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.

Living Circle Camp

Living Circle Camp
Joy Based Living

Cathi Nile and Brian Steere

Friday 14 to Sunday 16 September. (Extending option to Wednesday 19)

Camps I have joined with or held over the last decade and a half have always held the same call for me: freedom and joy in being. This might seem a luxury to attend to after sorting other priorities. I hold this is the sanity in which we can prioritise truly. If ‘the world’ seems to be collapsing around us it may simply be that we are neglecting joy.

Joy is also the context in which I share circle dance. As an invitation to and expression of simple presence. A felt connection expressing directly through us.

I heard on the radio a while ago of some young Rwandans who had been directly involved on both sides of the genocide. These few had joined to make music for dance as an expression of desire for their own and their people’s healing. Their need was great. In this music they engaged wholly and presently. And in that participation they found clean clear joy. And in joy they discover their essential humanity renewed.

Does this resolve the past in terms of grievance addressed? - No.

It does express willingness to let the past go in embracing life as a shared participation. From the mind this awakens in us we may discover how to live as expression of an unconflicted life.

Few of us have had to rediscover a sense of worth, meaning or reason after such extremity, but the example serves to shine a way for any who want to release joylessness, whatever its seeming justifications.

I hold joy as the treasure of life now - not an idea of now - but presently in my day - come what may. Have I attained anything? I have not attained any state or power that is not already the case for everyone. Have I allowed it to be uncovered in me? Yes.

Accepting joy expresses as increasing unwillingness to abandon it for it is the spirit connection that reaches to the sleeping mind. I feel joy in the heart. ‘I’ does not make it, nor mentalize or modify it in order to support a sense of a special self. This is work because the mind-habit that does do these things is of a hidden wish we have held for a long time to be as we are not. Yet that choice expresses conflict in the guise of protecting from conflict. This undermines our joy. We become distrustful and confused and resistant to seeing clearly.

Regaining joy is the desire of your joy. This expresses as willingness for a present relatedness within our own mind, acceptance of this experience without adding layers of judgement or reaction, and allowing a freedom of desire to move as the judging mind is quietly passed by.

Ego is a sense of self image. A rigidity of mind around an eddy amidst the flow. In our identification with it we are resistant to joy because ego represents a wish to become what we are not - and defend it over and against the truth of what is. Because it is a choice as to how we use our mind, we always have a choice to ignore ego in our mind, by engaging our attention in what we truly desire instead. This can only be felt and found within a silence or receptivity because we hide it in distraction. Discovering our true desire and its fulfilment is simply not the result of trying to think our way - but of feeling our way.

The thinking mind has its role in the way of things as servant. As our guide it is surely the blind leading the blind - and leads to activating defence for everything it trips over in the dark because life does not fit to its concepts! This does not engender joy. It engenders fear, distrust and conflict. This applies equally within the individual mind as with the world at large or within our music! Joy needs expression for us to remember or wake up to the truth that we love. In this is our freedom from fear.

The world’s nature is ever a flux of change. The retreat into fear is the same old game, and has its own perceptions and justifications, not unlike an addiction. But what does that really offer you? And do you truly want it?

We invite this camp for being with ourselves as whoever we find ourselves to be, together, with our own live music and dance that express a spectrum of feeling but also grounds us in silence. An expression of joy as a common inspiration. That our minds are joined may be argued - but in the experience of joy such argument is irrelevant.

Joy is conscious alignment with inspiration of true desire. It is not the masking of joylessness in temporary relief. We invite this camp to embrace the former to be free of the need to undertake the latter to the degree that you are willing to accept. Please don’t bring alcohol or so called social drugs to this camp as we find that they do not aid receptivity or clarity of attention.

We camp and live as one circle and will run for the weekend, but extending until Wednesday if there is support to do so. In that case campers can choose how long they stay. Starting together is good if we can do this. The nature of joy is a gift and we do not charge for the camp. If you want to support the work we welcome whatever is given but doing so is not necessary to be welcome.

Be in touch if you are interested in coming or finding out more. If you cant make this camp but are interested in other events then let me know.

I have resources that are whole for sharing live music song and dance - but there is opportunity and welcome to join in singing, rhythm and music making.

I have more information at: http://www.livingcircle.net

In Peace

Brian


Brian Steere and Cathi Nile. 84 Northfield Crescent, Wells-next-the-Sea. NR23 1LR

01328 711142

brian-at-livingcircle.net





PS - I have cards and prints available for some of my photography here:

http://www.clearlightcards.co.uk

Do the intrinsic characteristics of a dance change?

Was it Heraclitus who said a man cant stand in the same river twice because the man has changed and so has the river?

