Meditative awareness has three primary qualities. The first is calmness, the second openness, and the third harmony. — Tarthang Tulku

How does calmness show up? Meditation has been found to lower the stress hormone cortisol, lower blood pressure, and heart and respiratory rates. Studies have also found less gray-matter density in the amygdala, a part of the brain that plays an important role in anxiety and stress.

Openness can be interpreted in many ways. One might be “empathy” which is a critical factor of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a set of skills and qualities which is significant all on its own: it increases our ability to manage our life and its pressures, and relate to others in a socially positive way.

Back to empathy itself:

Not too long ago, we thought of the body as a machine and the brain as some sort of computer that ran the show. But much recent research indicates that the brain is essentially a social organ with its cells and pathways wired for empathy, for experiencing the joys and sufferings of others as if they were our own. Our brain, our hormones, and our immune system are an intimately related care-connection system.

— Stephen Post, PhD [follow this link to a complete breakdown of how this actually works]

Let’s look at the meaning of “harmony.” Here’s a dictionary definition: “The quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.” That about sums it up. Being stress-free, relating to others in a meaningful way, and making friends with ourselves and life in general through increased emotional intelligence all lead to harmony. Harmony feels good and leads to clear, better decisions and choices.

Harmony is the secret principle that controls life; without it life will disintegrate. Your breath flows and your health is vibrant as long as your bodily organs work in harmony. But if there is discord, disease ensues… This is equally true in any type of organization—any structure that has interacting parts, from nature as a whole to human relationships to corporate businesses… Harmony is the soul of organization…

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Speaking of health, recent research has shown that meditation reduces the experience of pain in the brain. It does this better than morphine! Not only is the intensity of pain reduced, but how the entire experience of pain is felt and perceived.

One major network in the brain has been identified as the default mode network or default network. This is “a network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest… The default network is an interconnected and anatomically defined brain system that preferentially activates when individuals focus on internal tasks such as daydreaming, envisioning the future, retrieving memories, and gauging others’ perspectives.” (Wikipedia)

The other network is the attentional network. “The attentional network is usually focused on something external, such as a manual task. The default network is involved in internal chatter and daydreaming.”

Usually the two networks are active when one or the other is inactive.

“But meditators are using this default network in unusual and novel ways,” Catherine Kerr, PhD tells WebMD. “People who meditate don’t get lost in mindless negative chatter. Meditation protects you from repetitive negative thinking, which puts you at risk for depression.”

An encouraging finding in many of these studies is that the measureable benefits of meditation are available to use with relatively short training, and positive effects remain well after each meditation period. In fact, certain ways of being and thinking can become lifelong. Meditators “may have formed a new default mode: one that is more present-centered (and less “me”-centered), no matter what they are doing.”

We sometimes regard meditation as an activity of pacifying or calming the mind, but it is also a way to gather and direct it. We gather the energy from hearing, seeing, feeling, and so forth, and place it very steadily on one object…

— Sakyong Mipham

Meditation increases concentration. It leads to better decision-making by removing emotions that may cloud clarity. Self-awareness is boosted because meditation works in the area of the brain associated with it. Several studies have shown that there’s a greater activation in the left prefrontal cortex as a result of meditation. This area is linked to positive emotions and greater responsiveness to negative events. Other research indicates that meditation may help with insomnia.

Why isn’t the whole world meditating?!

In this culture, if we sit and do nothing, people think we’re strange. In places like Tibet, where there is a tradition of meditation, sitting still is considered to be courageous. People appreciate that when someone meditates, they are working with their own mind, which is challenging. All of the pain and pleasure that we experience stems fundamentally from the mind.

— Sakyong Mipham

Even so, companies such as General Mills, Genentech, Google, and Prentice Hall are using meditation in the workplace. While the reasons for doing so may be more about their bottom-line (participants have reported greater satisfaction, productivity, communication, and clarity), such use mainstreams this ancient practice which is obviously so very beneficial.

At the same time, it’s very important to remember the real purpose of meditation:

Meditation is a precise technique for resting the mind and attaining a state of consciousness that is totally different from the normal waking state. It is the means for fathoming all the levels of ourselves and finally experiencing the center of consciousness within. Meditation is not a part of any religion; it is a science, which means that the process of meditation follows a particular order, has definite principles, and produces results that can be verified….

The goal of meditation is to go beyond the mind and experience our essential nature—which is described as peace, happiness, and bliss…

Meditation is a practical means for calming yourself, for letting go of your biases and seeing what is, openly and clearly. It is a way of training the mind so that you are not distracted and caught up in its endless churning.

— Swami Rama

Related:

The Ins and Outs of Meditation

Meditation Reveals…

Put on the Brakes with Meditation

The Life of Meditation

Why Do Humans Meditate?

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

How Meditation Might Help You Control Your Weight

The Neurobiology of Bliss—Sacred and Profane

Meditation May Prevent Psychiatric Disorders, Study Suggests

Selfless Gratitude

8 Astonishing Benefits of Walking

5 Ways To Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence

Psychology and Spirituality: One Path or Two?

And in this Season, whatever Holiday (Holy Day) you celebrate may it warm your heart and spread happiness to you and your loved ones. May you also have the healthiest and most prosperous New Year!

With the opening of the New Year, all the closed portals of limitations will be thrown open and I shall move through them to vaster fields, where my worthwhile dreams of life will be fulfilled.

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Pamir Kiciman

"Intuition comes from within; thought, from without." — Yogananda

Humans today have money worries. Money is the primary way our society is setup to ‘secure’ survival. Humans today are afraid of not being loved; of not being successful; of not looking a certain way. We’re not facing wild animals anymore, instead they’re inside! And the triggers for negativity are still there, albeit they’re sanitized, complicated and hidden under layers.

The result is what scientists call a “negativity bias” in the brain. It’s like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. This is a great strategy for passing on gene copies – which is the engine of biological evolution – but a lousy one for quality of life. The brain is tilted toward survival, but tilted against happiness. — Rick Hanson

You may wonder what chance there is to be positive if the brain is wired this way. It gets worse:

…the more we practice reactivity to our fears (e.g. from small fears to PTSD), the stronger the neural connections in our brains become that make us more likely to be automatically reactive to our fears. Or, the more often we practice automatic negative thinking, the stronger the neural connections become that lead to more automatic reactivity toward automatic negative thinking. — Elisha Goldstein

The good news is that the same is true for positive thinking. Neuroplasticity works both ways. The brain is malleable and it can trend positive or negative.

 …it is the simultaneity of firing (within a few thousandths of a second) of neurons that are connected with each other that leads to strengthening existing synapses – which are the junctions between neurons – and to building new ones.

For example, if you routinely dwell on your resentments and regrets, the neurons involved in that particular mental activity will fire busily together, and automatically start wiring together as well. Which will add one more bit of neural structure to feeling discontented, mistreated, angry, or sorrowful. On the other hand, if you regularly focus on the good facts around you and inside you – like your own good qualities, such as patience, determination, or kindness – then the neurons involved will wire together, stitching more resilience, hopefulness, confidence, and happiness into the fabric of your brain and your self. — Rick Hanson

All well and good. We can mold our brain. Much admired, researched and fawned upon, the brain is near deity status. However, the brain is still a material object, an organ. There are two other levels to our existence than the physical. These are mind and spirit.

Mind isn’t physical matter, but it is subtle matter; it’s ethereal and luminous. The mind isn’t limited to the confines of the brain. Every cell of the body has mind in it. It also goes beyond the body in the exchange of ideas and how thoughts live in our creations and relationships. The mind is mobile in its nature and influence. It’s local with the body and personal experiences, but it’s also nonlocal in its reach, what it influences, and what can influence it.

