corporations and organisations who have something to sell -- the resulting articles are nothing more than advertorials. So-called "info-tainment" travel and lifestyle programmes fall under this heading. I recently watched an episode of a state-based travel programme that has deteriorated into a string of undisguised, paid-for promos for cafes, wineries and B & B's, stopping every 10 minutes or so for a commercial break! Even the ABC is stooping to pass off promos for its programmes as "news" stories in the 7pm bulletin.
But we get the standard of media we deserve:
Lazy, undiscriminating viewers and readers
Licence lazy, deceptive journalism.
We're far too eager to assign to the media the responsibility to do for us our discriminating, thinking and holding business and government authorities to account. We're all too ready, I feel, to assume ignorance as an excuse for laziness of will, and to allow certain media to shape and reinforce our opinions, which we then give the status of gospel truth and ferociously grip onto them to the exclusion of any dissenting alternatives.
Lazy, undiscriminating viewers and readers
Licence lazy, deceptive journalism.
We're far too eager to assign to the media the responsibility to do for us our discriminating, thinking and holding business and government authorities to account. We're all too ready, I feel, to assume ignorance as an excuse for laziness of will, and to allow certain media to shape and reinforce our opinions, which we then give the status of gospel truth and ferociously grip onto them to the exclusion of any dissenting alternatives.
We get the media and the political and religious leadership we deserve,
And it takes irresponsibility and a victim consciousness to its absurd extreme
To blame the media for the results of our lassitude.
And it takes irresponsibility and a victim consciousness to its absurd extreme
To blame the media for the results of our lassitude.
Monday, August 02, 2010
HUMILITY
I know two basic kinds of Humility -- false and genuine.
The practise of False humility creates a facade of phony self-deprecation, sometimes masquerading as sympathy, or "understanding", or sometimes as "joking". It is an activity we do, often to avoid being with a genuine feeling, like embarrassment. False humility feels like both a manipulative strategy to engineer others' opinions of "me", and a defence tactic to preemptively ward off fear of vulnerability and external criticism by getting in first. But coming, as it seems to, from a soft-spot of negative self-image, and from the secret files of my Inner Critic, criticism is not avoided. False humility is The Mole at work, critically undermining ourself from within, destroying genuine confidence and replacing that with its opposite -- hubris. But "I" thinks that anything I do to myself doesn't do any harm. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Genuine humility has a very different feel to it, for both the wearer and those with whom he/she comes into contact. Genuine humility is not something to be done; it is a way of being to come from. Humility is characterised by a complete absence of self-importance, and a propensity to surrender to whatever, grateful for any new, fresh opportunities and possibilities this experience may provide.
False humility is a cunning stratagem of pride and arrogance, flowering from a flawed perception of self, and self importance. Consequently, I see the polar opposite of Humility to be Self-Humiliation.
True Humility feels like a quiet radiance; it is one's life's expression, an energy that underlies and gives a wholesome flavour to all that we do. Humility is that true power that never seeks to enforce itself. Humility fosters dignity, humanity, empathy (not sympathy) and grace.
Humiliation wallows around in sentiment and wounded pride. In humiliation we cede to others every scrap of authority and power in the matter.
Humility is knowing and living your Place and Purpose in the natural order of all things.
Dignity arises from living your Purpose (whatever you create that to be) in harmony with the natural order of all things. So the two are not quite synonymous; humility without feeling particularly dignified is possible, for brief periods. True dignity arises when we drop our defensive embarrassments about our shortcomings
In a state of Humility, ego takes a back seat, delivering the messages and memos.
In a condition of humiliation, ego, in the driver's seat, succumbs itself and subjects you to the egos of others. Humiliation sucks. Dignity, alignment and integrity go out the window.
When ego tries to own humility, it becomes "virtue"
(If the image of a politician pops to mind, you are forgiven).........
God protect us from all virtuous people!
The practise of False humility creates a facade of phony self-deprecation, sometimes masquerading as sympathy, or "understanding", or sometimes as "joking". It is an activity we do, often to avoid being with a genuine feeling, like embarrassment. False humility feels like both a manipulative strategy to engineer others' opinions of "me", and a defence tactic to preemptively ward off fear of vulnerability and external criticism by getting in first. But coming, as it seems to, from a soft-spot of negative self-image, and from the secret files of my Inner Critic, criticism is not avoided. False humility is The Mole at work, critically undermining ourself from within, destroying genuine confidence and replacing that with its opposite -- hubris. But "I" thinks that anything I do to myself doesn't do any harm. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Genuine humility has a very different feel to it, for both the wearer and those with whom he/she comes into contact. Genuine humility is not something to be done; it is a way of being to come from. Humility is characterised by a complete absence of self-importance, and a propensity to surrender to whatever, grateful for any new, fresh opportunities and possibilities this experience may provide.
