Soul-to-soul with G…
Alan talking in the Soul-Life workshop, 2008
In the world, around you there will always be people who care and people who don’t care. There probably were people there who cared when you were born, just you didn’t know, or they didn’t know how to show you. It seems there wasn’t anyone there to really show you how to care for G…. And so you left something behind. Maybe you feel it, maybe you’re finding it, touching it now in these minutes here; and maybe not yet. It’s OK either way.
What really matters is for you to find a new way of being in this world. It’s your learning now. It’s clear to me that you did a beautiful and necessary and brave thing in leaving this dead marriage. Your children may or may not understand that. The point is that although you did a brave and beautiful thing in leaving, you also did the same thing you did when you were born. That was when you first abandoned yourself. When you left your marriage you abandoned yourself again.
Your new life, your real life, is totally about discovering and reclaiming and embracing the one who was abandoned. And it’s not something that you do once and it’s done. It’s something that you have to discover over and over and over again from now on. There are patterns, habits of despair, hopelessness, resignation that you’ve learned. They’re like deep ruts that have been worn into the road, and the wheels fall easily into them and run along them. They’re like the old habit of abandonment that you learned to live in. And that’s why learning to live connected with your soul is not a once-and-for-all done thing. You have to keep on learning it, again and again. Every moment is for learning it.
And there’s one very practical feature of your life that I think you really have to pay attention to and look after. It’s good that your children [almost grown up] know that they are welcome to come and visit you whenever they like, that you love them, that they can come and find you whenever they want to be with you. Not that you will for sure be in whenever they knock on the door; it helps if they let you know when they want to come. But what they discover is that you are not showing up at their house every other day.
You don’t tell them. Just in living your life and learning to love yourself again you discover that you are not about making everybody else feel OK, and you’re not trying to make yourself feel OK by making your children feel OK. Your life isn’t any more about trying to make anyone feel OK. It’s about discovering what it means to celebrate your own soul-life.
You allow your children space - including the space to miss you – in which they can discover what you mean to them. As it is they don’t have to discover anything. They just have to take from the plate that is served to them. It’s time for them to discover you, and they can only do that if you are living the mystery of your life rather than endlessly accommodating yourself to their lives - not even to their needs but to the status quo that they live in.
Let them discover you, their mother, as a by-product of you discovering her. And you can also let go of all the other ways that your ordinary everyday life is like this, where you’ve just been accommodating yourself to other people’s programmes. You can let go of these as you discover them. That is part of your journey of reclaiming G….’s soul life. At the centre of all this is your real inspiration and your love in being. It is for you to keep on discovering from now on.
©Alan Lowen 2008
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
GECKO TALKS!
For many years, when I’m leading workshops at home in Hawaii, a cute and mysterious thing happens. When I say something that is really significant, really matters for someone in the circle to hear, or that just feels like the kind of truth that seems to come from beyond me personally, a gecko will twitter. It doesn’t happen all the time, but frequently enough that it affirms Shakespeare’s assertion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.
I’m going to begin using this blog in a new way. GECKO TALKS are taken from those conversations I have with the participants in my workshops that have the significance that makes them worth sharing here.
Aloha, alan
GECKO TALK NUMBER ONE
DEPRESSION AND A TEADY BEAR
© Alan Lowen, 2008
“First, you have to get yourself a big teddy bear! Really! And you know, it doesn’t surprise me that you should experience panic after receiving so much affection and connection in the circle. Just the way you said, “Thank you!” In that was your expression of how little you’ve been able to allow yourself that. And I guess that you’re afraid of affection. I also guess that your depressions have to do with your fear of affection. What happened here yesterday evening was that you were able to feel safe and trusting enough that you could allow yourself to be vulnerable. That touched people’s hearts, and they could give you the affection that you long for.
The fear doesn’t go away just like that, so it’s easy to imagine you going home and you’re very vulnerable and open and sensitized. That means that all the doors are more open than usual and so all sorts of colors can come through from the psyche, including of course your fear and panic, because we opened that door.
This is why I say you need a big teddy bear to have in bed with you. You need to make friends with that panic. What you’re given here, I hope, helps you to realize that your fear is only your fear! I know it can feel enormous, and still it makes such a difference to know that your fear is only your fear, and that lying in your bed at night you are actually totally safe.
It is really important for you to feel as much as you can - all the colors! Go to really heart-wrenching movies! Read books that will really touch you. Listen to music that makes you cry. And whenever you feel depression coming on, find whatever you can, including friends, including connections, including knocking on their door and falling into their arms, that helps you to feel! Sometimes you’ll find yourself crying a lot, you may sometimes find yourself laughing more than you ever did as you realize the comedy of it. It matters that you feel! So that when the panic comes, there’s an invitation in it. Instead of, “Oh my God, how do I survive this, how do I get back to reality?” the invitation is to do the really brave thing, which is to say hello to the fear that is inside the panic. This is why it’s good to have a big teddy bear that you can hold while you’re feeling the panic. That’s an important part of what soft toys are for kids, and it’s the little kid in you who needs this. There isn’t always somebody there who can mother or father you. Then having something like a teddy bear that you can hold and cuddle gives you a way to make friends with the panic.
And if you really want to add a bit of comedy, when you buy the teddy bear, christen him ‘Panic’. I mean it!
