Affirmations For Loved Ones

I grabbed these comments from one of my favorite books when I was a medical massage therapist in Las Vegas. It's titled A Headache In The Pelvis: A new understanding and treatment for chronic pelvic pain syndromes, by David Wise, Ph.D., and Rodney Anderson, M.D. This is such an outstanding book that I'm sure I'll be quoting more from it in the future!

"I want to be present with you exactly as you are. I am not asking you to change in any way. While I may have preferences about how I might want you to be, I am committed to letting go of those preferences in favor of letting you be exactly the way you are. You may change from one moment to the next, and I am committed to being fully present with you on a moment-to-moment basis and to feel and accept you however much you change. No matter what happens in this moment, I am determined to let you be as you are with an open and sincere heart."

Kristopher 

Thoughts On Love And Living

The older I get, the more I cherish life.

I thought I would share an article I found several years ago. The article below is from the prologue of the book, Reflections - Thoughts on Love and Living by Ginger Hutton. Sorry to get all sappy, but I love articles like this. (What's the real reason I post articles like this? Motivation!)

Don’t bring me flowers, whatnots or jewelry.

Give me a fresh idea. One that I can roll around in my mind and on my tongue and savor for months to come. Human beings are vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. I always feel half empty.

Give me a book. If it says something I don’t agree with – if it shakes me up – if it makes me spend hours thinking it through, so much better. I need the mental exercise.

Give me days to watch people, to listen to them, to understand them, so that their differences become familiar to me and no longer divide us.

Give me conversations with people who know more than I do, who teach me to think on a grander scale than I have before, who leave my mind racing and my dreams soaring.

Give me a job that seems a bit beyond me so that it makes me stretch to conquer my limitations and discover strengths I didn’t know I had.

Give me something new to taste, something new to see, something new to try, something new to feel.

Give me a workshop, a seminar, a lecture, a documentary, a movie, a class, a magazine, a newspaper. There are so many things to read, so many places to go, so many things to experience and not enough time to do it all.

Give me time. 

Give me freedom from all those things that take our energy and give back little. Heaven would be a place free of all the physical upkeep, like house-keeping and car repair, that is necessary to maintain this world.

Give me freedom from guilt when I take an hour or two from what I’m ‘supposed to do’ to read. So many of the supposed-to-dos will be undone or forgotten within moments or days. Learning stays with you forever.

Give me more moments talking and playing with children, mine and others. They teach me to feel and to express more openly and honestly.

Give me times of pain as well as gladness, for they develop inner strength and build faith in my ability to successfully deal with life’s mixed offerings.

Give me my mistakes, for they make me less judgmental of others.

Give me an answer.

Give me a question for which there appears to be no answer.

Kristopher 

Attachment

I gathered the information for this post from my Aikido sensei and wrote it when I was still living in Las Vegas performing massage therapy and EFT Tapping. One can just as well use the lessons in this post for the Wim Hof Method in Prescott Arizona. I know I'm using this sagely advice! 

Concerning the Wim Hof Method, massage or EFT Tapping, just like most anything else, there is body action of some kind. Of course, that has to be. I must raise my arms and place my hands and fingers on the client’s face and body to tap on the meridian points or perform massage while I teach the client how to do it themselves. But what is my body action an expression of? That's the question.

Is it an expression of my own small mind, trying to do something? Or is it an expression of the deeper sense of unity? Is it creating goodness out of badness, when a client is stressed out, or in a weakened condition, or injured? Do I think that there is something wrong, and I need to fix it?

This is seeing only the relative world. This is seeing only chaos, where in fact there is perfect order. If I don't see the order, then the order does not influence the client using EFT Tapping, massage, or anything else.

The client cannot see the order, balance, harmonious universe, because of their temporary condition of stress, anxiety, physical pain, etc. If I don't see perfection, then the client also doesn't see that.

When someone feels pain, there is attachment to that area of the mind/body. So, one might think that, if you are attached, in some sense your mind is strong there. But it is just very stuck there.

