Paradigm Shift – Page 13 – Hālau 'Aha Hui Lānākila

Ghostly Images of WiFi Signals Captured Using Long Exposure Photography and an Android App

March 22, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

So much of the world today is invisible to cameras. Technology operates in a light-less world of zeroes and ones, electromagnetic waves that fly over our h

Source: Ghostly Images of WiFi Signals Captured Using Long Exposure Photography and an Android App

About Gamesplayers and Playing Games

March 18, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

dull

Actually, this is a sticky topic because it’s about getting rid of distractions. Distractions from … what? What is important, of course. But then … what ought to keep your mind? Why, whatever is your point of focus at the moment. Anything will do … so long as you can keep your mind from wandering.

So, wandering is getting involved in games, isn’t it?

And then again … can you stop competing with other human beings … pursuing the desire, the craving, the suffering … to be superior? How to stop playing the “me-first” game?

It seems to be a common human socialization pattern amongst strangers, friends and family. So long as most are busy trying to beat someone at something, such situations create a circumstance that might appear as happiness. Hhhmm … sounds a bit dysfunctional as it appears in this two-dimensional black and white form.

I understand … it’s hard trying not to play The Game, because it feels like a trap from which you cannot get out. What does “it” mean … you cannot get out of “it”? “It” means that you and the trap are one in the same! You are not caught, you see, because when there’s nobody in the trap there is no trap.

And so, if you are able to break from this obsession to compete, to one-up another being, for sport, for egoic satisfaction (read, faux happiness), then you can extract yourself from the gameplaying and The Game … The “my game is more interesting than your game” game … and win that game by choosing not to play at all.

You see … it really doesn’t matter if you live or die, because the Spirit goes on as perfectly indestructible. Body death does not cause Spirit death because Spirit simply loses it’s mortal skin bag and goes on in a different way. So, why entertain a games-player and play their egoic game? It’s their game, their issues, about what defines happiness for them.

Thank you, I do not want or need another’s issues, and respectfully decline.

AUM TAT SAT

Brownbag Discussion – with Alan Watts

March 18, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

Topic Focus: Action Without the Process of Thought

A PARAPHRASING OF THE GNOSTIC TRACTATES OF CREATION | | TheKingdomWithin

March 17, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

Once before a time, in the endless void of countless aeons of pure and perfected conscious light, a young Daughter of Divine grace took light from Her husband, and, breathing forth, formed our home amongst the heavens. This Seed, emanated from the Daughter alone, birthed from within Her an intelligence that was unlike the host of heaven. This consciousness, in aberration of the pure and perfected awareness, did not contain the perfection of the cosmos, but operated in irregularity in semblance to the imbalanced emanation the young Mother issued forth in Her experimentation of life. As such, seeing the deficiency and having pity upon the newly formed god, the Mother wrapped It in a womb of light to shield it from the perfection, and to conceal Her mistake while She made efforts to rectify Her creation. This luminary, whom She called out to, “Child, come here,” with a face of a lion that shone like the sun and a serpentine tail, opened Its eyes and, surveying a perfect void of …

Source: A PARAPHRASING OF THE GNOSTIC TRACTATES OF CREATION | | TheKingdomWithin

On Self-Sabotage

March 16, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi Lanakila1 Comment

self-sabotage
Do you feel as if you are taking one step forward and two steps back all the time?

It may be that you are causing your own downfall without even realizing it. This is a trait that can be changed with the correct thinking and should be altered in order for you to succeed.

Have you been having issues with attaining the success you think you really deserve lately? Well, perhaps you are preventing your own success with self sabotage. “That can’t be, I really want to succeed,” you say. Well, actually, yes it can be true. If you’re not doing as well as you’d like to be doing, you are sabotaging yourself.There’s only one thing that can make your success: you. Without the blockage, every one of you is going to be successful. The reason you’re not as successful as you’d like to be, is because something is blocking you. That something is you.

So, what part of you is the only question we have to answer. How are you blocking yourself? Here are a few ideas; we’re certain you will think of more based on your personal experience.

