Guenther Pohlmann Society Meeting, July 30, 2010

      On July 30, 2010, our group read together a portion of a monograph by Guenther P. Pohlmann MD entitled The Nature of Our Religiosity, An Array of My Thoughts.  We read two sections: The Layered Backgrounds of My Own Ontogeny and Observations and Reflections on Our Spiritual Nature.

Healing Prayer Service: July 22, 2010

     Healing prayer service conducted by Jean.  She set up her altar with a hydrangea bouquet, candles, incense and the famous "Old Testament" Holy Trinity Icon of the Rublev style. (See below, first footnote under "Read More")  She led us in her usual expert way, first to develop concentration, to relax all parts of the body and center our prayerful thoughts on the heart. The group read together the following prayer from St. Bernadette Chapel, Lourdes, France. (See below, second footnote under "Read More")

     Lay your hands gently upon us,
     Let their touch render your peace,
     Let them bring your forgiveness and healing.
     Lay your hands, gently lay your hands.

     You were sent to free the broken-hearted,
     You were sent to give sight to the blind,
     You desire to heal all our illness,
      Lay your hands, gently lay your hands.

     Lord, we come to you through one another.
     Lord, we come to you in all our need.
     Lord, we come to you seeking wholeness.
     Lay your hands, gently lay your hands.


    Then we sat in guided meditation for those who needed our prayers for healing. We went around the group and pariticipants named those, either themselves, or loved ones, or friends who needed prayers for healing. Finally Jean annointed with oil  (See below, third footnote under "Read More" below) and prayed for any of those of the group who needed prayers for healing. Music was used to add beauty and soulfulness to the proceedings.  We closed with singing, and reciting the Lord's Prayer or Our Father together.

Reminder: Next Meeting, July 22

    Our good friend Jean will present her always moving healing prayer service for Todd. We will all try to be present to participate.

July 15, 2010 Unplanned Bake Off

Varanasi, India: cleansing meditation in the Holy Ganges River

  
     Chuck was supposed to lead the discussion this week, but there might have been some miscommunication. At any rate we ended up doing a make shift Bake Off.

     Eric mentioned that he had been angry at someone and he went to mow the lawn. At first he was aggressively mowing the lawn and thinking aggressive thoughts but then there was a switch to accepting the anger, naming it, and then focusing on the present moment. We discussed how this could have happened. The Buddhists, if angry, often do walking meditation.
    
    You need to name the anger, recognize it, tell the person you are angry and that you are suffering with it, try to talk it out, then one needs to let it go. Forgiveness may be involved at this point. Anger itself if allowed to proceed reinforces the process of getting angry. If we are able to stop this circling process, we will be able to take the novelty and surprise out of the anger, move the anger from the amygdala and put it in the frontal lobes where it becomes less threatening and less damaging.

     Our heart become involved in this as well and even as in HeartMath, gratitude and appreciation enter into the thinking. We may even be able to walk with tonglen during our walking meditation. Some traditions try to throw anger and negative emotions into the earth just as we do with our human waste at the dump site, and earth will transform these wastes into flowers and trees. Just so with our anger, it will transform the anger into positive emotions.

     Hitting pillows does not work. You just get very good at hitting pillows. The only value to such an aggressive practice such as hitting pillows would be to get over repression of the anger to bring it forward so that it might be recognized, named and then dealt with.

     The idea that someone made you angry is a faulty perception. This perception waters the seeds of anger. A better term is to say or think: "I have anger" rather than "I am angry."

     Dick showed us a form of walking meditation that uses the phrase: "Lift up your heart." While walking, hold one hand on your heart and the other hand over your abdomen. While meditating and walking, try to separate these hands slightly; the movement apart with only be a centimeter or so. But this is actually lifting up your heart, as it says in the Bible. We tried this walking meditation briefly. Someone else recalls a form of meditation where one puts one's hand on another's heart and even breath together with the other person. Some say in certain yoga practices, your "lead with your heart." Jean described that during her yoga practice she has moved to put her hands one on top of the other in front of her heart with the palms facing upward as though receiving a gift. All of these comments proved to us how important posture is during these different practices, especially if the posture is symbolic and becomes a natural part of the practice.

     Again we discussed about the necessity of regular meditation practice. People often give excuses why they are not meditating regularly, sometimes saying they forgot to meditate. Indeed, change to a regular practice is hard. There is a part of our brain that doesn't want us to meditate because such regular practice is putting that part of the brain out of business, so to speak. There are two recommendations for overcoming these excuses and moving to regular meditation practice: 1.) Have a place set up for meditation that you go to regularly. It might be set up with your cushion, with a Buddha, or with candles, other paraphenalia for meditation, or it just might be a corner or wall with a comfortable chair. 2.) Hook meditation to something that you do every day. For example, take your toothbrush with you to meditation and only put the toothbrush away after your meditation. Then if you do not do the meditation, and put your toothbrush away first, you will feel strongly that something is missing.

