As long as you recognize your error, you are still within the reach of the Higher’s embrace. No matter who you offended, what was said, if regret is felt then hope remains. “I have been with you so long, I would not leave for account of failure on your part,” says the Higher Self unto me.
But what must be done? It is unacceptable to wrong others and then be idle in forgetfulness.
“Apologies are not enough. Always one must look inward for the source of the problem, in order to correct the outward action. Return to the old ways and understand the process of healing. Healing is not a phase towards bodily enrichment, but a cascading power that fills your energy sphere towards a return to the Light of Guidance. It touches the head, heart, and every other part of your being. All it takes to receive is a reception on your part, a belief and stillness of mind. Sit, wait and receive.”
Higher Self
To receive spiritual power, we must be receptive to it. A hardened heart, a feeling of “I was right,” will always block the flow. Being in the present moment is the stillness required, but also required is an understanding of what happened in order to stop it from repeating again. Is our diet causing us anxiety? Is our finances? Are we in battle with corporations and bill collectors? Whatever is creating anxiety needs to be released.
Tuning into feelings of equanimity can be accomplished through dedicated meditation, where anger is ultimately blown out like a pilot light from a gust of wind. Meditations that are useful in this endeavor, that come to my mind, would be: Tonglen (giving and taking), understanding the changing nature of all things (visualizing 3 different personality types), and the Sufi purification meditations applied to those you’ve wronged (healing them).
Tonglen
The practice of Tonglen can be taught differently. The way it was given to me, is quite different than Pema Chödrön teaches. Basically, the practice is a visualized meditation where one imagines someone else who is vexed with a problem. The problem of the other is treated as a sickness, or poison and in this visualization we willingly take on the desire to remove it from them. This removal from the other is also bringing the poison into us. We take on their burden.
At the same time as we take on the poison of the other, we visualize our own energy, as light, flowing from us to the other. So as we become filled with their issue, we deposit our peace within them.
The method I was taught works like the following in two stages (preliminaries and the actual meditation):
Preliminaries
- Take several breath cycles to clear your mind of thought
- Contemplate the great wonder of your birth as a human, how this birth is special because (as a human) you can attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings
- Contemplate the impermanence of things: how even a plant can kill a man, or how love in a relationship is easily lost
- Understand Karma and Emptiness: The world is empty of existing any specific way. Karma paints the world a specific way depending on our karma. As we don’t see clearly, we can at least awaken to our own deeds and their future karmic consequences if not countered
- Contemplate the Suffering of all beings and how your enlightenment can help them into spiritual perfection
Meditation
- After the preliminaries are over, visualize someone in front of you. You can start this with someone you love, and in time work with a visualized person you struggle with
- See that this person before you is filled with a poison. A smoke at the center of their chest.
- As you inhale, will (with your intent) to draw the poison from this person. Each inhale pulls the poison smoke out of their body bit by bit. In time it becomes a fluid smoke pulled towards you on each inhale.
- As you exhale, visualize the light from with your chest center (representing love and compassion) emitting a stream of light that flows from you towards the other.
- At some point, the inhale will draw the dark smoke into you – towards your center, and at the same time the light of your being will enter the other person.
- When the smoke is hear your center, inhale visualizing it being consumed at your center, but your sacrifice is not in vain. The willingness to take on another’s pain creates a brilliant explosion of new light at your center
- When you exhale, visualize the light you have extended, now filling the other person.
- On several breathing cycles visualize the bond of light from your center to theirs.
Meditation on the Changing Nature of all Things
As this is a Buddhist meditation again, it starts with the Buddhist preliminaries and then enters a visual meditation where one brings to mind three types of people (one you love, one you are neutral to and one that irritates you). You walk through stages of understanding, where the realization occurs that each person you like, dislike and are neutral to are placeholders of personality types that change and shift roles. If we can understand that, then everyone can be seen as someone we love.
Prelimenaries
- Take several breath cycles to clear your mind of thought
- Contemplate the great wonder of your birth as a human, how this birth is special because (as a human) you can attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings
- Contemplate the impermanence of things: how even a plant can kill a man, or how love in a relationship is easily lost
- Understand Karma and Emptiness: The world is empty of existing any specific way. Karma paints the world a specific way depending on our karma. As we don’t see clearly, we can at least awaken to our own deeds and their future karmic consequences if not countered
- Contemplate the Suffering of all beings and how your enlightenment can help them into spiritual perfection
Meditation
- Before you, in your mind’s eye, visualize someone you love, facing you
- Next, visualize someone you are neutral to, standing to the left of them. This can be someone you know but have no feelings towards, one way or another
- Next, visualize someone that irritates you, to the left of the neutral person.
