: Today’s Reflection is about another perspective of looking at our deeply
: and profoundly interconnected world, where nothing exists in isolation,
: and everything impacts, affects, and depends on everything else.
The following is a story Keli
told me, about a live performance Prince gave in Vancouver a long time
ago; I hope that in retelling it, I will do the story as much justice
as it deserves.
Prince. Live performance. Crowds. Music. And
everything else that accompanies such an event. At some point, Prince
stops playing, turns to the audience, and asks: “What’s better, to give
or to receive?”
“To give,” scream some. “To receive,” shout others.
He
repeats his question. In return, even more screaming and shouting and
noise, all variations of the same answers. He points to a woman,
screaming from her seat in the front row: “What is better, to give or
to receive?”
“To give!” is her reply.
“OK,” says Prince.
“You are saying that to give is better than to receive?” Her loud “Yes”
carries through the whole space, as he raises his hand and quiets the
audience.
“I want you then,” he says, pointing to the woman, “to
give your seat to someone at the very last row and go sit there
instead. Trade places.”
Silence descends on the whole place.
“What is better, to give or to receive?” he asks again.
By
now, the silence is palpable and the audience can feel, sense, taste,
and touch it. It is as if time stands still. He repeats the question
again. Now the silence is heavy, drawing people deeper and deeper into
themselves. Nothing moves.
He then invites the woman from the
front row to the stage. Assistants bring pillows and make a comfortable
and cozy area for her to sit, right there, in the center of the stage.
He turns his back to the whole audience and performs a song – facing
the woman, singing just for her.
:: “You cannot teach an ego to be anything but egotistic, even though egos have
:: the subtlest ways of pretending to be reformed. The basic thing is therefore
:: to dispel, by experiment and experience, the illusion of oneself as a
:: separate ego.” - Alan Watts
When the song is over, he turns to the audience and asks again, “What is getter – to give or to receive?”
There
is still silence in the space, yet it is different now. Somehow, it is
more gentle, contemplative, intimate. “You cannot have one without the
other,” says Prince.
I keep coming back to this story, time and
time again, in a variety of situations and circumstances. How true his
message is. Some weeks ago, I witnessed a profoundly beautiful,
touching, and inspiring ceremony, where a group of students and faculty
acknowledged and appreciated a program dean, who has contributed
immensely to an MBA school, from the very beginning. She is now taking
a short sabbatical, and in an opening circle, people stood up and
acknowledged her contribution to the school and their own lives. Beyond
the appreciations themselves, one of the things that touched me the
most was observing her receive the appreciations – gracefully, humbly,
without trying to avoid or deflect the kind words that were shared with
her in front of a group of about a hundred people.
One cannot
fully give, if the message is not being fully received. The giver and
the receiver depend on each other for a full experience of grace,
kindness, appreciation, and love. Without such relationship of
interdependence, there is no giver and no receiver.
:: “The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence
:: of all things and events – that the world beyond the skin is actually an
:: extension of our own bodies – and will end in destroying the very environment
:: from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.”
:: - Alan Watts
This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That.
- James Broughton
A sunny week to you all, inside and out.
:: Simon’s Reflections newsletter is published on a
:: bi-weekly basis and contains writings that touch
:: the heart, provoke the mind, and inspire action.
:: And I do welcome your thoughts and comments.
Simon
About: http://www.SimonGoland.com
Blog: http://www.SimonGoland.com/news
Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SimonsReflectionsList
08 December 2008
04 December 2008
Voice Dialogue
Dr Hal & Sidra Stone's Voice Dialogue Tips
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:10:40 +1100 (EST)
From: Voice Dialogue Tips
Voice Dialogue Tips
December 2008
Email us: jcoroneos@bigpond.com
Web Site: http://www.bodymindinformation.com
Dear Participant
Welcome again to Hal & Sidra's Voice Dialogue Tips.
1. The month's article is titled "Meditation and Voice Dialogue"
2. Become a WRITER: Learn the Art and Craft of Story and Screenwriting
The most highly paid profession and rewarding career!
