Self Portrait

Self Portrait, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

The image is an impression of the truth, a glimpse of the truth permitted to us in our blindness.
Andrei Tarkovsky

Today’s my birthday.
Today, I become sixty-one.
And as it turns out, I recently created the self portrait that you see above.
I didn’t set out to do something so self-centered. I was simply typing at the computer when I noticed the sunshine falling on a canvas in the corner. One thing led into another – kind of like all the rest of life - and when I was done, I was quite pleased.

Now, I have this image of the little girl.
So much has changed, gone from memory so completely, I have to wonder, “Is that me?”
"Who was there when I was only two?
"Can I recognize myself?" ... even as
I am invited into what has not changed in all these sixty years.

The body is so very changed, and yet, around the eyes I see feelings I still feel:
Wonder.
Longing.
Something sacred and a mystery.
And one step back, prior to the feelings, now, I see that too.
I come to what is always and already “me.”

Wakefulness shines through a body.
Something streams through the child’s face and even now I know myself as the little girl you could say and yet, not the little girl that’s in the picture.
What shines through and is recognized is not within the details, not about the physical shape, specific feelings, or all the here and there’s and thens of sixty years.
But, even though It cannot be captured in one word or picture’s thousand, it doesn’t mean It goes unnoticed.
I study the self portrait and discover something shining through.

The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible.
Andrei Tarkovsky

Yes. Infinity becomes palpable.
Sometimes the “me” is apprehended, recognized.  And then we get to understand birthdays in a whole new way.

That which is unborn is that which we were before we were born, are during this life, and will be after death. Until there is a conscious realization of our unborn nature, our experience of life will forever be dominated by the egoic drive to survive.
Adyashanti

Which I guess brings me to the Song of the Day as the perfect ending:

Asemic Love

P. Bralley, Asemic Shadows #1

Love, someone said, is an abstract concept…
It takes the experience of a lifetime to make it concrete.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

I have taken up my art again, after a long hiatus.
I sent some asemic images off and they have been accepted for publication.
That made me happy.

Wikipedia posts this comment regarding asemic writing:
China, ca. 800 CE, two men pushed cursive brush calligraphy to the point of illegibility. "Crazy" Zhang Xu (one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup) used to get excited after drinking wine, and write exuberant but illegible cursive.

This was news to me, but I have always made a link between my doodled images and trying to capture… “something”… about that which is beyond specific words.
But as I say to do my morning’s yoga and listen to a Kilologue, Matt Kahn, took the explanation in a new and deeper direction.

He spoke of love.
Love is actually the absence of meaning
which is why it feels so amazing…
When we’re experiencing the deepest moment of love… in that moment there is the absence of meaning. And of course we try to capture meaning… we make it into something that has to be chased, coerced, captured…
To the conventional mind living a life without meaning is quite frightening because the mind has been taught to associate meaning with value… But, if we look into ourselves the absence of meaning doesn’t mean the absence of value. In fact, any meaning in particular will actually define the value and therefore limit it. So, the absence of meaning is actually the existence of unlimited value.
And that, to me, is why love is amazing.

Oh! That’s it!
That’s what’s going on in this asemic expression.
Love is just another word for Silence, of Emptiness as Fullness.
That’s what I’m playing at.

I think back to a long time ago.
I was about nineteen. My sister and I were riding in the car. She was telling me about being married for a year.
She said:
When I married Hank, I couldn’t tell you why I loved him. I just did.
Now, I can give you a whole list of reasons.

Cat’s Cradle

Intellectual understanding cannot awaken you.
But, an intellectual misunderstanding can keep you from awakening.
P Bralley –or at least that seems my experience.

Was emailing a friend today, discussing a Scott Kiloby quote when I realized the above.
It is a belief.
One thing led to another through the day until I came upon the following:

Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.


"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have.
“I feel very unimportant compared to You.
“The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up “and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"


Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
"What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
“I loved everything I saw!
“Good night. Amen."

Hypertext to Wikipedia:
Bokononism is a religion invented by Kurt Vonnegut as a fictional religion practiced by many of the characters in his novel Cat's Cradle.
It is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths.
The primary tenet of Bokononism is to "Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."


The foundation of Bokononism is that all religion, including Bokononism and all its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, one who believes and adheres to these lies will at least have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life.


Bokonon, a character in the novel, is the founder of the religion. He was born Lionel Boyd Johnson and attended the London School of Economics and Political Science, only for his education to be cut short by World War I.

"Bokonon" was the way the natives of San Lorenzo, the fictional Caribbean island-nation where the shipwrecked Johnson started his religion, pronounced his family name in their unique dialect of English…
Bokononism, encompasses concepts unique to the novel, with San Lorenzan names such as:
• karass - a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The group can be thought of as the fingers that support a Cat's Cradle.
• granfalloon - a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is "Hoosiers"; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.
• wrang-wrang - Someone who steers a Bokononist away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity.
• stuppa - a fogbound child (i.e. an idiot)
• duffle - the destiny of thousands of people placed on one stuppa
• Busy, busy, busy - words Bokononists whisper upon witnessing an example of how interconnected everything is
• boko-maru - the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.
• Now I will destroy the whole world. - What a Bokononist says before committing suicide.

I never read Cat’s Cradle.
But this description somehow reminds me of nonduality and all the internet yah-dah, yah-dah.

Hypertext “an absurdity” (see wrang-wrang above):
Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence…


The ontological argument for the existence of God, as it was originally stated by Anselm of Canterbury, is an example of reductio ad absurdum…
OK the Archbishop of Canterbury got it wrong. I’m not too surprised.
Another example: a statement attributed to physicist Niels Bohr:
"The opposite of every great idea is another great idea."

