Understanding Ourselves

Emotional Self Care

Published on by Jim
I Heart Me
I love myself

A newborn child does not have a choice as to whether or not they will move their bowels or relieve their bladder; they just soil themselves whenever the urge comes to them.  But by the time they are two years old they have been ‘potty’ trained; they have been taught to become aware of the status of their bowels and bladder and how to go to the bathroom and relieve themselves.

This awareness training is called mindfulness, in this case mindfulness of the bowels and bladder.  In so doing they have gained some mastery over the human instrument through which they will experience life and that mastery will enhance the quality of their life experience.

As we go through life we gain mastery over many aspects of our body/mind instrument.  We first learn to crawl then walk then talk then ride a bike and so on.  Each new mastery or skill enhances the quality of our life experience by empowering us to get what we want from life.

Not all people learn the same basic skills in life.  Most people are potty trained and learn to walk and talk. Some are taught mental disciplines that enable them to concentrate their mind on a task until it is accomplished.  Others who have not been taught that discipline are easily distracted and never seem to accomplish much of anything in their lives.

It is a very rare person who is taught Emotional Self Care; how to practice emotions that are healthy for us and give us a sense of contentment, peace, joy, beauty, empowerment and love in life.  Emotional Self Care, like any discipline or habit, takes practice or an effort to develop.

If we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that what we want is a life filled with positive experiences like beauty, happiness, joy, love, peace, freedom and the like.  Yet, because of circumstances, we develop habits that produce negative experiences like ugliness, misery, sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, bondage, guilt and the like.  This is not necessarily our fault, for much of society wants us to develop these unhealthy habits.  Others can then use these unhealthy habits to gain power over us.  [I will talk more about this elsewhere.]

There is an old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and I say that so is ugliness, good and evil, heaven and hell.  Being ‘in the eye of the beholder’ means that beauty is not something that is intrinsic to an object but is subjective to the individual.  Two people may see the same object but one will see it as beautiful and have a beautiful experience while the other will see it as ugly and have an ugly experience.  If we were honest with ourselves we would acknowledge that we want the beautiful experiences.  Therefore, why not develop a habit of finding the beauty in whatever experience we are having?  Of course, this makes sense but how do we do that?

Since beauty and ugliness are NOT inherent in anything, they are entirely subjective,  our choices to see and experience something as either beautiful or ugly are conditioned responses and being conditioned responses means that we can RE-condition ourselves to have different reactions to the same stimuli.  In other words, we can find a way to look at anything and experience it as beautiful or to find joy or peace or whatever experience we want.

Emotional Self Care is about practicing this IN SPITE OF OUR CONDITIONING.

As I sit and write this I am outside a café with cars driving by and people walking around.  The cars and people could be a distraction to my effort to write and I could find that annoying, which is to say I could see them as ‘ugly’ in a sense.  Or, I could see them as the elements of life that I am working at describing here and appreciate them for how they have added to my life experience; thus giving me an experience of ‘beauty’.

Consciousness or being awake is recognizing that I ALWAYS have that opportunity to choose the quality of my life experience.

I am not saying this is easy, it is not, at first, but with practice it does become a lot easier, just like riding a bike.

As with being potty trained, it first takes awareness of what I am experiencing.  Am I starting to feel irritated by the cars driving by or the people walking by and distracting me?  Are my unconscious habits creating tension in my body that would lead me to perceive my experience as negative?  Maybe I am slouched in my chair as I write and that slouching creates tension in my back which radiates out to the rest of my body, thus causing me to feel uptight and negative.

My meditations in the morning often consist of first just sitting and feeling what is, letting go of all desires and allowing what is to just be.  Then I go deeper and recognize that there is eventually a desire to get up from sitting and do something, go on with the rest of my daily life.  In that recognition I also recognize that I want to fill my life with positive experiences including this moment.  So, as part of my meditation I start by practicing appreciation of this moment or I practice feeling grateful for the fact that I am alive and all that I have to be grateful for.  Appreciation and gratitude FEEL GOOD in my body so I then focus on how good that feels.  I have found that in so doing my body relaxes, any tension or dis-ease melts away and the quality of my life experience dramatically improves.

