Week 1 - Mountains as Archetypes

 Everything that evokes a feeling response, or an experience of some state of Being, is the catalyst for an awakening in us of something the object or person represents. In other words, the activated states of shame and fear, or the awakened states of love, joy and peace, at a certain stage of development, is seen to reside in the object of our experience, and so as the cause of our experience. In fact, the mountain evokes what  is within us, and the external mountain merely reflects something back to us that we can readily experience, find and know within ourselves… For more … cClick here

Week 2 - What are Peak Experiencences

Peak experiences refer to states of consciousness that are peaceful, loving, wise, compassionate, filled with awe and wonder, gratitude and appreciation, creativity, delight, beauty and joy, harmony and oneness, unity and mutuality in relationship, to name just a few facets of this diamond state of being. It is not an “altered state of consciousness,” but our truest and most natural state of consciousness. 

“Peak experiences” are merely called peak experiences, because they are just that, occasional experiences for most people, not a stable condition of being.  For more … Click here

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The first half of life, is of necessity about getting needs met and young adulthood and personality formation is largely tactics (defenses), to get needs met. As we become more and more proficient at meeting our own physical, emotional and intellectual needs, so we expand and open to higher order needs to give and be of service. This represents peak experience, or the self actualized human - the enlightened state. For more … Click here

Week 3 - Creation Myths

The earliest creation stories talk about the primeval water - this came first. This water brought life, but also death. It created and it destroyed. As with all aspects of creation there is duality. It is an immutable law of creation inherent in the fact that creation is spirit in matter. From this duality comes all further dualities.

These energies of life and death were personified and deified in early people. In the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma elish, that precedes the Judeo-Christian creation story, the primeval waters were known as Nun. The two forces of creation and destruction were seen to be at war with one another, until Marduk - the Lord of the Forces of the Cosmos overcame the swirling chaos of the waters and their serpent deity, Tiamat. (Serpent is the symbol of the Goddess).

 So now in the myth we have the feminine energies of the world “conquered” by the masculine energies of the world and out of this “conquest” came the primordial ground of creation. It is helpful to see “conquered” in these myths, as merely the next stage of development, (We could say, for instance, we conquered 1st grade and moved to 2nd grade), rather than seeing it through the masculine ego lens of overpowering and destroying. 

 This mountain arising from the waters was charged with the energy of Life and as such was seen as the sacred mountain, the most holy place on earth - the navel of the world. This became the archetype of the temple, which is also only a representation as mentioned in the last teaching, of the human body itself.

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Week 4 - First 6 years in you, up to 12 000 years ago for humanity

The above diagram gives just a hint of the complexity of the spiritual journey and our evolution from being completely unaware and unknowing of ourselves as consciousness, to hopefully, full awareness of ourselves as consciousness itself - at least one drop of that infinite ocean of consciousness.  

 In terms of the diagram, we start with our conception at the top of the circle and start a descent down with the green arrow. The circle is very roughly divided into 4 quadrants of development, 1/2/3/4, for simplicity in teaching.  There are three states of consciousness, again in very gross and simplistic terms for learning the map. Above the circle, within all matter and outside of the experience of being in matter, is Spirit.  The 1st and 4th quadrants represent the Soul/True Self/Diamond Body/Etheric Body etc.  It is what you are - in form. 

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Week 5 - 2nd Quadrant - Rational Logic  - 6 onwards

This quadrant of development represents the center of gravity for the world’s population. It is estimated that about 75% of all humans will attain this level of development and not move much further in their development. Progress past this stage is very difficult and frightening and we do not have many examples or guides. The stage after this stage is the stage in which people start turning inward and recognizing that everything external is created by the internal state of consciousness attained by each human being. The great evolutionary turning, is an inward contemplation, instead of acting out of unawareness and so creating the inner chaos and splits in the psyche externally. 

 This stage of development is the state of awareness that develops around 5/6. We have been living to one degree or another in this particular phase for the last 12 000 years and although most philosophers are talking about the Great Shift in consciousness to an interior focus, this is not attained by very many people in any kind of stable way.  Evolution is very slow. About 5000 thousand years ago a few examples started showing themselves in the form of great avatars, like the Buddha and the Christ, for example.

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Week 6 - 2nd Quadrant - Stage of Unawareness of Motive

In the second quadrant of our development, we are learning to get our own needs met through education and socialization. We learn to tie our own shoe laces, go to the bathroom alone,  get a degree, learn a skill and earn a living.

