Sweet Embrace

Returning to read reread read again both Making Your Way in a Wild New World and The Buddha's Brain.  Unseen but felt forces had distracted me from them.  Fine to read, but the value is in mastering the process.  Remember remember remember the primary lesson of Ai.

Path of Torment ~ FATIQUE

Interesting, thinking of fatigue as a path to Wordlessness via torment.  What's suggested isn't, to my surprise, resisting the fatigue, but quite the unexpected opposite - giving way to it, surrendering to presenting weariness.  Breathe into it.  Intriguing phrase.  

"Being able to feel Wordless fatigue makes you more capable of resting deeply into whatever time you've got, allowing you to stay more rested physically & much calmer emotionally."

NOT what I expected.  Going to have to reponder this one...

Paths of Torment

Eeek...  Dropping into Wordlessness through Paths of Torment sounds pretty Spanish Inquisitionish.  

Oh, wait - it talking about suffering we CAN'T avoid.  Okay, that sort of sounds better.  If I knew what it meant.

It means noticing the pain, whether physical or emotional, without creating barriers around it, not averting our eyes to avoid seeing it.  

Strangely, studies show that when we don't resist pain, it tends to hurt less.  It's our verbal constructs - our resisting thoughts - that exacerbates the injuries, heightens the pain, delays healing.

Seeking out pain is stupid.  Accepting what exists - feeling it even as we seek to heal it - is much smarter.  And using it to drop into Wordlessness is wise.

Letting Go

Letting go is the toughest thing I've ever undertaken.  Not easy to understand what it is I'm supposed to be doing, let alone do it.  

History & Fantasy

Startling reality – past & future only exist as stories in our mind.

Spot on!  Events happen.  Facts about them are unchanged, no matter how many years go past.  Dates – same.  People – same.  Action – same. 

Example:  My 11-year old brother died suddenly on Easter Monday, leaving a gap of 8 years between my next sibling & myself, the youngest.  That’s reality (in spite of my oft-dreamed dream of Ian strolling out of Ed Allen’s garage, as if nothing had happened, no years had passed).  

Ah, but everything else is not so clear.  

The stories each member of Ian's family, each one of his friends, his classmates, his teachers, other adults, other kids, spun around that relatively short statement of fact ~ ah, those differ & sometimes widely, sometimes so widely as to make one wonder if the stories connect to the same event.  

Certainly, everyone in Ian's family came up with our own stories around that life-changing death, each one of them gospel to each one of us. 

We all - every human being - come up with our personal histories, our own fantasies about the future.  Stories spin off of thoughts, new thoughts spin off of old stories, until the only thing they have in common - whether they're Personal History and/or Fantasy - is that they're fiction.

Falling Petals

It was eons ago that I first heard Stephen Covey say it's not the venom from a rattlesnake bite that dooms most people, but their response to it - running makes the poison spread that much faster in the bloodstream & throughout the body.  It's the thoughts we hold onto about what's happened in our lives that cause us the most suffering.    

How weird that the apparent Queen of Wordiness - ME - unleashed torrents of words trying to unlock the reality to grounded living, only to discover that words are mere puffery, a bunch of letters stitched together to get across an understanding of the indescribable.  

Fact:  as soon as we try to convey something, it is diminished, ever so slightly (and sometimes flagrantly) distorted.  It is the very nature of language.  What was it Mom used to say?  "The flowering moments of the mind lose half their petals in our speech."  

Forget when people intentionally use language to distract, distort.  Even the most well-intentioned person cannot convey with any degree of perfection the thoughts in his or her mind. One glance from John tells me more about his feelings for me than words could.  One kind act from him tells me volumes more than a litany of love on the most beautifully designed card, his tender actions a veritable bouquet of what he feels.

Step Away From Cozy

It's easy to enjoy hanging around familiar people, those few or many with whom we share common events, the ones who have the same memories set off by the same triggers.  They bring a special richness to our lives, even the ones with whom the memories might not be so bright, the experiences not so merry.  Their very familiarity, the comfort we find in having them in our background, lends a special depth to our lives.

Much the same is true, it feels, of our thoughts.  The ones we feel a certain comfort with, the ones that help give us our very sense of place, be they positive or negative.  WE, as individuals, are infinitely more a reflection of our thoughts than of our bodies.  Infinitely.  Especially the ones that we cozy up to, whether fair or foul.  Thought - rooted in words - is what we attach to experiences, giving them residence in our mind.  

The rub is that memory is, by its very nature, selective.  It's faulty.  I once showed my oldest brother a family picture I'd drawn at age 8 or 9.  I pointed out different things about it that were unexpected.  He asked me what I thought each meant, and each time I answered the same way, "I don't try to interpret what I meant, because the one thing I know for sure is that I would be wrong.  I just find it interesting."  That really bothered him.  If I found the different things interesting, then I should attach some specific meaning to them;  he found my refusal downright irksome.

