Georgi Y. Johnson's Blog: I AM HERE - Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty, page 13
November 28, 2017
Consciousness, Light and Telepathy. Biophotons and Optic Neural Networks.
For millennia, mystics have equated consciousness with light. It started in Genesis, with the creation of the universe, and even today, the word ‘enlightenment’ hints at fundamental physical secrets.
Now, moving away from the belief that brain chemistry generates consciousness, leading scientists are saying that consciousness could be expressed through biophotons in the DNA and most specifically in the brain. They’re calling it the brain’s optic communication network.
But it doesn’t stop there, the possibility of biophotons at work in consciousness and non-verbal communication opens up the question of quantum entanglement – what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Quantum entanglement says that two entangled particles affect each other irrespective of distance and time. Meaning, that if there’s a change in my light frequency, it can affect another with whom I’m entangled even from the past or future, and even at a far corner of the universe. Could part of our purpose here be to evolve from unconscious distance communication to conscious mastery?
Below is an extract from one of the articles on the research coming out of the University of Calgary in Canada, written by Erin Guiltenane.
***
Christoph Simon specializes in quantum physics, an enigmatic field not commonly associated with biology or neuroscience. Together with a team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, Simon has recently published a paper in Nature’s Scientific Reports proposing that the brain may use elementary particles of light to communicate across the cable-like axons that connect its nerve cells, or neurons; in essence, the theory suggests the existence of a fibre optic network in the brain.
Simon had long been interested in learning about how the brain functions, but was uncertain how to blend that interest with his background in quantum physics. He found an entry point when learning about biophotons through a conversation with University of Alberta researcher and article co-author Jack Tuszynski. “Biophotons are photons that are produced by cells through normal metabolism, particularly in the brain. Photons are the fundamental particles of light,” Simon explains. “It’s clear to everyone that the brain uses electrical signals and this is how messages are sent and received through the body’s nervous system,” he says. “But we know that there are also photons present in the brain, and photons are really good for sending signals. It would seem natural for evolution to have found that as well.”
Infographic: MIT Technology Review
Simon says that the brain’s structure is similar to that of a fibre optic network, and has the potential to function as such. Using fibre optic cables, photons can be used for communication purposes across large distances. Messages inside the brain would, of course, be sent over much shorter distances. “We already know, from our existing technology, what needs to be in place to make cables for photons,” tells Simon, who says that the refractive index of those cable fibres needs to be higher than that of its surrounding environment, like air or water, for the light to stay inside the cable. He compares this to the brain’s structure; the axons in the brain, in this theory, act as the “cables” that transmit light from one cell to another. The myelin sheaths that protect the axons help to keep the photons inside.
Simon and his colleagues developed a sophisticated mathematical model for testing whether axons could indeed, physically conduct light. They concluded that it is a serious possibility. However, their idea still has to be tested experimentally. If Simon’s team’s theory proves to be true, and the axons and neurons of the brain constitute a light communication system, “it would be a whole new perspective on the brain,” he says.
Quantum laws may unlock mystery of consciousness
Rotating view of a photon emission from an electron
Earlier this year, UCalgary researcher Wolfgang Tittel used Calgary’s existing fibre optic network to demonstrate that photons excel at transporting not only ordinary information, but also quantum information. If the brain were also using photons to transport quantum information, it would be imaginable that some of the laws of quantum physics could apply to brain function and processing.
Quantum physics allows information to be sent and manipulated in ways that are not possible using rules based on the classical laws of nature (like teleportation). “My colleagues and I think about how to make quantum computers, which are vastly more powerful than regular computers,” says Simon. “If our theory is true, that means that the brain might also function like a quantum computer. It could be that some of the mysterious features of quantum physics are responsible for some of the mysterious features of the brain.”
If so, Simon speculates it might hold the clue to how the brain produces the state of consciousness, another question whose solution has long evaded researchers.
Laser beam crystal structure. Yin yang model of photons.
References
Are There Optical Communication Channels in the Brain?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4267444/;
https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.08887;
https://www.livescience.com/28550-how-quantum-entanglement-works-infographic.html;
Mirror Neurons & Nondual Therapy
The miracle of the human brain is only beginning to be understood: not least in its remarkable ability to attune to the environment and to reflect energetic resonance from others. When we are able to consciously allow this in therapy, the healing power could be tremendous.
A foundational premise of Nondual Therapy is that the concept of a definitively separate self is illusory. The belief in separation affects not only forms of thought but also patterns of stress, depression and energetic contraction throughout the whole psyche. We can perhaps release the idea that our consciousness is separate from the consciousness of others, but it can be hard to allow that also our bodies, minds, feelings and emotions are inseparable from the whole. This is because the intimacy of experience is clearly differentiated from the experience of another, and we believe that difference means separation and that this separation is absolute. On inspection, this belief is incongruous, although pervasive. Does the difference between the fingernail and the finger mean there is an absolute separation between the two? Does the difference between a mother and a child set them eternally apart?
Nondual Therapy: the Psychology of Awakening. Release date: 01/01/18
In neuroscience, the discovery of mirror neurons has brought fresh scientific insights into the inseparability of experience. In the ‘eighties and ‘nineties a group of Italian neurophysiologists at the University of Parma comprised of Rizzolatti, Di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, and Gallese, had the ventral premotor cortex of a macaque monkey hooked up with electrodes to study neurons associated with the control of hand and mouth actions. Each time the monkey picked up a peanut to eat, his brain would cause the monitor to go: “click, click, click”. One day, a researcher himself took a peanut to eat, as the monkey watched him. The same sound “click, click, click,” resonated through the monitor, although the monkey hadn’t moved an inch. The monkey’s brain was reacting as if the monkey had taken and eaten the peanut herself. Repeated tests showed that an observed action in another can signal the same brain response as first-hand physical action. The neurons that fired in response to actions taken by someone else’s body have been called Mirror Neurons, which display a phenomenon often referred to as: “Monkey see, Monkey do”.
