See.
Inquire.
What exactly do you have to say to yourself?
What causes you pain?
What belief causes you grief?
What exactly are you saying to yourself innocently, unknowingly, that’s actually causing…
The closing of the heart,
The resistance,
The grief …
And the anger.
Adyashanti, The Omega Institute, July 2007, (CD 10:3)
And what I usually find is that part of me actually enjoys the misery and doesn’t want to let it go.
Which brings to mind the earlier comment spirituality isn’t about finding relief,
but rather, discovering the truth. (see part 1)
It’s embarrassing to find I’m deliberately holding onto pain.
At such times I have to make the choice: Truth or some secret self indulgence.
The choice is up to me.
How wonderful to be brought to this dilemma!
Most people haven’t even noticed what they’re doing.
And they suffer and complain for years.
The Universe is patient.
Here, Adya is in dialog with a student, a man in his fifties I would guess, still carrying the pain from his childhood and his relationship with his abusive father.
Adya asked the fellow what his belief was about that relationship, but feel free to substitute a belief of your own.
Student: “How could you hurt me? All I did was love you.”
Adya: Core beliefs are often where the first innocent misunderstandings happen.
Turn it around a little.
Ask, “How did I hurt me?”
How did you take what happened – cause it happened …
how did your system, that innocent system take an experience that happened
and then, hurt it self?
From that instant on, how have you been hurting yourself?
Student: By holding on?
Adya: And what’s the thought that causes the holding on…?
Student: Fear of being hurt, I think…
Adya: Yes, fear of being hurt.
And this is the crucial point we all must realize –
The hurt is the hurt that we are doing to ourselves.
That’s the hurt.
That’s what we need to see.
How am I hurting myself?
Someone may have hurt me 50 years ago, or I can drop something on my foot (that’s a totally different kind of hurt)… but, from the instant that hurt happened,
from the instant that event happened,
from a few moments after that event,
ALL the other hurt has been something we’ve been doing to ourselves.
That event was long over and so we look back and we go,
“Oh! Someone hurt me and it’s causing me to hurt me now.”
…The thing that’s actually empowering is to see that from the moment something happened, from that moment on, my belief structure shifted in such a way that it’s causing me emotional pain.
If it lay in someone else’s hands, or some other event, you’d be in trouble…
because none of us can ever go back and change anything that happened.
We can’t change anybody or any event…
But, we can see that our current emotional pain is something that our minds are creating and our body is reflecting.
When you get that principle you can go into yourself – meditative inquiry – not like sitting around analyzing it, but meditatively really go in where the thought is always linked with feeling,
so that you feel everything you think…
You have to have the patience to feel what you believe…
so you see, “Ah, that belief causes this pain.”…
“Is that belief a true belief?” …
“If that belief only causes pain, why would I hold on to it?”
When your body gets it on a cellular level that the beliefs we hold are actually the most dangerous things we have in our system –
Then they let go of themselves…
As long as we think someone else is causing the pain, or an event that happened in the past… we are totally disempowered. There is absolutely nothing we can do…
The best that can happen is what I call re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The best you can hope to do is manage your suffering:
Blame somebody less.
Hate them a little less.
Love them a little more.
Personally, I want more than that.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
On Healing: Part 2
You can know it in the mind
But if the cells don’t know it, attention will be pulled there
Because everything seeks to wake up – every single piece of us.
That’s why attention is drawn to that which is unawakened.
Adyashanti The Omega Institute, July, 2007. (CD8:3)
(On Healing: Part 1, is here)
The doctor insisted that I not drive home.
When I protested, she pointed out that I could not even get from the chair onto the exam table.
I saw her point.
She presented options – drugs, transportation.
What did I want to do?
I was appalled to discover I could not even form a sentence.
I watched myself, sitting limply, head down swinging gently.
I tried to think things through but the mess was just too tangled.
From a distance I heard the doctor mutter “Ah, cannot make a decision.”
Then firmly, “Call a friend. I will be back.”
She left me in the white noise of the examination room.
It was then, I saw exactly how I move through life armored by my wit,
my clever mind,
my repartee.
I use them all to keep the world at bay.
And when intellect is stymied, I have a body that can turn and exit.
I’ve even thrown a punch or two and whipped boys three years my senior.
Clever mind and strong body, these are my carapace.
And at that moment, I was left with neither.
Gone.
Stripped defenseless.
I felt like some little anemone without one bit of shell – naked, exposed,
and totally unable to defend myself from a world I Do Not Trust.
I struggled not to give into shear terror.
And gradually, I backed away from the abyss.
OK. Accept it. Just go along with what the world wants. This seemed my only option.
I called a friend.
She came and wheeled me home.
Once safely in my bed, I turned on the CD player
and just happened to come across these words of Adyashanti.
They are a continuation of the discussion I shared earlier:
Student: Another aspect of what it [illness] is doing for me… in terms of my striving in life with my work…I’m afraid not to strive.
Adya: So feel the fear of that.
If you don’t face the fear, then you’re just going to strive again…
The fear of course is based on separation…
Anything we’re striving to be, somebody. It is always because we’re compensating for perceived separateness.
Student: Striving to feel like I have enough money to pay my bills…
Adya: Right! Which comes from fear of survival…and that will have a world view of its own…that sees the world as slightly threatening, something that you’ve kind of got to struggle in to take care of yourself…
It comes out of those deep survival impulses.
Again - separateness – that the world will not take care of me.
And it does.
You let it.
I’m not suggesting that it means you sit on your couch and let the riches roll in. But, I’m saying it’s amazing.
Let it.
It does take care of you.
But, you have to meet the fear…
See it. Digest it. Take it in.
Cause then it doesn’t have to keep giving it to you through a negative means, through sickness…
Feeling the fear is the entry point.
A lot of people are pointed to feeling the fear… and through that, if it’s not too traumatic a fear, there’ll be a release… the fear dissipates.
The problem with that is although it’s a quick fix, it’s usually not a real fix.
Because [while] entering an emotional state fully can cause it’s dissipation,
usually the cause is untouched.
So, open to the fear, but as a means to get in touch with the story of the fear,
the voice of the fear, the belief structure of the fear – cause that’s what’s causing the perception of separation:
“Life’s not safe.”
“You’ve got to struggle to make it in the world.”…
You start to feel that belief, that my beliefs, that have an unspoken promise to help me get by and protect me in the world… when you examine them through your mind and your body – your body starts to recognize
“It’s not true!”
The very beliefs that tell me they’re protecting me are hurting me…
It has to be connected from the inside of your head to letting your body feel it.
You’ve got to go slowly and step by step so each thing is felt.
If it is not felt, it’s analytical.
Then, you’re just a person [whose] gone to therapy for 20 years…
and they know how neurotic and totally screwed up they are.
They can tell you why.
They are experts, but experts who are a mess.
Why is that?
Because there is no connection between what they know and what they feel.
They haven’t let the knowledge reconnect them with experience.
The knowledge has been a means of hiding from experience.
So, connect it. Feel the belief…
And when your body feels it …the body will drop it…
Boom! It’s gone right out of your system.
This is actually classic Byron Katie inquiry.
If you’d like more support in being able to do this I recommend her teachings.
There is also a bit more to this discussion which I’ll share in Part 3.
But if the cells don’t know it, attention will be pulled there
Because everything seeks to wake up – every single piece of us.
That’s why attention is drawn to that which is unawakened.
Adyashanti The Omega Institute, July, 2007. (CD8:3)
(On Healing: Part 1, is here)
The doctor insisted that I not drive home.
When I protested, she pointed out that I could not even get from the chair onto the exam table.
I saw her point.
She presented options – drugs, transportation.
What did I want to do?
I was appalled to discover I could not even form a sentence.
I watched myself, sitting limply, head down swinging gently.
I tried to think things through but the mess was just too tangled.
From a distance I heard the doctor mutter “Ah, cannot make a decision.”
Then firmly, “Call a friend. I will be back.”
She left me in the white noise of the examination room.
It was then, I saw exactly how I move through life armored by my wit,
my clever mind,
my repartee.
I use them all to keep the world at bay.
And when intellect is stymied, I have a body that can turn and exit.
I’ve even thrown a punch or two and whipped boys three years my senior.
Clever mind and strong body, these are my carapace.
And at that moment, I was left with neither.
Gone.
Stripped defenseless.
I felt like some little anemone without one bit of shell – naked, exposed,
and totally unable to defend myself from a world I Do Not Trust.
I struggled not to give into shear terror.
And gradually, I backed away from the abyss.
OK. Accept it. Just go along with what the world wants. This seemed my only option.
I called a friend.
She came and wheeled me home.
Once safely in my bed, I turned on the CD player
and just happened to come across these words of Adyashanti.
They are a continuation of the discussion I shared earlier:
Student: Another aspect of what it [illness] is doing for me… in terms of my striving in life with my work…I’m afraid not to strive.
Adya: So feel the fear of that.
If you don’t face the fear, then you’re just going to strive again…
The fear of course is based on separation…
Anything we’re striving to be, somebody. It is always because we’re compensating for perceived separateness.
Student: Striving to feel like I have enough money to pay my bills…
Adya: Right! Which comes from fear of survival…and that will have a world view of its own…that sees the world as slightly threatening, something that you’ve kind of got to struggle in to take care of yourself…
It comes out of those deep survival impulses.
Again - separateness – that the world will not take care of me.
And it does.
You let it.
I’m not suggesting that it means you sit on your couch and let the riches roll in. But, I’m saying it’s amazing.
Let it.
It does take care of you.
But, you have to meet the fear…
See it. Digest it. Take it in.
Cause then it doesn’t have to keep giving it to you through a negative means, through sickness…
Feeling the fear is the entry point.
A lot of people are pointed to feeling the fear… and through that, if it’s not too traumatic a fear, there’ll be a release… the fear dissipates.
The problem with that is although it’s a quick fix, it’s usually not a real fix.
Because [while] entering an emotional state fully can cause it’s dissipation,
usually the cause is untouched.
So, open to the fear, but as a means to get in touch with the story of the fear,
the voice of the fear, the belief structure of the fear – cause that’s what’s causing the perception of separation:
“Life’s not safe.”
“You’ve got to struggle to make it in the world.”…
You start to feel that belief, that my beliefs, that have an unspoken promise to help me get by and protect me in the world… when you examine them through your mind and your body – your body starts to recognize
“It’s not true!”
The very beliefs that tell me they’re protecting me are hurting me…
It has to be connected from the inside of your head to letting your body feel it.
You’ve got to go slowly and step by step so each thing is felt.
If it is not felt, it’s analytical.
Then, you’re just a person [whose] gone to therapy for 20 years…
and they know how neurotic and totally screwed up they are.
They can tell you why.
They are experts, but experts who are a mess.
Why is that?
Because there is no connection between what they know and what they feel.
They haven’t let the knowledge reconnect them with experience.
The knowledge has been a means of hiding from experience.
