The Pulse of Spirit - "Knowing Through the Heart"

I recently was working on an article about values in politics. At one point I mention how important I feel it is for there to be a balance between head and heart in political discourse and policy making. David Karchere makes the point quite clearly during this message delivered in May, 2014. - jh

 

 

THE PULSE OF SPIRIT

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Knowing Through the Heart
May 12, 2014

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From a transcription of David Karchere’s words on an international video conference on May 4, 2014

Greetings, everyone. David Karchere here, from North Reddish, England. Here at St. Agnes Church we’ve had a wonderful day with Clive Larsen and friends. And I can tell you, if you haven’t been hugged by the good people of St. Agnes Church, you haven’t been hugged. There’s such a spirit of love in this community! And I’ve been away from home, traveling, long enough that I miss my home. I miss Sunrise Ranch and my family and friends. And at the same time, as I walked into the church this morning, I felt I was coming home.

It’s said that home is where the heart is. Home is where the spirit of love lives. And wherever there are people who embody the spirit of universal love and let it flow freely, there is a true home. So I’m so grateful for what is here and what’s among people, wherever they are, all over the world, where the true home is present and known. And from that true home there is altitude and there is a transmission. There is a tower of faith, a tower of reality, and therefore a transmission from that tower.

For that transmission to come from us, it takes courage. It takes something deliberate. And we might take the attitude about people in our life, “Well, they know I love them.” Do they? It’s so obvious that love is something that is of the heart. It is something that’s transmitted through the heart. And while there’s a vital part that our conscious mind has to play in our spirituality, ultimately, without a heart that’s open and is transmitting the frequency of love, how do we truly connect? How do we connect upward to the larger reality of Being that we are a part of? And how do we connect to other people and to the world?

I’ve been thinking about the role that our human mind plays in our life. And there’s a reason to have a human intellect. It’s vital in all kinds of ways, including the practicality of living life on Planet Earth and in the world in which we live. So the human intellect is vital, but it is no substitute for an open heart. The human intellect can be all about the questions of “what” and “how”: What should happen here? What do I want to happen? What’s going on? And how? How do I make happen what I want to happen? How do I make things work out? What’s the technology, what’s the method? The human mind is good for those kinds of questions.

But the human mind alone is very bad for an even more essential question. And until that more essential question is answered, all the discussion and all the thought about how we do things only lead down a path of destruction. It leads to things like atom bombs and global warming, and wars in Iraq and many other places around the globe. It leads to man’s inhumanity to man. It leads to the rape and destruction of the planet, because only when a person has not answered the “who” of life could they be so seemingly wise as to invent all this technology that we have in our world but at the same time so incredibly ignorant that they don’t know what technology is for. They don’t know the basics for creating a true technology, a technology that would truly serve humanity, that would truly serve this planet and not destroy it.

That most essential question is a question of “who.” The human intellect looks at the question of who: “Who am I?” and in a very intellectual way reflects on the human experience, a human life. Philosophers reflect on human life and ask, “Who am I? Who are we?” and pose that as the great existential question.

There’s a story familiar to many of us. It’s a Bible story. In this story there’s a depiction of the human intellect, the human mind in all its glory, keeping humanity enslaved. And then there’s also a picture of the knowing of Being, the knowing of the reality of God, the knowing of who one is. That story is the story of Pharaoh and Moses, and Moses setting the people free. When faced with Moses’ demand to let his people go, Pharaoh’s answer is: “I know not your God, and I will not let your people go.” The human intellect all by itself, with all its vaunted wisdom, doesn’t know and will never know of itself the answer to the most important question in life—“Who is present?” The answer to this question brings all wisdom and all truth available to the human experience.

The answer to the question can only be known through the heart. It astounds and stupefies the human mind that it can’t know who it is, and it can’t know God. It can’t experience oneness with other people and connect with other people. And the human intellect can’t really connect with this planet, because that knowing and that connection happens only through the open heart. The connection to one another is through the heart, and therefore the knowing of one another is through the heart. The connection with this planet and with all of nature, and therefore the knowing of this planet and the understanding of this planet, is through the heart. And yes, there are things to understand intellectually, but true understanding of the mind only comes when there is connection through the heart.