Carl Sagan used a reductio ad absurdum argument to counter this claim.
If this statement is true, then it would qualify as a great idea.
But, if the statement itself is a great idea, its opposite
("It is not true that the opposite of every great idea is another great idea")
must also be a great idea.

The original statement is disproven because it leads to an absurd conclusion:
An idea can be great regardless of whether it is true or false.
And somewhere in my head a bell rang.

Hypertext me back.
FaceBook earlier in the day:

I cannot deny awareness, yet I cannot find it to exist in its own form either.
Though I need not come to any description, if I had to, it would be that the nature of reality and everything that appears is aware non-existence,
or non-existent awareness:
this description both confirms and denies reality which leaves the 'not-knowing'.
The eternal paradox is that there seems to be something, yet we cannot find anything.

True freedom, as such, is beyond needing either this, or that.
To be free from needing all kinds of ultimate truths, is the freedom that sets us free.
Being free, who cares about truth?

In my experience awareness cannot be found at all, because it doesn't exist as anything, not even as itself.
Only when I refer to a particular experience, does the experience pop up, but never am I actually recognizing awareness, just creating more subtle experiences.
Yet all of it seems to confirm empty, non-existent awareness to be aware and existing.
Bentinho Massaro (who I actually am fond of… but perhaps not today)

And 56 people of the karass click the thumbs up.
And 44 others click into the comments as if anything they could possibly say adds to the discussion!

Or, am I simply being “Crabby Patty” yet again?
Hey, my other post was going to be “Rage, Grief, Terror.”
This may be an improvement.
What a lucky mud I am!

Just Watch

I am beginning to love this guy.
And I've nothing more to say.

Or perhaps I could add - I am wrestling a bit with finding "Self" if everything is simply an appearance.
Like when I dismissed the Klein Bottle experience - just an experience.
But, I get the part of falling backwards: how that's true meditation and that happens in activity...
which brings me back to somehow we are already awake.
KNOW THAT!  thoroughly.

Face It

5th grade skit, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

I sit here in this chair, and I am alone in the universe,
and I alone am the universe; outside of every system ever conceived.
How could this have ever occurred? …
Why do I look at the baby in the stroller across the room and only see myself? Not as a literal projection, but as something that is not separate from this organism.
I am not really sure why, or that it even matters.
I am keen to find out, however.
Takuin Minamoto, Emptiness and Levels of Consciousness

I think it started with FaceBook.

Carin, a childhood friend I’ve not seen in 40 years, posted a picture of David, just one of the people we went to high school with - David a year older, Class of 1967.
Now, there he was, 2011, smiling in a pink shirt, blond hair spiking just a bit.
God, he looked great!
And I thought, "David?" The name was so familiar, but I could hardly remember. What had he been like? - a nice guy, student council type.
And as I clicked to find out more there was one other photo: He and another handsome fellow, both in tuxes, silk vests, and boutonniere.
Underneath, a woman had commented, “I thought he was married to Philip.”

My god!
People in Decatur Illinois talking about gay marriage as if it were the most normal thing in the world?
I was deeply moved, because I know what that path was like from the clueless closet of MacArthur High School to 2011.
And now, I can count four of us as having made it. Who else? Who else shared that path?

That night I had a dream.
I was at David’s house, the lawn set out with white clothed tables awaiting the reception. As the guests arrived I was amazed to see all these old high school acquaintances.
Face after face.
It was delightful and heart rending. It was wonderful to see those who’d largely just meant pain.

Then I saw him, Carin’s father.
He was old. Not at all the robust beer drinking, cigarette puffing joker of my youth, but an old man with watery eyes. His name was Bill, but my folks had always called him Henry.
I went to him and we shared the softest kiss.
Then I stood back waiting for my hug. But, he was not about to reach out.
Puzzlement. Then he said, “If I were to hug you, I’d never let you go.”

With those words such love exploded. With a jolt I was awake.
Lying there in my bed I discovered I was crying.
I lay there for a moment trying to orient myself.
It was then I noticed there was this small burning pinhole of light right in the middle of my heart.
What a strange way for one’s heart to break.

I thought of Carin. I would write her in the morning and tell her, “I dreamed of your dad last night.”
A couple months ago via FaceBook she had told me, “He has his good days and his bad now.”
I thought of Carin’s mother, how when Pop died my mom had told me she had gotten a phone call: “Rusty, it’s Fuzzy.”
At first, that was all they’d needed to say. And I could hear exactly how Carin’s mom had sounded.
“Rusty, it’s Fuzzy.” …stop, beyond all words, just stop.

So, I’ve learned a strange thing from these FaceBook encounters, from these reunions with old friends and even with the ones I’d thought hadn’t really mattered.
They all mattered. Every single one.

They all matter because I have discovered that they no longer exist as separate entities.
Retreating into memory and mind they have become a part of me.
They constitute my Life.

I love them as myself.
I am so surprised to understand that.
I wish I’d known that all along.

What does it mean to believe in a perception?
It means that you are unconsciously assuming that the world you are perceiving is real....
it means you are assuming that whatever is perceived, is really there as something in and of itself; as having an independent nature; a solid existence...

When we realize this ...we stop solidifying our experience as being a single entity in a world full of other individual objects and people...
Whether you have your eyes open and believe you perceive 'external stimuli' or whether you have your eyes closed and experience your thoughts, emotions, or even meditational states ...
All is just that same perception of awareness. Just like the movie screen will always be the movie screen and the projection will always be the projection, regardless of what is shown.
Bentinho Massaro

Being Who You Are is Freedom

Ben is growing on me.  His directness shatters so much that I often cannot stand to listen. But, that glass I hear breaking are my beliefs. And he also makes me feel a burst of happiness and leaves me with a grin.

