This is a tough topic. I'm going to muddle through it and hope I don't spill too much of myself on the screen. Since this is a topic that reaches beyond what I have words for, I think it will be best to stick in the realm of metaphors. If you have trouble with Contemplative writing of this kind, do us both a favor and skip this entry.
I often refer to myself as a sheepdog. The metaphor has been especially powerful for me lately. In my life, I've noticed certain times when I seem inexorably drawn to someone. I just can't get them out of my head and I am overwhelmed with deep love for them. Not in a romantic way, but real love. These bonds are not at all easily broken. In fact, I can't really think of one time that I have broken it. I don't think I could. The people may go, but the bond stays in me if nowhere else.
One example, I was so impressed upon by God once when I was giving a presentation at a school of second graders about this one child in front of me. I don't know her name, I don't know anything about her, but I have prayed for that child for the past 10 years or more. I've never forgotten her and I could never even find her if I wanted to. But I pray for her to be safe and to grow and to be whole and loved. This is a weaker form of what I mean.
The bond with my friend that I mentioned in the previous post is similar but stronger for having interacted with this friend for so long. Then it happens periodically with the kids I minister to. I love them all and am fiercely protective of them, but every so often there is one that I am really impressed upon. Usually, I don't initiate the connection. In fact with kids, they usually do it because they are so much more apt to respond to those feelings, even though they don't understand how to verbalize them. Heck I can't even describe it. But I feel it deep in my soul in a way I don't with most kid-like clinginess. It's like my heart is bound to that person and something spiritual occurs. I've even seen it go both ways in which I feel myself healing from unrelated heart issues simply by interacting with someone I am attached to. I don't need any reciprocity and am joyed when I see development in the other person in the areas that I have been shown in their heart.
I've struggled with how to explain this in a way that doesn't come across creepy, espeically when talking about kids, but nothing has worked. Then, as often happens with pop culture, I was reading the Twilight series with my wife...I know, mixed reactions, I'm having them myself...but I have to admit it has entered our cultural consciousness very much like the Matrix and Star Wars and it will not go away. There is a lot of truth in those books, packaged amongst the preteen romance and the faddy vampire stuff.
Anyway, the idea that struck me about this was the idea of imprinting. How perfectly apt to my sheepdog metaphor! The wolves have this process of imprinting which is based in real developmental psychology, but fantasized into a spiritual attachment of a positive kind. I hesitate to use that term, since in the vocabulary of Spiritualism, spiritual attachments are pretty exclusively negative. But this concept of imprinting is so well described in the books even down to the confusion with creepiness. It isn't that at all. In fact it is so much the opposite. Someone I am "imprinted on" for lack of a better term is perhaps safer with me than anyone else in the world because I only want what is good for them, only want to help and heal and protect. Just like Jacob and Renesmee.
I've looked for other ways to describe this phenomenon, but they just aren't there. There is nothing in Christian literature that I have yet to find, though the concept is not foreign to Christianity. Jesus is said to have been deeply moved with compassion for people and mystics often talk about being given a heart for someone. I think it must be a process whereby God connects people who need each other for something, even if one of them doesn't realize it.
I'm not trying to make a doctrine out of this. I'm just trying to give a window into something that I wish was more widely recognized. And this metaphor melds well to the situation and with other metaphors that I find helpful.
In the meantime, if I seem inordinately attached to someone, please play it out against this metaphorical backdrop and see if it doesn't fit. It's all positive as far as I can run with it. And at the very least, I feel that someone has recognized the concept in some form or it never would have come out in the book.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Emotion
Things have been busy lately. One thing after another. Spring usually is for me. So many ideas come and go through my head, but I haven't had time to sit down and record them. And once they're gone, they are hard to recall, being incorporated into my personality or discarded altogether.
But the overall tone of things lately has been about harmonizing and trying to exist fully. About trying to embrace what is real and what is important both positive and negative. I'm finding it ever so easier by degrees to embrace the possibilities and love both the good and the bad things in appropriate ways. It is a good growing process.
