Inner eye: direct knowing

Dear Friends.  A quick reminder we will be hosting a contemplative worship service next Monday November 24 at 7.30pm. All are welcome.

On Monday we focused on Matthew 6.23-24.

Matthew 6:23-24

The lamplight in your being is the inner eye. If that eye is open and sound,then your whole being will be flooded with illumination. But if your inner eye is clouded, then your being will grow dark. If it is extinguished, how great will be your darkness!

As we have been weaving our way through the Sermon on the Mount, we have focused on the orientation to the practice of presence, especially the felt sense of the embodied now. What is the direct experience, the felt experience in the body now? In these words from Matthew we are moving towards direct knowing, or knowing through what he calls the inner eye. Over the last few weeks we have found that there are layers of obscuration-- judgements, beliefs, defense mechanisms, numbness and ultimately unconsciousness-- between "me and my experience". There seems to be a gap. This is the experience of living and experiencing through the lens of the separate self, otherwise known as ego. And this gap is the root cause of suffering.

Direct knowing, seeing through the inner eye is knowingness that rises up through presence, through the direct experience. It is immediate, spontaneous, flowing knowing. It is revelatory. Ordinary knowing, what we assume is the true way and only way to know--- is mediated through thinking, evaluating, comparing. It is knowing through the lens of ego, and so here too there is a sense of a gap, a separation.  Ordinary knowing is very useful if you are navigating through the Healthcare website!! But in the realm of presence ordinary knowing is veils us from deeper wisdom.

Direct knowing has access to memory and prior knowledge, but it is often experienced as a leap of insight, an ah ha moment. A moment when the dots line up. It is also quite ordinary. When you are in touch with presence you know the quality of presence. You know when it is warm love, and not still clarity. You don't have to figure it out. Presence knows itself. Its capacity to know directly is not separate from presence. So knowing as this kind of wisdom is the nature of presence itself. And it is available to us all the time. We just don't recognize it.

We ended with there are these wonderful lines from Matthew 5:15-16. Nor do you light a lamp then put it under some basket, but on a lamp stand where it can illuminate the whole house. So let your inner light shine before humanity, so that they may be able to witness your works of beauty and so worship the Beautiful One, your source in heavens.

Journal first impressions. What is your inner eye? What is illumination?

Turn me a way you distrust, ignore or avoid direct knowing.

Tell me a way you experience inner seeing/ direct knowing.

Explore the difference between ordinary, familiar knowing and knowing as revelation or illumination. How does the practice of presence help us discern between the two ways of knowing.

Stay warm!!! Alison

The narrow gate: the embodied now

Dear friends. Just a reminder next Monday we will be hosting the Contemplative worship service. This is a mix of prayer, chanting, readings and collective reflections and silence. I hope you will join us.

On Monday we focused our practice on the passage below.

Matthew 7:13-14

So go in by the direct path, through the narrow gate, for the road that leads to ruin is a broad way, and the gate stands wide open, and many are taking it. But the way that leads directly to Life has been compressed down to a single entry point, and few have been able to discover it.

It is easy to read this as elitist. Only a few are smart enough, privileged enough to find the entry point. The rest us are just dolts!!

But what if we look at this from the point of view of our practice of presence. Some questions arise immediately. What is the entry point and why do we miss it? What is it? What makes it compressed? Why when we know it do we turn away?

In our practice we have discovered that the embodied now is the opening to presence. We have all felt the opening into sweetness, stillness, peace, love... once we bring our gaze, our attention inward, into the felt sense of our experience in the body. This is the single entry point!! It is available to everyone, not some special elite. We have to remember to return to this present moment and let ourselves feel. 

We miss it because we forget. But also because the familiar ego gaze is always outward. You are looking outwards or even heavenward  for the answers, the bliss, the wisdom, the goodies, the guidance, the consolations. Our outer orientation is deeply hard wired neurologically. So in a sense when we come back to our inner experience we are going against the grain of deep habit and conditioning. And the superego is right there to attack you for doing it wrong, for wasting your time, for being incapable and on and on. This is why we have to practice. Over and over we come back when we are meditating and also in life. When we wake up that we have left our inner or direct experience for moments, for hours, days, weeks :) and we come back to the embodied now we are returning to the "narrow gate".  You have to wonder who and what is that remembers when you are lost in your thoughts, in your self judgements, your distractions. Is this not your consciousness, your presence waking us up out the sleep that we live in our so called normal lives. It is quite a miracle when you ponder this.

So what makes the narrow gate compressed down to a single point. I don't know what the theologians might say about this, but when we first begin to find and enter the narrow gate it feels very compressed, tight, reactive, agitated. This compression is caused by all the layers of defense, beliefs, conditioning, superego judgements which are designed to keep us away from the entry way. 

What we encounter right away is what we have been calling the gap. This is the sense of disconnection, alienation, dullness, emptiness. No wonder we turn away. This the gap between me and my experience, me and the outside world, me and presence. In short this is the sense of separation inherent in the ego self.  There is no presence here, or so it seems. As we have been exploring, we need to allow and feel this experience of profound disconnection otherwise we will  move away from the narrow gate and so miss the possibility of opening into the spaciousness of presence and life.

So far in our journey into the Sermon on the Mount we have discovered that we need to close the door to practice (ie turn inward); we need to let go of the religious and pious (ie the spiritual superego; and we need to discover the direct path through the narrow gate, (ie our direct experience, embodied and in the present moment). 

