About Meditation: Part 2

The earlier question for meditation from my reader also had a second part to it:

If I am constantly unfocused on anything how will I achieve anything? Once I am focused am I then suppose to direct all of my attention to an oppressing matter? It seems everything I've read tells me about the either the benefits of meditation, or how to get started. What should I think of when I am completely focused? How could one come to a deeper understanding through this?

While I still have to finish thoughts from part one, I will leave that for part 3 of the answer.

So in the last Blog post I answered basically:

meditation = awareness

Awareness opens up many options and it can be used for many purposes in how to navigate the movement of one's life.

A simplified example: A person living to fear. Fear causes that person to cut off all actions and stop living their life fully. Yet I teach fear is a delusion and projection: it doesn't truly exist, unless a person gives it power to exist. With awareness: fear goes away. Quite simply awareness lets you stop channeling your energy into fear, with awareness you see the potentials in life. Fear as a negative potential, it is clearly seen as such and released. In other words you can use your awareness to guide actions that empower your nature, you step around problems or help others before they become problems. So instead of wasting energy to prevent currently non existent problems you enhance your energy towards fulfilling actions. Fear just lets a person waste effort in creating personal problems.

Awareness as a result works a person towards greater potential of being: as in with awareness, actions can then be better embraced towards supporting one's life.

This is a simple example of how awareness creates a benefit from the meditation

Strangely I can summarize all the questions asked at the beginning down to a single question:

How to I become a better person?

Again we need to back up: who defines what being a better person is?

More Importantly

Why should you define how to improve yourself on other outside standards?

So it circles back around to: Where do you want to truly take a Mediation Practice?

Many mediation practices purposely don't give an answer to how for this reason:
You can't answer how to be a better , fuller person... since in reality we each define that personally by living your life in kindness to yourself and others. However: mediation opens up an awareness to how to work towards your personal path to this goal.

The deeper question is really: how would you like to express your nature!

Awareness finally ties into that answer, as with awareness you then have the ability to sense around on your path to better decide how to fulfill your nature.

What this all ends up being is a practice on how to best be yourself.

People have a habit of wanting shortcuts, to be told how to do this in a round about way, by being provided "keys" to secrets of meditation... but again as I said about secrets in an earlier post this month...

No secrets really exist, the answer is already there, but we make the path complicated to give ourselves a challenge.

I teach to make the path simple, and to take the time to enjoy just being: yourself... as that is where it all circles around to being anyway.

Part three will talk about release in meditation (hopefully). As some people will confuse awareness to be a focused process, which it can be...but most meditation practices approach awareness tied together with release... So we will tackle that issue next.

Namaste!

About Meditation: Part 1

I got this question yesterday:

How do I meditate correctly?

I will have to give a several part answer over the next few days

First: before meditation, it's more important to ask what is meditation...

People jump into meditation practices not knowing why most of the time. More times than not, people are trying to still their mind or desperate to find inner peace.

So lets start here at the root of Meditation:

Meditation is awareness applied to practice.

So the real question a person must ask:

For what reason do you desire awareness?

After you answer that, you must ask yourself what practice attains the desired set of exercises to generate the purpose you seek of awareness.

Now from my perspective as a teacher I find this logical follow up question to be equally telling:

If people jump into Meditation for stilling the mind or for inner peace: how does awareness lead to either of these states of being?

Tomorrow I will follow up with more. But for now it is a good exercise to ponder how awareness as a practice could make you life better. Since once you figure out what in your life you wish to improve, it becomes possible to apply awareness towards that goal and start achieving it: to become it.

Namaste

Therapists

A friend wrote me this compliment yesterday:

but few end up liking their therapist... except for me. :)

This relates to yesterday's post. When I work and guide people. I never work towards making a person whole to some outside definition. My work is to hold space and guide a person to following their own heart. This is a vastly different compared to how many therapists work to "expectation" or predefined measures of health.