Attachment is weakness. If my mind is strong, it is free and not stuck. Mind is weak there in that sore place or injured place, so if I touch the client using EFT Tapping there in that sore or injured place with a free mind, then I can release the attachment.

So the nature of what transpires between us, the client and me, the quality or flavor of what transpires between us, carries the quality, flavor, or taste of the source of that. If it comes from my small mind, then it carries that flavor; that characteristic. It is not that it is nothing, in this case, but it's limited. It's not limitless. It is not infinite. It's finite.

So what is the point of all that?

It is very important for me, and clients, to begin to truly understand how it is that energy pervades everything. It is everything there is. So, if I think, "I am going to move energy from me to you", or attempt to channel or move energy from The Great Spirit, or Heaven or God or whatever to you, this is limited thinking and a bit of a mistake.

Because how can that happen? It's already there.

Curtis Sensei lecture.

Kristopher 

Death Awareness

Death Awareness comments by the author Carlos Castaneda in a conversation with don Juan Matus, a character in one of his books. 

"A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear."  

"That's even harder, don Juan. For most people death is very vague and remote.  We never think of it."  

"Why not?"  

"Why should we?"  

"Very simple," he said.  "Because the idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit."  

"By the time knowledge becomes a frightening affair the man also realizes that death is the irreplaceable partner that sits next to him on the mat.  Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force.  Death lends the ultimate touch, and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.  

"A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidably he becomes keenly aware of his death.  Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts.  He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.”  

"Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death.  But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating.  So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment.  The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference."  

Don Juan stopped talking and looked at me.  He seemed to be waiting for a comment.  

"Do you understand?" he asked.  

I understood what he had said but I personally could not see how anyone could arrive at a sense of detachment.  I said that from the point of view of my own apprenticeship I had already experienced the moment when knowledge became such a frightening affair.  I could also truthfully say that I no longer found support in the ordinary premises of my daily life.  And I wanted, or perhaps even more than wanted, I needed, to live like a warrior.  

"Now you must detach yourself," he said.  

"From what?"  

"Detach yourself from everything."  

"That's impossible.  I don't want to be a hermit."  

"To be a hermit is an indulgence and I never meant that.  A hermit is not detached, for he willfully abandons himself to being a hermit.  

"Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything.  Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything.  A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life.  He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.  

"A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions.  He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices.  He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations.  His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.  

"And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner.  The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency. 

"When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience!"  

"When a warrior has acquired patience he is on his way to will.  He knows how to wait.  His death sits with him on his mat, they are friends.  His death advises him, in mysterious ways, how to choose, how to live strategically.  And the warrior waits!  I would say that the warrior learns without any hurry because he knows he is waiting for his will; and one day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish. 

He may not even notice his extraordinary deed.  But as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep on happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging.  A power that conies out of his body as he progresses on the path of knowledge.  At first it is like an itching on the belly, or a warm spot that cannot be soothed; then it becomes a pain, a great discomfort.  Sometimes the pain and discomfort are so great that the warrior has convulsions for months, the more severe the convulsions the better for him. A fine power is always heralded by great pain.  

"Death is the only wise adviser that we have.  Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so.  Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.  Your death will tell you, "I haven't touched you yet".  

"One of us here has to change, and fast.  One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and that it is always to one's left.  One of us here has to ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them."  

"You, on the other hand, feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be cancelled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts.  There is only time for decisions."  

"It doesn't matter what the decision is," he said.  "Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else.  Don't you see?  In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions.  There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death."  

"You always feel compelled to explain your acts, as if you were the only man on earth who's wrong," he said.  "It's your old feeling of importance.  You have too much of it; you also have too much personal history.  On the other hand, you don't assume responsibility for your acts; you're not using your death as an adviser, and above all, you are too accessible.  In other words, your life is as messy as it was before I met you."  

