Based on a request by several of our blog community, I'm setting up this topic to explore the idea (and practice) of transformation. There's certainly been ample talk of change amidst our political scene this year -- and that brings up a few questions:
What's the difference between change and transformation?
What are the various forms that the transformation of human consciousness can take?
What is required for a true transformation to occur?
Is transformation a natural process with humans?
Is it necessarily a good thing?
What are your experiences with your own transformation or that of others?
Since almost every topic we have explored here has inherently built into it a notion of the transformational process, I felt it might be helpful to take a closer look at this fundamental element that seems to be a necessary ingredient in any type of lasting, systemic change.
There is still another active topic in motion as well, "Genius Having an Identity Crisis -- How Economics Might Save/Destroy the World." So please feel free to add your thoughts and questions to either.
All the best to each of you,
Christopher
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Motivational Psychology & Transformation!
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a world of transformation.
Time Line: http://www.ipub.com/thomasgall/time.html
My father completed his PhD work in Educational Psychology. His thesis was on NLP in application to ESL on sabbatical in Jerusalem. It’s still being used to this day. My dad got to have the most amazing life, he grew up in a time of unlimited opportunity in the 60’s and I believe Adler was one of the professors that reviewed his thesis. He even got to work with Disney and was recognized for starting the small record books for Disney, they made 16 million that year. He was also the first person to generate one million dollars in one year for New York life which at the time had never been done before.
When we returned to the US from Israel in 1979 my dad took a seminar called EST. Werner Erhard because of the works of Alan Watts decided to make a seminar to help people achieve transformation in their life. I took the seminar in 1982 at the age of 13.
My life has been a product of this new way of being transformed or letting go of stuff which has allowed me to be free in unlimited possibility.
My father believed in unlimited possibility and exposed us to multiple cultures and languages growing up all over the world. He speaks about 13 languages. What I remember about dad is that he could do anything and taught me that anything was possible. They had diagnosed me with hyperactivity as a child, but my dad decided not to medicate me, rather he exposed me to five language and multiple cultures traveling around the planet. It was an amazing adventure that I still cherish to this day.
My dad current book Guerrilla Selling is available worldwide.
Enough about how much I love my Dad, I hold him to high for any man to live up to…
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Christopher asked, “What's the difference between change and transformation?”
Transformation: (This concept is influenced by Zen and Motivational Psychology)
The use of the word “transformation” in the EST context is a permanent & lasting change. Changing something in the EST context is changing then changing back and forth.
Erhard said, “Don’t change beliefs. Transform the believer.”
Change vs. Transform 1. Change is altering what you are doing in order to improve something that is already possible (more, better or different). Transformation is altering the way you are being in order to create something that is currently not possible in your reality.
Thus Erhard said, “One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you’re just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing.” He went on to say, “to make sure a person doesn’t find out who he is, convince him that he can’t really make anything disappear. All that’s let then is to resist, solve, fix, help or change things. That’s trying to make something out of something.”
In the spirit of me creating something out of something, I will end now, and continue later with Christopher’s other questions.
I must say, this is an intriguing topic -- and one in which I am most enthused to participate.
ReplyDeleteHaving been involved in a variety of transformational disciplines over the years and worked very hard to bring about transformation on a large scale basis, I'm most interested to see where we can take this conversation. Naturally the real work of transformation is first and foremost an on-going personal process. Where we take it from there can at times lead to a slippery slope that requires a genuine degree of humility and ego-less-ness to navigate.
I think it’s also worth noting, knowing some of this group, that a number of us attended some of the early Erhard trainings. Add to that the Big Sur days, Stanislav Groff and others and that we encountered along the way -- Buddhist training, Kundalini, and Silvio's days as a Jesuit -- and I find myself fondly remembering that there was a genuine movement afoot during those times.
Now, it seems, we've quietly slipped back into a mainstream setting, but not without bringing with us the deeper sense of those experiences. For as ThomasGall suggests, transformation implies a change from which one cannot return (and thus Christopher's suggestion stepping through the door – (and the part he left dangling for us to fill in was that the door closes behind you permanently -- there is no going back).
There is much more to come -- from all of us -- I am sure. For now, however, I'm going to retire for the evening with a renewed sense of commitment to the work of awakening that I and so many others find ourselves engaged in.
Thank you, Christopher, for opening up a forum on this topic.
Sincerely,
Anna
I wanted to share more on this language thing I keep discussing in transformation, so here goes addressing transformation on a personal level starting with the subject of temporality below… this is what Erhard used in his training, the temporality information was re-created from a Jerome Downes Seminar.
ReplyDeleteWerner took the linguistic work of Fernando Flores (promises, declarations, requests and assertions as a means of achieving sociological reliability) with the ontological theories of Heidegger (inauthentic definitions of self) and to some extent Wittgenstein ("framed conversations") and Rorty (the conundrum of the discrepancy between notions of reality as evident from the points of view of solipsistic thought versus social convention) to create his Erhard training seminar or EST. It was later sold to his employee’s and is now called the LandMark Forum.
Temporality: [ be/do/have ] Insights about temporality. Having time like a possibility.
When you can stand in “empty and meaningless.” Then life is empty of meaning. Against the background of “nothing” is “everything.” Human beings come into being through language, out of the undifferentiated mass of nothing. It’s important that we understand and appreciate the development we are in being, not doing. Who you be and what you do occur in two different domains of existence. The source of action is who you’re being.
Language is a leap from “undifferentiated nothingness” into being (language is the house of being).
If you’re born being human, you’re born into a way of being called becoming:
Have -> Do -> Be
The flow is from have to do to be. It’s the source of the “winning formula;” “failure to be” and “identity” arise together. The insight is the temporality is given in the relationship I have with time, like becoming, when you’re becoming, it’s later, we need time to become.
Temporality arises in language. Time (timeless time) is “as if” independent of language.
When you stand in nothing, language and being arise together. When I stand – am that I am, then I am being
BE -> DO -> HAVE
This gives a whole different flow to life. It’s more natural. The possibility of commitment is that it creates a flow from BE to DO to Have. When I say possibility, think of time like possibility. To become, I need time. When I’m being, possibility gives time, being gives possibility. This is a variation of Martin Heidegger’s view of time. When I’m becoming/in-order-to-ing, I’m working against something. It’s not time I’m working against, it’s temporality given by becoming. When it’s “timeless time.” It’s time as a possibility.
Timeless time. Like being graced with time. You cannot be whatever it is that you’re trying to become. “Failures to be” are when something happens and you “can’t be” and then “you’re not,” then you try to become something else. In this vicious cycle of becoming, every success/accomplishment/everything you get/have becomes a demonstration that you’re Not – a reinforcement that you’re not.
In Zen they have something called “practice.” We hear practice like – “go do something to become something.” In Zen, you practice – “being in the world of becoming.” “Practice” as in “being with the material of life.” With this concept of not doing, we defeat “doing-ness” here. There are no schools in mastery. There’s no being present in schools; it’s do do do. What we want to open up in our lives is “practicing being.” Stop surviving, in-order-to-ing. We should be being while we’re doing.
In the martial arts: … being is movement, not doing.
Past – Present – Future
Does the always already way of being for human beings have access to the past?
-No, because it’s already happened.
Does the always already way of being for human beings have access to the present?
-No, because it’s happening now. It’s a continuous now.
Does the always already way of being for human beings have access to the future?
-No, because it’s hasn’t happened yet.
Where are you standing if you have no access to the past, present or future? This is critical. You are standing in resignation/being victim. We have no past-present-future like distinctions. The past-present-future is really the past, the always already way of being related to time. Our adaptation is to become something/someone else, to fix, to change me, you, it.
The always already way of being for human beings has it’s foot nailed to the floor. This is the startling breakthrough. If you think (thinking as opposed to being thought up), you would think that the past gives you your present. But what give you your present is the future that calls you forth; and for most people what’s in the future is their past; and this doesn’t give present like a freedom that calls you to be. If we can put the past into the past, we’ll have an empty future. How do we do that if you’re standing in the past? You complete your past and stand in nothing (with no loss of power or ability). There are only two places to be standing in life: in the past or in possibility; in “significance/meaning” or in “no significance/no meaning.” It’s a great question to have up in front of you all the time.
I can’t have a breakthrough in being without a context for it. However, being human does have random breakthroughs.
The next phase of this conversation is, what do you want to design as a possibility once you’re standing in nothing? That’s the temporality aspect of possibility. When we hear possibility, we should hear time (possibility gives time). Practice, practice, practice that gives master of being. Practice being possibility. We should go out into the world being in the material of life.
The world is the gymnasium of becoming. Transformational work is the gymnasium of context – that gives being.
Get on the court and be~ !
ThomasGall, you've written a wonderful essay on transformation as seen through the eyes of your teacher, Mr. Erhard. It is, as you've explained, a very interesting mix of Alan Watts, Zen, Buddhism, Western Psychology, and NLP.
ReplyDeleteAre you open to the possibility that there are more paths to transformation than the one to which you’ve been exposed?
I bring this up for several reasons.
It seems to me that all of our concepts about transformation are merely mental constructs built around language, which in Western culture has come to be viewed as something sacred in and of itself (I am finding that this addiction to language is one of the primary obstacles we face in our Western minds to being able to expand beyond the linear, logical sphere in which we tend to operate).
EST raced through Canadian culture not along after it took off in the U.S. The challenge I see with this particular approach to the transformational process is that people who have become steeped in it, seem to be limited by its jargon and the other aspects of its paradigm and do not seem to be able to have an authentic conversation about their own experience without framing it in the paradigm that Mr. Erhard (or his acolytes) installed in their brains.
This is, of course, true of any religion or philosophy when one becomes confused and forgets that the map (the dogma or teaching) is not the territory (actual life, enlightenment, God, etc.). which is beyond words.
I remember reading or hearing a quote from St. Francis that states something to the effect that, "In order to truly live one's religion (or one could add, philosophy), one must transcend that very religion."
This is my concern -- and I've experienced the very same phenomenon in my own life -- that I become so married to a paradigm (be it religious, philosophical, political, or scientific) that I am no longer free to simply experience life (without words) and to thus be open to wildly new ideas, possibilities, passions, experience, and beyond.
So my question to each of us is:
Could it be that transformation itself is beyond words and that our attempt to explain it is merely our left-brained tendency to safely put everything back in a box so that we can be more comfortable?
Most sincerely,
Sarah
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteYes, you’re so right! God/Spirituality is beyond our measure.
I do use Mr. Erhard as a reference too often. I also didn’t want to lay claim that all this information is mine or my words, because there is nothing new under the sun.
As you said, Mr. Erhard used a lot of different approaches, so I thought this was covering many topics and uses to create transformation in one’s life. That’s why I didn’t just give him credit; I wanted to point out that he took the information from many sources.
I think EST/Landmark, also because of their aggressive multi level marketing and use of keeping you in their many seminars is annoying. It isn’t a cult like Scientology, but the members do become fixed and give all their allegiance to landmark in a cult like manner. They also get stuck in the terminology as you say. But I do have a back ground in psychology and Zen teachings and I wanted to use these philosophies as my discussion on transformation. The landmark seminar is simply Zen on steroids done in a western seminar for profit.
