I have written about desire here for a few days now. What is desire?

When I explore in immediacy, I find that my thoughts or images trigger desire. And it may then seem that the object itself triggered desire. It didn’t, and it is sometimes good to notice.

When I bring attention to the experience of desire, I find that the essence of desire is simply desire, the experience of desire. It may be triggered by my imagination, and it is given an object by my imagination.

As pure and simple desire, it is an experience. Energy. Flow. Life. Aliveness.

read on…

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It’s part of life to lose and find ground in different ways.

And that is no different when we are on the love/truth path.

I may make changes in my life to live more in alignment with my truth and heart, and this is an ongoing process. I may chose to leave the familiar and (apparently) comfortable.

I discover more sides of myself and embrace more of my wholeness as a human being in the world. My identities expand and become more inclusive.

There is a loss of identification with stories, images and identities, including the me (human self) and eventually I (doer, observer).

read on…

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Simple, clear and from the heart.

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In any relationship – with friends, family, co-workers, lovers - there is a desire for security and freedom.

And both comes from clear and honest communication, balancing passion for self with compassion for others*.

There is security because I trust myself and the other to speak freely. I trust each of us to bring up anything related to our relationship, for both of us to be clear about our needs and desires, and for our capacity to negotiate ways for each of us to fulfill our needs and desires. Giving ourself and the other the freedom to speak freely, there is trust.

And there is freedom because of that trust. When there is trust, I allow myself and the other freedom to be who we are, and to communicate honestly, to express our desires, and find ways to pursue those desires in ways that work for both of us.

Freedom feeds trust, and trust feeds freedom. If there is a commitment to truth and love – which are really two names for the same - there is over time a deepening of trust and freedom.

read on…

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When I take care of my own needs, it is easy to find happiness for the happiness of others.

I take care of my own needs, and this brings a sense of satisfaction, alignment and of coming home. Whatever resentment and poverty mentality may be here from previously not taking care of my own needs, is released. And instead, there is a natural and spontaneous sense of gratitude and generosity. One of the ways this gratitude and generosity finds expression is as an satisfaction in and desire for the happiness and good fortune of others.

read on…

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Truth feels good.

When I find what is more true and honest for me, for myself and in conversation with others, it feels good.

There is a sense of relief, of coming home. The is clarity, kindness and wisdom.  It is all recognized as innocence.

It feels good throughout all of me. My mind relaxes. My body relaxes.

As Adyashanti says, we are hardwired for truth.

read on…

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Here is a pointer from nonviolent communication (NVC) I find very helpful.

When I notice a wish, want, impulse or desire, I can ask myself what is the most simple and basic need behind it?

I prefer another variation of the question: What is my most basic desire behind it? It feels more true since there are no absolute needs*, and it feels more honest, alive, and juicy to call it a desire**.

In some situations, I find that the most basic desire is for connection with myself and others, and also life, reality, and God.

read on…

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Release of others through self-familiarity.

As I get more familiar with myself, there is a natural release of others from my expectations and shoulds.

There are several ways this happens:

I respond to my own images and beliefs, not to what others do or what life comes up with. I even trigger my beliefs through my stories of what is happening. And that’s how it is for others as well. I trigger my own beliefs. They trigger theirs. I take responsibility for my own choices and actions, aim at acting with as much kindness and wisdom as possible, and can be there for others. But how they respond and relate to it is their responsibility. Again, it’s their process and learning.

read on…

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Another way to talk about layers of love is as varieties of self-love.

I love how I feel when I connect with someone.

I love the human wholeness of the other as I love my own human wholeness. As I find genuine love and appreciation for more of myself, of this human self and these human experiences, I find the same for others.

As there is a recognizing of all as God, there is Self-love of all and everything.

read on…

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What is love?

When I explore for myself, I find three variations of love.

Attraction and desire is one form of love, although love is perhaps misleading. It can certainly enrich other forms of love, and it can lead to love, but is it love in itself?

Another and more true way to talk about this is to say that when I am with someone, I love how I feel. Seeing it this way, love seems a more appropriate word.

read on…

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I love you.

We are expected to say that in our culture (in the US at least!), and yet, it has never felt quite comfortable for me. It’s not (only) because I am shy. It is because it feels off. It doesn’t feel as true as I would like.

And that is an invitation to find what is more honest to me.

