Often sincere seekers feel shaky when realizing and experiencing reality without an absolute meaning.  We are accustomed to following structures, walking on paths, aiming for ideals, searching for depth, and looking for people and events that will reveal to us what it is all about. As the mind masters our moments, we are driven by reasons. We lose the ability of being for being, of doing for doing, of loving for loving. We need a reason for every move we do.

Once in a while when I get up in the morning with a foggy mind, throwing into the open air the ultimate question “what is it all about,” I receive from my beloved Pepe all kinds of funny answers that first make me laugh and then put me right back on track.

So when I received the below communication /question, I asked Pepe to reply to it and he did … joyfully … with a large smile on his face.

shakti

Dearest Shakti and Fellow Teachers,

Since my experience at Prana I have reached new heights of awareness, oh how wonderful…but I suppose when I started to do this work, I assumed it would be rainbows and butterflies, and at this stage, I am feeling less and less like I am dancing in an enchanted forest. I have a slight feeling this is not what you meant when you talk about bliss :P

I am grateful for my awareness, as many cannot see what I see, but at the same moment, I find myself frustrated and occasionally, scared. The frustration occurs every moment I realize another destructive behaviour, every moment another reflects back at me a quality I don’t want to acknowledge, and I wonder, what more can I do about this? Is this frustration caused by a lack of compassion for the self, for others?

The fear is more daunting. What is this fear? I suddenly KNOW in the depths of me that not only is everything meaningless, but there is no truth, and while I remind myself that this is what it is, and it is not to say that you cannot create meaning, it is still frightening to see the universe on such a scale. As the world changes I wonder more and more, what am I doing here, and what do I want to do here. I occasionally get the sensation like I have just gotten on a roller coaster, and its started to move, and now I want off, but why focus on the regret of getting on and not enjoy the ride? It is so obvious to me that fear is caused by a lack of grounding, and at the same time, I wonder why my years of effort to ground this spirit seem to be unsuccessful. I wonder is awareness, my desire to change, and my actions of pushing through the fear enough.

As time goes on I become more and more aware of the simplicity in living, and yet there is this deep rooted fear that seems to step in. I sometimes wonder if I allowed myself to become too open, too aware, too soon without properly developing the root chakra. I feel as though I am becoming more present in my body, in my legs, but then, especially recently, this fear comes up. Is this just dark tunnel one must walk through on the path to liberation? To walk into the fear, and come out on the other side?
I realize that not any person”s path or experience is the same, but I wonder, does it occur sometimes on this path where you will see reality as it is, and before you embrace and are empowered by it, it scares the living S*** out of you.

Pepe’s reply

Fantastic ! All you describe is actually a sign that your Practice has come to a very high level. Too soon? Not unless yo u are using drugs.

Reality is truly a terrifying experience for the little ego. When you have an experience of the true Vastness of the Universe and the unimaginable depths of what in Buddhism is called The Void, it’s actually hard to survive it!  We must then seek to strike a very difficult balance, walking the edge between “reality” and “Reality”. Most of us have a hard time doing this, and this includes even Teachers and Gurus, many of whom failed to bridge this gap and got embroiled in scandals and messy situations.

It sounds like you are getting close enough, often enough, to “Reality”, and your ego is naturally getting very scared and creating fear, but it also looks to me like you have developed a lot of awareness around this.

Your “years of effort” are indeed successful! Now you have to learn to handle that new level of energy and awareness.

“Everything is meaningless”… indeed!… “there is no truth”… indeed!, at least in “reality”. What does this mean? Freedom! When we realize this, we may not have mama’s skirt to hang on to any more, but, we can go wherever we want! Life has handed us a magical blank book, and whatever we write there, that’s our meaning, that’s our story, that’s our truth. It either “gets written”, or we write in full awareness and celebration of the amazing opportunity it is!

When we plant a tree, we don’t fuss about when it will flower. We just keep creating the right conditions for its growth. Do the same with your Practice. And don’t “push through” anything! Wherever you are, including fear and “destructive behaviours”, just Be there in Awareness. Applying awareness has the magical quality of feeding that which is conducive to your growth and slowly destroying that which is inimical to your growth.

