Computer Metaphors of the mind -: Noticing

If one were to run a program called ‘noticing’ as a willingness to notice presently without identifying via judgement, it would be a small download, and simply run without issue as long as it was maintained as a front parent process within which all other programs run.

If any other program attempts to run its own process so as to block or interfere It notices that and relaunches and comes to the front.

Other than this it doesnt interfere with other programs running, but they might fail to run within conditions of ‘noticing’ if they were designed to only run code in the background - for this is ‘not noticing’. If the not noticing insisted that it runs unnoticed within ‘noticing’ then the program ‘noticing’ self quits in protection of itegrity but in readiness to run as soon as conditions of integrity are present.

If the environment of othermindedness or ‘not noticing’ was so full of conflicting programs and messages that it effectively rendered the 'noticing' to the background almost continuously, then it might be possible to construct carrying and holding programs that fend off the worst offending distraction and denial programs - so as to allow the experience of 'noticing' to register as full functionality. This would be a bigger download and would run at various levels simultaneously.

It would only run on systems that have had malicious software - that actively undermines system integrity - removed.

A Course in Miracles is an example of such a multiple faceted program with the simple core of noticing.
If its information was merely data then it would indeed be bloatware!
But it runs as an active process every time it is given willingness of attention. Some aspects work to confound the mind that would suss it out and assimilate its ideas. Some work to suddenly reveal a passage of incomparable beauty. Some work to temporarily counter deeply held convictions as to the solidity and density and reality of definitions within a mind. But it also opens a simple noticing that is not in reaction to anything but is already the case. This is like a dawning of the Mind within the mind that thought it thought apart.

in Love's blessing
Brian

All that one need do is notice

We often try to apply an answer before the insight is actually opened in and as an expression of awakened intelligence.
To invite insight is to free attention from identification with its ‘object of un-affection’.
‘Bless you’ is an attitude of expression that is aligned with affection.
Focusing on the negative will always feed the negative and seduce the mind to try and overcome it.
So when something ‘obtuse’ seems to arise, we can practice this attitude and notice where our resistance reveals our personal agenda - and let pass by in willingness to align anyway.
The intent is to realign with the condition and flow of what is Truth.

All that one need do is notice and to allow that is to desist from doing something else.
Notice the events that appear to be within or without. Stay in noticing and include basic relaxation attitudes that proceed naturally from a desire to have the truth that you do not make - be revealed, uncovered, in the mind of You. I assure you that if you notice thinking from the place that can simply notice, then you will have awoken from the belief that you are the one who is thinking or that that thinking represents or expresses You.
(For at least that moment).

As long as we have something to achieve - in terms of who we think we are - we will get identity reinforced as the one who believes he knows and does. Yet we have no independent capacity to know and do - only a fantasy that we have made up and invested our desire and attention in believing.

When the capacity to pretend is starved of its support, then one is brought to a single point that to ego feels like a process of humiliation and disintegration - but to Spirit is a cleansing or purifying experience of simplicity and unclutteredness.

Here is a light that ego cannot see and a peace it cannot understand. But so what! YOU can feel the heart's movement. The light of awareness is with you and Is you, and the peace of acceptance is like being Home.

In commitment of willingness for waking up we each will meet what will seem as great temptation to actively believe that we are what we are not. All this means is that we have greatly desired to be orphaned stringless puppets - and have entrenched our mind in a posture of overcoming and resisting - and thereby maintaining our separateness - but only in our own partitioned mentality.

Noticing allows spontaneous recognition that, of itself restores and realigns the attention with the heart (intuitive wholeness) that feels Life freely given as it very being.

In Peace

Brian

One must have an object of affection to awaken - Raj

Raj - Jesus speaks through Paul Tuttle and can be listened to or read freely at :
http://www.nwffacim.org

The value of doing so is self evident for me. I have no need to convince anyone or validate mutual agreements as to Raj.
I recognise truth within my heart whatever the forms or traditions or sources.
- - -
“One must have an object of affection to awaken”.

Cathi and I found the term “object of affection” a bit cool and scientific when Raj first used it. But he uses it often.

But upon being asked what the phrase meant I volunteered the writing below:



God has an Object of affection - it is His Son.
(Formless Cause)(movement of Being)(Manifestation)

The manifestation as and through the Son is the working of the law 'Know Thyself'.
- (And It Was Good!)