But I'm also finding that in the process, I am flooded with emotions. When I allow myself to feel, they come at me almost unmitigated, and in the embracing of the moment, I have to allow myself to feel them. I am finding it to be very similar to a time in the past when I had allowed myself to fully experience my own reactions in an effort to stop internalizing them where they would wreak havoc on my psyche. Though the experience is very similar, the circumstances are not and I am different too, but it does feel good to re-find this obviously elemental part of me.
The trick now is to learn how to balance them without losing the ability to function. anger must be tempered and appropriate, sadness has its time and place, and love can't be expressed too openly. Sometimes, the tempering may not even be good or natural. For example when a reaction is right, but society tells us we shouldn't have it. I have a friend that I am sometimes overwhelmed with love for. Not romantic, but a very deep familial love. I want to express it and know that it would be good for it to be expressed, but the friend doesn't believe this to be true, or is too knotted up still to accept it. The danger I can see is in this is losing the ability again in an attempt to conform too greatly.
So for now, I am loping along, learning to trust and to surrender and to feel. The sheepdog metaphor seems more and more appropriate. Dogs have much less trouble living rightly. They can distinguish good and bad in their own way and can even learn a lot of our own subtleties about good and bad which they can only be taught by humans. They are not afraid to express their feelings. They are happy and loving and sad and ill and excited and it all comes out every fiber of their existence. If we were allowed to be more this way, the world would be better. I will change it one at a time.
But the overall tone of things lately has been about harmonizing and trying to exist fully. About trying to embrace what is real and what is important both positive and negative. I'm finding it ever so easier by degrees to embrace the possibilities and love both the good and the bad things in appropriate ways. It is a good growing process.
But I'm also finding that in the process, I am flooded with emotions. When I allow myself to feel, they come at me almost unmitigated, and in the embracing of the moment, I have to allow myself to feel them. I am finding it to be very similar to a time in the past when I had allowed myself to fully experience my own reactions in an effort to stop internalizing them where they would wreak havoc on my psyche. Though the experience is very similar, the circumstances are not and I am different too, but it does feel good to re-find this obviously elemental part of me.
The trick now is to learn how to balance them without losing the ability to function. anger must be tempered and appropriate, sadness has its time and place, and love can't be expressed too openly. Sometimes, the tempering may not even be good or natural. For example when a reaction is right, but society tells us we shouldn't have it. I have a friend that I am sometimes overwhelmed with love for. Not romantic, but a very deep familial love. I want to express it and know that it would be good for it to be expressed, but the friend doesn't believe this to be true, or is too knotted up still to accept it. The danger I can see is in this is losing the ability again in an attempt to conform too greatly.
So for now, I am loping along, learning to trust and to surrender and to feel. The sheepdog metaphor seems more and more appropriate. Dogs have much less trouble living rightly. They can distinguish good and bad in their own way and can even learn a lot of our own subtleties about good and bad which they can only be taught by humans. They are not afraid to express their feelings. They are happy and loving and sad and ill and excited and it all comes out every fiber of their existence. If we were allowed to be more this way, the world would be better. I will change it one at a time.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Freedom and Faith
Thinking about health as I described in the last post has opened a lot of new ideas to me, and some older ones too. I'm starting to think we don't actually originate as much of what goes through our minds as we'd like to think. There are just too many coincidents that seem to speak to the same issues at one time.
Anyway, I was listening to someone talk on the radio about freedom in the Christian sense. This is something that I don't think we often take as seriously as it is presented. Jesus talks repeatedly about freedom and faith. These are probably two of his most prominent subjects. There is countless imagery about it throughout the Bible. And yet, we continually lock ourselves back into chains with rules and expectations. I think the truth is that real freedom scares us. we see a version of freedom corrupt trust fund kids, hollywood stars, and politicians. This may taint us against it, but I think it really just forces us to realize our total lack of security so we look for paper walls to set up.
Of course, one of the virtues of freedom is that it doesn't force us. We are free to think of ourselves as unfree and to act as if we are not free. But I was most struck by this simple sentence, "For freedom you have been set free." It is translated a little differently in other places. But this version in particular resonated along the same lines as the Health topic. For freedom. The purpose of being freed is to be free...nothing else. I'm sorry, as dangerous as that may sound to the security and order that people crave, I can't take it any other way. I am free. Free in truth. All things are permissible for me. And no one has a right to restrict me. Not pastors or priests or politicians or even bosses.
