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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Abandonment issues

Resistance is the moment where what arises within is attached, identified. In this sense we could say we all dwell in a perpetual state of resistance. In the same way that we can acclimatize to bad smells, our resistance becomes so familiar, so normal, that it does not appear to be resistance any more. We form this hard shell around us and become extremely comfortable in it.

Eventually-now- our life is all about building the shell, protecting the shell.

Resistance is this mind itself.

What if we made the ruthless decision, as we continually encountered life, to attempt to immediately abandon the shell? To leave behind, at once, every manifestation that opposes. At the moment we saw a distraction, an attachment, an identification,

a thought,

if we immediately went in the other direction,

--how would that be?

Of course this raises the question of what the other direction is.

The direction is in the direction of nowhere, towards nothing.

We stand on the edge of a truth, a clarity, which we do not admit. Right here, at the very edge of my perception, one step beyond where I am in an inner sense, lies a clarity that is not born and does not die. I can smell, it, taste it, sense it- but it lies just beyond where this consciousness called I dwells.

To step one step beyond is to leave everything of this I behind; to immediately abandon what is known and enter that mysterious place where everything is-- without words.

This may be what Castaneda meant when he discussed the way of the warrior as being a way where one is without personal history.

The interesting thing about this act of immediate abandonment is that it is possible at any moment. We could wield it like a sword, cutting through identification, attachment, to sever the umbilical cords of desire and ego which bind us so firmly to our negativity.

I'd like to try that more. When I see my emotional attachments, I wonder- can I immediately abandon them? That would be a big thing indeed.

Like that ocean of clarity that lies just beyond the threshold of this perception- I am not there yet, but at times, if the wind blows in my direction, I can smell the salt spray.

Are we bold enough to dare to immediately abandon everything, seize nothing, and dwell in it?
Here, we have no choice but to apply the three cardinal principles:

Investigate. Investigate. Investigate.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Just stop thinking

...right?

But just what is thinking? Is this massive barrage of intake, evaluation, analysis, conclusion thinking? The answer may seem obvious, but I am not at all sure it is.

If we study the parts that "do" this for long enough, we eventually reach the conclusion that they are indeed, as Gurdjieff advised us, mechanical. That is, there are automatic parts that are, so to speak, "hard wired" which mediate this process.

All too often, at work, someone asks me a question and a part of me that knows the answer spits that answer out almost instantly, while something else in me-- something that is not part of the "thought" process- sits back and watches and says to its self (I speak figuratively here, because this observing part seems to be for the most part strictly "non-verbal") "Wow. Where did that come from? That is way cool."

So there are all these parts inside the machine that act automatically. 99.9% of my manifestation arises from and is filtered through these parts.

Here we segue into the recurring theme of this blog, and my own work.

There is no "I", there is only truth.

For our purposes, we must understand that everything that thinks is "I." Whatever thinks is not Truth. To state it positively, it may be a fragment of Truth, but it is only a bit of what's actually going on. We become identified with that bit and so we are that bit. We're back to the "discrimination of the conceptual mind," which Ch'an master Ta Hui described as worse than poisonous snakes or fierce tigers.

There has to come a moment when we stand in front of this blackboard called life, called "I," take the eraser in hand, and boldly, ruthlessly, confidently sweep the entire slate clean in, as my father says, "one swell foop."

Bang. The clutter is gone. There is NOTHING there.

The blackboard is now pregnant. We take one baby step forward into a realm where there are no definitions. A realm where all things live and breathe, where all conditions are unconditional. It's a realm of 100% not knowing, where everything is understood as it is.

Truth.

We're all sitting right on the edge of enlightenment, all the time. It's just... over... there. Not such a big deal. But our minds are too short to reach it.

There are a lot of moments in the average day when everything is so obviously crappy I wonder why I don't just throw it all away. As I just said to a friend of mine (the famous rlnyc of Doremishock blog fame) my diapers all come pre-tizzied.

The dilemma arises: do I really like holding all these smelly diapers so much?

Or should I immediately abandon them?

It's time for a change of pace.

Today is a day to water the trees and throw fruit down the well.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Uplift

One is subduction. One plate is sucked under the other, drawing its bedrock down into the mantle of the planet, where it slowly melts, sinks downward, and circulates in a movement that takes sixty to a hundred million years or more to complete, before it rises again as a plume of magma in a distant location thousands of miles away.

The other is uplift. The top plate, whatever it is composed of, rises. This is how fossil seashells ended up at the top of Mount Everest. That massive scarp in today's picture is now in the middle of the Arizona desert. It, too, was once seabed.

The collision of great forces, which takes place everywhere in the universe, invariably produces naturally opposing results of this kind. Some things go up; others go down. In fact, something has to sink in order for something else to rise. Everything is composed of circulation. Something must go down, soften, and melt in order for the other part to solidify and be lifted.

In our spiritual quest, we are all interested in uplift. We want to rise, to discover new inner heights and see the view from above. Who is there in the world of spiritual work who isn't reaching for heaven? (With all due respect for their-- to me-- very questionable choice, we'll leave the Satanists out of this discussion. Sorry, guys.)

In reaching for heaven, we may forget that things have to go down as well as up. We forget gravity.

This Saturday I met with a good friend of mine- a real essence-friend who I don't see too often, probably because he lives less than a mile from me and we take each other for granted, as is too often the case in such circumstances. We work on the same kind of things in our work and we speak the same language in so many ways it seems uncanny to me at times.

This man happens to be an adept Hatha yoga teacher, although his real work lies in realms beyond such a facile definition. He understands the body. That is much bigger than the kind of Yoga you learn in a classroom. Because of this he has an authority I listen to.

He was speaking this weekend of having a new relationship with gravity. Becoming aware of it as a force. He wasn't speaking of doing this intellectually; it was about the sensation of gravity, the organic awareness of gravity. In becoming more attuned to this force, he believes, we can approach the idea of uplift (he doesn't use that term, but it's entirely appropriate.) That is, by sensing what our relationship is to down, we begin to discover our real place. That happens through the organism, and in no other way.

It's only then that we can begin to consider what up might mean.

Plates within what we call "Being" collide; what we call consciousness is the intersection between the dog and the Buddha, between man's lower and higher natures. Human nature is formed in the ground where these two points meet. Human nature, the nature of Being, is a pivotal point where choices are made and directions determined.

Man needs subduction in him, as well as uplift; the forces are reciprocal. He must go down as well as up; dive into the roots of his cells as well as the lofty realms that feed him from above.

In fact, I think, it is better for men as we are to work to assist the subduction, the gradual melting of this massive crust of what we are, and to leave the uplift to other parts--

The ones that know more about how to find the sun than we, in these little minds, do.

Trees and fruit are not trees and fruit, they are trees and fruit. Wells and water are not wells and water, they are wells and water.

So, may your trees bear fruit and your wells yield water.