It appears that mind can fragment and dissociate so as to pursue imaginative goals.
But when mind creates without love it discovers - a seeming loveless self and world.

This is an error and is corrected by bringing mind into alignment with it Source and Truth.
Loving as God Loves.

The error takes the form of unrecognised and unworthy or unlovable other. It also takes the form of special other which validates or justifies the judgmental mind that IS the error.

We dont 'do' the love - we bring a willingness to listen and receive and accept and extend.

The love that spontaneously is revealed as Life where the previous mind had seemed to differentiate, define, analyse and control. It is Awakening - from which the previous mind is clearly contrasted as a sort of attention trap. A fascination.

Raj has often invited or exhorted us to allow and open ourself to the experience of ongoing intimacy - with anything as well as other beings. Releasing definitions and being thoughtlessly but feelingly WITH.

In this way the world is re membered to be in the Mind that is Thought.

The world never was 'the world' as an external existence to which we are subject - but its release from that use takes practice by which we re integrate as an Awake Identity that is implicit in Loving.

We are always in experience of something. In taken-for-granted-land we already 'know' and so we dont really be present with very much because we already have a reaction to that.

But that is false. It is a replay of thinking that is private - even if it is similar to a lot of other private minds. It is no relationship at all! No guilt here - just a phenomenal deception.

Joylessness in life is pain! - and whatever symptoms arise they express the loss of true innocence, freedom and the joy that shines therein. Yet not lost - only covered over.
By thinking that can be undone.

There is a song I know that says:

"From you I receive, to you I give, together we share, by this we live".

In blessing our brother - our world as we meet it - we open a channel wherein we desist from habits of ignorance, and allow the light, the love and the help of Spirit to shine into our life from where we thought we knew and didnt bother opening up with. This immediately shares out unless we block its expression.

Thank you for being here and sharing this little journey.

in Gratitude

Brian

An open and shut case

I have been observing the channel of feeling-being open and shut.
This is what letting in the experience of Spirit facilitates ; seeing the difference.
And having a basis for choice that is outside the programming of past learning.

The minds sutters can be a bit like a sphincter that inadvertently locks shut after even a tiny opening.
Open or shut is indeed the assertion of control or the release of control.
As open - the flow of being is not only allowed but includes and awakens what is really me.
Communion is here willingly engaged. Whatever the flow is, identifies itself as it moves and yet identifies all things as one.
It may not suggest this in words but if you rest and feel as simple noticing awareness it will speak you in intimate terms and you may find your own symbol and words if you wish to communicate about it.

As closed - the distortions manifest as complexities (of dissociation and displacement) that seem to justify differentiation and defence against the flow. Judgement and the attempt to grasp and control. In short this is me-mine-centric.


Whensome twelve years ago, I saw my truly and dearly beloved daughter's dead body, the sense of violation and grief felt like having my own soul pulled up at the root. Yet it wasnt - it was starkly and clearly revealed as a root. For the capacity to feel such a love as this is within a spaciousness that is always bigger than any thing or sense of self. Yet even here I observed the grace of flow being ‘taken over’ by crocodile tears. The love felt is Grace. The loss inferred and thought about is static interference. ‘Me me me’.

Crocodile tears are tears whose purpose is to get. Ego is only a getter. It cannot love - but it can worship and weave the forms of love into its story. If ego takes on the form of what is flowing - (as it will always attempt to do if invited by even a moment of unwatched mind taken by habit) - and I cannot at that time release it, then I desist from the form of expression until I find a sense of communion again. I dont fight or judge myself for being unable to wholly flow presently - but let it flow past like clouds. Acceptance that, is not enactment of, or investment or identification in.

There are times I have known where emotional blockages simply owned and released, have completely refreshed and healed all sorts of physical or interpersonal ailment.
But if ever I have looked for them - I have only gone on a thinking based witchhunt and prolonged ignorance.

It seems that asking is something that we do out of a sense of communion and that thinking is something we do out of a sense of control. But the latter can so often seem to be an asking because it can take the form of a question.

Resting the mind allows the space in which awareness simply rises to the fore and allows freedom to notice and recognise and appreciate.
To persist in keeping the channel open is not to apply force - but rather to grow willingness to notice when force is being applied and release it in trust.
The point at which you realize you have been sleepwalking your day is a moment of awakening - be careful that it isn't lost to self judgements!