We can recognize these mirror neurons at work: each time we clutch our heads in despair when the footballer misses the penalty; when we’re watching a drama on TV; or in any emotional engagement with second-hand situations. They are also at work where we empathize with ourselves through memories of the past or imagination about ourselves in future situations. We imagine the gourmet meal we’re going to have in the evening and our mouth salivates. We remember the death of a loved one years ago, and tears come to the eyes. Mirror neurons are at play in empathic resonance within and beyond the borders of the separate self.
As with all neurons, mirror neurons multiply according to use. If we don’t use them, we lose them. This is where meditation plays a fundamental role in opening the resonant connectivity of the psyche with its whole environment as well as extending the capacity for living experience. The control system over the free deployment of mirror neurons is found in the prefrontal cortex – which is the forehead area of the pineal chakra or the third eye. From this area, a quick check is made to the sense perception of the skin surface of the body to establish if emerging experience is local to the body or elsewhere, and based on this, the firing of mirror neurons is partially inhibited. Through our prevalent conditioning, if the experience is established as with the ‘other’, we tend to create distance and restrict empathy. Through bringing relaxation, stability and peace to the region of the prefrontal cortex, meditation will open the possibility of the ‘and-and’. Also, I know it’s not my body, but at the same time, I am able to share the experience. The duality of ‘me V you’ is no longer required.
In the words of neuroscientist Prof. V.S. Ramachandran to the Dalai Lama:
“Through practices like meditation, maybe you can temporarily suspend the inhibition (on mirror neurons), so you are able to genuinely adopt another person’s point of view and achieve genuine compassion.”
The functioning of mirror neurons is not hocus-pocus but a gift of nature. Perhaps you recall watching a dog moving its mouth in rhythm with your own chewing of food. Experience is a shared field, and it is the brain that filters how much of it we are ready to take in, and what kind of experience we choose to open up to. The possibilities of experience are limited, but we are so often limited by a combination of fear and belief. We are simply unable to perceive that which we don’t believe is there.
A large part of therapy comes with questioning the allocation of feelings and emotions. This means encouraging the client to take emotional responsibility for the experiences resonating through the psyche. For example, if we walk into a room full of grieving people, does it not affect us? Doesn’t grief awaken within our own experience? To make this clear, we are not responsible for the behavior of others, but we are 100 percent responsible for the effects of the environment on our direct experience. Often, we will want to blame other people for uncomfortable emotions, or we can get confused as to whether these feelings are ours or from the other people. For example, when a client is describing the anger of their partner, it is worth affirming that they also experienced that anger. Anger in the togetherness is experienced by both parts, even if one side is surprised by it. The couple is sharing a contraction of anger and fear. Just this experiential allowance can open the Nondual Quality of compassion.
Perhaps science will at some stage recognize that these mirror neurons – which are found throughout the brain – are about unconditioned consciousness. When mirror neurons are empathic to their own vibration of consciousness (when the brain becomes conscious of consciousness), an awakened freedom from form emerges which is directly conducive to neuroplasticity and the evolution of structures of belief. The experience of release, freedom and power that occurs when consciousness is liberated from the filtration system of the brain over the possibilities of experience is what many refer to as spiritual awakening.
This liberation is facilitated first by a deep relaxation of the control centers of the brain through a disinvestment from the absolute importance of thoughts, beliefs and the energetic web of personality. This disinvestment allows attunement and the emergence of one who can consciously attune to different fields of experience or different atmospheres. In this, attunement depends on the release of the grasping towards either-or structures. Only then can we turn the dial. For example, we can walk into a room full of frightened people and we can attune to the fear in the room. At the same time, and out of freedom, we can also attune to the care in the room, or to the anger outside the room, or to eternal peace. At a certain stage, control of the tuning system is surrendered as a trust develops in a higher form of attunement arising out of pure consciousness: the instantaneous attunement of perception according to the needs of the whole. This kind of liberation involves the surrender of the belief in being in control, as well as beliefs in judgement. There are no mistakes. Everything is of value in the play of experience.
Quality Transmission
The discovery of Mirror Neurons also introduces a scientific premise for the intuitive wisdom of transmission. Spiritual transmission is when an experience is passed between teacher and student without words, explanations or suggestion – simply through vibration. Transmission occurs when there is a strong resonance in a field and the context is safe enough to allow synchronization of the felt sense. Operating beneath the threshold of the conscious mind, it is the sharing of the deeper experiential layers of our true nature. This has direct relevance for Nondual Therapy as the foundational methodology is based on resonance, and on the understanding that the therapist can only awaken the Nondual Qualities of our true nature through being themselves consolidated in these qualities. For example, when a child abuser is confessing the agony behind his behavior, is the therapist able to relax in the resonance of purity? When sitting in a prison cell with a murderer, can the resonance of innocence breath freely, together with all the conditions of guilt?
The base-line of resonant transmission in a therapy session will be found in the ability to relax into the physical body in the here and now. This relaxation of the therapist will be transmitted to the client, modelling the depth possibility of healing. Despite the drama of the story, relaxation is possible in the here and now. This is where therapy becomes somatic: the body is literally learning new possibilities simply by being present with the therapist.
To take a common example, most people will experience contraction in fear and anger. An anxious client could have learned to repress her natural, boundary-setting reflex of anger as she has learned repeatedly that anger has terrible consequences: people get hurt, she gets punished, relationships get destroyed. This repeated conditioning can create a situation where anger reflexes are immediately translated into a combination of anxiety and self-destruction. The first time she gets angry with the therapist (even though it might be a form of passive aggression), the response of the therapist will give her the signal of whether it is safe to open. When the therapist can directly allow anger, in a relaxed and caring manner, a new depth of trust is born. There is an immediate modelling of a new possibility which can release vitality that has been habitually contracted, without devastating consequences. But words would not be enough. The body of the client is literally resonating with the relaxation within the body of the therapist, so the client could physically experience for the first time a relaxation in her own body, even when the charge of anger is moving through it. This shared experience can be revolutionary for the healing process of the psyche, without the therapist saying a word.
