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Security

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:27:00 +1000

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

~ HELEN KELLER.

While that quote is most often used in a motivational context, and in that context it is useful, it’s a limited viewpoint. Life is never nothing, has always been (and is) a daring adventure no matter what the external appearance may be.

You are unique. There is no one else who has ever lived exactly the same life that you have lived or will live. How your life unfolds is an adventure into the unknown. At no point was getting to where you are now guaranteed.

Congratulate yourself for having made it thus far. There is always uncertainty, even risk. No one knows what choices you will make, or can say with certainty how your story will unfold.

The truly mind-blowingly daring part of the adventure however, is in the possibilities that it holds if you are willing to take risks. Perhaps you will risk choosing love over fear, risk choosing to live as fully as is possible, to perhaps discover that now is the only time there is, that you are the one you have been searching for.

"When I complained to my abbot Ajahn Chah, considered by millions to be a great saint, that he didn’t..."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:59:00 +1000

“When I complained to my abbot Ajahn Chah, considered by millions to be a great saint, that he didn’t always act as if he were completely enlightened, he laughed and told me that was good, “because otherwise you would still be imagining that you could find the Buddha outside of yourself. And he is not there.””

- Jack Kornfield ~ After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

Good Question

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:31:00 +1000

I owned a brand new car once, which was an entirely delightful experience. I took very good care of it, washed it every week, kept it in good mechanical condition. But the reality is that it was a means of transport, a set of wheels to go places, and it did that so very well.

For some however, a vehicle is much more than transport. That shiny sleek powerful machine becomes a symbol, an extension of their image of themselves. Even so, no one says “I am this vehicle”. That would be absurd. The vehicle is not who they are.

The mind isn’t so discriminating however with its “vehicle”. We say “my hand”, “my leg”,” my body” as if it belongs to someone, a someone who is the vehicle that is the body. But its not so.

Living with non vital body parts or a limb removed in no way diminishes our sense of being a self, although our thinking about our body may require an adjustment.

Then there is the mystery of sleep. For close to one third of your 24 hour day, one third of your life,“you” are not actually there.

So if “I” am not my body, and “I” am not always there, then who am I? Really?

Little Deaths

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:26:00 +1000

In a lifetime there are many little deaths, some big some small. A phase of our lives comes to an end; a career change; the end of a relationship; a serious illness; and the like. Each time, we die a little death and perhaps grieve the end of the story of the self that we believed we were up until that life changing event.

A story is told of Mikao Usui. Having found inspiration in his studies of the sutras (his ah-ha moment!) he sought advice on what to do next from the abbot of the monastery where he had studied.

The Abbot is said to have given him the very zen advice, “Die one time.”

Dying to the story of the ego mind, awakening to the nature of who we really are is the nature of the zen practice, and the very essence of the nature of healing.

Therein lies the revolving door of life and death and of healing. Die one time, awaken to who we truly are, who we have always been …or die the many little deaths on the road to that realisation.

War is Obsolete

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 12:08:46 +1000

At the end of the talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?”

The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.”

Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back…but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”

That’s the insanity of war, the insanity of the separated mind’s way of perception.

Insanity

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:03:00 +1000

Scanning the news of the world on any given day is enough to lead you to thinking that the world is gone mad, that its being run by insane people, doing insane things …and you would be 100% correct.

The answer to the chaos and madness is not a single one of the “usual solutions” that are bandied about. The real answer to all this is the healing of the insanity of the separated ego mind, its need for control, its need to be right, and its “slippery logic”.

“Slippery logic” makes it OK to kill people for the “right” reasons, to torture, to deny people their basic human rights, to treat others as less than human, to lie, to cheat, to swindle, to wreak ecological harm on the planet in the name of “a greater good”. I, me, my, mine, is the underlying root cause of all of this. Everytime!

None of this is new of course, but the effects are no longer able to be hidden, and the means to have a global impact brings us to the brink of disaster like never before.

