tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post1352039483398789182..comments2023-04-24T08:22:01.715-07:00Comments on Amritayana Buddhism: About Conscious ParentingWillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-54602927654219195532011-06-14T09:39:30.984-07:002011-06-14T09:39:30.984-07:00Had a talk with a friend and found another element...Had a talk with a friend and found another element worth mentioning in regard to all this, dance and rhythm, especially the latter. It links the kinesthetic body intelligence to musical intelligence. There are imposed rhythms, like the goose step, that are part of a control system and there is an natural rhythm, related to heartbeat and breath, that allows us to feel in sync with life and is related to the Schumann resonance frequency, 7.83 hz, of the Earth. Greg Braden talks about this frequency shifting on the Earth and dropping to zero point. But I feel that, even though the magnetic field is dropping and changing, at some level 7.83 hz is still there to ground in. It is imprinted into the magnetic matter of the Earth, formed by the heating and cooling processes that happen underground and through volcanoes. Magnetic fields can have more than one frequency running inside itself. One part can drop to zero while a kind of subtle magnetic memory can hold a certain frequency even when the field seems mostly dormant. Breathing together (the root meaning of the word "conspiracy"), listening to each other on this level and harmonizing there, can form an organic rhythm that can initiate a person back into life resonance.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-48907768145620054252011-06-14T08:33:27.487-07:002011-06-14T08:33:27.487-07:00When you strip off the label "problem" t...When you strip off the label "problem" to something, it is a felt body experience that the body can process and learn from. Trying to solve a problem can be another aggression against being with our present experience and letting it evolve. We might suffer, experience stress, age and/or even die in the process, depending on the intensity of what is going on. But Sufis are big on deeply understanding a problem and seeing the problems, themselves, as gifts. This is the same with Tantric Buddhists, who consider all problems as old karma returning for completion, and Zen Buddhists who consider that the answer is within the question itself, that the problem and solution are within each other and part of a unity. We do not like problems that do not disappear in a weekend workshop and do not like problems we cannot nuke and annihilate from the sky with a robot plane.<br /><br />It is good to peal off all labels and to feel into nonverbal experience, to realize that "problem" is an empty mental construct that is imposed on life, or rather a system of interlocking constructs that the define the whole situation and categorizes all situations as "problem solved" or "problem unsolved". Creative thinking, emerging from the wordless, can "solve" the problem, but sometimes this is done by questioning the whole frame or lens that makes the problem look like a problem. For instance, rising fuel costs can be seen as a problem or it can be seen as a solution. The rise in fuel costs may be the fuel attaining its real value relative to alternate energy sources that may now have a chance to successfully compete and win against an obsolete and overused finite fossil fuel.<br /><br />It might be better to ask, to the body, what is making this feel like a problem? And then resolve the issue on this level. It means relaxing, but this relaxation can be artificially induced by a disassociation from what we actually feel or can be by "letting go of clinging" to something that we are holding on to. When a child cries, is that a problem? It is definitely a challenge and the goal may be to get the child to not cry. But it might just be that we need to only be present and loving and let the child have the body experience of crying (or any number of things like helping to release poop or releasing spinal tension, etc., all emerging from a felt sense of the situation. Crying is a deep letting go and the child might just be feeling a need to do this). It may not need fixing.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-43376880240705235292011-06-14T08:16:14.271-07:002011-06-14T08:16:14.271-07:00I remember hearing a Radio Talk Show interview of ...I remember hearing a Radio Talk Show interview of Doris Lessing who wrote some early feminist literature, later turned socialist, and then later turned Sufi. The interviewer, when hearing about all the ills of our present time period and all the challenges that we are facing, asked Doris Lessing about what she thought the solution was. Doris Lessing said, "What makes you think there is a solution?" She went on further to talk about how Americans, in particular, frame solutions. We generate workshops, paperback books, and quick summary slogans to define the solution, like "Just say 'No' to Drugs". Then there is a competition with other tribes which have their own counter-slogans. We want to fix things to "get back to normal" to the level of middle class social life that we are used to and which may, even though very innocent seeming, be part of the problem, increasing the carbon footprint each of us uses, melting the glaciers, causing the ocean sea level to rise, and increasing the volumetric pressure on the fissures on the Pacific Rim, and then causing earthquakes on the Pacific Rim, challenging poor designed and highly toxic nuclear power plants to failure and irradiating the entire northern hemisphere.