Blessed Monday to You!
I hope you’ve all enjoyed a peaceful, regenerative weekend.
Friday, Rory and I were blessedly lazy! He was ready to rest after lots of work and travel with his team, and I was ready to rest after a very busy week.
Saturday, we went to Encinitas for a massage and a steam. Then we went home and did some art and relaxed in the garden.
Sunday, the urge for exercise arose so we headed into my office. Rory did some reading while I caught up on some work I needed to get done before I start traveling again.
We headed into the gym and I got a chance to visit Janet Alexander and her CHEK Level 1 students for a while.
Rory did some exercise play and I did a nice deadlift workout with high cable pulls and reptilian crawling.
After that, we headed home to relax, do some art, enjoy some of Vidya’s amazing food and a nice fire.
Penny got creative last night with a bunch of pears we had that we just didn’t seem to get a chance to eat.
She took some gluten free cinnamon and raisin bread, put it under the ripe pears after skinning and quartering them, added organic coconut cream and a couple of eggs then covered that with more of the bread.
Then she baked it until the bread was golden brown and well toasted on top and boy what a joy that was!
I’m still high from that little organic experience! A little more art by the fire and off to bed.
Vidya took Rory to the airport in the wee hours of the morning today and soon we’ll be heading to Toronto to share space with him there for a few days while I teach for Can Fit Pro One Day event Saturday, March 3.
YOU ARE 25¢ FROM ENLIGHTENMENT!
What is enlightenment? That’s as ambiguous a question as “What is God?”
For me, enlightenment has the following qualities:
1. Taking responsibility for what you create moment to moment through your use of choice or your own free will.
2. Asking, “What would Love do now?” before jumping to conclusions or “reacting” to any given situation in relationship to self and/or other.
3. Being wise enough to know that what we judge, we often don’t fully understand.
4. Honoring that judgment creates separation and empathy and compassion create connection.
5. Knowing that whenever you are unsure as to how to best act for the benefit of self and/or other, that doing nothing until you feel safe and adequately informed to make an intelligent decision is a wise thing to do.
6. Abiding in the principle of Union; If all “things and events” are tracked back to their source, there is only One Source from which All emerges.
Therefore, All is “I” and “I Am expressed in and as the All.”
7. The willingness to explore all viewpoints as equally real as your own; honoring that all belief systems are attempts to express and experience Love.
We have all been conditioned to judge. In every culture, there are beliefs about what is right and what is wrong.
Yet, what is “right” in one culture or social milieu is often “wrong” in another, yet the only difference is often where you are standing (their place or yours) and beliefs.
At the end of the day, regardless of weather our choices are seen as right or wrong by others, we ultimately enliven our beliefs as our own living experience of ourselves and others.
If your choices or way of living are bringing you greater awareness and capacity to love, then ultimately, your choices are cultivating Unity.
In Unity, we experience the ultimate truth of reality that can’t be known by the separation created by judgment.
In order to function in the world, we all need to make decisions. Even Jesus, Buddha, the Dali Lama, Rumi, and the most enlightened had to make choices. But were their choices judgments? Were they attempts to separate or unite?
I personally feel that understanding the difference between a judgment and an observation is a critical distinction.
While judgments tend to separate us, observations serve to inform us.
If I see someone abusing an animal, I could easily judge them in a wide variety of ways.
But would that actually help the individual or the animal? I may have the desire to reciprocate on the animal’s behalf and harm the person that hurt it in kind—but would that action make me a better human being than one who hurts animals?
If I witness such an action, I can observe that there are two sentient beings hurting and that the human initiating such an act must be in deep pain and confusion.
Therefore, I don’t separate myself from such a person. I do my best to have empathy for the pain they must be in and to the degree that I can support them in finding clarity, I do.
It is safe to say that we all desire love and opportunity in our lives.
It is likely that everyone wants to look and feel good and that those that don’t, simply don’t have the tools or skills to create the experiences they want.
Looking at the image above, you see a person who’s balancing the scales of judgment with candy.
But are they really getting what they want to experience as an expression of love?
How To Use A Coin To Enlighten Yourself
I developed this exercise for myself and my clients to better understand how to make observations, and decisions that are affirmative of their dream or goal.
Just as yin (female) and yang (male) energies appear to oppose each other, but are actually in a state of functional opposition, all judgments depend on their antagonist for their existence.
Heads can’t be heads without tails and vice versa. You can’t be right and wrong at the same time.
If you observe that something is black, you have excluded the possibility that it is white.
If you are the winner, there must, by definition, be a looser.
When we meditate on such distinctions, we can come to realize that we are often playing games with ourselves and we have either accepted societies game rules, or we are creating our own.
For example, though you may be perceived as the winner, the apparent looser may have learned more than you from the experience and is therefore a winner of significant degree in their own right.
Though your favorite color may be black, white continues to exist even if you exclude it from your own mindset.
All judgments are choices to extract potential and condition it based on our perceptions and beliefs.
Rumi says, “Beyond judgment, there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Our minds are fields of possibility. The highest potential I know of is that of Unconditional Love.
When we accept Unconditional Love as the highest potential for creating and experiencing, we come to realize that any act of authentic love is an act that brings about the experience of union or wholeness.
Looking at the coin images, you can see functional co-dependence.
Heads depends on tails. Tails depends upon heads.
Both heads and tails depend upon that which is unconditional as the bond between them.
To use a coin to gain enlightenment in any experience or situation, follow these steps:
1. State your dream out loud or in writing. For example, my dream is expressed in and as balance and strength in my body-mind.
2. Heads: State your choice (judgment or observation): I’d like to eat two plates of pancakes with syrup for breakfast this morning because it makes me feel good when I do.
3. Tails: State the antagonist of your choice or judgment: I’d like to eat two plates of pancakes but I know that if I do, based on experience, I’m likely to move further from my dream of balance and strength in body-mind.
You will find that if you are honest with your desire to experience your stated dream, that only one of the choices will be optimal relative to your stated dream.
By performing the coin drill in a wide variety of situations, you will often find that heads negates tails and tails negates heads; I’m fat (tails) is supported by “I’m not as fat as I could get” (heads).
If your dream is to see and experience yourself as “not fat”, then energizing the belief that brings wholeness (and less perceived stress) is going to be the one that gives you the greatest energy and possibility to live fully.
As you can imagine, there are a myriad of scenarios that can emerge with this exercise.
That’s part of the learning and growing process, for each one allows you to explore your own beliefs, observations and judgments!
Let me know how it goes if you get stuck.
You can leave me comments on the blog and I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Enjoy enlightenment for 25¢!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
