The ego is confusing. It’s not your enemy. And you already know that very often it isn’t your friend. It can cause a lot of trouble.

If you have too much of it, you may be blind to it—while it’s obvious to everyone else. If you have too little, you can’t function in this world.

You can’t live without an ego; you have to have one, but it isn’t real. It is created moment to moment by a conversation you have in your head: one moment you’re wonderful, the next moment you shiver in fear.

This ego, the one that’s forever busy chasing what it desires and protecting itself from what it fears, is the ego of suffering.

The ego is baffling and mystifying, and if you don’t understand it, and educate it, it will be your master, instead of the servant it is meant to be. Then it will lead you around by the nose, through a lot of pain and loss to exactly nowhere.

You’ve heard all the stuff about transcending, or even  ‘killing the ego.’ And you’ve also heard that you need ‘ego strengths.’ So what is it? Do we need to get over it, or make it strong?

The answer is: both. You think that’s paradoxical? Definitely!

Okay, lets start with the basics.

At birth you emerge into this world from what has been called “The Ground of Being,” the womb of the universe. And at death, that’s where you go. It is the Self, the alpha and the omega, spirit, THAT which many people call God.

From there you can picture the journey of your existence as a circle that begins and ends in the Ground of Being.[1]

You can then divide this circle into two halves. The first part of life is about building the ego, coming to know who you are in this short time-span of your existence; it’s about going out into the world, about self-assertion, about being some body. The second half is about returning back home to our essence, to your origins, to spirit, to Self-realization, to eternity, oneness, and truth.

The “I” changes throughout this circular journey.

We can also divide the circle into three parts, three pie shapes. In childhood the ego begins as soon as you start to think. At the beginning of thought there is a mechanism that makes you continuously relate everything in your world to this “I.” You make up this thing called “I” as you think. You believe it’s a stable ‘thing,’ but it isn’t; it’s like an optical illusion of the mind that appears real.

This first third of the journey is the pre-personal stage. The roots of your beliefs of “I am………” are laid here, good and bad. You identify with your body, your likes and dislikes, your emotional habits and your personal history. You praise yourself and experience pride, and you condemn yourself and experience guilt. Most of this is subconscious and quite automatic. You struggle to be who you think you are meant to be, and you judge yourself as to how well you think you are doing. This, as I said, is the ego of suffering.

At this stage you are unconsciously still fused with the collective mind, and your thinking is deeply conditioned. You think in the way your family or clan, religion or nation told you to think. You are under the influence of an internalized voice that sounds like a controlling and critical parent. You have not yet developed a fully independent sense of yourself, a free way to make up your own mind.

For that you have to cut the restricting ‘umbilical cords’ that bind you to the ways of your upbringing. Until you do, you do not yet have a fully functioning ego. You’re part of the group mind. You’re also still close to spirit and that gives you comfort. But the danger here is that you may be prone to fundamentalist thinking.

Once you cut the ‘umbilical cord’, you move into the self-conscious stage, become a fully rational person and see the blossoming of your personal identity. You become an independently functioning individual, a “person” in your own right. No longer bound by the fear of being rejected by your group if you were to be fully yourself, you unfold your unique gifts and abilities.

This is the culmination of what Western psychology calls the development of ego-strengths. Rational and relatively independent in your views, you act and operate in your world.

Western culture generally assumes that this is the totality and aim of human development. Once you are a strong individual, you ‘have made it’ in the eyes of our culture; you are done. Therefore, of course, most individuals do not evolve much beyond this point. They are still in the grip of the ego of suffering, and remain far removed from the nurturing reality of the true Self.

This is now changing, as more and more of us realize that the highly developed ego is not the end of the line. And the ego itself feels it, as it matures. Where it has been fascinated with material life at first, now a sense of unease arises, an existential loneliness, disconnection and lack of fulfillment, or perhaps a deep, but indistinct yearning. These can easily turn into despair and trigger addictions and relationship problems.

Such lack of fulfillment is often mistaken for regular anxiety or depression—but that is not what it is, and it should not be treated that way. The ego has to suffer this basic lack of fulfillment, because it knows deep down that it, along with the body and all its worldly achievements, is going to die—although it tries hard to ignore that fact.

But rather than despair, this is the time when the individual needs to evolve further, and only entry into the next stage, the spiritual stage of development can resolve these problems.

