Category: Meditation

“As soon as you concern yourself with the “good” and “bad” of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weakens and defeats you.“
~ Morihei Ueshiba

Every one of us is a product of so many other people’s love, blessings, inspiration and support. We are all so interdependent upon each other. In a very real way, we are all a close family. In this soulful and upbeat music video, “To My People”, musicians Nimesh “Nimo” Patel, Chad Harper, and Nick Dalton, along with magical filmmaker Ellie Walton, remind you of that oneness that is so deeply rooted in all of humanity. ​

It will move you to hug the next person you see!

Short Film:  “The Most Beautiful Thing” (9 mins.)

This beautiful short film, written and directed by Cameron Covell, won the LACHSA 2012 Moon Dance Best Film Award and Best Actor Award. It’s a tender and compelling love story between two unlikely people and an uplifting piece of art.

In thanksgiving for life, I pledge
to overcome the illusion of entitlement
by reminding myself that everything is gift
and, thus, to live gratefully.

In thanksgiving for life, I pledge
to overcome my greed,
that confuses wants with needs,
by trusting that enough for all our needs is given to us
and to share generously
what i so generously receive.
In thanksgiving for life, I pledge
to overcome apathy
by waking up to the opportunities
that a given moment offers me
and so to respond creatively to every situation.

In thanksgiving for life, I pledge
to overcome violence
by observing that fighting violence by violence
leads to more violence and death
and, thus, to foster life by acting non-violently.

In thanksgiving to life, i pledge
to overcome fear which is the root of all violence
by looking at whatever i fear as an opportunity
and, thus, courageously to lay the foundation
for a peaceful future.

—–

What is a pledge that you are prepared to make in thanksgiving for life?

How do you relate to the notion of fear being the root of all violence?

Can you share a personal story where gratitude made a big difference in your life?

“Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbor.“ ~ Epicurus

You can’t always control the circumstances, but you can control yourself.

Click here for MP3 Audio:  Awakening To What We Are

Our true nature cannot be expressed in words. However, consciousness, awareness, beingness, and presence are some words that come closest to defining what we are, here, right now. We always start from this moment now, from the present.

So, what can be said to be real right now is you are alive, present, and listening to these words. What is real now is your existence. You are conscious of existing, of being alive. Your true nature is consciousness itself. It is the one thing always present, whether you are asleep or awake, and whether you are aware of it or not.

What you are in your essence is the lucid, unchanging consciousness … giving birth to everything in the world of the senses, including all your thoughts, stories, memories, and to your body, mind, and this unique personality called “you.” To understand this is to grasp the literal meaning of the words attributed to St. Francis: “What we are looking for is what is looking.” You become aware of yourself, your true nature, as consciousness, awareness, or presence itself.

Now, most people are not aware of this. They tend to live as if in a dream—a dream which sometimes turns into a nightmare. They take their ego and their thoughts—the personal “self” and its many stories—to be real, are caught in habitual patterns of conflict, self-doubt, and worry, and have only occasional glimpses of the timeless beauty and mystery of existence.

The goal of spiritual or transformational work is to wake up from the dream. It is to break free of the internal dialogue. It is to see through the mind-created illusion of “me, myself, and my story,” the imaginary world you have created between your ears, making you feel separate and apart from others.

These stories, memories, and experiences have shaped your personality but they are still only your stories. They may have been real once, but are definitely not real now. They are an imaginary world existing inside your head, in the form of fleeting thoughts, beliefs, pictures, and ideas of “self,” with corresponding feelings and emotions in your body. And they are always changing, always coming and going, yet you, as the awareness that sees them, experiences them, are always here.

Every time you see the truth of this, your head clears, your body relaxes, your heart opens, and you experience a release from inner conflict, stress, and suffering. You become, in a word, present.

