July 2020 - Compassion Group Notes
What is Psychology?
Psychology is the study of the psyche (soul) - in other words, “who you are.” You are a soul. What we call ego, is merely a function that arises within you to survive and thrive as a human, physical being. You are a spiritual being, a soul, having a human, physical experience, as Teilhard Chardin so beautifully said. In other words, you are both fully human and fully divine. The enlightened state is seeing and knowing this and living as Spirit in relationship to your humanity. In other words being connected always to Spirit and living a soulful life of love, truth, beauty, joy, kindness, gentleness, mercy as well as demand and challenge for compliance to loving relationship internally, always, which can then lead to service to humanity. This demand is the highest calling, purpose and meaning of life.
Psychology then is the study of the whole human being - the soul, with all its ways of functioning in the world. Nothing is exempt. Your attitudes and beliefs politically, religiously, sexually, and socially are not exempt from examination and challenge. It is NOT unprofessional for me to encourage and even demand the highest standard of thought, attitude and belief in these arenas and I will not ever apologize for challenging your views, attitudes and beliefs socially, religiously or politically - because they all represent your inner relationship to yourself. If you support Donald Trump, you are telling me that you rationalize and excuse your own inner perpetration against your own soul. If you tell me you believe that you will go to hell and believe in the doctrine of a God that condemns people to hell, then you are telling me of how you judge and condemn yourself to a hell of shame and suffering. I mention just two small examples in the social and religious domains. I will never support this level of functioning.
I WILL support you in understanding and examining and exploring these beliefs and moving to the next level and stage of development of your soul. So, if you are not really up for the challenge of living a life of love, expansion and truth and want to resist and fight the challenge to your ideologies, beliefs, dogmas and dualistic thinking, then you should not be at Aslan Institute. But I will not be compromised and bullied by being told that religion and politics, sex and money, or any other area of human development is not to be discussed. I will not collude with resistance and denial, defense and refusal to look within.
We do not have time on this planet to waste. Either you are in for radical transformation and growth of every area of your life, for deep self examination and reflection, for major inner exploration, or you are choosing to obstruct the progress of the human race. I have no time or tolerance for this.
This is not meant to frighten any of you. It is meant as a statement of for what we believe you are signing on, in choosing to learn what compassion and love really are. Charisse and I engage this process with passion, and with great love, on your behalf. Right attitude is one of humility, gratitude and introspection with devotion and reverence for your process - not attack and resistance. We are both worn out from the abuse, rudeness, 5 year old temper tantrums, blame and attack that is heaped on us. If the shoe fits, wear it. If it does not please, examine internally why you are feeling fear. And then, really examine what it is that you think you are wanting from group?
The intention for Charisse and I, is to commit to our inner work every minute of every day. It is to serve you in the ways in which we believe we are being called on to serve. It is in deep devotion and great love for each and everyone of you. It is in even greater love and devotion to the great Spirit of Love and Truth to whom we pledge our lives and service. And we will not compromise our work in guiding your growth by caretaking and pandering to your sensitivities, shame and old issues or meeting your wants that are all secondary gain instead of dealing with the real needs that your soul has. This is the unspoken contract you have agreed to. You will make mistakes. That is okay, as long as you do not self righteously adhere to a defensive stance, but once again pledge to do the inner work with the right attitude.
God's purpose for man is to acquire a seeing eye and an understanding heart." "God gave you life and bestowed upon you his attributes; eventually you will return to him." "The rewards of life and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the light of God. ~Rumi
“I am so mad at myself”
This seems to be a stock phrase, lightly glossed over in conversation, almost as if there is some grace or goodness in being mad at yourself. This is the self turned in on the Self. It shows no awareness, no introspection, no depth and is hateful and mean. It creates an inner split and dynamic of perpetrator / victim within, with all the ramifications of disconnection, hurt, shame and internal suffering as you once again get shamed and negated as you were as a child with all the grown ups who got mad at you and insisted you own what you did and took the blame. It’s like a parent saying, “Look it’s my kid and I will discipline it the way I want.” You are attacking yourSelf, not changing your behavior and learning - there is a big difference.
One simple practice would be to notice when you do it and apologize to yourSelf, secondly to seek to understand what it was that you are mad about and why by going much deeper into what you did and why. There is always a good reason if you paused to try to listen and understand. Thirdly commit to stopping saying this phrase. You are modeling hatred for everyone who listens to it and hurting yourself. And if you do it to yourself, you can be sure you do it to others too.
“Bring anger and pride under your feet, turn them into a ladder and climb higher.” ~Rumi
All Is Found - From the Movie “Frozen”
Where the north wind meets the sea
There's a river full of memory
Sleep, my darling, safe and sound
For in this river all is found
In her waters, deep and true
Lay the answers and a path for you
Dive down deep into her sound
But not too far or you'll be drowned
Yes, she will sing to those who'll hear
And in her song, all magic flows
But can you brave what you most fear?
Can you face what the river knows?
Where the north wind meets the sea
There's a mother full of memory
Come, my darling, homeward bound
When all is lost, then all is found
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Kristen Anderson-Lopez / Robert Lopez
The cure for pain is in the pain. ~Rumi
Without Brushing My Hair
The
Closer
I get to you, Beloved,
The more I can see
It is just You and I all alone
In this
World.
I hear
A knock at my door,
Who else could it be,
So I rush without brushing
My hair.
For too
Many nights
I have begged for Your
Return
And what
Is the use of vanity
At this late hour, at this divine season,
That has now come to my folded
Knees?
If your love letters are true dear God
I will surrender myself to
Who You keep saying
I
Am.
~ Hafiz Translation: Daniel Ladinsky
The Issue of Perspective
Small children are often given the admonition to “have perspective,” in order to shame them into not having feelings or needs that make their parents anxious. If you don’t like your food, you are given the shaming message that other children do not have any food and that you are “ungrateful.” If you fall and hurt yourself you are told that “stop whining, there is nothing broken,” Take a moment to reflect on how you were shamed by being given perspective or comparisons - not about the issue at hand like starvation, pain, ill- health and death, but because you had feelings and needs.
The end result of this kind of parenting is that children shut down their feelings and needs and so shut out the feelings and needs of others. By adulthood they could not care less about the starvation and death of others, but pretend they do by being “grateful for all their blessings.”. Their focus and energy is on tactics designed to get their own needs met so that they do not starve and die. One of those needs is to see themselves as having value, because they feel they have none - and one way to have value and be “good,” is to fake concern for those that have less than them, from a superior and unfeeling place. Now, in adulthood, they have no perspective at all about the little complaints of their lives. They have fully devolved into the age of narcissism that shows no empathy or care either for self or others, and are not awake to any perspective as to how privileged they actually are. Suffering and loss is all that awakens the feelings again and breaks the heart open to self-compassion.
Consider how you yourself, now stop yourself from “whining or complaining,” by briefly seeing or feeling a feeling or need and immediately follow it up with an admonition to “get perspective,” in terms of other peoples issues and struggles. Now it sounds superior - because it is! I am above my own suffering, needs and feelings because I judge them as weak and involved…” You will all interpret this using your own words, if you look deeply enough.
Recover your feelings and needs with compassion for the child you were, and you will actually see how immensely privileged and blessed you are, because then you will truly see perspective.
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” ~Og Mandino
“We can’t access the Good Mother until we find the little child.” ~Charisse Lyons
The deepest and most inaccessible part of our being is knowing our consciousness itself, which is the the Great Mother, the compassion compassion of the world and our own being. This is the very core of our being, it is the essential and it is buried under many layers of redirected attention. Our awareness and attention is not on Her, but on avoiding the suffering that the small child endured. Three layers: The essential, the suffering, the defense. Where is our attention - on the defense. See this in concentric circles. Essential surrounded by suffering, surrounded by defense and all it’ complexity.. How do we, living on the outer crust of defense, move to an awareness of compassion and wisdom? Only by moving back into the suffering of the small child. Back into the feeling and need states that remain fixated in memory - in time and space. Once we know the realms of time and space, we will awaken to the eternal, infinite now that brings only the essence of Compassion and Truth to the human condition. Once we have found the suffering, we choose to bring the essential to the suffering over the judgement. We choose because it is who we actually are. We choose.
The point (touch) of relationship
Non-Dual States of Consciousness
Every one of you has had moments of some level of non-dual consciousness, where there is an opening into experiences of one-ness, the inter-connectedness of all of life, bliss, joy, love, peace, well-being…… These can be triggered by immense stress and threat, trauma of all kinds, near death experiences, profound beauty in nature, drugs and any number of other outer triggers. In these moments people feel as if their life has changed, the meaning of life changes, the course of their lives and purpose changes, briefly. It is, so to speak, a glimpse of heaven.
However, these states have little stability in terms of living our lives, if the stage work is not done. There is a difference between states of awareness and stages of development. Small children have non-dual experiences all the time, but do not know them as such. People in second quadrant have non-dual experiences but cannot sustain any kind of loving presence to themselves or others. One way of saying this, is that “you cannot storm the gates of heaven.” No permanent access to higher states is truly available unless all previous stages have been worked with and brought into awareness. The expansion in consciousness only occurs in any stable way when each stage is mastered, in which case it is encased and included into the next expansion. So, having a non-dual experience when we are still in a dualistic stage of development represents a profound split in actual fact that must be recognized and not used as a further defense to prop up the insecurities, judgments and fears of younger stages. To use a spiritual experience to try to by-pass the work is truly sacriligious.
If any of you have an experience like this, the right attitude is one of profound reverence, gratitude, and humility. It cannot be used as a tactic to get lower order needs for attention, admiration, specialness, worth or value met. You cannot use God in this way, You do not even speak of such an experience but hold it close to your heart and vow to do whatever it takes of you to become that - not get that, or use that.
True non-dual experience has no subject and no object - it just IS, consciousness itself with knowing. There is no-one to know this and no object of the knowing. This cannot be spoken of, should not be spoken, cannot be spoken. The reverence would preclude the possibility. As long as there is still someone having this experience in relationship to anything else, it is not non-dual consciousness.
Dissociation and trance states can also be confused with non-dual experience. Meditation halls are filled with people leaving their body and dissociating, thinking this is somehow transpersonal. It isn’t. It is a defense against suffering.
So, if anyone tries to speak of this experience, then there was a subject and an object. The experience may be a bit more expansive than usual, but the constriction will happen quickly if stages of loving relationship have not been mastered. It will remain in memory but not in practice.
Do not chase this, do not grasp for this, do not attempt to storm the gates of heaven. There is an angel with a sword that bars entry. You cannot look on the face of God and live - it results in annihilation of your existence as a separate being if you have not completed stages of development. Strive instead to live in loving relationship with yourself, until all barriers of relationship within disappear. Bring your divinity to your human experience and learn to love, yourself - then others. Study all that gets in the way of this loving. This love is a giving and a bringing. Not a getting.
