embracing your innate beauty and perfection
Spirituality
The Inexplicable Design – and what it leads to…
Aug 10th
This clip explains the differences between looking inwardly in order to scratch around in the muck, versus looking to see the perfection of what’s there. Much of what we’re told about ourselves is a story. Do we need to cling to that “history” still? Or can we live from the place of what’s here right now in this moment without any reference to past (or future.)
No more practice/No more “me”
Aug 4th
From a teaching by Jeff Foster:
Do spiritual practices simply fuel the sense that you are a separate person?
If you (a separate person) are doing a practice to get somewhere… is that dualistic?
Is nonduality about giving up practices?
If a teacher gives out practices, does that mean they are keeping you trapped ‘in the dream’?
Let’s take a fresh look…
Q. The idea that we are not separate sounds like a theory, a belief. How do you know we are not separate from life? It seems as though we are…
A. Well, that’s the play. Of course it seems as though we are separate. Of course it seems as though there’s a me and a you. Of course it seems as though I’m over here and you’ve over there. Of course it seems as though there’s somebody here subjectively looking out at a solid, objective world. It’s supposed to seem that way. The seeming is the appearance. The seeming is the play. The seeming is the dance – the dance of duality.
But beyond the seeming, is there actually any separation?
Right now, what is happening? For a moment, if you can, and if you are willing, put everything you believe on hold, suspend all your second-hand knowledge, forget for a moment what you’ve been told by teachers, gurus, authorities, and look with fresh eyes at life. Look with fresh eyes at your own experience. Begin again, like a child seeing the world for the first time…
Right now, are sounds appearing? Listen: sounds simply happen. Without any effort, without you having to do anything, sounds simply appear. The sound of breathing. The sound of cars beeping their horns outside. The television blaring. A bird singing.
And then a secondary movement seems to happen: thought comes in and says “I am hearing”. “I am a separate person, hearing these sounds. There’s me, and there’s the sounds. I am the subject, and the sound is the object. There is a perceiver and the perceived.”
But does this separation ever really happen? In direct, unfiltered experience, is there any evidence that there is somebody there hearing sounds? Is there actually a person there who does the hearing, or is hearing simply happening, effortlessly? Is there somebody there doing sounds, or do sounds simply appear? Yes, thought says “I hear the sounds”, but this begs the question, what is this ‘I’ who hears the sounds? Who hears the sounds?
Same goes with seeing, thinking, feeling. Who sees? Who thinks? Who feels? Can you find anybody there doing seeing, doing thinking, doing feeling? Or are seeing, thinking and feeling simply happening, effortlessly?
Without the thought “I hear”, hearing still happens, doesn’t it?
Without the thought “I see”, seeing still happens, doesn’t it?
We say “I am thinking, I am feeling, I am seeing.” But in direct experience, isn’t it more true to say that thoughts just appear? Feelings in the body just appear? Sights and sounds and smells just appear?
That they don’t appear to ‘you’ or for ‘you’, they just appear?
That life isn’t happening to ‘you’ or for ‘you’, it’s just happening?
That really life has no centre?
This is the dream: that you are a person at the centre of your life. That you are a person doing life, a person controlling life, a person in charge of life.
See that life is just living itself. This is not ‘your’ life, this is just life. As Jesus said, you have to lose your life to save it. Perhaps this is what he was pointing to.
Jeff, do you offer a practice, a method, something that I can do that will bring me closer to what you’re saying?
Well, in a way, if you ask for a practice, you’ve not been listening to what I’ve just been saying.
Look, I’m not saying practices are wrong, or bad. You’ll find yourself doing practices or not. I’m certainly not saying “don’t do a spiritual practice because all spiritual practices are dualistic” – of course, that would just be a practice in itself!
Some people meditate, some people self-enquire, some people just like walking in nature or listening to music. It’s all life, it’s all appropriate to each and every dream, and I’m not here to tell you how to live or what to do. But what these words are really pointing to is the possibility that there is nobody there separate from life who can choose to do practices or not. Ultimately, there is doing, but no doer.
You see, no practice can bring you closer to life. There is only life, and all practices, and absence of practices, appear within life, which is what you are. If you think you are closer to life, or further away from life, these are just thoughts appearing within life.
Some people do meditation because they think it will get them closer to what I’m pointing to. Some people do self-enquiry because they think it will get them closer to what I’m pointing to. Some people give up practices altogether because they think it will get them closer to what I’m pointing to. I’m not saying any of this is right or wrong, I’m just saying it’s what seekers apparently do!
The real question of course is who does the practice? Who sits down to meditate? Who self-enquires? Who asks questions and waits for answers? All practices, in the end, lead to this question.
Why do some spiritual teachers give out practices, then?
Well, perhaps that’s the ultimate point of practices – to make you believe that you are getting somewhere, until it is seen in clarity that there is nowhere to go but here. To make you think that you are getting closer to your goals, until it’s seen that your goals are imaginary. However, this could be seen whilst doing spiritual practices… but it could also be seen whilst having a cup of tea, or walking in a park, or listening to music, or shopping in a supermarket…
There’s a world of difference between sitting down to meditate in order to get somewhere, and meditating for its own sake. There’s a huge difference between singing mantras because you think it will bring you closer to awakening… and just singing mantras. There’s a huge difference between sitting on a chair watching your breathing because you think it will bring you closer to enlightenment… and just sitting on a chair. There’s nothing wrong with meditation, or singing mantras, or sitting on a chair. But the question is, what are you looking for? When will you find it? And is there actually anything to find? Or is there only the present appearance of life? Is there only life, appearing to no-one? Is that possible?
Yes, the need for spiritual practices may simply fall away when it’s seen that there’s nobody there separate from life. And then you will find yourself meditating, or not meditating, and either way, you can’t go wrong.
Perhaps the reason I don’t give out specific practices is because I don’t know what’s best for you, in your dream. I am not an authority on life – there’s no such thing. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all method or practice that will magically solve all your problems. That’s a lovely idea but unfortunately life doesn’t really work like that. In the end, life isn’t something that needs to be fixed anyway… and that’s the great discovery….
Are you saying we should just stop practices, stop trying to help ourselves, and others?
I’m not here to tell you how to live, only to point back clearly to life as it is. I’m not telling you to give up on life, I’m not telling you to stop doing what you’re doing, I’m not telling you to stop helping others, I’m not even telling you to ‘do nothing’…
Look, you will find yourself helping people or not. But you see, beyond helping and needing to be helped, there is a wordless intimacy in which nobody can help anybody – because there is simply nobody there separate from life. Beyond help and helplessness, you are already free, and that’s the possibility that is being shared here. And again, this could be seen in the midst of practice, or in the midst of watching TV and doing the washing up. Nonduality isn’t about detaching yourself from the world and from other people (and justifying that detachment with the belief that there is no world, and there are no others). Detachment is separation. No, this is about a life lived in fullness, where nothing is denied. And that fullness could include moving to help apparent others, although ultimately there are no ‘others’. It could include moving to improve your life, if you think that your life needs to be improved, even though it’s not ‘your life’ at all. To the mind it’s a total mystery, a total paradox… but to what you are, it is the clearest and most obvious thing of all…. and there is no paradox in it, at all.
If someone is hungry, you might give them food. If somebody is in physical pain, you might help ease their pain if that is possible. If somebody is upset or frightened, you might help them to take a look at what they are thinking in the moment, and to see it as just a story. When there is unconditional love, there is space for all of this. But where the action comes from, you don’t know – it all happens spontaneously, without any specific agenda.
When you see that the world does not need your help, perhaps that’s when you become the greatest help. Because ‘you’ get out of the way…
So, after all that, do I really need to give you a practice? Can’t you see that you already have the perfect practice? That you’re doing it right now? That, in fact, you are it?
But don’t spiritual practices bring you to that realisation? Didn’t you do spiritual practices when you were a seeker? Didn’t they bring you to where you are today?
