Category: Observations

Forget Positive Affirmations
Positive Affirmations Are Negative in Nature

What do we do with the fact that almost 100% of positive affirmations are negative in nature? You disagree with the numbers?

Most affirmations I see being mouthed are being initiated from a place of deficiency, a wanting to change our state or circumstances to some idea of better. A large part of the effort exerted in positive affirming seems to be an attempt to convince ourselves that we (or life) are more than we believe ourselves to be in the moment – I’m successful. I’m lovable, the world is abundant, God is on my side, etc.

The whole motivation is coming from an unacknowledged and under-explored sense of lack and deficiency. More than that, it is a complete rejection of reality as it is in the moment – the reality that we believe we (life) are lacking.

As I write this, I am sitting in my office. I don’t know of anyone who could come over here and move this building 6 inches with their physical strength much less with a positive affirmation. And yet, there are many people trying to push the entire universe around, to warp and shape it to meet their ideas of what they think they need to be whole or complete or happy.

Why are positive affirmations so appealing? Mostly because they help us avoid pain and suffering – or so we think. Much of the effect of positive affirmations is nothing more than hiding from what we really believe deep down inside, in the dark places we wish to ignore.

It’s a sad, tragic and, at times, a comic affair.

Imagine a lion walking around affirming – I’m king of the jungle, I’m king of the jungle. And yet this is exactly what people are doing with positive affirmations most of the time. The lion’s very nature is that it is a lion. Being king of the jungle is mostly an idea .

Fortunately lions are not as confused as human beings. Lions mostly walk around being lions without suffering from being disconnected from themselves and having a bunch of ideas about who or what they should be.

The most affirming experience we humans can have is to land in our true nature. A moment of perceiving the real is more powerful than a lifetime of words. Well intentioned, but misguided efforts at positive affirmations would be better spent in learning how to settle down and allow what is truly real in us arise into consciousness.

The world is abundant. Life is on our side. We are awesome and wonderful. It’s the true state of affairs. If we can’t see it, then the more productive course of action is to explore – why not. Trying to convince ourselves that the sky is blue when, in fact, the sky is blue – is crazy behavior.

As the saying goes – the only way out is through. Explore the deficiencies, the hidden beliefs. Open them up to the light of awareness. The truth will set us free. The false dissolves. Only the real remains.

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February 17
How Good Friends Can Keep Us Down
Well Intentioned Friends Can Support Our Deficiencies

Freedom is near and dear to the human soul. Most people I know value the freedom to chase their dreams.

Recently, I have been observing a friend who is working overtime chasing her dream of success. Success, for her, has many components – financial, recognition, security, acceptance, material, etc. I think she is a good representation of a normal person with ambition and drive wanting to improve their quality of life.

Her image of success has physical, emotional and psychological components. She is listening to many audio books on success to help her stay focused and motivated. Many of the messages in these self-help materials are in the nature of: you can do it; you can create the life you want; create the life you were destined to have; tell the universe what you want and it will respond; the “secret” is the power of positive thinking or visualization; or similar guidance.

What’s interesting to me is that she already has many of the things she is chasing. She just doesn’t see them or own them. She is, in fact, chasing parts of herself that are already there. There is a not so subtle rejection in this type of behavior.

Somewhere in the mix is a sense of lack. There must be. Why would we seek something we already have unless we don’t see it and feel it is lacking in us?

There seems to be this crazy misunderstanding of “positive” versus “negative” thinking. In the course of my life, I have encountered many, many people who are fanatic about positive thinking. Their positive thinking seems to prohibit them from looking at their more subtle or unconscious negative self-images or beliefs. The thinking seems to be – if I tell myself I’m wonderful, lovable or whatever a zillion times, then eventually I will be regardless of my unconscious beliefs about myself.

Well, I guess that’s one way to pass the limited time we have on this earth.

