The eastern spiritual traditions are about finding peace; the western traditions are about passion. By combining BOTH strategies we can expedite our spiritual evolution and increase the quality of our life experience.
In this podcast, I talk about how I unintentionally combined the strategies of the east and west and how that profoundly helped me on my journey to Heaven/Nirvana/Enlightenment.
Ancient words that point at an experience that anyone can have who is open to it. Modern understanding has given us new insights into ancient methods that help a person open up to these experiences or states of consciousness. It is also important to recognize that a large segment of society does not want anyone to experience Heaven, Nirvana or Enlightenment, which is why they condition people to reject the very idea that anyone can experience this.
Outline of conversation:
Many times in my life someone has said something to me that upset me to the core of my being. Sometimes I was so upset that I put out of my mind what the person said, but the effect of what they said stayed with me…I was devastated.
Originally at the time I could not see ‘The Gift’ in this experience but later as I watched how this experience manifested in my world I could see that in reality it was a gift, probably one of the greatest gifts that person could have given me, for they were inviting me to wake up to what I was thinking and doing that was creating such devastation in my world. They were inviting me to choose to love myself and overcome my habit of not loved myself.
This is NOT something that is easy to see, particularly if one is still in the devastation or the reverberations of that devastation. When in the drama of the devastation I would usually rationalize within myself, and sometimes with others, that I was in the ‘right’ and that the person who upset me was wrong. The normal progression of this thinking was for me to see them as someone to avoid for they were not considerate of my feelings or emotions. Never would I look at the fact that I was the one who was not being considerate of my feelings or emotions, I would just automatically assume the other person was responsible and I would go into some form of “righteous indignation” that everybody around me would support. Naturally I would want to ‘punish’ them in some way and often that meant I would avoid them at the least.
This is a very hard thing to overcome, for our entire society or social support structures encourage us to continue in our unhealthy ways of thinking and behaving. If everyone thinks this way then can it be wrong?
It took a tremendous amount of focus and discipline for me to see that it really was me that was the uncaring one here; I was the one who was not caring about my feelings and emotions.
A major transition happened for me in my world when I began to see that when people upset me with their words that this was a gift and I started appreciating it as a gift. The very act of appreciation was healing my emotional wound or re-training myself to react in a way that was healthy for me.
Today, I cannot remember all the people who have given me this wonderful gift so I cannot share with them now just how valuable I feel that gift was to me. This thought saddens me but I accept it as part of the process.
Now, often, I see myself as the bearer of “The Gift” to people and most of the time the person who is receiving that gift does not have the presence of mind to be aware that it is a gift. It has been a discipline for me to be the bearer of the gift and to recognize that most people will not have that presence of mind to appreciate the gift, at least in the present moment and maybe never be able to think of me and be grateful for what I have given them.
The ability to see the ‘big picture’ here is important for our own peace of mind. It takes work to have the ability to see that in the long run most people who are gifted with an awaking experience like this will not be able to see the benefit of it when it is happening but that in the long run they will be better off because of it.
Of course, not all upsetting people is gifting them in a way that will sooner or later benefit them. The best way to do this is when you can point out to them how it was their reactions that caused them harm and not what you said to them. Still, most people will not get this, particularly in the present moment, but later that ‘seed’ of an idea can manifest into some self-knowledge or realization that will grow into a changed behavior that will benefit them in the long run.
When I think of this gifting I often think of Jesus and how he was gifting the people of his time. Obviously most of them did not get that they were getting a gift; they just saw Jesus as some jerk that was pushing their buttons and someone to get rid of. Hopefully, with all that animosity directed back at Jesus he was able to take care of himself recognize that in the long run he was serving those others and humanity in general.
I also think of Gandhi and Martin Luther King as they upset a lot of people in their time and most of those people could not see the Gift that they were receiving.
I recognize that it takes a particularly caring individual to make it a habit to gift people in the way that Jesus, Gandhi and MLK did, but we all can and do at times gift one other with our honesty, and honesty that can wake them up to a better life experience. The important thing to remember is that we are gifting them and that in the long run they will be better off if they are even a little bit open to it.
