Have you got time to Love?
Posted on October 4, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa
It is so easy to judge, is it not? It happens so automatically because our mind has been conditioned to judge.
Judgment is always based on past experiences, and most often, using information we have collected from age-old experiences. More recent experiences merely trigger old responses, including old judgments.
The judging mind is never a peaceful mind. It is restless because it is not accepting of the way things are. It is in constant quarrel with the world. Such a mind, as Mother Theresa so succinctly says, has not time to love.
You cannot judge and love at the same time. To judge is to believe in and reinforce duality and consequently, separation, whereas the essence of love is oneness.
I have never found judging to be a pleasant, fulfilling or loving experience. On the contrary, I have always felt more angered with and distanced from the people I claim to love or at least seek to love. Sadly, for a long time, I was not even aware of these unpleasant and often painful associations with judging.
As I said earlier, the habit of judging is so ingrained in us that unless we remain mindful, we may not be aware of our habit. And even when we begin to develop greater awareness, it tends to be over the more obvious objects of judgment such as the pedophile or the war criminal or a particular race or culture.
But what about the judgments we make about ourselves or our partners and our children? Somehow, we seem to think that we have a right and even a duty to judge! That, without our judgment, we/they may stray from what is ‘right’ as we have deemed it.
Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves: Is there a different way? Is there a way I can respond to the world, to people and things, to myself without judgment and its associated sense of separation and distance?
I believe there is. I believe that the consciousness of love, of awareness, gives us the freedom of true choice; choice which is not governed by judgment but guided instead by our feelings, our good, joyous, peaceful, and yes, loving feelings.
In love, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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The Soul squeals in utter delight!
Posted on September 29, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
Hello again!
Yesterday, I posted here about the profound experience of a soft gaze, a Peace Gaze. So moved was I by my recent experience of just such a gaze, only a few moments long, that I posted about it at my other blog, Longings Enchantments and Sacred Space.
Today, I wish to share with you another experience of joy and relating to the soul, aroused this time (as it has countless other times) by the rapture of Rumi’s soul:
No one knows
What makes the soul
Wake up so happy!
Maybe a dawn breeze
has blown the veil
from the face of GodTranslated by Coleman Barks in The Soul of Rumi
Ah, the soul gazes into the face of god, into all that it is, into eternity itself! How could the soul be anything but joyous? Ecstatic? It re-cognizes its beginlessness and endlessness, its limitlessness, its sheer beauty, goodness and greatness - unenhanceable and incorruptible! How could it not feel rapture? Exquisite, unstoppable rapture?
God has revealed its face and the soul squeals in utter delight as it sees itself! At last!
In love, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Look into my Eyes and meet me where we truly are!
Posted on September 28, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
Have you ever looked softly, yet deeply into the eyes of another person? And have you ever done it while holding yourself in a state of peace, joy and openness, which is really the state of love?
‘Peace Gazing’ is something that I invite people to engage in during certain meditation practices. For one minute, people sit in pairs, facing each other, gazing softly and deeply into each others’ eyes. Prior to this, I would have guided us into a more peaceful and open space, so that it is from this space that we engage in the Peace Gaze.
Sometimes, the Peace Gaze can be far from a peaceful experience. After all, most of us live in societies where prolonged eye contact is discouraged and considered threatening.
Have you noticed how we tend to avoid eye contact with strangers as well as friends and loved ones? We even act as if someone we are passing on the street or in a shopping mall or on our way to the living room or kitchen is not there.
Yes, we do acknowledge the physical presence of the person by either giving them space to move or allowing them to pass first but we don’t really acknowledge their spiritual presence in which the eyes play a significant role.
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect
G K Chesterton at thinkexist.com
It is not that we must make eye contact to be spiritually attuned with another. Not at all. In fact, the sense of connection and oneness is often most strongly felt when we close our eyes and allow our thoughts to settle.
