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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 25 2010 : 2:06:30 PM
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I have noticed that the experience of suffering makes us kind and indulgent toward others because it is suffering that draws us near to God. - Saint Therese
We all have our own buttons, and if you look closely at your life, you can see patterns in the situations that cause you to react with fear, anger and grief. I've personally always been too sensitive, particularly to unkind words from others, and by the time I reached adolescence, I was living in an inner hell, completely lost and confused in my own grief and anger. This great weight of suffering was the grace that drove me to look inward and observe my mental and emotional processes dispassionately, without identification.
We live in a world that runs from suffering. We run from it into sex, alcohol, drugs, entertainment, work... in some cases suicide. For most people, without periodic escape, whether that be into mindless television or heroin injections, I think it would be hard to retain sanity. There’s such tragedy in the world, and in the heart of each person, the only thing most people can do is try to shut down, not feel it, not think about it, forget it.
“You see it, Igby? I feel this great, great pressure coming down on me. It's constantly coming down on me. It's crushing me.” - Jason, Igby’s Father, who is having a psychological breakdown. From the movie “Igby Goes Down”.
When we are forced to suffer, unwillingly, it can beget a cynical attitude to life, or worse - mental breakdown or suicide. However if we look at the lives of many saints, we see people who turned around and embraced suffering, who willingly underwent suffering. People who were filled with love of god and compassion for others, who suffered but were not cynical because of it. Look at Jesus, Saint Therese, Ghandi… I asked myself, what does this mean?
“Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.” - Ghandi
A while ago, some years before I discovered AYP, I read and implemented what I learned from a book called The Presence Process. It taught me how to suffer willingly. It was agony. My life became unbearable as I opened the inner floodgates and allowed suffering to consume me. However looking back, the suffering, willingly embraced, transformed me. In many places within my heart, where once there was personal pain, there is now stillness, a stillness that is full of compassion for others due to the knowledge of how it feels to suffer. Compassion seems to me to be like “suffering felt for others joyfully with intent to help”.
Furthermore, it put a kind of strength or determination inside me, which has given me the motivation toward spiritual progress, enlightenment.
So this post is really on a practical note, sorry to bore you with the life story, but I felt like it put things in context. Yogani touches on this in the bhakti lesson, to continue from what he says, I find it really helpful to pray when I suffer, and/or self inquire. For me, it’s my most important spiritual practice outside of meditation and spinal breathing, to use my suffering constructively.
This post is for anyone who might stumble across it, feeling depressed, or hurt, or angry or upset.
Here are a few practical techniques to make a good use of unavoidable suffering:
1 - Just feel. I begin with closing my eyes, breathing in and out, deeply and slowly into my stomach, and just allowing myself to feel the suffering. Notice everything about what is being felt inside. Is there a feeling of suffering AND a feeling of resistance to suffering? A feeling of not wanting to suffer? Allow yourself to easily notice what is taking place, without resistance, give it the full attention of your heart, and allow your mind to be silent. Drop the stories, the accusations, just feel.
Emotional pain, resulting from unkindness from others can be, paradoxically, one of the greatest fuels on the planet for spiritual progress. There’s the Western/Christian concept of humility bringing one closer to God - “The meek shall inherit the earth’, then there’s the Eastern/Hindu/Buddhist concept of no-self and the ego. It seems to me that there’s a link between these two concepts. When we watch our own suffering with our quiet awareness, without retaliating or saying anything at all, we just quietly bear it and take it to a private place so we can willingly experience it fully, the ego is gradually melted away, and we increase in humility. You find where once there was a concept of a Self to defend, a concept of a Self who is being hurt by the other person/or life's misfortunes, there is now just quiet, compassionate awareness. I hope that one day I may reach the point where even if someone says the cruelest thing to me they can imagine, their words just fall on quiet, compassionate, attentive awareness - and cause not a stir of concern for myself.
2 - Prayer. I use something like “Dear Lord, allow me to make use of this suffering. Help me willingly feel it, even though there is desire not to feel it. Allow it to purify me. Allow it to humble me. Let me suffer this for you.” Whatever feels right for you. Often energy will shoot up my spine and I feel joy after this. The suffering continues when I’m still resistant to it, if I’m trying to use prayer as a method to control it, and to shut down. If that’s the case for you, it’s ok. Just gently return to feeling it again, and to feeling your resistance. Don’t struggle with it. If it’s just too much to take, read a book, or go for a run, whatever, come back to it later.