The usual answers, fixing stuff “out there” has been a futile exercise throughout human history. Making a war on everything only creates more war. Fixing “stuff out there” is in fact a story dreamed up by ego mind that created the problem. The real answer lies within each one of us, the opening to the values of heart that lead back to being in the here and the now.

True wisdom resides only in the now, unfettered by stories about a past, and not bound by fears about the future. All else is part of the ego minds fantasy.

The shift has to take place in you and I before it will be observed “out there”.

Weaving

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:54:00 +1000

What happens when we weave “question everything” with “feeding the good wolf”?

What the mind receives gets processed. That means everything, everything you see and visualise, whatever you listen to, what you enjoy, whatever gives you pleasure in life, both the positive and the negative.

Images are very powerful inputs. Your mind doesn’t discriminate when it comes to images, and especially moving images which generate strong feelings. Remember how many times you watched images of the twin towers falling for example.

Films and T.V. shows (of every kind), video games, the nightly news, flood our minds with repeated images (some real, some created) that get processed and stored as if they were our own real life experience.

The screens big and small are illusions in themselves, just coloured dots that create an image. Believing what is presented on them has consequences. These images and the feelings generated can get woven seamlessly into own personal story. We can make them “real” even when they are not.

Its not like that you say, I know the difference between real and not real. The insidious side of this repeated exposure is desensitisation, a closing of the heart to what is not OK, what has never been OK. Desensitising leads to acceptance of the unacceptable, until it becomes our reality.

If your mind is being continually assaulted by negative images and the fearful thoughts that inevitably result, finding peace within becomes far more difficult when the appearance of the world “out there” seems to confirm the fears in the mind.

Be selective with what you feed your mind, question its reality. Is it fear making? Where is the love in it? Give time to, and be in real life, the here now. That’s the only place that love, happiness, joy and lasting peace will be found.

Two Wolves

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:16:00 +1000

A Native American Cherokee elder tells a story to his grandchildren (all the children are “grandchildren”) about life .

He says to them, “A fight is going on inside me, a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil—-he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, and false pride.

The other is good —-he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

The children thought about it for a minute, and then one asked, “Which wolf will win, Grandfather?”

The Elder simply replies, “The one you feed.”

It’s a great story, with a powerful message, and with a question for each one of us. But its easy to dismiss its message.

The “good” wolf is a symbol of ourselves living consciously. The “evil” wolf is a symbol of our way of being when living unconsciously …a symbol of all those negative human traits that goes with ego mindedness.

Whatever we focus on, keep in mind, is reflected in the world we experience. Be mindful of what is being fed into your mind, be as aware as possible of the effect it has inside you.

Ask the question, “Which ‘wolf’ is this feeding?”. Then act on the answer.

Healing the Past

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:45:00 +1000

Eckhart Tolle Quote:

“Deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a ‘self’ out of it. Don’t misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behaviour, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There’s the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but non-judgementally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.”

This is a very real and practical approach. It combines “feeling the feeling” - not denying that something happened - with staying out of judgment about right and wrong, and with staying in the present.

It’s all too common that past trauma is re-created over and over again, by getting enmeshed in the emotion and pain, and then being carried away in it. That process takes us back into unconsciousness. It’s not wrong, but it reinforces victimhood and reopens old wounds.

Healing comes when we no longer identify with that past trauma, it isn’t who we are. It’s OK to feel that we had no choice in that story of the past, but by being conscious, which means being in the now, we get to choose how the story ends.

Question Everything

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:46:00 +1000

Theres an old saying that to get the choicest fruit you have to go out on the limb.

People are so very interesting. Some people want the easy “truth”, a story from an authority figure that makes their choice the right or true one. It is then so easy to fall back on “But my teacher taught me that … (fill in the blank) ”.

Some don’t really care what the facts are, they already have a story that they have accepted as the “truth” and will disregard all other data.

Neither way works if you are seeking Truth.

It is human nature to cling to fondly held beliefs, to a sense of safety, to the comfort of the accepted beliefs of the community or the culture in which we are engaged. However this is can be easily become another prison for our minds, one that limits our perspectives and understandings. It’s just the way things are.

