Anthony Flesch

How’s your health?

aflesch@npgcable.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 18:37:00 GMT

I’ve been experiencing less than optimal health for a few weeks now. Nothing serious – a cold that seems to ebb and flow but never quite leave, some digestive problems, and a lack of energy.

According to Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, in their book Conscious Loving, the complaint of the victim is, “...this is not the experience I should be having”. If, they say, we take responsibility for our lives, then every experience we have is exactly the experience we should be having. So, on some level, I’m choosing to feel like crap!

What’s tricky about feeling sub-par is that it makes it more difficult to focus one’s thoughts on how we do want to feel, or what we do want to create in our lives. If you believe, as I do, that “what you focus on expands”, then focusing on one’s health challenges is simply going to create more of the same. But, when the body is dragging around, the mind tends to be dragged down with it, and so a negative spiral happens.

Then the’s the whole pain thing. The other day, I was sitting at my desk in the late afternoon, finishing up the tasks I had set for myself that day, when suddenly a massive pain arrived in my left side, leaving me literally doubled over in agony. My wife Kate drove me to the emergency room (although there was some doubt as to whether I could even make it to the car) and we discovered that my body was doing its best to get rid of a kidney stone. I guess the pain was getting my attention – letting me know that something was going on. I can understand this if the pain is a signal to us to change something, so that we can heal. But, in this case, the stone was going to do its thing and leave in its own time. So, I don’t really know what the pain was for. Still a bit puzzled by this part of the divine design.

I’d love to hear from you about this subject.

My Predator’s Heart

aflesch@npgcable.com — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:17:00 GMT

The other morning, Kate and I watched a roadrunner getting his breakfast – a good-sized lizard. The whole process was filled with intensity, and, as it seemed to us, violence. The big bird repeatedly beat the lizard against a rock. The lizard repeatedly tried to run away, but was invariably caught by the roadrunner and brought back to the killing ground, until he was (finally!) dead, and could be eaten.

Then I thought, “…is ‘violence’ really the correct word/thought here?” The roadrunner was simply fulfilling his role in the divine design, which seems filled with predators and prey. He was just “doing his job” – and doing it well. All creatures need to eat.

Kate and I have had many discussions about predation and, and the fact that I am a carnivore. Philosophically, and for many other reasons, I would prefer to be a vegetarian. But, I simply feel better when I eat animal protein.

Vegetarianism fits better with my values, however. There are huge environmental consequences from our dietary choices. It takes much less land to grow vegetables, grains or legumes, than it does to “grow” meat. For example, it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of feedlot beef. One pound of grain will produce a pound of bread. One acre of prime land can grow 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 30,000 pounds of carrots, 60,000 pounds of celery, or 250 pounds of beef. If Americans alone reduced their current meat consumption by 10 %, enough grain would be saved to feed another 60 million people. That’s almost the entire number of people that die of hunger every year globally. Also, there’s the whole killing thing. And the way that most meat animals are treated. Factory farming and factory killing are horrific businesses, full of violence – and not just the simple violence of ending a life, but violence in the worst way – that of reducing a living creature to a thing.

So called “primitive” peoples mostly used to honor their prey – they would regard hunting as a sacred pursuit, and would purify themselves before they went on a hunt. If they were sucessful in killing an animal, they would say prayers over it, giving thanks to it for giving its life to feed them. They had a relationship with their prey, like all “natural” predators have. Contrast that with the life of say, a pork chop in a conventional commercial enterprise – from factory farm to factory slaughterhouse to plastic-wrapped supermarket package. We’re insulated from the messy realities of our choice to eat part of an animal.

Some farmers who raise animals for slaughter treat their animals humanely, although they are clearly very much in the minority. Now some stores are looking at how their meat suppliers treat their animals, and are making purchasing decisions accordingly. Whole Foods, the nation’s largest chain of natural food supermarkets, has just instituted a policy whereby most of the meat they now sell comes from suppliers or farmers who treat animals raised for meat in a more compassionate way. This is in stark contrast to the horrifying (to me) environment of a factory farm, where animals have virtually no room to move, and a completely artificial environment.

An Australian friend of mine became a vegetarian after working on a sheep farm, and having to take part in killing lambs for food. I applaud and support his choice, and yet he’s told me that he doesn’t judge me for eating meat. I think there can be a certain sort of “new age fascism” in the judgment of certain vegetarians toward carnivores. Once someone said to me, “Oh so you’re still eating meat!” as if it were surprising to them. The subtext seemed to be that the only “enlightened” choice would be to a vegetarian.

Yes, although I’m unlikely to be bludgeoning any lizards to death for my breakfast any time soon, I’m still a predator. Please don’t hate me for it.

