17 May 2013

Eight of us today and we started with an old video made for the BBC of Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) a German philosopher best known for his book, The World as Will and Representation, in which he claimed that our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction. They all thought he was too sad burdened by his experience attending an English school. His philosophy too bleak to be helpful but he did hint that the nothing contained an inexpressible something. Being perhaps. After some delicious cakes baked by Janet we went on to read the following. This they all enjoyed   

What Are We Trying To Fill?

April 3, 2013 by Elina

If you are human, you probably know that we have been conditioned to want to “fill” all the time. Emptiness often scares us. When our life falls apart, a common reaction is to quickly want to fill it up again, or rely on waiting for the future to find fulfilment there. When our lives are stable, when we have what we so-called “wanted,” we still can feel a void after a short while. Or when there isn’t much content in our present moment; we often try to fill it up with thoughts like “I’m bored” and reach out for something to do. So what’s the issue?

If we recognize ourselves in this first paragraph, let’s admit it: part of us feels “unhappy”. By that I mean the part of us that needs filling is somewhat unfulfilled, or else it wouldn’t need filling! If you are completely at peace within yourself and nothing could bring you down, then this article isn’t for you! But I know I’m not 100% there, so in a way I’m writing this for myself and anyone else feeling that certain aspects of themselves need attention. It’s okay to acknowledge moments when we feel unhappiness or lack. It isn’t “bad”, it’s just an emotion that is shedding light on what we need to acknowledge and investigate only for the purpose of freeing ourselves more and more.

Have you noticed how this “unhappy” self prefers thinking about life’s content, rather than experiencing life itself? This is an important realization, because it brings to our awareness that instead of living life in a state of inner freedom, we often “invest” our well being and sense of security in external content, other beings or thoughts of what would finally make us feel complete. We sometimes mistake this for love or purpose, but the core of it is actually attachment: the fear of separation.

The fear of separation seems to be a core wound within humanity’s collective subconscious because of all the years we have believed we were everything but one with Love – everything but whole. We began to see ourselves as a separate, weak individual that needs to be filled by something to have substance or value. Great experience! But quite illusory. We have forgotten who we are: a spiritual being at one with all of existence, having a human experience.

Since we’ve forgotten all about our true nature for quite some time, fear arose in our minds. “We can die! We can be lost forever! We need stuff to feel alive, someone to feel connected.” So there you have it: our “unhappy” self feels disconnected from being and therefore must feel like it’s doing or at least gaining something. It wants to survive. It is programmed to avoid feeling emptiness because it felt threatened by it, it knows it cannot exist there.

So what does this “unhappy” self have to do maintain a life of its own? It creates stories – whether it be miserable stories or comforting stories – for YOU to identify with them. Without us identifying with these stories and choosing to believe them, they simply come and they go.

“We are identifying with what is passing so fear comes. We are trying to make steady and permanent what is by nature impermanent.” – Mooji

This is about getting back to LIFE, the very core is this moment, the aliveness of who you are. Forget about content for a second and breathe in life! 

We can tell the mind to relax now. We are safe. Why? Because we don’t need to be! Sure, our bodies and minds are impermanent, but we are the BEING within the body, the consciousness experiencing itself through a physical vessel. The mind is simply the awesome tool through which we explore and create within the playground. We can be pals with it, but we don’t need to completely identify with it until we forget about our own being!

“Remember how spacious, creative and free you felt as a child at play? That is the space of no-mind, the space of being.” – Your Soul

I’m writing this as a message to myself and all of you, to remind us that we don’t have to escape “the void” anymore. The void is beautiful, it is our own presence. We can relax in our presence and sit with whatever we are feeling whether it is comfortable or not. We often are afraid to go within because we might find old baggage along the way that we are reluctant to let go of. We might feel like we are “losing” ourselves. But in truth, we are simply letting go of what we are not. We can now stop trying to control everything by thinking it through. No matter where the flow takes us, it will lead us to the perfect environment for us to acknowledge and dissolve our own limitations and create space for this higher dimension of consciousness to shine through. It is time to get back in the driver’s seat, not by taking control, but by letting go of the one that is trying to control everything and “fill” what needs no filling in the first place! Once we do that, it literally feels like you will be taking your first real breath of fresh air in a long time.

19th April 2013

Only five of us today with most off on the group on walking holiday. But nevertheless there was  a lot of discussion about many things including politics. We looked at a video of a banned TED video on one man's interpretation of reality. Then we looked at this a compilation of views.

Are You Always Racing To The Next Moment?

April 4, 2013 by Elina

If you are like me, you may be faced with choices which represent an uncertain future. Big whoop, life is uncertain and that’s the whole point of the adventure! That’s what the heart says, but often times, the mind is used to want a guarantee of something that “makes sense” before taking a step, or try to overanalyze with “shoulds and shouldn’ts”. Am I too impulsive? Should I take my time? Is it going to work? I didn’t plan to take this move! Or maybe nothing is presenting in your life and you’re freaking out about being stuck here forever. The thinking mind may try to take charge, but whether or not you are in the process of making choices, remember this:

Step-by-step, moment by moment. You don’t need to know what the next step is going to look like before taking the first one, you don’t need to know anything about the future because it doesn’t exist. It is to be created moment by moment, and is always aligned with what you need for your evolution anyways. All you need to is be in the moment of whatever step you are taking NOW, and be fluid with whatever new options will present when the time comes. Stress and tension is nothing but the unconscious state of wanting to escape or rid ourselves of the moment we are currently in, or cling on to our comfort zones because of a scary movie we play out in our minds of how difficult the future may be. Anticipation is also a form of stress, but we instead attach a positive polarity to the end goal and therefore become so focused on the “grand prize” that we forget all about accepting and living fully in the present.

Forget about future thinking, past dwelling or obsessive anticipation; you’re making it all up. Here & Now is the only place you’ll ever be in, so why pretend you are not? Why live in an imaginary “there” when you are here?

Learning to Hope by Daisaku Ikeda

Optimists and pessimists inhabit different worlds, reacting to the same circumstances in completely different ways. Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, identifies three characteristics of pessimistic thinking. He describes these in his fascinating book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.

The first is permanence. This means regarding temporary, passing events as lasting and unchanging states. For example, your boss berates you about something. You react by thinking, “I really hate her,” and you go on from there to think of all the things you don’t like about your boss. Your boss’ reprimand is a single, passing event, but you turn it into something permanent, by thinking, “She’s always like that. She’s not going to change.” On the other hand, the optimistic person thinks, “The boss is in a bad mood today. She must have something on her mind,” limiting the event to that day and not extending it any further.

