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PeterParticipantHi Anita
To be candid my posts of late have surprised me with the call to ‘scream’ seeming coming from nowhere and resonating deeply. Holding the tension of one’s paradoxes with no other intention nothing is fixed, the old fears remain but a something else arose. Holding the fear and the clarity of the No and the Yes something else emerged, a something that was not constructed but revealed. The blank canvas, always blank, painting itself. This is how the soul speaks, not in formulas, in emergence, in surprise. The scream not from despair but from truth.
Leaving me to wonder that perhaps healing isn’t the disappearance of wounds but the weaving of those wounds into wholeness. Healing not always making the pain go away but can make it sacred. The wound does not always close, but perhaps it no longer needs to. Perhaps it opens into a space where mystery lives. Where sorrow and beauty are not two things, where a scream isn’t failure but a song.
I note that the Buddha (nor any of the wisdom traditions when not misunderstood) promises that a ‘way’ will fix life, that healing will fix life. The Dharma doesn’t promise that life will stop hurting. It offers a way to relate to that hurt with spaciousness, awareness, compassion. Not as answers but as mirrors.
Each moment met openly reflecting the very thing we most need to see. The wind doesn’t fix you it reflects your resistance, a mountain doesn’t’ offer solutions, it reveals your stillness, wisdom teachings don’t change you, they return you to yourself.
In the past I have approached the wisdom traditions as pathway to fixing instead of allowing. Today I see the teachings as mirrors to reflect the Self back to me. Nature a mirror, teachings a mirror, each of us a mirror… The mirror not an object but a state of being.
So let the mirror reflect, let our screams sound, let healing arrive not as a fix but as a flowering in the soil of unguarded presence. Life is not broken, we are not broken, we are an unfolding.
This feels like a place to pause, contemplate if only to avoid the temptation to cling to what arises or mistaking a path as destination.
I hope everyone enjoys the weekend.Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond. Into the gone completely beyond, the other shore awaken.
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond. Into the gone completely beyond, the other shore return…PeterParticipantHi Anita I appreciate the questions as they mirror my thoughts.
There were a few questions so I’ll start with this one and maybe the others will fade: How do we stay present with emotion—without clinging to it, numbing ourselves, or rushing to fix it? How do we let difficult feelings sing through us… instead of scream “Danger! Danger!” at every turn?
If I have read what you wrote correctly the danger sensed is arising from past experiences (now memory) and is not immediate. If that is not the case and the danger immediate what I write of would not apply. The meditation is intended for the second half of life and the dangers of the past dealt with even if handled badly and their remains a wish of ‘if only’ it wasn’t so.
The thought of the mirror of the moment was to stay in the tension of such questions without intention other then holding it.
Emotional mindfulness reminds us that Emotions are not problems to solved but energies to witness. Here we sit in tension between the witness and our conditioned mind, our habit of categorizing and creating constructs. Observing the tension between the Yes and the No the space between witness and mind may dissolve and a something else arise. Here the observer is the observed and the thought the thinker – a mirror choicelessly aware.
When we don’t intervene with our habitual sorting and fixing, we open ourselves to a different mode of relating to the thoughts and feelings that arise. We do so with curiosity and space not judgment or measure. A space for something new to arise.
It is a difference of being present to an emotion holding space and being present in the emotion as identification with the feeling. Holding the tension, you will notice both. Staying in the tension honors the complexity of our experiences, resisting the urge to resolve or soothe our discomfort the tension becomes a teacher rather than a puzzle to be solve.
“Let difficult feelings sing through us” is a poetic call to metabolize emotion through presence. Where a scream cries out emergency the mind reacts to act and fix. A song, even a sad one, is expression and invitation to stillness in movement, resonance and maybe healing.
The notion I am playing with here is that of being a Mirror to the Moment and allowing what will arise and be seen. A mirror does not choose what appears nor try to fix what it reflects or claim ownership of what is seen.
To resolve the tension a third ‘force’ is required only the force isn’t action., nor can it be it be willed. It can only be allowed which the constructing ego mind is going to resist, thinking action must be a doing certainly not a being. This force is not a push but a rhythm, not will but a welcome. This to is a holding of tension.
