Archive for May, 2010

Fluid Relationship

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

As I’ve walked my spiritual path over the last few years I’ve let go of many aspects of my identity and the ways I had habitually defined myself. The question - Who am I? - is a key spiritual question which can be a conduit for accessing our true nature which is beyond all labels. My core spiritual practice is cultivating presence/awareness and in that space introducing the question Who am I which is an inquiry into the nature of the self. In letting go of many of my labels including ones associated with spiritual beliefs, career and relationship I’ve found that I’ve become much more free to respond to situations in the moment in surprising ways. Surprising because my responses are so spontaneous and don’t necessarily fit into my ideas about how I behave. Without such a rigid definition of who I am I can more easily step into roles, activities and ways of relating to people which would not have been possible before because my beliefs about who I am would limit the possibilities. This has opened a new world of unlimited adventure and experience and while it is often scary not to have the familiar backdrop of the old identity I feel far more alive than ever before.
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The Power of Awareness and Attention

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

In the last couple of years I’ve moved around a great deal living in half a dozen living situations. In the process I’ve been looking at how I create security, stability and a feeling a safety in my life. During this time I had very few of the usual things most people associate with security and stability, things like a house, a car, a job, a long term relationship or money. I’ve had all of these things in the past but in my process of transformation had to temporarily let them go one by one. My intention in letting them go for a while was not because they are negative or problematic but rather to look at my attachment to them and my motivations in having them in my life. You see, all of these so called sources of security have also been sources of suffering for me. They have caused suffering because they are unreliable, temporary and fail to meet my expectations. One thing we can say for certain about external sources of security is that they are temporary, they do not last forever and they change, often in ways we don’t like.
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