The other day I had a guy get very angry at me.  I had not seen him for a couple of months and the first thing he did after acknowledging me was to get riled up with some ideas that he had about me and my ‘agenda’ that he apparently disapproved of.  He was right in my face and acting very aggressive.  For my part, I remained calm and non reactive, saying nothing and just listening to him as he vented his pain or frustration.  He seemed to want to engage me in some sort of ‘battle’, probably most likely a verbal contest of some sort that would justify in his mind ejecting me from the meeting we were about to have.  So when he asked for a response I said that I was staying in the moment and I encouraged him to express himself fully.  Inwardly I was appreciating that opportunity to practice positive emotions IN SPITE of my conditioned habit of reacting in a defensive manner to this type of confrontation.  I could feel the power of the appreciation as it relaxed my body (not completely but considerably) which allowed me to stay present with him looking him in the eye and fully listening to him.  Being relatively relaxed my mind did not need to come up with arguments to defend myself or my position or ‘agenda’ as this guy imagined I had.

I was able to do this because I had practiced relaxing using positive perspectives and emotions.

Unfortunately for this guy he was not able to finish venting as others came and he seemed to feel self conscious about his behavior.  Nor were we able to resolve his imagined ideas as to my ‘agenda’ in the meeting.

What for me was important was that first I had taken care of myself emotionally and did not personally feel hurt by his aggression or words.  I did feel hurt FOR HIM, my compassion motivated me to want to reach out to him to offer him an opportunity to fully vent and to help him clear up any inaccurate assumptions he had about me that might be causing his discomfort.  I was not dead to him emotionally nor did I harm myself with my emotional reaction to his hurt.

Even now as I think of that situation I keep reminding myself to practice positive emotions as I think of him and that situation.  In the past it has been very easy for me to mull over the situation and to feel undignified or insulted by the situation, thus motivating me to feel some sort of negative emotion as I think about it.  In the past I would have thought he was disrespecting me and I too would have been angry.  Now, I recognize the most important person who must respect me is ME, and that if I react to something like this with anger or some other negative emotion then I am NOT feeling and showing respect for myself.

Emotional Self Care is a process, not a particular practice.  It starts with being aware of my conditioning and how I might be emotionally reacting in THIS moment to whatever life is offering.  It takes discipline to focus one’s attention on the Present Moment, the Here and Now.  Life, or society conditions us to always be thinking about the past or the future, to concern ourselves with the there and then.  Yet life is always experienced in the here and now.  When we are thinking about the there and then we are basically only experiencing our thoughts, not what the rest of our body is experiencing.

A second and very important step in this process of Emotional Self Care is to be honest with ourselves.  This includes accepting the fact that our emotional states or experiences are entirely a product of our reactions to the thoughts we have about what life is offering.  Words cannot hurt us, it is our reactions to words (or the thoughts they produce in us) that can cause us harm.  Yet, part of this truth is to accept that we HAVE BEEN trained or conditioned to be reactive to words or various stimuli in society.  Emotional Self Care is the process of re-training us to react to those words or stimuli in a way that works for us.

This means we have to own our feelings and not blame others for how their words or behaviors “make us feel”.  Everywhere we go we are taught or encouraged to think that others or situations “make us feel” this or that, and if we can only change who we are around or our situation then we can feel the way we want to feel.  This belief enables others to maintain control of us and keeps us trapped in cycles of emotional abuse where we have fear or get angry, upset, offended or some other painful emotional reaction and then we blame others or our situation for that pain.  Thus we are saying to ourselves that others or the situation have the power to end our emotional pain.  This dishonestly traps us in the painful feeling.  Owning our feelings starts the process of accepting the fact that we CAN do something about our painful emotional states.

In my experience, pain is more intensely experienced in a tense body.  Because of this, for thousands of years people have been taught to take deep, whole breaths when we feel tension arising in our body from our emotional reactions.  By consciously taking deep, whole breaths we soften some of our attention (at tension) on the activity in our brains and expand our awareness into our bodies. This softening of attention helps us relax thus lessening our negative experience.

