Tagged: enjoyment
Enlightenment 4 sale
“New age” groups, religions and gurus may offer “enlightenment” as part of their sales package.
In Tantra, we have the enticing offer: “enlightenment through sex.”
Simply put, enlightenment is not a package to buy or an objective to pursue. There is no human being that can offer “enlightenment” to another man.
Enlightenment happens when we have gone through the journey of the range of experiences. It is not just a one life-time process. It comes through the accumulation of many life times. That is why the term ”old soul” is used, to denote someone who “has been around.” His time to become “enlightened” is to lose the armors accumulated through the experience of being the “I.” To flush those conditionings out. That experience is never easy, however; the process, the timing, the experience could be completely different for every human being as every human has a different set of experiences.
“Enlightenment” is about Destiny. As long as our conditioning does not allow us to observe and experience, that we are one with Life; we will not be able to acknowledge Destiny as the journey of Life.
The journey is Destiny itself. We walk the path, but the path is ready made for us.
Whether we agree or disagree with the above, it does not make a difference.
Whether we buy a “money back guaranteed,” enlightenment package or not; that has no consequence.
That is why, “spiritual salesmen” are alright as they offer a particular experience to a buyer (seeker) necessary for that person’s growth, as part of his journey.
As a matter of fact, ANY experience that we have gone through in our path, was necessary for our growth.
Therefore, why look for the “right” experience? There is nothing to search for.
Why being caught up with “spiritual objectives,” if any other thing in our Life path, (which we may call “non-spiritual”) has the same value?
Life experiences have the same value, whether we label them as “good/ spiritual or bad/mundane.”
What truly matters is the change of consciousness happening by going through the experiences, in our personal journey.
Consciousness will change in our journey, no matter what we DO.
The direction of it (what we call “good” or “bad”) in one Life time, does not depend on us; however, rest assured that there is no saint who hasn’t been a sinner, nor sinner who hasn’t been a saint. For in Life, the experience of both is the full experience.
When we hop on the train of Life, the rails are already there made for our destiny. No matter what we DO inside the train and during the trip, we will get there.
Thus, what is the sensible thing to DO?
To search for “enlightenment” inside the train? To search for God inside the train? To make a profitable business deal with the rest of the passengers? To deeply study the rules for playing cards/ dice/ successfully, as to win recognition during the short trip?
DO whatever you like. However, be AWARE, CONSCIOUS of the TRIP. Know that every action has a consequence… We could say that those actions will take you to your destination, or that your destination called for certain actions made during the trip. Either way it does not matter.
ENJOY the trip!
Yes… Life is a journey. Enlightenment could happen at any train station… If it is in your destiny, but if it is not, enjoy the experience for whatever it is “now,” it is only a step closer to it, or “your money back.” 🙂
Evolved Human Sexuality
There is no topic in “spiritual conversations” which draw more attention and rejection, as human sexuality does. It is paradoxical to want and desire that which we have been conditioned to reject. The other day I was engaged in a conversation about the “Hua Hu Ching,” verse 69:
“A person’s approach to sexuality is a sign of his level of evolution. Unevolved persons practice ordinary sexual intercourse. Placing all emphasis upon the sexual organs, they neglect the body’s other organs and systems. Whatever physical energy is accumulated is summarily discharged, and the subtle energies are similarly dissipated and disordered. It is a great backward leap. For those who aspire to the higher realms of living, there is angelic dual cultivation. Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. Where ordinary intercourse is effortful, angelic cultivation is calm, relaxed, quiet, and natural. Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body. Culminating not in dissolution but in integration, it is an opportunity for a man and woman to mutually transform and uplift each other into the realm of bliss and wholeness. The sacred ways of angelic intercourse are taught only by one who has himself achieved total energy integration, and taught only to students who follow the Integral Way with profound devotion, seeking to purify and pacify the entire world along with their own being. However, if your virtue is especially radiant, it can be possible to open a pathway to the subtle realm and receive these celestial teachings directly from the immortals.”
