Surrender

Occasionally I think about the arc of my life as a rainbow of possibilities replete with connections, connections of the heart to friends, relatives and lovers… Tonight I feel filled with love, blessed to live in community. I feel incredibly wealthy and blessed. Thank-you.

The community in Sonoma and in the world for all that I have touched and whose hearts have touched mine. The connections through the WordPress blogs, Facebook and Medium to name a few are also heartfelt. I am deeply grateful and honored.When I dip into the breath and down into meditation the web and weave of a greater consciousness seems to open. In that opening I have glimpsed destiny based on synchronicities, karma, perception and the oneness of the heart. It is as if my life has been written as I surrender into a higher consciousness letting go of ego for those briefest of moments.
In 1990 when I asked the question – “God what should I do with my life?” and the subsequent “answer” that led to a place of choice. I could have continued to pursue what “I” (ego) wanted to do – make video, write unsuccessful screenplays and continue to work as a Crisis Counselor or…

I could surrender to a life as a “seer” and healer. So I surrendered. However that initial act of surrender wasn’t the only one. My rebellious and bratty ego keeps making himself known and this requires continual acts of surrender to the path.

I wish I could adequately describe the feelings of sweetness connected to the act of surrender. However the 1990 act of surrender wasn’t my first. My ego remembers all the seemingly magical acts of surrender, and there were many that were failed or seemed not to produce any obvious results.
To arrive at a place in ourselves where surrender is possible other avenues of work are required to generate the energy of beingness necessary for the sacrifice in the surrender process.
Avenues of work on oneself:
Struggle: Most people have an onerous association to struggle and avoid it. Most of our struggles are successful and easy. Getting out of bed in the morning, or driving to work etc. Paying taxes may be a task we put off – so that may be an odious struggle.

Struggle is the battle between “Yes” and “No”. The cultivation of the Witness observer self helps in two ways: it allows non-attachment to develop and the observer / witness can create energy from the friction of the struggle.
Help: Most people ask for help much as a child would ask an adult for help in the same way people ask for help from God, the Divine, the Universe etc. Many people expect help will arrive because they asked and that the help will arrive in a clearly recognizable way. Help can come when we make space for it and are attentive to the ways in which it can arrive and how we respond to it.
Learning: Learning can come from books. Deeper learning comes from direct contact with a Master and /or teacher.
Surrender or Sacrifice: This can only happen in the present moment. It involves a surrender of thought, feeling and motion (somatic knowing). It involves letting go of expectation and fears. When ego is released the Witness or Observer self may be present.
In 1982 will participating with 50 or so individuals in a practice of a Gurdjieff Sacred Dance – The Great Prayer, during the last twenty minutes I experienced a divine presence “doing” the movement while my Witness Self observed. This was an ineffable experience where to use words to describe it would denigrate it.

Health Care as a Right

Caring for health both as humans and as a planet with all the beings and all the elements of the planet does not seem to enter into our thoughts about health care. Some have thought about the health of the planet, but a healthy planet is not considered a part of health care policy. Our health and the planet’s health are divorced from one another and that seems unnatural and dangerous. Much of the literature – on-line about health care involves cost and money. This is an example of a reductionistic view of health that separates health from communities and the planet and sees health care as a business where profit is the highest value and health care is secondary to profit. Most corporations – at least the larger ones become more or as concerned with profit as with the products and/or services that they provide or sell. An environment where profit is accentuated limits the ability for higher levels of health care service to come to the fore due to a context of competition for profit.

By artificially separating Health Care for humans from a holistic view of a healthy planet we have created an isolated system where individual health is doomed for failure. Large corporations and government regulation or the lack of it to provide the best health care possible for humans excludes our environment – Earth and creates a destructive loop. As far as profit from larger corporations such as HMOs, the AMA, insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations Health Care has less to do with health and more to do with profit.

By excluding Earth from the health equation the Health-For-Profit Care Business excludes known and intuitively known toxic elements manufactured by industry that kill, maim or systematically weaken immune systems over time to name a few of the health risks from the toxic environment of planet Earth. Thus we create conditions for poor health, utilize Health Care Corporations to use expensive solutions to assist those that fall prey to toxic conditions so additional profits can be generated and maybe ill persons may survive. That is unhealthy but it creates huge profits for large corporations. The work of Patch Adams provides a ray of hope for medicine.[1]

Based on public health care the long-term effects of immediate profit create a higher expense: “In 2010, U.S. public entities spent $3,967 per person on health care. That’s far more than Germany, Canada, France, Britain, and all of the other countries we conservatives normally think of as socialist dystopias.”[2]