This brings us to the third pie shape, the trans-personal stage. This part of the journey has been deeply studied by the world’s mystical traditions. Particularly Indian Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhism have elevated this inquiry to a profound and fascinating science.

As long as you operate exclusively through your rational mind, you will remain unaware of the reality of this higher development, because it goes beyond the ego, beyond the rational mind. But it does not deny rationality; it includes and transcends it. Here the mind can evolve into intuitive intellect and into divine intelligence.

It begins with experiences that lead you into the spiritual realm. At first these moments of peace, or deep joy, or your ability to perceive a deeper truth, are fleeting. To make them more permanent, you must develop an ability for stillness. Meditation is the best known and time-honored way to do that.

The first part of the spiritual journey is the exploration of ‘spiritual wonderland.’ You are fascinated by all kinds of exciting options, collect spiritual paraphernalia, move from teacher to teacher, read many books, and, all-in-all develop a very cool spiritual ego, which is not much different at all from the rational ego. It feels special about itself, either in a good or bad way, and in that it is absolutely commonplace.

But as you explore the spiritual realm, you build another kind of ego, the ego of aspiration. Now you feel drawn to real sadhana, to committed spiritual practice. This is how you can free yourself of the shadow elements, the habits of suffering which you have acquired earlier in life and which are the true source of your pain.

The higher reaches of spiritual realization will remain hidden to you until you do this work. But with the gradual easing of unconscious tensions, and with a greater and stable peace, comes the ability to look inward.

Now a great paradigm shift begins. You realize that who or what you thought you were was in fact a mistaken identity. Yes, the ego was useful enough for a while, just like the countless other identities you have built in past lives that are now gone and forgotten. And so will this one be gone in just a few years.

Now however this is not a source of despair, but of a great aspiration. You begin to intuit that you are in truth not this puny ego with its ongoing drama and self-importance, but the true Self, and your body and mind can serve as the perfect expression of divine presence in form.

You realize that you are not the body, but a ray of divine light that is reflected in you. And, going even further, you realize that this individual ray is one with the sun, the Self, the Source of infinite light.

In the expansion of this inner experience, the ego is transformed into the ego of the sage. Where it has formerly been opaque and confused, it now becomes transparent to the light. Where it has been a dictator, if not a tyrant at times, it now becomes your faithful and reliable servant.

Through the force of continued spiritual practice, sadhana, your being becomes the conduit of divine grace. The thinking mind with its judgments and stress dissolves and gives way to the intuitive intellect, which can run your worldly affairs perfectly.

The heart remains increasingly open and, since you are internally filled by the bliss of the Self, you can love freely. Your life becomes a life of joyful service to all beings around you, in whom you recognize the same presence of God that shines in you.

This is the way to absolute peace and to the fulfillment that does not die when the body is done. It is the realization of your true and immortal identity as the Self.

The ego evolves from being the source of much trouble to being a clear lens through which the presence of God shines into this world. How is it done? What are the mechanisms that are at work in this transformation? And what is the most crucial transformation from the ego of aspiration to the ego of the sage?  That is what we will discuss in Part 2.

We invite you to watch the video: The 3 Aspects of Ego by Ram Giri.
For more information visit our website www.Skillsforawakening.com

With love and gratitude,

Ram Giri 
and the Skills for Awakening Team

You are the architect of your destiny.

There are parts of your life that are working, and others that aren’t. It is in dealing with your challenges differently, that you can find your true potential to make this new year a time of real transformation and victory!

Never mind the hype about 2012: this coming year will be exactly identical to all others in that it will give you plenty of opportunity to stay trapped in your conditioned ways of unhappiness—or not!

I can make one unfailing prediction: if your desire to change is not great enough to spur you to action, you will stay exactly the same. Your desire will remain a desire, not more. An unfulfilled hope, like you’ve had many over the years. Surface change will not work.

The reality that surrounds you is just that: a chain of opportunities, perfectly designed to help you realize your inherent freedom and bliss, your enlightened nature, your great heart.

Your challenges are not bad luck, personal failure, or a sign that the universe doesn’t care. Far from it! They come to help you realize the deeper truth: that you can be incredibly happy in life, not despite, but because of it all.