However, in our waking and walking moments, our eyes offer us the means to experience the deep and profound spiritual communion we have with another. That contact, held in a soft, open gaze penetrates effortlessly, the layers of conditioning that our individualized personalities are built on, taking us directly and instantly to the seat of our very being – that open, expansive, lush, vibrant field of foreverness, of eternity, of endless lifetimes. That field, which Rumi says, is ‘beyond the concepts of rightfulness and wrongfulness’! In fact, let me give you the full quote:
Beyond the concepts of rightfulness and wrongfulness, there is a field. I will meet you there!
Jalal Ad-Din Rumi
When we gaze into the eyes of another, the ‘windows of the soul’, as the eyes are sometimes described, we gift ourselves and another, the wondrous experience of a few moments in eternity, in bliss, in the truth of who we are.
I have noticed on many, many occasions that by softly gazing into the eyes of another, agitated, fearful, nervous, defensive or even hostile behavior or words instantly cease. It is as if we are meeting for the first time in that place beyond judgment, beyond duality, beyond separation. We meet in the truth of who we are – One!
If you have never done it before, or never done it with certain (types of) people, do try it. It doesn’t even have to be a minute long. Neither do you have to be seated opposite the person. Instead, you might try it with your neighbor, your spouse or your child or the person at the check-out counter, the last of whom was one of the people I exchanged a gaze with yesterday!
For about three seconds, we gazed softly and deeply into each other’s eyes even as he was handing me my receipt. What a beautiful experience that was for me and I sensed it was for the young man too!
Meeting you, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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What, my Human Being?
Posted on September 25, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
What draws me closer to you?
Or am I afraid to get too close?
What allows me to enjoy your being?
Or do I believe that I cannot afford such luxury?
Or that there are others more deserving of my time and attention?
Or that I cannot possibly enjoy your being when it is so different to my being, my beliefs and my values?
What encourages me to wish only good things for you?
Or do I believe that you can jolly well wish good things for yourself?
What persuades me to cease passing judgment on you?
Or do I believe that it is my business to?
And that, if I didn’t, why, you would spiral into moral decline or take advantage of me or act in ways that I do not approve of and ultimately, give me less and less reason to feel righteous about myself?
What compels me to listen to you with a wide open heart, with a mind willing to be changed, with a spirit basking in the wonder of your being?
Or am I too caught up in composing my response, or recalling my old arguments, or marshalling my defenses and launching my attack, ultimately seeking to prove you wrong or less or worse and me right and more and better?
What, in other words, my human being, convinces me that you and I are One?
Unmistakeably, unenhanceably, incorruptibly One?
Built of the same atoms and molecules as we are?
Spawned of the same cosmic dust?
Birthed by the One consciousness?
What?
One, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Interconnectedness - It is I!
Posted on September 22, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
If there is any lover in the world, 0 Muslim, it is I.
If there is any believer, infidel, or Christian hermit, it is I.
The wine, the cup-bearer, the musician, the instrument and the music,
The beloved, the candle, the liquor and the inebriation, it is I.
The seventy-two religious sects in the world
Do not really exist;
I swear by God every religious sect-it is I.
Earth, air, water and fire: do you know what they are?
Earth, air, water and fire-and the soul as well; it is I
Truth and falsehood, good and evil, pleasure and suffering, beginning and end,
Knowledge, learning, asceticism, devotion and faith-it is I.
Be assured that the fire of hell and its flames,
Paradise, Eden and the angels of heaven-it is I.
Heaven and earth and all they hold: angels, demons, and men - it is I.Jalal Ad-Din Rumi at www.onelittleangel.com
In the poem above, Rumi expresses the transcendent consciousness that is all-encompassing, god-consciousness, if you like, for god is all-pervading. The divine is present in all through each.
Such a state of consciousness must be of practical use if it is to be of any use at all. How are we inspired by it? I know that it inspires me to ask questions such as these:
Where am I not? Where are you not? How does the dominant perception of separation affect us? Does it draw us closer to one another? Does it help us experience the wholeness that we are? Does it help us go beyond the culture of ‘blame and shame’? Does it make us more likely to see goodness and greatness rather than pass judgment?
It is I, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Interconnectedness - You bet it matters!
