Rotten Rituals

Continuing the exploration of how religion interacts with grace.

I've been aware of the presence of God since before I can remember. I think that perhaps all children are, but they are conditioned away from it. I'm not really sure how my faith survived my childhood, given that my father was a 'committed' atheist, my mother a lapsed methodist, and my stepfather couldn't really be bothered with 'all that'. Consequently my spirituality became something of a 'private' event, observed in the moments between the times when I had to 'present' to the world. Often it was late at night when everyone else had gone to bed. I would sit up pondering the wonders I saw around me, or sneak outside to dance naked in the moonlight with the wet grass tickling the soles of my feet.

I found god in everything, the sun on my face, the feel of a horses body pressed against mine, the trusting eyes of the family dog. Hardest of all was finding God in the people around me, buried as it so often is below the layers personality and protection, but I found that I could 'look' at them in a particular way (that was more heart than mind) and the veils of ignore-ance would drop away to reveal a shining beauty. I was often criticised for my willingness to trust strangers, forgive those who mistreated me and generally refuse to engage in the social play of rejection and status games. Despite the numerous urgings to 'toughen up' and 'fight back', I could not help but see the pain being expressed in these hurtful actions. The few times I tried to heed this advise and retaliate, the pain I caused myself in the betrayal of my truth was far greater than the hurt anyone else could deal me.

However, I had one glaring advantage in maintaining my relationship to the divine, I was never exposed to religion (thanks to my atheist father). My first attendance at a religious ritual was a wedding, fairly benign if a little long. My second was a catholic christening of my nephew, which has stuck with me ever since. Not  (sadly) because the ritual was beautiful or inspiring, but because it struck me as being completely empty, a feelingness delivery of empty words. The one bright spot was the benediction by my younger sister, who's love for her nephew was the only evidence of God present.It became clear to me that ritual without true connection was a tragic blind alley and a terrible fraud. So what is ritual meant to be?

At it's best, it can be a gateway to the experience of the divine. Ritual can create a path that removes us from our everyday world filled with thoughts of problems and struggle, and lead us into an experience of our deepest truth. Rituals don't have to be spiritual either, our lives are filled with them. Going to the theatre or a movie is a ritual that many of use for exactly this purpose. Spending quality time with family, meeting our friends for a coffee or a friendly game of poker, and giving mum a call once a week (unless it's from obligation) are all examples of rituals that connect us to divine reality. Even sitting down for a cuppa, when done in the right way, can be the equivalent of a deep meditation. The things that set these apart from the hollow ranting of many religious endeavours is simply the presence of authentic presence. It is not the ritual itself, but the way in which we engage with it that provides the power and the benefit. It is not the ritual that contains grace, it is we who bring grace to it with our intention.

Simply put, rituals have the meaning and the purpose that we ascribe to them. If it is our intention to use a ritual to connect with the divine experience then literally any ritual will do. If it is not, or even worse, if we are participating in ritual from some sense of obligation, fear of divine retribution, fear of social retribution, or from the belief that the ritual itself is what holds the power, then no ritual will do the job. Meeting once a week to celebrate life, connect with grace, sing uplifting songs and enjoy the fellowship of others is a beautiful ritual - unless it's done from a sense of obligation and compliance to the demands of an oppressive religion that negates the divinity of its members. Taking ten minutes five times a day to kneel down and connect with grace is a wonderful idea (also good for the back), until its done to avoid social disapproval and punishment from the self righteous domination of self appointed 'representatives' of God.

Any ritual that negates the divinity of those performing it, or pretends that the power of grace is invested in objects, actions and words is a false one. Such rituals merely separate us form grace, diminish our sense of self, and give a non existent power and authority to those administering them. Far from connecting us to God, they trap us in an illusion of separation and unworthiness. They are simply another form of idolatry (discussed in next blog). The only useful ritual is one that reminds us to engage in some action of sincere communion.

Jesus of Nazareth instructed his disciples that 'they would be better to pray in a closet than a church'. It is going inside and finding the natural connection we all have to grace that gives us benefit, and any ritual that feels right to you is the best one. If it doesn't feel good, I say don't do it.

Foolish Faith

I spoke of the difference between faith and belief as being that faith emerges from a direct experience of God, which somewhat contradicts the modern idea that faith is 'belief in the absence of evidence'. People often speak of 'leap of faith', implying that one chooses to trust in the grace even though their rational mind tells them that they shouldn't, or that there is no evidence for doing so. Many times this is how faith is arrived at, often in circumstances of great peril or overwhelm where the person is faced with the knowledge that they are powerless to affect their own rescue.

Yet for this to occur there must first be some small voice within the person that impels that choice. One does not randomly 'get religious' when their fat is in the fire. People do not suddenly abandon their worldview, unless they have some inkling that there is something there. If you were hanging off the edge of the cliff you would not suddenly leap for a rope, unless you had some indication that the rope was actually present.

Everyone wants to believe that they have power in their world, particularly the power to look after themselves, this is essential for a healthy ego. However, there comes a point in every life when we discover the limitations of that power. Perhaps it is through sickness, or extreme danger, or getting old and infirm, or the inability to overcome addictions, or even through discovering that we are unable to create happiness for our self. Some people arrive at this knowledge through scientific inquiry or introspection, where they suddenly realise that the enormous complexity and order of nature is far beyond their understanding or ability to control. However it happens, at this moment there is the inevitable conclusion that some other rather awesome and intelligent force is at work in the world. This realisation - part logical conclusion, part experience, part intuitive understanding - is the foundation of faith. The knowledge that, in the words of the Kama Sutra, "things are not as they seem, nor are they different".

So what is faith? Well, I think it is simply the knowledge that there is something powerful, intelligent and benevolent driving the universe. The understanding that there is order in the apparent chaos, and that we are part of that order. What trips most people up is the idea that this 'higher power' is benevolent. How could it possibly be so when the world is full of war, destruction and inhumanity. Wouldn't a benevolent power do something about that? It's a good question, and one I could spend tomes trying to answer, without success. That's the problem - it's not until one has the experience of grace, and deepens in relationship with it, that it begins to make sense. One can't really have faith until they have faith.

Actually, arriving at faith doesn't have to involve extreme events, it requires only that we sincerely allow the possibility, but extreme experiences do make the best stories. My favourite was told to me a counsellor I went to see. She related how, as a young woman in New York, she found herself one day in a dead end alley in the wrong part of town. She was surrounded by five young men who were obviously intent on taking what they wanted and doing her harm. In that moment she realised that there was no way to escape or defend herself, she simply did not have the power to save herself from this situation.

As often happens at this moment, she surrendered, and was inspired to take a radical action. She explained to those boys that she was frightened for her safety, that she realised she was in a bad part of town and feared she would be raped and killed. She then asked these young men, who were intent on doing just that, if they would protect her and see her safely out of that area. Those five individuals proceeded to proudly escort her to her home, waiting until her door was close behind her before moving off. Years later she received a letter from the leader of that gang of boys, explaining that she had completely turned his life around. He told her that she was the first person who had ever seen him as someone capable of doing good. That day he quit the life of the street, got a job, and was now a successful man with a devoted wife and family.

I still cry every time I relate that story. Not only did she find the faith that saved her own life, she found the ability to have faith in others, to look past all the apparent evidence of evil and see the possibility of goodness. Her faith saved at least one other life from what would have almost certainly been a descending spiral into crime, drugs and early death. That is the true power of faith, the ability to look through the apparent reality to the grace that lies within, and in so doing, bring that grace forth in the world.

The picture above is the Tarot card of Strength, which represents the Kabalistic teaching on faith. The young woman, hopelessly overmatched in physical strength and ferocity, has tamed and befriended the wild lion through gentle love. She has declined to except the appearance of threat and overcome the danger though her faith in the goodness of the beast. Faith is a looking with the heart, rather than the mind, and its power is the power of God.

Why doesn't a benevolent higher power fix all the pain, hatred and violence in the world? What then would we have to do, what would make our lies meaningful, what would be the purpose of this adventure called life if not to discover who and what we truly are through our actions of love. A loving parent does not do their children's work for them, but gives them the opportunity to grow in power and maturity through setting them challenging tasks. In short, that’s our job - after all, we are the ones doing all the violence, hatred and destruction - why should God clean up our mess?

Together we rise

The Folly of Belief

Are religion and direct experience of God mutually exclusive?

You could be forgiven for thinking so.

I am not the first to note that there seems to be an inverse relationship between spirituality and religion, which means that the more religious people become the more disconnected from grace they seem to be. I say this not as a cynical condemnation of religious hypocrisy, but as a testament to the great tragedy of religion. Countless millions of people turn to religion looking for comfort, understanding and meaning. They seek the grace that others speak of. They yearn for the glory that something deep inside them clearly remembers. They seek peace, but often find only the hollowness of proscribed beliefs, or even the hatred and division of religious fundamentalism. However, many great men and women of faith have emerged from all sorts of religions, but they appear to be the exception rather than the rule.