See what doesn’t work in your life for what it is: Something you have yet to master. Something that is designed to bring out the best in you, to show you the missing pieces, to awaken you. Even discouragement and hopelessness are like that: they are the beginning of courage and mastery.

You need to brace yourself therefore not against challenging events, but against your habit of staying asleep, of reacting to life’s challenges in the same old negative ways that have perpetuated your suffering in the past.

And you have insisted on staying asleep even as a profoundly caring universe has tried time and again to shake you awake.

“A profoundly caring universe?” you may say, with a rather incredulous look on your face.

Imagine a loving mother who notices her child suffering from a nightmare. She comes to wake up the child, but he resists, and, still in the grip of the nightmare, blames her for disrupting his sleep.

This mother-universe is going to try to prod you to awake this year. How will it happen? Will it be through a new love, an unforeseen good fortune, or greatly renewed strength? Or will it be a financial meltdown, a sudden loss, an illness, an accident, a moment of deep despair?

Probably some of both.

How will you use these events? How you react to them—and therefore, the result you get—is up to you.

There is a simple law in effect here. If you do nothing now to change old unconscious patterns of reacting with anger, or fear, or desire, dependency, worry, and so on, then you will react as always before, and your old patterns of suffering will be reinforced. This means you will suffer more in the future.

That’s the default mode. But by engaging in a regular high-level awakening practice now, you will avoid future suffering. Such efforts are the wisest way of investing your time and effort.

Then, when the inevitable events of life happen, you are not helpless. Instead, whatever comes will help you become more skilled, more aware, more kind, more awake. This is a masterful way to live. It is based in wisdom and love.

You can only be a victim to your own unconscious tendencies, your blindness, fear and confusion—but they can be explored and removed now.

Your old patterns of suffering are what keep you asleep. They are what can turn life into a nightmare. But, let me say it again: you are not a victim!

At your core, deeper than the troubles of life, are undisturbed peace and vast awareness, waiting to be discovered by you. You are the unconditional love in your deepest heart, which creates this dance of a world. Now make a deeper resolve than ever before to discover that and shed your pain like the worn-out skin of a snake!

Whether by default, or by aspiration, you are the architect of your own destiny. The events of this world are nothing more than the raw materials out of which you build your character and through which you either rise to freedom, or entangle yourself further in pain.

So here’s to 2012, a year, which will offer you challenges and support, exactly like any other.

And here is to you, the hero in the quest for the awakening out of the slumber of eons into the clarity of your mind and the depth of your heart.

You, the one who can make this year an epiphany, the beginning of a new world!

Happy new year!

Ram Giri
and the Skills for Awakening team

………

To assist a few committed individuals to make the best of the challenges and the grace of this new year, Ram Giri offers a 20% sale on his personal or group coaching program for 2012. Please call (305) 567-1406 or visit http://skillsforawakening.com/coach/ for more information.

This offer is valid through January 31, 2012.

How to Rise Above the Pain of Attachment to Find Love, and
Why only a Clear Mind is Capable of True Affection and Caring

The most surprising Aha! moments come when we realize that something we have been absolutely sure about is completely untrue. Like a sudden ray of light into darkness we realize a new and liberating facet of truth. This can be the case when we gain some insight into the extremely common confusion between love and attachment. We pay an extreme prize for this error, and we pay it in suffering.

Before that clarity dawns, we don’t know there can be another way. Even the dictionary tells us that attachment is another term for affection. This view is directly in conflict with the wisdom traditions. Attachment is clinging, and that is not love. Love never hurts, it is free and pristine, and attachment always must lead to pain.

Only when we can let things be the way they are do we have a clear mind. When we want things to be different than they are, we lose, because reality doesn’t care about our opinions. Only by accepting reality as it is now can we perceive the world clearly. Only when we perceive the world clearly can we be effective and caring. And only when our mind is not filled with attachment and clinging can we have an open heart. One stressful though and our heart closes. That’s inevitable!

The crucial significance of non-attachment became clear to my friend Bob when he had to take his parents to an adult living facility. There he learned a powerful lesson about what love really is.

It began with the realization that mom and dad just couldn’t live in their nice home in the suburbs any longer. Even with help in the home, it was no longer safe. Dad would fall and bruise, and he even broke his arm. Mom also couldn’t cope any longer. She’d burn food in the kitchen and could easily have set the whole house of fire. They were both in their nineties.