And, finally, practicing positive emotions IN SPITE OF OUR HABITUAL REACTIONS continues this process of relaxing at the level of our mind or nerves.  Again, for thousands of years people have been encouraged to ‘love one another’ or even to ‘love your enemies’ or ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or to practice gratitude for what life is offering.  All of these are encouragements to practice positive emotions.  The more we practice positive emotions the more relaxed we will be and better able to flow with what life offers.

In the example I used above where the guy was expressing considerable anger at me, I used appreciation and gratitude to relax myself.  I was appreciative of the fact that he had found the courage to express himself about the obviously painful feelings he was having.  And I was grateful for the opportunity to practice Emotional Self Care in a situation where I habitually would not be doing so.

I can always find some reason or justification for some positive emotion.  Of course, it is not easy in the beginning for we usually are so attentive to situation that we are not being attentive to how we are reacting emotionally to that situation.  In primitive times or cultures being attentive to the situation was demanded, for if we were not then we might be physically attacked and possibly killed.  I still encourage people to be mindful of the situation just in case it could become dangerous, but most of the time our being relaxed and calm alleviates the situation to some degree.

They say that a dog can detect if you are afraid of them, and if so they will more likely attack you.  In my experience, that is true of people and all animals too.  If we are reacting to them with fear or any form of tension then those people or animals are more likely to attack us.  On the other hand, if we are reacting to them with compassion and caring for THEM then they will more likely relax their tension and aggression, thus alleviating the tension of the situation.

Also, if we are practicing Emotional Self Care we are modeling a healthy behavior for others who can and do recognize the healthy practice and that inspires them to want to develop the same healthy habits.  This creates cycles of moving toward more peaceful, joyous, healthy interactions in society.

Other Softening Emotions

Of course, in the moment of being challenged emotionally we may not remember to breathe deeply or to be in the present moment or to practice positive emotions.  When we become aware of our reactions that may have caused us discomfort or pain we first want to forgive ourselves.  I like to laugh at myself and my silly reactions.  This attitude and behavior releases the tension in my body allowing me to relax and feeling good again.

Sadness is often considered a negative or painful emotion, one that we don’t want to experience.  In my experience, we can only feel sad because we care.  Caring is an aspect of love, a very positive emotions and feeling.  Thus, the feeling or emotion behind sadness really is love, and if we can be aware of that deeper feeling of caring and love then sadness can be a very powerful motivator to helping others with our compassion.  It also feels really good.

I define compassion as a willingness to suffer with other.  I get that definition from the etymological root of the word compassion; com is Latin for ‘with’ and passion is Latin meaning ‘to suffer’.  Any suffering becomes a motivator to working to alleviate that suffering, assuming we can envision how to do that.

I am motivated out of compassion for others who are suffering from emotional pain to write this topic.  I WANT TO hurt with them.  I want to care for others because I am aware that caring is an aspect of love and love is what I want to fill my life with.  And since I have found a way to alleviate most emotional pain, I want to share how I do that with others.

This is a rich process and it fills my life with a wealth that is unsurpassable by any other means that I am aware of.

Practicing all this is the most challenging part of the process.  I often go to be around people or situations where I can practice Emotional Self Care.  Often the most challenging people or situations are the most rewarding.  Of course, if I am not up to the challenge then those people or situations can do damage to my confidence in my ability to deal with situations.  Therefore, I encourage people to start out with less challenging people or situations.

I started by going to listen to lectures or talks by people of various perspectives, perspectives that were not similar to my own.  At first I would only listen to the words and watch my habitual reactions to them, which often means I was resisting the ideas they were offering, and this habitual resistance, being negative, was painful or uncomfortable.

The practice got a lot more challenging when I started to openly question or challenge the words or ideas I was hearing.  But still I practiced listening and questioning with compassion, often taking into consideration the ability of others to hear or deal with the questions or challenge.

When you put something out, like asking questions or confronting or challenging someone else’s perspective, you are asking for feedback that often comes in the form of criticism, judgment and possibly rejection.   Naturally rejection hurts as it is cutting off a part of us, ourselves being the whole of humanity or life.  But the reality is that rejection is a natural part of life and we sooner or later learn to accept that there will always be those who feel a need to reject and cut others off from them.  If we care about ourselves we will come to peace with this process.

