More on Understanding Unease

 

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blais Pascal

As I continue to write this book on Samskara release, as I continue to study and learn what has been passed on through ancient wisdom traditions for centuries, as I continue to explore the mind ( my own and what I am observing as I objectively watch the universal mind of humanity), and as I continue to experiment with this human's ability to tap into consciousness fields in ways most of us have been conditioned to believe are "taboo", evil, or a sign of just how crazy we are...I am still aware that a life long knot of "unease" remains in my center. I find myself wanting so desperately to understand this idea of "suffering" and unease that permeates the human experience so I can explain it to myself and others. Yet, I am aware that this "unease" might be another of those many experiences that cannot be explained adequately, only felt. Still, I feel the compulsion to try. 

I feel "unease" and woke up with this new realization about it...well what I thought was a new realization about it. It all started a week ago with the knot analogy I came up with when I was knitting, followed by a complete revision of that analogy....and then I realized there was more to it.  I thought, "Unease is this focus on each tiny knot rather than the true realization of suffering having one cause. ...but what keeps us stuck, almost addicted to focusing on the need to unravel each knot rather than get beyond the one big tangle? " I began to explore why we focus on the tiny knots seeing so many of them that need to be fixed...rather than the whole, bigger picture.  I realized that "my" sense of unease was coming from this persistent inner voice that says, "Compartmentalize in times of crisis!" "Fix this problem here!"  "Solve that issue over there!" "Make it better here!" "Be aware of each knot in the yarn and unravel it!" "Be prepared to respond, to unravel at any time." "Don't lose focus of each knot and where it begins. Otherwise, you will be caught in this tangle forever." 

I, probably because of my past where I had to deal with one crisis after another, have become addicted to problem solving.  My amygdala, and subsequently my entire nervous system, has been taught to stay on hyper alert for problems that need to be solved.  I expect crisis...so I am all geared up and ready to jump in when the alarm goes off. Problem solving gives my mind a sense of purpose and since I still very much identify with my personal mind, it gives "me" purpose. Without problems will there still be purpose?

I noticed that it is not so much when I have problems, that need my attention, that I feel unease.  I am usually very calm and effective in those situations.  It is when I do not have problems to deal with that I feel this "unease" more intensely.  The unease is not a result of having constant prolems to deal with...it is felt more intensely when there are little to no problems to deal with. No problems =no purpose in this mind. No purpose = the striving to find purpose= looking for problems to deal with or something to replace them.  

I find it very challenging, in other words, to simply be quiet, and still in a relatively calm environment...which is where I am now.  I physically separated myself from the constant, never-ending problem solving I was doing in the situation I was in before, assuming I would find peace here.  I am in a very peaceful, calm environment now, but the unease persists. My body and mind are still on hyper alert looking for problems.  Without the problems to fix, the tiny knots to untangle, my mind says "What do I need now?  If I don't have that purpose anymore, I need another." So, I spend my time looking for things to do to substitute for the problems to fulfill the mind's need for purpose...to ease the internal restlessness we experience when we feel we are not doing enough. Instead of just relaxing into this present situation and allowing mind and body to regenerate and restore itself...that conditioned part of my mind is still striving to find some activity out there to numb the persistent unease with. 

Realizing that kind of blew me away. Then, I thought, "Wow! Maybe that is why retirement is so hard for people.  This problem-solving addiction, the part of the mind that constantly needs purpose will feel too restless when its problem-solving activity is taken away. Then, synchronicity stepped in again...the way it does especially on this blog, as if the universe is supporting the learning I am doing here. One of the entries that came up as read in the last 24 hours, was the entry I wrote in 2022 on restlessness after retirement. I even included this video in it. Go figure!

Anyway, spooky action at a distance or not, I think the understanding of our inner worlds will show us much more than trying to understand the massive universe ever will.  At the same time, we must widen our gaze from each little human problem or drama to the wider perspective of a universal suffering. Unease can become ease with realization. We do not have to solve and create a bunch of little tangles just so we will have something to “do”, we need to settle into objectively observing from a distance the complexities of the human mind. Starting with our own, of course, and the question, “Why is it so hard for me to sit quietly in a room alone?”

All is well in my world.

Unease: One Big Tangle

 Even when tied in a thousand knots, the string is still but one.

Rumi

I woke up with a very familiar feeling of "unease" in my belly, like there was a very well -known knot or tangled mess in there.  I realized at that moment that unease was a life-long companion in my human experience. There was a reason for that.

Let's go back to the entry I wrote on July 30th, Untying Knots

I automatically thought of the big tangles my yarn gets into, when I am knitting, when the working strand gets caught up in the nonworking strand of yarn. I remember writing a few days ago about the analogy this created in my mind of patiently needing to work through each tangle within the big tangle, despite the notion that it would be so much easier to "cut the tangle" out of the yarn. I told myself that snipping out the knot would be like "spiritual bypassing".

Well, I had another "aha" moment this morning that contradicted that notion completely. I could see so clearly that it would be much better spiritually to snip the knot out...or at the very least to see the whole tangle as one big knot that really couldn't be separated or fixed by focusing on unravelling each tiny knot within it. That big knot was "suffering" and regardless of how many misguided twists and turns the yarn had taken, how many mini-knots and causes that led to the big tangle, it is all one knot with basically one cause, as the Buddha said.  I am going to use the term "clinging" to describe that cause here because it will fit into the analogy of strands of yarn clinging together in a tangled-up way. It also fits in better with my favorite topic: samskaras: the stuffed and stored emotional energy we cling to.  Clinging is "craving", "desiring" something other than this. 

So, let's get back to the unravelling of a tangled-up mess in the human experience.

As I was saying when I woke up with this very familiar knot in my gut, I was reminded how unease was such a part of my entire life.  I could see, suddenly, the reason why. I was not seeing "unease" as one big knot...I was forever seeing and focusing on the tiny knots within the big knot. Life seemed to be a mass of tiny knots that needed to be untangled.  I was focusing on each tiny knot within the tangled mess as the cause of the unease I was constantly experiencing and I was believing that I had to fix each tiny tangle to unravel the whole  for this version of life to be smooth and workable. From this perspective, there were so many problematic tangles. There were problems with each of my four children and knots or problems within each of those. There were financial tangles and tinier tangles within those. There were relationship issues and tinier knots within those. There were problems with health and health seeking; problems with past trauma wounding that kept making itself known ...there were the everyday life experiences that offer challenges on a regular basis. And there was this constant awareness of the suffering of other beings. I didn't see one big tangle of "suffering".  I could only see the many tiny knots leading to the big knot. It was overwhelming to even look at.

My approach to such "unease' and suffering over the course of my life lie in the addictive and very distracting tendency to focus downward on each tiny tangle and deal with one problem at a time, to unravel one knot stream at a time, to get to one tiny knot at a time. I thought I could eventually create ease and peace in my life if I put the time and effort into unravelling one tiny knot at a time. I sat down in my proverbial knitting chair and I painstakingly focused on each knot and attempted to unravel it, fix it, solve the problem.  Sometimes those knots unravelled pretty easily, other times they were pretty tight.  I kept telling myself, "When I get through these streams of knots the strand will loosen, things will get easier, Life will be better and with each strand I untangle I get closer to what I really want. Peace. Someday with all this problem focus and hard work I might even attain peace." So, I kept going in that way. To do this I had to focus on the details of the knot's history so I could trace it back. It meant a constant focus on what was...on the negative details of the story which keeps the energy levels down. 

The thing is, this approach never really worked at eliminating knots, at removing that sense of "unease", at least not permanently.  It seemed to take forever to unravel a set of tangles, to get through a series of problems, if I was lucky enough to. As soon as I would exclaim, "I did it!"...more knots would show up.  I really wasn't solving anything. Instead of removing suffering and unease from mine and others lives in this efforted approach, I was actually just numbing and distracting. Just as I was  when I was literally attempting to remove tangles in actual yarn that night. In this "each problem" approach I was lowering my gaze from what could be and distracting myself from this feeling of unease by meaninglessly doing. The focus on separating the details of a problematic life into individual knots that had to be unravelled didn't work. I still woke up every morning with that feeling of unease in my gut.

