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Sunday, November 29, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Down the Cores, Up the Cores
I have started on a series of new adventure. I am the Fool on Tarot's Path.
I smile, sing bishmAllah and dive over the cliff. I fly in the loving arms of Allah. She smiles her smile as she sings and dances with me. Our hearts are One.
I know that to be able to play well, even beautifully, to dance and sing with these new adventure paths and beings I meet in a good way I have to martial and maintain a lot of shen and chi. Because of the tonsil cancer my energy is low and my pain level has shot up. I have to strengthen and heal. So I am, inshAllah.
I designed a chi kung prescription for myself to experience over a long period of time and space. It is good so I want to share it. I went through the various chi exercises and chose to practice " Down the Cores, up the Cores." Experiencing this ongoing chi kung exercise helps me stay focused and energised for longer periods of times. Fortunately none of my adventures require to much sustained energy.
It goes like this.
I smile, sing bishmAllah and dive over the cliff. I fly in the loving arms of Allah. She smiles her smile as she sings and dances with me. Our hearts are One.
I know that to be able to play well, even beautifully, to dance and sing with these new adventure paths and beings I meet in a good way I have to martial and maintain a lot of shen and chi. Because of the tonsil cancer my energy is low and my pain level has shot up. I have to strengthen and heal. So I am, inshAllah.
I designed a chi kung prescription for myself to experience over a long period of time and space. It is good so I want to share it. I went through the various chi exercises and chose to practice " Down the Cores, up the Cores." Experiencing this ongoing chi kung exercise helps me stay focused and energised for longer periods of times. Fortunately none of my adventures require to much sustained energy.
It goes like this.
If you can imagine, let yourself see and feel the location of each of the seven chakras. It might help you if you look at the image above as you use your imagination to see and feel your chakras.You can find where the illustration came from by clicking the following link. http://comfortinstylemag.com/tag/chakras/
Relax your physical body from head to toe. Let go, drop down, breath, gently, effortlessly, breathe. Breathe, slowly, deeply, through your nostrils into your lower belly. Exhale and relax deeper each inhale, each exhale. Relaxing. Let a smile appear in your face. See another smile in your heart. Smile with the smile in your heart. Know and feel slowly or quickly---yourself as seven beautiful spinning pulsating vibrating chakra spheres.
Let yourself be aware. Be aware of the chakras being in the very center of your body's core. Using chi kung principles i.e. thought guides chi, guide your chi with your mind down through the middle of your body through the Crown Chakra. From the Crown Chakra move down through the Third Eye. From there lead the chi down through the Throat Chakra to the Heart Chakra. From the Heart Chakra move your awareness down through the Solar Plexus Chakra into and through the Sacrum Chakra and down into and through your Root Chakra.
From below the Root Chakra lead your chi back up through the Chakras to the Crown Chakra. Continue to use your awareness to move up and down through the core of your chakras. Remember to feel and imagine you are flowing up and down through all seven chakras. Let your imagination dance with your awareness as you flows through this beautiful chi dance.
Allow yourself the adventures of exploring the spheres as you flow through them, after all, --- they, are you.
So, occasionally, take some time, during the dance, and explore the cores, explore the flows as you continue to dance up and down. Down and up though your beautiful and amazing chakras. You can let yourself see and here and feel and smell all that you can whenever and wherever you can as you flow up and down, down and up. So continue to flow down through your chakras and back up through your chakras and back down in the dance through you, you are seven chakra spheres dancing in harmony. Flow top to bottom, bottom to top. Your intention is to maintain focus as you dance. Dance long enough to build your chi and shen. One more time, imagine and feel all seven chakras. Lead the chi through the river of light flowing From one chakra to the next top to bottom. Bottom to top.
I do this for 23 minutes every day I can. Try it for one too however you like minutes, hours or forever. It works for me. (smile)
Allow yourself the adventures of exploring the spheres as you flow through them, after all, --- they, are you.
So, occasionally, take some time, during the dance, and explore the cores, explore the flows as you continue to dance up and down. Down and up though your beautiful and amazing chakras. You can let yourself see and here and feel and smell all that you can whenever and wherever you can as you flow up and down, down and up. So continue to flow down through your chakras and back up through your chakras and back down in the dance through you, you are seven chakra spheres dancing in harmony. Flow top to bottom, bottom to top. Your intention is to maintain focus as you dance. Dance long enough to build your chi and shen. One more time, imagine and feel all seven chakras. Lead the chi through the river of light flowing From one chakra to the next top to bottom. Bottom to top.
I do this for 23 minutes every day I can. Try it for one too however you like minutes, hours or forever. It works for me. (smile)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VqoxOcEqpk&feature=related
This is the time to finally face ourselves. We stand alone now. We look into the clear reflecting water and after self satisfaction and tears and shame and fear all fall away, here we are. It is time to sing our heart songs, our life and death songs. This is the time to stand naked in ourselves and sing. Sing the song our souls demand we sing of the lives we lead and the truth of how we really see and feel ourselves. Goddess/God, family, friends and history all mean nothing.Only we stand here. Only we sing here. Sing. And listen to your song.
Nothing to defend and nothing to attack. Just the truth of what we feel about the choices we have made. It is all clear now that we are responsible for the way we live. Not the teachers or the singers or the bankers or the politicians or the mullahs or the preachers or the rabies. We are the ones who stand here and have to look into our own eyes. Sing.
This is the time to finally face ourselves. We stand alone now. We look into the clear reflecting water and after self satisfaction and tears and shame and fear all fall away, here we are. It is time to sing our heart songs, our life and death songs. This is the time to stand naked in ourselves and sing. Sing the song our souls demand we sing of the lives we lead and the truth of how we really see and feel ourselves. Goddess/God, family, friends and history all mean nothing.Only we stand here. Only we sing here. Sing. And listen to your song.
Nothing to defend and nothing to attack. Just the truth of what we feel about the choices we have made. It is all clear now that we are responsible for the way we live. Not the teachers or the singers or the bankers or the politicians or the mullahs or the preachers or the rabies. We are the ones who stand here and have to look into our own eyes. Sing.
Good Bye My Friend
A current photograph of me saying I hope some of you find what I have written here about healing useful. My heart is with you.
I feel and think that it is time to end the chi kung and healing aspect of this blog. I have written and linked to everything I understand about chi kung healing and other forms of healing and ways to learn more if you are inclined out of curiosity or need. The rest is up to you my friend. I wish you the very best. Now go with Goddess/God in the directions of your many choices.
I am not sure what direction I will go from here. I will continue to blog but am now freed from the constraints chi kung and healing have placed on me.
Love River
Sunday, March 01, 2009
A Revised EntryWorth Reading, inshAllah
What is a human being? It keeps coming back to that. What are we? And where are we? Let us go back to how Chinese medicine sees a human being and our relationship with the rest of creation. And let us compare that to how a physicist might describe a human being. As I said in an earlier post, both the Chinese doctor and the physicist would be comfortable with the idea of a human being as a field of energy or a flow of force within a field of energy. Check out my previous post. River's Chi House: We are wondrously made.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a field as having many different meanings. The one we are interested in is under the number " (7) physics - A region of space characterized by a physical property such as a gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region."
Under field of force or force field we have, “Field of Force- A region of space throughout which the force produced by an agent or several agents, such as an electric charge, is operative. This phenomenon is also called a force field." Hmm what does that mean?
I think it means that a field of energy or a force field is an area that is most directly affected or acted on by an action of an energy entity within its boarders. That entity could be a magnet or the sun or a human being.
We are therefore, dynamic entities that are inseparable from the fields and flows of energy we exist within. We are continuously surrounded and permeated by greater and lesser fields and flows of energies. We are constantly in relationships of exchange with all the fields that surround and penetrate us and that we in turn surround, penetrate and influence.
So the question is, where do we end and where does another field of energy begin? The answer is that we any division is at best arbitrary. It depends entirely on your point of subjective view. We, it would seem, are one big dynamic flow of energy existing in one big dynamic field of energy. Because we are taught that we are separate and distinct we see ourselves as such. Perhaps it is time to see ourselves in a different light.
What would it be like if we could feel and experience ourselves not just as our eyes and other senses permit? What if we could feel and experience ourselves as a force field of vibrating energy? What would it be like if we experienced ourselves as part of the dynamic flow of the Universe. What if we could imagine and experience our relationship with our environment as a huge cloud of brilliant loving energy comprised of an infinite number of flows and fields constantly dancing and singing together? What if we knew ourselves to be ONE with all Creation?
We can do that. We can expand our ability to experience more of what existence is outside of our conditioned beliefs. We can break free of our limited understanding of reality with a committed and disciplined study and practice of chi kung and might I add a bit of understanding of quantum physics. Once you experience yourself and all life as a radiating flows and fields of energy, even just for a very brief moment, your life changes forever. Chi kung can give you the experience and quantum physics can give you some of the theoretical understanding of energy fields and flows. The more experience you have with chi kung the more you appreciate what quantum physics have to say about the nature of existence.
When you combine the experience of chi kung with the knowledge of quantum physics you become more comfortable with life. You are no longer confined to the small sometimes suffocating realm of the senses. You are not just a small powerless person in a huge, uncaring, crazy, social world. You are a radiating child of the Heaven and Earth. All of creation is your family and home. You realize that we are never alone or unloved and that the Universe is as open to you as you are to it. A rather cynical a friend of mine said after experiencing himself as energy, "To hell with existentialism. Life is good!"
Now that we can begin to accept ourselves at least intellectually, as force fields and flows of energy we are almost ready to chi kung. First lets examine our force field and flows relative to what we need to know to practice simple aspects of chi kung. Within our force field there are many flows of energy. These flows can be compared to the rivers and streams of the earth. The most powerful flows are called meridians and Extraordinary Vessels or Extraordinary Channels.
There are twelve major meridians and Eight Extraordinary channels. We will explore the meridians and vessels later. Right now it is just important to know they exist. For more information on the locations of meridians and channels follow this link. Acupuncture, Alternative Medicine, and Wellness Information Site Yin Yang House This web site should be on everyone’s link list. It is the site I go to more often than any I have in my healing link section. You can find ways to treat any problem you may encounter physically if you know how to use it correctly. You will learn how on this blog if you like. It is up to you. If you want it, here it is.
Besides energy flows there are also a number of smaller force fields contained within our energy bodies. . Yoga recognizes eight and calls them chakras. The Chinese relate to three and call them dan tiens. The dan tiens are like little spheres of vibrating, radiating and spinning energy. They can be imagined as three small suns. The upper dan tien is white. It is located in the mid brain. The middle dan tien is pink and located in the middle of your chest in the heart area. The lower dan tien is red and is about an inch and a half below your navel in the middle of your small intestines.
Western and Eastern medicine know that if you pay relaxed and loving attention to an area of the body energy in various forms will flow there. Blood flow and chi flows are heightened in areas that the mind moves into and through. So if you wish to strengthen or heal an area of your body, one of the best things you can do is to pay relaxed and loving attention to it. Moving your awareness to and through an area with intent and for an extended period of time and you will increase the healing and strengthening of that area. This is something worth knowing and cultivating through practice.
When you move your attention through your body with intent you will eventually notice that you experience a current like sensation. That is because when you move your awareness through your body you produce a electro-magnetic wave or current. In away it is like the wake of a boat moving through water. This current strengthens the field it passes through much like a high power magnet restores or strengthens another magnet when placed next to it. Can you imagine feeling the current of your awareness flowing through your body? The more you can notice the current, the stronger it will become and the more effective it will be in healing and strengthening you.
Take a moment now. Relax, and let your jaw slightly open and make sure you are belly breathing. That is to say, let your lower abdomen expand as you inhale and contract as you exhale. Good. Now can you imagine and feel the area of your lower dan tien? Can you imagine that it is a beautiful warm sphere of red, vibrating, radiating energy? Can you imagine that as you inhale the red sun gets larger and more powerful? And as you exhale the red lower dan tien radiates warm healing and strengthening energy throughout your entire body? Can you imagine that? Let yourself spend time with your lower dan tien and you will find yourself getting stronger and healthier.
The three dan tiens are very important for so many reasons that we will explore at another time When a meridian or channel is weakened the lower dan tien provides energy to balance and strengthen it. That is one of many good reasons for doing what it takes to keep the lower dan tien strong. healthy and strong.
The middle dan tien and upper dan tien will be explored at another time. Suffice to say for now that the three dan tiens exist and are worth spending time with. Chi Kung exercises keeps all your dan tiens strong.
I am now going to take you on a brief tour of your energy body from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
First, smile. Imagine that your heart is smiling. Imagine your lower abdomen is smiling.
Second, make sure you are breathing so your belly goes out on the in breath and in on the out breath.
Third, make sure you are sitting in a comfortable position.
Place your feet flat on the ground. Feel your feet and the ground they rest on. Feel your legs and adjust them to be as comfortable as possible.
Make sure your hips and abdomen are adjusted and comfortable.
Take your time and make sure your back is relatively straight and comfortable.
Adjust and relax your chest and let your inhale flow all the way to your lower abdomen. Exhale and relax.
Adjust and relax your neck and shoulders and arms and hands. Adjust and relax your head so you are comfortable.
Can you imagine a line gong from the tip of one ear to the tip of the other ear? Now can you imagine another line going from the center of the tip of your nose to the line joining your ears. Where the two lines meet is one of the most powerful points in your energy field. It is called bai hui or "the meeting place of a hundred points". Understand that when I use the word point I am not speaking of a western point on a line. Rather I am referring to a dynamic area in a flow of energy i.e. a meridian, within our energy field. The points or areas can be seen or felt as powerful mini fields of energy within the flow of the meridians.
The Chinese have discover well over three hundred places on the twelve meridians that when stimulated produce effects that benefit or harm the field. Bai Hui is one of the most powerful places on the body. Love your bai hui. Let yourself imagine and feel a big smile in bai hui whenever you can. Our whole energy field responds positively when we smile. Any place in the body we visualize a smile is helped by the smile. Try it.
Remember I wrote that a human being is blending of energies of the Heaven and Earth. Refer to the following link. River's Chi House: We are wondrously made. The bai hui is the most important place that Heaven energy enters the human field. The bai hui g.v. 20 is found on the Governing Vessel or Channel it is referred to as g.v. 20 . ( link to location of bai hui and gv channel(GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House . Treating bai hui can produce many wonderful effects in your field. If you feel depressed you can use bai hui to ease or eliminate the lowered emotional state you are stuck in.
Try this.
Can you imagine the smiling loving energy of God or the Universe? Can you imagine that as you inhale the smiling loving energy of God moves into and through a smiling bai hui? Let your self imagine and feel the smiling love flowing effortlessly down through your head, neck, shoulders, and chest to your heart area or middle dan tien.
Can you imagine that as God’s smiling love reaches you heart or middle dan tien that your heart smiles?
Can you imagine that as you exhale the smile and love of God or the Universe radiates out effortlessly from your middle dan tien, heart through your whole body-mind?
Can you imagine that the radiating loving smiles dissolve any and all negativity fear or sadness as you breathe in and out? Can you imagine that each and every time you inhale and exhale that loving smiling God Energy weakens and dissolves any and all fear, anxiety or sadness? Can you imagine that very soon your whole body-being is filled with loving smiles? Just relax and keep easily and effortlessly breathing in the smiling love of God and as you breath out feel the love and smiles permeating your entire being. Do it as long and as often as you desire. It can become very addictive.
Just being aware of bai hui and visualizing a smile in the area is powerful medicine. Love bai hui and you will be rewarded many times over.
The adventure continues.
Now that we know about bai hui and a little about the dan tiens, it is time to meet and greet some more of your energy self.
Move your awareness from bai hui right through the center line of the interior your body to your perineum. The perineum is the area between your sex organ and your anus. Their is a dynamic point at the start of the flow of the Conception Channel in the middle of the perineum called cv1 or hui yin or "meeting place of yin". More about the Conception Channel soon. For now check out the next link to find it.(CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
There is a flow of force or channel that flows from bai hui down through the middle of the trunk of your body to hui yin it is sometimes called the center cannel. This center channel is a powerful flow and you will work with it often during chi kung practice.
Can you imagine moving your awareness from bai hui down through the central channel to hui yin and than from hui yin back to bai hui. The more you do this the better for the health of your body.
Visualize smiles in bai hui and hui yin. Imagine you are sending a smile from bai hui to hui yin and from hui yin to bai hui. Imagine the points are friends and love communicating with each other. You can also imagine that as you move from bai hui to hui yin and pass though the three dan tiens that all three dan tiens are smiling. Back and forth your smile flows as you breathe in and out from bai hui to hui yin. Notice that the three dan tiens are smiling at you as you pass through. How delightful. Such good friend bai hui, the three dan tiens, and hui yin.
Meet the Hara
Japanese practitioners of Chinese medicine pay more attention to the lower dan tien in their treatments and explorations than do the Chinese. The Japanese call the lower dan tien the Hara. While the Hara includes the dan tien it is more than the dan tien. The Hara is the entire area from below the ribcage to the pelvic floor. Kiiko Matsumoto wrote an excellent book called “ Hara Diagnosis: A Reflection On The Sea" that I highly recommend to anyone wishing to know more about the lower dan tien. She has also written a number of good books on the eight extraordinary channels. Take a moment to check her site out. Kiiko Matsumoto International David's Site
Because of the Japanese contributions to my understanding of the lower dan tien I will sometimes use the name hara when referring to that field of energy. The more time and effort you spend with the lower dan tien the more amazed you will be at what it is to be human. But that is for another time. Give your hara a big smile and lets go on.
On with the tour.
We have now explored some what the bai hui three dan tiens and the Center Cannel and hui yin and the hara. So to continue the tour of our energy body let us return our awareness to the lower dan tien. All the major meridians and channels flow through the lower dan dan tien.
Let me introduce you to the Governing Channel. It starts here in the dan tien and flows down to the perineum hui yin and up your back just underneath your skin parallel to the spine over the top of the head to the inside of the roof of the mouth just above where your two front teeth meet. The bai hui point is on the Governing Channel. Take a field trip to see the map and understand more about the Governing Channel. I know you have been there before with hui yin but go now and look at the whole channel. (GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
Can you imagine and feel your awareness flowing up the Governing Channel? It is a nice trip full of interesting place to visit. There is a very special and powerful place or point on the governing channel called gv 4 or ming men or "gate of life". Ming Men is located parallel to your navel within the flow of the Governing Channel. You can go back to the cv link and find ming men. Visualize a beautiful happy smile in the ming men. Can you imagine that ming men is your nose and lower dan tien is your lung? Imagine breathing healing and strengthening energy from the Universe through ming men to dan tien and as you breath out imagine that healing and strengthening energy radiating throughout your entire body. More about the ming men later.
From ming men, flow on up past bai hui (is bai hui smiling?) to the end of the governing Channel on the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth. This point is called gv 28 or yin jiao. Touch the tip of your tongue to yin jiao within the Governing Channel. Take another look at GV and find gv28. (GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
Another powerful channel or flow of energy starts where the tip of the tongue touches the end of the Governing Channel or gv28. The link to the path and explanation of the Conception Channel or cv follows.(CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
The Conception Channel splits into two branches. One branch flows out from the end of the Governing Channel to the groove on your face between your lips and your nose. It flows just under the skin and around the lips and down the mid-line of the chest to just above the pelvic bone where it then enters the lower dan tien. The second branch of the Conception Channel flows down through the tongue and come out at the base of your throat where it connects with the first branch.
Let us take a ride along the Conception Channel. Can you imagine moving your awareness from the center of the groove between your lips and your nose down just under your skin and around your lips down the mid line of your face to your
chin? Can you let yourself imagine and feel the flow of your attention as you move down the midline of your throat just under your skin? Imagine and feel yourself flowing down the midline of your chest to a spot between your nipples. There is a dynamic area here called cv17 or dan zhong. Take a quick field trip to Yin Yang House to check it out. (CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House You can find more about how powerful it can be in relationship to a lot of breathing and chest problems by clicking the following link. CV 17 Acupuncture Point - Dan Zhong - Conception Vessel Meridian Yin Yang House
Can you imagine that cv17 is your nose and the middle dan tien or heart area is your lung? Imagine that as you breathe in, God’s loving, healing, and strengthening energy is flowing through cv17 and into your heart area or middle dan tien. As you breathe out can you imagine and feel that the healing strengthening energy of God or the Universe is flowing out from your heart or middle dan tien and is spreading out through your entire body? If you have breathing or other chest problems this is a wonderful exercise to do as often and as long as you like or need to do.
Well that was cool meeting Dan Zhong. Time to be moving on down the Conception Channel. Can you imagine and feel your awareness moving just underneath your skin down the mid-line of your chest from cv17 to hui yin? From hui yin move your awareness up the center channel to your lower dan tien. Ahh we are back home. The lower dan tien is often thought of as the home within the body for many reasons. Most people spend too much time in their heads. “Think, think, and think way too much thinking. Will drive you crazy. Go live in dan tien. Much better for you” as one of my chi kung teachers use to tell us.
Instead of thinking so many thoughts about too many painful or difficult things or people or situations try something else. Try moving your attention to your lower dan tien and spending time doing things there.
My teacher use to say, “Better to spend time at home doing good things than going all over doing nothing but causing trouble.” Some of what it was trying to tell us was that if we spend more time cultivating a relationship with our dan tien the rewards would become obvious over a period of time. By spending time he ment that we should do internal chi kung exercises that strengthened the dan tien and therefore our entire body-mind. There are hundreds of ways to play in the dan tien. Any chi kung exercise relating to the dan tien on this site will do that. But you have to play to have fun. Reading about exercises is not the same as doing the, It is as always your choice.
Saddle up partner and lets move out from the dan tien. We got places to go and energy fields and dynamics to meet.
So here we are moving out from dan tien to hui yin. Can you imagine moving your attention from hui yin down through the surfaces and depths of both your legs to the bottom of your feet?
There are places on the bottom of your feet where the energy of the Earth enters your body and where your energy and Heavens energy that moves through you enters the earth. They are called Kidney 1 or Yong Quan or Bubbling Wells or Gushing Springs. These two points are incredibly powerful and when treated right will benefit you in numerous ways. They are located at the start of a meridian flow called the Kidney Channel. Take a field trip to the following link to find them. (KD) Kidney Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House To understand them a little take the next click. KD 1 Acupuncture Point - Yong Quan - Kidney Meridian Yin Yang House
When we consciously and with intent brought Heaven energy into our body through bai hui we entered a new way of relating to the Unified field. It was not that Heaven energy was not entering us before. Heaven energy is always entering and interacting with us and leaving our field to continue it’ flow. Earth energy is always entering our personal field, interacting with us and leaving to continue its flow as well. We are the meeting place between Heaven and Earth as the Chinese say.
One of my teachers told me that a human being could be seen as a living acupuncture needle if they were conscious and acted with intent.
We exist as individuals and that is obvious to us all. We are distinct creatures having definite shapes or boundaries where our skins meet the rest of creation. Our everyday life experience proves this unique identity to us every day. The only thing wrong with this fact is that it is not true. Quantum Physics shows us another very diffident truth. That in fact we are radiating fields of energy that flow into greater and lesser fields and flows of energy that surround and permeate us constantly. Many and varied kinds of energy are constantly flowing into us as fields of energy and nothing exists independently of anything else. Everything is in flux and flow and radiating and vibrating. We are one dynamic Unified Field of Energy.
Who was it that said,” Just because a child believes a lie does not make it true”?
So this teacher of mine said that when one person acts with conscious loving intent to help the world she changes the world for the better even if it seems nothing has changed. He told us that by consciously intending to act as a gate or channel for the healing power of Heaven we can draw wonderful Heaven energy to this planet and help all sentient being that exist within our planetary field.
He further pointed out that we on this planet can help the Heavens by consciously intending to send the healing power of this planetary field into the Heavens to act with other flows to help where it is needed throughout existence.
Back to Bubbling Wells.
To repeat myself, the kidney meridian starts at the sole of your feet. According to the acupuncture text book “Fundamentals of Chinese Acupuncture" The kidney meridian begins “in the depression appearing on the sole when the foot is in planter flexion, about one third of the distance from the base of the toes to the heel." These points are called Kidney one or yong quan meaning “gushing spring".
You can almost see or feel earth energy gushing up and into your energy field. I love feeling that. Visualize big happy smiles in both gushing springs. Become very familiar with gushing springs and you will become more grounded and have better health. That is true of all the points and channels you have discovered within your self.
Now for one final voyage through our field with intent.
Can you imagine that your intent is to be a living acupuncture needle for the planet? Can you imagine intending to bring the most beautiful, healing energy of the Heavens through your bai hui with every inhalation and guide it down through your center channel to your upper white dan tien? Can you imagine the energy of Heaven smiling with your upper dan tien and the upper dan tien sending loving healing chi with the Heaves energy into your middle dan tien? Can you imagine the Heaven energy smiling with the middle dan tien and sending flowing loving energy with the Heaven chi to your lower dan tien? Can you imagine Heaven energy and the energy from upper and middle dan tien smiling with lower dan tien?
Can you imagine as you exhale moving the smiling loving energies of Heaven, the upper middle and lower dan tiens down through hui yin and down through your legs and feet out bubbling wells into the Earth?
Can you imagine the Earth smiling with pleasure and love as it feel and greets the combined energies of you and the Heaven?
One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." If you study and practice chi kung with a good heart and a disciplined mind a new life will open up to you. You will be blessed in more ways than you can now imagine. I know that from my own experience and the experience of many fellow students and practitioner. Come on it the water is wonderful.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a field as having many different meanings. The one we are interested in is under the number " (7) physics - A region of space characterized by a physical property such as a gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region."
Under field of force or force field we have, “Field of Force- A region of space throughout which the force produced by an agent or several agents, such as an electric charge, is operative. This phenomenon is also called a force field." Hmm what does that mean?
I think it means that a field of energy or a force field is an area that is most directly affected or acted on by an action of an energy entity within its boarders. That entity could be a magnet or the sun or a human being.
We are therefore, dynamic entities that are inseparable from the fields and flows of energy we exist within. We are continuously surrounded and permeated by greater and lesser fields and flows of energies. We are constantly in relationships of exchange with all the fields that surround and penetrate us and that we in turn surround, penetrate and influence.
So the question is, where do we end and where does another field of energy begin? The answer is that we any division is at best arbitrary. It depends entirely on your point of subjective view. We, it would seem, are one big dynamic flow of energy existing in one big dynamic field of energy. Because we are taught that we are separate and distinct we see ourselves as such. Perhaps it is time to see ourselves in a different light.
What would it be like if we could feel and experience ourselves not just as our eyes and other senses permit? What if we could feel and experience ourselves as a force field of vibrating energy? What would it be like if we experienced ourselves as part of the dynamic flow of the Universe. What if we could imagine and experience our relationship with our environment as a huge cloud of brilliant loving energy comprised of an infinite number of flows and fields constantly dancing and singing together? What if we knew ourselves to be ONE with all Creation?
We can do that. We can expand our ability to experience more of what existence is outside of our conditioned beliefs. We can break free of our limited understanding of reality with a committed and disciplined study and practice of chi kung and might I add a bit of understanding of quantum physics. Once you experience yourself and all life as a radiating flows and fields of energy, even just for a very brief moment, your life changes forever. Chi kung can give you the experience and quantum physics can give you some of the theoretical understanding of energy fields and flows. The more experience you have with chi kung the more you appreciate what quantum physics have to say about the nature of existence.
