The spreading of Love and Inspiration and Joy

But now we know
tomorrow means nothing
if we all die today.
But we won’t die today.
This doesn’t die today.

There have been so many beautiful moments of complete synchronisity, again, recently.

I feel like I’m carrying a beautiful, beautiful child inside my heart.  It is crammed full of love again, and it’s all going out to absolutely everyone, and is completely boundless.  It is for absolutely everyone, and I am not restricting it in the slightest.  It helps immensely if I am conscious of it, to enable my heart to stay open in order to be giving out to the fullest extent, and so I am working almost seamlessly on retaining my consciousness of this heart’s potential.

Today, bloody hell (excuse the word usage, these are words I use in situations of sheer amazement), I was talking with this guy who led a workshop in the NUS Interfaith Forum conference thing that I was at in Manchester.  He was talking with my group.  He’d come to our group at a very emotional time.  We’d just delved into talking about the severity of the sufferings that are possible and likely when experiencing homelessness.  I’d just told these two guys in our group about my meeting of the lady in Bath who’d been kicked out of her home just before Christmas and so left her two girls behind, who she broke down crying in telling me about them, and I’d given her my £10 note.  The focus of this task that we were doing was to discuss how we could come up with a way of solving a particular problem (we chose ‘homelessness’ from the list) with a £10 note.  I hadn’t thought about the symbolism of everything coming together like this until I told the people in my group about the homeless princess of Bath that I’d given the £10 note to, and then I realised that that was my effort of solving homelessness for one night for one person.  It all connected like a lightning bolt smashing a metal rod into pieces.  The guy missed the connection, as he’d come over just after I’d found the realisation.  He talked for a while, and we were all taking it in, then there was this quietness and I looked him in the eyes and all that came out of me was this huge pouring of Love and Gratitude, in the form of a smile, and he reciprocated with a smile and a childish laugh.  Just as Alex gives when we both realise the connection we’re getting when we exchange loving energy.  BOOM.  Everything came together and we stopped time together and Love was everywhere, pouring, streaming out all across to everywhere.  It was opened, and it was a waterfall flooding the room around us.

Another significant moment of the streaming outwards of Love was when I had started my walk to the train station this evening, had walked for about 20 seconds before encountering a man begging on the street.  Except, he didn’t ask for anything – he was just sitting there seemingly waiting for things to happen.  I offered him food, as I’d stolen* loads from after the Interfaith Forum finished.  He gratefully accepted, then after finding my harmonica in my bag I posed the notion of me busking to earn him some money for the bus fair that he needed in order to get to Leeds to start the job that he’d been promised by a friend.  So I harmonica’d myself good and proper, retaining this connection with this heart that was pouring insane quantities of the Good Stuff outwards.  Noone seemed to be looking at all, everyone was walking past as robots.  I could see so much tiredness, fatigue, and thus suffering, in the alienation the people seemed to have from us.  In the 10 minutes or so I played, I had one person look at me from the corner of his eye.  No luck on the money side of things, and so I gave Romanne a couple of quid and offered more food, which he declined, and sent myself on my way.  I found the heart to be swirling even more Love than ever previously in the day.

I was talking to Jasmine on a payphone in the train station when I got there (after singing happy birthday to my dad, who I love very very much, beyond everything, unconditionally).  At one point, she got me laughing, and then I was off on one in a bit of a laughing trip.  She started laughing too, because laughing spreads.  I was bubbling completely.  Anyway, when I had finished with the call, I was just walking not knowing quite where to or what to do, as I still had much time until my train was due, and I noticed that I was being called over by a ticket inspector who was by the doors going to one of the platforms.  I went over to him and he asked me if I was Buddhist.  This question I’ve answered so much recently that I’m starting to feel like I actually might be Buddhist, as everyone seems to think I am… Anyway, I answered with the generic ‘my parents are, but I don’t consider myself to be… But I know a lot about Buddhism and can teach you meditation if you like??’.  He asked me how he can get to understand Buddhism, that he was very interested in finding out about Buddhism.  I was quick off the mark in getting my notebook out and writing down links for him.  I recommended Ajahn Brahm’s videos on youtube for getting to know Buddhism in general, the Ram Dass Awareness meditation in order to experience meditation, the Dalai Lama’s books, and I recommended him to go to the Manchester Buddhist Centre, who I said would help him out a lot.  It feels wonderful to be asked about this stuff, and to be able to share the knowledge that I trust is good knowledge according to my own experience.

