Posts Tagged ‘authentic living’

As readers will know, I often insert paragraphs from Lester Levenson’s collected talks to groups in NY in the 1960s. Under the collective title of ‘The Way To Complete Freedom – Sessions With a Master On Personal Transformation’, this 266 page book is like a bible to those seeking to understand what this life is really all about and the ways and means of rising above what has become known as ‘the human condition’.

It covers such ideas as The Basic Goal and Ways to Attainment, Happiness, Love, Ego, Mastering Mind and Matter, to Realization By Dropping the Unconscious and Why Not Go All the Way?

The more I read it, the more the knowledge is internalized, the more it becomes a part of me.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter “The Basic Goal’:

“Let’s now take a look at this so-called apparency, the world. The world is only an illusion that we created mentally. It is not external but in reality within us, within our mind.  Some day you’ll discover that you created this entire universe that you see.
The method of creating is by first creating what we call our mind. We create our mind which is nothing but a composite of all our thoughts, conscious and sub-conscious, and the thoughts create the material world.

Every little thing that happens to each and every one of us is created in our thinking. We mentally set up a thing called time which makes it even more difficult to see things, because we think now, and things happen years later.

But the only creator that is, is the mind – your mind. Is God a creator? Yes, because you are. Thou are that! You set up a mind and through the mind create. It is necessary and good to discover that everything happening is caused by our thinking. Everything that happens to us is created in our thought. It’s a stepping stone to realizing and recognizing that we are the creators.
First you discover that you created your trouble, then you discover that you can create anything you desire. After you discover that there’s nothing you cannot create, you’re still unhappy.  The reason is that you have separated yourself from the infinity. Only on recognizing your infinity are you perfectly satisfied.”

So what Lester is telling us is that we are cause of all our problems. Not consciously of course, but because of our lack of conscious awareness, we operate on ‘automatic’.  I.e. our ego is operated by the subconscious programs built in by reason of inherited patterns, upbringing and experiences (nature, nurture and more). But as he continually reminds us, we are infinite beings acting as though we are not. We think and act as though we are each individual and separate from the whole. The ego strongly re-inforces this concept since it depends for its life on having us think this way. Eckart Tolle expounds this idea in a simple, elegant way in his books.

So what to do about all this?
It seemed to our regular group, which has been meeting each month since 1997, that the thing to do was to prove to ourselves as much of these ideas as we could. If we are indeed creators, then let’s be positive creators and take control, instead of being at the mercy of  ‘cruel circumstance’.

In future posts, I’ll report to you on various experiences and results which have come about from working with ideas and techniques.

Please leave your comments and any questions you may have below this post. We appreciate your interest.

Today I was browsing the Sydney Morning Herald and chanced upon the following article extracted from a blog written by an American woman living in Sendai, Japan. It shows how, when extreme adversity calls, humans drop their false self (ego) and live and behave together in a totally different way. The way we could all live with a little effort.

Here it is:

Somehow, profound joy amid sorrow

American Anne Thomas has been teaching English in Sendai for a decade. These are edited extracts of an email she sent to family and friends this week to let them know she was alive and a blog entry she wrote.

THINGS here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly, where I am, there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People keep saying, ”Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes.

No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival.

There are strange parallel universes happening. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack each day, now to send this email, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself.

In evacuation centres there are puppet shows for children. ”It’s to ease their minds,” my friend explained to me. ”That is very important.”

In another shelter, junior high school students got paper and paints and made a large bright, energetic sign that said, ”To have life is profound joy.” It was hung high overhead so everyone could see it.

We comfort one another as best as we can. We still say, ”Gambarimashou” (We must keep up our fighting spirit).

I want to close with another email from a friend who is a university teacher. It, too, is an excellent manifestation of the truly remarkable Japanese ”kokoro” (heart and soul).

”Today was supposed to be a graduation day which was postponed and might be cancelled. When I saw the students at the campus housing this morning, they served me a special breakfast that the juniors cooked for the seniors to celebrate the day. The meal was cold, but really special. I won’t forget the taste of it. I am convinced that my students will overcome this tragedy with the positive attitude. I intend to emulate them.”

You can read the full text of the blog article here:

http://odemagazine.com