Loving Awareness

I love you, you’re perfect, now change. Happy Valentines day!

Posted by matthew on February 18, 2008  |  781 Commenthttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2008/02/18/i-love-you-you%e2%80%99re-perfect-now-change-happy-valentines-day/I+love+you%2C+you%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2re+perfect%2C+now+change.++Happy+Valentines+day%212008-02-18+16%3A56%3A38matthew

Happy (belated) Valentine’s day all! Sorry for the lack of posts, but I am going through my own transformations and there are times for silence as well. (I actually wrote this on Valentine’s day, but got around to posting it now)

For this writing, I’m going to focus on a particular dichotomy that is pretty universal amongst our relationships and in ourselves. This is the conflict apparent in the following two statements.

• I love you fully and completely.
• I really don’t accept ___ about you.

(one example for the latter might be “I don’t accept that you want to back away from any issue that may cause pain or conflict”)

Again, this is very common – in fact it’s the stereotypical “I love you, you’re perfect, now change!” motto. This isn’t a symptom of a neurotic mind; it is part of being human. The question is, how do we work with this instead of trying to be a romantic Jesus by denying what truly goes on?

As Walt Whitman wrote in “Song of Myself” : “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. ” Most of us recognize this in ourselves to some extent. Part of us wants to relax under the sun, and another part wants to fix up the home and do “valuable work”. So how to bring this unity into our lives?

Paradoxically, both within ourselves and in relationships, we always move towards a more loving direction when this contradiction and lack of acceptance is allowed and not resisted. It is by loving that we aren’t all-loving beings that creates the room for it. We’ve all heard that you cannot love another more than you love yourself. What I’m saying is you cannot love anything more than the permission that exists to not love it. This sounds complicated, but isn’t if you think of love as total and unconditional acceptance. It is a totality that includes its opposite.

In relationships, when there is no freedom to not accept parts of the other, then when this occurs (and it will occur, for we are not Buddha yet), it will remain silent and denied. This denial, like all denials, shows up as tension, lack of trust, maintaining an image of what loving behavior is, and so on. That disowned part of Self atrophies. It thinks: “If she really saw me for who I am, she’d see I don’t love her for who she is, and therefore she wouldn’t love me because what I profess to be is different from what I am.”

The above two statements occurred for me recently, and I voiced them. The effect was very freeing. By saying “I don’t accept ____ about you”, I was in effect saying I don’t love all of you yet, but I want to. Oh, how I did want to – but I wasn’t there yet. It created a space for both of us to be human, warts and all. The paradox again is that without that space, there’s no love anyway.

The problem with romance in our culture is that it is rarely a true and deep connection based on reality and the present moment. It’s a pie in the sky dream. We learn romance from Hollywood movies and high schools, where the ideal of love is more important than any real emotions occurring. It’s more important to strive for that ivory pedestal of an ideal relationship than to bring every bit of one’s Self forward to the relationship.

Unfortunately, there simply is no shortcut to truly loving with our whole being. And yet the paradox is that the love is already there. All the relationships I’ve been in, extremely dysfunctional ones included, have always had that deep love at the core of my being, connecting to their own deep love within them. We all already know about Love if we go deep enough inside ourselves; we’re only learning to bring it up through all the surface personality layers so we can live it.

It’s even more essential to give ourselves this inner space and freedom. We can think in terms of the law of attraction if we want; we can use affirmations; we can proclaim that we love ourselves unconditionally. But unless there is room for not loving ourselves – for the hate, non acceptance and harsh desires to be someone else – then there will not be love, for there is no room for it. This is of mindfulness – a space of simply watching what arises naturally, without any attempt for control or change. The essence of mindfulness is spaciousness.

I wrote this on Valentine’s day and it’s traditionally a time for romance. Let’s make it a time for love as well. Welcome all of your Self, and welcome all of whomever you interact with. It’s only when you welcome hatred – not to cultivate or flame, but simply in giving it mindful space – that we make room for love to work its magic on it. There’s always room for that.

Moving from control to freedom

Posted by matthew on November 3, 2007  |  50No Commentshttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2007/11/03/moving-from-control-to-freedom/Moving+from+control+to+freedom2007-11-04+04%3A21%3A00matthew

Here’s the next podcast from Karen Murphy. This is one that is actually a personal channeling, but illustrates universal principles in terms of what is required to make a substantial change in one’s life. In this case, it is from a constrained sense of having to manage everything (and control) to having a much greater sense of freedom via allowing. It implies more than is obvious.

