Words of wisdom
The counselor/client relationship
An excerpt of Rahasya's book "Avalanches and Awakening"
In this chapter we are going to look at the relationship between the counselor and the client. It will also, of course, be relevant to other relationships. When I use the term relationship" here, I am talking of codependency between two people in an unconscious pattern, where two energies hook into each other, where two people provoke things in and influence each other in codependency.
As a counselor it is very important to recognize the moments when you get caught in a codependent pattern with your client. Then you may react unconsciously and the session may be very dramatic, but not beneficial for the client. Both of you will just play out your strategies. As soon as you identify that you are caught in a codependent pattern, you can go deeper inside yourself, unhook yourself, and the client will be free to see himself/herself.
In a codependent pattern you push and pull. It is bonding, binding and energies are caught.
Insights, understanding and growth can only happen in the willingness to meet inside ourselves what we normally want to keep outside projected on the other. We need the willingness to unhook from the other and meet it inside ourselves.
There are two main codependent patterns that are part of the common unconsciousness in any relationship. They relate to the strategy layer. They both transform into a third way, which is more of relating than of relationship. Most of the other patterns are offsprings of these two patterns.
You will learn to feel the patterns. You will sense them. You will smell them. You will taste them. You will hear that subtle disharmony here, the subtle manipulation and acting out. You will know where the sound is not harmonious.
The camel
The first pattern shows itself when the client's attention is completely with the counselor. He tries to please the counselor, tries to do everything for the counselor and would follow him to the end of the world. It looks like a Yes, it verbally sounds like a Yes, but it is not really a Yes. It is a Yes to the other, and that is a No to himself/herself. We call this pattern "The Camel." The camel lives in the desert. It carries its own mountains on its back. It bows down to the camel driver and takes any load on its shoulders that the camel driver gives him. There is not much happening inside the camel. There is nobody home, no presence. The camel simply takes on the burden and carries it for the driver. The camel lives on the energy of the camel driver. "The camel pattern" is a parasite with a lot of hidden manipulative power. Eventually the camel gets tired of this burden.
The lion
Then the next phase of a relationship pattern comes into play. The camel becomes fed up and starts reacting. The camel changes into "The Lion," and starts saying "No!" to the counselor. A revolution starts. The lion starts to assert himself. He wants to do his own thing. He starts acting as if he does not need the other, as if he is autonomous. The energy in this pattern is stronger. The client uses the counselor to feel his own strength. He/she needs the counselor to be able to resist. He/she needs the counselor to feel that he/she exists in his/her defense. There is a lot more energy in this pattern, but it is still not freedom. It is the pattern that revolutionaries tend to fall into, or rebels who are rebelling against some institution. The moment they win, their energy
collapses because they can only exist in opposition to what they fight. The lion finds his strength in the fight against someone or something.
The child
During a session when a camel or lion pattern starts functioning, it is very important for you as the counselor to become aware of it. You need to recognize that this is what is happening. You cannot avoid getting trapped, but you can recognize that you are trapped. Then as a counselor you need to go deeper into yourself and unhook yourself. For the client to act out the pattern, it is the best choice he/she has. As a counselor, if you are in any kind of reaction, you are caught in the matching pattern. Also, don't try to prevent being caught in reaction; otherwise you are not open. If you do, you will act from a strategy layer. What is important here is to understand that going deeper is the key. As you go deeper, you dis-identify. Then the session can continue in freedom. That leads us to the third stage, called "The Child." The child is free, open, responsive to the moment and free to be himself/herself. The child is spontaneous.
These patterns also reflect the natural evolution from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. You begin as the innocent and ignorant child – free, open spontaneous, vulnerable, but not yet conscious. Then conditioning sets in. You trade your integrity, power and will for attention, love, food and shelter. Your will is broken and you settle for saying yes to the parents, to the teachers, to authority. You think they know better. You are a good camel.
Then puberty comes, and suddenly everything that you were taught is not right. You start to rebel. You try to find an identity separate from the parents or the teachers. You start fighting and arguing. You complain and sabotage. You assert yourself and create revolutions. What you don't know is that you still need the "establishment" to be against it. You become a lion.
