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PeterParticipantContemplation on the sun
As I sat in the early morning I contemplated the sun, how it travels across the sky measuring out our day. A linear experience of time where one moment follows the next and in which we play.
I contemplated the moment realizing that in the very moment the sun was somewhere rising and somewhere at the same time setting. An experience of time where all things happen at the same time, a moment where every possible human experience was happening. Here someone was laughing, someone crying, someone falling in love, someone falling out of love, someone being born, someone dying… I contemplated this moment and saw everything, everyone, connected.
I contemplated the moment of connection realizing the sun neither rises nor sets, but is and so we are. An experience of time that isn’t a measurement but Eternal. The All that is One from which all arise and returns…“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die…”― Joseph Campbell
Breathing slows and steadies, the mind stills, thoughts and thinker one… silence…
PeterParticipantThanks for the kind words and poem Anita
I’ve been doing yoga classes where at the end the group is asked to repeat the club’s mantra ‘I love my Life’ – which I can’t do as I don’t love Life even though I’ve realized that life arises from and returns to Love.
I agree that the paradox of the desire to change will also confront and trigger the fear of change. I also agree with the advice about change – the importance of goals and process, detachment from results and finding joy in the journey … I feel this is important for the first half of life but not so great as you enter the last quarter.
I’m leaning towards Krishnamurti were all such doings are actions that happen within the temporal playground of duality and measurement and so will also always involve conflict and ‘grasping of water’. As most playground games they have proven fun and a distraction until they don’t, and a new game needed to be found. That has been my experience.
As I was writing I thought I would google to see if their was philosophy behind the notion of the sun neither rising or setting. Always a little disappointing to discover that what you discovered wasn’t new but also not comforting in a way.
Anyway, I didn’t find much though the results showed that the Rig Veda has this:
“The sun, it neither rises, nor does it set
he who knows this, he attains moksha……..”My intuition returns me to the beginning of our dialog – that we work for that which no work is required –
“To trust yourself to the water” will not be an act of doing or fixing but a leap… only not a leap you ‘work up to’.I asked the question how and, in the asking, defeated myself.
“He who knows…” but this knowing isn’t ‘knowledge’ and this is where I stumble. I so like to pretend at knowing.
Language is going to fail as language is a toy for the playground…. That said you may be on to something with poems and art.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I think, your correct about the phycology of change.
Krishnamurti makes an argument that the desire for change itself creates conflict. It’s a complex simple argument that you can’t think about change without also putting that into conflict with what you want to change. Then because we are thinking, and the thinker is also the thought…. we are the conflict, and around we go.
I think, as you noted, the notion of understanding excites me and doing so keeps its at arms length. There is a part of me that wants to ‘believe’ what I believe but another that is afraid. Its clear I use ‘seeking’ to protect me finding.
Still… out of the ‘corner of my eye’ sometimes there is a hint… ending the duality of form and formless – when your inner dependency on form is gone – which not being form or formless isn’t a doing.
In the conversation with Helcat I write about the moment Frodo arrives at the spot where the ring can be destroyed only to find he can’t do it. I’m convinced that such a thing is not for us to Do, it can only happen. And this happening isn’t an allowing or surrender. The space the ‘ring’ is released is neither form nor formless.
Yesterday after asking and posting the question I retreated to a chair to escape in a book ‘A Soldier of a Great War’ I’ve been reading.
(As often happens after asking a question I was surprised by what shows up – I also see now that the author was playing on the title as the main character is a Soldier and yet in the worst that can be experienced remains connected to beauty. Perhaps the real ‘Great War’ were all engaged in.)Alessandro wondered how a song could be both sad and cheerful, its counterpoint dancing forward even as it pulled back.
