Friday, October 29, 2010

Learning to flow in meditation to fearlessness and relaxing into the feeling that everything is unfolding perfectly.

I wanted to share something meditation as a process of entering into fearlessness, to present what meditation might be in relationship to our feeling side. Sometimes meditation is looking at from the view of calming the mind by letting go ...of thinking. When we meditate there is sometimes an LA freeway of thoughts running through our internal highways. This kind of mind cannot be forced into mental silence. This kind of intention only drives the thoughts into the unconscious where they manifest in turbulent dreams. It is wiser to feel the emotional tone of the thoughts and notice that they are processing a lot of fear. When we accept that we are afraid and anxious, then the mind starts to calm down. When we can look at our fear, own our fear, embrace our fear, and become friends with our fear, then we relax even more. In a paradoxical way, we are no longer afraid of our fear, we are no longer trying to become fearless. If we try to become fearless, then we are in resistance and actually get more stuck in the pattern of fear, and our thoughts race faster and faster in an effort to lash out at something that seems responsible for the fear. It is really perfect that this kind of meditation awareness can possibly arise when everyone might be dressing up as their favorite fear and wandering the streets on one side and everyone is campaigning against what they fear might happen politically.

When thoughts are felt and we acknowledge the fear tone about them, then the intellectual details of our fears become secondary to what is being felt. We do not analyze in meditation, we do not add thoughts to thoughts. Simply feeling the fear and noticing how fear was trying to escape itself and is no longer doing so is already a deep relaxation. We notice that analysis and debate are driven by subtle fears. The thoughts slow down naturally as we notice this. Ideally, if we have not already done so, our breathing reflects this process and also calms down into deep and full inhales and soft and slow exhales with gentle transitions of one turning into the other, rather than holding our breath anywhere.

If we are sensitive enough, we will notice certain thoughts are more core to the movement of fear than others. Most thoughts are reactive and merely embellish the fear, but some thoughts are very core to the fear, like a whirling vortex, like a tornado, and having a kind of empty center to itself. The energy of the tornado is fueled by a subtle sense of self clinging, of feeling a need to protect oneself as a body and mind, as a self identity, with all its system of attachments, possessions, resistances, and opinions about what is right and what is wrong. This subtle self clinging is behind a kind of constructed "me", our personality, and which holds the energy of anger, fear, and sadness. Again the secret is acceptance that this is what we have made ourselves to be and what we sometimes keep reinforcing through our seeking, latching on to things, and resisting other things, especially on the level of thoughts and emotions, anchoring in the sensation of being hurt and feeling pain, and not wanting to repeat a karma rerun and yet doing this very often both internally and externally as the tornado keeps spinning in circles.

The paradox is that we can release the whole energy of this tornado by surrendering into the fear happening, by releasing our resistance to what is feared. The object of the fear, the mental pictures of past atrocities and future apocalypses, are, as the Buddha said, "empty of a solid self", they will probably not ever really happen and if they did they would pass away very quickly anyway. It is the fear that makes what it resists feel solid and real, just as it makes the constructed self identity feel solid and real. It is, in some sense, this fear tornado that makes our world. When the fear is met inside and we surrender to our Golgotha, we die very quickly, and we notice a level inside us that cannot die. It is silent, eternal, peaceful, empty, clear, wise, compassionate, and creative without needing to manifest anything to show that it is creative. It may feel like a leap to go from the depths of fear into fearlessness so easily, but when a tornado stops whirling, a fever does calm down, and the landscape feels both quiet and cleansed.

I do find the metaphor of a tornado to be a good one, because inside the eye of the tornado is a quiet empty space, nothing solid, nothing that seems real, and yet this empty space is more real than the tornado itself, which is just a frenzied activity which disappears completely in one moment of not doing. In a strange way, one does meet a "new heaven and a new Earth" after our tornado apocalypse, or, as one poet said, "both a new world and the old world made explicit" or as the Upanishads said, "the ancient yet evernew". The "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" comes to an end, and the silent Earth remains. The Buddha conquered all the forces of Mara by simply touching this Earth.