3 - Self Inquiry. Most of our suffering is in the sense of being a separate self. We believe “something is being done to us”. I’ve been reading the AYP Self-Inquiry book and there are some very good guidelines in here for self inquiry. When I feel myself getting angry with or judging others, I like to ask “is this anger rooted in truth?” (i.e. am I really separate from them? Who is judging and who is being judged?).
Love, Josh. |
Edited by - mr_anderson on Nov 25 2010 2:09:08 PM |
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Katrine
Norway
1813 Posts |
Posted - Nov 25 2010 : 3:59:44 PM
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Hi Josh
Thank you so much for your beautiful sharing - for your courage and honesty, for your open vulnerability and generous heart - for the wise practices.
Because of your willingness to say yes to life...to the light.....many will benefit in such a way that their path may not have to include such a level of agony as you have gone through.
And yet - I know from my own history over the years how the ongoing inner opening to the light....the melting of the personal will......how that for me too always includes the suffering. How can it not.....it is our desires that themselves are the power of love. When they are not met we suffer. When they are superficially met - we suffer too, delayed though it may be.
So much suffering.....and yet, when the light is allowed to shine on it, it is like you say all seen differently. Compassion makes such a difference doesn't it......I still can not say one word about what compassion is....but I know the difference it makes.
And the praying......it is such a beautiful practice. Everything changed here the day the prayers started for real.
Your post moved me deeply.....
The still places inside....the spaces that emerge once a clearing happens......they have found each other within you....they have gravitated towards each other and are now bigger than what happens within you.
Just like your post - it is much vaster than the words 
May the joy continue to follow the prayers, and deep peace be with you Josh.
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cosmic
USA
821 Posts |
Posted - Nov 25 2010 : 10:42:40 PM
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This is really beautiful, Mr. Anderson. Thank you  |
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manigma
India
1065 Posts |
Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 02:42:02 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
3 - Self Inquiry. Most of our suffering is in the sense of being a separate self.
The biggest mistake we do is to think ourselves as a separate being having a freewill.
But in reality, eveyrthing is One!
When I wave my hands, blink my eyes, breahte, talk... everything is rooted and flowing from the whole.
One single mind.
The realisation of this is end to all sufferings.
Q: At this very moment who talks, if not the mind?
M: That which hears the question, answers it.
Q: But who is it?
M: Not who, but what. I'm not a person in your sense of the word, though I may appear a person to you. I am that infinite ocean of consciousness in which all happens. I am also beyond all existence and cognition, pure bliss of being. There is nothing I feel separate from, hence I am all. No thing is me, so I am nothing.
The same power that makes the fire burn and the water flow, the seeds sprout and the trees grow, makes me answer your questions. There is nothing personal about me, though the language and the style may appear personal. A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. There is nothing I desire or fear -- how can there be a pattern?
~ I Am That : Nisargadatta
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OUR BELOVED MASTER, RYUSUI SAID:
EMPTINESS IS A NAME FOR NOTHINGNESS, A NAME FOR UNGRASPABILITY, A NAME FOR MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, THE WHOLE EARTH. IT IS ALSO CALLED THE REAL FORM. IN THE GREEN OF THE PINES, THE TWIST OF THE BRAMBLES, THERE IS NO GOING OR COMING. IN THE RED OF THE FLOWERS AND THE WHITE OF THE SNOW, THERE IS NO BIRTH AND NO DEATH.
JOY, ANGER, LOVE, PLEASURE -- THESE ARE BEGINNINGLESS AND ENDLESS DELUSION. ENLIGHTENMENT, PRACTICE, REALIZATION -- THESE ARE INEXHAUSTIBLE AND BOUNDLESS.
THEREFORE, IN THE FUNDAMENTAL VEHICLE THERE IS NO DELUSION OR ENLIGHTENMENT, NO PRACTICE OR REALIZATION. EVEN TO SPEAK OF PRACTICE AND REALIZATION IS A RELATIVE VIEW.
~ Turning In : Osho |
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kami
USA
921 Posts |
Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 11:56:25 AM
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Thank you for this beautiful post and topic, mr_anderson
Its queer how this forum works - every time I have an opening or the need for more clarification on something, someone posts exactly what I need! I hope this thread will continue to be one of open and honest sharing of one's own journey (even if it has been said before) and less of teachings or advise..
