The Healing Power of Trees January 13, 2010
Posted by bodhidude in : Divine Feminine/Goddess, Healing, Spirituality, articles , 1 comment so far
I love trees, I always have. I love the natural world but for some reason trees have always had a special meaning and a special power for me. The reverence and appreciation I feel for them can be intense and lately I’ve made it a daily practice to connect and work with them. They are a great teacher for me and they demonstrate and symbolize how to live in the world with grace, groundedness, openness and connectedness. They help me move energy by connecting me with the Earth and acting as a channel for its energy. They comfort me when I’m feeling lost and help me get to my feelings. They provide a natural temple to connect with Spirit, the Goddess and the power of the Earth. Its really too bad they aren’t appreciated more for what they have to offer people as well as what we can do for them because I think we are meant to work together.
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Spiritual Practice and the Death of a Loved One December 28, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Healing, Psychology, Spirituality, articles , 1 comment so far
A friend of mine recently lost a loved one to suicide and asked me to advise her on how she might benefit her friend now that he has died. This got me thinking about death again which is not so unusual for someone on the spiritual path but it takes on new significance when it strikes close to home. Most spiritual traditions have some kind of practice to benefit loved ones after death but rather than regurgitate those here I’m going to present my view on working with the death of a loved one. I present this from the perspective of a spiritual practitioner as well as a counselor.
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Feeding your Demons November 16, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Healing, Psychology, Spirituality, Transformation, articles , 4comments
Have you had the experience of having intentions, goals and aspirations that you are passionate about but never seem to fully come to fruition? Do you find yourself struggling with habits, addictions or feeling stuck in familiar patterns in your life that no longer serve you but resist your efforts at change? Do you ever feel like there is a part of you that is working against your wishes? Well for me the answer to these questions has been most definitely YES, and for a long time my response was to increase my effort and fight against the tendencies in me that I found to be obstacles or to throw up my hands in frustration and sink into depression. However I began to realize the more I struggled to rid myself of the qualities I didn’t like about myself, the more I tried to force change by sheer effort and willpower and the more I judged myself for not succeeding the way I felt I should I only made these seemingly opposing forces or qualities stronger. Recently I discovered a powerful practice that directly addresses this issue which is known as “Feeding Your Demons”. Having put it into practice I find my life transforming in amazing and powerful ways and I don’t find myself so much in conflict. Feeding your demons is an old Tibetan practice known as Chud which originated in the 12th century with a female Yogini named Machig Labdron. It is presented in a very simple and accessible Western context by Buddhist teacher Tsultrim Allione in her book “Feeding your Demons” (see resources section).
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From Fear to Empowered Engagement October 5, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Community, Society, Transformation, articles , add a comment
What does the current world situation bring up for you? This question produces a variety of responses depending on who you ask. There are seriously alarming things playing out right now many of which are major global events such as climate change. Beyond that we seem to be creating increasingly oppressive governments even in our so called free western societies. Our society at least to me appears to be suffering from a degenerative sickness which is entering a terminal stage. The degradation of our society is evidenced by many symptoms including increasing extremism, a poisoning of the food supply due to genetic and toxic contamination, a health care system that is based on profit instead of healing and sells poison under the guise of medicine, an almost complete lack of honesty and morality in government, a numbed out population that spends its time entranced by mass media promoting extremely dysfunctional behavior and propaganda and an economy where both greed and manufactured scarcity run rampant.
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Mindfulness and the practice of RAIN September 24, 2009
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Most people have heard of mindfulness, like meditation it has become a fairly common term in general use. It has also become more accepted in western psychology as having therapeutic benefit. Many books have been written on the topic and yet there remains much confusion in terms of just what mindfulness is and how to apply it on a daily basis to heal and find greater freedom, this is especially true with regard to difficult or emotional situations, its easier to be mindful of a sunset compared to the intense anger in a fight with a partner. While the definition of mindfulness varies I would describe it as a gentle, focused, compassionate attention. A quality of spaciously noticing what is happening whether it be within or without. In the west today there has developed a tradition of Buddhist training and practice that is mixed with western psychology. From this tradition, represented by Psychologist/Buddhist Teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, a very practical application of mindfulness practice has emerged that can be readily applied in daily life especially with difficult issues or situations.