Part 2 of the Download: Beliefs

Most of us feel pretty ordinary, and if we have this conscious or unconscious belief that enlightenment is rare—that it's for only very extraordinary people—it totally contradicts our experience because we're not extraordinary...  And so this idea, it is one of the, if not the most powerful impediment to awakening.
We have images of the awake being, and they are all sort of halo-enshrouded... And if they are doing anything in life they're always teaching, and they always have disciples....
It's very hard for our minds to get that enlightenment can look like your grandmother, or the grocer.
Enlightenment doesn't need to look in any way extraordinary.
Adyshanti, an interview

Early on I got from Adya that beliefs impede enlightenment.
I was stunned to consider that maybe my belief that enlightenment is rare was my major stumbling block.
So, I worked on letting that go.
Ha! I replaced it with another belief, “This is possible.”
Well... that’s a useful start.

Adya also stated that in the end we have to give up ALL beliefs, and the spiritual ones will be the hardest.
So, I have been watching my reaction this past year or more to the Neo-Advaita teaching which I interpreted as something along the lines, “You can be awake and still be a ‘jerk.’”

I really resist believing that!
If awakening doesn’t turn you into some reasonable version of a saint, or at least diminish your obnoxious traits – What’s the point?
I have little tolerance for the behaviour of the so called enlightened that erupt into the scandal.
I have little tolerance for my getting frustrated with my mother.
Surely we should be able to do better than that!

Or, so I believed.
And I wanted to believe.
What’s interesting to me now is discovering that that belief made me deaf to a really useful teaching:
Awareness is Already and Always there -
even when I am a jerk.

Adya has another teaching that I immediately liked:
Ask yourself, “How am I unenlightening myself?”

Well, I realized that the belief, “I’ll be enlightened when I’m always patient with my mother,” immediately becomes,
“Oh, look! I’m not enlightened.”
Or, “I had it and then I lost it.”
Right there the deed is done.
“I had it and then I lost it.”
Believe that! And you’ve just done it – unenlightened yourself by believing in a belief.
And what specifically was that belief? “Enlightenment means I’ll behave a certain way.”

Well, that’s no better than saying enlightenment is based upon behaviour.
And, I hope we can all agree that enlightenment depends upon consciousness: pure, eternal, awareness rather than any specific, fleeting, temporal behaviour.
Hey, even Jesus could throw a hissy fit – ask the money changers in the temple. He was sincerely angry.

Perhaps a better way to explain the difference that this makes is to share a few clips from Bentinho's online Journal:
Tue Sep 29, 2009 3:42 pm
Today was a funny day and interesting as well. I have felt some intense emotions and thoughts, something that I have not had to this degree in a while. It was mainly disappointment, followed by sadness, self-pity and anger (towards some colleague of mine). I was quite touched by it and while doing my work that morning all kinds of stories went through my mind continuously. I occasionally believed in them as well. I naturally recognized awareness too, but that did not stop the stories. And I dangled somewhere in between freedom and believing in these stories.
So it was quite a challenging situation in the sense of being not distracted by my intense emotions and stories. It went quite well just as it went and I did not force anything. I just let it run and be for most of the time.
After some hours I just could no longer belief in my thoughts, instead I naturally felt light and free from suffering.

I was shocked when I first read these words. I felt something burning inside.
For a moment it crossed my mind that “Bentinho’s not so enlightened” and then slowly came this great relief:
1) Finally, a teacher who is willing to share the moment to moment of what’s it like. Totally honest. And not much different from me.
2) There are times when things are intense. But, it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong!
It doesn’t mean that you are any less or more enlightened. Awareness is already and always there.

Notice that! Let the difficult emotions pull you deeper into your grounding in awareness.
Let the thoughts and feeling becomes pure energy and burn the dross away.

It’s Freedom In – Not Freedom From

I’m trying to catch up in my posting. I’m giving up trying to make the “days” here match day to day with what happened in Life.
I’m just going to post as quickly as I can.
So, here goes. Something I wrote down last weekend:

If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering…
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth.   I read this and it’s haunted me…

I don’t know how to even say it.
But, a thought crossed my mind and immediately I knew, “That’s it!”
So, I tried to repeat the words that had just floated by and they no longer quite made sense, like when you wake up from a dream and realized it’s actually illogical.
I tried again and failed.
And just like that the insight was gone.

But, let me try once more just to give you an idea:
Instead of evaluating my experience and thinking ‘that’s not enlightened’ all I have to really understand is that that experience (whatever it may be) is enlightened.

In some way it was for me a new take on the concept, “We are all already awake.”
We just don’t know it.
Suddenly, it seemed “Well just accept it!”
Don’t question, just relax, right now, right here “Just Like This” you are awake.

I found I didn’t want to accept that.
Wouldn’t that just be replacing one belief with another?
I’m not interested in deluding myself with the concept, “I am enlightened.”
Surely, something has to happen. Something has to “POP!”
Doesn’t it?

I hear my friend almost shouting in my head, “Look! There is no you!”
But, there is another way around.
And that’s to recognize that awareness (being awake) is indeed already there.
Awareness, always and already there - that is an accessible experience for me.
That’s what I find when I look inside to “see.”
There’s always something indefinable, yet there: “always and already.”
And Awareness is as good a word as any to describe it.

Years ago I heard Adya say this and all my mind could hear was the alliteration: “always and already.” I got all caught up in trying just to say it, as if a mind can be tongue tied and thus unable to get what the words actually mean.
But recently, as Bentinho Massaro used the phrase it suddenly made such sense.
It makes Awareness quite accessible and obvious.

It is always and already there prior to all experiences.
And so, of course… we are already awake.
Notice that!

