Reflecting on a day almost done

I had a wonderful morning mediation today. The house was quiet and I didn't have to rush off anywhere later. The timer went off at the stipulated time, but I just sat there for another 10 minutes or so because I could. Funny thing, after the timer went off I dropped in much deeper. It was as if I had retreated to spot far within and looked at the world not through my eyes, but through my body. I quite enjoyed it. Maybe I have to increase my sitting time by 10 minutes. I hope I can get to the point that I drop that deep in quicker, instead.

I was put in a great mood for doing chores and all that necessary stuff. After a long, lazy breakfast, I went looking for a better meditation timer. No luck. This isn't something the stores carry around here. Looks like I have to get one online.

When I had done my writing today, I had no Internet connection and couldn't post. That was dissapointing because I also wanted to test a cgi script to see if I could use it for the site. I think that will have to wait. But no matter, I had a nice quiet day. Next up is a cup of coffee and a movie.
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Self-referral - A Quality of Pure Consciousness

"A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower."

Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930)


Self-referral is one of the Qualities of Pure Consciousness. I have found the concept of self-referral useful in understanding myself a little better and to assist with sorting out the useful from not so useful perceptions about why I am feeling this way or that.

Self-referral is very personal. It hits most of us where we live: We know this one and can relate to it because the explanation doesn't become as esoteric as for some of the other Qualities of Pure Consciousness. So here goes.

Consider the bee in the quotation. The bee simply expresses its bee-ness. It is what it is. It does not try to be anything but itself unlike so many us humans who are forever chasing some holy grail outside of ourselves. This condition is known as object-referral: the predilection for defining our happiness and well-being by our possession of some external object. This is what's embedded in the old saying about "Keeping up with the Jones’".

The opposite of object referral is self-referral. This means to let your own innate feelings and desires drive your sentiment. (I’m not talking about sociopaths here, because their non-caring is driven by an absence of feeling or sentiment altogether.) Have you heard about or seen references to soemting called Your Authentic Self? Well, here it is again. Having a self-referring orientation means you are listing to your authentic self; the real you, the you that is expressed from deep within.

The world is full of people who like nothing better than to tell you or I what to do, think and say. They do this because it serves their needs somehow. As we grow up, we hear these demands and opinions over and over again. Many of these demands and opinions are coming from people with an object-referral orientation. Most advertising certainly reflects an object-referral mentality. Buy this and you'll be happy!

For example, an object-referring person may buy a car because of its function as a status symbol. This is like saying to the world: look at my car it shows you I am successful.

A person with a self-referral orientation will make decision based on what is important to him or her. Such a person will buy a car when the old one no longer serves its purpose or the purpose has changed. This is like saying to the world: Don't look at the car to understand me, look at me.

Our world now has about 6.3 billion people and the number keeps growing. This means that object-referral leaves you at the mercy of 6.3 billion opinions. How can you possibly win?

Self-referral leaves you with one: yours. How can you possibly lose?  ⊕

Integrating - A quality of Pure Conscousness

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)"

The thought of the day is Integrating, a Quality of Pure Consciousness. To integrate means to make something into a whole by bringing all parts together. If we are ready to accept that Pure Consciousness is "everything", then this makes sense.

Becoming one with the All means integrating with everything else.

The obvious question is: How do we accomplish that? How can anyone become One With The All? Has anyone ever done that?

The prescription repeated over and over again in all the sources I have seen so far is meditation. Meditation is a cornerstone for a personal spiritual practice.

As for the other question, has anyone done it, the answer is yes. Such people often become known as saints, yogis, gurus or holy men and women.

Here in the West we don't pay a lot of attention to this phenomenon and often refuse to believe that it can happen.

While objective proof in the traditional Western scientific tradition may be hard to produce, there are documented examples of Asian monks who died sitting in meditation. Some of these bodies have been gilded and placed at altars in their respective monasteries.

Down through the ages there have been innumerable references to the astounding feats of people in advanced stages of self-realization. We can take heart from these examples because they show it can be done, even today. That is not to say it is easy, but it brings hope.
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Bliss - A Quality of Pure Consciousness

"Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss."