1. Meditation and Voice Dialogue
by
J'aime ona Pangaia
The goal of Voice Dialogue practice is the emergence of the Aware Ego Process. What is that? It's operating with free will, the ability to make choices in the moment with compassion and an energetic connection to our body. Essentially that means separating from our identification with a, or any part of ourself and having an ego experience ("I") that has the capacity to make choices with Awareness. By Awareness, I mean non-judgmental, unconditional, un-attached witnessing awareness. Choice-less awareness. Unvarnished beholding. Dispassionate Compassion. How many of us experience that?
This type of awareness may occur for moments, randomly in a person's life, or we may never experience it consciously. But, we have a greater potential to experience this awareness when we've engaged in an activity to practice it, to cultivate it. One of the oldest, simplest form of awareness practice is breath meditation. This involves setting our intention that the natural rise and fall of our breath be the sole object of our attention for a set period of time. This is a humbling discipline, because as soon as one begins meditation, other experiences rush in to compete for our attention. Thoughts, sensations and emotions layer in and our attention on our breath is lost. We quickly become possessed by these competing perceptions; we become attached, identified with whatever wins our attention in the moment.
We become consumed by that feeling of anger, or sadness, we become obsessed with that sudden, relentless itch behind our ear, we are mesmerized by our plans for tomorrow's meeting, we start rehearsing what we're going to say to someone. Our intention to focus on our breath is forgotten and our attention has been hijacked by whatever perception has won the moment.
Practicing meditation helps us to develop the strength to separate from selves. When I sit down for a half hour of meditation, I have to separate from selves a thousand times. Or more. Over and over, I bring my attention to just watching my breath, without comment, without emotion, without distraction or avoidance, without desire or resentment, just watching. With every returning to my breath, I groom my capacity to just watch. I discover Awareness, which is omnipresent although not often consciously experienced due to the almost ceaseless possessions of the ego. Again and again, I intend to watch my breath and over time and practice, I become more attuned to the experience of empty awareness, and what clouds it over.
Awareness doesn't do anything, and so we cannot 'aware our way through life'. We must engage with life, make choices and live with the consequences. Voice Dialogue, a psycho-spiritual discipline shares the stance taken by Buddhism that we can train ourselves to recognize ego states (sub-personalities, inner selves, 'parts', individualized archetypal patterns) as states, not what-I-am, once we are aware. We call this the 'aware ego process'. From there, we can begin to live life with choice, compassion, engagement and non-attachment. Through awareness, we recognize the existence of these selves while remembering and experiencing them as means of being; they are not our essential being. Our essential being is paradoxically full of every creative possibility, indelibly unique, and empty of anything in permanence.
Our closest common experience of awareness is with an inner part I'll call the Inner Critic. While witnessing Awareness is non-judgmental and has no agenda, the Inner Critic also perceives everything, but with negative judgment. When bringing our Awareness to the Inner Critic, we can perceive that it has an agenda - to change our behavior in order to protect vulnerability. Awareness of the basic nature of the Inner Critic can transform our relationship with the Inner Critic. We can pay attention to what it's trying to orient us to ~ our vulnerability, and when we start becoming relating to our vulnerability with Awareness, the Inner Critic calms down. Now we are no longer victim to the Inner Critic, nor trying to change or repress it. We accept it.
Meditation is a practice, it is an exercise, a discipline to potentiate a direct experience of Awareness. Any given time we settle down to meditate, we may or may not have much direct experience of Awareness. Or we may. We practice meditation, not so much so that we have awareness experience while meditating, but that our practice of meditation provides us with more Awareness experience in everyday life, on and off the proverbial meditation cushion. In fact the more we try to have an Awareness experience, the less we'll have one, since we're fixedly in a self that has an agenda.
The same goes for Voice Dialogue facilitation (a kind of engaged, two person practice of meditating). We may, or may not, have a big 'aha!' during the facilitation experience, in fact, it often comes afterwards, and more quietly. Because of Voice Dialogue facilitation, we simply see more clearly and immediately when we are in the throes of an inner self, and we can recognize it as such: ah, a self! There's a choice now, and we're more aware of it. We perceive that choice with less, or no judgments. We may still have to wrestle ourselves from the habit of our old patterns, but this is very similar to wrestling our attention away from passing thoughts, feelings, and sensations while meditating.
