One of my beliefs has long been that sadhana, or spiritual practice, can infuse and enliven every aspect of one’s life. God can be worshipped daily and everywhere, not only on Sundays at church. It is possible for meditation to include more than a 20-30 minute daily practice. Our entire lives can be infused with mindfulness, presence, and the sacred.

A little over a month ago I came to the realization that I tend to be very unconscious while I’m at the gym and it need not be that way. I’m usually somewhat preoccupied by what’s on the TV, regardless of my actual interest in the program. There’s also some people watching involved, maybe some self-imposed intimidation and envy with each very attractive and in shape gym bunny who passes by. My mind is busy striving to get to the end of my cardio, “Just 30 minutes, 20 more, 10, 5, then cooldown” it tells me. Then it’s time for some weight lifting, one set after another, each as a means to an end — to get home and start my day. Finally, I made it, but I was never actually there to begin with.

I decided that I didn’t like that kind of workout. I didn’t want to be so enraptured in the ego, I didn’t want exercise to be just a means to an end, nor did I want to feel intimidated by people who were in better shape than me (and who were more than likely not even noticing me). I decided that I could be present and simultaneously, have a profound meditation and some great physical activity. Endorphins coupled with the mental clarity provided by meditation — awesome!

Instead of a scattered mind, fear, and unconsciousness, I bring consciousness with me to the gym. I close my eyes, focus on my body, being in it, the movements, and my breathing (which is usually the yogic ujjayi breath. But that’s not nearly as important as simply watching the breath). I’m there, moving and feeling my body and breath, present to each breath and movement. Dynamic and yet very still within. I have found this to be extremely beneficial, energizing, and clarifying. And, as with every aspect of life, bringing in mindfulness, consciousness, and presence to our actions will make the gym a much more enjoyable and fulfilling experience.

The peculiarities of the American public education system imprinted on me (and many of you, I suspect) the contradictory and frustrating notion that the teacher is the repository of information, and the student the empty vessel, waiting to be filled at the teacher’s discretion. The problem with this notion is that it discounts the faculties of enthusiasm and inquisitiveness that the student must bring in order for the educational process to be meaningful. It also implicitly communicates that the teacher is somehow “done” with the learning process, because he or she is in the position of the Authority. The entire philosophical approach leads to a breakdown of the process it is meant to be facilitating.

Learning is complex. Until very recently, it was believed that the brain didn’t change at all once we were past about 21 years old, and that learning after that somehow imparted new ideas into an unchanging landscape of brainstuff. Now we have come to understand that the brain itself is plastic; it constantly changes its physical structure to handle new information coming in.

Recall the old adage that “to teach is to learn.” This axiom is, to my way of thinking, even better expressed implicitly in some of the Celtic languages, which use the very same verb for both “to learn” and “to teach.” Incidentally, it was through immigrants and English-learners translating phrases from these Celtic languages that vernacular English ended up with expressions like “well, that’ll learn ya!”

Real teaching is not the installation of collections of facts, but is the facilitated development of the faculties of reasoning, understanding, and synthesizing facts into new ideas. Ideas are nebulous things. They can’t really be expressed in words, because words encode not just the idea, but the speaker’s entire belief system that surrounds the idea. Teaching is the generation of multiple expressions of the same idea, multiple ways of saying the same thing, until the student has that “a-ha!” moment. The lightbulb goes on, and the idea has been transferred.

The reason teaching and learning are equivalent, then, is that the teacher invariably learns more about the subject by explaining it in a new way to a new mind, of course. Further, if the teacher is attempting to teach the student how to learn (the only lesson of real significance, for me), then the teacher is in the fortunate situation of learning more about how the mind works, how the mind learns, and how, therefore, learning happens, every time he or she meets with a student.

The learning arises from the lesson, the student, and the teacher.

The subject of religion utterly fascinates me. Religion is a perhaps the most powerful and influential force throughout history that has taken us to the heights of our sublime and beautiful feats and to the depths of our most despicable and gruesome acts.

In the past three weeks several friends have asked me about my thoughts on various branches of Christianity as well as other world religions. My thoughts on any religion are basically the same: they are all good at their core, but are often filled with corruption and a lust for power which shrouds the truth of the original teachings in fear, greed, and hatred. I have been reading The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and he really helped me solidify my thoughts on religions when he said “All religions are equally good and equally bad. It just depends on how we use them.”