Which leads me to the point - the difference between faith and belief. In the last blog I made reference to the difference between right and left brain thinking. This is particularly interesting in relation to matters spiritual. The left brain is the aspect of our ego mind that has the task of defining things. It gives names to everything, divides one thing from another, and allows us to distinguish the myriad purposes of objects in the physical world. This is important, it's good to know the difference between a knife and a plate, or a piece of rope and a poisonous snake. Our left brain figures out, catalogues and cross references not only things themselves, but what we believe them to be. Thus the same object can have two completely different belief systems attached to it. To one person a rifle may be the means by which they can secure food for their families. To another it may be a weapon by which they can dominate and enslave.

In this way the left brain can be considered the centre of our belief system. The important thing about beliefs is that they are polarised, meaning that we define things as much by what they are 'not' as by what they are - everything is relative to other things. By definition they define, which is to say that they divide and separate. Thus to be a Catholic is to 'not be' a Muslim, to believe differently to a Protestant, to be separate to a Pagan. Any religion that is 'taught' must be this way, because the act of teaching is one of defining. Religion says that God is 'this way', that humans are 'just so', that righteousness looks 'like this'. In any relative world view it is unavoidable that we will come to a belief about 'relative value'. For my beliefs to be valuable to me, they must be superior to others. For my beliefs to be 'true', others must be false.

There is no way to approach God from a left brain perspective that will not result in this dilemma. Trying to do so is like trying to perform surgery with a sledge hammer, it's the wrong tool for the job, and will most likely kill the patient. God is the indivisible, the all encompassing, the oneness that underlies all forms. Every great teacher will attest to the same thing, that God simply cannot be described, defined or captured with words and concepts (left brain). At best, words can simply point in that direction and intimate at the truth. In 'The Course in Miracles', Jesus says (paraphrased) that "I cannot tell you what Truth is, only what it is not".

Fortunately however, for those who may be despairing, God can be 'known'. Knowing is not a belief, or a definition or a concept - it is an experience, a living relationship with the oneness of grace. In other words, knowing cannot be done with the left brain. This is the great flaw of religion, the attempt to define God , to confine the infinite to the finite. The path of definition and belief leads only to the human experience of physical life, of separateness. Those who would know grace follow a path of experience, a path of faith. Faith is not, as popularly thought, a belief in God despite a lack of all evidence. It is the peace that comes from the direct experience of God, and it can only be had by those who are willing to abandon a slavish devotion to left brain thinking and embrace the right brain perspective on life.

The left brain defines and divides, looking for difference and separation. The right brain delves and explores, it seeks the relationship between things, the sameness and the sanctity. The left brain uses and controls, seeing a purpose to each object, a way in which it can be manipulated towards its own end. The right brain surrenders and succumbs, looking for how it might be 'used' by the greater web of life to a greater purpose. The left brain sees everything relative to itself. The right brain sees itself relative to everything else. The left brains separates, the right bonds. The left seeks individuation, the right seeks merging. And so on.

Once more, do not think that I intend to diminish the necessary and important function of the left brain in living this individuated human life. It is a wondrous creation, that is vital to the experience of creation. I say this merely to point out that if you wish to know grace, this isn't the path that takes you there. Nor do I wish to diminish the contribution and potential of religion. Religions, especially those who invoke particular practices of inquiry, have the capacity to evoke faith and direct others to the knowing of God. However, if all it offers is belief without real experience, it is a dead end that take us in exactly the wrong direction.

If we would know faith, we must abandon our beliefs. If we would know God, we need to forsake our attempt to define it. Grace exists in every moment, in everything, in every action, in every being. Indeed, grace is all there is. Anything else is just a figment of our imagination, a label, a name, a value judgement, an attempt to define and limit. If we would know grace, we need to look for what is the same in all things. But don't BELIEVE me, find your own knowing, your own faith.

Together we rise

The Middle Path - A Neurological Perspective

I wish to continue with the theme of the middle path, this balance point between the polarities of life. I mentioned in the last blog that I believe the problem is ideation, where we give too much authority to ideas and philosophies rather than trusting in our natural knowing. I'd like to clarify that this doesn't mean that ideas are wrong, or that the 'rational' mind should be denied in favour of feelings and instincts. These faculties are all natural parts of our human being, designed to work together in harmony and balance. The problem only arises when we favour one or the other too heavily, and impair their natural communication with each other. Supportive evidence for this need for a balanced approach is now coming from the field of science, which for so long has pushed us too far to the mental side of life. It's emerging out of the very exciting field of biological psychology.

Advances in electro imaging technology, such as MRI and PET scans, are allowing investigators to form a remarkably detailed picture of which aspects of our brains are doing what. This has been going on for a while, in fact if you haven't heard something about the differences between our left and right brain you've probably been hiding out in a mountain cave for the last twenty years. Popular myth has it that the right side of our brain is the feminine, responsible for creativity, emotion, music, relationship, intuition and so forth. The left is the masculine, responsible for language, linear logic, goal seeking, planning and so forth.

These are gross over simplifications of the available evidence, but there is enough truth to them to make it a useful model for discussion. Investigators have found a way to temporarily 'lesion', or shut down particular areas of the brain, allowing them to determine what alters during these episodes of dysfunction. For instance, when certain areas of the left hemisphere are lesioned, the person experiences impairment in their capacity for speech, reasoning, definition, the passing of time and focussed thoughts. When particular areas of the right hemisphere are lesioned some people lose their ability to distinguish emotion, perceive patterns in information, recall events, and recognise faces.

Let me stress that these differences are not nearly as predictable or as defined as many popular books on the subject would assert, but they give rise to interesting questions. What we do know is the the separate hemispheres of the brain control the opposite side of the body, and that the right brain has long been considered the seat of creativity, free will, emotion and motivation - considered the feminine mind. In fact the Catholic church has been waging war against the right brain for centuries. The word sinister, which is latin for 'left' (sinistra) came to mean evil in church doctrine. Left handedness was considered the mark of the devil and children with a left handed dominance were still being ruthlessly suppressed and 'retrained' as late as the 1960's.

Brain imaging studies have shown us that states of deep meditation and prayer generate increased activity in the right cortex, indicating that this area of our brain is involved in our personal connection to spirituality. However, belief based thinking, such as that involved in religious theology and ritual, mainly involve the left cortex. What we also know is that people who have suffered serious trauma often have a tendency to favour left brain thinking, which some put down to a tendency to avoid emotionally linked memories which seem to involve the right brain.

It appears that these two polarities need to work together to produce the best results. Most genius level intellects and high achievers in fields of innovation are famous for being people who are active in using both parts of their brain. Einstein was a great example of this. He related that once he had assimilated all the available information on the subject, he would determine his objective (both left brain activities) and then give it to his unconscious to figure out. He would then get on with other things until it came back at him with a response, which usually took the form of symbolic images (right brain activity). But this doesn't just work for geniuses. Every day life is a balancing act between our analytic mind and our intuitive reasoning - between our emotional responses and our cognitive abilities.

We all know people who favour one aspect over the other, usually to their detriment. For instance, those who stray too far to the left and live their lives in a highly intellectual and emotionally disengaged manner are usually dreadful at relationship, inclined to overwork, pay too little attention to their health and often lead quite bland unsatisfying lives. On the other hand (so to speak), some people go too far the other way and live lives of intense emotional drama while being unable to plan, set goals, discipline themselves or reason very well. Progress towards happiness for these people usually only comes when they recognise the need to embrace the 'other side' of life and develop their neglected faculties.

It's actually quite natural that different people specialise and tend more one way than the other, it's part of the diversity of human existence that go's to make a whole and interesting society, so long as we don't take it so far that we lose personal balance. Fortunately we all have both capacities, the ability to engage both sides of our brain in concert and balance. No matter where we are, or which way we tend, its never too late too redress the balance. Perhaps we need to take an art class, or a course in critical thinking, learn to play an instrument or develop self discipline. Whatever the need, just recognising that we may be out of balance is the first step back towards the middle.

Grace be with you.

The Middle Path

In the last blog I made quick reference to The Budha's teaching of following the middle path. Budha was born the crown prince of his country and raised in a state complete insulation from his world. He was surrounded by wealth, love, and reverence - never being confronted with the harsher realities of life until the day when he was presented to his populace. On that day he was shocked and horrified by the poverty, pain and suffering that he had never seen. He was also ashamed of his own wealth and position, realising that it came at the expense of others. So much so that he ran away from his life of privilege and became a spiritual ascetic, living  naked in the forest with nothing to eat but mud and water. After eight years of living this way, emaciated and weak from starvation, he had a realisation that life and truth was all about balance, that one had to walk the middle path.

