Reflections

And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started . And know the place for the first time. ~ Little Gidding, TS Eliot The internet has given a whole new face to long-distance relationships And it's the face of a screen, An interface That defies time zones and places. no colour, sound, smell, taste, touch, or what the mind takes hold of , nor even act of sensing How weird. But how true! My own mind framing seeing. Not you, not even my projections onto you (Although you are there, poor dear, putting up with this nonsense, waiting patiently three hours behind) But my mind seeing projecting Seeing seeing, right there before my very eyes Like staring into the mirror at life itself. Here then, my love Is emptiness: Not in the pixels I see Nor in the beautiful face That moves me to sadness because it is not really here to see, But in my own looking through them all To you. We smile and laugh (But not too hard because we might fall off our chairs And disappear fro...

Now you have to stand in desire, all your life long, if you are to make progress in the way of perfection. ~ Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous In everyday situations, when faced with ambiguity, conflict or other challenges, we are prone to respond instinctively with a fight or flight reaction. In spiritual practice, on the contrary, we are encouraged to just sit, do nothing, and breathe. In Contractions , I wrote about the crucible as indispensable to the transformation and sublimation of energy in relationships. The same holds true of spiritual practice. What happens when, voluntarily entering the crucible, you offer no escape from cycles or loops of thoughts and feelings? At first it may feel unbearably uncomfortable, increasing suffering. And at the beginning, it is tempting to get up and do something else. This is the right thing to do if one is not choosing to practice. But if one intends to go beyond suffering rather than avoid it, one must stay with it. Then the energy in th...

At present you need to live the question ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet So will you also frolic with me on the edge of this ominous time and wrest from it whatever it may offer ~ Friedrich Schleiermacher, Letter to his Bride In Western culture we confuse renunciation and sacrifice. We see our nature as inherently “bad” and regard the slaughtering of our heart's desire as the necessary payment for original sin. We understand our redemption literally as an exchange or trade-off rather than as something freely given up in the true spirit of offering. Moreover, there is an urgency to expiate the badness that we are uncomfortable holding, a need to eject it from ourselves as quickly as possible. This is the origin of confession, but also of pornography, projection and scapegoating. Unable to contain our forbidden parts, and if we cannot either secretly indulge or confess them, we will project them onto others whom we will then publicly shun, exclude or...

He said, "Neville, you must first start with self. Find self, don't be ashamed ever of the being you are. Discover it and start the changing of that self" ~ Neville Goddard, Changing the Feeling of "I" Becoming "awake" involves seeing our confusion more clearly ~Cogyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom Maturity entails regression. By this I mean that, beyond a certain point in our development, we begin to go backwards. We spend our youth and early adulthood building ourselves up, physically and mentally, acquiring language, knowledge and other skills, to forge ourselves an identity. We invest all of our energy into becoming somebody. Then, at some point, when we experience love and loss, suffering and impotence, we enter a crisis and everything that we've built turns out to be mere scaffolding for the real inner work that we must do. It is truly like a seed falling to the ground. First, in love, the outer shell drops away, unco...

We want to be at the center: at the source of power; and we want to be at the center: the center of attraction. Indeed ‘look at me’ could be called the cosmic game. ~ Albert Low, I Am Therefore I Think Men seem to have a very difficult time with shame, the flip side of the legendary “male ego”. They experience vulnerability as a threat to their survival and tend to seek external validation as proof that they exist. When a fight breaks out between two men, it is often due to one of them having felt insulted or humiliated. When a man fails to provide for his wife or family, he feels deflated and depressed. Grandiosity is mistaken as an expression of masculine pride when in fact it is an attempt to compensate for feelings of impotence and inadequacy. Women, on the other hand, seem to struggle with insecurity, the flip side of the legendary “do I look all right to you?” They need reassurance and understanding, everlasting proof that they are loved just as they are. When a fight break...

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. ~ Matthew 7:15 Anger is taboo in our culture. Unlike other negative emotions... sadness, fear, boredom... raw anger is socially proscribed and must be refined-- suppressed or “managed”-- before it is heard. We send angry children to their rooms and withdraw from angry friends or lovers until they “cool down”. We refuse to listen to an agitated roar until it subsides to a levelheaded whimper. Because of our anxiety around anger, we fail to attend to the nuances of different situations that involve the expression of anger, and are not very nuanced in our reactions to it. When anger is expressed to us, we tend to hear it as expressed at us. When anger is expressed at us, we tend to experience it as an assault... So anger generally elicits a defensive reaction that does not win the angry person our support or sympathy. Worse, it often elicits a counter-attack. This, I believe, is beca...

Unexpectedly, as I opened myself to love, I was accepted. ~Chogyam Trungpa, The Perfect Love Poem Conflict arises when two people want to be heard and neither is listening. There is disharmony, polarity, a split. This disharmony escalates into dissonance when, instead of taking turns being quiet and listening to each other, you raise the volume and take turns making speeches. You're caught in serial monologues that deepen the conflict and polarize you even more. Cacophony now threatens as you feel compelled to defend yourselves, firing arguments at each other like artillery in the hopes of quashing all resistance to being heard. Alas, you are perceived as the aggressor and defended against in turn... and on and on it goes. Like a war. In order to resolve conflict nonviolently, monologue has to yield to dialogue, and self-promotion to vulnerability, that is, exposing one's inner world as opposed to imposing it on someone else. Nonviolent communication has been described ...