My own journey here was a result of self-destructive behavior - primarily driven by anger. Seems like I've gone through life in the anger - rage - anger cycle. Having been born and bred in the culture of yoga and "I am That", I have to say none of it made a difference (or so it seems in retrospect). The anger led to immense self-loathing as I saw how I reacted to things and hurt people (especially loved ones) with my words and actions over and over again. No matter how many books I read, how many techniques I tried, it was futile. At the most, I could repress it, but it would always come out, sooner or later. I even tried psychotherapy, but got bored of trying to analyze "why". To me, it was less important on why I was behaving the way I did; all I wanted to know was how I could change. There was a positive side to this anger - a single-minded determination to achieve whatever it was that I put my mind to. My family would joke every time I went into the "tapas" mode. But it was largely out of trying to prove something, usually to myself. I remember a time when the self-loathing was so overpowering when I prayed fervently for this life to end, so I could "start fresh". Little did I know that unless I worked through those vasanas, they would become my burden in every lifetime
It was despair and intense, burning desire to change that led me to meditation. Even when I started meditating, I was under the impression that I would wake up the next day, transformed Of course, that didn't happen - I almost heard my partner's voice saying "what is the use of meditating?" Looking back, it was my own voice arising from the harsh self-judgements that had become a part of my life. I knew on an intellectual level about compassion for oneself, loving acceptance of what is, having a space between this and that happening there, "I am That", etc.. etc.. I knew emotionally what compassion for others is, because I felt it. I knew all of this during moments of calm. However, when something happened and the anger returned, I would be in the middle of it and not know how I got there.
The singular difference between intellectual knowing and knowing knowing is of course, the "dawn of the witness" as Yogani calls it. It was not until that witness became a constant presence that all of everything I had been reading about for decades made any sense. All of the prayers, self-enquiry and other techniques suddenly had new energy and meaning, because they went from non-relational to relational. During the Insight Dialogue sessions at the retreat, I was astonished to discover my self-judgements. Because the witness is here, I finally know what compassion and self-love is. Am I fully established in it? Absolutely not. I am also comfortable knowing exactly where I am. Do I still get angry? Of course, I do  But all the methods described above can actually be applied, finally (whew!). I can now see events, thoughts, emotions occur "there" with a space in between.
Inner silence/the witness, is the pre-requisite (as Yogani and others have been patiently saying over and over again for so long) to effective change. In my case, until that happened, no degree of intellectualization, devotion or sheer will made a difference.
Thank you again for this topic,
kami |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 12:38:20 PM
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| Thanks all for the beautiful posting from the heart. Have no words to express how grateful I am to be here and experience this. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 1:13:56 PM
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Katrine - You struck right at the heart of what I meant - it’s the melting of the personal will. Surrender. Surrender is painful, but it brings so much benefit. Thanks for your response #61514;
Cosmic - No, thank you! There is only one! ;-)
Manigma - I love the Nisargadatta quote. Beautiful. Thanks.
Kami -
quote:
My own journey here was a result of self-destructive behavior - primarily driven by anger…The anger led to immense self-loathing as I saw how I reacted to things and hurt people (especially loved ones) with my words and actions over and over again…There was a positive side to this anger - a single-minded determination to achieve whatever it was that I put my mind to…
I completely associate. What you said could have been me describing my life. The anger was so great inside me at one point I was seething with it. I know very well the single-minded determination borne out of channeling that anger into something constructive! And I know even better the feeling of alienating the people around me through my explosively angry or aggressive reactions. Thanks for your response, it was wonderful to hear an experience so like my own.
I can say now, after 2.5 years of intense work (via the presence process, a kind of meditative discipline focussed on your emotional/pain body, which brings you to witnessing your emotional reactions as they occur inside you, before you make a behavioural response) and 3-4 months of meditation - it’s very rare for me to behave with anger. I may feel angry, but I always witness the mental story urging me to reaction, and allow myself to deeply feel the anger, and then I realize an angry reaction is not the best choice. Then I can act wisely. Also the incidences of me feeling anger are less and less.
Best wishes
Josh |
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cosmic
USA
821 Posts |
Posted - Nov 26 2010 : 7:45:42 PM
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This thread is timely for me as well. Will add my experience since it's related to suffering. Right now I'm sick with cold symptoms, and spent Thanksgiving alone (away from my family). For the first time in my life, I am thankful for being sick. For once, there is no resistance to it. There is only gratitude. I'm grateful because it shows me that my suffering is only physical. Love and happiness are still felt here. They are not dependent on my being well. Feel really blessed to be shown this.
What is helping me in this situation is remaining open. To not contract/constrict the awareness. Just allowing this to be, not wishing for it to pass. Wellness will happen. No need to rush it.
