Christmas and New Year Reflections

Posted on by colinchenery

Christmas day – the day we most want to share with those closest to us, is a celebration of family and friendship when we feel grateful for those in our lives – those who are with us on the day, those elsewhere doing the same and those who have passed on. Magic and love is in the air for children and adults alike. It is a day when laughter, companionship and gratitude are practically sacred and mandatory, enabling us to cast aside any sense of burden and celebrate life as it is with sharing and giving of ourselves, gifts and seasonal dishes.

Traditional or seasonal festive events bring families and communities together in a celebratory tone of goodwill, providing a familiar cycle of customs and culture in tune with the seasons and harvests. The festive season of Christmas and New Year in the west provides the upliftment and sense of renewal that comes from the gratitude, celebration and love shared with those close to us on a day where millions of others are doing the same. Aside from religious traditions, the modern materialistic and retail promoted aspect, the most widely celebrated aspect amidst the lights and decorations, Santa ritual and the great Christmas lunch is this celebration of love and friendship.

In religious circles Christmas marks the birth of a spiritual saviour which can imply at a symbolic and universal level the Birth of Being or Awakening: spiritual rebirth or renewal within when we open our minds to connect with the nature of consciousness and the divine nature deep within. The renewal comes with opening heart and mind with the faith, trust and good-will of a child, with many doing this openly more-so than on most other days of the year. Many people notice more smiles between strangers and general good humour and goodwill when in public places at this time. This is a very healthy release of tension and renewal of faith in humanity for the social psyche. The spirit of Christmas Day with our loved ones is the ever new vitality of life and consciousness when we share lightness of being with a spirit of genuine care and giving. Conscious connection and unity in this mind and heart space brings us closer to real spirit or Christ nature which can take us beyond our human frailties and neurosis.

Jesus may or may not be a significant figure in your life, yet he represents awakening of man to the spirit within us all and the divine as the source and destiny of all. At the time of his ministry, his was a universal message to people of all faiths, cultures and social standing about the spiritual nature of life and consciousness offering us immortality and a plan of ascendency. He encouraged all to take life and consciousness as a gift freely, with the trust and acceptance of a child, to live in thankfulness for it, giving freely of ourselves to others in love and goodwill now and forever.

The message of an available and personal connection to the grand scheme of things, that the true nature of reality is on a spiritual level that we can tap into now and that holds a hidden destiny for each of us is a truly universal and great ideal. Aligning to values and conscious living in every moment, holding the space of love and gratitude in divine presence, enables better recognition of spiritual truths. While Jesus taught the message of relating to universal consciousness as a divine Father, aligning our minds and hearts to a personal experience of the divine provides a living, profound and immediately relevant source of transformation. Spiritual experience by nature is more transcendent while also being a grounding source of being than the changing landscape of lifestyle and self image, social and cultural differences, or beliefs and ideologies based on historically conditioned trends of the time and contemporary world norms.

Spiritual truth is truth that can apply in any age and is at the base of all great ideals, philosophies and practices that lead to true awakening to those who actively seek and live it. The power and reality of spiritual truths can be recognised not only in the subjective response within the seeker but also in the values and progressively life affirming attributes evident in good people’s lives, in the social fabric of people and communities that take on such faith and values. Spiritual truth is not rocket science, but based on a subtle simplicity of faith and knowing of the pure nature of the heart and mind, a sense of spiritual truth that is a subtle key for the seeker and practitioner.

Thus, at Christmas time as we enjoy the goodwill felt in the company of people we love and share life with, we can affirm the significance and core value of life founded in shared goodwill and friendship. Without goodwill and friendship in its many forms, life becomes empty of shared meaning and fulfilment. With it, we affirm the deep down purity of soul and spiritual nature in ourselves and each other.

In this way, Christmas reinforces renewal of faith in human nature, love and goodwill. Let us renew our faith that the nature of life and consciousness finds its own reflection in such ideals and values, and that opening our hearts and minds deeply and authentically to this knowledge with conviction, can bring us closer to greater personal freedom and realisation within our hearts and minds.