Alexandre Dumas, (1802-1870)


So what is it today? Despair or Bliss? Well, I don't think despair is a Quality of Pure Consciousness, do you? So Bliss, then. Do you feel you live in a world of bliss? I think I have felt sort of blissful on occasion, but the world is not on average a blissful place in my opinion. There is too much suffering.

Did you know that the goal of Buddhism and practicing Buddhists is to end suffering? Their own and that of others? That's a nice goal, I like it. But let us try to understand waht Bliss might be, before we try change the world.

The mind is a concentration of the Pure Consciousness itself. For that reason, it can never become still in the true sense of the word. The mind can never be stopped because you cannot stop the Pure Consciousness, that is impossible.

All is not lost, however. It is not the mind itself that tortures us. The real culprits are what Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras called vrittis. The vrittis, or modifications of mind, give rise to waves of thoughts and feelings. These agitate the mind and throw us for loops.

Unhappiness is a product of all these thoughts and feelings that bounce around within us. If we can still the modifications of mind, we can reduce or even eliminate these non-productive waves of thoughts and feelings. This is called going beyond thought and in this state is found bliss.

Bliss is a thoughtless state, a state of joy reached through meditation by turning the mind inward on the Self. When the mind becomes one with the Self it accesses the Pure Consciousness. No wonder, then, that one would feel blissful and joyful.

This doesn't sound that bad if you say it fast. In practice, it takes a tremendous amount of patience and dedication to reach this high state of personal development.

Maybe it's not too late if we start now.  ⊕

End of a beginning

"This is not the end.
This is not even the beginning of the end.
But it may be the end of the beginning"

Winston Churchill.
Speach on D-Day: the invasion of Normandy 1945.


I feel an end of a beginning in my own small way. This morning is another step forward on my path of preparation for the March Healing Touch Level 4 course in Banff. I am back on a morning meditation schedule and enjoying it quite a lot; it's easier to put mind over mattress than I had feared. At lunch time yesterday I went to the gym. It felt good although gym type exercises are pretty boring. I can't help it; I can't see much fun in it even if it is good for me. A bit stiff here and there this morning, but not too bad. I paced myself properly.

Last night I went to a Healing Touch practice session here in Calgary. I phoned the person organizing it to make sure it was on. I ended up getting a ride out there which was great because the session is across town and I don't have the use of our car on Tuesdays. My daughter has late classes at the college.

This particular practice group works in Ogden United Church. So you see that notwithstanding my gripe yesterday, I am happy to be with good people wherever they are, including churches. A church is a sacred place; you can feel it as soon as you step inside one.

The room we used is used as a day care facility for kids. We felt like giants with all the miniature furniture in there. It is a bright and cheerful place to practice, I liked it.

I hadn't been on the table for a while so it felt great and did some important shifting and clearing, some of it quit deep. I got a full body technique with back work. The pendulum pre-assessment showed some partially blocked charkas and spine, but all of that cleared up nicely with the treatment.

I had been bothered by a pain behind my shoulder blade all afternoon from something I did in the gym at lunch time. After the session it was completely gone and I don't feel anything untoward in that area this morning either. To return the favour, I did a spiral meditation and some back work on my partner for the evening.

On the way home I learnt more about the Healing Touch community. They are very active and have accomplished a lot over the years. I am thinking I should get more involved now that I am not traveling so much in my day job.
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Running with Monks

I thought I'd make a comment or two about why I seem to be quoting mostly Oriental and Buddhist works. It's not because I don't believe other philosophies or religions are deficient. It is purely a personal choice: I use reference material that speaks to me. Let me clarify.

I grew up in Norway where the Lutheran Protestant church rules supremely to the tune of 98% of the country. Not that everyone were so all-fired religious or zealous. The majority goes to church for baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, Christmas and occasions like that. Religion was a compulsory subject in school from grade 1 through high school with only a few exceptions. My high school program was one of these exceptions so I got off easy with only 9 years of religion classes.

The way religion was thought was mind numbingly boring. Being Lutheran Protestant, it was 99% New Testament over and over again, year in and year out plus a little bit of history. We also had to memorize hymns. No discussion was ever tolerated. It was strictly sit down, shut up and listen to the WAY IT REALLY IS.

We tried to push back a little harder in grades 8 and 9, but the teachers just shot back at us that unless we had read the Bible thoroughly we had no business arguing. Wrong answer to 15-16 year olds.