"Use it. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying.  Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly.  Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth.  Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power.  Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man."  

"What an exquisite omen this is!" he went on.  "And all for you.  Power is showing you that death is the indispensable ingredient in having to believe.  Without the awareness of death everything is ordinary, trivial.  It is only because death is stalking us that the world is an unfathomable mystery.  Power has shown you that.  All I have done myself is to round up the details of the omen, so the direction would be clear to you; but in rounding up the details, I have also shown you that everything I have said to you today is what I have to believe myself, because that is the predilection of my spirit."

To be continued...

Kristopher 

The Warrior's Last Stand

Usually, when we think of a ‘warrior,’ someone drawing a line in the sand, making their last stand on earth, we think they are committing themselves to an all-or-nothing battle: here and now, on this spot, live or die. That's the kind of ultimatum many others often describe. They make it sound like a fight, like, put up your dukes, but it's really not.

It's the end of fighting, the end of a lifelong struggle.

Did that comment lose you? Read on.

Drawing this line doesn't mean battle stations, red alert, DEFCOM one and all that. It’s not that kind of battle. It means we have to lower our shields, not raise them. That's how easily and effectively we are undone, and it's because the enemy is within, running the show, redeploying all of our mental and emotional resources against us.

Instead of adopting a warlike posture, we must, counter-intuitively, lower our shields and defenses. This seems confusing until we understand that we are both the protagonist and the antagonist in this conflict, both attacker and defender.

This is the paradoxical nature of the struggle. We can't win by fighting. The very thing that fights, that resists, is the thing we seek to overthrow. Only by vanquishing self-importance can we prevail.

Only in surrender can we find victory. This is the part so few get, and fewer get beyond.

This is the part where everything starts sounding all sagely or Zen like, but that can't be helped. If you want to say that all religions and spiritual teachings share a core truth, it can only be this: Surrender is victory.

Yet, this isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning.

Once we surrender, The Real Work begins.

Death Is An Advisor - Memento Mori

"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have." ~ James Baldwin

Death is the key to life. Death defines life, gives it shape and meaning and context. Without a clear and honest relationship with our mortality, we live in a state of endless spiritual sprawl, a soupy gray fog that creates that hellish illusion of life stretching endlessly in all directions.

We’ve homogenized our lives by hiding the parts we’re afraid of, and in so doing, we’ve removed all sense of urgency from life. We have taken death out of life and that allows us to live unconsciously. Death never left, of course, we’ve just turned away from it, pretended it wasn’t there. If we wish to awaken - and that’s a mighty big if - then we must welcome death back into our lives. Death is our own personal Zen Master, our source of power, our path to lucidity, but we have to stop running from it in a blind panic.

We need only stop and turn around and there it is, inches away, staring at us with unblinking gaze, finger poised, every second of our lives. That finger is the one true thing in the dream-state, and it will, for a fact, come down.

Death-awareness is the universal spiritual practice. What we have sought in books and magazines, in teachers and teachings, in ancient cultures and foreign lands, has been breathing down our neck the entire time. It’s not just another mood-making spiritual technique that you dabble with for a few weeks and blame yourself when it doesn’t deliver. Death always delivers. Death is your only true friend, the only friend that will never abandon you and that no one can take away. It slices through every lie, ridicules every belief, mocks every vanity and reduces ego to absurdity. He’s sitting with you right now. If you want to know something, ask him. Death doesn’t lie.

The inverse of death-awareness is equally important.  Learn to practice death-denial awareness.  Anytime you find yourself sitting on the couch watching TV, shopping in the mall, or trying to find amusement in some pointless book or idle pastime, remind yourself that this is exactly the habit you want to break.  Try to catch yourself in all the situations throughout the day when you are not awake, not aware, going through the motions of your life in a virtually somnambulistic state.  Remind yourself constantly:  This moment, right now, I am in the sleep-state.  This is the mindlessness I’m addicted to like a drug.  I am an opium addict living in an opium dream.  This is the coma; this slow oozing of my life down the drain.  Right now, my life is slipping away.  