It was very difficult for them to say good-bye to their home. They understood the need to move, but with their mental clarity coming and going, often didn’t know what was happening to them. Eventually Bob had them settled in a very good facility and went back home. Home is 2000 miles away.

He had seen how their attachment to their home had caused his parents pain, but the real teaching came for him when he returned to check in on them two months later. He was so happy to see them, but when he walked into the door he was greeted by a deep sense of depression and despair. There was nothing either of them could find good about their new home and they let him know in no uncertain terms how unhappy they were.

That night Bob went home in despair. He felt an intense heaviness in his chest. What was he to do? Moving them back home was out of the question. He wanted to relieve their pain and change their minds, but how? He seemed to be facing a hopeless situation.

That’s when Bob remembered his skill of Inquiry. He realized that his pain did not originate from his parent’s depression, but from his reaction to it. How was he going to be able to serve them better, with his mind and emotions in turmoil, or with a clear head and an open heart? So he sat down that night, pulled out a pad and pen and began to question his thinking.

His most disturbing though was, “My parents shouldn’t have to suffer.” He began the questioning process. Could he absolutely know that this was true? Of course it was what he, as a caring son, was supposed to think. All the voices in his mind, his entire conditioning told him so. And yet the undeniable fact was that they were suffering. His thinking was on a collision course with reality. He was waging a war in his mind he could only loose.

That was when he began to realize that this sacred belief simply wasn’t true at all. He continued with the process of inquiry and described to himself in detail his reactions to believing this thought. It made him miserable. It made him crazy because he was looking so hard for a solution and there was none. It made him as depressed as his parents were.

Then he asked, “Who would I be without this thought?” He would be relaxed and have a clear mind. Would he love his parents any less? Of course not! But there was a crucial difference: without attaching himself to this untrue concept he may be able to be with them in a much better mood. And that might help them.

So Bob turned this thought around: “I shouldn’t have to suffer.” At first this seemed selfish to him, but he realized that his suffering had really nothing to do with his love for his parents. It was the outcome of attachment and confused thinking. If he didn’t suffer, but had a clear mind instead, he might even find a solution to the situation. He couldn’t imagine one, but obviously his suffering solved nothing, it wasn’t helpful to anyone. He felt a shift inside his chest.

Then there was the other turn-around: “My parents should have to suffer.” This was the hard one. Everything in his conditioned mind fought against that belief. But for now, for this moment, wasn’t it true? They were suffering and that meant they ‘should’ be suffering, until they didn’t. The extremely simple logic of this insight settled in to Bob’s mind and if was a relief.

“My parents should have to suffer” of course means nothing about a future. To project that they ‘should’ suffer in the future would be mad, and we’re working on sanity here. But to say that they shouldn’t suffer when they obviously were was just as crazy. It was as though Bob could see something in his mind straighten out, an old and confused habit of thoughts coming into a new state of clarity.

There were other stressful thoughts, and Bob worked on gaining clarity in his mind for about two hours that night. One by one he saw through all his stressful beliefs, and as they melted away in the light of truth, he felt a great sense of relief. His emotions came to peace and he slept like a baby that night.

The next morning he couldn’t wait to see mom and dad. He walked into their room refreshed, with a clear mind and with his heart wide open. And that’s when the miracle happened. Inspired by Bob’s open heart, his two old parents instantly rose out of their gloomy mood, and they all met in a great space of love. This is how they had been together at the best of times and suddenly no one could any longer find a reason why it shouldn’t be like this again.

His parents stayed in this loving mood for the whole week of Bob’s visit, and it even after Bob left, they never again fell into depression. They opened to their new surroundings, made new friends, and lived out their final days becoming more and more peaceful until a merciful reality took them into the state beyond.

Today Bob often thinks about how different that day could have been and the time that followed. We believe that when someone we love is in pain we also have to hurt and we call that compassion. But what hurts is not love. It is blind attachment; it creates more pain and it doesn’t solve any problems.

The sacred belief, “My parents shouldn’t have to suffer,” and the misunderstanding of love that it breeds, is like an archaic religion. It is delusional. There is an unalterable reality about sickness, old age and death, as the Buddha taught. Can we support those whose turn it is, instead of joining them with self-created pain?

