Gaia Community: Rob's Blog

Who Am I?

http://Rob.gaia.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:19:14 GMT

The central inquiry we must all return to again and again is the perennial inquiry of selfhood, Who am I?

This inquiry is central to those of us who are interested in investigating our Excellence as we make our way through life. When you stop asking yourself this core question you are intrinsically wedded to a fundamental misconception: you know who it is that you are. This seemingly innocent presumption to know yourself actually inhibits and stunts your overall development and thus caps your capacity to enact and articulate the Greatness that your life is demanding of you right now.

Your most fluid, efficient and effective self development depends upon your capacity to remain open. Falling into the assumption that you know yourself stagnates your self-system into a closed system. When you assume to know yourself you fall into your habituated conditioning and loop again and again playing out your central assumptions as to who you are and thus what you do in the world. While your conditioning is an important part of yourself, left to its own ends your conditioning will never step into the Excellence that your life requires.

Keeping the inquiry Who am I? alive connects you with your essential curiosity. By stepping into this fundamental question you step into your recognition that you fundamentally do not know who you are. Not-knowing connects you with the dimension of yourself that is open, unconditioned and deeply creative. The more frequently you ask yourself this question, the more deeply you can hold this inquiry alive in your heart the more open your self-system becomes. What results is the setting down of your presumptions and the picking up and inhabiting of your vital creative openness.

Your life is demanding your Excellence or Greatness regardless of your awareness of this call. If you look around in your life you will see a life that is calling for more of you. Picking up this fundamental question as a part of your daily practice provides you with a simple yet highly effective strategy to cut through your assumptions and your habituated way of living your life. Feeling into the uncertainty and not-knowingness opens you to an alive seat of creative openness.

Step into the creative novelty that your life and heart is calling for.

Cross Posted from www.RobMcNamara.com

Tags: Excellence, Greatness, identity, self growth, self development

Relaxation and Performance

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:29:03 GMT

Cross posted from www.RobMcNamara.com

Many people whom are unconsciously caught in their conditioning make the mistake of pushing harder in the attempt to get more done in their life. While the initial effort may yield some short term benefit, as an enduring strategy for productivity and performance this approach is severely misguided. Getting stuck in this modality of functioning is the equivalent of being in first gear and pressing the peddle down harder and harder to go faster. Sure you’re going to go a little bit faster initially however you’re going to top out at 25 miles an hour and if you keep doing this day in and day out you’re going to do tremendous damage to your engine.

The most efficient and effective way to enhance your performance is to refine your recovery. Wether you are trying to grow a company 7% above and beyond your annual organic growth or make an NFL roster by cutting your 40 time down by two hundredths of a second while refining your understanding of defensive assignments the formula remains the same: Relax!

Any integral approach to performance must include efficient and densely effective forms of accelerated recovery. Relaxation cuts stress levels and its associated biochemicals cortisol, ACTH, lactate and adrenaline. A potent dose of recovery also reduces muscular tension, heart rate and oxygen consumption. Relaxation increases the sensitivity of your brain and nervous system, increases your capacity for memory formation, quickens your reaction times by refining neuro-efficiency and facilitates brain growth and plasticity. When we look at individuals who have a consistent strategy for relaxation and efficient recovery we find individuals who are operating in life with much more adaptive skills and capacities for execution than individuals who fail to relax.

Just as when you go from first to second gear and from second to third, forth and fifth gear you must put the clutch down. Before you can ramp up your productivity to the next level, you must relax, you must put your clutch down and allow your conditioned RPMs to drop. When you set your physiological and psychological faculties to be more responsive, adaptive and refined you’ll start to explore performance from a new perspective and territory.

Performance as you will come to see is dependent not upon more contracted habituated effort to push through, but rather your ability to relax, open and thus generate true force in your life and in the world.

Cross posted from www.RobMcNamara.com

Tags: performance, relaxation, stress, recovery, integral practice, productivity

The Unconditioned Ground Of Awakening & Your Conditioning

http://Rob.gaia.com — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:51:32 GMT

For you integral freaks with a passion for practice I just wrote a post in my pod Integral Strength on the two edges of practice: The capacity to awaken into Novelty and the capacity to entrench habituation.

Enjoy!

Big love...

~Rob

Tags: Integral Practice, Awakening, Novelty, Entrenched Habituation, Conditioned History, Reflectivity, Post-Reflective Practice, Radical Acceptance, Transcendence

Strength, Your Reservoir for Love

http://Rob.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:20:56 GMT

Hey all,

I just wrote a short piece on the heart of Strength Training, Love, Intention and Wellness...

I think it's a good short read...

Check it out here!

Peace

Tags: Strength Training, Love, Wellness, Well-Being, Intention

A Broken Heart

http://Rob.gaia.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:42:14 GMT

Tears are my friend of late.

I can't help but allow them to flow gently down my cheeks. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother wiping them away. I love the feeling of their soft paths drying on their own time.

There's something beautiful about walking along a side walk with tears rolling down my face, about the softest of tears cooling my cheeks as I check my mail box. There's something precious about tears rolling out from my eyes as I press hundreds of pounds from my heart or as I cycle on a stationary bicycle. Sometimes the tears land just perfectly on my knee.

Life is so utterly heart breaking right now. To breathe in my life right now is shatteringly painful. This very breath wells tears into my eyes. Why?

This is all just too precious, this beautiful radiant moment is so precious. I seemingly can't stand how much I love life. On one hand there's no "thing" about life that stands out right now, it's just this beautiful field of life that breaks my heart. On the other hand, it's seemingly just about anything that can pierce through my heart. Sometimes its someone's eyes, an heart felt invitation, someone protecting themselves, a song dancing within my heart...

Part of me wants to possess, to hold on to this dancing immediacy. Part of me knows I can't hold any of this. To do so would close me down to the very love and vitality that hurts with such beauty. I think this dives into the heart of what is so shatteringly penetrating. My heart loves this moment with a gasping unconditioned embrace, and there's the part of me that wants to hold on, to possess something when ultimately there's nothing to have here.

The impermanence of this life is just so penetrating, so uncompromising. I can feel just how fast and fleeting this life is. I'm 30 now. I'm utterly shocked by this fact. I never thought my life would last this long. And yet I can still feel the time of the transcendent in my bones, this is all going to be over in just a few moments, just a few blinks of the Kosmic eye. Rob will soon be gone. I take form, I change, I dissolve and pass away.

In the meantime, the only thing that matters is to Love. To articulate my Love's Kindness in every gesture that animates this body-mind.

Kindness, Kindness, Kindness.

Kindness not born of convention, but a Kindness that knows only the beauty of this moment and the precious opportunity to dance from Love's timeless unconditioned source.

Does anything else really matter? Does anything else truly hold this depth?

Tags: Heart, Broken, Love, Kindness, Transcendence, Tears, Life, Precious, Moment

Following Your Heart

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:25:02 GMT

The center of your heart does not make distinctions.

The heart at it's core simply is open, radically vulnerable, intimately receptive.

There's no, "I'll take this, but not that."

There's no conflicted stance, no I'll be "sort of" open...but only to the things I want.

Openness as it quietly rests at the center of your heart is in many ways an either or phenomena. Either your heart is Open and Alive in the moment or it's not. Your heart either feels intimately this very moment or it severs itself from the very life that animates it's vitality.

When Open, the heart knows no obstacle. The heart feels obstacles, but unconditionally remains open, receptive, spacious and intimate with every subtle nuance of this moment's presence, this moment's configuration, this moment's articulation of itself.

The problem is the part of you that does make distinctions, does take sides, does stake claims in preferences. When you do this, the basic nature of the heart is severed from how you function in the world. The alive unmediated lovingness of your heart is severed and your life becomes a rote expression of your slavery to the preferences, opinions, likes and dislikes of your conditioned history.

When the cool open spaciousness of the heart is lost within your direct moment to moment experience, you stop feeling with the fullness of your being. As a result, you live your life in accordance to your conditioning. Contracted into your preferences, distinctions and sides you guide your life from a lesser place. You feel less because you're less alive. You are less skillful because you lead your life from a more self-centered perspective. You're less kind in the world because you don't feel deeply into this radiant moment.

