Respectful greetings, Abaase,
I use that salutation advisedly, because I know from my own experience that sincerity of inquiry takes great courage in an enviroment that does not necessarily welcome it, especially in certain forms. I started on my own journey of inquiry while attending a Catholic high school. In retrospect, a triad of events sent me looking for answers that were not forthcoming from the source that I had considered infalible and inexhaustabel to that point. It seemed I had, despite its good service and good intentions, broke the camel's back. After some time I could no longer even bear to attend the mass I had loved so much, as it only reminded me that I had hit a wall of impenatrable opacity within the Church. This was mitigated later, but in an unexpected manner.
I was not so fortunate as you as to have such a book as "The Third Jesus" to use as one of my mile markers, though I did have other exceptional resources. I also framed my question in somewhat wider terms than you did. Having made a similar observation to yours about the complexity involved not only in Catholicism, but in other faiths as well, my inquiry centered on the matter of "How do I know God directly?" I was, as you might suspect, aware of the injunction that "No man enters Heaven except through me." Well, that statement became a bombshell of exceedingly great proportions, and the portal through which I entered a profound rebirth of understanding.
I must say here, that though I only heard it much later, it was when it was already impossible to turn back that I heard the following injunction: "The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." Also this one: "Spirituality is not a child's play. My words will tear apart anyone who listens to them." Though they were spoken by Nisargadatta, and not the words of my own Mentor, I understood from my own experience what this meant.
We are primarily mental creatures, as far as our perceptions of the world go. This means that in order to survive, as children we internalize by unconscious imitation the ideas and dynamics that form our environment. These are somewhat mitigated by our inborn propensities, wherever those may come from. The meaning of the above statements bear direct consequense on one's perception of the world. I had the imense good fortune to be with a Mentor who knew that as the false perception of Reality is disassembled as a scaffold for experience, the structure of Truth must already be there to enliven the experience of the seeker.
All that is to say that not only did I find a more profound Way of understanding the significance of Jesus, salvation, and all the galaxy of ideas that go with that, but I saw clearly and incontrovertably that the whole of religion as I formerly knew it was an innocently or deliberatly degraded husk of something that is fundamentally profound and miraculous, yet knowable. Indeed, the conjoining of the [I]feeling [/I]of knowing and the ability to see a clear cognative line of understanding precipitated for me a completely different world view than is common among our friends and loved ones. It resloved many seeming contradictions and gave a profound depth to both science and religion that both had previously lacked for me. This also brings with it a profound sense of the void between the fundamentalist practitioner of any form of christianism or strict scientism, even on one who has no more than an intellectual, but clear and certain understanding of the Third Jesus of whom Chopra speaks.
His line of reasoning has no doubt led you to some ideas that are different and disturbing in terms of the Catholic faith. They are mild compared to what is actually the difinitive experience behind them. I urge you to be careful in your desire to discover, because if you continue on this path you will change profoundly. You will become a pink monkey in the pack of furry brown ones. You will not feel seperate from them as you will see that we are all God's creatures, but they will not return that affection. Au contrair. We are a race that tends to crucify its saviors and innovators, or disdain and ignore them at best. It is not for nothing that what you might be embarking on is sometimes called "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility" or "the Way of the Lonely Ones."
You will have to come to the realization that your sole/soul friend is your own eternal Essence. There will be others like you, but they are few and far between with few exceptions. But like my Mentor said, "If you want a friend, be one/One!"
Yet this is the most glorious, if not also the most frustrating in terms of everyday life, aspect of it. One gains an experiential understanding of the root of the Golden Rule in both its forms, and one is found on an unshakable base for a real morality free of dogma. I think it is what has been refered to as "The Peace that passeth understanding" and "being above the Law." It is not that one is without rules, it is that "Thy Will is written in my heart, oh God" and one is rendered incapable of doing harm.
It is this aspect of the Law and Will being in one's own heart that has a transformative value. It is the knowledge and experience of what that means that may distinguish you from the majority of others.
I do not know your age, disposition, or support system as to any profound questioning you might undertake. I simply urge you to be careful, because you are talking here about taking the red pill, in case you have seen a movie called "[I]The Matrix[/I]." Though the merit of the sequels is dubious, the first part has some very significant analogies to the discovery of the true state of Man in the spiritual sense.
So, there you have it in brief. I can be a resource for you if you wish, but it may not be easy for you. I can refere you to others, if that is more helpful. In any case, you have my profound good wishes, as you seek to be a.....what? Something words cannot describe, other than as a transparency to the Divine
Showing posts with label Religion and Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion and Philosophy. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Response to "The Pagan Chist"
I was going to post this on Catholic Answers Forum in reply to someone who couldn't understand the idea that Jesus was 100% both and each God and man. In Catholic theology this teaching is called the hypostatic union. Here is my answer, which is still oversimplified, but touches the main points as best my understanding and language permit. This is something I've been avidly looking into since high school, when three experiences set me on that path. I've also signed and dated this monograph some time ago as wishing to take responsibility for its contents.
I would also like to quote here a pertinent statement from my Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, who said "All of the logic in the world could never unbind the fetters that systems of belief have engendered in the lives of mankind. Of course, those in high places of power are always trying to keep from those who inquire the actual truth of what is happening, and there is nothing more insidious than to have partial truths." This tract, being written word, is inherently incomplete, but is an attempt to point to the Living Presence that constitutes the reason and manifestation of the reader. It also points to what I have come to feel to be my own Truth.
"Here is a perspective I've not seen on here regarding all of these questions. I figure it is OK, since this is the "Non-Catholic Religions" part of the forum and we can allegedly say here things that others believe in order to put them on the table. If that is [I]not[/I] OK with you, stop here and go read something else, because this one was a depth charge for me. It is posted in the spirit of the Sage who said [B]"The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." [/B]That is how serious this is. I'm assuming you are not on here to play, as this search is analogus to taking the red pill, for those who have seen the first installment of The Matrix.
This all goes along wiith the proposition that man is a rationalizing animal. It also goes with the proposition that a single act of creation followed by a period of temporal maintainance and an attempt to "fix" a broken part of that Creation is inconsitent with an eternal God. Eternality has NO component of duration. It is also a low level logic and lack of introspection that to presume that life forms are the demonstration of life. LIFE is a constant unchanging pressure that will seek out every possible form and function of energetic combination as an expression of itself above, below, and including the frequency range of the perceptions of Man. This holds, whatever the opinion, based on limited frequency response and intellectual/affective ability, of any specific examples of its own manifestations.
"The point of view I will try to delineate here is that of the growth of the component in the human we call "awareness." I am distinguishing it here from a word often used interchangeably with it. That word is "consciousness." Here, awareness refers to the ability to experience as an individual. Conscious-ness refers to that quality in the abstract, taken as an underlying Reality.
"As simply put as I can, here it is: Since man has had the ability to reflect on himself, he has had a masculine and feminine component to his awareness as manifested in the two halves of the brain. In the womb, these function as one, and there is only the unawakened feeling of "I." At birth, the awareness must start to distinguish between "this" and "that" in its myriad senses in order to function. This is the knowledge of duality, or of +&-, or of "good and evil." This engenders the sense of being a discreet individual, or "me" as distinct from "you" or "it," etc. The feminine, intuitive side, "eats" of this experience and brings the male component into a dualistic sense of existence, casting the entire [I]sense[/I] awareness from its Eden of wombish bliss as it receeds into the background. The male side goes about the world suffering the pangs of a subject-object awareness, taking the female [I]side[/I] with it. This is especially so in patristic societies, e.g. the church and Western christianist culture.
"The Ancients had among them a few who understood the split within man and knew that healing lay in raising the feminine intuitive to reunite with the masculine logical as an experience in Consciousness. (The experience of the brain surgeion who witnessed her own stroke as the rational portion of her was damaged points to this aspect of awareness.) This healing ( Jesus was in older translations refered to as "Healer" as distinct from more current translations,)constituted "salvation" or [I]realization[/I] of the sense of unity within oneself. This brought with it an ability to realize as well the sense of Unity with Nature, or God.
"The way to this revitalizing of awareness was accomplished by myth and ritual. These myths from at least 5K years ago included virgin birth in a cave or manger, miracles, an ignominious death, and a Resurrection. All these were tied in as well with the cycles of Nature as a mnemonic system.
"Over the ages thousands of people who knew these stories went into the desert and came back with their particular revelations of the meanings for them, with or without the actual intended end of the reunification of the individual sense of Self.
"Three or four of these revelations came into popularity for one reason or another. As they became politicized and degraded for public consumption, the mystery was lost and the husk was systematized into dogma.
"In the case of the Roman Church, and thereafter other forms of christianism, the mystery of transformation became historicised by being attributed to an historic person. It was taught that Divinity in Man occured solely in this one individual, whereas in the mystery religions and Eastern philosophies it was known to be the reward of a particular kind of effort. This new teaching which coalesced about the third century, effectively acted as a prophylactic against the knowledge that the hypostatic union is the inheritance of every person who does the work of transformation. It is yet understood in many systems that in the three centuries after Jesus, the milieu of ideas surrounding the transformative act became lost in the dogmatic-ization and historicization of a remote and singular.god-man who symbolically did what is in fact our own life's work.