False humility is a cunning stratagem of pride and arrogance, flowering from a flawed perception of self, and self importance. Consequently, I see the polar opposite of Humility to be Self-Humiliation.
True Humility feels like a quiet radiance; it is one's life's expression, an energy that underlies and gives a wholesome flavour to all that we do. Humility is that true power that never seeks to enforce itself. Humility fosters dignity, humanity, empathy (not sympathy) and grace.
Humiliation wallows around in sentiment and wounded pride. In humiliation we cede to others every scrap of authority and power in the matter.
Humility is knowing and living your Place and Purpose in the natural order of all things.
Dignity arises from living your Purpose (whatever you create that to be) in harmony with the natural order of all things. So the two are not quite synonymous; humility without feeling particularly dignified is possible, for brief periods. True dignity arises when we drop our defensive embarrassments about our shortcomings
In a state of Humility, ego takes a back seat, delivering the messages and memos.
In a condition of humiliation, ego, in the driver's seat, succumbs itself and subjects you to the egos of others. Humiliation sucks. Dignity, alignment and integrity go out the window.
When ego tries to own humility, it becomes "virtue"
(If the image of a politician pops to mind, you are forgiven).........
God protect us from all virtuous people!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
SITTING DUCKS
I find it extraordinary that horticulturalists and zoologists have known for ages
That when we forcefully squeeze, then freeze the evolution of a species,
And aglomerate the resultant mutations together into a mono-culture,
They become sitting ducks for pests and diseases.
Corn, cotton, wheat, apples, sheep and certain breeds of dogs
Are the obvious examples of species pushed to the brink of biological extinction,
Requiring enormous inputs of energy from us
And huge volumes of poisonous pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides and drugs
To fight their biological foes for them
And maintain their existence.
These are admittedly the worst possible examples,
But every living thing that man has interfered with,
Including himself,
Is subject to the same law.
Man does not have a large enough overview of anything
To truly know what he's doing.
There is a price, and it will be paid.
With so many allergies and other diseases of progress now proliferating,
And pests and diseases mutating faster than we we can find ways of killing them off --
How come we haven't joined the dots?
Or do we really think that human beings
Can somehow exempt ourselves from the principles of life?
How ignorant and arrogant can we get?
That when we forcefully squeeze, then freeze the evolution of a species,
And aglomerate the resultant mutations together into a mono-culture,
They become sitting ducks for pests and diseases.
Corn, cotton, wheat, apples, sheep and certain breeds of dogs
Are the obvious examples of species pushed to the brink of biological extinction,
Requiring enormous inputs of energy from us
And huge volumes of poisonous pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides and drugs
To fight their biological foes for them
And maintain their existence.
These are admittedly the worst possible examples,
But every living thing that man has interfered with,
Including himself,
Is subject to the same law.
Man does not have a large enough overview of anything
To truly know what he's doing.
There is a price, and it will be paid.
With so many allergies and other diseases of progress now proliferating,
And pests and diseases mutating faster than we we can find ways of killing them off --
How come we haven't joined the dots?
Or do we really think that human beings
Can somehow exempt ourselves from the principles of life?
How ignorant and arrogant can we get?
WHO ARE WE?
We are:-
- What we do
- That which manages what we do
- What we think and feel about it
- That which is simply aware of it all.
GROWING
In order for growing to take place
We have to give up doing
What we know how to do,
And start doing
Something we don't know how to do.
LOYALTY
To all the women on dating sites
Who want Loyalty........
Who want Loyalty........
Loyalty is a function of feeling appreciated.
Please don't matronise me with Praise:
Praise is as much like Appreciation
As a sunlamp is like a romp in the spring sunshine.
Praise is a calculated act for a desired effect;
Appreciation is a space of gratitude.
If you want loyalty,
Let me feel your genuine appreciation.
OK. The ball's back in your court.
EXPERIENCE, OR REPETITION?
Once upon a time
A guy applying for a job with me stated he'd had 20 years experience.
I put him on trial.
It soon became obvious he'd had about 6 months of actual experience,
Then repeated it 39 times.
Experience is fresh, alive, and forever leavening.
Repetition is stale and sterile.
A guy applying for a job with me stated he'd had 20 years experience.
I put him on trial.
It soon became obvious he'd had about 6 months of actual experience,
Then repeated it 39 times.
Experience is fresh, alive, and forever leavening.
Repetition is stale and sterile.
WORK -- Glimpses Around.......
What follows are a few thoughts that popped
While musing....
