Excerpts from “Living Deeply” by Marilyn Mandela Schlitz, PhD; Cassandra Vieten, PhD; Tina Amorok, PhD.; circa 2007

Living Deeply was loaned to me by Nora Jukes, wife and partner of Professor Harold (Harry) Jukes (deceased), as she trusted that I would enjoy the type of literature that was typical philosophy for Harry.

There is no question that in the short five (5) years that I worked and lived with the Jukes family at our beloved seniors complex, Grandview located in Castlegar, B.C., I found that Harry became my mentor and friend.

As I went through Living Deeply, I noted these quotations that I consider noteworthy to enter in my blog.

Enjoy!

Excerpt page 128:

“…..Transformative teacher Angeles Arrien……the practice of letting go can help prepare you to open to “mystery’s plan”:

There’s a lovely Inuit saying that there are really two plans to every day: there’s my plan and there’s the mystery’s plan. In the presence of transformation I may have a whole plan about how I will transform and do my inner work. This is an egoic plan.

But there’s a deeper plan that is much stronger than any egoic plan. This plan gets revealed in silence, with specific intention and attention. What often happens for people in silence and in nature, in prayer or affirmation, is that once they let go and really listen, something else emerges that wasn’t on the agenda. And it often reveals something greater than was on their egoic agenda. I encourage them to pay attention to that.

I really trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence, what comes in nature when there’s no diversion. The lack of stimulation that takes us out of our addiction to intensity allows us to hear and experience a deeper river —– one that is constant and still and vibrant and real. (2002)….”

Excerpt page 129:

“…..Michael Murphy, cofounder of the Esalen Institute and author of Future of the Body (1992), explained it this way:

You can’t speak of a practice without [speaking of] the relationship of volition and grace. They all have it. In Buddhism there is the doctrine of nonattainment. In Christianity, the idea that graces are given. Practice is like planting vineyard. In meditation itself, for example, the primary act of being present, however you do it —- vipassana, zaen [ a Japanese form of silent meditation], prayer, or the prayer simple regard in the Christian contemplative tradition — involves re-collection. If you take this act of recollection as in a vineyard, you are planting a stake on which the vines start to grow, leaves appear, the grapes come, and then wine can be made….But you don’t make the grapes. They just happen. All you’re doing is planting the stake, and making sure it stands up against the elements. Sometimes it droops over, and you put it back up, until the vines are well established. The vines blossom through your process of practice and more practice. (2002) …..”

Excerpt page 135:

“….If you are really awake, conscious and aware, then your life is a practice. Then everything you do is a practice. Most of us aren’t that aware and awake all of the time.

—– WINK FRANKLIN (2003)…..”

Excerpt page 135:

Vispanna teacher and author Sharon Salzberg spoke to us about understanding transformation….She recalled the perspective of a teacher visiting from India:

When we were first starting to teach here we took one of our teachers from India around, to show him all the vispassana meditation groups that were springing up. We were very excited and proud. “Isn’t it great what is happening in America?” And he said, “It’s wonderful, but in some ways what’s happening here reminds me of people sitting in a rowboat: they’re rowing with great effort and sincerity, but they refuse to untie the boat from the dock. People want great transcendent experiences, but they don’t pay attention to how they speak to one another, or how the earn a living, or the things of day-to-day life.”

In the West, there isn’t a seamless understanding of what spiritual life is. It is more specialized, like, “I’m going to meditate on a cushion, and something great is going to happen.” The classical understanding is that spiritual life is how we live every day. It’s how we relate to our children, how we relate to our parents, how we earn a living, how we speak to one another, how truthful we are. That’s something that hasn’t translated completely into our culture. (2002)……”

Excerpt page 136

“…..As ecological and spiritual teacher and activist Satish Kumar told us:

I use meditation as a practice —– to focus, to learn how to be mindful, how to be present here and now. But for me the distinction between meditation and action must evaporate, must come to an end. Every action —- whether I am gardening or cooking or speaking or writing or talking to a friend or being with my children —– everything is to be done mindfully, fully present and attentive and aware. Meditation becomes part of everyday living. (2005)……”

Excerpt page 138:

“….Catholic priest Father Francis Tiso told us:

Remember, the great yogis went into retreat in the mountains from cultures that were traditional, religious, and favorable to at least some of the goals that the yogis were pursuing.

We live without retreat, in a society that is inimical to [the transformative process]. We are attempting to be part time yogis….If you’re going to get any kind of results out of this, it’s probably going to take awhile —- and they also might be a little on the this side; very fragile, easily torn. You may get a glimpse or an insight and the day afterwards, you’ll seem not to have had it. It’s evanescent. Don’t be discouraged by that. (2002)….”

Excerpt page 143:

“….James Fadiman agrees that an unsupportive community can undo a lot of good transformative work……

If everybody says you are crazy, at some point you are off the cultural norm and by definition you are crazy. And if you find yourself lonely and seem to be crazy, it’s hard to maintain your shift in perception. There’s a little Sufi story called “When the Water Was Changed.” It is about a town in which, if you drank the water, you would behave in a bizarre manner. Everyone but this one guy drank the water. He hoarded the old water —- he could see that everyone was behaving in a bizarre way…..But finally this guy said, “I give up, I’m going to drink the water.” And everyone said, “Oh, he’s cured, he’s healthy again, he’s sane. He was so bizarre, but now he’s one of us again.” Unless, there’s some kind of support system — it can even be a book —- some kind of external verification and validation, it can be very hard to maintain these changes. (2003)……”

Excerpt page 150:

“……Yoruba priestess Luisah Teish echoed this sentiment:

One of the things that I see as fundamental is coming out of feeling like “I’m a victim of my life” into “I am working with nature, community, and spirit to design and shape our lives.” You know, you go from a “me” to an “us”. You go from a victim to an actor or an initiator. You go from feeling devalued to valuing what’s already around you……”

Excerpt page 160:

“….Whatever put us here —- me, the ocean, the sand —– we are all one. We say “I” or “you” so we can communicate, but —- there is no I, there is no difference between I and you, I am you, you are me, there is only that.

