From Gregory's UPDATE on March 17th 2006
Our Subject this Week: An authentic spiritual practice is about loss and not gain.
The Bottom line: Only as we decrease does Love increase.
I once heard a wise man say that we spend the first twelve years of our life seeking to acclimate that which we will spend the rest of our life seeking to try to eliminate. He was correct as far as my experience shows me. Our Asilomar retreat was full of many surprises both for my students and me. A couple of things really struck me about their lives. First they are all depressed at various degrees. Second many of them do not have any relationship with themselves at all nor do they care too. Third most do not have any clue as to who they are or why they are in such misery. They have deep pain that they refuse to recognize or deal with and thus live in a subtle cruelty that they admire and respect. Their whole life is about pain and they allow it to drive them into one experience after another thinking that they are going to make everything "better". They cannot stop talking between sessions because their pain has no other way to come out except through the mouth! Humor and food are the big ways in which they deal with their deep inner hurt. At this level of pain which most people are in the only way out is to become deeply resolved in compassion and disciplined, in the willingness to explore themselves and their lives through what Jesus called humility and meekness.
Our subject at Asilomar was "insult and injury". Who insults us? Who hurts us? Well we could say many people have done this to us in our lives. But is this really true? If looked at from the perspective of compassion and Love one can see that no one has ever hurt us or injured us. Every person who has come into our life that has caused us insult or injury has been a messenger with the message. These "painful people" are a blessing because they are showing us something we have insisted upon living and believing about ourselves that is just pure illusion. If we look deeply at the insult and illusion we can sense that it is the illusion, which was insulted or injured, and not we. It seems like "us" only because we have so heavy identified with the beliefs and the assumed identity that we have created for ourselves.
Every person who comes into our life is there to help us OUT of the illusion of the mind that we have been so deeply rooted in. The insult was a door to Love and we did not take it because we were so deeply enamored by our fear of survival and need for safety, egotistically speaking, that we could not allow ourselves to open that door of insult and injury and walk out of our own mind's idea of ourselves. Once we begin to meditate we can feel that nothing IS, as it seems to the small mind we imprison ourselves to within. My students caught a whiff of their cruelty at this Asilomar. Some took it as an insult and use this insult to keep them from moving forward in their practice. They are very clever people who find any way they can to keep themselves from moving beyond common mind and into Love. Others used it as a way to see what they have been "doing" all their life and will try to with strain themselves in the future. Both are not the Way. The Way is to realize that we need a deep reduction of "self" and the ideas that come out of our arrogant cruelty and achieve a no-mind. This is all foreign to most students and people in general. I do not know about you but my parents always hammered at me..."Gregory, think, think. You need to make something of yourself!" The "something" was always a big question for me. Then my Master taught me..."Gregory stop thinking because you something only when you are no-body!" I laugh now at my thoughts now, but many of my students not only do not laugh at their thoughts they live them! They believe in them, they are only a thought! They have concepts about themselves and their lives which make them believe that sometimes they are good people and sometimes bad. It is all so silly. We are neither good nor bad. We are simply Love! Love comes in living in simplicity through the reduction of being engaged with our powerful thoughts of hate and fear.
Our pain is about clinging to the illusions we have about ourselves that make our ignorance seem powerful and real. These same illusions have become our identity and function within us as a machine that creates personality and environment for us. When a practice is introduced through meditation the ego feels the intrusion of SILENCE and the energy that comes with it and immediately feels its own destruction within us. When meditation is allowed to create compassion towards the "self" of us we come into the deep humility that is necessary for Love to bloom within us. Forgiveness is the art of reducing ourselves down into no-thing ness and giving up the mind and its psychology for the sake of Love. My students have become "old" and stale and as Jesus said they do not desire the "new wine" that would bring them into consciousness. ("No man drinks old wine and immediately desires to drink new wine; and they do not put new wine into old wineskins lest they burst, and they do not put old wine into new wineskin, lest it spoil it."-Book for Thomas) They do not want to move into the mystery of their lives. Death is staring them in right in the face and they are desiring to re-live their childhood instead of moving towards Love. They want time to move backward. When they were young they wanted time to move forward. The mind is never happy where it is! This should be a clue to us...but it is not. We tend to want everything to be pleasant and gratifying. Remember to enter into Life we must become less and not more. Less of Gregory...is more Love.
