Not Fully Responsible (Sleepy Samskaras Run Deep)

Not fully responsible, or NFR.

Close to NFG, but that would be by those quite blind-stricken by the true events of the evening; those with a short memory or rather a lack of depth in things of the heart and spirit.

Some, but not all of those, would also be the first in line to call me a rambler; long with the pen and short with the facts. And in response to those, sigh; I can only give the facts; and those through the personality I am cloaked with.

Yes, it was my decision to run the mountain trail, with its quail and rivulets and Blair Witch sensibilities. Running from the open woods to the wet shrouded blanket of quiet life under the canopy, to the radio tower with its oblique warnings and buzzing hydro wires running east and west down the mountain.

Yes, it was my decision to eat at double speed o'er the years; well resourced in what a healthy adult should eat all that time - still, I chose the dollops of butter and mayo and fatty bits from the steak in lieu of greens and crisp apples and sweet rich yams, full of the stuff my body needs.

Why then NFR? Because sleepy samskaras run deep. No matter the progress, all I have to do is sit in a business meeting or a concert and let the lids fall to half mast. The mind follows suit, and the ghosts drop their gauzed, gilded blankets around my shoulder, sit down with popcorn and watch their show.

In those situations it is usually desire for unity with a loved one, so strong my body literally contracts in its presence, only able to emit a kind of wail through the heart.

Today, it's not a mental but a physical tiredness that has set in; that's come up from the rich wet ground, impaled itself via the roots and rocks that gave a little pain as a hint; splashed up from the brown cloudy puddles; washed away by the rivulets both heard and felt, only to return on the next technical climb, jump, or pulse-raising move upward.

The pulse has settled now, down from 180 to 130 as, Radio tower behind me, I walk slowly back and forth, hoping the blood-sugar will kick in.

But before it can - or perhaps because it did - i am impaled with light from five points and pulled apart.

It simply Is in the heart. This is not the world of logic, geometry, dimensions and time. There's no starting point or ending point. It is simply there in the heart. Wording it here is like trying to catch your reflection in the wind; nonsensical and impossible. Still, there's some value felt in the heart, and so the description continues:

It explodes through the legs, carrying them deep into the ground where they wrap around roots and rocks and minerals' grace.

It explodes through the arms, winding them around the hydro towers and trees and my fingers are the wet and dripping pine connecting the rivulets up mountain with the scaled bulbous food sources sea-side

It launches my head on a braid of gold through the clouds, through powder and dark blues to the carpet of stars that shower down around the senses like buzzing flowers, rooting themselves in god's bookshelves on their way down to earth. And then like fireworks the senses themselves arc and depart, leaving long trails of light behind them; hearing and heard; seeing and the seen; tasting and the tasted; feeling and the felt; smelling and the smelt

Awareness begets its ten thousand children. Deep in the ground, or dancing with supernovas, or running with river rocks towards a saline economic system. Or walking arm-in arm with the rambler with his too many thoughts and too many words and with *that* recognition his contraction

into to the runner heading back into the woods, and the rivulets and mud and puddles and strange echoes; realizing how Not Fully Responsible is just a pointer, a taste to the One-ness. How can there be volition or responsibility where there is no 'I'?

Maybe it's just too many words rambled out, which are in fact the perfect amount of words, when their source is recognized

as no-thing.

Namaste.

Labmeister

Surprising, how it turned out.

Most of the time it would be circular script, end meets the beginning, differences blended together to offer a jumping off point that was really just the starting point in drag.

This time, however, things were amuck from the start.

The labmeister started by creating an environment that was just a blank slate FOR the environment. Awareness in a petri dish.

Into that, he dropped his erstwhile subject - me - in, but without most of the accouterments and appendages I was used to carrying into his real-life thought experiments.

Senses - limited to perspectiveless input and output.

Memory - extracted, not mine, just outside the petri dish.

In short, he dropped me, stripped of ME, into a timeless space to see what would happen.

The dump of the output that would have been committed to memory was sent to a system outside the lab dish, and ended up for the most part being pre-verbal stream of conciousness, although it attenuated quickly as there just wasn't that much to notice.

Still, the labmeister was interested in some findings, and after several minutes of detached observations, squeezed a few drops in.

...indignation - blue green and blood red algae diffused throughout the petri dish, shimmered, and dissolved agin. Monitor showed the colors

...rage - blood red storm boiled the petri dish down to a reduction of reduction. Monitor displayed images from a reptillain brain stem engulfed by but not taken over by anger

...happiness...sky blue with pink streaks across the horizon; monitor went into standby (without perspective, without qualification or memory, it just WAS without interference.

...love ... everything in the petri disk expanded and grew and dissolved even those boundaries and reached out and touched

Labmeister

Which is when the taint entered and everything just

broke.

Lilac Cathedral

So hot here, wet heat.

Part's internal - the controlled yo-yo of interval training, part of it is external - steam enveloping, relaxing, bringing up the core temp up bit by bit.

Close the eyes and mantra-up; thought recognition that established yogis are beyond hot and cold, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering. By that definition I am nowhere near established, but the mantra brings some fleeting relief.

Relief from what? I am the one who brought the exercise to the pulse; pulse in the body; body to the room where I now sit. I am the one who feels the desire of heated, steamed relief and relaxation even in the midst of a workout; I am the one who is sitting here, of my own volition. I WANT to be here. Human beings move towards pleasure and away from pain. There's a still-borne syllogism there. Even if fully articulated, it would fail the experience somehow because I am sitting in discomfort (pain and heat) for pleasure. Apparently, I want both.

