Who am "I" ?

Once Upon a Time... a time when I was living in a pre-christian medieval church, high atop a mountain in Northern Italy... surrounded by castles in the sky...the vision for this website began appearing in my minds eye... Beginning with Botticelli’s painting of Venus the Goddess of Love and Beauty... a dreamtime collage began unfolding... reflecting images of life, gems of wisdom medicine realized from my life journey, a journey of the Heart, revealing the primal transcendental mystery and ultimate simplicity of the “art” and yoga of living & loving. Understanding comes from the “manure” of life experience and with awareness comes the realization that familiar habitual life patterns repeat themselves, again and again, at times there seems to be no end to them, unless we stop, look and listen and begin doing something different.

Only with Heart can you touch the Sky

I was born in Boulder, Colorado to an Austrian-Italian father and Norwegian mother. I used to be a helicopter pilot, professional exhibition skydiver and once owned a carpet cleaning business in Mill Valley, California. I have spent most of my life as a nomad traveling and living around the world. My Journeys to the East, in particular India the land of Shiva, gave me valuable insight into mystical experience & spiritual materialism. These journeys and others I took with friends and family became a means of coming into relationship with the Self that was far removed from my 'conditioned' , sheltered, upper middle-class upbringing. It brought me into communion with my true Self and gave me an Awakened awareness of the world that has given me the ability to relate to a wide range of people and bring a rich sense of humanity to my bodywork practice.

Many years of seeking experience and knowledge, either through skydiving, travel, money, food & sex, or Guru's and spiritual disciplines, revealed to me, the illusory nature of my neurotic, hungry, fear-driven MIND. The Realization that "I" AM, "nobody." Radiant, all-pervading & un-Knowable. A 'state' of sublime surrender that transcends ignorance, experience and knowledge. Unborn, timeless, formless and spacelike, with no requirements, ZERO. The way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.

ANCIENT REALITY TEACHINGS

Who AM I BEFORE "I" Was BORN?

"In the womb the unborn doesn't know what the mother is like. It knows the mother only in the sustenance. In our quest in this world for all our questions about the source of creation, we live in the second womb, where the only proof of the creator is in the sustenance that we receive and experience through our bodily senses. My questions about God have reconciled to this in the sense that you, and I in my lifetime, will know about the creator only as much as the fetus knows about the mother". ~ Mahua Sen (Artist)

YOU HAVE A MIND YOU HAVE A BODY
IT IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE

YOU ARE LIMITLESS
AWARENESS

"I AM"

CRACKING THE CODE

The world appears so overwhelmingly real, because we think about it all the time. Stop thinking about it and it begins dissolving into thin mist. Once we have seen that we are dreaming, we begin to wake up. But we don't see, because we want the dream to continue! A day will come when you long for the ending of the dream with all your heart and be willing to pay any price; the price will be the loss of interest in the dream itself.

You Don't Have a Life You Are Life.

Since you don't recognize your own I AM-ness, the Self beyond words, you refer to various books, ideas, Gurus, relationships, social status, educational and professional background, experiences, race, gender, age and a variety of cultural concepts to get an "I" D -- entity. Identity is not what you are, it is a form of "marketing" that appeals to a particular "target audience." A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

You have to ask yourself the question, "Who am I ?"

This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.~ Ramana Maharshi

Identification with experience is identification with the body. We think that we Are our experience and that ultimate Happiness can be achieved through some form of experience in the body. Money, sex, power, drugs, love, adrenaline, exercise, yoga, religion. meditation, Guru transmission, or any thing that brings pleasure to the body. Longing for the past or anticipation of the future is felt as sensation in the body, a perpetual state of seeking that never gets fulfilled.

What is the Nature of Mind ?

Stop paying attention to the mind and it simply disappears.

The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, fore it destroys the world in which you live.

Until you are free of the drug (of self-identification), all your religions and sciences, prayer and yoga's are of no use to you, for, based? on a mistake, they strengthen it.

Why play with ideas? Be content with what you are sure of and the only thing you can be sure of is "I AM." Stay with it and reject everything else. This is Yoga. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj ~

Be Still & Know "I AM"

So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself,
without sticking to an old self.

Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore, nor actual difficulty in our life.
~ Shunryu Suzuki ~

The Unknown Can Never Be Known

Until man can free himself from false identifications, from pretensions and delusions of various kinds, he cannot come face to face with the eternal verity that is latent within his own self. What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the real is not invented and cannot be destroyed. When you are very quiet, you have arrived at the basis of everything. That is the deep, dark blue state in which there are millions of stars and planets. When you are in that state, you have no awareness of your existence. There is no separate identity. There is no more involvement with the play of consciousness, you are in the state of no return, the eternal state. This is the eternal dwelling place, where you swallow the entire Universe. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Freefly the Mind

Living from the Heart, I have learned the incredible power of focusing on love, the all-pervading connectedness of the Heart. The "Breath of Life," rather than the fear and isolation location of the intellect. Along with LIVING these words in "trial by fire" the biggest influence in my life has been the healing touch of Rolfing ® - Structural Integration, Polarity Therapy & Breath of Life Craniosacral Biodynamics. Working with the densest aspect of my being to the most subtle, these ways of touch got me out of my head and into my body. The integration and union of body consciousness and life-force energy, balanced my nervous system and changed my psycho/physical patterning at the root.

I learned how to 'stand straight' intuitively feel what is real and discover who I really am, my true Self. Beyond 'social face' and endless repetitive fear driven thoughts, patterns, ideas and adaptive identities that kept me in a state of contracted separation and fear based isolation. In me and in you exists a natural 'state' of sublime, non-separate surrender, prior to body-mind, beyond words. A 'state' of pure being that transcends the karmic conditional realm of divisive, repetitive, reflexive ego patterning. In me as in you, exists a natural, radiant, whole-body relationship to earth, Spirit -- Self & other -- Realized as One intimacy -- Your Natural State.

 

"No Point of View"

Not Knowing is Your Natural State

The unknown can never be known. The absence of the movement of thought which recognizes and names things is your natural state. "I don't know anything" is an expression of that state. Understanding is the absence of the demand for understanding. Understanding is dualism. If that division is not there, there is nothing to understand. Your wanting to understand anything is only for the purpose of you wanting to bring about change there. And at the same time you don't want to change. That has created the neurotic situation in man, wanting two things, change and no change. That is the conflict that is there all the time. Something there determines that all is not right. That's why you want to bring about change. And who is responsible for that demand to change? Culture, society, has placed the demand before you; namely, that you should be like that, you ought to be like that and you have accepted that as a model for yourself.

Whatsoever the society has done to you has to be undone so that you can be your natural self again, as you were before you were born.
Zen people call it the original face -- and that is your song,
that is your bliss, that is your truth. ~ Osho

Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas and live by truth alone. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Reality is Always Already the Case

Self-realization is not knowing anything or becoming anything.
There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We think that there is something hiding reality and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Natural Human Being

Natural human beings turn the common sense values of society on their heads, rejecting wealth, fame and prestige as worthless nonsense, and instead value simplicity, humility, and natural instincts. Intensely individualistic, often confronting, and sometimes plain rude, they say what they want to say regardless of social niceties. They exude a feeling of limitless freedom, great depths of compassion and an irrepressible sense of fun. Outwardly the natural human being seems the same as everybody else. Inwardly however, their distinctive trait is that they have no goals, but simply allow life to un-fold, unconcerned about where it is going. For them, effort, cunning and purpose are the results of having forgotten ones true nature. ~ Ancient Chinese Wisdom

In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the experts mind there are few. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

When the child was a child, it didn't know that it was a child, everything was soulful, and all souls were one. ~ Peter Handke

To seek Nothing is Bliss

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat,
"it doesn't matter." ~ Lewis Carroll

Somewhere out beyond our sense of right doing and wrong doing there is a field … I'll meet you there. ~ Rumi

But do not ask me where I am going, As I travel in this limitless world, Where every step I take is my home.~ Dogen

Bodhi Shivashaktipat

Bodhi has over 18 years experience as a body worker. He is a Certified Advanced Rolfer, Biodynamic Craniosacral therapist and master energy healer. He trained at the Heartwood Institute, Esalen Institute, Rolf Institute and completed the 3 year Franklyn Sills Biodynamic Craniosacral training in Boulder, Colorado. Bodhi is a former monk and former long-time practitioner of Zen Meditation, Advaita Vedanta, Yoga and Jingui Chi Gong. He has been jumping out of airplanes for over 30 years, offering a unique perspective on “heightened states of calm awareness” and the phenomenon of fear.

SPIRITUAL HEART