It’s beautiful to see you laughing and to feel your tears in your laughter. And it can be like this a lot, that you let the tears come and suddenly you’re laughing as well. Or you’re laughing and the tears come too. And you know, going to the movies is really good for this. You can really cry a lot in the movies. Nobody knows, and if they do, they don’t mind. They’re probably crying anyway! I remember when I was 16 and I went abroad for the first time. I went to Finland, and in Helsinki I went to the movies with my friends who I’d gone to visit. I can’t remember what the movie was. It was a tear–jerker. I was astonished. The whole cinema was crying, really out in the open. And there I am, this 16 year-old English boy, holding it together with his stiff upper lip.”
“Did you cry?” (asks a woman).
“Yeh, but much more secretly! It was a few years later I started crying out in the open. So every way you can, feel, feel, feel! And make that your medicine when you feel your depression coming on. And when you can’t find any medicine, then let the fact that you can’t find any medicine and so the depression is right here be so heart-breaking that it makes you cry!
And there are times when all you can do is to sit in the dreary emptiness of it, and it’s very important that when that happens you also are willing to make friends with this dreary emptiness, so that there’s nothing happening in you that you’re not making friends with. Whatever is coming, you know that your commitment is to make friends with it. Yes, sometimes it’s like that. “Oh my God, how can I make friends with THAT?”
With trust, with courage, with commitment; and with the recognition that what you’ve been doing all these years doesn’t work. Surviving doesn’t work. Surrendering is the befriending. “OK, I surrender to you. Come!” and you let yourself feeling whatever you feel in embracing what you don’t want to embrace. It’s feeling it that brings the friendship. Difficult assignment? Yes, but it’s so much better than all the pharmaceuticals! And the latest research is saying they don’t work anyway.
You have to let go of the notion that it should be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s got to be difficult, but in the nature of your healing it sometimes is. “OK, I’m willing to make friends with the difficulty of it also.” And what helps is just to remember how miserable it is to just survive depression. It’s much more inspiring to be a warrior. And in a way you are a heart-and-soul warrior. But you’re a warrior whose fight is to make friends with what he’s fighting. You’re the peaceful warrior, and it’s not always easy. Nor is being depressed. That’s never easy! So learning to feel is simply worthwhile and intelligent even if it’s not always easy. And if you mean it, you learn how to use the world to help you feel; music and movies and teddy bears, friends, lovers, broken hearts – all of it!
“Is feeling fear a feeling?” asks Friedrich.
“Yes.”
“And depression is the opposite of feeling?”
“Yes! De-pression. Pressing down. You know, what you do when you’re depressed is this: this is time, the horizontal plane (spreads hands outwards sideways, and this is intensity, the vertical plane (hands rising like they are holding a tube). Depressed people are not allowed the intensity. They got so scared of it when they were young. So they press the intensity down, and since it can’t go up, it goes out sideways. You press down the intensity and it spreads out across time. Depressed people are just endlessly gloomy. What you can’t feel in intensity over a short time, you feel very dully over a long time. So the healing is allowing yourself to feel more and more. Then it doesn’t have to be spread out across days and nights and weeks and months. It becomes feeling and emotion that you experience over quite short periods of time very strongly. And when you discover that you are only afraid of that intensity, you can allow all your feelings. And one of the primal feelings that you’re going to allow is this being afraid. Allow yourself to feel it more and more! When you don’t allow yourself feeling being afraid, when you press it down and it spreads out across time, it’s the state that we call petrified – turned to stone.”
“That’s my experience. Depression is not allowed because it’s not good for me and for others. I probably relate it to everything that is connected with pain. Actually my impression is that my feelings are quite strong, but becoming visible they do harm to me.”
“That’s what you’ve learned. And the harm happens in the lack of friendship towards your feelings. That’s why learning to be friendly towards them is so important. Then they are no longer potentially harmful. They are part of your joy in living.
© Alan Lowen, 2008
I’m going to begin using this blog in a new way. GECKO TALKS are taken from those conversations I have with the participants in my workshops that have the significance that makes them worth sharing here.
Aloha, alan
GECKO TALK NUMBER ONE
DEPRESSION AND A TEADY BEAR
© Alan Lowen, 2008
“First, you have to get yourself a big teddy bear! Really! And you know, it doesn’t surprise me that you should experience panic after receiving so much affection and connection in the circle. Just the way you said, “Thank you!” In that was your expression of how little you’ve been able to allow yourself that. And I guess that you’re afraid of affection. I also guess that your depressions have to do with your fear of affection. What happened here yesterday evening was that you were able to feel safe and trusting enough that you could allow yourself to be vulnerable. That touched people’s hearts, and they could give you the affection that you long for.
The fear doesn’t go away just like that, so it’s easy to imagine you going home and you’re very vulnerable and open and sensitized. That means that all the doors are more open than usual and so all sorts of colors can come through from the psyche, including of course your fear and panic, because we opened that door.
This is why I say you need a big teddy bear to have in bed with you. You need to make friends with that panic. What you’re given here, I hope, helps you to realize that your fear is only your fear! I know it can feel enormous, and still it makes such a difference to know that your fear is only your fear, and that lying in your bed at night you are actually totally safe.
It is really important for you to feel as much as you can - all the colors! Go to really heart-wrenching movies! Read books that will really touch you. Listen to music that makes you cry. And whenever you feel depression coming on, find whatever you can, including friends, including connections, including knocking on their door and falling into their arms, that helps you to feel! Sometimes you’ll find yourself crying a lot, you may sometimes find yourself laughing more than you ever did as you realize the comedy of it. It matters that you feel! So that when the panic comes, there’s an invitation in it. Instead of, “Oh my God, how do I survive this, how do I get back to reality?” the invitation is to do the really brave thing, which is to say hello to the fear that is inside the panic. This is why it’s good to have a big teddy bear that you can hold while you’re feeling the panic. That’s an important part of what soft toys are for kids, and it’s the little kid in you who needs this. There isn’t always somebody there who can mother or father you. Then having something like a teddy bear that you can hold and cuddle gives you a way to make friends with the panic.