Before I offer you a wonderful story I want to remind you of something very important. In this life it is more important what we lose than what we gain. In this world it is more important what we gain then what we lose. Each person must chose where they will live. If we chose the world we will be forced to live from the acquiring mind that seeks "things" and "stuff". If we chose to live from Life we will have a no-mind that lives without the need for fulfillment of the senses to appease the egos need for identity within us. The two are very different. We can live in the world, but not live from it. Jesus talked about this many times. Buddha, Jesus and many others that followed all look so impractical to the human mind. They look "impossible" to most and that is why it is easier to worship them then to see where they were pointing. They were pointing to the "other shore" within us. Most of us lose our sense of "the other shore" by the age of four our five and then seek to regain it at about the age of fifty or so. It is all about Love. If we seek Love we must live empty. If we seek affection we must become full. It is totally up to you.
The only way we will ever feel the power of Love within us is to reduce everything that supports our fear and hate to the smallest degree of importance. The "everything" in this world is merely a "thing". In truth any "thing" is an illusion. We are here not to create what I call "thingness" but to come back to our authentic form, which is no-thing. This reduction from form to formlessness is the art of living. The less of "Gregory" there is the more of Love there can be. Never be fooled by the idea of your identity and the "things" that create it. In Truth we have no identity as separate from Love. We like to use our minds to make us believe that we are unique and different in both "good" ways and in "bad" ways. But in truth this is simply our illusion. A spiritual practice brings nothing to the mind to "think" about. It brings space and deep emptiness. Everything the ego hates and is afraid of. This is why the story I am about to offer you here look so silly. It comes from India and it reminds me everyday what I am here to do with my life.
In a certain village a man opened a fish shop with a big sign: Fresh Fish Sold Here.
The very first day a man came into the shop and read, "Fresh Fish Sold Here". He laughed. "Fresh Fish'? Are stale fish sold anywhere? What is the point of writing "fresh' fish?"
The shopkeeper decided he was right; besides. "Fresh" gave the idea of stale to the customers. He deleted "Fresh" from the signboard. The board now read, "Fish Sold Here".
An old lady, visiting the shop the next day, read aloud, "'Fish Sold Here'. Do you also sell fish somewhere else?"
"Here" was erased. Now the board read, "Fish sold".
The third day yet another customer came to the shop and said "'Fish Sold'" Does anybody give fish for free?"
The word "Sold" was deleted. Only "Fish" was left now.
An aged man came and said to the shopkeeper, "'Fish'? A blind man, even at a distance, could tell from the smell that fish are sold here."
"Fish" was removed. The board was now blank.
A passer-by asked, "Why a blank board?"
The board was also removed. Nothing remained after the process of elimination; every word had been removed, one by one. And what was left behind was nothing, and emptiness.
Life is about sacrifices and learning what to lose to make living valuable again. If we are unwilling to sacrifice our philosophy of life and our ideas of good and bad we will find that we live in a very small mind that brings to us a very small life. Wisdom is born out of living in the less that creates more. "Less" of what you ask? It is the, less that needs to create an identity, which makes us live in the karma of our own silly beliefs. Less here means that we no longer "need to matter" or "no longer need to be loved" by someone else to feel loved in our life. The reason we get insulted and injured is because we refuse or are too willful to realize that every person that enters our life is there to show us that WE DO NOT EXIST as we believe we do. These insults and injuries are there for us to drop...the idea of thinking of ourselves as the person we believe ourselves to be and begin to sense the BIGGER PICTURE of our life that is beyond all belief and theory. We are here not as ideas or believers...we are here as Life itself. Every insult, every injury is there to offer us a door to go through which will help us realize Love. It is about slowly letting go of the ego that we are so heavy handed in and feeling the need to take the weight off ourselves. The weight of the heavy body, the heavy mind and emotions that come with having a body in this world. If we are wise we realize that our spiritual practice is just this...elimination of what we want and need that support the ego and its pride for the sake of a Love that is deeper than the desire for the ego to survive. This is such a personal matter that most people simply ignore it. We build "rules and rights" for the identity of us as an ego to live in. In doing so we miss the opportunity that stands within us and before us. Every difficulty we have where we must humble ourselves and admit that we were unkind or cruel is a chance to move deeper into the compassion that would bring us to Love itself. It is all about dropping insult and injury for the real presence in our lives...Love.