So, connect it. Feel the belief…
And when your body feels it …the body will drop it…
Boom! It’s gone right out of your system.
This is actually classic Byron Katie inquiry.
If you’d like more support in being able to do this I recommend her teachings.
There is also a bit more to this discussion which I’ll share in Part 3.
Friday, April 24, 2009
On Healing: Part 1
What you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened.
It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it.
For me, reality is God.
Everything happens for me, not to me.
Byron Katie
A couple weeks ago found me in bed, flattened by what the doctor called, “classic vertiginous migraine.”
After more than 16 days of vertigo and confusion, I was finally drugged and fairly content to just float there in a daze.
For company, I turned on a randomly selected CD from the Adyashanti retreat I attended in 2007.
There, in the luck of the draw, was a student asking about chronic illness.
The discussion that followed spoke to so many points I needed to hear.
I’d like to share some of this - fresh appreciation of old points.
The easiest way to do that is to post my transcriptions here.
So, here’s a dialog about illness, acceptance, and grace.
Student: For a lot of years I have been sick a lot… When I can accept it, it is almost fine…
Adya: As long as you prefer not being sick to being sick, it’s not so problematic… Given a choice, I’ll take the energy! …the problem becomes if we have a judgment that one is essentially more right or more valuable than the other.
Sickness has just as much right to exist as health does.
And if you DON’T think sickness has as much right to exist, then you tend to be sick all the time…
Student: I do have a resistance to being sick. It’s getting old…
Adya: What is it trying to show you? What IS it showing you? What is the positive thing that happens through being sick?
Student: …it really helps me feel, sometimes, more of what I actually am. Cause I can rest in that. I go to that. (and now she is beginning to cry – and so was I. For I know exactly what she means.)
Adya: Ah, Wow! Boy, I’d be thankful for it…
It does push you there because up to this point – maybe the next minute it won’t need to – up to this point you’ve needed to be pushed there.
Cause if you weren’t pushed there, you wouldn’t put attention there with any consistency. When you recover and feel good, the mind gets on with its own agenda. And then the sickness kind of brings it to its knees a little bit… This is a gift, right?
It’s hard, fierce grace.
There’s nice grace and there’s fierce grace – sickness taken to your knees until you see something essential - that’s fierce. We always value easy grace as being better than harsh, fierce grace… When you see what fierce grace is trying to show you, then fierce grace doesn’t need to be so fierce.
I had the same thing by the way. I had a series of illnesses, a couple of which put me more or less in bed for six months at a time – until I could see what they were doing. They were destroying persona.
I told you earlier that I had been a very high level competitive athlete.
That’s a nice persona to have – very empowering persona – but it’s a persona.
I was not ready to let it go. I knew I needed to. I felt it coming.
But, I just couldn’t do it.
So, grace put me in bed, flat on my back until I was so weak…
How can you be a strong athlete when you’re crawling to the bathroom on your hands and knees every morning?
And then it demolished it.
And then it was grace – Ah, that’s not what I am! What a relief! ...
And then health came back.
Hey! I can be athlete man.
So, I had to get sick again and have it demolished.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I’d been smart enough the first time?
…[but] it had to be squeezed out of my system.
God’s not always nice, fortunately.
Acceptance - If I’m good at it will life hurt less?
Yes. … so let me do acceptance…
Will that work?
Probably not, since that’s totally ego driven.
It’s like asking, “If I’m enlightened will life hurt less?”
Yes… so now, I’ll be enlightened.
That just doesn’t work.
And while meditation can be sold as a means to lower blood pressure,
meditation is actually about finding God.
Similarly,
Spirituality isn’t about finding relief. It’s about discovering the Truth.
(my version of a Adya quote)
God isn’t always nice, fortunately.
Sometimes we get sick.
Sometimes Life really hurts.
And the love in this Reality breaks my heart wide open.
Gratitude is what we are without a story.
Byron Katie
It should have happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it.
For me, reality is God.
Everything happens for me, not to me.
Byron Katie
A couple weeks ago found me in bed, flattened by what the doctor called, “classic vertiginous migraine.”
After more than 16 days of vertigo and confusion, I was finally drugged and fairly content to just float there in a daze.
For company, I turned on a randomly selected CD from the Adyashanti retreat I attended in 2007.
There, in the luck of the draw, was a student asking about chronic illness.
The discussion that followed spoke to so many points I needed to hear.
I’d like to share some of this - fresh appreciation of old points.
The easiest way to do that is to post my transcriptions here.
So, here’s a dialog about illness, acceptance, and grace.
Student: For a lot of years I have been sick a lot… When I can accept it, it is almost fine…
Adya: As long as you prefer not being sick to being sick, it’s not so problematic… Given a choice, I’ll take the energy! …the problem becomes if we have a judgment that one is essentially more right or more valuable than the other.
Sickness has just as much right to exist as health does.
And if you DON’T think sickness has as much right to exist, then you tend to be sick all the time…
Student: I do have a resistance to being sick. It’s getting old…
Adya: What is it trying to show you? What IS it showing you? What is the positive thing that happens through being sick?
Student: …it really helps me feel, sometimes, more of what I actually am. Cause I can rest in that. I go to that. (and now she is beginning to cry – and so was I. For I know exactly what she means.)
Adya: Ah, Wow! Boy, I’d be thankful for it…
It does push you there because up to this point – maybe the next minute it won’t need to – up to this point you’ve needed to be pushed there.
Cause if you weren’t pushed there, you wouldn’t put attention there with any consistency. When you recover and feel good, the mind gets on with its own agenda. And then the sickness kind of brings it to its knees a little bit… This is a gift, right?
It’s hard, fierce grace.
There’s nice grace and there’s fierce grace – sickness taken to your knees until you see something essential - that’s fierce. We always value easy grace as being better than harsh, fierce grace… When you see what fierce grace is trying to show you, then fierce grace doesn’t need to be so fierce.
I had the same thing by the way. I had a series of illnesses, a couple of which put me more or less in bed for six months at a time – until I could see what they were doing. They were destroying persona.
I told you earlier that I had been a very high level competitive athlete.
That’s a nice persona to have – very empowering persona – but it’s a persona.
I was not ready to let it go. I knew I needed to. I felt it coming.
But, I just couldn’t do it.
So, grace put me in bed, flat on my back until I was so weak…
How can you be a strong athlete when you’re crawling to the bathroom on your hands and knees every morning?
And then it demolished it.
And then it was grace – Ah, that’s not what I am! What a relief! ...
And then health came back.
Hey! I can be athlete man.
So, I had to get sick again and have it demolished.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I’d been smart enough the first time?
…[but] it had to be squeezed out of my system.
God’s not always nice, fortunately.
Acceptance - If I’m good at it will life hurt less?
Yes. … so let me do acceptance…
Will that work?
Probably not, since that’s totally ego driven.
It’s like asking, “If I’m enlightened will life hurt less?”
Yes… so now, I’ll be enlightened.
That just doesn’t work.
And while meditation can be sold as a means to lower blood pressure,
meditation is actually about finding God.
Similarly,
Spirituality isn’t about finding relief. It’s about discovering the Truth.
(my version of a Adya quote)
God isn’t always nice, fortunately.
Sometimes we get sick.
Sometimes Life really hurts.
And the love in this Reality breaks my heart wide open.
Gratitude is what we are without a story.
Byron Katie
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Love after Love
This morning I was listening to John Kabat-Zinn being interviewed on Speaking of Faith. He was giving an articulate argument for mindfulness but my curiosity was peaked when he was asked to address the fact that his father had been a scientist and his mother an artist.
These are my roots too.
The mixing of these two opposites play out in my life each day.
Kabat-Zinn was asked to explain.
He declined a “cognitive” reply and chose instead a poem saying, "it's not very long, but it really hinges around just this issue of who we are and how much we split ourselves apart."
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
These are my roots too.
The mixing of these two opposites play out in my life each day.
Kabat-Zinn was asked to explain.
He declined a “cognitive” reply and chose instead a poem saying, "it's not very long, but it really hinges around just this issue of who we are and how much we split ourselves apart."
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Fabric of the Univerise
She wanted to ask him if horses understood the wind.
His glass eyes looked at nothing. His mane was stiff, glued by the knacker to sit perfectly smooth in wind and stillness. She knew he was gone, that what she heard was only an echo.
But that echo reminded her how to listen deeper than her bones, to listen for what no one else heard.
And as the days passed, and she learned how to listen, when the wind touched her skin she began to hear much more than just her name.
The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale
Those were the words I opened to in the book. Just like that, in the library last Saturday. I’d loved the cover art, and so, judging by the cover, had taken up the book.
Something transformed me as I read. Silence pervaded everything.
I sat there for some moments simply trembling. Looking about the room. Hand stroking the pages of the book.
What was That?
What had these words done to me?
I have read other words this week – emails that have also stayed with me.
Like these words from a young woman I have never met, but with whom I correspond:
I woke up an hour after I'd gone to sleep last night and I didn't know who or what or where I was, or if I was dreaming or awake.
I just was.
It was the most vivid and scary thing, and then I sort of settled back into my story.
I'm not sure how to feel about it but I know I couldn't understand it in any way until I came back to myself.
I do know that earlier in the day I had sort of made a statement to the effect I may not be cut out for any great wonderful Buddha-like experience of enlightenment, and realizing I could just accept that…
Or these words are from a dear friend, a mother mourning her son on her own birthday:
Peter brought me flowers and a composter
(I tried a “pile” before and mostly we got rats).
I have been asking Charlie to “come to me” in meditation and at bedtime for several days now.
Last night I had a convoluted dream in which he called me on a cell phone that I couldn’t figure out in time to pick up…
He sang a few bars of happy birthday. It makes me weepy now.
Simply little snippets: a retelling of the Brothers Grimm, my friends just checking in.
In the fairy tale the young princess will one day learn the language of the wind.
As for my friends, they don’t seem that different to me. Our stories will unfold.
On the way to work today, proceeding at a crawl, at some point I had the thought,
“I am lost in traffic.”
But, I had accepted my fate and so I was at peace.
Except, perhaps, for the fact I could not find a single station that I liked on the radio.
I kept trying a new button, cycling through all six selections until I switched to an entirely new “page.”
There I found Eye in the Sky. And was delighted.
Alan Parsons Project, 1982, my original hieroglyphic calligraphy.
I turned up the volume.
Was the instrumental intro particularly long?
It was beautiful, and the words- the words were once my anthem.
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind…
Bitter days. Was I really once like that?
Now it seems just another love song.
Is it not about God after all? But those words…
“I am the eye in the sky…”
I am lost in traffic going nowhere fast, singing
"I am the eye in the sky."
I think of the painting I did this past weekend, “Fabric of the Universe.”
I think of the wind. What language might it speak?
I think of what my teacher told us last time I was with him:
“Enjoy the little things. Learn to enjoy and notice little things.”
And so I look. I turn my head.
