Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Five
March 11, 2006
A. Denis/elconwords asks:
1. I am not a fan or foe as I have not read any of your works. I only know of you through the fine folks here and by the deference they give you I accept that you are a certain authority in inner, spiritual and non-dualistic shadow puppetry, meaning that you try to impart the knowledge of light and dark through words. I also know that you have been a reader of the posts on this site for some time now and I wonder if you have any comments or reflections on things that may have grabbed you through your perusing this and the old site. Perhaps you would like to share with us some insights you have gained through our experience, in short I would like to leave an open door for anything you might like to address without a pointed question as your launch pad.
Robert answers:
Thanks for the invite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. ambosuno asks:
1. What is meditation? What do you mean by it? What is not meditation? Are there common misconceptions and misdirections about meditation that are part of some larger illusion? What might be the consequences of such?
2. To what extent is the place you stand and the content of what you say a product of the common material on "spiritual" and religious matters and to what extent and in what ways is it an original expression? Are the things you say, like perhaps the advaita-esque comments, partly generated from the current spiritual zeitgeist? To what extent and in what ways? Who are the influences that maybe mold your words, phrasing, outlook?
3. In terms of how we spend our time in life, how we express our humanity and our beingness, what are essentials and what not? Is there a sense of priority?
Robert answers:
1. I addressed the nature and practice of meditation in my last set of responses to Forum questions. You ask, “Are there common misconceptions and misdirections about meditation that are part of some larger illusion?”Sure. One is that doing certain things -- like meditating -- will make us happy, and if they don’t, then all we have to do is do them more. How easy it is to forget that real happiness is not in having (or doing) but in Being -- not being this, not being that, but simply be-ing. So easy it is to burden meditation -- and plenty of other activities, like sex -- with the expectation that it make us feel better or more secure, forgetting that when we buy into sunny-side up spirituality, all we end up with is egg on our face and a big bill. It’s crucial that we be clear about our motivations for meditating, including those that are ego-centered; if meditation is truly happening, such motivations will not go unnoticed.
2. Where I stand and the content of what I say (along with my delivery) arise out of all that I’ve learned and assimilated; as much as possible, I speak from my own direct experience, and usually try to do so in as creative and original a manner as I can, simply because doing it any other way wouldn’t bring me as much satisfaction. When I’m being original, I don’t think of myself as being original, and in fact (at such times) don’t think of myself in any way in particular, having far more interest in being possessed by the creative process. Those who have influenced my verbal outpourings include everyone from poets (Leonard Cohen is a favorite) to spiritual savants (like Adi Da prior to the 1990s); I especially appreciate and am inspired by those who elegantly encapsulate paradoxical profundities in their writings, regardless of their lineage (or lack of lineage). My loyalty is not to a particular path, but to a way of being that honors and celebrates the personal and interpersonal as much as the transpersonal.
3. What are essentials? Here’s a partial list: Whatever helps remind us of our true nature; whatever furthers the full flowering of our individuality; whatever supports our healing; whatever deepens our compassion; and being present, including when we’re taking care of details. (As we take this deeper, we may find that some or much of what we considered to be non-essential, is in fact essential.) And is there a sense of priority? Sure -- keep the non-essential (or the not-as-essential) peripheral to the essential, and do so not by ostracizing the non-essential (or the not-as-essential), but rather by keeping attention focussed on the essential.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Kim Burton (via email) asks:
1. How important and helpful he sees body psychotherapy in the evolution of consciousness?
And also, on a practical note, is it difficult to do body psychotherapy without seeing the person naked in order to assess body type and other details?
Robert answers:
1. I see body-including psychotherapy as very important in our evolution toward being truly integrated. Intuitive bodywork, in intimate connection with counselling know-how, teaches us -- firsthand -- the relationship between our fleshiness and our nonphysical dimensions, giving us a well-grounded sense both of our boundaries and of our multileveled continuity with all that is, again and again creating for us a safe place to let go of being safe. Such work, whether it’s hands-on or not, is necessarily deep much of the time, creatively and sensitively deep, inviting us to shift, level upon level, from frozen yesterday to fluidly grounded now.