"This teaching also accounts for the attribution of personality to God, or Consciousness, or Principle, and duration to eternality, both of which concepts are semantic impossibilities. It also accounts for the "fides sola," etc. approaches all of which require a remote savior. It also militates against the working our of our own salvation in fear and trembling (and love and joy) as Paul recommended.
"So, the anointed (Christ, or 2nd person) aspect of Jesus is his awareness of the Unity of Conscious-ness which he expressed as "I and the Father are One." History give other examples of such realizations. Thus, he is 100% God as recognition of his [I]Essence[/I] stemming from and being equal to Divinity, and 100% man because he was and we are, "the son of man." As a human He was one who had the distinction of being one of the Accomplished ones.
"As for the trinity, the "I" or the Pure Consciousness factor of Being can be equated with the Father. (Masculine.) The "I [I]AM[/I]," the creative, (Feminine, 'Elohim' is plural feminine) can be equated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, Man, capable of both practical (subject-object) and "nirvanic" or contentless unitary awareness is created in the "image and likeness of God." The Son can be equated with the knowledge [I]by identity [/I]of the essential root and stemming of each of us from THAT Source. It may be stated as "I AM THAT I AM." "The I AM is the vine, the "you's" and "me's." the branches. The nervous system is the "bush." or the "tree with its root in heaven," or the human body that burns without being consumed upon the realization of this Fact. In some traditions, when this realization occurs, the exclamation sometimes is [I]"I have not been deceived![/I"' and can be accompanied by a great feeling of heat in the body as it readjusts itself to the new perspective.
"This new "born again" understanding is also the basis of a viable morality. If one, in his deepest feeling of being, understands the Unity of all life, he is incapable of doing harm to living things or their support system and can only do works which promote the over all Good, as whatever he does, he does to himself. This psychologically, spiritually, and practically fulfills both the positively and negatively stated Golden Rule. It also fulfills "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Much of this viewpoint is delineated very well in a book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest and long time religion editor for the Toronto Star. It is called "[I]The Pagan Christ: Is Literalism Killing Christianity?"[/I] It is written from the standpoint of revitalizing the interpretations of the Bible and the Christian faith in general. I doubt it will have much popularity. I will be glad to furnish you with other titles if you are interested. What I personally like about this direction of understanding is that it comprehends the basics of many religions while de-fusing the encrustations of emotionally laden dogma that act to separate all those who purport to believe in one God.
I would also like to quote here a pertinent statement from my Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, who said "All of the logic in the world could never unbind the fetters that systems of belief have engendered in the lives of mankind. Of course, those in high places of power are always trying to keep from those who inquire the actual truth of what is happening, and there is nothing more insidious than to have partial truths." This tract, being written word, is inherently incomplete, but is an attempt to point to the Living Presence that constitutes the reason and manifestation of the reader. It also points to what I have come to feel to be my own Truth.
"Here is a perspective I've not seen on here regarding all of these questions. I figure it is OK, since this is the "Non-Catholic Religions" part of the forum and we can allegedly say here things that others believe in order to put them on the table. If that is [I]not[/I] OK with you, stop here and go read something else, because this one was a depth charge for me. It is posted in the spirit of the Sage who said [B]"The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." [/B]That is how serious this is. I'm assuming you are not on here to play, as this search is analogus to taking the red pill, for those who have seen the first installment of The Matrix.
This all goes along wiith the proposition that man is a rationalizing animal. It also goes with the proposition that a single act of creation followed by a period of temporal maintainance and an attempt to "fix" a broken part of that Creation is inconsitent with an eternal God. Eternality has NO component of duration. It is also a low level logic and lack of introspection that to presume that life forms are the demonstration of life. LIFE is a constant unchanging pressure that will seek out every possible form and function of energetic combination as an expression of itself above, below, and including the frequency range of the perceptions of Man. This holds, whatever the opinion, based on limited frequency response and intellectual/affective ability, of any specific examples of its own manifestations.
"The point of view I will try to delineate here is that of the growth of the component in the human we call "awareness." I am distinguishing it here from a word often used interchangeably with it. That word is "consciousness." Here, awareness refers to the ability to experience as an individual. Conscious-ness refers to that quality in the abstract, taken as an underlying Reality.
"As simply put as I can, here it is: Since man has had the ability to reflect on himself, he has had a masculine and feminine component to his awareness as manifested in the two halves of the brain. In the womb, these function as one, and there is only the unawakened feeling of "I." At birth, the awareness must start to distinguish between "this" and "that" in its myriad senses in order to function. This is the knowledge of duality, or of +&-, or of "good and evil." This engenders the sense of being a discreet individual, or "me" as distinct from "you" or "it," etc. The feminine, intuitive side, "eats" of this experience and brings the male component into a dualistic sense of existence, casting the entire [I]sense[/I] awareness from its Eden of wombish bliss as it receeds into the background. The male side goes about the world suffering the pangs of a subject-object awareness, taking the female [I]side[/I] with it. This is especially so in patristic societies, e.g. the church and Western christianist culture.
"The Ancients had among them a few who understood the split within man and knew that healing lay in raising the feminine intuitive to reunite with the masculine logical as an experience in Consciousness. (The experience of the brain surgeion who witnessed her own stroke as the rational portion of her was damaged points to this aspect of awareness.) This healing ( Jesus was in older translations refered to as "Healer" as distinct from more current translations,)constituted "salvation" or [I]realization[/I] of the sense of unity within oneself. This brought with it an ability to realize as well the sense of Unity with Nature, or God.
"The way to this revitalizing of awareness was accomplished by myth and ritual. These myths from at least 5K years ago included virgin birth in a cave or manger, miracles, an ignominious death, and a Resurrection. All these were tied in as well with the cycles of Nature as a mnemonic system.
"Over the ages thousands of people who knew these stories went into the desert and came back with their particular revelations of the meanings for them, with or without the actual intended end of the reunification of the individual sense of Self.
"Three or four of these revelations came into popularity for one reason or another. As they became politicized and degraded for public consumption, the mystery was lost and the husk was systematized into dogma.
"In the case of the Roman Church, and thereafter other forms of christianism, the mystery of transformation became historicised by being attributed to an historic person. It was taught that Divinity in Man occured solely in this one individual, whereas in the mystery religions and Eastern philosophies it was known to be the reward of a particular kind of effort. This new teaching which coalesced about the third century, effectively acted as a prophylactic against the knowledge that the hypostatic union is the inheritance of every person who does the work of transformation. It is yet understood in many systems that in the three centuries after Jesus, the milieu of ideas surrounding the transformative act became lost in the dogmatic-ization and historicization of a remote and singular.god-man who symbolically did what is in fact our own life's work.
"This teaching also accounts for the attribution of personality to God, or Consciousness, or Principle, and duration to eternality, both of which concepts are semantic impossibilities. It also accounts for the "fides sola," etc. approaches all of which require a remote savior. It also militates against the working our of our own salvation in fear and trembling (and love and joy) as Paul recommended.
"So, the anointed (Christ, or 2nd person) aspect of Jesus is his awareness of the Unity of Conscious-ness which he expressed as "I and the Father are One." History give other examples of such realizations. Thus, he is 100% God as recognition of his [I]Essence[/I] stemming from and being equal to Divinity, and 100% man because he was and we are, "the son of man." As a human He was one who had the distinction of being one of the Accomplished ones.
"As for the trinity, the "I" or the Pure Consciousness factor of Being can be equated with the Father. (Masculine.) The "I [I]AM[/I]," the creative, (Feminine, 'Elohim' is plural feminine) can be equated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, Man, capable of both practical (subject-object) and "nirvanic" or contentless unitary awareness is created in the "image and likeness of God." The Son can be equated with the knowledge [I]by identity [/I]of the essential root and stemming of each of us from THAT Source. It may be stated as "I AM THAT I AM." "The I AM is the vine, the "you's" and "me's." the branches. The nervous system is the "bush." or the "tree with its root in heaven," or the human body that burns without being consumed upon the realization of this Fact. In some traditions, when this realization occurs, the exclamation sometimes is [I]"I have not been deceived![/I"' and can be accompanied by a great feeling of heat in the body as it readjusts itself to the new perspective.
"This new "born again" understanding is also the basis of a viable morality. If one, in his deepest feeling of being, understands the Unity of all life, he is incapable of doing harm to living things or their support system and can only do works which promote the over all Good, as whatever he does, he does to himself. This psychologically, spiritually, and practically fulfills both the positively and negatively stated Golden Rule. It also fulfills "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Much of this viewpoint is delineated very well in a book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest and long time religion editor for the Toronto Star. It is called "[I]The Pagan Christ: Is Literalism Killing Christianity?"[/I] It is written from the standpoint of revitalizing the interpretations of the Bible and the Christian faith in general. I doubt it will have much popularity. I will be glad to furnish you with other titles if you are interested. What I personally like about this direction of understanding is that it comprehends the basics of many religions while de-fusing the encrustations of emotionally laden dogma that act to separate all those who purport to believe in one God.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
About open mindedness
For me a clarifying point regarding open mindedness is a dynamic posed by Don Juan Matus. He posited that each of us has an assemblage point. It is the point or perspective around which we consciously and unconsciously yet deliberately assemble the picture of our world that we call "real." Many factors enter in to the positioning of this point. Religious faith is one of these, but most of the factors are subliminal and not available to our reasoning minds--yet we sense that we are reasoning. This dynamic is born out to a great extent not only by a study of human mentality as a discpline, but by self examination as well. The injunction "Know Thyself" is not to be taken lightly, but is a tool for honesty, insight, and wisdom.
