by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, September 23, 2015 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Oftentimes, people think spiritual attainment is being free from the ego, often referred to as selflessness. If we really take a look at it, that is not exactly right.
Let us first take a look at what the ego really is. We could say the ego exists on two levels: the Personality Level and the deepest level of your being, the Transcendental Level. Typically speaking, those two levels do not work in unison. In fact, the majority of people are essentially unaware of the Transcendental Level of their being. To them, the personality ego is the only ego there is. They live in a world of separation. Their ego versus the ego of everyone else in the world. Oftentimes, their sense of self-worth is all about how they view their ego, their accomplishments, their place in the world, how much money they have, their children, what a good person they are, etc. Though these things can be of great value, that ego exists in the domain of superficiality in contrast to the Transcendental ego. Spiritual evolution is about integrating these two levels of ego so that they function in harmony with one another.
Now let’s take a closer look at the Transcendental ego. It is the level of your being that transcends relativity. It is fully awake to its universal nature. That can be expressed in many different ways: You and God are one; You are one with everything; Aham Bramhasmi; I am the totality; Or, as Einstein would say, “Everything is the unified field,” (that one thing that is the source of everything).
Just as a seed births the tree, the Transcendental Level births all of creation. Just as the seed is the source of all the intelligence and harmony that underlies and guides the growth of the tree, so too is the Transcendental Level the source of intelligence and harmony that underlies your existence.
So let’s take a look at what happens to the ego when, through the evolutionary process, those two levels function in a harmonious and integrated manner. The personality ego doesn’t go away. You don’t become free from ego as some people interpret the spiritual documents to say. What actually happens is the personality ego transforms so your sense of self becomes one with all that is. It is as if Mother Nature herself is functioning through you, as you, spontaneously supporting all branches of the tree of life. You haven’t lost the ego. On the contrary, it is expanded to embrace all that is to cherish, support, and facilitate the growth of everything in creation. This is exactly the opposite of selflessness or egolessness. It is the expansion of the ego to live in harmony with, and breathe life into, the depth of all that is.
In conclusion, a person that has integrated these two levels of their being may not look like your typical depiction of a saintly Hollywood sage on the surface. They do not necessarily speak with a strange cadence or float airily through a room. They may appear quite ordinary. To understand spiritual evolution, we must always look deeper.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, September 20, 2015 | Personal Growth |
Children are naturally quite pure at heart. When they are exposed to the crudeness so predominant in the world today, they feel hurt. Their vulnerability has been violated. That crudeness, having had such a powerful influence upon them, is perceived by them as power and strength. They need to react to that violation with power and strength. Otherwise, they feel like they would crumble and be devastated. They decided that through this power and strength, they would take on those crude values as a defense, as an attempt to claim power for themselves. It is, of course, a facade.
You see this manifest in many forms in adolescence, and also in many adults who have never worked their way through it. They may take on a tough exterior, dress in rebellious ways, behave sarcastically, negatively, or crudely.
When children are young, parents naturally try to protect them from the dark, crude world. Children sense that protection as an affirmation that they are not yet adults. Children grow up. They want to be big. As a result of all this, they associate darkness with adulthood. Crudeness becomes the thing that is forbidden unless you are an adult. So, we can see that morbid, foul, and inappropriate dress and behavior becomes for the child a declaration that they are adults, that they are big, that they understand the world and that no one is pulling the wool over their eyes.
The best way for parents to deal with this is, number one, to understand it, to be aware of it. The light of awareness heals. Through that understanding, you can begin to work with it wisely. If you attack it directly, you may well prompt the child to defend, which would only compel them to act even more harshly. But how this is appropriately approached is not a cookbook. It depends upon the unique nature of the child, the parent, and their relationship.
Certainly in every case, the true adult is one who is capable of resting in and speaking from that place of vulnerability deep within. True strength is found in the refinement of the depth of your being, not in the crudeness that so many wear on the surface.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Friday, September 18, 2015 | Health |
I just heard yesterday about drinking raw potato juice. It is supposedly a panacea… anti-inflammatory, diabetes, cancer, heart trouble, etc. I have no personal knowledge on the subject but when I Googled it, a lot came up. According to Dr. Kuai, a local acupuncture practitioner, Chinese traditional medicine says to drink 8 oz. twice daily on an empty stomach and do not eat anything else for an hour at least. He says some honey can be added for flavor. Online, some say carrot juice can be added for flavor. Use only the thin-skinned, white potatoes. Cut out any black spots, green patches, sprouts, etc. before juicing. The skin of those potatoes, I am told, is fine to leave on when juicing.
