The Difference – V

by DCH Park

There are several things that come up for me when I am aware of problems and how to deal with them. One thing that becomes apparent very quickly is that what I was taught is not necessarily true. This, in itself, is an incendiary idea. It would seem that schools, churches, indeed, social leaders of every stripe, want me to believe them and do what they tell me to. At least that’s the message that many of them are conveying.

Regardless of what they may get out of my compliance, one thing is clear – I am not choosing for myself as long as I accept what others have chosen for me.

One of the more powerful results to come out of organization theory is that one of the most powerful positions to be in in any organization is to be the one who sets up the options that someone else will choose from. All eyes are deliberately trained on the one who makes the final choice but if that choice is made from a field of options that are all acceptable to you then you are guaranteed to win.

All you have to do to be a guaranteed winner is control the options. In fact, it doesn’t matter who makes the final choice as long as that choice is one of the options that you have set up.

Arguably, this is exactly how society works. People choose from a limited range of options. They limit themselves because that range is all that they allow themselves to see. What they don’t see is that those options are carefully chosen and tailored so that they benefit a few while they claim to benefit many.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy hound, note that creative types of all stripes have said the same thing down through the ages. The individuals who are most directly responsible for pushing the whole race forward have said the same thing. Whether they have been in the arts or the sciences or have applied their understanding through engineering and business, the central message has always been that it is vitally important to decide for yourself and that as the decider, you owe it to yourself to be aware of what is truly going on. Only by being aware of what is truly going on can you hope to choose from the full range of possibilities, or at least, the fullest range that you can choose from.

No matter how well intentioned someone is, he or she will probably not find a way from point A to point B if certain paths are hidden or secret. In fact, points C, D, or W may be better suited for him or her but if those points are hidden, the only apparent choice is point B.

This is the power in making things invisible. If C, D, and W are all invisible, point B looks like the only logical goal. The nature of invisible things is dealt with at length elsewhere. Let it suffice here to note that you are benefited by seeing things that other people can’t or refuse to see.

Note that things that lurk unseen often engender pain, fear, being “creeped out,” etc. They can even induce feelings of numbness. We are often trained in this society to ignore these feelings and either block them chemically, additudinally, or otherwise or to emphasize things that “feel good” instead.

Regardless of this “wisdom,” however, rarely do such feelings go away on their own. They may be drowned out for a while but that doesn’t mean that they are gone or solved. They will inevitably return until they are solved.

This is one of the lessons of the parable of tying down an elephant. The elephant doesn’t even try to break the rope even though he or she could easily do so because the elephant “learned” when it was younger that it couldn’t. The elephant never sees that it could easily break the rope. Its true prison is formed out of its expectations.

In what ways are you trapping yourself because of the expectations that you have about the world? What are you “taking for granted” and never looking at? What parts of the world are you “taking for granted?” What is invisible in your world?

The fact is that the only ones who ever break out of their cages are the ones who test the bars and everything else that holds them back. The ones who sit and simply accept what they are told or the way things appear never break out of their cages.

There are a plethora of parables and stories about turning into the pain and that pain, fear, etc. are gifts. They are as common as steering into a spin if you lose control of your car and pointing the bow of your ship into an oncoming storm and as exotic as running toward the first artillery blast on a battlefield.

All of these parables and stories point to the same wisdom and they all contradict the so-called “wisdom” that it’s best to avoid pain whenever possible and to minimize it when it’s not possible to avoid it. Pain, fear, anxiousness, etc. are good in that they have at their hearts the thing that will heal the wound. They take us to that healing if only we let them. All we have to do is learn to turn into the pain.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2014, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Difference – V” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Difference – IV

by DCH Park

There is a further subtlety at work in choosing arbitrarily to “prove something,” including to yourself. It’s not immediately apparent. This may be due to its invisibility, which is also why so many people get drawn into it, either as an advocate or as an opponent.

For what it’s worth, my practice is to notice what is said and how I react to it. My reaction comes from me. By noticing it, I can notice myself. My practice is to notice what is said and my reaction to it to better understand my own private view into what is true and to express what is true.

I find that in that way, I am able to experience more freedom and joy within myself and hear others around me more clearly. To be sure, reacting to what I hear and say is a part of that process but my goal is to be more aware of things, not less aware of them.

I thus try not to use those things and reactions as shields or excuses. I feel them and at the same time practice being aware of myself feeling them so that they can serve as bridges into the deeper part of me rather than as blockades.

