09-13-2017, 11:15 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-13-2017, 11:16 AM by rva_jeremy.)
These are great tips! I especially resonate with the "dissociation" concept with respect to catalyst. It tacks very well with the Buddhist message of mindfulness as a means to really participating in the experiences of our lives fully, using meditation as a dojo for practice in real life:
There's something about experiencing phenomenal reality that "nails you to the spot", which seems confining and claustrophobic but is actually exactly the experience that our catalyst is lining up for us. I also return to this excerpt when I think about catalyst and the way to engage it for maximum learning, with a focus on our own reactions and an inquisitiveness into our mindset and thinking relative to experience:
I come back to that idea a lot: "learn to meet head-on all things in the light of love". I've spent a lot of my life avoiding catalyst instead of diving into it. I get the sense, 777, that your insight has a lot to do with balance because it is in avoiding and ignoring catalyst that it piles up until it bombards us.
Pema Chödrön Wrote:In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal — quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some kind of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then that's our experience. If sometimes we can approach what scares us, and sometimes we absolutely can't, then that's our experience. "This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it's always with us" is really a most profound instruction. Just seeing what's going on — that's the teaching right there. We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.
There's something about experiencing phenomenal reality that "nails you to the spot", which seems confining and claustrophobic but is actually exactly the experience that our catalyst is lining up for us. I also return to this excerpt when I think about catalyst and the way to engage it for maximum learning, with a focus on our own reactions and an inquisitiveness into our mindset and thinking relative to experience:
Hatonn Wrote:I am Hatonn. I am now with this instrument. When we speak of the reality of that which you call love, we speak of a universal concept. We speak of a concept with which all things have been created. We speak of a concept which contains all things that you experience. And man of Earth looks about him, and he sees about him that which is disagreeable to what he would desire. And he labels it, what you would call, to be bad or negative.
Yet in essence, my friends, that too is the love of which we speak. For in order to look upon any situation, any experience, or to receive any knowledge, and to have the ability to accept or reject through your own analysis that situation, is truly a gift of love from the Creator. And in order to properly do so, it is necessary that you [have] the balance of the concept of love. For each and every experience there is that which is what you would call the opposite, and through the knowledge of each, you then have the experience of being able to bring into balance both positive and negative aspects in your learning process. Without the knowledge of each, it would be of greater difficulty, or shall we say, even impossible for you to proceed upon your path of truth and enlightenment. For, my friends, without all things that exist within the universe, our creation would be incomplete, and so would our experience.
And indeed, though it be infinite, my friends, our experiences are complete. They are complete, insomuch as they are the manifestation of the concept of love, brought forth through the Creator and His gift of creation to us.
Love, my friends, to those who truly understand, is the tool by which they create. It is the tool or the law by which they live. It is the words they speak and the thoughts that they project. Love, my friends, is that which the Creator is and always shall be. In order that you may come into a clearer understanding of this concept, it is not only necessary, as we speak, for your daily meditation, it is also necessary that you go through the experiences and lessons of your life, and that you meet that which is placed before you, whatever it may be, as a stepping stone upon which you must tread—lightly, regularly and knowledgeably. Meet that which is placed in front of you. Do within that circumstance the best that you know how. Love the experience entirely, whether it be painful or pleasurable. For, my friends, in all things there are lessons that you must learn in order to progress. And placed before you in life there is nothing of coincidence. There is only that which is intended to be learned.
There was one upon your planet with whom you are familiar, whom many call Master. And, my friends, that name can be yours. That concept that he represented, of love, can be yours. Learn to meet head-on all things in the light of love and you shall learn to master all of your emotions and thoughts, and you shall learn to generate within you a brightly luminous flame from the spark of divinity that is within you. Radiate from within the love that you learn, the love that you are, and the love that you know you shall be. For love is ever-growing and never-ending. Love never is depleted nor divided. From within you comes all things, all things that you desire. For indeed, that love within you is the creative force within the universe. You are an extension of the creation, you are the creation, and you are the Creator. You are the light. You are the way, the knowledge, wisdom and truth. You are in the Creator as He is in you, and though you do not understand it through the utilization of your intellect, in true essence you are all things.
Hatonn, Sept 26, 1976
I come back to that idea a lot: "learn to meet head-on all things in the light of love". I've spent a lot of my life avoiding catalyst instead of diving into it. I get the sense, 777, that your insight has a lot to do with balance because it is in avoiding and ignoring catalyst that it piles up until it bombards us.