Overcoming Prejudice - Being Creative.

I am a fan of a blog, Lateral Action which focuses on all aspects of creativity. Today, I read an interview with John T. Unger, a creative entrepreneur. I was delighted to find in Unger thoughts a "perfect" description of the overcoming of the third temptation and prejudice.

Here are Unger's thoughts:

One of my favorite personal mantras is:

If you can't think anything at all, you can't think anything at all.

By which I mean that in order to think clearly and accurately, I believe you must be willing to consider a problem from any angle, no matter how disturbing, personally distasteful, contrary to public opinion, unpopular, ridiculous, or scary. I could make the statement clearer by saying:

If there is anything you are unwilling to think about, you have lost the ability to think.

But that's just not as succinct. In order to create something that is truly new, one of the best paths is to explore the "unthinkable." I practice experiments of imagining exactly how it feels to take a position opposite to my own, or imagining things backwards, sideways, upside down and generally examining the opposite of everything I come across. A large number of my best ideas have come from this practice as well as an intellectual flexibility that serves me well both as an artist and a social being.

Another way of putting this is that I'll go way out of my way to mess up dogma, but I don't do this to people antagonistically. I just try to eradicate any preconceptions or assumptions I catch myself with because I know that they're always holding me back from a more complete view of the world and how I can interact with it.

To read the entire interview click here.

Backwards Review of Your Day - The Ruchshau

A very freeing, healing and strengthening exercise is the Ruchshau or the backwards review of your day.

Each night for five or ten minutes before you fall asleep, review your day backwards. Begin at the present moment and run the fill of your life on that day in reverse. Review the perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions and interactions of all the hours of your waking day. You can focus on the central experiences or put some effort in to noticing the peripheral experiences. Here are a few examples:

I walked into town and passed a woman pushing a stroller but did not look at the baby.
I ate a hamburger and french fries for lunch - the fries were salty.
I worked on my big project but checked my email 3 times during the session. I felt restless.

The Ruchshau unwinds your experiences before they get rigidly consolidated into memory during sleep. This frees your soul from the weight of the earthly as it enters into spirit while your body sleeps.

I once heard a wise man share he would go backwards through the day and recall what he was doing at 10 minutes past the hour. If I have been in public, maybe at the grocery store, I will remember five faces I saw - this is a peripheral memory release.

All of us will sleep better physically and spiritually if we create and follow a nightly rhythm of sleep preparation. Consciously chosen rhythm is deeply nurturing to our being. Without rhythm we become prey to distraction and indulgence, to stress and anxiety. Make the nightly backwards review part of your bedtime ritual.

Freedom from Prejudice Exercises

Prejudice is thought held captive by a particular point of view and by a particular moment. It is a temptation very few of us can vanquish. The ease of forming opinion, perspective, attitude or conviction numbs most of us to the pain of dead thinking, feeling and willing.

As children every perception, thought, feeling or action is new and unique. A child does not have memories to fall back on or project forward. However, families and education often demand that a child adopt family and cultural prejudices. They are asked to obey and conform. Contrary opinion causes punishment and exclusion. We learn quite early in our lives that it is safe to hold prejudices and grasp the power of dominion over the the inner and outer kingdoms of our lives.

Morally we long for the freedom and responsibility to know the truth. Yet truth and prejudice deny each other. Sadly, we are so accustomed to prejudice and automatic thinking that the challenge to free our perceptions from a fixed perspective in a fixed moment feels daunting.

Rudolf Steiner said that Truth lives in the vicinity of the intersection of twelve point of view. Truth is not in the "eyes" of the beholder. Truth lies in the object beheld.

There are two demanding exercises to help you find the blessing of the twelve points of view. Place an object (a cup or flower or whatever) on a stool in the middle of a room (or go outside and find a tree in a field). Take a sketch book and a pencil, pick your first point of view and do your first sketch. Imagining this first sketch to be at 12 on the face of a clock, move to 1 and do your second sketch, then move to 2, then 3 and so on until you get back to 12. Each drawing will reveal a part of the cup, but not the whole cup. Notice how the light changes the intensity of the colors and the shadows move.

Another exercise is to draw an object in twelve different styles - like Picasso in all his different periods or twelve different colors like Andy Warhol. Even my Mac comes with Photo Booth so that I can take my picture using different effects. We want to loosen up our ways of perception. See things upside down and inside out.

Now pick an opinion you hold dear or a political leader you dislike. Write down your opinion (12 on the clock). Next write down the opposite opinion(6 on the clock). Then write down two more opinions that are midway between the first two but opposing to each other (3 & 9 on the clock). The difficulty here to to not just think the points of view, but to feel them, make them your own, as well. If you have the creative intelligence, continue to fill in the other eight opinions - not easy! This brings freedom into your thinking and feeling and definitely gets you unstuck from all temptations of prejudice. It may not change your mind, but it will make you alive in the moment of choice and discernment.