In everyday life, the practice of meditation conditions us to a return to the fleeting, yet expansive moment. Here I am now, and I have options. In meditation, our option is to return to our breath. That's our intention, our practice. In everyday life, our intention is to return to the present, to complexity, to paradox, to include more of how we can be, given the actual conditions of the moment.
Without the Aware Ego Process, we live by habitual patterns, we live through projections on the world, we live identified with some ways of being and by disowning others, we live by 'right' and 'wrong': judgment, we live through memories and fantasies, without relating much to what actually is, right now. Meditation and Voice Dialogue are like twin practices, complementing each other. Either one by itself is helpful; together, our direct experience of Awareness, and the Aware Ego Process is more probable.
For more Voice Dialogue tips and information, visit http://www.bodymindinformation.com
2. Become a WRITER: Learn the Art and Craft of Story and Screenwriting
The most highly paid profession and most rewarding career!
2. from Michael Domeyko Rowland,
presenter, director and writer of the Voice Dialogue Series.
Writing is an incredibly fulfilling activity and probably the most creative outlet for anyone interested in the personality and exploring the deeper parts of the mind. You will reveal your own inner being and discover all sorts of things about yourself that you would never find in any other way. Writing for the screen or the page is a fascinating and amazing experience, when approached in the right way. It is also the fastest way to generate a very large income, with royalties that can pay off for the rest of your life.
Most people make the mistake of writing from the conscious mind. The conscious mind can only ever come up with clichés, because it is not the source of originality and creativity. It is vital for editing, but not for creation. Many also make the mistake of not understanding the true function of story for an audience.
Deep within your mind you have an unlimited resource, a realm of undiscovered selves, which only the greatest writers know about. This resource I have called the Mythopoetica. It is the realm of the superconscious. It holds the ability to create any story whatsoever. This is the part of your mind that creates all your dreams. It is also the part of your mind that will bring into your consciousness the most inspiring, interesting and amazing stories you can imagine.
If you are interested in discovering the complete structural system, used by the world's finest story and screenwriters to guarantee that they have a professional and saleable story, as well as how to write directly from your superconscious, then please email me and I will send you a free ebrochure about a web based writing course I am offering. It is available for a limited time only.
The integration of classic structure and the superconscious is what makes this course unique. Email to: info@lifeact.com and put ‘Writing' in the subject line.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Send these Voice Dialogue Tips to Friends:
If you would like to send these tips on to any of your friends, please forward them by email. You can also advise your friends at http://www.bodymindinformation.com/tell-a-friend.php If you are able to help us do this, we would like to thank you by sending you a FREE REPORT titled: Voice Dialogue: A Guide To Great Relationships.
They can also register to receive future copies on our web site, which has a subscriber's panel, or they can email jcoroneos@bigpond.com directly. We will not be giving any of the addresses we receive to anyone else or any other organization. At any point you can stop receiving them - just click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.
How To Change Your Email details:
If you need to change your email address, the quickest and surest way is this: click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this page. Then go to the web site http://www.bodymindinformation.com and resubscribe with your new address. If you find your name spelt incorrectly, or have no name mentioned at the beginning of this letter, then email us on jcoroneos@bigpond.com and we will change it.
Warmly,
Dr John Coroneos
Medical Doctor
Producer of The Voice Dialogue Series
Copyright Wiseone Edutainment P/L
No part of Hal and Sidra's Voice Dialogue tips may be reproduced, in any form, without the written permission of Drs Hal and Sidra Stone except for forwarding an issue, in its entirety and complete with copyright information, to a friend.
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:10:40 +1100 (EST)
From: Voice Dialogue Tips
Voice Dialogue Tips
December 2008
Email us: jcoroneos@bigpond.com
Web Site: http://www.bodymindinformation.com
Dear Participant
Welcome again to Hal & Sidra's Voice Dialogue Tips.
