Final Service of the Summer

Tomorrow is the final meeting before the truly hot season sets in. Please come and enjoy our fellowship. The next meeting will be the Sunday after Labor Day.

The newsletter will continue to send provocative news from around the world. Here is a little note from heaven.

You Are Not Your Mind

Over the years I’ve learned dozens of little tricks and insights for making life more fulfilling. They’ve added up to a significant improvement in the ease and quality of my day-to-day life. But the major breakthroughs have come from a handful of insights that completely rocked my world and redefined reality forever.

The world now seems to be a completely different one than the one I lived in about ten years ago, when I started looking into the mechanics of quality of life. It wasn’t the world (and its people) that changed really, it was how I thought of it.

Maybe you’ve had some of  the same insights. Or maybe you’re about to.

1. You are not your mind.

The first time I heard somebody say that,  I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. What else could I be? I had taken for granted that the mental chatter in my head was the central “me” that all the experiences in my life were happening to.

I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. Thoughts are no more fundamental than smells, sights and sounds. Like any experience, they arise in my awareness, they have a certain texture, and then they give way to something else.

If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, who’s doing the observing? Don’t answer too quickly. This question, and its unspeakable answer, are at the center of all the great religions and spiritual traditions.

2. Life unfolds only in moments.

Of course! I once called this the most important thing I ever learned. Nobody has ever experienced anything that wasn’t part of a single moment unfolding. That means life’s only challenge is dealing with the single moment you are having right now. Before I recognized this, I was constantly trying to solve my entire life — battling problems that weren’t actually happening. Anyone can summon the resolve to deal with a single, present moment, as long as they are truly aware that it’s their only point of contact with life, and therefore there is nothing else one can do that can possibly be useful. Nobody can deal with the past or future, because, both only exist as thoughts, in the present. But we can kill ourselves trying.

3. Quality of life is determined by how you deal with your moments, not which moments happen and which don’t.

I now consider this truth to be Happiness 101, but it’s amazing how tempting it still is to grasp at control of every circumstance to try to make sure I get exactly what I want. To encounter an undesirable situation and work with it willingly is the mark of a wise and happy person. Imagine getting a flat tire, falling ill at a bad time, or knocking something over and breaking it — and suffering nothing from it. There is nothing to fear if you agree with yourself to deal willingly with adversity whenever it does show up. That is how to make life better. The typical, low-leverage method is to hope that you eventually accumulate power over your circumstances so that you can get what you want more often. There’s an excellent line in a Modest Mouse song, celebrating this side-effect of wisdom: As life gets longer, awful feels softer.

4. Most of life is imaginary.

Human beings have a habit of compulsive thinking that is so pervasive that we lose sight of the fact that we are nearly always thinking. Most of what we interact with is not the world itself, but our beliefs about it, our expectations of it, and our personal interests in it. We have a very difficult time observing something without confusing it with the thoughts we have about it, and so the bulk of what we experience in life is imaginary things. As Mark Twain said: “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” The best treatment I’ve found? Cultivating mindfulness.

5. Human beings have evolved to suffer, and we are better at suffering than anything else.

Yikes. It doesn’t sound like a very liberating discovery. I used to believe that if I was suffering it meant that there was something wrong with me — that I was doing life “wrong.” Suffering is completely human and completely normal, and there is a very good reason for its existence. Life’s persistent background hum of “this isn’t quite okay, I need to improve this,” coupled with occasional intense flashes of horror and adrenaline are what kept human beings alive for millions of years. This urge to change or escape the present moment drives nearly all of our behavior. It’s a simple and ruthless survival mechanism which works exceedingly well for keeping us alive, but it has a horrific side effect: human beings suffer greatly by their very nature. This, for me, redefined every one of life’s problems as some tendril of the human condition. As grim as it sounds, this insight is liberating because it means: 1) that suffering does not necessarily mean my life is going wrong, 2) that the ball is always in my court, so the degree to which I suffer is ultimately up to me, and 3) that all problems have the same cause and the same solution.

6. Emotions exist to make us biased.

This discovery was a complete 180 from my old understanding of emotions. I used to think my emotions were reliable indicators of the state of my life — of whether I’m on the right track or not. Your passing emotional states can’t be trusted for measuring your self-worth or your position in life, but they are great at teaching you what it is you can’t let go of. The trouble is that emotions make us both more biased and more forceful at the same time. Another survival mechanism with nasty side-effects.

