… mental labels obscure to you the depth that there is
and the aliveness
and the sacredness
that there is in every living thing.
And ‘living thing’ includes what the mind calls dead things.
Living things includes everything because everything is alive,
even the stone.
If you looked into the stone you could see that there's an intense aliveness there. …It looks to us as impenetrable, solid, and dead but its not.
So no matter whether we conventionally call it a living thing,
realize that whatever you perceive is alive.
Eckhart Tolle, transcript from Omega Retreat
And often as I have my breakfast on the back deck, and look into the tree tops as the rising sun peaks through, I remember that Tolle also described the morning light as Love the day that he awakened.
Light is Love.
It makes me smile, though I don’t really see it.
Sometimes though, I’m ready to just accept what someone else reports.
And so it goes with rocks.
I mentioned, last time, that my summer fun is expanding my flagstone patio
(A.K.A. an attempt to cut down on the mud and dust and dirt Bennie carries into the house.)
But, too, I want to stack some cairns and so have gone online to learn something about this new endeavor.
Googling so often brings delight.
And so it goes with rocks:
Everything, rocks and other solid objects or
anything else, have their inua (inner person).
Anything that is made or created has an inua.
Hubert Amarualik, Inuit elder
And then there were these photos of rather incredible balancing acts,
Like the BeBalance Gallery.
And the reports of what the “balancers” experience as they perform their feats:
There is nothing complicated about balancing a rock upon another.
It is child’s play.
Yet, just as a simple rock can change into something of grace and beauty upon being balanced, I believe the same type of transformations happens to the person doing the balancing.
Perhaps it is in the rapt attention and focus that is required to do a challenging balance.
Whatever the cause, invariably I come away from a session of balancing rock with a sense of equanimity,
a feeling of balance that does not leave, even when a rock, so delicately poised,
slips away at the slightest breeze.
It is just part of the process.
However, I speak only from my own experience.
Perhaps you would like to see for yourself. Anyone can do it.
As I said, it is child’s play.
Jim Morlock
I also came by this fellow, who probably doesn’t call himself a Taoist, but certainly might qualify:
In working with stone I have come to realize that even the most seemingly inanimate aspects of nature are very much alive with energy.
It's been an amazing realization.
One that has been validated time and again.
John Knight
Well, my rocks arrived last Thursday.
All 4,454 pounds of them are here on pallets, around the side of the house,
waiting for me to carry them into the backyard.
I moved six the first evening – and then didn’t sleep a wink all night as an electric jolt shot down my left leg about every thirty seconds.
I’m going to have to take this whole project very slowly.
Go stack rocks.
Be patient.
Look down at what is there.
Wait for the first one to call you. It will.
Look at what you've done with the first one and then look for its mate.
Repeat.
Go stack rocks.
Bigger rocks are easier, but work with what you can hold at head level for five minutes.
There is a vertical line.
See it. Put weight there.
Be patient.
Go stack rocks.
Buddy Smith
In Japan, Tibet, and South Korea stones are stacked as the embodiment of prayer.
In Canada and Alaska, stones were used to build free-standing totemic figures called inukshuk.
Just last week, a fellow down the block added one to his front yard.
I’m so glad he did.
It proved to me I needn’t do that. I am searching for something a bit rounder, The Cairn and Buddha Belly.
It is almost mystical… to feel a sudden realization of an
improbable equilibrium.
The most unexpected alliances can be
achieved, and as you gently move the stone on top you can somehow
sense whether the two can make a happy alliance.
You try one way,
then another,
you feel it might just be possible,
then the most tiny of adjustments and it suddenly locks into place.
You begin to set fresh challenges for yourself,
and look for bigger and more improbable
stones to try…
Rock balancers speak of this “click” when two stones suddenly align and lock.
Somehow, I know that click. It’s been replaying in my mind the whole past week.
Click. Not unlike a lock and load…
Once, I received a birthday card, or was it a Valentine, with the caption:
Two coyotes lost in the moment as love returns to the Land of the Rock Balancing Mountains.