Then one day, if you have worked through your childhood drama and trauma, and you have grown up and asserted your independence, you are again a child. One day you have claimed full responsibility for your life and all your actions. One day you have found that there is no freedom in the drama of your mind. You simply are present to what is. You spontaneously respond to the moment. You wake up. You are again a child. You are innocent, but not ignorant anymore.
The Ten Bulls of Zen –
The journey toward enlightenment
and beyond
an excerpt from Rahasya's Book "Avalanches and Awakening"
In many Japanese Zen temples, there is a beautiful collection of paintings called "The Ten Bulls of Zen." It is a series of paintings depicting the whole story of the search for enlightenment. They are a wonderful metaphor illustrating our journey towards
awakening.
The first picture
In the first picture, the farmer is looking around. He has lost his bull. There are forests all around and no sign of the bull anywhere.
The bull represents our inner being, the self, our true nature. This is the beginning of the search. We realize that we have gone a long way from home. We understand that the way we are living now is superficial and painful. Something essential is missing. We don't exactly know what we are missing, but inside, deeper than our mind, we know that there must exist something else than the robot like life that we are living.
When I was a doctor in Germany, I was offered a job in one of the most beautiful hospitals in Konstanz at the Bodensee. The outer circumstances seemed to be perfect. I had a good job, beautiful friends, a good relationship, but something was missing.
The second picture
In the second picture the farmer has left everything behind and has gone into the forest looking for the bull. Under some branches he discovers the footprints of the bull. Now he knows in which direction to search.
Under some branches, under our layers we discover the footprints of the bull. We drop everything unessential and go looking for it. We start to take part in therapy. We move through our layers. We start to experiment with meditation or yoga. We start reading books on enlightenment. We start sitting with a true master. We find a lead towards light.
The third picture
In the third picture the farmer discovers the tail of the bull amongst the trees.
Inside, there is the feeling: "Now I am on the right track." The thirst becomes stronger. There is more effort going into the search because it seems that we might find something.
In 1980 I saw the tail of the bull when I was in Khajuraho in northern India in the middle of the jungle, a place with beautiful tantric temples. There I came across a book written by an Osho sannyasin, Satyananda. He wrote about Pune and Osho. Reading that book, I got the feeling:"If what is written in here is only half true, that is enough for me to want to go there!" My mind had many arguments about why I should not go to Pune directly. Instead of going to Pune immediately, I went to Goa first for three months. When I finally arrived in Pune at the ashram, as it was called then, I instantly dived into the whole happening there of going beyond boundaries. I experienced encounter
courses, breaking out of old sexual norms and inhibitions, and I took every chance to move beyond limitations in myself.
The fourth picture
In the fourth picture the farmer sees the whole bull. It is huge.
When I saw Osho for the first time, sitting in front of him and looking into his eyes, I saw what I had been looking for. It was a wonderful moment of presence and simplicity. I recognized that Osho had something that was also dormant in me. I wanted it deeply. I became a sannyasin, a disciple of Osho.
The fifth picture
In the fifth picture the farmer is catching hold of the bull by its horns. He is trying to tame the bull, but it is resisting.
This is when we start experiencing truth. We have a satori. We feel we are home. And suddenly we are back in misery. We move between bliss and misery. We struggle really hard. Eventually everything that used to be important to us falls away. Everything that is not about awakening becomes absolutely uninteresting. The bull resists and the farmer is adamant. He does not give up. Our totality is needed in the search. The mind needs to be
exhausted.
We hear some modern satsang teachers say: "You are already that! Finished! There is nothing to do!" It is true. For those friends who have been on a long search, it is what they need to hear. But for people who just started to seek, it can become a fallacy. From my own experience and speaking to a few friends who had this shift in consciousness, it seems that an essential pre-requisite for waking up is to come to an utter exhaustion of seeking. That usually only happens when you have become absolutely single-pointed in making awakening the most crucial task in life.
The sixth picture
In the sixth picture the farmer is riding the bull home, playing the flute.
There comes a moment, which is even a surprise for the farmer, when the bull yields. It simply says: "Okay!" The farmer can put a rope around his neck. He can jump on his back and ride the bull home. He is so happy and plays his flute.
