September in Amonines

Solving inside that which manifests outside

The last newsletter ended with the beautiful review on the blog about Marjolein’s experience of the 5-day intensive Meaningful Living. Reading Marjolein’s text one gets a feeling of a continuous movement of expansion and coming back to the middle as the participants try to fathom the statement ‘Attunement in affirmation is the meaning of human living’.

 

 

So many participants, so many worlds, ideas, experiences and reflections. For this moment we want to take up one idea that came up about conflicts, as one of the participants realised that when she deals with a conflict, she deals with the conflict within herself. Remembering Yoginâm saying that we ourselves are a community with all the different voices, views, interests, opinions, emotions and considerations, it might be interesting to look at a community as an example of how to deal with inner conflicts.

Living in a community means taking care of each other and letting the other be at the same time. Respecting the other and yourself, with the qualities and pitfalls alike. This is not always easy and sometimes conflicts arise. We should be aware that they do not happen for nothing and that in order to function well, we need to overcome them. So we learn that we must stand together, and not opposite each other. At the same time serving the community is one of the tools to do this, both as a form of meditation and because the common purpose transcends the personal, in which we can find each other again.

The dynamics of community living show that you have a choice. To use the often used example of the drop and the ocean, one can set oneself apart as a drop in the ocean or one can be aware that everyone of us is the ocean. For the drop to change its perspective it needs to be attuned and willing to drop the ‘drop-ness’. How does one let go of one’s programmes and trigger-points that sabotage beautiful intentions and make one give up?

 

 

There is no easy answer to that, but we can point to Living Nâm where Yoginâm provides us with a fundamentally different way of thinking, which has its basis in a phenomenological approach. With his texts and talks Yoginâm constantly encourages us to take nothing for granted, to keep on asking questions and go back to the essence by asking ‘where did this originate? This approach may bring one to perceive the illusion of one’s being a drop, which is often the source of the conflict. It may give the sensation of hearing or seeing things for the first time, which keeps the door open for wonder instead of feeling unconcerned or becoming nonchalant. It becomes possible to see what is happening from a wider perspective. And on another level, it can be imagined as a way to stay alert and stalk one’s own sabotaging programmes. To stop being controlled by detrimental programmes, which define and determine one’s way of seeing things, we need some distance, a space to detach oneself from these programmes, and this opens the door for transformation. This space is created by doing The Breath.

 

The Breath is a sound combination

That carries a certain intensity of resonance

It is not a sound that refers to anything

It is the fullness within itself

Synchronising this sound with breathing

Purifies each physical breath

....

The Breath, once it becomes a focus

In ordinary daily life situations as well as

In moments of contemplation or meditation

Creates an emotional resonance

That supports the gradual replacement

Of detrimental Habitual Programmes of Perception

By Habitual Programmes of Perception that are

Beneficial for gradually strengthening Attunement

The Book of Nâm, Yoginâm

 

It is the affirmation that all the movement and challenges are happening within a wider whole. You áre experience and that living experience is a sharing. Coming back to the phenomenological approach we might ask, who is it that is having conflicting emotions? If the drop and the drop-ness is an illusion and contrary to sharing, which is living, then we might better drop the drop-ness and remember the ocean. Like during the 5-day intensive Meaningful Living where there is room for everyone’s personal account which, at the same time is effortlessly placed within the great story that the group forms together.

 

In living you become from

the ocean a drop

In living too you become from

a drop an ocean

Ocean and drop, drop and ocean

The sameness of water

Fragments of Voice, Yoginâm