Think of all the time you have spent in being willful! All those moments where you really "knew" what you were doing and could "feel" that you were doing the "right" thing only to find out that it turned on you. It did not come out the way you had moralized it or believed it would. This is the humility I speak of. In this humility we come to understand that nothing is, as we would like to believe it is or should be. It means that we must surrender ourselves to the greater Will that is Love. To do this we need a profound sense of devotion to Love in our life. Most of us are more devoted to our survival than to Love. When I speak with my students or work with people in counseling it becomes very apparent that what they want is answers to the problems their minds have created. If I tell them that the problem is in the mind and how it works they are shocked and think I am saying there is not way out. If I offer them a chance to live outside the box of common thought they tell me it is too hard to do this. So what is the answer to their problems?
The answer is simplicity. It is to reduce ourselves down through the elimination of mind games of right and wrong and just sit with ourselves watching the breath and reducing ourselves to the point where we can realize the loving options we have that the mind could never show us through its cruelty. When we are no longer seeking to survive through fear we will come to Love. Humility is the healing potion of our life.
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE WEEK: Watch the mind and do not get involved with the thoughts themselves. Learn how to just watch the mind by keeping your inner focus on your breath and not the actual thoughts that come out of the mind. Watch and see how the mind moves around in tight little small circles creating assumptions that have nothing to do with Love itself. Then realize that YOU are the one watching all of this. You are the presence that watches how the mind works. If you are consistent with this you will develop a deep sense of compassion that will overwhelm you into a deep sensitivity towards...Love. Now you will not be insulted nor injured at all again. How can you there are no thoughts to clash with the authentic Self? When we are no longer divided from within by thoughts and ideas we become whole and our awareness is enhanced by our compassion to realize that WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO. In understanding this we change the way we live...moment-to-moment.
ASPIRE ON XETV IN SAN DIEGO!
ON SUNDAY MARCH 19th @ 9:00 am ASPIRE PRESENTS: NOBODY LIKES YOU ANYWAY-FRIENDSHIP!
Sunday March 19th Gregory will be continuing his Emmy and Telly winning series on self-acceptance through his series NOBODY LIKES YOU ANYWAY. This week he will offer you one of the most powerful of all the programs in this eight part series, it is on FRIENDSHIP. What is FRIENDSHIP and how is it apart of our spiritual experience? You will find what Gregory has to say here is way out of the box of common thinking. Friendships are very important, more than you might be willing to see and hear. If you do not have the four CD set for this series you can learn how to get it by going to: http://www.aspire.org/nobody.htm
YOUR SPONSORSHIP IS THE ONLY WAY WE STAY ON THE AIR.
This week we had one very kind person join our Sponsorship Program. Gregory was thrilled and deeply grateful. It is very interesting...how Aspire happens in people. We received a letter this week from a lady who has been watching Aspire for TWELVE YEARS and decided to help keep it on the air with a gift. It takes a long time for many to realize what is going on with Aspire and the message. Please be kind to Aspire...and help us keep it on the air...by becoming a Sponsor. Your monthly or quarterly gifts are used for airtime of Aspire both on KNRY and XETV in your community. Without you...we cannot pay for our airtime.
When you join you will receive each month the Message of the Month and be asked to go to our catalogue section on the website and chose any Aspire product you like as our gift to you. An added bonus this year...when our new programs come out in July entitled...WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO...Gregory will offer you a set of his four disc book on Cd on the subject of our personal violence and how to heal it...as his gift to you for your compassionate generosity. You will be helping yourself and many others...through your support. For more information to learn how to become an Aspire sponsor and help please go to:http://www.aspire.org/tom.htm and you can join over our website with complete safety.
NEWS FOR MARCH 2006
GET A SAMPLE COPY OF THE MARCH MESSAGE OF THE MONTH AND THE NEWSLETTER: Living Outside The Box! FOR A DONATION OF TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS.
If you would like a sample of what Gregory offers to his friends and students each month and would like to help keep Aspire on both radio and television, then order your sample copy of the Newsletter and Message of the Month today. Your loving gift of twenty-five dollars will be pooled with other gifts and used to purchase more airtime of Aspire on KNRY and XETV. Just go to:http://www.aspire.org/nlmot.html order from there. It is safe and secure. Your gifts mean so much to us and are used for airtime of Aspire.
