Archive for July 2007
Just a few quick thoughts:
1. Most people are not comfortable with themselves.
To a large degree I’m not comfortable with myself either. I am not happy with my anger, with my hypocrisy, my fears and prejudices, my weakness, my lack of will power, my lust, greed, laziness or any other trait you “negative” might be able to name. I don’t think I am alone in this either.
So these emotions cause a problem for anyone seeking to understand who they are, and why they react as they do to any given situation. This poses a threat to meditation. Calming your mind, listening to your own intuition, to your own mind, or at least what we think of as a ‘mind’.
When I first began meditating I was lost on a sea of thoughts that would bombard me as I would try to still my mind. I would hush my self and concentrate on not concentrating and then a conversation would come to mind, or a thought would bubble up and off I go on this wild goose chase of internal conversations and fantasy. The only thing this would accomplish is suffering.
2. Learning who you are is often misleading.
You like the way I stated that?
I know it seems like a gimmick, but it isn’t, not really. As I began to get a grasp of who I was, when no one else was around, when I was alone with my thoughts and able to hear my heart; that still wasn’t me.
That was the me I saw threw the lens of society. It colors every thought we have, or think we have. I was paying more attention to the persona I had become to the outside world than I was to who I am. In fact, I could not find me until I let go of the world and myself; then I caught a glimpse. Like seeing a shadow in the darkness, unsure if it was really there or if it was simply a trick of light in the dusk.
Close your eyes and walk around your house in the middle of the night, you will see what I mean.
I am no Bodhisattva, no Buddha, though I am… paradoxes are fun huh? But I am aware of who I am, and I accept myself. I would be a friend to Matt, sure he has problems, yeah, he can be a jerk, or a complete whiner sometimes, but I am good with that. Just as long as I move on, see the positive again and embrace it wholly.
I could get in to a lot of stuff here about the “I” being an illusion of Sams?ra and the oneness of universe here, but I will save that for another time.
Light and Love,
Matt
This past Saturday I began my path to Reiki healer. I met with a Reiki master and after a few hours I asked for and received the attunement for Reiki I. Way too much for me to go in to here, but follow this link for a good explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki#First_degree
It is a couple of days now, since my attunement, and I am practicing at night, but after my first 30 days I will know more. Hopefully I will be able to use it and provide some healing.
I was drawn to Reiki due in large part to my participation in the martial arts. I have practiced the martial side of a few arts, so now I want to use the healing side of chi.
I strongly feel that all things are connected at the base, gross level. I feel that we all share the same energy and that that energy pervades all places, people and things. Plants, animals and landscapes are alive with that same energy, we have forgotten this for some reason. It is time to remember.
Buddhist, Christian, Hindu or Native American mystic — they all knew the same thing: we are all connected.
More later,
Matt
Why is it hard for many people to accept miracles in a religion other than theirs? Very normal, logical and sane people accept that Jesus walked on water, changed water to wine, healed the sick, brought Lazarus back from the afterlife and rose himself three days after his own death; but these same people think miracles in other religions are myth and fable.
Maybe I am able to suspend reality and accept imagination better than others? Perhaps I am equipped to see divinity in people where others can not? I don’t know, I do however know that it bothers me that many Christians can not accept that the divine can choose to show itself to any one anywhere.
Why can some people not understand that what they call God might show itself to others as gods, or devas, or angels or whatever it is that a person or people might need to experience? If a mother from the amazon prays and begs for the forest spirits heal her child, why would the divine not intercede and do just that? Just because she uses a name other than Jesus, or Yahweh or Allah or Buddha; don’t we think that the divine can hear all?
OK, I will stop ranting now…
This all started because I am reading a book right now called Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. I am not far enough in to the book to offer anything like a review or insightful comment, but I know that the book describes the lives of many yogis from India and the Himalayas. I know that it describes men and women that could heal the sick, float over rivers and become non-corporeal with thought.
I can buy all of that. I believe that Jesus did the works associated with his ministry, and I can accept that there might be others who can do many if not all of those same miracles, even today; all by faith in themselves and faith in the divine. I have faith that the divine creator of the universe can manifest itself anywhere in any time. To do otherwise would be to limit the limitless, to contain the universe in my own box. I can’t do that, can you?
I know that I cannot be considered an orthodox Christian any longer, nor could I be counted among the orthodox Buddhists, but I am comfortable with my own beliefs. I see the divine in others and myself, I see the divine in the world around me and I welcome it and call out to it. I also know that we all have eternal souls that suffer because we are mired in delusion.
I am no Bodhisattva, but I pray, I meditate and I smile. I try to be compassionate and mindful at all times, though I do fall short sometimes. “Loving kindness is my religion,” His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that once, but I will use it from now on as my own statement of faith.
So for now I am back to work, love you.
Matt