Cut at the heart

Quote from A Course in Miracles :

1. Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done to injure you. Here is the world’s demented version of salvation clearly shown. Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something not himself. He is the victim of this "something else," a thing outside himself, for which he has no reason to be held responsible. He must be innocent because he knows not what he does, but what is done to him. Yet is his own attack upon himself apparent still, for it is he who bears the suffering. And he cannot escape because its source is seen outside himself.

----–

The mind I call mine seems to carry an attack on life. It can show up clearly as hatred and be less obvious in expressions of irritation and impatience - but it is my own judgement upon others and the world.
But these are really my judgement on my self-as-judged and yet disowned.
The root of this seeming evil in me is too heavily fearful to allow directly into awareness and in deliberately obscured past I have sought to hide it by seeing it in all that I have disowned in my mind - and call 'world' and 'other'. This gives fenced off 'me' a breathing space where I have some sense of a self rather than unbearable conflictedness. But at great cost, because I have put the source of my judgements as if outside myself - and now suffer as if violated from the other or from outside myself.

But now I have come to recognise- to know again - that the darkness is never 'out there' but is reflecting something that has a gift for me if I can but be willing to listen and see with a fresh willingness for peace and wholeness of mind.

Last night and again this late afternoon I have experience of great pain in the right side of the heart. Like being cut. The first time was while singing for dancers and I felt to hang in and just find a way with it. It did fade after a while and caused me to moderate myself to be less energised but perhaps more transparent as a channel. Today as it hit again it brought a wave of deep emotional pains and I was tempted to follow that as if it were a cause - but the stories of 'my pains' are not worth the telling or the listening because I dont really believe them - or desire to. Self pity moved over to a sense of grimness amidst something that started to feel like hospitals, incapacity or leaving the body. I felt a great need to let everything else go - not difficult as it floored me - and just calm and feel and open. I also have the toothe ache which, though carrying a somewhat uncomfortable skull and throb, is something I have experienced trusting through and releasing fear - so it was as if the toothache was like a beacon for the larger fear. And indeed the toothache did remind me that it is my fear that causes pain to mount as if with power over me to become past bearing.
So I started the welcoming of the pain as medicine - as surgeons needle and knife. As I do so it softens because it opened a space to feel directly rather than to 'feel' my fears and thoughts about the pain. The capacity and willingness to hold and embrace is love - and this awoke in me as a sense of loving and being loved - of which the pain was not apart or violating.
I recognise that I want to be free of fear of whatever this is so that I can wholly embrace and trust. In the awakened love this is not merely thinking but love's prayer in me.
The experience had turned about and though all sorts of symptoms persisted I was in a gentle place. Very quiet within and indeed as if cut - and yet a core awareness within that has nothing spare and yet nothing lacking.
I have often wondered just how much illness and dysfunction that we seek remedy for, is in fact the gift of awakening unrecognised. I would never put this onto another unless asked of - because the essence of the matter is trust or fear.
How do I know if I am engaging with trust or allowing fear to fool me? If all I do is think (and react from that) I will surely ensure the latter.
But trust that opens to peace is self evidently the result of my true desire.

The thought of being cut at the heart had associations one of which is - Leonard Cohen's lyric 'By the River's Dark'
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thepassionofthechrist/bytheriversdark.htm

In Peace

Brian

A Pruning Love

I experience occasions where the world or others seem to be exactly designed to deny what I love, who I am, what can be truly shared. I have felt this as personal tragedy, determined attack by others, or I may feel it as 'the way of the world' with its seeming scripts of self hatred, writ in every kind of form. But in time I have come to recognise a pruning love that addresses what I am ready to accept and thus freely release.

I once felt violated by truth and tried to call evil that which pulled the rug out from under me - but in truth I just couldnt do it - nor could I call my own self illusion evil either, though I did feel unsane. I couldnt get a solid floor back over the basement hatch and had to start owning my own thought. I write this of long ago but I review it and see that nothing has changed! Smiling... (Excepting the capacity for love came forth in its own light and lives and grows the truth of what I am).