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Dropping our story September 16, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Healing, Psychology, Spirituality, articles , 2comments
Meditation has been one of the most powerful healing techniques that I’ve ever encountered and I’ve used it extensively on my own path as well as regularly offering it to those I work with. The power behind it lies in its ability to help one touch the core of their being, their inner most nature which from my perspective is limitless in every way, this includes limitless joy, abundance, power, love, healing and compassion. Meditation and mindfulness practice also help to break through the mental stories that we overlay on so many of our experiences and bring us back in contact with raw feeling and experience.
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"I don't mind what happens" September 5, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Spirituality, articles , 7comments
Once during a regular question and answer session with his students, spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti paused and leaned forward and asked the audience, “Do you want to know what my secret is?”. Everyone sat up and became immensely alert because here was one of the great spiritual teachers of the 20th century and he was about to tell them his secret. Krishnamurti in a soft spoken voice said “You see, I don’t mind what happens”. Who could believe that the secret or really the core teaching of such a great master could be something so simple? But it is just this simple statement and way of being that contains the key to incredible freedom and joy.
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The Warrior Archetype and the Reemergence of the Goddess July 26, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Divine Feminine/Goddess, Psychology, Spirituality, Warrior/Divine Masculine, articles , 1 comment so far
For the past few thousand years we have lived in a patriarchal paradigm where the masculine has been over emphasized at the expense of the feminine. This has produced not only the oppression of women, constant war and violence but also inner conflict for both men and women as each struggles to be whole human beings in a world where an imbalanced ideal is cherished. The result of the over emphasis on the masculine has resulted in it taking a negative form as the feminine is devalued and even systematically repressed. This negative masculine form is cut off from its feminine side and so is out of balance and taken to an extreme in a futile attempt to compensate for the lack of grounding in the feminine. This is symbolized by two archetypal patterns in particular, that of the Negative Father and the Warrior. The Negative Father is the authoritarian head of the household who rules the family and is often the source of abuse, sexual misconduct and control. This pattern is also seen in the authoritarian governments that have become the norm where the government represents the ultimate controlling punitive father figure for its citizens. This isn’t to say all fathers fall into this pattern but it is symbolic of a key aspect of patriarchal power. As a counselor I see many clients who have a figure in their lives in the role of the Negative Father and much of their work in counseling involves working through trauma associated with that as well as reclaiming their power from that figure and this includes men and women.
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Who needs work?! July 6, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Livelihood, Psychology, Transformation, articles , 2comments
For most of us working sucks which I think is why work is a four letter word. Have you ever really thought about why you work and what role it plays in your life? Most of us work because we think we have to, to pay the bills or really to survive. We might have a job that we can’t stand or we might even have a job that we like or no job but when whatever we do becomes work it takes on a quality of struggle. If we work for ourselves doing what we love often it becomes work when we struggle to make ends meet. Our society is built on work and struggle, the idea that you have to sacrifice much of who you are to survive. Right behind the struggle is lack, the belief/feeling that we are incomplete or lacking something that we must seek externally whether it is money, love or fulfillment.
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Meditation: Finding freedom in the present June 14, 2009
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There are two things about life that never cease to amaze me, one is how painful it can be and the other is how simple and beautiful it can be. When things are going well it is very easy to grab onto that experience and expect life to remain good and comfortable but inevitably it changes and we experience pain and difficultly which we tend to want to avoid or push away. You could say that this process of attachment and aversion is one of the main causes of suffering and dissatisfaction in life because we can’t hold onto the good stuff and we can’t avoid the painful, the one constant in this is change. Often we are not aware of the way we hold onto or push away parts of our life. We can pretty much count on almost everything being temporary and this is just a reality of life which doesn’t need to be a problem, but when attachment and aversion arise it quickly becomes problematic.