Foregive me for quoting Mr. Erhard again, but I am as you say a bit fixed, "Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit. If you experience it, it's the truth. The same thing believed is a lie. In life, understanding is the booby prize."
This speaks to your comment that the understanding is the booby prize.
I really love the theory side, so I would be sad if we couldn't play in it a little!
That said, I often get to "look good" by talking about the theory and not take on my own life, by living an extraordinary life.
I agree with your question that enlightenment or transformation is beyond words, but I am not ready to retreat to a Zen monastery, I choose to live in the western world, so I do things like a walking meditation to detach from meaning and assumptions. I am fully and totally entrenched in the chain of suffering, living in the western world I have little escape from suffering.
As Christopher tells me and as I can read by all of your very literate and educated commentary, I am among Giants. I am blessed that you would let a young man like me play here, so I ask in a loving and kid like manner, as Trihn would do, where do you want to go today?
I can't believe I'm pulling this jargon out of my dusty old EST toolbox, but ThomasGall, Sarah, we all having our "winning formula" that we've learned as a means of, as ThomasGall implies, "looking good" -- and we often spend a vast majority of our time living out our "story" as the line goes.
ReplyDeleteThe question ThomasGall recites -- "Where would you like to go today? -- is an essential one, if (and it’s a big “if) we're able to take that question beyond theory -- beyond the safety of intellectual concepts. Far too many of us spend time hiding out within the camouflage of intellectualized transformation (and I certainly find myself tangled in that trap more often than I want to admit).
Where I'd like to see this conversation lead us, is beyond our winning formulas and stories into the territory of the un-explored; the domain of the uncomfortable; beyond our mental manipulations. I don't claim to know how that might happen, but that's my wish, because frankly, talking about it alone, just doesn't do it any more.
Sincerely,
Anna
I'm not as educated as many of you are -- and I haven't attended all of the cool seminars and retreats that you have -- but in my simple life experience, it seems my most transcendent moments are the ones that happen when I stop thinking and simply feel. Feeling, to me, means I am alive.
ReplyDeleteI remember a saying from one of my high school classes about philosophy by a man named Descartes who lived centuries ago. He said, "I think, therefore I am" and people have taken that saying to be the truth. But to me the saying that is more truthful in my experience is, "I feel therefore I am."
As soon as I begin to think about it or put it into words or try to hang on to an experience of the divine or the "all" or any moment like that, it pollutes that experience and makes it so small and so limited that what is left are the mere ashes of what was an everlasting fire.
Transformation itself, for me at least, is a moment of transcendence -- when we experience ourselves beyond our little mind and beyond our ego -- when we experience a greater truth of who we are -- an eternal limitless place of being.
How that moment comes about is so different for everyone. I'm sure there are formulas and rituals and processes that increase the chance that we'll enter that space, but still that flash of insight seems to occur when something in us signals that we are ready to see the vastness and unity of all that is -- and that we are.
It's in those moments that I realize that I, too, am Love. It's the essence of that experience that somehow remains in me after those kind experiences. It's that flame in my heart that guides me to be a better person to myself and the people I'm with every day, that leaves me feeling constantly blessed.
With gratitude,
Skye
I totally understand what everyone's been saying about the limitations of language and the post-realization some seem to have experienced that EST and other similar approaches -- to a certain extent -- twisted Zen and their other foundational practices into cult-like money-making devices. However, I think it's also easy to forget that the less-than perfect approaches of Erhard and his contemporaries successfully re-packaged Eastern practices and philosophy into more palatable formats that enabled them to be presented to Westerners in a way that fit their culture. EST and other such workshops also made accessible several very valuable concepts that had not been fully popularized in Western culture until then:
ReplyDeleteA. The concept of personal responsibility and personal accountability (being equated with power and the ability to change one's circumstances and to learn from the past vs. blame and the tendency to get stuck in the past and project it onto the future); and
B. The notion that our reality is a subjective version of life (and of others) that is constructed of the meanings that we give things and the unconscious filters we wear; and the logical next step that we are "creating" our reality in each moment.
Gaining a deeper insight into these concepts has done more, in many instances, to radically alter or transform the lives of individuals than the prolonged and often victim-supportive methods of psychoanalysis that were going on at the time these workshops cropped up.
In many regards, the transformation movement, that sprouted during those years, radically altered the path of therapy and gave birth to approaches like transpersonal psychology, performance coaching, and opened the door for Zen and other Eastern and holistic practices to enter into the mainstream of our thinking.
Like any methodology, though, EST had its short-comings, not the least of which was its tendency to take itself too seriously. But perhaps the biggest reason EST faded and the Forum and a host of non-Erhard practices emerged with such a fervor was, in my opinion, Erhard's unwillingness to take into account the spiritual dimension to life and include it in his models and his processes.
Much of what has been expressed here by many of you points to that spiritual nature -- the realm of the felt and of pure experience. That realm has also been largely absent from Western science, business and even, in some cases, religion. Without it, though, we run the risk of going through life without truly experiencing the Life Force that courses through each moment. We then end up making far too many decisions without our heart being involved in the process and thus are only using half of the body/mind intelligence available to us.
For that reason, I think that the biggest transformational opportunity, especially for those of us in the West, is to really practice opening our hearts throughout the day and to feel and experience life and others fully; realizing that (as Skye and others have expressed) whatever words we put around those experiences are merely limited representations of the experience itself.
All of that said, I'd like to ask the question to everyone as to whether you think words do have actual power; and if so, to what extent?
I'm really interested in hearing answers that aren't dualistic (i.e. not it's all about words; or it's not all about words), but instead to hear how the felt and the thinking experience meld together.
Thanks!
Christopher
In my experience, the actual moment of transformation is, without question, beyond words (though words may have been one of the triggers for such an experience). I do not believe, on the other hand, that words are therefore without value or power.
ReplyDeleteWhat often seems to happen, however, when we speak of language, is that we act as if words were an objective medium, because they take a significant step from the right brain domain of feelings into the left brain’s seemingly more logical realm of language.
Words do carry tremendous power -- to impose meaning, to elicit action -- but it is a power that is very subjective and largely dependent upon the interpretation and thus corresponding feelings of the listener or reader.
This very intersection of the word and its nexus with feelings provides us an important reason to consider what our host has invited us to ponder -- and that is that words and feelings operate inescapably together in so much as we are dealing with human beings and not machines.
If we were living in a world where we had learned to communicate feelings without language, might words be a needless concept?
Perhaps, but we will likely never know this for in our world, the power of the pen is mighty and our ability to put words to use and motivate action is one of the ways that we can stimulate the process of transformation and heightened awareness.
This realization raises yet other questions which are also pertinent to our discussion.
What is intention?
and
What, beyond the lite version preached in "The Secret," is the actual power of intention?
Anna
Anna,
ReplyDeleteNot to play the role of the school marm, but I do need to make a slight correction in your commentary and side with our charming ThomasGall (and his much maligned Mr. Erhard).
There is an important process that occurs somewhere between a word being uttered or heard and a feeling being evoked. That process is that of giving meaning to a word. And I would suggest that it is the meaning given to the word that gives it its power and renders it interpretable by a person.
It is also essential for us to understand that the meaning of a word is an individual as each person who hears it is unique. And thus language is, at best, a clumsy way of conveying a concept (which is itself a mental construct and not the thing itself).
But to Mr. Erhard’s and ThomasGall's manner of thinking, it is the fact that we are meaning-making machines that gives rise to our stories about ourselves, the roles we cast ourselves into in those stories, and the winning formulas which then become necessary in order for us to preserve the script which is laden with ample evidence that our meanings are correct (and thus that our world makes sense and we have a defined place in it).
Ultimately, what Zen and all such related disciplines attempt to do, in one form or another, is provide a means by which a person strips themselves of their story, actively questions and attacks the meanings they have created for themselves and words, and lays themselves bare and without meaning in order to experience the world afresh in each and every moment (hence our man, ThomasGall's, reference to Erhard's borrowed notion of creating something from nothing).
While this practice makes very clear sense intellectually (and in the realm of words), it is much harder to put into practice amidst the moment-by-moment realties of the experiential world in which we live and of which words pale by comparison.
That is why the moment of transformation alone is so often viewed with suspicion by Zen masters and wise ones in other wisdom traditions -- because the moment of transcendence itself is but a peak at the larger, limitless reality -- and a life of practice is most often required in order to translate such experiences into our actions and interactions in the world of the mundane.
Christopher is correct inviting us to realize the intersection of words and experience, thinking and feeling. It is the joining of these two that in many ways, allows us to be whole and have a means of living in that illusory instant we call “transformation.”
Dot P.
"Enlightenment is the greatest of all delusions."
ReplyDelete~ Trungpa Rimpoche
This way of transformation is very suspect to me. Why would one want to go through door and not be able to go back?
ReplyDeleteWhat if world on side of door you walk through to is not a world you like? That could be very bad.
Perhaps one should think very carefully before taking such a very large risk.
Safe at home with family, or in job, or with mistress. These things might all fall apart if one steps through this locking door.
Trinh is not sure about such things. Perhaps someone might explain why people seem to be so concerned about this -- making a life's work of ruining people's lives.
What kind of karma might you be creating by doing so?
Thank you for hearing my thoughts,
Trinh
Nyguen:
ReplyDeleteDid Trungpa Rimpoche influence Sogyal Rinpoche? I loved The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying!
So with Nyguen’s quote of Rinpoche, I continue the conversation in a direction I can manage, regardless if it might be left brain mental masturbation.
Rimpoche said, "Enlightenment is the greatest of all delusions."
Dogma and religion were almost a strong influence in my life, till I had a profound moment with the Mormon Church telling me that even if I thought about a woman in sin, I was committing adultery. I had a dream where Jesus sat with me and laughed at the idea that man would say he said such a thing, given the fact that our imagination is not us, only what we may become with words and intentions put into practice.
It was in that year,(1987) that I read a course in miracles and finally release myself from the delusion of dogma and organized religion. This is about me letting go of organized religion, please take no offense if you are religious, this is not the truth, for like I said, I don’t claim to know the truth. I believe personally in a sort of metaphysical concept of God: we are Gods synapses. We are an infinite fractal of Gods creation perceiving itself infinitely in infinite possibility.
So I am not talking about spiritual transformation, although Christopher makes the profound point that we can’t divorce the two concepts for they are the same as Mr. Erhard failed to discuss in his seminars.
If I were to discuss spiritual enlightenment after my own enlightening experience with Zen at a 8 hour meditation session, I reached something that I thought was the “white light” or enlightenment and I was told that it was simply another delusion. But with this experience I did learn that there was no need for psychedelic drugs because 8 hours of sitting in nothingness of thought allows the mind or ego to create much more amazing illusions and without a hang over.
Dot P please help me with this… As I said in an earlier post, I believe that we are mostly pattern robot machines. We are essentially 99% neural chemical network patterns, the thing that I call spirit only exists for a split second in the now, which is very elusive. The minute I imagine and declare with words a new possibility into my existence, that new possibility is taken over and run by the robot pattern machine. I exist, in words, in the present tense only. My body is a biological robot; my spirit is taking a ride in this robot body with the mind/ego.
So I have been discussing this angle because I am not ready to go off the deep end with metaphysics or transcendence because such conversation are a very slippery slope. In college, I had an atheist professor who did his thesis on Kant, he was teaching philosophy of religion to us, when the movie The Matrix came out, that was the most amazing “God in the Box” or “God in Matrix” discussion I have ever had or care to have again.
