Invitation: Join us for an energy filled live online conversation this
Saturday, September 4th at 8:AM Pacific time. First we put topics
of interest out on the table, then we proceed to make connections
and new discoveries. It’s great fun. Join us. It’s free. One hour. Listen
to live audio through your computer, and if you like ask questions
via the chat room.
1. Spiritual work revolves around the wise use of energy. In your Heart,
at your Core, you are what you seek — an ENERGY SOURCE. Consider
the example of the fish in the ocean swimming around saying, “Where’s
the water, where’s the water?” She’s so busy looking for water she
doesn’t pause long enough to gather herself, calm down and see what’s
right in front of her.
2. Picture a world of billions of big bubbles, with a human at the center
of each of them. Bubbles do not pop easily. In fact they cannot be popped from the
outside, but only from within. Each person has a pin they can use to
pop their bubble. A productive wisdom teaching provides ideas for
clearing up the space inside the bubble so one can better remember
where they hid the pin on their person. The teaching can give inspiration
to step through the fear and dare to prick the bubble; however, no one,
no teaching, can pop the bubble for you
3. It is fascinating that at a certain point the ideas and
suggestions from wisdom teachings can become a chief barrier to
actually popping the bubble. Out of fear of living without a bubble, we
cling to teachers, methods and past learning experiences. We hesitate
to see the limits of the information we’ve gathered, placing it on the
mantle to admire it, sometimes becoming a “big ‘wise’ bubble” now
qualified to help others pop their bubble.
4. A major transition replaces spiritual seeking with the perception that
the higher world is in fact this world lived more energetically and
consciously, with more engagement and without filters of what you
“should” be doing. The bubble clears. Energy increases and intensifies,
forming a sharp and stout pin that YOU employ to pop the bubble. Now
there’s not two worlds, only One. Consider the relief of an undivided
mind!
5. Religions and spiritual teachings have a tendency to morph into glue
that holds a person back from detecting the limits of beginner level
ideas. Money and influence flow by setting up beginner level ideas as
destinations in themselves, while packaging and marketing them as
“advanced” of course. Survival of the group requires regimentation,
formulas and sacred cows. Dogma replaces daring. Just as a child’s
play area has boundaries, everyone knows what not to question.
Turmoil inevitably hits. Participants worry the group may disappear.
Groups always disappear! The wise face this fact early, so they never
get caught in the back draft. Don’t miss the powerful “Learning
How to Learn” podcasts alone these lines.
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Do you enjoy the SuperWisdom podcasts? Don’t miss this one:
#166: A Whole New Understanding of “The Devil”
(Be sure to read Lisa’s and Paul’s comments.) Listen Now
Always wonderful to post for you clear and inspiring mental pictures. Here is one to enjoy from Jacob Needleman:
Imagine a prison where the prisoners do not know or remember the life of freedom outside the walls. All their efforts are spent trying only to better their conditions inside the prison. Those in crowded, dirty, or isolated cells envy other prisoners who have greater privileges. Some decorate the walls of their cells, paint pretty stripes on the bars, without suspecting what these bars are really for.
This is a very “enlightened” prison. There are recreation facilities, arts and crafts, there is a well-stocked library, though the prison authorities carefully exclude books with certain ideas about the world outside the prison. There are prison psychiatrists to help the prisoners adapt and adjust. There are prison priests to instill imaginary beliefs and form segregated little “monasteries.” Over time, this prison has even evolved to allow political groups and meetings. Philosophers and critics arise among the prisoners to argue for more equality and liberty – within the prison. Honors are handed out, prizes are given, great names are enshrined in the rolls of prison-science, prison-art, prison-morality.
Occasionally, there appears a prisoner — sent from the outside — who speaks clearly and compellingly of a life outside the walls. What becomes of him or her? How is the messenger received? Sometimes he is met with mockery or hostility. Sometimes, the prisoners themselves kill him or dispatch him into isolation. Often his message, if it is particularly clear and persuasive, is taken up by the prison priests and psychologists, who adapt it to suit their purposes.
But sometimes this messenger from outside the walls convinces a few people that another world exists and shows them how to escape. These prisoners begin to understand that the only sensible aim they can have is to escape from the prison and, if possible, to help others escape. A special, carefully guarded knowledge circulates among those who have “ears to hear.”
