Getting To The Root Of It All
I am currently in touch again with a longing to return to a simple state of existence and consciousness. When I contact this longing I often have the physical experience of almost falling backward and translate that now into a longing to get behind the complexities of my thinking and reflections, my feelings and bodily processes and my conditionings. I have a deep need, or is it a longing, that at the heart of all processes are very simple states of consciousness/being: when I meet this simplicity in myself I am at ease on all the levels and life naturally unfolds.
CONTACT
It seems to me that the very first thing in the arising of consciousness is in making contact. All life is relational and perhaps consciousness can only truly arise in relationship. Therefore contact is a primary baseline for consciousness. I am reminded of the letter YUD in the Hebrew alphabet which is the primordial point out of which all the other letters can be formed.
When I allow myself to come into contact with anything, be it a felt experience, an emotion, a thought or belief system, a body system or developmental process, then that is my first opening up to consciousness in that encounter. I must make contact first. In this area of CONTACT is perhaps the original cell. Maybe this is the ONE and original WHOLENESS.
PURE HEART/PURE INTENTION
This came to me while on El Hierro, one of the tiny Canary Islands when I came across a statue of The Mother and Child. I stood in front of it for some time and it came to me that this image was truly an expression of PURE HEART. The absolutely natural love and bonding between a parent and child. Receiving as an act of Love strongly fits into this pure heart.
For me, it represents our innate goodness and Being nature that exists behind any complications that might have arisen in this primary relationship. At its most simple this is what that primary relationship is. As I write this, my heart feels full, has weight and substance, and there are also all my stories around my personal attachment history………….but behind all that there is simply PURE HEART and there seems no question of polarity or duality and yet I know they too are held in this state or whatever we may call it. I am not good or bad but hold both in me within the wholeness of my consciousness.
Pure Heart speaks to the heart of things. In Buddhism, the enquiry of natural goodness and natural compassion are expressions of the unlimitable states of consciousness. These qualities are compassion, joy in relationship also known as sympathetic joy, natural loving kindness which is about resonance and empathy in our mutual connectedness and also peace in the heart of things. The heart of being and that being to being relationship is a very heartful relationship.
CLEAR PRESENCE
This came to me after a visit with Mother Meera where she simply puts her hands on either side of your head and looks into your eyes. This happens in a room with maybe a couple of hundred people and is in total silence.
Afterward the words Clear Presence came to me in that I felt absolutely no conditioning or agenda present in Mother Meera. My body felt tremendous ease with this possibility of stepping behind my conditioning even for brief moments. All holding in the tissue seemed to fall away and I was more grounded and present.
To feel my way into any situation from this place allowed me to really be able to recognize, acknowledge and unconditionally accept that this is the way it (the situation, person, me, the process or whatever the ‘it’) is right now and to find the ease in stepping behind that. This is the conditioning at play in this moment. In this moment, we may or may not be able to change anything. It is possibly a place of no action and non-doing in and of itself and holds no agenda for the self or other.
Within Clear Presence is the possibility of stories, associations and memories arising. We learn to engage with them and disengage (as we step behind) from them in such a way as to allow us to loosen our identification with earlier experiences.
DIRECT COMMUNICATON
Tissue to tissue……………direct communication comes from the cells and tissues of the body and the consciousness therein. There is nothing in the way. Sometimes there are words and sometimes not. If there are words they are often sensation words or a direct expression of what is arising in this immediate moment.
Both story and conditioning may be there and recognized AND perhaps able to be stepped behind also. In order for there to be Direct Communication, there has to be heart centred presence and contact and then there can be attunement from which we can have direct empathetic resonance and direct knowing of the other in me and communication can flow from there.
EMPATHIC RESONANCE
From the direct and tissue cellular experience of Empathic Resonance we can, as writer Daniel Siegel says ‘feel felt’ by the other. The ‘other’ in Original Nature can be me, the self or even the SELF or another human being. It seems that when I can offer myself empathic resonance, with boundary, then something at very subtle and deep levels shifts inside me. The knowing of the other within me is one form of direct knowing and out of that, I can communicate from a place of empathy. Another is the direct knowing of oneself through deepening into the moment of bodily sensation and related emotion.
Empathic Resonance and Attunement are areas that allow for the Direct Communication and Perfect Right Action, Interaction and Timing to happen.
PERFECT RIGHT ACTION, INTERACTION, AND TIMING
This is a natural outcome of all of the above and deeply incorporates the basic principles of 1 Receiving as an Act of Love, and also 2 Recognition, Acknowledgment and Unconditional positive regard. It is the LILA or play of LIFE. This is THE DANCE in a good enough way which is what is meant by perfection in the here and now.
DIRECT EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
Recognition of same and different in the one moment – sometimes known as reconciliation of opposites – where duality falls away and ALL is here now and known in a deeply embodied way. (very hard to write coherently about this!)
ALL OF THE ABOVE are inter-relational and one cannot exist without the other. It is a constant cycle and spiral and they do not come in linear structure but as more of a natural outcome.
These points are encompassing the vastness of the ORIGINS of the Nature of every moment. The being to being heart place is here in everything and in every moment.
Receiving as an Act of Love: This comes from the work of Ronald Fairbairn. ‘The little one is an inherently loving being whose most basic need is for its love to be seen and received: experiencing receiving as an act of love. If I have a genuine need to give you something and you have a genuine need for that thing then that becomes a receiving of each other and is an act of love in its mutuality and non polarization of giving and receiving. Giving and receiving become one.
Our most basic needs at the level of Being are for Recognition, Acknowledgment and Unconditional Acceptance. Frank Lake speaks to the basic needs of Being; experiencing the other heartfully and unconditionally.