The Deep Hearts Core – Spiritual Direction for Difficult Times

Much of our life is spent judging.  This is judgement of ourselves and others.  This lowers our energy vibration and we fall out of a sense of refinement. We say that we feel less than fine, which is a statement of our energetic flow.

All spiritual traditions invite you to practice in one form or another the art of witnessing.  This is witnessing your thoughts and actions.  This is what the writer Colin Turner, writing in “Shooting the Monkey,” says  is the key to life’s fulfilment.  Here is what this wonderful writer on secrets of the new spirit of business has to say about this practice:

“Everybody is capable of reaping the infinite benefits available, yet most don’t even get close to it.  We are too busy judging others.  Although each of us carries the key to the door of fulfilment, very few ever turn the lock.  All that is required, however, is to take time to meditate.”

This instruction comes from a leading entrepreneur and teacher whose ideas have been influenced by such wisdom teachers as Chang Tzu, Rumi, Wayne Dyer, Vernon Howard and God, to name just a few.  He is representative of the new business spirit that the world of work needs in order that there be justice in the world in the use of economic resources for all people.

In “Shooting the Monkey” Colin Turner goes on to say that the powerful practice of silent witnessing of our thoughts and actions is a spiritual practice.

” Sitting cross-legged and half-naked under a tree humming to yourself is not meditation. Millions of people miss out on meditation because of false connotations.  They think it is gloomy and serious, or religious and monastic, or downright weird and bizarre. Yet meditation affords the opportunity to embark on the greatest adventure the human mind can take. In truth, total awareness is a form of meditation”

That quote is from someone who teaches in a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programme.  Can you see this instruction, the key to the door of fulfilment being included in the mission statement of many leading companies or corporations?

Can you see such an invitation being extended on the trading floor of the world’s stock exchanges?

Yet, this is being done.  Poets and storytellers are being invited into the boardroom of multi-national corporations. One such poet and storyteller is David Whyte.  This is a storyteller who tells fairy stories. He tells his listeners about the Tuatha de Danaan – the people of beauty and grace that have been overlaid with judgement.

This is one of many secrets of the New Business Spirit that allows us to become invitations to presence.  This means that we work more effectively when we are detached from outcomes and emotional involvement.  This does not mean we cease to fee but that we feel fine.  We trust the process of creation as we witness it in flow rather than in judgement..

The monkey you are invited to shoot in “Shooting the Monkey” is what wisdom traditions who practice silent witnessing call monkey mind.  We all have such a mind.  If you doubt this then sit for five minutes. Practice breathing in and breathing out. Now watch. You will probably be planning something in the future. Thinking about is not being present to and in the moment. Absence from the present moment is how most people go about experiencing their life.  The secrets of the New Business Spirit invite you into the present and the gift that you are and are intended to be.

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The best way to pay attention is to trust the creative process that creates all things.  It wants to create through you because that is its intention.  Your alignment with this intention is the degree to which life flows and things seem to happen in a miraculous way.

Trust is the opposite of doubt. Trust invites Love and doubt invites fear.  Trust invites expansion and fear invites restriction and regression.  In mythological terms one invites the Eros, the God of Love and the other invites the Thanatos, the God of Death.

A person who trusts in the creative process is generally once relaxed and happy.  They don’t have to do it all. They cooperate with the creative life force and trust it to do what it is best at – creating from inspiration.  This requires that you let go of the reins and trust that you will be directed to the source of fulfilment within you.

What are you to pay attention to? In a word, synchronicity.  This is when little things seem to be coincidental. Often we simply notice that a coincidence has occurred and we negate the power by dismissing it as a meaningless recurrence of some trivial event.  In this way we dishonour the way in which the creative process speaks to us.

When we begin to trust and pay attention to these synchronicities we begin to experience ‘Ah ha!’ moments. These are moments of seeming magic when it all fits together where before it might have appeared it was all falling apart.

These meaningful coincidences arise from the voice of your inner teacher.  This is the voice of intuition – inner tuition.  It is not just linear. It is not what we understand as more knowledge about something.  This writer calls it ‘knowing.’  In some wisdom traditions it is called ‘insight.’

Insight can be developed.  It is the real invitation to education.  You are not on this planet to become simply an accumulation of knowledge whose primary focus is to serve an economic idea called increased GDP that ravages the very planet that sustains our life.

You are here to grow in Love.  The extent to which you are in alignment with this primary purpose is the extent to which you will experience happiness.  The extent to which you are not out of alignment is the extent to which you will feel uneasy and experience suffering in some form.