Since the mind is not the brain alone, it can be used to train the brain, and also to make choices moment to moment. The mind is able to observe our autopilot reactions and impulses. Observation is the first step to modification and change. The mind can help us to stop being victims of past patterns that have been wired in the brain by life experiences, heredity, and by the way we ‘view’ these experiences, in other words our attitude toward them.

It’s best if the mind itself is informed by something other than itself.

Generally, we think that the mind dwells in either the head or the heart. The head us the center for the outer mind that works through the senses. The heart is the center of the inner mind or feeling nature that transcends the senses. The brain is no more than a screen on which the energies of consciousness from the get reflected… This is not the physical heart but the core of knowing deep inside ourselves. We should not confuse this center with a physical location. It pervades all our mental activity. — David Frawley

The brain becomes what is fed to it, positive or negative. The mind can oversee that what the brain engages is healthy and productive, if awareness is cultivated. The question remains, how accurately is the mind perceiving. Ordinary mind processes input from the senses. The senses are prone to dullness, error, bad habits, and a host of other filters that can be delusive.

The senses and the mind are the outer doors through which knowledge percolates into the consciousness. Human knowledge filters in through the senses and is interpreted by the mind. If the senses err in perception, the conclusion drawn by the understanding of that data is also incorrect. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The next time you’re overcome with negative thoughts and feelings about yourself, your life, your circumstances, realize that these perceptions may not be true at all. Even if there are some real issues to deal with, negativity certainly won’t find you solutions. Most often, even if your perceptions have a tinge of truth, negativity takes on a life of its own and colors events darker than they actually are.

This is where intuition comes in. Intuition perceives truth directly. Everyone has native intuition. A lot of it is schooled out of us, but doesn’t disappear and so it can be cultivated, to be established again. Intuition is read in the heart. It’s independent of the brain, senses, or mind.

Instead of paying attention to the thoughts that the brain produces, or the habituated thoughts of the mind, get a better handle on your situation by first perceiving from a cleaner awareness. An awareness cultivated by mindfulness. At least use some of the mind’s higher functioning. There’s strength there and clarity.

In time you can bypass the past, any habits that don’t serve, the brain itself and even the mind by being informed at a soul level, working with intuition, honing and trusting it. Negative patterns may still arise of their own accord, however, you’ll be equipped to dismiss them, because you know the truth of yourself.

The cultivation of intuitive calmness requires unfoldment of the inner life. When developed sufficiently, intuition brings immediate comprehension of truth. You can have this marvelous realization. Meditation is the way. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

© Pamir Kiciman 2011

Awareness is a quality which utilizes more sources than the intellect or the brain’s information processing. The thinking mind cognizes and perceives but neither of these add up to awareness. Awareness includes presence; the presence of the one cognizing. It also considers experiences available from other sources. Signal processing isn’t the only experience available to the human organism.

When we look out at the world with the five senses and what the brain processes through them, the world is solid and works in specific ways. When we look out to the world with awareness, its solidity starts to break up. It also becomes apparent that there are other possibilities in the way the world works.

This is true of our inner workings as well. If we only cognize our challenges and dilemmas, many times they seem unsolvable, set, and punishing. If we bring the same into awareness, however, space opens up and new possibilities arise in that space. We also find that we’re far less identified with or even as those ‘personal problems.’

If we imagine that our mind is like the blue sky, and that across it pass thoughts as clouds, we can get a feel for that part of it which is other than our thoughts. The sky is always present; it contains the clouds and yet is not contained by them. So with our awareness. It is present and encompasses all our thoughts, feelings, and sensations; yet it is not the same as them. To recognize and acknowledge this awareness, with its spacious, peaceful quality, is to find a very useful resource within. We see that we need not identify with each thought just because it happens to occur. We can remain quiet and choose which thought we wish to attend to. And we can remain aware behind all these thoughts, in a state that offers an entirely new level of openness and insight. — Ram Dass

The Heart-Mind

The thinking process gets all the fanfare. Schooling produces thinkers. Our mental capacities are touted, researched, edified and respected. Rightly so in many ways; the human mind is a pretty amazing thing. What becomes detrimental is the focus on the mind to the exclusion of other amazing aspects of our being, the chief of which is the heart.

This isn’t the biological heart or the heart of romance. It’s not operating only at the level of emotion. It isn’t entangled in our self-identity as ego. In fact it’s free of us entirely, acting as a backdrop to daily existence, and a container for the human journey.

In Sanskrit this Heart is called hridayam, the locus of consciousness where our true Self lives.

There’s nothing bad about having an ego. Those thoughts and feelings are necessary for a healthy personality. But if you identify so strongly with the ego that you think that’s all there is, that limited view can keep you from your deeper Self. — Ram Dass

As amazing the mind can be, it’s also conditioned, fragmented, distracted, trapped and fearful. It isn’t able to extricate itself from such influences by relying only on its own brilliance. It needs the balance of the Heart, and the awareness that’s available there. It needs to become heart-mind.

… in all Asian languages — at least I’ve been told this; I don’t know all Asian languages — but in all Asian languages the word for “mind” and the word for “heart” are the same word. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

There isn’t a mind without the Heart. Thinking without awareness gets us into trouble. We become narrow and exalt temporary truths. Thought-generated awareness is limited, the input it gets comes from the material world which gives us only a partial view.

The heart-mind is awareness turned inward, awareness of the spiritual universe within, and the quality of that awareness, the feeling that accompanies it, is love. — Ram Dass

Awareness

True awareness doesn’t originate in the mind. Cognition and perception are too narrow to produce awareness. There’s a contemplative quality to awareness and routine thoughts are too fast and disparate to be contemplative. The mind needs the ballast of the Heart. The mind is linear and trapped in time. The Heart is nonlinear and timeless. With heart-mind we can be in time and deal with our daily life, and also renew and recalibrate in the timeless. With heart-mind our sojourn in time is sweetened and enhanced by our diving into a nonlinear, timeless center of wholeness.

Mind by itself also leaves us trapped in ‘local problems.’ These are the stuff of everyday living, all the usual pressures, stresses and dramas. Awareness sources in the nonlocal. It’s ever-present and impersonal. It doesn’t make judgments or evaluations. It simply and directly reveals what is. Although readily available, like the Heart, awareness needs to be cultivated, promoted and made familiar to our consciousness.

So much of what is considered “smart” is brain-based. There’s another, holistic intelligence; that of the Heart. Education, business, social and behavioral sciences all emphasize brain development. Yet we’re inhuman without the Heart. It’s not the heart of cardiology or heartache that trumps the brain, but the Heart of exquisite Being and Presence.

Awareness is available at the Being level of reality. Here there’s Presence. Mind isn’t equated with the brain in its superlative states. Mind breaks the barriers of the brain. Yet even then, if it doesn’t hold hands with the Heart, it can’t know itself, it can’t participate in Presence.

Presence is ineffable, but it can be known and felt once we make ourselves available to it.

This presence whether experienced as Allah, as Atman, as Sunyata, or as the Buddha-nature or as Bodhisattva; whether as Tao or as the One or as the Divine Feminine, is the atmosphere in which humans breathe deepest and without which they eventually suffocate. — Thomas Berry

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© Pamir Kiciman 2010 Text, Photo and Digital Art

Through the ages, meditation has always brought great benefits to the human condition. Remember that meditation has been around since well before the time of the Buddha, stretching way back into antiquity. Today, it probably holds the greatest benefits for us than it ever has.

Meditation practice predates Buddhism and all of the world religions. It has lasted through the centuries because it is direct, potent, and effective. — Sakyong Mipham

In meditation, what we’re doing is looking at our experience and at the world intelligently. — Sakyong Mipham

What is intelligence? On one level it’s what an IQ test reveals. Intelligence doesn’t end there. It moves into knowing, wisdom, intuition, and clear-heartedness. Without these forms of intelligence we’re nothing but math geeks or some kind of super efficient robots. Intelligence includes our humanity, which includes our spirituality.

