Entries in silence (35)
Shatter myths about peace
Once there was a famous wrestler we'll call “Great Waves.” He was muscular and strong and knew the art of wrestling. In private bouts he defeated even his teacher, yet in public was so bashful that even his students threw him down. He was at a loss for words as well as inner peace.
Troubled, the wrestler decided to visit a Zen temple for help. There, a wise teacher advised him.
“Great Waves is your name,” said the teacher. “So spend tonight in the temple. Imagine that you are water. You are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those powerful waves sweeping over everything in sight. Do this and you will never again be defeated.”
The teacher left. The wrestler sat still, trying to imagine himself as water. His mind wandered but soon he began to feel more and more like moving waves. As night advanced the waves grew taller and taller. They swept away the flowers and rushed over the statues. Before dawn the temple was nothing but the tide of a vast ocean.
In the morning the teacher found the wrestler in meditation with a slight smile on his face. He patted the man’s shoulder. “Now nothing can disturb you,” he said. “You are the waves. You will sweep everything before you.”
That day, the wrestler entered and won a big tournament, and was never again defeated by his thoughts.
Contrary to popular belief, no peaceful mind exists. Mind itself cannot be peaceful. Its very nature is to be tense and confusing. Mind cannot have clarity. Peace and silence exist without mind. Never attempt to silence the mind. Only as you understand the nature of mind does your life shift.
Watch and you observe thoughts but never encounter the mind. Thoughts are not one with your nature. Thoughts come and go like visitors. They are like waves in the ocean. You persist as the host. All thoughts are borrowed. As this enters your visceral experience, everything transforms. Awareness is noticing what arises in gaps between thoughts and being that.
Recall martial artist Bruce Lee said, "be like water." The most challenging adversary is the thinking mind. True confidence and inner peace do not reside in temples or remote places. As we turn inward, go inside our own hearts, here we find all we seek.
10 Things to reflect on about Love
Here are 10 Things to reflect on about Love:
1. Each person is a unique expression of Love
From this view, love is not an action, not a commodity that we give or trade. We cannot leverage this kind of love, barter or exchange it as currency. We cannot brag about having more or less Love than another being because the Love we are is incomparable.
2. True Love is sometimes misunderstood as affection and attachment
As we feel our way into this kind of Love, we can no longer view it as an external factor or affected by external events or actions. Whenever we view love as external, we encounter conflict with external conditions.
3. Love can mean letting go of attachments
This is an invitation to let go of the conditioning that objects and affection are scarce so we are taught to cling to what we have. In clinging to our preferred people, objects and experiences, we overlook examples of the infinite within and around us.
4. Love is about releasing fear and hatred through forgiveness
This is a reminder that as we recognize our enemy's potential for Love, we connect with this individual's heart centre and hostility loses power. As we awaken to relationships as a mirror, we can also begin to see that what we choose to resistor judge in others is what we resist loving fully about ourselves.
5. Sometimes Love may require you to accept nothing exists for you to do
A higher level of understanding of Love imply embracing the pwoer of wholeness, which is all-inclusive. This involves a 'leap of faith' or trust consciousness. This said, different degrees of understanding are all valid. Some people need to be taught how to survive or helped in some way. Thus, Love can be an expression fo empathy and compassion also.
6. Silence can be the greatest expression of Love
Inner wisdom reminds us that infinite wholeness is the Source energy that commands life, shatters it and rebuilds it according to universal laws. To be an observer allows us to tune into the power of synchronicity, to sense separation from creation is illusion. This gives us broader understanding and we grow conscious of the nature of Love as immortality.
7. You are an extension of the Creator not a created 'Thing'
This is a reminder about the illusion of separation we are taught to imagine in the mind. When we accept that we are simply a droplet in the cosmic ocean, we know the creator makes no mistakes and we are simply a smaller version of Source Energy.
8. As Love, you embody the activating power of further creation
9. Love is a vibrational DNA imprint, universally resonant with all of life
10. You have the right to honor within yourself all that Love brings you
4 Signs you function at your optimum
Its common to assume you can improve something about yourself, your life and conditions. Consider 4 signs you function at your optimum:
1. When an organ is working properly, you are unaware of it
Notice when an organ is working properly, you do not feel it. Involuntary processes function naturally. If you see your eye, you have cataract. If you hear your ears, ringing in the ears is getting in the way of hearing.
2. When you are thinking clearly, your brain is not in the way
Notice the difference between casually looking at something and looking intently, the difference between half listening to something and hearing intently. Doing anything with force has one's focus on muscle tension and misses what is otherwise obvious and apparent. If you tighten muscles to pull yourself together, you only constrict yourself. All humans strain muscles with the thought its achieving psychological results. Straining muscles is actually a distraction to free energy flow.
3. When you are aware of the ego "I" you are aware of the chronic tension inside yourself
Notice you are in fact seeing with your eyes in the sense that everything you see in front of you is a condition in the optic nerves at the back of the skull where you are aware of all this and far more. Yet, how consistently are you aware of the "I" as the eye?
4. The mind has to be empty to see clearly
Notice the biggest ego trip of it all is that you must get rid of your ego. Who is asking to get ride of the ego? How can I stop identifying with the wrong me? You cannot achieve the mystical experience because you do not exist. The realisation you are the mystical experience of the universe. You cannot catch hold of it nor can you get rid of it. It enters your experience by divine grace. When you speak, it is silent. When you are silent, it speaks. All methods are simply gimmicks for strengthening your ego. If you realize you cannot transform yourself, then the main obstacle to mystical vision has collapsed, and that was a sense of 'you'.
Be aware of what you say
Words have the capacity to create a dynamic that engages you, that invites you to explore something deeper within. What you talk about, the words you choose, reveal thoughts and feelings toward your true nature, as well as about the apparent focus. Be aware of silent messages in what is said and left unsaid.
1) Notice feelings arising when you do not say anything
2) Notice feelings arising when you interject, agree or disagree
3) Notice hidden reasons for speaking up or remaining silent
Discover how to decode your mixed messages. Watch confusion and conflict dissolve. It all begins and ends in you.