Author Archives: kathleennewmanspero

consciousness, spirituality

Backstreet Boys and God

backstreet-boys-then

The other day in my post about religion as language I mentioned that at this point in my life I can’t help but see God in everything.  Tonight I was at a karaoke bar and the Backstreet Boys’ song “Larger Than Life” came on.  While at first seeing God in a Backstreet Boys song seems ridiculous, (unless you’re a big fan), when I saw the words to the chorus come on the screen I was totally blown away:

 

“All you people can’t you see, can’t you see

How your love’s affecting our reality

Every time we’re down

You can make it right

And that makes you larger than life”

Who knows what the author was going for when this chorus was written, but when I saw these words I heard a powerful message.

Each individual’s state of consciousness has infinite consequences for the whole.  Because of this the most important step to achieving peace for all, is to create peace within yourself.  The far reaching effects of one person’s state of consciousness can never be known; the entire history of time would need to be traced to see the effects in their fullness.  In this way, each person is “larger than life;” we are much more essential than we can know in our current experience of reality.  As for, “every time we’re down, you can make it right,” I hear that when the world is in pain, you can help by dealing with your own pain body.  The collective pain body of humanity is dissolved one person at a time.

So who can say that boy bands are all bubblegum and no substance?  Anything can point you towards God if you receive it.

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consciousness, spirituality

Keeping The Past Alive With Your Mind

Spring woods

Tonight I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. When I am strongly holding onto thoughts in my head this story helps me laugh at myself, and just let go.

“The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.

The monks walked on in silence.

Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. ‘Why did you carry that girl across the road?’ he asked. ‘We monks are not supposed to do things like that.’

‘I put the girl down hours ago,’ said Tanzan. ‘Are you still carrying her?’”

What are you still carrying in your mind?  What might it feel like to not carry that around all the time?  Just for this present moment allow yourself to drop those thoughts and experience what it feels like.

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consciousness, spirituality

Religion as Language and How It Connects Us All

For me, religions are like languages.  If I were to call a shoe “a shoe” and someone else called it “un zapato,” neither of us would be incorrect.  We were both describing the same thing using a different language.  The words sounded different, but they were pointing to the same meaning.  If I didn’t know Spanish I would have no idea what someone meant when they said “un zapato.”  That doesn’t make that person wrong, it just means the noises they were using to describe something sounded different from what I had known.

As we have many different languages, we have many different religions.  All over the world exist ways of pointing to God, the infinite, the divine, the universe, the oneness, being.  In English I just used many different sounds that are meant to point to a reality, to truth.  The many varied religions from this planet express God in God’s infinite aspects.

Right and wrong ultimately end up as thoughts in the head.  When looking at the religions of the world without the mental screen of “right and wrong” you can see God growing and manifesting for all people in unlimited ways.  Even further, without the mental screen of “right and wrong,” the present moment can be experienced as God’s current manifestation.  When judgment ceases, the miraculous increases.  Without judgment, you are accepting what is, allowing the highest potential of any moment to express itself freely in your life.

While I lived many years buying into the “right and wrong” voice in my head, I now can’t help but see God in everything.  When you are very present, watching the moment, looking and listening for God, God appears through everything.  For me, I could be watching a movie, overhearing a conversation on the bus, finding an encouraging sticker on the train window, and I receive it as something miraculous.  And no matter what mental screen or ego another person is operating from, if I concentrate really diligently on the present I can sense God in and all around them.  This is still challenging for me when people have really strong egos that feel very unpleasant, but the opportunity to recognize that person as their true self is always there.

The unity of the present is such that your awareness of God, (or being, or true self), in another human being, is also being experienced by that person in the present.  Even if that person is completely identified with, and operating from, the voice in their head, the awareness you are experiencing is one with them.  As was mentioned in yesterday’s post, once a small glimpse of awareness is sparked, it can only grow.  That connection can change both of your lives.  What a blessing it is to have the opportunity to understand another human being.

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consciousness, spirituality

The Irreversible Shift

The wonderful thing about awareness is that it cannot be undone. No matter what state you are in now, if at any point in your life you had a glimpse of an awakening, a moment of stillness, a feeling of deep peace beyond understanding, a moment of connection with another human being, you will always have that light of consciousness shining through the fog.

There have been moments in my life where I felt totally in tune, one with the moment, and at ease. Then at other moments I have felt off track, unsure, and out of balance. Those fluctuating states are happening in the foreground of my life, (as Tolle puts it), while the light of awareness still shines (however dimly it may seem) in the background. When things just don’t feel right, that peace you once experienced is not gone from you, and it is not shrinking. That gain in consciousness is still gaining, even when the foreground of life obscures it.

