The Arts
Midwest Americas’ Most Bass Heavy Music Festival Is Almost Here. Are You Ready??
The inaugural ‘Lost Lands Music Festival‘ is coming fast. Are you ready?
The media wing of the festival has graciously allowed The Mind Unleashed team the chance to do press coverage for the ‘soon-to-be-annual’ bass heavy electronic festival. If you don’t plan on attending, we are going to be bringing you guys the goodies from inside the festival all weekend, replete with live streams, photography, and a recap video that will be published onto our exclusive music-wing here. Be sure to follow for the goods!
What is Lost Lands?
Lost lands is an electronic festival located at the Legend Valley Concert Venue & Campground in Ohio, curated by none-other than the electronic bass king himself, Excision. Even if you don’t follow electronic bass music, chances are you’ve seen one the videos of his “Paradox” stage going viral on social media for it’s mind-melting visuals recently. Like this one here:
Stages
Lost Lands is going to have 2 stages this year, one called “The Cave of Souls” and the other called ‘The Prehistoric Paradox Stage”, which will take his signature Paradox experience and add a prehistoric twang to it. One thing is for sure, the ground WILL be shaking.
Sounds
While the official website states there will be “500,000 watts of bass shaking the earth”, Jeff Abel said in a post Friday night on the ‘Excision Headbangers’ Facebook group that the sound will actually be OVER 750,000 watts! For anyone that has been to an Excision show when he’s brought his 500k watt PK sound with him, that is A LOT of wattage. It’s no wonder Lost Lands will be passing out earplugs.. It’s probably a good idea everyone wears them. That is, if you want to have any sense of hearing left after the weekend is over.
He explains:
“Headbangers!
When we first launched Lost Lands I could guarantee we’d be bringing 500k watts of sound. That was just to give you an idea… But after working out the details with the guys at PK Sound, our actual wattage is going to be over 750k!
Just to be clear though, watts aren’t everything. COVERAGE is where it’s at. You can pump as many watts as you want, but what really makes a show sound great is being able to hear perfectly from anywhere in the venue.
At Lost Lands there’s a TON of space to cover. As the festival grew we added more speakers than originally planned so that we can cover more ground. But that doesn’t mean the festival is going to be any louder than previously planned, it will just sound better from more places
?
As for bass? We’ll have over 100 sub boxes (over 200 individual subwoofers) shaking the ground and any bodies that get in their paths. So don’t worry too much about watts. Even though we have 750k watts powering Lost Lands sound, we’re giving every bit as much attention to sound coverage and quality. We’re also giving out a free set of earplugs to every guest so you can keep your eardrums safe.
See you there!”
Daily Lineup
Boasting bass-heavy acts like Herobust, Crizzly, Kill The Noise, Liquid Stranger, Zeds Dead and 12th Planet, this is sure to be a festival to remember. Which acts are you most excited for?
Credit: Lost Lands
Dinosaurs Galore!
Everyone who’s been following this project come together since it’s inception knows that the theme is going to be that of dinosaurs and cavemen. Which is unique to any festival I’ve personally been to.. Are you going to dress the part?
“Enter a world where dinosaurs roam, lights illuminate and cave men and women are free to be themselves. Please don’t feed the dinosaurs.” The official website states.
Rules
Please be RESPECTFUL. As with most bass heavy acts, people have gotten accustomed to whats called “breaking the rail”. Personally, I think this shows a complete lack of respect for venues and festival organizers.. At best, it just makes us all look bad. We want to preserve this experience for the years to come. Jeff Abel even stated in a post that “breaking the rail” will get the music shut off immediately, and for good reason. Don’t ruin it for everyone else.
For a more complete list of what’s allowed and not allowed in the festival and in the campgrounds, please visit here.
Also, LEAVE NO TRACE is the lost lands sacred code. This one should be obvious, but at festivals I have been to in the past, this is almost never the case. Please be sure to follow the Lost Lands sacred code and clean up after yourself!
They state: “LEAVE NO TRACE. The ancient grounds of Lost Lands are a sacred place entwined in millions of years of history and beauty dating back to before even the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
If you plan on camping at Lost Lands please pack in only what you are willing to pack out. Inside the festival, make sure all waste is placed in the appropriately marked bins.#LostLandsSacredCode”
Credit: Lost Lands
Tickets & Camping
While camping on site is now officially sold out, tickets to the festival ARE still available. There are also hotels in Columbus, Ohio nearby the venue, and the festival is offering hotel shuttle passes which can be purchased here. At the time of this article being published, there are still vacant Lost Lands partnered hotels offering discounted rates for Lost Lands attendees. You can check out the preferred list of hotels here. It’s not too late!
Experience
While we expect music production and the stages to be on point, there are also other things.. KJ Sawka and ill.gates will be hosting music production workshops on site, there will also be yoga workshops. We at The Mind Unleashed love that the organizers are injecting a little bit of health and consciousness into this event.
Credit: Lost Lands
Stretching your body, especially your neck (to you headbangers), is going to be important. We recommend utilizing this.
If you won’t attend the workshops, perhaps this will help..
Credits: Lost Lands
Our Expectations Going In..
Since Excision has such high standards with everything he puts out regarding his music, we expect Lost Lands will live up to their word with top notch music production, good security, and awesome vendors. Since this was already mentioned as being a priority, I don’t expect conflicting music sets, as this is usually an issue at EDM music festivals. Artists at times tend to recycle each others music in their sets which presents a problem of hearing the same music over and over when bouncing between stages.. Jeff Abel has already addressed this, so we expect each set to be unique and awesome in their own way.
Stay tuned for our after-festival recap article which will be filled with awesome images and video shots of our favorite moments. Be sure to follow our Music Page here for the scoop.
See you there!!
Featured image credits: Lost Lands Flyer
Why do we love to document the world around us? Is it because we want to prove that we existed, or is it simply to retain a memory? Whatever prompts regular ol’ “selfies,” or self-portraits, most definitely does not propel the new trend of STEFDIES.
Unlike selfies, STEFDIES encourage the viewer to participate. The trend was started by artist and comic Stephanie Leigh Rose who is known for “dying” at famous landmarks to get her STEFDIES.
Rose told Bored Panda:
“The entire point of STEFDIES, is that the viewer is allowed to participate in the image-, whether that is by imagining the circumstances of the surrounding image, or in recreating the STEFDIES pose in their own photos. My long hair (and swimsuit in selected photos) would allude to the fact I am a female, but outside of a viewer coming to one of my gallery shows and meeting me personally, I prefer to keep STEFDIES neutral and free of age, nationality, politic, socioeconomic status.”
Aries, France
“STEFDIES is a character of its own, and I invite people to connect with that, and interpret the scenes as they wish. Part of the joy and humor of STEFDIES, is no-one knows exactly what the hell is going on, and that’s pretty much a direct reflection of real life in general.
Unlike selfies, there is no preparing for a STEFDIE. “All STEFDIES images occur spontaneously in my daily life. The images the viewer happens to see are the 25% of images that are useable. This is why a STEFDIES image is the opposite of a selfie. A selfie has controlled conditions, specific lighting, makeup/hair/wardrobe, an agenda, and is focused on the individual personality- it is a contrived and manipulated image distorted to achieve a desired result. STEFDIES is the polar opposite- I get one chance to get the shot, if it doesn’t happen, c’est la vie. We have one life to live, and we don’t get re-do’s- and i would like to think i try to capture that feeling, that fleeting sense of life and its impermanence, in my photos.”
Cueva Grande, Canarias, Spain
“There was an organic evolution to STEFDIES. The early STEFDIES photos were humor snapshots of my life, pretty much in times I was completely exhausted and amused by the situations I found myself in, and wanted to capture these moments in time, to be able to remember and reflect on those points in my life that seems utterly ridiculous.
So STEFDIES has always been a direct reflection of my desire to hold onto these seemingly minor or huge moments of my life, that I knew would be washed away to the ravages of time or memory, if i didn’t capture them in their proper moment. Never perfect, as perfection is not what I aim for, but merely the reality of the situation in all of its imperfections.”
Monopoli Cathedral
“As I posted some of these initial shots, I received an incredible response from friends and strangers alike, something in the ridiculousness of these poses, or the reactions of the passer-by. It brought them joy they wrote, it made their day a little bit brighter and brought them a much needed laugh. I realized I wanted to continue putting something positive into the world, while at the same time using art to synthesize my feelings and thoughts regarding our impermanence on this earth. The official STEFDIES slogan is ‘leave a mark.’ I’d like to think I’m doing that.”
UK
“For me as an artist and individual, I push myself to take these photos (in the most uncomfortable of situations) as it allows me to participate in capturing a moment in time physically as well as mentally and emotionally. I have to totally commit to being ‘in the moment’ to get that one shot. I have to take myself out of my one head and get into the moment. Believe me, it’s really hard not to be present when you are face down eating dirt, and could be tempted at any time.”
Capo Circeo Lighthouse
“I want to keep producing images that stir the imagination and produce joy for the viewer. I also want to continue to produce photos that are all age appropriate, and inclusive. For example, many school groups follow the STEFDIES series, as they considerate a good tool to teach young adults there are alternatives to the perfectionism of selfies and online culture.”
ARTHOUSE1
“STEFDIES welcomes everyone to participate, and doesn’t care about about status or perfection. I hope that STEFDIES promotes the idea of ‘everyone is prefect exactly how they are, and not a damn thing has to be changed.’”
The artist can’t remember when, exactly, she started taking STEFDIES. But, she thinks it was about eight years ago.
“As I mentioned earlier, there are many attempts but not all photos come to fruition. I would say [I took] over 1000 different images, but [only] a few hundred useable ones, and out of that only a handful that make it out on social media. One of my original intentions was to have a series of coffee table books that chronicle the STEFDIES series, so many images have not been released as they are being reserved for the book series.”
Corse, France
Her message has caught on.
“STEFDIES has quite the following – as it should – they are super fun to do and always get a good laugh! We have a few hashtags people use – #stefdieswithme #stefdiesfan, etc. Many people will send me their interpretations of the STEFDIES pose, which I love!”
Tuileries Garden
For those who want to join the movement, she says:
“Just have fun, and commit to the process! Don’t be afraid to look silly, and remember to be safe. Many don’t actually get the pose correct, as it requires the face to be completely flat on the ground (not to the side) but most people don’t like their mouth touching the disgusting items on the ground … and rightfully so. Just be yourself and that is good enough, and at the end of the day, incredibly interesting.”
Rome, Italy
Golden Gate Bridge
San Diego Zoo
Seine River, Paris, France
Myrtos Beach, Kefalonia
What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!
h/t Bored Panda, Instagram
“Highly evolved people have their own conscience as pure law.” ~Lao Tzu
If we heed these wise words by Lao Tzu, then it stands to reason that we focus more on developing highly evolved people capable of honoring universal laws, rather than waste our energy bludgeoning people with invalid laws that violate the golden rule, the nonaggression principle, and the universal laws that dictate health.
But what constitutes a highly evolved person? What might a highly evolved person’s character look like? How do we define such a broad concept? In Five Counterintuitive Traits of Highly Evolved Humans, I broke down the emotional disposition of highly evolved people. In this article we’ll break down the political disposition of highly evolved people.
Choose a courage-based lifestyle over a fear-based lifestyle:
“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with the taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.” ~John Salter
Does your government have a taste for blood and a thirst for power? A highly evolved person, with their own conscience as pure law, would choose smart rebuking over fearful obsequiousness.
Don’t allow such a government to have its way. Question its authority. Practice strategic civil disobedience. Count coup on overreaching power constructs. Challenge outdated, immoral, and unjust laws. Be the personification of checks and balances. Dare to be a courageous David facing down the Goliath of the state.
We don’t need more people who blindly obey in deadly fear. That’s already the vast majority of people. We need more people who are highly evolved enough to smartly rebuke any and all governments that use violence to “solve” problems.
Choosing a courage-based lifestyle over a fear-based lifestyle is choosing to no longer be a victim. It’s choosing, instead, to become a hero. It’s choosing courage over fear, self-sacrifice over comfort and security, adventure over banality, fierceness over obsequiousness, and ruthless skepticism over blind faith.
Understand that the vast majority of people are still willing to live fear-based lifestyles. Sympathize with them for having not woken up yet, but do not pity them. It’s not their fault they were brainwashed, conditioned and indoctrinated into living fear-based lifestyles, but it is their responsibility to educate themselves and to break themselves of their conditioning.
You can lead people to knowledge, but you can’t make them think. You can, however, remain ruthless with your courage-based lifestyle. Become a beacon of courageous hope. Especially for those who are still living fear-based lifestyles. Call it tough love. As Derrick Jensen said, “Love does not imply pacifism.”
Choose heart-centeredness over political divisiveness:
“We want to abolish the state and create a world free of oppression and suffering, but we must not lose sight of ourselves in the pursuit of this goal. Remain heart-centered no matter how violent the state becomes or how divisive the political climate. Every revolutionary through history who chose violence became a monster and a shadow of what they pursued. Remember, we are after an evolution of hearts and minds.” ~Derrick Broze & John Vibes
Bipartisan politics is old hat. It’s high time you toss that hat in the fire. Highly evolved people have already done so. They have gone Meta with politics. They’ve gone beyond the outdated, codependent divisiveness of bipartisanism and graduated into an updated, interdependent metamorality.
Metamorality, coined by Joshua Greene, is based on a common ground that all humans can agree upon while proposing a utilitarian deep pragmatism that empathically broadens the mind and compassionately opens the heart to the plight of us all as interdependent beings on an interconnected planet. Highly evolved humans use this strategy, along with the Astronaut Overview Effect, to go big-picture.
Going big-picture helps us change our minds. Or, at least be more flexible and open in our thinking. It puts things into proper perspective. It helps us feel more empathic and less psychopathic toward each other. We’re better able to see the world as one, without borders.
We’re better able to narrow our highfalutin politics down to a single concept we can all agree on: freedom. We’re better able to see through all the red herring cognitive biases of the climate debate and realize that our problem is a single problem we can all agree on: pollution. We’re better able to cut straight through the divisiveness of religion and narrow it down to a single concept that we can all agree on: love. Especially love for our children, and creating a healthy environment for them to grow up in. And suddenly there are not so many differences between us.
Choosing heart-centeredness over political divisiveness puts a compassionate spin on our conscience. Indeed, it puts the “conscience” in having our own conscience as pure law. For pure law is universal law, based upon the healthy interconnectedness of all things.
Choose self-improvement over self-preservation and create a better world:
“You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.” ~Eliezer Yudkowsky
When it comes down to it, becoming a highly evolved human is about spitting out the unhealthy blue pill of comfort, safety, and security based on outdated laws, and having the courage to swallow the healthy red pill of curiosity, questioning, and skepticism that questions bad laws in order to create healthy laws that align with universal laws.
It’s about becoming the personification of checks and balances. It’s about putting in the hard and difficult work of becoming a highly evolved person who has the wherewithal to “use their own conscience as pure law.” And to teach others how to do the same.
The answer is not creating more bad laws to shove down people’s throats. The answer is creating people smart enough to question the authority that seeks to shove bad laws down people’s throats. Indeed. The answer is teaching people how to become bigger than the law, how to gain the capacity to have their own conscience as pure law, and how to become a more valuable human. As Niels Bohr said, “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”
If, as Plato famously said, “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws,” then it stands to reason that we should focus more on teaching people how to act responsibly and less on creating laws. Especially since humans are so terrible at making good laws. And especially-especially since humans are even more terrible about abusing their power regarding those ill-conceived laws.