For a short while the immortal ray of light that is our soul wears a perishable mortal garment…but for all eternity the soul is sustained by the Infinite Source of that light. The more we meditate, the more we feel that consciousness. And the less we meditate, the less able we are to transcend identification with the little self—so many pounds of flesh encasing a limited mind bound by sense perceptions to the troublesome environs of the world. We have to get to the Self beyond its physical and mental instrumentalities to realize we are not fragile mortal beings… — Daya Mata

The human mind, normally equated with the brain by neuroscience, is limited. As Sakyong Mipham puts it, “Meditation is based on the premise that the natural state of the mind is calm and clear.” This is the knowledge that our various wisdom traditions have imparted. There’s the daily mind, and a higher mind with greater discernment, accessing wisdom and knowing.

This level of mind is termed buddhi in Sanskrit, from the root bud which means ‘to perceive’ or ‘to become awake.’ This form of intelligence discerns the true and the real from the false and the unreal. As Matthieu Ricard says, “It is through this unconditioned aspect of consciousness that we can transform the content of mind through training.” That training is meditation. Otherwise we remain in manas, or ‘outer,’ ‘sense’ mind, which is on the surface and handles impressions.

Here are a couple of more perspectives to help understand this:

Our minds are field-like, they are not confined to our brain. — Rupert Sheldrake

The conscious mind fails to grasp that which lies beyond the spheres of time, space, and causation. — Swami Rama

Pure consciousness without content is something all those who meditate regularly and seriously have experienced… — Matthieu Ricard

That “content” is the stuff of personality, the not-so-fun stuff! We want to move from content to substance. The substance of eternals like compassion, peace, and wisdom.

We’re also dealing with a paradox. There’s the real nature of the mind, and the mind we’re stuck with every day. There’s our humanness, then there’s our divinity. Leonard Jacobson puts it well: “We are on a journey of becoming that which we already are. That is the impossible paradox of our lives.” It’s not really impossible. It feels impossible until we get informed and empowered, and put into place a set of practices, the primary of these being meditation.

Meditation transcends time, the senses, and the subject-object relationships. By transcending these three, meditation takes us beyond the intellectual or rational level of consciousness. It is like looking through a screen; on one side of consciousness is all existence—thoughts, emotions, negativity, and our life patterns; on the other side is a very fine energy level—a deep meditative state. — Tarthang Tulku

Meditation is a first-person experience. It’s not looking at the world in the third-person. It’s not trying to understand our inner workings in the third-person. The first-person realm of meditation is holistic. It doesn’t cut reality up into pieces. It doesn’t need to understand how the brain works, to improve the workings of one’s mind. In meditation what’s known as the discursive mind can be disengaged. This is the mind that rambles. It’s unable to settle, to find its own depth. It remains on the surface, distracted and can’t get to the essence of things.

Whether it’s understood in terms of mind or being, our minds and our beings have a place that is calm and abiding. Calm abiding lives within us. It’s always there. There’s no app for it. There’s nothing to install. There is, however, an uncovering.

We have to uncover this lost place through meditation, and the application of meditative insight and orientation in daily living. Calm abiding is lost underneath all our pettiness, delusions and neuroses. The rational mind and the five senses informing it in their regular mode, give us only a partial and incorrect view of reality. This view keeps us trapped and attached. We’re operating within a limited informational field in daily living. In meditation, we have access to an informational field that penetrates the heart of reality.

It’s only from this wider and deeper field that we can make choices and decisions about how to best live, and to actually live well. It’s from this same field that we can positively influence the current state of affairs on our planet, and ensure a multi-generational sustainability of living and social systems.

When we talk about the techniques of meditation, these are techniques of life. — Sakyong Mipham

Meditation is a vast subject. Here’s some related material to help you with it. You may also add your input or ask questions in comments below. Often, answers tailored to your questions about meditation are the best way to get help with meditation.

Related:

Meditation reveals…

Put on the brakes with meditation

The Life of Meditation

Why Do Humans Meditate?

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

The earliest known reference to meditation in the region is found on one of the seals in the ruins of civilizations which existed prior to 1500 BCE. Chinese forms of meditation have been known to exist long before the seventh century BC. Siberian and African shamanic cultures hold even earlier precursors to the Asian meditative arts. In the West, meditation took on the form of contemplative prayer, with an unbroken tradition of mysticism from the NeoPlatonists through the medieval mystics. In our day and age, meditation is being studied scientifically for its effects on the brain.

In Sanskrit the generic term for meditation is dhyana, which refers to both inner contemplation, and the intermediate state between concentration on an object (dharana) and complete absorption in it (samadhi).

The general consensus is that humans have been meditating for 5000 years or so, and probably even longer than that. Why? Why do humans meditate?

It is to answer the fundamental question of “Who am I,” and related to it, “What is the purpose of life?” Meditation is essentially the quest for understanding and meaning. It’s a way for humans to find their place both in a cultural and cosmical context. And it has the added dimension of self-understanding which leads to an improved life.

Meditation is the process of self-discovery. On one level the meditation experience shows us the patterns of our lives—how we have carried on our emotional characteristics since childhood. But on another level it frees us from these patterns, making it easier for us to see our inner potentials. — Tarthang Tulku

All traditions from which the meditative arts are sourced include in their core a profound psychology. This is a psychology which is part and parcel of the wisdom that these traditions hold, and which the practitioner can also access.

When we look backward at the patterns of our thoughts, we can sometimes observe and identify the deceptions created by our self-images. We can learn to see through the mind’s posturings and pretenses and through all our explanations and excuses. We can realize we are still just playing games and are far from genuine self-knowledge. — Tarthang Tulku

When we improve our own life within first, then outwardly this has a ripple effect in our own household and from there in expanding circles in the rest of society.

Meditation is actually prescribed by more and more doctors. And there’s interest in meditation as a way to curb heart attacks. At the same time, the real value of meditation seems to be in this:

The animal has no power to analyze its condition and its environment; only man has that rational capacity. As such, man is meant to use that power to improve himself and to get the most out of life. Superior intelligence was not given to the human being merely to be used to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner; marry and beget children. It was given that man might understand the meaning of life and find soul freedom…. Beyond all the books that are written, it is God’s Book of Nature that remains the most difficult to understand. But the whole creation, including the chapter of human existence, can be read when God becomes a teacher. — Paramahansa Yogananda

If the word “God” is challenging, replace it with anything else that works for you.

Having first-person knowledge about our own workings, the workings of Nature, and to be free from bondage to pain, suffering and delusion is invaluable, the ultimate prize. Meditation imparts real, useable wisdom. It lets us know we’re not little egos stuffed into physical forms that are designed to perish. With meditation we have a way out of our maddening thoughts and burning emotions. Our sojourn here is not a dicey game.

When we spend conscious time with our breath on a daily basis, with our consciousness, and our heart, we relate to life as a part of life, instead of separate from and afraid of it. This brings about a knowing that compassion is a worthwhile investment, awareness and consideration of ‘other’ whether other is human, species or planet, is beneficial for all and the entire journey can be enjoyable, meaningful and beautiful.

This is the world in which I want my child to have his future. How about you?

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

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This is unfortunate, because meditation is natural to life and the human experience. It’s natural, but because of conditioning it may at first seem challenging. It’s considered marginal or exotic, but the body-mind states it uncovers for us are all the various states we seek through other activities, both healthy ones and not so healthy ones. The benefits of meditation are lasting too. It doesn’t require special equipment, there’s no need for a student loan, you don’t have to go anywhere to meditate, and it enhances your days unlike anything else.

Our culture values hard work, success, family, fitness, entertainment, and possessions. These too are a part of life. Only a part. Not all of life. We become educated, trained and retrained to have and be all of these things. However, as Andrew Cohen puts it, “Meditation is training for life.” Life includes all the above, plus the human being, this breathing, feeling, pulsing, sensing entity. And Life in all its dimensions is also included in our days: The life of the planet (nature) and the cosmos, and the very source of Life as well. What addresses the totality of Life?

