Dealing With Tragedies

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Health Mental, Understanding Ourselves

After each mass killing either here or abroad we hear a lot of people talking about how this could have been adverted, how we could have prevented this type of tragedies. Or they start to ask questions on what we can do to prevent these types of tragedies.

What people completely fail to look at is that the world has changed radically and we are only going to see more and more of these types of tragedies. No amount of legislation will overcome the world wide trend of more people crowding into a small planet. Even with sufficient resources for all these people, which we do not have, there will always be pressure with the crowds and some people will crack under that pressure. It is a function of physics and biology that cannot be denied.

Some people will claim we could outlaw the guns used in such killings, but they fail to recognize that guns are outlawed in China and they have these mass killings with knives. China is more of police state then the U.S. and they cannot stop these kinds of tragedies.

Can we avoid these tragedies by avoiding the pressure cookers of big cities? Santa Barbara, CA and Newtown, CT are not consider to be pressure cookers like like LA or NY so people can reasonably think that these would be the last places one would expect these types of tragedies to occur. But they did occur there and they will start to occur at many more such places in the future.

So what is an intelligent person to do?

The first and foremost thing to remember is that we have to take care of ourselves first, which means that we have to remain calm and centered so that we can have the clarity of mind that will enable us to see the best course of action. This calm or blessed state as Jesus called it is not something one ‘chooses’ in the moment but one that comes with practice. Mindfulness and meditation is just such a practice.

Disaster or tragedy may befall any of us in this modern world but those who can remain calm and collected have a better chance of survival than those prone to reacting emotionally to dramatic events. This capacity to remain calm and collected does not come easy; you cannot take a pill for it. Practice is the only way we know of today to acquire the skill necessary to manage OURSELVES when crisis comes.

Mindfulness and meditation is the practice of developing mastery over our bodies and our minds that so that we can be the master over ourselves instead of external situations or people controlling or manipulating us.

It is also worth noting that those who perpetuate these types of tragedies are NOT meditators, so that teaching mindfulness and meditation to everyone would help diminish the number and severity of such crimes. We can each do our part by first “removing the log from our own eye” and learning how to use mindfulness and meditation in our own lives. Then we can help others by sharing what we have found and demonstrating the advantages we have found from such self-mastery.

Philosophies and Theologies are Just Words

Published on by Jim Category: Christ, Communication and Relationships, Understanding Ourselves

Philosophies and Theologies are just words designed to program humans to have certain general physiological responses to words so that the humans can be control or manipulated.

Philosophy relies on a person’s conditioned responses to various words designed to stimulate general physiological responses in the human instrument.  It is a primitive method of gaining control over humans.  Science is words designed to point the human mind at processes so that mind will have understanding of the process and can therefore use that understand to its own benefit, transcending the external control that philosophies and theologies are trying to maintain.

Love is a general physiological response in the body to a thought in the brain; it feels good because that response is relaxing. One can create this feeling by focusing one’s attention on the center of the body, in the heart area, and by focusing their attention they are sending increased electrochemical activity to that area, thus activating the area and warming it up. The warming relaxes the muscles and nerves of the body giving one a sensation, one that we call love.

The conscious person understands this and practices this behavior so that they can have the positive experience of love whenever they desire, not conditional upon any particular thought pattern or any external stimuli such as a person or object’s presence.

I understand that less than one third of the world’s population is awake enough to understand what I am talking about. But there are those who will hear what I say and be able to use it to improve the quality of their life experience. Many if not most of the other two thirds of the people will resist what I say and take offense.

Look at the story of Jesus. He taught pretty much the same thing but most of the people did not understand him and forgot about what he said. Yet there were some who took offense at him and eventually killed him for his words.   Few if any got free from the power of words to control or manipulate their behavior.  In fact, some of his followers even encouraged the worship of words and their power over people.

This is natural too and part of the reality of life. Yet, we as a species are evolving and humanity is nowhere near as primitive as they were in Jesus’ time. It is science that gives on the understanding of how they human instrument works and how society is designed to manipulate that human instrument so that the individual can gain greater control over their own human instrument to maximize the quality of their life experience.

This advantage is lost to the ignorant masses. The will continue to be manipulated by words or objects so that the ruling classes can have dominion over them; they will be slaves to whoever can push their buttons.

 

Dancing With Words: The Beginning

Published on by Jim Category: Communication and Relationships

DancingWithWordsSpeaking before an audience is difficult.  Speaking before a potentially hostile audience is even more challenging.  Speaking your truth that you know will turn an audience hostile is probably the hardest thing a person can do.  Learning to be ok with people’s hostility and outright anger at your truth is both a science and an art.

