March 7th, 2008
If you're new here, you may want to check out my Offerings. Thanks for visiting!
What does it mean to be spiritual today? In this podcast Rob Scott and Kerri Kannan discuss how to implement spiritual teachings in a down to earth and realistic way. This interview is from a show that Kerri runs called World Awakened on Blog Talk Radio.
Topics covered include:
It’s a great interview and I was really happy that Kerri invited me to be on her show. Give it a listen.
How Do We Implement Spiritual Teachings:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
April 29th, 2007
This talk is meant to suggest the importance of a regular meditation practice. The pull of the world, and the normal distractions and natural egoic self builders don’t remind us that we need to see that there is more than thought. There is experience. We can exist without our minds running all the time. We can train a state experience that fulfills us deeply and gives us many other perspectives on how to live, what is important, and how we can behave with one another. We need to practice daily however. We need to train the mind in this new way of understanding. If you are not training your mind, you may not see when you get lost again. You may not be as aware as you can be of your own belief structures that can limit and ultimately harm you.
Our world is aware for the first time of the entirety of itself. With our news media being global, we are able to see the natural horrors that occur from time to time. We also get to see, possibly too deeply, the unnatural horrors as well. Many people wonder what can we do about these things. What will help us understand these tragedies? We want to figure it out, with our minds. But I suggest that the best thing to do is to learn to put the mind down. Learn to sit in stillness.
As we see our own structures more and more, we are helping others resonate in that way. As humans become more aware of themselves, our language about what is important can change. The words presence, and stillness start to have more gravity. As we see ourselves, we see other people as well, and we might just notice when someone is in need of attention, or help. Disasters will continue to occur of course, but we can contextualize them, and perhaps not be as fearful of them because we can see that there is depth in sorrow, and joy in the ordinary. And that life is not set in any definite pattern.
If you are interested in self growth, I humbly suggest you commit to a daily meditation practice. The benefits are enormous. But more than that as a selling point, I want to say that if we talk about growing, but don’t do the work, we may still be just as lost as those that haven’t woken up at all.
Song: Soup by Blind Melon
Do You Have A Practice:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
February 26th, 2007
Surrendering to the moment is a very important teaching. Learning to accept what is, is one of the fundamentals of growing spiritually. So if acceptance is fundamental to this teaching, then why do all these teachers want to change what is? Why are they unable or unwilling to accept the world in its perfection exactly as it is? Teaching is asking people to be different than they are. Why don’t all the teachers just accept the current state of understanding and move on?
This is a really great question, and points out a large logic problem with all this teaching business, and what enlightenment means. Do we want to change the world, or learn to accept it? The answer really is both. And the important clarification is the misunderstanding that to become enlightened is to blindly accept everything. That is not necessarily what enlightenment, or growth is about. Accepting absolutely everything would leave us motionless. That idea of stillness is an illusion. To a mind that is trying to manage state experience only, that would make perfect sense, and hence be a very attractive thing to try to attain. But that attraction is the same attachment that’s in any other form of desire. So what is this growth or enlightenment we’re talking about?
Integral theory and spiral dynamics talk about the difference between states and stages. And while a full explanation of the difference is beyond today’s talk, I will say that we are definitely trying for deeper states of consciousness, but also (and possibly more importantly) higher stages of development. Each stage is a level of attachment. It is a set of beliefs, or a paradigm that we walk through and act from. So the idea is not that we are trying to stay peaceful, or joyful, or happy all the time (which would be a state experience only, and doesn’t happen), but rather we are trying to walk through these larger stages of development (which would lead to more and more wisdom, durability, capability, and hence better state management as well). We try to become identified with larger and larger portions of reality.
So no matter what stage we’re currently identified with, what can we do to work within this paradox? At what point is our own attachment to change, or to an idea of something better, a problem? It is compassionate when we want to help someone else with their pain. But we begin to get lost when we insist on their growth or begin to get attached to it. Work to explain things you understand to those who don’t understand it, but don’t get attached to the outcome. Be mindful of your attachments, especially when they are masked with change for the “good” of something. Change and creation is always occurring with or without our intention. Be involved in that change to whatever degree you want to be, but know that acceptance is always available to you, and use it well. We have the ability to change what is (the external), but we also have the ability to change instead what we are (the internal) to acceptance.
Referenced: Integral Theory
Do We Change The World Or Accept It:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
August 21st, 2006
In this show I promise not to be too deep. Today I spend a few moments fostering presence with you. I open with a couple of conscious breaths, then onto examples of, and reasons for, bringing your focus back to your breath. I end mentioning that in regard to any learning, we deeply need to apply what we learn. Learning alone isn’t enough. Without application, it’s just spin.
Fostering presence will be the next evolution of man. Join in that evolution by bringing your attention back to your breath.
Bring It Back To The Breath:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download
June 19th, 2006
It seems many people want to get the idea of what enlightenment looks like. We’re all trying to "figure it out." I get many emails discussing understanding these ideas. This podcast is about doing them instead.
The "Now" has become very trendy. So let’s not get lost in ideas about it. We even have great philosophical minds telling us we don’t have time to be in the now, which is a bit ridiculous. What I think they are saying is that we shouldn’t be trendy about the Now.
Because we can play with words and ideas and labels at this level we should see that we will never "figure it out." Rather we should look at the desire that we have to figure it out. The idea of how to do this is less important than doing it. Our minds want to become experts, and so we look at all the possibilities of "getting lost" so that we can be sure that we will win "when those things show up." But that state of mind is already lost. The waiting, thinking, planning mind is exactly the mind we are trying to put down.
Someone comes across the idea of being at peace. And they are listening to these podcasts, and trying to meditate. And they realize they are not at peace. The mind that is trying to get to peace is lost in time. The mind that wants to "DO" peace is the mind that puts down expectations. This may feel very unnatural to us. We want to figure it out instead.
So when we "DO" peace, when we allow for peace of mind by coming to this moment, whatever it is, we are doing it "all the time". Because we start to realize that now is all there is.
The important concept is this: getting to this moment "is the end of it", EVEN if we leave this moment. Sounds like a cop out, and is hard to get your mind around, but it’s the truth.
So let’s look at the actuality of living in the Now. We don’t care if we can do it permanently, because that is another idea. We just want to do it now. When we come to the Now in this moment (whenever that is), we realize that this moment is always here. So that is all we have to do. The mind will kick up again and say things like "You won’t be able to do that in the future." And that may even knock us off a bit, but seeing that once we DO come back, there is no tally of how long we’ve been gone. So doing it now IS doing it forever. Because the illusion is the mind that creates a future that doesn’t exist.
So doing it in the now is as simple as coming to what you are, your breath, this moment, the sounds, the fears, the whatever, without worrying if you can do it again later. If you’re doing it now, you’re doing it forever.
Referenced: Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle
