Holding the Rawness of Vulnerability in our Heart

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy and creativity. It is the source of hope, accountability and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper or meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
- Brene Brown

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To Hold the Rawness of Vulnerability is to “Not Resist What Is”

For the past four years I have been sharing the practice of Qigong and, more importantly, the teachings of unconditional presence. Like many of you, I began this journey as a method to still my own personal anxiety and to improve my wellness. Somewhere along the way, I felt a connection to a higher power and an absolute knowing that my primary purpose was to maintain an open portal to this connection - which I find easy to do when I’m practicing or teaching Qigong and which I find more difficult to do in my daily life. Knowing I am not alone in this challenge, I am continuously drawn to share teachings that nurture the shared aspects of our humanity and to draw up on the strength of one another to enhance our ability to courageously connect again and again and again.

And throughout this journey, I have had the niggling feeling that there is a sense of urgency to this “awakening business”. Like so many, I have felt that humanity is facing a critical threshold of evolution and a calling for a global awakening of the heart.

And now it seems as if this threshold has arrived! Today, we find ourselves living through an precedented time, an era that will go down in history as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amongst the many things I am noticing is the outpouring of inspiration on the internet. It seems as if permission has been granted for vulnerability to be spoken of and for the message of love over fear to (finally) be unabashedly spread. It appears that the stripping away of our world “as we know it” is also stripping away the guardedness so many of us have held around our hearts.

Below is one of such message - though I don’t know of this author, her words struck a deep chord in me…

“When we truly embrace the truth that we are all going to die, that life is a profound gift and each breath is a privilege — every moment becomes infinitely precious.”
-Azrya Cohen Bequer

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Embracing What IS

“One definition of the ego that I particularly like is “that which resists what is”. Ego struggles against reality, against the open-endedness and natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being quite sure how to pin things down. The ego wants resolution, wants to control impermanence, wants something secure and certain to hold to. It freezes what is actually fluid, it grasps at what is in motion, it tries to escape the beautiful truth of the fully alive nature of everything.

The alternative to this struggle is to train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart.

When we’re resisting or trying to escape from “what is,” there is usually some kind of physical sign - a tightening or contraction somewhere in the body. When you notice this sign of resistance, see if you can stick with the raw feeling of discomfort just for a moment, just long enough for your nervous system to start getting used to it. Through this practice we can eventually accustom our nervous system to relaxing with the truth, to relaxing with the impermanent, uncontrollable nature of things. We can slowly increase our ability to expand rather than contract, to let go rather than cling.”

-Pema Chodron, “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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The essence of what Pema is saying is beautifully captured by Trungpa Rinpoche’s words:

“The wisdom teachings tell us not to reject anything about ourselves and embrace all aspects as the same. Gold is the same as dust. The lotus is part of the mud.”
- Trungpa Rinpoche

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I now remind you of a powerful and practical method for embracing vulnerability and awakening the heart:

THE PRACTICE OF TONGLEN “SENDING AND TAKING”

Tonglen practice is a Tibetan Buddhist method for overcoming our fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our hearts. By having the courage to face the pain of others and breathe it in, the Tonglen practice awakens the compassion that is inherent in all of us. Tonglen is difficult to do because it reverses the usual pattern of avoiding suffering and of turning away from our pain and, especially, the pain of others. Tonglen dissolves the layers of self-protection or walls we’ve built around our hearts…it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego. It is a deep and courageous practice of being deeply present with pain, which is the only way to dissolve it.

The practice is as follows:*

When anything is painful or undesirable, breathe it in.

In other words, don’t resist it.

You surrender to yourself, you acknowledge who you are, you honour yourself.

As unwanted feelings and emotions arise, you actually breathe them in and connect with what all humans feel.

You breathe in for yourself, in the sense that pain is a personal and real experience, but simultaneously there’s no doubt that you’re developing your kinship with all beings. If you can know it in yourself, you can know it in everyone. This practice cuts through culture, economic status, intelligence, race, religion.

Then connect with what for you is a sense of delight - connect with what for you is inspiring, opening, relieving, and relaxing. Start with your feeling of connecting, your feeling of delight, your feeling of connecting with a bigger perspective, your feeling of relief and relaxation. And breathe this out.

When you breathe it it out, you give it away, you send it out to everyone else. By doing so you awaken our connection to all beings. We awaken the collective heart.

* This particular explanation comes from pages 85-86 of Pema’s book: “Comfortable with Uncertainty, 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”

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A word from Pema about her first experience with Tonglen:

“After I did Tonglen for the first time, I was amazed to see how I had been subtly using sitting meditation to try to avoid being hurt, to try to avoid depression, discouragement, or bad feelings of any kind. Unknown to myself, I had secretly hoped that if I did the practice I wouldn’t have to feel any pain anymore. When we do tonglen, we invite the pain in. Tonglen takes courage to do, and interestingly enough, it also gives us a lot of courage, because we let it penetrate our armour. It’s a practice that allows us to feel less burdened and less cramped, a practice that shows us how to live without conditions.

Negativity and resentment occur because we’re trying to cover over the soft spot of bodhichitta (the awakened heart). In fact, its because we are tender and deeply touched that we do all this shielding. It’s because we have this genuine heart of sadness to begin with that we even start shielding. In tonglen practice we become willing to begin to expose this most tender part of ourselves.”

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“DOUBLE DOWN ON LOVE”

Inspired by one of Brene Brown’s blogs: https://brenebrown.com/blog/2019/10/09/doubling-down-on-love/ I have put together a small playlist on Spotify called Double Down On Love, I would LOVE for you to add to this playlist and see what we can create together!

Click here to hear the entire playlist and click below for individual songs!

Sleepless by Jann Arden
Crowded Table by The Highwomen
Let My Love Open the Door by Pete Townsend
Rainbow by Kacey Musgraves

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On Grace…

“What matters, in good times as well as bad, are people and community. It has taken a terrible virus to at least remind us of this eternal truth. Surely, there is grace in that.”

- Kathleen Parker, Washington Post, March 17, 2020

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Our Closing Meditation:

Prayer of the Lotus Nectar

Beloved Kuan Yin, help me realize the connection to myself and to Life that I need to be able to live my highest vibrational life, where I am well, replenished, joyful and connected to the endless flow of divine energy and life force in our Universe. Please bring me clear guidance about how to best cultivate chi now, how to be open to receive the Nectar of the Lotus, the life force and love of the Divine Mother, for my highest good, so be it. Om Mani Padme Hum. 

“Om Mani Padme Hum”
This is a powerful heart opening mantra.

It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.  

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Step Into Who You Truly Are...Step Into the Truth of Our Interconnectedness

“Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also the Source of all life out of which it came.”

-Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

“Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. This includes the physical body, which we perceive and think of as form, but 99.99% of which is actually empty space. This is how vast the space is between the atoms compared to their size, and there is as much space again within each atom. The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space.

To give you an idea of how vast the space is between celestial bodies, consider this: Light traveling at a constant speed of 300,000 kilometres per second takes just over one second to travel between the earth and the moon; light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach the earth. Light from our nearest neighbour in space, a star called Proxima Centauri, which is the star that is closest to our own sun, travels for 4.5 years before it reaches the earth. This is how vast the space is that surrounds us. And then there is the intergalactic space, whose vastness defies all comprehension. Light from the galaxy closest to our own, the Andromeda Galaxy, takes 2.4 million years to reach us. Isn’t it amazing that your body is just as spacious as the universe?

So your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as essentially formless when you go deeper into it. It becomes a doorway into inner space. Although inner space has no form, it is intensely alive. That “empty space” is life in its fullness, the unmanifested Source out which all manifestation flows. The traditional word for that Source is God.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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“Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

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I imagine it is easy to agree with the above passages, especially when you are hearing them within the calming influence of our circle. I also imagine that in this context it is even fairly easy for you to say that , YES, we are truly interconnected!

But I also imagine that it is much less easy for you (as it is for me) to feel this interconnectedness once you leave the sanctuary of our gatherings and you come face to face with the “reality” (aka: the uncomfortable, unacceptable, and highly undesirable aspects of humanity).

At the risk of sounding overly trite, I believe that it is more important than ever for us to choose love over fear and to turn towards our interconnectedness rather than turning away.

But how do we do this?

Enter Pema’s practical wisdom….

The way to not lose heart is to realize how everything we do matters.

- Pema Chodron, “Welcoming The Unwelcome”

“Every time we catch ourselves polarizing with our thoughts, words, or actions, and every time we do something to close that gap, we’re injecting a little bodhichitta into our usual patterns. We’re deepening our appreciation for our interconnectedness with all others. We’re empowering healing, rather than standing in its way. And because of this interconnectedness, when we change our own patterns, we help change the patterns of our culture as a whole.”

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“There is a practice I like called “Just like me.” You go to a public place and sit there and look around. Traffic jams are very good for this. You zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as “Just like me, this person doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn’t want to be disliked. Just like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.”

“Like many tiny drops filling a bucket with water, it takes a lot of people like me holding a grudge against others to create a polarized society. I really don’t want to be one of those drops.”
- Pema Chodron, “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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In closing I would like to share a quote with you from Ramana Maharshi and I would like to share it with you using a technique that in yoga is called “Vipasyana: and in Christianity is called “Lectio Divina”. I invite you to close your eyes and listen deeply as I repeat the following sentence several times. Just allow yourself to feel the vibration of the words as they land deeply within.

“Say or think “I am”, and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the “I am”.
Sense your presence. It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form.” 
― Ramana Maharshi

On Grace…

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“When I can stand in mystery (not knowing and not needing to know and being dazzled by such freedom), when I don’t need to split, to hate, to dismiss, to compartmentalize what I cannot explain or understand, when I can radically accept that “I am what I am what I am,” then I am beginning to stand in divine freedom.”

 - Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr

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Our Closing Prayer

AN INVITATION TO CONNECT

Invocation:

As a member of the human race, through my own free will and for the greatest good, I call upon all beings that resonate with the quality of unconditional love and wish to assist humanity and Earth to evolve on the path of divine love. I ask for the unconditionally loving ascended masters that serve Christ consciousness to be the gateway through which permission is confirmed for these beings to enter Earth’s field and assist humanity according to divine will, grace, and love. May all beings be happy and free. So be it.

- Oracle card #19 from the Lightworker Oracle by Alana Fairchild

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Stepping Into Who You Truly Are

We begin our journey towards freedom from the ego and from the pain-body when we step into our True Selves.

Who are you?

”When asked this question, many people will quickly tell you who they are: their name, their occupation, their personal history, the shape or state of their body, and whatever else they identify with. Others may appear to be more evolved because they think of themselves as an immortal soul or divine spirit. But do they really know themselves, or have they just added some spiritual-sounding concepts to the content of their mind? Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs. Spiritual ideas and beliefs may at best be helpful pointers, but in themselves they rarely have the power to dislodge the more firmly established core concepts of who you think you are, which are part of the conditioning of the human mind.

Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form.”

- Eckhart Tolle

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I am not the perishable body, but the eternal Self.

- Ramana Maharshi

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To know our True Selves is to breathe the consciousness of Presence into every moment and is the crux of all the teachings that I have shared and will continue to share. As you will discover, awakening to our True Selves is a continuous unfoldment and one in which we are well served with reminders and support.

I would now like to re-share my favourite parable with you. This powerful parable of The Two Birds was introduced to me by my beloved yoga teacher, Michelle. The metaphor of the two birds and the depth of the invitation has had a lasting impact on me. For those who received this before, I hope that, like me, it is a tale that you would benefit from hearing a thousand times over!

In “The Two Birds” Mooji brilliantly captures the essence of what it means to befriend our egos and our pain-bodies and into an awareness of our True Self.

THE TWO BIRDS
by Mooji

Some time ago, I saw a picture depicting a parable from the Bhagavad Gita. It showed two birds in a tree, and one of them was building a nest. This one is flying off collecting things, arranging the twigs—it’s active, doing many things.

Above this bird, on another branch, is a second bird. It looks identical to the first bird, but it’s not building anything. It is just observing. It’s not building a self-image out of its perceiving, and it’s not deeply interested in any aspect of what it sees. Its perceiving is happening quite spontaneously without effort or judgment. There’s a silence there, that feeling of Being without thought. Just looking.

This is a beautiful portrait of who we are.

These two birds are connected. The first bird represents our dynamic being, the self that is engaged in the world, in future and past, in growing. It is the aspect that is living life with the sense of my family, my children, my work, and so on. The second bird represents that conscious witnessing within us. It is the ability to observe life taking place and activities unfolding, but it is not actually doing anything. It is still within the same body, but it is not manipulating. It is not saying, “I hope this, and I fear that.” No, it is very still. It is simply there, and its seeing is panoramic. It sees not only the first bird, but also the wind in the trees, the sky—everything is observed with a kind of neutrality.

Initially the first bird is very identified with building the nest. It may not even be aware of the second bird. But as soon as it is able to be quiet, it becomes aware of the second bird, which is actually itself at a deeper inner level. When the first bird’s mind is synchronized with the second bird, the activities become much more gracious. There is a sense of a unity, a oneness. In that harmony, the work may still happen but without obsession, without fear, without the sense of needing to control things. It is simply happening because life compels this activity to happen. It is as though another power is helping the actions to take place.

