The Growing Edge

Dear Friends, During our last session we focused on the thread(s) that have emerged over the months that we have been meeting. What have discovered, learned, struggled with, delighted in over the many sessions? It is useful to keep that contemplation alive. It is a way to integrate the journey into consciousness.

This opened into an exploration: what is our growing edge? What is exciting to us, what is the challenge that we need to be open to. What is growing, bubbling up. Is it time to pay more attention to the supergo; is about sensing the body and breath more;  is it about how I bring my presence into my life; it is about creating the time and space to meditate; is it time to slow down... This journey is like a thread unfolding itself in and as our life. If we pay attention we will notice how miraculous this thread truly is.

We ended the evening with greeting each other face to face, presence to presence. It was lovely!

It has been an honor for me to be with you and to witness the unfolding of each of you and to feel the grace that has grown and matured in our circle. We will begin these sessions again at the end of August. Joe and I will keep you posted about details.

In the meantime we have an evening of spirit singing with Kath and Laurie next Monday. I encourage you to come. It is a way to practice presence, to sing... and to have fun too!

Starting in May we will be meeting on Monday nights for meditation. I will guide you through sensing your arms and legs and then we will meditate in silence together. We will begin at 7.30pm and end at 8.00pm. If you arrive a few minutes please join us.

Sending you all my love, Alison

Book that has me on fire!

Hi,
Some you wanted to know the book I was reading yesterday.

The Prophetic Imagination, by Walter Brueggemann.

According to Joe, Walter Brueggemann is the greatest living interpreter of the Old Testament. This book is especially for all you who care deeply about the world and the crisis we are all in. It speaks to the numbing of Empire on its people. That includes you and me. This book is on fire. The language is scholarly, perhaps dense, but the truth of ancient times -- Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jesus-- and these modern times, is  beautifully articulated by this prophetic voice.

Whenever we practice presence we are stepping out of the ordinary conditioned reality, the empire of ego, the empire of the culture, the empire of consumerism. When we are free from the numbing, from denial, even for just a few moments, we are participating in prophetic imagination.

Summer Practice Circle

Dear Friends, This is a space for you to ask questions, to post your own reflections about the practice of presence. Perhaps you find quotes, poems, writings, books that you have found helpful on your journey. Feel free to post what you find along the way.

I will try to respond from time to time with my own reflections over the summer.

This is a way to stay in touch with each other and the circle of presence that we have created over the months. Remember this is a sacred space. This is not a place to give advice but rather a place of listening, sensing and sharing your own experience. As with any sacred space it thrives in openness, vulnerability, sincerity. Superego be gone!

This is another experiment. Lets see if this kind of circle can support our journeys in presence more and more. Your feedback is always welome. Warmly, Alison

Surrender

 As we approach our last teaching session this coming Monday I would like to ask you to make donation to the church if you have not already done so. None of this would be possible without the support of Joe and this church. I will put the donation basket on altar. You can give cash or a check made out to ECI. Thank you for your generosity.

This last week we looked at the issue of surrender-- allowing, relaxing into, accepting, yielding.  On this journey we are discovering over and over that if we turn towards, if we allow our experience, surrender into it, there is a relaxing, and the possibility of an opening into presence and grace. This runs counter to our usual ego orientation which is to resist especially suffering or unfamiliar newness.  In the face of suffering we tighten, we numb, we dissociate, we push away, we go to sleep. In other words we resist. When there is no resistance surrender is natural and easy. In fact ego cannot surrender. Ego is essentially complex tension patterns. So trying to surrender only adds another layer tension, the tension of trying. So what to do.

What need to explore, meet and understand is our resistance. This is not easy. Much of our resistance may be unconscious. But if we turn towards the inevitability of resistance, if we meet it, hold it gently, it will begin to relax and open. This takes time. But if realize that resistance is an attempt to avoid, push away, deny suffering, perhaps you can see that becoming curious, kind about our resistance will allow to rest a bit. Maybe the resistance experiences your presence, your curiosity as a kind of holding, a kind of care. Then maybe a little trust can arrive.  Perhaps the resistance is not needed so much, maybe it's safe to open into what the resistance is trying to protect. (exercise: tell me a way you resist). We spend so much energy resisting out of habit, out of lack of support and understanding. It's exhausting.

Surrender arises when the obstacles, the resistances start to dissolve. It is a quality of presence. It seems to arise out of the ground of holding and support that we explored a few weeks ago. It has has a yielding, melting, ease to it. It seems to be inviting in a warm way, inviting us into more relaxing and more letting go.  The support of the ground provides the ballast, the trust into  surrendering into ever deeper relaxing. Not by trying to relax but by the natural effect of presence on our souls and bodies. In a way surrender is like a simple 'yes' in the heart.

As the weeks have passed we are noticing how the field of presence is growing. Sometimes it is warm and tender. Sometimes the presence is more robust and alive. This last time I was aware of the sweetness, appreciation in the air. This is what happens when a group of people come together  week after week to practice presence together. As the openness, realness grows amongst us, as we feel safer to expose the truth of what is arising now, this sincerity and courage opens up the field of presence in and amongst us. We feel held, we feel safer we feel more open, and that invites grace to be among us. It is so precious.