18 comments:

  1. Emotions are indirectly chosen by us, except unconditional love, which is always there in our eternal being and can be felt or not felt. When we choose to feel love and connect with love, we relax into being ourselves and let others be themselves. Choosing to feel anything else creates a tension inside us. Breathing relaxes us and lets love free.

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  2. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    Izaiah Asani: ‎...very nice...
    esp. letting others be themselves.
    Au Buddha natural!

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  3. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    Timothy Stetz: Thanks for all the teachings that reawakens our TRUE SELF

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  4. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    Kathryn Morse: Me, too. But I bet you are more advanced at this than I am. Namaste!!!

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  5. In this moment, we can breathe in universal love from the air prana that surrounds us and then breathe out unconditional love towards all sentient beings into the air that surrounds us.

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  6. Breath by breath, rising in love, getting high on love, loving ourselves just as we are and others just as they are, loving ourselves even when feeling complex storms of anger, fear, and sadness, loving ourselves even when we are condemning and shaming ourselves and others for what we are feeling, and then gently unchoosing, letting go, and relaxing into the safety and peace of love, until only love is present.

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  7. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    Leah Hopkins: So beautifully stated. Thank you, William!

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  8. Consciously breathing in universal love from the air prana and consciously breathing out unconditional love toward all sentient beings, we participate in a cosmic creative flow of energy and evolve the very cells of our physical body into a light body.

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  9. The sun pours out loving light energy which interpenetrates the atmosphere of the Earth and gets converted into bio-electricity which in turn recharges and pulsates the magnetic core of the Earth. When consciously breathing we feel this pulsation and our brains rhythm entrain at 7.83 hz, the magnetic pulse of the Earth, and we enter into a feeling of unity with the cosmos. As air prana enters our lungs, red blood cells also breathe with us, and recharge their microaura into a silvery blue glow of radiant health, and in turn allow all the cells of our body to breathe with us, moving from 30 to 70 millivolts to 120 millivolts and beyond. When saturated with loving prana, our bodies will sometimes experience light episodes, sudden surges of flashing into light, a flashing forward to our evolutionary endpoint where we will have light bodies and travel across this universe at the speed of thought. Every conscious breath with we do brings this nearer to us.

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  10. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    John Henson: William I am conducting Christian worship in Canton Uniting Church Cardiff, Wales, tomorrow at 10.30 p.m. I shall use a simplified version of your technique when we pray for others. The prayers will be interspersed by directed breathing thu...s:

    (As you breathe in, say to yourself:) 'Love from God to us.'

    (As you breath out, say to yourself:) Love from us to all.

    Thanks for your help, William. I shall also be reading from the Qur'an in the service, and also from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

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  11. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    Lynnet McKenzie: Thank you for sharing your wisdom and sweetness!

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  12. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    @John Henson: I have more writings about breathing on my blog amritayana.blogspot.com. A few of them go into how Jesus was using the word for "God" called "Abwoon". This word is both genders, male and female, simultaneously, conjoined in... a kind of cosmic creative sexual birthing of the cosmos (ref PRAYERS OF THE COSMOS by Klotz). It is also a breath mantra, "Ah" on the inhale and "Bwoon" on the exhale. The phrase "Holy Spirit" I translate as "Holy Breath" (like the Zorastrians did). The word translated as "spirit" is "pneuma" in Koine Greek (New Testament Greek) which does mean breath. My belief is that Jesus did breath and body prayer to transfigure his physical body into a light body. His disciples noticed that he was "praying" differently and asked him to teach them to pray. As far as prayer goes, the disciples were all raised in the Judaism of their time and like modern Christians and Jews, most of the prayers were more about sending words to god. Islam does add body movement to make it a body prayer, but still does not coordinate breathing with those movements (it would not be hard to add the breathing to their five times a day to Mecca though). Many Orthodox Jews do a kind of rocking body prayer with their words, while many old style Catholics still like to do certain body prayer movements during the Mass (they seem to like doing this on Wednesday night services where it can be more personal). The Eastern orthodox Christians have a tradition of breathing prayer with the Hesychasts. It seems that Saint Seraphim from among them did translate his body into light through this (but I have not been able to track down the passage where I found mention of this down to a root reference). In any case, the disciples see that Jesus is praying differently than the usual verbal prayers ("being heard for their many words") and ask him to initiate them into this deeper prayer mode. I also have a youtube video on channel "Raku777" which is entitled "Anthem to the Holy Breath" which walks a person through how to do this with music designed to support an energetic shift (7.83hz biaural beat aka brain entrainment to harmonize with the magnetic pulse of the Earth). Blessings, Will

