Marina Davies's Post

Establishing Our Experience

Marina Davies | 09.09.06 | 08:34 AM |

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As time reveals itself to us, we find that in each human experience there is a freedom that many of us forget. Our unique abilities to encapsulate billions of bits of information into our very fabric of being, absorbed from all other sentient beings, has been conditioned at every level regarding how to experience life.
Though I struggle daily to remember these choices I have been given, I find great strength in connecting with the experiences of others, in order to observe how I might want to share the moment. I have come to the conclusion that we have one of several choices when comfronted with an emotional choice. One, we can choose to be the victim, two, we can choose to be a perpetrator, three, we can choose to bear witness, or fourth, we can choose to be loving observers.
In each and every interaction with this world I attempt to make a concious and truthful choice to be the loving observer. Many times we have been so well conditioned to carry another role, and these are the times that stillness is required. In stillness and contemplation we can observe in reflection just how we will effect the matrix (as I call it).
It is in this instant that we refrain from reaction, that our GOD shines through in each of us. It is this middle way we choose, in the darkest of moments, that breaks the bonds of conditioning, time and time again.
Can we lead the next generation to these times of stillness? I find myself establishing this new role daily for my children, and all those I come into contact with. I insist there is a better way, that are conditioned selves can and do evolve into something much grander. As I work on interpreting what I learn in my well conditioned classes, in an enlightened way, I realize that the paradigm is so great with so many, that my love must be greater.
In the face of belittlement of my beliefs, and cruelty in response of my love for all, I find I love even more, and trust in my belifs even more recklessly than before. What opportunity has been awakended by these responses...only every possiblitity I wish it to be.

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Have You Heard of the Buddhist Tonglin Exercise?

Submitted by Cougar Brenneman on September 10, 2006 - 8:06am.

Dear Marina,

Before responding, I clicked on your name and read your other Shares and Declares, as well as the responses that you received to your posts.

To me, it sounds as if you are a sensitive empath, because your posts seem to share some common themes or messages. In your current post, you write about responding to violence from a loving observer stance, rather than from the position of a victim, perpetrator, or dispassionate observer. In your August 1 post "In the Midst of Crisis," you describe your attempts to heal the world by surrounding the pain that you deeply feel in other people with light and love.

I teach the Tonglin exercise to people who are not sensitive empaths, but it seems especially appropriate for people like yourself who are. The Tonglin is also known as the Buddhist Compassion exercise; it has the power to change the world, not just to heal your own negative feelings about the pain that is experienced by other people in the world. If you Google the Tonglin, you'll find an exercise that talks about drawing the suffering of the world into your own heart, transforming it, and sending the transformed energy out into the world.

When I teach it as part of the Global Wisdom System, I like to expand the traditional Buddhist description by saying that the Tonglin is a general strategy that not only applies to broadly painted suffering, but also to specific suffering. Once you make the Tonglin part of your spiritual toolkit, you can use it in numerous contexts.

The IONS distant healing experiment that was partially designed by Jerome Stone uses Tonglin as one of the technologies since Jerome has an active Buddhist practice. What this means is that you can draw the suffering of a specific person who is physically sick into your heart chakra, transform it, and send it back as an act of physical healing.

I once used the Tonglin for a large group ritual for peace, which was mostly attended by people who had no regular spiritual practice, but who were in attendance because of their political stance. Even though many of them had an initial impression that what I was doing was too "woo-woo" for them, I got very good feedback from people who had no background in this kind of spiritual work.

I asked the people who attended to realize that they have a connection with the people who create war. I asked them to realize that we all share in the same dysfunctions as George Bush, and I asked them, for a moment, to see him and us as being in the same community because of how we all share the energy of violence.

Once you remove your mental construction of separation, once you become one with the perpetrator or the victim, you can heal that negative energy in your heart chakra. Draw it in with your breath. I then usually recommend that you temporarily withdraw your attention from the other people or person while you heal the energy.

Heal the energy by breathing deeply, holding your breath while you transform it--using yogic Ujjayi breathing if you wish (AKA rasp breathing in healing circles), and staying focused on healing the energy until you feel complete.

Then expand your attention again to include the other people or person. Psychically send the healed energy back to them. Keep breathing energy into your heart chakra and into the other person or people until you feel that the healing energy has landed.

For a sensitive empath like yourself, I recommend that you finish the process by withdrawing your energy into yourself and then shielding yourself. In addition, close down your psychic sensitivity by focusing on your physical sensory awareness of your immediate surroundings.

I'm preparing a plan to begin an online teleconferencing group (using WebCam and voice) that applies inner silence through the Chrysalis Wisdom Council process. I'm thinking about starting with the topic, "How can I apply the insights that I'm getting through IONS to my daily life?" or some variation of this theme. It seems to me that this topic is related to the issues that you've raised both in your current post and your previous ones.

I started to write about this group in my previous post. Please let me know if you're interested in joining it by writing to globalwisdom@sbcglobal.net

In previous informal tests, I have found that you can teach healing energy work very successfully over the Internet, and that it helps to have a WebCam so that you can see the other participants. I would love to be able to test this hypothesis in a more formal, scientific way within IONS. Since IONS is a world-wide organization, I think that testing this hypothesis is important for IONS' future work.

After each session of my online group, I will be asking participants to respond to a brief questionaire to begin formalizing the process--though it still won't be scientific at this point.