Sickness is a Defense

Sickness is a defense against the truth… The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole.

ACIM, lesson 136

This from the BATGAP interview I was listening to as I did my yoga on the floor, carefully as my sciatica was sending electric jolts down my left leg.

Sickness is a decision when you’re afraid of love and you want to prove you’re little and tiny and frail and not Christ-like or Buddha-like.  You actually decide in your mind for a symptom.

David Hoffmeister, BATGAP  1:15:00

The tingling leg symptoms have replaced yesterday’s migraine, which I assumed was the result of several day’s intense scrutiny of county zoning and building regulations.  I’ve spent hours sitting at the computer in preparation for an upcoming contract discussion, if not dispute.  All that sitting also seems the obvious reason for the flare-up of sciatica.  And yet, Lesson 136 is an invitation to consider the issue from a different angle.

I'd already noticed that as I studied out the issues of the contract, tasks that needed doing, dropped responsibilities, failures, blame, missed deadlines, false deadlines,  I also began to see people trying to do their best, simple miscommunication, opportunities to learn, and greater clarity emerging. Could a frustrating mess also be a blessing?  It seems likely. 
I'd noticed that in the beginning there was anger, fear (?) that I really couldn’t name, an anger that became a deep burning energy that deeply shook my body and was totally without emotion.  And then the burning died out, as if all the fuel had been consumed.  What remained was the silence and the spaciousness… even as the migraine arose. 
And then, the electric leg… and then these words: 
Sickness is a defense against the truth. … when you’re afraid of love. 
They rang a bell!  

Still, I find it hard to believe that a herniated disc can be “cured” through simply an attitude adjustment. It has to go deeper than the words and nice belief.  Then, perhaps if I truly let love overtake my being, something will relax inside, hormones change, inflammation diminish, calcium channels close or open, and my leg will feel better and my migraine won’t come back.

I am reminded of this recent video I saw posted on FaceBook (and which I hope translates to this page!)  Perhaps in the end, what works and doesn’t work simply does rest upon your point of view.

Post by Arts, Artists, Artwork.

  

Leopard Leotards

The other morning, as I was sitting on my back deck, I was suddenly struck by the pattern of shadows on my leg.  Just like that, I heard the first line of the poem below.  So, following once more in my tradition of boldly sharing my “bad poetry,” here we go.  I also hope it helps span the gap between relating personal experience to descriptions found in text books.

Me in my leopard leotard of wholeness

The weight of light and shadow on bare skin

reveals the super supple:

Silence gulping, “Brahman eating”

as I sip my morning coffee.

How to move without tearing these finest of silk stockings?

Oh, that I might rip a hole in wholeness!

A hole in wholeness -

Impossible, I know, and yet the tear is felt in every cell

and the very Silence.

Paradox is simply That: here, there and everywhere.

Which is different from “not knowing” or even being “lost.”

I remain the Queen of Contradictions and Conundrums.

Don’t look to me for answers

but good inquiry can be quite useful

until it’s not

not when god gives morning coffee,

cicadas humming their Samaveda

thru the perfect summer air

as my Retirement unfolds

and leopard leotards appear

out of Absolutely Nowhere.

It took a big effort to haul myself out of the silence of the leotards and pick up pen and pad.  That effort in itself shattered the direct perception.  But, it was so paradoxical the mind couldn’t let the issue drop.  I recalled Harri Aalto recently emphasizing that one can indeed see the Absolute – a seeming impossibility and contradiction.   I also immediately recognized these leotards as a version of Wang Liping’s practice with his reflections and shadows.  I couldn’t recollect exactly how the story goes, so I looked it up:

One day the Wayfarer of Pure Serenity took Wang Liping to a small reservoir, where he had prepared a large plank.  The Wayfarer had Liping sit cross-legged on the plank, then eased it out into the water, where it gradually came to a stop in the middle of the reservoir.  Liping sat on the plank in a state of silence… [When] the Wayfarer was sure that Liping had reached the right state, he disturbed the surface of the water with his hand, sending a wave of ripples toward the center of the reservoir.  When the ripples approached the plank, Wang Liping’s reflection in the water was shattered; he himself just felt a shudder in his heart…  When the ripples had passed, the surface of the water again became smooth as ever, and Liping’s body and mind returned to their former quietude…

The young apprentice told his mentor all about the sensation he’d had on the water, finding it quite beyond his understanding.  … [Through cultivation] the yang celestial soul and the yin earthly soul in his body had both been strengthened and sensitized.  From the ordinary point of view, shadows and reflections are unreal, things have form but not substance… From the Taoist point of view, however, these “unreal shadows and reflections with form but no substance” also have ethereal force, which can be felt by the body on contact…  This is why Liping’s body and mind stirred when his reflection was disturbed in the water.  When one gets to the “middle three realms,” shadows and reflections are no longer insubstantial forms; now they have form, they also have substance.  This is the principle underlying the practice of curing illness by working on people’s shadows, as Wang Liping later learned from his mentor.

Opening the Dragon Gate:  The Making of a Taoist Wizard, translated by Thomas Cleary

Interestingly, once you compare these experiences, you realize that both Wang Liping and I found it “quite beyond” our understanding.  This is confusing and new territory of what’s normal. It’s not what the mind is used to.  There are new rules and possibilities.  Or, to site Nisargadatta:

A good measure of spiritual maturity is the degree to which one can appreciate paradox and ambiguity.

Settling into this maturity comfortably requires both experience and intellectual understanding. … to wit, the effort at bad poetry as I try to get the words precise.  I hope it helps.