The Nondual Quality connected with the contraction of fear and anger is compassion, which is at the core of Nondual Therapy. Yet the implications of Mirror Neurons and the effect they have on our subjective reality through shared fields of experience can be even greater. Imagine you walk into football stadium in the middle of a match. How does your body and mind react to the roar of supporters in unison? Imagine now you walk into a sacred space such as a church where there are hundreds of people in deep devotion. How does this affect experience? Beyond the four eyes of the therapy session, the effect of synchronized experience can be magnified in group meetings. Here, at the intimate core of direct experience of the individual, the inner borders to the source can collapse, precisely because of the resonance in the shared field. What is true and essential has a powerful pull towards a brain that seeks stability. When we consider the science of mirror neurons, we truly are responsible for one another. In the words of the first President of the Institute for Noetic Sciences (IONS) Willis Harman: “Because of the interconnectedness of all minds, affirming a positive vision may be about the most sophisticated action any one of us can take.”
Mirror Neurons play a key role in empathy, but equally they are also involved with introspection and self-contemplation. The ability to have compassion towards oneself, and to be able to take time and space to be curious about the patterns and phenomena within the individual psyche is critical to Nondual Therapy. Here, resonance and transmission are also at work. Yet confusion can ensue: for example, if there is a resonance around the contraction of betrayal and loyalty in our psyche, we will also easily attune to the same resonance outside of ourselves. Our consciousness will be directly attracted to the frequency. When the contraction is seeking resolution or relief, it will lead to a certain tunnel vision: we literally prioritize the resonance of betrayal, for example, over the resonances of love, peace, connection or curiosity that are also here.
A lot of work in Nondual Therapy involves the awareness of these resonant patterns of attraction, and the way that it narrows perception. This involves opening and trusting a deeper layer of perception – the unconditional space of free awareness – which precedes, underlies and outlives all content of perception. Impressions arise and fade, but this awareness remains, providing a neuroplastic position through which more possibility and greater freedom can arise within the field of view.
When Mirror Neurons resonate with Mirror Neurons, we begin to enjoy the liberation of being conscious of consciousness itself, (or aware of our own awareness) unhinged from the cruder contents of thoughts and feeling impressions. This mental aliveness occurs in the here and now, and liberated perception from the shackles of time (past programming) and context (a projected situation). The resonance of Beginners Mind, or pure clarity of mind, where consciousness is free of the burden of the story, is also passed between brains through the Mirror Neuron system. This awake-ness and disentanglement, is a fundamental part of neuroplasticity. When the resonance of unrestricted consciousness is accompanied with physical relaxation and a sense of safety, the possibilities for healing from neural networks through to habitual stress responses in the body increase dramatically.
This article is an extract from the upcoming book: Nondual Therapy: The Psychology of Awakening, by Georgi Y. Johnson. To stay tuned for pre-orders of the book, visit here.
November 16, 2017
Somatic Belief – Nondual Therapy and Unbounded Placebo Power
The brain is not a fixed, well-defined entity. The pain registering through any branch of the nervous system is identified by the brain, and the brain then also controls it. Once the brain has it mapped that a particular limb is in pain, for example, it can continue signalling pain long after the stimulus has past. and far from being a passive recipient of the pain, the brain always controls the pain signals we feel and plastically changes itself creating pain from non-existent locations.”
Phantom Pain is Pain
In the video above, Prof. V.S. Ramachandran, discusses many of the ways our belief control our experience. Most impressively, is his training of phantom limbs with mirrors, for the relief of phantom pain, and his reference to the treatment of OCD, through the witnessing of someone else carrying out the compulsive behaviour. This has far reaching implications for the psychology of non-duality.
Ramachandran’s work makes clear that in treating physical illness, we are not only looking at the bottom-up convention of seeing injured link – brain signal – pain, as the chief biological process. We are also, dramatically looking at top-down: the perception of the brain, or the historic patterns encoded on the brain through repetition and trauma, have a direct impact on the experience of pain in the body itself. It’s both bottom-up and top-down, and from the deeper perspective of spiritual healing, perhaps neither.
In this video, Prof. Ramachandran discusses the two pain responses: chronic and acute. In a situation of chronic pain, we withdraw the limb or body part from the cause of the pain. In a situation of acute pain, the body part freezes or immobilizes. Movement itself causes pain so the solution is to not move at all. Swelling of affected areas is one biological affect of the system of immobilization as a protection.
When we move into psychological dimensions (remembering that deep emotional pain lights up the same brain centers as physical pain), we see a similar effect energetically. When someone hurts you, we tend to need to push away, or run away. We try and get away from the source of the pain. This is an acute contraction, but it still has movement. A chronic psychological contraction is that which immobilizes us: we freeze. This freeze, and the progressive immobilization of energy around the pain center, is where psychological trauma sets in. It isolates the experience from the general flow of the body.
Interestingly, Ramachandran again discusses mirror neurons, (which he jokingly coins empathy neurons, or Gandhi neurons), as the means through which we can potentially heal each other. When we are open to someone who doesn’t share the same area of contraction, we have the possibility to “live through them”, training the brain in healthy response patterns, that can then be picked up. (What he doesn’t mention is that the law of attraction will also gravitate us towards others with similar contractions in neural networks, see The Dark Side of the Mirror Neuron). In all, the individual responsibility to evolve the mind out of the limitation of binary belief systems on the very fabric of the reality we create becomes clear. The more of us who can rest in the neuroplastic space of a mind of non-discrimination, the more the rest of us will learn to rest there too.
Belief & Immunology
As seen in the video above, the nature of our beliefs also has a direct impact on our immunity. Despite the dismissal of many forms of healing, mindfulness and alternative medicine as working through the ‘placebo’, it seems that the expansive structures of belief in q positive outcome, does have a direct impact on our actual ability to get better. The placebo could explain the positive effects of all medications, (not just homeopathic!)
