Mutuality.net - Recent Comments

Yes

Krishna — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:34:45 GMT

Hi Jordan, Yes, that's my intention.
Love,
Krishna

krishna

Jordan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:01:50 GMT

Are you still writing a book Krishna?

-Jordan

Playing with exercise

Krishna — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 01:29:48 GMT

Hi goldencindy,
That's as good a discovery as any other. While it's true that over time this will lead to a more consistent contact with feeling itself, I'd sugest that you use these exercises as an open ended exploration more than to get a particular result right away.
I'd just play with this a number of times as you feel moved to (as often as you like) and notice what you notice. There are times when thought will be much stronger than feeling, that's fine, no worries. If you contact feeling for short moments over time it becomes easier to connect with feeling as much as or even more powerfully than thought. Transmission can help with increasing feeeling too.
I hope that helps.
Love,
Krishna

mind stronger?

goldencindy — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:35:28 GMT

so i did this exercise, and i noticed that the thoughts/story was stronger than the feeling. the feeling kept "going away" yet the thought was like "no come back here look at this"...so what is that? the feeling was "i don't care anymore" and the thought was "it's important don't forget this"...

Site is live now! Lots to see!

SusanJoy — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:15:45 GMT

The MedicineCrow website launched this past weekend. You can check it out here: http://www.floracopeia.com/sto...

Even it you decide not to join, it's worth going there to see a few of the videos on the public page.

If you decide you want to join, sign up at www.medicinecrow.com/grassroots and enter my code "susanjoy" to get a special offer of 2 months free membership, different than the offer on the website.

The Old Dog...

vantillo32 — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:19:29 GMT

Sounds like Anubis, the dog-headed guide of the deceased in the underworld...of course he's going to lead the way, it's his natural inclination.

....Vic

Finally - a response

SusanJoy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:36:59 GMT

Welcome Jonathon! I read this when you first wrote it, but didn't really feel like I had much to say in response. Now that I have noticed your April 5th post asking why nobody has responded to this post, I figure I'd go ahead and at least write something.

While I am not in a financial position to help you raise a thousand dollars to attend the TR, I certainly can empathize with your desire to go and your lack of funds to meet that desire. I myself finally went to the TR last year (after nearly 3 years of Waking Down work) and it was quite a struggle to make that happen financially. But I had just gotten very clear -- a sort of deep internal knowing -- last year that it was the right time for me to go, whereas previous years it had not really interested me that much.

And I was very glad that I went. But it turned out that the "reason" I needed to go had less to do with what happened at the retreat than with what happened on our day off during the middle of the retreat. Anyway, listening to my deep internal knowing and borrowing the money to go, I put myself in the place where I needed to be at that time. This year, I simply cannot scrounge up the money but I also don't feel the same "calling" to be there.

Anyway, what I guess I want to say to you is to listen deep inside yourself and focus on what you are called to do. If it is meant to happen, you will find a way to make the financial part work too. But don't try to go just because a teacher, or even a couple of teachers, tell you it would be a good idea! Go when your deepest heart tells you it is the right time for you to go.

As Saniel has said, "Grasp the means of your own awakening." And again, welcome to our Waking Down in Mutuality community.

For those who don't already have it

Michael — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:54:57 GMT

I haven't read it. But I thought folks might like to know that the paper is made available to those who register for this free audio course at sanielandlinda.com. The course is a discussion of the paper between Saniel and Hans Plasqui, the paper's author.

