by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, February 12, 2014 | Personal Growth |
I was asked the following question:
I feel I need a sense of ego to get me moving in a direction. A feeling of deserving, with my back straight and ready to face the day. But then I tell myself it is a lie, that it is just ego and I become deflated. My question is without a false sense of self, what makes you feel worthy or motivated?
To which I respond:
The answer to your question lies in the question: “What is it that motivated you to ask this?” It is a sense of Self. Your relationship with your Self is one of doubt… but the Self shines through anyway in the form of this question. You are well intended. That is the Self shining through. Doubts merely dance around it, like clouds around the sun. What a wonder that something so ethereal as a cloud can seem to shroud the almighty sun.
Life is all about your relationship with all things in life. Know your relationship with the Self for whatever it is. Then you come to understand it. Then you evolve it. That is an organic, i.e. a natural, process. Meditation and reflection move it along much more quickly. You are doing well. But do not try to turn an apple into an orange. The humility of your relationship with your Divinity is a thing of beauty. No need to judge it harshly. Embrace it, not only for what it is, but also for what it will naturally blossom into.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, February 10, 2014 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
“People harvest only what they plant.” (Galatians 6:7)
“Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
Though these beautiful quotes are valid enough at first glance, lets take a deeper look. If you were not careful, you may think that you should just control your thoughts so your actions and everything would be healthy and productive. Again, that is true enough at first glance, but how do you ‘control’ your thoughts and actions? What criterion do you go by to determine what thoughts and actions are right and what are wrong? Is there a rulebook to follow?
Surely rules are of value. They are like training wheels on a bicycle. They are useful touchstones along the path of your life. But if you misuse them, they act as a lid of suppression on top of a volcano of life force. As I am fond of saying, life is about “relationship with.” You can have an unhealthy relationship with anything, even a good thing. There are so many good rules to follow that if you attempted to follow them all, you would drive yourself crazy. So what is the key to healthy thinking?
For thoughts to be healthy and productive, look to what lies deeper than thoughts… look to the source of thoughts. Look to your Being, your Essence.
Deep within you is the transcendental field of pure consciousness. It is what Einstein called ‘the unified field.’ It is the source of all that is. It is a field of infinite harmony, wisdom, and grace. To master life is to live from that place. In so doing, your thoughts are automatically, spontaneously, and naturally in harmony with all of nature… with the source of all that is. In so doing, you do not need to control thoughts so much as you spontaneously live and think in a manner that is in harmony with nature… with Mother Nature… with your own true nature. Your own nature best organizes your life.
The problems people experience are the result of not living in harmony with their True Nature. They attempt to live life by conforming to their limited understanding of life. Even their interpretation, their understanding, their relationship with good rules and principles are strained or distorted. They habitually act in a manner that is not true to their deep inner being, their True Nature. To really understand the wisdom underlying the life supporting rules and principles, they must be viewed from the depth of your being, not the surface that may be strained or confused. Only when the surface is finally in harmony with the depth does one live, understand, and think wisely. To attain that level of life is a process called the path to enlightenment. It is no small task.
The two quotes above have validity, but must be understood in the context of what is said here. Otherwise, they lead even the most well intended people down a blind alley.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
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.