In 2016, researchers from Technion Israel revealed a direct link between the placebo effect (which they term ‘optimistic mindset’) and the bodies immune system. “Our study explains how areas of the brain associated with positive emotions can affect the body’s coping with diseases,” explains Prof. Asya Rolls. “Placebo is a complex phenomenon in which the patient’s expectation of recovery affects his state of health. Expectation of improvement and arousal of positive emotions are reflected in the activity of neurons in the brain. Therefore we decided to understand, at the molecular level, how areas of the brain associated with positive feelings affect the functioning of the immune system, which is basically the body’s main defense system. We have no doubt that an understanding the mechanisms connecting the brain to this system could lead to significant medical applications based on the effect of the mind on the body.”
Immunological health has been linked to cancer, with immunotherapy being a front line of promise in future cancer therapies. The power of belief, and trust in a benevolent source of healing outside of the private self, would seem to be enormously supportive of the organism as a whole. And we have a feeling that this is just the beginning of the story.
Beliefs & Nondual Therapy
Nondual Therapy: the Psychology of Awakening. Release date: 01/01/18
The secret behind the placebo effect, is not in the switch to positive beliefs over negative (although this could have some positive impact), but in the surrender of all beliefs to what is perceived as a benevolent authority outside the perimeters of the separate self or body mind.
This surrender in itself has a neuroplasticity that allows brain networks to release and reform. When beliefs are released from their dictatorial role over reality, the organism as itself will flow with its in-built, inherent tendency towards harmony – the same harmony that is everywhere in creation.
Out of the insights of nondual therapy, each belief is formed around a structure of polarity. The basic polarity is inside V outside, or ‘me’ V ‘other’, An inquiry into structures of belief, which are often inherited through the generations, must begin with a degree of mindfulness about the nature of thoughts in the head.
The stages of inquiry, that include some sentient sourcing of the emotional energy of a contraction/trauma, could go like this:
Locate a key belief (eg. I am stupid).
Feel how believing that belief is make you feel inside the body-mind (eg, angry, frozen, blank), and where these feelings are located in the body.
Ask yourself: is this belief true? (Only a yes or no answer wanted, as we’re talking to binary mind)
Find what for you is the opposite (shadow) belief. (eg. I am clever),
Feel how believing that belief is make you feel inside the body-mind (this can be surprising)
Imagine how it would feel to be free of both beliefs.
Check in on the physical layer of pain contraction and invite it lovingly to relax, as it’s OK to relax now.
Listen to any story the remaining contraction has to tell.
November 12, 2017
Individuality, True Nature & Source Unity
True Nature shines with our deeper purpose, which is to shine. It shines through Nondual Qualities, many of which are described in Section II of this book. From this point, inward, we are out of the normative limitations of physical time and space. True Nature is often sensed where consciousness is free from identity, or when there is a fracture in conventional patterns or habits of the personality.
The process of the Dark Night is connected with the falling away of all that has obscured the prevalence of our True Nature. In the words of Nondual teacher Adyashanti:
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
The movement into freedom is fundamentally an unfolding of contracted parts of our psyche into the intimacy of pure awareness in which all experience occurs. All knowledge and our very perception of reality depends on experience, and experience arises in a consciousness which is here before, behind and beyond all experience. Consciousness is not a separate thing, but is collective and continuous. Even when it becomes obscured through us, the consciousness of others is still perceiving. In the same way, the qualities of consciousness are not separable. Where we can’t find happiness within our own psyche, for example, we can allow the experience of it outside of the psyche: in others, in animals, or in the elements. Conscious awareness offers a magical invitation towards the unfolding of contractions in the psyche into the pure experience of our True Nature, which will always puncture the illusion of separation.
Sometimes called essential being, True Nature is at once collective and individual. The strength or clarity of certain Nondual Qualities, such as freedom, peace, gratitude, happiness or esteem can vary from one to another. This is connected to subtler forms of evolution, and can pass through family lines. Here, we are not talking about inherited trauma as much as about inherited evolutionary themes. In addition to the prevalence of certain qualities in certain individuals, each Nondual Quality can express through the full spectrum of resonance. For example, the peace of the ocean can be subtly different from the peace of sisterly love, which can differ again from the peace of a cathedral. Is there a different quality to love through the female aspect and love through the male? As there are an unlimited amount of Nondual Qualities (they are all descriptive) and because each individual form is unique, the preciousness of the experience of any individual at any one moment cannot be over-estimated. We are all remarkably special – each drop a unique and miraculous expression of the whole. Yet we’re not separate from the whole, just as a tear-drop is not separate from water.
To get a sense of the individual expression of True Nature, consider how it feels to be present in a dark room with a loved one, without seeing them or hearing them physically. There’s no differentiation in pure awareness, yet an original presence manifests as a subtle, individual hallmark of True Nature; making it possible for you to at once connect, and at the same time sense the loved one as ‘other’ than you. Many will report sensing the presence of loved ones after they have died, or the sudden felt sense of someone close that might be separated through physical space and time. Classically called extrasensory, this sense of presence is integral to our connectivity: there’s a communication that goes on without words, normally beneath the threshold of conscious mind. This communication directly affects the way we think about others and our attitudes to them. Outside of sessions with your client, how do you bring them to mind? Do you picture them in the imagination? Do you think about their story? Do you already build an action plan on how to fix it? How would it be to also blend with their presence – to explore the qualities of True Nature that are expressing through them, and those that are contracted? Could it be that much of the healing process is occurring outside of the therapy space, in a flow of blend and communication between you and them?
