One author who has had a profound affect on my personal evolution and my client work is Stephen Levine, author of the magnificent book Who Dies which you can find in the Recommended Reading list in the sidebar. Stephen, a practicing Buddhist, writes about the softening of the hardness that we build around our hearts when our lives are under stress, and how to relax into a sense of presence and that-which-is. These are Buddhist concepts, but they transcend Buddhism or any religious or spiritual definitions. This presence is also what is taught by Eckhart Tolle, who has become one of the leading spiritual leaders of our time.
Dharmaruci at Astrotabletalk was a practicing Buddhist for many years and has an interesting article up today on this subject in a follow-up on an article about a Buddhist nun. He begins:
There are certain things I love about Buddhism. Its philosophy of emptiness makes complete sense. It is saying that everything is part of an interconnected flux in which there are no separate ‘things’. That includes the sense of ‘I’ – hence the famous ‘no-self’ doctrine.
I have to say that this “no-self” idea has always perturbed me. I myself practiced a disciplined form of meditation for about 18 years and found when I entered psychotherapy that I had spent much of that time using meditation to numb myself from my painful feelings. I actually quit meditating during the time I was in therapy so that I could more fully awaken to myself and begin to process a lifetime of discomfort. When I began to meditate again I no longer worked to quiet the mind but instead to be present with what was happening in the moment. The more I became Present, the quieter my mind became.
But Dharmaruci effectively describes this process in today’s article:
The sense of ‘I’ is a good place to start. It certainly seems very solid and real, and it locates us experientially at the centre of the universe, to which we reach out and relate. But that sense of ‘I’ is usually based on identifying with what we think and feel – that is what makes us ‘us’. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you don’t have to identify with, and act on, what you are feeling. We have a choice. If you are angry with someone, you don’t have to torment yourself with it, the mind circling endlessly as it tries to justify the feeling of anger. Nor do you have to go into therapy and try and find the root cause of it (though that can have its place.) We can make the decision to stand back and observe the feeling. This is a deeply transformational act.
This principle applies to all sorts of limiting, painful emotions which we all experience every day. And it is a different self that does the observing. This new self is not rigid and protective, for there is nothing to protect anymore. It is spacious. You no longer need take events so personally. You are fully present and aware, fully emotionally responsive to others, fully connected in a way you never were before, because you’re no longer seeing the world through the veil of your own reactions to it. You are, in other words, more aware of the interconnected flux to which in reality we all belong.
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Read more here. This process of becoming fully present is easier than one might think, but it requires courage and awareness and time to be still and pay attention.
posted August 20, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hi Lynn,
I always enjoy your posts; I read them every day. As someone who works in front of a computer and reads blogs, I want to point out that the dark blue background with black font is VERY hard on the eyes. It makes your posts a little difficult to read. A white background is not so good either. A very light blue or a cream color (like you had at astrological musings) would be perfect. It would make it so much easier to read and enjoy your posts.
Marianne
posted August 20, 2008 at 12:49 pm
This is a very intriguing photo, Lynn. If I look at it long enough, it begins to resemble a Hindu deity with several pairs of arms (one pair aloft, the other pair resting on the knees), and the Sun on the figure’s brow suggests enlightenment. Very cool.
)
posted August 20, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Thanks for be so honest and self revelatory. It’s nice to read ‘therapy’ and ‘meditation’ in the same paragraph. It is wonderful to find a writer who espouse finding a total wholeness through using specialists and also developing a spiritual, mental, intellectual and emotion balanced base.
posted August 20, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hi Marianne, unfortunately I don’t have any control over the template but I am a little confused by your comment. On my screen the actual blog is black lettering on a white background. What are you seeing?
Joe – glad you like the pic! I thought it was very cool as well.
Soraya – thank you for your comments, it’s very gratifying to know that readers are appreciating my personal tales.
posted August 20, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Hi Lynn,
I was very interested to read your experience with meditation and therapy. I am trained as a therapist and I too have practiced meditation for much of my adult life. Luckily the form of meditation I began with was an ‘awareness’ meditation. I first used it as a method to manage chronic pain and I learned that it was by ‘allowing’ the pain that it then passed.
I believe that all pain is speaking to us–whether emotional or physical–and it is only after we listen to this voice that it grows quiet. Our inner being recognizes that we have heard and the volume lowers or disappears altogether.
There is some pain, for some of us, that will never disappear entirely, but just because we have been present to it, acknowledged the pain with respect, it can fade into the background.
I deeply appreciate your writing and your generosity with yourself.
Sheila
posted August 20, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Royal Blue doesn’t bother me. It makes the message
stand out more and in an attractive way.
posted August 20, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I am on a Mac, and I see the blog on a dark blue background with black lettering. There is no white at all except when I leave a comment in this section.
Marianne
posted August 21, 2008 at 2:34 am
I am a fan of Stephen Levine too. His audio recording of The Grief Process is excellent. I have been practicing a form of Raja meditation, which entails more of a focusing on the object or question one wants to gain knowledge about.
Also the observer point of view is incorporated in the psychological techniques of Hal and Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue method. In a nutshell, they help the person develop the “aware ego” which can observe and control the expression of the polarities of self. A person may live more out of one aspect of ego (they call it the primary self)and the other polarity becomes disowned; for an example someone who is overly identified with a workaholic self, will likely disown the side that takes pleasure in relaxation. There is quite a bit more to this than what I have tried to describe, but it is a very interesting approach. The Stone’s do not have much interest in astrology, but I have thought their technique could be used with the energies within a chart.
posted August 21, 2008 at 8:34 am
Thanks Marianne, I’ll let them know but this is a bit confusing, because Rich has a Mac and he sees the same page I do. Let’s see what they say.
posted August 21, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I’m viewing this site with a Mac (Safari browser) and it is black lettering with a white background. You might try checking your settings or see if there is a browser update available.