Sare Liz Anuszkiewicz's Blog, page 32

Digital Missioner – Scope & Function

There are two ways to think of a digital missioner - what she does (function), and what applications her work can have (scope).   Let’s talk Scope, first. Scope of a Digital Missioner The Scope of a Digital Missioner is … Continue reading →

Panda as Momento Mori

There is a wonderful new urban art installation (I suppose you could also call it graffiti) in downtown Buffalo and it revolves around a slumped little panda holding a sign, emblazoned on a sticker, stuck to things. Quite often the thing it … Continue reading →

How Do You Turn Yourself On?

Preaching to colleagues can be a dicey business. We’re a tough crowd. We all do this for a living, and even more than that, we’re all plugged in to a greater or lesser degree with That Which All Is, and … Continue reading →

The Daily Doing of the Impossible

What is it for you? The impossible thing that you only dream of changing, but can’t actually imagine it differently? For me, I’ve been digging down deep and doing some spiritual growth, lately and it has come out of that. … Continue reading →

Book Review: Alone with a Jihadist

Once I got into it, this was a sensational, gripping read that gave me hope for the universal church in the 21st century – beyond tags of liberal or conservative, progressive or fundamentalist, this book is about the power of … Continue reading →

Disclosure of Material Co…

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.

Yep. Here it is. My standard Speakeasy Disclaimer for all the books I get from them. It's true! It's true! Check them out.

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And now for something completely different.

A little while ago I was invited to review books. Which is to say, a website who facilitates this (Speakeasy) who doesn’t require me to like or dislike the books I read is going to give me free books on … Continue reading →

Getting Unstuck

There are certain go-to questions that are really helpful for me when I start to get mired, to get stuck in negativity and unhealthy behaviors, and while those go-to questions, or sometimes statements, and occasionally entire books may change depending … Continue reading →

Movement & Life

So I was doing a google image search on smart cars in hats (don’t ask – it was lunch time), and I came across this image instead. I dug the blog it came from (Aaron Schwenzfeier, a guy whose professional … Continue reading →

Inner Peace

My morning meditation doesn’t normally resemble this, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?

Something lovely happened yesterday morning – the watcher laughed at the ego. It’s a bit of an ontological leap and there was a lot of giggling involved. (I think ontological changes could always be accompanied by laughter – that would be okay in my book.) At any rate, it is an that experience I’ve heard mentioned by Eckhart Tolle, but haven’t quite managed to have for myself – until yesterday morning.

The watcher laughed at the ego.

Let me explain. Who is the watcher? I am. Consider, in Christian terms, that the watcher is the immortal soul that dwells within this mortal coil complete with said coil’s cells, chemicals, thoughts and emotions. So the watcher isn’t the cells, chemicals, thoughts nor emotions – the watcher is perhaps integrated, but not the same substance. And yet (for arguments sake) the watcher, the immortal soul, is the seat of consciousness and self-consciousness.

Okay. So then, the watcher doesn’t think – the mortal coil does. And isn’t that an odd thing to consider – because at least in English we use the word ‘think’ far more often than its traditional definition requires… don’t you think? In a colloquial sense, ‘thinking’ covers contemplating, meditating, actual thought processes, believing, taking time out, creating distance, observing uncertainty, disclaiming an observation from needing to be true… and that’s just what I can come up with off the top of my head. So back to the point – the watcher doesn’t think. But the watcher is not just the seat of consciousness and self-consciousness, but also wisdom and connection with God. The watcher experiences. The watcher understands. The watcher is an intelligence that is bigger than simply thought.

Meditation opens a door. What is beyond… isn’t just hazy bamboo, either.

Now, the average person can’t actually stop thinking on demand. I’ll grant you that the average person also doesn’t realize that they’re shooting the rapids of their thoughts all the time, a rushing river of thought and it’s so normal to them that it’s like asking a fish if it likes water. “What’s water?” the fish asks, having never experienced anything else. But it only takes five minutes of instruction on meditation for the average person to say their own version of the following: “Holy Macaroni! I can’t stop thinking! It’s just one thought after another and I can’t seem to stop! Is there something wrong with me?” Either that, or five minutes into it they’ve fallen asleep – their body recognizing the signal of ‘slow down’ as the only downtime they likely get: slumber.

Having said that, the average person can also learn how to meditate, which is another way of saying, ‘learn how to control thought, rather than having thought control you’. It takes about three minutes to learn the basics, depending on how fast one reads, or your instructor speaks, and after meditating for a cumulative 50 hours or so, anyone can be well on their way. It’s one of those things where mastery comes over the course of a lifetime and that even though you’re sitting there doing nothing, you’re changing your entire life.

Why is that? Why does sitting for twenty minutes every day doing nothing and thinking nothing change your entire life? I mean, people work hard at jobs they don’t like, and maybe more than one in order to ‘change their lives’, or maybe more particularly, change the circumstances of their lives, their life situation. What does does twenty minutes of nothing have on doing so much something?

To answer that, let’s discuss the ego. Putting aside previous definitions of ego, let’s go with something more in the line of Eckhart Tolle’s definition: the ego is the illusory sense of identity that human beings adopt right out of the cradle. That is, when we identify with anything other than our immortal soul – and boy howdy can we do that in spades – we’ve expanded our egos. And you know, the ego craves fulfillment that it will never have because it already is an illusion. The endless cycle of craving and ultimate dissatisfaction… that’s ego. And the power and flexibility of our minds and thoughts in the service of the ego? Tolle calls it madness, and I completely agree.

But the mind doesn’t need to be in the service of the ego – it can be in the service of the watcher, that which we truly are, our essence, the deep wisdom that is one with God. And for that to happen… we get to decide when to think and when to turn our brain off. And when we meditate, we practice that in small doses.

And this changes everything. It is the difference between operating on a daily basis out of a place of profound and divine wisdom rather than out of a place of madness. This is the place where the miraculous occurs.

At one point in his books, Tolle points out that it’s okay to not take ourselves so very seriously. And when we have a little space, and realize what’s going on, we can laugh at the inner antics of the ego, as one might good-naturedly laugh a beloved child who is being petulant. And when we can do that, we will have experienced the difference from the intelligence that is laughing and the ego that is being petulant

And yesterday, I laughed at my ego. Actually, I giggled. It was being a silly-head, after all.