Jyotisha Practice

For-give-ness

"return to sender"

Simple, Repetitive, Boring - and It Works

see also: forgiveness

Q:

I have been reading volumes of psychological literature. I have engaged in many complex meditation procedures.

I have taken teachings from dozens of highly qualified instructors in many specializations of religious knowledge.

I have attended lectures, obtained academic diplomas, acquired certificates, participated in seminars, and endured long retreats.

I pretty much feel the same inside as I did forty years ago. Terrible sadness, grief, rage, and despair. I feel sick. Despite the presence of spouse and family, I am quite sure that no one loves me.

Do you have any suggestions?

A:

Namaste,

My recommendation would be to not make it mentally complicated. Being smart (caused by your exalted Mercury) can be a liability. One can be tempted to substitute "mental performance" for healing.

The direct method is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is hard for mentally gifted beings like yourself because it does not have a lot of conceptual structure. It's relentlessly simple and repetitive. But it's what works.

Good simple techniques are available through A Course in Miracles(which you know so well), also Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life (same material, presented through Louise's personality). The basic instructions for forgiveness are available in the great scriptures of all religions.

I personally like the way Louise Hay sets up the forgiveness act. The mentality can get involved in the first step, what to forgive that disappointing person 'for'.

E.g., I forgive you Dad for not being ... emotionally available, sincere, able to put children before ego, able to put children before career, wise, sincere, compassionate, humane, ... etc.

This method of forgiving a person for *specific* grievances works well. The mind is engaged in building a mental model of positive images for the future, making a long list of the positive expectations that were severely disappointed is actually a future-positive exercise.

When the mind-built list is (for the moment) complete, do the forgiveness. Visualize sending a ball of energy back to the person to whom one is "giving it back".

The intention behind forgiveness is simply "return to sender." the mind is saying, 'Here, take your poo-poo, this is foreign energy, I don't want it and even if I did want it I can't process it because it doesn't match my own natural energy, it's not mine.'

After about 10,000 repetitions of the forgiveness mantra, most of the trauma really is purged. Ancient resentment and pain are excavated, a little bit more stuff comes out with each repetition of the mantra.

Plus the mind is gainfully employed by making long and detailed lists of what positives were expected. When it's all done, there is a lovely healthy mental image of a huge cluster of positive virtue traits (available, kind, strong, protective, accepting, etc.) that have been rehearsed so many times they become second nature.

One becomes one's most frequently repeated thoughts. So this is a nice process and for good reason. It's the oldest religious trick in the book. Because it works.

That's my sage advice. Don't get too theoretical or be looking for complex psychological explanations right now. There is a time for that depth of scholarly inquiry in the future, but what you're doing now is extremely practical and rudimentary.

Most people can't even start to do forgiveness until they're really toxic and sick from the emotional bitterness and resentment, then their toxicity becomes exhausting and they want to die. That means the person is so full of foreign energy that they better start bailing water or they will self-destruct.

So wait until you feel totally lied to, cheated, abused, manipulated, disrespected, neglected, and generally disgusted with life -- THEN start bailing water, start unloading the attachment to resentment. It's boring and repetitive to bail but man has yet to design a better way to get water out of a sinking ship!

Give it forth

Forgiveness means "give it forth". Make one big long laundry list of grievances (add new disappointments and failures as you think of them) and fire off forgiveness volleys as often as a sad or angry complaint comes into consciousness.

• That's my suggestion. It's hard to let go of attachment to complexity, attachment to mental performance, Attachment to disappointment ( guilt), attachment to failure (grief) .

The ego has been stashing its inventory of old grievances for a long time.

Consider to start an "unloading" program, removal of excess inventory.

Forgiveness.

All the best, Barbara

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

"What is progress? How do we recognize it? The teachings are like a mirror before which we should hold our activities of body, speech, and mind. Think back to a year ago and compare the stream of activities of your body, speech, and mind at that time with their present condition. If we practice well, then the traces of some improvement should be reflected in the mirror of Dharma.

The problem with having expectations is that we usually do not expect the right things. Not knowing what spiritual progress is, we search for signs of it in the wrong areas of our being. What can we hope for but frustration? It would be far better to examine any practice with full reasoning before adopting it, and then to practice it steadily and consistently while observing the inner changes one undergoes, rather than expecting this or that fantasy to become real.

• The mind is an evolving organism, not a machine that goes on and off with the flip of a switch.
• The forces that bind and limit the mind, hurling it into unsatisfactory states of being, are impermanent and transient agents.
• When we persistently apply the practices to them, they have no option but to fade away and disappear.

Ignorance and the "I"-grasping syndrome have been with us since beginningless time, and the instincts of attachments, aversion, anger, jealousy and so forth are very deeply rooted in our mindstreams. Eliminating them is not as simple as turning on a light to chase away the darkness of a room.

When we practice steadily, the forces of darkness are undermined, and the spiritual qualities that counteract them and illuminate the mind are strengthened and made firm. Therefore, we should strive by means of both contemplative and settled meditation to gain stability in the various Lam Rim topics."