Now I know someone reading this will be thinking the same objections I hear screaming in my head, so rather than try to address them all individually, I would rather illustrate what I mean. We don't live in a society of kings and lords and birthrights, so this is a bit hard to understand for most people, but it works well. A king's family was born with rights. They could freely go places, they could freely speak. They weren't expected to bow or defer to people. Of course this can be abused, but stay with it. Those freedoms were part and parcel of who they were. That of course didn't mean that they should go do anything they pleased. Actions have consequences, noblesse oblige, etc. But even in situations where a prince, for instance, obeyed other authority or limited himself, it was not at the expense of his rights. He limited himself not because he had to, but because he chose to. This is the subtle key that stood out to me. If I truly understand my freedom, I can be fully comfortable in any setting and I can accept limitations because they are my choice, not because they are forced upon me. It's really a change in perspective.
Of course a false perspective is a delusion, so the perspective must be true to be healthy. This is where I was stuck with my friend's health concept. I have to understand the shape of my reality and my freedom to have confidence, i.e. faith, in it. To wish things away is just hollow PMA hoohah and fails in the end when things I can't deny force their way into my constructs.
But what if...just what if, I really was far freer than I ever imagined? What if I really was freed from illness, from fear, from the very laws of time and space? This could be possible, and by my friend's theory, the very act of questioning opens a space by which the cold energy, the counter-entropic forces, could rush in. So now I just need confirmation. That's where this teacher came in and spoke directly to the matter. There was confirmation in my own tradition, in my own faith, which I firmly believe to represent reality...to be true.
Jesus came to set captives free, to heal, to restore. He modeled true freedom. He told us that we simply have to believe that we have been freed to manifest amazing things. Peter walked on water until he wavered in his confidence that he could! Yet, we misunderstand, and return to our own vomit. And in our desperation for security we explain away, we metaphorize, we chop and reassemble what is the absolutely most amazing feat. The thing that the Greeks and Norse looked to the heroes for, the Enlightenment looked to logic for, the Progressives looked to future generations for, the New Agers and Pagans look to spirits for, had already occured! It had already been made possible. The worst thing is that I knew this. I couldn't have articulated it, but you can read my old writings about what I called majik and wonder. But for too long, even I had thrown off my own wonder in favor of the puke pile...but it was killing me.
I don't know what it means, how far it goes, or what happens next, but I believe that there are so many more possibilities than I saw even 10 minutes ago. I am capable of amazing wondrous things. And you are too. It isn't about buying a ticket or following a path. It's about believing what is true and discovering how much truer things can get. As a mentor of mine said, I'm being invited into the Wardrobe. And like Neo, wonderland is about to go bye-bye.
Anyway, I was listening to someone talk on the radio about freedom in the Christian sense. This is something that I don't think we often take as seriously as it is presented. Jesus talks repeatedly about freedom and faith. These are probably two of his most prominent subjects. There is countless imagery about it throughout the Bible. And yet, we continually lock ourselves back into chains with rules and expectations. I think the truth is that real freedom scares us. we see a version of freedom corrupt trust fund kids, hollywood stars, and politicians. This may taint us against it, but I think it really just forces us to realize our total lack of security so we look for paper walls to set up.
Of course, one of the virtues of freedom is that it doesn't force us. We are free to think of ourselves as unfree and to act as if we are not free. But I was most struck by this simple sentence, "For freedom you have been set free." It is translated a little differently in other places. But this version in particular resonated along the same lines as the Health topic. For freedom. The purpose of being freed is to be free...nothing else. I'm sorry, as dangerous as that may sound to the security and order that people crave, I can't take it any other way. I am free. Free in truth. All things are permissible for me. And no one has a right to restrict me. Not pastors or priests or politicians or even bosses.
