Memory and the Emotional Body

soap bubble
Originally uploaded by Fulvi0

And I think I now know why my twelve year old felt such a mystery tied up with this poem.

In 1976, I was five weeks into a six-week advanced training for TM teachers.
We were meditating a lot.
I had had a smooth and enjoyable time.
Then one evening, while simply walking down the hall, my belly felt very strange.
Within moments I collapsed into a combination seizure and flashback.

I was a soldier charging across a World War I battlefield. Out of the trench, then run.
The exploding shell caught me right in the belly.
Instantly, I was engulfed in a black Void.
On the "other side" Iheard the battle raging on.
In the Void, a maelstrom of chaos and terror, were the screams of all the dying souls.

I also felt the most curious ripping – like grass roots parting with the soil – as my spirit disengaged from the “ground” of my own flesh.
Or rather, that soldier’s flesh: He, who I had been and now once again was.
I wasn’t in the least upset by my death.
I was simply a calm observer, the one silent consciousness in all that black, chaotic Void.
All the others were horrified and gripped by terror.

Their screams flowed out my gaping mouth.

I understood why mankind believes in Hell.
I knew it to be an archetype of our own making.

And finally, I felt a hand upon my shoulder shaking me.
Someone was calling my name.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted. ...Did she really shout?
“I’m dying!” I screamed back.

So they dragged me up off the floor.
Got me into bed and I lay there for another hour or so, totally rigid.
Unable to talk.
My body arched in a bow, drew my head backwards leaving me staring wide eyed at the ceiling.
The bedside nurse asked, “What are you looking at? Do you see an angel?”

I was looking at the ceiling – not an angel.
But, I could not speak. Though I wanted to put her mind at ease.
My head was clear and calm.
But to the others, I was gone.
I was simply stuck there, locked up. Waiting.

Eventually, I did relax.
The nurse cleared out, and I spent the remainder of the night sitting on the toilet, peering out the doorway into the room.

The battlefield, in transparency, overlay my bedroom: crater and ditch, destroyed trees existed right along with dresser, overstuffed chair, and draperies.
I would have liked to lie back down on the bed,
but the sheets were clearly soaked by the dying soldiers blood.
I couldn't lie in that and so settled on the floor.

The next day I was told I had to leave.
I was “disturbing others.”
Get on the phone and make arrangements.
So soon, I was standing in a phone booth with absolutely no idea at all of how to make a long distance call.

A couple days later I was in Florida, at my brothers.
That night, Carolyn sat by my bed as I tried to go to sleep drenched in sweat and thrashing.
Flashbacks: charging cross the field, rifle in my hands, the bombs, the exploding shell catching me right in the belly.
It all replayed over and over.

The flashbacks continued for ten years.
Longer really – it all depends on how you count things.
In time, I stopped meditating.
Pop called it kundalini burn out.
I called it PTSD from a war I was never in.
It became my shameful secret.

And I had Friends that stuck by me.
Friends who could lead me out of movies when the visions started up,
Friends who could laugh if I suddenly ducked and covered in the middle of a meeting.

What we couldn’t laugh about was my taking up of cigarettes and alcohol.
And know one ever knew about the drugs.

In1976, Maharishi didn’t have any help to offer.
We were ten years out from the Grofs coining of the term “spiritual emergency.”
So despite my family and friends,
I was on my own because none of us really knew a thing.

It took seven years of psychotherapy with someone who didn’t want to hear about WWI,
and whom I am absolutely sure saved my life.
It toook maybe another seven years of simply resting without any spiritual practice,
It took another seven years of Taoist Sum Faht practice to finally make peace with all the wars.

(And beyond and through all this, for twenty years, I had a wise and loving partner who was brave enough to accept me as I was.)

But all in all,
This is one reason why I’ve been attracted to the teachings of Adyashanti.
He explains that it’s actually after Awakening that the real work begins.
He says this is actually the most delicate time when guidance is most required.

Why are things so delicate and difficult?
Because after Awakening, which occurs on the level of the intellect,
transcendence has to descend into the heart and belly.
It’s here that “energy in the emotional body” is released.

Such a euphemism!

What this can translate into is all Hell breaking loose.

Adya says that some people then choose to go back to sleep.

That’s exactly what I did.

And my twelve year old knew all along, that those memories were there.
She knew.

And she did not break faith.

(It just took so very long to work it out.)

Battle Hymn – another strange entry

In the Beauty of the Lilies
Originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein

Let me begin by saying, “I hate jazz,” though hate is perhaps a bit strong. “Anything but” is more accurate.

However, H. Johnson's "Jazz Classics" radio show, heard every Saturday night from 9:00 to 2 a.m. on Atlanta’s PBS station, has become something of a routine and companion – the only one there on some pretty lonely nights.
And the best part of the show is the introduction, Father TomVaughn's version of Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Born Thomas Wade Vaughn, in Kentucky, he began music around the age of eight, attended Yale University, and in 1965 entered the Episcopal priesthood. That same year he sat in with Gene Krupa's quartet in Detroit. As a Jazz pianist Ftaher Tom recorded several albums the total quantity of which is unknown, because most (if not all) of these records have been out of print for many years. After his final album, "Joyful Jazz" (which includes the Battle Hymn), Father Tom remained under the radar despite a handful of great recordings. … of which I think the Battle Hymn of the Republic is a most powerful expample.

So, I thought I’d buy a copy and went on line.
I discovered the above facts – this musician was really a priest. (H. Johnson is such your consummate “cool cat” I thought when he said “Father” Tom Vaughn he meant it like “brother” or something I wasn’t quite following.) But the man really was a priest.

And I discovered that you can’t buy or download his music.
But, I did find the Battle Hymn on YouTube.
And that’s where this whole story turned so strange, or allegorical (?).

To me, Battle Hymn is about the noble and the holy part of this nation’s psyche.
I had No Idea that it’s got this connection (apparently, if I interpret the YouTube entries correctly) to the University of Georgia’s football team.

There is a clip of a lone bugler, high above a packed Stanford Stadium peeling out the opening notes. And everyone falls hushed. So, one confusion to me is why, why is an old Dixie school so enamored by a song about the “Republic” – didn’t Georgia want to secede?
(Or am I just bitter, being educated and liberal in a state whose flagship educational institution proudly boast, “Hunker down hairy dog, hunker down.”)

But, this is not what really got me.

What really did it was Father Tom Vaughn’s Battle Hymn used as the cover music for some UGA football clips. A pass from the end zone and a spectacular 92-yard run by Lindsay that wins the game 26-21, and the crowd goes wild.
Mixed in over video and Father Tom is the sports commentator. This guy apparently breaks his chair during the play and then proceeds to rave joyously about how all over Georgia tonight "property will be destroyed" as it’s all part of “the worlds greatest cocktail party.”

It’s strange.
It’s all confused.
I can’t really untangle it or think it through.
But somehow, in all this, I think there lies one way we subconsciously indoctrinate our young. We convince them of the glory in going off to war. We reassure parents that nobel sacrifice is a sufficent compensation. And it's all a lie.

Yes. There are things worth dying for. Cheerleaders wiggling their butts and drunks smashing furniture are not on the list.
Or are they?

See what you think.
But better, enjoy the music. Ignore the ignorance.
(OH, look! – ignorance and ignore are the same root…interesting.)

P.S.
... how I do this: I write some entry and then go to Flickr and find a nice photo. Please click on this one and read it's entry. As Paul Harvey would say it's "the rest of the story." This teaching young people to go to war, goes very deeply into our fibers. And it's twisted!