The above is the origin of many religions, including the mass understanding of “Tantra.” That is techniques, methods are given for a “reasonable charge,” it is the mass compulsion to purchase everything including who you want to BE. The above, will compel those who feel “un-evolved” to DO things to become “evolved” despite their DOING not matching their BEING. That is a mirage.
In my experience, Life as well as sexuality, are journeys. Sexuality IS the expression of who we ARE.
There is no “higher or lower” sexuality, it is only what we ARE, the “now” without further labels.
If what we ARE changes, our sexuality will change as well.
Thus, the emphasis is not on techniques and methods to improve sexuality. The emphasis is on “improving” the self.
How do we “improve” the self?
Through openness to life, through awareness, through observation. No actions needed. No fees to pay. No certifications to obtain.
Life will bring those teachings according to our level of consciousness, our place in the journey of Life. Kindergarten is not less than being a college graduate, for without kindergarten there would not be a college graduate. It is a continuous, a process which will bring the range of experiences through our awareness.
In Life; there are no shortcuts. Every stage has its own timing.
Thus, importance is no longer placed in a particular stage of Life or a particular aspect of it, we may discover that our capacity to enjoy the journey is of utmost importance.
For those interested in finding a “purpose” to living, let me express that in 2 words that we may understand.
1. Enjoy 2. Learn.
Joy is an attitude towards Life. Joy will keep the child inside.
Learning the teachings of Life lessons while unlearning the conditioning of the “office world” will nourish our insight, which will bring evolution, wisdom.
It is that valuable insight which will “certify” us as being ready in Life for that “sexual angelic cultivation” when our time arrives.
If we want to find someone to teach us, we will not find anyone who truly knows.
If we want to pray to the celestials teachers to get their teachings, it will not happen.
In Life what we want to accomplish does not matter. What matters is what we are willing to go through to get that. It is through that journey how we learn, how our consciousness changes, how we evolve and gain insight.
Self-realization is not sold in best sellers. It is not taught in any retreat by certified holy masters.
If we want self-realization, we will need to give up ourselves. That is the ultimate openness to Life.
Are you willing to go through that? Perhaps not now, but believe me, your time will arrive. 🙂
The rule of collective consciousness
In the path of self-realization, there are no things to DO to become something “special.” On the contrary, we are taking away those learned things which have been imbibed through centuries of conditioning.
In a nutshell, part of the path of self-realization is to be aware of the influence of the collective consciousness without rejection.
What is referred as “mass consciousness” has been identified by thinkers, philosophers, etc. However, for them it may be a reaction towards it, a rebellion as when a kid finds out that Santa does not exist. That kid could make a religion, a life purpose, a goal to “save” other kids from the lie of Santa… That is until he becomes an adult and has kids of his own, then he will support that “lie” when he sees the eager and happy faces of his kids as Christmas comes around …Ho, Ho, Ho! Santa is there to give gifts!
That is Life. If we reject, we will accept. That is the full range of experiences. If we neither reject nor accept; then there is a quality which cannot be described through words. You are out of that duality, but if we must describe that; we have no choice but to call it “acceptance, openness,” although it is not.
So there are 2 “acceptances” in the world of the mind. The one with a duality and the one without it.
The collective consciousness is goal oriented. It has to have a purpose. However, any activity with a goal in mind is void of enjoyment.
Enjoyment in Life is not just a phrase to make a religion out of it. It is BEING which comes through taking away the clothes of conditioning. Your underwear, the most intimate attire, is collective consciousness.
John says that he likes sex. He says that he enjoys it. Nevertheless, he is concerned about “not lasting long enough” and to satiate the sexual appetite of his lover. His ego is searching for self-esteem through the recognition of his lover. He wants to be called a “stud,” he wants to be recognized as a fine lover. That is what John has learned. His fear is not to comply with that ideal, to “fail.”
