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Peter

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  • #422473
    Peter
    Participant

    That was beautifully said Anna

    I want to contribute to the change with love and compassion, not with hatred or cynicism… I was afraid I would lose my will to help

    My own experience involved realizing the difference between healthy detachment and indifference. I also worried that without the energy of being angry I’d fall into indifference. With or without that ‘energy’ the trap for me with Buddhist practice , and I found out for many others, was indifference. How to be fully engaged and at the same time detached (healthy loving boundaries) without falling into indifference?

    Currently I’m exploring the practice of Contemplation and Action

    #422217
    Peter
    Participant

    I guess I just wanted my yoga to stay calm, without any interference. And she asked me a few questions…

    Like the monkey mind that tests us in the practice of meditation, we will be ‘tested’ in yoga.

    The interesting question in my opinion isn’t if this person who’s focus seems to be on the physical aspects of yoga should or should not have challenged you on the physical aspects of yoga  but why the questioning impacted your intention of a ‘calm’ practice?

    #421306
    Peter
    Participant

    Heaven above, Heaven below, Stars above, stars below, All that is over, under shall show. Happy thou who the riddle readest” – Tabula Smaragdina

    Yoga a practice of the above and below, all connected, everyone one, everything belongs, we are enough, thier is enough.
    Be still and know that I am…

    Movement is time, Stillness eternity. “Movement is what creates life, Stillness is what creates love; To be still yet still moving That is everything” -Do Hyun Choe

    All movement all breath arises from and returns to stillness,
    All movement all breath arises from and returns to eternity,
    All movement all breath arises from and returns to Love.
    This is the practice.
    Be still and know that I am… stillness… eternity, Love…

    Yet it is said nothing arises, nothing ceases, nothing is attained.  Their is only the still point..

    This is the riddle and the practice. 

     

    #420996
    Peter
    Participant

    Have you noticed how many different understandings of Plato’s Allegory of the cave there are? How the explanations almost always reinforce the argument the person is presenting and in that way, proving Plato’s point.

    And Here I am about to do the same. 🙂

    It seems to me that one of the points Plato was making is that ‘we see the world as we are not as it is’… (That how we see the world is constructed, most of it though language where the common error is to mistake the map (our constructs our words) for the territory.) Thus, the task to “know thy self”, if only to see the world more clearly as It is.

    Anyone engaged in the task soon discovers that Plato’s Cave is a nesting doll of caves within caves within caves.  In my opinion such a quest of self-discovery, when honestly perused, can only lead towards humility and compassion.

    What then of Karma, Is Karma the same as justice, reward and punishment, the cosmic Santa Clause? Everything I’ve read on the subject says No. That is its great misunderstanding. Karma is impersonal… Karma is as it is, a reality of life as it is.  Action, cause and effect. The something, if we take up the task, we can influence and so change how we experience/see Life as It is.

    If I kick a large rock and break my toe is that, Karma? Yes, but not because kicking a rock is morally wrong and so I must be punished for my actions but because breaking my toe is a natural result of kicking a rock.  Should I blame the rock? Is rock karma to be punished for breaking my toe? Is  my desire for the rock to be punished bad karma?

    In the task to “know myself” I might, after kicking the rock and limping away, better ask myself why I kicked the rock and to focus on my own karma (actions) and avoid projections. (Note in the allegory of the cave it’s the projections (our shadows) that are the illusions.)

    Karma has nothing to do with our notion of Justice. (Our notion of Justice is a construct, too much of which has come about based on our projections.)

    In Christianity it is acknowledged (though forgotten even as we say the words) that as we forgive, we will be forgiven. In other words, karma, who we are, how we are and our actions as we engage with Life matters. Like karma, the focus is not on or about the other but on our own being and it it this that will define our experience. (I might argue that it is this truth that makes each of us co-creators, bigger then big…which is both terrifying and wondrous.)

    Sadhgure book ‘Karma’ is worth a read.

