During our retreat in Garrison, I understood something about attachment. For the first time.
Before each meditation segment we recited a dedication prayer. The fourth line was : May they (all sentient beings) dwell in great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion to those near and far. (You repeat the four lines of the prayer three times whenever you sit down on a cushion.)
Free from attachment.
At some point it dawned on me that included myself.
Attachment? This is something I had never paid attention to.
Wanting something, hoping for something, that's attachment, isn't it? All the dedication and work and effort I have put into building my Journey practice, hoping it would grow, hoping it would serve a lot of people, hoping it would support me, hoping it would confirm to me that I am on the right path, that I made the right choices... that's an attachment I think. And a big one.
Over the last weeks I had already been in the process of shedding more and more of this particular attachment, and I have been feeling the breath of letting go, a gentle, loving liberation.
On the last day Mingyur Rinpoche said something very casually, that hit me with a burst of incredulity: When your meditation becomes an amazing experience, that's when you stop.
What? That's when I stop???
I thought this was the whole purpose of meditating, to reach those wonderful transcendent states of being, to go into those states of oneness, beingness, free from ordinary thought, resting in just pure awareness... wasn't that the goal? Practicing that?
No, apparently it was not. Not at first. Because at first you get attached to the result.
All of a sudden that makes sense. Of course! You get attached... to a goal. You start to rate yourself. Without noticing you are drawn into your personal version of the inner drama of your own judgement... swinging forever back and forth between good and bad.
So yes, I think I understand.
Attachment is as much part of our illusion as aversion, as any form of our story that makes us get upset, depressed, angry, or afraid. Either one tells us we need something in order to... xxx ... and in each habit of thinking we believe we'd be really happy, IF we only had... xxx. All along we miss the truth that we are chasing something... very temporary... impossible to reach because it forever keeps changing names.
I had never noticed how much of my thoughts evolved around making something happen, or rather: yes, I was aware of that, but in my mind I was working with the law of attraction, I was matching my vibration to something I desired. Now I am seeing this use of my thoughts a little differently. Very possibly I was setting myself up for the ongoing duality of failure or success. If something didn't happen, it was because I had not done a well enough job in attracting it. That never feels good. On the other hand, once success is there, it is not a stable state of being either. Maybe that's why life had felt like so much effort at times, maybe that's why I have those regular experiences at night when my energy just deflates from my body like a punctured balloon... there used to be lots of days when I was so tired I could hardly get myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth... and all I had done was sit at my desk all day.
Maybe life doesn't have to feel like that.
Struggle. No, that doesn't need to be here any more.
Something of that may have drained from me. In a mysterious way. On the last full day of the teaching we practiced a "watching meditation" by watching a video of a performance Mingyur Rinpoche had given in Taiwan earlier this year. A combination of teachings and sound through music. We were given the assignment to watch this: with awareness. That was all.
Big stage. Mingyur Rinpoche sits on a little pedestal on the right side of the stage, a Chinese translator sits on the left.
He speaks briefly, very simply, in short, chopped up segments about meditating and using music to help the mind from running all over the place, he makes a few jokes, and instructs the audience what to do when the music begins... in a moment of silence we see the word of the first theme: EXISTENCE... and then a blueish light goes on behind him in the center of the back stage, an orchestra becomes visible through a veil on the raised platform, and the music begins: a beautiful, yearning melody, sung by a flute, wrapped in the sound of all the many voices of the full orchestra, magically washing us with a sound... so complicated, so touching, so precise, so skillfully, so passionately drawn from each of all these different instruments... oh, all these people all joined together in the service of this sound. This moment, this achingly beautiful music contained all of the dedication, all the years of learning... the hours and hours of daily practice on their instruments... these intricately crafted objects that had each been created with such knowledge, a knowledge grown into a mastery that had evolved out of centuries and centuries of perfecting the art of instrument making, fueled by an eternal love for sound and music... born out of the striving for a creative expression of beauty and truth and joy and exaltation, all of that which had forever provided a counterbalance, a healing nectar for the lives outside... the daily life in the world... the human life that has throughout the eons, jolted us through fear and anger and pain and frustration, and greed and hardship and suffering... Suffering... so much suffering.
All of this washed over me in one fell swoop within the first few moments of this sound entering my body, and tears began rolling down my face. I gave in.
I wasn't able to put what was happening in those exact words I just gave a wooden handed attempt to describe it with. I just looked at my teacher... There was Mingyur sitting in a soft, warm spotlight on his little pedestal in his deep red monks gown, his face still, his eyes closed, his hands resting in his lap... so small. His head hardly as high as half of the big cello bathed in blue behind him. He so still, so peaceful.
And behind him all of human existence, with all it's fragile moments of utter love and beauty and all it's striving and all it's millennia of suffering, present in this sound of this orchestra, recorded months ago on the far side of the globe for me to witness in this moment.
Something unraveled inside of me. I don't know what it was. I just kept weeping.
Maybe my soul understood the different between attachment and freedom in that moment. I don't know.
I know it came to an end when the piece was over. I know it didn't return when the next piece started. Beethoven's fifth, the first movement. This was called EMOTION. But no emotions flowed. Maybe I knew it too well. I know there were a few more tears with the next piece: FREE, a Mozart piano concert... and that was all.
The next morning at about the same time I entered the small private sitting room Mingyur Rinpoche was using during his stay with four other people and took refuge.
Now I am giving my being the space to learn there is no goal. Not in meditating, not in life. I do this every day. Twice. For 20 minutes. That's a lot of learning.
I imagine ... the ease... the of being present... breathing with unhurried gentleness... moving from one simple task into the next... collecting each little completion like a pearl that slips up on the string of memory, collecting like a precious necklace in the soul.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
New Update from Hamburg
This is the next chapter in my fathers journey through his current health challenge.
