TP Holiday Services / Supports Dec 20 – Jan 21

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Please click link below for Charles Thermos leave  details/ support options (if required).

All the best and stay well and safe. Charles

2020 Charles Thermos Leave Details / Support Options

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The pulse and energy of life is experienced internally, ‘inside your skin’, and, externally, ‘outside your skin’, through your interactions with others, the world and the vast, mysterious and miracle-filled universe. Everything you experience is part of an interdependent One or Whole. Life is calling every person, every moment, sometimes in the form of a whisper and sometimes in the form of a scream.

Intentionally choosing to look and notice inwards and outwards will reveal the fact that miracles are happening in every moment and everywhere.

Slowly read (at least twice) and reflect on the following words from Zen monk and mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh:

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.

But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize:

a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child, our own two eyes.

All is a miracle.

The miraculous is everywhere. No matter who you are, where you go, what you do or don’t do, life is a field of miracles. Perhaps one of the reasons people have stopped believing in miracles, or are believing less in miracles, might be due to their ideas about the nature of miracles.

Reconsider what miracles are and a whole other world becomes available to you. Engage your awareness and attention as you focus inward. Engage your senses of your imagination fully in the present moment as you focus outward. Start noticing, recognising and experiencing this banquet called life and its multiplicity of miracles.

Reflective practice

• What was your response to Thich Nhat Hanh’s words?

• What is a miracle for you?

• Is it possible to rethink how you perceive miracles?

• If so, begin to practice noticing the miraculous daily.

The post Miracles in everyday Life. Awaken and engage with Life now! appeared first on Transformative Psychology.

Enjoy!

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Last month I read an article titled The present moment by Jack Petranker in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (Winter 2014 issue). The author described four ways that people can be present. These are briefly described below. Following these are my personal reflections about the nature and experience of presence and contemplative presence.

1. Therapeutic presence
Practising present moment attention by letting go of the past and future.

2. Joyful presence
Attending to the present moment by cultivating full acknowledgement and appreciation of the rich experience available in each moment.

3. Mindful presence
Attending to the present moment by remembering to be mindful, remembering what has value, what matters most, and by choosing how we make sense of the world in each present moment.

4. Active presence
Taking responsibility, acting on our convictions, choosing how to act in the present moment and who and what we will be, and taking the experience of the present moment into the lived experience of everyday life.

The first three forms of presence are inherent within the experience of active presence. In active presence we are being invited to acknowledge and work with the potential to go further, engaging with our experience openly and intentionally choosing the whole, when we engage with the world.

Petranker’s invitation to experience a broader sense of what it means to inhabit the present moment evoked a deep resonance within me, and I thank him for this. In my meditation practice experience the notion of active presence is preceded by what I refer to as contemplative presence. This dimension and process of presence arises when I experience silence and stillness deep within my being and when I quietly remember that my being arises within a deeper and broader ground of Being.

Contemplative presence includes simultaneous processes of waiting, remembering and listening deeply, from one present moment to the next. These processes create and birth new and unique present moments, possibilities, opportunities and reminders about who and what I am, who I can be, and what I can do in my relationships and in the world.

Contemplative presence, in turn, gives rise to Petranker’s active presence. In my experience contemplative presence transforms the still, silent and formless into active presence – that is, being, pursuing and doing what deeply and ultimately matters or concerns me, intentionally and deliberately.

Reflective questions

• What does being present and connecting with the present moment mean to you?
• How do you, or can you, come into the present moment and determine who and what you want to be, and how you want to act in the world?
• Which forms of presence do you, or can you, draw on for being and acting in the world?

Happy reading. Charles Thermos

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One of the greatest human challenges is accepting and embracing who we are as individual beings. Being human is primary. Everything else emerges from this. Each of us has a unique history and life experiences. We also have our individual strengths, positive attributes and accomplishments. Additionally, there are our vulnerabilities, insecurities, imperfect and shameful parts and experiences. Each of us carries around self-beliefs that we would rather not have, and personal aspects and experiences that we consider to be unacceptable, unwanted, or shameful. Regret can be a feature of some of these experiences.

When I reflect on the person I am, on my life experiences, and on the multiple stories of people I have supported across various professional contexts for almost three decades now, I have come to realise that this combination of attributes, accomplishments and experiences is how all human beings are alike. No human being is perfect. No human being has it all together. Quite the opposite actually. Each of us can can acknowledge, accept and embrace our strengths, favourable attributes and qualities. Yet each of struggles to acknowledge, accept and embrace what we and / or others perceive to be our negative, unacceptable, imperfect, or less than desirable qualities. Remember, all of these aspects, qualities, attributes and experiences are an integral aspect of what it means to be fully human.

