Awakening Our Awareness to Where It's Needed

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee -

If we can learn to listen, maybe life will tell us how it needs to regenerate. In the ancient ways, the leader was not the one who told people what to do, the leader was the one who listened, watched the signs, was attentive to the inner world.

Sufis talk about the “ear of the heart.” This is something you learn in the relationship with the teacher. I spent 20 years sitting at the feet of my teacher listening.

You learn through listening. 

You learn how to listen to what is between the words. You learn to listen to the heart, to the soul.

You listen to people’s dreams, the signs in their lives and similarly one can listen and watch the signs in the world around us.

The earth is calling to us, sending us signs of the extremity of its imbalance through earthquakes and tsunamis, floods and storms, drought and unprecedented heat.

These are what Thich Nhat Hanh calls the “Bells of Mindfulness” awakening our awareness to where it is needed at this moment in time.

Nothing is Separate

Although there is a growing spiritual awareness of oneness and how humanity is a part of an interconnected ecosystem, there is still a sense of spiritual practice having an individual focus—that it is about our individual well-being.

We have yet to fully embrace the awareness that spiritually we are all interconnected and that our spiritual practice belongs to life itself—nothing is separate. 

Our spiritual practice affects and is affected by the inner and outer state of the world. 

At this time of global crisis that we call climate change, there is a urgency for our attention both physically and spiritually to be directed towards the earth and its real need.

Then our spiritual practice will include the whole of creation, either in our meditation or our prayers and devotions.

If we remember that the world is a living spiritual being in distress we will hear that it is calling to us. Then we will naturally respond both inwardly and outwardly.

Our response will come from a place that recognizes its sacred nature and unity, of which we are a part. 

The ecological situation is not a problem to be solved but a wake-up call to a different way of being and relating. As the Zen teacher Susan Murphy describes it,

"the whole world is posing us a singular koan, forcing us to make a shift in consciousness".

A NEW published E-book: 'From the Interview - HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN' - In this interview with writer Pat MacEnulty, Sufi teacher and mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee discusses his Jungian philosophy, the teacher-disciple relationship, oneness and his hopes and fears for humanity. Available online at smashwords.com or amazon.com

workingwithoneness.org

De-Conditioning the Ego

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee -

On the spiritual path one of the first processes you go through is a de-conditioning. In order to be awakened to your divine nature, you have to become free of the conditioning of the ego.

Unless you become de-conditioned, you’re going to find it very difficult to embrace the bigger spectrum of the Self or how to live according to its very different quality of consciousness. 

Once you’ve had a glimpse of your divine nature the idea of being competitive doesn’t function anymore. Instead you want to be supportive of other people. You want to be cooperative. 

It’s not because you’re a better person. It’s because you realize that’s how things are, how they are all one and interconnected—how nothing is separate. 

You awaken to a different way of being.

On the spiritual path one of the first processes you go through is a de-conditioning. In order to be awakened to your divine nature, you have to become free of the conditioning of the ego. 

Unless you become de-conditioned, you’re going to find it very difficult to embrace the bigger spectrum of the Self or how to live according to its very different quality of consciousness.

We’re surrounded by collective values that say you should be thinking of yourself, that what matters is the ego, how much money you can make or how many possessions you can have. 

On the spiritual path you learn how to live with less not because it’s better but because it’s easier—just to have what you need. 

People do not realize how their attention is taken up by their possessions, how it gives them less energy for life because everything you have or you accumulate carries a bit of your energy.

If you have a lot of possessions, then parts of your energy are caught in it all.

MacEnulty: I know. I recently moved to a smaller place. It was quite freeing to get rid of so much accumulated stuff.

Vaughan-Lee: You realize when you’re free of it, you have more space, you can breathe. 

They’ve now discovered scientifically that giving makes you happier than getting. 

These values you discover on the inner spiritual journey also belong to the whole. 

There is an ancient teaching of microcosm and macrocosm. What happens to the individual happens to the whole. 

We need to shift our consciousness from this very conditioned ego-centered “me” consciousness to an all-embracing “we” consciousness that includes not just humanity but the whole ecosystem — all the myriad living beings on the planet.

From the Interview with LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN -LEE; Get the E-book: HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN: An Interview 

workingwithoneness.org