The ego equates agency with control, believing doing is superior to being and allowing ia weakness. But this “third” isn’t passive, it’s radically alive, quietly dynamic, and spacious enough to hold contradiction without collapse. To the ego, it feels like “nothing is happening.” But to the deeper self, it’s everything. Presence without grasping. It’s the alchemical vessel where transformation happens because it is not forced…even as the fire heats the contents. (another tension to hold)
The past, the minds constructs, the fears remain, these experiences reside in the tension we hold. The Yes and the No, the like and not like. The meditation a kind of spiritual aikido, meeting the moment not with resistance but with yielding presence. Holding tensions not as weakness, but strength. A willingness to live the mystery, not to master it.
To be a mirror is to surrender authorship. To allow the third is to become a space through which life speaks. To embody this is to dance with the ineffable, not by leading, but by listening.
I seem to have used a lot of words which I fear may be misread as an attempt at understanding and understanding control and create a process to follow…
I can’t deny understanding hasn’t been the driving force of my youth, my ego and hope. A hope that if I understood I would no longer fear and no longer feel lost or alone. I would instead be in control and safe… That has proven to be a fool’s game and one I played badly.
I acknowledge the tension in that and holding the tension sense the rhythm of movement between a No ‘not this anymore’ and a Yes ‘I am still here’, listening.
I see I have named a fear – to be misunderstood. Within that fear a paradox that its ok to feel the pull for understanding and the tension that the point isn’t to not understand but to no longer demand the understanding protect me… I have named other fears, to be lost and alone… the tension of feeling separate from the world I know I’m not separate from.
I may still scream… just not in desperation… a holy scream.
Not a scream of “save me!”, but the scream “I am here!”
Not desperation, but declaration. Not collapse, but liberation.
Not trying to flee the fire but becoming the flame…This too is part of the alchemy: Letting the voice rise, not to demand an answer, but to announce presence. Letting emotion move, not to control, but to release. Letting the scream sound, not to be rescued, but to be real.
So, scream. If it comes, let it come. Not as a symptom but as a signal that you are alive, unhidden, and unwilling to mute what is most vital. Even the soul needs a sound sometimes. Let it be wild. Let it be true. Let it be yours. The sound and mirror of AUM.
PeterParticipantFollowing is the meditative or contemplative “practice” that honors both the structural insight and the radical, unconditioned seeing
The intention is to:
– Hold tension without escaping into belief or passivity
– Involve rhythm and interruption (Law of Seven – rythem )
– Engage the triadic forces (Law of Three – Active, Passive, Reconcile)
– Remain choicelessly aware
– Allow insight to arise from direct contact with the realStage 1: Affirming – Conscious Attention (5–7 min)
“I am here.”
• Sit upright. Eyes gently open or closed.
• Become deeply aware of your body, breath, sounds, sensations.
• Don’t seek to change anything. Just affirm the fact of being.
• Let attention embrace the total field of experience.
Think of this as the Active Force: presence, attention, existence.Stage 2: Denying – Letting Go of Control (5–7 min)
“Let it be.”
• Begin to notice impulses to control: to fix posture, judge thoughts, “do it right.”
• Each time such a thought arises, see it clearly, and let it pass.
• Now attend to what is not happening: the quiet, the spaces, the inner silence.
• Release the will, without becoming passive.This is the Passive Force: receptivity, surrender, stillness.
Stage 3: Reconciling – Holding the Tension (10–15 min)
“Yes and No arise together.”
• Sit now in the full paradox: I act, but I do not force. I see, but I do not grasp.
• Feel the tension of opposites: the absurd, the ecological grief, the Yes/No of your life.
• Don’t solve it. Let it burn gently in the awareness.
• Remain as a mirror, not fixing, not escaping.This is the Reconciling Force: consciousness itself. Insight may arise—but you don’t seek it
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🔔 Conscious Shock (Built-In):
– At 7 and 14 minutes, sound a bell or chime (or use a gentle timer).
– This mimics the “shock” in the Law of Seven: to awaken you from drifting.
– When the bell rings, ask silently:“Am I here? Who is here?”