Years ago, I used to be obsessed with spiritual practices! I was desperate to become an ‘enlightened person’, I was desperate to become ‘awakened’, to lose my self and merge with life. I was a depressed, miserable human being, and I saw spiritual enlightenment as the only way out. Modern psychology hadn’t worked for me – it only seemed to deal with surface issues. I didn’t want to ‘fit in’ or ‘adapt to society’ – I wanted to be free, totally, radically, free. I didn’t want a fleeting state called ‘happiness’ – I wanted truth and reality. And so I turned to the teachings of enlightenment, and I became obsessed with trying to transform. I tried everything. I meditated for hours every day, I did self-enquiry obsessively, I even became a vegan for a while because I thought it would bring me closer to life. And it was all very exciting at first, because I thought that I – a separate person – was getting somewhere. I thought that the seeker was getting closer to the sought. I thought that I was ‘nearly there’.
But eventually, the seeking failed. Why? Because no matter what I did, or didn’t do, there was still the sense that there was somebody there, separate from life, doing or not doing. No matter what I did, or gave up doing, to try and get rid of separation, separation still seemed to be there. I was in a double-bind. I saw that seeking was futile, but I couldn’t give up. I saw that practices were pointless (because they seemed to fuel the sense that I was separate) but I also saw that not doing practices, or giving up practices, was just another practice, just another tactic to bring about a desired change. The seeking ended in despair and frustration. How could a separate self get rid of a separate self? Not possible. I was lost.
And in that lost-ness, in that frustration and despair, another possibility arose. And it had nothing to do with somebody doing something to get somewhere. It went beyond doing practices or not doing practices. This possibility said that I was already free, that freedom was right here and right now, and that I had never for one moment been separate from it. That no practice can take you to freedom, because practices already arise in freedom. It all became as clear as crystal, as obvious as breathing.
In the seeing of this, practices became totally unnecessary. Having a coffee with a friend became equal to sitting down to meditate. Why? Because it was seen that the one who sits down to have a coffee with a friend is the one who sits down to meditate! The one who walks through the park looking at the beautiful flowers is the one who sings mantras or goes to therapy or spends a lifetime seeking enlightenment! The seeker is the sought. There is nothing to find – nothing was ever lost. As wise men and women throughout the ages have been trying to tell us – You Are That. Already.
Did practices lead ‘me’ to this realisation? Yes and no. It’s always yes and no, and totally beyond yes and no! The mind operates in the world of ‘yes and no’. But of course, life is always beyond mind. Life is not yes or no, life is just life. This is why this is very difficult to talk about…
Look, practices were all about me attempting to get somewhere, while this realisation that I’m sharing was a seeing-through of this me who was trying to get somewhere! Practices were all about doing something to bring about a change. This was the seeing that life is always exactly as it is, and no change, in the moment, is necessary. Practices were all about cause-and-effect, about putting in effort to get a result, and what was seen is that life is ever-free from cause-and-effect. Life as it is is not the result of effort, because ‘effort’ and ‘result’, ’cause’ and ‘effect’, indeed all thoughts about life, are simply thoughts appearing in life. The thought of a ’cause’ doesn’t actually cause anything. The thought of a ‘result’ is not the result of anything. The past does not bring you to the present. The present is all there is, and the past is just a story arising in the present. (And ultimately the ‘present’ is just another thought too…)
In the story of time, it seems as though there is cause and effect. It seems as though A leads to B. It seems as though acorns grow into oak trees. It seems as though what I did brought me to where I am now. It was this illusion that was seen through! No practice brought me here, because ‘I’ am not here! ‘I’ is just a story arising here! The shocking realisation was this: freedom had nothing to do with whatever Jeff did or didn’t do on his spiritual search. Freedom is not a result of Jeff’s search. Life is not caused by Jeff’s search. Jeff’s search appeared in life… and itself was a full expression of life. I had always been Home, but hadn’t realised it.
In other words, even the seeker is Oneness… dressed up as a seeker, looking for Oneness. The seeking is really Oneness looking for itself…
But was your seeking necessary?
I must say this: the story of Jeff’s search is the only story which could have happened, because it did happen. I simply had to go through what I went through, not because it was predestined, but because it happened, simple as that. What happened, happened. The dream you dream is the only possible dream. Your life story is the only possible story that could have arisen. And so spiritual practices were necessary (only because they happened)… until it was seen in clarity that they weren’t necessary. And when it was seen that they weren’t necessary, it was also seen that they had never been necessary, because there has only ever been life. I have always been this. Even before I did spiritual practices I was this. When I took my first breath, I was this. When I take my last, I will be this. I cannot not be this. And neither can you. You are what I am. And that renders all spiritual practices obsolete. This is not a rejection of spiritual practices, but a movement beyond them…
Spiritual practices aren’t necessary, in the larger sense of the word. It doesn’t take another 50 years of meditation, or psychotherapy, or guru worshipping, to become what you are. However, if you believe that it does, if that is your dream, then you will probably find yourself meditating, or worshipping a guru, or attending psychotherapy sessions for the next 50 years. I wish you the best of luck! You live your own dream. What you believe is necessary becomes necessary for you. It’s that simple.
And maybe what is being shared here will be seen in the midst of meditation or psychotherapy. Or maybe it will be seen in the midst of doing the dishes, or walking through the park, or reading these words. Who knows. There are no rules, and there is no authority. Or if there is any authority, it is life itself, not any particular individual within life. Although ultimately every apparent individual is simply an expression of life…
You will find yourself meditating, or not meditating, and I am not here to tell you how to live. There are enough people in the world telling you how to live! But if you really listen to what I’m saying, you may find that the need to practice or be practiced on simply falls away very naturally… and then all that’s left is life happening, with no need to do anything to get closer to life happening. It’s an intimacy beyond words, and really it’s where you already are, even if you don’t know it. Everybody is this, even if they don’t recognise it.
Ultimately you can’t even ‘return Home’… because you never left Home in the first place. You can’t ‘find’ the miracle because you’ve always been living it. You can’t ‘become’ awakened, you can’t transform into an ‘awakened person’ or reach an ‘awakened state’, because life itself is already awake, and there is nobody here separate from that ever-present awakeness. In a way, this turns all spiritual teachings upside-down and inside-out, revealing a previously-ignored simplicity right at the heart of life…
Jeff, do you really believe all of this?!
I know that not a word I say could possibly be true, because no word can touch life. Life is too alive for words. So, no, I don’t actually believe in this stuff, in the sense that I cannot form it into a ‘belief’ that I’m separate from. I don’t believe in life – because there is only life. Life as it is does not require belief, and that’s the beauty of it. It is simply this – here and now. It is breathing happening, it is the heart beating, it is sights and sounds and smells arising right now. It is sound of the washing machine whirring. It is the taste of the cup of tea I’m drinking. So simple, so obvious, so present. No need for belief, at all.
Life is the bonfire that burns up all words, even these words, leaving only presence. These words appear and are immediately burnt up. Jeff knows he is not special or different – he is simply an appearance in life. I cannot be an ‘authority on nonduality’, I cannot ‘know’ this, because these words are equal to the barking of a dog or the tweeting of a bird. It is all the one expression, and nobody can separate themselves from that expression and claim ownership. Nobody can teach life itself, nobody can give you that, because the dog barking, the bird singing, the sun shining is already life itself. Nobody can teach you it because everything is teaching it – everything is it.
To be totally free from all authority, including your own… that’s the real freedom….
Osho’s Divine Melody
Aug 1st
Unless you have known what love is, you have not known what melody is. It is the meeting, orgasmic meeting, of death and life. Unless love is known, you have missed. You were born, you lived, and you died – but you missed. You missed tremendously, you missed utterly, you missed absolutely – you missed the interval in between. That interval is the highest pinnacle, the peak experience. Kabir calls it the divine melody.
To attain it, there are four steps to be remembered:
Let these four steps become your whole religion, your whole Torah – all else is just commentary:
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Be here now, just this moment: you see the beauty of it? This very moment the benediction is here, God is here. When you are silent he speaks, when you are listening he sings.
