To embody spirit is to embrace, to own one’s sensual immersion in nature.(25) The three Earth qualities and their practices allow immediate sensual and sensible understanding, a rooting and grounding in direct experience.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
1. The Weapon of Centering
Keep one-point
Centering means “collecting to a point.” Wherever we focus our attention is where we “collect.” This means we have a movable center. We can practice centering in negative energies: lust, anger, jealousy, worry, guilt, anxiety, fear, greed, hatred. We can center in abstract thought. We can center in caring love, in compassion. We can center ourselves in another person. We can center in immovable stillness. We can center in the moment’s ceaseless movement.
Centering is a felt phenomenon. Have you ever walked a railroad track, a balance beam, a fallen log, or the top of a concrete wall? When you were doing so, you were centering. Recall the experience. You feel and act one way while balancing (safe, serene, breath flowing easily, no thoughts, no worry) and another way when unbalanced (held breath, tightened muscles, flailing arms, visions of doom, alarm, and insecurity).
Centering is associated with attention. If you let your awareness rest comfortably at your balance point, you remain centered and balanced. If your attention goes elsewhere (thoughts of falling or daydreaming distraction), you become uncentered, off-balance. Centering is grounding, condensing, and deepening.
Centering is a fluid, dynamic process. One does not become centered once and forever. One practices centering. “Experts” are those who constantly practice. Centering in the morning, centering in the evening, centering at suppertime. Centering while sleeping. Centering while working. Centering while driving. Centering while walking. Centering while talking. One is always centering. One is performing a definable action, a clear cut maneuver.
The warrior of spirit can, through awareness and attention, collect to any point of choice. Whatever is attended to becomes the warrior’s center. Though there are many useful and valuable centers, our warrior ancestors have found one particular center which allows access to all other centers. For a warrior of spirit, inviting and allowing attention to settle to this vital spot is essential.
Centering involves collecting yourself to the spot just below your navel and deep inside via breathing, perhaps even envisioning and sensing the submolecular dimensions of this point. Allowing attention to settle to this vital spot is useful for detrancing yourself and opening to the current flow of reality.
This place of centering is called by different names: center of balance, one-point, and balance point. All refer to the place just below your navel and deep inside.
Finding Center
All humans are members of one tribe: the Navel Tribe. We are all plucked from the same vine. A first step in finding your one-point is to find your plucked place: your navel. Put the palm of your hand on the spot just below the navel. The place beneath your hand contains the one-point. This place is also your physical center of balance.
For a moment keep your hand glued to this place. Take your other hand, lightly grasp the “glued” hand and pull outward from there. This place you feel being pulled is your center of balance. This is the location of your internal gyroscope, of your center of balance, of your one-point.
[If you are in a wheel or motorized chair, your physical center of balance may be in another location, possibly higher up in your body or down in the chair itself. Take a moment and sense its location. See if you can sense moving from there.]
Small Bowl of Water
Another way to practice moving from your center is through the use of your imagination. Visualize a small bowl of water at your one-point location. The bowl can be as simple or ornate as you wish (mine is a small wooden bowl filled with clear cool spring water). You may wish to get sloshing out of your system by deliberately walking in a way that sloshes the water out of your bowl. Do this in a spirit of fun and laughter.
When done sloshing, settle for a while, ensure your bowl is refilled. Now walk around without disturbing the still surface of the water. A common tendency is to walk stiffly while holding one’s breath (for fear of spilling the water). Walk with ease, with relaxed arms and legs. Breathe deeply and slowly and smoothly.
The Head / One-Point Comparison
This exercise is designed to allow direct experiencing of the difference in moving from the one-point and moving from the head. The head is chosen as a comparison point because most of us are accustomed to living in our heads. We move around preoccupied with internal chatter (sometimes called “rooftop” chatter).
Place the palm of one hand on your forehead. Imagine that it is stuck there. Begin walking by grasping the stuck hand with your other hand and pulling. Continue to pull yourself along. Sense how it feels to move when your attention is focused within your head. [Many people on my university campus walk from their heads. Some of them even walk with their heads preceding the rest of their body.]
Now place your hand just below your navel and pull from there with the other hand. Walk from this place of one-point for a while. Sense how it feels.
Switch back and forth, walking from the head, walking from the one-point until you can vividly sense the difference in balance, in mood, and in awareness. Say the differences aloud or write them down so that the intellect, as well as the body, can comprehend.
Mindfulness of One-Point in Daily Life
In the beginnings of practice, one-point is maintained, like any other skill, only through conscious awareness. Moving, living, and opening from one-point eventually becomes as familiar as breathing: no thinking required. A way to practice the maintaining of one-point is, upon awakening, to consciously go to the one-point, get out of bed from the one-point, let the one-point take you to your morning rituals, move from the one-point through the day. Drive from the one-point. Eat from the one-point. Talk from the one-point. Listen from the one-point. Write or “keyboard” from the one-point. Walk from the one-point. Sit down and get up from the one-point.
One-Point Walking
Observe a child learning to walk. The child gets up, falls down, gets up, and so on. [The child is like a small samurai embodying the warrior admonition: “Seven times down, eight times up!”]
As my son Phil has so aptly pointed out to me, walking is the art of controlled falling. This controlled falling is learned so well that our continuous balancing is largely out of awareness. Balancing is a process that never stops, a process that eventually occurs at infinitesimal levels.
Since meditation can be defined as a continuous aligning with the middle (medi), as an inner balancing, walking can be consciously meditational. Walking can be moving meditation.
Connecting Heart and One-Point
To develop an even stronger sense of the one-point, you may wish to practice breathing into your heart and down to the one-point. Stand with weight equally distributed on both feet, which are about shoulder width apart and flat on the floor or ground. Visualize, sense, and feel the crown of your head as suspending from a heavenly cord. Breathe in to your heart area. When breathing out, breathe down to the one-point.
The heart begins to receive more energy, to be bathed in energy, to energize. The one-point becomes more firm, calmer, more dynamically still. Instead of living only in your head, you are practicing residing in the one-point and in the heart. You are beginning the practice of going out of your mind and into the Mind.
Grounding Exercise
Settle. Relax. Breathe. Allow the upper body to be suspended from a heavenly cord attached to the crown of your head. Turn your awareness to the balance points on the soles of your feet. Visualize roots growing out of these points into the ground. Let your awareness move to the submolecular level by sensing the root tips as one-cell thick, so small they can move into the tiniest crevices of the earth. Sense the root tips gently moving into and through these crevices. Allow your roots to grow.
Midline Power
The midline of the body is the place projecting greatest power and energy. This bodily line proceeds from the mid-sagittal suture at the crown of the head downward through the body, a razor thin line between the right and left sides of the body. One projects energy outward from this line. When focusing (on anything!), align this area with the exact center of the point of focus.
For example, if sitting at a keyboard, align the midline of the body with the keyboard, directly facing it. This allows balanced responsive movement with the entire keyboard.
When ready, allow your midline awareness to extend beyond the head to the limitless sky (the sky becomes one’s head) and through the earth so that you are rooted and grounded in the earth. If you wish, allow the midline to extend through the earth and out into the sky on the other side of the earthly sphere. Your midline then goes from sky to sky while firmly anchored in the earth.
