Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thanks to the Fallen
And in that moment, I died to myself.
The sacrifice that had been made for me a half a world away overcame me;
the ocean of tears as metaphor dissolved into that which it pointed to
and I was floating in salt
Sky flamed turquoise and blues and ripe indigos
I rose from the crest, a singular salted crucifix
Wanting the sky
Needing the earth
Split north to south east to west
I rained
Poisoining and pleasuring the soil
*that* is how you find me here
Jade eyes windowing you from
this garden to
poppy fields to
halls
to
dark brilliance to
sleep
The sacrifice that had been made for me a half a world away overcame me;
the ocean of tears as metaphor dissolved into that which it pointed to
and I was floating in salt
Sky flamed turquoise and blues and ripe indigos
I rose from the crest, a singular salted crucifix
Wanting the sky
Needing the earth
Split north to south east to west
I rained
Poisoining and pleasuring the soil
*that* is how you find me here
Jade eyes windowing you from
this garden to
poppy fields to
halls
to
dark brilliance to
sleep
Hands of Water
Difficult emotions - and by emotions I am clustering together the physical, mental and emotional package - are tricky little bastards.
Let's take anxiety.
Physically - it's a constant feeling of nervous electricity lighting up the skin, particularly localized as a shroud around the head and shoulders, but present throughout the whole body.
Mentally - it's all the thoughts that attach themselves, from observations to to analysis to the runaway shitwagon the monkey sits on, chattering away as if he will make one iota of difference in the end.
Emotionally - feeling-thought-> emotion. Uptight I'm feeling this way. Tired of feeling this way. Sad and frustrated at feeling this way.
On paper, deconstructing it, it seems so clear and easy. Not to resolve, but to understand at least.
Living it is another matter.
Here's the thing - it's like the huge insight social studies have come up with in the last 50 years that I can't find to quote - you can't observe and deconstruct culture from a first person perspective. Similarly, you can't see and deconstruct difficult emotions from a first person perspective.
Let's take anxiety.
In interpersonal interactions, you feel electrically charged, uptight, scared and irritable at everything. Work, relationships, you name it. From a first person perspective you've got thoughts, the monkey on the shitwagon. If you can get beyond that, you might see symptoms of the anxiety - depression, OCD, emotions. And you might deal effectively with one or all of these. But these are not root cause, they are symptoms of the problem. The actual problem is anxiety - this running on of the autonomic nervous system, intermeshed with emotions and thoughts.
So you can spend weeks or years working on the emotions or thoughts, when it's the underlying condition of anxiety that needed to be treated all this time.
In the case of a relationship, it can be like trying to save a waterlogged plant with hands made of water. You're trying your best to work it, but until you realize what your hands are made of, what they're coming from, not going to do much good.
Let's take anxiety.
Physically - it's a constant feeling of nervous electricity lighting up the skin, particularly localized as a shroud around the head and shoulders, but present throughout the whole body.
Mentally - it's all the thoughts that attach themselves, from observations to to analysis to the runaway shitwagon the monkey sits on, chattering away as if he will make one iota of difference in the end.
Emotionally - feeling-thought-> emotion. Uptight I'm feeling this way. Tired of feeling this way. Sad and frustrated at feeling this way.
On paper, deconstructing it, it seems so clear and easy. Not to resolve, but to understand at least.
Living it is another matter.
Here's the thing - it's like the huge insight social studies have come up with in the last 50 years that I can't find to quote - you can't observe and deconstruct culture from a first person perspective. Similarly, you can't see and deconstruct difficult emotions from a first person perspective.
Let's take anxiety.
In interpersonal interactions, you feel electrically charged, uptight, scared and irritable at everything. Work, relationships, you name it. From a first person perspective you've got thoughts, the monkey on the shitwagon. If you can get beyond that, you might see symptoms of the anxiety - depression, OCD, emotions. And you might deal effectively with one or all of these. But these are not root cause, they are symptoms of the problem. The actual problem is anxiety - this running on of the autonomic nervous system, intermeshed with emotions and thoughts.