1. The month's article is titled "Meditation and Voice Dialogue"
2. Become a WRITER: Learn the Art and Craft of Story and Screenwriting
The most highly paid profession and rewarding career!
1. Meditation and Voice Dialogue
by
J'aime ona Pangaia
The goal of Voice Dialogue practice is the emergence of the Aware Ego Process. What is that? It's operating with free will, the ability to make choices in the moment with compassion and an energetic connection to our body. Essentially that means separating from our identification with a, or any part of ourself and having an ego experience ("I") that has the capacity to make choices with Awareness. By Awareness, I mean non-judgmental, unconditional, un-attached witnessing awareness. Choice-less awareness. Unvarnished beholding. Dispassionate Compassion. How many of us experience that?
This type of awareness may occur for moments, randomly in a person's life, or we may never experience it consciously. But, we have a greater potential to experience this awareness when we've engaged in an activity to practice it, to cultivate it. One of the oldest, simplest form of awareness practice is breath meditation. This involves setting our intention that the natural rise and fall of our breath be the sole object of our attention for a set period of time. This is a humbling discipline, because as soon as one begins meditation, other experiences rush in to compete for our attention. Thoughts, sensations and emotions layer in and our attention on our breath is lost. We quickly become possessed by these competing perceptions; we become attached, identified with whatever wins our attention in the moment.
We become consumed by that feeling of anger, or sadness, we become obsessed with that sudden, relentless itch behind our ear, we are mesmerized by our plans for tomorrow's meeting, we start rehearsing what we're going to say to someone. Our intention to focus on our breath is forgotten and our attention has been hijacked by whatever perception has won the moment.
Practicing meditation helps us to develop the strength to separate from selves. When I sit down for a half hour of meditation, I have to separate from selves a thousand times. Or more. Over and over, I bring my attention to just watching my breath, without comment, without emotion, without distraction or avoidance, without desire or resentment, just watching. With every returning to my breath, I groom my capacity to just watch. I discover Awareness, which is omnipresent although not often consciously experienced due to the almost ceaseless possessions of the ego. Again and again, I intend to watch my breath and over time and practice, I become more attuned to the experience of empty awareness, and what clouds it over.
Awareness doesn't do anything, and so we cannot 'aware our way through life'. We must engage with life, make choices and live with the consequences. Voice Dialogue, a psycho-spiritual discipline shares the stance taken by Buddhism that we can train ourselves to recognize ego states (sub-personalities, inner selves, 'parts', individualized archetypal patterns) as states, not what-I-am, once we are aware. We call this the 'aware ego process'. From there, we can begin to live life with choice, compassion, engagement and non-attachment. Through awareness, we recognize the existence of these selves while remembering and experiencing them as means of being; they are not our essential being. Our essential being is paradoxically full of every creative possibility, indelibly unique, and empty of anything in permanence.
Our closest common experience of awareness is with an inner part I'll call the Inner Critic. While witnessing Awareness is non-judgmental and has no agenda, the Inner Critic also perceives everything, but with negative judgment. When bringing our Awareness to the Inner Critic, we can perceive that it has an agenda - to change our behavior in order to protect vulnerability. Awareness of the basic nature of the Inner Critic can transform our relationship with the Inner Critic. We can pay attention to what it's trying to orient us to ~ our vulnerability, and when we start becoming relating to our vulnerability with Awareness, the Inner Critic calms down. Now we are no longer victim to the Inner Critic, nor trying to change or repress it. We accept it.
Meditation is a practice, it is an exercise, a discipline to potentiate a direct experience of Awareness. Any given time we settle down to meditate, we may or may not have much direct experience of Awareness. Or we may. We practice meditation, not so much so that we have awareness experience while meditating, but that our practice of meditation provides us with more Awareness experience in everyday life, on and off the proverbial meditation cushion. In fact the more we try to have an Awareness experience, the less we'll have one, since we're fixedly in a self that has an agenda.