Re:Personal revelation & communion with our unique god

Krishna — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:44:05 GMT

Wow Joy, what a beautiful sharing of your own journey with this!
I really appreciate how you mentioned that the forms and names were different at different times in your life. I feel this is important. It's seems to me that this kind of flexibility is the evidence of a deeper trust in the Divine that is the unseen heart of all of them, Onlyness Itself ( which of course is just another name). Uniquely personal, yet universal: This is the reclamation of the world heritage without the cost of sectarianism.
I could feel your heart in your sharing shining through. Thank you! I'm glad that you've enjoyed these vid

Personal revelation & communion with our unique god

SusanJoy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:56:06 GMT

I've really enjoyed your series of posts, Krishna, but especially the last 2. What you wrote about music and arts touching the Heart really resonates with my experience. Many years after I stopped identifying myself with the Christian church in which I was raised, I can still find myself moved to tears while singing a hymn - even when the words are in some ways almost repugnant to my own spiritual sensibilities. It's as if the music and the emotional ritual of hymn singing completely overrides the words and simply sweeps my heart along for the ride!

This past Christmas, I experienced that while (on a Christmas Eve impulse) I attended a German service at a Lutheran church in Chicago. Even though there were only a couple dozen people at the service, and I could not read the hymnbook (written in old german script) or understand most of what they were singing, and even though the whole story of Jesus' birth is more like a quaint fairy tale to me, I still kept tearing up over and over as the whole experience connected with some deep ancestral memory in my heart.

I feel grateful to be at a point in my life now where I can appreciate the mystery of that type of ritual - after many years in my 20s and 30s when I threw out the baby with the bathwater!

I also loved this part you wrote: "God, Lord, Goddess, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Blessed Virgin, Kuan Yin, Krishna, Ram, Buddha, Beloved and Allah are just a few of the many Names that the heart of the world's people has cried out, yearning to be heard by the ears of the infinite. Whatever Name the heart uses, it uses it to reach the Mystery."

This has been so true for me and the names have varied at different times of my life. I'm grateful to have come to the realization, quite a few years ago, that there is truth in all religions, that none has the whole truth, and that my heart could resonate with any of those divine names -- if I let myself surrender to whatever impulses arise in my heart.

When I was drowning in the pain of healing from sexual abuse memories, I saw an image of KwanYin in my imagination and I cried out "Mother, help me!" Later, Tara become a strong connection for me and I loved chanting Red Tara mantra and feeling my heart open in response.

Then Shiva captured my heart and my imagination for a few years. Though I didn't "believe" in Shiva in the sense of practicing a specific religion, I felt so moved by chanting Shiva mantra and bhajans. I would sing along with Jai Uttal on my drive to work and, as soon as I'd start singing "hara hara hara Mahadev", I would be smiling so big (and often crying at the same time) that it was hard to keep singing, but that didn't really matter. At that point what was happening in my heart and mind was more important that what was happening in my mouth and vocal cords. Not only would I arrive at work wide awake, energized, and ready to be of service, but I believe that transmission of Shiva essence was radiating to all the other drivers around me on their morning commute!

A few years ago, my attraction to Mary began growing deeper and stronger -- until that amazing experience I had last May on our day off from the Transfiguration Retreat. Ever since then, it feels as if I still carry some part of Mary's essence and archetype inside of me. I was not raised Catholic and never had much to do with Mary until just recently -- and the connection I have with Mary now has little to do with official church teachings about Mary. But I am so moved by listening to recordings of "Ave Maria" or "Salve Regina" or other traditional Marian songs and chants. I've bought several books with images of Mary in sculptures and paintings and I will pick them up often and just turn the pages slowly, opening my heart to the connection.

And lately I've felt drawn to learn some of the traditional Marian prayers, in the original Latin - despite not understanding the words and not believing what they mean anyway!

I totally get what you're saying about artistic expression and creative imagination and opening our hearts to connection with the divine "person". I also get, on an experiential level, what I've often heard about mantras being "essential speech" that carries reality in the shape of its sounds. I believe that is true for me whether I'm singing Sanskrit mantras or Latin prayers or German carols!

Re:Yay

Krishna — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:21:09 GMT

Hi Jordan, I'm glad to hear that your enjoying them!
Krishna

Yay

Jordan — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:44:48 GMT

I have really been enjoying this video and the other videos you recently posted on youtube Krishna. It is something I have been thinking a lot about a lot lately, and something I have been considering studying in school.
Thanks for posting, they're very inspiring!