    #420889
    Peter
    Participant

    <p lang=”en-US” style=”margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt;”></p>
    <p lang=”en-US” style=”margin: 0in; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt;”>Came across this statement the other day: “Joy is whatever is happening, minus our opinion of it“. – Joko Beck</p>
    <p lang=”en-US”>Joy is a experience, full stop. As as a experience Joy has no opposite, there is no un-Joy, like thier is for happiness. One can be happy or be unhappy suggesting that happiness is a measure of something we create or un-create.  Begging the question of why would someone un-create happiness? I have no answer but defiantly something I do so must wonder if being un-happy at times makes me happy.</p>
    <p lang=”en-US”>Perhaps the better word for that experience is Joy as Joy being a happening exits in both the happy and unhappy or unwanted experience. It seems to me that often in those moments that I wish was something other then what it is, I can be very engaged, very alive in dealing with it. I may not like it or want what is happening and perhaps because of that all the senses are firing. And in the moment if I do not judge, measure or label it as liking or not liking, happy or unhappy… that engagement is Joy.</p>
    <p lang=”en-US”>Joko Beck is right</p>
    <p lang=”en-US”></p>

    #420799
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Eva

    I don’t normally comment in the Relationship topic threads, but it broke my heart to read: ‘Even though I was cautious in the beginning, allowed myself to go in and trust him’ as being number 1 on your negative self talk list.

    Even when things don’t go as we hoped, the courage to open yourself up and engage in life was and is amazing. Please don’t close yourself off and lose that. That might seem like the safe option but in my opinion ends in becoming numb to life and numbing oneself many not feel like it hurts as much as engaging with life but I’m not so sure.

     

    #420760
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Kodi

    Is it ok to want to be happy?  Is it ok to want to be unhappy? Yes

    I sometimes wonder if part of the problem with the notion of happiness is thinking happiness is a Yes OR No questions.

    I also struggle with anxiety and the notion of happiness. Sometimes I find myself anxious about being anxious, unhappy about being unhappy, almost as if some shadow part of myself is happy about being be anxious and unhappy.  To be candid I’m not sure I know what it would feel like not to be anxious and I wonder if my body has adapted to expect and even look for ways to be anxious. I’m very good at being anxious.

    As a fellow introvert and sensitive person my observation has been that I’m more likely to feel the ‘negative’ emotions of those around the me and mistake them for may own. Sadly for reasons I don’t fully understand the same is not always true for ‘positive’ emotions of those around me. Not that I don’t experience others joy when I’m around others that are happy but in this case I tend not to think of those emotions as mine. Why is it ok to take on the experiences of the negative as our own but not the positive?

    I think when it comes to happiness were really, really, really bad at measuring and labeling. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe happiness isn’t something to be measured, labeled or even created (which is a sure fire way of missing it). Maybe its something intended as moments to be experienced and surprised by?

    Joseph Campbell writing about the Hero’s response to the question of “Life as it is”, is that we are all called to “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all“.  Yes to it ‘ALL’

    Can we learn to love the things we most wish had never happened? Can we really become grateful for grief? Heartbreak? The deaths of loved ones? Can we experience moments of happiness in a world filled with unhappiness? The Hero says Yes. This is not some Pollyanna Yes, this is a Yes that taste and ‘knows’ the bitter and the sweet.

    Lots of books, articles… lots of words on the subject, lots of advice, yet I think the answer is not in words but silent, stillness. Motion is time creating life, Stillness eternity creating Love… “to be Still yet Still Moving that is everything” Everything arises from and returning to Stillness, Love, Eternity…. Nothing is born, nothing lost… nothing found, nothing attained, it is always now… always now.

    A tree’s movement in the wind, leaves swaying on its branch’s taking in the suns warmth, blue sky, soft clouds flowing by, a  child on a swing tied to a branch, laughing, crying out, again, again, push me again…. Should we measure and label such a moment and weigh it against others moments. Can we, should we even try to separate the tree, from the sun, from  the wind, from the leaves, from the child…from the moments when the sun isn’t shining or the sky blue?

