Great River Institute - The Drift Into Appreciation

The Drift Into Appreciation

Your comments are also very good as were JO's and MW's. You have been facing inward and moving into a better position of understanding. Remember we are learning about space as well and we are targeting a particular space and reason.

We are getting more to the point, but there is still a lot of drift into appreciation in everyone's posts. Here is the point. I have offered it several times, but due to a lack of respect, it is not becoming the value we are centering on. We are circling it, but not centering yet.

I can say the point again, but before I do, let’s remember why and what we are here practicing. We are learning about an art…an art of giving…and way of being in the moment that can unlock the inward understandings of everything.

Now here is the point: when you post and practice, you have to go through the prime positions to bring anything into being. You may be at a distance in your awareness to the prime positions, but that would only be true if you were following Cain’s way into the land of Nod. If you follow Abel, you will be more Able in everything, but you must have the respect required to be Able (Abel).

In your posts, you start to track the pathway to the Lord. Then, something happens…you start to drift outward. Why? Because you lacked the Respect of being Able. Then, if you continue drifting outward, you end up nodding out in the land of Nod. The turning point is the thing you must find and you need Respect for it if you want to find it.

Why continue outward when our practice is to see the Lord. You must learn to give what is Able to show the respect required to continue inward. I have described how the principles, when applied as an inward directed loop, can take you to an understanding of everything. I have pointed to the moments of turning toward and away. This point is your target. Can you give an understanding of that target? If you do, it needs to contain all four principles, and to see the Lord, you will need to be giving all four continuously for that reason.

October 27, 2009 at 15:47 | sensei

Sensei,

Thank you for your response, and apologies to JO and MW for not mentioning them.

This stands out:

Why continue outward when our practice is to see the Lord. You must learn to give what is Able to show the respect required to continue inward. I have described how the principles, when applied as a inward directed loop, can take you to an understanding of everything. I have pointed to the moments of turning toward and away. This point is your target. Can you give an understanding of that target? If you do, it needs to contain all four principles, and to see the Lord, you will need to be giving all four continuously for that reason.

Let’s see if I can follow the pointing finger. The following was something I intended offering at a future class, but with a little tweaking, I’m hoping it’s going to be useful here.

Monday night, not long after class, I visited the TED web site, and came across a stunning video at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

In this video, Evelyn Glennie, the world-class percussionist who also happens to be nearly completely deaf, gives a talk on how to listen. I was absolutely entranced by it, and asked myself why that was so. Then it came to me: it was because she was living in the moment her reason for being, and as a result, as night follows day, she was oozing gratitude from every pore. Her gift flowed like sweet wine, and this is probably a rare example captured so strongly on camera.

I was on the receiving end, and this was the first time that had consciously occurred to me with such force: I was being given, and for once, I was open and receptive. And receiving that gift, deep and genuine gratitude arose in me. Had I been present at the talk, I'd have felt impelled to go to her afterwards, express my appreciation, and offer my heartfelt thanks. At this moment, I'm doing the next best thing: sharing this opportunity, as a sign of my gratitude, for readers to see Evelyn Glennie's gratitude in action.

Turning this over, I made an unexpected connection. My mother and I had a rather stormy relationship. We loved one another, but we didn’t always like one another very much, as they say. One day, when, as I occasionally did, I took my father and her out on a day trip in my car, we had a snack somewhere. This was always the highlight of an outing for my mother, who loved her food. But on this particular occasion, I was for whatever reason receptive, and I happened to notice her eating with indescribable delight some titbit or other.

It was as if I had never seen her before – and I mean that very literally. She was transcendently beautiful, a being I had never before properly seen. And belatedly, I think that this happened because, when eating the titbit, she was living in her reason for being in that particular moment.

Casting my mind back, I can remember other occasions when she was probably like this – for instance, when doing jigsaws or fussing over her grandchildren. And I have observed something similar with other people, quite often children unselfconsciously playing. So I’ve long known, without realizing it, what the receptive side of gratitude is like. My regret, however, is that I so very rarely returned gratitude, offered it back as my own gift. I may have savored it once with my mother, but it was so very difficult to return it in the moment of its arising.

So then, I asked myself, well, when am I like my mother was that time, or like Evelyn Glennie was in the video? When am I on the giving side? And then, I realized, a typical example is when, as now, I am writing about something I really care about. I don’t mind getting things wrong, I don’t mind telling things like I think they are, as long as I’m genuinely striving to increase my understanding. And exploration through writing, through discovery/invention as I go along, is for me like my mother’s titbit. It’s something in the moment that connects me with my reasons for being.

And why is that possible on this forum? Only because of your teachings. On other forums, I’ve discussed matters I care about before, but this one is by far the most important and useful to me. It’s the one where I feel I have been learning most. And out of that realisation, sure as night and day, gratitude arises.

So who is it who respects your teaching, who hopefully appreciates, has gratitude for, and is developing new values based on it? Is it that guy Cain, who loved my mother but often didn’t like her very much and so turned away into Nod? No way. Is it Abel? Well, as I said, I think he’s in the mix.