So you can spend weeks or years working on the emotions or thoughts, when it's the underlying condition of anxiety that needed to be treated all this time.
In the case of a relationship, it can be like trying to save a waterlogged plant with hands made of water. You're trying your best to work it, but until you realize what your hands are made of, what they're coming from, not going to do much good.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
My New Super Power Belt
Nobody knows it yet, but my new belt has given me superpowers.
Clearly I didn't recognize its latent abilities, or I surely wouldn't have picked it up yesterday. I mean, why would I want to pick something up that could help me breakthrough, to succeed?
Swiss Army belt made in China. That should have been my first clue. Either another globalization-spawned absurdity or thinly veiled code that could be read by the initiate. Clearly my subconscious said Fuck Occam's razor and zoomed in on the latter. Clearly, there was something magical here.
Purchase was through my usual (cloud-of-unknowing)-1: the slightly daft and inbred second cousin to the real cloud of unknowing: uncertainty sired from doubt instead of not-knowing.
Everything is complicated, see, when the modern day gatherer goes out to buy clothes. Made infintessimally more complicated when there is an other involved in the process. By myself, I can walk arm and arm with the ghosts of connections that spider out from me into the Kosmos: the reason I need clothes, symbols upon symbols to boost my non-existant self-image. But when the other is involved, it's a mirror for the ghosts. Some of them show their faces in the mirrors reflection of reflection, some of them don't. That makes complication**2. Or Self birthing self&self that are in apparent contraindication of each other.
Regardless, it was purchased and now sits proudly holding BOB in, and indicating that it's ostensible utilitarian function was masking far greater things.
38 was the perfect size, it turns out, to wrap around the koan I've been birthing the last 32 years. Crack open the cerebellum and pull out the paper doll chain, and have a look at the bloody and glorious miasma within. Ego first of all, solid to the eye, but on closer examination a febrible and transluscent mirage waiting to dissolve into ID who flops back and forth with shiny coal eyes that have distance without depth to the last doll cradling the large egg that has grown over the last three decades. And that egg has been
the surfaceless oval burping up paroxysm of dark light
the bridge between laughter and madness; glory and emesis
this and that
But the belt fits perfectly. Hole by hole I've been tightening this morning until the crack appeared, and the illusion started to dissolve:
My darkest enemy, who puts soporifico and relationship issues and motivation problems on the shelf like a child's tea-party hand towels, is made up of the stuff that I've dbeen trying to use to get into it.
Release the belt and it is sucked up inside again. But I have seen this morning:
OCD is the koan.
And my friend from the alps via the Silk Road has the power to unravel it.
Hsah and Namaste
Clearly I didn't recognize its latent abilities, or I surely wouldn't have picked it up yesterday. I mean, why would I want to pick something up that could help me breakthrough, to succeed?
Swiss Army belt made in China. That should have been my first clue. Either another globalization-spawned absurdity or thinly veiled code that could be read by the initiate. Clearly my subconscious said Fuck Occam's razor and zoomed in on the latter. Clearly, there was something magical here.
Purchase was through my usual (cloud-of-unknowing)-1: the slightly daft and inbred second cousin to the real cloud of unknowing: uncertainty sired from doubt instead of not-knowing.
Everything is complicated, see, when the modern day gatherer goes out to buy clothes. Made infintessimally more complicated when there is an other involved in the process. By myself, I can walk arm and arm with the ghosts of connections that spider out from me into the Kosmos: the reason I need clothes, symbols upon symbols to boost my non-existant self-image. But when the other is involved, it's a mirror for the ghosts. Some of them show their faces in the mirrors reflection of reflection, some of them don't. That makes complication**2. Or Self birthing self&self that are in apparent contraindication of each other.
Regardless, it was purchased and now sits proudly holding BOB in, and indicating that it's ostensible utilitarian function was masking far greater things.