Each time we focus on the tiny knots within the one knot of "suffering" we get too caught up in the smaller details, too tangled up in little me's experience of a "problematic life". We become the tangled mess. When we are not that.  We are not the knots or the problems we are fruitlessly trying to unravel. We are the knitter knitting and looking at the tangle.  That tangle of unease, isn't us...it is simply something we are observing and experiencing. We do not need to get all tangled up in.  We do not need to fix and solve every worldly problem this human experiences.  Attempting to do so is what increases and perpetuates this feeling of "unease".  It is an impossible mission.

Imagine as a meditator sitting down with the "what is" of your experience.  Would it be easier and more likely peace inducing to sit with a million separate problems of unease jumping around in your head, or to sit with all problems grouped together in one big thought cloud of unease? Is it easier in real life to deal with one problem or a million little ones?

I said in that entry a few days ago when I first used this knitting analogy, that snipping the  knot  would be like taking the easy way out, "spiritual by passing". I now believe just the opposite. Focusing on each of our worldly problems and trying to solve each one at a time, may be the psychological solution to ending suffering...but it isn't the spiritual answer. That is the spiritual bypassing. 

Yes, there is suffering...but there is only one cause...clinging.  When we focus on each individual problem, we are clinging to the world as the cause of our suffering and the solution for ending it. It keeps us in our "me-me" detailed focus that gets us nowhere.  We continue to cling to this idea of 'me" with its problems and story. 

Seeing, instead, all these tiny worldly problems as one knot of " human suffering" with one cause that we all share, is very freeing. On a personal level it means I don't have to feel so overwhelmed focusing on each individual knot that forms this big knot in my gut of unease. I can just focus on the one generalized feeling of "unease" all humans share. I can also eliminate suffering in a much easier and more lasting way.  I can see that I am not caught up in that tangled mess. I am the knitter observing and experiencing a very common  experience of suffering.  I can expand that clarity to seeing how all suffering an be ended. 

The snipping away of the massive tangle is understanding suffering and unease as a worldly human experience brought on by craving and aversion. Suffering is a tangle in the yarn of our life but it is not what we are.  We are the knitter observing the tangle with the choice of getting all caught up in it again and again as we fruitlessly attempt to unravel one tiny tangle at a time, or to focus on the whole as one tangle. We can then snip it away through a practice of healthy detachment and realization.

Hmm! What would you chose? 

All is well.

Stop Going Down to Meet the Unwanted

 You came down and met it and stopped it from coming through...Michael Singer

This meeting the unwanted in our lower energy fields creates the so called sum of our learned experiences...the psyche ...which becomes the filter through which we experience the world.  All energy is meant to pass through these vessels we call "me" but our self created filters determine if and how certain things pass through. Too often we say, "I can't handle this or I don't want this." We resist.  

Resisting does not equate to pushing and keeping something away so we can stay up in higher energy fields. It involves holding that something down.  Holding down requires putting focus, attention, energy, effort, and precious time on this energy we do not want to experience.  It ...that which we didn't want to deal with...still comes in despite our efforts to keep it out. All things in life are meant to come in and be experienced by us, as "Ambassadors of Consciousness or God". Then, they are meant to pass through us. It all comes in, but if we judge it as an "I am not gong to deal with this" experience, it hits the filter of our psyches and often does not pass through. It gets stuck. We assume we are pushing away through denial, avoidance, suppression, repression, numbing etc..but it is actually all just trapped in the filters of our minds. .

We are not pushing away. We can't push away reality.  Reality is what it is. All we are doing, then, is diving down from the higher energy of all that we can be, to meet the negativity of this experience we don't want in our conscious awareness, just so we can stop this thing from being felt and experienced, just so we don't have to deal with it.  We decided that we don't want to feel this thing, we don't want to deal with it, we don't want it in our conscious experience of Life. So, what do we do? We dive down to where it is and we spend our lives, our time and energy holding it down. We stay down in the experience we don't want just so we don't have the experience we don't want. Hmm!  Does that seem like an effective way to not experience something? 

So, instead of experiencing eternal consciousness and bliss (Sat Chit Ananda) we stay down in that negativity.  We cling to it. We are stuck, blocked in it....all because we decided we were going to not feel something.  We clung and went down instead of up.  We will then do what we can to stay down and to hold this unwanted down...As long as we are holding down, we are not where we are supposed to be...Sat chit Ananada...Eternal Consciousness bliss...which is up...Doesn't make much sense does it?

What do we need to do to be free of our blockages and our downward focus?  

We let go...we let it all come in, be experienced, (Just experience the darned thing fully) and then release it. That letting go will eliminate the need to stay down wasting precious life energy.  If we stop the fighting against the awareness of negative energy it all will be released. Without these blockages, we have freedom.  With freedom, we have awakening. And with awakening, we have Sat Chit Ananda.

All s well!

Michael singer/Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( July, 2026) The Difference Between Reality and Your Expereince of Reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lrIm5vO8Rc&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=2&t=12s

Primary Effect of Learning and A New Possibility

 This whole thing of learning to remote view is secondary, what it does for you is primary.

Russel Targ/ Lyn Buchanan

I realize  upon returning to Remote Viewing practice, after months of not practicing and experimenting with it, that my feeling of successfully tapping in to something was probably due to  "First Timer Effect." I seem to have very precise matching everytime I first come back to the process, but the corrects piter off as I continue.  I remember the first time I practiced 2 years ago. I got D. to go find a household object from anywhere in the house, place it in a box, seal it and place a target number on top.  I began with a squibble that looked like steam or bubbles...I wrote bubbles...I seen grey as my main colour followed by red, blue , and green.  I seen "writing" I had a sense of "bubbly" I also had a sense of the object being on its side by the way the bubbles seemed to be settling...sense of "cold"..."thirst"...came up with it.  I wrote  "drink?"....  I sketched a cylinder shape and put it on its side with this steam or bubbles coming up in the way they would if the bubbly contents got stirred up. I concluded without writing it down because I did not wnat to be wrong...cold, bubbly drink.  What was it?  A can of beer ...silver/grey with other colours on the label, laying on its side so it could fit in the box.  Hmmm. Pretty accurate, eh? 

I wasn't so accurate the next time or the next.  I gave up and put the practice away for awhile.  When I came back to it weeks later and tried it again...the details I came up with from the online target site I found blew me away!  Cra- cra...three in a row...I think! Unbelievable!  Then, the corrects started to pitre off...I kept going....doing a few practices a day for weeks and weeks...I wasn't matching much..except maybe the odd one or two.  I kept going up to a point, and then I put it away again.  Three days ago I returned to the practice...Voila! enough of a success rate to say, "This is really something!" Three matches with very precise and undeniable data. Then...the next time: lil to nothing, the next the same thing...and the next and the next. It wasn't working! More precisely...something in me was preventing the information from coming through. I wanted to understand more.

I really wanted to understand what I was doing when the information was coming through and what I was doing when it wasn't coming through.  I and the state of my mind was the common denominator here. Why am I so successful when I first come back to the practice? Is my mind open without expectations?  What happens as I proceed?  Why does it seem to stop working? One thing I do notice that I do is I begin to "effort" a bit. I begin to try to conclude what I am seeing...I imagine more and receive less.

I, in the beginning, was open. I was able to receive information from my subconscious and whatever field of wisdom it shares with everyone and everything as a down load into my conscious mind. There was little to no expectations. The more I practiced, the part of my mind that likes to put pieces together took over. It shut the subcconscious down. Conscious mind, looking for a result, took over the process. I was more focused on trying to figure out the picture than I was concerned about simply listening and feeling for the information. So,  the more I tried, the more  closed.  I was no longer as open to receiving information from the subconscious. 

So what can we do to remain more open to receiving more?

I listened to Lyn Buchanan today, another remote viewer from Stargate who now trains people to remote view. These are some of the jewels of informaton I received.

First step, he said, is to practice becoming more aware of the changes in "ambience" when you move from one place to another...like through a doorway, a gateway, a town or city border....Stop and notice what it feels like...be acutely aware of any subtle change in "the feeling" of that place. 

Mind is structured to pick up on change much more than a static situation...

Notice the change in ambience from one place to another (small change, small detail)

He then suggested practice strengtheing the right side of the brain and mentioned a book all remote viewers from Stargate were required to read: "Drawing on the right side of the brain".

