What did Buddha really go through as he sat for 49 days beneath the bodhi tree, intent upon achieving a quiet heart? As he sat, his petty tyrant helper, Mara, projected a rapid-fire succession of intense scenes before his eyes, provoking feelings of lust, sadness, terror and rage. Buddha’s challenge was to remain fully open to his experiences and simultaneously arrive at the place of a quiet heart.
A quiet heart is the place of groundlessness. In groundlessness nothing is rejected, the full experience is felt and known. There is no attempt to “get grounded,” no need to “attach” to something to stop the action and restore control. Nothing in the flow of images or evoked feelings has the power to interrupt full presence, full awareness, and full living in the present moment.
No wonder it took Buddha 49 days of nonstop sitting to fully achieve a quiet heart, the groundlessness of “enlightenment.” That is, 49 days on top of years of prior training. We should all keep this humbly in mind as we face the deep challenge of recapitulation. It’s a process! Here are some of the major components of that process to keep in mind: that every journey is unique, with its own components.
As with Buddha’s quest, the goal of recapitulation is to achieve a quiet heart amidst the parade of truths and myths of life lived, as they present themselves in the form of memories, bodily sensations, emotions, and beliefs. Can we stay fully present with the images that appear, whether slowly collecting or rapidly firing, as memories coagulate and come into sharper focus? Can we stay fully present with the physical sensations, at times so subtle as to be dismissed, at other times excruciatingly painful or pleasurable? Can we stay fully present with journeys of disintegration, dissociation, blackout, the terror of pending death, times of dissolution and altered awareness? Can we stay fully present with emotions that have been sealed away for a lifetime, that come coursing from the heart like a raging river, a current of energy that leaps across synapses of never-used neurons along the motherboard of the spinal column?
Can we sit with quiet heart no matter what comes?
Can we stay fully present with overloaded, interrupted circuits—physically painful, emotional misfirings? Can we allow the pent up energy of emotion and sensation to release through the breath, the tear ducts, the voice, the genitals?
Can we be fully present with the voices of old beliefs, constructions that defended the selves of bygone years? And, finally, like the Buddha, can we be fully present with the fullness of the experience with a quiet heart, with no attachments or need to stop the show? Can we be fully present in groundlessness that fully opens us to enlightened life?
We must remember that Buddha spent countless hours encountering and honing these components of recapitulation before he achieved the quiet heart that allowed him to step into groundlessness.
We must be patient and nurturing as the heart unlocks its feelings, as the body releases its memories, as our newly discovered neurons stretch and grow in order to carry and release our long pent-up energies.
Enlightenment awaits in the form of new, fully present life—NOW. And that means life unfiltered by the vicissitudes of the past, energy freed and restored, fully present, ready to live NOW.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her mother and father and many siblings in a house in the woods. Each morning before dawn the father would get up and go to work at his job in the city and he would not return again until after dark each night. Every day the mother stayed at home with the children. The children were quiet and obedient because that was what their mother expected of them. Anyone passing by the house in the woods would never have known that the house was filled with children, for they never made a sound, they knew better. That’s just the way it was.
One day, when the girl was nine, her mother locked herself in her room and would not come out. The girl could hear her father at the bedroom door pleading with the mother to come out, to not be angry, but the mother only screamed that she would never come out! The little girl went to the door of her parent’s bedroom and, pushing her father aside, told her mother to come out at once.
“We need you to be our mother,” she said, but the mother refused. And so the little girl became the mother that day. She took care of the other children, cooked for them and her father, cleaned the house and went to bed an exhausted little mother. The next day, to the little girl’s great relief, the mother came out of her room and carried on as if nothing had ever happened. That’s just the way it was.
Not long after that a new baby was expected in the family. The little girl was very excited about this new baby. “When will it be born?” she wondered. “Who knows,” said the father. There were many emergency trips to the hospital, but the mother always returned home to wait a little longer for the new baby to come. One night, the father told the little girl that he was taking the mother to the hospital again and that she was in charge of taking care of all the other children until they got back.