I drive to work noticing. I walk the halls noticing.
And when I forget to notice because my head is filled with molecular genetic details, when I put the work aside, I notice that awareness had been there even then… like the love that never dies even when we are too busy to notice, feel, or say, “I love you.”

But still, it could be clearer. I am not all that awake.
I like Tolle’s criteria: acceptance, enjoyment, enthusiasm.
Anything less and I’m creating suffering for either myself or others.

I also like the discussion between Scott Kiloby and Bentinho regarding how people often think that enlightenment is being free from difficulties. They experience a moment of freedom from their troubles and think, “This is it.” And then they collapse back into challenges.

They say the collapsing back ceases when you realize it’s not “Freedom From” (all the ups and downs) but rather, “Freedom In.”
So, check out this audio file. Especially from ~38 minutes onward.
Go to the Kilologue Page, scroll down to the interview with Bentinho Massaro.

Awakening simply means to notice that a natural, unconditioned awakeness is always equally present. The repeated recognition of that, is the 'getting used to it' and the personality gradually starts to reflect a greater peace, openness, clarity, love, selflessness.
Bentinho Massaro

I Looked for My Self

Often when we hear the masters speak about emptiness, stillness, awareness, pure space, openness, etc. our minds can create a copy of it, a concept….
Bentinho Massaro, Insights into Awareness- a collection of articles

I wrote what follows a few weeks ago. By the end of it I was so disgusted I never posted.
Now I realize it was kind of a nice letting go, a nice STOP.
I gave up trying to see that an “I” does not ultimately exist.
Giving up proved to be a nice stepping stone.
So, let me post that old inquiry now. Failure is good and it went like this:

The Looking
A friend keeps urging me to “just look and see.”
I’ve been meaning to ask exactly what she means by those words, realizing you must be pretty knot headed if you’ve reached the point of needing “look” and “see” explained.
Dick and Jane could do it.
Spot, the dog, could probably even do it.

And, it’s not as if I haven’t tried.
It’s just that is hasn’t led to any huge revelation.
Recently, I copied her instructions down leaving room for me to try and “Look & See” at each step of her description. Below her words are in bold.

i looked for my self, within the direct experience of the present moment.

OK, Present Moment.
Who’s sitting here? Body, mind, thoughts, fingers – none of that is me.
That’s the vehicle I drive.

I am what is here all along, all along, birth to death.
I am who feels the typing, the wind, the anxiety…
Who?
What?
“What” is far more accurate. That is obvious.
“What am I?”

There is a gap, a huge, huge gap, between me and everything else.
I am on one side. All That is on the other.

The gap seems to warrant attention, more so than the now ancillary “me”
It’s as if the banks of the river (me and that other) are not the essence of the river (the gap).
The banks are not what you really need to notice, not when the River seems more real and water is the river’s essence.

And the Gap?
What is the Gap?
The gap is nothing, yet the word is totally misleading.
This nothing almost pulsates with so many unspeakable qualities.

The gap is what holds everything: both “me” and All That Other.
I never really noticed that!

Attending to the gap is like dropping water on a dry sponge.
Instantly there is expansion, twisting, a spreading out in all dimensions.
The Gap is all pervading.
The Gap comes out my eyes, except it’s no longer shaped liked Gap.

In some Klein Bottle twist of Nothing - Gap is Everything:
“I” as individual am Gap.
“All That” out there is Gap solidified.
Gap is Nothingness become alive.

Maharishi told us once, “Never try to bridge the Gap.”
Now, I think you have to fall into It.
Let It swallow you.

And still, I am a “me.”
‘Cause I drive around inside this body, mind, thoughts, feelings.
A “Me” walks through this oceanic Gapness, curled back upon and through itself becoming something out of nothing, just as much Me as the sparrow over there.

… Or, maybe I’ve read too many books and all I’ve come to is a concept, not direct experience.

i looked for the looker.

And I found the “non-orientable” Klein Bottle of Creation
which is the Looker (me) and the Looking.

But see, this is what my friend said:
and what was found?
nothing!
there's nothing there. it isn't A nothing, that is somehow experienced.
it is instead that there is no findable me.
everything else is right here.

I’m not sure that it matters.
But, I do like the picture of the Klein Bottle that I labeled.

Shamanic Happenings

Wisp, Karen Cleveland

Wisp is a forest that requests a reconsideration of the human relationship to nature and… threads the supernatural through the everyday.

Karen Cleveland

Last night I went to see my friend, Karen’s, exhibition for her MFA. It astounded me. She had created a forest that she then invited you to enter. You could hear the wind, as well as tree frogs. Within a stump you discovered a gently throbbing light. You bumped onto branches and webs of lace. You stood before a tree, the bark bursting into a dozen pieces, even as it defined an internal space of emptiness. It was stitched together with threads of gold and red and buffalo gut.

But what moved me most was the painting of Leaf Gather.
Here was the benevolent cousin to a beast I had met just the previous night.
I had pulled him out of Evie as we did “energetic bodywork.”
He was a seven foot tall roaring, red-eyed, fanged embodiment of her disease: a tangle of grief and fear and rage, as well as chemicals and cancer.
I hadn’t expected to pull him out. But there he was.
I was stunned to then see his sweet cousin in Karen’s painting.
But, there he was.

Leaf Gather, Karen Cleveland

No one told me when I started my Taoist practice that it was actually shamanic.
They only spoke of energy.
Well, surprise. Energy can take on consciousness and form.
Think of humans. Think of devas. Think of the internal beasts that haunt us.

For awhile, back in the 70’s after I had my first shift in consciousness, I could see what I called angels. There was a “devotion angel” floating near the ceiling of the cathedral I attended. There was a “birth angel” cradling my sister-in-law as she gave birth to Evie’s brother.