Another powerful thing about the practice and cultivation of death-awareness is that it provides an accurate barometer of your own spiritual sincerity, though you may not want one.  Anyone can go sour on mainstream religion and adopt a less orthodox belief system to replace it, but how many people are really sincere in their spiritual aspirations?  

Probably everyone thinks they are, but are YOU really?  Are you willing to go wherever this leads?  To do whatever it takes?  Thousands talk the talk for one who walks the walk.  The practice of death-awareness separates the walkers from the talkers.  We can use this as a spiritual self-diagnostic to determine, once and for all, if spirituality is something we’re serious about or if we’re just tourists.  Most are just tourists, but which of us are sincere and which are dabblers?  

If you want to answer this question for yourself, here’s your chance.  Your relationship to your own mortality tells the tale.  Everyone is either facing toward it or turned away from it, it’s that simple.  Toward or away.  If you can’t face the most fundamental fact of your own existence, what can you face?  This is ground floor, entry-level awakening.  It doesn’t get any closer or simpler than this.  

If, based on the posts in this thread, your life does not undergo major restructuring over the next few months, then you have your answer; you’re a tourist with no real desire or intent to wake up.  What you do with that knowledge is up to you.  Maybe you don’t want to know the answer to this question, but if you don’t want to know, then you know.

Kristopher 

Unbending Intent

When we have unbending intent to create something - that is, we deeply desire it, we completely believe that we can do it, and we are totally willing to have it - it simply cannot fail to manifest, and usually within a very short period of time. 

Think of when you started the WHM (Wim Hof Method.) Did you deeply desire it? Believe you can do it? Totally willing to receive the benefits of this training? This is what I've referring to when I mention 'unbending intent.' 

The clearer and stronger our unbending intent, the more quickly and easily our creative visualization will work. In any give situation we only need ask ourselves about the condition of our intent. If it is weak or uncertain, it can often be strengthened by affirming: I now have unbending intent to create this here and now!

We can think of life as containing three levels, and we can call those levels beingness, doingness, and havingness.

Beingness is the basic experience of being alive and conscious. It is the experience we have in deep meditation, the experience of being totally complete and at rest within oneself.

Doingness is movement and activity, it stems from the natural creative energy that flows through every living thing and is the source of our vitality.

Havingness is the state of being in relationship with other people and things in the universe. It is the ability to allow and accept things and people into our lives; to comfortably occupy the same space with them.

Beingness, doingness and havingness are like a triangle where each side supports the others. They are not in conflict with each other. They all exist simultaneously.

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: They try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so that they will be happier.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Thus, the purpose is to connect us with our beingness to help us focus and facilitate our doingness and to increase and expand our havingness.

Kristopher 

The WHM Dojo Training Etiquette

Our training space, location or dare say I call it a 'WHM dojo,' but I will, is the place where we cleanse and enrich our mind/body. Such a place offers effective use only when it is filled with feelings of respect, gratitude, right attitude, and positive mutual support. 

When you come into your 'WHM dojo', or training location, you will notice that you and everyone you train with works very hard and sincerely to maintain these feelings listed above. Any feelings to the contrary should be left outside your WHM dojo. 

Following traditional forms of etiquette in your WHM dojo is an essential aspect of your training and should be practiced with sincerity. You will find, if you remain with the WHM for long, that "WHM Dojo Etiquette" is not a set list of rules and regulations to follow, but rather a Living Attitude. 

Just as discipline is a tool to use only until we learn to love the thing that is good for us, so the following list is a basis upon which to build our awareness of right thinking and right acting in relation to others. (I'm currently working on the list as I need to taper it to our training.) I'll get this done ASAP! :-) 

P.S. - I wrote this post in a rush and it's a mess. I've yet to write what I really mean...so, when I get the right words, I'll clean up this post. 

Kristopher