Experiencing: Awaken to Your Aliveness

Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly. ~Sam Harris

People often comment that they can’t meditate because as soon as they start meditating, the mind starts chattering away, and then, before you know it, the time is up. Does this sound familiar? 

Experiencing is a very satisfying way to approach your meditation time. It is simple to do when you focus on the sensations in the body as energy and vibration, and thereby merge into the field of awareness.

Experiencing is different from having an experience, however wonderful that experience might be. It is different from being entertained like watching a movie. It is even different from being mindful. I can be mindful in the way I eat my food, or slow down my pace and walk mindfully. Your awareness is surely heightened, but these are still more like having an experience, memorable though it may be. It is different also from being in the present moment. I like to make a habit of being in the present moment in the grocery check out line. It’s more enjoyable that way, but I am still very aware of my surroundings. With experiencing you lose the awareness of your surroundings and merge into a field of energy. It is not easy to describe without sounding cuckoo. It feels like every single cell in your body just wakes up all at the same time.

Daydreaming can be a form of experiencing if you are conscious that you are indeed daydreaming. To experience you do enter a trance-like state of being. There is ordinary reality when you are thinking and doing and planning and taking care of things. Then there is non-ordinary reality where you are tuned in to the awareness of you at this moment in time and space. 

I find it difficult to experience with my eyes open. Open eyes directs the awareness outside. Although it can be done and concentration on body sensations can be maintained, the eyes are quick to pick up things to focus on. Then the mind immediately enters and follows up with a story about that thing.

Staying present with what is is a subtle pursuit and the mind becomes easily bored. “Really? Is this all we are doing right now? Is this really doing anything anyway?” Actually, no. It’s the opposite of doing – simply being and feeling.

When you bring your attention inside, it can feel very intense. At times it’s difficult to stay with the intensity, and so, in a split second, the mind is back telling stories and hashing things out. Ego jumps in and wants to make sure s/he is not to blame for any problems or concerns that arise, and, before you know it, you are back to the races with the busy mind chitter chattering away.

Then the task becomes to refocus on the sensations in the body as energy and vibration, slow the breath and settle in to stillness and silence. To heighten the sense of aliveness, tune in to the heartbeat and the flow of blood in the body.

Feel it, be it, experience it. You are alive! Awaken to your aliveness!

Getting Connected

As a modern day mystic, I tend to see things differently. Take laws and the legal system for instance. There are laws that govern our cities, states and country, which are supposedly  there to protect us, but they operate on so many assumptions that are contrary to the mystical, sacred way.

I tend to resonate more with natural laws that indigenous people all over the world ascribe to.  Like plants and animals, we are inextricably a part of nature. Laws of balance, harmony, growth, birth and death govern us no matter what country we happen to be a citizen of. There are spiritual laws like reciprocity, intention, karma, animism, magic, miracles, alignment, and receptivity. There are subatomic, micro-level  quantum laws like resonance, vibration and frequency.

For native people, for instance, you can’t own property. The land is an entity in and of itself which cannot be possessed or owned. This makes sense to me especially since my house is situated in a flood zone which could be under water with sea level rise in the next 50-100 years. Who would own a piece of property that is under water? That brings me to the law of impermanence. When I started meditating and opening to feeling and sensation that was constantly changing in my body, I had to become more comfortable with detaching. Since everything is constantly changing, attachment to people, places and things is not only unwise, it also can cause a great deal of suffering as Buddha says.

Remember the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and tree sitter, who sat in a giant redwood tree for 738 days to save it from being cut down? She was standing up for the rights of the tree. Does a tree have rights? Not according to the logging industry.

Have you seen the Herzog movie “Where the Green Ants Dream?” It’s about a clash between the aborigines and the Australian government that wanted to put a road through aboriginal land. It was slated to be cut through an area where the aborigines believed that the green ants dream. If you plough through there, it would disturb the green ants’ dreaming and that would be the end of life. They resisted by squatting in that area and nearly got bulldozed over.

These are examples of people who are sensitive to the life beyond the veil – between the worlds. As you start getting deeper into your spiritual work, you start to grasp the idea that all is not as it appears. You start to become sensitive to deep feeling and sensation that is alive in everything – even a rock is alive. There is an invisible energy in everything even inanimate objects.

I can’t tell you exactly what this invisible realm is like, but I can feel it in my body when I drop into stillness and silence and get connected.