Holding

Dear friends. Perhaps you are beginning to see that this practice of presence allows for a new relationship with our experience, especially our suffering. When we turn towards our experience, even our resistance, and we allow ourselves to get closer, more intimate with the felt sense and some alchemy starts to happen. Our turning towards is the movement of our consciousness, our presence. It is as though our presence wakes up and rather being lost in the experience, identified with the suffering, we become present with the experience, awake in the  experience. And this changes everything. We discover that we are more. We thought, we believed we were simply a suffering ego, a suffering me, cut off, frantic, lost, and yet when we wake up, even just a little we find that our living presence, our consciousness deeply affects our experience. We are still suffering but now we are more than the suffering. Somehow we are not so alone. We may notice if we can breathe and settle into being with ourselves that we are being held by presence.

This holding, this buoyant ground of being, allows us to relax and feel safe. We feel less cut off and hopeless. This ground is always there, but we get so lost that we don't know and don't recognize it when it arises. We actually take it for granted most of the time. We only know it by it's absence, when we are in dire straits. At first it may be a subtle. Like a simple feeling that all is well. A simple okayness. But if you pay attention you will notice that is a palpable presence: Supportive, buoyant, reassuring, safe. You may feel that you are sitting in, floating in a field of this beneficence. The more you become aware of this, the more your nervous system can relax. We loosen our grip, we find some trustfulness that indeed all is well. And as we settle a quiet hope may arise, understanding about the suffering may bubble up, and there is a sense of flow. What was frozen suffering, cut off, stuck, becomes a fluid unfolding and our suffering morhps, opens into clarity, understanding, healing. What I am pointing to is that our living presence holds us, holds our experience, and this holding makes all the difference.

As children many of us experienced real abandonment by our mothers, our care takers. We were not held, and I mean physically, well enough. The holding was cold or rejecting or we were even dropped, parked somewhere. So we didn't have the real support that our bodies, our souls needed. As infants we needed mother's holding to help regulate our nervous system, to feel safe, loved, welcomed. We needed to feel that the world was good, trustworthy. And we learned this by being held, by being responded to in an attuned way, over and over. Mother's physical holding invited this support of presence. It was there implicitly and explicitly.

This lack support so early on creates a sense of being abandoned, cut off, a deep fear and agitation. And we learn that there is no holding and so we choicelessly turn away from this precious ground of support. And we forget it, ignore it, discount it. Mother was not there, so presence was not there, god was not there. But presence is always here, it cannot be otherwise. We abandon this precious support that we so desperately need. We never can have the mother we needed, as much as we spend our livings looking  for the perfect holding, the perfect love, the perfect relationship. What we are seeking out there is right here now. Sensing yourself, remembering to come back to your experience now, kicking out the superego is the way back to this precious sense of presence as holding.

(exercises. Tell me a way you experience the lack of support; tell me a way ou experience being held. Explore what is like to be held. What happens to your sense of being held as you become more embodied.)

Poems

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. Cummings

Holy Vulnerablity

We settled into the issue of vulnerability last time. We discovered  both our resistance, sometimes fierce, and also our longing for the openness, delicateness of our presence, which is surprisingly safe, clear, intelligent, and alive. How is it that something that we usually associate with weakness, foolishness, fear, unprotected, shameful, is something  we long for.

We explored this with the following questions: tell me what vulnerability means to you; tell me a way you resist your open vulnerability; and explore your open vulnerability or lack of it. 

We discovered that being being open to vulnerability AND being open and curious to our resistance to our vulnerability that a presence opened in and among many of us on Monday night. There was a sense of a shared sense of alive, vulnerability, open and safe. Even those of us caught in our fears could see that simply the openness to the questions could bring us closer to this miracle of us as humans of being. Being by its very nature is open and vulnerable. And really openness is simply another name for vulnerability.

All of us have scars, wounds from our past and even the day to day wounding and suffering of our current lives. And we learned as children to brace, to create boundaries, to hold ourselves tight, small. Some of us pretended to be big and powerful, some of us focused all our attention  on the needs of others. Some of us went to sleep. We all buried that openness that we are all born with, the amazing transparent presence of the the baby and the young child. We had to bury our delicate, impressionable presence as an emerging baby soul, to protect the core of our preciousness until such time as we were grown up enough, safe enough, courageous enough, intelligent enough, loving enough, discerning enough, and longing enough to begin this journey back to ourselves not to the infant presence, but to the open, vulnerable presence of us now! And as some us discovered on Monday night this open, vulnerability is the essence of ease, safety and receptivity. This is the door way to the many face of our presence, whether it be the fire of I can, the stillness of silence or the sweetness of love. Without receptivity we are stuck in all the barriers, defenses of the ego shell, and the soul is frozen at that stage of development.

I described on Monday night one way to think about the ego and its development. We arrive as an infant soul, open, transparent, infused by love and also buffeted by all the survival instincts which insure that we will live in this utterly dependent state. We utterly open vulnerable to all the ways our environment is attuned and all the ways it is not, and worse yet how it may be destructive. So the soul goes through a transformation it becomes an ego, a shell if you like, a separate self, that becomes me, who I am. Deeply buried is the remembrance of me as an open soul of presence. But for all practical purposes we no longer know ourselves as presence. Sometimes events happens that crack us open and we may get glimpses. Or we may have found ways to tap into this source of who we are. But mostly we live in ego, and as ego. And so it should be. This is part of the course of human development. And we grow into more or less functional adults, doing the best we can to show up, be in the world, to live, to engage and to contribute. 

