The Flower of Unknowing

One could probably spend a lifetime describing something as simple as a flower, especially as it changes, and in its deeper observations, changes you. I sometimes feel as if this is what I do as I share here, chasing the perfect and impossible expression of the One thing that embraces everything.

Intelligence is prior to the mechanism it evolves to express it. Intelligence is more than a possibility within creation but its very foundation. Intelligence is impersonal yet evolves persons. The apparent diversity of persons may never invalidate their unity within the intelligent ground in which they appear.

Language is but a reflection of intelligence - a pointing back to that which it mirrors only partially. It might be said. the language of space is its geometry we call forms. The language of eternity and its silent stillness is the tonal vibration we call time. The language of unity is the sensate connection we call relational love.

The mystic healer studies the language of space, eternity, and unity that they may awaken to the intelligence behind them. Then may arise the absurd idea that they now understand it.

Note to myself: be content with the fascination, the majesty and beauty of unfolding creation. Revel in it and it will become an endless spring of revelation.

The Light of Death

I have long been curious about the mystical symbols spoken of by the adepts. Symbols universal like water and light, like unconditioned Love and Joy. More and more science adds clarity to the metaphysics behind such language, yet our subjectivity is still the domain of "gnosis," that intimate knowledge of experience which can not be denied. There is much research about the near death experience. For those who experience it and those who encounter it second hand it can be life changing. Yet does one need to nearly die to experience its life transforming reality? 

My short answer is NO! I have spoken of my own initiation into the experience of Unity Consciousness. The two dominant attributes for me were Joy or Bliss of which I have had much to say. The second attribute was that of a light which began in my heart and came to rest slightly above my head and toward the front, yet which can be duplicated in any location. It is this light that keeps me company and I have come to call it the light of death because of its similarities with the Near Death Experience. The difference for me is that this experience with light is not of a limited duration nor a experience outside the body necessarily. An out of body experience is neither exclude not required in the interaction with this light, nor a cessation of life functions.

There is a sense of certainty that this light is not only an environment of rarefied experience but also a living entity, that illumines all living things from within. There is nothing truly exterior to it, not even the world of the senses which I have termed the world of color. The dominant experience of this light is not one of color but of brilliance. I have also come to recognize it as glow, meaning it is a self generated light from within itself. The world of color is a world of reflected light yet not different essentially from the light of life. I like to use the Dzogchen word "rigpa" or "clear light" when referring to the light of life.

As a spectral phenomenon, light is divisible into different frequencies or vibrations, each manifesting, geometrically, and with temperature differences, combing in kaleidoscope like patterns with emotional content and cross linked symbolic meanings. This I understand as the "aura" referred to in many traditions. Within this light, the energetic signatures of family, friends and loved ones and the ancestors are available ... even to dialogue with. The archetypes are as well fully represented along with intelligences far different from ours.

I am inclined to say that this is a virtual world and that our ancestors may not abide here "in reality" (reality being so much more than personality). Yet in a virtual world, things virtually identical are indistinguishable one from the other and yet are virtually autonomous and possessed of a temporal independence.

This to me is the very "mind" of the creative. It holds the imprint of memory and designs for the future, yet there is a suspicion that these poles are fluid and that not even the past is fixed nor the future entirely random. it is all "story" being made up in accordance with our capacity to confront or embrace it.

The effect of this light is fundamentally two fold. It is purifying, and clarifying. By purifying I mean that it brings into contrast all things which are not of what Socrates called "the good and the beautiful." By clarifying I mean that it gives a sense of direction and draws us toward our goodness that the things to be released may be released without counter intention. Thus it is always life affirming and seals us with an imprint of the good as our guide.

The effect of the light too is to reveal the indivisible unity and omnipresence of life. Most will experience this Unity as an unconditioned love. The Omnipresence will likely be perceived as some flavor of joy and delight. The dominant mood of these effects is often described as a peace. I offer this brief commentary that all may know such peace is available. May all come to know this light of life where death looses its sting.

On Spiritual Direction

 

At some level I always knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. What I failed to realize was the amount of interdisciplinary knowledge it would require and thus it always seemed as if I was distracted. Such distractions however has a sense of being led even if I could not see their end. 

I was led to become a "cure of souls" or guide of souls with an interfaith orientation. I also realized to become that I needed to be first a student and for 15 years I practiced contemplative disciplines as my foundation. In spite of all I learned I never felt I had achieved sufficient insight into the nature of "soul" and it took a  practiced spiritual guide to find me and mentor to in some ways push me into the practice of spiritual direction.