Metapatterns

To me, a metapattern is a pattern so wide-flung that it appears throughout the spectrum of reality: in clouds, rivers, and planets; in cells, organisms, and ecosystems; in art, architecture, and politics…

Tyler Volk

The most revolutionary time I ever had intellectually was in 1974 sitting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for one week of what he called “Vedic Studies.”  He was going to explain consciousness from a non-dual perspective.  In the front row he had a bunch of PhDs: physicist, chemist, biologist, mathematician and an artist.  He told them, “Now stop me when you think of something.”   The experts did stop him when they thought of a parallel between Maharish’s explanation of consciousness and some branch of science.  Day after day they did that, until my mind began to freak: “Why!”

Why were there so many parallels between consciousness and what I thought of as “Laws of Nature”?

I finally hypothesized that it was because all of Creation was based upon Pure Consciousness (consciousness as Absolute -not the consciousness generated by the brain) - and what we saw as Creation were actually, inevitably, “Patterns of Consciousness.”   I viewed this as a working hypothesis as my mind just couldn’t really swallow it.  Trained in biology and chemistry I was a materialist.  Or, to paraphrase my niece a generation later, “I don’t see how any college graduate can believe in God.”  And while perhaps I’d have said I did believe in God, that didn’t necessarily translate into all Creation being created in His image.

However, I made a hypothesis and have been collecting examples, bits of data, ever since.

So, now it’s 2014 – forty years of watching – and I have just discovered the work of Tyler Volk.  Since 1995 he’s written about Metapatterns.  I think this is the science supporting what I called patterns of consciousness.  What precipitated this discovery of Volk’s work?   I am trying to understand Geomancy as practiced by Marko Pogacnik.  And in my poking around this week I came across a rather surprising pattern.  These correlations are always so surprising to me and always seem to evoke a sense of wonder and why!

To begin:  I was looking are Plant Hardiness Zone maps – those maps that tell you what plants can be planted where.  I was interested in what healing plants grow where.  Somehow in my Googling I came across a map that displayed the differences in the 1990 USDA hardiness zones and the 2006 arborday.org hardiness zones.  This map shows wheretemperature changes are occurring across the United States.  This is one way of visualizing the evolving global climate.  

What surprised me was how this map of the U.S. reminded me of the pattern seen in developing embryos.A classic image in biology is that master gene expression establishing developmental gradients.  Below is a fruit fly embryo revealing the distribution of maternal proteins in anterior/posterior axis. The A/P axis is set up by a protein called BICOID that is expressed in an anterior-to-posterior gradient.

When I was in college a favorite phrase among biology students was, “Phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny.”  That was just the smart way of saying it looks like evolution of the species follows the same pattern as developing embyro.  Here that pattern seems to extend to global climate… Why?  Just chance?

I define metapatterns by saying where they are found and how I use them.

But what are they? And are they out there (patterns sensed) or in here (patterns imagined)?

Tyler Volk

AH!  Here is the inside/outside question of consciousness! 

It all depends upon ones point of view regarding Consciousness.  Is it Egoic or Wholistic?  You’re your definition of consciousness state that it arises from the complex organization of the brain?  Or, does Pure Consciousness express itself as a Creative Intelligence (CI) arising from the VOID?

Egoic separation says the patterns lie outside and are observed. 

Wholistic vision realizes that CI repeats itself throughout layers of complexity and scales of size: physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, sociology, geology, astrophysics.

Experience seems to suggest to me that both viewpoints are valid.

Sticky Stages

The apparent shift from the sleep state to an awake one is actually quite subtle. There's no real line, except that there is! This subtlety is the reason that after an initial glimpse there can be so much trailing oscillation before we reach a real grounding, or stability, within Nondual awareness. 
There's no such thing as "permanent" enlightenment, which is purely a mind-constructed idea that could only happen to a somebody, but there is certainly ongoing enlightenment, which has nothing whatsoever to do with a human being. Ongoing enlightenment--also known as abiding awakening--is unshakable and boundless.
Fred Davis, Awakening Clarity



This is REALLY good to know. Got it/Lost it has to come to an end at some point. ...ha,ha - just as spiritual egos need to disappear.

Dog, Cats, and Powerless Hate

This is fun and worth a listen:



At times it feels almost like an exercise in Tapping to release beliefs.  But, I also just enjoyed his take on dog energy and cats and hate.

The "Sacrifice" of Oneness

Landsong fire circle, Krishan Bralley

The world you see is based on "sacrifice" of oneness. It is a picture of complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must sacrifice the other part, to keep itself complete. For if they joined each one would lose its own identity, and by their separation are their selves maintained.

ACIM, Chapter 26

So here were more words that went straight into my heart.  Sometimes it is good for your heart to break.  Only then do I become open and defenseless and ready to receive the influx of love I’ve been resisting.  For a moment, these words made it imperative for me to see the world in a new way, to see the Oneness.  Perhaps they’ll resonate with you too.

A Course in Miracles states as its goal, in many ways, a shift in perception, a different way of seeing. The Course calls this different perception by various names -- the eyes of Christ, spiritual vision, salvation, Atonement, true perception, and forgiveness. The entire goal of A Course in Miracles is but this. For example, the introduction to the Workbook of the Course states unequivocally, "The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world."…
All of our experience is tied to our perception and perception is not a fact but an interpretation.
Daan Dehn, commentary on ACIM

Perception is not a fact, but an interpretation! 
That is not simply ACIM or non-dual philosophy but also physiology and hard science.
And where does all this take me? 
I scan the ACIM texts and from time to time come across a phrase that churns me, evokes some deep response that I cannot really understand and turn away from in discomfort.
I find many of them have to do with healing and highlight my resistance to something obviously of beneficial.