Next, he suggested developing our ideograms. Ideograms are "minimal graphic representation of an idea...the gestalt "the essence." No matter how small, or seemingly insignicant we need to notice and capture glimpses of that essence...the subconscious mind is always on look out for the essence of something. It will look for it and find it if we let it. 

The subconscious knows what is important and it will find it

As I heard this I thought of how elephants will sense even a drop a water left over in a camper's tent and will trample the whole camp to get to that water.

We can teach the brain to create and notice the essence of something in the target through ideograms...we can, for example, notice that wave like squibbles  mean water etc. (Yeah...my subconscious associates waves with water). I am also determining, I believe how photographer's blur, mist, fog shows up for me in target images. How females may be "ponytails" etc

Other than that we cannot make more of those ideograms by turning them into the story of what might be on the target.

We also use words. I tend to pick up words more than anything else...subconscious talks to this conscious mind  mostly through words.

Practice finding the words...expanding your vocabulary...words both facilitate and limit your ability to think

He says what we are really trying to perfect here is the ability to take passive vocabulary from subconscious and bring it up into conscious

Next, he says we need to practice being aware of all the finer details in all the sensory data we are picking up in our moment to moment life.  (Mindfulness!). He suggest the "Go hug a couple of trees" exercise...Notice smaller and smaller changes in touch, taste, sound etc and ambience from one thing to another. Notice the change!...

Then we can pay attention to sensory data we might not normally pick up: for example,  we can sit in a public place with our back to the  door...and describe the people coming in and out without turning.We can also quickly look at a picture and describe it in absolute detail after studying it  for 30 seconds...another for 15 seconds...another for 5 seconds... and another for 1 second etc....

He also suggests focusing only on successful stuff from our practice ....When we score sessions,  we don't have to score what we miss. Focus on the detailed stuff that gives a clear indication that we matched the target.

He reminds us that we will never describe a picture completely...Don't attempt to put the pieces together. Just notice  how accurately scattered data from target is matched...

Another exercise we can practice so  that we do not miss important detail...is the "Do you see what I see" game. In this game one person takes out a sketch or a picture and attempts to describes it to another, who cannot see it, so they can recreate the picture...

Big thing, he says when we are remote viewing, Never try to make sense of it...We do not want conscious mind to be in charge of the viewing. Why?

Conscious mind likes to jump to conclusions

Most importantly we need to practice practice practice until it becomes second nature [to be aware of the transfer of  information from subconscious into conscious...]

We all have the ability to do this, he says . Many of us just don't see that we do. 

It ends up that remote viewing becomes secondary to the whole process...subconscious knows why we do the things we don't want to do and why we procastinate doing the things we want to do...[Remote viewing can help us to know ourselves intellectually and intimately.]

Remote viewing is not hard to do, but it takes pracice, practice, and practice.  

Though the practice opens the mind, we will also meet resistance from the mind as we begin to practice. When we shake up our life paradigm we meet resistance...We dont always want to face the truth of this new possiblity.

Wow! a lot to soak up, eh?

All is well!

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove (2018) Exercises to Cultivate Remote Viewing with Lyn Buchanan.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDO8CdJV_kc&t=2214s

Other Than the Probability of Chance

 Synchronicity: a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.

Carl Jung

Something other than the probablity of chance is involved?

Back in the day I took, and much to my surprise, got credit for university Statitistics classes. I understand ( at some level) "probability". What has been showing up in this remote viewing experiment I have been undertaking in my quest to explore the limits of consciousness...is showing up despite the very low probability of doing so.  Of course, the experiment results the other day, would not meet research requirements as valid positive data.  All the results, in terms of matching the specific pictures in the five I selected as targets, were scrambled. That experiment then would have been thrown out the window as invalid...but there is no denying the details, is there?  How staitistically probable is it to have three pictures out of a subset of five collected from a data base of thousands  randomly match findings in words and downloads so precisely? Very, very, very low.   One has to remove the probablility of chance here.

Now, I am not sure what happened with that ad coming up this morning, showing a woman in a burka (burqa), exactly while I was rereading the section I wrote about the women not being  in a burka in my entry. (See yesterday's entry where I made an interjection this morning). It very well could have been AI as D. suggested, syncing with what I was reading, but man did it blow me away.  I have also been thinking (wrote it down somewhere on this blog)of  the possibility of helping out in refuge camps...Ukraine or Gaza? Maybe I am being called to do just that? I don't know...I don't know anything...I probably know less now than I did three days ago lol...it's okay...Just trying to figure things out and at the same time  remain open to all I don't know.

Keep your eyes open!

Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.

Carl Jung

All is well

Out of the Corner of My Eye

 It was also during this time in my remote  viewing development  that I began to see things out of the corner of my eye.

Joseph McMoneagle

I realize after refreshing what I have learned about remote viewing, that what I did in my attempt two days ago was not really remote viewing. Well, at least not according to Joseph McMoneagle and the protocol set up by Stargate, a once classified and top secret US army intelligence project that utilized remote viewers.(Like that is a pretty credible resource for the validation of this process, isn't it? It cant be that woo-woo if army intelligence was using remote viewing for 20 years! Though the project was returned to the CIA, and then publicly labelled ineffective with vague results...the results when they were declassified and later publicized... were far, far from vague).

Anyway, I was not remote viewing according to protocol. First of all, I have no idea what I am doing lol...so lets make that clear. As far as I am concerned I was just "guessing" and somehow despite the absurdly low  probability of doing so, I was guessing right 3/5 times. I was following the suggested format, but most of the information I gathered did not come from the squibbling, the sensory data, or the sketching (though some of it did)...it came from that which it was not supposd to come from: The AOL or Anayltical overlay (the way the intellectual  mind makes sense of data, puts the vague pieces together into something familiar,  by using pre-existing perceptions and information). 

This AOL is often viewed as interference in the remote viewing practice and is said to get in the way of a pure download from the subconscious. The protocol is to write this data down as it comes in, in a seperate column on the left margin of the page. Anything that pops in and is very clear in the form of words or ideas...especially if they are nouns or clear ideas are written away from the "glimpses of download" one may be getting. One is not supposed to clearly state what the target may contain...only describe what they are picking up and to draw it to the best of their ability.

Well...Things come to me in words...thoughts.  Not sure if I am "hearing" them or just thinking them...sometimes I will actually see the word. When I "get" a word whether it is my imagination or not, I write it down in quotation marks to indicate it is a word I am sensing in some ways. It often feels like a guess so I write that word (or sentence)in the AOL column...other times the words feel  "right" than I write those words around the sketches I am attempting to draw.  

Are these words always matching what the target reveals?  Absolutely not...a lot of times they have nothing to do with the image...but many more times they do. If I had to measure accuracy of my guesses  by counting how many times I got something in terms of a glimpse, a word, a shape, or feeling...right versus how many times I got it wrong...even in some of my worse "guesses"when the picture never matched what I had in my mind...the data right usually outweighs the data wrong or at least some of  the details that I connect together are too specific to ignore. 

Sometimes, even though I have a lot of unmatching or even contrasting information in a guess, something like "arabic writing" will come through and it will be so strong I can't deny it. It will then lead to an AOL like   "arabic woman standing alone"  "in dark clothes". Now I could be piecing stuff I already know together with this vague stuff...the loops I was seeing did look like the q's and f's? of the arabic alphabet ( I didn't consciously think I knew that at the time...but part of me did) What I kept drawing over and over was a connection of these loops...thus "repeated pattern" came to me. Then suddenly "arabic writing" made sense to me. That was clear but at the same time I  doubted myself and put it in the AOL column. So, what do I think of most often when I think of that alphabet...devote Muslims.  What is a symbol of a very devote muslim that comes to my mind? A women in a Burka. Thus "dark clothes"...The woman part also came with the word "ponytail" that popped in my mind  seemingly from nowhere...I couldn't connect it with anything other than the guess"must be a female".  That may be why I saw a female. 

The whole time I was "guessing"...it was all guessing...some of those guesses felt very strong but I still couldn't trust them to be accurate...There is a lot of skepticism and self doubt getting in the way here. So much so taht I never summarize my findings.  Even after I realized that three pictures were pretty well bang on but belonging to different target numbers out of the five, I did doubt.  If I was really doing this, I convinced myself, the pictures would not have been scrambled. Then when I read that this happens sometimes I trusted that I could  just be getting information out of time...I was willing to try to trust the process a little more.  The pics really seemed to match my descriptions.  