It was because the world had a life of its own. Leave winter alone or watch it to death, it would still gradually turn to summer. Miracles and paradoxes could be explained by the marvelously independent courses of their elements, and perhaps real beauty could be partially understood in that it was not just a combination, but a dissolution; that after the threads were woven and tangled they then untangled and continued on their separate ways; that the trains that pulled into the station in a riveting spectacle as clouds of steam condensed in the midnight air, then left for different destinations and disappeared; that the drama of a striking clock was impossible without the silence that was both its preface and epilogue. Music was a change forged half of silences and half of sound, love was nothing without longing and loss; and were time not to have at its end the absence of time, and the absence of time not to have been preceded by time, neither would be of any consequence.”
I note again the theme of movement arising and returning to stillness, sound arising and returning to silence and time arising and returning to the eternal. Without the arising and returning neither would be of any consequence. I feel I’m being asked to trust.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
Early you mentioned how Sam was based on a soldier that selflessly came to Tolkien aid suggesting that Frodo in some ways was Tolkien. The image that came to mind was how ‘tired’ Frodo remained after the quest, not defeated but his youth replaced by profound knowing that aged and weighed on him. I wonder if Tolkien felt similar. Again, the word bittersweet comes to mind.
I admired Sam, though not called to carry the weight of the evil he was able to carry his friend. Sam saw what his friend saw and suffered yet at the end of his quest, he maintained a wiser innocence that allowed him to continue to engage with life. Where at the end of Frodo’s quest Frodo couldn’t fully re-engage with Life.
I recall now that Frodo parents drowned. so at a young age Frodo had a glimpse of life as it is. Perhaps this is why Frodo doesn’t have the same youthful inherent innocents that Sam had. There is always something sad in Frodo. I suspect it was this difference of experience that made Frodo the one able to carry the ring… But not destroy it.
Purist of heart…. Frodo I think had a heart that had been broken and perhaps healed by the kindness of Bilbo taking him in. A healed heart stronger because of its scares… than perhaps only such a heart that has been broken is Pure?
It took everything Frodo had in him to get the ring to the place where it could be destroyed but not the step further. Here Tolkien shows his wisdom as such an evil is not for us to destroy, we are only called to carry our part. Its a theme throughout the story as the hero’s never assume to try to change what was not theirs to change.
I think I saw Sam as the Hero because I wanted to be him. To emerge from the quest with the kind wise innocence needed to continue to engage in life after all the hardships.
In hindsight it makes sense to me that I saw Frodo as failing and Sam as the hero. I wanted to be Sam and knew I wasn’t.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat.
I marvel at Tolkien friendships and how his small group of friends inspired each other and wonder if we well see the like again.
I always thought that Sam was the hero of the story and found Frodo difficult to relate to as in the end he fails. At least that’s how I saw it when I first read the books. Today I have a different take but I’d be curious to know your thoughts on Frodo.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
What a lovely breakdown. We seem to have come to a question which I will ask near the end of this post.
In my old journal writings, I also noted that I would try to do no harm. Next to it was a thought that if wisdom teaching weren’t leading a person towards compassion they were on the wrong track. I feel we are on the good track.
Over the last week I’ve falling into the shadows feeling stuck. Going over the post in this thread I wrote the following.
I’m tired of retelling myself my stories.
I’m tired of the emotions the retelling trigger,
I’m tired of the shame and sense of failure and hopelessness the retelling trigger,
I’m tired of trying to grasp at some inspired hope that the stories seem to call for…A part of me still attached to the original shame that I’m bad… A shame reinforced by the retelling of old stories….
One might wonder if I’m out to punish myself and so deserve even seek out the shadows… ohUnskillful reasons I retell and hold onto my stories of hurt?
I re-tell my stories in the hopes that by retelling them I can change them.
I re-tell my stories with a thought that I need to hold onto the hurt to maintain boundaries.
I re-tell my stories as away to imagine I’m hurting those that hurt me.
I re-tell my stories to punish myself.As we have explored we have noticed, if only peripherally, the Eternal. Realizing the relationship between the temporal and eternal is the sense of life. This realization itself isn’t hope but that the realization is possible maybe…
So, the question is. How do we go from ‘knowing’ to living and resting in what we have learned?