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-18023996497843596242011-06-14T07:40:31.480-07:002011-06-14T07:40:31.480-07:00Part of the reason why it is good for the child to...Part of the reason why it is good for the child to take on and take off the various adult roles that are around them is because it evolves this kinesthetic learning. It is very important, though, that a child stay grounded in the felt sense during the experiences, is an alive breather, and can feel the adult role state in terms of what the felt sense of the role is. Then the role will be felt as a kind of tension that the child will want to relax out of and release. The child will not be tempted again to go there unless it is temporarily useful as an appropriate response to whatever is arising, rather than a rigid pattern desynchronized with the unity of life that is sometimes called "character". Curiously, a Buddha looks little like a child again. They have gone back into that psychic flexibility and have a slightly amorphous personality. Hotai Buddha embodies this very well and did get along very well with kids, giving them little toys he handmade all year round.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-15842196202596216112011-06-14T07:33:58.766-07:002011-06-14T07:33:58.766-07:00Ideally, the nonverbal felt sense, the kinesthetic...Ideally, the nonverbal felt sense, the kinesthetic sense, is behind acquiring of language, where words are used to ground in the felt sense, rather than disconnect with the felt sense. In a book called FOCUSING (also the name of the method), Gendlin describes a method to re-integrate words with the felt sense. It is a good meditation method which is behind both Buddhist meditation and successful psychotherapy of any kind. When the disconnect happens, a person has a "flat affect" where they are meant to have some emotion or vital sensation. The person may also go into a blank stare and feel a small sensation in the brain where it is replicating the emotion or sensation that they are supposed to feel, a like of small autism ("ought-ism" aka what someone told him or her what he or she should feel, rather than what was the original feeling). This ought-ism can actually be felt as real and is replicated in a small part of the brain tissue as a virtual experience, but it cannot really be a whole body felt sense. If a person can expand his or her awareness into the fullness of the body, then this autism or flat affect can be healed. Babies and children ideally are allowed to keep this felt whole body sense alive and expand more deeply into this with their "curiosity" (dana parmita). They feel very alive because of this.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-63629417976648975662011-06-14T07:22:16.629-07:002011-06-14T07:22:16.629-07:00The Rebirthers and Vivation people found it was po...The Rebirthers and Vivation people found it was possible to heal the breath in babies by looking into their eyes (babies love to look at faces) and breathe with them and for them until their breathing becomes natural and circular again. The synchronized breathing with any parent or any human adult, on behalf of life, can initiate in a smoother welcoming manner that is a "good start for a good journey". It is necessary, however, that the adult in question has passed through "breath release" and can feel what it means to "breathe from the breath itself". It transcends the isolated doer and could also be called "unity breath" or "the mother breath". This kind of initiation is also a kinesthetic learning.<br /><br />Cranial Sacrum spinal release or simply touching the side of each vertebra with one finger of each hand, running Reiki energy until the back completely relaxes and realigns, can also help relieve some of the birth trauma. Sometimes the spine gets a little mangled during the transition from womb to world. I think this is less likely with an underwater birth, but in whatever birth process a child undergoes, it is good to check this. It stimulates some of the earliest kinesthetic learning and can ground the child in a learning process that is reliable and pre-language.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-25432013367534934262011-06-14T07:13:05.031-07:002011-06-14T07:13:05.031-07:00In a book called BIRTH WITHOUT VIOLENCE by LeBoyer...In a book called BIRTH WITHOUT VIOLENCE by LeBoyer, the author and doctor questioned a number of things about how children are born. He recommended a gentle process of birth where there are no harsh lights waiting for the child, where there is a small pool of warm water for the child to ground in, and where the umbilical chord stops pulsing before it is cut. This last item seemed very key to why Rebirthing breathing is so healing for people to undergo. When the umbilical chord is cut, the baby feels a panic and urgency about breathing, and must figure before dying of suffocation how to breathe for the first time. This premature cutting of the umbilical chord desynchronizes the "first breath" with the initial awakening into the physical world, and creates the first crisis for the child. The imprint gained at this time is that a person must struggle to do what he or she does not know how to do, that people, like the doctor, are going to force them to grow through unnecessary crisis, and that they may die instead. If there is a feeling of "breathing from the breath itself" through this transition, then the milder imprint would be that life is birthing us into this world, breathing through us and for us, and is with us as a unity through the entire journey through life.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-79985186485777377952011-06-14T07:05:12.274-07:002011-06-14T07:05:12.274-07:00Rebirthing breathing was a breathing system develo...Rebirthing breathing was a breathing system developed by Leonard Orr (although it was apparently a hot tub method until Diane Hinterman said, "Maybe its the breathing," and sparked both Leonard Orr and Jim Leonard to inquire in this direction, the former creating Rebirthing and the latter creating Vivation). During a Rebirthing session, it was very common to go back to the shock trauma of the birth process itself and "breathe through it" until one reaches "breath release" and "breathes from the breath itself" (or feels life itself is breathing through you and for you). This way the imprint of "life is effort and struggle" may continue. Like the Sufi group, many Rebirthers wondered if it was possible to just have a birth where the imprint does not happen, to make the ego sense remain more fluid rather than get too solid (built around the imprint).Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-29919611054512965622011-06-14T02:39:10.758-07:002011-06-14T02:39:10.758-07:00Thank you. I felt like I just took a semester in &...Thank you. I felt like I just took a semester in 'Intelligent Loving' child care.debhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14766879183101535831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-14565352333004096782011-06-13T09:48:06.686-07:002011-06-13T09:48:06.686-07:00Continued:
