If I can think of one of the many pet projects that my husband has consistently been interested in, it would be the need to help others to heal themselves with guided imagery and meditation. I remember the first  audio tapes he made for his acupuncture clients over twenty years ago, using an external microphone and a tape-recorder from Radio-Shack. Today with DIY technology using computer audio and video software, he is having a lot of fun playing with creating MP3’s and videos with ease. He  started the blog visualisemeditateheal.com two weeks ago and already has a dozen posts with two free guided imagery downloads and an instructional video. He is planning to have many more free downloads of guided meditations available for all kinds of physical and emotional healing as well as longer versions for purchase.

Click here for a link to a free download from his post, Breathe Easily. I love the background nature sounds that take you to a sanctuary in a cool nurturing forest while Edward’s soothing voice sets a tone of peace and deep healing. It is one of my favorite meditations that I use. I come away feeling as if I have had my body and aura cleansed. I notice much more clarity, vibrancy and joy in my day. I am really looking forward to the meditations that he will come up with, he is having fun with the project and has all kinds of ideas he wants to work with. I invite you to check out the blog and listen to the Breathe Easy meditation.

Image credit: h.koppdelaney

And from a clifftop is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth…

And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme…

Nor is there wanting in the press
Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
Sounds nobler there than ‘neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
And a shout greets the daring one…

And so the choice must be again,
But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come…

From The Trial by Existence by Robert Frost.

In his poem, Robert Frost suggests that we choose the life we have, the good and the ill, “And none are taken but who will…” When I read these words, I reflect on the most tragic situations throughout history. I wonder why anyone would willingly choose such a life.  I mentioned in an earlier post, Nothing Is Real, there is a possibility as scientists are beginning to suggest in String Theory, that we create multiple worlds through the thoughts we harbor. If it is true that we choose the life we have for whatever reasons, then I would be inclined to live  like the Buddhists who willingly accept their fate as a learning experience. (Click on the image above to read a beautiful verse, “Ten Times” about life as a learning experience.) Whether the life we have is our choice for our own learning or in sacrifice so that others can learn through us, the lesson is heroic, “And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one…”

A wanderer approached the Buddha wanting to know what happens after death. The Buddha asked him how he would live his life if he knew that there are future lives. The wanderer replied that he would want to live mindfully to sow seeds of wisdom for the future; to be generous and compassionate because they create happiness and abundance in the future. The Buddha then asked how would he live if there are no future lives. The wanderer replied that he would live mindfully so that he would not miss anything, and to live with generosity and compassion because they bring happiness, and because he won’t be able to keep anything at the end.

In some spiritual philosophies we learn that we reap as we sow, that all of life is the result of  karma, actions performed whether in this life or in a past life. This philosophy may seem fatalistic when we are presented with situations that we label as bad, but like the Buddhists we can accept the situation with equanimity rather than creating more karma by reacting to the situation with rejection, blame and increasing hatred. In acceptance, we can live with detachment and ease which creates a space for clarity. When there is clarity, we can be mindful of not repeating the past actions that created our unwanted situation, but rather to sow the seeds of generosity and compassion for ourselves and others.

With all that said, I still do not know if we truly choose our life situations as Robert Frost suggested in his poem. And given the darkness that humans are capable of, I wonder, do we make a conscious choice before we land on this plane? Whether we do or not, come what may, we would do well to live with mindfulness, generosity and compassion.

Step aboard little one
Welcome to this plane!
Here you will learn
As much as you care
Your every need be met
Nurture and succor
Love is the lesson
Love is the path

Just watch our mother
Her endless toil
A smorgasbord for every delight
Cleaning and energizing
The air, the land, the water
Make no mistake, our mother loves us
She will not stop

Though we are passing through
Twirling through space
A short stay in this place
A heavenly beauty blue and green
Dancing around the sun
With drunken partying
We trash and burn
Our lust for more
No end in sight

Still she serves us daily
Like a gentle mother
She takes no sides
Let them live and learn

Our mother heals herself well
Every cut and burn restores
Every season will come
So don’t cry for Earth
Cry for those
Whose hearts are dry
A wasteland of broken dreams
Show them love
For that is what they need

image credit: A. Rector and B.A. Wolpa (NRAO / AUI / AURA / NSF)

“Mamsa, wake up! God is coming.” Even after having seen the movie such a long time ago, these lines from the movie, Out Of Africa, continues to intrigue me.  What do these words mean?  These words can be interpreted in many ways. To those who  are religious there may be a literal coming of a messiah, those who are more spiritual may envision their meaning as personal transformation, a transcendental experience.