Even then, 8 or 9 years ago, something deep down inside of me knew the pitfalls of thought & memory.  As cozy as they feel, they are almost invariably wrong, wildly off-kilter from the unknown, now (maybe always) unknowable reality.  

Was it several years ago that I read that the reason humans - particularly Americans - tend to assume things is because we like to feel that we know, even when we don't?  There abouts.  Hence, the lure of assumption, which gives at least the illusion of knowing.  

Assumptions are all about words v. sensing, about tagging manageable, limited & limiting labels to often unmanageable events, circumstances, situations.  Of all the human actions, fewer give us an unrealistic sense of cozy than assumption.

Which leads me to one of the scariest things a human can do - drop out of limiting thought & into simple sensation, just being.  Ponder it - since we could first listen, even before we could talk, most of us were trained to suspend our sensing and embrace words.  From our earliest  interactions, too many people are told that what they're sensing is false & that what words depict - however far it is from the reality they've felt & seen - is correct.  We so keenly ache for the cozy rather than the true.

None of which changes the core reality that one of the most important things we can do for ourselves & others is to step away from the cozy, the comfortable, the familiar stories, and just let ourselves experience, sense, feel whatever is at this moment.  Just let it be.  

Follow Your Own Bloodstream - path of stillness #3

Okay, feel my hand - check.  Pull my senses into Open Focus - check.  Next up - follow my own bloodstream, which is apparently an Apache technique for putting the mind in a state of Sacred Silence.

To begin, I take a few breaths.  That's easy.

Okay, the next part loses.  "Exhale completely, pausing before inhaling."  Is that before or after I take the few breaths?

My guess is that I take a few breaths first, then go onto the heavy lifting.

So, now I exhale completely - pause - then inhale (I am assuming, although it's not spelled out, completely, too.)

No - back up!!  It said to pause before inhaling, but didn't really say to inhale.

Instead, in the space that is that all-important pause before inhaling, I focus my attention on my heart until I feel it beating.  Frankly, I think it's going to take longer than a mere pause to do that (am sure I'll get faster with experience).  

Take another breath & then exhale.  Along with my heartbeat, I need to find the sensation of my pulse moving through my hand, my scalp, my entire body.  (That's definitely taking longer than any itty bitty pause.)

Staying focused on the feeling of my entire (!) circulatory system as it channels my lifeblood through my torso, including my individual organs, my arms, my legs, my head, my brain, eyes et al.  

THEN, while doing this last step, perform some simple task as I continue to feel my heartbeat & experience the my circulatory system pulsing through my body.

The promise is that I'll feel strangely blissful.  Makes sense, since my body will be totally whacked out (in a good way).  Definitely cool.

Open Focus - path of stillness #2

If feeling the inside of my hands startled me, the next exercise – Open Focus – practically blew my mind.

Sitting, I focused my attention sharply on an object in front of me.  That was easy.

Next, without moving my eyes, I broadened my attention until it registered everything in my field of vision, including the original object.  To the left, to right, up, down, right in front of me – all at the same time.  Had the weird feeling that if I tried, I could become aware of eyes at the back of my head & gain a 360 degree view.

Still not moving my eyes, I made the object of my focus the foreground, making everything else the background. 

Next – not moving the eyes – the object became the background & everything else became the foreground.

Felt like I was on an acid trip!

Finally, I focused on everything in my usual field of vision, all at once, while repeating out loud, “Floor to ceiling, all things equal.”

Zowie! 

There was an optional last step, which I haven’t tackled yet – while doing the final step, repeat the question, “Can I imagine the space inside the distance between my eyes?”  This optional step is said to have a terrific impact in shifting brainwaves into a deeply relaxed Wordlessness.  

Unexpected benefits - about a week after first doing this exercise, I was in Philadelphia, at an extraordinary concert on the Wanamaker Organ, Fred Haas playing the Bryn Athyn Cathedral Christmas song list.  Originally irked by the people & noises around me, turned to what I'd learned, I focused on the playing & let everything else drop into the background.

Finding the Inside of My Hand - path of stillness #1

According to Martha Beck, it's easier to drop into Wordlessness when we follow the Paths of Stillness.  The first startled me!

Shook my head in bemusement when I read the directions ~ hold my hand up in front of me, eyes closed, checking to see if I can sense the hand without looking at it. 

Seriously??  

Seemed sort of dorky to me. Didn't hold out much hope it would help, but I gave myself over to it.

The first sensation surprised me – warmth.  I could feel the inner warmth of my hand, which I don’t recall ever experiencing before.  It seemed like I could sense the very blood flowing, the bones, the muscles, my skin & fingernails.

