Have you ever watched the moon and been affected by its 4-dimensional reality? Its circumference, its volume, its surface texture and its energy… all so very alive and breathing. It brought joyful love-tears to my eyes a couple nights ago when I went for a walk and stopped to experience it. Truly b e a u t i f u l. Pure Simple Light — organic Energy. As were the people I noticed from a window as they chatted and ate their late night dinner at a Denny’s. And the lady at a gas station’s convenient store who smiled warmly as I entered and then pointed me in the direction of the ladies’ room I needed. There is tremendous love energy in this world for us to share in. Tremendous.

And then… there is the “stuff” of us that keeps us too distracted, drained or blocked to notice and experience and creatively utilize this deep-as-an-ocean love energy that exists between us. I would like to address one such (rather obvious) thing that, from my experience, falls in this category I call distracting/draining “stuff”. I would like to address the energy of opinions that come together as ‘argument’. I am attempting to share here my experience of coming to realize what this argument thing is. . . why it is in existence in our world, be it in our homes or work place. On face value, arguments are strong contradictory or differing opinions confronting each other. And yet we know that different opinions, just like different personalities, can exist. In fact, co-exist. So then, why do differences of opinion turn into the act of argument — the act of emotionally or violently expressing or experiencing disagreement? Why do they become a me-versus-you battle?

In my experience, this happens when at any given moment of experiencing argumentative energy, it feels like something big (HUGE!) is at stake unless our opinion is the one that prevails as correct and the other’s as incorrect. Otherwise, why would you find yourself in stress and upheaval? So what really is at stake here? Does it feel like a matter of my life (the way I see things) or my death (the potential end of the way I see things)? A death of my peace and security through the death of my ideas? I’d say it feels like that. It is our fear of mortality coming alive — our mind taking charge of our life’s survival… our ego’s survival. If I am to survive, my opinion must survive. The old adage, “I think, therefore I am” falls right in line with this. Faux pas!

We are not here because we think, but in fact, as a dear friend’s father says when he arrives anywhere, “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” In other words, “I am present, therefore I am” (and there is great bliss in experiencing this thoughtless presence.) From my experience, as long as we are identified as our opinions, which have an amazing way of pulling us out of the freshness of now and throwing us into fears from pasts projected into an imagined future, then we (this mind-identified-ego-run-we), participate in argument (we counter counter-opinions) because it is a logical manner of survival… we are fighting for our opinions (which make us feel alive), we are fighting not to die. And we will struggle. And we will suffer.

The only salvation from this struggle is dis-identification from mind and identification with you–organic energy–the spirit–the soul — the presence — the now. (But more on this later.)

In an intimate non-spiritual relationship, I (egoic I) is attached to the idea that the significant other’s opinions (we think, who they are) ’syncing with’ my opinions (we think, who we are) is the way to joy in a relationship. And my defensive reaction is my natural protection from someone who could harm me by getting in the way of me thinking the way I do, so I can’t let go of this defensive reaction. I would be stupid to let go. I would be inviting the death of me.

Fair enough. Until you decide to try something different because this belief system is not getting you anywhere different… it isn’t allowing for the sustenance of peace, love and joy.

Interestingly, letting go of attachment to my defensiveness and recognizing a strength in accepting another’s opinions as just that (without allowing pain to take over me no matter how offensive or misinformed my partner was with regard to me) allowed me to discover the path to my real life… the invulnerable place within… the place of peace and power… the very alive soul… my ‘true-love’ energy… my tremendous being that is. This being understands the fears of mortality as created by the mind and knows that there is in fact no real death in mental death (silence of the mind). This being understands that there is real life to experience underneath and beyond the desperate drama of attack and defense in life situations. In this deep understanding lies the freedom from our own mental shackles. And this is the only true meaning of freedom. It is in this moment of experiencing this realization that you are able to detach from your unnecessarily defensive and reactive self…with a big picture knowing and so with compassion… and eventually, perhaps, even with amusement. You are now ready and able to let go… let gooo… let gooooo. You are able to surrender your false self – the ego-constructed, proud or angry or afraid self that can justify all defenses & offenses. Let it all go unto the universe as you experience the peace, joy & love of your real self emerging.

Eckhart Tolle, in his book The Power of Now, explains perfectly what I experienced:

The ego believes that in your resistance lies your strength, whereas in truth resistance cuts you off from being, the only place of true power. Resistance is weakness and fear, masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your being in its purity, innocence and power. What it sees as strength is weakness. So the ego exists in a continuous resistance mode and plays counterfeit roles to cover up your weakness which in truth is your power. Until there is surrender, unconscious role playing constitutes a large part of human interaction. In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. That’s dangerous, says the ego, you’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable. What the ego doesn’t know of course is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming vulnerable, can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.