Our experience of a dance (or of any thing in this world) has to change.

Rock and Roll burst into pop culture as an expression of freedom from stuffed shirt restraints - but soon became simply a normalized form in which conformity and uniformity could be expressed.

Because the context changed.

The first time we hit something new it is in innocence. But to look for the experience again is to be grasping and predefining by definition. This always reflects in a way that might still be energised but is not in the blessing or joy of innocence - because coercion is at work!

What is a dance?

I feel a dance is a vehicle or conduit that - if used as such - is an invitation and invocation of connection with life. The living dance comes through the vehicle - which is a way of bringing focus of attention to eternal qualities that express in changing forms.

There is also the channel opened by the musicians with Life as inspiration - and relationship with the dancers as the expression and extension of the music. (Though I once shared in an amazing silent circle dance).

With recordings one becomes used to the same form, but in life, music is responsive to the atmospheric of that moment in that group.

I heard a concert pianist describe once how active the audience was in his capacity to play. An engaged attentive receptive audience lifted his capacity to play to capacities otherwise inaccessible. I can testify to this.

As a musician I find I sing where I find the life, and also bring to life.
I want to allow an essence to be communicated through me. Because I love to be so alive and it is a joy to share it.

But also I come into a freedom to express or convey qualities within the music that might have been only potentials in the recording.

A dance's form is the brush strokes by which the living mind paints in a creation that reveals itself to itself.

I have always had the sense in the music and dance we share of:
"What it is to be human"

Embracing this in each and all of its energies has always opened:
"What it is to be Divine".

"Behold I make all things new!"

We CAN open to the experience that is Being the flow.

Which is a singularity and is thus perfectly shared - or shall I say - not a privately gotten experience. We may yet have filters of perception that limit the fullness of such knowing but each step is a lightening even if it sometimes seems that fear seeks to pull our mind back.

This is like letting the scales fall from our eyes (or the armour from our hearts) and being more directly smitten by the subtle beauty of the world.

I now recognise this opening in the archaic expression of 'leading from Glory to Glory'. Its not about getting somewhere else but letting the perfection in.

How relaxed, receptive and open a conduit are we willing to be?

Not a lot perhaps while we are given to validating our own private meanings.
But in a shared trust this tends to fall away and we find ourselves in a dance we have danced so many times and yet as if experiencing it as if for the first time.

"Behold I make all things new!"

Found in Translation Part 1

I sing songs from many lands and in other languages for dance. I add these to my repertoire from time to time from a fairly large archive of recordings that I used to use for dance – before I started singing them.

One such song was an expansive Greek song that had always opened a celebratory heart so I felt to learn it. “Tsamikos Ivalla - also known as Maria’s Tsamikos”

I asked a network of other dance teachers if anyone had the original lyric – and as an afterthought – any translation.

Someone did – but the translation was just the sort of thing that might have prevented me wanting to sing it! Here is the Lyric translated:

Yesterday as the sun turned - Ivalla! Yesterday afternoon They came and stole -Ivalla! The morning star They were eleven, they were 12, they were 13 All with horses, all with weapons, so they would be feared!

Up runs Botsaris - Ivalla! And Karafotias. They take up weapons - Ivalla! Against the Arvanites. And from the fighting, from the bloodshed and from the carnage, Houses cracked and collapsed, the mountain shook!

Yesterday as the sun turned - Ivalla! Yesterday afternoon They did not take from us - Ivalla! The morning star Here's to you Botsaris - Ivalla! And Karafotias, You have shamed - Ivalla! The Arvanites


The form of this is not at all initially attractive to me – but I found myself asking within to be shown what it was in its primary symbols as a story - and this is what came:

Take 1:
I see a story of having had our treasure (land/place/woman?) stolen by a greater force. They are Others. But that by courage and a bold intent and resistance and at cost of the ruin and change of the world as we know it The treasure remains with us and we stand tall against those who sought to deny us.

The treasure is a symbol of beauty and truth - expressions of the Divine. The Arvanites take the role of the feared and repressed forces that would overwhelm the seemingly outnumbered self with fear and consequent loss.

The heroes are the capacity and willingness to risk all in doing what must be done to keep connection with light in the mind though it shook the foundations of the world and all was changed. They are praised as the embodiment of a saving force that held back the darkness and kept the 'Morning Star'.

As with all stories, all the characters, roles and symbols are in our mind. "out there' is internal scenery serving as a prop for the story.

This story seems to speak of the ego's version of itself and the world. Special self supported by its symbols of the divine. Competition and conflict. Victory (and loss).

Something did not feel complete n me with this, so I asked and listened again to see what would be revealed.