We are all responsible for taking care of ourselves. No matter how much another may love and care for us, if we do not take care of ourselves then we will not feel or be cared for and harm is inevitable.  Life offers us many challenges and if we do not make a habit of caring for ourselves emotionally then we will eventually get ‘down’ as we drain our energy with our negative or painful reactions to what life is offering.  It makes sense to practice Emotional Self Care.

Again, I want to acknowledge that there will be those who rebel against the idea of emotional self care.  Some will do so because they see how powerful it could be for anyone who practices it and if it is empowering for the individual then it is disempowering to those who want to control or manipulate others.  Since taking responsibility for your behavior and changing your habits takes effort, the lazy person will resist and will continue to abuse themselves and blame others for the consequences of that abuse.  The only intelligent thing a conscious person can do is to practice loving them and by feeling compassion for them.

The freedom, peace, joy and love that come from Emotional Self Care can transform the quality of our lives, our relationships and our society.  The more we practice Emotional Self Care the more we are modeling it for others thus encouraging a society that is open, honest and caring about one another.

Healthy Boundaries

Published on by Jim

Healthy Boundaries lead to a healthy life.The human being is a limited being, it has boundaries. It cannot go indefinitely without rest, water, food, shelter and the like. There are also many boundaries that we must have in order to have any quality of life.

Sometimes our relationships with others challenge these boundaries and that can be good, for it helps us see what our real boundaries are. But sometimes, probably more often than not, those relationships challenge our boundaries and push us beyond what is healthy for us. This not only hurts us but it hurts all the others around us, for we are being an example of someone who does not care about our own health enough to stand up for our boundaries.

It takes courage to be honest. We first have to be honest with ourselves before we can be honest with others.

Courage is the manifestation of love. We cannot really love another if we do not first love ourselves. If we are feeling that respect, caring, and consideration that is love then it is easier to find that courage to be honest with ourselves and others. But if we lose touch with that self respect our courage will wane and our health and relationships will suffer.

Sometimes we do not want to even think about standing up for ourselves, even standing up against our own desires that take us beyond our healthy boundaries. Getting back in touch with our self respect helps us find the courage we need to be both honest with ourselves and with others.

I have been challenged to be honest with myself many times in my life. It is probably more accurate to say that I am always being challenged to be honest with first myself and then with others. Whenever I did not respect my boundaries it would lead to an unhealthy life. That might start with unhealthy relationships but eventually it would manifest into an unhealthy mind and body.

That unhealthy mind is the first symptom that some place I am not respecting my boundaries. I would get frustrated or angry or depressed; all symptoms that I was not being honest with myself and probably not being honest with others. Eventually these unhealthy emotions manifest into the body as disease of some sort.

Often we resist being honest with others about our boundaries for fear of their reaction to what we say. They might get angry or refuse even to listen to us tell them about your boundaries. Eventually we will have to confront out fears and deal with this lack of honesty or our relationships and our personal health will suffer.

We also often forget that we are here to inspire one another. When we challenge ourselves to be honest with both ourselves and others, even if that causes temporary disorder in our lives, we are demonstrating to those others (and ourselves) what love is and what a healthy relationship both with ourselves and others looks like. This can be the greatest gift we can give others, even if it starts out in conflict by our insistence on speaking our truth and respecting our boundaries.

In order to be a inspiring light to others we have to develop the willingness or courage to be honest with others about our boundaries that will keep us healthy of body and mind. This takes first being aware and FEELING how much we love our healthy life.

Dealing With Tragedies

Published on by Jim

After each mass killing either here or abroad we hear a lot of people talking about how this could have been adverted, how we could have prevented this type of tragedies. Or they start to ask questions on what we can do to prevent these types of tragedies.

What people completely fail to look at is that the world has changed radically and we are only going to see more and more of these types of tragedies. No amount of legislation will overcome the world wide trend of more people crowding into a small planet. Even with sufficient resources for all these people, which we do not have, there will always be pressure with the crowds and some people will crack under that pressure. It is a function of physics and biology that cannot be denied.

Some people will claim we could outlaw the guns used in such killings, but they fail to recognize that guns are outlawed in China and they have these mass killings with knives. China is more of police state then the U.S. and they cannot stop these kinds of tragedies.