Is Healing Certain?

Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value…
Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself…
Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there.
Manual for Teachers, Section 6

I recall a comment on BATGAP that anyone who meditates diligently for years and has not awakened is harboring some uninvestigated ambivalence – in short, they don’t want to wake up.
I think of Adyashanti explaining how many people awake and go through a loss of all will power.
And I think of Evie and others working their hearts out to heal their cancers.

A Required Course



Jump, by P Bralley

 For some time now, I have been uninterested in posting anything here. Something seems to have broken inside, which I actually take as a good sign. However, I find I really want to share these words:
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
ACIM

My nephew, when he was little, one day suddenly realized, “Life’s a lot of work! Why do people do it?” To this day, his words are something of a family joke.
But, isn’t this what A Course in Miracles is saying? It is required.
Your only choice is if you want to accept the challenge now or later.

When will I remove the blocks to love’s presence?
And how - How to let love in?
I find I can only aim at discovering what deeply moves me. And then, resist nothing.
Today, it was these words.
“Read ‘em and weep” … because then, I open up to Love.

Love will immediately enter into any mind that truly wants it.
Truly? Why not go with that?

You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.
A Course in Miracles

And less you think this is simply airy-fairy and not for the practical, gritty challenges of life, let me introduce you to two remarkable women:

Helena – who should by now be dead from rectal cancer.
And
Corinna Borden– who has refractory Hodgkins lymphoma.

A Krishnamurti Millisecond




Asemic Circles, by P. Bralley

I’ve mentioned that I have migraines. Curiously, over the past few years they’ve changed. They have gone from seemingly an obvious physiological pathology that sometimes gave rise to a spiritual experience to the exact opposite: a spiritual experience that makes the body sag as it tries to biologically support “the vision.” And sometimes, there is just this weird in-between state. My vision gets altered and I feel a little headachy and definitely nauseated. Not at all your classic migraine, but for lack of a better term, I just call it a migraine.

My doctor always asks how they are going (not that his by-the-book-medicine understands a thing about the spiritual) but, to give him something of a reply, I explained to him that something happens to my vision: I lose the ability to process vision in the normal manner. I don’t get the flashes of light or bizarre distortions that are ripe within the migraine literature. Rather, my vision becomes “disconnected” from the normal higher processing center.

It has become very obvious to me that vision is a process composed of a hierarchy of processes or functions. Most basically, the retina picks up light and the signals are processed in to a flowing image. We “see” the world around us and then at another level this image gets processed further. Another level of brain activity gives rise to meaning, interpretation, linguistic labels, and ultimately the logical interaction of “me” with the world I see.
The migraine disconnects this level of interpretation and labeling. When it happens at work, I call it quits and just go home. Last Saturday, it happened while I was driving up to the mountains for a family weekend. My reaction was, “No, no, no – not now!” I rubbed my eyes and rubbed my neck and tried to “reconnect.”

It’s with this background of “spiritual migraines” that I came upon this Blog entry by Nicole Taras, a psychic by profession, and was fascinated by the new angle Nicole provides my understanding. Her disconnect involves the sense of hearing and she calls it a Krishnamurti Millisecond:

It happened while I was watching a video talk by Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti is fun to listen to for me because he always, only, talks about “reality” on the very deepest level which cannot be talked about or understood intellectually so he is constantly frustrated by students trying to understand what he is saying intellectually…
In any case, during part of his lecture, Krishnamurti became very frustrated about this and said sternly, “Just listen. Don’t try to listen. Don’t try to understand. Just simply listen to what I am saying...” (that may not be a direct quote but that’s how I remember it)

He went on talking and I decided to listen without focusing on the concepts or trying to gain any sort of knowledge, or get anywhere further on my spiritual path by having listened.
For probably less than a second, I just listened. It felt as if some sort of filtering or resistance system that I live in constantly had turned off and for that millisecond life was allowed to just be without me slowing it down or counting it out in terms of a process of time before acknowledging it, organizing, categorizing, making concepts, understandings, perceptions, judgments — I saw that my normal processes of perceiving myself and the world around me acts as a filtering system which slows life down and breaks it into categories or measurements of time that I can then count and comprehend...

The best way I can describe what listening was like is that it seemed like a flood of openness...but even a flood is too small...it was just being open and with no idea in the world of a closed comparison…
the question I am stuck with is – how would it even be possible to actually go about living in this state of mind (if that’s what you’d call it)? In hindsight, I’m left with the concept of just how vulnerable it is to not have the filters on.

Krishnamurti says that once you have seen things as they really are there is no going back to the old way of being — I definitely am not there yet — he does not believe in a gradual awakening because that implies time and a goal, somewhere to get to — but my path appears to be gradual.

Yes. My path seems very gradual.
I poked around Nicole’s website and the more I read the more relaxed I became. There’s a sweetness that resonated with me. And before I knew it, my vision was disconnected once again. I wouldn’t call this a migraine. I’d call it witnessing, but then I might not even call it that. Witnessing presents a “radical duality” that by definition establishes a here and there.  I'm noticing that disconnection with my vision is a dropping off of differentiation, labeling, dividing. There's a soupiness or ocean that disorients my normal vision. (Perhaps the habit of vision/nervous system is to WANT to label and dissect.) And, of course, I can see all the cups and pencils and notebooks same as anyone. But, as the vision changes and the relaxation arises, mostly I am aware something dropping away leaving behind a Wholeness - or at least a chunky soup as we all swim about within the same warm pot of ...what?  Wow!  What?