Experience – Getting Connected

This experience will give you a glimpse into what it’s like to go beyond the veil and awaken to both worlds.

Take a moment to drop in to your body right now. Notice any tension perhaps in your stomach, shoulders, jaw or eyes. Notice how that tension is a way of resisting the full experience of you in this present moment beyond time and space.

Ask yourself – what is that about? Why might I be resisting. Is there fear, anger, sadness? What might that be about? What’s keeping me from surrendering to the ever changing flux of the present?

Tune into your breath. What is the quality of your breath? Are you restricting your breath?

Invite in more and more sensation and feeling with the intention of tolerating greater levels of intensity. Allow yourself to experience greater degree of aliveness as you push the boundaries of your comfort zone.

Enjoy surfing between the two worlds, physical and non-physical, enticing yourself to experience more and more sensation for a little longer.

What did you learn from that? Get out your journal and write down your impressions right away.

 

Daughter of the Revolution

My latest rap song……………

Daughter of the Revolution

I’ve been used and abused, maligned and accused. I’ve been raped and pushed aside, silenced and gagged.

My heart is aching. My third eye is open. My soul is witness to all that is. But I’m getting weary of all this gropin’.

I’ve been overfed and starved, body shamed and back bitten. I’m qualified and certified and soft as a kitten

Chorus: Sometimes I can’t watch. And sometimes I can’t listen to what’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on.                                                                                 How does it feel to be a sister,  a mother, a daughter, a lover of the revolution? Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on

I’ve been bought and I’ve been sold. My information shared and doled. Been drugged and overdosed, poisoned and GMOed.

The sea level is rising, which is not surprising. Stopped being complicit and made that explicit. I’ve used my words and I-statements too, cried until I was blue.

Pink pussy hat, jeans tattered and torn, I’ve nearly bled to death. Thought I was right. Always leaned to the left

Still I dance in the moonlight, and march on the beach, achieve states of bliss just out of reach

I’ve done it all. Been f***ed over, raped and groped, forced into submission, and been a big dope.

I’ve been called a dirty whore, swam in a sea of shame. I said no – and he came. And I’m a colonial dame.

Chorus: Sometimes I can’t watch. And sometimes I can’t listen to what’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on.                                                                                  I’m a sister. I’m a mother. I’m a daughter. I’m a lover of the revolution. Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on. Let’s get it on.

I’ve been wet as a whistle, been dry as a bone, been hot as a tamale, been cold as a fish and made you wish you could have some of this.

I’ve kept secrets I no longer want to keep. My third eye is open. I’m not going back to sleep.

I am finding my voice. The sleigh bells are ringing. I can’t carry a tune, but this caged bird is singing.

Chorus: Sometimes I can’t watch. And sometimes I can’t listen to what’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on. What’s goin’ on.                                                                                  How does it feel to be a sister, a mother, a daughter, a lover of the revolution? Let’s get it on, sister. Let’s get it on, sister. Let’s get it on, sister. Let’s get it on, sister.

Amy Sullivan                                                                                                                                       ☮️ Oct. 5, 2018

Why Nature

I like to use nature to get to what is really going on with me, because it is the opposite of and the antidote to cultural conditioning. Cultural conditioning is what you grew up within your family of origin. It includes expectations that were handed to you by the overculture – school, church, commercials, peer group, etc. Our response to this pressure to conform and these very powerful multi-generational messages is operating in the unconscious, but it is repressed. That means that it has been stored away so that we can perform everyday tasks and meet the demands of our families, jobs and the overculture.

You know that your unconscious is getting stirred up when you have the following:

1. Nightmares – Nightmares indicate that your unconscious is upset and trying to process something that does not feel right.
2. Emotional funk. Anger, sadness, fears, all feelings really are there to help us wake up.
3. Obsessiveness. This is the way the mind tries to “help” us not feel the pain and suffering that is below the surface.
4. Need to control, manage or fix people, places or things. This is the inner two year old saying that if everybody would just do everything the way I say, then I’ll feel okay.
5. Accidents. There are no accidents.
6. Addictions and compulsions. Substances, sex, food, habits, behaviors used to self medicate the pain away.