We are all hypocrites (for Earth Day a little late)

aflesch@npgcable.com — Mon, 08 May 2006 15:33:00 GMT

I talk a lot in my workshop about how to live a conscious, mindful life, and a lot of that “teaching what I’m learning” involves how to live on this planet with less impact on the environment. The more closely I look at “walking my talk” in this area, however, the more I realize how far we are from how we would ideally like to live.

A friend of mine runs a non-profit educational group called the Post Carbon Institute, based in Vancouver. When we visited him last year, I hadn’t seen him for several years. We met at a restaurant. He and his wife and baby son arrived on bicycles. It turned out they are now vegetarians, not for ethical reasons, as many are, but more for environmental/energy conservation reasons.

We had arrived via plane, had rented a car, and ate wild local salmon at the restaurant. Not bad, you say. And yet, where did the vegetables come from? Were they organically grown, or did they use chemically-derived (oil-based) fertilizer? How much water was used to wash them? How much water was used to wash the glassware and china on the table? (it takes roughly 8-10 glasses of water to wash one water glass, via conventional methods).

At home, we try to live as much according to our values as is “convenient” to us, and, I wish we did better. For example, it’s early May here, just past the prime time for us to be planting our vegetables, but not a single seed has gone into the ground yet.

I’ve realized that the way our society is set up doesn’t really encourage living lightly on, and closer to, the earth. They way our town is laid out, for example, makes it difficult to walk to stores, banks and other places of business. Riding a bike is not much better, since there are no bike lanes, and with 4 million tourists visiting a year, and the corresponding traffic, riding is a little scary. And, that’s no excuse for not doing the best we can. It just feels that the best we’re doing doesn’t feel congruent with our values about environmental impact. So we’re hypocrites.

Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon, in a Vancouver publication named “The Tyee” write about their “experiment” in eating only organically grown food grown within 100 miles of where they live. It brought up some surprising issues – like what to do in the winter for green vegetables, or what to use for a sweetener. They could get animal food OK, but grain was a different issue.

But, if I’m to “walk my talk”, I’m reminding myself, I’d prefer to focus on what’s possible, rather than what’s difficult, since I believe that “what we focus on expands”. My wife Kate and I were recently supported in this by reading an article in Natural Home and Garden Magazine about a family in Pasadena, California, who are growing 75 percent of their food needs from their organic garden. The surprising thing? – their entire lot, including their home, is one fifth of an acre! They’re growing three tons of food each year, with the surplus going to area restaurants who like the idea of local organic produce.

So, perhaps it’s time to stop whining, be inspired by their example, and do it ourselves.

Remember to Breathe!

aflesch@npgcable.com — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:22:00 GMT

Conscious breathing is the most ancient, universal and profoundly affecting spiritual practice. “Breath is the simplest vehicle for transcendence” – Sam Keen “Fear is excitement without the breath” – Fritz Perls

Sexuality and Spirituality – Strange Bedfellows Or Natural Partners?

aflesch@npgcable.com — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:51:00 GMT

Sex. Possibly the most loaded word in any language, and with good reason. Sex reaches deep down into who we are at our core, and tells truths about us that are undeniable. Freud tapped into this over a century ago, and his insights still reverberate across the decades, and did a lot to break apart the rigid taboos against talking about sex that are a legacy from the Victorian culture.

And yet most of us grew up with very little honest talk about sex, and very little guidance from our parents in this area. This is a real shame – it means we have to fumble around (both literally and figuratively!) learning about this most basic of energies all on our own.

Tibetan Tantric Buddhism says that sex and death are good subjects for meditation because they are the two natural events in which we are automatically stripped of our illusions and our selfhood.

I believe sexuality is a divine gift. God wouldn’t have given us the ability to feel pleasure in our bodies unless s/he intended for us to feel this pleasure. But I feel God also gave us the ability to feel an ecstasy during lovemaking that is greater than mere physical pleasure – the ecstasy of spiritual and physical energy merging and meeting in our physical bodies – the ecstasy of oneness with the divine at the same time we feel at one with our partner. This is truly one of the best ways to know God, and a great reason to invite God into bed with us!

So how did sex become such a charged issue morally, especially to institutionalized religion, and especially to Christianity and Islam? First of all, I believe that this stems from the root thought that body and spirit are separate, and that only spirit is divine. This has led, in its most extreme form, to the thought that the body is dirty, and that therefore, sex must also be dirty. This in turn leads to the thought that, in order to be spiritual, we need to deny ourselves sex – the essence of the monastic vow of celibacy.

The other reason for sex becoming such a moral issue, from a more metaphysical standpoint, is that sex is a very dense and powerful form of life-energy, and as such, tends to bring up issues in us that need to be resolved. Also, dense forms of energy like this (money is another one) tend to demand that we keep clear agreements about them in order to stay conscious. To me, this is not so much a moral issue as it is an issue about living consciously and mindfully in every area of life.

