The Transformation of Consciousness

This writing, on how we can respond to the current challenge of massive levels of radiation in our environment, is one of the best articles I have read. It is a stunning and documented affirmation of the truth that ‘everything if for our evolution.’

Thanks to Rama Jyoti Vernon, who wrote it.

 We are now facing more tides of change. The danger of radiation spewing into the environment hovers like an invisible shadow over the survivors in Japan as well as other parts of the world. We do not yet know how the cascading  effects will take shape. A few days ago, the news broadcast that traces of radiation were found in California but it has not since been mentioned. There is usually a tendency to downplay its presence and impact for fear of panic. I have  received calls from Yoga teachers throughout this country who know of my exposure to radiation and depleted uranium in Chernobyl, Kosovo and Afghanistan. They want to know what I have learned about living with radiation after enduring damage to my health and surviving two near death experiences as a result of thisexposure. The greatest piece of knowledge I can share with you I learned from  the Soviets during my eight years working in the former Soviet Union.
 
 Some of my Soviet colleagues were working with the children whose lives were shortened since the fallout of Chernobyl. They built salt rooms that looked like crystal caves for the children to remain in for a specified length of time. They used medicinal herbs indigenous to their region. Yoga was a mainstay for strengthening bones, balancing the endocrine system and raising the blood count 
 on those little beings dying of leukemia. Before Chernobyl, the Russian children had strong bones, strong bodies and thick lustrous hair. After Chernobyl, I wasshocked to see the children with their wispy hair, weak limbs and alarmingly thin weak bodies. Some children would be fortunate to reach the age of 15, diagnosed with illnesses of many names but all traced to the aftermath of Chernobyl.
 

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About five years ago I was at a retreat in the mountains. One night I was sitting beside a young man about 30 years old. I was right in the middle of a very difficult experience, when I heard him softly say ‘Help’.

Immediately a strong sense rose up in me that I was in no position to help anyone. It was one of those moments that you’d like to wriggle right out of, if you could. I sat there, wishing that I was in a more balanced and grounded state, and hoping that I had not really heard what I had heard.

It was very quiet. And then it came again, just a soft voice, out of the darkness: “Help.” I realized there was no getting out of this one. My mind was telling me that I could not do anything for this person beside me. I was not feeling well at all. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there and allowed myself not to know. It was not easy to allow that, even though it was the plain and simple truth of my experience.

And then, right in the same moment that my mind was saying, “I can’t do this,” I felt another kind of energy move me toward him, quite effortlessly.

I leaned over, and asked him what was happening.

He said, “I am very frightened.”

“Let’s breathe for a minute, together,” I said.

“Oh!” he said, “Breathing, what a great idea. I forgot about breathing.”

We breathed, and I allowed myself to become fully present for him, even though I had no idea what was going on. I could feel his fear, his distress, and I felt my own willingness to just be there with him exactly as I was. I could see things start to shift around in his body and mind.

And I was noticing something interesting: the moment I allowed that energy to move me, my entire experience shifted. I felt calm, balanced and present, without any idea of how that had happened.

I continued speaking with this man for quite a while, until he was okay on his own. When I sat down again in silence, I found myself wondering about what had happened. What was that simple, effortless flow of energy that seemed to have an intelligence and power of its own?

After sitting with this question for a while, the answer came to me: “It was the movement of love.” That was surprising. This experience was something quite different from how I usually understand love.

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The Homing Instinct

This writing describes one of the core practices, or fundamental views we will be working with together, in the Mutual Evolution 5 day retreat, July 29-Aug. 3

To find out more about the retreat, or to register: ‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

I was working with a beautiful group of women this spring, exploring what it is to listen and express from the heart. We were opening to the simplicity of just being present for whatever shows up, without any agenda of our own. Of course it’s not so easy to just snap your fingers and make all your egoic agendas vanish, but with a lot of willingness, many of our habitual preoccupations were falling away. 

At one point one of the women said to me, “But we do have agendas.”

“Of course, “ I said, “sometimes agendas are appropriate.”

“Then what to do?” she asked, “Try to get rid of them, one by one?”

“No,” I said, “that kind of practice will only create conflict. What you can do is just keep noticing, not with your mind, but with your whole being- heart, body and breath. Notice how it feels when you have an agenda, an expectation, a demand, and notice how it feels when you don’t.”

After saying that, my own awareness seemed to open to a deeper level. I began to notice in such a simple way how my body feels when I am holding any kind of agenda. There’s a tightness, a hardness, a solidity. When I am simply present, everything softens, expands. Without making any kind of value judgment in the mind, my body simply recognizes the basic sanity of being present. It feels good.

The more I noticed, the more I could feel my deeper being returning to presence, again and again, all by itself. In some spiritual teachings, this natural movement is called ‘the homing instinct.’ (I first heard it expressed this way in ‘The Radiant Mind’ course with Peter Fenner.)

Without a sense of this natural movement inside us, life can be quite bewildering. I was talking to a brilliant young woman in France last week. When I asked her what she wanted, she replied with great candor, “Shayla, that is the most terrifying question of all.” Her response was so genuine that it stayed with me, and I pondered it for days. I realized that the vast majority of the people I work with do not have a clear sense of what they really want. Isn’t that amazing?

There is often a sense of shame or helplessness that comes along with this, as if this not knowing is a sign of something wrong, a flaw or weakness. In my heart I know that this is not true, that there is another way to look at this phenomenon. How could so many people not know what they really want?

For me, this is a sign of how out of touch we are with our authentic being. What we relate to as our self is our conceptual self- the ideas, memories and images we have of who we are. There is really nothing wrong with this, but it has nothing to do with our living experience. If we open to the alive and present sense of who we are, we notice that everything is fluid, and unfixed, even our own identity.  As Bucky Fuller put it, “You are not a noun, you’re a verb.” In Buddhism they refer to it as our mind stream. This stream is who we are, not this solid, separate identity.

