Spiritual Growth

Within the realm of the unknown is both the impossible, that which we currently do not have the skill to do, and the potential for positive growth or change. When we approach the chaos of the unknown with care and a plan, the potential within the chaos of the unknown can be turned into a positive learning and growth experience.
Culture, protects us from the unknown. Over protection of culture becomes tyrannical. Suppression of exploration will, over time, lead to a breakdown of the cultural. Now if a Hero, of mythic type, comes and restructures the cultural norms, the pain is lessened because the discovery of the potential, by the Hero, is a deliberate act. And this discovery of the potential growth, while painful, can be incorporated into the culture before it breaks down. This discovery of the potential is deliberate. But if the tyranny becomes too suppressive and the Hero's not allowed to act, painful though their acts sometimes are, then the culture will not grow but eventually shatter. The unknown of chaos will over take the culture and the culture will be violently changed, which is more painful than the Heroic approach. The cultural change will be determined by the chaotic forces and it will become randomly restructured. This often results in war and violence. Myth, religion, and the ritualistic acting out of myth in religious rites, when it becomes an intra-personal process, generates the Heroes that the culture requires. This allows for the culture to evolve over time and embrace necessary change. By doing this at both the individual and social level, embracing change, the culture becomes actually safe both as a cultural protective device and as a place wherein it is safe to dwell.

The Force of Language

Recently I was discussing what mythological archetypes mean in regard to how we behave and believe. Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth states that there are two main type of myth. these are sociological myth and archetypal myths. Archetypal myths tell stories that are true for all and sociological myths are those which form a bounded group, you and your family my country and clan. He gives the Biblical mythological story of the giving of the laws as an example of the bounded myth the sociological myth. In one chapter it states "Thou shalt not kill" the next chapter says "Go into Canaan and kill every one in it." They the Canaanites are outside the group and thus fair game. In the church where I sing we have a new priest a nice guy. Many people complained that he had changed a lot of things. He gave a sermon on how he had not changed anything. Unfortunately he was wrong. He changed the approach to the language of the mythology in the church. Since he came into the church everything sounds explicit and literal. Unfortunately it is not supposed to be taken that way and that church community had never approached the Spirit in that manner. As a result people knew he had changed things but were unable to explain what. It took me a long time to realize what had been changed and that mostly because I looked in from the outside and had a good view. The tendency of most Christians is to make 'God' a concept. This removes the transcendent and unknowable nature from what can not be known.
This is what was happening within that community and as a result the true spiritual path was changing. Language has real power and force. Unfortunately when trying to speak about the transcendent nature of the Creator we are stuck with a limited imprecise tool called language. And we use this tool to try to explain what we know and feel about something we, in our limited capacity, cannot understand.
It was the intangibility of the change, a change in language and seeming meaning that was making people uncomfortable.