Can we avoid these tragedies by avoiding the pressure cookers of big cities? Santa Barbara, CA and Newtown, CT are not consider to be pressure cookers like like LA or NY so people can reasonably think that these would be the last places one would expect these types of tragedies to occur. But they did occur there and they will start to occur at many more such places in the future.

So what is an intelligent person to do?

The first and foremost thing to remember is that we have to take care of ourselves first, which means that we have to remain calm and centered so that we can have the clarity of mind that will enable us to see the best course of action. This calm or blessed state as Jesus called it is not something one ‘chooses’ in the moment but one that comes with practice. Mindfulness and meditation is just such a practice.

Disaster or tragedy may befall any of us in this modern world but those who can remain calm and collected have a better chance of survival than those prone to reacting emotionally to dramatic events. This capacity to remain calm and collected does not come easy; you cannot take a pill for it. Practice is the only way we know of today to acquire the skill necessary to manage OURSELVES when crisis comes.

Mindfulness and meditation is the practice of developing mastery over our bodies and our minds that so that we can be the master over ourselves instead of external situations or people controlling or manipulating us.

It is also worth noting that those who perpetuate these types of tragedies are NOT meditators, so that teaching mindfulness and meditation to everyone would help diminish the number and severity of such crimes. We can each do our part by first “removing the log from our own eye” and learning how to use mindfulness and meditation in our own lives. Then we can help others by sharing what we have found and demonstrating the advantages we have found from such self-mastery.

Philosophies and Theologies are Just Words

Published on by Jim

Philosophies and Theologies are just words designed to program humans to have certain general physiological responses to words so that the humans can be control or manipulated.

Philosophy relies on a person’s conditioned responses to various words designed to stimulate general physiological responses in the human instrument.  It is a primitive method of gaining control over humans.  Science is words designed to point the human mind at processes so that mind will have understanding of the process and can therefore use that understand to its own benefit, transcending the external control that philosophies and theologies are trying to maintain.

Love is a general physiological response in the body to a thought in the brain; it feels good because that response is relaxing. One can create this feeling by focusing one’s attention on the center of the body, in the heart area, and by focusing their attention they are sending increased electrochemical activity to that area, thus activating the area and warming it up. The warming relaxes the muscles and nerves of the body giving one a sensation, one that we call love.

The conscious person understands this and practices this behavior so that they can have the positive experience of love whenever they desire, not conditional upon any particular thought pattern or any external stimuli such as a person or object’s presence.

I understand that less than one third of the world’s population is awake enough to understand what I am talking about. But there are those who will hear what I say and be able to use it to improve the quality of their life experience. Many if not most of the other two thirds of the people will resist what I say and take offense.

Look at the story of Jesus. He taught pretty much the same thing but most of the people did not understand him and forgot about what he said. Yet there were some who took offense at him and eventually killed him for his words.   Few if any got free from the power of words to control or manipulate their behavior.  In fact, some of his followers even encouraged the worship of words and their power over people.

This is natural too and part of the reality of life. Yet, we as a species are evolving and humanity is nowhere near as primitive as they were in Jesus’ time. It is science that gives on the understanding of how they human instrument works and how society is designed to manipulate that human instrument so that the individual can gain greater control over their own human instrument to maximize the quality of their life experience.

This advantage is lost to the ignorant masses. The will continue to be manipulated by words or objects so that the ruling classes can have dominion over them; they will be slaves to whoever can push their buttons.

 

Why Stupid Peope Protect the ‘Honor’ of People Who Choose to be Offended by Team Names

Published on by Jim

Why Republicans Protect the ‘Honor’ of Offensive Team Names | The Nation.

This article states, “The name of Washington DC’s football team, the Redskins, is under fire. “Redskins” is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation’s capital. That’s kind of obvious, right?”

NO!  The word “Redskins” is NOT offensive.  No word is offensive.  But stupid, unconscious people might react to this or that word in such a way as to ‘offend’ or abuse themselves.  This is EXACTLY what the ruling classes want people to do.  The ruling classes want people to hurt around words because they use words and the hurt that people create for themselves to control and manipulate those unconscious people.

