Author: Laura Shaw

In the thick of the challenges that early parenthood brings, Laura had a profound experience of recognizing herself as alert, loving consciousness. As this knowing consciousness started to grow in strength and pervade her experience of life, she started to identify less with the roles and achievements in her life as an academic instructor and wilderness guide and more with this presence of awareness. Laura has spend the past eight years attending satsang, taking courses from Peter Levine, Tara Brach, and Jack Kornfield and has been coaching and teaching others mindfulness meditation and self-inquiry in Golden, BC Canada and over Zoom.
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Dissolving the murkiness with awareness

Hello friends,

It is a drizzly morning here in Golden and I’m hanging out in the richness and beauty of melancholy that rain seems to invite.  I love this clip of Gangaji speaking about the self-hatred that exists in most humans -the murky dark energy within our personality that we spend so much time (our entire lifetime – or lifetimes!) trying to fix, escape, deny, or dramatize.  Then, she speaks of the liberation we can experience when we finally meet it head on.  Until recently, I’ve never really known what that meant – to meet something head on……

So lately I have been observing how I as conscious loving awareness relate to this murkiness that exists within my personality.  I see that the truth of who I am in any and every moment cannot be bound in any way to the past or future.  The awareness that I am is simply always Here – unaffected by time or circumstance.  So I notice that when deep emotions related to the realm of time and circumstance surface (and engulf the personality)- or when this active mind continues to function – remembering, dreaming, creating, fretting…..  there has been a dramatic change in what happens (and this has been a profound shift because like most people, I’ve always had intense and complex emotions churning within my personality). And the result is, it is no longer possible for me to be afraid of them taking me (or keeping me) as their prisoner.  The change is this:

I now experience (not just ‘know’ but actually experience) the truth that these emotions, this pain, these thoughts, are not who I am. I am the conscious loving space that they can unfold in.

And again, like most people, there’s lots of sadness and confusion that has been locked up in this body, thoughts and emotions for decades, but now I am able to really explore the nuances of it all without the fear of ‘falling in’ deeper.  There is a soft, vast space and an effortless willingness to let everything that I’ve been holding in, or hiding from, or unnecessarily believing, to be seen and understood – and a tending to them as I would a beloved child. It can be painful and heartbreaking to see the extent of what has been held as truth… but as I stop ‘fixing’, denying and dramatizing, and instead just give ample space to whatever needs to unravel…. the story of it all, the pain, the energy –  all exits once it has been fully expressed.   

So these days, I’ve been noticing the paradox of the heaviness of things coming up to be seen, (and as a side-note, this process is as rapid as the depth of my willingness to greet it fully – then understanding and resolve can happen in just moments for me) and the absolutely blissful and joyful lightness that occurs when decades of trapped sadness disappears from my body.  I am not looking for things to ‘heal’  there is no list – oh, i better work on that, and oh, here’s a pattern that I better put on the list.  No.  I just live my life, do what this body/mind wants and needs to do in everyday life – and through it all, I remain aware of the truth of myself – always Here, and therefore open and willing to meet whatever arises.  It’s terrifying and mysterious and exhilarating –  but finally I am truly Here.

It is my hope that by sharing my process like this – transparently and intimately, you too will be able to recognize the greater truth and presence of being that is behind, underneath and free from all of the apparent limitations of your mind, body and emotions.

Peace xx

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRd3lZJL-AA

 

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Give up trying to ‘wake up’ and just enjoy!

The last thing I want to be encouraging, or promoting, or instigating here is another ‘goal’ to try to reach – to be a better person, or a more ‘spiritual’ person. This is not a puzzle that your mind needs to sink into to ‘solve’ or even understand.  But our minds automatically work that way, and so this path can be extremely frustrating because ultimately this deep recognition is not of the mind….. in this post I want to share about how much peace flooded in once I gave up ‘trying’…..

I wanted to ‘understand’ what Papaji, Gangaji, Ramana, Rumi and Hafiz were talking (raving) about so much – I wanted to experience what they were experiencing.  I wanted to see the seer.  I was so deeply frustrated at myself for not ‘getting it’ that finally I threw in the towel.  I decided this wasn’t for me anymore – this ‘experiencing ourselves as pure awareness’ – or truly experiencing life with ‘no separation’ – just wasn’t happening in my actual living experience.  At one point I decided that maybe they were full of shit – that they too weren’t actually living it, but just talking about it as though they were.  So I wrote it all off.

But as it turned out, the desire for freedom, for true peace, was not just in my mind (it was amazing how my mind adopted this desire too). I found that this desire was coming from somewhere much deeper.  So I was at a funny place of total resignation – but there was a tiny coal of desire still glowing deep in my being.   At that point, I knew that if I ‘tried’ to do anything, it wouldn’t ‘work’ (notice how the mind here still saw ‘awakening’ as something other than where I already was). I wanted to keep trying, and sometimes I still ‘tried’ (by listening to Papaji’s videos deeply, or meditating, or trying to reach my mind/energy into an imaginary pocket of ‘peace’), but something in me already knew that wasn’t the way- I had tried everything.  So the time came when I stopped trying altogether…..But that little coal still glowed.