How do we go from knowledge to wisdom, to making what we ‘know’ to be true to How we are?
When does the seeker get to be also the one who has found?I think I’m asking why do I continue to fall into shadow?
As the words of Tolle, Seneca and Watts indicate this wisdom is known… just not KNOWN. How is it we see but do not see?
“What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” ― Eckhart Tolle
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ― Seneca
“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.” – Eckhart Tolle
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax, and float.”― Alan Watts
PeterParticipantI was reminded of this quote Life of Pi while working though some past stories. I find it inspirational as it reminds me of our humanness, how hard we try, maybe sometimes try to hard… That it may be enough to speak our fear out load and doings so find ourselves surprised that were not alone.
I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
Life of Pi – Yann MartelPeterParticipantHi Helcat
I’m see that its been a tough week.
Its seems you, Anita and I struggle with a similar deep wound of having been told who we where and believing it. Even with all the positive work we have done to return to that ‘stillness where no work is required’ we can still slip into depression. Wounds can heal but forgetting and transforming memory is another thing. Even the transformed memory remembers its source. Memory is a trickster indeed.
Sandhguru argues that Karma is memory or intimately connected to memory, as it is memory that we tend to filter though and base our actions on and view the world. A beginners mind would then be a mind free of Karma, free of attachment to memory. Easier said then done. I am reminded of that quote – that we see the world not as it is but as we are – now we have the other hurtle that how we see ourselves is so tied to how others defined us and how they saw the world…
Hope it seems is not for wimps… something we also share is that we care and see that their is goodness in ourselves and others even when we sometimes doubt…
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Tolkien (I cannot grasp the creativity of a mind such as Tolkien’s)
Pinkie and the Brain… Rocky and Bullwinkle… we have I think given clues to our ages 🙂
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I think you defined Skillful hope best in the previous post “My Hope now is to say YES to me being me”. This is close to what ‘Like Stories of Old’ said in their break down of Lord of the Rings. The hero’s Hope was that when times were hard and victory unlikely, they would stand and press forward remaining true to themselves and their friends.
Outside there was a starless blackness as Gandalf, with Pippin beside him bearing a small torch, made his way to their lodging. They did not speak until they were behind closed doors.
Then at last Pippin took Gandalf’s hand. ‘Tell me, ’He said, ‘is there any hope? For Frodo, I mean; or at least mostly for Frodo.’
Gandalf put his hand on Pippin’s head. ‘There never was much hope,’ he answered. ‘Just a fool’s hope, as I have been toldIn the movie Pippin, a fool of a Took, will take the small torch and use it to light the signal fires that calls and brings forth aid to the cause.
I think, if I dare to hope, it is the fool’s hope. The hope that sparks and maybe brings forth aid, if only the aid of inner resources.
In mythology and fairy tale I note its often the fool that is the Hero, as the fool isn’t encumbered by teaching of how things ought to be and all the rest that get in the way. The fool in these cases having a kind of ‘beginners mind’ and ‘Wu wei’.PeterParticipantGlad your feeling better Anita
I read a book way back ‘Surprised by Joy’ and thought their should be a book ‘Surprised by depression’ as it tends so sneak up on me. I’m never quite sure why but their is is.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
The reference was from ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’. Bullwinkle was always asking Rocky to watch as he pull a rabbit out of his hat. To which Rocky would say ‘but that trick never works’. Bullwinkle would then say ‘this time for sure’ and fail, usually pulling out a lion or some such.
These characters have become part of my psych. For example when I go into my over analytical mode a inner voice whisperers, “but that trick never works” and then another voice.. “but this time for sure”. The trick of course never works as the ‘universes’ appreciates a good old joke.