At the time, I had no conceptual framework for such perceptions and thus adopted what I read in the Findhorn Garden:

By the springtime of our second year at Findhorn, the Landscape Angel told us that our garden was becoming more unitied and whole, and that as this took place, an angelic being, a sort of guardian angel for our area, was forming.
I believe that any unit, whether it be a farm or a community, a couple or a nation, has an overlighting presence that in some way embodies the various levels of energy used within that unit.
The Angel of Findhorn is a composite being, “born” from the substance of our thoughts and ideals, the radiations of the land, and the energies of the higher selves of not only humans working on the land but of all the animals and plants there…
Dorothy Maclean, The Findhorn Garden

This compositeness is shown so well in Karen’s image.
And just as angels can be born, so can beasts.
These dark cousins can arise from the energy of our thoughts and fears of disease, the drugs used to combat and kill, and the energy of cells that run amok.

Now, a strict non-dual stance might argue, “All that is vacuous and empty. See that!”
But, practically and usually, what we first notice is the physical.
And if we’re lucky, we can see a bit more subtly into the level of energy.
So lets start there.

And guess what? It all works out.
After I pulled the beast from Eve, it was really obvious that he/it then filled my body.
I stood and took a bow, asking of my Teacher, Wong Loh Sin See, “Please Teacher help this to leave my body.”
Spontaneously, I started whirling qigong style, roaring with the beast’s roar. And after a minute or so I noticed that the beast had broken into packets, leaves, of energy.
That’s when the words of Scott Kiloby came to mind.
And the rest was just like this:

What’s happening in the body? …
Let the pure raw emotion just fill your body, just fill the space of awareness.
Let it just absolutely overwhelm you, the feeling itself without any label on it so it’s not fear overwhelming you.
It’s the pure energy, the vibration filling up the air, filling up the space of the body. And there’s no desire for it to go away. We’re not even witnessing it…without any label… the emotion has nowhere to go but to simply dissipate or change itself into awareness.
Kilobit, Painful Emotions ~ minutes 3:45 – 7:30 (scroll down page)

Curiously, and of course, this sounds to me simply the reverse of the process of creation that Dorothy Maclean explained.

Listening: Song of the Day

True listening goes far beyond auditory perception.
It is the arising of alert attention, a space of presence in which the words are being received… That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking.
And now the other person is no longer “other.”
Eckhart Tolle

When I was a kid, I loved to sing along with the refrain of a popular song:
“One ton amara. Oooh-oooh-oh. One ton amara.”
I had absolutely no idea what I was saying.
But, the tune was sweet. That was enough.
Today, when it came on the radio, I saw it written out on the navigation screen:
Guantanamera

Immediately, I had this epiphany.
“It’s about Gauntanamo!”
And I was rattled just a bit - a song of beauty and now Gautanamo a prison.
Such a juxtaposition! How could that be?

And then, for the first time in my life, I listened to the words that had always been there.
Words from the life of a real man, a poet, soon to die for freedom:

I am a truthful man
from the land of the palm trees
and before dying I want
to share these verses of my soul.

My verses are soft green
my verses are also flaming crimson
my verses are like a wounded deer
seeking refuge in the mountain.

I cultivate a white rose
in June as in January
for the sincere friend
who gives me his honest hand.

And for the cruel one who would tear out
the heart with which I live
I cultivate not nettles nor thistles
I cultivate the white rose.

With the poor people of this earth
I want to share my faith.
The streams of the mountains
pleases me more than the sea.
José Martí

One Moment

A jay flies one way
a jet another, criss-cross
altitudes apart.
A robin stands silhouetted gull-like
branch becoming beach.
Overhead crows harass a hawk.

One moment in the backyard
Spring.
The beauty almost hurts.

My backyard is actually fenced in. There are some trees, a creek behind, a deck above.
You can hear traffic on the Interstate a couple miles distant.
The block I live on ends at the train tracks.
This is city and suburb inside “The Perimeter” of I-285.
And yet… so much is right here.
Why go anywhere?

Mr. Bluebird started a nest last week, only to abandon his effort.
Bennie and I may have been too noisy.
A couple days ago two jays started a nest way high in a pine.
They gave up too. Close observation suggests that may have been a case of incompetence. They seemed to knock more twigs out in one moment than they could collect in half an hour.

But, I am sure that somewhere nests are being built.
Nature never gives up.
Nature seems to never be impatient.

I Like This

First you awaken from Life, then you awaken as Life itself.
Adyashanti, The Impact of Awakening

Two Points:
1. Last September I told Adya that it felt to me like I had become stuck in the Witness. What I meant by that was it feels as if I am watching the world on a screen. I am here and across this wide gap of Awareness lies Life.
2. Because of this gap, this witnessing, the phrase “The world is illusion” has great resonance with me. …with me, me me: an individual with paradoxical familiarity with unboundedness.

I asked Adya what to do and he replied that I would have to discover for myself how to “witness from the heart.”
I can’t say I have been very successful with this undertaking.

Last week I came across a beautiful young man, Bentinho Massaro. He has a very simple, direct approach; an approach that often stops my mind in its tracks or reduces me to tears beyond all reason.
In this video, although he does not phrase it in terms of witnessing, he offers a practice for seeing the unity of life which carries this description:

In order to 'loosen' the identification we often have with Awareness being some kind of state, or the sense that it has a location, we can practice by saying to everything: "This is Life", until it is experientially apparent to us, that nothing is not-life, and therefore, everything is of the same essence.




You might also like to download his free ebook.
I am reading it slowly, very slowly, on my backyard deck in these beautiful Spring evenings in Georgia.