 

Under his tutelage I learned much but also could not apply much of what he did with me, to others. He was gifted with the ability to see the energy field of others and would customize practices more reminiscent of yoga than anything else. I could not see this energy so I needed to find another way. It was not until 5 years later and a profound mystical experience that I found that other way in the form of what would come to be called energy psychology. This new tool was important in the healing of the human condition. I had long ago realized that what many sought from spiritual practice had little to do with cultivating the Divine Presence, but rather alleviating their very human pain. My traditional psychological studies were for me not very fruitful in addressing these issues on several fronts and I knew I had to pursue this new approach to healing of the soul along with the integration of spiritual disciplines.

 

The highest art in the practice of spiritual direction involves the gift of discernment. Neither tradition, theology nor even scripture are sufficient guides for the repair or resurrection of the soul. Each person must be honored as a unique expression within the common ground of G-d. We are all the elohim... gods in the the common community of G-d. Discernment is about developing both aspects of this sacred mystery of multiplicity in unity, such that neither is invalidated yet is understood as an operation of one will underscoring the well being of the whole or Holy - being that without a second. Without a second means each part is perfect and works for the perfection of the whole. This is love in action - uplifting and being uplifted as a mutual interaction. Discernment is about "getting" this and guiding thusly.

Discernment is rooted in this vision which even the unschooled have access to. Certain skills may be beneficial in implementing this vision such that healing insight and transformation may unfold for the seeker, yet simplicity and gentleness lie in the core of useful spiritual disciplines and healing interventions. If the path set forth seems to steep, it probably is. A path without joy in sight is the wrong path. Even the experience of the dark nights of the senses and of the soul are not meant to be tests of endurance, but of abandonment. They are opportunities to let go and let G-d. Here is where the Spiritual Director is challenged as well as needed. And here is where spiritual community has failed - failed in rising to the challenge of evolving skillful means to restore the seeker one the path of "the joy of the lord" when derailed.

It is in this light that the path of the healer must be united with the path of spiritual formation. The ministry of Jesu exemplifies this in his charge to heal as well as teach the good news. How we have failed - failed in leaving healing to the secular arena which divorced the care of the soul from any spiritual essence. In my Rasa Coaching practice, I often speak to ministers and spiritual leaders in a capacity of advocate for this kind of ministry. Every time I have failed. Every time a tear is shed for the suffering which has no need and religion which has lost its deeper soul and heart connections.  

 

 

Of course the best spiritual guidance is that of connecting one to the inner teacher, that inner voice of the hearts leading and inspiration. The role of the guide is then ultimately  not to be needed. Yet even the guide may need guiding, even if he has to train one for himself. I keep that in mind as I work with people - that I am training them to care for others as I might require for myself. Here the loop is closed in profound spiritual community.

AMEX Radio Interview

Outline of a Radio Interview of 4-17-13 with Aprylisa Snyder on AMEX Radio

              Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOtxo-06yFg&feature=youtu.be

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/energymedicineexchange

  

                                                 

ON RESURRECTION  

Question: What are three main points you would like to share with our audience?
a) Two images of love – fire and light (from the Aramaic)
b) The importance of letting go – love and let go(d).
c) Bliss as the subjective core of love.

 

Question: On the image of "The monk in the lab coat."

Question re: My personal story of spontaneous renunciation and; cultivation of Bliss.

Question … about the medallion I wear around my neck.

a) The Labyrinth – a maze in which you can’t get lost – Just keep moving through the twists and turns of life and you will find the center core.

b) The Phoenix – symbol of death & resurrection
i)  Hesychasts greeting – “May you die before you die” … “May you resurrect before the resurrection.”

ii) Charles DuBois Quote: “The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”
iii) Rasa Coaching – may be said to be about directly engaging this dying & resurrection theme. 

Question (as a coach) How to do that?  
a) Koran Quote:  “Do you not know that you are made of light and love?” - Allah (The Unity)

b) DNA, bio photons, epigenetics – Darwin (Nurturing). 

c)  The fire of love - healing

d)  The light of love - love-bliss – Inner Smile practice (basic)

Rumi Quotes: Lines from Rumi’s poetry chosen and arranged to elaborate on the discussion.*

Note:  love and pain are often associated in our experience, yet, as with the mystics, love is purified of pain by a “passing away” (fana) of the persona and what remains is an essence of perfect joy.  For Rumi, this love-play is symbolized (metaphorically) as wines intoxication.