What tells you that you are in tune with the creative process that when asked gives you what you ask for? Simply stated, it is your feel state, your station of vibrational refinement.  Do you think fine thoughts? Do you live in a fine environment? Do you invest in fine food, fine music, and fine company?

Are you attractive? Not merely in a glamorous sense.  Would you commit to marrying yourself as you are right now?  If you are not sure, then start to pay attention.  Pay attention to the ways in which you negate the magic that is always trying to express through you.  This is through feelings of doubt, cynicism and judgement.  If these feelings are paid attention to, which does not mean they are indulged or judged, then they will move deeper into despair, anger and hatred.  There is no sense of refinement to be felt in these emotional states.

Pay attention to how you feel.  Feelings are the rudder on your life’s direction.  They are pointing you to the power within you to express the unique magical and mysterious being you are and are intended to be.  Wake up! Put away doubt and fear and trust the process of creation. It intended that you be here. Was that intention out of Love or was it an accident.  All the seers, mystics and prophets will tell you that you are the stuff of Love.

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There is a wisdom saying, “What you resist, persists.”

There is more this saying. It is this. What you resist intensifies.  You become in-tense and in tension. This is because you violate a fundamental universal law. This is the law that Love Expands.

This universe is expanding. It expands because it is Love and the nature of Love is expansion.  This creative expression has no beginning or end.  You have been born into form in order to allow creation to feel and be the knowing of Love.

When you resist you go against Love.  This does not mean you allow yourself to be a doormat. It does mean that you cease listening to your inner critic, which resists your creative expansion and thus your creative expression.

Recognise, however, that resistance is a gift.  It is what helps create growth.  Without resistance you might enter more and more deeply into your separate sense of self.

1. Honor Resistance

Resistance is what creates form from the formless. In order for the one to become two, which then becomes all things, the one has to be resisted. Resistance creates the big bang that began this universe. Without it, you would not be. Nor would life be as it is.  Resistance creates life and all life.

1. Do not judge resistance

Use resistance to grow in Love.  The growth of the mature spiritual warrior is through the alchemy of resistance.  The lead of anger is turned into the silver of unconditional regard and, as it moves deeper into the personality, into the gold of unconditional Love.

3.       Use resistance as a guide

When you are out of harmony with the source you will fee what you refer to as ‘bad.’  You will not experience the real movement of feelings that lead to ‘fineness.’ This is why you say you feel fine when you feel good, which is the same as saying when you feel G (o) od.

When you feel fine, the energy of the body is in free flow. It is not meeting resistance. Your work is really to commit to being an alchemist of Love. This is the work of the soul friend.

© Tony Cuckson 2008

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This is not the sort of advice you might usually expect from one you have asked for some creative problem solving. It is, however, the advice you could expect from an Irish storyteller versed in geancannach - love talking.

Much of the time we sit.  Many of us sit when we are at work. When we get home from work we might slouch on the couch.  What we tend to do is sit and think about our day and when we hit a problem we tend to begin a process of circular thought.  We think about X. We think about X.  Still the problem remains. Often ‘X’ seems to get bigger the more we think about X.

In some wisdom traditions this is referred to as monkey mind.  You mind becomes something that pulls your around and around on a chain.  It may appear that something is changing but all that happens is repetition. You are repeating patterns. This is not creative problem solving.

The solutions to problems often arise from what are called ‘Ah hah!’ moments.  The solution arrives whole.  It is not brought about through the process of linear thinking, which also tends to rehash the past in some form or other.  When the solution arrives you can genuinely say, “I would never have thought of that as the solution to my problem.”

In saying this you are giving recognition to the way problem solving works as a process.  One key aspect of this process is that you allow it to work through you.

This is the hard part for most of us.  We want our problem solved and we want it solved in our way.  This often tends to be the nub of the problem.  We resist the invitation to new possibilities. We refuse to stand aside and allow the creative intelligence that lives in us and through us to express in the way it is intended.

This sounds like you will have to relinquish control. This is exactly how it sounds. This creative intelligence created you as a unique sound and it intendeds to play this sound in this world.  When you resist this you stop feeling the resounding success that you are intended to be.

The key phrase here is intended to be. This intention arises from your very being.  It is the intention that created you in the first place.  It does not create problems. It creates solutions to creative invitations that are new ways of being in the world.