The memory of what crippled us -- and perhaps still cripples us, however subtly -- waits in our cells, our tissues, our organs and fascia and skeletomuscular tensions, fresh as at the time it was first imprinted in us. The trouble is, such memory is not primarily lodged in our everyday “awareness”(its presence there usually being only spectral or mostly informational, having been stripped of most of its emotional valence in its “translation” from the depths to the surface), but rather in “older,” seemingly less accessible zones of our neurological makeup. Not surprisingly, moving from the translation back to the “original” is far more than a merely cognitive exercise, perhaps most effectively facilitated through bodywork-including psychotherapy.
Such work deepens our sensitivity to our “solutions” to our long-ago problems. It grounds our investigation of ourselves, keeping it from the jaws of unneeded abstraction, returning us to the scene of the crime with an open mind, a willing heart, and the guts to complete what was (and probably had to be) left incomplete then.
2. Nudity is not necessary. When I do bodywork with clients, they are always clothed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
D. Arthur (adastra) asks:
1. How often do you spend in witnessing consciousness – e.g. during most of your physically awake periods? In dreams? Deep sleep? About how often do you lucid dream? Has this changed since the 5-Meo experience?
2. In response to my question on how you would try to induce a nondual experience, you said, “Probably through skillful questioning during a time of effortlessly direct eye contact, following a time of deep psychoemotional opening. This, of course, would be best handled by a spiritual master like Ramana Maharshi, whose gaze would be a supremely potent invitation to step into the nakedly nondual.” Have you encountered anybody who has the same kind of transmission ability as Ramana Maharshi (especially who lives in or visits the Pacific Northwest area)? Do you consider yourself to be qualified to do this? Have you attempted to do this - have people requested it of you - and have you been successful?
3. You said, “Masturbation is, to me, mere energetic discharge of sexual energy, and is not necessarily just a solo act, but is what often passes for sex. I consider masturbation to be a denser, unillumined, non-rejuvenative form of sexual expression. (I sometimes also use the term “masturbation” in other contexts, such as “emotional masturbation” or “intellectual masturbation”.) I would distinguish masturbation from “self-love”-- if you are touching yourself sexually, and your heart is in it, and you’re including your whole being in the process, allowing an arousal that goes much deeper than mere sensation, then you are not simply discharging energy, but are taking good care of it.”
I would like further clarification of this, please. Given our (or at least, my) capacity for self-deception, how can I know for sure if I'm acting in awareness and love, or just fooling myself? If I believe, or become aware (at this point, I'm at least highly suspicious) that I am largely acting in a masturbatory manner as you have defined it, particularly in the areas of literal masturbation and sex; how then, would you advise me to move from that to the deeper kind of expression you are talking about?
Robert answers:
1. Quite a bit of the time during the waking state -- not full continuity, but plenty of moments of witnessing, and more prolonged times of witnessing when I’m working with clients. In the dream state, there’s full lucidity maybe twice a month (I’ve had years where it was twice a week or so) and some sense of witnessing perhaps a quarter of the time. I used to be more interested in lucid dreaming (beginning in the early 1970s) and did a lot of experimentation with that state, but eventually lost much of my desire to do so. The territory is very familiar to me, no matter how long I go between lucid dreams, so I don’t feel much need to visit it very often. I did have a lot of lucid dreams following my 5-MeO experience, but only for a year or so. In deep sleep, I’ve been fully conscious, but only rarely.
2. “Have you encountered anybody who has the same kind of transmission ability as Ramana Maharshi (especially who lives in or visits the Pacific Northwest area)?” Not in the Pacific Northwest! The most powerful transmission ability I’ve encountered was with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1980 during “energy darshans”. Whatever his failings, he could at that time manifest a presence that was immensely powerful and transmit it in industrial strength dosages.
Am I qualified to do this? I don’t know if I’m qualified, but it has happened from time to time. People have not directly requested it of me, and when it happens, I don’t label it as nondual experience, but simply hang out with them in our awareness-aware-of-awareness condition, waiting until a bit later to discuss what happened.