SAN DIEGO NEWS!
GREGORY HAS UPDATED HIS FORGIVENESS WEBSITE FOR MARCH 17th WITH A NEW VIDEO AND PODCAST FOR YOU THIS WEEK.
Gregory has made a new video podcast for you this week entitled: Insult is a way to Love! He has also made you an audio podcast that you may listen to about Asilomar and the challenges of living in forgiveness. These are offerings to your life and practice. This mirror website is a way in which Gregory seeks to support you in your effort to realize that we KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO. If you have the new video IPod you can download all of theses Podcasts to it or just enjoy these offerings from your own computer. Please go to: http://web.mac.com/batmo1/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html If you are having trouble with the podcast and video cast just go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mac.html and download the free QUICKTIME and set it for your DSL or modem speed. It is very simple.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCMENT! WE ARE NO LONGER AT THE HILTON IN DEL MAR! THE WORKSHOPS ON FORGIVENESS: Repentance & Restitution! MAY 19th-20th. HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE ENCINITAS COMMUNITY CENTER!
We will no longer be meeting at the Hilton in Del Mar! For our May 19th-20th workshop we will be at the Encinitas Community Center, which is located at: 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive in Encinitas. The phone number there for directions is 760-943-2260.
Gregory's students found that FORGIVENESS is simply the most important aspect of their lives. In this workshop you will receive new journal entries, two new meditations that are deeply important and you will be introduced to the meaning of Repentance and Restitution. We will be learning how to see our cruelty without guilt, which is deeply important. All human beings make mistakes. Then we will in one of our meditations be moving deeply into asking for forgiveness from the people we have harmed. This meditation will offer you a great change in your life. Is it time for you...to mature into Love?
In this workshop in May we will learn how to look at our painful past through the eyes of compassion that NEVER punishes us for anything we do or have done. You are invited to come and experience for yourself the power of mercy that will change the way you live and experience your life. We begin at the ENCINITAS COMMUNITY CENTER on Friday night May 19th at 7:30 p.m. At this workshop two new meditations will be offered which will help you come to the humility that is needed for authentic healing. You are invited to come and join us. Now is the time to do the inner work your body and mind will not allow in just a matter of a few moments. Many are called to this inner healing and loving work few are interested. http://www.aspire.org/catalogue/forgiveness.html
If you are interested please call Gregory at 1-800-ASPIRE2 to sign up with Visa or MasterCard. The donation is 180.00 dollars and includes your lunch on Saturday with us. Your donation will be used for airtime of Aspire on XETV and to the kind people at the Encinitas Community Center. We have room for five more people. For more information please go to Workshops on our Aspire web site: http://www.aspire.org/workshops/sandiego.html. Please remember that if you sign up for our workshops that we cannot refund donations for any reason.
CENTRAL COAST NEWS!
CENTRAL COAST ASPIRE RADIO PROGRAM: On Sunday March 19th Gregory will offer you his radio chat on OUR FEAR OF KINDNESS. You might be very surprised to find out how deeply afraid we are of being kind to others and how this might affect our mind, which is rooted in the fear of living to survive. If you do not live on the Central Coast or can't make air time and wish to listen you can go to our web site and click on the radio button. http://www.aspire.org/radio/ You will find all of the radio programs Gregory has done over the past week...and even years. They are a gift to you and you can down load them into MP3 and listen to them on your IPod if you like. Gregory loves email and if you have any questions that pertain to you and your spiritual life he will be happy to answer them on the radio. Tell him in your email if you would like our name withheld or not.
DISCOURSE AT THE CARL CHERRY CENTER-CARMEL: On Saturday March 18th Gregory will offer a Discourse on the Tao and how great progress seems like foolishness. The title of his Discourse will be MOVING BACKWARDS TO LIVE FORWARD. The Carl Cherry Center is located on the corner of 4th and Guadeloupe in Carmel. We begin with a silent meditation at 9:25 a.m. While there is no formal charge for these Discourses, a suggested love offering of twenty dollars per person is recommended as a guideline only and will be used to support the Cherry Center and to purchase more airtime of Aspire on KNRY radio.
