Ian McKay interviews Jessica Britt, a Diamond Approach teacher, about her spiritual journey. Jessica has been a teacher of mine for over 20 years. In addition to teaching the Diamond Approach, Jessica works with the Medicine Wheel
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I like to watch Texas Hold’em Poker. I’ve never played it, though I have thought about playing poker online. My friend, Holly, is on her way back from France and coincidentally, I received an email about the above linked poker site.
It got me to thinking about how we bet on life, or don’t. It’s the old question of do we walk the talk or do we hedge our bet. Are we “all in” on our life and practice or are we taking it easy, procrastinating or even being lazy.
Perhaps the daily quote on the Diamond Approach Facebook page contributed to me examining the current state of affairs:
It’s possible to examine the extent to which our lives reflect the truth we know. What kinds of foods do we eat? Do we exercise? How do we manage our schedules? Do we find out what we enjoy doing and then set about doing it? Do we allow ourselves the rest and the aloneness that we need to experience the preciousness of reality? Or do we spend day after day being lazy and procrastinating, living routines that makes us miserable? What do we do in terms of our relationships? Do we try to live those relationships according to the truth that we know? Do we apply the experiences we’ve had of ourselves and others and the world or do we reserve our insights for special occasions? Do we create the kind of environment that supports the actualization of the truth? Or do we believe that it’s sufficient to experience ourselves as precious, and then expect the angels to come and clean our room every day?
We’re talking about very practical matters here. We’re talking about applying what we know and what we learn, making the effort, expending the energy to live with sincerity. We do the Work, we practice the teaching, every minute of our lives, not only when we meditate or go to a session or a meeting. For example, if we know that we are more in touch with ourselves when we are relaxed, do we try to pay attention so that we’re as relaxed as possible all the time? Do we organize our time and our life so that we minimize confusion and unnecessary activity?
So we see that there are practical sides to loving the truth for its own sake. To love the truth for its own sake, which has to do with the heart, we have to involve the belly. The Kath, the Hara, our belly center, supports the heart’s love of the truth. The heart cannot survive on its own, cannot survive without the support of our actions, which are centered in the belly. Sincerely loving the truth is ultimately useless if we don’t sincerely live the truth.
Years ago, I used to fly over to Las Vegas from Los Angeles every Friday night and play Blackjack all night. I was interested in card counting at the time. I’m happy to report that I broke even for the six months I did that. I don’t know what the fascination is with poker, but Texas Hold’em is interesting and the game is changing quite dramatically as a whole new generation of online players with a lot of aggression show up at poker events.
It’s an interesting moment when a poker player goes all in, risking everything…. well, at least for that hand, on that day, in that tournament.
Just got me to wondering – am I all in on life and daily practice?
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The problem with in-laws
Is the concern
For their family values
Not you
The mind’s orientation
Toward the soul
Is similar ———– jh
It’s impossible to judge a book by its cover if there is no comparing mind. If there is no reference point for comparison then, it’s damn difficult to find fault with anything.
Now, a comparing mind can be a good thing when it’s functioning free of the “judging mind”; “inner critic”; superego; or “junkyard dog”. It helps us to get home with a sack of oranges instead of a box of zucchini. But, unless we have engaged in specific work on this part of ourselves, it’s a given that it is running amok and causing us an enormous amount of suffering.
If we really look into the situation, we find that this junkyard dog is just plain mean and nasty. It’s being driven by self-hatred and it’s using our libidinal energy (life force) against us. I wish it weren’t so, but the situation is even worse. (more…)
I got on the spiritual path at age 19. The experience that precipitated my interest in spiritual development, self-realization, God-realization, enlightenment and such was, at that time, just mind boggling. Today, I realize that the experience involved a descent of essence into my consciousness and body, and an awakening of the point.