No matter how long we have held onto a set of unquestioned beliefs, if they cause us pain, isn’t it smart to question them? If our thoughts are at odds with reality, it may be time to change our religion.

Let me invite you to find out more about the revolutionary process of inquiry, also known as The Work of Byron Katie. If you are facing the suffering of a loved one, I cannot recommend this practice strongly enough! Just like in Bob’s case it may make a profound difference in your life and theirs. For personal consultations or coaching in The Work with Ram Giri, please go here.

With love,

Ram Giri

Skills for Awakening

There are countless levels of consciousness. No one lives on one level permanently, it shifts and moves, but more or less we have most of our experiences on a stage of awareness to which we are most habituated.

Within this stage we strive to be happy and to avoid suffering. And we also strive to evolve to higher stages to avoid the typical suffering we encounter in our stage and eventually get to what we call enlightenment or salvation or the peace that is beyond understanding.

First let’s look at the particular stage you are on. There is a spectrum of good experiences and bad experiences, of happy and sad, of peace and war. And all this happens on this same stage of consciousness. It’s the world of duality and we’re quite caught in it.

Now if you observe yourself closely you may find that when you get too low down you seek to elevate your consciousness because the higher your awareness is, the less you suffer. So with therapy or a vacation or a pill or by making some changes you make yourself more comfortable and then you feel better and your great desire for change is satisfied for a while – until something else happens and you get unhappy again. In this way you stay within your habitual range.

We can also observe that when we get happier than our customary state, we sabotage our happiness and create pain for ourselves. You may remember a thought like: “This is too good; it can’t last,” and sure enough it doesn’t because in some unconscious ways you call pain into your life again. Or you may have noticed that you are saying something to your partner and you have the thought, “Why am I saying this? I know where this leads, this leads to a fight and I don’t want a fight!” Nevertheless the words come out of your mouth and two minutes later you are embroiled in your fight. You get the pain you were unconsciously seeking. Then you make up and all is well again, until the next time.

This is what we call the pain body, the unconscious desire for pain.  It is a strange compulsion or addiction, an enchantment not unlike a curse and every one has it. It is bewildering but very real. Everyone has a pain body and if you are lucky enough to know about it that means that you have a chance to get free of it. With most people it is completely unconscious.

After the pain body takes over and you have created some pain for yourself you’re back on your habitual level of consciousness and your ego feels well because now it doesn’t have to stretch and grow and it gets to stay with the way it’s been which is the most important thing for egos.

So most of the things people do, maybe 98% of it, is designed to make their egos more comfortable. This is very confusing. They say they want enlightenment but they’re on the slow road. They are still feeding their egos by seeking more comfort. Eventually everyone gets enlightened, but unless you address and overcome what keeps you stuck on your habitual level of (dis-)comfort, it may be a long time until you get there.

But what if you’re really getting determined to grow, or even have the idea, the yearning to reach enlightenment and true freedom, the only way to experience true and full happiness? What would you need to do then? Then the search for more comfort would not be enough because the comfort never lasts. It just puts you on one side of the dualities of your life. You would need to transcend your present level of consciousness and in the end transcend all the levels of dualistic consciousness with their mix of pleasure and pain to reach non-dual or unity awareness.

This is a completely different state, outside of duality and therefore free of suffering in a lasting way. This is possible for you. It will take some work but the path-breaking news is that it is possible for you. I say path-breaking here because so many of us have been on a spiritual path for a long time and yet we are mostly busy to stay comfortable with what we know, we stay in our habitual state of consciousness and are not quite sure we want to go into the unknown that scares us, even though that unknown is true happiness.

We have to break that path open and begin to truly liberate our minds and emotions if we want to realize what we have been wanting for a long time perhaps. This is where the Skills for Awakening come in. They are the essence of reaching for true freedom and they are so simple that everyone can use them with a little practice.

with love,

Ram Giri

Skills for Awakening

Question: “Sometimes it is hard for me to feel my Heart. What can I do?”

Ram Giri: The mind has a tendency to run after distractions. This is caused by the subtle desires of the unconscious mind. It is an addiction that keeps the mind agitated and focused outward, away from the Heart. It is the greatest obstacle on the spiritual path and a source of tremendous suffering. Because of this unconscious and powerful mental addiction the soul is unable to know its true nature and freedom.