All prophets from Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and Krishna teach the same basic message and have all realized and tried to point to the same ultimate truth. Consequently, all religions seek the same thing, the Absolute, our truest nature, the Ultimate, or God. The nouns differ, as do the methods of attaining what is sought, but in essence, it is always the same end — getting away from our pain inducing, false, ego-derived sense of self, and realizing our true nature, that is pure being. In Christianity this is the attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven or knowing God through Jesus the Christ, which is becoming free of pain and illusion of the ego self through God. In Buddhism it is the realization of Sunyata and Nirvana, which are complete dissolutions of the ego-self through the realization of emptiness and nothingness where nothing else but pure, unadulterated consciousness and bliss exist. Schools of Hinduism, such as Advaita Vedanta, speak of attaining the Absolute from the opposite end of the spectrum, that is fullness, rather than emptiness. All is full of God, all is God. The totality of reality is nothing more than the divinity. Here, the ego self is dissolved in the realization that there is no “me” or “I” but only the fullness of God.

Nowhere is the commonality between all religions so obvious as it is when reading mysticism. There are branches of mysticism in every major world religion: Dzogchen in Buddhism, Gnosticism of Christianity, Sufism of Islam, Kabbalism in Judaism, Kashmir Saivism and Advaita Vedanta of Hinduism. It is often difficult to tell just by reading passages from the world’s mystics which religion they adhere to because their words are so similar.

Why then, if the ultimate aim is the same, are there such disputes between religions of the world? When the founders of these religions were still alive, the message was still true to the founder’s experience. However, over time, religions begin to be controlled by people who have not experienced their true self. These people start to take the words of the prophets, beliefs, and dogma as absolute truth rather than signpost pointing to the Absolute. The Absolute cannot be truly grasped with language or thought. Politics and fear come into play, and religion is used as a means of inducing fear and oppression, by frightened people who are, themselves oppressed. Religion becomes a divisive tool to say that “We have the truth and no one else does”. It becomes a game of “us” versus “them”. This othering and separation then allows for violence and murder. This is evidenced most strongly in every form of religious fundamentalism today. This is clear with the inquisition, the crusades, and with Fred Phelps. The basic messages of love, acceptance, knowing God and the true self are lost to fear, hatred, and greed.

So, what are my thoughts on religion? That, intrinsically, they are all good, but most of the time they are so covered in ego that they only serve to entrench the followers further into the world of form and illusion rather than taking them to their goal of finding the true self. Branches of mysticism, which are often lacking in this thirst for power and politics, and are often marginalized as a result, are the closest and truest aspects of the incarnations of the prophet’s original message.

Recommended Reading:

The Power of Now and A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

We’ve all noticed someone who’s got that certain magnetic something that everyone seems to respond to. I’ve always wanted to have the kind of presence that inspires a feeling of safety, calm, and wonderment, but have historically fallen pretty short of my goal. Recently, something’s changed, though. Instead of focusing on the kind of presence I project, I’ve been focusing on being extraordinarily present to what’s happening around me.

I’ve heard people in the self-help and new-age communities talking about being present to themselves and their environments before and even felt like I understood what they were talking about, but at the same time was constantly distracted by patterns of thinking and behaving that left me anything but present. Think about it this way: when you’re listening to someone talk and they make an interesting point, do you ever find yourself missing a few minutes of what they said after the interesting point because you’re off and running through your mind with this new and exciting notion? I know that this has been one of my patterns for as long as I can remember, and I also know that it no longer helps me get what I want.

Breaking old habits is a part of becoming more present to the world as it is. I’m talking about habits of getting lost in thought, of getting mired in details, of doing anything but simply paying absolute and unwavering attention to whoever you’re talking to or whatever you’re doing.

The solution? Practice being present. Instead of letting my mind wander, I focus on my breathing and noticing everything I can about what I’m doing or who I’m talking to. If I’m in a conversation, when I’m not talking, I’m listening with rapt attention, not just to what my conversational partner is saying, but to how they are saying it. I’m still working on this!

