[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Gem

I was raised Christian, too, which instilled basic moral behaviour, but under the fear of God's wrath as well, and my religious upbringing did more harm than good, wot with all the guilt trips etc, but all my beliefs collapsed very suddenly one night when I was 19 during a weird NDE spiced with a lot of alcohol and drugs, and from then on there's no way I can believe in religion at all. It doesn't matter much in terms of mindfulness, though, people can believe what they want, but we tend to find that our beliefs become exposed for the nonsense that they are once we become sincere about the truth - and in terms of morality, that means being so honest inside that our 'stories' tend to be a lot less convincing.

Yes I know the harm aspect can be confining to one's true self wanting to embrace life beyond that guilt trips etc. So that harm aspect I know all too well created a real disjointed connection to life in me and around me. Unlike yourself, my shift from conditioned religious core stuff didn't really kick in till much later when I hit the dark night of the soul time, where I had to go deep to pull out all those roots still lingering and affecting my openness and truth of the bigger picture and expand my reality as one monumental shift. Its like sometimes you need to see the whole bang lot together to kind of get it to hit home in everyway and see a way out. I guess your moment gave you what you needed back when you were "only nineteen" .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY

My dark night of the soul and expanded view of reality as one, was really where the deeper truth's were housed so once I landed in those roots, there was no where to go by that stage. Into the messy land and see the greater land awaiting, let go and found my way through the maze of craziness.

Well, yes - what we call focus is actually already there - for example, if you are in a quite room and close your eyes and listen, any slight sound is immediately heard clear as a bell, so if we can take that same principle of noticing and apply it to whatever thoughts arise, then thoughts will arise in a clear space just like sounds do in a quiet room. The thing is, if you are in a quiet room like that, you don't try to make any sound because if you do you won't hear the sounds that arise, and it's quite easy to just quiet down and listen for whatever sound might happen in a quiet room.

That makes sense. Listening is probably my strongest tool. Being hearing impaired has forced me in so many ways of its deterioration, to focus and listen deeper. So it comes more natural to me now to bring a deeper awareness beyond my 'normal ears' down into my 'being' and listen from there. So I suppose the loss was a gain in this way of viewing this issue I have.

It's a good metaphor for the practice because although many meditation techniques are trying to produce experiences, when we listen in a quiet room we simply become alert to the sounds that are there, and we automatically become quiet ourselves so that we can notice them. That is to say, if a person genuinely wants to know what is there, they will quiet down and 'listen' - and they won't try to quiet down - they only try to hear.

I did a workshop today about once again reminding me about dropping down into my being to move beyond the mind's eye and experiencing from that point alone (meaning not staying stuck in those views) shifting down into the belly to open up a deeper experience where all of me showed up, I entered the feeling, let go, opened the space of confinement, let go, climbed back up to my "birds eye view" where I saw the higher truth or wisdom of myself in all that. Where as the "minds eye" saw only myself as the vision alone, which was ok, because ultimately I was doing a test on myself as to why it is so easy to tell yourself the story of your visions rather than going down into your belly and allowing the whole self to show you more and gain more self awareness in that process.

In this sense, morality can already open up life issues, because you have to live in the truth, no matter how uncomfortable that might be, and the truth doesn't deal in what anyone wants. The truth is a word for 'as it is'; not a word for 'the way you want it to be'. If the foundations are not stable, then the truth will be obscured by justifications and stories of blame, but as I said, one has to quiet down to hear sounds in a quiet room, so it's ok for stories to come up, as one realises, 'oh, so this what I have been doing, justifying and blaming and making excuses,' and that means you don't care about those stories anymore, you recognise the fallacy and they become meaningless. You lose interest in them and stop making that sort of noise. If they pop up, you recognise them like, that's the stuff I used to think, knowing well you no longer believe it.

Makes much sense.

There we go, that's one problem solved, so one continues in a similar vein, being truthful, believing nothing the mind has to say, as thoughts are like sounds in a quiet room - they come into the mind and then they go away.

Yep.