While still at the retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche I spoke with Ted, who I had learned, works over the phone and is able to shift many things long distance. Ron in Ottawa had been impressed that his back pain, which had kept him from bending down and doing the unavoidable spring yard work, found this pain had completely disappeared. Natalie, his sister in law, who had joined us for the weekend, had apparently worked with Ted more than once, and referring to the speed he works with, she described she has a whole list ready to go through with all the little aches and pains she wants to address.
Enough recommendation for me to try him out, especially since he had a very low hourly rate at the time.
Ted talks very fast, almost in a hurry, and it takes me a few minutes to realize he is not just summarizing for me what he sees, but he is also adjusting and releasing things at the same time. I take notes and try to be present with all he is detecting and unraveling simultaneously. Within the hour he had swept through several past lives, death by poison, karma with the surgeon, acidity levels in the body a clogged lymph system, habits and beliefs of needing to do things alone, old stories trapped in the bowls, disempowering beliefs in connection with the second kidney, emotions within the family in response to these events, my mother's source of strength, and even a little bit on my own story with the cysts... Phewwwhhhh...
Papi got better, although slowly and with setbacks. His bowls again were the main stumbling stone.
On Wednesday they sent him back home, where he arrived happy but still very weak.
By Friday his bowls had come to a halt yet again and his family physician, a wonderful woman, who Mami describes as someone with a rare willingness to take her time to listen and be present with her patients, strongly recommended to him to go back to the hospital. She felt staying home over the weekend he might risk another locking up of the colon. Not a good thing. He experienced that four years ago. Nothing you want to repeat.
So, on the third day home from the hospital, he went back into the emergency room one more time. Anyone who has ever been through surgery knows how much of an effort it is to be up on your feet for more than 30 minutes during the first 10 days of recovering, but to go back into the emergency room, with all the waiting, the in and out of examination rooms for blood and urine tests, and new examinations. ... It was another four hour ordeal, but at the end of it all he was sent home ... after the bowls did come back to life through some simple magic.
It was only then that he felt he is finally on a steady way to recovery.
Knock on wood...tok, tok, tok... the old bowls have been doing fine since.
While still at the retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche I spoke with Ted, who I had learned, works over the phone and is able to shift many things long distance. Ron in Ottawa had been impressed that his back pain, which had kept him from bending down and doing the unavoidable spring yard work, found this pain had completely disappeared. Natalie, his sister in law, who had joined us for the weekend, had apparently worked with Ted more than once, and referring to the speed he works with, she described she has a whole list ready to go through with all the little aches and pains she wants to address.
Enough recommendation for me to try him out, especially since he had a very low hourly rate at the time.
Ted talks very fast, almost in a hurry, and it takes me a few minutes to realize he is not just summarizing for me what he sees, but he is also adjusting and releasing things at the same time. I take notes and try to be present with all he is detecting and unraveling simultaneously. Within the hour he had swept through several past lives, death by poison, karma with the surgeon, acidity levels in the body a clogged lymph system, habits and beliefs of needing to do things alone, old stories trapped in the bowls, disempowering beliefs in connection with the second kidney, emotions within the family in response to these events, my mother's source of strength, and even a little bit on my own story with the cysts... Phewwwhhhh...
Papi got better, although slowly and with setbacks. His bowls again were the main stumbling stone.
On Wednesday they sent him back home, where he arrived happy but still very weak.
By Friday his bowls had come to a halt yet again and his family physician, a wonderful woman, who Mami describes as someone with a rare willingness to take her time to listen and be present with her patients, strongly recommended to him to go back to the hospital. She felt staying home over the weekend he might risk another locking up of the colon. Not a good thing. He experienced that four years ago. Nothing you want to repeat.
So, on the third day home from the hospital, he went back into the emergency room one more time. Anyone who has ever been through surgery knows how much of an effort it is to be up on your feet for more than 30 minutes during the first 10 days of recovering, but to go back into the emergency room, with all the waiting, the in and out of examination rooms for blood and urine tests, and new examinations. ... It was another four hour ordeal, but at the end of it all he was sent home ... after the bowls did come back to life through some simple magic.
It was only then that he felt he is finally on a steady way to recovery.
Knock on wood...tok, tok, tok... the old bowls have been doing fine since.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The Question of Refuge - Update on Papi
Sunday, June 28th
I have the unanswered question hanging over my head whether or not to ask to take refuge with Minguyr Rinpoche.
I have talked with a few people about this during the last couple of days.
And today I have gained some clarity about my hesitation.
Yes, here it is with some surprise: This hesitation has its roots in fear.
I am afraid of some things!
I am afraid that once I make this official commitment, that I might fail to meet someones expectation, that I wont be considered a good enough Buddhist, that I could disappoint or fail in some way, because I am aware that I don't think of myself as a Buddhist and maybe never will, but I am thinking of myself as someone who is on a path toward enlightenment.
I am afraid that I will loose my freedom to explore other spiritual parts of life, of locking myself in.
I am afraid some people around me might have some kind of a judgement about me choosing the Buddhist path.
Yikes! Good to know what's been hiding in there.
Later...
After our second teaching of the day, the Rinpoche sat for a while with the discussion group I am in (about a third of the participants), to answer questions ... . The first two groups had their meetings with him earlier today. I had been chewing on my question for a long while and when the time came and I had the microphone, I said:
"I have been carrying the question of taking refuge with me. How do I know it is time to take this step, and how do I know I am not making a mistake?"
I was wondering if he might ask me what I was afraid of doing wrong, but he didn't.
He simply said: "When you are ready to accept the Buddha and the Darma and the Sangha as your path, then you do it."
and I thought: "Shit, I don't even remember exactly what the Dharma and the Sangha is." but I was too embarrassed to say that, and my next thought was: "Well, clearly... until I don't really know what it is I am committing to, I guess I am not ready to do it." and I was a little at a loss what to do with his answer. He said a few more words to expand the explanation... I don't remember right now. I noticed I felt a little... disappointed.
