Silence, Part 2: in many guises

Japanese Feather
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

The Unmanifested is not separate from the manifested. It pervades this world, but it is so well disguised that almost everybody misses it completely…
Do you hear that dog barking in the distance? Or that car passing by? Listen carefully. Can you feel the presence of the Unmanifested in that?
... Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be…
The Unmanifested is present in this world as silence… All you have to do is pay attention to it…
You cannot pay attention to silence without simultaneously becoming still within. Silence without, stillness within. You have entered the Unmanifested.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter 7, “Portals into the Unmanifested”

It is curious to me that Tolle doesn’t capitalize Silence, yet he does capitalize Unmanifested. I have always equated the two. Perhaps, I am wrong in this.

When my consciousness first shifted, back in 1975, the shift (my awakening?) began with a sudden thundering of Silence. I was leaning over to whisper a joke to a friend, as we sat watching a video tape of Maharishi, played to a roomful of TM teachers in the midst of a six week retreat. I was midway through my lean, when Silence cracked so abruptly I jerked straight up in my chair.

I never finished my lean, nor did I ever deliver my snide comment.
Instead, I looked around the room absorbed by this all pervading Silence.
At that moment my life was changed forever.
Then, I got up and walked out.

I no longer recall why I felt so compelled to leave. It was night. We were in the country and being out under a brilliant canopy of stars, rather than in the confines of a crowded room, was probably my motivation.

By the time I was done walking, it was long past lights-out, and my new found friend (the course leader who’d accompanied me when I fled the meeting) was pretty much holding me up. My legs had grown wobbly. I’d become quite drunk on my new reality. Eventually, she dumped me upon my bed to spend the night totally Awake.
I slept one hour every other night for the next two weeks. It made little difference whether my eyes were shut or open, whether my body moved, sat still, or slept.
I was always Awake. … How I managed to go back to sleep is a story for another time.

Since then, Silence has broken in upon my ordinary awareness time and time again during the most mundane behavior.
It strikes suddenly, without preamble.
It always seems precipitated by some other simple sound: a fly pinging against a lamp shade, a dog barking in the distance.
It can be electrifyingly intense or have the strangest subtlety.

I’ve had Silence spin me almost off my chair while sitting in a coffee shop.
I’ve watched Silence roll across the room just as a wave rolls to shore, buckling my knees and felling those around me also, in something of a silent tsunami.
It feels as if I’m going to faint, but I never have. I simply lose thought and muscular control for some few moments.
This has even happened while working at the computer in the lab. I was startled to watch computer monitor go black in perfect synchrony with Silence descent upon me.
We had to reboot the system. After the third time, the monitor was dead.
I never mentioned my involvement to the others and the Department covered costs.

Silence is not simply about sound.
It is also about space and form, which is just a way of saying it is also about Nothingness.

Just as no sound can exist without silence, nothing can exist without no-thing, without the empty space that enables it to be. Every physical object or body has come out of nothing, is surrounded by nothing, and will eventually return to nothing…. The Unmanifested is not only present in this world as silence; it also pervades the entire physical universe as space - from within and from without. …Nothing – space – is the appearance of the Unmanifested as an externalized phenomenon in a sense-perceived world. That’s about all one can say about it, and even that is kind of a paradox. …Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing, the same nothing.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Chapter Seven.

Silence is also about Love.
When Maharishi “made me a teacher,” I sat alone with him for sometime and we talked. As a final gesture, he gave me a picture of his teacher, Guru Dev, then said, “Now, you keep him happy.”
With those words, a wave of Silence, some “carpet flap” in an Ocean of Nothingness started at the far wall of the room. I knew it to be Maharishi’s love for Guru Dev and I watched it roll towards us. Even though I’d seen it coming, its splashiness of Love was beyond any expectation. Speechless and wide-eyed, I reached out with both my hands, clamped them hard upon the lithograph, bowed and backed out of there.

My Penguin paperback edition of the Bhagavad Gita is old and very fragile now.
But, I had it with me back when my consciousness first submerged into Silence.
These are the words that I underlined then.
I’m sorry that Adyashanti doesn’t speak about God more. Perhaps it is the Zen in him.
And I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay Awake. Perhaps it is the ego in me.

In cosmic consciousness silence and activity co-exist at the same level; whereas the level of God-consciousness is completely free of all duality; it is the living silence of eternal life, and Unity pervades all activity as water every wave…. When the awareness of the Self in cosmic consciousness develops into the awareness of God in God-consciousness, it develops on the level of silence; the whole process is one of the transformation of silence. At every step the quality of silence changes.… In transcendental consciousness, silence is devoid of any activity. In cosmic consciousness, the silence of Self-awareness co-exists with activity. In God-consciousness, the co-existence of activity and silence is transformed into oneness of awareness with God. This silence of God-consciousness is the most highly developed state of silence. It is all life on the almighty level of existence. It is the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient silence of Godhead. It is a completely different state of silence, which has nothing in common with the silence of cosmic consciousness or transcendental consciousness.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhagavad Gita, A New Translation and Commentary, Chapter 6, verse 3.

Silence, Part 1: A Body from the Absolute

the genius
Originally uploaded by yves.harnois

In my last post, I mentioned the discomfort I was wrestling with. I described it as “shredding the Silence.” I’d like to try to explain that experience more closely, for it bears upon how it is we live in Silence.

Since 1975, Silence has descended upon me, sprung up around me, washed over in a splashing wave, or simply tickled my spine. Silence is the most direct approach I have to the transcendent Absolute. And lately, it has presented itself with such intensity there’s simply no way my body can absorb it, relax into it, or simply “adjust.”

It’s like trying to sit still and relax into a sustained jolt of electricity – except its utter Silence. My reaction is immediate and totally reflexive. I shut down tight and the whole jolt passes in a few seconds.

The curious thing about last week’s “shredding of the Silence” was that it seemed to be an opportunity for Silence to come into me without being immediately rejected.
More precisely - the Silence merged into one side of me.
There it met the resistance of my own body, a body formed from “Ether” rather than the usual flesh and bone or even molecules or energy and light.
Ether is the best label I can give it.
I see it as crystal clear, without even molecular or vaporous content.
It’s like heat waves rising mirage-like above the highway. Except this Ether is not hot, nor are there any waves.
But, it was there, taking up space, forming my body, and abutting with the Silence right along the midline of my physical body.
The Silence was something distinctly different from Ether. Lacking the crystal clarity of the latter, Silence was an unbounded, immaterial presence.
It was also not my body. But, it was ready to move in.
My insistence upon moving, upon thinking, upon doing anything of much consequence caused a shredding of the Ether spreading out from where it abutted with the Silence.
It was a most physical lesson on Wholeness breaking into individuality.
Wholeness became separated, even as it permeated.

It was a hard and curious lesson.
It’s a lesson that I’m kind of left to figure for myself.
The only text I can refer to are these words from Maharishi, notes I took the winter of 1974, from a video tape shown at a TM teacher retreat.
(Maharishi was actually discussing the possibility of physical immortality, but I’ve edited it for an emphasis towards my own situation.)
Where Maharishi speaks of Absolute, you can just as easily substitute the word Silence.