How is it possible for John to enjoy sex? Mentally he is stuck in reaching an objective. His DOING is object oriented. That creates stress, anxiety and even emotional resentment to women, although John may not be AWARE enough to perceive it. John will look for “solutions” which in turn will support his conditioning, his belief system. Otherwise, John wouldn’t be interested.
To truly enjoy sex or any activity like eating or sleeping, the mind needs to go away. Far away. Sex is a discovery. Anything could happen. It is an opportunity for expression without frontiers of learned behaviors. It is an opportunity for trust, for opening to the possibility of being vulnerable. It is in that newness where enjoyment resides.
The collective consciousness has ideas, beliefs, moral values which are held as monuments of “Truth.” However, like Santa Claus; those ideals are just a matter of utility.
Enjoyment is a word with experiential depth. That depth is not known by the collective consciousness. 🙂
What do I DO to “improve”?
Observe the Life of a public “famous” person, a “star.” Without a doubt, he has experienced ups and downs in his lifetime.
Beauty, fame, power, health, joy and wealth had different intensities throughout his life. There is no point in time where everything was all there, unchanged as if he had “arrived.”
There is no point in time where a person is the “same” all the way until death arrives. This is a fact.
A what point in Life, that person was “improving”? It just depends on what someone looks at. Some examples of “improving”:
Did he settle with one partner rather than many? Did she take up yoga and meditation as part of her life style? Did he sell 1 million copies of his best seller book? Was she inducted in the rich and famous hall of fame? Are those singular things “improvement”? It is relative. Life is bigger than any single improvement.
Life cannot be compartmentalized, cut in pieces, but we do it in our minds, so “improvement” happens as an ideal to strive for.
That ideal will create in turn the duality of “success and failure.” We are sold on that one. The fiction of success is as real as failure.
Observe the artificiality of all. That is how we live Life, believing that our mental creations, ideals are Life.
In Life, the word “improvement” does not exist. It is not needed as Life has its own movements, as shared before; the full range of experiences entails to go through the 2 sides of a duality.
How does it “work”?
Observe any “positive” virtues or qualities in your favorite actress. The potential for the “negative” opposites is there as well. As a matter of fact, it will be experienced by that person at different times of her current existence or it was in another Life experience , or it will be in the future.
The full range of experiences needs to be experienced. BEING all of those.
That is how we have a variety of people in the world, experiencing a piece of the diversity of the ranges of experiences.
Our conditioning is ready to label and judge their experiences as “good or bad.” It does not matter. Our morality is worth diddly-squat in the way Life moves.
That is why it was shared that enjoyment of the experience is important. That quality of enjoyment is how we “become better.” (Those are not the most accurate words to use, but for the sake of being understood or misunderstood.)
That quality of enjoyment does not depend on what we have, what we earn, where we are in society or how we behave in society.
It all depends on how AWARE we are.
Greater conditioning, means less capacity for enjoyment.
Why?
Because we have learned all those sacred “go getter” keywords that we would like to “achieve” in Life to “make it worthwhile,” to find a “purpose.”
That is garbage.
Enjoy Life. Be open to the diversity of it. Expect the unexpected without judgment, without trying to “make sense.”
It is that sense the one that has been conditioned.
Live today, die tomorrow. No big deal. Have you enjoyed the ride?
Yes? Then there will be fulfillment. Nothing is missing.
If we try to “practice” any of the above, we will be fakes for we will try to “accomplish” that thing which looks good for ME… I’ve got to have it! (back into the conditioning of society.)
That “practice” could be made into a religion or some “system” to “help people” and to help MY pocket…but it is completely artificial.
BEING changes through AWARENESS. Give yourself an ample space of solitude to observe the movie of Life. It is in that observation how we learn from the actors of Life and enjoy their unique parts. The plot will keep on changing, but as long as we OBSERVE it without judgment, we will enjoy it… and improve by DOING nothing. 🙂
Appreciation and Enjoyment: The true doctrine of God
Observe that I have purposely used conditioned terminology: Truth, Doctrine and God.
