I came across this desciption of the authentic self by Andrew Cohen today.. just wanted to share..

" The authentic self is the expression

of the evolutionary imperative itself, within the

human heart and mind. It is a perpetual, unending, and

always ecstatic impulse in consciousness that strives

only to create the future. But in order for the authentic

self to function uninhibitedly, the individual has to be

willing to continually let go and embrace ever more of

the world of form in every moment. For the individual,

emotionally, psychologically, and philosophically, this is

what is so ultimately challenging about a truly evolutionary

context at the level of consciousness-the relentless

demand to continue to let go at these very deep

and subtle levels. I think it's only a rare individual who

actually is going to have the courage, the authenticity of

interest, the fearlessness, the liberated awareness to be

able and willing to continually let go in that way and at the

same time have his or her own deepest sense of confidence

in the nature of being and in life remain absolutely

unthreatened. This is often very difficult to explain to

people-that it's possible to be deeply certain, to have the

absolute conviction that is the hallmark of enlightened

awareness, together with a profoundly open and vertically

aspiring self-sense or evolutionary impulse. At an

existential level one can be absolutely convinced and still

be vertically reaching, groping, learning, inquiring, and

growing eternally.

Love
bruce

Wow, I cant believe its been seven months since i last blogged. A lot has happened; I moved back to Durban, South Africa, bought an old Mercedes, flew in a helicopter, went on a mission trip into Africa, and have been getting clear on my life purpose.

When I returned to Durban, i realized that looking for a job made me feel unhappy. I decided not to look for a job, rather, to seek first the kingdom of God, and to get clear on my life purpose.

Resisting the ways of the world, I have spent a lot of time in my apartment, essentially on retreat. Its has become clear that the only thing for me to do is teach enlightenment and a path of transformation towards that place. Its been a time of stepping into my lifes work.

The retreat has given me the clarity of purpose i sought, and has also been a time of transformation as deeper fears and resistances have been transformed.

How this will unfold and how students and I will find each other is still to be revealed :)

blessings
Bruce

www.freeintofull.com

Increasingly I feel more and more intimitely connected to how Spirit is speaking to me. A wise friend of mine suggested I pay intricate, ongoing attention to what is happening within me and without me, and make a note of it all. 

On Wednesday night, I went to a bar to meet a friend of mine. I didn't feel comfortable in the bar, and my friend had a grasping, male hunting, almost aggressive energy which I didn't enjoy. A plate of food was almost spilt in front of us. Soon after, two people next to me, in a strange accident, spilt their beer on me and broke a bottle on the floor. I met another friend shortly after and chatted to her for a while. Standing next to her in another spot, another drink was spilt on me. It wasn't a rowdy night, it was two unusual incidents. I went home soon after as I didn't feel comfortable.

I wonder, can I take on the Karma of another and that manifest in the field around? I slept with a woman on Friday night. She has a strong spirit, yet is also dogged by an inner conflict. This was the second time we slept together; the first time was a beautiful, intimate experience, which created some inner shifts within me. This time she had been drinking, was angry with a friend of hers, and carried the anger into the room with me. She was still angry when we made love. I couldn't get an inch of sleep that night. She neither, and as we were both restless, she felt it better that she return to her house around dawn. As she was getting ready to leave, I kicked over a glass of water in my room, spilling it on the floor.

She left and I finally got some sleep. Later that day, I went to the gym, and on return, found that I had forgotten my keys in the apartment. I never forget my keys, and so I sat, waiting for my housemate to return, wondering how I was locking myself out of my inner chamber. This was an apt reflection, as I have been engaging in more hedonistic, self-serving pleasure and less noble pursuits such as my bodhisattva vow.

