No Drama Afterall

 Life is like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

Jim Hensen  

I had an "aha" moment today in the examination of what goes on in my mind related to the stories we tell ourselves so ego can play a part. I am often lost in character as a tragic heroine,  playing a victim's role well enough to fool anyone, including myself. I seen so clearly today, however,  that "victim to life's challenges"  is just a role many of us become so attached to, but it is not who we really are. The dramas  we star in are  often just ever changing mind-made creations. Accepting script changes that may force us out of character can be painful but it is very necessary in order for us to heal from our delusions ..so we can  connect to who we really are. 

No Drama Afterall

Let me begin by saying, I do not have glaucoma...as of yet anyway.  I am at a risk because of a thin cornea and family history but as of now...no glaucoma.  Just some cataracts and  a dry eye which is believed to be causing the pressure and impaired vision I get in my left eye in the morning. (That and the floaters).  Hmm! 

The Movie I was Starring In 

The ophthalmologist  noticed something in the summer that warranted further testing to rule Glaucoma out. For months and months, previous to the "rule out Glaucoma" thing,  I was concerned that my retina might be detaching (family history of that) because of the increasing  pressure I was getting, as well as the flashing lights and big blobby floaters that kept getting worse. Even though the optometrist seen no tears on examination last spring and assured me it was just a vitreous detachment( a fairly common and benign condition), concerned about my vison I asked my doctor to refer me to an eye specialist.   And on examination she, the ophthalmologist, said there was absolutely no retinal tears and confirmed the other diagnosis of a posterior vitreous detachment. She did, however,  incidentally notice a fair degree of cupping and decided to test me farther for Glaucoma. When I left her office last summer, however, the possibility of having Glaucoma was not the focus of my attention. My shame was.

Shame: A Change in the Story Line and the Loss of A Starring Role

I was more embarrassed then anything that I did not have what I thought I might have, a retinal detachment.  That the pressure,  flashing lights and floaters were absolutely nothing and I was making way too much of it. I was  ashamed that I did not  trust the optometrist's opinion enough to leave it at that and instead probably wasted this much- in -demand -doctor's precious time and energy for nothing more than  a neurotic concern.  The shame was a bit too much. 

I was also regretfully embarrassed that I was subliminally focusing on my eye so much for months, wondering if I was going to lose my vision in it ( Even though I was acting all cool and in control, like 'oh that is the least of my problems' ).  You see, I had added this life circumstance: "Oh, on top of everything else, I may be losing my vision in one eye" to the plot and story line of the movie I was starring in called, "Oh Wo Is Me. This is "My" Life". In the movie, the tragic  heroine had so many bigger issues to deal with that the eye issue was played as being something that was of secondary concern , and she so cooly pushes it aside, thus amplifying her victim struggle and making her appear even more so the heroine she was playing. It was shocking to realize that I was really attached to my role and to the story line. 

Then when I was told in the  summer that there was no retinal detachment...I heard the not so nice director inside my head yell, "Cut!". I was called out of character pretty fast and it was like a thunk and a bump to my ego's need to be starring in this role.  Though I gained a certain amount of relief, I also felt like I lost something. The eye problem had become a part of the movie's plot line. I was playing it well. Without it, my character's victim status was going to be diminished. and then we had to add all that shame and embarrassment in there about being so neurotic and not so "cool" ...not fun. 

Revamping the Script; Revamping the Role

So the  script writing part of my mind, being as clever and resourceful , as it is and in its determination that I become the best tragic heroine ever,  has an "Aha!" moment.  It decides to add that very subtle, "It may be Glaucoma" to the script and to build it up. So before I know it, hours after my embarrassing call to come out of character,  I am back on set as this tragic heroine  with the eye issue. She is now someone who might have Glaucoma (instead of someone who might have a retinal detachment)  but doesn't have time to focus too much on it because she is too busy dealing with more important things and caring selflessly for others. We didn't have to write the "Oh, and on top of everything else,  I may be losing my vision in one eye" out of the script after all. I could still play the part well. I became attached to it again. Though it was played as a secondary issue in the  story...there was this creative  build up of suspense as the  character waited for this appointment that would determine the future of her vision. The music was building up and building up in tempo ...everything was taking us to this moment...and then "No Glaucoma." was like the sound of screeching brakes.  The audience is left with a "What the Fork?" let down  and I am pulled out of character once again, landing with a thunk on my backside.

Without the Story; Without the Role

I stumble around confused and nervous with a "Who am I without this role I was so identified with for months? Who am I without the drama of another challenging life event? "  It wasn't the nicest storyline for any character to live through in a movie but it was "my" story line and it was something I could play well. I was so committed to my role, lost in it, and when the  story line gets changed or I am asked to come out of character I feel lost.  Sure I feel relieved but I also feel so naked without the costume and the story.  Man. how cra-cra is that lol?

This is a very common human tendency, is it not?  To get lost in story, to get lost in a role?   I mean the movies we create in our minds, do not have to be as tragic as the ones I create in my mind. lol I realize , after today, just how negative I have been. Without meaning to, I have been focusing  on creating a dark and challenging scene and atmosphere, blurring or cutting out all the beautiful, wonderful things. Because of past parts I played in dark movies,  I too often  see the worse case outcomes as the climax of my life story.  Man.  Other people create the story lines for  comedies, romance, fantasy, epic dramas and horror movies etc.  So many options but I choose those dramas where I can play tragic heroine because, I guess, my mind tells me it is the easiest one for me to play.  It is where I had the most practice and experience. Crap!  That's dark. How did I get so dark in the writing of my own life story? I much prefer comedy and I can be funny and see the humour in almost everything when I am not so stuck on playing the victim. I could turn this around and write one good comedy about how I, a comic hero, blows everything out of proportion and thinks the worse lol...maybe I will.  

Anyway, as I was driving home...completely free of costume and make-up, I felt so vulnerable, so raw and so real.  It was scary being this exposed, without a role or a script to hide behind,  but at the same time it felt freeing to realize that the movie wasn't real and either was my part. I heard myself saying. "Yes!  This feeling, though uncomfortable, is good. This is where I want to be, outside the drama, not in it." There is something healing in that.

We need to step out of our dramas and our roles more often even when it is uncomfortable to do so.

All is well. 

Seeking Wisdom for Liberation From an Ancient Text

Last year, this year, the waxing and waning moons, The days, nights and indivisible time moments are all impermanent. If we reflect carefully, we too are face to face with death. Grant your blessing, so that we may become resolute in our practice! page 11

I read and study , analyze and summarize that which comes to me in the form of "teachings" in the same way I read, studied, analyzed, and summarized poetry in my English Lit classes.  I do so with great interest, reverence, and a desire to grasp the message being shared in both a conceptual way and a very ineffable way. It is almost like  trying to solve some great riddle contained in the words  and some even greater riddle that lies beneath the words.  I have done that with The Bible, A Course in Miracles, The Gita, The Upanishads, The Tao Te Ching, and so many other great teachings. Now I am doing it with, The Tibetan Book of the Dead,  which just happens to be like poetry in many degrees. 

Yet I know it is a "sacred teaching" that was protected and held from the world for centuries by its "lineage holders". Would these holders deem my approach to reading this a sacrilegious thing to do? Here is me, a lay person who doesn't even deem herself a Buddhist,  with so little expertise  , so little indoctrinated knowledge trying to grasp a selfish understanding from this ancient scripture. Do I have a right to do that with this or any such text? I really don't know. Yet, here I am pulled to these teachings and gobbling them up like they were my sustenance. I guess I truly am a Jhana Yogi. 

So I finished the first two chapters. A guide to " prayer" and mantra recitation practice is offered in these chapters. Through those guided recitations, we see many of the teachings of  Tibetan Buddhism, mostly on the impermanent nature of things that we tend to erroneously cling to or avoid. It offers a reminder to recognize these attachments, as well as a request for us to revamp our commitment to practice so we become more skillful in our actions, speech and thinking. It a reminder that we are all capable of Buddha-hood (being liberated by direct awareness of truth) if we first recognize the errors of our ways and commit to pursuing the skillful and virtuous path.  A call to see how compassion is needed for all of us, who have yet to see and understand the truth of who we are beyond the "obscurations" of our minds, is repeated again and again.  And there is this reminder of the major point of this book (I suppose) which is the need for us to face that which we are most afraid to face...this concept of  the impermanence of our bodily lives...to face death. Great liberation, we are told, lies in being able to do that. 

That is what I feel called to do lately, for whatever reason, to understand death. Death is the mother fear of all fears and in the western world we are surrounded by an epidemic of fear. Fear and wrong view is at the root  of most of our illusion-based suffering. We need to face that which we fear in order to see it clearly and transcend it. I personally want to transcend my fear for self and for others. That is why I finally got this book that I have been meaning to read for a very long time.

Anyway...I suggest you read it yourself if you feel inclined. What I am seeking from the book may not come out in words so I am not sure what I will be able to offer here, from it as I read it. 

All is well. 