The second characteristic is pervasiveness. When one thing goes wrong, a pessimist thinks that everything is bad. This is like thinking that you can’t handle any school subject just because math is hard for you. When someone points out a mistake to a person with this attitude, they think, “I’m no good. I can’t do anything,” and become dejected instead of simply thinking that here is something that has to be fixed. Individuals like this think that their very worth as a person has been denied. A single spot grows into a huge black cloud filling their mind. They lose confidence and make more mistakes, creating a downward spiral.

The third characteristic of pessimism is personalization. That is, thinking that anything bad that happens is your fault and anything good must be credited to other people or to chance. For example, when an optimistic athlete or team loses a game, they think, “You win some, you lose some” or “The other team was really on top of their game today.” They don’t simply blame the loss on themselves. But when a pessimistic athlete loses, they think, “I’ve lost my concentration, I let so many good ones go by,” or “With hitting like that, we’ll never win.” When two teams are of the same level in ability, explains Dr. Seligman, the optimistic team is more likely to win.

Of course, we can’t lose sight of reality and, in an extreme version of optimism, cheerfully blame everything bad that happens on others. However, pessimism causes us to criticize ourselves needlessly.

 When I met with Dr. Seligman during his visit to Japan in 1997, I expressed my thoughts on his views. The mind, I noted, is a wondrous thing. As Milton wrote inParadise Lost, “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Buddhism teaches that the quality of our lives ultimately depends upon our state of mind. Buddhism is a psychology of hope, and hope is my favorite word. Nodding in agreement, Dr. Seligman leaned his large frame toward me and said: “Optimism is hope. It is not the absence of suffering. It is not always being happy and fulfilled. It is the conviction that though one may fail or have a painful experience somewhere, sometime, one can take action to change things.”

According to Dr. Seligman, optimistic people are more likely to succeed at work and in personal relationships. They are healthier and live longer. He notes that the impact of our attitude on health becomes more pronounced from the mid-forties on.

Dr. Seligman’s theories are based on the idea that people can change. By changing our way of thinking, we can change our lives. During our discussion, Dr. Seligman commented that psychology after World War II was mostly concerned with those who had profound psychological problems. He explained, however, that he aspired for what he called a “positive psychology”—one that gives people courage, hope and strength.

Dr. Seligman confesses that he himself was a pessimist by nature; he had to learn to be optimistic. When he was only 13, his father suffered a series of debilitating strokes that left him paralyzed. His father lost all hope and plunged into a terrible sense of helplessness. He remained in that state until his death several years later. Seeing this, Dr. Seligman says he decided to investigate what it is that makes people feel powerless and whether there might be some way to overcome these feelings.

Perhaps because he was originally motivated by these sad events, Dr. Seligman’s scholarship is imbued with a warm humanity, the noble aim of helping others. His “psychological revolution,” based on a deep confidence in the positive potential of human beings, has been called by some the most important development in psychology since Freud.

Dr. Seligman emphasizes the need to become aware of the explanations we make for events, the unconscious dialogue we conduct within ourselves when we run up against some kind of problem. We tend not to notice the quirks in our own thinking because over the years they have become habitual.

One method Dr. Seligman suggests for people to become aware of these thought habits is to write down what we are thinking to ourselves when we encounter some minor frustrating situation. If we find that we tend to react to events pessimistically, we can practice “disputing” our own negative beliefs to overcome that tendency. For example, let’s say you rang and left a message for your friend to call you, but he doesn’t return your call. People with pessimistic thought habits will explain the situation to themselves by thinking, “He must be ignoring me.” When the conversation is just between us and ourselves, we seem to be ready to believe the worst. This is why learning to objectively dispute your own negative beliefs can be helpful: “As a matter of fact, he’s always been nice to me. He wouldn’t ignore me. He said he was having a busy week.”Or you could try saying to yourself: “Even if he is ignoring me, what about it? I can’t be perfect in everything and not everyone is going to like me all the time. Whatever others may think, I’m doing my best. I’m going to give myself credit for trying at least!”

Dr. Seligman says we should practice this kind of optimistic thinking, inscribing optimistic phrases in our minds. Prayer or meditation can also engrain positive habits of mind. Once we have acquired the skill of being optimistic, it’s a lot like learning to swim or ride a bicycle.

15th March

Low numbers today just six of us but we covered quite a few things starting with an image of a ballerina turning round and round first one way then the other but it depended on who was looking as our brains changed the direction without any clue as to why for we all saw the change at  different times.

I told the good news that beingness or being in the now reduces the cell's telomeres reduction giving us a longer life.

Telomeres have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces because they prevent chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would scramble an organism's genetic information to cause cancer, other diseases or death.

Yet, each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. When they get too short, the cell no longer can divide and becomes inactive or "senescent" or dies. This process is associated with aging, cancer and a higher risk of death. So telomeres also have been compared with a bomb fuse.

Afterwards we watched a video of a neuroscientist who died and flew away on a butterfly into the stars in a field of love. Sounds good to me - we then discussed the possibility that the universe is struggling to understand itself through us and maybe behind all of us the watcher is the same just the ego mind is different. No need for a creator, it just is, and is baffled as we are. Something to think about.

After our break for tea and biscuits we read the following a mixture from various web sites.

The Mirror

Two weeks ago, I noticed a small advertisement in the local newspaper. Someone called Gangaji was speaking in my town. I had never heard of Gangaji. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word. Apart from the vaguely spiritual context of the ad, I had no idea what she represented, let alone what she would say.
Gangaji was radiant. I have rarely seen anyone with such love and compassion. Once, when a woman in front of her was fighting tears, she did not try to fill the silence with words, instead she just smiled at the woman. It was a huge smile, wider than a dawn, and it was the right smile.
Unlike the woman in tears and the other three who went forward, I did not volunteer. I had no desire to be a centre of attention and no burning question. I was there to listen. But Gangaji clearly thought otherwise; when there was no one else on the stage, she looked directly at me and beckoned.
“You have a question,” she said.
I was startled. I looked around at my neighbours, back to Gangaji, and said, “Who? Me?” (Okay, call me slow on the uptake.)
“Yes, you,” she smiled. “Would you like to join me up here.”
“Okay,” I said. I went up there, I sat on her right, I talked with her in front of the crowd.
I did think of a question to ask her, which she answered. But that’s not what stayed in my memory. It’s what followed. I was so captivated by her presence that I said, “I know what I want… I want the look in my eye to be like the look in your eye.”
To my astonishment and the crowd’s amusement, she chuckled, produced a mirror (!!!), and thrust it in front of my face, forcing me to look at myself.
“But you do have that already,” she said. “See for yourself.”
No, I’m not planning to parade as the next Gangaji. In fact, as I left the stage, I was puzzled. Her manner suggested more than stage playfulness… there was serious intent there. What was she really saying to me? What was the point? Well, now I have to laugh at myself. How could I have missed it? It took my friend Tom Newnam in Philadelphia, to take off my blindfold with an email. His words, summarised: What you saw in Gangaji is not only who she is, but also who you are.
Of course, of course. In admiring Gangaji, I was primed to see—in her—the best in myself. We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. We don’t see people as they are; we see people as we are. She didn’t say that in words, but it’s what she was telling me. More to the point, she made me feel it.
Could there be a finer illustration of the second universal truth: that your life is your mirror. How extraordinary that she actually held up a mirror. How subtle, how playful, how mischievous. (And how startling… did she have that mirror ready?)
Had you or anyone else expressed the same desire as me, she could have made the same reply.