Meditation Emotion and Mind

I think we can all agree that even though the human brain or mind has a huge capacity to store sort and process information the mind does have limits. I am not suggesting that these limits are easy to comprehend or measure. That being said, I recently wondered why relaxing your thoughts, emptying and quieting your mind is a part of every meditation technique, which I have encountered, in one way or another. A series of conversations with my wife helped clarify the thought. I think that the mind, when busy with cognition and the logical processes we call thinking, is too full to properly or successfully deal with or comprehend our emotions. In an earlier blog post I noted that the mind allows us to recognize and comprehend what we perceive, below the level of labelling them. What I mean here by labelling is using language or forming mental images causing the brain to take on secondary oscillations of much larger patterns than the basic oscillation of recognition and knowing. Some people think linguistically and aurally and others pictorially and some in a combination of both. This cognitive ability fills the mind with oscillations of that our senses are telling us and allows us to associate this information in a manner that allows us to do what we do and formulate plans about what to do next. The application of the cognitive process we use to communicate forms many oscillations throughout the whole brain instead of the few parts required to recognize the thing or thought. One of the things we aim to do when meditating is to disconnect this linguistic process, which we do not require to comprehend what we perceive. When meditating we may hear a dog bark. We try to get to a state what allows us to recognise the dog as a dog but to do so by saying to ourselves that was a dog or even, “that was Mutt barking” or picturing the dog as “dog” or forming the image of “Mutt” in our mind. We know it for what it is but we do not label it. I think that we do this because it allows more room in the brain for us to allow emotions to surface into conscious thought. When we try to drag them up we label and cognate the emotion taking starting to take form, and this takes up too much resource in the mind to allow the emotion to fully surface. This prevents us from being able to fully examine and come to terms with what we feel and why we act when these emotions are triggered. Things like, “I am inadequate” or “I am not very smart” or “I wish I could be as smart as…” or “I wish I wasn’t so bad” and all the other emotional baggage we carry. This list is not a complete or comprehensive one either since we all seem to carry many negative images of ourselves. This negative aspect of self feeling or belief of self creates fear or anger responses in us. It is these deep emotions we try to address while meditating. If we allow our minds to still, the deep feelings of our worth, the feelings about our connections to others, what we think and have set for our goals and how we actually feel about them can all surface and be acknowledged. Once in the conscious mind we can examine and let them be what they actually are instead of letting them partially surface and trigger actions, such as an angry response, leaving us to wonder later why we became so angry. Allowing the emotion to surface and live in the conscious mind helps us place our emotional response into a proper perspective. Initially we may still have the angry response, but it is more likely that we will, at first, recognise why we respond how we do, and control it more appropriately, returning to a calm state more quickly. Over time we may even have dealt with the underlying emotion enough to avoid the angry response completely. In a book by Jordan Peterson called “The Maps of Meaning, an Architecture of Belief” the author states that we act and create plans to move us toward our goals prior to being able to articulate the actions we take to progress toward the goal. That it is through imitation of our behaviour and the behaviours of others in response to our actions that we eventually make out actions concrete enough to be able to articulate them. I think that he is correct in stating this. I also think that Dr. Debono is correct when he states that every decision we make is emotionally driven. This does not mean that logic is not a part of decision making. What it does mean is that we decide to do an action when it is both logically based and “feels” right. Meditation allows us to better comprehend, if not control, our underlying emotional make up. This allows us to make these decisions with a bit more understanding if not control. For example, we may not truly want what a goal we’re pursuing. When we know what we really feel about a goal, uncovering the emotive force that is hindering us from achieving the goal, will help us understand why achieving that goal was either unsatisfying or seemingly impossible to achieve. Knowing what we actually feel now about the goal now allows us to act more in accordance with what we really want or need based on our deep seated emotions and desires.

Meditation Is Not Easy

It seems to me that meditation is very misunderstood. I know when I first started I thought it would be simple, just sit, calm down and do nothing. Quiet the mind, relax and be at peace. Think this is easy; try to quiet your mind. It goes something like this. Concentrate on the candle flame and relax. Start with the toes and let the tension sink out of them. Relax and think of the muscles letting go of tension. Picture the tension flowing away into the ground. Next relax the lower leg, Look at the candle and wonder why you said that to whomever. Oops stop return to relaxing. Let go the tension in the lower back and feel it flow away into the flame of the candle. Wonder what’s for supper maybe we should have…stop return to relaxing. The, should do, might have said, will say, want that, what shall we eat, conversations inside you pop up again and again and finally you realize the mind, your mind, my mind is a very noisy place. The practice of meditation is like lifting weights done with your mind. It takes practice and is not as simple as it seems. There is no right way to meditate. There are almost as many techniques as there are people but they can be placed into five broad categories. These are:

• Guided meditation, where someone leads you through one of the following meditation types but helps keep you on track.
• Fixed point meditation, focusing on a single point such as a crack in the wall a candle flame until only that point is what you think of.
• Mindful meditation, being aware of your breath and body and all around you, understanding what you smell, taste, hear, and see without placing a label of some kind, verbal or pictorial and letting the emotions rise to the surface but not reacting to them simply acknowledging them and letting them go.
• Prayerful meditation, where a mantra or prayer is chanted either quietly or aloud over and over again.
• Open mind meditation, the most difficult to do, letting the mind acknowledge all thoughts until they have all been let go and calm peaceful joy is what is left.

Eventually the periods of concentration get longer, the relaxation of the body more complete, more familiar and easier to accomplish at deeper and deeper levels. The ability to understand what you can control and what you cannot grows. Responses to other people and events become more reasoned less reflexive because you become more aware of Self. When things annoy you, you find it easier to remain calm and return to a ‘normal’ state. The strength of your mind and your understanding of how your mind works grows. You eventually no longer require the pictures or words to understand things that your mind tends to form. Understanding becomes knowing without labeling. You feel knowledge and in feeling no longer have extremes in response to events that happen. This doesn’t mean you never feel anything it means you learn to know what you feel and not let the emotions felt take control of your actions. It does more than this though. Eventually you begin to get a real sense of Self.

After all the mystery is in you, just as much as you are in it.