In his poem The Guest House, the 13^th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi reminds us to acknowledge and embrace all of these aspects, attributes and experiences, to not reject any, and, furthermore, to treat them as guests, metaphorically-speaking. This implies a sense of honouring and respecting of all that we are and have experienced, and that we continue to experience. It’s through this process of profound acknowledgement and acceptance, and only through this process, that each of us can really embrace who we are. Being willing to acknowledge, allow and accept who we are does not mean we have to like our unacceptable and undesirable attributes, aspects and experiences, but to simply acknowledge these.

Recently I re-read and was profoundly touched by Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) letter De Profundis (The Depths in Latin). In this letter Wilde wrote to the man he loved while in prison for this ‘crime’. Incidentally, he was not granted permission to send it to him while in prison. This section of the letter poignantly captures how vital accepting and embracing who we are is to our development and well-being:

When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realizing what I am that I have found comfort of any kind…. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Wilde makes it undeniably clear that realising who and what we are is the key to accepting and finding peace with who we are. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. What a profound statement and truth about the relationship between acknowledging, accepting and embracing our human experiences and attributes and the positive effect of this process on our development and sense of well-being. To deny any aspects of these experiences, including and particularly who we are, is like putting a lie into the lips of one’s own life. This kind of denial is potentially harmful, psychologically, physically, interpersonally and spiritually. It can lead to dissatisfaction, unhappiness and suffering, as well as to stifling what it means to be real, deeply human and a person of integrity.

Rumi and Wilde have left me reflecting about where I am at on my journey toward accepting and embracing who and what I am. I invite you to consider doing the same with the support of these reflective questions. Take care and be kind with yourself through this reflective process. Feel free to share your reflections with me. I will be delighted to read these.

• What did you experience or notice while and after reading the above reflections?

• Where are you on your journey of acknowledging, accepting and embracing all aspects of who and what you are?

• Where are you on your journey of acknowledging, accepting and embracing all of your life experiences, particularly the more challenging or perhaps shameful ones?

• How do you want to move into 2015? What will you intentionally acknowledge, accept and take with you? What will you intentionally leave behind, after you have acknowledged and accepted this?

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After attending a mindfulness meditation class recently, which included a talk by an insight meditation teacher on feeling the pain of the world, it left me reflecting on this aspect of our humanity. The pain of the world includes all forms of individual and collective pain – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, interpersonal, organisational, communal, societal, cultural, environmental and global. There is also the pain of loss, abandonment, neglect, uncertainty, doubt, helplessness, hopelessness, unfulfilled dreams, regret, separation, longing, crisis, injury, illness and ageing. The list can go on. Most of us find it challenging to open up to and connect with and feel our own pain.To carry or try to feel more than our own share of pain can be daunting and overwhelming.

When pain is perceived and experienced through the perspective of separation, that is, I am separate from everyone else, ones pain is personal and more than enough to bare. From this perspective pain is inwardly-focused, entangled and intensified by notions of my and mine. No-one out there can understand what I’m going through. My pain is terrible, and worse than yours. Notice the separation – my pain, your pain. Adding to the personal pain mix is what a historical wisdom teacher referred to as first and second arrows of pain or suffering. The first arrow is the situation or condition giving rise to the pain. The second arrow is the person’s reaction to the pain, which typically intensifies their initial pain experience, creating further pain for them.

When pain is perceived and experienced through the perspective of connection or interconnectedness, that is, I am connected to everyone / everything else and the greater whole, ones pain is impersonal, and common to all humanity and living beings. From this perspective pain is still painful. Yet we begin to see that our and everybody’s pain impacts us in some form. What happens to me happens to everybody else, and vice versa. When one person is experiencing pain, all living beings and Life are simultaneously impacted by, and are holding, this pain. This is how the principle of interconnectedness works. Remember, our individual pain is part of our common humanity, and our world’s pain is the individual’s pain too. We can’t escape this. If we try to all we are doing is denying and avoiding this reality.

Our willingness to make this shift in perspective from separation to interconnectedness enables us to open ourselves up to and feel the pain of all living beings, including animals, birds, insects, creatures of the sea and the earth. We don’t really have to do much to experience this. Simply being willing to intentionally and consciously turn toward, acknowledge and feel all forms of pain in the world is how we can begin and continue to do this. If you are experiencing enough pain already, then focus on taking care of yourself first, and allow others to indirectly hold your pain too. Denying, avoiding or distracting ourselves from the world’s pain, through numbing ourselves, pushing pain away, disconnecting from pain or giving too much attention to our own pain, does not miraculously make the world’s pain disappear. Once we can move toward and embrace our collective and individual pain, then we can make our unique and interconnected contribution to sharing and carrying the pain of the world.

After all aren’t we all part of the same planet trying to make a difference to alleviating pain and suffering?

Would you like to make a positive contribution to our individual and collective healing, and to our continuing growth and evolution by being willing to intentionally and consciously turn toward, acknowledge and feel the pain of the world?

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Please return here from time-to-time.

Charles

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I hope you find it informative and helpful.

If you would like to provide any feedback I would appreciate this.

Charles Thermos

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