It’s all there: grain of sand, or in the little green sprouts opening by the roadside.
There is a fabric to this Universe – we are connected.
Fairy tales, Love stories, of course the rats are in the compost.
We are dear fools dealing with it.
Debris is everywhere.
The traffic all a snarl as power crews are called out to clean up.
It seems the wind has spoken:
“Slow down, the Light will come back on.”
Monday, April 06, 2009
What the Light Was Like
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book II, Chapter 20, sited in the notes for “August Darks” a poem in What the Light was Like by Amy Clampitt.
The “August darks” what is that, and are we not in April now?
I don’t know.
I am in week three of vertigo and dizziness unassuagible by any drug or Epley maneuver.
And I realize now that Nothingness – one version of that clear perception of Infinity or Silence – can arise from simply a dizzy brain, a troubled middle ear.
I think of Scrooge telling Marley's ghost, “You’re nothing but a bit of undigested meat.”
So, much for spiritual pursuits.
I am not at all clear anymore as to causes or effects,
and was thinking it was to to give up on trying to explain or understand
when I came across this Nisargadatta quote that seemed to only emphasize the point:
Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless.
What a swift kick.
It seems enough to get through the day when most steps shake the floor a good six inches.
I seemed to have lost all sense of shock absorbers.
When nothing stays in focus,
when your world arrives through the wrong end of binoculars,
when gratitude finds inspiration in the fact there is no nausea,
what wonderful support for the practice of letting go.
Let Go.
Nothing can make you happier than you are.
All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery.
The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.
Nisargadatta
Conscious Being...
Beyond the Silence there can be a crushing roar of dissolution.
Or having settled into That, there is the opposite, the outward stroke - the roaring of that March lion, Creation, springing forth.
Did George Eliot realize this? Or do I misconstrue?
Anyway, this poem and these quotations caught my eye,
middle March, middle ear.
I also completed this version of a painting this past weekend.
It’s done upon a photo I took of my bathtub drain and shadows on the water.
It doesn’t seem your usual bathtub. Not at first – but, every child knows just such a tub exists and has explored these waters.
The August Darks
Stealth of the flood tide, the moon dark
but still at work, the herring shoals
somewhere offshore, looked for
but not infallible, as the tide is,
as the August darks are –
…
sanguine with labor, but effortless:
as is the image, far out, illusory
at the dark’s edge, of a cruise ship
moving, seemingly unscathed by effort,
bright as a stage set…
out where the herring wait, beyond
the surf-roar on the other side of silence…
Many
have already died…
Amy Clampitt
And I try to keep the faith that everything is as it should be even as I maintain the delicate dance of playing my part with best efforts, even while I accept
this is how things are.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
So much depends upon…
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with
rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams
Because I couldn’t stand hemp milk replacing my usual half & half I arrived at work this morning woefully under caffeinated.
So as soon as I got my experiment in the oven I set out to remedy my state.
You can walk an incredible distance and see fascinating things in the building complex where I work simply going from one coffee shop to the next.
Here in, I report my road trip:
The first shop’s coffee dispenser was broken. As I wrestled with the pump I noticed that the decafe thermos looked totally non-functional. This was worrisome as I require the perfect blend of caffeinated and decaffeinated. Just as this worry was really registering, the attendant appeared by my side. I was right, absolutely no decafe.
I stopped pumping. Set my cup aside, “I’m sorry I can’t do this without the decafe.”
“I know baby,” was all she said. I thought that very sweet.
I headed for the tunnel that would take me to the next shop, falling in behind a women who walked with quick determined steps. In her hands she had The Cup.
“God, she’s caffeinated.” I realized that much and noticed it wasn’t that pretty of a picture. However, this did not dissuade me in the least from my own intentions.
The next cashier called to me over the woman between us still struggling to get her act together and leave.
“How can I help you?”
“I am in desperate need of coffee!” This was my attempt at humor.
No one caught the joke. Didn't matter- I'd enjoyed it.
As I stepped up to pay, an employee behind the counter on the phone kicked a cabinet and swore into the receiver.
“Ooooo, bad juju in the food today!” I took my cup acroos to the urns.
There I waited until the disorganized woman noticed me.
She apologized, explaining that she had to figure out just the right mix of decafe and caffeinated.
I assured her I understood perfectly.
And that was when the poem came:
So much depends upon … the red wheelbarrow… or the caffeine… or the smile… the desire… our consciousness.
Or that “Winter Blend” actually smells of hazelnut and that’s all wrong. The label hadn't said that and maybe they mixed the labels up and now maybe I’ll get a headache…
Back in the lab I got a text message: a friend could see the day looked fresh, but she was feeling stuck…
I replied, I’d send a song…
Actually, on the way into work today, the moment I saw on the radio screen, “The Archies, Sugar, Sugar!” I started laughing right out loud.
How delicious.
Alright! Song for the day!
“This one goes out to Mary.” (She who struggles mightily with sugar.) My head’s best DJ voice announced. And I had laughed some more and she who doesn't hardly ever dance was bobbing her head as she drove.
And now, I know it goes to Lily too… and maybe even you might need it.
So much depends upon… you fill in the blank.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with
rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
William Carlos Williams
Because I couldn’t stand hemp milk replacing my usual half & half I arrived at work this morning woefully under caffeinated.
So as soon as I got my experiment in the oven I set out to remedy my state.
You can walk an incredible distance and see fascinating things in the building complex where I work simply going from one coffee shop to the next.
Here in, I report my road trip:
The first shop’s coffee dispenser was broken. As I wrestled with the pump I noticed that the decafe thermos looked totally non-functional. This was worrisome as I require the perfect blend of caffeinated and decaffeinated. Just as this worry was really registering, the attendant appeared by my side. I was right, absolutely no decafe.
I stopped pumping. Set my cup aside, “I’m sorry I can’t do this without the decafe.”
“I know baby,” was all she said. I thought that very sweet.
I headed for the tunnel that would take me to the next shop, falling in behind a women who walked with quick determined steps. In her hands she had The Cup.
“God, she’s caffeinated.” I realized that much and noticed it wasn’t that pretty of a picture. However, this did not dissuade me in the least from my own intentions.
The next cashier called to me over the woman between us still struggling to get her act together and leave.
“How can I help you?”
“I am in desperate need of coffee!” This was my attempt at humor.
No one caught the joke. Didn't matter- I'd enjoyed it.
As I stepped up to pay, an employee behind the counter on the phone kicked a cabinet and swore into the receiver.
“Ooooo, bad juju in the food today!” I took my cup acroos to the urns.
There I waited until the disorganized woman noticed me.
She apologized, explaining that she had to figure out just the right mix of decafe and caffeinated.
I assured her I understood perfectly.
And that was when the poem came:
So much depends upon … the red wheelbarrow… or the caffeine… or the smile… the desire… our consciousness.
Or that “Winter Blend” actually smells of hazelnut and that’s all wrong. The label hadn't said that and maybe they mixed the labels up and now maybe I’ll get a headache…
Back in the lab I got a text message: a friend could see the day looked fresh, but she was feeling stuck…
I replied, I’d send a song…
Actually, on the way into work today, the moment I saw on the radio screen, “The Archies, Sugar, Sugar!” I started laughing right out loud.
How delicious.
Alright! Song for the day!
“This one goes out to Mary.” (She who struggles mightily with sugar.) My head’s best DJ voice announced. And I had laughed some more and she who doesn't hardly ever dance was bobbing her head as she drove.
And now, I know it goes to Lily too… and maybe even you might need it.
So much depends upon… you fill in the blank.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Past, Present, Future - Nothing
The first of what was to be a series of occurrences took place. I can’t say what it was.
I didn’t seem to be present for it, yet there was no interruption of normal bodily awareness as far as I know--no break in the visual stream reporting my surroundings, for instance.
Coming out of it I discovered I was weeping. A great quiet followed.
This pattern repeated maybe eight or ten times over the next several hours.
Between episodes I took the following notes…
I am the stillpoint of Now at the center of the universe, the portal through which Nothing becomes Everything. This is happening here, now, where I sit--at the moment, in the seat of an airplane.
Bart Marshall, on his awakening
A couple weeks ago, I was in the lab working at my bench.
I was following a protocol, following the points as usual, when I set down all accoutrements, turned, and left the room.
I simply acted.
There was not the slightest thought regarding leaving mid-experiment.
I walked across the hall to our other lab and starting looking through a stack of old X-ray films we keep on hand to use as dark backgrounds.
I went through the films until I came to one which was encrusted with white crystals outlining the bottom of dishes and stoppers that had sat upon it.
I held the film up in front of me, eyeing it with pleasure.
“Oh, this is nice! Take this home and make some art!”
It seems the pleasure also brought back thinking.
And then I jumped.
“What the hell are you doing? You’re in the middle of an experiment!”
I scuttled back to my bench and tried to reorient myself.
What had happened?
Like Bart Marshall – I had retained complete awareness of my surroundings and body. At no moment had I felt the least bit strange or spacey.
I tried to recall exactly how the whole episode had unfolded.
To my surprise I discovered the memory of a momentary only thoughtless, present of body doing and sensory awareness.
I started laughing because I immediately realized that a spiritual practice focused on remaining in the present, the Now, made absolutely no sense.
It was based on the premises that we continually wander off into the Past or Future.
It was based on the premise that mindfully, we must drag attention back to the Present.
And I had just seen very clearly – there is no such thing as past or future.
There is only, Only, the Present, Now.
This insight felt very strange and somewhat silly.
It also rattled me a bit.
Now,
fast forward to the future.
This past weekend,
my Teacher came for a workshop.
On Day Two, seemingly out of no where he asked, “Patty, there is Past, Present, Future. Is this correct?”
Shocked, I began my answer uncomfortably, “I am not sure that’s true.”
Some people laughed, but I was dead serious. I may have started crying.
It went downhill from there.
Part of me wanted to stubbornly hold to what my vision had shown me.
Part of me also clearly understands the coordinate system we use every day.
From which level did he want me to answer?
Well, I don’t think it really matters.
The Teacher’s purpose was to simply make me sweat.
He knew just where my button was and he wasn’t letting up.
“There’s past, present, future…” his hands blocked them out in space making it all so obvious. What could be the problem?
And I kept refusing to give an answer that felt like kowtowing to… to what?
My mind went into meltdown.
Teacher then changed the question just a bit.
“Past, Present, Future and then beyond the future. What is there? What’s beyond the future.”
All I could see was Nothing. A Nothingness that surrounds and cradles the Present and any past or future you care to create in your mind.
I felt my stubbornness smash into my mind and my emotions rage.
Something in me didn’t want to admit to Nothingness in public.
I was covered in sweat. My heart was breaking. My mind screaming. My intellect totally confused.
I responded, angry now,
“I don’t understand the question. What does that question mean?”
Teacher ignored me and looked to the far back of the room. He asked Vicky,
“What is beyond the future?”