Little Fella

I hope Bennie doesn't get jealous. But Little Fella was just too cute. So, I adopted him. Try clicking the mouse button in addition to moving the mouse. He will gobble down the steak!

adopt your own virtual pet!

Found Folded and Stuffed

Concern
Originally uploaded by Parthiv

into my briefcase, is a note I made shortly before going on retreat.
(You may be surprised to learn that I actually try to self-censor the stuff I post.)
This seemed inappropriate to share.
But, now I think, “What the heck?”

Something can be learned from this.
Two things actually: 1) Mahavakyas are “great sayings” or teachings. And I think, one goes like this (or have been combined into this) – “I am That. Thou art That. All this is That.” And 2) After all is said and done, you’ll see that it actually takes more energy to remain asleep than to Awaken.

This second point was made by Adyashanti. And I hope its meaning becomes obvious below.
The first point Maharishi used to illustrate the steps involved in awakening:
Step One – realize the Self, “I am That.” Witnessing consciousness arises, as the Absolute Self is separate from activity and the world.
Step Two – realize that any primary object of perception (thou, tree, cloud, bird…),“Thou are That.” Maharishi called this stage God Consciousness as perception viewed the most subtle beauty of each object.
Step three – duality drops off and Unity Consciousness is lived, “All this is That.”

So I came back from retreat to find crumpled in the side pouch of my briefcase/bag a good example of how abstract teachings can play out in real life.
It reads:

I almost went to the hospital today. I was at work, 5pm with chest pains, weakness in my arms, nausea, and confused thinking. Felt like I was about to faint.
But, I didn’t go- it wasn’t really a heart attack. [Or so I bet.]

I see now it is “me” tearing up my body, breaking my heart, as I refuse to let my consciousness shift.

I am witnessing horrendously – whatever that means.
I’m not looking closely enough to come to a true accuracy in words.

Horrendous witnessing is when your eyes tell you nothing, nothing is Real.
And yet, it’s all out there and moving and the laws of physics apply and have to be respected.
Visual perception is across this GAP.

I cannot find myself…
“I am That, Thou art That, All this is That.”

Horrendous witnessing is seeing, “All this is That” and That is Nothing.
“Thou art That” and That is not real.
No, it’s REALLY Nothing [rather than not real].

And I refuse to admit, though I can see it – “I am That.”
[Seems like I have got the three steps backwards. This worried me for awhile.]

If I were to really acknowledge this, I would no longer have it backwards.
Immediately, there would be this whole inversion of Creation.
I would be the God from which all Creation springs.
… And I am afraid to let that happen.
And my body is collapsing.

So ends my note to myself.

Adya hung a sign in the back of the retreat hall. It said, “Resistance is futile.”
It’s futile, for one thing, because it takes such energy.
Resistance just makes the changes harder to negotiate.
Resistance shifts the whole process up an octave towards hysteria.
Resistance gives you migraines and chest pains.

It really isn’t necessary, unless you want to do it.
… cause, what ya gonna do? Resist resistance!

If you don’t have a sense of humor now... you will.

PS - click on the monkey and read his story. It's nice.

Germaine to Absolutely Nothing

Funfair in Liège 2
Originally uploaded by jucanils

I am doing a lot of desktop centrifuging this morning and attached to the lid of the machine is a little sign that is right in my face.
It’s a note from my boss.
It’s been there for at least eleven years. And it never ceases to strike me as poetry. Strange poetry, but none-the-less a poem, which today I share.
It goes like this:

FELLOW SCIENTISTS:
When you use this centrifuge,
make sure that the flange on the shaft
fits onto the slot in the rotor
and
that
the screw
is securely fastened
onto
the shaft.

I don’t know. Do you hear it too?
It amazes me. The poem that’s always there, right under my nose.

No Wait, This Was Germaine!

No sooner did I post the above, that an email from Mara arrived containing Tricycle's Daily Dharma for July 31, 2007.

One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Retreat with Adya

Omega next morning
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Saturday morning, 7:30, but it feels like a Sunday.
Pulled the car into my driveway at 4:40 a.m.
Bennie was at the window peaking out.
I left Omega at 1:15 yesterday afternoon. So let’s see, that’s 15 and a half hours to make it home from New York.
I would have preferred a quicker trip. Bumped into one Omega-ite around 10:45 last night in line at the last place selling food in LaGuardia. We smiled at one another wide-eyed. This is an awful reentry! Or was it? I found it curiously interesting, marvelously interesting to observe… everything going on in New York, Penn Station… Manhattan waiting for a bus without a clue as to the routine.

I don’t regret it.
I would have preferred a direct connection, less weather up and down the East Coast.
I got something better.

Laid my head to rest upon my own bed’s pillow at 5:30 a.m.
Awoke at 6:30 feeling quite like sobbing.
I have no idea what to do now.
I so miss the routine of the last six days…
And what is it exactly that I miss? Again, so many images…

I am sobbing silently for the Silence that permeated it all. I am longing for the sharing of that Silence with 300 people I’d never met, but whom I’d never call a stranger.

I had resolved to not make notes while on retreat. Writing required way too much focus on my part. It’d be easier to let it go.
No matter what – just let it go.

But… resolution, let that go too.
And some words did make it onto paper.
They don’t seem at all to truly represent the whole story, or even close to a “fair” story.
Maybe they’re just the start of a new story and the end of an old story.

Sunday morning, 8:07, beautifully overcast, quiet.
OH! It’s Saturday… (Thank God!)

Omega Pictures

Omega dorm 1
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

My room. 6’x 8’ in the corner, up high, high in the trees. Lying in bed was my own little tree house. The breeze through the leaves made them rustle and shimmer.

Burst into tears as I stumbled upon my retreat badge while unpacking. I found the feather while walking.

(please excuse the strange way this is constructed. I am having trouble editing this. All these pictures are at Flickr and I've linked them - though many people have no trouble at all putting any number of photos into one blog... Taurus here, knows only one or two paths. Oh well. Plop, plop, plop. ... anyone who would click on a link to see my retreat badge ... probably enjoys the ridiculous too.)

Annotated Omega Notes

Omega trees
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Monday: [no comment]

Tuesday: [as noted on Wednesday]

Men are crying.

“If I go, I am taking all of this with me.”
[The exact words of an observation in the dining hall as I realized the extent and implications of my own dissolution. Struck me as both ludicrous and unfair to all the other people. Still is ludicrous.
I have been trying to avoid Non-existence. It never occurred to me others might appreciate my resistance also. Cause now it’s obvious: If I go, I’m taking this entire dining room and everyone in it down with me, down into the self same tube. … this to me is funny. But, maybe I’m just perverse.]

Wednesday: [“observations” are lettered, “insights” are numbered – yeah, well, I was trying.]

a) People say "thank you" at the mike now.

1) Yes, I really love you. It’s unconditional and forever. And of course, you’re not my partner. That was a role.

2) Silence makes you separate. Silence makes That also Nothing. And then it can unite.

b) I worn my shirt inside out for quite sometime today before I noticed.


Thursday:

Even creating a system, I am losing the ability to find my shoes after satsang.

Wendy (retreat leader) is transforming from the Soup Nazi into Space Cadet. This afternoon’s announcement, “It’s 10 ‘til four. We’ll take a 30 minute break and meet back here at 4:00. [she was carefully reading from her notes! and becoming dearer by the moment.]

Finally. I have gotten rid of the migraine. How? I forget. Last night was hardly any sleep. Belly, heart, head and electric leg.

Wrote this on an envelope:

“Silence creates separation.
When separate you see it (Creation) is not real.
Being not real it is Nothing.
Being Nothing, it too is Nothingness.
You and It together in Nothingness.”