This is the moment when the gestalt changes. Suddenly the mind recognizes that you are the white background on which the happenings of life are written. You are not just the lines the pen makes, but the background! You are not just the clouds moving in the sky, but the sky! Focus moves from your body-mind to the whole - including your body-mind. Suddenly your mind and you are aligned. You can ride the bull home. This is the moment of declaration: "I have got it! I am victorious!" There is still a doer there.
The seventh picture
The farmer sits at home and looks into the landscape. The bull has disappeared.
The search has ended and the object of the search disappears too. You stop!
The eighth picture
The eighth picture is empty. There is nothing there. No farmer, no landscape, no mountains, no rivers, no house, no bull. Everything is blank.
Mountains are no longer mountains. Rivers are no longer rivers. The old is gone and the new has not yet arrived. This is a moment where a master, a real friend who knows, is very helpful. The mind may not want that nothingness. It may want to re-identify with content. The master is needed to say: "Be here. Don't try to fill the blank. Wait, rest, trust – do not escape."
The ninth picture
In the ninth picture there are mountains and rivers again. No farmer is to be seen.
Everything wonderfully re-appears. There is no doer to be seen. He is dissolved. Life is perceived as it is. No opinion, no attitude for or against. Things are the way they are. We can let life play. No one is there to interfere. The flute is hollow. There is no "I", no separate entity that wants to feel better, wants to compete, wants to feel separate. There is just life in all its expressions.
The tenth picture
The farmer goes to the pub with a bottle of wine in his hand.
Now we have gone beyond enlightenment. We are completely ordinary. We hang out with friends and drink in the pub. There is no difference between the outer and inner. We are in the world, but not of the world.
The “Ten Bulls of Zen” is a wonderful metaphor for the great pilgrimage from here to here. Now the circle is complete. We can just sit here and enjoy. In this gathering, we are sitting in the meditation pub. There need to be all sorts of pubs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tantra Alchemy for Partners in Love
An excerpt from Rahasya's Book "Avalanches and Awakening"
The following is a teaching that indicates some of the possibilities that Nura and I present in our course for couples: Tantra Alchemy for Partners in Love. Since couples are the nucleus of inter-human relating, their way of being together determines all other relationships. Their love, intimacy, trust and fulfillment can influence all other realms of relating.
Usually in relationship we never see our partner clearly. We only see him or her through our mind, through a filter of all our desires and unfulfilled needs – through our incompletion. We want the other to fulfill what is not fulfilled inside. And the other is equally unfulfilled and wants us to fulfill him or her. This is not satisfying. It is a hopeless situation. Through our unawareness we make the other responsible for this mess.
After the honeymoon, when we have realized that the other will not fulfill our deep sense of lack, we may seek a new partner until we come to the same place again. Or we may resign and settle for a contract: "I protect you and you protect me. We are not going to touch each other's painful spots; we will stay stagnant and settle for a compromise." There are many stagnant relationships around the planet - robots living in the same house, too scared to live alone.
On the other hand, when the honeymoon is over and we have realized that the other is simply a mirror in which we can see ourselves reflected more clearly, a wonderful possibility for real love becomes available.
What I will present here requires a willingness to completely unlearn most of what we have learnt about male and female relating and sexuality. I share this from my own exploration with my beloved Nura. This is a real possibility, not just a fairy tale.
For a moment, imagine the following situation. You have pulled the plug on all telephones. You and your beloved have decided to share a love meditation together. You sit facing each other naked on the bed, meditating, entering deep into the heart. Perhaps you follow the guided Heart Meditation I have created. You rest in silence together for half an hour or so, allowing the mind to settle. You are relaxing into your being, allowing things to be as they are. Then, reborn from silence, you are completely innocent, not knowing, open, available, present. With clear eyes you see this precious moment of newness. You look at your beloved, not knowing, as if seeing him or her for the very first time... fresh and new…
You begin to touch the mystery of the beloved's body as if you would touch a delicate flower, a wild bird or a shy animal. You receive the subtle fragrance of this living organism. You touch the vibrant energy field of life that emanates from this mysterious form. Then you stop and wait, receiving the ripples of life and sensitivity inside, drinking them with each breath. You do not look for a goal, you are fully here-now, present to this moment of togetherness. Through gentle touch every cell of your body begins to open and respond with aliveness. As this deep receptivity fills you, you become aware of all the subtle sounds in the room and outside, which open your cells more to receive your beloved. You wait and watch in wonder how your whole body responds and melts in that openness.