But...I told myself this can't be happening....I am just wanting to believe this works. I want to believe in magic. I need to  make sure that I am seeing the matching clearly and objectively! So, I looked again at the picture of a woman standing over a barb wired fence...(the word "prickly" came so clear to me during the practice too)..I found myself ...questioning, "Well how do I know she is arabic? She is not in a burka...as I assumed she would be...sure she is in dark clothing but still...it isn't a burka. (I did not say Burka in the description...the words, "in dark clothing" came to me. My mind just made the assumption it was a burka...but the word "burka" never came to me like "in dark clothing" did )[ This is an interjection 2 days later after writing this: as I was rereading, everyday I come back to my blog, and just as I was getting to this part....this section right here...right at this point, while I was listening to a podcast that had nothing to do with what followed on my phone, all of a sudden a commercial came on..."Mothers in Gaza" and there was a woman in burka talking about her suffering...it came on right at this point...right at this point!!! I am jumping out of my skin but D. is telling me it is just AI somehow syncing with what I am reading...could be, eh? Why does my mind feel relieved, wanting to believe it was just AI, and my heart, at the same time,  feel so disheartened over that possibility? But then my mind questions, " If AI can do this...gather  information from what seems like an infinite data pool in the ether and then sync it with what is happening in "real time"...why can't consciousness?]How do I know she has a ponytail when her head is covered ( as a devote islamic women's head would be)? Am I just assuming that the building she is looking at is a mosque? That style roof  is very similar to Russian orthodox architecture.  Maybe the photo is of a Ukranian women looking into her country during war time? I did very much get the feeling of "war time' when looking at the picture. Come on, how do I know she is arabic...Arabic was the biggest gut feeling I had. I clearly wrote "arabic writing" "arabic woman standing alone" "in dark clothes". "If she isn't arabic, and  if that wasn't a mosque," I told myself. "None of this stuff is  true." 

Even if she wasn't arabic...how coincidental is that to have a woman standing alone in dark clothes looking at something that "could be" a mosque??? Of all the thousand and thousands of pictures in that data bank....this is the pic that came up in the five.

And the man on the moon one...I drew what my mind told me looked like "Earth". I wrote it down and the word space came to me so quickly ..I wrote "space"  ...not in the AOL section but next to my sketch. I also see where  I wrote "distant" "alone"under the, What does this make you feel like? part of sensory data... because that was the feeling I picked up.  Most bizarre, I wrote "rim of orange light to my left of the picture."  Now as I was putting the pieces quickly together in my mind I imagined a man standing on a precipice at high altitude, looking out at  big spacious valley. I wrote "solitary figure standing on rock." as my summary ( though I hate to do summaries because I am so unsure of what I am picking up). Assumed the orange light must be the "sunset", "sunrise". So, I obviously do use imagination ...I am crerating scenes in my mind ...the images rarely seem to match the entire image I have in my mind but they do match the words I write down. There was an obvious rim of orange light in front of the astronaut. 

The sand dune wave and cloud one had a lot of information that would never apply...but my final sketch was of waves under clouds. I also wrote "sand""soft". I was convinced it was water...when I first squibbled the waves. So when I did the dot dot dot sketch...I told myself that must be rain coming from the clouds or sprays of water on the camera lens...but the word "sand" popped into my head and I wrote that down near the sketch.  I told myself it must be the sand on the beach near the water. My mind was stuck on the waves being water...I started with writing "wave-like" but my mind was so convinced it was water, I wrote "water" in the AOL section. It turned out to be big waves of sand dunes under clouds. Hmm!

People often pop in when I am using this data bank of photographs..."Goethe lady in black"   came in this time...I discovered when blurry images  of these people pop in and they don't fit the scenario they could  actually be the photographers that took the pic (well I only gathered evidence of this twice and only once very clearly). When I started testing this a year ago, there was one pic of wild animals I got ...quite succesfully but I kept seeing this man...in his thirties...ginger...standing there, with an open hoodie on...I wrote it down because it  kept popping in and seemed quite clear...it was really interfering with what I was seeing of this wild animal...so I thought I must be wrong or the animal was in  zoo and he must be the zookeeper. So, I just wrote it all down...and when the pic came up...sure enough it was just of this mother leopard washing her baby...no human in the picture. Now the image if this man seemed to belong in this picture somehow so I decided to check the photo for the photographer's name (a lot of these shooters are from National Geographic). I looked him up under images...and the first pic to come up was of a man in his thirties with an open hoody on  and a camera around his neck...ginger. He was a wildlife photographer for National Geographic.  It was not the exact pic I had put together in my mind, but it was close enough for me to say, "WTFrontdoor?"

My mind is still convinced I am just "guessing". Isn't that weird?

I am not sure what this all means and why I am even sharing it. I feel in my quest to understand consciousness as a wanna be yogi, as  a person who loves science, and as a human asking "who am I?", I have to explore this, experiment with it, even if it means sounding like a crazy person to others ( and even to myself), even if it means throwing what I thought I knew into a tither ( it is uncomfortable to shift away from comfortable, familiar paradigms), and even if it proves to be nothing more than woo-woo...I have to at least explore it. Something tells me this possibility- "possible" ability- we all have is something too important to hide away.

The more intention you place on hiding something, the more it shines like a beacon in psychic space.

Pat Price, former Standford Research Institute Remote Viewer

All is well!

Learning from Another's Solitary Refinement

 

The transformed mind has the opportunity to transcend the ordinary, conceptual, dualistic, egoitistic level of our consciousness.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palma

I have been learning about and listening to Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a Buddhist Nun (and yogi) who spent 12 years in a Himalayan cave seeking enlightenment. I think she is my new hero. She came out of isolation to advocate for the rights of women to pursue the spiritual ranks of Buddhist Monastic practice and tradition that, up until then, was typically reserved for men. 

She, I assume, would have an understanding of the mind few humans would have. She touched on, without getting into too much depth at all in this interview, the reality of this unified field of consciousness that so many people are attempting to understand now. Unlike in other Buddhist sects, yogis and yoga are very much a part of her nunnery.  

I want to know about her understanding of this world and the world beyond that we just don't know enough about. That is why I experiment with kooky things like Remote Viewing...which definitely transcends the ordinary.  I would like to view such things with the level of calm and almost natural acceptance she does. 

If you are in a state of open awareness, then whatever appears is simply what is appearing at that point... It really isn't much different.

And what could be appearing at any point, I wonder.

...Even though one cannot see them one is surrounded by very positive energy which in the Mahaya is seen as buddhas and bodhisattvas. That positive energy that is in and from the universe is all around us...

This very interesting and evolved human might have  lot to teach us. Her biography is entitled, Cave in the Snow.

All is well.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palma/ Clear Mountain Monastry (December 27, 2023) Solitary Refinement: How Twelve Years in a Cave Can Change the World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvHIZJ7psdE

A Remote Viewing Experience

 

To be in the sense means to know, and to know is to add energy to energy, life to life, love to love. such is the way of the universe.

Michael Random (as quoted by Joseph McMoneagle in Remote Viewing Secrets)

I tried my hand at Remote Viewing again today, for the first time in a very long time. This is what happened:

Remote viewing practice:

Target one from randomly automated target pool

After all my scribbling, and sensory data observation I came up with a lot of data but the strongest impression was of these wavelike shapes that take up most of the scene. I later see them under big fluffy clouds. I wrote "wave-like" down more than once. I sketched several pics of them.I make the assumption in my summary that what I am seeing is a close up of "waves" or wave like structures under big fluffy clouds that I am seeing. I am thinking and writing "Is this water?" I assume it is water but I also found myself making a series of dots on the paper, and I thought and wrote "sand"? I think my mind might have been  connecting sand to a beach around water. I felt and wrote "soft" several times. What is clear is there are waves and clouds taking up most of the picture. Not much else.

