Peace

Being Conscious

The lower level, “un-conscious” mind is always dualistic, which is judgmental and oppositional. It always divides the field of the moment and takes sides. Whatever is unfamiliar, or whatever it does not already understand or agree with, is judged as totally wrong. In contemplative practice, you are refusing to take sides. Contemplation goes beyond words (which naturally differentiate this from that) to experience (which has the potential to unify seeming contradictions). This requires a higher level of consciousness that we are calling non-dual consciousness.

Your consciousness is not the same as your brain. The early Alexandrian Fathers knew this. They called consciousness “nous,” which is the Greek word for a combination of Spirit and God and mind. It is a participative knowing, as if you are actually inside of a larger mystery.

The very word “consciousness” is from the Latin con scire, which means “to know with.” When you really plug into consciousness, maybe it feels like it’s coming through your brain, but it actually comes through a whole-heartedsurrender to the moment—a surrender that encompasses everything and eliminates nothing. We religious people would call that everything “God.” When you’re truly conscious, you have the feeling that you’ve been connected to something much bigger than yourself—and you are right. It is no longer just about “you”!

Emerson called non-dual consciousness the over-soul. Thomas Aquinas called it connatural intelligence. It is true to my nature, but true to a larger nature at the same time. John Duns Scotus called it intuitive cognition and distinguished it from rational cognition. The great thinkers took for granted that we had access to a different and larger mind. They recognized that a flow is already happening and that we can plug into it. The most traditional word for that was just “prayer.”

You cannot know God with your “un-conscious” mind. That’s why all teachers of contemplation are teaching you to let go of your mind so you can go to that deeper mind which we would call the “Mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Then it’s really God in you knowing and loving God, which with ordinary consciousness you do not know how to do.

Richard Rohr

Contemplative Consciousness

Non-dual or contemplative consciousness is not the same as being churchy or reflective or introverted. Unfortunately this is the way the word is often used even by people who should know better. Contemplation is a panoramic, receptive awareness whereby you take in all that the situation, the moment, the event offers without eliminating anything. That does not come naturally. You have to work at it and develop practices whereby you recognize your compulsive and repetitive patterns.

It seems we are addicted to our need to make distinctions and judgments, which we actually call “thinking”! Most of us think we are our thinking, yet almost all thinking is compulsive and habitual. And educated people are just as bad as the uneducated, sometimes even worse.

That is why all forms of meditation and contemplation are teaching you a way of quieting the dualistic “thinking” mind. After a while you see that this kind of thinking is not going to get you very far, simply because reality is not all about you and your preferences! And frankly, the universe is not all about any one of us, but only all of us together and with God.

Non-dual consciousness is about receiving and being present to the moment and to the now exactly as it is, without judgment, without analysis, without critique, without your ego deciding whether you like it or whether you don’t like it. It is a much more holistic knowing, where your mind, heart, soul, and senses are open and receptive to the moment just as it is. You are not dividing the field of the moment (and eliminating anything that threatens your ego), but holding it all together.

The non-dual, contemplative mind is a whole new mind! With it, you can stand back and simply observe the self and the event from the standpoint of the “stable witness,” or what Christians would call the indwelling Holy Spirit (Romans 8:16). Now you can laugh or weep over your little dramas and dances, without being attached to them or hating them. You can look at yourself and others calmly and compassionately because you are able to see things as they are in themselves and not from the viewpoint of how they affect you.

Richard Rohr

Your nature is not manipulation, but presence

'Window to the true source of healing' (Yago, Dublin 2012)

Perhaps it's time to stop trying to 'fix' the one in front of you, to stop trying to give them answers or solve their problems. You're not very good at that, friend. Your nature is not manipulation, but presence; not division, but wholeness.

 Perhaps it's time to stop pretending to be the all-knowing authority, the infallible teacher, the healed expert. 

Even with the best of intentions, you may unknowingly be interfering with their natural healing processes. You may be keeping them dependent on you, distracting them from a deep trust in their own first-hand experience. 

Remember, they may need to feel worse before they feel better. They may need to feel their pain more deeply before they open up to the true source of healing. They may need to die to who they thought they were, before they can truly live. True for them, true for you. 

It's certainly something to consider.

 

Jeff Foster

The truth may be puzzling...

Sometimes in doing nothing everything is undone

Healers, therapists, friends, and lovers!

When you sit with a friend in pain,
 when their world no longer makes sense;
 when confusion rages 
and no rest is to be found.

Just for a moment,
 will you resist the temptation 
to make things better,
 to reassure them,
 to provide answers, 
even to heal them?

Will you offer your stillness, your listening,
 your presence,  and the warmth
of your immediacy?

Will you hold them in your heart 
with the same tenderness
of a mother holding her little one?

Will you embrace them where they are, 
without needing them to change or transform 
according to your own needs and schedule?

Will you stay close,
 holding your own impatience and discomfort near?

Will you look into their eyes
 and see yourself?

Will you stay in the inferno of healing with them,
trusting in disintegration, 
knowing that you are only witnessing 
the falling away of an old dream?

Sometimes in doing nothing 
everything is undone,

and love is revealed to be
the only true medicine.

Jeff Foster & Matt Licata

You are not your thinking

I AM

Be careful what you say after "I Am". Those two tiny words contain powerful magic.

Language tries to fix you in time and space, pressing PAUSE on the ever-changing dance that you naturally are. In reality, who you truly are can't be fixed or defined, for you are alive and dynamic and resist all attempts at capture.