Now I know someone reading this will be thinking the same objections I hear screaming in my head, so rather than try to address them all individually, I would rather illustrate what I mean. We don't live in a society of kings and lords and birthrights, so this is a bit hard to understand for most people, but it works well. A king's family was born with rights. They could freely go places, they could freely speak. They weren't expected to bow or defer to people. Of course this can be abused, but stay with it. Those freedoms were part and parcel of who they were. That of course didn't mean that they should go do anything they pleased. Actions have consequences, noblesse oblige, etc. But even in situations where a prince, for instance, obeyed other authority or limited himself, it was not at the expense of his rights. He limited himself not because he had to, but because he chose to. This is the subtle key that stood out to me. If I truly understand my freedom, I can be fully comfortable in any setting and I can accept limitations because they are my choice, not because they are forced upon me. It's really a change in perspective.
Of course a false perspective is a delusion, so the perspective must be true to be healthy. This is where I was stuck with my friend's health concept. I have to understand the shape of my reality and my freedom to have confidence, i.e. faith, in it. To wish things away is just hollow PMA hoohah and fails in the end when things I can't deny force their way into my constructs.
But what if...just what if, I really was far freer than I ever imagined? What if I really was freed from illness, from fear, from the very laws of time and space? This could be possible, and by my friend's theory, the very act of questioning opens a space by which the cold energy, the counter-entropic forces, could rush in. So now I just need confirmation. That's where this teacher came in and spoke directly to the matter. There was confirmation in my own tradition, in my own faith, which I firmly believe to represent reality...to be true.
Jesus came to set captives free, to heal, to restore. He modeled true freedom. He told us that we simply have to believe that we have been freed to manifest amazing things. Peter walked on water until he wavered in his confidence that he could! Yet, we misunderstand, and return to our own vomit. And in our desperation for security we explain away, we metaphorize, we chop and reassemble what is the absolutely most amazing feat. The thing that the Greeks and Norse looked to the heroes for, the Enlightenment looked to logic for, the Progressives looked to future generations for, the New Agers and Pagans look to spirits for, had already occured! It had already been made possible. The worst thing is that I knew this. I couldn't have articulated it, but you can read my old writings about what I called majik and wonder. But for too long, even I had thrown off my own wonder in favor of the puke pile...but it was killing me.
I don't know what it means, how far it goes, or what happens next, but I believe that there are so many more possibilities than I saw even 10 minutes ago. I am capable of amazing wondrous things. And you are too. It isn't about buying a ticket or following a path. It's about believing what is true and discovering how much truer things can get. As a mentor of mine said, I'm being invited into the Wardrobe. And like Neo, wonderland is about to go bye-bye.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Health
The other day I was sick with a mild head cold and was resigned to forgo a dinner party I had been looking forward to. But when a friend showed up to ride with us and I told him, he said, "oh don't worry about me, I don't get sick anymore."
This caught me off guard. I was skeptical and asked what he meant. He said that he used to have many of the ailments I've had all my life, but not anymore because in his meditation, he had learned to embrace illness. He even stopped getting sick at all. What! I had to know more. I've tried many things that are supposed to help ward off colds, but nothing really works. So I was sure there must be some other factors that would explain it...he was one of those who naturally didn't get sick, he really did get sick and was fooling himself. I didn't know. But in the course of the conversation, I began to understand his theory which was well constructed, actually. I ended up going to dinner, mainly just to learn more about this idea.
As I understand it, the theory is something like this: thoughts influence our body in real ways, so a practice of always seeking the good, leads to more good being manifest in us. This sounds like a standard Positive Mental Attitude thing, but it goes so far beyond it in ways that make sense. He described his meditation technique, the basis for his thinking, how he visualizes things, tied it to science and metaphysics, and religion. In short, it was plausible. I could acknowledge that it was valid, but I couldn't "believe" it yet. Then at one moment, the resonating wave that shakes the cords in the jeweled net of my reality hit and I found the one thing I was supposed to gain from the conversation. He recognized it at once and said, "good, then you're done for tonight. Do it again tomorrow." Of course we talked on from there, but I really did find a kernel of truth in what he was saying.
I mulled it over all weekend as I recovered from the worst of the cold and had decided, I might have found the kernel in it all and wasn't sure about the rest. So I did a little research to see if the stuff he said fell in the realm of the wacky, the pseudo-science, or the mainline that no one has heard of. To my surprise, I instantly found a reputable medical website that highlighted many of the very things he had talked about. Wow! So there was something to this! It was independently verified.