Click play to start:

 

 Moving from control to freedom [21:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Karen is a professional channel. For information on services she offers, visit her web site at http://www.light-spring.com.

Here is the transcript of this:

Question: I recently described what I saw in _____ (female) as a very constrained system with only a few outlets, leading to output that looks like geysers. Could you both describe the state you see in her, as well as suggestions on potential actions to be taken to move to a more “free” state?

Response: 

We see that what we have here is a propensity to attempt to manage things. There has been such a feeling of lack of control in this lifetime that the fragment at hand feels it necessary to control many aspects of her life in order to not feel the terror that comes from being manipulated by others. We would say that this propensity has moved into a feeling of comfort that exists even though the need for such a method of interaction is no longer as necessary as it was once, when there were truly terrifying things occurring. Once it is seen and acknowledged that this state has existed and exists still then it is possible, with a certain about of recognition, to attempt to move from that instead into one that is more “free”, as you say.

However, we see some difficulties with this. In other words, for some patterns become so ingrained that it truly takes what we would say is a complete re-writing of the DNA structure in order to move into other patterns of thought, interaction and being. This DNA manipulation does not come, however, without a price, and we are not sure at this time that this fragment is willing to pay that price, as we see it. There are certain tradeoffs that would be made, and we do not see a willingness at this time to move into this more “free” state. However, that is not to say that it could not occur, and we would suggest then, if this fragment is truly interested in making these changes, a program that would probably take 2-3 years to accomplish. A program of nightly moving back into those places of terror and removing all elements of comfort that exist would likely remap the pathways within the both brain and physical self sufficiently in order to move into this more “free” state.

However, it takes a great deal of endurance, as we see it, and of course the willingness that we spoke of. Is this fragment ready to do this work? We are not certain. Will she ever be? We cannot say that either. However, if you were to think of life in purely linear terms, and of course being on the physical plane that is what you do, we would say that in order to move into that state which she knows is possible at this time, that this complete disintegration would be necessary to go through in order to reach that state.

We would say that if you are interested on behalf of this fragment (note: this means ‘person’)  in her attaining that state, then there are things you could do (and actually you have already been doing) in order to assist with this process. It would take some additional connection, especially during dream time, in order to help create the atmosphere necessary for her to more comfortably consider the absolute disintegration of self. Now, you might ask what specifically can you do, other than just think about it? You know yourself that ironically you are also moving through similar patterns in your own life. So the fact that there are parallels certainly should not escape you, and may assist you in making some choices of your own. However, we see you as much more comfortable with the thought of completely losing your “self”, as you know it, and being open to what comes from that process.. It is possible that moving into that more firmly that you can help provide a model, if you will, for her to move more firmly into that space herself.

It may be helpful to think about this process in terms of simply two fragments moving together in a lifetime and removing from it any aspects of “relationship”, as you see it. That would assist with removing from the equation some of the elements of arrogance that sometimes occur between you. Now in terms of what can later be gained from these processes for each of you, you probably sense on some levels what this would mean to your own personal development, and there are a couple of things we would like to point out.

1) It would certainly assist with your own abilities to have an effect on others, especially others on a wider scope. If this is something that you, in your head, wish to do, then his is a process that you wish to consider on a purely cerebral level. However, as you know, change does not take place simply on an intellectual basis, and must occur throughout all aspects of the Self, and that is why we spoke of the remapping of the DNA , as that would change every aspect of you, from your physical bodies, to your habits, to your emotions, to your interactions with others, to your interaction with self, to your perception of self, of others, and the universe.

2) This process we would like to remind you is not one to be taken lightly. It will change everything. You will not be in any way the same person that you were once. Now if that is something that appeals to you, again on a cerebral level it may be something that you wish to choose. However, know that choice occurs on many levels, and it is not just a simple matter of saying “that sounds like fun, I think I’ll do that”. It is a choice taken in conjunction with, for instance, everyone that you currently have interaction with. Consider that for a moment. If you make a choice that affects you on such a deep level, then you must also obtain the support of everyone else that you interact with. This is slightly larger than you think it is at this time. There are those with whom you have agreements, there are those with whom you have karma, there are those with whom you have past life association, there are those who not in bodies at this time whose agreements you must alter in order to make this kind of choice. So part of the process of completely allowing yourself to disintegrate – we would liken it to one of the 12 steps, where you must contact every one in your life that has been affected by who you are now, and not necessarily make amends, but at least identify this and connect with them again and receive their “permission”, if you will, to make this huge change, as that change will change them. It cannot help but do so.