But what I can do because enlightenment is possibly a delusion, and western life is suffering, which leads me to the truth is out there and not knowable; I can choose a practice that works for my personal transformation, as I know it. That practice is figuring out that which I don’t know, I don’t know, or something that stops me in life (because I am constantly confounding truth with my assumptions), then let this illusion go (or put it in my past where it belongs), finally declare a new possibility. A new possibility that inspires and moves me that I can share with other people and be. A new possibility that I can live into being.
BTW… after letting go of past and learning to create transformation in your own life, LandMark does a course called Self Expression and Leadership, in the course you learn to create transformation with others on the planet. This is amazing, (more so then our personal transformation), and since 1979, this course has been creating possibility globally exponentially. See the websites below:
http://www.landmarkeducation.com/menu.jsp?top=22&mid=11020&bottom=3058
http://landmarkeducationnews.blogspot.com/
But again, this is just me, Christopher challenged me to get out of my head and mend the emotional and logical together (or if I do that without even knowing it), be open to another way.
So as Trihn says, “Perhaps one should think very carefully before taking such a very large risk.”
To which I reply, the greatest risk of all in life is not to risk, and I leap into the infinite possibility knowing full well that the outcome is both good and/or bad, I am a western man living in suffering by choice, fully awake…
No shit! Trinh has said it straight out… because my life has basically come unhinged… freaking unraveled since my little episode with the Big Out There!
ReplyDeleteI mean… how do you even pretend that your world is the same… that relationships are the same… that your job is the same… when your whole life and everything you ever knew is blown apart… obliterated?
Still… somehow… in spite of it all I have this feeling… this impulse… this something indescribable that leaves me feeling a sense of peace… even euphoria at times.
Maybe that’s the delusion that Nyguen is talking about… but I have to tell you all that I’ve never felt more fully alive… and less in fear in my life.
Christopher… you remember those talks you had with me for several hours… and how I had gotten myself… as you called it… “all wrapped around the axle?” Well all of that has disappeared… like gone! And I realize that I have no idea of what will happen next… in my life… and in the next moment… but it’s all okay because I’m in the flow.
So yeah… it’s a risk… and one that for me at least… is totally worth the freaking price of admission!
Loving you all!
JJ
It appears that Trinh may be too late. For too many of you have become drunken with the nectar of enlightenment.
ReplyDeleteWhat will you now do? Hopefully you will not tempt others to leave their safe lives and join you in jumping off the cliff into this land of great uncertainty -- this place of not knowing.
How many of you will surrender to this place of suffering where ThomasGall stays fully awake?
How many wish to have their lives "blown apart" like my sweet friend JJ?
Can this be a good thing?
How could the world go on with everyone knowing that they did not know anything -- that everything was merely a big story -- a fairy tale of their own creation?
What would happen to religions? There would be no more reason to point the finger at others or to feel right about one's path? Or to do good things so God would not punish them?
How would political leaders fight? Everyone would know their reasons for fighting were not real.
Shall we leave the starving to die because their suffering is merely their imagined life?
Should the young girls who are raped and tortured be told not to worry because their pain is merely their story?
What about your dreams? Are you ready to abandon those as well? They are only fancy images that dance in your head and are of your own creation?
And your children's dreams?
And love?
Is it too just a fantasy?
And your happy moments? Just a gas bubble in your brains? Are we no more than monkeys playing in the trees, drunken with the wine of fermented coconuts?
This thing of transformation is most troubling. It seems to rob human life of those things that bring joy to life. If nothing is real by drinking of this nectar, I think I will quickly turn away from such a thing.
Perhaps there should be a law against transformation. Can someone tell me of what good it is?
Thank you for your patience,
Trinh
Trihn:
ReplyDeleteGeorge Bernard Shaw said,...
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth."
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. "
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
AS I search your words everytime for the many lessons.
Your friend:
Thomas M Gallagher
Trinh ask,
ReplyDelete“How many of you will surrender to this place of suffering where ThomasGall stays fully awake?”
Transformation or life isn’t really suffering for me Trihn.
I have a wonderful life.
I use this metaphor because the Buddha said that when we want and desire things in life, we enter into a sort of chain of suffering. I understand what he meant because when I want things the perception of time, till I get that thing that I want, is extended. And this wanting person can be sad until the destination or thing finally arrives in one’s life because of that desire. It is true that hunger & pain are part of living in life.
But for me, I thrive in the pain and hunger, for they make me strong and wiser.
I don’t care so much about the destination as the journey, which I look forward to. The declaration of a possibility for something, I wish to create in my life is done so, to further the journey. The excitement isn’t in the destination that I will be at, but for me its’ in the journey that I will discover along the way. Sometimes, I discover that which I wanted, was not what I wanted, so I transform again. You see the door may be closed, but I am a butterfly who can met aphorize again and again into an infinite amount of possibilities.
Time might be extended when I desire something, but that’s ok for me, because since I am not meditating, time is going by faster for me in this western world, then it might for a monk in a retreat counting every second in a Zen state. Since I spend my life filling my head with these thoughts, this causes my perception to be in the past and future more often, thus time goes by faster. So time is already fast for me, I want to slow it down. I do walking meditation letting go of meaning and assumptions in my daily life because I don’t have or take time to meditate, this allow me to slow down time.
Trihn, I am not saying ignore the child that is starving. The hunger project that is part of this transformation effort since 1979 is doing a great deal to feed the world. The current problem with feeding the world is not resources, but prejudice from upper class in each country that will not let the food be distributed for fear they lose their power of those starving and hungry people. These wealthy prejudice people also want the food for their own profit. So transformed mankind brings food to these countries to feed the poor and starving and their fellow countrymen take it away at gunpoint.
I think a transformed society would not allow a young girl to be rapped, because clearly in Thailand babies both girls and boys are being raped legally. While, in the west we have rape too, we are doing are very best to stop it. More needs to be done.
You asked what about children’s dreams, our fantasy and happy moments. These are all still part of life, as much as we think we are transforming our life. We are still stuck in life. Doing our best to make a better day.
The more I come to understand this transformation path; I am still stuck in the fallacy of human perception. I still can’t avoid the assumptions of the mind. I still get stuck in bad habits. I am still in life, so I work on it every day to hope and achieve a better life for all.
Trihn says, “Perhaps there should be a law against transformation. Can someone tell me of what good it is?”
The is a law or saying is, ‘Ignorance is bliss”. But we have an organized world that is hoping that we take this line. These oil and money power types know that if we follow the path, they will stay in control.
John Lennon wrote a great song called, “A Working Class Hero is something to be” This song reflects the means of the ruling class to control the society (the working class). From the history we know thousands of cases in which the working class goes on strike and tries to take over 'the top' (to become rulers). The urge of the working class has made the rulers figure out two solutions: The ordinary people must either be persuaded that they are 'classless and free', or that they are controlling their country (communism). Both of these are indoctrinated to the working class through mass propaganda and disinformation. This happens in schools, the media, and the movies. 'Religion, sex and TV' are the opium of the masses of people. However, the masses are like sheep, i.e. they are easily controllable by a leader. In my opinion, the working class hero is a potential leader who has risen from the masses and has the necessary qualities to lead the working class against its current rulers (as it has happened many times in the past). So the working class hero is an exceptional personality, which is dangerous for the system and has to be destroyed. This song shows how are most people handled, but some are not easily doped with propaganda. This song is dedicated to all who can see beyond the propaganda, to those who think 'the country is doing this to me'. The last verse ('If you want to be a hero, then just follow me') shows how the potential heroes are handled: by propaganda (such as this song) designed to lead them to a slippery way. Stars like Lennon, Manson and Greenday propagate the use of drugs and alcohol, as well as a life that does not allow you to become a big bug. Other groups that are designed for the unprejudiced are Eminem, System of a Down and many others. All of them propagate the use of drugs and breaking the law. So the working class hero in our society is made a criminal in his childhood, so he could be caught by the system and imprisoned before he could become something big and unprejudiced. Other working class heroes are tempted through money and fame to become part of the ruling system, as long as they learn how to "smile as they kill" and are loyal to the rulers, i.e. the owners of all the money and fame.
So I wish a world of transformed working class hero to create a new world of possibility that we can live into where children are not hungry and get raped. I want us to find a way not just let the upper class squander away our future in ignorance.
You will please forgive my father. He has asked that I write for him and explain his angry statement for he is too upset this evening to respond.
ReplyDeleteMy father lived through the many years of war in Vietnam. I was just a small boy during such times. But no person who has not seen soldiers rape their mother or brutally kill their treasured sister or burn their house to the ground can know how a deep a pain can reach down into one's heart.
To be forced to watch your wife who has healed your heart and soothed your soul be cut and beaten and violated in front of you as you are tied to a chair, is a mourning that lives in your body and turns you either into man of hate or one of deep compassion and commitment. My father chose the path of compassion and love even in the face of such cruelty and hatred.
While he very much has a deep respect and love for his friends in America, he also has a growing concern that Americans have been too protected and isolated from the enduring pains of the rest of the world. He worries about the new generation in Vietnam also for they have no understanding in their bodies of the great suffering that comes upon many.
Enlightenment or as you call it here, transformation, should lead to deep compassion not convenient detachment, he said to me. Why do the Americans always transform into people who numb themselves from the real pain of others?
He believes that those of us who are in a position to have a voice and to cause things to be different are too often "asleep" in their enlightenment.
You have known my father as one of great kindness whose humor and humility enables him to work for solutions. This is true, but he is also a man who has lived in unbearable pain and is so very committed to awaken the people of earth beyond to passionate compassion.
As my teacher says,
"If enlightenment does not create a more caring heart within you, if it does not shock you out of the self-indulgence of convenience and self-reflection, then throw it away as it is of no earthly good to anyone and should be avoided at all costs."
This does not mean one should not seek to gain enlightenment. It means that there are many false teachers and methods that lead people to not care or to justify their convenient lives by saying they have become detached from the world. And while they make statements to support such crooked beliefs women and children starve and men far worse than Hitler slaughter millions at a whim.
Much of this result has come from people who follow teachings that have corrupted the deeper and more subtle truths of awakening. As my father hears words of his "daughter-friend" JJ and his new friend ThomasGall and his other beloved friends here, he is afraid they may have fallen under such a spell and walk a way without a teacher who has a heart opened to the world.
While new words of ThomasGall give my father more hope, such dreams will only happen, he says, if people live with open hearts and ability to feel the pain of others and the willingess to dream of days that are much better for the world.
“No man who could feel the pain of what he causes to others and the world would do such things as man has done,” my father has always told me.
My father meant to say all of these things through his comments. He has great concern and is humbly sorry for his outburst and hopes you may forgive his lack of humility and feebleness of mind.
With deep respect to all,
Nyguen
Trinh and Nyguen,
ReplyDeleteThere is no forgiveness needed for either of your words or the authenticity, integrity, and bold honesty with which you've shared your hearts.
I have no response at the moment because my heart is laid bare, other than to say from the deepest place within me, I am deeply sorry for what you and so many have gone through and continue to go through even as I write.
May we awaken to a sensitivity and courage that enables us to truly create, as ThomasGall has described, a new world where love and compassion reign.