Civilization changes a person on the outside. Meditation softens a person from within, through and through. — Bhante Gunaratana

An essential ingredient of living is to have some meaning to it. We need meaning to feel alive, have purpose and feel it’s all worth something other than what’s on our bank statement. We also seek understanding. We seek to understand ourselves, and life in general. This is often accomplished through art, psychology, science, reading and documentaries. These of course have value. They can come up short when it comes to understanding our own nature.

Meditation is the natural state of mind, and the whole nature of the mind can be our meditation. — Tarthang Tulku

And…

Meditation is actually a process of seeking truth or understanding, of trying to discover the nature of existence and of the human mind. — Tarthang Tulku

It doesn’t have to feel foreign. Meditation doesn’t have to look or be any particular way. You don’t need ochre robes or flexible joints to meditate. You can keep your belief system. You can still go to your job in the morning, and tuck your kids into bed at night. With meditation, it’s still your life… only, it’s brighter and fresher. There’s a sense of well-being, better flow and greater contentment. You feel clearer and your heart is naturally full. Anxiety melts, stress dissipates and you don’t crash on weekends.

Meditation isn’t a panacea, at least initially. Your challenges and bothersome personal traits don’t disappear overnight, especially if you don’t make time for it. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot of time. Twenty minutes once or twice a day, and a willingness to let the fresh awareness it uncovers filter through into your days. Really paying attention to that awareness as it’s freed up of all the entanglements it’s usually caught up in.

Once we have touched meditative awareness, our questions dissolve, for both the questions and the answers to them are within the meditation. — Tarthang Tulku

Open yourself to the possibility that you can enhance your living substantially in a simple way with an all-encompassing practice that is natural and abiding. Find a method that appeals to you and commit. Give it three weeks, daily. You won’t even need to think about making it longterm after that.

Meditation is a way to quiet the mind so you can practice all day long wherever you are; see when there is grasping or aversion, clinging or suffering; and then let it go. — Jack Kornfield

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This doesn’t mean silence has no value or we shouldn’t aspire to it. Silence is a remarkable counterbalance, one that’s vital for us to cultivate with the understanding that silence doesn’t have to be ‘silent’ to be effective and life restoring. Silence is really an orientation. It’s an inner hub, and flows through all activity, engagement and stillness as long as it’s cultivated.

The problem with the various kinds of noise we have to contend with around the clock is that they separate us from what is whole, true and beautiful in us. Noise keeps us off kilter. It doesn’t allow our naturalness to be, to inform our life. Noise pushes us to keep doing more. Not in a healthy, creative and productive way, but for the sake of doing alone. We do and do until we no longer are, until we walk away from ourselves.

There are many ways silence can touch us. Reading a book is one, especially if it’s poetry like haiku or some other short form. Sitting in nature without any objective. Taking a bath. Listening to quality, inspirational music. Yes, listening. Mindfully. Listening to your own heart. Not it’s beat, although that’s affirming too, but listening to its guidance and perspective. Preparing a meal, consciously, slow food style. Eating consciously, without too much talking. Sleeping in a hammock.

Meditation is of course a primary way to touch silence. Here we notice how unquiet the mind is. It’s constantly churning. Churning and churning, to what effect?

The mind can be quieted. Everything we have at our disposal to lessen the noise is useful. We have to fins ways to be the silence. Otherwise the noise swallows us up and we can’t hear ourselves, each other, life, or the numinous and the mystery. We have to be able to hear the mystery, for as Lewis Hyde says, “The passage into mystery always refreshes.”

Find the hub of silence within that refreshes.

There is an inner silence and an outer silence and a silence that transcends inner and outer, a silence of the breath and a silence of the body, a silence in the absence of words and a silence when the world is quiet, a silence where there is no sound and a silence that can be heard, and there is a silence that is a passage to emptiness, a silence of the mind in which there is no thought. There is a silence which is a response, a silence which is a truer witness than words. — Ralph Davis

Related:

Silence
Silence… again
Anchoring silence

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“We readily accept the idea of spending years learning to walk, read and write, or acquire professional skills. We spend hours doing physical exercises in order to get our bodies into shape…

“Working with the mind follows the same logic. It will not change just from wishing alone. Meditation is a practice that makes it possible to cultivate and develop certain basic, positive human qualities in the same way other forms of training make it possible to acquire any other skill.” — Matthieu Ricard

Everytime you meditate, you repattern your brain. Everytime you allow beta brainwaves to be reduced, you discover richer depths of your mind. The meditative state extends far beyond the brain. It extends to all of your 50 trillion cells. It extends out into the world. Mind permeates the nonphysical dimension as well.

“All of the body is in the mind, but all of the mind is not in the body.” — Swami Rama

Of all the aspects we’re endowed with as humans, emotions seem to be consistently challenging. It’s odd that this aspect which finds such full expression in humans would be such a knotty area. As much as we’re able to have emotions so fully and with such a range, they seem to confuse us and don’t know how to handle them. We aren’t very good with letting our emotions live alongside us.

There is no question of not experiencing emotions; it’s a question of not being enslaved by them. — Matthieu Ricard

I’ve found that emotions enrich life instead of hinder it when we’re able to find a greater spiritual container for them to exist in. If emotions are left to express in their everyday versions, then we’re left to deal with pettiness, blame, vindictiveness, selfishness, fear, being a victim, and lack of self-esteem. I’ve written about this in the past because so many good people need help in this area. You can read those entries by clicking here, here and here. Today, let’s look at this challenge from other angles.

I define responsibility (response-ability) as the ability to choose how we respond to stimulation coming in through our sensory systems at any given moment in time. Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than ninety seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within ninety seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completed dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those ninety seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run. Moment by moment, I make the choice to either hook into my neurocircuitry or move back into the present moment, allowing that reaction to melt away as fleeting physiology. — Jill Bolte Taylor

90 seconds, folks!

The only way we can get good at making that choice not to run the same reaction with its chemical, emotional, mental and physiological loop is by practice. It’s not an intellectual choice only, because if it was we’d all be good at it. How many times have you turned into an emotional heap, despite your best intentions? It’s not a choice that can be made because the science makes sense. It’s not a choice that can be made because the therapist recommends it. To disengage from the debilitating autopilot of emotion is a choice that can only be made from a place of realization inside, in the mind and the heart.

Pure consciousness without content is something all those who meditate regularly and seriously have experienced… And anyone who takes the trouble to stabilize and clarify his or her mind will be able to experience it, too. It is through this unconditioned aspect of consciousness that we can transform the content of mind through training… There is great virtue in resting from time to time in pure awareness of the present moment, and being able to refer to this state when afflictive emotions arise so that we do not identify with them and are not swayed by them. — Matthieu Ricard

Emotions don’t have to be ‘emotional.’ If there’s inward stillness, ego agendas, negative emotions, distracted thoughts and negative self-talk are neutralized.

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© Pamir Kiciman 2010

This was the topic of the monthly dojo meeting I have with Reiki practitioners I’ve trained. Here are the salient points.

Humans have the unique ability to experience emotions. We think that because we have an emotional capacity, it has to be like a faucet that’s constantly on. Just because we have this ability doesn’t mean we have to be constantly emoting! The opposite also happens: emotions get shut off, like a faucet which is rusted and stuck. Emotions both delight and scare us. Some equate emotion with peak experience. Some are victim to their emotional nature. And some keep emotion firmly in lockdown.

Emotions are valuable. They are a large part of what makes us human, and they can enhance life experience, as well as provide helpful feedback. The trouble is, we indulge emotions too long too, often and turn the whole thing into a command performance for a drama award. We must learn the fundamental difference between ‘having an emotion’ and our capacity to feel.

