Archive for June, 2008
From The Divine Matrix
BY GREGG BRADEN
We are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself – and building itself.
- John Wheeler (1911 – ), physicist
Imagination creates reality… Man is all imagination.
- Neville (1905 – 1972), visionary and mystic
In 1854, Chief Seattle warned the legislators in Washington, D.C., how the destruction of North America’s wilderness had implications that would reach far beyond the current time and threaten the survival of future generations. With a profound wisdom that’s as true today as it was in the mid-19th century, the chief reportedly stated, “Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” The parallel between Chief Seattle’s description of our place in the “web of life” and our connection to (and within) the Divine Matrix is unmistakable. As part of all that we see, we’re participants in an ongoing conversation – a quantum dialogue -with ourselves, our world, and beyond. Within this cosmic exchange, our feelings, emotions, prayers, and beliefs at each moment represent our speaking to the universe. And everything from the vitality of our bodies to the peace in our world is the universe answering back.
What Does It Mean to “Participate” in the Universe?
As mentioned in the last chapter, physicist John Wheeler suggests that not only do we play a role in what he calls a “participatory universe,” but we fulfill the primary role. The key to Wheeler’s proposition is the word participatory. In this type of universe, you and I are part of the equation. We’re both catalysts for the events of our lives, as well as the “experiencers” of what we create… these things are happening at the same time! We’re “part of a universe that is a work in progress.”
In this unfinished creation, “we are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself – and building itself.” Wheeler’s suggestion opens the door to a radical possibility: If consciousness creates, then the universe itself may be the result of this awareness. While Wheeler’s views were proposed later in the 20th century, we can’t help but think back to Max Planck’s 1944 statement that everything exists because of an “intelligent Mind,” which he called “the matrix of all matter.” The question that begs to be asked here is simply: What Mind?
In a participatory universe, the act of focusing our consciousness – of us looking somewhere and examining the world – is an act of creation in and of itself. We’re the ones observing and studying our world. We’re the mind (or at least part of a greater mind), as Planck described. Everywhere we look, our consciousness makes something for us to look at.
In our search to find the smallest particle of matter and our quest to define the edge of the universe, this relationship suggests that we may never find either. No matter how deeply we peer into the quantum world of the atom or how far we reach into the vastness of outer space, the act of us looking with the expectation that something exists may be precisely the force that creates something for us to see.
A participatory universe… exactly what would that entail? If consciousness really creates, then how much power do we actually have to change our world? The answer may surprise you.
The 20th-century visionary from Barbados known simply by the name of Neville perhaps best described our ability to make our dreams a reality and bring imagination to life. Through his numerous books and lectures, in terms that are simple yet direct, he shared the great secret of how to navigate the many possibilities of the Divine Matrix. From Neville’s perspective, all that we experience – literally everything that happens to us or is done by us – is the product of our consciousness and absolutely nothing else. He believed that our ability to apply this understanding through the power of imagination is all that stands between us and the miracles of our lives. Just as the Divine Matrix provides the container for the universe, Neville suggested that it’s impossible for anything to happen outside the container of consciousness.
How easy it is to think otherwise! Immediately after the terrorist acts of September 11 in New York and Washington, D.C., the questions that everyone was asking were “Why did they do this to us?” and “What did we do to them?” We live during a time in history when it’s so easy to think of the world in terms of “them” and “us” and wonder how bad things can happen to good people. If there is in fact a single field of energy that connects everything in our world, and if the Divine Matrix works the way the evidence suggests, then there can be no them and us, only we.
From the leaders of nations whom we’ve learned to fear and hate to the people in other countries who touch our hearts and invite our love, we’re all connected in what may be the most intimate way imaginable: through the field of consciousness that’s the incubator for our reality. Together, we create the healing or the suffering, the peace or the war. This could very well be the most difficult implication of what the new science is showing us. And it might also be the source of our greatest healing and survival.
Neville’s work reminds us that perhaps the biggest error in our worldview is to look to external reasons for life’s ups and downs. While there are certainly causes and effects that may lead to the events of every day, they seem to originate from a time and a place that appears completely disconnected with the moment. Neville shares the crux of the greatest mystery regarding our relationship to the world around us: “Man’s chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.” Just what does this mean? It’s the practical question that naturally arises when we talk about living in a participatory universe. When we inquire how much power we really have to bring about change in our lives and our world, the answer is simple.
This capability is available to us through the way we use the power of our awareness and where we choose to place our focus. In his book The Power of Awareness, Neville offers example after example of case histories that clearly illustrate precisely how this works.