Padmasambhava,  Terton Karma Lingpa (revealer of text) , Gyurme Dorj(translator) Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa(editors) (2005) The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation. Penguin Books: London

We Are In It and It Is In Us

 Remain still, with the conviction that the Self shines as everything yet nothing, within, without, and everywhere.

Ramana Maharshi

This quote is very profound and probably underlies the teachings found in the video listed below. 

Oops...will get back to this in a minute.  Decided, last minute,  to have my Thanksgiving supper tonight as it seems to be the only time I can get everyone together and so now  I have to pop the bird into the oven.  (Man...I hate the sound of that.  I don't eat meat  for many reasons but I cook it for those that do.  I find it hard to do so...yet I do.  Forgive me Turkey)

This is what I gathered (paraphrased) from the last portion of the Alan Watts lecture, entitled, We have forgotten who we are:

• We, in the west, tend to differentiate between what we do and what happens to us. When we decide to take a deep breath...it seems that we are doing the breathing but when we stop thinking about breathing, we are still breathing.  Are we doing it then or is it just happening to us? 
• Do we beat our hearts?  We don't say, I  "beat  my heart", like we say "I breathe". There are so many involuntary body functions in which we say we have no control. Watts tells us that just because it seems we have no "conscious control" over these process, we do have a "supra conscious" control over our bodily function, over everything actually.  He says we make our blood flow just like we make the sun shine.  The body knows that it is a continuation of the universe, that we are a continuation of the universe...not separated from it.  
• When we watch someone walking down  the street , we are making them walk through our attention to them walking. It is hard to believe we are doing that but we are. If we were not observing them walk in front of us, would they be walking in front of us? We control everything the body is doing and we control everything the universe is doing...
• Of course, we do not realize that. If we did we might go a little cra-cra...with all these delusions of Grandeur or what Watts referred to as "Holy Man Syndrome"...thinking we are special...when everyone of us has these same innate powers to control everything. 
• There is no such thing as separate events. Everything we observe is us...It is all us...the person walking down  down the street and the person observing the person  walking down the street are one and the same. Tat Taum Asi
• We can, however, only experience one thing at a time and we have no idea how we, as everything, are making everything happen. We don't know how we make that person walk before us...but we do. We don't know how we make the sun shine, but we do.  We don't know how we beat our hearts but we do.
• This organism is a continuation of the energy that makes everything happen 
• Yet ego gets in the way of us knowing that.  "Ego is nothing more than the focus of conscious attention. " "The moment we cease to identify with the ego and identify with the whole organism, we see how perfect and harmonious it all is. "
• There may be discord at the personal level but at the higher level, it is all perfect and harmonious 
• "The world is really okay and can't be anything other than okay because it wouldn't exist if it wasn't."
• Omnipotence is  not about knowing how everything is done , it is about knowing that it just does get done
• Life is a dance of energy. No such thing as a distinction between spiritual and material "stuff".  It is all just pattern.
• We may be aware that there is a brilliant light within everything...beneath everything... but we are often not aware that we are looking directly at that light right now
• The brilliant light of the cosmos can be found in absolutely everything, even in an old paper cup...when we look at the cup we are looking directly at this light
• Awakening is really a reexamination of our common sense which has been rigged so that we feel like strangers in an alien world. When we start to really question this common sense we grew up on we begin to see it as it really is...it becomes obvious to us that we are continuous with the universe....not separate from it.
• When we take on a practice to attain something...say start practicing yoga... we are getting in the way of this truth. If we try to improve this "self" so we have a better experience in the universe ...this is an indication that we are not yet understanding the truth.  We are one with that which we want a better experience of.
• We can't strive or struggle to reach where we already are...to become what we are.  We can't strive to love...if we do it because we think we "should" than we lose sincerity
• Tale of a man with a problemed mind that goes to the sage for help.  The sage says he can help if the man first shows the sage his problemed mind...which of course the guy couldn't.
• Spiritual practices are ways of just continuing in this "folly" We are told to let go and do nothing...then we try to do nothing which actually becomes a doing something. 
• "There is no road to here and here is already there."
• We already have what we are looking for but it is "our privilege and deeply felt wish to play the game that we don't". When we realize this... the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behaviour disappears.
• We are part of the process.  It is all one process
• We do not come into this world...we are grown from this world
• "In every lump of rock floating in space  there is an implicit human intelligence."
• "I am in it and it is in me.  There is always a transactional relationship between organism and environment."

So much wisdom in this lecture...it brought to mind another beautiful quote I heard from Ram Dass,

As long as we are logged into our thoughts we are always one thought away from here.

Anyway, thought I would share.

All is well.

Alan Watts/ The Advanced Course (October 5,2022) We Have Forgotten Who We Are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffomqkDMCw

Deliberately Seeking To Play The Part?

 

Do you define yourself as a victim of the world or as the world? You are not a victim. You are doing it.

Alan Watts

Excuse the typos that may appear.  I am finding it hard to write because of the eye.

Thoughts are just pointers, Eckhart Tolle reminds us in Should I  Ignore Nice Thoughts?  Positive thoughts, such as, "Life is beautiful"  may point to and lead to a certain amount of appreciation for Life. That's wonderful but we know from studies that the majority of our thoughts are not positive ones. They do not have the same compulsive quality to them that negative thoughts have. We are more likely to attach to and identify with the negative. These thoughts tend to run ramped,  proliferating like cancer cells trapping us in stories and creating barricades between the story character and who we really are.  ( see last two entries).  He reminds us:

The most vital thing is to remember what is beyond all thought. 

What is beyond the thought?

We are...who we really are beyond the veil of the thinking mind.

Instead of trying to convince ourselves that we should appreciate Life through our thoughts, we should simply experience that appreciation directly through presence.  We can only do that when we are beyond the thought veil and seeing the Self that is there..

Awareness of who we are is always the main goal and that awareness is "non-conceptual"...we cannot explain who we really are or know it with the thinking mind. We can only be it. Understanding our thinking tendency and  how the mind works is a crucial step in realization.  Recognizing how we so easily get caught up in thought/story is the first step to waking up and waking up is all about knowing , beyond thought, who we really are. 

Could the Dramas Play a Significant Part in Our Awakening?

Alan Watts takes this pointer a little farther by reminding us that Life itself is a drama that we as Self have created in order to have the challenge of discovering ourSelves beneath it. 

Say What Crazy Lady?

I know, it sounds like another riddle. Bear with me.

In the last two entries I spoke about the mental movie I often get trapped in when negative thought takes over. When I am in that movie , it all seems so real. I am the character wearing the costume, reading the script and the plot appears to be happening to this character, this "victim" of Life called "me". The props seem so real too.  I mentioned in one entry how there is an acting coach( the thought addicted ego) there telling me, the actress, to assume that I am powerless to what is happening and totally not responsible for any of it. With stern and aggressive direction it tells me to stay in character. I do. While in the movie, I am a true victim. I stay lost in this mental drama...seeing it all as real...feeling so trapped by "my" life...until  the kind and soft spoken director says "Cut!" 

I am then brought back to reality. The veil comes down and I realize I was momentarily lost in thinking. I was just playing a thought directed part and that none of it was real anywhere but in my mind. I am present again in this moment. There is no thought. I am experiencing Life directly   I am that. Tat Taum Asi.  I am what I am. I look into the set of my mind. I see that I am all of it...the acting coach, the screen writer, the make up artist, the director that says "Take!" and the director that says "Cut!"  I am responsible for all of it and I am none of it.  It is mind blowing. I stay here for a bit experiencing directly this appreciation for Life.  

Then I get called back to the set and I get lost again in the movie.

"Keep Pulling Me Back In"

Why? Why...if I have these glimpses of realization do I  keep getting pulled back to the movie, to the thinking, to the "suffering"?  

I haven't yet paid the price. And I was never pulled back...I willingly went back!

Watts tells us that we won't fully wake up until we feel we have paid the price for it.  We are just actors in a big drama that God is playing through us. In those moments we have, if we are lucky and willing enough to hear the "Cut!" ,  we will step out of character and see we were just playing a part.  Veils will go down and we will realize who we are beneath our costumes and roles. We will see that we are not the separate character...not the victim alone and exposed to external circumstances against her will...but that we are  everything! Not only that, but we will see that we are willingly playing the part every time we jump onto that set. We are responsible for it.

You are not victims of the scheme of things, of a mechanical world or an autocratic God. The Life you are living is what you put yourself in. You don't admit this because you want to play the part.

What?  Who would want to play this part I am playing, to get lost in a horror movie, or a tragedy like this again and again? 

Watts encourages us to look at Life as a game, "a far out play" and to see how we are deliberately involved in it.  He more or less explains that we come down here into this incarnation we call "me" in order to take part in the ultimate challenge.  The challenge consists of getting as lost as we can in our minds, to go as far away from realizing who we really are as we can just so we can find our way back. Why...so we can pay the price for a just reward.  You play "non-bliss in order to experience bliss . The bliss of experiencing who we really are can not be without first experiencing the suffering that comes with  forgetting who we really are.  

