Amongst other things, I’m a Complementary Health Therapist, and have been practising for more years than I care to remember, but it didn’t start out that way. I was naturally mediumistic as a child and unaware of the lifestyle implications -when it suddenly mushroomed into consciousness in my early twenties creating a host of questions.
I sought help to control it (you see, I had other ‘career’ plans), and became aware of other dimensions of reality. The shock to my system wasn’t the newness of knowledge -it was precisely the opposite, I already knew of it, but until then had been a ‘sleeper’. It was like I had suddenly woken up to who I was -and needless to say, my plans, which at that time was to take my dancing skills into musical theatre, vanished overnight.
I became aware of a timeless knowledge
and thereafter all that I have been verbally taught or have understood from others actions and writings has served to give thought, word, and action to the inner understanding I was aware of. It doesn’t mean I accept everything which gains my attention. For example, I have a clairaudient ability and a doctor guy by the name of Heinrich Schroeder who often assists me when I’m healing others will, as required, tell me things about my patients’ health condition and suggest ways they can help themselves. If I’m not previously knowledgeable of that advice, or he mentions words I don’t understand -I check it out and will only pass on that guidance when it makes sense to me.
What this means -is this; our individual needs are entirely unique, and no matter the appraised value of what you hear or read -your acceptance is the touchstone to enable, change, or reject. “And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. Luke 5:37, King James Version.
Which brings me to the subject of Mindfulness.
I’m all for any practise which puts emphasis of living life more fully in the here and now. It’s currently fashionable to talk and engage in the practise of Mindfulness -so, where did this spring from?
When you look into it -this is what it claims to do. It is a way of training the mind, to achieve a deep state of consciousness, free of judgments about our sensations, feelings, or thoughts. A process of paying attention to what is happening inside ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis. It actively encourages questioning of our habitual way of thinking and the mental patterns our lifestyles have wrought. The mind control objective is to give practitioner’s the ability to observe their thoughts with perspective, without immersing themselves in their content.
Benefits claimed from the practise of mindfulness include improving the perception of pain in chronically ill patients, resulting in greater emotional well-being. Improved ability to concentrate and apply your attention, which results in greater efficiency when performing any task. Gives ability to manage stressful situations and release anxiety states, as it helps reduce cortisol levels (stress hormones) in our bodies. The practise is an aid to a good night’s sleep and can relieve insomnia. In general, the practice improves our emotional intelligence, since it allows us to face our thoughts and emotions and interpret situations with perspective, without judgement.
Now, who would argue these benefits are of no value? I certainly don’t, but is this the ‘old wine’ they claim it to be? If they assert that it is, I have some issues with it.
Firstly, let’s put the history into context. The Buddha didn’t invent Mindfulness, and he never used that term. He won’t mind me saying so, because he himself was aware of the harmonising practises having a history many millennia before his time. Secondly, what the Buddha was addressing by his lifestyle and practises, was the root problem that has bedevilled Mankind since his inception -how to cojoin our warring parts by processes to harmonise and evolve them.
Man is a complex hybrid creation -the character and composition of his consciousness is born of the Earth. The inner nature of our energies has higher form and non-form timeless counterparts, intelligence we cannot comprehend at source, and are only aware of it through the filter of our time/form Earth born consciousness.
We cannot achieve awareness of the higher realities by mind alone -it is only achievable when mind and body are in harmony, and then -surprise, surprise! We are no longer logically in charge because our instinctual nature has become an intuitional guide! That doesn’t mean you lose the power of thought or cannot be objective in action -but it does mean the rational mind is no longer the source power. There are many psychic development processes, including mindfulness as a westernised practise, which educate the rational mind as the source of power and transformation. The ancient masters (including the Buddha) never took this approach, for them harmonisation is achieved by radically changing our mode of perception.
They recognised that Man, as with all other forms of life, are in essence, open systems. Perceptibly it would appear life has no go borders, differences abound, and many life forms are so diversely different they do not relate or engage harmoniously with others. The complexity of Man has given him cause to develop a buffer zone of consciousness -its purpose is to protect his perceptive time/form world of consciousness from non-perceptive forms of life.
In short, Man’s hybrid nature gave birth to the Ego -a self-aware mechanism to give purpose to the warring parts. The rational mind was born.
And when these ancient masters looked at the world, and to the worlds beyond ours, they found no evidence of rationality in any other form of life. In the process of achieving samadhi, as the Buddha sat motionless beneath the Bodhi tree, he was not empty of humanness -he was attuned and in active communication with all forms of life that interacted with his BodyMind.
The Buddha, as had other Masters of Light before him, discovered the mechanism to transform his warring parts into a unity that enabled continuity beyond the grave.
In my next post I’ll introduce you to that mechanism -and you will see why you can’t put old wine into new bottles, and why incidentally history keeps repeating itself ad nauseam.
The poem I have written for this week is a pointer to the problem we all face.
In Memory of Sarah King
Had you known your granite headstone
would be flanked by two unknowns
you might have thought it significant;
as yours stands tall like one chosen
compared to their drunken faces.
The tree that shadows where you lay
Its sloughed bark being last to view
the moonlights felicitations;
In your day sinewy green with youth;
has suffered change like you have.
The proud and leafy head is burnt,
broken and lifeless; its branches
blackened antlers gouging the sky;
the knuckled roots naked of earth
Reshape the form you left behind.
The unknown blistered facing flags
askew upon the biers they mark
wedged between the tree’s webbed feet
Is living proof that men must fear;
names mean nothing to nature here.
Though Earth has held your name upright
slow moving time has wrought its change;
skeletal remains seeking rebirth
remarry to achieve what you could not;
path to Mecca: world without end.
Mine Quick Voice of Aquarius 