Often times when a person sees a counselor, they are working to stay as they were and not working to change or to become what they are. In other words: trying to make a bad situation better by forcing oneself back into a box that doesn't fit life. So bad things can stay the same... Oh yes on the surface many people say they want change: yet they work hardest to stay the same. That isn't helping a person to stay whole in my book.

It's a hard job to help others flow to their life. Discover that it's a process of patience and acceptance. (Side note: this often requires rediscovering the meaning of truth and judgment to discover release and permission to be oneself)

If you are working to find your own solutions, I always stress firstly to each person that is this a process for you to discover patience and acceptance of your own heart first and foremost.

The Tao Te Ching is a great source of help here also. I won't quote it here, as it's best to make the reading one's own over than discovering meaning through someone else's heart and perception filters.

Namaste.

Healing and Spirit

What is healing?

Healing is a process to make whole.

Yet western culture separates it out. Drs, Pills, Shrinks and then on top of that: Regulations all plastic wrapping the soul. This ends up forcing people towards the same mold of being: "WHOLE"

But what is important to understand is that to be a healer is to help make another person whole.

People often forget that most western healers deal only in the physical aspects of life... since it's easiest to regulate... to a common mean. It's important to understand this in order to know the limitations of healing practices. More in later posts.

For now I would like to focus on this next question:

What does a spiritual healer do?

Spiritual healers help a person re-start their life back into a journey.

In other words: to be whole in one's life path.

Many people get stuck in problems:

• in trying to be something they are not,
• into trying to fit in someone else's predefined mold of what they should be
  
  That they forget to move with their life, as it happens. To instead move in way that goes counter to their life, counter to their own inner truth. This in turn causes harm.
  
  Don't take this wrongly. People are highly flexible able to follow many different paths. In the countless numbers of humanity there are limitless stories of what is possible.
  
  But also know for each person, some paths fit better than others. At times this means it's important to follow an easier path and at times it means taking the hardest. The job of a spiritual healer is to help guide a person along these pathways. Not to make it easier but to enable a person to explore their nature and potential fully.
  
  
  This is not a process that fits any guide book since it is undefined by default: in other words of the Tao.
  
  This is the realm of fully exploring Taoism.
  
  

I am a spiritual healer since:

I help people flow with their life as their life.

Namaste

Breathe

Last month was crazy closing the house, finishing off a bunch of federal paperwork, moving, coordinating and literally working 14 hr days helping others and doing all that at once... While I am releasing to a more normal schedule, I am not so sure the universe around me has released yet.

Here is a lesson:

• One condition of shape and form. When taking a larger shape and form, you also reshape the larger universe around you to reflect that new shape of yours... It sometimes becomes a self sustaining feedback loop to retain the more expansive shape.

You have to be very careful on how you maintain form as a result: since in reflection when re-shaping yourself, the larger universe takes notice and returns to you extra attention. Call it a test to see if you are what you project outward.

Anyways breathe when life decides its time for you to juggle and put on a show rather than worry about it.

We don't always get to pick when we are the show or are just watching the show.

If you happen to be the show, then enjoy your performance :). You might as well since you are living it!

Anyways: If I am behind catching up on anything for anyone just remind me later :)

Love to all

Namaste

Connection, Secrets and Wholeness

Connection

As a reader many reasons might exist to why you stopped by. I would take a moment to summarize all the various reasons to be this:

• Connection
  
  

As a writer again I write for many reasons but similarly I can also summarize all the various reasons again down to be this:

• Connection

---

In the time we spend reading, writing, trying out ideas... This is all a process of connection and playing about for our best fit.

We each have the good days and the bad days in how it flows together. We have special spots we go to to find solace or rest, and other spots to excitedly share out what we find. I am glad to share this place and exchange and share views. A simple spot to just exchange a few moments together.



Secrets

As a Taoist Healer I know many tidbits others would classify as secrets, but as I have taught in this blog... a secret is just a game people play to add challenges to life... We all like spice and the element of surprise.





Wholeness

So the secrets are not secrets but rather truths in which people find their wholeness. There shouldn't be a rush to find wholeness since in fact, in heart, everyone has access to wholeness at any given moment.