#1) You are wrapped up in the self from head to tail. What are you looking for in yourself? You’re like water in the jug, encased in earthenware. Embark on the journey of love. It takes you from yourself to Yourself.  And cut the story short, my friend.

#2) If you want to feel rapture, then give up thinking, and quit worrying.

#3) Thoughts are limited, but the one who gathers them is endless. Let what is limited disappear into 

the unlimited.

#4) Don’t be a man of thought. Stay pure and clean. Become a man of joy and ecstasy instead. Reason is a monster on this road. O my soul, get crazy, and go insane. Why are you so reasonable?

#5) Look for the path in the heart, O moonfaced soul. What can you find in the earth besides dust?

#6) In every moment you are reborn anew. But the crowd of people doesn’t know that.

#7) The world vanishes, but God remains. 

#8) This is the whole fortune. This is the whole glory. This is the pleasure. This is the life. There can be no trading, no gain besides this love.

#8) No one there feels jealous of anyone else’s attainments. In the soul’s garden, everyone is happy.

 #9) Your troubles will stay with you until you become God’s drunkard.

#10) Come, O sweet-lipped beauty. Drink this haram wine if you have the nerve. If you have a heart like the sea, pick up the wine that reveals what being human is really about.

#11) Forget about separation. Respect and embrace each other. Strive for Union. Open the door of heaven.

#!2) Who thinks a glass alone is enough?
Who can be happy with just one glass?

#13) Fill your skull with that divine wine. For God’s sake, roll up the covers of reason and the mind. O lovers, remove the garment of self-consciousness. Annihilate yourself while gazing at the face of Immortal Beauty.

*Source: Ergin, Nevit O.; Johnson, Will (2010-04-10). The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication (p. 124). Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Space and "I"

After some years of contemplating the Inner Smile within a modified discipline of Mahamudra (non meditation), I have come to conclude that it is the first "form", a boundless form. It none the less our real form. It is a body so to speak - the anandamaya kosha or "bliss body". It is a "clear light" form. It is the first and last form to which may be attributed an "I".

As one pursues a question like "where is the Inner Smile, it's location, it becomes apparent that it's center and circumference, it's extension and viewpoint, are neither fixed nor determined except by the postulates or considerations of itself.

Form is the Ahamkara, the I maker.  Without form there may be consciousness (without an object) yet no perceptible "I". The "mechanism" of the "I maker" is consciousness with, of and through form. Thus consciousness with/of objects is a requisite of "I-ness".

Enlightened mind is the nature of space itself, as the Buddha said, and all forms are  but modifications of space and geometry. Actually, we are the space in which all appearances show up. All objects are modifications then of space  - that very space which WE ARE. 

 A more intriguing way to say that is; all objects are modification of and within myself - thus I too AM that which I perceive.  This gives me a possibility of both identity and entrapment by the limitations of identity.

Shape shifting then might be considered the supreme game of a formless being. The very meaning and purpose of life is in the shape or form taken and its relationship to boundless space itself as expressed in time. An infinitude of possibilities made finite serve the manifestation of Omnipresence (One-ness) becoming Omniscient (Self aware) at times end. 

***

Post Script

Considerations for healers of conditions include these four:

1) Dissolving the boundaries of a condition into its boundless ground.

2) Regression into a condition prior to the current form.

3) Evolving the condition beyond its limited  boundaries by admixture of possibilities. 

4) Evoking another space-time continuum to identify with, which potentially collapses the current time- line. 

Various methodologies currently exist to help actualize the above shifts of temporal conditions.

                                                                               ***

Note - added 4-10-13

Spatial calibration note for healers:

Notice the space between two things.  Such a measurement may be as distance, time, quantity or quality. It will appear as a duality of some sort and become neutralized, voided or collapsed into a singularity - allowing new possibilities. Polarities may be opposites as with high vs low, or incongruous as apples vs oranges. The latter cultivates creativity.

Space is traditionally, the emptiness of Mahamudra and it's Bliss. Also Space is sky, the dwelling place of the Divine Presence  - the Queendom of Heaven, and the Tathagatagarbha or Buddha womb. It is too ever present paradise, more abundantly available than any conditional form.

Part II

The physicists tell us that space is not empty but the ground of energy itself. 

In its most refined form, Bliss is the energy of Self. It is identical with space. Everything that appears to the mirror of consciousness is a modification of that spatial Bliss. One could easily substitute the idea of space for the abstract nominalizstion of  "energy". 