Each strikes me as a truth,
To which there may be an equally valid converse,
So none is the whole truth.......
Just another way of looking at.
Work is something we do
When we'd rather be doing something else.
As long as we are physically and emotionally capable,
And mentally alive,
We have a responsibility to our own growth and learning
And consequently the growth and learning of all existence,
To do all that we can.
We work because we can, and because there is work to be done.
We work because working works.
We work because it is a basic human need.
We work because other people need our help.
We recruit others because we have something they're looking for, and it is our need to give it away.
We work because it's a great way to express and share who we are.
When you work -- work like you own the business.
If you get in to something -- get in all the way.
If you can't get in all the way -- get all the way out; you're just occupying someone else's space. Find your own.
It's not the job that matters,
It's how we see our self in the job.
And that's entirely up to each of us.
There are wealthy people and poor people who all do what I do;
One of the differences is that the poor ones are flat out making a living,
While the rich ones are enthusiastic about designing a life.
My various occupations provide me with opportunities
To express different aspects of my being:
But I have to play my part.
An arena without players is just architecture.
- If you can see a need, you're elected.
- You're never offered an opportunity until you're ready to grow into it.
- Without long-range vision, you're prone to short-term derailments.
- Circumstances and others may slow you down temporarily, but only you can stop you permanently.
- If you wait until all the traffic lights are green before you start your journey, you'll never get started.
- Have a map, and make it OK to improvise as you go along.
JEALOUSY
Jealousy is an insane, irrational condition
That arises from a ground-being of
"Without you, I am not enough and sufficient for myself."
The experience we generally label "Jealousy"
Is different for each of us.
But as a general observation,
I see two basic kinds of jealousy --
Male and female.
Male jealousy is property-based.....
"You belong to me."
Female jealousy is based on a fear of Lack --
"Without one of these things with a tag of tissue between his legs, I cannot survive."
Jealousy is a complex emotion,
A bit like a curry.
Some of the ingredients I've identified are -
In which we settle for central position,
When what we're looking for is intimate connection.
Jealousy repels the very thing it seeks to attract.
It's never going to get us to happiness.
That arises from a ground-being of
"Without you, I am not enough and sufficient for myself."
The experience we generally label "Jealousy"
Is different for each of us.
But as a general observation,
I see two basic kinds of jealousy --
Male and female.
Male jealousy is property-based.....
"You belong to me."
Female jealousy is based on a fear of Lack --
"Without one of these things with a tag of tissue between his legs, I cannot survive."
Jealousy is a complex emotion,
A bit like a curry.
Some of the ingredients I've identified are -
- Possessiveness -- a monopolistic urge to own and control
- A seismic belief in, and dread of, Lack and Loss
- A certainty of Scarcity, giving rise to a consciousness of Competitiveness
- An unhealthy addiction to "winning".
- A deep-rooted fear of, and resistance to being Inferior (I make myself feel inferior to attract and hang onto a superior being)
- Cowardice.
- Laziness -- a lack of motivation to go responsible and create what is desired.
- Egocentric obsessiveness.
In which we settle for central position,
When what we're looking for is intimate connection.
Jealousy repels the very thing it seeks to attract.
It's never going to get us to happiness.
GRATIFICATION -v- SATISFACTION
Think of......
Gratification as the indulgence of Pleasure,
And Satisfaction as the experience of Enoughness.
Gratification as the indulgence of Pleasure,
And Satisfaction as the experience of Enoughness.
SEX ENERGY
Your whole body is a sex-energy phenomenon.
Every cell in our bodies is a sex cell;
We were born out of a sex act,
And the union of two sex cells,
Which triggered a riot of sexual proliferation.
Let go tight-arsed control,
Surrender to the experience.
Forget what little you know
And all of what you think you know.
Let there be no hard and fast rules --
Cultural, moral, religious.......
Breathe into your belly, and
Give yourself totally to the moment.
Let sex be a celebration,
Life-affirming
And life-renewing.
Every cell in our bodies is a sex cell;
We were born out of a sex act,
And the union of two sex cells,
Which triggered a riot of sexual proliferation.
Let go tight-arsed control,
Surrender to the experience.
Forget what little you know
And all of what you think you know.
Let there be no hard and fast rules --
Cultural, moral, religious.......
Breathe into your belly, and
Give yourself totally to the moment.
Let sex be a celebration,
Life-affirming
And life-renewing.
BREATHE
It came as a surprise to me
That, after I'd been on life support,
I and my body had to be "told" to breathe again on my own;
It wasn't going to happen spontaneously.
That reminded me -
What we don't use, we may lose.
So this is my gift to you now --
A slap on the bum.
