Happy Tuesday to You!
I’m still buzzing with joy and anabolic hormones from my deadlifting session yesterday.
A while back, I got distracted when a visitor came to see me while doing heavy (1-2 RM) deadlifts about a month ago and didn’t realize how many minutes had gone by talking to her and her son while on my rest period.
My next set was a max rep set and unfortunately, I strained my thoracolumbar fascia.
That’s been a month project to heal and now I’m almost back up to where I was.
My body loves heavy lifting and I’ve found it to be extremely effective for maintaining youthfulness.
It is as though my body doesn’t believe it’s 50 when I lift like I’m 30, so I am happy to keep it thinking “30” instead of “50”.
So, now that I’m pumping some bigger iron, I’m feeling all the joy that comes with it.
I can’t help but think of all the men my age who’s bodies are sagging and sex drive following suit, while knowing how much medicine there is in simple activities such as lifting weights and rocks!
Speaking of “lifting rocks”!I’ve been blessed to see, and learn of the many people who’ve been inspired by my blogs to go start lifting stones and creating beauty with them in nature, they yards, their work places, and even in their homes.
I was first amazed to see my neighbors catch the bug and start putting up stacks. Then I started seeing them appear in the hills behind my home when I was out hiking.
The other day, I was doing an interview with Cory Harding, a CHEK Practitioner living in Australia about bodybuilding and protein consumption and prior to the interview, he sent me some photos of his rock stacks.
I was really impressed at the size of stones this guy is lifting. He was sharing all the joy he gets and how infectious it is for people when they see him creating stone art.
Below, you can see photo of Cory making and a friend “getting a natural androgen boost” moving a very large stone. Great job Cory!
Cory shared that people’s interest grew so strong that he began teaching classes so people could learn how to lift stones safely and create for themselves. If any of you are interested in learning about Cory’s classes, (he’s near Sydney), you can contact him at: cory.harding@hotmail.com
“MIND” ~ BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
In my experience as a human being with a deep desire for understanding, I’ve pursued inner-truth for my whole life.
This practice began when sitting in Sunday school hearing all the terrible things about what God would do to you if you didn’t follow His commandments, and the like!
I have palpable memories of how disconcerting it was to know that God was even more demanding and scary than my parents could be on their worst days.
It wasn’t long before I found myself in the fields on our farm having long, and often heated conversations with God over my frustrations with adults, and his dictates.
As my life progressed, I experienced many very difficult and scary situations.
They ranged from being pressured by my father to get a job done that seemed impossible to complete with the constraints given, to overcoming serious injuries from racing motto-cross, to becoming a father just a few weeks after turning eighteen, to being very challenged to meet the academic and intellectual challenges of being in electronics school in the army!
Each step of the way, as I worked through the challenges, my confidence that I could find solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems grew; I began to realize I had a powerful mind that worked to find solutions when others, including adults, were immobilized by fear and pain.
Over time, I began to become aware of the joy that emerged from me when I realized I had survived, or navigated my way to working solutions to challenges.
When I first began using mandalas to heal myself, I went through an exercise given to me by a famous shaman named Rowena Kryder.
In that exercise (which I’ve incorporated into PPS Success Mastery Lesson 1. How To Find and Live Your Legacy), we were to draw all the painful points of our life experience, and all the high-points as well and plot them on a timeline from the first experiences to the most recent.
Once I did this exercise, it became very clear to me that many of the times and challenges in my life that I found most painful, and had remembered them as such, were actually essential turning points or points of redirection in my life that had ultimately led me to where I was at that moment.
I realized that I was whole, capable, and aside from choosing to hold onto my pain, there were no significant restrictions placed upon me from such experiences.
I could still breath, play, create, make love, and help others. From that retrospective view, I realized that the biggest influence on my sense of safety and security, as well as my sense of well-being at each point in my life-journey, was my state of mind.
I know this to be true because now at 50 years of age, I’m able to let go of pain quite quickly and look for the blessing hidden within it; I’ve learned that that is part of God’s sense of humor.
I’ve learned that by using my mind with the trust that if God is real, then there must be beauty in every situation and that it is my opportunity to look for it and grow from the experience.
And each time I do, I feel less threatened by any adversity and more aware that I can find the juice when feeling squeezed by life events.
Speaking of the nature of mind, Hazrat Inayat Khan gives this description in his beautiful book, The Soul’s Journey (p113-114):
“!For the mind is the medium between heaven and earth.”
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Man experiences heaven when conscious of his soul; he experiences the earth when conscious of the body.
Man experiences that plane which is between heaven and earth when he is conscious of his mind. Man shows by his stupidity the mineral kingdom which is in him, thick and hard.
Man shows the vegetable kingdom in him by his pliability, by his inventive and creative faculties which bring forth the flowers and the fruits of his life from his actions, thoughts and deeds.
Man shows the traces of the animal kingdom in him in his passion, emotion, attachment, in his willingness for service and usefulness.
And if one were to say what represents the human in him, the answer is all things, all attributes of the earth and heaven: the stillness, hardness and stre ngth of the stone; the fighting nature and tendency to attachment from the animal; the fruitfulness and usefulness of the vegetable kingdom; the inventive and artistic, poetical and musical genius of the world of jinns; the beauty and illumination, love calm and peace of the angelic planes—all these things put together make man.
It is therefore that the human soul consists of all and thus culminates in the purpose for which the whole creation has taken place.