Those 3 words have all the ingredients to enhance any “spiritual” message, to make it sound important. That is the conditioning!
Life is. We live it. We are conscious of it. That is the gift.
To be conscious of BEING, to BE conscious of the surroundings including our own bodies, that is a fantastic experience!
When we wake up in the morning from sleeping, the gift of a new experience is right there. However, our minds will add conditioned thoughts to define our current newness with the past, it will unwind the reel of past experiences to shape up our perspective on things… That is how Life becomes the “same old thing.”
The interesting aspect is that we want to hang onto the known. That which is known to us, secure, unchangeable which basically follows the pattern of our mind: The mind welcomes static things, lifeless things, something that could be labeled and classified as “good or bad.” Those labels will remain unchanged through centuries of conditioning.
“Snake.” Observe the feeling that this word brings, the imagery, the emotions. Whatever it is, the bottom line is: Is it “good or bad”?
We are so lifeless when living through words!
The effect of hanging onto the known brings fear. Our minds are masters in the art of infusing fear.
Then, we search for God, we look for truth, for a doctrine to “save us” to keep us safe, to mitigate fear.
Life becomes a task, a DOING to accomplish that safety, whether that is through possession of goods, the pursue of god or the attainment of what is good. Do you see how similar those words are?
“God, goods, good.” Observe your feelings for those words, your emotions, your conditioning.
Life is away from all those words and their connotation and conditioning.
Your experience of BEING is related with feelings and those feelings get distorted through words, concepts, definitions.
Life is not about static “TRUTH.” It is about appreciation of perspectives (realities not reality) and thus, enjoyment of them. To allow them to change as Life changes, as BEING changes without the need of the artificial DOCTRINE (religious, political) that keeps things under control, to bring the sensation of safety, to calm down fear.
Away from that Life of concepts, ideals and conditioning Life IS.
Appreciation and enjoyment of “what is” without further labels, is the key for change, for self-transformation, self-realization, enlightenment and all of those “good” but meaningless words.
Life is away from our mind driven life. 🙂
Enjoyment: The bottom line
All Life experiences will move through a range “full to empty or empty to full” (- It is just a way to describe) which the conditioned mind is not able to grasp. For the conditioned mind, to go from “full to empty,” means to lose, to be worse off, to go down, etc. Likewise when someone is going from “empty to full,” we label that as becoming better, improving, getting to the top, etc.
Notice that our labeling will determine how we feel about our experience.
Although we are the same human beings, we are different. Every human represents a particular point of an experience on the range of experiences.
For instance, a fat man with a high appetite, low sexual libido, a funny personality and a great fear of heights; represents different ranges of different experiences, all in one “package” which we label as “John Doe.” A thin, bulimic woman with a high sexual libido and bipolar personality, represents another range of experiences.
There is nothing to judge or to label but to observe that there will be people in between those ranges of the fat guy and the thin woman. Life will offer us through all living beings different ranges of experiences and possibilities. Those things are never static, change is guarantee.
Humans caged by their mental “static”conditioning, will be in charge of labeling and defining what is “right/wrong, good and bad.”
This creates a “traumatic” experience.
Every experience in Life, is just that… an experience. We may go to sleep and never wake up again. That experience is out of our control.
Choosing one experience in duality, will bring unavoidably the rejected one. So why choose? Why attach our consciousness to an ideal which will bring the opposite?
Notice that because we are alive, then death is a certainty. Notice that because we are young, old age is certain. That is the range of experiences.
We like to compare labels such as “young” is “better than” “old.”
However, it is a polarity of the same type of experience: Aging.
Every single individual has a perception, a way of looking at things based on their conditioning. We like to label that as “true” or “truth,” but it is just a perception.
Many individuals are caught up in finding the “right” experience in Life, the “true” perception of “reality,” and in that search, they are willing to fake it and will pursue what is not for them to experience.
