by Michael Mamas | Saturday, February 1, 2014 | Personal Growth |
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“Trust the Power from Within”
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This quote came from a Duracell battery advertisement, but it certainly is an important concept we can apply to ourselves.
Your power is in fact infinite. You have only to tap into it more fully and stop turning it back on yourself.
To understand your potential, is to trust your potential, is to find the motivation to do whatever it takes to bring it forth. But such understanding is not just an intellectual concept. Such understanding comes from experiencing it… sampling a taste of it.
When I look in the eyes of the people attending the deep dive course, I see that blossoming so beautifully. To truly trust is to know, at least to some degree… to sense it deep within.
Once that is experienced, nothing will stop you… forward, forward, always forward.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, January 29, 2014 | Mount Soma, Spirituality |
The Deep Dive Meditation Retreat, going on at Mount Soma now, has permeated the atmosphere with a magnificent feeling of sweet stability, peace, and sustenance. In searching for a word to describe it, “normal” comes to mind. It feels normal to me. In this day and age, “normal” is something very rare and precious. It is very different from “average” or “typical”. Normal means natural. Normal means the way life was designed to be… how life was designed to feel.
During my years of ashram living, “normal” was a daily living reality. After leaving the ashram, “normal” was something I profoundly missed. But I felt compelled, even obligated, to recreate that state of normal for the entire world… for all of humanity. The atmosphere is so very important to life. A fish out of water is not a happy fish. The typical atmosphere humanity has created in this world of ours is far from normal.
With the retreat going on, I feel like I am on vacation. Mount Soma has been growing in this direction for some time, but it is even more tangible now. I remember decades ago in India there was a large assembly of saints and meditators that created a feeling like this. I did not fully realize how much I missed it until we recreated it here at Mount Soma, particularly during this retreat. It is a beautiful ‘welcome home’ sort of feeling.
This underscored the nature of our purpose. We do not need to directly abolish war or pollution or starvation or disharmony among people. We have only to create this atmosphere in the world. Once done, it is only a matter of time before “unnatural behavior” bubbles out and is cast aside and all of life returns to normal. Normal means natural. Natural means fulfilled, happy, harmonious, prosperous, content, joyful, healthy… abundant. The true nature of life is bliss. All else is unnatural. All we need to do is create the proper atmosphere. Then, quite simply… over time, everything will self correct.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, January 27, 2014 | Spirituality |
Well, the easy answer to that question would be a simple good feeling, “Yes.” And that is true and all should be well and good to just leave it at that. But it is not enough. Even more than that, it is misleading. Why? Because it implies, at least to me, some sort of emotional stupor you should feel as you experience God’s love for you. Also, because it holds God as other… at a distance… or at least a little separate from you. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The natural state of life is to have an ongoing inner sense of… what… how to say it…. peace? solidity? profundity? fullness? resonance? coherence? None of those words express it properly. You and God are one. Before you can really feel ‘God’s love for you’, you must first embody that state. But knowing that is not a concept or an idea to cling to. It is certainly not an emotion or attitude. When the physiology (I mean here the greater physiology… not just the physical) ‘clicks into’ that state, your consciousness awakens to it. Not as a thought but as a permanent state of being. You do not think about it… it just is. Just as you do not think about your arms all day long… they just are.
But this wakefulness is not just inside you. You see it in everything. It just is… there, there, and there… everywhere, always. You can call it God’s love if you like. But really, love implies some sort of separation, does it not? To love something, you in some sense or another, hold it apart from yourself so you can adore it. When the two merge, it is something other than (or a least a very different) love. Perhaps it is best to say that both are there simultaneously… You are one with God, and God is ‘other’ both at the same time. When God is only experienced as other, it is in a sense belittling of YOU. That is how many relate to the notion of God loving you.