It is too bad that we do not have a vi...Continued:<br /><br />It is too bad that we do not have a video tape of the master Jesus in action. Kinesthetic intelligence is often hard to translate into words and we have some of the sketchiest words left behind to decode what Jesus must have acting out through his body. But there are traces, like when the woman in need of healing touches his garment, he feels "power" or "virtue" leave him and she is healed (the word in Aramaic and/or Greek means both these things, as does "te" in Mandarin Chinese in the Taoist cannon, there is a parallel Sanskrit word that Buddha uses after he is enlightened when he sees that potential enlightened nature of everyone and how they are endowed with "wisdom and virtue"). It shows Jesus kinesthetically sensitive and also that he was initiated into something like Reiki Energy Healing, because that is very often how the energy works. It has its own intelligence and it is felt kinesthetically. There are also indications that Buddha moves very gently and compassionately upon the Earth, and the Earth itself responded to this kind of "body prayer" often blooming flowers out of season as if the plants could feel something different and were honoring this. This fits in with the beatitude, "Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the Earth."Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-85734166207090470472011-06-13T09:47:51.413-07:002011-06-13T09:47:51.413-07:00The Sufi school in question used "Mime" ...The Sufi school in question used "Mime" as their vehicle for kinesthetic learning. It is a very good one. By not being able to speak in audio, the body is forced to learn how speak through movement and gesture. Breathing becomes more important and building the movements around the breath are important. Mime is part of what I call "invocation 401". It presupposes, at its higher levels, some level of thought and attention mastery. It is one of the steps toward actual materialization of objects in space. Like hypnotherapy, everyone is unwittingly hypnotizing and miming their world into existence, even teaching others how to treat them. It is sometimes easier to see this on a mime (kinesthetic) level, where gestures, intent, attention, and presence are used to embody/materialize something. Watching Harpo in a Marx brothers movie is useful, because he is unusually awake as a person on a kinesthetic level. The people around Harpo are very asleep on the level body and emotional levels that he is acting out on. Once you get what he is embodying, then you can generalize and learn about other people you see on the media screens. What you will mostly see, though, is a kind of "disconnect" to the kinesthetic level, a certain glazed look in the eyes that shows that people are not present and aware in their bodies, but instead are running some mental/emotional/reactive conditioning pattern that bypasses the neural networks of the body as a totality. People are not into whole body thinking, feeling, sensing, and acting. There is a phantom electrical pattern in the cortex that is trying to run the whole show and is largely overwhelmed with the task of blocking out messages that sometimes end up screaming in the body, and calling for attention. Children often pick up on these body messages in their parents and act them out, and sometimes get punished for them or the parent tries to solve his or her problems through "remote therapy" using the child as the designated problem. The child cannot solve the problem, though, but only act out one of the missing voices and is usually not appreciated for this assignment. One Sufi practice is called "weaving" where you listen and respond to include all the alien messages back into the totality. You especially seek out the "lost sheep", the missing one that completes the 99 sheep to make the wholeness of 100 as in the Jesus parable. This is the "stone the builders rejected" that becomes the "chief cornerstone" upon which internal wholeness, the inner temple can be founded. The ego, based on separation, is always alienating some parts of the self and clinging to others in order to define itself. Internally it creates division and struggle, warring voices that it battles with, and often this struggle is externalized in a parent/child dynamic or a family pattern dynamic. To remove the battle metaphor and look at the whole situation differently takes a certain amount of conscious awareness and inner development. When Jesus says, "Resist not evil," he is laying down the foundation for this kind of process. He gives this command, because power struggling against evil is the way of the ego. It does not know how to not resist. It draws a blank when confronted with the paradoxical command of Jesus.