Like you said, kami, the witness makes all the difference. It's amazing what life can be when we step out of its way.
Love |
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bewell
1275 Posts |
Posted - Nov 27 2010 : 2:17:24 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
I've personally always been too sensitive, particularly to unkind words from others, and by the time I reached adolescence, I was living in an inner hell, completely lost and confused in my own grief and anger.
Mr. Anderson
I have been mulling over your words. I can relate to much of what you say, but there is something that I feel uneasy with. I am sensitive to unkindness too, and I wonder if you are echoing unkind words with yourself when you say: "I have personally always been too sensitive..." "Always"? That is a big generalization. As to making judgments about being sensitive: How can anyone judge what counts as too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, or just the right sensitivity? You feel what you feel. We feel what we feel.
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Edited by - bewell on Nov 27 2010 2:24:49 PM |
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tonightsthenight
846 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 01:24:51 AM
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Mr. Anderson, I just wanted to point out that your first quote was spoken by a fellow aspirant that lived a life of total despair with a dearth of faith.
Mother Theresa, it was revealed posthumously, could not feel god's presence, though she profoundly knew him to exist.
She said, "I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. I want God with all the power of my soul — and yet between us there is terrible separation.” On another occasion she wrote: “I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 10:06:55 AM
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Those words from mother Theresa have been used by athiests for confirmation that God does not exist. and I think I can see what would cause what christians call "the dark night of the soul", after St. John of the cross. What could cause such a feeling of abandonment by God other than expecting God to respond or do something, and not seeing it happen? (of course WE are the abandoners but we don't know it.)
Maybe part of the cause of this dark night of the soul lies in "christian" beliefs that God can be angry, and hates satan, and is jealous, etc, and will take action against these things. Is this what jesus taught?
I think these beliefs set you up for despair. Expectation is at the core of this cause.
Mother Theresa also said:
“I wish to live in this world that is so far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus,
to help them — to take upon myself something of their suffering.”
A very noble undertaking, but you can see in it seeds of her own suffering. She didn't say she would not feel the suffering because she would be with God.
At one time she wrote:
“Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an unbroken union of love.”
But she was very quiet about that time because she felt it would attract attention to her.
And then she began to accept her suffering:
“I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very small part,
of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.”
In these words you can see the ingrained belief in her darkness being suffering.
She even said herself that she believed it was harder for her to let go of her "I" than other people.
Her love of her darkness seems to be very close to silence, if she could just drop the story about it characterizing suffering.
What makes athiests different is that religious people believe we are separated from God, while atheists believe there is no god. Is this really such a great advantage to have this separation complex created by the very mind we need to minimize to know our true self?
I think these are just different styles of hogwash created by our clever egos.
So the answer would be to meditate, and try to ignore it all. |
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cosmic
USA
821 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 4:15:34 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by tonightsthenight
Mr. Anderson, I just wanted to point out that your first quote was spoken by a fellow aspirant that lived a life of total despair with a dearth of faith.
Mother Theresa, it was revealed posthumously, could not feel god's presence, though she profoundly knew him to exist.
FYI - Saint Therese and Mother Teresa are 2 different people.
Saint Therese was a mystical nun in France in the late 1800s.
Mother Teresa was more recent.
Love |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2010 : 7:59:46 PM
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ironically, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite, underwent similar experience. Centering on doubts about the afterlife, she reportedly told her fellow nuns, "If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into."
from Martin, James (29 August, 2007). "A Saint's Dark Night". The New York Times. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 9:34:42 PM
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@Etherfish/Tonightsthenight
Thanks for all your quotes and further points on Mother Teresa, and also Saint Therese. As was pointed out, I was referring to Saint Therese, not Mother Teresa. I'm aware Mother Theresa felt separated from God as I've read about her, and her own life accounts. Good evidence that if we seek liberation, a path driven solely by good actions (karma yoga?) is not sufficient.
However, the point of my post was how to make practical use of suffering. There is evidence here from both my own experience, and comments from other practitioners such as Katrine and Cosmic, that when we allow suffering, instead of resisting it, it takes on a different light, when we are surrendered to it, perhaps it ceases to be suffering. It's the same with all life, the process of completely opening and surrendering ourselves to it, instead of trying to control our experience via the personal will. I'm certain that surrender is a part of, and perhaps also a fruit of, the meditative process and spiritual progress. Byron Katie's "Loving What Is" is a good example of using self-inquiry as a practical path leading towards surrendering to what is, in a state of non-resistance... even it's non-resistance to our own resistance!