Yes, Trinh and Nyguen have poignantly brought us home to the realities of life for so many. I was born about six years after World War II to a mother who spent the best of her teenage years in a concentration camp in Germany. As Nyguen says, I will never fully appreciate what she went through though I have heard her stories "lest we forget," as she would say.
ReplyDeleteWhat touched me so about my mother is exemplified by one simple anecdote. I came into her apartment one day to find her crying. When I inquired what was wrong, she looked at me with tear-filled eyes and said, "It was just so horrible, so horrible."
Thinking she was re-visiting the times of her own imprisonment, I tried to comfort her by saying that it was in the past, but she pushed me away and shouted at me, which she had never done before.
"It is not over!" she cried. "As long as women and children and kind men are being tortured and killed for no reason other than hate, it lives."
She had been watching a news program about Rwanda and the pain and suffering of the countless numbers of people there who had gone through such travesties was very real and alive to her.
We somehow, it seems, must walk the delicate balance between feeling so deeply that we cannot act, to becoming so detached that we feel no need to act. That is the balance I've been seeking all of my life and Trinh and Nyguen, you are an inspiration to me for somehow you've found a way to walk that path with such dignity and grace.
Thank you for your profound generosity,
Anna
Viktor Frankl F
ReplyDeleteMarch 26, 1905 - September 2, 1997
Author of Man's Search for Meaning, and 32 psychospiritual books, Developer of existential psychology and logotherapy, Holocaust survivor
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
Man's Search for Meaning, p.172
Thomas Gallagher says, lets get really resonsiable, because we really want to make a difference.
Trinh... Nyguen... you know how much I love you both... and I assure you that I'll use my experiences... and this breakthrough of mine to feel deeply... and to walk consciously and compassionately... to think clearly... and act wisely and responsibly.
ReplyDeleteYou have no need... as sweet Christopher says... to apologize... just the opposite... I apologize to you for being so self-consumed.
With great love for you all,
JJ
My father thanks you all for your kind comments and for allowing him such grace. He is finally sleeping now after a day of feeling not well. He has so rarely gotten upset over the last twenty years or more that I believe his body is not accustomed to the chemicals that are emitted during such times.
ReplyDeleteI am not a teacher, but only a humble monk, and so I have no authority to say anything that you should pay attention to, but something is in my heart which very much wants to come out and take the form of words.
The thinking mind and feeling mind were meant to act together in a beautiful dance of reason and of love. Either, dancing alone, eventually leads to a lopsided dance that is not at all elegant and which is sometimes very dangerous.
Let me give simple example for you to consider. If someone harms my loved one, my feeling nature may respond out of such pain and set out to harm all those who even resemble one who hurt my kin. Thinking mind stops and says, “This is not reasonable. There must be better way.”
Heart is then able to regain its role as the governor over feeling nature and direct man to kind deeds and to work toward ensuring such actions do not occur again.
Of other hand, thinking mind may look at problems of the world and say, "These problems are not mine for they are far away and to fix them would cost me much of my own time and money."
Then heart speaks and says, "But how can we allow such suffering and misdeeds to go on. If it were us, most assuredly we would be praying to our gods for salvation to come. Surely this will affect us someday. Not acting will cost us greatly in our beings."
The mind sees this feeling as reasonable and then sets about to create ways to address such problems without forsaking entirely own needs. Mind then makes distinction, with help of heart, between needs and wants.
Too often, it seems, we think or feel we must choose between this and that. Such dualistic vision leads us to unnecessary limitations and far fewer solutions.
My teacher has told me many times that “Enlightenment is what happens when heart and head get married and begin to act as one whole to bring peace and compassion to their world.”
This has guided me greatly to walk with great awareness and to seek to receive wisdom from all of life around me. Humans can be too proud. We must learn humility. This is difficult for many to understand for we think this means for us to become insignificant and little. But it is just the opposite. It means for us to become insignificant and very big in the way we quietly or loudly reach out and bring healing to our suffering world.
My words are not spoken well but my heart saturates this message with meaning in hopes that you may understand.
Your kindness has moved us deeply,
Nyguen
I am sorry for not having participated more earnestly, my friends. But I have been personally very troubled with our topics and our struggle to get beyond scraping the surface.
ReplyDeleteAnna, you made a wish when you wrote the words,
"Far too many of us spend time hiding out within the camouflage of intellectualized transformation (and I certainly find myself tangled in that trap more often than I want to admit).
"Where I'd like to see this conversation lead us, is beyond our winning formulas and stories into the territory of the un-explored; the domain of the uncomfortable; beyond our mental manipulations. I don't claim to know how that might happen, but that's my wish, because frankly, talking about it, alone, just doesn't do it any more."
Well, my dear friend, that wish appears to have taken form in the courageous words of our mentor. I am a grown man and yet I have not been able to stop weeping for what our dear Trinh and so many others have gone through.
You are very correct, Anna, that we must find a way to walk the path of balance between becoming so consumed with our feelings that we do not act and so stuck in the process of intellectualizing that we do not feel. And Nyguen has given us a beautiful illustration of our need to create that marriage as well.
My fear, and I confess it openly here, is that there are many who do not really know how to feel. We simply have never allowed ourselves to be touched deeply enough by pain -- or have shut ourselves off due to our own extreme pain -- to such an extent that we no longer have the innate impetus to respond that nature seems to have intended when feelings were built into us.
For me, true transformation is synonymous with action -- and even more specifically right action. It is not enough for us to simply rush out and do something, but to be in touch deeply enough with our spirit or our soul so as to be able to act in a manner that is in harmony with the larger consciousness of our planet -- our Mother -- Gaia -- God -- whatever one may choose to call it.
Our problems today, both personal and collective are far too great for us to address using these antiquated, stupid little formulas and solutions that we have created in the past. It is time for a radical re-awakening, my friends -- for us to access a far greater intelligence than our own.
So how, in God's name, do we bring that re-awakening about? And please, no more intellectualizing -- no more bullshit. I am sick up to my eyeballs with it.
Please, be real. I implore you to first feel and then, as Nyguen showed us, let the feelings of your heart touch you to the very depths of your being -- and then let that wisdom take the form of honest and open words. From there we may let our own deep and true reason guide us hand-in-hand with our hearts.
With great sincerity,
Ellio
Trinh,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing something that is so painful, so that we may know the importance of finding love and compassion in our own lives. Trinh, in the last couple of weeks, I have been privileged to talk with you about life. I feel so blessed that you would consider me a friend, for I value your time and friendship. I pray for a world that learns the lesson you wish us to know, that love is the way and needed now more the ever. I hope you recover from the emotional pain this memory has recreated for you now, and return to our conversation, so that we may continue this lesson. I hope you feel better; you have made me laugh and inspired me many times this week.
I also want to thank Anna for sharing her mother's story. I lived in Israel and Germany, so I have a very deep connection to what happened in the Holocaust.
I am also touched by JJ story of how transformation has allowed her to create new possibility in her life.
I am excited to hear Dot P views in psychology and what we can learn to create transformation in our own lives.
Personally, I am trying to get more out of my head and in touch with my feelings.
In short, thank you for being here and sharing this conversation, not so much for the intellectual stuff, but for being a community of caring people, who by the law of attraction wish to create a loving world that we may live into.
Trinh, my friend, for someone who strives so hard to be "unimportant", you seem to have done some terribly important things in this particular group. That you and your family suffered so much at the hands of those ridden by hatred and fear tears my heart, but the choices you have made in response to that suffering are having an impact that I don't think any of us will be able to fully appreciate until much later. I am deeply grateful for your words and your presence here with us. Please accept my warmest wishes for your peace and your healing. Apologies for so openly sharing your wise and very kind heart with us are far beyond unnecessary. And thank you, Nguyen, for speaking to us so eloquently on your father's behalf.
ReplyDelete"The entire purpose of our existence is to overcome our negative habits."
ReplyDelete- Rabbi Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797)
In the chaos of life, everything is random, but the lessons, they seem to repeat themselves till I learn the lesson, often, the same lesson will return in another manner to test that I have actually learned it. If existence is all random, then why do these lessons keep repeating, bent on making me grow up?!
:)
With Love,
Tom Gallagher
P.S. I miss you guys, the silence is making me go crazy, not that I wasn’t already, clinically speaking of course.
Having allowed, what I hope is a respectful amount of time for the processing of our most recent events, I wanted to return to the heart of our topic -- one which has become clearly even more complex -- and that being the topic of transformation.
ReplyDeleteTrinh's comments and his son’s sharing of the tragedies that befell their family obviously pointed to a mounting frustration many experience in regard to our U.S.-centric versions of transformation, enlightenment, and the power of intention. Like any culture would, our U.S. culture seems to have adopted these more eastern-in-origin practices and philosophies and, in the transmigration process, reconfigured them to support its own value system, which in our case is the pursuit of the "American Dream" (i.e. more have, more do, less be).
Anyone who has subjected themselves to the masterfully created marketing piece otherwise known as “The Secret” hopefully has noticed that it not only panders to the more egotistical desires of our human nature, but also has established itself as the anchor piece of a brand of “transformational” products.
When examined more closely, however, using the “power of intention” to “manifest whatever you want in your life,” is a line that comes straight from the center of Madison Avenue as opposed to the soul of an enlightened being.
Furthermore, its shoddy formula leaves out, I firmly believe, a most fundamental component from the actual formula of “manifestation” (that of one’s unconscious barriers, beliefs, and values that compete with the consciously stated “affirmation”).
It is also not without profound irony that Trinh and his family were devastatingly impacted in decades past by wars that came at the hands of first the French, and then the U.S. whose separate policies of acquisition and exploitation both drew upon the rhetoric of their supposed core values of freedom and democracy to rationalize a deeper set of underlying, but hidden values, that include a “divinely assumed right” to occupy or exploit other sovereign nations.
My point, however, is not into launch a political epistle, but to direct our attention to the power of words and the subtle, but critical element that underlies such power which is this. It is the imbued meaning that the "hearer" and the "speaker" of words may share that creates the power. Said differently, it is the element of “belief” not the words themselves which empower.
There are two other very essential components essential to one’s ability to access the power of words -- rapport and authenticity. In the studies we have conducted on this subject, the precise same words when written by someone who had true rapport with a group, vs. one who had not, were received with far greater openness and felt more deeply.
There also appears to be an unquantifiable characteristic often listed by our test volunteers as "authenticity." Whether the words were written or spoken, it appears that people have (or believe they have) a built-in authenticity detector that measures whether a person is merely saying something to fit in or ingratiate themselves (as in the recent criticism by many regarding various political candidates), or whether it comes from the “heart” and therefore is viewed as being more genuine.
Not surprisingly, it is the lack of this ability to distinguish authentic promises from those which are fallacious that makes some individuals more vulnerable to Ponzi schemes and the like. In other words, the ability one has to move beyond purely the logical mind and to also access the “heart” is critical in making the most effective long-range decisions.
The ability to utilize one’s intuition (often described as a feeling in the “gut”) along with logical, data-driven information provides individuals and groups with a far greater reservoir of wisdom from which to guide themselves.
One very insidious caveat must also be revealed for this information to have its full impact. People unknowingly measure authenticity, it seems, based not on whether the speaker or writer believes the precise words they utter, but whether the communicator is unquestionably committed to the values that underlie the reason for which they speak or write.
