Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself-Part 3

Part 4 of this talk is available on YouTube.  These videos by Alan Watts are profoundly mind-opening.

Unglued

Unglued is an apt term, and often, a good thing.

I came unglued during some drama with my family yesterday. My upset-button got pushed, not by my family, but by my believed thoughts. 

Un-gluing is painful, like birth pangs, the birth of openness, the birth of nothingness, the void.

My self-image was threatened and a cascade of protective measures shot into action in the form of blaming, accusing, projecting, shouting, arguing. Protecting what? Protecting the cherished idea in the head of who I am. Protecting the image in the mind's mirror.

Unglued, pulled apart, taken off the pedestal in my own mind. Who do I think I am?

Today there's some fasting, some thought fasting. There's a part of me that is sick-unto-death-of-thoughts-about-me. 

Those me-thoughts clunk themselves out, self-reflection is an old habit, but at least I'm a bit unglued from the insanity in my head.

And I've apologized to my family, both in spoken and written words, and my apology is real, and I wish to make repairs and amends however I can, and life goes on.  And I hope the thought-structures of the imagined egoic identity become more unglued in the usual bumps and bruises of daily living.

Let all the bombs be inside of me not outside of me and let them blow away delusion.

~

Gratitude for photo: http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/10/

The Claiming Reflex

Watching satsangs with Paul Hedderman on ustream and reading the wonderful wealth of communications here on the internet, there is a noticing of something that has previously been unnoticed.

At lightning speed, there is an automatic claiming mechanism for feelings and thoughts that arise.  The possessive personal pronoun "my" is inserted into every arising, and this creates the illusion of egoic identity.  The feeling of anger arises and it is immediately clutched onto with the possessive identification of the thought "I am angry."  It seems too obvious to question that this anger, misery, excitement, whatever, is happening to "me."

Looking closely reveals that the "my" is tacked on after the thought or feeling arises.  It's not really "my" thought or feeling, it's just thoughts and feelings.  It's unbelievable what a difference there is between "I am miserable" and "sensations of misery are present here."  Without the automatic, unconscious ownership of mind stuff, it becomes quite benign.

The ownership reflex happens so quickly here that it can't be stopped - but that is actually not a problem. What is so astonishing is the simple seeing of this whole process!  Now that the seeing is happening, it is simple, effortless, and unstoppable.  The ownership or claiming reflex doesn't even need to be stopped-- because in just seeing this process occurring as it occurs- the gig is up! For example, as I'm typing these words, the claiming-reflex may come up. What this looks like in this instant is  maybe the ego wanting to claim this note as having something interesting to say....so, okay claiming reflex--- claim away- churn up the usual brew of guilty pride and painful doubt- go right ahead and have a party! It's not a problem, it's just a magic trick, a sleight of hand where the grasping reflex of ownership applied to thoughts and feelings creates the illusion of a personal entity.  Watch the whole spectacle- and remain unfooled by it.

Ramana Maharshi said if you are standing on a train there is no point in carrying your luggage on your head. Put your luggage down and let the train carry the load, for the train is carrying the luggage whether you set it down or burden yourself with carrying it. In claiming to carry the luggage myself I may feel very important as an exhausted and dutiful burden-carrier (my whole personal history, etc.).  I may love making myself miserable by carrying all this mind-stuff. But the fact is that the train-- life- is really carrying what is.

Carrying the luggage is to clamp onto every thought and feeling and experience as more evidence of "me."  Putting the luggage down is to see that there is no "my" story- there are only stories- arisings and passings in awareness.  Even when that automatic claw machine of possessiveness claims this experience as "mine", it can be seen for what it is (i.e. as not mine, not evidence of a personal entity), and no longer cause distress.  The neuroses, the conditioned patterns of mind, the reactivity, are still here, but they are no longer a huge burden called "me and my life"- they are just part of the dance, and "I" am no longer possessed by them...

~

Gratitude to Paul Hedderman, satsang can be watched at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9143973

Volumes of silence

A few weeks ago I came across this photo of a 12 month old boy being prepared for burial in 2001 after he died of dehydration in a refugee camp. Looking at the image there is horror at this baby's untimely death, mixed with a sense of profound wonder at the beauty of his peaceful countenance. There is such palpable love and reverence in the many hands carefully preparing this child for burial. I post this photo because it continues to speak volumes of silence within me.