What ages? Certainly not consciousness. One thing that is ever the same is the field of consciousness. What ages is a product of consciousness – energy or matter, that which is the home of consciousness…that which is not changing is only the Absolute and from this it’s apparent [that] if there is a body made of Absolute, then it couldn’t change. If we can mould a form of that, then we’ll have a body structured out of that which knows no change. Whether it’s possible to have such a body – the real answer is if… we can locate a body made from the finest Relative, then we can conceive of a formless form…

Prior to transcendental experience is matter of [the] finest state of [the] physical. Physical values of life are found in finer and finer values, we know from experience. Physics say[s] “ground state”… These theories are structured through direct experience through instruments. And at each of these levels it’s possible to structure a body. If there is that matter existing, then the bodies can be molded out of that…

[The] time value of gross [level of Creation] is different from the time value of the subtle. But, we’re so habituated to feel the passage of time we feel some factor of time when we transcend. We may feel five minutes has past while meditating and we come out and thirty minutes are gone. So, the quality of life is different when bodies are structured in finer matter. On the finest level we have a word for it – celestial - where bodies are glowing with light, bodies made of light…

Biological immortality will be on the same level as the abstract immortality of consciousness. Only consciousness is non-changing. Unless one can understand that there is a material that is non-material, so concrete yet so abstract, a man cannot comprehend that until he has the experience…

Bodies made of light. Light is finer than sound. Sound is finer than waves. Consciousness is finer [than everything]. So there is that level of substance that is so refined. And as that experience becomes more and more clear, then we can conceive of a body made of the Absolute.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, LaAntilla, Spain, 1973.

It’s nice to find such passages.
It helps me trust my own experience.
(And I apologize how my editing and Maharishi’s spontaneous speech make it read a bit jumpily.)
I don’t feel nuts. But, I do feel a bit outlandish.
However, there is some very interesting biology here.
And Silence is important too…

As is comic relief.
Maharishi went on to speak of Tapas – purification of the body to refine its elements into the celestial.
During this past week, I have spontaneously become the simplest of vegetarians. No more meat for now. So, it seems some Tapas begins solely intuitively.
However, I fine it difficult to believe that my blend of decafe and regular coffee, beta blockers and calcium channel agonists is really the stuff of traditional regimens.
Which brings us back to the interesting biology of all this.

What does it take to physiologically support enlightenment?
Take a look at this video of Ramana Maharishi before you answer.

A Promise (of dubious worth)

Canvas 6
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I have sat down with the promise to myself of “just write” and post whatever.
Whatever. It was been a quiet (strange?) whatever kind of week. My difficulty with writing has continued.

For one thing, I’ve kind of given up on thinking – though my mind is filled with thoughts. I find “intellectual activity” (and yes, that is actually behind most of these post) – intellectual activity in the form of thought after thought has become at times unbearable.

Why? Because I cannot stand how all the thoughts seem to pull me out of myself and away from the knowing discovery that “feeling” can provide. Driving into work the other morning (just about the only morning I made it into work last week) I saw quite clearly how thinking pulls me up and out of myself. I didn’t like that and was looking at the phenomenon closely. Then, I realized, “Well, at least that makes it very clear – You are not your thoughts.” Of course, this s a philosophical belief of mine, but just that moment, belief gave way to direct experience.

Thoughts are like these skyrockets I send up from the Silence of myself. Skyrockets are great fun and colorful delights. But, they are no more “me” than my body is. Though I (whoever that may be) do live in close proximity to both thoughts and physiology. In fact, we intermix.

I didn’t stay at work for long that day. My body has had its own struggles. Last Saturday a bunch of old friends and I went for a kayak float down a river in north Georgia. It was a perfect day. The river carried us along and required little work. We linked kayaks up in continually shifting combinations and caught up on each other’s lives. We picnicked on a gravel bank, floated pass turtles sunning by the dozen, gazed up into the blue, blue sky and inhaled the greenness of the trees. After seven miles of these delights we got out, dried off, and regrouped at Pod’s house overlooking a lake just outside Atlanta. I haven’t had such a good time in months.

The next morning I woke up with a migraine; too many nitrates in the potato salad? I don’t know. (Well, yes, in part it was the nitrates.)

But, I was also suffused with Silence, apparently absorbed from all that Nature and enlivened by all the happiness and laughter. The Silence sickened me as much as any migraine. For below all the muscle, blood, skin, and bones, my body was also composed of Silence and my insistance upon moving, thinking, focusing on task painfully torn into it and ripped the Silence into shreds. “One layer up” my inner body energetically became a silence scream. A layer up from that was a “migraine” of sorts.

I called in Monday with the migraine excuse. Though none of the drugs I took relieved the symptoms: low grade headache, nausea, trembling, poor balance, eyes not working. It was enough of a migraine to use as a somewhat honest excuse. But, it was something else too. My consciousness was wide open. I spent a lot of time sitting on the back deck, watching two robins tend their nest. I also caught up on cleaning and laundry, with naps freely interspersed. When I slept, there was pure wakefulness. When I went to work, I couldn’t understand my protocols – the instructions for my experiment. I would reread each sentence, moving my finger along below the words for emphasis, but nothing would compute. I couldn’t figure how to do things I have done several times before. Meanwhile, continually shredding Silence became a roar of jangled, chaotic energy. I soon had to return to my bed.

As long as mind is associated with the object, so long as is it experiencing mind; but when the object of experience has diminished to the point where it has disappeared, the mind ceases to be experiencing mind. Conscious mind becomes consciousness. But during this process of transformation, it first gains the state of its own individuality…
The verse does not speak of the mind but of “thought” as being steady. The Sanskrit word is chitta, which signifies that aspect of mind which is a quiet and silent collection of impressions or seeds of desire. Chitta is like water without ripples. It is called manas, or mind, when ripples arise.

When the mind gains the state of chitta… It holds its individuality in the void – the abstract fullness around it – because there is nothing for it to experience. It remains undisturbed, awake in itself.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, On the Bhadgavad Gita, a New translation and Commentary. Chapter 6, verse 19.

I think that physiologically my body/mind was ready to sit quietly. However, I live in the world. I have a 9 to 5 job. And so that which would melt silently … “Imagine a silent wave on a silent ocean, ready to merge into the silence of the deep” (MMY) – imagine taking a stick to that water and whipping it into a frenzy. That’s what moving in the world felt like all week. That’s what forming thoughts coherently into writing feels like just now. It nauseates my body and sets everything to trembling.

So, OK. Enough for now. I’ve kept my promise.
I have this one thought, RE: Why bother doing this?
I hope that this chronicle might be of use to someone, somewhere, someday.

Adya says if the question is occurring to you, then you also know the answer. So, when I ask myself, “What is going on?” I look to see.
And, I think I see. I think I understand. And so might someone else. But, the answers often seem so outlandish that doubt arises. Doubt is weakening and we don’t need that. So, from time to time it helps to discover that someone else has passed this way. And perhaps, this is the path... and then thorns and brambles don’t matter quite so much.

Feel So Near

There’s no posted photo today because this entry is so centered on the image in my mind. Ah, yes, a click can take you there – to a Flickr contact who doesn’t have a “blog this” link on this particular photograph.
That’s OK.
This image lives in memory. It lives out of time and is freed from the usual fetters.

For instance, it came swirling up into my consciousness this morning as I listened to this song by Dougie MacLean. And if I could control your actions, I’d have you click up the song at YouTube and ask you then to “minimize” it out of sight. Listen to the music and have this image in your mind.

