Buddhas, Saints, and physics
In my discipline, we are asked to take some time in the morning to show deep humility, gratitude and love to the holy beings that shine their light on our paths. It is called 10,000 bow downs, signifying countless bow downs. Westerners generally don't resonate with such a thing as bowing to anyone, but I know that I have had many lifetimes as a Buddhist monk, and it comes easily to me.
It's a great relief to relinquish that stiff-necked, rugged individualism of western civilization, with its illusion of control. It's an attitude that separates us from our good, and has caused significant harm. When the poo hits the fan it's good to know there are an infinity of Divine Beings that know more than we do, are willing to help us, and acknowledge us when we surrender to their wisdom and power.
This morning I had a peek with my third eye, and saw shimmering phalanxes of Saints and Buddhas, row after row. I had the feeling of their attention with each offered bow. I invited my ancestors and descendants to join me in this practice. With each bow that we offered, it felt like the ripples of pond water when a stone is tossed in, radiating out in endless wavelets of light. If my mind wandered, which it does, the Saints and Buddhas kind of winked out until I brought my own awareness back to the task. This brought me to a memory of a particle in physics, that only comes into being when it's observed. That is such a remarkable concept, so enormous, that my mind skitters off of it.
This is called "The observation effect." I like the concepts of physics, and am fascinated by it, though a lot of it is beyond me. It gets stranger and more wonderful the more great minds dig into it. There is enough written about physics on the internet to keep everybody busy for centuries, so I'm not going to expand on any of it.
My focus is the analogy of attention and observation. If it's that subtle and immediate, this observation effect, that an energetic particle literally comes into being when it is watched, and goes away when it's not, what does that say about what you are looking at right this minute? What does it say about your attention span, and what you pay attention to?
When we spend probably 90 percent of our time experiencing our outer incarnation with all the color and noise and light, and 10 percent in an inward discipline, can we be surprised when the outside just keeps on being what it is? We are observing it into being.
Is it possible to keep the eye, the attention, turned inward, as we navigate the state of earth plane existence? I believe it is, though it does take strength of will, determination and persistence.
“Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result.”
― Kevin Michel, Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams
My teacher, Master Zhi Gang Sha, has written at least 20 books about integrating practices into our being that help us discipline ourselves. Ungoverned patterns of thought and action are unbelievably destructive. The mind and the brain have pathways that we have worn with the feet of our thoughts and beliefs for years, for decades. These are not undone overnight, our mind and mortal ego will protest. It's like chiropracty, when a bone or joint, muscle or nerve has been in the same misalignment for a long time, it resists moving back where it belongs, and pain often results from that moving. Perhaps much can be released by simply being still.
The following are excerpts from a beautiful talk by a being known as Papaji.
Sangha of Love
Question: So, all that is needed is to look within?
Papaji: Yes.
Turn your sight inside and look behind the retina. In front of the retina, there will appear objects, but try to look within.
When you look inside you have solved all your problems
– problems of the ego, of jealously, of fear, of everything.
You will find no ego inside.
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So, look inside and see what happens. Peace will come up by itself, and you will feel that looking inside at the Reality and looking outside at the dream-creation are the same.
There is no difference.
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So, there is no need to meditate and no need to practice. Keep quiet without even a thought of making an effort – as in deep sleep – even only for a second.
Here is one's true nature.
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Keep quiet. PapaJi
What I would like to do, and encourage all to do, is to begin to realize the enormous creative power of our observation. Not our thought, but stillness. I've heard the opinion that everything we see in the present now moment is....already the past. It is a collection of everything we've ever seen or thought or believed. Can you spend 10 seconds looking at a flower or a tree? Not naming it, or categorizing, just being with it? Listening? Most humans are truly ignorant of who we are and what we are doing here. My teacher has said, to paraphrase,
"If you are not serving, if you are not in spiritual practice in every moment, you are wasting your life."
I think one of the most priceless spiritual practices is wordless awareness. Watch, observe, don't react to anything. Reacting pops you right into the fire of outer experience. Try PapaJi's sweet wisdom, it feels really good.
I do not know this book or this author, but this intriguing quote leads me to read it.
“Every conscious thought you have, every moment you spend on an idea, is a commitment to be stuck with that idea and with aspects of that level of thinking, for the rest of your life. Spending just 10 seconds focusing on a topic that does not serve your interests is to invest your energy along a path that will continue to draw from you and define you.”
― Kevin Michel, Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams
I feel like some of this subject matter has taken me to an exciting feeling of standing on a great precipice of possibility. We are only stuck if we insist on it.
Kristin Strachan
The Tao of Einstein
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
― Albert Einstein