Yesterday I noted we could, and maybe even should end the dialogue hope ref your thoughts to “pause and notice the small things that reconnected you to your true self, and how that help you though the chaotic times“. But I was heck bent on trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Latter Anita said something similar – “My Hope now is to say YES to me being me” even then I still wanted to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And… that trick never work as I found myself falling in to the trap Krishnamurti talked about – I found I had actually reinforced old issues as I tossed and turned all night.
I recently came a cross a YouTube channel –
- Like Stories of Old
and watched their – ‘A Mythology of Hope – The Lord of the Rings’. (Worth watching as is After Life – An Answer to Nihilism (it will make you cry’) Tolkien was intentional in his story telling where it was the hobbit, the small ones, at the center of the story. I was about to try to explain the video but the voice spoke and for those who are interested the video should be easy to find.
I think I’ll let ‘Like Stories of Old have the last words on skillful hope.
PeterParticipantKim a great reminder…
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.
Imagine a multidimensional spiderweb covered in dew in the morning, and every single drop of dew on this web contains in it the reflections of all the other drops of dew. And, of course, in turn, in every drop of dew that one drop reflects, there is the reflection of all the others again.
― Alan Wilson WattsA web of connection for those with eyes that see.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
That was a very thoughtful reply. I noticed how the word ‘fix’ has for me been revealed as having ‘arisen’ from an unskillful (I was going to label bad) past association. I understand better now why in the orignal post I wrote I wasn’t looking to fix something.
– the root cause of our ongoing anxiety has always been the devastating belief that I was a bad person waiting to be good… the tragedy that hit me and stayed persistently for decades, is the accusation that I was a bad person, and that I was a bad person from a time before I had a chance to have a say about it – we both arrive at the same place if by different paths.
I suspect a notion that most children have of being wrong is behind most of our struggles. Mine came from religion. I see in my journal quite a few attempts at trying to come to terms with the notion of ‘original as my understanding of ‘original sin’ was and is firmly connected to disobedience. (As I write that I notice anger – all the times I was told I could fix by obeying and didn’t question so much. FYI telling a type 5 not to question is telling them not to be.)
Today I reject that theology of ‘original sin’. If I were to think in terms of original sin, defining sin as in missing the mark, I will argue its ‘shame’. The undeserved shame of believing our ‘naked’ True self is ‘wrong’ even ‘bad’ and needing to be covered up. If you think about it were born naked and then will spend most of our lives trying to get back to being ‘naked’.
“In childhood, time has a different quality, a timeless quality, and when tragedy hits, there’s a forever feel to it” – Were so impatient to grow up time seems to stand still yet because everything is felt so intensely meaningfully new time flies by. As I get older, I experience the opposite. Each day feels as if time has stopped and a struggle… than perhaps because of the space between intensely meaningfully moments time flies – it often feels like the montage scene in the movie ‘Groundhog Day’…
What is a skillful hope that does not try to change, become or fix what isn’t ours to change, what cannot be changed, that isn’t a wish or a desire that Life be other then what it is?
I think we are coming closer to a skillful notion of hope as you identified the destination where such hope leads – A YES
And perhaps this YES is the Skillful Hope and nothing more needs to be said?—————————————————————————–
“If I know that I am good, I no longer desire to be good. What other desire may take the place of the-desire-to-be-good?”
The first thought that came to my mind, was if I really believed ‘I am good’… and if I could not just believe it but know it, that who we are, as we are, even as we work to grow… is OK and is ‘good’. Notice if we remove the label all were left with is ‘I am’
The second thought was, do we need another desire to fill the void, is ‘I Am’ enough? I know the correct answer yet can’t give it.“The desire for the experience of life beyond the trap of waiting-to-be-good. A sigh of relief. Running through an imaginary field of green grass, the gentle sun above, a child running, falling, lying on the ground frozen in time for decades, then getting up, an older woman resuming the run across field of green grass. Perhaps briskly walking across, don’t think I can run, not like a child can run. Too hard for my aging knees.”
This resonates and pierces the heart! ….