You'll find me sitting at this table with my friend Finn and my friend John
My friend Murdaney tells us stories of things long gone, long gone
And we may take a glass together, the whisky makes it all so clear
It fires our dulled imaginations and I feel so near, so near

I feel so near, to the howling of the wind
Feel so near, to the crashing of the waves
Feel so near, to the flowers in the field
Feel so near

The old man looks out to the island, he says this place is endless here
There's no real distance here to mention we might all fall in, all fall in
There’s no distance to the spirits of the living, no distance to spirits of the dead
And as he turned his eyes were shining and he proudly said

I feel so near, to the howling of the wind
Feel so near, to the crashing of the waves
Feel so near, to the flowers in the field
Feel so near

So we build our tower of construction, there to mark our place in time
To justify our great destruction, as on we climb on we climb
Now the journey doesn't seem to matter, the destinations' faded out
But gathering out along the headlands, I hear the children shout, children shout

I feel so near, to the howling of the wind
Feel so near, to the crashing of the waves
Feel so near, to the flowers in the field
Feel so near

Waking Up each Morning

early incarnation
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
Adrienne Rich, Power

Or to put this in another way and on another level:
It is necessary that the Current be attuned to the resources of the body and particularly the nervous system. While in the Current, I feel exaltation and a sense of well being that reaches well down into the outer organism, yet this does not change the fact that the Current is a powerful energy and does tax certain powers of endurance… The physical body is clearly the weakest link…

if the body is thought of as something like a ten ampere fuse, while from the transformer, just beyond, there is being delivered a current on the order of one hundred amperes at high potential. One is constantly under a pressure to use more than ten amperes and thus strain the fuse close to the point of burning out.
Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Experience and Philosophy.

And in yet a third manner, this from Eckhart Tolle:
Chi is the inner energy field of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source. It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the Unmanifested. Chi can be likened to a river or an energy stream. If you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the inner body, you are tracing the course of this river back to its Source…

You take a journey into the Unmanifested every night when you enter the phase of deep dreamless sleep. You merge with the Source. You draw from it the vital energy that sustains for a while when you return to the manifested, the world of separate forms. This energy is much more vital than food….

…use your inner body as a portal through which you enter the Unmanifested, and keep that portal open so that you stay connected with the Source at all times. It makes no difference, as far as the inner body is concerned, whether your outer physical body is old or young, frail or strong. The inner body is timeless…
The Power of Now.

Most mornings, lately, I wake up with something of an elevator ride.
It begins from the ground floor of “Existence”- I guess.
No object. No thought. No dream. Still, there seems to be something to the Nothing, when I look back in time. A bit of light, something even though there’s nothing, it is certainly not empty.

A swoosh as if some elevator is rising, pulls “me” out of That pure being, into a tingling field of energy as simultaneously I regain the ability for thought and to notice what is going on.
The tingling energy of rather dingy light (I want to call it “golden” – but that’s too clean and clear) this electric tingling of dirty dish-water energy swells up and floods my physical body. Instantly, my physical body is racked by inner trembling and nausea, where previously body was just fine and resting quietly.

Now, I can notice that it’s morning and the bedroom is surrounding me.
The elevator ride is over, even as awareness of my inner body remains.
I lie there for a moment hoping things will settle, become less intense, before I venture reaching out a hand to Bennie.

He is such a happy fellow. By contrast, I am feeling fairly trashed.
The ride up into "awareness of..." is such an uncontrolled process and where I am deposited is so very disappointing.
It all ends up in an “Ugh” and nausea.

Becky and I used to laugh about a picture of me as a baby in my buggy, ca.1952.
We entitled it, “Patty, trapped in her body.”
We joked about the shock of incarnating and how I’d been blessed with one solid chunk of body. (“Ninety-fifth percentile in every grade school class and all of it was muscle, dense.”)

Waking up these days seems to be a small scale recapitulation of that incarnating.
Leave the Light, take on inhabitation of this dross, dross body.
I find it tedious.
I also think of Maharishi saying whenever we’d complain, “Something good is happening.”

But, I think Tolle has put it somewhat inaccurately.
It does make a difference what shape your body is in.
(Why else do people become vegetarians, especially while on spiritual retreat?)

Each morning's re-awakening leads me to all sorts of questions.
Why is my inner light so dingy? What inner alchemy is this?
Does the physical body pollute the inner? Or, does the subtle stir-up the gross?
I bet both sides can be to blame. So, which direction, out-to-in or in-to-out, is causing my particular malaise?
Is this dross of physical or psychological origin? What did I eat yesterday? What can I change today? Is this toxicity from this life? A past life?
…so many questions… I will stop here.

… Or, perhaps, I’d do well to rethink the fact I’m sleeping with a dog.
Oh! That is simply far too sad.

Bennie stays.

PostScript:
And now I see. The physical body is the fuel. The inner body is the flame.
The inner body doesn’t care what the physical is like: strong, weak, pure, impure.
It’s all fuel for the fire and It will burn the dross until all the fuel is gone.
Nothing gross (including Bennie) can pollute this fire.
But, you can sure generate a lot of smoke, shakes, nausea, and more.

As with tending any fire, you want a clean and controlled burn.
And tending to the fire is a skill we each must master for our selves.

As for The Poet, Merrell-Wolff, and Tolle, they are right on – each in their own way.

You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone ...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down
the upbreathing air.

Adrienne Rich, “Twenty-One Love Poems,” The Dream of a Common Language.

Grief, Part III: dying, death, and birth

Canvas F
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I thought it’d be nice to share the story of Ramana Maharishi’s enlightenment which is posted in greater detail here.
Notice how this Saint responded to the thought, “I’m dying.”
He was totally free from the drama, gyrations, and flapping arms that most of us go through. And yet, he still experienced that fear that the Taoists speak of as ru ding.

In his seventeenth year, in full health and in normal waking state he was suddenly overwhelmed with the fear of death and fully convinced that death was imminent. The inexplicable feeling would not leave so the boy began to ponder on the meaning of death. He was alone in his upper story room at the time so he decided to act out death and inquire into the meaning of it. He laid down with his arms stiffly at his sides as if dead, held his breath and said to himself;

Now death has come but what does it mean?
What is it that is dying?
The body dies and is carried off to the cremation ground and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead?
Am I the body?
This body is now silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the 'I' within me, apart from the body.
So I am the Spirit transcending the body.
The body dies but the spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death.
That means that I am the deathless Spirit.

The awareness of this knowledge took full possession of him, not at the level of mere mental awareness but at the deeper level of complete spiritual self-awareness. He suddenly became the Spirit and knew himself as That, no longer identifying himself as merely the body form that had been called Venkataraman. Self realization was instantaneous, complete, and irreversible. His ego was lost in a flood of pure Self awareness.

How could Ramana Maharishi be so calm about it all?
Perhaps he had little if any pain-body. Maybe his ego didn’t fight him. Or perhaps the conditioning of his mind was not as deep as most.
Whatever the reason was, he wasn’t in the shape most of us are in.
Most of us have work to do, before and after awakening. We get to practice seeing through our conditioning and fears repeatedly on many levels.

…the vast majority of people who come see me, or any other teacher, would probably do well with a little help from a good psychologist… Somehow or other the conditioning will need to be addressed, either before awakening or after awakening. You can have direct experiences of deep reality, but if you have too much psychological conflict, or your ego is still too fractured and not functioning coherently, it will keep holding you back.
Adyashanti, Who Hears This Sound? The Sun, December, 2007

Ah, yes.
Adya has described this process of examining ourselves on deeper and deeper levels, as peeling away layer after layer of an onion. Eventually, all the layers are lying in a pile at your feet.
And you are left with Nothing in your hands.
The Nothing… (that is everything).

Well, I’ve opened enough presents wrapped in tissue paper to know that fingertips can tell what’s coming. I think the same holds true layers of an onion.
And so the whole process can be scary. You can feel the dissolution coming.
But, what does it really mean?