As Edward Abbey wisely suggested, “Since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” The few seeking to rule others do so through the enforcement of bad laws.
So, it is incumbent upon anyone with their own conscience as pure law to ruthlessly interrogate such bad laws and then mercilessly check and balance any authority seeking to enforce such bad laws. We do ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren a disservice when we decide not to.
There is no greater cause than becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in. Will you defend outdated unethical laws and merely turn a blind eye to those who unjustly enforce them? Or will you defend the people’s right to ruthlessly challenge unethical laws and those who unjustly enforce them? The choice is yours. As William James said, “We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.”
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
If you would be alive –if you would choose to live an examined life, a fulfilled life, a self-actualized life, a life well-lived– then don’t fearfully choose the safe road, what Jung called “The Road of Death.” Choose instead the courage to face the trials and tribulations of an adventurous road, a road full of danger and risk.
On the bridge from Man to Overman, there is no place for half-assed lifestyles and herd instincts. There’s no place for fear-based perspectives and cowardly excuses. There’s no place for play-it-safers and goodie-two-shoes clinging to comfort and light. The bridge is too narrow for narrow-mindedness. It’s too shadowy for those who have not reconciled their own shadows. It’s too full of dark nights for anyone who hasn’t experienced a Dark Night of the Soul. It’s too painfully real for those who have not overcome the Matrix and embraced the Desert of the Real.
The bridge is only for courageous self-actualizers and heroic self-overcomers. If your intent is not self-actualization and self-overcoming, then simply get out of the way. Don’t block those with a full heart just because your heart is empty. Better yet: fill your heart with courage. Join the ranks of healthy progressive evolution. “I teach you the Overman,” writes Nietzsche. “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”
Taking the leap of courage:
“Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.” ~Niels Bohr
Can you feel the constriction of your comfort zone? Like a heavy life-jacket weighing you down? Like a too-safe straight-jacket keeping you out of harms way?
Can you feel the warm glow of contentedness quietly stagnating you? Causing you to feel like you’ve made it somehow? Can you feel the secure pressure of the status quo keeping you in line? Causing you to blindly accept, to myopically believe that you’ve somehow got it all figured out?
Taking a leap of courage is daring yourself to escape these feelings. It’s encouraging yourself to step outside your comfort zone. It’s having the audacity to think rather than believe, to take things into consideration rather than rely on conviction. It’s inspiring yourself to be heroic despite fear.
Look, I get it. Inside the comfort zone everything is safe and warm, solved and unriddled. But there’s also no adventure there. There’s no risk. There’s no challenge. There is everything in there to help you heal, it’s a great place to lick your wounds, but there’s nothing there to help you grow.
Healthy growth, the kind of growth that builds resilience and robustness, can only be achieved outside the comfort zone. There’s got to be risk. Like Nietzsche said, “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.”
Inside the comfort zone there’s placation, pacification and pity. There’s everything that keeps us appeased and satisfied. There’s God with his shiny promises and glossy platitudes keeping us pampered and coddled and giving us that warm fuzzy feeling. But there’s no growth. There’s no questions. There’s no humor. There’s no furthering of evolution.
Outside of the comfort zone God is dead. Or, at least, God is a garden. A vast and vital garden filled with the compost of every man-made God to ever have existed, rotting like deified fertilizer for the future fertilization of ever-improved and ever-updated Gods.
Alas, the bridge from Man to Overman can only be built outside our comfort zones. Building the bridge is building adventure. It’s building something to grow into. It’s rebuilding God. It’s building a path into godhood and creative evolution. Indeed, we stand upon the corpse of God in order to self-actualize our place as Gods in the making.
Building the bridge out of the bones of God (and Giants):
“We are all Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be reborn.” ~Meister Eckhart
The bridge is a symbol for revivification, a creative renaissance, a spiritual rebirth, an existential resurgence. The bridge is a path, but it’s also a crossroads –a snarling juxtaposition. It’s built out of the outdated bones of God toward the updated end of creative evolution. It’s fixed into place with existential glue. It’s sturdier than any bridge ever created, but it’s surrounded by an angry abyss, and it’s never completed.
We are all architects of this bridge to some extent. Some of us are aware of it, but most of us are not. Most of us are cluttered and stuck in stopgap ideologies. We’re clustered and bottlenecked before the crossroads. Unable to self-actualize. Unable to self-overcome. Unable to see how everything is connected to everything else. Like pre-enlightened Rumis, we’re incapable of seeing that the door to our prison is wide open. And always has been.
Building the bridge from Man to Overman is proactively engaging and leveraging open-mindedness through self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s inflicting awareness. It’s launching existential flares. It’s highlighting creative evolution through courageous interdependence.
The bones of God are sturdy and steadfast. Solid ground upon which to keep moving, ever-forward, ever-overcoming, ever-evolving. It takes the Newtonian notion of “standing on the shoulders of giants” to the next level. It’s Meta-perceptual. We stand on the bones of God in order to see further than God did. In order to perpetually propel human imagination and ingenuity. In order to grow and keep growing, despite creature comforts, herd instincts, and psychosocial hang-ups.
Building the bridge begins with each of us taking personal responsibility for our contribution to human evolution. Indeed. We all carry the bones of God. Self-overcoming is taking the reins of our life into our own hands, and proactively going about improving upon who we were yesterday. It’s a personalized Fibonacci sequence (self-improvement) striving toward Phi (enlightenment), where our own development is predicated upon an individualized progressive evolution that will ultimately contribute to the evolution of the species.
If you meet Nietzsche on the bridge, kill him:
“If you meet The Buddha on the road, kill him.” ~Linji
As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature.” Similarly, we should kill our notion of self-mastery in order to continue improving our mastery. Think of it as a kind of recycled mastery, where we recycle the mastery of yesterday into the remastered mastery of today.
This applies to the concept of deification itself. So as not to get stuck in a particular state of growth, it is vital that we “kill” the notion that we have “arrived.” That our evolution is somehow “complete.” That there is nothing further to grow into, nothing to question, nothing to overcome. For there will always be something to grow into, to question, and to overcome. There will always be a vast infinity toward which our limited finitude must strive. Indeed. The bridge from Man to Overman is built ever-finitely into the infinite future.
Killing Buddha (God) on the road and killing Nietzsche (Godhood) on the bridge is vital to keep creative evolution in perspective, so as not to get hung-up on any particular notion of Truth. The bridge from Man to Overman is filled with the outdated bones of dead Gods and the burnt-out husks of outdated truths. As James Russel Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.”
Those who are proactively and courageously building the bridge understand that Truth is a fickle beast. Almost as fickle a beast as human fallibility. It’s for both reasons that those who are building the bridge consistently recycle their own mastery.
At the end of the day, the bridge from Man to Overman is a process of self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s the collective personification of creative evolution. We build the bridge to provide a flexible and malleable path toward godhood. We keep building, destroying and rebuilding so that past growth adds to, without subtracting from, the healthy and progressive evolution of the species. We stand and face the Abyss, honoring each other… “Overmaste: the (r)evolutionary potential in me honors the (r)evolutionary potential in you.”
Image: Source
(TMU) – Life abounds with stress-making, havoc-provoking mayhem. Did you misplace your keys when you were already late for work this morning? Was traffic worse today than after a 5-car accident on a Los Angeles turnpike? Is your boss expecting the impossible from you, while you stare into your kid’s eyes and choke back tears explaining you’re going to have to miss their game – again?
In these moments, you need a fast, effective method to chill the heck out. This simple exercise can calm you down and eliminate stress in three minutes or less.
A Stealth Breathing Technique Used by Navy Seals and First Responders
The best thing about this breathing technique is that no one will even know you’re doing it.
It is used by first responders, Navy Seals, and people who are regularly under massive amounts of stress because it has a direct, palpable, and positive effect on the way their nervous systems function.
If you were to pick someone up in an ambulance from one of those LA traffic pile-ups, you don’t have time to freak out. Maybe they won’t live. You have seconds sometimes, to make smart choices that could possibly keep them breathing long enough to get them to a hospital.
Every fiber of your being has evolved over time to signal danger. This is part of your body’s fight-or-flight response.
Counter-Acting the Fight or Flight Response
When faced with danger or any perceived threat, you instinctively default to two choices: run or fight.
A cascade of chemical reactions occurs the minute a stressful situation presents itself. This is how the body mobilizes its resources to deal with a threat. It doesn’t matter if it is a lion about to pounce on you – as our ancestors had to deal with – or that one last email that finally breaks you. Your natural response to stress will be the same – until you learn how to interrupt it.
The sympathetic nervous systems will trigger the adrenal glands to release catecholamines, which include adrenaline and noradrenaline. This causes your heart to pound, your blood pressure to rise, you’re your breathing rate to speed up.
Your pupils may dilate, and your skin may flush. In extreme stress, your muscles tense up – literally preparing you to run away from the dangerous trigger.
Modern-day triggers are so varied and pervasive, we are almost never in a state of calm.
After a stressful event, it can take up to 45 minutes for your body to return to homeostasis.
That’s why a simple breathing exercise can literally save your life, and retrain you to face stressful situations like a seasoned, meditating monk instead of a raging lunatic.
Cynthia Stonnington, chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, says she introduces people to breathwork because “many people find benefit, no one reports side effects, and it’s something that engages the patient in their recovery with actively doing something.”
Breathwork is in fact, so useful, that one study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2017 found that patients with major depression who practiced deep breathing methods for three months had significantly reduced symptoms as compared to those who did not.
Another study found that our breathing is so closely linked to our emotional state, that changing it can practically negate anxiety completely.
How it Works
Sometimes called box-breathing, you can really use any form of deep, present and conscious breathing to change your physiological response to stress.
Most of us breathe in an unconscious, stress-promoting way. Here’s what happens when you breathe deeply, and correctly for just a few minutes:
- An exhale that is longer than your inhale (deep breathing) causes the vagus nerve which runs from the neck down through your diaphragm to relay a message to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system – the part of your nervous system responsible for rest, relaxation, peace, and digestion.
- This counter-acts the adrenal-dump and flight or fight response.
- Your brain is freed to make smart choices based on relaxed concentration, a state known as Alpha that is seen on EEG scans as neural oscillations in the frequency range of 5–12.5 Hz arising from synchronous and coherent (in phase or constructive) brain activity.
- Alpha waves caused by a deep-breathing pattern create a positive feedback loop that restores harmony between your mind and body.
- This brainwave state is also indicative of those “aha” or “eureka” moments of a compelling new idea, or insane creativity. They allow you to literally create something out of nothing. And when do you need to do that most often? When you are faced with a challenging or stressful situation!
How to Do It
You can start with a box breath and expand into larger inhale-exhale ratios.
A box breath is a simple inhale to the count of four, using your diaphragm. You then exhale for a slow count of four.
Be sure you expand your lungs completely, and fill them as much as you can. If your shoulders are shrugging into your ears, you are likely doing a “stress-breath” which only keeps you in the fight-or-flight stage. This is a shallow breath that we normally do when we are agitated or depressed.
Your stomach should expand, not just your lungs. This is because your diaphragm is moving down into your belly to allow your lungs to expand more fully.
Once you can do this, you will change the ratio. You will start with a 4:8 inhale to exhale ratio, and then move to 8:16, 10:20, 22:44, or even 30:80 etc.
If you want some real inspiration for deep breathing, check out this video of the famous yogi, B.K.S. Iyengar, conducting one of the longest exhales ever.
You don’t have to be this advanced to get all the benefits of deep breathing, though. Simply have enough awareness to take control of your breath the next time a stressful situation arises, and you’ll be feeling less anxious, and calmer.
It’s that simple. You can breathe yourself into peace, in three minutes or less.
Thich Naht Hanh, the Zen Buddhist master, has some interesting advice about what it means to truly let go. Many people mistake detachment or non-clinging to be a form of aloofness, or emotional disconnect from others, but as Hanh explains, truly letting go often means loving someone more than you have ever loved them before.
The Buddha taught that detachment, one of the disciplines on the Noble Path, also called ariyasaavaka, is not a physical act of withdrawal or even a form of austerity. Though the Buddha teaches of a “non-action which is an integral part of the Right Way,” if it is taken out of context it can give the impression that we should develop a lack of concern for others, and that we should live without truly feeling or expressing our emotions – cutting ourselves off from life.
These type of misinterpretations are sadly common, since there are not always direct translations from the Paali language into English.
This form of “detachment” is an erroneous understanding of the Buddha’s message. Master Hanh states that to truly let go we must learn to love more completely. Non-attachment only happens when our love for another extends beyond our own personal expectations of gain, or our anticipation of a specific, desired outcome.
Hanh describes four forms of complete detachment, which surprisingly, aren’t about holing yourself up in a cave and ignoring everyone who has broken your heart, or ignoring your lust or desire for a romantic interest. This is not detachment. Letting go, means diving in. For example:
Maitri (Not the Love You Know)
Hanh describes the importance of Maitri, not love as we normally understand in a Westernized use of the word. He states,
“The first aspect of true love is maitri (metta, in Pali), the intention and capacity to offer joy and happiness. To develop that capacity, we have to practice looking and listening deeply so that we know what to do and what not to do to make others happy. If you offer your beloved something she does not need, that is not maitri. You have to see her real situation or what you offer might bring her unhappiness.”
In other words, your detachment may come in accepting that certain things you would normally do to make another person feel loved and appreciated may not be what the person you are actively loving now, needs. Instead of forcing that behavior on another person, with an egoic intent to “please” them, you simply detach from that need in yourself, and truly observe what makes another person feel comfortable, safe, and happy.
Hanh further explains,
“We have to use language more carefully. “Love” is a beautiful word; we have to restore its meaning. The word “maitri” has roots in the word mitra which means friend. In Buddhism, the primary meaning of love is friendship.”
Karuna (Compassion)
The next form of true detachment is compassion. When we let go, we don’t stop offering a compassionate touch, word, or deed to help someone who is in pain. We also don’t expect to take their hurt or pain away. Compassion contains deep concern, though. It is not aloofness It is not isolation from others.
The Buddha smiles because he understands why pain and suffering exist, and because he also knows how to transform it. You become more deeply involved in life when you become detached form the outcome, but this does not mean you don’t participate fully – even in others’ pain.
Gratitude and Joy
In truly letting go you practice gratitude. Mudita, or joy arises when we are overcome with gratitude for all that we have, such that we no longer cling to some other longed-for result. The Buddha’s definition of joy is more like “Unselfish joy.” It means that we don’t only find happiness when something good happens to us, but when others find happiness.
If you’ve ever had to say goodbye to a love or friend so that they could continue on their life’s path – one that may not have continued to intertwine with your own – you may have felt pain when they found someone new to love, or made a new friend that seemed to take your place. This is not true detachment. Joy arises when you find happiness even when others find joy – and it has little or nothing to do with you.
Upeksha (Equanimity)
Master Hanh describes the final quality of true love which sheds inordinate light on the true process of letting go.
He states,
“The fourth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, non-attachment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go. Upa means “over,” and iksha means “to look.” You climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. If your love has attachment, discrimination, prejudice, or clinging in it, it is not true love.
People who do not understand Buddhism sometimes think upeksha means indifference, but true equanimity is neither cold nor indifferent. If you have more than one child, they are all your children. Upeksha does not mean that you don’t love. You love in a way that all your children receive your love, without discrimination.”
Hanh explains that without this quality our love tends to become possessive – a stomping ground of the ego. We try to put our beloved in our pocket and carry them with us, when they are more like the wind, or a butterfly, or a stream, needing to move and flow, or risk dying. This is not love, this is destruction.