Last week, a friend who works in the SU at uni asked me about going round to his for dinner sometime soon and teaching him some techniques for meditation.  Characteristically, I arrived almost back at the flat when he’d just pulled up in his car right in front of me on Saturday evening, ready to pick me up.  We both entertained ourselves with the crazy synchronisity of our great timing to meet at exactly that moment.  I don’t entertain every synchronous moment, there are far too many that the entertainment would surely get boring after a while.
Anyway, we went to his after a while and we were just chilling and talking for a while, then had dinner, then after dinner we got into things.  I gave him some deep tips that I saw as crucial for meditation.  To physically relax the forehead area (along with the muscles behind the eyes); to keep the lower back especially straight by elevating yourself properly on cushions/an alternative surface (enables energy flow); to not be afraid to go into other energy centres other than the mind [the mind, I explained, is pretty good in going into for the meditation-style astral dreaming and for bringing other images up, but meditation should definitely not be limited to meditation on the mind] (especially the heart…don’t be afraid to put full attention into the heart, to become the heart); and that the breath can be followed as a focus point for meditation but isn’t essential – allow the meditation to be a trip in itself, with everything going down as it is meant to be…don’t be overly rigid with it….
Then I led a meditation, which was made up on the spot (as the guided meditations I lead normally tend to be nowadays…).  It started with bringing down the energy from the mind (physically feeling all the muscles around the forehead relaxing, and feeling the energy from that area actually coming down the front of the face and through the different other energy centres of the body, cleansing them as the energy went, until it went through the root and into the ground).  Then we saw the breath as it went deeper and deeper within the body, as a pure energy circulating into and out of our bodies.  We then focussed on the heart area, and became the heart.  The heart radiated out to one area of ourselves that came to mind as suffering.  We meditated on this for some time, with me reminding us to retain our focus every couple of minutes or so.  Then we saw the energy emitting out to absolutely everything in the world – sentient and non-sentient alike.  It was love going out unconditionally to absolutely everything of the world.  We meditated on this for some time too, with focus-retainers every so often again.  Then I brought us back to feeling that deep breath.  Then hearing sounds both distant and near to us.  Then the feelings of our hands and our feet.  Then to slowly open the eyes, whilst keeping the deep breath and the energy of the heart firmly retained in our attention.  We meditated on this for a few minutes, then I rang the bell.
It felt absolutely wonderful to lead this meditation, and to feel that I was genuinely giving some good guidance to my friend.  He sent me a message when I was in Manchester to say that he’d woken up feeling good in the morning for the first day in ‘a long time’.

I realised what I need to do.
And it lies deeply within meditation.

I do still need to teach, after all!

But it needs to come completely from my own experience of what works wonders for me.  I will not, ever, put a price on such a thing.  I would much rather live out of the monetary system but to be giving meditation and offering words of wisdom and guidance in the city or town even so.  I don’t think that my life would lie in being completely secluded from larger civilisations, at least for now.  I will still live out a long period in real seclusion, but this is merely to train myself up for the pure social action that I have in mind of leading.  I feel I need to be giving meditation in schools, in workplaces, in universities, on the streets, in cafes, in theatre performances, in mainstream politics, in the countryside, in friends’ lives, in family’s lives, in everyone’s lives… I feel that I need to devote myself fully to this giving constantly, seamlessly.  I will live without money if need be, or get whatever job makes it possible for me to give as much as is possible.  I feel that I have too much love inside of me continuously for anyone to be missing out on receiving it, and that the best way for me to give it is in teaching them how to access the love themselves through meditation.
If my friend who I taught some meditation to the other night is a good enough case study to go by, there is absolute definite evidence that life can be completely transformed by meditation.

I live this out now.  My life is completely devoted to this.  This is my absolute priority for me now.  This Love needs to be shared and I will give absolute every resource towards sharing it in whatever turns my life takes.

* not really stolen, as it was ours for the taking, but it sounds cooler to suggest it was stolen.

Originally from: http://sisinvincible.livejournal.com/117874.html at March 05, 2013, 04:05.