The major power of NLP for me has been precisely this: I am able to be more present by simply allowing myself to notice whatever patterns I notice about whoever I’m speaking with. I’m more present because I’m paying attention not to my thoughts about what they’re saying, but to what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. This increased presence has had huge payoffs for me. Firstly, I’ve noticed that people enjoy talking to me more, because I’m really listening to them instead of jumping ahead to what my response is. Second, I’ve found that the more I practice being present with people, the more present I’m able to be with myself, meaning I’m less judgmental, happier, and find myself often filled with a child-like wonder at the whole world.

And if child-like wonder isn’t a selling point, I don’t know what is!

In Indian cosmology the Sanskrit language has immense power. It is a magic and divine force of creation, preservation, and destruction. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a divinity. In Vedic times, the ritual, performed in Sanskrit, was believed to uphold the entire cosmos. There was even a class of priests who oversaw the ritual to make sure that each and every syllable was pronounced correctly and to remedy a mistake should one occur. It was believed that a misspoken ritual could lead to the unraveling of reality.

In some Hindu cosmologies everything was brought into existence when Lord Brahman spoke the everything into being. He did this through the power of Vac, the goddess of speech, who lent Lord Brahman her supreme creative force — the word.  The power of word is by no means exclusive to India and is evidenced in every spiritual tradition with which I am familiar. For example, in Judeo/Christian cosmology the Lord God speaks the world and man into existence in the book of Genesis chapter 1.

Everyone is acquainted with the sacred Sanskrit word, Om, which is comprised of a nasalized “m” known as visarga or bindhu. “Bindhu” means “drop” and it is believed that this drop is the primordial and eternal sound from which all creation sprang. Even to say the Sanskrit word for “I”, aham, is a sacred act. Aham begins with the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, the vowel “A”. The second letter of aham is “Ha” which is the last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet. Finally we end with the nasalized “M”, the visarga or bindhu. Thus, to say aham we go through the beginning and end of reality and culminate with visarga, the primordial sound of being.

Today we tend to forget that language has any power and are often unconscious of the words we use. In reality, language has a strong influence on our world view, attitude, and our actions. Positive thinking and speaking produces positive actions as negative words and thoughts will engender negativity. In order for us to evolve and connect with the ground of being, it is incumbent that we bring more consciousness to our language. We must be mindful and speak in a way that is congruent to the positive, powerful world and lives which we aspire to have.

I just completed a week-long intensive training in Coaching, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnotherapy, and Timeline Therapy® in Monterey with Success Allies, a coaching and training company that Scott also has trained with. It was a very intense week (hence no post from me last week! Sorry!) and I learned a huge number of new skills and tools that I can use with my clients as well as in my personal communication with other people.

The most fundamental of the skills that I have begun mastering as a result of this training is one referred to in the NLP community as “establishing rapport.” Rapport is a state of openness and connection that arises from feelings of safety and clarity in communication. When you feel like someone really gets what you’re saying, even really gets you, you’re in rapport with that person. I think we’ve all had the remarkable experience of meeting someone for the first time and just “clicking” with that person; knowing that you can build a great friendship easily because you’re on the same wavelength, in some way: you’re in rapport.

Establishing and building rapport is skill that can be learned, developed, and mastered. When you’re able to connect with people in a systematic way, you can talk more directly to their experience of the world, because you’re paying attention to how they’re expressing what their experience of the world is!

The Basics

I in no sense wish to build a comprehensive article on the details of building rapport here - there are nearly infinite details that one could observe and interact with in another person to build good rapport. Instead, I just want to give you a couple of thoughts to chew on and some things to notice next time you’re having a conversation with someone.

Mirroring and matching

Mirroring is the act of consciously adopting another’s behaviors, postural and verbal, when speaking with them. If I’m standing, talking to Sally and facing her, and Sally is resting most of her weight on her left foot, and has her arms crossed over her chest, when I talk to her, if I rest most of my weight on my right foot (as a mirror image) and cross my arms over my chest, providing Sally doesn’t consciously wonder why I’m standing in precisely the same position that she’s standing in, she’ll feel more relaxed and comfortable talking with me, because my body language is showing her that I know where she’s at, how she’s feeling, and what’s going on with her. She feels safer talking to me because I get where she’s coming from. Matching is slightly less powerful for building rapport than mirroring - it’s basically the same concept, but instead of standing on my right foot, I stand with most of my weight on my left foot, just like Sally is.