And if you really want to add a bit of comedy, when you buy the teddy bear, christen him ‘Panic’. I mean it!
It’s beautiful to see you laughing and to feel your tears in your laughter. And it can be like this a lot, that you let the tears come and suddenly you’re laughing as well. Or you’re laughing and the tears come too. And you know, going to the movies is really good for this. You can really cry a lot in the movies. Nobody knows, and if they do, they don’t mind. They’re probably crying anyway! I remember when I was 16 and I went abroad for the first time. I went to Finland, and in Helsinki I went to the movies with my friends who I’d gone to visit. I can’t remember what the movie was. It was a tear–jerker. I was astonished. The whole cinema was crying, really out in the open. And there I am, this 16 year-old English boy, holding it together with his stiff upper lip.”
“Did you cry?” (asks a woman).
“Yeh, but much more secretly! It was a few years later I started crying out in the open. So every way you can, feel, feel, feel! And make that your medicine when you feel your depression coming on. And when you can’t find any medicine, then let the fact that you can’t find any medicine and so the depression is right here be so heart-breaking that it makes you cry!
And there are times when all you can do is to sit in the dreary emptiness of it, and it’s very important that when that happens you also are willing to make friends with this dreary emptiness, so that there’s nothing happening in you that you’re not making friends with. Whatever is coming, you know that your commitment is to make friends with it. Yes, sometimes it’s like that. “Oh my God, how can I make friends with THAT?”
With trust, with courage, with commitment; and with the recognition that what you’ve been doing all these years doesn’t work. Surviving doesn’t work. Surrendering is the befriending. “OK, I surrender to you. Come!” and you let yourself feeling whatever you feel in embracing what you don’t want to embrace. It’s feeling it that brings the friendship. Difficult assignment? Yes, but it’s so much better than all the pharmaceuticals! And the latest research is saying they don’t work anyway.
You have to let go of the notion that it should be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s got to be difficult, but in the nature of your healing it sometimes is. “OK, I’m willing to make friends with the difficulty of it also.” And what helps is just to remember how miserable it is to just survive depression. It’s much more inspiring to be a warrior. And in a way you are a heart-and-soul warrior. But you’re a warrior whose fight is to make friends with what he’s fighting. You’re the peaceful warrior, and it’s not always easy. Nor is being depressed. That’s never easy! So learning to feel is simply worthwhile and intelligent even if it’s not always easy. And if you mean it, you learn how to use the world to help you feel; music and movies and teddy bears, friends, lovers, broken hearts – all of it!
“Is feeling fear a feeling?” asks Friedrich.
“Yes.”
“And depression is the opposite of feeling?”
“Yes! De-pression. Pressing down. You know, what you do when you’re depressed is this: this is time, the horizontal plane (spreads hands outwards sideways, and this is intensity, the vertical plane (hands rising like they are holding a tube). Depressed people are not allowed the intensity. They got so scared of it when they were young. So they press the intensity down, and since it can’t go up, it goes out sideways. You press down the intensity and it spreads out across time. Depressed people are just endlessly gloomy. What you can’t feel in intensity over a short time, you feel very dully over a long time. So the healing is allowing yourself to feel more and more. Then it doesn’t have to be spread out across days and nights and weeks and months. It becomes feeling and emotion that you experience over quite short periods of time very strongly. And when you discover that you are only afraid of that intensity, you can allow all your feelings. And one of the primal feelings that you’re going to allow is this being afraid. Allow yourself to feel it more and more! When you don’t allow yourself feeling being afraid, when you press it down and it spreads out across time, it’s the state that we call petrified – turned to stone.”
“That’s my experience. Depression is not allowed because it’s not good for me and for others. I probably relate it to everything that is connected with pain. Actually my impression is that my feelings are quite strong, but becoming visible they do harm to me.”
“That’s what you’ve learned. And the harm happens in the lack of friendship towards your feelings. That’s why learning to be friendly towards them is so important. Then they are no longer potentially harmful. They are part of your joy in living.
© Alan Lowen, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
On the eve of a new adventure...
Hello!
I’m in Switzerland, and tomorrow I begin a new Art of Being Training at the beautiful Waldhaus Zentrum where I’ve presented my major programmes in Europe for about 17 years. For the next 17 months we - the participants, the assistants and I - become a kind of family community whose bonding is our commitment to keep being here, in this circle, all the way through. It is impossible to describe the depth of our journey together, or the psycho-spiritual heights that we touch along the way. Or the extraordinary transformations of being and consciousness that everybody goes through. On the eve of such an adventure I’m always vividly aware of the people who are right now making their way across Europe, and even from the USA, to join the circle. I remember the Trainings I participated in many years ago, and how every single person mattered. What happened to each of us touched all of us, and the happenings were - as they still are - all about awakening, opening and becoming all that we are really here in this life to be.
Reflecting on all of this, I came across something I said to participants in a 2-year course a couple of years ago, at a point midway through the journey when a few of the 40-odd participants were struggling with what they were coming up against in themselves and in the circle. Here is some of what I said: “... you have all dared and trusted to be in this long relationship with each other. The simple fact that you all live in a basic trust that no one in our circle will walk out creates an extraordinary space. It is what makes the deepest experiences accessible.
