The Luminous Self
Happy Black-eyed Susans and the State of the Family in America
Spring brings phlox. White, purples, pinks. They’re soft, delicate, peaceful. I adore them. When in bloom, they’re always nestled throughout the sacred space in my temple room in small understated vases. But I treasure the Black-eyed Susan’s cheerful orange-yellow glow. They have a fire for life but not without graceful countenance.
I just walked in the door from picking my first gathering of the season. Spritely, joyful Susan’s deserve larger vases: one white and blue in delicate ceramic design, the other deep ruby-wine glass vase. When I must discard my yellow bundles of love, I put them in the dirt on both sides in the front of the house. They seed themselves. They grow themselves from their own deaths. I’ve got a whole Black-eyed Susan garden thriving and I want to extend their patches of space.
There’s another garden I’m giving special attention to: my friends and family and complete strangers. Every day I turn myself over to the practice of unconditionally loving. This takes practice, rigorous practice at first. I don’t always feel loving, and people, family included, can be absolutely impossible at times.
Actively cultivating unconditional devotional love for my Divine Other, the Supreme Person, makes it possible to tend to other relationships. See, I found out that no material relationship makes me whole, and unless I’m whole I can’t love unconditionally. Through great suffering and loss, I learned the secret to giving unconditional love in this world—and not be drained or degraded by the offering—is to make developing love of God my central relationship. In that relationship (as one friend likes to say) “giving is receiving; the giving is getting.” When I’m hooked up to the Supreme Person, my unlimited, giving source, I find the ability to extend unconditional love to others.
Once I decided that my life’s work and joy, my spiritual path, the way toward my human evolution is to develop unconditional devotional love, I’ve found that it seeds itself, sprouts up from and strangles fear, and returns love to me unbounded.
As I braved thorn bushes and stinging Nettle in open sandals to pick Susans, I was thinking about families and our relationships within them. I agree with Debra Moffitt in How Relationships Heal: Moving into the Divine Union.
Within relationships we have tremendous potential for spiritual development. Have we heard how this can be possible? Do we understand the significance for our lives? Do we believe this?
If we look at the state of family in America we might suspect our collective answer has to be “no” to each question. Do we care about this? Enough to change—maybe not the whole society—but ourselves? Are we depriving ourselves and our loved ones of something by sticking with the “no” answer?
After looking at statistics below, if you had to rate it honestly, how would you rate the health of Family in America?
Awful, Poor, Fair, Good, Great?
Divorce rate holds firm at 50% for many years[1], with more than 2 million couples marrying every year[2]. One million marriages coming to an end every year means emotional turmoil for 2 million people and their families.
Most everyone either knows the emotional and relational costs of divorce or is close to someone who does. Divorce may be nasty or not, but almost always is painful as we watch life push us forward past evaporating dreams.
Divorce isn’t the only familial ill in America (or elsewhere).
As you read the numbers below, please don’t read too fast. Allow yourself to remember that each number refers to a human being.
Every day 5 children die from abuse and neglect right here in our country[3], or 1,770 children in 2009[4]. However, this number doesn’t take into account the fact that 50-60% of children’s deaths due to maltreatment are not listed as such on the death certificate. 80% of these children are under 4 years old. In addition, an estimated 695,000 children were abused in 2010[5], and in 2009 there were reports and allegations of abuse involving 6 million children.
More than one in four children live in a single parent home[6], or 24 million children[7]. 408,000 children were in foster care[8] in 2010, but it should be noted that closer to 600,000 move in and out of foster care during the year.
Every day more than 3 women are murdered by their partners[10]. About 1.3 million women are victims of physical violence by their partner every year. Nearly 7.8 million women have been raped by their partner at some point in their lives.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually.[11] In 2005 there were 191,000 cases of rape or sexual assault reported,[12] a significant number of cases are not reported.
Whenever I listen to the news or hear depressing things like these statistics about the state of family in America I feel overwhelmed. What can I possibly do to help change the suffering in the world? What’s really frustrating is I usually answer, Not much.
But I can change what’s happening in my home with my significant other (okay, I don’t have one, but you might!), my children, my grandchildren, and my broader family. I can change how I relate to my friends and colleagues. I can change how I behave in relationships and I can do it today.
Guy Finley writes, “How do we illuminate our relationships at home, in our workplace, wherever we are? What must we do to enlighten this murky world of ours that staggers under the weight of its own shadows? We must cease being an unconscious part of its darkness.”
I see my Self and each being as a spiritual individual and understand we are eternally interconnected in relationships. I choose to act with each person, event, and my environment in a manner that honors and energizes how I want to express myself in my personal relationship with the divine. I design my relationship and establish the tenor of that relationship with divinity by choosing how I act in each circumstance now.
Let the numbers remind us; let the human beings remind us; let our loved ones remind us: we can choose to love unconditionally.
With love to you and your family,
[1] CDC FastStats
[2] http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html
[3] http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics
[4] http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11599.pdf
[5] http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/statistics/can.cfm
[6] http://www.familyfacts.org/charts/135/more-than-one-in-four-children-live-in-a-single-parent-home
[11] http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/
Moving Beyond the Mind
Wild mind. Incessant thoughts driving us into action, pinning us to bed in depression, or immobilizing us in loops of repeated ignorant action. Whether we’re pushed forward, held back, or cycling around the same territory, thoughts are powerful. While more subtle than our corporeal bodies, thoughts have a density, capable as they are of co-opting our lives.
No one likes to be captive to the dictate of their thoughts and the evident suffering they can cause: lack of self worth, limiting beliefs, or out-of-control emotions. Thus we have elaborate philosophical and psychological systems to assist us break through, or at least be in control of, the mind.