One of his most poignant stories has remained with me for years. It involves a man in his 20s who’d been diagnosed with a rare heart condition that his doctors believed was fatal. Married with two small children, he was loved by all who knew him and had every reason in the world to enjoy a long and healthy life. By the time Neville was asked to speak with him, the man had lost a tremendous amount of weight and “shrunk to almost a skeleton.” He was so weak that even conversation was hard for him, but he agreed to simply listen and nod his understanding as Neville shared with him the power of his beliefs.
From the perspective of our participating in a dynamic and evolving universe, there can be only one solution to any problem: a change in attitude and in consciousness. With this in mind, Neville asked the man to experience himself as if his healing had already taken place. As the poet William Blake suggested, there’s a very fine line between imagination and reality: “Man is all Imagination.” Just as physicist David Bohm proposes that this world is a projection of events in a deeper realm of reality, Blake continues, “All that you behold, tho’ it appears Without, it is Within, ~ In your Imagination, of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow.”
Through the power of consciously focusing on the things that we create in our imagination, we give them the “nudge” that brings them through the barrier from the unreal to the real.
In a single sentence, Neville explains how he provided the words that would help his new friend accomplish his new way of thinking: “I suggested that in imagination, he see the doctor’s face expressing incredulous amazement in finding him recovered, contrary to all reason, from the last stages of an incurable disease, that he see him double-checking in his examination and hear him saying over and over, ‘It’s a miracle – it’s a miracle.’” Well, you can guess the reason why I’m sharing this story: The fellow did get better. Months later, the visionary received a letter telling him that the young man had, in fact, made a truly miraculous recovery. Neville later met with him and found that he was enjoying his family and his life in perfect health.
The secret, the man revealed, was that rather than simply wishing for his health, since the day of their meeting, he had lived from the “assumption of already being well and healed.” And herein we find the secret of propelling our heart’s desires from the state of imagination to the reality of our everyday lives: It’s our ability to feel as if our dreams have already come to life, our wishes are fulfilled, and our prayers already answered. In this way, we actively share in what Wheeler called our “participatory universe.”
© 2007, Gregg Braden, All Rights Reserved
Excerpted from The Divine Matrix, by Gregg Braden, © January 2007. Reprinted with permission of Hay House, Carlsbad, California. Available at all bookstores or online by clicking on the thumbnail above.
June 19 2008 | Gregg Braden | No Comments »
Don Miguel Ruiz
Author The Four Agreements
There are two kinds of boundaries we use when dealing with people–the boundaries we use when we don’t have awareness, and the boundaries we use when we do have awareness. Usually we create boundaries in places where we can be hurt. We have emotional wounds in our minds, and if someone touches our wounds we have emotional pain. To feel safe in our interactions with people, we put boundaries around every emotional wound. These boundaries create a box that restricts us. When we heal the emotional mind, we no longer have those wounds, and the boundaries disappear. When they disappear, we create a new set of boundaries–this time with awareness.
The second set of boundaries we create is because of other people’s wounds, so we don’t allow other people to give us their emotional poison.
When we are young, we play with other children to have fun, not to insult them or to give them our poison. As adults, we also want to have relationships that we enjoy. We don’t want poison like anger, jealousy, or envy. We don’t want each other’s garbage. When we get together, it’s because we want to share our love and our joy.
When we are no longer wounded, and we are in a relationship, we can put up boundaries to restrict another’s poison. We call that respect.
We don’t want to have relationships that are disrespectful to us. For example, if I am in a relationship with someone and that person tries to control me, I can tell them, “Okay this is the limit. Don’t cross this limit. You can be with me or not, but if you stay with me don’t try to control me. Give me my space, and I will give you your space. I deal with my garbage, you deal with your garbage. If you are cranky, I will give you space. You can be cranky, it’s okay, there’s nothing personal. I respect you, and I want respect also. If you don’t respect me, I will not stay with you and it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, no… I love you. But if I’m not being respected, I will leave and you can be with someone who is the way you want them to be.”
We can create acceptable boundaries with people whose emotional poison we do not want to eat. When we respect ourselves, we will not allow disrespect from anybody else. This is not selfishness, it’s self-love. The controlling aspect is selfishness–wanting a partner to stay with us even if we are in hell. If we go into relationships because, “Oh I need you so much,” it’s selfishness, not self-love.
We need to understand that self-love is completely different from selfishness. Self-love comes from integrity. We recognize our integrity through our feelings. The feelings we have are real. If we don’t feel good it’s because something is not right. If we feel anger, we know that something is not right. If we feel envy or jealousy, something is not right. Jealousy is not bad, anger is not bad either. These emotions are telling us when something is not right.