In other words, you must receive almost permission on a global and universal level. That process itself requires abject and total humility. Now is it within you to possess such humility? We would not be bringing this up if we did not believe it was something you are capable of. But we would like to remind you that this process itself will bring with it pain and transformation. Just so you know what so expect.

Understand that if you choose on an essence level to undergo this, it will not necessarily be something that you’re all that conscious of when it’s happening. So to say that you wish a greater understand of it, yes, that makes sense again on a cerebral level. But because it’s a process and these parallels exist on much more than a cerebral level, it’s limiting to think of it in terms of something that you can understand. So we would suggest then, simply to expand your awareness into all the potentialities that ever have existed between you. In other words, expand your awareness to, for instance, all the past lives you have ever shared, and all the concurrences of those past lives, and all the reverberations that occurred as a result of the lives undertaken by those past lives that have occurred, and your collective concurrences. So you are starting to get the meaning of how huge this becomes. Expand your awareness into all of that, all of what happened, what might have happened, and what didn’t happen. And realize that’s only just a tiny, tiny piece of what exists between two fragments. So if you expand your awareness, again on a cerebral level, that’s extremely limiting. It must happen on a cellular level. And even that is limiting because your cells are not the whole of you. There is so much more to you than simply a body, and a mind and emotion.

So we would say to you then, that if you insist on attempting to have a greater understanding of this, because we see that you wish to do this from a place of wanting to help. The thing that would help (probably the most) would be holding a space of acceptance. That is not to say you are not already doing this. But to expand into that more. And include within that acceptance, acceptance for your Self as well. Acceptance for everything that has ever occurred between you, everything that ever will, and everything that never occurred between you. We have given you much to think about, and we would prefer it actually if you didn’t really think about it that much! Instead, just take the energy from what has come today and allow it to be there. That is all you have to do. Allow the energy to be a part of you. Because in essence, that is really all change is. There is nothing more ever necessary than that. And that is something we wish both of you to take with you this day.

Alright, we’ll tell you a story then, because again, it’s not what you know, it’s what you are. Remember that.

Once in time there were two farmers. Now, these farmers knew one another, but not all that well. They farmed in neighboring communities. They each built for themselves a business if you will, through their farming, and so became somewhat known by some of the additional neighboring communities. They were decent farmers and each of them employed some workers. Now one of the farmers had a worker who was quite disgruntled. Didn’t like the way he was treated; he thought he was better than being a worker. He really wanted his own farm, but didn’t have the wherewithal to establish that for himself. So he thought that what he would do is go to the other farmer to stir up a little bit of trouble, and see what happened. Because this disgruntled worker just liked to make things change more than anything else. He didn’t want to do the work, just see what would happen, because he was into observing experiences and interactions, and learning from that. So he went to the other farmer and started telling stories about the other, stories that frankly weren’t true. But the other farmer, being of a somewhat suspicious nature and wanting to hold on to what he saw was his own, started to believe these stories. Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon the original farmer who was completely innocent ended up losing his farm, his family, his money, his good name, and was cast out of the community in which he lived. As you can imagine this was a bit hard on him. He spent a lifetime building his little “empire”, his little world, but he was big enough in it, and he was happy with that. Not being all that young anymore, he wasn’t in a position to start over. So since he thought that the start of it all was the other farmer, he decided to do what he could do to stir up trouble for that other farmer. But you know what? It all backfired on him. It did. Because he no longer had his good name.

Now, did he learn something from that? Not in that lifetime, no. But later on he was able to look back and laugh and see how funny it was. Because it really kind of was – the beauty of irony is really quite funny when you’re not trapped by a body. So what happened to the other farmer, you might ask? The other farmer managed to double his earnings. I’m sure you can imagine where the other half came from, and made the disgruntled worker his son in law. So everybody was quite happy with this, except the other farmer started having dreams at night, dreams which plagued him and was unable to sleep. He lost weight because he couldn’t sleep, he lost his hair, he wasn’t pretty. Every night he was plagued with the same thoughts that he had done something wrong. That made him very sad. Pretty soon he was a mere shadow of his former self. So he decided some change was in order. He sold off the majority of his new holdings. He kicked his son in law and his daughter out of his house. He thought that the change would make him happy, but it didn’t. He still had the same dreams, night after night. He grew thinner and thinner. Finally he died. And on the astral plane after this life he ran across the other farmer who of course had died too, because he had no where to go and died of starvation, and they had a talk about this life. And what they decided was that it had really been quite a successful one, because although they didn’t necessarily have a lot of face to face interaction, the very fact that each of them was living their lives affected the other one to such a degree that it created huge changes in each of them. And they both went away from each other with huge satisfaction knowing that – even knowing that much of the interaction never took place on a “cerebral” level between them. They were quite aware on this astral level how actions of each other did affect them. And they walked away the best of friends and decided to do it again in another life. The end.