Take 2:
The fear that would judge, and thus rob us, (as if a separate power), by endarkening the wholeness of mind from itself is seen in its intimidating array of force but is refused.

This refusal allows in and supports the single clear intent that is willing to express integrity even though in so doing is the foundation of the self shook and the mind and the world changed.

In gratitude and celebration is the Spirit that restores sanity and dispels the fear of loss recognised and glorified.

Notes:
This the essence is derived from the substance but the reverse does not hold true.
I am not offering any justification of conflict worldly terms. I am addressing the mind that thinks and then believes its story.

The refusal to obey fear's dictate is the seed of peace within a mind in conflict. In time and by welcome it grows to a level that has some consistency and can be discerned as the voice for truth. (Though it may still be feared as it does not fit into the status quo and the consequences of following it seem dire).

Until then it seems mixed among the clamour of reaction and yet grows to the point where the ‘Yes’ for life expresses as the ‘No’ to allegiance or subserviance to that which undermines life.

This can get messy because reaction is still triggered by seeming external events but is essentially standing FOR and WITH. It becomes clear that taking an identity against something is to give the power of your mind over to it.

By releasing all claims to power as if a separated mind that has to enforce its will, is welcome made for the power of Oneness or the expression of innate integrity.

Rather than identify as a self-made-self we rediscover Identity as a living expression of that which is alive and which we do not create.
This is the basis from which we can respond from a fresh and conflict free place rather than react with rebranded answers from the same old database of past experience.

I felt to put the whole thing like this as a reference in case anyone was actually curious as to how a warmongering horror story could be a source of inspiration and homecoming.

I read it with my heart and my mind served behind.

I was inspired to practice this way of reading as a result of reading the NTI.
The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament ~ A Course in Understanding and Acceptance or NTI ( “New Testament Interpretations") To be published next year - but freely readable online at www.forholyspirit.org

In Peace

Brian

A peace of my mind

Life goes off the map. No field notes are taken. The camera remains in its bag. There is no time to think. Not because there is scarcity of time - but because time is better used to facilitate timelessness. Holding conflicting goals is simply a way to invite conflict. In the undoing of conflict is the willingness to only want what is given me to want. In religio-speak this is 'doing the will of the Father'. What is this in practice? To pause and be still and receptive and become aware of what is already moving within. Joy is the expression of a felt connectedness of being. Peace is the condition of wholeness or non-exclusion wherein joy abides. Love is the creative spontaneity of life in total self-giving.
These truths do not change with season or fashion but are revealed by desisting of the act that obscures. Did you know that the obstruction to peace of being is not in the past and will not be undone in the future, for now - really - now - is where we have the opportunity to let ourselves into the gap between thinking about or related to the past, and thinking or imagining about the future. For all of that is an elswhereness to which your mind has become enamoured - until you grew tired of the game and wanted to come Home.

Alight here and let the darkness go

I have been living for some time in an intensity or fullness of living that - to me - is very similar to the process that I associate with the ‘journey’ of a Mayflower Camp - or from any similar commitment to sharing and learning life with others in truth.

In Camp - or perhaps I will now say in a commitment to shared be-ing in relationship, the fruits of taking the journey that it offers are a profound sense of connectedness within that is extended and reflected without. A spontaneous capacity for joy. A very present appreciation of being alive. Freedom from compulsive thinking. A natural generosity of spirit.

To open the door isn't actually complex or difficult. But when such a spirit is in us we are forced into new responsibilities or to shut down.
From now on I will just speak in terms of my own experience.

The liability of such awakened relationship is that I suffer acutely if I ‘lose it’ by trying to impose the control or mindset of separative mind upon experience.

This would sometimes occur via a sort of unguarded curiosity where I don't realize that what I am attempting does not work until I get feedback that reveals to me that I am actually being obstructive. Then I tend to drop it and re-member myself in the present flow of relationship. This sort of thing is like seeing immediately how life flows or constipates according to the consciousness we hold. It is possible to set myself up in this way by trying to script what the world or others should be and then getting upset when they are not or do not. But that too is part of staying awake and being present with myself with the world.

Loss of joy mostly occurs when fear and guilt from my past are activated and experienced as if re-occurring - or about to re-occur. This often seems to be other people or experience impinging on me or others. I dont see that I have set myself up. I may see others as behaving badly or things not going how I want them to - and project my own shadow intentions onto the situation. At such times - if I take the bait - I cannot then of myself discern the true from the false; the real from the remembered past and the imagined or anticipated future.  I am caught in a trap. I will believe I am present and justified in my perceptions, but it is a painful and problematic experience from which I seek remedy because it is intolerable.

