The relationships we bump into as we move in our life that have powerful, strong chemistries are guaranteed to be past-life relationships that in one way or another represent some uncompleted part of ourselves, some pattern of tension we have built within ourselves that has become a part of the structure of us, which we have to be able to engage and transcend. When I say “transcend,” that does not suggest any particular outcome to that experience.
In these kinds of very strong experiences of connectedness that we have, you have to understand: it’s not about relationship, it’s about connection. This is especially true when you have a spiritual teacher. What most people do not understand about these very powerful relationships that have tremendous energy in them for us is that it’s about connection; it’s not about relationship. This is true everywhere in our life. And so, when you have a connection that requires you to suspend all of the “accounting” features of your relationship, you have to bring a deeper part of you to connect to a deeper part of your experience of whatever person this is in your life, and you have to have the capacity to connect to and participate in that energy without getting tangled up in who’s doing what to whom, and why, and so on.
The thing is, in strong relationships where there’s strong chemistry—whether it’s strong positive chemistry or strong negative chemistry—that strong chemistry automatically is going to evoke tensions. It’s going to evoke tensions because any encounter with strong energy is going to change you; and when it changes you, your mind and your ego start grasping for anything they can to hold on to some certainty. But in the dimension beyond time and space, where these past-life relationships endure, there is absolutely no certainty and nothing to hang on to. There’s nothing to hang on to. And your only point of reference is going to be flow, or love.
It’s not about what you think is right or wrong; it’s not about what you want or you don’t want; it’s not about your idea of anything. It’s about flow. And that flow can be described as love. The ultimate reality manifesting itself as individual currents of creative energy between human beings is love. It is that fine energy that has the power to dissolve all structure, to dissolve everything that magnetizes you to the ordinary dimensions of your life, so that you’re able to really open yourself profoundly, deeply, and be in contact with that simple, natural vibrancy and abundance that you are—the abundance that is present right here, right now.
So
much of the time, whether in our spiritual work, in our lives, or in our search
for nourishment and for growth and self-improvement, we become confused about
the issue of relationship versus connection. Think of it this way: relationship is structure; connection is
nourishment. With careful discipline, cultivating these powerful
connections in our life will nourish us deeply and release us from the tyranny
of our ego and the disappointments of our ancestors.
Being human is a challenge. Every single day, as we deal with ourselves and the world around us, we have so many experiences that give us the opportunities to close our minds and our hearts and give power to the tensions and the judgments within ourselves. Each day we have many chances to embrace the mistakes, embrace the misunderstandings, close our hearts and minds and become judgmental and reinforce the polarity that exists between us and others.
On the other hand, we also have the opportunity every day, day after day, to hold open our hearts and minds and reach into ourselves to discover there a dimension of sweetness and beauty and, ultimately, love. That love is something that each of us has experienced before and searches for in every experience that we engage, even though that sweetness and beauty and love is only and forever found within ourselves.
The only way that we can experience healing on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level is to continually release tension and allow our creative energy to flow, dissolving every crystallization and rigidity, and restoring to us the full range of motion that is available to us in our body, our mind, our heart and our soul. We need to see each person we meet with an open heart and an open mind, understanding that that human being is a miracle that has emerged out of the singularity that is life on earth. We should grateful for the opportunity to connect with and experience whatever alignment might be available in that moment with that person and the flow between us that speaks to the miracle of the unity of life.
Judging people, dumping on people, criticizing people, these are the most ordinary things that any person can do. It’s as ordinary as it gets. Anybody can take a dump on someone else (if you’ll pardon my crudity). It takes a special person to be aware of that urge within themselves, and instead of becoming tangled in our tensions and whatever story is associated with that, to breathe and open and feel and connect and align and flow, which facilitates a change of state that is the dawning of true healing. Our judgments of ourselves and others are only an expression of our ignorance. For us to truly grow, it is essential that we begin to respect and appreciate diversity, see each person in their uniqueness as a miracle, and hold open the space for every living being to unfold their own total wellness from within themselves. We should not be an obstruction to anyone. Rather, we should be a support.
