I once had a profound meditation, based on the feeling of being frustrated with my ability to extend a powerful and useful enough (in it's effects) love to others.
I was shown a cross. I saw the cross in my midst, the vertical beam running up the center of my body, the horizontal, through my arms.
The path of inner progress was the vertical beam, representing the path of raising consciousness from the physical emotional mental into the spiritual. From the desires of the body to the desires of the spirit.
The horizontal beam represented the outer path. The outstretched arms extending blessings, through relationships with others.
I was shown that the ability to extend love on the horizontal plane, through earthly relationships based from the 'heart' of the cross was dependent on the heighth to which we ascended on the vertical plane, and vice versa - the ability to rise on the vertical plane depended on our desire to extend our love on the horizontal. Only the desire to bless *all* of creation and humanity would trigger the vertical growth needed to access a love sufficient to the task.
But likewise, extending ourselves horizontally without expanding our foundation in spirit in the vertical relationship between us and God, heaven and earth, would result in a failed effort.
Only a balanced, coordinated growth in both planes would achieve the optimal result, either for personal enlightenment or the ability to effectively bless the outer world and those in it.
The words I was given were: "This is the way of the cross".
At that time, I was shown this due to my tendency to overextend myself horizontally, without sufficient vertical (inward) focus to compensate. And I've since realized that the majority of us in the west make the same error. The eastern lands and traditions make the opposite error, of working on internal/vertical growth without sufficient horizontal extension. This is why, some years ago, there was a great meeting of east and west, spiritually. They needed to understand our horizontal/outward focus, and we needed to understand their vertical/inward focus.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Someone asked me if choosing to feel peaceful didn't preclude personal responsibility for the perceived wrongs in the world, and involve 'detachment' from one's feelings.
Expanded awareness involves feeling *everything*, fully, deeply, but equally. It's called equanimity, and is the opposite of either attachment or detachment.
Another word for it is perspective. While in a movie theater, where you truly are powerless to change the outcome of the script, you can, nonetheless, maintain some emotional composure when the hero dies by widening your perspective, from it's 'attachment' to the hero and the action on the screen, to a perspective that includes the audience, the building, the neighborhood in which the theater exists, and so on. This is not 'detachment', which would involve shifting your attention away so that you don't have to feel what is going on. This is expansion of your attention to include other things, which puts *everything*, including, but not limited to, the hero's plight, into perspective.
It's really similar to the kind of perspective which time gives you. You've heard the saying "How will I feel about this in twenty years". Only this perspective isn't based on distancing yourself in time, but in enmeshing yourself more in the present moment which is happening *everywhere*, instead of just your immediate vicinity.
Expansion of perspective includes everything, rather than attaching your attention only to the painful situation, which excludes everything else, or detaching your attention from it to avoid the pain, which excludes the painful situation. Attachment and detachment alike are created by exclusion, and resistance to an awareness of other things.
In terms of being effective, responsible and powerful, acting from a space of equanimity based on an expanded perspective is always more effective than acting from either attachment or detachment.
Surely you've had the experience of being at a distance from a conflict and being able to see both sides of it (while still feeling the effects of it), and being able to see things which neither party sees which could resolve the conflict.
And surely you've been personally involved in up-close interpersonal conflict with another where you've felt absolutely powerless to either resolve it or to control the anger you have toward the other person.
It's quite possible to intentionally bring the perspective you have in the first situation into the second situation. Next time you're in such a conflict, simply begin to expand your attention from its focus on the other person. Begin to include an awareness of what they're wearing; their gestures; whether they are using words that relate to vision or feeling or sound; the area you're standing in; the colors of the surrounding environment; the temperature of the air; the other sounds which are in the background; etc. You'll probably find that in order to accomplish this, your breathing will have to become more relaxed and expansive, as well. Don't do this to the exclusion of the person and your dialog. Just include more and more things in addition to them. Don't forget to include yourself.
If you succeed in this, you will find yourself more grounded, more stable, calmer, and able to achieve the kind of balanced perspective on the topic of the conflict which you might expect to have if you weren't actively participating in the conflict. This degree of perspective will also show you the way out of the conflict, and into a true dialog which ends in resolution.
This is simply an extension of the unwritten rules for effective boxing, or karate, or kung fu: Don't fight from anger.
Anger signifies either attachment or resistance (purposeful detachment). Free attention always succeeds over both. Free attention is the ability to place your attention anywhere you want to. This comes from the kind of perspective gained by expanded awareness.