In fact as a healer I know a "secret" which many healers ignore. Finding or helping a person to wholeness too fast often leads to a person re-hurting themselves more, so they may keep the search moving along to pace to their larger life.

Timing is everything in the path of becoming whole.

More tomorrow... This posting is more me rambling and playing about the dynamic between connection & wholeness people play with in the definition of how we live.

Namaste

Work and Arms Loads of Tidbits.

A month ago

It was pretty insane, Tonnes of hard work, lots of work pulling everything together. I felt like an octopus weaving with all 10 arms thinking I am a squid and realizing I am only a person still with 2 arms...

At times you just need to bite down and plug through it all... The problem when working so hard, is to remember to let down. People have an amazing capacity to push themselves and to then break as a result: forgetting they are pushing their body and / or mind outside their normal shape too much.


Today.

Well I still have a big pile of work. Yet I did get a lot done. Still I needed to let down for a few weeks ago to regenerate. So I did. Be aware of yourself. Awareness is very much part of Taoist practice. We flow to our awareness and listen to what it tells us.

I teach meditation is a practice of awareness. The real question is using awareness. As an example: many people working too hard are still often "aware" of pushing themselves. Yet for many "outside" reasons they ignore the information. We always have a choice to let go. While the price might seem high, the price of crisis or breaking oneself is always far greater.

Ironically: people often distract their awareness in order to give themselves a break from being themselves. To not choose but rather to let the larger world sweep them along with day to day events of society and the world. Such choices are typically poor ones, as the larger world doesn't look out for one. That is the purpose of our own personal awareness (which the person has shut off) to protect and help live one more kindly to our nature.


Tomorrow.

I don't care about tomorrow... Busy living today. Don't get me wrong, I have a calendar, I place events in it, I am aware of all sorts of potentials that have been lined up for me.

But I will choose tomorrow which potential to embrace and best fits in my life, no matter what my calendar might say, no matter what is on the pile to do, no matter what others might expect of me, no matter what I might expect of myself (and I expect almost nothing for myself except to smile often and to breathe...)

In the end what gets done is always enough. I will enable both the potential of life and events that support the best fit to being myself with kindness and wonder.

This is important: it's the difference of having outside forces control your life without end... Or relaxing into your life and becoming yourself on your own terms.


Meanings:

In the end we each must accept how we interact with the world and ourselves. How can I supply a larger general meaning when meaning arises out from the actions you personally pick and play within?

A Taoist embraces the Tao, The wonder of undefined truth... defined only in retrospect by how it is lived in the moment... To paint a picture with 10 squid, 8 octopus and 2 human arms... would just show you my life as it stood last month. I am already in another place, elsewhere, today enjoying weeding out the zen garden and putting in some plant starts. Tomorrow will be... as it happens.


Peace in your Journey

Namaste

Teaching Non - Action and Patience

A student asks:

We have non-action and action. How do you know when to do which?

It depends, the way I often start is in small actions. Then if in my actions: outside influences keep interrupting me or if after a few days I can't get my heart around it. I drop it and just follow my heart elsewhere. However: if I start acting and potentials and little events happen that encourage me, then I flow into those actions more deeply with that outside support.

So you start with roughly 60% action enough to move forward (FYI: 50% action is just maintaining Status Quo, Less than 50% represents something else entirely but that's another topic for later...) and to test the waters and then increase /decrease accordingly into the potentials that open up to embrace.

How do I regain my patience? What importance do I place on that word and why do I feel I have lost it or need it?

Impatience represents the desire to act.

Impatience represents built up potential within a person, trying to push one to a more natural place.

When in a state of impatience: close your eyes, listen to your inner potential. Begin releasing it, but with inner guidance, to make the most of it. Rather than allowing it to burst your walls and then having to deal with uncontrolled released potential becoming flood damage later to clean up.

