Posts Tagged ‘books’

Welcoming, understanding, accepting and transmuting our emotions

Monday, December 7th, 2009

guesthouseI’ve watched Deb­bie Ford’s,  The Shadow Effect DVD a few times now and she men­tions the poem below, which likens being human to a guest house with new emo­tions arriv­ing every day. I think this poem is a great one to have in our diaries so when we’re hav­ing a hard day, we can read it and remind our­selves to accept what is and that all from all hard times, good things arise.

I think this runs par­al­lel with what Eck­hart Tolle sug­gests in The Power of Now (Page 218); “Become and alchemist. Trans­mute base metal into gold, suffering into con­scious­ness, dis­as­ter into enlightenment.”

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morn­ing a new arrival.

A joy, a depres­sion, a mean­ness,
some momen­tary aware­ness comes
as an unex­pected visitor.

Wel­come and enter­tain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sor­rows,
who vio­lently sweep your house
empty of its fur­ni­ture,
still, treat each guest hon­or­ably.
He may be clear­ing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the mal­ice,
meet them at the door laugh­ing,
and invite them in.

Be grate­ful for who­ever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

(The Essen­tial Rumi, ver­sions by Cole­man Barks)

I’ve also been read­ing Deb­bie Ford’s The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a vir­tual book club with Liz Fos­ter, who has been work­ing closely with Deb­bie for some years now. I’m find­ing the book and the book club offers me a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to under­stand those ‘shad­ows’ that bring me down. Debbie’s words help us realise that each shadow is indeed a guide and a gift which, if we embrace enthu­si­as­ti­cally, we can use to for­give our­selves. So, we use it, instead of it using us.

Making space for transformation

Monday, September 7th, 2009

There are cycles of suc­cess, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of fail­ure, when they wither or dis­in­te­grate and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise, or trans­for­ma­tions to hap­pen. If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refus­ing to go with the flow of life, and you will suffer.”

Eck­hart TolleThe Power of Now (Page 183)

What is bodywork? Who is the bodyworker?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I was so delighted to read this next quote. It really res­onates with my inten­tions and backs-up my belief.

A point worth remem­ber­ing here is that in this edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence it is not the body­worker who is “fix­ing” the client. The body­worker is not attack­ing a localised prob­lem with spe­cialised tool, con­fi­dent of achiev­ing cer­tain results. Instead, he or she is care­fully gen­er­at­ing a flow of sen­sory infor­ma­tion to the mind of the client, infor­ma­tion that is not being gen­er­ated by the client’s own lim­ited reper­toire of move­ments — new infor­ma­tion that the mind can use to fill in the gaps and miss­ing links in its appraisal if the body’s tis­sues and phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes. It is then the mind of he client that does the “fix­ing” — the appro­pri­ate adjust­ment of pos­ture, the more effi­cient and judi­cious dis­tri­b­u­tion of flu­ids and gases, the fuller and more flex­i­ble rela­tion­ship between neural and mus­cu­lar responses.

The body­worker is not an inter­ven­tion­ist; he is a facil­i­ta­tor, a diplo­matic inter­me­di­ary between a phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes that have lost track of one another’s proper func­tions and goals, between a mind that has for­got­ten what is needs to know in order to exert har­mo­nious con­trol and a body politic which increas­ingly utilises dis­rup­tive demon­stra­tions, ter­ror­ist tac­tics, and even the threat of all-out civil was to regain its governor’s atten­tion. Touch­ing hands are not like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals or scalpels. They are like flash­lights in a dark­ened room. The med­i­cine they admin­is­ter is self aware­ness. And for many of our painful con­di­tions, this is the aid that is most urgently needed.”

Deane JuhanJob’s Body (Intro­duc­tion xxix)

A drama called ‘love’

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Eck­hart Tolle on Relationships:

True com­mu­ni­ca­tion is com­mu­nion — the real­i­sa­tion of one­ness, which is love. Usu­ally, this is quickly lost again, unless you are able to stay present enough to keep out the mind and its old pat­terns. As soon as the mind and mind iden­ti­fi­ca­tion return, you are no longer your­self but a men­tal images of your­self, and you start play­ing games and roles again to get your ego needs met. You are a human mind again, pre­tend­ing to be a human being, inter­act­ing with another mind, play­ing a drama called ‘love’.”

Eck­hart Tolle — The Power of Now (Page 156)

Does this make sense out of con­text?

Surrender. And change will ensue.

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

No mat­ter how much I move myself around, my strongest ten­dency is to move in the same ways that I have always moved, guided by the same deeply seated pos­tural habits, sen­sory cues, and men­tal images of my body; but if I can suc­ceed in sur­ren­der­ing to the move­ments that another per­son imposes on my body, with­out my own sys­tem of cues and responses inter­fer­ing, it is pos­si­ble to treat my mind to a flood of sen­sa­tions that are novel in impor­tant ways, sen­sa­tion that may well be able to indi­cate things I have been doing that have pro­duced aches and pains at the same times as they have rein­forced my nor­mal sense of self.

And even more impor­tant, this move­ment of sur­ren­der and new sen­sa­tion can demon­strate to me that I am not per­ma­nently obliged to con­tinue act­ing out a habit­ual com­pul­sion. I can see that habit is habit, that I am some­thing else, and for that moment at any rate, I can choose to repeat it or not.  And if I can drop a com­pul­sive behav­iour or atti­tude for a moment with­out caus­ing a cri­sis, then per­haps I can dis­pense with it all together.  As any physi­cian knows, this kind of insight can often be worth more than any num­ber of drugs or pro­ce­dures for the rever­sal of a chronic condition.

In other words, just as the mind organ­ises the rest of the body’s tis­sues into a life process, sen­sa­tions to a large degree organ­ise the mind. They do not sim­ply give the mind the mate­r­ial to organ­ise; they are them­selves a major organ­is­ing principle.”

Deane JuhanJob’s Body (Intro­duc­tion xxvii)

Movement

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

No only is it true that the ner­vous sys­tem stim­u­lates the body to move in spe­cific ways as a result of spe­cific sen­sa­tions; it is also the case that all move­ments flood the ner­vous sys­tem with sen­sa­tions regard­ing the struc­tures and func­tions of the body. Move­ment is the uni­fy­ing bond between the mind and the body, and sen­sa­tions are the sub­stance of that bond.”

Deane JuhanJob’s Body (Intro­duc­tion xxvi)