I am already in a conscious intention to learn and live from a self-discovered-in-relationship rather than a self-getting-from-relationships, I do open into relationship. There cannot be a loss of joy if one hasnt first experienced joy. None of what I say will make any sense to one who only sees relationship as something to exploit for private or indeed mutual private gain. If people were to come to a camp without letting life in then they can not experience anything other than their judgements and definitions from the past because only opening into relationship presently connects directly with reality at all. This of course is about human mentality at any time or place.

In the camps I have held or attended, or in any commitment to relationship in being, I have always had at least some times where I felt gutted, excluded, cut off from joy, utterly bereft, or an empty meaninglessness or deeply felt fear. Heavy stuff. All these compelling realities become meditations because they were held within relationship - which is present by faith and at times by the present extension of love or attention from others or indeed from serendipitous events. But the living of it is experiential - not theoretical - and is often messy in ways that our closet self abhors and resists. I might add here that extending love is largely unconscious or spontaneous automaticity. Anyone inspired by joy extends love. "Love" has been remade in man's image but that is merely a concept and a construct. The reality of love has not altered in any way as a result of man's imagination. Your direct experience can find its own words if it needs to.

In life, we can often spend days, months or even years in grievances or feeling hard done by or just lost. This is largely because the culture is predominantly one of suppression of symptoms and we inhibit the movement of love. The intensity or rawness that I opened this writing with is the seemingly accelerated process wherein coming through grievance into miracle of clean and renewed joy may occurs in moments or hours.

Here is the journey-process of healing. A journey within myself that I have to make if I am to regain joy instead of a disposition that is tending to shut down into judgement, exclusion and blame. The temptation to guilt is sometimes terribly strong, but the immediate cost is loss of living relationship within myself as well as without. When hitting difficulty I may attempt anything that seems plausible - depending on the nature of the experiences I am having. But I would often find myself going off into nature and in essence, attempting to face, enquire and empty myself at a radical level. Often in wordless prayer that seeks but one thing; to regain a living peace. But such a prayer may not come until I have exhausted all other ‘options’ - and myself in the process. The fruit of such a journey is to discover the absence or undoing of the problem-bound self in the regained clean and clear joy of inner-connectedness and outer innocence.

There is no process to receiving but recognising and undoing the blocks that are obstructing present joy often needs some process in time. Joy is a spontaneous felt wholeness of be-ing that is not dependent on externals but on alignment of mind with Mind.

Such a journey cannot be learned, conflicted “I” always has to make it afresh. This is because it isnt so much a doing as a surrender of doing. Not so much a strategy or formula for solving problems; but a recognition of inherent futility in the problem’s perspective.

The essential dimension to this journey is “joining with” - into living relationship. The need for it is my conflicted state of mind in which I suffer not only loss of awareness and communion with this very living reality, but the usurpation of this by a falsity that actively seeks to protect itself and sees all things in it’s imagination such that nothing is accorded relevance unless it fits pre-set problematic criteria, and nothing will be allowed to reach it that would be seen as threat.

The one thing that seems to block this journey of healing is the belief or acceptance of (anyone’s) guilt as reality. In this is private judgement of blame or unworthiness solidified and made Reality. Capital R Reality. When such temptations are yielded to, I become powerless to invite or initiate change and indeed will fight to maintain and impose my conviction. Though I may feel vindicated and justified, I will not regain well being because I am unconsciously but actively excluding my wholeness. Until and unless I become willing to look within with fresh eyes and open my mind to change.

Living through such experiences over most of a lifetime has brought me to recognise and accept the difference between the false and the true in myself by virtue of not living as if a separate and unjoined mind. From this comes the next step; to let go of the false and embrace the true. This step is not without fear and like the first step is not achieved by self-will but by a willingness to be given the means as they are needed.

Now must I be as vigilant in protecting my peace as before I was in protecting my judgement. Such that judgement cannot find a welcome in my mind as a weapon but only as a mapping of my own private internal mindset.

The intent to maintain privately held separative judgemental reality can take any and many forms. It can adopt perfectly socially normal behaviour - because most of us are mostly engaged in trying to protect a split mind by projecting a split or conflicted world. So we have consensus judgements according to our various family, cultural and human perspectives. While we may be more of less unconscious of this activity of our mind, it remains actively obstructive of well be-ing in ourselves and our community.

I have simply come to point where I have had to separate from that which separates. To not do so costs me more than I am willing to pay. In making this choice I have seemingly lost my marriage and livelihood, the community in which I have lived in faith and fellowship for many years, and indeed my capacity to live from and as a compartmentalized self. I say seemingly because I am regaining an unconflicted presence in being alive that offers a true foundation for sharing and living life. I am in a new classroom here and learning by living with. In the very way this writing describes.