3. How can you know for sure you’re not fooling yourself? You can begin by deepening your meditative practice, to the point where it’s possible to observe the mechanics of self-deception, including the self-talk doing the propagandizing. It’s also very helpful to be with a partner who has sufficient maturity to have a well-developed bullshit detector and who also has your full permission to use it.
How do you know if you’re acting in awareness? If you’re even asking such a question, you’re more in your mind than in awareness. Get more used to being in bare awareness. No frills, no pats on the back, no glamor, just undressed awareness. And love? Visit it more often, get familiar with its touch, memorize the feeling of its presence, and don’t fill its absence with compensatory activity (including sex).
To move beyond masturbatory sex, breathe more awareness into your longing for the kind of connection that epitomizes deep sex. Make love more important than sensation. Make sure you are emotionally connected to your partner before you get sexual. If you find that you are being mechanical during sex, stop, open your eyes, breathe, and tune into your partner and yourself, and talk about/explore that mechanicalness. Make truth more important than security. Do not lose touch with your partner during sex, and do not lose touch with your caring for your partner during sex (this is helped by both of you maintaining eye-contact at least some of the time); this will help you to enter a more heart-centered lust.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
E. Jana/Plasmafly asks:
1. “When we remain outside our fear, we remain trapped within it. When we, however, consciously get inside our fear, it’s as if it turns inside out. Getting inside our fear with wakeful attention and compassion actually expands (or everts) our fear beyond itself. Once the contractedness at the center of fear ceases to be fueled, fear unravels, dissipates, terminates its occupancy of us. In entering our fear, we end our fear of it. Through attending closely, caringly, and carefully to the particulars of our fear, we decentralize it, so that its intentions and viewpoint can no longer govern us. When the light goes on in the grottoes of dread, then fear is little more than our case of mistaken identity having a bad day. When we touch our fear with authentic caring, it de-tenses and de-compresses, usually quickly becoming something other than fear, something unburdened by fear’s agendas or headlines.” RAM
I read your piece on fear, and think that since fear is “consciousness moving away” it is rather hard to switch around and invite it for tea. How do you do this with clients?
2. I am thinking that “love” is a more comprehensive “opposite” to fear…and bravery is simply a side of love. Of course when one “loves” then courage is not work it just is.
I pictured fear and love put into the yin/yang symbol….so that each has a little of the other in it. I am not sure if this is fundamentally correct; is there another visual image you would use to describe the interrelationship between love and fear?
3. I see nature, phenomena, mind and physiology as hyperbolic in nature. An "action/force/consciousness" would move in one direction to its zenith, reach its threshold of endurance and then flip into its opposite. I have experienced this phenomena in boy/girl relationship...but only when the individual was armored/neurotic...they would rubberband between opening and closure as regular as the sun coming up.
Do you see this hyperbolic pattern with your clients in their response to you? And do you observe it in your personal intimate relationships, or have you and your partner reached a level in which this fundamental physics of chemistry is changed into a different pattern. The following piece on the spillover effect might explain the hyperbolic nature of mind and emotion.
’Aquili and Newberg outline "four basic categories of arousal/quiescent states that may occur during extraordinary phases of consciousness": The Hyperquiescent state; the Hyperarousal state; the Hyperquiescent state with Eruption of the Arousal System; and The Hyperarousal State with Eruption of the Quiescent System. In addition they propose a fifth state where both systems are maximally aroused, the absolute unitary state (AUB). The Mystical Mind, 25-16; see also d’Aquili and Newberg, "Liminality, Trance and Unitary States in Ritual and Meditation," Studia Liturgica 23 (1993):2-24.
D’Aquili and Laughlin report research that shows that when either the arousal or quiescent system is maximally stimulated it results in a "spillover effect" or a stimulation of the other system. That is, experts in meditation may experience a "rush" or a release of energy during a hyperquiescent state. From the other side, those who engage in rhythmic rituals that engage the arousal system, such as energetic dancing and singing, may experience states of bliss, tranquility, and oneness with others. Hyperarousal and hyperquiescent states seem to stimulate the limbic system, which regulates our emotions. Hence, these states are experienced as being emotionally intense, and often pleasurable.