For love to be true love, it must have elements of compassion, joy, and equanimity – and this is truly letting go.
The Art of Letting Go is Artless
The real secret is that letting go is not an art, it is an allowing, a being. A non-attached relationship is healthy, strong and filled with effortless love, kindness and compassion. It is completely selfless because your sense of ‘self’ is no longer asserted in every situation. If you want to truly let go, you’ve got to love more, not less. This is the most common misunderstanding about this priceless teaching of the Buddha.
Featured Image: Photo © Unified Buddhist Church.
For far too long, but particularly in the modern, Western world we have thought of the heart as simply a pumping mechanism responsible for bringing blood to our organs.
The heart’s physical importance not to be underestimated, it supports life, sending the blood of life to the tree-like limbs of our vascular system – but this is an overly simplistic view of what the heart is capable of.
Gregg Braden’s latest research elaborates on the ancient technique of using the heart as an intelligent organ.
The heart’s intelligence has been ignored for far too long. What we’ve learned about the heart’s wisdom, however, in the past several years through the Heart Math Institute and through the research of psychologists, neurobiologists, and res-surfaced wisdom teachings from our ancient past – should inspire everyone to look at the heart in a completely new way.
For those who are not used to using their innate intelligence – that is their intuition — tuning into the heart for answers to the most profound and difficult questions they could possibly drum up might seem ridiculous. Why ask the heart whether to stay in a relationship that is challenging, or even if you should go through with a medical procedure?
It might seem ignorant or even haphazard to ask the heart questions like these, but it has wisdom that the intellect cannot match. Here’s why:
The heart does not send information through an egoic filter.
The heart knows your past, your present, and your future. Its intelligence does not care about your egoic constructs. The heart simply speaks from a completely neutral place.
You can think of it like a close friend who has your best interest at heart, and who does not care about making themselves look good in your eyes.
Hridaya
There is an ancient term that does not have a direct English translation that describes this intelligence of the heart. Hridaya, is the energy which is contained within the heart chakra. This is not just the physical heart, but the spiritual heart. It contains the intelligence of God, or the transcendental mind.
The word comes from the Sanskrit language, and the closest meaning to English would be something like this:
Hrid = center
Ayam = this
Thus, the spiritual heart always brings you to your center. It will not veer away from your highest self, always taking in a 360-degree (and beyond) view of any situation you could possibly face.
The yogi Bhagavan wrote once to explain this spiritual heart in more detail:
“Just as there is a cosmic center from which the whole universe arises and has its being and functions with the power or the directing energy emanating therefrom, so also is there a center within the frame of the physical body wherein we have our being. This center in the human body is in no way different from the cosmic center. It is this center in us that is called the Hridaya, the seat of Pure Consciousness, realized as Existence, Knowledge and Bliss. This is really what we call the seat of God in us.”
Conversely the mind-brain thinks of our past experiences, our past erroneous beliefs assigned to those experiences, and takes all sorts of twists and turns through a conceptual landscape that we’ve created to give us a “right” answer to life’s deep questions.
A Zen Buddhist can also describe what happens when we think with the head (brain) instead of the heart.
We place a fog – a type of perceptual overlay on top of a situation and then add an emotional investment. We call this “real,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Yet, we think we have to obtain a siddhi (great accomplishment or miracle) in order to obtain supernormal wisdom or intelligence. So, we go on trusting the false perceptions of the mind-brain.
The Neuro-Biology of the Heart
Moreover, if we were to look at the simple neuro-biology of the heart – there are many more fibers leading from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart. This means – as Gregg Braden recently pointed out in a Gaia talk – that there is much more communication being sent to the brain then being received from it.
As the HeartMath Institute explains, the heart also begins beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has even been formed, a process scientists call autorhythmic.
We humans also form an emotional brain long before a rational one, and the heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as “the brain in the heart.”
The heart can also create a level of coherence in the body just through its rhythm, which regulates all its systems, and corrects even diseased cells.
And finally, the electromagnetic field of the heart is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain, and permeates every cell in the body. The magnetic component is approximately 5000 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive magnetometers.
How to Think with the Heart’s Wisdom
Here’s what Braden suggests to help us learn to tap into the heart’s massive wisdom:
- Focus on the heart (and heart chakra). This sends a signal to the heart that you seek its intelligence.
- Slow your breathing. This sends another signal to your body that you seek higher intelligence, and not that of the normally stressed, and freaked out ego. Deep breathing calms the nervous system and quiets the brain.
- Conjure a sense of gratitude, compassion, or love. These are the feelings which trigger an activation of the heart’s energy.
- Ask your heart a question. The question should be brief and to the point.
- Everyone will experience the heart’s intelligence a bit differently. You may feel butterflies in your gut, a warm sensation growing around your body, or tingling in your fingertips. You may not feel any bodily sensations, but have a clear, short answer that comes through your mind. Know that it likely won’t need a long-drawn out story to “justify” its wisdom. The heart speaks directly and clearly. If it isn’t try this process again to let your body know that you seek the intelligence of the heart and not the ego.
- Practice makes perfect. The more often you do this, the easier it will be to tap into the seat of pure consciousness – the Hridaya.
Please republish this article freely with credit to The Mind Unleashed, Johanna Bassols, and with all links intact.
By: Johanna Bassols
Johanna Bassols is the creator of the Soul Reprogramming Method and founder of the Healers of the Light Academy.
“Love could be labeled poison and we’d drink it anyway.” ~Atticus
Love is a tricky subject. It’s multifaceted, both subjectively and objectively. It’s both lost and found within the complex folds of our unique mind-body-spirit dynamic. It’s both a spiraling in and a spiral out. We all know the “feeling” of love, but we can’t seem to describe it to each other. But boy do we try: in poetry, in song, in dance, in bed. Even in art.
Unfortunately, the predominant love paradigm in our culture is egocentric, ownership-based love. We live in a world where relationships are mostly based upon materialism, ownership and immediate gratification. It’s almost like we’re conditioned to consume to the point that we “consume” each other. Even the words we use toward each other imply ownership.
It’s sad. But no condition is insurmountable. We can recondition ourselves to form healthy relationships based upon respect, honesty, and trust. We can update the love paradigm into one of soul-centric, relationship-based love. But first we need to recognize each other as opposite sides of the same being. Our yin-yang dynamic is more dynamic than we tend to allow it to be.
The thing is, our language is dreadfully inadequate to do the concept of love any justice. There are over seven-billion people on the planet and we each have a different psycho-physiological reaction to any given stimuli, however minute that difference. And with abstract stimuli such as Love, Consciousness, and God, that difference is magnified.
The fact is: we each have our own definition for the concept of love (ego), but that definition is written in a language older than words (soul). So how do we understand this language? Simply put: mindfulness. More complexly put: we must become aware of what our mind-body-spirit is telling us, and then be honest about that information regarding our relationships. And poetically put: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” ~Mary Oliver
The ability to love (vulnerability):
“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.” ~Brene Brown
Our ability to love another person is predetermined by our ability to love ourselves. Similar to the airplane-crash-landing analogy, “Always put the mask on yourself before assisting someone who may be less capable,” we must put the Mask of Love on ourselves before loving someone who may or may not be capable of authentic love.
The irony is that we must first learn self-love to understand that egocentric love isn’t the healthiest way to love. We must first love our ego in order to transform it into an ego that isn’t just in love with itself. An ego that isn’t loved tends to become self-serving and egocentric (codependent or merely independent), but an ego that is loved tends to become self-actualized and soul-centric (interdependent).
An ego that has learned interdependence through self-love is more likely to love authentically. It is more likely to be vulnerable with another ego. And vulnerability is the key to loving greatly. It’s the secret of deep authenticity. A crucial aspect of self-actualized love, as opposed to egocentric love, is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable so that we may be astonished by love, taken aback by it, in awe of it. As the great Rumi once said, “Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there.”
The ability to let others love (freedom):
“The only way of loving a person is to love them without hope.” ~Walter Benjamin
Have you ever caught yourself saying this, regarding love and relationships? “I just don’t want to get hurt.” Or heard someone else say it? We hear people say this, and we nod in empathy, followed by an understanding pat on the back, or a sympathetic hug.
But, wait a minute! Who ever said getting hurt wasn’t a part of love? Are not pain and love two sides of the same coin? If we love something deeply enough, does it not hurt when we lose it? The thing is, the ability to love another person takes an enormous act of courage. And if we are genuinely allowing ourselves to love another person, then we must open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt. This is what it means to be vulnerable. If we’re not “all in,” then what’s the point of trying?
Pain should not be avoided at the expense of love. Love should be embraced at the risk of pain. Indeed.
If we’ve already learned to love ourselves, which we should have taken care of before attempting to love another person anyway, then insecurities be damned! It’s time to go for it. It’s time to move all in. Rejection happens. But if we don’t at least give it a shot, and that means getting vulnerable and laying our insecurities out on the table like a bad hand of poker, then we’ll never know if it could have been something magical or not.
A relationship is actually two uniquely different people who have gone from being independent dancers to becoming an interdependent dance. This is the beauty of romantic, soul-centric love. It becomes a dance. But, and here’s the rub, the dance can only be enjoyable if both parties are free to dance… or not.
This is where it gets difficult: allowing our partner to love the way they need to love. This sounds simple enough, but it is deceivingly simple. Because we might not like the way they love. It requires good communication skills, brutal honesty, and an exemplary trust in the other dancer.
One of the biggest assumptions we make about love is imagining that the other person loves the same way that we do. In other words, we assume that what the other person means by love means the same thing that we mean by it. But this simply cannot be true if we are genuinely allowing the other person to be an individual with their own unique tastes and opinions.
Letting our lover love the way they need to love is just as much a part of the dance as our unique way of loving is. But we must be honest, first with ourselves and then with our partners. Sometimes this honesty will hurt, but pain is necessary for growth. And if a relationship is what we’re trying to grow, then pain is par for the course.
If the way another person loves doesn’t jive with the way that you love, then the dance either needs to end or it needs to take on a new form. If this sounds counter-intuitive, that’s because it is. As the great Victor Hugo cryptically stated, “Love is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”
The ability to let love go (compersion):
“Everything we love is well-arranged dust.” ~Atticus
The ability to let love go is our ability to let go of our ego’s attachment to it.
Falling in love is both very easy and very difficult. It is easy when we are coming from a place of non-attachment and interdependence; when we’re allowing all things to mysteriously and majestically flow. But it is difficult when we are coming from a place of attachment and codependence, and we’re rigidly trying to control everything. It’s the difference between being Love, and vainly trying to pigeonhole love into the box of our expectation.
As Stephen Levine profoundly stated, “True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don’t love another, you are another.”
When we let love go, we’re not letting go of Love itself –not at all. We are letting go of the ego aspect of love. We’re letting go of the attachment, the need to cling. It’s not like we let go of love and then forget about it. No, it’s more like we are saying goodbye. Like proud parents who are sad that their child has left home, but are happy for their growth and open to the possibility of their return.
Love itself is never abandoned, nor is it forgotten. Only the needy, codependent, ego side of love that’s filled with unhealthy expectations and cultural predispositions about the way love should be is abandoned. Authentic love lasts forever, despite us, and even in spite of our egos. The more we let love go, the more we realize that we never owned it in the first place. It was never a thing that could be owned. It could only ever have been free, or it was never really love at all.
So, let’s learn to be Love in the face of expectation. Let’s be Love despite the love that thinks it needs validation. Let’s be Love even when others cannot. That is the heart of both compersion and forgiveness… Love, let others love, and then let go of your ego’s attachment to love. Do this, again and again, in a kind of loving life-death-rebirth process, and the ability of soul-centric, self-actualized love will not elude you.
Image: chombosan/Shutterstock.
“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” ~Charles Du Bos
What do you want to become? What do you want to achieve? Whatever it is, it will require sacrifice. The first sacrifice is time. You will have to decide between two contrasting options: One day, or day one. Will today be “day one,” or will you put it off until “one day” in the future?
Settling on “one day” leaves your life up to others and to fate. Deciding on “day one” gives you a little leverage, a little say so in the process. With “one day,” the day seizes you, and you’re powerless and left at the mercy of circumstance. With “day one,” you seize the day, and you’re empowered to make the best of circumstance. As Epictetus said, “Circumstances don’t make the man; they only reveal him to himself.” Don’t settle for “one day.” Cultivate the mettle for “day one” instead.
Whatever it is: writing a novel, starting a band, traveling the world, getting a PhD. Make today “day one” of that process. There will be challenges. There will be setbacks. There will be obstacles that seem almost impossible to pass. Don’t wait until you’re “ready.” Because what if you’re never ready? Fear not. Embrace the fear and begin. Use fear as a diving board and dive into your passion.
If you worry too much about what could go wrong, you’ll slip back into a “one day” mentality. If you wait until you’re ready, “one day” will consume your life. And that’s no place to be when you’re on the path toward something great. Don’t make excuses. Excuses are just you getting in the way of what you want to achieve. Get out of your own way and seize the day.
Of course, “day one” is itself a series of moments. So, seizing the moment must come first. Carpe punctum (seize the moment) leads to carpe diem (seize the day) leads to carpe vita (seize the life). Let’s break it down.
Carpe punctum (seize the moment):
“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: Not going all the way, and not starting.” ~The Buddha
Here’s the thing: you have from this moment until the day you die (which could be tomorrow or eighty years from now) to live the life you want to live. But it all starts with this moment. Right now. What are you going to do? The same thing you’ve been doing, or will you try something new? Will you just keep pushing the broom of procrastination into the abyss of “one day” or will you seize the moment, toss the broom into the abyss, make today “day one” and get busy cultivating your passion?
Your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, they all begin right now. They may or may not come to fruition sometime in the future, but their seeds must be planted now. They may not grow the way you want them to grow, but you’ll never know if you don’t plant them now. They might mutate or grow awry or become a hybrid with a seed someone else planted, but you’ll never know if you don’t get busy planting.
Seizing the moment is all about embracing your inner gardener. Your seeds represent what you wish to become, or what you wish to achieve. The soil is fate, which you do not have control over. But that’s okay, because there are things that you do have control over. Like how much you water your seeds. But right now, even that is irrelevant.
Don’t worry about if the seed will take root or not. Don’t worry about if it may possibly get dug up by unforeseen circumstance. Don’t worry about if there will or will not be enough rain to help it grow. That’s neither here or nor there. Right now, it’s all about planting the seed. The action of planting the seed trumps what becomes of the seed.
Human flourishing, Eudaimonia, doesn’t just happen. It takes work. It takes perseverance. It takes blood, sweat, and tears. But it doesn’t have to be a daunting prospect. Just take small bites. Take it inch by inch. Or millimeter by millimeter, if need be. Either way it begins right now, in this moment. This is the first second, in a series of seconds, that has the potential to lead to your own human flourishing.
Carpe diem (seize the day):
“Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.” ~Horace
Life is a series of moments. So even when you’re seizing the day, you’re still seizing the moment. The only thing that changes is that you are collecting each moment into a series of moments that are all about the cultivation of your own personal flourishing.
Where seizing the moment was a declaration against time itself, seizing the day is a declaration against that which seeks to suck up your time. It can be as simple as taking a day off from work to cultivate your garden and water your seeds, or getting away from the things of man and seeking out meditation and solitude in Nature. Or it can be as extreme as giving your boss the finger and quitting your J.O.B. to become a starving artist, or selling all your worldly possessions and striking out on a life-changing trip around the world.