There are two answers to your question of what you can do. The first answer is consistent and patient practice, to discipline the mind by the use of HeartSourcing or other meditative techniques. Although you will not have a great experience every time you practice, the effort is cumulative. You cover a distance of 10,000 miles one step at a time.

The second answer is that inside your Heart is the presence of the Divine. Some people imagine it as a spark of the great light of God. This divine presence has a masculine and a feminine aspect. The masculine aspect is absolute Truth. The feminine aspect is absolute unconditional Love and Compassion. This feminine aspect is known as the Divine Mother, the Goddess. She dwells in all beings.

To free yourself from the addiction of the mind to the unending distractions of the world, you can turn toward this all-compassionate inner presence. In the sublime psychology of the higher mind that we know as the ancient wisdom of India, this tendency toward distraction is known as the (inner) demon Mahisha. The (inner) Goddess is known as Mahishamardini, “She who kills the demon of distraction” and so sets you free. This means that it is the very function of your inner Divinity to set you free. She exists for that purpose.

This tendency to distraction, ignorance and subtle desires is a knot in the Heart (kama granthi). When the inner Goddess frees us of this powerful ‘demon’ this knot is destroyed and the Heart opened by the ascending power of kundalini. This awakens in us great spiritual and material prosperity and good fortune.

But there is a quality to love we have to remember: love never forces itself. So if you want that presence of powerful divine Love to come to your aid, you have to activate it by asking the Goddess to set you free of the distracted mind. This should be particularly easy for women who are the manifestation of Her form in the world. But men as well have within themselves this great power of self-liberation. So whether we are in a male or female body, we can turn to our own nature in the form of this absolute motherly love.

If but for a moment we can put pride aside, we can find in the depth of us a place of childlike surrender. It’s been there ever since we were very small children. Later we may have developed a litany of problems with our mothers, but let’s just leave all this aside for a moment. Deep in us is the pattern of this trusting surrender, and now we activate it not toward another being (who may leave us) but toward the presence of absolute motherly care in us. This makes this surrender completely safe.

This asking to be freed of the demon of distractedness is surrender. Instead of years of psychotherapy or austerity, instead of pounding on heaven’s doors, try to simply turn to that motherly presence in your own Heart and ask to be set free. Instead of being a hero in your quest for peace, try to be a child for now. Be simple and egoless, just for a moment. Find that place of trust in the divine in you that will be fulfilled.

This place of primal trust exists in the depth of your Heart. Evoke it there. It is just a simple and honest asking. You can do it now. You do not have to wait until many years of accumulated pain give you enough despair so you finally discover this place of surrender. No, surrender is easy. It’s child’s play. For a moment be that child of the Divine Mother in you and ask Her for help, and She will unfailingly give you that help. She will give it to you in Her way and in Her time, but it will unfailingly come and you will be free to live out of the unobstructed purity of the unlimited Love in your Heart.

Question: Today I woke up confused and with many doubts. I am confused because since there is not an absolute truth, how do we know that our behaviors are correct?

Ram Giri: There is YOUR truth. Your being will know it because it is free of stress. Stress is the measurement you can use. What is stressful, whether it’s a thought, emotion or action, is not true to you. That’s why it is stressful.

Q: Are my stressful beliefs completely wrong?

RG: I don’t know.  That’s for you to explore, one by one.

Q: Is the purpose of The Work of Byron Katie to inquire reality?

RG: No, reality is what it is. Inquiry is for your thoughts about reality

Q: How will The Work free me?

RG: Inquire into a stressful thought. Find out the truth about it. That truth can set you free. That truth leads to the end of suffering.

Q: So, is there no right or wrong?

RG: In relative reality there is a very clear understanding of right and wrong. In the unified mind such distinctions do not apply. The unified mind contains and transcends the conventional mind and the way it deals with relative reality (duality).

Q: Do I need to accept the reality as it is, and not argue with it?

RG: How is arguing with reality working for you? What happens? How does it feel? How does it influence your behavior? What is the outcome? We say reality is always kinder than your story (and you war) about it. And please don’t believe anything I say. Find out for yourself if it is true for you or not.

From a Buddhist perspective, busying ourselves with worldly activities is a form of laziness, because we’re lax in self-cultivation. Our lives are so busy in modern society: Our appointment books are completely full and we’re always running here and there. We often complain there isn’t enough time for the Dharma.