The world is God's drama, he explains,  and we are emanations of God. So when we meet the challenge of discovering who we really are,  God sees God through  our realization...that is why the bliss we experience in enlightenment is so pure. We are here to abandon Self for "self" just so we can abandon self for Self. 

Well this idea that we could be deliberately taking part in a big game of "Find Self/ Find God" beyond the drama and that we are creating and starring in our own movies of suffering in order to do that...is still blowing my mind a bit.  So I will leave it here.  

All is well!

Eckhart Tolle (October 6, 2022) Should I Ignore Nice Thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SBSYS9exr4

Alan Watts (October 5, 2022) We Have Forgotten Who We Are.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffomqkDMCw

From Pain Distraction to Reflection

 We who are fearless and hard hearted, despite having seen so many sufferings, of birth, old age, sickness and death, are wasting our human lives, endowed with freedom and opportunity, on the paths of distraction. Grant your blessing so that we may continuously remember impermanence and death.Page10

From the Common Preliminary Practice in the  Tibetan Book of the Dead. Penguin, 2005

I felt compelled to come back and explain something probably more to myself than to anyone else (which is good considering I will probably be the only one that reads this lol).

I keep mentioning the physical pain as the one trigger that takes me back into the moving narrative of my mind.  And that is not true.  I certainly have pain but it is more of a mental pain related to the physical that brings me back to a particular movie.  The pain I am having right now,  as was the pain I had in my armpit a few years ago and the pain I had in my left lower quadrant ( well that one could creep up to a nine at times) and the pain I get in my chest when I am having coronary vasospasms ( well I shouldn't use that for an example  either...that too can go up to a 9 pretty quick)...What I am trying to say is physical pain, by itself, is not a trigger. It is usually not that bad and  I can take pain, I really can especially if I can see and understand the cause of it, whatever that cause may be. This pain I get in my side is more of a deep, dull ache than a pain. At best it is a 6 /10 on the scale , most of the time less than a five.  And it is usually only "bad"  at night.  I didn't stop doing yoga and therefore teaching yoga because the pain is too much to bear. I can bear it.  I can still do yoga though it is very uncomfortable, but the thing is...if I do a full practice during the day, I will really feel the pain on those nights .  It will get bad enough to keep me awake. Sleep seems to be the only reprieve I have these days from all the other stressors in my life, like,  "How am I going to survive financially? or how am I going to handle the suffering of loved ones without getting lost in it?" So I don't want to be awake all night thinking of these things as well as the story connected to any bout of physical pain I get. I don't want the physical pain for that reason. It isn't the pain I resist but that which is connected to it: the story and the not knowing.

Physical pain brings me back to the movie, "Oh Wo Is Me."   There is so little hope, in this movie, that this will be diagnosed and treated effectively when the others have yet to be. Some one keeps calling out in this movie, " Look what assumption  has done! You lost more than just your health and any hope of being treated so you can get better, you lost your job, your career, your  income, your sense of self esteem, your reputation and a purpose. "

 The "me" of this experience  has been really diminished by past pain and fears it will  be farther diminished with this pain...and has so little left to give away to any health seeking venture. 

So when I am walking in the woods really feeling the now...what takes me out of my moment isn't the sudden experience of physical pain but the story attached to it. I automatically go to the story. The story is so darn consuming. 

I honestly believe I could handle anything...any diagnosis and subsequent prognosis.  That isn't it either.  It is the not knowing and this belief I have that I will never know what is happening to my body, that others will never know and never assist me in the way that is needed, that pulls me in. I fear I will never be believed until it is too late..  As someone who taught Pathophysiology for years and someone who has been practicing yoga enough to have established a certain union with her body....I know something is happening to this form, just as I did with the other pain experiences. I don't know if it is something serious or not serious. I just know it is something. I want to know what it is. So I am still clinging ...not to the pain experience... but to the desire to know and understand what is causing it.  Letting  go of a need to know, is very challenging. 

Of course, all this clinging and wanting to know, this feeling diminished  is what is going on in the movie. I am distracted by the movie but he Greater part of me isn't.  It doesn't need to know anything. 

So I recognize, when I am back in the moment,  that all this is just a distraction...just me getting lost in thinking and story whenever I get a bit of physical pain.  I see how everything I was so attached to that I feel I 'lost'  was insignificant in its unreliability.  I see how the suffering I have experienced because of this situation  has led me to something so much deeper and healing than external validation could ever give. I see how it has led me to and continues to lead me  to face some hard truths. It has led me to reflect carefully. on that which most of us run from...the impermanence of things. Our bodies will not last forever. It has led me to reflect on death

Last year, this year, the waxing and waning moons, the days, nights and indivisible time moments are all impermanent. If we reflect, carefully we too are face to face with death. page11

Hmm! I still get lost in this movie in my head related to pain and health seeking but I am able to bring myself back more and more. I am able to  reflect on what is real and important. I understand and accept the impermanence of things.

All is well 

Lost in Character?

Entranced by ignorance, from begingless time until now, you have had more than enough time to sleep.....So do not slumber any longer, but strive after virtue with body, speech and mind!...The time has come for you to develop perseverance in your practice..... Since we do not recognize that impermeant things are unreliable , still, even now, we remain attached, clinging to this cycle of existence. Wishing for happiness, we pass our human lives in suffering.

Passages from Common Preliminary Practice section of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Penguin 2005

I have been feeling sad off and on over the last few days . Part of that sadness comes from an attachment I still have with the things around me that I seem to be losing or have already lost. It comes from an over identification I have with them.  I am still caught up in this "me" thing and I am still seeing life circumstance as happening or not happening to "me".  Despite my practice, I can still get lost in story. I can still fall back to sleep.

I can still get  completely mesmerized by the movie in my head and before I know it I  find myself in the starring role of victim again. So engrossed I become in this part and this movie that I forget it is a movie. It, all the drama happening around me and in me, the heavy plot, the background music, the atmosphere of the scenes, the appearance of villains, as well as the part I am playing as victim,  all seem so bloody real. I feel like the character does...trapped and stuck in great suffering. (Suffering that the acting coach  tells her she is not responsible for and  that she does not have the  power of controlling).  Like her I find myself fruitlessly  plotting and planning, without knowing how, I am  going to get out of the mess I am in. It gets so dark and heavy.

"Cut!"

And then all of a sudden I hear this little director's voice within me softly and patiently calling out "Cut!!" 

The lights suddenly come back on and the sad music stops playing in the background. I look around to see that none of the props were real, that I am in costume and heavy makeup playing the part of a victim, but not really one. I realize  that I have been reading from a script.  Those playing the role of villains, I quickly discover,  are just actors like me.  They are simply playing a part too. I even see my own awkwardness and vulnerability  in them. I sigh deeply, releasing my identification with the character.

Then  I step off the stage and I go outside to I feel the Autumn sun on my face.  I hear the breeze blowing through the leaves now orange and red with vibrant beauty.  I put one foot after the other down on the pine needle covered path I walk everyday. The earth  feels so good underneath my feet, solid, supportive, loving. One step and then the next step.  All that was in my mind seems to be pouring out the souls of my feet.  I take a breath and let it go...and another and another.  It seems to be all that matters. This breath, this step, this moment is all there is. There are no "problems" ...no victims, no villains...no drama...no lines to remember...just this...just this precious moment and everything in it. I see that I am that. Tat Taum Asi. I was never the role I was playing only moments before. 

I reflect on how I got lost in my role again and tell myself I am going to try harder so that doesn't happen again.  I commit to persevering in my practice so I can stay with the moment longer. So I can stay awake. I am at peace, feeling hints of happiness and joy. 

"Take!"

Then suddenly there is pain. 

My mind is drawn from the souls of my feet to my left rib cage to the pain I have been having since May. My mind steps in again. "What is it?  What could it be? Why will no one tell me? Does it have  anything to do with those other lumps and masses and pain I had in the past that was dismissed and forgotten by everybody but my body and mind, without so much as an explanation? Those things that took so much away from "me" and led me here struggling to survive financially?  What is happening to this body?  I need this body to be well now so I  find some kind of paying  work so I can survive. Do I have to relive what I lived in the past again and again and again? Why do I have to suffer like this? Why "me"? " 

Then from there I hear  another impatient director's voice calling out, "Take 5067!"  

I am suddenly back in front of the camera ready to perform.  The lights go down, that music starts again. The actors around me become villains and I get lost in character . I get lost in the movie once again.  It all becomes so dark, so heavy,  so real. There doesn't seem to be a way out. 

Where is the director with the soft voice that can end this scene? Oh right...that director is me.

Going In and Out Of Reality

This is what it is like for me.  I am so trying to stay in the moment...to stay with what is real . Yet, I continue to get pulled away into the mind's movie by ego's direction and called back to realty by soul's. There is a battle between the two for my attention it seems. So though I am in the moment more and more, I still get called back into the mind's attachment to the unreliable and impermanent things. I realize what is real, what is important and what isn't but phenomena still has a pull for me.  I am still attached. And that attachment will lure me into my costume and make up again and again. 