So what does this mean? For me it means that this is a world of polarities, that life exists somewhere between the extremes. Everything in this reality is polarised - hot and cold, dark and light, up and down, in and out, fast and slow, male and female and so on. So too with matters spiritual. We live on the razors edge between the infinite oneness that resides inside us, and the extraordinary individuality that is our existence. We are both the same as everyone else, and entirely unique. And so too with life. We each of us struggle to live a life balanced between competing differences - we try to balance work and play, giving and receiving, caring for others and looking after ourselves, speaking and listening, activity and rest, consumption and creation, adventure and security, belonging and individuating, etc. Every moment of every day involves choices we make about which way we are going to go. Do I eat more food, or take a walk? Do I clean the house, or watch TV? Do I spend time with those I love, or get into my hobby? Yet despite this enormous burden of choice, this ever present balancing act, most of us manage to get through the day successfully - until we don't.

Therein lies the problem, sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we get it horribly wrong, sometimes we get so far out of balance that life becomes unbearable. I think it would be rare to find a person today who hasn't got at least one area of their life where the balance is out of whack. Perhaps they work too much, eat too much, give too much, let too much slide, or covet too much. Perhaps they love too little, take too little, laugh too little. So many lives today are consumed with greed and dreams of wealth, at the expense of their family's, their friends, their lovers. While others take too little and sacrifice their own wellbeing for dreams of love that never comes. As always the question of the hour is this - why and how do we get so far out of balance?

The easiest way to answer that question is to ask another - how is it that we manage to stay in balance at all? How, with the vast array of competing polarities and impossible choices, do we ever get it right? Certainly the complexity of life is too much for our poor feeble minds to handle. So what other forces must be at work just to get us to the end of each day intact and reasonably sane? My belief is that we manage to get it right so much of the time exactly because we don't give it to our minds to figure out. In truth, the vast majority of our actions and choices are happening at the unconscious level. We experience them as instincts, feelings, intuitions, desires, hungers, frustrations, longings, whims, fancies and inexplicable urges - rarely questioned and almost always acted upon.

It seems that we are built to carry out this delicate act of balancing, with little need for our minds intrusions. Our mind gets to know about the decision after it's been made. Sometimes it gets to figure how to put the decision into action, but rarely gets to influence the decision itself. I would go so far as to suggest that it is truly our hearts (the middle chakra, the balance point between the two polarities) that gets to make our decisions. That for the most part, we walk the middle path that Buddha, echoed and affirmed by every great teacher throughout the ages, spoke of.

So to come back to the original question, why do we get so far out of balance? It seems to me that the problem here is ideation, which is to say that we forget to trust in our hearts and entrust it to our mind. We lose touch with our instinctive wisdom, because we have given authority to ideas - to philosophies, beliefs, creeds, political theories, religions, charismatic personalities and so on. We have failed to place our faith where it truly belongs, in the quiet still voice gently whispering in our hearts.

Is there anything so dangerous as a good idea? Is there anything more likely to disrupt our connection to the divine than a grand religious theory? Anything quicker to destroy the peace of society than the latest all encompassing Utopian dream?

Does balance and truth really come from having the answers or from the willingness to keep asking the questions, a moment by moment inquiry, what needs to happen right now?

Walking Between the Worlds

My path to grace began with a childhood fascination with the Tarot. Without knowing why, I found myself compelling drawn to these evocative images. Over the ensuing years I studied all I could about it, but it wasn't until much later that it truly revealed itself. In 1998 I sat down to write a course on reading Tarot, and discovered that the words appearing on the screen were both achingly familiar and totally unknown to me. I found myself channeling the wisdom of Grace, and it was laying out in my mind the true teaching of the Tarot, which are an extension of the knowledge of the Kabbala. So what has this got to do with anything?

Well, the image you see to the right is one of the many depictions of the lesson of Temperance. In many traditions, this is called the path of enlightenment, what Budha called 'walking between the worlds'. Reaching enlightenment indicates that the person lives both in the world of form and in the world of spirit, or grace. Actually, this is what everyone is doing all the time, we are spirit made flesh, god in creation. However, when we take form we go usually through a process of forgetting our spirit self in order to inhabit our physical self. If we didn't, we would find it very difficult to go from the experience of  unlimited grace and power to the experience of limitation, vulnerability and not-oneness. If we didn't forget, adjusting to this new reality with it's potentials for pain and frustration would be almost impossible.

However, we are not meant to forget forever. Over time our spiritual self gradually and naturally makes itself known, unless this process is interfered with, usually by false religions and socialisation designed to keep us in ignorance of our true being. Continued forgetting is disastrous to our wellbeing, it's like trying to motivate a car after we've run out of petrol, all hard work and frustration. When we have become over identified with a self concept of limitation, life can become hard and meaningless. Life stops being an adventure in form, and becomes a journey in suffering. The opposite is also true - if we are trying to live in the world of spirit and deny the world of form we've missed the point entirely. The trick is living with our awareness in both worlds, deeply centered in the world of spirit but thoroughly and joyfully immersed in our physical reality. Enlightenment is the process of undoing this forgetting and learning to reconcile the two seemingly separate realities. Grace is the mechanism that spirit provides to achieve this.

Of course, the question is how? In the Tarot, Temperance is the final lesson in the path of enlightenment. It is the teaching of En-joy-ing, meaning that we bring joy into everything by having an attitude of meeting all experience with joy. However, coming to this point is a process best learned in stages. In future blogs I'll be talking about the six lessons of grace that precede Temperance, designed to move us naturally to a place where we can greet every moment of life with joyful welcome. For now, you might like to play with the idea that joy is not so much a product of the reality you face, but a result of the attitude with which you face it. It's the decisions I make about what is happening that determine whether my experience is one of suffering or one of exstacy. When I greet each moment as an adventure, an opportunity to experience the wonder of life, I naturally find the good in it and respond from a place of power and creativity.

Grace be with you

Blessings Be

The most powerful ways I know to experience grace and all the blessings it offers, is to offer grace to others in the form of blessing. This doesn't mean you have to wave your hands in the air and chant strange rituals at people. Blessing is simply another word for positively recognising other people. When I bless someone else I choose to see the good (grace) inside them, and acknowledge it openly. Everyone blesses all the time. We bless our friends, our families, and our co-workers every time we smile, embrace, validate and encourage. It's an ancient truth that the more we bless others, the more blessed we are. It could be said that all the world really needs is more blessing, but it isn't always as easy as it sounds. There are a number of barriers to blessing which we may have to get past.

The first, and the worst, is a sense of unworthiness, the idea that we have no blessing to offer - that our opinion is not important or valuable to others. Sadly this low opinion of ourselves arises because we have not received the kind of blessing and validation we needed. Even more sadly, this is a cyclical condition where, because of other peoples failure to bless us, we now feel we cannot bless others, who then feel they cannot bless others and so on. Fortunately it only takes one person to break this cycle. One person to think "well, maybe I don't think my opinion is worth much, but perhaps it can give some small joy to another anyway. Maybe I'll give it a go and see what happens". I don't know about you, but the times in my life where someone has taken the trouble to offer me blessing and recognition stick out boldy in my memory. Not only because they are rarer than I might like, but because they feel so damn good. It didn't matter to me who that person was, only that they took the time to care.

The second barrier to blessing is anger. Most people carry the pain of not receiving the blessing and validation they would like. Most people feel unnapreciated, taken for granted and unrecognised at some point in their life. For some, perhaps many, this can turn into a vengeful resentment. "If the world won't give me the blessing I need, then I'm not giving it to them either". I wish I could say that this is uncommon, but it isn't. Many of us feel that we have an empty cup, and therefore don't make the effort to fill the cup of others, lest it cost us what little we have. The reality of life is very different. Blessing not only costs us nothing but it has the strange effect that as we fill up the cup of others, so ours is filled. When I get into this sort of mindset I try to ask myself this question "Is this the person I want to be". Do I want to be part of the problem, or part of the solution?

The third barrier to blessing is fear. Fear that we might appear weak or needy. Fear that our blessing may not be welcome. Fear that the other may be embarrased. Fear that it might fall on deaf ears, be struck down on the rocks of the other persons feelings of unworthiness. Fear that we might be ridiculed or rejected. Fear that others might misinterpret our offering, see it as angling for something we want in return. Fear that others might grow attached and dependent on us. Fear that we will always be the one giving, and not receive the blessings we long for. Fear with a thousand faces. There are two good remedies for fear. The first is courage, the wilingness to decide that the benefits outweigh the risk. The willingness to allow other people to have their reactions and hold fast to the purity of our intent. The second remedy is skill - there are ways of offering blessing to others that are hard to misinterpret, hard to deny and hard to resist.

