Bi-Weekly Commentary
“I am so happy that I can print the commentaries to have them ready when time permits. They are so uplifting and I identify with them. Also, nice to see you recently in ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping.’ It, too, is great.”
Patricia Case – La Mesa, CA
“I just want the money and the fame and the adoration,
and I don’t want any of the other stuff.”
~Matthew Broderick
ADORATION
A Commentary on the need for human touch and spiritual Love.
adore – verb [ trans. ]
love and respect (someone) deeply : he adored his mother. See note at revere.
• worship; venerate
We all know that our skin is much more…exposed to the elements of life than any other part of our body. Besides being the largest organ of the human body, science is now telling us that it has a direct affect upon our life through our psychology as well as our physiology. It seems that how we were touched or not touched, and even the quality of the touch from birth to four years old, determines not only how we will live with our emotions our entire life, but the quality of those emotions that we will feel in our body.
Typically, this defines the need for human affection, which is interpreted as our understanding of where we belong (the family tribe), how important we are to the family and, of course, where we belong in the pecking order of the family’s “sociology” as it were. All of this is imprinted in our bodies and is often the result of DNA. Most of us are what I call “skin touch deprived” due to, in part, the introduction in the 1950s of Dr. Spock’s theories…which in my opinion, had to be based in Sigmund Freud’s fear of women, sex and mothers. Hence, many of us did not get healthy “emotional affection” through being touched on both the skin and the Heart levels…the kind of nurturing that would lead to having healthy emotions and a deeper experience of Love throughout our lifetime.
Karma being what Karma is, one can see that all of this is by no accident. We all incarnated into this world in such ways for very important purposes that have to do with the development of spiritual awakening, which was shunned in the 1980s as a matter of finding out how co-dependent we are and seeking to overcome drug and alcohol addictions through various therapies. Some of these worked…but most did not. We are now dealing with the ramifications of living indifferent to our Heart in the face of some very difficult experiences to come in our world.
All of this explains so much to me about my own childhood and the absolute obsession and compulsion that many of us humans suffer from in this world to be important and “loved.” It is in one sweeping moment that we interpret “love” for ourselves…which, in turn, truly defines what our “emotional needs” will be all of our life.
This sets into motion the definition of love we have come to through the emotions that occur from being “skin touch deprived” and establishes the quality of a person’s lifetime without any real consciousness being involved. You see, we erroneously believe that affection is love and vice versa. Hence, we create many life goals out of this assumption. All of our needs in a lifetime come from our disowned and unconscious obsessions and compulsions, which are derivatives of being “skin touch deprived” as babies.
Most people consider emotions their feeling for Life and its Love but they are truly not. For instance, we often refer to our ability to “motivate” ourselves to reach goals and win achievements through something called “passion,” which is typically thought of as unbridled emotion. For this we will risk the whole meaning of our life in order to fulfill emotions that are never going to be what we hope or believe they can be – real Love! Basing our life upon emotions is deadly and, for the most part, many of us simply do not give this any kind of real consideration.
So, all of this is rather important as our whole life is set into motion by an unforeseen hand of emotional abuse and deprivation that lives in the unconscious as well as in the cellular level of the body. I find that people consider this forsaken influence of the “skin touch deprived” syndrome as an irrelevant cause for misery in the course of a human beings’ lifetime…but this assessment is erroneous.
If you can observe without judgment and fear you will see that we live and breathe emotional obsession most of our lives and much of this is due to being untouched as babies. We grow up seeking touch through what we call “love” in most desperate ways. Yet, to be touched inwardly, spiritually, is something we do not seem to gravitate toward at all. We become desperate for touch and, yet, live as untouchable. Nothing ever penetrates our shell, which is always cautious about who touches us and where!
We deal with our “UNTOUCHABLE” either by learning how to suppress all of it, which is unhealthy and causes us to live “sideways” in obsessive behaviors…or we can express our emotional fixations as a lifestyle, which can be very self-destructive as it manifests in various forms of neurosis. We have seen countless times in human history how those who “had it all” lost themselves and lived tragic lives because of the deep emotional pain that is caused due to renouncing the emotional deprivation that all started through being “skin touched deprived.”