Mirroring (and matching) are really the key component to all rapport-building, because more than just posture can be mirrored. It’s possible to mirror someone’s word choice, vocal tone, speed of speaking, breath-rate… you name it! If you can identify a pattern in the way someone is doing anything, you can mirror it and make them feel safer, more listened to, more seen, and more deeply understood.

Pacing and leading

The second basic concept in building rapport is pacing and leading. When you consciously mirror someone’s behavior, you build rapport. This is called pacing; you’re putting yourself in sync with their rhythms, their patterns, and their way of interacting with the world. Once you’re pacing them well and trust and rapport are established, you can begin leading them: when you move your arms from across your chest to on your hips, they’ll want to copy you without even noticing that they’re doing it. When you step a little away from them, they’ll follow you without really noticing that they’re doing it. This is due to the fact that our conscious mind occupies so little of our cognitive faculties, and when you’re doing a good job of matching and mirroring, you’re speaking directly to the unconscious mind.

Try it at home! Impress your friends!

The wonderful thing about mirroring is that it’s a very natural thing to do. Try just emulating the body language of the next person you talk to (subtlely! wait 5-10 seconds before copying any major movements), and aim to keep your head angle and vocal tone matching theirs as much as you can. Don’t be surprised to notice that the conversation somehow feels more alive, more connected. The communication may feel clearer. If you can keep your attention really focused on both what they’re doing, and what you’re doing to match and mirror them (and this takes a good deal of practice and presence!), see if when you start to move a bit, they don’t automatically want to follow you.

Recommended Reading:

Unlimited Power, by Anthony Robbins

Mirroring People, by Marco Iacoboni

Last week I talked about The Artist’s Way, morning pages, and how regular journaling can be very beneficial for personal and spiritual development. I must be in some kind of Artist’s Way kick because I am going to talk about another idea I got from Julia Cameron — the Artist Date.

What the heck is an Artist Date? Basically, it’s taking time to do something fun for or with yourself — alone. They are meant to help inspire your creative juices, remove energetic blocks, and increase overall happiness. Take yourself somewhere you enjoy, such as the beach, the spa, the bookstore, or out to the park for a nice walk. Cameron encourages people involved in the Artist’s Way to step outside of their usual paradigm and do things that they’ve always wanted to do but have never gotten around to it — skydiving, learning to surf, or taking up crochet. Enjoy yourself.

The importance of taking yourself on a date is this: Too often we ignore our selves and sacrifice our happiness and needs for the sake of all those around us: our bosses, our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends, etc. I will agree that these things are important and I do not wish to attach any negativity to having friends, jobs, or a social life. However, the cultural trend is to have only these and nothing for ourselves. We have distraction after distraction from ourselves and being alone becomes a great fear for many of us. We are not in human form so that we can be slaves to what we perceive to be our familial, social, and career obligations. We must have balance. Living our lives for ourselves is equally as important as being and living with others. We are here to experience and partake of our experiences and our enjoyments, and these do not need to be sacrificed for the sake of another person or entity.

The simple act of taking regular time out for ourselves by going on little adventures enlivens us. It brings passion and lightness back to our daily lives and connects us to our spirit. Sacrificing all of our time for everyone else deadens us to our purpose, passions, and being. Life is a journey and an experience for us to have in its many facets– from interactions with others to experience of our self. Unfortunately, many of us forget that we even have a self.

Take some time out each week to practice some altruistic selfishness. Give to yourself and to the world by getting to know you.  It doesn’t have to be anything too big if you don’t want it to be, but stretch yourself, and most importantly, give to yourself, love yourself, and grow your happiness!

Two and a half years ago I read the book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. This is a wonderful self course in getting in touch with your creative self. I never really considered myself an artist in the conventional sense. I mean, I couldn’t even draw a stick figure. However, I’d always been musically inclined and had always enjoyed literature and writing. As I had never though of myself as remotely creative, I probably never would have considered The Artist’s Way. That is, until Sam started raving about it. He had been taking the course for several weeks and was quite excited by all the growth emerging in so many areas of his life. I thought that I would give it a try. I considered it may even help me with my PhD program. It certainly did. To be honest, I truly believe The Artist’s Way is probably one of the best things I have ever done. Even after several years I regularly practice one of the foundational tools of the course — Morning Pages.