I started this process back in the early 1990s as I learned how much power we have been taught to give away to words.  At that time I was living in Boulder, Colorado where they have an open air pedestrian mall downtown.  It is a beautiful place with lawns, trees for shade, places for the kinds to play, fountains and lot of places for people to just sit and watch people. This mall is the living room of the community, not just a place to go and buy things.  There were also buskers performing for their audiences and public advocates tabling to inform people of choices and situations.  Sometimes the religious people would come out and preaching their version of hell or reality as they saw it.

On the west end of the mall there were three large brick covered steps facing a small lawn area, a perfect place for people to set and listen to a speaker.  On both sides were businesses like a coffee shop, two restaurants and a bar all with outdoor seating where people could sit and eat while listening to a speaker on the lawn in front of the steps.

One day as I was walking through the mall I saw a guy standing in front of the steps just talking to whoever might be listening.  Few people were listening to him just as few listen to the preachers, but there was something different about him to me.  At first I thought he was just another religious zealot preacher talking about his brand of hell, but this guy was not talking about religion, he was using phrases like “techno-penis” and “Bourgeoisie-vagina”, derogatory terms he used for the average modern man and woman.  His spiel was mostly venting his opinions of the nature of society.  The only real solutions he offered were socialist in nature with a rejection technology.

He was articulate but looked like a laborer in dress and manner.  Later I learned that he had been a lawyer but was now a carpenter living out of his van. Obviously he was dealing with his ‘demons’ or overcoming his psychological/emotional challenges/conflicts.   One thing I would say he was doing was finding and exercising his voice; gaining the courage to speak his truth.

In just getting up and speaking, he was inspiring me.  For although I had felt I had dealt with my demons or dealt with my own psychological conflicts, I had not found my voice; I did not have the courage to speak my truth to the world.

I felt at the time that I had dealt with my inner conflicts for I had traveled around the world studying many different spiritual traditions, practicing meditation and examining my own thinking patterns that were denying me inner peace.  I had found my root assumption that we all make and I had seen it for the lie that it is, so inwardly I had peace, but outwardly I still had conflicts with how I fit into the world.  And, I had not found my voice; I was still afraid to do what this carpenter/lawyer was doing.

I listened and watched for several days and eventually I started to asked questions.  My questions came from a place of inner peace that the carpenter/lawyer did not have so my questions challenged him.  The questions were intended to help him see outside the boxes in his mind. Eventually he got tired of standing up there and speaking and particularly of dealing with my questions, so he challenged me to stand up there and speak.

I can tell you now that the first time he challenged me to stand up there and talk scared the hell out of me, my stomach turned to knots, my mouth went dry as cotton, my legs were like rubber, but I had a passion and wanted to share my insights.  It was this passion that drove me to stand up IN SPITE of my fears and to speak to the people listening.

I have spoken before audiences before and I was relatively comfortable with that, but this was different.  For one thing when I spoke before I knew what I was going to say and the audience had come to hear me.  In this public forum I could not know what I was going to say and the audience did not necessarily come to hear me.  Also, because the audience did not particularly come to hear me the listeners were a very diverse group of people.  Private audiences are self selected, people who come know what they are getting into and if they are not interested in the topic or feel that it would upset them then they do not go and listen to the speaker.  But in a public forum in a public place this is not the case.

Boulder is a somewhat elite town being that it is a university town, so the people there tend to be more educated, liberal and comfortable with diverse opinions and perspectives.  Still, I knew that my perspective was considerable different than most of the people in that town and particularly the visitors who frequent the mall any summer day.  Also, I knew that my opinions were controversial so I naturally would get a lot of criticism from some people.  This type of speaking is way different that “preaching to the choir” that most people do.  I was potentially speaking to a hostile audience, or at least partially hostile audience.

That first time I stood up and spoke the experience was more than exhilarating, it was liberating. I do not remember what I said and I quickly realized it did not matter so much WHAT I said, but THAT I said, for the very act of speaking my truth in front of people was inspiring to them as it had been to me.

Eventually this carpenter guy, whose name I learned was Craig, and I became friends and even team members of sorts, for we played off each other to build an audience and even a following.  By the end of the summer we would sometimes have thousands of people listening and each weekend people were coming from all over the state to be a part of this community forum.

It was not just fun but fulfilling.  I was part of something that was much bigger than me, for the community was becoming cohesive.  People loved this and so did I.  This was an important experience for me and I learn that others felt the same way.  For many of us it was the most connected we ever felt to community.  It was different than being in any other type of community for there were no rules or guidelines to exclude anyone, everyone was accepted but not everyone felt comfortable there.