As days slip by you continue onward semi-consciously amidst your life. Days turn into weeks and weeks to months. Suddenly years start slipping by as you slumber through each moment contracted around "you." As each moment beautifully flowers into an exquisite dance and dissolves away but your heart's truest most authentic articulation of life remains largely dormant as long as you live a life enslaved to your small self and it's conditioned preferences.

The heart remains ever present, waiting, the authentic articulation of yourself is brought into its fullest life as you release your attachments. As you stop contracting around you, your heart's immense sensitivity and delicate responsive aliveness comes to life. You die, your little box of a self dissolves and something much more precious than you can possibly image takes life right here, right now.

Here's a bow to the Heart.

Tags: Heart, Openness, Receptivity, Intimacy, Love, Spiritual Practice, Integral Practice, Life, Vitality, Consciousness

What is the Nature of Grace?

http://Rob.gaia.com — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:54:00 GMT

For those of you interested in Grace from a non-dualistic perspective...

So, What is Grace really? Is grace the relative unfolding that happens to meet your conventional self's preferences and desires? Is Grace that streak where "things go your way?"

While this might stand as a conventional understanding, this isn't the true nature of Grace, this isn't what it actually is.

Grace actually doesn't hold a preference. Grace holds no desire. Grace isn't concerned with becoming this or that, nor is Grace fundamentally invested in any other creation of time and its unfolding.

So then, What is grace actually?

Is it not this right here? Is it not my fingers typing on my mac? Is it not these very words crossing your eyes? Is it not the breath that drops effortlessly into my belly? Is it not your own breath rising or falling right now?

Grace is this.

Grace is Being. Grace is why anything is here at all. Grace is why something is, rather than nothing.

While there are times when things go your way, sometimes things unfold effortlessly from your conventional self's view. This is Grace no doubt; however, it isn't Grace because of the particular direction or way the Now happens to be unfolding.

Grace is this unfolding.

Grace is just as much as your pain, your struggle, your suffering. Grace is when the moment unfolds and makes your relative life more difficult. Grace is the misfortune, the broken heart, the loss, the death. Grace shows no preference, it's simply Being.

If you find yourself believing that Grace is absent, that's Grace. If you find yourself falling into an exclusive identification with doing, this is Grace. Distraction, Grace once again. Looking for Being? This is Grace.

So what needs to happen? What needs to happen for you to experience Grace? What do you need to do to connect once again to Grace?

These questions are precisely Grace through and through. Any question, any inquiry cannot point to Grace as the inquiry is Grace itself.

If you'd like a question that can frustrate you enough to realize Grace, turn your misdirectedness upon yourself. Ask yourself, What experiences this? The simple feeling of being that precedes all of this and that. This is grace in it's true nature.

You can't have it. You can't hold it. You can't control it. You can't do anything to Grace. Grace transcends all of this, and Grace is what you are through and through. Your conventional self has no choice in the matter. Grace has already chosen this, You - not the small 'you' but something much startlingly obvious has already chosen this.

Welcome to Graceland, you've never left.

Tags: Non-Dual, Wisdom, Grace, Integral, Perspectives, Being, Nature, NonDual, Realization, Now

Awakening Amidst Contraction

http://Rob.gaia.com — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:25:55 GMT

I am amidst what I call a push workout. I'm training my shoulders and core on this particular occasion, performing a cycle of lateral dumbbell raises, abdominal crunches on a bench and a practice of release in which I'm working on core and spinal flexibility.

Everything is *normal* perhaps too normal which proved to be the breakthrough. In my training I effortlessly fell into a Complete Surrender.

I'm not talking about the kind of surrender where you stop doing everything, allow your breath to naturally rise and fall as you drop all inner motion as you would on your meditation cushion or as I will at times practice between my sets.

In this emergence of Complete Surrender I was in the midst of an intense set of dumbbell lateral raises. I was exerting, pushing, flowing into each movement when shockingly everything changed, Surrender enveloped my conventional way of being-in-the-world.

From this Great Shift my eyes caught themselves in the mirror. As I stared deeply into my soft brown eyes everything was completely the same yet utterly different. The "I" that I conventionally understood was still there, same thoughts, same motions, same engagement with the intensity, yet for some reason my gaze fixed deep into my still eyes.

Amidst a contracting face and an intense extension of energy out into the world the subject from which I experienced life was all of the objects arising around me.

My Witness was no longer confined to feeling life from within my particular body-mind. Instead I was feeling life through the dumbbells in my hands, I could feel the mirrors from their own interior.

As my set continued onward, I felt the stair case behind me, the railing, the rack of weights, the wall wrapping around into the locker room. Perhaps most odd and profound was the space from which all of these things arouse. I could feel this cool expansive space from it's own interior just as I could feel the growing burning radiance in my shoulders as I raised the dumbbells again and again.

Awareness, liberated in it's essential nature, was awake and my witness (the witnessing faculty typically identified with my individual body-mind) had realized itself (the transcendent ever-present all-witnessing-witness). The subject and object had become one. As Wilber so eloquently says, "What you are looking out of is what you are looking at."

As we approach the new year I offer you this one instruction. Give yourself to your discipline. It doesn't matter what discipline you've chosen, what does matter is how completely you've given yourself to it. This year, practice surrendering to what animates you. Practice it until Surrender practices you, until the Great Shift holds you anew with grace and beauty.

Peace in Stillness,

~Rob

Tags: Awakening, Enlightenment, non-dual realization, strength training, Surrender, The Great Shift, Integral Practice

A Message from Mortality

http://Rob.gaia.com — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:40:09 GMT

For my good friend Terrance, all who've touched my life and the beauty and richness of this moment.

~~~~~~

Right now you've got one chance, one life, one opportunity. Manifestation has but one occasion to know who you are, experience your fullness and feel your love. You've got one body-mind and one life from which to share and serve.

One shot, that's it.

Now I'm not talking about one life as in a certain number of years before you meet your body-mind's relative eventuality (that's a sophisticated way of saying "you say hello to death"). I'm talking about life as this moment.

This is all you really have, or rather all that has you. If you think you've got years, got more than what's right here right now you're fooling yourself. You're painting a fantasy. The fact is you don't, nor will you ever, fully know where this moment is going to take you. Cancer, a car accident, an allergic reaction, a stroke, a heart attack, terrorism in any of its faces, an asthma attack...

Your body-mind may indeed shine into it's full brilliance beyond your next exhale, but there's no guarantee of this. As your chest rises with this inhale and falls away there's no guarantee aside from what's here right now.

This is perhaps Mortality's core message to you. You get one shot, one chance and this is it. "This" is the present moment, not your fantasy of what you'd like to have in terms of days, weeks, months and or years.

This message from Mortality isn't coming to you from the outside, letting you know that death is going to come for you. While you may be reading this blog, reading these words, check in and see if they resonate with truth from within. They will. Ultimately you'll find the message from within your own body-mind is no different from what is being shared here in these words.

While it often appears at first that death is something that comes to you and happens to you, something more profound is happening. Death is a part of yourself that, chances are, you have yet to own, embrace and guide your life from. Death doesn't happen to you, it is who you are. Thus Mortality's core message actually comes from within. Mortality's message resonates from a deeper sense of self that holds more authenticity, more beauty, more brilliance and ironically more life and vitality.

Regardless of whether or not you want to accept it or not you will come face to face with the crossroads of life and death. You will cross the bridge.

You can pretend as though this bridge resides off in the distant future, something for you to worry about "later." If you do choose this you're stunting your life, building your life around fantasy and avoiding your deepest calling and strength.

If you look closely, you can see that the bridge for you to cross is ever-present. The crossroads to the Unknowns are right here. Mortality stands within you as an invitation to enact and embrace more life, more of what's good, true and beautiful.

Are you going to paint a fantasy attempting to build a wall around your heart? Are you going to internally dismiss death's call for your ultimate freedom and fullness? Are you going to settle down, sit with your anxiety and face death eye to eye? Are you going to open your heart to death's grace? Are you really going to let death settle in and radiate throughout your body-mind as more vibrant life?

Death awaits. You know its message, its power, and its purpose. Deep down you know it. Now is the time to stop running, avoiding and escaping from your own greater freedom and fullness. You are simply too precious, to profoundly beautiful to cut yourself from your truest core. Embrace death now, allow yourself to breath out your last. Expect only your freedom and your fullness in this moment. Leave the rest to grace. This is Morality's chief concern.

~R

Tags: mortality, death, life, freedom, fullness, your fullest expression

Reflections on the Dance ~ Life & Death

http://Rob.gaia.com — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:17:34 GMT

Invariably life brings it's beautiful partner death to the dance.

You're invited.

Sorry but there's no turning down this dance, nor is it a dance you want to turn down. Anyone in their "right" mind would be a fool to resist. Yet how often do we spend our precious time playing out the fools dreams, pretending that the fool in us knows best?

Without death's grace life's glory slips away into a fleeting void. Does it not? So why resist, avoid, deny, run and pretend that you know not what resides beyond your conventional grasp of life?

For those who've made it here to this web page for one reason or another here's a glimpse of the dance between life, death and this guy who happens to respond to the name Rob.