That night, I met a new friend, and one of the topics of the night was surrender. We had a great dinner and good chat, yet afterwards, I was a little tired. This morning, I awoke feeling tired and not well rested. I just couldn't seem to get going. I drew a tarot card for the day, and the theme was ‘Control'. I have never once been late for my teaching job. This morning, though, I knocked my protein drink over which required a fair amount of time to clean up the mess. I had to wait to use the bathroom. The trip to work has never taken more than 40 minutes, and I use the underground metro system, and require two changes. The worst possible option of train catching occurred. I missed the first tube by 20 seconds and had to wait six minutes. I missed the next tube by about 30 seconds and had to wait 8 minutes. I missed the final tube by 15 seconds and had to wait 3 minutes. I could feel the frustration rising, and just allowed it to be there, working with the inner voice of control, and didn't push away or indulge in the frustration, waiting for it to self-liberate. I finally arrived at work 5 minutes late for my class. There was nothing eventful at work. Yet, on the way home, buying some groceries, I picked up an egg carton and it was open, and two eggs fell out, smashing. I called the assistant to clean them up.

It just struck me as strange, things spilling, falling, breaking. There were 5 spillages on me or around me or from me in the last five days. This rarely happens to me, and I wonder how I am perhaps spilling emotional energy (symbolized by the fluid and the water) and by wasting that emotional energy on the wrong pursuits, I am destroying my creative potential (smashing the eggs). By focusing on the external world too much, I lose the key to my inner world, which is the real source of my joy, my creativity, and my nourishment. This seems to make sense in terms of my current behavior, as I have been having a lot of fun in my last month in Asia.

So today, I was having creative thoughts. Tonight I feel a return to writing, to creating things, to putting them together,  to prayer, to inner contemplation and a surrender to the divine once again.

I Realized something last week. Something that perhaps has been staring me in the face for as long as I can remember.

Its been an interesting few weeks. A couple of weeks ago I started to sense that my body was disposeable. I also started to wonder what needed to exist for everything else to exist.

I slept with a woman in whom the Holy Spirit is alive and well a week ago. That night, the kundalini process quickened. I had intuitions which are indescribable within my dream states. I slept 14 hours the following night. It started to dawn on me, that God has been there for eternity, and its God who illuminates my experience. Awareness, as Gods presence, is primary, and experience secondary, yet God is the experience. Its as though everyything is turned inside out, and experience arises within awareness, and experience is both cognizance of inner world things like thoughts and feelins and percieved outer things like sights and sounds. Inner and outer dont seem to matter anymore.

Awareness has this body, and not the other way around. This realization, where I finally seemed to have realized what is going on, is very simple, very obvious, nothing to write home about, yet also profound. I feel a little like an idiot; how could I have not realized this before. Its the same awareness that illuminates and powers everyones experience, and this body is siimply a perspective on a dream of Spirit. Yet, all is Spirit, dreaming itself. Spirit is me. I am Spirit. Spirit is everything.

I dont know quite what the implications are. Maybe I will go surfing and sit under banana trees for a while. What I do know is that everyone is running around trapped in a type of optical illusion, thinking   they are seperate from their percieved world.

There is nothing to get, really. Nowhere to go and nowhere to land. My body is adjusting to this and there has been a lot of inner tension as a result.

Love
Bruce

Its up to us to bring the kingdom of God into earth, through good works. First, we have to bring the kingdom of God into ourselves.

I was listening to a talk today, about the difference between self inquiry and narcissm. My experience has been that intense self inquiry and understanding is essential as a phase in the journey, and then it will give way to a desire to do good in the world. I feel that. I feel that I have much less of a need to always go inside, There is not much difference between inside and outside anymore; it is all experience arising. If I watch my thoughts, I realize that I want to create good in the world.

This is not some idealistic fantasy. I have fallen into idealism before and its a trap which seemed to often inadvertently create its opposite, to strengthen darkness. This is heaven coming into the earth through this body.

My journey has been a long journey of healing and opening to Spirit. Slowly, my negative emotions have been increasingly transformed, and I am more and more positive, at ease, accepting, understanding, and balanced. I feel love. I notice the content and emotional driver of almost every thought. Inside me, there has been a hard fough  revelotion against addiction, doubt and fear,  that, through the grace of God, has been won.

I have been asking myself what world I want to create. I read somewhere that before you change the world, change yourself. In the moment to moment of my life, with colleagues, students, friends, I have been opening, laughing, bringing in positive energy. I have made repeated attempts to understand more, listen more, accept more, and if I have a reaction or aversion or obsession, to find that seperate thing within me, becoming more and more free in my inner world.

