Tagged: experiences
A lesson in Appreciation
Ananda experienced what is like to have an infected finger this past week. The physical “cause” was a piece of yellow squash that got into his index finger while cooking. The underlying “reason” was a buildup of emotionality that needed to come out. The past couple of weeks brought the experience as if everything in “his” world was falling on him. There is a time in Life where we learn how to swim in a nice environment. There is another time, when we need to put that skill into practice while in the “real” Ocean and not a swimming pool anymore.
It took one week for the finger to show symptoms of infection: It swallowed up, hurting with a dull heartbeat, changing color, etc.
Mathias helped Ananda through this “experience.”
Raysha (Ananda’s sister and channel of Mathias) observed how Mathias used some sort of needle of energy, to pull something out of Ananda’s finger. Ananda did not see or felt anything. Mathias then told Ananda to put the finger into a solution of water and baking soda for a few minutes. Ananda felt a relief immediately!
Mathias said: “Your body wants to get rid of the element, but it cannot. That obstruction caused the infection. But behind that infection, there is trapped emotionality inside you due to persistent thoughts.”
Ananda was thankful and appreciative of Mathias and Raysha.
Ananda felt very lucky for not having to see a regular doctor. However, he had to go through the “natural process” of dis-infection.
The finger was in pain for a couple of days. Woke him up at night. Mathias mentioned to apply ice to help in the healing process.
The finger turned into different colors: black with white indentations and red in the periphery. It was an “ugly sight.” Doubts came into Ananda’s mind. Perhaps he needed a regular doctor?
Mathias asked: “Are you finding difficulty to go through the natural process? Once that emotionality goes away from you, so will be the inflammation. You have 2 paths: You could go through the experience of natural healing and take away a valuable lesson OR you may want to get help from Science to make the recovery quicker, but you may not be aware of a lesson. Both paths are fine.”
Ananda went with the natural process.
Mathias said: ”Many times in the process of Life, things get ugly before they move into balance. Those who are not aware of this process do not know the end result and they become anxious and suffer by trying to change things when it is not their time. Only those who are ready to see a lesson, will take that experience as an opportunity for growth.”
So, what was the lesson that Ananda learned through this process?
Ananda learned about the “true” meaning of appreciation.
Many times, Ananda heard this word and even used it in many of his “spiritual” articles. It is a pretty word. Something everyone likes to hear. However, it was truly an ideal, a “concept.”
A “little” finger infection was able to move Ananda’s world into discomfort. Ananda learned to appreciate his health. Something that otherwise, he usually takes for granted. That appreciation is a source of happiness: His world could be upside down, but he is healthy. He can enjoy Life in many ways thanks to health. It is ironic how we need to “lose” something to appreciate it. That was another well-known, pretty phrase, that finally has meaning for him.
Life continually teaches us and will give us the tools for growth in consciousness. We are not willing to learn. We want to “change the world” to fit our ideas.
Unless we are ready to see, we will not see… but yet we are unwilling to trust Life to lead us. We want to see the world as built through the conditionings of our mind. That is why, we cannot AWAKEN. Our eyes are closed in our dreamy world of made up “realities.”
Peeling the layers of “Reality.”
Life does not have a purpose other than Life itself. The purpose of what IS… is to BE. BEING is the most basic and ultimate purpose at the same time. In the human world, a purpose is something different than what IS. It is an ideal of what “should be.”
Life does not bring any sort of learned ideas, ideals and moral values that human beings believe in. Because those things are needed in a society, it does not mean that those are needed in Life. Most human created Gods are supporters of societies’values but not of Life.
Most humans believe that Life is perceived with their 5 senses. That is a self-imposed restriction to know Life.
Humans want to control Life, however; one lesson to learn in Life is that Life cannot be controlled.
Humans have created their own little society with their own little rules and standards, inventing the words “right and wrong.” Humans have invented so many labels such as “property,” “equality,” “control” and “spirituality,” (to name a few amazing inventions) which are only learned perceptions which humans have labeled as “real Life.”
For most humans, “Real Life” is to comply with conditioning.
“Spirituality” has evolved as a way to control, the self and others. To be “better” is a new way to control.