Whatever it is, it’s collecting all those moments in your day and then aiming them at a particular target. It’s harnessing their collective power and then focusing that power into a leap of courage. It’s using those precious moments to turn the sound down on your life so that you can finally hear the call to adventure. It’s channeling the power of those moments and focusing them on taking a strategic risk or crossing a dangerous threshold. It’s concentrating all the moments that comprise a day and fixing them on taking the next daring step, striving for the next rung on the precarious ladder toward Eudaimonia.
Seizing the day is the proactive task of watering the precious seeds of each fleeting moment. Because sometimes you cannot wait for the rain to come. Sometimes you’ve got to risk looking foolish in your Rain Dance. Indeed. Sometimes seizing the day is literally bringing water to the wasteland.
Carpe vita (seize the life):
“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” ~Henry Miller
Seizing the life is embracing the journey. It’s allowing the journey to be the thing. There are still the precious fleeting moments to be mindful of, and there are still days in which you’ll have to collect those moments and transform them into courageous acts, but seizing the life is having a bird’s eye view of it all. It’s a big picture perspective that trumps the small picture perspective that trips so many people up.
Seizing the life is injecting meaning into your life. It’s collecting all the moments and all the days, and seeing them as an interconnected whole –the fractal construct of your life. It’s embracing your unique-as-your-own-fingerprint life task (or Immortality Project, as Ernest Becker calls it).
With a bird’s eye view and high humor in your heart, your big picture perspective oversees the tiny goings-on of the small mind and laughs at its need for attachment and inability to seize the moment. At this point, you’ve mastered the art of sacred humor. Your disposition is flexible yet robust. You’re able to forgive yourself, realizing, as Lily Tomlin did: “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”
Your third eye is a cosmic owl, the symbolic overseer of your human flourishing, perched upon the high limb of the universe, putting your entire life into perspective. You see how it’s all connected like a giant web (or Indra’s Net), stretched like gossamer across all the moments and all the days that you’ve seized. The “one day” of yesterday is dust in the wind, ashes leftover from the fire of having seized all the moments and all the days of your life and declaring to the gods, “Today is day one of the life I genuinely want to live.” As Voltaire profoundly stated, “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”
Image: everst/Shutterstock.
“All good books have one thing in common –they are truer than if they had really happened.” ~Ernest Hemingway
“I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.” ~Orson Scott Card
1.) The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho:
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey: stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” ~Paulo Coelho
Coelho’s short fiction (only 163 pages), The Alchemist, is an inspirational masterpiece. Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy keeps experiencing repeated dreams about a lost treasure in Egypt. He goes on a lifechanging journey, referred to as accomplishing his Personal Legend, after receiving sage advice and some magic stones from an old king. His journey takes him across the Mediterranean and through the Sahara Desert, where he experiences tribal wars, falling in love, and the secrets of alchemy.
A running theme in the novel is: “When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor.” But no amount of description can fully encapsulate the magic of this story. Written with soul, it must be read to really understand the deep feeling of destiny inherent within it. It runs the gambit on spiritual lessons: everything from courage to the language of the heart, from perseverance to the interconnectedness of all things. An awe-inspiring novel that helps us escape reality by teaching us how reality works.
2.) God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams:
“The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.” ~Scott Adams
From the creator of “Dilbert,” comes this unique and thought-provoking novel that takes the reader on a journey into God’s debris, which is basically the primordial matter of the universe (quarks and leptons and such) leftover since the Big Bang. The novel is based upon the precept of pandeism, which is the theological doctrine that combines pantheism and deism.
Explained through a Socratic dialogue between a delivery man and an old man named Avatar who “knows everything,” an idea emerges explaining how God annihilated himself into an infinite number of pieces (the big bang), as a challenge to himself and his omnipotent powers, and that the basic function of the universe, which is governed by the laws of probability, is simply God trying to reassemble Himself.
This book redefines the entire concept of God, merging spirituality with science. Empowering the deep thinker hiding inside all of us, Adams uses Occham’s Razor throughout the book to slice and dice the superfluous away from our perception of reality, calling into question our basic assumptions regarding Truth.
3.) Life of Pi by Yann Martel:
“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.” ~Yann Martel
Life of Pi is a harrowing tale told from the perspective of Pi Patel, a teenage Indian boy, who finds himself stranded on a large lifeboat after a shipwreck at sea. The morning after the freighter sinks, he finds himself as the only human survivor but he is in the company of a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, an injured zebra, a mean hyena, and a matronly orangutan named Orange Juice.
After a few days only Pi and Richard Parker are alive. As days turn into weeks and weeks drag into months, Pi and the tiger must learn to trust each other against all odds if they are going to survive the dangers of being stranded at sea. They have a series of stressful encounters but eventually settle into an unorthodox and complicated relationship.
Life of Pi raises complex philosophical and religious questions that cause us to question life and the things we take for granted. It’s an emotionally driven story of tested faith, unlikely friendship, and perseverance. It’s a book about survival, but it’s foremost a novel about the determination of the human heart in the face of astronomical odds. The twist at the end of the book gives a different account of what happened at sea, forcing the reader to decide which story was better even if one was more likely to have occurred.
4.) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card:
“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.” ~Orson Scott Card
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a young precocious military strategist who is chosen from a shortlist of other genius children to lead humanity in a war against a powerful and unpredictable alien foe seeking to destroy all human life. Through adrenaline pumping military training at a place called Battle School, young Ender and his cohorts are tested to the nth degree. He is forced to grow up fast. But with the help of his even smarter, and shorter, sidekick and right-hand man, Bean, he becomes a military mind the likes of which have never been seen in the history of the human race.
The movie, after the same name, does not do this phenomenal novel justice. Ender’s Game is a science fiction novel that changed the way science fiction novels were written. It follows an engaging, unpredictable, action-packed plot that is well balanced between Ender’s adventures at Battle School, his older brother Peter’s plot toward political power, and the mysterious work of his sister Valentine as a covert writer writing under the pseudonym Demosthenes. Like Ender, Peter and Valentine are prodigies.
Ender’s Game is an affecting novel full of surprises and deep strategy. Think Harry Potter meets Starship Troopers. An engaging page turner from the jump. It will not disappoint.
5.) Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell:
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ~George Orwell
Can you say, “classic!” So much of this deeply affecting political thriller has been absorbed by our culture. Perhaps no other book, other than maybe Lao Tzu’s Art of War, has been used more to explain the dark political animal of the human condition. Many people even reference it as a prophecy of today’s governmental overreach and tendency to use newspeak and doublethink in its relentless propagandizing. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” The warnings of George Orwell seem more relevant now than they ever were.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel set in a world of endless war in which Big Brother (can you say National Security Agency?) is omnipresent and always listening in on its downtrodden and brainwashed citizens. An agency called The Ministry of Truth oversees the rewriting of history as it sees it, literally changing the truth to fit its political agenda despite history and science (cough –Trump!– cough). The novel’s doomed protagonist Winston Smith and his lover Julia must rebel in subtle and covert ways in order to seek truth and freedom despite the Party and its blind followers.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has become shorthand for tyranny, for the overreaching surveillance state, and for the power of the media to manipulate public opinion. It strikes at the heart of the human condition and its tendency to become corrupt by unchecked power.
6.) Ishmael by Daniel Quinn:
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.” ~Daniel Quinn
Awarded the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, Ishmael is a novel that uses a kind of Socratic dialectic to deconstruct the notion that human beings are the pinnacle of creation on planet earth.
Ishmael is a Gorilla who is able to communicate telepathically. He takes on a nameless human student and proceeds to teach his philosophy using the Socratic method of dialogue.
He teaches his student about “Taker” societies and “Leaver” societies, and how Takers are always breaking the immutable laws of nature. Ishmael explains, “The premise of the Takers’ story is ‘The world belongs to man.’ …The premise of the Leavers’ story is ‘Man belongs to the world.’”
Ishmael argues that civilized societies (takers) are failing the world, and that human supremacy is nothing more than a cultural myth, asserting that Takers are enacting that myth with dangerous consequences, such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental health illnesses. This novel is truly an adventure of the mind and spirit that forces us to think outside of the box of our anthropocentric tendency to perceive an otherwise indifferent and interdependent cosmos.
7.) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse:
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” ~Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha is a tour de force of spiritual discovery. Considered Herman Hesse’s magnum opus, it takes the reader on a spiritual journey like no other. The novel is structured on Buddha’s four noble truths (Part One) and the eight-fold noble path (Part Two) which form the twelve chapters in the novel.
Siddhartha’s journey shows that the best way to approach the understanding of reality and attain enlightenment is through a totality of consciousness that doesn’t focus on separate events in life but looks more holistically upon life as an interconnected whole. He learns that wisdom cannot be taught, but must come from one’s own experience and inner struggle.
In the end of the book, Siddhartha doesn’t discover true wisdom through any single teacher, but through the understanding of all his experiences combined, put into perspective by “listening” to a river that roars in a funny way (a language older than words) and to a wise, old, smiling ferryman.
It’s a masterwork of spiritual self-discovery that presents a strikingly unique view of man in relationship with cosmos, and the arduous process of discovering meaning in an otherwise meaningless universe.
(Featured image: Shuttershock)
Understanding an astrology sign, or an axis (opposite signs), is insightful to the nature of human beings and the archetypal systems of life.
While archetypes about consciousness, human interaction, and the nature of reality are visible through the lens of astrology, in my opinion astrology is very literal. Those who embody the energy of a particular sign literally are made of that energy, and literally clash with another particular energy, or be fulfilled by another energy. It’s insightful to understanding consciousness to understand astrology, but it is also very literal.
This article will explore one “cross” in astrology: 4 signs that square and oppose each other.
As we explored in this past article, squares are possibly the most difficult astrology aspect. As we wrote here, opposite signs are actually very similar sometimes.
When you put 4 squares together and 2 oppositions, you get a “grand cross”: 4 planets squaring and opposing.
In astrology, there are also 3 modalities for a sign: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. It works with the way of the seasons, like winter or summer: the season starts with the Sun entering a Cardinal sign. The middle of the season is the Sun in a Fixed sign, and the end of it occupies a Mutable sign. Chronologically moving through the zodiac (the belt the Sun travels on, or the ecliptic), signs are Cardinal, then Fixed, then Mutable, and it repeats 4 times.
So this creates “crosses” of signs that are of the same modality: there is the Cardinal Cross, the Fixed Cross, and the Mutable Cross.
This article is a reflection on the Fixed Cross. It is composed of the Leo/Aquarius axis squaring the Taurus/Scorpio axis, as depicted here:
I was thinking about the Fixed Cross and realized it can be described as the axis of life/death squaring the axis of life-force, ideas and energy. It leads one to wonder about the relationship between reality and the end of reality, life and death, comfort and deprivation, and the ideaflow and life-force that fuels the human experience. Somehow these forces square and clash while having some unifying quality, as the other 2 squaring axises in astrology have.
These are some of the qualities of Taurus/Scorpio and Leo/Aquarius.
Leo
Leo energy (with Sun, Moon, or any planet in Leo) is dominant, sunny, warm and full of gravity. The Sun is Leo’s “planet.” Leo has social sense, a feel for the skills and crafts of life, a feel for the arts and creation in a wholesome, normal kind of way.
The Leo/Aquarius axis is about creation. It’s about ideas, skills, crafts, music and the arts, everything involving creation.
As the Sun’s rays illuminate every planet in the Solar System and activate everything, Leo has the same type of ability to create, initiate activities, use leadership, and generally set things in motion.
Aquarius
Aquarius is the opposite flavor of “creation” energy from Leo. Leo is warm and sunny with its propensity toward wholesome, kind of universally understood forms of art. For instance, country music if you were raised in the Southern US, or warm, wholesome folk music of your particular region.
So Aquarius is artistic and intelligent in the opposite flavor: the strange, sciency, complex, cold and detached but highly advanced direction of thinking. It’s without social sense and very strange, but very deep into whatever idea it follows.
Aquarius energy appreciates creation like Leo, but it takes it to another level, far from regular arts and crafts and into a strange place.
Aquarius is both the revolutionary and the technocracy which may enslave it. Its the lifeblood of thought, the spark of electricity in the mind itself, and a major factor in driving society. As the Sun and Leo illuminate everything and serve as a central driving force for things, Aquarius/Uranus is like an electrical signal that powers consciousness when it comes to ideas.
Taurus
Taurus could be considered the sign of Earth. It was worshiped as something like a God of fertility about 4,000 years ago, when the annual Equinoxes occurred in Taurus from about 4400 to 2200 BC.
Taurus is about home, stability, food, and the core necessities in life being fulfilled. It’s like the foundation for a solid life: food, water, shelter. It is very fixed and set in its ways, because that’s how a foundation of necessities in life should be.
Scorpio
Scorpio is very starkly opposite to Taurus. Scorpio energy often invites scarcity, struggle, deprivation, and the end of stability. However, in an individual with Scorpio energy, this can be resolved early in life and this energy is transmuted into something emotionally rich and useful if the person finds peace within themselves.
Scorpio is the energy of death, the energy of deprivation, of facing hard truths, and the end of lies and falsehoods due to Scorpio making a lie rise to the surface and be exposed.
Scorpio and Aquarius clash hard as squaring signs, but in ways they are very similiar in their convictions. The two signs are sometimes thought to represent the North and South Nodes: Aquarius being the North Node and Scorpio the South Node The nodes are spots where eclipses occur, with the 2 points taking 18 years to go around the zodiac, thought to be the origin of age 18 as a marker of adulthood.
Scorpio’s purpose is not an easy one. While Scorpio people might feel cursed, they simply seem to be tasked with digesting hard truths, feeling things to the deepest and darkest levels, and showing people what they are hesitant to look at.
So understanding how these energies really seem to be, from hard first-hand observation, we are left with a few archetypes to consider.
The Leo/Aquarius axis seems to be about creation, ideas, skills, music, the arts, and the things human beings create in life.
The Taurus/Scorpio axis seems to be about the polar opposites of life and death: stability, groundedness, and a foundation vs the deep depths of emotion and truth, no stability, and no foundation.
Does this mean that creativity, ideas, and the arts inherently go against the grain of stability, of necessities being taken care of in life?
Could this explain the “starving artist,” the introverted quality of thinkers and revolutionaries, or the nature of life and reality seeming to clash with the flow of creativity that runs through people? The very nature of life and this reality might go against the grain of the Sun, of creation and idea-flow. In this existence, the laws of Earth and nature might restrict our flow of consciousness.
Perhaps this is an explanation for why the truth, knowledge, scientific advancement, personal ambition, the arts, and all of these things seem to go against the grain of survival, stability, facing the realities of life and death, ect. Perhaps there is an inherent tendency for truth and information to be persecuted and suppressed in this existence. Maybe one would go as far as to suggest this reality is coded, some kind of virtual reality simulation type thing where these are the rules: our souls are solidified in our bodies at birth, a snapshot of the solar system’s energy at that moment, and the solar system is a soul-incarnating-machine.
Exploring these representations of consciousness is a mental exercise that inspires further exploration of the self, the meaning of life and this existence, and all kinds of other things.
This is also relevant because this year and next, the eclipses are occurring in Aquarius and Leo. The Moon’s North and South Nodes where eclipses occur, critically important points about everyone’s collective lessons and directions, are in Aquarius and Leo. The collective lessons and direction are in conflict with Taurus and Scorpio right now, so we might find ourselves in a moment where ideas, inspiration, the crafts and arts of life, and all those Leo/Aquarius things are in conflict with the nature of tangible reality, life and death situations. There may be comfort and stability vs instability and deprivation type scenarios.