The courage to question everything, even those things seemingly least open to question, to see with new eyes, is the nature of seeking Truth.

Sometimes you have to go out on the limb.

"Gaining enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident-prone."

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:58:41 +1000

“Gaining enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident-prone.”

- Suzuki Roshi

Threads

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 15:27:00 +1000

The thread of several previous posts has been an interpretation of the Reiki precepts as a path to “being in the now”. That doesn’t make the traditional way of interpreting them in a minded way any less valid. It’s not a “this or that” situation, it’s both.

To a mind engaged in a linear timeline, where the fearful or painful experiences of the past are dark clouds projected into the future, the concept of “now” is a nonsense. The past creates the future in that world view.

The traditional interpretation is the one that has a practical application in that setting. Only with the healing of the pain and fears the mind holds regarding events past is there a possibility for a different world view that includes the freedom of different choices held in the now moment. That’s just the way it is.

And of course there are other ways to use the precepts, as a mantra or a mindfulness verse for instance. The precepts are all of these things, and all at the same time.

Paradox

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:55:00 +1000

An insight into the Reiki precepts as ways to “being in the now” doesn’t seem exactly earth shaking. What use is that information, unless it can be a lived experience. That’s exactly the point. The “now” is not just for special or spiritual people. Anyone who follows those simple ways in the precepts, with or without the Reiki practice, is creating the mental environment where the now can be experienced.

Theres a difference between being in the now and thinking we are in the now. It’s the difference that Tolle refers to when he talks about “entering the forest with your mind”. “You will think you are present, but you are not really”.

Alan Watts tells the story of people during the second world war that heard the whistle of the bomb coming. They knew there was no escape, it was all over. There was nothing they could do and they simply let go of doing anything. The bomb hit, failed to explode and these people found they were alive in a different world, the now. They actually believed that there was something wrong with them, that they had a “mental condition”.

Every single human being has actually known the experience of living in the now, lived it effortlessly until they “unlearned” it around the age of six years. That’s the age at which time we develop and stabilise the facility we call “ego mind”. Those five precepts are a path to undoing what developing the ego mind took away.

It’s a paradox of life that we lose this capability in becoming an individual, to experience and possess the world as a self, and then at some point, we realise a longing for what was lost and begin a spiritual journey “home”.

Simple as that!

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 08:34:00 +1000

So how does “being here now” play out in relation to the precepts? It means they truly make sense of “Reiki” in terms of a spiritual practice. It shows the precepts to be a master key to the Reiki practice and its ultimate healing outcome, the healing of the separated ego mind.

Each precept is a key to the lived experience of the now. In the now, there is no future to worry over, no past to anger about. Honour and gratitude are given naturally. What is more honest than being present, being here now? “Now” is the end of the source of all of humankind’s mental suffering.

Each precept is then an invitation to step out of ego based stories of past and future, to step into the natural state of existence that we are all born into, the heaven of our religions, our natural state of spiritual connection with all that is, into the very fabric of mystic order.

This is what “the secret method of inviting happiness …effective against all kinds of illness” relates to.

“Being in the now” is not fantasy, every child knows this way of being. What clearer context is there than this for the biblical quote “Unless you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven”? The now is that “kingdom”. We’ve simply forgotten how to “be” there.

The Reiki practice was given form by a Japanese man of great spiritual insight enabling humankind with a way to remember. What the ego mind has made of that practice is something else, but that’s precisely the nature of what it does. Illusions are its tools of trade.

Undoing the ego mind is what the practice appears tailor made to do. The physical body follows where the mind leads. Simple as that.

The Secret Method

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:57:00 +1000

I get lost in detail just as easily as anyone else, get hooked on perceived differences. For many years I have heard opinions over which version of the Reiki precepts was “more correct”, which was the “right” order, and so on. I consciously made an effort to not buy into it, simply accepting the version that was the tradition in my form of practice.

What has always piqued my curiosity however, is the phrase that accompanies the precepts, “the secret method of inviting happiness”. Pulling the words and phrases apart, finding meanings and insights through that process, and applying those insights is a perfectly good and useful methodology. Even so, none of that process felt like it was even close to a “secret method”.

