In a post comment I said, “You have caused me to pause and consider the origin of thought. I once meditated deeply and looked for the origin of thought within me. I looked in all the unlikely places first - legs, arms, abdomen, stomach, heart, etc. Then I looked in my head and brain. In none of those places did I find thought. It was coming in from somewhere beyond the body. ”

Speck, an anonymous but always provocative, insightful and thoughtful commenter, posted this response:

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When you realized there was no identifiable origin of thought within you, did you not see that that itself is a thought, and there is no “I” inside? The thoughts follow one another without any effort on our part. If I was to say to you “Come up with a thought” you would see that you actually witness a stream of thoughts, you “pick” one of them, and say, “I will think of this”….lol. So much for creating a thought. But you might argue, well I had the thought of picking that individual thought…but did you really? Or was that just another thought coming from nowhere?

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Below is a message from James Souttar, which he posted in the comment section of my blog, and on some other blogs as well.

James lives in London and has a blog called Transforming Communication. I first met James on Tarquin Rees blog Anulios. Tarquin (aka Segovius) lives in Barcelona, and in recent months has been very busy, unable to blog. Tarquin asked his site visitors if they would consider guest blogging and I submitted a potential post, which he graciously posted. James is referring to that post in his message below. If you enjoy longer discussions, I encourage you to consider participating in James’ new blog abwoon, and be sure to keep your eye on Anulios’ site, too - he’ll be back.

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From James Souttar:

Tarquin, Mark, Serenity, Others… Our extraordinary discussion here [on Anulios' blog] has been percolating through me slowly over the last few weeks. And it has inspired me to want to carry out an experiment. I’ve set up a blog site on the following url which explains what this is. And if you feel so minded, I would be delighted if you would join me in it.

http://abwoon.blogspot.com

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Following my last post. I had a series of lessons with my teacher. There are several things I have harvested out of those lessons, including:

- when we return a portion of the appreciated value to the source, the loop keeps running, but more importantly it has an opportunity to grow in value;

- it is wise to find and give back to a source that can return compound value, because an accelerated effect can occur;

- having someone truly appreciate your value, and do that over and over and over, can become very uncomfortable, because we are not used to unconditional giving; unconditional giving eventually forces us to confront our selfishness, biases and insecurities;

- there is an aspect of going back to the source that can give us a feeling of admonishment when we approach and interact with the source, but that is because of our biases and our position of not being centered in the moment.

This post began as a draft post, which I asked my teacher to review. Following his review, there were several other lessons that took place before I finally felt ready to make a final pass at the post.

Note: This is a publicly posted lesson between student and teacher, a continuation of lessons on a series called The Art of Giving.

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About a week ago, Gretchen and I were with Sensei for a few hours. We had just left a community meeting, in which a lot of negativity was being thrown about. Negativity has powerful effects on our thinking, on how we interact with each other and with our problems, and on our personal growth. It can also distort and affect the messages and instructions from a teacher, because it grounds out the circuit of conductivity by introducing a greater amount of resistance due to the prominence we give to our personal biases. We can see this in our lives very easily, for example, when one negative person can often ground out an entire group of people.

During the lesson, we were talking about how using the Principles of Giving in that negative meeting had brought about improved results. As our lesson continued, Sensei kept building the source value so that I could better understand how gratitude should be working. There were many other elements to that lesson, and I came out of it with a determination to write a post. This time, however, after I wrote my draft post I asked my teacher to review it.

When his written comments came back, there were some things I saw as valuable, there were also some inner reactions I had, and there were some other things that weren’t apparent. Those unapparent things came out in further discussions and also when a few nights later we discussed the same concepts with a group of Great River Jiu Jitsu students following an evening marital arts class. The more often we met or talked, the deeper the insights I received into how to effectively return a portion of the appreciated value back to the source.

This brings out an important point: we tend to read or hear deeper lessons and go, “Okay, I get it.” I do this too often. But the fact is we don’t get it, because we are typically in too big a hurry to show that we are ‘getting it’, or we are too caught up in our biases to realize there is something beyond our biases.

In the first instance, we like to demonstrate all we know, or we enjoy talking about our understandings on the topic, instead of shutting up and listening. Even when we shut up and listen, and actually harvest a piece of deeper value, we sometimes make that piece the quintessential point. That can often be a good thing, but many times we walk away with our new piece of information, never realizing that the teacher had a far deeper point for us to obtain. Fortunately, I have a teacher who understands this, and he graciously keeps plugging away, giving students ample opportunities to learn.

In the case of our biases, we can get the whole ‘deer in the headlights’ look when we are brought to a certain tripping point. We can too easily get stuck in our conditioned behavior, sometimes to the point where everyone else can see an obvious thing about us, but viewed through the constant lenses of our biases nothing appears abnormal whatsoever. But that is not always the case. There are times when we are able to ovecome our biases and transcend our normal lives as we center and immerse ourselves inside the field of superconductivity. That’s when things can really sizzle. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sorry about the delay in responding to comments. This past week I was traveling extensively for work, and then pretty busy at each new city. I should have posted something about being too busy to blog, but each day I kept thinking it wouldn’t be a problem (sigh). Anyway, I am back off the road, and will resume posting and answering comments within the next couple days or so. My next post will be from a lesson with my teacher this past Monday evening, a continuation of this recent series of posts.