This was a great opportunity for me for a number of reasons.  Because of my meditation practice I had developed a habit of watching both my inner and outer behaviors and how events outside of me created inner reactions.  In this situation I would watch how the fear came up within me every time it was my turn to speak. And each time the fear would go away after a while.

There were challenges to speaking in public.  We had many people get angry and one poured a beer over my head.  I was physically attacked in more than one occasion, including once by Craig, the other main speaker.  Always there were those who judged us and called us all sorts of names.  In my recollection now, I believe I was judged more than others and called more names than other speakers and I believe that is because I was talking outside of the boxes of what most people are used to hearing.

There were times when no one would listen and there were times that almost everybody opposed me.  And there were times when I got a rousing applause.

There were also many times that we challenged others to get up and speak; one day we got thirteen others to stand up and speak for a few minutes including an eleven year old girl who mesmerized the audience with her clarity.    There was one guy who often stood up and said the same line every time, a line he apparently thought was smart but that most people just rolled their eyes at.  Often when someone new would overcome their resistance and speak I could see the exhilaration as they overcame that resistance.  I also watched the crowd’s reactions to the speakers, including when I spoke.

What usually happened as the evening rolled on was that the larger forum/audience would break up into small groups or forums where people would go off on tangents and this would go on until the early hours in the morning.

I often would watch the dynamics of the social interactions of people.  In most organizations the type of people in that organization would self-select so you only get a narrow perspective on how humanity might behave in any given situation.  But in a public mall like Boulder’s downtown Pearl Street mall a relatively diverse group of people would pass by.  And I say ‘pass by’ because that is what most people would do, they might stop for a moment and then move on, either uninterested in what was going on or because it frightened them.  I could see the fear in many people’s eyes as they observed what was going on, particularly if the topic being discussed was challenged or judgmental.

CNN Encourages Emotional Abuse

Published on by Jim Category: Communication and Relationships, Health Emotional, Health Mental

The CNN article “Should we celebrate Fred Phelps’ death?” shows a good example of someone who is pointing out to Americans just how programmed they are.

“(CNN) – He was a preacher best known for his virulent anti-gay rhetoric, the force behind placards that read “God Hates Fags.” He taught that natural disasters and man-made horrors like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were God’s punishment for acceptance of homosexuality.”

Fred Phelps was a minister of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas who earned the title as the “Most Hated Man in America” because of his rhetoric, because of his words.  Fred never hurt anyone, he just shows that people have a habit of hurting themselves and he was taking advantage of that.

To people who are awake and recognize that words cannot hurt them or anyone else, they experience no harm from Fred Phelps, but they probably felt sadness for him and his followers because they could see how they harmed themselves with their animosity toward gay people.

What irks me about this article is that it promotes or encourages emotional abuse by insinuating that Fred Phelps and his gang were hurting people.  As long as people continue to believe that words can hurt them then tyrants like Fred Phelps will be able to control those people’s emotional states and thus control and manipulate them.  This is the encouraging the slavery of people through the use of their fear of words and how they might be used to harm them.

This attitude is encouraged by the ruling classes because they want to be able to intimidate, control, and manipulate people into obeying them.  Those who are gullible enough to buy into this lie are only participating in their own emotional abuse.

One can never know unconditional love as long as they lie to themselves about the source of their emotional states. The truth will set you free to unconditionally love all that life has to offer, but you have to be open to it.

 

Why Stupid Peope Protect the ‘Honor’ of People Who Choose to be Offended by Team Names

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Health Mental, Understanding Ourselves

Why Republicans Protect the ‘Honor’ of Offensive Team Names | The Nation.

This article states, “The name of Washington DC’s football team, the Redskins, is under fire. “Redskins” is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation’s capital. That’s kind of obvious, right?”

NO!  The word “Redskins” is NOT offensive.  No word is offensive.  But stupid, unconscious people might react to this or that word in such a way as to ‘offend’ or abuse themselves.  This is EXACTLY what the ruling classes want people to do.  The ruling classes want people to hurt around words because they use words and the hurt that people create for themselves to control and manipulate those unconscious people.

If you support slavery then you want to encourage people to think that words can harm them, that words are offensive.  Intelligent and loving people do not encourage this abuse, they confront those who do encourage slavery and abuse.

People have been trained since the beginning of time to abuse themselves around words that the those who know can use that abuse to their own advantage.  How else can the slave owners get the slaves to word without needing to revert to the violence of the whip?  It is words they use to ‘whip’ the slaves into shape.

once we understand that it is OUR REACTIONS to words that causes us harm, our CHOOSING to take offense at something, then we can take commend of ourselves, learn to relax and not react.  Then, and only then, will be no longer need to fear other people, relationships and communications of any sort.