Another important benefit of these exercises is the enhanced capacity to maintain your center, your balance, your sense of selfhood when life falls into chaos. Too often we are tempted to sell our souls to the devil, in order to maintain a status quo, an identity or style of living.

Imagine knowing yourself as a being of many realities in many circumstances!

In the Moment in Time

When we take a momentary perception give it everlasting significance, we serve Satan. We give up the divine capacity to create and imagine. We get stuck in time and space.

In the moment we are only in one place with only one point of view. We cannot perceive living truth, feel empathy or strive for goodness, because we have turned our soul to stone (a high mountain).

Perceiving living truth, feeling empathy for others and striving for goodness in our deeds requires us to have multiple points of view.

How many perceptions in a moment have turned a part of you to stone? Make a list in your journal of these perceptions. What is their power and their glory? What is your power and your glory when you are frozen in that moment?

Make sure you consider all the moments of victimhood and woundedness.

The Third Temptation - What are the Kingdoms

It is quite natural to assume the "kingdoms" seen from the highest mountain are geo-political areas. However, if we recognize that the 40 days are the time it takes for the Cosmic Christ to experience and come to know earthly embodiment, then it becomes apparent that the temptations all relate to the biological realities of human embodiment.

Here is the third temptation : And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will, I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and him only shalt thou serve.


From the experience of embodiment or incarnation the high mountain is then understood to indicate the brain and the nerve/sense system that is the biological source of all mental images. The kingdoms are ways in which perceptions of the world are formed and the perceptions themselves - sight and the seen, hearing and the heard, taste and the tasted, smell and the smelled, feeling and the felt.

Spiritual beings do not have these perceptions. Perceptions occur in the experience of separateness and there is no separation in the spiritual world. We enter into the world and the world enters into us through our senses. Spiritually, there is no "into" as it is all one and unified.

We must know our senses and their perceptions, but not be seduced by them.

Fantasy

When we fall into the temptation of Fantasy, we imagine something as true or evident in the future. It is the collapse of thinking into unreality due to an absence of will. When we fantasize we do not evaluate, plan or act - we simply wish or desire.

We fantasize a future that absolves the present weaknesses and delusions. This has been a very difficult temptation for me to vanquish. I survived my abusive and unhappy childhood by fantasizing a perfect adulthood - perfect relationship, perfect career, perfect bank account, perfect body, perfect, perfect, perfect! Just by surviving, all would turnout perfectly.

When I reached adulthood I was so attached to fantasizing, I never knew how to make something real. Dealing with gravity, practicality, limitations, setting goals, building a creative community did not live in my consciousness. I could advise others, even organizations, on the steps to manifestation, but I could not follow my own advice. I could just dream - confident that the angels would lift me up before I hit bottom.

Where are your fantasies?
Career?
Relationship?
Body image?
Vacations?
Spiritual Development?
Recognition?

What feeds your fantasies?
Media?
Fairy Tales?
Inflationary praise for your talent?

Pick one fantasy and make it practical? What are the stones you need to step on, even stub your toe on, to make your fantasy an exercise in reality and manifestation? Find your will forces!

Poem on Incarnation

I just found this poem by Wendell Berry (from Collected Poems)

And the world cannot be discovered by
a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

Inner Lent is a journey of one inch. In the last few weeks what of your Inner Lent Journey has been arduous? humbling? joyful?

Challenges to the Incarnation of Your Deed

We each find a variety of challenges to the incarnation of our deed. Do not feel hopeless about these challenges. Recognize them and write them down. Flood them with the energy of self-compassion and self-acceptance. In that loving mood, write down the sources of healing, liberating and overcoming these challenges. Look at what results you seek, what processes you will undertake, and who will support or guide you in this work. Do this work from or out of your highest observing selfhood - your I am. Remember these challenges do not deny the existence of your "I am" they just challenge the incarnation. Too often we don't understand this and feel we lack a True Self or lack a purpose, meaning or significance.

Just find a part of your psyche that is like your scout or guide, who will move ahead of your True Self to clear the path, build the bridges, learn the languages and make the way for your destiny to unfold and your deed to manifest. You can do this.

As you go over these broad categories of challenges. Spend a few moment with each one and make it specific to you. Remember you do not face all these challenges. Your thinking may be clear but your emotional life may be dominated by fear. So you hesitate even when you know the action is the right one?