Allow awareness to return again and again throughout the day to your midline (from head to ground). This can produce an exquisite sense of balance.
Stance and Midline: The Earthly Triangle
You may often find yourself standing with your feet together, as if your ankles are tied together with a rope. This makes you a pushover. A more balanced way of standing is with the feet about shoulder width apart, toes pointing forward, knees slightly bent.
Allow your midline to be poised between heaven and earth as described above. Allow awareness to settle at the soles of your feet. Subtly shift your weight toward the toes. Notice the sensation of balance/imbalance as you do so. Allow your weight to slowly shift to the heels. Notice when you have shifted too far back.
Continue this slow movement back and forth until you sense the center point, the center of balance for each foot. Visualize this balance point as a small circular spot on the sole of each foot. These spheres of balance of the feet when connected by an imaginary horizontal line form the bottom line of your Earthly Triangle.
Become increasingly aware of your one-point, the balance point about two inches below your navel. Open to an awareness of the connection of the one-point with the balance point on the sole of the left foot and on the sole of the right foot. Sense the existence of your Earthly Triangle: an isosceles triangle with its apex at the one-point. Visualize internal energy moving up, down, across, and around the triangle.
Your Centering Practice
For this manual to be of any practical use to you, it is essential that you find and adopt centering practices that are most natural and suited to you. Perhaps it is imaging the small bowl of water at your core as you move through the day, or one of the other practices described above. Perhaps it is none of those.
Take a few moments and open to understanding what you do naturally that allows you to settle and center. Or, if you do not already have a centering practice, which of the above practices or variation of one of these practices might you embody in your daily life? Choose only one at this time.
2. The Weapon of Mindfulness
Attention! Attention! Attention!
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Mindfulness cuts through illusion, including the illusion of a separate self – the pervasive sickness of our society. Mindfulness is sharp, discerning, taking no prisoners. Mindfulness is standing naked in the universe, no protective clothing. Mindfulness is the true occupation of a bodhisattva – an awakening warrior of radiant origin.
Do you mind? When we ask this question of another, we sometimes mean “You are in my way. Don’t you care? Will you readjust your position to allow me to continue on my way?” Another shade of meaning points to attention and awareness (or lack of awareness). If truly we “mind,” then we are aware and attentive. The question can also imply, “Where is your mind? Is your mind somewhere else?” The question thus refers to the degree of presence or absence.
Minding then means to care, to be aware, to be attentive, to be present, and to shift and change according to current reality.
The practice of mindfulness, the cultivation of nonjudgmental moment to moment awareness, includes
- Attentional training – practicing the ability to place one’s attention where one chooses and to remove one’s attention when one chooses.
- Being nonjudgmental toward self and others – This does not mean that you don’t know the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It means that you don’t make an idol out of whomever or whatever you are being judgmental toward. “Idol” means your eye is dull; your eye becomes stuck there at the judgment point and cannot see further.(27) Since whatever you attend to you become, you become that stuckness.
- Being present – Everything that is going on is going on right here, right now. Now is the time. It is always already now. When we are not here now, we are not at the place of action. We are not being frontline responders. And that is always a personal choice. We are masters at zoning out.
- Being aware – Images that come with sensations, feelings and thoughts carry us away. Part of mindfulness practice is recognizing when we are zoning away, recognizing our own state of consciousness, its furnishings, and perhaps deciding to rearrange the furniture. I don’t like that old sad sofa, that rigid straight chair, that bed of nails, that dart board with the picture of the person I love most to hate. Or maybe you decide to keep those furnishings. That is, of course, up to you. The point is to become aware of the habitual furnishings of your mind.
Deadly States of Mind
In the martial arts, the state of one’s mind is considered as highly important. One’s attitude is manifested mentally, spiritually, and physically. One’s attitude is clearly visible. The “wrong” attitude can open one to serious injury or death.
In writing about their art and in training students, martial arts teachers use many “minding” terms: right mindedness, no-mind, mind like the moon, mind like water, immovable mind, no-abiding mind, original mind, placement of the mind, mind-stopping and so on.
There are at least four ways of mind that can be deadly (in martial arts and in daily life): the full mind, the stopped mind, the led mind, and ordinary mind.
The Full Mind
He checked his mind from time to time. When looking within, he found that much of the time he was full. When thoughts and images occupied his mind, when emotions flooded his heart, he had no time, no room for anything or anyone. When his mind was full, he went through the day as if blind and deaf, insensitive to all but mind-chatter and emotional surges. He became a victim of fullness. There was no room for anyone but himself.
Once there was a young Japanese swordsman full of pride and self-importance. He used every opportunity to show off his skill with the sword, even challenging and killing those who were obviously no match for him. One day, full to overflowing with his swaggering ego, he confronted Miyamoto Musashi (who later authored Gorin No Sho, The Book of Five Rings). Musashi declined the invitation to an immediate duel. An agreement was reached to meet on a river island at dawn the next day.
Before dawn, the young man strutted before the onlookers proclaiming what he was going to do to Musashi, if that coward ever showed up! Meanwhile, Musashi asked a boatman to row him to the island of encounter. On the way, he whittled a rough sword out of an extra wooden oar.
In a relaxed yet focused state of mind, Musashi stepped out of the boat, walked directly to the awaiting braggart and struck one blow on the crown of the man’s skull. The man with the mind full of himself fell dead.
The young man obviously had the wrong state of mind. He was saturated with egotistical pride. Musashi, on the other hand, had a “free and open mind.”
The Stopped Mind
When he asked Willard Lindstrom, an accomplished South Dakota guitarist, piano player, and beekeeper, his secret to making music, Willard said simply, “Don’t stop.”
A second type of mind that leads to defeat is the stopped mind. A stopped mind produces an opening. The enemy appears and slashes through the opening.
When your mind (awareness) stops, you stop. Like a fly in the web of a spider, you re caught in doubt, tangled in hesitation, paralyzed by indecision. One step toward “unfreezing” is to realize that you are all three (fly, web, and spider) and begin laughing at your amazingly competent ability to trance yourself into stuckness.
Deliberate stopping of the mind, called a suki in Japanese, is one of the weapons used by martial artists. In stopping the other’s mind (often by a devastating shout), the attacker has the other at his mercy.
The truth of this can also be seen in a conversation where each may be attempting to sway the other to a particular point of view. As long as one keeps a verbal and nonverbal flow with immediate and relevant responses, one cannot be “pinned down.” If there is faltering and hesitating, the other conversationalists pick up the beat.
In daily life, a stopped mind is one caught in fantasy, in doubt, in any internal state that decreases or eliminates awareness. A stopped mind is a dead mind. The person is a victim of stupor-idity.
The Led Mind
Do you remember the childhood trick of pointing to a person’s chest and asking “what’s that?” as if something inappropriate (a bug, spilled food) is there? If they fall for it and look down, your pointing finger quickly becomes a tool for flipping them under the nose or chin. You have led their mind and they have paid the consequences.