That is how we betray ourselves. If the “majority” sees a blue sky and I don’t; I must believe that the sky is blue to fit in. Peer pressure. Majority rules. The power of the masses.
What is the bottom line?
To enjoy whatever perception we truly experience, for it is only a perception and it is meant to change, to evolve.
What do we do instead?
We want to hold on to a mental ideal of what “should be.” We strive for that.
We hear many times: “Be yourself.”
That is meaningless unless we are willing to de-conditioning by dissolving our beliefs, taboos, hang ups, ideals and values; that is what Spirituality is meant to bring.
Someone may be experiencing a debilitating disease as an experience. What is there to enjoy?
A disease does not come by itself but adds up a circumstance around our lives. There are many other items that come along. For instance, the opportunity to have free time, the opportunity to be in the company of loved ones, the opportunity to enjoy certain items which other “normal” individuals cannot. There are so many other things to enjoy around the circumstance.
What do we do instead?
We curse our lives, our “luck,” the moment we were born, our parents. That focus in one particular aspect of Life which we reject will poison our being.
Because we are so focused on that one thing, we are unable to see the rest, we do not have the capacity to step outside ourselves, out of the pitiful “I” to observe beyond our narrow tunnel of thoughts. Whatever it is, it will change.
Enjoyment is around that “I.” Enjoy that moment! There is nothing that could last forever. That is a great blessing, indeed! 🙂
Enjoying the thought
Let us say that John is having a deeply “spiritual” moment with his wife Teresa. He is having sex with her.
During that time of enjoyment, his mind starts to send/catch thoughts.
John’s mind has a thought of a man that he saw before. He was a well built, good looking man in John’s view.
That thought, threw John off completely from the sexual experience with his wife. John was very concerned about “that” incident.
John labeled the thought as being “homosexual.” He even freaked out by the thought that he could have “homosexual tendencies”. From that point on, John created his own hell.
Sounds familiar?
No? It never happened to you?
It may. 🙂
The understanding of the experience explained above, could send light into the meaning of mature/aware “spirituality”.
Observe how the thought appeared. John thought that he actually created the thought. Great awareness, John!
This thought created a sense of guilt, lack of comfort.
Why?
It is not “right” to think that. John sees himself as “straight” (another label to create duality).
There is a rejection about the idea of homosexuality. This idea brings all the taboos, hang ups, beliefs, conditionings in John.
Observe that the sacred moment of John’s enjoyment with his wife, became a moment of disturbance. John was worried about this.
John wanted to “fix” this “problem” right away!
He had an inner conflict. He was ready to reject anything homosexual. He was ready to fight for his “cause” of being a “moral” man, that is; a “Godly man”. John was ready to defend his “righteousness”.
All of that, just to cover a rejected thought.
When we are living in the mind, a thought is everything.
Let us see Life from another perspective. In this perspective, thoughts do not matter at all. They are just the outcome of our conditioning.
In this perspective, what matters is the feeling. Thoughts could arrive, they could be weird, but they are welcome.
Do you want to resist? Do you want to put the mental conditioning up front?
That will be our tendency.
Let that go. The feeling is all that matters.
Have you ever wondered if the thought about a man, while having sex with your wife will make you into homosexual?
Apparently John believed so. His mental hell was in motion.
Observe how words, labels, ideas will make Life into a “problem”.
Observe how enjoyment becomes an ideal when the moment is not accepted, acknowledged as it is. We want to “fix” our thoughts by covering those with another thought, a “good” thought, but deep inside we know that we are just covering things to align with our conditioning.
A thought will come back as long as we reject it. If it is not rejected, it just goes away. It came to you; it goes from you.
“Empty” of beliefs, mental baggage about what should be, that may be a mentally sound individual.
The feeling of enjoyment is purely a sensation. We will kill the moment by identifying with a thought.
Observe that.
Exploring the Depth of Living 