Without a moment’s hesitation I heard her say, “Nothing.”
I was utterly amazed, flooded with relief. What a miracle. Someone understood.
Teacher said, “Nothing! How did you come up with that?”
Vicky laughed, “Patty mentioned it at lunch.”
Busted! Busted! (do click on this link)
That night I tried to make sense of this exercise.
I decided Teacher was just clarifying to me how very stuck I am.
I cannot really tell the difference between my beliefs and direct experience.
One is of the mind and the other of the senses.
Or at least, that is how I’ve always conceived of the difference.
The description of a strawberry is not the same as eating the berry.
I am clear on that.
But, now I’m beginning to wonder if in that initial arising from the Nothing, perhaps thought and object are less differentiated.
Is this the source of my confusion?
Is this why I cannot tell the difference?
Or has my ego simply found another way to wrestle, another way to hang an ornament onto the Christmas tree of Nothingness – and so sustain my false existence?
I needed to just let go of the wrestling. Thinking gets me no where these days.
Thinking seems almost counter to what my brain wants and needs to do.
Simplify. Stop. Don’t think.
Be still.
These words from Bart Marshall’s translation of the Faith-Mind Sutra helped bring me back to center.
When like and dislike are absent, the Real is obvious and clear
Make the slightest distinction, however,
And it appears as heaven and earth…
Seeing appearances as real, you miss the Source.
Seeing appearances as Void, you miss the show.
I could get off the marry-go-round of suffering by either jumping off, or by sitting in the quiet center point.
So much huffy-puff is just a trick to keep the Nothing somewhat more at bay.
For one thing has become quiet clear:
Suffering (no matter how sincere) is always just a bit enjoyable because it helps the ego to keep going. And ego is a verb.
Not long after this, I received a link from a virtual friend, Rebecca. She had also brought Bart Marshall to my attention. Now, these words of a fellow by the name of Scott Kiloby rang true:
…after a while, the non-dual ideas just become more conditioning.
…For those who have been seeking for a while … my suggestion is to use Byron Katie’s “The Work” …[to] question every non-dual teaching, book, and website you can find… until nothing is left but emptiness…
Whenever a teacher says, “It’s all One,” ask “Is it absolutely true?”
…rest into the silence that is left when all these non-dual pointers are seen to be ultimately empty…
A thought cannot see what is.
Thoughts are memories.
Interpretations.
Never confuse the interpretation of what is with what actually is.
Scott Kiloby, under his writing, entitled, Try This.
Yes. Ultimately, there is emptiness.
At times, I find it rather shocking.
Shock and pitching a fit is how I pull back into what is familiar.
I’m back on the merry-go-round... but, this time round enjoying the ride.
Not to worry... The Nothing will have Its way in Its own good time.
I didn’t seem to be present for it, yet there was no interruption of normal bodily awareness as far as I know--no break in the visual stream reporting my surroundings, for instance.
Coming out of it I discovered I was weeping. A great quiet followed.
This pattern repeated maybe eight or ten times over the next several hours.
Between episodes I took the following notes…
I am the stillpoint of Now at the center of the universe, the portal through which Nothing becomes Everything. This is happening here, now, where I sit--at the moment, in the seat of an airplane.
Bart Marshall, on his awakening
A couple weeks ago, I was in the lab working at my bench.
I was following a protocol, following the points as usual, when I set down all accoutrements, turned, and left the room.
I simply acted.
There was not the slightest thought regarding leaving mid-experiment.
I walked across the hall to our other lab and starting looking through a stack of old X-ray films we keep on hand to use as dark backgrounds.
I went through the films until I came to one which was encrusted with white crystals outlining the bottom of dishes and stoppers that had sat upon it.
I held the film up in front of me, eyeing it with pleasure.
“Oh, this is nice! Take this home and make some art!”
It seems the pleasure also brought back thinking.
And then I jumped.
“What the hell are you doing? You’re in the middle of an experiment!”
I scuttled back to my bench and tried to reorient myself.
What had happened?
Like Bart Marshall – I had retained complete awareness of my surroundings and body. At no moment had I felt the least bit strange or spacey.
I tried to recall exactly how the whole episode had unfolded.
To my surprise I discovered the memory of a momentary only thoughtless, present of body doing and sensory awareness.
I started laughing because I immediately realized that a spiritual practice focused on remaining in the present, the Now, made absolutely no sense.
It was based on the premises that we continually wander off into the Past or Future.
It was based on the premise that mindfully, we must drag attention back to the Present.
And I had just seen very clearly – there is no such thing as past or future.
There is only, Only, the Present, Now.
This insight felt very strange and somewhat silly.
It also rattled me a bit.
Now,
fast forward to the future.
This past weekend,
my Teacher came for a workshop.
On Day Two, seemingly out of no where he asked, “Patty, there is Past, Present, Future. Is this correct?”
Shocked, I began my answer uncomfortably, “I am not sure that’s true.”
Some people laughed, but I was dead serious. I may have started crying.
It went downhill from there.
Part of me wanted to stubbornly hold to what my vision had shown me.
Part of me also clearly understands the coordinate system we use every day.
From which level did he want me to answer?
Well, I don’t think it really matters.
The Teacher’s purpose was to simply make me sweat.
He knew just where my button was and he wasn’t letting up.
“There’s past, present, future…” his hands blocked them out in space making it all so obvious. What could be the problem?
And I kept refusing to give an answer that felt like kowtowing to… to what?
My mind went into meltdown.
Teacher then changed the question just a bit.
“Past, Present, Future and then beyond the future. What is there? What’s beyond the future.”
All I could see was Nothing. A Nothingness that surrounds and cradles the Present and any past or future you care to create in your mind.
I felt my stubbornness smash into my mind and my emotions rage.
Something in me didn’t want to admit to Nothingness in public.
I was covered in sweat. My heart was breaking. My mind screaming. My intellect totally confused.
I responded, angry now,
“I don’t understand the question. What does that question mean?”
Teacher ignored me and looked to the far back of the room. He asked Vicky,
“What is beyond the future?”
Without a moment’s hesitation I heard her say, “Nothing.”
I was utterly amazed, flooded with relief. What a miracle. Someone understood.
Teacher said, “Nothing! How did you come up with that?”
Vicky laughed, “Patty mentioned it at lunch.”
Busted! Busted! (do click on this link)
That night I tried to make sense of this exercise.
I decided Teacher was just clarifying to me how very stuck I am.
I cannot really tell the difference between my beliefs and direct experience.
One is of the mind and the other of the senses.
Or at least, that is how I’ve always conceived of the difference.
The description of a strawberry is not the same as eating the berry.
I am clear on that.
But, now I’m beginning to wonder if in that initial arising from the Nothing, perhaps thought and object are less differentiated.
Is this the source of my confusion?
Is this why I cannot tell the difference?
Or has my ego simply found another way to wrestle, another way to hang an ornament onto the Christmas tree of Nothingness – and so sustain my false existence?
I needed to just let go of the wrestling. Thinking gets me no where these days.
Thinking seems almost counter to what my brain wants and needs to do.
Simplify. Stop. Don’t think.
Be still.
These words from Bart Marshall’s translation of the Faith-Mind Sutra helped bring me back to center.
When like and dislike are absent, the Real is obvious and clear
Make the slightest distinction, however,
And it appears as heaven and earth…
Seeing appearances as real, you miss the Source.
Seeing appearances as Void, you miss the show.
I could get off the marry-go-round of suffering by either jumping off, or by sitting in the quiet center point.
So much huffy-puff is just a trick to keep the Nothing somewhat more at bay.
For one thing has become quiet clear:
Suffering (no matter how sincere) is always just a bit enjoyable because it helps the ego to keep going. And ego is a verb.
Not long after this, I received a link from a virtual friend, Rebecca. She had also brought Bart Marshall to my attention. Now, these words of a fellow by the name of Scott Kiloby rang true:
…after a while, the non-dual ideas just become more conditioning.
…For those who have been seeking for a while … my suggestion is to use Byron Katie’s “The Work” …[to] question every non-dual teaching, book, and website you can find… until nothing is left but emptiness…
Whenever a teacher says, “It’s all One,” ask “Is it absolutely true?”
…rest into the silence that is left when all these non-dual pointers are seen to be ultimately empty…
A thought cannot see what is.
Thoughts are memories.
Interpretations.
Never confuse the interpretation of what is with what actually is.
Scott Kiloby, under his writing, entitled, Try This.
Yes. Ultimately, there is emptiness.
At times, I find it rather shocking.
Shock and pitching a fit is how I pull back into what is familiar.
I’m back on the merry-go-round... but, this time round enjoying the ride.
Not to worry... The Nothing will have Its way in Its own good time.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Turnaround of the Heart
This is an extract from an Adyashanti satsang. I saw the entire DVD some time ago and something about it has stuck with me... the part about how pleasure seeking egos do so much rearranging of their lives... always with the renovations!
I think this is a teaching easy to mis-interpret. i.e. I think of it by way of an excuse, everytime I don't want to clean my house. But, I don't think that's what he's saying.
So why did it so stick with me?
Listening yet again just now, I noticed.
He asks, "What is actually here right now?"
That's the true essence of the teaching.
And I think of the text message I sent a friend this morning at 7:30 from my back deck. Sky was so gray. Trees were black webs of branch and twigs against a silence filled with birds chirping. The temperature was warm enough to leave the back door open and carry my breakfast outside.
What a morning!... I had to text my friend...
U awake? Note trees clouds sky sweet
It wasn't a gray, sad day at all. It was beautiful, just as it was right now...
U awake?
Enjoy the video:
I think this is a teaching easy to mis-interpret. i.e. I think of it by way of an excuse, everytime I don't want to clean my house. But, I don't think that's what he's saying.
So why did it so stick with me?
Listening yet again just now, I noticed.
He asks, "What is actually here right now?"
That's the true essence of the teaching.
And I think of the text message I sent a friend this morning at 7:30 from my back deck. Sky was so gray. Trees were black webs of branch and twigs against a silence filled with birds chirping. The temperature was warm enough to leave the back door open and carry my breakfast outside.
What a morning!... I had to text my friend...
U awake? Note trees clouds sky sweet
It wasn't a gray, sad day at all. It was beautiful, just as it was right now...
U awake?
Enjoy the video:
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Addiction, Ego, Pain
This cartoon fascinated me.
I believe we are each knitters of one kind or another.
But, I noticed the people commenting on YouTube seem oblivious to this fact.
I believe we are each knitters of one kind or another.
But, I noticed the people commenting on YouTube seem oblivious to this fact.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Pennies from Grandma
I received a 1914 penny in change a couple days ago.
I was amazed.
Had someone broken out their old collection? But, this was no collector’s specimen.
It was well worn and a bit corroded. I began to think about a penny’s life span.
How many were in circulation? How many were pulled out regularly and melted down?
I wonder if pennies aren’t like seeds blowing in the wind- out of a million, surely one will survive and take hold.