Being able to feel is the real attribute that gives life to our emotional nature. Emotions themselves aren’t as important as our ability to feel. Sadness is an emotion we don’t necessarily want. Sadness can be turned into a happy feeling. Thus it’s our feeling capacity we must prioritize. Being able to have an emotion isn’t sourced in the emotion; it’s sourced in our ability to feel. Sadness and happiness are emotions on a continuous stream of feeling. We like happiness and don’t like sadness. It’s skillfulness in feeling which facilitates the transition from one to the other.

Our feeling nature is an intuitive faculty. It comes from a part of us that’s not limited to spacetime. What’s behind our feeling ability? Awareness. Just like feeling ability is behind emotion, awareness is behind our ability to feel. Without awareness we’d be automatons. There are degrees of awareness. To increase our degree of awareness, emotional healing is usually needed. We all have wounds that need healing. Unless this work is done, emotions continue to trap us in their ongoing cycle of charge and reactivity.

Once we make whole emotional wounds, other levels of awareness open up. The emotional heart must be made whole before the spiritual heart becomes available and real. On one end of the emotional spectrum we remain in churning waters, unable to escape. On the other end, we’re happy, even exulted. Beyond either is a whole range of uncaused feeling.

Peace is such an uncaused feeling. It’s sourceless. It certainly doesn’t come from the emotional heart, or the human mind. Peace is simply there. We can access peace, feel it and embody it. We want to be clear and available enough in our emotional heart, so as to feel the peace that’s constantly beckoning us. Peace is a feeling state. It’s a state of being. States of being don’t become part of our experience when there’s still a lot of emotional crud to disperse, or we operate only at an emotional level, without knowledge of the whole range.

‘Emotion’ and ‘feeling’ aren’t synonymous. Feeling is a spiritual faculty sourced in self-reflective awareness. Awareness and its ‘tools’ lead to healing, as well as point to uncaused states such as peace or joy which inspire and propel our personal evolution.

continued →

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We’ve been like this ourselves and know others who are: Uncomfortable in silence, having a constant need to yammer because there’s a void inside. The truth is what feels like a void can be transformed into true emptiness. Emptiness is misunderstood as being “empty” whereas in fact it is full for it is Presence. And Presence is Silent yet creates All.

After I wrote the last piece on silence, two gems came.

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. These pages seek nothing more than to echo the silence and peace that is “heard” when the rain wanders freely among the hills and forests. But what can the wind say when there is no hearer? There is then a deeper silence: the silence in which the Hearer is No-Hearer. That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude. — Thomas Merton

And:

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us to see their own images and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a fiercer life because of our silence. — William Butler Yeats

Last time I suggested that you simply stop. Let your body breathe for you and put your whole awareness on it. Just notice the breath moving. That’s all.

Whatever stillness and silence this very simple practice helps you enter, take the memory of it, the feel of it, the seed of it and let it be the backdrop to the next encounter you have with another person.

And go to nature, frequently. To help you, here’s a photo I took ten minutes from where I live in an urban area. Silence can always be found.

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

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In your silence God’s silence ceases.

Here’s the entire context.

Sensations pouring in through the sensory nerves keep in mind filled with myriad noisy thoughts, so that the whole attention is toward the senses. But God’s voice is silence. Only when thoughts cease to one hear the voice of God communicating through the silence of intuition. In your silence God’s silence ceases. He speaks to you through your intuition. For the devotee whose consciousness is inwardly united with God, an audible response from Him is unnecessary – intuitive thoughts and true visions constitute God’s voice. These are not the result of the stimuli of the senses, but the combination of the devotee’s silence and God’s voice of silence. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Then I found the perspective of Gordon Hempton. Using a different language and viewpoint, he makes an inspirational case for silence. He is an ‘acoustic ecologist,’ and one line from him that had the same arresting effect on me is:

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.

Here’s the rest of what he says about silence.

When you’re in a place of natural silence, you’re not alone, and you can feel it. Whether it’s birdcalls from miles away or the proximity of a giant tree whose warm tones you can feel, there’s a presence. It’s a quieting experience….

Sound is a wave that passes through air, water, and even solid objects. Natural sounds generate a sinusoidal wave, with rounded peaks, which is easy on the ears. Many mechanized sounds are square or sawtooth shaped or have jagged edges. If you see them on an oscilloscope, you’ll know why they’re unpleasant to listen to….

And related to living on our planet at this time, with it’s myriad of troubles:

Natural quiet allows us to fall in love with a place and appreciate how unique it is. Noise detaches us — not only from our surroundings but also from each other. Research shows that in noisy areas people are much less likely to help each other. That’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from being in natural silence: that we can begin to feel love for a place and, through it, for everything. This is crucial for the health of our planet because, when you love something, caring for it becomes effortless. Just as we care for the people we love without asking, “What will I get out of it?” so does love enable us to care for our world without running a cost-benefit analysis to see whether it’s “worth it.”

Even though you’re reading this via some form of technology, which is part of the digital noise we also live with on the planet at this time, take a few moments and simply stop. Let your body breathe for you and put your whole awareness on it. Just notice the breath moving. That’s all.

To help you, here’s a photo I took at the city park my son has his basketball practice. Such spaces and moments are always available if we but notice and claim them.

© Pamir Kiciman 2010

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• Since you can see the body, you’re not the body. You’re the seer.
• Since you can feel emotions, you’re not emotion. You’re the feeler.
• Since you can observe thoughts, you’re not thought. You’re the observer.
• Since you can wield energy, you’re not energy. You’re the wielder.
• Since consciousness allows you to witness, you’re That.
• Being That; consciousness, witness, bliss… you’re free.

Let’s take each one and expand on it.

The body is something we relate to very easily because it’s with us everyday. Its pains and pleasures are never farther than our next action or behavior. Our identity is closely tied up with the body. Yet, who is it that feels pain or pleasure? Who is it that looks and sees your hand or leg? If we are the body, then how is the body self-observant?

Most of us are very close to our emotions as well. We live on an emotional plane and relate to life and others emotionally. This can be challenging. At the same time, emotions make life richer. We have the capacity to feel. If you know what you’re feeling, who is it that knows? Who is it that identifies anger or joy? Is it the body? It can’t be because there’s a knower who knows the body already.

The mental realm is highly regarded. As a society and culture we’re heavily invested in the intellect. And like the body and emotions, we live with our thoughts night and day. All the while though there’s an awareness outside of the thought process that knows the thoughts we’re thinking.

We also have the ability to sense the energy of a meeting, event or relationship. We get a feel for someone in a direct way. Similarly we can create or generate a certain energy that infuses whatever we may be doing. But we’re more than a flavor of energy. And there’s the sensing. Who senses energy? It can’t be the thought process because there’s an awareness that already knows that.

There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one’s mind and subtle spirit rest upon that and nothing else.

– Maitri Upanishad (VI: 20)

If we can be conscious of the body, emotions, thoughts and energy, then we must be something other than each of these, or even a conglomeration of them. In the same way, we’re free of their limitations. If we’re not the body, we’re not bound by it. If we’re not emotion, it doesn’t have a hold on us. If thoughts aren’t what we are, they can’t dictate to us. If we wield energy, then energy we’re exposed to is powerless over us.

It’s not even a question of being free. We are free. In truth we’re formless. We come from silence, dwell in silence, and play in form.

Don’t let the play trap you.

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If Reiki were a tree, its trunk would be the meditative teachings of Reiki; hands-on Reiki would be one limb; and the precepts Usui left behind would be Reiki’s living tissue. This was explained in great detail in a previous post: Modern Reiki.

Today we’ll look at Usui’s Reiki precepts again. Since they are the living tissue of the teachings, it’s important to dwell on these simple words again and again. Not only dwell but bring them into full focus in our lives. The translation used here is:

For today only: Do not anger—Do not worry

Be humble

Be honest in your work

Be compassionate to yourself and others

Let me first quote from the previous post:

Without anger, conflicts would be resolved and new ones circumvented. Without worry, fear would end and we wouldn’t exacerbate suffering. Humility is respect and the willingness to include all viewpoints. Honesty; would there be a worldwide financial crisis if there was honesty?

