Get Inspired
Get Inspired is a complimentary feature that is intended to provide information for you to create and maintain a healthy, balanced, lifestyle. These articles will feature inspirational quotes, health related news and other mind, body, and spirit perspectives.
Attention- Wake up!
..."You have stumbled on a path that been hidden from view - a path that's been traveled by countless people before you and continues to be traveled now by kindred spirits everywhere. Even more essentially, it isn't really a path at all, because there's nowhere to go and nothing to discover; everthing you need to know and be is right here and now." -Stephan Bodian
Coming up - Enlightenment is the natural state of consciousness...
True Meditation - Adyashanti
Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness - Part 4
When we perceive the world wrapped in Silence, we are aware of being within a consciousness very different from spectator consciousness. The Silence we perceive is as much in us as within whatever we are perceiving.
Our choosing to live in the noise of our thoughts and emotions, within the incessant clamor around us, happens almost without our recognition. Moments of quiet remind us that we have neglected the core of our being.
The deeper we enter into Silence the more we become aware that this living presence is primary, and the contents of our perceiving are the secondary bursting forth of this original presence.
When we have cleared space for the presence of Silence to enter into whatever we are doing, we feel the presence of grace in our lives.
Silence - The Mystery of Wholeness - Robert Sardello
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. - Meister Eckhart
Collision with the Infinite - Part 3
Most spiritual practices presume that awakening is someplace else and must be reached or attained. But we are always the vastness - always! It is the naturally occurring human state. Where would the vastness go? Where could the infinite hide? What could we possibly need to do to become the vastness when we already are it!
- Collision with the Infinite - A life beyond the personal self - Suzanne Segal
Truly, is there anything missing right now?
Nirvana is right here, before your eyes.
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body is the body of the Buddha.
-Zen Master Hakuin, "The Song of Zazen"
Emptiness Dancing - Part 2
Awakening is a radical shift in identity. We find that we are nothing and absolutely everything simultaneously.
Awakening is being willing to ask, who am I or what am I without any script or role, without the story about who you are and what you are, releasing the script of what you think your life is about.
Once you touch upon this radiant heart of emptiness, then you know what is living this life, what has always lived it, and what is going to live it from this moment on. You realize that you are not living this life; this radiant heart is what is actually living this life-along with this radiant, empty mind. When you give up being who you thought you were and let yourself be who you really are, then this radiant heart lives your life. Then nothingness becomes your reality, and nondual awareness is what you are.
The deepest experience is when you realize that this open, radiant, empty mind and open radiant heart have always been open. They don't need to open; they are not going to open; openess has always been here.
When you realize that you can leave every self definition behind and still you are, then you begin to see that these thoughts must not be what you are. In other words, who are you when you are not thinking yourself into existence: you start to see that when you are not thnking yourself into existence, who you have taken yourself to be literally isn't there anymore. No matter what image you have of your true Self, that image cannot be the Truth.- Emptiness Dancing - Adyashanti
When I look within and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom, when I look without and see that I am everything, that is love. Between these two my life flows.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj
Wake up now - Part 1
What is awakening? It’s a fundamental recognition of the inherent insubstantiality or emptiness of the person you take yourself to be and a radical shift in your identity- from being the suffering separate self to being the eternal witness, the limitless space or ground in which all experiences arise.
When you awaken, you realize that the separate person you took yourself to be is just a construct, a mental fabrication-a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, and stories that have been woven together by the mind into the appearance of a substantial, continuous someone with certain abiding qualities and characteristics
The fact is, the awakening process, once begun, develops its own momentum without effort on your part, and the truth naturally yearns to awaken to itself through you. Eventually, after repeated listening, the truth will spontaneously spring to life inside you, and you’ll recognize that it has always belonged to you, has always been the essential truth of your being; it’s just been hidden from view.
Simultaneously, you may experience a profound silence and stillness that underlies everything and seems more authentic and real than the thoughts and feelings you generally take yourself to be.
If you’re truly resting not only in silence, but as silence, then all question are unnecessary. Generally, however, there’s a subtle separation between the I who’s resting and silence in which it rests, which is implicit in the words you use. You can spend days and even years resting in this way without genuinely awakening to the vibrant truth of your being.
When you’re fully embodying the truth of your being, you’re living not as the story you’ve taken yourself to be for a lifetime, but as the pure, empty, radiant wakefulness you’ve always essentially been. Instead of imagining yourself to be the personal center around which the frame of your life story plays itself out, you’re now the vast, unencumbered space in which life itself unfolds as an impersonal mystery, with your body-mind as just one part of the total manifestation. - Wake up Now - Stephan Bodian
The Midlife Experience
A LIfe of Meaning
The goal of our life is not happiness but meaning. Those who seek happiness by trying to avoid or finesse suffering will find life more and more superficial. Life is not a problem to be solved but a series of engagements with the cosmos in which we are asked to live as fully as we can manage. In so doing we serve the transcendant meaning that is meant to be brought into being through us. In fleeing this fullness of life, we violate our very purpose.
In the second half of life there are many experiences of defeat and disappointments. We lose friends, our children, our energies, and finally our lives. The task of life asks that we embrace this agenda of apparent loss as much as the agenda of acquisition that the first half of life served. Life is ragged and truth is still more raggedy. The ego will do what ever it can to make iself more comfortable but the soul is about wholeness. Wholeness is not about comfort or goodness or consensus, it means drinking this brief unique, deeply rooted vintage to its dregs.
