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Spirituality, Responsibility & Transformation
March 23, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 2 Comments
Sooner or later it becomes clear to us that we are responsible for everything in our experience, and it is through denial that we negate responsibility. In the full realization of this there is no wriggle room and no get out clauses. Making anything other than ‘us’, and something or someone else’s responsibility, is denial pure and simple.
When we deny in this way we not only create separation in ourselves, but also from what it is in the external world, reflecting our separation to us. We cannot choose a view where we are ‘separate’ when we don’t like something, and holistic and into unity in a purely idealized way the rest of the time. We have to be living the truth to embody it.
When we remain in the consciousness of separation, there is very little responsibility outside the little pocket of reality that we occupy. This is partly why we have resistance to our evolution, because it requires us taking more and more responsibility and gets bigger, and keeps getting bigger.
Most of us, if we are really honest about it, are looking through spirituality, for
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreSpirituality – Religion
March 11, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 1 Comment
Increasing numbers of people in the developed world consider themselves spiritual without belonging to a religion. Some of the dominant world religions believe there is no spiritual life outside their confines. Let’s take some time now then to explore the differences between spirituality and religion.
Both spirituality and religion, at a core level are about our relationship with God, the Divine, the Mystery or Absolute truth, by whatever name you give it. From my point of view the similarities end here
Spirituality as I see it is an innate dimension to our existence and our relationship with the Mystery of life. Religions are manmade structures that seek to define and control our spiritual nature. Religions used to be a cultures one size fits all spirituality and in many parts of the world still are. Spirituality is personal, fluid and evolving. Religions are constructed with rigid and moralized belief systems.
Religion is based on faith and accepted beliefs which define the parameters of what is allowed to be believed. Ideas and beliefs beyond these boundaries are often
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreWhat Is Spirituality?
March 10, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 2 Comments
Spirituality, like so many things we refer to and speak of on a regular basis, is not so easy to define when we sit down and think about just what we mean when we use it. I imagine that a survey of this question would bring back as many different answers as the people who took it.
In this time, when so many are turning away from organized religion to find meaning in their lives, and with the vast proliferation of teachers and teachings, many people’s idea of spirituality may be a postmodern mixture of all kinds of different elements.
So here’s what I think. Spirituality is our conscious engagement with the process of our spiritual evolution. It is my experience that life in its very nature is a spiritual process of Consciousness evolving. We, in our individuated forms, are the living means through which
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreIn Defence Of Mantra
March 4, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
I decided to write this article In Defense of Mantra as response to a post on Stephen Sashen’s blog called Mantra power from Sweden. The gist of what he says is that there is no difference between having the words of a pop song going round and round in your head and repeating Sanskrit mantras.
In the comments that followed many people agreed and accepted this idea. I myself left a comment on several occasions, they were never published, so no other perspectives are obviously welcome there!
Here is why I think there is a difference.
First let’s look out the nature of sound and words, in fact the nature of all things. On a fundamental level everything that exists is a vibration of energy. This is no longer a mystical point of view but is the accepted science of new physics.
Sound is created by the vibration of air in a particular pattern, and words themselves have their own vibrational pattern even as writing. The power of this has been clearly demonstrated in the groundbreaking work of Masaro Emoto. For those unfamiliar with his work he developed a
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreHealing Though Meditation
February 28, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 1 Comment
Healing though meditation occurs in multiple ways. There are all the physical and psychological health benefits we gain from the practice. There are also deeper levels of healing available in meditation.
When we are practicing a body based meditation, we may begin to notice all manner of aches and pains in the body. They may range from gross to very subtle. If there is a pain in a particular part of the body our habitual reaction will usually be to want it to go away, to change it or move away from it. If it is not indicating a physical problem, with the knees for example, then there is the opportunity for release and healing.
Pain and tension in the body indicate a place of holding, a place where some unresolved, incomplete or unhealed ‘past’ is held in the subconscious. The body being the
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreBreathing Meditation Instruction
February 18, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
Breathing meditation is one of the most basic forms of meditation. Deceptively simple, it will soon show you what a monkey mind you have. It is the foundation of many buddhist meditation practices such as vipassana and mindfulness meditation. Breathing meditation is also an important yoga meditation.
Some forms of vipassana place emphasis on observing the breath at the nose tip, while others at the navel. Here are the breathing meditation instructions of my own, I will endeavor to record it and make it available as a free resource. My emphasis is attention on the body moving as it breathes. As I see it breath doesn’t actually exist, it is just air that the body draws in and expels. So the place to
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreSpiritual Unity – Where Is It?
February 13, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
Spiritual unity and oneness may be things we believe in and aspire to, but how manifest are they in how we think, feel, behave and live? Do these ideals of spirituality effect the way we view our moment to moment lives or are they abstract ideals that we share in like minded company? When things don’t go our way, or when we see suffering and destruction in the world, how do we reconcile them with spiritual unity and oneness?