When you combine the experience of chi kung with the knowledge of quantum physics you become more comfortable with life. You are no longer confined to the small sometimes suffocating realm of the senses. You are not just a small powerless person in a huge, uncaring, crazy, social world. You are a radiating child of the Heaven and Earth. All of creation is your family and home. You realize that we are never alone or unloved and that the Universe is as open to you as you are to it. A rather cynical a friend of mine said after experiencing himself as energy, "To hell with existentialism. Life is good!"
Now that we can begin to accept ourselves at least intellectually, as force fields and flows of energy we are almost ready to chi kung. First lets examine our force field and flows relative to what we need to know to practice simple aspects of chi kung. Within our force field there are many flows of energy. These flows can be compared to the rivers and streams of the earth. The most powerful flows are called meridians and Extraordinary Vessels or Extraordinary Channels.
There are twelve major meridians and Eight Extraordinary channels. We will explore the meridians and vessels later. Right now it is just important to know they exist. For more information on the locations of meridians and channels follow this link. Acupuncture, Alternative Medicine, and Wellness Information Site Yin Yang House This web site should be on everyone’s link list. It is the site I go to more often than any I have in my healing link section. You can find ways to treat any problem you may encounter physically if you know how to use it correctly. You will learn how on this blog if you like. It is up to you. If you want it, here it is.
Besides energy flows there are also a number of smaller force fields contained within our energy bodies. . Yoga recognizes eight and calls them chakras. The Chinese relate to three and call them dan tiens. The dan tiens are like little spheres of vibrating, radiating and spinning energy. They can be imagined as three small suns. The upper dan tien is white. It is located in the mid brain. The middle dan tien is pink and located in the middle of your chest in the heart area. The lower dan tien is red and is about an inch and a half below your navel in the middle of your small intestines.
Western and Eastern medicine know that if you pay relaxed and loving attention to an area of the body energy in various forms will flow there. Blood flow and chi flows are heightened in areas that the mind moves into and through. So if you wish to strengthen or heal an area of your body, one of the best things you can do is to pay relaxed and loving attention to it. Moving your awareness to and through an area with intent and for an extended period of time and you will increase the healing and strengthening of that area. This is something worth knowing and cultivating through practice.
When you move your attention through your body with intent you will eventually notice that you experience a current like sensation. That is because when you move your awareness through your body you produce a electro-magnetic wave or current. In away it is like the wake of a boat moving through water. This current strengthens the field it passes through much like a high power magnet restores or strengthens another magnet when placed next to it. Can you imagine feeling the current of your awareness flowing through your body? The more you can notice the current, the stronger it will become and the more effective it will be in healing and strengthening you.
Take a moment now. Relax, and let your jaw slightly open and make sure you are belly breathing. That is to say, let your lower abdomen expand as you inhale and contract as you exhale. Good. Now can you imagine and feel the area of your lower dan tien? Can you imagine that it is a beautiful warm sphere of red, vibrating, radiating energy? Can you imagine that as you inhale the red sun gets larger and more powerful? And as you exhale the red lower dan tien radiates warm healing and strengthening energy throughout your entire body? Can you imagine that? Let yourself spend time with your lower dan tien and you will find yourself getting stronger and healthier.
The three dan tiens are very important for so many reasons that we will explore at another time When a meridian or channel is weakened the lower dan tien provides energy to balance and strengthen it. That is one of many good reasons for doing what it takes to keep the lower dan tien strong. healthy and strong.
The middle dan tien and upper dan tien will be explored at another time. Suffice to say for now that the three dan tiens exist and are worth spending time with. Chi Kung exercises keeps all your dan tiens strong.
I am now going to take you on a brief tour of your energy body from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet.
First, smile. Imagine that your heart is smiling. Imagine your lower abdomen is smiling.
Second, make sure you are breathing so your belly goes out on the in breath and in on the out breath.
Third, make sure you are sitting in a comfortable position.
Place your feet flat on the ground. Feel your feet and the ground they rest on. Feel your legs and adjust them to be as comfortable as possible.
Make sure your hips and abdomen are adjusted and comfortable.
Take your time and make sure your back is relatively straight and comfortable.
Adjust and relax your chest and let your inhale flow all the way to your lower abdomen. Exhale and relax.
Adjust and relax your neck and shoulders and arms and hands. Adjust and relax your head so you are comfortable.
Can you imagine a line gong from the tip of one ear to the tip of the other ear? Now can you imagine another line going from the center of the tip of your nose to the line joining your ears. Where the two lines meet is one of the most powerful points in your energy field. It is called bai hui or "the meeting place of a hundred points". Understand that when I use the word point I am not speaking of a western point on a line. Rather I am referring to a dynamic area in a flow of energy i.e. a meridian, within our energy field. The points or areas can be seen or felt as powerful mini fields of energy within the flow of the meridians.
The Chinese have discover well over three hundred places on the twelve meridians that when stimulated produce effects that benefit or harm the field. Bai Hui is one of the most powerful places on the body. Love your bai hui. Let yourself imagine and feel a big smile in bai hui whenever you can. Our whole energy field responds positively when we smile. Any place in the body we visualize a smile is helped by the smile. Try it.
Remember I wrote that a human being is blending of energies of the Heaven and Earth. Refer to the following link. River's Chi House: We are wondrously made. The bai hui is the most important place that Heaven energy enters the human field. The bai hui g.v. 20 is found on the Governing Vessel or Channel it is referred to as g.v. 20 . ( link to location of bai hui and gv channel(GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House . Treating bai hui can produce many wonderful effects in your field. If you feel depressed you can use bai hui to ease or eliminate the lowered emotional state you are stuck in.
Try this.
Can you imagine the smiling loving energy of God or the Universe? Can you imagine that as you inhale the smiling loving energy of God moves into and through a smiling bai hui? Let your self imagine and feel the smiling love flowing effortlessly down through your head, neck, shoulders, and chest to your heart area or middle dan tien.
Can you imagine that as God’s smiling love reaches you heart or middle dan tien that your heart smiles?
Can you imagine that as you exhale the smile and love of God or the Universe radiates out effortlessly from your middle dan tien, heart through your whole body-mind?
Can you imagine that the radiating loving smiles dissolve any and all negativity fear or sadness as you breathe in and out? Can you imagine that each and every time you inhale and exhale that loving smiling God Energy weakens and dissolves any and all fear, anxiety or sadness? Can you imagine that very soon your whole body-being is filled with loving smiles? Just relax and keep easily and effortlessly breathing in the smiling love of God and as you breath out feel the love and smiles permeating your entire being. Do it as long and as often as you desire. It can become very addictive.
Just being aware of bai hui and visualizing a smile in the area is powerful medicine. Love bai hui and you will be rewarded many times over.
The adventure continues.
Now that we know about bai hui and a little about the dan tiens, it is time to meet and greet some more of your energy self.
Move your awareness from bai hui right through the center line of the interior your body to your perineum. The perineum is the area between your sex organ and your anus. Their is a dynamic point at the start of the flow of the Conception Channel in the middle of the perineum called cv1 or hui yin or "meeting place of yin". More about the Conception Channel soon. For now check out the next link to find it.(CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
There is a flow of force or channel that flows from bai hui down through the middle of the trunk of your body to hui yin it is sometimes called the center cannel. This center channel is a powerful flow and you will work with it often during chi kung practice.
Can you imagine moving your awareness from bai hui down through the central channel to hui yin and than from hui yin back to bai hui. The more you do this the better for the health of your body.
Visualize smiles in bai hui and hui yin. Imagine you are sending a smile from bai hui to hui yin and from hui yin to bai hui. Imagine the points are friends and love communicating with each other. You can also imagine that as you move from bai hui to hui yin and pass though the three dan tiens that all three dan tiens are smiling. Back and forth your smile flows as you breathe in and out from bai hui to hui yin. Notice that the three dan tiens are smiling at you as you pass through. How delightful. Such good friend bai hui, the three dan tiens, and hui yin.
Meet the Hara
Japanese practitioners of Chinese medicine pay more attention to the lower dan tien in their treatments and explorations than do the Chinese. The Japanese call the lower dan tien the Hara. While the Hara includes the dan tien it is more than the dan tien. The Hara is the entire area from below the ribcage to the pelvic floor. Kiiko Matsumoto wrote an excellent book called “ Hara Diagnosis: A Reflection On The Sea" that I highly recommend to anyone wishing to know more about the lower dan tien. She has also written a number of good books on the eight extraordinary channels. Take a moment to check her site out. Kiiko Matsumoto International David's Site
Because of the Japanese contributions to my understanding of the lower dan tien I will sometimes use the name hara when referring to that field of energy. The more time and effort you spend with the lower dan tien the more amazed you will be at what it is to be human. But that is for another time. Give your hara a big smile and lets go on.
On with the tour.
We have now explored some what the bai hui three dan tiens and the Center Cannel and hui yin and the hara. So to continue the tour of our energy body let us return our awareness to the lower dan tien. All the major meridians and channels flow through the lower dan dan tien.
Let me introduce you to the Governing Channel. It starts here in the dan tien and flows down to the perineum hui yin and up your back just underneath your skin parallel to the spine over the top of the head to the inside of the roof of the mouth just above where your two front teeth meet. The bai hui point is on the Governing Channel. Take a field trip to see the map and understand more about the Governing Channel. I know you have been there before with hui yin but go now and look at the whole channel. (GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
Can you imagine and feel your awareness flowing up the Governing Channel? It is a nice trip full of interesting place to visit. There is a very special and powerful place or point on the governing channel called gv 4 or ming men or "gate of life". Ming Men is located parallel to your navel within the flow of the Governing Channel. You can go back to the cv link and find ming men. Visualize a beautiful happy smile in the ming men. Can you imagine that ming men is your nose and lower dan tien is your lung? Imagine breathing healing and strengthening energy from the Universe through ming men to dan tien and as you breath out imagine that healing and strengthening energy radiating throughout your entire body. More about the ming men later.
From ming men, flow on up past bai hui (is bai hui smiling?) to the end of the governing Channel on the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth. This point is called gv 28 or yin jiao. Touch the tip of your tongue to yin jiao within the Governing Channel. Take another look at GV and find gv28. (GV) Governing Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
Another powerful channel or flow of energy starts where the tip of the tongue touches the end of the Governing Channel or gv28. The link to the path and explanation of the Conception Channel or cv follows.(CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House
The Conception Channel splits into two branches. One branch flows out from the end of the Governing Channel to the groove on your face between your lips and your nose. It flows just under the skin and around the lips and down the mid-line of the chest to just above the pelvic bone where it then enters the lower dan tien. The second branch of the Conception Channel flows down through the tongue and come out at the base of your throat where it connects with the first branch.
Let us take a ride along the Conception Channel. Can you imagine moving your awareness from the center of the groove between your lips and your nose down just under your skin and around your lips down the mid line of your face to your
chin? Can you let yourself imagine and feel the flow of your attention as you move down the midline of your throat just under your skin? Imagine and feel yourself flowing down the midline of your chest to a spot between your nipples. There is a dynamic area here called cv17 or dan zhong. Take a quick field trip to Yin Yang House to check it out. (CV) Conception Vessel Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House You can find more about how powerful it can be in relationship to a lot of breathing and chest problems by clicking the following link. CV 17 Acupuncture Point - Dan Zhong - Conception Vessel Meridian Yin Yang House
Can you imagine that cv17 is your nose and the middle dan tien or heart area is your lung? Imagine that as you breathe in, God’s loving, healing, and strengthening energy is flowing through cv17 and into your heart area or middle dan tien. As you breathe out can you imagine and feel that the healing strengthening energy of God or the Universe is flowing out from your heart or middle dan tien and is spreading out through your entire body? If you have breathing or other chest problems this is a wonderful exercise to do as often and as long as you like or need to do.
Well that was cool meeting Dan Zhong. Time to be moving on down the Conception Channel. Can you imagine and feel your awareness moving just underneath your skin down the mid-line of your chest from cv17 to hui yin? From hui yin move your awareness up the center channel to your lower dan tien. Ahh we are back home. The lower dan tien is often thought of as the home within the body for many reasons. Most people spend too much time in their heads. “Think, think, and think way too much thinking. Will drive you crazy. Go live in dan tien. Much better for you” as one of my chi kung teachers use to tell us.
Instead of thinking so many thoughts about too many painful or difficult things or people or situations try something else. Try moving your attention to your lower dan tien and spending time doing things there.
My teacher use to say, “Better to spend time at home doing good things than going all over doing nothing but causing trouble.” Some of what it was trying to tell us was that if we spend more time cultivating a relationship with our dan tien the rewards would become obvious over a period of time. By spending time he ment that we should do internal chi kung exercises that strengthened the dan tien and therefore our entire body-mind. There are hundreds of ways to play in the dan tien. Any chi kung exercise relating to the dan tien on this site will do that. But you have to play to have fun. Reading about exercises is not the same as doing the, It is as always your choice.
Saddle up partner and lets move out from the dan tien. We got places to go and energy fields and dynamics to meet.
So here we are moving out from dan tien to hui yin. Can you imagine moving your attention from hui yin down through the surfaces and depths of both your legs to the bottom of your feet?
There are places on the bottom of your feet where the energy of the Earth enters your body and where your energy and Heavens energy that moves through you enters the earth. They are called Kidney 1 or Yong Quan or Bubbling Wells or Gushing Springs. These two points are incredibly powerful and when treated right will benefit you in numerous ways. They are located at the start of a meridian flow called the Kidney Channel. Take a field trip to the following link to find them. (KD) Kidney Meridian - Graphic Yin Yang House To understand them a little take the next click. KD 1 Acupuncture Point - Yong Quan - Kidney Meridian Yin Yang House
When we consciously and with intent brought Heaven energy into our body through bai hui we entered a new way of relating to the Unified field. It was not that Heaven energy was not entering us before. Heaven energy is always entering and interacting with us and leaving our field to continue it’ flow. Earth energy is always entering our personal field, interacting with us and leaving to continue its flow as well. We are the meeting place between Heaven and Earth as the Chinese say.
One of my teachers told me that a human being could be seen as a living acupuncture needle if they were conscious and acted with intent.
We exist as individuals and that is obvious to us all. We are distinct creatures having definite shapes or boundaries where our skins meet the rest of creation. Our everyday life experience proves this unique identity to us every day. The only thing wrong with this fact is that it is not true. Quantum Physics shows us another very diffident truth. That in fact we are radiating fields of energy that flow into greater and lesser fields and flows of energy that surround and permeate us constantly. Many and varied kinds of energy are constantly flowing into us as fields of energy and nothing exists independently of anything else. Everything is in flux and flow and radiating and vibrating. We are one dynamic Unified Field of Energy.
Who was it that said,” Just because a child believes a lie does not make it true”?
So this teacher of mine said that when one person acts with conscious loving intent to help the world she changes the world for the better even if it seems nothing has changed. He told us that by consciously intending to act as a gate or channel for the healing power of Heaven we can draw wonderful Heaven energy to this planet and help all sentient being that exist within our planetary field.
He further pointed out that we on this planet can help the Heavens by consciously intending to send the healing power of this planetary field into the Heavens to act with other flows to help where it is needed throughout existence.
Back to Bubbling Wells.
To repeat myself, the kidney meridian starts at the sole of your feet. According to the acupuncture text book “Fundamentals of Chinese Acupuncture" The kidney meridian begins “in the depression appearing on the sole when the foot is in planter flexion, about one third of the distance from the base of the toes to the heel." These points are called Kidney one or yong quan meaning “gushing spring".
You can almost see or feel earth energy gushing up and into your energy field. I love feeling that. Visualize big happy smiles in both gushing springs. Become very familiar with gushing springs and you will become more grounded and have better health. That is true of all the points and channels you have discovered within your self.
Now for one final voyage through our field with intent.
Can you imagine that your intent is to be a living acupuncture needle for the planet? Can you imagine intending to bring the most beautiful, healing energy of the Heavens through your bai hui with every inhalation and guide it down through your center channel to your upper white dan tien? Can you imagine the energy of Heaven smiling with your upper dan tien and the upper dan tien sending loving healing chi with the Heaves energy into your middle dan tien? Can you imagine the Heaven energy smiling with the middle dan tien and sending flowing loving energy with the Heaven chi to your lower dan tien? Can you imagine Heaven energy and the energy from upper and middle dan tien smiling with lower dan tien?
Can you imagine as you exhale moving the smiling loving energies of Heaven, the upper middle and lower dan tiens down through hui yin and down through your legs and feet out bubbling wells into the Earth?
Can you imagine the Earth smiling with pleasure and love as it feel and greets the combined energies of you and the Heaven?
One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." If you study and practice chi kung with a good heart and a disciplined mind a new life will open up to you. You will be blessed in more ways than you can now imagine. I know that from my own experience and the experience of many fellow students and practitioner. Come on it the water is wonderful.
Friday, February 27, 2009
I know it may seem impossible to think we might individually make a difference in this world. We might just as well say to hell with it and let our lives count for nothing. YET, what if we can make a difference? What if our efforts can changes EVERYTHING? The only way to find out is to act like our actions can change EVERYTHING in a GOOD way for everyone. I urge you from my heart to yours to act like your life COUNTS. ACT my sister and brother. ACT like you CAN change EVERYTHING.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
A Good Day To Practice Chi Kung.
Sky Nourishes Earth Chi Kung
Preparation for any chi kung practice The first thing to do before starting any chi kung practice is to move into a comfortable position. This can be sitting, standing, or reclining. Start to relax all your muscles from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Regulate your breathing so your belly goes out on the inhale and in on the exhale. Above all else smile.
During any chi kung practice can you imagine and feel that your heart is smiling. Can you imagine feeling the smile in your heart flow to your lips? Turn the sides of your lips up.
All chi kung exercises require you to focus your attention and maintain that focus throughout the exercise. Most of us find it very difficult to maintain focus for very long before our minds start to wander away. Instead of being focused on our intent we find ourselves thinking about something else. That is very normal. When this happens gently let go of the thought and its accompanying emotion and return your focus to the exercise.
Remember to be very kind and patient with yourself while doing any chi kung exercise. We are not perfect beings and your practice will never be perfect. So relax and do not try to hard. My teacher said. “Practice with effortless effort. Try like you are not trying but still try. Do like you are not doing but still do. Once you imagine yourself doing a practice try to stay out of your way while you do it.”
So during a chi kung exercise stay focused on the intent and pattern of the practice. When you forget and lose focus, just let go of any thoughts and emotions as they arise and gently return to the practice. Noticing and releasing thoughts and emotions as they arise and returning focus to the intent of the practice is an integral part of any chi kung exercise. Simply stop taking your thoughts and emotions seriously during practice. They are just thoughts and emotions. The content of a thought or emotion may be valid outside of the practice. But they are just mirages within a practice and can be safely dismissed. If you wish you can entertain them after the practice.
Learning to notice and release thoughts and emotions as they arise in chi kung practice has many benefits. You will eventually find it easier to let go of destructive or painful thoughts and emotions outside of chi kung practices. You will begin to realize that just because you become aware of a thought or emotion does not mean you have to respond to it or take it seriously. You can choose which thoughts and emotions to engage and which to let go. That is a wonderful power to have. You will begin to notice that you are not thoughts and emotions. You are consciousness that notices thoughts and emotions as the come and go. If you do not engage a thought or emotion they will soon lose there power over you and dissolve.
So let any thought or emotion drift in and out without trying to stop them. They are like the tides. They will naturally come to the shores of your consciousness and if you do not engage them they will just as naturally leave.
Sky Nourishes Earth.
I urge you to practice this exercise until you can do it effortlessly almost anywhere and anytime.
I do Sky Nourishes Earth before I do any other chi kung exercise. It prepares your mind/body/energy field for all other exercises.
Sky Nourishes Earth is good for relieving or preventing the harmful effects of stress. It is good for eliminating or preventing headaches and many other kinds of pains and discomforts. Sky Nourishes Earth is also a good way to monitor and release unnecessary muscle tension and unhealthy breathing patterns.
Sit, stand or recline in a comfortable position.
Open and relax your jaw. Let there be a little space between your teeth.
Notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension in your body.
Notice your breathing pattern. If you’re lower abdomen is not expanding on the inhale and contracting as you exhale your breathing pattern is not good for your health. Always notice and adjust your breathing to make sure you are belly breathing or breathing diaphragmatically. As you inhale, your belly expands, as you exhale, your belly contracts.
Let us start Sky Nourishes Earth.
Smile from your heart to your lips.
Can you imagine feeling the top of your head and the space surrounding the top of your head? Can you Imagine and feel your scalp and especially the top of your scalp?
Can you imagine and sense your moving awareness feeling like a warm flow of healing water as you move through your body?
Now, imagine and feel your consciousness moving over and through the top of your head. Imagine and feel yourself flowing down through the surface and depth of your head. Let yourself flow effortlessly and easily through your hair and scalp and into your brain cavity. Let your warm relaxing awareness flow over the surface and depth of your forehead. Notice and feel the natural and effortless relaxing and releasing of tension and discomfort as you flow through your body.
Let your imagination and senses flow down from your forehead and brain cavity into the surface and depth of the rest of your head. Imagine and feel the warm healing water of your awareness move through the surface and depth of the inside and the back of your head, through the surface and depth of the sides of your head and down through surface and depth of your face. Warmly flow through your temples down into and through the surface and depth of your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and jaws. Relaxing and releasing tension and discomfort as you flow.
Gently and effortlessly drift down into and through surface and depth of the back of your neck, and throat. Relaxing and releasing.
Feel your awareness moving naturally down through the surface and depth of your shoulders and down through the surface and depths your upper arms, flowing through the surface and depth of your elbows and lower arms, and out through the surface and depth of your wrists, hands and fingers. Relaxing and releasing.
At the same time your consciousness is moving through your arms and hands and fingers your healing relaxing awareness is moving through the surface and depth of the trunk of your body. Let your consciousness drift down through the surface and depths of your chest sides and upper back. Move softly through the surface and depths of the area of your solar plexus just under your rib cage. Flow through the surface and depths of the sides and middle of you back. Imagine and feel your warm attention flowing effortlessly down through the surface and depth of you lower abdomen and the surface and depth of your sides and lower back and buttocks. Relaxing and releasing.
From your hips and buttocks let your senses move down through the surface and depth of your upper legs, knees, lower legs, and ankles. Let your warm healing consciousness flow out from your ankles into the surface and depth of your feet and toes and out through the bottom of your feet into the earth. Relaxing and releasing.
This completes one cycle of Sky Nourishes Earth. Repeat at least nine times for good results. You can do more or less depending on need or desire. If you can master Sky Nourishes Earth you will find untold benefits in the years to come.
Preparation for any chi kung practice The first thing to do before starting any chi kung practice is to move into a comfortable position. This can be sitting, standing, or reclining. Start to relax all your muscles from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Regulate your breathing so your belly goes out on the inhale and in on the exhale. Above all else smile.
During any chi kung practice can you imagine and feel that your heart is smiling. Can you imagine feeling the smile in your heart flow to your lips? Turn the sides of your lips up.
All chi kung exercises require you to focus your attention and maintain that focus throughout the exercise. Most of us find it very difficult to maintain focus for very long before our minds start to wander away. Instead of being focused on our intent we find ourselves thinking about something else. That is very normal. When this happens gently let go of the thought and its accompanying emotion and return your focus to the exercise.
Remember to be very kind and patient with yourself while doing any chi kung exercise. We are not perfect beings and your practice will never be perfect. So relax and do not try to hard. My teacher said. “Practice with effortless effort. Try like you are not trying but still try. Do like you are not doing but still do. Once you imagine yourself doing a practice try to stay out of your way while you do it.”
So during a chi kung exercise stay focused on the intent and pattern of the practice. When you forget and lose focus, just let go of any thoughts and emotions as they arise and gently return to the practice. Noticing and releasing thoughts and emotions as they arise and returning focus to the intent of the practice is an integral part of any chi kung exercise. Simply stop taking your thoughts and emotions seriously during practice. They are just thoughts and emotions. The content of a thought or emotion may be valid outside of the practice. But they are just mirages within a practice and can be safely dismissed. If you wish you can entertain them after the practice.
Learning to notice and release thoughts and emotions as they arise in chi kung practice has many benefits. You will eventually find it easier to let go of destructive or painful thoughts and emotions outside of chi kung practices. You will begin to realize that just because you become aware of a thought or emotion does not mean you have to respond to it or take it seriously. You can choose which thoughts and emotions to engage and which to let go. That is a wonderful power to have. You will begin to notice that you are not thoughts and emotions. You are consciousness that notices thoughts and emotions as the come and go. If you do not engage a thought or emotion they will soon lose there power over you and dissolve.
So let any thought or emotion drift in and out without trying to stop them. They are like the tides. They will naturally come to the shores of your consciousness and if you do not engage them they will just as naturally leave.
Sky Nourishes Earth.
I urge you to practice this exercise until you can do it effortlessly almost anywhere and anytime.
I do Sky Nourishes Earth before I do any other chi kung exercise. It prepares your mind/body/energy field for all other exercises.
Sky Nourishes Earth is good for relieving or preventing the harmful effects of stress. It is good for eliminating or preventing headaches and many other kinds of pains and discomforts. Sky Nourishes Earth is also a good way to monitor and release unnecessary muscle tension and unhealthy breathing patterns.
Sit, stand or recline in a comfortable position.
Open and relax your jaw. Let there be a little space between your teeth.
Notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension in your body.
Notice your breathing pattern. If you’re lower abdomen is not expanding on the inhale and contracting as you exhale your breathing pattern is not good for your health. Always notice and adjust your breathing to make sure you are belly breathing or breathing diaphragmatically. As you inhale, your belly expands, as you exhale, your belly contracts.
Let us start Sky Nourishes Earth.
Smile from your heart to your lips.
Can you imagine feeling the top of your head and the space surrounding the top of your head? Can you Imagine and feel your scalp and especially the top of your scalp?
Can you imagine and sense your moving awareness feeling like a warm flow of healing water as you move through your body?
Now, imagine and feel your consciousness moving over and through the top of your head. Imagine and feel yourself flowing down through the surface and depth of your head. Let yourself flow effortlessly and easily through your hair and scalp and into your brain cavity. Let your warm relaxing awareness flow over the surface and depth of your forehead. Notice and feel the natural and effortless relaxing and releasing of tension and discomfort as you flow through your body.
Let your imagination and senses flow down from your forehead and brain cavity into the surface and depth of the rest of your head. Imagine and feel the warm healing water of your awareness move through the surface and depth of the inside and the back of your head, through the surface and depth of the sides of your head and down through surface and depth of your face. Warmly flow through your temples down into and through the surface and depth of your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and jaws. Relaxing and releasing tension and discomfort as you flow.
Gently and effortlessly drift down into and through surface and depth of the back of your neck, and throat. Relaxing and releasing.
Feel your awareness moving naturally down through the surface and depth of your shoulders and down through the surface and depths your upper arms, flowing through the surface and depth of your elbows and lower arms, and out through the surface and depth of your wrists, hands and fingers. Relaxing and releasing.
At the same time your consciousness is moving through your arms and hands and fingers your healing relaxing awareness is moving through the surface and depth of the trunk of your body. Let your consciousness drift down through the surface and depths of your chest sides and upper back. Move softly through the surface and depths of the area of your solar plexus just under your rib cage. Flow through the surface and depths of the sides and middle of you back. Imagine and feel your warm attention flowing effortlessly down through the surface and depth of you lower abdomen and the surface and depth of your sides and lower back and buttocks. Relaxing and releasing.