Sigh!  Regardless, recognizing this pattern is a crucial step of our practice.  No one ever said that waking up, let alone, staying awake was going to be easy.

All is well. 

Changing Clothes

 When we look at life and death from a broader perspective,  then dying is just like changing our clothes! When this body becomes old and useless, we die and take on a new body, which is fresh, healthy, and full of energy! This need not be so bad. 

Dalai Lama

From the Editor's Introduction, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Translation. 2005. Penguin Books: London

Dying (Drying) Eyes: New Vision

 An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.

Cheri Huber

As I sit here to write I have my face pretty well pressed up against the screen.  My left eye is not behaving.  I know if I were to put a patch over it and view the world from my right eye it would not be so nauseating lol.  My perspective is off...I am not perceiving the world like I have in the past.  It is uncomfortable to look out at what is before me with  this big hazy blob that comes and goes over one eye. Part of me wants to go back to the vision I had before this eye started acting up. It seemed so clear then. It was more comfortable and less exhausting.  But was it real? 

Hmm! Yep...I am getting to a point.  I am seeing things differently now in all kinds of ways.  In my waking up my perspective is convoluted and distorted from what it was before. What seemed clear is no longer  so clear. Why? Because my ego has glaucoma...my ego is sick. ...and I have been seeing through my ego most of my life. That type of vision ego gave me is leaving me...for good...there is no return to the pre existing vision.  It is a bit off putting to have the ego change so dramatically and find yourself not seeing the way we were trained to see...to find yourself  questioning those shapes moving  before you and in you, wondering just how solid and substantial they actually are. It is off putting to know you can't get that vision back. The more you squint and struggle to focus the more nauseated one becomes with the effort. It takes so much energy. We are not meant to struggle to see. Seeing is done through us not by us. We will see what we need to see  in the new way when the time is right.  We just need to sit back patiently and wait for it all to be taken care of...to wait for the new vision to establish itself.  It's coming.  It's coming. 

So just as I patiently await for my appointment next week to find out what the next step will be in establishing a new norm for my physical vision...I await for the eyes of spacious awareness to replace the eyes of ego. I am confident that I am establishing a new way of seeing and understanding the world and myself through every bit of learning and practice I feel compelled to do.  

I am presently reading a text/book that will help me attain new and clearer vision.  I have been wanting to read and study , The Great Liberation By Hearing in the Intermediate State, or better known as, The Tibetan Book of The  Dead, for so long now.  I am sure it will help this form I call "me" to let go of  old ways of seeing so a new realization can be born within me.  It will also help me to cope, not only with the physical loss of a certain visual acuity, but of the loss of body that is sure to come  for this form and for forms I am attached to. One of the greatest things we can do for ourselves and other beings is to accept the impermanent nature of all things. We do that when we look into the eyes of death and we do not have to die to do that.  We will definitely see clearly, achieving luminosity and awareness, when we die but we do not have to wait for death of the body to achieve a glimpse of this understanding. This book will possibly help me do see clearly.  Ironically, it is is in very small type...ugh! 

 All is well.  . 

Note: After this was written it was determined that the big blob that sometimes disturbs my vision in my left eye is just a result of a floater brought on by the very benign condition of vitreous detachment  and dry eye.  So the title should really be "Drying Eyes: New Vision) lol

Don't Take Any of It Too Seriously

 

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

C.K. Chesterton

Talking/writing to myself again. Big fat 0 on my stats page.  What happened, I wonder, that disconnected this blog from what it once had? And why am I okay with it? Just taking it as it comes I guess...maybe something will change in the near future or maybe I will be inspired to do something differently...I don't know. 

I am dreaming at night...those kooky dreams I get...and am possibly  being told things are going to change soon, somehow physicians are involved in this change ( in my dream anyway)?? Which is really bizarre.  Maybe my book is going to get published. I don't know but something is going to change for the better in unexpected ways and I think this dream is showing me that I am going to be paid for it...paid well possibly...which would be nice lol. Maybe it is telling me not to give up, not to lose faith which I have been doing. Any improvement in my financial situation would be a blessing.  Any change in so called "luck" would be appreciated, let me tell ya.  My father, jokingly,  used to call me "Calamity Jane" and said that instead of  being blessed with the luck of the Irish, (the luck  that is  believed to be held in the horse shoes nailed above doorways), it seems I am more likely to have those horseshoes  drop on my head.  I have a lot of bumps on my head, I guess,  and I have no idea where the luck went. It didn't pour on me. 

Of course, I am being silly.  I do not , like my Irish ancestors, put much faith in luck. I do put my faith in karma...and the cause and effect thing but luck has little to do with why I am where I am now.  But I do like to remember the silly teasing from my father. We were brought up not to take the challenges in life too seriously, to laugh when everyone else seemed to be crying. And we did.  We laughed in the most inappropriate settings. It was a great release and a great relief to play a little here and a little there within the so called "seriousness" of things, to play  instead of constantly struggling  to survive.

Alan Watts tells us we are not supposed to take it all so seriously. Staying alive is not a must or an obligation...it is an opportunity to dance. Imagine if we looked at life like that...as an opportunity to dance and play and laugh even when everyone else is crying.

Regardless of how sad and how serious things are in a given moment...we have to remember that, This too shall pass. Nothing lasts forever...not so called good times or so called bad times...nothing lasts forever. We don't last forever.  So let's look at every moment as if it were one precious note from the most beautiful musical composition...savour it, play with it, dance with it and enjoy it.  Don't take it too seriously.

All is well. 

Alan Watts/Mind Awakening ( n.d.) Achieve State the of Flow, Right Now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOzaqmTbbbg

On Prayer

It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Gandhi

 I sit here today, writing  from my disconnected- from -the -world state, trusting that it is all as it is meant to be. Trusting the Tao, trusting God, trusting Life ( or at least wanting to). I do what I do because I do.  I do  because I am a participant in this Karmic dance of cause and effect and not the controller of it....allowing all to be as it is. I am swept along by the invisible chords of music I can only know by connecting to it with my heart.  

Hmm! Adding another video.  Helped me...hope it helps others. Well it is obviously, like all things I put on this blog these days,  not getting out there for others to see lol but it is out there whether it gets seen or not. :) 

All is well!

Known By Those Who Do Not Know

 He by whom Brahman is not known, knows it;

He by whom it is known, knows it not.

It is not known by those who know it,

It is known by those who do not know it.

Kena Upanishads 

What the fork? 

The above quote is not a mind twisting riddle, though it may seem to be. It is an  excerpt from the Kena Upanishads, a very important Hindu text dating back to 1000 BCE.  This text attempts to describe what God is...or probably more accurately...what God is not while constantly reiterating the limitations of concepts and words, the limitations of our thinking mind and our idea of knowledge  to describe, understand and to know something as hard as this source of everything we call God or Brahman is to know. If we think we know God "conceptually"...we do not know God at all.  If we understand there is no real way to know God with our limited minds...then we know God. 

There truly is only one way to "know" something and it is through what Wayne Dyer referred to as  "conscious contact." He goes on to say, in the linked vide below, that there is big difference between knowing "about" God and  knowing God. Most of us know about God without truly knowing God. 

Now many of us, whether we know it or not, are seeking to know God.  We go to religious centers, to scriptures, to dogma, to practices like prayer and meditation,  to Gurus in hope that they will create in us a conceptual knowledge of God. We seek to attain that "knowing" that will free us. We may devote most of our lives to doing this but Alan Watts tells us, in his recorded lecture ( see link below), that we are simply chasing our tail...going around in circles, getting nowhere when we do this.

Why? Because we already have that knowledge within us but we do not "know" it. We do not "know" it  because we do not know" ourselves in the "conscious contact" way.  We really do not know or experience who we are:

The God head cannot be the source of its own knowledge just as a knife cannot cut itself (somewhat paraphrased)

So just as we need a mirror to see our head, we look outside our self for God , depending on concepts and ideas and practices. Our minds have no way of handling "non-conceptual knowledge" that a true knowing entails. We seek knowledge from others. 

We may be told in our practices, in the scripture or by our priests, teachers or gurus...to "let go" of all these concepts...to "let go" of thinking. Following their directions, we shift gears and begin "doing the work" of letting go. We strive, we seek, we put effort into  attempting to "do nothing", to stop thinking these thoughts which are so much a part of us.  We meditate maybe to get to a state of trance induced  emptiness, mindlessness...the blank slate.  We think the trance like state of the meditator or seeker is enlightenment but Watts warns us that seeking this is just another trap leading to another tail chasing experience.

Meditation, Jhana yoga, prayer, listening to wise teachers is all wonderful, having  so many benefits to us in all realms of our existence but they are  not the be all and the end all of our evolving.  It is a medicine not the nutritious diet we need to sustain ourselves with. (paraphrased somewhat. ) Each element of our practice is merely a tool we use... a raft that takes us across the river. Once we get across...we are not finished and we do not pick up  the raft and carry it with us on our journey...we leave it there.  