So to some extent we are self-sufficient and capable human beings. However, the patterns for getting emotional needs met from other people is often very deeply entrenched through the shaming of our childhoods. We don’t just get educated in order to meet our own survivial needs, we also learn that we are bad, stupid, incompetent etc. if we do not. And when we do what is expected, we are good, right and perfect.

 So we work and achieve in order to get the secondary gain of value and love, admiration and praise from other people as if this could ever meet the inner need for value and love. Now we are truly conditioned just like circus dogs - but with no awareness of what we are doing…. performing tricks for external treats.  Rosenberg says, “Every act of violence (against ourselves and others) is a tragic expression of an unmet need.” I would say, every defense is a tragic expression of an unmet need. Originally emotional needs were not met by the adults in our life, and now we do not know how to meet them ourselves. 

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Week 7 - 3rd Quadrant - Hope and Paradox 

 When we reach rock bottom, or the depths of hell in our development, which is the bottom of the 2nd quadrant, we are faced with another choice on the journey. It is difficult to see that when we are in the depths of hell we are experiencing it as the “top of the mountain.”  We have climbed the corporate ladder, we have reached the pinnacle of our career, our achievements, our education, we have raised the children. We have succeeded in being very good at any number of skills and competencies.  If you listen to corporate motivational speeches, it is all about climbing the mountain of success, and yet, in terms of spiritual growth and attaining the true mountain top experience  we could not be further in our awareness from spirit than when we are on the top of the mountain of our ego defenses and achievements, accomplishments and triumphs  This is heady stuff - success, wealth, acclaim, reputation, pleasures……    We have developed from being just a body with all its emotions and needs, to being highly developed in our thinking and defense - this is a tall mountain, and yet at the top of this mountain is also dissatisfaction, a vague sense of longing and deep sense of “this is not it.” An existential or mid-life crisis sets in. “Is this all that life has to offer, and all that life is about?” The questioning starts, if you are lucky and brave, because hell can actually be a very comfortable and safe place, not to be questioned.

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Week 8 - 3rd Quadrant - Tools for the descent/ascent

The Great Work as this process was called in Medieval Christianity, is the great paradox of seeking to be aware of what you are no longer aware, that is repressed deep in your unconscious. Without understanding and guidance, the process of evolution is very slow and little progress is typically made in one lifetime. However, you have all decided to co-operate with this evolution in an intentional way. So, what is the intentional goal?

 1.     To become aware of the defenses that keep awareness of your souls suffering in unawareness

2.     To understand and be able to see the deep suffering underneath the defenses

3.     To reclaim and integrate the past by understanding the experiences of your childhood in the light of your adult capacity for compassion and wisdom that bridges the gap/split between the childhood condition and the adult mature self

Many people at this stage are able to get aware of the child’s programming, suffering, distorted beliefs and emotional neediness, but meet it with complete disdain, disgust and judgment - in other words with the same attitude as their parents had, that cause the repression of the suffering body, emotions and needs in the first place.  

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Week 9 - Learning to remember that you are the Observer

What does it mean to embrace and identify yourself as the archetype of the Lover/Christ/Great Mother?

Let’s think about the mountain, littered with debris, old supplies and dead bodies. How would we bring the Loving Observer to this condition?

 First, we would notice all the inner debris we bring to the outer condition. We would notice our judgements, our disgust, our self-righteousness, and our way of creating “them and me,” which is of so much importance to our current situation.

 Take a moment right now and honestly listen to the habitual script of, “I don’t know why anyone would want to do that in the first place…  what an ego rush…. what a bunch of idiots…. I get so mad that people can disrespect the earth that way…. I am not athletic and could never attain that…. I have failed all my life at that sort of thing….. well, I have climbed Mt. Kilomanjaro, let me tell you all about that….I don’t even see the point of wasting time with something like that….

 This is just my internal script?  Write your own. This is an active meditative practice.

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Week 11 - Realizing the Mystic - I Want to Know what Love is….

I gotta take a little time, a little time to think things over
I better read between the lines, in case I need it when I'm older

Now this mountain I must climb, feels like the world upon my shoulders
Through the clouds I see love shine, it keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far, to change this lonely life

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Inside this Clay Jug
~Kabir - Translation Robert Bly

Inside this clay jug
there are canyons and
pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons
and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside,
and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that tests gold is here,
and the one who judges jewels.