Validation: Picture that came up with this target was way off...no validation... totally off

Target Two results;

Many things came up but the one recurring thing was this loopy connected and repeated pattern. It was prevalent in everything I saw, squibbled, sketched... so I knew it was significant. I also had the sense that the light was off...indicating a filter or dusk..."Ponytail" came to me so I wrote that down...wrote down "smile". Had a sense of something "prickly". Also had the sense of, and I wrote it down several times, "repeating pattern". Suddenly the loopy things made sense to me "arabic writing" and something came in and  I wrote down "arabic woman standing alone in dark clothing"

Validation: none ...picture totally off

Target three:

Many things came up or through whatever that is...but what was the clearest and most sticky was this shape like a globe of Earth I found myself drawing...messy, blurry like it is far away. So, I wrote down "Earth"...and then immediately I felt "space" and wrote "space".  Had this feeling of being so alone...wrote "distant"  "alone". Then I saw this shape like a rocky precipice...I drew it and I wrote down "rock... there is rock in this picture". I also had a very strong image of a human knee?  I also saw and felt a rim of orange light on the left side of the picture. I wrote "orange light on my left side". Had this image of a Goethe lady in black...not sure she belonged there but I wrote it down.

Validation: none ...totally off. 

Failure?

There were two other target practices and I was off with them as well. I was feeling pretty defeated until I realized there was an image in the collection of these five images related to the targets that fit Target one beautifully...just as I described it..an image of just waves and fluffy clouds taking up the whole screen...it was sand not water though...soft... it was the image I kept drawing over and over. It just didn't fit the target number.

Then I noticed amongst the pictures attached to another target number practice I did, was an astronaut  standing alone on the moon. Could see the moon rock so clearly around him. There was this big rim of orange light on my left side of the picture. That matched what I found for another target number perfectly.

And the final picture was a woman standing alone over a prickly barbed wired fence looking at a mosque like building in the distance. It was dusk and she was silhouetted. She was dressed in dark clothing. Her head was covered so I couldn't see if she had a ponytail and her back was turned to the camera so I couldn't tell if she was smiling...my guess is she did and was. 

At these realizations, I jumped out of my seat and ran to tell D.  I was so floored by these crazy coincidental findings. I had to show someone else the evidence. When he concurred that it was too substantial to be coincidence, I had to do some research to find out if this mixed up target practice often happens with remote viewing with online targets...and it does, especially if we are using a big data pool like I was doing and if we are not clearing ourselves between viewings. I was just going boom...boom...boom, one after the other.

The explanations I received...and I know nothing about how or why this happens...so I cannot validate these explanations...is that there is sometype of "feedback-loop displacement and subquential bleed through" going on.  My subconscious is basically all mixed up when it is in there ( wherever 'there' is... where this information is stored). It is picking up information from other target numbers instead of the one it was assigned, and it is also jumping ahead to the information for the targets coming after the one I am working on. I am getting it right...but not in sync with linear time. 

What crazy lady? You expect us to believe that you not only remote viewed but you actually crossed the time space barrier?

Okay, it all seems so totally bizarre and unbelievable. I am not sure if it matters if you believe me or not.  I am not even sure if I believe what happened.  I certainly can't explain it...other than...three clear descriptions of data that was collected from some place in my mind, and then drawn, scribbled, written down, matched, somewhat randomly, but quite perfectly, a picture in a subset of five targets. These pictures from this data pool could have been absolutely anything and there are thousands and thousands of possibilities.  Yet, out of the five randomly selected targets...there were details that matched three of them. The details were astounding. ...absolutely astounding!!! That is not coincidence. There really is something to this!

At the same time...I know I have to be careful. Ego, always trying to feel "special" , is trying to convince me that I have some special gift because this happened to this human, that this "me" was especially chosen to experience this "kooky science at a distance" that so few of us experience. Truth is, I didn't do anything special. I just put an intention out there, "Well I hope so and so calls and lets me know what is going on."  And I waited by the phone for them to call. I am really not doing aything...I am just answering the phone when consciousness calls with the information. Every single one of us can answer a phone, can't we?

The next step is being willing to put in the effort to truly listen and hear what is being said. Consciousness doesn't talk loud. Its voice is pretty mumbled and hard to hear. Sometimes It speaks in a  different language all together and one has to scramble to translate. And there is so much other noise coming into the conversation too making it hard to decipher what is important and what isn't. Have to keep asking, "Is that noise on my end or the other? Is that static or something I need to hear?" Sometimes it is easier to video call with consciousness...to see  the gestures and symbols it uses to reinforce the message and make it clearer.  Still not real clear, though. Connection can get fuzzy there. Consciousness is not always the best artist or photographer either. You just get these glimpses that do not seem to make sense. It is confusing.

I am still very much at the point where I am wondering if the glimpses I get are just my imagination or something from someplace other than this "me". It is still very hard to tell. It is hard not to pass all this off as coincidence.  At the end of  most of these conversations that take place in this practice I am so convinced that I never got anything from it...that I misunderstood the message completely....that my imagination is just making it all up. Like I did after each session today when nothing matched.

 "This doesn't work," I told myself. "and even if it did work why did I think it would work for me?"

And then when you realize they did or do match...that there is something to this. Wow! Your idea of reality changes. Your idea of what is possible for this human mind just expands tenfold. It is the most amazing feeling. Consciousness is not limited to matter...it is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. When you personally tap into the truth of that. mind blowing! I am still more than a little blown away by it. And my rational mind wants to dismiss and discount it, because this "tapping-in thing" doesn't make sense to it. I am still very much a skeptic. Maybe a healthy dose of skepticism is needed here.

At the same time, it is pretty cool, especially for the ego that says, "Look at what we can do!" or worse, "Look at what I can do!"  I think it is very, very important not to let ego get involved in this type of experimenting. This is not a magic trick for ego to inflate itself with. What happens here doesn't make the person who taps in and is actually able to understand some of what they were told, special. There is no room for ego in this. Whatever this is, is too precious to allow for any ego contamination. It is a gift to use wisely and with the purest of intentions. 

And this is a gift we all have! Believe me, if the likes of me can do it...anyone can.  Just pick up the phone the next time consciousness calls and find out for yourself.

All is well

Joseph McMoneagle (2000) Remote Viewing Secrets: A Handbook. Crossroad Press

Untying Knots

 

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.

Jean Toomer

I knit..albeit not perfectly...as the tangled up mess in the yarn I am using to knit my grandaughter a sweater shows. I pulled the wrong strand out from the center of the skein and began working with that. When you do that the working strand gets all tangled up with the end strand and boom...you got a mess. I spent three hours yesterday evening trying to untangle these knots so I could go on knitting. I watched myself as I was untangling and was like, "Wow...my life practice is really working." 

I sat there for three hours with a smile on my face, patiently tracing the yarn through one tangled knot to another, very, very slowly and painstakenly unravelling the mess I made.  I wasn't complaining to myself or others. I wasn't thinking or saying, "Oh this shouldn't be. What a waste of time and energy. I'm supposed to be knitting, not untangling." Nope...I just sat there patiently unravelling the mess that was before me as if it was simply a life event I was given to deal with. I was dealing.  

I realised it was my mess, I made it, no one else. I didn't waste time blaming the cat. It wasn't the cats' fault though they like to swat at my yarn. I didn't waste time blaming the quality of the yarn.  It wasn't the yarn's fault. I made the mess...no one or nothing else. I made an unskillful choice and I ended up with the mess, therefore it was my responsibility to clean it up.  At the same time, I didn't blame myself or beat myself up for that little error in judgement. I just learned from it, teling myself I will do better next time.

I did think during it all about a short cut I could take. I could cut the tangle out and rejoin the ends in  a lil knot...but something would not let me do that ( I may at some point do that) but there was something about this untangling that had a lot of symbolic meaning for me . It was like I was untangling my samskaras, the knots within me and cleaning up the mess. It is a slow and painful process getting through one little tangle after the other...but a very necessary one if we want the freedom to create the Life these untangled strands of life energy will give us. If I were to cut...it would almost be like "spiritually bypassing". I reminded myself that the only way out is through. So, I kept on working my way  through the tangles.

Everytime I got through a patch of knots and the yarn loosened significantly, I felt myself getting lighter, happier. It was crazy. I realize now that I actually see myself getting through the samksaras within and that I am releasing them...one knot at a time.

So cool!

All is well!

Samskaras Related to Writing

 All these self sabotaging techniques gradually disappear if you apply awareness to them, observe them. 