You do not need anything to hang on to.  You are it. 

I love this:

You can't sit to meditate unless you are already a Buddha, in which case, why sit?

We meditate, not to get somewhere or to gain some special knowledge or to seek anything. That is counterproductive.   We meditate to connect to the stillness we already are, to have "conscious contact" with what is. There really isn't anything to gain from our practice because everything is nothing,

Hmmm! Something to think about.

All is well! 

Wayne Dyer/ Inner Self (n.d.) Just Stop Doing This and You Will Be Healed Permanently/ Wayne Dyer The Secret Powerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1waHtJwcRaw

Alan Watts /Mind Awakening ( n.d.) Everything is Nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCk-5QB7aaQ

The Tao: No Self or Effort Required

 The man who rows a boat uses effort. The man who puts up a sail uses magic.

Alan Watts

I love that quote above.

What does it mean crazy lady? 

Alan Watts in, The secret of happiness, teaches about the Tao and the importance of getting out of the way of it.  The Tao, of course, is that invisible fluid perfection of nature, of  Life flow that we cannot fully understand with our limited human minds. When we see ourselves as separate little "me"s in a strange and dangerous world full of "others", we often get in the way of it ...we strive to get somewhere, we push hard...we work against this force.  We row the boat ( often against the current)  when all we really have to do is, put up a sail, let go to the flow and be carried by the "magic" of the Tao. 

Self? Other?

If we identify with our separateness, we often feel  that we need to defend and attack to protect ourselves from Life.  We judge what unfolds in front of us as fortunate or unfortunate, advantageous or disadvantageous to this  separate little me...failing to see the whole impersonal nature of the Tao, failing to see the 'bigger picture'. We may feel attacked by Life when unfortunate things happen 'to us'  and "resist" life circumstances and Life. We may "work hard" to change it, instead of accepting, allowing and questioning if there is a wiser, more meaningful wind  beneath  these turn of events, beneath  that which is unfolding in front of us...than  the ego is capable of  understanding. With tongues out and fists clenched we too often stand  in the way of this flow ( as if that is going to do anything to change it lol) instead of allowing ourselves to be carried by it. 

Different or the Same?

There is no "self" separate or different from the "other" anywhere but in our minds. We would not have a sense of self if we did not perceive an "other".  Just like we can not perceive darkness without perceiving light, just as we can not have a front without a back and vice versa...we cannot have a self without an other and an other without a self. All things are connected. 

We can put up a so called fence between self and other but that fence becomes shared property, doesn't it?  On one side it is my fence ...on the other side it is your fence... but it is just one fence.  Whose fence is it then  and does it really separate what is mine from yours when the shared earth runs beneath that fence? And just as you multiply 1 x 1...your side times my side ...you still get one.  

Our body lines...that which we think separate us are shared property. They do not separate us from each other or us from the environment in which we live. Self is other and other is self.  In some eastern philosophies this consideration of so called polarities or opposites is termed "identical differences" . Different is identical and identical is different. I love the way Thich Nhat Hanh used to refer to this understanding of what we call self and other..."Neither different nor the same". 

A Part of The Flow

So once we understand there is no fence, no border, no separation  between self and other, between "me" and " you"...between "me" and everything else in the world... this understanding of the Tao becomes a little clearer. We begin to understand that there is a force flowing beneath everything, carrying everything, and we as little dots of matter, are carrying that same force within us.   Our effort to stop or redirect that flow not only exhausts us and causes conflict both externally and internally, it  is meaningless.  We cannot stop the flow that has been here on this planet...this tiny speck of dirt in the universe for billions of years before we were born and will continue for billions of years after we die. So why don't we learn to stop resisting, to accept and allow what is and flow with it instead of against it? 

Observing and Knowing

In Taoism there is no difference between you, the observer, and what is being observed, between you, the knower, and what is being known.  If there is any knowledge  at all it contains the knower and the known. What is important is the true experience: to be happy and to know you are happy. Yet we are often required in the west, Watts reminds us, to do what is acceptably happy making but to do it only as if it wasn't required. I may love to dance  for no other reason than to experience dancing  but if you observe me dancing and comment on my dancing  I may learn to dance for you and for me instead of the sheer joy of experiencing it, without observer or knower or "me" or "you". You may then tell me I am showing off. I will then  become self conscious and focused on how I appear to you and to myself . That diminishes the felt sense of happiness,  of being in the Tao. 

Dance as if you have no audience...not even yourself!

Anyway...I am beginning to ramble.  Have a listen for yourself.

All is well!

Alan Watts/ Timeless Knowledge (n.d.) The Secrets to Happiness.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jFXwJ69j8Q  

Not a Separate Stranger

 

I, a stranger and afraid in a world I never made.

A. E. Houseman

Two readers on my stats page today and I discover it is just me lol...checking to see how a highlighting came through on the readers page. Man, something has definitely cut this blog  off from the rest of the world and I can honestly say  I think it goes beyond what others may consider bad writing or an uninteresting topic lol.  I have been disconnected somehow. 

Still...here I am recording what I am learning from others and mostly from observing my own mind. So am I helping?

Frequency Holder?

Well interestingly enough, I stumbled across a video lecture from Eckhart Tolle today where he talked about something called a "frequency holder" and I wondered if that was what I could be here.  Now a frequency holder is someone who holds the frequency of presence for others, affecting far more people than they actually come in contact with. In olden days they would have been referred to as the "forest dweller", cloistered monks and nuns...those who devoted their lives to holding this frequency and have been often segregated from the busy world so they could do this.  Man...I feel segregated and isolated these days let me tell ya...but I don't see myself as someone who is doing much good for the world in my present state. Yet embodying presence is my goal and Tolle tells us healing happens when we embody presence.  It isn't so much what we do that helps or heals others but how present we are when we are doing it.  When we, as the ego, get out of the way and let the essence of who we are shine through then we heal.  Hmm! If we can look out upon the world with the eyes of compassion and non-judgmental acceptance that originates from this place of spacious, ego-less awareness we can do much good.  Carl Rogers would call this approach we take to the world and other beings as , "Unconditional positive regard". Hmm...maybe I am doing some good here? Maybe.

Who is "I"? 

I guess that takes me to the next bit of learning I did today.  In a video lecture from Alan Watts I was reminded to question who this "I" , I believe wants to help, is?  Trying to understand who "I" is, is one of the greatest mysteries of mankind.  It is like trying to touch the tip of one fingertip with that fingertip...to look at  yourself in the eye without a mirror.

Watts went on to explain that in the West we tend to equate this "I"  with a consciousness inside a body...the head more specifically.  He said our version of "I" is a "skin encapsulated ego" that operates in the mind and with thinking. Whereas in the  East...the "I" , if it is in the body, can be found in the heart or the solar plexus and operates with "feeling". 

In the West we tend to see the self as a separate soul imprisoned in a body looking out upon a world that is strange....an island of consciousness locked up in a bag of skin facing a foreign world outside itself.  Watts

Not a Skin-Encapsulated Ego

We grow up believing in the West , if we were raised in the Judeo-Christian way,  that we came into this world, that we and all things of this world have been made.  We grow up on the idea that some wise, loving but very watchful and corrective being created all this and "made" us, the humans, the only intelligent things in the universe.  The universe, we are conditioned to believe,  is basically stupid and was made for us to use and misuse as we see fit. If we grew up with science dominated thought rather than religious...we may have been taught that though there is no big benevolent being in charge, the universe, still very blind and stupid,  through a series of very random and chaotic coincidences, comes to be. Man is at the top of the "survival of the fittest" food chain and therefore gets to dominate, control an  dissect/kill to analyze,  all beneath him/her/them. 

In the east, in contrast, children are often taught to see how they, like all things in nature grew into being.  Growth is expanding from the inside and extending outward.  They are taught to see how intelligent nature is, how much a part of it they are.

Does not the eastern idea make more sense?  Watts reminds us that we, as intelligent beings, must have come from something intelligent. We can not get an intelligent organism from an unintelligent environment. 

We grow out of the world, just as an apple grows out of an apple tree.

We are simply extensions of our environment and the environment is an extension of some great invisible intelligence we will never be able to understand with our limited minds.  Everything...absolutely everything comes out of this intelligence. Everything, absolutely everything is consciousness.  The outsides or external forms or explicit nature may differ but what is inside everything is exactly the same.   It is all this consciousness. We are the environment we think is outside us. Our behavior can not be separate from the world around us

You are something the whole world is doing.

We are not separate and isolated strangers in a foreign world.  We are not, "a stranger to the earth- a momentary flash of consciousness between two eternal blackness's". We are a part of all of it.  We are all of it. We as "I " are not limited to "me":  a separate personality, body, mind.  We are  are  players in a game the universe is playing to express itself.

Just as the sun shines its rays, so does the cosmos express itself in rays of "you and you and you..."