38 was the perfect size, it turns out, to wrap around the koan I've been birthing the last 32 years. Crack open the cerebellum and pull out the paper doll chain, and have a look at the bloody and glorious miasma within. Ego first of all, solid to the eye, but on closer examination a febrible and transluscent mirage waiting to dissolve into ID who flops back and forth with shiny coal eyes that have distance without depth to the last doll cradling the large egg that has grown over the last three decades. And that egg has been
the surfaceless oval burping up paroxysm of dark light
the bridge between laughter and madness; glory and emesis
this and that
But the belt fits perfectly. Hole by hole I've been tightening this morning until the crack appeared, and the illusion started to dissolve:
My darkest enemy, who puts soporifico and relationship issues and motivation problems on the shelf like a child's tea-party hand towels, is made up of the stuff that I've dbeen trying to use to get into it.
Release the belt and it is sucked up inside again. But I have seen this morning:
OCD is the koan.
And my friend from the alps via the Silk Road has the power to unravel it.
Hsah and Namaste
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Nothing Personal
Nothing personal.
And maybe that's the problem. There's a circle of people around me, but I dont' *know* any of them. Even with my best placed efforts, the conversation will be surface and slippery. I'm contracting.
So I escape here, where I can write and reflect and refract some of the tension back to the system behind the screen that captures and loads this up to the noosphere.
And then the answer slaps me in the face.
The only problem, here, is me.
And on observation, that 'me' doesn't exist.
There is just choiceless awareness.
Disarmed with that, I will go back and see where I float to.
And maybe that's the problem. There's a circle of people around me, but I dont' *know* any of them. Even with my best placed efforts, the conversation will be surface and slippery. I'm contracting.
So I escape here, where I can write and reflect and refract some of the tension back to the system behind the screen that captures and loads this up to the noosphere.
And then the answer slaps me in the face.
The only problem, here, is me.
And on observation, that 'me' doesn't exist.
There is just choiceless awareness.
Disarmed with that, I will go back and see where I float to.
Suffering for Suffering's Sake
There's a spiritual line I like that says you can be in pain but not suffer. And it makes sense: observing the pain, having some kind of detachment from it, you can acknowledge it but not be wed to it. Your sore throat or strained muscle or virus or cancer can kick up a helluva shitstorm, but that doesn't mean you have to be *owned* by the pain.
But there's another maxim that came to mind today in witnessing a friend's suffering and reading about Vicki Woodyard's path through this life, and that is:
Sometimes suffering *is*, just for suffering's sake.
When you are toppled of the pure precipice of idealized non-dual space (which is about as pure as washing up with a bar of soap made of of dog shit), it's easy to pontificate that everything is perfect just the way it is.
But when somebody's filthy hands pull you off that precipice and sit you in front of a tv to watch the horror unfolding 24-7; when rape and death and even the simple untimely death of a family pet parade in their maudlin glory through your life, the precipice is seen, perhaps for the first time, as what it actually is: a constructed place of artificial glory. Second cousin to Peter Popoff's glittery spiritual chattel being advertised to the lonely up late watching TV because sleep won't come and the bottle's empty and there's terror at the door waiting to be let in when they go get the morning paper.
Sometimes suffering is suffering for suffering's sake. This is where the shit lives. The unexplainable, the unreedmable, the awful things in life that simply cannot be touched.
And yet thissuffering creates the same gordian knot that can pull one out of the morass.
For with surrender - against everyone's advice, in the face of horror; against all common sense - to truly let go and be - there is the light before the light; touch before touch; unity before unity: the nameless, faceless, lightless Mary and Buddha and Christ excoriating the emotional entrails and leaving nothing but light.
And it is that light which dissolves the precipice where you hung out to begin with;
And shines on the new ones being built as quickly as the pain subsides.
Namaste
But there's another maxim that came to mind today in witnessing a friend's suffering and reading about Vicki Woodyard's path through this life, and that is:
Sometimes suffering *is*, just for suffering's sake.
When you are toppled of the pure precipice of idealized non-dual space (which is about as pure as washing up with a bar of soap made of of dog shit), it's easy to pontificate that everything is perfect just the way it is.