When a society lives in the mind, fulfillment is only another idea. A topic to discuss. Something to “improve” by bringing laws, methods and procedures.
When a person lives in the mind, self-knowledge is out of his experience.
Our little human man-made world, away from Life itself, separated from the harmony of Nature, is alienating us!
Our reliance in the mind is killing what makes us alive, that is our feelings.
Honesty of acknowledging who we ARE now, is replaced by the ideal of what we “should be.” With that teaching, there is no way to “know thyself.”
In Life, learning is to experience. It is not to read and understand what someone wrote.
In life, to “Do more things” does not equal to feeling fulfilled.
In life, to “get ahead” with degrees, titles, certifications, diplomas, etc. is completely meaningless. Those things are only part of a small game, the “office world.” That game has become our daily “bread and butter” to the point that we believe that meal, to be the only one.
What is the outcome?
We are starved and tired of the same thing. We are looking for meaning in Life!
Do we want “answers”? Do we want “solutions”? Do we want to be “saved”?
Yes? Thus, the “market” screamed for religions to appear. The answer is in the future, by following some policy, some behavior. Politicians took note of that.
All we had to DO is to BELIEVE in another “reality.” Something that few perceived to be “true.” Those became the “saviors.”
Tired of that? Then try to BE what you ARE not. Pretend. Practice. Achieve that.
Can we peel the layers of conditioning and learned behaviors from ourselves? Peel the onion. What you find is not “what is,” but rather what needs to be peeled.
Who is peeling? A layer of the onion that we call “me.”
With that discovery, Life could have a different meaning.
What is that meaning? Peel the onion yourself to find out. In Life, we need to “reinvent the wheel” not to come up with a shortcut. “Time is money” is meaningless in Life. Your time is your Life.
Ps: Ahnanda will be sharing once a week from now on. 🙂
Learning from the shoe box of experiences
In the “office world,” we learn through books, classes, second hand “authoritative” teachings… We believe that those “teachings” are true. We label them as “truth” and want for others to follow them to support our desire to be “right” in Life. We presume that we have the “right answer,” we make our “morality” on those assumptions. We may believe that “God is with us,” and that we are part of his “chosen people,” ready for Paradise and everlasting Life …
Those “teachings” for whatever holy they may be, cannot match the uncertainties and ever changing possibilities in Life. What is “real” cannot be relegated into a shoe box full of code of conduct, commandments and laws.
Have we observed that in Nature? Have we observed that in Life?
In Nature/Life, morality does not exist. In the “office world” it exists as a façade for an ulterior purpose: Whether that is to gain heaven, to support our belief to be “special” or “rightful” among the rest or some other “reason.”
In Nature/Life, questions do not exist. Humans prisoners of their own minds, have twisted good old curiosity into the frenzy of asking “why?” out of everything, as if an intellectual verbal answer is enough.
Curiosity does not ask “why.” Curiosity observes with appreciation the uniqueness of Life. It is through that acknowledgement how everything is answered without asking a single question; for every answer comes at the right time. It is the knowing of learning through our own experiences.
Humans have coined the phrase: “Learn from your own mistakes.” That is insane.
When we separate our experiences in Life between “mistakes” and what is “right,” we forsake the opportunity to live fully in Life in exchange of some comfortable fear, designed to live within the boundaries of the shoe box offered by our society through our conditioned mind.
That is how we come up with the popular “Do’s and Don’ts.” We preserve those by enforcing them into the younger generations, effectively narrowing down the shoe box for others. At the end, it is about preserving what we discovered to be “right or wrong,” that is how the “I” of many dead people from many centuries ago, still live among us. We call that “traditions.”
Learn from your experiences. That learning only applies to your own path. However, what is to share to all, is to BE the type of person that is ever curious to discover Life, beyond the shoe box.
That type of invaluable teaching cannot be put into words or a “master class.” That “teaching” spreads through the winds of warm human relationships.
Nothing to teach, nothing to say. Just BE.
Those winds of relationship, have the potential of turning into Hurricanes and positively affecting many, without a business plan, special funding or a proselytizing effort.
What is natural is “good.” What is “good” is what IS.
