Tag Archive for "suffering"
I went last night to the Oklahoma City Reiki Energy Circle Meetup. Very nice group of people there. The woman who runs the Meetup has been practicing for 4 or 5 years, I forget how long, and is very knowledgeable. There is one person there that kinda blows me away. His name is Jim and his knowledge of the healing arts is formidable, for sure. Healing Touch and Qigong seem to be his area of expertise and he knows how to communicate with the person he is treating to help them as best he can.
I was skeptical when I first began to talk to people about Reiki. But being in the martial arts has probably predisposed me to accepting the idea of chi. Call is chi, ki, prana, or whatever; different cultures refer to the life energy in different ways, but it’s all the same.
A good friend of mine, Gardner Singleton, is a acupuncturist and Chinese herbal doctor. Learning from him has taught me to open myself up and experience what other cultures can teach me on the healing front. Herbs are used world wide by the indigenous cultures. From China to Australia to the Native American culture they are seen as the natural way to cure what ails us. It just so happens that these same cultures are not only open to the idea of chi, but all of them openly practice the energy work and training in various methods.
OK, back to Reiki then. Last night during the session I was flush with heat. The feeling of pin pricks was so strong on my hands that I had to shake them out more than a few times. It was amazing. Then, at the end, to see the woman we worked on and how she reacted to the healing; that was wonderful.
One of the women there, who is also an energy worker and yogini, asked me if I was using intention while working with the patient. I told her that I have been practicing tonglen while doing my Reiki. Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of taking and sending. You are actively taking the pain and suffering from someone and sending them compassion. When you inhale you remove from them the suffering and when you exhale you send them pure compassion.
I can’t think of a better thing to offer someone; the wish that they are relieved of their suffering and that you are giving them compassion.
I watched a very good presentation by Aubrey de Grey on TED. I am going to embedd the video below and then talk a little bit about these thoughts.
So this is amazing to think about, to say the least. If I could live to 150 years of age what would I do with this time? Learn languages, become a yogi, work towards Enlightenment and watch the Cubs win another series?
I first became familiar with Aubrey when I joined a site called BetterHumans and began to read his comments on the forums and his papers. He struck me as a pragmatic optimist. He could see that there is a chance we, as a race, could attain immortality, and he had the tools to do his part.
This all made me wonder why aren’t humans immortal already. I mean, you can look around at the world and realize that biodiversity is wonderful and obviously brilliant, so why not an organism that can live forever? Doesn’t that seem like the goal? I don’t think it is actually.
The goal of every organism I know of is simple: reproduce. Create offspring and ensure that your genus survives the drought, or the winter or the predator or whatever. So why would your individual genes try to create the super-being, one that would live forever if left alone.
I know that I don’t want to live forever, not in this world of suffering. But I would take an extra 60 years to get myself ready for the bardo if I don’t wake up first.
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