Awaken to the Knowing that you and God are one. It is not just philosophy or spirituality. It includes the science of how the universe is constructed. It is just the way things are.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, January 26, 2014 | Favorites, Personal Growth |
Another thing I like about the fitness world in general, and about my trainer in particular, is the strong results orientation. Do what works! If it doesn’t work, stop doing it! This makes his following declaration quite interesting. “Do not associate with negative people. Stay away from them. Get them out of your life!” That is easy to understand on a philosophical level, but in the real, results-oriented world of fitness, it is more compelling. It works!
When I was in the ashram, we always favored positivity. Note, that is different from oblivion. Eyes can be wide open while you favor a positive approach. It is important to know, not believe but know, there is always a solution. If you think there is not, your world is too small… you are not thinking broadly or patiently enough.
The world today is addicted to negativity. The news broadcasts are not really the news. They are all skewed toward negativity. Even worse, most people live their lives in that way – one crisis after another, interrupted by periods of worry as they await the next crisis to erupt. That is no way to live; yet it is a pandemic addiction. Know that an addiction is not just to something you like. In fact this addiction to what you do not like, crisis, is perhaps the strongest and most common addiction of all. Addiction is habit.
I remember when I was a kid. Everything was fine. Life went on day to day and stability was taken for granted. Imagine living your life that way. Imagine viewing your life as a stream of one joy on to the next, with periods of calm contentment between them. Because you are no longer a child, you are not oblivious. You plan and act wisely and responsibly, but the state of your mind is not negative or in crisis mode. You are positive. You understand that life is fine… things work out.
Life is a bell curve. Yes, there is the rare instance of the guy who was, for example, sleeping in his bed when a sinkhole erupted taking him away never to be seen again. But such things are way, way far out to the edges of the bell curve of life. Worrying, worrying, worrying, in anticipation of the next crisis is life destroying in and of itself. Yet ‘the news’ bombards us daily with reports of the sinkholes of the day.
Some are taught to take nothing for granted. However, there is one thing you can and should take for granted: Nature supports. Your nature and Mother Nature are supportive to your life. Life has a way of working out. Free yourself from the addiction to crisis. Appreciate yourself. You are a resourceful and capable being. That is your greatest asset, certainly greater than some money in the bank. Somewhere along the line people stopped believing in themselves. Then they turned to God and spirituality as a crutch to lean on. No! It is not a crutch, it is your greatness… It is the greatness of life, of humanity, of nature, of YOU.
Positivity breeds the positive in your life. Everything is fine. You are fine. Life is good. When challenges arise, they are challenges, nothing more. You will be quite capable of dealing with them. Find contentment within and act from THAT place within you. That is your home base. That is your touchstone. That is the true nature of life. When everything is quiet, you naturally and spontaneously settle into the silence of contentment… peace… shanti. When you put your head on your pillow at night, know that everything is fine. Life is positive.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, January 23, 2014 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Regarding the ‘Strength” blog, I was asked the following question:
How can you distinguish for yourself what is a strong ‘grip’ versus a strong clinging to a belief or a perspective? How do you know you’ve rested into your essence/soul or just an overlay?
To which I respond:
This is a very good and important question. In a nutshell, the answer is that you don’t know. If you really knew you were clinging to something, you would be seeing beyond it. If you really saw beyond it, you would not be clinging to it.
I like to say that the exploration tills the soil that facilitates the natural self-correcting mechanism… i.e. evolution. That process is called discernment. It is cultivated through reflection, proper counseling, self-honesty, proper meditation, openness, etc. The art of discernment is a major portion of what I teach.
In extreme cases, it is obvious to others when a person is clinging to a belief… for example, radical fundamentalism or a digging in of the heels. But as you move forward, the process gets more and more elusive. As has been said, the only true knowing is knowing that you know nothing. Knowing nothing means knowing no-thing… knowing that which is beyond things, beyond beliefs and perspectives.
It is not about the thing so much as it is about your relationship with the thing. It is like learning to swim. If you cannot swim, you cling to the rubber ducky to keep you afloat. It is everything. Without it you feel that you would drown. Slowly, slowly you get comfortable in the water and in time no longer need the rubber ducky to stay afloat. Then you swim freely in the ocean of being. You may still enjoy the rubber ducky, but your relationship with it is completely different. See?
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