That’s all for today. Please share with friends, and Facebook.Tom
B. Roundtable open discussion on this topic: Access Here.
Key idea: Resistance and struggle with lower zones of Beingness only fortifies them. Likewise, attempts to hold and recreate higher zones of Beingness proves stressful and unproductive. Unattachment is a major key, allowing yourself to oscillate often through the zones of Beingness while in direct, willing communication with the confent of each zone.
Like magnets, a useable spiritual concept creates a structure that attracts insights. As a metaphor, consider the existence of four zones of Beingness: red, yellow, green and blue.
The Zones Described
RED: The red zone is made up of memories, tendencies and reactions based on worry, blame, hostility, self-condemnation, painful demands and lingering regret.
YELLOW: In the yellow zone positive influences converge toward one’s wish to break free of the red zone and regain one’s spiritual purpose. The yellow zone is the domain of books, classes, teachers comprising a library of information and techniques – some discovered (by your personal experimentation) to be of greater usefulness than others.
GREEN: Spontaneity, flexibility, empathy and happiness blossom in the green zone. Life lives itself directly and not through the filter of techniques and influences. The color green connects with the season of spring and its budding new life.
BLUE: Ralph Waldo Emerson once described the blue zone this way: “The soul’s communication of truth is the highest event in nature, and this communication is an influx of the Divine Mind into our mind. Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable…” The blue zone is the sudden and unplanned entrance (usually brief) of the Cosmos of Ideas into the receptive space of a clear, playful and unfettered mind.
Ten Profitable Connections
1. Yellow zone techniques serve to bring the green zone into view. From the green zone of contentment and unfiltered perception, the blue zone may occasionally appear.
2. Yellow zone techniques get stale if overused. No one technique works indefinitely, though after setting it aside for awhile one can profitably cycle back. To perceive the limits of techniques, while working to develop mastery in their use, facilitates one’s approach to the green zone. The blue zone touches the green zone, not the yellow zone.
3. One naturally oscillates on this scale. For example, some people have driven themselves frantic trying to recreate a blue zone experience. Something happened, yes, but the harder one tried with yellow zone techniques and red zone demands, the further the blue zone seemed to recede.
4. The red zone reacts with every touch of the blue zone. The immense power of the blue zone stirs up the red zone, making the patient and persistent use of yellow zone techniques profitable and necessary.
5. When possible, associate with yellow/green zone incliners and avoid chronic red zoners. Red zoners sometimes pose as false positives, pretending interest in yellow zone influences with the aim of keeping you corralled. You often see them as “loyal fixtures” at spiritual groups! They tend to gravitate towards positions of influence and power in organizations, sometimes even being skilled speakers and writers. Also be leery of the hypnotic power of television – the primary dissemination tool of the red zone! Yes, there are some great moviesout there but they are few and far between.
6. Time slows in the green zone. The simplest acts, like a breath, a walk or drink of water reveal depths of pleasure and connection previously unperceived. What two words best describe the green zone? Engaging and fun!
7. Let’s highlight once again the importance of oscillation and movement on this scale. One allows himself to float, giving up the tense battle to maintain a position. Occasional blue zone visits alternate with the green zone, a plunge into the yellow zone when warranted, and perhaps even the red zone, though the red zone now taste like leather, devitalized, and one harbors no desire to linger there.
8. Increasingly unattached to the red zone, your sparks of awareness and vitality move throughout your system to free more lifetrons. Speaking in spiritual symbolism the Bible declares, “The rich get richer.” For example, energy wrapped around early childhood and family memories free up. One’s yellow zone associations with particular teachers and programs release with great relief. This release grants respect and gratitude to one’s teachers instead of unhealthy reverence that can deteriorate into red zone agonies. Only the blue zone warrants reverence.
9. A vast and expanding ocean of energy now honors your intentions. You find yourself much more resilient and able. People sink into discouragement and apathy because of low energy levels.
10. You exist in the blue zone as an Idea. Christ, Buddha, Rabia, Lao Tzu, and the super wise woman running the local grocery store in 1832 that no seeker ever knew about, all discovered the idea within the mind of God/Truth/Reality that is themselves. Like snowflakes, each one expresses pure originality. What you discover in the blue zone has never been found before, since no one else can find YOU.
Attaching color to a field of activity can facilitate connections and differentiation. Remembering a color can help bring back into consciousness all one has learned about that field.
B. Roundtable open discussion on this topic: Access Here.
(SuperWisdom Foundation www.SuperWisdom.com – Resources to develop spiritual self-reliance and penetrating inquiry, including the popular Time Out for Truth Podcast.)