1. You remain a victim. Victims can’t succeed. If they succeed, they can’t be a good victim. This is their way of getting attention. There’s always something wrong. “Feel sorry for me.” That way, nothing can be expected of them yet they get to enjoy the benefit of your pity, which then only reinforces the whole story.

2. If we don’t succeed, there aren’t a lot of expectations or responsibilities. I’ll put a spin on a decades-old Stan Lee comic book line: With great freedom comes great responsibility. If you want to be financially free, you gotta actually do what you say you’re going to do! You have to be accountable; to yourself and to others. What if we reallysucceed? How are we going to keep it up? Oh my god! That’s hard! What if people want things from you? When you decide that you are going to follow through on your commitments, and you do this consistently, that is the essence of spiritual maturity and a discipline for success.

3. Fatal attraction. People fear success so irrationally, they imagine bad things happening instead of focusing on the key term here: success! “I don’t have to worry about people robbing me.” Seriously? Like you’re so important now that the criminal underworld has you in its clutches? Please! “I don’t have to have my friends saying, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’” Other people’s approval is all of a sudden more important than the quality of your mental, emotional, and financial life?

Your mind is telling you the conditions as to why you are not successful. It’s all bullshit. Nothing is more important than succeeding with what you’ve got going right now.

Figure out your payoff. It’s going to have to go deep and you’re going to have to be honest and come from your Higher Self asking your intuitive wisdom on this.

Whatever you find, please share your truth with us. You aren’t alone in this. It’s one of the most simple yet profoundly important discoveries you can make on your path toward success. We want to hear from you!

Egocentricity in Humanity – with Alan Watts

March 11, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

Theosophy – Relationship and Solitude (part 1), by Raghaven Iyer

March 7, 2016March 7, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

RELATIONSHIP AND SOLITUDE – I

The principle that all human beings should be treated as ends in themselves and not as means constitutes the core of Kantian morality. It rests upon an older conception of the world as a coherent structure intelligible to the pure reason of man. This world is a moral order precisely because human beings are an integral part of it. The human mind, by an act of pure, universal, impersonal reason, is able to discern the ethical order within the natural order. Each human being is a self-determining agent within a universe which itself may be seen as a kingdom of ends. Every human being as a responsible agent can become a monarch within his or her own modest kingdom by living in terms of ends that are self-chosen. We rule ourselves by making those ends meaningful in our lives.

For the practical realization of this possibility, we must assume that every human being is inherently capable of acting spontaneously without interfering with other human beings. We know that this noble mode of action is not achieved because reason is clouded by irrational passion. Pure universal affirmation is distorted, dissolved and even destroyed in the midst of the blinding partialities of confused human beings captive to conflicting impulses, aims, motives and desires. Suppose, however, that these self-chosen ends were intrinsically compatible, and that each person, in willing an end, asked the question, “If everyone wills this end, is it compatible for all human beings individually to pursue it without mutual interference?” At one level, a general answer would only yield a formal criterion of action. Is there a practical way, however, in which we could readily recognize in ourselves any fall from the autonomous state of a self-determining, rational being? We must identify any desire to interfere with others as springing from a part of ourselves which cannot be underwritten by the moral order and which the universe cannot protect.

Although theoretical formulations have a certain value; nonetheless, in the familiar but treacherous territory of tortuous rationalization and sinuous self-deception, as well as the psychological pessimism of our time, they only communicate negatively. And yet, while we may not fully know what it means to pursue our own ends without interfering with other individuals, we can surely recognize instances where one human being is crudely using another. We recognize this in its extreme form in politics, but the idea that any government could have total control over the human mind is self-contradictory if human beings are intrinsically self-determining agents. This also applies to any theory of continuous interference through conditioning, any supposedly benevolent, massive manipulation such as “Skinnerism.”

The crucial challenge is whether we can, long before we are confronted by extreme cases, apply to all contexts a truly philosophical framework of indefinite growth in human relationships. Can we recognize not only the obvious ways in which we use other people, but also the pure ideal wherein we determine a chosen end without ever treating anyone else as a means? Can we understand the complexities of lower Manas solely through the desire for universal affirmation? We need a more complex view of human nature and especially a subtler understanding of the mind. It is not enough to see human beings merely in terms of use and misuse, least of all in the Benthamite language of self-interest, because people generally do not really know what is to their advantage over a long period of time in every context. All utilitarian formulations eventually tend to break down. It may even be better to think away altogether, in human relationships, from the ends-means dichotomy because it has been tainted by narrow and short-sighted perspectives.