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Romantic relationship in the new paradigm May 28, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, Relationship, Transformation, articles , 2comments
We are living in transformative times there is no question about it. It seems almost everything on an external as well as internal level is undergoing radical change these days. This is an exciting, powerful and often painful process to be involved in but the potential is amazing. Many of the structures from the old paradigm including government, religion, financial and social are beginning to crumble, the weight of their dysfunction finally beginning to overpower their momentum. As these old structures break down it is important for us to engage a creative process collectively to form new systems to take their place. New systems that reflect a new era and a different level of conscious and that redefine boundaries that reflect the next level of growth we are entering into as a society.
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My will or my heart's will? May 14, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Spirituality, articles , 2comments
I think it is fair to say that there is a crisis of meaning and purpose in society today. Much of what we see in the world is a reflection of this in my opinion. This leads to the question of where meaning and purpose come from, if many of us are lacking it or think we are, what exactly is it we’re lacking or out of touch with? I see it as something that comes from within rather than any external accomplishment or involvement and in the world today you see people engaging in ever more desperate and destructive behaviors in an attempt to get something out there that they can only find within. Their futile attempts to find it externally only lead to frustration and greater separation but the search for meaning and the dilemma that creates seem to be consuming many people because what happens when you look for something you already have?
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Allowing what is May 12, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Spirituality, articles , 1 comment so far
Since my intense experience at a Zen retreat a couple of weeks ago my spiritual practice (or really my life) has begun to shift significantly and it is shifting in the direction of simplicity. What I reacted to at the retreat was the degree of structure and technique. Zen practice is itself a very simple form of spiritual practice in one sense but it involves a great deal of form, procedure and technique in another sense. In sitting with my post retreat experience while I understand the purpose of that I am finding myself drawn to the utter simplicity of presence without the technique and form. I find that I can actually use meditation techniques to try and control my meditation experience, “trying” to do it right or achieve something which takes me into another mind story.
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A Vision of Community, sharing the burden and the benefit April 1, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Community, articles , 6comments
Some friends of mine and I have been discussing the idea of creating our own community house as an alternative to our various living situations. That discussion has prompted me to look at what community means to me now and in the future. Community has been quite important to me but I’ve started to realize that it has also been very limited compared to its potential. I have a community of friends and we maintain connection, support each other, and even share certain resources like food, services and such. This is a wonderful thing but I’m interested in taking it much farther.
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Service March 11, 2009
Posted by bodhidude in : Community, Relationship, Spirituality, Transformation, articles , 2comments
I’ve been working more lately with what it means to offer service, well really with what service actually means for me in practice. Service is a major part of my spiritual practice not only as a means of expressing my connection with others but also to express my gratitude for the incredible gifts I’ve received in my life and to give some of that back while reducing self-centeredness. I really had a limited idea of service up until recently imagining that it had to be some clear fixed activity that was labeled service and offered as such, something like volunteering for a charity or spiritual organization.
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Mindfulness Meditation and Transformation September 7, 2007
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, Spirituality, Transformation, articles , add a commentSince returning to the practice of counseling and therapy I’ve begun to develop an approach to working with people that uses mindfulness practice and meditation in a systematic way. Its begun to take shape as a four step process which first involves creating space for ourselves then using mindfulness to become aware of thoughts, feelings and behaviors. With this awareness the next aspect is identifying, accessing and feeling frozen or stuck emotional energy so as to release it. Following this, one is more able to connect with and access a deeper level of consciousness to find greater peace and happiness.
In order to get in touch with our experience in a more direct way I usually suggest to people that they create some sort of sacred space at home that they can use to spend quality time with themselves. Having a personal sacred space is a very powerful thing to create because it is a place to let go of the roles and dramas of everyday life and just be. This space should be peaceful and set to some degree away from the rest of the living space. It should be created with objects and images that remind one of peace and stillness and whatever one finds sacred. Creating it is a very personal experience. Once a sacred space has been created we can begin to spend time in it with ourselves, something much of our culture is designed to distract us from. This time initially should be unstructured without any kind of expectation or agenda and it can just be a regular time each day to be with ourselves. Here we can just sit and reflect or we can do some activity that grounds us and brings us peace but doesn’t distract us in a way that takes us away from the moment. Such an activity could be journaling, making art, listening to peaceful music or anything else that reflects who we are rather than who we should be. The creation and use of this kind of space is also a way to bring meaning back into our lives if we are feeling disconnected from ourselves and overwhelmed by life, it is a sanctuary.