This conscious jolt returns you to the moment—not as a judgment, but a refreshing of attention.
Integration (Final 3–5 min)
“What remains?”
– Open your eyes (if closed).
– Let yourself feel whatever remains, not what you think should be there.
– No analysis. No conclusion. Just the afterglow of being fully present, of having held paradox without collapsing into certainty.This is intended as a “practice” of listening to the “music” between Yes and No, between self and world, between rhythm and silence. A place where structure meets silence, where law not mistaken as love meets freedom. A practice that is not done but lived.
PeterParticipantHi Alissa
I really appreciate your thoughtful comments and the grounded way you approach these issues.
I’ve also noticed that AI often acts as a mirror, how I frame a question (the prompt) significantly influences the response. As a tool, AI has the potential either to expand our consciousness or to constrain it by reinforcing our existing biases. The key, as in all great hero stories, lies in the questions asked.
I agree with Anita, recognizing AI as both a tool and a mirror is an important insight. It reminds us that when we engage with AI, we are, in many ways, engaging in a dialogue with ourselves. Questions I ask myself when engaging with AI: how am I being mirrored? Does this interaction reveal unconscious biases within me?
I’m not sure I would call AI a illusion though, however I recognize how easily someone might forget that AI is a tool without feelings or beliefs.
These were some of my findings:
— Engaging with AI often reveals more about the human user than the machine itself.
— AI reflects the assumptions, tone, and biases of the prompt and can surface latent patterns in the user’s thinking
— AI can introduce novel insights and perspectives when used intentionally. Conversely, if fed biased input, it can reinforce stereotypes or narrow viewpoints, a known issue in human-AI interaction and algorithmic bias studies.
— The reflective nature of prompt-response loops can expose underlying values, assumptions, or blind spots.I’m currently exploring a notion of relating to the wisdom traditions teachings as a mirror. ‘When observation becomes a mirror, it becomes a portal, not to escape, but to enter more deeply into the real. In that stillness, the noise of the mind quiets, and something deeper begins to move, not thought, but insight, not effort but understanding.’
PeterParticipantThanks Anita
I should note that the notion of planting the seed was a seed planted by something you said about your personal ‘mission statement’. To do no harm and help in the ways you can even if it feels small. Perhaps your own answer to your question – how can WE make a positive difference?
In response to your reflection – “You said it perfectly, Peter. You used the word ‘we’ – we are repeating…’ – but the tragedy is that there’s so little of ‘we’ in today’s fractured world. There’s too much of ‘they’… those people. And ironically, they (whoever they are) might say you’re the one caught in an illusion—the illusion that there is such a thing as ‘we,’” – I want to share this: (something I struggled with while forming my last post)
You’re not wrong. I hear the truth in what you’re saying as the fracture between “we” and “they” feels very real, and it is painful. Yet I wonder if such observations, intended to highlight the divide, might also unintentionally reinforce it.
Our minds crave safety in clear distinctions: “us” versus “them,” “inside” versus “outside”… On one hand, the more we hold tightly to “they” as outside, the stronger the division feels. On the other, the more we recognize that “they” reflect parts within ourselves, the more the boundary softens, and the “we” naturally expands.
My use of “we” is an invitation to lean into the latter.
So perhaps the tragedy isn’t that “we” is missing from the world, but that the story of separation keeps being retold and believed?
How can WE make a positive difference, in a Life worth living? Perhaps healing begins, and a new consciousness awakens, when we take the step to see the “they” in “we,” and the “we” in “they.” Not a original thought, just one we tend to lose in the shadows.
We can’t change how someone might respond to these thoughts, that is part of the grief experienced, but its what we can lean into as we struggle to live our truths, and just maybe plant a few seeds along the way.
PeterParticipantHi everyone. Over the last weeks I’ve been exploring this dread I been feeling and Anita has been expressing. (I used AI to aid me in walking through and clarifying my thoughts and frustrations.)
We are living in what could be called a golden age. Never in human history have so many people had access to so much: information, comfort, connectivity, and opportunity. Diseases that once decimated populations are now treatable. Knowledge that was once locked in libraries is now available in our pockets. In many ways, life has never been better for so many.