I think it’s interesting, as we look at this issue of morality and sexuality, to notice that sex (along with money) is often the downfall of fundamentalist religious figures such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. It’s evidence of the phenomenon that what is suppressed is bound to come out into the light of day, often in ways that are undesirable or inappropriate.

The spiritual view of sexuality, as opposed to the religious one, is a little different. This view posits, first of all, that sex is innocent, and that it has been given to us by God both as a way simply to feel pleasure in our bodies, and also a vehicle for spiritual enlightenment.

Spiritual adepts in China and India realized thousands of years ago that we are not simply gross physical beings – we are imbued with energy. This energy, basic to all life, was (and is) called chi in China and prana in the Hindu tradition in India. These early adepts realized also that this energy could be consciously channeled up through the various energy centers of the body (chakras to the Hindus) to enhance spiritual awareness and create mystical states of oneness with the divine.

At the same time, they realized that sexual energy was simply a denser, more intense form of this basic life-energy, and that it too, could be channeled in such a way as to lead to loving, ecstatic oneness with the divine – and one’s partner. Truly the best of both worlds! This, of course, gave rise to the great tradition of Taoist sexual practices, and the sexual elements of Tantric Yoga, in which practitioners learn how to consciously channel sexual energy through their spiritual energy centers.

Isn’t this better than seeing the body and sexuality as sinful or “dirty”? Not only is our physical pleasure enhanced, it contributes to our experience of mystical oneness with the divine. It’s another amazing instance of what I call “divine design”. Of course, it is possible to engage in purely animal sex (in fact, this is still what most humans still do). But even here, the reason so many of us pursue sex so obsessively is because the moment of orgasm is, for many people, their only experience of true ecstasy, or their only experience of the divine moment (although most wouldn’t put it that way!).

So, our culture sees sex either as dirty, something to be hidden, something to be indulged in, or something to be repressed and suppressed. See the contradictions? The two extremes in this paradigm are sexual license and promiscuity at one end, or rigid repressiveness at the other -- where we are supposed to only have sex in order to reproduce with a married partner of the opposite sex. This is a very limited, and very limiting view of sexuality. There is another, higher option that is completely off this track -- that is sacred sex, or spiritual sex.

As Thomas Moore writes in The Soul of Sex: “In our culture, when we’re talking about sex, we often approach sexual problems mechanically, so the result can be that we approach our partners mechanically, without the deep engagement of the soul and spirit that would give sex its depth and humanity.”

I believe sex is designed by God to be spiritual and soulful. Anything less, and we’re not getting the whole deal. We’re depriving ourselves!

Here are some other thoughts about conscious sexuality I offer in my workshop:

Sex without harmony is either rape or mutual masturbation.

Sex without a clear agreement about the nature and structure of the relationship causes disharmony, fear, anger.

Sex without reverence, spirituality and love is like using your partner to masturbate.

Sex without play is work.

Conscious, sacred sex is about communion with the Beloved – both the divine beloved and the beloved in our bed. In healing our own shame about our bodies, learning to love our bodies and the natural pleasure that they experience, we naturally extend this love to our partner. Then when we learn how to consciously channel sexual energy through our chakras, we can create states which combine physical pleasure with spiritual ecstasy. It’s an experience of ecstatic, loving connection – with ourselves, with our partner, with God.

Conscious And Compassionate Driving

aflesch@npgcable.com — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:35:00 GMT

This is one of the toughest things for me to do, and since the whole thrust of the Lifetools venture is to “teach what I’m learning”, I thought it was time I shared with you my thoughts on driving. In these days of “road rage”, I think it is more important than ever that we drive with civility, and that we are “in flow” when we drive.

Since I live in Sedona, a tourist town which is also a retirement community, I’m often stuck behind slow-moving cars, driven either by tourists oblivious to anything except (a) natural beauty and (b) the fact that they don’t know where they’re going or (c) they can’t find a parking space, or old folks who feel unsafe at speeds higher than 20 m.p.h. This is a great test of patience.

Sometimes, I find myself feeling actual contempt for these people, and that gives me pause. I believe that judgement is basically self-judgement, and that it comes back to the judge. The same thing is basically true of contempt. So I get to look at what it is in myself that I hold in contempt -- what I am judging in myself.

So, what do I do when I find myself in these situations? My old pattern is the typical “type A” pattern -- tailgate the person in front of me until I find a gap, then zoom past them giving them a contemptuous look. More and more, however, I am reminding myself to regard the slowpokes and inattentive drivers in front of me as my teachers, as an opportunity to learn to slow down, and learn the lesson of patience.

So, when I catch myself being a stressed-out, impatient, judgemental driver, the first thing I do is take a long, slow, deep breath. Then I’ll drop back behind the “detainer” car to a safe and non-threatening distance, and maintain that distance until it’s safe to pass. Sometimes I’ll even forget about passing! It’s surprising how restful it can be. Surrender! You probably won’t take any longer to get to your destination, anyway.