Not all Blessings are Created Equal

I wish that they were, for certainly the intent is equal in it's lovingness, but the undeniable fact is that there is a skill to good blessing. There is an old principle that when it comes to communication the progentior is 100% responsible. This means that we are responsible not only for what what we say, but for how it is heard. This is harsh, because our words are often being filtered through the other persons worldview, but if we wish our words to have effect we need to take the time to understand their worldview and tailor our message to it. The intention of blessing is to communicate love and acceptance, so if our intention is true, the extra effort shouldn't be too much trouble.

As blessings go compliments are tricky and easy to misinterpret. They often hit up against the barriers of the other persons low self esteem, and sometimes can be interpreted as 'flattery', which is esentially self serving. If you tell someone that they are beautiful for instance, you may offend them because they could have a history of being objectified and exploited for their beauty, and not respected for their character. That's not to say that compliments don't work at all, but to give an effective compliment we usually have to make sure that it is very specific. It needs to be tailored to the the person's view of themselves, to praise in them something that they value in themselves. If we compliment someone for something that they are unable to recognise about themselves, our words will fall on deaf ears. If we compliment them for something that they do not value about themselves, or something that represents a limitation to them, they may even resent it.

Similarly, praise and encouragement can be seen as patronising and arrogant, or downright manipulative. Most people like to be praised, but only if the person praising them is someone who's opinion they respect and value. Sadly, many people who are in the habit of easily praising others, are often using charm to manipulate for personal gain. This leads to a general distrust and wariness of those who offer praise. Praise and encouragement usually requires a pre-existing bond of intimacy, or no room for doubt about the givers intentions, to be readily received.

The most effective and readily accepted form of blessing is usually a communication that lets the other person know that they have made a positive contribution to the speakers life. Everyone has an inbuilt need to make a contribution and be seen as a valuable member of their community. For all our modern obsession with what we can 'get', it is our ability to give that brings us happiness and self esteem. In fact, the most damaging thing that happens to our self esteem in this world is where others fail to recognise what we have to offer. So if you really want to let someone know that you value them, ask yourself what it is that they bring to your experience of life, and tell them about it.

Together we rise.

Healing the Ego - part III

I've tried to establish that the Ego is not the enemy of life, happiness and all things spiritual. I've also attempted to convince you that it is what happens to the ego in the process of being socialised to an unhealthy society, rather than it's innate properties, that causes our suffering and sense of separation from the divine. I'd like to expand on exactly how the ego becomes shattered in this way. The ego is meant to be a fluid mechanism, constantly adapting to encompass and incorporate all aspects of our being. As we develop during childhood different faculties and abilities, (thought, willfulness, curiosity, sexuality etc) come online at various stages. In a healthy family system these emergences would be welcomed and validated, leading to their natural incorporation into our evolving identity.

In many family systems certain aspects of our being are not welcomed, causing what psychologists call arrested development, which means that the ego has to adapt to the situation by supressing and defending against these parts of ourselves. This takes the form of various messages, beliefs and decisions that we make in order to survive - such as "it's not safe to tell the truth", "my sexuality is dirty and needs to be hidden" or "who I am is not right". These are known as trauma messages and they affect our entire system. Typically trauma messages have a cognitive component such as a belief, an affective component (our feelings) and a connotative component, being our attitudes and behaviours. For instance, if you are punished for speaking your truth you might make the decision that "my truth is bad" (cognitive) which will produce feelings of fear, shame, guilt and probably anger (affective). This will often result in behaviours such as withdrawing, people pleasing, secrecy and passive aggression against yourself or others.

To complicate thing even further, as time goes on you may forget the cause of these behaviours entirely and then start to berate yourself for them. Addictions and self destructive or self limiting behaviours all started their life as adaptations that were trying to protect you and ensure your survival. The result for the ego is that it stops being a fluid  mechanism and becomes a rigid unhelathy identity, which has trouble evolving and adapting to new situations. It is this ego 'state' that separates us from ourself and from grace. So, how do we go about undoing this egoic calcification? I like to continue with the tree analogy and treat is like gardening. To create a great garden (healthy ego) their are several stages we have to go through.

(1) Attention: Left to itself, this ego state will simply continue on becoming more and more choked up with trauma mesages, much as an untended garden becomes overgrown with weeds. The first thing we need to do is to end the denial and recognise that our garden is in need of loving care, of being tended with the correct tools. This is very different from trying to erradicate the problem from a place of frustration and self hatred. We are not trying to kill it off (poisons) or force it to look acceptable (lawnmower), but to gently revive it to it's original beauty (getting our hands dirty).

(2) Weeding:  This is the cognitive component of our work. We need to sort through the jungle to discover which parts are worth keeping and which are weeds to be removed. The weeds are all the repressive and self degrading thoughts, beliefs and decisions we have made. It's important to realise that even weeds have been useful, in that they have kept life going in our garden. Our 'negative patterns' are actually earlier survival strategies and need to be appreciated and loved even as we remove them from our minds. In fact, it is only though love and compassion that we are able to tell the difference between the two.

(3) Tilling the Soil:  This is the emotional component of our work. As we are pulling the weeds (negative messages) from their place we unearth the feelings buried beneath them. Our feelings naturally release and heal, given the opportunity, but we need to be willing to turn over soil and allow them to come to the surface, where they can evaporate in the sunlight. Our feelings are the emotional indicators that let us know we have been believing untrue things about ourselves. By tiling our emotional soil we rebuild our relationship with who we really are.

(4) Sowing the Seeds: Weeds are the result of our soil being sown with bad seeds (negative messages). To encourage a healthy garden we need to sow with good seeds (healthy messages) and encourage the goods seeds that are already there (our supressed self) to emerge. When we plant loving thoughts in our carefully tilled soil they will slowly grow to create loving feelings and loving self sustaining behaviours.

(5) Watering: Healing, like gardening, takes time. There is the intial satisfaction of seeing the weeds removed, but without continual loving care and replanting of healthy seeds, the garden will simply grow rank once more. Our new beautiful seedlings need plenty of care. This is where grace can be the most useful. By undertaking a practice of regular communion with divine grace we are bring our ego the fresh clean water and gentle sunlight it needs to truly flourish. As our healthy thoughts grow they become strong trees, providing shade and protection for the tender life beneath them and keeping the weeds at bay.

(6) Sharing the Beauty: A garden is not truly great until it's beauty is shared. As we grow in health and love we have much to offer others. Inspiration, gentle advice, a helping hand when their weeds have overwhelmed them. By tending to our garden we become able to help others tend to theirs in their moments of need. Together we create a beautiful world.

Of course, a lot of people haven't got the faintest idea how to go about tending their own garden and are truly overwhelmed by the forest of weeds that choke their minds with dark and thorny thoughts. That's where we need to look around us, we find someone who's garden is healthier than ours, and ask for help. People with healthy gardens always want to help others. As we are nourished, so we want to nourish.

The final thing I'd like to say is this. Always remember that you are never broken, that your garden is never dead, no matter how many weeds seem to dominate and oppress it. Just below the soil lie the seeds of your true self merely waiting for the monent when you clear a patch for them to emerge in. We have no need to know what the final result will look like. We merely need to start, to get down in the dirt and dig for the beauty within us.

Together we grow.

Ego is not a dirty word - Part II

In Ego part I, I spoke of how society separates us from our natural instincts and feelings, which denies us access to the most fundamental connection we have with the grace that lives inside us. In this blog I want to talk about what the ego really is, and why having a healthy ego is fundamental to not only our human happiness but our spiritual development.

I've spoken before about how each of us in actually the indivisible divine force manifesting in individuated form. God getting to know itself through the illusion of separation and the diversity of creation. Every being, every flower, every tree and animal are in fact merely different expressions of the one infinite life force. We exist in an interdependence of forms, much the same way that each cell in our body is both uniquely individual and a neccesary part of the greater whole. This is a very useful analogy, as most people realise that each cell has a vital role in their overall wellbeing. The disease of even one cell impoverishes and threatens the wellbeing of the whole system.

Like cells, we each contain within us the entire blueprint of life and yet we each are a specialised expression of that blueprint. Like cells, we each function within our own discreet boundaries, and yet we function as part of a greater whole. Like cells, we need to understand our part in the overall scheme of things, but we also need to maintain our independent identity and function. This is where the Ego comes in. Our ego is the mechanism by which we are able to figure out where we end and others begin. It is the basis of our individuality, which must be maintained for us to function. Without the ego, we would simply experience ourself as the undiferentiated life force, which would render creation rather pointless. The ego does not, as some claim, separate us from God. What it does is allow us to function as an individuated aspect of God, a unique expression of grace.