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  13. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    ‎@John Henson: I found this online that I thought was interesting (even though a little overly complex theologically): http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/hesychasm.html

    Crystallization of the New Paradigm: The Macarian Account of the Lord's Tran...sfiguration

    The previous analysis shows that in the Macarian homilies Moses' shining countenance and the luminosity of Adam's prelapsarian tselem serve as metaphors for major paradigms of the transformational vision.
    In the Macarian writings, one can also encounter a third paradigm of luminous transformation which is radically different from the previous two traditions. In a peculiar Macarian understanding of Christ's transfiguration[liv] on Mt. Tabor, the duality of inner and outer in visio Dei is attempted through in a new metaphor of the transformational vision--Christ's "Body[lv] of Light.”[lvi]
    Macarius makes an important theological statement when he observes that in His Transfiguration Christ was not just covered by the Glory but "was transfigured into divine glory and into infinite light" (II.15.38).[lvii]
    In II.15.38 the homilist elaborates this ingenious understanding of Christ's transfiguration in which the internal and external aspects of transformational mystical experience are absolutely resolved:

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  14. For as the body of the Lord was glorified when he climbed the mount and was transfigured into the divine glory and into infinite light, so also the bodies of the saints are glorified and shine like lightning.[lviii] Just as the interior glory of Christ covered his body and shone completely, in the same way also in the saints the interior power of Christ in them in the day will be poured out exteriorly upon their bodies...(II.15.38).[lix]

    The language of the passage further reinforces the totality of this transformational vision--Christ's internal glory serves as the teleological source of his complete, luminous metamorphosis.
    In the articulation of the newness of Christ's condition, Macarius thus offers a completely new paradigm of the beatific vision--the bodies of visionaries are now not simply covered externally with the divine light but are "lightened"[lx] in the way as many lamps are lightened from the one:

    Similarly, as many lamps are lighted from the one, same fire, so also it is necessary that the bodies of the saints, which are members of Christ, become the same which Christ himself is. (II.15.38).[lxi]

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  15. In this new concept of the transformational vision, Macarius, however, sets a significant distinction between Christ's Transfiguration and human luminous transformation. In contrast to the Lord's metamorphosis, the bodies of mortals cannot be completely "transfigured into the divine glory" but rather simply become "glorified."
    The hypostatic quality of Christ's luminous form is what differentiates Him from transformed Christians who are only predestined to participate in the light of His Glory and "have put on the raiment of ineffable light."[lxii] This articulation of the distinction between Christ's hypostasis and His light will play later an important role in Palamas' dialectics of God's essence and the divine energies.

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  16. From a parallel entry on Facebook:
    Norma Novy: "I am practicing a breathing exercise and I like yours very much. I love your photo with the third eye glowing."

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  17. From a parallel Facebook entry:
    John Hansen: "@ William. Used your recommended breathing technique on my congregation yesterday morning after they had been the recipients of my fiery sermon. I think it helped them to calm down and to think in prayer of those in need. Thanks, friend."

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  18. perfect words to calm the storm of my analytical mind...however quite another storm of comments here!endless gratitude

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