How the mind’s simple operating system distorts the world and traps us in the past
How the Mind Relates to the World and Others…
There is you/me
There is the other
There is an energetic/emotional/mental relationship between the two that connects to the past and the present is seen and interpreted through this lens.
Our experiences before and after birth impress upon our mind and nervous system as memory traces – mostly unconscious. These impressions form the building blocks for all future interactions with the world and others as the mind tries to learn from experiences by interpreting events and comparing what’s happening now to the past (projecting the past onto the present) and anticipating the future. These internal mental relationships are called object relations. (more…)
The exact words from a friend who a few hours earlier was doing all she could do to remain present in the midst of excruciating pain and suffering!
We sat sipping coffee as she inquired into a personal situation that soon had her on the precipice of the abyss – oceans of tears could be seen behind those eyes into the soul. As she articulated the early childhood roots of the pain and suffering – we both just kept breathing, sipping coffee in a crowded cafe and being with what was arising.
In the midst of the exploration into the pain and suffering that was arising, there were bright moments of laughter and happiness. A seemingly paradoxical thing, but not for those who love the truth. One of the most interesting and powerful turnings in life occurs when the truth becomes more important that pain or pleasure.
It’s an amazing thing to share a journey into such depth and also discover a great phrase for a bumper sticker!
It’s natural that human beings don’t want to suffer. Everyone wants to feel good. Not only human beings, but all living beings want not to suffer; they want to feel good, to feel safe. It is obvious, a given. Many people approach our work with the motivation to be free of suffering. This is one of the main attractions of work like this: we hope that it will help us with our suffering, our pain, and our difficulties. Most people come to the work because of suffering and dissatisfaction, because of some or other discontent with their lives.
But what is suffering? Why do we suffer? And why do we sometimes suffer more when we start paying attention to ourselves? We know that suffering is universal, that a large part of everyone’s experience is suffering, pain, discontent, difficulty. And most of the time we don’t know what to do about it. We have no idea why there is so much suffering or what we can do to alleviate it, although we always do want to alleviate it. To really penetrate this issue, to have a thorough understanding that will relieve our suffering is no small thing. – A. H. Almaas – Inexhaustible Mystery
When it comes to relationships, what are the possibilities for the human soul? Do soul mates exist? If everything is one, what’s the implication for human relationship? How deep can intimate relationships go? Why all the attraction between these human hearts?
These were just a few of the questions that were addressed at a recent exploration I attended on Unilocal Relationship. What the heck is unilocal, you may ask? Well in the grand scheme of reality which includes such crazy things as being/nonbeing, nonduality, singularity, timlessness and such – unilocal is a term used to describe the experience where time and space fold into everywhere and everytime being present. A wild concept, yes?
Some of the exploration included tidbits that were touched upon in the recent dialogue between A. H. Almaas & Cynthia Bourgeault – Conscious Love: The Power of Revelation.
There were over 200 people in attendance and I noticed that most “partners” did many of the exercise together – couples were interested in exploring their intimate relationship and history together.
I thought I might try to use Powtoon in an attempt to address the concept of unilocal relationship – an impossibility, but it was fun playing around with it! In the first place, unilocal relationships are not chosen by individuals, created via soul mates or necessarily something to aspire to. Unilocal is very mysterious, radical and mind-boggling – something for everyone!
How do we get the ego to relax – allowing us to wake up?
More than once, I have heard A. H. Almaas say that all we need is a good massage for the ego. His point being that fundamentally, the ego is nothing more than a collection of tension patterns in the mind and body.
These patterns become habitual ways of knowing ourselves and relating to the world. They show up as conditioned armoring in the body, an area of deep curiosity for Wilhelm Reich. These tensions and patterns affect how our awareness and perception – what we see and how we see it. Many of the beliefs and attitudes that we feel are conscious choices are nothing more than unconscious creations of these contractions in the psyche.
More and more I notice that during meditation there are periods where I am noticing tension patterns and streams of cycling thoughts, emotions, sensations and energies that I am bringing attention to – then relaxing within them. As an example, I may notice a deepening sense of concentrated awareness and an increasing tension in my forehead, neck or shoulders. When I notice this, I stay with the deepening awareness and at the same time relax the area of tension in the body.
When the tension in the body relaxes, I notice the awareness deepens even more.
One thing I practice relaxing with is the sense of self – that guy who thinks he is meditating. An interesting “mirror reversing” experience can arise where there is more just meditation and not so much someone there meditating.
I think there could be a great demand for ego masseuses. Do you know an ego masseuse you can recommend? What’s the going rate for a 90-minute ego massage – and I don’t mean the type of ego stroking that increases my identification with the sense of a separate self, just the opposite… fade to black!
To see what is in front of my nose is a constant struggle – George Orwell
If you go further than the tip of your nose to find what is truly precious, you’ve gone too far. – John Harper
Ah, the nose – it leads us into so much of our experience, even as it rejects what smells fishy or offending. Many of us rely on our “gut” for a sense of the truth, but the gut may be receiving input from the nose that we’re not aware of.
Cats arch their backs at the smell of a rival, and mice scurry at the scent of a fox. But how does the nose know who or what is lurking? Now scientists have identified several special receptors in the noses of animals that react to specific scents given off by others.
If you lose your sense of smell, could insanity be next?
An Australian team from the University of Melbourne examined a group of people deemed to be at ultra high risk of developing psychosis and found those that went on to develop schizophrenia, rather than other forms of psychosis, all displayed the inability to identify smells. This deficit was present before the onset of any significant clinical symptoms of psychosis. – Could You Suffer From Psychosis? The Nose Knows
Hairy Sensitivity – Before the hair stands up on the back of our neck, our body is registering a lot of hairy information. Our hearing and smelling rely on very sensitive hairlike cilia as does our sense of balance.
The olfactory cilia inside the nose line the mucus membranes of the nose, and unlike most other cilia in the body, they are non-motile, remaining stationary in the nose rather than wiggling around in the mucus like the cilia which line the trachea and intestines do. As smells enter the nose, they dissolve in the mucus and come into contact with the olfactory cilia. The cilia in turn transmit the smell to the olfactory nerve, which passes the information on to the brain – via the olfactory bulb.
At a cellular level, primary cilia appear in key places that involve hearing, sight, and other forms of sensory input. Does this mean that when we are – sensing, looking & listening – we’re just a bunch of wild hairs interacting with biological reality?
Consider for a moment your proximity and relationship to the tip of your nose. Does soul have a face that orients forward?
How the Mind Relates to the World and Others…
The exact words from a friend who a few hours earlier was doing all she could do to remain present in the midst of excruciating 