But at the core for some of us we intuit that something vital is absent. It can be a longing, or a deep sense that something is missing, or simply a desire to know more and more about what this is all about. I mean really what is this all about!!!!!  And that itch, that longing, that curiosity is the smoke signal from our presence deep in our unconscious. Gradually we know that we must seek and we must find this. And we think mostly that it is seeking out there. And that searching out there can go on for a long time, even a life time. But when we hear from the teachings from all the traditions that what you seek is inside, is the true you, the self deeper than the ego, our divine nature,is closer to you than your own breath, then we realize that we must turn inward. So when we turn our attention to this quest-- note this is different from therapy--then the ego starts the next stage in the journey of the soul. In a curious way our ego is called to return home. So this is not about killing the ego, but allowing for this new stage in growing to emerge with greater greater confidence and commitment. And gradually the ego finds its proper place, not as master, but as servant to what we really are. And gradually the ego can stop its incessant struggle to be in control, and come to rest and even disappear for periods of time. The ego is finally held by our true divinity and so it can rest! What a relief.

Without receptivity, without openness, without vulnerability this journey is impossible. The good news is that we are not thrown off the ten meter high diving board, although sometimes it might feel like that. No, we are asked to enter the wading pool, gently testing the waters of vulnerability. We learn slowly, tenderly that this vulnerability is not the vulnerability of the child within us, but is living presence, mature, open, grounded and exquisitely delicate and responsive to the currents of being.

As you can imagine the superego is adamantly opposed to this. So with each opening watch to see if and how the superego operates.

True Strength

On Monday we began to expose more clearly the aggression of the superego. (Exercise: Tell me a way you experience the aggression of the superego). It is this aggression that deprives the human being of the sense that I CAN or of strength. When we are judged there is aggression implicit or explicit in the attack, and it causes the body to brace, to shrink, to tighten as though in a vice. It causes us to get foggy, confused, filled with doubt. It makes us feel shaky, tearful, anxious, panicky, lost, even dissociated. The superego appropriates the life force and uses it cohesively against us. Remember the superego sees you as a small child who truly is incapable of functioning autonomously in the world. But we are not small children! And yet so often we feel incapable like small children especially when we have embarked on a journey of spiritual growth and maturity.

So over time we are cut off from the life force, the vibrant energy of I CAN, as the superego diverts this energy and uses it against us and others. So when we come up against the superego we are up against aggression. In order to be in the world, to engage in spiritual work we need to feel the strength of presence, the solidity of our being. If we are to open our delicate and tender hearts we need to feel that our presence is solid and protective of what is most precious. We need to feel that we have a base so we can open and flower into love. But many of us equate strength with aggression. We see it all around us. Strength as power over, as aggression. And so we shy away from strength, fearful of becoming aggressive.

What we discovered on Monday is that the presence of strength, is the embodied, alive sense of I CAN. In the belly it can feel alive, like red larva, or solid, unmovable like a mountain. It can feel like a bold and courageous heart. And in the mind this strength brings a penetrating clarity and capacity for discrimination or discernment. (Exercises: Tell me a way you feel strong and capable. Explore the way you experience embodied strength, the sense that I can. What happens to the superego when you are this strength).

There comes a time after you really see and understand what the superego is doing to you, to your expansion, to your growth, to your call, that this strength rises up in the soul and says enough, no more. This is an important moment. In a sense you have put the superego on notice. No more. Oh sure it will arise over and over. But it gets easier to turn your back on it, banish it, yell it away, laugh at it, hang up on it.... This is not about changing your superego into a nicer superego, this is about separating from the superego. And without your strength, your love you will be tied to the superego. This child cannot do this. It lacks the strength and capacity to separate from the superego. So it is the maturing you that finally says enough, and says it over and over until it becomes second nature. And gradually the superego loses its power over you. 

So this NO MORE is the I CAN of strength. It is the life force! Yours!

This week I suggest you notice the feeling embodied I CAN, how it comes and goes. It may be subtle and ordinary, or strong. We don't need to feel strong all the time. Life does not require it. But notice how the superego affects your sense of strength and aliveness.

Not Knowing

So what are we doing as we gather to practice together. We are learning how to practice presence. We are exploring the many ways  we block presence and all the opportunities for opening. And why are we doing this? We seem drawn to something deeper, some pull, some longing, some desire for something more real, more peaceful, more here, more embodied more true. In some important way this is not psychological work. Yes we have to deal with issues because they come up and pull us away from our true selves and back in the suffering. But the point of exploring them, facing them, is so that we are not so caught by their habitual pull into our habitual conditioning. Healing can happen along the way, and that is lovely and real, but ultimately this is about seeing, knowing, feeling that we are not what we take ourselves to be. We are not the bundle of suffering, even if all our feelings, thoughts and beliefs scream that is exactly who we are. We are humans OF being. We have all forgotten this ages ago. 