I’d also like to share here a little life-wisdom from sister Shivani of the Brahma Kumaris:

Life is a hurdle race, she says… an obstacle course. You can come up to the hurdle and say, “This obstacle is in the way. I’ll hurt myself. I’m backing off.” Or you can say, “This obstacle is the way… I’ll suffer some bruises and scratches… but once I get the knack of the right technique, I’ll clear it with flying colors. And it will become second nature with practice.”

Meditation, spiritual awareness of being, communion with the source, can tremendously help you through such practice.

Here’s some more of Eckhart Tolle as he explains how to handle potentially argumentative situations:

If you resist or fight unconscious behavior in others, you become unconscious yourself. But surrender doesn’t mean that you allow yourself to be used by unconscious people/behavior… not at all. It is perfectly possible to say no firmly and clearly to a person or to walk away from a situation and be in a state of complete inner non-resistance at the same time. When you say no to a person or situation, let it come not from reaction but from insight, from a clear realization of what is right or not right for you at that moment. Let it be a non-reactive no, a high quality no, a no that is free from all negativity and so creates no further suffering.

Let me illustrate how surrender can work in relationships. When you become involved in an argument or some conflict situation, perhaps with a partner or someone close to you, start by observing how defensive you become as your own position is attacked, or feel the force of your own position as you attack the other person’s position. Observe the attachment to your views and opinions. Feel the mental emotional energy behind your need to be right and make the other person wrong. That’s the energy of the egoic mind. You make it conscious by acknowledging it. By feeling it as fully as possible. Then one day, in the middle of an argument, you will suddenly realize that you have a choice, and you may decide to drop your own reaction… just to see what happens. You surrender. I don’t mean dropping the reaction just verbally by saying, “Ok you’re right”, with a look on your face that says I’m above all this childish unconsciousness. That’s just displacing the resistance to another level, with the egoic mind still in charge, claiming superiority. I’m speaking of letting go of the entire mental emotional energy field inside you that was fighting for power. The ego is cunning, so you have to be very alert, very present, and totally honest with yourself to see whether you have truly relinquished your identification with the mental position, and so freed yourself from your mind. If you suddenly feel very light, clear, and deeply at peace, that is an unmistakable sign that you have truly surrendered. Then observe what happens to the other person’s mental position, as you no longer energize it through resistance. When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.

And at this point, we need to allow for whatever the experience offers. And you will now be able to. No resistance within. No attachment to past mind patterns. No negativity. No argument. Only love energy.

My sweet Charu behen, at a Brahma Kumari center in Mumbai, tenderly guided me during my search and efforts for freedom from my pain. One day, I humbly informed her that I handled a challenging situation well, with peace, love, compassion and a complete detachment from my fearful self– the one afraid to lose in love and also afraid to “die”, i.e., lose my identity based on my points of view. She smiled encouragingly. “There are bigger challenges coming,” she forewarned gently, with a twinkle in her eyes, “use this time. Prepare your self. You can do it… you have it in you.”

She was right. I do have it in me. And the reason she could say that with the confidence she had was because… we all have it in us. We can handle our differences without conflict… and in genuine love.

We are all entities beyond uncontrollable thinking, and hence, beyond helplessness. We are Not void of being able to use the faculty of thinking when deciding to, but we are not mentally or emotionally defined, enslaved or run by it.

Challenges are opportunities for self-realization, growth and application of your true essence… irrespective of whether anyone else involved in the challenge sees it this way or not.

The Brahma Kumaris also explain that any situation/relationship you are in is karmic… your intimate love relationships, most profoundly. There is a divine reason why people come together… it is to serve as mirrors to each other… to see our selves as what we have become in self-reflection, to realize wounds we are struggling with, and then to allow for healing and growth. This requires humility, surrender, understanding, self-empowerment, love and effort within. It can be painful initially… but to be born again to our creative truth is worth it… for all sakes. This is your most important commitment. It is the commitment that empowers you for all other commitments.

Eckhart Tolle reminds us: “You are here to unfold the divine purpose of the universe. That is how important you are.”

We were born to realize and utilize our divine power, our creativity… in all areas of life… in all-ways… in all the roles we take our response ability into… in our every gift of now. The tremendous abilities that we all possess reveal themselves more and more as we connect with our beautiful energy, our life-source, our spirit, and practice compassionate non-judgmental awareness through the creative art of being.