On the level of religious affiliation, if we accept this idea of an assemblage point, we could ascribe that name to our understanding of our own faith, that of others, and of their relative positions on various value scales. Yet, as someone earlier on in this thread mentioned, what we profess and how we act as Catholics are quite dissimilar according to pew polls. I would imagine that in order to remain sane, it would be necessary to "compart--mentalize" our thinking in order to experience a smoothness that includes contraries. Mark Twain said that man is not a rational animal, he is a retionalizing animal. There seems to be some truth in that.
K.G. Mills said ""Perhaps the root of the problem within the world and within yourself is the refusal to face conflicting beliefs, which are obliterated by correct Identitiy." Correct Identity, we might say, can be approached by knowing our Self. This is an intense activity requiring aciduous honesty. There is no room for dogmatic piety or parochial attitudes in this search. So I would say that being closed or open minded is an internal function relative to the integrity one has within the entire arena of their awareness.
For my own part, I had to go through a revison of my entire inventory of beleifs when I had a near death experience. I had to incorporate new experiential data. You might say that my assemblage point was moved for me. It was a rude awakening. I saw clearly that I was not allowing communication between different "persona" which emerged in different situations. There were too many "me's" to have any sense of integrity. I can't say at this time that I am healed and whole, but I can say that I see with different eyes and have compassion for myself and those who are in the trap of a mind closed to itself. I guess I am now more concerned with the beam in my own eye as distinct from the mote in someone else's. It allows me to talk dispassionatley about potentially "loaded" subjects with other "beamers." You might say that my mind is more open because I saw how closed my own can be.
On the level of religious affiliation, if we accept this idea of an assemblage point, we could ascribe that name to our understanding of our own faith, that of others, and of their relative positions on various value scales. Yet, as someone earlier on in this thread mentioned, what we profess and how we act as Catholics are quite dissimilar according to pew polls. I would imagine that in order to remain sane, it would be necessary to "compart--mentalize" our thinking in order to experience a smoothness that includes contraries. Mark Twain said that man is not a rational animal, he is a retionalizing animal. There seems to be some truth in that.
K.G. Mills said ""Perhaps the root of the problem within the world and within yourself is the refusal to face conflicting beliefs, which are obliterated by correct Identitiy." Correct Identity, we might say, can be approached by knowing our Self. This is an intense activity requiring aciduous honesty. There is no room for dogmatic piety or parochial attitudes in this search. So I would say that being closed or open minded is an internal function relative to the integrity one has within the entire arena of their awareness.
For my own part, I had to go through a revison of my entire inventory of beleifs when I had a near death experience. I had to incorporate new experiential data. You might say that my assemblage point was moved for me. It was a rude awakening. I saw clearly that I was not allowing communication between different "persona" which emerged in different situations. There were too many "me's" to have any sense of integrity. I can't say at this time that I am healed and whole, but I can say that I see with different eyes and have compassion for myself and those who are in the trap of a mind closed to itself. I guess I am now more concerned with the beam in my own eye as distinct from the mote in someone else's. It allows me to talk dispassionatley about potentially "loaded" subjects with other "beamers." You might say that my mind is more open because I saw how closed my own can be.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
My "religion."
I sent this as a repy to someone who asked what I beleive in as a religion. I am open to any comments or criticsms from anyone who was an associate of Dr. Mills, or anyone who experiential knows the meaning of "Advaita" or "Non-dualism."
"Thanks for your interest. What you might term a religion, I might term a "Standpoint." Though I am not a Christian Scientist, the founder of that faith put it rather well: "The Universe must be interpreted from the Standpoint of the Creator of the Universe.." She also said "God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect." It should not be mistaken from my quoting her that she is by any means the sole or definitive example of what I stand for. My own Mentor in this Way, Dr. K.G. Mills, used every appropriate quote or passage from any Proponent of this Way he could find. Like a good piano teacher, which he was, he instructed his associates by the study of passages appropriate to the moment, using his own experience and statements as an encouragement and example for the growth in unique expression of each of his voluntary charges.
I say "voluntary" because his contract with us was that he would speak if asked, and otherwise remain ordinary in appearance. Yet I would class him in terms of understanding and action with such Giants as Buddha, Lau Tze, Jesus, St. Francis, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Merrell-Wolff, Shankara, Byron Katie, and others of their ilk. "Their ilk" is the company of all those Saints and Sages of the ages who, independent of time, location, culture, or training, had and were examples of a revelation of amazing homogenaiety. This revelation has been called Advaita in the East, and I use that name only as a convenience. In the West it might be called Non-Dualism. That said, any "ism" is a limit and makes distinctions, as such is the nature of mortal mind.
In any case, the revelation predicates itself on an experiential understanding of the Allness of God. This makes all of these folks "atheists" in the realm of the ordianry understanding of God as a Being apart and objective to a Creation. The sole reason for this radical* understanding is that the fundamental premise of this Way is the knowledge by Identity** that the component we call "I" is not seperate from God. If a god seems separate, it is due to the misallignment of the component called "me" or "person" which necessarily exists only as an aspect and function of time and space. The delusion of separation is due to the false association fo the "I" with the appearance and association with the limited sensatons of living as a seeming "part" in space/time. This association with a viewpoint also strongly fosters the convincing need for a subject/object mode of awarenss, as distinct from the undifferentiated Consciousness from which it stems and is not separate from.
On examintation, it is possible to discern that we interpret our experience according to language and assumptions we accept, necessarily, as children, from people whose experience is generally survival oriented and parochial to whatever degree. These languages and attitudes have inherent defects due to their temporal and "ad hoc" origins and nature. If we use our innate ability to step outside ourselves and see ourselves in a greater context, as a phenomenon, then we are proceeding in a direction of discovery as to the Nature of our experience as distinct from its circumstances. The examination of this Nature is found to be rooted in Consciousness. Without Consciousness as a Principle supporting our experience as awareness, we really have no life. My Mentor stated that "Consciousness is the Light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts."
The Understanding of life and its exigencies, as well as its natural phenomenon, structures and systems, each and all, from the Standpoint of interpretation that it is all at the root ONE expression of undivided Divinity, with our individual senses of existance not seperate from that, might be said to constitute the premise of Advaita or Non-Dualism. This is not a denial of any feeling or appearance of individuality, it simply attributes the Source of that feeling, etc. more correctly as a pointing to its actual origin.
From that premise comes the ultimate sense of morality. How could I do wrong to myself appearing as another, whether that is person, place, or thing? Is God divided against himself? No. But mentatlity in a space time continuum, due to the appearence of difference, can construe arbitrary divisions based on an animalistic sense of survival not founded in Reality. Knowing that Reality of root Oneness precludes harm to others by any means.
Think about it. If people who dump crap in streams or empty stacks into the air asked themselves " Would I put this in my own home?" woud there be pollution? If people who create money as banks from nothing against your labor and added value asked themselves " would I commit usery on myself?" would we be in the current financial crisis? And on it goes.
A vast simplification of Advaita is simply stated in the two forms we all know the name of: "Do not unto others what you would not have done unto yourself; do unto others as you would have done unto yourself." What does anyone think those admonitions are based on? For may part, a correct reading of the Bible would reveal that Jesus Himslef was a proponent of Advaita. He pretty much declared it by saying "It is not the son of man that doeth the works, but the Father in me that doeth them. " and "I and the Father are One." Not "me," dear angel, but "I." The one and only "I" that ever was or will be, appearing for the sake of the play and brief moment on the stage as you an me. That is a mystery, a miracle, and a joy passing understanding.
I hope that the above has been of some use in a way of understanding at least in theory what is being pointed to."
* it would be worth looking up "radical" and discovering its word origin.
**There is a saying in Borneo: " All knowledge is theoretical until it is in the muscles." Knowledge by Identity is distinct from book learning, assumptions, prejudices, information, beliefe, or any other way of "knowing." It is well and thoroughly treated in Merrel-Woff's book "The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object." His arrival at the points therein are fascinatingly described in his first book, "Pathways Through to Space."
"Thanks for your interest. What you might term a religion, I might term a "Standpoint." Though I am not a Christian Scientist, the founder of that faith put it rather well: "The Universe must be interpreted from the Standpoint of the Creator of the Universe.." She also said "God is universal; confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect." It should not be mistaken from my quoting her that she is by any means the sole or definitive example of what I stand for. My own Mentor in this Way, Dr. K.G. Mills, used every appropriate quote or passage from any Proponent of this Way he could find. Like a good piano teacher, which he was, he instructed his associates by the study of passages appropriate to the moment, using his own experience and statements as an encouragement and example for the growth in unique expression of each of his voluntary charges.
I say "voluntary" because his contract with us was that he would speak if asked, and otherwise remain ordinary in appearance. Yet I would class him in terms of understanding and action with such Giants as Buddha, Lau Tze, Jesus, St. Francis, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Merrell-Wolff, Shankara, Byron Katie, and others of their ilk. "Their ilk" is the company of all those Saints and Sages of the ages who, independent of time, location, culture, or training, had and were examples of a revelation of amazing homogenaiety. This revelation has been called Advaita in the East, and I use that name only as a convenience. In the West it might be called Non-Dualism. That said, any "ism" is a limit and makes distinctions, as such is the nature of mortal mind.