What I have also found, to my delighted surprise, is that the more I share what I find to be true with others, the more truth there is to share. This can take many forms. One of these is that the more I share, the more I have to share. Another is that the more I share, the more I give permission to others to do the same. A third is that other people see and voice pieces of the puzzle before I do but I can recognize what they say as the truth.

Another, which is always unexpected and delightful, is that someone may say something which no one had ever heard or even thought before, yet as soon as it is said, its truth is recognized. I can say it, so can others. The list goes on.

In every case the recognized truth provides a solid stepping stone to another truth and often to many truths. Such honesty also leads to freedom. In the cases when apparently solid truths have led to wounds, healing those wounds has led to even greater truths that would have remained hidden if the wound had been allowed to block the path. If I had seen the wound as a barrier, a tender spot to be avoided instead of as what it can always be – the shortest path to the other side – I would have stopped on the near side of the wound and whatever I saw it as, anger, fear, numbness, a small annoyance, or something else, would have become simply a part of the backdrop. It would possibly become invisible. In my experience, healing something always leads to something more.

What I notice is that many people have heard that one thing or another leads to wealth and that as long as you “toe the line” and follow one set of rules (their prescribed set) wealth, ease, and health are the inevitable or logical outcomes.

When I take a step back, I notice that all such systems are saying the same thing. Details differ from system to system, but the goal is usually defined in terms of wealth. That wealth may be yours or it may be someone else’s. Either way, the worldview that lies at the heart of such views is that:

1. The material world matters (as revealed by material wealth, for example); and
2. You don’t have a choice about everything in the material world.

Thus, taken together, these attitudes toward the material world have various implications. One of these is that healing is impossible. It is impossible to experience the world differently by doing nothing more than heal yourself because you are completely separate from your surroundings. Therefore what affects one cannot affect the other or if both are affected, those effects are unrelated and/or complex.

This runs counter to the observation that it is possible to experience change in the world by doing nothing more than healing yourself. The implication is, of course, that you contain the whole of existence, which only makes sense if the world is a reflection.

This means that it truly is fruitless to try to effect change in the world while holding yourself constant. At best, you can change yourself as you change the world. However my tendency has been to change myself in order to change the world.

The things I lament in the world, the disease, war, poverty, etc. are reflections of me. They must be if I can find the world in me. This means that as I find those things within myself and heal and fully release them, the world will be transformed.

On the other hand, if I accept the reality of the world and insist on the separateness of the world from me, such wounds and strife are inevitable. They are inevitable as long as I accept them as part of the world.

Thus, choosing what you want and trying to exercise Law of Attraction in this way is the same thing as trying to hold down a good-paying job, a house in the suburbs, two cars, and a family with a spouse and a couple of kids. They are both ways to emphasize the independence and reality of the material world. They are both ways to deny or reduce the power of healing yourself.

Another view would be that you are born to have a certain shape in the universe. Some people have called it your mission but that sounds like something you do rather than what you are. In the same way that you are born to have a certain color hair, a certain look in your face, etc., you are born to have a certain shape in the universe. What is your shape? What is your truth? Not what you want – which often determined or influenced by material reality – what is your being?

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2014, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Difference – IV” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Difference – III

by DCH Park

This may sound mean. In fact, in a way, I hope that it does. I also hope that you will ask the next question and seek out the deeper truth reflected in the (apparently mean) saying rather than sitting with the surface meanness and dealing only with that.

The mean, unexpected thing is that you make no progress toward your true self by choosing something arbitrarily. The idea is usually that by choosing arbitrarily, you choose unpredictably and that if your arbitrary choice is fulfilled, that must mean that you are powerful.

However, one lesson that can be extracted from modern shamanism is that no choice is arbitrary or unpredictable. If you gravitate toward something or even imagine something, the question to ask might be, “Why did you gravitate toward that thing or why did you imagine that thing?”

If you imagine meeting a dolphin or gravitate toward holding $1 Million, why did you imagine that? You could have easily imagined a completely different animal but you imagined dolphin. You could have gravitated toward a new house or a car or boat. Why did you gravitate toward your imagined goal?

We choose the things we choose because they have some significance for us. That significance is unique – even if someone else makes the same choices, that person will have different associations with those choices and even the same choices will thus have different meanings.

Therefore, each choice provides an insight into the chooser – you. By being aware of your choice (and perhaps the other choices available) and knowing why you made the choice you did, you come that much closer to healing yourself because you come that much closer to realizing you apart from your actions and the choices you make.

