WELCOME
Feel Your Way into Being
To Investigate our Embodied Experience is to Investigate the Living Present
It is only when we go to the center of our souls that we enter the ‘eye of the storm’, the still-point of our existence. In the rush to get an education, to make a career, create a family, obtain material success, to hurry, to do, to survive, we often don’t realize that in the midst of this modern-chaotic life that we lead every day, there exists another life, an unseen life that moves like a silent river beneath a city. A place where time stands still and we experience a softly euphoric sense of awakening, the feeling of breathing and falling in love in harmony with the universe.
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ILLUSIONS OF ULTIMATE FULFILLMENT
“The illusion of ultimate fulfillment” refers to the mistaken belief that achieving a specific goal, attaining a particular status, or possessing a certain material item will bring complete and lasting happiness, when in reality, the satisfaction is often fleeting and leaves one still searching for something more, often due to the influence of societal expectations and unrealistic desires.
The idea that happiness is in the next place, next job, next adventure, million dollar fortune, or even the next partner. Until we give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where we are.
Humans by their nature are unsatisfied, and consciousness—the ceaseless chatter within our heads—is the primary burden of humans. It’s a burden that animals, in their silent inner lives, do not have to carry. Humans cannot escape this burden, and the effort of struggling against it is in fact the cause of even greater suffering.
Seeking (ultimate fulfillment).
The Underlying Dis-ease, In Search of a Cure
It is part of the ego journey to conquer some things in the material world.
The ego needs to be crystallized to be dismantled. So, a crucial stage of life is the empowerment of the ego. It is for the ego to know it can handle life. That it can make money, it can conquer material things, that it is able to be recognized; it is a natural phase of the process of consciousness development. It is necessary to come to terms with this desire and to be able to let go of it and continue a grounded spiritual journey.
Sensual Awareness
“We have lost almost entirely the great and intricately developed sensual awareness, or sense-awareness, and sense-knowledge, of the ancients. It was a great depth of knowledge arrived at direct, by instinct and intuition, as we say, not by reason. Not until we can grasp a little of the working of the ancient mind can we appreciate the “magic” of the world they lived in. Men are far more fools today, for stripping themselves of their emotional and imaginative reactions, and feeling nothing. The price we pay is boredom and deadness. Our bald processes of thought no longer are life to us.”
— D.H. Lawrence
If You Wish to Know the Divine,
Feel the Wind on Your Face and the Warm Sun on Your Hand
“The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days.”
— Albert Camus, The Fall
Consider This, We Will Never Become Happy
We Can Only Ever BE Happy
Peace can exist only in the present moment.
It is ridiculous to say “Wait until I finish this, then I will be free to live in peace.” What is “this”? A diploma, a job, a house, the payment of a debt? If you think that way, peace will never come. There is always another “this” that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you will never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only “the hope of peace some day.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“Our society is very result-oriented, that’s why we are so competitive. That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance. If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet.”
“We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach. We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment which will magically appear once this and this and this happens. But what’s happening right now is “it” and it’s the only “it” we have. The rest is just fabrication.”
Present Moment Experience
Being aware of our core can awaken a feeling of intimacy with all life. Present moment experience is physical and body-based, not intellectual or theoretical. If we are not in alignment with the moment, life is a struggle. It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our body that our true presence can awaken.
There is only the present moment, and in the moment there is only relating. How we relate, or rather how well we love, depends on how empty we are of ideas, concepts, expectations.
Reality exists in the here and now. This is the ultimate, complete and final truth of life. All beings exist in this present moment. When we lose connection with reality in the endless pursuit of “conditional/conceptual” happiness, we lose awareness of our inherent, primordial, natural state. Our mind wanders incessantly, but our body and senses are always in the present. To investigate our embodied experience is to investigate the living present.
The highest form of intimacy is truth. When we have nothing to hide, no one to impress, nothing to lose, no games left to play, no attachment to outcomes, real connection and intimacy happens.
Being present is like standing on a cliff — exhilarating!
“The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
“Nothing was. Nothing will be. Everything is.”
~ Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Now is All there Is, Feel Your Way into Being
“Happiness is that state of being which is time less. That timeless state can come only when there is a tremendous discontent – not the discontent that has found a channel through which it escapes, but the discontent that has no outlet, that has no escape, that is no longer seeking fulfillment. Only then, in that state of supreme discontent, can reality come into being. That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of love.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
“To be in love with what is now — that’s the way. That’s the only way. The rest is just the ego trying to survive.”