You see, when we were in our formative years from birth to four years old, how we were touched…or not…by our mother and father set into motion the deep desires to be emotionally “loved” in certain ways all of our lives in order to fulfill the cellular memory of our bodies that never got the affection that would have introduced mature ways to live with our emotions. Most people do not truly understand this. Those that do understand their “deprivations” can move forward into meditation as the river that flows to endless Love. They realize the essence of this therapy and how it can heal them in so many ways.
The relationship we are having with ourselves is the one our parents had with each other. Hence, our life cannot really be any better than our parents. Now, when I say this I am talking about the emotional side of our life…not the outer. We generally do not exceed the state of emotion that our parents had with each other in their relationship as husband and wife. Only through the introduction of an authentic spiritual practice do we mature into Love by questioning ourselves and seeing our everyday relationship with emotion. Until we realize all of this – nothing can change within us. Nothing!
Now the reason I bring all of this up is because this has become the main thrust of our lifetime. If we are all honest with ourselves, we can clearly see that our entire life has been about being manipulated by and through our emotions. We seek to stimulate them in order to feel what is called empowerment! Those who want to incite excitement or motivation in us, try to arouse our desires and denigrate our spiritual state of being by telling us to live “passionately.” This often leads to some very self-destructive tendencies that few people want to or can talk about. It is often referred to as an egotistical state of mind whereby we become so obsessed with our wants and indulgences that our psychology becomes entirely narcissistic.
It is the “dark” side of living in the limelight of boundless passion that most people seek and seem to enjoy. Learning to live with the blessed state of consciousness through the discipline of “excess within control” is a very slippery slope that few people care to achieve as a state of artfulness in the course of their lifetime. But there can be an inner balance between the Heart and the body, through mental disciplines that an authentic spiritual practice introduces, which creates a very inspired essence that can heal and bring forth deep forms of personal creativity. All of this is what it means to be living SPIRITUALLY and not from the fear and hate that comes as a side effect of living from and back into unbridled passions.
We have lost so much in this lifetime due to our spiritual indifference. We have lost our ability to live in mercy and deep states of kindness because we have over indulged our body in the emotions that cause us to desecrate our inner being to that of an repugnant animal only seeking its pleasure through ruthless means of survival. This has caught fire, emotionally speaking, through the collective unconscious, which has actually created an “age” of civilization whereby we only live for ourselves and the gratification and power we can get through fear and hate. We cleverly disguise all of this through self-righteousness. In doing so, we have forsaken our loving Heart, which needs to be nurtured through daily living.
You might find it hard to read this Commentary and really understand it because the mind has been taught to succumb to the emotions and, hence, create a deep confusion due to the “value system” that unbridled emotions can fester within us. Everything has to make “sense” to us emotionally before we will give it consideration in our own lives. Most of us live in the hidden/unconscious “excess” of emotional pain due to the “skin touch deprived” syndrome, therefore, we have built a whole system of “values” and “rules” that govern what we have come to believe is “right and just” in our life. We use this system to judge others as well.
Much of the time that we are here on Earth, we live purely to sanctify our emotional state of mind through “justified obsession” no matter how cruel our intent may be with total disregard for the Karma that governs all of us. We find a way to “sanitize” our deep emotional cruelty with our morals and self-serving passionate ideals of “righteousness,” which are really not authentic morals or loving intent at all. They are just “rules of engagement” for our painful emotions that demand gratification in all sorts of “righteous” forms.
From here, we learn how to live in avoidance of anything that asks us to question our emotions and how they govern the state of our mind and thoughts through some form of justified fear…and all of this is the breeding ground for the hate that cultivates not only self-righteousness in all of its various forms but, more importantly, as our total identity in this world. All this has grown in us through emotional excess, gratification and compulsion in order to fulfill what can never be filled, which is the ill state of our emotions.
