Awakening—Keep your eyes on the ball!

 If you remain in the "don't want" state, everything will come to you. That is why both likes and dislikes are not wanted. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

Do you want to live like an enlightened one does? It’s not hard to do, just keep your eyes on the ball. Rain or shine, we mostly know what to do. So just do it and otherwise keep quiet. That’s what the masters do as well.

If you feel awful doing what needs to get done, do it and recover from the emotional turmoil later. If you feel excited reaping your rewards, that’s fine too. Just don’t let these moments of joy interfere with what needs to get done.

A friend once observed, “It is true what they say, before enlightenment cut wood and carry water. After enlightenment, cut wood and carry water. It’s just that afterwards we do it much more happily!” Contentment is what distinguishes the master from us.

The true learning opportunity happens when we are asked to face the depth of our subconscious. In moments when we don’t know what to do, or in times when the pain or excitement becomes so overwhelming that we take our eyes off the ball.

God gave us two eyes to spot life’s invite for learning in between the being.

Stop the Hurting Cycle

 Why do we hurt others?  The reason is that you get hurt, and you cannot face yourself. You make others responsible for your pain, and in turn, hurt others. So, hurting others is a way of escaping pain.

Running away from your pain and not be willing to face it will only create more issues. If you can come back to yourself, then you can end this karma. Ending this karma is the ultimate way of achieving peace. The alternative is to hurt others, then add more resentment toward each other, add even more karma, and then you hurt more, and add more karma. This is the endless cycle so many are born into. This is incarnation.

Suzhen Liu

 

The story of the six blind men and the elephant

 It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the elephant,

—though all of them were blind—

that each by observation

might satisfy his mind.

John Godfrey Saxe 

You may remember the story of the six blind men who all described the elephant from their vantage point. They all described their respective experiences—body like a wall, tusk like a spear, trunk like a snake, knee like a tree, ear like a fan, tail like a rope—but together they couldn’t come up with anything.

Likewise in spirituality, we have six approaches to get our arms around the illusionary nature of self to be united in Oneness.

Knowing     Understanding the illusionary nature of psychological self 

Meditation     Experiencing the stillness of mind

The Way     Perceiving the flow of life

Love     Grasping the oneness of everything via the heart center 

Energy     Activating the seven energy centers 

Healing     Letting go of psychological baggage

The irony is that Oneness can be perceived through all dimensions yet the practitioners sometimes mistrust each other just as much as the six blind men of Hindustan do. It’s a pity!

On Listening

 When you are listening, in that moment of focus and attention, your anger and your sadness disappears, and your worries and suffering are gone. All of these temporarily stop—they do not arise, and they are not present.

 

At the moment when you are listening to the other person’s voice, you are not listening with your anger or sadness. You are not listening with your mind. At this time, your deeper obstacles will naturally begin to clear themselves.

 

When you are listening without being in a mental or analytical state, the energy that you have always possessed can naturally expand. Your heart becomes extremely stable, and your perception becomes sharper and clearer.

 

Because there is no interference—because you are directly receiving and listening to this energy—it becomes very pure. And this purity brings forth the inner “stability” within you.

 

At this point, when you begin to practice the Letting Go Method, the power becomes much stronger. The deeper your inner stability is, the stronger the force of your letting go becomes.

 

By Suzhen Liu

 

If you enjoy Suzhen Liu’s writings please check out her latest book, “Discover Love Within—Release Your Suffering” available on Amazon. 

https://www.amazon.com/Discover-Love-Within-Release-Suffering-ebook/dp/B0G4L29MVN

Heart-centered living (video)

 A friend needed to get a job done but his daughter invited him to draw with him. He resisted but when she insisted they drew and sang together. He felt the moment had completely transformed. This is heart-centered living, away from the mind to the heart. We can consciously make this shift.

5 minute YouTube video attached below:

https://youtu.be/Wou8fmHyCSk?si=Ox6OIdi21r5xyFwQ

Timeless energy

 Thoughts and emotions are portals to what lies beyond conditioned mind, but first we have to face the memories, belief sets and human energies that they represent. The here and now is always an opportunity to break through a deeper level of consciousness and connect with a timeless energy that is always at our disposal. 

Viktor Frankl described this portal and the opportunity to open ourselves to a higher frequency of being when he observed: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” We don’t choose. We connect with timeless energy!

How Thoughts Influence the Movement of Energy

 It is essential for the mind to remain calm. The power of the mind should never be underestimated. When I was still a beginner in Qigong, I often tested how our thoughts influence Qi. For example, when I thought of someone I disliked and allowed that feeling of aversion to arise, I could immediately feel my Qi becoming tense. But the moment I thought of someone I truly loved, as soon as the feeling of love surfaced, my Qi relaxed instantly.

 

From these simple observations, we can see how powerful our thoughts are. When we have many inner obstacles we cannot transcend, our Qi becomes tight and unable to relax. As a result, we cannot resolve our issues or relieve our physical discomfort. Our physical discomfort or illness is always connected to our mindset. If we cannot transcend these mindsets, the illness cannot be eradicated.

 

Qi is intimately related to our thoughts. Even if you are an advanced Qigong practitioner, if you cannot go deep into the mind and the soul, you cannot bring true comfort to the body through Qi alone. We need not only to cleanse the physical body, but also the subtle body. If we cannot reach the deeper layers of the mind and soul, the physical body will inevitably be affected. When we cannot touch the energy beneath the level of consciousness, we remain only at the surface level of awareness.

 

The discomfort in our body is the accumulation of decades of thoughts. When we lack awareness, a single negative thought can tighten the entire body—not just one area—and this tension manifests especially in the weak or vulnerable places, eventually becoming illness. Therefore, major physical issues cannot be resolved without awareness of our mindset.

By Suzhen Liu

If you enjoy Suzhen Liu’s writings, please check out her new book, “Discover Love Within—Release Your Suffering, available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Discover-Love-Within-Release-Suffering-ebook/dp/B0G4L29MVN