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (September, 2022) Am I Ready To Help Others? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icheiaA4F1w

Alan Watts (n.d.) Understanding Life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZArIBiRkGfk

Cults: Hoping and Grasping

 One of the things that can be helpful in terms of an explanation is to look at the ways in which cults are similar to abusive relationships. Nobody seeks out an abusive partner, but so many people stay in these relationships longer than they should - they make excuses, they ignore red flags, and they allow themselves to be emotionally manipulated.

Sarah Edmondson

Hoping and Grasping?

Man life is so different without "hope".  In the psychological and psychiatric perspective, hopelessness is considered one of the chief symptoms of depression.  In the spiritual perspective, it is considered simply a lack of grasping.  I stopped grasping...well, let me rephrase that lol... I am putting effort into the committed practice of not grasping so I can simply sit with what is.  That means I am doing my best to stop "hoping" (praying and wishing)  the things that are presently unfolding in front of me  will change for the  better.  I am not projecting or escaping from them and this moment into some future scenario.  I am here and now where and when  things do not seem or feel so pleasant to my body or mind.  I am not struggling or striving to get something "out there" so I feel better "in here". For the most part, I am noticing and allowing the unpleasantness of what is. And yeah it feels depressing. It sucks lol. So what does my mind do? It gently lures me away from the depressing feeling  into  diversional activity. I binged over the last two days on the Crave series, The Vow. and ironically, doing so intensified my focus on the notion of hope and grasping.

Cults

This series was all about the cult like nature of the NXIVM group started by a man named Keith Raniere, who right now is serving a 120 year sentence in a federal prison in the US.  As you may know, I have always been fascinated by cults and cult leaders in my attempt to understand where that line lies between groups and leaders that humbly support and encourage self development without any egoic interference and those that are simply used to help build the ego of some narcisstic and sociopathic leader. My fascination is probably more of an obsession than anything else. 

Why do people fall for these manipulation tactics of these sociopathic leaders?  How are these leaders able to manipulate and control so effortlessly the minds and lives of other educated and intelligent beings for their own selfish and twisted purposes? And why do most of these "cults" center around the promise of something so good and altruistic : self improvement, happiness and freedom from suffering in order to make the whole world a better place?  To me, the answer to all three questions lies in our human tendency to grasp and to hope.

Why do people fall into cult mentality?

We fall into these manipulations, I believe,  because we are constantly grasping "out there" to make us feel okay "in here."  And these cult leaders know that and use that human fragility and vulnerability for their own purposes. 

Well, no one sets out and says, "I am going to join a cult" lol.  No one seeks to be manipulated and controlled at least not consciously.  But we are all "hopeful seekers" in one way or another whether we know it or not.  We are all looking to fill the empty holes within us whether we know it or not. Those empty holes are our disconnect, I believe anyway, with our True Self...with our whole complete eternal nature. Until we are Self realized and evolved we are going to feel that something is missing in us  and we are going to grasp out there for it. 

These groups that later become cults give us something to wrap our hands around so we feel we are finally holding onto something that is solid; that will fulfill us in the way that matters most. They offer us the hope of putting aside, once and for all, this painful craving we have spent our lives previously consumed by. They promise an end to suffering. Of course, these leaders are intelligent enough to recognize this need, this vulnerability, this grasping tendency in human beings and because they lack a 'conscience', or a true concern for the well-being of others as a sociopath, they are more than willing to use it and exploit it to get what they need or want.  The leader finds in the follower something to wrap his or her hands around as well...a something that strokes the ego.  They grasp and cling big time to those that follow them. 

How Does the Leader Attract and Control the Followers? 

Coincidence and a variety of external forces line up to take the follower to the leader or the leader to the  follower. The follower does not respond to an ad in the paper that reads, "Narcissitic, extremely selfish and sick sociopath, looking for vulnerable and good natured followers, who are willing to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled in order  to enhance the  identity and self serving desires of the master. " 

Well intended individuals seeking to heal the mind, to get beyond the ego, and to serve the world, are "innocently" recruited  by other well intended members whom they trust.  The premise on which the cult is built is that it is  for some higher and honorable  purpose that is ethical and altruistic.  It is often built as a means to Self-development. Self-development means a better world in the long run. That is what the individual who ends up in a cult is often seeking and hoping for. It is their desire to be "better humans" that often leads them there. 

 What keeps them there? 

What keeps them there involves  a lot of other factors , however. There is some form of what we call "brain washing" which is basically just a very intricate, repetitive type of manipulation that plays on the desires and weakness of others. Repetition is an essential component as well as a very subtle disconnection of the member from outside forces that will interfere with the manipulation. Members are often, at least to some degree, cut off from the outside influence. These leaders not only have a certain degree of charisma that draws people in but they are intelligent enough to  understand the human psyche and know how to play it.  The modules, the courses, the repetitive teachings and activities (walking and volleyball?)  were set up by NXIVM to play on these weaknesses and the desire for improvement. And yes, many cults will also use a subtle form of hypnosis. Sometimes it comes in repetitive chanting and repetition of key terms.  Other times it comes in actual hypnotic techniques. In this case, they were also using NLP: Neuro linguistic programming which the co-founder was well trained in and starvation(calory control) . So once the newbie arrives for whatever reason...gets passed that gut feeling that says "Oh this is weird!" they are pretty much lost. 

Like teh former Dos member quoted above, I compare it to the development of an abusive relationship. Both individuals are hopeful and grasping...seeking.  The "sick, sociopathic" partner seeks a certain vulnerability, a certain loving nature and a certain "something is missing in me"  in the other that will boost their sense of self. The soon to be abuser puts on all the charm to draw that partner in.  The other is often drawn to the charming and very devoted personality of  the grasping other.  The beginning of an abusive relationship is usually very idyllic and exciting...with promises that both will be fulfilled for a lifetime by the relationship. The soon to be abused is very, very happy thinking they have found the answer to their prayers. Manipulation from the abuser begins early on...they recognize the desires and weaknesses in the other and they use them to keep the partner under their control. Slowly and subtly with the guise that it is for their own best interest the abused is removed from outside influence and is socially isolated to some degree.  Guilt and shaming is often used. Manipulating insults are offered repetitively,  first as constructive criticism and then as repetitive abusive statements until the abused begins to own those statements and believe them.  They become more and more dependent on the abuser.  Then they are physically or mentally assaulted and fear of leaving and what will happen when they leave keeps them where they are. 

Why do  cults often center around goodness?

Well if the ad in the paper said, "Cult leader looking to exploit others in an evil way...to use them to do evil things as directed by evil master"...they probably wouldn't get many followers.  Cult leaders know that humans tend to strive towards goodness. The fact that cults like this flourish  shows to me the inherent goodness in the human psyche.  People do want to be better humans.  They want to make the world a better place.  We are driven by goodness more than by a lack of it. Even though we have both seeds in us...it is the seed of altruism and compassion that we naturally want to grow. Unfortunately, less than evolved humans who happen to be charismatic,  intelligent and aware of the human psyche can exploit that desire for goodness as Raniere and so many other cult leaders have done. It is the blossom on the rose that attracts the bee, not the thorns. These leaders will do what they can to look and smell like a rose. 

My take away from all this is that we have to be careful when it comes to how devoted we are to teachers and gurus.  I know it is the Indian tradition to devote oneself fully to their guru...but we have to see our gurus firstly as human beings .  Not all gurus...in fact few, I suspect...have actually transcended the ego and its desires, few have gotten beyond the grasping tendency of the mind. If you are going to join any group where there seems to be a leader with devoted followers, ask and observe just how evolved that leader is and just how devoted the followers are and why? Is the leader asking for devotion?  That to me is a big clue that ego is running the show? 

And also  know that nothing out there...not a leader, not a sangha... can fill what is missing in you.  Only you can do that by discovering who you really are? 

And stop hoping for things to get better in the future.  What are they like here and now?  I can just imagine how many times that the abused partner says to herself in a day, "Oh it will be better tomorrow.  Things will be different tomorrow if I do this or that tomorrow...there will be peace." You deserve peace now.

Anyway, I went on a rampage again.  Just my opinion and my little knowing.  Watch the series yourself and see for yourself how the grasping and hoping tendency can get us into trouble.

All is well. 

Crave: The Vow Season One (Sorry not citing as I should)

 When the Buddha described how long humanity had been on the journey, as he spoke of reincarnation he talked of a mountain six miles wide, six miles long,  six miles high. Every hundred years a bird would fly with a silk scarf  in its beak and run it over the mountain once. The length of time it takes to wear away the mountain is the length of time you have been on this path.

Ram Dass

Not Of It

 Be in the world, but not of it.

??

That above is an often used statement used by spiritual seekers  but I am not really sure where it originated from in the bible. Regardless...it makes sense,  right?  We are much better off if we approach this Life with less attachment to the world and with what Ram Dass refers to as "choiceless awareness."  Instead of being lost in the drama...always reacting to circumstances and external stimuli just so we do not have to "experience" it or "feel" the suffering that comes as part of the "being alive"  package deal...we can step away and simply witness the suffering,  as well as the pleasant and neutral experiences, without reaction.