As manigma insightfully pointed out:
quote:
The biggest mistake we do is to think ourselves as a separate being having a freewill.
As we progress towards surrender to our experiences, even those which apparently cause suffering, we are corrected of this delusion.
In addition, the quote from Saint Therese, was that suffering increases our compassion for others. It wasn't related to whether or not she is personally moving towards liberation. I am not yet liberated, maybe I will be in this lifetime, maybe I won't, but according to my personal values, anything by which I can learn greater compassion and kindness for others along the way is a lesson worth learning. :-)
@bewell-I didn't mean it as a judgement of my own level of sensitivity or sensitivity in general. Perhaps i should rephrase, I've always been sensitive to the level that it causes me much pain. There, that's factual, without judgement! :-) |
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machart
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 10:13:17 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
Good evidence that if we seek liberation, a path driven solely by good actions (karma yoga?) is not sufficient.
I believe Karma Yoga (i.e. selfless service) is one of the highest forms of Yoga ...and will easily liberate anyone from whatever they want to be liberated from...it is the epitome of outpouring divine love. |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 11:14:31 PM
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Yes but without inner silence it is not complete. I don't think you can get silence from selfless service.
I know what you mean Mr anderson about suffering. Many times in my life i have been thrust into situations that seemed like they were specifically set up to put me in hell. For instance one year there was a work emergency, and all my friends went on vacation without me, and I had to work outside in the rain on my birthday, with nobody even acknowledging it. But when I completely accepted the suffering, it seemed to me that I have never known suffering.
This kind of thing has happened to me over and over, and each time I feel like I'm being dragged into hell, and then I accept it, and it seems like nothing happened.
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machart
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 11:28:31 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Etherfish
Yes but without inner silence it is not complete. I don't think you can get silence from selfless service.
Hi E-fish!
Have you tried it?
IMHO all the bending,breathing, concentrating, sense withdrawal, bliss inducing actions which lead you to inner silence...culminate in Karma Yoga....this to me is what the Gita and New Testament are all about.
I'm still working on the bending (i.e. hatha) ... |
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machart
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - Nov 29 2010 : 11:56:28 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Etherfish
Yes but without inner silence it is not complete.
Not really sure what the "it" is you are referring to...? |
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SeySorciere
Seychelles
1571 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2010 : 05:15:39 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
However, the point of my post was how to make practical use of suffering. There is evidence here from both my own experience, and comments from other practitioners such as Katrine and Cosmic, that when we allow suffering, instead of resisting it, it takes on a different light, when we are surrendered to it, perhaps it ceases to be suffering. It's the same with all life, the process of completely opening and surrendering ourselves to it, instead of trying to control our experience via the personal will. I'm certain that surrender is a part of, and perhaps also a fruit of, the meditative process and spiritual progress. Byron Katie's "Loving What Is" is a good example of using self-inquiry as a practical path leading towards surrendering to what is, in a state of non-resistance... even it's non-resistance to our own resistance!
Thank you Mr. Anderson for your beautiful post and your advice on the practical use of suffering. I, too, have realised for some time that suffering contributes enormously to bhakti and spiritual progress when used the way you stated. I confess, however, to often finding myself confused in such situations. And would be glad of advice. I spent the last 4 years going thru' lost and suffering. I discovered samyama and has been releasing in silence with great benefits since (amongst all the other AYP core practices). I am more conscious of my thoughts and release such thoughts that will lead me into the quagmire of suffering as soon as they start. I am no longer suffering. Have my issues gone away?? I think not...yet. I have just learned not to waste energy chewing uselessly on them but to accept what is. Now I think of what you said and decided to take them out again, have another good look at them, gladly suffer the pain of them and surrendering them. However, this dwelling on my suffering, is it not attachment to it?? It went on for 4 yrs that way. I don't want to start again.
See my confusion??
SeySorciere |
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Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2010 : 07:48:38 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by SeySorciere
However, this dwelling on my suffering, is it not attachment to it?? It went on for 4 yrs that way. I don't want to start again.
See my confusion??
SeySorciere
Hi SeySorciere,
Yes dwelling on suffering is not the way to solve it. But if emotions/thoughts/situations come up naturally, don't push them back, don't hide them under the bliss and peace. If something ever comes up naturally, inquire into it.
