The continuous consciousness

I was deeply inspired by videos of Alan Watts' speeches on youtube tonight.  There's one thought that made a lasting impression:   The consciousness decided to have a dream where it can experience "life" and have whatever it wishes to happen.  After several nights of experiencing all that it could, it decided to mix the experience up a bit by "letting go" of the control, and let happen whatever happens.  It was a bit more interesting.  So, again after several nights, it decided to up the ante by not knowing where it comes from to have a more immersed experience.  Hence, here we are after the multiplicity of orchestration to experience what it is.

Here's the video: http://youtu.be/4-QTsBaGTJE

I also came across this site today:
http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/

There are some points presented by the site that I agree with, and some I'm not so sure about.  A question arose: if consciousness is continuous from life to life, why haven't we the ability to obtain the experience from the past life?  A possible explanation is that the "experience" is memory / data collected on that particular life, it goes away "mostly" with the physical form.   There's no real value in retaining them.  The real value is in the experience itself.

The bumps on the road of life -- emotions

Emotion is an inseparable property in human life.  Perhaps it's an effect of the environment we live in, there seem to be more negative emotions arise in the daily lives than positive ones.  It's certainly more so as a city dweller than one who can cast away the conventional ways of life.

As a meditation practitioner, I came to understand that mindfulness of the emergence of emotion might not eliminate the occurrence, but it surely changes how emotions may affect our lives.

It is as if we become more aware of the bumps on the road that we are jogging on, and thus reduce the probability of tripping over the bumps.

Just as there's always bumps or hills on a scenic trail, the emotion will always be there.  While we observe these bumps and hills, it might bring new perspective or even appreciation for what it is.


Photo credit: http://500px.com/photo/49104400

Impressions from three notable events

Sarvabhauma Yog 2013

The regional conference for Sarvabhauma Yog 2013 was in San Diego. I attended with a yogi friend in May. It was my first formal introduction to Iyenga yoga, which is recognized as "text book yoga" as it emphasizes on accuracy of postures, and it was one of the earliest form of yoga been introduced to the west.

The age group of conference participants were definitely older than the typical studio crowd in the hipster town. There were many great instructors, and I would definitely attend their classes if given more chances. One of the well known teacher was Birju Mehta, who came all the way from India. His session was very much treasured.  He spent a great deal of time to show participants how to recognize consciousness plays out in postures. My friend had a good interpretations which I will quote here:

Our bodies are laboratories, and the asnas allow us to experiment with the body on how we can distribute the consciousness evenly thoughout the body, the more advanced the asana, the more challenging it is to distribute the consciousness evenly ... as we experiment and learn to distribute the consciousness evenly in asana, it translates into exercising this awareness when we are not practicing asana.

It's a great take-away. I find a parallel idea in meditation practice where we tune into our body with finer awareness. The awareness brought about a level of evenness emotionally, mentally, and physically. As we practice more, the awareness stretches into other part of our lives. Come to think of it, asana is often called moving meditation for a reason.

Pujya Swamiji @ Seaside Center for Spiritual Living

On July 16th, Seaside Center for Spiritual Living in Encinitas invited Pujya Swamiji for a public talk.  I attended the talk, and following is my thoughts of the event:

I left feeling inspired by Swamiji's talk and grateful to have been in his brief presence.
It sounded like a sermon at the beginning, but I sensed a deeper level of connection with the talking points, probably because of pre-acquainted knowledge of yoga and meditation.

Here's some brief pointers that left a deeper impression on me:

• The intention is to build the loving relation with God. Building that love requires certain amount of faith, as faith gets stronger, so is love.
• Faith is the believe that we're supported by Divine, We look for clues in our daily lives to seek the existence of Divine presence. Finding those clues strengthens faith.
• Prayers and meditations are the key to develop clarity in our senses. So we can discern the noise from true clues. We would be able to feel it in our heart. 

There were a few good Q&As. One was particularly interesting: How do we prevent been dragged down by negativity or turmoils in the surrounding? 

Answer: Maybe it's not about blocking out or getting away from the unpleasant moments. There would be case that one should get away physically. However, realize that ocean has unstable times too, but it's only the surface. Majority of the ocean body is stable, and unwavering. Seek the deeper part during those moments. Take breath deep into lower abdomen as slowly and steadily as possible, and feel the stability of being.

Bernie Glassman Workshop @ Sweetwater Zen Center

The co-founder of Zen Peacemakers, Bernie Glassman was invited to Sweetwater Zen center for public workshops.  I attend one of his public talks on July 26th.  I first learned about Bernie from a book he co-authored "The Dude and the Zen Master", which I enjoyed.  The talk was a very interesting format where he gathered questions from the attendees at the beginning, then chose to answer the ones that he felt the answers for.  He used the analogy of making a meal with the ingredients at the present.  It felt very much like the conversations in the book, where he expressed the idea of jamming with what comes up.

There were a lot of questions, and Bernie's objective was definitely not trying to answer them all, but to discuss the ones that he had immediate answers.  Some of the questions were definitely challenging, and serious.  His answers were not always what the requester was expecting, but I felt that while answering the questions, he gave a great introduction to the philosophy of zen practice.  From his angle, there's no "solution" for everything, but to carry out what is necessary from the position of compassion and love.

I was a little surprised to learn that his philosophy can be summed up into 3 simple tenets:

• Not-knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the universe
• Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world
• Loving actions towards ourselves and others

That is so great!  I had asked a question at the beginning of the session, which was probably very "off beat" in comparison to some of the serious questions.  Bernie didn't answer my question at the session, but I felt that the answer was given after learning about the three tenets.

