I think you'd like me to share more about the experience of my truth. For me there is feeling, there is sensation, there is thinking, and there is what I am experiencing. I think we mostly relate from thinking, which makes for the shallowest relating. I think deep relating involves being aware of and relating as much of self as we can. To relate deeply with another, I find it is important that I notice what I am experiencing in the moment and relate what I am experiencing. What I am experiencing may be sadness or interest or disagreement or boredom or heard or talked down to or whatever, and I believe sharing what I am experiencing makes for deep relating.
For me there are two different ways to think about radical honesty. First is to tell the complete truth about facts of my life rather than fabricating stories about myself. Second is to be completely honest about what I am experiencing which is my truth. Radical honesty is present when it is present. I can be radically honest at one time or with one person and not at another time or with another person. Early in life I was guarded, not saying what I was experiencing, not saying my truth, which as Yung Pueblo wrote makes deep connection with another impossible. To have deep connection, I needed to become open and honest as to what I was experiencing, which was difficult for me to do. Now it is easy for me to distinguish between what is my truth and what is not. The satisfaction I experience in being honest about my truth helps me do it. To lose one's truth either by ignoring it or denying it is to lose oneself and lost close relationship.
I would like to live and engage with my work bringing all of me sincerely, openly, caringly, honestly, respectfully. I achieve some degree of that sometimes. When younger I was so enthused by my belief in my work and my thinking I knew the truth and the way that I was often poor at listening to others and attuning to them and their gifts, which was a disconnect. I worked in the mental health field. Slowly but surely over time, stubborn as I am, my attuning to and valuing others and their ways and gifts increased, and our connection increased. As our connection grew, our learning and growth increased. What helps me is the nourishment I have felt in my work. I feel a gratitude and a sense of good fortune and privilege that I got into this work which resonated with me and may have saved me. The growth I gained helps me engage knowing the possibilities for me and for others.
I think of pain and dealing with pain differently than Darlene Cohen. For me, life produces pain such as the pain of injury, illness, death. Pain hurts and is a signal that something is not working right and I have a problem. I engage pain in that I pay attention to it and what it's telling me about what's wrong. Suffering is different than pain. To suffer means to bear or carry. Suffering is the way in which I bear or deal with pain, such as the strategy I implement to deal with it. Life provides pain, I provide suffering. The challenge is for me to suffer pain in a way that decreases the problem or pain, and not suffer pain in a way that increases the problem or pain. Distracting myself from suffering is to not heed it or learn from it and is a very ineffective strategy. I don't notice the totality of each moment. That seems beyond me. I can notice a good deal of a moment, and I do that when I am present, open, and attentive.
I believe love is oneness of all that is, and love or oneness is underneath all the problems and hardships. It is there for us to see and embrace.
I love that song you shared.
Yes, everything can be intoxicated rapture calling us home. We hear what and how we are. If I am in intoxicated rapture or open to intoxicated rapture, I will hear it. I used to hardly notice birds. We have bird feeder in our back yard along with some bird friendly trees and bushes and a couple bird houses, and now, being retired, I am more present to hear, see, and enjoy the birds like I never before did. I so much enjoy their busyness, their flying, landing, and taking off, their moving from branch to branch, and their occasional singing. I occasionally slip into some amount of intoxicated rapture. My belief system helps me practice listening for love, lover, and beloved. I believe all existence is one, and one is love. When I am occasionally in that awareness, I am in love, I feel oneness with nature around me, with what I am seeing and hearing, and it is heaven on earth.
As Anais Nin said, we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. Peace, like happiness, is within us. It is for us to live in a way that we are in harmony with self and in harmony with peace. I went through a long period of life thinking I was broken, not right, and sought fixing in various teachers and helpers. Eventually I realized I was okay, enough just as I am, and needed to accept and be who I am, allow me and live me, which was the beginning of self care and self love. What I was looking for was within me. I gave up on performing and grew in being who and what I am, gave up on making a presentation and increased being present. When accepting and being myself, I feel calm and steady, I'm a better listener, and I relate better. When accepting and being myself, I feel the peace and happiness I was looking for.
God is the source and essence of being, and when we fight or try to control that we are in God's way. Too much certainty is a problem in that it gets in the way of being open and going with the source of being. Pain and suffering are different. Life provides pain. There is no pain free living. Suffering literally means to bear or carry. Each of us provide how we bear and deal with pain. How I suffer pain and problems in life is up to me. I can suffer pain in a way that lessens pain, and I can suffer pain in a way that makes it worse. Understanding that has been very helpful for me. Many people make pain and suffering the same because they don't want to take responsibility for how they suffer pain. I craft a vessel that carries me, not others. I hope others learn from my crafting of my vessel as they craft their own vessel.
One way by which we obtain knowledge is by playing and working with information and putting it together for ourselves as knowledge. In doing that, we could say, as Paulo Freire says, we invent knowledge. Another way we obtain knowledge is by accepting the knowledge of others, sometimes blindly. Whichever way we obtain knowledge, we can modify it. I began to give up in a big way being a passive receptacle when I was about 20 and started actively questioning, searching, and learning new information and knowledge rather than accepting ready-made answers as absolute. I felt myself being in a time of active growth, and I had no idea that a great deal of further expansion was ahead. What helps me most is wanting to learn, being open, listening and considering while not accepting others' knowledge as my own, letting go of what doesn't fit and going with what feels right, going with my truth rather than what someone else says is true.