~ Adyashanti
“When you realize you don’t know who’s living your life, breathing your breath, or thinking your thoughts, it’s a shocking moment.”
– Adyashanti
Familiarity is Your Comfort Zone
There comes a time in your life when the life you have been living is over, and you have no clue who you are becoming.
~ Marion Woodman
“As long as you are interested in your present way of living, you will not abandon it. Discovery cannot come as long as you cling to the familiar. It is only when you realize fully the immense sorrow of your life and revolt against it, that a way out can be found. As long as you have all sorts of ideas about yourself, you know yourself through the mist of these ideas; to know yourself as you are, give up all ideas. You cannot imagine the taste of pure water.
You can only discover it by abandoning all flavorings.”
~ Nisargdatta Maharaj
“What a lovely paradox that absolute aloneness reveals itself to be absolute intimacy with all things, an intimacy closer than unity or even oneness. Truly it cannot be put into words but must reveal itself from the very heart of aloneness.”
~ Adyashanti
“The Heart is the only Reality. The mind is only a transient phase. To remain as one’s Self, Is to enter The Heart.”
~ Ramana Maharshi
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Jesus
“The center of your heart, is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth.”
— Rumi
Intimacy With All Things
“There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me.
Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon . . .Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return, again and again, and be saturated with knowing, ‘I belong here, I am at home here.”
~ Vijnaan Bhairav Tantra.
‘ Beauty is simply Reality. Seen with the eyes of Love.’
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Your Natural State
“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it?
Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
~ Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
Nonconceptual Awareness
“The state of not knowing is the most important state you can be in, because that opens you up to the deeper dimensions”
~Eckhart Tolle
In the beginners mind, there are many possibilities.
Aligning With Gravity
“As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.”
– Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind
Being Present
Bodhi is a Sanskrit word meaning “awakening”. Bodhi Body is not a path, philosophy or belief system. It is a body-based gathering together of the “highest truth” for the recognition and penetration of pure Being.
One of the good things about the pleasure of inhabiting the body — how we feel the body from within, what we now call proprioception, our sense of the body as we feel it from inside — is that it’s an inherent pleasure that doesn’t have many stories at all. If you do not disturb the basic process of life within you, joy is the natural outcome. Prior to seeking pleasure or fulfilling a need. Joy is not an achievement; joy is our natural state.
“The key is to just let go into this awake, alive presence. Don’t be concerned with transcending anything. Always remember that surrendering to the core of being is the Way. Go where the depth of silence takes you, to the very root of your existence. The more simple you keep the practice the more powerful it is.”
~ Adyashanti
Being & Doing
Being must be felt not thought.
“We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
When you have a deep profound sense of being, you’re not worried about the meaning of your life.
― Adyashanti
“The feminine is not interested in abstract theories and logical reasons.
Feminine wisdom comes out of the marrow of bone, out of the suffering of experience—the fish that comes out of the gut, not the bird out of the head. Like the primitive woman, the feminine makes the passover into maturity when it experiences itself as part of the cosmic rhythms of nature, at the same time looking straight at the reality of the here and now, the present that is instantaneously shifting. That truth is non-negotiable.”
~ Marion Woodman
“What began as masculine values has degenerated into lust for control. Power has bludgeoned both our femininity and our masculinity. We all function with these two different energies. As health and growth depend on both dark and light, maturity depends on an inner balance between Yin and Yang, Shakti and Shiva, Being and Doing.
I prefer to call these energies femininity and masculinity because their biological images appear in dreams and their interaction or lack of interaction reveals harmony or chaos in the psyche. For me these words are not gender-bound. The task of releasing the feminine from the tyrannical power of the driven, crazed masculine is long and arduous. The process is just as difficult inside as it is outside. Observing it abstractly is one thing; experiencing it personally is quite another.”
~ Marion Woodman
The Feminine Principal
“When I say the feminine, I don’t mean gender. I mean the feminine principle that is living—or suppressed—in both men and women. The feminine principle attempts to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it says, Where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?
