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Some people are fortunate enough to come to the understanding that Life, in its essence, is not about self improvement or personal development.
They realize this because they have improved their ’self’ repeatedly and dramatically, and have found that self-improvement it is a bottomless endeavor that goes nowhere profound or deep.
They have found that, while personal development is an interesting exploration, it does not lead to the deepest truths and understandings in Life.
No. The deepest truths such as wisdom, love, compassion and the understanding of who and what you really are, belongs to realms beyond personal development.
In fact, personal development is exactly at the halfway way point of human development.
Half way.
All of the great Wisdom Traditions place personal development in the middle of our potential unfolding.
Pre-self (pre-personal development)
Self (personal development)
Trans-self (trans-personal development)
To put it as simply as I can, we as human beings start with pre-personal development, which means we have not yet developed a cohesive sense of self.
Once a ’self’ is established and stabilized, we are now in the realm of personal development, where we can expose and cultivate a variety of personal potentials and possibilities.
Beyond personal development lies the realm of trans-personal development, which means an understanding that surpasses and goes beyond the separate self that is explored in personal development. Many people refer to this realm as ’spiritual’. These same people like to imagine that trans-personal ’spirit’ is actually something to be controlled and used in the service of the personal self.
That is exactly backwards, confusing what is source and what is expression.
It is akin to imagining the sunshine creates the Sun, or the waves create the Ocean. Instead, let us say that the sunshine is an expression of the Sun, waves are expressions of the Ocean and the self is an expression of … what?
The self is an expression of Life, and Life is what you are in your deepest nature.
I had some very interesting experiences this weekend at the Red Deer Fire Walk.
First, when I agreed to go, I was quite aware that I had no real desire to walk on fire and could locate no real fear that walking on fire would help me to overcome.
I’m not suggesting I am without fear, only that there are no fears that stand boldly enough to announce their presence.
I understand that walking on fire is really a metaphor for walking into the fire of fear. That alone, in and of itself, is a very worthy understanding that could be gained from the fire walk experience. (I applaud my friend Russ for organizing it, because I know it was valuable to some folks)
But here, I will suggest that overcoming fear is the same as attaining self-esteem. Once you’ve done it, forget about it and move on. Don’t make a lifelong project out of it.
Second, as I was sitting there alone in front of the fire, I realized I had no real reason to do it. But, because I was there, the thought occurred, “Since I’m here, I might as well walk…”.
Then another voice countered that with, “Why don’t I just leave… am I afraid?”
I had to laugh, as I continued to eavesdrop on this little dialog/monologue/idiotlogue.
The first voice suggested, “I already said I would walk the fire… so just walk, darn it, walk…”.
The second voice teased, “Am I afraid of having to answer to the accusation that I ‘chickened out’?”
The first voice answered with, “Maybe I would be more courageous to leave and face the fear of having to answer to the accusation that I ‘chickened out’”.
The second voice said simply, “I dare ya…”
Then there was an awareness of the inner conflict between the impulse to go and the impulse to stay.
It was especially interesting that no one was controlling these voices, they were simply the play of the conceptual mind, doing what it does.
Eventually, staying happened and the walk was uneventful. Except that there was an impulse to conduct a little experiment that originated while I listened to the snake charmer salesman who did the talk just before I walked on the fire.
(I won’t say more about this guy, except this: There are still adults trying to peddle the belief in Santa Clause… to adults who, apparently still want to believe in Santa Clause. This takes nothing away from the act of Fire Walking, only the messenger delivering the pre-walk hype.)
The little experiment was this: The impulse to repeat inwardly, “I can’t do this… I’m gonna BURN!” over and over as I walked through the fire happened. No positive self talk, no inner pep talks, no cheer
ing myself on… only the chant of
the disbelieving mind, “I can’t do this… I’m gonna BURN!”
And guess what? Nothin but hot feet and a bad smell in my nose from the hair that burnt off my ankles.
With that I put on my socks and shoes and ran outta there into the night.
I wanted to get far away, before the snake charmer announced that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were about to make an appearance….
Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower;
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.
Don’t strain yourself, there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever arises in the body mind has no real importance at all.
Why identify with it and become attached to it?
Why pass judgment upon it and ourselves?
Far better to simply let the entire game happen on it’s own,
springing up and falling back like waves,
without changing or manipulating anything,
and notice how everything vanishes and reappears,
magically again and again, time without end.
Don’t believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like the weather, like rainbows in the sky.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax, ( this tight fist of grasping)
infinite space is there – open and inviting.
Make use of this spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don’t search any further. Don’t go into the tangled jungle,
looking for the the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting at home, in front of your own hearth.
Nothing to do or undo.
Nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing.
Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself—- Free and easy!
(Written for the World Alzheimer’s Day Conference, Friday September 21, 2007 in Red Deer, Alberta.)
Many of the World’s Wisdom Traditions promote meditation as a method of staying in contact with our actual life experience, as it’s happening, with attention and awareness.
One of the reasons this is so valuable is because our minds are generally not very accurate about our experience. Our thinking minds will often create stories and imaginings about our experience that are inaccurate and distorted. These stories and imagining are often a source of suffering, because we feel stress, tension and frustration from them. The mind can be unkind, and when our attention gets caught up in the mind we can suffer from the painful thoughts we have.
Also, just as important, when our attention is lost in our thoughts, we become disconnected from our heart, which means we lose touch with our basic goodness and our natural wisdom. When our attention is in our thoughts, we can lose track of the bigger picture and our deepest gifts that come from the heart.
