Nine of us gathered around for today's session of deep thinking. We listened to the second part of The Science of Near Death Experience. Dr. van Lommel, lead investigator for the prospective NDE study published in 2001 in The Lancet, now devotes himself full time to research on the NDE and the mind-brain relationship. During the 2006 IANDS Conference, he presented "On the Continuity of Consciousness."
Dr. van Lommel graduated in 1971 from the University of Utrecht and finished his specialization in cardiology in 1976. He worked from 1977-2003 as a cardiologist in The Netherlands' Hospital Rijnstate, an 800-bed teaching hospital.
After that we had a break although the subject never changed. then we read and discussed the:
What Is Your Relationship With This Moment?
A "moment" is of course an idea of the mind where it looks at reality in a "time based" manner, but it's useful to use this idea to understand your relationship with your life. Your moment to moment relationship with life is what accumulates into your life experience. If you sense that you are in a state of conflict, with the present moment, during most of your waking state, it's a given that your experience of life presently is one of lack, frustration, struggle and strain. When you start shifting your relationship with each moment, into one of peace/joy/love, you will see your reality shifting towards one of well-being, abundance and ease automatically. The truth is evident, but the mind finds it difficult to put into practice.
How to change your relationship with this moment?
At this moment, just take the time to sense your inner space. What exactly is going on within you? What are the thoughts your mind is occupied with, what are the feelings passing through your body? Your thoughts are indicative of your relationship with life (which is always this moment) and your feelings are just an "indication" of how this relationship shows up in experience. When your relationship with life is one of alignment you feel good in your body, and when you are in conflict with life it feels bad in your body. The feelings in your body work as a "truth meter" to tell you what your relationship with the present moment is.
When you bring Awareness into your inner space, you now have the choice to make a shift in your relationship with this moment. Only through awareness/self-observation can you detect the negative thought patterns that operate in your mind, some of them so deeply embedded that you take them to be the truth. Remember that negativity/negative thinking is always in conflict with the movement of life (life is pure positive energy), and hence will always create suffering in you. Awareness of negativity is enough to bring forth a transformation, because awareness by itself is a transformative agent.
Whenever you sense that you are in a state of conflict (indicated by negative feelings), bring awareness to the thoughts in your mind. Just bringing in this awareness is enough to cause a "dis-identification" with the negative thought movement, and it creates an invitation for the intelligence of life to take over. Staying in this state of awareness will bring in a space of silence/peace, and it prevents your attention from being dragged into believing the negative thought cycle of your mind. This shifts your relationship with the present moment from one of conflict to one of peace/alignment. Awareness always brings you in harmony with the present moment.