The deep love and unity we feel during these festive times can feel more real than all the passing ups and downs of life’s struggles for a reason. It is a closer reflection of our true nature than the worldly troubles and the mind activity we use to deal with them. While the challenge of life is important for shaping character and refining personal identity and decisions, we need reminding of what our true nature is within and shared. Knowing our true nature provides perspective and a real foundation to be more functional individually and collectively. Acknowledging and valuing this in faith, trust and goodwill further enables us to embody and generate beauty and goodness in our lives. Aligning and co-creating our lives from our true nature of spirit, further enables us to feel fulfilled and truly ourselves, to share and manifest in the world together in the formless essence of joy, friendship and camaraderie as fellow beings on this planet in the vast universe.

Real friendship, generosity of heart, and learning to love each other (warts and all) is rewarding because it is an end in itself. It engages the true nature of being before us and is deeply personal, just as the true nature of life and consciousness is profoundly personal as it is impersonal and universal to all beings.

Embodying life in this spirit, Jesus encouraged not only universal love and brotherhood of all mankind, but gave it the context of a Creator of love and being who we can come to know on a personal level as a child to a parent. Recognising the truth and capacity for oneness in such a divine nature, awakens us beyond our material and ego self, is the foundation of our ascendent path towards the birth of Christ consciousness. This birth from within is a living, present and immediate spiritual cause for celebration for which the traditional nativity scene, the life and teachings of Christ point towards.

With New Year upon us, a reset or new starting point in our choices and decisions of the year ahead, the pursuits that drive us and give us purpose presents itself. New Year is a time we can reflect not only on sought after accomplishments and challenges ahead in a worldly sense, but also how we can more fully apply the values and aspects of our deeper nature to our relationships and the countless tasks of ‘doing’ before us. Where do our deepest convictions lie and how do we exercise them in our work and lifestyle, in our relationships, and in ourselves?

In reflecting on the New Year with the joy of Christmas fresh in our hearts and minds, let us apply conscious intent not only towards key things we want to do or achieve in the coming year but also the state of being and quality of consciousness we want to align with.

In love and good-will I hope you have had a Merry Christmas and wish you the best for a Happy New Year!

Photo by …-Wink-… on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

A Simple & Powerful Way of Enhancing Mindful Living

Posted on by colinchenery

What are we always doing naturally that is immediately and continually available as a focal point of grounding and expansion of consciousness, providing the link between form and formlessness, doing and being, physical life and beyond death? …… it is our breath.

Conscious breathing is the vehicle for various therapies, relaxation techniques, basic and advanced meditations which are about shifting the mind to a higher awareness and spiritual awakening. Conscious breathing is also key part of the benefits and authentic practice of yogic techniques, xigong and taiji which are about unifying awareness of body, mind and spirit beyond the separate ego-self.

Breathing is something that happens by itself, so it can be witnessed like consciousness, so in meditation it is not something you do but witness with awareness. This is perfect for putting the receptive mind in an open, present and alert state.

These techniques involve directing the breath in ways that engage inner alertness, a relaxed yet focused mind synchronising breath, movement and attention producing a sense of mind, body and spirit alignment and wellbeing. In qigong and taiji for example we can practice performing actions that are practical while maintaining a mindful presence of body-consciousness and the environment around us. In other words, they can enhance the effects of conscious breathing in stilling the activity of the mind while maintaining wakeful alertness of mindful body movement that is synchronised with the breath. This type of mindful practice trains and teaches us how to apply this same balance of doing and non-doing with a spacious awareness while dealing with daily tasks, observing our thoughts and feelings as they arise and thus help develop identification with consciousness instead of the content of consciousness. We can learn to utilise breath and mindfulness to maintain a sense of balance, a sense of stability and focus while being present with real arising thoughts and feeling responses to situations without getting taking away by them.

With this awareness we can become more empowered to deal with stress and emotional reactions, habitual negative or non-productive thinking, behavioural habits and compulsions, by being able to experience them without them becoming our whole sense of self in the moment. Without processing them, just by embracing them deeply with the light of consciousness and presence, keeping our energy moving with conscious breathing, these same thoughts and feelings can transform from habitual and predictable reactions to new and creative ground.