Morning pages are basically journaling, except Cameron insists that while in her course, you write them first thing in the morning. At this point, I don’t usually do them first thing in the morning, or in the morning at all. Consequently, I’ve stopped referring to them as morning pages and started calling it what it is — journaling. I don’t feel as though anything has been compromised by changing the time of day I do them, as long as I do them.

What did I find so powerful in journaling that made me stick with regularly for two and a half years? In many ways, journaling has become my compass. It’s an active meditation that keeps me focused. My journal is also my confidant with whom I can discuss anything and everything. Journaling boosts my creativity. It allows me to unblock whatever it is or was holding me back from creating. It does this my just getting things out, moving them out of our way and into out conscious,  whether it is a bunch of rambling, beautiful prose, poetry, or angry, petty tirades. It’s a way to release the tensions and stresses of life while making room for creation, art, growth, and fun. I feel more balanced when I journal than when I don’t. It’s a great way for me to get unstuck out of situations I find myself in and work out ideas and solutions to multitudes of problems. It’s a refuge for guidance, direction, and balance.

I highly recommend that everyone try it at least for a couple weeks.  See how it works for you. Make a routine for yourself and stick to it religiously. Write for 35-45 minutes everyday, no matter what. If you’re feeling grumpy, write. If you’re sick, write. If you’re elated, write. Chances are that that grumpiness, illness, and happiness want to come out on paper. Don’t fret and stress about having perfect or brilliant writing. Perfection is the death to all creativity. Let your journal be the refuge that sees your sloppiest moments. Don’t be afraid of judgment, just get it out. No one but you is ever going to read it, and even you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Make it something you look forward to and enjoy. Write with things that inspire you. Personally, I use a moleskine, a fountain pen, and write in parks or in cafes after I get home from the gym. I find that journaling after yoga or the gym is a great mental clean out that compliments the physical gym-induced euphoria. Find some medium for writing that works for you — notebook, computer, whatever — and do it. Do it regularly. You might just find that you’ve found a tool that imbues your life with greatness and joy.

“Loyalty demands that you should always, in life or in death, be devoted to the person whether your heart is willing for it or not. It is a psychological way of enslavement.”
-Osho, from Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and Other People

I have been doing a lot of thinking about loyalty and love recently, and this quote from Osho has been galvanizing a lot of my thoughts. On the one hand, I consider myself a very loyal person; committed to my friends, my family, my partner through thick and thin, no matter what. On the other hand, I prize the freedom to live precisely what’s in my heart at any moment, to act on unencumbered desire, and to live my life on the hairy boundaries of fear, because the liberation of my spirit (call it attaining enlightenment, Nirvikalpa Samadhi, atonement, bliss, whatever) from the conditioning of my mind and body so that I can help others achieve the same is precisely why I understand myself to be here.

What strikes me as most disturbing about this quote is how directly it flies in the face of a lifetime of training in the virtues of loyalty. Suddenly I’m questioning some of my most deeply-held beliefs: that if I’m not loyal to the people with whom I’m in relationship, I’m a bad friend, lover, son, sibling, and that I’ve failed in my civic duties to help to maintain the cohesive structure of the society I participate in. I feel like this is a fairly common and pervasive social belief that most of us are trained in in some way or another. I also recognize within myself that this belief is at odds with another of my beliefs: that if I express anything other than what I most desire and wish to express, I am undermining the fabric of the society I’m trying to help to create. Namely, one of greater personal freedom, love, and kindness than the one that I grew up in.

“Love is a dangerous experience because you are possessed by something bigger than you. And it is not controllable; you cannot produce it on order. Once it is gone, there is no way to bring it back. All that you can do is to pretend, be a hypocrite.”

I’m disquieted by the answers I come up with when I think about the implications of these ideas as they apply to my life, right here, right now. Am I undermining my own search for freedom and the transformative power of love by trying to deconstruct and define the love in my life, and keep it familiar and safe? When I listen quietly to the sounds my heart makes, I have to confess that I am.