To hold to the embrace of the living universe - the gift and communion of life in which and of which we have our actual being - is in many ways to step off of the map. Such a presence is anathema to any who actively will to hide in darkness - or private-self judgemental realities. For it does not share the foundation from which their thought systems stem.

Though they may make much noise or more, they cannot make such a self real, and I will not forego the quiet loving extension of love’s recognition in order to conform to demands that are expressions of an unwillingness to look within this very moment - with eyes released from the past and a willingness to let vision in.

Humanity sleeps. In dreams are victors and heroes born, adversity engaged and challenges overcome. But none who dream but have fear stalk them in shadows and hope turns to despair. The odds are actually invincible because human mind is split against itself. The experience of being ground down or devastated by loss or undone in fear, maddened by guilt, can ripen us to question the entire basis of our experience.

None will look within who fear judgement upon themselves unless they have some cause to bring to question the case they hold against themselves or their brother. In any moment of experience where you do have light and share it - you have such a cause. Though it may seem lost when you get lost, every witness in your life to love's presence is part of your dawning sanity.

There is no case against the truth of you or I - whatever we may have seemed to have been or done. Can this be true? In the shared reality of Love's creation is this Truth. It isnt information to be applied within the framework of private realities. Only by taking the hand of another in rejoining in shared be-ing will we regain the perspective that is vision. Only with a present and grounded vision will we be able to respond to the call for healing with true help. For the absence of actual and direct connection with reality is the inevitable recycling of insanity. "Stop the world, I want to get off", expresses a truth felt in many in our world today - but expressed with humour. To make it also a practical statement of release say "I stop making my world in the image of my past all by myself, I want to come back into the giving and receiving of love's reality for I am not at home in what I have made and am willing to learn what love would have me be and do".

Camps as spiritual resource

I have in fact been a well adjusted individual to the world that I have grown up in. From earliest self awareness I felt it expressed less than what life is and what I can be. It seemed to demand that I be what I am not. In one way or another I met unlove. In reaction I grew a false independence that was essentially a form of complaint and feeling hard done by, whereby I avoided addressing my own failure of relationship. I thus become less than what I am and actively undermined my own unfoldment in life. A false presentation. A social identity.
 
Recognising this came about only via extremely painful change, but also because there is in me (as in everyone) an innate or God given capacity to recognise truth. I could not invest in falsity once I became aware that it wasnt true. Even though my world collapsed and I was terrified without the buffer of a false self to hide in or be.
 
I then began to grow from a sense of responsibility that before would have been inconceivable and therefore invisible. Unlike societal responsibilities, living responsibly does not carry the sense of ‘should’ or ‘ought’ but rather expresses one’s own intelligence as an expression of desire or free will. Albeit that life brought such crisis where I was not able to evade or delay such choices. Such has been - and remains the ongoing responsiblity of consciousness. Without this responsibility we reenact the past as a program of which we are unaware.
 
Camps offer temporary but periodic occasions of living in which we are much more communal and communicative that we normally are in daily life, and more immersed in the natural world and its living qualities. The camp offers renewal in the capacity for relationship.
 
New relationships will either grow on a new basis and call forth new behaviour and experience, or replicate the old set patterns. For the latter, the honeymoon period is soon replaced by a more obviously contractual ‘relationship’ where each participant holds ongoing private judgments which become associated with ‘no go areas’. The ‘trouble’ that surfaces over time in relationship will either tend to become ‘mapped out’ and avoided or the relationship is abandoned. Attempts to force solutions fail because the nature of human conflict expresses unconscious private histories we each carry and this is only recognised in freedom and not at all likely when righteously energising conflict.
 
A kind of peace can be maintained by those willing to obey the rules of non engagement that the group’s atmospheric carries. But it covers hidden conflict and is superficial. This is largely a picture of humanity at large - the human condition.
Camps - if they are to offer spiritual resource, need to discover the basis for relationship where we find enough willingness to remain in the experience of conflict and release our convictions of rightness or wrongness enough to let the presence of life come in.
 

This can be a simple as letting an uncomfortable silence be just that - uncomfortable. By not trying to lubricate or fix something that seems to be ‘out there’ we can just be with it and feel it ‘in here’. Being with anything without fretting and thinking and defining is to become actually present. The moment that we allow the presence of what is actually alive in us to connect, we are transformed. Now, instead of looking outside for conditions to be met and finding disappointment, we are unselfconsciously expressing our own sense of self inclusion. If the previous discomfort was related to issues in the camp, then one is awake and responsive rather than restless and reactive. There is now a relational basis on which one can act by discerning what is appropriate to the whole situation.
 

