Saturday, August 17, 2019

That Bias Against Not Knowing

heartIf you've lived long enough, there is a deeply transformative event that has probably happened to you. I call it "breaking open". It's when your worst fears, your deepest separations, and the destruction of your most cherished beliefs, lead you to such a deep despair, you begin to question everything you knew to be true. You realize you just don't have ANY answers--you have NOTHING to offer, and a survey of your life reveals no value whatsoever.

The first time this happened to me, I was in a difficult marriage riding alongside an existential mid-life crisis. I didn't know what to believe anymore. I didn't believe IN anything--certainly not myself. I felt like there was no "me" there anymore. What finally returned me to a functional ego was a book by Dr. Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul. In it I found a sort of spiritual rock to cling on to while I rode out the existential storms of my life. In time, I found comfort in the embracing of that dark night, as it revealed to me the depth of my feelings, the breadth of my not knowing, and the cosmic panorama of who or what I might be.

The second visit to the dark end of the street, was the loss of my partner. Her death broke open my heart, where I could see all the ways and hidden recesses of my resistance to loving, and the terrible regret I now had that I never truly shared myself with her. It hit me much harder than I had expected, or I should say her death was not what hit me so much as the realization that I never let myself love her the way she loved me. The further shock was seeing how I lied about it, and denied my own heart. Why was I seeing this NOW after she's gone! I cried, I writhed in the remorse, and I went deep into the grief of how I had lost my own heart.

These two journeys laid me out spiritually, prostrate on the rocky shore of the threshold to divine communion--a kind of ego destruction where nothing is important, and yet it all seems to have impact.

What got me reminiscing about these adventures was a talk by Miranda MacPherson called, "Ego Relaxation". She describes her own "breaking open" of her spiritual practice that reduced her to an extreme state of not knowing. Not knowing who or what she was, not knowing if she had anything to offer the world, or herself.

She finally came to an awareness that these profound states of not knowing are also part of who we are. And, in fact, are a gateway to our own divinity. As corporeal beings living in this dualistic world of opposites, we form biases in favor of knowing. We avoid and fight our own ignorance, and take definitive steps to transform our ignorance into knowledge. Culturally, not knowing has negative consequences, and is all twisted up with trust issues and existential security.

We diligently seek "answers" when we don't know something, and mistakenly carry over that habit into our spiritual life where there is a whole other thing going on. We get confused between ego knowing and the awareness of self.

The ego says it knows what and who we are--it knows what we've done and why. It knows what love is, and is certain about its own potentials and purposes. These are all ego constructs, and they are the solid basis upon which we build our sense of what is real, and what we are willing to experience.

The conflict arises when we attempt to connect to the Universal. We don't reference ourselves as being everything, because then there is no individual-ness, no point of reference between who we are and God. MacPherson points out that this is where the real spiritual work begins. We can begin to acknowledge and relax all the ego constructs, we can begin to seek to de-construct all those decisions and choices about who and what we are, admitting the Truth that we are everything, and yet are nothing. Our life is created simply because we exist, and yet what we are is an ineffable single point from which all things proceed.

By laying out the ego and allowing it to be just as much a part of our being as the rest of our life, allows us a transcendence of the dualities of living. Our identity can be more truly seen as a loved and loving character, an avatar if you will, in this game we have gotten so caught up in.

Your identity is loved. Who you are at any moment is loved. And through that love is the eternal connection we all have to each other.

Finding Your "Shool"

shoolThose of us who deal with pain on a daily basis, I believe are greatly hampered by language when it comes to incorporating well-being into our lives. I have noticed over the years that there is actually no word that describes a non-pain state, without using the word pain: PAIN-less, no pain, pain free, pain relief, etc., etc.

When we are in the throes of pain, the immediate cessation of it becomes all-absorbing, with our attention focused--stuck, really--on the experience of the pain. There is no "go to" concept we can focus on that is "not pain", other than focusing on what doesn't hurt, which, again, includes pain in the desire of it. It's no wonder it is so easy to get caught up in the "pain cycle'--the more it hurts, the more it traps your attention, which then leads to more of it.

Last week, I got into a fascinating discussion with a local Native American "medicine man", Jake, who asked me, "How is your 'shool'?"

After observing the blank look on my face, he continued. "Have you ever heard of the idea of 'loosh'?" Yes, I had, actually. Loosh is the energy of suffering--the low frequency energy of pain and agony, and it is said that it's an energy that vampiristic beings feed off of to increase their own energy.

"Yes," Jake continued. "We just turn that concept around, and what you have is a word for your sense of well-being. We like to use it to describe a spectrum, where low shool is where it is difficult to spot anywhere on your body or your life where something feels good; and then high shool, is where you feel fantastically alive and high vibe."

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was answering this question I'd had for years.