It seemed so fitting of our lives that we framed it and hung it in the bath for years.
And again, I have to smile.
Rock balancing mountains and lifetimes…
The whole thing is so ephemeral, and yet it has an appearance of permanence.
Sometimes the equilibrium is so fine that if it has been achieved
when one of the stones has still been wet from the stream,
it can be lost as the sun dries out the stone,
and you hear one that ten minutes ago was standing quite firm
suddenly tumble into the water again.
The only thing for certain is that this unique display is transitory.
A balancer from Barga, Italy.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
Prison or Paradise: Part Two
I mentioned last time going to an Adyashanti Gathering and watching a DVD.
There was a woman talking with Adya. He asked her repeatedly and directly, “So, what happened? What simply happened?”
Amazingly, the woman was incapable of answering the direct question.
She had to spin a story.
Feeling somewhat savvy, she had ready explanations and elaborations.
At first, I didn’t like her. In time, I saw that we all spin out our stories.
We just do it a bit more subtlely.
Let's say you are living in an unpleasant place.
It's cold, it’s wet or damp, or noisy, or cramped. And there you are sitting on a chair. It is the form that this moment takes, and you realize the limitations of that form.
And yet, you allow this moment to be as it is.
Some people confuse that with accepting a story they are telling themselves in their head concerning this moment.
And that is a mistake that some people make, I have noticed that.
When we speak of allowing this moment to be
they confuse that with creating some interpretation of this moment which is a story…
… say the stock market has crashed and your wife has left you, a synchronistic event. And then the story comes in, in your mind which says:
‘Okay, you've worked for nothing for 25 years…you failed at your business and you failed at your marriage. There's no point in even carrying on now because at your age what can you do? Who would want you? You haven't got enough time to build up another business empire.’
The story goes on in your head.
It's an interpretation of this moment.
I failed.
It's been pointless.
My life has come to nothing.
(And this is a simple story. Most stories are more complicated than that.)
The story is not this moment.
The story is the story in your head. It is mind-forms. Object-consciousness.
So what is this moment? What is the form of this moment?
The form of this moment is not the story about this moment;
it is the simple appearance of this moment
which is chair, walls, window, cold, noisy neighbors, an unpleasant smell.
But even unpleasant is the beginning of a story.
Just sit. Just this.
This is the moment. This is Now.
And you are sitting (perhaps you still have a chair.)
You're sitting on a chair.
And that's a strange thing.
What happens if I allow this moment without the story?
And then, oh,
strange,
suddenly, by allowing the form,
suddenly, there's a peace that arises from a deeper place.
And you look around at the forms and it is that spacious Presence that is there then. When the forms are no longer obscuring that.
But, you can only get to that when you allow the forms...
that which appeared to prevent you from finding yourself is …actually the doorway…
Not the story, but the simple form of this moment…
Eckhart Tolle, notes from his Omega Retreat
So, by my count, Eckhart Tolle is telling us to stop the story telling.
So, is Adya.
So is Byron Katie.
And so was Epictetus ca. 100 AD.
We are disturbed not by what happens to us,
but by our thoughts about what happens.
His son is dead. What happened? His son is dead. Nothing else? Not a thing.
His ship is lost. What happened? His ship is lost.
He was carried off to prison. What happened? He was carried off to prison.
But the observation: 'He has fared ill,' is an addition that each man makes on his own responsibility.
(Discourses 3.8.1–5, trans. Oldfather)
I think it’s time I learn this lesson.
There was a woman talking with Adya. He asked her repeatedly and directly, “So, what happened? What simply happened?”
Amazingly, the woman was incapable of answering the direct question.
She had to spin a story.
Feeling somewhat savvy, she had ready explanations and elaborations.
At first, I didn’t like her. In time, I saw that we all spin out our stories.
We just do it a bit more subtlely.
Let's say you are living in an unpleasant place.
It's cold, it’s wet or damp, or noisy, or cramped. And there you are sitting on a chair. It is the form that this moment takes, and you realize the limitations of that form.