~~~~~~~

My asthma strolled into my life like an old friend that you just know shouldn't be there. Familiar yes, somewhat known yet I know in my gut something's "off." This friend shouldn't be here right now. He wasn't invited. The look on his face confirms, something isn't quite right but I pretend not to know what.

I knew from the moment the subtle tightness set into my chest that something different was happening. Everything was the same, same old tightness, same old medicines, same old precautions, same old everything except for a nearly intangible felt sense that everything was different this time.

I immediately threw everything I had in my arsenal to continue the illusion that I was "OK." I chalked it up as I told myself and other's that I "just didn't want to spend my vacation struggling with my asthma." Looking back, I think I just wanted to avoid this subtle sensation, this fine shift in my being knew something else was going on here.

This fine subtle shift knew death had just cut in on the dance. I avoided it with more medicine, more treatments, more pills, more puffs, more struggle, more "fresh air" and more avoidance.

What was locked in my more conventional mind was that nothing was going on. "It's no big deal, don't worry, I'm fine. I've been here before. There's nothing to be worried about... just enjoy the vacation" I rehearsed to myself.

Over the next few days I got worse every day. Every few hours seemed to bring a step backward. Less of the normal life I wanted to have and more the constricted suffering I wanted to avoid. The more I treated my asthma the further I slipped towards death's powerful pull to dance.

My conventional mind constricted tightly around a belief that I was fine. I kept my back to death as I starred into life's eyes. Let's dance some more I demanded, gripped onto life's hands as the now odd dance continued.

New years eve arrived, the snow softly fell from the emptiness of the dark sky and we headed up into the mountains. My incessant drive to dance with life suddenly shifted into an exquisite play of vibrant moments. It was a clearing in the most unlikely of places. A taste of the "normal life" was mine to enjoy. I breathed in ease for the first time in days as I coasted long gentle ski slopes.

The soft silent snow, the breeze across my face and the immense stillness and contentment in my heart was exquisite. While the mountains were breathtaking, the surrounding lakes in the distance beautiful and the company warm and loving the most appreciated element was a cool effortless washing breath flowing in and out, in and out. No hit of tightness, no hit of the storm that had been brewing.

I knew from when I was a little child that my asthma would "take me." Something in me knew I would die from this. It wasn't a guess or a hunch, it was a knowing stemming from some unknown and unseen part of myself. This intuition was an unshakable certainty, I just didn't know when. But here it was knocking on the door and all I could do was deny. This isn't it. let's all pretend that this really isn't going to happen.

My day in the mountains came to a close and as it did my break from the downward spiral ended. My condition worsened and new years day brought with it life's all too common frantic avoidance of death. Panic flashed through my bodymind as I started to awaken to my condition.

It was a brief cutting full bodied flash. In this flash I heard myself saying "take me to the hospital."

I dulled it with relaxation, release and an intense focus on my breathing as my machine steamed medicine into my lungs. My subconscious mind rehearsed it's persistent argument: "Maybe, just maybe I'll turn this around after this treatment. Maybe something will change soon."

I completed my treatment and watched myself worsen by the minute. Left with no other course of action aside from acceptance I tried one more treatment. As I huddled over my machine wrenching air in and out of my lungs with heroic effort life's colorful vibrations faded away as I fell into death's arms. I reached out for help in desperation in my last moments, tears flowing freely until the I that I assumed to be me passed out.

Amidst the intense turmoil as I suffocated and fought for life's hand I found myself enveloped my the heaviest, deepest sense of emptiness and peace. A plunge into a relaxation that makes the best relaxation you've probably ever known seem stressful.

There was no energy expended, I mean that quite literally. When your body stops, your mind stops, your heart stops and an indescribable peace slowly settles in with a fullness, a richness and a completeness that's breath taking - literally. It's embrace is stunning as it fights nothing, accepts all and holds all of you all the same. The desperation of life's impulse to continue, the inevitability of cessation, the love of those around you and your resistance to leave. It's all OK.

As my lifeless body laid on the carpet, my pale oxygen deprived skin turned blue, then to a dull lifeless grey. The heavy dense, infinitely thick emptiness enveloping me was sliced through for a brief sliver of a moment. The sound of sirens sliced through this deepening peace to reach my awareness.

"ah, good they're here" was the very last thought belonging to my more conventional sense of self. After this my body, my awareness, my mind, my heart, nothing touched this known world of form - at least not from the vehicle of my more conventional sense of self.

The transcendent self can be defined as that which perceives yet its perception is no longer identified with nor grounded exclusively in the conventional body-mind.

As the paramedics furiously fought to save a young lifeless body with no vitals I'm in the process of remember my Self. I Recognize my Self, the one who came prior to the "Rob" who was born on October 30th 1977. I remember who I AM prior to this "life" that has just passed. I feel as though I've returned home, I realize I'm returning to something that's never been left.

Decades appear as short brief minutes amidst the Kosmic clock as life and death's dance continues; however, with a radical clarity I realize my "life" in the more conventional sense has been more of a "death" and this, yes this embrace of death shines forth as life, genuine vitality.

I remember Death is the plunge into a depth of life unfathomable to the conventional self.

My arms begin to extend, stretching outwards. My awareness follows as my arms continue to extend and dissolve into a radical embrace of manifestation. I sweep across mountains, forests and their brilliantly confident trees. In an instant become one with a loved one. I'm not their body, nor their mind in this moment. I hear their thoughts, I know their intentions, but I am their emotions coursing through their bodymind. I am their emotion - their basic energy-in-motion.

Here's to the emergent tree of life from which we all are fumbling towards the divine and to those who embrace the dance of life and death.

Tags: Death, Near Death Experience, NDE, Asthma, Life, The Divine, Transcendence, Avoidance

Are you playing with toys, fire or the true power of intention?