There is a difference between who you are and the choices you make, between your being and your actions or doing. Realizing that difference is critical and powerful. Healing comes in between them. It becomes possible to embrace your being without getting distracted by your doing.

Conversely, Ego sees itself as benefiting from confusion between being and doing. Ego sees itself as benefiting whenever doing is confounded with being. It sees itself as benefiting when doing disappears into being. When it becomes invisible.

Healing only becomes visible as a choice when being is separated from doing. That’s why Ego loses healing. Ego tries hard to confound the two.

My teenaged son was surprised to learn that you are just as controlled by something when you fight against it as when you accede to it. This leads me to suspect that this idea, though a reflection of a deep truth, is not part of current culture. Part of me notices that I am controlled by something to the extent that it is invisible to me.

To what extent can this be found in culture? To what extent is everyday life controlled by invisible things? How can invisible things be seen?

The answer is simple and also maddening. Look.

Contrary to popular belief, the human visual system is an amazingly subtle and accurate one. It can also be trained (or the human brain can be trained) to “see” things that aren’t there and to ignore things that are. Look. Dare to see what is truly present. Amazingly, the simple act of actually seeing what is there can be a subversive act. It is subversive only in that it gives the lie and the lie is only effective as long as it seems like the truth. It is effective only as long as it is invisible.

As a child, you saw things more simply but you also saw them more clearly. You saw more directly what was right in front of you. You had to literally spend years learning to see what trusted adults said you should see. Dare to see like a child again.

###

There is a further subtlety at work in choosing arbitrarily to “prove something,” including to yourself. It’s not immediately apparent. This may be due to its invisibility, which is also why so many people get drawn into it, either as an advocate or as an opponent.

For what it’s worth, my practice is to notice what is said and how I react to it. My reaction comes from me. By noticing it, I can notice myself. My practice is to notice what is said and my reaction to it to better understand my own private view into what is true and to express what is true.

I find that in that way, I am able to experience more freedom and joy within myself and hear others around me more clearly. To be sure, reacting to what I hear and say is a part of that process but my goal is to be more aware of things, not less aware of them.

I thus try not to use those things and reactions as shields or excuses. I feel them and at the same time practice being aware of myself feeling them so that they can serve as bridges into the deeper part of me rather than as blockades.

What I have also found, to my delighted surprise, is that the more I share what I find to be true with others, the more truth there is to share. This can take many forms. One of these is that the more I share, the more I have to share. Another is that the more I share, the more I give permission to others to do the same. A third is that other people see and voice pieces of the puzzle before I do but I can recognize what they say as the truth.

Another, which is always unexpected and delightful, is that someone may say something which no one had ever heard or even thought before, yet as soon as it is said, its truth is recognized. I can say it, so can others. The list goes on.

In every case the recognized truth provides a solid stepping stone to another truth and often to many truths. Such honesty also leads to freedom. In the cases when apparently solid truths have led to wounds, healing those wounds has led to even greater truths that would have remained hidden if the wound had been allowed to block the path. If I had seen the wound as a barrier, a tender spot to be avoided instead of as what it can always be – the shortest path to the other side – I would have stopped on the near side of the wound and whatever I saw it as, anger, fear, numbness, a small annoyance, or something else, would have become simply a part of the backdrop. It would possibly become invisible. In my experience, healing something always leads to something more.

What I notice is that many people have heard that one thing or another leads to wealth and that as long as you “toe the line” and follow one set of rules (their prescribed set) wealth, ease, and health are the inevitable or logical outcomes.

When I take a step back, I notice that all such systems are saying the same thing. Details differ from system to system, but the goal is usually defined in terms of wealth. That wealth may be yours or it may be someone else’s. Either way, the worldview that lies at the heart of such views is that:

1. The material world matters (as revealed by material wealth, for example); and
2. You don’t have a choice about everything in the material world.

Thus, taken together, these attitudes toward the material world have various implications. One of these is that healing is impossible. It is impossible to experience the world differently by doing nothing more than heal yourself because you are completely separate from your surroundings. Therefore what affects one cannot affect the other or if both are affected, those effects are unrelated and/or complex.

This runs counter to the observation that it is possible to experience change in the world by doing nothing more than healing yourself. The implication is, of course, that you contain the whole of existence, which only makes sense if the world is a reflection.

This means that it truly is fruitless to try to effect change in the world while holding yourself constant. At best, you can change yourself as you change the world. However my tendency has been to change myself in order to change the world.