… this whole thing is from my belly/heart – it’s more painful to see how tenuous all Creation is [than my own dissolution] – it could disappear like that (snap fingers) – and I feel such love. Incredibly deep loss, grief, and love [I am surprised to discover that Creation’s dissolution, seems more painful, intolerable than my own - as one would always grieve more for ones beloved than oneself.]

This is the love that accomplishes Unity – after the intellect separates [as] Maharishi [would say].

These insights aren’t new – what’s worth noting is my reaction (ego’s reaction) fixating on them.



That was all I wrote.
So, I got my questions of these many months (and years?) answered. The migraines come from my resisting acknowledging what I see.

I see a lot of Silence. I and see separation. Silence creates a separation.

Adya doesn’t really emphasize this step, for ultimately (and rather quickly if you don’t resist) Silence also unifies. Adya merely notes that first you must realize who you are. Then, he goes on to speak of embodying - all the details and travails undertaken after awakening to really root out the vestiges of ego.

By contrast, Maharshi emphasized all the details of that first step finding Self, pointing out that initially when you find the Self there must be separation. For in the beginning, there is a “unity of ignorance” as the self is lost in identification with the world. So first, realize who you are. He didn’t have a thing to say about embodiment except that, “Unity takes time” and “there is no technique” to create it. You simply adjust to the new reality.

I appreciate having the complementary explanations.

I really appreciate seeing so clearly what I have been resisting
and what happens
when I stop.

Namaste.
Patty


…So in leaving retreat, we are not actually leaving anything. In truth, there is no beginning of retreat and ending of retreat; there is simply our life as it is…

When formal retreat ends… the retreat of our life begins. This is the sacred opportunity to allow whatever you may have realized about the truth of your being to express itself in your life, in your relationships, and in the way you move through the world.

Adya

Are Things Normal Yet?

Evie thinks my musings of late are sounding "totally surreal."
Well…

I came across this cartoon that summarizes the so called consensus reality pretty well.
It also makes a pretty good argument for permitting me a bit of leeway here.

Or, as Mom use to say as she reflected upon her kids, “Oh! The whole group is sick.”

This was an often run routine we all thought pretty funny.

Mom also claims that even my grandmother couldn't really tell when things were "back to normal." Though we'd always promise to talk again when things returned there.

So much for lineage and tradition.

I'll talk with you soon. Maybe after dinner or a nap.

Jill Hall

Maharishi , Me, & Jill
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

One of my oldest friends passed on this week.
Jill and her husband, Tom, were TM teachers when I first came to Atlanta in 1971.
We shared those early, heady, heart filled days when all things seemed possible.
In time, years would pass and we would not see each other.
But, whenever we did, there was always that unspoken understanding of shared roots and love.

I find Jill to be entwined with what I hold most precious in my life.

She brought people to the transcendent.
She knew both my parents and they her.
I can’t say that of many people outside of family.
As part of his teacher training, Jill helped Pop give his first “living room lecture” on TM.
And she stood by his side as tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke of meditation.
Mom described the event to me, “Poor Jill didn’t know that Poppy cries when he is excited. Her eyes just got bigger and bigger as she watched him. She didn’t know what he would do.”
And I can still hear Pop’s voice, coming through the front door, “Hey, guess who I saw today, Tom Hall!”
Yes, it was always Tom and Jill. The two essentially were one.

I find that Jill takes with her a huge era of my life.
And so, this morning I dug out an old manuscript from those days some thirty years ago.
I was thinking of this William Dickey poem. I wanted to see exactly how it went:

Happiness

I sent you this bluebird of the name of Joe
with “Happiness” tattooed on his left bicep.
(For a bluebird, he was a damn good size.)
And all you can say is you think your cat has got him? …

So I am sending you this snail of the name of Fred
in a small tricolor sash, so the cat will know him.
He will scrawl out “Happiness” in his own slow way.
I won’t ever stop until the word gets to you.


Yes. That’s kind of how we've lived.
And Jill did it with such spirit.

Authentic Inquiry

Bath Tub Truth
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I’m not going to quote the whole thing here. If you want the full length, unedited version, click HERE.


Authentic inquiry is allowing yourself to care… Everyone knows what it’s like to inquire out of intellectual interest—asking for the sake of asking or because you think you should. This is not caring. When you care about something, it gets inside of you. It gets inside the shell that keeps you from being affected or bothered, the shell that keeps anything really new from happening.

So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have to care about it. You have to care enough to allow it to get inside that shell. What do you really care about? What pulls you into here and now, this minute? What is the most important thing to you? … The question needs to be personal, not about a spiritual teaching or something that’s outside of your experience. It needs to be something that’s coming from the inside.

When you care, you care from the inside. Many people impose ideas from the outside upon themselves, but this isn’t inquiry. When you really care, you enter a love affair with what you care about. Sometimes it draws you into bliss, sometimes into confusion. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know where you are going. You feel a bit out of control. You’re letting this caring get under your skin. To find out that you care like this is the most important thing; otherwise you can spend your whole life caring about what someone else says you should care about.

… you may be afraid to find out how much you care because that caring could just steal you away. What is the one thing that will matter the most at the end of your life? Without it, you would say: “That’s what it was all about and I missed it.” If you had the best job, lots of money, the perfect lover, or whatever your ideal is, and suddenly your life was over, what would still be left undone? That’s what it’s all about.

When you find that kind of caring, inquiry has some power behind it. You also find your own inner integrity. You find something inside that’s stable. There’s a place inside you that is willing to be a little crazy—crazy enough to take inquiry seriously and hold nothing sacred. Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true and all of your assumptions are fair game. The more spiritual they are, the more they are fair game. Ultimately it is your most sacred and unquestioned assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most important to question.

…[and] eventually the inquiry wears itself out. You wear yourself out. You wear your ego self out. You wear your spiritual self out. You wear it all out. You’ve inquired yourself out of this whole thing, and you’re disappearing faster than you can put yourself together.

… [and] You find a living experience of being, empty of content, empty of you. This is where spiritual awakening begins. This is the living answer of authentic inquiry.

Adyashanti

Just after I edited these wods, I received an email. One of my oldest friends, one who was there before and after those shattering days of the 1970's - one who never gave up on her path- was finally "resting peacefully and slipping quietly away" after long, long resistance to her cancer.

What will matter most at the end of my life? At the end of your life? And how well are we caring for That Which Matters Most right now, today?

Suzanne Segal

Abalone Cove Stormset
Originally uploaded by Dan90266

I picked up Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne Segal this morning. I was looking for a particular passage that I never found.
Instead, I opened to these words that slay me.

Maharishi’s description of the three stages of awakening - Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness - now appeared to be incredibly relevant. The initial months of my experience, in which witness awareness persisted throughout waking dreaming, and sleeping, was clearly the state of Cosmic Consciousness…this state of consciousness horrified the mind.

The dramatic shift to Unity Consciousness was also self-evident… However, I still found myself wondering what Maharishi had meant by God Consciousness. He had always described it as a state in which all creation is perceived to be infused with the sacred, the divine… Nothing I had ever experienced fit that particular description. Nor had I ever heard Maharishi describe anything resembling the experience, so clearly delineated by the Buddhists, that one is not an individual self.