Mantra is not strong enough here to take me to the place of no-pain; there are some rat-bastard demonoids that had happy-fun-time ravaging different levels of the gross-body the last two weeks, and they are having their last kick at the can before they can be expelled for good out of the system. They've fucked the equilibrium up, as has sleep and psychotropics and emotion and energy and the whole web, shimmering and sliding me in an only partly controlled free fall (more a free tumble) down the web to the end where I held on in rock climber's finger gripping grace and just managed to pull myself up and over.

So eyes are closed now, legs are dangling over the edge of silver web, and the mind's eye is open and I'm surrounded by a distanced white black screen

and now

floating down, tiny lilacs; one, two, then ...

walls of lilacs, and pillars in front of and holding up the walls. And great gothic arches sprouting windows and turrets and crosses and all of it Lilac.

i'm at the center now, standing and surrounded, the sitting me on the web in the steam room is somewhere connected but distant, it's just me and this Lilac cathedral

And the flowers extend and hold me now, and I am part of the castle, breathing in centuries and out eons, eyes exploding inward and outward; refuting physics in this tiny complete point that is everything because it is nothing

and that thought is whisked away because this is not a place for thought, just experience, or better yet just awareness playing.

A step up from awareness.

Manifestation between the causal and the subtle and the gross.

And it's flight that is delivered now, just above the walls and floors and spires and basements of the cathedral; everything Lilac, I am lilac, and I am being delivered it seems to the spire of spires where on toes and arms extended backwards I sing in ecstasy as

the steam rolls in

and I'm bounced to the web, off the web to the benched room where causal, subtle and gross gel into Me again.

puka.

is here, now.

No separation means...

...a surprisingly less-complicated life.

And that seems to be because wants, needs, desires fall into the separation category. When separation is seen to be illusory, it swallows the needs, desires and wants like neutered leatherback, folds back into the silver waters of awareness, and vanishes.

Some examples:

I listen to Badlands by Springsteen, and am taken to a core level of Holy Ghost revival meeting joyous Being listening to it. The desire comes to the surface of awareness, teeth shining, maw gaping. I should be doing music. I should be creating this kind of joy for myself and others. I have an ability that I should be harnessing. The beast is full out of the water now, I am thrashing my gear back and forth, but it is gobbling the heavy line like candied dental floss, eyes bulging and shining at me.

and then

No separation. I am not on this side and Bruce and my talent on the other side. We're all the same stuff, dancing on the surface with all of our needs, wants, desires, watching them pop up and dissolve again like a beautiful, effulgent circus game made up of a sheet of silver awareness.

There's no should. Just a realization that I can enjoy Bruce. Just enjoy Bruce.

Same thing with my need every night to have something to look forward to. Again, that suggests space, distance, separation. There is none.

I started playing with the idea of just showing up at home with no agenda every night, being fully present and seeing where it would take me.

Freedom.

namaste

God's Underlay

Happy and free, for the moment. Here's why: identifying as awareness.

to whit:

• I can only know externals through senses (touch, hearing, taste, sight) and thinking.
• All of these can be reduced to ideas.
• Something sees the ideas.
  
• Something that is NOT the ideas sees the ideas
• That, is the non-locatable awareness.
• Awareness contains me, I do not contain awareness.

Exercises to solidify this:

1. Read Berkeley many times to get the fact that nothing exists outside of experience
2. Use Greg Goode's pointer to identify where I think I am (above or below the waste - above. above or below the shoulders - above. Within the head - yes. Where abouts - a small marble shape behind the third eye. 'So you are a small marble shape object behind your eyes. That object is seen. Are you on the seen side or teh seeing side? The seeing side. And that brings you back to...non locatable awareness)

I finished reading Standing as Awareness last night. Working on Gladwell's Outliers, and the two have a common thread... people don't progress succesfully in isolation from A to Z. They need effort, talent, gumption, drive etc, but they also need context. Two acorns of equal genetic predisposition dropped in fertile soil and clay-sand-hell respectively will have two very different outcomes.

I was lucky enough to get to this point - getting pointers from Greg that turned a light on - due to MY context, which has had all kinds of ups and downs over the years.

If I hadn't grown up where I did, I wouldn't have put so much weight in realtionships.
If I hadn't put so much weight in relationships, I wouldn't have been so wounded.
If I wasn't so wounded, I wouldn't have looked for the unchanging.

So here I am, having been covered with a soft blanket of lightness from Greg's pointers. And whenever, WHATever comes up, i can look beneath, pull the carpet up, and look for the underlay, which is what I am. Awareness from which things arise. I don't contain awareness, I AM awareness.

namaste

Separation Papers

My concept of death has passed through many topical gates of inquiry; past the millstone of "why"; passed the emotional moors of nihilism, travelled to and from (or through) the barren yet exhausting existentialist wastelands. Got snowblind in those, almost lost my way, on the way to finding it.

So I've matured in my concept of death somewhat.

Now, when I look at it, and this is in the light of several deaths in my life - grandparents, friends, friends of friends - natural, premature, or otherwise - now when I look at it the closest feeling I can associate it with is a separation profound and unbreakable.

My sense is that those who have passed enter into an impersonal state, where they can 'see' or 'be' with family, friends, their past - but are not attached the way to it the way they were prior to death. That, plus an absolute barrier where communication - at least in the way we think of it - cannot take place. I believe that almost all rules in life can be broken, often need to be broken, but this one - here's a way to think of it - it does not seem relative. It seems absolute. The ultimate separation papers, from who you were to what you now are.

And the sense that it is not nearly as hard for those who have passed as it is for those who are left behind.

And that is the koan that I'm wrestling with right now on some level. As well as what happens in deep sleep, and the answer there that confirms awareness as non-corporeal.

I've seen through my spiritual travels and travails that happiness is wed to sadness; anger to joy; suffering to pleasure; in the world of not-two, they are two sides of the same coin.

What then, with this feeling, this vague abstract that paints death as profoundly one-sided?