In summary, in states of very high activity around one circuit, there can be a "spillover" such that the dormant system activates and goes "on line" simultaneously with the other. Although rare, this dual state can lead to a sense of "tremendous release of energy" that may feel like "oceanic bliss" or absorption into the object of contemplation.
And in extreme cases there is a "maximal discharge" of both systems, inducing brain activities perceived by the mind as the Absolute Unity of Being or AUB, which brings the abolition of any discrete boundaries between beings, by the absence of a sense of time-flow, and by the elimination of the self-other dichotomy. A mystic in the AUB state will experience either a divine being, such as God, or the cosmic void of Nirvana, depending on whether there has been a predominantly ergotropic or trophotropic involvement. Yet we cannot reduce religious awe, numinous vision or mystical experience to merely a neurochemical flux.
It is also during these "spillover" experiences that the paradoxes presented to the brain through myth become resolved by the simultaneous functioning of both hemispheres of the brain. In ritual stimulation of the arousal system, for example, the presentation of what is an unresolvable logical problem in the left brain (the wafer is both bread and the Body of Christ), is experienced as unified in the holistic operation of the right brain.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/pantheon/ArtemisII.html
Why God Won't Go Away : Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Paperback)
by Andrew Md Newberg, Eugene G. D'Aquili, Vince Rause; Ballantine Books, 2002
Also this article by Michael Persinger points to this spill over effect actually having an anatomical correlate in the brain...with regards to the specialized and polar functions of the two hemispheres...a simplistic way of looking at it is that the charge builds to threshold in one hemisphere then bleeds off into the other hemisphere to "balance." www.innerworlds.50megs.com/enlightenment.htm Forgetting About Enlightenment: Enlightenment as a Neural process
Robert answers:
1. Gradually and respectfully, beginning with smaller fears.
2. Love can include fear, but not vice versa. A symbol? I see a circle which includes a dark band close to its circumference; the circle is love, the band fear. At its darkest, the band does not know that it is included in love’s embrace, and will not know until it is penetrated by the torchlight of awareness.
3. I sometimes see this hyperbolic pattern with clients in their resistance to the work they need to do (my way of dealing with this is to have them cultivate intimacy with their resistance, so that its energies are not repressed, but rather only liberated from their viewpoint). With regard to my partner (Diane) and me, I don’t observe this pattern.
Let me add something here about THE IMPORTANCE OF SAFETY IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP:
To go truly deep in an intimate relationship, we need to feel safe with the other. We need to know — and know with our whole being — that we can trust them, and not just when we’re with them. This is a trust based not on thinking that we should trust them, but rather on feeling right to our core their trustworthiness — their integrity, their commitment to remaining present, their passion for accessing love, depth, and freedom with and through us.
If we cannot count on the other to consistently take good care of the container of our relationship — as when, for example, energy is leaked through cracks created by erotically wandering attention — then we’ll find that there is only so deep we can go with them. If one partner is chronically calling the whole relationship into question every time there’s a fight, then the other is probably going to become wary of opening fully. Less safety means more shallows.
Making the ground of a relationship unnecessarily unstable — as when certain boundaries are overridden or trivialized in the name of “freedom” — keeps the relationship from being as deep and fulfilling as it could be. The point isn’t to create a bastion of security, but to be a safe place for one’s partner to let go of playing it safe. Feeling safe is much, much more than just feeling secure.
Real safety creates an atmosphere in which we can give our all without giving ourselves away. Real safety makes room for a truly radical sharing of all that we are. Without it, we may seem to be free to go where we could not otherwise go, but such freedom — in its relative superficiality — is far more limiting than is the freedom that arises in the presence of genuine safety between intimates.
The safer I feel with my partner, the deeper I can go with her. The safer I feel with her, the deeper the risks I can take with her. The safer I feel with her, the deeper and more fulfilling the passions are between us; anger becomes a guardian of intimacy, lust a magnifier of intimacy, and ecstasy a celebration of intimacy.