BREATHE!
How?
How do I breathe?
Are you kidding?!
Nope. We've been on the drip for so long
We've forgotten how to breathe.
And breathing is basic, don't you think?
When we mess with nature at that level,
(And we do).......
Expect problems down the track.
We live our lives according to certain operating programmes,
Principles based on conclusions that we formed un-consciously during our early years.
Some of these fundamental operating principles derive from a long way back --
Back at least as far as the way we experienced the womb,
Our passage along the birth canal,
(Or ripped out of the womb in the case of a caesarian),
And the way we took our first breath.
All largely matters of pure chance
That have had effects so lasting and profound
that they have shaped our lives.
But we have no rational recollection of what these principles are, or how they came about
Because at the time we didn't have language with which to formulate what was happening,
Or what we'd concluded from those experiences.
Bur we do have sense-memory of them,
Which can be accessed via the same mechanism that was present at the core of the trauma we experienced --
Our breath.
The memories of our birth are almost universally traumatic,
Ensuring that they're vividly imprinted still in the amygdala,
The most primitive area of our brain,
Where it will likely remain so until the moment we die.
Whoever designed the process of being born,
Had obviously never tried it himself.
It was a total shock to the entire system,
The like of which we are never likely to experience again.
It is almost as if some cosmic joker decided
"If you can survive this, you'll survive anything."
The assumptions we unconsciously formed while Armageddon was going on
Were fundamental in shaping our approach to this life
And to everything and everyone that has been dealt to us post partem --
We jumped then to conclusions
About our self, about the sudden discovery of "otherness", and about life.
We typically have absolutely no idea what those conclusions were,
Nor do we have the foggiest notion of the distorting effect that they're having,
Shaping and continuing to affect all our ideas about how life is, what we are, how others are, and how we deal with change.
There's a very real sense that every thing and circumstance in our life since
Has proved the correctness of the conclusions we made then:
And most of us haven't a clue what they are.
But they can be accessed.
It you're finding life difficult,
It may be well worth your while
To find out what's causing it.
It is my own experience, and the experience of the hundreds I've seen go through rebirth,
When our particular "laws" are revealed,
The lights go on for us,
The shrouds are thrown off,
We remember past incidents
And spontaneous laughter and celebration breaks out.
It's a flowering of freedom
From the bondage of ignorance.
At last we're no longer stumbling around in the dark without a torch.
We might still be up Shit Creek,
But at least we now have a paddle.
Breath therapy and rebirthing can uncover the hidden operating principles;
They free us from the conclusions that have kept us nailed to the floor,
Racing around in circles, chasing our own tail since we were born.
We are released, too, from the hidden, pent-up emotions,
The ones we don't feel --
They feel us, and keep our stuff in place.
HOLDING PATTERNS
Outside of some other actors, most classically trained singers, and musicians who play wind instruments,
Very rarely do I come across anyone who knows how to breathe.
It never occurs to us that,
Like the difference between looking and really seeing,
Between hearing and really listening,
There's one helluva difference between respiration (which we can all do)
And Breathing (which most of us have forgotten about).
During birth,
And from time to time as we were growing up,
We became overwhelmed by, and fearful of, our experience.
The limbic (primitive fight/freeze/flight) area of our brain kicked in,
We instinctively modified all of our natural functioning in some way,
And then the crisis passed.
Now, although our breathing, metabolism and other behaviour in that moment had nothing to do with abatement of that crisis,
Our mind connected the two--
"If I hold my breath, speed up my heart, lock my jaw and act this way, the crisis will go away and I'll survive."
An un-conscious, not-thought-about pattern was set,
Which now kicks in whenever there is a possible crisis, or even an imagined threat of one.
Our mind cannot tell the difference between a real and an imagined threat.
On top of that,
The holding patterns create their own anxieties and disturbances,
Which add to the spiral.
The condition quite quickly becomes chronic,
And so familiar,
That our bodies and psyches reset and re-define what's "normal";
They now operate habitually at levels of between 6 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale;
We've completely forgotten what lower levels of stress feel like,
Or that more tranquil states even exist.
No wonder we wear out and burn out early
To obesity, diabetes, breathing disorders, allergies, stroke and cardiac problems!
There's another good reason why we continue breath patterns and lifestyles that depress and suppress us --
They limit the depth of unpleasantness to which we can sink.
Unfortunately in so doing, they also squash the "highs" like joy, happiness, satisfaction and prosperity-consciousness.
This is the law of balance in operation --
When you cut off the lows, you also lop off the highs.
While inside we remain emotionally churned up,
Life flattens out
And loses it's dynamic appeal.