Now even when I get caught up in my thoughts and taken over by the ego I am conscious that it is temporary, a minute moment, soon to be replaced by the awareness still growing in power. Presence will always return. Rather, presence is always present, becoming brighter and brighter until you notice it.

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consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

The Pain Body Practice and The Beginning of Inner Peace

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. Every morning I listen to an audiobook, interview, sermon, or anything that will inspire me and bring me more fully into the spirit of the present. I am always amazed by how words of inspiration change my inner state from tired and dreary, to awake, energized, and joyful. As I do my makeup I let the positive words sink in. By the time I’m out the door I feel excited for life. This is the polar opposite of the feeling I have when I first wake up in the morning.

Inner peace is a practice. It requires practice in every single moment. This looks different in every moment. I know that when I’m at work it looks different than when I’m at home. At home I can listen to my audiobooks when I get ready for the day. At work I can allow myself to focus fully on each task, keeping my attention on the “doing” instead of the result I am working towards. When I am at home watching TV and a commercial about some deadly illness comes on and I am about to be afraid of it, I have to practice peace by letting go of fear. Each and every now is an opportunity for greater peace. It is totally fine that not all moments seem as peaceful as others, that is all part of the practice.

Yesterday I began talking about the pain body, the residual energy of past pain that lives within each of us. The pain body creates great opportunities for practice. Of course they don’t feel great, but the awareness gained in the moment of disidentification from the pain body can put you light years ahead of your current state of consciousness. Practicing inner peace with a heavy and active pain body can thrust anyone into a spiritual awakening.

When I was just entering high school I had a very active pain body. I can see now how the emotional pain and the thoughts in my head fed each other constantly. This was a blessing because I knew something was wrong. I knew that the pain and anxiety was not okay. I remember telling my mom, as she was driving home from a friend’s house, that there was something wrong with me. I told her that the voice in my head was always coming up with horrible scenarios about the worst things that could possibly happen to me. It would come up with scenarios where everyone I loved died and play through how I would cope and what it would feel like. While that all sounds quite dramatic, it wasn’t until many years later that I realized everyone had a voice in their head that was making up various scenarios, many of which had negative outcomes. The active pain body was so uncomfortable that it woke me up to that voice as a “problem.” Instead of assuming that the mind is just the way it is, I knew it was causing me too much pain to be in its natural state.

Together the pain body and the voice in the head create the ego. They live their lives through you, and until a little spark of disidentification comes in, they are you. They make your decisions, they create your reactions, and they completely obscure the inner peace that is your natural state. The ego will cease to run your life the moment you realize it is not you. That is all that is required. That is where the practice of inner peace begins.

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consciousness, spirituality

What Is The Pain Body?

For the last two weeks I have been driving my Mom’s car, and what a blessing it has been!  I had totally forgotten when I had to give it back, and was just reminded that tomorrow I would be without a car once more.  Although not having a car was normal for me, hearing I wasn’t going to have one anymore provoked some negative feelings.  I felt disappointment and then it slowly dissipated.

What would have happened if I hadn’t let go of those negative emotions and held onto them?  My mind would have started thinking negative thoughts.  The voice in my head would have been talking about all of the reasons it was anxious about not having a car, describing exactly what would be more difficult, and why this was indeed an upsetting situation to be in.  Those thoughts in turn would have given rise to even more negative emotion than I had felt at first.  When emotional pain turns into thinking, the voice in the head is acting on the assumption that being upset will somehow help it get what it wants.

Eventually that pain subsides, and the mind starts thinking about other things and moves on.  What happens to the pain that subsides but is not let go of?  It is still within, and when an emotion akin to itself is provoked at some other time, it takes that opportunity to arise once more and add to the new emotional pain being experienced.  The new negative energy feeds the old negative energy lying dormant within.  And when that past pain is woken up, it takes the opportunity to feed negative thinking, which will make the negative emotions grow.

Eckhart Tolle describes the negative energy field that dwells within us as the “pain body.”  Deeply negative people are often controlled by the pain body.  That is the deep negativity; the heavy pain body.  It is not who that person is.  Awakening to the pain body is freedom.  The cycles of the pain body no longer have to operate.  You don’t have to feel bad every 3 weeks, or have a fight once a month with your partner.  When it wakes up and you know how it operates, it ceases to control your life.  Instead you have the opportunity to observe the pain body, be with the pain without reacting, and dissolve the past pain whenever you choose to express and let go of a negative emotion.

