Negative Emotions

There is a certain benefit in just observing one's negative emotions as they bubble to the surface of consciousness.  The benefits include a sense of peace in the face of turmoil, the eye of the storm, if you will.  A further benefit is a greater understanding of oneself.  Of course, this means that one cannot let these negative emotions take over one's mind and lead one off on a mental rampage.  One must simply witness without judgment and not react.  This is a difficult activity, but gets easier with practice. 

Eckhart Tolle

I've been listening to Eckhart Tolle's "The Art of Presence" in the car as I drive to work, etc.  I find his ideas resonate with the teachings of one of my martial arts masters, Peter Ralston, which in turn finds some of his inspiration from the works of Taoism and Zen.  Tolle's work places great emphasis on the witnessing consciousness, or the essence of your being.  He says that we are not our individual stories, or the thoughts and emotions that torture us, or even give us joy.  He teaches that our true nature is of the observer, the witness...Presence itself as our inherent nature.  He also talks about the pain-body which I will go into more detail on a later post, but which is basically an aggregate of all the emotional pain that one has experienced, a share of the emotional pain of humanity, one's culture, one's race, one's family, and even of the part of the world where one lives in.  He speaks of the pain-body as if it were an entity unto itself, that tries to get into our minds and take us over whenever it wants to feel more pain, and only continual vigilance and observation, not suppression, of this pain-body will eventually dissipate it and release the trapped emotional energy that makes it up.

The benefits of meditation and commitment

Meditation is of the utmost importance to all human beings as stress release, as inner exploration, and as focus practice.  What I mean by inner exploration is twofold:  firstly it is an endeavor to understand one's deeper psyche, one's true motivation, one's true self; secondly it is an exploration of what has been called the inner worlds by some, using oneself as the doorway.

To achieve anything of lasting importance requires commitment, steady progress, intent, and a plan.  The most important of these ingredients is commitment to doing something everyday to that gets you closer to your goal, no matter how small that action may seem at the time.

Sexual Energy and Spiritual Energy

Sexual energy and Spiritual energy seem to be intimately linked. I find that the more I practice meditation and other spiritual practices, the stronger my libido becomes. This is almost nerve-wracking. It seems the increased flow of energy or 'chi', if you will, wants to be used or released, one way or another. It has taken a great amount of self-discipline not to translate these urgings into actions.
It has been said that spiritual energy is a higher octave of sexual energy. Whether this is true or not I cannot be sure, but my experience would indicate that the two energies, or instincts, have a relationship of some kind. This requires further study on my part.

Faith

Faith has come up a lot in recent weeks in my life as a topic, mostly as a cure for fear. There is a sort of strength one with faith in God, the Universe, oneself, etc. is imbued with such that what once seemed daunting becomes manageable, even enjoyable as a challenge. It is not always easily attained this faith, but through repetition of affirmations with emotion, and the calming balm of present-moment awareness it is achievable. Also, I've noticed that faith can literally move the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals - talk about moving mountains! Just when you think you have to move around some obstacle, circumstances come to light that actually remove the obstacle from your path. Thus, I say: Keep the Faith!

Meditation and a headache

I've often found it hard to push past the pain of a headache in order to meditate. Other pains do not hinder a session of meditation as much as the pain of a headache does. Perhaps because my focus is on my breath or mantra chanting, or the visions that dance before my inner sight, which all tend to be located (at least I experience them phenomenologically as such) in the vicinity of the head. Today seems to be no different. I stayed up much too late watching the Oliver Stone film "The Doors", but had to get up early this morning. I am paying the price today.

Present Moment Awareness

To have your consciousness focused entirely on what the present moment has to offer is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish, but also one of the most satisfying if achieved. One of the main reasons that it is so difficult is that the mind has a tendency to wander, to follow some thread of thoughts that are not part and parcel of what the here/now experience entails. To aid in present-moment awareness I find it best to concentrate on one's breathing as a subtext to the moment-to-moment experiences. Strangely enough, repeating a mantra over and over again in one's mind seems to do the same thing, though not to the same degree. One mantra that I find myself mentally repeating over and over, almost obsessively, is one I picked up from Leonard Orr's book Breaking the Death Habit, though I don't recall the meaning, is "Om Namaha Shivaiya". This is just a stab in the dark, but it could be a praising of the name of the Hindu god Shiva. That is just my guess, Leonard Orr doesn't say this. It does seem to have a calming effect on me, and this is purely a subjective observation, but I believe it has changed potentially negative experiences to the positive.... or maybe being calm in a stressful situation can change that situation to a more positive one. Just a thought.