Open-Secrets

Tag: awareness

  • Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

    Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

    Go ahead, make my day…

    The gun didn’t scare me, nor did the guy holding it that was going to kill me. In fact, I was intrigued, curious to the nth degree – what would death be like? What would I experience? Would I experience? Who would experience, if there was experience? If there was experience, would there be a transition from one state of awareness and consciousness to another?

    I leaned into the gun until the muzzle was touching my forehead – directly at the third eye. “Go ahead,” I invited. I relaxed and centered my focus and  on simple being – breathe grasshopper…

    Did the gun fire? Is my body dead while my awareness/consciousness remains? If death was instantaneous, I probably wouldn’t have registered the event. “What’s my experience now?,” goes through my head(?), mind(?), consciousness(?).

    “If my brain is dead,” I think(?), “then I probably wouldn’t be thinking like this.” What would the experience be?

    My state is suddenly much more subtle – not so much heavy self-reflective thinking, more like deep, relaxed meditation. I recognize this state and am aware that if grasped at, it will disappear. Relaxing more (who/what relaxes?), the state envelopes me(?) more – absorbs me(?) – just the state now. A self-aware state. No where to go, no where to be – a simple experience, complete in itself.

    “Wait a sec,” I think(?) “What about all those different planes/dimensions of existence that many spiritual traditions speak of?”

    I realize that I am dreaming and have the freedom to explore possibilities beyond the limits of waking life. I head out for the far country where I can be many, any I(s). Where living, dying, flying and enlightenment are possibilities.

    I wake up on Easter Sunday, I’m a year older. Now there is a miracle – overnight, I aged a year!

  • Meditation – Running on Empty

    Meditation – Running on Empty

    Mindfulness of an Empty Mind on Auto-Run

    meditation awareness mindfullnessThis one is for Janice and Kathy.

    I remember when external noises were a nuisance and distraction during meditation. Like many(?) or most(?), I used to think I was supposed to block out noise. What a hoot! Nothing leads to deepening meditation like effort and contraction. At some point, I realized that I can’t stop my ears and brain from doing what they do – registering sound and other convenient processes.

    All (most?) of us have had experiences where we were so engrossed in something that all other activity seemed to cease. So the exercise seems to be one of increasing our absorption into ??? eventually awareness of awareness?

    It’s interesting how curiosity does not have to involve thinking. We don’t have to engage the content of the mind with our minds(?). I noticed that for many years my meditation seemed to be linked to my eyeballs – always looking for something inside because I seemed to be located right behind those eyeballs in my head. What a relief to discover that those eyeballs, head and body do not contain, nor confine, me.

    Imagine my pleasant surprise, one day, to discover that my mind could keep on thinking and planning without me having to be present and overseeing the process. This increased my curiosity about what was meditating – and that seems to be key – a real interest in meditation. Of course, this interest is not so much about understanding meditation with the mind, nor observing the process to improve it. The interest is deeper, subtler – more like our soul has an interest or the meditation has an interest.

    All(?) spiritual teachings say that God, the Divine, Allah, True Nature, WHATEVER you name IT –  is right HERE , right NOW. Most, also assert, that the Divine is always in a process of revealing itself to us. That being the case why would I need eyes to go looking for it. Why should I need to work so hard. Perhaps I should relax, you know – rest and abide in attentive awareness with no thought of getting anywhere or finding anything – just hang loose in a relaxed way as traffic goes by and dogs bark.

    It’s more pleasant now that meditation is not goal oriented. I meditate not for the pleasure of it or for gain, but for… hmm, my mind has no rational reason it can offer. The impulse seems to be coming from elsewhere – perhaps that other end of the candle where the Divine is burning through my veils.

    Awareness of mindfulness – a mind with or without content.

    The beauty of meditation is that all of life, even our thinking mind, can keep on keeping on while we tend to something much more significant.

     

     

  • More on Sensing, Looking & Listening

    Moving Beyond 6 Senses – Awareness & Consciousness

    As a continuation of my thoughts on Sensing, Looking & Listening, I must consider the senses. Seems obvious, but Sensing, Looking & Listening, if practiced and explored with sincerity, quickly leads beyond the senses.

    awareness practicsThe beginning practice of Sensing, Looking & Listening is associated with sight, sound & touch. As a first step, it is often suggested that one begin with the toes of one foot and move up the leg to the hip – slowly sensing each segment of the foot and leg. The sensing then moves to the fingers of the hand on the same side of the body and proceeds up the arm to the shoulder – again, sensing each segment as the awareness moves up the body. The practice then proceeds to the opposite shoulder moving down the arm to the leg and terminating at the toes on the opposite foot.