Somehow, you have to find the integrity to look closely and inquire.
So, let me end all this talk of grief and fear and dying with these words of the French Vedantist, Arnaud Desjardins (with thanks to Beth for telling me of him):

Westerners commonly consider life to be the opposite of death, but Orientals consider birth to be the opposite of death.
For them, life expresses itself through a movement of perpetual change: an uninterrupted play of death and birth… the birth of the child is the death of the baby; the birth of the adolescent is the death of the child.
Daring to live means daring to die at each moment.
But it also means daring to be born – daring to pass through important stages in life where the person you use to be dies, in order to make room for someone with a new view of the world…
To put it simply, daring to live also means no longer having the slightest fear of what we feel.
Arnaud Desjardins, The Jump Into Life: Moving Beyond Fear.

Grief, Part II: the Crucifixion

Canvas D
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Pat had gotten up from the table, for a moment, leaving Becky and me quietly digesting. We’d been talking about their life in Mexico.
“What was Becky doing there?” She didn’t know. She only knew it was important, the next step for her spiritually.
Then out of that silent pause, I was looking up from my plate, eyes all watery.
The softest, most unanticipated thought had just surprised me and was settling upon my lips, “I’m dying.”
The tears were an expression of the gentle sweetness of this new understanding.
I hesitated. Was this the time to speak it out?
No – that would require too many words, words that were better left to others:

But, as even the personal man is much more than the physical body, the price goes deeper than the body.
There is a kind of dying, proceeding in the midst of continued bodily existence. Doubtless it is but natural that the personal nature should dread all this and, in a measure, grieve. For here we have the true meaning of the crucifixion….

Awakening calls for a profound, though possibly subtle, virility…
A fire descends and consumes the personal man.
For a time, short or long, this Fire continues.
The personal man is the fuel, and the fuel, in greater or lesser measure, does suffer.
But the fire does not destroy; it simply transforms.
Franklin Merrill-Wolff, Experience and Philosophy

I bet that everyday, somewhere in Mexico, there is a re-enactment of the crucifixion.
Earlier at dinner, we spoke of how the myths that really catch on are the stories that hold true on many levels.
Now that Becky lives part of every month in the land where she was born, Jesus finally made sense to her.
In Mexico, Catholic cathedrals were put in place right over Aztec pyramids.
This is a people who know all about human sacrifice.
And here I had told them about the words of Merrill-Wolff regarding crucifixion.

But, I hadn’t mentioned why I was rereading him.
I have been watching this grief inside me, wondering if the energy/emotion will resolve before it actually shreds my heart. Sometimes it has felt fairly nip and tuck.
The aneurysm they found in January, right where the aorta ascends from my heart, is obviously bulging from the strain.
“Hypertension,” they say. And there are all kinds of calculations as to the chance of rupture, and all kinds of drugs to swallow.

Here too, a story holds on many levels.
How will it all play out?
How much of me is dying?
And what will be the price?
Not that it really matters.
I am ready to pay anything… almost.

My final word on this particular subject is: I sought a Goal the existence of which I had become convinced was highly probable. I succeeded in finding this Goal, and now I KNOW, and can also say to all others: “IT IS ABSOLUTELY WORTH ANYTHING THAT IT MAY COST, AND IMMEASURABLY MORE.”
Franklin Merrell-Wolff, speaking of his own enlightenment.

Grief: "Yes!"

Canvas C
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

I’ve not written in a while – it has seemed impossible.
I’ve decided to try posting snippets, and in this case, a transcript that I’ve been contemplating.

It’s a rather long excerpt from an Adyashanti CD, Enlightenment: The Direct Approach.
It deals with grief: grief with a capital G - grief that at times shakes the student, Adya is talking with, into convulsions.
Such deep grief has become very familiar to me in the past few months.

I want to understand such grief.
But, also notice that when Adya speaks of resisting the Immensity he speak of the entire Cosmos and he doesn’t frame his comments as metaphor or analogy. (He uses metaphor later, referring to plugging a hose with your thumb.)

The Grief at issue here touches an Immensity, and that Immensity apparantly involves, both experientially and in parsing Adya’s words, the entire Universe.
I was always embarrassed by Maharishi using the term Cosmic Consciousness.
Now, I believe he was simply trying to be accurate in his terminology.

How is this possible – that human consciousness becomes Cosmic?
What would that process feel like?
The proverbial camel and the eye of a needle come to mind.
But the extremes of the actual task are far greater actually: one individual and the entire Universe.

Notice too, that when Adya asks the student to explain her grief, she says she feels like she’s been “living life backwards.”
Awhile ago I mentioned Thomas Merton’s description of Adam’s sin as “a double movement of introversion and extraversion.”
In this phrase “living life backwards” we again meet something of that trick of twist.
Somehow, the Cosmos in which I exist seems to keep getting turned around and swallowed so that it resides within me.
I find this flip and twist excruitating. I react as one would to an electrocution.
Later, upon reflection, I find that returning to my true nature feels like executing some sort of fancy dive: forward somersault with full twist.
And you must pull it off without the slightest splash.

...But, the main point here regards grief and the transcript goes like this:

Student: About three months ago I gave up what I was doing, not really knowing why, but I just had to do it… I have this sense that there is something deeper in me wanting to move through and by doing what I was doing, I was just kind of bailing-out. And I just couldn’t do it anymore. But it really meant just falling back and giving up income and having no idea what was going to happen.

So what’s been happening in that process is just a lot of grief, just intense grief touching upon a depth of aloneness that is terrifying. I can intellectualize what is going on and yet … the feelings that come up are just so big, they feel like they are just going to rip me apart. And there is part of me that wants that, just let it take me over and I can’t…

Adya: It’s going to happen you know that. The moment is going to come and you’re not going to be able to resist it… It’s just about saying yes to it. Yes…. Whatever. Yes. It’s going to kill me. Yes. I’m ready.

Student: Yeah. I can say that when I’m not in it.

Adya: What I am saying is it will visit you until you get to that place where you really say/feel throughout your being, Yes.
Yes, you’re just done resisting…
There is a great Immensity that is coming up within you. The thing that makes it feel intense though, as opposed to immense (immense and intense are different things)… The Cosmos is immense. It’s not necessarily intense. The resistance of that much space, the resistance makes it be perceived as an intensity… Something holds on as the Immensity of Being is coming into your consciousness. Then It is experienced as very intense, overwhelming, terrifying maybe.
That’s why I say when you can get to the moment when you can just say, “Yes!” it’s like you’ve taken your finger off the front of the hose… It’s experienced totally differently. All is well. Then all is unimaginably well.

Student: Yeah. I’ve had glimpses of that… And you know the grief that is in there, that endless, endless grief, it just takes me over sometimes. It’s just unstoppable.

Adya: What’s the grief about? What’s the bottom of the grief?

Student: There’s really not a story or a memory…the best I can put it, I feel like I’ve been living life backwards in a way and that I’ve come to this core of I can call it separation, just the deepest, deepest core separation, just being ripped apart out of wholeness…I find it difficult because I don’t see it around me much. It feels like such a lonely process.

Adya: It feels lonely for the moment inside yourself [as other people hide it]… inside of us, [there] is the central wound…the core wound of turning away from what we really are. As soon as we turned away we experienced separation that causes a grief and suffering and everything else that follows. But as you get very close to that essential turning away… that’s the grief, the grief for having turned away from what you really were and the separation immediately issued. … it’s the grief of turning away from the immensity of what you really are.