In any case, the revelation predicates itself on an experiential understanding of the Allness of God. This makes all of these folks "atheists" in the realm of the ordianry understanding of God as a Being apart and objective to a Creation. The sole reason for this radical* understanding is that the fundamental premise of this Way is the knowledge by Identity** that the component we call "I" is not seperate from God. If a god seems separate, it is due to the misallignment of the component called "me" or "person" which necessarily exists only as an aspect and function of time and space. The delusion of separation is due to the false association fo the "I" with the appearance and association with the limited sensatons of living as a seeming "part" in space/time. This association with a viewpoint also strongly fosters the convincing need for a subject/object mode of awarenss, as distinct from the undifferentiated Consciousness from which it stems and is not separate from.
On examintation, it is possible to discern that we interpret our experience according to language and assumptions we accept, necessarily, as children, from people whose experience is generally survival oriented and parochial to whatever degree. These languages and attitudes have inherent defects due to their temporal and "ad hoc" origins and nature. If we use our innate ability to step outside ourselves and see ourselves in a greater context, as a phenomenon, then we are proceeding in a direction of discovery as to the Nature of our experience as distinct from its circumstances. The examination of this Nature is found to be rooted in Consciousness. Without Consciousness as a Principle supporting our experience as awareness, we really have no life. My Mentor stated that "Consciousness is the Light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts."
The Understanding of life and its exigencies, as well as its natural phenomenon, structures and systems, each and all, from the Standpoint of interpretation that it is all at the root ONE expression of undivided Divinity, with our individual senses of existance not seperate from that, might be said to constitute the premise of Advaita or Non-Dualism. This is not a denial of any feeling or appearance of individuality, it simply attributes the Source of that feeling, etc. more correctly as a pointing to its actual origin.
From that premise comes the ultimate sense of morality. How could I do wrong to myself appearing as another, whether that is person, place, or thing? Is God divided against himself? No. But mentatlity in a space time continuum, due to the appearence of difference, can construe arbitrary divisions based on an animalistic sense of survival not founded in Reality. Knowing that Reality of root Oneness precludes harm to others by any means.
Think about it. If people who dump crap in streams or empty stacks into the air asked themselves " Would I put this in my own home?" woud there be pollution? If people who create money as banks from nothing against your labor and added value asked themselves " would I commit usery on myself?" would we be in the current financial crisis? And on it goes.
A vast simplification of Advaita is simply stated in the two forms we all know the name of: "Do not unto others what you would not have done unto yourself; do unto others as you would have done unto yourself." What does anyone think those admonitions are based on? For may part, a correct reading of the Bible would reveal that Jesus Himslef was a proponent of Advaita. He pretty much declared it by saying "It is not the son of man that doeth the works, but the Father in me that doeth them. " and "I and the Father are One." Not "me," dear angel, but "I." The one and only "I" that ever was or will be, appearing for the sake of the play and brief moment on the stage as you an me. That is a mystery, a miracle, and a joy passing understanding.
I hope that the above has been of some use in a way of understanding at least in theory what is being pointed to."
* it would be worth looking up "radical" and discovering its word origin.
**There is a saying in Borneo: " All knowledge is theoretical until it is in the muscles." Knowledge by Identity is distinct from book learning, assumptions, prejudices, information, beliefe, or any other way of "knowing." It is well and thoroughly treated in Merrel-Woff's book "The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object." His arrival at the points therein are fascinatingly described in his first book, "Pathways Through to Space."
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Letter to the Venus Project
I recently encountered a wonderful site on line that advocates the idea of a resource based economy as distinct from a scarcity based economy. It is called The Venus Project. (http://www.thevenusproject.com/) I liked what they had to say, but was concerned about a procedural matter, so wrote them the following:
"Dear Friends,
"I call you 'Friends' because I feel a bond with anyone who is doing work toward the fulfillment of our potential as Conscious Awareness Beings on this Earth. I have some questions that I do not see addressed in your material, at least in any heading form. These questions have to do with the deconstruction of the present form of plutosocial systems that are in the hands of private individuals and which control governments. As we have seen, money obstructs change. We have also seen that possession of a human body only denotes potential, not fact or fulfillment. It does not even imply control of that body or its potential ability to precipitate experience, including technology, but especially change within or without the person. In apparent fact the vast mass of humans is unaware of other than their immediate circumstances and the needs engendered by such. This is true of persons living in hunter/gatherer societies even through the populations of great cities which use the inventions of others and therefore think themselves civilized.
"When Mahatma Gandhi toured London he was asked by a reporter "Mr. Gandhi, what is your opinion of Western civilization?" He replied "I think it would be a very good idea." This statement epitomizes the dilemma of the soul based Conscious awareness confronting the plutosocial momentum of those manipulating and those enslaved mentally to the systems currently holding sway over our ways and means. In other words, the general population is unaware of any other way, or even the possibility of any other way. Indeed, if such a way is suggested, as I am sure you know from experience, it is most likely met with the resistance of a cornered animal. A case in point might be the popular ignorance of the actual mechanics and consequences of the fractional reserve banking system.
"So, from the economic top one percent of the world population which owns about 40% of the world's defined material wealth, down to the economic bottom 50% which collectively owns about one percent, we are dealing with a mass of animal reactivity momentum interspersed by a fractionally very small number who are capable of conceiving original thoughts and directions. It is these few who can technologically change things whether by language or instrument. That change is mitigated, as stated, by the factor of those who are invested in the protection of paper and material wealth. The level of attachment indicated by that protection includes every kind and degree of inhumanity ever perpetrated. We have to conclude that there is an immense dysfunction for these people and their minions of whatever description in the quale of self identity. That self identity is attached to and greatly resists being dislodged from identification of self with material comfort and power.
"So, to my question: How do the proponents of the Venus Project, as vastly wonderful as their vision is, propose to confront the laws of inertia as manifested in the plutosocial realm? I greatly acknowledge in this regard the importance and basic rightness of your vision. Indeed, it says in one book that "a nation without vision shall perish." It means, I think, vision in accordance with Nature, and we are currently witnessing and experiencing the lack of vision on the part of the population that has allowed themselves willingly into slavery. I am asking, therefore, what steps you advocate, other than disseminating information encompassing the Project and agreement with it, to precipitate the changes you desire?
Best regards and Q'plah,
Anton Nemeth"
"Dear Friends,
"I call you 'Friends' because I feel a bond with anyone who is doing work toward the fulfillment of our potential as Conscious Awareness Beings on this Earth. I have some questions that I do not see addressed in your material, at least in any heading form. These questions have to do with the deconstruction of the present form of plutosocial systems that are in the hands of private individuals and which control governments. As we have seen, money obstructs change. We have also seen that possession of a human body only denotes potential, not fact or fulfillment. It does not even imply control of that body or its potential ability to precipitate experience, including technology, but especially change within or without the person. In apparent fact the vast mass of humans is unaware of other than their immediate circumstances and the needs engendered by such. This is true of persons living in hunter/gatherer societies even through the populations of great cities which use the inventions of others and therefore think themselves civilized.
"When Mahatma Gandhi toured London he was asked by a reporter "Mr. Gandhi, what is your opinion of Western civilization?" He replied "I think it would be a very good idea." This statement epitomizes the dilemma of the soul based Conscious awareness confronting the plutosocial momentum of those manipulating and those enslaved mentally to the systems currently holding sway over our ways and means. In other words, the general population is unaware of any other way, or even the possibility of any other way. Indeed, if such a way is suggested, as I am sure you know from experience, it is most likely met with the resistance of a cornered animal. A case in point might be the popular ignorance of the actual mechanics and consequences of the fractional reserve banking system.
"So, from the economic top one percent of the world population which owns about 40% of the world's defined material wealth, down to the economic bottom 50% which collectively owns about one percent, we are dealing with a mass of animal reactivity momentum interspersed by a fractionally very small number who are capable of conceiving original thoughts and directions. It is these few who can technologically change things whether by language or instrument. That change is mitigated, as stated, by the factor of those who are invested in the protection of paper and material wealth. The level of attachment indicated by that protection includes every kind and degree of inhumanity ever perpetrated. We have to conclude that there is an immense dysfunction for these people and their minions of whatever description in the quale of self identity. That self identity is attached to and greatly resists being dislodged from identification of self with material comfort and power.
"So, to my question: How do the proponents of the Venus Project, as vastly wonderful as their vision is, propose to confront the laws of inertia as manifested in the plutosocial realm? I greatly acknowledge in this regard the importance and basic rightness of your vision. Indeed, it says in one book that "a nation without vision shall perish." It means, I think, vision in accordance with Nature, and we are currently witnessing and experiencing the lack of vision on the part of the population that has allowed themselves willingly into slavery. I am asking, therefore, what steps you advocate, other than disseminating information encompassing the Project and agreement with it, to precipitate the changes you desire?
Best regards and Q'plah,
Anton Nemeth"
Friday, July 11, 2008
Quotes from Nisargadatta Maharaj
I was introduced to the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj by my Dear Mentor, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills, without whose instruction and example as Presence the following quotes would have no meaning for me. I offer them as an invitation in the consideration of what constitutes our right Identity, That, which we are before we think we are this, and without which there could not be the perception of thought.