If you support slavery then you want to encourage people to think that words can harm them, that words are offensive.  Intelligent and loving people do not encourage this abuse, they confront those who do encourage slavery and abuse.

People have been trained since the beginning of time to abuse themselves around words that the those who know can use that abuse to their own advantage.  How else can the slave owners get the slaves to word without needing to revert to the violence of the whip?  It is words they use to ‘whip’ the slaves into shape.

once we understand that it is OUR REACTIONS to words that causes us harm, our CHOOSING to take offense at something, then we can take commend of ourselves, learn to relax and not react.  Then, and only then, will be no longer need to fear other people, relationships and communications of any sort.

 

Taking Back the Power of Words to Hurt

Published on by Jim

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.

Honesty Leads to Heaven

Published on by Jim

Being honest with yourself leads to a heavenly life experience.  Lying to yourself and others leads to a hellish life experience.

It is so hard to be honest, even with ourselves.  Much of society teaches us to lie to ourselves and to others.  We call this process ‘believing’ and being polite, but it is just lying.

It took me years to break the habit of lying to myself, but when I did I experienced this world as heavenly, perfect.  Even today, I am not always honest with myself and hence I have periods where I experience life as hell.  But when I take the time to stop and get back to the truth,  I again go back to that heavenly life experience.

Recently there was an election and the conservative political party lost.  One of the things I find most startling about this is just how dishonest these conservatives were being with THEMSELVES leading up to the election.  They were all so certain that their candidate was going to win by a landslide even though the polls were showing he was going to lose.  But these conservatives wanted to believe their candidate was going to win so they lied to themselves saying that the polls were wrong or that the pollsters were all liberals and the liberal media was just trying to convince everyone their candidate was going to win so that the conservatives would be discouraged and not vote.

Anyway you look at it, the hell those conservatives experienced on election night and are now experiencing is entirely a product of their own self deception; nothing more.

The dictionary defines religion a a system of beliefs.  If we were to be honest without ourselves we would have to admit that a belief is a lie we tell ourselves.  For example, imagine I ‘believe’ that there is an apple tree around the corner with lots of apples on it, and I believe this because someone told me this, I am lying to myself because the truth is I do not know if there is a tree there  or if I understood the person correctly or whatever.  Such is the case with religion, for we really do not know what the writers of the scriptures meant by their words until we experience what they experienced, and that would only be in the present moment.  By experiencing something in the present moment we are not longer believing in some words about something, we are experiencing it.  Belief is gone.  If we just believe we are saying to ourselves that we do not care enough to find out the truth.

Religious people experience this world as HELL because of their self deception.  This is good for the business of the ruling classes, for they can hold out hope for a better future like a carrot on a stick and the gullible religious people will just keep chasing after that hope as they lie to themselves thinking that heaven is just around the corner.

Heaven is NOT just around the corner; it is here, AT HAND, as Jesus tried to tell people.  The only requirement is that you STOP lying to yourself.

That is a tough requirement; it takes a lot of discipline to stop lying to yourself when everywhere you go the world is encouraging you to lie to yourself.  Which is why some people encourage you to get away from society in order to find the inner peace and clarity that comes with it so that you can see what is real, what is true and you can be honest with yourself about it.

Yet who cares enough, even about themselves, to take the time to go off to a lonely place and find that clarity so that they can see the truth that will set them free to enjoy and love all that life has to offer?  Really?

Is it that people do not care of is it that people do not know HOW to be honest with themselves, they do not know how to find that clarity, they do not know how to stop the lying?

I do not know the answer to this question.  This has been the quest I have had for a long time, to find out the answer to this burning question.  I am hoping that there might be some people out there who will read this with some thoughts and ideas they will share on this here.

16 Desk Meditations That Will Change Your Life – OnlineDegrees.org

Published on by Jim

16 Desk Meditations That Will Change Your Life – OnlineDegrees.org.

This is a good article with suggestions on how to deal with the stress of working at a desk all the time.  I find that just taking a timeout for a few minutes, closing my eyes and taking some deep breathes really helps.   AND, it makes your efforts more efficient, in case anyone were to complain about you taking a break.