And compassion. Compassion is both a prerequisite and condition of enlightenment. In compassion there’s no separation, no other, no stranger. Compassion is the true democracy! Enlightenment is a state of Oneness. If there’s compassion, there’s understanding and appreciation. Compassion unifies and in that unity we find enlightenment.

Enlightenment isn’t only a spiritual pursuit. There can be enlightenment in government, technology, business, science and social systems.

In delving deeper into these simple words, we have to consider that translation from Japanese, a language based on ideograms,  leads to rich interpretations; aphorisms are pithy and packed with meaning; and such concepts are layered in meaning.

Copyright Usui-Do Eidan

For today only: We mostly understand a day to be 24 hours in the Gregorian calendar which defines our lives. This is fine for what it is.

However, here we’re considering ‘today’ as also ‘this moment,’ ‘this duration,’ ‘this task,’ ‘this activity,’ or even ‘this interaction.’

If you’re serious about your Reiki practice as a spiritual one, a path, not only a healing practice or worse a modality, then you understand that it’s lifelong.

A life and a path is made up of moments. Before you’re intimidated by what is asked of you, stop, breathe and take a moment to consider both how fleeting and how endless it is.

You don’t have to master For today only, today.

Do not anger: Anger is an afflictive emotion and we all have it. It’s hurtful to those it’s directed and to person who is angry. It creates suffering for everyone. Sometimes righteous anger is justified, but in the end anger is never skillful or successful.

Anger heats up the mind and it makes mistakes, and anger shuts tight the heart. With and overheated mind and closed heart you’re a danger to yourself and others. Anger can also escalate to rage.

Whereas if a higher feeling state like love is cultivated, when it escalates it leads to bliss!

I feel Usui isn’t only saying don’t let anger prevail, but also heal your anger. This is a major undertaking. Anger is pernicious and insidious. It hides under layers.

Start today with some smaller angers and move onto bigger ones.

Do not worry: Let’s start with the worst case scenario…when worry escalates it becomes fear and/or anxiety. Worry as it is hangs around, niggling away and ruining your outlook as well as inner environment. Worry is powerful in its constancy. It’s a mindset that traps and holds hostage.

It holds hostage your physical, mental and spiritual energy without any purpose. For instance when faced with a dangerous wild animal, fear has a purpose. Escalated fear and ordinary constant worry which are baseless cause more harm than do good.

Worry is a creation of the mind and indicates that your mind is leading you, instead of you leading your mind. The mind is powerful but worry is an unskillful use of its power.

Be humble: Often recommended, seldom understood. Every other avenue that influences daily life tells us to be loud, boastful, self-aggrandizing and to stand out. We cringe at humility. It seems weak and wimpy.

It’s actually a fearless act to be humble because all self-promotion is really a way to hold fear at bay. And it goes further to change your orientation to non-ego. In fact humility is another way to stay in the present, for today only…If you’re not ego driven then the trappings of ego aren’t there either which removes fear and limitations.

Be honest in your work: On one level this is integrity, which starts inside with yourself and extends to all your expressions in your life and the many ways you touch people.

‘Honesty’ in this sense also means consistency, commitment and sincerity, and these apply to your spiritual ‘work.’ Transformation is real. It’s available and occurs, but not without the practitioner partaking daily in the teachings and practices.

And if the ground of your being is transformed from ‘honest’ practice, then the work you have outwardly in the world will be honest as well.

Be compassionate to yourself and others: This is the big one isn’t it?! It also brings the others full circle.

Compassion is a win-win, skillful means always. It’s inherent whenever Reiki is practiced. In fact, Reiki practice teaches about compassion in a visceral way; it’s felt and its qualities are understood.

Compassion leads to understanding which leads to unity. In unity we find a greater degree of enlightenment because we feel “at one.” Feeling one with yourself, others, the environment, the cosmos and the Divine is one quality of enlightenment.

Fortunately with compassion you don’t have to be enlightened to feel and benefit from it, and help others through it.

Compassion blesses everyone equally. It can remain as such or for the dedicated practitioner, compassion can lead to unity states of consciousness, which in turn deepen compassion.

How do you contemplate, engage and learn from the Reiki precepts Usui Sensei placed at the core of his teachings?

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There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

In fact telling your story is the genesis of healing and growth. These personal stories collect to form a bigger landscape of the shared human experience. As C.S. Lewis has said:

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

We start there, unraveling the pain. This is the backstory. What’s ultimately healing and transformative is when we weave a new story, whether it’s personal or global. The transcendent story is the one that serves us best.

The transcendent story unites us and reveals the deepest mysteries of life.

It’s with this in mind that I’m starting the Reiki Stories Project^SM (RSP). In 15 years of teaching Reiki, time after time it’s practitioners and receivers of Reiki who show and tell the most illuminating aspects of Reiki. Sharing Reiki stories is an amazing learning and validating experience. It deepens this path.

The Reiki Stories Project^SM (RSP) is open to everyone. Please add your stories in comments on this post, or go to contact (top right) and email me. You can share anonymously, or with your initials and location, or full name and location. Share as many as you like over time. Stories will be curated by me and may be lightly edited.

Your Reiki story will be held in sacredness.

We begin with two stories from my own student practitioners. This first one is from someone who has been practicing Reiki for quite some time. I was recently interviewed and it prompted this sharing. Again, when we share and talk new associations are formed and we’re all elevated.

Pamir, your answers in that interview are beautiful and timeless. I even feel they are coming from your higher self. The most important part for me is that of shifts. I experienced a shift. I always loved everything around me and would even secretly talk to plants and animals. But I experienced a shift that came from great suffering to see my path more clearly (my desire to help people). So, my love and compassion was always there, but the decision to do something about it came later.

“It’s the emergence of all that you are, instead of only facets of a personality.” (From the interview.) This shift also brought an awakening to discover who I am and my ‘purpose.’ Of course, these realizations are still in progress since like you said, “I’m still awakening.”

My mom has been sick lately and I have been worried for her since she won’t go to the doctor or even admit she doesn’t feel good. Last night I took all my quartz and let myself be guided by them. I had never done anything with them but just have them in my room beside the picture of Paramahansa Yogananda.

I first filled a pot with water and put salt and Reiki’d it, then placed a quartz inside, then cleansed it with Jakikiri Joka-ho (a method for purifying inanimate objects). This I did with each of the stones. Then I placed them in a circle and put a card with my mom’s name and location and sent distant Reiki (crystals aren’t classically involved with Reiki). Finally, I placed the card under the biggest quartz which I feel was the one guiding me through it.

My mom called me this morning and said “I didn’t want to scare you but I have been very sick lately and today I simply woke up feeling healthy and strong.” All the pain she had disappeared and the vomiting stopped. Also, in a very odd way, $2,500 was sent to her today (and we really needed the money).

Like always, I want to thank you for being the tree for so many us who need you,

Namaste

This next one is a very recent excerpt from the 21-day report after Reiki Training I have in place to serve as a vehicle of accountability (both ways), and to further mentor my practitioners. What’s noteworthy about it is that even after a lifetime of habits and mental patterns, a mere 21 days of Reiki practice can have such solid benefits:

21 days looks like too little time, when you already have lived more than 16,000 previous days during your entire life. You can ask yourself how much more can 0.13 % of your existence do for you? Maybe nothing, but perhaps there was already a light switch waiting on the wall, and then the 21 days came as a space to do nothing else but turn it on.

To tell you the truth Reiki was not something that I was looking forward to practice before a couple of month ago. For the last couple of years I was too busy keeping myself entertained in a way not to see the falling bricks from the walls of my home. But finally the walls gave way to gravity, leaving me in the middle of what used to be my securities…now in ruins. That’s when I started feeling the need to clean up and rebuild and I started looking at one of the only things that was still standing there: Myself. Then, Reiki came to me.