I love how I feel when I am with you. I love how I feel when I connect with you.

That feels more true and honest.

I love how I feel right now when I am with you.

And that is even more true and honest, because it changes.

It feels better to say, and it feels better to receive.

read on…

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I have listened to Mike Snider again over the last few days.

He brings a clarity and ordinariness to it that I appreciate, and his story is also a good reminder for me.

read on…

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I woke up early this morning with that pure sense of loneliness.

Noticing. Be with. Feel. Staying with it. Taking time. Appreciation.

Giving it what it needs, just as if it was a lonely animal or child.

read on…

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He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.

But new research identifies the availability of “living space”, rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.

Findings question the old adage of “nature red in tooth and claw”.

Hm. I am not an expert on evolution, but it seems that BBC was able to fit in three misconceptions in three sentences. (From their article Space is the Final Frontier for Evolution.)

Evolution does have to do with fit – a fit between the organism and the environment. A fit in terms of what is asked for by the environment, what works, and what offers a higher chance for survival and the survival of offspring.

read on…

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Don’t Be Nice, Be Real is a deeply insightful, compassionate and practical book on being real with ourselves and others, and moving out of deadening and into zest. Highly recommended.

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You Are Not So Smart is a well-written, well-informed blog on how we deceive ourselves.

I especially enjoyed this post on Confirmation Bias.

(Thanks, Sean, for pointing me to this site.)

tagged: psychology, self-deception   » leave a reply   -  

Keep noticing within any state.

That’s one of the reminders for myself these days.

Keep noticing (a) all as awareness and (b) how appearances are created, within any content of experience.

This is very useful before and within an awakening, and perhaps especially so if there has been a glimpse or genuine recognition of what we are.

Why is this so tricky, at least for some of us?

read on…

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Desire is fun. It adds zest and juiciness to life. And it is obviously essential for the survival of the species and of us as individuals. (Ordinary experience, evolutionary psychology.)

I can also find that which desire happens within and as, and is “free” of desire in that sense. Through headless experiments, shikantaza, the Big Mind process, or by exploring the sense fields, I find that desire is the play of awakeness itself. When I discover this, it becomes the context for any other exploration of desire.

Such as…

read on…

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read on…

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The Chosen One is a common theme in mythology and entertainment.

Why is this such an attractive image? Is it only because we secretly want someone to fix our problems for us?

What do I find when I take it as a reflection of what is right here?

In what ways am I the chosen one?

read on…

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I woke up at 3am last night noticing a bottomless sense of loneliness. It was quite faint, but very clear. And in my imagination, it was very small, almost like a pin head, and infinite in its loneliness.

I brought attention to it and stayed with it for a while. Seeing it. Feeling it. Being with it. Allowing it. With kindness.

It felt primeval. Going back to my earliest days. Fueled by a sense of separation, of never quite connecting with myself, others, life as fully as what I sense is possible. Fueled by all the times in my life I experience loss – of people, dreams, hopes. It seems to be the point where all experience of loneliness is stored, almost like a very dense neutron star. The only resolution is to recognize that separation and any sense of I and other is mind made, created through our imagination, and made to appear temporarily real. But even when that recognition is immediate and clear, it is not quite enough to heal this spot.

read on…

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Towards the end of his life, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss had a toy piglet. It is perhaps a little odd for a grown and respected man to have a stuffed toy.

What is even more odd is that he and his wife treated it as a child, and wrote a book about him.

It is easy to dismiss it as the folly of an old man. But is that all?

Playfulness was always central in his life, and his playfulness in relating to his piglet is a teaching in itself. It is an invitation for us all to find more playfulness in life, including in how we use our imagination.

And there is also wisdom here.

When we interact with others, we usually assume we interact based on who they are. But we are really interacting with them based on who we imagine they are. When Arne Næss treated his piglet as a living being, it becomes clear that he is really interacting with his imagined piglet. This is an invitation for us to take a closer look at this in our own life.

read on…

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I am going to shamelessly continue exploring the 101 topics…..

It still comes up for me, so there is obviously more for me to explore and become familiar with, especially throughout my daily life, and writing it down here is a support in that exploration.

Noticing is not dependent on a state.

I can notice (a) all as awakeness, and (b) (some of) how appearances are created, and this can happen within a wide range of states, probably within any state. Reactive emotions, dullness, confusion, sense of I, identification with viewpoints, it doesn’t matter. The noticing can happen with and within any of those.