Chemo: One Way to Do It

I learned to really hate IVs. And get annoyed with anything going through it. Especially chemo.
I hate chemo. I really hate chemo.
My Cytoxan was a 24 hour drip. The first 6 hours were fine, after that I felt horrible.
I felt like I was dying inside.
And eventually it was over, I counted the hours…

I got the VP-16. Awful stuff too. Really awful.
I felt so very very dead.
I had to remember that if I felt really shitty I still had to be alive.
And I was.
Every time I puked I remembered I was alive. I was alive, and I was going to beat this little booger…and I hated every minute of it…

When I got home I could barely move.
For days I could barely move. I could drink, but barely eat. I could breathe, but barely walk.
But I felt pain, and I was alive…
I realized, as long as I maintain homeostasis -- I'm not going anywhere.
So I made a checklist in my head:
• Am I breathing
• Is my heart beating
• Do I feel any real pain, or do I just feel like shit
• Am I capable of telling someone I feel like shit
If those are true, I am alive. And I'm fighting. And I knew I was going to make it.
Dave’s Happy Little Hodgkin’s Website

From the first with Evie, I have tried to read up on the literature for a broader view of what to expect and what to do. Sometimes, I found such disturbing information that I’d pass it along to my brother and just wait a bit before telling Eve.
When I Googled “Hodgkins, mobilization, stem cell transplant” I found both literature and Dave.
I didn’t tell anyone about him. It felt better not to know.

This week, Monday through Thursday Eve gets the VP-16.
She told me last night it’d be fine if I shared our experience so far.
It may help someone else some day.
So here we go:

When Evie, Mary and I began meditating together last August our intention was to give Eve the skills she needed to deal with her cancer in a spiritually grounded manner.
Having relapsed from conventional treatment, having supplemented that therapy with the best complementary medicine we could, we found that wasn’t enough.
Eve wanted to dig deeper.

Mary and I wanted to pass on our Taoist teachings which consisted of three parts:
1) Meditation: to cultivate the ability to “allow everything to be as it is.”
2) Guided Movements: a form of spontaneous qigong helps unblock energetic imbalances.
3) Intuitive Reading: a way to develop ones natural ability to gain insight into a situation via intuition.

When we began, we hoped Eve would simply learn to not let her anxious mind run away with her.
A freaking mind only adds an additional layer of stress to the heavy rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.
None of us imagined Evie would have such a capacity to go so deep so quickly…
Or how shamanic a path we were on.

The World is Brahman, So is Chemo

The night before Evie was to begin the high dose chemo, the prelude to her stem cell transplant, we met for our usual meditation. We did a couple rounds and then fell into talking about the fear she felt about the chemo.

We’d talked before about having the attitude that these powerful drugs were being used to heal; how we could drop the image of their being toxic poisons. And yes, that was the attitude she had adopted.
But, it’s one thing to try to have a belief in your head.
It’s something else entirely, to see.

So I asked, “Would you like to do a reading on etoposide?”
This drug, also known as VP-16, was what she would start on Monday.
I explained, “Every form in Nature has a corresponding intelligence and consciousness; a deva. You can meet them with an intuitive reading.”

A momentary wave of fear passed through Evie’s eyes.
I felt a similar jump inside my belly.
Did I really want to have a face to face with some drug that can kill you?
We stared at each other for a moment wondering.
Then Evie smiled and nodded. Let’s do it.
So we sat and faced each other, took a bow, and closed our eyes.

I was about to mentally request a reading, when another thought jumped in, “You know the request has already been made. It’s out there. It’s started….” Yah yad, yah yad!
My mind was in a jumble, when suddenly this deep base voice boomed out of the darkness,
“Patty! What are you doing?”

Like a bunny in the headlights, I froze.
In front of me there was a shining, flat, large, metallic slice of something for lack of better words looked like a piece of Swiss cheese:  holes and squiggled lines running between the holes.  Only there was nothing organic tastey here.
It was planar, crystal, shiney.
It was the deva of etoposide, and apparently I’d pissed it off.
I was a scared.
Then, immediately to the right a small, exact replica asked again, this time in a higher, less intimidating voice, “Patty, what are you doing?”

I was flooded with recrimination and embarrassment.
Who was I to ask Eve, “Do you want to meet the Deva?”
I was ashamed of my arrogance.
And then another and another, smaller, higher voices took up a cacophony of,
“Patty, what are you doing?”
I lower my head, almost in tears, offering the only explanation I could give.
“I only want to help Evie.”

Immeditaely, all the shining dancing voices of etoposide erupted in tinkles of laughter,
“That’s all we want too!”

Something in my heart broke open. I felt a wash of complete letting go of the fear and worry I'd been carrying in my heart for days.
And as tears streamed down my face,
I saw that there was absolutely no differentiation between my love and desire and etoposide’s.
This was not a poison. It had been conceived and created simply from the desire to help.
I put my hands together and gave thanks for the reading.

Eve and I then shared our experiences.

Eve described that as she’d taken her beginning bow, she felt a drop of water roll down her nose.
That single drop fell silently onto a sheet of glass-like water sending out a ripple.
There was peace and beauty and she basked in that.
Then, the water began to churn into a steam.
There was a roar. A steam locomotive drove across the water. Power and commotion erupted:
Sometimes, it takes a most powerful force to do the work that needs doing.
This is etoposide.

As we talked, I realized that the different sizes of the voices I had heard were the etoposide crystals, identical in structure but of many sizes.
What shocked me about Eve’s water image was that she’d obviously picked it from my mind.
The day before I’d written a blog post about Brahman.
In working on that I’d found a Wikipedia picture with the caption,
“Impact of a drop of water in water: a common analogy for Brahman and the Ātman.”