I saw an interview today on CNN’s website where Marc Lamont Hill were saying that we should allow a discussion of the “N-word”. I find that attitude one of the most open minded I have heard in a long time. Let me explain why.
I have realized that words do not hurt people; it is people’s reactions to words that cause them harm. We, as citizens of our society, have been programmed to be reactive to words in such a way that causes us harm. Once we become aware of this we can take responsibility for OUR behavior (our reaction) and re-train ourselves to not react with such hurtful behavior.
Yet, as long as we keep lying to ourselves (and one another) that it was the word that hurt us and it was the person who said the word who is responsible for our suffering, we will stay trapped in a cycle of abuse.
Words like nigger, faggot, failure, dike, sinner and others still have the power to move people emotionally in a way that they would rather not be moved. The CONSCIOUS person recognizes this and takes responsibility for their part in this and learns to relax and stop reacting.
But what is the advantage of keeping people ignorant of the truth that will set them free of being offended by words? Well, one is if you were an owner of slaves in the US south 200 years ago you would want your slaves to be moved emotionally by words so that you could use that to control their behavior. It is easier to get them to hurt themselves with words then to have to hit them with a whip. Or if you were a racist today would you not want to be able to get someone of a different race to HURT THEMSELVES when you used certain words? Or what about the parent that wants to intimidate their child with words like “bad”; without the child’s fear of that word you would lose some control over them.
These are only a few of the many examples of benefits of keeping intimidated by words. What I am saying here is that there are many advantages to some people in society to keep people hurting when stimulated by words.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was all about Blessedness. One of the things he said was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me.” Yet, many religious people of his time did take offense at him, which is why they killed him. Jesus also said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world” which indicates to me that he was showing that you could not offend Jesus with your words (or actions). And finally, he said, “I have come to bear witness to the truth.” To me, this means that he was bearing witness to the fact that religious people have been conditioned to abuse themselves emotionally when stimulated by words (as a means of maintaining control of them). Yet, if you followed Jesus’ way (not the Christian way) you would overcome the world and its ability to push your buttons and hence control or manipulate you emotionally just using words.
So it is my opinion and experience that by bring this discussion out into the open and talking about it, and putting responsibility where it is due, we can show people that it is possible to get free from ever being hurt by words again.
A lot of the pain some kids are experiencing today from ‘bullying’ is a product of their conditioned reactions to words. If we teach children the old school yard rhyme, “Stick and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” we could end a lot of the bullying that now happens.
Of course, if we do this, those who benefit from people’s habitual emotional self-abusive behaviors will be up in arms about it, just like they were when Jesus was teaching this 2,000 years ago.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
On a search of Google adwords I find that those two topics each get 185 MILLION searches a month. I realized yesterday that those two questions are what I started looking for answers to thirty years ago. I realize now that I have found the answer to those question, found it to perfections, and so therefore I have something to offer those 185 million people who are still searching for answers.
Which is why I am re-dedicating my website, Yesness.com to answering these question. Starting today I will just be focusing my blogging efforts on these questions. I suspect that from time to time I will post on other topics but they will go to my personal blog, JimFreedom.com/blog.
I am sure there are many people out there who might read this and will be wondering why I would think I know something about love, for they might think I have no clue what love it. After all, I have never had a romantic relationship that has lasted even a year and I have had very few relationships. PLUS, I am one of the biggest assholes that many people who know me have ever known, so how could I say that I know anything about love?
I think that question is funny.
I imagine going into a Christian church and asking, “Was Jesus a loving person?” I am sure that virtually everyone there would say that YES, Jesus was not just a loving person but the very incarnation of love.
Yet, if you asked the religious people of Jesus’ time if Jesus was a loving person they would say, “HELL NO”, for to them he was Satan incarnate, he was mad, crazy or possessed by demons. To use modern language they would say that Jesus was an asshole extraordinaire. Which is why the religious people wanted Jesus dead, because he kept pushing their button or “bearing witness to the truth” of how they were conditioned to ABUSE THEMSELVES and lie to themselves about it by blaming other people for their own emotional behavior.
