by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, March 13, 2013 | Spirituality |
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” – Albert Einstein
Only when you awaken to your oneness with everything does your life make sense. Then there is no ‘other’.
Said another way, the small ‘you’ ceases to exist. You function through such maya, illusion, but you are no longer lost to the illusion. The paradox of Oneness and Separateness melts away into the flow of infinite integration of even polar opposites.
What you do for the world, you do for yourself. What you do for yourself, you do for the world. There is no contradiction.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Tuesday, March 12, 2013 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
I remember the early morning rains of my childhood. Invariably a time to pick up a stick and poke around at the ground and roadside as we walked to the school bus stop. I remember all the worms on the road… millions of them, it seemed. A gentle tap with the stick and they work scrunch right up… contracting to a fraction of their size where they remained until the road and their bodies dried up.
Admittedly it’s an odd analogy, but how to you respond to external events and notions in life? Your life is your choice. Henry Ford put it beautifully:
“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
I also remember my childhood encounters with butterflies.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, March 3, 2013 | Spirituality |
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Between facts and concepts, concepts (ideas) are closer to Truth. Truth is unbounded, without edge. Facts melt into the deeper and broader arena of concepts, which melt into the deepest and broadest field of the Absolute… Oneness…Pure Consciousness… Pure Isness…Truth.
As facts rest and dissolve into concepts, and concepts rest and dissolve into Isness, all levels of life become seamlessly interconnected, like the branches of a tree grounded to the trunk and then to the earth. Integration of life emerges. When the connection is weak, the mind becomes small and ungrounded, like tumble weed. A slight breeze then carries the mind adrift. Anything can then be justified by the intellect. That is called a life of karma… of bondage to the surface.
Awaken to the depth, more and more live life from that level, and become great. That is called freedom, emancipation, enlightenment.
Your relationship with anything and everything is determined by your level of consciousness. Tumble weed can and does argue as it will with the mighty oak. Within the world of the weed, it is the tree that is seen to be tumbling while the weed remains steadfast. From the perspective within the speeding train, one looks out and sees the trees flying by, while the train is experienced as the solid, stable reference frame.
Your level of consciousness consumes and defines your entire world.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Friday, March 1, 2013 | Spirituality |
I was asked the following question:
You are my teacher, but I was wondering if it was all right to visit other Masters.
To which I respond:
Everything is more about your relationship with it, than about it. Better to have a healthy relationship with a bad thing (which would mean stay away from it) than an unhealthy relationship with a good thing. If your relationship with visiting other “Masters” was healthy, then it would probably be fine. But there are many things to consider here.
First and foremost, the vast majority of those considered spiritual Masters today would be more appropriately students rather than teachers. Too too many have some intellectual knowledge or lifestyle/behavioral patterns that they consider spiritual and so decide they are rightly spiritual teachers. Though they may be quite well intended, they lead so so many sincere seekers astray. A true Master is a much rarer thing than most seekers realize.
Secondly, the subtle difference makes all the difference. I can not tell you how many times people have come to me and told me of a book or teacher that ‘says all the same things that I do.’ Yet when I look at what they teach, I am appalled. It is easy to drift off course without even realizing it.
If there were a genuine Master out there to visit, it would probably be ok. But do you really believe you have the ability to tell? People easily fall for a lofty belief system, a dramatic appearance, magic tricks, or emotional performances. Most alleged “teachers” are simply more fully indoctrinated into a paradigm than their students are. Enlightenment means liberation, not indoctrination. Yet indoctrination into the notion of liberation is not enlightenment. It is all highly elusive, evading many well-known “spiritual masters”.
Also keep in mind, as Ramana Maharshi put it, when you are traveling down a river it is best to have both feet in one boat.
This is Kali Yuga, the Age of Ignorance. You need to be careful.
There is the story about a great saint who had many supernatural powers. It is said that he could fly through the air and walk through walls. Do you know what his motto was? Safety first.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, February 17, 2013 | Spirituality, World View |
“Find purpose, the means will follow.” – Gandhi
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, February 14, 2013 | Spirituality, World View |
Today we celebrate love in all its many forms. I understand the ancient Greeks had forty different words for love in each of its forms.
There is only universal love, yet it uniquely emerges in each relationship. Love holds the universe together. Love unifies. Love brings all separation back to oneness.
Today then, is far more than the celebration of romantic love. It is the celebration of the love every individual knows from within, offered and shared with all others.
My wish for you on this day is that you celebrate your love for all that is… for every individual… for all humanity. You will see that in so doing, your love in any personal relationship in your life is enhanced many fold. We are all family. We are all one. The world is one.
You are my Valentines.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, February 11, 2013 | Spirituality |
If you look to the right of this page you will find a place where you can submit your own questions for Dr. Mamas to address in his blogs. Below is one person’s question.
Blog Question
Lately, at the beginning of some of my meditations, I have felt tense or nervous and I don’t quite understand what I’m feeling. Thoughts race through my mind. I think maybe I’m “thinking” too much.