I have been receieving more and more unsolicited compliments from more different people recently, of how people feel comfortable and understood around me, how they like my positive energy, and how they enjoy my presence. This makes me happy; I am happy that love and goodness is flowing into the world through me, and I am grateful for that. The compliments are important as feedback from  the world is important, and for me it is a sign that finally I am creating good.

The point is that the good is in small places, in flashes of laughter, in a compliment on a friends nails, in the stepping aside and helping an old person. Simple moments, this is where it matters. This is what I suspect we ought to strive for, and that is the transforming of our inner world, irrespective of the conditions around us, and then the joyful expansion of that inner world into the ins and outs of life. This is how good is created. This is how God loves Its up to me to create the world I want, First, I create a beautiful inner world. The outside then follows. .

Love
Bruce

I am sitting on my bed, amazed. This amazement has been flashing for weeks, maybe months, and is becoming ever permanent. Its not like a new understanding, which quickly fades in intensity and becomes stale, or a new experience that soon loses its shine.

It an amazement at the miracle that I am here. I am amazed at the process which is me, which is everything, that has created life, that has created this world. I look at people on the subway, I look at birds and animals and insects, and I am astounded that creation produced this. Sure, things like computers and airplanes are technological marvels, yet we are still have no clue how to create life, yet alone turn that life into anything as seemingly annoying as a mosquitoe, which can feed, reproduce, fly, lay eggs, die.

The miracle of creation is astonishing. More astonishing is this is all me. I have gone through a deeper series of realizations, and I see the body that I arise in as deeply impersonal, as just a perseptive that sees and experiences this world, yet also as being made of the same fabric, of the same essence, as all that arises within and without me. Its a sense, a knowing, that no thing is seperate from being, from essence, and that essence is my identity.

Its an identity which existed before I popped out of my mothers womb, before I thought I was Bruce and nothing else, before I became obssessed with my seperate self and which I recognized after I finally undid this seperate self obsession.
Eveyrthing is alive; left for long enough, the airplanes will break down, Spirit will breathe life into their metallic dust, and life will climb out of the rocks. Where did it come from? The mystery is too stupendous to even try and understand. All I can do is enjoy the show, and do some good.

Love
Bruce

I spoke to a good friend, S., last night. She has been in love with someone for three years but cannot be with him, even though he lives near to her. I know her well, and I know that when she was two years old she was sent to live away from her parents and  that hurt her a lot.
We chatted on the phone for a long time, and what emerged was her loneliness, and her feelings of isolation.

I can relate. I went though a long healing journey, and I had to get down deep into my unconscious to find the roots of my isolation. For a long while, I was happy to be self contained, and happy to be an island, and thats just how I was. Gradually, it dawned on me that I desired love, and that everyone naturally desires to love and be loved, and I started to search for the root causes of my disconnection.

At first, I tried to use my mind and do it rationally, trying to understand. That didnt work. I tried to get relationships and for whatever reason, they didnt last. Eventually, using awareness of my feeling states of loneliness and longing, I felt my way to the roots of my isolation, and it became clear that early childhood experiences had lead to a feeling of not being loved.

I carried the script that I was unlovable for a long time, and it played out in how I kept myself isolated. Until I could get to the root cause, any positive affirmation or action I took was almost certain to fail, as I was unaware of how my deeper game of 'not being loved' was playing out. INcreasingly, I find that if I can let go of my limitations, then my natural desires carry my forward into creating the life I want. The key, is that I have to find and release my limitations first, (in other words, I have to heal), before I can create.

So, I was thinking of S., again. Knowing what I know now, what are some tools she can use to explore her situation.

The first is to use non-conceptual awareness to stay with feelings and explore them. This simply means to just feel without getting lost in thinking about the feeling, or without judging the feeling or pushing it away. Simply stay with the feeling, notice where it is in the body, name it, and then, all the while staying with it, become deeply curious about it. If you can stay present and stay curious (this may take hours or days or several attempts) eventually the root cause will reveal itself.