It was not until I discovered a story about Shakespeare written by Jorge Luis Borges that I entertained the possibility that God Consciousness was really the consciousness of being no one. “In him there was no one,” the story begins, and goes on to explain what, when he was a child, Shakespeare thought that everyone knew they were no one as well. When he talked to his friends about the experience, however, he encountered blank looks, which “showed him his mistake…” The story describes a life lived in the wintertime of the emptiness, where the mind, juiced by fear, tried every thing my mind had attempted to spark the return of a personal reference point…

When Shakespeare became an actor, the story goes on, he found the prefect profession, where he got to “play at being someone before an audience who played at taking him for that person.” Although he spent his entire life attempting to reconstitute a sense of being someone, he never succeeded…

The story concludes: “The tale runs that before or after death, when [Shakespeare] stood face to face with God, he said to Him, ‘I , who in vain have been so many men, want to be one man – myself.’ The voice of the Lord answered him out of a whirlwind, ‘I too have no self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dreams are you, who, like me, are many men and no one.’”

Tears are streaming down my face even as I transcribe and edit words.
They hit me hard in ways I do not fully fathom. Yet, it makes so much sense to me.

I know I like the term “witness awareness” - so much more preferable and accurate than “Cosmic Consciousness.”
And I like the phrase, “the wintertime of the emptiness,” though I change it immediately to “wintertime of witnessing” and we are well into the heat of summer and I lie in bed each night in a sweat never going all the way to sleep.
And as we come on to the Fourth of July it self, I chuckle, “It’s a free country.”
I see the flag flying like some rightwing bumper sticker that I can appreciate.
It’s a free country and I have a free will.
And with my Free Will I seem to be screwing up my life just the way we all have screwed up this country.

Why can’t I just accept the witnessing? Why can’t I just relax, accept, drop all the lame excuses, and have the courage to look even deeper? Because, it’s a free country and I have free will and so I seem to be persisting in resisting.

Or as Suzanne Segal writes:
He took the presence of fear to mean the emptiness was a “strange ailment” and therefore spent his life trying to make it appear that he was someone.

Actually, as I write now, I have a grin on my face.
It’s nice to have the words, little navigation bouys out in the ocean.
It reminds me that Suzanne referred to we who get together and discuss all this as “buddies in the vastness.”
I like that.

And I do know the mind cannot figure this out. But, somehow, it must make it’s peace with it All.
It (I) need to slip past the fear.
I need to find more love. … as it all comes down to that… maybe…

I hope that you are smiling. I am.

Excuses

Bubbles
Originally uploaded by Rune T

I came across this Adyashanti passage the other day.
Sorry, but I didn’t record the where.
But this is what he said:

Step out of the dream of your concepts and ideas. Step out of the dream of what you imagine enlightenment to be. Step out of the dream of who you think you are. Step out of the dream of everything you have ever known. Step out of your dream of being a deluded person. Stop telling yourself those lies and dreaming those dreams. Step out of all of that. You can do it. Nothing is holding you back. There are no requirements and no prerequisites to awaken. There is nothing to be done, nothing to think, nowhere to go.

Just stop all dreaming. Stop all doing. Stop all excuses.

Just stop and be still.


And you know, that gave me pause. It was nice. … and it led to a whole train of thought regarding the excuses that I make … while not enlightenment it was
somewhat enlightening.

Excuse #1: The Biggest

blowing bubbles
Originally uploaded by MorningThief581

The barriers to awakening are all conceptual. The biggest barrier to awakening is believing, “Not me, it couldn’t possibly happen to me.” When that barrier is dropped, then the awakening is almost a forgone conclusion because you suddenly run out of excuses. When an individual runs out of excuses, they tend to get very serious and stop wasting time. As long as we say, “It’s only for the few,” we have an unconscious excuse not to take on the possibility ourselves and live up to what that possibility may ask of us.

Adyashanti, “The Awakening West: Conversations with Today’s New Western Spiritual Leaders.” P199.

“The barriers are all conceptual.”
Is that true?

I don’t think so.
But, I do trust Adya and luckily he encourages his students to accept nothing as a “given.” He wants us to find our own truth... So, I don’t feel too guilty expressing my doubts.

I believe that every state of consciousness is supported by a unique physiology.
Thus, there has to be some kind of physiology correlated with becoming enlightened. Maybe this is the same as, or maybe it is different from, the physiology needed to sustain enlightenment – but, initially something has to change within the body for someone to become enlightened… at least to my way of thinking.

It is this unique physiology that to me seems to offer a concrete barrier not at all “conceptual,” but rather physical.

For example, Maharishi said you had to get rid of all the stress in the body – the impressions of experiences that had overwhelmed and essentially scarred the nervous system. So there was this whole idea of “unstressing” or “normalizing” in TM in order to become enlightened.

I had another meditation teacher, an intuitively guided woman largely without tradition. She insisted that “every cell in your body must change.”
When I heard her say that I thought, “Yes! I have seen that. It is true and I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

Every cell must change. … and that is physiology and that it physical, even when it occurs within the “mythic” elements of EARTH, AIR, FIRE, WATER. I have seen this and to me, it is just the subtle physiology, the nervous system on the level of light. (Though, curiously, some systems of classification may place the subtle elements in the mental realms.)

So, my excuse for not being enlightened is that my physiology has not yet allowed it. My body is too screwed up.

Excuse #2: “Wait a minute”

Innocence
Originally uploaded by hvhe1

Asking every cell to change is huge.
Such a huge event that if undertaken precipitously, I do believe you can be killed or at least rendered so nonfunctional that I do not want to risk it.

Somewhere in the late ‘70’s I was in bed for a month. My sister-in-law finally carried me out of my apartment so I could take up residence in the basement laundry room of my brother’s house.
I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t cook for myself. I could hardly walk.
I did, however, pee on their lawn under the full moon by way of protesting their holding me hostage.… yes, I was crazy too.

“Been there, done that.”
Or, I could say, Excuse #2: "Major changes take time and must be done carefully."

I can quote Adya himself for support of this belief.
Here he is describing his first awakening:

I literally said, “Screw it, I give up.” And as soon as I said, “I give up,” there was this I guess what they would call it now, was some sort of kundalini experience. But it was this incredible rush of energy… just overwhelming, overwhelming to such an extent that my heart started to race and my breathing was like I was running the hundred yard dash… I knew what maximum heart rate was; I knew my heart maxed at about 210 beats a minute and I knew what that felt like and I knew I was way beyond that. The whole body was completely out of control… I was quite certain, absolutely sure that I wouldn’t survive it, because I knew what my body could take, and it couldn’t take it very long. At that moment, I knew I was going to die….And all I said was… “If this is what it takes to be free, okay.” So as soon as I said that, it was like something just let loose… everything became (snaps fingers) like that, absolutely pristinely quiet…

from Adyashanti’s contribution to “When I Awoke”- see the 50 page article.


I rest my case.
The barrier to enlightenment is physical and crashing through can kill you.

But, then look closely.
In Adya’s description of his awakening the physical crisis is both precipitated by a thought (“I give up.”) and resolved by yet a second thought (“…okay.”).
In each case that thought is essentially, “OK – You win.”
Or in one word simply, “Yes.”
Yes to what he can no longer control.
Yes, to what the Universe presents.

The barriers do seem to be conceptual.
The torment arose from resisting.
Once the concept changes, the body settles down and offers it support.

Oh yeah! They call it: Mind-Body.

We can give it lip service to the concept, but usually we each have our preference. Either we have a tendency to favor the idea that mind controls body, or body controls mind.
I think the truth is a much more subtle play.
The shuttle cock is batted back and forth in something of a blur.

Still, I do hold the belief that Enlightenment is a state of consciousness (again Adya disagrees) and that states of consciousness are supported by a physiology.

I believe the body supports and maintains our mind, and the body has to change if it is not to be a barrier to enlightenment …. a barrier, or excuse, my mind may be quite content to live with.
(but that leads to yet another excuse which I will save for another time).

