Open-Secrets

Author: John

  • Happy Ending Massage

    Happy-ending-massageDoes massage leave you with a happy ending?

    I was at Supreme Foot Massage in Walnut Creek, California the other day for a 60 minute foot massage combined with a 30 minute back massage – $45 weekday special.

    Supreme Foot Massage is kind of a hole-in-the-wall place, but you can’t beat the price for an hour or so of supreme relaxation. And the staff is friendly.

    I was mentioning my supreme massage to a guy moving to Walnut Creek and he immediately came back with – did it have a happy ending? A happy ending massage is a phrase I had never heard of until July of this year. You’d think with over 50 years of living and hundreds of massages from around the country, I wouldn’t be so ignorant or naive.

    What I really liked about the exchange, was how the guy’s mind totally lost interest when I replied – no, it’s just a great place for a great foot massage. Observing his mind’s dismissal (emptying, leaving the scene) was really something. One second there was content there, the next instant that content had evaporated because of a total lack of interest.

    I guess, if I had had the happy ending he was familiar with, we could have exchanged more words. My feet were happy, in that moment, it seemed like divine benevolence to me.

    What leaves you with a happy ending?

    Links of Interest

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    Items of Interest

  • Love of Truth – Fuel for the Journey

    Love-of-truthAgain, I am confronted by a person who seems to have zero capacity to self-observe or any interest in exploring their world view. There is a lot of conflict in this person’s life at present.

    Over the last couple of years, financial stress seems to have activated primal survival issues. Fear-based living is dominating this person’s life and awareness.

    It’s a sad and tragic situation. This human being is locked into a private hell where all the problems are outside, all the change needs to take place in others and in world circumstances. There isn’t one iota of contemplation around the possibility of personal responsibility, accountability, projection or distortion.

    It makes me aware of how difficult the journey can be. As I see this person alienating and hurting others while maintain a stance of – I’m the nicest person I know – I marvel at how blind we can be.

    Even when a person has the capacity for self-observation and a willingness to want to know the truth about themselves, it can be very challenging. We all have fundamental negative beliefs about ourselves that need to be brought into consciousness – into the light of day, into the possibility of transcendental awareness.

    Today, I revealed my deepest, darkest secret to my teacher. I’ve had a student/teacher relationship with David for over 12 years. I didn’t think I would ever bring this situation up with anyone, but there I was marveling at me opening up my mouth to reveal this very painful place in me.

    As you might assume, this place is full of excruciating shame and judgment.

    Why, I asked myself, am I choosing to bring this up? Very simple answer – freedom. My soul longs to unwind, to be free of all contractions, inhibitions and limitations.

    How is it possible to discover and engage these places that hold us hostage to our deepest fears – love of truth. The heart and soul love the truth. And loving the truth fuels the journey to freedom and intimacy.

    Links of Interest

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  • Coming to You Soon Through Understanding

    Dream-process-understandingThis phrase was in my dreams last night. It struck such a chord with me, that I remember thinking about it in my dream and, apparently, it stuck in my consciousness somewhere.

    On the way to 24 Hour Fitness at 5:30am today, I was pondering – Coming to You Soon Through Understanding, the process of understanding, and a relative of mine that seems incapable of self-reflection.

    The normal process of understanding is a pale reflection of the power that inquiry, self-reflection, insight and revelation bring to the soul’s unfoldment. To change the deep programming and convictions that exist in the soul requires us to be powerfully affected by reality – what’s real.

    Thinking about change, adopting strategies to live by, positive affirmations, and the like are not enough to dissolve fundamental beliefs and misunderstandings that keep the soul from knowing and living a realized life.

    Coming to You Soon Through Understanding – Self-Realization. That’s how the dream ended. When I first heard the phrase in the dream it was like an advertisement. I was wondering, in the dream, what are they promoting. (I suppose “they” are actually me since it was my dream)

    The relative, I mentioned earlier, is a constant source of contemplation for me. It boggles my mind that a person can absolutely believe that the problem always resides in the other. There seems to be an inability  (beyond the question capacity) to actually be able to look at oneself from a place of openness and curiosity. There isn’t even a spark of interest or desire to explore the possibilities of the self and the world being more than one imagines it to be.

    There is nothing quite like the wonderment, the bedazzlement and the delight of revelation through understanding.

    Of Interest – perhaps

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  • Narcissism – The I’s Have It

    PhotoFunia_9d6aeWho are you loving today?

    Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego.

    The term narcissism means love of oneself, and refers to the set of character traits concerned with self-admiration, self-centeredness and self-regard. The name was chosen by Sigmund Freud, from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Even George Carlin had something to say on narcissism.