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And learn to transform your poisons into honey, so all barriers are destroyed.
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Then third, start sharing: whatsoever you have, share it. Share your beauty, share your song, share your life. In sharing, you will be enriched. Don’t hoard. The moment you start hoarding you are going against God. The moment you start hoarding you are trying to depend on your own self; you have lost trust in life. Give it! As life has given it to you, give it – more will be coming.
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And fourth, be nothing. Nothing is the source of all, nothing is the source of infinity, nothing is God. Nothing means Nirvana. Be nothing – and in being nothing, you will have attained to the whole. In being something, you will miss; in being nothing, you will arrive home.
This whole existence is divine. Love the trees if you want to know anything about the forest. Love people if you want to know anything about God. Each particular manifestation can become a window, a door. Don’t be obsessed too much by words – the word ‘god’ is not God, the word ‘love’ is not love, and the word ‘fire’ of course is not fire. Drop words, and move more and more towards the existential.
Feel more, rather than thinking. Through feeling, your prayer will arise and through feeling, you will be dissolved one day. And when you are dissolved, God is.
(Osho – The Divine Melody #9)
Mindful Loving
Jul 14th
Mindfulness is a term with various interpretations and understandings. Although it’s become quite popular in recent times, I understand it to have roots in ancient Zen Buddhist practice. This little list of helpful suggestions for practicing mindfulness, works really well if you apply it specifically to how you relate intimately, to your mate:
How to Be Mindful
1. Do one thing at a time. Single-task, don’t multi-task. When you’re pouring water, just pour water. When you’re eating, just eat. When you’re bathing, just bathe. Don’t try to knock off a few tasks while eating or bathing or driving. Zen proverb: “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”
2. Do it slowly and deliberately. You can do one task at a time, but also rush that task. Instead, take your time, and move slowly. Make your actions deliberate, not rushed and random. It takes practice, but it helps you focus on the task.
3. Do less. If you do less, you can do those things more slowly, more completely and with more concentration. If you fill your day with tasks, you will be rushing from one thing to the next without stopping to think about what you do. But you’re busy and you can’t possibly do less, right? You can. I’ve done it, and so have many busy people. It’s a matter of figuring out what’s important, and letting go of what’s not. Read more: The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less.
4. Put space between things. Related to the “Do less” rule, but it’s a way of managing your schedule so that you always have time to complete each task. Don’t schedule things close together — instead, leave room between things on your schedule. That gives you a more relaxed schedule, and leaves space in case one task takes longer than you planned.
5. Spend at least 5 minutes each day doing nothing. Just sit in silence. Become aware of your thoughts. Focus on your breathing. Notice the world around you. Become comfortable with the silence and stillness. It’ll do you a world of good — and just takes 5 minutes!
6. Stop worrying about the future – focus on the present. Become more aware of your thinking — are you constantly worrying about the future? Learn to recognize when you’re doing this, and then practice bringing yourself back to the present. Just focus on what you’re doing, right now. Enjoy the present moment.
7. When you’re talking to someone, be present. How many of us have spent time with someone but have been thinking about what we need to do in the future? Or thinking about what we want to say next, instead of really listening to that person? Instead, focus on being present, on really listening, on really enjoying your time with that person.
8. Eat slowly and savor your food. Food can be crammed down our throats in a rush, but where’s the joy in that? Savor each bite, slowly, and really get the most out of your food. Interestingly, you’ll eat less this way, and digest your food better as well.
9. Live slowly and savor your life. Just as you would savor your food by eating it more slowly, do everything this way — slow down and savor each and every moment. As I type this, for example, I have my 3-year-old daughter, Noelle, on my lap. She’s just sitting here quietly, as the rain pours down in a hush outside. What a lovely moment. In fact, I’m going to take a few minutes off just to be with her now. Be right back. :)
10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation. Cooking and cleaning are often seen as drudgery, but actually they are both great ways to practice mindfulness, and can be great rituals performed each day. If cooking and cleaning seem like boring chores to you, try doing them as a form of meditation. Put your entire mind into those tasks, concentrate, and do them slowly and completely. It could change your entire day (as well as leave you with a cleaner house).
11. Keep practicing. When you get frustrated, just take a deep breath. When you ask yourself, “What should I do now, Self?”, the answer is “keep practicing”.
Falling in love with the Now – Gina Lake
Jul 8th
To fall in love with the Now, you have to fall in love with the adventure of not knowing, because the Now is an adventure in not knowing. You have to be willing to get lost in the moment and let life take you from one moment to the next without knowing where it’s taking you.
The truth is that we have never actually known what the next moment holds, but the ego pretends to know. Based on the past, the ego often assumes to know what will happen, or it imagines a desired future. It believes its own images are or can be real representations of reality.
This tendency to make up the future or pretend to know what’s going to happen is what egos do to feel safe. It’s an attempt at some control in a world where little is, in fact, in our control. The ego pretends that reality is different than it is, and when reality doesn’t match the ego’s wishes, imaginations, and assumptions, it’s disappointed, angry, or sad. But that doesn’t prevent the ego from continuing to pretend it knows and continuing to create an imaginary future. Minds are just programmed to do that.
The trouble with believing the egoic mind’s version of reality is that it takes us out of reality, which is actually a very pleasurable experience. Being in the Now is highly pleasurable because being fully in our senses, which is part of being in the Now, is highly pleasurable. Although the ego seeks sensual pleasure, it’s usually lost in thought while engaging in that pleasure or doing two things at once, thereby diluting the sensual experience. Ironically, the ego seeks pleasure, while limiting the experience of pleasure by keeping us in our mental realm in the midst of whatever sensual experience we’re having. When we spend enough time in the Now for the depth of sensual pleasure to finally register, we are rewarded for doing so, which encourages us to spend more time in the Now—in our experience of real life rather than our thoughts about life.
What’s so difficult about being in the Now has nothing to do with the Now, because the Now has everything we’ve been looking for. What’s difficult about being in the Now is that the mind continually pulls us out of the Now with desires, fantasies, thoughts about the past, problems, dreams, judgments, opinions, worries, doubts, fears, “what ifs,” and so on. Thoughts are extremely seductive, and we are programmed to be seduced by our thoughts. Our programming causes us to believe that our thoughts are more important and much juicier than anything going on in the present moment and that the Now is bland and boring, when quite the opposite is true. Thoughts are actually poor imitations of reality. Like cardboard pictures of a piece of cake, our thoughts entice us but don’t deliver anything real. The Now, on the other hand, once we stay in it long enough to really experience it, is juicy, alive, rich, and satisfying. In the Now, we experience contentment, happiness, and peace unlike anything the ego has to offer.
The ego is the generator of discontentment. How could it—or why would it—give us anything truly satisfying when its purpose is to produce discontentment? The discontentment it creates keeps us involved with it, as it attempts to solve the problems and satisfy the dis-ease that it has caused. The ego thinks up problems and then offers solutions, but its solutions, like its problems, are made up. They are artificial and don’t arise naturally from the Now, from the flow of life. Have you noticed how Life solves problems? Answers, solutions, arise all of a sudden out of nowhere when you need them (but not necessarily right when you want them). Who knows when that will be? That’s how the Now works. It delivers answers and solutions when the time is right; we just don’t know when that will be. That’s why I said that to fall in love with the Now, you have to fall in love with not knowing—because the experience of the Now is an experience of not knowing.
What’s so bad about not knowing? Nothing, really, if you trust life. The ego doesn’t trust life, so its solution to not knowing and the distrust engendered by that is to pretend or try to know something. When you trust that life is good, you don’t need to know. For instance, when you trust your husband (or wife) to pay the bills, do you need to know about it? No. Trust precludes knowing. Not needing to know allows you to drop out of your mind, which is the only thing that needs to know, into the moment. Once you are in the moment, life is a sensual and joyous adventure.