 

Spiritual Testing & Report Card

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Nonduality

After reading this article on Huffington Post titled The Ten Spiritual Transmitted Disease I started to wonder how one can get a spiritual check up.

I wish there were a way to test myself (or others) for their spiritual growth or evolution.  When I heard of the ‘stress testing’ that the banks had to go through in the recent financial crisis I wondered if there was any type of ‘stress test’ that people could go through.

For me, spiritual evolution is reflected in one’s ability to appreciate, enjoy and love what life offers.  One of the greatest challenges people seem to have is their fear of judgment or criticism, which is why I like the idea of a panel or group of people testing or judging me to give me a stress test.  I would like that because I am always alert to the possibility that I am deceiving myself in some way.  I watch for this because I have seen so many other so called spiritual people who have ended up deceiving themselves in some way or another.

But then again I could be deceiving myself in my assumption that being judged by people is a good stress test of one’s spiritual evolution. I might like that because I have mastered the skill of not reacting to people’s words so the judgments of people would not harm me, but I might be very challenged if a tornado came into town and swept away my home, something I have never experienced.  I have had things stolen from me and I felt I did pretty good at keeping the light when my motor home was broken into and my computer was stolen, or when my bike, which I truly loved, was stolen a month later. But what if I lost everything and could not replace anything because I lost everything, including my ‘nest egg’ of reserve money.

So I wonder what others think would be a good way to examine oneself or another to test their level of consciousness.  I recognize that the nondualist will challenge the language here wondering ‘who’ it is that is being challenged, but I recognize they do this because they just do not ‘get it’ when it comes to playing with the illusion of duality, which is what this exercise is all about.

So please, share your thoughts.

Taking Back the Power of Words to Hurt

Published on by Jim Category: Christ, Communication and Relationships, Health Emotional, Jesus, Understanding Ourselves

I saw an interview today on CNN’s website where Marc Lamont Hill were saying that we should allow a discussion of the “N-word”.  I find that attitude one of the most open minded I have heard in a long time.  Let me explain why.

I have realized that words do not hurt people; it is people’s reactions to words that cause them harm.  We, as citizens of our society, have been programmed to be reactive to words in such a way that causes us harm.  Once we become aware of this we can take responsibility for OUR behavior (our reaction) and re-train ourselves to not react with such hurtful behavior.

Yet, as long as we keep lying to ourselves (and one another) that it was the word that hurt us and it was the person who said the word who is responsible for our suffering, we will stay trapped in a cycle of abuse.

Words like nigger, faggot, failure, dike, sinner and others still have the power to move people emotionally in a way that they would rather not be moved.  The CONSCIOUS person recognizes this and takes responsibility for their part in this and learns to relax and stop reacting.

But what is the advantage of keeping people ignorant of the truth that will set them free of being offended by words?  Well, one is if you were an owner of slaves in the US south 200 years ago you would want your slaves to be moved emotionally by words so that you could use that to control their behavior.  It is easier to get them to hurt themselves with words then to have to hit them with a whip. Or if you were a racist today would you not want to be able to get someone of a different race to HURT THEMSELVES when you used certain words?  Or what about the parent that wants to intimidate their child with words like “bad”; without the child’s fear of that word you would lose some control over them.

These are only a few of the many examples of benefits of keeping intimidated by words.  What I am saying here is that there are many advantages to some people in society to keep people hurting when stimulated by words.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was all about Blessedness.  One of the things he said was, “Blessed be those who do not take offense at me.”  Yet, many religious people of his time did take offense at him, which is why they killed him.  Jesus also said, “Take cheer, for I have overcome the world” which indicates to me that he was showing that you could not offend Jesus with your words (or actions).  And finally, he said, “I have come to bear witness to the truth.”  To me, this means that he was bearing witness to the fact that religious people have been conditioned to abuse themselves emotionally when stimulated by words (as a means of maintaining control of them).  Yet, if you followed Jesus’ way (not the Christian way) you would overcome the world and its ability to push your buttons and hence control or manipulate you emotionally just using words.

So it is my opinion and experience that by bring this discussion out into the open and talking about it, and putting responsibility where it is due, we can show people that it is possible to get free from ever being hurt by words again.

A lot of the pain some kids are experiencing today from ‘bullying’ is a product of their conditioned reactions to words.  If we teach children the old school yard rhyme, “Stick and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” we could end a lot of the bullying that now happens.