I'm still not so sure how it all works out or to what extent, but I'm definitely going to give it a a fair go. Did you know that antibodies actually increase in people who habitually practice certain things that are really just sage old advice about health? I'm amazed, but shouldn't be. After all, ancient/folk wisdom, which we now tend to rank little better than superstition, is often derived from generations of keen observations. It's a common fallacy to assume that those with less technology are less intelligent. Maybe they can't describe it in our terms, but that doesn't automatically make it false.
So if every thought carries biochemical, electrochemical, and spiritual/energetic consequences, it certainly pays to work toward a healthy, holistic lifestyle of whole foods, plenty of sunlight, low stress, and plenty of good friends. If stress kills (I can attest to that), it also makes sense that the opposite would be true. That is a hopeful thought. And hopeful thoughts bring positive responses in the body. In short, they increase well-being in real measurable ways. So my friend says to use this as the basis and build from there. Add in some excellent Buddhist advice about desire begetting suffering, some Kung Fu about channelling spirit/energy, and some quantum physics about anti-entropic forces and that's pretty much it.
I'm not sure how it all works or fits together yet, but it seems possible. And possibility opens a space for something new. Since, my own observation of a phenomena can alter it, and one possibility is as good as the next, I'm opting for the good.
This caught me off guard. I was skeptical and asked what he meant. He said that he used to have many of the ailments I've had all my life, but not anymore because in his meditation, he had learned to embrace illness. He even stopped getting sick at all. What! I had to know more. I've tried many things that are supposed to help ward off colds, but nothing really works. So I was sure there must be some other factors that would explain it...he was one of those who naturally didn't get sick, he really did get sick and was fooling himself. I didn't know. But in the course of the conversation, I began to understand his theory which was well constructed, actually. I ended up going to dinner, mainly just to learn more about this idea.
As I understand it, the theory is something like this: thoughts influence our body in real ways, so a practice of always seeking the good, leads to more good being manifest in us. This sounds like a standard Positive Mental Attitude thing, but it goes so far beyond it in ways that make sense. He described his meditation technique, the basis for his thinking, how he visualizes things, tied it to science and metaphysics, and religion. In short, it was plausible. I could acknowledge that it was valid, but I couldn't "believe" it yet. Then at one moment, the resonating wave that shakes the cords in the jeweled net of my reality hit and I found the one thing I was supposed to gain from the conversation. He recognized it at once and said, "good, then you're done for tonight. Do it again tomorrow." Of course we talked on from there, but I really did find a kernel of truth in what he was saying.
I mulled it over all weekend as I recovered from the worst of the cold and had decided, I might have found the kernel in it all and wasn't sure about the rest. So I did a little research to see if the stuff he said fell in the realm of the wacky, the pseudo-science, or the mainline that no one has heard of. To my surprise, I instantly found a reputable medical website that highlighted many of the very things he had talked about. Wow! So there was something to this! It was independently verified.
I'm still not so sure how it all works out or to what extent, but I'm definitely going to give it a a fair go. Did you know that antibodies actually increase in people who habitually practice certain things that are really just sage old advice about health? I'm amazed, but shouldn't be. After all, ancient/folk wisdom, which we now tend to rank little better than superstition, is often derived from generations of keen observations. It's a common fallacy to assume that those with less technology are less intelligent. Maybe they can't describe it in our terms, but that doesn't automatically make it false.
So if every thought carries biochemical, electrochemical, and spiritual/energetic consequences, it certainly pays to work toward a healthy, holistic lifestyle of whole foods, plenty of sunlight, low stress, and plenty of good friends. If stress kills (I can attest to that), it also makes sense that the opposite would be true. That is a hopeful thought. And hopeful thoughts bring positive responses in the body. In short, they increase well-being in real measurable ways. So my friend says to use this as the basis and build from there. Add in some excellent Buddhist advice about desire begetting suffering, some Kung Fu about channelling spirit/energy, and some quantum physics about anti-entropic forces and that's pretty much it.
I'm not sure how it all works or fits together yet, but it seems possible. And possibility opens a space for something new. Since, my own observation of a phenomena can alter it, and one possibility is as good as the next, I'm opting for the good.
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