“This is why I put so much energy into keeping you all mindful of your commitment to keep being here anyway. I do it knowing that sooner or later, if you're lucky!!! you are going to come up against the idea, belief, feeling (however it comes) that "I've had enough. I'm leaving." Why lucky? Because there are very few people I have ever met who do not harbour somewhere, often deep down in their psyche, an adamant refusal to meet some aspect of themselves. Sometimes you get mad at me because you sense, rightly, that I'm not going to save you from whatever it is that you would rather not meet in yourself. Not that I’m going to push you into it. But as I see it coming up in you, I am going to do all I can to help you say hello to it - dark as it may seem to you - because I know that in your hello lies your redemption, your freedom, your happiness, your consciousness, and above all, your potential opening into the deepest treasures of your being, and of BEING itself. It’s only dark and rejected until you befriend it!
“I honour you all that you dare to trust enough to go the whole journey. I love you anyway, because I CAN love you. I can love you because I have been this journey myself. Not that it ever ends! My life is this journey happening! I have had to break, fall, dissolve and rise countless times. I trust life to confront me with whatever in my being still needs my loving, unconditional acceptance. I know that the things and people I don't like are my teachers. I know that my responsibility is to be willing to sense, feel, embrace and so befriend whatever they touch in me. This is so because I have chosen to pursue consciousness and love as the essence of being and the meaning of life. So it must for you and all of us if we wish ever to be whole, healed, fully awake and able to use all our inner resources. Even Albert Einstein, who was not only brilliantly creative but also a man of spiritual awareness and deeply human compassion, was apparently using a mere 15% of his cerebral cortex. OUR POTENTIAL IS UNIMAGINABLE!
“One more very important thing. That there is darkness to be encountered is in our very nature. It brings us gifts only to be found in our darkness. To avoid the dark is to be like the drunk who is searching for his door key under the bright street light. When asked where he lost it he says, "Over there!" pointing to a dark stretch of the road. "Then why are you looking here?" "Because there's more light here."
With love and aloha,
alan
I’m in Switzerland, and tomorrow I begin a new Art of Being Training at the beautiful Waldhaus Zentrum where I’ve presented my major programmes in Europe for about 17 years. For the next 17 months we - the participants, the assistants and I - become a kind of family community whose bonding is our commitment to keep being here, in this circle, all the way through. It is impossible to describe the depth of our journey together, or the psycho-spiritual heights that we touch along the way. Or the extraordinary transformations of being and consciousness that everybody goes through. On the eve of such an adventure I’m always vividly aware of the people who are right now making their way across Europe, and even from the USA, to join the circle. I remember the Trainings I participated in many years ago, and how every single person mattered. What happened to each of us touched all of us, and the happenings were - as they still are - all about awakening, opening and becoming all that we are really here in this life to be.
Reflecting on all of this, I came across something I said to participants in a 2-year course a couple of years ago, at a point midway through the journey when a few of the 40-odd participants were struggling with what they were coming up against in themselves and in the circle. Here is some of what I said: “... you have all dared and trusted to be in this long relationship with each other. The simple fact that you all live in a basic trust that no one in our circle will walk out creates an extraordinary space. It is what makes the deepest experiences accessible.
“This is why I put so much energy into keeping you all mindful of your commitment to keep being here anyway. I do it knowing that sooner or later, if you're lucky!!! you are going to come up against the idea, belief, feeling (however it comes) that "I've had enough. I'm leaving." Why lucky? Because there are very few people I have ever met who do not harbour somewhere, often deep down in their psyche, an adamant refusal to meet some aspect of themselves. Sometimes you get mad at me because you sense, rightly, that I'm not going to save you from whatever it is that you would rather not meet in yourself. Not that I’m going to push you into it. But as I see it coming up in you, I am going to do all I can to help you say hello to it - dark as it may seem to you - because I know that in your hello lies your redemption, your freedom, your happiness, your consciousness, and above all, your potential opening into the deepest treasures of your being, and of BEING itself. It’s only dark and rejected until you befriend it!
“I honour you all that you dare to trust enough to go the whole journey. I love you anyway, because I CAN love you. I can love you because I have been this journey myself. Not that it ever ends! My life is this journey happening! I have had to break, fall, dissolve and rise countless times. I trust life to confront me with whatever in my being still needs my loving, unconditional acceptance. I know that the things and people I don't like are my teachers. I know that my responsibility is to be willing to sense, feel, embrace and so befriend whatever they touch in me. This is so because I have chosen to pursue consciousness and love as the essence of being and the meaning of life. So it must for you and all of us if we wish ever to be whole, healed, fully awake and able to use all our inner resources. Even Albert Einstein, who was not only brilliantly creative but also a man of spiritual awareness and deeply human compassion, was apparently using a mere 15% of his cerebral cortex. OUR POTENTIAL IS UNIMAGINABLE!
“One more very important thing. That there is darkness to be encountered is in our very nature. It brings us gifts only to be found in our darkness. To avoid the dark is to be like the drunk who is searching for his door key under the bright street light. When asked where he lost it he says, "Over there!" pointing to a dark stretch of the road. "Then why are you looking here?" "Because there's more light here."
With love and aloha,
alan
Friday, April 11, 2008
Time flies, soul too! Part 2: Where I'm coming from.
People tell me I work too much. But you know, for me it is simply that I am serving something that is beyond me.
Some years ago I did try to stop. I smile at the recollection: man proposes, God disposes! But it wasn’t a flippant or casual thing. I was in a deep soul-struggle with my work and my life, and I needed to believe that I had to let go of The Art of Being. For a little while - several months - I did just that. Looking back on it now, I see that I was doing something really necessary. I was getting MYSELF out of the way. When I did so, I found what I was missing. I was missing it just because it had become too tangled up in me. Indeed, I was working too hard.