When you are in the Now, you experience life as the being that you are experiences life—and it’s having a wonderful time! It’s in awe of this life that it’s created and is participating in. It’s excited to see what will happen next and how life will unfold: Who will show up? What will that person say? What will I say? What will we do? What will happen after that? What an adventure this is. The way you experience life as an adventure instead of something to be afraid of is to fall in love with not knowing what’s going to happen next. That’s what we love about movies and novels, isn’t it? We love to wonder and discover what’s going to happen. What will this character do? And what will that character do? The Divine is having a ball creating and living within its creations in each of us. What an amazing life and world this is! This is the truth that the ego doesn’t want you to see because if you do see the truth about life, you’ll realize you don’t need the ego anymore, and it will cease to exist or fall into the background.
Here’s my latest blog post at http://www.radicalhappiness.com/
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“Nothing trumps truth…” – Jed McKenna
Jul 4th
When we come to the point where we can’t think we can’t find any more happiness, we think it’s all over. And in a way it is. In a good way. This is life’s wake up call. Misery, suffering death. This is where people are forced to get real, and where understanding can occur. Nothing trumps truth.
You are at the exact centre of the universe – YOUR universe.
There is only Truth and illusion, and within illusion there is only fear and denial. Denial of fear is the motivation underlying all activities in which humans engage. This is “vanity” in the biblical sense.
We must constantly project the illusion of self because if we don’t – WE AREN’T!
I’m asking you now – “Is it possible, that everything’s going to be “all right.”
Don’t you ever get tired of being afraid; of struggling? The answer is to stop struggling – to go INTO the fear.
The cause of the unhappiness isn’t the situation – but the resistance. You’re making death and decay and disease – evil. But they’re not eveil. They just are. The clinging is the cause of the unhappiness. Release is the answer.
We might equate surrender with abdication of self-responsibility – but it’s really just the opposite. It’s where we dispense with intermediaries like priests and doctors and government, and take our own lives into our own hands!
Karezza
Jul 2nd
Here is an article (written in 1931) which I really enjoy. I love the word Karezza that is used to describe Sacred Sexuality. The article was written in a time when contraception was illegal.
What is Karezza?
Karezza is controlled non-seminal intercourse. The word Karezza (pronounced Ka-ret-za) is from the Italian and means a caress.
The first objection that is certain to meet one who would recommend Karezza is that it is “unnatural.” Noyes confronts this objection very ably, and it is indeed absurd, when you came to think of it, to hear men who drink alcohol, smoke, use tea and coffee, take milk, though adults, eat cooked food, live in heated houses, wear clothes, write books, shave their faces, use machinery, and do a thousand and one things which the natural man, the true aborigine, knew nothing of, condemn a mere act of moderation and self-control in pleasure as “unnatural.”
In successful Karezza the sex-organs become quiet, satisfied, demagnetized, as perfectly as by the orgasm, while the rest of the body of each partner glows with a wonderful vigor and conscious joy, or else with a deep, sweet, contentment, as after a happy play; tending to irradiate the whole being with romantic love; and always with an after-feeling of health, purity and well-being. We are most happy and good-humored as after a full meal. Whereas, if there has been an orgasm, it is the common experience that there is a sense of loss, weakness, and dispelled illusion; following quickly on the first grateful feeling of relief. There has been a momentary joy, but too brief and epileptic to make much impression on consciousness, and now it is gone, leaving no memory. The lights have gone out, the music has stopped. The weakness is often so severe as to cause pallor, faintness, vertigo, dyspepsia, disgust, irritability, shame, dislike, or other pathological or unloving symptoms. This especially on the man’s part, but perhaps to some extent on the woman’s part too. Even if no more, there is lassitude, sudden indifference, a wish to sleep. A wet blanket has fallen for the time at least, on the flame of love. Romance drops and crawls like a winged bird. In Karezza, on, the contrary, the partners unfold and separate reluctantly, lingeringly, kissing, clinging, petting to the last, thrilled with and rehearsing memories, glowing with an affection and admiration which they feel can never end.
It would appear that in the orgasmal embrace the life-force is thrown off with such suddenness and volume that it is quite impossible for the partner to receive or assimilate much of it, therefore most of it is utterly wasted.
For this reason, the orgasmal-embrace is a most clumsy and disappointing thing when employed as a love-embrace. Nature meant it only for propagation and its whole modus operandi is calculated to check love, defeat love, and turn love into indifference or aversion. The more frequently it is employed, the more love dies, romance evaporates, and a mere sexuality, a matter-of-fact relation, or plain dislike, takes the place of the glamour of courtship days. On the contrary, Karezza makes marriage more delicious than courtship, more romantic than wooing, and maintains an endless, satisfying honeymoon.
There is an increase of attractiveness and magnetism of each for each, a growth of satisfaction in each other’s society, affection, and caressing becomes a sweet habit. Nothing else known makes the course of true love run so smooth as Karezza.
The orgasm is not always, but very commonly followed by a greater or less degree of exhaustion, perhaps extreme, but Karezza, unless repeated to excess, or practiced between the mis-mated, is never followed by exhaustion, but often by a delightful glow and joy in life. The usual sequel to the orgasm is demagnetization, indifference, too frequently irritability, disgust, repulsion and a craving for stimulants, but Karezza irradiates the whole being with tender, romantic, peaceful love. This, so far as I know, is universal experience, therefore merely needs to be stated to show how healthful an influence Karezza must wield. As a matter of fact, because of the tonicity, glow and vigor it bestows on the sexual parts and its wine-like inspiration of the spirit of the partners, with no reaction, it is one of the best hygienic agencies for the benefit and cure of ordinary sexual weaknesses and ailments – leucorrhea, displacements, prolapsus, bladder-troubles, simple urethritis, prostatitis, etc., known. And I say this from actual knowledge. I have known it to act like magic in painful menstruation and in prostatitis. But remember, I am always speaking of its exercise between those who are naturally fitted to respond and who really love each other, who honor their bodies and would not knowingly abuse them. As a mere sex-experiment it might be of little value or satisfaction. It appears to be perfect or poor, just about in proportion to the greater or less amount of heart-love involved. At least it imperatively demands kindness, tenderness, chivalry on the man’s part, a pleased acceptance and relaxation on the woman’s; and the more refinement, poetry of feeling and mutual romance the better – any amount can be utilized. The gross, reckless and lustful may as well let it alone – it is not for them.
As a nerve sedative its effect is remarkable. I have known it to instantly cure a violent, even agonizing nervous headache, a restful nap following upon the cessation of pain. Under a strong, gentle magnetic man, a nervous woman often falls into a baby-like sleep, in the very midst of the embrace, and this is felt to be a peculiar luxury and coveted experience. Many women call Karezza “The Peace”; others call it “Heaven.” This alone is a testimony worth volumes.
Now I do not apprehend, from all I have seen of life, that Karezza will ever come into vogue from the male side of the world. Men seem united in their dull, lethargic indifference to it. Helplessly or selfishly they say it is impossible, and let it go at that, rather than make the little effort required to perfect themselves in it. They would preferably choose, or rather oblige their women to choose, something out of the nerve-shocking, disgusting, disease-producing outfit of douches, drugs, tampons, plugs, pessaries, shields, condoms, and save them all further responsibility in the matter, although the highest authorities admit none of these resources are really safe, that is sure, contraceptives, and most of them are decidedly injurious. Only the absence of semen is safe, and that is found in Karezza and in Karezza alone. But perhaps the most clinching condemnation of these methods, to a refined person, is that pronounced by a fine woman of my acquaintance, “There is not one of these methods that does not destroy, for the woman, all the poetry of the act.” Only in Karezza is the poetry fully preserved, and not only that, but made capable of development to the most refined nuances of artistic and ingenious delight. Only to the Karezza-lover is the Art of Love possible in any sense worthy of the name. All the others begin the performance by shutting off the music and throwing away the wine.