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-98410231547260052011-06-13T09:17:49.426-07:002011-06-13T09:17:49.426-07:00What I have observed sometimes is that parents som...What I have observed sometimes is that parents sometimes end up resorting to sending communications when they are out of the range where the children can see their faces and sometimes, given the challenges of modern life, are barking out commands, some of them fairly complex operationally, for children to understand and obey. The commands presuppose a highly obedient child and presuppose a greater obedience to commands than one would expect from a romantic partner, and can sometimes require a response that is faster than their kinesthetic processing can grok. I remember that one mom barked out, "Don't slam the glass on the table". I could tell that the child did not grok the command. When people understand something, there is a kind of telepathic agreement, a shimmering of actual electrons in the brain, that resonates with the understanding. When we really understand, we are of "one mind" in that place. The more common understanding, the greater the telepathic unity and the more that one is eventually able to stay in communication resonance with each other, even at a distance. I saw the child did not have this resonance. So I took two glasses and tapped them together and asked the child what sound they produced. He gave a name to his experience. It did not matter what the name was, because in the act of hearing and feeling how the sound felt in the body, he already had an answer. I then slammed the glasses together and asked what kind of sound they produced. He said another name. I then asked, "What is the difference?". I could tell that the child already felt the difference, but we got the word, "Harsh", to name the difference. The louder sound was harsher. I then said, "Your mom does not want you to slam the glass on the table and produce that harsh sound," and demoed why, showing how the milk spilled out of the glass and caused a mess. The child never slammed another glass of milk on the table again. There was a "body learning" rather than a need for obedience to a command. The learning, too, was generalized over other events in subsequent times, becoming part of the sensitivity that this child was going to have. It became part of a sensory and motor calibration of movement. There was no need for me to be an authority, no need for logical consequences, no need for spankings, no need to shout confusing commands louder, and no need to evolve a more sophisticated control system for the child to live in. The child loved his mom and understood how the glass slamming was something that upset this flow. He wanted to be in harmony with his mom and was willing to give some authority to what she wanted. There is a natural control system that is already present because of how children entrust themselves. When I worked with abused kids or adults that were abused by their parents in childhood, what I am amazed is how much there is not a rebellion. They are often supercompliant personalities and very afraid of not understanding the often complex and contradictory commands (a no win situation) of their toxic parents. They often have to evolve complex strategies to decode what commands they are given and look for commands in noncommand statements. Part of Feldenkrais training is to learn to give kinesthetic instructions that allow a person to stay in a body learning about what needs to be done and for people to feel the same basic "necessity". It evolves in freedom when there is an open ended exploration of what is.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-39515622037865033212011-06-13T08:57:45.146-07:002011-06-13T08:57:45.146-07:00When I was in graduate school in Psychophysiology,...When I was in graduate school in Psychophysiology, when I was compiling info on my master's thesis. I found a lot of experimental abstracts about how some teacher used some method to take learning disabled children and make them into straight A students. The common theme of a lot of them was that they took kinesthetic learners and taught them in their own modality, one choosing ballet and perhaps another choosing some tactile art. Once grounded in their own modality, then they could branch out and access the other learning modalities of audio and visual processing. One teacher just said that she would "love" her students and tell them they were good people, worthy of respect, and inspired them this way. I do gather that very young children are very sensitive on a kinesthetic sensory-tactile-motor level and that parents are not going to be able to consciously teach on this level unless they already have grown in this direction themselves. This means that Chi Kung, Tai Chi, Hatha Yoga, Feldenkrais, Traeger, Hakomi, and other mind/heart/body therapies can help. The main thing is for the parent to have less glitches in themselves between thinking, feeling, and doing. When we start living incongruent messages on these levels, it does scramble up children who are very sensitive to contradictions.Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8467466552105314472.post-60134285430895088682011-06-10T09:40:24.771-07:002011-06-10T09:40:24.771-07:00The time that the crystallization takes place is a...The time that the crystallization takes place is around 6 years old, though the personality can become very formed and solid before then.<br /><br />One metaphor that may help is to feel like you are teaching a game to your child, make it more like play. If they have to learn something "serious" then make time when it can be playful as a kind of rehearsal for the real thing. If they have to learn how to be "on time" (a difficult idea for a child to understand, clock time), then take time to make this into a play. Try to be on time for things that are not crucial, like going to the park to play frisbee or to make an appointment to be in the room the same time as a doll who will be in certain parts of the room at different times. This also changes the process into a sensory motor learning process and gives them room to "fail" without serious consequences to you or them. You can also trust that they want to learn this mysterious thing called "time" (something that adults may need to learn is mysterious too).Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15340539277090876795noreply@blogger.com