When I finally get to this point, sometimes I’ll see someone wrestling their way through traffic – just like my previous pattern. Guess what? Now I feel contempt for them! There’s a phrase a friend of mine taught me that has stayed with me for years and really helps me in these situations. He told me that when someone cuts him (or another car) off in traffic and is driving overly aggressively, he says to himself “there I go again”.

It’s easy to be compassionate and loving when the situation is right – when we’re feeling peaceful and things are harmonious. The challenge is to be loving and compassionate toward those beings who “trigger” us and arouse negative and judgemental feelings in us.

And, since it is possible to do anything and everything with mindfulness and compassion (more on this concept later) it is certainly possible to drive in a mindful, present way.

What does this mean? Well, first of all, it means being completely present with the driving experience. When driving, drive, and only drive. Be present with the mechanical manipulation and handling of your car – shift cleanly and smoothly, if you drive a manual. Steer through corners cleanly and accurately. Be in flow with the traffic -- not an obstruction or something trying to force its way through. Maintain an appropriate speed.

Here’s a confession – I love speed and fast cars. I’ve been a car nut since I was about 10 years old, and have subscribed to Road & Track magazine for 30 years. When I was a much younger man, I used to have a lot of car “accidents” because I would drive fast without knowing how to do it well. After my umpteenth accident, my father gave me the best gift he ever gave me -- an advanced driving course. I did the course of the Institute of Advanced Motoring (IAM) an organization based in England. Their definition of good driving is to “... proceed as quickly and smoothly as possible from point A to point B, always ensuring that the car is in the best possible position in the roadway, that you are in the appropriate gear, that you are fully aware of all other traffic and your surroundings, and are ready to react immediately and appropriately to whatever happens.” I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have their book any more, but I’m pretty sure I’ve accurately reflected the definition. Since I did that course 21 years ago, I haven’t had an accident that was my fault.

One of the things they teach you to do during the course is to issue a running commentary on every single detail of the process of driving. This is an amazing exercise, and can be done with anything you do. What’s amazing is to realize how many things you are doing and thinking about (or should be) when driving well. This also helped me to realize that if you are to drive well, it is virtually impossible to do anything else. The IAM people strongly discourage smoking, eating, drinking or talking on the phone while driving. They even discourage talking to fellow passengers. While this might seem a little extreme for most of us, it is a great exercise in mindfulness – in putting your total attention where you are.

And, this process of making previously unconscious material conscious, is the foundation process of conscious living.

So, take a deep breath, and try sacred, conscious driving on your next trip -- especially if you’ve left a little later than you really should have!

P.S. I’ve often wondered about why I like speed and driving fast. The closest I can come to explaining it is that it is a way of stretching time -- of “timeshifting”, as Stephan Rechtshaffen calls it in his wonderful book of the same name. When you’re driving fast, especially on a racetrack, you are so focused on the experience that time actually slows down – a it becomes a meditative experience. People who have never driven very fast usually imagine it’s a “fast” experience, but it isn’t -- it feels slow out there. For me it’s also a way of quieting my mental chatter -- there’s simply no room for it when you’re concentrating that completely. And, for me, there is also a delight in driving a car which handles well, and in my own expertise in getting it to do well what it is designed to do.

As an environmentalist, it feels strange to be a car enthusiast at the same time. And yet, I am. I’ve come to regard this as simply one of my contradictions. I look forward to the day when more environmentally friendly car can be produced, and I actively support those efforts in every way I can. And when they discover how to make a car that’s environmentally benign and fast, I’ll be jumping for joy!

Where is your attention today?

aflesch@npgcable.com — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:07:00 GMT

What I call "the second law of metaphysics" is this: "What you focus on expands". So, I invite you, today, to be more aware of what you're focusing on in any given moment, and the way that that thought (or set of thoughts) creates feelings in you. What feelings are they?

Then, consciously turn your attention to something that is positive for you -- and then notice how you feel. Chances are, you'll feel better -- more optimistic, more hopeful, more joyful. One of the tremendous benefits of doing this is that, after a while, you'll realize that you are in control of how you feel. When something happens that stimulates difficult feelings in you, after the initial storm of those feelings has passed, you can take a deep breath, focus on something which has positive connotations for you, and feel better. I'm not saying this is easy -- like almost anything worth doing, it takes some practice. But it is simple.

This is why I recommend doing a gratitude journal every day. Simply write down ten things your'e grateful for, each day. The format is simply "Today I am grateful for...". Do it whether you feel like doing it or not. Then notice how you feel at the end of the exercise.

According to Melody Beattie, "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitiude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow".

So, what are you grateful for today, and what are you focusing on? Since according to Abraham, "You get what you think about, whether you want it or not", wouldn't it work better to reach for a more positive thought?