UNDERSTANDING

An orgasm is on offer --
Would you rather understand it, or HAVE it?

Understanding truly is the booby-prize.

Understanding is an attempt by the Mind to get a fence around the boundless,
To control the uncontrollable.

The illusion is that Understanding affords Security.


Life was never, ever designed to be to be understood;
It is meant to be lived! 
The search for understanding is OK as a pastime;
It rates somewhere about the same level as crosswords and Trivial Pursuit
I know one or two people who understand everything;
They are true arseholes,
And they know nothing.

Understanding is a blunt scalpel that kills the experience,
Like the botanist who dissects the flower --
It's structure is comprehended,
Knowledge has been extracted
(At the expense of Knowing.)
Now its beauty is butchered  and its perfume has evaporated --
The flower is dead.

To know a flower
Be first the poet who loves the flower,
Then be the awareness that becomes the flower.
This is how God creates and knows all things --
She becomes them.

To truly know any experience,
Set your mind to watch from the sidelines;
Then immerse yourself into the experience, and
Be-come it:
Allow that to happen

TRANSFORMING & THE SOURCE OF SUFFERING

Fear and dis-ease arise when we try to set or hold on to parts of our identity in the face of the winds of change.

We think of "me" as a fixed entity. It isn't. Like everything else around, "I" and "Me" are a process, within the larger process of life and living. It is the forgetting of the process, the resistance to its ebb and flow, and the illusion of a constant me-ness that causes pain, surprise and confusion.

When fear and doubt arise, it's a signal that there may be some fixating to let go of, so that re-balancing can take place.

This re-balancing is automatic; all of creation is in a continuous process of adjusting and re-adjusting. We do not need to concern ourselves with it, any more than we need to think about how to digest our food: it is taken care of.

"How" is an interference of the rational mind. Embracing transformation is not like learning algebra; it could be likened more with learning to walk or ride a bicycle, and discovering Balance.

Does your mind still demand to know how? OK, try this.......

HOW  =  WHAT + WHY

You know WHAT you want -- transformation into a state of Unconditional Love

You know WHY you want it -- (fill this in for yourself)

Now ACT. Do what is there to be done; let your focus be on that, and let the "how" of it take care of itself.

Let go of time, too. Creation and Evolution have never been in any great hurry.

Let your daily experiences be the answers to all your questions.

You are living the answer --

Feel into your now-by-now experience.

You see, transformation cannot be understood; there is no pigeon-hole in the mind that it will fit  into. 

Tell me, would you rather understand an  orgasm, or have one?

Understanding is the booby-prize.

If you insist on understanding either an orgasm or transformation, you will never have either.

Got it?

The communication of transformation is telepathic, not lingual. Transformation is radiated and infused, and picked up by a sensory mechanism beyond our ordinary five senses. The evidence of its passing-through can be seen, heard and felt a little while later.

In the meantime --

Be still and know the movement of I Am.

MORE ON UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

The warning bells go off when I read about "Unconditional Love" as a must-have. That, right there, is a condition --

(My unconditional love is conditional: I can't be with anybody who puts conditions on me.)

And it is likely to attract yet another conditional suitor --
Someone who says "Yeah, I'll have some of that unconditional love, too, thanks very much"

Unconditional Love, by definition, allows conditional love to be.
If there is anything -- anything -- that unconditional love cannot allow
Then it is no longer "unconditional".
Unconditional love ALLOWS.


(Right there is the answer to the question "How can God let this happen?" God ALLOWS. Thank God she allows, otherwise I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell. Ah, but you want God to allow this, but not that? That doesn't sound like God to me; that sounds like somebody's ego. God allows ALL. She can afford to because she IS All.)

Are you still so sure that Unconditional Love is what you're looking for?
How grand is your allowing?

I don't see Unconditional love as static. I see it as a moment-to-moment journey, a process that involves making mistakes and taking risks. It also involves giving up my attachments to excess baggage, like my most cherished old ways of feeling -- anger, resentment, jealousy (haven't felt that on in a while, thank god!), grief, hurt, embarrassment, righteousness, disappointment, self-pity, self-importance, rage, and winning --- to make room for some new experiences. Fortunately the payoff for allowing these bags of ballast to drop off the trolley is a closer connection with harmony, balance and the power of finer energies. Going back to the limitations of the old ways becomes less and less attractive. Occasionally I get flashes of re-cognition of how things used to be for me. It feels  a bit like looking through an old photo album -- quaintly interesting, but irrelevant now.