Student: And that’s what it feels like, that I am on that edge. I just have to remember. I have to know what I hold in me, what I’m here to express, cause it’s just so painful not to.

Adya: You’ll find it by turning into that intensity. And when I say, “Yes,” I’m trying to impart a certain sense - it’s the letting go of resistance.

“The drop experiences the Ocean by becoming one with it.”
That’s what Maharishi use to say.
No complicated somersaults and twists need be involved.
In fact, Maharishi used to describe the inward dive of meditation as simply leaning over and letting go.

“Yes.”

Too Much Kissing

Too Much Kissing - Caught
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

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

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

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

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

Now, Why I am telling you this?

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

Stop.
Breath.
Feel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mario’s Question from Another Angle

Thibet Buddha with Kuba-tatoos
Originally uploaded by olivier gilet

When the Dalai Lama came to Emory last October he met with researchers and held a conference on depression. Scientists here at Emory have been working with people whose depression has been unresponsive to all other conventional treatments: antidepressant medication, psychotherapy, and electroconvulsive therapy.
What they’ve shown is that intractable depression is immediately relieved when an electrode is used for deep brain stimulation of a very specific region of the brain.

The patients’ responses, so very striking, have made it into the research literature:

All patients spontaneously reported acute effects including “sudden calmness or lightness,” “disappearance of the void,” a sense of heightened awareness, increased interest, “connectedness,” and sudden brightening of the room, sharpening of visual details and intensification of colors in response to electrical stimulation.

These changes occured so quickly, literally at the flicking of a switch, that scientists believe that the response by-passed both chemical (neurotransmitters, stress and the hormonal HPA axis) and cognitive (such as the voice internalized critical parent) patterns.
This was an electrically mediated event that suddenly made the brain function in a different manner.
A different neural circuit had been turned on and that changed everything.

All this brings to mind Eckart Tolle’s description of the morning he awoke:

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. I have no recollection of what happened after that…

I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window… I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains…I knew that there was infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself… I recognized the room, and yet I knew I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence.

Let this be then, introduction to yet another way of answering Mario’s second question which I have paraphrased as:
Why does negativity keep arising in us?

It seems to me that spiritual seekers are somewhat analogous to depressed patients.

What the scientists found was that after the deep brain stimulation lifted the crushing darkness, patients still had to work their way back to lasting health via the usual and slower modalities of medication and talk therapy.
As dramatic a shift the deep brain stimulation provided, lasting change required the depression be “worked through” on the chemical and cognitive levels also.

There in lies the parallel.
That flicking of the electrical switch is like the “freebie” of awakening.
For even after awakening there is more work to be done:

Realizing who you are is a piece of cake compared to living it.
It is a freebie.
You don’t have to do anything for it. You don’t have to change…
All you have to do is stop trying… for just one second.

Realization is a freebie, even if you are holding on to regret, blame, and judgment.
But you’re going to have a hard time living that realization because the nature of truth itself is something without a past, without fixed points of view, and therefore, without blame…

When you awaken, those remaining personality traits, ego traits, and hidden places within you come to the surface one by one in the clear light of awakeness.
As each arises it offers you an opportunity to see through it.
But you cannot see through anything that you do not allow to arise.
Each time you allow this arising, you feel a deepening in the sense of spaciousness, presence, and openness.
You have the sense of a causeless love, a causeless happiness.
Adyashanti

Or, as Maharishi (and others) would remind us:
The world is as we are.

And how are we?
Even the Awakened are like little ponds of muddy water. The mud makes it impossible for the water to reflect the true brilliance of the sun. Our job is to quietly filter out all the muck and debris.

Maharishi called the muck “Stress” – abnormalities in the nervous system caused by either an overwhelming positive or negative experience. Regular meditation would un-stress the stress creating a normally function nervous system.
Then, you would see your true self and infinite nature, but ego would remain.
More meditation and normal functioning of a stress-free the body would lead to further refinement, a fuller awareness of God and one’s ultimate Unity with creation.

Tolle seems to suggest that the muck can be understood as the pain-body.
He explains that until Presence is fully maintained, we will from time to time slip back into “unconsciousness” and experience the pain-body once again as the ego thrashes about trying to maintain the illusion of its individuality.
Presence as it fully ripens will transmute the energy trapped within the pain-body into Consciousness.

And Adyashanti, in yet another terminology, speaks of what the Buddhists have traditionally called “conditionings” – all those negative (and positive) ego traits that persist like “grooves in a record” even after an awakening.

So Mario, Negativity continues to arise from within us – not because we harbor some inherent evil – but because the body has not yet finished the internal alchemy that purifies every single cell within our body after awakening.
Awakening can be thought of as that electrical switch, the deep brain stimulation that establishes a newly functional neuro-circuitry.

In an instant, the depression lifts.
“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” (as the Bible says* and Handel composed in Messiah) - We see the Light.
And then, we are left with the rest of the process.
We have to rebalance chemicals and hormones, and even subtler energies, flushing out all the acupuncture meridians.

Or, at least, that is how I picture it.

*1Corinthians 15: 51-54

Mario’s Second Question

pile up
Originally uploaded by Carolyn Garcia

It went like this:

How come "unwanted thoughts emerge" and we can't wipe them off!!?
Sometimes I am inclined to think that we have an innate ("evil") tendency which we have to learn to know and co-exist with...but how!?

Sincerely, Mario

And I simplified it in my mind to this:
Why do we have negative thoughts?

A couple days ago I said there are many angles from which to answer a question.
I love Eckhart Tolle’s comments regarding negativity so much I’d like to begin there.
Then later, I’ll take it from a more physiological orientation.

But here, from the Power of Now, Chapter Nine are excerpts that go straight to the point:

All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another.
All negativity is resistance… The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants…
The fact is, of course, that negativity does not work.
Instead of attracting a desirable condition, it stops it from arising.
Instead of dissolving an undesirable one, it keeps it in place.
It’s only useful function is that it strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it…

Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness… the ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe…
The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep seated fear and sense of lack…
Most of the so-called bad things that happen in peoples lives are due to unconsciousness… I sometimes refer to those things as “drama…”

When you feel sorry for yourself, that’s drama.
When you feel guilty or anxious, that’s drama…
Most people are in love with their particular life drama…
They have their whole sense of self invested in it. Even their - usually unsuccessful – search for an answer, a solution, or for healing becomes part of it.
What they fear and resist most is the end of their drama.
As long as they are their mind, what they fear most is their own awakening.

That last sentence is pretty damning in its implications and reveals why negativity keeps arising.
Tolle makes this suggestion:

Whenever you notice that some form of negativity has arisen within you, look on it not as failure, but as a helpful signal that is telling you: “Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present.”

Thanks to Carolyn Garcia for illustration: Pile Up.

Mario’s Email

svengali
Originally uploaded by Carolyn Garcia

I received an email the other day. It posed two questions that I’d like to share:

1) Why is it really impossible to go on living moment to moment with full awareness?
2) How come "unwanted thoughts emerge" and we can't wipe them off!!?
Sometimes I am inclined to think that we have an innate ("evil") tendency which we have to learn to know and co-exist with...but how!?

Sincerely, Mario

Good questions, I think. Right to the point.
So, why is it impossible to live moment to moment “fully aware” once we understand how nice that kind of life would be?

It’s because full awareness cannot be maintained through our good intentions, our meditation practices, or intellectual understanding.
Full awareness is maintained automatically by the body, our physiology.
Or in other words, enlightenment is a state of consciousness and each state of consciousness is supported and maintained by a specific physiology.
This is the nature of all states of consciousness.