In the movie, Baroness Blixen has come to a cross-roads in her life. After many setbacks, the failing coffee farm had to be mortgaged. One night, a fire broke out, burning down the barn that housed the precious crop harvest, and destroyed all her hopes for a viable future on the land that she so loved. Her house-helper woke her up saying, “God is coming.”

Perhaps in the culture of the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya where the movie is based, “God is coming” may refer to a time in a person’s life where a window of opportunity is open to us to make a choice to go beyond our limitations. Something happens which we have no control over, and we are asked to choose to respond in a manner that allows the greater aspects of who we are to manifest, or to succumb to discouragement and despair. There are many such visitations in the life of a seeker. Each incident morphing us into a greater aspect of ourselves.  There is no turning back,  and even in those times when we are in resistance to change, stretched beyond our limitations, the thought of going back to who we were is unlikely. It is like an adult trying to fit into clothes she wore as a child. They just don’t fit anymore. At these times, we are asked to keep moving forward, to face the greater aspects of who we are, to transform and step into another phase of our learning. We keep doing this until we are done with our journey on this earth. We know we are done when death comes knocking. That is the ultimate transformation. God has come to call you home.

“God is coming.” I  came across these words again recently in Turning towards the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey by Stephen Levine:

A sharp pain flashes across the right side of the head. It says God is coming, sit up straight!
The tectonic plates in the skull are shifting. Lightning in the temporal lobes. Angels, to say the least, and the simple clarity that reveals the floating worlds.
It is like awaking in a dream to find you are not dreaming. Discovering that all along the dreamer was the dream and only this wakefulness is real.
And the body melts from consciousness to consciousness as it dissolves luminous and beyond description.
There are earthquakes in the skull that rattle our silverware and knock all our trophies off their shelves.
They break the roof beam and scatter our belongings, leaving us naked and unidentifiable in the brilliant light.

These words poetically describe the experience of transformation, the divine alchemy in which our separate sense of small self, the limited ego is offered into the sacrificial fire.

Stephen Levine continues:

Most have gone mad looking for a solid center, but there is none.
We think of centering as a continual narrowing of focus
until we touch the pearl…
but in practice centering is a continual expansion of focus
until we become the ocean.
The deeper we go, the less definable we become, but the more real we feel.
The deeper we go, the more the luminosity of mind illuminates our birthright.
Our center is vast space, boundless awareness.

This emptiness, this vast egoless space at the center, is not nothing, it is simply no thing, no boundary, no opposite, no exclusion, no inclusion, no birth, no death, no life, no absence of life. Undifferentiated presence, pure awareness indistinguishable from pure love.

Image Credit: Eddi07

In the movie, Youth  without Youth, based on the novel by the philosopher, Mircea Eliade, we see the theme of “Life is but a dream.” The storyline is  consistent with  the teaching stories of the East, such as in the story of King Lavana in the Yoga Vasistha,  which I wrote about in an earlier post, Nothing Is Real. This movie makes me contemplate the nature of reality, the constrictions of time, my place in this world in relationship to the bigger picture of  cosmic existence.

The main character, Dominic Matei was struck by lightning. When he began to heal, his doctors were amazed to find that his body became younger with  each passing day, growing from a seventy year old to that of a man in his forties and that his brain was capable of super-human powers. Before the accident Dominic was suicidal, disappointed that his life’s work on the origins of language would not be completed before he dies. He was also despondent about the death of the love of his life who ended their relationship when they were young lovers. After the lightning accident, with his new found youth, Dominic encountered situations where he got a second chance to live out his dreams. He continued to study the origins of language when he met a young woman with whom he had a romantic relationship. She also had an incident with a lightning storm and regresses to speak in ancient languages.  Dominic saw the possibility of completing his life’s work, while dodging the Nazis who were after him to study and experiment on him.

At the end of the movie, Dominic returned to his native Romania, to the cafe which he frequented and though thirty years have passed, he meets the same old group of friends who welcome him back. He knows it is a dream though his friends don’t know it. He relates the story from Chuang Tzu, “I dreamed I was a butterfly.” To prove to them that it was a dream, he asked them about events that took place in their future of which they had no knowledge. We find out that he was dreaming up the meeting in the cafe.

