Archive for July, 2007

The Heart of Greatness

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

That’s me in the Grand Canyon, yes.

I am currently driving West, on my move to San Luis Obispo County in California. Along the way I have had the joy to see spectacular sights side by side with, well, the wonderful content of my mind.

At some point early in the trip I decided to do The Work on the thought “I need people to admire me.” I came to see for myself that, despite me believing it at varying degrees of strength throughout my life, it isn’t really true, and what wonderful news this is!

Further, I tried on “I need me to admire me” as a turnaround and to my amazement I discovered that whenever I do something that makes me proud of myself I soon want somebody to praise it but I spend barely any time giving the kind of honest and loving praise to myself that I seem to want from others. And so I decided to catch up with myself: as I drove through the desert I began making a list of all the aspects of me that I really do admire, and I took it in, really spending time reflecting on them, bathing on them, fully.

It is one of the most beautiful things I have done for myself. I would think, for example, how proud I am of how I have handled my divorce this last year, of how dedicated I have become to establishing a genuine connection with my students, of how loving of a father to my children I have become through the years, and the list would not stop. It would go on and on, searching through the distant past, finding the ways in which my life has had meaning and enriched this wonderful, mysterious planet. I did this slowly, really taking in the internal approval for who and what I am, for what I am becoming, for what breathes and thinks me.

I would think about each of these reasons for humble pride, and they would fill my heart, and I would cry, and cry, and cry, in joy. In fact, my heart swells up just to think of those wonderful hours of driving through the Southwest, crying, becoming real with myself about my own worth. At last.

What a wonderful thing, to be aware of one’s greatness, because it is through my greatness, and only through it, that I can be of genuine service.

Posted in Life, Service, The Work, The gift of inquiry, Truth, Unconditional love, self=Self | 2 Comments »

Siding with Everyone

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

eye.jpg

Last night my dear friends Randy and Jory asked me where I stood regarding the God/No God thing. I began to express to them my point of view by espousing what I call the Atheist’s Creed. It goes as follows:

  1. No one is running the show.
  2. It’s not a problem that no one is running the show.

Compare this to the Believer’s Creed:

  1. God is running the show.
  2. It’s not a problem that God is running the show.

Resting in between these two lies the Mystic.

A Mystic finds no contradiction between the Creeds, because the Mystic understands that

  • The word God in the Believer’s Creed is simply shorthand for the expression no one in the Atheist’s Creed.

The Mystic finds truth and worth in both perspectives. The Mystic understands that creed is language and whatever reality is pointed at by that language cannot be fully captured by any language.

The Mystic has no Creed, but if she had one, it could look like this:

  1. As meaning is dissolved, Nothing is left.
  2. That Nothing is cognizant, and good.

So what did I tell Randy and Jory in response to their question? That I side with the Mystic, and in that I am siding with everyone.

Posted in Truth | 2 Comments »

How to have ten thousand girlfriends

Friday, July 13th, 2007

lilfair.jpg

One of the most exciting moments in my life took place when I realized that just because I love somebody that does not mean that I have to date, kiss, have sex with, live with or marry that person. Love only implies itself and it is sufficient for itself. And I learned this by noticing that my love for somebody is really my love for myself, that the somebody was a projection of mind all along. What joy came out of this realization, I cannot describe, although there is a way, I found out, to get a taste for this kind of joy, and this is the exercise that I describe below. It is odd, fun and quite delicious. Read on.

  1. I close my eyes and picture in my mind how would I feel if I was with someone I really liked. I Pick a specific person and I allow my mind to show me all the qualities I like in that person. I allow the experience to become very real, I really recall how good it feels to be with that person.
  2. Aware of the fact that it’s me whom I’m liking throughout the experience, I allow the images of the person I thought about to dissolve while keeping the feelings that came with it. They are feelings about me, after all, and I notice that, even though these people in my life come and go, I remain.
  3. I then pick somebody else, and allow my mind to show me all the qualities I like in this person. And while keeping the feelings from the previous experience, I allow this new experience to also become very real, I really recall how good it feels to be with this new person. I then repeat step two, with the new person.
  4. I add as many people to the soup as I wish.

It is an exercise in finding all the wonderful qualities your loved ones have that really are inside of yourself and in having the courage to take them in, of bathing in the experience that it’s YOU whom you’ve been deeply in love with all along.

Sometimes I make the list of all the people I’ve liked throughout my life that I can recall, and I sit in the experience of running this exercise for as long as I can handle the intense joy that comes with it.

Posted in Life, Relationships, Surrender, Truth, Unconditional love, self=Self | 2 Comments »

Finding the thought behind the feeling

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

An expressive face

This morning I got a question from a dear someone I met a few months ago when I was volunteering my time at Katie’s Hotline. The answer I gave her may be useful to more than one, so I decided to post it here:

Q: How do you do The Work, if you can not reach your memories about something, but if you just have the feeling?

A: Hi, this is what I do in that situation. There are several options:

  1. Go very still and get really in touch with the feeling, allow the feeling to become very prominent in your awareness, if you will. And wait. Really, wait. A thought might pop up. Do The Work on the thought that arises. Now, some people try this for three and a half seconds and then say “nothing came up.” And the reminder is: this is meditation, give yourself to the process, give it enough time, five minutes, ten minutes, one hour, your entire life, if it’s the truth what you’re interested in.
  2. You can also ask the question: if this feeling had a voice, what would it say? and wait, see if you hear something, in your mind.
  3. Sometimes it helps if you begin to explain how you feel to someone (maybe someone who has done The Work, but this is not necessary), and ask that someone to look for underlying beliefs . When you speak about how you feel, be spontaneous, don’t censor yourself, don’t speak from the motive of trying to find the underlying belief, simply be genuine in explaining how you feel.
  4. Identify that same feeling on a specific person you know, and answer yourself the question “what do you think their underlying belief is that is making them have that feeling?” Then do the work on that underlying belief as if it was your own.
  5. Ask someone who knows you well, where do you think this feeling comes from, in me? It might be transparent to them, what is still not transparent to you.
  6. Take a look at your motives for doing The Work. If you’re doing The Work with a motive, with a particular outcome in mind, say, to make sadness go away, the thought that brings the sadness may not show its face, because looking at it may bring some more sadness, and “it” knows you believe you don’t want any more of that. To work with this, go brutally honest and make a list of all the things you think you will get from doing The Work. This is how you discover your motives. And they are not right or wrong. They are what they are. Don’t even try to change them. Just enlighten yourself to them, and ask yourself: “Can I absolutely know it is true that my life would be better if I get what I want from The Work?” Then go back to one of the previous exercises.
  7. If this fails, investigate on whether you really want to know the truth. Sometimes we just love our dramas a little too much because we think the drama is more exciting than peace, that peace is boring. You can question that, and until it changes just know yourself as someone who loves the drama, without guilt or blame. I actually admitted this to myself this last Sunday, and it was tremendously liberating, because it freed me from the (imagined) prision of trying to be who I’m not. The paradox is: by admitting it, I found peace, and this peace (surprise, surprise) tasted much better than the drama. It’s the truth that sets me free, and sometimes what the truth looks like is: I don’t want to know the truth. Can you be true to that?

Even if all of this fails, there’s no failing in it. Just notice that this is how your mind operates, right now. Then take a break from it: go for a walk, have a cup of tea, take a long shower, and come back to it at another time, or simply drop it, and do The Work on something else. And keep it very simple: pick someone you haven’t forgiven 100 percent, fill a judge your neighbor worksheet on that person, and do The Work on your stressful thoughts about that person. You know the gig.

We begin now.

Posted in Begin again, The Work, Truth | 2 Comments »