The myopic gestalt of profit and the greed it foments has truncated our survival as a species on planet Earth. The short-term solution is government regulation and a human right to Health Care. A longer-term solution may be to include Earth as part of capitalism.[3]

[1] http://www.patchadams.org/gesundheit/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/03/28/yes-health-care-is-a-right-an-individual-right/#227bd71a4d66

[3] http://www.natcap.org/

Life beyond Death

From all my encounters of death, stories of near-death and following others passage to death and beyond here is a composite:

When the physical body ceases the core or essence of light that passes from the crown to the root chakra is released and unites with our light body, the first frequency of energy in our Electromagnetic field and creates the tunnel of light.  When that tunnel ceases sometimes we see our previously passed relatives and friends their to greet us (this is not always the case).  We are still within the outer reaches of our auric field so we may be encountering our living memories of them recreated to help us pass. Or they may be co-created by us and them to welcome us into a new realm of consciousness.

Then we are in a line in an enormous building like a train station.  We meet a committee that asks us two basic questions:

Did you love?

Were you loved by others?

There are no wrong answers to these questions. Then you move away from the line and await you teacher.  But since there is no time or space what may often occur is a period where the person relives a favorite part of their lives or a fantasy of what they may have wanted but didn’t get and they do so in a their favorite time with a healthy body. This is also a time where they “visit” loved ones on the earth plain in the form of dreams and visions or a feeling of that person.

After that they meet with their teacher and review their lives from the library known as the Akashic Records – a holographic interactive record of what you have done and what would have happened if you had made a different choice.

The soul’s body is not complete. When our physical bodies die light from our light bodies is deposited into the soul’s body. When the soul’s body is completely coated with light it is no longer necessary to return to the earth plain. The individual may return as a Bodhisattva -great old soul of transcendental enlightenment love and compassion, or become a teacher for others.  Those that choose to return do so out of love and may be the only ones that choose their parents.

When all the work is done the hunger to make more light (love) is paramount.  The individual is pulled into conception at a certain time and anchored to a cell at the point of conception.

This is conception trauma worse than birth trauma because consciousness was free to be everywhere without attachment and at conception attachment begins.  From Freedom to attachment…

 

[NOTE – since there is no time the order of most what happens may not be necessarily accurate.]

Remembering Bhante

 

Photo taken outside his rented house in Lathrop, CA in June of 1982

I came to California – arriving on Memorial Day Weekend 1982 – to study with Bhante or the Dharmawara Mathahera. In some ways I was ready to work with him – but in most ways I rebelled. A year later I moved out. Bhante gave me his shakti (spiritual energy from the guru) upon leaving and I used this to develop myself on my own spiritual path. Bhante and I remained friends. The photograph you see here was take when he was 93.  I saw him shortly after his 100th birthday (a second photo not shown here) and then again at 101 when he was living in Merced by the Merced River. I last saw Bhante when he turned 109 about a year before his death when he spoke in both English and lapsing into Cambodian in mid-sentence with a Monk to interpret.

About six months after his death I had this dream – one of those very real dream-time dreams –

I was at a small hut / temple in monsoon season in the midst of a rice paddy. It was night. The temple was on stilts to avoid being flooded. The Dali Lama was there.  I was bowing – and then on my knees kissing the hem of his garment.

“Get up, Frank,” The Dali Lama said laughing. “You’re one of us.”

I stood dazed and slightly disoriented:

“I am?”

“Oh yes.  Besides I am here as a bridge to open a way for this man…”

The Dali Lama pulled back a heavy drape.  There was smiling face with bright orange light all around. It was Bhante.

“How come you haven’t come to visit me before now?”

“Well, Bhante, I hate to tell you this, but you’re dead.”

“Do I look dead to you?”

“Oops…”

The dead are the death of bodies. Spirit lives on.

Bhante is with me and helps me in my work on an on-going basis.

A Radical Theory of Consciousness

Consciousness from a Scientific Perspective

What is consciousness and from whence does it arise and can we as human even write about this without becoming befuddled? We, as humans, have a modicum of consciousness, so to write about consciousness is problematic much the same as defining a word using the word we are defining in its definition.

Most neuroscientists seek to find the arising of consciousness in a brain, mainly the human brain, although others admit consciousness could arise from a bee’s brain amongst many others, for example.

Wikipedia defines consciousness:

Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.[1][2] It has been defined variously in terms of sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood or soul, the fact that there is something “that it is like” to “have” or “be” it, and the executive control system of the mind,[3] or the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.[1][2] In contemporary philosophy its definition is often hinted at via the logical possibility of its absence, the philosophical zombie, which is defined as a being whose behavior and function are identical to one’s own yet there is “no-one in there” experiencing it.

Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.[4] As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: “Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives.”[5]

Neuroscience is reductionistic in the sense of “looking for” a seat of consciousness. Problems continue to arise with the neuroscientist as observer of consciousness. Or what is outside of consciousness? This subject object relationship becomes increasing difficult and problematic in the reductionistic nature of science.

Most theories of consciousness divide it into levels while neuroscience looks to the “seat” of consciousness. All the theories are generated from reductionistic principles.

Cosmic or transcendental consciousness as in enlightenment is consciousness and may be the least reductionistic. Though explaining Comic Consciousness and the functions of its expression requires some reductionistic thinking / writing.

 

Thoughts about Consciousness as Cosmic and its Meaning

Even to write that consciousness is Cosmic is to reduce the experience of said consciousness into a reductionistic concept based on the technology of written language and that is a problem. And even though the problem can be overcome it cannot be done within this context.

Cosmic Consciousness fits nicely with Buddhist philosophy especially when one considers that human beings or any being with a brain or neurons or complex life is a receptor or expression of consciousness.

Let’s assume:

• All consciousness is Cosmic and pervades all.
• Consciousness is. Consciousness is everywhere and permeates every being (elements such as rock, Earth, air and water are beings as well as all animal and plant life are beings and are receptors of Cosmic Consciousness.
• Consciousness expresses it self through a variety of beings – human beings have a technology to assist in expressing how Cosmic Consciousness manifests in humans.
• Enlightenment is the actionable part of Consciousness. Buddhist philosophy states that human beings are enlightened and that only illusion stands in our way of this experience.
• Death is death of the body not the death of consciousness. Consciousness never dies.
• Reincarnation is the journey / expression of consciousness through a variety of expressions or points of view
• Cognitive recognition of the view of the Is-ness of consciousness expressed through a series of individuals to a state of transcendental enlightenment represents the expression of one consciousness across many lives.
• The expression of Cosmic Consciousness in an individual human is limited by the perceptual faculties of said human
• Illusion is created at conception when consciousness is conscripted into a set of cells and when the child learns language and delineates oneself from the unity of Cosmic Consciousness through the expression of self and the other.
• Illusion and the creation of identity are necessary in the play of consciousness.
• Identity allows for an illusion of separateness to exist. This is necessary to allow a human identity to create energy (light) in its journey into Oneness, the Oneness of Consciousness. The journey itself is also an illusion.
• A human’s urge is a play between separation from Oneness to create identity and definitions of the self and the urge to be One with All That Is. This can be characterized as a struggle.
• Struggle is the battle between “Yes” and “No”. Struggle can only be effective when a compassionate neutral witness sees the struggle. The neutral part acts as a valve to store the energy created in the struggle. Struggle without the neutral witness stays in the worlds of illusion.
• The struggle when recognized as raising one’s consciousness can generate much energy in the form of light. This struggle is capable of overcoming illusion while acknowledging illusion as a motivator of spirit’s contact with matter to create energy to constantly surmount the small self or ego by way of the divinity within.
• Death may be analogous to sleep, a forgetting…
• When a singular consciousness has journeyed through many lives they are called old souls. These old souls begin to remember former lives in increasing detail.
• The oldest of souls remember the life (or lives) after the death of the body.

 

Take a rest and come back to the material later.

 

Buddhist, Mayan and Gurdjieffian philosophies are reflected in this piece

Unconditional Love is Everywhere

Light connecting heart to heart

Unconditional love is without conditions.

What if we’re surrounded and permeated with unconditional love all the time?  

We don’t know this because we have a sense of self that separates us from feeling this love.

To feel this love, surrender ego in the moment.

 

A Moon Cycle Ritual

full and new moons

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Begin at the Full Moon – New Moon Manifestation Ritual (Often a full moon appears full for 2 nights)

INTRODUCTION

If you’ve been working on a goal that doesn’t seem to be manifesting you may need this kind of help. Rituals are meant to augment what we are already doing on a practical level to fulfill our goals. This ritual by itself is not a magic bullet for success. It is here because it may help you that extra amount towards what you seek. This may especially be true if you have made space in your life for spontaneous intuitive life in us to flourish.

Emotional receptivity is a precursor to a new way to manifest what we wish to happen. In the new world that began in 1992 (paradigm shift) – a world where every being is in relationship with all others, manifestation takes on a whole new meaning. The motto of this new way is: “Energy first, Manifestation second as aligned with Higher Self and Community at large.” That being said, working with the emotional receptivity of the lunar cycle is the next step. The Full Moon is a way to charge an object with its receiving power. When the papers are charged under the light of the Full Moon a way is made to give birth in the dark of the new moon.