Jesus then went on to talk about blessedness, which was the theme of his whole Sermon on the Mount. One of the things he said there was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me,” which put the onus of responsibility for being offended back onto the one who is offended. Then Jesus went even further and said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world,” which means that you could not push Jesus’ buttons and piss him off the way he could piss off the religious people’s buttons.
So Jesus was not just pointing out that people had been programmed to abuse themselves emotionally, but he cared enough to show them that there was a way out of that abuse. He loved those people who were persecuting him, enough to take their hatred yet he still tried to inspire them to get free from the unhealthy/unholy habits.
That is what I do and that is why some people still see me as an asshole who knows nothing about love. I may not yet be as big an asshole as Jesus was, but I aspire to and to even go beyond where Jesus went.
What I have learned is that when I was like everyone else I would abuse myself emotionally all the time, which lead me to experience this world as HELL, but when I learned to be honest with myself and to love myself I was then able to see, appreciate, enjoy and love ALL that life had to offer, which makes my experience of life heavenly.
I have learned how to love myself in the presence of whatever the world is offering and I feel that skill is valuable enough that people will come to my website/blog to hear what I have to say about it.
I would love to hear what you think about this. Please post your comments wherever you read this. Your criticism is VERY valuable to me, for it enables me to improve my method of communication and service to others.
Thank you.
I love bullies, and that is why bullies have no power over me.
Bullies are people who have learned how to bully by being bullied; they are hurting too. What they seem to want is for others to hurt as much as they are hurting, or to show them how to stop hurting.
A bully hurts others by words or violence, both to entice an emotional response out of the bullied that causes them to be afraid or in some way emotionally manipulated.
To overcome the power of the bully one practices positive emotions IN SPITE of what the bully is trying to create in you.
This is why I love bullies, for they force me to practice love.
Since I do not want to feel fear or be intimidated, I practice love when my normal conditioning or habit would be to react with fear or some other negative emotion. This love drives out that feeling of fear or whatever negative emotion I might habitually react with. This practice is not easy at the beginning, but it gets easier.
When I remember that bullies are people who learned how to bully by being bullied I can feel compassion for the bully. Compassion is an aspect of love, all of which feels good or at least better than the intimidation and fear that the bully seems to want us to feel.
It is the compassion that motivates me to demonstrate to the bully that it is possible to overcome the world and its ability to cause them emotional pain.
I am reminded of a line that Jesus is reported to have said, “What profit you to love those who love you, even the sinners can do that. So much greater is the profit to love those who persecute you.”
In my experience, my skill or ability to love grows faster when I am challenged to love those who torment, judge or bully me in some way. It really is easy to love your friends and loved one, anyone can do that. But you gain so much more in your skill of loving by loving those who torment you.
AND, you are demonstrating to them the way out of their suffering, which in itself is an act of love. When you no longer feel the pain of the words or mean behaviors because you are no longer reacting to them in a way that causes you pain, then you are demonstrating to them how they too can overcome the world.
The way to end bullying in the world is to first top bullying ourselves by our reactions to what life is offering. The practice of happiness, joy, love and gratitude in spite of what life is offering is how we stop bullying ourselves. In my experience, all spiritual traditions around the world and most psychological systems encourage people to practice these positive emotions.
Don’t worry, be happy.
There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.
The great commandment is to love…
Love one another…
All of these are encourage us to practice positive emotions.
Usually we think that emotions are something that happens to us, not something we have a choice in whether or not we experience. But when a person endeavors to pursue and effort to developing their ability to feel any emotion at will, they will find that there is no greater gift they can give themselves or other than to make that effort. Again, this is something that Jesus seemed to be talking about in his teachings but I also see it in the teaching of most great teachers.
We can overcome all bullying if we care enough about ourselves and others to make the effort. Practicing joy and love in the presence of bullying is how we can get free from bullying and show the bully how they too can get free from those who bully them.