An Oasis: In this monthly online class, you’ll meet friendly people all over the world. Subscribe to this website’s News in the upper right and you’ll receive a reminder.
SuperWisdom Foundation conducts a live monthly webcast the first Saturday of every month. You can ask questions, voice insights and meet friendly people all over the world who are deeply interested in these ideas. Or you can just sit back and take it all in! Unlike lectures, dialogues can sometimes evolve slowly, but the impact and benefits can reach far deeper.
Next Live Webcast, and YOU’RE invited: Saturday, September 4th at 8:AM Pacific. Access class here.
Topic: Free and Open Discussion – An unrestricted and fascinating format.
Transmit questions and insights during the event (or now) if you wish, for real time response.
People settle down into familiar patterns, comfortable in the misery they “know.” They build their own cage and claim it is opposition, when in fact it is all a clever escape from igniting their power to break free.
For the best quality grapes, wine makers know the environment cannot be lush and easy. You find flourishing wineries in somewhat dry looking, semi-desert areas. Without challenges, the best flavors of the grape stay dormant.
One great Sufi wrote he was concerned God had deserted him, since challenges and difficulties had disappeared from his outer life. What a diametrically opposed viewpoint to the mindset found in our modern times, where most students primarily seek comfort and ease under the guise of the “spiritual” search.
Just as farmers allow a field to rest for a year after 6 or 7 cycles of planting, so a wise and intelligent cessation of all effort allows space for the dawning of something new.
It is a strange fact that students often get used to a tense state of struggle, and even feel “guilty” when they lay all effort aside for awhile. This is the same old tension patterns under a different coating.
J. Krishnamurti said it so well, “To be still after tilling and sowing, is to give birth to creation.” This Bible also teaches this by placing much importance on the Sabbath Day — the day of rest.
Because of your life experiences, genetics and countless other factors, there is no duplicate to your life-puzzle, or one even similar. Your puzzle is truly unique!
We may investigate the viewpoints and discoveries of others to see what pieces of the jigsaw puzzle they may have found, that we can perhaps find within our own puzzle. However, thinking that any program or given teaching has all the pieces of the puzzle for you, closes off precious possibilities.
Many have found writing and journals to be a powerful piece of their puzzle; it is one that may work wonders for you also. Consider the immense benefits of having your own expanding row of journals on your bookshelf, teaming with insights and memories for your eyes only!
Membrane defined: “Biology: A thin, pliable layer of tissue covering surfaces or separating or connecting regions, structures, or organs of an animal or plant. Chemistry: A thin sheet of natural or synthetic material that is permeable to substances in solution.”
What is the self? Big question. One way to perceive the self is as a membrane, with porous qualities allowing a two way exchange of energy from outer to inner, and from inner to outer.
The membrane has its concerns and quirks. Why be overly concerned with getting rid of them? Many have found that a direct frontal assault on imperfections does not work, and can in fact cause them to multiply.
Wholeness includes the eternal and the temporary. Touch the eternal, and the imperfections of the temporary membrane pose no concerns; however, to hunt down the quirks and imperfections is an indirect way to make a “god” out of them. It generates conflict that scars and solidifies the membrane, thus obstructing the touch of the eternal.
The membrane, no longer trying to perfect the temporary and “enlighten” it, turns instead to allowing more space and openness. The energy now flowing through has built in charm and lots of rejuvenating pep.
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” (N. Hawthorne)
We begin this quest with persistent efforts to stay alert, refusing to roam in the maze of associative, unchecked thinking. This initial (and necessary) stage of effort can be compared to the caterpillar stage of the butterfly. Without this initial struggle, there can be no stirring up of dormant inner powers.
Just as the butterfly breaks free of the shell and flies, so intelligent effort gradually gives way to understanding. In the beginning, to quote author Vernon Howard, “We work hard because we don’t yet know enough to work easy.” The transition from hard to easy, therefore, is from effort to listening — from movement to catch the butterfly to receptivity that invites the butterfly, and when it alights, to cherish it.
An Oasis: In this monthly online class, you’ll meet friendly people all over the world. Subscribe to this website’s News in the upper right and you’ll receive a reminder.
People settle down into familiar patterns, comfortable in the misery they “know.” They build their own cage and claim it is opposition, when in fact it is all a clever escape from igniting their power to break free.
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