Also like cells, we each have particular functions, a particular part to play in the grand scheme of things. A brain cell would never consider the idea that it should be a liver cell, or vice versa. They accept their particular role as given, and find joy in the doing of it. Unlike cells, and most other lifeforms, the human being does get a little more choice in matters of function. We bear the gift and the burden of free will, the ability to make choices about our direction in life. This is more limited than most people would like to believe. Each of us has particular tendencies, talents and abilities which suit us for particualr roles. If we use free will to try and fulfill unsuitable roles we generally find ourselves frustrated, unsuccesful and unhappy. Fortunately, if we surrender to the fulfilment of our true roles we discover passion, fulfilment and happiness.

One of the most damaging concepts of the modern world is the idea that you can do "anything at all". If the little skinny guy with the high academic IQ and poor motor skills sets his mind on being a star football player he simply will not succeed. Nor will the jock with limited academic ability be winning the noble prize for science. These would be examples of our ego having become disconnected from reality. A healthy ego is firmly rooted in our organic and spiritual existence. We experience our ego consciously through our 'self concept', our psychological picture of who we are. The degree to which this self concept matches up with the reality of our 'self' (called self efficacy) determines the degree to which we are able to be happy and at peace in our own skin.

Unfortunately, most of us do not get the family and society that naturally leads to the development of a healthy ego. Ego health is a result of unconditional love, positive regard and validation for our unique value as a person. The extent to which others recognise the value of our particular being usually determines the extent to which we form a healthy and loving self concept. Sadly, most people are subjected to environments in which others demand that we try to make our true self fit into a self concept that is foreign and unachievable. Put another way, our identity is meant to develop around our experience of self, not be imposed on us by other peoples expectations and ideas about who we should be.

The first part of the journey of spiritual development is the healing of our ego. Those who try to bypass this stage inevitably end up being dragged back to it, no matter how advanced they may seem to be in matters spiritual and energetic. In fact, many people who try to devlop transcendent awareness without having healed their ego end up in a highly ungrounded state that can lead to insanity. Others end up stuck in a stage of 'spiritual ego', where their knowledge and beliefs outstrip their understanding and development. They talk the talk but are unable to walk the walk. The Kabbalists put this well - "a tree that wishes to grow tall must first put down deep roots, or it will not withstand the storm".

In the next blog I'll be talking about the process of healing our ego's and releasing our damaged self concepts.

The Paradox of Prayer

Ok, Ok. I know that this can all sound a bit religious when I start talking about things like prayer. But if you bear with me you'll come to see that prayer really has nothing to do with organised religion, or supplications  of unworthiness before a distant God who hands out favours at whim. Indeed, real prayer is the opposite of these things. So please indulge me for a moment and forget everything you may have learnt about praying from some sick idolatrous religion.

What is Prayer?

Prayer is communion with Grace, much the same as meditation, contemplation of the divine, self inqiry, sacred dance, intentional chanting and a dozen other forms of spiritual practice. Prayer can take a great many forms, but what tends to distuinguish it from other practices is that it usually takes the form of a 'conversation' with whatever the person recognises or conceptualises as the divine. Many people view prayer as asking for some sort of favour from God. A situation in which the little powerless human being begs the big powerful deity for some sort of intercession in their life. If this were true, you could imagine that the big G would be pretty busy attending to the needs of billions upon billions of lifeforms.

Such prayers seem to go unanswered, because the basic premise of them is flawed. For Grace to intercede in our creation of our lives would be a fundamental denial of who we are, an affirmation that what we are is something less than an expression of the divine creative life force. If such prayers were to be answered, it would give valididty to our concept of ourselves as small, powerless and dependent. Grace will never affirm such a misconception, will never support such an insanity. The purpose of grace is to bring us back to awareness of the truth of who we are, to help us beyond this injured identity and rediscover our divine self. A loving God would no more seek to make his/her children dependent and powerless than a loving human would.

True prayers never go unanswered, because they occur in recognition of our right relationship to Grace. This is the recognition that we are not separate to the divine in any way. A real prayer begins with the recognition that we are believing something that is causing us suffering. Perhaps we have projected our power onto something seemingly outside of ourselves, or become trapped in an illusion of separation, grievance and powerlessness. Whatever the reason, the form of a real prayer is deceptively simple. We are asking grace to restore us to right perception, to help us clear our minds of the illusions that are causing us to suffer.

There are many ways to ask this question. Some of my favourites are "please help me see with the eyes of God", or "What would love do in this situation" or "Show me the errors in my minds viewing of this situation" or "Help me to see what is for my highest good in this situation". Prayer doesn't always have to be in response to suffering either. As people develop their relationship with grace many simply make it a daily practice to pray. This can look like "show me how to live this day in peace" or "help me to find grace in each moment" or "show me how I might live my day closer to love". Answering these questions are the function, the very purpose of grace. Grace is the gift that helps us to find the truth and recover from the ilusions of sinfulness and powerlessness and prayer is one of the most powerful ways that we can connect with grace.

As much as a loving and responsible parent would not encourage dependence in their children, nor would they turn a deaf ear or fail to offer appropriate assistance. The paradox of prayer is that all prayers are answered by grace, it just may not look like we think it should. In the movie Evan Almighty, one of the main characters prays to God for a more loving, closer family life. After all hell breaks loose, threatening to disrupt their family life altogether, she unknowingly encounters God (as played by Morgan Freeman) in a roadside diner. He challenges her with the proposition that if you were to pray for a closer family do you think God would send you warm fuzzy feelings, or the opportunity to create closeness through offering love and support in difficult times. It's not often that I look to hollywood for spiritual wisdom, but this seems to me a perfect example of the way irresponsible prayers are answered.

When we pray we are engaging in a partnership with grace, not giving our power to it. Attempts to give away responsibility for our life usually result in situations that provide us with the opportunity to reclaim that responsibility. Grace partners us by giving us the opportunity to grow, heal and rediscover the reality of our divine self. If it were to do these things for us it would be a partner in our disempowerment. Graces ultimate answer will always be this, that you are whole, complete and powerful. That you have always been whole, it is only in your mind, and the illusory reality you create with your mind, that these dark dreams of brokenness can exist. They are but shadows that never affect the true reality, the reality of love. However, until we are ready to hear this answer, grace will always allow us the opportunity to experience our delusions, and offer us the opportunity to give them up. The choice, as always, is ours. Free will, it's a bitch.

Prayer isn't hard to do. It requires no rituals, no incense, no special words or scented oils or fancy buildings. In fact, Jesus instructed his disciples that "they would be better to pray in a closet than in a church". It requires nothing except a sincere willingness to let grace show us the truth. But don't take my word for it, give it a go.

together we rise

"There but for the Grace of God" - Forgiving the Unforgiveable

Because of the nature of my studies at University I'm continually being exposed to information about the some of the worst aspects of the human condition. Wide spread violence and exploitation, child abuse, political indifference, and planet destroying corporate greed just to name a few. Like most people I find myself horrified, despairing and teetering on the edge of hopelessness on a regular basis. Unlike most people I lack the luxury of turning to an episode of the simpsons and tuning out. These are prescribed readings, and read them I must. Sometimes I get angry, and sometimes I start judging the perpetrators of these crimes against decency, these deceivers and users who commit unspeakable acts.

In those moments it is often difficult to find grace. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I wish to not experience those feelings of horror, I would be worried if I did not feel this way. Being shocked and appalled by dreadful crimes, feeling empathy and concern for the victims, is how I know I'm human, how I know that grace is alive inside me. It's the judgment that takes grace from me. To be angry at the commision of these acts is healthy, but to condemn the perpetrators is for me to commmit an act of violence (if only in my mind) in return. I become in that moment a perpetrator of lovelessness.

Please don't think I'm taking the righteous high ground here. Believe me when I say that I do this all the time. I do it driving down the road when someone cuts me off on the roundabout, or at the supermarket when someone blocks the aisle. I do it when I hear the news, or witness another politician trying to obscure the facts behind political double speak. I do it every time I pick up a newspaper and see the bias and manipulation in today's media. It seems that to judge is merely part of the human condition. The trick, I think, is in what I do next. Sometimes I just keep judging, which seems to feed on itself and engorges until I finally notice that I'm feeling absolutely miserable. Sometimes, the fortunate times, I remember the old saying - "there but for the grace of God go I".

I notice that my judgement is always righteous, always containing somewhere within it the idea that there is no way I would commit such a crime, or do something so stupid, or act with such carelessness towards another. Of course the truth is quite the opposite. I'm guilty of carelessness and stupidity on an almost daily basis, and I've many acts in my past of which I'm not proud - some of them criminal. I've been hurt by others, and I've hurt others in turn. To err is human, or so the saying goes.