Now, these are very serious questions. And the feminine is difficult to talk about because so few people have experienced it. The feminine is presence, and relatedness, and a heart that can open so that when you meet another person you actually are seeing that person’s authentic self. What meaning does human life have if nobody has ever seen you?
I can’t tell you the number of people—men and women—who have sat in my office sobbing, saying, “Nobody ever saw me. Nobody ever had time to listen. So I am unlovable”—the saddest word in the language. Sometimes I’ve had a real flood of feeling about somebody, and I put out my hand and they say, “Don’t touch me. I’m unlovable.” And they mean it. As a child, that person was raised where the feminine was not present. You have to experience the feminine to understand it.
Ask yourself: As a child, who saw you? Who heard you? Was there anyone with whom you could be totally yourself and to whom you could trust your heart responses and speak your soul responses? Someone who made you think, “Gosh, I am somebody. They’re happy that I’m here.”
The great work of our time is to bring the feminine into this culture. And it’s not an easy path. How does each one of us contribute? Believe it or not, it’s done in the most personal ways. Take time to listen to your dreams, to write them down. Take time to recognize that there are things going on within you that need to be felt, or said, or lived, or grieved. Pay attention to these things both in yourself and in the people in your life. Pay attention to the authentic self.
…Love is the real power. It’s the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you will want to use it. It brings out your creativity and helps everyone around you flower. Your children, the people you work with—everyone blooms.”
~ Marion Woodman
We Think Too Much and Feel Too Little
“Have you noticed how angular and masculine so much communication is?
If you destroy the temple and the greatness of Woman, you reduce life to scandalous nonsense. Monotonous, aggressive exchanges, petty concerns, and rivalries, and all the rest of the nonsense of mind divorced from the realm of feeling…mankind is throwing it away with both hands.
Everything about Woman — in other words, everything about the domain of feeling and the senses, and pleasurable association with the feeling and sense domain— is corrupt at the present moment, and opposed…That which Woman is, that which she incarnates, that which her pattern is about, requires mankind to be integrated with it as the core of life…”
~ Adi Da Samraj
Sense your presence, the naked unveiled, unclothed beingness.
It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form.
– Ramana Maharshi
All houses are dark until the Mother wakes up.
~ Khalil Gibran
How Our Culture Makes Us Feel Lost
Aligning w/ Gravity – Earth & Sky
The Tetrahedral Star can be said to represent the complete equilibrium and unity of the two poles of nature – spirit and matter, masculine and feminine, heaven and earth. It is a geometric and energetic representation of the human body. It is believed that all life and all of creation is based on this equilibrium.
Embodied alignment is the integration of gross physical and subtle energetic forces of manifest existence. An inner “line” expressed within the constant relational field of earth’s gravity and infinite space of sky. Our mind is the function of masculine energy and our heart is the function of feminine energy.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
The Tetrahedral Star represents the energy body of the human being, the blending of Heaven and Earth, Masculine and Feminine. The two tetrahedrons contained within each other represent the two poles of creation in complete balance – Spirit and matter. All creation is based on this Divine Balance. Hidden within this body is the Higher, Divine Self, the Eternal Being. Within and from ourselves, we are the link between the world of Spirit and that of matter.
“Most human beings are living their whole lives from the pairs of opposites because it’s the only way they know. But when you discover that there is within you this place that is beyond the pairs of opposites, and that place, that state of awareness, is actually what you are, you start to realize you can live from that place.”
― Adyashanti
“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough —sustain it, be true to it—we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.”
— Marie-Louise von Franz
Integration of Head & Heart
Love story of Shiva & Shakti from Indian Mythology
Head and heart means the integration of masculine & feminine energies within oneself.
“Myriad things, backed by yin and embracing yang; Achieve harmony by integrating their energy.”
– Lao Tzu
“The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.”
— Carl Jung
Warrior & Yogi
Within each of us exists a warrior and a yogi. A warrior who will push through and overcome, who is determined, who will achieve, and a yogi, who is the most tenderhearted and compassionate being. The one that can let go, that can flow with what is. But it is the combination of these two that makes us uniquely human. We have the opportunity at any given moment, to select the behavior that is appropriate: a call for action, or a call for surrender.
The ideal is to integrate this dual nature into one, complete being.
“Imagination and willpower are the two poles of the mind. Imagination is female; willpower is masculine. The key to success lies in imagination and will come together in vibrant harmony.”