To value a relationship enough to stay in when issues arise that embody loss of trust requires a faith in oneself and life whereby one is willing to forgo investing in conflict and remain in relationship - ( As described in the above paragraph). However we are not obliged to submit ourselves to actual abuse or indeed abuse ourselves or others by futile attempts to enforce our wills. Withdrawal or restraint is appropriate as an expression of love toward ongoing willful violence at any level. If a mutual channel of relationship does not exist it cannot be forced into existence. To deny access to that which refuses to look within and only attacks is sanity - but only if we remain open to their essential worth beyond the costume and posture they are currently identifying as.
 

There is something in human conditioning that always tries to usurp and do what in fact is not its responsibility - and thus we obstruct our own good. To bring ourselves present is to be in an ongoing relationship with others and the world, just as we are, but not in conclusion or judgement as to where we (or they) are. Compulsion to fix, grasp and control is an expression of insecurity that always represents an avoidance of looking within. Life is intelligent, we do not persist in what doesnt serve any purpose, once we are awake enough to see.
 

To be in the messiness of involvement is not comfortable in human terms. But to regain recognition of your and your brother or sister’s innate worth is to have found the way to live in and from your own. Learning to live is to a very large degree learning how to not get in the way; how to let in and join with the life that arises.
Joy arises from within. It cannot be bought or made. All pleasures are external and their ‘joy’ will pass. Yet joy can fully drink pleasure’s essence without grasping at the forms. Joy is the call to live that we will have no peace unless we respond.
By becoming present we become receptive and life will reveal itself as we allow it. To be in joy is far too simple and requires no preparation - though it may require patience as old habits diminish.
 

What better than a relationship in which you can let be yourself as is, for your own joy to show you an alternate to the ways the past would dictate, that seem safe but lead nowhere; that wear us down and out of joy? Therefore the camp is an opportunity for you to offer that freedom to others once you have realised it is yours to receive.
 

Everyone expects spiritual life to demand sacrifice of himself herself. Everyone expects that looking within or being revealed is to encounter judgement against oneself. Until the attempt to go it alone as a self made man or woman becomes untenable, there will be the tendency to defend against love and to protect fear. But if there is any willingness in the day we live now toward change from conflictedness to wholeness then that is enough to take one step. To embrace the step we are inspired to take is not only enough - it is all we will ever need to live.

Brian Steere

Living Circle Camp - unused draft copy

Living Circle Camp - this was my first draft for the invitation for the camp which I didnt end up using so I put it here as it has some alternate points that may serve your attention.

I have always invited a spiritual intent without exoteric trappings to the camps I hold. This doesnt require or espouse overt ‘spirituality’. But it does require a willingness to join with the invitation that IS the camp’s inspiration or you are at the wrong camp.

Living Circle runs as a single circle gathering of people; meeting, camping, cooking, sharing silence, music and dance together.

I invite Living Circle as an act of worship and renewal in which we step out of thinking-mind into relationship with the Living world. Such reality we do not make or control but in and of this we presently and always Are, whether we are aware of this or not. Living experience is indescribable and direct, (whatever words may be used to point to it), because it is not filtered or distorted by thinking. Such can be uncovered by opening into presence - this moment - without using the lens of the past.

A journey into simple presence in which time-bound thinking falls away is easy if we simply do NOT do the things that keep us distracted into elsewhere and elsewhen, unconsciously acting out a past that is not actually here - but whose imposition upon the present ensures that the future merely extends the past. The present is a gap between memory and imagination. They are not continuous. We have a choice in the way we see the present and a different world arises from a different choice.

Until one has a real experience of the living present as a unique expression of a shared joy, an unbounded peace, a recognition of love’s radiance, then it is hard to realise just what it costs us to live as if we actually are what we think we are. Yet even a moment of such experience is enough to witness that there is vastly more to what we are and what life is - than what we have come to accept (and suffer) as ‘the human condition’.

Becoming present as a living practice is the essence and is an allowing or letting into what is already here. It simply cannot be ‘done’ but only accepted and shared. This is profoundly different from most of our previous learning which tends to promote a time based ‘becoming this’ or ‘getting that’ which is aimed at some other moment than that which we are living right now.

Our adaptions to coping as a time-separated mind fall away when not serving any useful function and we may feel threatened or uneasy when anything that we identify with is open to change. Learning not to react to fear with that which promotes fear is a worthy endeavour whose fruit many hope for in our larger world, not realising that it is this which we need to give.

Whatever the forms of the camp, they are expressions of where we are coming from: our intent and invitation. How could it be otherwise? I do not seek music and dance as the content of the camp but we will use it as a common structure or vehicle through which we live and express our life together - just as we do with morning meeting and shared circle cooking.

