How do we serve the lesser gods? We feed them. What is their food? Our sensations of anger, hatred, jealousy, frustration, obsessive desire. These sensations are held in the nervous system and the muscles and their vibration attracts unseen minions who revel in them, encourage them and look for ways to provoke them. In our work, these sensations are known as negative emotions because they arise as an electrical charge in the nervous system and eventually discharge.
Religions have developed rules to subdue the expression of these negative emotions but rules most often operate on the basis of suppression, which is ineffective. Our work recommends that these phenomena be impartially observed, held consciously and absorbed as energy. In short, whose food is your anger…unseen vampirish beings or your functioning as a real human being?
The key to all this is wanting. Consider, what is wanting? To want is to have a desire for something you do not have, meaning a lack of something you desire. Wanting is a loaded gun. In a state of wanting, you are not satisfied with what you have. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”, says Psalm 23. Wanting is not intrinsically wrong but it is dangerous, meaning not only that in a state of wanting you may not appreciate what you have but also that you may be tested on the lengths to which you will go to get what you want.
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May 16, 2024
Tags: negative emotions, sensations, wanting, work notes
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July 3, 2019
In our work, there is great emphasis on impartial observation of self. What is observed? Sensations, emotions, gestures of hands, face and voice, behaviors that arise habitually in reaction to what happens around us.
This is not metaphysical, not observation of thinking but rather knowing my physical reactions, neither judging nor justifying them.
As with any endeavor, this can become habituated too. I tend to observe the same things again and again. Of course, there is truth to this…we are repetitious creatures, creatures of habit. But perhaps it is also true that I need to look for the unexpected, the unknown states that escape attention.
Could I suggest that you look for the sensation/emotion of covetousness? In my view, it is one of the strongest and most consequential of inner conditions but it is no longer commonly part of our vocabulary and moral compass as it once was as the 10th commandment of Moses.
There seem to be two dimensions of this state. One is that I may be covetous, I want something that belongs to another…a skill, a possession, a relationship…it could be anything that brings enjoyment to another. Coveting is not simply wanting something for its own sake but also being willing to take from another…it is envy not only of the thing itself but also the enjoyment of it by another. In fact, the one who covets is governed by wanting what others have, not by inwardly searching for what is of value to himself. It is a kind of short cut to satisfaction that tries to mimic what others have discovered and achieved.
The other dimension is experienced by the one whose possessions are coveted. A common reaction is to sense that something I have is causing another to be aware of what they do not have. Was my enjoyment too obvious? Can I diminish or hide my enjoyment, even deny it, so that others will not want what I have?
It may be that covetousness is not part of your experience, in either dimension. Can you find out?
Tags: covet, habits, impartial observation, reactions, wanting
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August 28, 2017
It was an ordinary Sunday morning in a coffee shop known for its new age inclinations. The server wore a t-shirt with the following message: “Limitations only exist if we let them.” Magical thinking.
Limitations are what make life interesting and challenging. We have limitations everywhere…of time and space and resources of every kind. As destructive as we are in a world of limitation, how much more so would we be if not subject to limit? We are dull enough with the benefit of limits that force us to shift and change. If our every wish could be fulfilled, would we be more awake or less?
What’s so bad about limitations anyway? Limitation is finding what is right for me among the many things that are not. Limitation is knowing something well: to find water, you must dig in one place.
Can I really be whatever I want, have whatever I want, if I just want it enough? Does my thinking really have such power?
I know that negative thinking destroys creativity and takes away energy, closing me to what is possible. Does positive thinking have the reverse effect? Can I guide my life to my chosen goals through affirmations? It seems to me that my best responses to life, the moments less troubled by what I lack, are moments of silence and space, not wordy affirmations.
When I want what I want, then it seems I am most powerless and ‘dry’. When I am at the center, I am most alone and unaided, least able to proceed. If there are moments of magical thinking, when more seems possible and new openings surprise me, it is when I am dancing with the universe, when it leads and I follow, no agenda in mind.
Yes, I need my aims and understandings to begin. I take the steps I know and can. But then the world intervenes and I am moved. My agenda, my conceptual staircase to somewhere, is dislocated, shot through with light and shadow and air. What makes what I want the right thing or the best thing? What makes my constructed aims important when they are only made from the fluttering of insubstantial thought?
When thinking has weight, it is grounded in sensation, why else do prayer forms have movements and postures of the body? When thinking invites feeling, it develops wings. Then there can be magic, but not mine.
The universe is inherently uncertain. It will always be so. Can I embrace it?
Tags: limitations, magical thinking, negative thinking, thinking, wanting
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October 1, 2015
I wish for you to explore the difference between wishing and wanting. These words are used interchangeably but they do not at all mean the same thing and they refer to different states.
To want is to be without and to be motivated by a state of lacking, a condition of want. Unconsciously or not, when action springs from want, it is like filling a hole. It draws what is lacking towards self, to satisfy self.
Wishing has a sensation of affirming something outside oneself. It transfers force to that which is wished for. This force is created by wishing, it is not stolen from elsewhere.
Words are important. In Vajrayana Buddhism, speech connects body and mind. In all religions, great importance is given to words. The word you use activates psychic and physical reverberations in yourself and others, establishing orientation and direction of actions. In automatic functioning, body habits precede and determine speech which then enslaves mind. Perception is lost. In one who works on self, mind perception discerns what can be wished and chooses words of helpful orientation.
Use attention to become sensitive to the reverberation of words. Words are not just ideas, they are sensations which evoke physical and psychic states. Some words also invoke. Find this in your own experience.
Tags: affirming, psychic, speech, Vayrayana, wanting, wishing, words