I carry agendas with me that I dont recognise until the experience of suffering feeds back.
I may use friendliness as a cover for insecurity and yet am surprised to be met with guardedness. If I dont recognise that as a wake up call, I may try to reach another and discover I invite a conflict of wills. I may employ well articulated understanding to 'communicate' and yet am still perplexed when others enact opposition. I see others in terms of a script from my past and so dont see them at all. I am most likely to be wrongfooted when I think I have something to share and that I need to share it. I choose to stay with that which seems unlovely and unsharing at least enough so as not to be animating a sense of self that could maintain that it has been wronged. This is practice of always being present amidst resistance or fear and at some point I realize my gratitude to the situations that brought me to a real world where all of that stuff is mine and reflects only the use to which I put my mind and does not witness to the truth of anyone or anything.

In Peace

Brian

Why don't we share joy (for more than little moments)?

To live needs few words. But life needs joy to be Alive. A sense of energetic communion by whatever name, has been inherent to my experience of sharing Life.



I have often used the analogy of wet wood to account for why the joy and connectness we share doesn't spark the world alight. Wet wood symbolises the obstruction or blockage to the sharing of joy.

It is to identifying and releasing this in us all that I address such sketches of word or phrase as this article. I have spaced it so that each paragraph can be considered in spaciousness. There is so much that we are deterred from encompassing because we forget that we only need take one step at a time.





If enough people get stuck at the same point because of unconsciously shared mutual agreements, they call it reality. To speak outside accepted norms may seem initially un-understandable or provocative because it has a different foundation. One has to be accepting of not initially understanding, and feel or discern for any meaning that arises while reading. To merely filter all things within pre existing meanings is to stay within the confines of old maps without looking up to see the terrain.



Ideas can seem like philosophical twaddle - but I assert that by the ideas we accept, do we stand open or closed to life, and the time for change is at hand.

By this I mean that the old ideas are manifestly obstructive and obsolete and that fresh vision is called for by the very stuckness that is evident in self and world.



I hold that a separative self sense underlies and necessitates the core problems that humanity faces and yet also generates to use as distractions from the real issue. It is indicative that if such ‘territory’ is opened up to consideration, one inevitably meets blanking or denial, ridicule or extreme reaction. How could it be otherwise when the self and world we want to believe real is brought into question? We discover the same dynamic within ourself if we start to use our mind to uncover what we are using our mind for. There is that in us which does not want to open to question the mindset that we have become comfortable in - even if our life is not very ‘alive’ or really shared at all.



Fear is associated with change because our first experience of radical change was of separation. But locking down on change and attempting to minimise risk has not and will not lead to undoing of the basis for fear. The world seems to justify and necessitate fear but that is ultimately because we have adopted a posture of withheld presence and attention in which we do not see love because we do not see with love. We have become expert in seeing what is ‘wrong’ with everyone and everything and justifying our private view and its defences. But this is displacement of a fear and a judgement that what we ourselves in fact are ... is loveless or unworthy of love.



We can seem to use our mind lovelessly - this may be an idle curiosity or carelessness and not an intent to harm. But while we do so we misalign with the truth of what the mind is. We experience a sense of conflictedness that we then interpret within the terms of the thought we hold and see adversary, adversity and guilt. If we choose to stay in the thought we undertake the role and drama of overcoming the limitation as we misperceive it. But it is not there and every step to do so only excacerbates the belief that it is there to be overcome or defended against, magically healed or attoned for by punishment or penance.



Love waits on welcome - not on time.



In the story of Jesus he demonstrated very simply and persistently the truth of love and healing - not guilt - is within, and that death is transcended in rootedness in the Father’s Will - which again was found within - by trust - and not imposed from without. If this story isnt accorded historical validity then it still serves as symbol to activate any mind desiring to be free of - a separate self sense. The Truth that alone is true isnt definable or graspable - but it IS shareable.



To feel this is to let thinking serve the heart.



If what I say doesnt speak to you - so be it. But to read anything and feel your own knowings stirred is to have intimate experience within the mind. By this ordinary miracle are moments of communion. Communication isnt merely packets of information but a resonance of intention.



What do you (reader) want?

The answer to this determines how you read the world.

It is that simple - and at this level you are not victim to a past or a world beyond your control.

To wish for reality to be other than as it is, is to enact imaginative or experimental thinking. For Reality is as it is. To give preference to one's private judgement is to distract attention from what is, and invite an inherently conflicted state. For such a use of mind creates a choice between its making and the truth.