After dinner Jimmy and I walked to the edge of the little park that overlooks the river. Upstream, perched on the cliffs of the opposite bank we could see Westpoint Military Academy. What a curious placing of contrast! Then we saw a little trail leading into the forest that we took, that became a bigger trail, that joined a bigger path, that led over a bridge across the railway tracks and past a tiny beach onto a group of rocks with a bench on it. Crossing the railway we had seen a family of foxes play on the tracks! Was this a good omen?
Returned to our Institute there were 30 Min left of the evening meditation practice. As I sat on the double cushion, I practiced what we had learned today: a gentle surrender into whatever catches the meditative awareness away from simple, non thinking spaciousness... let that be sound, sight, thoughts, physical sensations, or emotions. Whatever shows up, you simply watch passing through by bringing it into your awareness. Toward the end I drifted into the emotions surrounding my decision about refuge, or lack thereof. I felt the fear, became aware of it and something started unraveling.
I sat there tears rolling down my face as I felt what it would be like to say YES. To say yes, in spite of all that I don't know, in spite of all that I have doubts about, in spite of all worries about what this might ask of me that I might find hard to meet... I felt this YES in my body and I sensed that the time of saying MAYBE was over, that life, yet again had put something in front of me... and that living fully meant, yet again, saying yes. In the same way I had said yes to becoming a Journey practitioner, I had said yes to the surgery, and I had said yes to going to Ottawa. Did it matter that I saw my mentors lining up and bowing to me? I don't know. Maybe I wanted to see them that way. What mattered was the intensity of the emotion and the sense that something old, timid and limiting was leaving with this decision.
I will have to wait until silence ends tomorrow to speak to someone, and to find out if this little ceremony can actually take place before I leave on Tuesday.
Saturday, June 27th
Dearest friends, just a little update on my father...
Not all continued they way he had wished. In spite of many offerings of pain medication, both orally as well as by IV, his pain did not subside during the first night. It was in fact quite unbearable. The pain pump could not be repaired as the clog was located in the surgically inserted portion. Not sure what the heck they were giving him... I had raved about Delauded, but their stuff has different names... so I don't know. Only know the pain stayed with him during the next day and into the next night. Yet again hardly any sleep.
I heard about it after we came out of morning silence here at the retreat. Gave him a call via skype and heard his tired and exhausted voice, he didn't even want me to lead him in some guided meditation, he was too worn out to give energy to anything. I contacted an energy healer my hosts in Ottawa had raved about, and also checked in myself... saw something like a crab. an entity, in his belly and removed that. There were some disempowering beliefs that had been lodged into this area and a new awareness that opened up when it was gone... not sure how much that actually affected him, but today he is overall feeling a little better. Later tonight I will work with Ted from Canada via phone on Papi and we'll see how that goes.
Now back down again into my discussion group.
Otherwise we are having a great time here!
Love you all
Tomma
I have the unanswered question hanging over my head whether or not to ask to take refuge with Minguyr Rinpoche.
I have talked with a few people about this during the last couple of days.
And today I have gained some clarity about my hesitation.
Yes, here it is with some surprise: This hesitation has its roots in fear.
I am afraid of some things!
I am afraid that once I make this official commitment, that I might fail to meet someones expectation, that I wont be considered a good enough Buddhist, that I could disappoint or fail in some way, because I am aware that I don't think of myself as a Buddhist and maybe never will, but I am thinking of myself as someone who is on a path toward enlightenment.
I am afraid that I will loose my freedom to explore other spiritual parts of life, of locking myself in.
I am afraid some people around me might have some kind of a judgement about me choosing the Buddhist path.
Yikes! Good to know what's been hiding in there.
Later...
After our second teaching of the day, the Rinpoche sat for a while with the discussion group I am in (about a third of the participants), to answer questions ... . The first two groups had their meetings with him earlier today. I had been chewing on my question for a long while and when the time came and I had the microphone, I said:
"I have been carrying the question of taking refuge with me. How do I know it is time to take this step, and how do I know I am not making a mistake?"
I was wondering if he might ask me what I was afraid of doing wrong, but he didn't.
He simply said: "When you are ready to accept the Buddha and the Darma and the Sangha as your path, then you do it."
and I thought: "Shit, I don't even remember exactly what the Dharma and the Sangha is." but I was too embarrassed to say that, and my next thought was: "Well, clearly... until I don't really know what it is I am committing to, I guess I am not ready to do it." and I was a little at a loss what to do with his answer. He said a few more words to expand the explanation... I don't remember right now. I noticed I felt a little... disappointed.
After dinner Jimmy and I walked to the edge of the little park that overlooks the river. Upstream, perched on the cliffs of the opposite bank we could see Westpoint Military Academy. What a curious placing of contrast! Then we saw a little trail leading into the forest that we took, that became a bigger trail, that joined a bigger path, that led over a bridge across the railway tracks and past a tiny beach onto a group of rocks with a bench on it. Crossing the railway we had seen a family of foxes play on the tracks! Was this a good omen?
Returned to our Institute there were 30 Min left of the evening meditation practice. As I sat on the double cushion, I practiced what we had learned today: a gentle surrender into whatever catches the meditative awareness away from simple, non thinking spaciousness... let that be sound, sight, thoughts, physical sensations, or emotions. Whatever shows up, you simply watch passing through by bringing it into your awareness. Toward the end I drifted into the emotions surrounding my decision about refuge, or lack thereof. I felt the fear, became aware of it and something started unraveling.
I sat there tears rolling down my face as I felt what it would be like to say YES. To say yes, in spite of all that I don't know, in spite of all that I have doubts about, in spite of all worries about what this might ask of me that I might find hard to meet... I felt this YES in my body and I sensed that the time of saying MAYBE was over, that life, yet again had put something in front of me... and that living fully meant, yet again, saying yes. In the same way I had said yes to becoming a Journey practitioner, I had said yes to the surgery, and I had said yes to going to Ottawa. Did it matter that I saw my mentors lining up and bowing to me? I don't know. Maybe I wanted to see them that way. What mattered was the intensity of the emotion and the sense that something old, timid and limiting was leaving with this decision.