Once a sacred space has been created and we have begun to spend some time in it each day we can introduce a mindfulness practice which is basically just being intentionally aware of what we are doing, thinking and feeling in the present moment. This sounds very simple but it can be quite challenging at first and also quite profound because we may not be aware of how much of our experience occurs unconsciously or without much awareness. If we are wanting to change our lives or experience we will not have much success doing that if the causes of our difficulties are unconscious so we need to start off by making more and more of our experience conscious. I usually ask people to start by being aware of their environment focusing on the sounds, smells, sights and sensations they experience as they sit in their personal space. Then we can add the body focusing on how our body feels and noticing all its nuances. Next we can start noticing our thoughts and feelings, the keyword here is noticing we just want to be aware of what’s happening at this point without judgment or shame regardless of the content. From here we can focus our awareness even more and bring it to something such as the breath.
Breathing meditation is a basic yet very powerful mindfulness practice. The breath is always available and is always connected to both the body and mind in the present moment. To practice breathing meditation we begin by sitting on a chair or cushion in a position that is comfortable but allows us to keep the back as straight as possible. Keeping the back straight enables our energies to flow more easily and aids in concentration however we can use support cushions or something else if needed because we want to balance that with comfort so we are not too distracted by pain. Once we have a comfortable sitting position we rest our hands in our lap or on our knees and tilt the head slightly forward while we rest our gaze on the floor a few feet in front of us. At this point we slowly bring our awareness from our environment to our body and try and let go of any tension we may be feeling. When we are ready we bring our awareness to our breath at first just being aware of the flow of the breath in and out. Next we pick a specific point to use to focus our attention. This could be the tip of the nose and the sensation of the air moving past it or it could be the rising and falling of the abdomen or some other area. The important thing is that you pick one place to pay attention to the breath that feels right to you and you stick with that place for the duration of the mediation.
To do the practice we now keep our attention on the breath at the place we chose. If we find it difficult or the breath too subtle to focus on we can mentally say “breathing in” when we breath in and “breathing out” when we breath out to help our awareness stay on the breath. Naturally our attention is going to wander and we will get distracted by thoughts, feelings and external distractions. This is perfectly normal so when we find that our attention has wandered from the breath we simply and gently place it back on the breath without any kind of judgment. This is a key part of the practice, focusing-realizing we are distracted-putting our attention back on the breath. Over time we will be able to remain focused for longer periods and the distractions will lose strength. When we have finished it is good to slowly allow ourselves to come out of the meditation by bringing our awareness back to our body in general and then to the environment and slowly rising from the cushion.
Initially it is good to do this practice for short periods of time and not to force the process but keep it light and gentle yet with intention. The most important thing with meditation practice is consistency; it is effective if its done regularly over a long period of time and the effects are cumulative. Ideally a short period everyday at the same time will eventually establish it as a pattern. You can work up to longer periods as you become used to the practice but its good to try and always finish a session when you still feel fresh so you will want to come back to it. One common misconception about this kind of meditation is that it is designed to help us stop thinking. This is not the case at all because directly trying to stop thinking is rarely effective and usually results in frustration. Instead we allow ourselves to have any thoughts or feelings that come up without any judgment. We however don’t give them our attention; instead we place our attention on the breath while the mind continues to do what it will. If we get distracted we return to the breath. Over time thoughts and other internal distractions will slow down on their own due to the lack of attention paid to them. Another obstacle people commonly run into is feeling like they can’t do the practice because of the state of mind they are in. If one is feeling angry or anxious its easy to feel like we can’t meditate or like we can’t sit still but this is often because we feel like we need to change our state of mind or we have judgment on ourselves for feeling such things. When these states of mind come up the solution is to accept them and allow them to arise, we simply practice where we are without trying to change it.