Of course we can swap so-called absolute goals for relative ones. Outpacing others can replace the things we really care about. Those happen via conditioning, doing what we think we should, or not having the self-confidence or courage to do what we want. I was once on a career path that I and others wanted for me. I wasn't in it by chance; I was in it by conditioning and choice. I was succeeding and had a bright future; when I no longer wanted it, I anguished over getting out and going in a different direction. I didn't know where I was going, but there are always other places to go. While making the change cost me, it was liberating and transforming for me. What helps me more than anything is to be honest with myself and pursue what I want, not what others expect. My feelings and my heart are my best reference points.
I agree with Michael Singer that your mind and heart are not your enemies. Their overall action is health and elimination of what is not healthy. My efforts to resist, deny, or ignore uncomfortable emotions usually makes them worse. When I allow uncomfortable emotions to move through, they are gone; doing that is often easier said than done. What helps me let uncomfortable energy transmute is knowing that it is healthy especially when done in conjunction with other action that reduces or resolves uncomfortable feelings, such as facing a fear or worry and actively doing something about them. Not all feelings are from the past. Some are from the past and stirred by present happenings, and some originate in the present generated by what is happening here and now. In either case they warrant paying attention to.
The quest for authenticity is a quest for being real, a quest for integrity, a quest for authoring one's own authentic life. If it is a crusade for authority as in authority over others, I think the quest for authenticity has gotten sidetracked. I have experienced sharing what I am authentically experiencing as a creative act when I am present, honest, and open in the moment, don't have an agenda, don't try to control or manipulate, and allow what happens to happen. I have experienced that process being a bridge of close, valuable, satisfying connection between me and the other. Unconditional welcome means genuine welcome without any agenda, and when unconditional welcome is present I find it easier to extend further my own concentric circles of authentic hospitality.
Thanks for sharing a wonderful journey. Isn't it wonderful that presence other than physical goes on beyond death.
Us is the combination of me and you and is bigger and more than me or you. I think Ajahn Brahm says that and I agree with that. I don't agree that marriage means never thinking of self and never thinking of spouse. For me, marriage has three components, that is, me, you, and us, with us being primary and special. In an alive and growing marriage, me and you sacrifice our separateness to the us but don't sacrifice our individuality. It's an alive and growing me and you that support and have as primary an alive and growing us that supports and nurtures two alive and growing individuals. I learned that focusing less on self than on us always leads to more happiness. For me, letting go of self-centered thoughts and expectations nurtures more harmonious and joyous connection with others and in general, and experiencing that cultivates doing it more often.
I don't possess the exceptional qualities of historical figures, but I have my qualities, and for me as for everyone, that is plenty. Afterall, they didn't possess the qualities that I have. I can care and serve with what I am and what I have. I have felt inadequate in some way or another since childhood, and sometimes I've held myself back because of that. When I have held myself back I have regretted it, and when I have contributed what I have in me to contribute I felt good. What helps me to serve is thinking less in terms of my imperfections and more in terms of my gifts and uniqueness, less in terms of what I'm not and what I don't have and more in terms of what I am and what I do have. What helps me is trusting that when I am contributing from being true to myself, I contribute positively and I feel good for contributing.
I agree with Harris that meditation can reveal a more fundamental reality, and even reveal fundamental reality. In meditation, we can let go of usual thinking, let go of conditioned or trained seeing, let go of learned concepts and definitions, and let go of expectations, judgments, and goals, and connect with what is. There are times that I let go of preconceived notions and judgments and feel a sense of oneness with all existence, which times are brief, special and fulfilling. What helps me have such times is that they are special and awesome. They are times of feeling outside my usual bodily boundaries and feeling some amount of oneness with all that is. They are times of being outside my usual views and at least somewhat into a universal connection.
I believe all existence is one activity, one Ultimate Existence. We are a manifestation of Ultimate Existence and we are one with all that is and with one another. The beloved is one with whom I feel especial oneness most clearly and deeply. I want to be with the beloved, not away from that person. I consider Ultimate Existence to be God, and the more deeply aware I am of that oneness with Ultimate Existence and with one another, the more connection with sacredness I feel. Sacredness is oneness, and reflecting on the oneness of all helps me be aware of our sacredness.
The notion stirs my thoughts and beliefs that life is a dance, though we find ways to ruin it and turn it into drudgery or pain, and it is glorious to wake up to the dance that life is. I was once in a profound group retreat that was a positive wild burn that revealed a depth of life that I had never before seen. It opened my eyes to life below the surface or behind the veil. It was an awakening experience that changed me, has always stayed with me, and led to my mission of igniting that experience with and for others, which I seldom recreated to the extent I had experienced but sometimes recreate to some extent. What helps me take a chance is knowing how exhilarating and valuable the dance of life can be, and knowing it begins with my being true to and with myself, which is satisfying no matter what happens.
Personal freedom is already ours. Nobody can take that away without my participation. Personal freedom doesn't take seeking it, it takes embracing it, which usually takes courage. We are conditioned to see, think, and do as we should, and it usually takes courage to break out of that and be oneself, which may or may not match one's conditioning. Lack of freedom is imprisonment. We're usually partly imprisoned or free, not a hundred percent either way, and it is up to us how much freedom we take back. My childhood and religious conditioning were well ingrained, and it was due to being open to new ways of looking at life that I began to break free. I began to listen to me and trust me and my truth which fostered my learning and finding my truth and being me more and more rather than living by conformity.