The second bird represents the change of perspective from the mode of the person to the state of presence. When we are involved in the activities of life so deeply that it seems that the daily routine is all there is, then we are like this first bird, the nest builder, oblivious to our second bird position.

Come to the second bird position, to the one who is observing, and you will discover that the one who is busy building a life will slowly become more transparent, leaving only the functioning itself. The activities are happening anyway, beautifully, but the sense of doer-ship—which is the ego sense—will fade away. Activities are just happening; our self-image as a person is just happening, but our true Self is not a happening.

In fact, the TRUE SELF is a third position, which is not a bird, but the space within which both birds are arising and seen.

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“The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are – the awareness, the Self, the Soul.”
- Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

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As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power. At first there may be no noticeable changes in what you do - only the how changes. Your primary purpose is now to enable consciousness to flow into what you do. The secondary purpose is whatever you want to achieve through the doing.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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On Grace…

I want nothing of you.

This means you can trust me.

Please do what I say.

Bow your head to the river of Consciousness.

Flowing rapids will sweep you clean.

Be swallowed whole by the Mystery.

Be thrown into love.

Drink the pure light of Self revealing Truth.

Why stay in the storm of the mind when you are blessed by Grace?

- from “Whispers of Grace” a poetry collection by Shani

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Our Closing Prayer

Dear Grace,

Please walk with me today.

Please whisper divine wisdom in my ears,
Please reveal magic to my eyes,
Please touch my skin with life’s vibrant energy.

Divine Grace, I am open to unconditional love and I allow this love to:

Infuse my thoughts,
Prepare my words, and
Animate my movement.

Through my own free will, so be it.

- Patti Wardlaw

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Freedom from the Pain-Body

“The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of our planet, it can be a conscious choice.“

-Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”“

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“The beginning of freedom from the pain-body lies first of all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the pain-body in yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active. When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and renew itself through you.

It is your conscious Presence that breaks the identification with the pain-body. When you don’t identify with it, it can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore by feeding on your thoughts. The pain-body in most cases does not dissolve immediately, but once you have severed the link between it and your thinking, the pain-body begins to lose energy.

The energy that was trapped in the pain-body then changes its vibrational frequency and is transmuted into Presence. In this way, the pain-body becomes fuel for consciousness. This is why many of the wisest, most enlightened men and women on our planet once had a heavy pain-body.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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Pema and her teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinphoche says that the way to arouse bodhichitta (the awakened heart ) is to “begin with a broken heart”. This is very similar to Eckhart’s teachings of shining presence unto our pain-body.

“We touch in with bodhichitta by simply allowing ourselves to experience our own raw feelings, without getting sucked into our thoughts and stories about them.
When I’m embarrassed, when I feel like a loser, when I feel that something is fundamentally wrong with me, bodhichitta is present in those emotions. When I’ve made a big mistake, when I’ve failed to do what I set out to do, when I feel the sting of having let everyone down - at such times I have the option of tapping into the awakened heart of bodhichitta. If I really connect with my jealousy, anger or my prejudice, I find myself standing in the shoes of humanity. From this place, the longing to wake up to alleviate the suffering of the world comes naturally.”

-Pema Chodron, “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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Techniques for freeing ourselves from the pain-body, aka “welcoming the unwelcome”:

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L.E.S.R.

Pronounced like “Laser”, L.E.S.R. stands for “locate, embrace, stop, remain” and is a practice developed by Richard Reach.
Whenever you feel yourself getting worked up or having any unpleasant, uncomfortable, or stuck feelings, follow these four steps:

1. LOCATE it. Where in the body is the grasping, contracted sensation?

2. EMBRACE that feeling, that sensation, that contraction. Send unconditional warmth to the sensation. Rather than rejecting it, move towards it with your heart.

3. STOP the storyline. Let go, interrupt, or look directly at the thoughts and stories. Go beneath or behind the thoughts to contact the underlying sense of being hooked. The goal is not to stop thinking altogether (that’s impossible) but to connect with the raw feeling of being hooked and then to interrupt the storyline over and over again.

4. REMAIN. Stay present with the feeling, keep going until it shifts. Just remain with the feeling with kindness and warmth, leaning in as much as you can.

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F.E.A.R.

This is very similar to LESR and is a technique to cultivate unconditional friendship for yourself. Whenever you are feeling embarrassed, uncomfortable, unwanted follow these four steps:

1. FIND it in your body

2. EMBRACE it

3. ALLOW thoughts about it to dissolve, abide with the feeling until it shifts

4. REMEMBER or recall all the other people in the world who are feeling what you are feeling

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TONGLEN

Tonglen practice is a Tibetan Buddhist method for overcoming our fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our hearts. By having the courage to face the pain of others and breathe it in, the Tonglen practice awakens the compassion that is inherent in all of us. Tonglen is difficult to do because it reverses the usual pattern of avoiding suffering and of turning away from our pain and, especially, the pain of others. Tonglen dissolves the layers of self-protection or walls we’ve built around our hearts…it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego. It is a deep and courageous practice of being deeply present with pain, which is the only way to dissolve it.

The practice is a follows:

When facing pain, either our personal pain or the pain of others, we feel a connection to the millions of other people who are feeling just like us.

Contact what we are feeling and breathe it in, take it in for all of us.
As we breathe out, we send relief to all of us.

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If you are invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.”
- Pema Chodron

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On Grace…

“Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.”

-Eckhart Tolle

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Our Closing Prayer

Dear Grace,

Please walk with me today.

Please whisper divine wisdom in my ears,
Please reveal magic to my eyes,
Please touch my skin with life’s vibrant energy.

Divine Grace, I am open to unconditional love and I allow this love to:

Infuse my thoughts,
Prepare my words, and
Animate my movement.

Through my own free will, so be it.

- Patti Wardlaw

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Understanding and Recognizing the "Pain-Body"

“In order to disentangle, you have to first see where you are entangled”
- Trungpa Rinpoche

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“The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted, and then let go of join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body. This energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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As far as I am aware, the term “pain-body” is unique to the teachings of Eckhart Tolle. Emotional pain is, of course, a widely researched and analyzed concept, yet few theories describe it as a living entity or energy field, as Eckhart does. Millions of readers have had life changing experiences after learning how to become aware of how this energy field operates. I personally believe that Eckhart Tolle’s teachings on the pain-body are his most significant contribution.

