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In meditation this morning as thoughts subsided and pure awareness moved to the forefront of my experience, this poem by Rumi came to mind:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
It is the silent awareness that we experience in deep meditation that is the field Rumi is talking about here. Between your thoughts… in the space between your breathes … lies this field. Here awareness is both empty and full.
Such a paradox: empty of thought, yet full with the ineffable presence of being. And in this beingness, in this silent field, we leave behind the thinking mind, with its positives and negatives, with its right and wrong and its good vs. bad. All polarity resolves as we come to rest in this still field of Unified Consciousness or Oneness.
Oneness is all there is, and in this shared experience, in its fullness and in its profundity, language becomes unnecessary and wholly inadequate.
Closing the eyes direct your meditations here. Form the intention to quiet the mind and lie down in this, Rumi’s grass. This field is everywhere the mind is not! Yes, find it in meditation, but also anywhere you can find a quiet moment. Discernible in nature, especially, the natural world subtly pulsates here in silent wonder.
At this critical moment in a world so filled with chaos, in a world so desperately needing peace, we can choose to spend time in Rumi’s field. We can choose to leave the polarized nature of the lower mind behind with its relentless searching thoughts never resolving.
Instead let the mind be still. Be the change you want to see. Spend time in Rumi’s field, where all inner and outer conflict is resolved and, instead of a world of strife, a world of possibilities appears.
This question came up the other day: “If only I could be more patient with myself and others, I wouldn’t get so stressed all the time. Is there anything I can do?”
Having patience, waiting… why can it be so challenging sometimes? Our lack of control over a situation and the accompanying feeling of powerlessness? Our activated nervous system and inevitable restlessness? Why do we so easily become impatient? Whatever our subjective experience, impatience is always about our relationship to time. We resist the unease of our present moment experience and desire to be in the future when our inner tension is resolved. We want that slow driver ahead of us in traffic to move along, already! We want that co-worker to complete their assignment so that the stalled project you’ve been working on together can proceed, pronto! The thoughts we’re having about the unresolved situation dominate our awareness and we feel restless.
So we could say impatience begins in the mind with the thoughts that the mind generates about what it feels should be. We become attached to some imaginary future moment when the world meets our expectations. Or if it doesn’t, at least we’re we’re no longer left in the dark! And in this we become a prisoner of psychological time, feeling trapped and stressed.
But what if, next time, you were to choose to detach from this endless thought-stream? For this is where our power regarding impatience lies. Finding patience is synonymous with finding inner peace. And this inner piece comes from a quiet mind. It’s not so hard to do. The next time you notice yourself being impatient, simply take your attention away from your thoughts and to your breath. Focus on breathing deeply and rhythmically in and out for a moment or two. You’ll notice that the mind naturally quiets down, and an activated nervous system begins to settle. By slowly tracking your inbreath and outbreath with your attention, an experience of inner stillness will soon begin to take hold. The future holds no sway here, for you are becoming present.
It is in this still present moment awareness that, rather than resisting or desperately needing resolution to your predicament, you find acceptance for what is. And it is in this acceptance that you find your elusive patience waiting for you all along!
Beyond our desires and fears, our anger and our pain a place of peace, equanimity and love awaits us at the level of the heart and beyond. In this full day seminar you will learn about the beauty and power of living from the heart chakra, or the spiritual heart, and how it serves as the doorway into expanded awareness and higher consciousness.
Our minds are polarized in nature creating the familiar teeter-totter of emotions that we experience daily. We may feel good one moment or on one day, then bad the next in an endless cycle of pleasure and pain. Over the course of our day together we will learn how to walk the “razors edge” between the ups and downs of life and begin to live from the still center of our being and from the love that naturally resides there. Our time together will include guided meditations to ground our new awarenesses.
Topics we will explore include:
the chakra energy system and the shushumna (the core light within)
the Human Imprint and the upward and downward spirals
the Neutral Witness and the path of the Middle Way
practical techniques for clearing the blocks that keep us from our hearts
The seminar will be held in San Francisco at a quiet Outer Richmond district location. Suggested donation: $75. Please bring a lunch. For questions or to reserve your space you may e-mail Gary at: garysnote@bluebottle.com
I invite you to join me as we explore the beauty and power of meditation and how you can begin to incorporate a meditation practice into your daily life.
Regular meditation is a way to increase energy. It helps us to release the stress of the day and to calm the nervous system. And a morning meditation gives us energy and inspiration to take on the day!