In other words, to draw upon a historical example, it is not that a vast majority of the German public actually believed in the precise words or philosophies of Adolf Hitler (though some found themselves believing, in spite of themselves), but rather that they were “captivated” by his passionate belief and commitment (and, at a very real “felt” level, came to realize that his commitment was such that they would be in jeopardy if they did not capitulate and thus their underlying value of survival overrode their higher values).
To make such a choice consciously, however, is an entirely other matter (for such survival based choices are usually cloaked in some higher level rationalization). Making a conscious choice of this nature requires the re-insertion of the logical mind into the matters of the heart (i.e. I feel the man’s passion and authenticity, but something is not a logical fit here).
I believe I have seeded the conversation enough for now and certainly have made the beginnings of a case for “whole-mindedness.” My primary aim, however, is simply to suggest that “transformation” can be, as Christopher questioned at the beginning of this topic, a dangerous process. For it is in whom we have learned to place our trust, in which values (and which underlying and more unconscious values) and how well we have learned to flow back and forth between head and heart that often determines whether we end up following the transformed path of a saint or a demon.
For your consideration,
Dot P.
Dot P, I'd like to add a couple of quick notes to your commentary.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more with much of what you've said. I want to highlight a few of the words mentioned in your last paragraph, though, and tie it back to your statements in the historical example you cited regarding Germany and its relationship to Hitler. In your closing paragraph you talked about “in whom we believe or trust.”
Exactly!
Some of the additional reasons for following Hitler's egomaniacal path were:
A strong belief in authoritarianism (i.e. we do what our leaders tell us to because they are more qualified than we are to make decisions for our lives);
A strong belief in the superiority of one's own race (i.e. xenophobia), which has been a pre-dominant reason for much of the conquering mentality and ethnic cleansing for many millennia;
Dehumanizing and marginalizing the value and worthiness of other races, people, and nations (a subset of the prior characteristic); and
A sense of entitlement as to what "we" deserve (our "divine" right).
If we were to examine our current world situations, most (if not all) nations fall prey to these characteristics because they are at the root of our human nature (this is Thomas W.'s point in the economic topic).
Any "transformational" path that is worth its salt, leads a person through a process that enhances the odds that such aspects of our baser nature become balanced and amply mitigated by the higher nature also available to us as human beings.
In order to make a distinction, however, as to legitimacy in that regard, we must be committed to a level of self-honesty that watches for tell-tale signs of deceit that appear in both transformational paths and in our own adoption of those paths as we put them through our own "trans-migration" process and adapt them to our personal culture (or way of thinking and believing).
As an old saying goes, "Anything can be construed to mean anything, by anybody, at any time."
Sincerely,
Anna
It seems like we're possibly breaking through to another level in this discussion (at least that's my hope).
ReplyDeleteI think Trinh's compassionate and very honest reaction to some of our previous comments was a welcome gift, though it was motivated by happenings that none of us would wish on another.
Also, referring back to Thomas Gallagher's last post, a Native American friend I had as a kid had a grandfather who once shared a thought with me (he rarely spoke, so I really took notice when he did). After hearing me complain about a tough time I was having, he said:
"Life is kind. It brings us back our lessons over and over again, until we learn them."
A wise perspective, it would seem. It would also appear, as Anna's words might suggest, that the human race as a collective is still very much in learning mode in regard to the all-too-frequent examples of history repeating itself.
Maybe if we focus on learning those same lessons for ourselves and practicing them, we'll have that positive 100th monkey affect that is so famously longed for.
Christopher
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThomas,
ReplyDeleteIt might be worth considering that in that short space of your last post, the word "you" or some derivative thereof appeared 36 times.
I found that interesting.
Thomas, for several reasons I'm afraid I have to respectfully disagree with much of your latest post.
ReplyDeleteThe first reason is one of principle and is simply this -- the words you've posted don't appear to be your own thinking, but instead the marketing language from someone else’s seminar. Unless it's your seminar, I'd really rather read your own thoughts and know what you mean by all of the jargon you've copied (and even more so, how you apply this understanding in your life right now).
The second reason is more material, though, and it is based upon the simple fact that while much of what you've entered on that page makes very good sense within an appropriate context, it is based upon an assumption (which I believe is not accurate) that purports that some mystical form of the "word" pre-existed the meaning with which each individual infuses into language. I would suggest instead that what you have constructed as your meaning for the word "trust", for example, is in all likelihood [based on numerous studies] very different than what your parents, friends, or other associates may have constructed as their specific meaning for that same word. A word’s power is based upon its individually constructed meaning and how and to the extent those meanings overlap with those of others, not on some pure, inherent meaning the word carried with it and with which it infused itself into a person’s mind.
There is also a tremendous amount of constriction that must occur if one assumes that the "word" exists in some pre-extant, self-powerful form or that identity is based purely upon words. If such were so then a person is not free to re-define words, readily adapt to other people's meanings, operate in wordless environments, or in strongly felt environments that use few words, or situations where one encounters words of another language which do not readily translate into one’s own tongue. It is precisely our ability to re-create our identities, re-frame our self-constructs and past histories, drop our ideas about self and so forth that actually enable the Zen practice of constantly creating something out of nothing to be useful.
The third reason for my disagreement with your post is a minor one of pure subjective definition. For me, integrity is simply this: a person living consistent with their own principles and values. Referring to my previous post, I believe it was Hitler’s remarkable integrity (adherence to his own principles and values) that enabled him to be so convincing and powerful in swaying a nation (and to this day a core group of disciples). I heard it said once that,
“A person’s honesty is a person’s consistency and that if we expect someone to be other than whom they have consistently demonstrated themselves to be, we are both foolish and unfair.”
In conclusion, I believe our colleague Trinh entreated you to do so before, and I will echo his sentiments. Please share your own ideas with us, Thomas. We have all been heavily influenced by great thinkers and teachers, but it's our ability to assimilate that information, infuse it with our own personal meaning, and share those original perspectives with one another that enables us to gain real value and learn from each other and, perhaps even more importantly, relate to one another in the most authentic way.
Each time you share the real you, I find myself refreshed and delighted. I hope to hear more.
With respect,
Dot P.
Man, I'm not sure what we'd do if this blog wasn't around... it's kind of like our bible or something... I mean not that we think it's all true or anthing... but it's like we read it a lunch or dinner together... and then we have the most radical cool talks... you know?
ReplyDeleteSo... what we all decided (me and Rizzin and Skye)... is that transformation is what happens when LOVE takes over... you dig what I mean? Like you just stop worrying about the small little shit... and you start looking at things through God's eyes.
Then you see the whole story... you know? And how all the stories of everybody like all come together... like maybe in the song Come Together... and it's like your own little story isn't so freaking important any more... it's more about what's good for everybody... and would bring people peace and healing and love and all of that.
Man, it's been hard for me to write this stuff because I'm no scholor or nothing... and my hands start shaking when I write on the computer... but I've really been thinking about what BKO told me when he said what I said mattered.
So... this is the stuff that matters to me... and what I'm triing to live every day.
Peace to the World!!
ZEE
BKO,
ReplyDeleteThat's how the seminar on integrity was presented; these are simply notes from the seminar.
I wonder what it would look like if the seminar leader presented it with "I" or "We".
Or maybe, in this teaching format, I could have edited for our reading pleasure.
Sorry, I just remember this as a very powerful seminar on integrity, and this seemed to be the direction our conversation was going.
I know in my life, that transformation has often been selfish, but not always, usually after I am strong, I have reached out to help others.
So since we need to be clear that being or creating transformation must be done with love, for something this powerful if not done with love could create possibility that would have negative effects on our world as Mr. Trihn suggests. A person like Hitler probably knew the power of transformation, but used it in the wrong way because of his on personal ignorance as to what would create love in the world as opposed to economic prosperity.
As I went to the movies to see Schindlers list in Germany when it was released, I notice 100’s of school kids coming in the theater, they were required by the German government to see this movie, apparently that day with me.
I have lived in Germany, Israel, knowing Germans, Jews, Palestinen people as close friends, we are all brothers trying to figure out answers to life, but at best we just come up with more questions.
Hey Zee, so good to have you back in our mix (say Hi to Rizzin and Skye)!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how what you said and what Tom Gallagher just wrote are so much in sync.
Seems like we often try to complicate things too much, when it really just comes down to something very simple, very basic, that rings true.
Thanks to both of you (and to everyone here) for sharing your voices and ideas with us. I'm looking forward to more exploration together.
Christopher
Dot P,
ReplyDeleteI will work on posting my own thoughts, or at least in my own words since I want to present many subjects on transformation that are not mine. It takes a lot of work to do so, but since you have taken so much of your time to write out your thoughts, I will attempt to do so also. I wanted to present many subjects on transformation that I have come across, to create a discussion.
I appreciate your taking the time to read them and give me your insight.
At the very least, I am pleased that I can attempt to discuss these ideals with this group.
Best,
Tom Gallagher
Hi Zee... I've been reading this blog too... cuz it makes me think and I learn a lot... but I agree with you and Rizzin and Skye. I do think it's about how well we love people... especially the ones who aren't our own.
ReplyDeleteYou know... I read a lot of what people say here about "words" and "intention" and "something out of nothing" and this might not be real politically correct... but I think that's just a fancy way of missing the point.
Cuz at the end of everyday... when I talk with God... what it all comes down to is this... Did I treat everybody with the same love and respect I would give to God?
I had a friend talk me into going to one of those pricey seminars... and you know what? They were a lot more interested in me thinking I needed more of their workshops than they were in me being whole... and complete... and committed to love.
That was my experience anyway... so I guess what I'm saying is... yeh... it all comes down to love... and there ain't no faking it. And one of the things that I've really received from most everybody here... was the support and belief that I'm okay... even when I feel kind of broken. Thank you for that.
Love you all,
Lisa Lee
The word can be used as a context for creating possibility in ones life.
ReplyDeleteDot P points out that in fact, regardless of how you package it, there is still a world out there. The seminars, in there attempt to create a context of word to world belief, have used this concept by putting it in a format that has allowed people to make great breakthroughs in their lives, be it the truth or not.
The knowledge represented in the seminars appears to be less valuable communicated in a format of a blog. I guess the concepts needs to be presented and evaluated in a seminar setting. It’s interesting, my father did a motivational seminar, with the same material, one cost $500 and the other cost $5000, the people who paid more felt and got more results then the less expensive seminar.
Dot P points out the Zen concept is still powerful, which is really why it all works.
In the seminars, the concept or delusional concept, that we create our world with our words may not be the truth, but through the power of faith many people have taken this concept and broken past their short comings and pitfalls of their lives.
I guess it’s true of religion that many people through the power of faith have created great possibility in their life. This Faith thing is an amazing thing, often, people give it credit for something that really they accomplish on their own.
While “The Secret” & “Law of Attraction”, put into a western materialist person hands may turn out to be another tool to promote selfish interests and not really get to spiritual transformation, these concepts as Christopher has pointed out have brought the idea’s of the East in a format that the west could swallow.
We have a long way to go. I think it’s not the concept that is to blame, but the people who have not been able to figure out that it’s not about them; it’s about being in the service of all humanity.