—-SHAYKH YASSIR CHADLY (2006)….”

Excerpt page 170:

“….Starhawk, a leader in the Pagan tradition, spoke eloquently to us of the challenge of being both supportive and empowering at the same time:

You know, we have real values —– taking care of people who are depressed, healing, relieving suffering —– but these can sometimes lead to ….. bias toward the victim. All someone has to do is to define themselves as a victim and people will flood them with attention. But that isn’t always the most effective thing to do for healing —– or the most effective thing to do for building a community of real empowerment. Learning how to empower people to create and do and take leadership, to take risks and face obstacles, is a real challenge. [it’s important to] empower strength, not just empower people to complain. (2006)……”

Excerpt page 175:

“….As Albert Einstein described:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest…..a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty…….”

Excerpt page 187-188:

“…..Native American elder and healer Charlie Red Hawk Thom and medicine woman Tela Star Hawk Lake expressed concern about the endangerment of their people and the earth—-and the need for people to engage in ancient healing practices to restore the “sacred hoop” of creation. Tela said:

From the beginning of time all cultures had ceremonies. Our ceremonies still exist just as they always have, we never changed them. That’s why Charlie, as medicine man for the Karuk, Kiowa, and Hoopa tribes, has so many people coming to him looking for balance. They’re looking because they have that same philosophy of being one with the earth, and it brings them back to that circle we all began. Our people still hold this circle, we form the sacred hoop, as we call it. (2006)….”

Excerpt page 196:

“….Avatar teacher Sue Miller aptly pointed out that attending to the suffering in the world allows you to stay open and move forward on your transformative path:

There’s a place in Avatar that involves the shift to realizing that you’re the one who can deliberately create your life. But then you look around and you can see the suffering of the world at large. If you don’t have a way to help alleviate that suffering, it can be so painful that you can potentially just shut back down. When people have a way to alleviate that suffering, the keep opening up and are willing to become more aware…… One of the main things that happens is that at some point people think, “Enough about me and my life and all my stories and my dramas and my whatevers.” It’s old news. You may wonder what else is there? To me the “what else is there” is being of service, and the joy people get from that interaction. (2002)…..”

Excerpt page 197:

“….Swami Nityananda shared with us some wisdom he’d learned from his own guru, noting that inner experience determines our view of the world and everyone in it:

Whenever people asked Swami Muktananda what the heart of his teaching was he would say “Meditate on yourself, honor yourself, worship yourself, God dwells with you as you.” That is really the crux of the path —- teaching us what we should meditate upon. Unless I knew it myself, unless I worship myself and see God within me, there is no point in going anywhere, because what I have here within me is what I am going to see in everyone else. If am able to honor, respect, and worship myself, I will see the divine here and everywhere, because wherever I go, I go. So if I carry that experience of contentment with me, in my mind, in my being, then that’s what I am going to see, that’s what I am going to experience, and that is what I’m going to give to everybody. (2006) ….”

Excerpt page 207:

“…It’s as Lawrence Ammar and Paulo Santos, two teachers of the healing art of Johrei told us:

If I were to sum up in this language of Johrei, together each of us is transforming ourselves, transforming our families, our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, our cities, and our states —– and then out into the general society. It is like ever-expanding circles —– like when you drop a stone in a pond…….So as each of us transforms and we begin to connect with the others close that we love, we can really begin to make a real paradise on earth. A real world of health and peace and prosperity………..”

Excerpt page 208:

“…A quote often attributed to Albert Einstein states,”No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” George Leonard, whose writing on consciousness transformation from the sixties to today has paved the way for human potential movement and positive psychology, spoke to us of the importance of developing a grounded metaphysic that recognizes both the opportunities and the challenges before us. When we embrace our divine essence, we are incapable, Leonard notes, of engaging in violence, hatred, or injustice:

I believe that our failure to develop our potential is one of the most dangerous tendencies on the planet, Crime and war can be attributed to our failure to develop the potential of the vast majority of people. The main aim, shall we say, of all this work is to make it possible to develop your divine, God-given, universal potential. You’ve got no time to study war, if you are developing your potential. You’ll be too busy to get into that kind of trouble.

If you have a path of practice, you won’t be insecure. For some, this insecurity says: blow up the world. That’s a problem. If you are on a path of practice, you will see yourself as part of all life. You will understand the spiritual in all its parts. And you won’t need to dominate others.

Ultimately I feel that everything is spiritual. What we call matter is just one manifestation of spirit. I think that the heart of an atom just blazes with spirit. The heart of every atom and every subatomic particle is spiritual. I don’t see a mind/body split. So much evil has occurred because we fail to see that. (2002)…….”

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Entered November 18, 2012 by Elmer Verigin