Yet Despite the abundance, people feel anxious, disconnected, and disillusioned. The prevailing narrative is not one of triumph, but of breakdown, of systems failing, of meaning eroding, of futures becoming uncertain.
Despite the promise of a golden age, I find myself increasingly skeptical that I will witness a positive outcome in my lifetime. The world, for all its technological brilliance, seems determined to cling to an outdated consciousness, one rooted in competition, fear, and the illusion of separation.
Just this week, Countries have pledged to re-arm and increase military spending. This, while environmental issues remain unchecked and public health systems strain under pressure. The priorities are clear, and they are not aligned with the kind of future we claim to want. It feels as though we are repeating the errors of the past, only now with more powerful tools and higher stakes.
This is not cynicism. It is grief. Grief for the potential we are squandering. Grief for the wisdom we ignore. Grief for the generations who may inherit a world more fractured than the one we were given.
And yet, even in this grief, their is responsibility. If the world is not ready to change, then perhaps the work is not to wait for change, but to live, speak, and act from the consciousness we hope will one day take root. Even if we never see the harvest, we can still plant the seeds.
Today’s technology has the potential to awaken us or to further entrench us in unconscious patterns. I pray we choose the braver path.
If we are to navigate this age bravely, we must do more than innovate. We must awaken. We must learn to slow down in the midst of speed, to listen in the midst of noise, and to remember that the most powerful technology we possess is not artificial, it is the human capacity for awareness, compassion, and transformation.
Alan Watts might remind us: “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” And neither is society. We can choose not to escape ourselves, but to meet ourselves more deeply. Just maybe that might be the difference?
PeterParticipantHi Anita
The Riddle my go to song. 🙂
“You’re lookin’ for a clue? I love you free…” I imagine myself sitting in those words, being loved – free.“Looking back, I realize I’d been thinking that stillness meant the absence of feeling” – I hear the beginnings of a song?
FYI – I’ll be of line for a while.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
The world is so big and we are so small… yet even smaller then small we are bigger then big. When I feel this way I like to listen to the song ‘The Riddle’ by five for fighting
What you’ve been expressing touches on a deep and sacred wound, the loss of the innocent child, the one who never got to fully arrive. It’s left you in a long night of the soul, where the ache of loneliness doesn’t just live in the body, but in the soul. I too know this ache. The kind that visits most often at night, when the world quiets, the noise fades, and all that’s left is you… and the silence. If only the birds would sing…. I might not fill the space with thought of what was and should not have been, if only.
I turn to Rami’s words on loneliness. He speaks of it as a sacred visitor, one who comes to reveal that there is something within you that longs to be seen, held, and loved. Not by the world. Not even by another. But by you.
And yet, though I know these words to be true… how can they sooth when one can’t feel themselves enough?
Words, in the end, must fail. So, I return to the sacred container, the place where tears are allowed to fall without shame. You speak of being thrown into old age without ever tasting youth. But the soul is not bound by time. She waits. She remembers. She still sings.
Listen deeply to her voice. You are not broken. You are becoming.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
It seems to me you have been touching on something “just out of the corner of the eye” that resonated with my own ponderings. That word Loneliness associated with darkness, how it colors life and that ache. I do not wish to say to much more as it feels like space to hold for a while.
I will share an accompanying thought that has been arising as I’ve sat in T.S Eliots words and that you also echo in your last respnse. And “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
Mary doesn’t rush to interpret or act. She doesn’t try to control or explain. She simply holds with reverence, the unfolding of life, even when it’s confusing or painful. The feminine wisdom of contemplation, of allowing meaning to ripen in the heart over time.
In Jungian terms “Mary” the ‘sacred container’, the vessel of the Self that holds paradox, uncertainty, and transformation. A reminder that not all truths are meant to be solved or spoken. Some truths grow stronger in stillness. Some healings need to happen in the quiet. Some are meant to be pondered, lived with, and slowly integrated.
In a world filled with troublesome stories I find myself returning again and again to this “container”. Not to name the ache and understand, but to feel and find rest in it.