However: sometimes a flood is useful to blast away obstacles... :)

Discover Wisdom is Patience,

but Impatience still serves as a tool to help explore one's inner potential that builds up for all of us. Over time a Taoist learns how to hold on to greater and greater potential, allowing for greater patience in their actions and seemingly more amazing feats. Keep in mind you still have to ride a wave to learn how to surf potentials that arise in your life. To surf the bigger waves is to first start in surfing the smaller wave and potentials you experience.

To have patience is to also have played within impatience to learn how to move safely within the range of potentials we each experience.

Action and Non-action work in tandem with each other:
To complete each of us as a realized human being.

Namaste

Complications and Simplicity

People like to make life complicated for many reasons.

Strangely for many it's about challenge. People strive to make life interesting. Of course then all the layers seem to get added and then it seemingly becomes "too complicated" to have any simple answer. Also it appears that much of this complication is out of our control.

It isn't.

This is why the Taoist path is so effective, as you release, you discover what matters and in that the answers become simple again. I teach people how to remove layers of fear, delusion and false obligations...

What matters most is Acceptance and Kindness. Acceptance to many represents "faith" but I prefer using the word "acceptance" as it avoids the religious overtones of "faith". Faith is the act of ultimate acceptance... so faith actually rolls up into acceptance.

Kindness is the other half, as it represents our essence: to be kind is to live in your essence, and since we are "one" it also means to treat others as you would yourself.

Yet even the process of kindness and acceptance people make complicated... make it so you have to be certified by others and add tones of bullshit loops of outside acceptance to validate oneself... how much bull is that if we are one... ?

Here is the answer I teach so many people:

A Taoist has a full and great life...
very simply as oneself.

It might seem cliche, but how many people truly live to their heart? Instead most rush to the beat of the job, of others, of obligations, of consumption, of expectation that must be met or else, of of of of...

Remember it is not "of" rather this is all already in your heart and just is about finding peace to the heart...

It isn't always easy to find peace of heart, but it's impossible to find peace of heart when rushing to always fulfill orders and desires of others before taking some time to be yourself first.

Namaste

Harder Times and transformation

Economic times continue to get harder.

More people I know are getting laid off and more people I love are on edge of financial problems.

If you are about to lose a job remember to turn it around. To lose a job is to be in a process of release. It represents a time of transformation.

In a process of release, keep in mind to not limit yourself to answers but let go in appreciation and restart with fresh eyes and mind. All of this is represents new openings for life to start freshly. Answers always come later without trouble when not forcing them to fit some mold. The real trick is to be open to potential. This is why it is so important not to limit yourself with "what was" or "what might be" when in the middle of a time of release.

I talk from experience, having lost a job or two myself in my wandering. I know from experience to make it into an opportunity and live my life even more in times of release. To do so opens up so many options.

Namaste

Finding Temples

It's been a busy month. I have been answering far more emails of late for seekers looking for place.

We have a saying in the Taoist tradition:

The hermit lives in a cave

The great hermit lives in the city.

The temple is our life, is how we find peace ... acceptance in how we live. Now, no matter where we might be...

The place to start is where you are: practice in a garden, state park or any spot that gives an edge of clarity within.

Our Taoist Temple has just started, I use it for teaching retreats and small Taoist circles. But our temple is also our personal home and we practice living out of it. It will take decades to fully build it out. Any westerner would look at the temple room, be unimpressed and mutter "That's a sun room" Yet for us: it's the wonder filled start of a new temple, the very center of our home. Since to have a temple: is to hold space that teaches a person how to hold spirit... to have spirit is to move with your life...

Any temple is whole when filled by heart.

It's not about structure, it's the spirit and accepting wholeness we each have in being one...

In a sense, seekers go to famous temples or places where people have deposited parts of their heart over generations, in order to share in that heart... So again it's not the structure but how heart is "held" in that place which is the magic we call "temple".

So the first challenge for any seeker is to embrace the sense of place and acceptance. All temples are one, all places are of spirit: we are all one in connection.

However: know this if you are seeking a "true" Taoist temple... it isn't a place to discover in google maps. It's a process of a quest to find and release into the spirit of being whole.