The biggest disconnect for me had already happened when I was 14. Like most of my friends, I went for confirmation. This used to be a big deal in prior times. Kids would complete grade 7, go for confirmation and then enter the work force. These days confirmation is more or less a vestigial practice. There's also a party and gifts. That last part was, truth be told, the kicker for most of us.

Confirmation is otherwise a ceremony where you confirm the vows made on your behalf by your parents and guardians at your baptismal. Prior to the actual ceremony, I had to take a course at the church. I forget now how long it was; seemed like it went on forever at the time.

On one memorable occasion, the teacher of the course showed a film of people in Japan making offerings to Shinto shrines. The object of the exercise was evidently to show us the foolishness of heathens. The main thesis being that with so many people going hungry in the world it is absurd and wasteful to offer rice to a statue.

I found this to be an extremely arrogant, bigoted attitude and quite contrary to any notion about forgiveness being a Christian attribute. So I spoke up. Mistake: The reaction was swift and relentless. In no uncertain terms was I told to just shut up and not question the teachings of the Lord and the church and the teacher and my betters.

That was in essence the general mantra for anything to do with religion all through school. Shut up and don't question anything. Don't question the priest. Don't question anything in the scriptures. Just shut up, shut up, shut up. So I did, and more.

I complete tuned out anything to do with Western religion, period. I have met a number of clergymen over the years and had great respect for some of them. It's just that fools and bigots flock to any banner, so I suppose I should not be surprised that some of these found their way in the Lutheran Protestant church.

What is more remarkable is how devastatingly successful the church was in hiding anything even remotely hinting our need as human beings for a spiritual life and what it would be like if you got one that worked.

The upshot is that I have to come at this from my own angle. And I have found a door that is open to me. Let me give you an example of a totally different approach, one that I like a whole lot better.

I have visited the Avatamsaka Sagely Monastery here in Calgary a few times to attend lectures. The place is a breath of fresh air with a palpably clean and pure an energy. I feel it as soon as I step over the threshold.

The people there are very friendly and I have found Buddhism to be very open and accepting. Everybody is invited to join in whatever ceremony is in progress. So one time I did and got a surprise. I had no real idea what was going on because the ritual was spoken in Chinese. But I got a few hints to help me along and everything was fine for a while.

Suddenly everybody got up and started walking in a line after the head monk. Someone whispered to me that I could follow along, but to make sure and be quick about it. Well in for a penny, in for a pound and all that. So I got up and took last place while one of the monks tapped a beat on a drum, rang bells and intoned sacred words.

The procession moved quite fast round the monastery. And I mean quite fast. To the point where many people had trouble keeping up. You had to see this to appreciate it. It was a hilarious spectacle.

Picture this: a tall stately monk in his yellow gear walking briskly with long determined strides followed by a dozen or so short, mature oriental ladies, a couple of giddy pre-teen girls and bringing up the rear, a 6'2" yours truly.

I could match the monks stride and then some, but not so the others. Gaps grew in the line, big ones. Coming around the back of the hall behind a partition, it was catch-up time. Suddenly everybody in front of me took off on a flat-out run to close the gaps in the line - robes flapping and flip-flops flopping, girls giggling and yours truly marveling.

Apparently that was entirely OK and it became a pattern: Good formation up and around the altar, seriously loosing it on the far stretch and a mad scramble to close ranks behind the columns in the back. And then we started again. This went on for quite some time. Perhaps not so very dignified looking an approach, but very human and down to earth all the same. I had tears in my eyes from suppressed laughter. I came away joyful.

You know, I'll take that approach any day over the ossified Lutheran approach of my Norwegian childhood.

I realize that my childhood experience has very little to do with the deeper truths of the Lutheran Protestant church as such, of course. It just closed some doors; moved some signposts so to speak.

I don’t think of my self as Buddhist or any other kind of ‘ist’. My way is simply my way. You have your way and I have absolutely no problem with that.

I am convinced that at the roots of all the great religions are found the same fundamental messages to all mankind. What matters is not what banner we flock to, but how we practice what we are taught.

I just hope that if we ever meet, we can put aside our ideological baggage and discuss freely and openly the things that really matter: peace, love and respect and how to reach enlightenment.
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Postscript to Freedom

I realized something this morning: I forgot an important insight in the discussion about Freedom, one of the Qualities of Pure Consciousness. Freedom in this context refers so obviously to freedom from suffering. I don’t know how I could have missed that the first time around.