Now…after all of this, which I suspect few of you really understand and appreciate due to your own obsession with “skin touched depravation,” I am left helpless as an influence to serve you in a most powerful way. You see to “reach you” is difficult if not impossible when one is only seeking emotional fulfillment. Many of you reading this Commentary have come to the place where life is merely a matter of coming up with a cunning systematic series of planned emotional excesses that would be designed to ease the pain of the inner ignorance, apathy and indifference to authentic Love, which our emotional DNA has so readily provided for us.
Here is a wonderful story from Soren Kierkegaard who taught us how to step back from our emotions and recognize the given moment of Truth. I hope you hold this story dear as I have all these years.
Once, there was a king who loved a humble maiden. This king was so powerful and well established that he could not marry her without being forced to abdicate. If he were to marry her, the king knew he would make her forever grateful. It occurred to him, though, that something would be wanting in her happiness; she would always admire him and thank him but she would not be able to love him, for the inequality between them would be too great and she would never be able to forget her humble origin and her debt of gratitude.
So, he decided upon another way – instead of making her queen he would renounce the kingship. He would become a commoner and then offer her his love. In doing this, he realized that he was taking a great risk. He was doing something that would be foolish in the eyes of most people in his kingdom, perhaps even in her eyes. He would lose the kingship and she might also reject him, especially if she were disappointed at not becoming a queen. Yet, he decided to take this risk. It was better, he believed, to risk everything in order to make LOVE POSSIBLE.
Do you see what he is teaching us? He was willing to go beyond the passion of emotion to find the ultimate truth of his brides’ love for him. It is the same with seeking Love through consciousness. We must be willing to do all things that “MAKE LOVE POSSIBLE” in our lives no matter what it might destroy in our human comfort level. This means we must be willing to shed our emotional attachment to the gratification of living passionately for things that are just transitory to our humanity.
Observe how we live to line up one gratification after another in order to keep the faceless “pain” of an unknown emotional fear in some sort of control. Sad to say but for many of us, this is all it has come to in a lifetime…avoiding emotional pain through the desperate need for endless affection and, of course, gratification. Few question all of this and its importance in a lifetime. Eventually, all of this turns to the deep need for something called – ADORATION.
We see it everywhere! The sickness that our emotional worship has rendered us to live within. We find ourselves depressed and likely bored if we are not “doing something” that causes us to feel emotionally hopeful that something “good” might come our way. So, we voyeur off into obsession through what I call “absolute adoration.” This means that I find myself watching programs like “American Idol” and sports where I hero-worship some athlete that I feel stands up to the veneration of my passions. Then, I start my inner “fan club” and it is all about placing my life in the hands of something or someone else and living in the mania of being a “fan” instead of finding my path to the Way of Life, itself.
I find that many of us do not unite in energies that would cause us to live in the flow of consciousness and Love, but rather, we are drawn to people who we can’t be like and then project ourselves upon them and even imagine ourselves AS them, thus, becoming compulsive about what they are doing that we would “like” to be doing in our life. People can be an inspiration for what we authentically are…but many, due to emotional illness and basic lethargy, lack the courage to put away useless emotions and move into their own life and creativity!
People do this with religion as well. They feel lost to their emotions that, due to the syndrome of being “skin touched deprived,” are always looking for that metaphoric “teat” to suckle that they did not get when they were children. So, they find a “savior,” someone to “save” them from themselves, in a man that lived thousands of years ago whom we really know very little about and make an idol worship of him, rather than learning how to understand what he was offering to the world in the form of his teachings.
Most people that I have talked with know who Jesus is, as far as their own neurotic beliefs are concerned, but they do not know the meaning of the Beatitudes, which are his most powerful offerings to the world. Adoration of the man, Jesus, is far more important to people than the spiritual awakening he was offering. There is far more money to be made by the idolization and worship of Jesus than in truly “hearing” the truth of his teachings. The typical person just needs that emotional deprivation filled in some way that looks legitimate to them. It is all a cunning form of mania and has been with us since the dawn of humankind.