The things I lament in the world, the disease, war, poverty, etc. are reflections of me. They must be if I can find the world in me. This means that as I find those things within myself and heal and fully release them, the world will be transformed.

On the other hand, if I accept the reality of the world and insist on the separateness of the world from me, such wounds and strife are inevitable. They are inevitable as long as I accept them as part of the world.

Thus, choosing what you want and trying to exercise Law of Attraction in this way is the same thing as trying to hold down a good-paying job, a house in the suburbs, two cars, and a family with a spouse and a couple of kids. They are both ways to emphasize the independence and reality of the material world. They are both ways to deny or reduce the power of healing yourself.

Another view would be that you are born to have a certain shape in the universe. Some people have called it your mission but that sounds like something you do rather than what you are. In the same way that you are born to have a certain color hair, a certain look in your face, etc., you are born to have a certain shape in the universe. What is your shape? What is your truth? Not what you want – which is often determined or influenced by material reality – what is your being?

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Difference – III” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Difference – II

by DCH Park

The world is a reflection. No doubt, this is something that can be widely recognized. Perhaps you have heard it before in your life. It is a saying that I knew immediately. I can’t put my finger on the first time I heard this. Perhaps it’s part of the culture. Perhaps it’s something that I always knew. Perhaps it’s something that everyone knows. Nonetheless, I know that the first time I can consciously recall hearing it, my reactions were (1) of course, (2) everybody has heard that (or everybody knows that), and possibly (3) so what?

Taking the last thing first, I notice that there is an expectation that noticing the world is a reflection is universal and useless. There is also a voice that says that this is wrong, the world is not a reflection. No doubt, it is the same voice or it is connected to the one that maintains the saying is useless. The weight of history seems to be that the world is not a reflection. We don’t see in the world what we wish to see in ourselves. The lesson of history seems to be that we have to work hard in the world to make even a small change in it and that our characters are implicit only through our actions.

We even seek to discover our own characters through our actions.

But note that this is not what the adage says. It does not connect what we see in the world with what we want to see in ourselves. It connects what we find in the world with who we are.

The word “reflection” implies a mirror. If we see in the mirror an image of ourselves and notice that the image we see is dirtied with mud, we do not reach into the mirror to groom ourselves. Yet reaching into the mirror is tantamount to reaching into the world.

What is perhaps not as widely known is that we don’t immediately recognize ourselves in the image in the mirror. We have to learn to see ourselves. In fact, showing creatures their own reflections is often used as a test or indication of intelligence. Perhaps the universe or God or the quantum field is similarly showing us our reflection in the world and waiting for us to see ourselves.

Extending this idea for a moment, if you see mud in the mirror, you do not reach into the mirror to remove it. You groom yourself and the reflection changes effortlessly. Could the same be true in the world? Is it possible to change the world by changing yourself? Is it possible to change the world by changing only yourself? How do you change yourself? How do you know what to change in yourself?

The last question is a good one. For that, the same adage comes to the rescue again. Many people hear about the importance of happiness, joy, peace, silence, etc. and they strive to achieve those things. I have often heard as a result the recommendation that you should choose to focus on (or only focus on) those things that make you happy, peaceful, etc.

The idea is that by focusing only on things that you like or want only those things will grow. The expectation (voiced or unvoiced) is that what you don’t like in your experience or about yourself will drop away. At very least, it is expected that it will stop growing due to lack of attention.

However, in my experience, the things we would rather not look at rarely go away. They rarely even stop growing. In my experience, as we become more successful, as we get bigger in the world, so too do our issues. The things we don’t like about ourselves are nonetheless ourselves. We take them with us wherever we go and whomever we become.

This is why a common cliche is to annoy an “enlightened being” until he or she “cracks.” At that point the claim is often made that the “enlightenment” is nothing more than a facade and the true person beneath is as troubled as any other.

However, the idea that the “world is a reflection” offers another path into this. Notice that another quality of the reflection in the mirror is that it tells you what is wrong and where it is. You don’t clean your shoes by attempting to brush your shirt or embracing your hair. It would be silly to even try. Yet we do exactly that with our reflections in the world.

By the same token, we treat a smudge or greasy stain differently from the way we deal with caked-on, dried mud. We are likely to benefit even more greatly from individual attention to things that come up within ourselves.