    As one gains proficiency sensing the body, looking and listening are added. When adding looking and listening, the practice is to not “go out” to see and hear, but to allow perception to come in – think receptivity.

    The art of sensing often carries a bit more emphasis as it is said that sensing is closer to how the soul perceives. So let’s look at this – what are we really exploring and developing? Our sensitivity for sure, but what does that imply? Ultimately, we are nurturing our capacity for awareness and consciousness.

    The soul is the field of consciousness, the medium of experience. More basic than consciousness is awareness, so what we are is fundamentally a self-aware field of experience. It shouldn’t be too much of a leap to understand how sensing is closer to how the soul perceives.

    If we are the medium of experience, then experience arises within the medium. This (us) self-aware medium perceives and knows by being “in touch” with what is forming within it – sensitive to the arising. The sensitivity is basic perception.

    One really cool thing is that the forms arising in the medium are also “of the medium. In this world, what we perceive of as physical forms, thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations are all forms of, and within, the soul. One can experience this as a telescoping of perception – think about the endless reflections you see when you stand between two mirrors – forms within forms within forms. Not only this, but dimensions sensory deprivationwithin dimensions within dimensions.

    An Evolution of the Practice – Sensing, Looking & Listening Beyond the 6 Senses

    Imagine you are in a sensory deprivation chamber – what is sensing, looking & listening?

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    Ponder, wonder, contemplate…

  • Geneen Roth Bounces Back from Madoff

    What Geneen Roth Learned About the Past & Money

    Geneen Roth Lost and FoundYesterday, on the flight from Detroit to San Francisco, I read Geneen Roth’s new book – Lost and Found – Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money. The book is an eye-opening exploration of how the past and our unconscious attitudes about money can wreak havoc in our lives.

    Geneen pulls no punches in the book. From “grovelling for dollars” to “Madoff rage” to the “specter of homelessness,” Lost and Found is a candid revelation about what Geneen learned by losing her life’s savings in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme. The book gives us insight into Geneen Roth’s open-ended inquiry into her relationship with money, her unconscious attitudes toward money, her life habits around money, and how she has begun to free herself from it all through awareness & inquiry.

    It takes a lot of courage to reveal so many personal and intimate details as Geneen has in her book. The gift of it for the reader is that we can connect with her and her experience in a real way. Lost and Found isn’t a dispassionate treatise on the effects and insights of falling victim to one of the greatest con men of all time, nor is it a tale of “woe is me.” Lost and Found is more a journey of revelation from a person responding to a “wake up call” from reality.

    We are fortunate to have a person like Geneen Roth who can show us the beauty and power of bringing awareness and inquiry into all of our life.

    (BTW – The magazine cover is wishful thinking, though
    I hope to see Geneen Roth soon on the cover of Time!)

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  • Non-Doing is Brewing

    Non-doing-brewingHow often do events and daily drama trap us in reactivity?

    Reactivity seems to always engage us in some kind of doing response. In fact, the reactivity itself is a doing. When we react, we’re always taking the world and ourselves to be something other than they are – and this is a subtle form of doing. Of course, I am defining reactivity here as mental and emotional response.

    This type of reactive state results in a form of mental grinding and emotional juicing that is fundamentally a form of suffering.

    In contrast to all of this doing drama is a way of being that centers around non-doing. Grokking the concept of non-doing can be difficult as conceptualizing is a form of doing and our whole lives have engaged us in doing. Doing to understand, doing to experience, doing to get, doing to survive – the doing list is endless.

    In approaching the practices of non-doing, we usually begin by making the non-doing practice a doing – it’s difficult and challenging to not do.

    Non-doing is like a form of brewing – we sit and don’t follow any thought, feeling or sensation. We rest in presence and awareness.

    Making tea involves brewing and it’s easy to apply an analogy here. When we sit in non-doing, abiding in presence and awareness, our consciousness begins to naturally move more into the foreground. Our presence deepens. Our awareness sharpens. Consciousness strengthens.

    Perhaps our souls are really tea bags looking for a good pot of hot water!

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