For instance, as a Nurse I work on a wonderful Continuing Care Unit in Rimbey. I am surrounded by amazing and beautiful elderly folks who look to me for help, comfort and support.
As a Nurse, another part of my job is a to do a lot of writing, recording and physical tasks that can take me away from my time with the residents there.
Add to this the fact that often times things do not go at all as planned. Unexpected situations arise that take me away from my opportunity to provide comfort and care. Sometimes residents become unhappy with how things are, and they let me know in a variety of colorful and interesting ways. This can be also be a source of stress, tension and frustration.
It is easy for me to imagine that “things are not as they should be”,
which adds further stress, tension and frustration. My residents are unhappy. am unhappy. What to do?
One way of working with this situation is to use the stress, tension,
and frustration as a ‘Wake Up Call’ informing us that something is
wrong, our attention has wandered and we are no longer connected
to the heart. his means that as soon as we notice our suffering,
we STOP and RETURN o our real and true experience in that exact moment.
Stop thinking. Return attention to our breathing.
Stop imagining. Return attention to our experience.
Stop allowing attention to ’sleep’ in the head space. Wake up and return attention to the heart space.
Stop living with attention in thought and imagination, Return attention to our breathing, our experience and our heart.
Any time we Stop and Return, two great benefits can occur.
1. We can Stop causing ourselves pain and suffering with our thoughts (get out of the head space).
2. We can Return to a simple appreciation and gratitude for being alive right this moment now (get into the heart space).
This means we decrease our suffering and increase our enjoyment at the same time.
Today, right now, stop what you’re doing. Just Stop and Return to the present moment. Just for this moment, listen to yourself breathe. Feel your body. Watch yourself take deeper breaths and enter the space of the heart. Stopping and Returning means just that. It means when we realize we are suffering because we are listening to the chatter of the busy mind, we Stop and Return our attention to the heart space and the present moment..
It’s valuable to have designated times to practice Stopping and Returning. One of my favorite times is when I first wake up in the morning and my mind starts racing ahead of me and into the future. When this happens I Stop and Return to what I know is real: my actual experience of laying in bed. Showering, eating, hugging and walking are some of my other favorite times to remember to Stop and Return.
Decide that six times today (and every day) you will Stop whatever you are doing and Return to the heart space and present moment for 10 seconds. That’s 60 seconds total. One minute of your life you will dedicate to practicing this exercise that can make all the difference between living in a place of stress, tension, and frustration, or in our heart where our basic goodness and wisdom has a chance to shine
This is Stopping and Returning Meditation. It takes one minute a day. Sixty seconds, in six short sessions of 10 seconds each. Six moments in which you may Stop and Return your attention to your heart, where your basic goodness and wisdom comes from.
I enjoy movies that ask me to ’suspend disbelief’ in a very dramatic way.
To ’suspend disbelief’ means we allow ourselves to believe or ‘buy into’ our experience without questioning the unreality of it. Put simply:
We allow ourselves to ‘buy in’, then we forget that we are only ‘buying in’.
For example: I enjoy horror movies because when I watch them, I ’suspend disbelief’ and become afraid or shocked, even though I know in my depths the facts that:
‘It’s just a movie’, ‘they’re just actors’ and ‘it’s NOT REAL’ .
Heck, I’m even sitting next to other people, feet sticking to the floor of a dirty old theater munching popcorn… how real could it be?
Even though I know it’s just a movie, it’s not real, I’m in a theater watching a flat movie screen project a recorded film of actors being paid to act out scripts…. it still gets me.
I can watch many movies more than once, when I know what’s going to happen and still get scared or excited, even though it’s just a movie, it’s not real, I’m in a theater watching….
You get the picture.
Put simply, I become over-involved and fail to question an obvious unreality.
Please read that again and understand: I become over-involved and fail to question an obvious unreality.
You too? Of course. It’s normal and one of the joys of going to a movie.
But here’s the thing. What if we look at this as a metaphor for becoming over-involved in our own thoughts.
We know it’s just the mind, it’s not real, we’re listening to an automatic voice in our head create distorted fantasy’s and twisted interpretations about various events and situations, but we still become affected by it because we fail to question the reality of it.
How often do you suffer because you are lost in your own mental movie theater watching a cheesy movie and allowing yourself to buy into a lousy B-grade mental movie?
Teaching children to wake up in the midst of mental movies should be job #1 in the educational system, in my humble opinion.
It seems like our society teaches it’s students to use the mind to memorize ‘facts’, problem solve and creatively think, then fails to show them the off switch for the thinking mind. (That’s because teachers don’t know where the off switch is either.)
Then we live out our lives thinking that constantly thinking is normal, meanwhile we suffer from a busy mind that becomes out of control, distorted, dramatic and deluded (ie deluded means ’suffering from a fixed false belief.’)
Attention Training is the Mental Movie Destroyer.
Like that obnoxious jerk sitting behind you in the movie theater, talking on a cell phone, Attention Training does not allow you to become involved in mental movies.
Attention Training ruins your mental movie going experience.
How much of your life is spent in the dark theater of your mind, watching old movies play out that are not only poorly performed, but you’ve also seen them many times before?
Isn’t time to step out of that dark, dank, prison-like theater, into the sunshine of reality?
If so, I’ll be the one smiling, sitting under the tree across the street, watching the expression on your beautiful face when you realize you are finally free, but didn’t even know you were trapped.