CENTRAL COAST WORKSHOP- MONTEREY- May 6th 2006: Our subject will be; "REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION" Gregory will be exploring with his students the events of their lives that brought them to the place they live in now and how we need to make restitution and find the repentance needed for a life that makes Love possible. There will be two new meditations being offered at this workshop that are to be used each week along with your new journal entries. The new meditations are entitled: REPENTANCE AND RESTITUTION. They are simple and highly affective. You are invited to be with us for this experience. We have room for five people at this time. Please call Gregory at 831-622-8410 for more information and to sign up for our next workshop on May 6th. http://www.aspire.org/workshops/carmel.html
THE SILENCE BY THE SEA MEDITATION RETREAT- July 29th-August 3rd.
You are invited to join us for our Silence By The Sea Meditation Retreat. This year Gregory will be offering to you...a chance to deeply understand what it means to change the way you live from within as not to create a constant flow of cruelty and deep unkindness. His new meditations which will be presented at this retreat will help you to understand with compassion how to REPENT which means to change the way one thinks and how to create restitution for the way we have lived to the people we have harmed.
FOR WHOSOEVER EXALTETH HIMSELF SHALL
BE ABASED;
AND
HE THAT HUMBLETH HIMSELF SHALL BE EXALTED.
- Jesus
If you are considering joining us...it is very important that you come to the May workshop in Encinitas on May 19th-20th and if you live on the Central Coast that you join Gregory for the workshop on May 6th. These workshops are used to posture your consciousness to make ready for the retreat that is this experience on Repentance and Restitution. If you are interested in the Retreat please call Carolyn Mollohan for reservations at 760-729-9025 for more information or to sign up. You can email Carolyn at: shoebrat@adelphia.net as well. If you want more information regarding the retreat...go to: http://www.aspire.org/asilomar.htm. Or you can call Gregory at 831-622-8410 for more information about the retreat. Come home to your selflessness and realize the meaning of this birth in this world.
A CLOSING INSIGHT ON: How Important Is Your Breath?
People seem to love things that "add" to their assumed identity in this world. They like to think that additional years added to their lives would be very important so they can watch their grandchildren grow up and they can continue the same patterns of emotional and spiritual abuse that they offered so freely to their own children while growing up and now spread it to the grandchildren, what a blessing! Plus they would get to live in the habit and repetition of their mind and body for a longer period of time. (Inspiring!) Or maybe you want additions to your bank account so you can travel and see all the same places over and over again. Or maybe you could add some education you think would make you a "better" person. But in the spiritual practice it is not what we add to our minds that matters, it is what we are willing to lose that brings us to Love. Can we lose our ideas of good and bad or our belief in what our ego tells us would be a perfect life for us? Are we willing to live and sacrifice our desires for what we call happiness and live in the compassion of the Heart and soul? All of this matter to the person who is seeking to awakens.
There is nothing more dangerous to the mind than a spiritual practice. To most the practice seems deeply boring and unrewarding. For instance the mind hears that we are going to sit down and just watch our breath and it beings a linty of thoughts and memories that is aimed at taking us away from our focus upon the breath. This is the nature of a mind that has been allowed to think whatever it wants.... whenever it wants for many years. This happens to all of us! But it does not need to be this way.... a spiritual practice can be deeply beautiful if we are willing. To lose our sense of mind and fall into the Love that lives within us is the most precious moment of our lives. It is my experience that when the mind is lost the Life is realized and the most beautiful part of living occurs...God as the very experience of our daily living.
I work with people who are very self-ish. Now I do not say this as a criticism it is just a simple fact. They live by an assumed "self" that makes everything they think, say and do some kind of service to the "ish" which is the way they live their life. They only think of who they are as an assumed "self". They have formulated identities through thoughts and words so they can prove that they exist. All illusions! They formulate beliefs based on fears and the avoidance of pain through pleasure. In doing this the practice has become seemingly...boring and they have lost the resolve needed to not be fooled by a mind that is living in illusion. Which brings me to a wonderful story.
A beginning student complained to his Master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Finally, he let the student go.
"Now how boring is your breath?" he asked.
Living intelligently means living to Life and sacrificing death as a means for an end to the suffering the mind creates. If you understand this...you have found the Way.
Enough for today-Please forgive me. Gregory.
IMPORTANT PLACES:
Contact information:
Gregory Penn e-mail batman@mbay.net
Web site: http://www.aspire.org
Phone: 831-622-8410
Mailing address: P. O.
Box 223779, Carmel, CA 93922-3779 |