Eckhart Tolle

I was exploring the possibility that I was self sabotaging when it comes to my writing. A very wise person brought awareness of this possible tendency to my attention and it surprised me. I was also, that very same day, questioning the true motivation behind why I asked a loved one to read one of my manuscripts. I realized there were several underlying factors at play besides, "Can you tell me what I can do to improve this?"

 I guess I was sensing something was up in my approach...not so much to the writing itself (that remains pure and natural)... but when it comes to showing my work, submitting, and getting it out there so others can read it. I have many unpublished manuscripts and independently published books- that I had worked very hard on; that I thought were good; and that I had written with the intention of helping others, collecting dust on my bookshelves. Why? Why does it stop there for me? I was convincing  myself, that I wasn't meant to be read by many while I was alive, maybe post humously, but not while living ...that obscurity was my plight...that if the universe really wanted what I wrote out there, that it would take care of it...I just had to write what needed to be written and the universe would take care of the rest....that by not putting a lot of effort into the post-writing stage of this process ...into promoting and showing my work...I was simply expressing that I wasn't attached to outcomes etc. 

Is that the truth?

Of course, this stalling and getting stuck prior to significant readership, was happening because it was a self sabotaging technique I was not aware of having. Now, I want to shed light on it. Explore that possibility. Look deeply into it. Bear with me. I am convinced though that much of this can be relatable to others. 

I write usually with the intention of bringing something of value into the world. I want to serve, I want to give, I want to help...that is all true...but there is also a big part of me that wants to express herself through this artform...I am more myself when I am writing than I am anywhere else. It is my playground where I get to say and be who I am. I feel free when I am writing. (Well, as long as no one else is reading it...as soon as a reader comes to mind, things change.)  

So, what has that got to do with why you self sabotage the chances to be read? 

Well, like many of you likely did as well, I perceived, that I was not allowed to be "me" as a child. I was not allowed to be and express myself freely. I often got shamed, shunned, ridiculed, and even punished when I was happily expressing my most authentic beingness. (This, I am sure, is what many who grew up in the culture I grew up in experienced.) 

Growing up (before the programming took hold) I saw beauty everywhere. The world seemed like one big, beautiful playground to explore. Everything was "poetic". It was fun; it was exciting; I loved people...I loved it all. And it also terrified me. I never felt safe being "me" in it. I, in my truest form, was so different than the other kids around me. Much more sensitive and emotional, much more introspective, connected to things others could not see or understand (that I could not see or understand), and inquisitive to the point of being extremely annoying. My siblings and friends thought I was "weird", "strange", " a sulk". They unknowingly convinced me that because I asked so many stupid questions that I was stupid. I owned that, growing up believing they were right. That there was something wrong with my true self. I wanted so badly for this "me" to be seen, heard, accepted, and loved but the more "me" I was the more I got the opposite of what I thought I needed. So, I learned very early on to do what others wanted me to do, to say what others wanted me to say, to be what others wanted me to be. Sound familiar to anyone? (This, I believe, is a very common conditioning response in the formation of our personalities.) I stuffed "me" away...but... she came out when I wrote.

When I was in grade five one of the stories I had written for creative writing class and got to be myself in, got read out loud to the whole class. I actually got praised for this expression of "me". It felt so good. This "me" was seen, heard, validated, accepted. She wasn't "weird", "strange", "sulky" or "stupid"...she was a writer! It happened again and again whenever I wrote for school. I even had a grade nine teacher tell me that she expected to see my name on the best seller list someday. That cemented it for me: As long as others thought I could write, I would be okay. Writing gave this true "prior-to-personality -development me" worth and value, in a world where she felt shamed and devalued. As long as I could write well enough for people to praise my work, I had value in this social pack.

So, as the years went on the "idea of writing" became my redemption. When I screwed up in math class as I often did, I would remind myself that I could write. If the people pointing out my inadequacies in any area could see how I was with words, I would tell myself, then maybe that would redeem me in their eyes. When I got rejected or ridiculed for whatever reason, I would say to myself, "just wait until they read my best seller, then they will squirm for having said or done that." Or, when I felt misunderstood, as I often did, I would soothe myself by saying..."They will understand me and accept me when they read that great work I am going to write. My gift with words will show people someday that this "me" is good and okay."

I became very attached to the "idea of writing" and what it could give this "me" in the future. So, though I still write mostly for the sake of writing and expressing my "beautiful" authentic self that is truly independent of the need for other's approval...this child seeking to redeem herself through writing still lingers around, determining how I show my work. This child still has the unspoken request whenever I open up my writing to others, "Please tell me I can write." Why? "So, I know I have value." 

So, what happens if someone doesn't like what you have written or doesn't think you are a good writer?

Hmm! That's the problem, isn't it? Of course, not everyone is going to like my style of writing or what I write. The writer within me who writes for the sake of writing is okay with that...expects that...sends her work out on occasion knowing that...But that child in me isn't okay with that. She is still seeking to be seen. She is still seeking to be validated and accepted for who she is.  She still believes that her value to this pack called "society" comes from approval for her writing. If she shows this true expression of who she is to others and they say, "Nah! Don't like that. Don't want to read that!" she will hear, "Nah! Don't like you! Don't want you in this pack! You never belonged then and you don't belong now. " 

That is why I go back to those who were around during the time this denial of "me" began, who were in the same conditioning group I was in, who might of even innocently believed I was "weird, strange, stupid" back then...to read what I want to pass on to the world.  They are the test screen my writing must get through. I mistakenly assume that if they say, "Oh you can write!", it will erase what I have come to believe about this "me". It will make it okay to be me as a writer and as a person...it will be safe. And I can then open myself up to the world. I will begin to do what I need to do to get my work out there. I will begin to do what I need to do to openly be my authentic self."

If they hum and haw, with the purest and best of intentions, to protect and help me...and tell me that "Maybe this isn't ready to show the public yet" (remember...they have the same conditioning in them that I have in terms of, "This is what you show the world and this is what you don't and it has to be really, really good before it is safe for you to send it out there." ... the child will only hear what she heard back then, "Weird, strange, sulky, stupid etc. " I close up. How does that look? The books go on the shelf, and I reprimand myself for being weird, strange, stupid enough to think I had a right to express myself in that way. Thank God, they stopped me before I showed this "me" to the world...again!" 

Now, my loved ones have nothing but the purest intentions...to help me. They have no idea of this broken little child in me and what she is looking for when she asks them to read something. They won't remember what they may have said fifty some years ago and how it impacted me.  We were children for goodness sake.  Heck...I barely remember anything from childhood, just glimpses of this or that. I had no idea of this child still lingering around in my psyche until yesterday...and it was like "What the Front Door!" I immediately emailed the person reading one of my manuscripts and explained that what I was asking her to do was related to an unhealthy tendency in me that I am looking into breaking. ...she could abandon her mission.

So, why did all this come up now? 

Because I am openly willing to release the samskaras that are holding me back from living life to the fullest, which will include for this human...writing to the fullest. This was a big one...memories came back, the awareness of this child came back and here I am. Watching, observing as this big samskara comes up to be heard and understood before it takes the next train out of here. 

Do you think you will publish or promote those books on your shelf now?

I don't know. I may. But I think the real break through here is in the clearing away of a samskara that was holding me back from being who I am. So cool!

All is well in my world. 

Going Up?

 

Spiritual evolution is survival of the fittest- those who can handle anything

Michael A. Singer

Learn to handle everything without pushing down or away and you will stop creating the imprints and impressions, the tendencies known as samskaras. You will stop preferring and resisting. If you do that, you will stop closing. If you stop closing, you will stay open long enough for the old samskaras to be released. You will be purified. If you are purified...the channels for Shakti to flow will be clear. Shakti will flow up and you will be taken upward with it to permanent states of peace, joy, bliss, and love.

When you are not being pulled down, the natural ascent upward will start. 

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True (July 27, 2026) From Ego to Divine Consciousness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbjy1e3FcUc

The Desires of the Lingering Self

 "Bright, loud, and mobile is the false. Subtle and indistinct is the true." 

Ajanh Amaro

I do not wish to live in the false. I wish to live in truth, even if it means being indistinct. 