I think astrology can inspire creativity and a deeper understanding of things, by enabling the mind to think about things in this way.
(Image credit: NASA, NASA)
Defining where someone else begins and you end seems like an odd thing to do, but if you are an empath, separation of the “Self” from others, even with all the talk of accepting our connectedness as part of the One, is crucial. Here’s a little insight into why setting personal boundaries is so critical, and why empaths may have an especially difficult time doing it.
As an empath, even more so than in “regular” folks, taking on other people’s emotions can be exhausting. Just walking down a hallway of a well-populated building, you may take on anger, fear, jealousy, fear, and any number of emotions which stick to you like glue, and even feel like your own. You may absorb these emotional states subconsciously, but feel them viscerally.
In extreme cases, these absorbed emotions can make an empath physically sick. Oddly, an empath does this automatically. Others among us, learned to simply ignore their own needs as a coping method in families that demanded they be “grown-up” or responsible for themselves prematurely.
If you are care-taking for someone who is sick or addicted, or it is your job to be a compass for a big group of people as part of your career, you may feel even more emotionally depleted, even though deep down you want to care for others.
A lack of healthy boundaries can cause us to say yes to every “opportunity” which arises, whether it’s social, personal, or business-related, and then either exhaust ourselves by trying to do too much while carrying a great amount of resentment, or simply “check out” and leave everyone hanging after we’ve over-committed.
Empaths are Connectors and Conduits
As an empath, you are a conduit and a connector. Much of this happens below your conscious awareness, but many empaths or sensitives are acutely aware that they feel others feelings as if they were theirs. This differs from sympathy where we may be familiar with what someone may be going through.
As an empath, we are wired to experience grief, pain, joy, hurt, and love at the extreme ends of the spectrum. It is more than an intellectual experience of another’s feelings, thoughts or attitudes. It is not simply a vicarious experience of these things. The empath experiences another’s pain, literally as their own.
This “skill,” though some may not yet see it as a strength, and rather a weakness, is what allows us to have an impeccable ability to transcend the “other” syndrome which plagues the modern world. We are the opposite of the psychotic or psychopath, who feels nothing, and has no capacity for empathy, and therefore can inflict devastating pain – as he feels no sense of moral grief, or personal responsibility.
A psychotic is detached from reality, and an empath experiences it in high-definition. In the same way that a psychotic is more likely to be a danger to society, due to their inability to relate to others’ feelings, an empath is in danger of losing themselves because they relate so completely.
Because empaths experience emotions so powerfully, they are more likely to have little tolerance for greed, usury, negativity, meanness, and other shadow qualities of the human psyche. They are simply more sensitive to them, and so, boundary making becomes an act of life-saving. If they don’t establish clear boundaries, then then lose themselves, quite literally, in another’s emotional battles and wars.
Five Ways to Tell If You Have Healthy Boundaries in Place
For everyone, including empaths, we can usually tell if we lack healthy boundaries, a signifier of healthy self-esteem, by our actions:
- Do people expect you to drop everything you are doing at a moment’s notice to give them your full attention?
- Do you answer your phone or email no matter what is going on in your life?
- Do you receive praise and acceptance for the things you do for others, or are they largely ignored, perhaps even ridiculed?
- How do you usually feel after spending time with friends and family in your life? Are you passionate and empowered, or do you feel emotionally drained?
- Do you always say yes, even when you aren’t sure you want to do something?
Empowerment Through Boundary Making
The first thing you can do to start setting healthy boundaries is listen to your inner yes and no. If you aren’t sure if something is a “yes,” or “no” because you have become clouded by ignoring your own desires, and are constantly absorbing other people’s emotional baggage, take some time to be alone and ask yourself, “is this my stuff?” Am I doing what I want to be doing, or am I doing someone’s heavy lifting, feeling their emotions for them, instead of allowing them to sift through them, and learn from the lessons those emotions bring?
If you’re inner compass isn’t sure if you should spend time with someone or create a little space, make sure you don’t decide what to do when you are stressed, but notice over time how they make you feel. This is an indicator if you are absorbing their emotions, and that you may need to create a buffer zone between yourself and the other person. If you are feeling exhausted, depressed, or chaotic consistently around another person, this is a big alarm going off that they may not need to be in your life.
Cut Energetic Cords Without Cutting Out the Relationship
You can also cut energetic chords with someone without cutting them out of your life. There are good attachments and attachments which don’t serve your continued growth. If you aren’t sure whether there is an energetic chord between you and someone else, sit and experience your emotions regarding them when they are not present. This will tell you what you need to know. Caroline Myss talks about how to cut chords extensively in her work.
Increase Your Self Care
Self-care is bigger than taking care of what you eat and how often you get to the gym. Self-care honors you just as much as others. You give your own well-being just as much importance as your care-taking of others. Self-care can include giving yourself the space and time to decide if something is right for you, and giving yourself permission to do what you want to do even if it upsets others – like not attending a party, or refusing to be the executor of someone’s will.
Tell Your Workaholic to Chill Out
As empaths, your work is never done. This also makes boundary setting absolutely vital to your own physical, energetic, emotional, and spiritual health. If you are constantly fixing other’s problems, or even your own due to neglect of boundaries, it’s time to teach yourself to slow down. Work less. Play more. On purpose.
Don’t Numb Out
An empath can’t really numb out, but they can temporarily check out, only to feel all the emotions they’ve absorbed from others come back in a tumultuous tidal wave later on. When you are feeling overwhelmed, it may mean that you need to temporarily reset your boundaries with someone, allowing them to get closer to you at a later date.
Stay Grounded
Literally. Walk on the earth. Let it absorb some of those heavier emotions you’ve sucked up like a Hoover vacuum. Grounding can help to reset the energy system and realign the chakras so that you can face another day of energetic super-sensitivity all over again.
Healthy boundaries can be beautiful, and allow a relationship to flourish.
Just Let Go
Let this mantra become your best-friend, “I choose to let go of what isn’t mine.” If you have been in the habit of taking everything on, letting go can feel scary or even unnatural. Once you’ve discovered you’ve been picking up other people’s emotions and have lacked healthy boundaries, forgive yourself, and them, and let it go. Focus on your own breath and your own body and start anew. You are a processor and amplifier of energy, but you need to consistently clear out and give up all the energy you’ve absorbed. Boundaries will help you when you need “me-time” to off-load.
Images: Source, Source, Source, Source, Source, Source
Featured image: Source
From now until almost the end of the year, a special astrological configuration will be stuck in the sky. The aspect seems to foreshadow a serious, determined and energized period of time. It is a clear sign of rejuvenated inspiration, which we seem to have been needing for a long time.
Rejuvenated energy and inspiration but in a somber, “post lesson” type feeling: an intuitive, music appreciating watery energy, and a solid, energized crystallization, solidification of ideas will occur for the next several months.
It doesn’t mean that the circumstances of our lives will cease to affect us or our problems will disappear, but the energy will again feel ripe for functioning in life generally, and some sense of grounding might come about.
This solidification of the decade’s ideas, and lessons learned from its events, will culminate and peak in the two August eclipses, and it will persist after. This article will explain what astrological aspects are shaping this era.
It happened like this: from mid-2015 to late 2016, some of the most inspiration killing, devastating, spirit crushing and depression inducing aspects in about 30 years occurred (since the Jupiter/Saturn/Neptune aspects in Cancer and Capricorn in the late 80’s.)
It was 3 aspects that locked together in peak: a rare Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune configuration in hard, “negative” aspects, with eclipses occurring exactly on top. It was:
Jupiter square Saturn
Jupiter opposition Neptune
Saturn square Neptune
After the September 2016 eclipse, things looked like they were getting better in the sky. The hard aspects ended, but a series of small, harsh astrology aspects with the inner planets extended the period of lessons in a fateful way. Something said more lessons needed to be learned.
By November 2016, in Scorpio season, people were blasted with a dark, Pluto influenced, Scorpionic wave of energy. It was lit on fire (Mars) and with electricity (Aquarius) when the Scorpio planets squared Mars in Aquarius.
What people called PizzaGate broke, and this purging, immensely agitated feeling emerged with both the energy and the circumstances of the month, with the US presidential election. Either intentionally or not, the media used this moment to agitate the general public to the maximum.
The purging, harsh truth revealing heavy aspect Jupiter square Pluto kicked in that November.
The Sun and Venus in Scorpio sextiled Scorpio’s planet Pluto and squared Mars. November left an imprint on us, an agitated, exasperated shadow of darkness that seems to have persisted several months. November 2016 left a long-lasting imprint on the world like an eclipse. So since November, the agitated and out of balance collective energy that seemed to crystallize with the aspects of this month, it felt like the lessons of 2015-2016 were extended a few months further.
But exactly now, the “lesson era” is definitively taking a turn for the better. The circumstances of the world as a whole remain critical and our problems will not evaporate out of nowhere, but the energy is finally returning to favor us.
Considering how strong the ruling classes are and how increasingly non-free and malleable our class of people is, you could say we’re collectively in a “lesson epoch”: a massive, unknown-number-of-millennia long era of learning the lessons of human slavery and freedom, or care vs coldness, or however you see it.
So now, there will be what astrologers call a “Grand Fire Trine” in the sky for several months.
Saturn in Sagittarius trine North Node in Leo and Uranus in Aries.
It locks into the Moon’s nodes, which is where eclipses occur, because the nodes are the points where the Moon conjoins the ecliptic bi-monthly every year (the ecliptic is the belt the Sun and all planets travel on).
There is a fire trine, but more importantly all the outer planets will be locked together in positive angles. As 2016 saw a Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune configuration in hard, “negative” aspects, 2017 is a Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune configuration in “positive” aspects.
2017’s skies have:
Jupiter sextile Saturn (in Libra and Sagittarius)
Jupiter quincunx Neptune (in Libra and Pisces)
Saturn trine Uranus (in Sagittarius and Aries)
Jupiter opposition Uranus (in Libra and Aries)
Jupiter opposition Uranus (conjunct the two dwarf planets Eris and Haumea) is the central aspect of 2017, but its second peak doesn’t occur until the mid-end of 2017.
The eclipses in Leo and Aquarius this year lock into the configuration in the sky, as they did with a different one in 2016: so if you believe in synchronicity, or the code of this existence whatever it may be, it’s telling us something significant is happening right now. The annual eclipses keep occurring on the other most important aspects in the sky, year after year this decade.
Recognizing synchronicity and the improbability of such synchronistic things occurring, and not rigidly believing we know exactly what it means, we can understand something of significance is happening.
The Meaning of 2017’s Sky
The most central component of the energy we will feel in the next few months is a long Grand Fire Trine locked into the points of the eclipse in August. It’s a Saturn-Uranus-North Node triangle in the sky, 2 planets and the eclipse point locked into 120 degree angles to each other.
It is composed of the aspects:
Saturn and Uranus trine the North Node (and sextile the South Node)
Saturn trine Uranus
While this Grand Fire Trine is stuck in peak, the aspect Jupiter quincunx Neptune in Libra and Pisces will be active.
The only way to explain this is to look at it in pieces and picture the mixture of all these aspects in the bigger picture: mix these detailed descriptions together and you’ll understand the energy of the next few months.
Saturn trine Uranus
Saturn trine Uranus is probably the strongest aspect in the air right now: it adds a grounded, solid, structure creating feeling to the day, crystallizing and solidifying ideas, ways of being, and things that pertain to Uranus in people’s minds.
Saturn trine Uranus solidifies and crystallizes things in people for an extended period of time: philosophies, ways of thinking, ideologies and ways of being become solidified in culture and individuals when this aspect occurs.
It causes our ideas, convictions, ideologies, thoughts, and learning/thinking processes (Uranus) to become structured, refined, and solidified in us (Saturn). Ideas may become more disciplined, refined, or practical, and our desire to improve things may become energized.
Saturn is the planet of structure, form, discipline, and of course it can be extremely malefic in worse aspects. However this is a positive one, and Uranus’ energetic thinker energy lights up Saturn here. When energies of flowing ideas, creativity, or substance hit Saturn in positive aspects, the fluid ideas become solid structures in reality.
Uranus is one of the great bodies of original idea. You could say Uranus and Neptune are the two great bodies of idea and intuition. They are the two different flavors of creativity, thought, ideas, perception. Uranus is an electric, information accumulating, technology producing thing with an inherently freedom loving nature. Neptune is the music appreciating, dream associated, intuitive watery energy, where almost all creative people receive that quality. That energy is Neptune as a planet, or Pisces/Cancer as a sign (just an area of the sky that bears that energy).
But Uranus is an information seeking energy with a specific rebellious, non-conforming, freedom seeking and energized quality. This makes Uranus, or Aquarius energy circumstantially be exactly what we need on Earth right now to pursue freedom from the slavery systems we struggle so hard in.
Uranus and Aquarius are an antidote to the tyrannical circumstances of the world at this moment, and their energy filling the air is something we should gratuitously anticipate and appreciate to the fullest.
Depending on how much people utilize this energy, the freedom seekers and revolutionaries of the world will solidify and crystallize their efforts of the past several years during this time. These people will find themselves in circumstances ripe for the inspiration to fight for freedom again: the thinkers and activists everywhere will form new structures and crystallize past efforts into a new form this year. The air will finally be ripe for the activists again.
While Uranus is the revolutionary, thinker energy when it is imbued with the purpose and heart of some water energy like Neptune, Pisces, or Cancer, Uranus is like mad science in harsher aspects.
Uranus is exactly what people felt in the early years of this decade, with 2012-2015 Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto blasts occurring with Blood Moon eclipses contributing to the rise of the alternative media, and a fiery activist spirit.
The most important aspect of the 2010’s decade was undeniably Uranus square Pluto from 2012- 2015: the great purging and dissolving (Pluto) of old ways, old ideologies and previous conceptions of how the world works (Uranus). This was the awakening people experienced, and the long Uranus square Pluto had bursts of positive energy and activity at the moments Jupiter locked into Uranus square Pluto.
These blasts of awakening, thinking energy occurred in 2013 and 2014 at the peaks of:
Jupiter sextile Uranus (2013)
Jupiter opposition Pluto, Jupiter square Uranus (2014)
Jupiter trine Uranus (2014 and 2015)
And here in 2017, at the center of all the other aspects in the sky, Jupiter opposition Uranus and Jupiter square Pluto are there. A great purging and changing of ideas, an awakening defined by Uranus and Pluto is the dominant theme of this decade.
So all this time, the Uranus of this era has been in Aries: lit on youthful, energetic fire. Since 2011 the Uranus/Aquarius people of the world, the thinkers, revolutionaries, or on the dark side the stubborn ideologues and those trying to build a scientific dictatorship, have been lit with fire.
But in 2018, Uranus will start to leave Aries. Uranus will enter Taurus, and for the next 7 years, the fire and energy will not be present in people as it was most of this decade. This configuration in 2017 is the grand finale of the fiery revolutionary energy of this decade: Uranus in Aries’ finale.
After the depression we felt from late 2015 to now it’s finally time for more of that 2013-2014, high inspiration Uranus energy. However, we can’t expect it to feel as climatic and euphoric as 2013-2014. We all went through something and generally speaking we became humbled and changed after the intensity of the recent purging. We had a wave of awakening, a euphoric, intensely confidence building one for the first several years of this decade, and then a fall to a low pit of depression, and now we’re being built back up but the circumstances of our world still remain unsolved.