We practice the process, first of all, to release tension. Secondly, we do it to find and feel and allow our own creative energy to flow, and, in allowing that flow, we experience a change of state that feels really good. It feels good. Feeling that simple really good feeling makes our day interesting and meaningful. Moving through our day, it makes our contact, alignment and flow with everyone whose life our life touches an uplifting experience.
A Guided process
Here’s a simple process practice you can do to promote the flow of your creative energy. (If you’d like to follow along with a video, you can find one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zCEPGXwAgo)
First, it’s important to use proper posture. Whether you’re in a chair or on the floor with your legs crossed, sit up straight, thumbs and forefingers together, hands palms up on your thighs. Find the place on your thighs where your hands can be placed and support your posture—not too far forward, not too far back.
Now turn your attention within yourself. First, close your eyes and find your breath. The simplest expression of life and aliveness in each of us is our breath. We take our breathing for granted, but inside our breath there is tremendous energy. So relaxing your body, lift your shoulders to your ears and drop them. Relax your shoulders. Breathing in fully, hold it for a second, and exhaling, relax your chest. Breathing in again, take a deep breath into your abdomen. Pull down from the diaphragm, breathe into your abdomen, expand it and exhaling, relax your abdomen. Tighten your butt, and exhaling, release it. Take a minute to feel and relax your fingers, your palms, your wrists, your forearms, your upper arms, your neck. Going further, feel your thighs, feel your calves, feel the soles of your feet, feel your toes, and relax everything. It feels really good to relax deeply, and the enhanced experience of circulation that we feel in a deep state of relaxation is extremely healthy.
Now you start to pay attention to the energy centers in your body. In our practice, we consider that the human body is the expression of creative energy in the physical world. The energy body or magnetic field, from which our physical body, our mental body and our emotional body arise, has junction points that are very powerful. These junction points are called chakras. Our sex chakra (in the perineum at the base of our genitals), our heart chakra, and the chakra above the palate behind the eyebrows are considered to be the most powerful chakras in our body.
So, breathing straight into the perineum, the sex chakra, breathe there and relax. Exhale. As you exhale, move your attention up to your heart, and breathing directly into your heart, exhale and relax. As you exhale and relax, move your attention above your palate, behind what we call the third eye chakra, which is really in the middle of your brain. Breathe in, straight up into your brain, and, exhaling, relax your brain.
It’s important to keep your body relaxed when you meditate. A relaxed body facilitates a quiet mind. A quiet mind allows us to see beneath the surface of the thought waves into the vibrancy of life itself within us. To support your opening these energy chakras and awakening this extraordinary energy within you, which you do simply with the power of your own mind, you use a mantra. Mantras are words that have a strong vibration to help in retuning your state. The basic mantra of the spiritual tradition that I have trained in and practice is is 6 syllables: Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah on the inbreath; Shivaya on the outbreath. It’s repeated silently.
First, you breathe into the sex chakra, Om Namah, and exhaling, Shivaya, having your attention land in your heart. And then Om Namah, breathing straight into your heart, exhaling Shivaya, your attention lands in the middle of your brain. Then with Om Namah, you breathe directly into your brain, and with Shivaya, feel that breath rise out the top of your head.
It’s natural that your mind will wander during the course of this practice, and it’s not a problem at all. When you discover that your mind has wandered, just connect to your breath, and begin again to repeat the mantra and move your awareness within the chakras.
Sit and practice for about 20 minutes using this technique. When you are finished, take a deep breath, breathing in, exhale, and drop your chin to your chest. Inhaling, lift your chin. Exhale. Inhaling again, lift your shoulders to your ears, clench your fist and release and wiggle your fingers. Flex your butt muscles, move side to side, and feel the circulation in your legs.
As you practice, train yourself to take your awareness more and more deeply into the experience of the chakras and the flow. This will awaken in you a profound change of state which will, if you keep practicing, dissolve every tension in you, provide in your life every imaginable and unimaginable possibility and present for you, and everyone whose life your life touches, profound abundance.