     

     

    #420161
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Benedikt

    I tend to get in my head about most things which makes the experience of joy and happiness that much tougher. Imagine trying to think and measure your way into joy, contentment, happiness. I tend to forget that words such as joy and happiness are experiences and not ‘things’ created.  Such things are happenings. (language and ego consciousness are dualistic by necessity so difficult to express – thus a happening happens regardless of if you let it happen or try to control it. However, an attempt to control a happening, though still a happening, most likely won’t be experienced that way.)

    Taoism has the concept Wu Wei  ‘non-doing,’ (all wisdom traditions have similar notion if not always understood) Wu Wei is not so much about ‘doing nothing’ as it is about aligning our movement with the greater flow of life. Often referred to as ‘natural action,’ Wu Wei does not involve excessive effort or struggle, but a kind of ‘going with the flow’ where we are able to move with the energy of the moment and respond freely to whatever situation that arises. From a western perspective; perhaps a act of will that is the letting go of will.

    Doing and Being… two of the great dualisms everyone struggles with… what if I suggested that they aren’t opposites? That there not even two sides of the same coin as in heads OR tails. As a metaphor perhaps heads AND tails, but then where is the fun in flipping it in the air. Here’s a riddle for you what is the word for something that is both doing and being, in and out, up and down… happy and sad? 

    You used the word ‘manifest’. Manifest a kind of doing, setting intention, direction, pulling the draw string with the arrow back AND Being, letting the arrow fly. Doing tends to focus and measurement and control (ego) while Being is All about the whole experience, no measurements, no language, required. (The bliss of not having to name something to experience it! Not even the words like joy or happiness! I wonder if the ‘emptiness’ Zen points to isn’t partly the emptiness of a space of no words?)

    The archer pulling back the draw strings of the bow, aiming at a target. Doing is ‘happy’ when intention and result align. Nothing wrong with that only notice any expectation of happy if I hit the target OR sad when I don’t. But Being, Being is alive in the whole process most especially the release and of the arrow, the excitement and terror of not knowing, feeling and experiencing all the things.

    Doing tends to view the arrow as separate, but for Being there is no separation. Being is the archer, the bow the arrow, the air and target. Feel the energy in the archer and bow as the arrow is held ready pointed in a direction, and then release, whoosh, feel the arrow slicing through the air, flying, the terror, wonder… ‘thunk’…  Hit, miss, new, exhilarated! If just those moments… we don’t forget

    Again! the child cries out! Again!

    Perhaps the art of manifesting is getting out of the way?

     

    #419789
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Wisp

    As a fellow overthinker, I can relate to the ‘what if’, ‘should I’ traps. Speaking for myself these traps usually involve control issues and ego. I want to control my enviourment, my experience but mostly to feel safe. You can miss out on quite a bit of life trying to keep safe and avoid anxiety. Of course its anxiety either way. Funny the one place we do have some control, the stories we tell ourselves, we tend not to take. Nothing like the ‘what if’s’ story to take you for a ride.  Do we tell our stories or do our stories tell us?

    As a practice I was taught that if you hear yourself using words ‘what if’ to pause, step back and observe.  Notice that we don’t tend to finish the thought, leaving it hanging at the worst thing we can imagine.  At one level we play the ‘what if’ game to reduce anxiety, what if it rains…I will pack my rain gear.  But that only works if we finish the thought and don’t leave the what if hanging.

    Of course most of our ‘What if’s don’t appear to have a answer, which is why they hang… what if people don’t like me, what if I make a fool of myself, what if I don’t like what I learn about myself… ahhhh!!!!

    Pause, step back, observe.

    Notice how these possibilities have always been present in every moment of your life and your still hear. Sometimes they even happened, most times they didn’t, either way you dealt with the situations, sometime well, sometimes not so well, your still here.  Notice that when we look back at the all the things we feared, how many have turned out to be False Evidence Appearing Real (F.E.A.R.).

