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-----Original Message----- From: Bill@bkspeaks.com [mailto:Bill@bkspeaks.com] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 1:16 PM To: ordinarylife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [ordinarylife] Summary of November 11, 2001 ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life ====================================== Summary of November 11, 2001 ====================================== Dear Folks ? The Principle of Just Noticing One of the fastest ways out of the fear that our current global crisis can cause in us is to develop the skill of "just noticing" what our reaction of life is. When we fail to notice what is we miss life as it is. We do this because we try to make ourselves safe and secure - especially from death. Just noticing is build on the principle of "sacred unity." ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Full text of presentation I'm calling the remarks I want to make with you today "Just Noticing." We are attempting to learn how to be with the world as it is. And with ourselves as we are. These are big tasks because the world as it is currently a scary place with an uncertain future. And we as we are turn out to be a mixed bag, some of which is hard to accept. Last week I introduced you to what are, at least for me, some key concepts. First, were the principles of mind and spirit. Second, the process of learning to make life work for us in a way that fits the goal of "living the life we want and wanting the life we live." Some of you have wondered: "Is it really possible to do this? Can we really love and accept ourselves and each other unconditionally?" One very important spiritual skill is learning just to notice. Just be with what is. Yes, this is difficult to do with no judgment. But it is one of our primary spiritual tasks. If we cannot learn to relate to ourselves this way, we cannot relate to others with kindness or compassion either. Several years ago a man walked into a bar in San Francisco near the waterfront. After he had ordered his drink, he noticed that the man sitting next to him looked like a sea-going pirate. Not only was he dressed the part but he had a peg-leg, a hook instead of a hand and he had a patch over one eye. Curiosity got the better of him so he asked the man to tell him about himself. "Excuse me, but you look like a pirate." "Aye mate, that I was. A true sea-going pirate." "My but you must have had an interesting life judging from the looks of things." "Aye lad, that I have." "Do you mind telling about your adventures? For example, how did you come to have a peg-leg?" "Well, I was a pirate you know. One day a huge wave came and knocked me off the ship and a shark bit my leg clean off. That's why I have a peg-leg." "And your arm? How did you come by that hook?" "Well, I was a pirate you know. One night in a bar in Singapore I got in a fight and this guy took a machete and cut my arm clean off. That's how I got my hook." "And how about your eye? How did you lose your eye?" "Well, I was a pirate you know. One day while up on deck I happened to look up and a sea gull pooped in my eye?" "A sea gull pooped in your eye and that's how you lost your eye?" "Well, it was the day after I got my hook." There is a profound wisdom in learning to be with life as it is. Something happens and immediately we react rather than just noticing. When we do that we can blind ourselves. So often we want to escape life. What I want our times together to help us all do is to develop a loving and compassionate relationship toward life as it is and toward ourselves as we really are. One way to talk about this is with the phrase "just noticing." The foundation of this "noticing" is the principle of spiritual unity. When Jesus used the word "God," the word that he used in Aramaic means "that which encompasses everything both outside and inside." This includes those things we label "good" and those things we label "bad." Both within the world and within ourselves. This is one of the reasons we are encouraged to know ourselves as completely as possible. You can't love what you don't know or know what you don't love. Jesus was constantly inviting people toward himself in one way or another. Indeed, I think one of the true marks of the spiritual life- style I would aspire to is that it be one that is inviting. I would like for people to find what we are up to in here, for example, to be intriguing, appealing, etc. "Come, follow me," he said. "Come and see what I have found," said his followers. So Jesus embraced and invited everyone. Indeed, his hanging out with sinners, prostitutes and drunks - his inclusiveness if you will - got him into far more trouble than anything he ever said about himself. This is a manifestation of the Jewish principle of wisdom, called "Sophia." In the Old Testament book of Proverbs you find Wisdom gathering various guests together. At the time of Jesus there were very strict rules in Judaism about whom you could eat with and whom you couldn't and he regularly and deliberately disobeyed those rules. By violating these rules Jesus modeled the nature of God's love. God invites and includes all. The word Jesus used for "God," means "no boundaries." No one and nothing is excluded. So our spiritual work involves attempting to create our lives in light of this reality. Of course, the phrases "being with life as it is" and "learning to embrace it all" are what we talk about all the time in here in one way or another. Here