Consequently, when you awaken to your own pain body, it is easy to awaken to the pain body in others.  For me this has helped me to not take negative comments and actions from others as personally.  When I see it is just the pain body, I am able to see through the person’s pain to their true self. Have there been situations in your life where you can see now that a person had been taken over by their pain body?

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consciousness, spirituality

Today’s Take Away

I feel this last week’s lesson in “divine compensation” is very relevant today.  When someone takes something away from you, or harms you, the universe repairs itself by restoring to you what you lost in a new form.  The person who took from you will also get to experience the loss they facilitated in some form in their own life.  But to feel the peace of this knowing requires complete trust.  For me learning a lesson helps evoke this trust, which is why I write these posts.  I think we are all learning something about ourselves, and what our personal views of justice are, from the Trayvon Martin case.

Eckhart Tolle sends out “present moment reminder” emails and the one he sent out this week, from A New Earth, says, “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”  So today I look within, with an open mind, at the assumptions and attitudes I hold.  Where do I perpetuate injustice?  What assumptions and attitudes do I make about people who I don’t truly know?  When do I put the blinders on and stop seeing my human kin as brothers and sisters and instead treat them as “other”?  Without judging what I find, I am able to learn from myself.  From the higher vantage point of the watcher I can view the parts of me that do not operate from my true self, and find they dissolve in the light of awareness.

In the coming weeks I will begin to address the pain body, that energy created by past pain that lives within us and is added to when painful events are not fully accepted and let go of.  I feel that the recent events from Florida may add to this nation’s pain body.  Our collective pain body has surely been awoken, as can be seen on any social media outlet.  But it can be dissolved, by dissolving our own individual pain bodies.

I also find it very healing to remind myself that I am seeing current events from a very limited viewpoint and cannot judge what I see.  I have no idea for what purpose any event happens,  and labels such as “good” and “bad” are merely thoughts in my head.  For now, I think we could all use a bit of good news:

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consciousness, spirituality

How do you forgive yourself?

When I visited an ashram for a short time at the age of 21 I was offered a different perspective about what it meant to forgive yourself. When staying at the ashram I had to do various jobs like housekeeping, landscaping, kitchen duty etc. My first day of housekeeping I was sent outside to bleach shower curtains. As I sprayed, the bleach splashed onto a pair of gray sweatpants hung on the line just in front of me. I rushed inside dousing the pants with water but sure enough, like mold on a strawberry, little white dots began to appear. When the guest came to retrieve his sweatpants he was extremely upset, they had been his favorite pair of pants. I felt terrible and cried to the head of housekeeping about it. There is no concealing your inner state, however you might try, and the other people in my program knew I was sad the rest of that day.

Across the hall from my dorm was a blonde boy, probably a couple years older than me, named Chandler. The most charming thing about him was that he actually said “golly” with all sincerity. When I told him what had happened his response was something I never expected. He said, “Katie, that man has given you the greatest gift! The chance to forgive yourself!” I had never looked at forgiving myself as a gift before. But forgiveness is a gift even when the person you happen to be forgiving is yourself. By forgiving you say, “While this or that has taken place, I see through that to your true self, the same self which is in all of us, holy and untouched by outer circumstance.” When you can say that to yourself, you are loving yourself. And while forgiving yourself at first may seem difficult, because of emotions like guilt and shame, you can practice by forgiving other people.

There are a million moments each day to forgive other people, to look past their outer form and see their truest inner being. When someone has an opinion you find offensive, you can look through that, you can forgive. When someone is unkind, unhelpful, or unforgiving to you, that is a moment to practice forgiveness. Even further, you can practice forgiveness by forgiving the present moment. Allow the now to be as it is by forgiving whatever it brings. When the present moment is undesirable, practice forgiving that moment by bringing inner acceptance to what is. When you accept and allow you open up space for change. Forgiveness does this for moments you experience, for people in your life, and for you. Forgiveness transforms the illusion of form into the reality of timeless being. Forgiveness makes all and everything holy and unified. No matter what you have done, that you now see in the light of awareness was not the right thing to do, practice forgiving yourself. Practice seeing past what you have done, to who you truly are. Looking past the outer circumstances of your life in turn allows you to do the same for all other beings. It connects us all, and gives us all the chance to live our destiny as fully conscious beings, unshaken by the illusion of outer circumstance.

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