People make all kinds of attempts to connect with God. Intellectually, we may think that if we meditated long enough, if we prayed long enough, maybe if we practiced yoga long enough, we would connect. Maybe if we confessed enough, said enough repentance, maybe if we studied long enough, maybe if we read long enough, maybe if we went to enough workshops, we would know God. I say no, not ever that way. Not ever.

Through our recent tour in Europe, we have talked about various kinds of courage. There is the courage of performing brave acts, which is the courage of action. That is what we usually think of when we think of courage, and truly that can be courage. And then there is the courage to truly think for yourself, and that is a rare kind of courage. The courage I am addressing now is the courage to open your heart and connect and allow what would come to you in that connection to come to you, to be known by you—to allow what’s available to you from the universe, from other people, from the planet and from God, to come. In that connection we find there is not only something coming to us but there is also something coming from us. There is a knowing and a being known.

So here we are, separated by oceans and miles. You might say we’re always separated by some kind of space; it just depends on how much—seemingly separated by space and many other things, by culture, by personality, by race and gender. I’m asking in this moment whether all of us, connected seemingly by telephone, by Internet and streaming video, can make a different kind of connection right now and perceive through the instrument of the heart the presence of Being, the presence of Being in all people and therefore in each other; the presence of Being in all things, in all human relations.

There are things to know and there are understandings to have about other people and about relationships with them. But all of that understanding springs out of a knowing and a connection to who they are and who we are. It is a question, first of all, of who is present. And in knowing who is present and connecting with who is present, and coming into that deeply—in ourselves, first of all, coming into the presence of Being—we can feel that same presence in one another and know that we’re ultimately not only connected but there is one presence in us all and in all creation. When we know that, that is the beginning of all wisdom. And the lack of that knowing is the beginning of all ignorance.

At Sunrise Ranch we have recently published a document which I’ve shared on this trip with people that we’ve met with, and it speaks of the philosophy of Sunrise Ranch and speaks of that philosophy as honoring Universal Being, honoring the Being in all things and all people, and ultimately in ourselves. In St. Agnes, in the service this morning, I reveled in the practice of a true Christian faith—that faith as it was originally taught by Jesus, as it was originally known by him and practiced by him. It was a faith based in a knowing of Universal Being. And I felt, in St. Agnes this morning, that we redeemed that word God that has been so misused, that has been used to refer to a reality far distant from who we are, far distant from this planet, up in the sky someplace, unattainable in experience and by connection for us as human beings.

People think and speak of using the name of the Lord in vain. Using the word God in this way as something separate and disconnected surely is in vain, for it leads noplace. Jesus taught I and my Father are one. And for that word God to have meaning, that surely must be the experience. That experience is only known through an open heart. And where there is an open heart, it cannot help but be known. If you try to think yourself into it, you’ll be thinking a long time, and you won’t be knowing. It’s only as the human mind admits defeat in this regard, admits its total futility, that a person can give up on that attempt and open their heart. The human mind, of itself, doesn’t know God and wasn’t built to. It was made to be an instrument of awareness brought to it by the open heart. And then the mind can be a servant to that knowing—a servant. I do believe we have to admit, perhaps on behalf of all Western civilization, perhaps on behalf of all the so-called developed cultures of the world, that our mind, of itself, is futile and helpless when it comes to the most important things in life; and that its true role is one of accepting the humility of being a servant to a large knowing that only comes to the mind through its friend and partner, which is the open heart.

I want to recall a very ancient teaching that was even before Jesus’ time on earth, Jesus’ life. It is that ancient psalm, attributed to King David but likely from a far earlier time—he may have been the publisher, maybe even the editor, but very likely not the author. I’m speaking of the Twenty-fourth Psalm, in which this knowing of Universal Being was brought so profoundly. And in the minds of most people around the world, the deeper truth of that psalm is hidden in plain sight, shrouded in religious concept and religious idea that fills the human mind, but without the heart connection to the deeper reality being pointed to so clearly.