Real safety in a relationship gives us room to show up in all of our colors. It gives us full permission to be in as much pain as we actually are, thereby making more than possible the healing we need in order to come fully alive, the healing through which we are awakened by all things. What joy, what benediction, what grace, to share this in the dynamic safety possible in an intimate relationship!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A. Denis/elconwords asks:
1. I am not a fan or foe as I have not read any of your works. I only know of you through the fine folks here and by the deference they give you I accept that you are a certain authority in inner, spiritual and non-dualistic shadow puppetry, meaning that you try to impart the knowledge of light and dark through words. I also know that you have been a reader of the posts on this site for some time now and I wonder if you have any comments or reflections on things that may have grabbed you through your perusing this and the old site. Perhaps you would like to share with us some insights you have gained through our experience, in short I would like to leave an open door for anything you might like to address without a pointed question as your launch pad.
Robert answers:
Thanks for the invite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. ambosuno asks:
1. What is meditation? What do you mean by it? What is not meditation? Are there common misconceptions and misdirections about meditation that are part of some larger illusion? What might be the consequences of such?
2. To what extent is the place you stand and the content of what you say a product of the common material on "spiritual" and religious matters and to what extent and in what ways is it an original expression? Are the things you say, like perhaps the advaita-esque comments, partly generated from the current spiritual zeitgeist? To what extent and in what ways? Who are the influences that maybe mold your words, phrasing, outlook?
3. In terms of how we spend our time in life, how we express our humanity and our beingness, what are essentials and what not? Is there a sense of priority?
Robert answers:
1. I addressed the nature and practice of meditation in my last set of responses to Forum questions. You ask, “Are there common misconceptions and misdirections about meditation that are part of some larger illusion?”Sure. One is that doing certain things -- like meditating -- will make us happy, and if they don’t, then all we have to do is do them more. How easy it is to forget that real happiness is not in having (or doing) but in Being -- not being this, not being that, but simply be-ing. So easy it is to burden meditation -- and plenty of other activities, like sex -- with the expectation that it make us feel better or more secure, forgetting that when we buy into sunny-side up spirituality, all we end up with is egg on our face and a big bill. It’s crucial that we be clear about our motivations for meditating, including those that are ego-centered; if meditation is truly happening, such motivations will not go unnoticed.
2. Where I stand and the content of what I say (along with my delivery) arise out of all that I’ve learned and assimilated; as much as possible, I speak from my own direct experience, and usually try to do so in as creative and original a manner as I can, simply because doing it any other way wouldn’t bring me as much satisfaction. When I’m being original, I don’t think of myself as being original, and in fact (at such times) don’t think of myself in any way in particular, having far more interest in being possessed by the creative process. Those who have influenced my verbal outpourings include everyone from poets (Leonard Cohen is a favorite) to spiritual savants (like Adi Da prior to the 1990s); I especially appreciate and am inspired by those who elegantly encapsulate paradoxical profundities in their writings, regardless of their lineage (or lack of lineage). My loyalty is not to a particular path, but to a way of being that honors and celebrates the personal and interpersonal as much as the transpersonal.
3. What are essentials? Here’s a partial list: Whatever helps remind us of our true nature; whatever furthers the full flowering of our individuality; whatever supports our healing; whatever deepens our compassion; and being present, including when we’re taking care of details. (As we take this deeper, we may find that some or much of what we considered to be non-essential, is in fact essential.) And is there a sense of priority? Sure -- keep the non-essential (or the not-as-essential) peripheral to the essential, and do so not by ostracizing the non-essential (or the not-as-essential), but rather by keeping attention focussed on the essential.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Kim Burton (via email) asks:
1. How important and helpful he sees body psychotherapy in the evolution of consciousness?
And also, on a practical note, is it difficult to do body psychotherapy without seeing the person naked in order to assess body type and other details?
Robert answers:
1. I see body-including psychotherapy as very important in our evolution toward being truly integrated. Intuitive bodywork, in intimate connection with counselling know-how, teaches us -- firsthand -- the relationship between our fleshiness and our nonphysical dimensions, giving us a well-grounded sense both of our boundaries and of our multileveled continuity with all that is, again and again creating for us a safe place to let go of being safe. Such work, whether it’s hands-on or not, is necessarily deep much of the time, creatively and sensitively deep, inviting us to shift, level upon level, from frozen yesterday to fluidly grounded now.