Or, as Nicole summarized:
This moment, along with other milliseconds of sudden conscious shifting in my life helps me see (little by little) my mind with more perspective and with a deeper trust in my Oneness with God.
Well, I hope that makes sense to somebody!

I think it does, at least to me! Thank you, Nicole.

Intentions

You can have a group of people hang out with the same teacher, or perform the same mediation practice, and their outcomes will be determined by their individual intentions for participating in the common practice.
I haven’t found a more influential factor of a practice’s outcome than one’s intention for performing that practice.
Peter’s comment at BATGAP

Peter’s comment, which I love, brings to mind a story of a local meditation teacher who one day, aggravated with her students told them, “You do just enough to feel better.” Meaning, they wanted to simply do the bare minimum and escape into the feel good airy-fairy.

Why do you bother with your spiritual practice? What is it that you really want?
Community? Stress relief? Self improvement?
Has it become mere habit?
Or, has it slipped beyond any personal choice, to become a force beyond yourself?
I find it rather presumptuous to assume that I know why anyone meditates. And I find it useful to periodically look into my own motivations, because, as Peter points out, intentions have a direct effect upon outcomes.

When I was with Adyashanti this summer I noticed that he spoke of three practices: Meditation, Inquiry, and Contemplation. I liked seeing this as it seemed to bring some new balance, order, and perspective to terms that float around inside my head.
Now, he is giving away a booklet entitled “The Way of Liberation” which you can download for free for a while. It’s a really simple, straightforward explanation of these three practices. I love the sparseness of the language, like his Summary of the Teaching:

Be still.
Question every thought.
Contemplate the source of Reality.

There it is: meditation, inquiry, contemplation.
If your intention is liberation, it’s good to know the bases.

In The Way of Liberation, Adya begins by suggesting you address your aspirations (intention by any other name…) and he states it almost as a warning:
To clarify your aspiration means knowing exactly what it is that your spiritual life aspires to, not as a future goal but in each mo¬ment. In other words, what do you value most in your life—not in the sense of moral values, but in the sense of what is most im¬portant to you. Contemplate this question.
Do not assume that you know what your highest aspiration is, or even what is most important to you.
Dig deep within, contemplate, and meditate on what the spiritual quest is about for you; don’t let anyone else define your aspiration for you…
Very few people have Truth or Reality as deep values.
They may think that they value Truth, but their actions do not bear this out.
Generally, most people have competing and conflicting values, which manifest as both internal and external conflict.

Where am I going with all this? I am not sure.
But, more and more I understand how important it is to truly value what is true.
What is it that you REALLY want?

I was reading The Seven Story Mountain recently. In this autobiography, Thomas Merton said something that simply stunned me as if I’d never before heard truly heard such a teaching. He said:
If what most people take for granted were really true – if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it… I would never have entered a Trappist monastery

Question every thought. Question all assumptions and the rules that get drummed into you.
I don’t want to miss out on Life and yet, I do not even know what there is to miss and how best to use my time.
A friend and I compare notes.
I worry that I will waste my life by not being engaged enough with others.
I fear I am too content to sit upon my back porch and watch the sky.
And then my friend worries that she will waste her life by always being addictively too busy.

There is no such thing as a path to enlightenment… What you can do is to remove any and all illusions, especially the ones you value most…
Adya, The Way of Liberation

I read these words this morning at the breakfast table and made these notes upon the page margin:
How do I recognize illusion?
When I feel resistance to what is… when I feel separation…
What illusions do I most value?
I am in control… I exist as an individual, born and will die…
Are not illusions my most persistent thoughts?
I could do better… I’m not loved… I am a silly mess… I have failed… If I were enlightened all my problems would be solved…

I hope you will ask yourself a similar inquiry. I found it somewhat surprising and it began an opening of perspective until I heard a voice from the radio behind me shouting:
Are you crying?
Are you crying?
There’s no crying!
There’s no crying in baseball!
Tom Hanks, A League of Their Own

The Library of Congress is inducting this film and these words into the National Film Registry for its contribution to American culture. Somehow, that seemed just perfect, just perfect and the end of any commentary I might offer.
Meditate, Inquire, Contemplate. My intention is upon discoverying what’s true, despite all appearances.

A Lover's Tale

One day, one of God’s lovers goes to the home of his shaikh.  The shaikh begins to speak to him about love.  Little by little, as the shaikh speaks, the lover begins to melt, becoming more and more subtle until he just flows like a trickling stream.  His whole physical being dissolved in front of the shaikh, until there was nothing but some water on the floor.
                Just then a friend of the shaikh enters the room and asks, “Where is that fellow who just arrived?”  The shaikh points to the water on the floor and says, “That man is that water.”
               This kind of melting is as astonishing transformation of state.  The man lost his density in such a way that he became what he originally was: a drop of liquid.  Originally he had arrived at human form from water, for as God has said: “We created all of life from water.”
               This lover merely returned to his original essence, the water that is the source of life.  And so we may draw the following conclusion: A lover is that being by whom everything is brought to life.
A story attributed to Shaikh Ibn al-Arabi,  as told by Kabir Helminski in The Knowing Heart.

I read this story and broke down in tears and as I mopped my face dry a whole new appreciation for what tears represent came to mind.  They reflect our opening to our true essence, our Beingness, our Love.
And immediately a song arose from somewhere deep in memory, just this fragment, out of context and yet so fitting:
We lay down and wept
And wept for thee Zion
We remember, thee remember
Thee remember, thee Zion

There was grieving heartbreak and yet there seemed to be some hope within the song, which to my surprise was sourced not in psalm but rather science fiction and American Pie.

