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The Magic is in Your Nose

I was wandering around in a hardware store the other day, feeling rather hot and stuffy in my mask – and also a little anxious – when I realized my… Read More

Empower Your Health during Coronavirus … and Always. (audio cast)

Check out this interview I did on The Raw and Wild Hearts Podcast! We talk about how to strengthen your immune system, keep infections mild, and manage the psychological, emotional,… Read More

Neti: the missing link in your immune routine

My 12-year-old is always asking me to tell her stories from my childhood, so I recently described the time when I got into big trouble for making long-distance calls to… Read More

Don't deprive the world of your warmth and light!

How can you share your acceptance and love with the world? Leave a comment below and let us know.

[post_title] => Talking Wellness with Peter: The Fire Element (video) [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => talking-wellness-peter-fire-element-video [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-05-16 18:03:05 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-05-16 18:03:05 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.thedragontree.com/?p=6674 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 11 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6682 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2017-05-30 12:34:12 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-05-30 12:34:12 [post_content] => Last week I wrote about nondual philosophy. It was very brief, but hopefully pointed you in the right direction. It’s hard to convey with words what can only be experienced, but I feel compelled to try. Therefore, this week I’m presenting you with many attempts by people of many different times and cultures. The key is not the specific words they use, but the common experience they’re all pointing at. In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all. - Nisargadatta Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers. - Ken Wilber Quite simply, since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of that one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God ... Now some interpreters of the tradition say, "Everything is God, but some things are more God than others." This is as nonsensical as the famous quote from Animal Farm, "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others." If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must also propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness. Therefore, this - whatever is happening right now - is as God as it gets. Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, "This is as God as it gets," not, "This is as free as it gets." Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment, which is the same as not wanting the present moment to be any different than it is. When you don’t want any moment to be any different, then you are no longer struggling (or even waiting) for a better situation, and therefore you are free to fully show up for what is actually happening now. Paradoxically, this reveals the inner joy of consciousness, because by not struggling against some part of reality, you see and meet the whole of the moment, and you naturally enjoy it to the maximum extent you are capable of in that moment. - Christopher Wallis Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations. - Paramahansa Yogananda In the pursuit of Knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped. - Lao Zi When you think everything is someone else's fault, you suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy. - Dalai Lama Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist. - from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine You could say the whole world is consciousness having taken birth as form, manifesting as form temporarily, and then dying which means dissolving as form. What always remains is the “essence” of all that exists – consciousness itself. - Eckhart Tolle And For no reason I start skipping like a child. And For no reason I turn into a leaf That is carried so high I kiss the sun’s mouth And dissolve. And For no reason A thousand birds Choose my head for a conference table, Start passing their Cups of wine And their wild songbooks all around. And For every reason in existence I begin to eternally, To eternally laugh and love! When I turn into a leaf And start dancing, I run to kiss our beautiful Friend And I dissolve in the Truth That I Am. - Hafiz It is as if a raindrop fell from heaven into a stream or fountain and became one with the water in it so that never again can the raindrop be separated from the water of the stream; or as if a little brook ran into the sea and there was thenceforward no means of distinguishing its water from the ocean; or as if a brilliant light came into a room through two windows and though it comes in divided between them, it forms a single light inside. - St. Teresa of Avila I BELIEVE God is everything. . . Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It… My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all round the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it. - Alice Walker in The Color Purple Vimalakirti asked Manjusri what was the Buddha’s doctrine of nonduality. Manjusri answered, “The doctrine is realized by one who sees beyond forms and who knows beyond argument. This is my understanding – what is yours?” In response to this question, Vimalakirti closed his lips and was silent. - Timothy Freke (ed.) in Zen Wisdom It is not the body, nor the personality that is the true self. The true self is eternal. Even on the point of death we can say to ourselves, “My true self is free. I cannot be contained.” - Marcus Aurelius Profound and tranquil, free from complexity, Uncompounded luminous clarity, Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones. In this there is not a thing to be removed Nor anything that needs to be added. It is merely the immaculate Looking naturally at itself. - Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche This unity is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity, since these two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability, of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta philosophy as “non-duality” (advaita) to distinguish it from simple uniformity. True, the term has its own opposite, “duality,” for insofar as every term designates a class, an intellectual pigeon-hole, every class has an outside polarizing its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can go beyond two dimensions. Yet by the convention of perspective, certain two-dimensional lines that slant towards a “vanishing-point” are taken to represent the third dimension of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic term “non-duality” is taken to represent the “dimension” in which explicit differences have implicit unity. - Alan Watts I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe. - Richard Feynman Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger, the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, Love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: 'I am everything'. Wisdom says: 'I am nothing.' Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. - Nisargadatta Love is without a doubt the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard to fathom kind of love but the day to day kind that everyone knows. The kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse or our children or even our animals. In its purest most powerful form this love is not jealous or selfish but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will exist. And no remotely accurate understanding of who or what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it and embody it in all of their actions. - Eben Alexander, MD You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false. - A Course in Miracles My contribution was the title (“One plus one equals one”), which some wise person probably said long before me. From a nondualist’s perspective, two (duality) emerges not from merging oneness with oneness (which just begets oneness), but perhaps from dividing oneness – a separation which can only be accomplished in the illusions of the mind. Hopefully some of these quotes spoke to you. Admittedly, although these words were drawn from nondual contexts, some of them spoke not to nondual philosophy itself but certain facets of the human experience in a way that I found insightful. Perhaps some rubbed you the wrong way, or confused you, or brought up more questions than answers – all of which are good, in my opinion. Keep challenging your beliefs and feel free to share your thoughts below. Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => One Plus One is One [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => one-plus-one-one [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2017-05-30 22:10:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 2017-05-30 22:10:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.thedragontree.com/?p=6682 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 4 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6792 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2017-10-25 18:39:06 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-10-25 18:39:06 [post_content] => Several months ago, Briana (my wife) started feeling drawn to do a different kind of healing work. She began getting strong intuitive impressions about what was at the root of people's challenges - sometimes health related, sometimes whole-life related - and this came with a sense of how to "intervene" on their behalf on a subtle level. I think we were both at a loss as to how she should proceed with it. I suggested that she try it out on some volunteers and ask them to be totally honest about their experiences. She sat with these folks, either in person, or over the phone, asked them what they were struggling with, and dove in - sometimes offering practical advice, other times making energetic adjustments on their behalf. I don't think either of us has better words for it than that.

