Catherine Auman, LMFT

We had ridden on the motorbike an hour to get there, to the little room inside a cave in India, far off the tourist track. When Peter opened the door, it was to freezing cold air, water dripping into a tiny pond, and the tinny sounds of a cassette tape of prayers sung in Sanskrit on continuous loop. The spirit of holiness was palpable, thick from years of chanting, decades — who knows how long — in India it might be millennium. The energy quieted the mind of its chatter, and still resonates in my consciousness today.

Some places carry the energy of the Divine. We might feel this when entering an ancient cathedral or shrine. The New Age has identified global places of power such as Machu Picchu, Lourdes, Sedona, and the Amazon jungle. Perhaps you have felt the opposite of this feeling in parts of the inner city where crimes are committed daily.

From the Buddhists comes the concept of the buddhafield, the environment that blossoms around a person of high spiritual attainment. The geographical area becomes purified by the compassionate actions of the Enlightened One, and thus conducive to spiritual practice and advancement. The buildings and pathways in these buddhafields are often built of marble, believed to store the Enlightened One’s energy for two thousand years.

Certain places are reported to consist of the sanctified energy of people praying and meditating there for centuries. This also has to do with the saying of Jesus, “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Wherever people gather to worship, work on themselves, be of service, seek Truth; wherever like-minded people gather with other seekers, the power of the group raises everyone.

Also from the Buddhists comes the precept of devotion to the sangha, the community of spiritual seekers. All the meditation, prayer, commitment to an art or craft, support and love enhance everyone participating in it. You will be able to identify a buddhafield or a sangha because around this vibration, your mind will become quiet, your body relaxed, and your energy will rise to meet it. You will feel a deep understanding that all is as it is.

What does this mean to we urban dwellers who may not live in a buddhafield and may, in fact, live in the inner city? That we may benefit from paying closer attention to our environment and our group of friends. We may need to spend time searching for our sangha, or spiritual brothers and sisters. We can choose to visit buddhafields when on vacation, or create them in our apartments and communities. Together, we can work to create energy fields that lift us all up.

© 2013 Catherine Auman

People think that bliss states are dependent on buying and owning the right things, being in the right environment, finding a sexy partner, or years of spiritual discipline. The truth is, bliss states are available to you any time, anywhere.

Such as right now. Walk with me through this technique I developed when I lived in India:

• Unfocused Eyes  As I’ve written before, the aggressive Western gaze reaches out and claims the environment, penetrating, owning, criticizing, and conquering. When we unfocus the eyes, they become receptive, soft, and open to receive.

• Be Breathed  Slow your breathing down, all the way down. Notice the difference between when you are doing the breathing, such as when you purposefully take a deep breath, and when the breathing is happening by itself. Are you breathing? No, “something” or “someone” is breathing you. Enjoy being breathed: no effort is required.

• All the Way to the Root  In the modern world, we breathe rapidly and shallowly, with the breath staying at the top of the chest. If you look at statues of the Buddha, he has a big fat belly, symbolizing that his breath is so relaxed it went all the way into his abdomen. Bring the breath down to your tailbone. Let it push out your belly when it inhales, then deflate like a balloon during the exhale.

• Watch the Flow  Feel the breath flowng in and out by itself, over and over. Observe it circulate all the way down, up and out. If you are somewhere where there is activity, open to the flow of humanity or nature with your unfocused eyes. If your mind starts its endless judgement, watch that too.

• Blissfulness  Become aware that blissfulness is happening It may not be as dramatic as you’ve been led to believe, but there it is, flowing within you at all times, below the level of your awareness, just waiting for you to tune into its frequency. It’s not anything you need to search for — it’s been there all along.

This technique might be easiest to learn and practice lying silently in a quiet room, but you can practice on a busy city street, in a Board meeting, or during an argument with your lover. These are more challenging situations, of course, but the point of any meditation practice is to bring these higher states into our daily lives.

© 2013 Catherine Auman

You’ve hiked to the top of the hill, and the vista spread out before you is breathtaking. Full of endorphins, you’re overcome with a speechless appreciation of beauty. You suddenly know without a doubt that all is right with the world and your place in it, and you’re in touch with a magnificence way beyond your finite self. The moment changes you forever. Some people call this an experience of God; transpersonal psychologists call it a Peak Experience.

According to research conducted by Robert Wuthnow in the 1970s, 84% of the 1,000 people interviewed responded affirmatively to the questions: “have you ever had the feeling that you were in close contact with something holy or sacred?” or “have you experienced the beauty of nature in a deeply moving way?” or “have you had the feeling that you were in harmony with the universe?”  We can thus assume that most people we meet are familiar with an intense, emotional experience that put them in touch with something greater than themselves, was hard to put into words, and has had a profound effect on their life.

Peak experiences can come from a deep experience of nature as above, or through drugs, sex, meditation, or even when we are turned on by learning, as Gad Yair from Hebrew University found out in research in 2009, in “singular, short and intense educational encounters that proved to have strong and long lasting results.”