The more we can attune to the felt-sense of others, which includes group atmospheres, the more we will get a sense of our own essential being. The more we rest as this essential being, without attaching to it, the more we release the power of pure Nondual Quality through all the psyche. Nondual Therapy is about sharing the qualities of our True Nature, which is at once a celebration and an invitation for contractions to release. In the words of the Irish spiritual teacher Bob Moore:
“If you are going to help another person, you have got to have something within you which this person can use. But with your qualities is related to the contact this person is trying to establish to his own qualities. And this is the initial thing, where the whole healing situation begins.”
You could think of Nondual Qualities, or the qualities of our true nature, as channels of heaven towards earth, or from source through denser vibrations of form. Allowing the connection is key and this allowance involves relaxing our senses, so they can open. It involves a movement out of ‘either-or’ structures of thinking into the inclusive ‘and-and’. When a conscious shift into authentic being is initiated, a natural unfolding occurs of the contractions that limit the personality. It’s no longer critical what we do, but it’s imperative to be what we are. Being is recognized as preceding “doing” in every movement.
The more we develop the ability to allow the undoing of contractions in the psyche, through the cessation of grasping and aversion, the more our True Nature can manifest according to the intelligence of need. Yet the emanation of True Nature, or Nondual Qualities is not something that we can control, create or force. It’s more about release, or letting go of what has been frozen. For example, when we let go of the belief that innocence is lost because we are guilty, the quality of innocence can spontaneously arise, irrespective of guilt.
Nondual Qualities are powerful and expansive. We can freely identify with them in order to open the channel – for example, we can say “I am bliss”; or “I am pure awareness”. Yet if this identification becomes rigid as a contra to areas of suffering, then the freedom and expansion of the quality again becomes stifled. The Nondual state needs to be defended, which introduces energies of stress and conflict into the field of the psyche, (sometimes even open warfare).
To truly allow the manifestation of Nondual Qualities, we need to release them. Qualities are here to be shared. Yet we can’t give them unless we let them go; and letting go requires consolidation in a deeper source – a source from which letting go is possible. This is the source which Nisargadatta Maharaj called prior to consciousness and prior to being. It is the innermost tunnel of singularity, which precedes all reflection and all experience. In the language of Nonduality, it is at once everywhere and nowhere.
Source Unity
Beneath all forms of manifestation and experience, the source is a perennial continuum through and beyond conditions of time and space. It’s imperceivable in the same way that an eye can’t see itself. It’s found in such practises of being aware of awareness; or listening to the listener. It’s not an end-point but a wormhole to unity.
Akin to a black hole that births galaxies, the source can be known by impressions of itself and by its effects. It can be sensed through its qualities, and by the quickening and liberating effects of falling back as the innermost source of the life that we are. It sounds abstract, yet this singularity of perception is under the nose, in every particle of normal experience – be it transcendental, subtle or in the simplest moment of boredom. Nothing is left out of source, yet nothing is caught there either. Beyond all fear of division, it facilitates unconditional naturalness with all that arises.
At the layer of source, the illusion of the separate self is gone. The one that is looking is the one that is looking, and it doesn’t matter through whose eyes. The sense of ‘otherness’ collapses into an endless play of experience through manifold unity. In the words of Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.”
Consolidation in source unity can look like a perpetual, embodied arrival into the mystery of life, moment by moment, which is mirrored by an easiness in letting go and a freedom of consciousness to allow multiple perspectives. It can be noticed in gradual changes such as increased vitality; an easy emotional intelligence; a deepening of relaxation; agility of mind; and a natural ability to attune to the environment.
The more the therapist can relax into the unconditional source that precedes even consciousness, the more the flow of healing is liberated through the array of Nondual Qualities according to the intelligence of need. Therapeutic agenda is increasingly released as contractions whistle for their own remedies. The therapist follows the client, who follows the contraction, and there is an unconditional unity in the process.
A simple rule would be to say that if you can sense it, feel it, thinking, touch it, it’s not the source, but a manifestation or reflection. Its stability, power and freedom are beyond human measure. Yet it is not solid, we can rest and expand as the source through all layers of experience; and all experience is our experience. One of first resonances of source through the layers of form is a refined, choice-less, unconditional care. This is why Nondual teacher Rupert Spira has described it as a kind of “benevolent indifference”.
In therapy, consolidation in the timeless, boundless source of the psyche supports the ability to be able to let go, to let be and to be for real. It allows the release of agenda and the spontaneous emergence of deeper truth. This includes even the agenda to rest as pure awareness or to stay conscious. It requires no effort, as it’s an absolute and pre-given unity. We don’t need to wait for some sublime attainment to be present as the source. All it requires is a default position of relaxation in the here and now, following the process with an open curiosity, without expectation or conclusion.
All transformation is a function of the allowance of the nervous system, and involves its reprogramming as well as the evolution of thought forms and the opening of new dimensions of mind that can contain experience. As such, the nerve system deserves the greatest respect and patience. Here, the default positions are relaxation, silence, stillness and emptiness. Filling the gaps with ungrounded stories or encouraging a client to do so, threatens to obstruct the process of liberation and provide an escape route from deeper liberation. In this experiences of bliss or unconditional light, can be seen as reflecting a paradigm shift through the liberation of Nondual Qualities, but not as an end-point (there are no end-points).
Consolidation in source unity looks more like the realization of perpetual, embodied arriving into the mystery of life, moment by moment, which is mirrored by an easiness in letting go and a freedom of consciousness to allow multiple perspectives. It can be noticed in gradual changes such as increased vitality; an easy emotional intelligence; less stress; freedom of mind; and a natural ability to ground and center.
Extract from Georgi’s upcoming book: Nondual Therapy: The Psychology of Awakening. Available here and in online stores from January 2018.
November 9, 2017
Silence is the Language of our Sentient Universe #Nonduality
Before, between, behind, above and underneath the formation of every thought is silence. Without silence, no thought, no vibration, no form could come to be. Without silence, thought would not be possible at all.
“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Silence is not a dense nothingness, It’s not an absence of thought. Silence is the subtle soil out of which every sound, each subtle vibration arises, takes unique form, and into which it rests.