Our whole life is about surviving the emotions that we were “born” into due to so many lifetimes that have turned into Karma and were formulated by energies that we know little or nothing about. We are living the life that we live due to the emotions that we are either trying to combat or fulfill. Look at your life and see how everything you did and continue to do in this lifetime has a “reason” and or a “purpose” in order to fulfill or gratify the emotions. Most of this has gone on undetected or simply ignored by most of us our entire life in order to cover up the pain we seem to have that inexplicably lives in us as our “needs-wants” and eventually blooms in us as our chronic addictions.
All of this occurs because we are driven by emotions that we willfully and absolutely refuse to expose for what they are. We just continue to live through conventional thoughts, which are created and cultivated through the emotions we either deny we have or proudly display through gratification. So, we feel our emotions and then, without awareness due to not engaging in an authentic spiritual practice, we create the thoughts that directly correlate to the emotions we live within…and around and around we go, never realizing what it means to stop this insanity. We just try to polish this turd with all sorts of elaborate explanations and excuses. I’ve heard them all and I can tell you that most people are nothing but experts in being “spin doctors” about their own neurosis.
Out of all of this we see the only cure being absolute ADORATION! We want more than just mere “love” from people. We want idolization, hero-worship and complete veneration for anything we would ever do no matter how cruel it might be. We see all of this in what is called “movie stars” and the TV programs we dream about being on like American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. Our idea of an antidote to not seeking to mature out of emotional addiction is to become more devoted to our emotions.
So, rather than being brave and noble by pulling ourselves out of the muck and mire of emotional cul-de-sacs where we try to relieve our emotions by adding more emotions…we just sit back and say, “well, this is how I am” or “there is nothing I can do to change all of this.” Typically, we just sit with an attitude of indifference mixed with compulsion and live in the mania of emotions that only create hate and are entertained by fear, self-righteousness and, often times, all manner of personal violence. This is where the majority of us live our lives. It is all so very “right” and, for the most part, so subtle…that many cannot recognize it all.
I know that many of you want some “cure” for all of this that does not include deep inner healing but, alas, there needs to be some inner reckoning where we can, without guilt and shame, begin the process of migration by moving away from our emotions. This is a critical moment in a person’s life. We do this by allowing our emotions to be used for the purpose of helping the human part of us as an entry point where intuition becomes deeply significant to our inner being.
There is a vast intelligence that lives within us that, when realized, allows all of our attributes to fall into alignment with our inner being and create the beauty that we are. It is all about Love and how to let Love live you…my dear one. This takes deep inner discipline and a willingness to no longer ignore the presence of Love that lives within us as so many do by supplanting emotions as the only FEELINGS one can have in their life. Love has nothing to do with emotion. Love is that which lives only as Love within us in consciousness.
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE WEEK:
This week instead of caving into emotions that seem “right” or fulfilling…rather, seek to stand back from all emotion. Remove yourself from emotions by learning how to become indifferent to them. Do not feed them through entertainment, desire and passion. Instead, learn what it means to not act and react to emotions that are giving you some distraction from the meaning of any given moment that you might find yourself in.
Do not seek adoration for emotions or by emotions. Your mind will complain that you will be living a very ugly life and that people will not “love you” anymore. The mind will paint the picture that you will be alone for the rest of your life and die in some painful place where no one cares about you. LOLOL! It is all illusion, my dear one, and these illusions are the byproduct of the emotional mentality that makes us so deeply ignorant about Love and the meaning of our life.
Be brave and seek Love over the lifestyle that supports rationalized emotional indulgence. Seek to live beyond mind and emotion and allow for consciousness to prevail as your inner guide. There is something there– beyond the beyond as the Buddha taught us.
SKIN HUNGRY CHILD
“Do not let pleasure distract you from meditation,
from the way.”
–Dhammapada
One of my quasi-students, who really struggles with himself and his life, was recently getting some acupressure treatments for back pain from a Chinese therapist. He told me that she looked into his eyes and said; “Oh, you are a skin hungry child.” At the time, he really did not get the significance of the statement but brought it up in session with me as a casual insight that he merely poo-pooed. I was immediately all over it because it really helped me to serve him better and the therapist was so correct about him. In that same week, I met his beautiful mother for the first time and she told me stories of his childhood and how “difficult” he was to manage.