When I let go, when I wasn’t there any more, I found the space of the inner connection from which I have always loved working. I love it because it is so clearly what I am supposed to be doing. It’s my talent! To teach the art of being is my art of being! And the most beautiful thing about it for me personally is that what I’m teaching doesn’t seem to me to originate in me. I’m just a good channel, in the way that good musicians and composers, actors, playwrights, poets or artists are good channels for what comes through them.
Many years ago my old Master, Osho Rajneesh, told me to get out of the way when I was leading my workshops. Then there is space for real awareness and presence and love and creativity. I feel always immensely creative in the workshops. All the processes and structures and meditations that I’ve designed were created there and then, in situ. And when I’m exploring deeply with an individual or couple I feel inspired by being there. But the magic that happens - and sometimes it does seem so! - is precisely because I’M NOT IN THE WAY. That’s what I mean when I say I’m serving something. Something that is calling to our potential to be conscious and in love, and soul-connected. I don’t think I’m nearly as creative as what I’m serving!
And this was why I had to come back. That caused some chaos and some disappointment for the people who were ready to take over leading my workshops. But I had to. My soul was speaking very clearly. Quitting was like a schoolboy playing hookie! I have always loved what Richard Bach wrote in one of his books. It goes, more or less, “Here is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete. If you’re still alive, it isn’t.” My mission is the art of being, manifesting as The Art of Being®. It’s why I’m here. It’s what I love, It’s what I have to do. I feel privileged and honoured that it is so.
Some years ago I did try to stop. I smile at the recollection: man proposes, God disposes! But it wasn’t a flippant or casual thing. I was in a deep soul-struggle with my work and my life, and I needed to believe that I had to let go of The Art of Being. For a little while - several months - I did just that. Looking back on it now, I see that I was doing something really necessary. I was getting MYSELF out of the way. When I did so, I found what I was missing. I was missing it just because it had become too tangled up in me. Indeed, I was working too hard.
When I let go, when I wasn’t there any more, I found the space of the inner connection from which I have always loved working. I love it because it is so clearly what I am supposed to be doing. It’s my talent! To teach the art of being is my art of being! And the most beautiful thing about it for me personally is that what I’m teaching doesn’t seem to me to originate in me. I’m just a good channel, in the way that good musicians and composers, actors, playwrights, poets or artists are good channels for what comes through them.
Many years ago my old Master, Osho Rajneesh, told me to get out of the way when I was leading my workshops. Then there is space for real awareness and presence and love and creativity. I feel always immensely creative in the workshops. All the processes and structures and meditations that I’ve designed were created there and then, in situ. And when I’m exploring deeply with an individual or couple I feel inspired by being there. But the magic that happens - and sometimes it does seem so! - is precisely because I’M NOT IN THE WAY. That’s what I mean when I say I’m serving something. Something that is calling to our potential to be conscious and in love, and soul-connected. I don’t think I’m nearly as creative as what I’m serving!
And this was why I had to come back. That caused some chaos and some disappointment for the people who were ready to take over leading my workshops. But I had to. My soul was speaking very clearly. Quitting was like a schoolboy playing hookie! I have always loved what Richard Bach wrote in one of his books. It goes, more or less, “Here is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete. If you’re still alive, it isn’t.” My mission is the art of being, manifesting as The Art of Being®. It’s why I’m here. It’s what I love, It’s what I have to do. I feel privileged and honoured that it is so.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Time flies, soul too! Part 1
Hello!
These past weeks I’ve been on a whirlwind workshop tour around Europe. I still am! Yesterday Love and the Shadow, my annual workshop for couples, ended in Switzerland, and now I’m in Prague relaxing before presenting my brand-new Spiral workshop next weekend. The theme is the expansion of sex into soul.
It is with some fascination that I look back over the workshops of this tour and see that soul has been the major theme. I didn’t consciously plan it to be so. The sub-title of Body, Heart & Soul 4, that I led in early February, is “Love: the essence of Tantra”. It is a journey of surrender, in love, to the beloved. And the ultimate beloved is not anyone ‘out there’. I think that each time I have led this workshop over the past years, the opening into the ultimate beloved - the Beloved! - has become more and more vivid and present for all the participants, and for me too of course. It is an opening that happens when we come all the way into connection with our own soul. That is when, in sexual intimacy, we discover the real meaning of Tantra.
So there was the soul theme, present at the very beginning of this tour. Of the six workshops from then until this final one in the Czech Republic next week, the two new ones are both soul-journeys (the other is Soul-Life that I presented in Berlin a couple of weeks ago).
It isn’t just in the workshops, of course, that the soul is so calling me. For 35 years my workshops have mirrored my own journey. It’s why The Art of Being remains enthralling and why I always have the sense, when I begin the workshop, that I’ve never been here before. I love the infinity of being! These past weeks I’ve been noticing that my personal journey is rather like the title of the all-encompassing course I created 20 years ago for people to heal their sexual wounds and re-discover the celebration and the spiritual potential in their male/female nature: yes, BODY, HEART & SOUL! Now, at 64 years of age, (and still feeling young in my being!), I have the sense that I’ve come to the soul of that title. Body and heart are included naturally. We don’t lose our nature, we just expand its boundaries as we deepen. This gives me a sense of profound excitement about the workshop here next week, and too about the new, 17-month Art of Being Training that I begin in Switzerland in September. It is such a blessing to work with soul!
More in a day or two!