So you can draw your own parallels and do with that information what you will. Again, simply allowing the energy to be there is all that’s needed for change. There is nothing needed for change. It’s very simple.

seeing suffering in India

Posted by matthew on August 5, 2007  |  22No Commentshttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2007/08/05/seeing-suffering-in-india/seeing+suffering+in+India2007-08-05+20%3A16%3A00matthew

I’ve recently had talk with a few people about India and my experiences of being there. It’s been over 10 years ago now since I was there for about 6 months. I arrived without friends, guides or plans – simply bringing a large (but mostly empty) backpack and a guidebook. I saw ancient ruins, ashrams, monasteries, beach resorts, sky-touching mountains and parched deserts. I treked in the Himalayan mountains and river rafted and kayaked down mountain rivers. I saw the extremes of India’s culture, from the poverty, to the spiritual traditions, to the Hindu-Muslim clashes. The experiences from that trip expanded my mind and helped shape my mind to be able to see outside the cultural assumptions we take for granted.

Now one of the most common questions I’ve received over the years has been about the poverty in India. “It must have been so hard to see all the poverty and suffering there!” is something I’ve heard over 100 times.

The answer is of course, paradoxical. The truth is that it felt like an extreme relief. It was a profoundly freeing experience to actually see the suffering that was actually there. Here we avoid this. In the North American culture most of us are in, we do all we can to remove all sights, sounds and impressions that suffering exists. We try to hide homelessness, ignore poverty, and even amongst friends there’s usually a tacit agreement to filter our emotions and sufferings. Showing these in a corporate office is usually taboo. We’re uncomfortable with the emotions that seeing direct pain can bring up. In India, on the other hand, it’s all visible. The leprosy on the street is visible; the millions of people living in shacks with unclean water and no toilets are visible. The simmering rage between Hindus and Muslims is also visible.

(This kind of sight, by the way, is not that uncommon. Leprosy is quite common and visible in many streets)

It’s hard to convey why this is such a relief. But perhaps an analogy is in order. Say two people are in an exclusive relationship and one person cheats. The other person knows (as they usually do), but it hasn’t been brought out in the open. There will be a great tension in all interactions between them, because there is a great pain waiting to come up that they resist. So until it does, there will be a feeling of walking on eggshells, and if it continues, there will often be an entire routine built around avoiding the truth that a broken agreement has taken place. Misery will appear. When and if it actually does become visible, and both parties put all their emotions on the table, there will be a palpable sense of relief; the need for pretense is gone. Both sides can actually reveal their emotions instead of living within emotional castles of thick stone walls.

The truth is that suffering exists. Buddhism starts with this simple statement as the first noble Truth. Our society intellectually knows this, but we push it away emotionally. We say “yes, I know about suffering, I know it’s there, but I don’t want to touch it or be confronted with it”. And yet, when we do actually touch it, our heart opens. We simply can’t act compassionately until we actually touch another’s sufferings. We can’t understand others until we fully listen, and listening means fully allowing them to touch you. This touch involves more than the hospital rubber gloves of analysis; it involves an openness that has the possibility of being overwhelmed for a while. Yet being overwhelmed, as I was in India for some time, develops the heart. Emotional muscles need to work, or they atrophy. Allowing ourselves to be touched, and yes, sometimes hurt, by others’ sufferings lets the full range of the heart come forward.

It was actually more of a shock for me to arrive back in Canada than it was arriving in India. I was presented with all my family patterns of hiding real emotions (similar to most families here), and realized I simply could not go back to the way I was acting before. So over the next few years, I did my best to be visible with what was going on. This caused many upsets in my family, but has immeasurably helped me. My parents may not always feel comfortable with me, but their reaction is based on who I actually am, not a game we play.