Posted on September 19, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a small boat
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.Thich Nhat Hanh from http://desertrosepress.com/Detailed/35.html
The truth of our interconnectedness or interbeing, as the Buddhist monk, scholar, poet and peace activist, Thich Naht Hanh, refers to it, is fundamental to the truth of who we are. There is no separate and discrete entity that is ‘you’ or ‘Lucy’ that exists independently of all else. How can there be? Even the air we breathe is without boundary.
Which molecules of air could we say are just ‘yours’ or just ‘mine’? No, that sense of a separate ‘you’ or ‘I’ is but an illusion and a very persistent one. It is an illusion that babies and very young children are free from before they are conditioned into the consciousness of separation!
This does not mean that there isn’t a condensation of energy or a configuration of consciousness that is uniquely ‘you’. There is and this is what we see. However, to see only this and no more or no further or no deeper leaves us with a false belief in separation and a gnawing sense of isolation. For in truth, consciousness is the substratum of all of life, animate and inanimate, permeating and taking all forms of being. It is rather like the ocean which gives rise to waves of all sizes, shapes and forms. But it is the one ocean and all the waves are inherently of the one nature.
To overlook or ignore this truth is to live in denial of who we are! And many of us do! Which is why we struggle in an unenlightened (ignorant) consciousness of self-preservation, competition and exclusivity. These ways of being directly attack and dishonor the truth of who we are, our very nature!
However, when we allow ourselves to experience our interconnectedness or interbeing, the illusion of separation slowly begins to dissolve. When we pray or offer intent from a place of interconnectedness, our prayer or intention is powerful for it arises from and draws on not just one ‘cut off’ or ‘isolated’ ‘piece of consciousness’ but from the entire and infinite field of consciousness which is the field of infinite possibilities! Would you really want anything less???
Much love, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Interconnectedness - Does it affect me?
Posted on September 16, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Eugene may have been inspired by Jesus’ sense of interconnectedness and co-responsibility expressed thus: Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.
Mathew 25:40
Both statements remind me of a truth I have intuited – that I am inextricably connected with all else, just as my fingers are inextricably connected to the rest of my body. It reminds me that everything that I think, say or do, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ affects all else, whether I sense it or not. This reminder motivates me to keep my mind peaceful, free from worry, anxiety, distrust, anger, fear and any other kind of state that increases my sense of separation from all else.
In recent years, the notion of connectedness and wholeness has been explored and evidenced in the field of Quantum Physics. The notion itself is not a new one. On the contrary, it is intrinsic to the cultural and spiritual experiences and practices of native and ancient peoples. But its study, using the methods of science, has been more recent, probably dating back to some hundred years ago but more intensely in the last twenty to thirty years.
As you may know, I am a great advocate and practitioner of the power of intention. I see it as a power that we have always had and that we always use, although mostly unconsciously/habitually and with little understanding of it and how it works i.e. the Science of Intention. Making yourself a cup of coffee, for instance, happens as a result of your using the power of intention.
When I consider how the power of intention is constantly in use and how it brings about all our life experiences, individual and collective, I feel both a deep sense of responsibility as well as a fresh burst of motivation. My sense of responsibility is not burdensome at all. Rather, it is more like a heightened sense of awareness of my freedom of choice! I know that the choices I am making, whether over the minutiae of daily events or over the elaborate strokes of national and global events, affect not just me but all else.
It is something that I encourage others to be mindful of, as for instance, when I guide a meditation group. I often begin by reminding all of us present that our practice is “…not just for ourselves but for all else, seen and unseen, known and unknown”. At the same time, I am motivated to bring conscious and loving intent into everything I do – my thinking, speaking and acting.
Over the last fifteen years or so, I have felt increasingly drawn into the bigger, greater, wider, infinite ‘me’, the ‘me’ that extends beyond my skin, if you like. It is what is contemporarily known as a great ‘leveler’. Yes, dear reader, I have come to realize that to be so myopically focused on my personal/individual interests without considering their impact on the whole is limiting, both in my personal visioning as well as in my creative ability and willingness to participate in the truth (wholeness/infinite potentiality) of who I am!