These are all indicators that your unconscious is trying to get your attention. It wants you to pay attention because there is something that is just not right. Your body-being knows the truth of who you really are – a beautiful, loving and radiant being. However, you may have gotten the opposite impression growing up. You may have heard quite the opposite of that from parents, teachers and religious personages. Or you may have picked up the vibration of some core deficiency in your character along the way. Basically, it is that voice that tells you that you are not smart, patient, loving, helpful, hardworking, kind, or contained enough. Or you are too much – too loud, aggressive, lazy, outspoken, emotional, negative, needy, greedy, sinful, gluttonous, or sexual.

Anyway, nature offers us a fresh look at ourselves from our more natural, animalistic, instinctual, spontaneous, expressive, connected self. Nature has the capacity to offer us a direct line to our basic true selves, although we may have to use a different part of our brain that is more receptive to the information – our metaphorical mind.

I was walking with a client in nature once, encouraging this person to stop talking about his story, and, instead, pay attention and just notice whatever he noticed. Just then a flock of seagulls squawked and flapped all around us. He was somewhat perturbed because he was expecting something a little more delicate. He questioned my premise that nature offered a connection, for surely this intrusion was clearly just a distraction. The further we investigated the gift from the natural world, the more he started to realize that the experience was similar to the flock of thoughts that tend to inundate his mind every time he attempts to get quiet and get to know himself – to get close to himself.

It wasn’t nature that was distracting him. It was nature that was reminding him of his own tendency to distract himself from experiencing himself, and what was really going on – his feelings, his inner voice and knowingness.

 

Feelin’ Goooooood

What does it say about modern society that so many people need medication(s) just to function on a daily basis? What has changed in the last 100 years that makes it so we can’t cope?

As therapists, we are taught that we are to defer to the medical profession when treating mental-emotional disorders. Doctor knows best. What do doctors really have to offer us besides medications?

I love that scene in Sisters, a movie with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, in which they are trying to get their party started with a bunch of 40 somethings who have forgotten how to party. To loosen everyone up, Tina’s character calls in a drug dealer, Pazuzu, played skillfully by John Cena. She asks him what he’s got in his medical bag, and it takes him 5 minutes to run down all the drugs he has to offer, 90% of which are NOT illegal. Here’s a clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XAKjc2gIfo&t=10s

This medicated mindset comes from well meaning, smart, educated people all working really hard to try to make us feel good! There is a thick, all-inclusive, self help manual by well renowned doctor and teacher, David Burns, MD with that exact title – Feeling Good. In case you are interested, there’s even one for couples called Feeling Good Together!

The Buddha also wanted to end suffering, and that is the goal of Buddhist practice, but the approach is basically the opposite. The cause of suffering is attachment to wanting to feel good. The more you cling to the need to feel good, the more distraught and disappointed you become.

While meditating you learn that your suffering or dissatisfaction is directly related to attitudes that arise within your own heart and mind. You become aware of the fleeting nature of your thoughts and emotions, and you basically give up your restless seeking for something better and thus bring dissatisfaction to an end. No thing is ever going to make you happy. And on top of that, happiness is actually right under your nose. According to a certain parable, underneath the floor of the poor man’s house lies a great treasure.

This wisdom develops over a lifetime, and in the details of the difficulties of everyday life and social interactions, which become increasingly more interesting as we become conscious of our limiting and downright crazy thoughts.

Think about it ~jealousy, greed, hatred, fear, desire ~ What are these things anyway?

 

Anger – Plain and Simple

I am starting to write a book called Craving Closeness: A Creative Work-It-Out Eco-Psycho-Spiritual Journal for Your Mental Health. I realize that’s a mouth full, so let’s just call that the working title. The first thing I am called to address is anger. So here goes.

Anger – Plain and Simple

The best strategy with anger is to accept that you are indeed angry. If you resist, which you can do, it will come back to haunt you, plain and simple. Feelings buried alive never die. “So how in tarnation do I accept my anger?” You ask. The first task it simply to just sit with it. Feel all the effects it has on your body, your physiology, your biological functions – your heart rate, your blood pressure, your muscle tension, your digestion. Get really close to these sensations in your body that are ever changing. Get down to the atomic and molecular levels where the anger is causing the neurotransmitters in your brain to work or stop working in a variety of ways. It affects your hormones. Imagine, if you will, the stress hormone, cortisol, squirting out into your system wreaking havoc on your physiology. Or adrenaline pumping out getting you ready for flight or fight. Again get back to feeling the effects. Get quiet and tune in to your heart, your breathing. What muscles are firing right now?