 

And after humming for some time another classic came to mind regarding love and water, evil and melting:  I’m melting!  I’m melting!  ... Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness!

Yes, who would have thought?  Enjoy your tears and melting heart... 'cause we are each our own wicked witch and we do not die so much as melt back into our original essence. 

What’s the Point?

I never know what’s going to happen next.  I have to roll the dice.
A mathematician, explaining the Chaos Game
 Fractals… They’re all over in biology.  They’re one solution that natural selection has come up with over and over again.
NOVA, Fractals the Hidden Dimension

A good friend has spent the past few weeks on jury duty – a death penalty, double murder trial.  It’s been a hard, very emotional period for her.  But, she’s approached it as happening for some reason and so she tends to look upon the trial as an opportunity for growth.  Her husband, on the other hand, feels things simply happen.  The trial is an odious even she has been pulled into and there is no reason for the disasters that befall us.  Our task is simply to survive the pain and move on down the road.  His philosophy has uncovered my friend’s own doubts regarding her spiritual beliefs. 
His doubts also reflect statements I sometimes hear from nondualists:  There is no reason or ultimate cause.  Things simply happen.

I think we all wrestle with this question.  Sometimes we simply voice it as, “Why me?” 

I find one answer to this question through the science of Chaos Theory and Fractals.  It’s simple and very graphic.  Fractals are beautiful complex patterns.  Each pattern is defined by an equation.  The equations are meant to be solved repeatedly with each iteration generating a point.  When these points are plotted graphically, their location pops up randomly.  It is from this random deposition of points upon a piece of paper that the beautiful fractal pattern eventually emerges.

You can watch this process for the pattern called a Sierpinski Triangle here.

You can view an emergence of this pattern in 21 seconds here.

[The game is following these rules:  Number the vertices of an equilateral triangle 1, 2 and 3. Start with a random initial point in the plane and plot this point.  Randomly pick a number: 1, 2 or 3. From the initial point, move half the distance towards that numbered vertex. This point is plotted and becomes our new initial point. Repeat this process thousands of times.]

Fractal geometry is the geometry which describes the chaotic systems we find in Nature.  Scientifically speaking, Life and the Universe itself are complex systems.  Such systems are Chaotic in behavior and Chaos Theory presents these simple, defining features of every chaotic system:

1. Chaotic systems may appear to be random but they are not. They are deterministic with equations ruling their behavior.
2. Chaotic systems are very sensitive to the initial conditions making them very unpredictable.  A very slight change in the starting point can lead to enormously different outcomes.  The famous Butterfly Effect and the difficulty in predicting weather are examples.
3. Chaotic systems appear to be disorderly, but they are not. Beneath the seemingly random behavior are a sense of order and beautiful patterns.  The orderly systems predicted by classical physics are actually the narrow situation.  

And thus, in the Chaos Game we find that the picture that is generated through this random process is not random at all.  And I think this is exactly how are lives are.  We may not see the reason for the situation that we're in.  But, that does not mean there is no intelligence or reason underlying the surface appearance of events.

Chaos and order are deeply, deeply linked.  In fact, I view them as different sides of the same coin.
You can call this phenomenon an expression of the Laws of Nature or the intelligence of God.  I think it just depends upon whether you are coming from your head or heart, and your ability to look deeply inside yourself, deeply inside the universe.

If You Listen

Light Cone 1, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

If you Listen you will go mad.
(I told myself these exact words)
And they rang like poetry.

I have been reading poets trying to find just the words
The perfect words
The perfect fit as nothing feels quite right
Except that one first line which surely isn’t mine
Someone must have said it. But they didn’t. I did.

I found this one. Perhaps the rhythm caught me, for I didn’t understand what he was really saying
Famously and Beautifully, under the Theme of Fire (surely they mean burning), T.S. Elliot:

Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight…

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Well, perhaps I am beginning to understand a thing or two as the poem improves the more I read along its lines, until I realize how close they come to YES!
And they sound finer than Lock Kelly's BBQ, highlighting fire and not so much the burning flesh.
So many ways to say it, a Google brought me this:

These inner voices are just crap. These are just fragments of your mind; they have no value at all...These are all your fragments. And if you go on following them you will go crazy…
Remember, God has no voice except silence. He never says anything. There is nothing to say; there is no verbal communication. But that silence, that utter silence, gives you clarity, gives you light, makes you capable of moving rightly. Not that it gives any directions, not that it gives you any maps, not that it supplies you any guides – nothing of the sort. It simply gives you eyes to see your path.

And then you start moving in life with eyes. Ordinarily you are moving blind. A blind man needs guides, a blind man needs voices, a blind man needs maps. A man who has eyes needs nothing. God comes to you as silence. God is silence. Remember it: only trust silence and nothing else – otherwise you will get trapped by the mind again and again. And to be trapped by the mind is to be in misery. To be free of the misery is to know what bliss is, is to know what benediction is.
Osho

Different Qualities of Awakening

There are different things that are seen, different things that are experienced in different types of awakenings… They all have to do with a shift in your essential identity. If it doesn’t have to do with an essential shift in your identity then what you’ve had is a spiritual experience, not a spiritual awakening…
Each of these windows has their own illusions that you awake from… Awakening on the level of the mind, you realize that you are the spacious infinity of consciousness – lovely! And, you can still be an emotional basket-case… you can still be a total mess as a human being… It’s common to be awake on the level of conscious mind and still be emotionally guarded. Awakening on the level of the heart you become unguarded in your emotional body… emotional vulnerability is different from intellectual [vulnerability].
Adyashanti, Different Qualities of Awakening



And then there is the belly too.
After a certain level of clearing, the Self moves forward to absorb the “gut” as Adyashanti put it. The divine continues the decent into the world. The core identify, long sitting sub-conscious becomes conscious. This is the core of what Tolle calls the “pain body,” the driver of the drama and the ego. It is a root fear that has been holding our story. Once seen, it can be released.