It is obvious that Jesus saw the corruption that came from the belief in the God of Abraham, a idea of God that is tyrannical which unscrupulous people use to intimidate and enslave people with keeping them trapped in a paradigm that was and is unhealthy for them.
The God of Abraham was the Creator and Ruler of the world, “out there” or up in the sky some place; distant from people, separate from people. This God of Abraham, being the Creator and RULER of the world could therefore dictate to the people what HE wanted (God had to be a he because that protects the patriarchal privilege of men). IN ADDITION, and more importantly, God could assign certain ‘special’ men to tell the people what He, God, wanted. Of course, this gave those special men great power and privilege in the world. In so doing, this God of Abraham was justification for all the forms of slavery, most of which still exist today. The appointed leaders are to be the masters and everyone else is to be the slaves. Of course, these so-called appointed leaders who create the rules and tell the world they are appointed by God to be the master over the rest of humanity.
Today we can still see that the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are violent, abusive to themselves and others and the planet or environment as a whole.
Obviously, Jesus could see this long ago and that is why he felt the need for a more democratic vision of God, a new idea of God, a gentler, kinder more loving vision of God. Jesus could see a truth that lesser men could not see, a truth would set people free to love ALL that life offered, a truth that WE are all gods, part of and not separate from the Universal Consciousness or Spirit that primitive people call God. We are the ones who can choose not to give our power away to other people. We are judges who decide what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. We are the ones that define what sin is and what sin is not. We are the ones who define what is God. Even though the religious people of Jesus’ time saw him as a massive sinner, Jesus did not see himself as a sinner or separate from God. He saw himself as one with God, which he called his Father. And Jesus said that he saw us all as one with God, that God is within us and we are within God, we are not separate from God.
This “we are all one, we are all part of God” idea is a more democratic idea of God than the autocratic God of Abraham. No one person or group of people would have dominion over another. Jesus’ idea of God would do away with the lording of parents over their children, clergy over their congregations and kings or political rulers over the masses. No longer are the rulers “out there” some place, but WE are the real rulers.
Of course, the ruling classes would not want to see an idea of a more democratic god prevail in society, for they would lose their power and privilege. So they had to stop Jesus by whatever means became necessary. That is why they had him arrested, tortured and killed, not just to stop Jesus but also to discourage anyone from following in his example.
Jesus tried to bring about a paradigm shift, one that the ruling classes did not want to happen, and that is why that had to kill him. However, the ideas that Jesus talked about did not die with him; they started to spread. Because of this, the ruling classes hired Saul of Taurus to find a way to destroy the movement that Jesus had started.
Saul tried everything he could, he killed and persecuted the followers of Jesus but that only seem to strengthen them. Then, one day, on the road to Damascus Saul got a brilliant idea, it was so brilliant that it almost blinded him. He envisioned that he would change his name to Paul, join the follows of Jesus and call himself an ‘apostle’ or leader of them. Then he would bring those gullible enough to follow him back to “sound doctrine” by which they could be controlled, manipulated and enslaved. His plan was near perfect, for it worked brilliantly.
Paul got people, including the other apostles, to worship Jesus as someone special, as God incarnate. In so doing, they were pushing Jesus up on a pedestal so high that people could no longer see Jesus as an example of what they could be but only as an idol worthy of worship. The people learned to say that Jesus’ teaching were ok for him, he was God, but we are not; thus rendering Jesus teachings no longer valid.
The spirit of the Antichrist wanted to create a movement to ensure that people would never follow Jesus or examples like him. They were calling Jesus the Christ so when Paul created his movement or religion became known as Christ-anti or Christianity, which is what it is called today. However, as Jesus said, nothing is hidden that shall not later be revealed. It is time to expose this Antichrist movement for what it is, there to support the ruling classes and to keep people slaved. The last thing this antichrist movement wants is for people to think and act like Jesus, to be the part of God that they are.
Remember what Jesus said, “It is not those who say lord, lord to me, but those who do the will of their Father in heaven”; the kingdom of heaven being within us. Today, Christians will honor Jesus with their mouth but their heart is far from him, they think so differently than he did.