When I first started the twenty minute meditations, my whole being jumped into it with great joy, it was something longtime missed and well needed, mostly for my never silent mind. I haven’t stop doing it, sometimes once, sometimes twice a day, and not precisely because I am doing it so well, but because of the opposite…With the hope of maybe one day being able to find the bottom that shuts down all the thoughts from my head, allowing the light to fill up the empty spaces.

I practice both Hikari no Kokyu-ho at night and Gassho Kokyu-ho in the morning (two Reiki-specific meditations taught in Level I). The first one opens me to the universe, the second one centers me into myself. In spite of the constant escape attempts from my mind, both have been slowly making things change around me. I can see the difference, I feel a lot lighter, I don’t worry that much, I don’t find myself immersed in the foggy cloud of day dreaming as much as I did before.

I started to visit some situations in my past, seeing them with other eyes and better understanding. Now I am more able to forgive myself and I am not letting others fill me up with guilt. I am finding great joy in things that I am rediscovering such as dancing.

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This is dedicated to my mother, a good friend, and my paternal grandparents for whom I was woefully unavailable, as well as all caregivers.

___________________________________________________________________

Are you the caregiver for a dependent? Does it feel unrewarding? Is it burdensome?

Well, take a load off. It wouldn’t be caregiving if it was all fun and games. You’re not a robot. Sometimes, perhaps often it’s not going to feel good. At all. Ease up and be good to yourself. It is a great and arduous service.

Here are four qualities to cultivate as you navigate this experience:

• Compassion
• Detachment
• Recognition
• The long view

Compassion

Compassion is a selfless form of passion, a self-indulgent emotion transformed by wisdom into empathy for the suffering of others. The emotional energy of compassion is every bit as potent as ordinary passion, but rather than scattering energy and disrupting equanimity with bouts of unrestrained emotion, compassion focuses energy and motivates intent to apply one’s wisdom and other resources towards helping people.

–Daniel Reid

Compassion is an essential life quality. If it can help the Dalai Lama keep his equanimity, it can help you. When compassion becomes an anchored part of your being, your human heart becomes greater. It is no longer so little and fragile. There is this grid that becomes available, like steel rebars that support concrete buildings. Except this steel is steely without losing feeling; strong without being harsh; immaterial but so very present; long lasting without loss of meaning.

Compassion makes the heart sacred and it is from there that you serve, not from your personal heart. Compassion is the extra hand to carry, ear to listen, pep to finish, patience to linger, forgiveness to smile, and surplus kindness.

And it isn’t only for the other. It is for both of you. Compassion is available to you and you are in as much need of it as your dependent. Compassion doesn’t separate and classify. There isn’t any hierarchy in it. Compassion isn’t allocated by approval, you don’t have to qualify.

You do have to make yourself available to it.

Detachment

Learn to detach…Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent…But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That’s how you are able to leave it… Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’

–Mitch Albom

Detachment is a place of self-control and objectivity. It is the starting place of the long view. When detached your goat is ungettable! Your buttons are unavailable and you protect yourself. There’s fluidity of motion and action and patience is effortless. Detachment allows service to come through you, rather than from you.

Caregiving is a series of tasks, on one level. These tasks may become tiresome and put pressure on your time and energy. Yet the tasks are unavoidable. When approached with resentment, dread, inattention and emotional escalation, you’re tired and unavailable from the get-go.

Detachment creates spaciousness in heart and mind, and powers your limbs for the tasks at hand.

Recognition

I wasn’t able to find an appropriate quote for what I want to say here, so this one is mine:

Recognize that everything that rubs you the wrong way about your dependent is an unhealed part in them expressing itself, crying out for help, looking to be recognized and loved, to be heard and held, to be made whole however desperately.

Recognition is to see the person behind the dependency. More, to see the soul behind the person. Recognition is to not equate the person with their suffering. Suffering is part of the person, but it is not the person. It is something they are going through and they are in fear. So are you probably.

When you recognize what is actually happening, your buttons are again unavailable, your goat is happily bleating and there is more spaciousness. The way your dependent makes you feel is not personal. It is about them and it simply is. You must let their behavior bounce off of you, for they can’t help it.

The other side of recognition is to be very aware of your own resources and limits. Like compassion, recognition works both ways. Where do you stop and the other person begins? You may be a caregiver, but you retain autonomy and the two of you haven’t merged.

Recognize not only your limits but also your own needs. Endlessly giving doesn’t work for either party, quality care suffers and so do you. This requires a promise. A promise you keep and act upon. It is simple but you must be resolute. If you need a fill-in, be resolute about that too.

The long view

Kalpa: An exceptionally-long (but varying) period of time in Hindu and Buddhist thought.

Every 100 years, a bird flies over the summit of Mount Sumeru and, in so doing, brushes the pinnacle with a red silk scarf held in its beak. A kalpa is the period of time it takes to wear the mountain down to nothing by this activity.

No, that is not how long you have to give care! It is only a lens to help you get perspective. The burden of care you’re giving is circumscribed in the temporal. There is much more to reality than the temporal.

Service is merit and merit is spiritual currency you want to have as you navigate eternity.

Not only that, but when you serve meritoriously it gives the served an opportunity to grow and evolve too. This may be very hidden and completely unobservable, but do not despair. Practicing awareness enhancers such as compassion, detachment and recognition creates a crucible of heart energies and thoughts for personal growth and spiritual development to take place, even if the other person is not actively engaged.

Furthermore, the way you view the person you care for, how you approach and interact determines greatly what responses and reactions you receive. If you think they are cranky and demanding, then that’s what they will be. You get what you expect. One way to avoid this is to expect something different. Envision and affirm more productive and cooperative behavior and interaction.

Hold this person in a new light, the light of possibilities. They may be entrenched in their patterns and misery, but you can trust that they would rather not be. They would rather have dignity returned and show appreciation, share a smile and a warm look.

Create the space of sacred heart for mutual acknowledgment, trust and solidarity. You’re in it together and the sooner you surrender power struggles, the more rewards there will be. This may include you neutralizing any power plays coming from the person in need of your care. Yes, it seems like you have to do all the work, all the inner work, and all the outer work. Yet, right there a gate opens to a garden where the sun shines and the beauty of flowers is available equally to both of you.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

– Kahlil Gibran

Usui’s family was hatamoto samurai. The hatamoto were the shogun’s personal guard. The Usui family crest, also known as the Chiba crest, is a design that is a circle with a dot at the top. The circle is the universe, and the dot represents the North Star. The North Star is a polestar, it never moves, is ever constant, while life moves around it.

Three Japanese budo masters were contemporaries of Usui Sensei. Gichin Funakoshi founded Karate. Jigoro Kano started judo. Morihei Ueshiba created Aikido a little later on. Mikao Usui was born a Tendai Buddhist and studied in a Tendai monastery as a young child. At age 12 he began the practice of a martial art known as aiki jutsu, made popular by Takeda Sokaku who was Ueshiba’s teacher. This form included harmonizing with Ki, making it possible to experience calmness, concentration, willpower and physical fitness. He also studied yagyu ryu, and it’s interesting that this tradition includes both life-giving and -taking techniques.

About two years ago I had come across a Samurai’s song. It was impressive and thought-provoking. Let me share it here and we’ll look at some ideas that emerge.

A Warrior’s Creed

I have no parents
I make the heaven and earth my parents

I have no home
I make awareness my home

I have no life and death
I make the tides of breathing my life and death

I have no divine powers
I make honesty my divine power

I have no means
I make understanding my means

I have no secrets
I make my character my secret

I have no body
I make endurance my body

I have no eyes
I make the flash of lightening my eyes

I have no ears
I make sensibility my ears

I have no limbs
I make promptness my limbs

I have no strategy
I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy.