From your hips and buttocks let your senses move down through the surface and depth of your upper legs, knees, lower legs, and ankles. Let your warm healing consciousness flow out from your ankles into the surface and depth of your feet and toes and out through the bottom of your feet into the earth. Relaxing and releasing.
This completes one cycle of Sky Nourishes Earth. Repeat at least nine times for good results. You can do more or less depending on need or desire. If you can master Sky Nourishes Earth you will find untold benefits in the years to come.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Come Dance With Erica
Erica Ross's "Dance Our Way Home"
My friend Ercia Ross in Toronto Canada has sent me two links that I urge everyone especially women and girls to visit. She is doing leading edge work in healing dance that all people all over the world can befit from experiencing. I will write more about her work soon, inshAllah. Please click on the two links that follow. I placed both site links on the link section of this blog as well.
http://www.danceourwayhome.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDxM9IAe4eU
More Play Time
This exercise incorporates techniques from Open-Focus Brain and Whole Body Breathing Chi Kung.
Many if not all of you will feel the reduction or disappearance of pain and tension as you do this practice.
To prepare for this exercise sit, stand, or recline. Adjust your body so you are as comfortable as possible. Slightly open your mouth and relax your jaw. Notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension.
Notice your breathing. Make sure you are belly breathing. In other words make sure as you inhale, your belly expands and as you exhale, your belly releases inwardly. Take your time and then start the exercise.
I suggest you take about fifteen seconds for each step in the exercise. This will allow your body to more fully integrate the practice.
Can you imagine bringing your attention to your lower abdomen? Can you imagine that within your lower abdomen is an area called the lower dan tien? The lower dan tien is in the lower abdomen about an inch and a half below your bellybutton. It is in the center of your abdomen between the outer skin of your belly and the your spine. The dan tien is a pulsating area of warm energy about the size of your fist, It is shaped like a small glowing red sun. It stores and radiates warm healing energy.
Can you imagine and feel your lower dan tien radiating warm healing energy?
Can you imagine and feel and that every time you inhale your belly goes out and every time you exhale your belly releases inwardly?
Can you imagine and feel that every time you inhale your red lower dan tien gets filled with warm energy and grows larger and stronger?
Can you imagine that every time you exhale your lower dan tien radiates warm healing energy out in all directions through your entire body? Can you imagine the warm healing energy radiating throughout your body and flowing out the pores of your skin?
Can you imagine that every time you inhale you inhale through the pores of your skin through your whole body to your lower dan tien? In other words can you imagine that the pores of your body are miniature nostrils and your lower dan tien is your lung. Every time you inhale through your pores you inhale to your lower dan tien lung. The lower dan tien gets stronger with every breath. It gets larger and more powerful with every inhalation.
Can you imagine exhaling from your lower dan tien lung and as you exhale the energy from your lower dan tien lung moves outward though your whole body and leaves your body through all the pores of your skin?
Now can you imagine and feel the healing energy of the Universe as it radiates through the pores of your skin with every breath you take? Can you imagine and feel the warm energy flowing effortlessly through you, relaxing and releasing any pain or tension it encounters? Can you imagine and feel the healing warm energy as it flows through your body to your lower dan tien?
Can you imagine and feel your lower dan tien lung getting more and more powerful with every inhalation?
Can you imagine and feel that as you exhale from your lower dan tien, it radiates warm healing energy through your entire body?
Can you imagine and feel as you exhale, the warm healing energy radiating from your lower dan tien relaxing and releasing any pain or tension it encounters?
Can you imagine and feel any remaining pain or tension radiating out of your body in all directions as you exhale? Can you imagine the Universe transforming the residue of your pain and tension and using it for good.
Can you imagine and feel with every breath you take the loving, healing, energy of God flowing in and out of every pore of your body?
Can you imagine and feel with each exhalation from your dan tien, healing energy radiating like the warm rays of the Sun through the pores of your skin nourishing the Universe?
Can you imagine and feel that as you breath the radiating energy flows effortlessly in and out of your body like warm healing waves? Can you imagine the warm healing waves of energy flowing through you releasing any discomfort or tension they may encounter?
Can you imagine doing this kind of breathing as a regular part of your day whenever you want or need to do so?
Can you imagine the sides of your lips turning upward?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
To Lovers Everywhere
To All the women and girls of the World. I wish you a Romantic and Beautiful Valentine's Day. May your men and boys be worthy of you.
To All the men and boy's of the World. I wish you to be worthy of the women and girls in your life. There is a Sufi saying, "God treats you like you treat your lover." Remember that and take it to heart.
I urge you men and boys to return to the Romantic or Chivalrous Paths. There is nothing more noble or enlightening in this World than to learn how to be a good lover in all the many and varied forms. Let us men and boys become troubadours and sing and play and dance with the women and girls of the World now and forever.
May the Gay and Lesbian lovers of the world enjoy the love of this Valentine's Day as well. We are all in this Love together.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Play Time
"Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us." Rilke
Lets play with our pain.
First sit or recline and adjust your body so you are in a relatively comfortable position.
Now notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension. Notice your breathing. If you notice that as you inhale your shoulders rise and you jaw tightens and your breath goes to your upper chest just smile. Gently open slightly and relax you jaws. Breath so that as you inhale your belly expands outwardly like a balloon being filled with air. As you exhale your belly contracts inward like a balloon deflating. Smile like a little baby after a wonderful burp. Now lets find some pain and or discomfort to play with.
Scan your body for pain or just go to a place that obviously HURTS. Stay as relaxed as you can without to much effort. Keep the jaws relaxed and slightly open and the make sure you are belly breathing throughout this play time.
Give yourself time to experience each step in the following play time before going on to the next one. About fifteen seconds is a good average amount of time. Take as long as you like. Just let go of any need or tendency to rush through this practice.
Feel that painful area. Say "Hi" to pain and smile. Can you imagine the painful area as having a personality and being surprised at your greeting and before it can help itself, it smile back at you? Can you imagine the pain spontaneously smiling back at you? There you are smiling at each other.
It does not matter where the pain is or what intensity it is. Just you and pain smiling emphatically at each other.
Now can you imagine the area of the pain is like a little scared child being squeezed inside a big clinched fist? And that big tight fist is being held inside another big clinched fist? Poor little pain held so tightly inside two big clinched fists. Poor little smiling pain.
Can you imagine that you are the two fists squeezing poor little smiling pain? What would it feel like if you as the outer fist softly relaxed the pressure on the inner fist and the smiling pain and very gently opened yourself?
Notice and softly and almost effortlessly relax and release any unnecessary muscle tension around the smiling pain.Ahhh.
Can you imagine how you as the inner fist would feel? Now that the outer fist has opened and relaxed you feel more space and warmth and find yourself effortlessly relaxing , and releasing into it.
Sigh, the little smiling pain has a bit more space it can relax and release and effortlessly open and expand into.
Can you imagine a warm gentle cascade of relaxing, releasing, opening and expanding energy sensations spreading effortlessly throughout your body?
Sigh, such a wonderful gift you have given to smiling little pain.
" Ohhh, Thanks, says smiling little pain. That is better. I can breath easier and relax more. Thank you." Pain smiles more and with less effort. You smile is warmer and more loving.
Now can you imagine you are the inner fist and you can chose to begin to open and relax even more?
Can you imagine that now that you have more space to move into and more blood and energy flows into you, that you are becoming warm and comfortable and open?
Can you imagine how it feels to now just gently open and softly hold little smiling pain?
Can you imagine how wonderful it feel to softly hold the area with warm radiating loving energy just as you are held gently with warm radiating loving energy by your outer hand?
Can you imagine and feel another sweet warm cascade of relaxing and releasing energy sweep through your body in all directions.
" Wow, that's even better smiling pain murmurs sweetly." You smile and the little area smiles. Sometimes the little smiling pain has become just a smile.
No more or much reduced pain.
If the little one wants more release just repeat the play until you stop naturally or the pain is gone or the intensity is less. The more you play with pain the less you will have.
" Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us."
that wants help from us." Rilke
Lets play with our pain.
First sit or recline and adjust your body so you are in a relatively comfortable position.
Now notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension. Notice your breathing. If you notice that as you inhale your shoulders rise and you jaw tightens and your breath goes to your upper chest just smile. Gently open slightly and relax you jaws. Breath so that as you inhale your belly expands outwardly like a balloon being filled with air. As you exhale your belly contracts inward like a balloon deflating. Smile like a little baby after a wonderful burp. Now lets find some pain and or discomfort to play with.
Scan your body for pain or just go to a place that obviously HURTS. Stay as relaxed as you can without to much effort. Keep the jaws relaxed and slightly open and the make sure you are belly breathing throughout this play time.
Give yourself time to experience each step in the following play time before going on to the next one. About fifteen seconds is a good average amount of time. Take as long as you like. Just let go of any need or tendency to rush through this practice.
Feel that painful area. Say "Hi" to pain and smile. Can you imagine the painful area as having a personality and being surprised at your greeting and before it can help itself, it smile back at you? Can you imagine the pain spontaneously smiling back at you? There you are smiling at each other.
It does not matter where the pain is or what intensity it is. Just you and pain smiling emphatically at each other.
Now can you imagine the area of the pain is like a little scared child being squeezed inside a big clinched fist? And that big tight fist is being held inside another big clinched fist? Poor little pain held so tightly inside two big clinched fists. Poor little smiling pain.
Can you imagine that you are the two fists squeezing poor little smiling pain? What would it feel like if you as the outer fist softly relaxed the pressure on the inner fist and the smiling pain and very gently opened yourself?
Notice and softly and almost effortlessly relax and release any unnecessary muscle tension around the smiling pain.Ahhh.
Can you imagine how you as the inner fist would feel? Now that the outer fist has opened and relaxed you feel more space and warmth and find yourself effortlessly relaxing , and releasing into it.
Sigh, the little smiling pain has a bit more space it can relax and release and effortlessly open and expand into.
Can you imagine a warm gentle cascade of relaxing, releasing, opening and expanding energy sensations spreading effortlessly throughout your body?
Sigh, such a wonderful gift you have given to smiling little pain.
" Ohhh, Thanks, says smiling little pain. That is better. I can breath easier and relax more. Thank you." Pain smiles more and with less effort. You smile is warmer and more loving.
Now can you imagine you are the inner fist and you can chose to begin to open and relax even more?
Can you imagine that now that you have more space to move into and more blood and energy flows into you, that you are becoming warm and comfortable and open?
Can you imagine how it feels to now just gently open and softly hold little smiling pain?
Can you imagine how wonderful it feel to softly hold the area with warm radiating loving energy just as you are held gently with warm radiating loving energy by your outer hand?
Can you imagine and feel another sweet warm cascade of relaxing and releasing energy sweep through your body in all directions.
" Wow, that's even better smiling pain murmurs sweetly." You smile and the little area smiles. Sometimes the little smiling pain has become just a smile.
No more or much reduced pain.
If the little one wants more release just repeat the play until you stop naturally or the pain is gone or the intensity is less. The more you play with pain the less you will have.
" Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us."
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Drums Are Calling Us!
We call on all the older people of the world. We call on the youth of the world. We call on you personally, to unite in love and to help the people and creatures of the Mother Planet. We call the People of the Americas. the men and women of Asia and Africa and the people of good will among the Arabs and the Israelis. Come you Turks and Persians. Stand with us oh people of Iraqis and Afghanistan, you Kurds, and Australians, and our brothers and sisters of the Island Nations in all the Oceans and Seas of the World. Let us leave aside the religions and politics that divide us and join in recognition that we are One and need each the other.If we do not do it for ourselves let us do it for those we love and extend that love outward to the whole World.
If you have the desire and the ability to help change the world for the better in any way this is the time to lend a hand. We Baby Boomers and those older and younger than us have another adventure that beckons us. Let us see if we can integrate what we have learned and bring forth new quests. The People needs new visions right now that call us to Unity and action. The youth are waiting for something to happen outside themselves. So are we. Let us unite with them and be the happening. There is much to do and we cannot just sit back and leave it to others. I hear the tribal drums calling those of us who had hope for real change when we were young and saw that fire of celebration and adventure turn to dying embers. Lean down near those embers and gently blow the breath of enthusiasm over them. Believe what can be and watch the fire rise again.
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.
T. S. Eliot
I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
T. S. Eliot
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. Eliot
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Rainer Maria Rilke
It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.
T. S. Eliot
There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Fear of the Inexplicable
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot
Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
It Is A Good Day To Live!
There is a delay in my ability to translate this blog onto video. My wife, who will be behind the camera, has to much work to do right now . She has a test in massage school she needs to study for and some children and other personal problems that demand most of her attention. So no video for a bit.
The Lords of the Wall Streets of the World have made one hell of a mess. Their greed and callous disregard for the consequences of their actions in acquiring vast fortunes is causing untold damage to the planet and people of the world. If there were social justice in this country and around the world the men and women who have created this economic and environmental catastrophe would be in jail awaiting trial for crimes against Humanity. Instead most of them are still enjoying the good life relative to the vast majority of the people of the world. How many will be indicted or convicted? Only a very few. What about us? We will have to deal with the very real and dangerous results of their actions for the rest of our lives.
Such is how it is and such is how it has always been. The rich and powerful have always behaved the way the current ruling classes are behaving. The biggest difference is that their greedy personal-ego driven choices have become more destructive because of the development of modern technologies and chemicals. The vast increase in population and the shortening of physical distances because of communication and transportation advances have combined to create the perfect conditions for world wide suffering. Now there is not only one World but one Ruling Class of the World and one People of the World.The rich and powerful throughout recorded history have hardly ever given a damn beyond a few gestures and words hear and there about the way the vast majority or the world's people and other creatures are forced to live and die.
My wife pointed out to me that not all the super wealthy and powerful are indifferent to the people and planet. There are many exceptions to this. The Gates family, Sores and Warren Buffet. the Kennedy family to name a few. That there are exceptions does not disprove the rule. History has shown over and over in every country in the world that the main concerns of the very rich and powerful have to do with accumulating more wealth and power for themselves and their families and friends, the rest of the country and the world be damned. Even when the occasional leader has stood up for the people how long has it been before they were either killed or brought off. In most cases our saviors soon show that their concerns were masks for their real agendas which was and is, more often than not, more power and wealth for themselves. The people have been and are used as foot soldiers and laborers and cast aside when we are were no longer useful. The best we ever get from them are a few tokens or gestures depending on how prosperous we helped them to become or how threatening we became to them. As I was once told by an old man in Kentucky, " Son, some of need those few gestures. So thank God for them."
What I am saying is that if we look to the rich and powerful to save us or change the world for the better we might as well spend every penny we have left on lotto tickets. We have a better chance at winning the lotto than depending on them to secure our future. So what is to be done? What can we do? Class war does not work. They have to many ways of winning and if we won some of us would soon become them and we would be back to where we are now or worse.So what is to be done?
The good news is that we are doing what is needed right now. People alone and in groups all over the world are reaching out to one another. We are sharing information and giving all kinds of support in a multiplicity of forms to each other. Needs and problems are being recognized and confronted and dealt with by an ever increasing number of people and organizations in and out of governments and institutions. I have to say I feel more hopeful and dedicated than I have ever felt in my life. And many people all over the world feel the same way. It is a good time to be alive.
If you are confused and afraid and in pain of any kind I urge you to become an explorer and an adventure. Become the Fool in the Tarot deck and set out to find a new way of seeing and thinking and being. There are as many paths to understanding and help as there are hearts and feet and minds.Try some things on this blog or follow some of the many links you find here. Reach out to us and we will reach out to you. By we I mean all the people of the paths of Love.
The paths of Love are ways that proclaim the Unity of all beings. The people of the paths of Love want to be of help to all sentient beings in need. We help when and where we can. We do what we can when we can and leave the outcome to the Mother/Father.
One of my Sufi teachers once said that it is like this. We have a need or see another in need. Before we take action we say BishmAllah, which means I will do what I do with the highest awareness I can. Than we will respond to the need in the most beautiful way we can. After we have finished the first action we say inshAllah. That means I will leave the results of my action to the Mother/Father. We observe the results.If we see a need for another action we repeat the process. If the need has been resolved we celebrate. He said it is a beautiful dance with Allah. We are responsible for between BishmAllah and inshAllah. Allah does the rest. Allah leads first by showing the need. We lead next by responding to the need. She/He leads next and so on and so on. The dance continues forever.
I was speaking with a good friend of mine named Candy recently. She had just lost her thirty seven year old son to cancer. We were talking about the condition of the world and our desire to help. Candy has been a good friend and teacher for me since I went to Kent State in 1968. She has been on the spiritual path for over thirty years and has practiced a form of meditation for those years. Candy said that perhaps this world was never created to resolve all the problems that we face but as a place where we could incarnate on to have experiences.
I agree with her. I believe that we came hear for a multiplicity of reasons including just to have the adventure of being human on this planet. My perspective is mainly from the Sufi path. I see a strange and wonderful duality about our species. On the one hand we are human and full of crazy social life and pain. We are as another of my Sufi teacher said, an immature species slowly becoming mature over millenniums. Right now we are in early adolescence. And the adults among us know how difficult adolescence can be. On the other we are divine beings who have chosen to forget who we are while we are pretending to be human. And while we are being human we are simultaneously still Divine beings who in the greater Reality are dancing and singing with the Beloved and with each other. We are dancing and singing together even as we seem to be suffering and hating and fighting each other. You see this in the Hindu story of the Bhagavad Gita ( link to a copy of the Gits http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/gita/ ) and in all the spiritual traditions in one form or another.
What seems to be our reality is an illusion and what seems to be to good to be true is the Truth. The One Truth does not deny the reality of the illusionary truths that confront us day to day. We still need to act as if suffering is real and respond with as much love and help as we can muster at the moment. Such is the nature of who we are and where we are.
As a parting gift I leave you some links to paths worth exploring.
For those in various kinds of pain I urge you to get the book Open-Focus Brain. I have been using the techniques found in this book for all kinds of pain and they work more often than not.
http://openfocus.com/
For many links to a number of different kinds of paths try the following link and have some fun.
http://urbangurucafe.com/wordpress/index.php
A place to go for a Buddhist perspective. I send you to a place on the sight that I have just finished reading. You can go to the Home page from there.
http://www.tricycle.com/web-exclusive/family-dharma-leaning-suffering
A Sufi Zen thing,
http://www.zensufi.com/
And here are a feew more.
http://www.allspirit.co.uk/
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/
http://sunlightgroup.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
A New Day .
I wrote in an earlier post that I would be soon converting this blog to video and I am almost ready. My wife and I are experimenting with our Canon HG10 Digital Camcorder camera. We hope to be good to go by sometime this weekend, inshAllah and the creek don't rise.
I have re-started chi kung and integrated healing classes. The classes are held weekly and are between 1 hour to 2 hours long. Each class is $10.00 for singles and $15.00 for couples. The classes cover a wide range of chi kung and healing modalities using the the actual problems of the students and volunteers in the classes. Many of the classes will be videoed and shown on the blogs and YouTube. If you would like to know more about the classes or would like to attend please contact me by email, Rivgibeaut@gmail.com or by phone 412-576-2332.
I have re-started chi kung and integrated healing classes. The classes are held weekly and are between 1 hour to 2 hours long. Each class is $10.00 for singles and $15.00 for couples. The classes cover a wide range of chi kung and healing modalities using the the actual problems of the students and volunteers in the classes. Many of the classes will be videoed and shown on the blogs and YouTube. If you would like to know more about the classes or would like to attend please contact me by email, Rivgibeaut@gmail.com or by phone 412-576-2332.
Rumi offers you some wine in the poems that follow. Have a drink of the wine that does not come from a bottle.
If your knowledge of fire has been turned
to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don't abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ze âtesh az `elmet yaqin shod az sokhan
pokhtagi ju dar yaqin manzel ma-kon
Tâ na-suzi nist ân `ayn al-yaqin
in yaqin khvâhi dar âtesh dar neshin
-- Mathnawi II :860-861
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Daylight"
Threshold Books, 1994
Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra
"Not Here"
There's courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-
open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp
compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought? I want
a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm
won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.
-- Version by Coleman Barks
"The Soul of Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Brother! To be a lover you must have pain!
Where is your pain? Sincerity and patience require
a man. Where is the man?
How much longer will your invocation be
congealed and your meditation paralyzed? Where
are passionate cries and a yellow face?
I am not looking for the elixir or gold. Where
is a receptive piece of copper? How can even a
lukewarm disciple attain passionate love? What
then if he's cold?
-- Translation by William C. Chittick
"The Sufi Path of Love"
State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
There comes a time where we have to admit we have not got a clue to how it is. yet there is a fragrance in the air that tells our hearts nose that the scent is so overwhelming that to not follow it is to betray our self. I urge you to follow your heart's nose my sister/brother/friend. This year's path has much that is worth suspending cynicism and doubt.
God's reversal of things: Mathnawi V: 420-458, a poetic version
from Coleman Barks, and the literal translation from Reynold A.
Nicholson, from which Barks developed his version
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~
"The Question"
One dervish to another, "What was your vision of God's presence"?
I haven't seen anything.
But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.
God's presence is there in front of me - a fire on the left,
a lovely stream on the right.
One group walks toward the fire, into the fire, another
toward the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which not.
Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.
And then a head goes under on the water surface, that head
pokes out of the fire.
Most people guard against going into the fire,
and so end up in it.
Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion
are cheated with this reversal.
The trickery goes further.
The voice of the fire tells the truth saying, "I am not fire.
I am fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks."
If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.
You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings,
so you could burn them away, one set a night.
The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire
and go toward light. Fire is what of God that is world-consuming.
Water, world-protecting.
Somehow each gives the appearance of the other. To these eyes
you have now, what looks like water
burns. What looks like fire
is a great relief to be inside.
You've seen a magician make a bowl of rice
seem a dish of tiny, live worms.
Before an assembly with one breath he made the floor swarm
with scorpions that weren't there.
How much more amazing God's tricks.
Generation after generation lies down, defeated, they think,
but they're like a woman underneath a man, circling him.
One molecule-mote- second thinking of God's reversal
of comfort and pain is better
than any attending ritual. That splinter
of intelligence is substance.
The fire and water themselves:
accidental, done with mirrors."
-- Poetic version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995
God's reversal of things: Mathnawi V: 420-458, a poetic version
from Coleman Barks, and the literal translation from Reynold A.
Nicholson, from which Barks developed his version
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~
"The Question"
One dervish to another, "What was your vision of God's presence"?
I haven't seen anything.
But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.
God's presence is there in front of me - a fire on the left,
a lovely stream on the right.
One group walks toward the fire, into the fire, another
toward the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which not.
Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.
And then a head goes under on the water surface, that head
pokes out of the fire.
Most people guard against going into the fire,
and so end up in it.
Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion
are cheated with this reversal.
The trickery goes further.
The voice of the fire tells the truth saying, "I am not fire.
I am fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks."
If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.
You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings,
so you could burn them away, one set a night.
The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire
and go toward light. Fire is what of God that is world-consuming.
Water, world-protecting.
Somehow each gives the appearance of the other. To these eyes
you have now, what looks like water
burns. What looks like fire
is a great relief to be inside.
You've seen a magician make a bowl of rice
seem a dish of tiny, live worms.
Before an assembly with one breath he made the floor swarm
with scorpions that weren't there.
How much more amazing God's tricks.
Generation after generation lies down, defeated, they think,
but they're like a woman underneath a man, circling him.
One molecule-mote- second thinking of God's reversal
of comfort and pain is better
than any attending ritual. That splinter
of intelligence is substance.
The fire and water themselves:
accidental, done with mirrors."
-- Poetic version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995
Friday, December 26, 2008
There comes a time when we just dance. There is no understanding. We dance. There is no explanation. We dance. There is no ultimate purpose. We dance. There is no reward. We dance. There is just the dance. It is Beautiful. We are Beautiful. Let us dance in Beauty. You and I. We dance, inshAllah. Shall we?
Happy
Happy is the moment, when we sit together,
With two forms, two faces, yet one soul,
you and I.
The flowers will bloom forever,
The birds will sing their eternal song,
The moment we enter the garden,
you and I.
The stars of heaven will come out to watch us,
And we will show them
the light of a full moon –
you and I.
No more thought of "you" and "I."
Just the bliss of union –
Joyous, alive, free of care, you and I.
All the bright-winged birds of heaven
Will swoop down to drink of our sweet water –
The tears of our laughter, you and I.
What a miracle of fate, us sitting here.
Even at the opposite ends of the earth
We would still be together, you and I.
We have one form in this world,
another in the next.
To us belongs an eternal heaven,
the endless delight of you and I.
-- Version by Jonathan Star
(From a translation by Shahram Shiva)
"A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi"
Bantam Books, 1992
Thursday, December 25, 2008
What follows is from Dr Sha's site
I had the results of my last Petscan and there was no sign of cancer. My doctors say that it is not likely to return, Inshallah and the creek don't rise.
There will be many changes in this blog that I feel will make it much more accessible for people on many levels. My much loved and adored wife, "My" has a new digital Soney recorder and has given me a canon G10 digital camera for Christmas. I am buying, in the next few days, a Canon HG10 camcorder. So I will soon have most of the chi kung and healing techniques and information available on this blog and YouTube in different media formats.
It is always inshAllah and the creek don't rise, so who knows but Allah what will happen. That said and meant, my intent is to help you and yours when you want and need that help. The new cameras and digital recorder allows me to do many things I have wanted to do for a couple of years. For instance, if you would like to try an internal chi kung practice there will be audio files for all the internal practices available. That way all you have to do is sit or recline in a comfortable position and when you are relaxed and ready to begin your inner journey just turn on the recording and I will guide you verbally along the paths.
The video files will contain a wide variety of adventures and inshAllah surprise and delights. I hope we will have many wonderful and healing adventures during the year ahead. It will soon be 2009 and nine in the world of number magic and mysticism symbolizes the perfect or enlightened woman. I am a matriarchal Sufi so for me this next year has particularly beautiful implications. That is not to say it will be an easy year ahead because it will not be. I will say that the Chinese character for crises contains two symbols one for danger and another for opportunity. Let us dedicate ourselves to finding and developing the opportunities for positive transformation during the perilous times ahead of us during the upcoming year.
I believe that the shen and the chi of the universal Mother will be particularly responsive to us this next year. Many of us have a wonderful relationship with the Mother/Father and that relationship makes even the worst times more bearable. If you do not experience the love and comfort of Goddess/God this is a good time to reach out to Her. I urge you to call to Her from your heart's pain and She will sooner or later respond, inshAllah. The Mystery has many forms and names so call to Her the way your heart urges you to do. Do it over time and and with intent and experience the response in your life over time. The truth is that relationships develop over time relative to the efforts put into them. Our relationship with the Great Mystery or God/Goddess is the same. If you take the time and make the effort to develop a deeper relationship with Her/Him, the Mystery will do the same with you. The Sufi's say that She is like the loving mother who comes to answer the cries of her babies. So they say, cry out from your heart and She will come to your heart with comfort and love. I know She comes to me when my cry is truly from my heart. For that I am eternally grateful. Thank you Mother.