I have found that once I genuinely heal myself and release what irritates me, I never have to revisit it. The things that once annoyed me no longer annoy me. The tricks are to not get lost in the annoyance, pain, fear, etc. and to find that pain. That’s where reflections in the world can be handy. Once I find the pain, I can heal it.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Difference – II” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Healing – VI

by DCH Park

There is something that comes up for me in the context of healing. It is something that I have heard before but didn’t fully appreciate before. It is similar to other things in that my practice of Huna has aided me considerably in my ability to understand this and apply it in my life.

The thing that I recognize is the idea, the truism, that wherever you go, there is only one of you there. No matter how many might be present in a given situation, there is only one person there.

This idea has many guises. Another of the more popular ones is that the “world is a reflection.” Whatever difficulty or turmoil you may find around you, it somehow reflects you and comes from you.

As we looked at in a previous essay, if you notice that your collar is mused up in your reflection, you are not served by trying to reach into the mirror, directly for your collar. You are better served to reach in the other direction, away from the mirror to reach your collar.

It may sound silly to try to reach into the mirror but in principle that is exactly what many of us try to do. This is not surprising or it shouldn’t be. We are very carefully taught over a period of many years to reach in the wrong direction. What’s amazing is that healing is close at hand, but not in the directions that most of us are reaching in.

Nevertheless, such healing is possible and available. It is easier than we ever imagined it could be.

Thus, it is possible to change the world around you by changing only yourself. Such change is only possible because the whole universe – all of existence – can be found within you.

It’s been said that a model of the universe is a bottle that contains itself. Such a model gains power by directly containing everything. This is the same power that you or I and/or everyone has. This is why you can experience change in your life by doing nothing more than healing yourself.

Huna provides philosophies and techniques for thinking about and handling these concepts. Leaving deeper realities aside for the moment, there is a simplified version of updated Ho’oponopono available for free on the internet.

The deeper practice of Ho’oponopono makes it clear that all things are connected and that healing yourself alone leads inevitably to changes in your life, but even with the free version of Ho’oponopono that is available online it is possible to clean yourself up and thus to experience change in your life.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Healing – VI” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Healing – V

by DCH Park

A curious thing happens sometimes when you get to the root of things. It tends to happen when you characterize the world as separate from yourself. This might sound strange but it is very common. In fact we are trained to think this way by school, language, and culture. It is so pervasive, it is in the fabric of society and we don’t even notice it is there. We tend to see ourselves and the world in a certain way. This certain way seems natural and normal. Everyone around us seems to be seeing the world the same way when we are growing up so we assume that we should, too.

However, since when has it been a good reason to accept or adopt anything just because others have done it the same way before? Isn’t the essence of the “Scientific perspective” that you don’t accept anything from anyone unless it makes sense to you?

The power of supposedly “obvious” things is in that we take them for granted. They seem so obvious that we take them for truth. Then we stop noticing them altogether. The power of obvious things is in their invisibility. This power allows them to shape everything that we see in the world and in ourselves. It allows us to simply accept what we think we see as “just the way things are.” We never ask ourselves why things are that way or how they fit together. Such questions are deemed to be “silly” and fit only for children.

All we have to do to neutralize this power is to notice our assumptions. We don’t have to eliminate the assumptions to change how we see the world. By removing the cloak of invisibility we are putting ourselves in the driver’s seat. We are consciously calling the shots. Our invisible assumptions aren’t any longer – they aren’t invisible or operating behind our awareness.

We can see such invisible assumptions at work at the root. It has been observed that there tends to be a reversal at the root. Suddenly black is white and up is down, metaphorically. Specifically what happens is that your expectation of separation is violated. What you observe in the world is not what you expected.

There are different possible responses to this but what I have observed tends to boil down to one of two possible things. Either you can admit to the reality of what you have observed and proceed from there or you can deny the validity or reality of your observation. In the latter case I have even seen instances in which assertions about the unreality of observations was bolstered through violence. In fact, history is full of instances in which violence or the threat of violence was used to bolster such claims.

If you accept the reality of your observations it becomes clear that things you had thought of as being opposites of each other are actually connected. They are different faces of a single thing. Society is usually predicated on an assumption that in any conflict there are two sides and the only way to “win” is to completely destroy the other side. This assumes not only that you know or will discover how to destroy the opposing force, but on a deeper level, that such destruction is even possible. It assumes that I am apparently separate from my enemy, I can destroy him or her without hurting myself.

However, everything is connected which means that it is impossible to destroy someone or something else without also diminishing or destroying yourself. One way that this can be experienced is as a sudden reversal. When we get to the root, we are past illusions and fooling ourselves. We face what truly is. So we see a sudden reversal.