And then you can start to recognize that all attack and defense, forces of destruction, are ones own dormant pain emerging… an entity separate from the real you, but that can take over you… the wounds and fears a mind-driven ego has nurtured and made you define your self with. And it is fighting for its pained survival. It is, however, also an opportunity to recognize the cry of your scared child within… asking you to wake up and please help it do away with its baggage because it wants to come out and play and love and create and celebrate life fearlessly… it wants to simply be. Unhindered love, joy, peace, wisdom, strength. So be tender yet strong… practice honest, non-judgmental observation and compassion with your self and others. Unless you have first empowered yourself through the realization of who you truly are, you cannot help empower another. Put the oxygen mask on your self first, breathe the pure air, then help the person next to you… if at all possible… or you’ll both be unconscious. This is the most selfless thing you can do…because unconscious behavior (inner truth unawareness) is the cause of selfishness (driven by a need to utilize others to feel fulfilled) and conscious behavior (awareness of the divine self) does away with your false idea of self… you become selfish-less…self-less. And you experience and become motivated by true love energy.

And so, it is important to check your belief system, which until now has pretty much formed itself as a reaction to cultural, environmental, childhood impressions and influences and recurring ego-mechanized false ideas of who you are. Detachment from attachment to your false self and its sense of right and wrong is a liberating achievement… it is the deep sense of freedom that is being sought after but cannot be realized from a mind-level approach. You are pure, peaceful, all-encompassing, love energy, blocked by distractions of the thought-run mind.

As Eckhart Tolle explains in The Power of Now: “The problems of the mind cannot be solved by the mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

When you have not yet glimpsed the unquestionable purity, peace, compassion, empowering strength and love you are, even if you like this idea of who you truly are, you find yourself drawn into arguing against another’s differing opinions, thus falling back into the pattern of defining who you are based on thinking rather than being. Recognize your ego (which can play both aggressor and defender) in your nagging need to opinion and counter-opinion. And perhaps the next time you find yourself falling into argument or strong emotional resistance, you can stop, step back and ask yourself… am I coming from a place of defensiveness? Am I feeling the need to prove something? Am I slipping into my mind-run definitions of me and so trying to survive something?

Also recognize that in any argument, there exists the energy of resistance and opposition, and this negative energy first passes through your body before it gets thrown onto anyone else. This is also the root cause of your own stress, and most physical ailments, causing you to experience a viscous cycle of recurring negativity, mental tension, physical stresses, and basically a base operating center which lacks the strength that comes from a peaceful you… which is ironically, your inherent true nature, no matter what. This is how you perpetually become your own worst enemy.

In my personal-relationship life-situation (however this could be applied to any recurring relationship problems, even work related) I came to realize that I needed this important-to-me other person to get me the way I see me or at least not find wrongs in me. Otherwise it hurt. And if the other person couldn’t do this… well then it felt like shit. (Today I literally can’t relate to why it felt like shit, but it did.) And I didn’t like shit. I was unhappy with shit on my plate. It smelled.

So then, what do I do?

I suggested tossing the whole plate out. I’ve tossed shit out before.

Except, this time, I couldn’t. And the reason I couldn’t was because I suddenly realized, on a very profound level, that I had in fact done away with shit before (the cycle of recurring drama and its suffering) and I had apparently also moved beyond allowing shit into my life again. So then how did this shit (recurring suffering) sneak back into my life?? When did it sneak its way back in and carry me to unbearable pain again? How did it make it past my radar? I mean the dish (person) before me looks different and is a different person from others I have loved, so then… how, when, what… for goodness sake, how is it that I am suffering in such a familiar way again?!

Just then, (lucky me), something nudged me… some kind of vague yet deep beckoning. It took me a little time to attain a real sense of clarity but I started moving in the direction of realizing something hard-hitting… I recognized the “shit” as my own. (Sorry about this crass metaphor. It’s just in the flow…)

“Oh my lord! I am the common variable in all my experiences! So the stinky smell must be coming from me! It’s my own contribution! It must be! It must be! The pain I am feeling is in fact from what I am contributing in the given situation! It is from the poor quality of MY reaction. But did I have a choice? I mean, I was reacting for the most part to what felt like attack/negativity/judgment. Ahem, well as we know by now… we always have a choice in how to respond. We just don’t realize this… until we do. I came to realize that my pained reactions were my own wounds showing up, and the other’s, his… and we were actually mirroring our need to be wound-free. What was needed wasn’t argument, but a nurse.

Sayings like, “change is the only constant” sound perfectly true when things are going well, but I was not able to handle what felt like extremely difficult changes in a relationship which at first had felt nothing short of organic, honest, deep, real, pure and promising, and then changed into extremely confusing, burdening, and painful. I was running out of handling-power.