Don't force anything up or force anything away, that is what loving what is is about. At this min, if an emotion arises, deal with it in this moment. Next min if it has subsided, don't go back and revisit it and make a story of it and analyze it. If the going back happens naturally (a thought about that moment comes up), look into it, pick it up and let it go in stillness, or Katie it or do anything that you use as a self inquiry technique. At times, just dropping the thought and going about your day may seem like the thing to do, then do it, drop it in stillness with an intention it will resolve and forget about it.
All I am trying to say is, don't suppress anything that comes up naturally, you don't have to get involved to find a solution, you can just let it go, but before you do, make an intention that it will resolve. This way you are aware there is something that needs to get addressed, and as you progress you will know how to address it. Not every block can be dissolved using the same technique, and when it is time for a block to dissolve the technique will present itself... just staying open to whatever presents itself will helps us get over the blocks painlessly. |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2010 : 07:49:45 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by machart
quote:
Originally posted by Etherfish
Yes but without inner silence it is not complete. I don't think you can get silence from selfless service.
Hi E-fish!
Have you tried it?
IMHO all the bending,breathing, concentrating, sense withdrawal, bliss inducing actions which lead you to inner silence...culminate in Karma Yoga....this to me is what the Gita and New Testament are all about.
I'm still working on the bending (i.e. hatha) ...
Yes,selfless service is pretty much what I do at work all day. I get paid, but work selflessly.
What i meant by "it", is your path, or enlightenment. You are right that it all culminates in selfless service. But if you are interested in liberation, you have to find inner silence, and move on from there. That is found through meditation, and it leads to radiating love while you are doing the selfless service.
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2010 : 11:19:24 AM
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Hi SeySorciere. Thanks :-)
I couldn't put it better than Shanti did: "But if emotions/thoughts/situations come up naturally, don't push them back, don't hide them under the bliss and peace. If something ever comes up naturally, inquire into it."
I'd only add, as well as inquiring into it (perhaps before inquiring into it), allow yourself a few minutes to feel it fully, to notice if you have any resistance to feeling it (often the case when the feeling is unpleasant), and then begin your inquiry. |
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machart
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - Dec 03 2010 : 6:58:00 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Etherfish
quote:
Originally posted by machart
quote:
Originally posted by Etherfish
Yes but without inner silence it is not complete. I don't think you can get silence from selfless service.
Hi E-fish!
Have you tried it?
IMHO all the bending,breathing, concentrating, sense withdrawal, bliss inducing actions which lead you to inner silence...culminate in Karma Yoga....this to me is what the Gita and New Testament are all about.
I'm still working on the bending (i.e. hatha) ...
Yes,selfless service is pretty much what I do at work all day. I get paid, but work selflessly.
What i meant by "it", is your path, or enlightenment. You are right that it all culminates in selfless service. But if you are interested in liberation, you have to find inner silence, and move on from there. That is found through meditation, and it leads to radiating love while you are doing the selfless service.
Hi E-fish!
I have not progressed to total selfless service in my profession yet...but agree meditation will help get me there.
Thanks for your input! |
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JDH
USA
331 Posts |
Posted - Dec 06 2010 : 01:21:59 AM
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| In the last day here, I have just 'come back to life' from a violent stomach flu. My experience was that the suffering was real, and could not be transformed in any way. No good came from it in other words, no spiritual growth. Sometimes, suffering is just suffering. Other times, it is an illusion and will dissolve in self-inquiry. |
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tonightsthenight
846 Posts |
Posted - Dec 06 2010 : 6:25:54 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by JDH
In the last day here, I have just 'come back to life' from a violent stomach flu. My experience was that the suffering was real, and could not be transformed in any way. No good came from it in other words, no spiritual growth. Sometimes, suffering is just suffering. Other times, it is an illusion and will dissolve in self-inquiry.
I don't know. Not saying you're wrong on this, but I feel a bit differently...
I find that this type of suffering is analogous to something like birth, wherein the suffering is real, and no apparent spiritual growth comes of it. However, I feel that these forms of suffering represent transformation.
This transformational process does indeed include suffering... and it is the suffering of physical, 3d growth. Now, stomach flu doesn't seem like a positive thing on it's face. However, Life uses any and all means possible to effect action. So maybe it is not so far fetched to believe that even sickness and disease are representative of divine intention. |
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JDH
USA
331 Posts |
Posted - Dec 06 2010 : 9:06:17 PM
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| Why try so hard to paint a turd gold? The good that came from it was that I survived a life-threatening illness. |
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Suffering and spiritual progress