“The earth is the Lord’s.” The earth is an embodiment of Universal Being. “…the world, and they that dwell therein.” All people, everywhere, no matter how unknowing, no matter how ignorant, no matter how they’re behaving, no matter what has happened in their life, belong to Universal Being. Within all people is Universal Being, the reality that is rightly named as God, as much as that word has been misunderstood. And in fact, all of us together, all of humanity, all of the world, was meant to be the way by which Universal Being could be present in this world. This world does not belong to the human intellect, which is thinking about how it can bend that world to its own will, bend other people to its own will, bend nature to its own will. This world belongs to Universal Being. And the reality of Being is meant to be embodied and manifested in this world.

I think of that prayer of Jesus where he so clearly spoke to this: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Here is the exact same message as the Twenty-fourth Psalm: that in this world, on earth, the reality of Universal Being is meant to be present, the will of Universal Being is meant to be done, and the home of Universal Being, referred to as heaven, the kingdom, is meant to be present right here on earth. Oneness is the truth. But there can be no oneness, there cannot be connection leading to oneness, without the courage of an open heart.

This, I know, is what our world needs now from us—not us as smart human beings, even spiritual human beings, who are going to figure this all out. The world needs us as Universal Being incarnate and in expression through our glorious humanity. And our humanity does become glorious when the Being of who we are is in full and free expression through it. But how does that ever happen without an open heart? When that does happen, we put ourselves in touch with the wisdom of Universal Being, which is our wisdom. And our mind can function intelligently and brilliantly and creatively in that context.

So I appreciate the opportunity to share this around the world. Love to all my friends and family at Sunrise Ranch. I miss you deeply. Love to my friends around the world, many of whom I have met and know person-to-person, and many whom I haven’t met, but I believe we know each other through an open heart regardless—being-to-being, love-to-love, having the courage to extend that love which knows no boundaries, no distance, no space that could separate. And as we are connected and one throughout the world, we can feel and know the reality of heaven, the kingdom, coming into our own experience and coming into the world.

David Karchere
dkarchere@emnet.org

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Knowing: A lesson from the recent election

 

 

Knowing… Beyond Belief and Epistemological Closure

Posted by John Hutchinson

Recently, the presidential election in the United States came as a shock to many leaders of the party that lost. It came as an unbelievable surprise to fundraisers and directors of super political action committees [SuperPACs] and to their donors who flushed hundreds of millions of dollars into these efforts in the hopes that their dollars would influence voters.

 In some political races, the ‘losers’ find it so hard to believe the results that they are challenging those results and asking for recounts.

I heard a term from a political commentator which caught my attention. 'He' called the dynamics of the losing party as that of falling into the category of “epistemological closure.” What? As they discussed this, I came to understand it as a way of saying, “We know that our candidate is going to win because all the people we talk with also believe he is going to win… and the polls that show other information are biased toward the other candidate and therefore ‘wrong.’”  This ‘closed-minded’ approach of only listening to those who ‘believe’ the same thing is not confined to many in the political party which lost the election. They ignored or reframed all empirical data as ‘wrong,’ ‘biased,’ or ‘irrelevant.’

Supposedly by raising doubts about something means the opposite is true. And we know this is not the case. Another example is the area of climate change. Raising doubts by quoting a handful of ‘scientists’ who are not convinced that climate change is happening and that humans play a role in it as nearly 95% of ‘climate scientists suggest, does not change the empirical data that exists. If in fact someone wishes to prove science wrong, then the scientific method needs to be used to refute scientific argument. Or one can just believe what they want to believe. This does not make it so.

There are other examples of “Epistemological Closure” we can look at and some relate to what is “believed” in religious and spiritual communities. There can be, though not always is, a certain ‘closed-minded’ agreement of “believers” whether it is in the fundamentalism of a religious belief system based upon a sacred scripture or revered doctrine or in the New Age and Consciousness Movement ideas that are shared among the “true believers.”

This begs the question, at least to me, “How do we know something to be true?”

Do we depend on a teacher or book or doctrine to say what is ‘true’? We can. Yet this is information and data that is feed into our sensory being. We can use these as tools perhaps to explore more about life and to see them as one interpretation of life-s meaning or path.