Full Moons are always the opposite of the Sun sign. This ritual is most powerful when your Sun or Moon is in the sign of the current Full Moon or its opposite, trine, square or inconjunct. Full Moons are doubled in power during a lunar eclipse.

However the following ritual can be beginning with any Full Moon.

THE RITUAL

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE MOON IS FULL

Place a new, blank sheet of paper under the light of the Full Moon [outside, in a window, on your dashboard] you’ll be using on the next New Moon. If a Full Moon occurs at dawn for instance you can put your papers out the night before or the night after. Don’t worry if there’s cloud cover under the Full Moon – the luminosity of the Full Moon will still reach the paper. As in all things receptive it is not an exact science, more like an art. So you’ll need to experiment to see which works best for you. IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME WITH THE RITUAL – After having left the paper out at night bring it in and dry out if need be and put it in a safe place or on your altar. You will need to take it out in approximately two weeks at the New Moon.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE MOON IS NEW:

Take the blank sheet of paper that you put under the light of the Full Moon from and write down your wishes from 1 to 13. You may only have to wait until the next Full Moon if you align yourself with your wishes. Write the wishes during the night of the new moon (or within 24 hours of the beginning of the New Moon) when birth of a new cycle is imminent.

ON GOING – At each Full Moon after you have written your wishes on the last New Moon you need to sit and see which came to pass and which did not. If a wish did not come to pass – was that wish in alignment with your Highest Good? Does it need editing – re-writing? Or does it need to be put aside or discarded?

A Quick No-Think Grounding Method

Here’s a quick way to get grounded and centered in the body quickly:

1. Go into your kitchen or a place where there is a firm counter-top.
2. Stand facing about a foot to six inches away from the counter-top.
3. Put your finger-tips underneath the lip of the counter-top (below the molding).
4. Focus your attention on your feet as you pull up with your finger-tips under the counter-top.

 

Notice the isometric tension in your body.

 

Do you feel in your body, grounded and centered?

Why NOT go to a Psychic?

Originally published on April 6, 2010 – now with updates

Context:

As technology and social change have accelerated beginning in the 1980s humans have resisted these changes and seek reassurances from psychics and other spiritual gurus that “I am going to be okay.”

In 1992 the frequency of the planet changed and the way of the patriarchy died and something new was born. No one knows exactly what the new energy is like or how it will manifest. Our proclivity as humans is to remain the same until whatever new future is deemed “safe”. The patriarchy is hanging on – one need only look at the election of Donald Trump to see a desire to return to simpler times while in denial of a complex world.

 

When one asks a psychic about one’s future there are a number of underlying assumptions we’d all like to be true:

 

1. There is a future that can be nailed where anxiety and fears are removed, then I can know I am safe and happy.                                                                                                        ~ one possible solution: breathe through anxiousness and face fears as a way towards mastery. When we put off safety and happiness in the future we are always chasing it rather than acknowledging we may already feel safe and happy because we decided.

 

2. I give up my power to the psychic (a parent-figure perhaps?) instead of co-creating my future with spirit.                                                                                                                         ~ one possible solution – breathe and be your own psychic – perhaps through meditation

 

3. I believe that some “thing” in my future will make me be okay.                                             ~ see possible solution in #1

 

4. There is something wrong (or I am bored) with me in the present – I am incomplete.      ~ one possible solution – perhaps peace is the flip side of boredom? The present is all there is. Decide you are complete, peaceful and there is nothing wrong with you.

 

5. The content of my life (what my ego identifies with) is what makes me happy. Things and having allow me to feel secure and owning happiness – “I am in-control.”                                                                                                                                                  ~ one possible solution – begin with a gratefulness practice. How are you happy right now? Make a list or just contemplate this.

 

6. I have forgotten what real happiness is (like when I was a kid) and have traded my happiness for “I’ll be happy when I have…” thus confusing content for being (an other way of stating number 4).

 

7. I believe “magic” can make things happen and I don’t have to work for it.                          ~ one possible solution — making a space for unplanned events to unfold while cultivating your intuition can open doors to “magic”. Intuition may be a “spotty” thing, but without a practice to exercise intuition the the logic of daily life fills up everything and where’s the fun in that?

 

Anyone with intuition can see your expectations and tell you the logical conclusion to them – thus posing as a psychic and maybe doing a good job of it.

Life is 99% hard work and maybe 1% miracles or good luck. There are many factors in manifesting the content or things of our lives. Remembering that we are already happy can be increasingly difficult because we have forgotten how to play like children and have heaped personal, family and society beliefs on our plate and forgotten how happy we once were.

Once I began cultivating being within myself working towards “the future” became easier knowing that whatever happens to be “I am okay” inside.