This is up to you to do. No Fitbit or Google Watch can do this for you. You are the only one who can feel your feelings, except in the case of resonance, by which your feelings have a frequency and a vibration, which can be felt by other sentient beings whether they are conscious of it or not, and whether they are even in close proximity or not. But I’ll save that subject for another time.

This is powerful stuff! You are having an atomic reaction after all.

You should be feeling pretty uncomfortable at this point. That’s good. Now get into the uncomfortableness. Where do you feel that? How do you experience that? This is where the cravings come in. They start protesting. “Why do we have to feel this? This is too much for me to take. I need relief.” Then the Victim chimes in. “I don’t deserve to feel badly. What did I ever do to deserve this?”

Before we entertain them, locate a piece of paper you can write and draw on, and start writing. Keeping it plain and simple, just start with “I am so angry.” Again. “I am so angry.” Then just “Angry.” And again write out the word “angry” over and over again until you can’t write it any more. Now perhaps repeat the same process with the word “uncomfortable” until you have had enough of that.

Now locate some paints, markers, crayons or pastels. And continue by adding color however you feel drawn to express yourself at this point.

And then rest. Good job! That’s all for now.

 

Getting Close to Yourself

I’m in a very unusual class. It’s called the Master Alma (“soul” in Spanish) Class. It is the baby of Julia Carmen a bona fide curandera, a seer of Souls. Every month we pick a theme, and last month it was “self pleasure.” Everyone got a good giggle over that imagining themselves running off to the nearest Good Vibrations store.

The first thing I did was schedule a massage, which was wonderful. I could get a massage every day. I figured I was about done for the month, when an email came in that one of the participants was practicing self pleasure in some form or other every day.

Every day??

Clearly I needed to up my game. I committed to a daily practice and quickly learned how little real pleasure I allow myself. I’m good a self care, which is not the same thing. I walk every day. I meditate and do yoga. I eat well. I go shopping, and, while I derive pleasure from these things, self pleasure implies getting intimate with yourself. Yikes! Having grown up in an alcoholic family system, getting close in general was not our strong suit. Independence, strength, achievement were highly valued traits. Besides, alcohol is much more dependable for feeling good than real relationships with real people. In alcoholic families, there is usually a family history of fragmentation, trauma or loss that disrupts or threatens ones ability to get close to parental figures, and the pattern repeats itself over generations to come. I’ve even heard that addiction comes from a denial of the need for intimacy.

Despite my unfamiliarity with self pleasure, I started lightly touching my arms and legs focusing on the parts that sent chills through my body. Intoxicatingly delightful, I challenged myself to tolerate more intensity and build my threshold for self pleasure. As my breathing would soften, it felt like I was getting bathed in a deep sense of self contentment. Maybe it’s okay for me to get close to myself after all.

This practice also made me think about how you can get the chills when you have a psychic hit on something. Maybe you get the chills when you are getting close to spirit too. It provides a double delight – getting closer to myself and getting filled with spirit at the same time.

I think I can do this.

Shining Light on Victimhood

I awoke last night with this nagging sense that it was going to be a while until I fell back to sleep. I was activated, for sure, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. My mind tried to analyze what being activated was about. What’s the opposite of that – numbness. Okay that’s one axis – activated on one side and numb on the other. To flesh it out, however, I wanted to create another axis.

Numb ————————————————-Activated

After much restlessness, I remembered a recent retreat when we were asked to place ourselves on a numb-activated continuum to get an idea of where we were in terms of nervous system arousal. With trauma, you tend to bounce back and forth between getting overly excited and triggered, and then burning out your adrenal glands and crashing and burning into a puddle of tears. (Or is that just me?)

After walking in nature in sacred silence, one of the participants shared that he was activated, but in a conscious way. In other words, he was feeling a vibrant sense of awareness and aliveness. That’s interesting – We can be activated and grounded in a way the leaves the circuits open. What’s the difference? Consciousness.

You are unconscious and activated when you are angry, perhaps fighting with your spouse for instance, which is how I was feeling laying in bed next to a used therapeutic wedge pillow my dear husband had bought at a garage sale from a man who had used it for his recent recovery from heart surgery. It even had stains on it and everything! I was beginning to realize how vehemently opposed I was to this intruder, i.e., I was becoming conscious.