It wasn’t until creating a “precepts workshop” that the “secret” emerged, like a 3D stereoscopic image that appears to be random dots one minute and a 3D image the next. I was studying different translations of Usui”s memorial stone, on which the precepts and the secret method reference are inscribed. The source was the same for each translation, but the wording was distinctly different.

Translation is an art. It is the translators job to change the form of the original, but to retain its meaning. What I realised was that I had been hooked on perceived differences in the English language words, and the meanings I was giving to them. In the instant that I let go of needing the words to be the same, and reached for the original meaning behind them, understanding dawned.

The secret method was not a secret, has never been a secret, but it may as well be so for our inability to perceive it. The teachings of mystics and sages over the ages is known to all. “Be here now!” Each phrase of the precepts is a lesson in being in the now, a path to that experience.

"Can you drop your entire past, all at once? Can you let yourself see, all at once, that everything..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:59:00 +1000

“Can you drop your entire past, all at once? Can you let yourself see, all at once, that everything that was, everything you ever imagined, is no longer present now? Can you actually enter into this moment fully?”

- Adyashanti

"If you enter a forest with your mind only, you’ll only notice the sounds and the mind will try..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:56:21 +1000

“If you enter a forest with your mind only, you’ll only notice the sounds and the mind will try to interpret them.   You might think you’re present; but you’re not really, you are simply judging what you hear.   But if you become aware of the silent dimension underneath the sounds and in between the sounds, then you become present because… the moment you become aware of the silence, you become silent.”

- Eckhart Tolle.

The Feeling is Healing

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:46:00 +1000

I came across this small story (which I have paraphrased) in a Gregg Braden book, “The Spontaneous Healing of Belief”. He asked a buddhist abbot in a monastery this question. “When we see your prayers, what are you really doing? When we see you tone and chant for 14 and 16 hours a day … when we see the bells, the bowls, the gongs, the chimes, the mudras, and the mantras on the outside, what is happening to you on the inside?”

The abbot’s reply was “You have never seen our prayers, because a prayer cannot be seen. What you have seen is what we do to create the feeling in our bodies. Feeling is the prayer.” (my italics)

I was reminded of what people see and interpret when I place my hands on someone during a hands on reiki treatment. Every time a feeling of peace and a stillness of mind takes place “inside” me, within my body. The abbots words resonated within me, and they morphed form in my mind.

“You have never seen the healing, because healing cannot be seen. What you see is what I do to create the feeling in my body. The feeling is healing.”

"What are you waiting for? The next promotion? The next holiday? The next satsang? The next Facebook..."

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:07:00 +1000

“

What are you waiting for? The next promotion? The next holiday? The next satsang? The next Facebook update? The next spiritual high? The next victory? The next relationship? The next level of enlightenment? The next chance to prove how much you know? The next life? The next moment?

What if this ‘next’ never comes? And even if it does, what if it doesn’t end your seeking?

What if life – and its fulfilment – is always now? Then, what’s next?

”

- Jeff Foster

Now

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:15:00 +1000

I was recently on a group camping trip for twelve days in a remote area. With limited mobile coverage there was only occasional access to news of the outside world. What was fascinating was the experience of the very different quality of being together when mobile phones were working. The difference was something that was immediately evident, something one could feel. People were no longer present, they were somewhere else.

Arriving back in “civilisation”, I was aware that I had missed nothing by not checking email, or surfing the web, or accessing world news. I was aware of how I had not even missed not doing those things, that I was aware of being present in my daily life in a way that was more real in some way. The cold and the rain and the environment were not something easily ignored. It was a great “be here now” experience.

As if to emphasise that awareness, I was amused to read an advertisement for a news media website for people on the go. “Turn your downtime into uptime, be in the now” it said. I had to laugh. It wouldn’t even be my now that I’d be in, it would be someone else’s, a now that someone else decided I should be in. No thank you!

It’s a great question to ask from time to time. “Where am I now? Am I really here or am I somewhere else?”