Silence has quality. From the denser silence of resistance through to the thinner silences of non-verbal atmospheres, it is a language in itself. Silence speaks a language beneath the time-based polarities of the thinking mind.
In silence, there are no borders, just gradations, slopes, rifts and valleys. In silence there is inherently no disconnection. Silence is invitation to unity, which is why we can so often feel ashamed when silence is here between us.
What is this shameful silence? Is it the shame that is unclothed when the borders between the private inside and the public outside are touched? Is it the pain of exposure of a layer of resistance to being here as one, together in peace? Can this shame of silence teach us where we are not free to be? Is shame not also silent? Where does the silence of shame end and the silence of love begin? Who could say where the silence deep inside ourselves is separate from the silence out there, which we can hear with our ears? Where does private silence end and and melt into the boundless, natural, universal silence?
Silence is the language of our sentient universe.
When we listen to the silence of another, we listen at a layer deeper than their words. We can hear the anger behind the obligation of kindness. We can hear the language of personal survival speaking through words that pretend togetherness. In the silence we can sense the fear underlying the most enraged diatribe, or the insecurity beneath the empowered dictation of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.
“Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. “
Franz Kafka
Listening to the silence is not surrender, Listening to the silence brings us simultaneously to the causal layers of the energy playing out in symptomatic sentences expressed by us, to us, around us. Silence needs no translator as she speaks. Words are optional.
Many of us are formed by a silence that has been used as a weapon to try and annihilate our souls.
We are the children that should be seen and not heard when our father speaks. The babies that impoverished their families and bothered them with questions.
We are the women that when they expressed themselves were castigated, imprisoned, humiliated and condemned.
We are the minorities who should not attract attention, and be silent to survive. We are the injured ones, who learned that lack of silence means death and that silence is death.
How did we learn to believe that the right to silence belongs only to the powerful few? Who gave them the authority to order silence, to break it, make it and impregnate it with lies?
Stay silent. Don’t say anything. Conceal your thoughts. Conceal your face, for it also speaks. Conceal your eyes because expression is also an outrage to a national order where you have no right to belong. Bow your head. Lower. Lower your head and be still. Be silent. Surrender. Wait for the blow to come.
One tragedy of the dynamics of power and abuse that have left their footprints on our personalities is that the magnificent resource of silence has been barred from our perception. Where might is right, because it can beat you up, exclude you and rob your body of air, there we find that silence, or silencing is used as a weapon. And the experience of silence gets encoded as punishment.
Nondual Therapy: the Psychology of Awakening. Release date: 01/01/18
It’s time to reclaim the silence. The deeper we move into the free-fall through silence, the more natural our expression can become. The more we allow silence, the more precise and refined our expression. As we fall through the veils of silence, the listener opens up and we might realize that we were never alone, but always heard.
The more we reclaim the inner and outer home of silence, with its qualities of reflexive care, peace and indestructibility, the more our voice deepens to express these qualities into the world. And we must express these qualities into the world.
Be silent. Not as a punishment. Not as a retreat. Not as an obligation.
Be silence in freedom, out of which every form of expression can emerge through our body, cells, voice and through the melodies of the soul. Be silence in deepest, living peace. Be silence beyond and through all forms that get born and die.
Be silence in freedom, that an unfettered prayer of universal care might rise with the resonance of the truest voice alive, sung by the goddess for the creator, in his ear, so that he might know himself again.
November 7, 2017
Nondual Therapy and Trauma
“It is the character that is doing it. There is a definite, inherited complexity. We are born into a pattern… We are a structure that is pre-established through the genes. There is a biological order of our mental functioning. If a man could look into himself, he would discover it. And when a man discovers it, in our days, he thinks he’s crazy, and really crazy.”
C.J. Jung
There is a limit to how much we can control, medicate, section or incarcerate parts of who we are, to avoid the confrontation with shared inner wounds. Condemnation of the perceived enemy simply leads to the general feeling of condemnation. This is because condemnation, for all its force and fury, cannot undo what has already happened. At core, condemnation is impotent.
According to The Sentencing Project, In the last forty years, incarceration in the US has increased with rates upwards of 500%, despite crime rates decreasing nationally. The prisons are overflowing with untreated crimes. Consider for a moment that it is precisely the energy of guilt – a deep somatic identification with being ‘bad’, a perennial feeling of being condemned, a background sense of unworthiness – that causes us to do bad stuff. What comes first? The guilt or the crime? Primed as we are to believe that doing something makes us ‘guilty’, we are hardly able to consider attending to the inherited energy of guilt that we carry collectively and experience as personal. It is not the doing that makes us guilty, it is the guilt that has infected our being, often long before we ‘do’ anything at all.
As Jung says: “The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” This sense of being tortured through living punishment or guilt is a horrific pressure on the chest and on the very basis of the body. It clamps the buttocks and tightens the throat, limiting both freedom of movement and expression. It shuts down experience of pleasure, success and reward, and contracts us from others as well as from our own source. Left with this irredeemable sense of evil untouchability, the energy of guilt acts out that ‘badness’ on the environment. It expresses itself outwardly, seeking to destroy the projected accusers. Why? Because any connection with the world is better than no connection at all.
So, we lock them up, these criminals, in ghettos of the guilty, splitting them further from the whole, ensuring that this guilt gets passed to their offspring. It’s an epidemic of dosing affliction with affliction, accusing the accused, treating trauma with more trauma. The world gets split in one great illusory verdict of good V evil. Fear to fall on the wrong side of the line between insider and outsider prevails. At the same time, for each us, no matter how much we pretend, the person in and of itself is never good enough. We are always guilty and act as if we can never be proven innocent.
Beyond prisons, we have the splitting of ourselves into the sane and insane; the serious and the ridiculous; the smart and the stupid; the winners and the losers; the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’; the elites and the masses; the survivors and the suckers; the insiders and outsiders; rising stars and those who are ‘going down’; saints and sinners; wives and whores; successes and failures.
We scramble reflexively to become one side of the coin while pushing away the other, flattening the dimension of life into perpetual self appraisal and perpetual failure. The so called good stuff totally depends on the bad stuff to be good. Without the good guys, the bad guys cannot exist.
It was Plato who first observed: “The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
Whether outside of ourselves in the way we perceive others, or within our own psyches as it struggles through layers of inner conflict, we will see a balancing happening through these scales of duality. We grasp towards the light, the darkness emerges. We grasp towards our sense of self and find ourselves disappearing.
We need the insane people to make us feel sane. They define our assumed normality. We depend on the poor people to bring value to our riches. Our pleasure depends on our pain. The heaven in one corner of the planet depends on a hell somewhere else in the vicinity.
Every contraction has the potential to become a full trauma, just as every trauma will leave a legacy of contractions. This is true in an individual life-time, but also in the plethora of personal stress patterns inherited in our genes. While a contraction is a psychologically acute situation, trauma is chronic. Many contractions can be symptoms of a core trauma, and can continue to spiral around the trauma until it core imbalance is addressed. While contractions can play out with even a thin thread connecting them to the nondual quality that has become frozen (for example, with issues around rejection), in cases of trauma that thread has been broken and can be restored only through a progressive reintegration of the experiential universe of trauma with the experiential universe of the whole. In trauma, all sense of belonging here is lost, and because the loss of this connection to the feeling of belonging is simply unworkable in ‘normal’ life, the dimension of experience is simply severed from the whole. In this, the traumatic state forms a separate inner universe beneath the floor of normative consensual reality. It is like a rabbit hole. One moment a person is feeling fine, and then he sees a sick dog on the street which triggers his trauma, and then suddenly he is there: inside the trauma tunnel.
Part of what gives trauma its power over the human psyche and what allows it to pass through the genes from one generation to another is that in the splitting off from consensual, normative reality, there is an opening to a far greater reality. In the rift between our usual structure of personality and the traumatic state, there is pure emptiness, alive with the sense of truth. This sense of truth becomes associated with the traumatic state as a foundational reality. In this is gains a sense of momentous importance. This deeper truth is preserved in energetic memory to help future generations survive. However, what is mostly inherited is legacy of incongruous fear responses resulting in a confusion of how to integrate these with a fundamentally safe environment. This confusion separates people still further, as they have no good reason to be traumatized – nothing happened! This is partly why the acknowledgement of the epigenetics of inherited trauma and PTSD is a game-breaker in healing. It is also why Nondual Therapy – allowing whatever comes forwards as a perfect feeling response in the here and now to the needs of the form, can move more deeply than conventional therapy based on rationality and behavioural conformity.
At the same time, because of the rift of pure, underlying emptiness revealed through the splitting of part of the psyche, our traumas represent opportunities for spiritual awakening. The underlying truth in the split between one part of the persona and the other can be recognized as itself a resource – not just an ‘empty’ space. In addition, traumatic states, with their ability to affect perception and the nature of experience with a degree of certainty, can make a mockery of our belief in the permanence of our perceived reality. They can bring humility to the whole phenomena of personality and open up the possibility of perceiving more essential, existential layers beyond all forms of identity. As Nondual Therapist and expert in Somatic Experiencing Lynn Marie Lumiere writes:
“Because its effects are so intense and pervasive, trauma can be a catalyst for profound surrender and awakening. I see it as a wake-up call for the human race.”
The human psyche is in a dance of duality that will become increasingly contracted in multiple forms of paradox and senselessness until we open and restore the flow of the nondual qualities out of which every duality emerges. Only then is there space for healing. Only then, do we get freedom in the dance of duality, and only then is the dance liberated to move into the harmony and rhythm of the universal whole.
November 6, 2017
LIVING JOY. i-Exist 2018, April 3-10, Glastonbury UK
The 2018 i-Exist Active Spiritual Retreat
With Bart ten Berge & Georgi Y. Johnson
April 3-10th, 2018
Neolithic England
What is joy? How do we let the joy unfold from all living experience? What do we need to let go of for joy to be without effort?
An inner and outer adventure through ancient England. Based in Glastonbury, we will rest, walk, meditate, explore and visit Stonehenge where we meditate inside the stone circle. There’ll be nature walks, outdoor and indoor seminars and meditations at sacred sites. Middlewick Holiday Cottage offers the ideal backdrop to enjoyment, with delightful English cottages, the rich nature of Glastonbury and nourishing vibrations of silence.
LIVING JOY. I-Exist 2017, April 3-10, Glastonbury UK
The 2018 i-Exist Active Spiritual Retreat
With Bart ten Berge & Georgi Y. Johnson
April 3-10th, 2018
Neolithic England
What is joy? How do we let the joy unfold from all living experience? What do we need to let go of for joy to be without effort?
An inner and outer adventure through ancient England. Based in Glastonbury, we will rest, walk, meditate, explore and visit Stonehenge where we meditate inside the stone circle. There’ll be nature walks, outdoor and indoor seminars and meditations at sacred sites. Middlewick Holiday Cottage offers the ideal backdrop to enjoyment, with delightful English cottages, the rich nature of Glastonbury and nourishing vibrations of silence.
September 9, 2017
Listen to the Flame ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
When you invite the flame to manifest, maybe you want to ask him ” dear little flame, where are you from? ”
And when the flame is gone, maybe you want to ask: “Dear little flame where did you go? ”
We have these notions of coming and going. Meditating is to listen deeply to the flame after asking this question: “Dear little flame, where are you from?”, ” Dear little flame where did you go? ”
And by looking deeply, by practicing meditation, you will hear the voice of the flame that says: “I came from nowhere, I did not come from the south of the east or west, when the conditions come together I manifest.”
This is not the birth but the demonstration. And we know that the flame is right. His nature is not a kind of non. When the conditions come together and it manifests itself, it has not come elsewhere. And so “coming” is a concept, leaving is another concept.
