Hi everyone

What comes first… I think both can be true and maybe why things like depression can become such a trap to fall into – feeling depressed about being depressed – feeling feeding being, being feeding feeling…

I’ve heard it said that we swim in the ocean of mind and that perhaps our notion of consciousness is too narrow. The thought being that eyes, ears, skin, heart, lungs… all have a kind of consciousness, as would plants and animals, all adding input to the ALL.
Just imagining all the cells and microbes that make up this body I think of as Peter, each cell with its own kind of consciousness… Would the cells feel themselves as part of the whole? As below so above, the drop of water contains the ocean.

Pondering the notion of emptiness, I recalled taking an Art class for the intimidated. On the first day were given a blank white canvas and asked to draw a bowl of fruit. Everyone stared at the blank canvas like a dear in headlights, afraid to put the first mark on the canvas. The blank canvas held all possibilities while drawing on it would limit those possibilities. Each act a act of creation and destruction, an affirmation, and a negation… everyone hesitated, afraid of making the wrong choice.
Of course, the joke was on us as the canvas nature never changes, even when covered its is always blank, never loosing any of its possibilities. Why do we assume the white canvas is itself empty? Why wouldn’t a red canvas also be blank? Why do we trust the reasoning that making a mark, naming something, changes the nature of what is marked what is named?

I wonder if I really let my Self really ‘Know’, what might change. I hesitate like a dear in headlights…

Interesting observation Roberta – when one points to oneself, we usually point to the heart area.
Campbell suggested that one of the ways to look at the chakras (western mind) was psychologically, where the first level was Id, second the will to pleasure, third the will to power, fourth Individuation, fifth the will to power directed inward to ‘master’ one Self, sixth the will to pleasure turned inwards to a realization of love of others as our Self (subject and object still separate), and seven Unity, no subject no object (no nameing’s), all extinguished in the ‘light/fire”.

Jung observed that the second half of life is the time to seek out an integrated Self, letting go of the base drives and find our way to the heart chakra and relationship with the capital s Self. Jung suggesting that any higher-level experiences reinforcing the heart chakra but not meant to ‘sit’ in, except for the few who would devote their lives to it. Jung felt that in general the western ‘Mind’ was not capable of the discipline required to let go of our attachment to our notion of mind, logic, reason…

I sometimes wonder if the monk or hermit lifestyle would work for me, then I think of the rules and the isolation and suspect maybe not so much. I’m ok with that, the heart chakra as a space to be feels doable to me.

You might enjoy Richard Wagamese’s meditation of being in ones body
“When I allow myself to feel my body, when I can inhabit it and allow myself to close off the world beyond my flesh. I become who I am – energy and spirit. I am not my mind. I am not my brain. I am stardust, comets, nebulae and galaxies. I am trees and wind and stone. I am space. I am emptiness and wholeness at the same time. That is when my body sings to me, a glorious ancient song redolent with mystery seeking to remain mystery. Connecting to it, living with it, becoming it even for a moment, I am healed and made more.“

Hi Tilmar

I like the virilization technique which doesn’t sound weird to me… all the best people have a little weird 🙂

Helcat, One of the things I apricate about eastern thought like the Toa Te Ching is that its a reminder not to hold on to words to tightly. Like a good poem one should give the words some space to breath.  I also apricate the emphases on experience rather then believing.  The latter is when, I think, we tend to mistake the words we use for the things that the words can only point to. The word tree is not a tree.

Interestingly thier is a old Christian practice – Apophatic theology – which also uses negation (emptiness?) as a path to affirmation.  Apophatic was a practice of unsaying anything one said especially when what is being talked about is Transcendent.  (There are those that argue that negation is nihilistic though that is a trap one could fall into if one mistakes the map for the territory)

In the Toa Te Ching – The name that can be named is not the eternal Name – The Nameless is the Source of Heaven and Earth – the named is the Mother of the Ten thousand Things.  In the Geneses Garden story Adam is given the task of naming (the first scientist?) . I picture Adam excitedly telling G_d about his day naming this and that as if he discovered that which he named and G_d smiling to her self. Imagine if instead G_d becoming upset yelling at Adam that he broke creation by getting a name wrong.  Yet that is what we often do to one another.