Taken to the extreme, there is considerable evidence that someone existing in such a state can do more to effect positive change in the world than thousands of people clinging to narrower perspectives based on attachment or resistance, and acting therefrom.
Expanded awareness involves feeling *everything*, fully, deeply, but equally. It's called equanimity, and is the opposite of either attachment or detachment.
Another word for it is perspective. While in a movie theater, where you truly are powerless to change the outcome of the script, you can, nonetheless, maintain some emotional composure when the hero dies by widening your perspective, from it's 'attachment' to the hero and the action on the screen, to a perspective that includes the audience, the building, the neighborhood in which the theater exists, and so on. This is not 'detachment', which would involve shifting your attention away so that you don't have to feel what is going on. This is expansion of your attention to include other things, which puts *everything*, including, but not limited to, the hero's plight, into perspective.
It's really similar to the kind of perspective which time gives you. You've heard the saying "How will I feel about this in twenty years". Only this perspective isn't based on distancing yourself in time, but in enmeshing yourself more in the present moment which is happening *everywhere*, instead of just your immediate vicinity.
Expansion of perspective includes everything, rather than attaching your attention only to the painful situation, which excludes everything else, or detaching your attention from it to avoid the pain, which excludes the painful situation. Attachment and detachment alike are created by exclusion, and resistance to an awareness of other things.
In terms of being effective, responsible and powerful, acting from a space of equanimity based on an expanded perspective is always more effective than acting from either attachment or detachment.
Surely you've had the experience of being at a distance from a conflict and being able to see both sides of it (while still feeling the effects of it), and being able to see things which neither party sees which could resolve the conflict.
And surely you've been personally involved in up-close interpersonal conflict with another where you've felt absolutely powerless to either resolve it or to control the anger you have toward the other person.
It's quite possible to intentionally bring the perspective you have in the first situation into the second situation. Next time you're in such a conflict, simply begin to expand your attention from its focus on the other person. Begin to include an awareness of what they're wearing; their gestures; whether they are using words that relate to vision or feeling or sound; the area you're standing in; the colors of the surrounding environment; the temperature of the air; the other sounds which are in the background; etc. You'll probably find that in order to accomplish this, your breathing will have to become more relaxed and expansive, as well. Don't do this to the exclusion of the person and your dialog. Just include more and more things in addition to them. Don't forget to include yourself.
If you succeed in this, you will find yourself more grounded, more stable, calmer, and able to achieve the kind of balanced perspective on the topic of the conflict which you might expect to have if you weren't actively participating in the conflict. This degree of perspective will also show you the way out of the conflict, and into a true dialog which ends in resolution.
This is simply an extension of the unwritten rules for effective boxing, or karate, or kung fu: Don't fight from anger.
Anger signifies either attachment or resistance (purposeful detachment). Free attention always succeeds over both. Free attention is the ability to place your attention anywhere you want to. This comes from the kind of perspective gained by expanded awareness.
Taken to the extreme, there is considerable evidence that someone existing in such a state can do more to effect positive change in the world than thousands of people clinging to narrower perspectives based on attachment or resistance, and acting therefrom.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Broken down, responsibility doesn't mean 'obligation' as it has come to mean in our society, which is suffering a plague of litigation based on the idea that someone else (especially if they're loaded) is responsible for my well-being. As a result, the McDonald's company is 'obligated' to reimburse me when I spill hot coffee in my lap. This is nonsense of the worst kind.
Responsibility, broken down, simply means 'the ability to respond'. That ability, like most things, begins at home. In this case, home is where your heart, or attention is. Only you can best respond to the things that are available to your own attention. Since your attention dwells within a spirit-mind-body complex with which only you are intimate, only you truly have the ability to respond to it. No one else can possibly know more about your dreams, desires, intuitions, feelings, thoughts, and experiences than you. Your primary responsibility lies there.
This quickly eliminates the kind of thinking which says it was McDonald's coffee, so they're responsible. Rather, it was your lack of attention to what you were experiencing in the immediate moment which allowed the coffee to spill. McDonald's simply wasn't available to respond. You were. To attempt to make them responsible after the fact is soul-killing to the worst degree.
When you look at it in terms of available attention, it gets much simpler. You are responsible for your kids to the extent that their own attention is insufficient to what they are experiencing. The same yardstick can be used in measuring our responsibility toward a parent with failing awareness.
It works in other relationships, as well.