He has what is referred to as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which means that he has symptoms of poor concentration along with hyperactivity and a proclivity for being impulsive. Yet, he is a very smart man. His mother told me that when he was a child it was impossible to reason with him. She told me that he could always argue a way around it all so he did not have to do what he did not want to do! It took two people, his mother told me, just to put his snowsuit on when he was four years old. He was then, and still is now, very rambunctious.
How we was touched here had a great deal to do with his emotions and how they have conformed not only to his DNA, but sometimes the harsh touch that was needed to protect and care for him when he was a child. This is a no-fault thing with the parents. Rather, it is more about Karma than anything…and I will talk about all of that as we go deeper into Karma through Workshops and Retreats in the future.
You see, this man needs complete adoration to feel “loved” and when he does not get it, he becomes impulsive and depressed. I feel that depression can be called up by the unconscious mind when a person is emotionally remembering how they were touched as infants and throughout childhood.
Many of us who were born in the 1950s are “skin hungry children” and we do not really realize it. We had a great deal of stuff given to us in the form of toys and such. But when it came to the real touch of Love that was necessary for maturity and introduction into the spiritual realm of compassion and authentic Love¬, it was just not there. So, we became passionate, which is another word for obsessed, with the emotional need for adoration. Our “skin hungry child” is running about within us seeking affection and comfort as well as some sort of homage that will give us a sense of pseudo identity in this society.
There is a certain “touch” that we all need very deeply. Most of us do not place ourselves in the position to find the inner posture to receive this “touch” so we go out in this world hungry for the profound touch of authentic Love. This is a Love that is beyond the body, emotion and mind…that elevates us into the spiritual consciousness that is Life, itself. I would say most of us misinterpret all of this as seeking to find a “mate” so we can pass on our “skin hungry child” to another generation, which runs rampant on this sweet Earth.
Few of us on this blessed Earth stop the “selfish train” and simply do not have children due to the fact that we understand what it means to seek meaning in life rather than use people or children as cures for the ills that bind us to selfishness and its futility. My effort in this life is to have a direct experience of Love because I, too, am “skin hungry” and seek a meaning to my life that is deeper than the superficial touch of the skin by people who only want gratification and not authentic Love.
My closing story, while sweet, is very profound for me. It was sent to me by one of my friends who knew that I collected stories. It was given to me way back in the early 1970s after I came home from India. This story is about me at both ends of my lifetime. I was this “little boy” in my youth and I am now the “old man” in this story. Both of us are looking at each other for that “touch” of Love, the touch of God…as it were. I did not know, when this story was given to me so many years ago, that I would be talking about it as I am with you now. Maybe you will glean something from me in all of this.
A little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and a six-pack of Root beer and he started his journey. When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old man. He was sitting in the park just staring at some pigeons.
The boy sat down next to him and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old man looked hungry, so he offered him a Twinkie.
He gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. His smile was so pleasant that the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered him a root beer. Again, he smiled at him. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word.
As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave, but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old man and gave him a hug. He gave him his biggest smile ever.
When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, “What did you do today that made you so happy?”
He replied, “I had lunch with God.” But before his mother could respond, he added, “You know what? He’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.”
Meanwhile, the old man, also radiant with joy, returned to his home. His son was stunned by the look of peace on his face and he asked, “Dad, what did you do today that made you so happy?”
He replied, “I ate Twinkies in the park with God.” However, before his son could respond, he added, “You know, he’s much younger than I expected.”
Every encounter is the touch from God if we are allowing of it. Seek to touch and be touched through the depth of kindness that your being is actually made of. We are the touch of Love and we do not need to “create” this touch. All we have to do is allow for it. I hope that you can feel the TOUCH of Love that was cultivated in the writing of this Commentary for you. All I can really hope for in my life is that you feel the touch of Love that I feel so deeply…for you.
Enough of me for today….please forgive me.
Metta to you,
Swami Chaitanya Siraj
Copyright 2011, Gregory E. Penn. All rights reserved.
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