The next morning the little girl woke to hear her father coming in the door, looking tired and bedraggled. “Is there a baby?” the girl asked, all excited. “What was it? A boy or girl?” The father, in a dead tone of voice, as if it were not the most important and exciting thing in the world, simply replied, “Oh, a boy.” And he went into his bedroom and fell fast asleep on his bed while the little girl kept everyone else happy and quiet. That’s just the way it was.
Later in the day, when the father awoke, the little girl asked him questions about the new baby. “Where will it sleep and where are its clothes?” she asked, for she saw that no preparations for this new baby had been made. She made the father climb the rickety ladder to the spider-filled attic and get the old, dusty, baby bassinet down. She told him it had to be cleaned and when he stood there helplessly, his hands hanging at his side, doing nothing, she took over. In spite of her fears of spiders she cleaned and scrubbed that bassinet until it shown. After that, she found sheets and baby blankets and made it up so the new baby would have a place to sleep. Next, she asked the father to help her find the old baby clothes, but he did not know where to look. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll take care of it.” And so she did. The girl did all of this because she knew if she didn’t no one would, and that’s just the way it was.
On the day the new baby came home from the hospital, one of her brothers claimed him as his own, for the baby was coming home on his birthday. The little girl let this pass, knowing that the baby was really hers, for she was the only one preparing for its entry into the family and she felt a special bond and great tenderness for this new baby. She vowed that she would be a good big sister to it and so she was.
Pouty big baby...
As time went on and the girl became more observant of the family dynamics, she began to notice that the mother had many tantrums, that she spent a lot of time fuming in her room with the door locked, that she rarely left the house. The girl noticed that she was not like other mothers. It was extremely rare for the mother to attend a school function or accompany her children to extra curricular activities or even encourage them to express themselves. She liked things to be predictable, her children to be quiet and everything perfect. She did not like others to ask things of her, but if she wanted something she demanded it be so, and so it was.
The mother did not drive and so as soon as the girl got her driver’s license she became the mother’s chauffeur, taking her on trips to visit people and places at the mother’s whim, sometimes great distances away. She took care of the younger children on these trips, keeping them quiet and preoccupied while the mother attended museum exhibits, tea parties and bridge club meetings, while the father was away in the city. The girl accepted these assignments, because that’s just the way it was.
The girl grew up and left home. With great relief she left the house in the woods and all her duties as little mother and went off on her own adventures. Eventually, she got married and became a mother herself. Whenever she took her children to visit their grandmother she took note of how distant and uninterested the grandmother, her mother, seemed to be to the people around her. Her interactions with her grandchildren were brief and then she’d shut herself off in her own world, literally turning her back on those around her to pick up a book or disappear into another room. “That’s just the way she is,” the girl thought, “it’s how she’s always been.”
After the girl’s father died, the elderly mother grew increasingly dependent upon her daughter. The girl began to remember her life as the child of this woman as she took on the role of chauffeur once again. Without complaint, she quietly attended to her mother as she had once done as a child and teenager. One day, as she was chauffeuring the mother around as usual, the girl, to make polite conversation, asked a simple question. The mother, for some unknown reason responded with an angry retort which escalated within seconds into a full blown tantrum. Screaming at the girl in a bitter and condescending tone, insinuating that she was a stupid idiot, the mother unleashed a fury of pent up anger. The girl, much taken aback, looked at the mother as clarity struck. “Oh, My God!” the girl thought to herself. “You are the World’s Biggest Baby! You are a f***ing big baby!”
The World's Biggest Baby
A voice in her head told her to let this truth stand, and thus she refused to take responsibility for her mother’s outburst. She did not allow herself to take the insinuation personally, nor did she make excuses for her mother as was her usual tactic. For rather than let herself feel the full impact of the mother she had gotten in life, she often toned down the reality of who she really was, sensitively striving to see her as just another human being struggling to make sense of her journey. But this time the girl let the full impact hit her: her mother was indeed the World’s Biggest Baby, she always had been, and she was not a very nice person, either! And that’s just how it was!