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live."
***
"I do not accept paths... All paths lead to unreality. Paths are creations within the scope of knowledge. Therefore, paths and movements cannot transport you into reality because their function is to enmesh you within the dimension of knowledge, while reality prevails prior to it."
***
"Realization is of the fact that you are not a person."
***
"Personal entity and enlightenment cannot go together."
***
"There can be no person that is Self-realized."
***
"Why does this conflict normally occur? Why this dispute between us? People come here with some profound concept of spirituality. They think they have spiritual knowledge and they want me to give them a clean certificate: "yes, you are knowledgeable". This I don't do. I blast their concepts, and hence the confrontation... All knowledge is ignorance."
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live."
***
"I do not accept paths... All paths lead to unreality. Paths are creations within the scope of knowledge. Therefore, paths and movements cannot transport you into reality because their function is to enmesh you within the dimension of knowledge, while reality prevails prior to it."
***
"Realization is of the fact that you are not a person."
***
"Personal entity and enlightenment cannot go together."
***
"There can be no person that is Self-realized."
***
"Why does this conflict normally occur? Why this dispute between us? People come here with some profound concept of spirituality. They think they have spiritual knowledge and they want me to give them a clean certificate: "yes, you are knowledgeable". This I don't do. I blast their concepts, and hence the confrontation... All knowledge is ignorance."
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
About the possibility of a "Dark Age."
(This post is an excerpt from an ongoing discussion about such books as "The Long Emergency" and "The Comming Dark Age" as it appears in a forum called JUSTCOZ at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justcoz. It is a site dedicated to the promotion of self sufficiency in local communities.)
Yes, Jacob's thesis (in "Dark Age Comming") appears pessimistic, but she states clearly that it is the description of a tendency, not a fate. She has great faith in our ability to change our course and the book is meant as a lens to focus our energies on specific leverage points.
In this regard I certainly agree with the simile of wealth as energy. Money is a symbol of work done, therefore can represent energy and its governance. Faith based and politically based systems are inadequate to deal with money as they are, to various degrees, adversarial systems, and though possibly valid within themselves,
ultimatley not accurate as models distributed wholley over the Universe. Being that they are localized, they are parochial attempts to get by in and explain "Life," and are, as we know them, at the root of the failure of Western society to cope with the world as it actually IS in an epistemological or ontological sense. That is why
societies that percieve Mankind as a function of Nature as distinct from a controler of Nature have a more one-to-one accuracy in their experience of existence, and a more accurate psychological map of our relationship with the World. Anyone as a physcist might appreciate the importance of this perspective as it is outlined in
Bohm's "Wholenesss and the Implicate Order" or Talbot's "The Holographic Universe."
Herein lies the link between personal maturity and responsibility. I am personally convinced that the founders of the great religions had the insight that we (I) and the Universe IS One in Essence, and based their ethic on that premise. This was dogmatized into faith systems, corrupted, naturally, into that by lesser souls who sold it to well meaning folk of lesser insight who were ready to recieve whatever
leadership would help their emotional nature cope. This is the human way. The "highest" path described in religious literature that I am aware of is known by its practitioners, among other names, as "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility."
That Path is at the root of the desired success of the bumper sticker that says "Do No Harm." Why would one harm what or who is Essentialy themselves, or their Self? The vastly immature understanding and practice of the concept of "Self" contributes to the afformentioned adversarial relationships in the most destructive ways. It is why the "Golden Rule" in either form lacks practice. I suspect that if translators had a more accurate grasp of the implications and referents of the the word idea translated as "I" from Aramaic and other languages, we might have a far different face on our dogmatized faiths, whether religious, political, or scientific. The idea of discreet individuals in competition with Nature and each other is an egoic invention punctured by the demonstrations of cooperation based on Love. That sees only Itself growing in maturity and wisdom, incapable of not bringing all its manifestations as people and their world with it. Such a standpoint also enables the perception of dissolution to be experienced as a function of creativity, where the
falling apart of a system is only the necessary step required for the enabling of a more encompassing functional understanding. But again, that requires the impersonal maturity and responsibility of the participents, eh?
Yes, Jacob's thesis (in "Dark Age Comming") appears pessimistic, but she states clearly that it is the description of a tendency, not a fate. She has great faith in our ability to change our course and the book is meant as a lens to focus our energies on specific leverage points.
In this regard I certainly agree with the simile of wealth as energy. Money is a symbol of work done, therefore can represent energy and its governance. Faith based and politically based systems are inadequate to deal with money as they are, to various degrees, adversarial systems, and though possibly valid within themselves,
ultimatley not accurate as models distributed wholley over the Universe. Being that they are localized, they are parochial attempts to get by in and explain "Life," and are, as we know them, at the root of the failure of Western society to cope with the world as it actually IS in an epistemological or ontological sense. That is why
societies that percieve Mankind as a function of Nature as distinct from a controler of Nature have a more one-to-one accuracy in their experience of existence, and a more accurate psychological map of our relationship with the World. Anyone as a physcist might appreciate the importance of this perspective as it is outlined in
Bohm's "Wholenesss and the Implicate Order" or Talbot's "The Holographic Universe."
Herein lies the link between personal maturity and responsibility. I am personally convinced that the founders of the great religions had the insight that we (I) and the Universe IS One in Essence, and based their ethic on that premise. This was dogmatized into faith systems, corrupted, naturally, into that by lesser souls who sold it to well meaning folk of lesser insight who were ready to recieve whatever
leadership would help their emotional nature cope. This is the human way. The "highest" path described in religious literature that I am aware of is known by its practitioners, among other names, as "The Path of Ultimate Responsibility."
That Path is at the root of the desired success of the bumper sticker that says "Do No Harm." Why would one harm what or who is Essentialy themselves, or their Self? The vastly immature understanding and practice of the concept of "Self" contributes to the afformentioned adversarial relationships in the most destructive ways. It is why the "Golden Rule" in either form lacks practice. I suspect that if translators had a more accurate grasp of the implications and referents of the the word idea translated as "I" from Aramaic and other languages, we might have a far different face on our dogmatized faiths, whether religious, political, or scientific. The idea of discreet individuals in competition with Nature and each other is an egoic invention punctured by the demonstrations of cooperation based on Love. That sees only Itself growing in maturity and wisdom, incapable of not bringing all its manifestations as people and their world with it. Such a standpoint also enables the perception of dissolution to be experienced as a function of creativity, where the
falling apart of a system is only the necessary step required for the enabling of a more encompassing functional understanding. But again, that requires the impersonal maturity and responsibility of the participents, eh?
Monday, March 3, 2008
A reply to someone who credited the "fish brain" as the root of evil.
I agree with you about the fish brain (also known as the reptilian or monkey brain to some) theory to some extent. One of my favorite sayings is Gandhi's reply to a reporter who asked him, after a tour of the modern wonders of London, what he thought of Western civilization. Gandhi replied "I think it would be a very good idea." I took that mostly to mean that appearance dosn't necessarily mean substance, despite our looking like, or agreeing with each other that we are cultured.
Similarly, it is my opinion that Satan, the name for the fallen Lucifer, is a symbolic--yet very functioning--aspect of awareness. More precisely, of the lack of awareness of higher functions and perceptions, particularly those having to do with the unitary nature of Being. Lucifer means "Light Bearer." In the scheme of things, it seems to me that the fall of "Lucifer" from Heaven is the development of the human ego. My mentor said that hell is the sense of separation. Conversely, the feeling of Unity can be called heaven. And this to me is the crux of "salvation." Salvation is the deliberate or serendipetous regaining of the feeling of Unity with the Source. It is why the religions that postulate a god seperate from a creation can only be misleading the "faithful." They who believe that are doomed mentally to found their belief in god as one irrevocably separate. How hellish is that? And there can be found the foundation of guilt. On the other hand, one who feels that the "other" is an aspect of his own impersonal Essence, though seemingly different, cannot do harm. Who would harm themselves? And thereon is founded an actually viable morality, as far as I can tell.
Similarly, it is my opinion that Satan, the name for the fallen Lucifer, is a symbolic--yet very functioning--aspect of awareness. More precisely, of the lack of awareness of higher functions and perceptions, particularly those having to do with the unitary nature of Being. Lucifer means "Light Bearer." In the scheme of things, it seems to me that the fall of "Lucifer" from Heaven is the development of the human ego. My mentor said that hell is the sense of separation. Conversely, the feeling of Unity can be called heaven. And this to me is the crux of "salvation." Salvation is the deliberate or serendipetous regaining of the feeling of Unity with the Source. It is why the religions that postulate a god seperate from a creation can only be misleading the "faithful." They who believe that are doomed mentally to found their belief in god as one irrevocably separate. How hellish is that? And there can be found the foundation of guilt. On the other hand, one who feels that the "other" is an aspect of his own impersonal Essence, though seemingly different, cannot do harm. Who would harm themselves? And thereon is founded an actually viable morality, as far as I can tell.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Advaita, "in" vs. "as"
Yes, I understand that there is much good in many religions. I certainly affirm that my Catholic school education was in many regards superior. I am very grateful for that. I'm only commenting on aspects of the whole religious phenomenon that might keep those pious folks ignorant who have the capacity and will to discover something more foundational for themselves.