Earlier cultures understood the transformative possibilities of peak experiences and developed technologies to produce them: ecstatic practices such as drumming, dance, prayer, singing, ritual, drugs, Sufi whirling. Many of these techniques were introduced into mainstream Western culture in the latter part of the last millennium. Although he is most known as a an avid proponent of LSD, Dr. Timothy Leary importantly theorized that since a peak experience by its very definition changes us, in those peak moments we can change our conditioning to see the world in a more useful way. Group and individual psychotherapies have since been developed to facilitate the purposeful change of worldview of suffering people, especially addicts and those with PTSD.

Once you’ve had a peak (also referred to as transcendent, or spiritual) experience, you never view mainstream reality in the same way again. You’ve had a taste that more is available than you’ve been taught. Peak experiences are so full of promise, so enticing, that once you’ve had one, your whole life may become trying to experience it again. However one comes, whether spontaneously or induced, a peak experience is always a great teacher and a boundless blessing.

© 2013 Catherine Auman

Many of my single patients have lost sight of their humanity in the search for a beloved. Their list of criteria for a partner has become absurd. As soon as they meet someone who is as good looking as Brad and as sexy as Angelina, as rich as a Oprah and as unconditionally loving as the Dalai Lama, they will be able to let down their guard and love somebody.

I send them to Match.com not to find a partner, but for an education:

• A common complaint is “there’s no one out there” or “all the good ones are taken.” By browsing for free, you will find out how many prospects are actually out there. If you live in a major metropolitan area, there are a seemingly endless number of possible partners which will challenge those beliefs for good.

• Browsing will also confront the idea that online dating is only for nerds. When you see how many smart, attractive, accomplished, kindly people are online, you will change your mind. Statistics say that today one in five married couples met online.

• Match.com is a great place to get comfortable meeting friendly human beings. Spending time getting to know other available people will help you remember that people are people before they are sex objects or arm candy, and will expose you to how decent and lovely most people are.

• The next step is “coffee dates.” This is a meeting of about an hour in a public place such as Starbucks. You go on coffee dates with just about anyone who asks to practice your conversation skills and find out if a friendship might be possible. Go out as often as you can until you are comfortable meeting and conversing with strangers. You could meet three new people a week or even three in an evening.

• The only thing you need to know after meeting someone is whether you’d like to see them again. It’s too soon to know if you want to marry them or have a baby. Most single people make up their minds too quickly, such as in the first few seconds.

• You’ll come to accept that dating is basically a game of rejection — either you reject or you get rejected. Learning not to take it personally will help with dating and with all of life.

Match.com has enough candidates looking for love for you to learn to how to meet and enjoy other human beings instead of waiting around for Mr/Ms Perfect. You can use what you learn at Match.com University to return kindness and humanity to the dating world.

© 2013 Catherine Auman

I never saw such eyes as he had: soft, velvety, bleeding with impersonal love. When you passed Videha in the walkway, he was not like the rest of us, happily anxious to connect with a friendly face. No, Videha kept his eyes to himself.

When I lived in India for a year, one of the disciplines I practiced was Sufi whirling, the powerful method of remembrance of God danced by the whirling dervishes. Through it, I learned a tremendous amount, about life, about balance, and the nature of the Universe. Videha was our teacher, our Sufi Master.

Small boned, with long hair and beard, he was handsome but anonymously so, drawing no attention to himself or his looks. He always wore a slight smile, radiating quiet kindness. Videha wouldn’t meet your eye when you walked by because he wasn’t looking and thus didn’t see you. It wasn’t that he was spaced out or unfriendly, it was just a different kind of awareness than the rest of us “hungry ghosts.”

The eyes, he taught us, are aggressive. Rather than take his word for it, I experimented and became aware of how my eyes attacked my environment, hungry for stimulation, for connection, for beauty. We talk about a “penetrating gaze.” I also saw that the eyes scan for things to criticize, to feel superior to. With the usual way of looking, the ego is in the driver seat, and there is violence in it.

A receptive eye, on the other hand, relaxes and receives impressions. It is soft, fluid, not judging or dividing. What is seen comes to it, rather than the eye going out to capture. This gaze is of that most denigrated concept in the West: passive.

Try it yourself: for a moment, look at something with your normal reaching-out and grasping eye. Inspect the object; take its measure. Then practice relaxing your focus and contemplating with your receptive eye, receiving information about the object of your gaze, rather than dissecting it to divulge its secrets.

Imagine walking about in your world as Videha does, being a part of the environment but not the center of it, receiving information from people and things rather than “penetrating” them. How much less effort and striving would be involved? Which of these “eyes” do you think is more likely to receive love?

The point is not to lose the ability to reach out into our environment, but to become aware that it is not the only way to approach our lives and each other. Perhaps a discipline could be cultivated of exercising your receptive eye at times, to find out how much it could teach you.

© 2013 Catherine Auman