Question: Isn’t desire the origin of suffering?
“You said that attachment is the origin of suffering. The Buddha said that the root cause of suffering is desire. That is the second “Noble Truth” in Buddhism. There is a vast difference between desire and attachment. Do you think that you have the truth and Buddha does not?”
http://www.pbs.org/edens/thailand/buddhism.htm
Thank you for your question.
No. Ahnanda does not preach truth. He only shares his experiences and realizations.
Take a look at the link below:
http://www.zen-buddhism.net/buddhist-principles/four-noble-truths.html
Here is a quote from that website: The cause of suffering is: “the attachment to the desire to have (craving) and the desire not to have (aversion)”.
What happened then? Perhaps this website has the “wrong” interpretation? Millions of people believe in what you said: “Desire is the cause of suffering.” However, that belief even though held by millions is plain and simple nonsense.
This problem arises when we believe what the book says, the guru, the expert without looking at our own experience.
Buddha did not say that. It was interpreted like that.
What millions know is only the interpretation, the translation of someone who may have many degrees, who may be very proficient in many languages, but who does not have the capacity yet for inner observation. Perhaps that was a Buddhist follower, maybe not.
Through that nonsense of getting rid of desire, many “spiritual” people are denying life to their own experience through the ideal of DOING what the Buddha “said.”
Misinterpretation is the mother of all scriptures. Please quote me on that.
Perhaps if you take a test in “introduction to Buddhism” you may have to choose: “Desire is the root of all suffering” as the “right” answer. You may score 100% because of that answer, but know that your “right” answer in the “Office World,” is not so in Life.
We could have many desires. As many as we want. Suffering will kick in when we are attached to a particular desire. That means that we may need to attain/possess the object of that desire to feel fulfilled in Life.
Nevertheless, let me share a “noble truth” with you. Attachment is not the true source of suffering, but the ONE who is attached is…. Yes, the “I.”
To intellectually understand the above, is not easy. Therefore, let us stick with “attachment.” But, if “attachment” is hard to perceive, then “desire” is an easy answer. It will sell many books. 🙂
So what do we take home from all this?
Any spiritual guru or any self-realized being including the “word of God,” are by nature, limited by language. In other words, to truly understand what they are trying to convey, we need to look at those words through the mirror of our own personal experience. If it does not make sense, then that is so for us at that moment. That is OK. Move on.
If it makes sense, then do not try to “practice it.” Allow for Life to work on you and go beyond the intellectual realization, by integrating THAT as part of you. Then, you know for you ARE that. BEING is KNOWING.
But if you don’t understand and you are simply following what someone is telling you to practice, then my friend; you are not being honest with yourself, with your current state of BEING.
You may want to be like Buddha, but you ARE not there yet.
Do you think that practice will get you there?
It can only distract you from what you ARE… until you are AWARE.
Thus, “practice” is an entertainment in the meantime. Nothing wrong with that. 🙂
Honor your experience, for it is not a belief.
Life is about experiences and every experience is different. If we talk about a particular experience such as “swimming,” every participant will have a different experience out of the same thing.
The collective way of perception (Office world/ afterlife insurance) is looking for some objective, something to attain constantly out of any experience.
Boredom is typically lack of attainment. There is no objective to achieve. Nothing to DO. That same mentality is used to make sense out of Life, that is to find a “purpose” to it.
That mentality pollutes our ability to enjoy Life.
We were taught to make sure that we are getting the” best” out of Life; “milking” Life through constant activities to avoid boredom with the idea of achieving something “worthwhile in Life.”
Take a closer look at that mentality and you will find out why there is so much anxiety and stress in most minds.
Ahnanda is not promoting the life of a “loser”, that is without objectives and goals. Ahnanda is not promoting the life of a “winner” either: The one who is achieving, getting, becoming.
That duality brings its own issues.
Ahnanda is merely observing that enjoyment of Life is not in a duality.
Have objectives, dream about them. Nothing wrong with that. Achieve them if you want to, but do not expect “self-realization” out of that. Plainly, there is nothing special about it… unless you believe so. It doesn’t matter if the whole world believes in the same thing. It doesn’t make it “true” or “real.” It is only a perspective at the end of the day.