Of course, if we do this, those who benefit from people’s habitual emotional self-abusive behaviors will be up in arms about it, just like they were when Jesus was teaching this 2,000 years ago.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Identification Ends Love

Published on by Jim Category: Christian, Communication and Relationships, Liberality & Conservatism, Religion

CNN Exclusive: One conservative’s dramatic reversal on gay marriage – CNN.com.

This story is a perfect example of how a person’s identification with someone or something has limited their love.  Before Sen. Portman realized that someone HE KNEW and loved was gay he was very anti gay marriage.  But as soon as he realized that someone he knew was gay and that sooner or later he would want the same things that the senator wanted, the senator opened his heart and changed his mind to support gay marriage.

If the senator had opened his heart to ALL BEINGS then he would have felt the same desire that he has within them, which is the desire to marry the person of his or her choice.

Sen. Portman identified with HIS family but could really care less with people of other families.  He opposed gay marriage because he did not care about the desires of people he did not identify with. His son’s coming out to him caused him to re-examine his ways of thinking and change his perspective.

To me, this is an example of the biblical concept of removing the heart of stone (the heart of the conservative) and replacing it with a heart of flesh (the heart of the liberal).  [Ezekiel 36:26]

We can see this same thing happening with former Vice-President Cheney, who discovered that his daughter was gay and she wanted to marry her girlfriend.  Because of this Cheney opened his heart and is now pro gay marriage just as Portman.

The point is that our habit of identifying with this or that person, including our own ‘self’ is part of the process of closing ourselves off to or limiting love.

By identify as Spirit one sees themselves as one with ALL beings and the heart become open and we can feel the pain and desires of all beings.  Being one with them you want for them what you want for your Self, which now includes them.

This is what Unconditional Love is and does, it opens you up to the pain and desires of all beings, not just your ‘loved ones’.

Love is a Feeling

Published on by Jim Category: God, Love and Fear

The dictionary defines love as a an intense feeling of deep affection.

Scientists like Dr. M. Scott Peck define love as “”the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. Yet, Dr. Peck admits that he does not know WHY a person has the will to extend one’s self.

That is because Dr. Peck and most people ignore the obvious, that love is something that we FEEL in our bodies.  Feelings, like the feeling of hunger, are what motivate us.

One thing that can be said about love is that it feels GOOD, even when it hurts.  In fact, sometimes the pain or hurt of love is what is so powerful about love.  We can long for union with someone who we are physically with, the longing feeling being the love, and that longing hurts SO good that it is so intense we feel we are going to die or be burned up in the feeling.

We do not have to be limited to this feeling just for a person, we can feel it for a concept like the idea of ‘God’ or country or freedom or just about anything else

The point is that love is a FEELING and the more we are willing to feel that feeling, including the intensity that feels uncomfortable at times, the more love we will have in our life.  From the perspective of the person in the drama of romantic love, this idea can really suck.

Yet, on the other side of this coin, fully going into the pain of love and staying there to long can be physically, emotionally and mentally damaging to the human instrument through which one is experiencing life.  Too much can be a bad thing.

This is where discipline and sensitivity comes in.  We first have to be sensitive in our bodies and mind to know when we are on the threshold of damaging ourselves so that we can then use our disciplined skill to stop the pain.

Without this sensitive and discipline we will continue in the pain until we damage our human instrument or condition it away from love.  You can tell a person who has done this for they are shut down to caring about most if not all people and life itself.  They become what I call ‘conservatives’ for they ‘conserve’ or hold back their love.

Both sensitivity and discipline come with practice.

Sensitive comes from practicing feeling what we are actually feeling in our body, not just the activity in our brain, our thoughts, but what is happening below the neck.  This is not just feeling the gross sensations we normally feel, but also the subtle ones, the beating of our heart, the movement of the blood through our blood vessels, movement of the subtle energies as the body communicates with itself.  Feeling this takes practice being still and watching/feeling what else is going on.

Discipline comes from keeping at it no matter what happens, even if at first you lose your focus and get distracted you go back to the practice.  That is discipline.

If you want love, unconditional love, then you have to develop sensitivity and discipline.

Be Happy 4 No Reason

Published on by Jim Category: Health Emotional, Love and Fear

BeHappy4NoReasonThe right to happiness comes with the consciousness that we always have the power to choose happiness. We have been lead to believe that ‘things’ outside of us are going to make us happy or give us joy and love. That is a lie. Things, including people, cannot make us happy or give us joy and love. It is our reaction to the thoughts of these things that creates our experience of happiness, joy and love. The conscious person recognizes this and PRACTICES happiness, joy and love no matter what life is offering.