You may have a tendency to do things prematurely - too soon - but your sense of proportion may be beautiful.

You may find that you don't stand upright between front and back space but your sense of left and right is perfect.

Just go through this exercise as a work of compassionate self-awareness. If you need any help ask a good friend or you can schedule a 15 minute conversation with me.

Remember to share your observations and insights by posting a comment.

Challenges in your Soul
Lack of Clarity of thought
Lack of Equanimity/serenity of feelings
Lack of Distinction between moral feeling and emotional feeling
Lack of Integrity of intention, attention and action

Challenges to the Life Body
Distorted awareness of Time and Movement
Distorted awareness of Needs and Resources
Dramatic biography - victim, perpetrator, distraction, sentimentality, habit, maturity coming too soon or too late
Biology - lack of warmth, lack of rhythm, lack of flow, too much, too little of various functions
Trauma

Challenges of the Physical Body
no sense of boundaries
no sense of weight
no sense of balance
no sense of uprightness
no sense of dimensions - front/back, left/right, above/below

More on "NO!"

NO is so essential to spiritual and psychological health. The more conscious and clear our relationship to no, the healthier and stronger we become.

Our "Yes" becomes more certain. Our "Yes" reflects our truth, if we know our "NO."

Below are a few words that express "NO." Review all these words. Consider the meaning of each word and your way of relating to it. Think about these "no" words coming toward you from the world and then coming out of you toward the world or another person, or an idea, etc.

How do you say "no" to yourself?

Perhaps you resist joy and celebration?
Have you ever been excluded?
Are you aware of your boundaries?
Can you set limits?




NO
resist
reject
renounce
repel
resent
sacrifice
avoid
exclude
restrain
constrain
limit
define
boundary
gravity
distraction
skin - feel your boundary
no place
no energy
no name
no direction
no focus
no support
no time
no traction
no more
no less
no distraction

Meditation on Your Body

We need to lovingly and gratefully focus on our bodies. Our bodies are reflections of the Cosmos. They are exquisitely complex. At any moment there are more actions in our nervous system than there are stars in the universe! Yet we pay little attention to our bodies.

During the forty days following the Baptism, the entry of the Christ Being into Jesus of Nazareth, Christ attended to the reality of being embodied. Suddenly He was experiencing having over 200 bones and over 500 muscles. He penetrated the mysteries of each organ and gland. He lived into the senses. He felt weight. Imagine bringing Divine Intelligence and Unconditional Love to knowing each "part" of the whole living physical reality of your individuality!

I've written a meditation on your body. I suggest you consider working with it once a week upon waking. It will make you more alive, more present, healthier.

You may want to buy a book on anatomy or do some google searches on the different parts, always search on images. For your bones and muscles I urge you to look at the Albinus on Anatomy book. It offers incredibly inspiring drawings of the bones and muscles. Just remember that the beautiful drawings are not nearly as beautiful as your own bones and muscles. (You can order this book through the link on the left.) I often make photocopies from this bood for my workshop participants and ask them to color the images in an active meditation.

Here's the meditation. Make notes on your feelings as you go.

Get comfortable.

find your breath.
love your sweet breath with your warm pulsing blood

take your breath deep into your body.
feel your breath warming.
send your warm breath all through your body filling it with life.

now release your breath.
send your breath far out into the world

Take your breath to your bones.

Find your bones
Your bones are strong and calm
Deep within your bones is the marrow of life.
feel the bones of your feet that walk on the earth
feel the bones of your legs long and straight
feel your pelvis the strong round support for your organs
feel your curving ribs as they embrace your lungs and your heart
feel your collar bones courageously holding up your chest
feel your shoulder blades like folded wings at your back
feel your spine gracefully holding you upright
feel the bones of your arms long and straight
feel the bones of your hands that touch the all there is

now feel your slightly curving neck

feel the bones of your face and your skull reflecting the great cosmos

each of these bones is hard mineral. Each of your bones fit together. Your bones hold you upright. They form a five pointed star of calm supporting strength. Your bones do not let you down.
With each breath, trust your bones.

Now feel your muscles.
your muscles wrap your body up
They surround your body with protective and expressive gesture
Your muscles expand and contract.
They flex.
They lengthen and shorten to move your bones.
Your muscles keep you mobile and graceful. Poised and ready.
Blink your eyes.
Point your toes.
Tilt your head forward and back, side to side.
Bring your hands together in a gesture of prayer
Lengthen your spine.
Smile
You do all these moves with your muscles.
Your bones fit together, Your muscles work together.

With each deep breath, relax your muscles.
Relax
Relax

Now take a special breath and focus on a very special muscle,
Your diaphragm. It is the diaphragm that moves the dance of breath.
Experience its movement with your breath.
Smile at your diaphragm.