What happens when we really allow ourselves to be in touch with this flowing, unfixed experience of ourselves? At first it can be bewildering, disorienting. But after a while, a clarity, a brightness begins to shine. Whenever we stay with our own experience, the natural intelligence within us starts to reveal itself. Insights, flashes of deep wisdom and compassion appear out of nowhere. And we know what it is that we want. We know it in the same simple obvious way that we know we are hungry.

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The Joy of Inquiry

‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ 12 month online course

A few years ago, when the Olympic games were in Athens, I was watching them one night on T.V. The American commentator decided to give us a taste of Athenian life, so he walked down to the main square with the T.V. cameras. It was about 5pm, and the square was just filling up for the evening. There were children skipping rope and playing tag, teenagers on skateboards, mothers with babies in their arms, students drinking coffee, businessmen with newspapers and liqueurs, and old men playing chess. He strolled for a few minutes around the square, taking in the vitality and general friendliness of the scene.

What I noticed was how many people were actively engaged in talking with each other. Not the cursory cell phone kind of conversation we are so used to now, but real dialogue. It intrigued me so much that I lost interest in the games. When they were over, the same commentator went back to the square at one in the morning, “just for fun” he said. “We’ll see who’s left.”

He was astounded to find that the square was still full, and not because of the games. The mothers and young children had gone home, but they had been replaced by people of all ages who were still talking. This was quite unfathomable to the commentator. Finally he approached a white haired Greek patriarch, who stood up to speak with him. “Excuse me sir,” said the American, “could I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course,” the man beamed. “What would you like to know?” He was a remarkably tall and handsome fellow, towering above the American.
“What do you do here all night long?”
“We enjoy each other’s company,” the Greek replied. We laugh, we sing, and we engage in dialogue. We are eager to find out what is in each other’s hearts and minds.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Will you be on time for work in the morning?” the American asked.
“Of course,” the patriarch replied with a huge smile. “But we Greeks have a different understanding of time and work than you North Americans.”

A few years later, I spent some time running a series of conversation cafes in our community. My intention was to bring as much of the community together as possible, and create an environment where they could engage in dialogue. I had been living in India for 25 years, where dialogue and inquiry are like part of the air you breathe. The people in India, like those in Greece, are not afraid to ask what I call ‘the big questions.’ As my teacher there used to say, “Any rickshaw driver will talk to you about God, life and the universe.”

It was when I was facilitating the conversation cafes that I discovered how different it is in North America. In this culture we have never really learned how to ask ourselves and each other the important questions, and how to listen. We leave that to the philosophers, theologians, preachers, scholars, and scientists. One evening, at one of the cafes, I looked around the room and realized how many people there were who did not really know how to begin engaging in dialogue.  I grabbed my friend David Mackenzie, who was my co-facilitator. “David, I said, Help me! Do something so that these people start really talking to each other.”

David really rose to the moment. He stepped into the centre of the room and said, “Okay folks! Stop. We are all on the Titanic, right now. These are the chairs on the deck of that great ship. Smell the ocean air, listen to the sound of the waves. We’re all going down in about 10 minutes. That’s all the time you have left in this world. Now, what do you have to say to your companions on the deck?”

That certainly livened things up a lot. And it became one of the questions I ask people in my Heart of Communication course. Along with “What or who have been the greatest teachers in your life? What is your deepest longing?
What calls forth your greatest aliveness? What is your biggest challenge? What matters most to you? What are you saying Yes and No to in your life? What do you really love? Who are you really?”

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On a recent telecall I responded to a question asked by Barbara, from Argentina, about nondual practice and the ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ online course. She asked me to write down for her what I said in response to her question. Here it is:

Nondual awareness is the unconditioned presence that is right here, not separate from anything. This is the foundation for all of our work in this course. You might have heard that in the space of nondual awareness, the nature of what we call ‘I’ is radically different, or that it doesn’t really exist. When we hear these things, it can feel very confusing or abstract.

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On a recent telecall I responded to a question asked by Barbara, from Argentina, about nondual practice and the ‘Living Inquiry, Endless Surrender’ online course. She asked me to write down for her what I said in response to her question. Here it is:

Nondual awareness is the unconditioned presence that is right here, not separate from anything. This is the foundation for all of our work in this course. You might have heard that in the space of nondual awareness, the nature of what we call ‘I’ is radically different, or that it doesn’t really exist. When we hear these things, it can feel very confusing or abstract.

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When we really open to our natural desire to be at home, at ease, and fully alive, we discover that this is, in fact, our natural state, our true nature.

An effortless presence that shines in the middle of everything, even deep sorrow, rage and despair.

Coming together with this willingness to be present as we are, we discover the intimacy we have been longing for, with ourselves and with each other. We find that we can communicate in ways we never knew, with tenderness, with clarity and no separation.

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One of the main questions or inquiries we will be engaging in during this retreat is, “How do I move beyond self-preoccupation?””How do I open to a vaster, more expanded, and more authentic self?”

To engage in this kind of evolution can be quite challenging, because most of us have been trained to think that we should focus on ourselves, our needs, and our own happiness. We might hear about someone like Nelson Mandela, or the Dalai Lama, who seem to have very different values and motivations. But we don’t believe that we could really live like that.

We have not learned how to stop and really listen to the deepest place in us, to what we really want, to what we care about, more than anything. When we connect with this part of us, we realize what freedom is, what love is, what clarity is.

We are no longer willing to live in service to our survival brain, the part of us that is only interested in safety, control and approval.

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