Mindfulness Video Blog Part One

Introduction

Introduction

Please note that I am writing this blog as a creative exercise in order to explore certain ideas. All the work is original and copyright to myself. If you want to use it please reference it. I am delighted to receive any feedback, questions or comments on the articles. Note I am slightly dyslexic so please excuse grammer and spalling mistakes!
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Managing Psychological Energy - A Thermometer Check

Managing Psychological Energy – A Thermometer Check

Today I would like to talk about managing psychological energy. I picture psychological energy as being measured by something like a thermometer with a spirit level that has a line towards the top and a line towards the bottom. The line towards the bottom is black, and the line towards the top is red.  When I’m doing something that gives me a great buzz, like teaching, I notice that I move towards the top. I become more and more energized, and I really start buzzing in response to what I am doing. The only problem is that when I go above the red line, although I’m still energized, there are now added unconscious energies running the show. These unconscious energies are things like needing approval from the group that I am teaching, wanting to be seen, hoping to be recognized for how great, wise, or spiritual I am. It is almost as though the unconscious little boy/teenager/father/ mother approval complexes start to kick in. This is what takes me above the red line. So even though the context is still the same and I’m doing something that I love and have a passion for, something has changed in the energy – there is a wildness and unconsciousness that wasn’t there before I hit the red line. Sometimes I call this going past ourselves or going past the energy – that’s the phrase that I use for it. It basically feels like the energy is taking over and that I’m no longer centred or present in it. When I’m really buzzing, it feels like a high – like being elated or a little bit ecstatic. What happens then, of course, is that after the group has finished, there is a let-down, as there is with every group or client that I have. However, If the energy has spiked above the red line, when it drops, it doesn’t just drop somewhere to the middle on the spirit level, it drops all the way down to the black line, and sometimes it even drops below it. When this happens, I feel exhausted, burnt out, grumpy, negative and very tired. I don’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. I just want to be alone in order to restore and somehow reconnect with myself. This is very similar to a bi-polar movement, where there is a constant swing between the red and black lines and no middle ground. When the energy drops below the black line, psychologically it almost takes me back to an earlier stage in myself, a stage when I wasn’t receiving the affirmation, love, understanding or approval that I’m looking for even now, without being aware of it, when I spike above the red line at the top of the cycle. When I hit that deeper psychology within myself, I don’t just experience being tired as I normally would if I were above the black line after a long day of working, teaching or retreat. There is an added element to the tiredness or the grumpiness or the sense of depletion. That added element shows me that the pendulum has swung from spiking above the red line to dropping down to the other extreme below the black line. 

My goal in presenting this image is to bring clarity and awareness to the process that happens to me in my working life. I am always seeking to find the middle point in my awareness – the point where the spirit level doesn’t spike above the red line or drop below the black line. Sometimes I refer to this as managing my psychological energy in my work so that the old wiring in my psychology doesn’t affect my current performance.

If we wanted to put a label on it, we could call the area below the black line the pain body or the Saboteur. It’s that sense that we’re not good enough, that we’re not going to succeed, that we’re failures and that we don’t deserve to succeed. These are the old interjections of the younger person in our psyches who was brought up to believe these things in one way or another. In my own case, wherever I may have picked up this psychology, whether it was from my parents or in school or college, I unconsciously incorporated it into my sense of self and believed it. There is a part of me that is still alive within my psyche that believes that I am going to fail and that is ashamed of my past failures – a part that never felt good enough. The result was that I internalized these things – they became what Carl Jung would call an internal complex. It is this internal complex that sometimes comes alive in me in my work, when I’m teaching or presenting to a group, and I then start to spike above the red line. You could almost say that the Saboteur sets the bar too high because it wants me to fail. So no matter how good a session I give or how much I try, I always feel that it wasn’t enough, that there were people there that weren’t getting it or that didn’t approve of what I was saying. That in turn supports my sense of not being good enough and represents my mother complex the co-dependent pleasing part of my self. So the next day when I drop below the black line, my ego threshold drops and the unconscious complexes come up – you could almost say they possess me to some degree. I beat myself up, telling myself that I gave that workshop but that I could have done better, or that some people didn’t understand it and that I had therefore failed in some way or it was mediocre.