Spontaneously we shift from waking, to sleeping, to dreaming.
We cannot will ourselves to remain asleep forever, or stay in a beautiful dream.
We wake up. And then, we cannot remain awake forever.
It is the same with remaining “fully conscious.” We cannot will it.
The Body has a will of its own.

If you have insomnia – intellectual understanding is no cure. The more you think about the insomnia the less likely you are to fall asleep. Telling yourself to go to sleep is a futile endeavor, only increasing your agitation.
Similarly, intellectually understanding that there is something called “full awareness” won’t produce the state. And trying to remain “fully aware” is futile. The moment our attention lapses full awareness is gone.

But, we can effect the shifting back and forth between states of consciousness to some extent.
We can go to bed, lie down and wait quietly. Soon the body slips into sleep.
Set an alarm clock. You are likely to awake on time.
And too we can affect the quality of our sleep or wakefulness by the things we do that affect our physiology. If we want to have a good, alert day and not to be dull or sleepy, we know that we need a good night’s rest, eat correctly, and avoid excessive drugs and alcohol.
This everyday knowledge of how to behave and support our everyday states of consciousness is similar to knowledge of spiritual practices: meditation, inquiry, yoga, Qigong.
All these practices help orient us towards fully awakening.
But, in the end, awakening to full awareness happens through Grace, when all the ego’s efforts get out of the way.

Or as the Sufi paradox states:
If you seek Him,
you will never find Him.
But if you do not seek Him,
He will not reveal Himself to you.

It’s a fine line to walk.
And this is the short answer.
There are other equally valid ways in which to answer the question. But, this is from a physiological perspective. It can be flushed out a bit by other comments I’ve made in the past.

But that’s it for today. As I wrote Mario – they are making me work at work these days.
(Some people have all the nerve… is that a negative thought surfacing? Oh, NO!)
So, off I go.
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to Question #2.

Thanks to Carolyn Garcia for illustration: Svengali.

Literature and Everyday Transcendence

Just you
Originally uploaded by mercant

In college I eschewed the humanities, at eighteen having already spent half of my life certain I would be a scientist. However, my life has not gone at all as planned. For instance, by my late twenties, I was playing catch-up, reading Poetry and the NY Times Book Review.

From this period I have carried ever since these isolated paragraphs in my head and heart.
I was thinking of this one just the other Sunday morning, as I pushed my cart through "Your (ie my) Dekalb Farmers Market."

She liked - she loved - to push a cart with nice rubber-tired wheels through a paradise of groceries, vegetables, meats, fish, breads… It’s because our fortresses were meant to be impregnable that the fortresses of the ancient world have outlived the marketplaces of the past, leaving the impression that fear and bellicosity were keystones of our earliest communities, when in fact those crossroads where men met to barter fish for baskets, greens for meat, and gold for brides were the places where we first grew to know and communicate with one another. Some part of Betsy’s excitement at the Buy Brite may have been due to the fact she was participating in one of the earliest rites of our civilization.
John Cheever.

I have this in my head as Betsy Brite at the Buy Rite, but that doesn’t matter. She has stuck with me, because I enjoy the same ritual, the same transcendence in the everyday.

I have also carried these lines of John Barth, being as I am a child of central Illinois. From this I know a flatness that the mind struggles to comprehend: fields silent and black, with the roads running straight through the sections, 440 acres without a tree, where silos are the skyscrapers.

I knew that I would leave. John Barth knew my reason.

[80 percent of] Dorchester County, Maryland is subsea level: estuarine wetlands all but uninhabited by men, but teaming like bayous and everglades with other life: the nursery of Chesapeake Bay… More exactly it will be brackish, turbid, tidal and tepid; about the same salinity and summer temperature, I am persuaded, as the fluid we all first swam in… I used sometimes to stand in those boundless tidal marshes, at the center of a 360 degree horizon, surrounded in the Spring by maybe a quarter million Canadian Geese taking off for home and at least by age nine or ten thinking two clear thoughts: 1) this place speaks to me in ways that I don’t even understand yet; and 2) I’m going to get out of here and become a distinguished something or other.

My wife shakes her head at the apparent vanity of the latter. But in a landscape where nothing and almost nobody was distinguished; whether for better or worse there was no pressure from Nature or culture to stand out; where horizon is so ubiquitous that anything vertical- a day beacon, a dead loblolly pine – is ipso facto interesting, the abstract wish to distinguish one self somehow, anyhow, seems pardonable to me.

Pardonable. Understandable. Yes.
And I think that perhaps we all live a version of this story as we flee the void of Nothingness, dispite of and because we know that it speaks to us in ways we cannot fathom.

Adya calls it “Treading water on the Void.”
So today I chose a picture from the Flickr Pool, “Floating Worlds,” known in the Japanese as Ukiyo- a way of escaping earthly brutality by floating upwards.

(Be sure to click the picture- With Thanks to Antonio Mercurio.)

A Double Movement

mouette insectes
Originally uploaded by olivier gilet

Pride is a deep, insatiable need for unreality.
Pride is a stubborn insistence on being what we are not and never were intended to be.
Thomas Merton, The New Man.

Merton is speaking of Adam’s pride. And his words are almost “throw away” wisdom as he proceeds on to the explanations I carefully underlined in my 1961 Mentor-Omega paperback book, the pages of which are now quite yellow, fragile and ready to crumble.
Merton continues:

Adam’s sin was a double movement of introversion and extraversion. He withdrew from God into himself and then, unable to remain centered in himself, he fell beneath himself into the multiplicity and confusion of exterior things…
Adam turned human nature inside out and passed it on in this condition to all his children…

Each of us has the task of turning the thing right side out … and the task is by no means easy.

That phrase, “a double movement of introversion and extroversion” has stuck with me through the decades, as I’ve tried to turn “the thing right side out.” It has been by no means easy, or perhaps more accurately, quite a measure of my pride and insatiable need for unreality.

Seven years ago or so, I was delighted to discover the Taoist text entitled, “Turning the Light Around.” It described a technique that I realized I could perform. A practice that if performed for 100 days promised that I would become immortal.
I lasted about 10 before things just got “too weird.”
Unreality is so ingrained in me as Real.

The words also invoke contemplations I mentioned not so long ago - the strange twisting inversion of consciousness I discovered as I tried to diagram the flow of creativity throughout Creation. Our minds can travel “from smaller than the smallest to larger than the largest,” in Maharishi’s jargon. To me, this journey forms a kind of Klein bottle – a geometrical object that you can imagine but not build since a Klein bottle requires four dimensions. (Oddly, it’s surface passes through itself without a hole. Is this a metaphor of transcendence, I have to wonder?)

So, my ears perked up the other night as I listened to Eckhardt Tolle on the true nature of space and time:

Go out on a clear night and look up at the sky…What appears to us as space in our universe perceived through the mind and senses is the Unmanifested itself, externalized. It is the “body’ of God. And the greatest miracle is this: That stillness and vastness that enables the universe to be, is not just out there in space – it is also within you…. Within you, it is vast in depth, not in extension…
What you perceive externally as space and time are… the two essential attributes of God, infinity and eternity, perceived as if they had an external existence outside you. Within you, both space and time have an inner equivalent that reveals their true nature, as well as your own. Whereas space is the still, infinitely deep realm of no-mind, the inner equivalent of time is presence, awareness of the eternal Now.
The Power of Now, Chapter Six, The Inner Body

The teachers of enlightenment speak of two a two-step process.
First, it is necessary to wake-up to your own true nature. Know your Self to be unbounded. Second, the ego must dissolve into an awareness of unity.