Anyway, I began to think of pennies. And when I see a penny, a discarded and old penny for that matter, I always think of Grandma.
My point here? I really don’t know. But, it has to do with what we hold onto and how we let go. It has to do with love, and love gone wrong, and love curving round to heal.
It brings to mind an essay I wrote, long ago now, entitled, Pennies from Grandma.
The clip the magazine highlighted declares:
They told me that her blood was too thick for her heart to pump, and I wondered how it was that someone stayed alive so long after nothing’s left. I’d seen bugs crushed and gone so quickly. I couldn’t decide if life was fragile or tenacious beyond belief.
I’m still wrestling with these concepts. So I thought I’d share a bit more of the essay here.
I’ve been passing pennies on the sidewalk. There seem to be a lot, as if I’m not the only one who doesn’t bother anymore to lean down and pick them up. After all, what good’s a penny anymore? It’s enough to buy a memory. Every time I see one I think of Grandma Bralley. I see the two of us in 1954. She has me by the hand, for I am only four, and we are walking down the street in Bristol, a town all brick and iron-stained industrial cement.
We were on our way to the Delaware, to watch that oily river flow by, when Grandma saw the penny. It seemed to take her forever, and I held my breath, as she leaned over all arthritic to retrieve that penny off the street. When she finally had it, she held it out proudly for me to see, “Now, that’s a lucky penny!” The idea truly impressed me.
It’s a young girl’s first memory, those visits to Grandma’s. I think she liked me then. It was later that I grew too loud and impulsive, so that when I entered a room Grandma would jump and snap at me, “Be still.” I made her nervous. I don’t recall ever doing much of anything right for her except one time when I was about ten. Realizing she was very old, I spent the afternoon sitting on the sofa with her, holding her hand in mine, pushing her thick blue veins back and forth under the skin like spaghetti on a plate. I wanted her to tell me all about what it had been like when she was a girl. I looked into her eyes and saw they were so blue. I told her they were beautiful and suddenly, eighty-three years old, she sat up like a ramrod and burst into a smile. “The boys used to tell me that.” I’d never thought of Grandma and boys. I had never seen, nor would I ever see again, such a spark in her.
Later, that night, my father came to my room. Grandma had told him I had been nice. I was about to say how happy I was. Grandma’s stories had been wonderful. She’d told me things no one else knew. But Pop saw something else. “Here, you earned this dollar.” I liked the money, but it made me feel strange, being paid like that. Everything, like love, got turned askew…
I could hardly wait to tell my sister that Grandma had died. It seemed like such a news flash. She replied with a big grin, “She did?” and at the funeral we started laughing. It was terrible – my father next to me, head bowed, his hands trembling. And I was laughing out of control. I would just about burst with trying not to, but every time I got myself quieted I’d feel the pew shake, and knew my sister was down the line doing the same thing… I remember Grandma’s funeral as the torture of this laughter, and the curious inability to comprehend that she was really up there in that coffin…
Soon the dreams started. I saw Grandma old and we both cried. But in a while she was happier and we would talk. After a few months I didn’t really consider them dreams anymore. They were more like visits while I was asleep. She was getting younger, strong and happy. We enjoyed each other and I’d wake up feeling good. Then the dreams stopped. I figured she had gone off on her own.
Extracted from The Sun, issue 130, September, 1986.
I was amazed.
Had someone broken out their old collection? But, this was no collector’s specimen.
It was well worn and a bit corroded. I began to think about a penny’s life span.
How many were in circulation? How many were pulled out regularly and melted down?
I wonder if pennies aren’t like seeds blowing in the wind- out of a million, surely one will survive and take hold.
Anyway, I began to think of pennies. And when I see a penny, a discarded and old penny for that matter, I always think of Grandma.
My point here? I really don’t know. But, it has to do with what we hold onto and how we let go. It has to do with love, and love gone wrong, and love curving round to heal.
It brings to mind an essay I wrote, long ago now, entitled, Pennies from Grandma.
The clip the magazine highlighted declares:
They told me that her blood was too thick for her heart to pump, and I wondered how it was that someone stayed alive so long after nothing’s left. I’d seen bugs crushed and gone so quickly. I couldn’t decide if life was fragile or tenacious beyond belief.
I’m still wrestling with these concepts. So I thought I’d share a bit more of the essay here.
I’ve been passing pennies on the sidewalk. There seem to be a lot, as if I’m not the only one who doesn’t bother anymore to lean down and pick them up. After all, what good’s a penny anymore? It’s enough to buy a memory. Every time I see one I think of Grandma Bralley. I see the two of us in 1954. She has me by the hand, for I am only four, and we are walking down the street in Bristol, a town all brick and iron-stained industrial cement.
We were on our way to the Delaware, to watch that oily river flow by, when Grandma saw the penny. It seemed to take her forever, and I held my breath, as she leaned over all arthritic to retrieve that penny off the street. When she finally had it, she held it out proudly for me to see, “Now, that’s a lucky penny!” The idea truly impressed me.
It’s a young girl’s first memory, those visits to Grandma’s. I think she liked me then. It was later that I grew too loud and impulsive, so that when I entered a room Grandma would jump and snap at me, “Be still.” I made her nervous. I don’t recall ever doing much of anything right for her except one time when I was about ten. Realizing she was very old, I spent the afternoon sitting on the sofa with her, holding her hand in mine, pushing her thick blue veins back and forth under the skin like spaghetti on a plate. I wanted her to tell me all about what it had been like when she was a girl. I looked into her eyes and saw they were so blue. I told her they were beautiful and suddenly, eighty-three years old, she sat up like a ramrod and burst into a smile. “The boys used to tell me that.” I’d never thought of Grandma and boys. I had never seen, nor would I ever see again, such a spark in her.
Later, that night, my father came to my room. Grandma had told him I had been nice. I was about to say how happy I was. Grandma’s stories had been wonderful. She’d told me things no one else knew. But Pop saw something else. “Here, you earned this dollar.” I liked the money, but it made me feel strange, being paid like that. Everything, like love, got turned askew…
I could hardly wait to tell my sister that Grandma had died. It seemed like such a news flash. She replied with a big grin, “She did?” and at the funeral we started laughing. It was terrible – my father next to me, head bowed, his hands trembling. And I was laughing out of control. I would just about burst with trying not to, but every time I got myself quieted I’d feel the pew shake, and knew my sister was down the line doing the same thing… I remember Grandma’s funeral as the torture of this laughter, and the curious inability to comprehend that she was really up there in that coffin…
Soon the dreams started. I saw Grandma old and we both cried. But in a while she was happier and we would talk. After a few months I didn’t really consider them dreams anymore. They were more like visits while I was asleep. She was getting younger, strong and happy. We enjoyed each other and I’d wake up feeling good. Then the dreams stopped. I figured she had gone off on her own.
Extracted from The Sun, issue 130, September, 1986.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Wings
Last night, at my Taoist meditation group, I was given an object with which to meditate.
My eyes were already closed, so I never knew it was a skull – until after the fact.
It was a very powerful meditation that challenged and moved me deeply.
I wouldn’t recommend meditating with skulls for the weak of heart.
Still, I’m glad I had the opportunity for seeing and for learning.
And though I am a collector or skulls and antlers, tooth and bone, at the end of the meditation I wanted to smash that skull with my foot – the way a glass is crushed in celebration under the chuppah.
There! Be done! A new beginning has begun…
Or better still, I found these words of Mary Oliver today:
Wings
My dog came through the pinewoods dragging a dead fox – ribs and a spine, and a tail with the fur still on it. Where did you find this? I said to her, and she showed me. And there was the skull, there were the leg bones and the shoulder blades.
I took them home. I scrubbed them and put them on a shelf to look at – the pelvis, and the snowy helmet. Sometimes, in the pines, in the starlight, an owl hunches in the dense needles, and coughs up his pellet – the vole or the mouse recently eaten. The pellets fall through the branches, though the hair of the grass. Dark flowers of fur, with a salt of bones and teeth, melting away.
In Washington, inside the building of glass and stone, and down the long aisles, and deep inside the drawers, are the bones of women and children, the bones of old warriors. Whole skeletons and parts of skeletons. They can’t move. They can’t even shiver. Mute, catalogued – they lie in the wide drawers.
So it didn’t take long. I could see how it was, and where I was headed. I took what was left of the fox back to the pinewoods and buried it. I don’t even remember where. I do remember, though, how it felt. If I had wings I would have opened them. I would have risen from the ground.
from New and Selected Poems, volume II
My eyes were already closed, so I never knew it was a skull – until after the fact.
It was a very powerful meditation that challenged and moved me deeply.
I wouldn’t recommend meditating with skulls for the weak of heart.
Still, I’m glad I had the opportunity for seeing and for learning.
And though I am a collector or skulls and antlers, tooth and bone, at the end of the meditation I wanted to smash that skull with my foot – the way a glass is crushed in celebration under the chuppah.
There! Be done! A new beginning has begun…
Or better still, I found these words of Mary Oliver today:
Wings
My dog came through the pinewoods dragging a dead fox – ribs and a spine, and a tail with the fur still on it. Where did you find this? I said to her, and she showed me. And there was the skull, there were the leg bones and the shoulder blades.
I took them home. I scrubbed them and put them on a shelf to look at – the pelvis, and the snowy helmet. Sometimes, in the pines, in the starlight, an owl hunches in the dense needles, and coughs up his pellet – the vole or the mouse recently eaten. The pellets fall through the branches, though the hair of the grass. Dark flowers of fur, with a salt of bones and teeth, melting away.
In Washington, inside the building of glass and stone, and down the long aisles, and deep inside the drawers, are the bones of women and children, the bones of old warriors. Whole skeletons and parts of skeletons. They can’t move. They can’t even shiver. Mute, catalogued – they lie in the wide drawers.
So it didn’t take long. I could see how it was, and where I was headed. I took what was left of the fox back to the pinewoods and buried it. I don’t even remember where. I do remember, though, how it felt. If I had wings I would have opened them. I would have risen from the ground.
from New and Selected Poems, volume II
Monday, February 16, 2009
Off and On, In and Out
Last Monday, I "signed off" blogging.
Last Monday, I stayed home from work simply because I didn't feel like going. I wanted to just be quiet.
Today, I found this file. Appparently, I wrote it last Monday. I have absolutely no memory of doing so. I read it today a bit jarred at first - to have done so much and "never known." But then, that's happening alot lately.
At first I thought it was bad memory. Now I see I am transcending in activity. I find traces about the house of doing things I have no recollection of - refilling the kibble dish, putting oil in the frying pan and then skipping then meal. It's more startling at work. Without ever feeling spacey, I'll lay down an experiment and wander off. Or worse - continue working while "gone." I find myself at step 14, tube in hand, when last thing I recal I was at step 9. That particular experiment had to be redone.
I try to put events back together when I "wake up" (or actually - go back into this dream). There is utterly Nothingness on either side.
