Happy Monday to You!
I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend.
In my blog today, I will share:
1. NATURE’S OPEN SECRET, and
2. MY VISITORS; highlights from our recent visitors at Heaven House.
1. NATURE’S OPEN SECRET
A Paul Chek Mandala
(Click on the image to see it full-size.)
Science is forever probing into nature, trying to find Her secrets objectively, while yogis, naturalists, shaman, artists, poets and mystics take the role of empirical scientists, placing emphasis on experiences.
There has long been tension between the worldviews of classic scientist types and the more experiential and/or mystical types of people in the world.
The objectively minded scientist types are likely to tell you there is no God because we have no objective proof; and they will tell you the very same thing about nature spirits, the healing power of prayer, and most anything else that escapes their instruments.
On the other hand, the more empirical types (like myself), often have a profound sense of “knowing” the answers to many of the questions that elude classical science types, but because we can’t “prove it” within their context of proof, it makes it hard to share.
There are many things I inherently “know”, but can only use the current language, and social programming to convey. This same situation creates quite a conundrum for the experiential groups such as yogis, naturalists, shaman, artists, poets and mystics.
When an artist like Alex Grey draws incredibly complex, beautiful images depicting the inherent nature of God, many of the people that could benefit most, won’t look; after all, he once walked around with half his head shaved and uses psychedelics!
When Rumi tells us we’ll never know God until we become a heretic, the classical science types refer to their favorite books, most of which classify Rumi as a sinner, or evil for saying such things.
When OSHO says, “The beauty of love is that it doesn’t work”, only mystics, poets and people with three or more divorces understand him.
Rudolph Steiner looked deeply into the nature of life and nature, and drew upon the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: German: (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832); He was a German writer, artist, and politician.
Goethe’s body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and color; and four novels.
In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, and more than 10,000 letters written by him are extant, as are nearly 3,000 drawings.
In Steiner’s book, Nature’s Open Secret, Steiner explores Goethe’s ideas and experiences and shares his own.
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Today, I’d like to share some expressions and a few thoughts of my own from Nature’s Open Secret (p.5-8).
Steiner, referring to Goethe’s concerns around the nature of scientific investigation, refers to one of Goethe’s letters:
The poor creature trembles in the net, rubs off its most beautiful colors; and if one captures it unharmed, it ends up stuck upon a pin, stiff and lifeless. The corpse is not the whole creature, something else belongs to it – an important thing, and in this case, as indeed in all others, the main thing: is life…
These words from Goethe’s Faust arise from the same view:
Who would study and describe the living stars
By driving the spirit out of its parts;
In the palm of his hand he holds all the secretions,
Lacks nothing, except the spirit’s connections.
Osho said the same thing in his uniquely mystical way:
You can cut open the dancer
But you won’t find the dance.
Science and religion have gone to great lengths to break “spirit’s connections”, “the dance in the dancer”, into parts.
To most, we’ve become “very intelligent people” through traditional approaches, expressed in science and religion.
But are we any “wiser”? Are we living any better?
All that science, and religion, and all the “laws” and “rules”, and “do’s and don’ts”, yet all the while, none of them have any objective grasp on what love is, or what consciousness is.
The empiricist inherently knows that as soon as you “grasp such things as love or consciousness, it is as though you’ve boxed a frog; a frog in a box is a frog no more.
You can’t come to know and understand life if you cut, weigh, and box its parts any more than you can come to know and understand sex, love or gardening by reading alone.
Even the empirically minded scientist can come into a conundrum of false confidence; one may sit at the edge of a pond studying frogs for years, and may well deem themselves a frog expert. But can we really know “the frog” without an equal knowing of the part of froginess played by the earth and water, and all they contain?
What about the sun and moon? What about the stars?
Goethe says:
In tides of life, in actions storm
To and fro I wave,
Weave eternally!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changeful strife,
A glowing life.
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In the end of this beautiful poem, we see “A glowing life”. But what is life without the connections. What is the frog without the pond, the surrounding fields and forests, or the sun, moon and stars?
Indeed, what is the scientist, the atheist — often so staunch in their evidence against God – yet every bit as dependent upon love as the mystic, poet, or shaman for their very existence.
Walter Russell made it clear in his teachings (see his book, The Secret Of Light) that life is not the pressure fluctuations that create movement; it is what occurs within and between them, just as the dance is not the body parts being swung in rhythmic gyration, it is what occurs within and between them.
MY INVITATION
There is so much more to life than can ever be put into, or read from books.
No amount of TV watching will get you fit.
No amount of medical school will get you healthy.
No reality TV show imparts reality.