He speaks about this as being an important step in Jhana yoga...the "studying" component.  Of course, I do not consider myself much lol but I do see this self immersed in Jhana Yoga, and call myself a Jhana yogi.  With this type of yoga we use the mind/intellect to beat the mind/intellect into submission with several techniques.  

We may study in order to shift context. After all my studying of scripture, the teachings from wise masters, the world, others and self, the context of reality  has changed dramatically for me.  I look at things so differently than I did before. I see the normal tendency to get lost in, overidentified with, and to react to stimuli in an unwholesome way that alters our approach to Life and reality.  I am not awake because I realize this though. I am just beginning to become aware.

Can you activate that part of yourself that can look at the universe without any reaction? 

Jhana  meets Dhyana 

We take this learning then into our meditation, our mindfulness in order to develop further the witness consciousness.  We want to develop that part of ourselves that does not react to stimuli but that responds, instead, in a wholesome way to whatever Life offers us...be it " good, bad or neutral." We detach ourselves from the drama and instead, at a distance, observe it with great awe. Meditation and mindfulness help us to do that. We can then look at physical pain in self or another and instead of saying , "Oh my pain"...we simply say, "Oh!  There is the pain"  When we look at depression...we can say instead of "Oh I am so depressed!  " or "They are so depressed"..."There is depression".  We remove the identification from it. 

Of course,  it isn't easy to stay in witness consciousness.  We keep slipping down into the drama and get lost in it again and again.  Then with some form of an anchor ( meditation and mindfulness can provide anchors) we bring ourselves back. We keep bringing ourselves back to the space where the witness resides. This is the practice. We are cultivating the witness...that part within all of us that is not all tangled up in worldly things...that is in the world ...but not of it. 

We also have to loosen our judgements and expectation about how things should be.  We need to face the fact that we do not know how they should be.  We actually know very little of Universal Design and mission.  We do not have to know. We can learn to look at suffering, feel the pain of it and say, "It is all perfect as it is" through our tears. 

The more we cultivate witness consciousness, the more we become witness consciousness.  This, according to Ram Dass, is true transcendence...witnessing the witness...and then being the witness...knowing who you really are when you are finished being who you think you are.

Deepak Chopra also reminds us that reality id relative but who we are as witness consciousness is absolute.

All is well.

Deepak Chopra (Sept, 2022) How to Be in the World but not of it: A Guided Meditation Exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSot4ApLPgY

Ram Dass/Here and Now Podcast (n.d.) Shifting Contexts. Episode 206. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEDUa81H5AE 

Insights From Some Pretty Wise People

 In one fragment of my existence, I capture the whole universe. 

Deepak Chopra

A quick entry before I take the dogs for a walk in the rain. I am releasing my hold and my need for more readership but my mind cannot get over the fact that stats are showing that not one entry written from Sept 2 on was read...yet I am getting readers according to stats and google analytics everyday.  What is up with that? (Thank you readers...I do appreciate you.) My intellect still gets in the way sometimes and my lack of "knowing" and "understanding" what is going on here leaves me unsettled. I  just follow my dharma and come here, releasing my attachment to outcome, but my mind will still pop in and say, "This is still really weird...how all of a sudden many of  the readers just went "poof." 

Anyway, offering some great insights from Ram Dass from the second part of the Breath Inside the Breath (Note:  some will be actual quotations and some paraphrased versions of what was shared):

• We can go the long way in dealing with strong emotion by seeing them as something concrete and solid in our experience or we can go teh short way by noticing teh space within them
• We are deep in the do-do of personality, caught up n it and defending its rights and needs at all costs
• Does fulfilling your needs make you any happier than not fulfilling your needs? And if so for how long?
• How do we play our roles, have our needs met without being trapped in them? Realize you are trapped-not really- but you are thinking you are trapped.  You cab be in them without being them....Play the roles just don't get trapped in them.
• Be a blend of compassion and emptiness
• In relating to others : My presence offers two bits of information: 1)empathy by letting them know we are all in this together and 2) letting them know we don't need to be caught
• The main approach is to make sure nothing in 'me'  is keeping them stuck in their suffering and nothing in 'me' is demanding they come out of their suffering
• "I give people what they want because they don't want what I give"...spoken by a guru who felt he needed to provide miracles for ppl
• We can help each other to freedom
• Can you hear without getting caught up in hearing; can you speak without getting caught up in speaking? 
• All methods and all identities are traps.  Meditation is a trap. You don't want to end up a meditator-you want to end up free. 
• Play the role of life  -just don't end up trapped in them 
• we need to stop taking the personality and the drama of life so seriously
• We will get it when we get it
• taking something seriously does not make it happen or go away any quicker
• couple of stories, I will share later

Also listened to Deepak Chopra today 

• Nothing in the physical world exists without consciousness There is no colour, sound, taste or fragrance  ...all are simply sensations interpreted by mind. 
• Emotions and thoughts do not exist without consciousness
• So the answer to the question about a tree falling in the forest..."if no one is there to hear it does it make a sound?"  is "No!"
• The physical world is actually inside us
• Line from Gita??: In one fragment of my existence , I capture the whole universe. 

All is well!

Deepak Chopra ( Sept 25, 2022) That Which Upholds  the Universe Is the True Self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCWjtecMq7Q

Ram Dass/ Audio Buddha (n.d.) The Breath Inside the Breath Part 2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFypQOHMkE

The "Crappy" Stage of Waking Up

 Enlightenment consists not only of the seeing of luminous shapes and visons, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult, and therefore, unpopular. 

Carl Jung

Still clinging! Still grasping! Still looking for something out there to make me feel better in here...but I am doing it less and less.  For the most part, I find myself sitting with what is and saying to myself, "Well this sucks!" Well...maybe not to that extreme lol... but  I do find myself feeling a bit 'hope-less' and sad. I am at the "crappy" stage of waking up, I guess.  

The Crappy Stage

When we give up our old conditioned ways of getting through the day, what are we left with?  The reality of what is.  And what if that is less than pleasant, as it 'appears to be'  in my case?  The old conditioned mind would say,  " Well find something out there that you can fix or change to make your situation better.  Or at the very least find something you can look forward to in the future or fall back on some pleasant memory of your past. Just don't stay here in this moment.  It sucks!"  This is also what we are encouraged to do by psychology and society, is it not? "Don't lose hope! Stay positive!  Look for the bright side.  Find your happy place.  Think of a pleasant memory. Focus on some future goal." There is no, "Notice, allow, accept, embrace, learn, grow  from what is right here, right now...even if it sucks and you feel miserable inside." 

I am at the point of my understanding where I truly realize that nothing "out there" can make me feel good inside and nothing "out there" is responsible for making me feel yucky. It is purely an internal game. But  without the veil of ignorance that once convinced me otherwise I am looking smack dab into the eyes of reality.  I am left to face some less than pretty things in my life. I am left to face the yuckiness of my insides...the discontent, the resentment, the frustration, the fear...the 'suffering' . There is no more hiding behind this veil (a pseudo sense of happiness derived by denying the reality of the moment). At this point of the juncture it does not feel good being so exposed. I know the peace is there beneath all these things that I stuffed on top of it  over the years  and I do know, without a doubt, that I will get to it when I finally rid myself of all these samskaras...Let me rephrase that, I am falling into peace as the knots within me untangle, come to the surface and are released. But as of now...I am still falling as these things come up into my conscious awareness. I am  bumping into my stuffed emotion and it hurts. This leaves me feeling very 'unsteady'. 

When we feel unsteady or uncomfortable in the moment...what does the mind want to do? Escape! Despite what I know, I still occasionally fall back into the old ways of grasping and clinging...wanting to numb or escape the moment.  I have been going to Netflix and Crave every evening with a plea, "Save me from this feeling, this moment!" I catch myself doing this.  I watch myself doing this and I willingly go there instead of just sitting with this "yuckiness" inside. I suppose the fact that I am calling it yuckiness is an indication of my lack of advancement.  It isn't "yuckiness"...it is just feeling, emotion, thoughts, story that may not be pleasant. Part of me still says if it isn't pleasant..."it is wrong, bad  or shouldn't be!" And I resist it.  I catch myself doing it...I do...but I have yet to commit to sitting with "even this" level of intense emotion. I know that it is only through allowing this sense of suffering to be and by going through it will I get beyond it...but part of me still resists. 

I still judge and resist my moment. And then I catch myself resisting the fact that I am resisting. So, I start there. I gently release the hold I have on those habits of beating up myself for not being where I want to be. I say to the resistance of the resistance, "It is okay.  Come up here and sit with me for a while.  I hear you. I feel you. We don't have to be 'there 'already, though, k? .  It is a process. It all unfolds one layer at a time.  It is all good. We will just keep falling back into what is and with curiosity and awe , we will just watch what happens."

Hmmm! Learning, learning, learning. Growing, growing, growing.

All is well!

