LifeStreamTony Crisp |
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Each of us grew from a tiny fertilised seed in our mother's womb. Wisdom innate in that tiny cell, in your mother's body and in how the universe works, enabled and directed the amazing journey of growth. That journey is perhaps the most incredible of any life form on our planet. From a very fundamental level of life your being moved from a single cell to a bundle of cells. Then it developed from being an aquatic creature toward forming a body capable of living in and breathing air. At birth you transformed from being fully immersed in water to breathing air and beginning independent life. If, as we see with some plant growth, these changes were filmed and speeded up, we would witness an extraordinary process of growth and energy flow. In fact energy streams through your forming body, directed by innate wisdom. LifeStream is a name for that activity and life-giving flow.
The teachings underlying LifeStream remind us that life upholds our existence at all times. Even death is part of this natural process of change. In contrast with the lifestyle that believes everything comes from outside, LifeStream reminds us that even as adults the streaming life process has an enormous amount to offer us. But because we have developed a certain amount of self-determination, because we may have learned destructive habits of behaviour and response, we may have to learn how to co-operate once more with the life process of body and mind. Certain things underlie both the practice of this and its possibility. Taking the possibility first, western science says that radical human change occurs through evolution or interventions such as we see with genetically modified crops. In other words, genetically modified human beings. |
Infinite PotentialHowever, LifeStream, as an approach to human change, says there are other possibilities. If we look at the phenomenal range of life forms on this planet, and if we remember that as far as we know, this variety developed from bacteria and single cell creatures, we can see that the process behind the variety has infinite possibilities. The variety could not have developed if there was not a potential for its appearance. The shaping influence of environment and its connection with evolution then played its part in directing or exploring the potential. Some of the latest findings in regard to the quantum level of the universe, and therefore of our being, suggest that at base the universe can be thought of as infinite potential. If you stir enough salt into a glass of water it becomes a saturated solution. No more salt will dissolve. The potential for salt to dissolve has gone. Life on our planet is not a saturated solution. The infinite potential is still within us and as the substratum of our universe. Up until the arrival of self-awareness, any change in human beings was produced by evolutionary processes interacting with climate, environment and the ecological situation. With the arrival of self-awareness we could begin to work with our own inner potential. Human beings began to develop methods to change their condition physically, mentally and spiritually. Some cultures, particularly those of the East, gave enormous importance to this. However, most of us simply want to improve the quality of our life emotionally, our relationships, our health, and our creativity. These are all within the scope of what is possible with LifeStream. So let us look at how it works, and how it can be done.
With ourselves the way we are reared in childhood, the way we are educated and the society into which we mature, involve many factors that can inhibit growth beyond what is seen as normal around us. One of the main factors of human growth is that we copy the behaviour of those who rear us, and we learn the worldview or ideas of those around us. But most of the people around us are often quite limited in their perceptions, their creativity or their ability to reach beyond their present state of growth. A dramatic and extreme example of this inhibited growth -- or perhaps it is better to call it inhibited potential -- can be seen in those babies reared by animals. Cases of such children have been recorded all over the world, where babies had been lost and female animals such as a wolf or bear have succoured the baby. In such cases the baby never developed into a human being, but exhibited all the characteristics of the animals they were reared with. Being Reared a Human is LimitingBeing reared by other human beings therefore suggests we inherit the inhibiting factors and problems of being human. But because at the core of our life process an infinite potential dwells, we can open to and allow further growth. After all, do we wish to perpetuate the murderous tendencies we see expressed in two world wars and continuing national and local conflicts? Sometimes this wisdom at our core, this infinite potential to change, expresses in very simple ways. Some years ago I was talking about how our body knows how to heal itself, and a man told me that he had suffered prolonged back pain. He said that while he was in a bar he was talking to a friend about his back problem and realised as he spoke that his body had started making a movement involving his hips. He continued practising this movement afterwards and his back pain was healed. But the possibility of allowing our being to show us how to heal our physical ills, is only one of the possibilities that LifeStream offers. Another man, K. P., on reading an article I had written about LifeStream, e-mailed me telling of his own experience. While meditating he had the urge to move spontaneously. When he allowed this it led to blissful and rapid movements that lasted for about ten minutes. He said that, "When I got up I found myself totally euphoric and able to see in artistic mode all the time. I have never felt