Ego development is necessary to make it through childhood, and  to live in the world. So lets not knock the ego. It got us here! For some people, and I assume you are among them, it is not enough to live the life of ego. Perhaps there is too much suffering and we get it at some level that no amount of therapy will get to the root of our suffering and fix it. Maybe we have had glimpses of what we really are, moments of deep peace, moments of love, of awe, beauty. Maybe we are drawn to God, to Divine Emptiness. Maybe we don't know why we are drawn, we just are. So we are doing this because at some level we can't help it. We are called to practice presence.

And we are called to practice being present in the world because that is where we live. To bring our bellies, our feet, our arms and legs, our not knowing, our curiosity, our love into the world. We are called to live this in the world. So when you remember to sense yourself, to bring yourself back to this moments you are bringing presence into the world. And the world needs this desperately, so very desperately. Even a second of self remembering is precious.

And as we practice presence and as openings happen you will meet the superego. It will slip in unnoticed except you will start to feel on edge, ashamed, anxious, collapsed...Or it may hit you with a two by four crushing you into a puddle. The superego can come from within or you may project it onto others, the world. Either way it is trying to shut you down, return you to your usual conditioned  small, childlike, deficient, suffering, lost, doubting, frustrated, hopeless, mournful, envious self. The superego sees you as a child that needed to be a certain way to make it, survive in your family. It is simply doing its job to return you to your familiar self consistent with the narrative of your life. Spiritual work will bring forth openings, expansion of your consciousness and awareness  which will challenge the familiar self, so the superego will do its best to bring you back into the shape and familiarity of how you know yourself and how you are supposed to be. This is inevitable. So don't judge yourself because you have a superego!!!!!

There is good news here. If the superego jumps all over you after a moment of opening, or jumps all over you as you enter the chapel, or when you open your mouth to speak into the circle, or beats you for not doing the practice right, for being confused, for being the worst person in the group, o for not meditating,  for forgetting to be present 24/7, it means that opening is afoot. The superego won't bother you if you stay within the confines of the familiar self, the conditioned ego. It may even praise you for being good!  So when the superego is up it means that opening is in the air.  So we have to take on the superego, banish it when it beats us up, question why we believe all the abuse, become conscious how it operates. It can be a blunt instrument, it can be sneaky, it can even sound ever so reasonable. So if we become aware of it, and you will be shocked how ever present it is, then we have chance of turning away from its aggression towards our precious experience, OUR experience, OUR moment in the now, OUR presence, whatever it is. Our felt experience right now is the only living moment. This living moment is the opening into what is deeper, quieter, subtler, silent, peaceful, into the opening of our being as presence, as the divine that we are, here now. It is through our brokenness, vulnerability, sensitivity, tenderness, exposure that the living spirit breaks through. This is not about becoming perfect beings, self improved beings.

 Forgive me if I seem fierce this morning. Whenever I write or speak about the superego, I experience a kind of fiery passion. 

So what has this do with our last session on not knowing. Many of you saw the deep shame, anxiety about not knowing. Some of you grew up where knowing, being vigilant was a way to survive. Some of you remembered the precious curiosity of the child who seemed unconcerned about not knowing. Some of you were drawn into the relief of not knowing, into the possibility  this opening, this spaciousness of the mind at rest. Some of you saw the endless chatter of the mind busy trying to plan, to figure, to rehearse and the exhaustion of that. Some of you encountered the superego. ( Exercises: Tell me something you don't know; Tell me how you think and feel about not knowing; explore what it is like to not know.)

What is important is that we begin to welcome those moments when we reach the end of the story, the end of the stream of thoughts, that blank space, the confusion and  disorientation. In those moments we are moving out the familiar stream of thoughts beliefs and feelings. Something fresh, something new can arise. Perhaps it is the open sky of mind, or perhaps some insight bubbles out of nowhere, and we say"oh I see, I understand" or perhaps we simply land here, being with whatever is arising. So rather than not knowing being a failing, a dead end, it is in fact the opening.

Remember this is not about rejecting knowledge. We need it, we love it. It is necessary to live in the world, it is necessary to grow and learn. But knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom draws on knowledge, but it arises out of the spaciousness of not knowing.  

Spiritual Practice

Years ago my spiritual teacher said to me " practice, practice, practice"! I took this to heart. And I practiced and still do. At the beginning it was hellish; it seemed impossible for my mind to settle even for a few seconds. Now these twenty plus years later, meditation is simply part of my life. I no longer resist it, or question it. I simply sit every day. Sometimes my mind is busy, sometimes it is not. The important thing is to practice. Spiritual transformation involves our efforts and grace. It seems that grace loves our efforts. It is natural to encounter resistance, difficulty along the way. One of the reasons we come together to practice together is that there is a kind of renewing of commitment when we meet as a group.

So this week I encourage you to explore your relationship to your daily practice. If you don't have a daily practice explore the barriers, the obstacles. Are there real ones? Is there resistance? What kind of resistance? Are there worries? Don't use this as an opportunity to beat up on yourself. Sometimes it takes a long time for the desire to practice to arise. 

If you do have a daily practice what is your relationship to your daily sitting. Do you put it off? Do you dive in? Do you judge your meditations? What kinds of resistance, distractions are you encountering?  Just take a look at how it is going. Maybe you need to back off a bit, maybe you need to sit longer. 