No, let me just mention one more thing...

Excuse #3: “I’d Rather be a hamster”

Polly Sentada
Originally uploaded by Woupidy

I was talking about “excuses” – the barriers to enlightenment, which Adyashanti claims are all conceptual.

I am not sure I believe that, so I have been examining the idea and in the processing looking at what I do believe.

In a somewhat similar vein a student mentioned, on an Adyashanti CD, that she has been spurred by his teaching, “You always have what you want.”
She was looking at her physical disability.
She was asking herself, “What purpose does it serve?”

Well, I can relate!
My own body has been horrific lately: migraines, vision difficulties, nausea, poor memory, and cognitive malfunctions. It feels as if my brain is being torn up.
It’s scary.
It’s frustrating.
It’s a huge struggle at times.
I have missed so much work that I decided I really had to take some action.

Luckily my brother is an expert in functional medicine. He has his own lab and can run the book of subtle, metabolic tests on me. He’s figured out my body since that first “kundalini frying” back in the ‘70s.

This time, I carried along some new research on migraine and depersonalization.
It seemed to me my visual problems are both migraine aura and depersonalization,
which is a great confusion to me since depersonalization in many ways seems to the physiology of what meditators call “witnessing.”

Witnessing is a bug-a-boo to me.
On one hand it’s an experience to be commended.
It is one way of describing the effects of awakening.
You discover that “the Self is separate from activity.”
Oh yeah. I am so separate that at times I feel as if I am a pea rattling around inside this tin can called Creation.
I am so rattled or non-attached I cannot even latch onto the world visually.
Thus, there is the strangest visual “something.”
Something is all wrong with my eyes, except that I see fine.
No blur, no lights, no distortion.
Yet, it is totally non-connected in some way impossible to verbalize.
In the end, I avoid using my eyes – I get too nauseated.

The eye clinic refused to see me. I wanted them to look at the blood vessels of my retina. I wanted them to measure the pressure of my eyeball. Just some quick check for a tumor.
Instead they said it was a migraine aura without the migraine. “Glasses wouldn’t help.”
I know glasses are not gonna help!
But my complaints don’t sound like any aura I have ever read about either.
But then, I don’t feel enlightened either.
So surely my witnessing is a symptom of pathology not an indicator of awakening.

Or, am I using my disability as a conceptual barrier?
What if all this is just my way of justifying,
“Enlightenment couldn’t happen to me, so I must be sick.”

Excuse Number What? “I can’t become enlightened until my health is better.”

Even if it’s my direct perception that my self is separate from activity,
Even if it’s my direct perception that all Creation is not really Real,
Even if it’s my direct perception that all This could dissolve into That – Nothingness.
This last is one scary as hell perception.
No wonder I do not really want to see it, though my body seems to be insisting.

No…
Rather than accept that I am sitting on the border of awakening, it makes better sense to me to think:
I have weak adrenals.
I have a carnitine deficiency, or hypoglycemia, or migraines, or yada-yada pitch a fit.
Apparently, Anything is better than saying, “Yes,”
and simply dropping the excuses,
dropping the pathologizing.

Because then, I’d have to drop the Big One, that one that Adya mentioned,
“It can’t happen to me.”
…
…
It seems that letting go of that last excuse simply requires … too much love.
That’s all that it would take …

It’d take a smile to myself.
It’d take a bit more compassion than I now can offer to say…

“Yes, Dear, this is for you.”

Apparently, I prefer a self-image more along the lines of a hamster,
a hamster running round and round on that little exercise wheel in her cage of samsara.

Okay.
So for now, I run in circles…sporting the most lovely, chubby cheeks
that can squirrel away all kinds of lame excuses.

Jeanette Winterson

Cotswold Cottage, Greenfield Village
Originally uploaded by Maia C

Jeanette Winterson is back at her monthly column.
Oh, I have missed her.
I am missing a lot of things of late. My body- brain and eyes – have not been cooperating. So I have missed writing very regularly here.

This seems to make me enjoy Jeanette’s words and world all the more. And I want to share a bit of them with you...

Now I am sitting in my cottage in the Cotswolds, with the kitchen door open onto the garden, watching the rain pour down. I love to have the back door open - feel oppressed when I am shut in. I don't know how my friends with smart but shut-in London flats cope with life. My hens get more fresh air than they do.

I suppose there is a big psychological difference between the urban beast and the country animal. When I have to go to London for work things or to the theatre or the opera, that's fine, but when very occasionally I have to spend leisure-time there, I find myself going mad. What is there to do in the city unless you make a list of plans?

In the country there is always something to do - in the garden, walking, little jobs with the radio on, and then a quick dash in for a cup of coffee, or a quick dash out for a walk. I need to have ordinary contemplative life - it is easy to calm down digging a vegetable bed, or clearing out the shed or going for a walk whatever the weather, all things that can be done without spending money or being run over…

I have just finished kitting out my studio, where I won't be making skulls. Downstairs, there is a reading room, and upstairs, there is a workroom, which has nothing in it but a simple trestle desk and a bed; I sometimes need to fall asleep when I am working.

It's a beautiful space, made of oak, with doors onto the garden, so that I get plenty of light. I can't explain why I can't work in a domestic space, and need a dedicated space, but that is how it is - even though I am no clutter-queen, and even though my house is always quiet and orderly.

In the early days I used to work in various sheds and houses lent to me by others, and then gradually I acquired extra space of my own. Now, moving permanently to the place that used to be my run-away hide-away, I have had to build another run-away-hide-away in the garden.

But I like it here very much; it is not grand, not making any statements, just the thing that modest places used to be when people could afford them. I am set alone in my wood, with a cuckoo in the mornings and owls in the evenings, and the tap-tap of woodpeckers. Not a single car has gone by since eight this morning, and that was the farmer's wife going to the farmer's market down the road.

I'm making asparagus soup for lunch, with a salad from the garden. Then a walk, then more work, then, as it is so wet and damp, I will do my favourite thing and light the fire and keep the back door open until it goes dark. Then bed. Not what you might call an exciting life - but I can do that in my head.

More Stories for the Day- Not from Me but StoryPeople

Blocks 2
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I collected these the other day. In going over them today, I find them something of a psychological test. They seem to have a gardening theme, and I have been putting in a flagstone patio and garden… so I guess the labor shaped me.

Enjoy them, each one at a time, like a cherry popped into the mouth.

1. I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do.

2. That's not my real reflection, she said. I've changed so much since then most people barely recognize me.

3. This is a tree on fire with love, but it's still scary since most people think love only looks like one thing instead of the whole world.

4. My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy.

5. O no, she said, you can't say just anything to the wind. Only the deepest secrets will do
& also you must not use the letter i.

Duane Keiser: A Painting A Day

Koh Toa Sunset
Originally uploaded by alex the greek

Duane Keiser is the fellow who created the concept of “a painting a day.” This method of producing small pieces of art and marketing your work directly on the internet has been inspirational to me.

The other morning I checked his site just to have a updated look-see. To my surprise and delight, I found Duane had written a piece that may inspire many of us to live a bit differently. Here is what he said, edited a bit for brevity:

I’ve been struck by how many emails I have received from non-artists wanting to learn how to paint and start their own PAD projects. They typically aren’t interested in selling or even showing their work publicly. They often have full-time jobs and kids. It finally occurred to me there is something going on here that goes beyond wanting to learn how to paint a pretty picture, and I think it taps into an underlying attraction to the idea of making a painting a day:

We go through our lives with a perpetual cursory glance. We see but we don’t notice. It is like when we are on a long car trip and get so lost in thought that we suddenly can’t remember the last 30 minutes of the trip… the landscape, the road signs, nothing. We didn’t crash, so we were seeing, but we weren’t noticing.