Awakening itself is realizing you are not your stories, not your thoughts, but you are the consciousness in which stories and thoughts—in which all existence—arises. You are not an object, a human being in space and time who has only intermittent glimpses of consciousness, the source of creation. You are not a wave, occasionally remembering your connection to the ocean. Rather, you are consciousness itself, viewing all of creation through the eyes of this human being called “you.” You are the ocean itself, manifesting in this individual human wave form.

As this realization occurs, you find yourself connected to an inexhaustible source of wisdom, love, and inner joy. Instead of living out of some myth or story about who you are and what life means, you live in awareness in the present. Meaning and identity no longer depend on beliefs, stories, or circumstances, but flow directly out of the beauty and dynamism of the life force itself. They arise from the sense of oneness, of the intimacy you feel with life—from the fullness and fragrance of being itself. You live in a state of openness, of welcoming everything that comes into your awareness.

With this awakening to the truth of being, the incessant chatter of the mind no longer dominates your consciousness. Your inner state becomes one of clarity and ease—at times, radiantly so. You become aware of a deep, vast silence, a universal spaciousness without center and without borders. You feel yourself to be one with that silence.

From within this inner silence you use thinking—including the “I” thought—for the extraordinary creative tool it is, but there is no attachment to thinking itself, nor to the concepts “I,” “me,” and “mine.”

Whenever you use these personal pronouns you are clear you are speaking as impersonal consciousness, expressing through your personal form. You use them in a functional way, free of personal ownership, pride, or emotional reactivity. Because of this openness and freedom from ego, from attachment to the personal perspective, living becomes much more effortless. Regardless of what is occurring, each day has a quality of magic and adventure to it.

Contrast this with your experience when you have not yet awakened to truth. Whenever you say “I” or “me,” there is a very definite identification with the personal, with the ego self—with some kind of story, judgment, expectation, assumption, or agenda. You often feel divided, as in: “A part of me feels this way, and yet another part of me feels that way.”

There may be glimpses, but there is no abiding awareness of being one with the totality of consciousness. Instead, separation, isolation, and a feeling of aloneness, even meaninglessness, is the prevailing experience. It is this personal identification with your story, with who you “think” you are, which triggers self-doubt, stress, worry, and fear. It perpetuates the experience of conflict and suffering.

Awakening, as will become clear, means freedom from conflict and suffering. This is the promise of the inner quest. It doesn’t matter what your circumstances are, or where in this world you live—inner freedom can be yours, simply because it is your true nature.

The feeling-tone associated with being established in pure consciousness is one of relaxed ease, harmony, and presence, of openness and welcoming, of gratitude and appreciation. It is one of feeling the energy of aliveness in your body. Thoughts may or may not be present, but you are not identified with them. There is no “you” in the way. There is just the flow of beingness, what in Zen is called the “suchness” of life, and you are one with the suchness. Everything then happens out of oneness.

Truly, to know your self as consciousness, and then to embody the knowing, is the greatest blessing.

See if you can feel it, your true nature, right now. Just be very present, very aware of all that is … Then let the awareness which you are permeate your body … Notice how your breath flows in and flows out in the awareness you are … Then notice how sensations arise and fall in your body … How thoughts, images, and stories come and go in your mind … Be aware of yourself as the awareness, the consciousness, which is aware of all this.

“Any thought that you have had about yourself, however deflated or inflated, is not who you are. It is simply a thought. The truth of who you are cannot be thought, because it is the source of all thoughts. The truth of who you are cannot be named or defined.

Words like soul, light, God, truth, self, consciousness, the universal intelligence, or divinity, while capable of evoking the bliss of the truth, are grossly inadequate as a description of the immensity of who you truly are.

However you identify yourself: as child, adolescent, a mother, a father, an older person, healthy person, sick person, a suffering person, or an enlightened person – always, behind all of that, is the truth of yourself. It is not foreign to you. It is so close that you cannot believe it is you.

The truth of who you are is untouched by any concept of who you are, whether ignorant or enlightened, worthless or grand. The truth of who you are is free of it all. You are already free and all that blocks your realization of that freedom is your own attachment to some thought of who you are. This thought doesn’t keep you from being the truth of who you are. You already are that. It separates you from the realization of who you are.