- Focus on the one you love. Make them real before you. Tap into the feelings of what makes you love them.
- Next, focus on the neutral person. Contemplate who they are and what they do and how you really don’t know them well.
- Finally, focus on the irritating person. Consider what they do that irritates you.
- Back to the first person (the one you love), contemplate how given the right set of circumstances they could become someone that is natural towards you. Ignoring them, for example, or not having time for them may create distance that turns to neutrality.
- Contemplate how the second person (neutral one) could become someone you like. All it would take is positive communication.
- Contemplate how the second person (neutral one) could become someone you dislike. All that would take is, once again, communication.
- Contemplate the irritating person. Is there any way they might become someone you are neutral to? Could time heal this wound? Observe how the U.S. President George Bush was hated by various groups in 2004/5 but by 2012 he was all but forgotten. Strong hatred no longer persisted towards that president.
- Contemplate how the irritating person could become your friend. Is there anyway that could happen? What if they donated to a cause that helped you? What if they benefited you in some way? Again, consider how the U.S. President, George Bush, went from ignored to even liked by the very people who once hated him. All it took was an image of Michele Obama helping him with his rain poncho in 2016. His fragility and her compassion seemed to heal the anger many had for him. Could something similar happen to this person that irritates you?
- If you believe in reincarnation, imagine a column of people behind each of these and understand that if reincarnation is possible, each of these figures has been every type of person to you in the past. They have been enemies, lovers, children, parents. If you can tap into that feeling of love for one, understand at one time you felt it for the past incarnations of those that irritate you.
Sufi Purification Meditation
It is best to read this practice from the source, which would be the Inayatiyya group, based on the teachings of Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan. However, I will quickly explain how this practice can be performed in different contemplations, but keep in mind, this is my interpretation of their work and I am not an authorized mentor or teacher of their organization.
Prelimenaries
(optional) state the following written invocation in order to tune into the Sufi current:
Toward the One,
https://inayatiyya.org/teachings/prayers/
the Perfection of Love,
Harmony, and Beauty,
the Only Being,
United with all the Illuminated Souls
Who form the Embodiment
of the Messenger,
the Spirit of Guidance
Inner Purification
Determine how many times you will do each cycle. It can be 3x, 5x, etc. For this example, I’ll use their website example of 5x.
- Closing your eyes, tune into the breath and let go of conscious thought
- Breathing in through the nose and out through the nose, visualize your connection to Earth. You can imagine yourself in a deep cavern, the dusty smell… the feeling of the earth at your feet, or just simply visualize the color Gold. Repeat 5x
- Breathing in through the nose and out through the MOUTH (pursed lips, slow breathing out through the mouth), connecting with the feeling of water. Water can fill us and clean us, and with drained on the out breath can take away our uncleanliness. Repeat 5x
- Breathing in through the MOUTH (slowly with pursed lips) and out through the nose, connect with the element of Fire. Fire is a call to action, to fill us with passion for our work. It is a light unto the path and can burn the refuse that tarnishes our behavior. Repeat 5x
- Breathing in and out through the MOUTH (slowly with pursed lips), connecting with the element of Air. Contemplate the Air aspects that can be purified. Repeat 5x.
- Breathing again through the nose, connect with the spiritual or etheric energy. 5x
Shadow Identification
Each element has an unbalance to it as well, this can be thought of as its shadow side. Shadows of Fire, would be anger, hatred and cruelty. Shadow of Earth would be getting stuck and unwillingness to change. Identifying a problem being dealt with (such as anger) would require the antidote of its opposition. If one is dealing with anger (Fire Shadow), then meditation on Water would cool the fires. One would repeat the appropriate breathing method with visualization of the element, as described above.
Purification of Elements within Another Person
Looking at the Inner Purification methodology described above, this could also be applied to someone who is suffering a shadow side of an element. That is, if someone is holding a grudge or is upset, then doing a meditation of Water on their behalf will soften their problem, perhaps even eradicate it.
To do this, visualize the person – with your intention to help them – and as you do the breathing purification feel that the work you are doing is happening to them. You could visualize it happening upon them, or do the work as though are that person, or some other way that connects with you.
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