Once we have begun doing mindfulness practice and developing our concentration by focusing on the breath or some other object we can use that skill to go more deeply into our experience. In the practice we will begin to notice what’s happening in the mind, our thought processes and emotional patterns. Often people especially struggle with certain emotions that cause them suffering or discomfort such as depression, anger or anxiety. These emotional patterns can be caused by past traumas, conditioning and experiences that created an emotional response that was not fully felt and healed. We all carry such stuck emotional energy and it usually exists buried in the unconscious where it wreaks havoc on our experience and health without our conscious control. In my view, emotional energy is a free flowing aspect of life in the moment. It is energy that needs to flow freely as we engage life and have emotional experiences generated by it. If we carry significant amounts of stuck or frozen emotional energy the free flow is blocked and we are not able to fully experience life but rather we consistently re-experience the stuck emotional pattern. Our resistance to feeling these so called negative emotions openly is what keeps them stuck as does our judgment and shame for having them. We continually re-solidify them in this process rather than releasing them.
In our practice when we are feeling negative emotions we can apply our meditation technique to them in such a way as to facilitate their release. We do this by first being aware of the emotion using mindfulness. Then we give the emotion space and permission to fully arise while we make it the focus on our meditation practice much the way we did with the breath. We place our awareness on the emotion we are experiencing and allow it to arise fully. As we begin to feel it we can bring consciousness to the experience by understanding we are intentionally inviting the emotion to arise and seeking to release it. The only way to release it however is to fully allow ourselves to feel it and cease labeling it as problematic. During this process it is also important to bring in compassion for ourselves by realizing that we are human and feeling this hurts and that it’s natural for us to have these reactions but we don’t have to hold onto them anymore. In this way we can begin to more fully and openly feel our experience and break through the pattern of avoiding feeling certain unpleasant emotions while we chase after and try to grab onto pleasant ones. It becomes a process of accepting what is in the moment and allowing it to flow.
As we develop more mindfulness and awareness and learn to openly feel our experience allowing it to be what it is we can begin to access a deeper level of consciousness. This level of consciousness you could call your higher self, or inner nature or your truth. Whatever you label it, it is a deep level of consciousness that is unaffected by external situations and by internal states of mind. Its nature is clarity, joy, power and peace. This is the internal ground of being and is the ultimate source of happiness described in all the major religions and mystical systems. Ultimately this is what we need to get in touch with to find happiness, freedom and peace because the source of those things is within us and not generated by anyone or anything externally. By practicing mindfulness and meditation and learning to focus our awareness and by clearing away emotional baggage we open the door to this level of being because it is always there in the moment if we can learn to pay attention properly. The more we cultivate it the more power we will realize in our life and the more we will be able to create what we want and realize our full potential.
Contemplative Dream Integration January 29, 2007
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, articles , add a comment
In working with dreams both my own and with others I have begun to use a technique I call contemplative dream integration. I’ve been paying attention to dreams and their content for some time now but recently I have sought to work with them in a slightly different way.
From my perspective dreams (except lucid dreams) function at a subconscious level and reveal important information as to what is happening deep within our psyche both at a personal unconscious level and at a broader collective unconscious level. Given the level of consciousness from which most (not all) dreams originate, they usually cannot be interpreted literally nor can the greatest meaning be derived from them using conceptual analysis. This is because dreams take place at level of mind that is deeper than our usual rational conceptual conscious experience. Dreams communicate meaning in a symbolic language where symbols are infused with meaning that is specific to the context of the individuals life experience. There are many universal symbols found within dreams that are common among many individuals and even across cultures but they still need to be examined within the context of the individuals experience and this is most effectively done in my opinion using contemplative techniques.
The goal of my work with dreams is to access the symbolic experiential meaning they contain and bring that into conscious awareness so that it can be integrated and used to unfold deeper processes. The way I go about doing this is by doing a kind of dream meditation that is done immediately upon waking. If I have a powerful dream and wake up with it fresh in my mind I immediately get up and sit in meditation and take the dream as the object or focus of my meditation. I sit with the still fresh experience of the dream and hold the experience in my mind without thinking about it conceptually or trying to analyze it. I tend to specifically focus on any powerful symbols and feelings or emotions involved with the dream. The idea here is to really sit with the raw experience of the dream in all its richness. Sitting with the dream in this way allows the unconscious experience of the dream to be mixed with the now conscious aware mind. By sitting with the dream experientially and holding it in my mind there is space for the symbolic meaning to speak to me which often leads to realizations and epiphanies.