How do we learn of love? Is it through reading concepts or is it in experiencing the dynamics of Love. One can point to love in a conceptual way; the other provides first-hand knowledge of some energy dynamics that leads to an acceptance and knowing that love is. I would suggest this is real ‘knowing’ beyond egoic and mental knowledge.

Many spiritual teachings speak of the oneness of life. Science even grapples with these quantum and unified field dynamics of life. Hearing or reading about this can point to the possibility and the words of spiritual teachers, when authentic, emerge from their experience of ‘Oneness.’  Yet you and I do not fully understand the experience of ‘oneness’ until our egoic mental egg has cracked a bit to allow us to experience the wonder of ‘Oneness.’ Talking about what others have said does not make it so for us. Personal knowledge comes from personal experience, even when it is impossible to put into precise words.

Carl Jung was once asked if he “believed in God?”  His answer, “I don’t believe, I know.” He spoke from personal experience of the ‘Numinous’ or spiritual source and also from the personal experience of seeing healing in his patients when there was this numinous experience in their ‘treatment.’ And we too can say, “I know” as we have experienced that dynamic of “Mystery” which is the One Life.

So let us move beyond closed-minded “Epistemological Closure” and experience ‘Life Energy’ or ‘Spirit’ or the ‘Numinous or ‘Mystery’ or ‘Source’ or ‘God’ for ourselves. Then we can speak from understanding and knowing, not because others agree with us, but because of our own witness to what has happened and is happening in the present moment.

To return to the opening example, Nate Silver was 90% sure of the elections outcome, because he did the live math from real poll averages and researched it in all its ‘nerdiness.’ He was lambasted by pundits from all political parties. Hats off to Nate and his statistical analysis for correctly predicting the outcome of the election down to getting every state’s outcome correct. He didn’t listen to pundits; he listened to his experience and empirical information he received. 

And may this be a reminder to all of us to look beyond the words of friends, colleagues, and co-believers and come to the answers ourselves.

Many Dwelling Places...

It is written that our brother and spiritual master, Jesus, said, "In my Father's house are many mansions...."

And indeed in the world of worlds and universe of universes, both physical and spiritual, there are many dwelling places...

There are many planes of knowing and consciousness... time collapses into eternity now... as we are being ushered into new realms of awareness...

Treat each person as if they were your favorite Great-great grandfather or grandmother... for in fact they may be...

Treat each other as if all are one and the same as the Divine Source and Mystery of Life and Love... for indeed we are in some way...at some level... One Soul... One Being... Now...

Happy Loving Moment!...

 

 ... and welcome to this Present Moment!

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 John Hutchinson

Truth... What is it and How can we Know?

Knowing… Truth… What is it and how can we know?

It’s simple right… In this Information Age where data and info are paramount, all we need to do is ‘google’ it… in less than 2 tenths of a second, ‘truth’ gets about 2 Million hits to read about truth… and in less than 3 tenths of a second, searching the word ‘know’ produces more than 1.3 BILLION opportunities to learn about ‘know’ and ‘knowing’…

We can spend the rest of our lives reading all these articles and information results of a search engine on the internet… and we can also read about all the teachings of spiritual guides and teachers from throughout the ages…

I would like to save us some time… having spent many hours reading, contemplating, practicing this and that, exploring dreams and consciousness, taking formal and informal classes, workshops, and seminars…and trying to convey something of what I’ve learned through both speaking and writing…

So the short answer is… each one of us has to find our Return Ticket Home for ourselves.

This doesn’t mean we are alone… I suggest we are never alone…we only feel that way… until we find that Return Ticket Home … The Return Ticket Home leads us to the Now-Gate that transports us to the Realm of Consciousness that is Eternally Now… As we go through the Now-Gate, we find ourselves right where we are… the only thing that has changed is that it is now more like heaven than earth… we have stepped from the limitations of time and space and form… to that which is eternally Now… The Great Source of the Present Moment of Life… Returning Home to Essence of our True Being…

So, back to ‘knowing’ and ‘truth’… As you read these words or any words, simply take what seems right and true from your experience or to your heart, and leave the rest behind… Each person finds their Return Ticket Home in their perfect time…

