Inner Self - 2/4 - Life Coaching

The generosity of spirit

9 March 2012 By John

Recent upgrade work to my website reminded me of the generosity of the internet. When I was working on my site, at one point I repeatedly hit snags and yet whenever I asked Google for the answer, out there on the net some kind soul had posted a rescue message.

Now, what really struck me was how there are all these incredibly generous souls out there who are willing to give their time and knowledge to help others. Yes, I know that the net was intended to be about networking and connecting, and that many also give in order to market themselves too. But it’s the generosity and willingness to share that hit me. There was I, and no doubt very many others, feeling rather stuck and someone was around to help. Now, isn’t that just great?!

It really says something to me about the generosity of the human spirit, our willingness to share.

Let’s think about that. When we give, we get back tenfold. When we truly give, others know it and reciprocate, even if just to give their appreciation. When we give, we open our hearts to others. The gesture of giving is hands held out, palms up, at the level of the heart. Others smile and open in turn.

When we hold back, and hold on to what we have, the flow shuts down, and the universe responds accordingly. They talk of meanness of spirit. The musculature tightens up, thoughts become more narrow, our systems contract, and the universe contracts, for us anyway. With these difficult times economically, many people must be tightly holding on for fear of losing. Powerfully negatively attracting stuff.

When we truly give, we express our love for others at some level. True giving is unconditional, with no expectation of reward. This is in the nature of being of service. There is no attachment to ego. It is a great way of experiencing egolessness. Here you let go of expectation. This is not about doing something at your own expense or any view about the deserts of the cause or the worthiness of the other person. It is unconditional.

And the thing about the spirit of it, the true meaning of it, the essence of it, is that it is from the heart, from the essence of who we are.

Thus when we give like this, when we are for example truly of service to others, there is a sense of pure joy, of being connected to our inner joy, Who we really are.

So, as spring approaches, and our spirits flow more outwards and think of ways to enjoy ourselves, now is a good time to “en-joy”, to connect with our inner joy. And one way to do this is by giving, selflessly.

So, start with smiling!

Smile as you read this. Yes! Go on, give it a go!

Smile….and really get into smiling. Really smile, for no good reason, just for the sake of it! I’m smiling as I write this. Yes, a great big cheesy grin. You might even have a small laugh! Let the smile get really broad (yes, I’m still grinning as I write!) and then breathe the smile down inside with the in-breath. Breathe it down, down to the heart centre, down to your centre of love and caring, and feel the heart centre warming with the pleasure of the smile. Notice the warm, generous, kind, loving sense that is there within you. Really notice what is always there. Allow your awareness to rest there a moment. You could call this your inner smile.

Now, when you go out to meet others, even if passing them in the street, remember your inner smile, and smile to them with this awareness, your awareness of your essence.

It’s a practice.

Remember, it’s unconditional, so don’t expect anything in return. If they look blank or surprised, or uncomfortable, or if they smile in return, you will at some level have impacted them, somewhere inside. Just be clear about your intention. The universe will take care of the rest.

And see what it’s is like for you, giving to others, if only a smile.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: generosity, giving, love, service

Be really alone and find what’s really there

28 February 2012 By John

Aloneness is at one end of a spectrum of awareness, at the other end of which is At-Oneness. They are polar opposites. Aloneness has a variety of associated experiences, the understanding that we are separate being the underlying condition. We may at times feel lonely, on our own, abandoned, unloved, sad, miserable, depressed. Not surprisingly, we fear it. It can be such an unpleasant place to be that we’ll do all sorts of things to avoid it. Many will cling to the company of others and even go into relationships for fear of being alone and unloved, not necessarily the most positive basis for a relationship.

What people don’t so easily contemplate is actually allowing themselves to go through the experience so that it won’t have any hold over them. The point about facing one’s fears is to discover that they are illusions. Fear will dissolve itself if faced.This does however take practice.

This is where retreats can be so useful, or going off somewhere by yourself and being alone for a while, with nothing to distract you and where you see nobody, and don’t have even the internet or books or TV or anything to occupy and distract your mind. Imagine it! Challenging, but useful.

Aloneness has a mixture of feelings in it, and it is the feelings, and particularly the fear of aloneness that gives it its power over us. So it is in part about learning to confront and let go of the feelings.

Underneath there is At-Oneness. If you’ve already become acquainted with At-Oneness then that helps. Because when you go into aloneness and let it go, there is At-Oneness. But you might reach a different understanding.

This is very existential work, all about who we are at an existential level. One school of thought would have it that we are nothing and that life is meaningless. One could have a belief that it is otherwise. Then you could go and work on it, by experiencing aloneness, and discover a different experience, which might put a very different gloss on it. There is something very important in there about facing yourself, and meeting your Self.