The word/name tree is not the eternal Tree, naming, measuring, judging creates the Ten thousand things while the Nameless is the Source (of experience?)  Watts associated this notion with the fact that we tend not to notice the background of the object even though we can’t discern the object without the background. To name the Horse a horse Adam needed to separate the suchness that is Horse from the background of which we are apart of. Once named we forget about the background and consider the horse as separate from other things named including ourselves.  Through the task of naming duality arises, I am this not that. I am the name I give myself  separate from the eternal Nameless (emptiness). 

We can’t experience motion without relationship with other objects to measure against. (The circle without circumference and center is everywhere – we are each the “emptiness that makes the wheel work”??? – Motion creates Life). We can’t ‘see’ the object without its relationship, context, from the background. The error we make is assuming that this relationship to our experience means separateness. Believing we are separate, we suffer. Confronting the notion of duality though negation the background (emptiness – as we do not ‘see’ it just as we do not see light only what the light illuminates) becomes the Source it is rather then the naming of the object illuminated that we ‘pull’ out of It . The naming being a kind of game we get to play, the Ten Thousand things after all, work for us.  We are not brought into the ‘world‘, implying separate from it, but emerge out of IT.

🙂 Whose wired now. 🙂

On a practical level – perhaps?  I’ve spent a lot of time working on undoing the my attachment to identity, to naming. Undoing the message that you are your tribe, you are your job, you are your feelings, your thinking… you are a ‘identity’…. (Nothing like a perceived threat to a notion of identity to bring out the ego protector.)  I suspect with the current attachment to words, mistaking the map for the territory, that we have made the transition through the second half of life, where we are to let go of such things, more difficult. My thought is that maybe the language of negation (emptiness) is the ‘slap’ needed to break us out of that habit?

I think your right Brandy

Came across the following the other day: In order to concentrate, it is necessary to have attained a certain degree of freedom and detachment. In order to meditate, one must place oneself within the light from above. And in order to experience contemplation, it is necessary to become one with this light. Meditation is therefore the honest and courageous effort of the ‘lower self’ to think together with the ‘higher Self’ in divine light. Contemplation follows in the union of the thinker with reality where one does not arrive at a ‘conclusion’ but a experience of union – Reality. – Hermeticism Unknown friend

Helcat –  Such stories makes one wonder. From a point of view of non-duality the reality of each breath is a dying and rebirth. I wonder about the point, (still point?) of transition where one is neither dead or alive? Or, non-duality thier is no dead or alive just the point of which we have no language (name for) for? What is the name for that which is both ‘up and down’, ‘in and out’,  past and future’….  – Reality, Tao, G_d, Brahman ????

To be candid the notion that emptiness that isn’t empty sometimes feels like play with language to me. Then perhaps the intention is a mental slap to  break our habit of thinking and being? As Brandy and Tee pointed to the intention seems to be a experience of ‘knowing’ -unity –  rather then knowing.

A thought occurred to me last night as I was thinking about the conversation on hope and hopelessness. That it was the notion of hope and not the notion of “waiting without love, for love would be for of the wrong thing” that drew our attention . I suspect each of us has experience of love of the wrong thing, being disappointed in love. Still to wait with out love leading to a experience of unity – Love – is difficult to grasp.  Perhaps its similar to emptiness that isn’t empty.. as Eliot says its all in the stillness of waiting, the still point. Emptiness, stillness, waiting…. the pause between the notes.

Coming back to earth 🙂 I return to Richard Wagamese
“In this stillness, I am the trees alive with singing. I am the sky everywhere at once. I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations. I am the light everywhere descending. I am my heart evoking drum song. I am my spirit rising. In the smell of theses sacred medicines burning. I am my prayers and my meditation, and I am time captured fully in this now. I am a traveler on a sacred journey through this one shinning day”

Me: What is the point of prayer and mediation?
Grandmother: To Bring you closer to the Great Mystery.
Me: So I can understand it?
Grandmother: No, so you can participate in it.
– Richard Wagamese – Embers

I think its safe to say that hope is a skill requiring discernment – mindfulness. I wonder if I suffered from chronic physical pain what my relationship to hope might be.  The word courage pops into mind, as it takes a kind of courage to hope skillfully. I admire your courage Tee.