"When there is pervasive pain, usually the first thing we do is try to get rid of it, when the healing thing to do is to acknowledge with gratitude where in your body there is no pain. We call it 'finding your shool," he gazed at me and I realized that although my shoulders were aching and my knees hurt, my lower back felt really good.

"Yes, concentrate on that. Give that your energy and attention, and it will expand," he added right after my thoughts.

As Jake left the room, I was elated to have a wonderful tool with this shool thing. In Manifestation 101, we learn that what we put our attention on expands. This is the problem with pain, so we turn to external chemical means--analgesics, NSAIDs, and such nostrums, to just get our attention off of it. This is why the shool concept is so valuable. We can now rest our attention on those areas of the body that feel good, or at the very least, don't hurt, and by turning our attention thus, those good feelings can expand.

Jake also advised that we can increase our shool where there is pain, by noticing that there is some part of that painful area that feels okay, or even feels good. He said that in order for pain to exist, there has to be its opposite present--and that's shool.

shoolOur sense of proprioception is greatly affected by pain. Limping is a good example. We change how we feel movement in our body by avoiding the movements that trigger pain. In the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner slowly and gently moves the body into those areas where there has been a proprioceptive avoidance of pain, demonstrating that either there is greater range of motion than was thought, or that the proprioceptive reaction is no longer necessary--basically allowing shool to expand in the area.

This goes much deeper into what it means to hurt, to suffer, and to eventually start defining ourselves by our state of pain--changing our social behaviors, altering our physical movements, and justifying the pain by accepting it as a part of who we are in the world. This is all a result of pain fixation, and not realizing that there is shool within the pain that is the gateway to healing.

Again, back to Manifestation 101, Joe Dispenza said it well: "You have to feel whole before your healing; you would have to feel abundance before your wealth; you would have to feel awe before the mystical moment; you would have to feel love before your new relationship; and you would have to feel empowered before your success." So, I would add you would need to feel shool before your healing.

Death Is Obsolete


the field

"Death, as a concept, is preposterous in the face of the infinite effulgence of being." -- Unknown

From a quantum perspective, death is actually a re-arrangement, a re-assignment, of particles and waves. But death in the way it is used in casual social parlance, means the "end" of a living organism's lifespan. I had a wonderfully bizarre conversation with a channelled being calling itself "Anttarr" one afternoon back in 1991.

I had asked if my lifespan was predictable--you know, that question that most psychics get: When am I going to die? Anttarr replied, "Dying is a hallowed tradition amongst you humans. It is a way to escape commitments, prove a point, give up, and stop playing the game."

I countered, "So we humans don't have to die? If we wanted to, we could live as long as we wanted?"

And before I had completed that sentence, Anttarr barged in, "Of course, of course. But there is much to unravel here. There are hundreds of generations of DNA programming to prove to you that death is as inevitable as taxes," it chuckled. "But no, you don't have to leave your body, nor do you have to age. That, too, is a social meme, a more, an accepted value; a way of constructing a character around an ego. A way of using time to validate self."

I didn't really have anywhere else to go with the conversation, so I changed the subject. But Anttarr's words stuck in my craw, and every time I start mulling over my mortality, Anttarr is standing there waving his "finger".

This week, Deepak Chopra published an article in SF Gate Magazine, called "Practical Immortality". In it, he stresses the point that consciousness cannot be non-existent. It always has been and always will be conscious. It is the basic, fundamental property of experience, the physical universe, and all dimensions beyond this one.

Within this context, the concept of death is exposed as an extreme example of duality. As Alan Watts said, "Death implies Life", since death would be meaningless without life. In the social human world, we have languaged and defined life as "not death", focussing cultural attention on the end of life being the reason for living. On the face of it, it makes a kind of slavish sense, but universally and from a non-dualistic view, it is absurd.

If we can turn this around so that death exists alongside life, it makes much more sense, and becomes something we can work with. Life no longer is defined by death--no longer defined by "lifespan". Instead, death becomes a useful agent for change--a way to transform self, and transcend the death-obsessed ego.

In most cultures is the idea, or tradition, of the "mid-life crisis", seemingly brought on by "becoming aware of one's mortality." This is how we program our minds, our DNA, and those around us, into carrying on this fine tradition of mortal fear, body death, emotional loss and suffering. We live our lives under the auspices of "being a contribution to society" while we're still alive to create a "legacy", and generally use death to motivate and worship our ego.

In the face of the "effulgence of infinite being", these concepts, traditions and cultural habits become obsolete. And by contextualizing living as an everlasting sequence of experiences and expressions of form, we arrive much closer to the Cosmic Truth about existence--a truth that is informed by infinite possibilities, choices, freedom and joy. We choose to live in this form. We choose to live as boundless expressions of creation, untethered by such mundane and slavish concepts of "lifespan" or "mortality".

By living a life without end, we send a message to our DNA to continually repair and regenerate, and we embrace the nourishing impossibility of non-existence. We have always been here, and will always be here. It's the inescapable essence of life.