http://Rob.gaia.com — Thu, 17 May 2007 02:29:54 GMT

I've received more than a few questions on the intention front and there's a few critical elements I'd like to at least briefly touch on for those interested in the "power of intention." First of all I'd like to say this: Intention is NOT - I repeat not - the same thing as a wish. Wishful thinking isn't a whole lot different from the fantasy filled thinking you did when you were a child. Now there's nothing wrong with this approach to relating to the world, yourself and your dreams. It's just not very effective if your age isn't still in the single digits. Wishes generally stem from your "surface level thinking," meaning wishes are often created by impulsive desires and or fantasies that are created by your conditioned history. Most often wishful thinking parading around as "intention" is focused on outcomes, getting this, or getting rid of that. Again there's nothing wrong with this; however, the assumption that if you wish for something it will come true largely doesn't work. Try an experiment, see if it does. I think you'll find that it doesn't work so well. Now for most adults - developmentally disabled may be an exception here - wishing your life to change parading around as the "power of intention" is a regressive movement. Again, this is OK; however, it isn't all that effective in terms of making grounded change in your life. So for those who're interested in the true power of intention, and perhaps a more effective way to spark and catalyze change, let's move onto the good stuff and foster healthy wishful thinking in our young children and not ourselves, peers and other individuals who's age does indeed involve two digits. At a deep level, intention is an important structure or process that lies at the very core of who we consider ourselves to be. Now I'm talking about at a deep level, so your more surface-level social construction of a sense of self isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a level of authenticity that delves beyond your more "social" identity we first start to create in adolescence and consolidate in early adulthood. Let's go beyond this "you." Now this structure involves a choice, a decision if you will. For those of you thinking well, we all make decisions and thus we all are connected to our "intentionality" you're partly right. Even the wishful thinking is stemming from your intention to bring about some change - or so it seems. Yes it appears to be this way, it certainly looks and feels as though our more "surface" selves have an intentionality of their own. But here's the key question in my mind. Are you really making a choice, a decision for yourself - your authentic sense of self? OR is your decision, wish and "intention" stemming from your conditioned history? It boils down to this, do you create your intention or does the intention that's handed to you by your conditioned history create you? I'll put it another way because this is one hell of an important question, Does your conditioned history own you or do you own it? The vast majority of people are largely owned by their conditioned history, and thus when they work with the "power of intention" they find themselves desiring, fantasizing and wishing just what their history ordered. Unlocking the power of intention requires that you take ownership of your capacity to choose, to make a decision for yourself - one that belongs solely to your most authentic self - not the selves that rest in dependence to your conditioning. In order to do that you simply MUST have cultivated a stability of mind, a clarity to see beyond the surface waves of your conventional selves and a strength to courageously act from the spring within you that is the fountain of your most authentic purpose in life. So grab your cushions, and work on your stability of mind. Pick up your weights and burn the torching light of radical clarity that sees more of this and every moment. Roll out the yoga mat and cultivate the strength of your effortless single pointed focus as your body-mind manifests as the perfect expression of the asana. Without these the basic prerequisites, you will simply not unlock the true power of intention. And if you're not unlocking this core seed of intention, chances are you're probably reinforcing and strengthening your attachment to playing out the puppet show of your conventional selves, their conditioned fantasies and surface level desires. And while the popular understanding of intention points to the world being at your feet and your conventional sense of self getting whatever it wants I urge everyone to consider this: If indeed you do power your way to have the world at your feet, is it you who own and have mastered the world or is it the conventional world that owns and has mastered you? Consider this carefully because if you do employ more sophisticated ways to engage the world - disciplined action, visualization, mantras, affirmations, goal setting, etc. - and these tools are in service to the more conventional you - you're playing with a fire that fuels more and more suffering for both yourself and others.

Tags: Intention, development, evolution, suffering, liberation

3 points away from what Doctor?

http://Rob.gaia.com — Fri, 04 May 2007 01:20:16 GMT

A few weeks ago I finally made it in for an annual physical - although in my case it would be more accurate to call it the decade physical. I'm pleased to report that in i'm in good health; I've got no ringing in my ears, my eyes appear to be doing well and I didn't have any pain as the Doc pushed into my stomach feeling out my organs. My blood pressure is "very good" and my resting heart rate was so low the nurse asked me if I "exercised a lot." I said "yes." I thought I was doing pretty good until my doctor brought my weight to my attention. As he put it "Now I want you to be aware you're 3 points away from what we consider obesity." According to the wonderfully efficient and innovative Body Mass Index or BMI as its often called I'm "overweight" and not just a little overweight. I'm only a few pounds shy from being clinically obese according to the BMI. My doctor continued, "now I know you've got some muscle; however, I want you to be aware of this." My 6 and a half minutes were up with the doc after a brief discussion of my asthma and I was finally given permission to put my clothes back on. As I was getting dressed I was laughing to myself, I just got my first obesity talk! Here's a guy who was poking and prodding around on my body, I've attached a photo of me in my pre-obese state to give you a sense of what he saw, and then he talked to me about obesity. Come on Doc? Are you serious? You're really going to mention obesity to me? Personally I think the BMI is so profoundly out of whack it's amazing it actually gets used. Next time I go in I plan on being clinically obese according to the BMI. But next time he's going to have to demonstrate that he knows the importance of body composition as opposed to generalized measurments. Here I come obesity!

Tags: Annual Physical, Obesity, Body Mass Index

Abundance, our tendencies & our path

http://Rob.gaia.com — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:08:43 GMT

Abundance, What is it? At its root abundance is space. The experience of abundance is an expansive opening that's quite unlike anything else. Abundance is "otherworldly" in its texture; however, utterly plain through and through. Abundance is what holds, possesses, retains, nurtures, cares and yet does not lose the root of spaciousness. If you're interested at all about knowing abundance intimately you'll pay careful attention to the end of the last sentence... "yet does not loose its spaciousness." Abundance isn't having something without this spaciousness. Holding without spaciousness isn't abundance. That's scarcity. That's what is called "I'm going to grasp onto this stuff like a hoarding kid ready to fight for the cookie jar. This is mine! mine! mine!" It doesn't matter if you only own a bag, one book and no change of clothes or 3 houses, 8 "luxury cars" and 55 of the most expensive shoes on planet earth, if you hold and grasp you're living in scarcity. From an interior standpoint, there's very little different. Now let's look at the other side of the coin. Let's take a quick glance at spaciousness without holding, possessing and retaining. That's not abundance either. That's the "I'm checked out like a kid at a middle school dance with my hands on someone else not quite sure what to do as I shuffle my feet around" ... abundance isn't in the slightest bit afraid to hold what is here. So Abundance is spaciousness that embraces, possesses and holds. The desire to possess is so strong that very very few people ever really come to know what true abundance is. Why? You guessed it, no space. What you probably didn't guess is that there also isn't any ability to possess anything. Go back and read the first part of the last little mini paragraph - ok, so you don't really have to, I'll rewrite it again - I said, "the desire to possess is so strong..." Did you catch it that time - it's a desire to possess. This "desire to" in no way in hell or in heaven (or on earth for that matter) is the actual ability to possess something. So most people end up desiring to possess - and I mean really intensely desiring to possess that new car, house, pair of really cool shoes, relationship, spiritual attitude, computer, book, insight, discipline, happiness... you get the point. So in the extreme desire to possess, people tend to follow one of two trends. Behind door number one we find Bob Barker revealing the person who "has it all" or the person who's on the path to "having it all." There's very little difference between these two at their root. (My deepest apologies to those who've "made it" in order to set themselves apart from those who haven't). Behind door number two we find Bob Barker revealing the person who has "next to nothing." This is either by necessity or by choice. In necessity we find people for many reasons who aren't able to deeply engage into their lives. When I say they "aren't able" I mean they lack the ability in any particular moment. Those who've chosen not to "have" anything fall into the camp that is largely driven by fear. This is your pathological ascender - the ones who've mastered dissociation and just kept on going. Somehow they feel as though they are better than just about everyone else, yet ultimately afraid to step into their manifest strength and responsibility. Now I'm obviously painting with some broad strokes here, life isn't black and white. There's gradations of an immense complexity relating these trends; however, for the sake of conversation hold these lightly as orienting generalizations. So then, let's come back to this notion of abundance. Without spaciousness, openness, and the expansive freedom from which and within all of manifestation arises, true appreciation cannot flourish. Appreciation thrives upon space. Appreciation dives deeply into the present moment, your heart expands and opens more fully to what is in front of you, what you behold. You appreciate what is, you cherish and celebrate what is. This is abundance. Abundance is in no way, shape, or form (at least not one that holds much authentic wisdom) the contracted desire for more. Abundance isn't the fantasy of having this or that later on down the road. Abundance only exists right now in this moment. The beautiful thing about abundance is it requires nothing special, just space, an open hand and an open heart. The challenge then is taking the steps we need to cultivate our awareness of space and our ability to open our hands and hearts so that we're actually able to just hold - nothing more nothing less. Peace, Rob

Tags: Abundance, Development, Spaciousness, Embrace, Open Heart, Appreciation, Bob Barker