 

To cultivate this spatial perception will also help to clarify what is meant by the term "Taction" referred to in an earlier blog.  To dissolve the borders, the boundary conditions of a thing, is to return it to the purity of space and expand ones spatial perception as an almost tactile awareness of interconnecting  pulsating grids of spaces. This is the direction Rasa Coaching is taking. A direction more consistent with recognizing what you are. 

The tradition of watching the breath can be made more effective by understanding that breath is an energy pulsation. The physical aspect of the inspiration and expiration mimics the pulsation and the spatial nature of energetic charge. 

The idea of "flow" is analogous to a direct current and pulsation to an alternating current. It is similar to the difference between a pleasurable caress and orgasm. To tune in to the  pulse of the Universe is to live the ecstatic flow of the life force. This is the difference in understanding bliss as a fixed state which can become unsatisfying or even boring, and Bliss as an ever new unfolding of spacial consciousness itself. 

A major difference between a healing event and liberation is that the first is an intervention in a specific stress event or constellation of events. Liberation is a progressive insight into the nature of distress itself, such that all conditions spontaneously self liberate in a field of love-bliss (if allowed).

Sunyata and Healing

My interest in healing evolved as I sought a shortcut to the long ascension path of the traditional spiritual disciplines. I considered we really don't have 30 years or longer to devote to meditation, nor the environment to support such practices and began looking for alternatives.

One thing I saw was that the end phenomenon of most spiritual disciplines was expressed as some form of love-bliss and I reasoned that it was this end phenomenon which could could form the foundation of our beginning practice as well as the end. The Taoists encouraged this cultivation in the form of the yin practice of the Inner Smile, and the Tantrikas as well in the form of Mahamudra practice which is defined as the union of Bliss and Emptiness. The emptiness portion of this practice - described as the realization of the Void, or emptiness of all phenomenon, including that self which we define as personality is implicit in the Buddhist term "sunyata."

I noticed that the end phenomenon of healing, in the disciplines of energy psychology, were likewise a recovery of that joy and freedom which were the earmarks of liberation. There was also a parallel to the idea of sunyata in the theory and practice of "releasing" reactive emotions, sensations and judgements. Releasing or letting go of these lead to the recovery of our native unconditioned joy. Here i saw that as the masters have always said, there is nothing to attain. Rather as the Vajrayana Budhists so eloquently said, it was a matter of clearing the obscuring emotions and their agragates of
experience. Buddha mind was original mind, not a thing created, only recovered.

Today I revisit the idea of the seeking the Void, seeking sunyata or the realization that all phenomenon are ultimately empty (formless) is essentially a healing practice as much as a spiritual discipline. It is interesting to me that the Tantrikas put so much emphasis on what we might consider the negative side of the emotions. Bliss is actually sought through realization of the emptiness of conditions triggering our reactivity - a reclamation of the fluid spaciousness inherent in all things. It is right here, right in the middle of our conditioned illusions - seen as devoid of permanence or independent existence, that healing and freedom manifests. That is the perfection of releasing.

In energy psychology, originally based in meridian theory, tapping works to release our traumas and the incessant replay of inapropriate emotional and psycho-somatic content. Other systems evolved whereby the simple intention to move, "stuck" energy through and out of the body, or holding the
intention to return said energy back to its source, further reinforced the idea that it was a expression of  "void-ance" as a reduction of the energetic "charge" which was invested in its form-ation, leaving it essentially without the power of form needed to effect any harm.

This can also be applied to the several healing methods which counsel us to maintain a certain stance of pure or neutral observation when engaged in healing practice, un-invested in result or the idea of an "I" doing something. This is pure sunyata practice.

The healer then like the Zen inspired archer says "IT" shoots, and the ego gets out of the way. Others might say we become a channel through which "IT" as grace may act, or through which healing happens best the more "I" am out of the way.

This brings me full circle back to my early years of sitting Za-zen for hours each day seeking a realization of the Void. I am encouraged that we as "healers" have new ways of explaining and teaching this, yet I am also struck with a conclusion that there may not yet be very much of a shortcut to any deep realization of this emptiness, which now seems to me to be the very heart of healing as well as enlightenment and liberation. To see the emptiness of a condition, whether it be a physical condition, a mental poisition, an emotional reaction or the Illusory nature of sensate and self existence, seems to the me to be the panacea, the universal remedy, which healers and sages and philosophers have sought for throughout human history.