Viktor Frankl notion of hope is tied to the notion of meaning rather then to specific outcomes.    “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Frankl –  I imaging that space as a stillness waiting, the pause between the notes that creates music, as hope, teh space of hope to choose, hopefully courageously, wisely? That their exists a space of choosing and that space is hope or can be?

No dialog on hope is complete without addressing Pandora’s Box paradox, a box that contained all the evils of the World, A box that also contained hope. Begging the question is hope to evil?  Only in the story hope was not released with the other evils. Does  this mean Life is suffering as thier is no hope, suffering without hope, that we suffer when hope is locked away? Their is a thought that hope was kept in the box in order to separate it from the evils and so transform it. Hope attached to the evils’ being hope for the wrong things while by itself, in its ‘true’ formless form, is the space of choosing, reframing, meaning…

For myself I hold such thoughts – things – lightly.

Tee

I resonate with that. One breath I’m connected and ‘know’ and the next not so much.

In those moments when I struggle I remind myself of TS Eliot’s words

“I ask my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

(Sometimes the Lords Prayer which can be a ‘centering prayer’ when G_d isn’t projected outward, as it establishing ones place were we are both ‘smaller then small AND bigger then big’  in every moment)

I note that Stillness and waiting is a important notion in re-connecting to that ‘knowing’ of Self in the path of meditation and or ‘contemplation and action’ –  A kind of a ‘Wu Wei’ – the creating of space for the happening to happen…

Always found those story’s of instant enlightenment fun and wondered how often or if those who experienced that needed to experience that moment over and over again – perhaps till the realization that the present moment isn’t a slice of time or space. 🙂

Hi Brandy

Memory is a trickster so its not something I can be certain of. At the time that experience and others engendered questions more then answers not that I was fully mindful of that. At the age when Life happens I think such questions are filed away and it is only in hindsight that I sense that the questions were… being worked on.  Having often fallen into the trap of indifference while trying to convince myself it was healthy detachment, I wonder about that period of my life.

Hi Tee

Thanks for the Youtube recommendation. Intriguing thought that  ‘what’ observes the parts is the true self

Hi Brandy, I’ve often wonder if perhaps if what I experienced was a healthy detachment or a dissociation to protect myself. Could both be true at the same time?

I was reading about the Enneagram. Its suggests that you can’t change the type that you are. The task is to be mindful of your type so one might better spot its traps and gifts. A odd point they made was that though you can’t change your type it wasn’t the natural type you were born with. At some point something confronts our world view which causes us to compensate our natural type to our survival type. (Suggesting that Type can change however it seems when our blank slate of our natural being is written on its a WORM type programing – Wright Once, Read Many.) Since posting that memory I can’t help but think that moment was more impactful then I have considered. Seems detachment is the superpower of my Type  but it is also its kryptonite, more comfortable as a observer  then someone that engages in life and a hard lesson that indifference likes to disguise itself as detachment.

Enjoyed your post Tee.  Perhaps it comes down to noticing when we have emotions and when our emotions have us. I might also argue that like our emotions the ‘ego’ has a important role to play in becoming. (also need to notice when our ego has us.) Seems we are more then the sum of our parts.

Read somewhere that the SELF is a circle without circumference which center is everywhere – each person, small s self (each thing?), is the center of the circle without circumference, the SELF – (G_d, Brahman-Atman…) When we look for the self we do not find it because were It only imagining ourselves separate from It.  (Allan Watts like to joke the the Self liked to forget that it was IT so that it could delight It Self when It remembered… or something like that)

To love our neighbor as ourselves isn’t then a reflection of how we love ourselves, or not only that, but that our neighbor is also It and so also our Self.  Begs the question what is Mind? LOL

I don’t think its a stretch. What your describing sounds a lot like repression which for sure trigger anxiety attacks. Not surprising a some part of you knows whey a larger part of you does not want to know – blocking flow – experienced heart palpitations and all the stuff assoicated with that.

My untrained guess is that the unconscious issue that you would prefer not to make conscious is something to do with the notion of death.  If so facing your fear and concept of death,  making that conscious should help reduce the number and or  intensity of future anxiety attacks.