For example: "I am sad"? No. A wave of sadness is arising in the vast ocean that you are, an ocean that cannot be defined by either 'happy' or 'sad' or anything in-between, but allows all those feelings to come and go.

You are not sad - sadness comes and goes in you. You'll find no sad person, no sad entity, no sad 'thing', no sad 'me', only the energy of sadness arising presently, energy that will dissipate, especially as it is allowed to move.

You are not sad - you are the home for sadness in this moment. You are not angry - you are the capacity for anger right now. You are not enlightened, ignorant, successful, or a waste of space - you are all of this, and none of it. You are infinite potential realising itself in this instant, and at no other time.

Use your magic wisely. Don't turn yourself into stone.

Jeff Foster

Resignificando el Conflicto; Reviviéndolo desde la Paz

Article in English >>

Participantes del taller organizado por Gernika Gogoratuz

El pasado 9 de Julio emergió en un rincón de Ereño un nodo de experimentación entorno a la paz. Conectamos 18 personas con trayectoria en la resolución de conflictos, la comunicación efectiva y afectiva, y la construcción de entornos no-violentos. Yago Abeledo pidió poner a prueba su "Modelo Mariposa" de transformación de conflictos en el aquí y ahora. Supuso un buen pretexto para hacer confluir, además de las personas y sus trayectorias, las prácticas del "Poder del Ahora" de Tolle, el "Marco de construcción de la Paz" de Lederach, las del "Trabajo de procesos" de Mindell, las de "Lucha no-violenta" de Ghandi, la "Nueva ciencia del liderazgo" de Wheatley, la "Narrativa de las emociones" de Early, la "Resonancia mórfica" de Sheldrake, la "Propiocepción" de Weaver y las místicas perennes orientales y occidentales. En definitiva, una exploración compleja, integrativa, creativa, vivencial y transformadora de esa parte de la vida que produce identidad en el dolor y que cuesta soltar y reconciliar.

El "Modelo Mariposa" propuesto por Yago es un marco nuevo que explora la transformación de conflictos en el aquí y en el ahora. Este Modelo sigue desarrollando el Marco expandido para la Construcción de la Paz de Lederach. El "Modelo Mariposa" mapea sucesivos paralelismos entre procesos estructurales (extrapersonal), históricos (pasado), estratégicos (futuro) e intrapersonales asociados a un conflicto o trauma cualquiera. Estos paralelismos, a modo de espejos, permiten reflejar el efecto que el dolor sentido en el presente, tiene, tuvo o tendrá, en las sugeridas "alas" estructural, histórica, estratégica e intrapersonal. 

Cual oruga que deviene mariposa, estos reflejos permiten quitar las capas que bloquean la toma de conciencia y transformación del conflicto experimentado desde esquemas demasiado parciales o demasiado superficiales. El tiempo y el espacio parecen disolverse en una realidad subyacente y común a todas las expresiones del aparente dilema dual: una realidad esencial donde el conflicto "se es" y, puesto que el Ser vive; dá a luz al ser vivo oculto, enredado y mortificado en el conflicto, que requiere ser dignificado en el  Ahora para, desde aquí, sanar y traer paz.

Uno de los primeros ejercicios propuestos para vivir este proceso de percepción, identificación y construcción de paz, vino de la mano de una serie de frases fuertes extraidas del libro "Desenterrar las palabras", de Clara Valverde. Esta escritora, profesora de enfermería, activista en el #15M y presidenta de la Liga Síndrome de Fatiga Crónica, presenta en su último libro la transmisión transgeneracional del trauma de la violencia política en el siglo XX español. Algunas de estas frases son: "no se han escrito las historias que son la Historia", "vivimos con el miedo de que algo va a pasar", "la transmisión inconsciente del trauma no se corta", o "la palabra perdón nos acerca a nosotros mismos". Leyendo estas frases recordabamos las exhumaciones de fosas comunes de la guerra civil, de Ferrandiz, la labor de las comisiones de la verdad en Bosnia o Rwanda, y las biografias de supervivientes de Auswitz, del Proyecto Shoah, o cada cual, sus particulares experiencias de muerte violenta o vida verdadera. Inspirando lentamente, cada cual se acercó a la frase que le resonaba, esparcidas por la sala como palabras desenterradas, pero no recuerdos neutralizados por la historia, sino mensajes presentes en la biografía, genealogía e identidad de cada cual. Hubo un intercambio entre las personas que resultaban haberse acercado a la misma frase o a frases vecinas, seguido de un compartir grupal que hizo patente el reflejo caleidoscópico y los paralelismos entre las experiencias conflictivas que resuenan más allá del tiempo y el espacio.

Este ejercicio, y muchos otros, trajeron la práctica del "Modelo Mariposa" a este nodo espontáneo de personas, trayectorias, conocimiento y experiencia. La oportunidad de ser íntegro, sea cual sea la identidad cuestionada, está servida. La ocasión de transformar el conflicto en paz está a mano. El momento de soltar el dolor y prestar atención a la vida es ahora. Una invitación a vivir más allá del dualismo y el miedo, explorando y reconociendo los ecos del suceso pasado en la estructura presente, en la cegera táctica y en el dolor interno para, sanando éste, abrir los ojos y cambiar el presente para resignificar aquél suceso y revivirlo desde la paz.

Gracias por el regalo. 

Borja Izaola
Arquitecto, Antropólogo y Coach Sistémico