But as the Woman Movement grows I am sure Karezza will come into its own. As women learn its transcendent importance to their happiness and health, they will demand it and refuse all men that cannot supply that demand. That will be a force that cannot be withstood.
Woman is by birth the Queen of Love and will certainly assume her inheritance and control in her own sphere and realm.
Extracted from SacredTexts
MAKING LOVE?
Jun 30th
(I’d say this must be one of the most profound teachings on the subject, that I’ve ever read.)
An extract from Barry Long’s book MAKING LOVE ~ SEXUAL LOVE THE DIVINE WAY – a turning point in the understanding of love on the planet.
I teach man and woman how to be true to love and how to be honest in their relationships. I help them to discover a divine love beyond all sexual imagining. The key to the mystery of divine love is to see love as it is, and not as you think it or imagine it.
The cause of most of the unhappiness on earth is that man and woman have actually forgotten how to make physical love. This is the greatest tragedy of all time. The forgetfulness has been going on and slowly getting worse for so many thousands of years that it’s now a tragedy for the whole of mankind. There can be no mass solutions. The problem is too personal and too deep. Everybody has to do it for himself or herself, or it can’t be done.
*
Woman’s basic unhappiness, her perennial discontent, is because man can no longer reach her physically. Her emotional excess, depressions, tearful frustrations, even premenstrual tension and the conditions leading to hysterectomy and other uterine problems, are due to man’s sexual failure to gather or release in lovemaking her finest, fundamental, female energies. These extraordinarily beautiful divine energies are intense and exquisite and when left untapped in woman, as they are now, they degenerate into psychic or emotional disturbances, and eventually crystallise into physical abnormalities. The womb gives birth to all things.
Man’s basic unhappiness, his perennial restlessness, is because in forgetting how to make love he’s abandoned his original divine authority and lost sexual control of himself. His emotional or psychic degeneracy manifests as sex obsession. All men, without exception, are sex obsessed. This means compulsive sexual fantasising, chronic masturbation (even when living with a partner), sex repression leading to anger and violence, and the universal symptoms of chasing wealth and getting lost in work. Busyness and wealth-gathering compensate for being an inept lover and are cover-ups (in both sexes) for the inability or fear to love.
Because of his neglect of love, neglect of woman, man suffers from premature ejaculation, guilt, anxiety self-doubt, impotence, sexual atrophy masquerading as sexual disinterest, sexual abstinence due to repressed fear of failure, sexual bravado and lack of true wisdom – all of which he inflicts on woman, aggravating her basic discontent and his own restlessness.
No matter how much a woman loves her man and wants to give her love to him, she will not and cannot give up all her divine energies if he is not yet himself, fully integrated or aligned with love. As very few men are themselves, the gap of unhappiness between man and woman keeps on growing.
To be a fully integrated male, a man has to assimilate in his body the divine female energies that woman can only release to him through right physical lovemaking. But the man has to be man enough. He has to be able to love her enough; that is, love her selflessly during the actual act of lovemaking. He has to be able to absorb and express sufficient love in his body to reach the highest part of her, and love enough to extract the divine energies from her deepest centre. To be able to love in this way is the authority man has lost – his only true authority over woman.
This requires pure love. It does not depend on technique. A man may develop his sexual technique but he cannot use expertise to make divine love. Exciting sensations are gratifying and give him a form of authority, but they are not the love that woman craves. He may satisfy her, like a good meal. But soon she hungers again and eventually despises her appetite or herself, because she knows she is not being loved.
*
Man has failed to serve love and failed physically to serve woman, who is the personification of love. The penalty for man is woman’s tyrannous emotionality. Wherever he loves, or tries to love, she will one day shock him, stun him, devastate him by suddenly revealing herself as the fiendess, the living demon of emotion.
The fiendess shows herself when he is attached and can’t just walk away. A man who has not yet experienced the hatred of the fiendess has not yet experienced love. A woman who has not yet seen herself being the fiendess has not yet connected with her love.
To man, the fiendess of emotion in woman is hell on earth. This is the part of her he cannot handle or understand. The demon of his own failure to love comes to life to scorn, abuse and torment him. He is terrified of it. He bluffs and blusters his way through. But finally, as he grows old in the relationship and gives up for the sake of some peace, the fiendess will conquer him and force him to surrender the last vestige of his manliness and authority. Then they both grow old together, feeling safe, but half dead as they lean on each other in the awful world of compromise.
While the world continues as it is, the fiendess will not allow man to forget his failure to love woman rightly. Woman must be loved. The future of the human race depends on woman being loved because only when woman is truly loved can man be truly himself and regain his lost authority. Only then can peace return to earth. Yet woman as she is now cannot be loved for long (or for good) by man as he is now. Together they are trapped in a vicious cycle and if left to their own ideas of love, there is no way out for them.
*
Woman has learned to make love through man who does not know how to make love. Hence the dreadful mess that love is in. Since time began she has been manipulated and encouraged to feel that the finest expression of her love is to please man sexually. The truth is the other way around. The finest expression of love is to have man delight her sexually. This he can only do when he can forget his preoccupation with orgasm and be sufficiently selfless or present in love to collect and receive her divine energies. For him, these are the finest expression of her love.
By teaching her to please him and satisfy him down through the ages, man has taught woman to desire him, to project herself sexually, to make herself attractive to him. He addicted her to an emotional and physical craving for his sexual attention. And he did this by neglecting to love her.
Woman had no affirmation of love, her true nature, since there was no man to love her rightly. So she settled for sexual excitation, which man had persuaded her was love. Men addicted her to this by teaching her that there is no purpose to physical love outside of making babies or selfish pleasure.
Man in his selfishness taught woman to be selfish. He taught her to excite him physically whenever love was not present; to project herself sexually for their mutual entertainment through clothing, make-up, dance and posing. And he encouraged her to let him excite her (and himself) through digital stimulation of her clitoris to the point of orgasm, instead of loving the beauty of her whole body.
The loveless narcotic of sex numbed her and like all addictions, engendered fear – fear of losing him or his attention, and fear of other women in the form of jealousy and female competition. If she didn’t satisfy him another woman soon would. And with this went the intimidating thought sown in her by all her sexual partners: that if she didn’t comply she’d be left alone.
As a reaction to this male infamy woman discovered cunt power – the power to tease man and manipulate him without delivering the goods, or by denying the goods when he wanted them. But the spell of cunt power, being largely imaginary, soon wore off after she let him enter her body. He would soon tire of her and go off with another.
Woman’s subconscious dependence on the fluctuating sexual attention of men rules her choice of partner. She may go for either an exciting man whom she thinks she can control, or an agreeable and safe partner whom she can quietly bend to her wants. Both kinds of partnership usually end – either in disaster or boredom and indifference.
*
Male sexuality is put into woman in sexual intercourse and, because it is substantive, it stays on in her. Its effect is a periodic wispy shadow of depression that she can’t explain but accepts as normal. It clouds her perception, making her feel emotional and not herself. The same male sexuality is the active outgoing selfish drive which made the world a violent and loveless place. In woman, this destructive shadow of man subtly influences her choice of partner. So very seldom is he Mr Right.
The male shadow in her is doubt. And it is the shadow that chooses. While woman wants the right to choose she has to make a choice; and then she must live with the shadow, doubt, in the man and in herself.
Woman in her natural state is not dependent on man. She loves him. And in love there is no dependence, and no fear of losing. She is the passive, attracting principle. She is an irresistible living magnet. She draws to herself a right man to love her truly and divinely. There’s no choice in it.
For woman today to return to her natural golden state – of pure love – takes time. But having suffered enough from man’s sexuality, she gradually learns not to compromise when there is not enough love. Finally this brings her a man who can remove the shadow from his love.
A woman is only ever less than her true nature because of man’s lack of love. She went off into her dream of love to escape his sexuality. Her babies have long been a substitute for his love. Unlike man, a real woman can exist without sexual intercourse or masturbation. She waits for love, not sex. Woman only lusts for man when she identifies with the male sexuality he has induced in her. ‘Nymphomania’ is a male invention and fantasy projection, like sex-shops, pornography and prostitution, all kept going by male sexuality and lack of love in all concerned.