If one chooses mutually opposing outcomes then conflict is what is being chosen. To play within the realm of conflict is to become trapped or identified in reaction. The freedom to accept this is so is the freedom in which to make another choice. Freedom can be denied but only as you choose to do so.



To desist applying or imposing a seemingly separate will allows reality to be what it already is - AND for more of what that Is to register in our awareness - by which we are guided and grow in capacity to receive. When joy infills and arises we experience a glimpse of communion. Communion is not a sense of being separate, isolated, cut off or lost. It is joy.



Whence comes the intuition, the guidance, the discernment, the inspiration? They come in secret while your truth is held secret.

They do not issue from self will and its little walled off mind. But by the forgetting or neglecting to apply self will and letting life in.

The life that is let in is the sanity and intelligence of the truth of what you remain but have forgotten amidst distraction. Initially it may be experienced as if a Spirit that touches or heals and guides because our belief in guilt is deeply held and we are not yet willing to release it. But as we recognise and accept the voice and the promptings and intuition of this mind as the guide instead of following the voice that arises out of selfwill we regain vision and weaken an addictive identification that inceasingly is revealed as unfulfilling and futile or meaningless.



Yet we are so enamoured of our self will that we equate it with freedom and independence.

To trust and be led by guidance from a source that is not of our ego’s making can seem insulting to our idea of independance for it suggests at some level being like a puppet.

This is not altogether untrue for the mind can only be a conduit for the ideas it accepts.


The ego illusion of an independent and private self feigns to make you temporarily free but this is a carrot. The stick should be familiar by now. It knows exactly where to hit you!

This puppet is strung up in fear and guilt and dances in clever ways such that joylessness can be presented as success!.

The alternate to fear is to be a puppet also - but to a creative living freedom that gives Identity, indivisibility, Joy, Peace, Meaning.

Because That which gifts us awareness is Giving all of Itself and holding nothing back.



In personal practical terms, if one discovered that what is truly desired, is not what you are actually aligning with or subscribing to, does it not express freedom to say yes to - and live from - your revealed truth? The desire of our heart is the ongoing prayer of our life. If it is covered over it waits while our ears are stuffed with our own thinking.




The only real choice is which purpose we serve. Hang on... The only real choice is the choiceless choice of being ‘moved by the Divine will. The apparent other choice is a state of indecision played out as if an alternate option were in fact possible. But while we believe the choice is real we have to really make it.



If releasing self will breaks a hypnotic dream and awakens a fresh experience it is because we let it. By acceptance. Not because we exert a will and achieve it.

Reality is already here but we are largely unconscious in our thinking.

Because we think we know, we do not even bother to look! If guidance doesnt answer problems within terms we insist on defining them as, we say it doesnt exist or is undependable.



Such a puffed up arrogance of self will is in the mind of man! When I notice this in myself - it is opportunity of awakening - and not a call for more judgement. (For judgement IS how we auto-hit the snooze button and slide back to sleep).



The mappings that we hold dear act as filters. They are beliefs that literally program the way we experience reality and thus how we react to what we perceive. (Is this man threatening you? Is this man calling for help? - can be two ways to see one thing).



In exercising our personal powers of judgement and belief we tend to see ourselves as exercising our freedom. I hold that doing so is in fact (freely but unconsciously) denying freedom of our present participation in what life really is - in favour of a self made ‘world’ that convicts us with the very power of our convictions.



Individuality is rooted in the singularity of Being. Your individuality is inviolable as the expression of One Will.

It doesn't seem that there is One Will - it seems that there are billions of conflicting wills.

I hold that this is what One Will looks like when seen through an illusory and fragmented viewpoint.

(Tweedledum and tweedledee AGREED to have a quarrel).



And though many like to talk sweetly of oneness, it is this that the ego or separate self fears most because it believes it has cut its puppet strings and is independent. And thereby subject to being cut off from its life as it did unto Life.

Live by the scissors and ye shall die by the scissors!



Guilt and fear are inevitable companions to self will - for engaging self will is a wish that reality be as you alone would have it be. (I’m not saying we dont trade alliances or make relationships where we sacrifice in order to get what we are intent upon). This is by definition conflicted with reality and such a game is no game to one who believes it has defiled reality and IS a defiled reality.