I listened to Ajahn Nisabho answer a question about what happens when we get too attached to our world pursuits in hope of becoming distinct...like writing a book, for example. 

When attached to outcomes, say very slowly, "When I finish this book, I will be very happy forever."

Well, of course, I see how ridiclous that statement is. Yet, it is very applicable to 'my' life right now. (Well, to this human's little experience of life). I am struggling over this book I committed myself to finish.  I think it is such an important book in the sense it offers some wonderful life healing and hard-earned wisdom. As I am writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting...getting stuck...finding some release only to get stuck again...I find out, a book very similar to this intention has already been done and recently published by Michael Singer. Part of my commitment, as well as my jaw, just dropped to the ground for all kinds of reasons. (Besides being floored, once again, over how our minds seem to be so connected to the same thought waves.) 

How on earth is an obscure author like this "me" going to compete with the likes of Michael Singer? There is only so much limited space out there on that platform to begin with and only the best and the worthy will be able to stand on it next to him. There will be no room for this obscure little human that I am.  I put so much time and energy into this but I don't seem to be getting anywhere anyway...maybe that's a sign I should abandon this mission. This human may not be worthy of it.It ight be a waste of time.

 That is the thought stream I observed in this mind. So, when I sat down to listen to yesterday's podcast, that question came up (another piece of undeniable synchronicity) and I immediately began to practice saying over and over:

When I finish this book, I will be happy forever.

When I finish this book, I will be happy forever.

When I finish this book, I will be happy forever. 

Of course, I know happiness is not dependent on the finishing of this book.  Nor is it dependent on what I assume are the outcomes of a finished book: Notoriety or obscurity...doesn't matter. 

I see two intentions behind this endeavour...one wholesome, one not so wholesome. One spurred on by "little self",  and one spurred on by "Greater Self". Little self, which is very much still in me (the subtle sense of lingering self remains) is still longing to be lifted from obscurity and scarcity as if that will bring happiness. Greater Self knows that it won't. Little self is still trying to convince me that the outcomes of finishing this book will bring happiness, while Greater Self is telling me to simply write the book for healing purposes and share it so at least one other may find the direction for healing, they too may need. When I found myself in the above thought stream, I realized once again that ego was still very much attempting to take over this mission. 

Even this downward spiral of thought into this human's sense of unworthiness to write and speak that which someone who is already known has written and spoken about ...was ego doing what ego does. I was circling around myself. 

 Self flagellation a sense of narcissism, a sense of circling around one self is unwholesome selfing

What can this small, insignificant human through the writing and thus the completion of this book give of value and meaning to the world?

Not worldly stuff that would ever satisfy theattachments of little self in this human and in others. 

Milarepa: the wise Tibetan yogi said...."all worldly pursuits have but one inevitable end, which is sorrow. Meetings end in partings, acquisitions in dispersions, buildings in destruction, birth in death. Knowing this, one should from the very start renounce meeting, building and acquiring. And faithful to the demands of an eminent teacher, go about realizing the truth which has no birth or no death. This alone is the best science.

All these things ego wants from this writing endeavor will not last or satisfy for long. 

Be weary of gain, honor and praise...[They keep us stuck in self] [All these things] "will be ripped away"...these [things] are impermanent.

This endeavor, however, can serve the Greater Self. What the writing of this book  can offer is a very healing truth, a truth that does not come from this little me but from something much greater, that Singer has already tapped into. I do not need to stand on teh platform beside him. The platform I stand on will likley be of much smaller scale and grandeur. That's okay. We are not competing...simply sharing that universal Source of wisdom. There can never be enough expressions of truth, can there be? Even if the expression that comes from this little human remains subtle and indistinct. 

I will not abandon this mission. I will finish this book knowing that it was never meant to make this "me" happy forever. That happiness is already within, whether I write this book or not.

All is well.

Clear Mountain Monastry (April?,202) The Wing Span of Humility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpS6CaBZxMg

On Annata

 

Anatta is not nothing. It is somehow the photographic negative of how we look at the world, the trees of light between the trees, the cracks between the people, the moments of silence and quiet between those moments of vibrating heat and the majesty that is hidden in them.

Ajahn Nisabho

The following are gems of wisdom gained from listening to this humble being speak so beautifully this morning:

[Practice] is the daily following of something quiet and you have to be quiet to follow it.

"I am this"...the self forms in the shadow of Self

[Even when we advance in the practice] the subtle sense of lingering self remains

Self flagellation a sense of narcissim, a sense of circling around one self...unwholesome selfing

Problems are not solved, they dissolve

Anatta = no self

An empty of self =full of reality, full of life, full of light

[Take]one more step in dissappearing

nivata= without wind= humility= without self

'self' forms in the shadow of craving

Be weary of gain, honor and praise...(keep us stuck in self) "will be ripped away"...these are impermanent

Do not wish gain, honor, and praise on anyone

Milarepa: tibetan yogi...."a worldly pursuits have but one inevitable end, which is sorrow. Meetings end in partings, acquisitions in dispersions, buildings in destruction, birth in death. Knowing this, one should from the very start renounce meeting, building and acquiring. And faithful to the demands of an emminent teacher, go about realizing the truth which has no birth or no death. This alone is the best science.

The less well known, the greater the angel..Christian saying

There is pride in not being despised...

Mara controls that wanting to be seen when we give...

Not being seen magnifies karma

Try one unnaminous act of kindness a day

"Bright loud and mobile is the false.Subtle and indistinct is the true." Anja Amaro

Remove self from praise...whatever good you do and are praised for, acknowledge that the gift you gave was given from another to you...

Say, when attached to outcomes, very slowly, "When I finish this book I will be ver happy forever"

What you don't acknowledge becomes your destiny...Carl Jung

All is well

Clear Mountain Monastry (April?,202) The Wing Span of Humility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpS6CaBZxMg

Peace of Mind and Coincidence

 Set peace of mind as your highest goal, and organize your life around it. 

Brain Tracy

I want to write about two things this morning. Firtsly, I want to write about that which I was intending to write since I returned home last evening after a birthday celebration: about a question asked of me and how I answered. And secondly, about the crazy nature of entanglement observed in serendipity- "spooky action at a distance" as Einstein had called it. 

Last night I was asked, "Now on your birthday...what do you wish for going forward?" That is a fairly common question asked to people on birthdays. I thought about it and was about to answer something to the effect..."To finish this book on Samskara Release" (something I incidently just found out Michael Singer already wrote and published with his third book, much to my surprise)"and to start sharing what I learnt about it...to get back out there speaking. " 

And then something stopped me. I heard a little internal voice say..."Is that what a woke person would ask for? What do you assume doing this will give you? What do you really, really want that is not as temporary or fleeting as this? 

I answered with confidence and sureness, "I want peace of mind." 

That led to  "Come on...what do you really want?   Money? Success?  Or ...like what do you want for each of us? Say for him", while pointing to my brother in law, "Good health? Do you wish him and yourself good health?"

I answered, "Sure...I would love for everyone to be well but if everyone had true peace of mind, it wouldn't matter what their bodies were doing or not doing."

Well, that led to a big discussion on what is more important ...peace of mind or physical health etc. ...That is, until everyone got bored with my repeated answers and moved on. 

I do believe a tamed mind is the answer for everything.

Anyway, as I sat down to write about this question/answer today and before I opened "New Post" I did a quick search of stats to see what was recently read and I came across an entry witten two years ago, after I got this same question asked of me at my then birthday party. My answer then was the same one I gave last night. Now, let's put this in perspective: Not only did I get the same question at two different birthday parties (which is likely to happen), that was answered in the exact same way ...but....out of the possible 4000 entries that a reader could possibly open and read from this site, one of the 12 entries chosen in the last 24 hours...seemingly randomly ...was the one that included this same topic I sat down to write about this morning, about this same question and answerthat I shared after a birthday party. (see July 29th, 2024 entry).

My first thought, was "Oh my...cool...serendipity...entanglement. Must write about that." As I went on to check the read entries, I came across another entry that was read in the last 24 on "entanglement."

That to me, is a little bit too kooky to be coincidental. 

All is well. 

Does the Intent to Purify Body, Speech and Mind Make Me a Buddhist?

 

And a Buddhist is someone who speaks in ways that are harmless, gentle, skillful. They  act in  ways that are harmless, skillful, beneficial. And they think and conduct their minds in ways which are harmless and beneficial....purifying body, speech, and mind.