Time is something I get off of the clock. I've lost the feel to some extent. How can we make being in the Now a practice? That's actually all that there is. (This struck me as very funny.)
And every word is distortion. And confusing. SO, I am going to clip and paste. I can't edit. Too hard. Too confusing.
But, recording might be of some help. So here is what I found today:
Note January 9, 2009:
Sent this to Mary. (Did I really? - I don't think so)
Want to make additional comments. Been enjoying the song “Suddenly I see”
I was writing Becky just now and she'd asked some things... anyway here's part of my response and I realized I wanted to tell you too - though it is really carpool material - somehow it doesn't seem "right" to bring up (or actually it didn't cross my mind as germane to anything) but, having written it, I'd like you to know. It's been such a curious spot to be in - curious and at the same time not worth mentioning - which is curious too to me... so here's what i wrote:
Had my first actual breakfast today which is good sign for the stomach.
LOTS of energy pouring in? Virus? Both? Certainly energy...
A bit confusing as to whether I am totally ungrounded (doesn't quite seem like that) or no longer existing (obviously, I exist - existing here and/but everywhere too). I think it may be just the light shredding the knots in the fabric of ego.
Am watching very closely what is just a habit and can be let go. And if I insist upon maintaining the habit - what happens? Universe does not support. So next time, just let it go.
Was sitting the other day at the kitchen table puzzling over the strange feeling permeating my body. Was surprised to see it was Love. But not any love I had ever felt before or even recognized as Love, so why use that word? So, I looked again. This time it was Joy... but it was not joyous. Then I started laughing. Maharishi used to say "Bliss is not blissful." Now I understood. And the Love that was so strange to be calling love was strange because it was not loving. Words can't really get it. ... another habit to just let go... trying to explain anything.
Better to just pass on happy songs. Then the Joy is joyous and the Love is loving and it all kind of rolls along.
Re: doesn’t seem right. Ego is a habit (a collection of habits) – so if you’re dropping habits by feeling right/wrong you’ll notice it doesn’t feel right to focus on the “me, me, me” of experience. It hurts. “Division hurts” been thinking on that too. The I wants to disappear and “me, me, me” hurts – almost physically.
Addendum 2/16/09: And who is this “I” – First answer is “I don’t know.” Look closer- Emptiness, a false construct wants to do a header into Nothingness and disappear. Anything else is a Lie. It "division hurts" as the effort goes counter the entire flow of the Universe.
And I think this next part is just notes I made to myself.
Universe doesn’t support: the other day I sent email to Mary & Lily about sadness in finding picture of Becky & Annie in the snow. I Knew I shouldn’t bother writing out the complaint. But I did anyway. No reply. Writing just prolonged the wallow.
Complaining is a habit. Which is not to say, ego doesn’t have to first learn to speak up about what hurts. When it learns to speak, then it can move on to learning it doesn’t matter.
Why the habit is a habit? A body/nervous system filled with stress/impurities/ lacking contact with Being registers an experience as if a line has been etched deeply into rock. So: Grief makes an impression – on a physical level (“The Body Remembers”) Grief can be released, healed forgotten, moved on from… but it requires a lot of time and energy, as if the rock must be ground away.
But, as the stresses go, purity rises, Being becomes infused into the system – literally a new body is created and the physical body changes. Now, when an impression in made, “Grief” is experienced… it’s as if the impression, the experience is registered as a stick drawn through the water. Yes. I experience grief… and then it’s gone. Think this is impossible? Watch a baby move through the day. Catastrophe, tears, and two minutes later… delight. No problem.
As you change, have to be alert to the habit of being upset for long periods. Yes, you can still experience deeply – a stick can reach into the water to a far greater extent that it can etched into a stone – and then the experience is cleared and ready for the next moment…. To be whatever it may be.
What feels right and innocent and moving – rather than put into words, which holds onto a transient experience – better just to play. Send the songs you find, share, listen to what others are saying. Listen, don’t talk, let others express what you would say. Music, cartoons, serving hot soup. Love and Joy then become loving and joyous.
Who am I – I have a physical body – that’s not the real me, though I hang around the place – my true body is infinite Love, infinite Joy. There is a body of this – it permeates and transmutes the physical.
The words to label this transcendent body will fool you. I bet you’d find another word every time you look. Someone said “I am Surrender.” Surrender is not something we do. It is what we are. Love, Joy, Surrender – none of them are verbs. They are the un-nameable infinite Nothingness.
This body, the true you coincides with physical body that will always have personal preferences.
Best not to look or speak – at this point looking too closely into all this makes the energy too intense. So, in a way, I’ve been avoiding. But, I know it’s going on – like a freight train. The Universe is rolling through … I was going to say "me." But, actually, I saw – I am rolling through me. "Self unfolds itself, by itself, to itself."
Added ~2 hrs later... Ohh. I just noticed this note is dated Janurary 9th - not February 9th.
I give up. I'm leaving it here. I give up. This is just how life is boys and girls. Mostly a swirl. Better if I stay quiet.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Signing Off
Midnight. No waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.
Dogen
I sat down with Suzanne Segal’s Collision with the Infinite specifically to find the passage she has about playing the part of an actor on stage.
I was searching for those words because I knew that the ones in my own head,
“And finally he sat down upon a rock
and there he died…”
while expressing exactly the exhaustion of my soul, had no elegance and were not a poem.
(Does Chaucer have some rooster dying somewhere? I know those words are out there.)
Anyway…
I searched and searched Suzanne’s book and never found the passage that I sought.
But, I did find Dogen.
And he brought tears to my eyes.
Close enough. Go with that.
I need to take a break from writing because I need to stop creating for a while.
I have found it impossible to complete anything and yet I keep making these attempts.
It might be nice to stop this struggle – it’s as hopeless as a fish hauled upon the bank continuing to flop.
There’s no way back into the creek.
There’s no point to struggle against the game that will play out.
So, let it go.
Let it go.
And here I'm not thinking so much about a paragraph as I am a sense of self.
Suzanne’s book also has these words of Rumi.
For years I pulled my own existence
out of emptiness…
That one line captures another element of what’s unfolding for me now.
I’m dog tired of hauling a false self up and out of Emptiness.
Mostly all that gets created is a lot of suffering, as well as clever chatty personae. I find it all exhausting.
And while I think this blog and blogging has been useful and enjoyable,
the effort seems counter-productive to me now.
Right now the next step for me is to play like a balloon and finally loose all that hot air.
Writing requires me to purse my lips and exhaling re-inflate that which needs to just
“blow off into emptiness.”
Don't worry. Everything continues just fine without me. I get to drive to work and do all the things I ususally do - playing out the greatest, silliest joke of total Impossibility, until once more I manage to haul my sorry ass back out into duality and create yet another drama.
Not so long ago, I was given an opportunity to receive a spiritual blessing.
While waiting for my turn, mind started chattering. "What do I want?" "What do I need?" "What am I missing here?"
Suddenly, I realized I have been blessed beyond all expectations.
I have received Everything, all that anyone is ever given.
And I got this long ago. I gave my life that night in gratitude and in all the intervening years, a spinning lifetime of drama, trauma, laughter and tears, the blessings of the Universe were always there. Though often I forgot,
I have been in need of Nothing.
So, I took the opportunity to bow my head.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
Three by three it went.
And I think that is just enough for now. ...Thank you!
Also know – I could change my mind tomorrow. And I probably will post again. Not just this right now.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Dancing with the Boogie Man
Am trying something new here.
Can I blog an animated cartoon I've made?
Can I make a cartoon - crudely...
But, I've a friend wrestling with her own Boogie Man and this was the result.
Without once reading any instructions... hummm...
Ok - give it a shot and leave open the possibility of "spiritual cartoons" for the future.
Fanfare (tried to add it in the cartoon - no good)!!!!
Well, that kind of worked.
Perhaps the teaching is a bit obscure at this point, but
hey, there's always Hope.
Specially, for those who can't seem to stay present in the moment.
Cha, cha!
Can I blog an animated cartoon I've made?
Can I make a cartoon - crudely...
But, I've a friend wrestling with her own Boogie Man and this was the result.
Without once reading any instructions... hummm...
Ok - give it a shot and leave open the possibility of "spiritual cartoons" for the future.
Fanfare (tried to add it in the cartoon - no good)!!!!
Well, that kind of worked.
Perhaps the teaching is a bit obscure at this point, but
hey, there's always Hope.
Specially, for those who can't seem to stay present in the moment.
Cha, cha!
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Axolotl
I went by the woman in the mercado who sells medicinal herbs and asked her what was good for sore throats. She sold me a bottle of something called Jarabe de Ajolote.
It turns out that Jarabe just means syrup, but Ajolote (which at first I thought was a version of ajo or garlic) is actually this reptile!
I received this email from Mexico, and while Ajolote is actually a salamander, my friend’s sore throat had led her right into the mythic.
And that face! Hadn’t I seen it before?
Ajolote translates as axolotl. Ah, yes!
Axolotl are famous in biology for incredible powers of regeneration. Chop off a limb and it will grow right back.
But my friend was adamant. The animal is pre-Columbian and mythic in Mexico. And I'm beginning to believe her.
Enjoy this short story by Julio Cortazar which I excerpt here (or better still, read the unedited original):
There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.
I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent… I decided on the aquarium, looked obliquely at banal fish until, unexpectedly, I hit it off with the axolotls. I stayed watching them for an hour and left, unable to think of anything else…
That they were Mexican I knew already by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the placard at the top of the tank… I found their Spanish name, ajolote, and the mention that they were edible, and that their oil was used (no longer used, it said) like cod?liver oil…
I began to go every morning, morning and afternoon some days. The aquarium guard smiled perplexedly taking my ticket. I would lean up against the iron bar in front of the tanks and set to watching them. There's nothing strange in this, because after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant kept pulling us together…
I saw a rosy little body, translucent (I thought of those Chinese figurines of milky glass), looking like a small lizard about six inches long, ending in a fish's tail of extraordinary delicacy, the most sensitive part of our body. Along the back ran a transparent fin which joined with the tail, but what obsessed me was the feet, of the slenderest nicety, ending in tiny fingers with minutely human nails. And then I discovered its eyes, its face. Inexpressive features, with no other trait save the eyes, two orifices, like brooches, wholly of transparent gold, lacking any life but looking, letting themselves be penetrated by my look, which seemed to travel past the golden level and lose itself in a diaphanous interior mystery…
Once in a while a foot would barely move, I saw the diminutive toes poise mildly on the moss. It's that we don't enjoy moving a lot, and the tank is so cramped we barely move in any direction and we're hitting one of the others with our tail or our head - difficulties arise, fights, tiredness. The time feels like it's less if we stay quietly.