The second method is to look at her situation as if from an outside perspective. The game has someone who deeply longs for love, yet is frustrated in that longing. Its conveniant that situations appear to be in place that keep her frustrated, and she doesnt know how to get out of this. So, what deep beliefs would someone need to hold, to have the experience of longing from the depths of their soul for love, yet being denied that love? It would need to be a belief of 'not being worthy of love, or not being allowed love' or something like that. Its interesting that in the situation she told me, she wants to love but he wont give it to her. So, there is a projected other who has the power to give or take or bestow love.

Once the play, or game, is seen, then it may be traced back (out of interest, but not necesarry) to early family dynamics or ther powerful emotional experiences. Did S. really want love but the family didnt give it? Once the game is seen, it can start to be transcended. This is not easy. and some of my early scripts of longing for love but being frustrated were very painful to move through. as there was also a lot of associated and unresolved hurt and anger from being denied that which I longed for. Still. a useful place to start is to 3-2-1 Shadow work to start to take ownership of the qualities which are seen in the other.

The process is simply to imagine facing and speaking to the imagined other from the heart, as openly and truthfully as possible, and then being the other, speaking from their perspective and fully and emotionally as possible, and doing this, the projection can be reclaimed.


Its difficult work. yet liberating.

love
Bruce

My inner practice the last few weeks has been based on this profound statement by Christ 'Resist not evil'. What did he mean by that? Simply, whatever negative irrational emotion arises within your awareness, simply notice it, and dont engage it or try and push it away. Notice it, name it and surrender it to Spirit. Do this and keep turning to the light, and if its not shadow material, then it will fade away.

The other line i like is 'dont worship false gods'. To me, this means that emotions, like fear, doubt, even love and happiness, should not control you and direct you. The key again is to let them be there and keep surrendering them to Spirit.

As I write this, i think that the caveat to 'resist not evil' should also be 'grasp not onto good'. Offer all happiness and joy to Spirit too, keeping returning it to the Source.

In my hometown of Durban, South Africa, I met many Christians who I feel are enlightened and dont even know it. They have spent their whole lives surrendering to Jesus that sanctification has occurred, and they are among the most peaceful, loving and accepting people I know. I found that ironic that I ran around teh world in search of the mythical enlightenment (which is real when you realize you can never find it..lol) only to come home and find that there are a bunch of liberated folks in my own back yard. God has a sense of humor..

love
Bruce

I am around a month into my vacation, having taken six weeks off work to go home to south africa, see family and friends. I havnt been writing much, but hope to get back into blogging again in a couple of weeks. Hope everyone has a growing and happy 2009!!

:)
Bruce

hi..ok...so this is quite a long blog...be warned :)

I had some communication difficulties with a good friend this week, and it has raised a lot of questions for me, which is good. I need to be questioned, I need to have good problems to solve that can solve me as well. I need to write this, to express the drive that wants to share learning, to explore my thoughts on communication, and what communication means to me. What does it mean? What does it entail? I write this with the hope that my learning may be helpful for others.  

The issue was simple on the surface. My friend and I were not connecting, and we bashed heads in a way. Maybe I bashed my head against her. Maybe she bashed her head against me. When heads are being bashed, each person is convinced that they are right.  She felt I wasn't listening to her. She felt I invaded her boundaries. Maybe. In my world this was not so, yet in hers, it was. So, a good first assumption is that everyone is right if they are convinced that they are not lying.  I just don't do the ‘I am simply right and you are simply wrong' thing, as that is a denial of the truth of one expression (even though it may be flawed). I am in favor of honoring the truth, and then seeking a more accurate truth through investigation.   So, why do heads bump into each other. I spent a few days resting with this, just trying to understand all sides of the situation. 

I came across these words by Krishnamurti..   How can I find a true answer when I am confused? Do you understand? If I am confused, I can only receive an answer that is also confused. If my mind is confused, if my mind is disturbed, if my mind is not beautiful, quiet, whatever answer I receive will be through this screen of confusion, anxiety and fear, and therefore the answer will be perverted. So what is important is not to ask "What is the purpose of all this?" but to clear the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man who asks ‘What is light'. If I tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness, but suppose he is able to see,  then he will never ask the question "What is light?"  It is there.  