Turn it around. When 100 people look at you, they each see a different version of you: the version that best reflects them, their beliefs and aspirations. It’s not you that affects them, but their version of you. Not one of those 100 versions is the real you. So who is the real you? You’ll only find the answer by looking into the looking glass that is your life – yes, that life which seems to happen to you, but is really created by you. In this incarnation, your life, and everything and everyone in it, is you. Literally. The universe is not objective, it is subjective.
On the face of it, that stretches credibility. You could, for example, be in a coal mine one day and a cruise ship the next; so you might ask, How could I change so much overnight? But your physical surroundings are only the shallowest reflection of you. Instead, look to your relationships, the events you attract, and the attitudes you take with you from one place to another.
Here’s some Sufi wisdom,
Once upon a time, somewhere between the mountain peaks and the shores of the azure sea, there was a village in which there dwelt a Sufi master renowned for his wisdom. One day, a stranger entered the village, and immediately looked for the master to ask advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?”
And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?” “Ah,” said the visitor angrily. “They are terrible people. They are robbers, cheats and liars. They stab each other in the back.” “Well now,” said the Sufi master. “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.” So the man departed the village and was never seen there again. Soon, another stranger entered the village, and he too sought the Sufi master for advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?” And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?” “Ah,” said the visitor in fond remembrance, “They are wonderful people. They’re kind, gentle and compassionate. They look after each other.” “Well now,” said the Sufi master, “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.”
You do, most comprehensively, take your mirror with you wherever you go. You want to find yourself? You don’t have to go anywhere. You want happiness? You don’t have to wait. There’s joy to be had, even in the difficult times.
I have Gangaji to thank for the reminder. And also for the moment when she looked around at the audience during a silence, and said softly, “It’s all so very simple.”
“I have known good and evil,
Sin and virtue, right and wrong;
I have judged and been judged;
I have passed through birth and death,
Joy and sorrow, heaven and hell;
And in the end I realized
That I am in everything
And everything is in me.”
(Hazrat Inayat Khan) 

What are the oddes that you exist, as you, today?

It is the probability of 2 million people getting together (about eight times the population of Southampton) each to play a game of dice with a trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice and all come up with the exact same number – for example 550,343,279,001

Answer Zero

Carl Jung said, there is no coming to consciousness without pain. We need, it seems, the experience of pain and suffering in order to go beyond it. Mindless creatures do not experience emotional suffering as we do… simply because they have no ego-mind with which to do so.  Many animals, of course, have a level of conscious awareness that allows them to experience a wide range of emotions – more than some (damaged) humans in fact.

February 2013

We watched short video of Louise Hay now in her eighties but still alert and full of hope for the future still encountering the odd boulder in life's pathway.
After a discussion about this and an exploration of what is the thinking process and as to where it takes place we stopped for tea and biscuits.
Afterwards we read this article on giving up other people's business.


LET GO OF CONTROL: HOW TO LEARN THE ART OF SURRENDER
This is a contribution by Dr. Amy Johnson
“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” ~Proverb
I’ve noticed that things go much more smoothly when I give up control—when I allow them to happen instead of making them happen. Unfortunately, I’m terrible at this.
Although I’m much better than I used to be, I’m a bit of a control freak. I often use perfectly good energy trying to plan, predict, and prevent things that I cannot possibly plan, predict, or prevent. For example, I wonder if my baby is going to get a proper nap when we travel and, if not, just how crabby she might be. I think through her travel and napping patterns, attempting to figure out exactly what we’re up against, as if her sleep is something I can control.
I also think about the weather a lot when out-of-town guests are visiting. I spend my already-limited time planning for every possible weather/mood combination when considering our itinerary.
Like most humans I know, I spend a lot of time in business that’s not mine. The baby’s business, my friends’ business, Mother Nature’s business.
As a recovering control freak, there are three things I know for sure about trying to control things:
1. We try to control things because of what we think will happen if we don’t.
In other words, control is rooted in fear.
2. Control is also a result of being attached to a specific outcome—an outcome we’re sure is best for us, as if we always know what’s best.
When we trust that we’re okay no matter what circumstances come our way, we don’t need to micro-manage the universe. We let go. And we open ourselves to all sorts of wonderful possibilities that aren’t there when we’re attached to one “right” path.
3. The energy of surrender accomplishes much more than the energy of control.
I suspect it’s slightly different for everyone, but here’s what ‘control mode’ looks and feels like for me:  My vision gets very narrow and focused, my breath is shallow, adrenaline is pumping and my heart rate increases.
My mind shifts from topic to topic and from past to future very quickly, and I have little concentration, poor memory, and almost no present-moment awareness.
In surrender mode, I’m calm, peaceful. Breathing deeply, present in the moment. I see clearly and my vision extends out around me, allowing me to (literally) see the bigger picture.
So the great irony is that attempting to control things actually feels less in control.When I’m micro-managing and obsessing over details, I know I’m in my own way.
 The Art of Surrender
Surrender literally means to stop fighting. Stop fighting with yourself. Stop fighting the universe and the natural flow of things. Stop resisting and pushing against reality.
Surrender = Complete acceptance of what is + Faith that all is well, even without my input.
It’s not about inaction. It’s about taking action from that that place of surrender energy.
If letting go of control and surrendering not only feel better, but actually produce better results, how do we do that?
Sometimes it’s as easy as noticing that you’re in control mode and choosing to let go—consciously and deliberately shifting into surrender energy.
For example, when I become aware that I’m in control mode, I imagine that I’m in a small canoe paddling upstream, against the current. It’s hard. It’s a fight. That’s what control mode feels like to me.
When I choose to let go and surrender, I visualize the boat turning around, me dropping the oars, and floating downstream.
I’m being gently pulled, no effort necessary on my part. Simply breathing and saying, “Let go of the oars” is usually enough to get me there.
Sometimes it’s a little harder to make the shift from control to surrender. Here are a few questions that can help:
1. What am I afraid will happen if I let go of control?
When you pinpoint the fear, question its validity. Ask yourself, Is it true?
2. Find out whose business you’re in.
Your business is the realm of things that you can directly influence. Are you there? Or are you in someone else’s business? When we’re trying to control things outside of our own business, it’s not going to go well.
3. Consider this: Would letting go feel like freedom?
It almost always would. Let that feeling of freedom guide you toward loosening your grip.
A Friendly Universe
Einstein said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”I believe in a friendly universe.
Being receptive and allowing things to happen is a skill that can be practiced and improved upon. It helps to believe in a friendly universe—one that is supporting you at every turn so that you don’t have to worry yourself over the details.
We can always choose to do things the easy way or the hard way. We can muscle through, or we can let go of the oars and let the current carry us downstream.
There is a peaceful, yet focused energy that accompanies holding the intention of what I want, but not forcing myself to do it. That energy is magic. I’m still a work in progress, but I’m allowingit to become a habit instead of making it a habit.



