Being and Leadership part 2

Posted on May 7, 2011 by

Creating participation

As long as we feel disconnected from our Source, we will feel isolated and alone in the universe. All apparent differences in the phenomenal world are finally resolved in the unified field of Being from which they arose in the first place. When we deeply intuit this ultimate Oneness pervading all things, we lose our fear of differences. Fear is what blocks us from creating participation in our lives. We perceive the ‘other’ as a threat or competitor and seek to defend against, control or dominate him. 

 

Life forces us into communities, but basically communities are war zones camouflaged over with platitudes about caring, sharing and cooperation. If this were not so, there would not be such high rates of depression, burnout, substance abuse, divorce and suicide. There would not be so much costly litigation. The transformed leader who has attained a high degree of Self-awareness is able to see through the veil of separation and recognize his own self in the other. This is known as empathy, but there cannot be empathy where there is fear. As long as we perceive ourselves isolated we will be dominated by fear and unable to experience true empathy for others. The deeper our sense of isolation, the more remote and inaccessible we become. When we are able to feel empathy, as distinct from attachment or sentimentality, others are attracted to us and this is the real basis for creating participation in our life and projects.

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Being and Leadership part 1

Posted on May 7, 2011 by

‘Established in Being, perform action.’ 

        Bhagavad-Gita, ch.2, verse 48 

 

It is an observable truth that the majority of human beings have imbibed various negative ways of ‘being-in-the-world’ that not only reflect low self-esteem but further undermine it.  Having lost contact with our true nature which is essentially joyful, our capacity to act powerfully and positively is greatly weakened.   

 

In order to transform a disempowered and disempowering mode of ‘being-in-the-world’ we must first assume responsibility for where we find ourselves. This starts by jettisoning the self-pitying belief that ‘I am a victim’. As has been discussed elsewhere, the ‘I am a victim’ attitude keeps us locked into the mood and behavior of a victim. And, like any self-fulfilling prophecy, we will continually create situations that merely serve to reinforce this crippling downward spiral.  The moment we choose to assume responsibility for being the source of both our personal history and our current situation we will have opted for being a leader. What do we mean by‘leader’? In the context of transformational leadership it means ‘taking the reins’ of one’s own life. A self-leader is neither a leader of the pack nor a follower of the herd. To be a self-leader means to be proactive, self-generating, self-actualising, honest and accountable. The moment one truly assumes responsibility for whatever was, is and will be one’s life undergoes a transformation and these qualities begin to flourish. 

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Self-enquiry — ‘Who am I?’

Posted on April 30, 2011 by

‘Siva is the Being assuming all forms and the Consciousness seeing them. That is to say, Siva is the background underlying both the subject and the object. Everything has its being in Siva and because of Siva.’                          Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950)

 

 

Self-enquiry (atma-vichara) has been called the Maha (Great) Yoga because it is a direct path to Self-realisation. Self-enquiry deals head on with the most fundamental philosophical and personal question we can raise: ‘Who am I?’ The practice of Self-enquiry is very ancient and traditionally has been considered suitable only for those who have renounced everything in their one-pointed search for truth. In more recent times, Ramana Maharshi has revitalised this timeless path, making it accessible to all seekers, even those with busy lives and crammed agendas.

This method can be practised in a formal way by setting aside a certain period of time each day (for example, 20 minutes upon arising and 20 minutes before retiring) or it can be practised informally for a few minutes here and there as the opportunity or motivation presents itself. As we progress on this path, Self-enquiry becomes an automatic process that continues unbroken throughout the day. It can be done while working or speaking, without reducing our ability to function efficiently. For beginners, however, a set period of time set aside each day is recommended until the practice is firmly established.

In order to experience anything – a tree, another human being, a desire, an emotion or a physical sensation – there first must be someone who is experiencing. Before we can know an ‘it’, ‘he’ or ‘they’, the ‘I’ must already be established. During deep sleep there is no sense of ‘I’, nor is there any awareness of objects, whether subtle or gross. When we enter the dreaming state, the sense of ‘I’ reappears, as do all of the characters and objects of the dream experience. In other words, the second and third persons (‘you’, ‘he’, ‘it’, ‘they’) cannot exist in the absence of the first person singular (‘I’). The sense of ‘I am’ is the only stable aspect of experience, since the objects of experience themselves are continually changing. People, places and things come and go in our lives, but we remain. Our own bodies will change, sometimes drastically, but the ‘I am’ associated with our body will remain firm. This ‘I am’ is the only subject, whereas all else are objects. Even God is an object to the subject, ‘I am’.

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Self and the External World

Posted on April 30, 2011 by

Reflections on Bertrand Russell’s ‘The Problems of Philosophy’


Bertrand Russell

‘The Problems of Philosophy’ is one the earliest and most popular books of the British analytic philosopher, Bertrand Russell. It’s a small book, but one asking the most difficult questions of philosophy and loaded with insight and wit. Russell was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. He sought to reconcile philosophy and science, drawing heavily from his expertise in logic and mathematics. Russell devoted a great deal of thought to the subject of knowledge and to the question, ‘What, if anything, do we truly know?’ As a rigorous analyst he launched this inquiry with a close examination of the fundamentals of human experience, seeking to find a solid basis upon which to build a theory of knowledge. In so doing, Russell was tackling one of the oldest, most bedeviling problems of philosophy: ‘What exactly is our relationship with the external world?” It has proven a difficult problem not only for philosophy, but one which impinges heavily on both science and religion.