PeterParticipantHi Anita: Riffing on what you wrote.
Reading the post a line from the Heart Sutra arose: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form”. I don’t know why, but these words leave me with a quiet ache, a loneliness I can’t name, but not disrepair.
Lately, I’ve been sitting with T.S. Eliot’s line: “Darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
What if light and darkness aren’t opposites? What if light is darkness in motion, illumination as the unfolding of awareness, form as the dance of stillness?Last night I read a dialog from Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji which I felt was connected to the ponderings – Looking up into the night sky Bapu-ji asked: “But what is nothing?” I gaped with my child’s eyes at the blackness above my head, imagined it as a dark blanket dotted with little stars, imagined with a shiver what might lie beyond if you suddenly flung this drapery aside. Loneliness, big and terrifying enough to make you want to weep alone in the dark.
“There is no nothing” Bapu-ji continued, as if to assuage my fears, his tremulous voice cutting like a saw the layers of darkness before us, – “when you realize that everything is in the One.”Before the first light moved, there was not nothing but stillness. A fullness so vast, it needed no form. A silence so deep, it echoed with potential. We call it darkness, but not to be feared, This is not the absence of light, but its womb. Light dances, born of stillness, the breath held before the song, motion held in arms unmoving… Do not fear the dark, it is not lonely, no need to rush to fill the silence, it is not the end of light; it is its beginning.
I wonder, the quiet ache remains unnamed, has it been felt.
The night sky whisperers as I drift to sleep; Fall, child. Fall into the blackness. It is not forgetting, it is remembering what you were before you were born.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I wish there were words that would help reduce fear and anxiety. I know how quickly the work we have done to move past our hurts can be undone by outer events we have no control over, and we find ourselves in old familiar unwanted territory.
I can’t say I understand the world seeming constant need to hurt one another. (Perhaps a fear of ‘not enough-ness’ a topic for another day.) How this moment the happenings of the outer world triggers uncertainty, anxiety and fear. Then I hear your cry, “I think of letting go of any love for my mother.” the heart breaks, love so entangled with pain, obligation, betrayal and survival. (Is this the cry of current world affairs? Are we letting go of love…)
Over the last few months, I feel you standing at a threshold, not just of letting go of a relationship that has hurt you, but of something deeper: a way of seeing, feeling, and being. The words of the Heart Sutra come to mind – into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond, the other shore, awaken.
Today I started my day reading the meditation from Acton and Contemplation. It spoke of contemplation as “a long loving look at the real.” That line stayed with me. Because maybe what you’re doing now, facing the truth of your experience, your pain, your history… as a kind of contemplation. And maybe love, in this context, isn’t about closeness or forgiveness or even warmth. Maybe it’s about seeing clearly and choosing peace.
You said you might be letting go of love for your mother. I wonder if what you’re really letting go of is the version of love that hurt you, the one that demanded silence and the sacrifice of self as the price for survival. That’s not love you need to keep. Love can be fierce. Love can walk away. Love can protect.
“There’s a kind of joy that comes not from things going well, but from being real, from standing in truth, even when it hurts. And there’s a kind of sadness that’s not weakness, but wisdom. Both can live in you at once. That’s not contradiction, that’s depth.” after Richard Rohr
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Binary thinking existed long before personal computers
True, my point was that the digital “information” age re-enforces that tendency. Our reliance on our ‘smart phones’ to not only manage and record our memories but in ‘think’ for us… we need discernment sills more then ever.
Hi ALessa
Thanks for the vote of confidence.I’ve also pondered the notions of ‘Treating others as you want to be treated.’ -‘Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you’ similar but not the same thing. And then ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ – wondering – what if were not so great at loving ourselves? Then the suggestion to read that literally, that we are our neighbor. In the web of life everything is connected – what we do to the earth we do to ourselves…
“We swim in a river consciousness, experiencing just a molecule of the whole, mistaking it as separated from the whole the I calls I.
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” – WattsPeterParticipantHi Anita
Sounds like you had a night 🙂“I used to think in black-and-white terms—all-or-nothing”
Sadly, the digital age, especially with algorithm-driven platforms reinforces and amplifies our tendency to either-or, all or nothing, binary thinking.