Another thought
Examine how we create a persistent alienation from ourselves, from others, and from the world by fracturing out present experience into different parts, separated by boundaries. We artificially split our awareness into compartments such as subject vs. object, life vs. death, mind vs. body, inside vs.. outside, reason vs. instinct ...
The result of such violence, although known by many other names, is simply unhappiness. Life becomes suffering, full of battles. But all our battles in our experience - our conflicts, anxieties, sufferings, and despairs - are created by the boundaries we misguidingly throw around our experience.

21 Dec 2012

Eight people attended today two suffered from ill health and other reasons. We first looked at a video that tested our awareness and we all failed miserably to realize that the participants were making many changes of clothing in very different colours. We failed to notice that even the back screen and the tablecloth were changed dramatically while studying a simple colour change card "trick" Slightly chastened for that experience we then watched two young well qualified MD's talking about reality, dreams and mystic experience. After a break and Janet's cakes we read the following and then discussed what we felt was true.

 Breaking Free of Belief
 For awhile I lived a very comfortable religious life. I believed I had some sense of experiencing God. Experiencing God was that warm fuzzy feeling one felt during worship, or maybe praying with others or during a good sermon. That was the extent of what I felt experiencing God amounted to. I was perfectly comfortable living out taught beliefs. There came a time after I had incorporated meditation into my spiritual disciplines and began to really encounter the presence of God within that I no longer found these taught beliefs and doctrines fitting in with my sense of what I was beginning to feel was true. I struggled to find ways to incorporate them in the new paradigm I found myself merging into. I tried rationalizing and twisting them almost beyond recognition in order to conform. But it was to no avail. The pursuit amounted to being as futile as trying to jam the wrong puzzle piece into the wrong space. They just wouldn't fit. The struggle to believe in my presupposed ideas based on the doctrines I was ascribing to and their conflict with the truths I was receiving was becoming the source of my undoing. This process was suffocating me spiritually to the point where I was ceasing to find life, light and meaning in my beliefs at all. I could just see walls, like those of a prison, hindering the full view of which I had only caught glimpses of through moments of meditation. Walls, that had to come down. I realized I wasn't after hollow doctrine. I was after truth and thirsted to experience that truth first-hand. I wanted God, not man's words about God, to reign in my heart. Contemplative prayer and other forms of meditation allowed me to realize that that was truly possible. I would, however, have to let go of all that I once held dear in order to find the greatest treasure of all buried within my soul: God Himself. I would have to sell all of my land just for that one field where I knew the treasure to be buried and then spend the rest of my efforts in separating dirty ego from divine Self in discovering it. Imagine God being like a powerful river swiftly flowing. It was as if I was relying on people's interpretations of the river and merely viewing it from a portrait that they had painted of it. And then, still more, reviewing charts regarding the facts that defined it. Memorizing the rules that determined its nature and the outlines of its topography and where one could swim, where one couldn't and who was allowed to swim. The problem was, there was no swimming going on at all. It's as if I stood by the bank one day realizing the beauty and reality of the river and decided that rather than studying it from afar it'd be tons more fun to just jump in and let it carry me away, becoming one with it's flow and rhythm. My experiences of meditation up to that point had gotten my feet wet. Now I wanted to saturate my soul as well. I wanted no more barriers between myself and God and at last decided it was time to strip myself of the dogma that clothed my sense of what was real spiritually and take the plunge into the swift waters. Doing so has released in me the sense of merging into the great I Am and given me glimpses of what it's like to live in the great We Are. Not fully, but enough to know it's possible. There are still rocks I reach out and cling to in desperation, as I feel truth sweeping me in its current and my own inner insecurities resisting it, trying to slow it down because it's all so much to process in one experience. There are a lot of analogies that use the illustration of the river to symbolize truth, reality and God. Just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend regarding the truth and how it cannot be contained ... only experienced. The book I'm currently reading, The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts, illustrates this idea perfectly. "You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God." For so long I hadn't just tried to "capture truth in a bucket" but I allowed it to be served to me on a platter. Served to me in the form of other men's words and visions about God without experiencing my own. I had to learn to surrender myself to God and the process of understanding unhindered by labels and superficial rules. I had to trust my own inner voice and not the voices of others. I felt my subconscious beckoning me to cease my struggling and to flow with the current and not resist it. For God is the current itself, the ever changing flow of what Is. Alan Watts talks about 'the law of reversed effort' and how when we struggle against the water we sink but when we stop struggling we float. Finally, when I stopped struggling to cling to my preconceived notions of belief, trying to fit them in to interpret my experience, I rose to the surface of the water I had been submerged in and my spiritual lungs began to fill up with the air they so desperately needed.

 Posted by Jessica

M  Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once said, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few."  I began my pursuit to discover God's truths with my ideas and philosophies bound in a neatly wrapped package. I figured I would go about learning and discovering God but within the confines of certain parameters. My search for encountering and exploring the Divine has burst open that package and dispelled my once held myth that God could ever be categorized. I feel more a beginner now to the process than I did from the very beginning. And I'm okay with that. To me it confirms that my compass is pointed in the right direction.

 "Seeing" Truth

When you realize that all that appears and exists to be your mind, there is no path of enlightenment apart from that. When samsaric existence is freed in itself, there is no awakening state to accomplish apart from that. Once you realize this, samsara and nirvana are not two.