Russell, like his rationalist predecessor Rene Descartes, begins by putting everything into doubt. He asks, ‘Of what, if anything, can I be absolutely certain.’ Descartes’ famous answer to this question was, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Russell however is not so sure of Descartes’ ‘I am’, since when he looks into his own experience he cannot find it. In ‘The Problems of Philosophy’ he remarks: ‘When we try to look into ourselves we always seem to come upon some particular thought or feeling, and not upon the “I” which has the thought or feeling.’* Russell does not doubt that there is an experiencing ‘I’, but he doubts Descartes’ implicit assumption of a more or less permanent ‘I’ which is thinking. Russell is not at all certain that the ‘I’ who is aware of a specific brown table on two different occasions is, in any absolute sense, the same person. This notion of an impermanent or momentary self is not exclusive to Russell, but is expressly affirmed by some Buddhist schools of thought. What Russell does find and cannot doubt when examining his own experience is what he calls ‘sense-data’, specifically colours, sounds, sensations, tastes and smells. He notes that the sense-data which make up his brown table are directly intuited and immediately present. The brown patch is a brown patch, neither more nor less: it is what it is. The table, however, is another matter. It is a composite of sense-data representing something which supposedly continues to exist regardless of whether the observer is observing it or not. The various sense-data themselves are an appearance which cannot be questioned and what they represent as the table is also an appearance which cannot be doubted. What is open to doubt, however, is whether the appearance of the table is anything more than an appearance; in other words, whether the table in itself has a material existence independent of its appearance to an observer. Of course, common sense says it does. The person who every day goes into his study, sits down and writes at the same brown table will never seriously doubt that his table is real or that it exists independently of himself. Proving this, however, is not an easy matter and, in fact, there is no proof that any object truly exists beyond its appearance, although there are strong arguments in favor of inferring that it does.

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The Primacy of Consciousness

Posted on April 28, 2011 by

Shiva

An essay on the composition of experience

 ‘The Self, the true consciousness of Siva, shines as endless space within my Heart, as my very existence, beyond the reach of objective knowledge.’

Muruganar

 

 

Experience predicates existence

 

The starting point of human understanding is the indisputable fact of experience. Experience is the alpha and omega of our earthly life. The content* of experience, whether truth or illusion, does not alter the fact that experience exists. There is experience, therefore there is existence: experience predicates existence. What exists is experience and its contents: experience is constituted of content.

 

The meaning of the word ‘experience’ is not delimited to ‘my’ experience or even ‘your’ experience, which is what common sense unconsciously assumes. The possessive adjective ‘my’ is a qualification mentally superimposed upon an impersonal substratum of experience. In fact, impersonal experience, where there is neither subject nor object, functions at a more fundamental level that the personal, ‘I-other’ experience with which we are familiar.

 

 

Outside of direct experience, any other mode of existence is subject to doubt. We may infer that some thing exists beyond our immediate experience, but we can never prove it beyond all doubt. If you and I were to meet face to face, all we would know indubitably about each other is what we directly experience in that meeting. Upon parting we would each undoubtedly assume the continued existence of the other even though no longer within range of the senses. Such assumptions however, are not indubitable.

 

Beyond direct experience, there is necessarily an element of doubt about the continued existence of what has been experienced. If we are not experiencing something directly, how can we be certain it exists? Others may testify that it does exist and we may hear it directly from their own lips, but how do we know that their testimony is still valid at the current moment when it is being uttered? And even though we experience the same object or person again and again, we have no guarantee that a further reappearance will occur.

 

* In the sense of ‘awareness of _____’

 

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The Healing Breath

Posted on April 14, 2011 by

The World Health Organization has declared that by 2020 anxiety will be second only to heart disease as the principal cause of health-related deaths on the planet. Many people turn to alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs to deal with anxiety, but all of these options carry serious negative side-effects. Surely, there must be a healthy way to deal with anxiety. Yes, there is. And it’s simple, cheap and effective. Nor do we need to leave our home buy it. It’s free, it’s here, it’s now. It’s the breath.


Connected breathing has been around since the 1970′s. It goes under a variety of names, including Rebirthing, Holotrophic Breath and Transformational Breath, to name a few. Connected breathing does not belong to any specific tradition, although some say it is a form of Kriya Yoga. For our purposes we will simply call it, The Healing Breath.


Negative experiences can trigger powerful reactions in our bodies. The birth experience, for instance, can be traumatic. A child’s first day of school can be positively frightening. Being attacked by bullies, being sexually abused, being deserted, being fired, plus accidents, divorces, bankruptcies, civil wars, etc, are all sources of trauma.


Powerful emotions evoked by negative events are often repressed in order to be able to deal with the situation at hand. When we feel threatened we temporarily stop our breath in order to avoid the feeling of fear in our body. This strategy may appear to work in the short term, but there are long term negative consequences. Emotions are energy and when we suppress our feelings, that energy gets stuck in our bodies. The lower belly, the solar plexus, the heart area and the throat are the principle locations of repressed emotions. Generally, the belly houses our fear, the plexus our anger, the chest our sadness and the throat our frustration at our inability to communicate what we truly want and need to express.


When we begin to breathe ‘into’ these primal locations, the emotional energies that are blocked start to discharge. As these energies begin to move, we feel the feelings that we have been repressing. We call this process ‘integration’ because repressed emotions are being felt and accepted, no longer denied. We don’t need to get rid of emotions, because emotions themselves are never the problem. It’s their repression that is the problem. At first The Healing Breath process can be uncomfortable, especially if suppressing our feelings has become a life-long habit. However, after some initial support from someone trained in this form of breath-work we acclimatize naturally and become comfortable with our emotional body. Feelings come, are felt and then disappear. People who are spontaneous, expressive and ‘alive’ are OK with the entire range of their emotions. Their emotions are not ‘stuck’ in the body. Repressed feelings create a toxic environment that can turn into disease, as well as chronic anxiety, burn-out, depression, withdrawal, addictions, anti-social behavior and suicide.

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