Please do not bring ‘social’ drugs or alcohol to Living Circle. If such is your preference please be willing to explore living without for a few days. We are inviting the renewal of a simple clear awareness rather than its distortion. Boredom, doubt and discomfort can be the catalyst for either growing beyond one’s unrealised mindset or addressing inappropriate behaviour in others. This takes trust and support to stay with and come through. We can grow such a trust within our self and in our community. Everyone is both a teacher and a student to themselves and each other.

Living Circle is experiential and while we trust that we each and all welcome and include, our fundamental responsibility is self inclusion. Our perceptions shift as our state of mind calms. The essential learnings are of a highly personal relationship within one’s living self. The fruits of this process share in the community in terms of the light and quality of our presence. There is no private enlightenment to be gotten. We have it by seeing others in recognition of their worth - especially when it is not apparent.

In our human conditioning we all carry shit or guilt which we at times get stuck in or sticks to us if we try to throw it out. If we are to come into a shared presence that heals and enlivens it will only be through being straight and grounded within ourselves. The ego or time-bound mindset is an ingenious defence mechanism that can easily be set off, take us unawares and insinuate itself as if it were ‘I’. But it is dependent upon being fed with attention and I trust we can find better things to do with our minds.

The willingness to live with others is where the treasure is. It is also where the stuff comes up. There is no need to look for trouble but, if obstructions to your joy and essential peace of being seem to turn up in ambush, then trust it is coming up to be undone. Either over a process of years - or in a moment. But never by force of will imposed by self or another. The freedom to say no is essential to having the capacity at another time to say yes. I do not invite coercion as a valid expression of being at Living Circle. We are not here to fix the world or others - but to regain a grounded and clear sense of being ourselves in the shared life of the camp and take this into our lives. Such sanity is often lacking in the larger world in which we live. Fear will react but only love can respond; for to respond we must respond TO something that we receive by listening, in relationship, beyond the confines of chattering mind and pictures from our past.

Brian Steere

Full article which I abridged for the back of the flyer for Chelmsford

Living Circle Dance ; Live Music with Brian Steere

My adult life has been inspired toward the process of awakening. I find guidance and support through many forms and am not subscribed to any one teaching. But I resonate with and recommend ‘The Power of Now’ by Ekhart Tolle as a good example of what I mean by awakening.

I have been teaching and sharing dance since the late 80’s. During the 90’s I was a co organiser of Dance Camp East and co-founded the Mayflower Camps where the dance became a living focus of our camping communities as well as growing in live musicmaking.

Circle dance is a kind of folk dancing where we mostly join in lines or a circle and the dance has a form that we all share. Yet it holds the dimension of stillness and feeling awareness. Many of the dances are slow and simple and invite participation rather than competition or attainment. Though a few dances have a partner element, most do not. You do not need to bring a partner to come.

Circle dance draws music and dance from many cultures past and present. This helps to raise an appreciation of our common humanity. I see circle dance as a tool for peace on an individual and collective level.

Living music is the gift of the spirit of inspiration which calls us in the innate language of our own being. Rather than focusing on perfecting the forms we use the forms to open through into inspiration. Music and dance may thus serve as a vehicle or doorway to our true selves.

My approach to dance is simple and yet profound. I join with and facilitate the dancer that you are, (whether you know it yet or not), rather than engage the mind that thinks it needs to be in control, (and which then generally gets in the way of joy). I share dances in a musical relationship that is easy to pick up and does not require more than some willingness to join with the group and move with the music.

I share dancing as a practice to invite and participate in a present state of Be-ing.

We live in a world that is increasingly time driven - and fear dominated. Be-ing is the dimension of Sanity. We don’t make it - it encompasses and infuses us. To come back into this simplicity is freedom.

A shared experience of music, dance and stillness help to calm us and bring us to the present - especially when we are feeling disconnected from our joy or peace.
Experiencing of a sense of self that is ‘part of’ rather ‘than apart from’, simply by moving with music that moves us.

In this respect, our dance is a meditation, bringing attention present through simple means, yet dynamic in its range of qualities and relational in that our sense of each other and the atmosphere we share is transformed as we relax into the dance. But it is also wholesome creative fun, and often deeply moving and yet held without sentimentality.

The times we live in are such that music is now considered to be a canned commodity, dance is either a competitive sport or something done privately in the dark while drugged. The mindset of the individual ‘getter’ is largely promoted as a norm. This is a poor shadow of a life. I offer Living Dance as a way of reconnecting with a present and energetic sense of being alive - and sharing it by receiving it.