I think once wounded, even in the hope of YES, we don’t forget. Bitter… Sweet is all that comes to mind… and if honest its sometimes wondrous but also tiring.
I’m sorry to hear your feeling tired and depressed… my first impulse is a wish/hope to ‘fix’ it…
Instead I’ll sit quietly as it pierces the heart…PeterParticipantHi Helcat
Reading your comments I didn’t feel you were trying to fix me. I see this kind of dialog as an exploration. Both you and Anita have shared thoughts that brought me back to earth 😊 and push back. (we need tension to become conscious)
I like how your meditation helped you pause and notice the small things that reconnected you to your true self, and how that help you though the chaotic times. (I suspect that in a dialog on hope we could, and maybe even should, end here…. But I’m going to type 5 it and confuse things. 😊)
“I don’t necessarily agree that hope comes from despairr” – I wrote that badly. In the present moment of the experience I agree while in detached hindsight I think there is a connection.
The connection to hope and despair is the idea that in times of discomfort or despair, when where ready and able, we turn to hope to help us pull through. In the exercise of looking back I think we can trace a hope to the experience that called it forward. (Language is going to get in the way…. I view hope as a something exercised in the temporal realm of experience which means it has a opposite from which it is intimately connected. Sadly the ‘needle’ between opposites can be one sided. As you mentioned balance is a key. Happily, if skillful, this tension of opposites creates greater self awareness and consciousness. )
This had me asking the question:
At a sub-conscious level is it possible that an unskillful hope unintentionally reinforced the experience I was seeking relief from? I’m leaning towards a yes.You may recall the number of times I’ve written the question – ‘
- How will you respond to Life as it is?
’, only to get lost in a secondary question – Am I seeing life as it is?
I agree that we can choose to accept or reject reality… though at the same time I’m not sure we always see/know reality as it is. My own experiences shows how I fill the space between the observed and the observer with my expectations, the trickster that is memory, fears, discomfort, hopes…. which often distorted reality and in hindsight, leaves me wondering about choice. (though not responsibility).
Question: Can a distorted view of realty fool us into believing that we are choosing happiness or despair?
(I have wondered if sometimes I weren’t happy being miserable.)Looking back in my journal its clear in hindsight how among other things unskillful hope hid and distorted my reality which I don’t feel was a ‘conscious’ choice. As Anita noted – childhood happens so fast only in the context of an adult looking back that we begin to see clearer. This is where I see the exercise of removing measuring labels from our stories as being helpful as it allows the space between observer and observed – that I now realize are both me – smaller.
Looking back I note a tendency of getting stuck in the retelling of stories of something that happened where in hindsight I see a nu-articulated thought or hope that if I repeated a story enough times the outcome could be different. Writing that I also note the tendency to mistake a wish for hope. (“That trick never works!”… “This time for sure!” – LOL a memory of a carton i would watch over and over as a young boy. A lesson on never learning the lesson… unskilled hope or healthy optimism??? 🙂 – 10 points if you get the reference.)
From that I note the following thoughts about unskillful hope
– it’s not fully conscious – perhaps the reason it can unintentionally reinforce its opposite, though in the moment
provide relief.
– a desire to change what happened in the past, a hope to change what can’t be changed and is not ours to change.
– a desire to control the future and create what is not ours to create.
– a desire that life be other then what it is…
– a desire to avoid and or hide from reality.Humm… the word desire is showing up quite a bit.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Rereading my last post it might sound like I had a horrible childhood which it wasn’t. As it comes to hope as a child I doubt I gave it much thought. Life happens so fast at that age that memory hasn’t had enough time to get its hold into you.
The think when were young even unskillful hope can act as a band-aid for the moment, even as they may sub-consciously reinforce the fear that the hope was called upon to relieve.
It is in hindsight that I realized where much of my future anxiety came from – I hoped unskillfully, unintentionally reinforcing the not quite conscious suspicion I was wrong/bad.
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