– Samael Aun Weor
Bodhi Body Being
Bodhi Body sessions are based on Rolfing ® Structural Integration, the work of Dr. Ida Rolf and influenced by the Craniosacral work of Dr. Andrew Still, and Polarity Therapy, the conscious health building system of Dr. Randolph Stone. Bodhi Body Biodynamic Structural Integration can create openings on emotional, physical and spiritual layers, depending on your intention; to support you with what is emerging for transformation.
Biodynamic Structural Integration
Dr. Ida Rolf had a vision of human potential that went beyond effective symptomatic pain relief and “good posture”. Better alignment was not an end in itself but a means of coming into a more personal and profound relationship with earth, spirit, self and other. Integrated as One, Complete, Being.
Journey of the Heart
“Passion is the spark of excitement we feel when we stand on the edge of the unknown. It arrives on the boundary where two different worlds rub up against each other — male and female, self and other, inner and outer, familiar patterns and unchartered possibilities.
So in following our passions all the way, we arrive at the boundary of life and death; here we feel the insignificance of our small self as we enter into the mystery from which we come and to which we must return.”
~ John Welwood, Journey of the Heart
The unknown, the mind of not “knowing”, is the true mind. It is not a blank, vacant or dull state, it is alive with the vividness and depth of Presence and Being fully here/now.
Aligning with Gravity
Truth is Where You Stand No Where Else
If you are unable to find the Truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
“Wherever you are, enlightenment is there. And if you stand upright where you are, that is enlightenment. It means ‘accepting things as it is’, accepting yourself as you are.”
-Shunryu Suzuki
“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
Aligning With Gravity
Man is an event on a line, connecting Heaven and Earth. Man organizes himself around the line so that he can be a more fully functioning Human Being.
When the body comes into alignment with gravity, it spontaneously heals itself.
~ Dr. Ida P. Rolf
Gravity
Feel Your Way into Being
A Dimension Deeper than Thought
Stress, it’s not in our head, it’s in our myofascial nervous system. Sympathetic/Parasympathetic nervous system homeostasis is our natural state. Feel your way into being by releasing stress patterning within your human form. The great wisdom dwells in the body, fully away from all thought. It is only by grounding our awareness in the living sensation of our body that our true presence can awaken.
Being Must Be Felt Not Thought
Feel the Mystery
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. …That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
~ Anthony de Mello, Awareness Quotes
Awakening the Intelligence of the Body
“The intelligence of the body attunes to wholeness. It resonates to the world around it. That is its true nature. Just as it is our true nature.
Our longing for embodiment, then, is a longing to grow into our fullest reality: to put to rest our divisions and liberate our stifled energies and to finally feel the self and the world in the wholeness of the moment. What we long for is a homecoming – coming home to the self, coming home to the present. And it’s crucial in our head-centric culture to understand that you can’t achieve that homecoming by grasping any idea; it is a tangible, physical journey that drops your thinking out of the head and lets it come to rest deep in your body.
When that happens, the energy of your being achieves coherence and attunes to the life of the present. You feel yourself embedded in an intelligence that guides and informs and clarifies – an intelligence that sings through your body not in a language of words, but in a language of sensational, borderless awareness.”
~ Philip Shepherd, Radical Wholeness
Joy is Our Natural State
NATURAL PRIMORDIAL PERFECTION
Sahaja is one of the four keywords of the Nath sampradaya along with Svecchachara, Sama, and Samarasa. Sahaja meditation and worship was prevalent in Tantric traditions common to Hinduism and Buddhism in Bengal as early as the 8th–9th centuries. The British Nath teacher Mahendranath wrote:
Man is born with an instinct for naturalness. He has never forgotten the days of his primordial perfection, except insomuch as the memory became buried under the artificial superstructure of civilization and its artificial concepts. Sahaja means natural… The tree grows according to Sahaja, natural and spontaneous in complete conformity with the Natural Law of the Universe. Nobody tells it what to do or how to grow. It has no swadharma or rules, duties and obligations incurred by birth. It has only svabhava – its own inborn self or essence – to guide it. Sahaja is that nature which, when established in oneself, brings the state of absolute freedom and peace.
The Last Achievement of Thought
“Take my soul to that place, where I may speak without words.”
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