It was their quietness that made me lean toward them fascinated the first time I saw the axolotls. Obscurely I seemed to understand their secret will, to abolish space and time with an indifferent immobility…
Above all else, their eyes obsessed me…The golden eyes continued burning with their soft, terrible light; they continued looking at me from an unfathomable depth which made me dizzy…
It would seem easy, almost obvious, to fall into mythology. I began seeing in the axolotls a metamorphosis which did not succeed in revoking a mysterious humanity. I imagined them aware, slaves of their bodies, condemned infinitely to the silence of the abyss, to a hopeless meditation. Their blind gaze, the diminutive gold disc without expression and nonetheless terribly shining…
They were not human beings, but I had found in no animal such a profound relation with myself. The axolotls were like witnesses of something, and at times like horrible judges. I felt ignoble in front of them; there was such a terrifying purity in those transparent eyes. They were larvas, but larva means disguise and also phantom. Behind those Aztec faces, without expression but of an implacable cruelty, what semblance was awaiting its hour?
…there was nothing strange in what happened. My face was pressed against the glass of the aquarium, my eyes were attempting once more to penetrate the mystery of those eyes of gold without iris, without pupil. I saw from very close up the face of an axolotl immobile next to the glass. No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood.
Only one thing was strange: to go on thinking as usual, to know. To realize that was, for the first moment, like the horror of a man buried alive awaking to his fate. Outside, my face came close to the glass again, I saw my mouth, the lips compressed with the effort of understanding the axolotls. I was an axolotl and now I knew instantly that no understanding was possible. He was outside the aquarium, his thinking was a thinking outside the tank. Recognizing him, being him himself, I was an axolotl and in my world…
Or I was also in him, or all of us were thinking humanlike, incapable of expression, limited to the golden splendor of our eyes looking at the face of the man pressed against the aquarium.
He returned many times, but he comes less often now. Weeks pass without his showing up. I saw him yesterday, he looked at me for a long time and left briskly. It seemed to me that he was not so much interested in us any more, that he was coming out of habit…
I am an axolotl for good now, and if I think like a man it's only because every axolotl thinks like a man inside his rosy stone semblance. I believe that all this succeeded in communicating something to him in those first days, when I was still he. And in this final solitude to which he no longer comes, I console myself by thinking that perhaps he is going to write a story about us, that, believing he's making up a story, he's going to write all this about axolotls.
from The End of the Game by Julio Cortazar.
For a while the other night during our coven meditation, I turned into a minotaur. Such a strange beast he was! Not at all like the monkey or lion or mythic bird that have transformed me in the past and that the Taoists call “the lower higher self.”
So who are you? Are we? And where?
Happy New Year.
It turns out that Jarabe just means syrup, but Ajolote (which at first I thought was a version of ajo or garlic) is actually this reptile!
I received this email from Mexico, and while Ajolote is actually a salamander, my friend’s sore throat had led her right into the mythic.
And that face! Hadn’t I seen it before?
Ajolote translates as axolotl. Ah, yes!
Axolotl are famous in biology for incredible powers of regeneration. Chop off a limb and it will grow right back.
But my friend was adamant. The animal is pre-Columbian and mythic in Mexico. And I'm beginning to believe her.
Enjoy this short story by Julio Cortazar which I excerpt here (or better still, read the unedited original):
There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.
I got to them by chance one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent… I decided on the aquarium, looked obliquely at banal fish until, unexpectedly, I hit it off with the axolotls. I stayed watching them for an hour and left, unable to think of anything else…
That they were Mexican I knew already by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the placard at the top of the tank… I found their Spanish name, ajolote, and the mention that they were edible, and that their oil was used (no longer used, it said) like cod?liver oil…
I began to go every morning, morning and afternoon some days. The aquarium guard smiled perplexedly taking my ticket. I would lean up against the iron bar in front of the tanks and set to watching them. There's nothing strange in this, because after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant kept pulling us together…
I saw a rosy little body, translucent (I thought of those Chinese figurines of milky glass), looking like a small lizard about six inches long, ending in a fish's tail of extraordinary delicacy, the most sensitive part of our body. Along the back ran a transparent fin which joined with the tail, but what obsessed me was the feet, of the slenderest nicety, ending in tiny fingers with minutely human nails. And then I discovered its eyes, its face. Inexpressive features, with no other trait save the eyes, two orifices, like brooches, wholly of transparent gold, lacking any life but looking, letting themselves be penetrated by my look, which seemed to travel past the golden level and lose itself in a diaphanous interior mystery…
Once in a while a foot would barely move, I saw the diminutive toes poise mildly on the moss. It's that we don't enjoy moving a lot, and the tank is so cramped we barely move in any direction and we're hitting one of the others with our tail or our head - difficulties arise, fights, tiredness. The time feels like it's less if we stay quietly.
It was their quietness that made me lean toward them fascinated the first time I saw the axolotls. Obscurely I seemed to understand their secret will, to abolish space and time with an indifferent immobility…
Above all else, their eyes obsessed me…The golden eyes continued burning with their soft, terrible light; they continued looking at me from an unfathomable depth which made me dizzy…
It would seem easy, almost obvious, to fall into mythology. I began seeing in the axolotls a metamorphosis which did not succeed in revoking a mysterious humanity. I imagined them aware, slaves of their bodies, condemned infinitely to the silence of the abyss, to a hopeless meditation. Their blind gaze, the diminutive gold disc without expression and nonetheless terribly shining…
They were not human beings, but I had found in no animal such a profound relation with myself. The axolotls were like witnesses of something, and at times like horrible judges. I felt ignoble in front of them; there was such a terrifying purity in those transparent eyes. They were larvas, but larva means disguise and also phantom. Behind those Aztec faces, without expression but of an implacable cruelty, what semblance was awaiting its hour?
…there was nothing strange in what happened. My face was pressed against the glass of the aquarium, my eyes were attempting once more to penetrate the mystery of those eyes of gold without iris, without pupil. I saw from very close up the face of an axolotl immobile next to the glass. No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood.
Only one thing was strange: to go on thinking as usual, to know. To realize that was, for the first moment, like the horror of a man buried alive awaking to his fate. Outside, my face came close to the glass again, I saw my mouth, the lips compressed with the effort of understanding the axolotls. I was an axolotl and now I knew instantly that no understanding was possible. He was outside the aquarium, his thinking was a thinking outside the tank. Recognizing him, being him himself, I was an axolotl and in my world…
Or I was also in him, or all of us were thinking humanlike, incapable of expression, limited to the golden splendor of our eyes looking at the face of the man pressed against the aquarium.
He returned many times, but he comes less often now. Weeks pass without his showing up. I saw him yesterday, he looked at me for a long time and left briskly. It seemed to me that he was not so much interested in us any more, that he was coming out of habit…
I am an axolotl for good now, and if I think like a man it's only because every axolotl thinks like a man inside his rosy stone semblance. I believe that all this succeeded in communicating something to him in those first days, when I was still he. And in this final solitude to which he no longer comes, I console myself by thinking that perhaps he is going to write a story about us, that, believing he's making up a story, he's going to write all this about axolotls.
from The End of the Game by Julio Cortazar.
For a while the other night during our coven meditation, I turned into a minotaur. Such a strange beast he was! Not at all like the monkey or lion or mythic bird that have transformed me in the past and that the Taoists call “the lower higher self.”
So who are you? Are we? And where?
Happy New Year.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise
Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture. Like our marrow, and the color in our veins. We shine the lantern of our sleep on them, to make sure, and there they are, trembling already for the day of witness. They will be buried with us, and rise with the rest.
Language, W.S. Merwin
On the News Hour last night I chanced upon an interview with the poet W.S. Merwin, of whom I had never heard.
Of course he was speaking about words and so have you and I of late.
So my ears perked up.
Merwin, now in his eighties with such a clear and kindly face, was reading from his poem, In the Start.
I thought, “Oh, I have to share that!”
But, I can’t seem to find the words online.
Instead I came across these excerpts (and I do not even know the order in which they belong). But, they too must be passed along.
In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them…
I am not ashamed of the wren's murders
Nor the badger's dinners
On which all worldly good depends
If I were not human I would not be ashamed of anything…
Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life
Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me
Monday, December 29, 2008
A Bit of History
Well-being I won
And wisdom too.
I grew and took joy in my growth:
From a word to a word
I was led to a word,
From a deed to another deed
From the Old Norse, Poetic Edda, (ca. A.D. 1200)
as quoted on Margo’s Magical Letter Page.
After what was then a lifetime of abstinence, I started drinking coffee in my early forties.
My morning routine became: get up, have a cup, climb into the big, old, claw-foot bathtub and soak.
Thus, the fifteen minutes of caffeine-induced luminescent awareness (in which everything that crossed my mind was totally fascinating) occurred in the tub.
These revelations so amused, I felt compelled to share them out the bathroom door.
From the kitchen I would hear polite or bemused responses until I became just too outrageous.
Then, my partner’s head would appear in the doorway,
“You really ought to have your own early morning radio show.”
And that is how it began: oracular bathtub broadcasts.
And not long after that “Word of the Day” became part of the show.
Some word would burst into my consciousness bringing with it tribal rhythms, promised implications, and delight.
Perhaps my fascination with the power of a word began with Donna de Varona, the great Olympic swimmer of 1964.
Her name drove me crazy as I watched her race on TV.
Was it just such alliteration? Donna de Varona! Or was it the snare drum rat-a-tat or the announcer screaming o’er the crowd?
Donna de Varona!
The name pulled me to my feet, set me pacing until my circuits overloaded.
Chalk squeaking on a blackboard never bothered me a bit. But, this name drove me nuts.
I’d turn to my father hoping he might understand or perhaps explain.
“Donna de Varona, Donna de Varona, Donna de Varona!”
Pop just grinned back at me. He did not get it, but seemed fascinated.
He’d just repeat the chant right back to me.
Neither of us understood.
We were discovering the power of a word, specifically a mantra.
“Donna de Varon, Donna de Varona, Donna de Varona.”
I’d say it quietly during the day.
I’d repeat it mentally as I swam my own practice laps with just a bit more power.
Some languages are sacred.
Some languages insist that name and form can become one.
When this happens the gap between word (the name that we speak out) and form (that which word denotes) begins to close.
This is not a horizontal phenomenon, but rather vertical.
Union is gained by going deep within our own consciousness.
It is transcendence that makes language sacred.
I became interested in sacred language when I learned that mantras work via “name and form.”
I became interested in etymology when I realized that Gertrude Stein used it to make poetry, to dive deep within the word and into herself, and that even English retains a hint of sacredness:
a noun is the name of a thing,
and therefore slowly if you feel inside that thing
you do not call it by the name which it is known.
Everybody knows that by the way they do when they are in love
and a writer should always have that intensity of emotion
about whatever is the object about which he writes.
And therefore I say it again more and more one does not use nouns…
I called them by their names with passion and that made poetry.
Gertrude Stein
Well, so much for history.
I haven’t broadcast from the tub in years and
I'm trying now to cut back on caffiene.