Woman has been utterly fooled by man, pathologically brainwashed. And as modern woman congratulates herself on her progress in breaking down male domination in the world, she fails to perceive that she is as firmly hooked as ever on his orgasmic sexuality and his clitoral substitute for love. Her protests are really about love, not equality; but that’s not heard in the strident male arena.
It is man’s world and he built it on the strength of sexual aggression. Male domination began in sex and in sex it continues unabated. Woman cannot alter this position by marching with banners or withdrawing from sex. She has tried all the means at her disposal down through the centuries; none has worked and none will. The solution is for her to be in command of love. That does not mean to be in command of the man. It means to know inside herself what is right and true and stick to that, even if it means the man leaves her. Woman is love. All she has to do is realise that, by giving up her self doubt and fear.
Barry Long
An extract from Making Love
© The Barry Long Trust
Be soft like water!
Apr 29th
“Water is so soft that it can’t be harmed, damaged, or destroyed—it simply returns to its Source to be used over and over again. Boil it until it disappears, and its vapors enter the atmosphere, ultimately to return. Drink it, and it returns after nourishing your body. Pollute it, and it will return after enough passage of time to become purified nourishment again. This is all accomplished because of the element’s mutable softness.
When you stay soft and surpass the hard, you too will be indestructible. There’s nothing softer than water under heaven, and yet there’s nothing that can surpass it for overcoming the hard. There’s so much wisdom to be found in this analogy: Stay in your soft mode. Hang back when you’re about to show how hard you can be. Try patience rather than attempting to rigidly control. Trust your innately gentle self.” Wayne Dyer
This option, skill and way of being like water, fits beautifully with how we can relate intimately with a partner – in the bedroom as well as outside it, when the going gets rough. As we practice touching and making love softly, we embody and integrate the principle of living and being as soft and as gentle as water. What better way to show your soft open heart than through the way you touch your lover.
A respected teacher of mine often encourages his students to “open and soften” in the midst of a wave of turmoil. This is the same principle as the art of being like water. When life thrusts us into situations where we feel misunderstood or when our expectations don’t seem to be met, we tend to label this as “suffering.” When we suffer, we have two choices. We can react and harden in resistance to what we’re feeling and experiencing in the hopes that the feeling or the situation will go away, or we can open and soften. We can choose to be like water. Choosing this way seems a tough call but it is in fact much softer way of life. It’s softer on the heart, the mind and the body. It may take a deep breath or two and a lot of courage to do, as it feels exposing and scary to be soft and open, but the lesson of water is that it will bear the fruit and will, if you dare risk it, feel a lot kinder on your system and on others around you.
I invite you to join me in choosing to be soft, like water.
Osho’s advice
Mar 30th
If you can encounter any problem face to face, directly, it disappears.
In the inner world, to know what a problem is, to know exactly what it is, to diagnose it – is to treat it. There is no other medicine in the inner world. A problem only exists if you go on suppressing it. If you don’t allow it to be confronted, it exists. And people go on piling up many problems, and then they are always in a hurry. In their hurry they are trying to evade; because if they rest, sit down, they will have to face them. OSHO
Inner Smile
When: Whenever you are sitting with nothing to do.
Step 1: Breathe From the Mouth
“Relax the lower jaw and let your mouth open just slightly. Start breathing from the mouth, but not deeply. Just let the body breathe so it becomes more and more shallow. And when you feel that the breath has become very shallow and your mouth is open and jaw relaxed, your whole body will feel very relaxed.
Step 2: Feel a Smile
“In that moment, start feeling a smile — not on your face but all over your being — and you will be able to. It is not a smile that comes on the lips; it is an existential smile that spreads just inside. Try and you will know what it is, because it cannot be explained. No need to smile with your lips on your face but just as if you are smiling from the belly, the belly is smiling.
“And it is a smile, not a laugh, so it is very very soft, delicate, fragile — like a small rose opening in the belly and the fragrance spreading all over the body.
“Once you have known what this smile is, you can remain happy for twenty-four hours a day. And whenever you feel that you are missing that happiness, just close your eyes and catch hold of that smile again, and it will be there. In the daytime as many times as you want, you can catch hold of it. It is always there.”
What is consciousness?
Mar 19th
(I forget where I copied this from – but feel it’s still too valuable not to share it.)
Consciousness is what we are doing. You might call consciousness our operating system. We are aware of those things that support our consciousness, and we live our life in that manner.
The consciousness that pervades this planet is violent. Violence is when something is seen as other than ourselves, and is then pushed around or destroyed in order that we might change the circumstances that we find ourselves in. When we live our lives in this way, we make the world – and everyone and everything in it – something to be conquered.
Violence is not aggressive action, but aggressive action can come out of violence. All that is required for something to be considered violent is that it is seen as other than yourself.
There is a new consciousness on this planet, which is free from violence. It is the end of seeing everyone and everything on the planet as separate from ourselves. It is not knowledge, or something you have to remember. The new consciousness is not a philosophy or a religion. There is nothing you need to believe in. All that is required to move into the new consciousness is that you speak truth, which is not some special truth or knowledge that someone else tells you. It’s to speak what is happening now, without the manipulating and control that we speak from in our current consciousness. The truth is simple; we say what’s true. Someone asks “who ate the last cookie?” and we answer without evasion. If we ate the last cookie, we say so, without avoidance or excuse: “I did”. Consciousness is not something that we are separate from. It is not our master. We are our consciousness, and if consciousness is to transform into something new, it is up to us. No god or religion is going to do it for us. When we transform ourselves, we transform our world, for each of us. It is not up to us to transform anyone but our self, but perhaps we might assist each other in the most important undertaking that human kind has ever known – the transformation of consciousness. What else might each of us do to make transformation of consciousness a reality for every person on the planet?
Martina’s take on Women
Mar 3rd
Women want to talk about men . . .
More specifically, all the things that men need to change or do differently in order for the relationship to work or for her to be happy. When did women get so out of balance that her happiness became a man’s responsibility?
A woman who is out of balance with herself imagines that all of the concerns in the relationship would disappear “if only he would change” or “if he would share his feelings”.
She becomes overly concerned with his emotional state and the fact that he “doesn’t share”. And when asked why she feels unhappy she will say, “it’s about Bob, I think he needs to do something new”.
Women tell men that they are not being “real men” and complain to each other that “he is not man enough for me”.
There is only one remedy for a woman to take – to realise that she needs to be more of a woman in order for her to experience the men around her differently, she needs to be willing to be vulnerable, to be tender, to be soft, exposed, expressive in her feminine essence. So many women have lost sight of what it is to be a woman. We have examples of the totally submissive woman throwing herself away and the totally emasculating woman taking control of everything. But where did the in tune, in touch, healthy expressive version of the feminine go? Where is the woman who is open, receptive, and wise? A real woman relaxes into her feeling nature, she uses structures and masculine intention where necessary but the way she moves within is from her feeling base, connected to herself as the source of knowing and feeling.
A real woman will nurture and tend to her inner needs. She will take time and space to recognise what is of value in her life, and she will give priority to what is of value. She will nurture real, loving and intimate communion with other women. She will support the men around her to grow, she will let him know what moves her, what touches her deeply and she will let him know when she experiences him being out of alignment with his values.
A real woman does not manipulate or use her sexuality to feel powerful or to fulfil her egoic desires for attention. She will not repress her sexuality or undervalue the natural power of her relaxed sensual, sexual being.
She will nurture herself sexually, she will feel confidently alive and loving and vibrant in her body. She is also discerning, she knows when to say yes and when to say no. In sexual relating, she will experience herself as open and receptive and she may be available to one man or many. She feels into the sexual opportunities to ascertain whether there is something of value for her, for him or both. She may ask, “Will it support us to move towards creating a more loving space for being of service to our communities?”