Christopher tells the story of his friend’s Grandfather who believed that life is a lesson that repeats itself till learned. I find it important for us to find a transformational way to create a new possibility in our life, so that we may learn the lessons. The only thing I can know is that these lessons do seem to have a higher purpose, and I must learn them to grow and evolve.
It was easier for me to change, because I grew up changing. But I see many people in the world that have a difficult time changing. They are stuck in bad habits and negative situations refusing to change or unable to change. Transformation for me is a way, be it gestalt therapy, talk therapy, transformational declaration, whatever, to let go of negative habits and create a positive possibility to live your life by.
Life is too short to let our negative feelings and beliefs stop us.
Dot P writes: "Ultimately, what Zen and all such related disciplines attempt to do, in one form or another, is provide a means by which a person strips themselves of their story, actively questions and attacks the meanings they have created for themselves and words, and lays themselves bare and without meaning in order to experience the world afresh in each and every moment"
ReplyDeleteI think that getting rid of my negative habits is learning, on a daily bases which habits serve me; which of these are ego/acts ways of being, which are positive or negative and then transform them! That means looking deep into the area of that which I don't know, I don't know. Yes, even the positive habits and really question their existence for me, often, even shedding the positive habits because they may be negative without my awareness that they are so. This was a very powerful insight for me, I thought, I am “a glass is half full kind of guy”, later; I learned that this optimistic way of being helped me, but it didn't transform me. The task is to empty the metaphorical cup completely, get rid of the cup, because even in doing so I am still not completely at nothing. The more I reach for nothing; the universe fills my cup up with something new and amazing like a vacuum filling air into a space. The metaphorical cup can't be at nothing, everything must be full, even the cup that is half full of water, must be half full with air. So my way of being or act was from the past, it was superficial, it was about “looking good”, now I get to this nothingness, now I have real transformation. Now I look deep into all my habits, and transform them, just to get good at transformation, that way, when real break downs occur or lesson presents itself, I can shed everything very fast and all at once, to allow a space for the possibility of everything and anything!
It is very early morning where I live now and I have trouble sleeping. You have all been most kind to me for my outburst which was most uncalled for. I am humbled by such kindness.
ReplyDeleteBut this is not my reason for visiting because you already know that Trinh is a silly senile man.
I have two questions for ThomasGall and for anyone else foolish enough to play. These questions will not leave me alone and keep running with loud steps through this old man's mind like untamed children -- they are very mischievous these thoughts.
ThomasGall keeps writing of need to change, to cast off negative ways of being and to question positive as well. He works very hard to be good at changing and to be in the nothing so he can be something fresh each day. This seems to be a noble quest.
But what if secret is not to work so hard to change or to not change, but simply to notice actions -- seeing them for what they are -- actions, not bad, not good, not positive, not negative -- just actions?
Striving for change only seems to engage ego -- makes it plant itself in the middle of such attempts -- then the mind works too hard for ego -- it seeks to explain -- to prove -- to disprove.
Perhaps not striving -- but simply being might let ego rest -- it must be very tired after so much trying -- so much changing.
May I ask another question? Maybe then it will leave me alone?
Perhaps best seminar is life, not people stuck in a closed room? This is a funny notion, but Trinh wonders about such things. What if ideas we get from attending such things are just what happens when a brain passes gas?
This is making me laugh loudly to think of how we try to make our farts of the brain become so very important as if there was some great truth in them. Oh, Trinh must be quiet or he will wake others.
No need to answer questions. I am feeling much more relaxed now. I will go back to sleep.
Thank you for hearing my thoughts,
Trinh
Trihn,
ReplyDeleteMy foolish answer is this:
I believe that I am whole and complete just being. I dont need to reach enlightment, and there is nothing to do but notice action and enjoy being alive.
I choose be more then just ok, I choose to live an Extra Ordinary Life. I want to be extraordinary.
You may laugh and say that you are already extra ordinary.
But somehow that isnt enough for me, and I don't think its just my ego feel this.
IT lives in me... IT lives in you... IT is always pulsing... breathing... feeling... loving... IT is LIFE ITSELF.
ReplyDeleteWe seek to possess IT... to own IT... to make IT ours... to make IT better... only to shut IT out... as we close our hearts... leaving our minds to race... scrambling disparately... seeking to understand... to know with who... and how we fit in... where we belong.
Impossible questions... they have no answers but those of madness... of malice... of pain...
For we have no place beyond our service to Love... to fade away allowing IT to reach through... healing the hearts of all who would be healed...
Healing me... healing you... IT is always present... and IT requires nothing from us but the utter surrender of our longing hearts.
Hi Rizzin! I always love your poetry. You take the things in life that seem so complicated and you bring them to this level of elegant simplicity that always touches my soul.
ReplyDelete"IT requires nothing from us but the utter surrender of our longing hearts."
I'm going to create a little piece of art with those words and hang it on the wall in my bedroom. That way I can remember it... first thing when I wake up... and each night before I sleep.
Mmmm... Love is the Only Power,
Jonnie
Hey to Lisa Lee... from all of us here...
ReplyDeleteAnd we totally dig what you're saying... about at the end of the day... you know... how did we treat people...
It's so true... because there was this guy... who like always totally hasselled us and stuff... whenever we walked past his house... he'd like say stuff that was really mean about me or Rizzin... and we'd always just walk on by... you know... like we didn't even hear it...
Well one day Skye is with us... and the guy starts talking trash... and we keep going around the corner... and then Skye like stops... and starts walking back to him... and I'm thinking... oh shit... we're gonna end up in some fight defending Skye's honor or something... so I'm kind of walking carefully back... and then I stop... cause I see her talking to him with this big sweet smile on her face... and he looks like he's really kind of sad or ashamed... then she gives him a little hug.
So... when she gets back to us... I'm like... What did you say? And she says... I told him I thought his eyes were far too beautiful to be saying things like that... and that for whatever reason he was hurting that bad I was really sorry and would pray for him.
The guy like totally apologized... and now whenever we walk by... he waves and smiles... it's a total trip...
Skye told me that she could tell the dude was in pain and that it was the LOVE in her that made her reach out to him...
She's a very brave chic... you know? But that's the power of LOVE too.
Be strong sister,
ZEE
P.S. And Hey Jonnie... Rizzin's nudging me to say Thank You... for what you said about elegant simplicity... that's our dude Rizzin... elegantly simple... he's smacking me now... gotta go
For sometime now I have read the dialogues that take place on Passionate Genius. Chris Harding and BKO, whom I have the utmost respect for and I am grateful to have in my life, both invited me to participate with you all. I have felt like I have sat quietly in a room amongst friends and finally have the courage to speak.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost the recent exchanges amongst this community have been deeply moving. The level of compassion, kindness and respect that you constantly return to within the discussions I find to be inspiring and refreshing; I think I am observing transformation in action. I will do my best to answer one question set forth by Chris in the opening of this topic and in a manner that has recently been implored by Ellio.
What is required for a true transformation to occur?
I attempted several times to answer this question and kept erasing my words so I opened the “I Ching” and was directed to the hexagram entitled “Returning.” “Returning indicates the direction in which the path of development leads, back to the person’s original nature. It does not lead forward, through cultivating virtues or becoming something we are not, but is a process of continuous subtraction of what we have falsely added.”
When I examine transformation occurring in my life it has been synonymous with my eventual willingness to let go of beliefs and/or attitudes which held me in postures of self-righteousness, justification, victimization, rigidity, limitation, self deprecation, just to name a few. Said simply, transformation requires me to subtract my narrow perspective to include a broader one.
I resonate with Trinh’s words,
“Striving for change only seems to engage ego -- makes it plant itself in the middle of such attempts -- then the mind works too hard for ego -- it seeks to explain -- to prove -- to disprove.”
Transformation seems to arise in the inner word and seems devoid of ego participation. I have experienced times in which a situation has transformed to only find that my ego attached to the unfolding as a strategy to implore instead of recognizing the grace that was present and offered by something larger than myself. I am beginning to understand and practice saying an “inner no” to the ego’s desire for recognition or claim that it (the ego) was responsible for the transformation.
Humility seems to be another component present in the process of transformation; am I truly receptive and open so I can receive thoughts, feelings, intuition, information, clarity and love.
Thank you Rizzin for saying it so beautifully, “IT requires nothing from us but the utter surrender of our longing hearts.”
If asked to read a book entitled “The book of Changes” verses a book entitled “The Book of Transformation” of the two, which one would you choose, why? As you contemplate this question your inner self knows what that difference is; it understands that “Change” and “Transformation” are two completely different things. As I age, I am remembering this inner self; it’s a place I lived more from as a child for which it seems to inherently know and understand its harmonious relationship to all of nature. As in many cultures, institutions and families, we are often coerced through reward or punishment to give up living from this feeling consciousness which often guides us towards an appropriate or harmonious response. Please understand that I do not purport that a harmonious or appropriate response has anything to do with warm and fuzzy; harmonious could look like not speaking for months to another, saying “no”, prosecution or intentionally speaking to another’s inner self, which Skye so beautiful demonstrated when she went up to the harassing man and spoke from her own authentic inner self into his, thanks Zee for sharing that story. I suspect transformation resides in this realm of the inner self and my sense is this inner nature is synonymous with the nature of the universe; ever evolving and transforming.
I appreciate the opportunity to share,
MAK
I want to share my feelings, although you might think this is my ego talking…
ReplyDelete“I am not feeling welcome, heard or loved here; can I get a little love?”
I feel as if, I am showing up looking like a foolish young egotistical & materialistic western man bent on transformation, ranting about the power of “nothing” and “affirmations.”
But that’s not my spirit or my ego. I am unconditional love; of God.
Shalom;
Moshe
Tom,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thank you for your honest feedback. I can't speak for everyone, naturally, but I have thoroughly enjoyed your involvement in our group's conversation.
I might be wrong, but I have interpreted people's interactions with you as being that of genuinely trying to draw you into a deeper conversation -- to hear your most authentic voice, as opposed to a rejection of you or your principles.
My continuing invitation to you and everyone here is to hang in there and use this as an opportunity to explore your feelings, to expand your conversations, and to be -- as you have been here -- as honest as possible.
Very sincerely,
Christopher Harding
It is late but before I sleep, I must make apology.
ReplyDeleteThomasGall, you must forgive Trinh. He is very old and crafty like a snake who steals eggs from the nest of birds. He can not help himself and in the end his work makes birds stronger and smarter.
Most sincerely, my esteemed friend, our conversations are of great benefit to me. My challenges were meant for one who is ready and worthy for a duel. But if you request, I will be more considerate in the future (though this will be most difficult for one so stubborn). Many people tell me I am rude and that life is not as funny as I think it is. Perhaps I should listen to them with greater compassion.
With humble respect,
Trinh
Welcome to MAK! I was truly inspired by your words and the respect you showed to everybody here. How wise of you.
ReplyDeleteI came into this group with a cyncical attitude in tact and a belief that most people did good things for ulterior motives. That may be, in many cases, but it was some of the guardians of this group calling me out that really made me sit myself down and take a long hard look at what my own motives were.
Now as for ThomasGall. You seem like a sweet guy with a good heart who's trying damned hard to have a real conversation. But something about what you say sometimes seems to make people feel like you're preaching at them. Can't say what that's about -- maybe it's just them being particular, but my humble advice is for you to hang in there, as Christopher said.