On a deeper/metaphysical level meditation cultivates our Silent Awareness, which Einstein called the Unified Field, and our true nature beyond the physical.
In the classes you will learn:
- what meditation is and how it can enrich your life
- a simple but powerful meditation technique for “transcending’, or detaching from the mind
- the practical aspects of establishing a meditation practice and supportive practices
In addition, there will be plenty of time to practice the technique within the group over two afternoons and lots of time for questions and answers.
Classes will be held from 2pm – 4:30pm on Saturday May 16th and Sunday May17th at a quiet Outer Richmond district location in San Francisco. Instruction is offered by donation. Suggested donation for the weekend is $75
To register or if you have questions please send an email to garysnote@bluebottle.com
I hope to see you there!
Paul, a student (not his real name), asked “why is it I get in so many car accidents?” After a bit of self-inquiry he was able to name how he has a habit of identifying himself as a victim as he goes through life. We could say he holds the energy of victimhood in his consciousness, and that this energy lives as an energetic field or aura that inhabits and surrounds his physical body. Through the spiritual law of attraction this field acts like a magnet drawing to him people and situations (car accidents!) that victimize him.
I explained that if he were to clear his aura of this victimization energy his life would smooth out greatly. As we dug a little deeper he also noticed that, although he spends most of his time being a victim in life, he can also act out its opposite sometimes. He saw how, when push comes to shove, he can also be a dominator or a perpetrator (the energy of the Tyrant)!
Duality is the operating system that runs consciousness for most of us in the world right now. It is a consciousness divided, and it plays out in our minds and emotions and, in extreme cases, in our physical world as dance of opposites, or polarity. Although Paul identifies primarily with the victim, he was beginning to see how he flip-flops from being a victim to being a tyrant, depending on the situation on any given day. Victim and tyrant, in fact, all polarities, are inextricably bound to one another!
Spiritual law says that any polarized state of mind will in time turn into its opposite; we cannot have one without the other… When Paul is in victim mode this energy dominates his reality, and that’s all he can see. He feels small, inconsequential, needy and deprived. But his tyrant didn’t go anywhere! This character is just not conscious to him, and what is not in the conscious mind lives in the unconscious. Similarly, when Paul is acting out his tyrant energy, his victimhood lies unseen in his unconscious, nevertheless always present and eager to resume its starring role in his life’s movie!
The underlying energy that upholds and sustains the tyrant/victim construct in our minds is the energy of power vs. powerlessness, and like all polarities held in the mind, it is inherently unstable. So, as good as it feels to Paul’s ego to feel powerful, in control, and able to assert its will, it won’t last. Inevitably, tyrants become victims! On the world stage, they’re all too familiar: Look no further than Hitler or, more recently, Saddam Hussein; then there is Mubarak in Egypt, a tyrant to his people for thirty years. Now he sits in a jail with a sentence of life imprisonment; and we all know the fate of Osama bin Laden!
Because Paul is committed to growing his consciousness and living his life from a place of balance, equanimity and inner peace, he must be willing to give up both his inner tyrant and his inner victim. Through a process of self-inquiry Paul’s work is to begin to name and own all of the ways he plays the tyrant and the victim, and to free himself of the exhausting and perpetual dance between them. He needs to make what is unconscious to him conscious, and then be willing to hang up his dancing shoes! He must make a bid for true power by surrendering both aspects of ego. Here is where grace will take over if he asks. In fact, it is the essential piece that will create an integration.
Paul’s consciousness with this polarity is boxed in by the seen and unseen attractions and repulsions he holds around it. I asked Paul to create four lists: 1. Why I desire to be a victim 2. Why I fear becoming a victim 3. Why I desire to be tyrant 4. Why I fear becoming a tyrant. What Paul will discover is that he spends some indefinite amount of time with the consciousness of each of his four lists before he inevitably flips to the state of mind of the next list, and the next, and so on in a never-ending loop of desires and fears.
His flip-flopping consciousness between victim and tyrant is keeping him in a spin of opposites, manifesting adversity in his life and from the peace of mind that he seeks. By feeling deeply into and naming all of his desires and fears around being a victim and being a tyrant, and then surrendering them all back to Source, he will move into greater balance and equanimity with this polarity. And if he continues to scrupulously examine and release even the most subtle ways that he engages these self-defeating personas, he can be free of them. No more victims or tyrants need ruin his day!
How about you? Are you ready to give up the struggle between your victim and your tyrant? Your inner peace and true power await you there beyond all polarity…
I’ll meet you there!
embracingOneness Blog 