The fragmenting and disintegrating effect of guilt upon the mind is catastrophic. Just because it has become normal here doesn't make it less so. While one believes himself/herself unworthy of love it will NOT be allowed to register in awareness as our experience of world - each other, or ourselves. Of all that you could do to defy thralldom to the false, receiving love is the most liberating. For guilt MUST be abandoned to let love in.



Much of our mindset is enacting strategies of coping with a conflicted world - that is itself the displaced projection of conflicted mind. Which has little or no desire to accept responsibility for thought because it does not access joy’s vision and has given the power of decision over to the ‘world’ outside. This is the cost of blaming anyone or anything - including oneself. Guilt sucks (...the light, and uses it to make light seem darkness).



Joining with others in common inspiration is to Let Life In - and to EMBODY it. This communicates through us as individuals but is experienced as a shared present joy. This is spirituality as lived through us - not dressing up or applying special meanings to things.



None is forced to accept reality as it is, we are each free to experience our own privateor local take if we so desire. But whatever is the vibrational tone and quality of the movement of being that is occurring right now - it is experienceable as it is - as a universal knowing. It could be said that this is the essence of That you are, (or anything is), rather than any attempt to experience what you are, (or anything is).



The attempt to grasp or define or map or compare is itself a gesture of self will which is absenting oneself from awareness of the flow while distracted in the act of differentiation. The grasping control mind is like a sphincter that tries to close around experience. It tends to get in the way.

The channel of our consciousness functions well in being relaxed and calm, allowing us to join WITH or surrender into the flow as it moves us. Identifications may get shat out as light is welcomed in for these were an attempt to live in the dark. They become unnecessary and obstructive and so life works to release them step by step as we are willing to accept. In this process of waking is the world given the purpose of waking - which is to see all things in a new light.



Reality or Truth is shared as a movement of Be -ing that has definite qualities. It is the sharing of these that extends them and maintains them in our awareness - not theorising or theologising. The release of self willed reality allows a direct experience that is recognisable and relevant to whatever the current need is. It always restores joy and sanity and grounds us in a capacity for response rather than reaction.



But without a structure through and by which a more constant direction is held; joy, oneness, light and love - all can become momentary vacillations before fear takes the stage and calls them pretty delusions, comforting lies or sweet fixes.



There are two aspects to the world which prompt me to speak out. One is the fear driven world and its deepening joyless clutch on our hearts. How far does it go before we wake up? I dont mean wake up to unite against danger - that is for Chicken Licken and the Fox. I mean wake up to joy.



There isn't a widely known framework of thought for the realities of what I call the heart - our wholeness as feeling awareness.

The old religious and spiritual traditions tended to cater to the ignorances and issues of their day. God has been so misused as a word that few would associate God with eternal light in your heart.



The dominance of so called rational thinking mind has hardly heralded the most enlightened era - yet the scientific willingness to break out of dogma and superstitious delusion or manipulation is a real gain. But I would say that we used rationality to box ourselves in to a corner in which there is a stuckness and lack of vision or aspiration. This says only one thing to me - wake up! What is the truth here - in this situation - in this place? And remain receptive and willing for an answer to come in time and form of its choosing - not ours.



The world experience that we mostly equate with life takes on a different nature and quality when it is used as the means for healing (wholing) our mind rather than using the world to hide our mind from Mind.

When we use our bodies as a means of communication - as for example in dance rather than employing body as a private boundary around a thinking isolated me, we are being a channel of expression and extension.



Such joyful freedom cant be grasped or bought and sold. Nor owned, argued over or substituted for by spin or even sacred symbol. It cannot really be lost - because we do not create the channel that IS our reality. But such giving and receiving can be lost sight of in the drive to get.



Is anything I write new? I dont think so. But the ideas by which we map the world do fail us and we have to live raw enough to find fresh expression. It isnt the forms that are ultimately important - but the willingness to dance the qualities they hold as these flow through us - and move on anew.

To that which identifies only with form, life must mean death. Yet to that which expresses itself through form to its own channel of recognition, there is only life.



In Peace



Brian

One response that came from writing Found in Translation part 1 was

“It's a bunch of Greeks having a fight. Then the winner bragging about it afterwards”.

This story is told as of a distant or unrelated event from which the teller is comfortably removed. It is also humourous and isnt fixated on negatives. It allows life to continue much as before and has put the story in a way that has restored normality to the one who shares it.
I havent got a problem with this except it isnt the story that speaks for me.