Wisdom - part 4
Where ego consciousness is the mark of the first half of life, the larger Self is the mark of the second half of life. One now comes into contact with wisdom. Wisdom begins when we recognize that there are these split off parts of the personality that have a life of their own. Wisdom allows one to find meaning and interpret ones own life story. It allows us to reinterpret the past, present, and future. One begins to sense the greater Self who has been at the heart and core of ones life since birth. To be in touch with this Self is wisdom.
Solitude
It may be necessary for us from time to time to absent ourselves from the world in order to reflect, regroup or revision our journey, but ultimately we are to bring the larger person back to the world. To achieve this requires solitude. We must be alone if we are to find out what it is that supports us when we can no longer support ourselves. Only this experience can give us an indestructible foundation, a necessary prerequisite to personal growth.
Maturity
This process of maturation of the personality calls for owning ones shadow, realizing ones uniqueness, harmonizing ones inner and outer life and finally realizing the divinity within. For those who worry about the impact of their journey on others we need to remember that our best way of helping them is by living our own life so clearly that they are free to live theirs.
It takes courage to face ones emotional states directly and to dialogue with them. But therein lies the key to personal integrity. To take this on is the greatest responsiblity of life. And pehaps the goal of the journey is the journey itself. We may even come to realize that it does not matter what happens outsicde of us as long as we have a vital connection with ourselves.
September 2008: The Shadow - part 3
By midlife the capacity for self deception is exhausted. While the encounter with ones lesser qualities may be painful their acknowledgment begins the withdrawal of their projections onto others. Enter the shadow. The shadow represents everything that has been repressed or gone unrecognized. By midlife one has managed to repress large portions of ones personality. How humbling it is to recognize the inner dependency on outer authorities, projected onto spouse, boss, church, or state. Many parents project their unlived lives onto their children. Overreaction, excessive emotion is sure signs that something unconscious has been touched and is finding expression. We will find that what we fear in ourselves we will fear in the other and what we avoid addressing in ourselves we will avoid in the other.
The shadow should not be equated with evil, only with the life that has supressed. Negative shadow contents can be destructive when acted out unconsciously but when consciously acknowledged and channeled they can provide new directions and new energy.
The encounters with the shadow are never easy. Each of us must rework painful feelings and experiences and come to terms with ourselves as victims and villains. One may be asked to make earth shattering changes, to rework the entire personality around a new center, which will profoundly affect every role, relationship and commitment. Ones life will be different but it will still be built on the foundation that has been there from the beginning.
You will need to bear the tension of the opposites. Holding onto the ego, the identity ones life has built, while holding onto the new awareness of ones shadow. One needs to bear this tension until somehow this new element can be integrated into who I am, without totally destroying who I have been. This examintation of ones life cannot be undertaken on a whim or finessed through a weekend workshop.
August 2008: Life Cycles - part 2
Midlife is the third major birth one encounters in the life cycle. The first life cycle is about the development of the ego. Youth is the completion of this development that began in childhood. Midlife integration cannot happen if the ego development is poor. Midlife and the mature years are as developmental as childhood and youth. The midlife years summon us to the inner journey, to integrating the unconscious elements of the psyche. This venture and journey toward integration and wholeness should go on all during the second half of life and be completed in and through the process of dying, death being the fourth birth. The vitality and health of the person in the mature years depends on his or her sucess in making the midlife transition. The mature years are the spirit years. They depend on and bulid on the conversion of midlife.
Difficulties will primarily be in dealing with ones inner world, the layers of the personal unconscious that have not been assimilated. It's about becoming ones true Self than about the ego and following the dictates of the collective. It is about asking the question who am I really and looking for an answer within the inner environment. It's about acknowledging the inevitability of change and to go with it, finding what is true for oneself and to live it in the world.
July 2008: Midlife experience - part 1
One does not choose the midlife experience; It arises from within when the time is ripe. It can be felt like an enormous force pressing from below. The signs and the symptoms are there; depression, overindulgent affairs, recurrent shifts of jobs and so on. Its urgency is felt as disruptive; causing anxiety when aknowledged and depression when suppressed. More and more people are living into and through the midlife period wanting to know what is the meaning and purpose after youth. This middle passage is less a chronological event than a psychological experience.
When embarking on the middle passage the unfinished business of the first half of life becomes painfully apparent. All future growth or decline is dependent on this encounter. As we reach the end of youth the psyche prepares us for this new phase of development and self-knowledge. At midlife we are moving out of the child youth half of life into the second half of life which makes up the midlife and mature years. This new phase of life takes place in the unconscious. Ones own unconscious story, dormant in the psychic layers of the personal unconscious are the first to be claimed. Getting in touch with ones conscious and unconscious life story is preparing the way for increased self knowledge, self appropriation, and self acceptance. One can no longer be the person one became in youth. The conscious personality developed during childhood and youth is no longer the center of the stage. No longer is the ego the center of psychic life.
This article is an excerpt from the following material:
Mid-Life Spirituality and Jungian Archetypes by Janic Brewi and Anne Brennan
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life - How to finally, Really Grow Up by James Hollis PH.D
The MIddle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife by James Hollis PH.D.
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