The Power of Silence

I just finished leading five exquisite days of silent retreat for a group here in Nevada City.  I am bursting with excitement to share with you the fruits of this adventure, and, at the same time, at a loss for words to talk about five days where there were no words.

Silence has always been, for me personally, the greatest teacher.  Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it?  You think of a teacher as giving you messages, insights, guidance…how can silence do that?  When I look back on my life, it was from discreet periods of silence that the greatest creative flow emerged.  It was from discreet periods of silence that the greatest blessings flowed, synchronicity just happened, and things fell together in the outer world.  It was following silence that opportunities flowed into my life most easily.

 

The Deeper Love

For the last 8 years Chameli and I have been practicing and teaching an approach to intimate relationship which we call the Deeper Love. It has arisen one hundred percent out of our own personal experience, and our longing to bridge a schism which can often be confusing and painful. We have taught this as a seminar both in the US and in Europe.

I started to guide people into awakening in 1991 at the invitation of my teacher H.W.L. Poonja.  He asked me to “share the secret with my friends.”  My wife at the time and I returned back to Seattle, where we had previously been living, and I started giving “Satsang.” People would come to our small apartment, just 8 or 10 at first, to find out what I had been up to in India.  It didn’t take long for that same realization of spaciousness to become infectious.  Soon the meetings grew from 10 to 30, then from 30 to one hundred.  It was during those first months that our first son, Abhi, was born.  A couple years later we had Shuba, our second child.

So there I was, after a few years, giving teachings to people all over the world that were profoundly impacting their lives and helping them experience the “Big Love,” — and I also had a personal life: I was married with children.  It was sometimes confusing and disorienting to discover that the “Big Love” we shared in Satsang and on retreats was not sustained at home.  I was still experiencing the same kinds of conflict, misunderstanding, and shutting down as I had known all my life, not only in my own relationships, but I had also seen in my family growing up.  Eventually that marriage fell apart amidst feelings of failure, deep disappointment, and some sense of hypocrisy that I had been unable to live, in my personal life,  what I had been  teaching on a bigger scale.

 

A Wonderful Week

I just got back a few days ago from what feels like the most incredible week of my life.  I was attending and speaking at the Integral Spiritual Experience conference in Asilomar near Monterey, California.

Wow, wow, and wow.

The conference was attended by over five hundred people from 33 different countries.  Unlike many conferences of its kind, it followed an evolutionary path.  It traced the development from personal story: the circumstances of our birth and conditioning, to the development of personality, or what the organizers called “false self.”  From there the conference moved into awakening: the  shift from personality based living to the realization of our true nature as limitless, unborn, undying and the source of everything.  (Guess who facilitated that part?!)  And from there we moved into uncharted territories: what Ken Wilber describes as an evolutionary emergence.  We explored how the more we rest in true self, in limitless consciousness, and subjectively experience emptiness, the more other people experience the flow of a unique gift.

This is the paradox. By resting in oneness we deepen our uniqueness, and in the cultivation of unique gifts we deepen oneness.

 

Breakthrough To a New Dimension

Happy Holidays to all our friends.

Chameli told me last night that it was the longest night of the entire year, which means that we have officially shifted from a phase of turning in, dying and withdraw, to a new phase of rebirth, regeneration, and fresh beginnings.  By now the last of the brown leaves have fallen from the trees and become mush under our feet on the wet ground.  And deep beneath the surface of the earth, the first stirrings are preparing themselves for next year’s spring.

These cycles of death and renewal have always been part of our lives, but I get the sense that this year it is more poignant than ever.  For most of us 2009 has been quite a year.  Most of the people I have met with this year have been facing, in a personal way, what we are all facing in a collective way: the old habits by which we live our lives are no longer sustainable.  We are being presented with a wake-up-call to try something completely new.

 

Relationship as a Practice

Here is a passage from my 2005 Bestseller, “The Translucent Revolution.”