I don't wish to fight, but sometimes I do? Why? Because I get stuck in a perspective, in a way of seeing the world, that makes perfect sense in my world, yet has no meaning in anothers world. To understand the other, to see what she sees, I cannot ask "What is light?" I have to see with my own eyes through her eyes. The first thing is to step out of my perspective, out of my screen of seeing the world.   So, I try and step into hers. She was frustrated with me, angry that she had told me many times how she experienced the world, and I kept on saying I wanted to understand. I couldn't do that while stuck in my frame of reference. First, I honored my frame. Then I felt her perspective, and it started to make a lot of sense. My friend T. has been a psychotherapist for many years, and connects to people through the experience of her feeling in her body and by sensing what they are feeling. She is highly skilled at doing that, and has years and years of practice and results to validate the importance of being in the body, and by doing that, she has reduced the suffering on this planet. I respect her deeply for that. Being in the body holds tremendous value and integrity and goodness in her world. That's her strength, her connection to others. She is able to inhabit the body with natural ease, to know what she is feeling, and to name her feelings with accuracy, and she is very capable of healthily expressing those feelings.  That's why she kept on telling me to describe how I felt, even if it's bad feelings. That's how she connects to the world, how she best interprets the world, and what motivates her actions in the world.  I get that now. I get that to step in to her world and connect, I need to feel, to resonate, I need to be in my body and to respond from that presence, from that body awareness.  It's a learning curve for me, for someone whose strength and habitual frame is ideas and the mind.  

This brings up an interesting point. We have a fundamental desire to connect to each other. We desire to find another who can share our experience, who can resonate, where we can come together. It's built into our fabric of being, its built in to want to share in that miracle where two separate bodies can say or feel or share an experience, to say ‘I know what you mean.' This shared experience can be somatic experience, such as a feeling of love or fear or hunger. It can be a mental experience, such as a shared inspirational idea, a shared way of compassionate understanding. It could be visual, such as looking at the same beautiful mountain together, or sound, hearing uplifting music, or a sacred spiritual experience where both people exist in the bliss of divine love. It may be angry and hate filled, as in two Nazi's speaking about genocide, or loving and caring, such as two mothers overflowing with unconditional affection. The point is, loving or hating, we desire to connect. We have a desire to seek others in the same space we are in, to be supported and to be understood, and that is a source of strength when found.

The problem arises when we try and connect exclusivly from our frame of reference, from our perspective, in which me may be unconsciously or habitually embedded.   Does this mean that one is needy or desperate or wants to cross another's boundaries in the desire to connect? It's a problem if one tries to insert ones worldview on other, to force a perspective onto another perspective that is different from the first. That would feel like an invasion of boundaries, like an unwelcome penetration into a space that is not ready or willing or receptive to receive that approach. In its most brutal form, it's a type of psychic rape. I was coming strongly from my perspective, coming from a fierce learning mind, trying to engage from that place, and  I can see now how that would have been felt as a violation, as she was not open to it, being embedded as she was in her feeling perspective.  Yet, it's not a problem if two people are inhabiting the same perspective, such as being in the body, and then boundaries naturally collapse and openness arises as each knows what the feeling means. There is a reference point, I.e. we both know what joy means and the two beings, for a while, can merge, and experience the miracle of connection.  

So, does this then mean that communication is always one person giving up their perspective to inhabit the world of another? Is that really honoring all perspectives, or is it a sacrifice of the truth of one side in return for the miracle of connection?   I feel first I need to wake up to the world of emptiness, to see how my perspective is fundamentally empty. By seeing, this, the grasp of the separate self sense on that perspective is loosened, and I can relax. The perspective doesn't disappear, all that disappears is the grasping, the attachment to seeing the world exclusively through that lens. Once the grip is loosened, once I can rest in emptiness and see my world floating before my eyes without being caught up inside it, then I am free to inhabit the world of form.  I like these words, which to me reflect the liberating capacity of awareness.  (I used them in a previous blog, so if anyone is reading this again....sorry for the repetition).