In response to traumatic events
And growing levels of stress, anxiety, depression,
And chronic habits like withholding and suppressing our selves,
We've distorted the way we breathe.
Typically, we breathe in and out in a piston-like motion --
Sucking breath in, cutting it off, holding it while some threat passes, pushing it out, cutting off again, and so on.
The naturally smooth, even, connected flow of breath
Becomes jerky, uneven, obstructed and disconnected.
We raise the psychological centre of our breath from deep in the belly
Up into our chest, throat, and even up as far as the sinuses.
Our naturally resonant voices become throaty, croaky and raspy,
And, in some cases, nasal and shrill.
Young teenage girls, for example, find it fashionable to strangle their throats,
Constrict their jaws, tongue and lips,
Shove their voice up into their sinuses
And distort speech into a croaky smirk.
What is that about?
What could possibly be attractive about a young girl sounding like a 90-year-old hag with cerebral palsy?
A person under stress tends to breathe like an asthmatic,
Taking in deep gulps,
Tightening the belly,
Holding the diaphragm rigid,
And heaving the shoulders and upper chest
(Immobilising all but the upper, pointy ends of their lungs with the least area available for oxygenation)
And breathing out in tightly controlled squirts.
An angry person does the reverse;
He/she tightens up all over,
Sucks air in shallow bits,
And then exhales in blasts.
At every point along that scale,
We exhibit a unique, personal pattern of breath-holding.
Holding Patterns on both the in-breath and the out-breath,
And during speaking,
And during moments of high emotional arousal,
Not only reinforce the hidden programmes that cause them,
But in turn cause their own patterns of disease and illness --
Physical, emotional and psychological.
The way you breathe is both the result of,
And the further cause of
Illness and dysfunction.
The next time you feel uncomfortable, upset or angry,
Notice how you are breathing (if at all).
What you will be looking at is one of your favourite Holding Patterns.
LIVING TOTALLY
The moment we first adopted a Holding Pattern,
Nothing happened that anyone would notice.
A choice, and consequent decisions were made, but without the benefit of language to give them form,
And by a part of our being we had no knowledge of.
These first choices were the beginnings of what we would later come to recognise as our Ego,
And Ego plays its cards like a politician at a Senate hearing.
From the moment a Holding Pattern was put in place
Our facility to feel anything totally began ebbing away;
That was its unconsciously intended purpose -- to protect us from pain.
By "living totally" I mean to be so utterly absorbed in whatever is happening, while it is happening,
That no trace of unfinished business remains at the end of the experience.
We move on, without any left baggage.
When we experience something totally,
It is finished, done with;
No psychological stuff is carried over
To pollute the next moment.
But since the innocence of childhood
We have rarely been total in any experience,
So incomplete business hangs over into the next moment,
And the next.....
Accumulating exponentially.
It shows, in our faces and bodies as we get older
As "aging".
[I experienced a striking example of this at a cardiac rehab. class yesterday. A new patient who's had heart surgery about 8 weeks ago made a comment that "My cardiologist said I'd be dead by now. He was wrong!" It seemed so odd that he would want to so bitterly want to make his doctor wrong -- so that he can be "right"; about what? It struck me, too, that his cardiologist probably had a lot to do with him being still alive, both by giving him a kick up the arse to get him to have the surgery, and by successfully performing whatever he's had done. But this guy has chosen to resent the man for the comment, rather than be grateful for the outcome. When this guy got up to the gym, however, I began to understand the dynamics. His face was permanently drawn down into a resentful scowl, and he walked stooped over, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. I tried the same gait and face-mask for a few laps, just to find out what it felt like to live inside that body shape. I gave up after a couple of minutes -- I started to feel quite ill.]
Haven't you ever wondered
Why certain patterns of discomfort and misfortune
Seem to come around again and again?
Even though the circumstances and the dramatis personae may change,
Patterns recur,
And the common denominator between them is......
You and me.
We've seen it in other people, too. haven't we?
What is that?
A good place to start for yourself
Is to look to the holding patterns on your breath,
The patterns that prevent you from fully feeling your experiences.
It's not even necessary to do any post mortems on them;
They don't need to be analysed,
Just experienced,
Totally.
INTEGRATING BREATHING
We can do this through Breath --
Integrating our breath
Integrates our experiences.
The more often we consciously remember
To replace our jerky old breathing habits
With a smoothly flowing new practice,
The more integral our experiences will become
And the sooner and better our emotional and physical dis-eases will heal.
Re-breathing begins when, in a state of physical and emotional relaxation
We simply observe our breathing,
The way we normally do it.
Without analysing, we just become aware of how and where
Our breathing gets caught up, restricted and out of rhythm.