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EMOTIONS

Could there be a more nuanced, or misunderstood word in our English language than the word “emotion”? Fear, Sadness, Anger, Jealousy, Happiness, Love, Joy - we all know how these emotions feel, yet very few of us have a clear sense of what emotions mean from an energetic perspective.

The Latin derivative for the word emotion, 'emotere', literally means energy in motion. In itself, emotional energy is neutral. It is the feeling sensation and physiological reaction that makes a specific emotion positive or negative.

Emotions are the body’s reaction to the voice in your head…

“The physical organism, your body, has its own intelligence, as does the organism of every other life-form. This intelligence gives rise to instinctive reactions of the organism to any threat or challenge. It produces responses in animals that appear to be akin to human emotions: anger, fear, pleasure.

The fundamental difference between an instinctive response and an emotion is this: An instinctive response is the body’s direct response to some external situation. An emotion, on the other hand, is the body’s response to a thought.

Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It responds to every thought as though it were a reality. It doesn’t know it is just a thought. To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means “I am in danger”, and it responds accordingly. There is a buildup of energy, but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the energy has no outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious thought. The rest of the energy turns toxic and interferes with the harmonious functions of the body.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

This understanding of emotions is supported by Qigong theory. In Qigong it is widely understood that we are emotionally balanced when all of our different energies are moving and flowing together with full integration and balance. It is also understood that the primary cause or disrupting force of this energetic flow is stressful or negative thinking.

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“Emotion itself is not unhappiness.
Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.”
-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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THE PAIN BODY

We can now begin to understand how the energetic field that Eckhart calls the pain-body comes into existence.

"Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain.

The awakening of a pain body can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy.”

The pain-body is not just individual in nature. It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless of humans throughout the history of humanity. This pain still lives in the collective psyche of humanity and is being added to on a daily basis.”

-Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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What Eckhart Tolle calls the Pain-Body may also be described as:

pain consciousness
suffering
blocked Qi
carrying of past pain
negative energy
a dark entity
a semi-autonomous energy-form
a dormant volcano
a heavy cloud
Shenpa*
Vasana*
Samskara*
Karma*

*Sanskrit terms (from Hinduism and Buddhism):
Vasana: past impression in the mind that influences our behavior
Samskara: the mental impressions left by all thoughts, actions and intents that an individual has ever experienced
Shenpa: a hooked feeling or a surge of emotion that often stems from past or present experiences that have a negative “feeling tone” associated with it and when not acknowledged pulls us back into our habitual patterns of anger, conflict and closing down.
Karma: the residual from past lives that we are born with

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As an energy field, the pain-body is attracted to and feeds off of energy that vibrates at a similar frequency. Hence, it thrives on negative thinking and drama - it is addicted to unhappiness. Herein lies the key to breaking free of the vicious cycle of the pain body!

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“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
- Rumi

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“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”
– Pema Chödrön

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It is very important that you know that the pain-body is not YOU. Recognition of this is key to breaking the shame, blame and guilt cycle induced by cycles of pain-body flare ups. Because it is only our thoughts that keep them alive, we have the power to free ourselves from the remnants of emotional pain that lives inside us!

The pain-body cannot survive in the power of pure presence and unconditional friendship towards oneself. This realization is true forgiveness!

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“There’s no end to the number of fresh starts you get. There’s no fixed “you” doomed to stay in the same rut forever. Nothing that happens in our lives is more fixed or solid than a passing memory.”
- Pema Chodron, “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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“We are a species who has lost its way. Everything natural, every flower or tree, and every animal have important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look, and listen.

The duck’s lesson is this: FLAP YOUR WINGS - which translates as “let go of your story” - and return to the only place of power: the present moment.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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On Grace…

“Grace can be seen as intervention of the universal intelligence, Being, that creates freedom from the trap of the ego’s complete unconsciousness. It is the gift of a glimpse of the Truth that is unexplainable, unearned, and cannot be attained by doing something.”

- Brendon Lumgair, “A New Earth in a Nutshell”

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Our Closing Meditation:

Prayer of the Lotus Nectar

Beloved Kuan Yin, help me realize the connection to myself and to Life that I need to be able to live my highest vibrational life, where I am well, replenished, joyful and connected to the endless flow of divine energy and life force in our Universe. Please bring me clear guidance about how to best cultivate chi now, how to be open to receive the Nectar of the Lotus, the life force and love of the Divine Mother, for my highest good, so be it. Om Mani Padme Hum. 

“Om Mani Padme Hum”
This is a powerful heart opening mantra.

It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.  

Freeing Yourself from the Story of You - Embracing the Ego

“It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.”
- Pema Chodron

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The Ego

The word ego originates in 19th century Latin. Directly translated, “ego” means “I” in Latin. In psychology and Western theories, the ego forms our self-concept and is an essential part of our human cognitive function.

In spiritual teachings the ego is the aspect of the human mind that is identified with the external image we have of ourselves and believes that image is who (and all) we are.

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“The ego is an optical illusion of consciousness.”
- Albert Einsten

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“The ego is a conglomeration of recurring thought forms and conditioned mental-emotional patterns that are invested with a sense of "I, a sense of self.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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“The ego is the feeling of separateness, the sense of duality, or the idea of being distinct and different from others. It is the false perception of oneself as a separate being or a limited being. Since it exists in all of us as individual consciousness, it is a universal feeling.”
- The Bhagavad Gita

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“The ego is a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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“Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It's covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience.”
-Pema Chodron

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“Ego says, "Once everything falls into place, I'll feel peace". Spirit says, "Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place".
-Marianne Williamson

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“Lifetime after lifetime, I’ve been born and been given a name, and lifetime after lifetime I’ve identified completely with that persona. It dawned on me what a waste that has been. What a waste to keep getting tricked in the same way.”
-Pema Chodron “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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OTHER WORDS FOR “EGO”…

False Identity
Identification with Form
The Voice in your Head
Illusory Self
Phantom Self
Forgetfulness of Being
The Unobserved Mind
The Conditioned Mind
Unchallenged Agreements

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HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE EGO

Notice when you experience a tightness or contracted feeling when you say: I”, “me”, “my”, “mine”, “I want”, “I need”.

Become aware of the voice in your head - notice when you are completely identified with the voice in your head, when you believe all the thoughts and content.

Notice tendencies or desires to make yourself right and others wrong.

Notice when you take things personally.

Notice when you make assumptions and stories about someone else or a situation.

Notice when you complain, find fault, feel resentful or are very reactive to a situation.

Notice your attachment to things, objects and possessions - all the things you label as “mine”. Do certain things induce a feeling of importance? Do you feel angry or resentful or less than if someone has more than you or you lose something. Notice when you want “more” but getting more does not satisfy you.

Notice if you believe that something that happened in the past is the reason you can’t be at peace today.