Exercises from Monday night:

Journal: first impressions.

Tell me a way you feel the gap between yourself and your experience.

What happens when you open to the emptiness.

Follow your direct experience, Notice what happens when you allow your direct experience. Do you experience the gap? Does it open up into spaciousness? How is this different from the experience of the gap?

I look forward to seeing you all soon. Peace, Alison

Religious and pious, the spiritual superego

Dear Friends, Happy Halloween. Looks like we might be turning towards winter! Please note we will be holding our next session of the practice of presence this coming Monday November 3rd. I still have plenty of booklets of the Sermon on the Mount for sale. I will bring them to the next few meetings.

Matthew 5:20

And I tell you this, unless  your own inner virtue transcends that of the most pious and religious here, you cannot enter the realms of Transcendence (heaven) there.

On Monday we explored how we easily turn to outside authorities-- the pious and religions--, for direction. And how this outward source of so called authority is often our own spiritual superego. The spiritual superego takes precious spiritual teachings and turns them in perfectionistic standards, turns them into rigid rules that our based in the need for control. It also creates the tribal loyalties which lead to doctrinal wars, excommunication, persecution and war all in the name of the superior God. This teaching like last week asks us to turn inward. In this week's quote from Matthew we are asked notice how we create our own idolatry, our own fixed beliefs and standards.

And what about inner virtue. What is Jesus pointing to. Is he asking us to become good virtuous children? This is an easy misinterpretation. Virtue here is pointing to Presence-- and the many tastes and faces of presence: stillness, love, compassion, openness, clarity, peace, true power.....This cannot be fabricated by the ego. Although we all attempt this. We can feel the difference between the fakeness of ego compassion and the tenderness of the presence of compassion. Ego desperately tries to imitate presence. 

This week you might focus on the way we fake, or try to imitate the qualities of presence that we believe we SHOULD be expressing. If you feel into this you will inevitably find the superego telling how you should feel. But also you may also feel the actual fakeness; how it feels in the body, the taste in the mouth, the tension in the eyes and face; the shallowness of breath.

We also discussed the difference between direct experience and  usual experiencing. In direct experience there is no gap between ourself and our experience. This is the taste of oneness. In the  egoic or familiar way of experiencing life there is me and and then there is my experience. This can feel quite subtle or like an enormous chasm. The ego goes to town attempting to fill the gap: distraction, repetitive thinking, moving onto something else, compulsive habits, addictions...This gap is what separates us from what we love: the intimacy with ourselves, awake, at rest, alive and also from the deeper mysteries of our divine nature and the divinity of everything. You have joined this circle because the gap nags at you, haunts you, drives you crazy... If you never felt the deep dissatisfaction with this deep sense of separation you would not participate in our practice together. As we go deeper you may discover that the pain of the gap is the root of all human suffering.

Monday's exercises:

Journal:  What is your literal, rational, take on this. 

Tell me a way your spiritual superego— the eyes of the most pious and religious —blocks your inner ways of seeing and knowing.

Tell me a way your experience this inner seeing.

Explore  the arising of direct experience. Notice when the surface way of seeing arises and takes you away from the immediacy of direct experience. Do you feel the gap between you and your experience. What is your relationship to the gap.

Hope to see you all soon, Alison

Turning inward

Dear Friends,

A reminder: next Monday October 13th at 7.30pm at ECI we will be holding our contemplative worship service. There will be no session on Monday October 20th. I will be away.

If we simply ground ourselves in experience we can we can go astray; if we simply ground ourselves in Scripture without experience it becomes stale and riddled with superego; by bringing scripture and presence into the tradition of centuries of prayer we open to the living moment grounded in the depth of a kind of ancientness and newness all in the now.

Last time we focused on holding; holding in the body.

Tonight we are going to explore the turning inward. But more than that is beginning to learn the language of knowing from the inner vs the knowing from the outer. Or the different wisdom that arises in the esoteric vs the exoteric. The exoteric is the surface, the way of knowing, the way the ego knows, the s/ego interprets, the dualistic mind, the linear rational mind, the right and wrong. The knowing that comes from conceptualizing, dividing….

The inner way of knowing the esoteric way of knowing requires eyes that can see and ears that can hear. This is a new operating system. We all know it. It is the flash of inspiration, the sudden synthesis, the dots lining up; the silence revealing something deeper; it is a way of knowing without the usual thinking mind.

I am suggesting that the Beatitudes can be read from the exoteric, egoic, by the superego, familiar way of knowing, or from the way of wisdom, the way of knowing that comes through silence, oneness, through mystery; wisdom comes out of a non dual way of being.

Over the next months we are going to learn and experience this way of knowing. how we know through superego vs living presence; how we know literally vs through living presence; how we know rationally vs knowing through living presence….

We start with the entry into practice:  turning inward.

Matthew 6:6: 

Enter into a private place to pray, shut the door, and then commune there with your Father privately, and your Father, the Hidden One, who observes you secretly will reward you.

Journal: what are your literal interpretations? What were you taught? How does the superego hear this? 

What if the private place to pray is your own body, your private temple, your inner experiencing. What if your embodied opening into the now is prayer, the deepest form of prayer, the prayer of silent, wordless prayer?

Tells me a way you resist shutting the door.

Tell me what draws you into a private place to pray.

Explore what it means to you to commune with the Hidden One. What does communion feel like?

Remember that the superego will thwart you as you go deeper, as you claim your experience, as you take your unique journey. Don't let it stop you. 

In peace, Alison