I invite you to let your attention dive into what has always been here, waiting openly for its own self-realization.

Who are you, really?

Are you some image that appears in your mind? Are you some sensation that appears in your body? Are you some emotion that passes through your mind and body? Are you something that someone else has said you are, or are you the rebellion against something that someone else has said you are? These are some of the many avenues of misidentification. All of these definitions come and go, are born and then die.

The truth of who you are does not come and go. It is present before birth, throughout a lifetime, and after death. To discover the truth of who you are is not only possible, it is your birthright.

—–

How do you tap into the truth about you that lies beneath everything else?

Can you share an experience of a time you felt this truth?

What do you understand by “the truth of who you are does not come and go?”

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

WHY IT’S GOOD TO GO OUT OF YOUR WAY FOR PEOPLE

We’re taught when we’re kids to be kind and to be generous. We’re told that it’s nice to share and that we should look after those weaker than us.  We tell our kids this too, but somewhere along the way it just becomes too damn difficult, and inconvenient, to take anyone but (perhaps) our immediate family and friends into account. To be fair, these relationships can be minefields all on their own; taking copious amounts of energy to negotiate effectively. Essentially, we become insular, turning inwards, concerned only with maintaining the balanced rhythm of our own lives, ignoring the whole.

Who can blame us? It’s a competitive world out there and it’s not easy to “make it” anymore. But more than that, we are just overwhelmed. There is so much poverty, suffering and injustice in the world, it’s difficult to endure. So we shut down, cutting ourselves off from all the pain. We ignore the beggar at the car window; pretend the stray dog who scratches at your gate isn’t there. We don’t want to see, and more importantly, we don’t want to feel because feeling means having to do something, and we don’t have the energy.

The Importance of Compassion

The problem with this coping mechanism is that while we mitigate our pain, we also diminish our capacity for compassion. We become hard and cold; chewed up and spat out by our own cynicism. And what’s left? Well, very little joy, that’s for sure. The truth is some of the most profoundly beautiful moments in your life will be born of pain. It is only when we are open and able to feel true and unbridled compassion for others that we are really living. This doesn’t mean you have to give money to every homeless person you see or that you need to start an animal shelter in your backyard. It means you don’t have to block yourself off from the suffering around you. It won’t break you. It can’t because you are not separate from the world around you so it is really your suffering too. Don’t run away from it. Embrace it with all the softness and kindness you can muster.

It’s true that you can’t help everyone. But when you allow yourself to live your life with your heart open, it becomes easier to respond authentically to what does come your way. You can’t help every stray animal, but maybe you can help the one that scratches at your gate every day. Maybe he’s there because you are the one person that can help find him a home.  And to that little creature, it matters. It won’t be easy. It’ll be inconvenient. You’ll have to shuffle your schedule around, buy dog food and put up posters. You’ll feel your heart want to shut down again just so you don’t have to go out of your way like this. You’ll hear yourself saying things like ‘I have a life you know’ and ‘this isn’t my responsibility’.

But you won’t listen and you’ll go out of your way anyway because you’ll realize that it’s actually not going out of your way at all. You and this being are one after all so by helping it you’re really helping the whole, of which you are a part. So you put him on a lead and take him for a walk. It’s clear he’s never been on a lead before, and he’s a little unsure. But he gets the hang of it quickly enough and looks up at you, his eyes full of trust and wonder. Your heart breaks, but never has a moment been more full, more meaningful and joyous than this.

Source:  Silent Journey

The practice of being real is something highly underrated. We have been taught to appear in certain ways to get the approval of others. We may have fallen prey to the image makers who tell us how to dress, what colors are “ours” and how to be politically correct. The pressure to fit in is strong but not very intelligent. The really great people we admire, the ones who have contributed to our greater good, are always those who refuse to comply! They invariably are radical thinkers, fearlessly individual but at the same time allow for others to also stand out.

“Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life.“ ~ Sanskrit poem