Jordan

-do you understand me?

Krishna — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:38:23 GMT

Bapa,
Well it seems that you feel I don't, so in my book it doesn't really matter much if I think I do.
You say you feel that you understand me, but I certainly don't feel you do.
Honestly, at this point I'm not sure what the point of all this is.
I was not dealing with imaginary situations. I was addressing the real one that happened with you. At this point that you lay aside reality and bring in a hypothetical and I have nothing much to say about it really. I certainly can and think I do understand your distrust and your ideas of power, and in this case I don't share your sense of things.
You don't trust organizations. That's fine, I'm not the most trusting person in the world either, so that makes sense to me. As you said my experience in helping to create and maintain this organization has produced a real degree of trust. There have been plenty of scandals throughout the years and mutuality is what has got us (WDM) through them. We deal with all these things together. And our turmoil hasn't always been "civil", as you put it. It has been at least as bad as the things you've mentioned ( with Eli) and we've hung in and come out on the other end, wiser than before. It's true that I trust, but it's not true that I " trust the policies and rules and adaptability of the IAM." At least not in some abstract sense. Since I and the 3 other teachers founded and have run IAM I know that we are in mutuality with the rest of the teachers of WDM ( including Saniel) and I know how we do things. I know how we make decisions. It's not particularly "the organization" ( which is me and my friends) that I really trust, I trust mutuality and what it can do. But that's just me. It sounds like you don't, and I don't expect you to, that's understandable to me.
Okay, but now what? I'm not inclined to try to convince you of anything about this at this point. Is that rejection? I think not. I'm sorry that you feel it is.
This is not mutuality. It's just becoming an argument. If you want to be in mutuality with me give me a call and let's stick with reality about your own situation. I make no guarantee that you will agree with me or that I will agree with you, but I will hear you, beyond that I can promise nothing.
Krishna

do you understand me?

Bapa — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:10:08 GMT

Krishna-
I take it from your response I have not made my point clear about Saniel. You argue your point from inside the box. The power I speak about, that Saniel carries, comes from outside the box. Completely outside the organization.
Let me spell out a scenario that may clarify my point.
Imagine a scandal in the WDM community. Something really big involving teachers doing something wrong. Something huge. Forget about my problem. It does not rate. I mean something that rocks the community like the scandal with Eli Jaxon Bear and Gangaji that happened a few years back, involving both sexual and financial mischief. Perhaps even bigger than that though. This WDM scandal divides teachers and students and the response to it does not meet most peoples expectations or restore their trust.
Then Saniel gets righteously angry with the institute (IAM) and repudiates the whole enterprise. He decides that it has too many internal problems and sees no way people will salvage it, so he disassociates from it publicly, and he starts a whole new teaching organization. Some of the teachers align with Saniel and the new organization, some of the students will also. Does IAM have a non-compete clause? I doubt it. This further divides the WDM community and organization, resulting in its eventual demise. Thus, my description of Saniel as the 500 pound gorilla.
How does that strike you? It depends on some unlikely possibilities, I know.
1) Huge scandal, with teachers making big mistakes and not taking responsibility. Possible or not?
2) Saniel repudiating the result of his life's work and starting to build a new organization. Very unlikely. Possible or not?
3) The resulting migration of teaches and students results in the demise of IAM. The likely outcome of the two above unlikely possibilities.
Possible or not?

You say this in your email:
"Of course you are free you believe what you will, but it seems futile to have a conversation about it beyond this point"

In everyday conversations with disagreements like we have here, I would agree with you. But don't we have another possibility here, that of Mutuality? In everyday arguments each side has the goal of convincing the other side of his/her truth. Lack of progress toward that goal makes the argument "futile". I have a different goal, so I do not see this as futile at all. I keep learning from this exchange. I have this goal: I want you to really hear what I have to say. To hear me. To see me. To understand me.