One thing I learned is that doing a daily practice because I should never  worked for very long. The superego is not the effort that is needed. 

Maybe you practice presence while you do yoga, read sacred texts, brush your teeth, fight with your loved ones ( that's a tough one!), watch moves (even tougher one!)....  Remember we can practice becoming present at any moment. It is a kind of waking up and remembering to be present right where you are.

Embodiment: The Head

Dear Friends, It was so touching to see you last night. Braving this nasty winter weather speaks to something very precious arising in each of you. Some call it a call, some a desire or a longing, some call it an inner flame that simply won't go away. It beckons you like the moth to a flame. What burns up are all the obstacles and what is left is the preciousness that is you, mysterious, alive, awake. It is a journey. All we can do is follow this longing, the light of this flame and show up as best we can. We show up, we face the obstacles with kindness, with deepening understanding, and lightness and grace does the rest. We show up, we return, or as Margaret mentioned in an email to me this morning, we arrive. Yes and over and over and over and over. Drawing closer, faith and courage growly slowly. This is about growing not some magical event.

So we are spending our time these days looking at holy embodiment through different lenses. This week we focused on the mind and how the superego rises up and closes us down, in our mind, body and heart. It is an aggressive, cohesive voice. Sometimes it operates loudly but often it operates quietly in the background. When you engage in spiritual work-- which is an invitation for your consciousness to expand and to expand beyond the bounds of the familiar self-- the superego out of habit will rise up to insist that you shrink; that you return to the conditioning that you learned by the time your were five; that you become the familiar self; the self of the young child. It does not see you as grown person capable of functioning in the world, it sees you as fundamentally as a young child. As someone said last night at its core the superego had your best interests at heart. Its job was to help your survive and grow up in the family you were born into in a way that was possible for you. The problem is that not only are you not five anymore but the superego is essentially aggressive. And its aggression can be brutal, or it can be quiet, even unconscious. And the superego may embody adult values, like doing a good job. The problem is the aggression. It is the aggression that causes the soul to shrink, recoil, feel shame, feel anxiety and even terror. This aggression is NOT okay. And that is what we are up against.

We looked at how the superego judges the mind, your thinking  (tell me a way that you judge your mind). And then after the sensing arms and legs meditation we explored what effect being embodied has on the mind. Do you relax, does the superego rush in, do your find a place of not knowing. What happens?

So this week I encourage you to explore how and when you notice the superego. What does it say, how does it say it. What effect does it have on your body, your heart and mind. You may be shocked as you start paying attention to find that the superego is around all the time. Don't worry. This is the case for everyone. Mostly people are simply not aware of this structure in the ego and don't realize its affect on their daily lives. If the presence of the superego makes you livid, hooray. Notice how you believe what is says about you, as though it really knows you as the adult, living being that you are!!!

Embodiment: The Belly

So we began the new year with a return to the importance of embodiment in journey to presence. We explored our relationship to our bodies (Exercises: Tell me a way you relate to your body? Explore your relationship to your body right now). Do we abuse, perfect, reject, numb, ignore, dissociate from our bodies? Most of us pay no attention until something goes wrong. And then we panic, become obsessed, push our way through, go to into the sleep of denial. Others are preoccupied by their bodies, monitoring body functions, worrying about its shape and performance. We want to perfect it, change it. We want to have a different body. Some of us use the weight of the body to protect ourselves from outside threats.

Embodiment is the opening in this moment. The body only lives in the present. So returning to the body allows us the possibility of becoming present and  opening into the divinity of presence. Embodiment brings with it a grounding and a deep regulation of the nervous system. When we begin this encounter  with the body we inevitably discover all that we have ignored and denied. We can discover a deep exhaustion caused by the driven, stressful, life we lead in these modern times. We can find all kinds of body tensions, pains, numbness, agitations. We may find that we are preoccupied with the body, worried about it, not simply present. Many of us may find it is very easy to be distracted. We get lost in thoughts and some of us may float out of the body entirely. All of this is fine, it is what it is. The practice is simply and gently to come back, back to our feet, hands, arms and legs, to the breath in the belly.

In many spiritual traditions there is a deep rejection and even abuse of the body. The belief has been that only by denying the body can spiritual development occur. Sadly this has become a deep hatred of the body, which most of us have internalized in our spiritual genes. So to welcome the body, to embrace the body as a scared vessel is deeply challenging to our personal and religious beliefs. So don't be surprised if you encounter judgements and resistance to this new orientation.

Embodiment is the doorway to incarnation. The spirit living in and as flesh, as us human beings. Yes each of us! Not just the Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed. It is a journey. Just like at first we practice being present, remembering to sense this moment by feeling our bodies. And with time, patience and receptivity, presence will arise, first perhaps as a subtle perfume and gradually as the substantially of being. So embodiment is the beginning of the journey to incarnation. 

We will be exploring this journey over the next months. We will begin with the head center, the place of thinking, then we will move into the heart, the center of feeling and finally we will return to the belly, the ground of our physicality. And finally we will focus on the soul,  this mystery of human embodied human consciousness. We will explore and touch into the issues and the openings of each these aspects of embodiment.