Then we start joining the ends of of each separate in/out motion.
Instead of a pumping action,
We begin to turn the breathing pattern into a figure "8",
Merging the ends of the in and the out breaths into each other
To create a smoother, more integrated flow.
Don't worry if you only have partial or fleeting success at first;
Every connected breath-end has a beneficial flow-on.
Let each in-breath fill your lungs and, towards the apex, let it turn in on itself
and become the out-breath, and let each out-breath empty itself (don't push, or hold back) and, towards the bottom, let it begin to turn in on itself and become an in-breath.... and so on........
If at any time you experience a transition from breathing to being-breathed,
Allow this to happen for as long as it lasts,
But do not strive for it.
Beyond experiencing the connecting of your formerly separating breaths,
Let there be no other goal to this meditation.
Let breathing be the Means
To which there is no End....
Allow what ever happens to happen
And continue connecting your breaths anyway.
Breath meditation is best done with experienced supervision,
But that does not preclude you from connecting your breathing
Right here, right now.
Take it gently. Take in no more breath than you need.
If you're not comfortable, you're pushing too hard. Back off.
Force nothing,
Or you run a slight risk of hyperventilating.
If that does happen, simply stop, relax, and allow your habitual breathing pattern to reassert itself until you are completely grounded once more.
This conscious and deliberate reconnecting
Of the natural flow of breath
Enables re-connection to happen
At all levels of your energy and awareness.
Blockages are released,
Space is created,
And aliveness is expanded.
All that we need to do for let-go and expansion to happen
Is to be present and aware of each moment of breath,
And to be present and transparent to what ever is going on
In body and mind
While you're here and now.
As the holding patterns release you,
You'll experience an expansion of qualities of life
Such as aliveness, happiness, joy, abundance, prosperity and self-expression.
It is possible to get back to being total in what we do.
When we are total,
Bliss happens as a natural consequence.
Life becomes beautiful as it is,
In its suchness, it needs no improvement.
I don't know how or why re-breathing works,
And, to be honest, I don't care.
It does work --
At all levels of awareness at once,
And that's all that matters to me.
These days.....
I'm decreasingly obsessed with being right or wrong
And increasingly fascinated
By anything that works.
That, after I'd been on life support,
I and my body had to be "told" to breathe again on my own;
It wasn't going to happen spontaneously.
That reminded me -
What we don't use, we may lose.
So this is my gift to you now --
A slap on the bum.
BREATHE!
How?
How do I breathe?
Are you kidding?!
Nope. We've been on the drip for so long
We've forgotten how to breathe.
And breathing is basic, don't you think?
When we mess with nature at that level,
(And we do).......
Expect problems down the track.
We live our lives according to certain operating programmes,
Principles based on conclusions that we formed un-consciously during our early years.
Some of these fundamental operating principles derive from a long way back --
Back at least as far as the way we experienced the womb,
Our passage along the birth canal,
(Or ripped out of the womb in the case of a caesarian),
And the way we took our first breath.
All largely matters of pure chance
That have had effects so lasting and profound
that they have shaped our lives.
But we have no rational recollection of what these principles are, or how they came about
Because at the time we didn't have language with which to formulate what was happening,
Or what we'd concluded from those experiences.
Bur we do have sense-memory of them,
Which can be accessed via the same mechanism that was present at the core of the trauma we experienced --
Our breath.
The memories of our birth are almost universally traumatic,
Ensuring that they're vividly imprinted still in the amygdala,
The most primitive area of our brain,
Where it will likely remain so until the moment we die.
Whoever designed the process of being born,
Had obviously never tried it himself.
It was a total shock to the entire system,
The like of which we are never likely to experience again.
It is almost as if some cosmic joker decided
"If you can survive this, you'll survive anything."
The assumptions we unconsciously formed while Armageddon was going on
Were fundamental in shaping our approach to this life
And to everything and everyone that has been dealt to us post partem --
We jumped then to conclusions
About our self, about the sudden discovery of "otherness", and about life.
We typically have absolutely no idea what those conclusions were,
Nor do we have the foggiest notion of the distorting effect that they're having,
Shaping and continuing to affect all our ideas about how life is, what we are, how others are, and how we deal with change.
There's a very real sense that every thing and circumstance in our life since
Has proved the correctness of the conclusions we made then:
And most of us haven't a clue what they are.
But they can be accessed.
It you're finding life difficult,
It may be well worth your while
To find out what's causing it.
It is my own experience, and the experience of the hundreds I've seen go through rebirth,
When our particular "laws" are revealed,
The lights go on for us,
The shrouds are thrown off,
We remember past incidents
And spontaneous laughter and celebration breaks out.