    What if? … I’ll deal with it, as I always have, some times well, sometimes not so well, I’ll learn…

    Great thing about the retreat is that I’m pretty sure you meet many others that have the same ‘what if’ and fears as you have, maybe you will even talk about them, maybe not.  Still what if… what if during the retreat you experience a few moments without anxiety or any what if’s? What would that feel like?

    Reading your post it seemed to me that a part of you wants that.

     

    #419572
    Peter
    Participant

    There is wisdom in Thich Nat Han words, my own experience in the unskillful attempt to alleviate a feeling seldom made things better in the long run

    The key word being skillful and as you point out Helcat noticing the triggers is a important part of that.  Hire I’m thinking less on solving a problem as to the experience in the moment –  “I spent all evening on the porch staring at mountains, listening to birds… Heart still empty” . In such a moment I don’t wish to run from it or in the moment fix it. Its very uncomfortable

    The teachings talk a lot about emptiness being a important  skill to cultivate. “The Heart still empty” isn’t the emptiness they point to but I suspect could be a doorway if one has courage. Is it not odd that what one hopes for is also what one fears? (Lots of wounded child in that)

    #419539
    Peter
    Participant

    Reposted to remove the formatting and make it more readable – wish edits were allowed

    I was watching an episode of Yellowstone the other day where the main character made the following statement.

    “I spent all evening on the porch staring at mountains, listening to birds… Heart still empty. I take a shower to wash it away like dirt, but you can’t wash lonely off. So, I surrender to it. Best I can do is sleep through the lonely.”

    “I can’t reflect at the end of the day. Evenings are for forgetting. But in the morning, I remember.”

    Something achingly sad about those words. An emptiness that isn’t empty, I feel and ‘know’ the words. (The emptiness experienced here is not the emptiness as suggested by the teachings of Buddha. We are not falling here but holding on… of course we fool ourselves believing were not falling.)

    After hearing those words my first thought was to wonder if ‘loneliness’ was an emotion or state of being? Probably both are true at the same time, yet I’m not sure I experience loneliness as an emotion. I am more likely to say that I feel sad because I’m lonely… In that context is sadness a distraction from looking at the experience of loneliness in the eye? I suspect I pretend I can rather wash lonely off then face loneliness .

    On the topic how to deal with emotions I’m wondering how others experience and deal with loneliness

    #419538
    Peter
    Participant

    I was watching an episode of Yellowstone the other day where the main character made the following statement.
    <p style=”text-align: left;”>“I spent all evening on the porch staring at mountains, listening to birds… Heart still empty. I take a shower to wash it away like dirt, but you can’t wash lonely off. So, I surrender to it. Best I can do is sleep through the lonely.”</p>
    <p style=”text-align: left;”>“I can’t reflect at the end of the day. Evenings are for forgetting. But in the morning, I remember.”</p>
    Something achingly sad about those words. An emptiness that isn’t empty, I feel and ‘know’ the words. (The emptiness experienced here is not the emptiness as suggested by the teachings of Buddha. We are not falling here but holding on… of course we fool ourselves believing were not falling.)

    After hearing those words my first thought was to wonder if ‘loneliness’ was an emotion or state of being? Probably both are true at the same time, yet I’m not sure I experience loneliness as an emotion. I am more likely to say that I feel sad because I’m lonely… In that context is sadness a distraction from looking at the experience of loneliness in the eye? I suspect I pretend I can rather wash lonely off then face loneliness .

    On the topic how to deal with emotions I’m wondering how others experience and deal with loneliness

    #419536
    Peter
    Participant

    Ever wonder why the Buddha is most often pictured as laughing?  Siddhartha on being ‘enlightened’ – lightened – I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.” One does not have to be a monk to gain nothing 🙂

    Something from Campbell, Myths of Light –

    D.T. Suzuki once remarked, “You know, they tell me when a baby is born, the baby cries. What does the baby say when the baby cries? The baby says, ‘Worlds above, worlds beneath—there is no one in the world like me’” . So, all babies are Buddhas! What’s the difference between Queen Maya’s baby and all the other babies? Siddhartha knew from the beginning that he was Buddha; all the other babies are caught in the illusion of materiality and the worlds of perception and sensation, but not him. Buddha means “The Awakened One” or “The Illuminated One,” and what brings one to illumination other than a deep, penetrating, attention to life, life exactly as it is, an attention to life that allows one to realize that the forces of nature, the pulse of the cosmos, course through and pulse in you, too. The nature of the Universe is your nature as well.”