To get past the social programming of the past, and the mindsets of the present day, we must be willing to not only hang out with the frogs at their habitat, we must be willing to walk around it. We must be willing to lay on our back on the bank with the frogs and listen; does their song change as the night sky changes?
Do they behave differently on a full moon than at other points in the moon cycle?
To understand our loved ones, we will be forever challenged by what books and psychologists say if the ideas in our heads precondition our feeling capacity, our capacity for empathy and compassion.
To one who eats without giving a few moments of gratitude as inner-thanks, or heart-felt gratitude, or love for the sacrificed that now extends your life, food has become but parts.
The trees and plants don’t talk to them. The angels keep appearing in their dreams, but they don’t believe in them, so can’t see them.
Take a moment to watch how the flowers in your home react to being moved; how they turn, change their whole bodies to connect with the sun.
Be curious about how it is that your dog or cat know when a family member is coming home, and wait patiently at the door tail wagging minutes before they arrive.
Be curious about what’s inside you, breathing you, and looking through your eyes?
Be curious as to the invisible connections between our experience of words love, such as love, and why the words are but skeletons compared to giving, or being loved.
No matter what you find in your authentic experiences of loving, dancing, giving thanks for your food, creating your dreams, or greeting your dog at the door, you won’t be able to define it with an equation.
And, you can share it as a living expression of your joy.
When we are in touch with the spirit within, we are in touch with what’s in touch, and we feel safe, supported, and whole. We know our fate isn’t written in a religious, or a scientific book.
Our fate is the story of the Universe, and there’s no end in sight, so don’t loose sight of love.
2. MY VISITORS: highlights from our recent visitors at Heaven House
Vidya’s granddaughter, April, was with us here during the day for a few days and got some time to be with her Mata. Vidya not only worked with April in a variety of explorations, she took her into the gym for some more weight lifting coaching.
Here you can see April performing a single arm cable pull. I love seeing children this age learn how to master their bodies. Learning to exercise, eat, and lift weights properly can become the difference between a life in a body that hurts and doesn’t look nice, and being in a body that feels good to live in and looks great. Great job April!
Mike Salemi came to visit me for his next evaluation and to get his program updated. We are getting him ready to acquire his Master’s certification in kettle bell lifting, which is no easy task.
To do it, he will have to perform 54 clean-and-jerks with a 32 Kg kettlebell in each hand without ever letting them touch the ground!
The competitors have 10:00 to perform as many reps of the exercise as they can, and believe me, just holding one 32 Kg kettlebell for ten minutes any way you could would exhaust most athletes, let alone the successive clean-and-jerks!
This is Mike’s third conditioning phase with me, and we have just finished our base conditioning and are moving into sport specific conditioning. Above, you can see Mike enjoying gravity after having just performed one half of his new program .
After a very intensive kettlebell training, Mike was introduced to his last exercise of the day, which is the Farmer’s Carry.
I use the Farmer’s Carry to develop grip strength, for which its very effective. You don’t see many people doing the exercise because most people’s work ethic is too weak for the experience this little exercise delivers!
You can see Jonny Suarez CP3, HLC3, Mike’s CHEK Practitioner walking with him to time him and cheer him on. Jonny helps me with assessments and specific therapies to keep Mike in top shape and does a great job.
My buddy, Ryan Hughes and I got together last Friday for a brief visit. I took advantage of Ryan’s love of rocks, and his truck while he was here.
One of my neighbors gave me some lovely big rocks, but they were too big to try and carry down the hill in a wheelbarrow – I’ve already twisted my wheelbarrow and had to bend it back straight with less heavy stones…
Ryan and I took his truck and loaded it until the front tires were about to come off the ground. Above, you can see me unloading the truck, and believe me, there’s no need for a gym when you’ve got rocks around.
Here you can see me unloading a beauty. She weighs a good 300 pounds. Of course, I had to see if I could lift it and carry it… Getting a grip on a rock this size is often very challenging due to oddly placed, or lack of handholds.
I could probably do 25 reps with the same weight on an Olympic bar, but when you are lifting something that is sharp, dirty, odd, and often has a displaced center of gravity due to different densities of materials within it, gym strength is only part of the story…
Here you can see me lifting the rock up onto my thighs so I can reposition it. The next challenge is to get it up high enough that it doesn’t stop my legs from swinging while I walk.
I was able to get it up and carry it across my stone circle to dump it in its new resting place. It was not easy.
The edge of the rock was digging into the front of my pelvis with a lot of pressure, but I couldn’t jump it up any higher.
When I do these sorts of things, I don’t feel my age. When I don’t do them regularly, I begin to feel my age!
Well, that’s it from the world of Paul Chek for now.
I hope you all get a chance to go dance, watch frogs, and do some empirical research on the breath, love and life in youself each day.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