As with every other area of our lives, there is a symbiotic relationship between the depth of our translucence and the way we view otherness. Translucence naturally shifts our habits of relating, without our doing anything about it. We have less to defend as we come to know ourselves as bigger than our own story, and our relating naturally becomes less strategic. As we see the other as myself, even if only in snapshots, we find that compassion occurs effortlessly. We develop more humor about the idiosyncrasies of our personality. We have less investment in laboriously working things out, and a greater willingness to breathe a sigh and return to innocence. The need to change others relaxes, since we are less tied to them as a source of our well-being. All these things can happen more or less spontaneously as by-products of waking up. At the same time, the attention we bring to our habits of relating can deepen and stabilize our expression of translucence. We can always bring more skillful means, more as an art form than as self-improvement, to our relating. We can become more aware of, and tell the truth about, the old habits that have created separation. These old habits run deep, and they will not necessarily die on their own. Our social environment reinforces them. When we are willing to put awakening into the fire of relationship, it will reveal all old habits and allow them to be released. Says Gay Hendricks:

“I think therein lies the difficulty, as well as the awesome beauty, of relationships. The universe is attempting to meet itself in play. When one person meets another, as that space links up with that space again, it pushes to the surface all the little places where we’ve withdrawn from space. Whether it’s being physically beaten, or starved to death, or criticized, or in beating others, those are the places where we’ve withdrawn and crystallized into mass, and then that has to come to the surface.”

 

Co-creation

Here is a passage from my 2005 Bestseller, “The Translucent Revolution.”

Carolyn Anderson and John Zwerver, the founders of a UN-affiliated organization called Global Family, call this model of people working together “co-creation.” Anderson is the co-author of The Co-Creators Handbook. She defines co-creation as “co-participating consciously with the laws or patterns of life itself, conscious alignment with the essence of others and with nature.”

Anderson and Zwerver offer several other examples of co-creative businesses, where the CEO or president has come to a position of stewardship, drawing out and giving voice to the innate wisdom of the collective. For as long as we can remember, Iago-based business has used a dominator model.  Decisions are made by the CEO and senior management, who are retained by investors to represent their interests: to make as much money as possible. The dominator model of doing business may make money, but the hidden cost is high. First, everyone in the company, from middle management down to the shop floor, is placed in a position of subordination. Divorced from their own vision, their integrity and inspiration become entirely irrelevant in this ask-no-questions environment. If you want to keep your job, you don’t question company policy. People feel used. Absenteeism and job turnover rise, since those doing the hands-on work feel little or no loyalty to the company, to its reputation, or to what it produces.

 

Take the Day Off

Here is a practice you can use right away, from my book “Leap Before You Look.”

Every one or two months,
Take a day where you do absolutely nothing,
Just as you would do if you had the flu,
But do it when you’re not sick.
Switch off the phones, shut down the computer.
If necessary, stay in bed all day.
Do as little as possible.
Just lie still and give the body and the psyche a chance for deep healing.
If you’re married, if you live with your family or friends,
You could even alternate stillness days:
One of you could completely take care of the other, including meals in bed, then switch.
If possible, refrain from watching television or other distractions.
Just lie still and give all of yourself,
Including your senses,
Twenty-four hours of undiluted rest.

 

A Culture of Contribution

Dear Friends,

I’m in the middle of a whirlwind European tour here, and so this post will be shorter than others have been.

We had a wonderful evening event in Oslo last week, hosted by Peter Svenning, one of our certified Awakening Coaches.  Great people, mostly from professional backgrounds, quickly “got” what this approach is about.  Many will now be coming to the Awakening Coaching Training in Stockholm, February 20-24th.  Next day I saw some very inspiring people in Oslo for private sessions.  I’m constantly amazed by how regular people with relatively little background in “spirituality” can easily drop out of the mind and into the mystery of presence.

I took the train from Oslo to Stockholm, which took most of the day, and was a great treat.  When was the last time you took a really long train ride?  It’s great.  The carriage sways back and forth like the rocking of a cradle, massaging you into letting go.  You pass through small villages, larger towns, and then endless forest and fields put to rest for the winter.  I could spend my life on European trains!  The buffet car serves great food, the internet connection allows you to get things done, and the rest of your life seems far away.

 

Honesty

Here is a passage from my 2005 Bestseller, “The Translucent Revolution.”

