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This is Not a Woman's World Part 3 : Center for Human Awakening BLOG
The Center for Human Awakening
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Blogs contained here emanate from questions or responses to themes that arose in psychological and spiritual settings – sessions, groups, training workshops, etc. Please note that blog entries 64-166 are drawn from Richard Harvey’s articles page. This retrospective series of blogs spanned over 25 years; please remember when reading them that some of Richard’s thought and practice have evolved since. We hope you enjoy this blog and that you will carry on submitting your psycho-spiritual questions for Richard’s response, either through the form on our Contact Us page or in the ongoing video blog series. Thank you.

This is Not a Woman's World Part 3

by Richard Harvey on 11/07/15


[continued from last week's BLOG]

 

Continuing this marvellous litany of healing virtues, the next is I am suppressing the gift of really listening to Life or the other... sometimes it gets obstructed by the impulse of telling people what needs to be done. Nothing is stationary, no thing stands still, everything is in a process of change and transformation. The difficulty therefore with attempting to bring about change is that in the very process of trying to make it happen we miss the fact that change is already taking place. We may not be able to change the change that is happening. We may not be able to hinder the natural processes of life, however we may become unaware or even oblivious to them when we are caught up in the impulse to interfere.

 

In healing therapy as well as in life itself we are wise to harmonize our interventions with the natural energies of existence. When we go against existence we are sure to become frustrated. Therefore, the wise person only intervenes in a way that is confluent with the forces of natural energy and change. Tell people what needs to be done, by all means, but be clear about where this impulse is coming from. If it is from the ego-self then it is in conflict with the natural forces of developing life. These forces sometimes lead us into creative chaos or fruitful stillness or a thunderstorm of change. When they do it is just like the ego-self to want to intervene and set everything straight again. There is a part of us that resists natural change and transformation. When the ego-self feels like interfering bring your awareness intensely to the situation and contemplate how you can tolerate chaos, the interruption to routine and habit, the upsetting of the structures and template of present life, in order to surrender to some greater change and development. If your impulse is impeding natural growth and development then stop and tolerate the process as it grows into fullness. The whole of life is full of a series of changes, changes that challenge the conservative ego and our imagined sense of security. Listen to life and be receptive to the changing events and circumstances. Meet them all with dignity and courage. Then in the fullness of grace you will live into full surrender and live the truth that in life you need not be angry or controlling, frustrated or opposed, but rather you can accept the gift of life by receiving, by listening in the fullest sense of the word and opening your heart to life's blessings.

 

Next is I am suppressing the big part of me that loves to hug, to say loving nicknames, to hug, to caress others. Since we were young we have learned to suppress emotions and spontaneity. As we grow older that early conditioning becomes calcified and fixed. In an effort to fit in, to behave acceptably to the culture, we suppress our life force, our energy, our sexuality, our awareness, our soul, and our uninhibited spontaneity. Regain the freedom you forfeited in early life by actively rebelling against this suppression of your life essence! Allow yourself to behave in natural ways that are uninhibited and unrestrained. Then and only then may you in time realize your inner stillness, the deep truth of your connection with all life, with all beings and, following your process of release from the conditioning, attain a place of balance in which you are hugging and caressing the world even as the world is hugging and caressing you and you live in the heart embrace of unity.

 

And finally, When I make love I am suppressing the enjoyment of foreplay... it almost always gets lost in favor of the urge to come to climax and get it over with. In healing-listening it is just our ability to be with the other in the moment that is effective. Why does this simple—or apparently simple—ability yield such profound results in relationship, connection, and healing?

 

People do not live life—they think life. We have been indoctrinated to think everything. We think a picture of who we are. We live a narrative of our life. We live a fairy story of our primary love relationship, a romance of prescribed events condoned by society, hardly anyone is living outside the box. We discuss today the topic of artificial intelligence, robots have been under discussion for a long time, mind control, systems of belief, indoctrination. These topics are discussed as if they are in the future, whereas they are of course here-now and very present. Almost everyone you know is indoctrinated. It is a radical insult to humanity. How have we created a world of people who are automatons? Who cannot think, feel, or behave for themselves? Everything is done with an ulterior motive. No one does anything without a view to the outcome of their actions. Hardly anyone is present, living here in this moment at this time. No wonder we are so alienated in our society; no one is here, not even ourselves.