Next time is an opportunity for meditation practice. Without some daily practice it is very unlikely that there will be much spiritual development or unfolding. So the biweekly sessions focusing on meditation are very important. You will discover, if you do not already know, that meditation is much more difficult alone. It is easy to become disheartened and give up. Just as meditation is a continual return  from the tendency of distraction, so is getting back up and remembering our commitment to daily practice. We keep coming back. We keep beginning again. Meditating in a group offers a support -- a field of presence, commitment and sincerity -- which makes it possible for us to continue when we become discouraged. Remember the spiritual joumey is the journey of a life time. So along the way we need the help of our fellow travelers, and all the reminders to practice.

Holy Blackness

We spent our last session together exploring holy darkness, the deep blackness of this time of year.

We discovered that darkness brings up many feelings: fears of death, despair, sadness and loss, depression, slumber parties and whispered secrets, deep stillness, peace. We then inquired together with the lights turned off. Hushed voices filled the dark sanctuary. Many us shared in a deep sense of safety, peace and mystery.

Remember to step outside at night and savor the darkness and the piercing stillness.

Slow down, remember to sense your arms and legs. This is a time of deep interiority, a deep pregnant abiding in the mystery of the depths.

Many many blessings. Happy holidays.

Holy Indifference

As we discovered last time it is hard to imagine that holy indifference, has anything holy about it. The word conjures up images of cold hatred, heartlessness. And yet there is something profoundly holy about holy indifference when it expresses itself as one of the many flavors of presence. It is the ground of settledness, of non reactivity, of no preference. All is held, all is welcomed. Everything!

We explored the taboo of sitting with our friends in this non reactive, non socially responsive presence. We are hard wired to respond: we nod, we laugh, we judge, we identify, we fix, we rescue, we reject, we avoid.... That is the nature of ego. In other words we are reactive to the outside, and mostly these patterns are unconscious, conditioned from our past and by our superego and they pull us to the surface and draw us away from the depths of presence.

Holy indifference allows us to sit in presence, to be present to our friends, our lives without the usual reactivities, the likes and dislikes, judgements. It is not something you can do, it is a face of grace which will arise when we see through -- notice I did not say reject-- all the issues that come up when we invite the possibility of the simple gift of presence rather than all the busyness and fuss of trying to be helpful, trying to to be there for someone, evaluating, judging, performing, trying to be a good friend..... These are deeply engrained patterns.

To let yourself open to the  blessing in holy indifference, the deep freedom, the deep relaxation, the true gift is another doorway into the depths of presence. Without this non reactivity , this equanimity, this settledness, the heart cannot open. It will open when it feels right or good, but not unconditionally. It will be run be likes and dislikes and it will waver and react to what it believes is out there. The heart cannot feel safe to open to the tender loving gentleness, transparent delicacy of love without the support of this ground of holy indifference. Holy indifference offers the ballast, the support for the heart to discover it's nature as love.

 Many if us on the spiritual path long for the heart to open and we may miss this vital ingredient, this ground. That is why we focus so much on the belly, on the embodiment. Gradually these practices--- and it takes time-- will cultivate this grounded presence, this face of holy indifference. When the heart feels the support it will open quite naturally since that is it's nature. You wouldn't want to build a house without a foundation, so it is with spiritual development. Without the  ground our commitment will be shaky, our heart will feel reactive and the mind will desperately try to figure it all out, try to mange and fix.

 So as I said next week will dip into the waters of holy mutuality. I would encourage you this week to continue to explore all the beliefs and barriers you have about holy indifference. The point of this exploration is for your soul to begin to welcome the stillness and freedom of holy indifference.

Meditation Practices

 At our last session we reviewed the three meditation practices that we have been working with: belly centered concentration, open gazing, and embodied sensing arms and legs. Each practice has a focus and supports a certain development. Concentrating in the belly, cultivates grounded presence and is needed as a support for all spiritual development. When you are distracted, agitated this is a way to settle the nervous system. If you are settled you can open your eyes and gaze.This supports the opening to the relaxed, effortless sky of mind. This is not staring. Some call it soft eyes. The important thing here is that it is easy to space out and loose the awakeness. So don't forget to stay in touch with your body. If you loose focus and become distracted go back to the belly concentration. Belly concentration is my primary practice. Sensing your arms and legs is a good way to start your day. Sit on the side of your bed and take a few minutes to circulate your awareness from your left foot, up your left leg, up your left arm and across your shoulder and down the right side. 

Simply sensing your arms and legs ( not the circulation practice) is a good way to bring your practice of presence into the world.