Maharishi clarified the distinctions between Cosmic Consciousness and Unity Consciousness. Adyashanti speaks of awakening as the first step to becoming fully enlightenment. And Merton, has this double movement – pulling the senses out from identification with the world, becoming re-centered in the self and then melting into God.

People don’t seem to speak of Merton anymore. So, let me end with more of his words. More phrases that have stuck with me all this time.

For Krish:
If we would return to God…we must reverse Adam’s journey, we must go back the way he came. The path lies through the center of our soul.

Here he echoes Tolle’s instruction that the inner body is a portal into Being:
The body that you can see and touch cannot take you into Being. But that visible and tangible body is only an outer shell…In your natural state of connectedness with being, this deeper reality can be felt every moment as the invisible inner body…to “inhabit the body” is to feel the body from within… and thereby come to know that you are beyond the outer form.

For Becky:
The sense of being “carried” and “drawn” by love into the infinite space of a sublime and unthinkable freedom is the expression of our spiritual union with the Father…[Son and Holy Ghost (to put it in the Catholic)]

For Dan:
When the light of God’s truth begins to find its way through the mists of illusion and self-deception…the false self which we inherited from Adam begins to experience the strange panic that Adam felt when…he hid in the trees in the garden because he heard the voice of the Lord God in the afternoon.
If we are to recover our own identity… we must learn to stop saying: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid.”

OK – I’ll sign onto Dan’s passage too. And end with this one, which I really like:

It is a spiritual disaster for a man to rest content with his exterior identity, with his passport picture of himself… If that is who he thinks he is, then he is already done for, because he is no longer alive, even though he may seem to exist.
Actually he is only pushing the responsibility for his existent on to society… he assumes he is a person because there appear to be other persons who recognize him when he walks down the street.
Thomas Merton, The New Man, Spirit in Bondage.

Sky hanger (Playing with Magritte)

Sky hanger (Playing with Magritte)
Originally uploaded by Hobo pd

I am decidedly non-verbal it seems.

So, we don't have to be.

Here are three photos from my Favorites set at Flickr.
Not my work... but those of others.
It's all explained in the elsewhere... click, click, click.

the deeper I go, the further I fall

the deeper I go, the further I fall
Originally uploaded by ~ fernando

Good luck and happiness

Good luck and happiness
Originally uploaded by Hobo pd

He Who Brought the Sun

He Who Brought the Sun
Originally uploaded by Buddha's Ghost

A quiet day here today. But that doesn't mean you should go without your treats.

The photo here is one from Buddha's Ghost.
If you click on it you can read the Inuit story of how Crow brought the Sun to the Inuit.

It is a delight!

Thank you, Budhha's Ghost!

The World is as We Are…(three): Story Telling

A Barely Perceptible Vibration
Originally uploaded by bigheadedrobot

I came across the ink drawings of bigheadedrobot (aka Philip Kirk of Iowa City, IA) the other day and was captivated.
I really want to share this discovery with you.

They invite a caption.
They invite an entire story.

So, I thought I'd post today’s favorite, “A Barely Perceptible Vibration,” and invite you to share your own interpretation – either in a comment or via email.
Initially, I imagined a contest for the best cartoon caption.
We can do that.
But, as I was doing morning asanas and contemplating captions, NPR’s Speaking of Faith was on the radio and I heard:

[story telling] is a spiritual activity…
…in order to hear a story, you have to quiet yourself and you have to empathize with the characters in the story. And isn't empathy part of the spiritual life? Isn't quietude part of the spiritual life?
And you also discover in the story that you don't have control. You might like the characters to do one thing or another, you might wish they would make one decision or another, but you can't control the situation. And part of the spiritual life is learning that we are not always in control.
And also, if we are truly listening, then all the details matter. ...it matters what the color of her hair is or what he's wearing or what the time of day is. And paying attention to the details of life is part of the spiritual life.
Rabbi Sandy Sasso

These words provid the perfect basis (less you think I've wandered totally off subject)
for sharing the insights and stories bigheadedrobot’s images evoke. So, to get things started I offer this:

What we see as other is always different. What is different, we fear.

But, that curled finger urges so much more. So, let me throw this out also (in a deep, deep whisper):

Have you seen this Piggy Bop? I need to speak with her… this Piggy Bop… and this Cat’s Meow.

There you go. Put on your thinking caps.
Have you seen Piggy Bop? Next lines are welcome.
Stand alone captions, fine.
Best line wins. (I will solve the “win what” later.)

The World is as We Are... (one)

Crystal Translucent
Originally uploaded by magic fly paula

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
attributed to Aeschylus, quoted by Bobby Kennedy upon the death of Martin Luther King.

Forty years ago today Martin Luther King was shot.
I was eighteen and soon Bobby Kennedy would be gone too.
He was campaigning in Indianapolis that day. He followed this poem with words that now echo in me with the timbre of Lincoln’s Gettysburgh Address.
We memorized Lincoln's words in Junior High.
But, you may not recall these of Kennedy from that night in April.
They are now etched in stone near his grave in Arlington:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

You can hear Kennedy’s voice crack as he speaks of love.
You can see how very young he looks. He who was once my elder.

The World is as We Are... (two)

Maharishi Namaste
Originally uploaded by saeed_tm

I’ve not commented here about the passing of Maharishi on February 6th.
I haven’t felt compelled to.
But, the other evening after work I climbed up into the attic, pulled out the box labeled “Patty’s Old Life” and sorted through the notebooks and memorabilia from my days with Maharishi.
The pages are quite yellow now around the edges. The writing and doodles are familiar, unforgettable.

I made some tea and took a stack to the back deck.
Remembering.
Reconsidering.
I don’t know what I wanted to find. Nothing seemed quite right, nothing totally compelling. The strangest feeling began stirring.
“Am I past all this?”

I copied a few passages to a yellow legal pad. Some of these may be of interest to you.
And while I can’t swear that I took down Maharishi’s words verbatim, I was fresh out of college and my note taking skills were well honed. I caught most of what was said.

I smiled at these lines. They've come to me often in these intervening years.
Maharishi had decided we should take three days of silence. I had no idea what “taking silence” even meant. So he was explaining.
We were to stay in our rooms alone, meditating day and night. A thermos of hot soup would be delivered to our door:

April, 1972:

You should have the chance to experience what makes men spend months and years of their lives by themselves in caves. What they live on is that sweet bliss of inner awareness.

And then he added as an after thought, “And you should have some chips, potato chips.”
Sure enough the next day there was a small bag of chips along side the thermos of soup.
I loved him for that gesture.

July 8th, 1971. Maharishi on how to give an introductory lecture:

Most people don’t understand why collective calamities occur from stressed individuals - be it riots, wars, or earthquakes. Explain how the atmosphere holds only so much tension. Use your own experience of a tense house.

All efforts have failed because wars still occur. Therefore, the problem is unsolvable according to history. If the problem is so big, let’s break it down and try to solve the small problems. Then maybe this generation can be the first to solve the big one.

The problem is the individual.

April 10th, 1972:
There was a question – a woman from Rio was worried that she somehow hypnotized her audience when she gave introductory lectures. The head of the local TM center was also concerned. Her audiences said they felt hypnotized and everyone always signed up to learn. How could this be?

People get wrapped up in the reality of hope. More credit should be given to the people of Rio than to the lecturer. They must be very inspired people.
They hear the beautiful possibilities and they are stunned by the shock of the truth.