Next, I held up both hands, eyes still shut, turning my attention from the one to the other, back again, then experience BOTH at the same time.  Strange - focusing inside my body was experienced so strongly as out-of-body.

Will that wordless experience help me drop into Wordlessness??

Unbounded

Seems reasonable to me that true appreciation of any given situation begins with viewing whatever it is without the boundaries, the limitations of words, instead looking to experience the boundless concept as it actually is rather than the vowels & consonants that represent it in a limited world. 

Which gets me thinking about how stunted the life of a typical public school student is in our current day.  The focus of publicly-funded education is to cram as many words & numbers  >data< into lesson plans, with no breathing room for discussion or consideration.  Recess is practically unknown in most schools; phys ed now largely limited to certain marquis sports; arts & music & theater – fluff – are the first things to be cut, when they should be the last.  

Students are left with words & left without the open space                                                                                needed for them to make any sense.

Which leads me to my own school.  Seems strange the Bryn Athyn schools don’t instruct students in meditation from the earliest years.  Feels like something that would be natural, even generations ago.   

Now that I think about it, have been stumped by how my birth faith stresses reading & seems dismissive (at best) or condemning (at worst) toward wordless intuition.  

IMHO, the General Church seems shackled by the very words                                                                        which should be liberating. 

There are a limited number of letters in my native language, a finite number of words in existence, far less ones I know, way fewer the ones I use.  But when I see a beautiful sunset lighting the cathedral a deep rosy gold, everything registers in my mind & on my heart without grasping for the right phrasing.  It just is.  Expressed but wordless.

Hamstrung by Language

When humans began using language - which seems to be used more to dissemble & distract than to make whole & connect - our rapport with magic, with the miraculous that once pulsed throughout all that was around us, weakened until it was considered a myth, something found in fairy tales, not k every day life.

It is sad but true that language, which hides true meaning & genuine emotion, pushes aside Wordlessness, just as it weakens the technologies of magic that once made the miraculous of the everyday.  

Language weakens & pushes aside the magic, but it can't destroy it.  Which is why we can reintroduce the lost tool of Wordlessness to our lives, why we can reinstate its place of importance in all we do, in all that is around us.

originally posted on another blog 01/26/13

Wordlessness * Oneness * Imagination * Forming

These are the four skills that help open us up to magic in our lives.  Instead of occasionally experiencing, occasionally seeing it our lives, these four techniques help us focus in on the miraculous that is not so rare as most of us tend to think. 

Each of them makes such total sense as to leaving me with a totally, "Ah, yes - that makes sense" response. 

Of course WORDLESSNESS is our truest self - we might not ponder it, but words are total artifice, created out of need to communicate with others. But put together two people who don't share the same language and the limitations of language becomes immediately apparent.  Words reflect our being's crassest self;  WORDLESSNESS embodies our highest, most fully genuine.

Of course ONENESS is our truest self - everything is one, barriers are themselves mere figments of imagination gone amuck.  Barriers between people & peoples, barriers within ourselves - they are no more real than the lines on a map that delineate countries.  Let go of the illusion of separateness, embrace & experience & be immersed in ONENESS.

Of course IMAGINATION is our truest self - everything that is but hasn't been manifested in the here & now is imagination.  Wow....  It's not cutesy or airy fairy, but downright amazing - when our true eyes are open, so MUCH we never considered because of thinking in space/time concepts keeps taking our breath way while constantly breathing new inspiration to help us see the unlimited What Is around us.  Instead of balking at questions, IMAGINATION opens the way to seeing the host of answers swirling around us.

Of course FORMING is our truest self, and the last aspect of the four - we start out with the illusion that we're formed, then liberate ourselves from language, our most obvious limiting illusion, language, see that everything is one, are awakened to the jaw-dropping endless vastness of imagination,  use all those new ah ha-nesses to come to genuine FORMING, which has no relation to the form we had starting out.

Totally cool....

originally posted on another blog 01/25/13

CHANGING IDENTITIES AHEAD ~ spiritual road sign

This blog seems just right for a bit of reinvention.  "Ask ~ Believe ~ Prepare ~ Receive" captures my current best next steps, ones I've been strangely yet typically been avoiding, sidestepping if you will.  Strikes as the just-right place to put together a working journal for my responses to, inspirations from & exercises in Martha Beck's Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.

Tried journaling, tried oversized Post-it Notes ~ both fell flat.  Too stolid, passive.  Hit me in the wee small hours of this morning - blogging feels just right. 

Ask ~ Believe ~ Prepare ~ Receive.  AKA - get the lead out & shake a leg!!

first posted on another blog 01/24/13