Dharma and Karma Yoga

 .....My dharma is to do this. I am doing it. I am at peace with the universe. It is what it is.  It includes horror and beauty and it is all unfolding and I am part of it.  I am part of it, like the winds, the mountains and the rivers. I am a part of it. And I am at peace.

 And the actions, and every action that catches you is another action to awaken and see how it caught you and to bring you back into a center. Then you are a karma yogi. Then you a karma yogi.  And when a karma yogi, a real yogi, meets another yogi it is only itself meeting itself through all the different forms of the dance, of the dialogue between two parts of itself...  

Ram Dass

I think part of my journey is to be perpetually confused! lol.  After what I wrote yesterday about there possibly being something wrong , not with the lack of readership, but my 'desire' for more 'knowledge' and readership because part of me is longing to be recognized as someone that knows...I once again came across the video on Karma I listened to and wrote about a few entries ago. It added another perspective to the mix of musings and questions circling in this much too busy mind of mine. 

I realize...that first of all...I need to, once again, put effort into removing those words, those judgements of "Good and bad, right and wrong, should be and shouldn't be" from my vocabulary and thereby from  my mind. There is no right or wrong about what I am doing.  It is all just as it is and I am exactly where I  am supposed to be at this part of the journey. All the "studying" I did helped to bring me to this point, as did all the 'living', the falling, the failing, the losing, the making so called mistakes.  My big fat ego that wants so badly to redeem itself and be recognized also helped to bring me to this point of where I am.  Where am I right now?  I  am exactly where I am supposed to be. I know that the end of suffering for me and others will only come when we wake up to who we really are and we can only wake ourselves up. So I am committed to waking up myself and sharing this journey so others may be inspired to wake themselves up too..  That is how this blog began. I am not yet awake.  I am still in the so called early stages, very much grasping and clinging ...looking for things out there to make me feel okay in here. The beautiful thing about this is that I realize that. I realize it enough to share it. It helps me to awaken and that in turn has the potential to help others.

Can't wait until you are enlightened to help another person...bring whatever truth you got to bear into the situation. Each act you do to help another person is simultaneously the act you do to help yourself.

From Jhana...

As a Jhana Yogi, I learn so I can teach and I teach so I can learn.

Ram Dass mentions that once we get to a certain point  of our evolving we will feel compelled by something greater than 'little me' to keep going, to practice a certain way, even if 'little me' is still very much around.  I am literally compelled to study everything that comes my way in the form of scriptures, reading, lectures, teachings. I am "pitting the mind against the mind". So I study. Jhana yoga is a part of my path right now, my dharma. Ego may be attempting to use this for its own benefit but I can "see" that...so I can bring myself back to the pureness of  my dharma.

...To Karma Yoga 

I am also compelled as you can see by the frequent sharing of what I am learning from my own mind to follow the path of the Karma Yogi. Karma Yoga, according to Dass, is that yoga that works with the stuff of your life. Karma is all about cause and effect so it is using every action as a way to wake up.  It is not so much about what we do but how we do it.

Ram Dass offers four components or ways to help us use Krama yoga to fulfill our Dharma:

1. Firstly, we must quiet down, become still so we can listen to that inner wisdom helps us hear what our dharma is. What are your skills, interests, opportunities, present day circumstances, education etc and how will these things help you best serve?  We do not need to manipulate the world to suit our dharma...we use what is offered us, what we got, so to speak in the present  moment. Our dharma will fluctuate and change from moment to moment so we need to keep listening.  Right now...I am not working "out there"...I have time and an opportunity to write and study.  I have that compelling interest. I have this blog and a few readers, at least, whom I am very grateful for. I have years of education and past experience as an educator so it makes sense that I would at least share what I learned, don't you think? So when I am most still and quiet...in those early hours I awaken I sit and I listen to my dharma...feeling the pull to study and come here with what I have learned. That may change tomorrow and I may be called to serve "out there".  Who knows? 
2. Secondly, we need to loosen our identity with being the one doing the action.  We really don't do anything, we are done.  We need to get that. I don't do the learning, the  learning comes to me and through me.  I don't do the writing...it too comes through me. Lao Tzu said, When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. We just flow with Life. We don't make things happen nor are things really happening.  It is just getting done.  We just need to rest in spacious awareness of all that is getting done around us. The Karma yogi is using the act to come back to the space behind the act. They are seeing beyond the veil. 
3. Need to detach from outcome.  We just do the action as best we can ( knowing that it is simply just being done through us)  without getting too hung up on the goal. What will happen will happen.  Though I occasionally slip and become disappointed or worried about the number of readers I have ...for the most part I let go of all that.  I bring myself back to spaciousness and just do what dharma tells me to do....leaving the rest up to Life. The process of Life becomes the focus rather than the product. I still slip many times and get all tangled up in the idea of Life as a product rather than a process but I am committed to  keep bringing myself back to that spacious center, to who I really am. Back to awareness. What is free is awareness. You are free.  Who you think you are isn't. 
4. Then there is the devotional component in Karma Yoga.  Who is it that you are relating to in your act of service...through your dharma? We need to see the being, not that which we want them to be in order to best serve our egos. There is a being beyond the idea of that person and the being in me will see it if I get beyond my own image of self.  I do not want to use that being to enhance my ego.  So sometimes I , as the ego, see the being or potential being who may stumble upon this page as a "reader" who  enhances the numbers on my stats page and therefore enhances my ego...I do. I diminish who they are.  But most times I, the being,  see or at least strive to see the "being"  reading what I have written so we  can connect  for I know that my experience of Life is not "individual" or "unique. 

Hmm!  So much learning. In my practice of Karma Yoga I also took up a mantra from Buddhism...developed by a 12th century Japanese Monk in his desire to help all individuals he saw suffering to find peace and an end to their suffering. It is a simple chant : Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. This can basically be translated from Sanskrit into : Devotion to the mystical law of enlightenment/Buddha nature as the lotus  flower opens revealing both fruit and flower simultaneously ( cause and effect at the same time...a transcendence of Karma) sutra. 

Anyway, I learn and I share.  I learn and I share.  What else is a gal to do when she is compelled by Karma to follow her dharma? 

All is well

Ram Dass//Be Here and Now Network (n.d.) Getting Free With Karm Yoga: Here and Now, Episode 207. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEHx5B0fuPc

Soko Gaikki Official (n.d.) How to Chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo/English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02jPdwVgO4U

Self-Intended Knowledge

 Lady with fair countenance! Understand that one who is not able to realize the Truth in his heart by this knowledge of spiritual wisdom known as Kala Jnana, can never attain it, even by studying countless crores ofsastras ( scripture) spread out like the sky.

Ramana Maharshi

I often whine and complain about a lack of readership here implying to myself and others, in some subtle way, that there is something "wrong" with that, that it was another indication of a universe challenging me.  After all the "studying" I do, all the reading, listening and interpreting I do, after all the knowledge I gain it somehow seems "unfair, wrong, should be different" that what I am sharing in regards to that knowledge collection is not getting out there. I suddenly realize today that my lack of readership could actually be the Universe, not challenging 'me', but supporting 'me' in my desire to be Self-realized. 

One can know thyself only with one's own eye of knowledge, and not with somebody else's. Does he who is Rama, require the help of a mirror to know he is Rama?

In...Ramana Maharshi's teachings , shared in the linked video below a 'disciple' speaks about Maharshi's view on knowledge outside ourselves and our desire to share it like I do here.  He often says that true knowledge has nothing to do with "I know this" but more to do with "I am this"...again we are getting back to this idea that "knowing is being". The only real value of knowledge cannot be found "out there'...only from within.  It is Self intended knowing we seek 

He also speaks of a very subtle and powerful desire within most of us to be recognized for what we know because we, like, most egoicly bound humans, long to be praised, seen, respected, revered, regarded with high esteem.  We think that by collecting knowledge and "showing" what we know we will attain this, satisfying this desire. I think that is a trap many spiritual teachers fall into without realizing it.  Oh man, I am not a spiritual teacher but part of me has been doing that here.  After assuming I lost so much of this type of "respect and esteem" from the outside world with the recent going- ons in my life, I was looking to be redeemed here. My goal of self realization was being corrupted, maybe, by this desire for recognition as someone who "knows". I erroneously believed I needed readers outside 'me' to recognize 'me'. If I had true knowledge of Self, however, there would be no 'me' to recognize.

I love the learning...the reading, the listening and the studying but I need to be honest with myself.  Am I feeding my ego here or my heart?  Is this type of knowledge seeking hindering or assisting me to gain that "I am-ness" I seek? I need to look at that. 

People out there do not need more "knowledge" from me or others, they need to tap into their own essence. The best thing I can do for myself and others is become Self-Realized...not to study more and share more. I really have to look at that too. 

Ordinary knowledge is always accompanied by ignorance, and ignorance by knowledge; the only true knowledge is that by which one knows the Self by enquiring whose is the knowledge and ignorance. 

All is well. 

Ramana Maharishi/ Medicine of One  (n.d.) Surrendering To The Death Of The Mind- Teachings of Sri Ramana for the Layman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYk2Km4sfmI