Ah, and just one more thing to say right now. If you have been paying attention to this page and the website that it serves, you will no doubt have noticed that the TanZ’n’Tao web page (see previous blog entry) has disappeared. I took it down because the Forum format I was using is too easily spammed, so rather than you getting each other’s book, music, movie, etc recommendations, well, you can guess what was coming your way. If any of you has a good suggestion about the best way to bring the TanZ’n’Tao web page alive, please send me an email: alan@artofbeing.com
With love and aloha, alan
These past weeks I’ve been on a whirlwind workshop tour around Europe. I still am! Yesterday Love and the Shadow, my annual workshop for couples, ended in Switzerland, and now I’m in Prague relaxing before presenting my brand-new Spiral workshop next weekend. The theme is the expansion of sex into soul.
It is with some fascination that I look back over the workshops of this tour and see that soul has been the major theme. I didn’t consciously plan it to be so. The sub-title of Body, Heart & Soul 4, that I led in early February, is “Love: the essence of Tantra”. It is a journey of surrender, in love, to the beloved. And the ultimate beloved is not anyone ‘out there’. I think that each time I have led this workshop over the past years, the opening into the ultimate beloved - the Beloved! - has become more and more vivid and present for all the participants, and for me too of course. It is an opening that happens when we come all the way into connection with our own soul. That is when, in sexual intimacy, we discover the real meaning of Tantra.
So there was the soul theme, present at the very beginning of this tour. Of the six workshops from then until this final one in the Czech Republic next week, the two new ones are both soul-journeys (the other is Soul-Life that I presented in Berlin a couple of weeks ago).
It isn’t just in the workshops, of course, that the soul is so calling me. For 35 years my workshops have mirrored my own journey. It’s why The Art of Being remains enthralling and why I always have the sense, when I begin the workshop, that I’ve never been here before. I love the infinity of being! These past weeks I’ve been noticing that my personal journey is rather like the title of the all-encompassing course I created 20 years ago for people to heal their sexual wounds and re-discover the celebration and the spiritual potential in their male/female nature: yes, BODY, HEART & SOUL! Now, at 64 years of age, (and still feeling young in my being!), I have the sense that I’ve come to the soul of that title. Body and heart are included naturally. We don’t lose our nature, we just expand its boundaries as we deepen. This gives me a sense of profound excitement about the workshop here next week, and too about the new, 17-month Art of Being Training that I begin in Switzerland in September. It is such a blessing to work with soul!
More in a day or two!
Ah, and just one more thing to say right now. If you have been paying attention to this page and the website that it serves, you will no doubt have noticed that the TanZ’n’Tao web page (see previous blog entry) has disappeared. I took it down because the Forum format I was using is too easily spammed, so rather than you getting each other’s book, music, movie, etc recommendations, well, you can guess what was coming your way. If any of you has a good suggestion about the best way to bring the TanZ’n’Tao web page alive, please send me an email: alan@artofbeing.com
With love and aloha, alan
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
TanZ'n'Tao! YOUR Art of Being page!
Aloha! Yes, here comes TanZ’n’Tao!
Tantra says, “And this, and this, and this, and this...”
Zen says, “Not this, nor this, nor this, nor this...”
Tao says, “This is it.”
Which just about covers all and everything!
The new TanZ’n’Tao Bulletin on The Art of Being website is where you will be able to share with others your greatest discoveries of books, music, concerts, happenings, workshops, courses, and so on. There are (see next paragraph!) a few final glitches to be sorted out, so after just a few days online, it’s now off-line and will be back once it’s working properly.
If there are a few glitches at first, be patient! This is a new adventure, so mistakes may happen. And you know how I regard mistakes: they are beautiful opportunities for us to learn! Enjoy, and if you have any suggestions, I’m listening!
I’m on my way to Europe now for a new tour of workshops. Have you looked at HAPPY ANYWAY! - the workshop in Switzerland at Schloss Glarisegg Feb 20-24. It’s new - the first was in Berlin 3 months ago, and it was more than I had even imagined when I created it last year. I was inspired to do so by my Universal Experience workshop; the intimate encounter with one’s own death that many of you have already experienced - still the most popular of my short workshops (3 days). The Universal Experience is a life-transforming journey through encountering the mystery of our own death.
HAPPY ANYWAY! is also an exploration of letting go, in this case related to the extraordinary fact that many people are living their lives quite successfully in terms of what they are doing and achieving, and yet ARE NOT HAPPY. If you want to know more, go to HAPPY ANYWAY!
I have to catch a plane!
With love and aloha, alan
Tantra says, “And this, and this, and this, and this...”
Zen says, “Not this, nor this, nor this, nor this...”
Tao says, “This is it.”
Which just about covers all and everything!
The new TanZ’n’Tao Bulletin on The Art of Being website is where you will be able to share with others your greatest discoveries of books, music, concerts, happenings, workshops, courses, and so on. There are (see next paragraph!) a few final glitches to be sorted out, so after just a few days online, it’s now off-line and will be back once it’s working properly.
If there are a few glitches at first, be patient! This is a new adventure, so mistakes may happen. And you know how I regard mistakes: they are beautiful opportunities for us to learn! Enjoy, and if you have any suggestions, I’m listening!
I’m on my way to Europe now for a new tour of workshops. Have you looked at HAPPY ANYWAY! - the workshop in Switzerland at Schloss Glarisegg Feb 20-24. It’s new - the first was in Berlin 3 months ago, and it was more than I had even imagined when I created it last year. I was inspired to do so by my Universal Experience workshop; the intimate encounter with one’s own death that many of you have already experienced - still the most popular of my short workshops (3 days). The Universal Experience is a life-transforming journey through encountering the mystery of our own death.