She gives herself lovingly to a man without expectation or condition. She allows her source, her love, to overflow and touch the man’s heart deeply.
She leaves a man free to discover for himself what it means to be a man. She takes care of her inner feminine and inner masculine so that she falls so deeply in love with life, there is no way out. She nurtures only that which is real inside of her. She drops all stories, agendas, performances and fantasies. She knows the quality experiences of connecting with her essence and she lives from this place. Sharing her essence with the world never drains her, is never a chore, simply an opportunity to share and amplify her inner experience.
She interfaces with the world through the feminine; she is tender, compassionate and loving in all thoughts and actions. The way she feels is expressed in her tone of voice, the way she holds her body and the expression on her face.
She celebrates life and inspires men and women to rejoice in life and the unique expression of their essence. She knows that men become men when women become women, as that is the way of polarity.
Polarity is always balancing itself, when a woman has moved into a masculine posture, the men she attracts will be more feminine; and when a woman falls deeply into her feminine she attracts masculine men. Women may force the premature end of a relationship due to “his lack of manliness”. However, she would find that through taking care of herself and learning to express her feminine, either the relationship will shift and he would reclaim the masculine space or the relationship will fall away, leaving her to attract a partner who is a more suitable polarity match.
So whenever, we are experiencing discomfort in our relationships and waiting for the other to change, look inside, ask yourself what needs to be taken care of internally. The discomfort is simply your own being calling you home. The joy of life is restored when men and women remember who they truly are.
Dear Lover (Deida)
Feb 1st
“Like every man or woman, sometimes I want to flow and enjoy feminine energy and sometimes I want to go straight ahead toward a goal in the masculine style with no interruptions. But my sexual essence happens to be masculine, and so I am attracted to you, a lover with a feminine essence.
I know what I want sexually from you, dear lover. I want to see your feminine light and feel your invitation to merge with your feminine energy. I want to enter and claim your feminine heart open to God. I want to inhabit your loving surrender and open in love’s bliss with you not simply as friends, but as lovers in the play of passion and ravishment.
And yet I often feel you closing down or pushing me away. Sexually, I sometimes feel your coldness and resistance more than your joy of surrender. I know that sometimes it is my fault. I have been insensitive or cruel. And I know sometimes you are just too tired to open. But there are times that I don’t feel your heart open to receive my love even when you seem full of energy and I am fully present with you.
I want to enjoy deep sexual loving with you, but I also want both of us to open for the sake of everyone. I want our bedroom to be a palace of bliss, but I also want our hearts to give their gifts all day, so we live as the fulfillment of love, always opening, feeling everyone, making love through all our daily actions and relationships. I want you to open to me and I want to give you everything, but I also want both of us to open, feel, and offer ourselves to everyone all day.
I hope that together we can liberate our true hearts from our cages of fear. Then, our bodies can merge open in sexual delight and our hours can come and go as love all day.”
from “Dear Lover” by David Deida
“How to” meditate
Jan 2nd
I love this article on Awareness that I received from Gina Lake this week. It describes a simple and superb way of switching off and becoming quiet inside, one of the foundational aspects of what I teach when it comes to conscious sexuality:
NOTICING VS. GIVING ATTENTION
Noticing and giving attention to something are very different. When you notice your thoughts, you have stepped away from them and are no longer so identified with them. Noticing creates a space between your thoughts and you. When you notice something, you become aligned with the Noticer, or the real you. And that provides an opportunity to choose whether you’ll give those thoughts further attention or not. When you simply notice something, you are aligned with your real Self, or Essence. This Self is sometimes called Awareness. You are the awareness that is aware of, or notices, everything, including thoughts. You are not your thoughts or the thinker; your thoughts and the sense that you are the thinker is the egoic, or false, self.
Unlike noticing, attention is more like a spotlight that focuses on something to the exclusion of everything else and gets lost in it. When we give our attention to a thought, we become identified with it if our attention lands there long enough. Whatever we give our attention to becomes magnified in our awareness. Noticing, on the other hand, is more like a moving spotlight that doesn’t land in one spot. When we are aligned with Essence and noticing what we are experiencing, we are noticing lots of things: Our awareness moves from a thought, to a sensation, to an object, to a sound, to an intuition, to another sound, to a feeling, to a knowing, to another object, and so on. Our awareness jumps around so quickly from one thing to the next that we barely realize all the things it’s taking in. Noticing is what the real you, or Essence, does as it experiences life. It gives attention to what needs attention in order to function, and then it moves on. The state of ego-identification, however, is a state of giving attention to thoughts or feelings more than the other aspects of experience—and believing them. This ends up coloring our experience of life and interfering with experiencing it purely.
Continued HERE>
3 Tantra basics
Jan 1st
I have borrowed these exercises from a site I visit regularly. Enjoy!
“There are three exercises that I always teach as the basis for any Tantric work. They are Deep Belly Breathing, the PC Pump and the Pelvic Tilt. It’s best to learn each independently first so they are second nature. After that, you learn to combine the three.
The Breath
It’s always best to start with the breath. You would be amazed at how difficult it
can be to breathe correctly. Some people cannot feel their bodies. If you are one of these people don’t give up, just keep trying and with practice you will get it. You want to really concentrate on taking a slow full breath in. Expand your belly, give room for your lungs to expand fully. Then when you want to exhale, just relax. Again, this may sound easy, but if you experience difficulty in isolating your belly and getting it to go out on the inhale lie down on the floor on your back. Put your hands on your stomach or a book or something so your awareness has somewhere to concentrate the sensation on.
When I coach, I always suggest starting any practice slowly so that you actually end up doing it. For most people an hour commitment every day just seems too difficult so they never begin. But if you start with three or four minutes a day, just lying in your bed before getting up, breathing deeply and consciously, you might actually keep doing it for more than two days. Then the more you do it, the more desire you have to remember to breathe this way. As time goes by you might want to more of it in the morning because it feels so good. You might even start to think of it in the middle of the day and check in on your body to see if you are breathing deeply or not.
People often wonder why I suggest learning this and stress it so much- it’s because there is nothing on the planet that brings us into our bodies and brings us more present to the now than the breath. It’s life and increases life force in our bodies, opening up orgasmic channels that help kundalini to flow.
The PC Pump
Wom
en have been taught about this, the Kegel or PC (pubococcygeus) muscle, and how to exercise it for childbirth for years. We have been told that it reduces the incidence of incontinence that can develop with age. What isn’t communicated, however is the importance of this exercise for men. Studies have shown that doing this exercise reduces prostate problems in men.For both sexes, this exercise enhances your sexual experience. For men it is the basic exercise for learning ejaculatory control and for beginning to learn to be multi orgasmic.
For women, it helps bring on orgasm and enhances your sexual experience, too. If you are a heterosexual woman, you can really enhance both of your and your partner’s experience by learning to milk his vajra (Tantric word for penis. Another is lingham) with your muscles… it feels great to him and wonderful for you.
Some people have a hard time finding the muscle, but it can be easily learned. You just use the same muscles that you contract to stop the flow of urine. If you have any question as to what that feels like or which muscles you are supposed to be using, then practice the next time you pee. When you tighten the right muscle the flow of urine stops. You can start and stop numerous times to integrate the feeling. Then just replicate that feeling when not urinating, going back to checking when you are, just to make sure you have the right muscles. Many people think they are doing the right ones when they are really just contracting their lower stomach muscles. It’s really a good thing to check.
Once you get the basic feeling down, you can play with the the PC Pump in a variety of ways: try tightening lots of times really fast. Then tighten it slowly or alternate fast and slow.Try doing it R…E…..A….L…L..Y slowly, hold, then slowly release.Tighten it to about a third of the way, then again tighter, then again. Then go down in increments.For women, when you reach the bottom, bulge that muscle out like you are pushing a baby out. This is one exercise to begin to ready your body for ejaculation, ladies.