At long last, I gathered some ability to get into witness consciousness about the situation. I could see and be with that part of me that was suffering, a victim of circumstance. I sent unconditional love and support to the victim, bringing it into the light. That did the trick. A little compassion for my poor pitiful self went a long way toward unhooking me from the deep freeze.

So there you have it. I think we are so aware of not wanting to be a victim that we create more shadow space for it to comfortably hang out in.

I grabbed the offending pillow and walked it outside to air out. In the morning, I told my husband I couldn’t sleep. He asked why, and I told him the story of how sorry I felt for myself for having a husband who buys filthy wedge pillows from garage sales.

He laughed.

 

 

Songbirds Sing of Surrender

On my walk today, I noticed how I was striving to get up the hill in my usual power walking way. My chest was tight and determined, ready to shatter all obstacles in the way.  In the noticing though there was a deep awareness that I don’t have to push so hard any more. Whether that way has served me or not is up for debate, but let’s just say that now I know another way that feels a whole lot better. I slowed down and took some giant lunges, so I was still working but not striving so hard. I used to love to wail along to those songs about “nobody done told me life was gonna be this hard.” But now I know that those are just beliefs. Statements about whether life is easy or hard are just generalities that may be true or not. The thing is – how do they make you feel?

Life just is.

As I began to slow down, I realized I had neglected to notice that it was a beautiful spring day. I started listening to birds singing all kinds of incredible songs. One in particular caught my attention. It was as if the bird was singing harmony with itself as it warbled up and down the scales. It reminded my of the sound rain water makes on a metal roof only more melodic. 

I found a place to lie down and dropped deep into the nothingness and started to wonder.

I have used my will to meet goals and accomplish stuff. There is nothing wrong with will. It’s a function of the 3rd chakra and supports self esteem. Only problem is I spent much of my working life in fight or flight, handling one crisis after the next as if there was some constant invisible threat. That takes a toll on the adrenal glands to say the least. Is there another way to be besides being in that typical jacked-up, intense stress state? Or the opposite – collapsed in a heap trying to recover?

“Surrender to what is,” the songbirds remind me. “Surrender to nature, to your own true nature.  It doesn’t mean you are giving in or giving up. It does mean that your scared, fragile ego will have to stop fighting, running, resisting and pushing. It will thank your in the end. It doesn’t necessarily want you to buy into it’s panic. It just needs to be reined in, and then you can loosen the reins on your soul self. You are free as a bird ~ if you let yourself be.”

So What is the Energy Body Anyway?

We’ve all heard the term “energy body,” and maybe we’ve had experiences of the energy body, but how would you go about trying to explain what it actually means to you? You’ve probably seen the diagram of the outline of the physical body with the circumscribing lines encircling the physical body. These are called Koshas, and there are many names for those layers – etheric body, auric body, causal body, prana body, bliss body. For simplicity sake, I’m going to lump them all together today.

I come from years of training and experience in Yoga Nidra. In Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, you are guided into Turiya, which is the 4^th state of mind beyond waking, dreaming and sleeping where you experience the transcendental states of the ancient mystics. This is my most direct experience of the energy body.

Yoga Nidra practice combines conscious action (stretching, breathing, and chanting) with conscious receptivity (sensing, feeling, and detached attention) producing a paradoxical state of integration which effectively activates the energy body. If you simply let your mind merge into the flood of energy pulsating in the body, you can connect your individual consciousness with the unified field and experience the blissful illuminated essence of your being.

Being able to access the energy body is very important to your health and vitality. You can think of the energy body as a non-physical dynamic field that distributes prana or life force to and also releases excess energy from the physical body. This invisible body is a living energy made up of invisible subtle matter which functions as a medium to energize, clear and revitalize body, mind and spirit. “The energy is like water which should be moving to keep it fresh. Otherwise you create a stagnant swamp,” says yoga teacher, Marlene Smits.

If you close your eyes for a moment and become still, you can get a sense of this alive energy moving through you. The energy can take certain pathways like the meridians or chakras, but it is up to you to develop your own sense of how the energy moves in your body. Use your detached attention to sense and feel into the alive space that is your energy body. With practice you can build on pleasurable sensations in the body and pulsations of breath and blood flow. Pleasure is key. The more you can allow the intense sensations to build, the healthier and more vital your energy body can become and the closer you come to awakening the bliss body.

For more direct experience, please join me for Yoga Nidra for Relaxation Sunday, March 11 at 10:30 – 11:30 am at April’s Yoga and Pilates in Pacifica, CA.