voice intro

[voice]

I've been pretty silent lately, because that's just the way it's been. These intros are cool though, and got me thinking about how I got into spiritual seeking.

 

Born in 1962, I grew up in a typically dysfunctional North American family -- and the less said about them the better! I grew up fat and lonely. I loved reading books of exploration and camaraderie when I was young - Swallows and Amazons, Enid Blyton books (the fabulous 5), Lloyd Alexander's books, CS Lewis etc. I used to fantasize about living in school where all the children lived in some fantastic honey-combed dormitory - we weren't in boxes of rooms, and we were all connected by some mission of some sort.

 

When in grade 7, an interesting thing happened - I saw a picture of someone leeping over a deep chasm, a 1000' deep split between two granite walls of a mountain. Something of that picture awoke something in me, and I wanted to become a mountain climber. Over the next decade I dabbled in mountaineering and backpacking, with some moments of exhilaration, some moments of utter depression.

 

In the summer between grades 11 and 12 (the summer of 1978), I read an article that changed my life. I was also into running at the time, and I read an article by an author named Bruce ______ in a book of articles from Runner's World. Bruce had physical problems that was limiting his running, and so ended up taking a yoga class with BKS Iyengar. The description of yoga, and the physical healing that took place, did not interest me much. What grabbed me was this, Iyengar saying something to the effect of "When I walk, I want the floor to feel the joy in the souls of my feet. When I die, I want the wood of the coffin to feel the joy of my body."

 

Wow. For the next few years I dabbled in Iyengar yoga, meditation, read Tibetan Buddhism, but was still generally depressed. Two of my common fantasies were to eviscerate myself and to jump off a mountain top. I sort of used the fantasies as exploration of feelings - I knew they weren't dangerous, I now know because they were just explorations of my energy body, not my physical body.

 

I finally realized - I need to become a real person! So, I got involved in modern dance, contact improvisation, studied psychology for a bit, moved away from home, and didn't do anything spiritual at all. I got into science, moved away from areas of beautiful nature, and went off to grad school.

 

And, I became a more and more functional social being! I finally started dating, getting drunk, doing things with friends, and I met a woman who I am still with now (17 years later) who is pretty much my match, as a partner in our exploration of self and living.

 

But, while in grad school I was very materialistic - no meditation, yoga etc. I scoffed when my wife took Reiki and did Tai Chi. I took Reiki 1 at her request, but just because it was taught by someone famous.

 

As all this was going on, my body was starting to bother me more and more. Old injuries were holding my body hostage, and I was visiting the chiropractor weekly, sometimes a couple of times a week. The chiropractor had somehow just gotten into Healing Tao stuff, and had someone come to give classes. I took them and found them interesting. Around the same time I took a course in energy self defense. When we had an energetic fight, I for the first time realized that all the thoughts I have about other people connect to them energetically. That changed everything. It still blows me away, but luckily (or not?) most people are not sensitive enough to feel the blows and carresses we energetically send their way.

 

And, about the same time, my parents died. And, strangely, that put me into a 5+ year tailspin. They were my center - my undesired center, my lost center, my unacknowledged center. During that tailspin, the HealingTao has helped me find my own center. Helped me look inside, feel inside, dwell inside. Helped me feel the different energies, refine them, explore them. The three Kan and Li workshops I've had with Michael have been the most prolonged times of personal comfort that I have had, feeling good in this Later Heaven, feeling good connections with Early Heaven.

 

Starting last summer, I have changed my method. While getting a Feldenkrais treatment from my wife, I suddenly recognized a subtle level of resistance in myself. I then remembered the method of Focusing that I'd learned 20 years before, and acknowledged the part of me that was resisting, and it subtley shifted away. I got a book on Focusing, and it has really become the method for me.

 

With Focusing, I have no goal - not kundalini, or enlightenment, not approval from Michael or Plato. The underlying urge is to embody myself. In Focusing, whatever feeling I have, I allow it. If I have any guile, any desire to morph or control it, then nothing happens, and that part stays unintegrated. I never know what will happen - I trust that any part of me is intelligent, and maybe it will have some great message for me, some great skill for me. It is paradoxical living in Focusing - the fumbling weakness of opening to something "new" and the expansiveness that occurs when acknowledging that part, opening to it, and allowing it to be.

 

Focusing for me allows all the HT methods to appear, but in a totally non-formulaic manner.

[sean]

Voice, I really enjoyed reading your intro here. I identifed with how you said you decided to become a real person at some point. I did the same thing ... took about 5 years off to establish myself. Even became cynical towards esoterics during this time.

 

I think some traditions purposefully put age requirements on inner teachings for this reason, because the process of struggling to become something is natural, human and can be considered an important first step before seeking to surrender and be nothing. Traditionally to study the Kabbalah, for example, you had to be 40 years old.

 

The three Kan and Li workshops I've had with Michael have been the most prolonged times of personal comfort that I have had, feeling good in this Later Heaven, feeling good connections with Early Heaven.

Quite an endorsement. I've been riding the fence on wether to dive fully into the higher levels of the HT K&L material.

 

With Focusing, I have no goal - not kundalini, or enlightenment, not approval from Michael or Plato.

...

Focusing for me allows all the HT methods to appear, but in a totally non-formulaic manner.

Really well put. I love that last line. This is exactly the experience that Sedona Method and Advaita Vedanta is opening up for me. It's a cliche that it's hard to talk about this aspect of the spiritual experience, but it really is. For me it's almost like there is always the ground of being that the phenomena of my experience arises from, however mundane or spiritual that experience is perceived in the moment.

 

Something like that.

 

Nice hearing from you voice, I always enjoy your posts,

Sean.