The same goes for Voice Dialogue facilitation (a kind of engaged, two person practice of meditating). We may, or may not, have a big 'aha!' during the facilitation experience, in fact, it often comes afterwards, and more quietly. Because of Voice Dialogue facilitation, we simply see more clearly and immediately when we are in the throes of an inner self, and we can recognize it as such: ah, a self! There's a choice now, and we're more aware of it. We perceive that choice with less, or no judgments. We may still have to wrestle ourselves from the habit of our old patterns, but this is very similar to wrestling our attention away from passing thoughts, feelings, and sensations while meditating.
In everyday life, the practice of meditation conditions us to a return to the fleeting, yet expansive moment. Here I am now, and I have options. In meditation, our option is to return to our breath. That's our intention, our practice. In everyday life, our intention is to return to the present, to complexity, to paradox, to include more of how we can be, given the actual conditions of the moment.
Without the Aware Ego Process, we live by habitual patterns, we live through projections on the world, we live identified with some ways of being and by disowning others, we live by 'right' and 'wrong': judgment, we live through memories and fantasies, without relating much to what actually is, right now. Meditation and Voice Dialogue are like twin practices, complementing each other. Either one by itself is helpful; together, our direct experience of Awareness, and the Aware Ego Process is more probable.
For more Voice Dialogue tips and information, visit http://www.bodymindinformation.com
2. Become a WRITER: Learn the Art and Craft of Story and Screenwriting
The most highly paid profession and most rewarding career!
2. from Michael Domeyko Rowland,
presenter, director and writer of the Voice Dialogue Series.
Writing is an incredibly fulfilling activity and probably the most creative outlet for anyone interested in the personality and exploring the deeper parts of the mind. You will reveal your own inner being and discover all sorts of things about yourself that you would never find in any other way. Writing for the screen or the page is a fascinating and amazing experience, when approached in the right way. It is also the fastest way to generate a very large income, with royalties that can pay off for the rest of your life.
Most people make the mistake of writing from the conscious mind. The conscious mind can only ever come up with clichés, because it is not the source of originality and creativity. It is vital for editing, but not for creation. Many also make the mistake of not understanding the true function of story for an audience.
Deep within your mind you have an unlimited resource, a realm of undiscovered selves, which only the greatest writers know about. This resource I have called the Mythopoetica. It is the realm of the superconscious. It holds the ability to create any story whatsoever. This is the part of your mind that creates all your dreams. It is also the part of your mind that will bring into your consciousness the most inspiring, interesting and amazing stories you can imagine.
If you are interested in discovering the complete structural system, used by the world's finest story and screenwriters to guarantee that they have a professional and saleable story, as well as how to write directly from your superconscious, then please email me and I will send you a free ebrochure about a web based writing course I am offering. It is available for a limited time only.
The integration of classic structure and the superconscious is what makes this course unique. Email to: info@lifeact.com and put ‘Writing' in the subject line.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Send these Voice Dialogue Tips to Friends:
If you would like to send these tips on to any of your friends, please forward them by email. You can also advise your friends at http://www.bodymindinformation.com/tell-a-friend.php If you are able to help us do this, we would like to thank you by sending you a FREE REPORT titled: Voice Dialogue: A Guide To Great Relationships.
They can also register to receive future copies on our web site, which has a subscriber's panel, or they can email jcoroneos@bigpond.com directly. We will not be giving any of the addresses we receive to anyone else or any other organization. At any point you can stop receiving them - just click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.
How To Change Your Email details:
If you need to change your email address, the quickest and surest way is this: click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this page. Then go to the web site http://www.bodymindinformation.com and resubscribe with your new address. If you find your name spelt incorrectly, or have no name mentioned at the beginning of this letter, then email us on jcoroneos@bigpond.com and we will change it.
Warmly,
Dr John Coroneos
Medical Doctor
Producer of The Voice Dialogue Series
Copyright Wiseone Edutainment P/L
No part of Hal and Sidra's Voice Dialogue tips may be reproduced, in any form, without the written permission of Drs Hal and Sidra Stone except for forwarding an issue, in its entirety and complete with copyright information, to a friend.
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