The memory of what crippled us -- and perhaps still cripples us, however subtly -- waits in our cells, our tissues, our organs and fascia and skeletomuscular tensions, fresh as at the time it was first imprinted in us. The trouble is, such memory is not primarily lodged in our everyday “awareness”(its presence there usually being only spectral or mostly informational, having been stripped of most of its emotional valence in its “translation” from the depths to the surface), but rather in “older,” seemingly less accessible zones of our neurological makeup. Not surprisingly, moving from the translation back to the “original” is far more than a merely cognitive exercise, perhaps most effectively facilitated through bodywork-including psychotherapy.
Such work deepens our sensitivity to our “solutions” to our long-ago problems. It grounds our investigation of ourselves, keeping it from the jaws of unneeded abstraction, returning us to the scene of the crime with an open mind, a willing heart, and the guts to complete what was (and probably had to be) left incomplete then.
2. Nudity is not necessary. When I do bodywork with clients, they are always clothed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
D. Arthur (adastra) asks:
1. How often do you spend in witnessing consciousness – e.g. during most of your physically awake periods? In dreams? Deep sleep? About how often do you lucid dream? Has this changed since the 5-Meo experience?
2. In response to my question on how you would try to induce a nondual experience, you said, “Probably through skillful questioning during a time of effortlessly direct eye contact, following a time of deep psychoemotional opening. This, of course, would be best handled by a spiritual master like Ramana Maharshi, whose gaze would be a supremely potent invitation to step into the nakedly nondual.” Have you encountered anybody who has the same kind of transmission ability as Ramana Maharshi (especially who lives in or visits the Pacific Northwest area)? Do you consider yourself to be qualified to do this? Have you attempted to do this - have people requested it of you - and have you been successful?
3. You said, “Masturbation is, to me, mere energetic discharge of sexual energy, and is not necessarily just a solo act, but is what often passes for sex. I consider masturbation to be a denser, unillumined, non-rejuvenative form of sexual expression. (I sometimes also use the term “masturbation” in other contexts, such as “emotional masturbation” or “intellectual masturbation”.) I would distinguish masturbation from “self-love”-- if you are touching yourself sexually, and your heart is in it, and you’re including your whole being in the process, allowing an arousal that goes much deeper than mere sensation, then you are not simply discharging energy, but are taking good care of it.”
I would like further clarification of this, please. Given our (or at least, my) capacity for self-deception, how can I know for sure if I'm acting in awareness and love, or just fooling myself? If I believe, or become aware (at this point, I'm at least highly suspicious) that I am largely acting in a masturbatory manner as you have defined it, particularly in the areas of literal masturbation and sex; how then, would you advise me to move from that to the deeper kind of expression you are talking about?
Robert answers:
1. Quite a bit of the time during the waking state -- not full continuity, but plenty of moments of witnessing, and more prolonged times of witnessing when I’m working with clients. In the dream state, there’s full lucidity maybe twice a month (I’ve had years where it was twice a week or so) and some sense of witnessing perhaps a quarter of the time. I used to be more interested in lucid dreaming (beginning in the early 1970s) and did a lot of experimentation with that state, but eventually lost much of my desire to do so. The territory is very familiar to me, no matter how long I go between lucid dreams, so I don’t feel much need to visit it very often. I did have a lot of lucid dreams following my 5-MeO experience, but only for a year or so. In deep sleep, I’ve been fully conscious, but only rarely.
2. “Have you encountered anybody who has the same kind of transmission ability as Ramana Maharshi (especially who lives in or visits the Pacific Northwest area)?” Not in the Pacific Northwest! The most powerful transmission ability I’ve encountered was with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1980 during “energy darshans”. Whatever his failings, he could at that time manifest a presence that was immensely powerful and transmit it in industrial strength dosages.
Am I qualified to do this? I don’t know if I’m qualified, but it has happened from time to time. People have not directly requested it of me, and when it happens, I don’t label it as nondual experience, but simply hang out with them in our awareness-aware-of-awareness condition, waiting until a bit later to discuss what happened.
3. How can you know for sure you’re not fooling yourself? You can begin by deepening your meditative practice, to the point where it’s possible to observe the mechanics of self-deception, including the self-talk doing the propagandizing. It’s also very helpful to be with a partner who has sufficient maturity to have a well-developed bullshit detector and who also has your full permission to use it.