New May 08 2008

Ok folks I just added a counter to my blog. Now I will know how often I visit ;)

Energy and Life

I have been informed that energy can be altered but not destroyed. Considering that we are all in one way or another sentient energy does this mean that there is life after death, or does it support the idea of reincarnation? I have been the observer of too many encounters and have been involved in encounters that support the concept of reincarnation. For example the feeling of knowing someone from before, and having that knowledge supported by them and affirmed. This affirmation however is not a complete remembering and it is the changing of energy that I think is responsible.
I have read, been told and experienced thought while meditating where I know what I have seen, heard, felt or tasted but have not labeled it. This ability to comprehend and understand yet not put need to put knowledge into language helps us understand the Self, that true essence of what we are, as opposed to the fleeting ever-changing ‘I’ of the body and mind.
The idea I have is that when we die and return to the Creator or the One we teach what we have learned to that Spirit. In doing so we are altered by the encounter and prepared for the next round of learning. It is in the changing of ourselves as we grow that alters our past life’s memory and makes it difficult for us to remember the lives past. I think that this is a deliberate growth strategy else we would simply revert to old behaviour strategies from past lives if we remembered them as well as we remember what we have learned, or not learned, in this life.
Past associations with souls we have traveled with before however seem to have deep resonances. This is why when introduced to someone after a brief chat we feel like we have known them and they have known us for a very long time. When this happens the two souls together will do more than typical in any project they tackle together. They will find that together they create deeper, co-ordinate better and make things in a way that people who have worked together for a very long time have done even when they are only working together in this life for the first time.
When a person is self aware then they quickly identify the resonance I am talking about and can, by making the other person aware as well if that is needed, quicken the entry into a deeper and more and productive relationship.
Since these people can work from a long, maybe centuries or millennia long, mutual history they tend to communicate and relate in ways that are obscure to others around them. Sometimes the others become envious or disconcerted even jealous and trouble can arise. Mostly these relationships are very beautiful and joyous. When they fall apart however they go very sour for everything is in extremes.
My point here however is about energy and how it relates to the Self. Since energy can change but not be destroyed and changing energy is not simple being in the moment and grounded in thought without language places you in what you actually are not what your are perceived as being. The root of thought and consciousness below language is non emotional, settled and calm. It does not change but is the same every time it is touched. This energy point of awareness is in my opinion the actual Self. This is the Self that does not change the true I as it were that you remain and are even after death. This is the core of your learning that grows in complexity as you learn yet remains strangely peaceful and simple. When you leave this plain and travel back to the One you take all you have done and learned and teach the Creator what you have learned. The act of teaching changes you somehow and prepares you to return and learn more. I believe that the fact energy can be changed but not destroyed supports my hypothesis. This however, is like any other metaphysical belief in that it is not provable.
Peace.

Myth

A myth is a story, a spiritual story that holds up a mirror to some larger truth. It does this by using archetypes to illuminate the point being made. Since things spiritual are not typically measurable by scientific means we tend to state they have little value or are not “true”. So we tend to approach myths as art, or fiction and disregard the lessons that they are supposed to teach us as being not relevant or meaningless in the ‘real’ world. I do not believe this attitude is helpful nor do I think that the people of today do not hunger for something more spiritual in their lives. So I am going to use the story of Persephone and try to show how the truths in this story can help benefit us. I am not using this myth because it is better or more relevant. I am using it because I am more familiar with it than others. The story goes as follows…

Persephone is the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology. She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Persephone was such a beautiful young woman that everyone loved her, even Hades wanted her for himself. One day, when she was collecting flowers on the plain of Enna, the earth suddenly opened and Hades rose up from the gap and abducted her. None but Zeus, and the all-seeing sun, Helios, had noticed it. Broken-hearted, Demeter wandered the earth, looking for her daughter until Helios revealed what had happened. Demeter was so angry that she withdrew herself in loneliness, and the earth ceased to be fertile. Knowing this could not continue much longer, Zeus sent Hermes down to Hades to make him release Persephone. Hades grudgingly agreed, but before she went back he gave Persephone a pomegranate (or the seeds of a pomegranate, according to some sources). When she later ate of it, it bound her to underworld forever and she had to stay there one-third of the year. The other months she stayed with her mother. When Persephone was in Hades, Demeter refused to let anything grow and winter began. This myth is a symbol of the budding and dying of nature. In the Eleusinian mysteries, this happening was celebrated in honor of Demeter and Persephone, who was known in this cult as Kore.

The Romans called her Proserpine.

Her names means something like "she who destroys the light."