As far as “what am I doing here, and what do I want to do here”, just stay with your Practice. When we have cultivated our Essence enough and removed our Fear, or at least stopped giving energy and credibility to the ego’s panic, our path simply becomes clear in front of us, and we start naturally attracting who and what we need at the right time (what a great teacher called a “magnetic center”). As long as we have to “find” or “decide” what we “are here for”, we simply haven’t found it yet… and that’s ok! Let it come to you organically and in its own time. In the meantime, cultivate awareness and impeccability in whatever you do. “Showing up” fully in the here and now has the power of grounding us… less philosophy and more washing dishes!

I’m glad you got rid of the “rainbows and butterflies” fantasy. The Path requires a lot of courage and discipline, and as one of my most beloved Teachers used to say: “The brighter the Light, the Darker the Shadow.”

As long as we are in this “reality” we have to accept the Dance of Yin and Yang. It’s up to you to dance as a  puppet or Dance as Shiva.

Many Blessings your way…

Pepe Danza

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.

An allergy is an exaggerated immune response or reaction to substances that are generally not harmful.

If you don’t suffer from an allergy yourself, you probably know people who do. When people have allergies, they feel it has something to do with their personal condition or their personal health state. This is only partially true. Fifty years ago, one in thirty people were affected by allergies, but in Britain today it is closer to one in three!!! 40% of all children suffer from allergies and the numbers just keep increasing. So when we talk allergy, we do not deal with an individual condition only, we deal with an epidemic disease that attacks the human race in endless forms, conditions and symptoms.

People are allergic to pollen, to seafood, to peanuts, to house dust, to pets, to grass, etc. People suffer from hay fever and from asthma… The list is endless, and the truth is that we are becoming allergic to Mother Earth. What used to be our home is now becoming an environmental trap.

The reason for our collective poor health situation as a race is that our body, nervous system and immune system were designed to deal with Mother Earth in the state she was before we polluted her. Although our bodies haven’t changed in the last 100,000 years, our environment changed rapidly without giving us time to adapt to the new conditions (if such a thing is possible at all). Our bodies were not designed to live in an environment full of chemicals and pollution while eating modified foods. We are designed to get up at sunrise and go to sleep at sunset without being over stimulated by noise and artificial lights.

We’ve arrived at a point where most of the population’s immune system cannot deal anymore with the burden of chemicals and over stimulation of the senses/nervous system. As a metaphor, imagine a person who lives in a house that is constantly being flooded by dirty water. All day and night he needs to keep removing the dirty water out of the house so he won’t drown. Sooner or later this person will reach physical exhaustion as well as mental fatigue. He won’t be able to think straight anymore and as a result will start to make wrong choices that will be harmful to his house and himself. The same happens with our immune system. It gets overworked by constantly trying to remove unfamiliar chemicals and toxins from the different organs and systems until it collapses and loses its judgment and starts to attack harmless substances such as pollen and peanuts.

The yogis were aware of the fact that if the body deals with constant health issues, the ongoing symptoms will consume most of the person’s energy and will leave him/her depleted of energy to fully experience existence. This is why so many holistic techniques and methods were developed in yoga to help remove toxins from the body and ease the general process of physical maintenance.

If you are facing allergy symptoms, do not settle into it as if nothing could be done. Take action… change your lifestyle… find holistic solutions and apply them… and be patient.

I am inviting you to a day of practical seminars where you will learn various useful methods to clean and balance your body. Please see details below.

Workshops with shakti mhi

When: Sunday April 17^th

• 5 Tibetans 10am – 12pm
• Urine Therapy 1pm – 3pm
• Liver Cleanse 3:30 – 6:30pm

The Five Tibetan Exercises ($60)

The Five Tibetan Exercises are a rejuvenating series of movements that will keep you young, healthy, and energetic throughout your life. This series can be performed by yourself in the morning in as little as 12 minutes with no equipment required. By balancing the hormonal systems, improving circulation, and increasing bone density, these exercises can halt or reverse the negative effects of aging.