It will be a good year for the Mother energy and that is very good because I feel that this next year is going to very challenging for most of us because of the downturn in the world economy. The greed and selfish stupidity of players on and off the Wall Streets of the world have created a disaster that is causing major and unnecessary suffering around the planet. They have poisoned out planet and done major damage to our ability to support ourselves and our families. And, unfortunately, things are going to get worse before they get better. I feel very good about President Obama and his leadership. If we have to go through what we are going through he is the right man for the right time, inshAllah. But as he said, our future is more in our hands than his. He and our other leaders in and out of governments can do a lot to help or at least not hurt us as much as the Bush-Cheney bunch did over the last eight years. Still, at the end of the day it is we who have to take responsibility for ourselves and our families and more consciously and actively and consistently do what it takes to change our lives for the better. So let us reach out to each other and do what we can to make things a little better when and where we can. I hope you will find this blog useful this next year.
I would like to take this time to say how much I appreciate and felt and feel the love and support of so many of you who sent your prayers and chi during my time of sickness and recovery. I did not want to communicate during this last year because frankly I needed what little energy I had to heal. I went into my cave and did what I had to and could do which was very little. I was in the most powerful rip-tide of my life with the tonsil cancer and all I could manage to do for a long time was to just stay afloat. So I made a decision to walk away from my blogs and be with what I was going through with as few distractions as possible. I know it was the right choice for me. I was aware of and appreciated and appreciate your help. I want you to know that. Thank you from my heart to yours.
"Burnt Kabob"
Last year I admired wines. This,
I'm wandering inside the red world.
Last year I gazed at the fire.
This year I'm a burnt kabob.
Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.
Now I am a lion staring up,
totally lost in love with the thing itself.
Don't ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.
Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.
And my heart, I'd say it was more
like a donkey, sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.
But listen to me: For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms around you.
God.
-- Ghazal (Ode) 2738
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997
There will be many changes in this blog that I feel will make it much more accessible for people on many levels. My much loved and adored wife, "My" has a new digital Soney recorder and has given me a canon G10 digital camera for Christmas. I am buying, in the next few days, a Canon HG10 camcorder. So I will soon have most of the chi kung and healing techniques and information available on this blog and YouTube in different media formats.
It is always inshAllah and the creek don't rise, so who knows but Allah what will happen. That said and meant, my intent is to help you and yours when you want and need that help. The new cameras and digital recorder allows me to do many things I have wanted to do for a couple of years. For instance, if you would like to try an internal chi kung practice there will be audio files for all the internal practices available. That way all you have to do is sit or recline in a comfortable position and when you are relaxed and ready to begin your inner journey just turn on the recording and I will guide you verbally along the paths.
The video files will contain a wide variety of adventures and inshAllah surprise and delights. I hope we will have many wonderful and healing adventures during the year ahead. It will soon be 2009 and nine in the world of number magic and mysticism symbolizes the perfect or enlightened woman. I am a matriarchal Sufi so for me this next year has particularly beautiful implications. That is not to say it will be an easy year ahead because it will not be. I will say that the Chinese character for crises contains two symbols one for danger and another for opportunity. Let us dedicate ourselves to finding and developing the opportunities for positive transformation during the perilous times ahead of us during the upcoming year.
I believe that the shen and the chi of the universal Mother will be particularly responsive to us this next year. Many of us have a wonderful relationship with the Mother/Father and that relationship makes even the worst times more bearable. If you do not experience the love and comfort of Goddess/God this is a good time to reach out to Her. I urge you to call to Her from your heart's pain and She will sooner or later respond, inshAllah. The Mystery has many forms and names so call to Her the way your heart urges you to do. Do it over time and and with intent and experience the response in your life over time. The truth is that relationships develop over time relative to the efforts put into them. Our relationship with the Great Mystery or God/Goddess is the same. If you take the time and make the effort to develop a deeper relationship with Her/Him, the Mystery will do the same with you. The Sufi's say that She is like the loving mother who comes to answer the cries of her babies. So they say, cry out from your heart and She will come to your heart with comfort and love. I know She comes to me when my cry is truly from my heart. For that I am eternally grateful. Thank you Mother.
It will be a good year for the Mother energy and that is very good because I feel that this next year is going to very challenging for most of us because of the downturn in the world economy. The greed and selfish stupidity of players on and off the Wall Streets of the world have created a disaster that is causing major and unnecessary suffering around the planet. They have poisoned out planet and done major damage to our ability to support ourselves and our families. And, unfortunately, things are going to get worse before they get better. I feel very good about President Obama and his leadership. If we have to go through what we are going through he is the right man for the right time, inshAllah. But as he said, our future is more in our hands than his. He and our other leaders in and out of governments can do a lot to help or at least not hurt us as much as the Bush-Cheney bunch did over the last eight years. Still, at the end of the day it is we who have to take responsibility for ourselves and our families and more consciously and actively and consistently do what it takes to change our lives for the better. So let us reach out to each other and do what we can to make things a little better when and where we can. I hope you will find this blog useful this next year.
I would like to take this time to say how much I appreciate and felt and feel the love and support of so many of you who sent your prayers and chi during my time of sickness and recovery. I did not want to communicate during this last year because frankly I needed what little energy I had to heal. I went into my cave and did what I had to and could do which was very little. I was in the most powerful rip-tide of my life with the tonsil cancer and all I could manage to do for a long time was to just stay afloat. So I made a decision to walk away from my blogs and be with what I was going through with as few distractions as possible. I know it was the right choice for me. I was aware of and appreciated and appreciate your help. I want you to know that. Thank you from my heart to yours.
"Burnt Kabob"
Last year I admired wines. This,
I'm wandering inside the red world.
Last year I gazed at the fire.
This year I'm a burnt kabob.
Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.
Now I am a lion staring up,
totally lost in love with the thing itself.
Don't ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.
Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.
And my heart, I'd say it was more
like a donkey, sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.
But listen to me: For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms around you.
God.
-- Ghazal (Ode) 2738
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997
Saturday, November 29, 2008
I am back. I am amazed at what happened to me since I wrote last. I came down with tonsil cancer and had 3 chemo treatments and over thirty radiation treatments. I seem to be in remission now. I have my last petscan on December 7 and will have a good idea if it is gone for good. My life has changed. I am very different than I was before. What that means is hard to explain. I just want you to know that so much of what I use to believe I am in doubt about now.Knowing that I do not know is so exhilarating. My heart is with you. I will wirte more after my petscan, inshAllah.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
.
I am disturbed by what is happening in my community, my country and the world. That is true. But, being a Sufi, I realize that my perceptions of what is happening in my society and world is also, and more importantly, a reflection of my inner landscape. If I am going to be of any use to my society during these troubling times I have to first explore myself and seek clarity about my own life and how I am living it. I need to question my intentions and actions in ways I have not done in many years.
As a first step in my journey I am returning to my roots before monotheism and spending time with the Wicca of long ago. When I say Wicca I am not speaking of any organization or books but rather the Mother Goddess energy and Her messengers. She has been there before for me and I feel Her call now. Fortunately I live next to a park with Native American mounds and the energy is very conducive to mystical and transformational exploration with the Mother. I will also be increasing the amount of time I do chi kung, meditation, and yoga.
I am not sure how much of this journey I am going to share on this blog yet. I just wanted to let you know what is going on with me. I will say I feel like the Fool in the Tarot deck.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Healer-Warrior
It is a Good Day to Die!
The photo above is of Geronimo. "Geronimo was the leader of the last American Indian fighting force formally to capitulate to the United States. Because he fought against such daunting odds and held out the longest, he became the most famous Apache of all. " For more information go to the following link.
http://www.indians.org/welker/geronimo.htm
The photo of Geronimo is the only photograph of a Native American war chief taken while he was still at war with the United States. The chi and Shen of his photograph is good and appropriate for this blog entry.
"I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say." Geronimo
Sometime it can be very healthy and good to admit to ourselves and each other how incredibly mysterious, inexplicable, difficult and empty life can be. Sometime it is important to kick out the false supports we use so often and so well to deny our real feelings and thoughts about ourselves and the lives we lead. And sometimes it is important for us to say to God and our societies and our world views and pseudo understandings, "Fuck you! Fuck you God! Fuck you Christianity! Fuck You Judaism! Fuck you Islam! Fuck you Buddhism! Fuck you Hinduism! Fuck you Atheists! Fuck you Humanism and all the other Fucking isms and philosophies and psychologies! And especially Fuck you Big Corporations that chose profits over the good of the people and the planet! Fuck you, the vernier of personality that we all wrap ourselves in and while I am at it, Fuck me!"
A good " Fuck you!", to the world and existence and the self can be so good every now and again. Try it, or not. Do as you will or you wont. It is entirely up to you. When I was young, before the acid trip that let me experience a small bit of the Unity of all things I use to regularly tell God to go fuck It's self. I would tell God that because You put me here, You are responsible for my life here. And life here is shit. I was young what can I say? I use to give God hell a lot. When my dad came home drunk or when my parents fought or when things did not go my way I called on God to say fuck You. I have to admit I have never been afraid of God. I don't know why in retrospect. Now I am not afraid of Goddess either but for very different reasons. A lover is never afraid of the Beloved and a child is never afraid of his mother as one of my Sufi teachers use to tell me. So why should I fear Her when She is both to me.
Today I say I am glad I am here. I am honored to be alive and on this planet. But all the same it is very difficult being human because of the way humans share the world with each other. Societies which are organizations that regulate human relationships all over the world suck. This I believe in my heart of hearts. Societies do not so much serve the average man, woman or child as they do the rich and powerful and connected. They are not societies dedicated to the betterment of the people but are instead societies for the protection of ideologies, religions, politicians, corporations and the very powerful. Societies pay lip service to the real welfare and concerns of the people and do the bare minimum for them only when they are forced to do so. Yet all societies bow before the rich and powerful and rush to serve and protect them when they feel threatened. Thus has it always been. This is true all over the world. Show me where that is not true if you can?
My first good Chinese medical teacher told me that you can not have a healthy individual in a sick society. She was and is RIGHT. I see the truth of that every day from the macro to the micro levels of social and physical life. We live all over the world in multidimensional and interrelated societies that cause much harm and suffering for the people of the world. That is not to say they do no good at all because the good they do is obvious. But, the harm they inflict is equally obvious and that must be faced and changed for any real healing to have a chance.
Do not let yourself be confused by what is good about families and societies and organizations. Healers are not to concerned with what works. That is good when things work. We are concerned with pain and suffering caused by what is not working for the good of the person or a people. Healer-warriors search out the cause and effect of pain and suffering and work there. We acknowledge and support the good in everything. But the pains and sufferings of the world holds our attention and strengthens our determination to help.
Look at the suffering that families, societies and organizations inflict on their inmates and work to change that. Look at the suffering of the people. Look and look and look. Go beyond your comfort level. Look honestly at the everyday suffering of people of the world and how they are forced to live. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of Africa. Look at lives of the poor and suffering of Asia. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of South America. Look at the lives of the poor and suffering of Europe. Look at the lives of the poor suffering of the people of the United States. What do you see? If you are happy with what you see than I say in all sincerity, fuck you! Look once more until you really see and above all feel the poverty and suffering so many people and animals have to live with day in and day out. And than thank God if you are not one of them and lend a helping hand when and where you can.
Look at the societies and organizations you live in and how they effect you and the people you live with. Look at your families. Look at yourself. Look with courage and a ruthless honesty. Where is there balance and love and security and real good and wholesome life? Maybe you are one of the lucky few. Good for you. But your are the exception not the rule. Most people on this planet are kept poor and oppressed by the societies and organizations that control their everyday lives. For far to many people life is hard and brutal. Am I wrong? Wouldn't it be wonderful if I was? But I am not.
Why do I write this? Because as I said a long time ago when I started writing this blog that real healing is Revolutionary. Real healing demands the fierce determination of warriors and warriors who are willing to bear looking for a long time and in many locals for what is there not what they want to be there. We have to be willing to face ourselves and our societies and challenge our selves and our societies. Internal and external jihad is called for if we want to be healthy.
We must face the unpleasant reality that the families, societies and organizations we live in are responsible for most of the problems that we face in our lives. And we must also accept that as members of families and societies we are responsible for causing a lot of stress and harm to others by our actions and our lack of actions. The stress of trying to live in these families, societies and organizations are creating untold physical, mental, and emotional and indeed spiritual problems. This will not change until the families, societies and religions change. I say again, real and long lasting healing will not occur until we change the paradigms of the families, societies and organizations that control our lives.
Until the welfare and security of people of the world is the primary focus and aim of all societies and organizations that exert control on this planet there will be no real healing. Until profit and power serve the people and not just the few there will be no real healing on this planet. Corporations and governments and religions must be held accountable for the misery of the people and animals of this world. And they must change. Let us face it , families societies, governments, corporations and religions will only change when you and I in our billions insist that they change. And the billions I am writing about are composed of you and me. If we want change we must change. Real change occurs by example not force. Real change starts with our selves and spreads to all our relations and situations. That is a fact.
Until the people of the world do not have to live in fear of their families and neighbors and governments and religions and corporations their will be no real healing. Until people all over the world do not have to wonder where their next meal will come from and how they can support themselves and their families there will be no real healing.Until health care and education and decent housing are available to all the people of the world there will be no real healing. That is why to be healer is to be a revolutionary.
Why do we fight? We fight for our right to have a good life, a life worth living.We fight to live in societies that do not exploit us but that support us. And we fight not just for ourselves. We fight the healing jihad for our loved ones and for our friends and our families. We fight for people we do not know just because it is the right thing to do. We even fight for people we do not particularly like, because that too is the right thing to do. And we fight for the very real and suffering people and animals of this planet.
My analysis of the situation we find ourselves in on this planet is that it is going to get far worse before it can get any better. I am an American and frankly I fear for my country and by that I mean the people and animals not the elite and the corporations. In this country and around the world, I believe life will only get better if we abandon hope that some doctor or politician or religion or philosophy is going to save us. We must save ourselves and each other.
The problems that are causing us so much pain and suffering will not get better in any real and long lasting way unless and until we each personally commit to changing our selves and our societies for the better. We need to take the heroes journey and strive with our lives to be examples of the power of positive healing transformation. We need to become the medicine not stay part of the problem.That means you and me personally. It means you. It means making a warriors oath that as the Native warriors of America use to say before a battle,"It is a good day to die!" To say that means among other things that I let go of fear and embrace the battle. I will be a warrior worthy of life and do honor to myself and my people with my efforts come what may. I take a vow to struggle to be a better person, a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, a better son or daughter, a better brother or sister, a better friend. I take a vow to help change the world for the better and I am responsible for my actions. It is a good day to die.
Anyone can learn about herbs, or chi kung or the many other aspects of healing. But that does not make them a healer. A healer is a warrior who choses to faces the many enemies that threaten the people, including ignorance and discomforts, and trains to understand and wrestle with them for the good of the people.
We come into being in our mothers wombs. POP. Here we are. Our education about ourselves and the nature of existence is limited, contradictory and usually biased and misleading and mostly wrong. We act on what we are told or what we think we understand from our experiences and the results are more often than not far from what we hoped they would be. We get older and sadness or apathy or cynicism or fanaticism become our guides. We say to hell with it and stay inside our forts and cages and wait it out till death relieves us of the strain and depression of living. We need to do something different now. We need to stand up and walk outside our homes and begin the journey
You cannot find very much about the more meaningful aspects of life just using so called science and truths and logic. They all have there important uses but beware my friend. Science "truth" and logic all to often will betray you when you need them the most on your journey of the self and healing. They become the servants of safety and ignorance rather than the guides you need to get you past the more dangerous aspects of your education and journeys.
I recommend art and intuition be your more trusted guides. Have other guides but listen especially to the poets and look to the works of the artists for inspiration.
Maria Rilke understood a lot about what it takes to be a healer-warrior. Read his poems below and let your intuition and heart speak to you. You can find all of his poems on line at the following link.
http://www.poemhunter.com/rainer-maria-rilke/
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 - 1926 / Germany
Fear of the Inexplicable
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Thank You
I dedicate this year to my best friend, lover and wife, "My".
2008 a fresh start. Every day and every second is a fresh start. Fazil Inayat Khan, my first in the body Sufi teacher and guide use to say, "Don't live in the past. And the past ended one second ago." So let us let go of the past as much as possible and as often as possible and BE HERE Now!!! Wherever here is let us be here and see and be what is here. Let us look at ourselves and our current situations with fresh eyes and fresh brains and fresh attitudes and determine to change poison into healing medicine if that is what is required or to just laugh and give thanks.
There is so much to do in a good way and not do in a good way. Let us do and not do in a good way. " In a good way." in some Native American cultures means to be with whoever or whatever the situation may be in a way that benefits all concerned. To be here in a good way that brings blessings and beauty to all and everything.
I say to Allah and all sentient beings, " I come in a good way." I ask for help and love and harmony from all who would give it in a good way. May we all walk in Beauty in a good way. I walk in Beauty. Beauty in front of me. Beauty beside me, Beauty behind me. Beauty above me. Beauty below me. Beauty within me. I walk in Beauty. May you walk in Beauty.
I am so thankful and appreciative for all the people who have visited this blog. Thank you for your time and energy. I thank Chamki especially and kiss her heart. I am honored by the many positive responses from so many of you. I am grateful for all the help and support. Thank you.
I am glad that many of you have found what is written here helpful to you and your loved ones. I say now that, inshAllah, I will work more on this blog this year than I have for for the last six months.
Thank you Allah, thank you.
There is so much to do in a good way and not do in a good way. Let us do and not do in a good way. " In a good way." in some Native American cultures means to be with whoever or whatever the situation may be in a way that benefits all concerned. To be here in a good way that brings blessings and beauty to all and everything.
I say to Allah and all sentient beings, " I come in a good way." I ask for help and love and harmony from all who would give it in a good way. May we all walk in Beauty in a good way. I walk in Beauty. Beauty in front of me. Beauty beside me, Beauty behind me. Beauty above me. Beauty below me. Beauty within me. I walk in Beauty. May you walk in Beauty.
I am so thankful and appreciative for all the people who have visited this blog. Thank you for your time and energy. I thank Chamki especially and kiss her heart. I am honored by the many positive responses from so many of you. I am grateful for all the help and support. Thank you.
I am glad that many of you have found what is written here helpful to you and your loved ones. I say now that, inshAllah, I will work more on this blog this year than I have for for the last six months.
Thank you Allah, thank you.
P.S. Check out Laughter Yoga. I will write more about this soon. http://www.laughteryoga.org/
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sometimes We All Need Help.
I have to admit that the last few days has been very difficult for me and my family. Our oldest son at fifteen wants the freedom of adulthood with none of the responsibilities that go with it. Or at least that is the way it seems to me at times. He has different thoughts and emotions about it. I know the reality is different from what my thoughts and emotions tell me but it is not easy to swim against the riptides of thoughts and emotions. And my inability to do what it takes consistently to deal with this in a good way is driving me a little crazy. OK a lot crazy. I have a temper and it has shown it's self more than is good for all of us. I am feeling the gap between my knowledge and my ability to do what I know. One minute I know what to do and do it. The next minute I blow up and make things worse. Shame and blame are spending a lot of time with anger and frustration in my mind/body. My Sufi soul laughs. It is an old story that anyone who has or has had teenagers understands I am sure. Well I opened up my email and found the following posts from http://www.tricycle.com/
I know that the Sufi Path has been the best gift Allah/Alot (God/Goddess) has given me on this Earth. Only the love of my wife comes close. And I could not be as good to her or know how good she is to me if I did not have the teachings and guidance of the Sufi Path. The Sufi's say Allah is speaking to us all the time especially when we are in need, we just have to listen. Reading the emails from tricycle and seeing how they are medicine for my delusions is very appreciated. Thank you Goddess. We fall asleep so often and so easily when difficulties arise and it often takes a lot to wake us up, especially when we do not know we are asleep.
Just thought I would share this with you. Perhaps some of you my benefit from reading these posts as well
Before you read the posts here is a definition of Dukkah from another web site that will come in handy for some of you. It comes from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html Click on the links like "birth" and "aging" to get more information.
Dukkha is Our Best Teacher Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."
And now the posts.
Dukkha is our best teacher.
It will not be persuaded by any pleading of misery to let go of us. If we may say to a human teacher, I don't feel well...., the teacher may reply, "I am very sorry, but if you want to go home, then you must go. If we say to dukkha, "Look, I don't feel well.... I want to go home," dukkha says, "That's fine, but I am coming along." There is no way to say goodbye to it unless and until we have transcended our reactions. This means that we have looked dukkha squarely in the eye and see it for what it is: a universal characteristic of existence and nothing else. The reason we are fooled is that because this life contains so many pleasant occasions and sense contacts, we think if we could just keep this pleasantness going dukkha would never come again. We try over and over again to make this happen, until in the end we finally see that the pleasantness cannot continue because the law of impermanence intervenes.... So we continue our search for something new, because everybody else is doing it too. - Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith
Our Worst Enemy is Delusion.
Shantideva characterizes the hold our delusions have over us as follows: "Although my enemies of hatred, attachment and so forth have neither weapons, legs nor arms, still they harm and torture me and treat me like a slave." According to the dharma our worst enemy is delusion. This refers to any mental factor that disturbs and harms our peaceful mind. If we wish to be free of all suffering we must be able to identify the various delusions and understand how they harm us. Generally we all try to be aware of our external enemies but we pay scant heed to the inner enemies infecting our own mind. If we do not recognize the delusions and see how they harm us, how can we overcome our suffering? Buddha identified the six root delusions that poison our mind as following: (1) attachment, (2) anger, (3) pride, (4) ignorance, (5) deluded doubt and (6) wrong views. - Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle booked edited by Jean Smith
As a final gift here is some medicine and a gift from Rumi.
I have to admit that the last few days has been very difficult for me and my family. Our oldest son at fifteen wants the freedom of adulthood with none of the responsibilities that go with it. Or at least that is the way it seems to me at times. He has different thoughts and emotions about it. I know the reality is different from what my thoughts and emotions tell me but it is not easy to swim against the riptides of thoughts and emotions. And my inability to do what it takes consistently to deal with this in a good way is driving me a little crazy. OK a lot crazy. I have a temper and it has shown it's self more than is good for all of us. I am feeling the gap between my knowledge and my ability to do what I know. One minute I know what to do and do it. The next minute I blow up and make things worse. Shame and blame are spending a lot of time with anger and frustration in my mind/body. My Sufi soul laughs. It is an old story that anyone who has or has had teenagers understands I am sure. Well I opened up my email and found the following posts from http://www.tricycle.com/
I know that the Sufi Path has been the best gift Allah/Allto (God/Goddess) has given me on this Earth. Only the love of my wife comes close. And I could not be as good to her or know how good she is to me if I did not have the teachings and guidance of the Sufi Path. The Sufi's say Allah is speaking to us all the time especially when we are in need, we just have to listen. Reading the emails from tricycle and seeing how they are medicine for my delusions is very appreciated. Thank you Goddess. We fall asleep so often and so easily when difficulties arise and it often takes a lot to wake us up, especially when we do not know we are asleep.
Just thought I would share this with you. Perhaps some of you my benefit from reading these posts as well
Before you read the posts here is a definition of Dukkah from another web site that will come in handy for some of you. It comes from http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html Click on the links like "birth" and "aging" to get more information.
Dukkha is Our Best Teacher Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."
Dukkha is our best teacher. It will not be persuaded by any pleading of misery to let go of us. If we may say to a human teacher, I don't feel well...., the teacher may reply, "I am very sorry, but if you want to go home, then you must go. If we say to dukkha, "Look, I don't feel well.... I want to go home," dukkha says, "That's fine, but I am coming along." There is no way to say goodbye to it unless and until we have transcended our reactions. This means that we have looked dukkha squarely in the eye and see it for what it is: a universal characteristic of existence and nothing else. The reason we are fooled is that because this life contains so many pleasant occasions and sense contacts, we think if we could just keep this pleasantness going dukkha would never come again. We try over and over again to make this happen, until in the end we finally see that the pleasantness cannot continue because the law of impermanence intervenes.... So we continue our search for something new, because everybody else is doing it too. - Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith
Our Worst Enemy is Delusionhttp:
Shantideva characterizes the hold our delusions have over us as follows: "Although my enemies of hatred, attachment and so forth have neither weapons, legs nor arms, still they harm and torture me and treat me like a slave." According to the dharma our worst enemy is delusion. This refers to any mental factor that disturbs and harms our peaceful mind. If we wish to be free of all suffering we must be able to identify the various delusions and understand how they harm us. Generally we all try to be aware of our external enemies but we pay scant heed to the inner enemies infecting our own mind. If we do not recognize the delusions and see how they harm us, how can we overcome our suffering? Buddha identified the six root delusions that poison our mind as following: (1) attachment, (2) anger, (3) pride, (4) ignorance, (5) deluded doubt and (6) wrong views.
- Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle booked edited by Jean Smith
As a final gift here is some medicine and a gift from Rumi.
"Cry out in your weakness"
A dragon was pulling a bear into its horrible mouth
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.
And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."
Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.
And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.
Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.
Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.
Tear the bindings from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.
Give your weakness
to one who helps.
Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning whimper
and she's there.
God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.
Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.
The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.
Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.
-- Mathnawi II: 1932-60
Version by Coleman Barks
"The Essential Rumi"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1995
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
EVERY SWEET SONG IS MINE
You are my Sultan, you are my Lord;
You are my heart, my soul, and the faith of mine.
By your breath I am alive;
What is one life? – you are a hundred lives of mine.
Without you, bread cannot feed a man;
You are the water and the bread of mine.
By your touch, poison becomes medicine;
You are the cure and the sweet nectar of mine.
You are the garden, the grass, and the heavens;
You are the cypress, and the laughing jasmine of mine.
I have entered that supreme silence.
Please, you go on . . .
My mouth may open, words may come out,
But you are every sweet song of mine.
-- Ghazal (Ode) 3365
Version by Jonathan Star
"A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi"
Bantam Books, 1992
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Winter Journey
In the old times before so called civilization covered us up in it's protective and restrictive forts and cages this time of year in the Northern Hemispheres was a time to huddle together and try to survive the cold dark winter. In those days there were always a very few people among the many tribes and clans who used this time to reflect on their lives and the lives of their people. They were the wise people and the shamans and the leaders who used this cold dark time to learn lessons from their past and to seek understanding for their future and the future of their people.
I say this is still a good time of year to look at your life with fresh eyes. It is a good time to stand in front of a mirror both in real time and symbolically. Try letting go of your comfortable understanding of your self and your world. Dare to stand naked and fearless and alone with yourself. Look deeply, and for a long time, over many days, and see what you see and than look for what you do not want to see. And then look again and yet again. There are dangers and rewards to be found and dealt with when you do this. It is a good journey to take before, during, and after the winter solstice.
I try to do more than just write this stuff. I try to do as much of what I write as possible. Believe me, it is not easy. I find it more often than not, very uncomfortable to really face myself. I usually see and feel a whole lot of fear, laziness and hypocrisy. Than I find myself laughing and still laughing I take a fresh look. Try it for yourself.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Let Us Drink Some Of This Wine, And Laugh!
DROPPING KEYS
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
("The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)
The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
("The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)
A Golden Compass
Forget every idea of right and wrong
Any classroom ever taught you
Because
An empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear
Are always the testimony
You have been completely fooled!
Turn your back on those
Who would imprison your wondrous spirit
With deceit and lies.
Come, join the honest company
Of the King's beggars--
Those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns
And those astonishing fair courtesans
Who need Divine Love every night.
Come, join the courageous
Who have no choice
But to bet their entire world
That indeed,
Indeed, God is Real.
I will lead you into the Circle
Of the Beloved's cunning thieves,
Those playful royal rogues--
The ones you can trust for true guidance--
Who can aid you
In this Blessed Calamity of life.