7. All people operate from the same two motivations: to fulfill their desires and to escape their suffering.

Learning this allowed me to finally make sense of how people can hurt each other so badly. The best explanation I had before this was that some people are just bad. What a cop-out. No matter what kind of behavior other people exhibit, they are acting in the most effective way they are capable of (at that moment) to fulfill a desire or to relieve their suffering. These are motives we can all understand; we only vary in method, and the methods each of us has at our disposal depend on our upbringing and our experiences in life, as well as our state of consciousness. Some methods are skillful and helpful to others, others are unskillful and destructive, and almost all destructive behavior is unconscious. So there is no good and evil, only smart and dumb (or wise and foolish.) Understanding this completely shook my long-held notions of morality and justice.

8. Beliefs are nothing to be proud of.

Believing something is not an accomplishment. I grew up thinking that beliefs are something to be proud of, but they’re really nothing but opinions one refuses to reconsider. Beliefs are easy. The stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because “strength of belief” is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself. As soon as you are proud of a belief, as soon as you think it adds something to who you are, then you’ve made it a part of your ego. Listen to any “die-hard” conservative or liberal talk about their deepest beliefs and you are listening to somebody who will never hear what you say on any matter that matters to them — unless you believe the same. It is gratifying to speak forcefully, it is gratifying to be agreed with, and this high is what the die-hards are chasing. Wherever there is a belief, there is a closed door. Take on the beliefs that stand up to your most honest, humble scrutiny, and never be afraid to lose them.

9. Objectivity is subjective.

Life is a subjective experience and that cannot be escaped. Every experience I have comes through my own, personal, unsharable viewpoint. There can be no peer reviews of my direct experience, no real corroboration. This has some major implications for how I live my life. The most immediate one is that I realize I must trust my own personal experience, because nobody else has this angle, and I only have this angle. Another is that I feel more wonder for the world around me, knowing that any “objective” understanding I claim to have of the world is built entirely from scratch, by me. What I do build depends on the books I’ve read, the people I’ve met, and the experiences I’ve had. It means I will never see the world quite like anyone else, which means I will never live in quite the same world as anyone else — and therefore I mustn’t let outside observers be the authority on who I am or what life is really like for me. Subjectivity is primary experience — it is real life, and objectivity is something each of us builds on top of it in our minds, privately, in order to explain it all. This truth has world-shattering implications for the roles of religion and science in the lives of those who grasp it.
***
What have you discovered that turned your world upside down?

Photo by h.koppdelaney

"Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!

— Ram Dass (via lazyyogi)(Source: lazyyogi)

Copied from http://mudpuppyceramicstudio.tumblr.com/

Change your life

Change your life by changing what you do each day!

 How to Turn an Aspiration Into a Daily Change

Let’s name a few aspirations:

• lose weight
• write a book
• stop procrastinating
• fall in love
• be happy
• travel the world
• drink more water
• learn Spanish
• save money
• take more pictures
• read more books

How do you turn those lofty ideas into daily changes? Think about what you could do every day that would make the change happen, or at least get you closer to the goal. Sometimes that’s not always easy, but let’s look at some ideas:

Voices

You know that ringing sound that you will perceive when you are in a very quiet area? Some people say this is an auditory-illusion brought about the ear’s inability to detect frequencies below the threshold of the human senses. This is completely wrong. That ringing covers up something else altogether. If you are quick, patient, and maybe a little lucky, you will be able to hear past the ringing. What you will hear are voices whispering to each other. They will silence themselves quickly but with practice, you will become more adept at catching and interpreting what they are saying. You will hear things of the past, the present, and the future. However, you must be careful. Because there is no such thing as a voice without a body.

And when you start noticing them, they will start noticing you.

http://voices.pen.io/

The Subject Was Silence

SERVICES RESUME AT CHRYSALIS SPIRITUAL CENTER

Services at Chrysalis were briefly interrupted due to loss of electric service following falling tree branches.

Regular services will be at 10 am Sunday July 21. Thank you for your patience.

It is our opinions of things --- and not the things themselves that cause disturbances in our lives. Epictitus

Can Be Felt Everywhere
God sleeps
God awakens
God walks
God speaks  anon

We ought to imprint
        all God's gifts
                into our hearts
Mechtild of Magdeburg

Leap!
Leap in ordered dance -- Be a vanquisher
of evil spirits
Mechtild of Magdeburg

It will be worth your time to go to www.doctoroz.com to learn about healing with crystal bowls. I am going to get the recordings for meditation. When I heard the first vibration from the gold bowl I felt transformed. You won't believe it ... a medical oncologist uses crystal in the treatment  for cancer.