We were all born out of the womb; to physically return is impossible. There just isn't room back there any more! And there really wasn't anything back there then that is worth cranking your head over now.

Moving right along..............

Unconditional Love is no better or worse than any experience, conditional or otherwise, that we have had before. If it were so, then that would be a judgment, a comparison, and therefore no longer unconditional.

Love is not better than anything. Nor is it better than anything else because there is no "outside" of love to be "else". Love embraces every experience unconditionally (including the experience of not-embracing). Once we experience that kind of allowing and appreciating, it makes looking at your old ideas of what love was (like in any soap opera) rather like watching those jerky old movies of flying machine experiments that never quite got off the ground long enough to fly more than a few metres. Quaint, crude and, frankly, a bit of a joke.

How will you know Unconditional Love when you experience it? 

Well, for one thing, your mind will stop saying "This ain't it."
And for another thing, your mind will stop saying "This is it."

In fact, your mind will be absent,

Because wherever anything unconditional is

Mind, and anything else it considers itself to be,

Cannot be there.

Mind is a Condition that is conditional and conditioning.

Love is like --

A daily commitment to celebrate

And permission to go deeper, higher, wider and beyond...........

Beyond even this limited perception.

BE ALONE

Inspired by the words of Baghwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho)

Alone is what we are --
And there is a knack to it.
Learn the art of being alone.

Unless you learn the art of being alone

You will never stand alone;

You will never be individual.

Being individual is a "valuable phenomenon",

But is not encouraged.

Governments, religions and families are against the individual.

The "black sheep" is a threat to their dominance --

Being individual is the greatest privilege, 

and the greatest challenge.

Until you can be individual and alone with your self,

You will never truly be

With anyone else......

You crave relationship? Why?

Because you cannot be comfortably and completely alone?

That is the worst of all possible reasons.

To be in a successful relationship,

Aim to be alone -- together

It is a paradox -- 

Only when you are content to be al-one,

Are you ready for real-ationship.

 It has been said many times,

We came alone; we will depart alone.

Even our most intimate lover cannot come with us when we go inside.

Adventuring inwards, we go alone.

Always.

Our hurts, our joys

Are absolutely private.

LOVE

Love delights in objects outside of us,
But does not require them in order to be.
Love delights in someone noticing it,
But does not require recognition.
Love does not require the world to respond in any particular way,
But delights in response anyway.

Love is a lightness,
A way of seeing and being
That blossoms for its own sake.
Love is the bird that sings in the bush,
Even when there is no-one to hear.

Love
Like all things natural
Is divinely indifferent.
There is no "special" love for some "special" person or thing;
There is no precondition for it to exist.
There is Love,
That allows us to create an illusion of "Not-love" if we wish --
Love is All.

Love cannot be earned;
It is a Given of Life,
Given evenly and freely to all that is, without consideration or favour --
To the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.
Love is intrinsic in Being --
Unconditionally.


Mind cannot understand such love;
Love cannot be contained
in something so small.

Unconditional Love
Is not a static state;
It is a continuous process
Of letting go
Of anything and everything
That restricts our ability
To totally embrace the fullness of Now.
Unconditional Love
Allows.
It is
A state of awareness, without judgment,
A state of embracing, without reserve,
A state of allowing, without limit,
A deep appreciation for every experience.

And it is the opposite of all that.
All-so.

NO FORMULA

Our logical mind wants formulas for being
So that it can feel safe and secure.

Life presents us with mysteries, paradoxes and contradictions
that invite each of us
to go much deeper into experience than mere mind.

We are called to risk chaos
in order to discover the cosmic harmony of all Creation
and our part in it.

How will you get through the threat to the mind of dis-solution?

There is a leap to be made
With no way of imagining where you are going
And with no hope of ever scrambling back
To Mind.
This is so hard, because you have no recollection of a time without Mind.
Mind has easily fooled you that This is all that there is.

There is more, though.
You know it. You don't know how you know it,
Or what it is that you know.
You just --- know.......
Mind cannot recall it for you, because it was not there when you knew it before.
The "more" you long for
Is found in no-mind.

Evolution has always gone with the curious, the bold, the adventurous, the cheeky, the takers of risk....
Of course you are afraid.
That's why we were given the gift of Courage.
You do have to follow the urge,
Dare
Trust....
Not me, Not God,
But the river of life, and your self in the flow of it,
Without the reassurance of any prior proof
That there is an ocean.