Hafiz,
Look at the Perfect One
At the Circle's Center:
He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass,
Beyond all that is Rational,
To show this dear world
That Everything,
Everything in Existence
Does point to God.
I Heard God Laughing
Renderings of Hafiz
By Daniel Ladinsky
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Just True
“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.” OL
Friday, December 07, 2007
Time For A Second Or New Look Depending On Who Is looking.
Below are links to key healing techniques. The links lead to my yahoo blog. The information is found on this blog but it is easier to find them this way for now. I will re-do this blog soon, inshAllah.
Keys Healing Techniques
I am going on adding here the links for the keys healing techniques
Tapping, Try it. It Works.The Tar Baby Game and The Radiating Energy Being GameSwimming in the Ocean of Thoughts, Emotions and SensationsEase The Pain In Your Head And Your Wallet At The Same TimeA Breathing Exercise to Calm the MindBreathing Is One The Most Important Of The Keys To A Better LifeKoryo Hand Therapysee the tag for moreThe Beautiful Feeta primer on the basic training to become proficient inWaiqi Liaofa, or External Qi Healing Aspect of the breath. "Absorb the Colors Chi Kung."see the tag for moreA Very Good Internal Chi Kung Practice A Bad Hair Day And What To Do About ItLend me Your EarsJin Shin JyutsuWalk In BeautyDevelop A Home Medicine Bags or Boxes
more to come
The Doctor Might Know or Might Not.
We need to learn how to take care of ourselves and our family. We are faced with all kinds of medical problems all through our lives and are usually woefully prepared to confront them in a good and healing way. To depend on the medical profession or insurance is to depend on a small candle on a windy night. According to a recent study almost 50% of medical diagnoses are wrong. Not good odds and most people do not have adequate insurance to pay for the treatments they receive.
Usually we get big bills and very little understanding of what is happening to us or a loved one and the results are usually far from what we would like them to be.
So as I said before we have to become our own doctors/healers. And that is a lot of work and commitment. But it is worth it when you can help someone you love in their time of need is it not. Look within this blog and learn. The choices are always your own.
So many people come here and take away so little. I read comments about this person or that person having need of help but hardly ever read about someone using what they could find here to help themselves or their loved ones. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your family or loved ones. Do not look to me or someone else. Look to yourself and ask yourself if you are all talk when it comes to caring about what is happening to you or someone you care about or if you want to do the walk? Are you all hat and no cattle or what? Just thought I would throw in that western expression. It means you look like a cowboy but you ain't.
One of mys favorite teachers use to say."If you want to help people, do more, talk less."
Usually we get big bills and very little understanding of what is happening to us or a loved one and the results are usually far from what we would like them to be.
So as I said before we have to become our own doctors/healers. And that is a lot of work and commitment. But it is worth it when you can help someone you love in their time of need is it not. Look within this blog and learn. The choices are always your own.
So many people come here and take away so little. I read comments about this person or that person having need of help but hardly ever read about someone using what they could find here to help themselves or their loved ones. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your family or loved ones. Do not look to me or someone else. Look to yourself and ask yourself if you are all talk when it comes to caring about what is happening to you or someone you care about or if you want to do the walk? Are you all hat and no cattle or what? Just thought I would throw in that western expression. It means you look like a cowboy but you ain't.
One of mys favorite teachers use to say."If you want to help people, do more, talk less."
Above is our Australian dingo cattle dog, Baraan. The foot and leg belong to my much loved step-son, Asher.
A loving dog or cat can do more for people than most doctors.
Doctor Buddha
Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and of the world. It looks at things objectively. It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness.
One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second optimistic. Both are equally dangerous. But a third physician diagnoses the symptoms correctly, understands the cause and the nature of the illness, sees clearly that it can be cured and courageously administers a course of treatment, thus saving his patient. The Buddha is like the last physician. He is the wise and scientific doctor for the ills of the world.
- Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught
from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
My Wife My
I love this picture.That is My's art work behind her. She is currently in massage school and studying Martial Arts and yoga. I am also in yoga classes now three days a week.
I love My's massage work. To receive her work on a regular basis is wonderful. What a pleasure it is to be there at the birth of a new healer and watch and feel her development.
Here is a Rumi poem. My gift to you.
I can't pretend to be a lion able to conquer the enemy
to master myself would be enough.
I am only the dust on my Lover's path and from dust
I will rise and turn into a flower.
Dark like the night I mourn and hold the pain
of love inside me.
But bright like the Moon I will rise from the darkness
for I have seen the source of light and being a child
whose tutor is love I will not grow up ignorant.
I will rise like a flame out of love's fire
and become infinite like love.
When I reach my end, play the music
that will lift me up to Spirit.
-- Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
"Rumi: Hidden Music"
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Read This Book If You Can
I wrote about this book a few weeks ago. I just finished it and am now on my second read. It is so good that I have to tempt some of you to read it with the following exert from it. If you have read it or do read it let me know what you think OK?
The following can be found at
http://commongroundmag.com/2007/03/artsoulbook0703.html
Why We Close Doors
In his new book, researcher featured in What the Bleep… shows how to outsmart our brains for our own betterment
By Joe Dispenza, D.C.
We’ve all been there or had friends who were: bad patterns. Relationships, for example: jumping from one psychotic badger-mean person to another, or worse… musicians [rimshot].
In his latest book, Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind, Dr. Joe Dispenza explains how emotions are tied to thinking, and how new thinking can literally rewire one’s brain to change emotional reactions and break habit-forming patterns. “Aside from dealing with physical ailments,” he says, “this book addresses emotional addiction. Among its symptoms are lethargy, lack of ability to focus, a desire to maintain routines, the inability to complete cycles of action, a lack of new experiences and emotional responses and the persistent feeling that one day is the same as the next and the next.”
In the following segment from chapter nine, “The Chemistry of Emotional Addiction,” Dispenza writes that as we begin to exit our youth, our lives get smaller and we start closing doors. This, he contends, can mean a lot, and explains how this phenomenon takes place in our minds, and how it can affect our lives.
“Settling in and Settling For”
You’ve surely heard of the midlife crisis, and you have probably seen its effects as well. The number of marriages ended and sports cars bought are probably directly proportional to the number of people turning 50 each year. Why is midlife so fraught with people wanting to make a change in their life? We know that emotions and feelings are the chemical markers of prior experiences. As we grow older and embrace new experiences in life, there is a period in our late twenties and early thirties in which we think that we have experienced most of what life has to offer. Perhaps we have pretty much stopped having new experiences and are repeating the same experiences, which produce in us the same feelings. Because we’ve had diverse experiences in our earlier life, we can say that we know what most of our unique experiences feel like—and so, we can predict them. In a midlife crisis, it is as if we are trying to feel the way we did the first time we experienced the emotions associated with novel experiences.
From childhood through young adulthood, we are learning and growing from our environment. Then we reach a point in midlife—whether midlife is a genetic, natural phenomenon or a learned, environmental effect—in which we certainly have experienced a lot of what life’s experiences and emotions have to offer. By this time, for the most part, we understand sexuality and sexual identity because we have experienced it. We have embraced pain, suffering, victimization and pity. We know what it is like to feel sad, disappointed, betrayed, unmotivated, insecure and weak. We have reacted without thinking. We have been afraid. We have sunk into guilt. We have been embarrassed, shamed and rejected. We have blamed, complained, made excuses and been confused. We know success and failure…
Because we have experienced so many of life’s emotions by our late twenties and early thirties, we are able to predict the outcome of most situations. It becomes easy to determine how they will feel, because we have experienced what similar prior circumstances felt like. In this way, feelings become the barometer to determine our motivation in life. We then begin to make choices based on how they will make us feel. If the personality self knows that a potential experience is familiar and predictable, we feel good in choosing that option. This is true because we feel confident, and that feeling tells us that we have already experienced the event before, so we can forecast the outcome.
However, if we cannot predict the feeling of a situation, more than likely we will not be interested in engaging that experience. In fact, if we can predict that a potential experience is likely to have an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling associated with it, we will tend to avoid that situation.
By the time we are in our late twenties to early thirties, then, we are thinking almost exclusively based on feelings. Feelings become the means of thinking. The two are nearly inseparable. Most of us cannot think greater than how we feel. The feedback loop of thoughts and feelings that are intrinsically connected to the body becomes complete right around this point in our life, because we spend more time feeling than learning. Feelings are the past memories of experiences; learning is making new memories that have new feelings. At this life stage, we are forced to stop focusing primarily on growing and learning, and start surviving. Jobs, homes, cars, mortgages, finances, investments, kids, colleges, extracurricular activities and maintaining a relationship or marriage are just the right ingredients to begin living in survival instead of expansion.
And so, given the opportunity for a new experience at this stage of our life, we typically try to predict the outcome based on how it might feel. This is when we say things like, “What will it feel like? How long will it take? Will it hurt? Do I need to bring something to eat? Do I have to walk a lot? Will it be raining? Will it be cold? Who will be there? Will we be able to take breaks? Who are these people?” All these concerns reflect our anxieties about the body, the environment and time. This is a sign that youth is slipping away and we are beginning to age.
To continue this line of reasoning, now we become further trapped within the limits of our box. We hesitate to step outside the familiar to experience anything unknown or new to us because we will not be able to identify a feeling to go along with that potential experience. The box of our limited thinking creates the same “frame” of mind.
The explanation is simple. A new experience evokes a new feeling. An unknown experience might expose us to an unknown feeling, so it initiates the survival mechanisms of the personality. Because we have not experienced this novel event, the “self” runs through its databases of prior experiences, looking for familiar patterns and associations to forecast what feelings that situation might bring. The neural nets of inherited memories are also activated in an attempt to evaluate the future. When we run out of options, we will simply steer clear of the unfamiliar experience. The chance to experience a novel opportunity is now overridden by the firing of our old neural hardware. In other words, it is outside the limits of our comfort zone. And so, we fear the unknown.
Excerpted from Evolve Your Brain (Health Communications Inc.) ©2007 by Joe Dispenza D.C. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Available at independent bookstores, hcibooks.com and drjoedispenza.com
The following is an interview with the author of "Evolve Your Brain" It can be found at the following link.
http://www.hci-online.com/jdispenza#Interview
EVOLVE YOUR BRAIN
The Science of Changing Your Mind
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Why do we keep getting the same jobs, taking on the same relationships, and finding ourselves in the same emotional traps? In Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind (HCI Books – January 2007), Dr. Joe Dispenza not only teaches why people tend to repeat the same negative behaviors, he shows how readers can release themselves from these patterns of disappointment.
With the dynamic combination of science and accessible how-to, Dispenza teaches how to use the most important tool in one’s body and life—the brain. Featured in the underground smash hit of 2004, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?," Dispenza touched upon the brain's ability to become addicted to negative emotions. Now, in his empowering book, Evolve Your Brain, he explains how new thinking and new beliefs can literally rewire one's brain to change behavior, emotional reactions, and habit forming patterns.
Most people are unaware of how addicted they are to their emotions, and how the brain perpetuates those addictions automatically. In short, we become slaves to our emotional addictions without even realizing it. By observing our patterns of thought, and learning how to 're-wire the brain' with new thought patterns, we can break the cycles that keep us trapped and open ourselves to new possibilities for growth, happiness and emotional satisfaction.
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AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Q. What inspired and motivated you to write this book?
A. An experience I had 20 years ago inspired me to investigate the power of the brain to alter our life. As I describe in the book, much of my spine was crushed in a bike accident, and four surgeons said my only option to avoid paralysis was a type of surgery that would have left me with a permanent disability and possibly, lifelong pain. I had to make the toughest decision of my life, but I turned down the surgery and turned instead to the innate intelligence that constantly gives life to every one of us. Ten weeks later, without surgery, I was back at work, completely healed and pain-free. I give credit in the book to many factors that contributed to my healing.
Because of that experience, I promised myself to spend a major portion of my life studying the phenomenon of mind over matter and spontaneous healing, meaning how the body repairs itself or rids itself of disease without traditional medical interventions such as surgery or drugs. And so I’ve spent many years studying about human potential, about our ability to transcend or be greater than our personal limitations, and about the interconnectedness of the brain, the mind, the body, and consciousness.
Until just a few decades ago, science had led us to believe that we were doomed by genetics, hobbled by conditioning, and should resign ourselves to the proverbial thinking about old dogs not being able to learn new tricks. However, what I’ve discovered in studying the brain and its effects on behavior for the last 20 years has made me enormously hopeful about human beings and our ability to change. We have just needed to know how to change, and today, neuroscience has a very solid explanation for how mind over matter works; it’s no longer a pie-in-the-sky concept. The science of changing our mind is now available, and I wrote Evolve Your Brain to help make this science accessible to everyone.
Q. Is Evolve Your Brain a self-help book? How is it different from other books that concern human potential?
A. Helping us understand and accept that we truly can modify our brain and change our life is a major focus of this book. My approach is to unify the most helpful new findings from neuroscience, neurophysiology, biology, and genetics, and build the reader’s knowledge in a systematic, easily understandable, and hopefully engaging way. Yet as the book makes clear, knowledge must be experienced before it can become wisdom. Evolve Your Brain is designed to serve as a practical tool to guide us as we experience the processes that we can use to change our mind and evolve our brain.
Unlike self-help or human potential books that focus on the mind, the emotions, or the body but place little attention on the brain, this book embraces the structure and function of this crown of our evolution. Everything that we do takes place through the brain—how we think, how we act, how we feel, our relationships, our perceptions of the world around us—because our “self,” as a sentient being, is immersed and truly exists in the electrical web of our cellular brain tissue. Then, since we can’t hope to evolve our brain without changing our mind and understanding the role of our feelings, Evolve Your Brain explores how they all interact with the body to create our life.
Q.Many of us learned in school that once we become adults, the brain is static and rigid. How much potential do we have to change our brain?
A. Those of us who went to school 20 or 30 years ago were taught that the brain is hardwired, meaning that by the time we’re adults, we have a certain number of brain cells that are arranged in fixed patterns or neural circuits, and that as we get older, we lose some of those circuits. We thought that we would inevitably turn out like our parents in many ways, because we could only use the same neural patterns that we genetically inherited from them.
Neuroscientists now say that was a mistake. The great news is, each of us is a work in progress, throughout our life. Every time we have a thought, different areas of our brain surge with electrical current and release a mob of neurochemicals that are too numerous to name. Thanks to functional brain scanning technology, we can now see that our every thought and experience causes our brain cells, or neurons, to connect and disconnect in ever-changing patterns and sequences. In fact, we have a natural ability called neuroplasticity, which means that if we learn new knowledge and have new experiences, we can develop new networks or circuits of neurons, and literally change our mind.
Q. So, why is it hard for us to change?
A. In my practice as well as my personal life, I have seen that change isn’t easy. When people want to commit to a goal, they start out with good intentions and ideas, but quite often they go back to their unwanted habits. The concept of change means that we are going to do something differently within the same environment; we’re not going to respond to our environment with our customary thoughts and reactions. That, however, is easier said than done. Many of us tend to think the same thoughts, have the same feelings, and follow the same routines in our life. The rub is, this causes us to keep using the same patterns and combinations of neural circuits in our brain, and they tend to become hardwired. This is how we create habits of thinking, feeling, and doing.
Don’t get me wrong, hardwiring isn’t a bad thing. Thanks to hardwiring, when we learn a new skill such as driving a car, the more we practice, the more we hardwire what we learn into our brain’s circuits, and eventually we can operate a car automatically. But if we want to change something in our life, we have to cause the brain to no longer fire in the same old sequences and combinations. We have to create a new level of mind by disconnecting the old neural circuits and rewiring our brain in new patterns of nerve cell connections.
The good news we’re learning from the latest brain research is that we can change the brain and thus change ourselves, if we take just a few simple steps. Evolve Your Brain will take the reader step by step through the knowledge and “how-to” steps needed to change any area of our life.
Q. What does stress do to the body? Can Evolve Your Brain help people to overcome stress?
A. As a doctor of chiropractic, I’ve seen first-hand the effects of stress on my patients. It is not short episodes of acute stress, but chronic, long-term stress that most weakens the body. Most of us rarely face the immediate threats to physical survival that our ancestors had to deal with, so we may fail to realize the impact on us of years spent worrying about job security, credit card debt, whether our kids will experiment with drugs, and so on. When we chronically live in high-stress mode, or when we are constantly looking for problems that may affect us at some future moment, we engage the body’s emergency response to stress all the time.
Why is this such a problem? The chemicals that continually flood our body when we are under long-term stress are the culprits that begin to alter our internal state and pull the trigger of cellular breakdown. Moreover, when we’re always on high alert or in emergency mode, our body doesn’t have the time or the resources necessary to repair and regenerate itself. The body can even become addicted to the chemical state of being under stress.
Q. But as we will demonstrate, the ability to overcome stress lies right between our ears.
A. Most stress ends up as emotional/psychological stress, and that means it’s the autosuggestions of our own thinking that affect the body so intensely. In other words, we can turn on the stress response by our thoughts alone, and they can have the same measurable effects as any threatening stressor in our environment. In Evolve Your Brain , we will learn how to overcome the thoughts that initiate stress responses.
Q. Can evolving the brain help people to overcome emotional addictions?
A. Aside from dealing with physical ailments, this book is also intended to address another kind of affliction--emotional addiction, which always accompanies high stress levels in our life. We’ve all experienced emotional addiction at some point in our life. Among its symptoms are lethargy, a lack of ability to focus, a tremendous desire to maintain routine in our daily life, the inability to complete cycles of action, a lack of new experiences and emotional responses, and the persistent feeling that one day is the same as the next and the next.
What was once scientific theory now has practical applications for us to heal our own self-inflicted emotional wounds. The methods I suggest are not a wouldn’t-it-be-wonderful, self-help miracle cure. Be assured, this book is grounded in cutting-edge science. How is it possible to end this cycle of negativity? The answer, of course, lies in you. And in this case, in a very specific part of you. Through an understanding of the various subjects we will explore in this book and a willingness to apply some specific principles, you can heal yourself emotionally by altering the neural networks in your brain.
Q. Can you explain the mind/body connection? What is the relationship between thoughts and the physical body?
A. An emerging scientific field called psychoneuroimmunology is demonstrating the connection between the mind and the body, and is beginning to help us understand the link between how we think and how we feel. We now know that our every thought produces a biochemical reaction in the brain. The brain then releases chemical signals that are transmitted to the body, where they act as messengers of the thought. In this way, the thoughts that produce these chemicals in the brain allow our body to feel exactly the way we were just thinking.
Essentially, when we have happy, inspiring, or positive thoughts, our brain manufactures chemicals that make us feel joyful, inspired, or uplifted. For example, when we look forward to a pleasurable experience, the brain immediately makes a chemical neurotransmitter called dopamine, which turns the brain and body on in anticipation of that experience, and we feel excited. If we have thoughts of hate, anger, or insecurity, the brain produces chemicals that the body responds to in a comparable way, and we feel hateful, angry, or unworthy. Another chemical that our brain makes, called ACTH, signals the body to produce chemical secretions from the adrenal glands that make us feel threatened or aggressive.
When the body responds to a thought by having a feeling, the brain, which constantly monitors the status of the body, notices that the body is feeling a certain way. In response to that bodily feeling, the brain generates thoughts that produce corresponding chemical messengers, so that we begin to think the way we are feeling. Thinking creates feeling, and then feeling creates thinking, in a continuous biological feedback loop. This cycle eventually creates a particular state in the body—what we call a state of being—that determines the general nature of how we feel and behave.
For example, say a person lives much of her life in a repeating cycle of thoughts and feelings related to unworthiness. The moment she thinks about not being good enough or smart enough or enough of anything, her brain releases chemicals that produce a bodily feeling of unworthiness. Now she is feeling the way she was just thinking. Her brain notices that, and she begins to have thoughts of insecurity that match the way she was just feeling. Her body is now causing her to think. If her thoughts and feelings continue, year after year, to generate the same feedback loop between her brain and her body, she will exist in a state of being that is called “unworthy.” These repeated chemical signals cause the cells of the body to function in undesirable ways, making us sick.
This starts to explain how the mind can physically modify the body. In the book I talk about a man I called Tom, who developed one digestive ailment after another. This finally led him to examine his life, and he realized he had been suppressing feelings of anger and desperation over being in a job that made him miserable. Tom’s mind and body were in a feedback loop of thinking and feeling that amounted to toxic attitudes that his body just “couldn’t stomach.” He had been living in a state of being revolving around victimization. His healing finally began when he paid attention to his habitual thoughts and realized that his unconscious attitudes were the basis for the person he had become.
There is significant scientific evidence suggesting that the mind has a direct effect on the body…both for better and for worse. Research demonstrates that we can cause our bodies to be sick just by the anticipation of a future event or the memory of a past experience. In both cases, it is our thoughts that are creating powerful chemicals of stress to alter most of the systems in our body. So what we think about and the intensity of these thoughts directly influences our health, the choices we make, and our quality of life.
Q. What, then is the mind, and how is it related to the brain?
A. Now that we have the technology to observe a living brain, we know from functional brain scans that the mind is the brain in action. This is the latest definition of mind, according to neuroscience. When a brain is alive and active, it can process thought, learn new information, invent new ideas, master skills, recall memories, express feelings, refine movements, and maintain the orderly functioning of the body. The animated brain can also facilitate behavior, dream, perceive reality, and most important, embrace life. In order for the mind to exist, then, the brain must be alive.
The brain is therefore not the mind; it is the physical apparatus through which the mind is produced. The brain facilitates mind. We can think of the brain as an intricate data processing system that enables us to gather, process, store, recall, and communicate information within seconds, if need be, as well as to forecast, hypothesize, respond, behave, plan, and reason. The brain is also the control center through which the mind coordinates all of the metabolic functions necessary for life and survival. So when your bio-computer is “turned on” or alive, and it is functioning by processing information, it produces the mind.
The brain has three individual anatomical structures with which it produces different aspects of mind. We also have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind, and both are the result of a brain that is coordinating thought impulses through its various regions and substructures. Therefore, there are many diverse states of mind, because we can easily make the brain work in different ways
Q. What is neuroplasticity?
A. Neuroplasticity is our natural ability to change how the brain’s neurons are connected and organized into circuits, which we call its synaptic wiring. Every time we learn something new or have a novel experience, the brain makes new synaptic connections to form new neural patterns or networks—and this happens at any age. When we utilize new circuits in new ways, we rewire the brain to fire in new sequences. From a neurological level, then, we are changed moment to moment by the thoughts we think, the information we learn, the events we experience, the reactions we have, the feelings we create, the memories we process, and even the dreams we embrace. All of these alter the way the brain works, producing new states of mind that are recorded in our brain.
Neuroplasticity is an innate, universal genetic feature in humans. It affords us the privilege to learn from experiences in our environment, so that we may change our actions and modify our behavior, our thought processes, and our personality to produce outcomes that are more desirable. Merely to learn intellectual information is not enough; we must apply what we learn to create a different experience. If we could not synaptically rewire our brain, we could not change in response to our experiences. Without the ability to change, we could not evolve, and we would be at the effect of our genetic predispositions. How neuroplastic our own brain is depends on our ability to change our perception of the world around us, to change our mind, to change our self.
Q. What is mental rehearsal and how can we use it to change?
A. Mental rehearsal allows us to change our brain—to create a new level of mind—without doing anything physical other than thinking. It involves mentally seeing and experiencing our “self” demonstrating or practicing a skill or habit or state of being of our own choosing. Through mental rehearsal, we can employ the advanced faculties of our frontal lobe to make significant changes in our life.
Several studies have shown that the brain does not know the difference between what it is thinking internally and what it is experiencing in its external environment. In one experiment, two groups of non-pianists were asked to learn one-handed piano exercises and to practice two hours a day for five days—with one important difference. One group physically practiced their exercises, while the other mentally rehearsed the same exercises without using their fingers. At the end of the five days, brain scans showed that both groups grew the same amount of new brain circuits. How is that possible?
We know that when we think the same thoughts or perform the same actions over and over, we repeatedly stimulate specific networks of neurons in particular areas of our brain. As a result, we build stronger, more enriched connections between these groups of nerve cells. This concept in neuroscience is called Hebbian learning. The idea is simple: Nerve cells that fire together, wire together.
According to functional brain scans in this particular experiment, the subjects that mentally rehearsed were so inwardly focused that their brain did not know the difference between the internal and the external world. Thus, they were activating their brain in the same way as if they were actually playing the piano. In fact, their brain circuits strengthened and developed in the same area of the brain as the group that physically practiced.
Q. You say in the book that thinking isn’t enough to change our mind, and that change is a process of thinking, doing, and then being. Can you explain how this works?
A. The change we want to make has to go beyond thinking and even doing—we need to go all the way to being. If I want to truly be a pianist, I will start by acquiring knowledge, which involves thinking. Then I can start to gain experience through mental rehearsal, which again involves thinking. I also have to involve the body in the act of doing—physically demonstrating what I’ve intellectually learned—by playing the piano. But that isn’t going far enough. I magine a concert pianist who does her best work in practice sessions, but struggles during a concert. Or to bring this a little closer to home, imagine a spouse who is the model of understanding on the drive home from work, but devolves into an impatient pouter as soon as he or she comes through the door.
If I want to attain the state of being a pianist, my evolved understanding and my skills must become so hardwired and mapped into my brain that I no longer have to consciously think about playing, because my subconscious mind now handles that skill. Now that I am being a pianist, any thought I have about playing, or desire to express my feelings through music, will automatically turn my body on to carry out the task of playing the piano. We talk at length in Evolve Your Brain about how we use different kinds of memory, activating different parts of the brain, to make conscious thoughts, subconscious thoughts. We also learn that to master any particular ability also takes possessing a great deal of knowledge about a subject, receiving expert instruction in that area, and having plenty of experiences to provide us with feedback.
We all go from thinking to doing to being, every time we learn a skill so well that we can do it automatically. Driving is a great example. The beauty of this process is that we can use it to attain any state of being we choose, from being more patient with our children to being healthy to being a happy person.
Q. What is evolution and how can we evolve our brain?
A. We evolve as a species and as individuals. In fact, our own personal evolution also advances the human species. Most of us learned in school that evolution is the slow, linear process by which species survive changes in their environment through adaptation over generations, developing specialized anatomy and physiology that help them to perpetuate their species. Our human brain evolved in a linear fashion up to about 250,000 years ago, when (for reasons that remain a mystery) a sudden, explosive period of growth gave us a neocortex much larger and denser than that of any other species. This so-called new brain is the seat of our conscious awareness; it houses our capacity to learn and to reason, and our free will to create. Simply put, our neocortex, especially the frontal lobe, affords us the potential to transcend the gradual process of evolution and move into rapid, nonlinear evolution. Because we can learn from knowledge and our experiences—above all, from our mistakes—and since we have several specialized forms of memory by which we can remember what we learn, we can immediately modify our thoughts and behavior. Unlike other species, then, we can create a completely new range of experiences in just one lifetime. We may then pass on what we learned to our offspring and to other members of our species.
In terms of the brain, evolution means learning, making new synaptic connections, maintaining them, and applying what we learned so we have a new experience, which then is encoded in the brain. What Evolve Your Brain presents is a process that can cause the brain to make a quantum leap, by overcoming certain neural circuits that we’ve been given genetically, and by encoding new experiences and information. When we evolve out of the primitive states of survival hardwired in our brain, fire new thoughts (which make new chemicals), change our mind (which alters the chemical message to our body), and modify our behavior (to create a whole new experience, thus bringing new chemistry that affects our cells), now we are on the path of evolution.