However, whenever we have a spare moment, we work overtime or call some friends to fill in the gap. We always have time to eat, but we hardly ever have time to nourish ourselves spiritually by attending Dharma classes or meditating. When the temple has entertainment and free meals, we go; but when there is meditation or lessons, we’re busy.

This hindrance to spiritual progress comes because we’re attached to worldly pleasures: food, money, reputation, amusement, and friends. The harm comes from our inappropriate way of relating to them. Attached, we selfishly indulge in them. However, these things in and of themselves aren’t bad. Through pacifying our afflictions, we can enjoy these things with a good motivation–to improve ourselves for the benefit of others.

–from Taming the Mind by Ven. Thubten Chodron,

]]> http://blog.skillsforawakening.com/blog/our-lives-through-buddhist-eyes/feed 0 http://blog.skillsforawakening.com/blog/from-fear-to-fearlessness http://blog.skillsforawakening.com/blog/from-fear-to-fearlessness#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:13:13 +0000 Ram Giri http://blog.skillsforawakening.com/?p=332

I like checking the Skills for Awakening against a variety of other wisdom traditions. What I find, time and again, is that this thoroughly contemporary approach is really the pure practical essence of what the wisdom traditions teach. It represents the practice of the liberation from suffering without all the trappings of foreign cultures and times. It is for us, and it works.

The following is a quote from a Tibetan work, detailing exactly what our Skills approach says: identify the thought or feeling that causes stress and apply the antidote: The Work for thoughts and Open Attention for feelings. Face them, set them free – and as you do, you increasingly build a habit of the opposite positive qualities (here: fearlessness). This is the process of removing obstructions and building the qualities of a pure existence. As you do that, grace will create the deeper transformation of enlightenment. Here is the quote:

Fear and Fearlessness.
Perhaps the first reaction we have to our own suffering is fear. Fear arises in us almost automatically when we experience strong emotions or pain. We don’t have to sit there and generate fear–it just arises. When we experience a disturbing emotion such as jealousy we think, “No, I don’t want this.” We would rather not experience it. However, if we examine fear closely, we see that it is a thought to which we have been habituating our mind for a very long time. We have repeated this thought pattern of fear for many years, and from a Buddhist point of view, many lifetimes.

In just the same way, when we habituate our minds to being fearless, to being brave and open towards our emotions, fearlessness will also arise naturally. In order for this to happen, we must train in applying antidotes to our thought patterns that are caught up in fear. In this way, we transcend fear first through a conceptual process, which later becomes nonconceptual, a natural fearlessness. In order to become fearless in this way, we need determination and the willingness to face our emotions. With that strong determination and courage, fearlessness will arise effortlessly.

–from Trainings in Compassion: Manuals on the Meditation of Avalokiteshvara trans. by Tyler Dewar under the guidance of The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Dear friends,

I want to share with you this interview I was invited to attend couple of days ago. I’m very grateful to ‘Wisdom’s Soft Whisper’ radio show team, for your kindness and love.

Please click on: RamGiri09272010.mp3
If the above link does not work, you can paste the following address into your browser:

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/958760073/0bd75d0021a3e4694841c73b9cd35874

Size: 20.54 MB. Time: 51.32min.
Content will be available for download until October 07, 2010 15:50 PDT.

Excerpt:

* HeartSourcing Meditation
* Satsang (spiritual community)
* Conversations about my personal spiritual path
* Conversations about divine love
* The Skills to help you find your own freedom from suffering and your way to the core of your being

with love,
Ram Giri Braun

Skills for Awakening

People harm others only when they are unhappy. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I feel so great today! I think I’ll go out and harm someone!” When we can allow ourselves to know the depth of the pain and confusion felt by those who have harmed us, compassion–the wish that they be free from such suffering–can easily arise. Thinking in this way does not mean whitewashing or denying harm that was done. Rather, we acknowledge it, but go beyond amassing resentment, because we know that grudges help neither ourselves nor others.

–from Working with Anger by Thubten Chodron, published by Snow Lion Publications

Life is full of pain sometimes, where do we turn to find some relief?

Look at your fear, depression, anxiety, worry. They are all about the past and the future, are they not?