How do you know if you’re acting in awareness? If you’re even asking such a question, you’re more in your mind than in awareness. Get more used to being in bare awareness. No frills, no pats on the back, no glamor, just undressed awareness. And love? Visit it more often, get familiar with its touch, memorize the feeling of its presence, and don’t fill its absence with compensatory activity (including sex).
To move beyond masturbatory sex, breathe more awareness into your longing for the kind of connection that epitomizes deep sex. Make love more important than sensation. Make sure you are emotionally connected to your partner before you get sexual. If you find that you are being mechanical during sex, stop, open your eyes, breathe, and tune into your partner and yourself, and talk about/explore that mechanicalness. Make truth more important than security. Do not lose touch with your partner during sex, and do not lose touch with your caring for your partner during sex (this is helped by both of you maintaining eye-contact at least some of the time); this will help you to enter a more heart-centered lust.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
E. Jana/Plasmafly asks:
1. “When we remain outside our fear, we remain trapped within it. When we, however, consciously get inside our fear, it’s as if it turns inside out. Getting inside our fear with wakeful attention and compassion actually expands (or everts) our fear beyond itself. Once the contractedness at the center of fear ceases to be fueled, fear unravels, dissipates, terminates its occupancy of us. In entering our fear, we end our fear of it. Through attending closely, caringly, and carefully to the particulars of our fear, we decentralize it, so that its intentions and viewpoint can no longer govern us. When the light goes on in the grottoes of dread, then fear is little more than our case of mistaken identity having a bad day. When we touch our fear with authentic caring, it de-tenses and de-compresses, usually quickly becoming something other than fear, something unburdened by fear’s agendas or headlines.” RAM
I read your piece on fear, and think that since fear is “consciousness moving away” it is rather hard to switch around and invite it for tea. How do you do this with clients?
2. I am thinking that “love” is a more comprehensive “opposite” to fear…and bravery is simply a side of love. Of course when one “loves” then courage is not work it just is.
I pictured fear and love put into the yin/yang symbol….so that each has a little of the other in it. I am not sure if this is fundamentally correct; is there another visual image you would use to describe the interrelationship between love and fear?
3. I see nature, phenomena, mind and physiology as hyperbolic in nature. An "action/force/consciousness" would move in one direction to its zenith, reach its threshold of endurance and then flip into its opposite. I have experienced this phenomena in boy/girl relationship...but only when the individual was armored/neurotic...they would rubberband between opening and closure as regular as the sun coming up.
Do you see this hyperbolic pattern with your clients in their response to you? And do you observe it in your personal intimate relationships, or have you and your partner reached a level in which this fundamental physics of chemistry is changed into a different pattern. The following piece on the spillover effect might explain the hyperbolic nature of mind and emotion.
’Aquili and Newberg outline "four basic categories of arousal/quiescent states that may occur during extraordinary phases of consciousness": The Hyperquiescent state; the Hyperarousal state; the Hyperquiescent state with Eruption of the Arousal System; and The Hyperarousal State with Eruption of the Quiescent System. In addition they propose a fifth state where both systems are maximally aroused, the absolute unitary state (AUB). The Mystical Mind, 25-16; see also d’Aquili and Newberg, "Liminality, Trance and Unitary States in Ritual and Meditation," Studia Liturgica 23 (1993):2-24.
D’Aquili and Laughlin report research that shows that when either the arousal or quiescent system is maximally stimulated it results in a "spillover effect" or a stimulation of the other system. That is, experts in meditation may experience a "rush" or a release of energy during a hyperquiescent state. From the other side, those who engage in rhythmic rituals that engage the arousal system, such as energetic dancing and singing, may experience states of bliss, tranquility, and oneness with others. Hyperarousal and hyperquiescent states seem to stimulate the limbic system, which regulates our emotions. Hence, these states are experienced as being emotionally intense, and often pleasurable.
In summary, in states of very high activity around one circuit, there can be a "spillover" such that the dormant system activates and goes "on line" simultaneously with the other. Although rare, this dual state can lead to a sense of "tremendous release of energy" that may feel like "oceanic bliss" or absorption into the object of contemplation.