Integral Practice & Working With Your Injuries

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:00:59 GMT

What is an injury within the context of an integral practice? And how should you work with injuries within your integral practice? These questions have come up on several fronts, both in my Pod Integral Strength, questions to me on my Z-mail as well as in my consulting practice. Let's take a quick look at injuries, what is the basic nature of an injury? An injury in the broadest sense of the term is some type of "pathological disorganization" with your body-mind. Now injuries are most often referring to physical problems; however, injuries as I'm framing them here can also refer to an interior "pathological disorganization" as well. So, injuries within this context includes both the exterior as well as the interior. Now as far as I can tell, all injuries have a cause, it may be getting hit playing a sport, too much weight for a joint in the weight room, a fall on the mountain slopes, etc. These all tend to result in a physiological injury (which obviously has interior dimensions to it but is largely external - meaning your "body" is what's "injured."). Now we also have emotional assaults, the violation of trust, verbal attacks aimed at you that create pathological disorganization within your interior. What we have now is what's typically referred to as psychopathology (which has external body based correlates but is largely an interior injury that has corresponding symptoms in your body). Much like the muscles, tendons, bones, etc. get "injured" in falling on the slopes, trust, confidence, and or your sense of self become "injured." So we have both external (the body part of the bodymind) pathological disorganization and interior (the mind part of the bodymind) pathological disorganization. At the root we have some cause that has on some level disrupted our bodymind's natural (or optimal) organization. As far as I can tell injuries are simply part of life. So if you're alive, you're going to invariably run into injuries. Something is going to knock your bodymind's organization out of whack. To answer the question of what is an injury in the context of integral practice let's take a quick glance of what integral practice is and what it's central aim is. Integral practice has two basic functions or two central aims: 1. To awaken. That is to cultivate awareness, consciousness, or what what essentially boils down to awakening to our essential Freedom. Integral practice fundamentally cannot avoid this awakening process. If it does, in my opinion this practice can't in any genuine way be considered "integral." 2. Shifting to the second basic function of Integral practice we find this: To embrace. Embrace as I'm using it means to enact, engage, activate, and cultivate manifestation as it arises in our self, culture and in nature. Put simply Integral Practice is committed to the Fullness of manifestation. That's why we try to "exercise," "train" or "engage" all of the major parts of ourselves. Injuries naturally draw our awareness to our bodymind - both our interior and exterior dimensions in each and every injury we sustain along our journeys. Injuries within integral practice is a calling to awaken to what is. Each and every injury along our path is a call to witness what is. When we get injured, whether its to our interior or to our exterior, we get a clear picture of who we are and how we're organized. This natural movement of our awareness of being injured is a calling to your witness. Your witness is at its root freedom, it is the seat of your everpresent unflinching impartial awareness that without question, without hesitation holds all that arises moment to moment. It doesn't matter if you're heart has been shattered or your spine broken. The witness in its truest seat holds these experiences no differently than the radiant love of your heart nor the fluid open spinal column of a yogi. So this is the first role of injuries within the context of Integral Practice. Here's a summary: WAKE UP! The second role of an injury within the context of integral Practice is, you guessed it, to helps you embrace more of who you are. That's to say it is calling you to engage, activate, fill out and enact the larger sphere of who you are in and as manifestation. This is difficult because the natural response of the ego is to struggle with an injury. Integral Practice includes the ego's struggle with injuries; however, a strong practice does not mindlessly (that is to say unconsciously) follow this process. The ego's natural tendency is to withdraw from an injury, to contract around an injury and to fight to get rid of the disturbance. This is good news/bad news. The good news is that this process in many cases starts the healing process. The bad news is that left to its own devices you'll end up reinforcing the injury - you'll often consolidate and solidify the disorganization within your bodymind. Often times this process does not facilitate you embracing more of who you are, instead you end up avoiding more of who you are. Thus injuries often take on some type of chronic disorganization that becomes normalized and accepted as the "normal" organization of your bodymind. One process I've practiced for years is what I call Working With The Envelope. The first step in this process is to find your "envelope," which is the boundary in which you start to bump up against your injury. Finding your envelope is an ongoing process; however, you want to push out into your bodymind's sphere and see just where you're disorganization begins and where it ends. The closer you look the more fluid this boundary will become. Once you've found this fluid space, the delicate boundary between what is normal and uninjured and what is injured you'll want to start to work with this boundary. A professional who specializes in your injury is a useful resource to draw from. They can provide conventional norms of what to do and what not to do with regards to exploring around this envelope - the space around your injury. Your central intention is to work with the injury within the moment. Live with the injury without trying to get rid of anything. With that said, you're not solidifying your injury into some solid entity separate from yourself. There's a delicate balance of accepting what is and working with what is, awareness of and embrace of, watching and dancing with your injury. Ideally what happens is you're bodymind's organization starts to integrate the injury into your larger self system. You become more fluid with your injury and over time the envelope that you're exploring becomes smaller and smaller, meaning your injury is healing more and more. Now some injuries - interior and exterior - become resolved, healed and normal fully integrated functioning returns. Other injuries are more or less there for the rest of your life. The trauma, disorganization and disruption to your bodymind were lasting and become a part of your thumbprint so to speak. This isn't to say these injuries aren't workable or aren't fluid from moment to moment. This is simply an acknowledgment of your conditioned history, your past. Some "injuries" become part of the more or less permanent landscape of our bodymind. With these types of injuries, it's important to acknowledge our egoic desire to struggle with these parts. Acknowledge this rejection of your injury but don't allow it to be the single guiding intelligence. Ultimately our injuries are something to be celebrated as beacons to our own awakening as well as sparks to drive us to deeply engage in our lives. Injuries are simply our call to freedom and fullness. With that said, I hope this fuels a strong, consistent integral practice and the skillful use of your injuries, whatever type they may be. Peace, Rob

Tags: Integral Practice, Injuries, Freedom, Fullness, Engagement, Awareness, Human Development, Bodymind, Integral, Integral Strength

Enlightenment & The Compassionate Lie

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:45:55 GMT

A quote by Andrew Cohen: "The revelation of enlightenment reveals to us directly the perennial truth that real happiness and contentment lie within us as the nature of consciousness itself, as our own natural state, already full and complete as it is." A Response: The perennial truth is not that real happiness and contentment lie within us as the nature of consciousness itself. This has been one of the perennial instructions which is an entirely different from the Truth or Realization itself. To look within and not outside of oneself is an instruction often passed down from teacher to student yet ultimately it doesn't hold the Truth. The Truth is realized only after you've looked within and still you do not find real happiness and contentment nor do you ever find the nature of consciousness. So you ask your teacher, and again the instruction is "look within." Again, instruction is not reality. If the teacher does say to the student "it lies within" the instruction is now what I call a "compassionate lie." It's compassionate in that looking within is the fastest way to exhaust the seeking motion of the "personal self." It is often in the cessation of one's attachment to this personal self - the total and complete cessation of seeking - that the nature of consciousness and true happiness is realized. It's a lie in that this does not reside within. Mature realization knows without a doubt true happiness and the nature of consciousness does not lie within; however, it is the searching within that appears to be one of the quickest ways to this realization. There's some perennial 2 cents... Thanks for the compassionate lie Andrew. ~R Link to Andrew's full Quote of the Week: http://www.andrewcohen.org/quote/?ifr=hp-hilite

Tags: Andrew Cohen, Awakening, Enlightenment, True Happiness, The Nature Of Consciousness, Compassionate Lie