This process Loch Kelly called the BBQ, when these core drivers are seen and cleared. In the process, the sense of person or “I” dissolves. There is no longer a “Fred” or whatever name you go by. We also notice there is no longer an “inside” and “outside.” This is always a unique experience. Again, the experience can be quite short or take a little time, depending on the work that remains.
Davidya, The Journey, Part 2

I’ve been feeling this BBQ for some time now. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s OK … but uncomfortable! And mostly, I just don’t care enough to write about it here. Sometimes I make notes. But, then there’s no will to carry. Through. (or brain) There’s just this pull inwards into silence and watching the body, the cellular “stuff”: the earth, air, fire, water - just be vaporized.

Resistance is Futile

Q: How do I let go?
A: You can't, you won't, you don't.

Adyashanti
 
My friends and I for some time have taken it as gospel that resisting only causes suffering – so stop it!  Let it go.  And what I am finding these past few weeks is that resistance is totally beyond my control.
It resides in my tissues as attachment - my entire love of Life as I have known it.  It is a gripping in my belly and even a hint of letting go evokes terror.  I am having pretty uncomfortable days.  

My friend’s response to my complaints was, “What did the sign say? Resistance is futile!”

She was referring to a sign Adyashanti used to post at his retreats.  But, she wasn’t sure of where the phrase originated.
So, as a joke, I found this clip from Star Trek.  What I myself did not recall was how intertwined the phrase is with my all-time favorite hero, the iconic warrior with great heart, John Luke Picard.  And too, I had no idea that the phrase refers to an epic struggle between separate self and Oneness.  It indeed embraces mythic roots.

Resistance is futile.

You will be assimilated.
Your life as it has been is over.

Wow!  That is just what my body tissue is resisting.  Intellectual understanding doesn’t touch it.  The awakening of belly letting go is preverbal.  And so the teaching goes:
How do I let go?
You can’t. You won’t.  You don’t.

I cannot stop thoughts arising in meditation.  Nor can I will myself to cease resisting.  That is my experience and it is backed-up now by neuroscience:

I was conscious of a decision to press my right finger down and you’re saying that six seconds earlier my brain had already made that decision.

[Yes.]  In your case, up to six seconds before you make up your mind, we can predict which decision you’re going to make.

Neuroscience and Free Will video clip

 

Resistance is futile.

Still, apparently, I resist right until the moment that I do not. That moment is beyond my personal control.  I’m getting this understanding with my body these days.

I can feel how cellular my grip is. 

And yet, from time to time, I notice the role of mind.  I notice how my mind can quiet as some intellectual reassurance dawns.

The intellect gets soothes and immediately there is relief: terror in the body is not as painful as a herniated disc.  So let the discomfort simply burn.

None of this struggle is absolutely necessary. 

Or more precisely:

You have no control over that… It’s something you realize when it’s pretty much done.  You look back and go, “What the hell was all that for?”

…It’s not necessary [to struggle] and if you can hear that…if it can actually be totally let into your system…which usually it doesn’t… it need not be difficult.

Adyashanti, on Effort

 

What I notice is that in going over the classic teachings, every now and then, some little word does get truly in.  It brings tears of relief and letting go.  The resistance in the tissue dissolves or is instantly just gone.

I Never Sleep: Part 3

Ripples, II, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

I’ve edited this down to make easier reading and the points clearer. Hopefully, I have not changed Ramana’s meaning! Click here to get the unedited version of Raman Maharishi on Samadhi.

Question: What is samadhi?
Ramana Maharshi: The state in which the unbroken experience of existence-consciousness is attained by the still mind is samadhi… When the mind is in communion with the Self in darkness, it is called sleep… Immersion in a conscious or wakeful state is called samadhi. Samadhi is continuous inherence in the Self in a waking state. Sleep is also inherence in the Self, but in an unconscious state.

In TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught that wakefulness during sleep was a test for self realization untroubled by the biased mind. That is, you cannot fake it. Having this established was a hallmark of Cosmic Consciousness. In a recent conversation with a friend I mentioned that by objective criteria I might conclude that my experience is what Maharishi called Cosmic Consciousness. My point was to explain that recently I was laughing to myself, “How very disappointing.” I can laugh now. But for a while, the disappointment was quite sincere. Why? Because the mind still holds so many beliefs and troubling thoughts that I am really still quite a Bozo. Adyashanti has a nice talk he gives about Buddha seeing his reflection as a clown.

Here’s a version of this feeling from Ed Musaki:
Nirvakalpa samadhi, [is] a temporary unicity state of mind where the thinking mind does not function, and no longer imposes an artificial order on the perceived universe… However, after experiencing this state literally thousands of times, I was deeply disappointed that I was still the same person after meditation was over. I was not transformed. I did not have any great knowledge. I did not feel any smarter. I did not feel enlightened. In fact, I felt like a failure because I had experienced all these Samadhis, but they had not convinced me…

My friend, Joel’s, comment was wise:
Yes, CC is a disappointment. It's dualistic. But it is really a first step. Don't get hung up on mechanics. It happens spontaneously, effortlessly. Just look in a restfully quiet way. There is no witness! Only experience. The witness must and will disappear. Then there is only life. Drop all your concepts and just look.