They say that when people have done this work, and are as a result much more comfortable with themselves, they are then much happier in the company of others, because they’ve let go of neediness, needing others for fear of being alone and outside. They are comfortable in their own skin, who they are.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer wrote, at the end of her superb The Invitation, which went all round the internet a few years ago, “I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you can truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: Alone, love, oneness

Why do people cry at weddings?

25 February 2012 By John

I attended a wedding last weekend in the august surroundings of the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, at which someone my wife had known a long time was getting married. It was a traditional Anglican wedding, during which we were treated to a sermon by the priestess. Her subject was “Why do people cry at weddings?” I was initially absorbed by her range of psychological explanations, until she settled on a religious explanation as the real reason.

Well, if you are a devotee of that tradition, or others for that matter, I can imagine that her explanation that it was the celebration of the union of two people solemnised by the priest(ess) in Christ’s name that did it, would be a very likely one. However, I found myself asking the question more generally, since, as per the last post, I’d doubt that most attending would see it quite like that. Most probably wouldn’t know why. They’d just do it, and generally I’m not aware of people having a problem with it. Rather the reverse. Such tears are often accompanied by smiles.

For some, the tears might be one of regret. Dad might possibly be mourning the loss of a cherished daughter, as might mum (and ditto sons, let’s not forget). Then they might just be very pleased for her. Given that about half of couples get wed today, and often after a period of cohabitation, people might not be so bothered. Except that weddings fascinate. At the wedding I was at, when it got to the point when the couple were exchanging their vows, the children, especially the girls, stood in the aisle watching intently. Now, that might be plain simple curiosity, and children will stare, except that there was an intensification of emotion at that point, since I’d suggest everybody was firmly plugged in. Children are very sensitive to such things.

There is something hugely poignant about this moment in the service, when the emotional level goes right up and people start gently mopping their eyes. Is it sadness? Are there those grieving, about people lost or who can’t be there or whatever, or about what might have been or had been but isn’t now? Well, it can be mixed and we can cry for mixed reasons, and when the emotional channels are open we connect with deeper stuff than perhaps is usual. However, I’d suggest rather that these are mainly tears of joy, in the happiness of a couple with whom we all share a moment. Because there’s a part of us there too. We want that joy for ourselves, and somewhere inside we know that joy, and we appreciate it in others and we share in their joy. We feel it as if one, and here’s the key point. It is a Transpersonal moment, when we are as One. We are all re-minded of the essence of love within each of us, being played out in front of us, as in a mirror.

So, next time you get invited to a wedding, explore this. It’s another way to connect.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: awareness, joy, love, oneness, wedding

Learning to love simply and purely for its own sake

18 February 2012 By John

Teachers and gurus of many traditions all urge us to apply love in our daily lives. Without it we are, as St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal“. It’s a brilliantly simple way to experience more love in our lives. Muktananda wrote, “In your ordinary life, learn to love. This love should be pure, unattached and given for its own sake. If it contains any demands, it is just a commercial exchange – the motions of love but not love itself.”

If the pursuit of the awareness of love is taken further, if for example we practice such awareness in ways consistent with our own chosen spiritual practice, then this love deepens. It becomes a pursuit in its own right. Gurumayi wrote: “Without the experience of inner love, without embracing God’s love, without the darshan of one’s own true nature, without the awareness of So’ham, “I am That“, a human being is like an empty container.”

So when we are aware of something missing inside us, and we do our own journeying and find that we need to cultivate more love in our lives in this unattached way, without neediness, dependency on another, expectation or the other manifestations of the ego around love, then we are moving towards cultivating something wholely precious, beautiful, utterly fulfilling. For when the ego really and truly gets out of the way, That is all there Is.

This weekend, perhaps you could spend some time meditating on your heart centre, in the awareness that there dwells love. Whether you feel it or not doesn’t matter. It is the intention and the practice that matters. It maybe that lots of stuff needs to be got out of the way first. But if one sets out with the intention to create more authentic, genuine love in one’s life, we steadily draw it to us. Consistency is needed, along with a willingness to face what comes up along the way. But the results are a treasure indeed.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: ego, love, meditation

Thank you Whitney for your service to us

12 February 2012 By John

Like very many others I was very saddened to read that Whitney Houston died today, and that we’ve lost a major singing talent, albeit not as she once was. She died in her 49th year, which can be a turning point for many, and I’ve often noticed how people leave at that time. She was important for me not just for her excellent singing and all those songs I used play in my car on the long journeys I once did. She also helped unwittingly to contribute to the emergence of a new phase in my life.