Now I suspect that that last statement might leave you a bit puzzled so I shall elaborate on it over the next post or two. In the meantime, if anything that I have said here (or quoted) inspires (or annoys or amuses) you, please feel free to share your reactions :-)
Much love, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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If Money wasn’t an Issue…
Posted on September 14, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
There is a question that has really gripped my attention and raised my awareness of late. I would like to share it with you as I believe it could help you negotiate some of those sticky, sensitive, scary areas in your mind that keep you from doing what you really, really want to be doing.
Here’s the question:
If money wasn’t an issue, and if status/image, confidence, obligation/duty, physical/mental/emotional ability were not issues either, how would you want to spend your time, use your life?
I encourage you to really give this question some deep thought. Actually, allow it some deep feeling.
Too many of us spend the best part of our adult lives doing things we would rather not be doing while decrying the fact that we were denied the freedom to do as we liked as children!
One of the major occupants of our adult lives is our JOB, something that many of us begrudgingly allow into our lives and then find a justification for its continuing occupancy! In academic research, this is referred to as ‘post-event justification/rationalization’.
The mind is quite capable of coming up with reasons that support our professional/work and personal choices…and it does, to the extent that we are not only able to convince others but, sadly, ourselves too!
And so we continue for years, trying to ignore, suppress or placate with distractions that persistent restlessness that we just cannot seem to shrug off once and for all! Until maybe, one day, when we finally give an ear to its relentless calling, we find to our great dismay, that it may be ‘too late’ for change. Or so we believe.
Well, today, right here and right now, could be just such a moment to give an ear to that calling. A moment for change. It is never ‘too late’. The belief that it is ‘too late’ is a belief that we have been socialized into. There is no reason why that belief cannot be questioned. In fact, there is every reason why it should be! After all, it is your happiness that such a belief can either allow or prevent, depending on whether you accept it or reject it.
I once saw a bumper sticker that made this point quite succintly:
Don’t believe everything you think.
Time, or ‘psychological time‘ is something that we can take charge of using the power of thought, which is a power that we have and use (for better or for worse) every moment of our lives. Now is where all change ever happens. And you can be the orchestrator of the change you deeply desire! But first, you must be the one who imagines that change. No one else can do that for you. You have to allow yourself to step into the paradise of desire, a place that you so joyously and willingly spent much of your earliest childhood in!
So, why not give it a go? Ask yourself the question,
If money wasn’t an issue, and if status/image, confidence, obligation/duty, physical/mental/emotional ability were not issues either, how would you want to spend your time, your life?
Give yourself all the time and space to feel the answer. You don’t have to do anything about your answer if you don’t wish to, but, gee, wouldn’t you just like to explore the possibilities..??? In your mind, of course… :-)
Have fun!
Love always, Lucy
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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Communion of Spirit
Posted on September 11, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
Hi All! Today, I happened to send a message to a friend over the internet. After sending it, it occurred to me that others too might enjoy reading it and so I am posting it here, omitting the name of my friend and replacing it with a more universal name, Friend :-).
My dearest Friend
The expressions and my experiences of our infinite nature/potential continue to thrill me and keep me in awe!
Take the internet, for example. Look at how it has influenced us, how it has become a medium for communication and action like no other (and by that I simply mean ‘different’ not ‘better’ :-)). Look at how it has made our spiritual communion possible…or rather, brought it to our awareness for we are all and always in communion.
So from this space of gratitude, thrill and awe, I give thanks for and marvel at your spiritual journey too!
I truly believe and feel in a very gentle and free way that ALL things are possible. I do mean ‘all’. In my experience, when I am in a free, peaceful and loving space, whatever I have desired, imagined, intended and allowed is manifested, often in the most charming, unexpected and thrilling ways :-). Life has truly been getting more and more fascinating, joyous and free for me!
I do wish that you too will experience the power of DESIRE, IMAGINATION, INTENTION and ALLOWING (the last of which means not trying to dictate how things mush happen but remaining open to the infinite possibilities by which they can happen). Also important is to go through this process while in a state of peace and love. I believe that this is what is implied when Jesus teaches:
When you come to pray, first make peace with your brother.
