FEBRUARY
2023 BLOG
Dear
Reader,
Toddy I am reflecting on the feeling how the time passes. It is a
feeling as if the river of life is flowing into the eternal sea that is the
container of all lives, past, present, and future.
Yet, the
idea of time is simply a construction of our mind that has given us a watch -
to “keep time”.
Our brain
is the amazing bio-computer that formulates, drives, and organises our so
called “FLOW”.
I am now nearing
that imaginary border between the river and the sea. Where Time meets the eternal,
a deep field that is eternity. It is the final journey of one that is called:
ME – body, Mind and Soul. But I ask myself now WHO AM I? This question,
although simple, is still active and interesting spanning over many years of
reflection. The search for the answer is a subtle process that the ancient
Tibetan sages and masters have spent meditating on for some thousands of years.
They have discovered that the end of Life on Earth is a journey from one dimension
to another. The first stage is dying and moving to the second “Bardo”, it is an
intermediate, liminal stage our soul passes through in order to be reborn. This
process takes several stages called “Bardo Yoga”.
The second
stage after death of our body, we enter a space where all our life memories
come up and it is like a review of our Karma or destiny that we have experienced.
By cleaning our Karma, we move to the third stage and that is an illumination
(pure light) that leads to the final stage and here we can choose: to move to
eternal liberation or rebirth.
The Tibetan
“bardo” stages indicate that choice of eternal liberation or rebirth is a
choice that depends on our Karma. How do we ‘clen’ our Karma? One answer may be
that the “karmic dust” is cleaned when we see all our bad and good things we
have done while living your life on the Earth stage. Another answer could be
the duality principle when we are in relationship with ‘another’.
All Nature
is divided into pairs of opposites that create connections that are both difficult
and loving. For example, male and female energies are manifested that help or
hinder our Karmic ‘dust’ from cleansing.
From the
time of our birth, we meet ‘the other ‘and that meeting is a sudden experience of
wellbeing called LOVE. Again, we may ask where is this feeling coming from? But
the reasons do not matter as we are happy and well. As we grow up, this addiction
to the loved one is shifted from mother to others as we seek this healing contact.
Yet, being ‘in Love’ is a trap. We find ourselves in a wonderful tarp that
eventually self-destructs. We are in SHOCK! There is a feeling of loss and despair:
“I lost him/her forever” and “I thought it will be love forever”! This love relationship becomes a tragedy when
we become ATTACHED! We are attached to the image of mother and/or father and we
get trapped in the image of our childhood.
Then starts
the FEAR. ”He/she may die and I will be lost forever. To keep the image, we may
become angry, jealous, possessive and even violent. So, the ‘vehicle’ that
brings us to love is damaged and our addiction makes our Karma very “dirty”.
As an old
master said: “To enter the valley of Love, we must plunge into the fire, then
we must become fire itself, otherwise we cannot live there”
When we
truly Love, we must transcend fire as the flame of passion is burning at all
times and the problem is ATTACHMENT! We need to feed the flame of Love with a
certain oil to be able to live. Standing with feet well planted we can take the
flame of love without being totally burnt. Yet, this passion is so addictive
that we want more and more of this heat because the mind has received this heat
from the boundless energy of the Universe, and we ended up in a ‘prison’ room and
we feel that the key to that room is in the hands of the other. If we are in
this room with our lover, we must practice moving in and out of the room an
move from “I love you” to “we are love together”. And suddenly that needs, and
desperations start to dissolve and all our inner aggression and addiction
starts to disappear. Berceuse the quality of Love has no time, no space, was
never born and does not die.
Here and now,
I recognise and am grateful to the great teaching masters, and particularly BABA
RAM DASS who inspired me over the holidays to reflect about the importance of
letting go, to detach from anything that we are addicted to, like our family
members, our friends and possessions and even our own body. Buddha said that
life is a preparation for a peaceful death.
When we practice
detachment, we go through the process of ‘finishing our unfinished business’ as
the gestalt teachers stated. This is a form of clearing our Karma and enable our
inner ‘dust’ to disappear and take us to the liberation BARDO as our best
reward.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