This is a classic complex that has been written about for years, and it makes sense to me. I think that the thermometer with the spirit level with the red line on top and the black line on the bottom is a really helpful image to keep in your psychological toolbox. You can take it out during the day, stand next to it and take a measure of where your energy is at any given time. You may not have the same psychological underpinnings as I‘ve just described, but if you find that you spike above the red line and then rebound below the black line, you are experiencing a similar process. Bringing that to your awareness and using it as a measuring stick, you can then stop yourself from spiking and then regressing. When I am presenting or working, I have learned to be aware of when those unconscious energies begin to come into play, and I don’t allow myself to get carried away by them. Then, when my energy drops after the session or the next day, it doesn’t quite drop below the black line, or even if it does, I become aware of it – and awareness is the key. I then say to myself that I just need some time that day to restore my energies. I find that the more I bring that measuring stick with me in my pocket to work, the more I am able to find a middle ground where I don’t go past myself in my presentations or my work. I am not triggered by my audience or the people I work with, and I therefore don’t have to suffer the extreme of dropping below the black line and again feeling that old pain within me of not measuring up. Instead, I find that I have a greater sense of balance and centredness and that I am able to extend myself to others without losing touch with my own core.

A Story of Brigid & the Field of Barley

Please add your own commentary I would be delighted...

Brigid was a young girl always looking for deeper meaning in her life and asking big questions about things. Her simple life on the farm wasn't enough for her and she was tired of digging around in the mud with her parents. One day she decided to join the local monastery with the hope that the wise sisters and anam cairdé (soul friends) could help her on her search.

Commentary:

Like many of us Brigid wanted to break away from the mundane aspects of her childhood and find her Self separate from her family and who she is with them. Carl Jung would call this the beginnings of individuation. In the wisdom tradition the monastery was seen as a container for the expansion of the psyche, which is often missing today.

The abbess, head of the monastery took Brigid under her wing and so Brigid began her training. The most important thing to know she told Brigid was to avoid the field of barley at the bottom of the hill. She told Brigid that the monastery rented this land to a local farmer and he sprayed his barley with foreign imported pesticide that would be poisonous for her.

Commentary:

All the advice in the world is great to a young seeker of wisdom but those inner complexes will have their day. Brigit is moving away from her mother complex toward a healthy mother archetype as represented by the abbess. Complexes are the unconscious energies of parents that children take on and pass from generation to generation if not released. They can lead to narcissistic tendencies, mental health problems and all sorts of suffering.  

Taking Brigid under her wing indicates an animistic link to the instincts. The abbess will guide Brigit in directing her instincts in a healthy way. The language of the birds was also a way of describing hidden meaning. The foreign pesticide represents knowledge or experiences that Brigid isn’t ready for yet and this is held by the farmer a male figure and also in the field of barley representing a connection to the earth.

One day while Brigid was out walking she saw the field of barley at the bottom of the hill and even though she felt drawn to it she remembered what the wise abbess had said and she walked the other way.  

Commentary:

This is the first stage of Brigit’s boundary lesson. The ability to recognise what isn’t good for us in the moment and say ‘NO’. Brigit separates from her family and adopts the archetypical identity and lessons of the abbess instead.

But every night Brigid had dreams of the field and the mysterious farmer (or was he a shepherd :) who tended it. She'd wake up with an intense longing to go there highlighted by an image of the farmer in the field with his muddy boots (Brigid didn’t like mud it reminded her of days on the farm and her father :)

Commentary:

The complexes are coming alive in Brigid, the unconscious mother and father in her. Even though she has left the farm and family behind the projections are still active in her new context. The unconscious attractors in Brigids psyche inherited from her mother and father create a projected longing that is hard to ignore.

One day not long after she joined the monastery Brigid could no longer resist. (Brigid was a spirited girl in more ways than one :) She went into the field of barley at the bottom of the hill. Walking through the field she felt exhilarated but after awhile she began to feel ill. She got so sick she was later found by the sisters and had to be carried back to the monastery.

Commentary:

It’s often in life we engage with situations that are harmful or we are unprepared for. Brigit is been drawn to the field (her shadow complex projection as attractor) and while initially exhilarating like all addiction it becomes her downfall. From Brigids point of view this is a crisis but it’s often out of crisis that growth can come.

With the wisdom and healing care of the wise abbess Brigid recovered from her plight and resolved not to go into the field again. As the years went on she developed her own ground through meditation, prayer and awareness. With her new strength and positivity she once more went to the field of barley at the bottom of the hill and facing her       possible death she took a big scythe (they didn’t have combine harvesters in those days :) cut the barley down, not just for her but for any who passed this way. (The farmer sent the invoice to the monastery later that month :)

Commentary:

When we recover our strength and reflect and learn from our lessons it gives us the confidence to face our fears. This time Brigit was able to challenge the poison in the field. The same is true in all our relationships but most importantly the ability to challenge the inner shadow complexes.

In time Brigid began to have dreams of the farmer again where she would find herself in the field in the moonlight dancing with him in his muddy boots under the naked stars. She brought these dreams to her wise abbess and with spiritual guidance began to integrate her own wise inner Self; the instincts, drives and passions in her life.

Commentary:

This is a real time of integration. The mother archetype is now active and the complex less so. It allows Brigit to engage with the father complex especially around integrating her contra-sexual other or animus. This process happens naturally around mid-life for women with the decline of oestrogen in the body.