Since I drink a lot of water, I often have to take bathroom breaks.  As I am standing there relieving myself I take several deep breathes as my body relaxes.  This is one way that I pace myself and kind of force myself to take these mental health breaks.

We work to survive, but if work is killing us then it is not worth doing.  By bring mindfulness into our work we cut down the stress that it causes and can improve the quality of the experience of working.  Being mindful of our attitude toward work, our co-workers and our work environment, reminding ourselves that a positive attitude improve the quality of our experience, we can greatly enhance our life experience that work is part of.

When you become aware that what you seek is quality of life, then taking a few minutes to enhance your work experience and create a healthier mind and body is worth it.

Beyond Nonduality II

Published on by Jim

In my personal spiritual evolution I turned first to the eastern traditions because I had seen the corruption of the western traditions and the eastern traditions offered me a way to find inner peace and not just some nebulous concept like salvation.

After finding some degree of inner peace and the clarity that comes with it I turned to the western traditions and read about Saint Theresa’s “Dark Night of the Soul”, which I was now more prepared to deal with because of my skills developed via the eastern traditions.  Because of my study and seeking I was getting very depressed as I saw though the ideas and beliefs I had had from childhood and seeing that they were just my wishful thinking and not reality.  This depression was really a ‘dark night of the soul’ in which I truly felt abandoned by God, Consciousness and/or life itself.  There did not seem to be any real reason to continue living.

Around this time I read a book titled, “The Experience of No Self” by a former Catholic nun who was documenting her own spiritual evolution and process. In this book she talked about how she spent twenty years in the Dark Night of the Soul.  Since I was experiencing what she described I was even more depressed as I pondered that I might be stuck in this dark place for twenty years.

Yet, at the same time I was also studying Zen and it was showing me that all the negativity I was experiencing was just thoughts in the mind.  When it finally dawned on me that my depression was just a product of my thinking, just thoughts in my mind, I laughed at myself for making the thoughts so important.

With this laughing I realized I was immediately out of this dark night experience, my laughter being the light that was shined on my reality for me to see again.

Of course I would fall back into my negativity and fall back in to that pit of darkness, but eventually I would realize what I was doing to myself and again laugh at myself and my thoughts thus popping me out of that dark pit and depression and back into the light.

Every night I would set and watch what was coming up for me in my mind and in my body.  When I would go into this thinking that produced depression or negativity.  I would sometimes get caught up in for a while in the thinking and depression until I would catch myself seeing what I was doing to myself and would laugh at my silliness.  The laughter would feel so good I just dwelled in that feeling until I was tired and there everything would drift back into rest, equanimity and a deep inner peace.

This process made it easier to get to equanimity than if I was just trying to get to equanimity, for the very trying itself worked against my intention.  The more I tried to get out of negativity and into equanimity the more resistance and negativity I experienced.  I realized later that it was my effort or will that was creating the tension within my body/mind that I was experiencing as negativity, pain and suffering and keeping me from the equanimity and clarity I was seeking.

I realized that by going beyond equanimity from the negative into the positive emotional states and then resting in that positive state thus allowing the body/mind/human instrument to relax and drift back to a place of equanimity and inner peace allowing clarity which enable one to see the truth that permanently sets them free to enjoy and love ALL that life has to offer.

Beyond Nonduality

Published on by Jim

I went to talk by a nonduality teacher this week.  He was pretty good as nonduality teachers go (I have heard many teachers of the nonduality persuasion talk and ply their trade).  I have studied the teachers of old who started the modern nonduality movement, I even meditated on Ramana’s bed in the ‘cave’ in India that he gained his enlightenment.  [Ramana is founder of the modern movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi.]  I know the verbiage or dogma of this philosophical tradition.

As I sat there and listened, particularly to the questions of the audience, I could not help but feel sad as I realized how primitive this method was of dealing with the challenges that people have in their lives.

Obviously, people go to spiritual teachers looking for something, something they do not feel they have.  This sense of lack or the emotional pain they feel is a negative in their life and they are looking for a release from that negativity.  Spiritual teachings and teachers are there to help people find that release from the negativity.

Eastern traditions talk a lot about the end of suffering with the goal being equanimity or inner peace.  Yet, equanimity or inner peace is not what we want, it is only the half way point in our journey.