I'm not sure that "Advaitist" is even a word, but I have used it as a tag to loosely point in the direction of what I understand to Be. "Advaita" is an Indian philosophical system based on non-dualism. It might, I have recently found out, be called "Non-Dualism" in English. Very simplistically, it is predicated on the premise that God and Creation are One and inseparable. Or one might say "There are not two, there is only one." So the statement attributed to Jesus that "I and my Father are One" is a statement of the necessity of being, not of a special kind of person-ness or miraculous manifestation.
It has much to do with your question about "in" and "as." As far as I can tell, most "Christian" religions are dualistic in nature. By this I mean the idea found in many religions that there is a God and an objective world created as something apart, or objective to, God and vice-versa. To me, this is a misinterpretation of existence now being addressed by quantum physics as it has been addressed for thousands of years by the Great Teachers. In fact, a reading of some of the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible lead me to this conclusion as well. That is based on the observation that a very important sense of the word "I" does not translate into English in other than an egoic way.
"Christian" is in quotes because of the simple fact that if there was one Jesus called The Christ, then the several main Christian denominations, not to mention its unnumbered subdivisions, cannot all be practicing what must have at one time been an original teaching. They are all, in a word, beliefs. That is a fancy word acceptable to adults for "let's pretend." That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, except that if you take it for Reality, you lose. What do you lose? Any chance of perhaps perceiving what that original Teaching might have been. You also lose a lot of playmates because you insisted that it is your game and they have to play by your rules and die or suffer if they don't. This is true of many non-Christian faiths as well, and many "-isms" and "-ologys."
The crux (lol) of the matter is perhaps the difference in knowledge by information and knowledge by identity.
Information is always by its own nature partial. It is always a best guess, an ad hoc, or a pro tem. Due to the human need to be right, to be validated, which is an emotional, not scientific, issue; partial understandings masquerading emotionally as reality get adhered to and practiced unflinchingly by many who wish the security of a closed system. Information is not a closed system, and beyond that, it is a speculative endeavor largely because of the narrow band perceptive ability of our senses, which are further restricted by operating in local time and space, as far as I can tell. This is the realm of operation of most, if not, all religions.
Knowledge by identity works Now, outside of time and space. It works outside of time and space in that it is "bigger" than that continuum and the only substance to it. If you put a pencil dot on a very large piece of paper and called it "all of time and space," the paper would represent Eternity, but wouldn't be nearly large enough or even begin to have enough dimensions. Moreover, that Eternity has no component of duration. It IS. Advaita is the descriptions offered by those who know this of what IS as distinct from what seems to be. Those descriptions are offered as a way to alter thinking in order to bring about a thought pattern congruent with Reality in order that an individual might SEE, and thereby exponentially know At-Onement with Reality, or God. In other words, there cannot, as is purported in Christian and other religions, be a Creation apart from God. Creation is a manifestation of God Himself. The human mind, being limited in scope, is the seeming barrier through which God, Reality, can experience Self from a localized perspective and thus enjoy the infinitude of Creation. But the sense of Self is unlimited and genuine and Whole. It is why many who become enlightened exclaim, "I have not been deceived!" It is the aspect of Divinity called Soul, which Dr. Mills referred to as "The feeling of Being I AM."
This is why to me to say that God is "in" something smacks of pantheism. Yet to say that God is manifesting "as" this or that allows at least the possibility of acknowledgment of the inseparability of, what to our senses, only seems to be a discreet object. The idea of "objects" having no independent existence is as well in accordance with quantum physics.
You might, in addition to F. Merrell-Wolff's books, enjoy David Baum's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
I'm not sure that "Advaitist" is even a word, but I have used it as a tag to loosely point in the direction of what I understand to Be. "Advaita" is an Indian philosophical system based on non-dualism. It might, I have recently found out, be called "Non-Dualism" in English. Very simplistically, it is predicated on the premise that God and Creation are One and inseparable. Or one might say "There are not two, there is only one." So the statement attributed to Jesus that "I and my Father are One" is a statement of the necessity of being, not of a special kind of person-ness or miraculous manifestation.
It has much to do with your question about "in" and "as." As far as I can tell, most "Christian" religions are dualistic in nature. By this I mean the idea found in many religions that there is a God and an objective world created as something apart, or objective to, God and vice-versa. To me, this is a misinterpretation of existence now being addressed by quantum physics as it has been addressed for thousands of years by the Great Teachers. In fact, a reading of some of the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible lead me to this conclusion as well. That is based on the observation that a very important sense of the word "I" does not translate into English in other than an egoic way.
"Christian" is in quotes because of the simple fact that if there was one Jesus called The Christ, then the several main Christian denominations, not to mention its unnumbered subdivisions, cannot all be practicing what must have at one time been an original teaching. They are all, in a word, beliefs. That is a fancy word acceptable to adults for "let's pretend." That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that, except that if you take it for Reality, you lose. What do you lose? Any chance of perhaps perceiving what that original Teaching might have been. You also lose a lot of playmates because you insisted that it is your game and they have to play by your rules and die or suffer if they don't. This is true of many non-Christian faiths as well, and many "-isms" and "-ologys."
The crux (lol) of the matter is perhaps the difference in knowledge by information and knowledge by identity.
Information is always by its own nature partial. It is always a best guess, an ad hoc, or a pro tem. Due to the human need to be right, to be validated, which is an emotional, not scientific, issue; partial understandings masquerading emotionally as reality get adhered to and practiced unflinchingly by many who wish the security of a closed system. Information is not a closed system, and beyond that, it is a speculative endeavor largely because of the narrow band perceptive ability of our senses, which are further restricted by operating in local time and space, as far as I can tell. This is the realm of operation of most, if not, all religions.
Knowledge by identity works Now, outside of time and space. It works outside of time and space in that it is "bigger" than that continuum and the only substance to it. If you put a pencil dot on a very large piece of paper and called it "all of time and space," the paper would represent Eternity, but wouldn't be nearly large enough or even begin to have enough dimensions. Moreover, that Eternity has no component of duration. It IS. Advaita is the descriptions offered by those who know this of what IS as distinct from what seems to be. Those descriptions are offered as a way to alter thinking in order to bring about a thought pattern congruent with Reality in order that an individual might SEE, and thereby exponentially know At-Onement with Reality, or God. In other words, there cannot, as is purported in Christian and other religions, be a Creation apart from God. Creation is a manifestation of God Himself. The human mind, being limited in scope, is the seeming barrier through which God, Reality, can experience Self from a localized perspective and thus enjoy the infinitude of Creation. But the sense of Self is unlimited and genuine and Whole. It is why many who become enlightened exclaim, "I have not been deceived!" It is the aspect of Divinity called Soul, which Dr. Mills referred to as "The feeling of Being I AM."
This is why to me to say that God is "in" something smacks of pantheism. Yet to say that God is manifesting "as" this or that allows at least the possibility of acknowledgment of the inseparability of, what to our senses, only seems to be a discreet object. The idea of "objects" having no independent existence is as well in accordance with quantum physics.
You might, in addition to F. Merrell-Wolff's books, enjoy David Baum's Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Friday, April 27, 2007
A "Take" on Good and Evil
Someone asked me about good and evil and this is what came to me:
As for the problem of good and evil, it has according to my best lights, nothing to do with God, as the God I know is not a personal God. I find the idea of a personal God an impossibility and too small to fit the facts as I see them. The sort of personal God I percieve as being commonly worshiped by most religionists can at best be a well developed entity far enough beyond ordinary men as to appear to be God like, in the way a competent technician might be to someone of a mentality that could belong to a so called "cargo cult." God, in my estimation, is so far beyond any anthropomorphization that our ideas offered about a diety by religions is insulting to and demeaning of Diety, and astonishingly misleading as to what might be called "salvation."
Good vs. evil, as I see that dynamic, is the evaluation of events natural or artificial by standards pertinent to personal wishes of happiness or well being. Ignorance, particularly ignorance of the laws and forces of Nature, or Self, have not yet been recognized publicly as similar in nature to such things as hurricans, tsunamis, and avalanches. These things are not "evil," they are conditions of of our nature. As I see it the vast majority of humans are uncivilized, ignorant, and immature, despite good intentions and aberrant ideas of self esteem. I agree with Mahatma Gandhi's reply when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization. He said "I think it would be a very good idea." This applies equally to the ones who have the toys which control the ways of the world, namely banks, corporations, governments, and religions, likely in that order. These are for the most part found to be sociopathic institutions if they are subjected to ordianry personality tests. These institutions, and people who do harm, do it because they are looking out for their best perceived self interest. This is normal and everyone does it. The difference might be in what those percieved best self interests are. Being on the whole a phenomenally uncivilized and experi-mental race, few of us are on the same page, even nearly, with those who have an inclusive overview of what our potential as interactive beings might be. In other words, "evil" is Nature's way of saying "Hey! You (plural) are not congruent with your own best self interest! Wake up!"