Ramana’s next comments speak to this situation nicely.
Question: What are kevala nirvikalpa samadhi and sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi?
Ramana Maharshi: The immersion of the mind in the Self, but without its destruction, is kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. In this state one is not free from vasanas and so one does not therefore attain mukti. Only after the vasanas have been destroyed can one attain liberation.

So maybe, what MMY called Cosmic Consciousness can be equated with kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. Those beliefs and troubling thoughts, those lingering conditions keep the mind “up and running.” To say that Duality remains is to say the ego remains with a sense of separateness. Vasanas keep activiating ego. There is the phrase, “the mind silences.” Yes, I’m awaiting that, for the vasanas to dissolve. I’m awaiting Liberation which is a non-duality.

There is a new site that I like called Liberation Unleashed. Their premise is that awakening can be achieved quickly through direct inquiry into seeing “no self.” However, post this liberation they have a support system for clearing out the troubling thoughts, the vasanas. They suggest Byron Katie’s The Work. This is great, all fine and good. But, it is muddying the terminology.

Question: When can one practise sahaja samadhi?
Ramana Maharshi: Even from the beginning. Even though one practices kevala nirvikalpa samadhi for years together, if one has not rooted out the vasanas one will not attain liberation.

How curious.
Kevala nirvikalpa samadhi at first seemed to be a state, or at least a noun. Now, it is spoken of as a practice or a verb! Well, nouns make me think of objects and consciousness is not an object. Verbs make me think of the ever changing Relative and impermanence. That seems very fitting also. Maybe it’s that the Relative is actually a gerund –both a noun and a verb. In fact, conceiving the Relative/Life as noun-verb seems to be just another way of stating the classic:
Emptiness is Form. Form is Emptiness.

There’s a similar condensing of state and practice in two definitions I came across the other day. The first term has Hindu roots. The second is from Zen.
Turiya: the experience of pure consciousness. It is the background that underlies and transcends the three common states of consciousness: the state of waking consciousness, the state of dreaming, and dreamless sleep.Wikipedia
Dzogchen: the natural, primordial state of the mind, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition.Wikipedia

Soon, I will be seeing my Taoist Teacher, Wong Loh Sin See. I was going over a question he asked me at our last visit: “Are you meditating?” Back then, I was doing qigong, more exercise than meditation. He encouraged me to actually sit. I did that for awhile and then slipped back into qigong. More recently, after experiencing a rather intense collapse of the witness, I realized I was always “meditating.” If indeed meditation is the activity of soaking in pure consciousness, then that was happening at all times. Sitting was not required. Looking closer, to my surprise I discovered that all of Life, all Creation, was always, and simply, only the act of meditation.

Meditation is all that’s going on! Meditation is Creation rising and falling. The state is indeed the practice. At least, that’s how it appeared to me for that afternoon. Realizations come and realizations go. What do they come and go in? The Self, and I am meditation.

I Never Sleep and Fighter Pilots

It turns out that fighter pilots accelerated to speeds that induce loss of consciousness can wake up through these same layers of light, bodily sensation, and no thought that I described in I Never Sleep. That kind of surprises me. Perhaps losing consciousness is simply losing consciousness and it doesn’t matter if that is precipitated by gravity draining blood from the brain or simply laying your head upon a pillow at night. Curiously, when the thinking brain falls behind and can supply no reason for the body’s sensations, the fighter pilot researches say that the brain then makes up a reason. I first heard this explanation of brain playing tricks on you from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He said the relaxation deep in meditation will start the body normalizing. Sensations, feelings arise for no external reason. Maharishi explained that we then experience “a mood on an abstract basis.” He went on to explain the mind cannot stand this lack of decent reason and so ascribes the sensation to some memory close at hand. “Ah, my friend is coming for a visit.”

Here’s RadioLab’s description of this research.

I Never Sleep

From the point of view of Consciousness, there is no experience of a dark, blank nothingness. Rather, there is only the ‘experience’ of itself, which means only the presence …of itself. This is neither deep, dark, blank, or asleep. It [is] dimensionless, present, luminous, alive and awake.
Consciousness is not the opposite of un-consciousness. For Consciousness there is no ‘off.’ It is always ‘on.’ ...What is considered to be deep sleep from the point of view of the waking mind is ‘wide-awakeness’ for Consciousness.
Now, with that as background, we can look more closely at the question as to whether identification remains at a subtler level in deep sleep.
Rupert Spira, interview

I think most people have had the experience of waking up the morning (or maybe days) after a disaster, a death, and for a moment you’ve forgotten. You’re simply there awake, until that first thought arises and with it the pain that sleep momentarily erased returns. Apparently, there are other versions of this story.

Recently, I’ve noticed the transition from being deep sleep to lying there in bed awake with a clarity that’s usually not there. What I notice is a buzz (and no thoughts), a luminescence (and no thoughts), and then fear (and still no thoughts), except its rather intense fear and thus physically uncomfortable. My mind quickly presents a list of reasons. This week they’re financial.

But, the process is kind of strange when you think about it. Why would I wake up gripped by fear for which there is no reason? (I here equate reason with a label, or a thought.) I think identification, attachment to beliefs, must remain deep inside me. My body must be listening to unspoken fears. How else could the sensation arise?