 

When we eat we are elsewhere, when we drive the car we are fantasizing being at our destination, when we are studying we internalize a picture of the grades we will achieve, and when we are making love we are oriented to the climax of the act.

 

Life is desired and desirable only if it is a copious ejaculation, a mighty orgasm of imagined delight. We move ahead with one idea only—toward purposeful ecstasy. Yet ecstasy is not purposeful and a fantasy is not really authentically delightful; it is merely a thought.

 

Try taking this insight to people and they will glaze over. They will deny it inevitably. They have been pre-programmed to eat the menu, to enjoy the vacation in the glossy brochure. They see their friends, their partners, and their loved ones through a veil of idealized fantasy, the product of a lifetime of pre-programmed propaganda.

 

Take a group of people who are willing and conduct a process workshop with them together. Have them become aware of breath, aware of their bodies in movement and in repose. Have them eat and taste food, the textures, the experience of the eating and the digesting. Have them look into each other's eyes and occupy the soul-space behind the looking itself. Have them learn again to touch and be touched, to hear each other, to listen to the sounds of life, of their own bodies, of voices, of birds, of music. Have them look and see with new eyes in order to not merely look but to see without expectation, assumptions, or pre-programming for the first time what is before them. Have them walk in truth, holding another's hand and feeling what it is like to be together, to talk and breathe and hug and love with another human being and then another and finally a group. Have them learn to speak truth from the heart, from the depths of their being, from their soul, speak truth to each other without guilt or shame or repression or inhibition.

 

You touch on something very important here—in fact several important points. You say When I make love I am suppressing the enjoyment of foreplay... but this is not making love. When you suppress you are not making love When there is no joy you are not making love and when there is no play you are not making love. Perhaps what you mean is duty, going through the motions, energetic release, the machinations of sexual intercourse but it is not truly making love. I suspect it is a picture, a picture created by the mind, a kind of inner movie that is played out in physical life—an inner movie of making love. Just these clues are enough to transform the fiction of "making love." No suppression, no lack of joy, no lack of play. Without these what is there? The essence, the soul, the truth, and uninhibited spirit, the wildness and ecstasy of human connection and psycho-physical, emotional, spiritual communication: the great depth of wild joy, illimitable enjoyment of the dance of pure ecstasy in the moment  and the lightness, the humor, the innocence and freedom of playfulness and play for its own sake, without anywhere to go, not with any goal in mind other than present delight.

 

You say it almost always gets lost in favor of the urge to come to climax and get it over with. When we lead life with a view to outcome, orientated to the future, to the goal, to the end result inevitably our fantasy collides with the ending... and the ending is death. Strangely enough there is nothing quite so comforting as death, the end of effortfullness, the end of pain and sadness, anger and fear... nothing quite as secure and sure as death with its resolve, its resolution, its fantasy of eternal rest and heavenly happiness.

 

This too is a picture and if you were raised in the west it is the indoctrination you received about life. Live and endure the pain, the suffering, and receive your reward in heaven. But the indoctrination of heavenly rewards has driven us to be end-orientated. We make love to climax and get it over with, we live through the year to get to the last day and get it over with and start all over again. We are happy when Christmas has finished and we get it over with, happy at the end of the working day, when the long school summer holidays have ended, when our periods of study or training or commitment or even holidays and breaks are over and we get it over with and can get back to work. We "look forward" to what?

 

The remedy is to try life, try living. Embrace life. It is a mystery you will never fathom. But to live in this mystery without indoctrination, because that is not living is to risk, is to be alive, feel alive, to breathe, to experience, to not conform, to be true to yourself, to stop chasing your orgasm, the climax of life, but live!

 

If you want to try a very powerful exercise with yourself and/or close friends, try discussing how you make love. Contained in an honest account of how you make love is everything you need to know about yourself or another. There is nothing else... nothing else other than the real experience of sacred-spiritual life lived freely... with no limits. 

BLOG entry #17

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