The particular song recounts an historic Greek-Arvenite conflict. But it is an example of a recurring re-enactment going on around the world, within societies and families and of course within our mind. Day by day.

I believe that the roots of conflict are in our mind and can only really be addressed there. Because these roots are largely accepted, and even socially proscribed, does not make them inactive or ineffective to my mind.

I choose not to be indifferent to presentations that arise in my mind if they affect my peace. I am also sensitive to the atmosphere of fear and distrust and depression that I see in my fellow man an woman. As if it is normal (just because everyone does it). It feels like so many walk around in a defended torpor. Sleepwalking, reactive, and easily manipulated.

I believe that what we choose to accept and endorse in our minds is part of, and shared into one mind - without exception. Not so much the contents but the intent. We are teaching ourselves all the time and we also teach others to the degree that they are already open to learning what is demonstrated.

I guess that I have stepped off of the commonly accepted map because I am not willing to simply accept the current prevailing mindset that is generally called 'The human condition' without re evaluation.

'The human condition' is remarkable similar to the story we are talking about excepting that the baddies, (in various guises), relentlessly come back again and again until all that we grasped at and called 'me' or 'world' is lost in death. We get opportunities to brag our victories en route. But pride makes the fool - and the fall, inevitable.

It has come to me that transcendence or freedom in spirit is not otherworldly - but involves seeing exactly the same experience with fresh new eyes - from a vantage point that is not 'a thinking' within unconsciously accepted definitions.

Look at us as dancers at the beginning - and look at them at the end of a lively or heartfelt circle dance session and our perception will be different for by joining we let in light. And it is in light that we see and recognise and feel connected with.

Some are seeking to use dance as a conflict resolution tool but of course the first (and in a way the only) hurdle is getting to the point of letting the other in by joining with them.
Is this not me or you? For who lives here but knows conflict and the pain of it?

I feel that joining with each other can be a conflict preventative, because by the moments of seeing each other lovely in beauty we weaken the judgemental mind that focuses on differences and inevitably generates and thrives and conflict. That is its thing - even though it thinks it can contain and control or fix the situation in its terms.

Ultimately I sense that all conflict is shadow boxing. I put my shadow on you and you put your shadow on me. And the stage is all set to believe that we are in fact 'fighting' another! But each is privately within their own determinations and cannot actually see the other.

“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”

Therefore I get an 'wake up call' if I start seeing another in a lack of light, because it signifies that I am actually slipped into my own history scripts of conflict and NOW I can come clean with myself and own it and let the other be free of the role that was in MY mind but which I laid on them. This is true forgiveness. It is the ultimate gift to oneself.

It is necessary for me is to do what I do with a whole heart. And in this incident with this song I took what could have been a trivial issue - except I felt a conflicted sense of a song whose musical and dancing quality I enjoy.

This particular song was coming up in me as a feeling tone - which I wanted to learn to sing. In opening to its original cultural meanings it seemed to become lost to an 'enemy' (its translated meaning) - but has in fact been regained at a deeper level of meaning for me than it had when I seemed to nearly lose it. The whole process was simply because I asked within and trusted what I heard and asked some more and found Meaning.

If I hadnt I might have tried opening to the song as simply an expression of the Greek spirit and not cared about what it was about. Or I may have felt it unclean and dropped it. But a momentary stab of pain was not ignored - it was the basis for prayer. Nothing in the world was changed by the answer - excepting the mind with which I behold has recognised that the world is a script that can be read differently.

Is this a mind that has lost it? Or a mind that has let itself be found?
I cannot tell you what the Truth Is - but I can testify that my own conflicted fears are very capable of presented a dark and distorted rendition that had little if any actual connection with Reality.

In Peace

Brian

Dancing as invitation and expression of a joy based way of living: a truly human culture

I sing for dance in a manner that inspires and uplifts the heart to dissolve our habitual preoccupation with elsewhere-ness.

I use dance forms that are accessible without necessitating the resort to a problem solving mentality. I am not one who prefers dumbing down without real need and can usually share the dance to dancers within the energetic that is the feel of the dance.

Joy is the entry point - and hopefully the ongoing experience of sharing these dances.

If I am aware of information about a dance, I may include it when sharing dances, but I accord prime value to sharing an experience of dancing to a common felt inspiration.