This orientation toward self-help and self-improvement is very wide spread in our culture – to the extent that it is easy for our friends to offer us support and encouragement that actually supports our unconscious beliefs instead of really supporting our movement toward freedom. It is well intentioned help that comes from a place of love and caring, but think about it – if I support your efforts to chase your tail – is that really the support you need?

I think the more loving thing to do is to try and help you stop chasing your tail and and take a close look in the mirror. Why aren’t you able to see what is so obvious to others? It’s not negative to explore negative beliefs and self-images. In fact, it’s one of the most positive things we can do to support our movement toward true freedom, wholeness and fulfillment.

Instead of avoiding or trying to cover up those limiting beliefs, we should be trying to expose them to the light of consciousness so we can see them for what they are – beliefs – ideas about ourselves that have been taken to be true. Seeing them in the clear light of the present moment sets in motion one of the most fundamental truths of realty – the truth will set us free.

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February 2
More on Non-Verbal Inquiry
How to Ask a Question Without Words

Geez, I forgot to mention one of the coolest things that led me to investigating non-verbal inquiry.

A couple of years ago, I started noticing that there were times when I was asking a question in myself, or interested in something, or curious, or simply in a state of open awareness – and a process of revelation and understanding happened that did not require me to put the question into words.

I think the first time this happened something had caught my attention and I just wanted to know more about it and – shazam! – things started unfolding. After this happened a time or two, I began to notice that in each of these instances, there was a familiar sense in my body and consciousness.

As I pondered this, an image came to me of a dog cocking it’s head – like it is curious about something. As I explored further, what I noticed was this inner orientation or posturing contained 3 main elements – Not Knowing, Curiosity and Openness.

But these elements on their own did not seem to initiate the process of nonverbal inquiry. An actual movement in my soul or consciousness was required to set things in motion – I had to cock my head (so to speak – just like that curious dog).

As I played with this, I found that I could literally look at anything (or not) and move into a space that just started things happening.

When I engage in this type of inquiry, there is often no goal or direct answer to anything in particular I am seeking. Quite often the experience is more like a meditative falling through the rabbit hole. When I return to my other sense of myself, I feel like I have seen things or been shaped by the experience and that somehow I have changed.

Right now, I am curious about cocking my head and walking down the street or driving down the freeway to see what it might be like to move in the world while doing some non-verbal inquiry.

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January 28
Non-Verbal Inquiry
Analysis & Revelation in Inquiry

Two elements or dynamics that seem to have engaged my attention for sometime now are analysis and revelation, particularly in regards to their role or functioning in the process of inquiry. (Inquiry is a powerful methodology for removing the blinders of the ego-self.) Both of these dynamics, analysis and revelation, play a significant role in what I refer to these days as non-verbal inquiry.

Let’s begin with analysis or the analytical functioning of the mind and how it serves the process of inquiry and supports revelation. For most of my life, people have been telling me I am too much in my head – I even tell myself this at times! People often say I think too much, but many of those people do not understand that what is happening in me is not what is happening in them.

Often, when I am describing my experience or insights to someone, they think that I am engaged in what I call mechanical thinking – the mind is chewing its way through something, examining the details, looking in every nook and cranny. But these days, that is often not the case.

These days what is happening, more and more, is an analysis that is more synthesis than thinking. That is to say that I see more than think. The various elements , details and components of a situation or thread of inquiry just appear. The articulation of them can often appear to others like I am thinking about them, when in fact I am merely trying to express the relationships I am seeing between them and the various roles they play.

So, these days, telling me to stop thinking so much is wasted breath. It would be more on point to tell me to quit seeing so much which seems impossible because mostly what I see is not dependent on my eyes. Isn’t this part of your experience, too?

It is beyond me to explain or articulate revelation. Things are revealed – seems simple enough. What amazes me is the power and simplicity of revelation. Seeing and experiencing the affect of revelation on my mind, consciousness and experience is always surprising, amazing and fresh. “Seeing is Believing” seems to apply here.