Jupiter quincunx Neptune
The entire time the fire trine is stuck, this aspect will be as well. It’s a special, particularly pleasant one, a positive quincunx. A Quincunx aspect fuses together two energies in a way that could either be functional and positive, or discordant and less positive. For example, two planets quincunx in Aries and Scorpio are likely to produce volatile, impulsive (Aries) deep feelings (Scorpio), but not 2017’s Libra-Pisces quincunx.
Libra and Pisces are both more relaxed, harmony-loving, emotion feeling signs. The planets beaming their energy through them and forming the aspect, Jupiter in Libra and Neptune in Pisces, are also harmonious and positive planets, especially in those places. Jupiter and Neptune both formerly represented Pisces and Sagittarius in astrology, before the discovery of Neptune. A Jupiter-Neptune aspect is a strong pull toward the spiritual, the Neptune or Pisces energy.
This mix of Libra/Pisces/Jupiter/Neptune is a very gentle, watery, deeply feeling but harmonious energy that will saturate the atmosphere for the next several months, calming the intensity of the Uranus, fire aspects, giving the Uranus fire purpose and heart to guide its intense willpower. This aspect has the power to rejuvenate people’s appreciation for life, music, nature, family, and the things they couldn’t enjoy enough during this recent period of collective depression.
Uranus trine/sextile the Nodes, Saturn trine/sextile the Nodes
The points eclipses occur on, or the North and South Nodes, are some of the most important factors in any astrological equation: in a person’s chart, or in the sky at any time. Any aspect to the nodes is sure to be particularly potent.
So Uranus being in a positive trine/sextile to the nodes for the next several months will give our collective direction the influence of thinker energy, revolutionary energy: we will strongly gravitate toward fire laced, freedom loving energy for a period of time that we need to savor to the maximum.
Uranus trine/sextile the nodes is an easy to interpret equation: everyone is drawn to Uranus energy, and this pull toward it will crystallize and fully culminate with the eclipses in August, which will also trine and sextile Uranus.
Then after the eclipses locked into Uranus, like the 2014 Blood Moons locked into Uranus aspects more directly, the high energy, insomnia inducing, inspired feeling will persist in the air for an unknown period of weeks after the eclipse. Eclipses can make energies persist in the air or in specific people’s feelings for weeks after the event.
So now, everyone will be drawn to thinking, learning why we aren’t free in this world, ect. People will feel a conviction to be free. This Uranus energy that is the antidote to humanity’s circumstances of slavery will make one final appearance in this decade of higher hopes for freedom (amidst circumstances that seem hopeless).
However, remember that when any positive, functional aspect occurs the entire world feels it at once (as with anything that happens in the sky). So everyone, from the most evil to the most compassionate of people, awake or asleep people, will be feeling a form of this inspired, higher energy Uranus: it could fuel a purpose, like the fight for freedom, or it could get contorted into stubborn, headstrong discordant energy in people individually.
Either way, our “bottom” class desperately needs this energy that is inherently non-compliant and freedom seeking. This energy never fails to inspire disobedience, and no Uranus energy will be this imbued with fire (Aries) for 7 years. No Uranus energy will have this type of fire for 21 years, Until Uranus enters Leo, the next fire sign.
So what will Saturn trine/sextile the nodes do?
It is the same thing as Saturn trine Uranus: the Uranus energy described above will be crystallized and solidified in the collective consciousness where it will never be forgotten.
Years from now this year will be remembered. Saturn trine Uranus and the nodal/eclipse locking into Uranus are two factors sure to solidify this feeling we’re about to have in the consciousness of people for a long time. What we felt this decade will not be forgotten.
North Node in Leo, South Node in Aquarius
The nodes bear an energy where they stand, and the Saturn/Uranus solidification of purpose will crystallize into this axis where the eclipses occur. The whole equation lies on the Saturn/Uranus being beamed into Leo/Aquarius. Aquarius is the sign of Uranus, and Leo is the sign of the Sun. This is an equation for warm, human (Leo, Aries) purpose and unwillingness to succumb to slavery (Uranus, Aquarius).
The North Node’s position determines what energy will collectively satisfy everyone at any given time. Collective lessons pertaining to a certain energy change every 1 1/2 years with the movement of the nodes backward through each sign.
So as the North Node in Virgo 2015- now, made all those who tapped into their intuition gravitate toward a desire to better their health, lessons about poison and chemicals, lessons about paying closer attention to detail in life (all Virgo), the North Node’s recent entrance to Leo changes the flavor of this era’s lessons. The North Node pulls us like gravity to an energy that satisfies and grows us, advances us personally and collectively on a deeper level. Now Leo’s energy will fill this role.
Leo energy is about warmth, the arts and crafts, skills and hobbies of life (art, music, film, books, any form of creation or construction).
Leo energy is about an ambition, a sunny, warm, human desire to create something or accomplish something. When aspected with Uranus, or a purposeful, heart filled water energy like the Jupiter quincunx Neptune that will coincide with North Node in Leo, the energy becomes warm, human fire for whatever purpose: here it is extra inspired and ambitious.
So in 2017 and 2018, we’ll have a collective hunger for wholesome, warm, sunny energy. This energy will be filled with purpose and heart, Uranus and Neptune, and we’ll have an equation for people desiring freedom. Coldness, technology, these things will feel less appealing then heart filled music, the Sun, nature, the crafts and activities of life, ect. The South Node in Aquarius also means we will have a desire to distance ourselves from technology (Aquarius). However, the revolutionary energy of Uranus’ sign Aquarius will surely be present in the air.
Conclusion
In short, this is what the next few months will be like, leading up to the August eclipses in Leo and Aquarius which will bring this energy to fruition, and leave a long lasting imprint of it that will persist for probably the rest of 2017.
– Warm, unafraid, strong fire energy with revolutionary purpose (North Node in Leo, Uranus trine NN)
– A desire for wholesome, warm, down to earth activities over technology (Nodes in Leo and Aquarius)
– A music and nature loving soft, pleasant, watery emotional energy in the air helping everyone feel their hearts (Jupiter quincunx Neptune)
– A solidification of this decade’s ideologies, ideas, revolutionary energy, thinker energy: a grounding in stone of what we believe in and care about (Saturn trine Uranus)
The next article will explore in greater detail exactly what the August eclipses will solidify, and what will happen next.
This article (All Outer Planets Lock Together: Fire Trine on Eclipse Point to Last 5 Months) is a free and open source and can be re-published anywhere with proper attribution to the author and Themindunleashed.com.
“One inch of sitting, one inch of Buddha. Like lightning all thoughts come and pass. Just once look into your mind-depths: Nothing else has ever been.” – Manzan Dohaku (1635-1714)
The Zen culture and daily life practiced in the East is often misinterpreted by Western aspirants. Many think it is nothing more than sitting on a cushion in a Buddhist Zen monastery, practicing Zazen for countless hours a day, perceived as a fruitless endeavor, and an impossible one! Once you understand more about “Zen living” though, you can truly change the way you experience reality for the better.
The first thing to understand about Zen is that it is a practice in non-being. This doesn’t translate to nihilism, but as an opposite cultural thrust of what we most often do in the West, which is to assert ourselves, often in an aggressive manner.
We are like the adolescent child learning to make his way in the world in the West, but the Eastern philosophies of Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, etc. are more about relaxing into the flow – an unfettered experience of life without any assertion of our will at all, perhaps how we would imagine an old man behaving after he has made his mark, or even like an innocent baby that has not yet learned he will struggle for love, attention, money, success, etc.
For many who have grown up being taught they have to fight, plan, and work themselves to death, this can be a very hard concept to understand.
Zen also doesn’t fit into a neat conceptual package like many Westerns would like it to. You could use a few catch phrases to try to encapsulate it, but this wouldn’t be Zen. It defies doctrinal teachings and can’t even be described accurately through a list of sutras or rules. There are no “commandments,” such as we are used to in the Judeo-Christian religions.
Nonetheless, Zen asks us to give our “natural, or original face” to the world, and not an egoic mask. It is perhaps in learning how to be authentic through and through that we start to realize what Zen really is. Zen even frowns on anyone who has concrete answers to life’s biggest questions – about God, life after death, our own mortality, etc. Zen Master Taisen Deshimaru once said, “It is impossible to give a definite answer to those questions, unless you suffer from a major mental disorder.”
The more important focus in Zen is to ask the right questions. The answers are secondary, because these only come, very personally, and uniquely to each person as they quiet their minds and begin to return to their original state of being.
This is a marked difference from the Western viewpoint. We are trained from our earliest years to seek more, try harder, and work as hard as we can to achieve some finite goal. Then, after achieving all the material success offered by the world and the sweat and toil of these endeavors, we discover that we still aren’t happy. Zen would suggest this is because we have erroneously attempted to “add more,” instead of stripping away the artifice.
This difference can be demonstrated in the story of Dogen Kigen (道元希玄) who was disturbed by the Tendai concept of “original enlightenment.” He wanted to understand this concept fully – one which was taught by the Buddha himself.
The Buddha believed that enlightenment is inherent in all beings – any sentient creature has the ability to achieve this state. But Kigen wondered why, if all people were already enlightened, then why do they continue to seek enlightenment? He could not find the answer within the Tendai school of Buddhism, so he went looking for it somewhere else.
He ended up studying Rinzai Zen with the famous Zen teacher, Eisai’s disciple, Myozen. Here Dogen became disenchanted with Myozen’s tactic of relying heavily on koans to teach enlightenment. These are mental puzzles meant to force or shock the mind into enlightenment.
Kigen finally ended up in the Soto school (曹洞宗) of Zen, Zazen, or sitting meditation. This practice, Shikantaza, or “just sitting” was the vehicle of Buddha‘s Awakening. It is the essence of Soto Zen. In this practice, there is no goal to be attained beyond the practice itself. Unlike the Western idea of doing more, getting more, or ‘being’ more, in Soto Zen, you don’t do anything but sit. You only worry about experiencing the present moment fully. You become aware of every action and thought in the here and now. You are acutely aware, you might say.
As Zen Master Taisen Deshimaru once said, “Zazen has no object, it is purposeless, it only brings us back to ourselves.” One doesn’t need to worry about Satori (Japanese word for enlightenment).
Strangely though, in doing less, we experience more. We get to know our “original face” in experiencing emptiness. Westerners find this so difficult to do because there is no goal. We don’t “try.” If anything, we must learn to “un-try.”
As Zen master, Taisen Deshimaru said: “By simply sitting, without looking for any goal or any personal benefit, if your posture, your breathing and your state of mind are in harmony, you will understand the true Zen; you will understand the Buddha’s nature.”
Zen practiced in this way returns us to our original condition, and this changes our lives in ways that are almost indescribable.
We learn who we really are, and what we really desire (which is almost never what you think it will be.) We give up cultural, religious, nationalistic, and other presuppositions about who we should be. We are free to experience more joy, because we accept ourselves as we are, not as an artificial person trying to be “worthy” of our parents, our peers, our bosses, our romantic partners, our children, or even our false selves.
Zen maintains that we are “not one” and “not two,” i.e., “positionless position,” where “not two” signals a negation of the stance that divides the whole into two parts, i.e., dualism, while “not one” designates a negation of this stance when the Zen practitioner dwells in the whole as one, while suspending judgment in meditation, i.e., non-dualism – but all of this is only realized in doing less and sitting, in being in Zazen.
We learn that most of the “action” we take in life is busy work. It is movement without cause, and without need. It is wasted effort. We say we don’t have time, but in Zazen we find that to be patently untrue. All we have is now, and in that moment, there is no time. This happens in real ways, not just conceptual ones.
People magically start solving their own problems because we stop trying to fix them for them. We also stop creating as many of our own problems, because we don’t act from the egoic impetus that forces us out into the world to act in disingenuous ways. We also are less concerned with taking actions to please others’ egos, and learn when to take true action, guided by our higher selves. We get more and more comfortable with allowing life to unfold, rather than having to force it into the tiny compartmentalized sections that make our egos feel they have control.
Zen offers the perfection of personhood. Maybe this brings us closer to our Godliness, or maybe it just means we are less flawed as men and women, but we begin to cherish simplicity and calm, instead of chasing after chaos. Zazen (just sitting) changes everything.
Let’s get this straight right up front. ‘Om’ chanting is not religious. It may be practiced by Hindus, and even co-opted in yoga classes all over the U.S. and Europe, but every single religion in the world has its own version of Om chanting, which I’ll detail more completely in a moment.
The chanting of ‘Om,’ or more specifically, Au, Oh, and Mmm is a scientifically-backed system of becoming more in touch with the infinite creative energy of the Universe. This isn’t a metaphoric energy, but a real, grab-a-hold-of-it-and-look-it-in-the-eyes energy which is absolutely alive and pulsating through everything.
Om is really a transliteral way of writing and speaking ‘Aum’, as in Amen from the Christian bible. ‘Aum’ was also absorbed into the Buddhist tradition; however, Buddhists almost never transliterate the mantra as ‘Aum,’ but use ‘Om’ instead. Ek Onkar (another variation of Aum) is the root basis of all Sikh sacred thought, as well. You can additionally see Aum in the Jain tradition, and in the Hebrew āmēn, which means “certainty,” “truth,” and “verily.”
Om or Aum also shows up in ancient Egyptian mythology. Amen, or amun, was a deity represented by a ram, the god of life and reproduction, and those in scientific circles call Aum the God Particle or Higgs Boson.
It should be interesting for anyone to note, even more so for linguists, that the combination of Aaa, Ohh, and Mmm signifies the entire possible combinations of syllables, denoting the total, uncut range of words that can be uttered.
If you want to see what the sound Aum looks like on a quantum, energetic level, you can see it manifest as form in the following video. It is a resonance experiment that shows the geometric pattern, also known as divine geometry, which underlies all form. Though this experiment doesn’t reference Aum specifically, it shows the continually evolving complexity of sound at different Hz.
Aum contains that divine geometry, at the most complex levels, at frequencies which the human ear cannot even detect. As Nikola Tesla once advised us, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, you have to think in terms of energy, vibration, and sound.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Architecture is frozen music.” The Sanskrit language is code for the patterns of form. Om is a sonic representations of the way nature works. This mantra holds within it the latent forms of the universe.
If you still aren’t convinced that the world was born of sound, you can look at our own language and how it developed. Neuroscientist Mark Changizi has posited that the major phonemes of speech have evolved to resemble these kinds of interactive events, in a sort of onomatopoeia, where the sounds of the words resemble the events themselves, such as in “screech” and “crash.” Speech, and even music as an ordered narrative of sounds, makes use of our brain’s evolved capacity to perceive natural sounds – but what Changizi doesn’t point out, is that the brain structure itself evolved from the sound, ‘Aum.’
Aum is said to represent the 3-fold division of time/space:
- The waking state – Ah
- The dream state – Oh
- The deep sleep state – Mmm
The symbol OM visually consists of three curves, one semicircle, and a dot.
The large bottom curve symbolizes the waking state, A.
The middle curve signifies the dream state, U.
The upper curve denotes the state of deep sleep, M.
The dot in the Om symbol has its own meaning, signifying the fourth state of consciousness, Turiya. This describes absolute, infinite consciousness.
The semi circle at the top represents Maya and separates the dot from the other three curves. It signals to us that we live in a world of illusion created by this cycle of subtle energy descending into form, or more gross energy.