I've also noticed that it is always from a place of hurt that I hurt others. It is when I feel myself as powerless, victimised, threatened and unloved that I lash out at those around me. I believe that this is always the case, that hurt people, HURT people. So when I witness these crimes of indifference and viloence I find myself faced with a choice. Do I judge and condemn, or do recognise that the perpetrator is in pain and needing the experience of grace, of love and compassion? Or I could ask it another way. When I commit acts of lovelessness, do I wish to be judged and condemned, or would I like others to recognise that I'm in pain and in need of grace and love?

To Forgive, Divine.

Forgiveness is a word often used and often misunderstood. Forgiveness is not 'letting someone off the hook', and is not achieved by taking the moral high ground. If we tell ourselves that we are forgiving someone, but inside we are still full of anger and judgment, then we are actually fooling ourselves and committing what 'a course in miracles' calls a double condemnation. First we condemn them with our judgement about how bad they are, and then we condemn them again, through putting ourselves in a position of moral superiority by 'forgiving' them.

True forgiveness comes in the recognition that they are just like us. The understanding that they are acting from pain and trauma, just as we sometimes do. True forgiveness is the realisation that this person has lost touch with the truth of who they are, and become caught in an illusion of sinfulness, powerlessness and unworthiness. True forgiveness is looking past the actions of the wounded ego to the god self inside and offering them the love they need to heal. Most of all, true forgiveness is rediscovering who we are, learning to look with the eyes of grace. In true forgiveness we are transformed, because in seeing through the illusions of their pain ridden mind, we learn to see the illusions of our own. the opporunity in forgiveness is the opportunity to say 'Thank you for giving me the chance to rediscover grace, in a world beset by the illusion of sin".

The reality is that we all do bad things, and it doesn't matter how severe or mild they are. The act of murder is in fact no more or less violent than the act of a harsh and unloving remark, because they are sourced in exactly the same place. All acts of lovelessness comes from a disconnection between us and grace. Every crime against another is a crime against life, and every act stems from the belief that what we are is something less than the child of a loving God. Every judgement is a condemnation to hell, because its intent is to say that the other person is somehow unworthy of love, of grace, of forgiveness.

But what about those who commit the truly unforgiveable crimes? Those who abuse children, destroy entire species, commit murder on a massive scale? how can there crimes be no worse, no less forgiveable than ours? How indeed. Well, these people didn't get to where they are by themselves. The child abuser was themselves abused, which means that someone else dit it to them, and a whole bunch of other people failed to protect them by turning a blind eye, and an entire society failed to heal them when the early warnings signs showed up. It means that hundreds of people chose to allow their suffering to continue, chose to take care of themselves with total indifference to the plight of another.

Similarly, the CEO who's company destroyed a precious habitat did not do it alone. He was trained and conditioned towards greed, fear and carelessness from an early age. He was lauded and applauded for his ability to compete, to be stronger than others and indifferent to their pain. His shareholders demanded of him that he produce ever greater profits so that they might make money without having to work for it. His society required him to be succesful in order that he might be loved and rewarded. No one is born a child abuser, or a conqueror or a serial killer. They are made that way by a world full of lovelessness and the illusion of sin. They are shaped and moulded by the family and the society they came into with 360 degree innocence and trust. They are created - by US.

So when I find myself looking for someone else to blame, some other soul to condemn for the pain and the blood of this world, I have a choice to make. Do I add one more blow to the lovelessness of the world, one more burden of pain for them to bear on my behalf, or do take this opportunity to bring love and healing. Do I take revenge, or do I offer forgiveness. Do I convince myself that I could never be that person, or do I recognise that given the same life experience as them, I would be the one standing condemned, by me. There but for the grace of God, go I.

My ultimate choice is this, do I create even more darkness and perpetuate this cycle of suffering, or ask grace to show me how I might become the light that ends it. We'll, sometimes I do the former, and sometimes the latter. When I remember, when I stop for a moment and seek in myself the understanding and compassion that I would hope others would offer me, I discover that there truly is no crime greater than another, no unforgiveable sin, for they are all the one thing, the acting out of the terrible pain that comes when we believe that we are separate from grace. Revenge, punishment and condemnation are not the solution. They are what caused the problem. In offering others forgiveness, in choosing to see the grace that is who who they truly are, I give them the opportunity to forgive those thigns that were done to them, and myself the chance to learn who I truly am.

In the Kahuna teachings of the Hawaiian people there is a very old tradition. When faced with a person who has committed great harm, the shaman/healer would  walk up to them and say simply this, over and over again. "I'm sorry, please forgive me".

Now that's grace.

What a Shame

In my last blog I promised to talk about the process of recovering from a state of toxic shame, which is how John Bradshaw (psychologist and author) describes the common state of distorted identity that separates us from our natural grace. In his book 'healing the shame that binds you' (see my picks) he talks about the difference between our natural healthy feelings of shame and unhealthy feelings of toxic shame, which is poisonous to our wellbeing. Natural Shame is the feeling that arises in us when we are thinking or acting in a way that is against our innate values. This could be that we are behaving dishonestly or destructively to ourself or another, or it could be that we are failing to live up to out potential in life. All of us have feelings of natural shame which guide us in living a fulfilling and responsible life.


Toxic Shame is the result of other peoples values, negative messages and expectations being imposed on us. This is done (usually not deliberately) by parents, teachers, society, religion, media and peer groups. Very few of us in the modern world escape the traumatic effects of toxic shame in our lives. The effects can vary greatly from a mild lack of self esteem to serious mental disorders and behavioural problems. The majority of people are somewhere in the middle, usually suffering under the burden of addiction and self limiting beliefs, but able to function well enough to survive and begin a process of recovery.


Toxic shame creates what Bradshaw calls a 'shame bind'. This is a no win "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. If we comply with the imposed values and expectations we feel ashamed because we are not living our true values and potential. If we do not comply we feel ashamed because we are acting against the imposed values. Either action leads us to pain, forcing many people to live a life where they are constantly trying to reduce the risk of shame though a complex balancing act of self limitation. I call this emotional fence sitting. Of course the problem with sitting on fences is that you end up with a sore arse.


What this leads to is a state where we often dissociate from shame all together, to avoid the experience of this painful and seemingly unresolvable emotional state. In the milder cases this leads to a sort of emotional numbness that results in living a passionless and neurotic life, often leading to depression and apathy. In severe cases it manifests as psychopathic and other pathological behaviours like violence, criminality, drug abuse, excessive promiscuity and so on. Bradshaw calls these two ends of the spectrum living shamefully or shamelessly. Whichever the case is, recovery involves a process of undoing the imposed state of toxic shame and rediscovering the gift of natural shame in ourselves.


Another effect of toxic shame is the impact it has on our self concept. Typically people who are suffering from toxic shame binding have an 'all or nothing' view of themselves. In their own minds they flip between fantasies of being either super human or totally worthless. There is no permission in their self esteem to be somewhere in the middle, another human being who, though no better than others, still has their unique and valuable contribution to make to life. This is a dreadful bind to be in, a belief that if I'm not making superhuman achievements (which are impossible) I'm completely useless and unloveable. Wow, what a setup for feelings of failure and self hatred. Again, this can vary in severity from unrealistic goals and over achievement behaviours to total life paralysis where no action is taken.


Toxic shame is most evident in the extraordinary incidence of addiction we find in our society. Pretty much everyone is doing it. We are addicted to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, adrenalin, television, work, romance, video games, sex, food, sport and so on. All addictions serve the same basic purpose, numbing out our uncomfortable feelings and stimulating our bodies into an excited state that overides the pain. They are coping mechanism's, self medicating practices that help us to survive until we can discover the will and resources to deal with the toxic feelings underneath. In themselves, addictions are not the problem and need to be treated with understanding and compassion. If we beat ourselves up for our addictions we are simply adding to the shame and worthlessness we feel. A kinder and more effective approach is to recognise the addiction as the symptom of our distress, and use it as a gateway to the healing work we need to do.


Undoing toxic shame is rarely easy, and takes courage and determination. The worst thing to do is trying to do it alone. Toxic shame does it best to hide from others, and healing it requires that we expose ourselves to the loving presence that we are unable to provide for ourselves when we are shame bound. This can be through a therapist, a support group, a twelve step program (which are designed exactly for this purpose), a spiritual practice or any number of healing programs and workshops. Ultimately, we are exposing ourselves to the opportunity for grace to enter into our heart and heal our illusions of wrongness. It's not easy work, and it requires that we give up our attempts to avoid, deny and hide the shame that we feel, but the freedom and joy it brings far outweighs the pain we have to go through.