The space between our thoughts and feelings is what reveals the consciousness that is projecting them. Maintaining a state of presence and awareness of this background of consciousness gives us a greater ability to respond and experience all aspects of ourselves and our life with equanimity and perspective. The breath can be used as an intermediary focus between the content of mind and the consciousness from which it arises. Learning to engage with more quality and frequency of consciousness of consciousness can then become the grounding point for spiritual awakening and experience.

Mindful awareness enables us to experience spaciousness of mind and heart where thoughts, feelings and situations come and go in a medium of consistent stability and relaxed openness. Conscious breathing gives us an immediate tool that helps ground our present moment awareness within and without in a balanced way. At the same time boundaries can dissolve so we feel unified with reality in and around us. Good practice of Qigoing and taiji or yoga combines relaxed body movement or postures with conscious breathing to further ground this mindful awareness into our inner experience of the physical body and the circulation of breath and subtle energies to create a more tangible subjective experience associated with this state of being.

However, you don’t have to practice these disciplines for years or become an expert to start getting great benefits. Taking brief times to be still and breath even a dozen times at the start and end of the day, while mindfully breathing 2-3 times during daily activities can provide progressive benefits with a little persistence. This involves being aware of the body form head to toe, and being fully present during each second of inhale and exhale, noticing any natural holds or pauses, areas of relaxation and tension in breath and body. Just taking brief times to do this, observe and be aware with a relaxed mind as it happens will bring its own results.

Many of us have characteristic breath patterns which reflect how we deal with stress as does the stress patterns evident in our posture and body tissue tension and sensitivity. Noticing pauses or momentary holds in the breath along with the quality of inhale and exhale will gradually open the breath naturally to a more rhythmical and deep cycle and calm the mind to wakeful alertness. Conscious breathing, sustained or regularly practiced as a momentary technique will naturally still the mind and energise the body promoting alert mindful awareness. These two conditions, a calm still mind and relaxed alertness or focus, are preparation for realisation of the nature of consciousness and therefore spiritual awareness.

The experience of inner body awareness using postures and controlled movement synchronised with breathing helps to ground us from ‘spacing out’ in such states, ensure we are practicing a balanced alertness of non-thinking consciousness. In this consciousness, awareness of breath, inner body experience and surroundings can then be all observed in equanimity. When the observer or the consciousness of the experience embraces the experience unconditionally in the moment, it is not defined or contained by it.

One of the first techniques of basic yogic breath is a three phase breath expanding the abdomen, then the chest or thoracic region, followed by the top of the chest or clavicular area with the inhale, noticing any pause before allowing each region in the same order to relax with the exhale. Try practicing this in your conscious breathing.

With practice as you feel more fully present in yourself after some conscious breathing you can also invite joy, love or peace fully into mind and body. These, along with illumination, compassion, goodness and beauty are natural qualities that can be tapped into in such calm, open and unified states. How simple and valuable then, can the breath be, in taking charge of developing more deep and authentic personal experience of these often sought after states.

Making a daily practice of conscious breathing enables us to employ such practice effectively before, during or after times we feel imbalanced, forgetful or reactive. in order to regain a centred and deep sense of being that was always there and never truly lost. Just notice what happens, not only to yourself but often to those around you, when you break a pattern of stress or reaction that would otherwise have run its course. Notice the change and then stay with the breath rather than creating a commentary of the gained insight and shift, thereby remaining present in your ongoing ‘nowness’.

When you are in mindful stillness, you are tapped into who you are as the source of thought and experience and not defined by them. Thus your awareness resonates more closely with the authentic self untainted by any one mood or situational context, closer to the formless and eternal self which can also be termed spirit.

May you continue in serene and energised conscious breathing.

Photo on Visualhunt with quote added

Uplifting the Quality of Love and Friendship in Your Life

Posted on by colinchenery

A great aspect of life that I find most encapsulates beauty, goodness and truth is friendship. What a marvellous gift! Friendship universally valued, is founded on mutual love and regard for one another. It nurtures our sense of connection and enriches life. It’s a safe and nourishing means to gain perspective of our personal realities through sharing thoughts, feelings and views with each other. In friendship we truly enjoy each other and life as personalities, invigorating life meaning, the value of sharing love, reminding us what is important. We couldn’t imagine life without it. Every friendship is so unique, and what we gain and share in different friendships often surprise, delight and fulfil us mind and soul.