    Narcissism isn’t just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness. Narcissists desperately need other people to validate their own worth. A narcisist’s self-worth is based upon being admired by others. Many flaming narcissists are despicable jerks, dislike by many, but also admired for their business savvy, charisma, wealth, looks, etc. It’s the admiration that counts not being liked or disliked.

    The term narcissist usually conjures up an image of a self-centered, selfish person. Narcissists avoid personal accountability, it’s always the other person’s fault.

    From the perspective of Being, True Identity, or the Essential Self – we’re all narcissists. Being disconnected from what is real within us, we live our lives based upon images of self and not the actual ontological experience of self.

    Fundamental narcissism, the specific and most central manifestation of the disconnection from the essential core of the self, the Presence of being, underlies all other forms of narcissism. Pathological narcissism is a distortion or an exaggeration of fundamental narcissism. Fundamental narcissism is an intrinsic property of the ego-self, which is the self as experienced in the dimension of conventional experience.  –  A.H. Almaas – The Point of Existence

    Self-help books and personal development gurus speak to the value of self-love. Let’s not confuse this with narcissistic tendencies. Perhaps it would be better to encourage self-kindness and self-acceptance – which is really all all about disengaging the superego so we can actually explore our experience in an open manner without beating ourselves up all the time.

    If we accept the fact that psychological development includes a certain amount of baggage like narcissism,  racism and enough defenses to populate the Pentagon, it actually opens the door to fruitful exploration and the possibility of encountering what’s real.

    Of course, we can always Love New York

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  • Platonic Forms – Platonic Love

    What did Plato refer to when he used the word “form”?

    Reality. If Plato is right, we are not entitled to think of reality in the conventional commonsense way, that is, to assume that that which is sensible is most real. That which really exists is to be apprehended only through thinking–by constructing and testing theories. Sensible objects could not possibly be real; they could at best be “copies” or “images” (as Plato calls them) of underlying realities which can be thought about but which cannot be perceived. In short, what we usually call “the real world” is not that at all, but is rather just a world of appearance or seeming. Only the Forms really exist, for they are the “causes” (in the sense of archetypal standards) of whatever intelligible properties are discernible in those sensible things which seem to be most real. If we don’t know what beauty, or equality, or justice is ideally, how can we recognize particular instances of these? – James Dye

    For Plato’s Forms are not mental entities, nor even mind-dependent. They are independently existing entities whose existence and nature are graspable only by the mind, even though they do not depend on being so grasped in order to exist. And mind refers to the “nous,” the higher mind, not our every day conceptualizing mind.

    Each of the aspects of Essence is a Platonic form, eternally and primordially itself. Love is always and eternally love, so is peace, so is joy, so is intelligence, and so on. Each cannot be anything else, cannot evolve and cannot devolve. It cannot be contaminated and cannot be improved upon. Each aspect is aware of itself, and only of itself. It is the presence of a particular quality, and only this quality. It is a pure consciousness, a consciousness aware of its presence, but its knowledge is different from that of the soul. The soul can be aware of herself as pure consciousness, and then she is like essence, for she is then essence. The soul, however, can know herself as any of the aspects of essence, for all of these aspects are elements of her potential.  – A.H. Almaas – Inner Journey Home

    Platonic Love

    Platonic love is mostly understood to be a pure, spiritual affection, subsisting between persons of opposite sex, unmixed with carnal desires, and regarding the mind only and its excellences.

    Love, though, is a Platonic form, so Platonic Love could also refer to the undelying ground of love despite its appearance or manifestation. Platonic love could be how we experience the Platonic form of love when love is not tied to the instincts.

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  • What Do You Do, When You Do What You Do

    Butterfly_chaosYou’ve heard of chaos theory?

    • When a butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Caribbean Islands, does it affect us here in California?
    • When a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound.
    • If a man makes a decision while his wife is not around, is he still wrong?

    Few of us consider the consequences of our everyday actions in depth. If we did, we’d be busy all the time thinking of the consequences of our actions. Of course, the superego is there to help you with this endless mind chatter.

    Enlightened souls seem to spend little time thinking of consequences, they act from an integrated place of being. Thus, their actions are in the flow of the logos, in harmony with the arising of being.

    For those of us still trying to do the best we can with our actions and doings, it seems the more open our hearts, the more likely our actions will be less violent to others. Violence = Divisive = Separate

    You’ve heard the Dervish Tale???

    Knock, Knock

    “Who’s there?”

    “You”

    Reminds me of Cheech & Chong –

    Knock, Knock

    “Who’s there?”

    “Dave”

    “Dave’s not here anymore”

    What’s your favorite meditation koan?

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Open-Secrets