But, as I mentioned, we recently formed a “Taoist Coven” filled with women’s weedie-weedie as much as meditation.
I have unwittingly stepped into new energy
and with that step the revelatory Word has reappeared.
We are simply playing with a word. But play can have an impact.
How many myths begin with a gentle slipping, as our heroine’s attention is diverted she wanders deep into the woods and into mystery.
Sometimes, I think the whole story of spiritual cultivation, the Tao, the whole of Life and by that I do include biology can be approached via sacred language and linguistics.
Which I guess is just my own way of coming to the Biblical:
In the beginning was the Word.
So, it seems I’m returned to oracular bathtub broadcasts, except that now I blog – and since the ole blog has fallen into a somewhat quiescent state of late – I thought I’d share the Word of the Day with you all.
But for today, in honor of roots and origins, let’s just go with:
“Donna de Varona, Donna de Varona, Donna de Varona.”
Not at all our usual Word,
but rather a name, one that carries history and my father’s smile.
Oh and hey, guess what.
After Donna de Varona retired from her pool ... she herself went into broadcasting. I hear her now on NPR.
See! It all begins to come together, our connections become more obvious, when you turn inside.
All praise for the Word of the Day!
****
(Postscript: a friend recntly sent Mom this clipping from our hometown paper. I was somewhat rattled that my own life was slipping into camp - I share it here by way of apology to Donna and for your curiosity. "The History Corner," indeed. I quess that's why my body feels like it does each morning.)
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Word of the Day: Specious
Some of my Taoist Coven members and I have slipped into the celebration, revelation, and just plain silliness of proclaiming the spontaneously arising, “Word of the Day”
I thought it might be nice to share.
Today’s word is “specious”
Now, a dictionary will tell you that it means:
plausible but false;
"a specious claim";
"spurious inferences"
But, the dictionary doesn’t know that as Word of The Day, “specious” has arisen from the subconscious of a rather wacky Taoist Coveness thus insisting upon a bit more depth.
Perhaps the dictionary definition is somewhat rather specious in and of it’s own self.
Google on:
There seems to be something called the “Specious Present”
An idea to deal with the problem that we can apparently only be aware of what is present,
and what is present must be momentary
(otherwise it would include the future or past and not be all present),
yet anything real must exist for at least some time:
so how can we be aware of anything real…
Introduced by E.R. Clay and quoted William James (1842-1910) in The Principles of Psychology (1901).
The specious present is a short period… allegedly presented to consciousness as all present at once,
though in reality never more than one moment is present at once
(hence the 'specious').
Well, I never knew.
1901 and William James.
All I know is that many of us are trying to stay present in the moment.
We have made it into a spiritual exercise that we can wrestle with and fail.
Maybe we need to realize there is long standing argument that that is all there is.
Will that make it any easier?
And how interesting that when we accept this point of view of being in the present, we really have to question what is Real.
Will that make it any easier to smile? To cease the struggle? To laugh? To love?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Checking In for Christmas
It’s been a while since I checked in with Byron Katie to see what she is up to. And since today I have the time, I Googled.
I found this. It is worth sharing. She’s addressing thoughts very much like those I’ve had, very much like thoughts my friends have.
I wonder if similar thoughts haven’t crossed you own mind in the last month.
Katie is responding to someone who has written to her from Texas. I have shortened their exchange a bit. But, you'll get the point:
Dear Katie,
Now that Obama has won, I'm noticing friends of mine are going to the gun store and buying more guns and ammunition. This seems ridiculous to me, but when I ask them why, they reply, "because Obama will take away our guns."
What is wrong with these people?
I tried to talk to them about racism and their feelings before the elections, but nothing would change their minds. I'm sad and upset that these "friends" of mine are so narrow-minded and racist.
What can I do to change them? They are normal, decent people in most ways, except when it comes to politics.
love, J
Dear J,
…I invite you to personally work with “Obama is going to take away our guns” and see what it might be like to walk in your friends’ minds, world, and internal life and fears.
I invite you to look at taking away the gun that you are aiming at your friends, the judgments that you are shooting at them inside you.
Also, try working with “There is something wrong with these people,” “They need to wake up,” “I need to do something to change them,” and “They are not decent people when it comes to politics.”
For now, let’s look at “These friends of mine are narrow-minded and racist.”
Is this true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true that your friends are narrow-minded and racist? Notice that your mind wants to defend your position, to justify, to show proof of why it is true.
Notice this and return to a simple yes or a no.
Commit to one answer or the other. The Work stops working the moment your mind moves away from the questions and into its old pattern of justification and defense, winning and losing.
Just notice these tendencies and continue to answer the questions.
Give them a respectful amount of time…
There is wisdom beneath the surface answers, there are answers that are pure gold to you, and they offer freedom that you cannot imagine.
When you have given the first two questions plenty of time and answered them, please gently move to the third question.
How do you react when you believe the thought “My friends are narrow-minded and racist”?
Do you feel sick to your stomach, disgusted, sad, even frightened for them? For you?
Do you see images of them using the guns?
Notice how you react when you believe that thought.
Do you see yourself as superior to them?
How do you treat yourself when you believe this thought, how do you treat them?
Give this question some time, be still with it for a while.
Who would you be without the thought “My friends are narrow-minded and racist”? Would you be less frightened, less separated from them, lighter, easier of mind, less judgmental?
Would you be happier thinking of and being with your friends, a closer listener, really hearing their minds, hearts, and fears without separating yourself from them?
Now turn it around. Are you being narrow-minded, sweetheart?
Have you ever experienced yourself as racist, even a tiny bit?
Have you been prejudiced against prejudiced people?
Are you seeing these friends of yours as less enlightened than you, less rational, less wise, less open?
…Find at least three examples of each turnaround, and continue with the next turnaround, or begin to work with another judgment that you are holding on to.
Because until you do,
you are the cause of the separation that is happening in the human race
and that separation in the world is what you are putting out there.
It is what you teach those in contact with you…
I want to deal with anything within me that would separate me from anyone or anything. This is intimacy, oneness, love.
Ahhhh. Turns out Katie wrote a pretty good Christmas Letter for me.
Happy Holidays.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Winter Silence
I have become very quiet on these pages, I know.
Maybe it's the winter days now, grey, silent.... marvelous.
I have managed to make some visual art - this little leaf and acorn caught my eye the other morning and brought everything to an immediate halt. I bent over and looked closely, then ran and got the camera.
If you want to read more, go here and visit with Jeanette Winterson.
Or, I found these words of watching and silence yesterday as I inspected a Christmas book:
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bench of shadow to have watched
those scattered lights
that my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the note of water
in the cistern
known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arch of the entrance, the damp
these things perhaps are the poem.
Jorge Luis Borges
Maybe it's the winter days now, grey, silent.... marvelous.
I have managed to make some visual art - this little leaf and acorn caught my eye the other morning and brought everything to an immediate halt. I bent over and looked closely, then ran and got the camera.
If you want to read more, go here and visit with Jeanette Winterson.
Or, I found these words of watching and silence yesterday as I inspected a Christmas book:
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bench of shadow to have watched
those scattered lights
that my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the note of water
in the cistern
known the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle,
the silence of the sleeping bird,
the arch of the entrance, the damp
these things perhaps are the poem.
Jorge Luis Borges
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Irrational Exuberance aka Life
I actually wrote the entry, Roots, two weeks ago. But, I never posted.
It seemed too goodie-two-shoes to me.
Too exuberant.
However, today is “hostess’s” birthday and this morning I was once again noticing the straw as I came to work. So, I thought I’d post belatedly as something of a birthday salutation.
In this interim two weeks, I also celebrated my mother’s birthday.
I took her out to Sunday brunch and because the restaurant surprises birthday celebrants with a slice of cake and candle, we knew that the family at another table was also celebrating.
I was already making my way out when Mom said, “I’m going to wish this young girl happy birthday.” So I turned back and waited. By then, Mom was in conversation and had discovered that actually both birthdays were the next day.
“I am going to be eighty-three. How old will you be?”
“Fifteen.”
A universal, “Ahhhh,” went up from the group.
The girl’s mother and my eyes met right then in the midst of that Ahhh. And we smiled.
It was just a moment, then we looked away.
But, in that moment we had got it.
The unspeakable miracle of a single life, of family, of love was right there, an understanding shared amongst complete strangers.
It goes beyond the rational and it is such fullness it must be exuberant...
So, Happy Birthday: Mom, Lily, ... and to all of us!
...Roots
We’ve started a women’s meditation group. We do meditate, but our talking sometimes leads us rather far afield, though no one is complaining.
Last night, we found ourselves speculating on the meaning of the root “dox.”
Thinking of “Doxology” I’d suggested “god.”
Our hostess immediately replied, “No…” and bowed her head in thought.
She began with “paradox” and “orthodox” and so suggested “idea.”
(If memory serves, I think that was the word.)
But, anyway, she didn’t go with “god.”
The next morning I awoke to find an email: “We were both right!!”
Greek doxa, opinion from dokein, to think; see dek- in Indo-European roots.
Greek doxologi, praise: doxa, glory, honor from dokein, to seem; see dek…
Well, this only makes it clearer, I think.
Dek reminds me of the Sanskrit deva:
Deva (meaning "radiant" or "shining") refers to a "god" or "deity"…
I left last night's meditation singing the Doxology to Mary, with whom I car pool.
Had she sung it in her church? When I was a kid we sang it every Sunday after they’d completed the collection.
In many ways, the Doxology brought the service to its peak for me:
The ushers marching up the aisle to lay our money upon the altar
(no fatted calf I grant you but the next best thing, we were Presbyterians, for God’s sake)…
the congregation rising to its feet to sing in unison:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all Creatures here below.
Praise Him above Ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The organ pipes rang out as we all swelled heavenly,
and then we'd return to earth with this natural bowing of our heads.
This was high ceremony to me. It made me want to drop to my knees and cross myself (but we were Presbyterians...).
I found myself singing again this morning, as I negotiated the path between the parking garage and the construction site that's expanding the School of Public Health.
They’ve scattered straw and grass seed over major excavations, torn up roads, and made a huge mess.
But this morning, right next to the newly poured cement a flock of sparrows was busy gobbling up seeds from beneath the straw.
The sight stunned me, stopped me in my tracks.
It is 35 degrees outside. Winter has arrived in Georgia.
The impatience are frozen solid on my deck.
And here are these little birds, the softest puffs of feather, burrowing along like fuzzy hamsters while in my head I am hearing:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all Creatures here below…
What praise right here at my feet! In the softness, in the Life, with these little birds.
Doxology and doxa, dokein, dek and deva. Right here!
Deva most likely from the Proto-Indo-European deiwos, originally an adjective meaning "celestial" or "shining." But, I prefer the verb: diiv meaning "to play."
As in little birds rummaging through scattered seeds or a good tune running through your head.
As in irrational exuberance.
Happy Birthday, Lily, Mom, and one and all.
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