You are not separate from the creative process. You get into do-do because you constantly do-do. You are invited to relax, sit there and do nothing.  In not doing your mind can become still and the creative intelligence that longs to pour into you has an opportunity.

 So next time you want to creative problem solve and your mind says, “Don’t just sit there and do nothing!”- Take a creative leap into the unknown. Trust and sit there and do nothing.

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As a storyteller interested in the creative process I was interested in an article I read on the web about the idea of becoming linear thinker rather than a circular thinker.  The writer was inviting us out of a habit of circular thinking into a more forward-looking way of living life.

In today’s world we do little else but think. We are constantly being invited to think forward, forward plan, to go forward.  We are asked to think about this and that and the other.  What if this is what is called circular though and that the more creative way to problem solve is not thinking about it at all.

“ Wait a minute there, buddy!” I can hear you asking, ”We should stop thinking?”

As I am a storyteller, you might expect the answer to that question to be in the form of a riddle or paradox, magic or mystery. The answer is “yes” and the answer is “no.”

There is a common expression today. It came out of the blue. This means the solution to a problematic situation came out of nowhere.  It just ‘sort of happened.’ One moment there was a problem and the next moment there was a solution.

This is creative intelligence at work.  But this type of creative intelligence is not about linear thought.

Blue is the colour of communication. Solutions to life’s problems come out of the direct connection to the source of creative intelligence that creates worlds for the joy of creation.

There is one essential ingredient that is too little mentioned in articles focused on goal setting and linear thinking.  This is an ingredient that most people in the modern western world are not good at doing.  They are not good at it for a number of reasons:

1. They have not been told about creative intelligence
2. They have been told about it but do not trust it
3. They give up after a time
4. They don’t even try it.

So what is this magic technique that is at the heart of creative problem solving?  It is that having given the issue some linear thought; you let go and trust in the process without dictating the result.  You become open to finding a new solution moving from the intelligence that creates all things out of nothing.

This is not forward planning but creating a space for that which is the flow of creative intelligence.  Forward planning tends to be a projection of the past into the future.  There may be differences but there will not be the “Ah hah!” moment that is beyond linear thinking. 

The creative process can be divided into four steps or phases:

1. Intention
2. Silent Waiting
3. Attention
4. Action

We tend to simply engage with only two, or at best, three of these steps.  These are all needed but the whole process is more than the sum of the parts.  If you leave out one part of the process you disconnect from the creative intelligence that longs to flow through you.

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I am a reflection of mind within Mind. I am as a wave on the ocean of I AM. The purpose of creation is to create. Creation is expansive. It arises from the energy of Love and its expansion and expression is joy.

Thus it is that I am co-creating with the One Mind that is I AM. The next question is then what I am I going to create?  In what way am I prepared to actively claim this power for the highest good?  This is not passive but a sense of empowered responsibility. It is Divine. It is enlightened responsibility. Responsibility implies responding directly to the moment.

The emphasis here is on non-passive reflection. This means a willingness to claim this power of creation that is everyone’s birthright. This is a powerful responsibility. One is required to exercise a true sense of humility. The word humility is rooted in ‘grounded on earth.’

So in this reflection I am moving towards the active. Andrew Harvey calls it…….activism. It is action on behalf of Love. It is committed to the instruction The Course in Miracles, “Teach only Love for that is what you are.” It means being committed to the sayings of Rumi that ” let the beauty you are be what you do.”

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If you build it and they will come.

From Field of Dreams

One key element on the spiritual journey is trust. One must learn to trust the path. One must learn to trust that the force is always with you. It is not that the force of love in action is available to you only at sometime of its choosing. The force is unconditional. It is timeless.

In the wonderful movie Field of Dreams the main character played by Kevin Costner is called to build a baseball stadium in the middle of a cornfield far from anywhere. Everyone thinks he is crazy but he follows his heart’s calling and builds his field of dreams. And they do come.

The Anam cara invites you to unfold your creative potential that will come through you if you trust it will. This creative flow is needed to be felt as a force within you before it can be made manifest in the world of form. This requires the ability to trust your creative imagination.

Most people have shut down this imaginative ability to a large degree. It has been scientifically measured to find that before we are educated our creative imagination operates at a level of 97%. When we leave school this ability has fallen to 3%. This has not fallen by 3% but fallen to 3%, a net 94% loss!

You leave school well informed. We have, however, lost touch with that creative force beyond from. This is the force that gives you what you want would that you build your trust in come what may.

This learning to trust the course of the heart’s imagination is the Anam cara invitation.

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