The mind that is led is an attached mind, attached to some aspect of internal or external circumstances. The mind sticks like glue to a pre-established plan, to rigid belief, to a feinting movement, to a sword blade. As a result, the attached mind does not reflect current reality.
A swordsman named Hidetsuna, who lived in 15th century Japan, passed through a village where he was met by confused and anxious villagers. A man had taken a child hostage and barricaded himself in a barn with threats of killing the child if anyone approached.
Hidetsuna put aside his swords, had his head shaved, donned a monk’s robe, and approached the barn armed with only two rice balls, one in each hand. He told the alarmed (and hungry) man that he had brought food for the child and for the man.
Hidetsuna tossed one rice ball to the man, who released the child and caught it in his left hand. Hidetsuna immediately tossed the other rice ball. The man dropped his sword and caught the second rice ball. Hidetsuna stepped in and subdued him.
This man’s mind was led by the tossed rice balls. As a result, his mind could not take in his current reality.
The led mind pursues a reactive path. All other paths are closed. Free unrestrained 360 degree awareness is not a possibility.
Trance Mind
Most of us attend to our internal dialogue most of the time. By attending, we direct energy to our internal dialogue. It grows even more powerful. We begin to identify with our thoughts. We believe we are the internal dialogue. This is a form of insanity. Insanity is the inability to shift one’s attention, a stuckness.
We entrance ourselves. Like master hypnotists, we give ourselves repetitive suggestions. We convince ourselves that we are this way, the world is that way, and the future is like this or that. We repeat these hypnotic commands to ourselves and dare anyone to deny that our hypnotic suggestions are anything but reality. We repeat scenarios of doom as if fingering a demonic rosary.
“Monday” is a trance state. So is “Friday.” Dogs don’t know it’s Monday (except by our trance behavior). Neither do the trees, small children, flowers, the sun, the earth. You are the one who decides that since this particular appearance of the sun is named “Monday,” you will imbue it with Monday-like qualities. You are the one who decides. Oh sure, you may have committed to certain activities. But you don’t have to let it be “Moan Day.”
Trance dance. If you are going to be in a trance, don’t do it half-heartedly. Really get into it! Trance yourself on purpose and with full awareness. For example, if one of your favorite trances is worry, take your usual worries and fashion them into a worry mantra, a litany of worries, complaints and fears. Write them down. Capsulate them, make them into one or two sentences or a few phrases. It’s helpful if it’s rhythmic. At the end of your worry mantra, add a phrase (repeated twice) invoking the aid of the powers of the universe, such as “Help me O God, Help me O God” or “Help! Help!” Every time you feel like worrying, recite it like a Gregorian chant. [Caution: Do not use self-limiting phrases like “I can’t” as in “I can’t pay these bills. I can’t pay these bills. Help! Help!” Take the “I” out of it as in “Bills are unpaid. Bills are unpaid. Help! Help!”]
Why-ning and how-ling. Why-ning is a part of ordinary mind. Why-ning refers to the tendency to ask “why?” Why me? Why must I do this? Why am I like I am? Why is the world this way? Why, why, why, why, why? This is why-ning.
Why? Genetics, environment, karma, family, job, society, early childhood experiences, Adam and Eve and the serpent, television, other people, God, the Devil, the Big Bang, the Great Unfolding…. The list goes on and on.
Trying to find out why is of limited use in creating personal change. I can stay on my therapeutic couch of analysis forever. A little understanding of why is okay, but a more important question is how? After I know what I want to change, I need to know how. How? By doing this and not doing that. By being this and not being that. By attending to this and not attending to that.
Stop why-ning. Start howl-ing.
Stance Affects Trance
My grandmother would correct my posture. “Stand up straight,” she would say. She was wiser than I knew at the time. Following her advice affected far more than the physical body. Physical stance is an ally in clear seeing.
Many of us are entranced much of the time. Even though our bodies are here, our minds travel to other places and times: reliving conversations with others, envisioning next steps in daily activities. These travelings in past, present, future, and hyperspace are trance states.
For example, I may trance myself into believing that I am “George Breed”, a social phenomenon composed of other’s perceptions and expectations. If not careful, I might live out a portion of life doing my best to either conform to or react against these perceptions and expectations. I would rather see clearly and not be entranced.
The way we stand and sit affects the subtle energies of our consciousness. To experience this, sit with your elbows resting on your knees and head in your hands and look down. Become aware of the mood tone of this posture.
Now relax, breathe and shake your hands as if flinging water droplets from your fingers. This allows releasing of mood.
Next, sit erect in a chair, both feet flat on the floor. Visualize a golden or silver “heavenly cord” from which you are suspended. The cord is attached to the crown of your head and extends upward into infinity. While grounded by the chair and floor, your upper body is suspended by the heavenly cord. Let breathing flow. Become aware of your mood. Notice the differences between your mood tone in this posture and the mood tone in the first posture.
Persons often report that the second posture is “easier” and “more relaxing.” With awareness, you may find that you put yourself into postures (like the first posture) that produce trance states of negativity. It pays to park your body in a posture that generates positive energy. No one is in charge of this but you.
Chiltan Posture
One Flagstaff winter morning I opened to the Chiltan posture.(28) My dogs and I were moving through the Ponderosa Pine forest before sunrise, the just-past-full Moon grinning from the west on the new snow while the Morning Star blazed gloriously in the eastern sky and the Big Dipper cast its overhead glow while its north-pointing finger singled out the San Francisco Peaks, capped with snow and framed in a break in the pines. The near peak, Agassiz, looked like Mount Fuji in the moonlight.
I stood facing the Morning Star, feet shoulder width apart, left hand on one-point, right hand on heart. My right hand on the heart energized, warmed, and strengthened the heart; the left hand opened the one-point. After the heart and one-point were vibrating warmly in the cold pre-dawn air, I switched hands. I found that the right hand on the one-point and the left hand on the heart connected one-point and heart.
I turned to the west and opened to the spirit of the Moon in the same way: first, right hand on heart, left hand on one-point; second, the switching of the hands.
I turned to the south and faced two oaks, standing side by side, each with gracefully extended snow-covered arms glistening in the moonlight. My left hand was on my heart, my right on the one-point. The energy of the one-point, activated earlier, moved through my right palm, into the right arm, up and across the shoulders, and through the left arm into the heart chakra. The energy reversed itself and spiraled from the heart into the one-point. The energy then moved straight up and down connecting the heart and one-point in one shimmering vibration.
After a while, I moved through the forest and found myself standing and experiencing the blessing of a large snow-draped oak. I opened to its Chiltan spirit. Joy moved through me. I turned and saw the moon hanging over four distinctly individual Ponderosa pines. The vision of each was touched by the faint rosy hue of the soon-to-appear sun. Moonlight still fell on the snow. I looked at the oak. Something almost imperceptible moved in its upper middle branches, something at its heart. I laughed with pleasure and moved on through the snow.
Going Out of Your Mind
The man was highly intellectual. He sat in my office caught in the web of intellect. While he continued to speak, I wrote a note on a small card and handed it to him. He read it aloud, “Go out of your mind.” He looked confused, then serious. He burst out laughing.