Honor your nourishing and warming organs one by one
Your intestines
Your stomach
Your liver
Your gallbladder
Your spleen
Your stomach
Your lungs
Your kidneys
Your bladder

Honor your enlivening glands that create growth, interest and desire one by one
your pancreas
your thymus
your thyroid
your adrenals
your pineal
your pituitary
your hypothalamus

Honor your immeasurable miles of blood vessels
Honor your cleansing lymphatic system
Honor your nervous system that operates and manages the complexity of your body
Honor your organs of perception that tell you about the world
Your eyes,
Your nose
Your ears
Your tastebuds
Your skin

Honor your reproductive organs that create new life.
Honor your brain that serves your consciousness and your unconsciousness.
Honor all the bio-organisms that form your inner community of life.

Honor your heart as the center of your being

Feel the forms and functions of your amazing earthly body.

You now have a sense of your living physical body. Breath deeply into this awesome experience. Breath again and again. Relax and soften each part of your body.

You are alive in time
You are contained and celebrated in space.

Now gently leave the meditative space. Know that you can reengage with this sacred earthly reality at any time.

Bless the gods for the creation that is you.

Oasis and Clearing

some more thoughts on the desert and the wilderness.

Horizon - in the wilderness there is no distant horizon - everything is wildly on top of you. In the desert there is endless distant horizon - nothing between you and the vast end of the world. What are your horizons? Can you sense what surrounds you or lies beyond the horizon?

Oasis - every desert has an oasis. What is your oasis?

Clearing - every wilderness can be cleared. What do you need to do to create a clearing?

A Lenten Exercise

Pick a “thing” like money or lima beans or a poem - go through your body parts, organs and sense functions and ask them how they feel or sense themselves in relation to the chosen "thing.". Write down the responses - writing is very essential to this exercise as it manifests your experience in the world. Practice this once a day, or once a week. Choose "things" that you love, that are unfamiliar, that are addictions, that are safe or dangerous.

This exercise will connect your mind with your body. It strengthens your conscious (True I) relationship to your physical and etheric bodies. It empowers you and liberates you and truly heals.

Here is work I did around money.

My feet feel around money like they will be put on hot coals or glass shards. I feel like they are curling up and cannot touch the ground or take my weight.
My calves feel hard and weightless
My knees feel tickled and sloppy.
My thighs don’t exist.
My vagina feels closed up and angry
My hips hurt and feel rough
My hands are sensitive and tingle - they want to grasp something strong and meaningful
....

My lungs feel heavy and leaden.
My liver feels frustrated and toxic - can’t do its job.
My brain feels dizzy
My throat feels open, a little numb, wanting to speak.
My kidneys feel fried and bouncy.
My gut feels stuck and weightless.
....

My hearing feels clenched and muffled.
My seeing feels like I am looking into a bright light and can’t see any details.
My taste feels bored.
My sense of temperature is chilled below my chest and hot above my chest.
My smell is eager for sensation...there is not enough to smell.

The roots of Addictions

The roots of addiction are neurochemical imbalances caused by

1. Trauma - anything that caused unbearable anxiety in your life. Pain, horror, neglect, abuse, abandonment.
2. Toxicity - chemical and emotional poisons in your environment.
3. Chronic Stress or Hypersensitivity
4. Diet and Allergies
5. Hereditary factors

It is our responsibility to uncover these roots. Nowadays there is much help for these problems and challenges.

If you are interested in learning about neurotransmitter testing please contact me and visit www.neurorelief.com.

The Temptation

Devil: If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.

Christ Jesus: It is written man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedth out of the mouth of God.

There is an awakening at Baptism of the divine deed within the human spirit. This is the declaration of the True I - the I as divine deed. Something in each of us is an expression of the Word of God - the LOGOS.

The Gospel of John begins with...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

If you have faith that you are a Word, a LOGOS being, then you will not need to turn stones to bread. The addiction devils cannot buy your soul.

The physical body of the human being is made up of minerals (stones). It is a corpse without the other bodies of life, soul and spirit. What brings life (bread is the staff of life)to the human being is the "breath of God" and it becomes visible through the earthly tasks that make up our earthly destiny. We incarnate to labor, not to do magic.

How in your life have you been tempted to magically turn stones to bread? Just start writing and see what comes. All answers are perfect. No answer is complete.

Write about your destiny deeds - your contributions.

How does this first temptation relate to the last miracle - the raising of Lazarus?