Like many, I have spent years seeking, searching, making half-assed attempts at meditation (daily practice), attending workshops, retreats and in the course of events spending more than tens of thousands of dollars. In the process of all of that, I matured (to some degree!) physically, emotionally and spiritually. My journey or process deepened. My orientation reoriented. My interests and curiosity started going places I could not have imagined.
Today, I find myself here – not going anywhere, no interest in changing or making something happen. It seems things change on their own and that there is an intelligence guiding it all that is more in touch with what I need to unwind than my mind on it’s best day could offer up. A real weight-lifting experience – so to speak.
I recently attended Byron Brown’s Soul without Shame workshop, a 3 1/2 day teaching on disengaging from the superego / inner critic. The superego / inner critic is one of the places of arrested development in our psyches and souls that constantly attacks and undermines our realization. Interestingly, in the beginning it actually serves us to move toward deeper realization, but then it really gets in the way. Doubt is one of it’s most effective tools. It also works through other people by producing attacks from the outside.
So there I was minding my own business two days after the workshop reading a magazine when I came upon this:
The harder you hit this material, the more powerful it becomes. F. Daniel Tsai, Novana
And that is where and how the words bulletproof and realization crossed paths in my brain and got me to thinking and contemplating bulletproof realization. I haven’t the time, nor inclination to share the breadth and depth of my contemplation, but I will say this – if we want to bulletproof our realization – live our realization, without goals & artifice, penness, curiosity and not-knowing are better supports and servants for orienting us.
Realization is practice. Practice is realization.
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We know reification is at work when we think of it as this moment or the next moment. The moment is actually out of time.
Time is rushing at us
From everywhere
From all directions
From inside and outside
From the past and future
Physical time
Emotional time
Psychological time
It’s absolutely
Incredible
How
All of time
Fits into the
Moment
The Inner Heart
When heart touches earth,
it also whispers upon the wind,
engulfs the sea,
and hears itself in every breast
How is it possible
to breathe in all of this beauty
and empty oneself
into the moment?
Sleep
Is the gift of God
Don’t waste it on escaping this world
Or flee there in boredom or despair
Sleep for the sake of the soul
Refresh yourself for tonight’s dancing and revelry
A rested body and mind
Is a great gift to throw into Nothingness
Lay your body in the lap of the Beloved
Deep sighs of the burden surrendered
True support, the Divine Current
Lay your head against the Beloved’s bosom
Sighs of relief from separation
Acceptance, the disappearing into Transparency
Touch your heart-cheek to the Beloved’s
Sweet melting sighs of ecstatic release
The rich Perfume of The Beloved’s neck
Is what you are
Oh come, you
Who work and struggle
Who suffer and wander
Who are weary and worn
Rest for the sake of the soul
Lay you heads and bodies down
Lay your heart-cheeks upon His mercy
Rest for the sake of the soul
One moment
In Absolute sleep
Will
Change
You
Forever
There IS
A point
At the center of me
That IS
Not of this world
All moments
Within and without
Intersect here
All directions
Lead to it
It is not even
A nanosecond’s width
In space-time-existence
It connects all moments
And threads of time
Reducing all time-maps
To nothingness
It is the non-function
Birthing the Golden Mean
Resolving all mathematics
Into null
It is the priorness
The no-place
Of the emergent bubble
It is not here nor there
But everywhere
It cannot be found or located
But is the core
Of the Everything
It is the utter calm
The completely still
To say
It is this or that
Is a deception
It does not exist
But is the ground
That gathers every
Present moment
Into nowhere
It is the Not-Now
Of timelessness
It is the ground of NOT
Gravity-mass-movement
And the soul
Longs for its
Intimate kiss
Cessation
Time
Has a way
Of complicating life
Here
Is the key
Of how
To make life
Very clear and simple
Enter
The moment
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Night
Came silently into my house
Illuminating dark spaces
The hidden, the forgotten, the not-known
Night
Put the mind to rest
And bedded the heart
In the still-point of rapture
Night
Kisses my face
Until I am no more
Than it
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