Many more years went by and Brigid became more whole (some would even say holy :) with the guidance of the wise abbess. She went out walking once more and one day seeing the field of barley at the bottom of the hill she went in and began to eat the barley (some stories say she used to distil it and turn it into another type of spirit :)

Commentary:

In the movement of kenosis we empty out the energy of these unconscious complexes and reach a stage where the inner doorway of the soul can now be opened fully. The soul is a doorway to Greater awareness or God. Brigid realises in herself that God can’t be poisoned or Awareness isn’t dualistic and therefore is able to eat the barley.

As she ate it she took all the foreign pesticide, negativity and knowledge into herself and transformed in into love. She could do this because she had been given the grace to do so, and she recognised her deep soul Self (connected to God) couldn't be poisoned but only grow from the experience.

Commentary:

This is a high level of Transcendence where we move from negativity to positivity to eventually awareness which is the ultimate knowing and is neither positive nor negative. In moving beyond negativity or positivity we connect like Brigid to the oneness in all things.

Slowly Brigid built this awareness more and more into her body and one day was out walking when she came by the field of barley again. Like the first time she walked the other way, but as she passed the field it was transformed by her passing. She had come home to herself and God and was no longer separate from the field. She had been planted, grounded and anchored into life.

Commentary:

This is an important element in Spirituality. The awareness that Brigid received in her training allowed her to embody a different structure within. It’s not just a head exercise and Brigid is totally transformed. As within so without and therefore Brigid is able to affect her environment just through her presence.

Brigid then approached the farmer and the legend goes she made an offer to take the land as far as her cloak would stretch. The following morning he returned to see that the mantle had covered a large tract of land surrounding the oak tree where Brigid is said to have done her healing.  The landowner was so overwhelmed at what he saw that he gifted Brigid the land on which to build her church. 

Commentary:

Miracles are ways of describing events that are beyond our rational understanding. When Brigid achieved this level of awareness with the Divine then everything she did had a power that can achieve great things. Some would say this is the mystical union as represented by the outer farmer and Brigid but really taking place in Brigids psyche.

Eventually Brigid became the head of her own monastery and did many good works throughout the land transforming fields of barley into gold, and receiving much merit (and even some fruits :) Often when the moon is full she can be seen dancing through the field with joy, awareness and wild abandon, a living prayer to all those who suffer in the world.

Commentary:

When there is inner freedom and we realise like Brigid that happiness isn’t about our outer circumstances then life becomes a celebration. Brigid message is to be brave enough to celebrate what you believe and be free enough to dance it out into the world.

Jesus on the Inside

Jesus on the Inside

Christian Mysticism

This can be summed up in one word and that is Embodiment. Historically in the church the idea was to sublimate or overcome the body. The spirit was primal and the body was seen as something that caused sin. This can be still seen in the fundamental practice of religion. One of the changes that is happening in Christian Spirituality today is the realisation that the body is a temple for the holy spirit and that the body has to be included in any spiritual practice. If this is not done then the practice of religion becomes just an intellectual one or even just one of doing. You see a lot of practising Catholics who have the ideas and even sometimes doings of the church but they don’t apply it to themselves in terms of embodying the message. And what does that mean, to embody Christianity? It basically means to look inwards. They have a similar process in Islam, which is called the Greater Jihad. The idea with the Greater Jihad is to look inwards and deal with your own stuff before you go out in to the world or even at the same time as you go out in to the world. This I think is the next stage for Catholicism or Christian Practice as a whole.

Up to now we have had a very relative type of relationship with Jesus and with God. Jesus and God seen mainly as literal figures that are outside of ourselves. Obviously the trap in that is that they are outside of us and this can lead to idolatry and dis empowerment of a person.  It is a particular way of practising a religion. What is happening now is people are being invited to embody those literal images in to metaphorical ones that live within us. What does it mean that God or Jesus lives within me? What does that look like? There is a shift in emphasis. We say that when we pray to God that prayer is active, and in that relational model we are praying to something outside of ourselves. In the old days when we meditated it was called passive, because the opposite of active was passive. In a way that hid the true sense of contemplation because the opposite of active is not passive, in the old days it was called Quiet ism and that was banned. The opposite of active prayer in meditation is receptive prayer and that is of course based on the feminine principle. Anything to do with the body was seen as feminine therefore, whether unconscious or not, was seen as some sort of threat that needed to be overcome. Therefore the rediscovery of the feminine principle, the Marian Principle if you want to base it on Mary in the Christian Tradition or the Mary Magdalene Principle is important. That we begin to bring God inside and also begin to bring Jesus inside. The way this works particularly obviously is the main ritual in the Mass where people receive the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of Mass which means that Jesus is embodied within you. You are taking in the body and blood of Christ and within you Jesus is coming alive. You are not reading about some literal figure, you are not trying to emulate his values whether you believe in him or not, you are not just reading Gospel stories, but in a very deep ritualistic way you are saying the body of Christ is coming alive in me.