Thankfully, not all mornings are like this. Sometimes I notice that, “Oh, I was asleep.” And with that thought comes the understanding of Consciousness as presence, alive and awake: Even though I was asleep, I was awake all night. It was this experience that actually first attracted me to the video, I Never Sleep

And so, as the fear hit me this morning, I was reminded onceagain of the images. Rupert Spira so artistically presents the transition from deep sleep into waking. It doesn’t help my belly wake up any easier, but it’s something nice to share. It’s not your usual Advaita lecture.

When I was a Young Man

Bralley kids Christmas Card 1954, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

This morning as I sat to meditate, or simply just to be, since I had no intention to even close my eyes,  my body seemed to want to settle and I thought I’d give that a chance.

To my surprise, my mind became filled with these old Biff Rose lyrics:

When I was a young man
I ran away from home
I went to join the circus
I went to see the cotton candy world
And make me lots of money
On my own
For Molly oh my pretty Molly
She's waitin' all alone
Someday soon I will return to her…

Well, he never did, not in the song.  (Please listen to the whole song)
But, yesterday, my brother "made him lots of money" and retired.   And I find it very moving to see the broad sweep of his story: the searching, seeking, and the coming home.  His son-in-law said, “Woo Hoo! Hard work does pay off!”  But, the journey wasn’t all about the money.  It is not even always couched in terms of money.  The journey was and is about love.
We all leave home and join the circus, in one way or another, hoping to prove our worth, hoping to prove to ourself and others that we have earned and deserve love.  Some of us eventually make it home and others seem to get lost along the way.

It starts out all for Molly, in her many forms: parent, partner, child, friends, and self.  What an amazing discovery to realize, “She loved me all along.”  At least, that is one thing I have learned through sharing in my brother’s journey.  It’s what I’m learning in my own rather cash strapped journey.

Real love is unconditional.  That's the first lesson I learned from my brother. (What better definition for the very word - my brother.)  Love is simply given, not just by God or Spirit, but often by those around us.  It seems we’re always given a second chance.  And we’ll need it! Because, apparently, we have to make the journey and hopefully we’ll come full circle. 

And there are songs along the way that say it better than the words.  In my meditation there was another lyric preceding the words from Molly.  That tune is lost in the fuzziness of past transcendence.  But, perhaps they were from this song:

And yes, I know this is incredibly and unrepentedly "SO the 60's" ... let's just call it roots :)

Microbiome

Watch A New Genetic Map That Could Make Your Skin Crawl on PBS.
See more from PBS NewsHour.

We're outnumbered ten to one by these microorganisms and yet less than 10% of them have ever been isolated and studied.
Eric Green

I really am excited by this.  It's worth getting past the ad and listening to the interview.  This is going to change how medicine is practiced in the future.  Understanding the metabolism of these bacteria is like discovering a new organ(s) in our bodies.


The Human Microbiome

Petri Plate 5, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

The human body contains about 100 trillion cells, but only maybe one in 10 of those cells is actually human. The rest are from bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms.
The human we see in the mirror is made up of more microbes than human.
NPR reporter Rob Stein and Lita Proctor of the National Institutes of Health

So began the radio report on the results of the Human Microbiome Project the first catalog of the bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms that populate every nook and cranny of the human body as reported by 200 scientists in some sixteen articles published in four journals.

The definition of a human microbiome is all the microbial microbes that live in and on our bodies, all the genes, and all the metabolic capabilities these microbes bring to supporting human health and also human disease. The scientists had taken samples from 200 healthy adults in 18 different sites both on and in the body.

The factoids of the findings are truly amazing:
10,000 different species annotated, 8 million different genes, that’s 300 times the number of human genes by the Human Genome Project.
There were discoveries of entirely new species which have the scientists speaking in terms of opening new territory – a rainforest with new butterflies or mammals… except they’re speaking of bacteria. Those foreign little buggers  that we mostly try to sanitize away.

Well, all this info, however stunning in the moment (and I got very excited yesterday), isn’t all that new. Because, you see, the symbiosis in the human body is actually quite fractal, the pattern repeating on different levels, in different ways on subtler, more microscopic levels.

I think of Evie fighting cancer. Well, actually her Hodgkins tumors are  composed of only about 10% cancerous cells. The cancerous Reed-Sternberg cells recruit a host of immune cells that symbiotically support the cancer. And in turn within each of these human cells, both benign and malignant, respiration occurs in small organelles – the mitochondria – that are descendents of swallowed-up bacteria that symbiotically created the cells we know today as "human".

When I discovered this fact about mitochondria back in 1969, I shivered with a thrill. I’ve quoted Lewis Thomas before because the impact went so deeply into me and he expresses his own feelings that so well echo mine:
there is the whole question of my identity… It is a mystery.
There they are, moving about in my cytoplasm, breathing for my own flesh, but strangers. They are much less closely related to me than to each other and to the free-living bacteria out under the hill. They feel like strangers, but the thought comes that the same creatures, precisely the same, are out there in the cells of sea gulls and whales, and dune grass, and seaweed, and hermit crabs... Through them, I am connected… This is a new kind of information, for me.
Lewis Thomas

And, I guess until a deeply non-dual awareness is established, I shall continue to be shaken to my core by such incontrovertible evidence that the boundaries I draw around myself are actually quite arbitrary and ultimately rather artificial.

It seems that experience is a very dualistic affair. Experience, we are taught early in life, has a personal inner observer who gets in touch with outer objects through the means of the senses, and communicates through language to other inner observers. There is an impassible barrier, we are taught, between in and out. …
This subject /object duality is perhaps the most fundamental duality of all. How you see yourself affects how you see the object of your experience. “What you be” determines what you see.
Greg Goode, How to Stand as Awareness