I have no design
I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design

I have no miracles
I make right action my miracle

I have no principles
I make adaptability to all circumstances my principle

I have no tactics
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics

I have no talent
I make ready wit my talent

I have no friends
I make my mind my friend

I have no enemy
I make carelessness my enemy

I have no armor
I make benevolence and righteousness my armor

I have no castle
I make immovable mind my castle

I have no sword
I make absence of self my sword

–Anonymous Samurai, 14th century

Admittedly it’s a little austere and minimalist. This has advantages, however. Many times, there’s nothing quite like a bare bones view to gain clarity and hone in on essentials. Let’s break it down.

• In Reiki we work very closely with heaven and earth in the form of Earth and Celestial Ki.
• Uncluttered awareness in the moment is key.
• Understanding is an enhancer of Reiki practice, whether it’s better results with techniques, or with people. When Reiki is practiced or shared with understanding, its power deepens.
• Reiki constantly gives us ample opportunities to improve our character.
• Quieting the busy mind is a core practice that rewards in multiple ways.
• Right thought, right speech, right action are built-in Reiki ethics.
• Being the bending but not breaking bamboo is the adaptability Reiki brings us.
• Knowing when to be empty and when to be full is a skill Reiki helps us develop.
• Befriending ourself is where healing begins.
• Being careful is a prime example of being full. Full of care.
• Reiki is the way of compassion, which includes benevolence.
• Immovable mind is the beginning and end of meditation.
• Absence of self in the Self is the way of peace and enlightenment.

Reiki is a way of living with wisdom and compassion. It’s a way to reclaim your authentic self. To move out of the past, return from the future and live fully awake in the present. Reiki shifts your paradigm too, revealing the many layers of reality. It helps you find energetic integrity. Reiki heals the human condition. It transforms your consciousness so you can be your true self. Your heart and mind become unified and you’re empowered to walk in peace. Reiki brings you what you need. Through the years, I’ve witnessed with inner joy and gratitude everything student practitioners share about their Reiki training experiences. These are nothing less thanpoetic and I’ll now attempt to convey some measure of what I was privileged to witness this past weekend.

An ocean, cloud and light was received. Plans changed many moons ago came to completion and an ordination was received. Tears inspired by sheer beauty flowed. Peace was tangible. Never before reached depth in meditation was commonplace. After lunch heartburn relieved completely. Back pain healed. Several first-time spiritual awakenings. The courage to face things one doesn’t want to. A young person’s talent validated. Success affirmed. Shoulders lightened. Realization of inner powers. Wonder. Recognition.

And hugs. Heart on heart hugs.

Always heart on heart hugs.

Updated July 2, 2008

An early testimonial:

“…Now that I have had a little time to reflect and absorb, I want to thank you for being YOU and what you brought to me this weekend. I can already notice changes in me, there is a deepening sense of calm within, much more energy both physically and spiritually. It has been both a fulfillment and rebirth of sorts. I am different, I am one with myself, and my surroundings. The teaching and empowerments brought through you this weekend are amazing. Thank you for thus far guiding and teaching me. The teaching and tools you brought to me will continue to aid and guide my journey…”

–J.G., West Palm Beach, Fla

Consciousness is the substratum of everything, the first thing created that creates everything else.
— Dr. David Frawley

We all know there’s a brain in each of our craniums and it is what ‘thinks.’ Yet our brain is 90% fat and water. How exactly does fat and water ‘think’ as well as self-organize and self-regulate? After all, the brain really doesn’t have a direct experience of the world.

Wisdom traditions such as Vedanta and Buddhism accept that before creation there is a nondual state. To make a simplistic correlation to quantum physics, this is the unified field. Wisdom traditions identify this field as Pure Consciousness; Chit in Sanskrit. Pure Consciousness is unborn.

Chitta on the other hand, is conditioned consciousness (thought) and is the primordial state out of which the universe is born. This field of thought is high vibration subtle energy which is the basis of material creation. Thought creates all, but this is at a primordial level compared to our ordinary mental reactions.

The ghost in the machine is consciousness! A consistently effective and reliable way of outing consciousness and working with it to our benefit is to implement an authentic spiritual practice. Reiki is one such practice.

Neuroscience has mapped mindbody functioning in terms of electrical, chemical and hormonal signals from one part to another. The brain has been identified in all of its parts: cerebrum, cerebellum, limbic and reptilian. Each has a specific function; thought and action, movement and balance, with feeding, fighting, fleeing and procreation assigned to the remaining two brain structures.

Yet, we are still unhappy, depressed and ill. The observation and tweaking of the physical components of the mindbody web is inadequate in finding wellbeing.

At the moment of enlightenment the Buddha said, “How strange–all living beings have the fully awakened nature, but none of them knows it….” Luckily it doesn’t have to remain unknowable. The Buddha and every authentic wisdom tradition advocates a return to the ground state of consciousness.

You may have heard of Reiki or even experienced it. What you may not know is that Reiki is much more than a healing modality alone. Reiki is an authentic wisdom tradition. It’s a path of enlightenment, with healing being a natural part of personal evolution.

We have to turn to wisdom teachings and practices to first understand consciousness and then delve deeply into it. Consciousness is our true nature. It also has the capacity to remember our divinity. This is true memory and not the false memory of our personal history.

Going back to the question of how our mindbody does in fact have the capacity to self-organize and -regulate… Dr. Frawley again:

Consciousness is responsible for the existence and movement of the cosmos. It functions behind all forms of matter and energy. Some type of consciousness exists everywhere in Nature, even in inanimate objects. It sustains the cosmic process on all levels, staring with the atom itself. Whatever exists must contain some degree of consciousness or it could not be perceived.

So there is a vast intelligence with which we are inextricably linked. This intelligence naturally produces methods with which it can be accessed. The human spiritual software is perfectly matched to run on this cosmic operating system, while harmonizing and balancing human hardware.

In the next part we’ll look at how Reiki is able to reestablish this link between the personal and the universal.

Reiki links personal and spiritual consciousness

We’re encased in skin, our largest organ. We have mind and ego to navigate this plane. All three have specific functions to make the physical experience work.

Yet all three also separate and disconnect us, even in mundane terms. We may feel disconnected from our heart, loved ones, our job, our friends and our body.

Still underlying these is a core separation. The skin, ego and mind, separate us from the source of our being. As it is, this happens so easily in a limited physical world where we rely on sensory information to perceive and understand. The separation is compounded by all that is unhealed in us.

Our person needs healing. The little self has healing to do physically, emotionally and mentally. This is important work for it is foundational.

Then there’s the healing of ignorance. Not knowledge ignorance, but spiritual ignorance, which is essentially not knowing that we are only in part skin, ego and mind. Only in part.

Reiki is able to grow us out of personal pain, and out of self-imposed and design limitations because it sources at a non-collapsed level of reality, whatever you may want to term that. Here it’s termed consciousness. Any practice that arises out of consciousness heals the little self and opens the gates to everything beyond the hard and wetware of our being, because consciousness is always overarching and all-encompassing.

Reiki is mostly accepted as energy and a modality. Reiki is in fact a spiritual teaching that doesn’t fit well in the skin of modality.

As for energy, consciousness is really far too subtle and vibrating too quickly to be considered energy. It has to further densify to manifest form. During this densification, ‘energy’ or life force as we understand it begins to show up. This energy is still very subtle, compared to say electromagnetic energy.

To say that Reiki is ‘universal life force energy’ or any of variation of this statement needs to be qualified: Life force is dependent on, supported by and sources out of consciousness. Healing takes place in Reiki at the level of personal consciousness being transformed, with a solid connection to the greater field.

There’s the direct action of life force moving through the mindbody and engendering healing through balance and harmony, but the real transformation takes place in consciousness.

Reiki as Consciousness parts 1 & 2.

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