Integral Awareness & Changes In Your Practice

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:05:25 GMT

Here's a question I recieved recently - ok so maybe not so recently - but one that nonetheless deserves some attention as it has continued to surface within my own body-mind's dissonance. "How do you or how do you not remain engaged in Integral Awareness when a piece of your practice is altered suddenly?" Integral Awareness - let's start with a definition to start this thread out. For our discussion here, I'm going to refer to integral awareness as a moment to moment awareness as your body-mind, not your body-mind as an presumed distinct whole or "complete" entity but a body-mind that fundamentally understands itself as a system or constellation of interpenetrable self systems. I know it's a mouth full, but it's a very necessary mouth full - and it's in this mouth full that we'll find some guiding insights to the question being explored. Let's unravel some of this... Integral Awareness - at least one perspective that can be cast on this subject - is fundamentally a refusal to see oneself as a single system or a discrete form. If there's one thing that integral awareness is not - it does not pretend to be complete. Integral Awareness and the sense of self that emerges and is identified with is a constellation of interpenetrable systems. You fundamentally know yourself through the moment to moment co-creation and co-emergence with the various parts of yourself and the various aspects of the world in which you are immersed and engaged. This doesn't mean you don't have enduring predispositions, characterological traits and so on. Quite the contrary, integral awareness discovers more of these dimensions of oneself as the developmental shift into integral awareness and an integral sense of self disidentifies with more limited belief systems and more rigid attachment to a few core traits. Instead of being "complete" and needing to be a certain way in the world, integral awareness and the sense of self that naturally follows is much more fluid and flexible. Why? The process that is being identified with is a moment to moment co-emergence or co-creation - that's what is fundamentally experienced as "me." The sense of "I" that is a discrete and complete object who then meets the world no longer is the foundation of what "I" experience. Remember, evolution or development is shifting more and more towards a conscious relationship with the present moment. Development starts with a largely unconscious embeddedness with the present moment, then development proceeds to develop a sense of self that exists and endures over time. Another way to say this is the present moment learns to discover, hold and use both the past and the future through the construction of a conventional self. As development shifts beyond the conventional - towards what we're referring to here as "integral awareness" - the present moment is approached and discovered as the ground for ones sense of self. This grounding with the present moment then lays an important foundation for higher "transpersonal" stages of development. So with that small tangent into Integral Awareness, let's again revisit this core question: "How do you or how do you not remain engaged in Integral Awareness when a piece of your practice is altered suddenly?" Integral Awareness is lost the moment your sense of self congeals to and consolidates itself into a perceived "complete" self. Anytime you experience yourself as a whole and complete entity entering into relationships, taking in objects "out there" in the world, and bouncing off others - this isn't integral awareness. Now this can of course be part of integral awareness; however, it is just that - "a part of" - not the complete whole that pre-integral awareness knows itself as. So, let us bring this to practice... Practice is not something that "you" do. You and your practice are fundamentally not two from the vantage point of the integral self. Your practice creates you and a various constellation of activated parts of your self simultaneously create, animate and illumine your practice. Changes are thus understood to be a natural part of the process of co-emergence. Practice is no longer perceived to be a static element or separate entity in which "I" - a presumed complete and distinct whole - engage with. The practice is alive, fluid and changing as is the sense of self from the perspective of integral awareness. Neither the practice nor the self is separate from one another. That is to say they co-emerge and are co-created together. Integral awareness is fundamentally not changed through alterations within the practice nor changes within the various parts of the self system. These are simply the natural by-products of the co-creative process that is always unfolding. Integral awareness is however lost when a change in one's practice causes the self-sense to recede back into a preferred part of the self system. Now the "I" believes itself to be a discrete entity. This is generally how integral awareness is lost through unexpected change. It should be noted though that it is not the recession back upon some preferred part of one's self-system that causes the loss of integral awareness. What causes the loss of integral awareness is the exclusive identification with this processes. If this processes is allowed to unfold within the larger spaciousness of the present moment, and the sense of self remains seated in and knows itself through the co-emergence and co-creative processes unfolding in the moment - integral awareness has not been lost. Either way, the dance goes onward. Enjoy ~R

Tags: integral, integral practice, development, personal growth, evolution, personal practice, change, personal transformation, Integral Strength

Avoidance & Strength Training

http://Rob.gaia.com — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:32:59 GMT

The process of avoidance is a major contributor to many obstacles (please note, I'm saying "many" and not "all" obstacles). Avoidance stands at the genesis of many obstacles and remains a central part of the functioning of many other forms of obstacles that can emerge in strength training. So, with regards to obstacles that do have some relationship with avoidance, here are two useful questions: "What is it I'm avoiding?" and "Why am I avoiding?" These two questions form a first step that is useful for reflecting and inquiring into yourself. It should be noted, there's a very good chance a large part of your conditioning is structured precisely so you don't see the truest answers to these questions. The answers and insights holding the most validity and authenticity are likely to remain hidden. And while you may consciously be invested in understanding these questions to the fullest of their depth, unconsciously you're likely to be heavily invested in not revealing what it is you're attempting to uncover. So as you're exploring and inquiring into the "what" and "why" surrounding your avoidance bring curiosity to what is being seen as there's almost always more hiding. Step two is asking, "How do I avoid." Once you've got a general sense of what it is and why - granted your general sense will have varying degrees of truth and authenticity - you need to understand just how it is you avoid. This insight can then be used to directly change your dynamic of avoidance. What and Why are important self awareness questions to answer for yourself on an ongoing basis; however, they lack a pragmatic thread that is activated when you inquire "how is it that I am doing this?" Once you know "how" you are making something happening, you intuitively will have an understanding of how you can do something different. With the insight of how you're avoiding comes with it the insight into how you can engage yourself and your life differently. Strength training can be used to work with avoidance in the following 2 ways, which work together synergetically: 1. Awareness Let's start with Awareness, or your capacity to see. Strength training is a rich venue for you to witness your historical conditioning. By looking at how you strength train, why you strength train and what you do and don't like to do you'll see the perfect microcosm of your life. Simply put, every single pattern that governs your life as a whole will manifest itself within your training. It is a microcosm for the macrocosm of your life. By finding what you're avoiding in your training, you'll be simultaneously uncovering, rediscovering and witnessing that which you avoid everywhere else in your life. So if you're at all interested or curious about yourself, your greater potential as a human being and you'd like to explore the further reaches of your body-mind I suggest taking up the intention of seeing your avoidance patterns while you strength train. Taking this intention is critically important as it is the starting point for bringing more awareness into your training. This intention - the intention to simply see - is the foundation for the second part of our equation. 2. Embrace Embrace, as I am using here refers to your ability and capacity to engage with the present moment. Embrace is how your body-mind engages and enacts into the dance of manifestation - whether you've got weights in your hands or not. Fundamentally you showing up here at all - in this precious moment - is an act of radical embrace for your own body-mind's dance of life. At a very fundamental level your body-mind's embrace includes avoidance on some level. Seeing your avoidance with awareness is just a first step in your training. Now you must work with how your body-mind engages your avoidance. The instinctive reaction is to get rid of the avoidance; however, this is just laying more avoidance on top of avoidance and only results in more inner struggle, thus further obscuring the truth and freedom that resides within this knot. Instead of trying to get rid of the avoidance, your most skillful move forward in most situations is to consciously connect with and embrace the very activity of your avoidance. Deeply connecting with your largely unconscious avoidance patterning will place you in a ripe position to profoundly deepen your own self understanding. More importantly connecting with your avoidance is an act of immense strength - the strength to heal the split between the splitter and the sense of self that has been split. By fully embracing your power to divorce, disown and avoid you naturally settle into a position of more authenticity and strength to truly choose a new course of action. Bon Voyage! ~Rob

Tags: Strength Training, Avoidance, Development, Integral Strength

Intention & Your Soul's Architechture

http://Rob.gaia.com — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:20:45 GMT