You then may enter each other, soft or hard, to simply allow a connection in the root chakra. You sit or lie together inside each other and wait. As a man, do not follow the urge to move, to stimulate yourself. Rather watch from within how the energy connection between the polarities in both of the first chakras may begin to awaken an energy flow that naturally allows the penis grow into a fullness of erection. Or you both watch how the small penis stays cradled inside the vagina, with no expectation that it should grow, and enjoy the deep intimacy of hearts and bodies melting into this moment. There is only this moment, this presence and loving intimacy that grows into an amazing timelessness.
As there is no expectation, goal or idea how things should be, the body energies and their different polarities begin to play by themselves, opening more and more to their natural flow. Both bodies may begin to gently move and open to more energy. When more life and excitement begins to flood the bodies, you both wait and watch how this new life is opening and entering unknown layers of being. A deeper receptivity allows the love flow to penetrate into areas that you have never touched before. You feel vulnerable, trembling, shaky, not knowing. You surrender to the love that moves both of you. When the energy rises and you feel that there is more excitement that may bring you towards ejaculation, you rest, allow, relax and invite that energy to be absorbed inside. You do not look for an orgasm or release. You may disappear and fall into "space," not knowing who or where you are, and yet you trust and allow….
Tantra starts here and it can bring you to dimensions that you never knew were possible.
If you have meditated, you may have discovered that at your center there is emptiness. This is difficult for the mind to understand, because the mind can only relate to something tangible, substantial. If you investigate, you discover that you are endless, pure space, with a body-mind in it.
When two people with different bodies and different minds are meditating together, both reconnect with that emptiness in the center. From mathematics you will remember that if you add two zeros together, they become zero. Our deepest longing is to be one. That is our deepest attraction to the other. We want to melt, we want to become one. We want to return home. On the body level, in sexual union, this is only momentarily possible. Through Tantra the sexual union can become the basis for awakening - the climate to fall back into source and become one with all and everything, a mystical union.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Counselling from the Heart
An excerpt from the counselling chapter
The first thing in counseling
The heart is one of the easiest doors to access being. Each day in all my trainings and retreats begins with a guided heart meditation. The meditation is spoken spontaneously, yet the main content stays the same. It helps to move beyond the busy minds into emptiness and silence. In order for healing and transformation to happen, we need to be able to meet the other on a deeper level than the content of mind. And to really meet on a deep level, we first need to go deep within ourselves and find emptiness and silence here. We then fall into synchronicity with the emptiness and silence of the other. Synchronicity happens when the "emptinesses" of two or more people become one. A resonance begins to happen on the level of being. Moving within by sitting in silence together for a few minutes is a very good way to start a meeting. Close your eyes for a while and breathe in a relaxed way into your heart. Fall beyond the content of your mind into emptiness. Rest in that vastness for a moment….Just by your resting in emptiness, resonance will happen with the emptiness of the other person - whether he or she is aware of it or not. Two "emptinesses" become one. Just as in mathematics when you add two zeros together, the sum is zero. In this meeting on the deepest level, two "emptinesses" become one – you are one.From that base of emptiness, resonance and synchronicity on the level of being, problems that appear on the surface are recognized as life situations that simply need more understanding. Throughout the meeting, remember your own center, again and again. When a person is in despair and you want to support him or her, all the person needs, really, is space and courage to be with what is, to bring loving awareness to what is.If at any point you think that there is something wrong with the other, it only indicates that you are not in synchronicity. You are trapped in your own strategy and defense layer, perhaps in your own subtle feeling of superiority. Then you will meet the other in that layer and he/she will subtly feel inferior. You both will act out a relationship pattern and may have an argument. No healing is possible. One or both of you may try to be right. Both may try to change the other.
Whenever you discover that you want to change something in the other, just stop. Go straight to your center, deeper into yourself. Rest in the emptiness inside, not doing anything at all for a while. That will create an incredible pull for the being. The being in the other will respond. From here you can see the perfection of the other being and embrace him or her exactly in the layer where he or she is. In that synchronicity the tight identification with the problem begins to loosen.
_________________________________________________________