Namaste!

Image credit: 

http://500px.com/photo/28219877

Row Row Row your boat ...

I'm not familiar with any English nursery rhymes since I was born and raised in China.  Becoming a father in the states has exposed me to quite a few tunes.

My daughter was recently given a "play-along" nursery rhymes book.   The first song is "Row row row your boat".  I have heard it before, but this time the lyrics took on a whole new level of meaning.  Here's the simple lyrics:

Row Row Row Your Boat, Gently Down The Stream, Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily, Life Is But A Dream!

Perhaps we should all take a moment and remind ourselves to be gentle with our actions in life, and be happy while doing it, because life after all, is just a dream as pointed out by the convergence of physical and metaphysical philosophies.

Photo Credit: Rusky Mist (2) by Karl Williams

Meditations from the Mat - Yamas

I've started practicing yoga since end of 2010.  It is one of the most beneficial activity that I've adopted into my life.  I felt natural in many of the yoga poses as they reminded me of playtime in my childhood.

This year, I received a book as a gift from a dear friend who's also a practicing yogi.  It's titled "Meditations from the Mat".  This book presented the practicing of yoga from a 8-limb perspective, and it is in the form of a journal where the author created a passage for each day.

I've just finished the chapters in Yamas and Niyamas, the don'ts and do's of a yogi.  Though they are ancient doctrines, the author had interprete them from a modern perspective, which makes it easier for aspired yogis like myself to adopt.

While learning about the Yamas, the author suggested to go over the 5 aspects of Yamas during decision making process and contemplation.  They are "non-violence", "non-stealing", "truthfullness", "non-hoarding", and "moderation".  It's not easy to adhere to all the Yamas in every moment, but I tried to remind myself as often as possible, so that I can be conscious of my choices and their impacts.  There were times when I couldn't remember 1 or 2 of the Yamas, and I feel that perhaps that is an indicator of what I need to work on more.

"Moderation" is the one Yama that I had troubled with the most.  Perhaps it has something to do with the culture I was brought up in, or perhaps it's a habit passed down from my parents, there are too many times when I over indulged on pleasing the senses or emotions.  It'll be a work in progress for a while.  Becoming aware of it, at least, is a good start.

As far as Niyamas go, I have even more work to do.

The start of understanding

In the past few years, I've learned with a novice understanding in quantum mechanics that the world we see and experience has a fundamental underlying truth.  Many questions can be theoretically explained by this truth, and modern scientists have made giant leaps in proving this idea mathematically.  When I started taking interest in eastern philosophy, I was amazed to also learn that the thousand-year-old school of thought have already point to the same idea that modern scientists have just began to realize.

This understanding has changed me profoundly as a person.  I'll try my best to explain why and how here, because I'm at no means understands it all. As a matter of fact, I barely scratched the surface of it. This blog will serve as a road map to help me see where I came about along the way.

So what is this truth? It is actually surprisingly simple.  Everything is fundamentally a form of energy vibrating.  The variety of frequency resulted in the kaleidoscope of the world we experience through our senses, including the realm of existence that we might not able to sense.   This idea was very profound to me because I felt that it provided baseline answers or at least clues to questions across a spectrum of studies, and has the potential to unify them.

This blog will not dive into the scientific study of the concept, instead, I intent on journaling from the spiritual and my personal growth aspect.  For those who's interested, please look into "String Theory" by theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku.  For explanation on the link between quantum physicist and consciousness check out the film Quantum Activist by Dr. Amit Goswami.  For spirituality from a biologist point of view, check out the lectures by Dr. Bruce Lipton.


photo credit:

O(@-@)O by Bunnawath ( B-FOTO )

Individual and global consciousness

Sam and I had a discussion on consciousness today after watching the film "3 magic words".   It is a documentary on spirituality. We both agreed that the film presented good concepts, but it didn't provide any in-depth / detail material information to support the concept.  It is basically a composite of brief sound bites from different people around the subject.

Sam described her idea of consciousness as experiencing of individual life, and sub-consciousness as being deep seeded emotions from the experience.  I agree with her to some extend, but feel that there are more to consciousness than just individual experiences, and same goes to sub-consciousness.  The main reason I feel "more" is because I believe that our individual consciousness has a connection to the universal consciousness.  The connection can be very subtle to very perceptible base on the individual.  Since we can look at individual experience as individual consciousness, we can look at our collective experience from a particular frame (be it community, national, global) as collective consciousness of that frame, and the totality of universal experience as universal consciousness.  To go a step further, perhaps the concept of multiverse would contribute to multi-dimensional consciousness.  Are we getting closer to supra-consciousness?

Since we linked consciousness to experiences, and experiences are manifestation of potentiality, a stronger connection to the higher consciousness is certainly beneficial to the individual in the form of a channel to a broader potentiality.  A good analogy to conceptualize this idea is to imagine our individual consciousness as streams, rivers, ponds, or lakes.  All of which can have a connection to a bigger source, which would enhance the livelihood of the origin.

The film prompts audience to accept the responsibility of being God as God lives within.  It raises a concern that some people wouldn't want to be God, because they don't want to feel responsible for the darkness in humanity or they don't feel that they are holy enough for this qualification.  First of all, it's nonsense to push the burden on God for humanity's dark nature.  Without going into the idea of free will, it is just plainly irresponsible.  Secondly, while it is certainly very difficult to be completely selfless as we're strongly binded to the physical perception,  it should not be so much about becoming "holy" before accepting "being God" than it is about accepting the potentiality of it while also accepting the shortcomings of being human.


Namaste

Photo credit: Softness by Thanes G.