You recommend meditating for twenty minutes but sometimes it takes me twenty minutes to just “settle down”. Sometimes focusing on my breathing for a couple of minutes helps.
Someone told me it was my ego resisting letting go.
I have read about focusing on breathing during meditation. What do you say?
Response
Do the meditation as taught. Do not change it in any way. Intentionally focusing on breathing will compromise it. The purpose of meditation is to purify stress out of the body. You are experiencing stress release. That is a good thing. Be sure you are taking 5 minutes to come out slowly. Lying down is best if it is practical to do so.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, February 3, 2013 | Spirituality |
“No man e’er was glorious, who was not laborious.” – Benjamin Franklin
I would like to add that all want to be glorious, few are willing to be laborious. But what does it mean to truly be laborious? It is not about how much effort one expends. It is not about courage. It is about how deeply one senses the Divine within. Once sensed deeply and fully enough, one will do whatever it takes to follow that, wherever it leads No mountain is too high. No river is too wide. No ocean is too deep. One then with one pointed focus surmounts all obstacles no matter how laborious, no matter how long, no matter how far.
It has been said that the original love songs were written to God. In truth, all love songs have been, are, and will be written to God. All is God. When ones vision is clear ones beloved is seen to be what it is… God. God comes in many forms. Yet they are often veiled. The veil leads people astray. But the innermost longing is always the same one thing. The more clearly you hear the call, the more direct your path, the greater you become.
It is just that simple.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, January 26, 2013 | Spirituality |
“He does much who loves God much, and he does much who does his deed well, and he does his deed well who does it rather for the common good than for his own will.” – Kempis, Thomas
Everything exists on all levels of the reality continuum. It is fascinating to ponder what level a quote like the one above was conceived upon.
What did Kempis mean by “loves God?” Was it essentially an emotional level? Was it a level of enlightenment? Was it Cosmic or dualistic? Could it even be the level of Unity with God? And what did he mean by deed “for the common good”? Was he simply a good deed doer? Or was he living a life aligned with “the cosmic flow”?
Certainly, all levels of reality are interconnected. But the level an individual functions from most directly, most fully, says everything about who the person is and exactly what his words mean to him.
To understand a person is to sense, not the literal meaning of the words he speaks, but the level from which he speaks those words.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Sunday, January 20, 2013 | Spirituality |
My response to MB’s comment on “the Razors Edge” Blog:
Define “True.”
What does it mean for something to be true? If it is not refuted by anything… if it applies on all levels to all that is… is it then true? Well, not necessarily. You could conceive of something like “The Evil Deceiver” that philosophers conceptualized… sort of like the movie, “The Matrix”.
Yet there is a principle (Occam’s Razor) that says the simplest solution is the correct one. Once you grasp what I am saying, then it is so simple… so clear… so full… so all encompassing… so straightforward… so obviously true. Beyond that, it touches a place inside that knows… that has always known… that has no doubt it is true. That is not faith. It is not belief. It is called Knowledge with a capital “K”. All comes around full circle. You awaken to that one thing out of which all was born.
As you meditate and evolve, your perception of ‘it’ becomes clearer and clearer. You understand and feel it more and more fully. You become increasingly certain of its validity. It all starts to make more and more sense to you. Everything starts coming together within you. It can be compared to climbing a mountain. First, you are in the valley. The thick brush and trees obstruct your view. It is not possible to determine the lay of the land. As you climb higher, you begin to glimpse what lies a bit further out in one direction. However, once the mountain peak is reached, you see for 360 degrees. Everything falls into place and is clear, simple, obvious, and oh so beautiful.
The universe is born out of pure consciousness. A number of modern physicists say that the unified field is in fact, quite simply, pure consciousness. All is that. Like all in a dream is born out of your consciousness. Knowledge is structured in consciousness. As your consciousness expand and evolves your understanding of everything changes. That process culminates in a state where everything comes together. It is like standing on the mountain peak. What before seemed theoretical at best, is suddenly obvious. Yet as you ascend the mountainside, your feeling for it… you sense of its nature… becomes more and more clear. It all starts to make more and more sense. At some point, you reach the summit. You are certain it is true even though you still have a little way to go before you are actually at the peak of the mountain with a totally unobstructed view all the way around. Everything maps. Just as the mountain climber longs for that moment when the 360 degree view is first experienced, every individual longs for that moment when all of life comes together within them. That is true of all life, all beings, all existence. Everything gravitates back to wholeness… back to Oneness… back to God. See?
It is not just a concept. Everything clicks into place… not a philosophy, but as a self-evident state of being.
How do you know that 2+2=4? It is obvious. I offer a level of life where the very nature of all (that is) is obvious. It is not faith. It is not assumption. It is not just an intellectual model.
It is glimpsed by all beings to varying degrees. Once it is directly (fully) experienced everything clicks into place. It is then quite simply irrefutable.
That is called enlightenment.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