Shame off you.

EGO is not a dirty word

I've made several references to the idea that our 'distorted ego mind' is what separates us from the awareness of grace. In many schools of thought the poor old ego is blamed for pretty much every moment of suffering we experience. I want to clarify that the ego is not actually at fault for the current human condition, it's as much a victim of the situation as anthing else. The problem is what happens to distort the ego when it emerges in a society that actively works to disconnect it from reality.

What is the Ego?

Sigmund Freud first gave us the modern conception of the ego. He divided human consciousness into three segments called the Id, The Ego and the Super Ego. The Id represents our instinctive and unconscious nature, our feelings, instincts, passions, and drives. He speculates that the id operates on the pleasure principle, seeking instant gratification for our various hungers, desires and impulses. He then posits that the Id is kept in check by the actions of the Ego, which operates on the 'reality principle', meaning that it adjusts our behaviours to the situation in order to avoid the problems that can occur if we were simply to act on every impulse. The Ego is partly in conscious awareness, and partly unconscious. Freud recognised that both the Id and the Ego were engaged in the same job, that of serving our interests and maximising our chance of getting our needs met. No problem so far.


Then we discover the Super ego. Freud allocated this the role of our conscience, that which constantly and critically examines our behaviours and thoughts against a 'moral' standard and try's to make us behave within the constraints of this ethos. This seems to be where the problem arises, the Ego ends up as the meat in the sandwhich, trying to serve two masters who seem eternally opposed to each other. The Id pushing for gratification and the Superego trying to constrain it with guilt and shame. It's unclear to me whether Freud believed that the superego was a natural and unavoidable development in consciousness, but I have come to believe that the presence of the super ego is a distorted emergence leading to what I'm calling the 'distorted ego mind'.


Freuds conception of the Id as being basically selfish and irresponsible, and therefore in need of constraint, seems to me to be essentially flawed. Certainly our passions drive us towards gratification, but our feelings also inform us of our limitations and our other needs. We come to organically understand that all of our actions have consequences and that those actions that are destructive also hurt us. It is through this that our Ego evolves in it's strategies for meeting our needs and naturally tempers the urgings of the Id with awareness and responsibility. One might say that they are are perfect team, with the Id supplying the destination and the Ego planning the journey.


The Super Ego on the other hand seems to be the result of imposed messages given to us by others, who wish to control our development and move us towards a destination of their choosing. Many modern cultures, particularly those who are being heavily influenced by religions, seem to be contructed to separate us from our natural relationship with the Id. they teach us that our instincts and our organic nature are not to be trusted. This leads to a situation where the Ego, in it's attempt to adapt to the prevailing environment, becomes dissociated from our innate faculties of feeling, desire and instinct. In doing so it becomes dissociated from grace, which is the source of these guiding and motivating forces. This leads to the emergence of a false 'self concept', an insane identity struggling to maintain itself in an insane world, and defend itself against the urgings of our true self (which it now believes to be the enemy).


This separation from our natural self leaves our ego floating rudderless in a sea of external messages. Without access to our feelings and instincts we are vulnerable to the manipulations and demands of others. We can no longer feel the right path for us and are constantly trying to make sense of a world map drawn by other hands. We are trying to navigate life without the benefit of our natural emotional compass. If we also accept ohter peoples conceptions of the divine, rather than trust our own innate relationship with it, we are sailing in a world where we cannot even see the stars for guidance.


The irony of course is that it is by complying with other peoples conceptions of 'The will of God' we become separated from our innate relationship with God's Will in us. Perhaps grace speaks to some through burning bushes, but for most of us it is through inner listening that we discover the truth. In fact, finding true grace requires of us that we reject these imposed mesages of sinfulness and shame to reconnect with our own being. We need to reconcile our Ego to our Id and remove the ever critical super ego from the throne of our consciousness. Jesus of Nazareth said that "to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become as a small child", which is a lovely way of saying that we need to find the innocence that we once knew, before we were overcome by the impositions of others.


Ego really is not the problem. It is what happens to distort our ego that causes our suffering. Fortunately, through communion with grace this distortion is gently and irrevocably healed so that we can once more live in the flow of the true power and beauty of our being. This is a process that John Bradshaw calls 'recovering from toxic shame', which I'll be talking about in the next blog.


Grace be with you.

Grievance as Opportunity

In the last blog (Grievance VS Grace) I explained what grievance was, and alluded to the idea that when we find ourselves in grievance we are actually facing an amazing opportunity for growth and happiness. Let me explain that a bit further. Sadly, most people on planet earth today are not walking around in a state of the awareness of grace, or the happiness that comes with that. Nor are we spending most of our time utterly miserable. The general status quo is one of a low level state of suffering and unconscious complaint. Most of us manage this with a range of stimulants (caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol) and distractions (tv, reading, radio) that keep our true state at an unconscious level. In this way life limps along from one shade of gray to the next with just a few moments of either joy or misery breaking the surface into our conscious awareness.

It is these moments (when we are paying attention to our internal state) that are the doorways to reconnecting with the grace that transforms our life. One well known teacher of grace by the name of Papaji once made the comment that "it is hard to wake up from a pleasant dream", meaning that in those fleeting moments of joy and comfort in our life we lack the motivation to seek a deeper experience. It is our suffering that makes us question the status quo. It is misery that provide us the motivation and the opportunity to discover something more. The trick is to learn to recognise these opportunities for what they are, rather than trying to minimise and avoid them.

These moments of grievance, stress and suffering usually involve some sort of emotional pain, physical discomfort and psychological disturbance. It is however important to understand that these things are not actually the cause of the suffering. Our suffering and stress are the result of how we respond to these events, how we are being 'with' them. When we are living in the belief that we have the power to meet these events and resolve them, there is no suffering, just a natural move to action. When we believe that we are powerless in relation to them, we suffer and resist. From this context there are a number of ways in which we can view these moments as opportunities.

(1) Reclaiming Power & Transcending Limitation.

Whenever we are suffering we are in the grip of a delusion of powerlessness. We have forgotten the truth of who we are, which is Human Beings (def: Hu-man - God Manifest). Instead, we have bought into an identity of limitation that has us at the mercy of the world. These moments of suffering give us the opportunity to question our own minds and rediscover the truth about ourselves and our true power. One of the most effective methods for doing this has been given to us by an extraordinary teacher of Grace called Byron Katie. You can access her work for free at http://www.thework.com/

(2) Resolving Trauma

In future blogs I will be talking in more depth about the nature of human trauma, but for now I'll define it as 'undigested emotional experience'. When we have an experience that we are unable to naturally 'process out', whether because the situation is not safe or because it is simply overwhelmingly intense, the emotional energy gets locked in our body. Our body mind responds to this trauma much the same way it would to a foreign object in a wound. It isolates it from the surrounding energy by contracting around it and diverting our psyche away from it. This usually results in chronic tension, distorted behaviours and self limitation to avoid re triggering the held trauma. If we wish to become once more healthy and fully alive, we need to release this trapped trauma and resolve the event that caused it.

The Grace within us wants us to be whole and happy, and tries to achieve this by recreating situations that are similar to the ones that caused this original trauma and pain. Thus much of our suffering is repetitive, the same emotional triggers over and over again, until we stop resisting the experience and embrace the opportunity to finally free ourselves from this old trauma.

(3) Rediscovering Grace

The king of all opportunities is this one - the chance to reconnect with the grace inside us and discover who we are beyond our limited and sick identities. All suffering arises from the disconnection that occurs between our ego mind and our natural state of grace. If we can learn to recognise suffering for what it is, it becomes the signal that tells us to reconnect. It informs us that we have become lost in a dark delusion of being separate from God. In that moment we can respond by seeking the grace inside us in whatever way works for you (prayer, meditation, centering, breathing, gratitude, etc) and once more discover the joy that exists in every moment.

The great part about this response is that it naturally incorporates all of the others. When we once more become aware of grace all our delusions naturally dissolve. When we reconnect, our traumas naturally begin to heal and release with an ease that is remarkable.

Nobody wants to suffer, that's why we try to avoid it and numb it with addiction and distraction. Unfortunately, these things do not resolve it but only extend it into the future. It is through embracing the opportunity which our suffering presents that we can become truly free. The opportunity to surrender to the grace and the truth inside us.

Blessings

Grace VS Grievance

The book "A Course in Miracles" explains that what takes us away from the 'awareness' of grace (because we can never be truly taken away from the reality of it) is a Little thing we do that it calls GRIEVANCE. Essentially, this means that we look at our reality and judge it to be 'not right' in some way.