Most seekers don't have the patience to let go into themselves to touch their own heart. Most seekers search for heart in another place or teacher first. To try and capture that essence they find. The quest is always the truth of turning that search around completely to end in ones own heart.

So that brings this discussion around full circle.

The great Hermit lives in the city.

Trust your heart, don't chase answers, make sure to trust to a smile and the laughter of fellow travelers to point one truly... It isn't about how hard, long or beautiful the journey is... Nor about what temple is discovered as being "the one" ... It's about embracing the joy of life itself, with kindness and your own flare that makes the difference.

Much peace in the journey.

Namaste

Teaching Taoism And Release

Yesterday I talked about how Taoism teaches a practice of release.

Lets look at this more closely today.

1. Simple doesn't mean easy!
   
   Just becuase it's simple doesn't mean it is easy. In fact learning release for most people is the hardest thing there is to do. It often takes active seekers of the Tao 20 to 40 years to master the process.
   
   
2. To release doesn't mean not to learn.
   
   Teaching the process of release is special since it requires a special style of teaching. As a Taoist Teacher I match my teaching to each student. The process requires information to compliment what the student knows in such a way to help them let go.
   
   As a result this process is still a process of learning, where a person acquires both new habits and ways of thinking to support living without "burdensome" attachments.
   
   
3. Release doesn't mean to destroy or throw everything away...
   
   Some people make the mistake of letting go too much, Cutting off so much in such a way they hurt themselves and others they love. This is not what Taoism teaches. Some seekers make this mistake when reading some quick snippets of Taoist materials. The path of Taoism also always integrates heart and kindness into our actions. As a result the process of release that Taoism promotes is a very kind and active process. One which plays out over time in such a manner to ripple out in way that considers our place in the heart of being.
   
   
4. Release doesn't follow a time table, Yet timing is everything.
   
   You can't rush nor stall the process.
   
   Teaching release is an art since timing makes a difference. If you force release, then the release will either break something or a person resists the release and it then ironically increases how much effort and time is required to discover personal release. (this is why the process can take some seekers countless decades as a person keeps adding in what they need to know...which ironically then lengthens their process of release)
   
   
   Most traditional subjects can be learned at any time just by increasing knowledge in a metered manner. Release not only requires complimentary knowledge of acceptance (see #2 before) but also must be taught in harmony to a person's life cycle.
   
   At certain points in life, we naturally add to our life and seek additional knowledge to become more and at other points in our life we are naturally letting go and are ready to embrace release. As a Teacher of Taoism I watch each student carefully and time teaching according to where a student is in their personal life. As a result Taoist teaching, even though we are teaching primarily forms of release, we also teach many other subjects in order to better match into a student's life fully. Taoist teachings tends to be holistic as a result. Each Taoist Sect taking a slightly different approach but all teaching in some manner..

   Acceptance...
   Of Tao...
   Of your way into ...
   Releasing into yourself ...

   
   This is why in the stories you hear about the guru or master rejecting students so often. As guru's we know timing is a critical factor in a person's ability to
   
   

   Release into their heart.

Namaste

Brain Freeze, This old Temple and Yup and Teaching....

Brain Freeze:

More on this a little later in the post. Working on breathing away a headache at the moment...


This Old Temple:

Evicted some more termites yesterday. Finally ripped up an old rug out of the back room. I will have to re-floor that. Having been on the road the past few years, its a bit of a awakening to be back in one place and working so hard to start fixing a place up again. Ripping out rotten lumber to chase down leaks... The place will need lots of work, the next few years will be full ones that is for sure.


Yup...

Lots going on at the moment, new students, new clients, new responsibilities... Probably why the headache is feeling a bit like a brain freeze right now.

It's all good. What will get done, is what gets done.

What is important, to keep in perspective, is not to measure to deeds and actions but simply in the kindness of how one lives to their life. Even sharing one smile in a day :) is enough

It all comes together as it needs to.


Teaching

Teaching Taoism is quite a bit different than most people would expect. Most traditions or systems teach in an additive sense, you build up knowledge which then permits additional knowledge to be gained at a future point.