If you tell someone "Gee, your hair looks nice today!" and they respond with "Are you saying it looked like sh*t yesterday!?!", then they are the one with the problem. It's called taking yourself (or 'things') too seriously.
And if you take their outburst seriously and then proceed to take seriously the potential consequences of what you say to others when speaking from the depths of your heart, then you will have caught the disease and be dragged down to their level. In their minds, this is good, because now they have company with which to take things too seriously. But if someone is stuck down a hole, going down into it with them just traps you as well. Better to stay out of it and be available to pull on the rope you give them, if and when they decide to exercise the intent to climb out.
If the lady whose hair you complimented is so severely stressed that you're certain that she doesn't have the wherewithal to understand what you intended, then you can compassionately cut her some slack in your response to her outburst. If you find yourself unable to, and wanting to retaliate, those feelings are inside of you, and if that's the case, it's because your own attention is caught up inside you, unable to encompass her as well, and your first responsibility is to work with those feelings, rather than with her. See?
And that's what spiritual growth and enlightenment boil down to. Continually working on the feelings and accompanying beliefs that trap our attention inside us, and gradually expanding our attention, as it becomes freed, to include more and more of the world around us, to which we then have the ability to respond.
The ultimate reality to achieve would be an awareness that is so expanded that there is noone and nothing it doesn't include. Such is the awareness of the Divine. And yet, do we see evidence that this divine awareness responds to us in the ways we usually assign to responsibility? Does it act on our behalf as another human would? Does it act at all?
My own experience with this suggests that awareness itself is the highest form of action, but involves doing nothing. An example of this principle:
I'm sitting with a friend at work, and he's telling me about a problem in a relationship. As he talks, part of me is becoming aware of what he's describing from a more expansive point of view. As a result, I'm beginning to see what it is he needs to see in order to arrive at some resolution. I notice that I'm beginning to put this in words in my mind, so that I can speak them. I also notice that, when I do this, I lose touch with his awareness and what it's conveying. I also realize that if I speak what it is I'm seeing, he will also lose touch with what he's concerned about. His attention will shift to me - outside of him - and away from the issue. He may even resist my words for that very reason: despite any wisdom they might contain, my words will shift him out of his center, and preclude the possibility that he can arrive at the solution from within, and wouldn't that be preferable, and increase the likelihood that he would be willing to hear the truth?
So I abandon the desire to speak, to be wise, to be recognised and appreciated. I abandon putting what I am seeing into words. I rejoin him in the middle of his perspective, and resume my expanded awareness of his situation, in a wordless awareness. As a result, I begin to feel that his attention is following mine, moving into the expanded perspective in which the solution is obvious.
The next thing I know, he is verbalizing, from within, the exact words I had been about to say to him. It was a most edifying and uplifting experience.
A similar thing has happened too many times for me to count. I will be aware that the room is too hot, or the sound is too loud. Rather than say or do anything, I will simply be aware. Then someone else will turn down the A/C or the music.
What if divine awareness operates in this way - knowing all that is felt and desired by everyone, and being able to respond, not through direct action, but by raising our awarenesss to the level where the resolution is obvious, or by causing the universe at large to address our needs?
I once had a vision which suggested that if humans could tithe, not 10% of their money, but 10% of the attention they normally use to create division (we each live in our own separate dwelling that requires our own separate source of power to maintain our own separate environment, etc., etc. - and almost 100% of our attention is spent in the process of creating and maintaining this separation) - if we took 10% of that attention and united it in creative desire, the atmosphere of the planet itself might just respond to the degree that we wouldn't need our separate dwellings. The weather would be that perfect. There are legends that suggest that the planet was once like this.
Okay, I know I've gone a little far afield here, but the power of attention vs action, as illustrated by my talk with my friend, is unquestionable to me, and I honestly think that power is much more unlimited than we believe.
This isn't suggesting that we shouldn't act, any more than we shouldn't eat. But fasting has its value, as well. Food and acting are for the body. Fasting and being more expansively aware are for the spirit.
Responsibility, broken down, simply means 'the ability to respond'. That ability, like most things, begins at home. In this case, home is where your heart, or attention is. Only you can best respond to the things that are available to your own attention. Since your attention dwells within a spirit-mind-body complex with which only you are intimate, only you truly have the ability to respond to it. No one else can possibly know more about your dreams, desires, intuitions, feelings, thoughts, and experiences than you. Your primary responsibility lies there.