Of course, one of the most impossible things to do is to tell someone who is asleep to wake up. It takes forcefull action. Imediate action, in fact, if the house is on fire, for instance, such as our planet is at this moment. Thing is, too many are too involved with what's in front of their own nose to notice, i.e. physically feel, that things are horribly awry. "Evil" is a teleological component of life and seems to result from the ignorance and immaturity of individuals who have not percieved their own right identity as co-creators with a rather astonishingly beyond-our-intellectual-understanding WONDER of a Universe. Conscious and aware of our underlying unity we can build a paradise. Ignorant of it, we will continue to blunder against each other's ignorance and create the result of that. Primarily, ignorance is not necessarily of facts and knowledge, it is of the nature of Self. One who knows experientially what they are before they the sense of being a person cannot harm others without knowing that they harm themselves. In either case, experience of good and evil is for the benefit of our education. But no one said we had to survive it as person.
The power that is Love is like electricity. Directed, it can do immense good. Undisciplined, uneducated and undirected it wreaks havoc. In any case it is the same force. And regarding the idea that "good" and "evil are a matter of vibrations high or low, vibrations of every kind and degree always already exist. The point is: am I aware of them and what they mean at various levels of consequence. (the consequences reveal the rules.) If I'm not, I am certain to step on toes, and that will be called evil. If I learn and change, that might be called good. The labels of good and evil belong to a limited two valued logic system which is incapable of including the actuality of the infinite value system of Universe. Good and evil judgements are blinding us from perceiving and acting on dynamics that would free us of the need to make such poor and inadequate evaluations.
Making Our Own Prison Bars in Other's Minds
Habits can facilitate skills or be prisons. Judgement is one of the most common prisons. It puts one behind the bars of their thoughts of what someone else ought to be like. In a way the judge-mental person is in their pretend mind of somone other than themselves. So if we do this we are either in God's business or someone else's business. This means that in judgement we are not at home in our own business where we all rightfully belong. Unfortunatley, we may, through habit, not know we are not home by attempting to live an opinion as someone else's "ought to be."
A simple way that can remind them (and us) of where they (we) are, if there is a modicum of honesty, is to ask four questions, like this: "Is it (what is being said about someone) true?" If "yes," then ask "Do you know it is absolutley true? (as in: are you a God who can see every tiny possibility, and is the judgement absolutly true in every case?) Most often it can be easily seen that there are exceptions or differences. Then ask "How do you feel when you think that thought?" like anger, disapointment, etc., including how the body feels when that thought is paid attention to. Then ask "Who would you be (in that situation, with that person) without that thought?" This question often allows the person to assume an impartial perspective or emotional distance. Sometimes it can be asked if there is an unstressful reason to keep the judgemental thought, or if there is a situation contrary to the thought that is equally true, even in some instances. Then turn it around. In other words, if the judgement was "So-and-so is blah, blah," say "I am blah-blah." See if it fits and how, and see if there are more ways of varying that turn around. Never try to give up the thought, just see if there is any reason to, or if there is some other possibility that simply wasn't on the radar, or wasn't given weight. Just seeing in this way allows the thought to leave you of it's own accord. As my Mentor, K.G. Mills* said, "The thoughts you think are not your own." Attention to a thought gives it, and its train,** life. This method allows the hold of attention to be broken so the thought can go back to where it came from. In some cases these questions have changed lives. They are from Byron Katie,*** a woman of remarkable compassion and understanding.
*Kenneth G. Mills www.kennethgmills.com
** train of thoughts, or the training of habits
***Byron Katie www.thework.com
This is silly, but someone asked....
One of the favorite sports at a particular dating site is sniping at the "Improve Matches" questions, whether it's their logic, lack of appropriate choices, grammar, or what ever. This one I responded to was about spelling: "What are 'mosqutoes?'" from the question "If you could kill all the mosqutoes in the..."Well, there are churchtoes, templetoes, synagogtoes, and mosqutoes. They all look pretty much the same and have to wear different things so they can tell themselves apart because if they were naked they couldn't. They fight each other because despite being exactly the same they think their special "clothes" make them the best and only, despite each acting exactly the same. People come from other planets trying to figure this out. "Why do all these 'toes that are exactly the same destroy each other so no one has anything when they could all have everything, because they are all the same and want the same things, except they make themselves think thay are different. Why, why, why?" No one has figured it out yet, and then they all leave because they are civilized and don't wish to be in such rude company.
In the Moment
E.E.: You ask some fascinating questions. My Mentor defined Heaven and Hell in these terms: Heaven is the feeling of Unity, Hell is the feeling of separation. I'd add that we can experience each to various degrees. But the important thing is, like Shakespeare said, "... thinking makes it so." The Heart of each of us desires whatever the mind convinces us leads to the feeling of Unity. Since the mind works by making destinctions, it is quite capable of misleading us as to what will, in Fact, lead us to that certain, gut felt, intuitve knowledge of Unity. My sense is, that ultimately all of our experimentation will lead to the discovery that there never was a separation, but the we created the sense of it in order to find that out at an experiential level, no matter what the cost. Love, it seems to me, at one level, is absolutly impartial and will let you find your own way. That way it is utterly and irrevocably yours. You made it, you own it, and ultimately you know what it means. Maybe our difficulties stem from trying to find happiness as an addition of something from "out there" as we decline to percieve that the difference between "in here" and "out there" is purely cognative and is supported by English grammar which is emphatically not true to fact. I think that fits both with many Eastern systems as well as with quantum physics. It is the way of complete responsibility. (See my journal entry on Ho'oponopono.) I think also that it fits with Christianity as it was originally intended before its coruption. (I agree with the famous Christian playwrite, G.K. Chesterton: "It's not that Christianity doesn't work, it just hasn't been tried yet."*) This Way of complete responsibility has been taught for ages everywhere under many names and is, as far as I can see, the root of many religions. Religions happen as an attempt to codify the undefinable, experiential Teaching of a Master and are therefor poor substitutes for being in The Presence. It is also why those who accept the responsibility to whatever extent seem to naturally seperate from those imersed in the re-ligion** of dogma. One could write books on the awesome miracle of it all, but for "pop" digests, one might see Down the Rabbit Hole and The Secret, both oversimplifed, yet useful.A moment or forever? Most folks think that eternity has duration, with which come the commensurate myths of Heaven and Hell. That it doesn't have duration is what makes it eternal and therefore able to support a moment and one's thinking it is this or that. Now there's another book!
I am wondering how common, and how popularly unsupported in the West, your experience with your Hindu friend might be, the one where you realized "IS IS." I was what, maybe 17, and walking throught the house thinking about the nature of things and it hit me: IS IS!!! It was such a remarkable insight for me that I, right there at that moment, penciled it in under the light switch for the kitchen overheads. It was there for years. I could walk by and see it even years later when I came to visit.
This is not where I would go in to my 28 year association with my Mentor, but suffice it to say that just at the time that, due to the undeniable pressure of experience, I started to question my birth religion, I met him and very soon after I heard his first lecture he reconciled my ambiguities about Eastern/Western religious thought in a spontaneously given poem.
For me it had yet another resonance. My Dad was an armchair Egyptologist. Of course, one of the great goddesses in that pantheon is ISIS. I later became more intruiged by MAAT, but at the time of my inspiration I was quite taken by the coincidence in the name of Isis.
Lately, in addition to the Ho'oponopono, I have been reading Byron Katie. You might enjoy her work as well. It is VERY IS IS.*this statememt of Chesterton's resonates for me with what Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization. He said "I think it would be a very good idea."
** look up the root meaning of the word; compare to the verb "to be," 1st person singular.
What Do We Want???
To a friend: "I know from experience that we, as the U.S., have a horrible and declining reputation outside our borders. I don't think that the majority, especially our young adults, have ANY clue as to the horror of the situation. Why are Americans wearing Canadian flags when travelling abroad? It must be because of the desire to insulate against the very common perception of our country as an overbearing imperial state whose internal affairs are rotting.
"In the face of all this, I really have no desire to cry "woe is me; woe is us." I think that we are getting what we ask for by way of accepting our own ignorance and choosing comfort. As I often say, the consequences reveal the rules. Perhaps the consequences in due time will be rather horrible.
"I ask myself what I can do in the face of all the stuff I hear about the shenanigans around me. I don't know. I don't even feel that I can escape. Even in your situation up there, you are living the horror by association. You know them as intimately as I do. If things go very very wrong with our infrastructure, then you will be perhaps insulated from that for a while, as distinct from folks in cities who will have three days and then chaos.
"I maintain, adamantly, that we have everything to make this world a Paradise. yet we have not the will to take the world from the hands of its destructors. Was Walt kelly right? His cartoon character, Pogo, exclaimed as an all too accurate misquote: "We have met the enemy, and he is US!" How is THAT to be turned around? What do I do, I, ME, to make a difference in vectoring this ship away from the reef its bottom is already scrapping? What do you think? how would you advise me on this? I would really like to know. And most importantly, I would like to know it from a standpoint of having a constructive attitude in the face of it all. That is what I would like to know. How do we precipitate an actual civilization from what we have as a public picture. Is there anything even equal to a grain of sand that you can give me in that direction?
"Thanks for hearing me out. Even if the whole shebang goes to hell, I want to know that as far as I could, I tried to put my hand on the wheel and turn the right way."