Repressing emotions is not the answer…to change the cause of the emotions is the answer. If we feel anger or jealousy, we have to take one step back to see what is causing those emotions. If we change the cause, the affect also will change.
A love relationship should be based in respect. And that’s why we put boundaries on our relationships. The boundary is not, “Don’t touch me because I can get hurt.” The boundary is a way to have someone show respect. We don’t want their anger or their judgment.
Relationships can be so wonderful. We can be completely open and loving. But just because we love someone, that doesn’t mean we have to put up with their anger, jealousy or abuse. We don’t need to be abused, and we can’t send out our abuse either.
This is a way of having relationships based in love. A selfish relationship is not based in love. “I love you if you let me control you. I love you if you do whatever I want you to do. If you are not the way I want you to be, then I won’t love you.” This is not love. “I will stay with you even if you abuse me, even if you mistreat me.” That is not love either. How can we love if we don’t love ourselves?
With self-love and self-respect life can be completely different. We can make life easy or we can make it difficult. The only one who suffers or enjoys the consequences is us. If we have children, and something happens to them then yes, we feel emotional pain. Sometimes we can get sick, and be cranky, why not? But it’s not personal. We don’t have to give our poison to anybody else.
Life can be a playground. We can create new habits and routines that are automatic and lead us to happiness, and to the enjoyment of life. We can play and have fun most of the time, and be loving all the time, for no reason. We don’t need any justification to love. It just feels good. Love coming out of us is what makes life happy.
Copyright © 2000 don Miguel Ruiz. Reprinted by permission.
June 17 2008 | Don Miguel Ruiz | No Comments »
By Eckhart Tolle
Author of The Power of Now
Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.
In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.
Finding that dimension frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on yourself and others when the mind-made “little me” is all you know and runs your life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness,
If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as simply thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions happen — the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds.
The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much.
It wants to draw your attention in completely.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously.
How easy it is for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons.
The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It says: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret “your life” or someone else’s life or behavior, however you judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. It is no more than a bundle of thoughts. But reality is one unified whole, in which all things are interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself.
Thinking fragments reality — it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.
The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don’t realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.
Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention. Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness. It is the healer of separation.
Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don’t want to be where you are. Here, Now.
Dogmas — religious, political, scientific — arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth.
Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.
It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.
The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp.When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied.
When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.
Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.
You discover that a “bored person” is not who you are. Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours,” not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.
“I am bored.” Who knows this?
“I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.
Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.
Thinking that is not rooted in awareness becomes self-serving and dysfunctional. Cleverness devoid of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. That is the current state of most of humanity. The amplification of thought as science and technology, although intrinsically neither good nor bad, has also become destructive because so often the thinking out of which it comes has no roots in awareness.
The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.
Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately mental noise slows down or ceases. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. Feel the life that you are, the life that animates the body.
The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of aliveness underneath the fluctuating emotions and underneath your thinking.
There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your entire Being, not just in the head. Every cell is alive in that presence in which you don’t need to think. Yet, in that state, if thought is required for some practical purpose, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operates beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itself through it.
You may have overlooked that brief periods in which you are “conscious without thought” are already occurring naturally and spontaneously in your life. You may be engaged in some manual activity, or walking across the room, or waiting at the airline counter, and be so completely present that the usual mental static of thought subsides and is replaced by an aware presence. Or you may find yourself looking at the sky or listening to someone without any inner mental commentary. Your perceptions become crystal clear, unclouded by thought.
To the mind, all this is not significant, because it has “more important” things to think about. It is also not memorable, and that’s why you may have overlooked that it is already happening.
The truth is that it is the most significant thing that can happen to you. It is the beginning of a shift from thinking to aware presence.
Become at ease with the state of “not knowing.” This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind. A deeper knowing that is non-conceptual then arises out of that state.
Artistic creation, sports, dance, teaching, counseling — mastery in any field of endeavor implies that the thinking mind is either no longer in-volved at all or at least is taking second place. A power and intelligence greater than you and yet one with you in essence takes over. There is no decision-making process anymore; spontaneous right action happens, and “you” are not doing it.
Mastery of life is the opposite of control. You become aligned with the greater consciousness. It acts, speaks, does the works.
A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.
The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.
This article was excerpted from Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany, where he spent the first thirteen years of his life. After graduating from the University of London, he was a research scholar and supervisor at Cambridge University. When he was twenty-nine, a profound spiritual transformation virtually dissolved his old identity and radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating and deepening that transformation and marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. Eckhart Tolle is not aligned with any particular religion or spiritual tradition. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. To find out more, visit: http://eckharttolle.com
June 11 2008 | Eckhart Tolle | No Comments »