    #419535
    Peter
    Participant

    That was beautifully expressed Mae. “To approach life’s current life’s disruptions with curiosity…”  has such a light feel, a exhale of breath, you are a wonder.

    #419522
    Peter
    Participant

    Hi Mai

    Quite the year you are having

    In a single year I was dumped, lost connection to my community, the markets crashed, lost my job and no one was hiring. Nothing made sense. The world as I thought and assumed it ought to be was not.  (The question behind the hero’s journey – how will you respond to Life as it Is. Yes? No? – Whoever has eyes, let them see – notice how much of the Journey is about learning to see Life as it is and not as we are….)

    I wonder if at some point in life everyone faces such disruption in their lives. Not that knowing that lessens the anxiety, fear, disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, anger, existential angst… a person in that situation experiences.

    Turns out existential angst was the one that caused me the greatest distress as I felt forced to question everything. Yet in a way it also proved to be a path out as it forced me ‘down’ where I had to feel and take responsibility for what I believed, felt, and thought. A difference in knowing a definition and ‘knowing’ the experience. Indifference was not an option.

    As Phillip Simmons put it ‘Learning to Fall – The Blessings of an Imperfect Life’ It seems the way out isn’t up but down. Both Buddhism and Christianity (kenosis) have the notion of self-emptiness as a path to discover the Self in such moments. A kind of falling upwards, not for the faint of heart as it involves a lot of “dying.”

    Something more practical… The two steps I took that year that kept me moving forward was finding a therapist to talk with and taking up ballroom dancing. You can learn a lot about yourself in dance class. A instructor once told me that dancing was a or of falling and catching yourself. (Just reminded myself of a book I read back then – The Art of Falling – by Kathryn Craft (lyrical portrayal of a young woman trying to come to terms with her body and the artistic world that has repeatedly rejected her. The Art of Falling expresses the beauty of movement, the stasis of despair, and the unlimited possibilities that come with a new beginning.)

    Something by Phillip Simmons to leave you with (google – learningtofall excerpt – for the full chapter.)
    “Think again of falling as a figure of speech. We fall on our faces, we fall for a joke, we fall for someone, we fall in love. In each of these falls, what do we fall away from? We fall from ego, we fall from our carefully constructed identities, our reputations, our precious selves. We fall from ambition, we fall from grasping, we fall, at least temporarily, from reason. And what do we fall into? We fall into passion, into terror, into unreasoning joy. We fall into humility, into compassion, into emptiness, into oneness with forces larger than ourselves, into oneness with others whom we realize are likewise falling. We fall, at last, into the presence of the sacred, into godliness, into mystery, into our better, diviner natures…

    I would rather, at least for now, find victory in the falling itself, in learning how to live fully, consciously in the presence of mystery. When we learn to fall we learn to accept the vulnerability that is our human endowment, the cost of walking upright on the earth.

    In the northern part of our town there’s a stream that comes down out of the mountains, and at one place that we call the Pothole it makes a pool of emerald clear water ten feet deep. Every summer from my boyhood until quite recently I would climb the rocks high above that pool and fling my body into the air. A summer was not complete without the thrill of that rushing descent, the slap of the water, the shock of its icy embrace. I have a photograph, taken two years ago, of what would prove to be my last such jump. In the foreground, seen from the back, my wife stands waist deep in water, shading her eyes with one hand, watching. She has never approved of this ritual, something most grown men leave behind with their teenage years, but there I am, half way down, pale against the dark rocks that I rush past. You can see my wet footprints on the rock over my head that I’ve just left. My eyes are focused downward on the water rushing toward my feet, and I am happy, terrified, alive.

    We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear God let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.” — Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall

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