From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage
Subject: Re: Becoming aware
Keywords: anger,meditation,balancing,healing
Date: 8 Oct 92 18:46:00 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.

In article <1992Oct6.163711.27357@daimi.aau.dk>, elascurn@daimi.aau.dk
(Lars R{der Clausen) writes:
|> >In article <19mgooINN34j@gap.caltech.edu>, tt@wag.caltech.edu (Toshi
Takeuchi) writes:
|> 
|> [...]
|> 
|> >It's NOT shameful to feel.  In fact, if you start feeling less and less
|> >as you meditate, know that you are spearating yourself... more than likely
|> >floating away from the emotional issues that should be dealt with head on.
|> >There is enormous power locked up in denied emotional expression, and the 
|> >more you deny your emotional side, the more you deny the power of the 
|> >GOdforce within You.
|> 
|> >Embrace It.  You don't have to Love it, but you do need to be open to
|> >what it has to teach.
|> 
|> Ah, nice to listen to a person with some sense! I did that emotional
|> denial for years until I found that I had it all stored inside me. It's 
|> been greate fun (and hard work) to begin to get it out. Typically, 
|> meditation forms that work most in the head (TM, Hare Krishna, 
|> high-chakra meditations) make you loose touch with your body & feelings 
|> unless you have a VERY good grounding.  But with all the great visions 
|> and experiences you can get there, most people don't notice. It might 
|> also give you success and a feeling of happiness because you don't get 
|> angry, but if you want to grow spiritually, you have to deal with it at 
|> some time, and not only by denying it. Kartharsis can be
|> a great help.
|> 

Chogyam Trungpa coined a term, "spiritual materialism", in one of his
books.  It deals largely with an ego-based attempt to create the image of
walking the spiritual path.  You can see the irony of ego/mind attempts 
to make itself appear "holy" or "spiritual" rather then get on with 
facilitating its own demise.

You two are beginning to flesh some of that out with this discussion.
Notice the irony in a post which is entitled "becoming aware" which deals
with the (sometime) "resistance" to strong "negative" emotions and the 
"desire" for flashy visions and experience.  Why not a simple awareness 
of anger? Why not a simple awareness of "vision" like any other thought.
It is, after all, what's so in those cases.  Is there an awareness of 
the "resistance" to anger? Is there an awareness of the "desire" for vision?

I wonder if there isn't judgement underneath?  Strong negative emotions are
"bad" and to be avoided in my very holy, pure, spiritual meditations and
life, whereas "flashy vision" are to be welcomed.  Notice how having flashy
visions might become a "credential" of my spiritual success which would 
simply serve to solidify my (ego) satsifaction with "my" progress.

My understanding of awareness is that one practices it neutrally, or rather
one simply opens to awareness, and one is aware of what is "real."  Who we
are at any particular time is real.  Its kind of a cheap "trick" that if
one can really open into a simple honest relationship with what is so about
one, then much of the attached/desirous energy is dissipated.  But.... if
you try to do this as a "technique" for getting rid of those energies then
you are practicing desire.
  
I am now taking an acting class.  In many ways this serves as a nice
compliment to the temptation of spiritual materialism.  It too is a
spiritual practice.  Why?  Because in acting "anger" is "good" to the
extent that one needs to cultivate the ability to "practice" it whenever it
is called for in a part, which is frequently.  One doesn't resist it at
all.  It is welcomed, and then dropped.  This is a real experience.  The
danger of course is that one can indulge oneself swimming about in the
various emotions.  But I believe that it is in this sense -- not
desiring, not resisting -- that we are to relate to our experience.

Paul Collacchi