Tons of qualitative analysis on many different mantras has been conducted, but above them all is Aum. Ranging from curiosity about the effect of certain sounds, including Aum, on the human form by Lord Rayleigh in the 19th century to the work of Uchida and Yamamoto which found that seeds germinated more quickly and profusely under the influence of the sound of Aum, there is so much evidence that Aum chanting is beneficial, it becomes kind of ridiculous for anyone to claim that this is simply a religious practice.
Without further delay here are five, scientifically backed reasons to chant Aum today:
1.) Aum chanting positively affects pulmonary health. In a study conducted involving ‘Aum’ chanting and pranayama (breathing exercises) participants experienced a measurable boost in their lung capacity, and pulmonary health. The lungs represent our ability to connect with others, and are tied to the heart chakra’s health.
2.) Aum chanting slows the heart rate. The capacity for Aum to give the heart a profound rest and relaxation is not relegated to the physical body. The heart’s energy in a more subtle form, as measured through kirlian photography and other methods, is enhanced. When the heart is open, we are able to accept Universal love and creative energy.
3.) Protects us from mobile phone and wi-fi radiation. In a study conducted recently, it was proven that Aum chanting could mitigate damage caused to the body (and brain) by the sea of wi-fi we live in.
4.) Aum chanting causes monumental changes in our brain chemistry. Every single area of the brain is positively affected by the chanting of Aum. From a single, 20-minute session, researchers have been able to map changes in how our neurons fire, and the subsequent emotions we feel. Aum induces calm, happiness, and peace with very little practice. The accumulative effects have been heralded for centuries.
5.) Aum chanting slows down the nervous system. As Carolyn Myss, the intuitive psychic and healer has described, our endocrine gland system works along with our limbic system in creating our personal realities and our states of consciousness. Aum chanting can effectively treat depression, anxiety, and even epilepsy because it profoundly effects this interface. The limbic system, specifically, is enhanced by chanting this single word.
Our DNA is more than only a data storage unit. It’s a quantum antenna, able to send and receive data. When we chant Aum, we give our DNA the primordial sound of all creation, thus purifying our form. The science has proven it.
Hermann Hesse’s timeless book, Siddhartha, should be required reading for any spiritual seeker. The book is about Siddhartha’s journey as a respected son of a Brahmin. Everyone expects that he will follow in his father’s footsteps. He enjoys an idyllic life and follows the tenets of his religion expecting that they will bring him peace and happiness. He feels the pangs of discontent though, and observes that his father and elders have not yet reached enlightenment, even though they too have followed the instructions of their religion. When starving and naked ascetics cross Siddhartha’s path one day, his journey truly begins. On this endeavor, he comes to a river that teaches him many life lessons.
If you haven’t had a chance to be profoundly awakened by this book yet, here are ten quotes from it that will move you to question your own environment, religion, culture, and relationships, to possibly find something more.
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
We so often misunderstand the difference between wisdom and knowledge in this world. Wisdom is timeless. It can only be arrived at with discernment and the development of our consciousness to a level that understands paradox and true freedom.
Knowledge simply binds us to erroneous, concrete beliefs, making it nearly impossible to understand the truth of the Universe. Wisdom, however, discloses Truth in ways that cannot even be explained with a thousand books, a million teachings from religious figures, or a hundred million facts memorized and assimilated. Wisdom is so pure, that even language corrupts it.
“When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
There are numerous literary and mythical examples of the seeker. Joseph Campbell describes the seeker in the quintessential quest for the Holy Grail – a representation of some outer prize that can be obtained with enough valor or sacrifice, but what we truly seek can be found only within our own hearts. When we seek an outside goal, this is an indication that our own hearts long to be understood. Striving for something outside ourselves causes us to forever remain a seeker.
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
All people, places and circumstances in life are fodder for spiritual advancement. Tears are a spiritual release. Hearing a song on the radio that reminds us of someone is a clue from the Universe to send that person love and compassion. Seeing someone else go through something horrible and thinking, “that could have been me,” is a reminder to be thankful.
Getting stuck at a red light is a reminder to breathe deeper. An argument is a gentle tug from the Universe to look inside yourself. Everything that we experience can help us grow. It isn’t just the positive, airy fairy things that help us grow.
When we do a life review, the times we acted with courage and faced our pain, fear, and sadness will be the moments when we smile the biggest.
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
This point is described in great detail by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan in their discussion of spiral dynamics. The way they visualize change is in a spiral. Though we may circle around to the same challenges, each time we do, we are higher up on the spiral, hopefully with a higher level of consciousness with which to approach the problem.
Beck explained that if we try to impose our ‘solutions’ too far ahead of the curve the result can be rebellion rather than transformation. Because of this, the authors use the term “more complex” instead of “better” or “higher” to describe humanity’s stages of evolutionary development. Even if we haven’t quit reached the apex of what we can visualize, we have already taken many steps to make a better world a reality.
The 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse describes the spiritual journey of a man named Siddhartha during the time of Gautama Buddha.
“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.”
Sex is so often a mindless exchange between people these days. It is not an act to be engaged in so recklessly, though. When we share each other’s bodies, subtle energies are exchanged between us. The cultivation of these energies can even be used to achieve higher states of consciousness. When we act as though our bodies are just sacks of flesh, instead of the physical manifestation of energy, then we are missing the point of sensuality.
“It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”
One of my own spiritual teachers once said to me, you only have to learn to love. That is your only lesson while you are here. Even when we think we are loving, there are usually ways that we are not acting, thinking, and feeling from a loving place. This includes how we think and treat ourselves, not just other people.
“My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.”
Whatever you define yourself as in this life – a father, a mother, a daughter, a son, a husband, a friend, a lover, a worker, etc. – these are only labels. They don’t not encase your infinite soul. You have been all these things and more in many lifetimes, and in many more places than where you are now.
“Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.”
You know that other saying about opinions and asses. Enough said.
“One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen.”
With everything that has been taken from us by an evil, destructive, psychotic, corrupt cabal, isn’t wonderful to know that love cannot be traded like a stock or destroyed like gold, faked like paper money, or made to be more, or less valuable at the whims of a few elite. Love is eternal, indestructible, and pure. It is our greatest treasure.
“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha.” He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.”
Every single major religion on this planet has been corrupted. This doesn’t mean that religion has nothing left to teach us. It also doesn’t mean you need to believe in God or be an atheist to arrive at true wisdom, but as long as you are looking to an institution or a person to bring you enlightenment, you’ll miss it.
Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Zen Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh has a very different theory about why our ecosystems are dying and our financial systems are crumbling. The Vietnamese monk credited with bringing mindfulness to the West believes that our desperation to succeed at all costs fuels our voracious economic system. An innumerable number of worldly ‘sicknesses’ come from this singular philosophical vice.
On one of Hanh’s Facebook posts he said, “Each one of us has to ask ourselves, What do I really want? Do I really want to be Number One? Or do I want to be happy? If you want success, you may sacrifice your happiness for it. You can become a victim of success, but you can never become a victim of happiness.”
Thay – as his followers call him, is no stranger to the ideology of the movers and shakers in our world economy. He was invited to speak in Silicon Valley by Steve Jobs once, and has met with the World Bank president Jim Yong Kim. He has also met with senior Google engineers to discuss how they could develop technologies which could be more compassionate and bring about positive change, instead of increasing people’s stress and isolation, taking them away from nature, and one another.
He recently explained his concern with how people pin their happiness on success in an interview with the Guardian.
“If you know how to practice mindfulness you can generate peace and joy right here, right now. And you’ll appreciate that and it will change you. In the beginning, you believe that if you cannot become number one, you cannot be happy, but if you practice mindfulness you will readily release that kind of idea. We need not fear that mindfulness might become only a means and not an end because in mindfulness the means and the end are the same thing. There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.”
Thay warns, however, that practicing mindfulness just to be more productive at work, or only to enjoy more material success will leave the practitioner with a pale shadow of awareness compared to what true mindfulness can provide. He suggests,
“If you consider mindfulness as a means of having a lot of money, then you have not touched its true purpose. It may look like the practice of mindfulness but inside there’s no peace, no joy, no happiness produced. It’s just an imitation. If you don’t feel the energy of brotherhood, of sisterhood, radiating from your work, that is not mindfulness.”
As company executives in banking, oil production, agriculture, manufacturing, tech, and other fields strive to be successful, are they missing out on the true peace that might come from preserving an ecosystem, or helping to protect biodiversity? Are these titans of industry reflective of our social and political slant toward ever-increasing spending, a lack of accountability fiscally and environmentally, and the disassociation workers feel from their families and friends while constantly trying to work harder and earn more?
Thay says that all businesses should be conducted in such a way that all the employees can experience happiness. He says that helping to change society for the better can fill us with a sense of accomplishment that doesn’t come from focusing purely on profits.
When top CEOs make 300% more than their workers, and include stock incentives, luxury cars, and healthy expense accounts, how can balance truly be upheld?
When the world’s top 3,000 firms are responsible for over $2.2 trillion in environmental damage, how can we find joy from nature?
When even Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who now heads up the software firm Asana calls out the tech industry for a lack of work-life balance, how can anyone find time to practice mindfulness or meditation?
Furthermore, even loss of life is acceptable in the name of profits. The ‘business’ of war has allowed the 100 largest contractors to sell more than $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of those companies sold over $208 billion – while providing the means to kill millions.
Is it any wonder employees are broke, stressed out, and burned out from a lack of balance, no connection with other people, and an incessant work flow that promises very little reward, either financial or otherwise, from their toil?
Then there is the debt-based financial system of the Federal Reserve, propping up this entire show.
But the truth is that we don’t actually need the Federal Reserve. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in United States history happened during the decades before the Federal Reserve was created.
We also don’t need CEOs who make 300 times what their employees do, or ridiculous government policies which allow the notion of corporations as people, while ignoring the basic needs of real people.
Our courts have extended constitutional protections to the most unconscious among us, preserving a way of life that does not allow true happiness. Our constant aim for success has warped our original goal – to be happy. Isn’t that why people want more money, more power, and more ‘things.’ But as Thay says, this is a false way to attain happiness.
What this quiet Zen monk is trying to tell us is that our entire society is upside down. Our economic system protects mindlessness, not mindfulness.
He says that the primary affliction of our modern civilization is that we don’t know how to handle the suffering inside us and so we attempt to cover it up with all kinds of consumption.
Retailers peddle a host of devices to help us cover up the suffering inside. But unless and until we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us.
How do we change our economic policies so that all employees can be happy? It might help to look at our true goals. It might help to acknowledge the pain we’ve caused thousands of people by perpetuating war for the sake of profits. Success doesn’t automatically equal happiness, not if the definition of success only includes the bottom line.
We can measure success by our fulfillment in life, by the people we’ve been able to touch with our good deeds, or a mindful interaction, by having friends, experiencing love, being able to walk in a forest, or learn how to play a musical instrument.
Perhaps the true goal should be peacefulness instead of happiness, even. As Hanh has said,
“If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society will benefit from our peace.” This could be our new definition of success.
Image: Thich Nhat Hanh, Plum Village
I am happy. I am fulfilled. I am joyous. I am peaceful. I am in harmony with all. I am filled with the spirit of love and compassion.
Read those words again. How does it feel? Would you like to take this an emotional step deeper? If yes, go to a mirror, and look into your eyes, deeply, as you repeat the above words and sentences. How does it feel? If you want to take yet another step deeper, then follow up by saying, I love you followed by your name. The first time I said these words while looking into the mirror of my soul, my eyes, I felt such deep longing for my own love.
“I am comfortable looking in the mirror, saying, I love you, I really love you.”
-Louise Hay
Now, how do the following words and sentences feel to read?
I am sad. I am unhappy. I am frustrated. I am tired. I am angry. I am mad. I am hate.
How does it feel, on the inside, to read these words and sentences? Personally, I feel no need to read them again, nor do I feel a need to look into my soul while saying them. Why? The contrast to the feelings elicited by the first set of loving and kind words and sentences, felt so truly graceful within my being.
Let’s return to the first set of words and sentences. Let’s call them intentions or affirmations. Read them again. Look into the mirror of your soul again while reading them.
“Language creates reality. Words have power. Speak always to create joy.”
-Deepak Chopra
“From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled;
with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied.”
“The tongue has the power of life and death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
This passage from the bible too emphasizes the power and strength of words. Let’s look deeper into this spiritual and mystical wisdom.
I am – movement of the Universe – energy begins to move in our lives.
The I am presence can uplift societies, countries, worlds. It is expressed through consciousness and presence.
What you focus on, when you say those words, is what changes. When you attach something to I am, you become it. Think of it as an affirmation that you only utilize to illuminate the state being expressed through the I am presence. If you do not want to illuminate it, and strengthen its presence in your life, then you know you do not want to place it behind I am.
I am that, I am. This is our divine connection with all that is in the Universe. What we say after these words is how we are defining ourselves.
“I am means pure being” – David Allen
Otherwise known as Om (yet it sounds more like aum in its more complete form).
Speak I am as you would a mantra. Let the pure stream of consciousness flow through you. Speak it as your highest ideal of being.
Meditate on the words, I am, and feel the power and inspiration that comes forth.
What we place behind those words can limit us or it can expand us. It is our choice what we want to focus on and bring with a very strong universal force into our lives.
If we want a new way of being, we must repeat them time after time.
Breathe. Controlled breathing centers and amplifies the effect.
I am that (out breath – sends it out into the world), I am (in breath- bring into you).
What inspires you: joy, peace, beauty, abundance…. I am that, I am.
That power manifests into your life. Know and understand yourself as a true divine being here to serve.
“It is the consciousness of being the thing that makes it effective” – David Allen
Manifesting things (acquiring things for the ego) is not the same as bringing something through us such as joy and peace. You feel empty if you forget about the soul. IF we can BE and live in BEINGNESS, we have the presence of God. It’s not about cars or houses, it’s about the God within. The divine.
Combining with being fully in the body and using the energy of love while accessing the energy of oneness, you can begin to experience this I am presence.
The key is to use it for the purpose of the light within, the divine, for it to truly come to life within each and every one of us.
Keep a pure intention, relax, and step into a new world. We are a power of good in the world.
What you place behind I am, you eventually become. Affirm and believe the I am in you, which is awareness and existence.
“I now feel that I am, that which I long to be” – David Allen
Let’s change what is going on within us, and watch our outer world transform.
I am strong, I am compassionate, I am loving, I am… free.
Free people do not have masters. Be all you are to be… Be the master of your own ship.
“Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul’s individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s.” – Crossing the Unknown Sea, David Whyte
I have a purpose, you have a purpose, we have a purpose. Let’s be all we are to be.
I am that, I am.
Ulonda Faye has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and studied Peace and Conflict Research during her Masters program in International Relations. She survived a Near Death Experience during an accident that led her into Mind-Body-Spirit studies. She is a certified Wellness Practitioner, Rejuv Miracles Practitioner, and holistic esthetician as well as an ordained spiritual minister. Her services are available in person or through Skype and are offered in English and German. For more information, please visit her FB page or fayenaturales.com
Resources:
Blog; The Power of I Am, Dr. Wayne Dyer
The Moses Code by James Twyman
Movie; The Moses Code: I am that, I am.
Blog; Sounds I Love, Dr. Wayne Dyer
Meditation; I am that, I am. Wishes Fulfilled. Dr. Wayne Dyer
The Power of I am by David Allen
Featured image from: Power of Consciousness
As we progress through the process of ascension, several stages occur. Among them is a shake-up which inspires an initial awakening, then the full realization of truth, followed by the development of discernment to ascertain a correct course of action. We wouldn’t try to ride a bicycle before building one, nor would we attempt to sail an ocean without a boat. When things get challenging in life, we can check to see if we are practicing Wu Wei in order to refine our actions. This is the art of effortless action as described in Taoist teachings.