For me she most represented a phase of re-awakening during which I used to play over and over again her rendering of The Greatest Love of All. One thing that had stood out for me from all the personal development work I was doing at the time was the need to learn to love myself. At the time that was a concept for which I heard the words but didn’t get it. How did you love yourself and what was that like? Like many others, I had grown up with a very negative view of myself, which I tried hard to conceal from the world, and had finally confronted and embarked on a journey to know the real me. Part of that involved loving the self I was discovering.

Of course Whitney wasn’t the only contribution to that process, but I recall playing the track over and over and noticing how I reacted inside when I heard the words “I found the greatest love of all inside of me…Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all“. And the song ends with her singing that if you find yourself in a lonely place, “find your strength in love.” I can’t repeat often enough how important I believe those words are.

One might think that those sentiments don’t seem to accord with her own life, but, hey, we’re human and we screw up. Sometimes our shadow jumps out to bite us. It’s to be compassionate and also to see beyond whatever challenges a person might be going through to what they teach us, and for me this teaching of her’s stands out.

Whatever we need to learn, we will find a way to hear it, and it may come from a song, and then it might come from some words in a book, and then some chance words you overhear as you pass by some others, and then the headlines on the news, and some inner voice speaking to you. It’ll be coming to us when we’re ready for it. The point is to be open to listen and to receive the wisdoms so freely given and to notice the resonance with our own process.

Whitney played her part in that and I thank her for that, and for her service to so very many people. God bless her.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: love, loving yourself, self esteem, Whitney Houston

Being present in the silence

4 February 2012 By John

As it’s snowing at present here and in much of Europe, people may find their activities restricted. Apart from those perhaps stuck somewhere and having difficulty, and we should keep them in our thoughts during this freeze-up, for those of us perhaps stuck in-doors we might feel frustrated by the limitation, and then we could reflect on what it might have to teach us.

Enforced idleness, lets say, in a society accustomed to feeling driven and busy, can be a strange one. We might look round for “something to do”. Our minds could “go off on one”. And then we could just be still.

And listen to the quiet.

The snow might have dulled sound. It might seem still.

So, you could be present with the stillness, aware of it, being the observer of it. Just being still.

Just now I found this statement by Eckhart Tolle: “The human condition: lost in thought“.

We get so caught up in thinking and go off all over the place. Absorbed in ego. So here’s a good time to be still, and let the mind just quieten down and be still. They say, a watched mind becomes still. So, watch it.

As you become aware of the stillness, go into it. Be right there in it. Feel it. Let it touch your heart. Breathe it in to your heart centre. And be very aware and present.

It’s very simple really. We just get lost in thought.

Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: awareness, mind, presence, silence, stillness

On being purely aware of breathing

3 February 2012 By John

I went to a wonderful evening about Rumi in Bath last Thursday, at an event led by people of the Sufi Way. Peter Hawkins led a fascinating session on Rumi’s life and the mystical poetry that he wrote, interspersed with readings by Kunderke Kevlin.

Rumi is frequently quoted not only by his followers and other Sufis but also very many others interested in the mystical approach both in the East and in the West. One particular poem stood out for me, Only Breath. Such a powerful reminder of that which is formless and unattached.

For me it was a great session on the inspiration of Rumi’s encounter with Unity and how his life moved into a different dimension in consequence. Listening to the story and to the sequence of poems, a calm gradually descended over me and so too did a smile. Then came the poem, Only Breath. And it felt complete.

When the meditator sits focused on the breath, and gradually thought recedes into the background or disappears entirely, the simple awareness of breath can seem like all there is. The breath comes in and the breath goes out. Utterly simple. It comes into the chest region and is often best felt in the heart centre, where at the end of the in-breath it merges with the energy of the heart centre and with the Love that is its essence. It goes out and merges with the air outside. The air is everywhere, all one and omni-present, all That. When breathed in, it connects with the whole on the inside too. It’s a powerful way to feel totally connected, unity consciousness in practice.

Practice it.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: awareness, breathing, unity

When gentleness of spirit opens doors that are firmly closed to you

29 January 2012 By John

Earlier I looked out of the window across the field at the back of our house and saw three deer silently grazing in the evening gloom. They nibbled steadily and ever now and again looked up and around. They would pause and gaze all around and seemingly right at me, although I was probably obscured by the glass of my room’s window. They would stand quite still, as if sensing the air. Then they would go back to their eating. A silent presence.

They come a lot to this field, a large meadow also given to cattle and to pheasants. But deer are always such a pleasure to see. In Native American medicine they are often seen as representing gentleness, which seems totally appropriate.