(Note from Paul: Khan describes the jinn on p.57 as such! The realm of the jinn is the place of the mind, and this plane may be called the spiritual plane, for it is mind and soul which make spirit. The jinn is an entity with mind but not such a mind as that of man, but a mind more pure, more clear, which is illuminated by the light of intelligence. The mind of the jinn is deeper in perception and conception because it is empty.)
Having studied the teachings of many great masters that speak in these terms, I’m very familiar with this type of language or mode of expression.
What’s more important than weather your ego-mind construct or social conditioning can grasp the deeper meanings here is whether you are willing to explore such teachings and gain your own experiences and understanding of them.
I have spent much time experimenting with my diet and keeping careful notes (even log books at times) to see exactly how more or less intake of minerals, plant foods, animal foods, mental exercises and spiritual exercises did, or didn’t affect my overall state-of-being.
All I can share briefly is that when put to the test, I’ve found what Khan, Yogananda, Steiner, and many others at that level have said to be true.
Most people read this kind of communication and immediately dismiss it as unscientific babble; yet not surprisingly, the majority of the people seeking my help for a healing challenge or crisis-of-self are trapped in this very mind-set.
How wonderful it is when they wake up to the realization that love, the most essential of all nutrients and experiences evades sciences instruments of objectivity, and that God’s tendency is to write poetry above and beyond prose!
It is a normal practice for me (particularly on my days off from work) to begin my day with art as meditation.
I love to let my soul guide me so I can learn to experience life without trying to direct it all myself. I go into my off days with a general sense of emptiness and willingness to explore.
I often draw a circle, and then go into meditation so my inner-vision becomes unobstructed by my thinking ego-mind.
I then allow whatever vision my soul gives me to be my template, which I then do my best to draw.
My drawing then becomes the symbolic message from my soul, showing me how to unfold naturally for the day.
This day, I was instructed to draw the brick circle around my huge Fichus tree in my front yard.
I was then instructed to create a backdrop of earth, plant, tree and sky out of OM symbols, using different colors to represent each element or life-form.
I then saw myself laying on the ground with my head facing the stone circle.
My soul had me draw an empty heart in my chest, which symbolized letting go of all thoughts or desires related to “what I think I should be doing, or what I think the world should or shouldn’t be like”.
The black area around me was my soul’s invitation to sleep awake.
I’ve done meditations like this in my yard too many times to count.
Each of them allows me to experience a new way of perceiving reality, including how I fit into reality as part of a Kosmic tapestry of perpetual unfolding.
The secrets to getting the most of a mediation of this type are:
1. You must agree to let the world carry its own weight for the period of your meditation.
As long as you convince yourself that you are “needed” and must do this or that, you stay in ego-mind reality and can’t escape its confines.
2. It helps to do some form of exercise before hand and have a cleanly showered body with comfortable all-natural fiber clothing.
3. Drinking some relaxing tea, such as the Yogi brands “Calming”, “Meditation”, or “Bedtime” tea for half an hour or more before the meditation and during it as needed really helps.
If you have other favorite teas or herbs that work well for you, then I suggest choosing the ones that work best for your individual needs. These are just some of the ones that work for me.
You can also use a variety of flower essences and essential oils as an aid to meditative relaxation.
If you chew a couple teaspoons of raw sweet fennel seeds very thoroughly, I find that deeply relaxing, and an aid to feeling subtle energies.
4. I lay only on natural fiber mats with natural fiber blankets to avoid disruption of my energy field.
5. I find a warm spot in the sun if possible, and then I allow myself to drift off into a dream-state. I do my very best to stay conscious of what’s occurring in my mind as my mind relaxes.
The deeper I got into sleep without falling asleep, the more profound the experiences are.
What commonly occurs is that I progressively merge with my yard, the trees, then the animal life, then the sky, then the planet, then the sun, and progressively, I become totally at One with the Universe.
What happens there is too much to describe here, and I’d much rather you find out for yourself! Needless to say, with each such experience, I feel more grateful for my ego.
I feel so blessed to be able to have reached a state in my life where I don’t let surface experiences and appearances detract from my ability to see and participate in the beauty of life.
I’ve come to see and experience that no matter how screwed up the world looks at any time in my life, if I take responsibility for my own happiness, the world is colored first and foremost in that joy.
Then, I don’t see a world all-screwed-up. Instead, I see a world in which God is dreaming each and all into existence.
In that dream, we are all being given exactly what we asked for!
Through those experiences, I’ve learned that our perceptions equal our reality.
Those that we see in pain are often there to cultivate the backdrop needed to contain the joy that would otherwise be invisible to them in their lives; without the pains in my life, I could not be nearly as useful to the people in my life, be they family, friends, students or otherwise.
Indeed, without my pains from my past, I would be less wise.
As I explore, learn and grow, I come to realize that between heaven and hell is an ego-mind, who’s function is the freedom of choice.
Once we learn what love is, we at-once learn that we don’t need pain to frame it any longer.
We become motivated to seek and explore what we want, and learn not to focus our mind on what we don’t want.
Eventually, we all get there. And once we are there, if pain arrives, at least we know that it’s just an “unwrapping job” to get to Spirit’s little surprises tucked inside!
If you apply some of my techniques, I hope that you too gain a deep understanding and appreciation for your own soul’s journey and the many gifts waiting to unwrap.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