Intention. it's your bridge between the personal and transpersonal, relative and absolute, form and formless, mundane and spiritual. Intention is the seat of your soul. Well, I suppose I shouldn't say that. Actually some intentions are the seat of the soul. Other's are well... just others. Not that there's anything wrong with these "others." Hell, I've been "intending" to write this blog for a month. Rock on nonetheless, its happening right now! Intention is an important "structure" that constitutes what we consider to be "ourselves." Or, if you prefer another perspective, its an essential "process" sitting at the very crux of who you are and how you manifest in this world of form. (Not to mention if you come to intimately know the divine beyond this form as well as the divinity in and as this form... but that's another story, or is it?) Whether you know it or not, everything stems from motivation, from intention, from the seat of your Will. And as your trusted philosopher of strength you can guess intention has a MAJOR role in your strength...or lack there of. Strength as I'm going to use it here refers to your capacity to BE and then animate your body-mind into action (doing), whether that action is inner, outer or the delicately blended integration of these two. Intention, in the broadest sense of the term, spans this notion of strength yet also includes the utter and at times complete lack of strength. The simple reality is this. Intentions are either chosen from a greater space or they simply choose, define, and ultimately imprison you. Ouch! I mean let's face it, your historical conditioning drives you and your life in a way that makes slavery look compassionate. And where did historical conditioning come in you may ask? If you don't choose your intention, and choose it wisely, something else will choose for you. If you fail to exercise your ability to choose, your historical conditioning steps in and poof! life passes by without anyone in the driver seat. Ok, so "someone" is there. But let's be honest. In comparison to your more awakened seat of intentionality, conscious action and compassionate embrace enacted by your soul, your conditioned history in the driver's seat ain't much! At least that's how it feels for me. Perhaps you're conditioned history is more than mine, in which case perhaps we can both fall unconscious - let our auto pilots settle in and get comfortable and have a nice inspired chat about who's ego has amassed more attachments. On the personal, mundane, or relative side of this bridge I'm calling intention you've got your historical conditioning as the major stake holder. These are the "morphogenetic" grooves of your personal history, your environment, culture and even historical lineage that largely define your conventional self. Yes that's right they are simply handed to you. If you take a snap shot at humanity most action in the world stems from this source. Every action stemming from these sets of conditioning reinforces the tendency to follow this groove again and again. It's kind of like the record that gets stuck on one track. The major problem is how our identity tends to get consumed into this one track. We forget - ah yes plato! - that we are so much more and there is so much more... So regardless of what's on this single track lifestyle, we'll tend to stick to it. Why? Our historical conditioning follows this momo-track life because your ego, your conditioned self simply does not hold the capacity to authentically face the unknown death of itself. In the face of this daunting task the ego, and who ever is along for the ride, perpetuates and inflicts suffering on both itself and others all to stay on this one track, to preserve its cherished sense of identity. Getting intimate with these patterns, tendencies and habits is simply essential for the path across this bridge, the bridge between the conventional manifest and the divine formless. Without this first step its difficult if not nearly impossible to anchor your intention into the seat of your soul, the seat of your most authentic intention. Let's go there. It's Still. Silent. Welcoming like a home you've never left. Arriving there you'll gasp at your own beauty with a smile never before known by any ego. You're clear. Receptive. Spacious. You move yet are unmoving. You're compassionate and flexible. Understanding yet curious. Full of wonder. You are strength itself. You can cut like nothing else yet you hold and embrace all. It's the seat of your higher intention. This is you. Your more "authentic" sense of self. You are radically present. Yes, you animate in the eternal, timeless now. You know of the past and future. You're aware of them, but you do not dwell in them, you don't fundamentally depend on them. You're the complete opposite of instincts, which act out of a presupposed conditioned relationship to the past. Instincts are habits that unfold without any conscious intention, without any conscious choice as this form of motivation is largely empty of understanding of the present moment. Instinctive habits form and wrap around the ego's single track such that everything is superficially known, defended against and ultimately feared. Your will is spontaneity itself. You are the expansive rich field from which life springs forth into action spontaneously. It's what I like to call Strength, your true strength. Ask yourself this: "if this is my last moment, what is my intention?" Think about this, seriously inquire. What would it be if this is your last moment? OK, when you're ready for the next step read on... Good, now stop playing around in fantasy ego land. Yea its fun, or not. Yes that was an important "step" for ego to take, but let's push onward. Imagining that this is your "last moment" implies a past and future. It implies all this through that seemingly innocent word "last." Your ego can make sense of it. Can chew on it. Can imagine it. This is an important step, but you must step off this precipice... This is your ONLY moment. Let that settle in. Seriously, this is it. Let me say that again. This is it. What's your intention now? You've got one life to live, one death to face. This isn't the lifetime your ego perceives and dreams of. We're talking about the life right here and now, this moment. I'm talking about living now. Dying now. What's the intention that's most worthy? What's the intention that holds your truest sense of authenticity? What's your intention? Perhaps your spontaneity with this moment, this sentence, this breath will lead you to post yours for the world to see and resonate with... I know I'd love the opportunity. With Gratitude, Rob

Tags: Intention, Personal Development, Transcendence, Spiritual Development

Strength: Your Spiritual Pursuit

http://Rob.gaia.com — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 00:04:20 GMT

Strength, What is it? What is it and how does it manifest in your life? Or, perhaps more importantly, how, when and where does it NOT show up in your life? Strength, from my vantage point it is simply the capacity to do and be. Simple yet profound...we'll get well into the profound here shortly. The doing part is fairly straight forward - kind of like a beer commercial. Rob's inner dialogue: "wow, girls...attractive girls, not wearing too much, but acting like scientists at the south pole researching cosmic background radiation...maybe not... but look at all those people smiling, wow they look happy! Oh that was funny, gosh they all are drinking beer, my goodness that girl sure looked like she wanted me...I hope Em didn't see that and get all jealous and attack the TV again" But I digress... Strength in its more conventional sense is the ability to do - or not do as Yoda would say. This is fairly simple. What I'm really interested in is strength from a more "post conventional" perspective. And this runs us straight into the second half of the equation: being. Now we've got some interesting depth to play with. Yummy! Being is perhaps the most central pursuit of any authentic spiritual discipline (for you integral freaks out there we're not talking "legitimate" or "translative" spiritual practices, we're kicking back and chilling with their authentic transformative and sometimes hidden underbelly - you know the kick ass shit!). For those of you who don't classify yourself as an "integral freak," here's the rough and dirty. I'm talking about spiritual practices that are primarily focused on transforming the practitioner. This is the Authentic thread of spiritual practice. Now not all spiritual practice is focused on transformation, this is where the Legitimate thread comes in. Not that there's anything wrong with non-transformative spiritual practice, it just serves a different function in society and for the individual who benefits from these elements. Follow? ... rock on ... So being, why is it of such importance? It is placed at the core of nearly all of the worlds authentic spiritual practices because this is the true seat of strength. "Go Rob! Go Rob! Your The Man! You brought this back to strength!! YEA!!! Keep rock'n it out..." Hey cheerleader beer chick, keep it down, I'm trying to dive into this And this true seat of strength intimately shows us our own face. Not the face we conventionally identify with but the one that we've always known. Ask yourself this, what resides beyond the very act of your personal perception? I'm talking about your conventional self, your ego, and its moment to moment act of perceiving. What's beyond this? It's being. It's like a deep black velvet that envelops and holds everything. It's the very essence of peace, the truth of immense stillness in which all motion occurs. Tasting this, feeling this within your transcendent body-mind leaves you.... all Donk'd out? Perhaps that's not the right expression, but you get the point. Even if you don't think you do :-) But anyway, this being thing rocks the kosmic party - literally! This is where strength really comes from and itself is strength. Strength to BE. Being is strength. So let's talk strength as a spiritual pursuit. The authentic spiritual traditions and their rich array of practices all aim at going beyond the conventional self... its Rumi's field beyond thought. "Yo, Rumi, what's up dawg? Oops, Shit... there isn't any thought out here. Sorry God, I'll keep quiet. I know I know - detention again. Well fuck me..." Anyway, all authentic spiritual practice is aimed at this strength, thus in some crazy sense - spiritual practice is "strength training." Now I'm not talking about just lifting weights - although I'm certainly not excluding it either. But literally, all authentic spiritual practice is aimed at expanding one's identity to embrace and include this transcendent seat of being. It's focused on training every day your capacity to first connect with and eventually be strength. Then once you identify with this transcendent "donkey" (yes donkey is a technical spiritual term that is presently undefinable) then the really really good teachers shatter this identification. Yea sounds shitty, but its much worse than any conventional imagination can come up with. Which leads to what you really really don't want right now - liberation - freedom which you kind of sort of want some of it - but certainly not all of it - hell no! This is another story though... For now let's focus on getting beyond our conventional selves - let's talk about "hunting the ego" (thanks for the ego hunting term Diana), finding it and then killing it while preserving it's essential function and beauty as we shift beyond... Ego, your conventional self, is rooted around one particularly nasty little attachment - ok so a few, but let's look how they all stem from one. Your ego hates pain. This part of you will do anything and I mean anything to avoid it. Look at planet earth and tell me, what's off limits? I'm not sure there's much if anything that's off limits... Anyway, because ego hates pain we tend to create 3 almost timeless habitual strategies. First, we try to reject pain. Second we try to grasp onto and perpetuate anything that's remotely pleasurable - which unfortunately backfires on us, biting us in the ass. Finally we just try to numb out and not feel anything. Crazy I know, but take a look at your conventional self - your ego - and I'm sure you'll see these beautifully rich and creative strategies expanding faster than Google's profits (and Microsoft wants to take them on? Hell you guys can't even get a new operating system out and you've been doing that for decade...sorry but I couldn't pass up the opp to rip on Microsoft) What is even more crazy is being, just plain and simple being, resides beneath all of these strategies. Thus if we are unable to move beyond our aversion to pain and these basic strategies from which ego rests upon, that is if we can't find the strength to shift beyond ego we'll never really know the divine bliss resting right here in this very moment, and that my friend, that is crazy! So strength training, what is it? In its most basic essence its training our capacity to be and then do. It certainly doesn't happen the other way around. True strength training is any activity from which we are able to differentiate from our conditioned history - it's cultivating a new relationship with the present moment. True strength shifts our identity to ever expanding wholes - well beyond our little fragile egos, well beyond the tears of believing with all our known conventional selves and into the tears of radiance streaming from pure empty being. There's a sword with two very real edges right here in all our lives. We simply must deal with this. We need to train. We need to practice. Yet the more we do something the greater our tendency is to fall into a pattern, a habit. When this happens we stop living. That's not really being alive - that's just kind of like being on auto pilot. Instead we trade in our vibrant vitality that can cook and burn your ego until you find the essence and radiance you've always been. We trade this in for the safety of some known "me." Sounds like a late night infomercial rip off...What do you think? I think we must collectively find a way to compassionately jolt one another from our fascination with the shadows in the cave. History tells us one thing in relationship to spiritual practice. Pain, yes pain, is one of the few paths that forces us to wake up to this ever present moment. In order to strength train, truly strength train, that is to genuinely shift our identity beyond ego and into the vast forest of being most of us need pain. My buddy Ken commonly cites a study involving meditators who were broken into two groups - one group just meditated, while the other meditated and did strength training (we're talking lifting weights right now). The results... Strength training and meditation produced far greater contemplative development than did just the meditation alone. Yes its a huge plug for cross training in general and certainly integral practices, but why weights? Why this particular often seen 'superficial' practice? Here's my take. Weight training is the most potent form of integral practice when integrated with meditation and a serious intention for growth, development and transformation - and no we're not just talking about the body here...although we're not talking about leaving it out either. We're talking integral development. But let's get back to this pain attachment. I don't know of any other practice that enables you to confront your ego's conditioned history to pain as safely and consistently and as often as lifting weights. Ok, well there is one other vehicle - life - but let's take a look at some of the available options within "life" If each set is engaged fully, all sorts of strange things happen. For starters, you're ego is going to flair up, negotiate, create stories, employ deep seated beliefs and not to mention just generally "check out" for you to both avoid the flame of intensity and the vibrant moment burning to explode throughout your body-mind. In fact the ego might just resort to pulling on the strings of some early deep seated issues around the body to keep you from doing engaging. Just avoid - says the ego... we'll find wholeness some "other" way... You get to watch this incredible display flair up every few minuets. I don't know about you but in terms of accelerated meditative development this is far more efficient than just conventional sitting practice alone - whatever tradition you might employ. Hell, most of us have years of training ourselves to keeping our sitting practice as comfortable as possible... years of training on how to manipulate our experience on the cushion. Strength training while lifting weights, If the intention to cultivate a new relationship with pain is held and maintained, you've got one potent vehicle to cut through and propel you beyond ego. In the intense vibrations within a set, you can cultivate a new body-mind relationship with pain. A new relationship with the moment. As you shift into the storm of the ego - instead of buying into the ego's persuasion - as the weights move up and down rhythmically, you can watch your habitual tendencies - your conditioning to close down from the life that's radiating in this very moment. If you stay with your intention - to continue to "go into" the immediacy of the moment, pain transforms itself into your greatest ally, your greatest teacher. Pain turns into vibration, the body-mind dissolves into energy currents and vibrations. Pain turns into pleasure, radiance, joy and ecstasy. Suddenly there's an immense stillness within all of this dance. You're tasting strength - true strength. Peace, Rob