Knowing comes to you and through you…from the inside out… we tend to look under the lights others have provided… but guess what… they may say some things that ring true in your experience, but they are not you… Truth is not about finding a written document or dogmatic creed… it is about finding Life…

Remember how it is reported how much intense time Jesus spent with his followers… They certainly liked what they saw… but there is little evidence that they got it while he taught them and walked with them… They could see the authority of his words because they saw him living his ‘talk’…it seemed, from the reports, to be only later as they were gathered together in one place that an ‘knowing’ in the moment entered their experience and it was beyond understandable words and language …

We have language that becomes a kind of mind game and we think we know because we read or hear something… the key word is ‘think’… Humanity has tried to communicate something for as long as ‘who knows’… symbols and words…languages are removed from experience… If I write that “soft ‘Soundscapes’ gently fill the air from the gadget downstairs,” you may get a sense of my experience…. And you also have to project your own experience onto my words… so now we are at least 2 steps removed from the “real” experience that I have had and tried to convey… we have my translation of my experience into symbols and then your interpretation of my translation based upon your own experience…. So you have to project your own meaning onto what you think I meant… Suppose you wanted to write about my experience… anyone reading your words is now at least 5 processing steps removed from the event… granted there may be some general idea of the original experience…but never 100%...

I may have an deep experience which we might call “spiritual” or “mystical” and I have had a deep sense of ‘knowing’ the ‘truth’ of the experience of ‘Being’…of “I am”-ness… of connection with the “Totality of Life”… “Source”… “G-o-d” … “All That Is”…”Mystery” … “Great Spirit” … so each of these symbols, words, and phrases conveys something… and what it conveys is always processed through thought… the mental processing in our brain that is conditional upon our own mindset which is developed through our experience…

Unless the reader has experienced the formless essence of Being, and associates that experience with symbols I choose, there is only the mental gymnastics of understanding symbols without real essential meaning… without knowing… If the reader has experienced the ‘Numinous’… the Light of Being’… they will have that experience to project onto my chosen words… if not, he or she may be intrigued and curious about the ‘unknown’ or they may make an ego judgment that I am simply ‘crazy’… as evidently the family of Jesus made about him at one point…

Let’s look at another example how mental gymnastics can get in the way from direct experience … I have often enjoyed music that is played without words to it… I suspect this is because the sound vibrations have a better chance of reaching my being and resonating than when I am trying to process words and meaning at a mental level… If a song is sung in a language I do not understand, I can more deeply appreciate the real experience of the vibrations and harmonics… I can better ‘know’ the music in my being…

It is both ironic and necessary that I write using the cognitive and creative thinking function we possess… This function of our humanness is or can be quite useful in learning about the world and functioning in life. So, when does mental gymnastics become a hindrance or a simple tool of the ego to keep us disconnected from the ‘Real’… from the present moment of Eternity?

It is ‘normal for us to observe and to see how things works in the world…to observe connections… to see that lightning creates a spark or flame… that sun focused through a curved glass can intensify heat to flame… It is good to remember that a flame is hot and can cause damage to our skin… there is a good quality about putting things together and remembering… it is how we function in the world…

The same cognitive processing can became detached from reality when we hold rigidly to any thought-form, concept, or belief that removes us from seeing the reality of the present moment.

By always interpreting what we see according to labels and old mindsets, we do maintain a certain status quo… balance… and security… And at the same time may be losing consciousness of the ‘Reality’ in the moment.

Our mental structure, sometimes referred to as ego, is part of our humanity… reactions of the ego structures or cognitive processing is also a product of our experiences… the psychological structures seem to want to maintain their boundaries and what is known which can and does provide a sense of identity, even though incomplete or ‘false’ ….some talk of this as the ‘false self’… which also provides a sense of individuality and security of sorts… the problem then becomes one of separateness… We start to believe this is who we are….”I am separate from the world, an individual, and this just is the way the world is”… and this goes on within each of us and at the collective levels as well…

As a side note…the mind… or consciousness is much more than our egoic mental processing… and by contrast opens and expands beyond form and labels. We are reminded that we are… and are beings of pure consciousness… present awareness and response… Being and Doing… At times as we open, we receive intuitions and illuminations that seem outside the realm of the egoic rational processing… as if they come out of ‘nowhere’…