I am not a purist regarding traditional folk dances. I may embrace circle-dancified regional simplified versions that are loved but will usually identify them as such.

I love dances that are congruent with the feel and sense of the music in my heart and body. The free expression of such qualities facilitates coming back into alignment or focus with the life that lives me. Being one. Being whole.

But also I know that the bodymind has learned patterns to which it has become fixed and we can find resistance to being open to new patterns. But relaxing through this is to grow in our range of inspiration and expression. What can at first seem chaotic can in fact be the opening into a greater freedom.

Its not unusual in any culture for incoming opportunity for growth to be 'conformed to the existing comfort zones - and so it gets neutered. To embrace the energetic qualities of the new and then discover ways of integrating and assimilating this, is to be enlivened and renewed.

Therefore I aspire to sing us out of seeming comfort zones that are not really where our joy abides. The same dynamic applies to my singing. A relaxed conduit allows expression.

I hold the meaning of a dance to be in our sharing of the dance - which is an embracing of its qualities. Because traditional dances come out of cultures that have held to their identity amidst struggle and conflict, and because dance is one of the ways that cultures express their own particular values, they may have aspects that I do not endorse at the level of their original cultural meaning. But I do feel into and join with them as an expression of that in the human Spirit, that defies a sense of illegitimate limitation and reaches beyond itself in holding for what it loves. And as expressions of beauty woven in many threaded forms.

I don't feel honouring of that in our mind which attempts to put hate onto 'other' as if they are not also worthy of the experience of love in peace and freedom - whether this be expressed by some-ism or anti-some-ism. When we join in a circle - it is a symbol of joining with all, and not a boundary set around a special identity

Forms associated with true gifts of our Spirit can be used in opposition to our truth when false self assertions are cultivated in the our minds and shared as truths.
Its not that what Truth is changes as a result - but that we lose appreciation its presence in our minds and hence our lives.

Dancing together is a way of renewing our sense of self in recreation and freedom. To experience life as a shared felt connectedness works to undo the insidious fear that would rob our joy in the form of worry, anxiety, distrust and suspicion. These are prevalent in our culture today as if they are expressions of righteousness.

The dance as I share it is but a seed or aspect of a culture of being truly human - to share in the spirit that moves us. It serves as a meeting place where we ground ourselves within that to which all else can be added. The qualities of our spirit are as a song that we remember by singing it.

By embracing what it is to be human, we open ourselves to Divinity.

I don't hold the thinking mind as the best tool to find answers - as it is merely analytical of its own database rather than connecting with a present wholeness. But the thinking mind serves the heart naturally when the light of the heart is brought forth.

Therefore the willingness to join with each other is the willingness to put our differences aside in trust, and allow what is common to us but forgotten, to rise to our awareness and include us all.

The language of living music is the vehicle of our feeling being. We are feeling beings. We are participant in life whether we withhold or share. But only by sharing a gift can we retain our appreciation and awareness that it is given us to share.

Joy is not ephemeral to us - it is innate and is the real effulgence of our spirit. The forms we associate it with are the forms where we currently give ourselves permission to allow feeling awareness to expand and extend. I see all forms that help as stepping stones, not as destinations in themselves or dependencies to become fixed or means of getting a fix.

Joylessness is a choice made in ignorance to which we have become addicted since we identified with self-willed judgement as if it were our core. To learn to live from joy is to live out of a present grounded awareness in trust - whatever the apparent outer circumstances. To bring ourselves fully present in our lives is to embrace and include that in us, (and thus in others), which we have denied or forgotten in our distractions and confusions. It requires willingness, trust and acceptance - in which our own desire is recognised and aligned with in peace and freedom. Freedom is without coercion and the heart sings freedom’s song of itself when coercion is foregone.

Releasing our selves of that which obstructs the flow of feeling is not an intellectual activity. But to allow even a glimpse of joy shared is to discover the connection in which our own guidance can reach us as a way of being and seeing in which our joy and wholeness is restored. to our awareness.

It is easy to look out on the world and see insanity - but to see that this is a reflection of how we choose to see may not be so easy. Yet blame is an error and the fear and guilt that declares itself as the Power and Truth of life has a false foundation. Sharing in the light of joy is a demonstration that this is so and an expression of our essential sanity.