Shivambu (Urine Therapy) ($60)

Shivambu (Urine Therapy) is an ancient yogic practice known for many centuries that has lapsed into obscurity. shakti mhi is Vancouver’s foremost authority on this powerful healing technique.

Urine therapy is a very ancient and drugless form of intrinsic medicine. Its application is so simple that it can be done anywhere and at any time. Urine has been used as a healing agent in many cultures. Often it is called the Water of Life or Living Water Within. In many religions it is believed that this water will enhance one’s spiritual growth and even give one everlasting life. Learn to heal yourself of: skin disorders, ear and eye infections, fungal infections, and immune system disorders.

Liver Cleanse ($80)

You will learn a simple, step-by-step procedure for cleaning the liver and the gall bladder. Since liver is the main filter of blood, if the liver is full of toxins – as a result of taking medication, consuming alcohol, unhealthy eating, being under stress etc. – then the blood is not clean anymore. As a consequence, the blood carries toxins to the whole body. Symptoms of toxins in the liver are: allergies, low energy, anger, mood swings, skin problems, digestive problems and much more.

During the course you will learn how to do liver cleanse. The actual cleanse is something you do on your own; it takes a day and a half and it’s not painful.

Registration:

• Register and pay by Friday April 15^th and receive a discount of $15 on each workshop
• Register and pay for all three before Friday April 15^th for total price $140
• You’re welcome to simply come to the workshop of your choice on Sunday – no discount applies
• Please visit Prana office at 293 East 2nd Avenue or call 604-682-2121 to register
• Payment by cash or credit card

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.

Great TED talk – enjoy!

http://www.ted.com/talks/nigel_marsh_how_to_make_work_life_balance_work.html

A few days ago we changed all the locks in our house. The next day we were expecting a visit from a friend of ours arriving from Nelson. When she called, we were out of the house so we asked her where she was, and she said “I just arrived and I am in your house”. We were very surprised she was inside our house, as no one had got a copy of our new key yet. When we asked her how she opened the door, she said “with the key I always open with” and she added that strangely enough, she had a hard time opening the door but finally she managed. We got into the car and rushed home, curious to see how it was possible that the old key opened the new lock. We were complaining to each other about paying for changing the locks and not getting the service. We were ranting about our locksmith and planned to get home, call the company and let them know what we thought about their service.

When we got home, we did what most of humanity would do in such a worrisome situation: we took the old key and ran to the door to see if it worked – and it didn’t!  Now the mystery grew even bigger. First our friend opens our door with a key that should not work, and then the same key does not work anymore – which is what it was supposed to do (or rather not do) in the first place, how strange?

The mind immediately classifies such an event as “this is crazy” but once we relaxed and considered the facts, everything made sense in the most paradoxical way. It wasn’t the key that opened the door; it was our friend’s certainty that she was using the right key.

Often what we know and believe outlines our reality, and as a consequence either limits our experiences or expands our reality.

Knowing that we cannot fly is what keeps us on the ground; not gravity or our physiology mechanism.

If a person who is paralyzed knows or believes strongly that the touch of a holy person can heal him or her, he or she may instantly stand up and start walking.

If a person free of all illness believes strongly that he or she has got cancer, the person will get cancer, and vice versa.

As long as you know and believe that walking on fire will burn your feet, that is what you will experience; but if you change your beliefs and knowing to “I can walk on fire with no harm,” you will be able to do so. And I guess it is the same with walking on water ;-)

Our friend didn’t know that we had changed the key, what she “knew” and believed was that the key she was using was the right key. The fact the key wasn’t the right one created difficulty for her to open the door, but her strong sense of knowing that this was the right key, free of hesitation, was the force that vibrated the key to fit in the “wrong” lock. By the time we arrived in the house, we all knew the key was not the right one and that conviction vibrated the key back from being the “right key” to being the “wrong key”.

The physical word that we project through our perceptions has no absolute meaning, form or shape. We keep forming and reforming this world with our knowing and beliefs. That doesn’t mean that you can all come to my house with your own keys and try to open the door…. ;-)

shakti

To discuss this posting or to comment, please visit the forum topic dedicated to this article.