Our need for companionship is a natural instinct on every level of our being as we are not created to be in isolation. Beautiful friendships do not come from neediness and dependency on each other for security and completeness. Beautiful friendships reciprocate an unconditional love that each person has found within. These authentic friendships we all would like in abundance and the way to cultivate them is to cultivate our own ideal ‘friendship’ in ourselves.

To become a good friend to others is much more achievable if we have an abundance of love and a sense of connection within ourselves. Feeling complete, means we have more energy and concern for others. There is one reliable source of this.

In the Gita, Krishna speaking as an embodiment of the divine says: “I am the Self, dwelling in the heart of all beings, and the beginning, the middle, and the end of all that lives as well.” (Gita 10:20) It is universally recognised that it is in the heart we most truly see ourselves and each other. In religions around the world, it is the calm or spirit aligned mind unified with the heart that is attuned to truth, meaning and higher values.

A pure intent, coming from love and strength rather than seeking it, enables us to be more present and loving, able to respond to life and situations with thoughtfulness and compassion. We all want to respond more readily to authentic and genuine needs, rather than react or get ensnared by conditional ego needs in our ourselves or in others. From a free and independent state of ‘universal love’ we can seek to understand others, even when their actions may not be in our own interests.

To love universally does not mean approving or advocating indiscriminately when we see things that are obviously misguided or outright evil and wrong. However, like the saints and masters, we can condemn the sin and love the sinner as we ourselves hope to be treated. This means exercising love with wisdom. It is only through understanding that we can genuinely achieve the spiritual ideal of ‘loving our enemies’. Even the worst types of characters can be friendly to their family or those close. Therefore, spiritual wisdom in our responses is being discriminating but non-judgemental to those who slight us, seeking out the goodness in them, understanding why they do what they do, then responding appropriately without taking it personally. In the joy of righteousness, or the courage of challenging injustice, we can act with love in our hearts for the benefit of all concerned. It is not easy at all, yet a profound ideal of applying mindfulness.

Offering love and friendship in any circumstance is a way to freely apply our higher nature whether joyously or sternly. If the intention is to be true and authentic and of most value to others, then such acts of love and friendship are not a means to an end but fulfilling a pure and complete end in itself.

Those who realise the power of an open heart in facing life, discover the sacredness in and through their relationships. Personal spiritual experience comes from a sense of the divine in the universe at large as well as a personal connection within. This personal religious awareness “may permeate all four levels of the realisation of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.” (Urantia I:5:5.2)

Thus, friendship can be a sublime channel for actualising divine love if, even in ordinary moments, we consciously connect to the source of personal love within and omnipresent universal love around us. “Love spontaneously gives itself in endless gifts. But those gifts lose their fullest significance if through them we do not reach that love, which is the giver. The question is, in what manner do we accept this world, which is a perfect gift of joy? Have we been able to receive it in our heart where we keep enshrined things that are of deathless value to us?” (Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize-winning poet of India).

Jesus love and regard to all people equally, challenged the social mores of racial and gender prejudice in his time. He broke such a social code when speaking to a Samaritan woman by a well, saying: “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14). This ‘fount of living water’ amounts to our own conviction and willingness to feel great divine love within ourselves and to embody it for the benefit of all.

Realising the inner fountain of love and life according to Sri Krishna is to calm worldly attachments and aversions, focusing oneself completely with inner devotion with the divine. In the Gita, Krishna speaks to the cultivation of such love within when he says: “Only by undistracted love can men see me, and know me, and enter into me. He who does my work, who loves me, who sees me as the highest, free from attachment to all things, and with love for all creation, he in truth comes to me.” (Gita 11:54,55)

A great sense of meaning and purpose comes with cultivating conscious love and friendship and including the world at large in that love. It is greater than the pursuit of a personal happiness from external things or trying to fill emotional or psychological gaps in an isolated and conditioned self.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second most important commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment more important than these two.” (Mark 12:30,31)

Thus, the key to great love and friendships can be found by applying spiritual values in ourselves and with others to overcome worldly and ego needs. Sacred friendship requires effort – engagement of all aspects of our personality, and an acknowledgement of a personal relationship in and with the divine. The rewards are immense and real.

