FacilitatorU.com » Spirituality

Thought Trains

davissm — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:11:19 +0000

After an extended, six-month retreat last year, my inner scale tipped. The scale I refer to is the one that tetter totters between the true essence of pure awareness and my personal self.

I recognize that any sense of a separate self, the one with problems, issues, goals and dreams has to be constructed and maintained by the energy of attention. The well laid thought patters, like tracks in the desert, are still there with trains ready to go. And they only become real when I attach the engine of my attention to them.

For example, my life long “problem” of not being heard by the world only shows up now when I fuel that thought train with my attention. With attention upon them, the trains of hopes, dreams, desires, and judgements arise, link up, and give rise to feelings which make them appear even more real. This seeming reality then calls for yet more attention and for strategies to help them arrive at the non-existent station. I can get worked up, passionate, excited, depressed…exhasuted. In just a few moments, I can beleive that I am this convuluted complex of thought and feeling. Or, in an instant, I can release all this and recover my true identity as the witness of this drama…and it all collapses. I think I’ll stay home today.

Facilitating Ego Surrender

davissm — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:39:32 +0000

I was talking with my friend Darin Harris this morning about the impact facilitation has on our personal and spiritual development. As we were talking, a metaphor came to mind about the facilitator being an instrument. While I’ve used the instrument metaphor before, today it showed me something deeper than in the past. In this week’s article, Facilitating Ego Surrender, I share the metaphor then I’ll talk about its ramifications.

The Art of Not Doing

davissm — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:38:28 +0000

This holiday week, I want to present an idea that might easily be labeled as a sacrilege in this society. Ours is a culture of doing, even at an increasingly frenetic pace. It’s a common view that if we’re not doing something, we’re failing or lagging somehow. Everything in our world is about growing, progress, and production. This movement is often defined simply by action with little emphasis on the nature or the result of that action.

In this week’s MFJ issue, The Art of Not Doing, we explore the radical idea of not doing to support the emergence of solutions to our problems both individually and in our groups.

Spiritual Growth is not a Project

davissm — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:34:33 +0000

All our lives, we’ve been taught what we must do to be successful. Many of these things we’ve learned have helped us get what we want. When it comes to spiritual growth, I see many people trying to apply the same principles. Perhaps they are encouraged by the plentiful purveyors of spiritual products using the sales tactics and success language that we are all accustomed to.

The important thing to note about true spiritual growth is that it’s course requires an abandoning of most all of the tactics, techniques, and strategies that have previously worked for us. While these strategies may have spiced up our dreamworld, when applied to spiritual growth, they show up as impediments. This is so because ultimately, true spiritual growth is about surrender. And surrender, the “S” word, is taboo to the success-oriented ego. Any strategy, effort, or force we try to apply only strengthens that which must be gradually surrendered. This gradual surrender is the growth of which I speak. The process of surrender of our attachment to the ego IS the process of spiritual growth.