And in extreme cases there is a "maximal discharge" of both systems, inducing brain activities perceived by the mind as the Absolute Unity of Being or AUB, which brings the abolition of any discrete boundaries between beings, by the absence of a sense of time-flow, and by the elimination of the self-other dichotomy. A mystic in the AUB state will experience either a divine being, such as God, or the cosmic void of Nirvana, depending on whether there has been a predominantly ergotropic or trophotropic involvement. Yet we cannot reduce religious awe, numinous vision or mystical experience to merely a neurochemical flux.
It is also during these "spillover" experiences that the paradoxes presented to the brain through myth become resolved by the simultaneous functioning of both hemispheres of the brain. In ritual stimulation of the arousal system, for example, the presentation of what is an unresolvable logical problem in the left brain (the wafer is both bread and the Body of Christ), is experienced as unified in the holistic operation of the right brain.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/pantheon/ArtemisII.html
Why God Won't Go Away : Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Paperback)
by Andrew Md Newberg, Eugene G. D'Aquili, Vince Rause; Ballantine Books, 2002
Also this article by Michael Persinger points to this spill over effect actually having an anatomical correlate in the brain...with regards to the specialized and polar functions of the two hemispheres...a simplistic way of looking at it is that the charge builds to threshold in one hemisphere then bleeds off into the other hemisphere to "balance." www.innerworlds.50megs.com/enlightenment.htm Forgetting About Enlightenment: Enlightenment as a Neural process
Robert answers:
1. Gradually and respectfully, beginning with smaller fears.
2. Love can include fear, but not vice versa. A symbol? I see a circle which includes a dark band close to its circumference; the circle is love, the band fear. At its darkest, the band does not know that it is included in love’s embrace, and will not know until it is penetrated by the torchlight of awareness.
3. I sometimes see this hyperbolic pattern with clients in their resistance to the work they need to do (my way of dealing with this is to have them cultivate intimacy with their resistance, so that its energies are not repressed, but rather only liberated from their viewpoint). With regard to my partner (Diane) and me, I don’t observe this pattern.
Let me add something here about THE IMPORTANCE OF SAFETY IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP:
To go truly deep in an intimate relationship, we need to feel safe with the other. We need to know — and know with our whole being — that we can trust them, and not just when we’re with them. This is a trust based not on thinking that we should trust them, but rather on feeling right to our core their trustworthiness — their integrity, their commitment to remaining present, their passion for accessing love, depth, and freedom with and through us.
If we cannot count on the other to consistently take good care of the container of our relationship — as when, for example, energy is leaked through cracks created by erotically wandering attention — then we’ll find that there is only so deep we can go with them. If one partner is chronically calling the whole relationship into question every time there’s a fight, then the other is probably going to become wary of opening fully. Less safety means more shallows.
Making the ground of a relationship unnecessarily unstable — as when certain boundaries are overridden or trivialized in the name of “freedom” — keeps the relationship from being as deep and fulfilling as it could be. The point isn’t to create a bastion of security, but to be a safe place for one’s partner to let go of playing it safe. Feeling safe is much, much more than just feeling secure.
Real safety creates an atmosphere in which we can give our all without giving ourselves away. Real safety makes room for a truly radical sharing of all that we are. Without it, we may seem to be free to go where we could not otherwise go, but such freedom — in its relative superficiality — is far more limiting than is the freedom that arises in the presence of genuine safety between intimates.
The safer I feel with my partner, the deeper I can go with her. The safer I feel with her, the deeper the risks I can take with her. The safer I feel with her, the deeper and more fulfilling the passions are between us; anger becomes a guardian of intimacy, lust a magnifier of intimacy, and ecstasy a celebration of intimacy.
Real safety in a relationship gives us room to show up in all of our colors. It gives us full permission to be in as much pain as we actually are, thereby making more than possible the healing we need in order to come fully alive, the healing through which we are awakened by all things. What joy, what benediction, what grace, to share this in the dynamic safety possible in an intimate relationship!
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posted by adastra at 4:56 PM
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