I will have to wait until silence ends tomorrow to speak to someone, and to find out if this little ceremony can actually take place before I leave on Tuesday.
Saturday, June 27th
Dearest friends, just a little update on my father...
Not all continued they way he had wished. In spite of many offerings of pain medication, both orally as well as by IV, his pain did not subside during the first night. It was in fact quite unbearable. The pain pump could not be repaired as the clog was located in the surgically inserted portion. Not sure what the heck they were giving him... I had raved about Delauded, but their stuff has different names... so I don't know. Only know the pain stayed with him during the next day and into the next night. Yet again hardly any sleep.
I heard about it after we came out of morning silence here at the retreat. Gave him a call via skype and heard his tired and exhausted voice, he didn't even want me to lead him in some guided meditation, he was too worn out to give energy to anything. I contacted an energy healer my hosts in Ottawa had raved about, and also checked in myself... saw something like a crab. an entity, in his belly and removed that. There were some disempowering beliefs that had been lodged into this area and a new awareness that opened up when it was gone... not sure how much that actually affected him, but today he is overall feeling a little better. Later tonight I will work with Ted from Canada via phone on Papi and we'll see how that goes.
Now back down again into my discussion group.
Otherwise we are having a great time here!
Love you all
Tomma
Friday, July 3, 2009
Realizations
Friday, June 16th
During the meditation practice after breakfast I had a whole series of realizations.
When Jimmy and I arrived last night and sat down in the old dining hall for dinner, I was aware how I observe people I don't know. The two women across the table were talking and talking and didn't look at us at all. Now, I am almost embarrassed to write this down, but this is what I paid attention to: I noticed the jewelery they wore, both more than me: rings with many sparkling stones, a watch, and yes, that could have been an expensive watch, the hair: well combed and cared for with fashionable sunglasses pulled up over the forehead on one while the other hair was rather fluffy and out of bounds, the gestures and body language of the first: relaxed and selfassured.
I wasn't naming those observations to myself, I just took them in and a little later I noticed that I was reminded of watching the really cool girls one grade above me during the break at school - from a distance. And I thought: This is really an old habit that creeps in here.
So, this morning during meditation I thought back to this experience at dinner and all of a sudden it became very clear and I saw what I have been doing for most of my life. I am evaluating people. In this old way of looking at a fellow human being, I try to read whether this person is wealthy, powerful or influential, valued by others, educated maybe, creative or interesting looking, and... here comes the conclusion: I am doing this, because I want to find out whether this person ranks above or below me... if this is someone who has something I don't have, something to GIVE to me... or if it is someone who has nothing much to offer.
And the following confession is embarrassing too. Next I realized that I have played a game over and over again, a game in which I will pick a person somewhere above me and make it my goal to be recognized by this person, in fact I don't rest until I have worked my way up so that in the end I am able to give something to this person, all the while I dream of being someone important to them. And I don't always succeed. Wow. THAT'S what I have done?? Yep. I think so. More than once.
What if I could meet another human being without all this old crap? Just free. Just in complete welcome. Seeing the perfection of this meeting. No matter who. NO MATTER WHO.
That was # one.
Next I thought that it would be really nice to speak with Jimmy about our intention for this retreat. To massage some juice into a really good experience. What am I hoping for is not only to learn something about meditation, but also... to meet people, people we might both have some synchronicities with, some interesting and inspiring conversations with, maybe even people who will end up leading me further in my life. And then I stopped myself and thought: Ho, wait a minute! WHAT am I doing here? Am I not setting myself up with a whole set of best, ok and disappointing results from this retreat? Am I giving myself a goal here? Isn't that what I did with my cysts? And wasn't I totally turned upside down? Yes. So why don't I absolutely let go of that? Why don't I just leave it up to life to give me what I need. And I wont care if I don't meet a single new person.
That was # two.
And finally, just before Mingyur Rinpoche came in for the first teaching of the day, I had another realization. About my work, my private practice. All of a sudden I understood something about why the first years have felt like such a struggle. It goes back to the question of giving. While it looks like I showed up with something to give to my clients, I really started from a place to needing them to need me. It actually feels like my need to be needed was bigger than my ability to give... of course that creates a mixed up energy! How would it have been if I had been able to give my work with pure generosity from the very beginning... with pure compassion? Doesn't really matter now, does it. What matters is that I now see the difference. It's not that I had a hard time interacting from that place once someone sat down with me in my living room. That was easy. I am talking about the process of attracting clients. Generosity and compassion, It feels like those could be a true anchor for my work and I will not forget that.
And that was # three.
During the meditation practice after breakfast I had a whole series of realizations.
When Jimmy and I arrived last night and sat down in the old dining hall for dinner, I was aware how I observe people I don't know. The two women across the table were talking and talking and didn't look at us at all. Now, I am almost embarrassed to write this down, but this is what I paid attention to: I noticed the jewelery they wore, both more than me: rings with many sparkling stones, a watch, and yes, that could have been an expensive watch, the hair: well combed and cared for with fashionable sunglasses pulled up over the forehead on one while the other hair was rather fluffy and out of bounds, the gestures and body language of the first: relaxed and selfassured.
I wasn't naming those observations to myself, I just took them in and a little later I noticed that I was reminded of watching the really cool girls one grade above me during the break at school - from a distance. And I thought: This is really an old habit that creeps in here.
So, this morning during meditation I thought back to this experience at dinner and all of a sudden it became very clear and I saw what I have been doing for most of my life. I am evaluating people. In this old way of looking at a fellow human being, I try to read whether this person is wealthy, powerful or influential, valued by others, educated maybe, creative or interesting looking, and... here comes the conclusion: I am doing this, because I want to find out whether this person ranks above or below me... if this is someone who has something I don't have, something to GIVE to me... or if it is someone who has nothing much to offer.