To me, this means:
Offer your prayer, your desire, your intention with a mind and heart that are at peace, for this will ensure that what you ask for is what is good and great and what you truly desire!
Quantum Physics or at least the scientists and science involved is finally catching up with the cosmology of ancient spiritual traditions, perhaps best articulated and captured in the Hindu Vedas.
I have not heard of CERN. My first taste of QP was through the work of an English physicist, Paul Davis (who became my ‘hero’ for a few years!!!). He has written several books, one of which is called, Physics and The Mind of God. I read this book about 18 years ago when I was considering doing my PhD…
Anyway, since then, I have read others, including Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics), Amit Goswami and others that I find on the internet.
It really was the turning point for me, recognizing that the classical physics I had learned at school was not quite right and finding within QP, the pointers and tentative explanations of my life experiences. It was QP that got me interested in Buddhism and what I have gained from that is immeasurable.
I believe what we ‘take’ from something is proportional to what we ‘put’ in. To that extent, having a mind of sincere enquiry and openness and a desire for happiness will certainly reap just the fruits we desure - happiness through enlightenment.
The gradual ‘departure’ of your trauma and its companions (anger, guilt, fear, regret etc) have revealed your natural joy which has always been a part of your true nature, that true nature which is ‘unenhanceable and incorruptible’, as they say in Buddhism.
Friend, your moment of joy and freedom is here and now. Always here and now. May you continue to fall deeper and deeper (and/or grow wider and wider) into ‘here and now’ (which of course is the other expression for ‘love’ :-)).
I rejoice in the fact that we have been able to share this communion of spirit and shall continue to… :-)
In love, Lucy
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Are You Holding Your Poise?
Posted on September 6, 2008 - Filed Under Blogroll
Have you ever received acts of kindness and generosity? And have you received them without feeling indebted or inferior or guilty or ashamed, even if only in small measure? And have you tended to reciprocate these acts or respond in a way that feels slightly awkward from your eagerness to please?
Or have you felt as if you have been ‘giving in’ and frequently acceding to another person’s wishes, demands or preferences, perhaps persuading yourself that you have done this in the name of ‘love’ or ‘peace’?
The conditioned mind has its preset margins of comfort, tolerance, agreeableness, acceptance and compromise. It is also this same conditioned mind that permits these margins to be ignored or overridden when acting out of fear. And this same conditioned mind also finds justification for such departures from its preset margins.
Almost all of this ‘action-reaction-justification’ is habitual or conditioned which is why the mind is described as ‘conditioned’. Yet, it is to its own undoing for there comes a point when it can no longer tolerate these departures from the preset, when it feels it has given too much, or given in too much or is trying too hard to please and often to little or no avail. At such a threshold, something snaps, either violently and externally or sullenly and internally. Neither of these benefits you or the party you have been trying to please or whose kindness you have been trying to reciprocate.
You see, in all of this, you have lost what I call your ‘poise’.
What is poise?
It is the state of equanimity where your mind is held in the imperturbable ocean of love, where neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ as judged by the conditioned mind has power. Rather, the equanamous, joyous mind is able to enjoy all things, attaching to none, avoiding none.
Such a mind-state has no interest in pleasing or acceding. Nor does it have any interest in controlling either overtly through demands and threats or covertly through accessions and compromises. When the mind is free from all such devices and is thus resting calmly and joyously in awareness and unconditional acceptance, you are standing in Poise. You have Poise.
The awakening mind is increasingly a mind of Poise. It is not disturbed by the currents of other people’s behaviors, words or ideas. It is not disturbed by the constant changes in the physical, material, emotional and mental world. It is motivated to act not for self-preservation but for SELF/OVE-expression. In all conditions, it holds Poise!
Develop the mind of equilibrium.
You will always be getting praise and blame,
but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:
follow the calmness, the absence of pride.
Much love, Lucy
How shall I serve you, my Love?
For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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