In our culture, the phrase “out of your mind” means crazy, irresponsible. “Are you out of your mind?” is a question asked of someone behaving in a bizarre or unexpected fashion. We value total identification with the mind or intellect. We still put Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”) before the “horse” (one’s vehicles: the physical body and the awareness body of infinite extension).
Having been asked to talk to a university career women’s group, I looked up “career” in my mammoth 1918 Webster’s Dictionary. Career has its roots in a word that means “to gallop swiftly on a track like a running horse.” The word “careen” (to veer almost out of control) is a close cousin.
Many of us have multiple careers and are galloping swiftly through the day. It behooves us to pay attention to our horse during the day. If we go out of our mind and allow the full experience of embodying, we find that our horse has wisdom of its own. Going out of our mind allows attuning to the wisdom of the physical body, which opens further into the awareness body (you extend much further than you think).
The warrior often has no time to think. When someone comes swinging, the “horse” is already moving. The same is true in everyday life. In driving a car, you may have had the experience of braking and/or swerving quickly with no thought. The horse takes over. The horse has great wisdom.
In going out of the mind, we open to relationship. In relationship, separation does not exist. One does not act (a “subject” does not “do something” to an “object”). Action is. What occurs is called forth from what is. Whatever comes to pass is called for by the flow of the situation. Future action unfolds out of current process. The Tao taos the Tao. The Flow flows the Flow. The Wave waves the Wave.
In the martial arts, this phenomenon is known as the sword that swings itself. The swordsperson has no thought of harming another, no thought of revenge or of dispensing justice, no thought of self-protection. The swordsperson is simply (and vividly) present. The attacker calls the sword into action.
When the sword swings itself, the ego is not involved. When the ego (sense of separate self) swings the sword, the ego is responsible for whatever happens (usually a bloody mess). When the sword of spirit swings, no ego is in sight. Right action occurs. The action provides what is called for, no more, no less.
Presence
A bear of a man sat in my office. He was moving through troubled times at home and at work. The man chuckled. “Well the way I figure it, if you can’t do anything else, you can still suit up and show up. Isn’t that right?” I could only laugh with him and agree.
The man’s “suit” consisted of presence: troubled but here, hurting but here. He was determined to continue to face and deal. No strategies, no weapons, no plans other than to “suit up” and “show up.” No running, no hiding, simply present.
Life has its own rhythm. At times it is easy to maintain open awareness. At other times, it feels almost impossible. We seem to open and close like some exotic blooming flower, opening and closing to a rhythm we do not understand.
When we can’t see clearly and we feel “shut in” and our vision obscured, an effective response is to allow. Allow, even give blessings to, the current state of awareness and it will be given room to change. Transformation occurs.
If nothing else be simply present.
Vanquishing Negative Thought
Steps exist for getting rid of negative and judgmental thoughts. First, before you throw the thought away, see if there is any information that is useful in that thought. Do not throw a repetitive thought away until you see if it has something to say to you.
As an example, if the thought comes into my mind: “I talk too much,” I want to take a look at that. I want to observe the full extent of my talkativeness. Am I indeed flooding the air with my words?
After extracting any useful information, the next step is Pffft! a method taught by Aikido Sensei Koichi Tohei. Find an index finger. Place it to your lips. Vigorously utter the sound, Pffft! and throw the thought with your index finger to the far horizon, to outer infinity. Body and mind acting together are more powerful than either alone. One combines the bodily gesture of throwing it away with the imagery of that thought being flung to the far corners of the universe.
A participant from the Navaho Nation recently told our mindfulness group that the Navaho way is to say “Pah.” I like “Pah.” It is a gentler releasing. Pah!
Whether you Pffft! Or Pah! do not stand there looking for the thought to come back. Immediately turn your attention to something else: a predetermined thought, an affirmation of some kind, a prayer. Or turn your attention to whatever you are doing. If you are ironing your clothes, turn your attention to ironing your clothes. If you are driving, turn your attention to driving.
If the negative thought arises again, as soon as you are aware of it, throw it away again with a gesture and sound, and then turn your attention immediately to another place. Since attention directs energy, if you pay attention to this negative thought after extracting its useful information, then you are giving it more power. You are allowing it to stay in your mind and it becomes more and more powerful. To allow it to dissolve, you must turn your attention to something else.
Attention directs energy. What is attended to becomes energized (more powerful). What is not attended to becomes de-energized and eventually fades into oblivion.
Formal and Informal Practice
Mindful awareness can be practiced both formally and informally. Formal practice means to have a certain time and location for sitting quietly, to honor a specific form (parking one’s body so it doesn’t fall over, sitting in a dignified posture, eliminating external distraction, creating a sacred space, etc.). Informal practice uses daily life with all its unexpectancies, distractions, interactions, routines as an arena for mindfulness.
Formal practice provides a base, a ground for informal practice. Daily life practice ensures that mindfulness is part of one’s being and isn’t an aspect that can only thrive in a “hothouse” environment.
Your Mindfulness Practice
Consider creating (or deepening) a formal mindfulness practice for you. What time of day might it occur? Early morning? Noon? Evening? Where might you sit? In what chair? On what cushion? Can you turn your phone off during this time? Do you need to notify other family members so they can support your practice?
For daily life practice of mindfulness, consider using a centering exercise (e.g. small bowl of water) as you move through the day or periodically attending to your breath to call yourself into the Now. Practice being actively present in whatever you are currently doing (driving, talking, listening, walking, performing a task).
Here is some room for you to make some notes about your mindfulness practice. How will you embody mindfulness in your life?
3. The Weapon of Relentless Intent
Seven times down, eight times up!
Energy practice (kung fu) means deliberately embodying unremitting attention, continuously lending energy to one’s pursuit. Energy practice is calm and steady. It is the practice of relaxed relentlessness.
Embodying relentless intent is like praying without ceasing – a constant connection with the universe. In aikido terms, it is extending positive energy in all directions. Relentless intent means total involvement, while simultaneously letting go. It means acting from the depths of one’s being with no clinging.
Isshinryu (the name of the karate discipline I first learned) means “to throw oneself wholly into the action without any other thought at all.”(29) Hokusai (30) has an energetic drawing of a warrior on horseback leaping from a cliff into a roaring mountain stream. The warrior and the horse are as one. The warrior is still and relaxed while the horse is moving with vibrant openness. Total commitment, nothing held in reserve. With such a state of being, the mission has already been accomplished while it is being accomplished.
A Native American woman I know spoke with some of us about the custom of men of the tribe during hunting season. The family/community needs meat. The hunters condense their focus, withdrawing from verbal and sensual contact with their mates and others, concentrating deeply on the specific animal they invite to give its life. A relationship is formed. By the time the hunter physically leaves for the hunt, the animal’s sacrifice is a done deal. The mission is accomplished before it is accomplished.
Relentless Intent and Co-Creation
We are co-creators with the universe. God has been defined as a circle with no circumference whose center is everywhere. You are one of those centers where universal creation abides. Without our relentless intent, the wellspring of creativity is clogged with the debris of our fragmentation. When we keep willing it, it will be done.