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Here is something I often do haphazardly, and that the lesson in the link below is teaching how to overome:
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“All too often, we are so busy expressing ourselves, we hardly take notice of the incoming value.

“The principles which I am describing are principles that can help us build a stronger connection to source value. This occurs as we act in ways that help the source value, and our relationship to it, grow.”

Sensei, Giving and its Principles

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“If we are to become more consciously aware of our reason for living, through the process of breathing, we have to have some way of recognizing what the incoming value is and compare it to the outgoing. In other words, our in-breath has a reason and purpose behind it, which is something we have to know and realize if we expect to extend that purpose and reason through ourselves and into our world as we breathe out. We are the factor that distorts or enhances that reason as it moves through us to enter into our world. Our giving, in the sense of our study, is about becoming more aware of this process. In order to become more aware, we have to become more cognizant of what lies upstream and compare it to what we are breathing out.”

- Sensei, Giving and its Principles

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Running ‘the loop’

As I begin to re-read Sensei’s lesson, Giving and its Principles, I cannot go further than this point above, found in the opening 4th and 5th paragraphs: I don’t have sufficient clarity on what lies upstream.

There is a Value being stated here. One Value I find is in the actual question being asked: what is the reason and purpose behind my in breaths? If I can better understand that, and better understand what lies upstream of my in breath, then it is apparent I will have a better understanding of what is powering my body and my reason for being here.

So, I am going to stop and Respect that I don’t have sufficient clarity about that Value. I also recognize and respect that what comes out of me, exemplified by my out breath (and my life), has a lot of distortion when it comes to living and communicating deep Divine clarity and eternal awareness.

Having done that, I move to the next principle: Appreciation. How can I appreciate this; how can I find a way to increase the Value that I am respecting? First, by being even more honest: there is no question that I don’t have a good understanding of what is powering my body and my reason for being here. It would be easy to blow by these few sentences of my teacher, justifying that I do have some understanding. But justification is not going to improve me, and certainly not going to take me to toward an improved understanding and application of these principles.

Therefore, as a measure of my Appreciation, I am going to say that I not only want to have a good understanding of what is powering my body and my reason for being here, but I want to have an excellent understanding. Why? For a variety of reasons, but foremost is that I want to minimize the amount of distortion occurring between my in and my out breath. Why? Because I want to live and be a Divine Giver, and in the process of doing that I want to do everything I can to ensure that what is coming through me has a minimum of bias and a maximum of clarity.

I have now Appreciated a Value that I have Respected.

So, how do I show my Gratitude? One way is by stating that I am happy to be reminded that simply stopping and running this ‘loop’ of principles, that comprise the Art of Giving, that act is already beginning to give me a more centered and informed point of focus.

How do I return at least a portion of that Gratitude to source, which is in this case my teacher? One way is by saying, “Wow, take a look at how effective this formula is! Take a look at how just a few words into this article, appreciated value is already being formed.”

Just stopping for a few moments on a couple of lines, that I’d normally speed bump right over, is already giving me better clarity. Not only that, I know from past experience that I am now better aligning myself to the next thing my teacher is going to say.

Note: the four principles of the Art of Giving are capitalized for clarity.

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Background

Following is a lesson from my teacher, based on questions I submitted from a series of posts on the Art of Giving. Normally, this is a private dialogue between teacher and student, however I am making his lesson to me transparent on my blog.

In his response, Sensei is not answering any questions that have to do with blogging itself. Rather, he is laying some groundwork and focusing on what some would consider to be a subtle nuance: the order in which I listed, and was applying, the four principles of Giving. He is also addressing the issue of giving back to the source.

I have been studying these principles with him for years, and upon seeing that I had reversed the order of two of them, he said, “This is a problem because source is not being honored. This mis-order causes many things in life to malfunction.”

You may find, I as do, that his teaching has a certain flow to it that makes it very easy and natural to read and follow. Do not be lulled into complacency by this; there is a depth occurring that can be quite difficult to understand. This one lesson has years of study available in it.

If you find auditing this lesson to be interesting or valuable, I recommend you spend some time, as I shall, studying. Perhaps you will end up coming up with a good question or two.

Introduction

As an introduction, I have selected the following quote from my teacher. Once you click on the (…more) button, you are reading his direct word-for-word teaching (not my notes). His lesson is called “Giving and its Principles”.

“Most people who tithe are giving out of duty or kindness. But they are not realizing an improved connection to source each time they give. The same thing happens to most musicians - when they play and have a moment of connection, they don’t know how to build it into a further one, where it just keeps getting better and better. It is the master musician who knows how to do that, and it is the master in life who knows how to do that. Mastering life should be certainly about doing that, otherwise we’re not even in tune with our reason for being. How can we master something, including our reason for being, if we are not even in tune with it. It is almost unbelievably embarrassing.”

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