Says the Dhammapada - the Sayings of Buddha: "Driven by fear, men take to many a refuge, in mountains, forests, parks, sacred groves and shrines, but these are not a secure kind of refuge. By taking to this sort of refuge one is not released from suffering."

This is but one example of the prominence of suffering in philosophical or religious thinking. In most religious texts, suffering gets top billing. It makes sense, then, that Freedom should mean absence of suffering.  ⊕

Meditiation is on again

My on-again, off-again personal meditation practice turned on again this morning. It felt very good to just sit quietly for 20 minutes. So good in fact that I think it may be sustainable. That probably sounds silly to some people, but when I wake up I want to do only two things: Die or go back to sleep. First thing in the morning is not exactly "happy hour". The mind-over-mattress struggle is a real event in my life.

The music my wife and I used this morning was Sacred Sounds. It doesn’t have a clean 20 minute cutoff so we set the timer on the stove. That’s a pretty jarring jolt of reality to pull us back to the world. We agreed we have to find something gentler! I also have to remember to put the dog out first so she doesn’t interrupt us. We got away with it today. Not putting her out until after, I mean.

Funny how so many practical details can clutter up an otherwise simple activity, isn't it. Say I'm not the only one with this problem.  ⊕

Medicinal Secrets of Hot Peppers Featured on New Website

A press release touts the Medicinal Secrets of Hot Peppers. This was a new one on me, but it stands to reason that food is good for you allthough my stomach gets upset if I have too much hot stuff. I have not tried the products discussed in the press release, though.

My personal take on this is that body type matters. Some things work for some people and not for others. I like Ayurveda's approach with the tri-dosha system. Dosha means body-type and the idea is that your body type determines what will be most effective for you, be it for weight loss or general healing. This is not a complicated system, in fact it's quite a bit simpler that the traditional Chinese system which identifies five main body types.

In traditional Western medicine we ignore anything to do with body types all together. That's a shame, and the main reason there is such a crying need for complementary healing alternatives.  ⊕

A beautiful day, a beautiful idea

It's a beautiful wintery day here in Calgary today. Not too cold (compared to the -30C we've been having this last week) and sunny with a few inches of fresh snow over night. The whole world sparkles. I think I will take the dog for a walk in the park later. She hasn't been wanting to go outside for very long what with the weather we've been having. With the windchill factor, we hit -47C one day. Made for a very fast round trip in the back yard for a little dog, I tell you.

I am working on a new project. Still trying to straighten out my own thinking, set priorities and figure out how to get it done. It's not something I can do in a day or even on my own. I have been incubating the idea for a long time. Maybe now is the time for it to hatch. I think I have to spend the day focusing on this and let the next Quality of Pure Consciousness rest for a day.

Here's where I'm staring out:

The Dhammapada: The Sayings of Buddha opens like this:

"We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakeable."

The key question is this: How do you get to the point where you Speak and Act with at Pure Mind? I am interested in this from a very personal standpoint. I want to build a daily routine for myself to support me as a move along on my own personal healing voyage.

I am aware that I am hardly the first person to wonder about this and that there are probably many, many prescriptions. But what are they, I don't even know that. Besides, I am looking for something that will work for me to integrate mind, body and spirit. I am wondering if I need something with a few guiding principles that forms a coherent context for thinking about the kind of personal growth we're talking about here.

I want to address desires, intentions, prayers, affirmations, meditation, nutrition and physial exercises. I want to build a flexible daily routine that naturally incorporates these elements so that the personal practice becomes a pattern of daily habits. Only then will this become sustainable and not a chore. Methinks.

Did I forget anything? I hope not, I'm getting worried it's' way to much already. I am not looking to do a Ph.D. thesis here, just a very practical, easily followed program that is adaptible to new life circumstances. It's an exiting idea and I aim to have fun with it.  ⊕

Explore the visual history of London

The online London Photo Gallery features photographs of London from the collections of public art galleries and museums. This is a treat for those interested in photography or just plain fascinated by a visual history of how things were and what they became. This time around the focus is on London, England. Wouldn't it be great if more sites like this would become available so we could experience other parts of the world this way?  ⊕