And the following confession is embarrassing too. Next I realized that I have played a game over and over again, a game in which I will pick a person somewhere above me and make it my goal to be recognized by this person, in fact I don't rest until I have worked my way up so that in the end I am able to give something to this person, all the while I dream of being someone important to them. And I don't always succeed. Wow. THAT'S what I have done?? Yep. I think so. More than once.
What if I could meet another human being without all this old crap? Just free. Just in complete welcome. Seeing the perfection of this meeting. No matter who. NO MATTER WHO.
That was # one.
Next I thought that it would be really nice to speak with Jimmy about our intention for this retreat. To massage some juice into a really good experience. What am I hoping for is not only to learn something about meditation, but also... to meet people, people we might both have some synchronicities with, some interesting and inspiring conversations with, maybe even people who will end up leading me further in my life. And then I stopped myself and thought: Ho, wait a minute! WHAT am I doing here? Am I not setting myself up with a whole set of best, ok and disappointing results from this retreat? Am I giving myself a goal here? Isn't that what I did with my cysts? And wasn't I totally turned upside down? Yes. So why don't I absolutely let go of that? Why don't I just leave it up to life to give me what I need. And I wont care if I don't meet a single new person.
That was # two.
And finally, just before Mingyur Rinpoche came in for the first teaching of the day, I had another realization. About my work, my private practice. All of a sudden I understood something about why the first years have felt like such a struggle. It goes back to the question of giving. While it looks like I showed up with something to give to my clients, I really started from a place to needing them to need me. It actually feels like my need to be needed was bigger than my ability to give... of course that creates a mixed up energy! How would it have been if I had been able to give my work with pure generosity from the very beginning... with pure compassion? Doesn't really matter now, does it. What matters is that I now see the difference. It's not that I had a hard time interacting from that place once someone sat down with me in my living room. That was easy. I am talking about the process of attracting clients. Generosity and compassion, It feels like those could be a true anchor for my work and I will not forget that.
And that was # three.
Listening to my Body again
Friday, June 26th
It is our first morning at the Garrison Institute, the first morning of our meditation retreat.
I am looking out the window onto a small strip of the Hudson river framed by massive oaks and maples. Green everywhere. Morning fog still hangs in the branches. It's going to be a hot day today. We are on the third floor of the building, it's an old Capuchin monastery, a grand old stone structure built in the 1930s, with tall ceilings, bone white walls, and dark wood everywhere except for the blond parquet floors. The vegetarian food last night was delicious.
Last night we also had our first opening teaching with Mingyur Rinpoche. More than before it struck me how funny he is. What a sense of humor!
This morning we had a choice between an hour of meditation practice and an hour of unsupervised yoga... from 7:00am to 8:00am
I took a short bath in the lovely hot tub and then went to yoga.
When I did my postures, I couldn't fail to notice how much stiffer I am. No regular practice since last winter, clearly, and I noticed how I wanted to stretch to reach my old marks, and then I thought: No, I want to listen to my body, I want to find the point that feels absolutely delicious, the point where my body says: this is where you are right now, right at this moment in your life, and this is perfect. And then I thought: I should do this practice as if I have never done yoga before, as if there is no past. Oh, of course: no past!! Isn't that how we would live, when we have left all of the old baggage behind? Without a past?
Reaching for a standard instead of listening to my body. To reach for an outside standard by comparing myself to another person or following an instruction is one thing, and I have been letting go of that for a long while now, but today I noticed that the standard and measurement I put up for myself from within my own body, from my own memory... is yet another matter, and just as destructive.
So I think I want to do this yoga practice now as if I had just been born and I am exploring and experiencing this body for the very first time.
It is our first morning at the Garrison Institute, the first morning of our meditation retreat.
I am looking out the window onto a small strip of the Hudson river framed by massive oaks and maples. Green everywhere. Morning fog still hangs in the branches. It's going to be a hot day today. We are on the third floor of the building, it's an old Capuchin monastery, a grand old stone structure built in the 1930s, with tall ceilings, bone white walls, and dark wood everywhere except for the blond parquet floors. The vegetarian food last night was delicious.
Last night we also had our first opening teaching with Mingyur Rinpoche. More than before it struck me how funny he is. What a sense of humor!
This morning we had a choice between an hour of meditation practice and an hour of unsupervised yoga... from 7:00am to 8:00am
I took a short bath in the lovely hot tub and then went to yoga.
When I did my postures, I couldn't fail to notice how much stiffer I am. No regular practice since last winter, clearly, and I noticed how I wanted to stretch to reach my old marks, and then I thought: No, I want to listen to my body, I want to find the point that feels absolutely delicious, the point where my body says: this is where you are right now, right at this moment in your life, and this is perfect. And then I thought: I should do this practice as if I have never done yoga before, as if there is no past. Oh, of course: no past!! Isn't that how we would live, when we have left all of the old baggage behind? Without a past?
Reaching for a standard instead of listening to my body. To reach for an outside standard by comparing myself to another person or following an instruction is one thing, and I have been letting go of that for a long while now, but today I noticed that the standard and measurement I put up for myself from within my own body, from my own memory... is yet another matter, and just as destructive.
So I think I want to do this yoga practice now as if I had just been born and I am exploring and experiencing this body for the very first time.
Leaving an old Duality behind
Monday, June 22nd
One of my big experiences during this weekend was a vow process that we exchanged very much at the beginning, on Saturday. The plan was to remove any beliefs or limiting vows that keep us all from being successful in our business. I had not really thought much about that... we had just done some guided meditative pieces and some elicitation, but not a lot had come up for me... and as fate had planned it, I was paired up with an older woman, small, with short white hair and tight lips and a slight air of resignation hovering about her, and I remember thinking, oh well, this will probably not bring me a whole lot.
Normally, when you do a vow process you go back to a time earlier in your life when something happened that caused you to make a vow, take on a new belief or when the perception your reality changed ... in a way that was necessary at the time, because it offered a solution to the situation you were in... but now it has become unwholesome, unhealthy, or unnecessary for your life.