Notice if you believe that you something is happening now that should not be happening, and it is preventing me from being at peace.

Notice if you find yourself saying or believing that once (fill in the blank) happens, you will be at peace.

Become aware of your relationship with the body. Do you feel that what you call “my body” is who you are? Is your sense of self worth dependant on how your physical body looks and functions?

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BEFRIENDING THE PRESENT MOMENT - RELAXING THE EGO

“Our journey toward living without ego is to learn how to let go, relax, take a chance, wait and see, and never sum ourselves up.”
- Pema Chodron

Though the Buddhists talk about achieving an ego-less state and Eckhart Tolle speaks of dissolving the ego, it is very important to not mis-interpret their message.

The ego is not the enemy.

Viewing the ego as an enemy and the unconscious actions that follow as a weakness or fault only serves to strengthen the ego, that is to say the sense of separation. Eckhart says, “the ego needs resistance to survive”, so fighting the ego or trying to get rid of it actually strengthens it, often by creating a new false identity of being an “enlightened being”, for example. This is a spiritual trap that many people fall into and one that we are wise to be aware of.

“The idea that we need to get rid of ego is a mis-understanding, one that many people - even experienced Buddhist practitioners - share. The notion that we need to get rid of something within ourselves is a setup for intensifying our inner struggle. It can only inflame our tendency to be unfriendly to ourselves.
- Pema Chodron

Presence relaxes the ego.

We are not aiming to terminate the ego, rather we are aiming to relax the ego. Free from the grips of an identified mind, we are able to maintain our sense of being, our sense of inhabiting a body - we are able to perform functions and roles without losing ourselves in them.

“Instead of getting rid of ego, the idea is to become very conscious of ego and how it works. Ego manifests in all the countless ways we resist what is. It shows its face in all our solid views, opinions, and fixed ideas. It is present in the ways we identify ourselves such as ‘weak’, ‘strong’, ‘broken’, ‘wise’, ‘competent’, ‘unworthy’, and so on.” The heart of the practice is to notice all of this and rest in the middle of it all, not trying to fix or alter anything. This is the path of non-rejection.”
- Pema Chodron, “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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“It all starts with the present moment, and your relationship with the present moment. Friend or enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend, it is up to you to make the first move: Become friendly toward it, welcome it no matter what disguise it comes, and soon you will see the results. Life becomes friendly toward you; people become helpful, circumstances cooperative. One decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again - until it comes natural to live in such a way.”
- Eckhart Tolle

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“I don’t want to waste another lifetime taking this current, very fleeting, very fragile persona so seriously.”
- Pema Chodron

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On Grace…

“You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform someone else. All you can do is create space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”

- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

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Our Closing Prayer

“Be totally empty,
embrace the tranquility of peace.
Watch the workings of all creation,
observe how endings become beginnings.”

All creatures in the universe
return to the point where they began.
Returning to the source is tranquility
meaning submitting to what is and what is to be.””

— "The Tao Te Ching", by Lao Tse

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“Om Mani Padme Hum”
This is a powerful heart opening mantra.

It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.  

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You are Needed

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“You are required right now. There is an amazing shift in consciousness occurring, and you are needed. Consciousness is silently inviting you into your bigness”

- Pamela Wilson

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Pamela’s words resonate deeply with and yet it is not easy to explain what she means. Perhaps this is also your experience? You may be asking, “what exactly is consciousness?”

According to Eckhart Tolle, this question cannot be answered and “the moment you answer it, you have falsified it, made it into another object.”

“ Consciousness, the traditional word for which is spirit, cannot be known in the normal sense of the word, and seeking it is futile.

Although you cannot know consciousness, you can become conscious of it as yourself. You can sense it directly in any situation, no matter where you are. You can sense it here and now as your very Presence. It is the underlying I Am, the underlying background to every experience, thought, feeling.

- Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now”

Feeling a union with consciousness as a felt sensation is the ultimate goal of our time together, and is, as Eckhart suggests, the primary purpose of our lives. Yet, how does one attain this illusive state if not guided by words?

Fortunately, while fully disclosing the limitations, Eckhart does offer more words on this subject:

“Consciousness is the luminous space in which the world arises and subsides. That space is the life that I Am. It is timeless and eternal. Consciousness can also be called:

God
Spirit
Eternal
Source
Formlessness
Space
Stillness
Silence
The Unmanifested “

So, though we can never really know consciousness, we can experience our union with it.

We enter into this union every time we experience sacred silence. As Friar Richard Rohr says: “Silence has a life of its own. It is not just that which is around words and underneath images and events. It is a being in itself to which we can relate and become intimately familiar. When we connect with silence as a living, primordial presence, we can then see all other things—and experience them deeply—inside that container. Silence is not just an absence, but a primal presence.”

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Fr. Lucien Kemble

I had a great uncle who, I believe, experienced this primal presence, this union with consciousness.

My Great Uncle, Father Lucien Kemble (1922-1999) was a dedicated Franciscan Friar. Though I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with my “Uncle Bert” he left a lasting impression on me. He had a warm heart and practical and grounded wisdom.

In addition to teaching, preaching and helping people, he loved to gaze at the stars and was an active and well respected member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - he even discovered a cluster of stars which became known as Kemble’s Cascade!

“Asked if the sheer immensity of the universe made him feel insignificant, Fr. Lucian replied: “Au contraire. I am as big as that which I contemplate.”

- Brian Brennan, Calgary Herald, March 5, 1999

“Kemble’s Cascade”

What I believe my Uncle meant by this statement, is the same thing Pamela means when she says that ‘consciousness is silently inviting you into your bigness’. They are both pointing to the Truth that, though apparently contained in a limited form we call our bodies, our true essence is as vast as the Universe that we perceive.

The key to awakening, and thereby ending suffering, is to to unite with Consciousness (or God, Spirit, the Eternal, Source, Formlessness, Space, Stillness, Silence…feel free to substitute with the word you feel the most resonance with). Only then can we dis-identify from our limited sense of “I” and our destructive ego.

And the only way to experience this union is to listen to the silence, that is, to become fully present (over the next few weeks we will discuss methods for becoming present and aware of the ego).

We intuitively feel this union when we are in nature. Nature teaches us how to find our way home, to listen to the silence and remember our union with it.

“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.”

- Eckhart Tolle, “Stillness Speaks”

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“When you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal, or a bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window into the formless. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit. This is why these three “en-lightened” forms have played such an important part in the evolution of human consciousness since ancient times; why, for example, the jewel in the lotus flower is a central symbol of Buddhism and a white bird, the dove, signifies the Holy Spirit in Christianity. They have been preparing the ground for a more profound shift in the planetary consciousness that is destined to take place in the human species. This is the spiritual awakening that we are beginning to witness now.

Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection?”

-Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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“Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness?” Eckhart Tolle asked this question back in 2005 and I, along with the millions of others who were moved by his teachings, answered with a resounding “YES, we are ready”!

Fifteen years later, so many of us on the planet are this “YES” with much more intensity than ever before!

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“Awakening and staying awake is the shared purpose of every human being. This evolutionary step is our inner purpose and is the most important thing that can happen to and through a human being. Then what we do in the world, our outer purpose, is revealed to us and lived out through us. Harmonious actions, relationships, communities, and business practices set the foundation for balanced, sustainable, and abundant economic & government systems. The awakened state of consciousness is the New Heaven. Being and doing in that state are the foundation of the New Earth.”

- From “A New Earth in a Nutshell”, a commentary written by Brendon Lumgair (and shared with his permission)

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What Eckhart calls the “New Heaven” can be likened to what the Mahayana Buddhists call bodhichitta. In Sanskrit, bodhi means “awake” and chitta means “heart” or “mind”, so bodhichitta means the awakened heart. The Buddhists believe that a commitment to bodhichitta is the only way to affect change here on earth.

“We are at at time when old systems and ideas are being questioned and falling apart, and there is great opportunity for something fresh to emerge. I have no idea what that will look like and no preconceptions about how things should turn out, but I do have a strong sense that the time we live in is a fertile ground for training in being open-minded and open-hearted. If we can learn to hold this falling apart-ness without polarizing and without becoming fundamentalists, then whatever we do today will have a positive effect on the future.”

- Pema Chodron “Welcoming the Unwelcome”

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A paradox of our times seems to be that we, as a society, are both ripe for awakening and simultaneously presented with a plethora of obstacles preventing this very awakening. On one hand, we have unprecedented access to teachings, we are free to practice without fear of persecution, and there is a growing awareness of and a desire for a shift in consciousness. On the other hand, many of these same forces that are enabling a spreading of consciousness (internet, social media, email)are also distracting and preventing us from achieving the only thing that really matters, the only thing that can actually awaken us - our connection with stillness!

In her audio book “Walking the Walk”, Pema Chodron says, “our society is habitually used to being unconscious rather than being conscious and that there seems to more and more cultural support for unconsciousness, that is to say more and more cultural support to become distracted and disengaged from the present moment.”

In “A New Earth”, Eckhart Tolle refers to the power of television to pull us out of presence and to feed our unconscious pain bodies. At the time of his writing, social media, a force much more powerful than television was not even in existence!

We need a return to presence and a return to grace! And as Pema says:

“Our only shot at accomplishing this is by first attaining enlightenment ourselves. Along the way, we can take one step at a time, doing our best to keep our longing and commitment going during the ups and downs of our lives.”

We begin with ourselves…we listen….and we remember!

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On Grace…

“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent on things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.”
-Eckhart Tolle

“Grace can lie in a smooth, well coordinate motion, or in a humble and tolerant attitude. More often than not, the two go hand in hand. The people who move well will tend to be folks you want to be around. Their ease comes from being comfortable in their own skin, and that’s what we’re drawn to - not to technique or practiced perfection, but to what smooth physicality conveys about a person’s nature. Grace has nothing to do with looks or sophistication, and everything to do with compassion and courage.”

- Sarah L. Kaufman, “The Art of Grace”

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Our Closing Meditation:

Prayer of the Lotus Nectar

Beloved Kuan Yin, help me realize the connection to myself and to Life that I need to be able to live my highest vibrational life, where I am well, replenished, joyful and connected to the endless flow of divine energy and life force in our Universe. Please bring me clear guidance about how to best cultivate chi now, how to be open to receive the Nectar of the Lotus, the life force and love of the Divine Mother, for my highest good, so be it. Om Mani Padme Hum. 

“Om Mani Padme Hum”
This is a powerful heart opening mantra.

It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.  

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Whispers from Grace

“Welcome, Welcome”

My beloved mentor, Pamela Wilson begins each Satsang (sacred gathering) by saying the word “welcome” two times…followed by a little bow of her head.

I invite you to pause for a moment and really listen as I say “welcome, welcome”. I invite you to open your heart to receive and feel the intention - more than a greeting, this is an invitation to open the heart and to receive.

Welcome to this circle.

Welcome to this space.

Welcome to this time.

May our time together be sacred and purposeful.

May we create an authentic and safe environment for each of us to rest in the heart and listen to the stillness.

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“Listen. Can you hear the voice of wisdom whispering in the silence?”

- Shani

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The following passage captures perfectly what it means to listen to the stillness (or silence) and captures perfectly the intention for our time together:

Sacred Silence
- By Richard Rohr, The Centre for Contemplation and Action

Most of us who live in a capitalist culture, where everything is about competing and comparing, will find contemplation extremely counterintuitive. How do we grasp something as empty, as harmless, as seemingly fruitless as the practice of silence?

Silence needs to be understood in a larger way than simply a lack of audible noise. Whenever emptiness—what seems like empty space or absence of sound—becomes its own kind of fullness with its own kind of sweet voice, we have just experienced sacred silence.

When religious folks limit their focus in prayer to external technique and formula, the soul remains largely untouched and unchanged. Too much emphasis on what I call “social prayer” or wordy prayer feeds our egos and gives us far too much to argue about. How can we truly pray when we are preoccupied with formula and perfection of technique?

If we can see silence as the ground of all words and the birth of all words, then when we speak, our words will be calmer and well-chosen. Our thoughts will be non-judgmental. Our actions will have greater integrity and impact.

When we recognize something as beautiful, that knowledge partly emerges from the silence around it. It may be why we are quiet in art galleries and symphony halls.

As one author I read years ago said, silence is the net below the tightrope walker. We are walking, trying to find the right words to explain our experience and the right actions to match our values. Silence is that safety net that allows us to fall; it admits, as poets often do, that no words or deeds will ever be perfectly right or sufficient. A regular practice of contemplation helps us trust that silence will uphold us, receive our mistakes, and give us the courage to learn and grow.

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As Richard Rohr so beautifully expresses, at the heart of all spiritual traditions is the recognition that we are One with all of life - that there is no separation. 

My goal for this session is for you to know this Truth as a felt sensation in the body rather than as an illusive mental concept.

Over the course of our twelve weeks together, the teachings of Eckhart Tolle and Pema Chodron will be reinforced by the ancient practice of Qigong. “Qi” means life force energy and “Gong” means the flow of or practice of; so Qigong means the practice of flowing life force energy. Though this simple definition is accurate, it fails to fully capture the essence and mystery of Qigong. Qigong is much more than following a series of prescribed movements, it is a practice of DEEP PRESENCE…and this is why I chose to dive deep into the practice of presence for this session.