I remember posing a question to myself: How is it possible that I cannot do or be what is required to fix a problem in such an important part of my life?? How how how is this failure possible of the woman always referred to as a “power-house” by her mother, “super-woman” by friends, and a whole bunch of other humility-power-and-smile-inducing adjectives by several people she has helped in their difficult situations.

The reason is, when it came to the most challenging (for me) area of my life — the intimate love dynamic– I didn’t have the right knowledge, the right tools, the right resources, and thus, the right resultant foundation for empowering myself. These tools decide the beauty or the beast moment of truth experience in every relationship. I was using my mind run heart and reacting from the un-empowering mortal place of an ego (the beast) not wanting to lose in love or die with the defeat of my defense. I mean, “How dare he! But shit I love him.” Hence the sayings “Love hurts” or “Love is slow poison” (I’ve actually seen this on the back of a taxi!!) or “Love kills”. They forgot the word “conditional” love or “unconscious” love. To be interrogatively scrutinized or criticized felt like rejection by someone I wanted to share love with and my feeble identity was being threatened… the ground was shaking beneath me. My mortal peace was crumbling… I was suffering. Something needed to change… and change fast…

I am ever ever ever so grateful that I woke up to realizing that that something was me. A change in the foundation of my belief system… a change back into who I am… which is who we all are… pure, peaceful, powerful, painless, already proven, love energy. My truth was beckoning me. I went to it. I became familiar with my being… from whence all things beautiful can then also be… and all things ugly have no (lasting or real) hold on me, within or without. And I will strive to emerge more and more through better and through worse life situations. This is my joyful promise to me.

In reflection of life thus far, which isn’t done nudging me (bring it on baby!), I see how my arriving to meet this liberating truth has been a gradual process. I’ve definitely been on a journey to here all my life. I believe what helped me experience this separation of me and my pain was how easily I went from misery in a defensive state of mind to deep all-encompassing love within just a few moments of a conversation with a soul who was experiencing his baggage of a hard time in our relationship. The jolt within to wake up came from this extreme and immediate transition in me, showing me the real me and the stuff that could take over.

It took my arriving to a feeling of being fed up with the pain. It took me decidedly and deeply wanting love to prevail.  And then it took a deep conviction for wanting the ability to truly & response-ably turn pain into love whenever faced with such a challenge. I realized soon after, that I wanted a partner who wanted the same thing… to co-create responsibly. I sensed the calling to grow… so I started in the only place that again made sense… in Michael Jackson’s words, “I started with the man in the mirror”. I decided that I was turning in my piece of shit for a peace of heaven that I know is within me. I was unclear about how to do this… but I didn’t need to know how exactly. The how’s found me as I humbly allowed for them.

 “Ask, and ye shall receive.”

So I’m asking, believing, self-empowering, focusing on staying present, and allowing myself to receive moments as they come and change for the better and braver with love. This is, for me, the meaning of truly living.

Cheers!

(Felt like a toast moment.)

Change is in fact the only automatic constant. It is the law of nature. And it takes the serenity of wisdom to handle it and a desire for a beautiful and sincere life to grow yourself through it.

Remain connected to the ocean-deep love you possess. Know where you come from and who you are… pure, peaceful, simple, light energy, that neither gets destroyed nor destroys… it transforms beautifully, like an alchemist.

o Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as real strength. ~ Francis De Sales

o My strength is at the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. ~ Tennyson

So allow this strength to be the energy that is you. Allow your pure & peaceful love energy to navigate you through life… even in the face of storms. In fact, especially then.

From the sixth edition publication by © The Divine Life Trust Society, founded by Sri Swami Sivananda:

·         Every man should have a comprehensive understanding of Nature’s laws, and their operations. Then he can pull on in this world smoothly and happily. He can neutralize the hostile forces or antagonistic currents in the best possible manner, adjusting himself properly and safeguarding himself through suitable precautionary methods. He can utilize the helping forces to serve his ends in the best possible manner. Otherwise he becomes a slave. He is tossed about hither and thither helplessly by various currents. Various hostile forces drag him in different corners. He drifts like a wooden plank in a river. He is miserable and unhappy although he is wealthy and possesses everything that the world can offer. His steamer will drift here and there helplessly and be wrecked by being dashed against some ice-bergs or rocks. The captain of a steamer who has a mariner’s compass, who has knowledge of the sea, its routes and the oceanic currents, can sail smoothly.

“The owner’s manual to the Self is written within,” said someone.

It is the most important read of your life.

Dive into it.

Then… keep brushing up on it.

Use instruction and information.

Use wisely the instruments that help you maneuver.

You will weather the storms

You will whistle your songs…

A capable, creative, confident captain

with every journey’s home coming

you will sound life’s triumphant horn…

With love energy,

Seema