To some extent, we will to be the way we are. Personality concretions (sometimes called disorders), being “set” in our ways, are partly due to choices we made and continue to make in our lives. Personality concretions are based in closure – out of fear, anger, and/or confusion. We must have relentless intent to stay in the shape we are in. (“I am the way I have defined myself to be, and don’t tell me any different. My mind is made up like a bed in the morning, and I don’t want any strange ideas trying to slide beneath my covers.”)
We limit ourselves through relentless story telling. I am this way. The world is that way. I must always be this way. The world must always be the way I perceive it to be.
Without relentless intent, we will remain confined in our mental cubicles. With only vaporous intent, we will use any perceived obstacle as justification for remaining in our prison. We may rebel but we will not revolt.
Without relentless intent, we will yield to the pressures of others who have strong interest in our remaining the same. We will follow the will of humans rather than the will of spirit and co-creation with the universe.
With relentless intent, we ruthlessly vanquish all inner obstacles to openness and presence. With relentless intent, we do not cling to any element of secondary reality. With relentless intent, we continue opening to primary reality. We are truly warriors of spirit – of the primary lifeforce. We know no bounds.
Mind and Body as One
When our mind and body are moving in the same direction, we are strong. If the mind is thinking of something separately from what the body is doing, we lose strength. “When the two become one, we can say to the mountain to move and it will move.” (31) People demonstrate this to themselves quite readily in my workshops.
I invite folk to think of something they truly want; it doesn’t matter what it is as long as they have a strong urge to attain it. The group moves to the other side of the room from me. Each person walks toward me twice: once with the desired something behind them so that they are walking away from it; once with it ahead of them so they are walking toward it. I extend my arm horizontally so that I catch each person across the chest at shoulder level. They cannot be stopped when their mind and body are moving as one. (32)
Hauling the Meat: Just Take the One More Next Step
On those days of relative lifelessness and fatigue, of no internal music and no external rhythm, often all one can do is “haul the meat.” Hauling the meat means to keep putting one step in front of another, to allow one breath to follow another. Even with no music or rhythm, maintain movement. Eventually, rhythm and music will appear. [Caution: two or more meat-hauling days in a row are a sign that something in your life needs contemplative attention.]
Diamond Sharp
A diamond in its clarity and brilliance cuts right through. No effort. The very nature of its being allows slicing through. Relentless intent is diamond like. With relentless intent no obstacles appear. Everything is in the Way, so no thing is in the way.
Diamond sharp does not mean harsh engaging. Diamond sharp intent responds appropriately with each moment’s circumstances. Diamond sharp can be very soft and quiet. Diamond sharp means appropriate engaging.
For example, gentle laughter often cuts right through imagined obstacles. This does not mean that gentle laughter is used as a deliberate ploy. Appropriate responses arise concurrently with imagined obstacles (person, thought, and situation). Such responses include gentle laughter, calm silence, or even a sudden shout! Diamond sharp refers to the deep intent. The manifestation of diamond sharp may take many forms.
The Silver Cord
This practice is especially useful for walking up an incline, whether mountain or stairs, though it’s also wonderful when walking or running on a more level plane. While walking or running, visualize a slender strong filament, a silver cord, extending from your one-point to a winch or reel attached to a tree, boulder, or building several hundred feet in front of you. Allow yourself to be “reeled in” by this silver cord. Relax all muscles not essential to your movement. When you do so, you are moving from your one-point, from your physical center of balance.
Your Practice of Intent
The practices of centering and of mindfulness can be a strong basis for your developing of your intent. Pure intent comes from your mindful core or center, uncontaminated by any form of cognitive-emotional affliction (fear, anger, regret, desire, and stupor). Pure intent aligns with primary reality and may be at odds with “world” reality.
Your practice of pure intent comes along with your practice of centering and mindful presence. After settling and centering and relaxing into the Now, reflect upon your intent for this day, for this moment, for this life. In what arenas of action will your intent express itself?
Part IV: The Manual: Heaven Weapons
The three Earth weapons alone are out of balance. To be centered, mindful, and relentless is not enough. Each has its complement in a weapon of the heavens and with its partner is to be manifested in (horizontal) daily life action. The three Heaven principles and practices allow clear and infinite openness.
1. The Weapon of Opening
Have 360 degree awareness
Opening allows one to sense all other beings while being sensed, to live in the realm of intersubjectivity.(33) Opening coincides with releasing or letting go (the essence of forgiving and of healing). Opening allows one to freely merge with all that is, to be at home in the universe.
Some of the persons I see as a psychotherapist are in the process of closing their hearts because they are in pain. A closed heart feels like a knot in one’s chest. Breathing becomes shallow. Anxiety attacks occur. Bitterness sets in. Stupor is sought. A closed heart is death.
Healing (making whole, hale, and hearty) requires an open heart. Pain can still arise but it also dissipates as one opens to the rhythm of life. Openness means no clinging – no clinging to pain, no clinging to joy (cling, cling, cling goes the folly).
Contemplation: Living in the Temple
The dictionary definition of meditation is “to keep the mind in a state of contemplation.”(34) Contemplation means to go to the templum, an ancient space for observation marked out by the highest class of official diviners, the augurs. Ancient Rome had a college of augurs whose sole duty was the interpretation of signs, especially through observing the flight of birds. To do so they needed a clear and open space, the templum.
The augurs moved to the clear and open space with expectancy (predetermined signs would answer specific questions) and with no expectancy (unexpected portents or omens could occur). With expectation and no-expectation, with mind and no-mind, looking for one of several specific events to occur, like a scientist awaiting one of several possible sets of data to show up, while staying open to the unexpected, the augurs sat in contemplation.
[Shortly after reading about augurs, I went to the forest with my dogs. I stood in a clear open space. A red-tailed hawk (one of my totems) appeared. The hawk flew about twenty feet above my head, looking down at me, circling twice, and then shooting out of view. I stood meditancing.]
When we meditate or sit mindfully, we go to the templum, we prepare for insight by moving to an inner space of clarity and openness. We open in con-templ-ation, move into the temple, and become one with the universal template.
Open Awareness
I was in the grocery store the other day, picking up a few things for the home. Though the store was full of people, the only one who saw me was a three-year-old, perched in his mother’s shopping cart. Our eyes met with clear awareness. No words hid us from each other. The adults were lost in thought, in self-induced trance states. The three-year-old was wide awake. We saw each other’s openness. Our open presence was a blaze of awareness that extended outward in all directions.
Such presence comes with calmness, with the absence of the will of separateness, with letting go of words and thoughts, with allowing life’s flow. This relaxed extension of awareness is called “extension of ki” by Aikido folk. A circle or sphere provides the perfect imagery for describing ki extension. A sphere depicts 360 degree awareness, awareness in all directions.
To provide an example from everyday life, bring to awareness the experience of driving a car. Driving a car requires 360 degree consciousness; an awareness of what is going on behind, to the left, to the right, to the immediate front, to the distant front. The driver’s awareness radar perpetually scans the spherical area radiating outwards from her center.
Any movement or potential movement in that 360 degree field of consciousness receives immediate attention and relaxed response. This 360 degree awareness can be condensed or expanded at will through attention.