In a rush of insight, her whole relationship with her mother suddenly made sense, her whole upbringing and her childhood in the house in the woods made perfect sense. She had indeed been the little mother while her own mother lived out her entire life as a big baby, tantruming, demanding and refusing to grow up.
More fully liberated from this big baby mother than ever before, she continued to chant, first silently to herself and then out loud as she drove away from her mother. “You are a big baby! You are the World’s Biggest Baby!” Shouting it out for the whole world to hear, she drove down the street happy and free at last, knowing that it was just the way it was!
The moral of the story is, don’t get caught in thinking that you have any responsibility for how your own mother acts in the world, for she is living out her own necessary life and—until and if she chooses to change—she will live it to the fullest. She may, in fact, just be another World’s Biggest Baby! And that may just be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
Here is today’s channeled message from Jeanne and all of our guides in Infinity.
What do you see?
Set your intent to see and experience life differently today. Tweak your perspective, allowing your outlook, and even your very eyes to perceive differently. This intent, if practiced with awareness, will help you greatly.
From this new viewpoint, turn down the old self and the old points of view and allow life itself to fill your awareness with new information. Be open to what comes and without judgment let things pass that might once have stirred you to anger, resentment, or regret. Abide in calmness, unattached to the known world, and with openness let something new into your knowing.
With awareness of the new energy now upon you, awareness of your new place in the world, awareness of a new path unfolding—simply because it is time and you are ready—let yourself be open to accepting your gifts from nature and the universe. Shift your personal intent today to one of gratitude and purpose, to one of openness, and let go of something that holds you in its grip, for it is appropriate to do so.
No matter who you are, where you are, or how you have lived your life, it is time to let go of something that has held you back and make room for something that will catapult you forward.
Life itself will show you the way, for it has a special knack for knowing just what you might need and just when is the perfect time. So be aware today, and then use your intent to accept this gift of awareness as you experience today from a new perspective, and then let something go. It’s that easy!
Channeled by Jan, with humbleness and thankfulness for all the gifts of nature and the universe.
We are overwhelmed with instructions. We hunger to do it right even when we are addicted to doing it wrong. Hard not to appreciate and value ancient traditions that have honed techniques over generations. How can our knowing and growing compete with that knowledge when we’ve only this one brief moment to live? At least as far as our rationality informs us, that is.
I do value ancient knowledge. Yoga, meditation, magical passes, martial arts—those traditions are indeed imbued with the intent of generations of living beings. To partake in those traditions is to tap into a river of energy that flows into deeper knowing of self. This is not a cognitive truth, this is a living truth, available to anyone willing to step into that river of energy through persistent disciplined practice.
On the other hand, we are the beings alive at this time. We are center stage. It’s our moment to be in this world and to discover life through our own direct experience of being alive, in our bodies, NOW.
I thank everyone who came before. I thank everyone who has remained behind to teach. But it’s my responsibility to discover what it means to be alive in this life, at this time.
This is our opportunity for direct experience with living. This is our opportunity to encounter the unique energetic configuration of Now. How do I greet it? How do I be with it? Where do I go with it? I am responsible for evolution.
Can I experience this energetic configuration?
Energy wants to go where it has never been. Energy seeks new life. Energy abhors boredom. We are on the cutting edge of new possibility in this world, in this life, in the bodies we are in, right Now.
This simple truth packs a powerful wallop. It grips us with fear. How could it be otherwise? To allow ourselves to flow freely into the unknown—into the never-known—is truly awesome. How natural to fall back into self-doubt, into judgment, into the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Ones who have gone before.
We counter our fears with socialized structures, giant monuments of the past to house our souls. We forget, however, that those structures are not immortal. They are relics, wisdom of other times, of other energetic configurations. They can only take us so far in our encounters with the unique energetic configurations of Now.