16th November

Just nine of us today and after twenty minutes of catching up we settled back to watch a short video on young people waking up to spiritual truths. A bit new age but still interesting are we all awakening up to the same call to rise above the physical reality?

An atom's nucleus occupies less than one thousand million millionth (10 ) of the atomic volume, but contains almost all of the atom's mass. If an atom had the size of the earth, the nucleus would have the size of a football stadium.

Know that Life is simply our classroom to learn who we truly are as Spirit beings and how to operate in the Divine POWER that was birthed with us as us.

All of the sages of old came to teach us this very truth about ourselves.  How we can manifest our greatness through our thoughts, feelings and beliefs.  To LIVE YOUR POWER you must first begin with knowing that you are the Divine manifest in human form here to experience life in all its glory through your eyes and actions.

Remember, Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz? She had the power to go home all along. Well like Dorothy you have the power all along to BE that which it is you dream to BE.

SO HOW DO YOU GET THERE?

1) The first step is to understand that you are more than just someone here to exist through what ever happens to you. Take control of your life by first knowing that you make the decisions either consciously or unconsciously to live the life you are living.

2) Align yourself with your true nature! Know that you are the miracle of birth, the living manifest power of Spirit in the flesh, here to live a life that only you can live. You are here to give to the world the dreams that can only be manifest through You! Know that your life affects people in so many miraculous ways. It’s why we grieve so much when someone that has touched us makes their transition.

3) Understand that all of life operates according to Universal Law. Example: Gravity – it is a law in the Universe. We can’t see it but we know it works and we abide by how it works to use it effectively. You don’t jump off a building because you know gravity exist and you will fall to your death. Understand that the Law of Attraction as mentioned in the book/video “The Secret” is one of many Divine Principles to be embraced to exercise your POWER to manifest your Dreams.

4) Be totally open to a new awareness of L.I.F.E. (Live in Full Expectancy) and do not fear it shaking out people, places, thoughts and things that no longer serve you. It will loose concepts and belief systems that you felt strongly about, thoughts you have believed in error for decades due to religious dogma or erroneous thinking. Allow them to fade away as you embrace YOUR POWER. It is called New Thought for this very reason. (In Christian terms it is referred to as being born again, the renewing of your mind.) It IS the re-birth of a new consciousness. Be fully open to it as you learn new information and find new realizations leading you to higher levels of awareness.

5) Practice moving negative thoughts by allowing them to fly out of your mind like a flock of ducks flying over head. Don’t fight the negative thoughts, allow them to pass through. Release them as freely as they come. It is when you shoot the duck you own the meal. That is how the negative thoughts get stuck in mind causing great damage. Practice positive thinking and feeling good.

I so want you to FEEL ALIVE and know that the very Spirit that lives with in you is filling you with LOVE, PEACE, JOY and ABUNDANCE in every moment. Know that you are here to Live a L.I.F.E. (Live In Full Expectancy) filled with all the good that you have dreamed of.

Know that you have the POWER living right inside of you to BE the POWER that is YOU! LIVE YOUR POWER! LIVE IT! FEEL IT! BELIEVE IT! BE IT!

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him/Her to be,
and whatever your labours and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. 

19th October

We started by discussing have we free will and then listened to a short video where Richard Dawkins an atheist, and vice president of the British Humanist Association summed it up by quoting Hitchens "I have no choice" We watched a video of a guru with turban and flowing beard who pointed out that Descartes was wrong when he said "Je pense donc je suis" I think there for I am. It is obvious that he was therefore he could think. After a break we looked at a paper on being in the moment.

17th August 2012

Eleven of us today met to listen to a young Canadian student studying under a guru speaking of an approach to enlightenment by asking Who Am I? Without forming ready answers such as my name my history or what others think of you.
This led to much speculation and inward thought. We never got around to reading the prepared paper but if we had this is part of it.


Beyond all experience is the one experiencing.
To anyone who declares themselves enlightened, I would ask, “Who is enlightened?” The answer is “I AM.” And then only silence remains. Pure consciousness is your true nature. The I AM Presence is your true nature. It is silent. It is eternal. It is impersonal.
But that does not mean that you cannot also exist at the personal level. I do not mean to imply that life at the level of mind should cease. That is not possible, nor desirable. What is possible however is that you become so awake and deeply grounded in the present moment and the awakened state of Presence that you never lose your connection with the present moment, even when you do venture into the world of the mind. In other words, you no longer believe in your thoughts, memories, ideas, beliefs and opinions as the truth. You are no longer identified with any of it. You recognize that life at the level of mind is simply play. It is sometimes happy and sometimes sad, because it is a world of duality. You relax and accept the dual nature of the mind and the world of experience within time. You are no longer for or against anything. You have transcended judgment. Life is accepted fully and so too is death. Joy is accepted fully and so too is pain. But you are so deeply grounded in the moment of now, that you no longer get caught in the movements of the mind and its world of thought and emotion. You are deeply grounded in Oneness. You are able to return to silence and Presence at will. In fact, silence and Presence is always there as the foundation of your existence, and your sense of yourself.
It is time for humanity to awaken at a collective level. Enlightenment can no longer be for just a select few, who no longer participate in the world. If there is to be an awakening at a collective level, we will have to learn to function within the world. This means that we will have to find a balance between the timelessness of the fully awakened state and the world of time.

20th July 2012

Eleven of us today. I was going to show the law of attraction but found another video about a similar practice that predated it by at least two decades. We watched as those attending a seminar were instructed to let go all negative grudges and emotions just as a child who realizes that no one is aware when they hurt themselves dismisses the injury when normally they would be inconsolable.

We accepted that the mind even when producing thoughts that we don't want should be seen as ourselves and accepted. We need to expect the world to react to us as a friend to accept what it offers.
We then read an article of interest.

Beyond the Ego
However, there is a method of healing our inner discord and transcending our insanity: through 'transpersonal' - or spiritual - development. The whole purpose of transpersonal development is to transcend our intensified sense of ego, to blunt its walls of separateness and quieten its chaotic thought-chatter so that we can begin to experience a new sense of inner content and a new sense of connection to the cosmos and to other beings. This is what the practice of meditation aims to do: to generate a state of inner quietness in which the ego fades away. And this is what happens when we dedicate our lives to serving others rather than following our own selfish desires: separateness begins to fall away as we develop a heightened sense of compassion, a shared sense of being with other people and other creatures.
As we transcend the intensified sense of ego, we begin to see the world as a meaningful and harmonious place. We become able to live in the moment and accept ourselves and our lives as they are, without wanting. And we also move beyond the social insanity of warfare and oppression. Since there is no discord inside us, we no longer crave for wealth and power, and now that we are no longer separate, we have the ability to empathise with other beings, and so become incapable of abusing or exploiting them. When the ego is transcended, all of the madness of human behaviour fades away, like the symptoms of a disease which has now been cured. That is the only true sanity, and perhaps the only way in which we can hope to live in peace and harmony on this planet....