Wikipedia explains further that,
“Brahman is the universal Spirit ... the origin and support of the phenomenal universe.”
What I had been blogging about was the non-dual teaching: “The world is Brahman.”
And this was the essence of what I'd seen with all the etoposide voices:
There is a seamless identity between my love and desire for Evie and the Universe’s.

Next day, I went online to dig up that Wiki image for Eve. So here it is.
I also checked out the Wiki entry for etoposide.
Well, guess what looks like a slice of Swiss cheese :

                                                        Etoposide molecular structure.

Tom’s Diner

A friend and I have been discussing this teaching:
The World is an illusion
Brahman alone is real.
The World is Brahman.

Well, maybe we’ve been arguing.
I’ve done a couple drafts in an effort to state my position with more clarity.
How silly. What does it matter?
I’m not sure either of us listens very well, even when we try.
I also realize the absurdity of someone not living in enlightened Unity arguing as to what it’s really like!
Good Lord! Silly girl, be still.

Anyway, here is how my friend would restate the teaching:
Living is all there is.
Separation from living is an illusion.
There is nothing to find.

Or to restate the situation as she sees it in yet another iteration, she might go along with:
There is a totality of Life which is always present, in the endless forms in which it appears.
Within this totality of Life, there is never a self.
There is no me and there is no you.

Well, I have been chewing on this for days.
Finally, I have focused in on something I do have experience with and the exact point where I apparently disagree.
I am uncomfortable with:
Living is all there is.

I say this because I have experienced an emptiness, a silence, something beyond all words that seems to be beyond all Life (by this we mean the whole Shebang) and yet gives rise to all Creation.

My friend dislikes the old texts, but I think this passage makes the point:
That supreme Brahman is infinite, and this conditioned Brahman is infinite.
The infinite proceeds from infinite.
If you subtract the infinite from the infinite, the infinite remains alone.
Mundaka Upanishad

Life is not all there is. Because when it drops off, the Infinite remains.

Nisargadatta points to these two infinities by saying:
When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom.
When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love.
Between these two my life turns.

Or to illustrate with song, there is the Suzanne Vega acapella bombshell calledTom’s Diner.
Acapella: “something missing,” and that emptiness, silence (analogous to supreme Brahman) makes all the difference in the world to the Song (analogous to Life = conditioned Brahman).




The space (i.e., the emptiness) feels more like what I am. And the “things” that come and go “within” that space never feel like they are separate from that space.
This is why saying that things happen “within” space or “within” consciousness don't feel accurate. No concept feels accurate.
All concepts appear to come and go in whatever I am.
And what I am is more like simple being itself…
It’s just this, this great space, this silent being, and things coming and going in that, inseparably.
Scott Kiloby, A Day in the Life.
(If you’d like to read a nice description of a typical day from a much clearer consciousness than mine.)

An Inquiry

half bath inverted
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

In a couple of weeks, I am going to see my Taoist Teacher, Wong Loh Sin See.
It’s been a year since I was last with the Teacher, so I was soaking in my morning tub thinking about what I hoped to gain from the coming workshop.
Just after I had satisfactorily clarified my intentions, I heard the Teacher’s voice:
“Patty, what is enlightenment?”

I thought a moment before replying, realizing he had touched a nerve.
“I could give you a definition, an explanation in words.
“But, I don’t know that I know …
what enlightenment feels like to be lived or embodied.”

At least, that was how I was going to finish my sentence.
Instead, I heard what I had just said:

“I don’t know that I know”

This revelation stopped me cold.
Stunned into silence:
I know!

It’s just life as I live it every day.
That’s how it feels.
It’s that simple.

By then, I had melted into tears.
And immediately the mind and commentary kicked in.
“Insights like this are supposed to be met with laughter not tears.”
And I was OK with the “incorrect response,”
as I zipped right on to the next thought, “Now! Can you just let it be?”

… No...
Embodiment can always go deeper.
Going deeper, becoming clearer, gentler, softer – those had been my intentions for the workshop.
What will being clearer be like?

That’s what I don’t know.
That's the mystery and delight of the next moment.

We were both enlightened in the most profound and deep way; we were both fulfilled.
And yet there was [something] that had not risen to the surface to be met.
And that's what had to be seen…
I had to be willing to discover how I was and what deals I had made with myself to overlook this.
And so, it's endless. And vigilance is necessary until the last breath…
Gangaji, Awakening is Endless 

By Way of Introduction

..for a lot of people we’re beginning to see their taking on illness as an apprenticeship, almost a shamanic apprenticeship to know themselves, to know the mind… there is the “gift of the wound” and although I wouldn’t wish illness upon anyone, I would wish the ability to take illness as a teaching on everyone.
Stephen Levine, (click Couch Talk Preview)

I wrote the following squib, “I Am Surrender,” a month ago.
But, after I got it all polished I had the thought, “Now is not the time.”
So I put it away and forgot.
Yesterday, when Evie told me how her day had gone, I recalled the story of the “average but sincere student of Vipassana.”
Then, I knew, “Now is the time.”

I am Surrender

Blue Buddha, Red Ball
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

One night not long after my twenty-nineth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of the train – everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence…

Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist nothing,” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void…
Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now, describing his awakening.

Evie couldn’t sleep the other night. Pumped full of steroids and chemo there was good reason for her body to be freaking.
From the beginning of her struggle against cancer I have wondered about the mindset we bring to this disease.
On the one hand there is the “the fight” that needs waging and even the governmentally sanctioned, “War on Cancer.”
On the other hand, there is the tenet “That which we resist persists.”

I feel like we’ve been walking a line between these two extremes.
Yes, resources must be gathered: logistics, plans, hard decisions made. A strong fighting spirit can do this well. Yet, even from the get-go we’ve been amazed by how useful knowledge and helpful connections have arrived with stunning synchronicity.
We can’t take credit for this grace.