1. No Action Doesn’t Mean ‘Nothing’ Happens
“The Tao does nothing and yet nothing is left undone.” – Lao Tzu
Wu Wei or 無為, translates from Chinese pinyin to mean “no-action” or “actionless action.” This is considered the ‘natural’ way to do things, as opposed to striving, opposing, and forcing, as well as lollygagging, or succumbing to complete inertia. When we are in alignment with the Source, or as Taoists call it, simply, the Tao, then we don’t have to ‘work’ at anything. This is not to be confused with doing nothing. The state of Wu Wei doesn’t give us an excuse to sit on the sidelines, observing life and critiquing others’ actions. Instead, it describes the inspired action of a person who is brimming with life energy, and that has dedicated their actions to a purpose which supports Oneness. This person does not waste energy, though, and moves only when the time is right, and then, with magnificent acumen, and seemingly magical support behind them.
The ancient ideograms and symbols used in the Chinese language and culture offer the most simplistic way to describe wu wei. We can observe this is the simple yin yang symbol. One side is active, or masculine, representing the energy of extending oneself into the world, and the other side of the symbol is passive, or more accurately, receiving, or feminine energy that causes an inward journey.
All Chinese medicine, martial, and internal arts from Tai Chi to acupuncture to meditation aim to help balance the masculine and feminine energies, the doing and ‘not-doing’ you might say, as a way to achieve wu wei.
2. The Cosmos is Not Working Against You
We aren’t sandwiched between heaven and earth, we ARE heaven and earth. To practice wu wei, we must first realize that we are connected to the Oneness of all things. Though we should have clear boundaries, like children given free rein to run and play within the confines of a beautiful park, we also should remain open to vulnerability and the lessons this may teach. Once we are open and protected we can begin to observe nature and embrace universal energy as it ebbs and flows. From there, we learn when to move with that energy – ebbing and flowing with our own actions in accordance with the Oneness of all things. An immense sense of freedom comes from knowing we don’t have to fight against the Cosmos, and understanding that it is never working against us – only we can choose to work against it’s flow.
3. Physical Action Isn’t the Only Action
Another principle of wu wei involves quieting the ever-busy mind. Even if we aren’t ‘doing’ anything physically, often our minds are busier than ever. Wu wei means that we not only quiet the body and its actions, but that we aim to quiet the mind. Otherwise, we will have no idea if we are in Universal flow, or simply acting ‘busy’ out of the needs of the ‘ego,’ we so obsessively align ourselves with.
Even with our meditation practice, we are encouraged not to ‘try too hard.’ Perhaps you’ve seen a mind game that has been installed at several museums around the U.S.. Two people sit across from one another, and attach headbands equipped with electrodes to themselves. Between the players are a group of balls that can only be moved with the brain’s waves, measured as electromagnetic currents through the headband. If a player maintains a state of relaxed calm, essentially a combination of alpha and theta waves produced by the brain when it’s relaxed, then a ball moves up a tube and is placed in a bin. The player with the most ‘balls,’ wins after a certain period of time commences. Those who try too hard, fail, as do those who don’t try hard enough. The combination of alpha and theta waves created by a wu wei mind is what wins the game every time.
Lao Tzu advises that we must be quiet and watchful, learning to listen to both our own inner voices and to the voices of our environment in a non-interfering, receptive manner. This requires a calm, but astute mind.
4. Being at One with the Tao Means Accepting Change
A key principal in Taoism, and the practice of wu wei involves the realization that there is an unceasing flow of change in nature. This change is governed by laws which are unalterable, and rarely perceived except by the most consciously evolved individuals. Fighting these laws of change would be a sisyphean task. Would you try to to stop the changing of the season or the rise and fall of the sun to the horizon? Once you observe this flow of change in nature, you can apply principles of wu wei to your own transformation. Since you are a part and parcel of nature, you will change accordingly. Why not move with that change instead of fight against it – perhaps you can even welcome change the next time it arrives at your doorstep.
5. True Wu Wei Involves Purposeless Wandering
Zhuangzi refers to a type of being in the world that many of us have never considered. He calls it flowing, or more poetically “purposeless wandering.” Most of our cultural values frown upon this type of being. If we have ‘no purpose’ we are often deemed pathological in the context of modern day living. Yet, it would be difficult to maintain that our current values have promoted harmony and balance, either environmentally or for each individual.
In Zhuangzi’s Basic Writings, he states, “you can use the analogy of an artist or craftsman. The skilled woodcarver, the skilled swimmer. . . does not ponder or ratiocinate on the course of action he should take; his skill has become so much a part of him that he merely acts instinctively and spontaneously, without knowing why, and achieves success.” He further describes an enlightened person as being one who wanders through creation enjoying its delights without ever becoming attached to any one part of it.
If the ego had an engine, its fuel would be fear. Trepidation isn’t all bad, but it certainly has its time and place. Fear can render us quivering and useless, or motivate us toward change. In the study of Zen, we learn how to not only overcome our fears, but to become fearless. This is called the Lion’s Roar of Zazen.
The lion is the living embodiment of self-possessed power. This animal has dominion over all he sees as well as the courage, speed, and might to attain all he desires. His deportment is regal and calm, though, never bullying and neither shrinking. The metaphor of the lion is used to describe how one overcomes fear in the Majjhima Nikaya, a Collection of Middle Length Discourses on Buddha’s teachings, and they are immaculate at describing the fears most of us face. Many Zen teachers describe how to become regal and fearless in their discourses as well.
Fear of the Loss of Life
Zen master, D.T. Suzuki says that fear of the loss of body is usually what we must overcome first. Following this, an internal consciousness becomes aware that we are threatening the slated, well-accepted notion of being merely corporeal, and we ‘think’ we are frightened. Suzuki says we needn’t look any further than the bodily sensations that arise when we simply ponder fearfulness. An empty feeling in the lower abdomen ensues, there is an immobility at the base of the tongue, and our breathing becomes restricted. If we were to remove these sensations, though, fear becomes a meaningless thing.
Szkuki attests that according to Zazen, we aim to keep a lower abdomen full of power, the breathing always uniform, the heart beat tranquil, and the muscles of the whole body resilient so that if emotions like fear arise, they can easily be encountered and dismissed.
Fear of the Loss of ‘Self’
Some fear is understandable, even – such as when we realize we must face a spiritual death in order to progress on our path. Although we may long to richer higher levels of consciousness, we aren’t always so keen to let go of the habits and crutches that have propped up our current level of awareness. As the Sufi poet Rumi once said, “No one will find his way to the Court of Magnificence until he is annihilated.”
Other types of fear make us meek and fallible. Our consciousness easily wavers, and we cannot attain Mu, or a state of Zen, let alone get on with our daily activities. It is only by cultivating the 4 Zen States of Mind that we can ‘fill our abdomens’ with power and roar like a lion with fearlessness.
4 Zen States of Mind
- Shoshin or “Beginner’s Mind” (初心) is the first stage in cultivating fearlessness. Think of a time when you were excited, and eager to start a new endeavor. There might have been unknowns, but you were brimming with glee over trying something new. This is the type of mind we want to cultivate with all aspects of life. Instead of begin nervous or fearful, we can aim to be eager and open, accepting all that comes our way. In order to approach life from the beginner’s mind we need to let of preconceived notions, and be optimistic. If you’ve been able to have this feeling with one thing you’ve done in life, you can translate that feeling to other areas also.
- Fudoushin (不動心) means you have an “Immovable Mind.” It doesn’t mean you are stubborn, but fudoushin does translate to being determined in the face of obstacles. Does a lion run away from present danger? Hardly. The animal doesn’t get angry or judgmental about obstacles either. He is peaceful like the eye of the storm until he is upon his prey. If you can develop fudoushin when you are under stress, you will be unstoppable in life.
- Mushin (無心) or “Without Mind.” This is a similar philosophy to the Chinese Taoist idea of wei wuwei. When we are ‘in the zone’ working on a great masterpiece or doing something we love, we’ve likely already experienced the state of mushin. When we are empty of thoughts, yet moving and acting purely in the present moment, without fear, anger, ego, or other emotion, we are a force to be reckoned with. By developing equanimity and learning how to focus to the point of no-thought, we can cultivate mushin.
- The last of the four states of Zen Mind is called Zanshin (残心) which literally translates to “Remaining Mind.” This state of mind contains two precise elements. It means you are both relaxed and keenly aware of your surroundings. This is the state that marital artists aim to be in so that they can react at any moment to anything that comes their way. By maintaining relaxed alertness fear cannot sway you, even in the face of a frightening opponent.
Fear of Suffering
The Buddha taught that self-grasping and ignorance are the root of all remaining fears. Healthy fears aside, our tendency to try to avoid suffering – the fear of failure, heartbreak, being trapped, being lost, etc. are all caused by a single root – and arise from the mind. In Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, is is said that the Buddha articulated, “The source of all our fear comes from our own uncontrolled minds or “delusions.””
In order to overcome this root cause of fear, the Buddha, and Zen masters alike, teach to strive for no-self or emptiness. This doesn’t mean a nihilistic view for life is adopted. Friedrich Nietzsche accused Buddhism of being existentialist, but the Buddha taught us to seek the Middle Way between the mundane and the spiritual, seeing objects as real but dependently originated, not-self and unsatisfactory. Instead of seeing all things as pointless and empty, we see mundane life as meaningless but recognize spiritual goals as meaningful.
As the Zen master, Sojo has said, “Heaven and earth and I are of the same root, the ten-thousand things and I are of one substance.”
After all, even once the Buddha gave up all his worldly possessions he realized he was no closer to achieving Nirvana. He discovered that exaggerated asceticism was not required to attain enlightenment.
By learning how to work through these fears, we can achieve the ‘lion’s roar’ of full realization.
Featured image: Uplift
A Zen koan is a finger pointing at the moon. It isn’t meant to serve up absolute truth on a platter, but to help a seeker contemplate the wisdom behind its riddle. A koan, or a puzzle for the consciousness, should instill ‘great doubt’ about a subject, so that students, especially of the Renzai tradition, can test their progress toward awakening. Seeking the ‘selfless self,’ as a way to clarify the Great Way has been passed down for centuries by Zen masters, but this practice is still useful today.
Before getting to ‘work’ on a koan, or the mental conundrum that is offered as a way to enlightenment, we can take the advice of Zen master, Wumen Huikai (Mumon Ekai, 1183-1260), who explains in detail from his own experience in his book, The Gateless Barrier (in Japanese, Mumonkan),
“In brief, the important thing is not to think about the koan with one’s mind, but to become it by unreservedly devoting one’s whole body and mind to it.”
In other words, we can’t use the same mind to solve a problem as the mind that created it – the same old Einsteinian wisdom that can be applied so completely to what the world is going through today.
So, let’s begin.
The first Zen koan reminds us that every single person can arrive at the Great Way, or experience “Mu,” a shorthand word for the very first koan ever written, which supposedly contains the secrets of the Gateless Gate. Mu helps us break through the conceptual fog that many of us live in.
This koan, titled Washing the Bowl is about eliminating the habits of procrastination, a key task if we are to obtain Mu. It goes like this:
A monk told Joshua: “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshua asked: “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”
The monk replied: “I have eaten.”
Joshua said: “Then you had better wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.
There are many ways to arrive at the answer to this riddle, but essentially it outlines the need to get started on something right away, and not to wait to take care of the things that need to be done. You don’t wait until later, or tomorrow, or next week. You eat. You finish. You wash your bowl. All great things are accomplished with this attitude of immediacy. Otherwise, the dirty bowls pile up, and no one attains enlightenment with clutter choking their space.
Procrastination is a habit many of us struggle with. We have all sorts of crutches that keep us from getting to the things that really matter. Is there something you could be doing with your time to become more loving, peaceful, or productive that is wasted by watching television, smoking, drinking, playing video games, surfing the net, or some other bad habit? False ‘needs,’ like the need to smoke or drink inhibit our ability to act on the important stuff. As we learn to let go of these things, we can ‘wash the bowl’ more often.
The next koan is about desire:
“Mountains are not mountains. Mountains are mountains.”
Let’s say we want to climb a mountain. We set this as our ideal. There is a paradox in desire, though. With most things in life, we set something as our goal, and consciously work very hard to achieve it. If our aim is to free ourselves of desire though, how do we accomplish this task? In the process of intensely desiring not to desire, we set up an unsolvable problem of not being able to attain our goal.
There is a story about a Zen student who arrives at a temple and finds an audience with a Zen master. He asks the master how long it will take him to become enlightened. The master tells him, “ten years.” With this answer the seeker says to the master, “If I work very hard to achieve enlightenment, how long will it take?” The master’s response is, “twenty years.”
Most of out troubles arise from clinging too tightly to any goal – even the most noble of them. The story points to the need to radically change our approach if we are to overcome desire. The mountain is the mountain, but it isn’t a mountain. We practice loving detachment, and strangely, we are able to let go of clinging to things as we want them to be. Paradoxically, we often also achieve the goal we originally had to let go of in the process of becoming desireless, and letting go of our attachments.
The next Zen koan involves what seems to be a silly question. It asks if all beings have ‘Buddha nature.’ Zen, and Mahayana Buddhists believe that all things have Buddha nature, even insects. The seed of enlightened consciousness is in every living thing. The choice for that being to move toward enlightenment is entirely theirs, though. This, in fact, could be more important than ‘if’ someone or something has Buddha nature, since we all do, but whether or not they will endeavor to realize it in its full blossoming.
There is a story of a brahman (a seeker) who asked the Buddha if all the world would reach release [awakening], or if half, a third, or some other number would achieve this. The Buddha was silent. One of the Buddha’s attendants, worried that the brahman might confuse the Buddha’s answer, took him aside and offered an analogy. He said, “Imagine a fortress with a single gate. A wise gatekeeper would walk around the fortress and not see an opening in the wall big enough for even a cat to slip through. Because he’s wise, he would realize that his knowledge didn’t tell him how many people would come into the fortress, but it did tell him that whoever came into the fortress would have to come in through the gate.” The enlightened ones, such as the Buddha didn’t worry about how many people would reach Awakening, but he understood that anyone who reached this high state of consciousness would have to follow the path he had found: abandoning the five hindrances, establishing the four frames of reference, and developing the seven factors for Awakening. Though these are detailed very specifically in Buddhism, they are echoed through almost every wisdom tradition in the world.
The most important point of the koan is implied in the word ‘if.’ The path is clearly defined, but the choice lies with the sentient being if they want to realize Mu or Satori.
The fourth zen koan is not a verbal puzzle but a visual puzzle. The ensō or circle symbolizes absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and mu (the void). The circle encompasses all and excludes nothing. Contemplate on this symbol, and share what wisdom it brings to you.
Image credits: WisdomPubs.org, Ericgerlachdtocom, EddieTwoHawks, Float Universe, BuddhistChannel.tv, Dailycupofyoga.com
-
Entertainment3 days agoJames Franco Explained How Life Is Now Different After Being ‘Cast Out’ of Hollywood
-
Awareness3 days ago‘Bleeding Eye’ Virus Sparks Travel Warning and Worldwide Concern – What Is the Incurable Disease?
-
Ancient History6 days agoNASA Finds Underground ‘City’ Hidden 100 Foot Below Icy Surface
-
News6 days agoCalifornian Man Who Spends His Time Searching for Abandoned Cars on Google Maps Has Found Some Unbelievable Things in America