Jesus presents ideal love and friendship as the love of a divine parent to all combined with the mutual love of neighbours or brother or sister sharing a divine source and destiny: “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me who is doing his work.” (John 14:10) “.. you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you”. (John 14:20) “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” (John 15:9) “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12,13).

This depth of love is a great human achievement to be exercised in wisdom. While Jesus followed through with this truth in the ultimate sense, we can devote our lives to mindful daily practice. Truth, beauty and goodness in our true nature is demonstrated by so many people the world over. There is a quiet majority who are essentially good and beautiful souls. May love, unity and friendship become the art form of our times.

Recommended Reading:

The Berean Bible (download online – public domain)

The Bhagavad Gita (download online – public domain)

The Urantia Book (download online – public domain)

Photo by drhenkenstein on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Like Waves and Drops of the Ocean

Posted on by colinchenery

Waves and little drops play their timeless dance,

Rolling, bubbling, splashing and spraying,

Rising and falling silently or reaching high to crash and tumble,

From shoreline the steady timeless rumble or quiet lapping.

 

Coming into form then merging and returning to formlessness,

Always an inseparable expression and action of the sea,

Seeming to revel in motion when towering dramatically and suddenly,

Or languidly rising and falling rarely cresting with power dormant.

 

Wave and drop a brief and minuscule extension of vast ocean,

Shaped by the winds of time and chaotic turbulences amidst a familiar flow,

Oblivious to massive tides and planetary forces that also shape their paths,

Of forming and re-forming, again and again merging with the source of their substance.

 

Their own watery substance reflecting the unfathomable depths below,

Every wave and drop expresses unique beauty of infinite form and detail,

Each necessary in the passage of time to the continuity of the whole,

Ripples united in a play of the vast sea and the elements that shape them.

 

Always apart in form yet unified in substance,

Sometimes crashing together, moving indefinitely apart, always moving in pattern,

The waves and little drops know no name or definition,

No views and differences of opinion about their nature, source or destiny.

 

There is no argument or agreement about the depths beneath,

No consensus required on preferences for conditions,

Of wind, sun and rain, for calm stillness or storm,

Each one manifested by the same energies and elements that form them.

 

How grand that we know our own nature,

That knowledge, name and form allow us to evolve ourselves while in form,

Shaping and developing our own world around us as well as our little selves,

Our source and destiny a great ocean of life and consciousness from which we rise and merge.

 

Must knowing the form come with the folly of forgetting the unseen whole,

Treachery of knowledge, power of naming and categorising entrapping the mind,

Consuming identity and nature when defined by separateness and conflict,

The vast inseparable source reduced to division, or rejection or forgotten altogether.

 

It is only in knowing the waves and drops minutely,

Relative to the inseparable interactive elements of ocean, wind, and earth,

Vast whirling planets and space that direct the tide and bring it all to bare,

May true understanding arise embracing both form and formless forces.

 

Yet does knowledge reveal of the beauty of the calm sea and terribleness of the storm,

The humility in feeling the vast power of ocean and earth and their gift of life,

Vital freshness or bite of salty wetness and the glory of riding cresting wave,

Knowing that arises from realms of the heart and in the rich depths of experience.

 

Heart and mind, knowledge and experience, form and formlessness,

Material and consciousness, phenomenal and ethereal, master and servant,

One without the other a blissful ignorance or sorrowful suffering,

While embracing what is, as both and neither is to come nearer to creator.

 

Only in detail are we uniquely personal and evolving understanding,

All else is diversity in unified experience of shared challenges and forces,

Directing the farsighted to oneness of realisation and revelation, eternal being and meaning,

Glorious and miraculous that we are also that, the vast and unified ocean of consciousness.

 

By Colin Chenery

Photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/bostik/6310836292/”>bostik_</a&gt; via <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/re2/90ba41″>Visualhunt.com</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”&gt; CC BY-NC-ND</a>