It really is … Just another WordPress site
I’ve really struggled to get my head around the concept that a ‘thing’ is also ‘not-the-thing’. I understood the basic idea that a ‘thing’ cannot exist without ‘not a thing’. A solid cannot be a solid if it is not surrounded by space.
But to then say both are one and the same fuzzled my mind. Then I recently came across someone describing it on a forum like this:
The Buddha says “See them, floundering in their sense of mine, like fish in the puddles of a dried-up stream — and, seeing this, live with no mine, not forming attachment for states of becoming.”
Thinkers like De Mello and Tolle interpret this as not attaching happiness to anything – no person, no thing, no outcome. By dropping this “I will be happy if” mentality we actually become happy – our default state.
Continue reading “Experiencing bliss … and understanding what it is!”
Anthony de Mello had been my starting point on this journey thanks to a friend’s recommendation but many of his audios and films on YouTube referenced Eckhart Tolle as another worth knowing better.
I looked him up and found him to be a giant in the field of self awareness. 35 million people tuned in to watch a series of Webinars with Oprah Winfrey and him in 2008 and Watkins Review named him as the most spiritually influential person in the world in 2011. I had never heard of him.
I have just come across this concept again and realised I had never fully understood. it. People often talk about ‘sorting out their Chakras’ and I’ve just understood it as ‘sorting yourself out mentally’. But what is it actually about?
OK so a Chakra is an invisible energy point within your body meant to be imagined as a spinning wheel and every beginner guide seems to start with the seven main ones which are all in a row from the bottom of your spine to just above your head.
Someone recommended I look up Recall Healing so I have! Its yet another gateway to self awareness and one well worth exploring.
The basics are this. Many physical illnesses and ailments are actually caused by psychological conditions, I have heard this time and time again, perhaps first in the John Cleese book Families and How to Survive Them.
Here Cleese himself notes how he had suffered numerous small ailments (‘flus and colds) which cleared up after he started therapy and realised that he was subconsciously depressed.
Continue reading “Recall Healing and the mess of modern medicine”
I’ve dismissed this concept all my life but a few events in my journey have turned this from outright non-belief to high skepticism.
In the spring I went to an aura cleaning workshop. It was nearby and I was curious to put myself in the center of something I don’t believe in.
It started with the workshop leader telling us to hold our hands slightly apart and start to feel a gentle energy that actually keeps pushes against the palms.
I think I’ve finally got this. When I did it was so obvious that I hesitate to blog about it! But then I thought if I didn’t get it before, others haven’t yet either.
So often I’ve heard, seen or read about this ‘wise’ men who answer questions, “No, no illusion, you are living in an illusion” or “This is concept, not reality” and not got what they were driving at.
So in a nutshell: Reality is the world as it is, Illusion is all we place on it in terms of interpretation and labels. The path to self awareness suggests we understand the two clearly before we act.
The more I read around the more I come across this concept in multiple self awareness concepts and ideas. I’ve talked about it before in Things do not change, you do but it is still bugging me.
If you’ve landed on this page cold then important to understand this is not about being passive. You can still pursue things with passion but stop attaching happiness to the outcome of these pursuits.
So I’ve been introduced to a type of therapy I haven’t heard of before – The Spectrum of Creation. I haven’t been able to find much about it on the web but I went for an initial session with a therapist and found it fascinating as well as troubling.
The basics are this. Your emotional troubles manifest themselves in the physical. That’s not a complete revelation in itself. John Cleese in Surviving the Family realizes that his multiple physical illnesses at one point in his life were caused by his depression. When he sought help for his depression his physical ailments subsided.
OK – it can’t go uncovered. What about some form of Christianity or other faith like Islam as a path to self awareness?
Alright, hands held up in honesty position, I come from a very anti-religious direction which is not to say that I do not believe, or perhaps suspect. Contradiction? Not really. I’ll explain.