I can hear it now as the those who see themselves as nondualists read that paragraph above they will ask, “Who is it that seeks this goal, who is it that is on the journey?” But this is all part of their method, to question the idea that we are the doer of anything.   A nondualist questions their assumptions as to their own identity, which traditionally people think of as something that is separate from something else.  For the nondualist there is no separation, they think of the self as infinite and eternal, without form or substance.

The value of this nondualist way of thinking is that when thoughts come up that produce negativity, like the idea that we are going to die, they quickly replace that thought with a thought of non-attachment to the form that dies or incurs some form of loss. Thus diminishing the pain of the contraction of fear and negativity that is the conditioned habitual response most humans have.  The nondualist is not trapped in a negative thought form of concern about what happens to them in the future, after death or so one.

This is all good as far as it goes.  Nonduality is replacing one way of thinking, one philosophy (or theology) with another philosophy (or theology).  It is true that the nonduality way of thinking is an improvement over the traditional dualist way of thinking, but it is still very archaic system for dealing with negativity.  I can see better ways of getting human where they want to go.

Through conditioning the human instrument has learned to react to these thoughts with either contraction/tension or expansion/relaxation.  The eastern tradition tries to introduce a different reaction, or should I say LACK of reaction to thoughts that we have habitually reacted to with contraction.  They try to get us to stop reacting and just be still.  Of course this is very hard, for the very effort to try and stop creates or comes from contractions itself.

What I have seen and what I now do is that I recognize that all this is just thoughts, electro-chemical impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain.  When we recognize that a thought is just a thought and cannot hurt us, it is only our reaction to the thought that causes us harm, then we can directly address the problem of our reaction.  A reaction of contraction (fear based), if held,  is experienced as negative.  Holding on to any idea is just holding our contracted state and that creates a sense of being trapped in a negative state.

We can address this ‘problem’ directly by just practicing relaxing around all thoughts, thus releasing the sense of being trapped in a negative state.

Here is where the eastern traditions are handicapped in their effort to help people release, for they are ONLY seeking to release people from the sense of being trapped in the negative state.

The reality is that we do not want to just be released from negativity, we want to have positive experiences and by practicing positive responses to thoughts we excel PAST equanimity, PAST inner peace, toward a richer, more positive life experience.

We do this by practicing appreciation, joy and love at any and all thoughts we experience.  We stay constantly aware that they are JUST thoughts, electro-chemical impulses traveling along the neurons of the brain and nothing more.  We stay aware that we have a choice about how we react to those thoughts and that we can enjoy the process of thinking, thus creating a positive experience from all thoughts.

This is not a new idea, I am only articulating it in a new way.  I see this idea expressed in many tradition like those that say there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.  Also in the traditions that teach people to love God or to love one another and to even love our enemies.  All of these traditions are encouraging people to PRACTICE a positive response to thoughts.  It does not matter what you are thinking about, whether it be God or some person or some future or whatever, if you respond to that thought with love or some other positive emotion then you will experience life as positive.

When a person has the capacity or skill to UNCONDITIONALLY love all that life has to offer then they will experience this world as heaven or nirvana and it can be said that they are ‘enlightened’, for they can lighten up and be light-hearted about thoughts of everything that life offers.

From my experience I do not want to ALWAYS practice this.  I actually find value in the negative experiences of contraction to thoughts.  It is those negative or painful reactions that motivate this stupid piece of meat that I call Jim Freedom to get up off his lazy and/or cowardly ass and do something.  But when Jim is tired or sees no way to do anything constructive then he can just sit back and practice his joy and love in heaven or nirvana.

There is value in the equanimity or inner peace, for with equanimity and inner peace we gain clarity that enables us to see the truth that permanently sets us free to fully enjoy and love all that life has to offer.  So I am not saying that we NEVER should allow equanimity only that we do not need to seek equanimity through philosophies or beliefs.

In summary, why go to all the trouble of all these philosophies and theologies?  We really do not need them to get us where we want to go, we can go directly to the positive by just recognizing the thoughts for what they are and recondition ourselves to have positive experiences by practicing positive emotions.