It is true that it can be easier to notice a and b in some states – for instance states of great stability of attention and great clarity. And the invitation is then to continue noticing as the states continue to change, including into states that appear “unenlightened” to our conventional (and misleading) views.

It can be a fun exploration and game, to notice a and b in what appears the most unenlightened.

read on…

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Being halfway selfish is painful.

I eat something my tongue says is good, and my body feels bad. I keep something for myself, and others notice and keep things to themselves. I try to protect myself through a white lie, and experience stress and tension.

In short, I act on a very limited notion of what is good for me and who I am in the world.

It is much better to be 100% selfish.

When I am completely selfish, I take the bigger picture into account. I think longer term, and in terms of my relationships with others and the wider world. I ask myself, what is really good for me? What will meet my most essential needs? I act in ways that meet my own needs, and also the needs of those around me, and even for the larger social and ecological whole, because I know there is no separation there.

read on…

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The five happiest countries in the world–Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands–are all clustered in the same region, and all enjoy high levels of prosperity…..

“The Scandinavian countries do really well,” says Jim Harter, a chief scientist at Gallup, which developed the poll. “One theory why is that they have their basic needs taken care of to a higher degree than other countries”…..

A reminder that egalitarian societies tend to have the highest levels of happiness. When our basic needs are taken care of – health care, free education, economical safety net – we are free from many of the most basic survival fears, and free to live our lives in a more meaningful and joyful way.

read on…

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I am going to make this simple…..

As I get more familiar with allowing experience, as is, as if it will never change (although it always does), and with kindness, I can actively seek out that which is more difficult to allow.

I can bring up the images about the past, future, or present that are most difficult for me, and find familiarity with allowing these images and the emotions triggered by them.

read on…

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A quick look at the entertainment world – books, movies, songs, fairy tales, mythology – tells us that we are fascinated with the unpleasant.

Why is that? I can find several reasons for why I am drawn to it….

The most obvious is that these things (death, pain, cruelty etc.) are part of human life, and this is a way for me to get familiar with it in a safe way. I get to explore it without putting myself at risk. And I get to prepare for it should it happen to me or someone close to me. If or when something like it happens in real life, I am already somewhat familiar with it.

read on…

tagged: entertainment, familiarity with the terrain, fear, media, projections, shadow   » leave a reply   -  

A quick note on prayer.

I continue to return to the simplest forms of prayer.

It can be wordless as in “just sitting” or shikantaza, or wordless with a more active shift into receptivity, humility, gratitude, or compassion.

I may ask for guidance, receptivity, healing, maturing for myself or others.

read on…

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We are engaged in a great battle for ideas that Christians understand to be a battle for hearts, minds, and souls. Dowd and his fellow evangelists for evolution are certain that they own the future, and that biblical Christianity will simply fade and disappear. “Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, and the worldwide web,” he asserts. His conclusion: “This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers, and camel drivers.”

Well, give Michael Dowd credit for reminding us where the rejection of biblical Christianity inevitably leads.

This is from a post by Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He gives a very accurate description of Michael Dowd’s views.

And I am also genuinely curious about the last sentence. For me, what comes up is compassion and relevance.  I am pretty sure that’s not what Albert thinks of. He speaks to an audience where they must have a shared understanding of what he refers to, and I am not quite sure what it is.

If I imagine into it based on my very rudimentary knowledge of more fundamentalist views (I have never encountered them personally, nor did I grow up in a culture where these views existed), I can find something. I imagine he may refer to the “ills” of modern secular society, such as materialism, fragmentation of families and communities, alienation, misguided youth and so on. I share those same concerns.

But if that is true, there is an irony there. Michael Dowd shows how science can be a source of a deep sense of meaning, belonging, compassion, a widening circle of care, and ethical guidelines. He is pointing out the (quite obvious, to be honest) shortcomings of fundamentalism, and instead offers a profoundly meaningful worldview that can be adopted and shared by Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, and atheists alike. What’s not to like about that?

It doesn’t tear something down or reduces possibilities. It offers something different that can enrich the views of people from any tradition and background.

The only thing it is exclusive of is a literal interpretation of ancient texts, and that is of course what doesn’t sit too well with fundamentalists.

tagged: christianity, epic of evolution   » leave a reply   -