Ajahn Kovilo

 I no longer consider myself a Christian in the way I was brought up to consider myself (Catholic) though I find such beautiful practical wisdom in Christ's teachings and do my best to adhere and live by them. Though I may loosely refer to myself as a yogi because I study and practice yoga in all its forms, I really do not consider myself a yogi. Still, I do my best to adhere and live in what I am learning from this practice. I don't consider myself a Taoist though I have studied the Toa Te Ching in great depth and practice QiGong and Tai Chi everyday. I try to live by that wisdom shared by Loa Tzu.

And...I don't consider myself a Buddhist... though I love and do my best to adhere to the dharma because I find such beautiful practical wisdom in it. It resonates so much within me. I also seek to purify body, speech and mind. Purification is my major goal in Life these days and I pick and choose from both the Buddhist and the Yogic path as I journey towards healing and freedom. I do my best to speak in ways that are harmless, gentle, and skillful. I try to act in ways that are harmless, gentle, and beneficial. (In yogic terms, I seek to serve the moment, the world, and other beings as well as the Higher Self). And I seek to think in wholesome ways, attempting to train the mind  while I watch it and learn from its unwholesome tendencies. My practice is all about going forth from bad habits to good habits which is also the mandate for "Sin no more" in Christianity...and the mandate for wholesome skillful karma in the others. 

I love the dharma and I love listening to dharma teachers share these beautiful and very, very practical teachings from the Buddha. I get sucked right in to some crazy type of "familiarity" with it. It all makes such perfect sense to me...yet I do not call myself a Buddhist. I personally don't want to label myself as  anything actually. 

I do in many ways follow the five precepts of Buddhism. I try to refrain from taking the lives of any living thing. People think I am crazy that I do not kill spiders, flies or ants and protest loudly when others are about to. Not because I see self as a Buddhist but because it just feels so wrong to my mind and my being to take the life of another being away or even harm. I do my best not to take anything from others unless it is given to me. I refrain from all forms of sexual misconduct. I do my best to refrain from lying. I am considered a very honest person. (Though I know I could strive to be even more honest.) I refrain a great deal from intoxicants...though I do drink tea and coffee and I will have a glass of wine on occassion. (Tonight I plan on having a glass when I celebrate my birthday.) But I truly see the unwholesome reasons why many humans partake and abuse substances (including this one) and how that use can interfere with higher goals. (Even knowing that, I will still have a glass of wine so I am obviousl not a true buddhist.). 

I meditate regulary and practice mindfulness, equanimity- the  acceptance of Life as it is. I also try to train my mind in the bliss of seclusion. I love my solitude,

Anyway. in so many ways I appear to be a practicing Buddhist, without labelling myself as such.

So, what does that mean? Can I still learn and practice what I am learning from this path if I am not a Buddhist?  

I hope so. Missing the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh from Plum Village, I ran into another podcast commnity...Clear Mountain Monastry. These teachings are actually from the Theravada tradition (The way of the Elders). One of the oldest (3 centuries BCE)  and most structured schools of Buddhism with "strict" rules and regulations. Its teaching are preseved in the Pali Canon. Both Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama, on the other hand, were/are of the Mahayan school, originating in 1 century BCE.

Anyway, this podcast touched my heart and made me ask the question: Do I want to label myself and commit to being a practicing Buddhist?

The answer: Not yet. I still, find great wisdom, grace, and strength from many other religions, and fields of thought...so I would rather keep seeing the one unifyng nature of all of them as I pursue this path. 

Does that make sense?

All is well!

Clear Mountain Monastry Project (January, 2026) "Why We're Not a Cult" or "Going Forth"...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tejAh-56S7Q&t=5s.

All in the Perspective.

Look up; not down!

A few days ago  I wrote a poem through a mental perspective of feeling stuck.  (See "Heavy" from July 19th)The poem radiated a certain negative focus downward. I, as the poet was purposefully focusing on the negative.  

Our lives are determined by our perspectives. I took that very same poem and reworded it using a different poetic perception ( as Thoreau calls it).  I felt so different simply writing it and reading it in a positive way. So much more lightness, peace, light, and joy can be found through this perspective.  It reminded me of how much power is in our perception.  We get to choose how we perceive and express what we are perceiving in this life. We get to choose if we will focus down or up. This perception will determine the quality of our days. Up is definitely the way to go. So cool!!

 

Light...

I open eyes 

to a purring cat on my hip, quick and determined claws

kneading biscuits in the abundance that has become my body.

Familiar and energetic twins ...also greet me: Smile on face...and mind, 

a calm and grateful tool that refuses to look down..

I wake up.

 

I slip from the bed.

Limbs experiencing the many aspects of sensation...

Expressing love for all who are suffering, my feet kiss the earth.

And the intention to help, meta kindness, fills my calves with purpose

I stand.

 

I step down.

The earth is solid and steady beneath my feet.

The awareness of the world's suffering, lifts me with compassion into the morning

 Toes and tendons, molded by life’s many ups and downs offer testament to time that has passed

As they curl forward in appreciation for all that was given including the gift of motherhood.

I ground into solidity.

 

I uncurl.

The body’s sweet noises like the soft rustle of breeze against aging leaves,

 lovely musical notes that come with being alive, escape from joints.

Bone supported by bone, the sturdy leaning on the strong

body and life sharing moisture, softness, the precious lubrication of joy .

I straighten.

 

 I stretch

Various sensations, some pleasant, some not ...tease and dance...playing with muscles

Awakening aging sinew as limbs are lengthened

I do not stamp out the unpleasant. I wrap my arms around it.

The cramping, another whispered Hail Mary 

added to the gratitude list I have long ago kneeled to write ,

I welcome all sensations.

 

I move.

Neck down, Shoulders curled forward in reverence to gravity...a gift they willingly carry

Body slowly and gracefully moves with  it, into this precious dash of life I have been given.

The draft ...created by this illusion of disconnect and aloneness the empty space creates

Is blown away by the wind of his breath behind me, reminding me of my own

creating lift under my arms. Shoulders move to ears.

I am propelled like one of the many soft and floaty things carried by the breeze

 over the mound of abundance that grows and multiplies beneath me,

and through the door.

I softly sway.

 

I move into another room, another day.

Warmth in chest, I breathe; Lightness of mind, no need to think

Gravity’s chosen pawn.  Like a shuffleboard puck, I am playfully slid from one task to another.

Flowing with the force above me, I lift arms like water. I do what I get to do.

Flush toilets, run hands under taps, fill bowls, make coffee

sit to write something of meaning...opening to the empty page

bring cup to lips, use fingers and compassionate heart to answer the human calls for help,

Write, 2000 words ...words with depth, words with meaning like the sincere "good morning" I offer.

Put away dishes, sweep the floors...rejoicing in being able to pick up broom

tapping, tapping, tapping fill remaining pages of chapter with something...anything...nothing...it doesn’t matter

Arms tremble with delight under the stream of hope and expectation the morning light from window offers.

Its reality brings tears of joy to my eyes. I bow my head in reverence.

I slip into any opportunity to serve I can find.

 

I serve

Light with joy. One of the many beings under gravity’s guiding palms 

I slip like a breath of air from one giving activity to another,

From one lovely smiling face to another, 

from one more thing I can give away to another,  

taking nothing of it seriously, I go from

 laughing and playing with reckless abandonment

to the listening truths offered by wise teachers

Moving all parts of body as one unified serving machine

While going nowhere, doing nothing but breathing

Into a body and soul that no longer needs to cry out to be heard.

I am free

 

I sigh

Clocks ticking patiently in background,

Life’s many noises and humanity’s many words entering the silence

Without disturbing the meaningful watching and noticing of life,

a comfortable and healing practice that takes over the day

uplifting any weighted heart, unveiling any clouded mind.

I sigh

 

I watch as time passes

Morning becomes dusk. When dark enough, I make my way back to bed

Body still light, supple, carrying the energy of life and the stream of morning light in every cell.

Head softly rests on pillow...waiting ...for cat with happy claws to remind this human,

once again that it can feel what it is like to be alive.

Smile on face. Mind, free of anything that does not serve.

I close my eyes.

All is well!