I felt such a deep relief in letting go of all the ‘trying’ – it had felt like such an upstream swim without any eddies to rest in.  It felt so much better to just let go and not worry about ‘attaining awareness’ anymore and instead just have more fun.  I found that letting go of my effort really allowed me to enjoy where I was more – there was an easy ‘yes’ to all the great things that were happening moment by moment in my life.  Something deep started to shift in this period as my desire for peace quietly (but fiercely) grew while my effort to attain it completely melted away.

And that brings us to we are right now – all of my inspiration that I’m sharing in this blog here is coming from a bubbling over of this joy and peace and clarity that is flowing from whatever it is that is conscious, awake, alive and here.  It is totally mysterious to me, unpredictable and honestly has NOTHING to do with ‘me’.  Even the desire and action of  starting a blog and writing regularly is pulled by this mystery – I have no idea where it is going – I am truly just along for the ride.  I (as an individual body/mind) am reading these words as they come – not the writer -but the reader, just as you are.

I am no longer concerned if I’ve ‘reached awakening’ or not – there is a carefree lightness that laughs at the attempt to measure that anyway. Who cares??? =) I know that the part of me that was striving for understanding – or to experience something someone else has – is gone.  I am so excited about not feeling trapped in my unconscious patterns anymore – that is truly liberating – and I feel passionate about helping others (who want it) become aware of how they buy into their own unconscious patterns… but I find I never speak a word about any of this in my everyday life (unless it comes up – then of course I’m so glad to).  Now I find myself just enjoying all the forms in this world so deeply. I love being surprised by, and playing with the world through the form of my personality, my body, my emotions, my silly dance moves, my ideas – my actions.  My relationship to all of these things has changed – now it is all very mysterious and spontaneous and the range of what manifests is surprising.

So instead of trying to grasp some concept, or to have a ‘deeper’ experience in some way, what feels most truthful to me is just to experience whatever is here fully – people, music, making meals, changing diapers, watching thoughts, watching actions, swimming laps, doing yoga, hearing dirty jokes fly from my mouth, drinking a jar of green juice, sipping on a glass of wine, eating chocolate chips, noticing the immovable blissful consciousness that fuels everything…..

So my two cents is – if you truly have that desire for freedom, for peace, notice the glow of that little coal, and other than that, give up the ‘trying’ to ‘wake up’ and just enjoy your life with every fibre of your being.    

Peace and deep joy xx

 

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Do we need to meditate to awaken?

A dear friend (who is also raising young twins) recently asked me if I meditate every single day.  In that moment, we were engulfed in the cacophony and activity of our small children, so our exchange on this beautiful question was short.  I’d like to explore it more here.

Do I meditate?  It depends on what is meant by meditating (and on who this ‘meditator’ is, but we’ll get to that in a bit)….  For years and years, I diligently practiced transcendental meditation.  I was drawn to it to calm the mind, and to become consciously aware of the ‘gap’ between thoughts.   TM was beneficial – it definitely brought a deep peace to my mind and body, and at the time, I attributed my increased creativity, energy and ability to be more present and joyful to my meditation practice. It was great for reducing stress and when I was in school, I found it increased my ability to easily retain knowledge.  So for these reasons, meditation has been very useful for me. But I can see now that I was striving for something in this practice. And by ‘I’, I mean the ‘I’ that was seeking inner peace and fulfillment.  The ‘I’ that thought meditation would be a good vehicle to arrive at the Truth of being.

And the truth is, to recognize the consciousness that we are, meditation is not necessary.

In fact, if meditation is used for this purpose, it can become just another strategy, or practice that the mind adopts in pursuit of something.  But we can’t pursue something that we ARE.  The only way we can truly see what we are is by stopping all pursuits, all concepts around peace, and all desire for ‘finding something’ completely.  The action of striving is what keeps us stuck.

If you weren’t striving for peace, in other words, if you were able to truly let go of that desire for peace, what would there be?  This is a question to feel and experience rather than to think about……The mind thinks there would be a feeling of defeat, frustration or resignation… and maybe that is what the mind would experience, but there is also something deeper there to be recognized.

So now, my meditation has changed.  Now I see the tendency of mind to claim things to support the existence of a ‘me’ (as an independent little ‘free willed’ engine)….. it claims everything to bolster this illusory identity “my country”, “my kids”, “my fingernails”, “my cardiovascular system”, “my ideas”…. it sees everything from a perspective of a central ‘me’.  But now, I see that our bodies, our thoughts, our biological and personal histories are a (brilliant) function of form, and they are alive and real and important -but who and what we are is not limited to the functions of these forms.  The mind sees everything as a relationship to ‘itself’, but what the mind can’t see is that everything is Self – including the mind.  The mind classifies and categorizes, but the Self includes all with no classification, no separation. The definition of self that the mind believes in, is just a function of the mind. So what is happening here is that we experience a function of the mind so deeply that we come to believe that this is the totality of who we are.  Once we see this …. we can see it in action – and we are no longer bound by it. We can see this function – and we don’t have to make it go away or change it, but we know it for what it is, including its limitations.

That is my ‘meditation’ now.  To hold my awareness on what is here and not collapse into unconsciously believing the mind’s identification with (or pursuit of) anything other than what is.  Now when I sit in silence (or in noise), I’m just Here, aware of being aware.  If I use a mantra (which I rarely do anymore) – it is to play with the beauty of the world of form.