Here is a classic example of the paradox of absolute truths and relative reality. Our relative experience is of separation consciousness, the absolute truth is unity, oneness. The egoic mind is a fractured consciousness and as such experiences itself as separate from all else. It is fractured by pains and fears that remain unhealed, incomplete or unresolved. The pure awareness of unity and oneness is filtered through
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreIs Letting Go The Means Of Liberation?
February 8, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 1 Comment
If Liberation is a process, how does it work and what do fear, anger and pain have to do with it?
What do we do when we are experiencing fear, anger or pain? The first thing is to actually notice and acknowledge what we are feeling. Next look where in our bodies it is vibrating. If we can do this we have immediately stopped being the emotion and it is now something happening, in a particular place, that we can be present to.
Where we find the emotion vibrating in the body we will find tension. This tension is the physicalizing of resistance we have to the feelings. The feelings are ‘past’ held by resistance in unconsciousness. Our resistance and denial then are directly reflected in the tension and holding in our bodies. By choosing to stop holding and allowing the body to open, we begin both the release of our resistance, and
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreManifesting, The Law Of Attraction & Spirituality
February 4, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · 5 Comments
I see the prevalence of information on manifesting and the law of attraction as evidence of some upward movement in the collective consciousness of humanity.
The belief in, and practicing of manifesting can free us in our understanding of, and interaction with life. It can empower us to realize choice over victimhood and open the potential of our creative interaction with life.
However it is just one step up and if only used to gratify our egoic desires it will not evolve us very much further. Indeed it is possible it will entrench us deeper in maya albeit with better skills to play there.
Understood more deeply the law of attraction becomes
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out moreMeditation Is Training For Life
February 1, 2009 by Ray Baskerville · Leave a Comment
Many meditation practices have some focus on the body.This is because body and the feelings are always in the moment. The mind exists in the past, and its projection into the future. So when we are identified with the mind and thought, we are not in the present moment and, therefore, not in touch with our experience and response to it. When we are caught up in mental activity, particularly when we are upset about something and the mind is caught in cyclical internal dialogue, then feeling is vibrating in us and we are disconnected from it.
With meditation practice, we are able to notice ourselves being disconnected in this way, and we can simply ask ourselves “what am I feeling now?” we can then move our attention into the body and the direct feeling experience. Becoming embodied in this way we become present to our internal experience in the moment. With this development of awareness we can choose to engage with what in us is seeking liberation.
When we remain in identification with thought, our experience of life is largely governed by what we are thinking about it, or the ‘story’ we are telling ourselves about what is happening.
Most of the time we believe our ‘stories’ – our self-talk, we assume it is ‘real’ and true. In fact our thinking moves in habitual patterns, which arise from what is held in separation within us. Our thinking largely arises from this sub-consciousness.
The exception is when there is connection between our feeling state and the mind. In its present form this is the minds interpretation of intuitive feeling, inspiration also falls into this realm.
THE POSSIBILITY OF CHOICE IS NOW
Becoming present to our experience of the present moment opens the possibility of our having choice. Until we are present in the moment, our subconscious patterns and habits will be running our lives, and dictate our behavior and experience. This occurs seamlessly without our conscious awareness of it happening. We are identified with these habitual patterns as simply being who we are. Indeed our ego is engaged in constantly creating identity from them.
Feelings in response to the moment will arise without our noticing them, and we remain caught in the narcissism and tyranny of identification with the mind, which keeps us from the experience of now. When we are actually connecting to our feeling experience of the moment, we create the possibility of choosing our response to what the moment brings. With time we become more able to discriminate what part of our feeling experience is the vibrating of separation within us, and bring that awareness into our response to what is actually occurring ‘now’.
For example someone may speak to us in a particular tone and manner and we are suddenly irritated and angry. If we connect with these feelings before jumping into reaction from them, we may realize that the tone and manner of speech echoes the way one of our parents addressed us when telling us off. The child within us, still holding our feeling response from childhood now reacts through the adult we have become.
Another example, lets say the above situation occurs but it is our boss who is speaking to us, or someone else we feel we has some power to affect us. In this situation the childhood resonance is denied and unexpressed, as it has been for sometime. Then for some reason you are late finishing work and are unable to buy something your partner asked you to pick up on the way home. You get home and they innocently ask for the item. In this moment, the original childhood feeling, the frustration at working late and lets say, the feeling of having failed through no fault of your own, all emerge at once and you snap angrily at your partner. This response is clearly disproportionate to the actual situation. This is re-action – projection. It is most often in our closest relationships that we do this.
Practicing meditation is an effective means of beginning to break the tyranny of identification with thought an demotion. It’s value and usefulness though is greatest when the practice of meditation becomes a skill in living.