Now, to my surprise, Ann, my partner had also just done a shamanic workshop the weekend before... and when her time machine had landed, she said;" oh, I am back at the akashic records. I am in that very same library I went to last weekend, and there is my book, my record... We ended up shifting an irrational feeling of fear, a fear of exposing herself. A story unfolded that gave us glimpses of experiences when she had be prosecuted and hated by a lot of people. When her life had been in danger or even lost. Possibly all of this goes back to a lifetime when she had been executed for being a witch. When we were done and had cleared out the past, the image in her book had changed from one of a black witch to one of a lovely fairy. This was very unusual! I am mentioning her part mostly, because her process may have set the tone for something more unusual to happen for me too.
So when I started going down the stairs the first thing that was really different were the stairs. In a vow process you only have five steps, and as I got ready to step down the steps, they started expanding, started widening at the bottom and for a moment became something like a grand staircase, and then they kept on expanding until they had created a full circle, so that I was now standing on nothing but a little itty-bitty round spot at the top and steps were leading down all around me, so that there was no coming from or going toward, other than a going deeper and wider in all directions. Very unusual, something I had never seen before.
I had two mentors a male and a female... and our time shuttle was a human size version of these little cylinders that transport messages through little air tubes... where you put a little capsule in it and then: puff!! it gets shot into another part of the building. So, my time machine was a large cylinder, big enough for us to step into, and ready to shoot us to wherever we needed to go. And when we pressed the button to take us to a vow or a belief that was in the way for me building my business, I felt this capsule shoot us up into the sky and circling the earth and within moments we had zoomed around three times, with incredible speed obviously... faster than a rocket... and after three round trips it came straight down, voomm!! and landed in Egypt.
In Egypt, I arrived at an elevated, rectangular garden that was connected to the palace. It was built, balcony like, raised up from the ground, supported by high walls on three sides... and somewhere beyond the garden to the left was the temple, and the palace itself was over to the right.
Curiously this garden looked almost identical to a place I had seen during a journey with one of my clients in Germany, when she uncovered a time in Egypt where she had been a priestess at the temple. This was the same kind of garden... I though this was peculiar, almost as if I had landed in someone else's story. Didn't quite know what to do with that. My mentors had no information for me... they were just standing by my side on the gravel path, next to the lush flowers... I could bring the image of my client as a priestess and her soul mate into the picture... they could be there... or they could not be there... and it didn't really make a difference. Strange!
Then there was this slight pull into the palace and I wondered whether this journey had to do with the lifetime when I had been a member of the royal family and I had committed all these atrocious cruelties against the Jewish people. But none of that really showed up, it only hung there as a question, but didn't materialize as an image or an emotion. So, I kept wandering through the palace for a while and kept asking: ...what is this about? ... what is going on here? The first thing I finally heard was that it was about a duality of power... and I thought maybe it was about the duality of the religious or spiritual power on one side, and the power of the palace on the other, maybe there was a separation, or a conflict, or a competition of power... but no response on that... so we kept moving... and before long we wandered into the cellars of the castle, following a certain pull to go deeper. The castle was carried by many columns that were all black... The foundation of power? Again I wasn't sure what that meant... and before I could get an answer, we started sinking into the ground, and I let it happen. We sank deeper and deeper and finally arrived... in another time zone... an archaic or stone age time of human existence.
Here I felt myself to be male and I felt myself holding a big club and sensed that this was a moment of discovery, a discovery of a new, physical power through the use of the club. I could feel the surge and the excitement of that new power rushing through my body.... the exhilaration and the expansion of my life force and my territory. Here was the root of the duality: this club, this physical power, was being used against someone or something: against animals to be eaten, or against enemies to be killed or injured or threatened... and I could feel the imprint that this power came with. This power was made up of two parts: while something was gained for me, something was always lost for someone else.
I understood that it was time to remove this duality from my being. I sensed that it might have been this very duality that has kept me from using my power, because in this lifetime I don't want to use it against anything any longer, but up until now I hadn't been able to separate the power for something from the against something. I sensed I must have been brought here to remove the paradigm of this duality from my consciousness, or from my vibration, or my identity... hard to put into words. The image that represented the old energy was one of a large root growing inside my whole body. A root with two strands that separated at the end and reached down into my legs, one side white, one side black. Somehow I knew this old duality would be removed by pulling this root out of my body... and indeed, my two mentors took care of that, and as they did, I felt an an unexpected wash of emotion, of sadness, of pain, of old stories, of suffering, and suffering, and more suffering... so much suffering had been held in that duality of power being linked to gain and loss. Took a long time until this root was all out, almost as if it was extending as it was being pulled... stretching the ends of the root longer and longer, a stickyness, a sucking that pulled out all these old emotions with it... quite an experience... When it was done, and it was time to replace the old with something new. But what? There was no answer from my mentors, no words, no image... but after a while I became aware of the presence of a sound. A sound both audible and then also visible... that washed through everything... almost dissolving the boundary between me and everything on the outside. Melting away the separation, and what remained here and there was as thin as a membrane. This was the sound of oneness. Oneness in a sound... quite indescribable.
And that was the conclusion to the vow process.
The future integration was interesting, I could feel a spaciousness the next day.
A week into the future I knew I would be sitting in the middle of a Buddhist meditation retreat Jimmy and I had registered for, and I could feel experiencing the oneness in that environment, it felt almost as if I could slip into the experience of the teacher there, and the expansiveness of that state was quite exhilarating. The retreat appeared like a playground to experience this oneness in, in interactions with other people, in the experience of meditating, of doing yoga, or of eating.