…once when I was visiting California several years ago. A crowd had gathered on the beach to watch the sunset. As I joined them, I overheard someone talking about a green flash. I asked what she meant. She explained that the moment the sun disappears behind the horizon there will be a green flash. I had lived in California as a child and had seen many ocean sunsets and not once did I see a green flash. I was skeptical. But sure enough, there was a green flash. I watched for it again the next day, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It was there.

What amazed me, however, was that I had never seen it before, even though I had been looking right at it during dozens of sunsets.

If I can look at dozens of sunsets and not see something so obvious and beautiful as that green flash, what is going on around me, right now, that I am missing simply because I am not prepared to notice it?

We are bombarded with imagery-TV, video, cameras, camera phones, movies, computers etc. All of this information forms the visual equivalent of white noise. It is hard to see and appreciate the colors in a candle flame when it is seen against a fireworks display-- and if we are only looking for fireworks in the first place, we will not only not see the subtleties of that single flame, we won’t notice the flame at all. In effect, the flame ceases to exist to us.

Direct observation and the patience it requires has become less natural to us. When you go to any art museum, look how much time the average person spends in front of even the greatest painting... not much.
Or look what happens when somebody is on vacation and discovers some amazing vista… out comes the camera for a snapshot and then it’s time to move on.

We simply aren’t used to observing things firsthand, of investigating them, and I think we sense this—that we’re missing something; that we have, to some degree, become spectators of our own lives.

I think this is one aspect of the PAD idea that draws artists and non-artists alike to the idea of making a painting a day. Even to the uninitiated, there is the notion that painting makes us participants again. The idea of bringing painting into our life holds the promise of experiencing a moment each day when we can be still.

Duane Keiser

Navigating Life

Sam & Maka
Originally uploaded by Goniagnostus

The principles of wayfinding are simple; the practicalities are very complex." -- Nainoa Thompson

I went sailing this past Sunday. On the drive up to the lake we got talking about the skills of traditional Polynesian navigators. … rumor had it, they could see stars during the daytime. I spoke of what science tells us, that using our senses is a process of throwing out layer after layer of information - don’t use this, don’t use that. So, have we decided to throw out seeing stars during the day? It’s like that with learning a language. By the time a baby is about six months old, an English child can not distinguish between subtle Asian sounds. English babies actually can’t hear what Japanese babies can, and vice versa.

So, Monday morning I wanted to know if Polynesian navigators of the old school, could really see stars during the day. I never found that directly addressed on the Internet. What I did find was the work of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. They are trying to save traditional skills and teach a new generation.

What I realized is this skill of “wayfinding” is also a powerful metaphor for the navigation we all must do through Life. And so, I want to share the words of Nainoa Thompson here.

Nainoa Thompson, the first modern-day Polynesian to learn and use wayfinding for long-distance, open-ocean voyaging, studied wayfinding under Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the island of Satawal in Micronesia. Mau navigated the first voyage of the Hokule'a to Tahiti in 1976; Thompson was Hokule'a's wayfinder on the 1980 and 1985-87 voyages.

Wayfinding involves navigating on the open ocean without sextant, compass, clock, radio reports, or satellites reports. The wayfinder depends on observations of the stars, the sun, the ocean swells, and other signs of nature for clues to direction and location of a vessel at sea.

Wayfinding

Easter Island Rainbow
Originally uploaded by goudance03

Nainoa Thompson:
How do we tell direction? We use the best clues that we have. We use the sun when it is low down on the horizon. Mau has names for how wide the sun appears, and for the different colors of the sun path on the water. When the sun is low, the path is tight; when the sun is high, it gets wider and wider. When the sun gets too high, you cannot tell where it has risen. You have to use other clues.

Sunrise is the most important part of the day. At sunrise you start to look at the shape of the ocean -- the character of the sea. You memorize where the wind is coming from. The wind generates the waves. You analyze the character of the waves. When the sun gets too high, you steer by the waves. And then at sunset we repeat the pattern. The sun goes down; you look at the shape of the waves. Did the wind change? Did the swell pattern change? At night we use the stars. We use about 220 by name -- where they come up, where they go down.

When it gets cloudy and you can't use the sun or the stars, all you can do is rely on the ocean waves. That's why Mau said to me, "If you can read the ocean you will never be lost." One of the problems is that when the sky gets black at night under heavy clouds, you cannot see the waves. You cannot even see the bow of the canoe. And that is where people like Mau are so skilled. He can be inside the hull of the canoe and just feel the different wave patterns as they come to the canoe, and he can tell the canoe's direction lying down inside the hull of the canoe.

Mau, who is about 20 years older than me -- my eyes are physically much more powerful than his -- he gets up on the rail of the canoe and says: "The island is right there." And we all stood up and we climbed the mast and everything and we just couldn't see it. Vision is not so much about what you do -- but how you do it. It's experience. Mau had seen in the beak of the bird a little fish. He knew that the birds were nesting, and they were taking food back before they fed themselves.

The more the weather gets up, the more the navigator needs to be awake, the less he can leave the crew on their own. We estimate that our navigators stay up between 21 and 22 hours a day. We sleep in a series of catnaps. Mau says the mind doesn't need much rest. But the physical body does. …When you are tired, you close your eyes. He always said that for him maybe his eyes were closed but inside here, inside your heart, you are always awake.

I just dreaded the doldrums, because I had no confidence that I could get through it. …I limited myself to thinking that I could only really accurately navigate with visual celestial clues. And getting into the doldrums, where there's 100 percent cloud cover all of a sudden … I would be blind. And that's what happened.

We got in the doldrums, and it was just a mess. It was 100 percent cloud cover, the wind was switching around, it was about 25 knots, and we're going fast, and that's the worst thing you want to do -- go anywhere and not know where you're going. And I was just fighting it to search in this kind of black. It was nighttime, and it was black -- the sky, everything was black -- and I couldn't find anything with my eyes. It was like I just got so exhausted that I just backed up against the rail and - and it was almost as if …there was something that allowed me to understand where the direction was, without seeing it… I just gave up fighting to try to find something with my eyes, I just settled down, and then all of a sudden, it was like this warmth came over me. It was just solid rain… you couldn't see the moon, it was so black. And then I directed the canoe with all this total confidence at a time when I had already convinced myself prior to the voyage that I would have no confidence in knowing where to go. And I turned the canoe to this particular direction, got things lined up, felt very, very comfortable in this cold, wet, rough environment, and then there was a break in the clouds and the moon was there…

And those are the things that I chase now. It's not like I can do that any old time…Internally I have to be at a certain state to be able to get into this kind of special realm. And so those experiences, I just can't conjure them up consciously. But they do come, and they're coming more and more often now. And it has a lot to do with this kind of internal relaxation.

Three Zen Stories

Stick Snap
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao.

Zen stories have a way of confusing me. But, then, I guess that is the whole point. I came across these three that I like. One or two relate to issues I've thought about.

What do you think? I invite comments.

Man of Tao

A student once asked, "What is the difference between a Man of Tao and a little man?" The Zen Master replied, "It is simple. When the little man becomes a student, he can hardly wait to run home and shout at the top of his voice to tell everyone. Upon hearing the words of the master, he will climb to the rooftops and shout to the people. Upon learning the ways of the master, he will parade through town telling one and all about his new knowledge".
The Zen Master continues, "When the Man of Tao becomes a student, he will bow his head in gratitude. Upon hearing the words of the master, he will bow his head and his shoulders. Upon learning the ways of the master, he will bow to the waist and quietly walk alongside the wall so that people will not see him or notice him".