Brian Steere
Friday, August 4, 2006

Live in South London - July 2006

One of the hottest days this year. Driving down the M11 and M25 round to Collier's Wood - near Wimbledon. The roads were almost empty as England were in the process of being knocked out of the World cup. We were booked to hold a dance in a little community hall that we have visited a few months previously. The bookings were low - to be honest we were not even sure that there were any bookings but Kate thought there were a few people who had said they were coming. But the nature of what I seem to be doing is a lot about trust and a willingness to give where there is an invitation and willingness to share. We left a bit late and didnt have much time to spare - but I felt well aligned for it - whether in fact people turned up or not. But they did. I think we were about a dozen all told though i didnt count. Barry and Andy joined on guitar and Steve joined on percussion on some songs.
Initially there was a reserve and perhaps a reluctance on some level - it was so hot that to touch was to sweat - let alone to move.
I started with a circle just to be connected, to arrive and set an intention.
Then began with Shalom Aleichem. I had only recently found the vocal recording of this and learned the song, so although it is a classic circle dance it was its live debut for me. A lovely cool peaceful melody and a gentle and easy start. Its wonderful for me how such 'old' and much danced dances are brought freshly alive with singing live. Its like a new relationship from being set free of a recorded fixity. We danced this again later in the evening.

We had some that had never or hardly danced this way before and I saw that the level of danceability in the group as a whole was at a fairly beginner level.
We went on to dance:
Thalassa - such a delight to sing. A greek love song full of longing and loss. Choregraphed by a late German teacher ‘Dimo’, this has a very simple part that I always love to dance where the dancers come into the center (we usually hug) and side close around, come out again and side close to the starting place. The other part has a grapevine, then turning into chekassias where the nature of the longing invites a unique movement - even though the ‘step’ is ‘a grapevine followed by a turn’.

Dro Retourne - this is fun and an icebreaker and a mindstopper too with arms and feet at once and a lighthearted nonsensical rendition. We danced this again later in the evening.

One Love (Lets get together) is a Bob Marley song with a simple dance from June Watts. This was requested in error (it was actually Faith that the dancer wanted). But it is bright, positive and is one of the few with English lyrics and some lovely lines. I invited free dance as a paralell option but this doesnt often happen yet (though I forsee that it will).

Faith is a Toots song calling for peace and love in our community. I always acknowledge that this came - like Bob Marley’s music - out of a context of music as a message of peace in a divided and strife torn Jamaica. Also in English and a sort of raggaefied gospel song. Very inspiring. Always too short no matter how long.

Lioube : It is still an amazement that such a lovely song and dance could not only come to me but come through me. The dancers werent quite sure of the sequence but we repeated this later in the evening and it really came through. Sometimes I feel we could dance this all night.

Hora Medura. Well before our break I suggested that we go into the heat and be free of having anything left to try to keep cool. The bonfire or campfore dance is a rowsing uplifting Israeli dance with a lovely moment of stillness amidst the otherwise fast movement.

Karev Yom is one of the simplest dances and I felt it would be good to come out of the break with as well as being a vehicle of coming present without moving a lot and getting hot straight away. Many dancers didnt just join but sat and watched. I know if I had called the circle first and then shared it they would have all danced but I like to try and invite some freedom and spontanaity too.

Erev Shel Shoshanim (‘Evening of roses’ from Israel) is a summery evening dance. I wish I could sing it like Nana Maskouri!

Daronee holds a deeply heartfelt call. I wont bring more words into trying to describe this song but there is both a brokenness and a rapture. A simple ritual dance with a strong presence.

Ivoushki is one of the most recent new songs in my repertoire and this was its live debut. Gypsy passion in a slow earthy plaintif cry of love. Andy Bettis choregraphed a simple but lovely pattern of sways and side together sides that fit this perfectly. The dancers were not needing to learn anything demanding at this stage and Ivoushki was a perfect finale.

To list the songs and dances and try to say anything in words is makes for poor reading I would think. There is nothing that can begin to speak in words what the experience is of sharing these dances in a growing mutual delight. For indeed the dancers were uninhibitedly glowing and in my remarking on this part way through thye evening it was apparent that I was no less bright with joy.

Three and a half hours on motorways disappeared from my mind and body - as did the mind that measures in terms of profit and loss. I will need to attract more dancers to pay the costs involved if this is to be an ongoing event, but there is a desire in me to keep this alive and sharing itself and not let a lack of affordability stifle its coming into being as a vehicle for such a presence of felt and living participation.

There is a lovely blessing in discovering that our dance has been an initiatory awakening for new dancers.
I am as keen to say 'thank you' as they are. For only that which you have given and has been received do you get to keep. And such is the fruit of our lives. Heaven is not somewhere else. Sometimes vision breaks through and perception aligns with essence rather than the distortions of egocenrtic thinking. When we let it.
Brian