This is usually a good thing in that the reversal means that we are not far away from understanding our healing. It becomes infinitely clear through our reversal that what we thought of as a problem holding us back is nothing more than a challenge providing a means to grow, that our enemy is nothing more than ourselves, and that we have chosen these challenges and selves.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Healing – V” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Healing – I

by DCH Park

I have heard myself saying to different people in different ways over the last couple of weeks how to find the healing at the center of wounds. This is not a topic that I have been consciously pushing. Rather I have been consciously aware of it as a question or discussion topic raised by others. As I have explored this with different partners, I have heard wisdom in what was said. Most interestingly, I have heard wisdom in my own words.

This wisdom not only reflects the truth, it is immediately recognized as being truthful. What’s more surprising is that this truth is often not anything that either person has heard before. Nevertheless, it is there and it is true.

This is a practice, but it is also an ability that everyone has, like breathing. We can recognize the truth even when we have never seen or heard it before. This is not logical. Logically speaking, recognition is of a thing that we have been seen before. It goes to remembered experience of this life and truth is (at best) inferred from what is remembered.

However, this recognition (the best word available – it captures the right feeling, but it is not in the context we have been brought to expect) of truth goes beyond logic. Logic cannot explain nor describe it. To ask logic to explain it would be to make logic bigger – big enough to contain it and it doesn’t. Specifically, recognition is not logical in that we can recognize the truth even when we have never heard it before. We can recognize something even though it is the first time we have seen it. This is not logical.

It is possible to recognize the truth even if we have never seen nor heard it before. We do it all the time. In a sense, this recognition goes to the future. One sense of the word “recognition” goes to the past while another goes to the creative future. One relies on logic while the other relies on something else.

Some people expect specific practices or behaviors that they can adopt. The more aware of these ask for such practices specifically. There seems to be an expectation that it is possible to know your destination before you are there. This seems logical and it may have led to widely accepted success in the past, but it is not true.

Many have been trained to logically define and expect a certain outcome. They have been trained that the means are shaped to bring them to the desired end. As I write this, I realize that I was like this. I was trained as a logical scientist throughout my high school, college, and graduate educations. I was led to expect logical outcomes to specific problems and situations. I expected to be able to know where I was going before I got there. I found it frustrating when such logical predictions were not forthcoming.

What I realize now is that we can never know what shape will manifest nor from where it will come. This has been demonstrated over and over again throughout history. Therefore, to maximize chances of success, it makes sense to keep as many possibilities open as possible. Further, it makes sense that whenever it becomes clear that another possibility exists which is closed or defined negatively, I benefit by at least understanding this negativity and where it comes from. If/as I can heal it, a new possibility opens to me.

This means in turn, that I can benefit by noticing the things that I define/react negatively to and healing that negativity. This is a practice. I am changing my habits so that instead of running away from negative things and things that hurt me, I run toward them.

I remember psychologists like John Welwood, who says that sitting with your rawness – those parts of you that are literally uncooked – the raw parts soften and open up to you. They tell you what they need.

In other words, the area of growth for me has been in applying the lesson from life in my specific case. What are my wounds telling me? What are your wounds telling you?

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”The Healing – I” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.a

Surrender and Will

by DCH Park

It has been said that there are two avenues toward spiritual enlightenment. One is the way of surrender and one is the path of will. Many in modern society are familiar with the path of will. It requires great discipline. Many are drawn to it. They see it as strong, like iron or stone. They gravitate toward will and reject surrender as weak. like water.

In following will, you often start out by noticing and criticizing others and their choices. You look around you and see that many are consumed with the “wrong” things in life, things that won’t carry them forward, things that won’t make them more “spiritual.”

Looking toward yourself, you may recognize such “wrong-headedness” in yourself and begin to reject it there. Self flagellation and deprivation are often ways to “punish” yourself and in particular those parts of yourself that are “wrong.”

Ultimately the followers of will find that the only way further into spirit is to surrender to a greater will. Some call this the will of God. Others know it as the will of the universe. No matter what name you give to it, in the contest of wills, it is clear that your little will is bound to be overwhelmed by the greater will.

According to Osho, the practitioners of will are destined to either surrender their will or to stop growing. If we must surrender sooner or later, why, asks Osho, waste time?

Furthermore, while the path of will requires great discipline, the path of surrender calls for extraordinary trust. However, I find that there is something beyond these apparent opposites. We are taught to believe that antagonistic opposites rule existence. In nature we find male and female, right and wrong, and hot and cold, to name a few.

