Enlightening the Shadow

Practice begins with enlightenment.
Suzuki Roshi

Until one has tasted the essence of what we are, none of it’s going to make sense.
Jon Bernie

So, having tasted. Now what? (And, if you’re here, surely you’ve had an inkling.)
Or, perhaps it’s more than merely a simple taste. Perhaps you’ve swallowed the whole meal. Now what?

Wayne Liquorman gave some nice definitions in his interview at BATGAP.
Saints embody the highest ideals of human behavior.
Sages have realized their true self.
Traditionally, we seem to have blurred this distinction. We want our sages to be saints.
Now those who have awakened are telling us, “Not so.”
And sometimes I think, well then why bother.

In his Ordinary People interview Jon Bernie got me thinking about the shadow although he never mentioned it by name.
Posted just below Jon is an interview with Scott Kiloby and Scott speaks directly to the point. He speaks of deeply realizing “no-self” and still, something had to shift.
In speaking with other teachers on non-duality Scott noticed they, like he, were actually feeling quite conflicted. Turns out, “no-self” can create a shadow just as easily as a “separate me.”
That’s one angle to my point here. But, I have another much more personal.

Sometime ago a friend asked me, “What happens if you never decide if you are awake?” I still can’t answer that to my satisfaction. But, I think it leaves things unfulfilled. I have had so many tastes, and still something needs to be resolved.
I really liked how Scott talks about walking the middle way: sometimes no-self, sometimes me. In fact, every time I open my mouth to speak, I will be a me.
Can I be comfortable with that?

I recommend listening to Scott.

Waking Up Out of the Teaching

P Bralley and young friend, ca 1952.

You know, it’s all jazz.
Leonard Bernstein explaining Beethoven’s Seventh to Bobby McFerrin

I illustrated my last post with a self-portrait.
Let me share here the source and reality of that photo. I was standing by my sandbox.
But, which image best illustrates or "explains" the gist of me?
It feels to me like they both make wonderful commentary.
So, which is better? Which preferred?
It all depends upon the point I’m trying to make.
Historical roots are addressed by the sandbox view;
Spiritual aspirations by the self-portrait… perhaps.

This appreciation for different points of view seems to be occurring in regards to teachings and paths.
Several threads of experience have become intertwined and have brought about a shift for me:
First, I found I could no longer make the effort of self-inquiry. I am no good at that. And even resting as awareness, something that felt quite easy suddenly became too great an effort to even think about.
Secondly, when I meditate with Eve and Mary often I start channeling. Initially, we went with this because it falls within the realm of our Taoist practice, but more importantly, it’s shown itself to be very helpful to Evie as she deals with the physical challenges of chemotherapy and stem cell transplant.
Finally, I got tired of all the chattering debates at sites like Buddha at the Gas Pump: the neo-advaitist, “No Ego!” versus advaitist, “Don't be so sure!"

And maybe there's a fourth experience here:  I (?) let go.  Well, something wore out or surrendered without my even attempting to do anything.  Something stopped in a rather non-event. I noticed a little feeling: "exhausted" or "defeated" drifted through body and psyche. But all that was rather subtle.  Rather, daily activity tracked along the above events, and the words I was pondering were Scott Kiloby's:

The thought of myself and the thought of a cliff are equally both thoughts. There’s nothing about the self that makes it really not exist… the cliff doesn’t either…
We make the big deal about no-self and then we think the tree exists.
They’re all just thoughts.
“An unreal concept can’t disassemble itself,” but an unreal concept can drop a rock on its foot. The whole no-self thing becomes a mental concept, “I don’t exist.”…
People say it as they want it to be true or they sense that it is true.
But the word, that insight is an after the fact kind of a thing… It’s not like, “Oh, there’s nobody here.” And now I have to live as if there’s nobody here.
That’s a person trying to be a no-self.
Scott Kiloby talking with Jeff Foster

… at least I think that’s where this rough transcription comes from. The comment that an unreal concept can drop a rock is probably my own commentary.  The quote is probably Rupert Spira.  Anyway, I found these scribbled words on my dining table when I finally cleaned the papers off.

On the other side of the page, there are these words:
Scott: I could really believe I stumbled upon some truth in my concepts, but really they’re just words floating by.
Jeff: It’s like two birds singing. Two birds singing and that’s it.

Around this time I read an essay by Scott entitled, Waking Up (Out of the Teaching).
It felt really right to me:

The possibility of waking up out of the dream of being a separate self, through the use of a spiritual teaching, is amazing…What is more amazing [for me] is the possibility of waking up from one’s own teaching, lineage, tradition, or message.
It’s like waking up from the idea of “I know how it REALLY is” into an openness that wants to explore the diverse landscape of life —to explore how it is within each view.
So that becomes my new language —openness.

It’s funny. As I copy and paste this excerpt I realize that Scott uses the word “openness.”
I didn’t remember that and it's a seldom used word (for me) that I've been thinking about.
My tendency is to define "open" in terms of being tolerant and willing to listen.
But, recently I realized that's how I feel these days physically.  The inside of my body and mind feels Open as in “wide open spaces.”
Open can be a Nothingness that is far too rich to be considered nothing.
And it does no good to really think about this.
It’s something that is rediscovered in each moment, always new and unexpected.
No preconceptions. Just look.
Where are you standing if you’re not holding onto any teaching?

… there will be truth in any word you come up with… at least for that one moment.
Cause, it's all improvisation
when you're open.

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.

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

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.