Enlightened

One day the Master announced that a young monk had reached an advanced state of enlightment. The news caused some stir. Some of the monks went to see the young monk. "We heard you are enlightened. Is that true?" they asked.
"It is," he replied.
"And how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever," said the monk.

Sounds of Silence

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, "Oh, no! The candle is out." The second monk said, "Aren't we not suppose to talk?" The third monk said, "Why must you two break the silence?" The fourth monk laughed and said, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."

Taboos and Broken Hearts

Angkor-Bayon-nun
Originally uploaded by Wiggum03.

I hadn’t read very far into Emptiness Dancing, the first book I ever read by Adyashanti, when I melted into tears and momentary collapse.
I had read this simple sentence:

The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare. When this barrier is dropped… then everything becomes instantly available to you. … it can’t be rare and difficult unless we insist it is.

I knew immediately that I carried the belief, and now apparently I was being given permission to let it go.
God, what a heart breaking relief – or Belief if I can truly let it in.

I am not alone in this.
How could anyone really feel deserving of the greatest spiritual blessing?
You can’t.
You couldn’t possibly deserve it.

So, there is this second belief too, “Oh, it’s not for me.”

This self-sabotage is subtly strengthened by the taboo, in many traditions, of speaking openly about one’s awakening. The Tao Te Ching makes it clear: "Those who know don’t say. Those who say don’t know."

Vedanta is no better. Maharishi was a monk, and monks don’t speak about themselves as “individuals.” So, we were taught to describe enlightenment while never ascribing any of the qualities as personal endowments. To behave otherwise was the height of crassness, vulgar, poor behavior and resulted quickly in open shunning by many of the organizational powers that be.

To this day, I struggle against a shame regarding speaking openly about my experiences.
How many times have I cringed as I compose this blog?
“I can’t say that!” But, sometimes I have.
I haven’t even understood entirely why.
I’ve just felt I needed to. Maybe in all this babble of saying and not knowing others may find a clue that helps them forward just a step.

So, it is with gratitude that I discovered this interview of Adyashanti.
It was originally published in the Fall, 2004 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Stephan Bodian, the author, is a student of Adya’s.
The title of the interview is “The Taboo of Enlightenment.”

Bodian: In traditional Buddhism, at least as I practiced it, there’s a taboo against talking openly about enlightenment, as we’re doing now. It seems to be based on the fear that the ego will co-opt the experience and become inflated. In your dharma talks you speak in great detail about awakening, including your own, and in your public dialogues you encourage others to do the same. Why is that?

Adya: When I was sitting with my teacher, Arvis, we’d all go into the kitchen after the meditation and dharma talk and have some fruit and tea, and we’d talk openly about our lives. For the most part we didn’t focus on our spiritual experiences, but they were a part of the mix. Then these same people would do retreats at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and have big awakenings, and the folks in L.A. began to wonder what was happening in this little old lady’s living room up north.

Arvis’s view was simple: The only thing I’m doing that they’re not, she said, is that we sit around casually and talk, and what’s happening on the inside for people isn’t kept secret or hidden. This way, people get beyond the sense that they’re the only ones who are having this or that experience. They come out of their shell, which actually makes them more available to a deeper spiritual process.

The tradition of talking about certain experiences only in private with your teacher keeps enlightenment a secret activity reserved for special people. I can understand the drawbacks of being more open, of course. Some people may blab on about how enlightened they are, and become more egotistical. But when everything remains open to inquiry, then even the ego’s tendency to claim enlightenment for itself becomes obvious in the penetrating light of public discourse.

In the long run, both ways have their strengths and weaknesses, but I’ve found that having students ask their questions in public breaks down the isolation that many spiritual people feel - the sense that nobody else could possibly understand what they’re going through, or that they’re so rotten at their practice, or that nobody could be struggling like they are. And when people have breakthroughs and talk about them in public, awakening loses its mystique. Everyone else can see that it’s not just special people who have deep awakenings, it’s their neighbor or their best friend.

Bodian: Would you claim that you are enlightened?

Adya: Well, no, not with a straight face. I would say enlightenment is enlightened and awakeness is awake. It’s not an experience; it’s a fact.

--------------------------------------------------

So, I’m gonna keep on truckin’ here.
At the risk of sounding egotistical… or actually ignorant, seems more likely to me.

But, once again, “Oh, well.”

How Long is Now

Entangled Beauty
Originally uploaded by SunFlare.

Tolle wants us to stay there. Byron Katie says that that’s “what is.” Adya, what would he say? There is no past or future really?
This is my quick synopsis of how spiritual teachers address the Now.
My question is…
How big is the Now?
Or rather, How long is the Now?

On one hand you might say that it is infinite since an enlightened mind is fixed there and knows it to be all that Is. But, I’m thinking more down to earth.

I think it has to be physiologically constrained, because it takes a certain amount of time for electrical impulses to flow around the brain, and it takes a certain amount of time for chemicals to diffuse. There must be parameters for the Present set down by the body.

For instance, in Libet’s experiments the readiness potential preceded conscious awareness by about half a second. Is that how long the Now is? Is this the ball park we’re playing in - seconds as opposed to minutes or hours or days? Maybe.
Certainly the Now is not a point without dimension.

Most people would agree that a few hours from Now lies in “the future.” Even the desperate, “Wait a minute!” can put things off from Now.
Or is it that “in a minute” Now is usually completed?
Half a second to a minute, it’s all “ball park” to me at this point, psychologically and biologically.

On a subtler level, Professor Brian Josephson, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Cambridge University, says "It's not clear in physics why you can't see the future. In physics, you certainly cannot completely rule out this effect." …Virtually all the great scientific formulae which explain how the world works allow information to flow backwards and forwards through time.

So, now I have a corollary question, If we were to be able to receive information from the future – how far would we have to extend ordinary perception for it to become extra-sensory?
I can’t answer that.

I simply bring all this up by way of introduction to a new Blog I discovered today.
Dean Radin writes “Entangled Minds” and you might find a visit to his site stimulating.
Radin is a research psychologist associated with the Institute for Noetic Sciences. In skimming his blog I came across an article on precognition, which suggested to me that perhaps the Now might be on the order of three seconds.

Entangled Minds links to yet another site with an article about premonitions.
Radin hooked up volunteers to a modified lie detector, which measured an electrical current across the surface of the skin. This current changes when a person reacts to an event such as seeing an extremely violent picture or video. It's the electrical equivalent of a wince.

Radin showed disturbing or soothing images to volunteers in a randomly generated sequence. He soon discovered that people began reacting to the pictures before they saw them. They began to 'wince' a few seconds before they actually saw the image.

Hmmmm. It seems somewhat akin to Libet’s results, only this time it’s a totally different “experimental task.” The article had yet another link for me in the person of Kary Mullins.

In my lab we do a lot of something called PCR. The fellow who invented this technique for amplifying DNA, Kary Mullins, won a Nobel Prize for his efforts. Apparently, Mullins took an interest in Radin’s work and was himself tested. Here’s what Mullins had to say, "It's spooky. I could see about three seconds into the future. You shouldn't be able to do that."

So, check out Entangled Minds, or as a first pass check out this entry entitled “I Knew You Were Going to Read This.” It has a link to this article on “presentiment.” It also talks about how fewer people get on plans that ultimately crash than the statistical norm would suggest. For instance,

“The aircraft which flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were unusually empty. All the hijacked planes were carrying only half the usual number of passengers. Perhaps one unusually empty plane could be explained away, but all four?”