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It's been a chaotic few weeks with tons of stuff happening, and I ask myself if I have an image or expectation of how I'm supposed to weather these stormy seas (hospital and ER visits with Chris, an intoxicated person threatening one of my children, a loved one coping with dementia, and many other experiences)- and the answer is "yes!"- I absolutely have an image of how I'm supposed to weather life's storms. I'm supposed to be unflappable, serene, wise, a cross between Eckhart Tolle and Mother Teresa- NOT!  What a strait-jacket it is to have all these images of how I'm supposed to be, and then the secret internal-editor busily deleting all feelings that don't jive with the worshiped image of "how I'm supposed to be."

It's exhausting pretending to be someone I'm not.

And yet the pretending becomes a habit with a life of its own.

The flower doesn't control its reactions or strive to be peaceful, it just is itself.  It doesn't have a me. It doesn't need to have a me to be fully itself.  

I wonder if people also don't need a me to be fully themselves.  Even though I think I have a me, maybe there is in fact no me here typing these words, just as there is no cut-off and separated me in the flower curving in the sun.  There is an idea of me, there are plenty of ideas of me all over the planet, but maybe the fact is that there is not a me anywhere in all the universe, there is just life.  Life doesn't need a me.  It's absolutely complete without a me.

Chameli Ardagh talks about realizing that "this me I have been trying to get rid of is not really a thing.  It's not really there so there's nothing to change."

It's a bit hideous to imagine a flower with a me.  A flower with an ego.  Kind of ridiculous.  Maybe it's just as ridiculous to imagine myself or any other person as a me.  A me is a mental phenomenon, an idea, nothing more.  It's fine and will help me to take Mary out for some errands after I finish posting this.  But this mental phenomenon called me doesn't have to consume all my life energy in endless obsessions with protection and gaining.

It's exhausting pretending to be who I'm not, and maybe without realizing it I've been busy pretending to be a me when I'm not and never could be a me.  Maybe I'm fine without me.  Maybe I'm life here, undefined and undefinable.

Maybe that's easier than I think.

Time to take Mary for back-to-school errands.  Chameli says when we forget about me there is a noticing of love...

Indeed, this turns out to be the case.  The egoless flower and all of nature- including human beings- are the energy of great benevolence fluxing through form.  The child being prepared for burial and his caretakers...


~
Thank you for words from Chameli Ardagh available here:  http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Women-Extraordinary-Wisdom-Awakening/dp/1846940680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264527334&sr=8-1
And also here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NeverNotHere#p/u/3/SlaHtyyrZtk

Gratitude to Erik Refner for photo, and to the family of the child for allowing his burial preparation to be photographed. http://www.archive.worldpressphoto.org/search/layout/result/indeling/detailwpp/form/wpp/q/ishoofdafbeelding/true/trefwoord/year/2001

Gratitude for flower photo taken by Bahman Farzad

Sound and Light

Years ago I came across two sentences and they have never left me:

"The spiritual journey," says Thomas Keating, "is not a career or success story. It is a series of  humiliations of the false self that becomes more and more profound."

The world stood on its head.  For decades I had been seeking accumulation and self-enhancement when in fact all along the deeper longing was for the very opposite: diminution of that heavy burden of an imaginary ego-self .



This morning I was watching a video of Dr.Vijai Shankar  in which he asks, "What is thought?"

               I paused to consider this.

Thought is a word, he observes.

And what is a word?

               Again, I stopped to wonder what a word actually is.

A word is a sound.

              Thought is essentially a sound vibration, whether it is uttered out loud or not.

Mind is thought.

Thought is sound.

Mind is sound.  It is a vibration, a pattern, an appearance.


There is sound (mind) and light (awareness).

There is sound and light, there is mind and awareness: these are the two indivisible dimensions or aspects of reality.

Sound is form, light is formless, and they are one.

There is sound and the light of consciousness that is aware of sound. 

Sound and light occupy the same space and are inseparable.


For much of my life attention has been circumscribed to the thought-trance, hypnotized by the sound of the mind.

Yet the light bathes everything and it has always been free.

This light feels like home, and it does not make a sound.  The light loves sound without needing to make a single sound itself.


~
Gratitude to Thomas Keating, quote is from his book
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/site/PageServer
Gratitude to Dr. Vijai Shankar
http://www.nevernothere.com/dr-vijai-shankar
Gratitude for photo: http://www.coosacreek.org/way/?m=200910

Listening to life

I was getting Chris, my 16 yo son with cerebral palsy, ready for school this morning, and Barney was singing a song on the DVD, "You are my hero."