Oddly, this answer brings with it a kind of joy. It tells me that more freedom is on its way, more wild love, a greater expression of bliss and tranquility and illumination. It also brings with it enormous fear. What do I have to give up that I don’t want to let go of in order to feel this freedom? My friendships? Closeness with my family? My relationship with my romantic partner? The joy in me whispers that perhaps there’s a way to surrender utterly what those things are now, and not have it be a loss, but a win. How that unfolds is ultimately out of my hands. All I can do is let go and watch.

Living on those hairy boundaries is hard, but worthwhile. With each victory over fear, another opportunity to resist fear instead of embrace it will present itself as a challenge. Remembering to rise to my highest sense of honor, and acting from what I know to be right fills me with a sense of accomplishment that the feeling of achieving a material goal can ever touch. That doesn’t make it especially easier to do, however!

I live in California, home of sun-bronzed Gods and Goddesses of Hollywood, Gym Culture, and the Surf, Epicenter of the Cult of Thin. In California (and, I’ll wager, in all of the USA), we are trained to hate our imperfect bodies. I could make an argument that this is all the result of the Puritans abnegation of the flesh, blah blah blah, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s telling for me is the degree to which people hurt themselves, doing lasting harm to their bodies, in order to change them from what they are into something else. This isn’t just the diet industry that I’m talking about. Whether you’re overweight or fit, active or a couch-surfer, we are living in an environment that trains us to want our bodies to be other than what they are.

So enough with the negativity and cultural condemnation. What can each of us do about it? If what I’ve said thus far resonates with you personally, try this meditation on body forgiveness. It may sound a little corny, but it helps and works to release internalized Somaphobia (body hatred and fear):

Get naked and sit comfortably. Ease your breathing, and notice how deeply you’re breathing. Notice how slowly and easily you’re breathing. Place both hands on one of your feet. Don’t try to do anything to it just yet (ie, don’t massage or squeeze or stretch it), just feel how it feels between your hands, and feel how your foot feels when it’s being held. Say “I forgive you, foot, for ever not meeting my expectations. I accept and love you just as you are”. If it feels like it wants to be squeezed, give your foot a couple of gentle squeezes, almost like you would reassure a child or small animal, and release it. Repeat this on the other foot. Be loving! Be kind! Be silly! You’re talking to your foot like it’s a person; if that doesn’t make you feel a little silly, I’m not sure what will. Do it anyway. Name your body parts as you go, if it helps!

Place your hands on your ankle. Tell your ankle that you forgive it for not meeting your expectations, and that you love it and accept it just as it is. Take your time. You’re not doing yourself any favors by rushing through showing yourself how much you love and care for yourself. Repeat on the other side.

Now the calves, the knees, the thighs, the hips. Place your hands on your genitals. Forgive them. Tell them you love them. No, seriously. If you feel ridiculous, you’re probably on to something really worthwhile. Touch your bottom. Touch your anus. Forgive them for disappointing you, for not being what you wanted.

Forgive your belly, your love-handles, your low-back. Forgive and love your breasts, your ribcage, your sternum. Accept and be grateful and loving toward your shoulders, arms, armpits, forearms, hands, fingers. Accept and forgive and love your throat, neck, chin, jaw, skull (spend a little extra time on that place where your skull joins your neck - as a predominantly seated culture, we tend to carry more tension and see more problems here than other people).

Touch your face, bit by bit: lips, teeth, eyes, cheeks, nose, forehead, eyebrows, ears. Don’t leave anything or anyplace out. Forgive all the pieces of you that have disappointed and let you down. Accept them and love them as they are.

Now go look at yourself in the mirror (ideally, full-length). Tell your naked body that you forgive it for ever failing to meet your expectations of it. Finally, look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and forgive yourself for having expectations that your body be other than what it is, was, has been. Say “I love you, ______” [your name here]. “I forgive you and I love you.”

If you get stuck anywhere in this process, derailed or unable to continue, stop and reflect on where you got stuck and why. If you just can’t look yourself in the eyes and tell yourself that you love yourself, strive toward being able to - you deserve your own love first and foremost.