When my mother was eating her titbit, Abel felt deeply grateful to Source. But did Cain show any sign of this to her? No. She went to her grave not knowing how beautiful I had found her that day. Cain was still in the land of Nod, still hurting from the past, and couldn’t bring himself to turn inwards enough to cooperate at the Christ point with Abel. He didn’t express inwards-facing appreciation to her, and so didn’t connect with her, didn’t show compassion.

Had he done so, she might have become more receptive, have appreciated that, and been able to turn inwards in gratitude, so that she and I could meet inwardly and grow that value. What a waste of a perfect opportunity.

In every moment, we need to be Seth, our own specific manifestation of the position of the inner Adam/eve model at the Christ point. Cain and Abel need to become like conjoined twins – on second thoughts, more like a single body, where many organs are paired or at least bilaterally symmetrical.

The One being takes Cain and Abel with it on every journey, be that into the land of Nod or anywhere else. Each needs the other for the offering to provide a platform for continuing inward movement, both for ourselves and other people. Without this, there can be no true compassion.

October 27, 2009 at 21:28 | ML

This is a good realization and I am quite sure your mother felt it as you wrote it here. I appreciate your kind words and I respect your sharing these thoughts and concerns. A new value can come out of that respect that leads more inward to the Lord. We must aim for the Lord, not as an icon...but as a state of being.

Now go even further inward ML. It's our reason for being here. Use the principles...all four of them and use them again. Look to the moment when Abel is dead and Cain is nodding off somewhere. Look to see Adam and Eve in that moment. What are they going through? Look to see this scenario in your own posts, where you have made a respectful offering and then started nodding off, killing the more inward movement. Pick any post or idea and look into it to find the point we are looking for. You are on the right track with Gratitude, but remember, it was Respect that the Lord found lacking in Cain. You are stopping one principle too soon and this prevents you from starting the Giving loop again. Go inward and more inward. Look to understand where the Cain and Able point of conflict is in your own offerings now. Don't be concerned about Seth yet. We will get to him, but not until we reconcile where these points are in the moment.

October 27, 2009 at 22:37 | sensei

Sensei,

Thank you for you thought about my mother. As I was writing my previous post, I was thinking about her, wondering if somewhere, somehow, she could detect my regret. It would be a great consolation if she could.

What are Adam and Eve going through when Abel is dead and Cain snoozing? I have a tremendous block here. They seem so very far in, so abstract, and one doesn’t know where the literalism stops and the inner message starts. Literally, parents who lose one child to the grave and the other, who put him there, to exile, won’t be best pleased. I’d imagine they’d be feeing a certain amount of guilt; did anything they do help make Cain the way he was? Could they have foreseen and intervened? They’ll also be missing them, of course.

What were their reasons for bringing them into the world? Well, they had fallen, and must have wanted their children to do better. But now they were both gone, and there would have been no way to resolve it through discussion or persuasion, for example. A lost opportunity: the crushing guilt and regret. But at some stage, surely, the desire to solve the problem, to move on and try again?

Let’s think of one of my own moments. What was it that mourned and regretted and felt guilty that Cain nodded off, after killing Abel, in the instance with my mother? Maybe I missed that. Could it have been Adam and Eve? Have I been making them too abstract, too distant? Are they at the very core, and am I beginning too far out?

Let’s imagine that’s the case. One thing about Adam and Eve is that they are male and female, and so can between them generate new lives, new beginnings. Even disregarding Seth as advised, in practice in the psycho-spiritual realm, which is what I think we’re actually dealing with, the tableau plays itself out countless times.

Abel and Cain and are continually being conceived in hope, being born, making offerings that do or don’t respect the Lord, getting killed and exiled. Likewise, Adam and Eve are continually experiencing the pain, guilt, regret, sorrow, and trying again.

But they don’t seem to be learning very quickly. They don’t go through it once or twice and then come up with the solution. No: it seems entirely possible that throughout their lives, for some people, Adam and Eve never learn, never come up with the solution, just keep regenerating the same two children who suffer the same fate.

If this is so, then the first people who need to wake up are them. They have to stop forgetting, have to become aware of what is happening. Somehow, it has to register. Cain and Able, their offering to the Lord, perhaps, needs to be accepted by Him, and if it were, maybe He’d show his appreciation and gratitude, give them the grace they need to achieve their aim. So they have to start first with respect for the Lord, and maybe grace comes first in the form of awareness, of registration of what their situation is? And an idea of how to escape the destructive loop?

Let’s look into a moment where I might have caught my Cain about to kill my Abel, and stopped that happening. It says a lot that I have to pause and really think about that to find a definite example, but I suspect it has happened. What was it doing the stopping? Let’s assume it was Adam and Eve, that in that moment they were aware and acting with the grace of the Lord. I imagine that at that time, they were in balance at the Christ point.

What then? Well, I suppose that the grace of the lord is then being channelled through them to their children. For once, the latter are working together one step further out than Adam and Eve, helping them achieve the Lord’s aim for humanity in the world, which entails each of us returning respect, appreciation and gratitude to Him, and creating ever new and better values nearer to our very most important reason for being, the completion of the rise after the fall, the redemption, the return home to Source.

And the conflict in my offerings? Perhaps it is that you have said on several occasions that I need to look at how Adam and Eve might be feeling about the loss of their children, and I haven’t followed that up, and didn’t begin by respecting that point.

October 28, 2009 at 2:25 | ML