“Dear little flame where did you go? “and you listen to the flame: “I’m not gone or I’m not gone South or North.”
When a very dear person stops showing up as he did before, we want to ask: “Beloved where are you now, where are you gone?”. And if we listen carefully, he will tell us that he is not Isn’t gone anywhere, he’s always here in a way. And if we look with the eyes of a Buddha, the eyes of a practitioner, we can always recognize him in his new materialization, because nothing gets lost.
~~~
Lorsque on invite la flamme a se manifester, peut être que tu aurais envie de lui demander ” chère petite flamme, d’où viens tu ? ”
et lorsque la flamme n’est plus là peut etre que tu aurais envie de lui demmander ” chère petite flamme où est tu partie ? ”
Nous avons ces idées de venir et partir. Méditer c’est écouter profondément la flamme après avoir poser cette question “chère petite flamme, d’où viens tu ?”, “chère petite flamme où est tu partie ? ”
Et en regardant profondément, en pratiquant la méditation, tu entendras la voix de la flamme qui te dis ” je suis venu de nul part, je ne suis pas venu du sud du nord de l’est ou de l ouest, lorsque les conditions se réunissent je me manifeste”
Ceci n’est pas la naissance mais la manifestation. Et nous savons que la flamme a raison. Sa nature n’est pas une nature de non-venue. Lorsque les conditions se réunissent et qu elle se manifeste, elle n’est pas venue d ailleurs. Et donc “venir” est un notion, partir est une autre notion.
“Chère petite flamme où est tu partie ? ” et tu écoutes la flamme : ” je ne suis pas partie ou que ce soit, je ne suis pas partie au Sud ni au Nord.”
Lorsqu’un être qui nous est très chère cesse de se manifester comme il le faisait avant, on a envie de demander ” bien-aimé où est tu maintenant, où est tu parti?”. Et si on écoute attentivement il nous dira qu’il n’est pas parti où que ce soit, il est toujours là d’une manière. Et si l’on à les yeux d’un Bouddha, les yeux d’un pratiquant, on peut toujours le reconnaître dans ses nouvelle manifestations, parce que rien ne se perd.
September 8, 2017
We’re not part of Nature, we are Nature. #IRMA
Nature is ultimately beyond the control of the human mind. Volcanic eruption, hurricane, earthquake, drought or plague can make the whole grandiose form of humanity impotent in a day. We are helpless in nature, just as we are helpless in the fate of birth and death.
Because we are afraid, we create a separation. We talk of nature as if the human being were not part of it; as if our bodies and minds were not mammalian, as if we were independent and separately existing from the sun, the moon, or even the oxygen in the air.
Nature is a “thing” outside of our cities, and sometimes showing up in the cracks in the concrete. Often, it is only noticed when there is a natural dsaster, such as the present devastation of hurricanes sweeping the US. Because we only respect it when it puts our lives in danger, we miss its resource, we stop listening to it and we deny ourselves the source of all we are in body, mind and heart.
Nature is increasingly conceived as a threat to our sanity, our health, our homes and our communities. So we try to negate it further by withdrawing our consciousness, hoping it will go away.
We see trees in our boulevards as if they were furniture, failing often to recognize the same life within their veins as runs through ours. We ignore our breath and we notice the weather only when it creates discomfort. We arrogantly relegate animals as inferior life-forms, as if life could be measured, rationed and quality tested.
Yet we are nature itself. It never was separate from any movement or any thought we could ever have. We are entirely and inextricably nature in action.
The idea of separation is an unscientific lie.
Yet it bothers us, this unity, so we withdraw our consciousness from nature, which means pretending that our consciousness ends within some arbitrary distance of our own physical heads. This is a dangerous space to be when nature screams her pain. We are still perceiving beyond this circumference of our bodies, yet we mentally block the birthright of our natural alignment, our intuition and our safety instincts. We shrink as our perception as separate and deny ourselves one of the greatest resources available to the living brain – the resource of its own source.
Baruch Spinoza put it well: “Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.”
Yet we continue to move as if we are essentially contrary to nature. We forgot what it is to shine as the sun; to rage as a storm; to be as unbounded as the sky and to express with the unconditional joy of birdsong. We denied ourselves the permission to live, becoming a natural manifestation which William Wordsworth called: “…the still, sad music of humanity.”
Yet it’s not enough to separate from the natural world of which we are composed, we also are conditioned into separation from each other. The same formula applies: what we seek to negate contracts our consciousness from what has already, anyway been seen. We splice our perception, and we become physically unsafe.
When that contraction becomes habitual, then we become less conscious. We begin to experience living as a kind of perpetual dying. We deny in other what we deny in ourselves. Based on the belief in the separate self, we retract our consciousness from what is experienced through others, and in this, contract consciousness within ourselves. We shutter up the windows of perception in a misconceived attempt to fix our world through censorship of our experience.
Yet the separation between individuals is in flux and is at core fictitious. We are consciously and unconsciously perpetually composed and formed through consciousness, whether it is ‘our’ consciousness or that which shines through another human being. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said: “We are the creators and creatures of each other, causing and bearing each other’s burden.”
The natural world of which we are an expression, and in which we live in balance and imbalance, is an omnipotent resource of peace, strength, bliss, comfort, nurture and wisdom. Each animal is our teacher and our ancestor. Each plant is showing us the true nature of our own being. It is time to awaken to what we are.
As Hurricane Irma approaches Florida, freedom from the lie of the separate self becomes equatable with safety. Be in communion with the wind. Listen to it and heed its warning. Be in community with the animals and birds. Follow them, as they are inextricably attuned to the dynamic of the earth. Help each other. Collaborate. It is the key to both survival and evolution. Be compassionate. Compassion will bring you stillness and omnipotence. You never were alone.
I AM HERE - Opening the Windows of Life & Beauty
- Georgi Y. Johnson's profile
- 30 followers