I feel like I understand you, but do you understand me? You live in a world that you have learned to trust. You trust the policies and rules and adaptability of the IAM. You see things in your work that reinforce that trust. So naturally you have belief or faith that the organization will continue to meet your expectations.

I don't have that trust. You may see my scenario as an extravagant paranoid fantasy, but I have experienced disappointments or betrayals of trust at that level and greater than that. I see those possibilities as real because I have seen it and experienced it- not from WDM but in other places. So I hold them as real possibilities for WDM. I don't want to win this argument in the sense of "you have to acknowledge these 3 things as possibilities". I just want you to understand how I could think about and perceive life in just this way. Because I feel in this email exchange a little like I felt two years ago. I feel unheard, and misunderstood, by your response. It feels like rejection. I felt a little anger arising. I don't hold any of the assumptions that you attributed to me! I KNOW "Saniel does not run things here, period". I KNOW "decisions are not run past him". . I see all that as your assumptions about me. They all come from "inside the box". And while you may know better than me how power works inside the organization, that does not help you understand how power can change things from outside, in a situation far removed from the kind of courteous and civil disagreements that may have occurred in the past with Saniel.

Speaking of courtesy, now I look at this email and wonder if I can clean it up. Can I take more care not to issue blame or denigrate you? I would say this: when I use the oft used phrase "in the box", and "out of the box", I don't mean it to reflect superior, open minded thinking, as opposed to "in the rut" thinking. I simply mean you have trust, where I don't. Trust has advantages and disadvantages. I don't mean to put you down for trusting. In fact trusting in someone or someones has the power of making the object of your trust act more honorably. So I would not even say you make a mistake to trust. I have simply had the rug pulled out from under me once to often to trust at that level. I also don't want to put you down for not getting my point about Saniel's power. The possibilities I see may simply not exist for you. I don't find this exchange "futile" at all, but, in contrast, very instructive and helpful. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I don't speak just for myself here either, but for others who have brought negative or challenging points of view to WDM, and have experienced something that feels like a very subtle, or sometimes not so subtle, type of rejection.

Do you hear me?

Do you see me?

Do you understand me?

Bapa

Thank you both for your comments

SusanJoy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:36:55 GMT

First of all, it is great to know that someone is still reading Mutualilty.net!

I really appreciated what both Steve and Stephen have written and you have both given me much to ponder.

Steve, your comment about watching helplessly while a loved one goes through 'a health crisis' stirred some reaction in me that it took a while to clarify. Finally I realized that I tend to think of a health crisis as something that people struggle with and then recover (although I realize that is not always the case). I know that my mother is not going to get better and, in fact, will most likely get worse over time. To me, that feels even harder -- and different in a way that I can't quite articulate yet -- than a health crisis from which someone has a good chance of recovering. You've brought my inner attention to an area that I will be exploring further and watching to see what I can learn about why that's so difficulty for me -- maybe something about the finality of it, the sense of inescapable fate.

Stephen, I appreciated you sharing your experiences with your father and with your mother and her friends -- and I can relate to what you shared about sitting quietly in presence with your father. I feel like a part of me was able to do that, but it was a little harder because my mother is still very vocal and very communicative. In fact, it almost seems like she has to keep talking to whoever is around because (maybe) the silence is uncomfortable to her or maybe even frightening.

When I started to feel into the differences between your situation and mine, I have remembered something I heard one of my former spiritual teachers, David Deida, suggest to men about how to listen to women's talking. Deida explains that women often talk as a way to connect energetically and the content of the words is not what's important. Men, says Deida, can find that frustrating because they are often more used to silence and tend to speak when they have something important to say. I remember his suggestion that men could listen to their women's speaking the same way that they would listen to the sound of a singing bird or a rushing creek -- to just enjoy the beauty of the sound and appreciate the aliveness of the energy behind it. It feels to me like that could be a useful way for me to listen to my mother tell me the same memories and the same stories over and over. Rather than feeling frustrated, I could try hearing her speaking as a way to connect with me through the energy of words, rather than trying to focus on the meaning of the words.