Educating the Soul
This was in response to a young lady who had encounterd much rudness and uncivility in her dating experience and decided to try here, yet with concerns:
"Being human is an aquired skill. Having the body gives you the animal part to get around with, but only indicates potential. Our particular society goes out of its way to avoid any deep and significant training in the higher sensibilites that can mark an individual as being a fine example of our race. Some folks are, of course, but they are straglers in time from cultures that had some concurance on what constituted excellent behavior, but even then these are usually partials. I find myself agreeing with Mahatma Gandhi. He was asked at the end of a tour of London what he thought of Western civilization. Without skipping a beat, he replied "I think it would be a very good idea." He knew in his heart what we publicly deny: Toys and comfort do not make a civilization and neither does technique or the ability to bash someone out of existence. We have no rites of passage for our young men and women, save something like Outward Bound, that makes them reach inside to discover what they have as resources in mind, body ans spirit, alone, or in a group. That's why barn raisings and tragedies unite people. They have to cooperate and the consequences reveal the rules. It's why the elders used to take the young men aside, and the crones the girls. It is a matter of soul education. How can you expect an ordinary raised in front of a TV short attention span, shootemup, what about them Nicks, society to know about etiquette and your sensibilities? Yes, there are guys out there who have a fine background and will make you a loving parner. See clearly what you want and practice living it in your mind. You will find that activity not only a wonderful filter, but there is a subtler level of life than just looking in a site like this. Feel what you want as if you have it, and see if it isn't yours in due time. I wish you the very best."
Who's Driving?
Occasionaly, as we all do, I spend an hour or more on the phone or sitting with someone who needs a navigational mirror, or a staunch wall off which to repeatedly bounce the ball of their considerations. That happened last night and here is part of what I wrote to her this morning as a follow up:
I have utter confidence in your ability to resolve in the most kind and loving way possible, whatever the outcome. Surely it is a painful process, but that is a gift of life: it tells us in no uncertain terms its rules by where we are. Pain seems to be one of the large indicator dials on the dashboard of our vehicle of awareness. There is, therefore, a lot to be said for emotional detachment. What a mark of maturity it is to sense and feel, and yet to function as Love in its most impartial dispensations. It is very reflexive; you get to drive the emotional body through its time-space environment as an observer, yet experience every nuance of consequence. Blessed are those who deal with the road as it is in front of them without the foggy insulating windsheild of denial. Blessed are those who have competent navigational consultants. Blessed are those who know they have the wheel firmly in their own hands.
How does someone put things on a table so that they may be embraced as having bearing and be looked at impartialy? I am told that this is the scenario of our own last judgement at death. Perhaps another "beatitude" is in order: Blessed are those who voluntarily see themselves dispassionately before it is too late. No wonder, then, that so many adepts have told us to use our own death as an advisor. That's not morbid, it's just sober. What better condition for the mind when driving?
Respecting the Feminine
I just had an interesting question about this, as to wheather I respect the feminine as it appeares in others, or in my self. Huge issue, even if (for the non-dualist crowd) you postulate the semanitc impossibility that there is such a distinction as self and other apart from a delusion of incomplete perception.
Yes, I respect, Isis and Maat, not to mention Palas Athena, Sumeramis, and such historic women as were queens, stateswomen, inventors, adventurers, and artists. Not to mention my friends, who are mostly female. My Mentor often said that this was the age where the power of the feminine must be raised. Yes. Look at the shenanigans of today's church, state, and corporations in their unbalanced and unmitigated patriarchic frenzies. Not good for Gaia or her children, eh? My Mentor was a classic archtypal polyphrenic according to Jean Huston. He always was for balance, always exemplified it, and hopefully some of that rubbed off on me.
And yet, yours is a good question: What about men who respect their feminine. Well, very often they are regarded with epithetic comments as to sexual orientation, as if one had to do with the other, except as coincidence. It seems to me that gender and sex are two dimensions that are factors in a bigger equation yet. I know it is not quantifiable, but what do you consider to be attributes of the feminine nature, and what constitutes respect? I've experienced "respect" for different people to mean anything from "tolerate" to "militantly celebrate."
I guess one of the seed ideas in my mind about his area was first verbalized for me by my Dad. He said that generally, women have the power to guide the perciptation of ideas and things by men. I took that to mean that for the most part there is a gender/temperament tendency *on the face of things* that has women percieved as having perceptive abilities that can be seeds for men to use as ideas influencing what they do. So, again, generaly speaking, the feminine has to do with reception, the male with penetration. (Please don't take this to the physical though the "outer" tends to reflect the "inner." I mean psychic tendencies. As in perhaps people with "dirt paths" (see "Announcement:..., next entry down) may be able to concentrate intensely on some small thing well enough to make a breakthrough. And yet, the need to do that may have come from a destinctly receptive component, internal or external.) But things for me in this regard are somewhat blurrrrrred as to the male/female thing. Even as a young man it came to me that there are at least four genders. Later I modified that to twelve. As icing for that view, I found a book called "The Clock of Sex" that personified twelve archetypes, with examples, of six male and six female catagories of gender predeliction. That did not include genuine hermaphrodites. I can't say that there are other than statistical probabilities in gender expression that are surely masked by the need for public appearances. We are, I think, very repressive in general, as witnessed by our poverty of words for the infinite shades, gradations, intensities and kinds of love. We've in English stuffed an infinity of possibilities into "love" and "like," which regardless of some other poor phrases, cannot bear the burden of meaning required of them. I agree with Gandhi, who was at the conclusion of a tour of London was asked what he thought of Western civilization. Without missing a beat he replied "I think it would be a good idea!" Part of that might be to elevate the gender qualities one might encounter and support their creative aspects regardless of the sex of the body they manifest in. For my part, they seem to be coexisting in a mostly balanced happy synergy and are an aspect of my sexual orientation, my art, my trade, and any activity I am blessed to partake in.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The World's most unusual thereapist
The World's Most Unusual Therapist
by Dr. Joe Vitale
www.mrfire.com
Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.
When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?
It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.
However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true, I had to know more.
I had always understood "total responsibility" to mean that I am responsible for what I think and do. Beyond that, it's out of my hands. I think that most people think of total responsibility that way. We're responsible for what we do, not what anyone else does. The Hawaiian therapist who healed those mentally ill people would teach me an advanced new perspective about total responsibility.His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous. Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.
Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.
"After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely," he told me. "Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed."
I was in awe.
"Not only that," he went on, "but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed."
This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: "What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?"
"I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he said.
I didn't understand.
Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.
Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.
This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.
I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving yourself. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. If you want to cure anyone--even a mentally ill criminal--you do it by healing you.
I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients' files?
"I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again," he explained.
That's it?
That's it.
Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the nasty message. This time, I decided to try Dr. Len's method. I kept silently saying, "I'm sorry" and "I love you," I didn't say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer circumstance.
Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn't take any outward action to get that apology. I didn't even write him back. Yet, by saying "I love you," I somehow healed within me what was creating him.
I later attended a ho 'oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He's now 70 years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive. He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve myself, my book's vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.
"What about the books that are already sold and out there?" I asked."
They aren't out there," he explained, once again blowing my mind with his mystic wisdom. "They are still in you."
In short, there is no out there.
It would take a whole book to explain this advanced technique with the depth it deserves. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you.
"When you look, do it with love."
This article is from the forthcoming book "No Limits" by Joe Vitale and Dr. Len
by Dr. Joe Vitale
www.mrfire.com
Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.
When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?
It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.
However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true, I had to know more.
I had always understood "total responsibility" to mean that I am responsible for what I think and do. Beyond that, it's out of my hands. I think that most people think of total responsibility that way. We're responsible for what we do, not what anyone else does. The Hawaiian therapist who healed those mentally ill people would teach me an advanced new perspective about total responsibility.His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous. Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.
Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.
"After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely," he told me. "Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed."
I was in awe.
"Not only that," he went on, "but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed."
This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: "What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?"
"I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he said.
I didn't understand.
Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.
Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.
This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.
I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving yourself. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. If you want to cure anyone--even a mentally ill criminal--you do it by healing you.
I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients' files?
"I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again," he explained.
That's it?
That's it.
Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world. Let me give you a quick example of how this works: one day, someone sent me an email that upset me. In the past I would have handled it by working on my emotional hot buttons or by trying to reason with the person who sent the nasty message. This time, I decided to try Dr. Len's method. I kept silently saying, "I'm sorry" and "I love you," I didn't say it to anyone in particular. I was simply evoking the spirit of love to heal within me what was creating the outer circumstance.
Within an hour I got an e-mail from the same person. He apologized for his previous message. Keep in mind that I didn't take any outward action to get that apology. I didn't even write him back. Yet, by saying "I love you," I somehow healed within me what was creating him.
I later attended a ho 'oponopono workshop run by Dr. Len. He's now 70 years old, considered a grandfatherly shaman, and is somewhat reclusive. He praised my book, The Attractor Factor. He told me that as I improve myself, my book's vibration will raise, and everyone will feel it when they read it. In short, as I improve, my readers will improve.
"What about the books that are already sold and out there?" I asked."
They aren't out there," he explained, once again blowing my mind with his mystic wisdom. "They are still in you."
In short, there is no out there.
It would take a whole book to explain this advanced technique with the depth it deserves. Suffice it to say that whenever you want to improve anything in your life, there's only one place to look: inside you.
"When you look, do it with love."
This article is from the forthcoming book "No Limits" by Joe Vitale and Dr. Len
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