Regarding the second half of life transition, the digital culture does make it harder to slow down and listen inwardly. On the other hand, it can be a great resource to explore the wisdom traditions and such.
I wonder what role AI will play? Will we use it to amplify the noise and distraction and quick fix. Or could it become a companion for reflection, ask better questions, and access deeper knowledge. LOL – I implied a ‘either or’ when the its going to be both.
Skillful discernment something the we will all need to develop… I hope society will be up to the task.
I was recently asked what I thought was the best advice the bible had to offer and the first thought that came to mind – “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
In a culture of instant reactions the advice to step back to ponder, observe, absorb, and reflect. Her response to the miraculous a profound inward stillness, fully present to the moment. Such pondering isn’t passive; it’s thoughtful engagement. She’s not simply feeling her faith, she’s examining it, cherishing it, and contemplating its meaning, a invitation to blend heart and mind.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
To the topic of suppressing vs expressing emotions. I would agreeThe thought or image was as “partners in a quiet dance”, holding the tension of paradox as connection.
Expanding the metaphor, dancing with a partner requires tension as the means to create connection, to feel where the partner is. A connection we hope neither to light nor two heavy.
In dance, that subtle resistance isn’t conflict; it’s intimacy and communication. Feeling where the other is without overpowering or collapsing, just enough to know. Emotionally, that same kind of attuned tension allows us to meet our inner experience with respect. Not rushing to express nor forcing it down. But holding it, sensing it, moving with it.
Understanding, I trust, will arise but not as a driving force, not as the intention… the intention being to dance.
Like breath, we exhale and inhale. There are moments when a feeling held back is a kindness, to ourselves or others. And moments when releasing becomes a form of truth-telling, connection, and transformation. Neither is wrong. Neither is the whole. Together, they move us toward being.
A change in perspective where suppression vs expression becomes suppression and expression. Not poles in opposition but steps in rhythm. In that middle space, the breath between action and stillness, we cultivate a presence that doesn’t demand resolution, it listens, resonates. This was the experience of stillness while dancing.
In the second half of life, I wish to lean into that, a move from the head to the heart. A move from a seemingly insatiable need to understand and cry out why, to a quite yes.
Anyone following my posts might notice how difficult letting go of understanding has been, being a defining attribute of “my type”. The mind is so good at trying to protect us by explaining everything. But the heart of the fourth chakra isn’t to explain, it’s to witness and be open. Not the end of inquiry, but a softening.
Writing that I wonder if its not all wishful thinking, the ego disguising itself still wanting to understand… but maybe…
“Grant me the grace to hear the Voice beyond voices, the one that never shames or frightens, but invites, strengthens, and clarifies. Strip me gently of illusion and hostility until even my fear forgets its name.” – Anonymous
What would such a dance look like to you?
PeterParticipantHi Everyone
“thoughts on the later half of life:”
Jung once said it takes a healthy ego to let the ego go, a truth I’ve come to embrace. I see letting go as the work of life’s second half.
Like the Hindu notion of Vanaprastha, once a literal retreat into the forest—it now symbolizes a journey into the inner forest, a conscious turning inward that rest in the heart chakra. A time when one begins to relinquish control, status, and possessions, and instead seeks wisdom, contemplation, and spiritual depth.
On my path, I began noticing a tension between duality (the river) and non-duality (the ocean), and with it, the assumption that such an experience must be one or the other. Perhaps, in hindsight, this assumption revealing a desire to escape life (suffering).
It was through ballroom dancing that I encountered stillness within movement, a paradox that began to shift my perspective. Over time I suspected that duality and non-duality (subject, object, particle wave) aren’t opposites to choose between, but partners in a quiet dance. Not two sides of a coin, but the coin itself. A coin that no matter how you divide it, all are always present.
And so, as the second half of life dawns the realization: the paradox isn’t something to resolve, but something to hold. Paradox softening into integration. It’s here, in this stillness, that ego loosens its grip, not in rejection, but in reverence. The experiences of life, deeply felt and lived, resting quietly in the heart, no longer seeking to be understood, only held.
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