This is a truly inspired initiative : Using the technology of Google Earth Street View, it is now possible to walk virtually through the most famous museums of the world. Visit the National Gallery in London, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg or the MoMA in New York and many more for free, without long queues, in your own time.
Enter here:
The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me.
“Letting go of taking things personally” is an experiment based on an idea from Eileen. Taking things personally is something that we all do, and at times it really clouds our sense of peace, our relations to others and everyone’s quality of life. ” Letting go of taking things personally” is a practical course in 5 parts, looking at the most important elements of taking things personally, with some exercises to put in practice.
Part 4: Going beyond fear and letting go
So how are you doing so far ? I have received many comments and questions, so I have a sense we are moving in the right direction with this. So let’s take another step.
Taking things personally is at the core of our suffering. It is is nothing less but experiencing the process of egoic conditioning in full action. As we are all searching for traces of the ego, this is good news indeed. With a little bit of knowledge about it’s formation, a pinch of curiosity and a dash of courage, we are actually able to bring the different elements of the reaction out of the darkness into the light – and see it dissolve.
Egoic conditioning has it’s roots in the past. Traumatic childhood experiences of real and/or perceived neglect, may lead to a sense of being incomplete or not good enough. Egoic conditioning is all about survival, and we discovered that the ego is using the instance of a stress response, to apply not only to real danger, but also to perceived threats to it’s own beliefs of being in control.
Fear is a leading emotion in all of this. The watchdog of the ego will prevent us from looking into certain areas of our memory, because it is related to experiences of being vulnerable and helpless. Critical mental processes, like judgement, will help us to avoid situations, and or people, that may remind us of this experience and we will create layered, and complex emotional responses to those instances.
The moment that you are with yourself,
the beloved will be like a thorn to you;
and the moment that you are selfless,
what use will the beloved be to you?!
The moment that you are with yourself,
you will be a prey to a gnat;
and the moment you are selfless,
the elephant will be the game you hunt.
The moment that you are with yourself,
you are under the clouds of sorrow;
and the moment you are selfless,
the moon will come to your side.
The moment that you are with yourself,
your beloved will depart;
and the moment you are selfless,
you will taste the Beloved’s wine.
The moment that you are with yourself,
you would feel the chill of November;
and the moment that you are selfless,
winter would blossom like spring.
All of your restlessness is due
to your seeking restfulness.
Become a tireless seeker,
so that restfulness will seek you.
All of your displeasures is due
to your seeking pleasure.
Abandon pleasures, and austerity
would become a pleasure to you.
All of your frustrations are due
to your seeking your wishes.
If you didn’t, all wishes would
come top you like offerings.
Love all of the Beloved’s ways,
not just Her affection,
so that the coquettish Beloved
would come to you as desperate lover.
Were Shamsuddin, the great king of the East,
to arrive from Tabriz,
you would be ashamed,
by God, of the moon and the stars.
Over the past couple of days the issue of abandonment came up on several occasions and this motivated me to enquire into it.
As always, I will state that I am not a psychologist and I do not follow the current literature or research about the subject. What I am doing is to look at the issue, based on experiences, both of myself and others, and go deeper to see where these issues may be rooted. I am doing this to bring some light and clarity to the most prevalent and common emotional issues, not in terms of analysis, but observation. My hope is that the reader may be inspired to follow this path, but also be encouraged to find their own truth. Please be aware, that anything I come up with are pointers, and written as it feels pertinent at the time.
In my own holistic medical practice, I am quite often confronted with the issue of emotional abandonment and I have seen first hand, how much an early trauma of abandonment can affect the quality of life, health and wellbeing. But it also may trigger many layers of defenses and compensatory reaction.
Abandonment means that our needs are not met as a child. Those needs are primarily physical, like being fed and kept warm and dry, as well as social, in terms of growing up in an environment that allows for the unhindered development of the interpersonal and emotional capacities, that prepare us to be self-confident, trusting, empathetic, intellectually inquisitive and comptent in using language to communicate, and capable of relating well to others. This is the requirement for a healthy mental development, and it affects the child’s ability to regulate and express emotions, form close interpersonal relationships with others, and explore and learn from the environment.
This is such an insightful talk from Adyashanti. It is really all one needs to know – before enjoying the state of not knowing.
Sat Cit Ananda
An ad by Goldman Sachs ….enough said.
“Means of Life” is an inter-disciplinary approach to explore how everything is related and to pin-point the differences between what we need and what we want.
“Means of Life” is emerging as I type. I has started as a reflection on food and sustenance and later ventured into areas of medicine, physics, psychology, philosophy and spirituality. It is a bit of a creative hodgepodge, but I can see a red thread leading through it all, and so I will take it up and weave it a bit further.
Food can become an addiction. It works the same way like all addictions do – in oder to avoid a sense of of insecurity or emotional distress, that is associated with a certain situation, the mind forms an automatism, a habit, in order to avoid seeing the truth about oneself. An addiction is a protective mechanism of the egoic mind, a maneuver to distract from going where the truth lies, which is basically the realisation that the ego is not in control and has never been.
There are two elements about food and eating that make it a prime candidate for an addiction. One is the element of nourishment, the “means of life”, that makes it so appealing. Food is war, comforting, giving energy and a sense of fulfillment. Just look at the abundance, quantity and size of portion – everything is just so much bigger than it used to be. This is representing an element of abundance, a cornucopia of a never-ending supply of anything we ever want. The other one is the element of control – provided availability, it is the mind, making choices about what and how much nourishment to give – or deny the body. Food in many ways, is the minds weapon, trying to beat the body into submission – either by dulling the senses and filling it up with food and drink, or by starving it.
This is just such a huge subject, because it borders on the area of eating disorders, that are so incredibly prevalent in these days.
The Living Room 