Our experience is not enough. We want more, for the mind is insatiable. We want “the” experience. Welcome to the world of beliefs.
A belief keeps the mind busy. It is the dangling carrot, always away from the donkey. The donkey may come up with pretty good “ideas” and “methods” to reach the carrot, but there is no donkey who has ever reached it, although there are stories about it.
How do I know?
Can somebody accurately describe the taste of a carrot?
That is the world of religions, belief systems and political ideals.
In Life there are no teachings. There are only experiences. The teaching is made up by the student, it is his own “aha!” moment.
If we could clearly see that every experience is different and we can only have perspectives of what we call “reality,” then we could clearly understand that there cannot be accurate written teachings, reflecting the “truth.”
Consider this: The best teachings are never written. They are never shown as teachings. They are never spoken of as teachings.
Thus, if we have “teachings” what we have in our minds, is second rated material.
Acknowledge the experience of Life knowing that it is not the only way to perceive it. That in itself will give us the openness for further perception, expansion.
If we replace our experience with a belief, inner dishonesty is unavoidable.
That is the biggest lie: The one that we tell ourselves. There cannot be “reality” there, but a perception in the land of illusions…. Like a dream.
Your experience is your truth. But it is only yours. No one else’s.
The range of human sexuality: Being is Knowing.
What we consider a “problem” or “normal” or supranormal” is just a particular experience in the total range of experiences. Those experiences will change as everything in Life changes albeit, in their own time which is beyond human control, thus destiny.
Destiny is what makes us all ONE.
Let me illustrate an example of the different ranges of human experiences, through the experience of Sexuality: Fear, frigidity, pain, premature ejaculation, dissatisfaction, numbness in the vagina, sexual addiction, lust, spermatophobia, feeling guilty, feeling wasted, pleasure, full body arousals, deep relaxation, energetic boost, feelings of love, blissful ecstasy, union beyond the corporeal…. That is a vague description of diverse ranges of experiences in human sexuality.
A “Black or white” mentally driven society or religion could label sex as “bad, dirty, lowly, sinful;” however, observe that sex is a different experience according to where we ARE in the range of experiences of human sexuality.
Likewise, a business oriented guru may say that “sex should be good, healthy, blissful and holy for all.” If you pay him a “love offering” he may teach you the “secrets” so you too could enjoy the benefits of long, blissful sex.
The issue is that ALL are not at the same point of the range of sexual experiences. Moreover, the teachings will be only techniques and mental information which do not affect or change BEING at all.
As you ARE (BEING,) so your experience of sexuality.
Most everyone wants a fulfilling, loving, blissful and ecstatic sexual experience. That is not possible.
Why?
Because everyone is in a different level in the range of experiences. Life is about experiences and those are diverse like human beings. Although, we could be “successful” in other things at the “office world.” 😉
Knowing is BEING and unless we know, we are not living.
To gather information through books, talks, etc. is not KNOWING in Life. KNOWING is BEING it.
That is why, every attempt to clarify “spiritual” (Life) things through holy books or best-sellers will only create confusion, different interpretations.
For example, we hear “ Open your heart.” That is a basic phrase in the “spiritual lingo.”
Actually it only means what you interpret it to be. Moreover, can you explain how to “open your heart”? Are you sure that your experience is fitting those words? Is your experience the only type that could happen to “open your heart”?
Observe how vague a “solution” word could be. How easy it is to throw that word out there to solve other people’s problems, but to practically fail in our own.
“Open your heart” is meaningless, but yet we believe to have the answer to the “problem.”
Observe the changes within you. BE AWARE of the changes.
Life will bring experiences. We bring biased meaning to them. Experiences are like horses in a carrousel (merry-go-round.) There are different colors of horses, different positions or shapes of horses. We will go through all of them. When we put labels or ideas to reject or accept a particular horse, we are creating our own hell, as we have to go through all of them.
Why?
BEING is KNOWING, when we are AWARE that we ARE, we KNOW, we ARE living. Without AWARENESS we are “sleeping,” death already without dying; no matter how active our “calendar of activities” is…
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. 🙂
Exploring the Depth of Living 