Chuang-tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly, fluttering here and there, carefree, unaware of a Chuang-tzu. Then he woke up, and there he was again: Chuang-tzu beyond a doubt. But was he Chuang-tzu who had dreamt that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he was Chuang-tzu ? There must be some difference between Chuang-tzu and a butterfly! This is called “the transformation of things.”

Chuang-tzu awoke from his dream, aware of himself, but he did not know for sure if he was really a butterfly dreaming of Chuang-tzu. His identity was uncertain, empty of self,  more related to a non-self that includes it all. The sages tell us that this life of ours that seems so solid with all of its drama unfolding, is merely a dream. That there are no separate beings with separate life experiences, but the one Consciousness that looks out upon a phantasmagorical field, a dance of  Consciousness.That awakening comes with recognition of the dreamlike impermanence of all existence. When we become attached to any part of the dream, we suffer. The sage Chuang-tzu said:

You may dream that you’re at a banquet
and wake up to find yourself miserable.
You may dream that you’re sobbing your heart out
and wake up to find yourself at ease.
How, in the middle of a dream,
can you know that you’re actually dreaming?
In the middle of a dream, you may even
try to interpret the dream:
only after you wake up
do you realize that you were dreaming.
Someday there will be
a great awakening, when we know
that all this was one big dream.

And when I say that we’re dreaming,
of course I am dreaming too.

— Excerpts from The Second Book Of The Tao by Stephen Mitchell.

image credit: edshealthtips

In that space where we meet
In the temple of the heart,
You and all my spiritual ancestors
In that circle of light we sit.
In this weary physical form
A myriad points of scintillating light surround me
Nourishing and healing.
How gracious, how generous
Yet am I willing to receive your gifts?
My mind says there is so much to do
To earn your love.
You ask:
Don’t you know who you are?
Here are your friends, your family
You are one of us.
You who think you are alone
Are watched over and cherished.
To this meeting place
Always return
So you remember.

Why are we here? Most of us will respond in the manner in which our culture defines what life is worth. In the modern culture of the West, we are trained from birth to be a cog in the wheel of society that is based on consumption. We contribute to the prosperity of the masses while identifying with our independent existence, each competing for the greater slice of the bounty. In traditional cultures, there is more of a focus on harmony. The elders teach that the survival and flourishing of the whole society is dependent on respect and the welfare of each person. In the model of the traditional cultures, people seem happier, more aware of their connection to all of life and its interdependence. In the West, people are unhappy no matter how materially wealthy they are. What can we learn from the wisdom teachings of the traditions that allow people to thrive,  immersed in the love and simplicity of their beingness?

Jack Kornfield in The Wise Heart, mentioned that in 1989 at an international Buddhist teacher meeting, the Western teachers brought up that in the practice of Western students, the most prevalent  problem was that of self-hatred, unworthiness, shame, and self-criticism. “The Dalai Lama and other Asian teachers were shocked. They could not quite comprehend the word self hatred. It took the Dalai Lama ten minutes of conferring with Geshe Thupten Jinpa, his translator, even to understand it. Then he turned and asked how many of us experienced this problem in ourselves and our students. He saw us all nod affirmatively. He seemed genuinely surprised. “But that’s a mistake,” he said. “Every being is precious!”

The disparity in cultural expectations begs the question, how is it that in some cultures the word self-hatred does not exist? I believe that it is based in the fundamental premise of our Western society which honors success and self-importance above all else. We learn to judge ourselves and others, to compare ourselves, and to identify with our roles. This narrative is a formula for self-hatred, self-criticism, and unworthiness.