Apparently, people pick up enough info to somehow avoid these flights.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
But apparently, we do.

The stuff on Entangled Minds should get you thinking. That’s good.

Just don’t let it pull you from the Now. ;) … right.

The Source of Thoughts

Mystical Rose
Originally uploaded by booboo1604.

“Thoughts seem to come from somewhere deep inside.”
That’s what Maharishi wanted us to say, back in 1971, as he instructed us on lecturing about meditation. It was his way of introducing what he called “The Source of Thought,” or the Absolute.

He said that people don’t know where thoughts come from, but they will agree that they come from somewhere… “somewhere deep inside.”

That was the first time I ever considered where my thoughts came from. I’d always simply assumed that thoughts just came out of my brain, the actual gray matter and electrical activity.

Maharishi got me to take a closer look. And it was then I realized that I had no idea where my thoughts came from; except perhaps as some knee-jerk reaction to outside events, though clearly, not every thing that crossed my mind was simply a reaction to the world.

Some thoughts seemed to come unbidden.
I simply seemed to “come up” with some thoughts.
Maharishi said that thoughts arose in the mind like a bubble from the depths of the ocean. They burst upon the surface of the ocean and the conscious thinking level. But there are all these antecedent levels, tiny, tiny bubbles and unconscious thoughts "deep inside."

All this came jumping into memory recently as I listened to Byron Katie on a CD of “Loving What Is.”
She had this to say about thoughts and where they come from:

One day I noticed I was not breathing.
Then to my amazement I noticed that I wasn’t thinking, that I was actually being thought, and that thinking wasn’t personal. You wouldn’t wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I won’t think today.” It’s too late. You’re already thinking.

Thoughts just appear.
They come out of Nothing and they go back to Nothing like clouds moving across the empty sky.
They come to pass, not to stay.
There is no harm in them until we attach to them, as if they were true.

No one has ever been able to control his thinking, although people may tell you the story of how they have.
Thoughts are like the breeze, or the leaves of the trees, or raindrops falling.
They appear like that and through inquiry we can make friends with them.
Would you argue with a raindrop?

Raindrops aren’t personal and neither are thoughts. ….

How can you not think about something?
It’s thinking you.
Thought appears or it doesn’t.
It’s just amazing that you think (after how many years) that you can control your thinking.

Can you control the wind too?
What about the Ocean?
Let’s stop the waves.
[You can’t stop the waves.] Except when you’re asleep they stop.
No thoughts - no waves…

So it seems to me thoughts arise in our mind from somewhere deep inside, from something that controls Nature.

I think Katie would call that God.
She used the word Nothing.
That’s a Zen thing, Nothing. (I made the “N” a capital)
Maharishi called it the Absolute, or Everything.
By whatever name you give it, thoughts come from beyond the little, conscious self .
(I made that “s” the lower case.)

The Readiness Potential

Magnolia Bud
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao.

Somewhere in time between Maharishi’s and Byron Katie’s comments, a scientist by the name of Benjamin Libet had enough experimental evidence to start a debate that rages to this day.

Libet asked his subjects to move a finger at some moment of their choosing. They were also to report when they made the decision to move by noticing the position of a dot circling a clock face. Meanwhile, an EEG monitored the electrical activity of their brains.

Earlier research had shown that consciously-chosen actions are preceded by a pattern of activity known as a Readiness Potential (or RP). RP’s indicate that the motor region of the brain was preparing to act upon a command like, “Move your finger.”

Strangely, Libet’s experiment showed that the time each person decided to move their hand consistently occurred after the RP appeared.
Thus, is seems as if the conscious decision to move a finger had been preceded by an unconscious command to which the brain began to react.

Other labs got similar results, and the debate has raged for decades.
Are our actions really generated subconsciously?
And what does this do to our notions of Free Will?

People were upset.

Daniel Wegner, a Harvard psychologist, calls it “The Mind’s Best Trick.”

We think of moving a finger and then do it, we think of going to the store for milk and do it, we think of looking away from this page – and then do it. It certainly doesn't take a rocket scientist to draw the obvious conclusion …[but] the mind has been known to play tricks… What if our minds keep … leading to an impression of conscious will again and again, but never revealing to us how our actions are actually caused?

To me, this is science stumbling upon, “Thoughts seem to come from somewhere deep inside.”

It seems, to me, to be the physiology supporting Adyashanti’s comments to those who look deep within their consciousness:

You might even start to notice that your thoughts, they are not even yours.
And how do you know that? Because when you…want your mind to stop, it doesn’t pay attention, does it.
… It’s my mind, or so the mind thinks, but at each moment …it’s an impersonal thing.
It thinks when it wants to think and stops when it wants to stop.

Student: “So you just let it?”
Adya: “Pretty much. Or you don’t, and you suffer like a dog.”

Ahhh, suffering!

Why bother about where thoughts come from?
Because if we don’t know, we make the mistake of thinking what that our thoughts are really REAL.
We make the mistake of confusing My Will for Thy Will.

Byron Katie emphasizes the non-reality of thoughts by calling them “stories.”
Spiritual Inquiry allows us to clearly see this. We are able to distinguish My Will and Thy Will. And this sets the stage for liberation, freedom from suffering, and Enlightenment.

Blue Squares and Asemic Calligraphy

Blue Cups 2
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao.

We lay there & looked up at the night sky & she told me about stars called blue squares & red swirls & I told her I'd never heard of them. Of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own.

"Blue Squares," a Story of the Day, from StoryPeople.

And to me that’s what art is about. You have to imagine it. Or, let it flow from deep deep inside. Or let it take you deep inside.

I haven’t been here this past week because I have been working on my art. Making some and getting my other blog (Silence: a Gallery) organized into something of a real online gallery. In that process I have discovered some very interesting things (?), ideas … which I will share here.

First off I discovered the term “asemic calligraphy.”
Turns out this is what I have been doing in my art these past few years.
I never knew that.
I never knew what to call these doodles of calligraphy.

I do not know either kanji (Chinese characters) nor have I studied shodo (Japanese calligraphy). So of course my calligraphic-like swirls are without meaning, that is asemantic or "asemic."

This type of calligraphy is by definition without meaning. But meaning is missing only if we restrict ourselves to the surface and most superficial level of language. There are other possibilities. Or to quote the Australian artist Tom Venning:

“The letters are illegible, invented, or primal. The text has no verbal sense. Through its formatting and structure, it may suggest a type of document, or coded diagram, thereby, hint at meaning. Asemic writing can be understood through aesthetic intuition… through gut feeling.”

I executed the “writing” as an exercise in Taoist meditation, the guided movements I have mention before, only these were movements writ small... so small that it was simply almost writing rather than the grand flow of postures and mudras demonstrated during the practice of guided movements, or spontaneous Qigong.

I called my doodling “intuitive calligraphy.” I consider it both “guided” by the subtle flow of energy within me, as well as “spontaneous” as it simply is what flows out once the attention settles inward.

To me “intuitive calligraphy” is a meditative practice stemming from Taoism.
To me it ties into my understanding of sacred language, and memory, and transcending.
I think of it as the manual version of speaking in tongues.
Then suddenly, I discovered this term “asemic calligraphy.”

There is this whole other tradition focused around asemic calligraphy. (See asemic.net)
It is a tradition peopled with poets, artists, children scribbling.

Check this out for very different (yet related) way of viewing the intuitive calligraphic.
Turns out the roots can be traced to surrealism too.
Am I surprised? – no, delighted!