What’s more, we are taught that if something is not one thing, it must be its opposite. In fact, many things are defined in terms of not being their opposite. This can even be the basis of supposed humility – one avenue to “humility” lies in denying what you are not without saying what you are.

However this only works if there are only two choices. In that case, not being one thing implies that you must be the other. But in most cases there are many more choices than only two. Even the supposed “natural opposites” listed above are idealized states that do not exist. There is, in fact, a range of states between each extreme and even the extremes change based on the range that is chosen. Thus, what is hot in one context may be cold in another. Even fighting against something gives life to what you oppose.

This is why the path of will or applying discipline must ultimately fail. Anything and everything that you oppose must grow and may ultimately grow too big to ignore. This is because it grows from all of your opposition.

The only way to defeat something is to surrender to it, but this is more than giving in. In order to stop fighting against something you have to accept it, which looks like surrender. However beyond surrender, it is possible to transcend distinctions and see not only that it defines you, you can see that it is a part of you.

From here, taking personal responsibility for all of your experience and ultimately choosing what you experience is only a matter of practice.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”Surrender and Will” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What I Learned From B (A Friend Of A Friend)

by DCH Park

I had a friend once who had fallen into a habit of always expecting that his friend was more aware than he was. He had always expected that his friend “got” more than he did. As a result, as he became more aware, his assumption was that his friend would have to know even more.

To his credit, he (let’s call him A) caught himself having that expectation more and more frequently and noticed it at work in himself. However, he was still in the habit of playing himself down so that the other (let’s call him B) might seem bigger than he was, himself.

A refused the mantle of master and found himself enmeshed in the same arguments and misconceptions that he’d been in since childhood. When he raised his head, he could see these patterns re-emerge and he could see how they worked in him. However, he sometimes chose not to raise his head because that way his relationship with B would be the same as it had always been.

I am reading into the situation somewhat, but until A is ready to let their relationship become whatever it will be, he won’t free himself to be whatever he can be.

For whatever it may be worth, my sense is that B faces challenges that A does not have or has already found his way through. One of these, based solely on what I heard B saying, is the idea or expectation that there is such a thing as right and wrong. The concepts of right and wrong and of judgment are prevalent and we spend a great deal of practice noticing them and getting past them in ourselves.

This is often because judgment and such are presented as being necessary to life but in actuality they hold us back. It is necessary to be able to discern the difference between a floor and a road (for example) but it is not important to say which is right and which is wrong. Judgment goes to the latter.

One thing that becomes possible by noticing and releasing judgment is that possibilities that might not be considered because they are held to be “wrong” can be considered and their implications can be explored. Similarly, we are not wed to ideas of what is right, so we are not forced to consider only a few “correct” or “right” possibilities.

I may choose the same possibility or I may choose something different. Even if I choose the same possibility, the mere fact that I considered all possibilities means that my choice is more meaningful. If I had never considered “taboo” possibilities, my final choice would have meant less, even if I had chosen the same way.

This is one way that you may embrace your own “bad boy” or “bad girl.” You are free to discover who you are in yourself, regardless of what society or your training may call you or expect you to be. In this way, you may be exactly what society calls you to be or you may be different. Either way, you chose how you behave consciously.

Some may object that by having people do what they want, society would break down and chaos would ensue. Certainly, this deserves further examination and I intend to give it further examination in a future book. However, I can state that to date, my own experience and as I understand it, the experiences of creative artists and scientists of all ilks, has been that they come to the same truth. There is no chaos.

Regardless of where they start from or what method they use, they come to the same conclusions. Their conclusions touch on not only the nature of creativity and how to achieve and maintain it, they include discussions of what they find there. They talk about the nature of truth and how truth animates and penetrates everything they do.

Thus, there is no chaos. There is no abyss in the sense of emptiness. Or perhaps more to the point, there is, but not in a negative sense. Negativity is an indication that only part of the picture is being embraced. As more of the picture is grasped and let in, the whole turns from being negative to being true. It goes from having a value to being simply what is.

As part of what is, there is no separation, so there can be no chaos. Defining things to be separate and the practice of separating this from that may be useful for society in the short term, but it has no basis in fact since there is no separation. Is it possible to construct society in such a way that this lack of separation – this unity – is not only recognized, but it is celebrated and it becomes a centerpiece of how society works? How would you construct such a society?