But when somebody's filthy hands pull you off that precipice and sit you in front of a tv to watch the horror unfolding 24-7; when rape and death and even the simple untimely death of a family pet parade in their maudlin glory through your life, the precipice is seen, perhaps for the first time, as what it actually is: a constructed place of artificial glory. Second cousin to Peter Popoff's glittery spiritual chattel being advertised to the lonely up late watching TV because sleep won't come and the bottle's empty and there's terror at the door waiting to be let in when they go get the morning paper.
Sometimes suffering is suffering for suffering's sake. This is where the shit lives. The unexplainable, the unreedmable, the awful things in life that simply cannot be touched.
And yet thissuffering creates the same gordian knot that can pull one out of the morass.
For with surrender - against everyone's advice, in the face of horror; against all common sense - to truly let go and be - there is the light before the light; touch before touch; unity before unity: the nameless, faceless, lightless Mary and Buddha and Christ excoriating the emotional entrails and leaving nothing but light.
And it is that light which dissolves the precipice where you hung out to begin with;
And shines on the new ones being built as quickly as the pain subsides.
Namaste
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Picture of the *least* compelling pixel on my dual monitor display
Monday, September 20, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Hi, can I have a side of redundancy with my redundancy? #redundant #ironicrepetitonofredundant
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Time and Distance in Relationships
What is looking out of these eyes does not feel old; it feels as if it's getting younger, although in reality it's never changing.
It's what is looking at the body as the wrinkles appear and the belly-over-belt gets larger and the aches and pains of middle-age creep up.
It's what sees the world without contraction, because it is the world.
It's what notices the contractions as they appear:
As I pull back from intimacy
how could I? this would suggest two, and it is all not-two
As intimacy pulls back from me
there is no me. How can something pull back from what does not exist?
Still, let's assume that the contraction exists, that the relative playground is real, the place I have to live and work and connect and ...
As I contract into the relative world, I become identified with the
thoughts
feelings
But this identification with is a mistaken perception. For in the amnesia of contraction I forget that I am *not* the thoughts and the feelings but that which is aware of them.
I feel like I am the flurry of electricity under the sternum. From clear seeing, this is true. I am that which is aware of the flurry; there is no separation between the flurry and that which is aware of it. But from contraction's myopia, I simply am the flurry, a contained, separate, freefloating existentialist nightmare. A ball in the universe, forever frozen and alienated from everything around me.
When I'm there, the connection with friends is tight and regimented. I feel the pain of separation and want to salve it, which leads me to what I *could* do outside of the now. This makes the separation more pronounced, eye contact stutters, and I contract more.
I tangle in on the lines coming from the heart; confused, manic, trying to connect to the friend, to the other.
And with each meeting of each friend the problem compounds and the separation is more intense.
What then, of the option?
Soak in the uncertainty and purity of living, timeless awareness.
It's what is looking at the body as the wrinkles appear and the belly-over-belt gets larger and the aches and pains of middle-age creep up.
It's what sees the world without contraction, because it is the world.
It's what notices the contractions as they appear:
As I pull back from intimacy
how could I? this would suggest two, and it is all not-two
As intimacy pulls back from me
there is no me. How can something pull back from what does not exist?
Still, let's assume that the contraction exists, that the relative playground is real, the place I have to live and work and connect and ...
As I contract into the relative world, I become identified with the
thoughts
feelings
But this identification with is a mistaken perception. For in the amnesia of contraction I forget that I am *not* the thoughts and the feelings but that which is aware of them.
I feel like I am the flurry of electricity under the sternum. From clear seeing, this is true. I am that which is aware of the flurry; there is no separation between the flurry and that which is aware of it. But from contraction's myopia, I simply am the flurry, a contained, separate, freefloating existentialist nightmare. A ball in the universe, forever frozen and alienated from everything around me.
When I'm there, the connection with friends is tight and regimented. I feel the pain of separation and want to salve it, which leads me to what I *could* do outside of the now. This makes the separation more pronounced, eye contact stutters, and I contract more.
I tangle in on the lines coming from the heart; confused, manic, trying to connect to the friend, to the other.
And with each meeting of each friend the problem compounds and the separation is more intense.
What then, of the option?
Soak in the uncertainty and purity of living, timeless awareness.
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