I told Chris he is my hero, and I mean that 100%.

What  is a hero?  Chris is a transparent window beaming sunshine effortlessly all day long.  He doesn't try to be loving, he can't help but be loving- it's just who he is.

Lately I'm feeling more keenly this formless life energy that I am, that Chris is, that we all are, the invisible spring beneath the body and mind.  I'm noticing that it wants to move, to go along in the invisible current of  life that is right here now beneath all the mind's stories of unhappiness, and that I can feel its quiet pulse and follow it.  I whisper in its ear, "What would you like to do?" and I feel it move within me.

Eckhart Tolle has said that he doesn't ask so much, "What do I want?"  Rather, he asks, "What does Life want?"  In the end they turn out to be the same question,  for I and Life are one and the same.  But due to confusions of language and mind, the word "I" is also used to mean its opposite, which is ego, the pseudo-self that is an object made out of thoughts and images, created by mind activity.   The true I is anatta, egolessness, the formless being that we all share, that is one.

Chris can't walk or talk, yet he is clearly more productive and contributes more to this world than many CEO's ever will.  He is the hero of my heart. Thank you Chris for Being, the greatest gift of all.

~

What is here.

Listening to the sound of the dishwasher and looking at the cat napping on the blue chair, something is suddenly clear (it becomes visible as if  floating up to the surface of water).  It is this:  The mind will never be able to tell me who I am.  I've searched long and hard in the mind to discover my identity and it is not there.  I won't find myself in any thought or story or experience, not even in the experience or story of awakening, enlightenment, or self-realization.  Identifying with mind-objects (i.e. seeking my identity in objects such as thoughts, stories, experiences) is the basic confusion that I have suffered from. It's the basic confusion we all suffer from.

Even though I am myself always (it cannot be otherwise), there can be a sense of not knowing who I am, of being strangely lost and disconnected from the reality of my being.  Of being out of touch with what is most vital and real within me.

There is a longing to know directly who I am apart from any mental ideas.

What I want is some kind of fundamental, conscious contact with the being, the actuality of the life that I am in this moment.

What is prior to any mental idea of who I am?  What is here in the absence of thought?  What am I apart from ego, apart from any personal history? What is here right now?



The awareness or being that everything shows up in is prior to any appearance.

In seeing this, sensing this, there is a plunge into immediacy, a wake-up slap of reality.

Attention had been locked on the clouds (thoughts, appearances) and now opens to the sky (presence/essence).

This sky of awareness or presence is here at all times; inseparable from the experiences that arise but not confined to them.

I am in no way separate from my experience, but my experiences are not who I am. There is great freedom in this fact.  The sky is not confined by the clouds within it, and no human being is defined by thought.

The sky is not diminished when the clouds dissolve. If anything, the sky is even more present, or more apparent, when there are no clouds. A sky naked of clouds is not less of a sky. Without all the buzz of experience and thought, what I am is not diminished, but unveiled or more readily apparent. Without a big pile of accomplishments and failures and ideas and experiences (without all these clouds in the sky), the true essence of the reality that I am- the sky of awareness- is more readily apparent.  The very things I sought to define myself did just the opposite: they obscured "my" reality- the wide open sky.  All the things I thought defined me were more like a mask that alienated me from my reality.

What I want to know is not so much what I am but that I am.  I want to feel/sense/know my reality, that indeed I am very much alive, aware, in this instant, un-separated from life itself.

I am.

I am!

What could be more astonishing than the am-ness of anything at all, the am-ness that is typing these words, reading these words, the am-ness that is ubiquitous in the single sky that is everything?

There is a sensing/feeling/knowing that I am.  I can't wrap it up in a neat little mental package, but I can be what I am- effortlessly, unceasingly, like the space of the sky.

The joy of being is something real and present and accessible, and it is more satisfying than any passing experience.  Why pine after a cloud when the wealth of the sky is here?

What I want, it turns out, is what I've got:  Life.  Life as it is in this moment.


Not a single movement of the mind is needed to be what I am.

Not a single thing needs to be different in order for me to be fully who I am.  There is no circumstance that can block the fullness of being.

The dishwasher is quiet and the cat is still napping on the blue chair.  The presence that is here is alive and a great wave of benevolence moves through.  Thank you for being here and sharing this space.