I find this approach far more effective than waking up and thinking about the dream or immediately writing it down because these techniques engage the conceptual mind which I find can drown out the deeper symbolic meaning of the dream. The time of waking up presents a unique opportunity because the dream experience and all its images, feelings and concepts are still fresh in ones mind and so they can be brought into awareness so that the unconscious meaning can be integrated into conscious awareness. Later more conceptual or analytical work can be done with the dream experience to more fully integrate it. This process seems to be most useful with powerful, repetitive or otherwise intense dreams that seem to have something to teach us. Dreams are a powerful aspect of our minds and they provide a deep realm of experience for us to work with if we are interested in using them that way.
The Fluidity of Feeling January 16, 2007
Posted by bodhidude in : Psychology, articles , add a comment
Feelings and emotions are amazing aspects of life as a human being and they can take on qualities that are extremely blissful to experience as well as qualities that are extremely painful to experience. But what is it really that differentiates a pleasant feeling from an unpleasant one other than mind itself? In my practice and in my life I’ve come to see emotion as simply being the energy of raw aliveness. A constantly flowing, moving energy that comes from being fully engaged with ourselves and the world, being fully open and alive. We remain in a healthy state as long as this energy is allowed to flow freely. The times when I feel this energy flowing freely are the times when I’ve surrendered to my humanity and allowed the experiences of life to touch me deeply without resistance. I experience this free flowing energy as a constant exchange between me and the universe.
But why is it that so many of us have such a hard time feeling openly? In my experience I’ve come to see it as processes of grasping and resisting that freeze or solidify the normally free flowing fluid energy of feeling causing blockages and obstructions. We tend to grasp at emotional experiences we label as pleasant or positive and try to hold onto them not realizing the impermanence of the world we live in. We also tend to resist or push away emotional experiences we label as negative or unpleasant and avoid experiencing them because they feel threatening to us. Both of these patterns interrupt the flow of natural aliveness and create blockages. These blockages not only obstruct the free flow of energy but they get frozen in the unconscious mind from which they impact us in unhealthy ways including fueling destructive habitual patterns. Of course I think we all go through the process of dealing with our emotions in this way, its part of being human however what I’ve really come to understand is that the process of obstructing our emotional experience is one that we can change.
The ways that I have come to work with emotional obstructions are through processing them both contemplatively and experientially. In order to work with these obstructions however we need to get in touch with them and that’s usually easiest to do when they are triggered in some way. When an emotional pattern is activated I find that it can help to first have awareness of the fact that its activated because just the aspect of having that awareness presents the opportunity to work with it rather than react from it. Here one can contemplate the experience of the emotional pattern and try to unravel it to discover what is underlying the process. I have had to work with an emotional pattern of anxiety centered around my relationship partners which manifested as a fear of losing them and so contemplating it I would eventually get beyond just the experience of anxiety and see that underneath it was a fear of abandonment (a pattern from childhood) and going even further it was a fear of aloneness or being with myself (disconnection from the self) and ultimately a fear of loss of self (who am I really?). The point is our emotional patterns have many layers so it can help to begin to peel back the layers and work with what we find at each level. It can also help to do this sort of processing with a partner which could be a counselor, significant other or friend. Often it is other people who trigger our emotional patterns so if we have a person who is open and self-reflective enough we may have an opportunity to go into it with them. This has been the case for me with my anxiety because my last partner triggered it very powerfully so rather than react negatively toward her for “making” me feel this way I eventually decided to take advantage of her gift of shining a light on my stuck place and work on it with her help. I’ve found group work particularly effective with this as well as having the reflection of a group of people when you share a painful process can allow different aspects of it to be mirrored back, different people can pick up different voices for you.