We all have certain habits and propensities that we’ve either inherited genetically, or that we’ve been conditioned to by our environment. Personal evolution requires us to break the habit of being ourselves and to become greater than our environment. We break out of our routines and habitual emotional reactions and behaviors by learning new knowledge and having novel experiences. In the early stages of learning, we are faced with novelty. Next follow moments during which we review and internalize the new stimuli, as we begin to make it familiar or known. By the end of every learning process, the newly acquired information is known and familiar; if we have learned a behavior or a task, it may now be routine, even automatic. Our ability to process unknown to known, unfamiliar to familiar, novel to routine is the route to our individual evolution.
Q. Are training programs or schools of wisdom are necessary to evolving our brain?
A. In Evolve Your Brain, I outline a simple process of acquiring knowledge, getting instruction, applying what we’ve learned, and receiving feedback—that’s how we evolve our brain. We go from thinking to doing to being. That sequential process allows us to change. I do recommend, and have found it essential in my own experience, that if we want to evolve in the most effective way, we should seek out instruction from someone who has mastered what we want to learn.
There are many excellent individuals, programs, and institutions—some of which are mentioned in this book—that can help us learn new information, apply what we have learned, have novel experiences, and begin to modify our behavior. Each individual must decide for themselves whether starting with small changes, or taking huge leaps, is most appropriate for them. I do mention a number of times in the book that my own learning has included 17 years as a student at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment in the Pacific Northwest, and that I taught at that school for about seven years. Those who have spiritual or personal growth interests that go beyond convention may wish to look into RSE’s training programs, books, and other informational materials; I have included contact information in my Bibliography.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Save Lives, Check Your Furnace
Check you Furnace!!! My family was sick for a week or two recently and it turned out our furnace had a gas leak and was venting CO2. But for the grace of Allah, we could have all died. If you have not had your furnace checked this winter I would advise you do so as soon as possible. The life you save may be our own.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanks Giving Day. But Never Forget What Happened After That Day!
After the First Thanks Giving the Native People had their Land and Lives taken away to make room for more Thanks Givings for the White People. And the Red People ended up on the Reservations. Where would you rather live?
What happened after those early Thanks Givings should always be remembered. Native People went from Freedom to the Res. That is important to acknowledge while we give thanks on both sides of the Reservations. Never Forget. And if you do not know the history of what happened after that first Thanks Giving spend some time today learning the true history of the White and Red peoples relationships. Then try to make things better for ALL the people of the Earth.
What we can also do with what has happened is to make it better by seeing Thanks Giving in different ways. Turn the poison of history into good medicine and food by giving thanks for all the GOOD in our lives and the world.
Happy Thanks Giving Day to all of you and yours. I suggest using some of this day to thank God and the people in your life who you value and love. I am going to do that. And Chamki, I want to say how very much I appreciate you and all the help you have given me on this blog and in my life.
Love River My and Asher and Diamond
Love River My and Asher and Diamond
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Healing And Beauty Manifest In Infinite Forms
Healing has many forms just like beauty. I urge you to find and enjoy many manifestations of both during your stay on this planet. Please share what you find.
The above illustration comes from Barbara Ann Brennan's healing web-page. I have many friends who have studied with her and they have all benefited from doing so.
http://www.2012.com.au/Healing_energies.html
The above art comes from the folloing link.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/marifras/paint.htm
http://www.holisticeureka.com/
The above illustration comes from Barbara Ann Brennan's healing web-page. I have many friends who have studied with her and they have all benefited from doing so.http://www.2012.com.au/Healing_energies.html
The above art comes from the folloing link.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/marifras/paint.htm
http://www.holisticeureka.com/
Dance With Beauty And Healing
We are healers, wise men from the East!
We have cured many from sorrow and blindness,
we uproot the cause of all pain.
We bring the dead to life because
we have learned our skills from Christ,
ask those who have witnessed our signs.
We mix our medicine from plants of paradise
and need no instruments
for we run through the body like thought.
We are the healers of spirit and do not look for reward.
But before we leave,
remember not to speak of us, guard your words
for this world is full of unfriendly ears.
-- Ghazal (Ode) 1474 Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam MafiRumi: Hidden MusicHarperCollins Publishers
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Is It All In The Mind?
The art above is my wife's My's. For me, this painting reminds me of a woman caught in the social-mind-emotion world of conflicting actions, thoughts and emotions. Of course it shows whatever anyone can see in it and more. I just like seeing it and wanted to show it once more on this site.
I am reading a fascinating book by Dr Joe Dispenza called Evolve Your Brain. He describes how our mind body works in such a good way that I have to let you know about it. He shows how it works and how you can work it to change your life on all levels. He has a very good website that I also recommend.
http://drjoedispenza.com/
Believe it or not I am so trying to get back to this blog but as I said before, the Goddess keeps delaying me. What can I do? Talk to Her if you like. I am but an innocent child in Her hands.
When I do start back I have some very good things to share that I have found and been shown these many months, inshAllah.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
It Is Done And It Is Time
The above artist Mymoo can be found at the following link.
http://poowa.com/english-board/zboard.php?id=poowaisland&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=45
The art is from my 360 friends I will put links and names to them later. I just would like you to be with them and let them take you on journeys. I am sure the artist who created them feel the same. If you click on them, you will see a larger and more private expression.If you want to change the world or your family or any relationship, you have to be willing to show the way to change. You need to accept the responsibility for confronting yourself and your part in any problem or situation. Then you need to begin to change your responses inside and out to any difficult relationship or problem. When people see you change they will be more likely to follow your example and begin to change themselves.
Your commitment to change and healing must be real , deep, wide ranging and personal or it will not be effective or long lasting. We have very little time left to shift our social worlds away from their destructive courses. That is true no matter where we live or what cultures we exist within.
It is time to start helping yourself, your family and the people and plants and animals of our world. It has to be a multi-dimensional transformation. It starts with you and spreads out from there. You cannot demand that others do what you will not or do not. To help others you must lead by example. The way you live is more important than what you say.
As I have said many times, "You cannot heal yourself past a certain point if you live in an unhealthy society." That of course is from ancient Chinese healers who were healers. We live in those kinds of societies all over the world. Any honest evaluation of any society in most of this world would come out in a very sick diagnosis.
It is sad and tragic the way we live. How many have a good life on this planet? And I am not talking just about human beings.
Fazil Inyaht Khan once told me that, "We are an immature species becoming mature over millenniums."
We are maturing. We have a lot of work to do to get there. But it is incredible and very necessary work. The more we personally change for the better the more our social worlds will change for the better. The good news is that our transformations personally and within families and small groups all over the world is happening. We are not alone in this wonderful and necessary adventure. We never have been and we will never be alone in our on going metamorphosis.
The beauty and wonder of self and group transformation is happening all over creation all the time. And had we eyes that could see this massive transformation developing , we would soon be incredibly self-aware, happy, worthy and adventurous. This I believe, inshAllah.
Remember that it is just a song I sing. But it is a good song.
We will not see mass human maturity in our life time. The odds are very high we wont. But you never know. Do you? If we do our work in a good and consistent way it will happen sooner rather than later. This I also believe, inshAllah.
What do you believe. What songs and dances do you see and hear in you heart.
I feel now that there is enough healing information on this blog to give anyone who had the desire and commitment the ability to become a world class healer. This I believe and this I know. It is now up to whoever follows the trails I have laid out on this thing called a blog. The people who are reading this and understand the reality of what is here in one place are pleased. I know that because enough of them have confirmed it with me.
I will add more to this blog, inshAllah. But I have completed to my satisfaction the core of the blog. I feel satisfied that I have made a worthy gift in this blog for whoever finds it. I know it is being read all over the world by one or two people here and there. If it is good. they will tell others and it will spread. That is all inshAllah. What happens will happen. I did what I said I would do to my satisfaction. Who could ask for more. I have realized my intent and I am happy. Thank you Goddess. Now it is out of my hands and is all InshAllah from here. (smile)
I have more to say but now I go. We are going camping for a few days.
It Aint Easy. But It Is Worth It, inshAllah
The most difficult thing I have ever had to do is to be a step-father. I decided when I was a young man that I did not want a traditional life or children. I wanted the freedom to do whatever I desired free of the responsibilities of traditional marriage or fatherhood. And I was very happy not having any children or too many social responsibilities. I lived the life I wanted to live well into my early fifties. I went where I wanted to go and stayed as long as I wanted to stay. I got in and out of trouble and had many good and exciting adventures in this country and abroad. I regret nothing and loved it all, even the pain and suffering and shame and humiliation. It was my life. I made my choices and have accepted the consequences. There was a lot more good then bad and for that I am thankful to the Goddess.
Things changed about six years ago when I met my wife, one of her names is "My". My has two sons by two different men. Diamond is fourteen and Asher is twelve. I have always understood that if I love a woman with children I would have to try to develop good relationships with her children. I have tried to develop good relationships with Diamond and Asher and I think for the most part we get along very well.
The reality of living as a step-father with two boys can be and is overwhelming at times. It is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do.
I have had a lot of experience living with and loving women. I have lived with and loved American women, foreign women and women of different ages, races and religion. I have tried to love and be loved by enough women over my life time to know how hard it is. I have failed at it repeatedly. At first I was a legend in my own mind. I thought I was a lot better man than I was in my relationships. After a certain point I realized how really bad I was in my relationships and I had to take a long hard look at myself. It was not fun or easy to do that. I still do that. I spent years reading about and trying to understand what it takes to have good relationships with people you love.
I tried and failed many times over those years to practice what I studied. Fortunately when I met My, I was better prepared to do what it takes and as a result of her patients and love and my development we are able to have a good life together. We work through the difficulties inherent in any relationship and enjoy immensely the pleasures life brings us. I have never been happier in my life as I have been for the last six years. She says the same is true for her.
I ask myself fairly often, if how I am living is reflecting my true intent in my relationship to my wife. I try to adjust my thoughts and actions accordingly. It is ALWAYS worth the effort no matter how difficult or long it takes. It is worth the work because it keeps me in a good relationship with the most important person in my life, my wife and friend My.
Being a good step-father is much more difficult then being a good husband for me. They are not my biological sons. But I have lived with them for six years and have taken an active part in raising them. So I am one of the two men in their lives who is responsible for their welfare and upbringing. I am honored to be in this position and very humbled by it as well.
I lose my temper with the boys more than I would like and have said and done many things I wish I had not. I have to admit that for awhile I wished I could chuck the whole thing and leave because I felt like I was going crazy trying to deal with the rougher aspects of being a step-father. If I did not love My and know how incredibly blessed I was to be with her I probably would have left. In fact I know I would have left.
But as the years have passed I have grown to love and appreciate the boys. And just as I had to face myself in my relationship with women so I have had to face myself in my relationship with Diamond and Asher.
I have had to admit that if I ask them to take responsibility for their choices and actions I had to take responsibility for mine with them. That is very humbling and difficult at times. When they mess up as kids will do and I get really pissed and lose it as adults will do, I have to admit my part in the situation while not excusing their parts. It is a difficult balancing act. I have to say and mean that no matter what they did or did not do my going off on them is still not right. I have to try to deliver the needed messages and corrections to their behavior in a way that helps them understand not in a way that just vents my frustration or anger.
When I lose my temper with them it just puts another layer of ugliness between us and the very real problems we have to face and deal with. The same principles of communication I learned to use with my wife are needed when dealing with my step-sons. I have to admit it is a lot harder dealing with them then it is dealing with My. It is very easy to fall into being a bully at times with them instead of trying to work difficult situations out in a way that is good for us all. But later when I look back at how I behaved I have had to go to them and apologise for my behavior.
I told the boys a few years ago that being a family means among other things, having to ask for and give forgiveness a whole lot of times. But to say you are sorry for your actions is only one of many steps that have to be taken. We have to intentionally and honestly look at the situations that cause the problems and try to gain some insight into what we could have done differently.
It does not matter what we or other people did or did not do in any situation that turned bad. We have to let go of blaming other people or even ourselves. We need to instead try to understand the dynamics of what occurred and look for pivotal points where we could have chosen different responses. We then need to remember the past and what we have learned and try something new when the situation re-occurs. And the situation in one form or another always comes around again. The players may change but the dynamics will be the same.
I tell the boys and myself that If we study what happened and look for different ways to respond to pivotal points in the future, life will get better. I tell Diamond and Asher both that we are in this together. I do not ask them to take responsibility for their choices and behavior and not hold myself to the same standards. I am equally responsible for my reactions as they are for theirs. Every difficult situation that arises is one that challenges us all to respond in a good way. When we fall short of our intentions, and we almost always do, we can let go as soon as possible of blame, shame, anger, and fear and try something different until we work through what ever the problem may be, as a family.
I am learning a lot being a step-father and I am very grateful for the opportunity. I hope to write more about this soon, inshAllah.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Poetry,The Mother Tong
The above photo can be found at the following link.http://www.nuribilgeceylan.com/earlyphotographs1.php?sid=1
How do we understand each other and the world we inhabit? It is like the story of Babel in the Old Testament. We are stuck in symbols systems created by long dead people. We are constricted in our communication with each other and within ourselves by a language that we are not terribly good at using to our best advantage even in the best and easiest of times.It is essential for all of us to share all kinds of important information between us. The better we can do that the better our lives become. That is a shared experiential reality.
The problem is that we do not know how to translate our experiences or the other person's through our languages very well. We need to take the time to understand as completely as possible what the other person is trying to communicate. Our future actions are determined by our translation of what they are trying so hard to tell us. The more we understand the better and more beautiful will be our responses.
Non-physical forms of communication are mostly song and dance. They are not a fact or facts. Communication is mostly song and opera and stage. It is all the human forms of art. At the beginning and end of the day, non-physical communication can never be about literal truth very often or very long. It is mostly art. Science has such a small place in the art world. It is vital but only to a small important degree.
But what is art? Art in the way I am using it is a beautiful multi dimensional interactive relationship between the arts and others over a long period of time. Art invites us back for many return visits and each visit is different and potentially richer in appreciation and love. Each visit changes us above and below our conscious awareness. Art invites creative exploration. It can seem sometimes likes a good bout of rough sex.
I chose poetry and art to be the messages I send to you and everyone else I am with in a good way. The truth invites you to fence off all kinds of other understandings and focus only on it's small, often misleading domain.
Poetry is an invitation to an adventure. It invites you in to your own soul and out to new worlds at the same time. There is never safety on knowing completely or for sure. There is only deep pleasure and appreciation as a journey concludes or pauses.
So when you read or hear me understand that poetry and art are how I communicate. If you try, and you will, to translate me into another language, you lose me. What you have is something you created and it is you and me no longer.
What language do you use? What songs do you sing and how do you sing them?
Religion can say here is the truth and from that truth flows all social reality if it is to be of the highest order.
Art says, " I am a beautiful seductive woman or a rugged and handsome man. I want you even before you knew I wanted you. You want me as well. So come to bed like a good little boy or girl or like a hot hungry woman or man. You chose. And I shall teach you how to dance and sing and make love. I will help you be beautiful." That is what art says.
I say truth is a poor lover and an indecent cook and her wine lacks depth. I say follow the Harlot. Kneel down and kiss Her foot and then Her nipple's and pledge your troth. I say let the women do with Him as they will. In fact art says, " there is only art that can touch our souls. " Of course that is only true until you know how it is not. Past this place it cannot be written about at all.
We human beings have crated a complicated mythological fortress and cocoon around ourselves as a species and as individuals. We need to understand the matrix's that surround us and it's limitations. We need to know how to get important messages back and forth between us. We are not all that good at it now, are we? Look at that reality for as long and often you can. Is it true? If it is true what can we do? Is it worth the effort to spend a long time and effort developing artistic communication skills?
Yes.
It takes a long time and a lot of effort but it is worth the work.
How can you benefit?
OK, take love as an example. If you have anyone you love or hope to love and you want to make them happy listen to me.
I urge you to be a poet and an artist in your communication with them.
I urge you to follow the highest ideals of Romantic Love. The results will speak for themselves eventually.
You will have to be a dedicated explorer and student. It will not be easy. And believe me I know you will be tested and you will fail a lot. But eventually you will be a half way decent singer and dancer. When your lover looks at you, and you can see the pleasure your efforts give her, you will know. It was and is worth it.
A good student on any path often uses "Choice-less Awareness" with intent as a very good way for exploring in depth without making premature conclusions.
The languages we use to communicate does have so many limits and pitfalls and that is just the way it is. Yet as well, they have so many different and colorful possibilities that it is worth spending a long time to master them.
This thing called civilization or culture is what grounds us in social reality. Verbal communication is one of the most important ways we touch each others minds and hearts. The sad reality for most people is that we do not know how to touch each other very well without the use of communication skills. Yet few have those skills or spend much time trying to develop them. But that is no different from all the other important things in life. Few of us have any good desire or ability to handle complicates relationships very well, or very long. And I am not very good at most relationships either. I have to laugh at myself a lot. Fortunately I am not alienated from my own laughter at me.
So the intent of the days blog is as follows.
I have no faith in truth or logic as anything other than poor deluded well meaning fellows. They have their use. But they will never sit close to my heart.
My inner heart is the love chamber for me. The Mother of all creation resides there. She is my Mistress and I listen to Her with eager heart and mind. I thank Her for each adventure, And I hope to win Her handkerchief now and again through the journey of my life, inshAllah. Even a Rat can look at a queen if She likes what She sees. The art for the rat is to have many ways to please and excite her. Love will do the rest, inshAllah. (smile)
We tell other people stores hinting at what we have experienced and how it effects us.But the more complicated and personal our communication the more difficult it is to deliver a pure message. We get very confused when we speak of important and complicated matters. People normally get confused and anxious when hearing complicated personal stores from other people. I see art as one of many better way of sharing our deeper experiences then I see logic or so called truth.
Bringing a song or a dance or a poem to the people can often be more productive than "just the facts."
" The truth and noting but the truth." How can that show you how to experience what you need to know about something very important. It is like having cloths that do not fit but trying to wear them anyway. Why bother wearing such things when you have lose beautiful cloths in your wardrobe and you look good naked as well?
So back to my intent for this section of my blog. The intent is to say, read this blog like an artist not like a scientist or a lawyer or a religious police person. (smile)
I urge everyone to walk the artist path now and again and then walk where and how you chose. Walk the artist path and use the poetry language that the Goddess showed Her children when they were alone with Her. It is the tong and ear of all the Lovers and their Beloved since the dawn of time. What better way to communicate with each other?
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Tapping Your Troubles Away
The Photo above is of a very good book on the Tapping Cure by Dr Roberta Temes. I recommend it for understanding and doing tapping. It can be found at the following link.http://www.amazon.com/Tapping-Cure-Revolutionary-Post-Traumatic-Disorder/dp/1...
I would like to introduce you to a very important self-healing technique developed by Dr Roger Callahan. It is often called the"The Tapping Cure." It is also referred to as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and is part of a school of energy medicine called Thought Field Therapy (TFT). You can also find it under a way of healing called Energy Psychology. Goggle search all of these names and you will find many healing treasures.
Dr Callahan is a psychotherapist who uses the Chinese meridians and points to literally tap away many psychological and physical problems. It is used for quick relief from anxiety, phobia post-traumatic stress and much more.
The Tapping Cure is so simple and fast and easy to use I urge you to spend time learning and using it on yourself and your friends and loved ones. Learn it, use it, and pass it on to others.
All you do is tap gently on the areas located on the illustrations above for anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds or to a 30 seconds to a minute. Tap gently. No need to pound. Rather then me going into a whole explanation I have placed a series of links on this page that will show you what you need to know. I have also placed and an exert from one of the links explaining how to tap. There are many video presentations on the links that are worth watching. You can get free downloads of charts and information on how to treat yourself and others. This blog is about you taking responsibility for your health so take it and follow the links.
You will never know if tapping or any other healing technique found on my blog works if you do not try to make it work. Your intent and effort is always the key to your success or failure.
You can get a free download manual from the following link that shows in more detail how to understand and use the Tapping Cure. I have it and I think you should have it as well. It sould be in your medicine bag.
http://www.emofree.com/downloadeftmanual.asp
The above illustration can be found at the following link. http://healinginyou.com/
Below is an exert from the website explaining how to do the tapping.
EFT in a Nutshell
"1) Identify and tune in to the problematic issue or pain you wish to address. Note your starting intensity (0-10),
2) The Set-Up. While tapping on the Karate Chop Point, repeat the following three times out loud, stating your physical or emotional pain as specifically as possible:
Even though I feel this (insert your issue here), I deeply and completely accept myself.
3) The Sequence: First, tap about 7 times on each of the accupoints in the graphic at the right, while stating your pain (the "reminder phrase"): This (your issue here).
4) Take a deep breath from your stomach to the top of your head! Hold for 7 seconds. Exhale.
5) Note your ending intensity (0-10): If above a 2, repeat the steps above, adding your choice with a positive affirmation as an antidote.
Even though I still have some of this (your issue here), I deeply and completely accept myself and I choose to (your positive feeling or affirmation) instead.
6) Perform a third round of EFT alternating the negative issue and the positive choice as you tap again the 7 accupoints.
7) Repeat until your intensity level is 0.
The above photo comes from the following link. Do go there for more information.
http://www.quantumflow.com/qfb_techniques.html
More links to explore below.
http://www.tftrx.com/callahan.html
http://www.energypsych.com/index.html
http://www.emofree.com/
http://eft-miracles.blogspot.com/ A good blog with lots of links on tapping
http://www.dreamscience.org/energy_psychology.htm
http://www.nesttd.org/Integrating%20Energy%20Psychology%20and%20the%20Meridian%20Therapies.htm
http://www.emotionalrelief.org/index.htm
Friday, June 08, 2007
Make Friends With Death
Death in all it's forms exist side by side with life.
We come to this world through our mothers wombs. Some of us die before we leave the womb. Others die shortly after. Others die a hundred or so years later. All will die. I will die. You will die. Everyone you know and love and dislike will die. This whole planet and every living thing on it will die. Our sun will die. Everything in existence will eventually cease to exist as we know existence. There is nothing that will stop our deaths. There is nothing that will stop your death or the death of your loved ones.
Most people are afraid of death and close there eyes to it's inevitability. They live there whole lives in denial. And because of that, they live in fear and anxiety is their constant companion. My teacher, Mr Hilton Tam, told us to, "Make an enemy into a friend." A mystic or a warrior or martial artist understands the importance of making death an ally. If you are afraid of death you will often not be able to take part in the many wonderful yet dangerous adventures of life. Make peace with death and you will be able to really live.
People who make peace with death live very different lives. They can appreciate the beauty of each moment and person more often and for longer periods then those who live in denial and fear. They are more likely to risk and surmount failures and disappointments and to gain a life that they love.
We live in a world that requires us to make constant choices. Even when we do not want to make a choice we are making a choice. We are choosing to live in denial of our situations. We have chosen not to make choices. The results will be that we will be swept along like flotsam and jetsam on the tides of life and death. We will not be living in the real since of creatively and courageously interacting with our world. We will be like people who are sleep walking through life. And the sad thing is that we will die any way. We will die after living an impoverished life. We will die without ever having tasted many of the more delicious delights of living.
We can use death to put our lives in perspective and make new and better choices in many of the difficult moments in our lives. We can use death as our friend and trusted adviser. We can ask ourselves if we are making a good choice in the light of our own or others death. We can often make better choices in our lives if death is kept in mind before we make our final choices. Perspective is always a good thing to have in life. And deaths inevitability is a great part of any perspective about life choices.
We can ask ourselves if what we are facing is really so important or so bad when faced with our own or others deaths. Perhaps we are involved in fighting with someone we care about. Maybe we are feeling stuck and are afraid to do something or not do something. We can turn to death and ask it if any situation is as important or as bad as it seems at the moment . A good relationship with death can give us more freedom, courage, and confidence to do or say what we other wise might be to afraid or shy to do or say.
I watched an autopsy many years ago. It was on my birthday. Very symbolic I thought at the time. I was facing many life changing choices at the time. I imagined me being dead on that table. I asked myself what would I chose if I knew I would be on that table in a year or two? The choices that I made then helped lead me to where I am now, and I love my life.
I imagined people I knew and loved being on the table. I asked myself what kind of life am I living with them? How would I treat them if I knew they were going to be dead next year? I still ask often ask myself that when dealing with people I care about and who care about me. It is good to ask these kinds of questions before we make important choices in our lives.
So make peace with Death. Turn an enemy into a friend.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
A Sign On The Road
There are problems within ourselves that must be investigated, diagnosed and treated until balance is restored. That reality is true for ourselves and everyone else in the body on this planet and alive. Because of a host of reasons we need to start to relate to a whole plethora of important situations differently then we have in the past. If this does not apply to you that is good.We were brought up in group ignorance and superstition and here say. We were educated and led and mostly misled from our first awareness. And we are only rarely aware for short periods of time of what a beautiful reality this mind/body/spirit experience can be. So how can we expect to be healthy or for others to be healthy? The only way we can do that is to close our eyes and go back to sleep. Live in the dream worlds where your own influence counts for nothing.
The ancient ones in Chinese medical history agreed you could not have a healthy individual in an unhealthy society. Unfortunately they soon learned another reality. If you wake people up in any organized society to what is happening around and within them, the results are usually costly. The people in charge of that group always get extremely reactive in not good ways. And you had better be very careful or you will be on to the next life very quickly. So the Chinese doctors who knew the truth about the intimate relationship between individual and collective health did not often dispense this aspect of their understanding. Because the Chinese did not encourage to much personal examination and action in the social world and the family, did not make it less needed then or now.
We have a better chance then ever before in our species journey to begin to change ourselves and our society with minimal violence to a point. Social constraints to pursuing knowledge are relatively limited in much of the world now. We are relatively free to explore vast worlds of knowledge in a multitude of forms. And we are free to communicate with each other while we explore We need to take advantage of this opening in a good way. In a beautiful and healing way. If you look deeply into our personal and social dynamics you will see reason and room to move and transform your self and us for the better.
First we change in basic ways like changing your breathing and developing muscle awareness and tension release techniques. Then we begin to have the possibility of transforming into more and more beautiful forms and adventures and situations inside and out side your self. That is just the way the paths work and flow. Many paths have their own flowing dynamics that can be so beautiful and awe inspiring if you have the discipline and desire to explore them.
The bottom line is that we have very little hope of real, on going multi-dimensional balance unless we engage our society and our own body/mind/spirit on an on going exploratory basis. This on going exploration of self and society and it's many inevitable struggles, is an integral part of the necessary medicine. No way to get around it. We got to go through it many many times.
Just a further thing to say. We are radiating energy beings and in constant relationship with all the field we exist and transform within. It is impossible to charge a person without changing the entire field. It is impossible to encounter anyone or anything with out changing it and being changed by it. The field is in constant flux and therefore we are in a state of constant flux. There are many implications that are worth exploring.
We are also pack animals and we will mostly be as those around us are being at the time. Why this is important to understand and factor in to our lives can be illustrated by looking at breathing.
Let us look at a person who comes to learn diaphragmatic breathing from a teacher. She learns and masters it. The she goes back to society and soon she in back to unhealthy breathing before she knows it consciously.
We follow each other all the time conscious but mostly unconsciously. So our breathing will assume the pattern of the group a person interacts with over a period of time. There are exceptions or so I have heard. But the principle says most will do it.
What is true of breathing is true of a whole host of social and psychological response we take in and make ours unconsciously. That is why you need to understand not only yourself but also you need to understand at least the basics of group dynamics and psychology.