We finished by watching a video "Where the hell is Matt" a very inspiring short video.

15 June 2012

Only nine of us today. A lively discussion first of all before watching a video, a very old one of a counsellor revealing his message to the world. One of the first to blaze a trail for those that followed. His philosophy the perennial one of living in the now as the future and the past are not real. To centre ones being and to change the without from the within. After a break we read a tract that basically gave the same message. I did add on an article about the need for technology to answer all the important question we all want to know such as what is reality and what is time. My belief is all you need is what we all have our minds.

A Call To Presence
To be fully awake and enlightened simply means to be fully present in the moment of now. To be present is the simplest thing. It is your natural state.
Every moment, you have a choice. Will you be present in the truth and reality of this moment or will you allow yourself to be seduced into the world of the mind? All thoughts take you out of the present moment. And then if you believe in those thoughts, which most of us do, you get lost in the world of the mind.
For most of us, we have become so habituated to thinking, that now thoughts never end. They have a life of their own. We are not even choosing to think. Thinking is happening all by itself and we are simply pulled from one thought to another, never really experiencing the sacredness of this moment.
The present moment is free of memories of the past and imaginings into the future. And so the pain and limitations of the past magically disappear when you are present. Anxiety about the future also disappears. You are just here now, fully present in this moment. When you are fully present, your inner experience is one of peace, love, acceptance, power, truth and compassion. Separation and fear dissolve. You exist within Oneness.
When you bring yourself fully present, thoughts stop and your mind falls silent. But there is an even deeper level of silence waiting to emerge. As your mind becomes silent, an inner door is opened, allowing an infinite and eternal silence to emerge. This infinite and eternal silence is the very essence of your Being. It is your true nature. It is the essence of all existence. It is the eternal silent presence of pure consciousness. It is the "I AM" of you. It is that dimension of you that exists in Oneness with all that is. It is your Buddha nature. It is the Christ of you, which exists in Oneness with God. It is awakened man. It is awakened woman.

18th May

Just nine of us today. After 15 minutes of general chat we watched video about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow use the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.
We all agreed with the author and although we may know the truth of it the reminder was still beneficial.
After the break we looked into Eastern philosophy.
The egoic mind is the cause of suffering. Nothing more. Suffering only happens in response to a thought. We suffer because we think something about what is happening, what happened, or what might happen. We create a story about what is, what was, or what will be; then we suffer over it. We particularly suffer over fears, which are negative ideas about the future, although any idea can cause suffering if it is believed.

Even positive ideas can cause suffering. Something as simple as, "I'm doing great" can cause suffering because there will come a time when the egoic mind will declare, "I'm not doing great." Every positive thought has as much potential for suffering as a negative one because it carries with it the fear of losing what is desired.

27th April 2012

Eleven of us altogether enjoyed or at least they said they did a morning of exploration into reality and our right view of it. I explained the link with the argument to remove fluoride from the body as it calcifies the pineal gland apart from all the other negatives. The third eye that sees the world as a spiritual entity and its critical role in good health.

"One of the most damning pieces of research occurred at the University of Surrey in 1997 after Jennifer Luke discovered that the pineal glands in some medical cadavers had accumulated fluoride to the point of mineralization.
The pineal gland produces melatonin for the human body. While many know melatonin to be the hormone associated with sleep, KU Professor of Molecular Biosciences Paul Kelly explains that its function permeates all aspects of life:
"Melatonin is a secreted product of the pineal gland, and as you probably know that is functionally important for circadian rhythms; our ability to have an internal clock and be able to adjust a lot of the physiology and metabolism in our body, our brain and all our organs so that it is optimal for daylight, awakening behavior and also optimal for sleeping at night."

We then watched a video instructing how to improve the gland by "pushing on the door". Most of the group found the meditation calming and worth doing.
I then said how I believed the Tao could like the Christian faith be accepted as a declaration of faith as the mind is not capable of being separate from what is.
I found this idea already expressed in the following article.

The Tao of Faith
by Jack Crabtree
I want to do two things in this paper: (1) identify and explain an interesting idea shared by Taoist philosophy and modern Evangelicalism; and (2) begin to examine the teaching of the Bible to see whether this fascinating notion is to be found there. The distinctive idea in question I will refer to as "the Tao of Faith." () I begin by explaining the teaching of Taoist philosophy on those points where I find it so strikingly similar to the teaching of Evangelical Christianity.
I. TAOISM
Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy; and for some it is a religion based on and derived from that philosophy. The key concept in Taoist philosophy is 'the Tao'. In Chinese, tao, literally translated, means something like 'way'; but this literal translation is not helpful for understanding tao in its most important sense.
'The Tao' is the ultimate power which creates, energizes, moves, animates, and underlies the whole of reality and everything in it. If not for the Tao, nothing would exist at all. It is responsible for the existence of everything that is and provides everything that lives and moves with its animating force. In the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist 'scriptures', we read:
There is a thing inherent and natural,
Which existed before heaven and earth,
Motionless and fathomless,
It stands alone and never changes;
It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted.
It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe.
I do not know its name.
If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.
Supreme means going on;
Going on means going far;
Going far means returning.
Therefore Tao is supreme; heaven is supreme; earth is supreme;
and man is also supreme. There are in the universe four things supreme,
and man is one of them.
Man follows the laws of earth;
Earth follows the laws of heaven;
Heaven follows the laws of Tao;
Tao follows the laws of its intrinsic nature. ()
In a later chapter, we read:
The great Tao pervades everywhere, both on the left and on the right.
By it all things came into being, and it does not reject them.
Merits accomplished, it does not possess them.
It loves and nourishes all things but does not dominate over them.
It is always non-existent; therefore it can be named as small.
All things return home to it, and it does not claim mastery over them;
therefore it can be named as great.
Because it never assumes greatness, therefore it can accomplish
greatness. ()
Any true philosophy of human existence must tell us how to live. Taoism does just that. According to Taoism, a human being can live, act, and think in harmony with the Tao–the ultimate, good and creative life-force which underlies all that is–or he can live, act, and think at cross-purposes to the Tao. The Tao is like a giant river flowing in a particular direction. As an individual human being, I can either relax and permit myself to be swept along by its flow, or I can struggle against it, seeking to swim across its flow or even to swim upstream. Even my efforts to move against its flow are, of course, ultimately empowered by the Tao itself; but because they are not efforts which take me in the same direction as the Tao, they will be clumsy, unsuccessful, futile, and unproductive. ()
Under this view, human existence will be good, happy, and fulfilling just to the extent that I live my life in harmony with the flowing power of the Tao and not at cross-purposes to it. And why is this exactly? Because a life lived in harmony with the Tao is a life energized by the direct and undiffused power of the Tao. But a life lived at cross-purposes to the Tao is a life lived under a different sort of power–the power of one's individual self. Since ultimately no power exists except the power of the Tao, the power of one's individual self is ultimately the power of the Tao as well; but it is diffused and particularized, not the pure, undifferentiated power of the Tao in its fundamental harmony. So human beings, while being empowered by the Tao, are able to take control of their own lives, to make decisions, and to take action out of the force of their own particular wills. The result, says the Taoist, is unfortunate. Self-effort, self-control, and self-assertion lead to evil, vice, failure, and imperfection. Creative work performed out of self-effort is inferior to the creative work performed under the undiluted and undifferentiated power of the Tao. Wisdom gained through self-effort and learning is inferior to the wisdom consisting of submission to the Tao.