It's a flowering of freedom
From the bondage of ignorance.
At last we're no longer stumbling around in the dark without a torch.
We might still be up Shit Creek,
But at least we now have a paddle.
Breath therapy and rebirthing can uncover the hidden operating principles;
They free us from the conclusions that have kept us nailed to the floor,
Racing around in circles, chasing our own tail since we were born.
We are released, too, from the hidden, pent-up emotions,
The ones we don't feel --
They feel us, and keep our stuff in place.
HOLDING PATTERNS
Outside of some other actors, most classically trained singers, and musicians who play wind instruments,
Very rarely do I come across anyone who knows how to breathe.
It never occurs to us that,
Like the difference between looking and really seeing,
Between hearing and really listening,
There's one helluva difference between respiration (which we can all do)
And Breathing (which most of us have forgotten about).
During birth,
And from time to time as we were growing up,
We became overwhelmed by, and fearful of, our experience.
The limbic (primitive fight/freeze/flight) area of our brain kicked in,
We instinctively modified all of our natural functioning in some way,
And then the crisis passed.
Now, although our breathing, metabolism and other behaviour in that moment had nothing to do with abatement of that crisis,
Our mind connected the two--
"If I hold my breath, speed up my heart, lock my jaw and act this way, the crisis will go away and I'll survive."
An un-conscious, not-thought-about pattern was set,
Which now kicks in whenever there is a possible crisis, or even an imagined threat of one.
Our mind cannot tell the difference between a real and an imagined threat.
On top of that,
The holding patterns create their own anxieties and disturbances,
Which add to the spiral.
The condition quite quickly becomes chronic,
And so familiar,
That our bodies and psyches reset and re-define what's "normal";
They now operate habitually at levels of between 6 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale;
We've completely forgotten what lower levels of stress feel like,
Or that more tranquil states even exist.
No wonder we wear out and burn out early
To obesity, diabetes, breathing disorders, allergies, stroke and cardiac problems!
There's another good reason why we continue breath patterns and lifestyles that depress and suppress us --
They limit the depth of unpleasantness to which we can sink.
Unfortunately in so doing, they also squash the "highs" like joy, happiness, satisfaction and prosperity-consciousness.
This is the law of balance in operation --
When you cut off the lows, you also lop off the highs.
While inside we remain emotionally churned up,
Life flattens out
And loses it's dynamic appeal.
In response to traumatic events
And growing levels of stress, anxiety, depression,
And chronic habits like withholding and suppressing our selves,
We've distorted the way we breathe.
Typically, we breathe in and out in a piston-like motion --
Sucking breath in, cutting it off, holding it while some threat passes, pushing it out, cutting off again, and so on.
The naturally smooth, even, connected flow of breath
Becomes jerky, uneven, obstructed and disconnected.
We raise the psychological centre of our breath from deep in the belly
Up into our chest, throat, and even up as far as the sinuses.
Our naturally resonant voices become throaty, croaky and raspy,
And, in some cases, nasal and shrill.
Young teenage girls, for example, find it fashionable to strangle their throats,
Constrict their jaws, tongue and lips,
Shove their voice up into their sinuses
And distort speech into a croaky smirk.
What is that about?
What could possibly be attractive about a young girl sounding like a 90-year-old hag with cerebral palsy?
A person under stress tends to breathe like an asthmatic,
Taking in deep gulps,
Tightening the belly,
Holding the diaphragm rigid,
And heaving the shoulders and upper chest
(Immobilising all but the upper, pointy ends of their lungs with the least area available for oxygenation)
And breathing out in tightly controlled squirts.
An angry person does the reverse;
He/she tightens up all over,
Sucks air in shallow bits,
And then exhales in blasts.
At every point along that scale,
We exhibit a unique, personal pattern of breath-holding.
Holding Patterns on both the in-breath and the out-breath,
And during speaking,
And during moments of high emotional arousal,
Not only reinforce the hidden programmes that cause them,
But in turn cause their own patterns of disease and illness --
Physical, emotional and psychological.
The way you breathe is both the result of,
And the further cause of
Illness and dysfunction.
The next time you feel uncomfortable, upset or angry,
Notice how you are breathing (if at all).
What you will be looking at is one of your favourite Holding Patterns.
LIVING TOTALLY
The moment we first adopted a Holding Pattern,
Nothing happened that anyone would notice.
A choice, and consequent decisions were made, but without the benefit of language to give them form,
And by a part of our being we had no knowledge of.
These first choices were the beginnings of what we would later come to recognise as our Ego,
And Ego plays its cards like a politician at a Senate hearing.