Now bring your attention to the present moment. Not ‘sort of,’ but really come into the now. Get focused on the breath. Feel it streaming in and out. Then go even closer. Let the mind become very still and pay close attention to every smallest part of each breath. Then, when your attention is truly focused in the Now, look around you. Are you safe right now? Can you handle this moment?

Now where is your pain? Can you find it?

It can’t exist in the Now. Since all pain and fear are about past or future, when you take those away you take away the breeding ground of suffering. In the Now you are free and you have found relief from your suffering.

Practice that again and again and even the strongest suffering will weaken and eventually melt away.

Three aspects of spiritual life are precious to guard and develop: devotion, enthusiasm and the focus on enlightenment.

Devotion to our teacher and our highest goal is the source of all blessings. We may think that this is because when we have devotion we are good and we deserve to receive blessings, but that is a minor consideration. Rather it’s that our devotion opens us so we become capable of receiving the blessings that are always ready to come to us. Devotion is entirely for our benefit. It focuses mind and heart onto what is essential.

Enthusiasm is what drives us on and what increases with each forward step we take. Even when we’re in a deep valley we can still maintain this passion for enlightenment; perhaps then it comes in the form of the yearning for the end of suffering. This is perfect, for suffering can create powerful motivation.

The focus on enlightenment, on awakening to our true nature, is the great goal of life and the more keen our focus becomes, the straighter will be the path we travel. The straighter the path – the less suffering. The less suffering – the more peace, bliss and truth. The more peace – the more compassion and the more we will be able to share with others the grace of our beings. If we can remember our aspiration for enlightenment a little bit more each day, then before we know it, our life will become a thrilling adventure and it will be nurturing and uplifting to all around us.

Maggy doesn’t like her arms. They’re just too hairy. She shaves them, she waxes them and still they are always a thorn in her side. The hair on her arms is the focal point of her self-rejection.

Perhaps it’s your boss, or your first boyfriend who mistreated you, or life itself. Somewhere your unhappiness crystallizes and since it’s always been this way you see no way out.

But Maggy knows The Work of Byron Katie and has set herself free successfully of many things that have bothered her. And yet that hair issue seemed unmovable, like it just had to be there. A monolith of her suffering.

So when I asked her whether she ever thought to do The Work on that hair she looked at me stunned. This thought just had never occurred to her. It was a revelation, an epiphany!

Yes, whatever pain we have, it’s just a bunch of thoughts and feelings. It’s not the hair, it’s never the person who hurt you. It’s inside of you and there you can set yourself free.

So I invite you to look closely for what suffering may be hiding from you in clear sight.

Whatever it is, if it feels bad you can get free of it, even though your mind may say it’s impossible.

The day is past and some of us came together in a wonderful workshop, stepping out of the imprisonment of our stressful thoughts and emotions. This is how we are creating peace in this world, one mind and heart at a time.

Let me offer you a quote by Byron Katie today:

“I am the perpetrator of my suffering

– but only all of it.”

It may sound strange at first hearing, but I invite you to sit with it for a while and see if it is true for you. For me I can say that it freed me of thinking I am a victim. If I did it (and I know that to be true) then I can stop. This is the invitation to the end of pain.

Now it has come again, this sad day. We hear great waves of disturbance around us, as though a stone was thrown into a pond and the ripples are spreading. Intolerance, fear, prejudice and confusion, one follows the other. We see the disturbance in the world and what can we do? How can we not feel helpless in the face of threatened Koran burnings and fanaticism on all sides?

There is much we can do. First of all we can keep our cool. We can notice the shrill voices and perhaps they are not so attractive. And so we can listen to the quiet voice within. What does it say? Where does it guide us?

I think it leads us into the opposite direction of fanaticism, toward peace and compassion. Maybe that is the purpose. Maybe that is the teaching of 9-11.

Okay, I’ll drop the ‘maybe.”

The louder the madness grows, the more obvious is the need for inner peace, for acceptance and an inner safety that can radiate out from us into the world. To find this inner safety and peace is our work.

We have been given much grace. We are not caught in the common delusion of conflict. We have the means to end the internal wars – and this is the all-important step toward how the external wars will end.

On this day I wish you the peace that is the exact opposite of what this day has come to symbolize. It is already within you!

Namaste – Ram Giri

PS: If you live in South Florida, you’re warmly invited to come to our afternoon Seminar on the topic in Key Biscayne (more here: http://skillsforawakening.com/events/)