I do not know anything more and cannot say from my own experience if it is useful or not. I can’t imagine how it can hurt so I am going to give it a try.
If anyone has knowledge or personal experience with this, please post your comment.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, September 16, 2015 | Personal Growth |
Question: Would you discuss past life memories and how to deal with them?
Answer: So many sincere and well-intended seekers are fed poor information. As a result, they become confused or self-judging, and in some cases, become self-righteous. If I had a nickel for every person who said they were Buddha reincarnated I’d be a wealthy man. Similarly, if I had a nickel for every person who felt terrible about themselves because of a past life they seem to recall or were told about, I’d be a wealthy man. In India, there is a saying: “Reincarnation is for failures.” But the most relevant meaning here is: Don’t sort through the garbage. The fault is not with those seekers, but with the people who have misled them, even if well intended.
There is an approach to personal process where we imagine past lives and allow them to become symbolic of dynamics in our psyche that relate to this life. However it is so often misused, that it is best forgotten.
Carl Jung, a foundational figure in psychotherapy, spoke of the different archetypes within an individual. For example, the Inner Sage, the Inner Fool, etc. If used properly, that can be a worthwhile tool to explore your own inner dynamic. Similarly, if you believe in past lives or not, imagining they exist and pretending you remember them, is another effective tool for exploring your inner psychodynamics IF DONE PROPERLY.
Unfortunately, the way past lives are generally approached is so unwise that it is better left alone. Some people use “past life memories” as a justification. Someone who is chronically depressed insists they remember being imprisoned in the Tower of London for decades. A number of people who go to psychics for a ‘past life reading’ are hoping to learn of a time when they were a great person in hopes of finding what actually amounts to a psychological crutch. I have seen past life explorations misused far more often than I’ve ever seen a healthy relationship with them. So, past lives are for failures is probably your healthiest attitude towards them.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, September 14, 2015 | Spirituality |
In a recent conversation about spirituality, someone mentioned that there are all sorts of opinions out there. Suddenly it struck me. Today’s arena of spirituality is a free-for-all. Science is different. In science, things are logically verifiable, or at least justifiable and reasonable. Spirituality is plagued with superstition, convention, indoctrination, and emotionalism. For that reason, pretty much anything goes. Most everyone has already formed an opinion. This is all compounded by the fact that spirituality is generally approached as an escape from having to really think. It is not generally considered to be an arena where things need to make sense. Therefore, a rational approach to spirituality is viewed as just another opinion.
Can you imagine if the field of science was riddled with nothing other than irrational opinions, one valued just as much as the other? If so, there would be no telephone, no automobiles, no television… basically just the Stone Age. Sadly, that is the state of spirituality in the world today. Just as the ancient Rishis said, this is Kali Yuga – the Age of Ignor-ance. This is further compounded in that people commonly take offense at the very idea of taking a critical look at their perspective on spirituality. What a mess.
This all started when the scientific age was in its infancy. The very tenets of spirituality made no sense to those scientific novices. Today, science has advanced sufficiently enough to actually make sense of spirituality. Thusly, the wheat is separated from the chaff. Superstition, emotionalism, indoctrination, and irrationality are filtered out of the field of spirituality. As with science, there is no longer room for a free-for-all of random opinions. Adi Shankara referred to this process as discernment. Discernment is integration of all aspects of awareness – the rational with the emotional, the thinking with the feeling, the heart with the mind. That integration is practically non-existent today. Even those who attempt to approach spirituality from a rational perspective have, for the most part, been unable to put all the pieces together. The true art of discernment has fallen by the wayside. The degree to which someone is spiritual is determined by how fully indoctrinated they are to a particular dogma.
I trust that, at this point, stating that spirituality needs to be redefined will not be viewed as just another opinion. So what is spirituality? Let’s define spirituality as the field that integrates all fields of life into a unified whole. A spiritual life, then, is a life that strives to attain that level of wisdom, knowledge, insight, and understanding. This demands vision, a willingness to look beyond what you currently know, while at the same time looking directly into the face of what you do know, and questioning it: the art of discernment.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
