Simple vs. Complicated

The direct path of non-duality rings through and true to me; but some questions peppered me yesterday when I was reading a lucid and thorough book of Buddha dharma and maps of the states of consciousness.

Specifically, there is something in me that averts or contracts when presented with the complicated and wants to settle in the simple.

I get it when I'm reading books - I want the story but am frustrated with having to either skip by the names and their labeled relationships to others (too much to remember) or stop and absorb them, which seems to take to long and leads me to a feeling of frustrated knots.

I get it when reading technical-ish papers that refer back x pages to a diagram to make a point (ok, maybe that's just frustration with poor readability).

And yes, when it comes to Buddha dharma. So much to ingest! So many details! So much description! And yet so valid, tested and true. And yet, when I read it, I contract away from it.

And then there is non-dual inquiry, which really all boils down to a couple of questions:

(a) How many? (are you separate from...)
(b) If a is >1, investigate
(c) Repeat until a is not-two.

Even with the problem of Buddha dharma and my contraction, I can apply non-dual inquiry. Do I feel separated from the dharma? Why? Investigate.

And at the end of the investigation, I might engage in something I was never separated from in the first place. Or not. Or both. Or neither. In any case, I will be where I was at the start of the investigation, just less occluded.

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?

Alone together, Into the Sun

From May, 2007

The backdrop.

An existentialist, for whom all points back to the one as opposed to the One. Everything points back to self, and the bright lights of the intellect clearly articulate the borders, the end point. Anything beyond is not worthy of attention, could only be the result of an overactive imagination or the failure to see Reason.

The narcissist, who simply lays claim to the existentialist's illumination as another shimmering piece of chattel, more of the inventory that can be used in the supply and demand of their need's needs.

Picture it.

Endless black, God's inkwell. This time, from nothing, two - the Narcissist and the Existentialist, a mere speck but growing larger. They pass the vantage point and we have a clear view of the two in their bubble, looking through each other with indifference. Things change with light. Faint and diffused at first, silk mesh across the inkwell, blue ice to white heat
to saffron fire.

The Existentialist notices the heat first - the Narcissist his discomfort - as the mercury climbs. First boundary gone as the bubble contorts and dissolves as the sheet of fire grows beyond imagination.

Fear bursts the next boundary unconsciously, as they embrace in the face of the known-unknown. Narcissist's wings blaze around the Existentialist, and for one glorious, naked moment before conflagration, the final boundaries are transcended, four eyes become two eyes; and I-I swallows the sun whole.