     In the end, our discussion shifted to work and jobs Sharleen asked two questions about work. 1) Do we work to serve others in the workplace? or 2) What in the work makes you happy? The former is extrinsic, and the latter intrinsic. Tim discussed this briefly and gave us a preview of his planned discussion on the schedule for August.

     Next week is Jean's healing prayer service for Todd. Be sure to come.

  

Contemplation of Toys, July 8, 2010

Andrew Lloyd Funny Face tin walker, 1920s

     On July 8, 2010, I hosted the Spirit Mind Body group at my home for Meditation, followed by a breakfast of quiche, fresh fruit, bagles and spreads, orange juice and coffee. Then I took the group through the house to different sites where I had presented groups of some items of my toy collections. On the dinette table were 9 different issues of the card game, Touring, and later editions called Mille Bourne. It is interesting to see the illustrations on the cards with the earliest Model T cars, advancing to more modern ones from the 1950s and 1960s. Chess sets graced the dining room table. I put my subcollection of nesting blocks on the foyer table. This collection commenced with a cardboard set of nesting blocks that belonged to my mother, probably dating from the 1920s. Since it is entirely of cardboard, it would be classed as collectibles called ephemera. I have never seen a similar set anywhere, including on ebay. We moved onto the living room where I displayed a couple of old board games, Parcheesi and Round the World with Nellie Bly. I presented the history of Nellie Bly, the journalist who was before her time, also the history of Fisher Price Toys, and other toy companies. Also I demonstrated the Whistling Questioner, a question game that uses air channels to provide a whistle for the correctly matched question and answer. From this area we climbed upstairs to the toyroom where everyone saw a toy that they remembered from their childhood. The Richmond School blackboard easels with rolled paper information windows on top, one from my mother's childhood, and one from mine were popular when the rolled information windows were demonstrated. From the toy room, we moved across the hall to my library, where we viewed steroscopes from the late 1800s and the Viewmaster with its round discs which is another way to present three dimensional pictures. Heidi brought some of her toys which included collectible dolls and Stieff teddy bears. I was able to present the history of Teddy's Bear both from the United States development based on a cartoon about Teddy Roosevelt and the simultaneous development in Germany of Stieff stuffed bears.

Hit the button below, Read More, to see more pictures of toys seen during this event.

Reminder: Next meeting at home of Ann Selzer. Topic: Toys

Next meeting we will start at 7:30 or 7:45 at the home of Ann Selzer, 10522 N. Circle Road, Mequon, WI 53092  Phone: 262 241 5747

Your email will contain a link to a map showing how to get to my home. Here is the link to the map.  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=s&ie=UTF8&ll=43.2109,-87.90895&spn=0.010322,0.030427&z=15

And below are directions from the Mindfulness Center to my home. You can adopt these directions depending on where you are coming from. These directions advise you to get off I 43 at Mequon Road and go south on Lakeshore Drive to Circle Road. But if coming north you can also exit I 43 at Port Washington Road and take Katherine and then Zedler to Lakeshore Drive.

WI-32 N
12.7 mi 28 mins

From the Mindfulness Center at 1922 E Park PlMilwaukee, WI 53211
1. Head west on E Park Pl toward N Cramer St 0.1 mi

2. Take the 2nd right onto N Oakland Ave 0.3 mi

3. Turn left at E Locust St 1.6 mi

4. Turn right at N 7th St 220 ft

5. Take the ramp on the left onto I-43 N 10.4 mi

6. Take exit 85 for WI-57 S/WI-167 W/Mequon Rd 0.2 mi

7. Turn right at Mequon Rd 0.8 mi

8. Mequon Rd turns slightly right and becomes N Lake Shore Dr 0.8 mi

9. Turn left at E Circle Rd 0.1 mi

10. Turn left at N Circle Rd

Destination will be on the left 0.2 mi


10522 N Circle RdMequon, WI 53092

We will have a light breakfast. Then we will basicly play with my toys. There is a computer Power Point presentation to look at for those that wish to showing a few toys and their history. There will be toys around the house to view and touch, and my toy room is something to see. Among other things, we will look at Viewmaster slides, and an old steroscope with its slides. There are some pre electronic questioning machines which are quite fascinating. There are play sets, electric trains, dollhouses, old books, Slinky, Etch a Sketch, and many many more.

Bake Off on July 1, 2010

     On this Bake Off Day, we discussed an article called "No time, no excuse" from the book, Rework  by Jason Fried and David Henemeir Hansson.  We all agreed that timing and not having time for meditation, and living in mindfulness is one of the biggest complaints that people have. Gary S. commented that from a physics stand pont, the basic quantum measurement is timeless. We really don't need to consider time.