We can get so heavily engaged in effort, striving and seeking to “make” things happen. So, on a Sunday afternoon, seeing the deer seems a useful reminder of the power of gentleness in facilitating outcomes. So often, when effort seems to be getting nowhere, it pays more to let go, and allow things to be. Then somehow things happen, but we need to be unattached to the outcome. It’s like our egos have to get out of the way.

To quote from my Medicine Cards, “You are being asked to find the gentleness of spirit that heals all wounds. Stop pushing so hard to get others to change, and love them as they are. Apply gentleness to your present situation and become like the summer breeze: warm and caring.”

So I pass this on to whoever this might be relevant right now. Let go and love.

It’s a reminder that we all need, a lot. The power of love.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: gentleness, love, presence

All possibilities co-exist in the present moment

27 January 2012 By John

The hard bit, often the really hard bit, is to see the new beginnings, the new way forward, in the midst of what’s going on.

Yet, as they say, in the “quantum soup of pure potentiality” (see Deepak Chopra et al), all options, all possibilities co-exist in the present moment. We’re so used to linearity, to cause and effect, and that things follow a sequence, especially a logical one, that we find this one hard to get. The ego mind fights the idea of being open to what is, to being unattached to a specific way and to the idea of allowing.

I was asked not long ago if I might run a coaching program for some psychologists and one was puzzled by my approach which seemed to her to lack a scientific rationale. “Can you measure it?” she asked. It can be hard for those educated in the Newtonian scientific paradigm to get that there’s another way of perceiving these phenomena. Not that they are necessarily any more right or wrong, just another way. The struggle for so many in our society can be to accept that there might be several ways, all of them “right”, right that is for the chooser.

So, the “new beginning” can be many and varied, all existing in the present moment. It depends on your perception, and you can change your perception. I have so often seen people shift some of their inner baggage and a whole new way has then opened up for them, one they hadn’t necessarily anticipated before. Let’s say that Person A had been used to the idea that if he wanted people to do something he believed he had to control and dominate them in order to “make” it happen, not an attitude that would endear him to others who would probably resist, overtly or covertly. Then, in doing some work on himself in a seminar he discovered that he tried to control others because he was really afraid they would reject him and the control enabled him to avoid having to face that possibility. Then, once he allowed himself to explore that and to start to like himself and not need that from others, he was able to approach others from a perspective of love and acceptance, which empowered others to respond differently to him. What he learned was that love opened all sorts of doors for him, including the treasure of his own heart.

He didn’t know that at the beginning, or at least not in awareness, although perhaps his soul did and was inviting him to come home to himself. The new beginning was there all along, perhaps, and he just needed to open up to it.

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Filed Under: Inner Self

Allow yourself to meditate on love

15 January 2012 By John

Reading the news today, and the usual catalogue of disagreements, upsets and conflicts as presented by our media, I was reminded of an excellent book by James Twyman, Emissary of Light, which describes the author’s visit during the Bosnian conflict to a group of people who devoted years during the conflict to meditating together right in the midst of the conflict in the cause of peace.

Every day, this group would meditate for most of the day and they would send out light to the world. James describes how on one occasion, a large group of soldiers were advancing and came right up to where they were and then passed them by without seeing them. They had made themselves as if invisible.

A lot of their work was about transcending fear, since conflict originated from fear. He describes how at one point he was instructed by the leader, referred to as “Teacher”, of the principle that “as you release fear through surrender and trust, incredible waves of light will wash over you. You’ll begin to feel joy and peace greater than you even knew existed,” and “You in your essence are the fountain of unconditional love…let it flow from you and wash over all those you see.”

This reminded me too of the passage in A Course in Miracles about love and fear. “God“, it says, “is not the author of fear. You are.” It goes on to say that “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” It is love that is real. All else is an illusion. “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”

When we get caught in our stuff, or we read about others doing the same, whether on an individual, group, or national basis, this is always worth remembering. “All there is, is love.” It is so easy to forget, such is the power of ego. We can forget these words in minutes, which is the testimony to our disconnection, and thus replicate the same dilemma.

Thus, spending time meditating on love is a powerful practice, not just for ourselves but for everybody. Unconditionally.

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Filed Under: Inner Self Tagged With: conflict, love, meditation, peace

The generosity of spirit

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Be really alone and find what’s really there

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Why do people cry at weddings?

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Learning to love simply and purely for its own sake

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Thank you Whitney for your service to us

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Being present in the silence

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On being purely aware of breathing

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When gentleness of spirit opens doors that are firmly closed to you

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All possibilities co-exist in the present moment

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Allow yourself to meditate on love

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