We will spend the first several weeks focused on Eckhart Tolle’s teachings (mostly from his book “A New Earth”, but also touching on his first book, “The Power of Now”). We will then naturally transition to a discussion of Pema Chodron’s book, “Welcoming the Unwelcome, Wholehearted Living for a Brokenhearted World”. Pema’s wisdom will beautifully support and reinforce Eckhart Tolle’s teachings of presence and grace by providing timely, relevant and practical “how to’s”.

Together let us embrace the art of listening to the silence…
and hearing the wisdom that transcends all words!

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“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thoughts. A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness, from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say identified with. That disentanglement is what this book is all about.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”

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During our twelve weeks together, we will be exploring the heart of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. Like many others in the western world, “The Power of Now” (1997) and “A New Earth” (2005), were my first foray into what is often referred to as new age spirituality (even though Eckhart himself refrains from calling it this…as do I). Eckhart Tolle’s teachings went mainstream in 2008 when Oprah Winfrey discovered “A New Earth” and asked Eckhart to join her in offering a free online course. This course was one of the first of its kind and over half a million people from all around the world signed up (I was one of them).

Eckhart Tolle has often been credited for bringing present moment awareness into mainstream thinking. As we will discover presence is and always has been at the heart of all spiritual teachings, including the practice of Qigong.

“Opening yourself to the emerging consciousness and bringing its light into this world is the primary purpose of your life.”

-A New Earth

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Pema Chodron, an American born Buddhist nun, is a gifted communicator and teacher. She is a resident teacher at Gambo Abbey Monastery in Nova Scotia and the author of many best selling books including: “The Wisdom of No Escape”, “Start Where You Are”, “When Things Fall Apart”, “The Places that Scare You”, “No Time to Lose”, “Practicing Peace in Times of War”, Smile at Fear”.

“Whether distraction and aggression proliferate globally or peacefulness and harmony grow stronger depends on how we as citizens feel about ourselves.”

- Welcoming the Unwelcome, Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World.

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Bringing it all together:

In recent sessions, we discovered the power of The Five Agreements (by don Miguel Ruiz) and of the Ho’oponopono Forgiveness Ritual

The Five Agreements:

In his teachings, don Miguel Ruiz helps us to break our self-limiting agreements and replace them with agreements that bring us personal freedom, happiness and love:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best
5. Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen

The Ho’oponopono Forgiveness Ritual

This ancient Hawaiin forgiveness ritual proceeds from an understanding of the unity of everything in the world, which is true even though we feel ourselves to be separate. Because everything influences everything else, we contribute to harmony if we discover our share in disharmony and enter instead into the healing process of directing the following four sentences to a person or situation (can be spoken or said silently):

I am sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you

As we learned (and will continue learning), the Five Agreements and the Ho’oponopono Forgiveness Ritual offer profound wisdom and practical tools. At the heart of both of these teachings, and, in fact, all spiritual traditions, is the recognition that we are all connected to the One-Life energy that creates and sustains us, and that separation or “me-ness” is an illusion created by the mind.

As you can see all of the teachings weave together into one beautiful and continuous tapestry! Through our time together, you will be reminded of the practical wisdom of the Five Agreements and the Ho’oponopono Forgiveness Ritual and you will discover how Qigong is the perfect practice of integrating this timeless wisdom into the body to enhance your health and wellbeing!

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On Grace…

“Grace is the constant love that animates, permeates and balances everything and everyone. When we bring awareness and gratitude to Grace, it awakens balances, and resolves even the unresolvable.”

- Pamela Wilson

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“We need a return to grace. We are all fighting hard battles, and we need all the help we can get. Yet we’ve lost sight of grace, which for so long was an essential, treasured quality, and which ought to be at the heart of how we interact, how we inhabit our bodies and the world around us. Life in the twenty-first century is often rushed, clumsy, and frustrating. We’re distracted and we let the door slam on the person behind us, we trip over curbs as we’re texting, we’re running late, we fail to notice. Our bent postures show us the unfeeling habits we’ve fallen into. We’ve given into gravity. We’ve forgotten how to move through life with grace.”*
- Excerpt from “The Art of Grace” by Sarah L. Kaufmann

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* We are here to remember - welcome to our journey! 💗

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Our Closing Mediation:

Prayer of the Lotus Nector
Beloved Kuan Yin, help me realize the connection to myself and to Life that I need to be able to live my highest vibrational life, where I am well, replenished, joyful and connected to the endless flow of divine energy and life force in our Universe. Please bring me clear guidance about how to best cultivate chi now, how to be open to receive the Nectar of the Lotus, the life force and love of the Divine Mother, for my highest good, so be it. Om Mani Padme Hum. 

“Om Mani Padme Hum”
This is a powerful heart opening mantra.

It means ’the opening of the jewel in the lotus,’ or ‘may the heart awaken with divine compassion and may I know myself to be an awakened being of light’.  

EASTERN GODDESS OF COMPASSION KUAN YIN

Kuan Yin takes multiple forms, to meet the needs of all beings. She is gentle but like any feminine being she will assume a more ferocious form if necessary in order to protect what she loves. She takes masculine forms when that will best serve her higher loving purpose, bringing through much needed sacred masculine energies of tenderness, strength, courage and protection, as well as the divine feminine energies that nourish our souls.

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Planting The Seeds

NOTE: All unbolded text is taken directly from either “The Four Agreements” or “The Four Agreements Companion Book” by Don Miguel Ruiz, and all credit extends to the author. Bolded text is my personal commentary.

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The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fertile, but only for those kind of seeds it is prepared for.

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The Smoky Mirror is an abstract yet very powerful metaphor for awareness - the awareness that is necessary to embody and live by the four agreements. I invite you to not analyze it with thinking mind but rather gently take it in with a curious mind - whatever you experience (including nothing) is perfect. Our Qigong practice will further help us see and feel the smoky mirror.

The Smoky Mirror

Three thousand years ago, there was a human just like you and me who lived near a city surrounded by mountains. The human was studying to become a medicine man, to learn the knowledge of his ancestors, but he didn’t completely agree with everything he was learning. In his heart, he felt there must be something more.

One day, as he slept in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon. The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars. Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever. He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say, “I am made of light; I am made of stars.”

He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it’s not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. “Everything is made of light,” he said, “and the space in-between isn’t empty.” And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information.