From the moment a Holding Pattern was put in place
Our facility to feel anything totally began ebbing away;
That was its unconsciously intended purpose -- to protect us from pain.
By "living totally" I mean to be so utterly absorbed in whatever is happening, while it is happening,
That no trace of unfinished business remains at the end of the experience.
We move on, without any left baggage.
When we experience something totally,
It is finished, done with;
No psychological stuff is carried over
To pollute the next moment.
But since the innocence of childhood
We have rarely been total in any experience,
So incomplete business hangs over into the next moment,
And the next.....
Accumulating exponentially.
It shows, in our faces and bodies as we get older
As "aging".
[I experienced a striking example of this at a cardiac rehab. class yesterday. A new patient who's had heart surgery about 8 weeks ago made a comment that "My cardiologist said I'd be dead by now. He was wrong!" It seemed so odd that he would want to so bitterly want to make his doctor wrong -- so that he can be "right"; about what? It struck me, too, that his cardiologist probably had a lot to do with him being still alive, both by giving him a kick up the arse to get him to have the surgery, and by successfully performing whatever he's had done. But this guy has chosen to resent the man for the comment, rather than be grateful for the outcome. When this guy got up to the gym, however, I began to understand the dynamics. His face was permanently drawn down into a resentful scowl, and he walked stooped over, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. I tried the same gait and face-mask for a few laps, just to find out what it felt like to live inside that body shape. I gave up after a couple of minutes -- I started to feel quite ill.]
Haven't you ever wondered
Why certain patterns of discomfort and misfortune
Seem to come around again and again?
Even though the circumstances and the dramatis personae may change,
Patterns recur,
And the common denominator between them is......
You and me.
We've seen it in other people, too. haven't we?
What is that?
A good place to start for yourself
Is to look to the holding patterns on your breath,
The patterns that prevent you from fully feeling your experiences.
It's not even necessary to do any post mortems on them;
They don't need to be analysed,
Just experienced,
Totally.
INTEGRATING BREATHING
We can do this through Breath --
Integrating our breath
Integrates our experiences.
The more often we consciously remember
To replace our jerky old breathing habits
With a smoothly flowing new practice,
The more integral our experiences will become
And the sooner and better our emotional and physical dis-eases will heal.
Re-breathing begins when, in a state of physical and emotional relaxation
We simply observe our breathing,
The way we normally do it.
Without analysing, we just become aware of how and where
Our breathing gets caught up, restricted and out of rhythm.
Then we start joining the ends of of each separate in/out motion.
Instead of a pumping action,
We begin to turn the breathing pattern into a figure "8",
Merging the ends of the in and the out breaths into each other
To create a smoother, more integrated flow.
Don't worry if you only have partial or fleeting success at first;
Every connected breath-end has a beneficial flow-on.
Let each in-breath fill your lungs and, towards the apex, let it turn in on itself
and become the out-breath, and let each out-breath empty itself (don't push, or hold back) and, towards the bottom, let it begin to turn in on itself and become an in-breath.... and so on........
If at any time you experience a transition from breathing to being-breathed,
Allow this to happen for as long as it lasts,
But do not strive for it.
Beyond experiencing the connecting of your formerly separating breaths,
Let there be no other goal to this meditation.
Let breathing be the Means
To which there is no End....
Allow what ever happens to happen
And continue connecting your breaths anyway.
Breath meditation is best done with experienced supervision,
But that does not preclude you from connecting your breathing
Right here, right now.
Take it gently. Take in no more breath than you need.
If you're not comfortable, you're pushing too hard. Back off.
Force nothing,
Or you run a slight risk of hyperventilating.
If that does happen, simply stop, relax, and allow your habitual breathing pattern to reassert itself until you are completely grounded once more.
This conscious and deliberate reconnecting
Of the natural flow of breath
Enables re-connection to happen
At all levels of your energy and awareness.
Blockages are released,
Space is created,
And aliveness is expanded.
All that we need to do for let-go and expansion to happen
Is to be present and aware of each moment of breath,
And to be present and transparent to what ever is going on
In body and mind
While you're here and now.
As the holding patterns release you,
You'll experience an expansion of qualities of life
Such as aliveness, happiness, joy, abundance, prosperity and self-expression.
It is possible to get back to being total in what we do.
When we are total,
Bliss happens as a natural consequence.
Life becomes beautiful as it is,
In its suchness, it needs no improvement.
I don't know how or why re-breathing works,
And, to be honest, I don't care.
It does work --
At all levels of awareness at once,
And that's all that matters to me.
These days.....
I'm decreasingly obsessed with being right or wrong
And increasingly fascinated
By anything that works.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)