The more we attach to the solutions of other times, the more we distance ourselves from our own direct experience of Now and the unique energetic configuration of our time. We miss the show and then, before we know it, it’s lights out!
Can I flow with the breath of now?
Ancient wisdom has informed us of the value of the breath. I say, thanks for that hint! Now I must ask myself: What is my relationship to my own breath, right now, in this energetic moment that I live in? Can I turn my awareness to the house of fear deep within the abdomen, for instance? Forgetting all the rules, all the systems, all the instructions in breathing and mindfulness practices, can I simply be in my body in this moment, acknowledging that fear? Can I loosen its grip, expand its horizons with ever-deepening breath? Can I do this with no rules, no set-aside time, no goals, no objectives other than simply being present, deeply in my body, at the main attraction—NOW?
I am a human being. How am I going to use my gift of consciousness today? Am I awake? Am I aware? Am I advancing myself and my world in some way, small or large? These are the things I ask myself this morning as I awaken before dawn. I’m tired, I don’t really want to get up yet, but I do. I go about my morning routine and before long the sun has risen and I am full of energy. Something has shifted.
Nature being nature...but not at my front door!
I go to the front door and peer into the overhead recessed light, looking for my tiny petty tyrant, the yellow jacket that has been pestering me lately, for days invading our entryway. I am determined that he will not nest there. And so I have become his petty tyrant as well. He is not where I last saw him. I wonder if perhaps I’ve finally out-pestered him.
I see him and his comrades stealing tiny wood fibers from the latticework on the back deck. They scrape tiny filaments off the top frame of the structure and fly to their chosen nesting spots. My yellow jacket flies around to the front yard and right up to the front door. By the time I notice him, he has constructed a tiny nest; a cluster of four or five honeycombs dangles from inside the doorway. When he leaves I knock his nest down.
“Sorry, but you can’t be here,” I tell him. He comes back. Persistent, he begins to build his nest again in the very same spot.
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want you here!” He flies away and, again, I knock the nest down.
I don’t want to harm the insect, yet I don’t appreciate his abode of choice and so this process between us goes on for a few days. Yesterday, after I had knocked the nest down for the billionth time it seemed, he went away and didn’t come back. Or at least that was what I perceived because he didn’t come buzzing angrily at me every time I stepped out the front door, letting me know how disappointed he was at my presence in his life. But then I noticed that I had been tricked! The persistent little devil had only moved a few feet, into the recessed light fixture right above my head.
“Okay, you little trickster,” I said, “I’ll get you yet!” And so I waited until evening, when I knew he would be sluggish. Just as it was getting dark, I asked Chuck to reach up and knock down the tiny nest—this time with the yellow jacket nestled inside it—a little too high for me to reach. Now I’m not a fan of messing with the wasps and bees of this world, so I stepped back inside and let the fearless man in my life take this turn at delivering the message to my nemesis that I just didn’t want him around.
“It’s okay, he’s on the ground,” Chuck called to me a few seconds later. We left him there to struggle and I turned the porch light on, hoping that the heat of the bulb would deter him from settling back into the housing of the light fixture. And so this morning, at first glance, I was pleased to see that he was not there. Does this mean our process as each other’s petty tyrant is over?
I ponder the role of the petty tyrant, always ready to point out something to us. This little guy makes me face the fact that I do not like tiny stinging insects, but, even more than that, he lets me know how some tiny, pesky little thing can blow up into a major battle and soon take over. A good amount of time and energy went into the recent battle between the yellow jacket and me. I tracked him as much as he tracked me. Was it really necessary? Well, yes, I think it was. There was something I had to recapitulate.
The wasp making a nest by my front door reminded me of the two wasp nests that flanked the back door of my childhood home when I was about seven years old. My parents, rarely attentive to such things, had let the wasps take over and two large nests were in full operation on the day that I rushed up to the door a little too fast for the likes of the wasps. As soon as my hand touched the handle to pull open the screen door I was dive-bombed and stung by two wasps simultaneously, on either side of my forehead. Within seconds I had two very painful egg-sized lumps forming high on my temples. Not only did I look ridiculous with my Frankenstein forehead, but I was in agony! In addition, I was furious with my parents. How could they let such a thing happen to me! How could they not have noticed those nests!
