Too Much Kissing

Too Much Kissing - Caught
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

When Little Bear’s Grandmother received the drawing he had made for her, she asked Hen to please give him a kiss from her. Hen said she would deliver the kiss, but when she ran into Frog, she passed the kiss to him asking, “Would you give this kiss to Little Bear?”

Frog agreed. But when he wanted to go swimming he passed the kiss on to Cat.
Cat agreed to deliver said kiss, but when he wanted to take a nap, he passed the kiss on to Skunk.
Skunk then saw this pretty little skunk and he gave the kiss to her.
She immediately gave it right back to him.
Skunk was in the process of giving the kiss yet again to the pretty little skunk, when Hen arrived upon the scene and declared,
“Too much kissing.”

I have always read this with an exclamation point,
though there is actually none in the text of this 1968 classic, A Kiss for Little Bear.

In the end, Hen delivered the kiss per the original plan.
Little Bear was happy. Grandmother was happy. Hen was relieved.
And the two little skunks got married which is the antecedent of course to, “happily ever after.”

Now, Why I am telling you this?

Turns out, “Too Much Kissing!” has become something of a shorthand to me for the spiritual exercise of simply stopping.
More recently, the words have evolved into the rather exasperated –
“Too Much Thinking!”

Stop.
Breath.
Feel.

I have become sick to death of Thinking.
I await some sort of epiphany in which I finally STOP.
Yet, I am still waiting. Day after day. Weeek after weeak. Pound head onto ground...

Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction,
but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it,
so it is considered normal.

This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being…

The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone,
lives in a state of apparent separateness,
in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict…
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I learned early on in life (and totally non-verbally, now That's Ironic!) that by being busy – thinking and working on my projects – I could momentarily escape the pain I felt inside.

Now,
I am noticing how I turn to use this escape valve moment after moment through the day.

I am noticing how thought is actually superficial behavior.
I am noticing how it takes me away from deeper truer feelings.
I am noticing how I am putting off the inevitable
And what I would actually prefer.

I feel the magnetic pull to sinking deep inside, even as I know it could mean feeling pain and grief at least initially.
I feel the pull even as the thoughts continue chattering somewhere on the surface, somewhere in the distance.
I feel a peace that calls.

So I’ve started honking on this horn of Hen’s admonition,
“Too Much Thinking!”

I invite you to do the same or at least to simply begin watching for a moment what you do with thinking. (Turns out it's not a new topic here.)

Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering
and of continuous conflict within and without,
but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

**************************************************
However, You may want to keep on thinking.
If so, you could go here: the Jazz Dispute on YouTube. (I especially enjoy the end of this video)

Or for you true intellectuals,
I have included a link to Maurice Sendak. I find his inspiration interesting.
He seems to paint straight from the pain-body, both child and collective.

Thinking too Much

Pear & Butterfly II
Originally uploaded by Jack Hindmarsh

I’ve been thinking a lot lately.
Making lists of reasonable reasons, if not on paper certainly in my head.
There’s this and this and this and this…

Then, yesterday I received an email from a Nick Forrest, which didn’t make any sense to me at first. It read

Subject: agatha defuse animate

bard bolshoi, chromatography conception bloomfield, defrock combine. compactify allure babyhood actinide dakota bureaucratic conveyance. bottommost capillary dobbin cancelled amos casualty astrophysical chairman cane burette chambers armenia. baxter alexander cruelty boeing angelic bloodstone browne

What is this? It makes no sense.
And then I realized.
This is "asemic poetry."

I’ve got this little asemic connection ,via my painting, to a group of artists round the world doing stuff like “concrete poetry” and this Nick Forrest must be saying hello in his own asemic manner.
That was it.

And then I recalled the poem I posted about a week ago. Yeah, I brought this on myself
probably with that bit of poetry that is actually an instruction on the lab’s centrifuge.

Now, it all was making sense and so I read again what Nick had sent.
And I began to get the feel... to understand.
OK!

So, I wrote Nick back:

Well, I really like "bottommost capillary dobbin," but the rest doesn't really help me make sense of a life that seems to be getting stranger by the moment.

“Cancelled amos casually.”

And I don't know if it’s good when it begins to fall into place. But, "Yeah."
“Angelic bloodstone browne.”

I really meant that, “Yeah,”
And was feeling pleased with making yet another little contact out there in radio-land,
When my email system sent a "failed delivery" notice.

Apparently, “Nick Forrest” is some kind of obfuscated computer dead-end in the UK.
And I had been carrying on, happily conversing with, even finding meaning in, the non-sense of some spam generating computer.

UNIVERSE to PATTY:
"You have gone too far!"
Coyote, you’re hanging in the air and the cliff edge is over there.
Get back, Honky Cat!

Sometimes non-sense is just non-sense…
Unless the intellect/intellectual gets a hold of it and starts thinking WAY too much.


So, (Good Buddhist that I am) from now on I am going with what’s right in front of me,
With That which simply Is.

... (In fact, I’m doing that right now) … (look. No hands) ... (Doing it.) ...

Well, Dang!
I find I still really like the phrase, “bottommost capillary dobbin.”
How very curious and
Delightful

How wonderful!

It all works out
even without a brain churning away.

Thinking

thinking
Originally uploaded by Household 6.

“Nothing remains the same for very long. The mind wants everything to stop so that it can get its foothold, find its position, so it can figure out how to control life. Through the pursuit of material things, knowledge, ideas, beliefs, opinions, emotional states, spiritual states, and relationships, the mind seeks to find a secure position from which to operate.

The mind seeks to nail life down and get it to stop moving and changing. When this doesn't work, the mind begins to seek the changeless, the eternal, something that doesn't move. But the mind of thought is itself an expression of life's movement and so must always be in movement itself. When there is thought, that thought is always moving and changing.

There is really no such thing as thought. There is only thinking, so thought which is always moving (as thinking) cannot apprehend the changeless. When thought enters into the changeless it goes silent. When thought goes silent, the thinker, the psychological "me," the image-produced self, disappears. Suddenly it is gone….

You are now no longer the thought, nor the thinker, nor someone who is aware. Only awareness remains, as itself. Then, within awareness, thought moves. Within the changeless, change happens. Now awareness expresses itself. Awareness is always expressing itself: as life, as change, as thought, feelings, bodies, humans, plants, trees, cars, etc. Awareness yields to itself, to its inherent creativity, to its expression in form, to experience itself. The changeless is changing. The eternal is living and dying. The formless is form. The form is formless. This is nothing the mind could have ever imagined.”

~ Adyashanti Copyright ©2003 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.

Too much Thinking!
So, why do I bother with this blog?
Let’s call it encouragement… for me, for you…
So, let’s take a bow. And proceed.

Let’s think about some things, because that’s what scientists do.