And the music
that comes from the strings
that no one touches,
and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

Week 12 - 4th Quadrant Practice - Befriending what you have named the Enemy Within

 Last week we worked on learning to turn inward so that there is a witness to your human condition.  Just observing without judgment, is the reality of who you are that is always connected to God and is of the same substance as God. It is the little god within the Big God. It is the Big God within the little god. From this place of witness, the qualities that are brought into relationship with your humanity is Love and Truth expressed as Compassion and Wisdom in relationship to every aspect of your humanity.  And so, we bring that internal frame of reference or focus to the part of you that is identified with the external and focused on the external.  In this way you stop expecting everyone else to be God to you and meeting your needs and tending to your feelings.  Learning to state our feelings and needs and then expecting someone else to tend to them is still living in an external frame of reference. We do not get aware of and learn to express our feelings and needs so that others help. We do it to grow up and learn to meet our own needs and tend to our feelings.

 Until there is a witness, there is nothing to bring to the relationship. You are alone with your misery begging the world to help.

 Assuming you have all developed some capacity for self-reflection and self -introspection you need to know what it is you are called to relate to with compassion and wisdom.

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Week 13 -4th Quadrant Practice - The Fundamental Issue of Shame

Underlying all the characteristics of having an external frame of reference is the fundamental ground of human physical life, shame. It is explained, described and outlined in the book of Genesis… which is beyond the scope of this teaching, but if you are interested in understanding the myth more, I am free for consultation.Suffice to say here that from the moment of physical incarnation you are in the realm of duality and now you are not only divine, but also limited by the physical conditionin which you find yourself. Any connection to awareness of relationship to the Divine is veiled from the young organism.

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The hardest work, is bringing our love to the depths under the mountain - to the parts of ourselves trapped in the Mines of Mordor living in the burning hell of shame. Both the mountain top experience and the depths under the mountain, all belong to us. Can we bring the Witness to the whole mountain. This is the enlightened state. The mountain experience is not the enlightened state, the consciousness of knowing it is all me, is the enlightened state.

~L. Johnson

Week 14 - 4th Quadrant Practice - Bringing Curiosity to our Closed Minds

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.” Benjamin Disraeli

Can you hear in this quote what is being said in terms of the witness who knows self to be the whole mountain bringing awareness of ignorance at lower levels of the mountain - being the Sherpa who comes back and encourages the next step of the great adventure?  

 One of our greatest defenses against feeling the vulnerability of our small and confined minds is to pretend we “know it all.”  This is particularly dangerous when we have indeed learned a great deal and spent time and effort getting advanced degrees. It is so very convincing to think “we know,” something, when the truth is that we know one small aspect and one particular level of knowing.  And on deeper and deeper investigation we will find that what we once knew now seems elementary and even “wrong.”  Being an investigator and scientist of our own consciousness is a very important attitude to have about every word we utter, every thought we have, everything we have ever learned, the meaning of every word we use so automatically.

When we are talking about having an openness to growth, we are talking about adopting an attitude of moving towards greater and greater awareness and self-acceptance of being a small and ignorant creature, who desires to know like God and so works very hard at being a student of everything in the Universe which can only be found within oneself.  The actual universe is just a mirror image of the inner Universe. This striving starts with a deep desire and conscious effort to become aware of what one thinks, values, believes, feels and needs as well as the connections between these energies of self.
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Red Azalea on the Cliff by Xu Gang

Red azalea, smiling
From the cliffside at me,
You make my heart shudder with fear!
A body could smash and bones splinter in the canyon–
Beauty, always looking on at disaster.

But red azalea on the cliff,
That you comb your twigs even in a mountain gale
Calms me down a bit.
Of course you’re not willfully courting danger,
Nor are you at ease with whatever happens to you.
You’re merely telling me: beauty is nature.

Would anyone like to pick a flower
To give to his love
Or pin to his own lapel?
On the cliff there is no road
And no azaleas grow where there is a road.
If someone actually reached that azalea,
Then an azalea would surely bloom in his heart.

Red azalea on the cliff,
You smile like the Yellow Mountains,
Whose sweetness encloses slyness,
Whose intimacy embraces distance.
You remind us all of our first love.
Sometimes the past years look
Just like the azalea on the cliff.

translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Diung, & Edward Moriss

Why You Stare at the Mountain

What does real love do? It stills the longing, for real love is crowned, and then all become its willing slave.