We focused our attention for the remainder of the session on how to practice presence during our explorations and inquiries with our partners. We looked at many of the ways we repeatedly judge, evaluate, assess, reject, avoid our lived experience in the moment. It is all these layers that freeze our lived experience into chronic patterns, stories, that we repeat over and over. The superego makes sure that we stay within the confines of the familiar story. The familiar story seems real and true. And yet below the judgements, the beliefs is our living experience desiring to open and reveal deeper and deeper truths of what and who we are. When we begin to see the familiar-- without judgement-- and we come back to the felt sense in the body, in the heart, we are inviting an opening. We are inviting  this experience to unfold, to become revealing. We are opening to a deeper and deeper understanding. Sometimes that opens into presence, but mostly at the beginning we will begin to see and understand what we reject, what we avoid. This is not about fixing what arises, although that may be the temptation, but it is to become present to what is and in a deep way to understand. There is nothing wrong with our experience. In fact you are where you need to be, because that is the only place you can be. This welcoming, this kindness towards our experience, towards ourselves is the opening to presence. You will no doubt believe you are the only one who is not experiencing presence. Not true! We are all ensnared in the superego, the matrix of our thoughts, minds, beliefs. Presence is quiet, subtle. delicate, at times strong like a mountain. Mostly at the beginning it is subtle and we miss it because we are caught in the layers of judgements, beliefs and feelings. So this little practice of inquiry is a way to enter into this territory of our lived experience. With time we become curious about what is really going on, and we become less enamored or convinced by our familiar sense of self or our familiar story. This curiosity is a kind of gentle, generous opening to ourselves and is the presence. It welcomes everything that is here. That is the opening to our deepest longing.

This week I suggest that you do an inquiry by yourself. Using your journal if that helps, explore your loyalty to your story. Start with exploring  the headlines, the broad sweeps of your story. ( it might be that I am too stupid, or I am too abused, or I always judge others, or I can't do this, or I get lost in my thoughts, or I am too abused, neurotic......). These are core beliefs about yourself and are reinforced at every turn by the s/ego. You might write down this story. Then explore your loyalty to this story. Notice all the ways you keep convincing yourself that what you know about yourself is what you are. Why do you keep believing the story. Is there a fear of stepping into the unknown, to not knowing who you. 

Follow this we 5 minutes of. What I am experiencing now is.......

Then reflect on what you have discovered. Also notice how  it is for you to explore alone rather than with in a group with friends who are present to you.

I am very touched by the presence that is developing in this circle. Whenever people come together with a sincere desire to practice presence something can awaken and open. I hope you are sensing the softness, support and welcome that is in the field of our circle.

Holy Mutuality

Dear friends,  

We are discovering that presence has many flavors. We have touched holy silence, holy indifference and last time we explored holy mutually.  You will recall many of you felt a curious alive soft presence between you. This arose because you stayed with your own experience. This greatly challenges the normal view that mutuality comes from leaving your own experience and relating, identifying with, merging with, rescuing the other. It is indeed a  mystery that presence, being present to your immediate experience, opens up a field of mutuality, of joy, of intimacy with your friend. This reminds us again that the simple power of learning to stay with our embodied experience is the mysterious opening. We also explored that this radical discovery challenges many of our cherished ideas, beliefs about what it means to be close, supportive of loved ones. 

So once again it is so important to recognize that this is a patient practice that we do as faithfully as we can. No superego here. Along the way we discover we are on a journey. First we have tastes of presence and we begin to realize how different presence is from our usual ego state. Then as we continue to be faithful to the practice and the tastes become some more frequent, more available, there comes a time when we realize that this presence is our nature. This can open into a realization that presence is the nature of everything. And then this mystery wants to live in the world as this ever unfolding, ever opening presence, ever creative, ever expressing itself. This is the journey of a lifetime. It may not unfold exactly  in this way because each soul has it's own unique opening. But it is important to realize that this is a journey, not about having big spiritual  experience and that's it. 

But what is for sure is that this  journey begins and ends with practicing presence. As the soul opens and remembers her true origin, her true nature, her divinity, this commitment to patient practice becomes a love, an irresistible call. 

It is hard to imagine, but we are approaching our last session, and winter has arrived. Joe and I would like to hear from you about what next. Does this end or is there a desire for this exploration to continue in some fashion. This work requires a group of around 15-25 people. So we would encourage you this week to spend some time with your journal inquiring into what next for you.  Is there some desire, is there a willingness to come during the depth of winter? What are you drawn to: more meditation, or more of the kind of exploration of the faces of presence? What kind of barriers do you notice to what next.  Is it important for you to be in a group? Is this way of working opening up for you, despite it being difficult at times, or is it not helpful. 

So next time we will spend some time together listening for the individual and collective guidance. 

Then we will turn our attention to holy blackness, holy darkness. This time of deepening night is a very special time of year. And we may miss it for the bustle and stress of the holidays. So we will spend our time exploring this holy black, this holy night and the gifts that it invites us into. 

God as Spiritual Superego

Dear Friends,

During our last session together we focused on the spiritual superego and the images we carry of god. The spiritual superego takes precious spiritual teachings and turns them into standards of perfection. The superego uses the teachings to threaten us, damn us, punish with images of hell and perfection. Many religions do the same. They are not interested in expansion, growth and least of all freedom. So what began as teachings about love, about freedom, about spaciousness, peace become instruments of control and abuse. To make matters worse when we are very young we see our parents as huge, mighty and god-like. And we are utterly dependent. So our parents become the first images of God. Punishing, loving if we are good, repressive, controlling, fearful, powerful. We unconsciously project those images onto God, onto the divine, onto the Truth. The spiritual superego will rise up when we start to practice, when we long for more depth, inner freedom and more expansion. Well into adulthood the superego keeps us believing deeply that we are small children, incapable and powerless to grow. 