Hunger and Addictions

Our digestive organs experience the world through consumption and combustion. They take what is outside us and assimilate it into our own beingness. The first temptation to turn stones into bread - emptiness into satisfaction - is a temptation to our organs of digestion. We feel we will be made perfect if we assimilate some outside thing - turn stones into bread. Turn dead minerals into the staff of life.

Hunger awakes us through discomfort or desire to a need or needs that seek nourishment. Our digestive organs want to be active. They want to consume, combust and assimilate.

Nourishment/Bread is any substance that is essential for growth, health, strength and fertility.

We need to seek food for our bodies and our souls that is good, not simply tastes good. To know what we need for nourishment we must penetrate our hungers.

Without self-knowledge our hungers can become false and addictive.

Addiction is a need that cannot be satisfied and plagues you with overwhelming demand. Addiction cannot be escaped nor managed without support (ministering of angels).

When we are out of grace, we are not balanced. We hunger for soothing or for stimulation. Without understanding the cause of our need for soothing or stimulation, we can be tempted to want to magically turn stones to bread. We become addicted to the false and the non-nourishing. You will never be satisfied and the demand will only grow.

Your addicted hungers want satisfaction (satis = enough, facere = make) - they want to "make enough."

We are addicted to certain substances, certain behaviors and certain intangibles.
Make a list of your addictions.
Substances - alcohol, chocolate, coffee, tobacco, cheese, jogging etc
Behaviors - biting nails or cuticles, facebook, shopping, texting, lottery tickets etc
Intangibles - knowledge, self-development, meditation

A demand/addiction is an insistent and pre-emptory request made as if by right. what in your life is pre-empted by the demands of your addiction? Your focus? Your responsibilities? Your truth? Your harmony? Your good deeds?

Imagine making choices and saying no to anything that does not contribute nourishment to yourself, to others and to the world.

Fasting and Grace

Fasting is voluntary and conscious abstinence - the non-indulgence of an appetite.

Consider soul fasting: what thoughts would you abstain from? what emotions would you abstain from? what behaviors would you abstain from?

Fasting requires we endure suffering for some time. If we have faith that the suffering will metamorphose into joy, can we choose to fast more willingly.

If you fast as a spiritual practice, please seek guidance and support. Find someone who will listen to your process with compassion.

Do not fast on a whim. Fasting is very serious business. You are putting your digestive organs to sleep whether the organs are in your gut or in your soul. You need to know why you are choosing to abstain, you need to keep a fasting journal, you need to set a time frame that will support you being successful - your forty days may be forty minutes. Think of measured time or life time or destiny time. Is your fasting successful because it is about measured time? Is it about changing your lifetime? Or is it about awakening your destiny time.

Christ-filled fasting follows baptism and relates to awakening to destiny.

Fasting is accompanied by prayer.

GRACE: Create a state of grace - go into the wide open spaces of your heart where you find the balanced and serene meeting of spirit and matter. In this place of grace you hold your selfhood and destiny with infinite reverence. Grace is a light radiating integrity, love and freedom.

Find your heart place, feel the grace and write about what you are about to receive.

The Root Chakra & Flaming Spear

Our root chakra is the energy center that connects to the earth - the chakra that sustains the completeness of incarnation. Some root chakra declarations:
I am here, I am safe, I am stable, I can meet my earthly needs.
I know myself and my environment.
I can say no and set limits. I know my boundaries and can protect them.

The fiery spear visual meditation. A strong, straight spear with a flaming point pierces my crown and moves through my chakras, moves down my spine, and penetrates my root chakra seeking to enter the core of the earth bringing spiritual devotion into the source of earthly manifestation. The shaft of the spear holds me upright, strengthening my courage.

Is your root chakra damaged? Do you seek your sense of incarnation, your ability to meet your needs in the other chakras? Eastern Body, Western Mind by anodea Judith offers powerful descriptions of both the wounding and the healing of all seven chakras.

Work with the Fiery Spear and share your experience.

Baptism

Baptism/Epiphany is a conscious recognition and celebration of reaching a new level of your purpose, your meaning, and your significance. Baptism is also the declaration that the time has come for you to take up your ministry - your gesture of love in the world.

How are you new this Inner Year? Look at your self with a soft, warm inner eye and discover a new truth in your thinking, a new beauty in your feeling or a new goodness in your deeds. Write about what you feel living in you. It may feel like a mere glimmer, or a sense that what has been dwelling within you, or above you, or behind you is now ready to emerge, incarnate, step forward.

The element of Baptism is living waters. Living waters purify, vivify and carry you forward.

What are the living waters of your life right now? How do you imagine your Baptism? Who would baptize you? Who would witness?

Following your Baptism you would immediately be taken to the wilderness or the desert to spend "forty days" incarnating into your True I.