Taoism reverses that to a great degree. We have a practice of release. This means no student needs to learn anything new, in fact it's often a process of unlearning bad habits or ill fitting definitions from elsewhere.

This doesn't mean not learning "new things", but the speed at which one learns Taoism is not metered to a clock, tests or having to learn new things. We use life, your life, and from that everyone has the baseline to discover release into acceptance of the heart.

Sometimes an email once three months is enough to keep a student busy moving ahead in the lesson at hand in their life.

The key point however is the wonderful simplicity of a system that is based upon release, since it doesn't require anything new to make it work, it just requires, heart, a little breath, some patience and a kind word at the right moment.


This reminds me of

The Words of the High,
or the words of Óðinn,

52.
A kind word need not cost much,
The price of praise can be cheap:
With half a loaf and an empty cup
I found myself a friend.

53.
Little a sand-grain, little a dew drop,
Little the minds of men
All men are not equal in wisdom,
The half-wise are everywhere.

54.
It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
The fairest life is led by those
Who are deft at all they do.

55.
It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
No man is able to know his future,
So let him sleep in peace.

56.
It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
The learned man whose lore is deep
Is seldom happy at heart.

As seen from this norse poem,

A kind word over complete answers indeed is a simple but full path indeed.

Namaste.

Home Retreat

Its been raining quite a bit here the past few weeks. Behind our Home / Temple is a water fall. It is an amazing mixture of mist, rumble and tumble.

When the Wailuku river flows, it more than hums... it vibrates the very land to its own beat. I love falling to sleep in this energy.

To be the river is to flow to your own course.

So many forget this, in chasing after dreams of others, follow other stories rather than their own. To wake up into one's own life... rather than just working to the office beat and expectations of those around you.

2009 is a year of release, a year to set new intentions. This year holds more potential than any other that our generation will see. From that potential will spring great things in later years. But don't forget the seed which gets planted this year, don't forget your own heart. Since it's in potential that it's possible to discover the vibration to solutions of the future.

Namaste

Connection and tidbits

Connection:

As people continue to plug into the internet, with Facebook, blogs and the hundreds of other online tools to help connect us.

Don't forget to take the time to connect to yourself. It can be so easy in the rush to stay connected to the outside world, to end up not being connected to your own inner life.

---

Tidbits:

End of November / December was such a trip for me. Just plugged and plugged and plugged away to get so much done.

Sometimes to live in the moment, means to work your arse off. *whew* yesterday i just soaked in the sun and released to be again me.

To live is a dance , we take many roles, partners, actions all to keep the motion of our life swirling.

But as the first half of the post is a reminder...

Always swirl back into being yourself :) as you play in the potentials and build up what it is to be yourself in order to release into being yourself.

Namaste

speace

I love typos.

As a Master I hold space for others. It's a honor I hold very seriously since it helps and is an assistance towards others, to find completion at their own terms. It's a very ancient and special part of practice in Taoist history.

To go on with the story I was holding some space of peace for a student today. When writing it out, my mind blurred the two words together as "speace"

I thought that was a pretty nice way of saying it.

Speace towards your moments of exploration.

It won't catch on as a word, but I still think it's cute. I love typos they play and show the mind all jumbled and brimming with potentials as the mind sorts out the chaos of integration of living in the moment.

Namaste

Shells

A seeker wrote to me a poem a few days ago. These two lines stand out to me :

life is hard
the burden upon one's back

Think about this for a moment:

We wear life like a turtle shell
to protect ourselves while exploring life, interesting combo isn't it?

People make life a burden in part to protect themselves.

It's an effective tactic, but imagine the freedom attained when releasing that hardened shell of expectations, past regrets and other accumulated "sins" we imagine exist

I can take this many directions but for today just adding it to the mix to help others ponder.

peace

new year

Blessings for your new year

remember a new year isn't a new start, unless you accept that it's now you live within.

let it be "ous"

both

Delicious
&
Wondrous

Peace