Lifetime after lifetime
You have struggled to this point,
Only to lose your nerve --

Will it be this time?
If it isn't -- no problem;
You can go 'round again, and again, in a spiritual holding pattern.....
Until you're ready.

ANOTHER BLINDING FLASH OF THE BLOODY OBVIOUS

We all have a pretty good idea of what our most obvious negative emotions are. Mine, for example, are Anger and Frustration. But are they our Dominating negative influences? Are our obvious demons just a cover for a hidden reality that is far more powerful in its insidious influence against our well-being?

What feelings are we avoiding? In my case, by feeling frustrated and angry, am I trying to avoid feeling something far more painful?

Ever since the day I was being born (and possibly before) I have automatically used Frustration and Anger as ways of greeting the challenges of life. Life, for its part, has very kindly given me an open invitation to deal with it, and has seen to it that I'm rarely left wanting for provocation. 

My fall from bliss started, as far as I know, with an inexperienced obstetrician who panicked when I charged face-first down the birth canal at high speed. He grabbed my head with a pair of forceps and, despite the protestations of my mother, pushed me back into the very space I was hell-bent on getting out of He then wrenched my head forward and dragged me out again, unable to see where I was going and gasping for breath. I picked up on his panic, my mother's anxiety and felt breathless, frustrated and angry. And I survived. So my mind put it together -- "If I feel threatened, all I have to do is churn out Panic, Anxiety, Breathlessness, Frustration and Anger and I will survive." 

That's how our minds work.

Then Life gave me a father who, despite the fact that he'd never done it before, faked certainty about knowing exactly what was good for young children and how to get it from them -- severe restriction, fear, and the certainty of painful punishment for our sins. It's not his fault -- that's what his parents did to him, and he knew of no other alternatives. The point is, I chose (unconsciously) to respond to him, however he was, with panic, anxiety, breathlessness, frustration and anger. That upset him and made him angrier. Our future relationship was set in granite.

But only one of us was allowed to overtly express Frustration and Anger,  and it wasn't going to be me.  So I learnt to sit on them and  rely on my gentleness and niceness to get me by. I suppressed my natural rebellion against restriction (aka. my urge for Freedom)  by turning it inwards onto my self, with very good reason -- my physical survival. My giant of a father who jammed the scales at their maximum of 26 stone,  had absolutely no tolerance for opposition from anyone on the planet, especially his firstborn, and a vile bent for physical violence with which to vent HIS frustration. I learnt very quickly to keep myself hidden.

It didn't work, of course. The more we try to suppress anything , the more it will pop up in one form or another somewhere else, like a waterbed. In my case, the "popping up" took two forms. The first was in covert rebellion. Despite my watchfulness, a part of me -- the bit my mother called "the very divil in you" -- periodically forced me to do sneaky stuff that broke the strict rules. My father always found out, of course, (he and God both had spies everywhere), and I got a right belting and kicking for it every time. The second form of breakout came in a permanent case of the shakes, nightmares, and a propensity to throw up whenever stressed. Untreated, this turned over the decades into full-blown chronic anxiety, panic attacks, depression, overweightness, diabetes and coronary heart disease.

I've been aware of this for the last 20-odd years, and my accelerated inner growth in that time  has helped me to have my anger and frustration without needing to inflict it upon others. But my efforts to transmute (ie. complete with and transform) frustration and anger have met with only mild, incremental success.

I think I've found out why........

THE BLOODY OBVIOUS

All of the above has been by way of preamble. I thought if I told my story, then someone out there may learn from it and avoid the effects and consequences of my ignorance that I must now take care of (viz. open-heart surgery -- the body/mind does have a sense of humour!)

We all have, as part of the Self that we construct, a set of  internal organising principles that determine how we go about doing our lives. One of mine goes like this --

Because I feel Grief and Hurt,

I alienate others

in order to get Validation and Honour

Now, how we arrive at our particular fundamental operating principles is not up for discussion here -- that is something you and I would have to do together, one on one.. The reason I mention it here is that, having made this discovery 20 years ago, I forgot about Grief and Hurt.

In a blinding "A-Hah!" moment of remembrance earlier today, a question popped -- Am I using Frustration and Anger  (whipped up by my Mind) to avoid experiencing the greater pain of Grief and Hurt (felt in my Heart)?