Galeropia: Clear and Cheerful Vision
Galeropia (gal-uh-rope-e-ah) is a word combining the Greek galeros (cheerful) and opsis (vision). A medical term, galeropia means exceptional clearness of vision. Clear vision is cheerful vision.
Cheerful vision is not smile-button, Pollyannaish, bubble-headed vision. Cheerful vision is not accomplished with one’s noodle full of meringue. Cheerful vision is practical, down-to-and-expanding-past-earth vision.
Derived from the Middle English word chere (face or welcome), cheer at one time meant countenance: the outward look or appearance. It eventually came to mean spirit, state of mind, or heart. The word cher refers to courage (French: couer) and heart.
Be of good cheer, said Jesus, the Ki Master. Have courage and heart. Be of good cheer. Have a good countenance toward all. Face all with good spirit, good mind, and good heart. [Good originally meant fitting or belonging together, as in “and God saw that it was good.” The creation of the heavens and earth was good. When creation was flung into being, God pitched a perfect fit.]
Be of cheerful and clear vision (awareness). Galerope through the day.
Settling Down
A pre-requisite to open awareness is allowing oneself to relax, to settle down. Settling down is an inner experience. One can feel the muscles and the cells of one’s body relaxing and letting go. No longer is one “bearing up” under the stresses and demands of one’s current trance state. One settles into one’s center. One lets go of all else.
Please put down anything you are doing and let your awareness move to your breathing. When you breathe in, breathe into your heart area. Visualize, sense, and feel that you are breathing into your heart. Use your childhood imagination.
After breathing into your heart, when breathing out breathe down into your one-point, just below your belly button. Breathe into your heart and when breathing out, feel that breath go down to the one-point. If your breath does not go all the way down, be patient. Over time, it will.
Breathe in to heart. Breathe down to center. Allow settling down. After settling down, extend positive energy in all directions. “Positive” refers to clear sensing. Negativity blocks one’s field of vision. For example, fear does not allow one to see clearly.
In extending clear positive energy in all directions, one is exquisitely aware of one’s surrounds. One is also expanding one’s sphere of influence. Eugene Herrigel (35) writes of this expansion of one’s sphere of influence as spreading your field of power around you in ever-widening rings.
Settle down. Extend clear positive awareness in all directions.
Spaces Between Thoughts
As I sit quietly centering, I pay attention to thoughts going by. I see my thoughts like boats on a river, like a train with cars. I begin to pay attention to the spaces between thoughts. Sometimes it seems as if these spaces are razor’s edge thin. I continue to attend to the spaces, the intervals between thoughts. The spaces become larger and larger.
By giving attention to the spaces between thoughts, energy is directed to the spaces rather than to the thoughts themselves, and the mind gradually becomes empty, empty in a positive way. As the mind empties of preconception and thought, awareness opens to the Larger Context.
The extension of open awareness toward infinity in all directions (a spherical 360 degrees, a sphere with no bounds) becomes comfortable and natural.
Condensing and Expanding
Park your body in an alert, yet relaxed and stable posture. Breathe in deeply, smoothly, calmly. Breathe out beyond the far horizon. Visualize a sphere of energy the size of an orange at your center of balance, about two inches below your navel and deep inside. Halve it in size. Halve it again. Continue to halve it until you reach subatomic realms and the Infinity of Inside.
Then double it and continue doubling until you and the Earth are enveloped in a light-filled sphere of energy. Continue to expand until you reach galactic realms and the Infinity of Outside.
Condense again. Repeat the process for as long as is comfortable.
Your Openness Practice
Notice the times during the day when you feel more open and able to engage life situations. Notice the times of closure, of your energy condensing. While honoring your natural rhythm of opening and closing, consider that with a relaxed spirit you can stay open to the energy of our source, to the wellspring from which all life flows. Maintaining openness to the source is essential to spiritual life. This “rooting” openness allows our remaining open to daily life.
What is the quality of your openness? Do you have calm awareness or is it agitated hypervigilance? What is your openness practice? What are your practices that allow you to remain aware?
2. The Weapon of Surrendering
Enter and blend
Relentless intent can be in the service of the ego – the aspect of one’s being that falls prey to the illusion of separateness. The coupling of relentless intent and ego allows one to see all others as objects and as fair game for aggressive manipulations into serving one’s own interests. Relentless intent and ego are prime ingredients of insanity. Relentless intent must be combined with surrender.
Surrendering is to the universe, to the great mystery which actively breathes us. Surrendering means dropping our “self” stories, no matter how entertaining and fascinating and intriguing, in favor of the larger story. We declare ourselves planetary and universal citizens.
Surrender means to drop all self-induced trances. The word surrender points toward “rend.” When we surrender to the universe, we are torn apart and rendered as someone new. No longer a pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding alienated protoplasmic blob, we become an integral embodying of the universe itself, of the great mystery, of the origin unfolding, evolving.
To Be Rendered
On our South Dakota farmette (26 acres along the Vermillion River), we lived with an assortment of critters: hogs, sheep, chickens, ducks, and horses. When something died that was not edible (we were active carnivores), we called the Rendering Man. He would whisk the carcass away and assist its transformation into further usefulness.
To surrender means to allow oneself to be totally rendered. It is a painful process. The old carcass is whisked away, its parts put together into new, imaginative and useful ways.(36)
A friend said over the phone as we spoke of surrender, “You mean I have to give up and accept defeat?” “Yes,” I said, “Give up. Accept the feet. Do both at the same time. It’s called embodying heaven and earth.”
Total Abandon
A Ronin is a warrior with no earthly master, no organized clan; a warrior who roams outside the established camps.(37) He allows no part of the human consensus world to dominate. He follows the spirit of the lifeforce.
Becoming and being a Ronin is an essential stage in the life of Spirit. At some point, one abandons all established structure and support and stands alone, no Lord to serve, no cause to fight. Being a Ronin provides opportunity to become totally empty. Once empty, one can be filled.
I recall, as part of my Ronin journey (a previous part had been stepping out from organized religion), when marriage had dissolved. Maybe you know the hell of a divorce. All illusions of the previous life are suddenly gone.
My “stuff” (clothes, canoe, treasures of various sorts gathered across a lifetime) had been retrieved and stored in a friend’s South Dakota barn. I had no job. My “home” was a temporary room at a dear friend’s house. I received word that the barn had burned and my stuff had vaporized. After the first shock, I laughed and laughed and laughed. I stood naked in the universe clinging to nothing.
An inner work of the warrior is total abandon. This requires complete trust. Total abandon means being totally present, clinging to nothing, trusting the Source while not clinging to the trusting, and embodying the immediate current surging of the Wellspring, allowing the Tao to Tao, God to God, Spirit to Manifest, Emptiness to Form, and Form to Empty.
The inner work of the warrior is to let go of the obscurations of “I, Me, Mine” and of “Want, Don’t Want, Don’t Care.” By allowing these obscurations to dissolve, the warrior opens to and becomes a direct manifestation of life force, of spirit. In this sense he “lays up his treasures in heaven”(38) and “dies before he dies.”(39)
Drop Your Story
We are story tellers. Whatever is unknown, we make up stories about. We begin to familiarize it (to bring it into the family). This is one of our gifts as humans. Like all our gifts it can also become our torment.
