InnerNet Weekly: Inspirations From CharityFocus.org

InnerNet Weekly: Inspirations From CharityFocus.org http://www.ijourney.org/ iJourney passages are a weekly email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom to 72,613 people. It all started with couple folks getting together on 'Wednesdays' in the Silicon Valley. eng inspiration, wisdom, spiritual, service eng clubs@charityfocus.org 2013-06-17 23:44:25 Micro Moments of Love, Barbara Frederickson It’s time to upgrade our view of love.  First and foremost, love is an emotion, a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force. As for all positive emotions, the inner feeling love brings you is inherently and exquisitely pleasant -- it feels extraordinarily good, the way a long, cool drink of water feels when you’re parched on a hot day. Yet far beyond feeling good, a micro-moment of love, like other positive emotions, literally changes your mind. It expands your awareness of your surroundings, even your sense of self. The boundaries between you and not-you -- what lies beyond your skin -- relax and become more permeable. While infused with love you see fewer distinctions between you and others. Indeed, your ability to see others -- really see them, wholeheartedly -- springs open. Love can even give you a palpable sense of oneness and connection, a transcendence that makes you feel part of something far larger than yourself. Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force.  And the new take on love that I want to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually any time two or more people -- even strangers -- connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.     Odds are, if you were raised in a Western culture, you think of emotions as largely private events. You locate them within a person’s boundaries, confined within their mind and skin. When conversing about emotions, your use of singular possessive adjectives betrays this point of view. You refer to ‘my anxiety,’ ‘his anger,’ or ‘her interest.’ Following this logic, love would seem to belong to the person who feels it. Defining love as positivity resonance challenges this view. Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people -- within interpersonal transactions -- and thereby belong to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily.  More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections.   Perhaps most challenging of all, love is neither lasting nor unconditional. The radical shift we need to make is this: Love, as your body experiences it, is a micro-moment of connection shared with another.  And decades of research now shows that love, seen as these micro-moments of positive connection, fortifies the connection between your brain and your heart and makes you healthier.  [...]  It can seem surprising that an experience that lasts just a micro-moment can have any lasting effect on your health and longevity. Yet there’s an important feedback loop at work here, an upward spiral between your social and your physical well-being. That is, your micro-moments of love not only make you healthier, but being healthier also builds your capacity for love. Little by little, love begets love by improving your health. And health begets health by improving your capacity for love.   --Barbara Frederickson, in Love 2.0... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=949 Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700 We Move in Infinite Space, Rainer Maria Rilke It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary - and toward this point our development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside them. Just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space. -- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=957 Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700 The Shambhala Warriors' Weapons, Dugu Choegyal There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Great barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate one another, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable destructive power, and technologies that lay waste our world. In this era, when the future of sentient life hangs by the frailest of threads, the Shambhala warriors appear. The warriors have no home. They move on the terrain of the barbarian powers. Great courage is required, both moral and physical, for they must go into the heart of the barbarian powers to dismantle their weapons, into the places where the weapons are created, into the corridors of power where decisions are made. The Shambhala warriors are armed only with the weapons of compassion and insight. Both are necessary. Compassion gives them the energy to move forward, not to be afraid of the pain of the world. Fueled by compassion, warriors engage with the world, step forward and act. But by itself compassion burns with too much passion and exhausts us, so the second weapon is needed -- insight into the interdependence of all phenomena. With that wisdom we see that the battle is not between "good guys" and "bad guys," because the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. And with insight into our profound interrelatedness, we discern right action, knowing that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what can be measure or discerned. Together these two weapons sustain the warriors: the recognition and experience of our pain for the world and the recognition and experience of our radical interconnectedness with all life. -Adapted from Dugu Choegyal, as recounted by Joanna Macy... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=945 Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700 To Be Simply, Radically, Absolutely Still, Gangaji Sometimes, in a blessed life, there arises what we call the spiritual search, the search for God, the search for Truth. There is a recognition that the usual means of taking care of this command just doesn’t take care of it. There is a putting aside of what we have called mundane existence and a turning of one’s attention toward spiritual life. Unfortunately, the same conditioning that directed the mundane life usually also attempts to direct the spiritual search, and it, then, becomes a search for spiritual pleasure, spiritual comfort, spiritual security. Sooner or later there has to be a disillusionment with that search also. […] I got a note this afternoon from someone asking, “Which world religions are your principles based upon?” Well, I haven’t made a study of world religions, except superficially, but what I have seen is that at the heart of every human being, there is a command to find this that I am calling right now, “happiness.” But I have discovered that it is impossible to find happiness. As long as you are seeking to find happiness “somewhere,” you are overlooking where happiness is. I would say the same in reference to God. As long as you are seeking to find God in some place, you are overlooking the essential truth of God, which is Omnipresence. When you seek to find happiness someplace else, you are overlooking your true nature which is happiness. You are overlooking yourself.  