Love creates a home wherever it is. Love is really never in want. True love is always in a state of found.

Homeless one is, whenever the heart is not alive. Realizing that, I sing the way I do. A bird’s melody can grant a pardon to vision that is obstructed.

I know why you stare at the mountain’s beauty,for she reminds you of something vital in your self. And natural desires to explore her heights are just there to help you reach your own summit.

Once, while I was looking at the sky, it spoke, saying,“Hafiz, I am surprised at your admiration for me, for dear you are my root. With a ruby in your purse why wish to hold a clay coin?”

I like this poem, its weave. It is a basket where something has been placed for you. Read this again, slowly, it may become more revealed.

A problem has arisen. I can’t leave right now, you feel too close. Do you mind if we kiss for an hour?

—Hafiz, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, or Daniel Ladinsky, trans. Hafiz
(source: Suj & Google Books)

Week 15 - 4th Quadrant Practice -Bringing Self-Empowerment to Issues of Control

“Any attempt to impose your will on another is an act of violence.” ~Gandhi

 Power and Control Tactics used to change or overpower others, is always a defense of fight against, or flight from, our own emotions of fear and shame. All attempts to over-power or change another person so that they do not trigger us, threaten us or pose some real or imagined danger to our inner world, is an act of violence against that person, as Gandhi so succinctly said. Any attempt to control and stifle our own inner emotional life in the face of threat is an act of violence and abandonment against ourselves. Of course, all of us do both - we are both victim and perpetrator internally and so externally in second quadrant caught in the temporal reality of time and space without knowledge of our infinite Selfhood.

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Week 16 - Live Questions and Answers

How do I stay with my fear when it feels so uncomfortable in my body, like I am slipping on the mountain and about to go into a free fall with no harness or rope or rock to grab onto, when my voice is gone? Is it important to stay with the fear? Or can I quickly try to change it into love and compassion?  Bonnie

“A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive.

"I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."

Letting go of control and defense, is indeed like a free fall of a cliff into fear. Examine what the fear might be?  It can seem like the fall will result in a bloody crash, death, infinite falling into an abyss out of which you will never be able to get out. It takes courage to surrender our illusionary safety and stop grabbing for defenses Fear is a memory - you have already survived it. 

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More Live Questions and Answers

How does it feel to not hate the person but hate the behavior? How do I even recognize that if it’s ever occurring in me? Like the guy who killed the woman runner in Texas recently -- I feel such rage that I don't know how to not hate him.  I can tell myself intellectually that he’s had great suffering that would cause him to act this way, but from the neck down I still feel nothing but raw hatred. 

You are trying to do a spiritual by-pass to get to loving without doing the inner work, because it is not yet clear to you how to do this. The inner work requires deep inner self-reflection that requires the ability to ask yourself questions about how you have been a victim, and then secondly, how you have been a perpetrator and be able to hold both victim in the tenderness and firmness of love. We cannot tell ourselves to be compassionate and think that knowing this will make it so, as you so rightly realize.

First of all, let’s ask some questions. “What is under my rage?” “What is the trigger?” “What need is not being met?”

 I do not know the story you refer to, but some questions to consider might be, “Who has tried to run me over in my life?” “Who has unpredictably come up behind me and slammed into me nearly killing me, either literally or metaphorically?” “Who has threatened my life and safety?” “How have I been ambushed?” “How did the person doing this to me get away with it?” “Ignore it?” “Not care what was happening to me? “

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Week 17 - 4th Quadrant Practice - Bringing our Creativity to our Perfectionism

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”  ~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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Heart of the Hills

If but for the span of a moment I swam in the aura of flame; 

I caught the rapt secret of being clothed by the Ineffable Name. 

And chastened with wonder and strengthened to meet life's beleaguering ills 

I went, like a bondman unfettered, adown from the heart of the hills. 

  ~Clinton Scollard

Week 18 - 4th Quadrant Practice - Bringing Unconditional Love to our Caretaking

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

~T.S. Eliot

The term ‘caretaking,’ is used to cover a variety of unaware bargains that people strike with one another for hidden motives, even to themselves. It is for the most part well-socialized behaviors that are condoned and even admired, and certainly not recognized for what they are, by the general public.