I generally recommend being immersed in a similar culture for anyone wishing to see other ways of living. It’s not just India of course; there are many, many other cultures that don’t have the emotional straightjackets we do. An example closer to home might be Italians; in general, they tend to be much more visible with emotions, and if fights break out, so what? It doesn’t mean a lack of love. It can easily be part of it.

True Power.

Posted by matthew on June 5, 2007  |  30No Commentshttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2007/06/05/true-power/True+Power.2007-06-05+16%3A04%3A00matthew

If there’s anything that seems to create both longing and repulsion in our society, it’s power. People see it, and are both drawn to it and repulsed by its misuse. Even if we try to avoid power, we cannot avoid it completely. Power is a need as much as breathing and connections are. Without power, we would have no energy, and would only be a husk instead of dynamic beings.

However, the manifestation of power can vary greatly in its degree. Here’s some examples (those of you into Michael will recognize them) :

• Power from obtaining blind unquestioning obedience from others.
• Power from learning how to follow “the rules”.
• Power obtained from positions in society.
• Power from being an active member in a community and the support that means.
• Power obtained from knowing yourself.

You can see a progression there. This comes in to what true power means to me:

You know when you have reached a state of true power when your power cannot be taken away.

If you look at the above list, only the last item cannot be taken away. Others can refuse to listen and obey you, rules change, positions can disappear, and communities can undergo upheaval. Jobs can be lost; friends can be offended. As Buddhism teaches : everything in this world is transient.

However, I’m discovering more and more in my life things which are not transient, but are simply intrinsically part of who I am. Here are some things that give me power.

I have the power to not resist.

Though this sounds paradoxical to power, it goes to the root of all suffering. We suffer when we resist whatever experience is happening to us in this moment. Creating division internally by resisting an experience is a form of violence to myself. The knowledge I can choose to not resist anything gives power. [Note that this doesn't invalidate or make wrong the choice to resist; sometimes it's very practical and necessary to say "No" or "Not now."]

I am open to support in all form

Support is absolutely necessary for power and well-being. No one can experience joy or power in an ivory tower. A baby is perhaps the best example of this, as I’ve mentioned before. They are profoundly open to others support; they attract attention and care through their trust and openness. It is their openness that attracts rather than any active behavior.

It is also powerful for me to be clear what “all forms” means. It means that I simply don’t know what form it will take, and I’m fine with not knowing. It can be from friends. It can be from guides. It can be from the earth under my feet. It can be from the simple sensation of brushing my fingertips against a couch, reminding myself of my aliveness. Being open to all forms requires flexibility, which brings me to the next item…

I can adapt and change

Those who are rigid in their approach to life find themselves in constant battle. The world changes, as it’s designed to do, but they cannot. Therefore there is constant effort to make the world conform to their expectations. If a tragedy occurs, they are devastated. They will exhaust themselves in denial and in futile attempts to move the unmovable mountain.

Some martial arts can be good for learning this; they teach us to use the energy of the other person in an adaptive way, never making more effort than necessary. Some effort is always required, but by being flexible, we minimize it. The Tao Te Ching says it wonderfully :

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.
Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.
The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

This of course goes directly against the Hollywood ideal of power. Try it on for yourself and see if it works better for you than that!

I have detachment from results

Any attachment to an end result means there is something you want that can be taken away or not reached. This in itself provides fuel for fear. When we derive power from the process of living, instead of the results of our effort, there is nothing that can be taken away from us.

The best example of this is the greek concept of areté. (see the link for a full definition) The person with areté simply lives to their utmost potential, even in the face of hardship and disaster. Their well-being is derived from this sense of excellence in their life. Their actions come not from a place of desiring results, but simply because excellence is who they are. It is a continual, self sustaining source of energy, filled with love of self.

I can speak out and exert influence

This is what most people would think of when it comes to power – but note that it came after all of the above. There is no power without the ability to make an influence. However, it is the ability, or potential, that makes the power. It there is a need to make an influence, there is of necessity an attachment and inflexibility. There is also a lack of Love in the behavior, and so it will always create a counter force. If you make influence from a place of complete acceptance and love, there is no additional resistance created. People start listening.

Others’ power adds to my power

This is the final clincher, because at the root of true power is Love. True power is in harmony with others; it rejoices when others gain more power in their own lives. There is no one to compete with, and therefore no fuel for conflict, either externally or internally.

By all means, share your own source of power!