So this teaching is the invitation and the challenge to stop overlooking — to simply, radically, absolutely, Be Still. To put aside, at least for a moment, all of your ideas of where God is, or where Truth is, or where you are. All of your ideas of what God, or Truth, or you have to give or receive. Put them aside. Be still. Stop looking anywhere. Stop seeking. Simply be. Not be in a stupor, or be in a trance, or even be like a cow is being in a field, but deeper than that, so that the revelation of Omnipresence can be recognized, can be revealed, the revelation of your true nature. I don’t mean your personality. I mean deeper than your personality and present in all the fluctuations of your personality. Be still in the presence of that. Not be still to create that. Not even be still to invite that. Be still simply to recognize what is always here, who you always are.... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=932 Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700 Seven People Cutting Stones, Roger Walsh For several weeks strange sounds had drifted over the mountains from the neighboring valley. There was much talk in the village about what these noises could be, but no one could make sense of them. Even the village elders had never heard anything like them. Finally one of the young men of the village was chosen to cross the mountains and see what was going on.   After two days of hiking he reached the mountaintop and saw in the valley far below a hive of activity with dozens of people working. As he drew closer, he saw a line of people, each with a huge stone in front of them that they were hammering and chiseling.    When he finally reached the valley floor he approached a young man at one end of the line and asked, “What are you doing?”   “Huh!” grunted the young man. “I’m killing time until I get off work.”   Puzzled, the hiker turned to the second person in the line, a young woman, and asked, “Excuse me, but what are you doing?”   “I’m earning a living to support my family,” she responded.   Scratching his head, the hiker moved on to the third person and asked again, “What are you doing?”   “I’m creating a beautiful statue,” came the reply. Turning to the next person, the hiker repeated his question.   “I’m helping to build a cathedral,” came the answer.   “Ah!” said the hiker. “I think I’m beginning to understand.” Approaching the woman who was next in line he asked, “And what are you doing?   “I am helping the people in this town and generations that follow them, by helping to build this cathedral.”   “Wonderful,” exclaimed the hiker. “And you, sir? He called to the man beside her.   “I am helping to build this cathedral in order to serve all those who use it and to awaken myself in the process. I am seeking my salvation through service to others.”   Finally the hiker turned to the last stone worker, an old, lively person whose eyes twinkled and whose mouth formed a perpetual smile. “And what are you doing?” he inquired.   “Me?” smiled the elder. “Doing?” The elder roared with laughter. “This ego dissolved into God many years ago. There is no ‘I’ left to ‘do’ anything. God works through this body to help and awaken all people and draw them to Him.” --Roger Walsh, in Essential Spirituality... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=962 Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700 The Gentlest Thing in the World, Byron Katie The gentlest thing in the world is an open mind. Since it doesn't believe what it thinks, it is flexible, porous, without opposition, without defense. Nothing has power over it. Nothing can resist it. Even the hardest thing in the world — a closed mind — can't resist the power of openness. Ultimately the truth flows into it and through it, like water through rock. "When the mind first becomes a student of itself, it learns that nothing in the world can possibly oppose it: everything is for it, everything adds to it, enlightens it, nourishes it, reveals it. It continues to open, because it's in a fearless, undefended state, and it's hungry for knowledge. And when it realizes that it's nothing, it can penetrate everywhere, even when there's no room for it, no place to receive it. People are afraid to be nothing. But being nothing is only one aspect of it. Not only is it nothing to be afraid of, it's a cause for celebration. Without your stressful story, there is no stress — obviously! When you don't believe your thoughts, there's only laughter and peace. There are names for a place like that. I call it heaven. And how can people know what nothingness is while they still believe what they think? 'Something is better than nothing' — can you absolutely know that that's true? The truly open mind doesn't have a goal or a purpose other than to be what it is. It's not attached to concepts of self or other. It realizes that ultimately there are no humans, there is no mind. When the mind opens, you lose everything, gratefully. I'm sitting here as a woman, and in the next realization I'm a galaxy or an ant. It doesn't matter. You lose everything, and then there's the reentry. On a good-hair day, don't you love to look in the mirror? That's what it's like. You're looking in the mirror at nothing, delighted. When you're nothing, it's always a good-hair day. […] Mind appears, if it appears, only to end itself. The projected world goes first, then the mind that projected it. No trace of it remains. Silence is all that's possible — the openness of never having existed in the first place. That's where I live. When it's over, it's over. You can't create or uncreate it. You wouldn't want to. -- Byron Katie, in "A Thousand Names for Joy" ... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=956 Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700 Selfless Climbing versus Ego Climbing, Robert Pirsig Phaedrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents. He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the physical strength but that physical strength wasn't enough. He had the intellectual motivation but that wasn't enough either. He didn't think he had been arrogant but thought that he was undertaking the pilgrimage to broaden his experience, to gain understanding of himself. He was trying to use the mountain for his own purposes and the pilgrimage too. He regarded himself as the fixed entity, not the pilgrimage or the mountain, and thus wasn't ready for it. He speculated that the other pilgrims, the ones who reached the mountain, probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take. To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He's here but he's not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here." What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is â€‹all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance... http://www.ijourney.org/?tid=959 Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700