“Anytime you find yourself wanting sympathy, you’re trying to get someone to join you in your mythology. And it always hurts.”
– Byron Katie
Tag: Byron Katie
“The heart says only one thing…”
“Believing that what you want equals what’s best for you is a dead end. It makes the mind stiff, inflexible, caught in a picture of reality rather than open to the wisdom of the way of it…
The heart doesn’t move, it just waits. You don’t have to listen to it, but until you do you’re going to hurt. And the heart says only one thing: What Is, is.”
– Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy
What is social activism?
James Wood:
Social activism is a form of love in action. If you base your activism in a value judgment – e.g., that the world is “messed up” – you will only create more pain in the world.
As far as social activism is concerned, just liberate yourself and trust what happens. Human rights arise from the true heart of all morality, the conscious human being. The more awake you are in the world, the more just, righteous, and fair your actions are. Anger does not produce positive social change. Liberation does. Anger just makes you harder, meaner and more afraid. Negativity in any form is not necessary for vigorous action that, in its own way, subverts an unjust social order.
– The Path of Awakening (2007) p. 110
Vernon Howard:
If you straighten yourself out, if you are no longer putting out hostility or deception, then you are putting out something that is helpful, therefore that is the only thing you can do to help society… Your anger is the cause of war.
-The Esoteric Path to a New Life MP3 CD, “A revealing interview with Vernon Howard”
Byron Katie:
Just as we use stress and fear to motivate ourselves to make money, we often rely on anger and frustration to move us to social activism. If I want to act sanely and effectively while I clean up the earth’s environment, let me begin by cleaning up my own environment. All the trash and pollution in my thinking- let me clean that up, by meeting it with love and understanding. Then my action can become truly effective. It takes just one person to help the planet. That one is you.
-Loving What Is (2003) p. 107-108 and here is an additional excerpt on activism from A Thousand Names for Joy (2007)
Franklin Merrell-Wolff:
This view is not merely altruism in the usual meaning of the word, for in the latter sense, altruism involves a difference between one’s own self and others… I Recognize more in every man’s Recognition. I am delayed by every man’s failure. Every new facet opened by another individual man breaking through is a new facet awakened in My understanding. Thus, from this standpoint, the duality of selfishness and altruism is destroyed.
-Experience and Philosophy (1994) p.91
Resistance
James Wood:
“The unawakened state is characterized by resistance or this shouldn’t be happening. Suffering is caused by a split between Reality and what you think it should be. When what is happening and what you think should be happening are different, you suffer. To the degree that you energize what you think should be happening in opposition to what is happening, you experience the pain of unconsciousness, like steel plates grinding against each other.
How do you know what should be happening? Look around; it’s happening.
There is nothing you can do about it.
In addition to a should, resistance can also be expressed as a want or a need: this shouldn’t be happening then becomes I want this not to be happening or I need this not to be happening. If what I want to be happening or what I need to be happening is different from what actually is happening, I generate pain and unconsciousness. For example, consider the following statements: “It should be raining.” “I want it to rain.” “I need it to rain.” If it’s not raining, attaching to these thoughts hurts. In the awakened state, I recognize that what should be happening, what I want to be happening, and what I need to be happening are all the same thing.”
– Ten Paths to Freedom by James Wood
Inquiry
The Game of Life: Who’s playing?
“True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. This inner alignment with now is the end of suffering.”
—
“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.”
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“What you truly need may not be what you think you need.”
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I never made any plans-
the Plan is there
and we can fit in
with joyous ease
and delightful uncertainty.
—
I like movies. A lot. Have you seen The Game? It’s way high on my list of favorites.
So, Michael Douglas’ character signs up to play a very mysterious game – there seem to be no rules, no boundaries and no objectives. Or, he is not told what the point is when he signs up to play.
The Game is different for each player, and the rules change continuously, depending on the player’s responses and reactions. Once a player has committed to the game, it does not stop… until… well, writing too much about it will spoil the effect for those of you who haven’t seen it :)
—
“Awakening is Truth-recognition. It is not an experience, state, or form of anything you can mentally know. The path of awakening involves finding false ideas, or lies, and seeing their falseness. When you see their falseness, you see truth. To find truth you have to be a detective. You have to notice that things don’t add up, like a bad alibi.”
–James Wood The Path of Awakening (2007) p. 2-3
Who’s playing? ;)
Have you met a teacher of spiritual awakening?
Have you met or studied in person with any of the teachers listed in the sidebar of the home page here? I would love to hear from you if you have!!
It is exciting to see ‘spiritual awakening’ become a more commonplace interest. Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle seem to be the most popular voices right now; they both present the teaching in a way that jives with living a typical modern life.
If you are familiar with Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle, probably you have wondered, as I have – what was it like to be with these teachers before they got famous? How did they teach before they were booking huge, sold-out venues? Who were their first students?
Perhaps our task of discernment is easier with teachers who already have an established following of relatively intelligent, ‘normal’ people (whatever that means :)
Perhaps it’s easier to recognize teachers who have published books and videos because we can digest the message from a distance. We can sit back, comfortable in our own homes, and run the material through our BS detectors. We can check to see if it’s the same message (different expression/terminology) given by the true teachers we already recognize. We can check to see if the inner teacher says, “yes!”
But before Eckhart Tolle wrote The Power of Now, and before Byron Katie wrote Loving What Is, I wonder… how did people respond to them? What was it like to be with them?
Here is a written interview in which Byron Katie talks about the early days after her ‘transition’. And a super fun video interview with Eckhart Tolle on Canadian TV show The Hour. In it, Eckhart talks about his childhood.
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I started a Twitter account today… let’s connect if you are there too!
Who are these teachers of spiritual awakening?
One of the many benefits of getting to know James before he wrote his book and got busy teaching was the time we spent discussing the teachers who influenced him when he was a student.
James has an extensive collection of audio tapes, CDs and literature written by awakened individuals. In those early days we would spend hours watching videos, listening to talks and reading excerpts from the books. We talked about the material at length. At first, I was skeptical of every one of these individuals. I was fond of the Zen tradition of transmission, in which a teacher receives permission to teach from his or her superior, usually after decades of formal practice. Most of the teachers James introduced me to had not received formal transmission of any sort. They spoke on their own authority, using their own terms, about awakening.
Listening to the first borrowed audio talk in my car driving home from James’ house, my skepticism flew out the window. (As I recall, it was a tape of Bryon Katie leading people through The Work… ) I borrowed more material and couldn’t keep my head out of the books. All these teachers were saying the same thing, in their own terms, in their own ways! But the message was the same message, and the same root teaching of Zen – life is suffering and there is a way out. As Byron Katie says, “you are the cause of your suffering, but only all of it.” This was great news.
I noticed several things as I learned about these teachers. I noticed that they do not rely on religious traditions, texts or systems. They may refer to passages in religious texts or use certain rituals, but they communicate only from the authority of their own personal and direct realization. They speak spontaneously in response to their immediate surroundings, listeners and life circumstances. Talks do not have the tone of a planned lecture. In general, there is not a course of study or step by step plan of attainment. There may be guidelines or mile-markers that students tend to notice along the way, but the mile-markers are not stages of enlightenment, just the possible results of applying certain practices.
In my studies, I did not hear these teachers say – you are already free, there is nothing you need to do. There is no denial that we are suffering anxiety, stress, fear, anger and the whole spectrum of negative emotions. They say, freedom is our birthright, or natural state, and we cannot do anything search-wise to find it. True freedom comes by grace, and, we can take steps that develop a stronger psychological/physical/emotional/social vessel that is able to contain and express that natural state. Practices like meditation and inquiry help me. I am not spiritually awake, but there is progress that I feel as less density and a relief from the sense of dis-ease.
Access to the work of a variety of persons living and expressing the awakened state grew my hope and determination to keep going. At first exposure, I felt the light at the end of the tunnel getting brighter and over time I feel my ‘self’ getting lighter.
Svaha 