Every one of us has learned to ‘caretake,’ other people. This means literally what it says - taking from another person to feel safe, accepted, admired, important and valued by tending to their feelings and what is perceived as their needs, in complete unawareness of the transactional nature of the exchange and believing oneself to be “loving.” I am deliberate in saying, “perceived needs,” because usually it is just giving people what they want - not what they need.

A need is universal.  Every human needs safety, attention, value, to be seen and heard - and so on. A want is a tactic to try to get a need met. Eg. I want you to do the dishes for me, because this means to me that I have value and am loved. This is a very tragic tactic that can never work to meet the inner need to know oneself as love and of intrinsic value. 

For more … Read here

Week 19 - 4th Quadrant Practice - Bringing Interdependence to dependent and codependent stages and states

“Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” 1 Peter 1:22

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” ~The Talmud

When we live in the lower regions of the mountain, we are only able to perceive the world through a dualistic lens of either/or, you or, me, black or, white, male or, female, rightor wrong. There is not enough awakening to consciousness yet to hold the both/and in awareness. I cannot consider both you and me, I cannot find both male and female within, and so on.  Life is simple. Morality is simple. Life is seen and experienced as a bargain or balancing act in relationships of getting needs met by meeting needs. This is the realm of dependency and codependency, or, when this becomes too painful, independence and isolation. How many times have many of you said, “That’s it. I will never get married again!” Interdependency at this stage is an idea unrealized in actual relationships that remain in dependent and co-dependent experiences. It can be no other way until the higher realms are reached, when life becomes about giving from the heart and receiving from the heart.

~Rene Daumal, the French philosopher and novelist wrote an allegorical novel called Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures

For more - Read here

Week 20 – 4th Quadrant Practice – Bringing Holistic Thinking to our Dichotomized Thinking

 “We are all born whole and, let us hope, will die whole. But somewhere early on our way, we eat one of the wonderful fruits of the tree of knowledge, things separate into good and evil, and we begin the shadow-making process; we divide our lives.”       ~Robert A. Johnson                                                             

 Consider today the side of the mountain that is in the shadow. Once the sun shines on it, it is no longer in the shadow.  The constant and infinite is the light of the sun. There is just a movement of attention that shifts what is shadow into the full light of our awareness. Today let’s consider bringing the light of Wisdom or if you like Unitive Thought, or holistic perception to the habitual ways in which we divide the world and see only one layer instead of all layers. We tend to focus on one strata of the mountain (stage of development) and one state of consciousness (aware or unaware) at any one moment. If we can notice this, then we can bring the light of knowing the whole mountain to our very dichotomized, constricted and limited vision.

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Week 22 - Making a Mountain out of Molehill

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I taking this so personally?” “Am I being oversensitive?” These are excellent questions to ask because the question itself opens up a space in us for an answer, as we seek to understand why we are so very hurt by other people’s judgments, their disregard, their lack of interest, their attacks and criticisms, their unresponsiveness etc.

If you do take something personally - meaning that something someone else does or says about you, or to you, is “all about you,” then you are trapped in the illusion of believing yourself to be bad, worthless, unlovable, or at least, not good enough. In other words, your inner suffering - shame and fear - is activated and puts you on red alert for possible danger to your value.

Clearly your value is on shaky ground. And if you collapse into this childhood belief and emotional experience of a toddler, you will react defensively and “make a mountain out of a molehill,” by accessing the same resources you had as a toddler.

You can go on the defense (childhood resource) in passive, passive/aggressive or aggressive ways.

For more … Read here

Week 23 - Volcanoes

As a young person, every time I erupted in rage, I was filled with such a deep sense of utter despair and shame. I believed I had ruined myself, ruined relationships, ruined my life and that each time added up to an irreparable place of rejection from God. I counted them in my journal over the years. There are many reasons for me to have reached this conclusion in my childhood and it took many years to understand the complexity of issue of anger.

For more … Read here

Week 24 - In Summary

“The center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is ever at our disposal ... A point from which God disposes of our lives, a point which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, God’s name written in us ... It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.” ~Thomas Merton

Mountains are formed through tectonic forces shifting in the earth’s crust and volcanic activity. The forces of your socialization have given rise to the unique form of your own mountain – each mountain in the world is both the same and completely unique just like you. No mountain is special – but each is of unique intrinsic value by virtue of its mere existence.

For more … Read here