Is there a nobler way by which we can come to understand what it is for two human beings to help each other, to share with each other, and not to use each other? Even though the sacred idea of love is degraded every day, there is no human being who does not understand what love means at some level. The counterfeit of love is false romantic idealization which soon becomes empty and irrelevant. True love involves the many complexities of human beings, the manifest weaknesses and also the hidden poignancy in the archetypal relationships between father and child, husband and wife, teacher and pupil, and between two friends. If two people can sense something beyond themselves, can they also see how the direction of their relationship could be meaningful? Even though in their weakest moments there is a tendency for either to take advantage of the other unconsciously or in the name of the good, is there still a feasible possibility of self-correction? Must relationships tend to become prisons or can they evolve in the direction of liberation? In the everyday contexts of human relationships, the critical question is whether we are becoming more tyrannical in relation to others or are allowing our closest encounters to enhance the joys of individuation.

These fundamental inquiries hurt because any pertinent discovery of the subtle forms by which the tyrannical will masquerades as love destroys our delusive relationships. Mere intellectual awareness does not help, and this is the point we have reached in contemporary culture. People know so much about all abuses of trust that they are terrified of any irrevocable commitment. They are afraid to spend time with their relatives; afraid to assume burdens of responsibility in relation to children; afraid of intimacy with others and most of all afraid of deep introspection and meditative solitude. Relationships have broken down because many have become painfully aware of all the ambiguities, perversions and tyrannical elements in the human psyche. The atmosphere is so polluted that we almost dare not breathe. Therefore, the most simple, natural analogies, let alone idyllic models of archetypal relationships, do not speak to the disillusioned. They need a fundamental solution and not only an acute awareness of human failings. There is no total solution in the empirical realm that is compatible with the sum-total of goodness in the universe, but a fundamental solution can emerge when individuals are willing to rethink their conceptions of themselves.

The therapeutic counsel of the great healers of souls is as relevant now as it was in the days of the Buddha and the Christ. There are those whom the immemorial teaching does not transform, even though they spend a lifetime with it. There are those who are afraid it is going to alter them and therefore never enter the stream. There are those who progressively find it affecting them, and are able by an unspoken trust to use it and be benefitted by it. And then there are those very few who are deeply grateful for the supreme privilege of witnessing the presence of this timeless teaching. They are constantly focussed upon the eternal example nobly re-enacted by Avatars who portray the magnificent capacity to maintain, with beautiful balance and ceaseless rhythm, the awesome heights of cosmic detachment and boundless love. These mighty men of meditation are also illustrious exemplars of the art of living and masterly archers in the arena of action. They cannot be understood in terms of external marks or signs. It is only through their inner light that individuals can come into closer contact with the inner lives of beings so much wiser and nobler than themselves. Those who cherish this truth may find the inner light within their own silent sanctuary through deep meditation, in their incommunicable experience of poignant emotions, in response to soul-stirring music, or in their ethical endeavours through honesty and self-examination.

Hermes, June 1977
Raghavan Iyer

Perspective – What A Difference The Years Make

March 7, 2016March 7, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi Lanakila1 Comment

wolf-cloud
Just had to check in for a moment to take a look back thus far at this year … quite a different vibe compared to this time of year in 2015. I can’t help but think that if I had done things a tad differently … listened more closely … my Dad might still be around today. But, with his passing came a swift, intense road-opening stream of events that, among other things, healed my relationship with Mom in a way I never thought possible. In spite of her health teetering precariously … from recovering from her eighth round of beating cancer to the loss of her husband of 57 years … Mom continues to be the resilient Rock and indomitable spirit that I could only aspire to be when I reach her age. She’s teaching me how to be the proverbial Phoenix reborn from the glowing embers of perceived ruin … just by being herself.

