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Thursday, September 20, 2007
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- Friday, September 21, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007Curling up inside This blog took a bit to get itself started. Plants do not always grow just because one sets their seeds in the soil, any more than cats curl up and sleep where you expect them to.
This morning I awoke at about 2:30 a.m. and spent time within the darkness actively curling up inside the energies that concentrate themselves in the lower part of the torso. We have so many energies flowing through us in the course of the average day that we don't notice. It's equally so at night, when the body busies itself manufacturing the substances it will need to sustain the consciousness during the following day. As one gradually becomes more familiar with these inner forces, it's worthwhile to study their presence, their strength, the source of their sustenance--presuming, of course, we can locate that--and their effects. This kind of activity is perhaps not so unorthodox. Gurdjieff, as it happens, advised Ouspensky to become familiar with what he called the "higher hydrogens" and study their effect so that one knew them individually. Of course I know few people who profess to undertake such a study in their work. Why, I cannot know. Perhaps there isn't so much interest in the kind of precision that type of study takes. Or perhaps it's too vague or inaccessible. I don't know. It might, however, be worthwhile to cultivate a more intimate relationship with these inner forces. I believe that in its essential practice, meditation--whether we express it as mindfulness in sitting or mindfulness in life-- is all about initiating and feeding a relationship to the finer substances the body can produce. Dwelling within them, accepting them, without manipulating them or clinging to them. Just studying them to see what they are. Where do they come from? Where do they go to? What are they doing? We don't know this. We speak of "different states" but do we invest in such different states? Do we pay for them, or try to take them? If we turn such moments and such states into things we want to have, to hold, to own and to repeat again, "the gate becomes more and more distant." And we've all been there, surely. This clinging, this wish to curl up comfortably within the familiar--even if it's the unfamiliar which has suddenly become familiar (for the grasping mind creates familiarity within the instant)--is the pouring of cement--always supervised by our inner paving company, whose intention is always good, rather than with aim. In grasping we flatten everything. Flat is safe. So there I was at 2:30 a.m., curled up inside not-flat, inside depth, attempting to see inside the inside. This mechanism we inhabit--it's delicate, precise, unfathomable. Perhaps the very beauty of inner study lies in the fact that the landscape--the fences, walls, tiles and pebbles-- from which we arise so directly is so unknown, and so profoundly filled with an invitation to this subtle intimacy. Let's all get closer to ourselves together this weekend, shall we? May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water. Friday, September 21, 2007Self-ishness
Another one of those days when energies that cannot be described and do not have names show up in the middle of the day and make decisions that cannot be brokered. I wanted to write a blog about the subject "never mind anyone else," that is to say, the idea that we should not pay attention to other people and how they are, but pay attention to ourselves and how we are. How are we for ourselves, to ourselves? Like many early-morning formulations, it turns out these questions, while good ones, do not relate to the present state. And I think perhaps the whole point of undertaking an enterprise like this one is to at least be honest enough to make sure that the writing corresponds to the present state. If one can. We do not know what we are, or where we are. We speak of the self as though we know something about the self, but no one has ever seen the self. It might as well be dark energy, a term physicists use to explain properties of the universe that cannot be explained in any current model without invoking a deus ex machina. ...Dark energy has never been seen, and no one can tell what it is. Nonetheless, scientists speak about it as though its existence were a certainty--in the same way that the religious people they so often disdain invoke God to explain properties of the universe that nothing else seems to come to grips with. Does science have a poor nose for irony? And are the seekers and searchers of truth any less imbued with hubris, as we banter about the dark matter of the self? Self observation, self discipline, self control. What is the self? The self is not something that can be grasped or held; a trillion words will not describe it; no container can hold it, no mathematical equation can describe its arising, position, direction, or momentum. When one thinks it over a bit, it's quite amazing that we have developed so many words to grapple with the concept of being, which is a quality that can only be inhabited within living consciousness, and dies the instant it is pinned down in the killing jar of analysis. Yet here we find ourselves inside our own personal killing jar. Everyone has one. Or, drawing on my most current analogy, our own personal cement mixer. Everything comes in, we cast it in cement, end of story. In this way, everything that arises in us becomes a funeral monument. Great to look at. Useless for practical work of any kind. In the beginning of one of the Gurdjieff movements movies (not, unfortunately, unavailable to the public, a very nearly criminal oversight on the part of the powers that be in the Gurdjieff Foundation) Jeanne DeSalzmann says to the viewer that everything is always in motion, everything is always going up or down, nothing ever stands still. If we hear this, of course we nod in sage agreement, as though we knew what she was talking about. But we don't. Every single one of us is trapped in cement mixer mode. The flexibility that is needed to treat life in a manner other than as a solid object just isn't in the inner air. When and if new and truly flexible things come along within us, they are bewildering, inexplicable. So of course we try to calm down and tame them, and explain them. More dust, more water, more cement. Even more criminal on our own part, perhaps, is our insane belief that everything of value that we might find is incredibly delicate. If spirituality, if a real relationship with whatever "self" may be, is that ephemeral and that weak, let's face it, it doesn't stand a chance in this brutal world. On Saturday we drove upstate and strolled along a relatively undeveloped stretch of river bank on the Delaware River. I watched a monarch butterfly take off and fly away from the riverbank over the trees. We look at butterflies and see that they are extraordinarily delicate creatures, you can squish them in hand with little or no effort. They weigh so little that any wind would seem to buffet them off their course; they are just the right size to be a snack for a bird. Beauty, yes. Magnificent, delicate, ephemeral, short-lived beauty. Of course, our impressions of these butterflies are all completely wrong. This butterfly flew off with a strength, a speed, a determination and an aim that would have put some small aircraft to shame. This creature was strong. Not only that, constantly in motion, it travels thousands of miles to winter over in Mexico, a journey that a human being would find terribly difficult without aircraft or motorized vehicles. Far from being defenseless, it is poisonous; there is nothing nice about eating one of these creatures. So nature has endowed beauty with strength. Amazing, flexible, mobile strength that drinks nectar from flowers.
If there is such a thing as self, self lies beneath and within all the qualities that give birth to everything, from the leaf to the munching caterpillar to the chrysalis to the butterfly. Self needs to be expanded to encompass everything, even the moments before self and the moments after self. May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.
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