And yet, you allow this moment to be as it is.
Some people confuse that with accepting a story they are telling themselves in their head concerning this moment.
And that is a mistake that some people make, I have noticed that.
When we speak of allowing this moment to be
they confuse that with creating some interpretation of this moment which is a story…
… say the stock market has crashed and your wife has left you, a synchronistic event. And then the story comes in, in your mind which says:
‘Okay, you've worked for nothing for 25 years…you failed at your business and you failed at your marriage. There's no point in even carrying on now because at your age what can you do? Who would want you? You haven't got enough time to build up another business empire.’
The story goes on in your head.
It's an interpretation of this moment.
I failed.
It's been pointless.
My life has come to nothing.
(And this is a simple story. Most stories are more complicated than that.)
The story is not this moment.
The story is the story in your head. It is mind-forms. Object-consciousness.
So what is this moment? What is the form of this moment?
The form of this moment is not the story about this moment;
it is the simple appearance of this moment
which is chair, walls, window, cold, noisy neighbors, an unpleasant smell.
But even unpleasant is the beginning of a story.
Just sit. Just this.
This is the moment. This is Now.
And you are sitting (perhaps you still have a chair.)
You're sitting on a chair.
And that's a strange thing.
What happens if I allow this moment without the story?
And then, oh,
strange,
suddenly, by allowing the form,
suddenly, there's a peace that arises from a deeper place.
And you look around at the forms and it is that spacious Presence that is there then. When the forms are no longer obscuring that.
But, you can only get to that when you allow the forms...
that which appeared to prevent you from finding yourself is …actually the doorway…
Not the story, but the simple form of this moment…
Eckhart Tolle, notes from his Omega Retreat
So, by my count, Eckhart Tolle is telling us to stop the story telling.
So, is Adya.
So is Byron Katie.
And so was Epictetus ca. 100 AD.
We are disturbed not by what happens to us,
but by our thoughts about what happens.
His son is dead. What happened? His son is dead. Nothing else? Not a thing.
His ship is lost. What happened? His ship is lost.
He was carried off to prison. What happened? He was carried off to prison.
But the observation: 'He has fared ill,' is an addition that each man makes on his own responsibility.
(Discourses 3.8.1–5, trans. Oldfather)
I think it’s time I learn this lesson.
Prison or Paradise: Part One
…it limits you tremendously to be trapped in the world of labels.
Eckhart Tolle
Becky and Pat are in Thailand – to be precise, they are on the island of Koh Tao, some 70 km from the Thai peninsula, in a tropical paradise.
Koh Tao has only recently become an “inhabited island” as people migrated there in 1947. Before that, from 1933 – 1947 it was used as a prison for political prisoners due to its lonely isolation.
Now, it’s a beautiful resort and a major dive site of Southeast Asia.
So one day the child is looking at the tree in openness and wonder.
That is still the state of oneness.
And the next day it has learned the word 'tree.'... "Oh, tree, tree!"
Yeah, that's right, that's what it is. Now let's go on to the next thing.
Many humans, from that moment onwards, they don't really look at the tree anymore because they think they know what it is.
And this is just one tiny example, of then thousands of concepts,
and then being imprisoned in that
and then having concepts about me.
Me? I’m in Atlanta.
I’m going to my job each day.
I’m not taking a vacation this summer. I’ve never been to a tropical paradise.
I’m shifting two and a half tons of rock from my driveway to backyard (well, actually – that’s my summer fun, creating a beautiful new rock garden… if my back holds.)
I got Becky’s email from Koh Tao last night after going to an Adyashanti Gathering.
On the DVD we watched, Adya was speaking of a man doing time in a prison in Florida.
The man had awakened while incarcerated.
He no longer thought of himself as being imprisoned. He’d found his monastery.
Adya said, “We’re all doing time.”
Do you think you can escape the planet?
Do you think you can escape your life?
Do you think you can escape your labels?
Koh Tao used to be a prison.
Now, it’s a paradise.
So our practice is meeting the Now fully.
We spoke of the possibility of allowing what is, to be.