Interestingly Anne skipped over the one month time line and went straight to asking me to step into the future six months from now... and that felt sooo far away... it was so different, it was almost as if my brain couldn't compute what it would be like, and instead just slipped back into what it had always been. Initially that was a bit confusing and then I understood it as a range of possibilities. Again, I kept asking: What IS going on in six months? ...close to Christmas, what IS life going to feel like? And it seemed the answer was: there is a very big range of possibility at that time, depending on my choice, depending on how I choose to use this oneness in my life. It could not have a big impact, it could not create a big difference, if I didn't chose to use it all that much... and life could slip back into something very similar as it has been in the past. But I could also use it a lot, and the endpoint of that was almost not visible... if that makes sense.
When Ann asked me in the second, one week integration : Did you integrate it? In that moment, that was a odd question, because it didn't feel like a ME was integrating anything, it felt like a ME was not there so much. A ME was falling away. It was not something that was added to a ME but something that I was blending into. At six months I couldn't even make that out any more.
Very curious to experience this unfolding. Much mystery ahead.
One of my big experiences during this weekend was a vow process that we exchanged very much at the beginning, on Saturday. The plan was to remove any beliefs or limiting vows that keep us all from being successful in our business. I had not really thought much about that... we had just done some guided meditative pieces and some elicitation, but not a lot had come up for me... and as fate had planned it, I was paired up with an older woman, small, with short white hair and tight lips and a slight air of resignation hovering about her, and I remember thinking, oh well, this will probably not bring me a whole lot.
Normally, when you do a vow process you go back to a time earlier in your life when something happened that caused you to make a vow, take on a new belief or when the perception your reality changed ... in a way that was necessary at the time, because it offered a solution to the situation you were in... but now it has become unwholesome, unhealthy, or unnecessary for your life.
Now, to my surprise, Ann, my partner had also just done a shamanic workshop the weekend before... and when her time machine had landed, she said;" oh, I am back at the akashic records. I am in that very same library I went to last weekend, and there is my book, my record... We ended up shifting an irrational feeling of fear, a fear of exposing herself. A story unfolded that gave us glimpses of experiences when she had be prosecuted and hated by a lot of people. When her life had been in danger or even lost. Possibly all of this goes back to a lifetime when she had been executed for being a witch. When we were done and had cleared out the past, the image in her book had changed from one of a black witch to one of a lovely fairy. This was very unusual! I am mentioning her part mostly, because her process may have set the tone for something more unusual to happen for me too.
So when I started going down the stairs the first thing that was really different were the stairs. In a vow process you only have five steps, and as I got ready to step down the steps, they started expanding, started widening at the bottom and for a moment became something like a grand staircase, and then they kept on expanding until they had created a full circle, so that I was now standing on nothing but a little itty-bitty round spot at the top and steps were leading down all around me, so that there was no coming from or going toward, other than a going deeper and wider in all directions. Very unusual, something I had never seen before.
I had two mentors a male and a female... and our time shuttle was a human size version of these little cylinders that transport messages through little air tubes... where you put a little capsule in it and then: puff!! it gets shot into another part of the building. So, my time machine was a large cylinder, big enough for us to step into, and ready to shoot us to wherever we needed to go. And when we pressed the button to take us to a vow or a belief that was in the way for me building my business, I felt this capsule shoot us up into the sky and circling the earth and within moments we had zoomed around three times, with incredible speed obviously... faster than a rocket... and after three round trips it came straight down, voomm!! and landed in Egypt.
In Egypt, I arrived at an elevated, rectangular garden that was connected to the palace. It was built, balcony like, raised up from the ground, supported by high walls on three sides... and somewhere beyond the garden to the left was the temple, and the palace itself was over to the right.
Curiously this garden looked almost identical to a place I had seen during a journey with one of my clients in Germany, when she uncovered a time in Egypt where she had been a priestess at the temple. This was the same kind of garden... I though this was peculiar, almost as if I had landed in someone else's story. Didn't quite know what to do with that. My mentors had no information for me... they were just standing by my side on the gravel path, next to the lush flowers... I could bring the image of my client as a priestess and her soul mate into the picture... they could be there... or they could not be there... and it didn't really make a difference. Strange!
Then there was this slight pull into the palace and I wondered whether this journey had to do with the lifetime when I had been a member of the royal family and I had committed all these atrocious cruelties against the Jewish people. But none of that really showed up, it only hung there as a question, but didn't materialize as an image or an emotion. So, I kept wandering through the palace for a while and kept asking: ...what is this about? ... what is going on here? The first thing I finally heard was that it was about a duality of power... and I thought maybe it was about the duality of the religious or spiritual power on one side, and the power of the palace on the other, maybe there was a separation, or a conflict, or a competition of power... but no response on that... so we kept moving... and before long we wandered into the cellars of the castle, following a certain pull to go deeper. The castle was carried by many columns that were all black... The foundation of power? Again I wasn't sure what that meant... and before I could get an answer, we started sinking into the ground, and I let it happen. We sank deeper and deeper and finally arrived... in another time zone... an archaic or stone age time of human existence.
Here I felt myself to be male and I felt myself holding a big club and sensed that this was a moment of discovery, a discovery of a new, physical power through the use of the club. I could feel the surge and the excitement of that new power rushing through my body.... the exhilaration and the expansion of my life force and my territory. Here was the root of the duality: this club, this physical power, was being used against someone or something: against animals to be eaten, or against enemies to be killed or injured or threatened... and I could feel the imprint that this power came with. This power was made up of two parts: while something was gained for me, something was always lost for someone else.
I understood that it was time to remove this duality from my being. I sensed that it might have been this very duality that has kept me from using my power, because in this lifetime I don't want to use it against anything any longer, but up until now I hadn't been able to separate the power for something from the against something. I sensed I must have been brought here to remove the paradigm of this duality from my consciousness, or from my vibration, or my identity... hard to put into words. The image that represented the old energy was one of a large root growing inside my whole body. A root with two strands that separated at the end and reached down into my legs, one side white, one side black. Somehow I knew this old duality would be removed by pulling this root out of my body... and indeed, my two mentors took care of that, and as they did, I felt an an unexpected wash of emotion, of sadness, of pain, of old stories, of suffering, and suffering, and more suffering... so much suffering had been held in that duality of power being linked to gain and loss. Took a long time until this root was all out, almost as if it was extending as it was being pulled... stretching the ends of the root longer and longer, a stickyness, a sucking that pulled out all these old emotions with it... quite an experience... When it was done, and it was time to replace the old with something new. But what? There was no answer from my mentors, no words, no image... but after a while I became aware of the presence of a sound. A sound both audible and then also visible... that washed through everything... almost dissolving the boundary between me and everything on the outside. Melting away the separation, and what remained here and there was as thin as a membrane. This was the sound of oneness. Oneness in a sound... quite indescribable.
