Category Archives: Spirituality

Dealing with Haters

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I was expecting an email and didn’t see it in my in box, so I opened the spam folder and checked for it. It wasn’t there. But I did notice, half way down the list, a series of emails from someone in my neighborhood. I closed the spam without even looking at the subject lines and wondered what this person was so upset about, again.

A few months back we had a chat about some farming thing (biochar) and the conversation went to Robert Kennedy Jr.. Her ideas about him didn’t seem to match my experience of him. However, she had never even met him or listened to him talk. I had. Frankly his knowledge and dedication to his own health were inspiring to me.

Anyway, as time went on she started sending me political articles. Just forwarding things without any comment. At first I took a look, but it became clear that they were not contributing to me. I also noticed that I could feel the charge of fear and aversion that motivated her to forward them to me. After careful consideration, I choose to mark her email as spam so it would simply avoid my inbox.

Today I am wondering what it would take to change the hate and divisiveness in the world.

Last year I was leading “An evening of Visioning Beyond This Reality” in February. One of the guests shared during the introductory time said she just wanted there to be more love in the world. She was very emphatic about this heart’s desire.

Later, after I showed the 5 minute mind movie “I am Oneness” by Nicola Do (find below), she expressed her feelings. She hated the movie and everything it represented. Where I saw ease, she saw repression. Where I saw healthy people moving their bodies, she saw fake, Hollywood bodies. Where I saw the ease that money creates, she saw greed and filthy dollars. I selected this movie as a contribution and was surprised about how much hate it inspired in her.

The fact that she desired love and was putting out so much hate was ironic. And it was a little tragic that she couldn’t see how allowance and love creates more love. Hate, aversion and rejection doesn’t allow for what she said she wanted. She also disregarded how her lambasting the video might impact me, the person that selected the video.

For me, that evening was the end of the “Wisdom Goddess” series I’d been leading. When someone called them entertainment, I realized that what I was creating as transformation opportunities was not how they were being received. I was wondering why I was feeling a little let down after each event. Now it made sense. This is another example of the same thing being seen differently by different people. I also gave up the weekly Chi Gung classes I was teaching. I desired community devoted to inner growth, so I let go of everything that wasn’t aligned with that to allow for my outside world to change to reflect my inside world.

I’m not sure what will change the hate and divisiveness in the world, but I do know what changes it for me. Realizing that this world is a creation of my mind and choosing to cultivate my mind to weed out everything that stands in the way of peace. At this point my practice is to
1. Notice my internal reaction when people say mean things about others
2. Restraining my impulse to lash out or counter with my brilliant intellect
3. Redirect my mind that is ruminating or continuing to think about my great comeback
4. Reflect on emptiness or the dream like quality of this reality
5. Reaffirm what I am choosing
6. Reflect on any possible actions to take
7. Take action and/or let go

Hestia, Goddess of Eternal Light

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Hail Hestia!
Goddess of Eternal Light
By your presence I am restored

Blessed is I,
who knows myself
and Blessed is the love
I bestow upon me

Holy Vesta!
Goddess of the hearth
Warm my heart,
allowing me to simply be.

Let me introduce you to Hestia. We are good friends.

Historically she is a Greek/Roman goddess that tended the fires of Olympia. Sister to Zeus, she refused all suitors and vowed to remain forever unmarried. In earlier history, devotees of Hestia practiced sacred sex as part of the healing aspect of the divine feminine. They were “virgins” in so much as they were not married, but they were certainly not celibate. In later times, under the Roman Empire, the high female priestesses of Hestia/Vesta were called Vestal Virgins and were indeed celibate during their 30 year service period. They had rights and liberties not usually associated with women at that time. The service they provided to the community afforded them with more prestige than royalty.

Hestia is an interesting lady, being associated with the home and hearth and yet, not being a mother or caretaker. She invokes the energy of self-love. She is all about knowing oneself intimately and caring for oneself with kindness and self-nurturing. She stands apart from social customs and comes forth as a great individualist.

When we invoke Hestia, we are calling forth that eternal spark of our being. We are connected to our primordial nature and our source. This is how Hestia restores us by her presence. She reminds us of the blessed nature of all of life. She reminds us that all beings and things have that sacred spark of eternal light.

Drawing on my studies of Buddhist world view, I penetrate even deeper into the idea of inner light and wisdom. Hestia can assist us in realizing the deceptive nature of ourselves and conventional reality. When I say she helps us know ourselves, I not only that mean that we know our personal preferences, desires, passions and aptitudes, but that we know, ultimately, that we don’t exist independently. We truly do not exist in the way we appear to exist.

We can call on Hestia to help us remove the constructs that obscure the truth of our being. She can help us penetrate the false ideas that have been perpetuated upon us. Her refusal to partake in the convention of marriage, is an open invitation for us to question conventional ideas and make different choices from the norm.