For the women: you can stick you finger inside yoni as you do the exercises to understand the feelings and to give yourself a sort of visual or more integrated kinesthetic knowing of your body. This can be especially helpful when learning milking.
The Pelvic Tilt:
When first learning this one, I have found that the easiest way to feel the sensation is to lie down on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the ground. Take your fingers and fe
el the area right above cheeks of your butt. Most people have a bit of an indentation on either side of the top of a triangle bone called the sacrum. The bone then continues down into a point about five to six inches or so. This is where you focus.
Usually when lying down in this position, there is a natural curve to the back, with this triangle,or sacrum, slightly arched, leaving a space right above it between your back and the floor. To get the motion down, tighten your thighs a bit and flatten only that sacrum part of your lower butt/back to the floor. Don’t round your whole back, just that part moves. Now press it under a bit more, arching the pubic bone up and tilting it at an angle. Then release and arch it the other way slightly exaggerating the space between the back and the floor. Again…this does not involve the whole back, just that sacrum area.
Try it a few times, then when you feel comfortable, do it rhythmically to a very slow beat, arching first one way then the other. Once feel you have the sensation of what it is supposed to feel like with the added pressure of the floor, you can then sit a zafu (or other pillow) on the floor or on a chair with no arms. Sit up straight on the edge of the chair, spread your legs and begin the motion in that position. Again..all movement is just in that lower part of the body- only movement below the waist should be going on. You can imagine that your pelvis is on a fulcrum moving back and forth while the rest of the body sits still.
Once you have this down, you can practice it in a variety of positions, always focusing on isolating that very lowest part of your body. Eventually you will feel so at ease with this, the Breath and the PC Pump exercises that you will be able to combine them for enhanced meditation practice, increasing orgasmic energy flow throughout the body, controlling sexual orgasmic release and grounding.”
What is Authentic Sexuality?
Jan 1st
A valuable article from Deva Charu. Much of what she says is what I’ve found to be true in so many ways:
As the things that used to titillate me and turn me on dissolve, I find myself asking what is it to be ‘turned on’ when it does not come from my brain?
It seems to me that most of the things that are sexually exciting to us as human beings fall under one of the following categories:
1. forbidden in some way eg. making love in public
2. inaccessible, unrequited eg. lusting after someones spouse
3. ‘bad’, unethical, just plain ‘wrong’ eg. sleeping with someones spouse, a teacher, co-worker
4. shameful eg. longing for some sordid sexual act
5. punish-able eg. (see ‘bad’, unethical)
6. somehow involving control eg. a feeling ‘if I am sexy enough to win this persons attention, I have ‘won’ control over them
For some(most) of us, we have been raised so isolated from sex and sexuality that we are turned on by anything sexual because to us it somehow falls into one of these categories.
And yet, when we find ourselves in loving, committed relationships, these elements are generally not a part of it, or if they are, the novelty wears off after a while and we are left with a person we love, who loves us and…??? How in the world do you get turned on within such freedom and love?
I always had a feeling that most of the time when I felt ‘titillated’ it came from my brain…being a meditator I imagined that as I let go of listening to what my mind was telling me, and little by little found my way back to the wisdom of my body, that all of these turn-ons would go away and I would begin to discover what is ‘authentic sexuality’.
I believe that I have had moments of this. The first of which occurred for me in India at the Osho commune. Each evening we would do a 3 hour meditation which involved dancing, listening to a lecture, speaking gibberish (making sounds), and resting silently…whenever I would participate in this meditation I would feel my heart open, and with it, my vagina. I would often leave the meditation hall feeling a slippery wetness dripping down my legs…I felt very alive, and none of it came from stimulating my brain or what I had come to believe was sexy. It was simply a bodily response.
I have also felt this several times within my relationship, moments when I have felt so loved, and allowed myself to receive that love…as my heart would open, my vagina would open in a completely genuine, alive delicious way.
…and, of course, one of the main things that drew me to Tantra, and that keeps me consistently dedicated to this practice is that in Tantra I have often felt the sweet, authentic, connected opening that I so long for.
Several times in my life, including right now, I have felt a wall come up, or a switch has been flipped ‘off’. The things that once turned me on no longer do and I feel strange and slightly less than human.
Although I regularly practice opening my heart and my body, it seems that the door to my authentic sexuality does not yet know how to stay open consistently and I find myself in an uncomfortable numbness. Or perhaps it is that as I am opening more and more and journeying deeper into unknown territory inside of me, I am gradually uncovering walled-off areas that I had been able to avoid when I was more disconnected. Perhaps there was a more comfortable layer of behavior that has been burned away by the meditation and I am sitting with parts of myself that I had been safely avoiding.
My intuition says that something beautiful is happening for me, that I am meeting a new side of myself and as I allow myself to feel what is happening in my body, I will begin to discover a new level of authenticity…perhaps make new ground-breaking discoveries about what is available between man and woman. Perhaps touch the depths of myself on a new level and learn to experience even more of life, even more of lovemaking, even more intimacy.
In the meantime, I am having trouble letting go and allowing. I feel confused, frustrated and wrong for experiencing this. I feel a responsibility to satisfy my partner, I feel a pressure from within to ‘hurry up and get through this’ so that I can again feel alive the way that I once did.
I am afraid of the unknown. Afraid of what comes after this point.
The point beyond excitement into a discovery of essential arousal.
in love,
Charu
Romance – the new alcohol
Dec 13th
Many of us are looking to improve our relationships or to find some ideal of the right partner. The media and any movie that you watch, completely supports the illusion. Everyone around you seems to do so as well. It’s only when we start looking a little deeper and questioning the conventional norms of society, that we may step away and start looking for ways to find the truth we somehow miss when we’re running around hoping for someone else to make us feel better. I have done this many times myself and I keep having to come back to the recognition that life is lived from within and Love lies ready and waiting in my own heart. Any outside loving that goes on is just an overflow of what has been found within.
Romance is perhaps the most common cover-up for the sense of fragmentation. If we are lonely, it must make sense that we need a special someone! Logical and cold, like a business transaction. A boyfriend, a girlfriend, a lover, someone, anyone! We have reduced them to a mere cover up for our sorrows – no different from the misuse of alcohol, the noise of our television, or killing time on the phone until we can next be with someone – as if we have so much time to kill!
Sex is the closest we can get to oneness on a physical level, and that is why it is so deeply satisfying. And when we peer deeper into our heart, fragmentation shows up as a need to attach, to cling, to melt and to merge. How many people are conscious of this lack? How common is this primordial sense of alienation? Common enough to show up on a standardised psychological test.
And so we look for someone to take away that feeling. When we are with someone, we can take our mind off that background sense of disharmony. Suddenly, our existence seems to have meaning. “I am not alone!” You exclaim, as you cuddle, hug, and kiss. “I have someone who needs me, who wants me! I am beautiful, I am wanted, I am worthy! I am no longer alone!”
And yet, a mere cover-up is all they will ever be. Even when we are with our loved ones, we are still just as we are – alone.
A few weeks ago, I was watching a documentary on the “host” sub-culture, in the nightclub districts of an affluent country. It revolved around handsome young men – dressed up gaudily, highly trained in seduction, paid to lounge around in special bars. They play host to multitudes of women – often young, pretty, and rich – who pay for their company, their caresses, and their idle flattery.
The film focused in particular on the finest host in town – a charming man who owned his own bar. He was living the dream. His prowess with women made other men pale in comparison. He stole women away from their husbands and boyfriends. Women fought over him, sometimes physically, sometimes by throwing money at him, and he goes home with a different one every night. It seemed he would be the last man on Earth to feel alienated.
Near the end of the documentary, I remember the interviewer asking him if it was all worth it. He hangs his head and sighs. “It was all fun for the first few years. But after a while…I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore. I am the loneliest man in the world.”
Well worth reading the full article in context: SOURCE
Jean-Pierre Hartman
Massage.co.za
Eckhart Tolle
Jeff Foster