We want to awaken to the self beyond the mind, the self beyond the ego, the observer of thoughts. To that self who experiences genuine relief when we gain mastery of the mind. So we try to corral wild mind. Rope it, tranquilize it, stomp it—somehow contain it.
Some of us have become quite accomplished in the pen with the wild bull. So astute, we often leave the fenced-in area with clothes and hair still looking presentable. Practices of living in the present moment, meditating, forcibly stopping negative thought patterns, positive affirmations, and the like, offer much of the tools we need. Patiently control it.
Here’s another skill, coming to us from Bhagavad Gita: Ignore it. Get out of the pen and walk way. Let the mind reel on, ignore the sound. Focus on what deserves your full attention: You!
You are not the mind.
You are the Self who is relieved by controlling the mind, and wants to awaken to deeper levels of living.
Your Self remains hidden in its dwelling—the heart—a settled, wholesome environment diametrically opposed to the mind’s domain.
We need to move beyond the mind and we can’t do that only by employing techniques for controlling it. If we remain focused on dominating or transcending the mind, we inadvertently remain within the mind’s territory, and thus its ultimate control.
Walk from the mind. You’ll be able to focus productive attention where contemplation is deserved: on your conscious self, Conscious Heart. That self requires more than stopping the assault of the mind.
A Day with Conscious Heart
With angst, I wait for Saturdays to be able to write. My acute need to write makes me uncomfortable in my skin as I search throughout the week for a moment, any moment, to write. Thoughts churn, learning moments come and go, important lines surface, but time prohibits me from capturing them on the page so that I can see. The desire to write pushes me like a bodily need for existence, as essential as eating or drinking water.
Mid-way into last Saturday, I walked out of the kitchen onto the screened-in porch heading to the shed. Four pairs of adult shoes, five pairs of child’s size 6 shoes—two clogs, a pair of gold sandals, navy blue slip-ons with daisies—lined the side of the porch. They were a distracting blur as I walked passed.
For weeks, I’ve been wanting to write about the heart being the locus of consciousness. The conventional belief is that consciousness and emotions are generated from the mind.
However, the heart being our true intelligence is a major theme throughout ancient cultures—the Greeks and Egyptians, and the traditions Judaism, Christian, Chinese, Islamic, and Hindu.
All the ancient Vedas are emphatic: consciousness is the symptom of the soul (not the mind), and the heart is the seat of individual consciousness. We perceive from the heart, not from the mind, though the mind gives input to the individual conscious Self.
The sensory experience and input from our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth pull our attention to our head. The mind, which is the default screen of our inner vision, is in the head. Thus the configuration of our physical apparatus in the head makes it appear as if our head is the center of our being.
Heart is the Seat of Consciousness
I have often experienced the screen of inner vision on my heart, just as easily and regularly as I have experienced a screen on my mind. The two screens offer different perspectives. Just like the two computer screens on my desk. One screen is a wide HD screen. The colors are crisp, the resolution clean and sharp. The other, older, screen has a yellow hue making everything I see on it slightly cloudy. Two screens, two different viewing experiences.
To experience the heart perspective requires that we consciously draw the locus of our attention to the heart and look from that position. There we can also hear. Hear important messages that, should we choose, direct our life choices in a more amiable experience. Drawing our attention from the mind down to the heart takes practice, but it can become second nature. It also requires that we gain a perspective about who we are as spiritual Beings.
We are Heart-Generated Life
Our biological heart beats before our brains are formed, before we even have a central nervous system. The heart’s beat is self-initiated. After the beat begins, the brain develops the amygdala, our emotional center. We come into being in this body in this order: heart, emotional brain center, and only then the thinking brain, or the mind, develops.
Our heart and our emotional brain center are respectively, the seat and feedback center of our Being. Mastering emotions are exercises from life’s workbook of learing spiritual maturity and making spiritual progress.
What I Learned from the Porch
Returning from the shed,I stepped passed the line-up of shoes on the porch. My thinking brain was playing a tape I’ve been hearing over the past three weeks: “Meena is with her Mom on the weekends. Her mom gets to be the grandma. I want to be grandma! Instead, I get to discipline, clothe, educate, teach, hold, feed, and think ahead of all Meena’s steps—to keep her safe, healthy, whole, and developing. If I could be the grandmother I am, I could write, read, contemplate, and rest—activities congurent with my age and inclination.”
As I contemplate what could be, resistance rises. My thoughts are rational, from my thinking mind. With regret, I muse, “Writing the details about heart as the locus of consciousness is put off for yet another day.”
Yet before I can wallow and build on where that thought is headed, I notice something. As the shoes come into the periphery of my vision, my heart leaps, and melts, a dozen images of me laughing and talking to Meena explode on the screen of my heart—all before there was enough time to form a single thought. I felt Meena’s shoes!
Communication from the Heart
The messages we receive before thoughts are formed are communications from our heart. So often they float by unnoticed as we navigate the raging white waters of the mind. But it is the beacon of the conscious heart–well connected with the intelligent universe–that is our true Self’s trying to get our attention. Conscious heart can help us navigate the mind’s fickle choices. Accepting and embracing the heart’s direction can introduce us to our true Self, and keep us in alignment with our true life course and purpose.
I smiled at myself. I’m living from the locus of the heart by putting Meena’s care first and my writing second.
When we have two heart directions, the practical reality, after examining it with heart, will be the final guide. I have a primary and secondary heart direction. When we have more than one, balancing becomes part of our learning exercise.
Our house is richer with the small shoes, put on and taken off, in a line-up at two entrances. The adult shoes don’t have daisies.