Then he realized that although he was made of stars, he was not those stars. “I am in-between the stars,” he thought. So he called the stars the tonal and the light between the stars the nagual, and he knew that what created the harmony and space between the two is Life or Intent. Without life, the tonal and the nagual could not exist. Life is the force of the absolute, the supreme, the Creator who creates everything.

This is what he discovered: Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is merely light perceiving light. He also saw that matter is a mirror – everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light – and the world of illusion, the Dream, is just like smoke which doesn’t allow us to see what we really are. “The real us is pure love, pure light, “ he said.

This realization changed his life. Once he knew what he really was, he looked around at other humans and the rest of nature, and he was amazed at what he saw. He saw himself in everything – in every human, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth. And he saw that Life mixed the tonal and the nagual in different ways to create billions of manifestations of Life.

In those few moments he comprehended everything. He was very excited, and his heart was filled with peace. He could hardly wait to tell his people what he had discovered. But there were no words to explain it. He tried to tell the others, but they could not understand. They could see that he had changed, that something beautiful was radiating from his eyes and his voice. They noticed that he no longer had judgement about anything or anyone. He was no longer like anyone else.

He could understand everyone very well, but no one could understand him. They believed that he was an incarnation of God, and he smiled when he heard this and he said, “It is true. I am God. But you are also God. We are the same, you and I. We are images of light. We are God.” But still the people didn’t understand him.

He had discovered that he was a mirror for the rest of the people, a mirror in which he could see himself. “Everyone is a mirror, “ he said. He saw himself in everyone, but nobody saw him as themself.

And he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. They couldn’t see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And that wall of fog was made by the interpretation of images of light – the Dream of humans.

Then he knew that he would soon forget all that he had learned. He wanted to remember all the visions that he had had, so he decided to call himself the Smoky Mirror so that he would always know that matter is a mirror and the smoke in-between is what keeps us from knowing what we are. He said, “I am the Smokey Mirror, because I am looking at myself in all of you, but we don’t recognize each other because of the smoke in-between us. That smoke is the Dream, the mirror is you, the dreamer.”

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The Four Agreements are like a map that tells you all the different ways to reach your destination. Their simplicity is what makes them so easy to use in so many directions. But the map is just one half. You are the other half. In any relationship, there are two halves. The book, the messenger, is one half of the relationship, but you are the other half, and that is the beauty of this relationship: your half.

In our exploration together, the invitation is to fully own and embrace “your half”. Simply learning the Four Agreements and pledging to follow them is not enough (I know, as I have tried numerous times over the past 20 years). To truly adopt these four agreements and experience the transformation that is possible requires will and courage.

Every concept, every belief in your mind has its own personality that wants to express itself. You have millions of voices in your head, a whole society inside your mind, and just like a democracy, what the majority wants is the way you live your life. That inner society is governed by rules that dictate the way your life should be, the way each part of you has to behave. The whole dream of your life is based on the rules in your Book of Law, and whatever happens in your life will be interpreted according to that Book of Law.

And there are two other parts that live in your mind: One is the Judge and the other is the Victim. The Judge is doing its job perfectly. Its job is to judge, and it uses the Book of Law to judge everything. Every action and reaction lives under the tyranny of the Judge.

The Toltec created THREE MASTERIES and FOUR AGREEMENTS to guide us out of suffering and return us to our true nature: happiness, freedom, and love.

THE THREE MASTERIES:

1. THE MASTERY OF AWARENESS
   This mastery is the first step towards personal freedom, because we cannot be free if we don’t know what we are, where we are, or what kind of freedom we are looking for. In this mastery, we become aware of the fog that is in our mind. The Mastery of Awareness can also be called the Mastery of Truth.
   

2. THE MASTERY OF TRANSFORMATION
   The goal of the second mastery is to put order into the chaos of all the voices in our mind, to face our fears, to transform our fears, and to find the freedom to live our own life instead of the life of the belief system. The Four Agreements are a summary of the Mastery of Transformation.
   

3. THE MASTERY OF LOVE
   The result of the first two masteries is the third mastery, The Mastery of Love, or The Mastery of Intent. From the Toltec perspective, love or intent is that part of life that makes the transformation of energy possible. It is Life itself; it is unconditional love. Everything is made with love because everything comes from God or Life. When we master love, we master the dream of our live, and when all three masteries are accomplished, we reclaim our divinity and become one with God.
   

The first two masteries are the essential to the application of The Four Agreements and we will spend time focusing on the what they really mean and how to bring them into our lives. The third mastery, is the result of the first two masteries and the application of the four agreements. Don Miguel Ruiz has written a book devoted to this mastery, called The Mastery of Love.

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This weeks closing prayer (at the end of our Qigong practice):

“Once he knew what he really was, he looked around at the other humans and the rest of nature, and he was amazed at what he saw.”

Your integrity is who you really are, what you really are, the totality of your authentic self. Spend a few moments every day to get in touch with the memory of what you are. Allow yourself to imagine the possibility that you are made by a certain frequency of Light. Light is the messenger of God; it contains all the information, all possibilities, and all power. Imagine that you are made of Light, of Spirit. There is nothing you need to do. There is nothing you need to be except what you really are. Remember what you are, and the dream of your Life will have no limits.

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Don Miguel Ruiz was born into a family of healers, and raised in rural Mexico by a curandera (healer) mother and a nagual (shaman) grandfather. The family anticipated that Miguel would embrace their centuries-old legacy of healing and teaching, and carry forward the esoteric Toltec knowledge. Instead, distracted by modern life, Miguel chose to attend medical school and become a surgeon.

A near death experience changed his life. Late one night in the early 1970’s, he awoke suddenly, having fallen asleep at the wheel of his car. At that instant the car careened into a wall of concrete. Miguel remembers that he was not in his physical body as he watched himself pull his two friend to safety.

Stunned by this experience, he began an intensive practice of self-inquiry. He devoted himself to the mastery of the ancient ancestral wisdom, studying earnestly with his mother, and completing an apprenticeship with a powerful shaman in the Mexican desert. His grandfather, who had since passed on, continued to teach him in his dreams.

In the tradition of the Toltec, a nagual guides and individual to personal freedom. Don Miguel Ruiz, a nagual from the Eagle Knight lineage, has dedicated his life to sharing the wisdom of the ancient Toltec.

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Thousands of years ago the Toltec were known throughout southern Mexico as “women and men of knowledge”.

Toltec knowledge arises from the same essential unity of truth as all the sacred esoteric traditions found around the world. Though it is not a religion, it honors all the spiritual masters who have taught on the earth. While it does embrace spirit, it is most accurately described as a way of life, distinguished by the ready accessibility of happiness and love.

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With endless love and compassion we embark on this journey together!

xo
Patti