We can become attached to the story, begin to see the story as reality. We can “pave paradise” with our stories and “put in a parking lot.” We have “paved” the unknown with interpretation, with a story that no doubt is pleasing and satisfying and may even have great predictive value. But it is still just a story.
The torment is the “parking lot.” The torment is the solidification of our mind, the hardening of our “ought”-eries, and the “should”-ing all over ourselves. Our mind is made up like a bed in the morning and we don’t want any strange ideas sliding between the covers. We exist in deep trance.
We forget that a story is a story is a story.
A man came in to see me. He told me a torturous story in which he was a victim, the world was unfair. He was alone against the world.
He was right. His story was justifiable. A jury of his peers would not have convicted him. His plight was the fault of others. He was right. And in pain. And stuck, nothing to do but point his finger at his situation.
He finished and sat quietly.
I said, “All of that is just a story.”
The silence in the room was deep and long.
He struggled with my statement.
“What do you mean?”
“What you told me is a story. Things happened. What you told me is your story of what happened. You are a victim and there is no way out. As you spoke, a different story came to me describing the same events. I can tell it to you. If you want to hear it.”
He wasn’t so sure at first. He was slightly stunned at my comments. He may have been expecting commiseration, consolation, sympathy.
More silence.
When he said yes, I told him the story. He was the hero of a journey, rather than the victim of a circumstance. The situation he had described was now one small part of a continuing adventure – the saga of HIM – a saga in which there was no end.
He now had a choice. He could continue to tell himself the victim story, which he had every right to tell, but which would keep him in painful stuckness. Or he could adopt a variation of the story I had told him, which allowed him room to maneuver, to act freely. Or he could drop all stories and simply be here, mindfully present without describing himself over and over to himself, without putting himself into a trance state of ME and THE STORY OF ME.
He decided to adopt a variation of the story I told him, while not discarding the victim story.(40)
No Enemy
Isshinryu karate is a vicious form of in-fighting, of bringing one’s body close to the body of the other and using all the hard surfaces of one’s body (fists, knees, elbows, feet, fingers, knuckles, etc.) to attack and destroy the soft areas of another’s body (eyes, throat and neck, armpits, solar plexus, stomach, groin, kidneys, etc.). As such, it is one of the “lower” forms of martial arts.
“Lower” means “no harm to me, excessive harm to you.” Higher forms of martial arts practice “no harm to me, as little harm to you as possible.” The highest arts practice “no harm to me, no harm to you.”
The lower arts are relatively easy to learn. Any bozo can destroy. The highest arts can be more difficult. They require a distinct change in attitude, involving a different relationship with fear and anger. The energy of fear and anger remains present, yet fear and anger are nowhere in sight.
This particular shift in worldview is a reason all warriors of spirit, Taoist practitioners, Christian contemplatives, Islamic Sufis and Buddhist Zen masters appreciate each other. They live, breathe and respond as those outside conventional reality. They do not get caught in fear or anger because there is no enemy.
One surrenders all thought of an enemy. One opens to a higher art.
In the Soup
Rumi (41) has a great poem about a chickpea being boiled in a cooking pot. The chickpea takes it personally and tries to leap out. The cook knocks it back in. The chickpea isn’t done.
Of course, we are that chickpea. We decide, at times, that we have had enough. We want out now! Getting out in the midst of the process is a half-baked idea. “But the water is too hot!” we cry.
Getting more agitated, we forget about centering and grounding, opening and releasing, fierce intent and compassion (for our own boiling and the boiling of others). We forget that we volunteered for this mission.
We are all in the soup together. Instead of evasion, the warrior cries: “Boil me some more! I’m not done yet!”
Submission
Submission has dual meaning. To submit means to be both active and passive simultaneously. To submit means to yield, to give up; to submit means to hand over, to turn in. One is actively committing to yielding something up, purposely turning something over.
When the word is used in logical argument, such as “I submit to you that the sky is blue,” the meaning is that I present it for your consideration; literally, to sit side by side with.
When we submit to the principles of the universe (the will of God), we are turning ourselves over to sit side by side with these principles, this will.
To sit side by side with the universal flux and flow is a submission. We begin to move in accord with rather than in opposition to. We enter and blend.
Surrender and submission are acts of courage and trust. We acknowledge that we have emerged (are continuously emerging) from the source (the Living Father, the Ever-Birthing Mother), that we have created our own bubble heads (secondary reality), and that we shall return (are continuously returning) to the source. We surrender and submit ourselves to this reality.
Forgiving is Releasing
Sometimes forgiving is interpreted as letting someone get away with something. We might feel that we want to hold it (their perceived trespass on us) against them for the rest of their lives (and maybe even after). But we are the ones doing the holding and holding comes with a price. Our souls suffer with bitter anguish.
The holding is within us. The person we are holding something against is probably not affected at all by our holding. Long term holding leads to cramp and strain. Unforgivingness is a warping endeavor.
Forgiving is releasing, letting go. What is released? What is let go? The festering sores within our consciousness which we have been nursing so carefully; the clinging sores of resentment, of anger, of hatred, of vengeance. When we forgive, we release ourselves from torment. We allow the wound to heal.
Hands Attaching
A martial practice I have adapted to couples counseling and to work teams is called “hands attaching.” The exercise is useful for determining your degree of comfort with surrendering to someone else’s lead or whether you must always have your way.
It goes like this. Pair off. Stand facing each other with the right foot extended a few inches. Allow the backs of your right hands to touch lightly. That point of contact is where you are having your conversation. One of you will move your hand within the space in front of you, in and out, up and down, right and left. Move smoothly and with full intent. The other of you is to keep your hand attached to the hand of the one who is moving. Breathe naturally. Do not speak. Do this exercise for 3 to 5 minutes.
Notice what happens with the way you feel, what you think, your ability to lead or to follow. Now, continuing verbal silence, reverse roles. The leader now follows wherever the other goes, keeping contact with the other’s hand.
Continue for a few minutes.
Discuss what happened. Were you more comfortable leading or following? What were your styles in leading? In following? Forceful? Detached? Jerky? Smooth? Predictable? Unpredictable? What else? What was communicated each time? Was there a time when you did not know who was following or leading, when your movement merged?
Your Surrendering Practice
One way of surrendering is the practice of humility, of releasing self-importance. To be humble is not necessarily to always put oneself last. That practice can be quite self-inflating. To be humble is to release one’s tight bounds that one is always defending. To be humble is to let go of the bounds, to let go of that all-too-sensitive self-awareness.
What is your surrendering practice? Do you continuously dwell upon you, singing the refrain of I-I-I, me-me-me? When do you drop your story? What is it you need to forgive, to release, to let go? What do you do to open to the Great Capacity?
3. The Weapon of Compassion
“the whole creation groans and travails in pain together” (42)
Compassion, at its root (com + pati), means: to suffer with, to bear with, and to have patience with. Compassion, by necessity, begins with oneself, begins at the core of one’s being and extends outward from here. To be compassionate, we cannot evade our own suffering. We are not to wallow in it and cling to it as professional victims, but we are to recognize our suffering and allow it to live its natural life. The only way out of suffering is through suffering.