16th March

Ten of us for philosophy and after waiting for a break in the conversation after a quarter of an hour we started. Geoff mentioned had we seen the Horizon programme about the power of the unconscious and the limited ability of the conscious mind to hold a picture of just four coloured objects. Several of us had and like me Pat tried to listen to a French lesson without listening but also like me it didn't seem to work or at least the unconscious never communicated that it had heeded the information. Shame that.
We then watched a TED video all about how society is geared to celebrate extroverts and the world would be a better place if introverts were encouraged to work in a way that would bring out their talents.
The paper we then read and discussed was:

Become Aware of Your Thoughts
One of the most important steps in becoming a high vibrational being is becoming aware of your thoughts. Your mind is like a garden. Your thoughts (seeds) are what you plant and expect to grow. Constant awareness of your garden (mind) will help you create the reality you desire by helping you quickly pluck any weeds (negative thoughts) that have intruded upon your space. If your seeds are good thoughts, beliefs and ideas you will manifest a beautiful garden with a positive outcome. Begin now to sow thoughts of peace, happiness, healing, good will and abundance for yourself and the universe. Our world is held in place by our mind. Imagine how our world would be if each one of us were in control of our thoughts, beliefs and emotions 100% of the time. If we were all focused on unconditional love, peace and unity our world would reflect that. Just imagine!


All things are possible through the power of correct thought. Our thoughts and beliefs are "things". They are energy and energy never dies. When our energy or thoughts are focused and repetitive they become creative! When we realize our thoughts, feelings and beliefs create our reality we can create what we desire instead of being a victim of circumstances getting caught up in the after effects of our own negative thinking. The law of attraction simply states "like attracts like". Whatever we believe about others and ourselves becomes our reality. We literally see through our thoughts. Every thought we think is a lens we see through and it is the mind (our thoughts) that creates our feelings and emotions. As above in consciousness; so below in matter.

The vast majority of mankind currently lives in a world of unconscious co-creation. Many are running on autopilot and are unaware that their inner world (their thoughts, feelings and imagery) is where their creative power resides. Unfortunately, many of us are creating circumstances we don't really want because we are unaware that our thoughts, beliefs and subconscious programming is what creates our reality. Many of us have allowed our minds to get so out of control that our mind has literally become the enemy instead of the powerful gift of loving, co-creation God intended it to be. We each have the power to make our inner world work for us, or work against us. What we think about expands so any thought or belief that keeps us from our peace is a weed we want to discard from our garden immediately! The Universe fully supports us in every thought we choose to believe. It is a law of nature that the universe will reflect back to us what we are concentrating on. The Universe has no value judgments of positive or negative so we need to be very aware of where we are choosing to focus our attention!

We are each responsible for our own creations! We have the choice of being a conscious or unconscious co-creator with God. When we are making unconscious choices we are refusing to take command and dominion over our minds. When we become conscious we become aware and awareness is the key to change. We must be willing to put energy and time in avoiding negative thinking and actively pursuing to think positively. Persistent inner work and paying attention to what we are thinking will change our negative thought habits. If we are conscious of our thoughts, every negative thought can quickly be changed into a positive affirmation or command. If we are not happy with our life, we need to observe the attention of our thoughts and beliefs and shift our mindset into a more positive one.

17th February 2012

Ten of us altogether met up for another brain stretching exercise. We first viewed a video curtesy of TED where a philosopher must have confused an audience of young people by telling them the idea of a inner self was not true. Although we felt that the ego maybe an illusion the inner being or essence is a reality and many believe to be the true Self.
After a break we read and discussed the following mixture of different ideas.

The Source of PhilosophyWonder: The main source of philosophic questioning is the sense of wonder, a childlike wonder just about everything. Philosophy starts with bewilderment, astonishment, amazement about the world, life, and ourselves. Philosophy arises from the workings of an inquisitive mind which is bewildered by seemingly common things or by those that appear to be entirely impractical. It emerges out of readiness to follow the call of human intellectual curiosity beyond common sense acquaintanceship with the world. The same idea is expressed in the old saying that the business of philosophy is to deal with the things supposedly familiar, but not really known and cognized. Philosophy reveals the illusion of knowledge where none in reality exists. Indeed, everything touched by philosophic bewilderment miraculously changes its character from a known to an unknown. B. Russell resuscitates the same idea in claiming that philosophy "keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect".
Self-Knowledge There is nowhere we have to go, nothing we have to do, although lots of going and doing seem to happen. This apparent activity is just as it is without anything being wrong with it. It simply cannot make or create anything with regard to spirituality.
At some point we are reoriented in our search away from the attainments and achievements we long for – we come to a maturity and a place of pause. In this pause we likely realize we are chasing our tail. We might then begin a serious inquiry into the very nature of our essence, what-we-ARE, not what we might become if we do spirituality the right way, trying to hold our posture straight and our thoughts still. We might then realize that only by inquiring into our beliefs about ourselves, by questioning and challening our core set of default beliefs, do we have a chance to see past them, to realize their shortcomings, to recognize that what we believed ourselves to be isn't as we thought................
There is no hiding with LSDSue Blackmore She has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation. She practises Zen and campaigns for drug legalisation
Beyond the flowers that turn into cats, an acid trip forces users to face whatever comes up, and self-knowledge often follows
face the fact that I could not blame the drug nor anyone else for my visions, and certainly not for the worst fact of all – that such cruelty has always happened and is happening somewhere even now. Ultimately I confronted the fact that I was not fundamentally different from either the torturers or the tortured, that I had in myself strains of cruelty and hatred that might, under other circumstances, lead me to be the perpetrator as well as the sufferer.
This is just one small example, and everyone's stories are different, but again and again people report that through LSD they learned to know, and accept, themselves. This may be why LSD has such powerful and can be so helpful for people mentions "spirituality" and whether anyone becomes "kinder and wiser". Surely knowing oneself underlies all these – knowing and accepting your own mind, taking responsibility for what you have done and what you might do. Even simple kindness grows with self-knowledge. When we see ourselves clearly we can see others more clearly, and then it is so very much easier to be kind.....