better than that day. I was absolutely incandescent with joy; without really knowing why." K. P. told me that by the term artistic mode he meant the ability to see his surroundings in a way that he never previously experienced, enabling greater artistic expression. The joy he experienced is something that comes to many people who learn to open to their core self. Infinite potential means exactly what it says. There is no end to the wonders we can experience or the person we can become. What Are You Really Capable of?Lyle Watson, a scientist and biologist, in researching human potential for one of his books, was asked by a boy's father in Italy to observe his four-year old son. In Watson's presence the father rolled his son an ordinary tennis ball. A little while later the boy rolled it back. The ball was turned inside out without any cuts or damage to its surface. Watson then signed his name on another tennis ball and the boy repeated the change. Later Watson cut open the ball in front of witnesses, revealing his signature on the inside of the ball. Thousands of such cases exist of children or adults doing what are seen as impossible actions by our present and outdated Newtonian and dualistic scientific understanding. To do want that child did, the boy would need to have been able to function in dimensions, or in ways, completely beyond what many people consider to be the real and only world of three dimensions in time and space. Fortunately the leading edge of science now begins to explain how such things may be possible. They are, in the end, not supernatural or impossible, but involve aspects of the universe around us that the worldview we were raised in completely denies. This is why it has been said earlier that being raised as a human being within a certain worldview is one of the great limitations inhibiting our potential and growth. The case of the four-year old boy changing the condition of the tennis ball is an extreme case, but history and the present-day is full of people's descriptions of their discovery of, entrance into, and exploration of, dimensions of experience that are beyond everyday three-dimensional sensory based life. This is often named the spiritual or psychic world. I am simply calling it human potential, and am not claiming we will all be able to turn tennis balls inside out by the end of the year. What I do see in connection to LifeStream is that there is MORE in your nature that you can unfold when you learn to allow the streaming life that grew you from a seed to continue its unfolding. There is MORE when you learn to consciously cooperate with the mystery of life in you. Mostly we tend to block or interfere with its attempts to heal and unfold us. But how do we allow the LifeStream?There are many ways of doing this, some more profoundly affective than others. Here are some pointers.
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How do you open the door?One way of describing it is to say that you become the dance partner who is led. You dance with life every day anyway, but usually you want to make the decisions about what steps to take, what way to twirl, when to finish. Opening the door to the streaming life means that you open your body, your mind and your feelings to being guided by your partner, who has led the dance from the very beginning - Life. Let's imagine it. Here I am as the dance instructor, and you are standing with your partner, Life. So, is your body ready to move? Are your feelings and thoughts ready to enter fully into the dance? Are there points of view that you are keeping hold of and will not surrender to the dance? Can you move and be uplifted and thrown down? Are you ready to dance the drama of love, the darkness of pain, the sunlight of discovery? The dance is always creative. So can you let go of what you already know, what you have already done, and the moves already made, and let Life move you wonderfully into the unknown?
Animals, being the unselfconscious manifestation of how life expresses, when they are ill are spontaneously moved to seek or do things to help the healing process. Animals seek to survive, and learn in the process. Often they are informed by what we call intuition and instinct. But we have those possibilities also, but often muffle them by our conscious desires and thoughts. So open your mind and imagination to the mystery at your core. Let it unfold its wisdom to you intuitively or in images. Opening to the LifeStream in this way starts the process during which you remember your origins. It is a time of letting the power that gives you Life flow more fully into awareness. It is a time you allow your potential and creativity to unfold. It is a time of cleansing and healing, equally as important as your daily wash. It is also a time when you open to allowing your hidden needs to be known and dealt with. In opening to the mystery you also become more conscious of being an integral part of the society and world you live in. You begin to feel your connection with the life of this planet and the universe that is the constant stage upon which you live your life. Come to the mystery at least several times each week -- or daily if you can. Lots of people believ they do this in their prayers or meditation. But in most cases what is happening is that they still hold on to the almost unconscious attitude that this means being still, not making a noise, controlling their thoughts and emotions, blocking their sexual feelings and bodily movements. So their meditations are actually a form of intefering with the real flow. See: Mind and Movement: Self Regulation. That Much Power Needs UnderstandingOpening to the mystery is a powerful thing to do. It brings real change and growth. Opening to that sort of power needs to be understood, and there are certain skills and attitudes that can be of great value.
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