The sages tell us that the cause of our suffering is due to our identification with our roles such as woman, mother, business-partner, healer, writer; our thoughts which are mostly related to our roles; our opinions; our bodies and our separate self-hood.  When we experience ourselves as separate, disconnected from all other beings and all of life, this sense of duality leads to grasping at things to protect ourselves from loneliness and fear. We then suffer from  fear of loss of what we hold on to. An endless cycle of grasping, fear and its ensuing suffering becomes our reality and  engenders self-hatred and feelings of unworthiness. The sage Nisargadatta Maharaj said, “One without the sense of duality has no occupation, no intention or desire, and no sense of doership….The concept”I am” veils the Absolute—it is the source of misery and is itself untrue. This is the essence of spirituality” To me, this means that when we identify with our roles, our opinions and our thoughts, we lose our connection to the truth of who we really are. There is no other, but the one Self that expresses through each person. We are no better than any person, animal or thing. We are all emanations of the same love. When we can identify with our fellow humans and all other creatures, we connect to the love that is its expression. We come to realize that we are everything, our heritage is the great spirit that unites us all.

We are all on the journey to reclaim the legacy of our spiritual heritage. When we lose sight of this awareness, we are ensnared in the mire of cut-throat competition for more, burdened by the ceaseless vitriol of self-loathing and judgment of others. We have to be vigilant of  illusion that draws us into its grip. For me, the most important practice is mindfulness of judgment of self and others. When I judge, I am saying that I am not good enough as I am, there is something wrong with me. The same for when I look out and judge  situations and people. To remember that all of life is about learning and moving on to the next stage of our development, and whatever level we are at is good enough for now. To remember to identify with the greater aspect of my beingness that is already perfect, when these feelings of illusion arise. I have to recognize that when I ask to be established in peace and joy, that I have to let go of the illusion of unworthiness and self-hatred.

The notion that we can hold on to our unhappiness, our disrespect of ourselves and others and still be immersed in peace and joy is in conflict with our truth. If we indulge in conflict in ourselves and in our world, there is no room for peace. We cannot live in this duality and become established in the one Consciousness.  So the spiritual healing journey for me is about letting go of everything that is not peace. If I am not feeling peace, then I am in conflict. If I cannot be at peace with my own self, then how can I expect to find peace in my world. Everything that shows up in life is asking of me, “Can you be at peace with this too?” My reason for being is to be at peace. When I am in conflict, I say to myself, “may I be free from suffering, may I be at peace, may I be happy.” I offer the same blessing when I am aware of judging others, that they be at peace. It always amazes me how the moment I become mindful of judgment and let it go, my general sense of well-being moves from contraction to expansion and love, that the  energy in my body feels free and abundant.

When we recognize ourselves in others, when Consciousness recognizes itself, this is called self-realization, which the sages tell us is our reason for being. We may think that self-realization is some lofty unattainable ideal, yet when the sages speak of it, they speak of loving and respecting ourselves just as we are, for Consciousness lives in us as us. It is that simple. Yet it really isn’t, or else all of us seekers who have heard this, would already be realized. I learned that only we can do it, we have to do the work, for I have sat in the company of a few realized beings, and if hanging out with them can make you become realized, I would have made that claim a long time ago.

With compassion for who we are, where we have been and where we are headed, we rally on the path to freedom and extend this same compassion for all beings that  we meet along the way. This is the formula for true success and genuine honor.

May it be so!

Image credit: Khowaga1

I spin, I spin, around, around,
And close my eyes,
And let the bile arise
From the sacred region of the soul’s Profound;
Then gaze upon the world; how strange! how new!
The earth and heaven are one,
The horizon-line is gone,
The sky how green! the land how fair and blue!
Perplexing items fade from my large view,
And thought which vexed me with its false and true
Is swallowed up in Intuition; this,
This is the sole true mode
Of reaching God,
And gaining the universal synthesis
Which makes All— One; while fools with peering eyes
Dissect, divide, and vainly analyse.
So round, and round, and round again!
How the whole globe swells within my brain,
The stars inside my lids appear,
The murmur of the spheres I hear
Throbbing and beating in each ear;
Right in my navel I can feel
The centre of the world’s great wheel.

Ah peace divine, bliss dear and deep,
No stay, no stop,
Like any top
Whirling with swiftest speed, I sleep.
O ye devout ones round me coming,
Listen! I think that I am humming;
No utterance of the servile mind
With poor chop-logic rules agreeing
Here shall ye find,
But inarticulate burr of man’s unsundered being.
Ah,could we but devise some plan.
Some patent jack by which a man
Might hold himself ever in harmony
With the great whole, and spin perpetually,
As all things spin
Without, within,
As Time spins off into Eternity,
And Space into the inane Immensity,
And the Finite into God’s Infinity,
Spin, spin, spin, spin.

by Edward Dowden