20th Jan 2012

Nine of us today on a dry relatively warm day for January. First of all we watched a video of a woman who spoke of her time when she divorced her husband and proved her self reliance by not seeking any money from him. She has since bought a home together with her new husband. She spoke about giving up fear letting it go, giving her guardian angels a chance to help her achieve peace and success.
Some of us found it relevant to their own life, other people were more hesitant to accept that it was the spiritual aspect that helped, more the practical work she put into it.

I asked had anybody heard about Plato's cave analogy apart from when it has come up in previous meetings and surprisingly none had. I then outlined what he meant and its meaning today, our reality is the shadow world. We hopefully will attain the the ability to see the spiritual underlying truth.

We then looked at the following:

Thoughts and Thinking
We collectively glorify our ability to think as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity; we personally and mistakenly glorify our thoughts as the distinguishing pattern of who we are. From the inner voice of thought-as-words to the wordless images within our minds, thoughts create and limit our personal world. Through thinking we abstract and define reality, reason about it, react to it, recall past events and plan for the future. Yet thinking remains both woefully underdeveloped in most of us, as well as grossly overvalued. We can best gain some perspective on thinking in terms of energies.

Automatic thinking draws us away from the present. We wistfully allow our thoughts to meander where they will, carrying our passive attention along with them. Like water running down a mountain stream, thoughts running on autopilot careen through the spaces of perception, randomly triggering associative links within our vast storehouse of memory. By itself, such associative thought is harmless. However, our tendency to believe in, act upon, and drift away with such undirected thought keeps us operating in an automatic mode. Lulled into an inner passivity by our daydreams and thought streams, we lose contact with the world of actual perceptions, of real life. In the automatic mode of thinking, I am completely identified with my thoughts, believing my thoughts are me, believing that I am my thoughts...............

16th December 2011

Nice sunny morning for an introduction to the philosophy of Florian Schlosser. We watched a short video where he outlined his non-duality teaching. Florian from an early age had the burning desire to know what reality is and our place in it. With many interests that one after another he found empty until giving away his wealth he entered a monastery. He has now come back with a new way of laying the ego to rest by reassuring the body that it is safe by grounding oneself with three simple instructions.

After a break and a good conversation about many things including relationships with all the problems that go with it we the read Florian's articl:

From the perspective of normal consciousness we mostly experience ourselves as "somebody" – an identity however named – to whom time and reality happens. We experience the course of life as an
event which is separated from us and at the mercy of which we more or less are. Or we doing our best to take some influence on it.

To explore the essence of time and reality as it really is, we first have to turn to "the one" to whom time and reality seemingly occurs. The question is whether "the one" who experiences time and reality really exists? Does an experiencing person really exist? And is the one we call the experiencing person – the "I" which experiences – really separated from "his/her" experience?
But how can we explore what the "I" is and if it really exists? Let's start together:

Who is thinking? Is it you who is thinking or are there just thoughts, which emerge and leave again? Who is feeling? Is it you who is feeling or are there just feelings which emerge and leave again? Who has physical sensations? Is it you who has sensations in the body or are there just sensations which emerge and leave again?

If you want to check this, then just try to stop your thoughts. Simply like that -STOP. Does it work? If you are completely conscious and honest for a moment you will realize that it is not so easy to switch off the experience of thinking, feeling and sensing.What you recognize is a never ending stream of movement (experience) which just happens. Now, to whom does this movement occur? Who has always been conscious of this? What is it exactly that is conscious? Normally you will say: I am conscious. Check it briefly if you like: Are you conscious of the present experience, whatever it may be, just now? Of course you are. Now, what is this "I" that is conscious? It is consciousness itself. Therefore you are consciousness, aren't you? Time is movement in consciousness

As we find out by close investigation there is consciousness, in which the movement of thinking, feeling and sensing in the body emerges and leaves again. This movement in the consciousness feels like an occurrence (appearance) in time. But if you again allow a moment to be quiet and conscious you will notice that time itself is an illusion, which is created by the ever changing experiences in consciousness. Without the movement of thinking, feeling and physical sensations there is no independent time, which can be measured i.e. experienced. So time is not separated from experience but (an) included part of it, well, it IS experience itself. Time is movement in the consciousness. And also the "feeling of I" is included in the movement and therefore not separated from it.

Let us now stop for a while and strike an interim balance: We see that consciousness only comes into being by movement. That is all. There is no one who experiences anything. It is the experiencing which experiences itself as movement in consciousness – that WE ARE. What may confuse us sometimes is that the movement of attentiveness is mixed up with pure resting awareness. Let us make clear this difference also. The movement of attentiveness Attentiveness is the natural ability to focus energy on a certain object, to observe it. For example this can be an object "in the outside", but also an object "in the inside", like a thought or a feeling. So we can focus with attentiveness. If you inquire precisely now, you will see that by mere focussing the feeling of an 'I-observer' on the one hand and at the same time the observed object appears separated from you.Observing only creates the feeling of an "I" and an experience separated from "you". But both don`t exist like this.

Neither is there really an "I" nor the object separated from "I" e.g. an experience. Both of it only emerges seemingly as a dual reality when attentiveness focusses
Both of it only emerges seemingly as a dual reality when attentiveness focusses. If you look closely you will realize that attentiveness itself is part of the movement. It is moving permanently from one object to another. Similar to a monkey it jumps about. The faster and the more restless attentiveness moves, the more varying is the experience of time. Abrupt, erratic movement of attentiveness creates a rapid feeling of time. Slow and quiet movement creates a feeling of "having time" and slowness.

So not only time itself is an illusion but also the experienced speed (quality) of it. Now back to consciousness again, through which all of this is recognized. So you – consciousness itself – are conscious of the experiences including the movement of attentiveness. To make it clear once again: you are already conscious of this – now -in this moment. Experience comes into being by observation Where is the border between consciousness and the experience (including the observing) that emerges and leaves again? If you investigate further you will find no border. The border does not exist.