The Present Moment and Spiritual Practice # 2

(As usual, any quote not designated to an author come form the Ancestors)

…Through our choices and our efforts we go beyond ego and Narrow Mind's pursuits of immediate and momentary satisfactions to engage in Spacious Mind's on-going joys in searching for spiritual fulfillment - joys found in the very quest itself. Narrow Mind concerns itself with the one percent world and so its yearnings can never be gratified in a lasting way unless spiritualized in Spacious Mind. Spacious Mind helps us connect with some of the other 99%. (or the "Field.")

Escaping the present moment is not helpful or healthful. It promotes imbalance as well as a lack of equanimity and harmony.

There are only two feelings, love and fear. Spiritual practice is about subordinating fear to love. 

Fear resides is survival's Monkey (Narrow mind) which is our default mode unless we do spiritual practice. We cannot think our way out of monkey mind without one form or another of going inward. Monkey mind resides in our primitive mind and was designed to help us escape from a bear. It  is linked to our sympathetic, autonomic flight or fight reaction. Usually, however, it is in overdrive during work, fighting traffic and the other challenges of modern living. Monkey mind connects us to our primitive and often our harmful fear based emotions. Sympathetic overdrive is also a major cause of ill health.

Spacious or "Big" mind on the other hand can be located in the prefrontal lobe of the brain and is the default for advanced meditators who appear to have more neuronal density on F.M.R.I scans.

Spacious mind is the seat of our higher consciousness and linked to the positive feelings of a love vibration. It is connected to the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system or the so called relaxation response.

Emotions run high - feelings run deep.
Emotions require discipline.
Feelings require nurturing.
The better one controls emotions the more one can express feelings.

Fear can lead to harmful emotions such as; hate, envy, anger, vengeance, and our poor habits, compulsions, desires and addictions.

"Fear itself is not a foe but acquiescing to it empowers it to be a powerful one." Hillel

Love connects us to our higher ideas, ideals, notions, concepts, beliefs, discriminations and discernments. Spiritual practice is also about the heart and love. The Heart Math instituted tell us that coherence of the heart causes coherence in the brain and vice versa. 

Love generated by spiritual practice should help us subordinate Monkey mind to Spacious mind, our Shadow or Evil Inclination to our Good Inclination (being heart felt), our ego to our higher Self. 

Opening the heart chakra through meditation helps generate empathy and compassion and puts ego, monkey mind, judgment and cynicism on hold. 

The soul’s language is learned by listening with the heart. It has many sounds including that of silence. Its eloquence is universal.

 

The heart must honor the mind (monkey mind) for its understanding and the mind must follow the heart in its wisdom

Use the mind, do not let the mind use you!
Use it to support the heart’s wisdom (and spacious mind's wisdom.)

 

The more we steep ourselves in the immediacy of the moment, the deeper we travel into the heart’s chambers.
The lighter we tread with the mind, the higher the soul will soar.

Bushmen healers say that to be a powerful healer one must love everyone no matter what you think of them. The ancient teaching of love your neighbor as yourself, is a commitment not necessarily a sentiment or an emotion. Spiritual practice should open the heart chakra. We should be able to see the divinity in everyone even if we do not like them we can love that.

Click and play

04_Love.mp3