Two Boxes or Three?

by | Tuesday, August 31, 2010 | Relationship, Spirituality

To be ignorant is to ignore.

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To identify with any one reality and ignore the rest is to be ignorant.

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The structure of existence resembles the Two-Boxes-or-Three Diagram. Viewed one way, you see one reality, three boxes stacked in a corner.  Viewed another way, it is two boxes stacked in a corrugated corner.  The Quantum Mechanical structure of existence is like this diagram, but far more complex.  It holds within it an infinite number of realities all based upon the one megastructure.  Such realities, viewed together, create paradox.  They all exist simultaneously, in contradiction to one another.

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To be ignorant is to ignore all realities other than the one or few with which you are identified.

© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.

Forgiveness

by | Thursday, August 26, 2010 | Relationship | 1 comment

I am often asked about forgiveness. How can we bring it about? If we are to forgive or to be forgiven, this question remains. Yet in either case, the answer is the same. You need to find the strength within yourself. There’s a delicate balance here. You need to have self-honesty regarding what you’re feeling… not to suppress it, yet not to lose yourself to it. Suppressing or denying your hurt feelings reduces forgiveness to little more than an overlay. However, losing yourself to those feelings makes forgiveness impossible. If you were hurt, you need to find it within yourself to let it pass… let it heal. By balancing inner feelings with inner strength, you attain understanding, which is the gateway to true forgiveness.
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If you hurt another and long for their forgiveness, it also starts with holding the sadness in your heart with strength and dignity. If you do that, it invites the others involved to also move forward to forgiveness. There may be some snide remarks or even outright verbal assaults before they come to that place. You may hear of their criticism or negativity through the grapevine. You may be directly criticized, challenged and hurt again. Your stance is best always held with inner strength. That strength brings understanding. It offers a willingness to give things time to settle. If you bring forward the requisite strength to hold a healthy understanding in your heart, in time, it will be felt by those around you. You may desire an immediate resolution and verbal acknowledgement of your offering. However, the strength required more often must be held in your heart over time. Slowly, the others will feel it and it will assist them in coming back into balance and peace.
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You are tremendously sensitive and vulnerable. This is what it means to be human. Some hide it, or try to. Others do not. But know without question that the sensitivity is universal. It may at times feel like a flaw. It is not. It comes along with the love that dwells within us all. Hold it gently, while finding the strength within to hold it with dignified understanding and honor. This is the gateway to forgiving others, as well as the healing balm often needed to receive loving forgiveness from others.

© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.

Is the longing to commune based in our fear of being alone?

by | Saturday, August 21, 2010 | Relationship | 1 comment

It’s a beautiful question.  What does this longing for oneness really have its basis in?  Is it based in fear?  It is not based in fear.  It’s based in love, the opposite of fear.  We long to commune because it’s our inherent nature, at the depth of our being, to love.

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Our fear is what prevents us from functioning from that place.  We may fear that if we show our vulnerability, we’ll look like a fool.  So we create a facade, an overlay.  But as the psyche heals, we integrate all the different levels of our being so that we function harmoniously with our vulnerability in a fulfilling manner that is unique to each individual.  Then our vulnerability naturally interfaces with what’s occurring on the surface of our life.

© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.

The Three Levels of Motivation

by | Thursday, August 19, 2010 | Relationship

We can say that motivation exists on three levels.

1) Motivation of Communion

At the source of your being, your motivations are based upon that place inside that’s already fine, that’s pure.  In that place, your motivations involving your relationships with other people are quite laudable.  They are to perpetuate the feeling of communion in love, to make things better, and to be in support of all concerned.  It’s a very positive and life-supporting sort of motivation that’s inherent to your own true nature. From that pure place, what motivates us is the desire to share that purity with others.

2) Subconscious Motivation

At the depth of even the most wicked person is loving, compassionate, and pure intent.  What they do may be totally inexcusable, but at the depth of even a murderer’s being is purity.  What happens is that as stress accumulates in the physiology, the psyche gets distorted.  What is that underlying motivation at the purest level?  It’s communion.  It’s love.  Little kids right out of the womb radiate it.  That’s why we love them.  They don’t care about belief systems, models, or identities.  All they care about is Mommy’s and Daddy’s love.  They just want to feel loved.  If Mommy says, “You’re bad if you do this,” they try not to do it.  When Mommy says, “You’re good,” they feel her love.  This is where the overlays start to take root.  Children begin to identify with whatever behavioral modality seems to get them what they long for: communion and love.  Over time, the purity of that underlying motivation becomes shrouded underneath the identity overlays.

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In our workings on a day-to-day level, we get identified with this second level of motivation; yet it, too, is hidden from our conscious mind. Getting in touch with your hidden motivations is a major part of tilling the soil of your own inner landscape.  It is very much about self-honesty.  The motivation behind what you do or what you say can be very elusive at times.

Conscious Motivation

The third level of motivation is the most superficial.  It’s the motivation that we’re clear about and comfortable with in our conscious awareness.  We believe, and tell ourselves and others, that it’s our real motivation.  You can say to somebody, “I love you,” and believe you are being honest and straightforward.  But you can simultaneously have a hidden underlying motivation that says, “I hate you,” that it is actually based on: “I hate you because you don’t love me, so I want to make you feel bad by telling you that I love you.”  But it is not stated or even understood.  Where you think your motivation comes from is actually only the surface.  Of course, simultaneously, you have the underlying pure motivation based in the longing for communion, love, and mutual support.  However, this deepest purest love is usually hidden from view, buried under the stress in the psychophysiology that creates our more superficial and distorted motivations.

Questions To Facilitate Your Inner Exploration

1. Think of a recent conflict you had with someone, and remember the things you said to that person.

2. What did you tell yourself your motivation was for saying those things?

3. Can you identify a more hidden motivation that was making a very different statement or had a different intent than what you told them, as well as yourself?

4. Look even more deeply to identify a place within you that had a deeper longing that lay at the very basis of this interaction (the place where you long for the purity of communion and mutual appreciation with that person).

© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.

Life is all about people

by | Saturday, June 26, 2010 | Health, Relationship

Life is all about people.  To organize my day, I make a list of the people I need to speak with.
When I think of a particular field of study, I think of the person or people I look to in that field.  When I think about fitness, one person I look to Mike Geary.
He offers a simple common sense approach that works. There are a good number of physical trainers that share his approach.  He is not unique.  However, I find his presentation accessible.  The following is worth knowing.  It is from Mike’s latest newsletter.
“A recent study revealed that people who drank diet-sodas actually increased bodyfat when compared to those who drank sugar-sodas.”
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.