Now we should examine this myth and what it actually is trying to tell us. Despite the obvious this is how winter began theme which is why the modern scientific mind tends to discard the Myth out of hand, there are some very interesting themes that if examined can help a person grow spiritually. First Hades abducts Persephone. This is a comment on how some attachments including that of love can be unhealthy. The love Demeter has for her daughter is also destructive because it is not controlled. So control of ones emotions is a theme here. Mythos will not tell you how to do something but it will point out what you should do to grow. Next Demeter’s rage causing destruction is a theme. Coping with anger is a serious issue and there are methods for doing so but allowing it to take over can be very destructive. Again the theme is self control. The next is an eating of a pomegranate causing Persephone to have to return to the underworld. This exploration of the underworld or deaths attachment to us here is curious. It tells us since Persephone can return to the living world over and over again that we too can have a resurrection of spirit within us. It also tells us that the recurrence of spiritual death within us is also possible but not necessarily permanent. We too can return back to health over and over should we choose to do so. So the main theme here is actually renewal. People can grow anew and renew themselves just as the seasons can come around and new growths begin.

As you can see here the obvious story of how spring began is not actually the point of the myth. Myths are to help a person grow in spirit by showing meta states of being through metaphor and entertaining stories. They need to be entertaining because that is what makes them memorable.

What Is Self (Not An Answer Just A Comment)

I was running this morning and noticed that the sky was so blue and the air so clear and I was me looking running feeling great feeling like I haven’t in a long time at peace. Even though I was running controlling my breathing and looking ahead avoiding the ice on the pavement I felt at peace. My mind was calm and empty wondrously clear. I remembered once more what I actually am not what I am defined by others and myself as being. This feeling of self is hard to describe. I am both the person who knows computers, music and is doing things, and the person who IS. The person who has had many lives, knows of them and looks forward to reconnecting with the ancient souls I have met before. I know that sounds peculiar but I have met some old souls and we have recognized each other. But I loose this feeling of Self in the business of the day. I loose myself and this is sad in a way because this makes time steal me away from myself. Ok so this doesn’t seem to make much sense but I think it helps me feel more like what I am and what is. So if you got something from it great otherwise I am happy knowing at least I did.

As Above So Below

Recently I saw a program called ‘The Pagan Christ’. In this program the documentary people discuss a book titled ‘The Pagan Christ’ where Tom Harper an Anglican priest discusses the possibility that Christ as a man did not exist but that the message was a retelling of ancient Pagan, Egyptian and Greek Myths. The message here is that the resurrection exists within each individual and is not an act that happened in the past ‘for us’. I am not going to argue here whether I think Christ existed as a man or not, rather I shall explore the idea of the resurrection of spirit within individuals. The possibility of God, the Creator in us, and the fact that we are divine in nature is frightening to me. It is frightening because I tend out of ignorance and habit to abuse myself in many different ways and if we are in fact divine then I habitually abuse God, the Creator by this self abuse. This potential for abusing the divine through the non pursuit of a truly spiritual life failure by non attempt is to me very frightening. We are all connected and every thing we do mindlessly tends to detract from what we are. How can we be truly reborn and grow the divinity within ourselves if we fail to pay attention to what we are doing. Aristotle said “Wise men do not hurry.” This does not mean they never do things quickly, rather that they pay close attention to what they are doing at the moment they do them. How many times have you thought about something you were going to do later in the day when eating breakfast rather than actually tasted what you were eating and paying attention to the feeling of the spoon in your hand the knife spreading the butter or jam on the bread or toast or even the smell of the toast as it is being made? This lack of attention to what we are doing is a time thief. We practice it constantly and forget in doing so who and what we are. So try to be in the moment and slow down your mind, not your body and pay attention to what you do as you do it. Do one thing at a time carefully and with attention and so do it well and in so doing find yourself and the divine within. I am trying to do this and sometimes I get a glimpse of what I can be and what I actually am.

Photo Shoot

Ok my band did a real photo shoot. Carrly loved having her picture taken. Me it was just another thing to do, Sean wanted out no way he enjoyed it. We did end up with a great shot though so it was worth it. This has nothing to do with enlightenment however but we, Carrly, I and Stweart and Anthea, had fun. Sean had a laugh when we went through the shots so it wasn't a total waste. The twirl shots we're going to use for the background in Around The Sun on you tube :)
We have a you tube account with nothing up so at last something to post.

I am going to get some sleep now as I had a good rehearsal this evening and am happy with everything except I Have Looked For You. Maybe next week it will come together.