And that means not imposing interpretations on it.
So let’s use where we are…
And see if we can meet Nature without imposing mental labels or interpretations on it…
This is a very important, very helpful way of stepping out of the stream of thinking. … The prison of your mind, the prison cell, the conditioned mind, that most people identify with as themselves, as me,
that prison cell has hidden little exits.
Easy to overlook.
But it’s not really locked, they’re open.
And one such exit is, quite simply, sense perception.
…most people don't know this because all they know is whatever they perceive is immediately interpreted through the conditioned thought processes.
It’s compared to something else,
you find some personal relationship to it,
it reminds you of that,
or you simply put a label on it
and then you think you now what it is
and you inhabit a flat universe.
It lacks depth because the mental labels obscure to you the depth
that there is
and the aliveness
and the sacredness that there is in every living thing…
And it has happened that the greatest criminal turned into a saint.
Eckhart Tolle, from his Omega Retreat
Friday, June 27, 2008
An Experiment
I'm just going to try this... I've created a "badge" to view my photos via FlickRiver.
The whole process has been somewhat out of control.
Let's see if this works. I think you can click on the next bit of text:
Ahhh. I see. If you click on the blue dot (above) you can see either my photos and paintings with a black background and large size... OR (for a real treat) once in Flickriver, click to FAVORITES and enjoy my collection of favorite Flickr images from other folks. There are some stunners there!.
Enjoy.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Meister Eckhart
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
I’ve not read any books of Meister Eckhart’s writing.
Perhaps I should.
I think I would enjoy them, finding the Same Story yet again with slightly different wording so that my attention is peaked anew.
For instance here, speaking of the Now, he sounds so much like that present day Eckhart (Eckhart Tolle):
There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
With my love of sacred language, I enjoy discovering:
Every creature is a word of God.
While biologist and meditator in me seem to be entwined by these words:
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,
as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul.
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
For more of Meister Eckhart, you can go here.
At Michigan State University, the course of Religious Studies 275 has a website with links to Eckhart.
There you’ll find the complete text from which I’ve made these excerpts regarding the desire for Transcendence and the path of getting There:
THE SOUL'S RAGE
The soul is furious for self-knowledge.
Her face is lit with passion, red with rage for the arrears withheld from her in God…
The masters say there is no fiercer appetite than a friend's desire to possess his friend and all that he possesses.
The soul proclaims her rage so boundless she cannot be appeased by him…
Alas! she cries, who shall console me? My misery is too deep…
So I take refuge in myself and there I find the lowest place, aye,
one more base than hell for even thence do my shortcomings hound me.
It seems I cannot then escape myself.
Here I sit me down and herein will I stay…
So I go out and let the soul go in.
The third rage of the soul is that she should be God
and that there should not be a single creature,
like when God was in his eternity ere he created creature,
so that she may enjoy God-nature in its simplicity as he did before.
Fourthly, she rages to be absolutely nothing but the naked essence,
there being neither God nor creature.
MAN HAS TO SEEK GOD IN ERROR AND FORGETFULNESS
Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness.
For deity has in it the power of all things and no thing has the like…
the soul's lower powers should be ordered to her higher
and her higher ones to God:
for her outward senses to her inward
and her inward ones to reason;
thought to intuition
and intuition to the will
and all to unity,
so that the soul may be alone with nothing flowing into her but sheer divinity,
flowing here into itself.
Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart
I’ve not read any books of Meister Eckhart’s writing.
Perhaps I should.
I think I would enjoy them, finding the Same Story yet again with slightly different wording so that my attention is peaked anew.
For instance here, speaking of the Now, he sounds so much like that present day Eckhart (Eckhart Tolle):
There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
With my love of sacred language, I enjoy discovering:
Every creature is a word of God.
While biologist and meditator in me seem to be entwined by these words:
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,
as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul.
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
For more of Meister Eckhart, you can go here.
At Michigan State University, the course of Religious Studies 275 has a website with links to Eckhart.