The other way to work with these emotional patterns is experientially and I believe that in order to fully release them we need to get to this stage because if these patterns are essentially frozen feelings that we didn’t allow ourselves to experience we can only release them by fully opening up to them. For me this process has entailed doing the exact opposite of what we normally want to do with unpleasant emotions. Instead of running away or distracting ourselves, going into them when they come up and really allowing ourselves to fully and openly feel the emotion. We’re not doing this with the conceptual mind (not thinking about the emotion or experience) but rather from a purely experiential perspective. We’re just sitting with the feeling and giving it both permission and space to arise fully into our experience. When we resist an emotion we are not giving ourselves permission to feel it and when we distract ourselves from feeling we are not creating the space for the emotion to arise. This for me was initially terrifying but it became less so over time because I realized that the worst part of my anxiety was all the stories my mind had made up around it and actually just feeling the raw emotion wasn’t so bad and in fact it would arise and dissipate on its own if I would just let it be. Having a contemplative practice such as meditation really helps with this because it teaches us to sit with our mind and be in the present moment with it without judgment.
The amazing thing about doing this kind of work is that when you can really face, process and release emotional patterns it frees you in incredible ways to more fully experience life and be touched by your experience not to mention taking the power out of destructive habitual patterns that may be causing all kinds of problems. You can begin to welcome experience both good and bad and see it as part of this beautiful impermanent universe which we are all intimate parts of. You can truly flow with life again.
The delusions of science and materialism October 15, 2006
Posted by bodhidude in : Society, articles , add a commentOur society is mired in a materialistic paradigm that has degenerated into something of a pseudo-religion among its most fanatical adherents. Science is a double-edged sword in our society today in my view. It has allowed us to advance our understanding of the physical world to a great degree and create a highly advanced technology that stretches across most or all areas of knowledge. However it has also had a very destructive effect as well. The materialistic approach and its underlying beliefs have brought the planet and humankind itself to the edge of destruction. Our material worldview has blinded us to seeing the earth as a living breathing life supporting organism and instead systematically stripped it of its resources and polluted its atmosphere to a point where its ability to function to sustain life is being compromised. Our materialistic views of our bodies and health have caused us to reject natural medicine and adopt a drug culture where we regularly poison ourselves with synthetic chemicals that alter our body’s functions in ways we don’t fully understand. We add chemicals to our food and genetically engineer plants and animals while we destroy the biodiversity of the planet and create a new set of diseases never before seen in human history. Our worldview and technology create such a rigid and intense relationship to time that we find ourselves living in a world where stress and stress related diseases are the norm and we seldom have time to really take care of ourselves. The meaning that our forefathers found in all aspects of their world has been stripped away by a cold materialistic understanding and created a crisis of meaning where peoples attempts to find meaning become convoluted and destructive. In my view this is in large part due to a fanatical attachment to the materialistic worldview.
This fanaticism causes us to adopt this worldview and accept it as the only valid approach to understanding the universe and our own consciousness. The problem is this worldview is flawed. The scientific approach itself is nothing more than a belief system; all of its supporting constructs function only within its limited version of reality. It is a man made approach that seeks to find meaning by imagining that we can understand the universe by measuring it. Science makes an assumption or accepts a belief that material reality is all that exists and that is something it must do. If we approach something scientifically we also know that we are approaching that subject from a materialist point of view. However we have no evidence that the material world is all that exists, actually we have a great deal of evidence that there is much more to the universe than that. This evidence comes from other ways of knowing. There is nothing wrong with looking at something from a materialistic point of view until you mistake that for all of reality because then you have become trapped a rigid incomplete viewpoint. Science makes many assumptions and accepts many beliefs just like non-scientific approaches. The belief in a totally materialistic universe is one of them. The belief in objective truth is another and it’s a concept that creates serious flaws in the scientific approach. There is no such thing as an objective observer; this has been shown in studies in quantum physics and psychology as well as being known to the mystical traditions for thousands of years. The consciousness or mind of the observer influences the outcome of the experiment by virtue of the observer’s observation and bias. The objectivity that science relies on is impossible because that’s not the way human beings or the universe function. Our experience of the universe co-creates it. Science also assumes that measurement, quantification and reductionism are the ways to understanding. While this may be the case with some phenomena there is no reason to make this assumption across the board. Much of the universe and human consciousness is complex and qualitative and the very act of reducing it to fit our limited viewpoint also destroys meaning.