The most powerful gift we can bring to our relating is the conscious practice of honesty. Under Iago’s spell, telling the truth evokes many conflicting reactions. We may try to be honest to protect an image of being a morally superior person; to prevent the other from leaving us; to avoid guilt, fear of punishment, and other uncomfortable feelings; or to conform to a learned
moral framework. We may also avoid being honest in an attempt to look good, to protect the other from hurt feelings, or to rebel against moral conditioning. We can also adopt honesty as a discipline to deepen presence, to expose and evaporate everything we carry within us that interferes with love. It can be a spiritual discipline, rather than something done in service to separation. Honesty is not just a moral principle. When we avoid the truth, we are cut off from ourselves. If you lie to another, you’ve also created a wall between you and yourself. We split infinity into two, and divide our own intrinsic wholeness. Brad Blanton, who has been a clinical psychologist for more than thirty years, came to translucence through the rigorous and sustained practice of radical honesty. Blanton describes honesty as being completely present and describing your experience just as it is:

“You can take the whole awareness continuum and divide it into three parts. Notice what is going on right now outside of you in the world, what is going on within the confines of your own skin, and what is going through the mind right now, and that’s all there is. Noticing and reporting what is here is honesty. . . just saying it right out as though you didn’t know any better.”

Blanton thinks of honesty as a spiritual practice more than as a moral virtue:

“We know meditation develops your capacity to be present. It becomes more complicated with eyes open, and even more challenging when it involves feelings and interactions with other people. Radical honesty is simply the predisposition for meditation that involves interactions with other people. Honesty and intimacy are really the same thing. When you’re honest, the boundaries between yourself and the other break down, and you experience more oneness or more of a mutual beingness.”

Entering into mutual agreements with your partner, friends, and community to end withholding and deception may be more challenging than first meets the eye. But it is worth the price we have to pay. The old habit that creates most separation, and that pulls attention back most forcibly into Iago’s grip, is the tendency to withhold. Says Blanton:

“The biggest rationalization for lying is “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” the second is “I don’t want to offend anybody,” and the third is “I don’t want to make a fool of myself.” I recommend that you do all three. But stay present with people and let them stay with you until you feel your way through it and get clear. I recommend that you hurt people’s feelings till they get over having their feelings hurt, and offend people but stay with them; don’t do a drive-by. Make a fool of yourself, be a fool in life, be embarrassed, ashamed, whatever emotion comes up, do it out loud, and if you’re scared, feel your way through it and go on to the next limit.”

While researching this book, I was hard put to find anyone who had added honesty to their awakening and later regretted it. Practicing honesty as a translucent discipline is not just a disposition; it involves cultivating very specific skills, which in many ways run counter to our habits. Kathlyn Hendricks gives her definition of being honest:

“It is to describe what is going on in any given moment in a way that doesn’t blame anybody. It’s a whole set of skills: being able to pay attention, to notice what is actually occurring, and then to describe what is occurring in a way that matches the experience. And the act of doing that is tremendously enlivening. It literally will flush out and create a burst of aliveness; it flushes out any old grit, either physical or emotional. It is very, very powerful, but it is also a skill that people can learn and can develop. They don’t have to either know it or not know it; they can literally develop it.”

To read more about translucent honesty and translucent living in general, pick up your very own copy of Translucent Revolution today.

 

Here is something you dont want to miss!

One of the most inspiring things about this new time is the emerging spirit of co-creation.  I can remember only a few years ago being invited to speak at the Whole Life Expo in Altanta.  All of the big names were there.  On evening we had a party where all the speakers attended. I still remember scanning the room and noticing that half of the New York Times bestseller list was in the room.  The other thing I noticed at that party, back in the early 90s, was how much talking was going on, and how little listening.  Everyone had a pitch to sell, and noone was very interested in buying anyone else’s.

Times have changed!  What I love about these new times is not just the diversity of wisdom and grace that is showering on all of us from every direction, but the ways that we are open to listen and to hear each other with respect.  We come to recognize that our wisdom is made visible in our openess to listen more than our capacity to speak.

I was invited recently by a new friend named Linda Pannell, to participate in a new teleseminar series.  It started on October 21st, but has hardly got started yet.  Every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm through February 2010, Linda has invited some of the planet’s most inspiring, provocative, and visionary scientists, healers, spiritual leaders, and wisdom keepers to explore ways to navigate the immense individual, societal, global, and universal change toward creation of a  New Shared Future.

The series is titled Science, Spirituality, and the Sacred:  Ancient Wisdom, Modern Miracles.
Take a look at the line up of speakers here
These are all  Free, live events which you can join from your own home.  They are all recorded, so you also will have the chance to buy mp3s of the whole series.

RESERVE A SPOT AS MY GUEST