For me, sticking with it when I had people on my case turned out to be a really wise investment in myself (and has paid off for the people around me in a big way). And honey, no one has jumped on your case as hard as they did mine.
That's my two dollars worth.
Your sister in continual growth,
Tarah
I smile as I write because my father is a smooth devil. You should watch out for him -- all of you.
ReplyDeleteI spent my first months with this group only writing quotes from my teachers. No one criticized me. No one even responded to me or acknowledged that I existed.
This made me look inside at what I had expected to receive. Was I trying to borrow honor from my teacher's words? Had I not found my own voice? Was I needing to be acknowledged? Oh, how my little monkey mind ran throughout the entire house of my consciousness looking for answers.
In the end, I believe your fear, ThomasGall, was very same as mine for you say, "I feel as if, I am showing up looking like a foolish young egotistical & materialistic western man bent on transformation, ranting about the power of “nothing” and “affirmations.”
Yes! Yes! ThomasGall that's precisely what we are. Foolish, young egotistical and materialistic men trying very hard to be something else, to do something good and noble.
So what is wrong with being foolish, young, and egotisitcal and ranting about power of "nothing" and transformation? In my practice I will now sit with this and be foolish, young, and egotisitical until I exhaust this thought -- until I am so tired of it that I cannot hang onto it any longer.
Then it will drop from me and I will not be haunted by it any longer. For what need has one to run from what one has accepted as true? What need has one to resist what one has taken on and lived until it has been consumed?
I have finally found a friend and partner in this village. ThomasGall and I are foolish, we are young, we are very stupid egotisitcal men who think we can transform the world.
Will you join me in this fellowship? Craziness craves company, my teacher once told me. At last, we are not alone.
Humbly, your friend,
Nyguen
Trinh and others,
ReplyDeleteThank you for hearing me. Please listen; I feel this is important…
I am very worried about the world today. Christopher spoke of the Global Warming, and you have all talked about the end game of our current economic consumption society.
I get that there is spiritual value and on some cosmic collective consciousness level, that just being (Zen) might be doing more good then really taking action in the world.
Those that attempt to make a difference in the world, often, cause as much problem and they solve.
But we need people to wake up and make a difference.
Its not enough to just say, “I love you man or just be”, although the ripple effect of the butterfly flapping its wings could transform the world, it doesn’t seem to be happening enough or fast enough to create the results our world needs now! Although Trihn would say, “what’s the hurry”, I think we need to wake up the world, or I fear that it will be too late.
Maybe, we might say, if more people would just be and love, then we would have a ripple effect that would transform the very fabric of life, but something is missing and we may not have enough time to wait for this to occur.
I want to suggest that what is missing is the confounding problem of our perception. Our ego/perception traps us in a safe place and assumes false information about reality.
Transformation will awaken people to great possibility and allow them to make a difference in the world. First you get to a Zen state of nothing, letting go of past, then you create affirmations to program your subconscious mind. Period.
Marketing gets this and spends a billion dollars a month to program you.
In the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, we learn the rules of the game of life, but then we have the problems that confound us to not be this, that’s where transformation can make a difference and make the world a better place.
1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
3. Don't Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best
Nyguen... we only have met a few times... but now I know why I've always been so comfortable around you... you're crazy too.
ReplyDeleteCan I be a foolish, young, and egotisitcal woman and join you?
And by the way... your dad has stolen the "eggs" out of so many nests around here that when he retired this month most of us could owe some of our best memories of breakthroughs... both scientific and personal to him.
Smooth devil indeed!
Love to all,
JJ
Thomas, dude... can I be honest? I'm being a jerk maybe... but it's out of respect. I think you've been like straight on with your word... and you are one guy who really seems to try hard and do your best... and I totally dig where you're coming from about this world needing a whole pile of help... yeh man... it is defintely wake up time for Planet Earth.
ReplyDeleteBut man... you took a whole lot personally in this community that I don't think was meant that way. And you made some assumptions about some of us... that wasn't true at all...
I'm not calling you out or nothing... cause I do the same stuff all the time... just ask people.
But the one thing I will get up on you about is putting down the power of saying... "I love you man". If more people did that... you know... and felt it and meant it... and lived it... we'd start solving some of the big stuff... cause we'd be looking at things we different eyes... through our hearts.
Besides... Skye's one of the angels on this planet... and she wouldn't let me write this... but I don't like people making fun of how she turns people's hearts to gold in a freaking instant... by saying those words...
I'm saying all this in love bro... cause I think you seem like a cool dude... and we need more people like you.
Your brother in transforming the planet,
ZEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7KhTjoqD4
ReplyDeleteZee,
Total respect and love to you.
I get what your saying, I don’t want to come off saying that the love things isn’t powerful, please don't let my words only communicate that, please read them again.
Love is the way, and I do love you man.
I believe in unconditional love.
Let’s be really clear that if we did get everyone on the planet to be unconditional love, the world would transform forever.
I have a deeper message that I am trying to get across for myself and others if they have an ear for it.
Respect and Love to you all, thanks for listening.
Tommy G
Nguyen,
ReplyDeleteRe: joining the craziness fellowship:
Where do I sign up? As a matter of fact, I'll take TWO!!!!!!!
Thomas... we're cool... I totally hear you man... there's a lot of us headed to the same town on different roads... so follow the one that calls you so loud you can't say no. That's what my mom always told me...
ReplyDeletePeace and love bro,
ZEE
Nyguen & Trinh,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your words. I wrote my feelings because Chris challenged me to get out of my head and really feel this spiritual transformational stuff. My confusion lies in a matter of context and my brains process of “already always listening” from my own perspective. Normally, my psychology degree and transformational work would have made me realize that I was assuming and then I would not have posted those comments.
I was really touched by your fathers, Trihn interaction with me in the last blog. I see him as a teacher, and even in this thread I was learning some great things from him. So when a concept I hold very dear to my heart, that of waking up humanity from the problem of human misperception, became something that was bad or egotistical, I was unable to have a voice to defend her from the snake, the wonderful butterfly called transformation.
I was born in 1968, the year of the Chinese monkey.
I am the monkey playing with a snake in the garden, having gotten bitten. I ask the snake, do you not love me, why would you bite me? The snake says to the monkey, “I can’t help myself and in the end my bite makes monkey’s immune system stronger and monkey smarter.” But the monkey cries like a foolish child, but that hurt. To which the snake replies, “My challenges and bite were meant for one who is ready and worthy for a duel. But if you request, I will be more considerate in the future not to bite”
The monkey smiles having been spanked or bitten, which ever metaphor suits you, and say’s, “Thank you master, May I have another?”
I look forward to our friendship, with Nyguen and Trihn, truly great teachers, are you both.
The Dali Lama said, “-Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risks.”
http://livemusicnetworks.com/Dali%20Lama%20Quotes.html
Best,
Moki Gallagher
Hey MAK, welcome! I'm so glad that you've joined us. You've brought up an interesting point that circles back to some of our earlier conversations about what is transformation.
ReplyDeleteYou're suggestion, by way of the I Ching, is that it's returning to our most natural state of being. I can see a similarity there to what Tom Gallagher's been bringing up about the Zen notion of returning to a place of nothing so that we can create something fresh from a space of limitless possibilities.
Am I interpetting what you're saying correctly?
Because children, as you mentioned, seem to come from this space much more naturally because they haven't taken on all the stories about who they are not and what they cannot do. They also haven't made up as many myths that separate from the rest of nature.
So here's the question that comes up for me when I read your post: So what are the processes you use or have seen others use that can a most readily take somebody back to that more clear state of being?
Tom Gallagher has advocated an approach that he's found very useful. What works for you?
I'm always looking for new ways to recommend for people to get to that space.
Thanks!
Christopher
I never like to leave back-to-back comments, but I've been in meetings all day and trying to push everyone's comments through from my Palm Pilot and then I read Tom Gallagher's last post which popped up just as I was getting ready to leave my last comment.
ReplyDeleteThe uncanny parallels in Tom's year of the monkey description and the metaphors that Trinh and Nyguen used earlier in the their comments to him gave me one of those "chills up the spine" feelings. Very unusual coincidence -- or really great universal synergy -- take your pick, but cool none the less.
Thanks for letting us share in the story, Tom.
Christopher
I awake this rainy day to find that my friend ThomasGall is a very wise monkey.
ReplyDeleteYou should know this snake will only bite gently but will make much noise and try to look more fierce than he is. But now you will know better and will not mistake snake's nature for mean spirit.
You have honored me with our duel.
Humbly,
Trinh
Hi everyone! I'm one of JJ's friends (if that tells you anything).
ReplyDeleteSo I'm reading this crazy blog that she's been blabbing about for months -- at least -- and I have a big question for all of you transformation gurus.
If we are truly perfect and whole -- as some of your previous topics profess or suggest -- then what is there to transform into?
Seems to me -- pardon me if I'm being daft -- that transformation is simply the process of remembering who we were in the first place before we forgot.
Am I missing something -- or am I just making it all too simple?
Yours ever so curiously,
Jamie
I'm going to welcome Jamie... because she's sitting right here next to me... looking all expectant and everything.
ReplyDeleteBut what I really want to say you all is that my dear mentor... Master Trinh is seriously missed... because he "retired" recently and went home to his homeland... on the other side of the freaking world.
So... what I want all of you to know... is that as humorous and wise and all of that good stuff as he seems on this blog... he's ten times better in person.
I just had to say that.
Love you all Big Time!
JJ
Jamie,
ReplyDeleteI think the confusion with this transformation thread in this passionate genius blog was the definitions or meanings or context of the word Transformation.
To answer your question, we are whole, complete and don’t need anything in the sense that we are already spiritual enlightened. This is a very metaphysical view, however, because many traditions say that you need to take a journey to reach enlightenment. I believe like many here that a child is already enlightened and we get lost along the way, that all we need to do is return to simply being childlike to reach enlightenment again.
If we talk about transformation in the sense of self improvement, then it’s not so much spiritual enlightenment, as a method to not just change your bad habits, but to transform your way of being forever.
From the peak performance sense, which is Christopher’s main passion, we use the context of the word Transformation as in creating a new possibility that never existed before from a clearing of the past negative habits that limited our life. From this new space, amazing things become possible, dare I say miracle become available, and true genius flows.
But, that’s just my context; I know others have their context or meaning. We are meaning making machines, and because of this we assume so much to get through life.
Tarah and Chris thanks for your welcoming words. I am so glad to be writing amongst, snakes, monkeys and crazy people…. .
ReplyDeleteToday in my counseling session I shared a dream I had last week. The kind you wake from and remember it in great detail. I figured it was an important so I shared it with my Trans-personal counselor. His response was…”you have internalized an image of yourself as ‘damaged’.” Well that moment was truly a moment of transformation. I can not say I went to “nothing” since my head was spinning with a myriad of examples as to how I live into that perception. This dissonance in my mind went on for some minutes during which the counselor spoke more about aspects in the dream that supported this notion of “damaged.” Then he offered the perspective of “what if you held you self as “normal” and chose not to participate in the belief that your “not normal”. It was in that moment of realization that I felt relief.
So transformation was definitely present and going on in me and to answer your question Chris…”So what are the processes you use or have seen others use that can a most readily take somebody back to that more clear state of being?” I would have to say honesty, generosity, regard, relatedness, listening and receptivity on my part to let what he offered in to my heart and mind.