is a promise: the more you work with not running from the things that scare you - whether within or without - and the more you and I don't try to sidestep the feelings of insecurity that facing these demons brings us, the more we will be at peace; the more joy we will experience; the happier we will be. It is that simple. It is that difficult. Of course, the bottom line thing we try to run from and escape is ? death. Once I had a very profound dream. It was disturbing beyond belief. I would say that paying attention to and honoring this dream saved my life. And by "saved my life" I don't mean it in the way we usually do. It didn't keep me safe and secure. I dreamed that I was back in Columbia, Tennessee the town where I lived from age six until age seventeen or eighteen. I had gone back there because I had some sort of business to conduct with the undertaker. (You understand that we take nothing in a dream as literal. Dream symbols are much more serious than that.) While I was waiting for the undertaker to finish whatever he was doing and come to our meeting, I was looking around this place. Off of the vestibule where I stood waiting, there were numerous visitation rooms. Each seemed to have several caskets in it. Each casket contained a corpse. I looked over to the room on my right and there was a casket in which the body in it seemed to be breathing. I walked over to it and there, plain as day, was my dad. All laid out but clearly not dead. He was breathing! Now, in the dream I had no emotional reaction to this whatsoever. I just noticed it. I went back to the vestibule to wait. Soon the undertaker came out. He had on a white lab coat with blood stains on it. Blood in dreams always refers to sacrifice. (We don't like to make sacrifices!) I said to him, "Before we get down to business, I thought you might like to know that the body in that casket over there isn't dead." "Oh yes, we know. He is about to die. You see, he is afraid of the pain of the process of being embalmed. We're keeping an eye on him. As soon as he is dead, we are going to close the casket and bury him." That seemed to make sense to me so I said, "Okay" and we got about our business - which I have no idea what it was. When I woke, the dream seemed like it had been so real. I was very disturbed by it. Remember, there are no bad dreams - just disturbing ones. What could it possibly mean? I worked with that dream for weeks. What in me was afraid of dying? Of the process of being embalmed? The ego. The ego thinks it is the whole show and is terrified about having the life sucked out of it. This is why I say to you that the spiritual practice I am attempting to teach in here has nothing to do with believing anything religious - at least not at first. It has most of all to do with our being willing to die and to do this dying on a continuous basis. Just when we are sure that we've found the truth, that we have a place to stand, that we are safe and secure; life as it is - or God - comes along and says, "Let that go!" Sometimes this command is whispered to us and is so subtle we miss it if we aren't careful. Sometimes it is yelled so loudly in our ears that it echoes there for a long, long time. This is why I have cautioned you about the danger of putting labels on anything. For example: "I'm married." Then my spouse leaves by death or divorce. "I'm wealthy." Then the market crashes. "I'm young and healthy." "What do you mean it's malignant? "I'm a safe and secure citizen of the United States of America." Then comes along 9/11. Almost nowhere do we get taught the folly of running away from that which scares us. Instead we are taught to cover it up, make the bitter sweet, smooth it over so no one will pay attention, take a pill, distract yourself and don't think about it. By all means, by any means make it go away. The saddest thing about how we are taught to deal with the fear we have of the various deaths we need to face is that each and every method causes us to cheat ourselves out of being in the present moment. Pema Chodron in her wonderful book "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" talks about the wisdom of being nailed to the present moment. I thought, when I first read that phrase, of one who was willing to be so nailed and the powerful impact he had because of that willingness. One of the negative contributions organized religion has made to our lives is that it tries to organize things. Which, of course, it must. But organized religion begins to create God in its image. Each religious group becomes so certain of what it is that God wants and believes. But you notice that what God wants and believes varies from group to group. You get the suspicion that the beliefs have been shaped to support and affirm the religious organization's existence and culture. I have a suspicion that this is one of the leading causes of atheism. The spiritual path I am attempting to apprehend and talk about isn't about getting someplace - at least not the place that organized religion talks about. We're not trying to get to heaven or be "right." I grew up, as did some of you, in a church that emphasized the importance of "being saved." To this day when I go to visit my Dad in Columbia, Tennessee - where that funeral home is - if I go to church with my dad, the service is just like it was when I was a child. There is almost no one in that church under fifty. My dad is 93. Yet, every sermon and every service is focused on the unsaved. A phrase that some folks used briefly after 9/11 "when will things get back to normal. "Normal" is one of the most useless words in our vocabulary. Things are not normal - except in this sense: Things come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again. Then they fall apart again. This is the way of ordinary life. Our healing lies in creating room for this sort of thing to happen. Room to love. Then to grief. Then to feel relief. Then misery and joy that frees us to love again and start the process all over again. Do you see why I say that the spiritual journey isn't about getting it together or getting to heaven? In fact, looking for a secure safe place is what keeps us miserable. Just noticing what is going on right here and now and what our reaction to it is, this noticing becomes our teacher. That's what meditation is about. Learning to notice. We don't meditate in order to become good meditators. We meditate so that we will wake up. If someone were to ask me, "How long does this take?" my answer would be: "The rest of our lives." Many people are out seeking for some special religious and/or spiritual path to take them to bliss. All sorts of things are available for that. Some try the drug Ecstasy. Some try weekend workshops of all sorts. Some go off and follow someone who can channel a long dead person into the present moment. These dead folks always seem to be so wise. Are there no dead jerks? And on and on. All these are efforts to transcend life as it is. My assertion is that it is only when we are willing to be with ordinary life that we are free to really to live. You see, as long as I am pre-occupied with the hope that there is somewhere else that is better to be or that there is someone else better to be, I'm not able to be with where I am and who I am right here, right now. I remember when I first heard the notion that suffering doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief! Suffering is part of life. Life is difficult. We don't suffer because we've done something wrong or weren't good enough. To believe that is spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty is always experiencing "I'm not good enough or haven't done enough; that there is something missing in me." I strongly believe that our efforts to protect ourselves from sorrow and hardship are not being kind to ourselves. We get taught in this culture on the importance of getting it all together and feeling good. So that if we are experiencing an upset of some kind, we think that something is wrong and we have to get it fixed. When we take this approach, we inevitably become bitter, hardened, unavailable, fearful and alienated. In our effort to avoid sorrow and hardship we end up living tensely - it's like living your whole life in the dentist chair. When we suffer, it doesn't mean something is wrong. If you had a child or best friend who felt that that they were inadequate or fundamentally flawed, what you would do is put your arms around them and say, "No, you are fine, just the way you are." Then you might help the child or your friend explore why they felt so bad. Understand? We can explore the nature of our feeling inadequate without believing that we are inadequate. [At the point each person in the Ordinary Life Gathering was given a raisin. We spent time "just noticing" the raisin.] Now a raisin is a small thing. But what if it is your spouse or partner that you are not noticing? What if it is your health? What if it is your surroundings? One of the first things I learned when I began to do sitting meditation is how much time I spend not in the moment. Rather I am busy planning, thinking about the next item on my "to do list," how I'm going to get done all I have scheduled for myself. One main goal of spiritual practice is just to notice. These are dark times. Learning to notice and then practicing loving- kindness and compassion toward ourselves is as good a way as I know for us to start turning lights on in the darkness so that we and others can see. No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember this: You are carrying precious cargo. Watch your step. ====================================== Ordinary Life is a gathering that provides an opportunity to develop an enlightened heart and an awakened mind to the reality of the present moment. The gathering meets on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am in Fondren Hall at St. Paul's UMC - 5501 South Main, Houston, Texas and is taught by Dr. Bill Kerley. If you would like more information - Contact Bill Kerley - E-Mail - Bill@bkspeaks.com Web - www.bkspeaks.com Voice - 713-663-7771 Fax - 713-663-6418 Mail - 6300 West Loop South, Suite 480 Bellaire, TX 77401 ============================== You can access the archives of these newsletters by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ordinarylife You can add someone you know would be interested in receiving these on- line newsletters by sending that information to - Bill@bkspeaks.com I'll make sure they are added immediately! Or, they can subscribe themselves by sending an e-mail directly to Ordinarylife-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can unsubscribe to this newsletter by sending an e-mail to ordinarylife-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ================================ The material in this on-line newsletter is copyrighted. It may be reproduced and printed elsewhere as long as it is not changed in any way and credit is given to this source. Your use of Yahoo! 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