Tags:

Death of Strength Training

http://Rob.gaia.com — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:23:03 GMT

How is it possible that strength training is steadily growing in numbers yet at the same time slowly dying and withering away? Well, It's certainly possible because this is exactly what is happening. At least that's my biased opinion. On the surface gyms are popping up everywhere and companies are flocking to developing wellness programs like it's the internet before the bubble popped - or if you prefer - like a 16 year old hopping on mom and dad's high speed connection to find a porn site. Gym memberships are up, the number of gyms is increasing almost daily and the number of people who incorporate some form of strength training in their exercise continues to grow. So what's the problem? Well if you just look at the exterior of the situation - those stats and figures - there isn't one. But if you go into a gym, just about any one of them, and you take a look at the interior - both your own, those around you as well as the shared space within a gym I think you'll agree, something's wrong. (yea we're talking about the left side of the quadrants you integral freaks!) Here's some of what I've noticed. Most people aren't enjoying themselves. Next time you're there, take a look around and see if you can catch some joy, happiness or excitement while someone's lifting weights or engaged in some other form of strength training. Honestly, it's a difficult task to find someone who's whole heartedly enjoying themselves. Most people seem to just be going through the motions. When I talk to people here and there at my gym, I don't find a whole lot of passion and drive. In fact, the conversation almost always goes to something else. It is as if people are implicitly saying, "there's nothing to talk about with regards to lifting weights, why would anyone talk about that?" Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this, but it does display the mind's tendency to go elsewhere, away from strength training. Sometimes I'll just look around and watch for a few minutes and connect with all that's going on around me. That's when I get the biggest sense that most people are just going through the motions - physically they are on what seems to be an autopilot. When I look at someone I can usually feel what's going on within them. The body communicates so fully that sometimes I don't even feel like I need to have a conversation with them to know their interior. (Hey, either I'm really dialed in or I'm really starting to master this whole "projection" process really well!) Sometimes, it's just a complete checkout. Like the guy who was working his shoulders while watching TV last night. It was as if the human being - the part of him that animates his aliveness from within - simply wasn't there. Body on auto pilot doing one thing, mind on auto pilot watching some crappy game of baseball. Another woman broke my heart a few months ago as she was struggling with something while she was working out, her struggle appeared to be very intense. It was radiating from her like a distress beacon cutting through the night. I felt as though she was just on the edge of holding things together. What was tearing her up inside was the fact that she didn't have any more chocolate Full Strength nutrition shakes. This existential uncertainty was...ok, obviously just kidding... One of my least favorite things to watch is a trainer and trainee working "hard" together as they talk throughout an entire set... about skiing. And this guy is getting paid for that! He's considered a professional of sorts? Good lord, no wonder this strength training thing is heading south (just a play on words here - I've got nothing against the south!!!) Most people aren't really fully engaging themselves. What I'm getting at is most people don't fully engage themselves in strength training. Now I get that there are different levels of engagement, but the vast majority of what I see is the opposite. Dis-connected, Dis-engaged, Dis-empowered. People must feel deeply obligated to train in order to maintain this pursuit. It's the "I should" strength train story line. I think this approach to strength training is killing this beautifully rich discipline. So many people are not becoming more alive, engaged and aware through their strength training. Too many people numb out, go through the motions, dissociate from their current activity and then feel relieved once they're done. Why? My guess is because the obligation has been lifted for a brief amount of time. Strength training has a short and strange history - beyond the scope of this blog - but it's birth was born out of people who had at least an interest in developing their strength. The individuals who have carried this discipline forward are those who fell in love with the practice. Why did they fall in love with moving iron around? I ultimately don't know. Personally though I've found a discipline that challenges me to wake up, passionately engage in my life and find a meaning and depth in my life that quite honestly does not as vividly arise in any other sphere of activity. I write this in hopes that people who strength train can bring their struggles, their conventional day to day habits, their desires as well as their vivid passion for life and bring it all into their training. I hope that the woman who broke my heart wide open can bring her suffering into her training in a way that fuels her greater unfolding. I hope this inspires someone to tell their trainer to shut the fuck up, to let them be in this brilliantly painful moment without adding yet another distraction from what really matters. I hope that strength training can be a place where we can bring our habitual tendency's, but instead of just playing them out like an old record stuck at the end of the track, I hope we can learn to confront these habits set by set, moment to moment while we dance with weights. I hope people can begin to step beyond their conventional level of engagement and feel the ebbing bliss hiding within the intensity of a really great set. I hope more people can know the radiant ecstasy that flows up the spine, the formless stillness that settles into an infinite space, and the tears that embrace both suffering and joy. Yes all that and the oddly strange surroundings of all too often bad music, strange guys either checking you out or sizing you up along side the sea of unconsciousness of those who physically came but have yet to really show up, running on autopilot hoping to get in shape some day. Perhaps in the strangest of circumstances, we can breath life, real life, into a discipline that's both growing and dying. Regardless, I'm looking forward to having some more authentic company as I'll be dancing with the weights later on tonight. Peace, Rob

Tags: