Ask Parvati 19: What Is Home? Part 5, Finding Home in Non-Resistance to What Is

 

WHAT IS HOME? PART 5: FINDING HOME IN NON-RESISTANCE TO WHAT IS

(Continued from What Is Home? Part 4: Home In The Vertical Hour)

 

These days, home for me has everything to do with non-resistance to what is. People have been asking me, especially as I have been blogging about it recently, what does it mean to be non-resistant to what is? To me, it has a lot to do with the “vertical hour”, the feeling of home being now.

 

When I feel unsettled, or somehow not quite in the flow, I realize that in some way, I am in resistance. So I go inside and practice non-resistance to what is. As with all things wise, it is really simple, though takes skill and practice. Here is what I do. Give it a try if you like.

 

Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, if I notice I feel disconnected I immediately pause. I notice that I feel unsettled and begin my non-resistance practice. I start simply, with just looking at my surroundings, and noticing what I see. I just watch, without adding stories to things. For example, I see a tree out the window. I just watch it. I notice the tree, the dancing leaves, the light and the colour. I just notice. Should I hear a car drive by, I just notice it. I hear it drive towards me then pass me. So it is. I notice it.

 

Then I feel my body within my surroundings. If I am sitting, I feel my body on the chair. If I am lying, I feel the weight of my body towards the ground. I just notice how I feel. I notice the softness or hardness of the surface supporting me.

 

Then I draw my attention to my breath. What does it feel like? I breathe in. I breathe out. I move my awareness inward and just notice. I feel the quality of breathing. Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it easy? Is it restricted? What is going on?

 

In this, everything begins to settle and I feel not limited to my thoughts, to the sense of being separate in a body. I begin to feel divisiveness dissolve, replaced by energy, flow and abundance. I feel connected and interconnected. I feel flow. I just stay with that, watching.

 

When I start to think about what I will have for dinner, or if I will get that call, or whatever, I notice I am going into thinking and simply and gently bring my attention back to the feeling of being rooted and expansive, here and now.

 

From this place of expansion, I am guided to the next steps in my life, without having to push, manipulate, fear or control. Life arises in each moment. All is unfolding in balanced perfection. All I have to do it get out of the way and enjoy being here, being now, being home.

 

May all beings feel at home.

May all beings feel home now.

May all beings feel home in all that is.

 

Parvati

 

 

 

Ask Parvati 19: What Is Home? Part 4, Home In The Vertical Hour

 

 

WHAT IS HOME? PART 4: HOME IN THE VERTICAL HOUR

(Continued from What Is Home? Part 3: Inner and Outer Home)

 

There is a song I wrote, that I have yet to produce and release, that expresses what home means to me. In it, I sing: “Home is here. Home is now. There’s gold in the dark, as I bow down…” When I am willing to let go of wanting things to be other than they are, though I may feel in the dark, I bow, in humility to what is, and I find the gold in this moment.

 

The relationship with home that I cultivate in my present life is the eternal home found within this perfect moment. In some of my poetry, I call it the “vertical hour”, when time collapses and I rest in the vastness of the infinite.

 

My most recent blog “To Do Or Not To Do” explored some of these feelings. “Wherever you go, there you are”, says Jon Kabat-Zinn. We may run. We may try to avoid. But no matter where we are physically, we bring our self with us. There is a perfection in all that is when we learn to be with what is, rather than what is not. We find meaning in the fullness of the now, rather than dreams of the past or future.

 

More than ever, I am aware within myself of any places that resist that perfection, that are attached to striving, to doing, to identifying as being separate. Those old thought patterns feel painful to me, as I know in my cells that pushing, divisiveness and wanting only lead to suffering. Instead, I focus on interconnection, on flow, on wholeness, on the fullness, the abundance of what is. I don’t push away old tendencies. I just notice them for what they are and open to what I know to be real.

 

When I am surrendered to the whole, I find a sense of place. That place rests in the vertical hour. It is as though when I let go, open up, look around, my feet naturally reach in to dig into the earth. As a result, I expand. As I feel part of the whole, I find meaning in the now. “What is” then takes on the sense of home.

 

(Continues tomorrow with What Is Home? Part 5: Home In Non-Resistance To What Is)

 

 

Ask Parvati 18: TO DO OR NOT TO DO, THAT IS THE QUESTION. PART 3: IN THIS MOMENT, WE HAVE ALL WE NEED

PART 3: IN THIS MOMENT, WE HAVE ALL WE NEED

(Continued from “The Perfect Now”)

If we could step outside our fixed ideas of reality more often, if we could learn to pause the habit brain that tells us that we are unsafe and must fight; that we are not loved and must want. If we could let go of trying to conquer life, we may just find what we were seeking. We would touch an eternal moment, the eternal now.

Those who meditate may know of this place, the space between breaths, the momentary pause that exists between the inhale and exhale. It is the space between thoughts that opens the gateway to the underlying reality of pure consciousness beyond the grip of our thinking mind.

Lovers may know this place when life feels perfect, whole, like million watt bulbs were just turned on and all of life bloomed into technicolour. Artists and athletes know this when surrendered to their task, time dissolves, the sense of separate self is gone and all that exists is the perfection of what is. Heroes know this, when they throw all caution to the wind and dive into a seemingly impossible situation and experience the momentary death of their ego expanding into the realm of eternal possibility.

This moment, eclipsed a billion times each day, has within it all we need. Absent of the wanting that comes with thoughts of the past and projections into the future, this moment is complete into itself. The thing is, we eclipse it. It is not eclipsed for us. Due to our habits, our thinking, we cut ourselves off from the fullness of living. This is great news. If we cut ourselves off, we can reconnect.

The author Byron Katie does a wonderful job at helping people cut through their limiting beliefs, so that they may open to the perfection of this moment. Her method, simply called The Work, consists of four questions and a turnaround. When you notice a fixed thought you ask yourself, “Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? How do I react, what happens, when I believe that thought? Who would I be without the thought? Then you turn it all around. Each turnaround is an opportunity to experience the opposite of what you originally believed and in so doing, help dissolve the feeling of life being fixed and bound.

Once we have unearthed ourselves from the burden of our limiting thoughts, we discover that in the perfect now, we have all we need. We begin to live in I am consciousness, that is, in the flow of pure consciousness arising. This is not dependent on thoughts like, “I am a doctor. I am a nurse. I am a lawyer. I am a mother …”. We are simply “I am.” When we add descriptions after that simple truth, we add an i-dentity, a label, a story over what is. We become identified with our actions, rather than rooted in surrendered being. We are human beings, not human doings. Our value is in our beingness. Though we may do beautiful or horrific things, our inherent goodness lies beyond that. We are born of the infinite. To the infinite we must return.

(Continued tomorrow with “Karma Yoga: Action As a Means To Self-Realization)

Ask Parvati 18: TO DO OR NOT TO DO, THAT IS THE QUESTION. PART 2: THE PERFECT NOW

PART 2: THE PERFECT NOW

(Continued from “What is time?”)

People today may think of the word “now” and immediately associate it with Eckhart Tolle’s incredibly popular book “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”. His book skillfully sums up much of Buddhist and Vedantic teachings in a way that most can digest. To me, it was Grace that this little man with a big message was guided to be on Oprah and eventually have his own television station. Yay for conscious expansion!

Eckhart Tolle, like many mystics that went before him, insists time is an illusion. He says, "There's nothing that exists that's not now”. In his book “The Power of Now”, the author shows how to connect to the indestructible essence of our Being, "the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death."

Because of our profound attachment and identification with our ego, we see things as divided. Through that lens, we tend to see things around us as separate from us, which somehow seems hostile, painful, void of love. We then reactively feel we must dominate and control. Yet all of this is the construct of our ego, the part of our psyche that is deluded into a self-perpetuated state of fear and disconnect. It is part of our human condition to free ourselves from this self-perpetuated nightmare and realize that what we experience is in fact more like a dream than a nightmare made real.

The Hindu notion of Maya is a profound concept that explains this notion of illusion. In the words of the great saint Sri Ramana Maharshi:

"It is like a cinema-show. There is the light on the screen and the shadows flitting across it impress the audience as the enactment of some piece. If in the same play an audience also is shown on the screen as part of the performance, the seer and the seen will then both be on the screen. Apply it to yourself. You are the screen, the Self has created the ego, the ego has its accretions of thoughts which are displayed as the world, the trees and the plants. . . . In reality, all these are nothing but the Self. If you see the Self, the same will be found to be all, everywhere and always. Nothing but the Self exists."

We believe what we see, feel, taste, touch, smell and think is something solid and fixed. Time then becomes something externally imposed, to which we are confined, rather than a temporary structure that can serve, but is not absolute. Sri Ramana Maharshi goes on to say:

"The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self. There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space; you exist even in the absence of time and space."

As we begin to let go of the need to be in control, of seeing things through the lens of our ego, we begin to touch the substratum of life, the field of pure consciousness, our true state. In this, life arises, flows, unfolds in ways that are perfect and balanced. We then see ourselves as part of a complete system within Nature, within the Cosmos, cradled, held, supported, loved, given exactly what we need. We learn to embrace and relax with what is, rather than want what is not and push. In the perfection of now, life is.

(Continued tomorrow with “In This Moment, We Have All We Need”)

Ask Parvati 18: To Do Or Not To Do, That Is The Question, Part 1: What Is Time?

Ask Parvati 18: TO DO OR NOT TO DO, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Dear Parvati,

No matter how organized I seem to get, I just can’t get a handle on my to do list. I seem to never get my tasks done and I often feel overwhelmed. Any ideas on how to stretch time or where to find a magic wand so I could fit more hours into the day? I am tired of feeling like I just can’t get on top of my to dos.

PART 1: WHAT IS TIME?

The word “time” is part of our conversations everyday. We seem to have a common understanding of what it means, but what does it really mean? I know what it means to me, but how does the dictionary define it? So I looked it up.

The Webster’s dictionary says time is “the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues”. So time is a measuring system used to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them.

Based on time being a measuring system, it seems reasonable to believe that working within the construct of time would help us keep control of our lives. To an extent, it does. Because of time, we know when we are expected to be at work, or when to be at a coffee shop to meet a friend. We know how long it takes to do a job, and I will know what portion of my day this blog will take me to write.

If time helps us measure, why then would we need the many self-helps books on time management, if time, by definition, is something that helps us stay organized? Why do so many of us feel like we get caught up in that which was intended to help us stay in control? (If I had a personal favorite book on time management, it would be Stephen R. Covey's book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” for its principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity.)

History colours our figures of speech. We speak commonly of Father Time, a mythical figure who keeps tabs on our every action. Father Time is historically derived from Chronos, the Lord of time in Greek mythology and is usually depicted carrying a scythe and an hourglass or other timekeeping devices, representing the idea that time is a constant, one-way movement.

Interestingly enough, the Greek language has two different words for time, Chronos and Kairos. Chronos refers to chronological time. It is about quantity. Kairos, which is qualitative, divine time, literally means "the right or opportune moment. I love that the word Kairos also means weather in both ancient and modern Greek. To me this points towards the mystical power of Nature that exists both within chronological time and also expresses the eternal.

It is part of our human nature to feel safer when we think of life in absolutes. It helps us feel in control of ourselves and of our surroundings. The 17th century physicist Sir Isaac Newton believed time to be an absolute. His views of the universe dominated science for over three centuries.

Yet others believe that time is an illusion, not at all linear or absolute. Albert Einstein proved time to be relative, not absolute as Newton believed. Einstein concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. He wrote in a letter to a friend: “the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

The idea that time is an illusion was not born through modern physics. In the 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Antiphon believed that: "Time is not a reality, but a concept." Parmenides, also a Greek philosopher at that time, went further, maintaining that time, motion, and change were illusions.

The notion that time is an illusion existed even well before the early Greeks contemplated it. It is a common theme in ancient Buddhist and Hindu thought. Both of these religions explain that what we see as fixed and solid is only a temporal illusion, masking the underlying reality of timelessness.

I have seen repeatedly in my life that what exists as real and meaningful is not bound by time, though it may be expressed through time. Time may give us a sense of temporary structure as a common reference point on our route towards enlightenment. As we evolve, we move beyond dependence on time as solid and absolute and begin to flow within a much larger, conscious picture of reality.

As I grow, I begin to experience the space between objects as palpable and tangible, not at all empty and meaningless. I begin to sense in my whole being that what I see as solid is no more solid than the space between objects. All is pure consciousness arising. Everything is dancing and I am part of it all, no more and no less important than anything else. I am part of the whole and the whole is that which I am.

I enjoy the way the author Gevin Giorbran of “Everything Forever: Learning To See Timelessness - Seeing Beyond Time into the Realm of All Possibilities", speaks of the illusion of time:

“In my explorations of timelessness I reveal that ordinary space is not merely full of other empty spaces, but empty space is actually the whole of all physical realities; all the universes of the many worlds theory. Profound as it may be, if the theories I propose are correct, space is full, rather than empty. Material things are less than the fullness of space. In fact, it may be that space must include all possibilities in order to seem empty to us. So in summary, the universe we see is just a fragment nested in a timeless (everything) whole, rather than a single material world magically arisen above some primordial nothing. All universes exist without beginning or end in the ultimate arena of time, and each moment we experience exists forever.”

(Continues tomorrow with “The Perfect Now”)