~
Gratitude to Annette Nibley for pointing out that "without a single movement of the mind" being is known. Annette's extremely lucid writing can be accessed here:  http://www.whatneverchanges.com/

Thanks also to the video of Stuart Schwartz on Never Not Here TV, which powerfully points attention to the obvious. Video can be accessed here:  http://www.nevernothere.com/stuart-schwartz

Yes and no

"There is only complete simplicity: an openness, a consent, to letting happen what will happen, and to letting the misconceptions fall away."

David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness, p. 125

Allowing what is in this moment.  Surrender.  Alignment.  Flow.  Oneness with the movement of the Totality.

Consent.  Welcoming what is.  Making friends with the present moment.  Non-resistance.

Sounds good, but....how many times do I bump into the slightest glitch in my day and instantly exclaim, "No!"  The "no!" to any unpleasant occurrence is interesting to watch.  Muddy shoes on the carpet? In the same instant they're seen the reactive "no!" arises.  A hundred times a day there is the inner bracing against what is, there is the knee-jerk response of "this is unpleasant and I don't like it."

It's amazing to begin to become conscious of the amount of  resistance to what is.  And to see how much stress this resistance to what is creates.

It's as if the light of awareness were sunlight spreading over an inner landscape that had previously been in darkness.

I see the resistance to what is and I don't want to plaster "consent" on top of my feelings of resistance and aversion.  I don't want to pretend to surrender when every fiber of my being shouts "no!".  I want to be honest with myself.  I can see that all the resistance to what is creates feelings of misery.  But the resistance seems natural and automatic, so what alternative is there?  How can I "not resist" what I resist?

Let me look freshly at this whole dynamic of rejecting or accepting what happens.

What happens happens, with or without my consent.  Without my consent, what happens can feel like slamming into a brick wall.  With consent, that very same happening may feel like a joyful and flowing dance.

My consent, my willingness, my acceptance is the one vital, indefinable thing I have to give to this life,  to "what happens."

How does this work when I feel the knee-jerk lack of consent to every unpleasant happening, whether small or large?

Consent does not come from the ego, but from a deeper level of being than the ego.

Is it possible to say "yes" to the "no" of the ego?  In other words, is it possible to accept all the painful non-acceptance that arises to the glitches of an ordinary day?  Who says "yes" to the "no" of the ego?  I do. The deeper me which is the conscious space of being. I actually feel this inner tilt from no to yes, from resistance to acceptance.  There is a sense of stepping outside the thought of "no!" and being the quiet, intelligent awareness that surrounds the thought. There's a sense of the field of conscious awareness enlarging, in the same way that the view of the earth expands when a plane gains altitude.

The conditioned response of "no!" to those muddy shoes is strong and it is allowed to be. Can I be the space for this? (Eckhart Tolle recommends asking this question.)  Can I be the space for conditioned reactivity?  Can I be the space for feelings of irritation?  Can I be the space for this non-spiritual and negative Colleen?  Can I be the space for the shoes on the carpet?  Can I be the space for what arises in this moment, whatever it may be?

After asking the question there is a gap of openness.

Wow! Space is here! For all of it. For everything. Space has always been here.  Now I see it!  Now I am it. Yes, I can be the space for muddy shoes on the carpet, I can be the space for feelings of irritation, I can be the space for beleaguered Colleen, that poor ego trying so hard for years to become enlightened when the ego can never be enlightened.

Whenever there is consent for even the least unpleasant occurrence, there has been a shift from ego-identity to deeper being. There has been a shift from thought to awareness. The ego is incapable of saying "yes" to anything unpleasant; when the ego says "yes" to something unpleasant it is faking it.  I have felt this many times!  My ego says, "yes, those muddy shoes on the carpet are just great" and the ego is lying through its teeth and this is clearly felt as the horrible inner split of inauthenticity.

In authentic consent, there has been a shift from being identified-as-resistance to being identified-as-awareness.  Identified as the space of awareness in which the resistance and everything else occurs.

Consent itself is a bridge from the superficial self to the deeper self. The deeper self is the no-self of aware space or presence. Consent is a bridge from object consciousness to space consciousness (see p. 227 of A New Earth). Consent is a bridge from ego to essence, from knowing to not knowing, from form to formlessness. Consent is the thump of power at the heart of each person. Consent is the inborn vitality that is accessed in any moment we live as a Yes! to life.

~