If you know how to reads signs in your body/mind and in social situations you have a better chance of making a whole host of better decisions and having a much better life, inshAllah.
That is why I am saying this thing now. My intent is to urge you to learn how vitally important it is to study and understand the many aspects of all the relationship that are important to you. If you have to resolve something to achieve balance this is a good way to start to do it, inshAllah.
When trouble arises in any form we need to learn not only how to understand it, but how to affect it in a good way.
We must learn how to communicate more effectively in all our relationships internally and with others.This is much more difficult then learning most other healing techniques.
The vital need to understand and communicate is true of your relationship with your own body and with your own society and family. To be good at communication requires commitment, study and effort. But like all aspects of learning how to be a healer, it is worth the effort now and in the future. The reality is that there is no way to avoid it and continue on your way on the healing paths.
If you do continue on the healing paths with poor communication skills you will soon find yourself constantly trapped in tar pits.
So lets commit to waking up and trying to stay relatively aware more often and longer. And especially let us pay attention to what is happening within our bodies and on this planet now and in the past. That is needed for survival. Unless we look very deeply into our personal and social experiences we will be living as uneducated people live. We will be like people who grew up on the edge of the Ocean but never went into it, let alone learned how to fish or swim.
It is so important to try to understand a little more all the time what being human is and is not. It is as important to act in many new ways. New songs and dances are needed. New relationships and new love making ways. The people are tired, and stressed. We sing sad songs now. We sing of war and our people dying and other people dying. We sing of less money for to many of our people. We dance the hunger dance. We dance the dance that tells of the empty dance and no-song song.
True many are happy and life is good for them. I am not writing this for them. I sing this song because my heart says I must. I need no other reason. I see the suffering out there and in my family and friends and strangers and in other species.
These songs and dances are signs not realities. They hint at possibilities ahead or behind or now. They are not to be considered exact or definitive, ever. They are just signs left on a trail for those that use this trail. I find many invitation and warnings and surprises on the paths in signs. I appreciate and leave signs all the time. I study signs. I advise you do as well.
Someone on the path who is ignorant of the path looks at a sign and does not recognize what it is. He perhaps knows the most common meaning. And if he does that is good. A traveler who knows of the nature of paths looks at the signs in many ways and all at once. He sees it's contexts and its warning and invitation. The choices a healer traveler makes during his journey are arrived at very different then those of the average tourist.
I urge you to be a traveler. The Fool is the first card not the last
.
We need to hear the drums and new chants that summon us to action. Look within you. Look deeply at what is troubling you. Look at what you need to look at now. The take the ritual vow of commitment in what ever form touches your sincerity and heart. You have started now. My heart is with you. All the hearts who know and all the ones who do not know. We all beat as one. We sing with you. We dance with you.
The white people loves the Indian people because white people were as the old red people were a long time before our relations came here. White people and black people and yellow people and red people and all the people are the people.
Our blood personally and socially has lived as clan and tribe more that anything else in all but a small portion of our species time on the planet. It is this time now when we live alone in small animal clusters in a gigantic pack. This is a good time to live. But the walls around our lives are restricting us more and more as time passes. Better to start trying to understand at a deeper level now. Who knows what the winds bring with them.
We were clan and tribe. We lived as people of the Earth. Then the ones from the cities came and built walls around our people and within ourselves. We have lived as they have told us and forced us to live for all these years. Perhaps it is time to do something new.
We are born of strong radiating energy fields. We have manifested strong beautiful body/minds. We are here now on the mother earth and of the people. Let us remember all our relations and start to remember and relate to our selves and our people as Energy Beings . We are dancing and singing on this planet. Let us do so with strong intent and awareness. Let us dance in beauty and sing in beauty.
Now about the the travelers. We are many. We are as different or the same as we chose to be or not be. There is always room for one more. I follow any interesting trail I have time or desire to explore. I am bound to help if I can anyone on that path who comes in a good way and lives in a good way with me.
The trail I follow the most is my wife's trail. It is a beautiful path. Each step is virgin and goddess and very wild. I am honored to walk with her.
I have paths and no paths. Many times I just develop a relationship with the ground I meet as honestly and freshly as I am capable of being at that moment. Other times I coast or laze about for long periods. It's true. (sigh) (smile)
I like best the dog soldier paths and the Beloved/Lover paths.
I believe with my heart, that the people need the dog soldier medicine people right now. On this path our intent is to make our lives and the lives of the people better. We are dedicated to enjoying our lives and helping others do the same in a good way.
We are the people who chose to try to look deeply into ourselves and our families and societies not just with our eyes. We chose to try to understand and learn how to help those in need of help. It is that simple.
All of us are the children it took thousands of generations to deliver to the hear and now. I honor the generations. I bow to them with love. I look ahead and see the new children, our children a hundred generations from this now. I see them and bow with love.
I urge you to look back down the generations and up ahead. Honor the good ones of our people who helped create and sustain the most beautiful aspects and aspirations of humanity. I do.
Look at the people who have suffered in their billions. Look at the people who helped ease some of the peoples suffering. Those are the people I call you to join. Look ahead. If you want or can, go into a trance state and become as a young woman or man a hundred generations from now. Look back at the peoples blood and spirit trails. Look back to the beginning. Then find where we are now. What do you see? What will the children not yet born think or our songs and our dances. You know the nature of the songs and dance I sing of now. You do not have to be told more. What will they see and feel of your time and walk on this planet when they see your dance and hear your song or see that you had a no dance or song?
I say it is time to dance and sing your heart. If you can not sing or dance it is time to learn how
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The Journey Continues Little Brer Rabbits. DON"T TOUCH THAT TAR BABY!!!
I want to tell you about Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit. It is not exactly Uncle Remus's Briar Fox and Brer Rabbit. You can find the original story at the following link.http://www.otmfan.com/html/brertar.htm
The Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit I want to tell you about are within all of us. Our conditioned and unconscious mind or ego is our Brer Fox. It is made up of many things including our false beliefs and understandings, or lack of understanding, relative to any difficult situation we encounter in our lives. Will Rogers use to say, "It is not what you know that can hurt you. It is what you know that ain't so."
The Brer Foxes within us are always preparing traps for us. I call these traps Tar Babies. A tar baby is any thought or emotion or situation that we encounter that gets us angry or hurts our feeling or makes us lose it in one form or another. It is any situation, thought or emotion that gets us stuck and makes us feel shame and regret later for what we said or did to ourselves or others.
Tar Babies are difficult and sometimes dangerous and even deadly. They are easy to get into and very hard to get out of once you touch them. But you can often get out of them if you remember, to stop and let go. Stop acting out and start to regulate your breathing and relax your muscles. And as one of my teachers use to say to us, "Let go of that tar baby" or "Don't touch that tar baby."
So my friend and fellow brer rabbit, if you see a tar baby, resist the desire to touch him. If you have touched one, let go ASAP. The more you struggle with him, the more you will regret it later. Just let go. You have heard it before and you will hear it again Regulate your breathing and relax your muscles. And remember you are not the thoughts and emotions that are running through your body/mind. In fact you are not even this body/mind. After you are more settled and breathing good, look at the tar baby in a different way. React to it in a different way. The tar will then sometimes turn to water. This is called. " Turning poison into medicine."
We are so Innocent. We came to this body and this planet with the best of intentions. But because of so many things, we forgot and are now confused and full of contradictory thoughts and emotions.We see somebody or encounter a situation or find ourselves thinking toxic thoughts or immersed in toxic emotions. We try to do the right thing. We get frustrated when things do not go the way we would like.
We lash out at others. Or we attack ourselves or we do both at the same time. Things get sticky.
I want to do a brief review before I continue.
In a previous blog , "If You Want Help, You must Be The Help", I wrote the following;
"In my years of healing work I have found there are a few things that can make almost any situation a little better. The first one is to understand how to breath properly. For those who have read through this blog, I know you have heard this before, but are you doing it? For the new people make sure you are belly breathing. That is make sure your lower abdomen is going out as you breathe in and in as you breath out. It is that simple. If you are not doing that, start doing that. And keep belly breathing. The link below has more information on belly breathing. When a person is in a stressful situation they will usually forget to belly breath and the results will always make things worse. When you are stressed out check your breathing pattern are you belly breathing? If not and before you do anything you do not have to do immediately, return to belly breathing. Belly breathe as consciously as you can all through the stressful problems. If you want to help others who are stressed by one thing or another, teach them about belly breathing.
Next, I help people understand the importance of noticing any unnecessary muscle tension in their bodies. I urge them to learn how to move their awareness through their bodies and notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension especially in the head neck and shoulders areas. Notice your own body. How is your breathing? Move through your body, from head to feet. Notice any unnecessary muscle tension. Release it when you do. How does it feel? See what I mean? If you master the art and skill of belly breathing and notice and release muscle tension especially in time of stress, your life will be a lot less stressful and painful, all other things being equal, then the people around you no matter what the situation. "
The third thing you need to know that can make your life better is what my last blog and this one is about.
You need to understand that you are a beautiful radiating energy Being who occupies a human body. You are immersed in an ocean of thoughts, emotions and sensation but you are not those thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
And just as important, neither are other people just their bodies or their thoughts, emotions. and sensations. Try to remember that your interactions are mostly based on ignorance and confusion and should not be taken to seriously.
We are all in the same difficult situation. We are trapped in our false beliefs about who we are and who other people are. And we think that we understand what is going on most of the time, when we do not.
It is so easy to forget, when we find ourselves face to face with a difficult situations. It is so easy to just react unconsciously and spontaneously. But please try to remember to play a new game.
The next time you find yourself in a highly charged situation, STOP your reactions as soon as you can. And Let Go Of the Tar Baby!!! Try to remember, "It is not what you know that will hurt you. It is what you know that ain't so." And Let Go Of The Tar Baby. Before you do anything else, regulate your breathing and relax your muscles. Then take a fresh look at what is happening.
Try to understand something new about the situation you are confronting. Perhaps you might ask yourself or the other people questions before you make a statement. Seek to understand before you demand to be understood.
We need to shift paradigms. We need to try something very different then what we have done before. The old ways of relating have caused to much pain.
It would be wonderful to let go of our beliefs that we are only physical beings and that we are our thoughts and emotions. Instead let us try to see ourselves as radiating energy Beings who have chosen to manifest bodies and come to this planet to have an adventure. One of our goals in coming here might be to remember what we are not. And then remember where we came from. What a fun game that would be. Why not play?
The next time you are caught in a unpleasant social interaction try to catch yourself being caught up and in the mist of turbulent thoughts and emotions. As soon as you catch yourself doing it, smile. And play this other game. Play the " I am a Radiating Being not a body/mind. "
Relate to any experience you find yourself caught in at the moment from your new perspective and see what happens.
So we have two new games to play. The Tar Baby game, and the Radiating Energy Being game. Both games involve stopping yourself in difficult situations and letting go of your thoughts and emotions and regulating your breathing and relaxing your muscle tension. Then chose one of the new games or both at once and return to the difficult situation.
I play both games a lot. I need to play them more. I say to myself when I find myself immersed in tar, "Let go. Don't touch that tar baby any more." Or "Damn, got tar all over me." And then I turn tar into water when I can, and play. Try it. You have nothing to lose but your tar.
Enough for now.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Swimming In The Ocean Of Thoughts, Emtoins, And Sensations
I really have no idea what is going on here and I doubt most people who say they do. My best guess and hope is that we are amazingly Beautiful Beings, who chose to incarnated on this planet in a material body to have a incredible experience. I believe that the journey is so beautiful and complex and overwhelming that we lost our sense of who and what and where we are. Because we have become disoriented and confused we, more often then not, have a very difficult and confused and painful experience while in the body on this planet. So what can be done to make this journey more beautiful and less painful? I have asked myself that for decades.I have seen, when working with people in healing situations, that most pain and suffering comes from confusion and ignorance about how to understand the many situations and experiences they find themselves having to confront. I have found that true for myself personally.
Our choices in all kinds of situations are, more often then not, made in highly charged emotional environments and based on inadequate or wrong understanding. The results are all to often not what we hoped for or what we enjoy after they are acted on.
So what can we do to clear up some of this confusion and ignorance and suffering we find ourselves immersed in?
My recommendation is to first look at ourselves individually and as a species for awhile. Look without trying to understand anything. Just look and not only with our eyes. Look long and deep and try to put aside your past ideas and understandings. Put aside for awhile what religion or science or the politician or the teacher or your family has told you about what is going on around and inside you.
My first Sufi teacher Fazil Inayat Khan once gave a talk about what we need to do to begin to understand more about our situation in the body/mind. He said if you want to have a hint of what and where we are just wait for a warm, moonless night. Waite for a time when there will be few or no clouds in the sky.
Go somewhere alone, away from other people and away from cities or towns. Go into the woods or by the sea or other bodies of water. Find a place where you feel relatively comfortable and secure from other people and creatures.
Take off all your cloths. Stand naked or sit naked. Look around. Let your eyes get use to the dark. Look around. Listen. Feel your body and it's relationship with the environment. Notice, no people. No artificial light. No social masks to deal with or to distract you. Civilisations artificial shelter gone. This is how it was before we constructed a social world over many millenniums. It was just us and the other wild and untamed creatures and this planet and the Universe that surrounds it. That is how it is now, when we step away from the group shelter or womb or illusion or whatever you want to label it.
Standing or sitting naked in the warm night is incredible. Look around. Look up at the star filled sky. Look at the woods or water or both. Feel the beauty and the immensity of being naked in the night.
When you have experienced the newness of the night and your nakedness in it for long enough to settle into it you are ready for the next step. You are now in your real environment free of artificial distracting social reality. This is you and natural existence.
Now do nothing. Do not look around. Do nothing. Just stand there or sit there. Let some time pass.
Now, begin to let yourself consciously notice the thoughts and emotions and sensations that you are experiencing.
You have never stopped having thoughts and emotions and sensations. They were with you as you stripped off your cloths. They were there when you stood or sat naked in the night. They were there when you looked around and heard and felt during your previous experience on this new naked night journey. It is just that now is the time to pay attention to them and to them alone. It does not matter now that you are in the warm night, naked and alone. Just pay attention to the thoughts and emotions and sensations that sweep through your awareness.
It does not matter if the thoughts are fear based or full of appreciation or mundane or about the past or future. It does not matter if they keep changing, jumping from one thought to another. Just be aware that you are having thoughts and watch them without judging their worth. Try not to continue any of the thoughts you are having consciously. Just let it be. Let it go on as long or as short as it will. Do this for as long as you can within a reasonable time period.
Next observe the emotions that sweep through you as well as the thoughts. Notice if they are fearful or joyful or whatever their nature. Notice how one thought and one emotion gives way to another or intermixes with another. Notice the relationships between the various thoughts and emotions.
Now, add to your conscious awareness, the physical sensations you are experiencing to the mix of the thoughts and emotions that are sweeping through you.
Where are you in all this? Are you the thoughts that you are having? Are you the emotions that you are experiencing? Are you the sensations that you feel?
What are you?
Who are you?
If you do not know where you are or what you are or who you are, how can you expect to make important and intelligent and meaningful decisions in your life? I say you cannot. What do you think?
Fazil told me that if I wanted to get the full worth of the night journey, I would have to commit to doing it until the sun rose the next day. I would have to be prepared to experience an entire night and let what happens happen. He suggested I use the Buddhist technique of identifying myself as pure awareness separate from thoughts, emotions and sensations that I would experience. I had studied and practiced Buddhist meditation at a Thia Buddhist temple in London so I knew how to do it. I have experienced what Fazil talked about several times during my life.
The first time I did it was in the New Forest in southern England on a warm August night in 1972 or 73. I forget the year now.
I found a secluded safe place. I set up camp and stripped naked when it got very dark. I stood for a long time. I sat down for a long time and I lay down at times. I did as my teacher told me to do. I experienced so much that I realize it is impossible and pointless to try to describe it. I would say to you if you want to know what it is like, just do it yourself. I will say that the experience was life changing. It made me a lot less dependent on what I experience socially to define my idea of who and what I am. It also showed me that in fact I am not the thoughts and emotions and sensations that I experience. I knew this before from past mediation practices but being alone in the woods at night, all night, really drove it home for me.
I was determined to be in a meditative state for as much of the experience as possible. I know that when you meditate you let any and all thoughts, emotions and sensations come and go through your awareness. You forget to let them come and go and you soon get involved with them. Then you notice you are involved and you let them go. This letting thoughts, emotions, and sensations come and go and forgetting to let them come and go, and instead, getting involved, and realizing you are involved, and letting them go, occurs all through any meditations. (that was a long sentence) (smile)You have to remember that this is meditating. You are not only meditating when you are not identifying with thoughts and emotions and sensations. Meditation is the entire experience.
I felt fear. I felt excitement. I felt awe. I felt so many emotions and sensations. I experienced innumerable thoughts, emotions and sensations that night. Some thoughts and emotions were cosmic and amazing. Others were scary and others, in fact most, were very mundane. Many were so contradictory and confusing that I soon felt completely overwhelmed. I also had to deal with the thoughts and emotions of boredom and restlessness. I had intense and repetitive thoughts and emotions that I wanted the experience to end or that it has ended. It was an amazing and difficult night.
So where is all this going? It is back to how do we understand who, what and where we are? And, how can we make better choices then we have when confronted with difficult situations and experiences?
Let me take you on a trance trip. Let yourself suspend any judgments. Let your thoughts and emotions come and go and just continue to read these words.
Imagine you are a radiating energy Being. You are not material in any sense we can understand.
Now imagine you have decided to take a journey into the material world. You decide to create a physical body. You surround yourself with an energy field to create a material structure to inhabit while in the material world. Imagine a picture of that process is the one above this writing. Look at it.
Now, imagine the egg like force field parts and you are suddenly in the material world. It is thick and all encompassing like an Ocean. You are now naked and exposed and graping for air.You remember who you are and what you came to do at first. Then you are overwhelmed with sensations and you begin to forget as all your energies are focused on surviving your experience. Relating to numberless amounts of sensations gives birth to a whole series of emotions.
Soon all awareness of who you are and where you came from are gone. There is just the sensations and your emotional reactions to them.
Then you notice that you are not alone. You are in relationship with other material beings, human and other kinds. You begin to learn how to communicate with others like yourself and others not like yourself. The humans teach you how to communicate using gestures and sounds. Soon theses sounds become more meaningful and you are introduced to something they call language. At first you use it outside yourself to communicate with others. Then it becomes a way of communicating with yourself. You are now a social human being and that is all you think you are. Just a material body and a series on emotions and thoughts.You learn the rules that you need to know to get along in your new social world. You learn about proper relationships within the family and with non-family people. You learn about religion and politics and art and science. You are an integrated part of humanity. You made it.
But things do not seem quiet right. Something is missing. Life is not working out the way you were taught it should. People disappoint you. You disappoint them. God is difficult to believe in or relate too. Politics suck. You cannot make enough money. Your lover leaves or you do. The kids are a pain. You get sick and cannot pay the bills or get well. Someone you know and love gets hurt and dies. You get old. You are dying. (sigh) Life is a disappointment. Oh well.
You know you are dying. You have nothing to lose or gain now. So you look at your life. You try to understand what happened and why. You decide to strip yourself down and start from the beginning. You do not know where you came from but you do know that who you thought you were and who others thought you were was not true or real.
The only thing you know for sure is that you are a physical body. You have five senses and they help you explore and relate to your external environment. So we are back to being naked in the night. We are back to looking and sensing and trying not to understand but to explore. To examine our situation internally and externally long enough and deep enough to begin to be more aware of what we are NOT. It is by knowing what we are NOT that leads to a different understanding of ourselves and our situation.
So that is where we will leave this until my next entry. Stay tuned fellow Beings. The story continues, inshAllah. (laugh)
Friday, May 18, 2007
What the Doctors Do Not Tell You About Headaches
I was moved to write this blog today after watching CBS news in the morning. They had a headache specialist on their show being interviewed about headaches and what caused them. No where in her talk did she say one word about bad breathing patterns i.e. neurosis breathing or unnecessary muscle tension in the head neck and shoulders. I am not a headache specialist in her league. But I do know that Dr Janet Travell, in a landmark book published in 1983, showed the relationship between muscle tension and head, neck, and shoulder pain. My question is, why did the headache specialist not talk about that relationship and that most people who suffer headaches, also have that muscle tension pattern? In my experience of working with people with all kinds of headaches, I have not seen one person who suffered headaches that did not have the muscle trigger points or knots that Dr Travell discovered. You can find information on her findings on referred pain patterns at the following links.
http://www.triggerpointbook.com/triggerp.htm
http://www.triggerpointbook.com/headache.htm
I know there are many reasons for a headache, but why not first see if the headache can be helped by the most obvious cause for it? Referred pain caused my muscle tension. Remember OCCAM'S RAZOR, named after William of Occam. Given a choice between two explanations, choose the simplest -- the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions. And I would add less money and time to treat.
Now, what role does breathing have in relationship to headaches. Get a mirror. Look at your head neck and shoulders, and chest. Take a deep full breath and hold your breath at the top of the inhale. Look at the mirror. Most of you will have seen your chest and shoulders rise up. You would see the muscles in your neck tense. You would notice your lower jaw push into you upper jaw. Release your inhale. (smile) Notice the illustration of referred pain patterns below. Can you see the relationship between how you breathe and muscle tension in the head, neck and shoulders? I hope you can because it is there.
The headache specialist reported that exercise can cause headaches in some people. True, but did they examine how these people where breathing and holding their head neck and shoulders. The answer is NO!!!!! WHY????
My belief is that the business aspects of the medical community have very little interest in telling the American people about the role of trigger points and the cause of the trigger points in the cause and treatment of almost all headaches. Why? Follow the money. The treatment of headaches is a multi-billion dollar industry. If the medical community dealt with headaches as a bad breathing indicator and a muscle tension problem where would the money go? It would not go to the pharmaceutical industry or the hospitals or doctors. Let me see now, would they give up a multi-billion dollar industry to give you what you really need to help your headaches?What do you think. Hmmm, NO, I do not think they have or they will. That would give them a big financial headache. The money spent of their services and pills would go back in the patients pocket and away from the pharmaceutical industry. What do you think?
I talked with a Korean doctor who was working at the Cleveland Clinic many years ago and we talked about breathing patterns and muscle tension in relationship to headache treatment. He said if he brought this kind of educational treatment up he would be out of a job. There is way to much money in pharmaceutical treatment of headache for any real hope of telling people with headaches about breathing and muscle tension. When it is mentioned it is only in passing and is not actively publicized.
The above illustrations are from Dr Travell's book on referred pain patterns. The x is the place on a muscle that has tension or a knot. The red is where the pain from the knot manifests. If you get headaches, and the pain is in the area of the red on one or more of these illustrations, press around your own muscles where Dr Travell has placed a X. If you get sharp pain, you have a trigger point. Most people will find they have many trigger points.
OK so now you know what can cause most headache pain. So what can you do during a headache? If you want to help someone who has a headache, tell them about the role of muscle tension and breathing. Ask them to take a deep breathe. Show them in the mirror how their chest and shoulders rise as they inhale. Show them how their neck tightens and their lower jaw pushes into their upper jaw. Then teach then Sky Nourishes Earth chi kung. While, they do diaphragmatic or belly breathing and consciously relax their muscles sit with them and place your fingers on the upper sides of the nails of their middle fingers. Those points are called Bladder 17 points in the Koryo Hand Therapy paradigm. See the photo of my hand below. You can find more information on Koryo Hand Therapy on this blog. Touch Bladder 17 points on both hands for a few minutes or more until their head pain is completely gone and then keep doing it for a few more minutes. If the headache returns, repeat the treatment. The key is to help the person understand the need to change their unconscious habits relating to breathing and muscle tension. If you, or the people you are trying to help, can keep belly breathing and keep muscles relaxed, you will have few if any headaches in the future. If you, or they, go back to bad breathing and not noticing and releasing muscles tension, the pain will sooner or later return. Change of breathing and noticing muscle tension MUST become normal for the headaches not to reoccur.
If you have a headache or are filled with tension, put your thumb under one of your middle fingers and treat your own bladder 17 points on the side of your body that has the most head pain. The photo below shows how to do this self-treatment.If you do not have a headache, but are very stressed, either hand will be fine. But while you treat yourself, check your breathing pattern and notice and release unnecessary muscle tension. I recommend Sky Nourishes Earth chi kung while you do this self-treatment.
Now you know. It is on you now. If your head hurts and you go running to the doctor and get expensive medicine and do not have much money left for other things, so be it. But the next time your head hurts, Try something different. Put away the pills and try checking out your breathing and releasing unnecessary muscle tension in your head neck and shoulders. I hope some people use this. Let me know if you do.
My friend Chamki just sent me the following. I love it and it fits so well into this blog.
"I've got a problem, Doc," the new patient began. "We all have problems," replied the doctor, smiling his assurance. "My problem is this, Doc:
I get migraine headaches every time I think of my wife.
I break out in a rash every time I think of my job.
I get cold sweats every time I think of my bank account.
Talk about problems! Boy, have I got them!" "Every problem has its answer, of course,
and I understand this one perfectly," said the psychiatrist, nodding.
"You will need a hundred sessions on the couch,
at seventy-five dollars per session." The patient gulped.
"Well, Doc," he said after a painful pause, "that solves your problem.
Now, how about mine?"
Here is another story that is worth reading. If you are a doctor do not get to uptight. This is just an allegory and only apply to some doctors.
The doctors will die from starvation if nobody falls sick. The doctor's profession is a very contradictory profession. He helps people to come out of sickness, knowing perfectly well he is destroying his own business. That's why poor people get healthy quickly; they are not much of a business. Rich people... the doctor helps the process linger on. I have heard about a doctor who sent his son to medical college. The son came back, and the old man said, "Now that you are a doctor, I can retire. I am really tired" -- because the doctor's profession is such; in the middle of the night he may be called, in the cold night with snow falling, he will be called, and he has to go. Day and night, twenty-four hours he is on duty. "So I am really tired. You have come, now you take charge of the clinic." The boy was very happy. After three, four days the father asked him, "How are things going?" He said, "Really great. The woman that you could not cure for thirty years, I have cured in three days." The father said, "My God, that was our basic income! That woman I have been keeping sick for thirty years. She has so much money, she can afford to remain sick for three hundred years. You idiot -- you cured her! All your education has come from her sickness. Who do you think was sending you money to study in a medical college? It was that woman. If this is the way you are going to behave with my patients, perhaps you should retire; I will do my work. You will destroy the whole business." The boy can be forgiven -- he was not yet aware of the profession. He had just acquired the medical knowledge, but he was not aware that there is a business side to it. He said, "I can understand. Now I know why you were sending me so much money." His father said, "It was all coming from that woman, and that woman could afford it, there was no problem -- I just had to keep her sick." by_Osho
http://www.triggerpointbook.com/triggerp.htm
http://www.triggerpointbook.com/headache.htm
I know there are many reasons for a headache, but why not first see if the headache can be helped by the most obvious cause for it? Referred pain caused my muscle tension. Remember OCCAM'S RAZOR, named after William of Occam. Given a choice between two explanations, choose the simplest -- the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions. And I would add less money and time to treat.
Now, what role does breathing have in relationship to headaches. Get a mirror. Look at your head neck and shoulders, and chest. Take a deep full breath and hold your breath at the top of the inhale. Look at the mirror. Most of you will have seen your chest and shoulders rise up. You would see the muscles in your neck tense. You would notice your lower jaw push into you upper jaw. Release your inhale. (smile) Notice the illustration of referred pain patterns below. Can you see the relationship between how you breathe and muscle tension in the head, neck and shoulders? I hope you can because it is there.