'rest in natural great peace, this exhausted mind.
Beaten helplessly by karma and neurotic thoughts.
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves in the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.
To find rest'  

After emptiness is again realized, and the perspective I was holding so tightly is seen to be just an empty play of phenomena,  a new movement, the descent into form, is possible. In my case, I am free to inhabit the body, and experience the world through feelings. I can hold my old perspective, or embrace a new one, and slowly (with practice and awareness) I can become fuller, more embracing, more encapsulating of this world, my world, our world, as I hold and dance through increasing perspectives.  A beautiful possibility then arises, the possibility of interpenetration, the possibility of communication being a radical loving inquiry where we think, take risks, experiment and explore another's world, as compared to forcefully inserting ourselves into another's sacred field.  There is the assumption that both worlds have truth to share, and perhaps it's possible to learn about others perspectives and find them in oneself. That assumption is based in integrity, in a compassionate embrace to honor the inclusivity of both worlds, of all the fields of human experience present,  including the body, the mind, the spirit and the soul. Anything less is partial, is fragmented, and leads to suffering.     

I felt suffering when my perspective was not honored. I know that I am dedicated to truth, to honoring and expressing truth, even though I may not always do it in the most skillful manner. Attempting to honor that perspective before it's released into emptiness just solidifies the ego, and leads to further suffering. Yet, not honoring my perspective, once that perspective had been released into emptiness, is a denial, a rejection of the world of form, a rejection of the whole picture in return for a limited embrace of one of the parts. In the call for truth, I feel compelled to call with love for all the voices of Spirit to be heard, for all viewpoints to be allowed into the light, including my own. Can my friends call me to honor their worlds? Yes. Can I call them to honor mine? I can only offer an invitation, in invitation grounded in emptiness.  And then, only then, can the viewpoints be understood in a clearer light. If all is not honored, and some perspectives are locked away, then a cycle of suffering starts again. I wrote this poem a while back. It was about the pain of disowning perspectives that have caused conflict and suffering, and locking them away inside ourselves. In my embrace of anothers world, I cannot reject my own any longer, for its equally valid and has its reasons for being there, and I feel one of the highest loves we can offer is the context in which another can be what they need to be and experience what their soul needs to experience, without our own filters blocking the light.  All perspectives seek for their liberation into emptiness, into Love. Isnt that what Bodhisattva's vow to do?

Big sky sunset, all golden.
I am exhausted from turning away.
Exhausted,
from turning away from myself.  

Oh, if you were watching from the outside,
you would think I was normal.
A 35 year old man, foreign looking, yet to have his 2.6 children,
riding a train,
writing who knows what in his book.  

You could not see how I have always been turning away.
It's not your fault, you see.
You could not see, how, walking to work,
eating, sleeping, stuttering, love making,
I have turned away and barricaded myself in.  

If, by magic, yu could travel through the air across the room,
and slit open the back of my skull
climb into the middle of my brain, watching my thoughts (being caressed by my feelings),
 you would begin to be haunted and repulsed by
my silent, subtle Self inflicted Brutality.  

News flash! "An Austrian man keeps his daughter captive in a cellar for 22 years, rapes her repeatedly, and has seven children through her."  

The world is rightfully horrified.
We rightfully scream outrage at this sick sick man.
Yet, you are not horrified at me,
hovering silently inside my head that you so secretly split open,
watching me?
(Did you know that you can hover within yourself too?)  

You are not horrified,
when you see how long I have pushed myself away
and held myself down.
Everytime I thrust to reach a goal to save myself,
everytime I pushed to be something I was not,
everytime I strove to get something and have something and satisfy myself through my desire, I silently fought myself.
I silently, relentlessly, pushed myself down,
keeping my unwanted self captive in my tortured darkness,
crushing my soul,
giving birth to slow madness upon slow madness.  

Love.
Love has penetrated.
Love has awakened.
I got too sick; I needed healing.
A voice in my soul called out to Love, and Love answered.
Silent, unwavering, Love answered.  

As you hover inside the slit in my skull,
you see. I see.
You and I, one, not two,
we see together, my violent oppression, my inner savagery.  

We are Love seeing.
We are Love, liberating,
ending this insanity.

A light shines into the darkness.
Torture cannot continue in the light.
The dark veil is lifted; the cellars opened,
and painfully, screaming in delight, fearfully, ecstatically,
the captives (my disowned and disohonored selves that were impossible to kill) Crawl into sunshine.        


It's a fun game, a fascinating journey.
Love Bruce