Tension is the expression of unawakened energy. Love is conscious energy, and love doesn’t occur accidentally. It occurs consciously. We choose it. Choose to be awakened, choose to rise above the tensions and the judgments, and become the love you say you want to be.
My teacher,
Rudi, used stories to illustrate some of his teachings. I think my favorite
story is the one where the architect and the wise man were wandering the world
together. As they traveled, the wise man was entertained by the company of the
architect, who was looking at everything and saying, “This tree ought to be
like this,” and “That rock ought to be over here,” and “This thing ought to be
this way,” and “That thing ought to be that way.” One day they had traveled a
long time without eating, and they came over a hill to a meadow where there was
a flock of goats. As they approached the goats to milk one, the architect said,
“This goat’s tits ought to be 6” higher.” The wise man went to the goat’s udder
and the architect went 6” higher. The moral of the story is: take it where it
is and not where you think it ought to be.
What we
think about how it ought to be, about how anything ought to be, it is only our
ego talking. It is absolutely useless. If I were going to describe, in the
simplest way I could, our spiritual practice, I’d say we practice contact,
alignment, and flow. We practice contact, alignment and flow in our bodies,
which activate the deepest healing capacity of the body to express itself in
its broadest range of motion. We practice contact, alignment and flow in our
hearts to realize our own self in the deepest possible way that we can and to
flow from our own source through this body into this field of experience, ever
in alignment. We’re also practicing contact, alignment and flow between ourself
and the entire universe. It is contact, alignment and flow in every dimension
of our life that wakes up our own creative resource and facilitates its
expression through the field of our life.
This contact, this connecting, is connecting with what is, not what we think ought to be.
The second
day I was in New York with Rudi, I was sweeping the stairs outside his
brownstone on 10th Street before class because I noticed it had gotten a little
dirty out there. While I was sweeping a guy named Hans, who was ostensibly a
student of Rudi’s, came up to me and said, “Oh, you’re new here,” and I said,
“Yeah, I am.” Then he said “How can you study with Rudi?–he’s so fat.” I said
“Really, I didn’t notice. All I’ve ever seen when I looked at him was love.” I
guess Hans thought Rudi ought to be thinner, and some people thought he ought
not to be in business. Everybody has thoughts about something that we ought to
be letting go of in order to extend our capacity to connect.
When I was a
young person just starting to teach, I thought there’s a right way and a wrong
way to do everything. Now I think the fact that anything ever gets done is a
miracle, and each and every day that I wake up and start to express myself, I
establish contact and flow within me, and the rest of it is an experiment.
Maybe in the linear world how it ought to be is a straight line, and easy to
say. Sometimes I wish we lived in a linear world. It would be a lot simpler.
But we don’t. So, quieting our minds and then feeling into our hearts, we let
go of our ego and all of the ways in which we think it ought to be to connect
to the reality of our own self and the reality of each other. We begin to hold,
without any kind of judgment, a completely open and loving space from within
ourselves for everyone that we share our life with. Be the wise person and, if
you’re hungry, take it where it’s at. Don’t go eating where you think it ought
to be. Because it ain’t there.
We have to constantly wake up the energy that is this body and, with our own personal gentle awareness, by feeling and feeling and feeling, bring the body into total alignment with itself and its resources and its creative flow. Then everything else happens on its own. It will happen not like we think it ought to be, because that is the limitation of anybody’s creative expression. It will happen as an unimaginable possibility that is beyond anything that this crazy brain of ours can wrap itself around.
The story of the architect and the wise man and other teaching stories appear in Rudi’s book Spiritual Cannibalism, published by Rudra Press.
Growing and change begin with letting go, rather than struggling with decisions. We need to allow a flow, which may move us into a period that is like a dark night of the soul. If we can move into and through that space of shadow, we can come through it and return into the light in a whole new way.
While there are always tensions and issues to be recognized and acknowledged, the basic issue is how do we flow in and navigate all of the circumstances of our life in a way that allows for the richest, finest part of us to be expressed.
Cookies
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