HAPPY ANYWAY! is also an exploration of letting go, in this case related to the extraordinary fact that many people are living their lives quite successfully in terms of what they are doing and achieving, and yet ARE NOT HAPPY. If you want to know more, go to HAPPY ANYWAY!
I have to catch a plane!
With love and aloha, alan
Friday, January 18, 2008
Riding the wave, or not, and being happy anyway!
Aloha,
I just published a new podcast called Happy Anyway, recorded in the Happy Anyway workshop in Berlin a couple of months ago. Here’s an excerpt. To hear the whole podcast CLICK HERE.
Love from the High on Life vacation workshop on Maui!
alan
ABOUT WAVE-RIDING!
So it’s a matter of when you’re ready,
When you’re ready to ride the wave…
You have to let yourself just feel it totally.
When you’re ready you will
And until you’re ready you won’t.
And ready doesn’t mean it’s done!
Ready always feels like “No, I’m not ready yet!”
It’s like standing on the 10 metre board and looking down,
And your intention is to jump
And you went up there cos you’re ready.
And you stand on the end of the board and you look down
And you say,
“Shit, from up here 10 metres looks a lot further than it did from down there,
And I’m not ready for this.”
And then I jump,
Or I don’t!.
Either way I’m not ready
And the difference is if I’m ready I jump anyway.
In the end it doesn’t even matter if you jump or not
It matters that whether you jump or not, you’re happy anyway
And by happy anyway I mean that you’re willing to be where you are,
In friendship, in opennness, in consciousness, in love.
I just published a new podcast called Happy Anyway, recorded in the Happy Anyway workshop in Berlin a couple of months ago. Here’s an excerpt. To hear the whole podcast CLICK HERE.
Love from the High on Life vacation workshop on Maui!
alan
ABOUT WAVE-RIDING!
So it’s a matter of when you’re ready,
When you’re ready to ride the wave…
You have to let yourself just feel it totally.
When you’re ready you will
And until you’re ready you won’t.
And ready doesn’t mean it’s done!
Ready always feels like “No, I’m not ready yet!”
It’s like standing on the 10 metre board and looking down,
And your intention is to jump
And you went up there cos you’re ready.
And you stand on the end of the board and you look down
And you say,
“Shit, from up here 10 metres looks a lot further than it did from down there,
And I’m not ready for this.”
And then I jump,
Or I don’t!.
Either way I’m not ready
And the difference is if I’m ready I jump anyway.
In the end it doesn’t even matter if you jump or not
It matters that whether you jump or not, you’re happy anyway
And by happy anyway I mean that you’re willing to be where you are,
In friendship, in opennness, in consciousness, in love.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The most beautiful New Year message I wish I'd written myself!
Aloha friends,
For once, I want to give you not my words, but the words of an old, wise friend I’ve never met. You may well have seen and heard him - he’s a celebrity comedian-actor - and this message that he put out to the world is one we all need to hear. Enjoy! May 2008 be the year you let your soul guide you every step of your way. With love and aloha, alan
PS: And by the way, if you like my words too, you can always find more of them on the listen/read page of my website (www.artofbeing.com).
A Message by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space.. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete... Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. If you don't send this to at least 8 people....Who cares? George Carlin
For once, I want to give you not my words, but the words of an old, wise friend I’ve never met. You may well have seen and heard him - he’s a celebrity comedian-actor - and this message that he put out to the world is one we all need to hear. Enjoy! May 2008 be the year you let your soul guide you every step of your way. With love and aloha, alan
PS: And by the way, if you like my words too, you can always find more of them on the listen/read page of my website (www.artofbeing.com).
A Message by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space.. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete... Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. If you don't send this to at least 8 people....Who cares? George Carlin
Monday, December 24, 2007
It is Christmas!
Christmas is very special for me. During the five years of my childhood that I spent in a Catholic orphanage, it was the one week of the year that I could revel in a real family life. My mother’s parents had ten children, and they would all be there, squeezed into a little terrace house in north-west London. My grandmother was a true Cockney - born within the sound of Bow-bells - and our Christmas was a Cockney fandango! My grandfather was Jewish. No matter. The celebration wasn’t religious. It was family!
To this day I hold to the tradition. In my Hawaiian home Christmas really happens! As I write this, it’s the early hours of Christmas Eve. The house is quiet, but tomorrow there will be twenty of us sitting down to dinner. This evening, as now, I’ll sit here late into the night, listen to sacred Christmas music and let it connect me with the mystery. I don’t mean just the Christian nativity. I really don’t know who Jesus was, any more than I know who Buddha was, or Lao Tzu, or Moses. I trust that they were all blessed with the light of the spirit just as I trust that Shakespeare, Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wordsworth, Whitman, Michelangelo, Turner and... and... and... were all blessed with the gift of pouring the spirit into existence through their words, music, art.
I am touched by the way the world is touched by Christmas. That’s why it’s so good to sit quietly and open to what is happening. There’s such an outpouring of soul, such an opening to the eternal spirit! A couple of years ago I spent Christmas in Prague, alone. I went to a midnight mass. I’m not a Christian, and I would guess the same was true of a good proportion of the throng in that jam-packed church. I went, as so many must, for the spirit. It calls to us in countless moments and personally I love to give a little time every day to listening. There is nothing more precious in existence. It’s beautiful to gather together with others to celebrate this sacred mystery in a holy place.
I am in love with the mystery. I wish people could give up trying to define it but I accept that they need their myths and movies. For me, Christianity, like all the world’s religions, is just another movie through which we can manage the mystery. It really doesn’t need our management! It offers us so much more than what we do to it. And this is why I love Christmas. All over the world as I sit here writing, people are engaged with CHRISTMAS! And this has been so for thousands of years. Yes, the pagan correlate of Christmas long predates the nativity. I’m not interested in that movie either, by the way. I am simply touched because every winter, at this time, far back into our human heritage, something in us answers, en masse, to the call of the holy spirit in existence. No wonder we are all so engaged. It’s in our blood, our bones, our marrow, our collective unconscious.