So we explored our individual images of God. Maybe loving, maybe condemning, maybe frightening, maybe out there and distant, maybe the sin counter, maybe we killed off god a long time ago. We then  explored how these images affect our practice of presence and our longing for spiritual depth. 

So I encourage you to look into your images of divinity, of god, whatever your religious or spiritual background. These beliefs and images are deeply imbedded in our cultural genes. We are meeting in a church, there are religious images around us. How do they affect you? Do you have to close down a bit to keep the pain that religions have inflicted on us and on humanity. Or do they open you up?

And despite all of this we are seem to drawn to together, in search of something mysterious. Longing for presence, for god, for truth.

And perhaps you already know or are discovering that path to spiritual practice is not easy. We get so few glimpses of presence. The ego, the superego seem so persistent that it is very easy to loose heart. A dear friend said to me years ago it takes a lifetime to make a Christian, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, a spiritual Being. It is a journey that if you are called to it-- and not everyone is, and that is quite fine-- will ask of you a growing commitment.We discover that when we give up, we believe have failed there is something like an inner flame or an inner gyroscope that will gently pick us up and set us back on the path. This return to the path, to this moment, to our practice is so gentle and forgiving. Unlike the superego which condemns us, the return is really the loving hand of self remembering. It is a  uiet yes. And it is a yes to this mystery of our deepest nature, which with time will slowly reveal itself to us. 

Before our session on Monday I stumbled on this quote from Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk. I hesitated sending it along to you because it arises out of Christianity and I know that for some of you this is not your path, or your religious tradition. But it  is such a compelling "image" of God. And all week it bubbles up. So I am sending it out to you. In the place of the word God you can use words like  Mystery, Divine, Essence, the Absolute. He talks about absolute poverty, being a monk that meant both outer poverty and inner poverty. If the word is confusing and conjures up the superego, you can use something like, absolute silence, or absolute, stillness.

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin or illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us. . . . It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven." (A Merton Reader, p. 346).

Silence

Dear friends, 

It seemed appropriate to focus on silence on Hallows Eve. ( I hope all of you out there with the goblins and fairies, had a wonderful time!) 

Silence is a doorway to the depths of our being. 

It is curious how we long for silence and yet we resist it. We long for the peace, the stillness, the end of frustration, noise and yet we surround ourselves with noise, with distractions, with busy lives. Do we really allow ourselves to simply sit, in a relaxed but awake way. Before we know it, we have something that has to be done and we get going, or we are creating lists in our minds, or we are berating ourselves for being lazy......

During Monday's session we began by exploring what silence feels like. Sometimes silence is completely full and quiet and sometimes it is empty, empty, empty. Silence is the nature of Being itself. It is beyond  the thinking mind, it is not about the absence of thought. And in fact if you try to quieten your mind you simply create more tension and stress, more thoughts and self criticism. 

We then looked at why we resist silence. And in came the superego with all its judgements about sitting quietly, meditating, about doing nothing. We recognized how rare it is to actually rest, for all the inner activity to settle down and for the silence to emerge. We explored the inner agitation, boredom. And how some part of us simply wants to goof off. We looked at how the superego slips in and is in charge of when we should meditate and then the child within us responds by procrastination. Some of us are frightened by the silence and what might arise. Some of us are frightened of the emptiness that can arise. We are not familiar with the emptiness. Notice in this culture how averse we are to even a second of two of quiet. Social silence can make us very anxious. When we allow silence we may notice how alone and lonely we feel. So there are lots of reasons why we resist the silence. Perhaps this week you will notice more of them. Not to judge them, but simply to notice. And when you notice perhaps you will remember to sense your arms and legs, your breath, your belly. 

I suggested this week that instead of meditating-- which we saw so easily becomes a "should" of the superego-- that this week you simply gaze out of the window, relaxed looking. See what it is like to gaze and relax into your body. Perhaps you have a nice view. If you are someone who makes lists in your mind, have paper and pen at hand and jot down the list. That way you won't spend the whole time trying  to remember the list!!!! Gazing is not staring, it is relaxed. Some spiritual traditions practice gazing at sacred icons. This week we are gazing at the sacred icon of the world outside your window. Your mind will drift. No problem. Let yourself be drawn back to gazing, by the mysterious pull of your quiet longing for silence. Remember this is a journey of relaxation and awakeness. Trying to relax won't work!!!

I also suggested that you turn off your TV, your radio, your computer, your phone etc. Not for the whole day, but simply a conscious gesture to bring some outer silence into your life. It is easier to drop into the presence of silence when there is some outer quiet, when we are in touch with our bodies, and when we have sent the superego packing.

Since we are at the mid point of these sessions Joe and I thought it would be useful to have a check in next time. How is this going? We  will then move into one of the most insidious ways the superego gains the upper hand in spiritual work-- such as the practice of presence--and religious life. We call this the spiritual superego, or the religious superego. It is deeply imbedded in all the major religious traditions and has caused so many such harm. 

Whether we like it or not, all of us are deeply affected by our religious cultures. It is in our genes! We all have been impacted and hurt. And to add insult the spiritual superego actually distorts the precious teachings. Can we actually hear the words of truth?