The headache specialist reported that exercise can cause headaches in some people. True, but did they examine how these people where breathing and holding their head neck and shoulders. The answer is NO!!!!! WHY????
My belief is that the business aspects of the medical community have very little interest in telling the American people about the role of trigger points and the cause of the trigger points in the cause and treatment of almost all headaches. Why? Follow the money. The treatment of headaches is a multi-billion dollar industry. If the medical community dealt with headaches as a bad breathing indicator and a muscle tension problem where would the money go? It would not go to the pharmaceutical industry or the hospitals or doctors. Let me see now, would they give up a multi-billion dollar industry to give you what you really need to help your headaches?What do you think. Hmmm, NO, I do not think they have or they will. That would give them a big financial headache. The money spent of their services and pills would go back in the patients pocket and away from the pharmaceutical industry. What do you think?
I talked with a Korean doctor who was working at the Cleveland Clinic many years ago and we talked about breathing patterns and muscle tension in relationship to headache treatment. He said if he brought this kind of educational treatment up he would be out of a job. There is way to much money in pharmaceutical treatment of headache for any real hope of telling people with headaches about breathing and muscle tension. When it is mentioned it is only in passing and is not actively publicized.
The above illustrations are from Dr Travell's book on referred pain patterns. The x is the place on a muscle that has tension or a knot. The red is where the pain from the knot manifests. If you get headaches, and the pain is in the area of the red on one or more of these illustrations, press around your own muscles where Dr Travell has placed a X. If you get sharp pain, you have a trigger point. Most people will find they have many trigger points.
I urge you to check anyone who has headaches and wants help for trigger points. If you have them, or a friend or loved one has them, what do you do? I would say first, you change your breathing pattern to diaphragmatic breathing See the following link from this site.
Stress in all it's forms causes us to go from diaphragmatic breathing to neurosis breathing. We have to get to the point where we can check our breathing as soon as we notice we are in a stressful situation and if we are breathing badly, change back to good breathing as soon as possible and make sure we stay that way. The physical/mental/emotional effects of stress will be minimized if you do that. I urge you to do Sky Nourishes Earth chi kung untill it becomes second nature to you especially during and after stressful situations.
OK so now you know what can cause most headache pain. So what can you do during a headache? If you want to help someone who has a headache, tell them about the role of muscle tension and breathing. Ask them to take a deep breathe. Show them in the mirror how their chest and shoulders rise as they inhale. Show them how their neck tightens and their lower jaw pushes into their upper jaw. Then teach then Sky Nourishes Earth chi kung. While, they do diaphragmatic or belly breathing and consciously relax their muscles sit with them and place your fingers on the upper sides of the nails of their middle fingers. Those points are called Bladder 17 points in the Koryo Hand Therapy paradigm. See the photo of my hand below. You can find more information on Koryo Hand Therapy on this blog. Touch Bladder 17 points on both hands for a few minutes or more until their head pain is completely gone and then keep doing it for a few more minutes. If the headache returns, repeat the treatment. The key is to help the person understand the need to change their unconscious habits relating to breathing and muscle tension. If you, or the people you are trying to help, can keep belly breathing and keep muscles relaxed, you will have few if any headaches in the future. If you, or they, go back to bad breathing and not noticing and releasing muscles tension, the pain will sooner or later return. Change of breathing and noticing muscle tension MUST become normal for the headaches not to reoccur.
If you have a headache or are filled with tension, put your thumb under one of your middle fingers and treat your own bladder 17 points on the side of your body that has the most head pain. The photo below shows how to do this self-treatment.If you do not have a headache, but are very stressed, either hand will be fine. But while you treat yourself, check your breathing pattern and notice and release unnecessary muscle tension. I recommend Sky Nourishes Earth chi kung while you do this self-treatment.
Now you know. It is on you now. If your head hurts and you go running to the doctor and get expensive medicine and do not have much money left for other things, so be it. But the next time your head hurts, Try something different. Put away the pills and try checking out your breathing and releasing unnecessary muscle tension in your head neck and shoulders. I hope some people use this. Let me know if you do.My friend Chamki just sent me the following. I love it and it fits so well into this blog.
"I've got a problem, Doc," the new patient began. "We all have problems," replied the doctor, smiling his assurance. "My problem is this, Doc:
I get migraine headaches every time I think of my wife.
I break out in a rash every time I think of my job.
I get cold sweats every time I think of my bank account.
Talk about problems! Boy, have I got them!" "Every problem has its answer, of course,
and I understand this one perfectly," said the psychiatrist, nodding.
"You will need a hundred sessions on the couch,
at seventy-five dollars per session." The patient gulped.
"Well, Doc," he said after a painful pause, "that solves your problem.
Now, how about mine?"
Here is another story that is worth reading. If you are a doctor do not get to uptight. This is just an allegory and only apply to some doctors.
The doctors will die from starvation if nobody falls sick. The doctor's profession is a very contradictory profession. He helps people to come out of sickness, knowing perfectly well he is destroying his own business. That's why poor people get healthy quickly; they are not much of a business. Rich people... the doctor helps the process linger on. I have heard about a doctor who sent his son to medical college. The son came back, and the old man said, "Now that you are a doctor, I can retire. I am really tired" -- because the doctor's profession is such; in the middle of the night he may be called, in the cold night with snow falling, he will be called, and he has to go. Day and night, twenty-four hours he is on duty. "So I am really tired. You have come, now you take charge of the clinic." The boy was very happy. After three, four days the father asked him, "How are things going?" He said, "Really great. The woman that you could not cure for thirty years, I have cured in three days." The father said, "My God, that was our basic income! That woman I have been keeping sick for thirty years. She has so much money, she can afford to remain sick for three hundred years. You idiot -- you cured her! All your education has come from her sickness. Who do you think was sending you money to study in a medical college? It was that woman. If this is the way you are going to behave with my patients, perhaps you should retire; I will do my work. You will destroy the whole business." The boy can be forgiven -- he was not yet aware of the profession. He had just acquired the medical knowledge, but he was not aware that there is a business side to it. He said, "I can understand. Now I know why you were sending me so much money." His father said, "It was all coming from that woman, and that woman could afford it, there was no problem -- I just had to keep her sick." by_Osho
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
A Breathing Meditation
The above photo is of Osho a Mystic Teacher. You can find more about him and other meditations he teaches at the following link.http://www.osho.com/Main.cfm?Area=Meditation&Language=English
This was sent to me by my good friend Chamki. I think it is good to know this information,
Thank you wondrous Chamki.
THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
Patanjali gives other alternatives also. If you can do this: being happy, with happy people, friendly; compassion with the miserable, joy with the virtuous, indifference with the evil ones; if you can do this, then you enter from the transformation of the mind towards the supermind.
If you cannot do, because it is difficult, not easy, then there are other ways. Don't feel depressed.
Says Patanjali: THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
Breathing and thinking are deeply connected, as if they are two poles of one thing. You also sometimes become aware, if you are a little mindful, that whenever the mind changes, the breathing changes. For example, you are angry: immediately the breathing changes, the rhythm is gone. The breathing has a different quality. It is non-rhythmic.
When you have passion, lust, sex takes over, the breathing changes; it becomes feverish, mad; when you are silent, just not doing anything, just feeling very relaxed, the breathing has a different rhythm. If you watch, 'and Patanjali must have watched very deeply... he says if you watch deeply you can find what type of breathing and its rhythm creates what type of mind.
If you feel friendly, the breathing is different. If you feel antagonistic, angry, the breathing is different. So either change the mind and the breathing will change, or you can do the opposite: change the breathing and the mind will change. Change the rhythm of breathing, and the mind will immediately change.
When you feel happy, silent, joyous, remember the rhythm of the breathing. Next time when anger comes, you don't allow the breathing to change; you retain the rhythm of breathing as if you are happy. Anger is not possible then because the breathing creates the situation. The breathing forces the inner glands in the body which release chemicals in the blood. That's why you become red when you are angry: certain chemicals have come into the blood, and you become feverish. Your temperature goes high. The body is ready to fight or take flight; the body is in an emergency. Through hammering of the breathing, this change comes. Don't change the breathing. Just retain as if you are silent; just the breathing just has to follow a silent pattern, you will feel it impossible to become angry. When you are feeling very passionate, lust, sex takes over. Just try to be tranquil in the breathing, and you feel sex has disappeared.
Here he suggests a method: THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
You can do two things: whenever you feel the mind is not tranquil , tense, worried, chattering, anxiety, constantly dreaming, do one thing: first exhale deeply. Always start by exhaling. Exhale deeply: as much as you can, throw the air out. With the throwing of the air the mood will be thrown out, because breathing is everything.
And then expel the breath as far as possible. Take the belly in and retain for few seconds , don't inhale. Let the air be out, and you don't inhale for few seconds. Then allow the body to inhale. Inhale deeply, as much as you can. Again stop for few seconds. The same should be the gap as you retain the breath out, if you retain for three seconds, retain the breath in three seconds. Throw it out; retain for three seconds. Take in; retain for three seconds. But it has to be thrown out completely. Exhale totally and inhale totally, and make a rhythm. Retain, in; retain, out. Retain, in; retain, out.
Immediately you will feel a change coming into your whole being. The mood is gone. A new climate has entered into you.
What happens? Why is it so? For many reasons: one, when you start creating this rhythm, your mind is completely diverted. You cannot be angry, because a new thing has started, and mind cannot have two things together. Your mind is now filled with exhaling, inhaling, retaining, creating a rhythm. You are completely absorbed in it, the cooperation with anger is broken: one thing.
This exhaling, inhaling, cleanses the whole body. When you exhale out and retain for three seconds or five seconds as much as you want, as much as you can - what happens inside? The whole body throws all that is poisonous into the blood. Air is out and the body gets a gap. In that gap all the poisons are thrown out. They come to the heart, they accumulate there, poisonous gases, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, they all gather together there. You don't give a chance for them to gather together. You go on breathing in and out. There is no gap, no pause. In that pause, a gap is created, an emptiness. In that emptiness, everything flows and fills it. Then you take a deep inhalation and then you retain. All those poisonous gases become mixed with the breathing; then you again exhale and throw them out. Again pause. Let the poisons gather. And this is a way of throwing things out.
Mind and breath are so much connected - have to be, because breathing is life. A man can be without mind, but cannot be without breathing. Breathing is deeper than mind. Your brain can be operated completely; you will be alive if you can breathe. If the breathing continues, you will be alive. The brain can be taken out completely. You will vegetate, but you will be alive. You will not be able to open the eyes and talk or do anything, but on the bed you can be alive, vegetating for many years. But mind cannot. If the breathing stops, mind disappears.
Yoga found this basic thing - that breathing is deeper than thinking. If you change breathing, you change thinking. And once you know the key, that breathing has the key, you can create any climate that you want: it is up to you. The way you breathe it depends on it.
Just you do one thing: for seven days, you just make a notebook of the different types of breathing that happen with different moods. You are angry: take a notebook and just count breathing , how much you inhale and how much you exhale. Five counts you inhale, three counts you exhale - note it down.
Sometime you are feeling very, very beautiful - note it down, what is the proportion of inhalation and exhalation, what is the length, is there any pause - note it down. And for seven days just make a diary to feel your own breathing, how it is connected with your moods. Then you can sort it out.
Then whenever you want to drop a mood, just use the opposite pattern. Or, if you want to bring a mood, then use the pattern.
Actors, knowingly, unknowingly, come to know it because sometimes they have to be angry without being angry. So what they will do? They will have to create the breathing pattern. They may not be aware, but they will start breathing as if they are angry, and soon the blood rushes in and poisons are released.
And without being angry their eyes are red, and they are in a subtle anger state without being angry. They have to make love without being in love; they have to show love without being in love. How they do it? They know a certain secret of yoga. That's why I always say a yogi can become the most perfect actor. He is! His stage is vast, that's all. He is acting - not acting on the stage, but on the stage of the world. He is an actor; he is not a doer. And the difference is that he is taking part in a great drama and he can remain a witness to it and he can remain aloof and detached.
from the book :"Yoga - The Alfa and The Omega" Osho comments on the Sutras of Patanjali. quote from Volume 2 - Chapter 9
Thank you wondrous Chamki.
THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
Patanjali gives other alternatives also. If you can do this: being happy, with happy people, friendly; compassion with the miserable, joy with the virtuous, indifference with the evil ones; if you can do this, then you enter from the transformation of the mind towards the supermind.
If you cannot do, because it is difficult, not easy, then there are other ways. Don't feel depressed.
Says Patanjali: THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
Breathing and thinking are deeply connected, as if they are two poles of one thing. You also sometimes become aware, if you are a little mindful, that whenever the mind changes, the breathing changes. For example, you are angry: immediately the breathing changes, the rhythm is gone. The breathing has a different quality. It is non-rhythmic.
When you have passion, lust, sex takes over, the breathing changes; it becomes feverish, mad; when you are silent, just not doing anything, just feeling very relaxed, the breathing has a different rhythm. If you watch, 'and Patanjali must have watched very deeply... he says if you watch deeply you can find what type of breathing and its rhythm creates what type of mind.
If you feel friendly, the breathing is different. If you feel antagonistic, angry, the breathing is different. So either change the mind and the breathing will change, or you can do the opposite: change the breathing and the mind will change. Change the rhythm of breathing, and the mind will immediately change.
When you feel happy, silent, joyous, remember the rhythm of the breathing. Next time when anger comes, you don't allow the breathing to change; you retain the rhythm of breathing as if you are happy. Anger is not possible then because the breathing creates the situation. The breathing forces the inner glands in the body which release chemicals in the blood. That's why you become red when you are angry: certain chemicals have come into the blood, and you become feverish. Your temperature goes high. The body is ready to fight or take flight; the body is in an emergency. Through hammering of the breathing, this change comes. Don't change the breathing. Just retain as if you are silent; just the breathing just has to follow a silent pattern, you will feel it impossible to become angry. When you are feeling very passionate, lust, sex takes over. Just try to be tranquil in the breathing, and you feel sex has disappeared.
Here he suggests a method: THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.
You can do two things: whenever you feel the mind is not tranquil , tense, worried, chattering, anxiety, constantly dreaming, do one thing: first exhale deeply. Always start by exhaling. Exhale deeply: as much as you can, throw the air out. With the throwing of the air the mood will be thrown out, because breathing is everything.
And then expel the breath as far as possible. Take the belly in and retain for few seconds , don't inhale. Let the air be out, and you don't inhale for few seconds. Then allow the body to inhale. Inhale deeply, as much as you can. Again stop for few seconds. The same should be the gap as you retain the breath out, if you retain for three seconds, retain the breath in three seconds. Throw it out; retain for three seconds. Take in; retain for three seconds. But it has to be thrown out completely. Exhale totally and inhale totally, and make a rhythm. Retain, in; retain, out. Retain, in; retain, out.
Immediately you will feel a change coming into your whole being. The mood is gone. A new climate has entered into you.
What happens? Why is it so? For many reasons: one, when you start creating this rhythm, your mind is completely diverted. You cannot be angry, because a new thing has started, and mind cannot have two things together. Your mind is now filled with exhaling, inhaling, retaining, creating a rhythm. You are completely absorbed in it, the cooperation with anger is broken: one thing.
This exhaling, inhaling, cleanses the whole body. When you exhale out and retain for three seconds or five seconds as much as you want, as much as you can - what happens inside? The whole body throws all that is poisonous into the blood. Air is out and the body gets a gap. In that gap all the poisons are thrown out. They come to the heart, they accumulate there, poisonous gases, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, they all gather together there. You don't give a chance for them to gather together. You go on breathing in and out. There is no gap, no pause. In that pause, a gap is created, an emptiness. In that emptiness, everything flows and fills it. Then you take a deep inhalation and then you retain. All those poisonous gases become mixed with the breathing; then you again exhale and throw them out. Again pause. Let the poisons gather. And this is a way of throwing things out.
Mind and breath are so much connected - have to be, because breathing is life. A man can be without mind, but cannot be without breathing. Breathing is deeper than mind. Your brain can be operated completely; you will be alive if you can breathe. If the breathing continues, you will be alive. The brain can be taken out completely. You will vegetate, but you will be alive. You will not be able to open the eyes and talk or do anything, but on the bed you can be alive, vegetating for many years. But mind cannot. If the breathing stops, mind disappears.
Yoga found this basic thing - that breathing is deeper than thinking. If you change breathing, you change thinking. And once you know the key, that breathing has the key, you can create any climate that you want: it is up to you. The way you breathe it depends on it.
Just you do one thing: for seven days, you just make a notebook of the different types of breathing that happen with different moods. You are angry: take a notebook and just count breathing , how much you inhale and how much you exhale. Five counts you inhale, three counts you exhale - note it down.
Sometime you are feeling very, very beautiful - note it down, what is the proportion of inhalation and exhalation, what is the length, is there any pause - note it down. And for seven days just make a diary to feel your own breathing, how it is connected with your moods. Then you can sort it out.
Then whenever you want to drop a mood, just use the opposite pattern. Or, if you want to bring a mood, then use the pattern.
Actors, knowingly, unknowingly, come to know it because sometimes they have to be angry without being angry. So what they will do? They will have to create the breathing pattern. They may not be aware, but they will start breathing as if they are angry, and soon the blood rushes in and poisons are released.
And without being angry their eyes are red, and they are in a subtle anger state without being angry. They have to make love without being in love; they have to show love without being in love. How they do it? They know a certain secret of yoga. That's why I always say a yogi can become the most perfect actor. He is! His stage is vast, that's all. He is acting - not acting on the stage, but on the stage of the world. He is an actor; he is not a doer. And the difference is that he is taking part in a great drama and he can remain a witness to it and he can remain aloof and detached.
from the book :"Yoga - The Alfa and The Omega" Osho comments on the Sutras of Patanjali. quote from Volume 2 - Chapter 9
Breathing
The above illustration can be found at the following link. You will find more information there on breathing. http://www.geocities.com/flutepower55/breathing.htmlI had hoped to do today's blog on the mind and emotions but no. I feel I must add one more thing about breathing and muscle tension.
Learning about the importance of proper breathing and releasing unnecessary muscle tension throughout the day is easy to learn intellectually. Internalizing this important knowledge into our day to day life is not easy. The human mind can only remember consciously so much for so long. Then the knowledge or awareness fades away and old habits resume their dominate place in our lives. For instance, we learn diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing in a class that deals with any number of disciplines like singing or playing the flute. Perhaps we learn it in a yoga or chi kung class. Or we are taught belly breathing as a form of stress reduction or for meditation.
We learn belly or diaphragmatic breathing and we are very conscious about doing it. Then we are done with the class or we put down the instrument and we go on with our lives. Within seconds to minutes most people are back to breathing from and to their upper chest. This type of breathing is often called neurosis because it can help to produce neurosis. So the reality for the vast majority of people who know about diaphragmatic breathing is that they do not do it enough to really impact their mental/physical/emotional/social health. There is a saying in the Christian Bible, "If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them." That is very true about diaphragmatic breathing and muscle awareness.
It is only by making a clear and consistent intentional commitment to do diaphragmatic breathing all through the day in all kinds of circumstances especially stressful ones, that you have any chance to really change your breathing pattern. It is only by committing to noticing your breathing throughout the day that you can be aware of when you have slipped back into neurosis breathing and change back to diaphragmatic breathing. It is an on going meditation. Many schools of Buddhism teach breath awareness as something one should do all day everyday. This intentional commitment and life long practice of being aware of your breathing is totally necessary, and there is no way around it. I know because this is the only way I have been able to do it.
What is true about what it takes to get the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing, is just as true about noticing and release muscle tension. It has to become a conscious and intentional part of our everyday life or the results will be minimal. There is no way to get away from disciplined commitment and consistent work if you want anything worth having in this life.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
If You Want Help, You Must First Be The Help
People suffer from all kinds of problems. Physical and /mental/emotional, and social life inevitably produce painful situations. In the words of a song from the 60s., " There is no way to delay that trouble coming everyday." When problems come to us or our loved ones that do not match our coping skills life gets pretty rough for most of us. Then we have to face the fact that we need help. What to do? A friend of mine wrote a song back in those days that went something like this, " Dogs in the dog house,cats up a tree, and the whole worlds crying, oh please Mr Fireman won't you please save me."
We want to be saved from whatever pain invades our lives or the lives of our friends or families. When the easy or familiar ways do not work, we pray to God. We rush to the doctor or the shrink and hope like hell that the problem will go away. If it does not go away, or God forbid, it gets worse, what do we do? We pray more, or go to new doctors or therapies. Still nothing? We give up, or get angry or depressed or suicidal. We reach for a drink or a drug. At that point, life sucks.
I wish I could say something wonderful now. I wish I could give you the magical answer or call the Big Fireman and get you or your loved one out of the tree. But I cannot.
All I can do is tell you what I was told by an an old Sufi guy I met back in 1972 at a summer retreat in Holland. " In the persistence of your desire lies the answer." If your desire or intent is strong and determined and you dedicate yourself to being a good student of your situation no matter how it manifests you will find what you seek. It may not be exactly what you hoped for, but it will be worth finding.
I was told by someone else that most people give up just before they could have arrived at the resolution of their problem. History is full of examples of people who have tried over and over again to accomplish something and finally did it just as it seamed impossible. History is also full of people who failed no matter how much effort they expended over long periods. Life is like that. There are no guarantees. We have to live with that reality. We will fail many times, we will get hurt or sick and suffer. We will have to watch many of our loved ones suffer and die and be able to do very little or nothing about it.
This does not seem to be a very happy blog entry so far does it? Ces't la framage. C'est la vie.
I face the reality I am writing about all the time. Believe me I know what being helpless in the face of suffering is about. I know it for myself and I know it for my loved ones. I am sure most of you do as well. That is why I have this blog.
My intent is to be a place people can come and find some possibilities of help for themselves or their friends and family, and maybe help a stranger or even an enemy or two. There are no guarantees on my blog. No sure cures or easy fixes. There is just good information. Information about things that have helped others in similar situations or with similar problems you might encounter or are encountering now.
In my years of healing work I have found there are a few things that can make almost any situation a little better. The first one is to understand how to breath properly. For those who have read through this blog, I know you have heard this before, but are you doing it? For the new people make sure you are belly breathing. That is make sure your lower abdomen is going out as you breathe in and in as you breath out. It is that simple. If you are not doing that, start doing that. And keep belly breathing. The link below has more information on belly breathing. When a person is in a stressful situation they will usually forget to belly breath and the results will always make things worse. When you are stressed out check your breathing pattern are you belly breathing? If not and before you do anything you do not have to do immediately, return to belly breathing. Belly breathe as consciously as you can all through the stressful problems. If you want to help others who are stressed by one thing or another, teach them about belly breathing.
Next, I help people understand the importance of noticing any unnecessary muscle tension in their bodies. I urge them to learn how to move their awareness through their bodies and notice and release any unnecessary muscle tension especially in the head neck and shoulders areas. Notice your own body. How is your breathing? Move through your body, from head to feet. Notice any unnecessary muscle tension. Release it when you do. How does it feel? See what I mean? If you master the art and skill of belly breathing and notice and release muscle tension especially in time of stress, your life will be a lot less stressful and painful, all other things being equal, then the people around you no matter what the situation.
I urge you to go to the following link and learn a technique called Sky Nourishes Earth that combines belly breathing and muscle awareness.
Once you have Sky Nourishes Earth down, I urge you to look at how your mind and emotions interfere with your life in general and with your ability to handle difficult situations in particular. Ignorance can be a very good excuse for prolonging suffering. Before you understood that your breathing patterns and muscle tension were adding to your problems you had an excuse for continuing along without changing them. There is an important saying, "With increased knowledge goes increased responsibility" Before, bad breathing and muscle tension producing bad effects within you was not your fault. You were innocently ignorant, If you have a good understanding of how bad breathing and unnecessary muscle tension can be harmful, you are no longer an unconscious victim of their effects. Now you are responsible. If you continue to breath badly and keep your muscles tight, then you are no longer a victim, You are a self abuser. Instead of making your situation better, you are helping to make it worse. Change it or live with it consciously.
Once you have Sky Nourishes Earth down, I urge you to start to look at how your mind and emotions interfere with your life in general and with your ability to handle difficult situations in particular. I will write about this in the next entry, inshAllah.
The steps are as follows:
First get your breathing together.
Then get control of your muscles.
Then learn and gain mental/emotional control.
Then you can begin to learn how to go on a journey of exploration.
As they use to say in the old movie serials. "Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of Buck Rodgers confronts the evil Dr Doom."
Below is a blog entry I wrote a few months ago that is related to this one. to this one.
How do you balance and strengthen your energy body? The mystical sufi poet, Jahladin Rumi, has a line in a poem that says: "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Well there are hundred of ways to strengthen the energy body as well. The most beautiful way is the way of love. The more you love the more balanced and stronger your energy body becomes. Remember I said earlier that God treats you like you treat your lover. It is also true that God gives more attention to those who give God attention. I am not talking about religious attention. I mean the attention a lover gives to the beloved.Mantak Chia, a Taoist chi kung teacher and author, writes about the relationship between a chi kung student and the Universe in his book Tan Tien Chi Kung. "By transcending the separation between oneself and the universe and honoring one's intrinsic unity with it, the universe becomes one's own body.The Chi of the Universe can only be absorbed to the extent that we open our hearts to the universe and extend our consciousness and Chi to it as a token of our love. Only then will it respond. We will only receive the love energy of the universe to the extent that we acknowledge and honor our love relationship to it.This first of all implies that we acknowledge that the universe is alive and that we are it's children. Unless we awaken to this and bring it into our lives, it will be difficult to realize that we are part of it. We will tend to see ourselves as the center of the universe and to relate to the universe and the earth as objects to be conquered and manipulated. However, with increased sensitivity to our interconnectedness with the universe and the earth, a sense of responsibility, love and compassion for the universe and the world will grow.This experience of interconnectedness, rooted in the cultivation of love and compassion, is summarized in the ancient saying, "Embrace the universe as the mother her newborn child." Through the practice of chi kung, we become grounded and connected and begin to feel at ease and relaxed in our body, this sense of unity is cultivated and reinforced."You can cultivate and develop your energy body without a conscious relationship with God i.e. the Universe. Practice chi kung exercises long enough and you will grow stronger and more powerful. But in the end you will be like a wealthy man who has no family or friends with whom to share his life in all its manifestations. Western medical studies have found that people in good relationships tend to be healthier and live longer than those who do not have good relationships. For me the three most important relationships are between a human being and God, a man and a woman (or between a gay or lesbian couple) and between parents and children. If these relationships are vigorous and loving the people in them will benefit themselves and each other in innumerable ways. If they are toxic the people in them will sooner or later manifest sickness and imbalance in other areas of their lives.When a new student comes to me and asks me to help them learn chi kung or recover their health I always tell them the same thing. "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I can usually help. The bad news is that you must do most of the work." I tell them they need to open themselves to becoming students not only of chi kung but of themselves. In order to learn and recover balance and strength they need to re-examine themselves and the Universe in new and challenging ways. As Einstein said, "you can't change the situation with the same mindset that created it." The truth will often set you free but first it will cause you pain and piss you off. Let's face reality, who wants to examine themselves and their relationships on a fundamental level. And who wants to really commit to doing the work to act on what they find? See what I mean? Do you still want to learn and practice chi kung? Do you still want to recover your health?
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