And there’s the beauty! In all the tripe and trivia that infest Christmas there is something that we can touch into with all our senses if we choose. Tapping into the collective unconscious we can awaken. I think many people do. It isn’t necessary to go anywhere. The ethos is carrying humanity’s collective soul. Our awakening, that is always personal, transforms our collective unconscious into our transpersonal consciousness. We can be one together. We can be in love.
Have a happy Christmas, and in whatever Christmas movie you choose to be in, listen to us all. If we all listened, there would be peace on Earth!
Aloha, alan
To this day I hold to the tradition. In my Hawaiian home Christmas really happens! As I write this, it’s the early hours of Christmas Eve. The house is quiet, but tomorrow there will be twenty of us sitting down to dinner. This evening, as now, I’ll sit here late into the night, listen to sacred Christmas music and let it connect me with the mystery. I don’t mean just the Christian nativity. I really don’t know who Jesus was, any more than I know who Buddha was, or Lao Tzu, or Moses. I trust that they were all blessed with the light of the spirit just as I trust that Shakespeare, Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wordsworth, Whitman, Michelangelo, Turner and... and... and... were all blessed with the gift of pouring the spirit into existence through their words, music, art.
I am touched by the way the world is touched by Christmas. That’s why it’s so good to sit quietly and open to what is happening. There’s such an outpouring of soul, such an opening to the eternal spirit! A couple of years ago I spent Christmas in Prague, alone. I went to a midnight mass. I’m not a Christian, and I would guess the same was true of a good proportion of the throng in that jam-packed church. I went, as so many must, for the spirit. It calls to us in countless moments and personally I love to give a little time every day to listening. There is nothing more precious in existence. It’s beautiful to gather together with others to celebrate this sacred mystery in a holy place.
I am in love with the mystery. I wish people could give up trying to define it but I accept that they need their myths and movies. For me, Christianity, like all the world’s religions, is just another movie through which we can manage the mystery. It really doesn’t need our management! It offers us so much more than what we do to it. And this is why I love Christmas. All over the world as I sit here writing, people are engaged with CHRISTMAS! And this has been so for thousands of years. Yes, the pagan correlate of Christmas long predates the nativity. I’m not interested in that movie either, by the way. I am simply touched because every winter, at this time, far back into our human heritage, something in us answers, en masse, to the call of the holy spirit in existence. No wonder we are all so engaged. It’s in our blood, our bones, our marrow, our collective unconscious.
And there’s the beauty! In all the tripe and trivia that infest Christmas there is something that we can touch into with all our senses if we choose. Tapping into the collective unconscious we can awaken. I think many people do. It isn’t necessary to go anywhere. The ethos is carrying humanity’s collective soul. Our awakening, that is always personal, transforms our collective unconscious into our transpersonal consciousness. We can be one together. We can be in love.
Have a happy Christmas, and in whatever Christmas movie you choose to be in, listen to us all. If we all listened, there would be peace on Earth!
Aloha, alan
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Music, presence and intimacy
My final workshop of the year, just two weeks ago, was at Kripalu, lovely center deep in the autumn countryside of the north-eastern USA. The workshop days began with one of my variations of The Art of Being meditation - dynamic happenings that consistently evolve through high-energy expressive movement into profound stillness. I always play music when the meditation ends, and I’ve never thought twice about why I do so. It seems natural.
It was a pleasant surprise, one morning, to find myself out of the blue reflecting on the matter with the group. It connected me with why I have such a deep love for the musicians - people like Carioca, Miten and Deva Premal, Peter Makena, and quite a few others - who are some of my dearest friends. Here, more or less, is what I said to the participants:
“The songs that I play after the meditation I play because the musicians are so intimately connected with what they’re singing. They are the expression of intimacy happening in the realm of music. They are totally in love with what they are bringing into being in that moment. My hope is that even if you’re not aware of this, their music communicates anyway so that you feel drawn by it into the present, carried by it into your own intimate connection with what is happening here now.
“This is the essence of all intimacy, and a way for us to learn it. Our awakened sensitivity allows us to be touched by what is happening and in touch with what is happening. When existence is made beautiful, as it is by such music, it is easy for us to be in love. Awareness and love! As my old Master, Osho Rajneesh used to say, ”these are the two wings on which we fly.“ To open into this is the purpose of the meditation and of the music.”
It was a pleasant surprise, one morning, to find myself out of the blue reflecting on the matter with the group. It connected me with why I have such a deep love for the musicians - people like Carioca, Miten and Deva Premal, Peter Makena, and quite a few others - who are some of my dearest friends. Here, more or less, is what I said to the participants:
“The songs that I play after the meditation I play because the musicians are so intimately connected with what they’re singing. They are the expression of intimacy happening in the realm of music. They are totally in love with what they are bringing into being in that moment. My hope is that even if you’re not aware of this, their music communicates anyway so that you feel drawn by it into the present, carried by it into your own intimate connection with what is happening here now.
“This is the essence of all intimacy, and a way for us to learn it. Our awakened sensitivity allows us to be touched by what is happening and in touch with what is happening. When existence is made beautiful, as it is by such music, it is easy for us to be in love. Awareness and love! As my old Master, Osho Rajneesh used to say, ”these are the two wings on which we fly.“ To open into this is the purpose of the meditation and of the music.”
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