How does Hestia, “Warm our hearts”? The warmth of love and of self-caring is spread through our bodies and beings once we let go of judgments. Following Hestia’s lead ,we learn who we truly are and we honor that. We learn that all judgments are arbitrary and simply choices. Peace and deep contentment and connection can only come with the demolition of all judgments. A careful investigation reveals that this is truth.

Following the path of inner nurturing, we can begin to let go of the judgments that keep our bodies locked up and our minds closed to receiving. Starting with ourselves we choose to appreciate everything we are. We let go of self-hate, criticism and harmful self talk. Then we begin to expand the circle. We let go of the judgments of our friends and family. Allowing them to be exactly who they are. We are practicing sacred respect. And finally, can we let the world be exactly as it is? Perhaps we can become empowered to stand for ourselves while not standing against any other.

Sometimes called “enlightened self-interest”, our new attitude provides us with freedom from trying to control and change everything and everyone – which is probably outside the realm of possible anyway. The ultimate health treatment is letting people be as they are without judgment: tension falls off our bodies and we experience greater peace and joy.

In this new place, we are able to act or not-act, but are not compelled to react or live under the influence of the emotions of hate, frustration, anger, sadness, and resistance. Are hearts are warmed by the the ever present hearth within us.

Spiritual Bypassing

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In 2009 I was living at a meditation center below Tucson, Arizona. Many times I drove from my old home in Northern California to where I was developing myself as a meditator. When I first made the trip, I used maps and my best guess on the quickest route to go, since GPS wasn’t a thing yet. However, while the major highway went through Phoenix, I quickly learned to take Route 85 as the “Phoenix bypass” since traffic through Phoenix, especially at rush hour, could literally be a real drag.

A bypass is a way to avoid or circumvent an obstacle or a problem. A road that goes around a busy city is called a bypass. It avoids the problem of getting stuck in slow moving traffic. Certain practices that circumvent mental and emotional obstacles could be considered a bypass as well. The highway could be called a physical bypass and the mental practices could be called a spiritual bypass. A bypass is always a good thing in my estimation.

I am beginning to focus my attention on doing more spiritual bypassing. The process of coming to know ultimate reality can be considered a clearing away of obscurations or weeds in the mindstream. However, I think there may be a bypass. Instead of focusing on pulling out each weed, perhaps, one can plant so many flowers that the weeds are choked out.

I have some rather large weed trees growing in my mind. I’ve tried to cut them back, sometimes almost to the ground and they just seem to sprout back in a new season. Other trees are so large and entangled with desirable trees that I can only seem to cut branches out. Its so thick that I don’t even recognize them as weed trees. Instead I think they are just a bad branch on a good tree. In the past, I’ve mostly focused on identifying and getting the weeds (false beliefs) out of my mind’s garden.

I know this is not the most efficient way to go. I’ve heard that a single moment of direct perception of ultimate reality will cut the root of every false weed tree. And the way to encounter that illuminating moment is to meditate and investigate how the self is created. That is what the Buddha did. However, so many weeds have taken over my mind I find it hard to have a stable meditation. I have been discouraged.

Now I am choosing to stop focusing on getting rid of the “bad”; to stop focusing on getting rid of the effects of ritual abuse trauma; to let the crazy arising and passing of emotions just be; to stop looking for the uncomfortable in me and the misbeliefs creating my world. Instead, I am embracing the “good”. I am expanding into all that is. I am focusing on simply whatever opens my heart and my mind.

To facilitate this, I’ve adopted the practice of Spiritual Mind Treatment. It is a form of affirmative prayer. The first step is recognition of ultimate truth and who I am in the big picture. Then there is a place for affirming the truth about the world – there is abundance: limitless energy, limitless love, limitless good; while denying falsehoods – there is nothing to fear, crave, or resist. Finally the prayer ends with rejoicing and a sense of surety.

The prayer can be long or short. It is followed with the practice of keeping the mind continuously directed to truth. This spiritual bypass focuses on truth and the multitude of possibilities as a way to elevate the mind, emotions, and spirit to starve out habitual limiting thoughts and false beliefs. Here is my Spiritual Mind Treatment for knowing greater peace and freedom:

I know there is one ultimate reality that encompasses everything. This truth of life flows through, within, around, and beyond everything. The world I experience is a deceptive reality that obscures the simple truth that I am that one life, that one power, that one reality. And since I am all that is (given duality is just an illusion) I know that it is impossible for me to lack anything. I am limitless peace, energy, love. It is impossible for me to really be separate from anyone and anything. It is impossible for me to be traumatized, just as it is impossible to traumatize the one life. Right here, right now, I choose to release all habitual tendencies to reify myself and the harm I experienced. I let go of the notion that I have to work to clear away obscurations. I simply affirm the truth that I am pure spirit and everything that is not true falls away. I rejoice in my new freedom and the great peace I feel. And so it is.