I am going to shift language because we need another language to continue the conversation, this is where it gets tricky because as I change language, people say that is new age language, or it belongs to a different frame of reference. I am prefacing this because it doesn’t, but we need the words. When we move to a metaphorical language, then things change. If Jesus is alive in me through the sacrament of the mass, then we have to introduce the words consciousness and energetic.  It becomes an energetic experience and it becomes one of Consciousness. Jesus has changed now from the literal figure and becomes a metaphorical representation for Consciousness, sometimes called Christ Consciousness. A particular way of seeing and witnessing and being in the world. That is how the literal figure changes to a metaphorical one. It is an energetic experience as well and I will talk about that later. If Jesus is alive in me and he represents a way of seeing and witnessing and being in the world, what does that mean in my internal self? Basically it is connected to the witnessing observer or witnessing presence if you like, in myself. Up to now Jesus and God were the witnesses of me in my daily life as I aspired to connect more with them. Now when I make a shift in to the internal metaphorical world, it is called the Mystical Shift, I am taking a mystical step, it is no longer outside me it is the next stage where I am inviting Jesus to be alive in me,  very much alive in me.

It is a little tricky whereby if people are not grounded in themselves, they become Jesus. It can impact people’s mental health, in that they become Jesus, they can have a psychotic type episode, or they become God if they have a schizophrenic episode. That is not what we’re talking about obviously, if it is done right, it is Jesus coming alive in me.  The difference being that In terms of my identity, this is another word I’m using: my sense of self: which is a psychological term that is another frame of reference I’m drawing from. But in terms of my identity, I am no longer looking for my identity, my sense of self in the external world, that means, in the story about my life, in the things that I have, the roles that I play, the jobs that I do, my haves and my have not’s, my dreams and so on. I am not looking for my identity there anymore, I am looking inwards now. In doing so I step back from the egoic self, the personality, the story a little bit, the content or the circumstances of what is going on in my life, into a position of observing and witnessing.  Observing and witnessing is not a passive position, this is where people get trapped sometimes, well you are just observing, you are not participating, and that is not the case. Observing and witnessing in this way is active. I am actively witnessing, actively observing in a particular way, this is where the sense of embodying Jesus in the Mystical Tradition comes in. I am witnessing and observing through the lens of Jesus Christ, which metaphorically again represents a non-judgemental, unconditionally loving view of the world, particularly linking to the Beatitudes of the New Testament. It is a particular way of witnessing and observing, it is active and it is using the lens of Jesus Christ. Even more so this changes the way I am in the world. It also changes my prayer life, in the sense that I am not praying to Jesus in the traditional sense outside of myself, praying to something, but Jesus is alive in me as a living prayer in every aspect of my life, all beings, everything that I connect to, that comes through. That is a very different type of Religious Practice to the one that is currently operating in our Society.

In a way I think that is what people are looking for, they are looking for that transitional element to be taught by Religious, so that they can practice it for themselves. In the next stage it is almost like I continue this process allowing Jesus to be alive in me as the loving observer, the witness.  Then also I begin to see, as Jesus is connected to God, I then begin to see God in all things and in all situations and in all people through the eyes of Jesus, because I am connecting to that level of consciousness, that sense of awareness that I can now see God in all things. This is sometimes called God Consciousness. Because this is an embodied experience, it is not just an intellectual one, by embodied I mean you feel the experience in the head, the heart, the gut, I am not just seeing God in all things, I am experiencing God in all moments. What is that like? That is the lived life of the Contemplative, experiencing God in all moments.  The separation between God in me and my individual self is no longer there, I don’t lose the sense of my personality, my life, my story but it becomes secondary to what is alive in me. My sense of identity has shifted away from the external egoic story of my likes and dislikes, my hopes and dreams in to an Inner journey in the Christian Tradition with Jesus and then into what is called a Mystical Marriage with the Divine. Here I can draw on the work of Carl Jung the psychotherapist, talking about the inner marriage between the masculine and the feminine. That is what is happening here as well because the traditional active type of praying to something outside of me to a literal figure Jesus or God has now become a receptive taking in of Jesus or God into me until there is a marriage between the two.. Again using another word outside of the Christian context, we become Whole or Holistic in the world. If Christian Religion is going to go anywhere in its renewal, or going anywhere in the 21^st Century, this is where it has to go.

The Unanswered Question

Stop looking for answers

hold instead to the question

in your heart.

The question taken inwards

unfolds into a stairway

that guides you down

into the centre of your soul

where the wonder,

mystery,

and grace of the unknowing

light a candle

in the darkness.

Where majesty and mundane

can exchange notes

that only a silent listener

can hear....