My counselor then said something very valuable near the end of the session, he said that what is important is to raise consciousness and in doing so be careful to not try and coerce someone into raising there consciousness as if they should, but to allow the individual to find the truth within themselves. His words also reminded me that Transformation is thwarted when we attach ourselves to an outcome.
Nyguen thank you for sharing these beautiful words they so describe what I experienced today in counseling…
“Then it will drop from me and I will not be haunted by it any longer. For what need has one to run from what one has accepted as true? What need has one to resist what one has taken on and lived until it has been consumed?”
Regards,
MAK
P.S. Chris I realized I have not answered all of your questions and I will however there is so much personal conversation going on amongst the group that I feel like if I answer you fully I would be holding a separate dinner conversation.
Thomas, I so enjoy when you simply share your own brilliance with us. Thank you, it is most refreshing.
ReplyDeleteYour explanation as to the distinction between transformation -- as viewed through the lens of peak performance vs. transformation, as viewed as a purely spiritual practice -- is most helpful.
Our previous lack clarity in that regard was, for me at least, at the heart of the differences of opinion that were being bandied about in regard to some of the previous comments shared by you and others.
As you suggest, our discussion certainly reinforces the idea that words are powerful and can be source of conflict and misunderstanding when we do not create a shared context.
And to MAK, it sounds as if you have a wonderful counselor (I tend to favor the transpersonal approach myself, as well). But their advice to you was noteworthy as well as their caution as it applies to coercing someone else into engaging in the process of transformation.
Such habits are common when we experience our own breakthroughs and often lead to co-dependency and the alienation of friends and loved ones.
I'm also taking this moment to put a call out to KBF. I am definitely curious as to your unique take on this conversation (that's the politically correct version of my slightly more perverse question).
Dot P.
Thanks for answering me Tommy (is that being too familiar? That's my brother's name. I should probably be more formal and call you Tom). Anyway I get where you're coming from.
ReplyDeleteI kind of look at it like... hey once you remember you're perfect and whole... you start treating everybody else the same way. You know? I mean you look for their good points and what's great about them instead of what's f#@ked up.
It sometimes freaks people out to be treated like their totally cool when everybody else has been treating them like their messed up or a freak or something but usually they start to appreciate it if you just keep seeing them as great.
The other part that I kind of like about what you said was that from my way of looking at it... once you realize you're totally cool or perfect as you are then you can start to really kick ass and do all kinds of "out of the box" or "off the wall" stuff for fun instead of thinking you have to do that to measure up or be okay or something.
Anyway... that's what I've been thinking about today.
Peace out,
Jamie
Thank you Dot P, given your back ground in psychology, I really value your insight. I am a silly monkey making your words come off having great meaning; I am being a young child seeking approval of their parent. I guess my fathers being larger then light, often, leaves me with a need to find approval in the world. I will sit with this and other things I have learned this month till they drop away like Nyugen & Trinh suggest, my new wiser teachers.
ReplyDeleteI was really looking forward to hearing more from Sarah; she jumped in at the start with the question of,
“Could it be that transformation itself is beyond words and that our attempt to explain it is merely our left-brained tendency to safely put everything back in a box so that we can be more comfortable?”
Did anyone answer this, I was not able to, but then maybe it was rhetorical in the spiritual transformation sense. Again context has created a lot of confusion here.
Sarah brought up the concept that, “"In order to truly live one's religion (or one could add, philosophy), one must transcend that very religion."
This is true of both spiritual and self help transformation, which speaks to the fact that really, it’s all spiritual, even though I am attempting through context to make distinctions.
I loved Anna contributions on transformation and would love to hear more about her talk on Intention, Intention is key in language and transformation! Erhard said, “The essence of communication is intention.”
Skye jumped in with a beautiful touch on transcendence, and given the image others like Zee have described of her, she sounds like an amazing angel that leaves people with a “Christ” like feel of unconditional love after they meet her. Anyone who can make this type of impact on others is truly in the service of humanity to make a big difference in the world!
I am, however, surprised to not hear more from BKO, given the number of entries from him in this blog, I would think he had more to say, or I guess I was hoping, I do love his words.
Jamie, great points on seeing and being positive with others!!!! I guess, this is where the law of attraction really shines, because of the thing called projection in psychology, people show up how we see them, and our perception can only see them how we believe them to be, in other words, we have filtered glasses on that given our beliefs about someone forever lock them into that way of being, so no matter what other things they do, our brain mostly only remember what we think they are and reinforces those memories over others. The key part you said, and that’s where peak performance/law of attraction is greatest, is in faith, though faith we transform the world!
Anyways, I could go on a mention all of you, because I am starting to feel this group and the many souls that are choosing to leave their energy in this place somewhere in cyber space for no other reason then to share your thoughts.
Thomas, you're very sweet to acknowledge me in your highlights. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteBeing a relative newcomer to this growing family, I often choose to sit back and observe, being sensitive to the chemistry and flow of the discussion and somewhat reluctant to speak too much (when I get started, I have a difficult time stopping).
When I made my wish at the beginning of this topic -- that we would go beyond the comfortable -- I could not have imagined that the process would be so rich.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if you really look at what's transpired for you internally during this discussion, my guess is that, like me, you've been doing your own private little workshop. How could we not, with the depth and breadth of what has been discussed here.
I'm in deep appreciation for being included here and honored in the variety of ways that people express their respect (some as challenges, some as compliments, some as observers).
Since Thomas re-invited the question I posed earlier regarding intention, however, I will share with you what was going on for me when I asked the question (and Ellio, your history and own experience will likely provide more depth on this topic than mine).
We have to more fully look at the unconscious mind in order to grasp the complexity of intention and of its weaker cousin, affirmation. Early advocates of positive thought from Norman Vincent Peale, to James Allen, to Paul J. Myers, all tapped into a deeper sense of spirituality, one could say (and yes, guys, here I go getting spiritual).
While there are those who argue that these early advocates of positive thought were influenced by religions from India and other Eastern climes, others feel strongly that they leaned more on a mystical understanding of faith spoken of by Jesus. I don't know that it matters ultimately, where they drew their inspiration from.
What we now understand better, though, is that these early thought pioneers of Western spirituality: a) either assumed that their readers knew of certain fundamentals regarding the process; b) had incorporated the underlying principles so well themselves that they felt it could go without saying; or c) possibly did not know the principles which we are now discovering (and I’d like to think that this last option is the one we would choose to make ourselves feel better, though it is likely not, in my estimation, true).
The principles to which I refer are those regarding the unconscious mind and how it functions in relation to the conscious mind. To use an analogy, the unconscious mind runs the security system for the body. It monitors all biological processes and it stores all information that pertains to what has brought pain and pleasure to our system. I think it is also valuable to consider that Western scientists are now beginning to consider and accept, in some cases, early understanding from ancient cultures that have always suggested that the unconscious mind is existent throughout the body and operates at the cellular (some even say molecular) level.
It is also worth remembering that much of the survival-based encoding of our unconscious minds took place during pre-verbal and early verbal stages. Thus, one could deduce, much of the encoding was done non-rationally using the best information available and the best method of direct interpretation that one could do at such an age (the both of which were obviously less than optimum for adult functioning).
Making a rather long subject, much shorter, my point is this. Affirmations are made at a conscious level. If there is counter programming already in place within the unconscious mind, that internal security system will attempt to eradicate ideas that it has deemed unsafe and will operate in stealth mode to undo the best laid plans. It is possible to bludgeon the unconscious so consistently and repetitiously with an affirmation that the amount of data input eventually overrides the previously held unconscious belief (that’s what we call the “I don’t know that I don’t know” category) and in so doing, a person is able to forge ahead and “overcome.” (Many modalities of therapy attempt to approach this process differently, by “uncovering” the mistaken notions of the past and to unveil the “identities” that we have created for ourselves based on such early-stage decision-making.)
My goodness, this is difficult to explain in so few words. The challenge I have with systems like “The Secret”, and other basic affirmation approaches like “Think and Grow Rich”, etc., is not that they don’t work -- but that they are very cumbersome, antiquated methods that often create such a high failure rate that many people give up and believe that the “power of intention” is a bogus myth created by hucksters (and sadly the irresponsibility with which some have approached this science in the past makes one wonder about the category in which they were operating).
Nonetheless, there are several very essential point that nearly all such systems miss: a) without acknowledging and reprogramming the body/mind consciousness (the security system), we are working against ourselves as we attempt to “manifest”; b) the ability to fully use the power of intention (or faith as some call it) to manifest, requires that one must already be in attunement with the vibratory frequency of both the “spiritual” and the “physical” form of that which is to be manifest -- without this attunement, one will either not manifest what is intended; will manifest it incompletely; or will manifest it, but then not be able to hold it (thus it will again disappear out of one’s life).
I’d be very interested in hearing from others in our midst here who are familiar (and likely more familiar) with these principles via their research and/or own experience. When we get down to the question of attunement, then we are really ready to have a conversation about “what is transformation?” and “what is intention?”
My apologies for being so terribly long-winded, but there is an opening in the flow of this conversation that was perfect for introducing these aspects and I did not want to miss it.
Anna
I'm going to take Anna's suggestion and create a new post entitled, "Genius Manifesting -- The Power of Intention." I'll repost Anna's comments as the first comment there to allow for easier access.
ReplyDeleteAnd please feel free to also continue the transformation conversation in that topic as well. We have just accumulated so many responses here that it was beginning to become a bit difficult to navigate.
Thanks!
Christopher
Lunch with God dedicated to Skye, Zee, Rizzin, Jamie and JJ.
ReplyDeleteA little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a
long trip to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase
with a bag of corn chips and a six pack of root beer, and
he started his journey. When he had gone about three
blocks, he met an old woman. She was sitting in the park,
just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat down next to
her and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink
from his root beer when he noticed that the old lady looked
hungry, so he offered her some chips. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him.
Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again,
so he offered her a root beer. Again, she smiled at him. The
boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word.
As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave, but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old woman, and gave her a hug. She gave him her biggest smile ever.
When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, "What did you do today that made you so happy?" He replied, "I had lunch with God."
But before his mother could respond, he added, "You know what? She's got the most beautiful smile I've ever seen!"
Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home. Her son was stunned by the look of peace on her face and he asked, "Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?" She replied, "I ate corn chips in the park with God." However, before her son responded, she added, "You know, he's much younger than I expected."
Have lunch with God........bring chips...
Dear Genius Family:
ReplyDeleteI have been talking about Werner Erhard a lot through out this blog. Christopher also has taken the same course with Mr. Erhard. For all the good and bad of this seminar, there were many great things that came out of it.
This is a video of Werner talking about what happened back in the late 60 years.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f17cu-TS-Tk
New movie about his life:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f17cu-TS-Tk
John Denver speaks about EST.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ipWnNdBD6iw
"In this conversation we discover another possibility: living in a way, now, moment to moment, that makes a difference to life. We discover that as human beings we can live in a possibility instead of in what we have inherited, that instead of just being a human being because we were born that way, we can declare the possibility of being for human beings. This is the work of transformation: bringing forth a breakthrough in the possibility of being human.
ReplyDeleteWhat we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people's lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings."
--Werner Erhard