We often remain lost in the egoic mental processing and focus on past and future until a new thought breaks through… one label that has been given to this is paradigm shift. I am reminded of the often used examples of how the earth was believed to be flat, and how the earth was the center of the universe…until actual observation and experience broke theses trances of long held beliefs… More recently we have seen the concept of a precise single cause and effect relationship be exploded by quantum physics and unified field system theory to include an infinite number of causes leading to an infinite number of results and all things being interconnected far beyond what our ego mind can grasp…

Now, we can observe the life in front of us and within us right now… and it will largely be interpreted from what we have learned or experienced in the past… As we enter the present moment, letting go as much as possible of the interpretations, we begin to see and experience what is…

We can spend time ruminating about the past… Often, for many this is replaying negative experiences and memory traces that tend to influence our mood and experience in the present… This dynamic can be one way the ego mind keeps us separated from our true Self… the Being we are… and the true experience of what is in this moment… The mental trips to the past and the thought-forms and beliefs from the past remove us from the present… and usually end up supporting a state of suffering, regret, shame, quilt… all types of psychological pain… all illusions that we create in the present with the ego mind…

Equally, we can visit past pleasure and happy moments that, while perhaps giving us a momentary sense of pleasure, also remove us from the present moment … ego-escaping to fantasyland. We hear those who wish for the ‘good old days’ or happiness in the future… Can you see how, while this feels real to us, it is actually not real? It is the ego keeping us cut off and resisting life right in this very moment… It is the ego putting us back into the slumber of its unconscious trances which cuts us off from actually experiencing Life-Now and Living and responding within our ‘real’ Life situation…

In a similar way, due to the many ways fear is used to try to get us to behave in one way or another, we may spend an inordinate amount of time focused away from the reality of life and looking into the future…If we recall that the future holds an infinite number of possibilities outside the realm of our control, how could possibly prepare for them all… Fear makes us a slave to the unknown… fearing, planning, hoping, trying to make sure the future is secure, certain, and better than today is impossible… Marketing schemes, politicians, parents, employers, military supervisors, and all of us have used fear as a motivating and manipulating tool… The future, of course, can never be guaranteed… We can spend so much time working today to insure tomorrow that we fail to live today…. We can become so lost in trances of fear of the future…or trances of failures or regrets from the past … that we are actually ‘dead’ to this day and to LIFE! …

How do we ‘restart’…? How do wake up from the trances of yesterday and tomorrow?

There has always been one way… “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” This is the way Christian scriptures expresses it… Ram Dass, a former Harvard professor, said it a bit differently… “Be Here Now” … Spiritual teachers and individuals like you and I have learned that there is but one time and one place… it is the eternal now…the present moment… This is not a reminder to believe a certain church doctrine or set of religious teachings… it is the altar call to return to the sacredness of Life in this present moment.

The sacredness of you and me… and all of life…the Us-ness of Being…
The “Kingdom of God is at hand” and the ‘hand’ is always attached… is always a part of us… that’s how close the realm of Source is… the gateway is open… the altar flame is always burning… enter the temple within… in this moment…enter the Now of life, forgiving and letting go of the past… let go of tomorrow’s fantasies and enter the present moment … Open to this moment of togetherness in the ‘kingdom of heaven’ on earth… be the love and rock of eternity in your present situation this day… this moment… embrace the power to let go of the ego trance…

Let us end our ego’s resistance to Life… and trust the real Source… even as many have done who have gone before us as teachers, guides, brothers, and sisters…

What is ‘Truth’ and how can we ‘Know’…?? We can only know the truth from within… through our real life experience… sometimes Life joggles us to break our old trances and ego resistances to Life… to the Source and Being within…

Forgive, love, and deeply accept others right now, so that you may let go of the past and trust anew in Life.
Forgive, love, and deeply accept yourself right now, so that you may enter this moment, letting go into the Now…

Be here Now in the Truth of your Being... and let real Freedom ring!

John Hutchinson
Sundance Center
February 20, 2010