I had been dodging the wasps for weeks. Once aware of their presence, I began using the front door, but for some reason on that day I had forgotten! I was in such a hurry that all caution went to the wind and I sailed right up to the door in total forgetfulness.
One evening, a few days later, my father donned his bee-removing gear—a large hat covered in netting that tied under the chin and big leather gloves—and climbed onto a ladder and pried both nests from their perches on either side of the back door. I stood far back in the yard and watched him do this. Now he was my hero, just as Chuck was last night, but at the same time I never forgot the experience. My seven-year-old self has been wary of the painful stingers of those tiny flying tyrants ever since.
Now, in full consciousness, I confront my flying petty tyrants again, this time in an inner process, for I know that I must use what nature brings me for personal growth. I will not allow occupation of my entryway by petty tyrants, I conclude. I will not be controlled by outside forces. I want free access to my outer world and my inner world. I guard and protect my ability to flow freely.
The other nest builders who make me laugh...
Beyond the front door I accept that I have little control over what happens in my yard. Even as I write this, I look out the window and see that the robins have flipped the hose I’ve tucked into the mulch around a newly planted peach tree and are now bathing in its spray. I laugh at those petty tyrants.
I’m not really annoyed by the robins as much as I am by the wasps, and I have to ask myself why. They are all just being nature, doing what they naturally do, but, as I said, I want free access to that which is mine, and so I will not tolerate the pesky yellow jacket so up close and personal.
I pause in my writing and go outside and right the hose, making sure there is a nice puddle of water for the robins to work with. I know they just want it for nest making, for I’ve seen them working as diligently as I’ve seen the yellow jackets scraping the latticework on the deck. For the past few days, I’ve watched the robins dragging nesting material through the mud before flying off with it dripping from their beaks.
The robins and the wasps are nature being nature and I am part of nature too, but a certain degree of consciousness was awakened on the day I was stung by the wasps at the age of seven. I remember thinking that I had gotten through my whole life, until that day, and never been stung by a bee. I knew that it was a momentous occasion, that it was a rite of passage. Now I had been stung and I was no longer the same person. I had experienced something that could never be undone and I could no longer brag that a bee had never stung me. As I experienced the pain of the stings, I was jolted into full body consciousness, leading to awareness of inner transformation.
It was a big moment for my seven-year-old self. I have continued to use the lessons I learned that day. I have never let a wasp build a nest by my entryway. Keeping watch over my doorways became one way I maintained control in a world where we often have very little control. And to this day I still do it, because I know that my child self was right that day, that you don’t let things get so out of hand that they injure you and cause you pain. But I also allowed the stingers in my forehead to awaken me to an awareness of my inner world. I knew that a transformation, an awakening, happened that day as I experienced that jolt of pain.
It took me a long time to really fathom those lessons, and a whole lot of years of pain and suffering had to ensue before I figured out how to use the consciousness raising that occurred that day. I carried the lessons deeply inside though, and have since put them to good use many times, always aware now to not let things get so bad that I am overwhelmed and, in addition, to look for the transformative lesson that is always being presented.
Consciousness, as Chuck wrote about in his last blog, is our unique gift from nature. As I contemplate that yellow jacket, I am aware that we often undertake life with the same repetitive persistence. We continue to do the same things over and over again in spite of the consequences. Our habits control us, until we wake up to the fact that they have been stinging us on the head for a very long time, alerting us to wake up and stay awake. It’s time to act differently, they tell us. It’s time to change. We are no different from the wasps and the robins if we don’t use our most unique gift of consciousness to change.
Nature instructs. Are we awake?
Still watching that entryway, and wishing everyone a transformational week,