There you’ll find the complete text from which I’ve made these excerpts regarding the desire for Transcendence and the path of getting There:
THE SOUL'S RAGE
The soul is furious for self-knowledge.
Her face is lit with passion, red with rage for the arrears withheld from her in God…
The masters say there is no fiercer appetite than a friend's desire to possess his friend and all that he possesses.
The soul proclaims her rage so boundless she cannot be appeased by him…
Alas! she cries, who shall console me? My misery is too deep…
So I take refuge in myself and there I find the lowest place, aye,
one more base than hell for even thence do my shortcomings hound me.
It seems I cannot then escape myself.
Here I sit me down and herein will I stay…
So I go out and let the soul go in.
The third rage of the soul is that she should be God
and that there should not be a single creature,
like when God was in his eternity ere he created creature,
so that she may enjoy God-nature in its simplicity as he did before.
Fourthly, she rages to be absolutely nothing but the naked essence,
there being neither God nor creature.
MAN HAS TO SEEK GOD IN ERROR AND FORGETFULNESS
Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness.
For deity has in it the power of all things and no thing has the like…
the soul's lower powers should be ordered to her higher
and her higher ones to God:
for her outward senses to her inward
and her inward ones to reason;
thought to intuition
and intuition to the will
and all to unity,
so that the soul may be alone with nothing flowing into her but sheer divinity,
flowing here into itself.
Meister Eckhart
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Body, The Soul: Part I
While the data will be convincing to many readers, it would be a mistake to think that accepting reincarnation as the most likely explanation for these observations gets us past many of the difficulties with personal identity and the meaning of ‘‘memory’’ which have plagued philosophy of mind for millennia…
The biggest import of this work is for basic science and the understanding of the universe as a whole. More profoundly than most of the work on psychokinesis, telepathy, and so on… the prospect of personal survival of bodily death speaks against the doctrine of materialism…
It is clear that if the human personality is not simply a by-product of the biology of the body, a drastic revision in our basic sciences will be required.
Michael Levin, PhD., Forsyth Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, Forsyth Institute, Harvard University, reviewing Life Before Life.
I’m sure she changed the subject on me as we pulled into my driveway, which is why her words kind of stunned me.
“You wrote, ‘I’m dying.’ I know you’re not, but if you do, will you contact Charlie and send me a sign that he’s OK?”
In my head I saw vastness, darkness, floating wisps, or even less – just a point of consciousness. I also got the feeling I might be highly distracted, if not disoriented once I “crossed over.”
“What makes you think I could even find him?” I never met Mary’s son, Charlie, who died at age 16, in a car crash three years ago. But, Mary and I have meditated together for over a decade now.
She knows my spiritual issues well and I know how deeply she has grieved.
“You could find him. And you could give me a sign.” Mary is usually pretty clear on what she thinks and this was no exception.
More silence ensued as I sat there taking a deep breath, trying to implant an instruction that would go deeply enough to be retained even when I'd dropped my body. I didn’t fool myself for a minute that it seemed a long shot. These days I can’t remember how I spent my weekend.
So, I kind of switched the subject.
I told her she might enjoy reading about the work of Ian Stevenson and his successors at the University of Virginia.
If she was looking for some validation beyond hope and personal belief – this is about the best that I can offer.
To be continued… (no pun intended)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
News of the World (little, little world)
Qarrtsiluni translates as "sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst."
That’s a sentiment I really like and I enjoy visiting this online journal frequently.
A painting of mine appears in the current issue, “Water.”
Or, you can see both of my pieces that they’ve published by going to the author’s link.
That’s a sentiment I really like and I enjoy visiting this online journal frequently.
A painting of mine appears in the current issue, “Water.”
Or, you can see both of my pieces that they’ve published by going to the author’s link.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Once More...
I have posted this Rumi poem before.
Today, I have come across it yet again.
I find it just right.
For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn't decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
Rumi
I came across this poem while visiting Douglas Hardings' teachings on the web.
If you would like to try a fairly direct and immediate way to experience the Silent Nothingness within, I point you to Right Here.
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