And that was the conclusion to the vow process.
The future integration was interesting, I could feel a spaciousness the next day.
A week into the future I knew I would be sitting in the middle of a Buddhist meditation retreat Jimmy and I had registered for, and I could feel experiencing the oneness in that environment, it felt almost as if I could slip into the experience of the teacher there, and the expansiveness of that state was quite exhilarating. The retreat appeared like a playground to experience this oneness in, in interactions with other people, in the experience of meditating, of doing yoga, or of eating.
Interestingly Anne skipped over the one month time line and went straight to asking me to step into the future six months from now... and that felt sooo far away... it was so different, it was almost as if my brain couldn't compute what it would be like, and instead just slipped back into what it had always been. Initially that was a bit confusing and then I understood it as a range of possibilities. Again, I kept asking: What IS going on in six months? ...close to Christmas, what IS life going to feel like? And it seemed the answer was: there is a very big range of possibility at that time, depending on my choice, depending on how I choose to use this oneness in my life. It could not have a big impact, it could not create a big difference, if I didn't chose to use it all that much... and life could slip back into something very similar as it has been in the past. But I could also use it a lot, and the endpoint of that was almost not visible... if that makes sense.
When Ann asked me in the second, one week integration : Did you integrate it? In that moment, that was a odd question, because it didn't feel like a ME was integrating anything, it felt like a ME was not there so much. A ME was falling away. It was not something that was added to a ME but something that I was blending into. At six months I couldn't even make that out any more.
Very curious to experience this unfolding. Much mystery ahead.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Driving Home from Ottawa
Monday, June 22nd
A rich and full weekend is behind me.
What a privilege to stay with too highly successful Journey practitioners, Don and Marie-Sylvie, both psychotherapists who have both adopted the Journeywork into their practice.
Marie Sylvie didn't take part in our NAJPA weekend, because she was participating in a shaman training, a healing practice she was speaking about with highest praise. She had also just returned from a Journey event for a native American Indian tribe further north in Canada. A community that has an extraordinarily high suicide rate, where sexual abuse among children and teenagers is at a rampant 90%, and alcoholism has dissolved much of the foundation of the social fabric. They had a translator there who had to translate the work into "inu", their native language. It was a four day workshop, held for the entire tribe. The chief who had asked for the Journeywork to be introduced to his people had also just before banned all alcohol from coming into the community, so the upheaval was enormous and the anger was palpable, but in the end the transformation, the way she described it, was stunning.
It was an inspiration and a gift to experience this weekend from the vantage point of their lives... and to see such a different approach to working with clients, as they have pretty much maintained their schedule of one hour sessions and don't often go beyond that. The most they will schedule is a two hour session with a client. So there is not that long intensity of a process that tries to clean up everything that presents itself at once, but there is a more gradual, a more continuous and a more ongoing rhythm to the work... and that seems to serve their clients more than these big "all packed up in one" processes that take a long time to digest and have less of a continuity. Bob Levy, who presented at the weekend has the same approach. He sees clients for short amounts of time and his practice is overflowing. He is also a very gifted speaker and he gives a lot of intro talks. That's how he attracted all the people into his practice. He only completed the accreditation two years ago and he has already become a new presenter for the Journey Intensive Weekends. I understand why they picked him. His example is so very inspiring - very different, but very inspiring. I will have to restructure the way I do my work from the ground up, redefine my whole approach, including my follow up system, and my intake with people. Hmm, a lot to think about, a lot to digest, a lot of inspiration.
A rich and full weekend is behind me.
What a privilege to stay with too highly successful Journey practitioners, Don and Marie-Sylvie, both psychotherapists who have both adopted the Journeywork into their practice.
Marie Sylvie didn't take part in our NAJPA weekend, because she was participating in a shaman training, a healing practice she was speaking about with highest praise. She had also just returned from a Journey event for a native American Indian tribe further north in Canada. A community that has an extraordinarily high suicide rate, where sexual abuse among children and teenagers is at a rampant 90%, and alcoholism has dissolved much of the foundation of the social fabric. They had a translator there who had to translate the work into "inu", their native language. It was a four day workshop, held for the entire tribe. The chief who had asked for the Journeywork to be introduced to his people had also just before banned all alcohol from coming into the community, so the upheaval was enormous and the anger was palpable, but in the end the transformation, the way she described it, was stunning.
It was an inspiration and a gift to experience this weekend from the vantage point of their lives... and to see such a different approach to working with clients, as they have pretty much maintained their schedule of one hour sessions and don't often go beyond that. The most they will schedule is a two hour session with a client. So there is not that long intensity of a process that tries to clean up everything that presents itself at once, but there is a more gradual, a more continuous and a more ongoing rhythm to the work... and that seems to serve their clients more than these big "all packed up in one" processes that take a long time to digest and have less of a continuity. Bob Levy, who presented at the weekend has the same approach. He sees clients for short amounts of time and his practice is overflowing. He is also a very gifted speaker and he gives a lot of intro talks. That's how he attracted all the people into his practice. He only completed the accreditation two years ago and he has already become a new presenter for the Journey Intensive Weekends. I understand why they picked him. His example is so very inspiring - very different, but very inspiring. I will have to restructure the way I do my work from the ground up, redefine my whole approach, including my follow up system, and my intake with people. Hmm, a lot to think about, a lot to digest, a lot of inspiration.
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