As the Philippine actor/singer James Reid recently wrote:

“It was worth every tear and every smile; every slap and every kiss; every sad and happy memory; it was worth every time I lost you just to find myself back in your arms again. Destiny doesn’t decide everything. It only gives us a little push in the right direction. We decide if it’s worth fighting for; worth waiting for.”

Family is everything. It’s the Rock, the love-foundation upon which the home-hearth is built. It’s the safe harbor sought … the peaceful waters that keep you safe from the wild and raucous Oceans of Life. By going out into the world, going away from the family circle, I found what I was looking for as I simultaneously came back into the society of the family circle. Love is forever because it exists in this Now. And, by setting aside pride and stubbornness, acceptance of Love is the ultimate road-opener of Life and living.

Spiritually, the biggest surprise is realizing that this is also the way of the Bodhisattva, in living the Four Truths:

You suffer because you crave, you desire, things.

But, that craving, those desires, are the source of your suffering.

Thus, the Truth about the craving, the desiring … the suffering … is that everything is a thing not in relation to anything else.

And so … the only way to bring an end to the craving, the desiring, is to try not to stop all desire, but only try to stop as much desire as you can stop.

It took Dad’s passing to recall me home … the signal to return from my ascetic existence in Washington State, where I sought out the great silences amongst the trees to aid my vexatious questioning about my spiritual identity … my forced solitude away from family and the material … Hey, it all makes sense to me, now. In a fashion, I understand Buddha’s lesson: that the way to liberation is not competitive, but rather it is the path that cannot be followed. There is no looking for the “right thing to do”, because there is no rule, no doctrine to follow. You just do “it” because you are it.

Life is strange. I didn’t start out writing these thoughts to end up here, at this point … but there it is … and I am grateful, so very grateful, for the Grace that allows it all into my heart. I think that these experiences are part of attaining that state of Nirvana, that “great sigh of relief” as it is translated from the Sanskrit … because I’ve discovered from living this phase in my life that what I really am is “it”, or “that art thou” as is also written in Sanskrit.

I am Home … And so it is.

In La’kech … Gassho … Namaste’ … Aloha … Mabuhay!

— Lana and her Dad

The Shifting Energies Are Shaking Up Egoic Perspectives

March 7, 2016 Hālau ʻĀha Hūi LanakilaLeave a comment

pink blue lotus by Stanley Zimny Nobody ever thought that this recent Full Moon’s energies would shake up perspectives, perceptions, attitudes and behaviors to the degree all have been affected this past week. Individuals who once called one another “friend” or regarded mentor/advisor are now faced with mortal enemies full of vitriolic verbage. I’ve read and heard many commenting at the seemingly sudden flood of negative thoughts and emotions translated into bad social behaviors, like slander, bodily injuries and even death.

Where’s the gratitude, compassion and unconditional love everyone seemed to acknowledge as the wave lifting human consciousness higher?

It seems that the elevation of cosmic energies continues to work on our world in one of two ways … Either, you are experiencing a genuine upliftment of mood that daily manifests as an unflappable upbeat outlook, with life circumstances appear to be improving … Or, you are experiencing a knee-jerk sociopathic (negative) response to everything and everyone around you, and that vibe manifests in fighting with others, either physically or through the use of harsh words, and/or the commission of bad acts calculated to hurt others. Another way to characterize this split is the conflict of ego versus spirit. And, although many acknowledge that to be spiritual is a “good” state of mind, many more are actually living life with the opposite, perceived-to-be-less-desirable state of being.

So how do we sort it all out? For that answer, I turn to my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, to wit:

“Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you’re all that, only you’re pretending you’re not. And, it’s perfectly okay to pretend you’re not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

It must be obvious … that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

We do not “come into” this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it, or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when s(he) is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love her(him)self. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one’s eye, because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.

When a wo(man) no longer confuses her(himself) with the definition of himself that others have given her(him), s(he) is at once universal and unique. S(He) is universal by virtue of the inseparability of her(his) organism from the cosmos. S(He) is unique in that s(he) is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, s(he) loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.”

That pretty much sums it up for me …