These days I find myself engaged in a form of inquiry that is not so much a Sherlockean (I made that word up) experience, that is deductive or inductive reasoning. In fact, this form of inquiry bypasses articulation or my need to language or verbally interpret my experience. This experience of inquiry seems to be happening in an arena beyond the conceptual mind. It is more like free-falling into the depth. It feels more like open-ended revelation that is more a felt sense than seeing, hearing or conceptually understanding.

In this process, I feel the dynamism of the soul revealing itself in subtle ways. So far, my experience is that, it does me little good to think about things after returning to my normal sense and way of thinking and understanding. My mind seems unable to grasp the experience, but there is knowing and understanding – I can feel it in myself.

The result of this non-verbal inquiry is that as I live my life, I see the results of the process showing up as revelation or analysis/synthesis. My life reveals my understanding as I live it – there is nothing to apply, no burden to produce.

And that is about as much as I can say about non-verbal inquiry at the moment. What say you?

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January 22
Green Tea vs. Coffee

What’s Your Choice – Green Tea or Coffee?

As I sit here working on the 10 blogs I author, I just got a strong desire for a cup of dark roast coffee. It’s the first such impulse I’ve had in the 14 days since I had my last cup of java.

I didn’t make a concerted effort to stop drinking coffee, just woke up one day and decided to have green tea instead. The next day I decided to do the same and before I knew it, 2 weeks had passed.

As most coffee lovers know, it’s hard to imagine green tea giving one the same satisfaction as coffee. Coffee seems to be more of an enlightening experience where green tea is for the enlightened – could it be???

The desire for a cup of coffee seemed to have just evaporated. I noticed this morning, when I had the impulse, that the elements involved were a desire for the aroma, the sense of fullness and some sense of grounding. Interesting that a cup of coffee could evoke such things.

As I sit here with my cup of Japanese green tea, I don’t get the same sense from it at all. Green tea, to me, seems vaporous and unsubstantial – more etheric in nature. Green tea has a long list of health benefits associated with it while coffee has a shorter list of health benefits associated with it.

I think coffee has more fanatical fans than green tea. This could be because they’re all addicted to the caffeine, but as in all things, the true coffee lovers are in it for more than a slight metabolic boost.

BTW – one of my favorite coffee blogs is the Coffee Messiah. I don’t have any green tea blogs to recommend.

Just took my first sip of green tea. It’s hot. That’s about all I can say in favor of the experience on the surface. Hopefully all of those health benefits are coursing through my blood stream.

It surprised me that I didn’t get a caffeine withdrawal headache from dropping coffee. I can’t pinpoint another source of heavy caffeine in my life and I remember times I stopped drinking coffee in the past and the pain that came along for the ride.

Why am I drinking green tea? I haven’t a clue, but the desire for coffee seems to have faded into the background for a while. I’m sure it will return, something that good can’t stay hidden for long.

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January 19
Eat from the Perimeter

Shopping the Perimeter for Healthy Eating

I had not hear the term – perimeter shopping – before, but it makes sense. The idea of perimeter shopping or eating is that the modern supermarket puts the fresh food and produce at the perimeter of the store.

As we move into the center of the store, you find the canned goods and more food items with additives and preservatives. Often it is these ingredients that lead to food sensitivities that reduce our quality of life.

By shopping the perimeter, we keep your diet cleaner and take control of what we put in your mouth. While shopping the perimeter of the supermarket for healthy and fresh foods, look for and aim to buy organic fruits, veggies, meats and other products.

Of course, there are many items in the perimeter that have additives and preservatives, but in the perimeter of the store we usually find fresh produce and fresh juices.

The sense of shopping the perimeter reminds me of “grazing” at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle. Pike’s Place Market, for those of you not familiar with it, is a huge, multi-storied market with fresh produce & fish and many artisan shops.

A great way to spend a Sunday is to spend and hour or two shopping at Pike’s Place Market and nibbling food as we go – human grazing – an apple here, a little smoked fish there, a muffin, some juice, an espresso – make it an epicurean experience.

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January 4