Anyway, I know how this sounds. I think most people have a hard time accepting healing modalities that aren't really tangible - myself included. So I tried to prep her for some lukewarm responses, saying things like, "This is pretty esoteric stuff ... it’s not for everyone ... people find it hard to measure what exactly it's doing..." and so on. Much to my surprise, the participants were all enthusiastic about their sessions. Everyone reported feeling some kind of alignment or affirmation - and that's nice - but what really surprised me was the number of people who felt like a longstanding block in their life had been removed, or that they felt notably better, or that an issue had resolved, or that their life had taken a turn for the better. For some reason, I was one of the last people to experience it. I guess I didn't want to have to tell her it didn't do anything. I had a wrist pain that had been nagging me for a year (something called DeQuervain's tenosynovitis). I had received multiple massages, adjustments, and acupuncture treatments for it. I even wore a splint for a few months. Lots of things helped in the short term, but it kept coming back. When Briana asked me what I wanted to work on, I said, “Well, we might as well go for my wrist.” I actually felt kind of guilty in choosing it because I thought it was a *structural* issue and that nothing in the realm of “energy work” was going to touch it. Sure enough, the next day I kept testing it out and it still hurt. Oh well, didn’t hurt to try. I decided not to report the bad news to Briana though. I’d wait until she asked me about it. A week later, I noticed I’d been doing lots of manual labor with it – hammering, lifting, sawing, drilling – and it wasn’t bothering me. That was weird. I poked it and prodded it. I couldn’t get it to hurt. Now it’s been a month and it hasn’t come back. I honestly don’t know what to say. Other than… maybe you should work with her if you feel called to.

Learn more about Briana's energy work

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Don't deprive the world of your warmth and light!

How can you share your acceptance and love with the world? Leave a comment below and let us know.

You may also be interested in:

Talking Wellness with Peter: The Fire Element (video)

The Dragontree

Immune booster

The Magic is in Your Nose

Empower Your Health during Coronavirus … and Always. (audio cast)

Neti: the missing link in your immune routine

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