Challenging the Programs That Limit Us (AHCW)

Challenging the Programs That Limit Us

• The Body is Our "Way In" to Reality
• Everything we experience, it is always registered in this body
• If we want to enter reality, we have to experience aliveness in our body.
• "The God that I seek, is within."
• Any healing that we need to process ..
• Our Neurological and Cultural Programming
• The challenge is we "leave home" again and again.
• Spend a lot of time in inner dialogue. 
• Leaving reality, "leaving the garden"
• Reentering is embracing..
• Being embodied, we experience pleasant and unpleasant. Unpleasant can be intense. 
• When we check in to the body...
• The training, come back from all the thinking and with kindness and awareness open to this "raw, dynamic dance that is going on right here"
• In order to "stay" we have to decondition our habitual limbic reaction to try to control things. 
• We are all rigged in this way. 
• Self medicated, addictiveness, our virtual realities, are examples of us trying to control things
• The High Costs of Disconnection
• We lose intimacy because we are stuck in our minds
• we live in a small, self-centered, and distorted reality.
• Children spend more time online other then out in nature
• It lesses the ability to take care
• When we leave our bodies, we disconnect from empathy
• It takes an embodied presence, to have a living kind of empathy and compassion. Otherwise its easily abstract and out the window. Lost in your thoughts.
• When there is unfaced fear, it turns into aggression. 
• Leaving the body, and not dealing with the fears leads us to cycles of violence.
• Re-Embodying with R.A.I.N.
• We can practice together to heal the unfaced, unlived life inside us.
• Practice to discover the spirit to shine through, and for the healing of our world
• Practicing is contagious, 
• Be the portal exactly experiencing what is going on.
• Again and again, our minds will try to interpret and find out what is going on. 
• Notice how we are trying to make our world safe and comfortable by trying to understand, instead of an embodied presence that is living it. 
• Recognize this cacoon of familiar thinking 
• Rumi "step out of the tangle of fear thinking."
• Be able to honor thinking, and let it be a good servant. But know how to experience reality. 
• Use RAIN when things get sticky.
• Honor it, and don't judge yourself
• Where do you feel it in your body? What is it like in your body?
• Feeling vulnerable, and raw - treat it with kindness
• After RAIN, rest, experience non identification.
• A rest in wakefulness and openness that is free. That is the fruit of RAIN.
• Discover the flowering after RAIN, rest.
• Practice. Deepening Embodied Presence with R.A.I.N.
• Think of something that brought up sticky thinking
• Take a moment to reflect on it, think about it, remember it.
• Recognize this is what is going on.
• Allow, create some space not trying to fix anything or make the stress go away
• Investigate, deepen your attention. How is it living in my body? When I am activated, what is it like in my body? Scan your body. Helps to use a breath. Feeling the breath in your body. Investigate, what is it like?
• Nurture, regard with kindness whatever you are noticing. Nurture with a sense of acceptance, warmth, and gentleness. A gesture of kindness. 
• Pause after the active steps of RAIN, to sense the fruit without expectation, to sense the quality of presence that is here. To notice what it is like, to rest in it. 
• Feel from the inside out, on purpose offer a gesture of kindness. Notice how present, and awake you are after taking those steps and deepened your attention. 

My notes:

Listened to this this morning and took notes while I was home. Listened to it it two more times during my time driving. I'm beginning to really understand the aspects of RAIN but also the necessity to deal with the unpleasant. I'm always avoiding the unpleasant in regards to myself and the issues in my life. I rather avoid it ands spend my time doing something else, whatever that is. We have all the answers we need, we just need to sit with it and see.

I appreciate the Neurological and Cultural conditioning part. We are "rigged" in this way. Gotta come back and be present. 

The part about Disconnection made me think of all the times I've been with friends or family or other loved ones, and I'm stuck on my phone. I know this isn't the disconnection Tara talks about, but right away I felt guilty and thought of that. The guilt too is not helpful, I regret those moments but must respond with kindness and self compassion. Working on it. The unfaced fear part turning into aggression is very true. Within ourselves, within our relationships, and on bigger scales as well. It is so sad to see this happen, but like she said the antidote is to be embodied, and that "it's contagious." 

Practice RAIN. Take the time to practice RAIN, and get out in nature more are my starters for me for this segment of the course. 

We have challenges, and they are not our fault, but we can become aware of this and then walk ourselves through that.