“Stunned by the shock of the truth”… “the reality of hope.”
Suddenly, I saw this year’s election cycle and “the politics of hope.”
Samsara and politics. One generation and the next,
time and passages.
Maybe this generation. If not, when?
Suddenly, I felt compelled.

The world is as we are.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Summer, 1971.

The Sufi Paradox of the Journey:

bench
Originally uploaded by Mary Hockenbery (reddirtrose)

If you seek Him,
you will never find Him.
But if you do not seek Him,
He will not reveal Himself to you.

An Awakening in Sweden

Recommence
Originally uploaded by Camilla E

And those that were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music – Nietzsche (from A Mouse in France)

Through the Blogosphere I have come to appreciate the fact that all around the world people are spontaneously awakening. By “spontaneously” I am drawing the distinction between people such as myself who have been diligently identified as being a seeker, often for several decades, and those who are just kind of going along living their lives when “poof” – everything is changed.

Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie have written about the delicious disorientation that ensues when one spontaneously awakens. I don’t mean to imply that everyone awakens to become a famous teacher. Nor does everyone awaken to exactly the same experience. On the contrary - each awakening is as unique as we are individual.
Some will stay awake. Some won’t. Some will have a smooth transition. Others won’t.

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing from a young man in Sweden.
I thought others might enjoy hearing Dan’s experience in his own words (though I have edited just a bit):

I recently got my heart open and I'm now awake from 31 years of sleep.
I got a calling to write a book about just that.

It is so exciting, everything is so alive.
There are so many people lost in the dark.
Yes, we all need to wake up and see that all things, everything and
everyone is one.
When I realized that God was inside me and inside everyone I got a great feeling.
My whole world changed in a second.
Time does not exist, the only time is now.
Future and past is a kind of dream.
I now try to live by three values: thought, feeling, and action.

So I asked him how this happened?
Did he have a spiritual tradition or was his awakening a spontaneous event?

Well it all started with a movie, "Peaceful Warrior."
A college boy had a remarkable awakening, and uses his ability to stay focus on this moment, now. That really got to me.
Later I came to know a little lady who has the ability to heal and she helped me open my heart. I'm working on her website right now. She is a lovely lady full of love. She practiced almost exactly as the movie told me, so I knew I was on the right track somehow.

I'm brought up as a Christian and it took a lot of courage for me to go to her.
But, now my world has changed and my boundaries for different religions have changed. I see a wider perspective now but still called myself Christian because I believe in Jesus.
So I build my book on awakening and Jesus.

So far I have had two amazing experiences, and both must come from GOD.
One is I was writing in my book for two hours without knowing what I was writing - that came to be the start of my book.

The other thing is I asked GOD out loud, "How does a tree feel?"
It was a horrible feeling, every muscle shrank and my heart was beating really hard, I almost could not breath.
Still awake and very afraid, I asked again, "What does a healthy tree feel?"
And I tell you it was the best feeling I have ever felt, it felt like something was pulling my toes, finger, hair (in a good way) my body was filled with life, [it] almost felt like flying.

I never believed that nature had such a connection as it has, and that we might learn allot from it. For example my spiritual guide told me that she had been walking down a road with trees. There was one tree that was not so healthy, she saw energy fields moving from the healthy trees nearby to help the sick tree. I thought that was amazing.

Yes I've been a tree, and I'm really happy about that.
(My friends though have trouble believing that. I think they are thinking that I have become a bit crazy. I know that allot of people are afraid of their inner light.)
I'm only been "open" about 7 month now.
But I must say I don't regret a single second, only urge for more.

I must ask you, do you feel in your body the same way I do?
Like hearing good music makes your body's water feel like sparkling water.
I get this feeling 2-20 times a day. Sometimes it is so exhausting that I need to catch my breath, I get higher pulse.
I would like to know if anybody else has the same feeling.
If you write the blog and get any response I would love to read them.

It's amazing, just one year ago I thought this was science fiction and did not know any of this.
Now it's reality and that there are others experiencing the same thing, all over the world, all striving to make a better world filled with love.

I think we are close to finding the core of all things. I like to call it God or the Light.

Best Regards,
Dan Rosshagen

If you can relate to any of this, I am sure Dan would love to hear your comments.

Oh Mama, Obama

IMG_6942
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama

OK, another "News in Brief" on the fly et cetera.

I was exploring my Flickr site when I discovered Barack Obama has a site, well not quite "like everyone else" - but, it made me laugh out loud and do a double take.

So, I made him a contact. (I'll see if he clicks back.)
You might enjoy the look-see your own self.

God, I love the Internet.
Makes my consciousness seem totally grounded.

Zen Stories, now and then

temple disconnection
Originally uploaded by cjb22

Knowing that we are looking for something we already have and are does not, of course, mean that the journey is
unnecessary, only that there is a vast and sublime joke
waiting to be discovered at its end.
Andrew Harvey, 'The Direct Path'

So, off I tramp. Much a do about nothing, all around the mulberry bush.
Becoming a scientist was never much in doubt. They love to hypothesize and think -
always with the question.

Zen Story One: How Grass and Trees Become Enlightened

One day a fifty-year-old student of enlightenment said to Shinkan: "I have studied the Tendai school of thought since I was a little boy, but one thing in it I cannot understand. Tendai claims that even the grass and trees will become enlightened. To me this seems very strange."
"Of what use is it to discuss how grass and trees become enlightened?" asked Shinkan. "The question is how you yourself can become so. Did you even consider that?"
"I never thought of it that way," marveled the old man.
"Then go home and think it over," finished Shinkan.

I find I do not want to explain myself. No talking it through with the girls.
I am almost sick of words. Almost.
I want to experience and then just let it be.
No labels. No putting it to words.
In labeling I feel a torque.
Is it a twist of fear? Yes.
Is it a twist of “Not True?” Yes.
It is a twist of ego? Yes.

I am almost sick of words. But not quite - damn, I’m blogging still
Still
I am not quite anything.
Best case label, “I am Nothing.”
That is so obvious. Obvious oblivion.
Then there is that torque -
How can I deny: the tree, the table, the sky, the thoughts?
All That must be at least Something. I know that truck can hit me hard.

So that must be something And thus I can’t be Nothing.

But I am.
Nothing.
Staring me in the face
The contradiction is so funny. I laugh hugely, silently
And that is contradiction too
as no grin breaks upon my face.

Rumor had it Angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Maybe I’m an angel… no, that was just a rumor.
More likely, I’m a pin head
Dancing on the Void
Dancing, Dancing
Insisting on the pin head.

Zen Story Two:

Originally uploaded by akiruna

The emperor, who was a devout Buddhist, invited a great Zen master to the Palace in order to ask him questions about Buddhism.
"What is the highest truth of the holy Buddhist doctrine?" the emperor inquired.
"Vast emptiness... and not a trace of holiness," the master replied.
"If there is no holiness," the emperor said, "then who or what are you?"
"I do not know," the master replied.

What is there is know? I have the words and theory down
pat
No wonder I have a tendency to headaches. The problem is with my eyes, connected as they are to brain.
One of these days I’ll have to give up science.

Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of
anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor
doesn't exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming
it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it
doesn't exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither
create nor negate the mind. This is what's meant by the
mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist...

The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, translated by Red Pine

“Ugh,” I say. “Ugh.”
Stepping ever closer to giving up on words. One day I’ll have to give up blogging.

Zen Story Three:
A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away.
The Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused," I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."