Nevertheless, in organic disease things happen physically. Solid matter has to move and shift. Drugs are lowering the boom. There are reasons for Eve’s body to be freaking.
The question is, does putting your shoulder against the boulder and fully engaging the task at hand have to be a war?
Must Evie herself go to war; or can she leave that battle to her body?
How can Eve’s spirit support her body?
Curiously, by recognizing that ultimately, there is no war. There is nothing to resist.

Recently, I read the story of a women who went into a medical crisis.
During pre-eclampsia she developed the HELLP syndrome: hemolysis of red blood cells, elevated liver enzymes (her liver ruptured), platelet count drops.
She describes it with these words:

In excruciating pain and knowing that both the baby and I might not survive… there was nothing else to do, but to be present.
I told the nurse, "Acceptance of what is, whether it is what we want or not, is critical."
She said, "You don't understand, you're dying." I assured her I understood fully and asked her to be as still as she could.
She asked if I wanted last rites.

Metta practice was directed to everyone helping and to all suffering beings. Then came the ultimate challenge. I had to, in order for us to live, open up to death itself, for even the most microscopic form of resistance would kill us both. I was emptied of all fears, past and future. And in so doing, I was set free to choose to stay in this manifestation or to not…
Signed, An average, but sincere student of Vipassana since my first retreat at the Tao Center in Winona, MN. (see personal experiences)

Once at a retreat with Adya, a woman got up to say that she had realized that surrendering was not something you could do or practice.
I sure agreed with that. How many times have I tried and failed to “just let go,” or to even simply “STOP”?
Then, the woman said something that amazed me.
She said she had discovered that, “I am surrender.”
And Adya, not at all surprised, said, “Yes! That is another name for who you really are.”

These days, I guess that also means that Surrender is simply another name for God.
Let your Surrender cradle your body.
And Evie is learning this in her apprenticeship.
She felt it last night as we sat in our circle.

Stem Cell Evie

Stem Cell Evie
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

When I was in Benares, I went to see a jnani no one had heard of, named Swami Brahmananda. He was called "the Staff of God". He was about 90 years old and had three disciples who had been with him for about 50 years. I was invited to sit by him. I think I was the first Westerner to get permission to stay with him. So I sat with him for a few days, listening to him say nothing. He was mostly silent.

On the third day that I was there, he announced to his disciples that his body was in pain, that it was arthritic, but that he still had work to finish on this plane. He said he was going to leave his body the next day at 3 pm and take on the body of a younger person. He said that someone would slip on the street and crack his head. "I will take up that body," he said. I listened as I usually do, and we couldn't wait for the morrow to come. Nobody cared that he was going to die. We wanted to see if he could do what he said.

At 3 pm the next day, he was sitting in the lotus posture, he stiffened, and he did die! I felt for a pulse but there was none. I pinched him. Nothing happened. His body was an empty shell. We fooled around with his body for about a half hour to see if we could bring him back to life. Nothing.
We heard a commotion outside. Sure enough, a young man had slipped on the street — it was raining — and hit his head. A crowd had gathered and a doctor was there. He was pronounced dead. All of a sudden, the young man got up and ran into the forest. No one ever heard of him again…
Anything is possible.
Never believe that something is impossible.
It limits you.
Even if you haven't experienced it yourself, have faith that within you lie infinite possibilities.
Robert Adams, The Mountain Path article, 1993.

You don’t have to believe Adams’ story, though I find that I can’t dismiss it out of hand.
I share it now to put into context the point worth making: don’t let beliefs limit you.
Anything is possible… which brings to mind a word I love: “totipotency”.

Do you realize we all begin as “totipotent” cells?
Yes!
That’s how a biologist would say “anything is possible.”
And from totipotency we descend into the merely “pluripotent” – stem cells that can become any tissue in the body.

I also like Adams’ story because it is such a “control-alt-delete” moment.
That is exactly where Evie finds herself today as she embarks upon her stem cell transplant.

From the moment I heard about the transplant specific words and an image came together in my mind.
I heard “Stem Cell Evie” and I saw her photo: age 6 or 7, young and strong and whole.

So I dug the photo out of the box it’d been stored in for years and propped it up on my dresser.
I wanted to see her every day in all her pluripotency.
I wanted to reinforce a simple fact: Eve possesses every gene she needs to be perfectly healthy.
It’s just that some genes have become encumbered or entangled in their programming.

One of the first discoveries we made as we started reading up on Hodgkin’s lymphoma was totally surprising to me. Hodgkin’s isn’t so much a case of some critical gene or genes having mutated and become permanently dysfunctional. Rather, a few cancerous cells are being nourished and supported by a host of non-cancerous cells that are producing inflammatory products.

What this means is that the disease can be eradicated if those support cells simply shift their physiology: some genes need to be turned off and others need to be turned on.
This is very doable. Why? Because genes get turned on and off all the time.
Biologists like to speak of the “program of development” we all go through as we mature.
We don’t go through life using all of our genes all the time.
There is a constant up and down regulation.
Some genes are off most of the time. Some are on most of the time.
Some are off, then turned on. Some are on, then shut off.
You can even adjust the volume, so to speak – way turned up or just barely on.

Stem cells represent the original setting of the genes. By going for a transplant we’re admitting that the programming has gotten all screwed up. There’s been such fiddling with the controls that it’s easier now to simply hit control-alt-delete and start at the begining.

So, I have set out two pictures of my “Stem Cell Evie.”
It’s my way of seeing and affirming, “Yes. The genes are all there and working fine.”
It’s my way of re-enforcing the resetting of Eve’s genetic program.
I see these photos and am flooded with love and that too flows to those genes.

This is biology and this is prayer.

And this is the Song of the Day.