“Unless a seed falls into the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit” is an accurate metaphor for our existence. We are like seeds sown into the ground of the universe. Imagine a seed in the dark cold ground. The seed may huddle into itself, not wishing to stir, fearful of the great unknown. It fights against any urge to crack its shell (too painful!). Better to stay with the familiar fears and discomfort than to venture out.
Those who open begin to reach out toward the light, knowing instinctively the direction. Obstacles are met: hard rock, at which the opening seed either stops or continues around or through. While it moves toward the light, the seed also begins exploration of the dark by sending roots down into its depth. Eventually the seed opens into the light and finds that along the way it is no longer a seed. In its journey toward the light, it has transformed.
Like fruitful seeds, we suffer with, bear with, and have patience with our own existence and its unfolding. This is compassion.
Entering and Blending
As we practice the eight qualities, we become aware that there are no “others,” no beings who are separate from us. Life is an unending web of existence. It is impossible to say where “I” stop and “you” begin. (The attempt to do so has brought a proliferation of attorneys with unceasing argumentation that will continue as long as our co-created secondary reality does not mirror primary reality.)
Aware that we are not separate from “others” (whether “they” are called humans or plants or animals or earth or molecules or planets or whatever names we use to designate, to differentiate, to divide and conquer) and opening with compassion for ourselves, we automatically open with compassion for all that is. The whole universe groans with its existence and its unfolding.
But you might want to start small. You might want to have compassion for one other person. Compassion is not pity. Compassion is not misty-eyed romantic sorrow. Compassion requires the use of a certain skill, a certain capability. Compassion requires shape-shifting: the ability to become another, to identify (become identical) with another without losing one’s own center. In martial arts this is known as entering and blending.
Practice of compassion automatically develops our capacity. As we open with compassion, we become roomier. Eventually we have room for the entire universe. As we practice compassion, we lose the concretization of our selves. We become transparent (diaphanous, to use Jean Gebser’s term).(43)
Practice of compassion requires fearlessness, refusing to submit to fear. Fearlessness comes from living in primary reality, from having insight into the nature of the universe. We enter into right relationship with all that is. We enter and blend.
Attention and Interbeing
For comprehension of how compassion can lead to an energetic world of open interbeing, consider the following premises:
When attention is given deeply enough, interbeing reveals itself. Interbeing is a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh to point to the interrelationship of all things. Similar concepts are Indra’s Net, wyrd, and the great holoarchy. The point is, the in depth study or deep participation in any field of interest eventually allows one to discern a vast network of interconnection. One may start one’s study as a particle; one ends as a wave.
Any field of study allows the giving of deep attention. Whatever our field of interest (science, music, sports, romance, politics ecology, etc.), we can give it our deep attention. This means more, much more, than “making a living” in the field of interest. This means that our attending is so deep that we become the field of interest.
For example, the field of martial art study allows the giving of deep attention. Instead of stopping short and merely learning techniques for defending oneself, the true martial artist embodies the principles of the martial arts revealed through the giving of deep attention.. Interbeing reveals itself. Persons encountering each other are having a conversation. Like all conversations, martial encounter takes place primarily in the nonverbal realm. What is spoken matters less than how it is spoken. Martial art or warrior principles are relationship principles and relationship principles are interbeing principles.
When attention is given deeply enough, one merges with interbeing. Continued identification of self as a separate particle gives way to the realization that all is interbeing, that one is not the center of the universe, that one is a center of the universe, that all other humans are each a center of the universe, that separation does not exist, that all is continuously interconnecting. One relaxes and merges with interbeing, while maintaining one’s unique center.
Appreciation
Though one might think of the essence of the way of the martial artist as arrogant destructiveness with total disregard for life and for others, the opposite is true. The nature of the universe is such that the most effective way to deal with aggression is through blending with (having lovingkindness for) those who appear to be the enemy. This is the way of Jesus, of Gandhi, of Martin Luther King, of the Dalai Lama, of Thich Nhat Hahn. This is the way of the highest form of the martial arts. The essence of the martial arts is selfless creative harmonious blending with what is. (44)
This necessity for appreciating one’s “enemy” is in accord with the way the universe works. We are physiologically “wired” for opening to all beings with lovingkindness. A large body of research has shown that appreciation (holding something as precious) produces positive changes within a few minutes in one’s heart rate, brain rhythms, and immune functions.(45) Feeling appreciation in the area of one’s heart produces positive physiological change.
Impedance of Compassion
A centuries-old synonym for compassion is “unimpededness.” To be compassionate means to exist in clear openness with no blocks, no obscurations, no thing present to impede the natural flowing of the clear light of awareness.
We humans appear to habituate to three major categories of impededness, of inner obscuration, of blocks that disallow compassion. These blocks, which we so assiduously cultivate, serve to reduce us to an inner world of judgmental turmoil. We grow accustomed to this self-induced reduction and come to regard it as “normal.”
Our three major favorite blocks are Wanting, Not Wanting, and Stupor. I want what I do not have and I cling desperately and with great desire to this wanting. I do not want what I have and I do not want some imaginary possibilities so I exist in perpetual irritation, even hostility. I prefer to remain ignore-ant of some things so I keep myself in a state of stupor.
In addition to the three major blockings, we also cling to three concepts which blind us to a larger reality. The embodying of these three concepts is not only socially approved, but actively encouraged by most of human society. The three blinding concepts are I, Me, and Mine. [I am the only one; it’s all about me; I’ll attack you if you bother what is mine.]
While the three blocks appear to have a place when coming from the survivor mentality of the “lower” or reptilian brain, and the three concepts appear to have a place when coming from close identification of “self” with the rooftop chatter of the cerebral cortex, perhaps the time has come for a less impeded awareness and an opening to a sense of self much larger than the one we usually entertain.
Giving and Receiving
A practice of great compassion is, while talking with someone who is suffering (emotionally, spiritually, physically), to deliberately and calmly use your breath to receive their pain. Envision their suffering coming into the vastness of your being with your inhalations and disappearing into the fertile void of great capacity. As you exhale, breathe lovingkindness into them. See them surrounded and infused with calm clear healing energy, with healing light.
During times of meditation or prayer, you might do this for your own being, for others you know, for all life on earth (including humans), for the planet, for the universe. Breathe in all the suffering. Breathe out blessings and lovingkindness.(46)
You may not be able to do this exercise unless you are practiced in the embodying of the Weapon of Great Capacity (see Part Six).
Your Compassion Practice
We are led to believe that we are to love ourselves before we can love others. To some extent, this is true. If carried too far, we get stuck within a smaller version of ourselves. When we realize the reality of interbeing, that everything rises and falls together, that life is one continuous ebb and flow, that each of us is the universe embodying, we can give ourselves permission to love “others” first, to extend lovingkindness to all we meet.
How do you embody compassion in your daily life? What form does your practice of lovingkindness take? What do you hold precious, show appreciation for? Do you enter and blend with people and situations while mindfully maintaining your center? Do you leave a wake of gentleness and healing as you navigate the day? Are you compassionate only to strangers? Are you compassionate only with friends?
What is your compassion practice, O Warrior of Spirit?
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