The materialistic paradigm has had the effect of putting blinders on our society. It’s like looking at the universe through a keyhole. I see this approach deteriorating and falling apart at this point and I think we need to retain our scientific understanding but put it in perspective and integrate it within a new more expansive paradigm where we see the materialistic approach as one of many ways to see reality all of which have their own flavor of validity. In this way we can deepen our connection to ourselves and the universe and find much of the meaning we have lost.
What is real? July 14, 2006
Posted by bodhidude in : Spirituality, articles , add a commentA friend of mine wrote an article entitled “the stuff of which dreams are made” (see www.awakeninthedream.com) and in it he is pointing out how our waking life experience is literally not unlike a dream. When we are asleep and having a night dream what we are experiencing is being generated by our minds and usually we do not know we are dreaming while we are in it. Because we don’t know we’re dreaming we experience the dream environment as real and react to it. If we learn to practice lucid dreaming and learn to “wake up” in the dream we can become aware that we are dreaming and change our relationship to the dream. We no longer need to see it as real and we can affect the process of the dream, in other words, dream up a new dream or just experience what we are dreaming without being carried away by it. This is possible because the dream originates from our own minds.
However what most don’t realize is that our waking life experience is really very much the same although it certainly seems more real and solid than a night dream. This is so because our experience of waking reality is just as much generated by our minds as the night dream experience. We know two very important things from perceptual psychology. One is that of all that exists in the environment we can only perceive a tiny fraction. We can only perceive the parts of our environment that our five senses can detect and we know scientifically that there is far more to the environment than what we perceive. Further, even among the types of stimuli that we can perceive we only perceive a small piece. For example, we can detect light with our eyes but only a small portion of the total spectrum of light. So there is much more to the physical environment than we can perceive. This fact points out that our reality is only a small part of a much larger reality. The other important point here is that even what we do perceive, we do not experience directly. Our senses convert what they detect into electrical impulses, which are then sent to the brain to be perceived. These electrical impulses are not the actual environment but they are what we perceive so perception is indirect.
Perception or experience of the environment and actually of our inner process as well takes place subjectively. When the brain receives electrical impulses from the five senses as well as the mental experience it interprets these signals and creates a picture of reality, which we take to be more or less real. But this is not reality; it is our version of it or our interpretation of it. We are all different physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually so how we interpret what we experience and how we generate our version of reality is going to be different.
In Tibetan Buddhism it is also pointed out that our experience is generated by mind. We experience our outer and inner environment and our mind creates labels to identify and interact with things. These labels we take to be real phenomena. For example, I have the label Colin for myself. What is Colin? Colin is a constantly changing collection of many things including this body, my unique past experience, thoughts, feelings, ideas etc. Colin is just a label for this constantly changing impermanent set of stuff and I’m the only one who perceives myself in this way. Those that know me also use the label Colin but their version of Colin is very different from mine, its based on their experience of me from their perspective. This is the case with all labels of everything we experience, they are not inherently real but we take them to be most of the time and so we get into conflict with people because we don’t realize that they see things from their perspective which is different than ours. There is certainly overlap and agreement in how we all see the world but only to a point because no two people see anything exactly the same way, its not possible for them to.
Because our experience is so dependent on mind, it is very much like a dream. In the same way as with lucid dreaming, if we can become aware of how we experience reality and how we co-create it we can become lucid in the waking dream of life, which empowers us immensely because we can consciously recreate our experience of the dream in relationship with our intentions and happiness. If we are not aware of these processes then we can only react and interact with the world based on assumptions which don’t stand up to analysis. We’re like dreamers terrified of a monster which we don’t realize is an illusion and so we run and scream as it appears to chase us. This creates havoc, pain and chaos. If we realize the illusory nature of reality we can create and maintain a much greater and more stable piece of mind and we will be able to share that with others to create a more peaceful world.