The ruling classes want us to think that God is out there and we are here to serve God. Jesus said that if you have known him you also know his Father, and then he said, I come to serve and not be served. When a person identifies as being part of God then they realize that all the rest of humanity and even all life is part of them. Therefore, they will do unto others as they would want done unto themselves, for they ARE the others, just as Jesus pointed out when he said, as you do unto the least of them you do unto me.
You will never hear any Abrahamic tradition followers say anything like that. For them, the God of Abraham is the master and we are to be the slaves. That is what we get from Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
It is time for humanity to take it power back and to awaken and realize that WE are that democratic God that Jesus was pointing out and he demonstrated for us the freedom to love that being God brings to anyone open enough and courageous enough embrace.
Master your own mind. This is the heart of the message of all the great teachers or ‘masters’ that ever existed, be they called Buddhas or Christs, for they were masters over their own minds and hence masters over the world.
Meditation or ‘watching’ is just the process of watching your own mind so that you can see how it works and then become a master over it. Meditation enables us to gain clarity and it is with clarity that we can see the truth that sets us free to enjoy and love all that life offers us.
The Four Steps or Four Skills, which I call the Four Ss, enable us to come to that place of clarity. When you follow these steps, you develop these skills and then whenever you have lost the light within these steps or skills enable you to get back to clarity which again allows you to see the truth that sets you free to go back to enjoying and loving ALL that life has to offer.
When you have found the perfect truth that sets you perfectly free to love unconditionally ALL that life has to offer, and then you will know the Nirvana, the Heaven that is here, now, and AT HAND.
My Calling is what I have to do and what I am not doing, or where I have to go…
Jesus is my model of sorts. What he did that was so impressive was that he went and spoke his truth out there in the world. He had the courage to be honest. Moreover, this is not just the courage to write a book, make a video, or give lectures for people that want to hear what you have to say.
It is not WHAT you say but how it you say it or, better yet, WHERE it you say it.
It does take some courage to write things that will not be popular. Yet, to go out into public places and speaking to the public, not people who came to hear me necessarily, but to those who do NOT want to hear me, like the conservative and religious people that Jesus did. The conservative and religious people would judge him and criticism him and he would demonstrate his lack of fear of their judgment. Jesus demonstrated that he had overcome that fear of the world’s judgment or the world’s ability to intimidate him with their words. He was not afraid of them when they would say that he was a sinner or that he was Satan.
Jesus was out there speaking his truth; he was demonstrating the courage to be honest.
Courage is the manifestation of love.
Jesus was demonstrating the love, that courage. That is why they call Jesus God; they say that God is love since Jesus was demonstrating love in his courage to be honest in spite of the hostilities of those who were listening. Jesus was not intimidated by all these doctrines and theologies that were out there. Jesus had seen that the judgments and criticisms meant nothing if one aligned within himself.
Demonstrating that courage is what I have to do. I have done some but I have not consistently spoken out. That is where I have failed, consistently to speak out in public places. That is my calling. To go out and speak my truth to people who do not want to hear it, who will judge me and criticize me and reject me. People who will take the greatest offense at what I have to say.
I am not necessarily to talk to just individuals, who cannot handle the heat of the confrontation directly, but to crowds of people in public places.
That is my job, to go do this. Until I have done this I have not done what I have to do.
This guy is One Sick Parent, and the sooner his daughter gets away from him the better. Talking about disrespect as he sits there smoking a cigarette, how stupid, for he is DEMONSTRATING that he does not feel he is worthy of respect by his KILLING himself with his smoking. Then he goes and does VIOLENCE to a computer to show respect? How stupid and sick can a person be.
If he really loved his daughter he would talk to her about he ‘problems’ with him and work it out, he would not be violent. He could talk about the economics of reality, that he is paying for her shelter and food and that he could stop buying his daughter any ‘special’ items, like new clothes, computers or phones, etc. but doing violence to anything, using a GUN to make his point to his daughter? Really? This guy is sick and those who support him are sick.
Would Jesus have done this? Hell, no, but this is what is taught in the ‘bible belt’.