This quickly eliminates the kind of thinking which says it was McDonald's coffee, so they're responsible. Rather, it was your lack of attention to what you were experiencing in the immediate moment which allowed the coffee to spill. McDonald's simply wasn't available to respond. You were. To attempt to make them responsible after the fact is soul-killing to the worst degree.
When you look at it in terms of available attention, it gets much simpler. You are responsible for your kids to the extent that their own attention is insufficient to what they are experiencing. The same yardstick can be used in measuring our responsibility toward a parent with failing awareness.
It works in other relationships, as well.
If you tell someone "Gee, your hair looks nice today!" and they respond with "Are you saying it looked like sh*t yesterday!?!", then they are the one with the problem. It's called taking yourself (or 'things') too seriously.
And if you take their outburst seriously and then proceed to take seriously the potential consequences of what you say to others when speaking from the depths of your heart, then you will have caught the disease and be dragged down to their level. In their minds, this is good, because now they have company with which to take things too seriously. But if someone is stuck down a hole, going down into it with them just traps you as well. Better to stay out of it and be available to pull on the rope you give them, if and when they decide to exercise the intent to climb out.
If the lady whose hair you complimented is so severely stressed that you're certain that she doesn't have the wherewithal to understand what you intended, then you can compassionately cut her some slack in your response to her outburst. If you find yourself unable to, and wanting to retaliate, those feelings are inside of you, and if that's the case, it's because your own attention is caught up inside you, unable to encompass her as well, and your first responsibility is to work with those feelings, rather than with her. See?
And that's what spiritual growth and enlightenment boil down to. Continually working on the feelings and accompanying beliefs that trap our attention inside us, and gradually expanding our attention, as it becomes freed, to include more and more of the world around us, to which we then have the ability to respond.
The ultimate reality to achieve would be an awareness that is so expanded that there is noone and nothing it doesn't include. Such is the awareness of the Divine. And yet, do we see evidence that this divine awareness responds to us in the ways we usually assign to responsibility? Does it act on our behalf as another human would? Does it act at all?
My own experience with this suggests that awareness itself is the highest form of action, but involves doing nothing. An example of this principle:
I'm sitting with a friend at work, and he's telling me about a problem in a relationship. As he talks, part of me is becoming aware of what he's describing from a more expansive point of view. As a result, I'm beginning to see what it is he needs to see in order to arrive at some resolution. I notice that I'm beginning to put this in words in my mind, so that I can speak them. I also notice that, when I do this, I lose touch with his awareness and what it's conveying. I also realize that if I speak what it is I'm seeing, he will also lose touch with what he's concerned about. His attention will shift to me - outside of him - and away from the issue. He may even resist my words for that very reason: despite any wisdom they might contain, my words will shift him out of his center, and preclude the possibility that he can arrive at the solution from within, and wouldn't that be preferable, and increase the likelihood that he would be willing to hear the truth?
So I abandon the desire to speak, to be wise, to be recognised and appreciated. I abandon putting what I am seeing into words. I rejoin him in the middle of his perspective, and resume my expanded awareness of his situation, in a wordless awareness. As a result, I begin to feel that his attention is following mine, moving into the expanded perspective in which the solution is obvious.
The next thing I know, he is verbalizing, from within, the exact words I had been about to say to him. It was a most edifying and uplifting experience.
A similar thing has happened too many times for me to count. I will be aware that the room is too hot, or the sound is too loud. Rather than say or do anything, I will simply be aware. Then someone else will turn down the A/C or the music.
What if divine awareness operates in this way - knowing all that is felt and desired by everyone, and being able to respond, not through direct action, but by raising our awarenesss to the level where the resolution is obvious, or by causing the universe at large to address our needs?
I once had a vision which suggested that if humans could tithe, not 10% of their money, but 10% of the attention they normally use to create division (we each live in our own separate dwelling that requires our own separate source of power to maintain our own separate environment, etc., etc. - and almost 100% of our attention is spent in the process of creating and maintaining this separation) - if we took 10% of that attention and united it in creative desire, the atmosphere of the planet itself might just respond to the degree that we wouldn't need our separate dwellings. The weather would be that perfect. There are legends that suggest that the planet was once like this.
Okay, I know I've gone a little far afield here, but the power of attention vs action, as illustrated by my talk with my friend, is unquestionable to me, and I honestly think that power is much more unlimited than we believe.
This isn't suggesting that we shouldn't act, any more than we shouldn't eat. But fasting has its value, as well. Food and acting are for the body. Fasting and being more expansively aware are for the spirit.
Friday, March 12, 2004
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)