If you have comments or questions about that, please send them directly to me. I will do my best to read everything sent and to respond to it.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”What I Learned From B (A Friend Of A Friend)” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

What Is Logic?

by DCH Park

What does it mean to have a meaning logically? Or, (to avoid defining something by using the same word), how do I define it? To me, this is equivalent to asking, “what is logic?”

I find that what I understand as logic is something that I was taught in school. It is non-emotional and falls out of a combination of a small set of axioms and a small set of rules. These rules describe how to go from one thing to another, where the first thing is either an axiom or an observation and the second thing is generally held to be an inference.

However, it is also possible for either thing be an inference. In other words, it is possible to be cut-off from the outside world and never see an actual observation. It is possible to “see” only axioms and inferences, both of which can be chosen, so it is possible to come to a conclusion logically, that has no bearing at all on what is experienced in the “real world.”

I have heard it said of statistics, but I feel that the same is true of any logical system, that it can be made to support any conclusion. This supposes a few things. The thing that is pointed out and that we are meant to see is that the axioms and inferences I draw can determine the conclusions I reach, even if we both agree about the observations.

The thing that we are meant to notice less of is the fact that I (if I am making the argument) have chosen the conclusion before I formulate my argument. I might allow you to use logic as a predictive tool and follow it to it’s inevitable conclusion, but in formulating the argument that you follow in the first place, I go backward and start with my conclusion – the conclusion that I want you to draw.

This means that the conclusion that I start with is something that I see or define myself as being attached to. It is something that I create. Why did I choose this idea or conclusion? What drew me to it? What am I attached to (and how does being attached to it affect how I see – or define – myself)?

One thing that often helps me voice what I am attached to is to notice that there are whole parts of the universe – whole realms of possibility – that are eliminated by my choice. When I attach myself to a conclusion (any conclusion), possibilities that include my conclusion not happening are eliminated. This might be what I asked for, but it limits me. I can mitigate this limitation by noticing that it is there, but most of us are trained to not notice the role our choices play.

The thing that we are not meant to notice at all is that these possibilities present themselves and are plausible to us only because we have no feeling for what is true. If we use pure reason as our only guide forward, we condemn ourselves to grope blindly in the metaphorical darkness, searching for a truth we believe we will recognize when we touch it, without realizing (or admitting to ourselves) that our fingers have gone numb along with the rest of our selves.

The thing we are not meant to see is that logic, though it is predictive and can be mysterious to the body, can be self-contained. I believe that this explains cohort replacement – even in scientific groups. By itself, logic can only take us to things it had already contained in itself by its axioms and inferences. If I change these axioms and inferences, I can change what my logical system contains and therefore control what you can conclude. As long as I am sure that you limit yourself to what you can conclude logically, I can trap you because by definition, logic has no feeling.

(A deeper question that can come up immediately is, “do I trust myself.” Do I trust how I feel about things or what comes up? I find that most of us do but we are trained not to. We are trained to suspect things that come from emotion because they come from emotion. We do not ask or investigate what emotion is or where it comes from. We simply reject it and everything that comes from it. We reject it because we do not trust ourselves. I sense that this is a related but different topic that is probably better suited to another article or a series of articles or a book.)

Getting beyond logic to a sense of what is true from a felt sense of truth is impossible, or so I can tell myself logically. Making predictions from what I get about the truth makes no sense because the source of truth itself lies outside of logic. I don’t even get to the step of testing or even making my predictions because I object to the process by which they were derived in the first place. Therefore, anything that comes from a felt sense of truth must also be suspect, branded as non-logical, and rejected.

In my experience, I can (and have) followed this reasoning. In doing so, I have found myself in a neatly defined world, with neatly defined boundaries and corners, and no room for growth. I could choose to accept this world and define myself as my world defines me (and itself). I could defend my definition of myself (and my world) vehemently. I have. Of course this never meant that I or my world were right, just that they were well-defended. (I never asked myself what they were defending against or whom I was pushing so hard against.)

On the other hand, I could recognize logic as one quadrant of at least four and open myself to everything that the whole graph might offer. I could recognize that what I had heard about this totality was mostly confined to two quadrants – logic and emotion. I had been trained to access and use only half of what was available to me. It was up to me to find someone to train me to use the rest or for me to discover what was there, maybe both.

For more information or for personal support in exploring presence, contact me at david@dchpark.com or 412-407-7401.

© 2013, David Park. All Rights Reserved.

”What Is Logic?” by DCH Park is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.