SHORT AFFIRMATION
I was created in love. For that reason nothing can express my beauty nor liberate my nobleness except love alone.

See you Sunday!

Letting Go

25 Quotes on Letting Go

Quotes on letting go and moving on.

Published on October 25, 2012 by Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D. in Here, There, and Everywhere

 Letting go is can be a painful yet necessary part of life.  And letting go can also result in feeling free.  Read these quotes on letting go.
Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself. - Deborah Reber, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul
Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it. - Ann Landers
Forgiveness means letting go of the past. - Gerald Jampolsky
In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself. – Deepak Chopra
Letting go helps us to to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress. – Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go

Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values. – Dalai Lama
Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. – Ralph Marston
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty. - Seneca
Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future. – Daphne Rose Kingma
We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty. – Leo F. Buscaglia
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar. – Raymond Lindquist
You don’t need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding. – Guy Finley
Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. – Anais Nin
People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on. – Bill Cosby
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. - Havelock Ellis
The mental and physical space we create by letting go of things that belong in our past gives us…the option to fill the space with something new. – Susan Fay West
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need. – Tao Te Ching
Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go. - Herman Hesse
One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. - Michael Cibenko
To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit. – Jack Kornfield
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. – Joseph Campbell
You’ve got to make a conscious choice every day to shed the old – whatever “the old” means for you. – Sarah Ban Breathnach
Nirvana means to extinguish the burning fires of the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. This can be accomplished by letting go of dissatisfaction. - Shinjo Ito
There’s an important difference between giving up and letting go. – Jessica Hatchigan
You can only lose what you cling to. - Buddha

Basics of Buddhism

Flitter is the official newsletter of Chrysalis Spiritual Center in DeLand, FL  Chrysalis meets each Sunday at 10 am to 11:30 am during the period from Sunday after Labor Day in September to the end of July. Additional meetings may be scheduled during the year. Pastor is Skuli Thorallsson, a certified minister of the Swedenborg order.

The setting for Chrysalis is an intimate and informal symbolic circle. Dress is casual. Themes for each service are based on the wisdom and truth found in all religions. Comments and thoughts about each service are welcomed and encouraged. Everyone is welcome to our non-denominational group.

Members may participate in special services as speakers during the year.  When extra services are planned notices will be sent by email. If you would like to be on our email list send your request to nan.sherrill@gmail.com   Requests for healing prayer  may be emailed. Donations to Chrysalis are never solicited, but are needed. Every donation is appreciated and may help support our maintenance of the home that houses our worship center.

Members are active in Bamboo Arts Yoga Center, the Slow Food Movement, and other local businesses and institutions. Host at the center is Barry Colley, an internationally known bead and jewelry artist who is considered the top global expert in bead antiquity. Barry is also an organic gardener and gourmet cook. Nan Smith is a retired graphic designer and typesetter who publishes the Flitter blog frequently during the year. Contributions and submissions of articles for the blog (as well as photos) are welcome.

Refreshments are available at each service, including organic treats and flavored coffees. for more information email nan.sherrill@gmail.com

Topics for blog do NOT represent the beliefs of anyone who attends Chrysalis and are intended to be informative and provocative as well as inspirational.

 

Essentials of Buddhism

 

The workings of the mind are examined with great precision in these teachings of the Buddha that originated in India over 2000 years back. However the way to freedom lies not in a scholarly study of these teachings, but instead in practicing meditation and mindfulness. The reality of suffering draws many to Buddha's teachings; the teachings are not about suffering though. Instead they are about ultimate freedom, and the exuberance that this freedom is accessible to all. Strive to be a Buddha, not a Buddhist!

Four Noble Truths
   1. Suffering exists
   2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires
   3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
   4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

Noble Eightfold Path

Three Qualities	Eightfold Path
Wisdom (panna)	Right View
	Right Thought
Morality (sila)	Right Speech
	Right Action
	Right Livelihood
Meditation (samadhi)	Right Effort
	Right Mindfulness
	Right Contemplation

Three Characteristics of Existence

   1. Transiency (anicca)
   2. Sorrow (dukkha)
   3. Selflessness (anatta)

Hindrances

Unwholesome mental states that impede progress towards enlightenment.
   1. Sensuous lust
   2. Aversion and ill will
   3. Sloth and torpor
   4. Restlessness and worry
   5. Sceptical doubt

Factors of Enlightenment

   1. Mindfulness
   2. Investigation
   3. Energy
   4. Rapture
   5. Tranquility
   6. Concentration
   7. Equanimity
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