Grievance can take a great many forms, including complaint, self pity, believing that we need to change things, and trying to take control of events. It can also be found in a great many of the 'new age' philosophies like positive thinking, creative visualisation, 'creating your own reality' and some of the resurrected older philosophies like spell casting. Even the act of praying can be a form of grievance if we are asking the divine to make our life different in some way. That isn't to say that these things are necessarily based in grievance, because we do them naturally all the time. Most everybody finds themselves daydreaming possibilities for their future and motivating themselves to action with bright imaginings of the things to come.

However, usually when people sit down to consciously try to apply these techniques they are doing it because they have decided that something in their world needs to change, that something is not right. So, what's the problem with grievance? Well, this is a classic example of the distorted egoic mind trying to make itself the boss in life. Its attempting to usurp the role of the natural faculties of feelings, intuition and inspiration, which are the ways that grace guides us in life. Through our natural sense of attraction, desire and excitement we are guided to follow the path that is right for us. Through our natural feelings, aversions and pain responses we are guided to avoid that which is harmful to us. When we are aligned with these natural events, we have no need for grievance, no need to resist our reality, because we are able to 'gracefully' respond to it.

It can be hard to tell the difference between grace and grievance because grievance often takes these natural signals and uses them as evidence for its attempt to take control. For instance, if I am in a career that is unfulfilling to me I will feel naturally dissatisfied and want to move towards something else that attracts me more. My distorted ego can take this and turn it into a 'problem' which it has to sort out, rather than allow the normal flow that would bring graceful change. When this happens I have stopped responding and started reacting to the situation, I have stopped trusting in grace.

Tricky isn't it? Do not worry though, 'A course in Miracles' also offers us the sure way to tell the difference, what it calls the test of truth. It states that the truth will always leave you feeling fearless and peaceful. In other words, you can always tell when you are in grievance because it always carries a sense of stress and suffering with it. From a place of grace we know ourself to be powerful and creative. From a place of grievance, we believe ourself to be vulnerable, powerless and at the effect of life.

The obvious question now is how do we return to a state of grace? the first step is to recognise that we are in grievance, and to understand that the suffering we are going through is not because of the situation, but because of the way that we are seeing it. To echo the words of Echarte Toll (in his book 'A New Earth'), "the minute you can recognise that you are insane, you are just a little bit saner".

The second step is to recognise that grievance give me an opportunity to bring love present to my reality. Grievance is the act of resisting reality, which denies the situation the energy that is needed to continue it's natural evolution. There's an old saying, " what you resist persists". I believe that this perfectly defines the effect of grievance. When I judge and resist my reality I am attempting to create distance between it and me. I do this because I believe that reality has the power to threaten and harm me. While ever I believe myself to be less powerful than the situation, I negate my natural creative resources and give my power away.

The completion of that saying is "what you embrace, evolves". When I meet my reality with love, I transform the consciousness in myself that is bringing that reality into being. I rediscover my power and I am once more aligned with my natural resourcefulness and creativity. From this 'grace place' I organically come to understand the lessons and opportunities being presented, and to heal my perceptions of self limitation. When I respond with love I once more recognise that I am the power in this situation.

If the above ideas make sense to you this naturally leads to the question of "how do we respond with love"? There are many forms of love, but one of the most powerful for me is an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude is a funny thing, the more I do it the more I realise just what I have to be grateful for, which leads me to do it more. I had a very strong experience of the power of gratitude about ten years ago. For over 12 years I had been working in hospitality, of which 11 were spent in a state of grievance and resistance. I hated my job, seeing it as demeaning, unchallenging and beneath my potential. For 11 years I had been unsuccessfully trying to get out of it.

One day I grew tired of constantly complaining to myself and decided that it wasn't really all that bad. I was well paid, worked hours I mostly enjoyed, was making a valuable contribution to other peoples enjoyment of life, and wasn't harming anyone. I resolved to appreciate my work, to be grateful for what it gave me. That day turned out to be my last shift in hospitality. Two days later I found myself working in a completely different field and my life underwent radical change in every area, without me doing a thing. After fifteen years of struggling to 'get out' I discovered that I had to 'get in' before any thing could change. I finally stopped resisting my reality, and it rapidly evolved in directions as yet undreamed by me.

In my next posting I will talk more about how grievance gives us an opportunity to grow, heal and find fulfilment. For now, I'd like to finish with the invitation to see what happens when you stop believing those thoughts of grievance and limitation and meet your reality and yourself with a choice for gratitude, which is another word for an attitude of grace.

Together we rise.

Adam Blanch

Who's the Boss?

Grace doesn't surprise me anymore. I see it all the time, in a thousand moments a day. What does surprise and fascinate me is how we as human being are able to make ourselves blind to it. Despite the riot of wonder and amazement that is everyday reality, so many of us manage to get from sunup to sleep without ever leaving our self created world of suffering and fear. It's exhausting, requiring a constant state of fixation on thoughts of problems and paucity.

From what I've observed, the mechanism of this fixation goes something like this. We imagine a big bad world full of struggles, enemies and difficulty which is set in opposition to poor little us with our limited powers and inadequate abilities (also an imagining). Then we go about trying to figure out how to overcome them and meet our needs, despite the fact that we've already decided we probably won't succeed. Holy shit, no wonder half the population is on Zoloft.

So, a little reality check can be helpful. I'm told that the conscious mind, which seems to be the part of us that is doing all this imagining, can process up to seven plus or minus two (7 +/- 2) pieces of information per second. Not bad really, faster than your average computer. However, they have recently built a computer that is capable of doing a pettiflop, which sounds like a bad experience from a high diving board, but is actually the ability to process one trillion pieces of information per second. Wow, this seems pretty impressive, until you realise that it is still an order of magnitude below what the human brain is doing. In other words, our noggins are doing ten trillion processes per second.

So, if our conscious mind is doing between five and nine processes per second, but our brains are doing ten trillion processes per second, what's going on in the unconscious? Well, heaps and heaps. In every second your brain is managing to keep you breathing, sweating, digesting, balancing, and assimilating gigabytes of visual, audial and sensory information. Just keeping you from falling flat on your face requires the monitoring of thousands of biofeedback signals and the movement of hundreds of muscles - a constant program of incredibly sophisticated adjustment. In every second you are literally doing thousands of actions, without having to pay attention to any of them.

It reminds me of the old joke about the Blonde (gender unspecified) who was always wearing earphones. Finally one of his/her coworkers got curious about what she/he was listening to and took them off his/her head. The blonde immediately dropped dead, and when the coworker put the earphones on they heard "breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.....". I'm allowed to tell this joke because I'm a blonde. Political correctness notwithstanding, its a good illustration of two things. One, it's a good thing we don't have to think about our basic body processes. Two, English really needs a gender neutral pronoun to deal with the modern age.

Jokes aside, if you think about what is really going on in your personal reality each second it becomes a little absurd when you conscious mind pops up and says "I'm in charge here". In the time it took you to read this your brain/body has performed millions of actions, and your conscious mind is still somewhere back there going "ooooooh ten trillion, that a really big number". The idea that we are in charge of anything at all is so ridiculous it's laughable. Yet this is the idea that most people go through their day with. "I have to take charge, to sort it all out, to solve this problem called life".

The bad new is that we really can't. We (our conscious mind/ego) can't even make ourselves breathe properly, let alone manage the untold trillions of actions we need to perform each day. If we can't even manage to keep ourselves running, how are we to handle the innumerable complexities of what's going on outside our skin. The truth is that life is simply beyond our control and our understanding. Seven plus or minus two just doesn't cut it.

The good new is that we don't have to. Life looks after itself the same way our body does. We exist within a field of infinite intelligence, and it's got it sorted. If we are smart we eventually learn to give up, to stop trying to take control of our life and let our life take control of us. Personal growth is not an action of becoming something greater that we currently are. It's an action of allowing our greatness to make itself known. If we are smart, we learn to stop fighting with ourselves and start cooperating with that which is trying to emerge. If we are smart, we learn that we aren't as smart as we may think we are.

The conscious mind has it's place, and is indeed intended to make choices and decisions, but if those choices are against the natural flow of our being it really doesn't work. It's useful to think of it like an iceberg, the visible emergence of a far greater weight of intelligence below the surface. The problems occurs when we think that our conscious mind is somehow separate and dominant, that it's in charge of things. The reality is that the iceberg will always go with the flow, following the deep currents of life. If we think that we should be going in another direction, then we simply create an experience of frustration and stress for ourselves. If we trust what is beneath the surface and concentrate on enjoying the journey, life becomes an adventure in curiosity and learning, not a pointless struggle for a control that is simply unachievable.

Well, that's how I see it these days. Grace doesn't surprise me anymore, but the things we do to fight it leave me amazed.

Peace be with you.