Something immediately shifted deep inside. That's a feeling I've learned to trust. Maybe I've been working on my mind when it's the heart that's faulty!? 

I can certainly feel that there is Grief and Hurt behind my anger.  And I can see, too, that anger and frustration are only bringing me more grief and hurt. Perhaps if I feel into the Hurt and  Grief, the Anger etc. will resolve themselves.

This might be interesting!

By feeling what you're feeling, what other feelings do you get to avoid?

INTEGRITY, AND BEING RE-BORN

Our emotional stances --

Joy, sadness, fear, calmness, anger, equanimity, hate .................

Are just low-frequency manifestations of our potential for Love.

They're not "wrong", they're just on one end of a see-saw where both players are sitting side-by-side. One of you has to venture up to the other end. Then you can have fun!

Each of us has two dominating negative emotions that we avoid  (mine are Grief and Hurt).

Avoid no longer;

Your dominant, dominating negative emotions  are the way through that you have been seeking all this while.

Come through.

When they come up next time, meet them. Breathe into them, breathe them into you. Welcome them home. Integrate them in to You; Integrate your Self into them.

You created them; bring your children back home.

While this is happening, your mind may think that you are being destroyed.

Not so.

Something is dying alright --- what's dis-appearing is the Not-You, the False-Self that you put up front after you banished the bits of yourself that you thought, mistakenly, that you could do better without. When you did that, you lost something very precious -- your Integrity.

INTEGRITY

Integrity is often confused with "honesty". They are related, but not the same. In much the same way as all elms are trees, but not all trees are elms -- honesty is part of integrity, but Integrity is much more than just honesty. Integrity is all of it (including dis-honesty). When a system, process or person has Integrity, nothing is missing. Everything possible is there, integrated and balanced. Any thing without integrity becomes un-balanced (something missing), unstable and teeters unpredictably.

We yearn for Integrity, but discard and reject the stuff we judge as "not-what-I-want-to-be". Every rejection, every resistance, throws us further out of balance and out of Integrity.

I know this is not what your mind wants to hear. And you are free to reject it. But next time you feel your life getting out of kilter, look at what you're saying "No" to, including the "no" to the feeling of being out of kilter.

For those of you who are so divinely pissed-off with lurching through life like a drunk on steroids, here is a gateway to a new life --------

Accept your stuff. Breathe into it. Integrate it back into the Not-You that you've always thought that you were. Open up the not-being part of your Be-ing to welcome everything that comes to the door of your awareness. Take notice. Ignite everything with the fire of your loving attention.

Your life will begin anew,

Blossoming forth with the Love That You Are

In to the Love of All That Is.

LOVE IS....................

Love is.........

whatever you add after the dotted line.

Something to do,

Something to have,

An IS-ness to be in.

When we get the Is-ness of Love

We get the Gift.

There is nothing undone to be done, nothing not-available to be acquired.

We have it all.

PAIN

The greater Energy of all life and living
Flows through the whole of creation
Unimpeded,
Until
It is constricted by resistive ligatures of thought and feeling -- the old, habitual ways of fulfilling ourselves.

(I resist; therefore I exist.)

The constrictions they cause are too tiny for the Energy flow;

At the point of contraction we experience Pain and Dis-ease.

Mind rushes around concocting strategies,  potions and disciplines
designed to avoid, salve and anaesthetise,

When all that is needed is to let-go.

Allow

Surrender

Relax

Release.

Breathe through the pain to the Energy,

And connect with that which is.


Whenever I do this, I experience the thought and the feeling loosening,
I feel the energy flow as the movement of some larger reality that I cannot even guess at
Surging through me and supporting me
In a heightened and deepened awareness.
I am the conduit
Completing a circuit.

My heart is quivering, but not from fear;

I am shaken from my foundations, but not out of panic;

My mind freezes: but not in depression;

And I know -- somewhere inside of all this --

Everything is OK

And I am alright.

COMPETE OR CREATE

There are two ways to have the tallest building in town:--

1. Build the tallest building in town
2. Tear down anything that's taller than you.

Both ways are effective.

But with option #.2., people quickly get wise to you and see you coming with your big lead wrecker's balls.

With option #.1., there will be people who may want to help you, and maybe rent some space in the finished building.

Ruthless Rule of Reality -- Where you come from is where you're going to.

People who Compete come from a reality of Scarcity and Lack. So they'll end up in............?

People who Create know there's Enough for all. So they'll end up in......?

I know who I prefer to be with.

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.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0

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