Apologies for the freeform of thoughts, wanted to see where it when

Hi Helcat. I don’t think finding meaning in outcomes is a negative unless if we forget that outcomes must be impermeant. The task then would be able to come to terms with the reality of impermanence.

Brandy, you bring up a challenging thought, what does a person do when the space of self-emptying one is to rest in becomes an uncomfortable feeling or fear of emptiness?

Recalled a story that Pema Chodron tells in her book ‘When Things Fall Apart.’ She was instructing a student on meditation – suggesting a “gentle touch of awareness on the everchanging out-breath, ungraspable and yet continuously arising. When you breathe in, it’s like a pause or a gap. There is nothing particular to do except wait for the next out-breath.”  The student replied – “But that’s impossible! There’s a whole part where there’s nothing to be aware of!” (fear of this emptiness and time of waiting?)  Pema goes on to explain – “This was the first time I realized that built into the instruction was the opportunity to completely let go… meditation as the willingness to die over and over again… as each breath went out and dissolved, there was the chance to die to all that had gone before and to relax instead of panic.”

Latter she goes on to talk about hopelessness and death noting: “Turning your mind toward the Dharma does not bring security or confirmation. Turning your mind toward the Dharma does not bring any ground to stand on. In fact, when your mind turns toward the Dharma, you fearlessly acknowledge impermanence and change and begin to get the knack of hopelessness (emptiness?)… If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”

Allan Watts suggested, which I think applies to hope. “The instant we become motivated by fear, we become unfree. So long as the mind believes in the possibility of escape from what it is at this moment, there can be no freedom. When you are freed from being out to improve yourself, your own nature will begin to take over.”  As Dr Old’s suggest one’s own nature being the capital S Self and a practice of hopelessness that involves the realization and embracing ungroundedness. To sit (be) in that still place from which all things arise and return and ‘Be not afraid’?

Movement is time, stillness is eternity.
Movement is what creates life
“Stillness is what creates love,
To be still, Yet still moving
That is everything!” – Do Hyun Choe

“The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together… Movement is time, stillness is eternity. Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal—not moment, but forever—is the sense of life… Realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity.” Watts

Reminding me of something from – Richard Wagamese

“I Used to believe my body contained my soul. That was fine for a while. But when I started thinking about oneness with Creator (all things), I came to believe that it’s the other way around. My soul (one Soul) contains my body. It is everything that I am. I am never separate from Creator except within my mind. That’s the ultimate truth, and I need to be reminded, to learn again, to learn anew in order to get it. When I do. I know the  truth of why my people say: that we are all spirit, were are all energy, joined to everything that is everywhere, all things coming true together.”  – Richard Wagamese

Then “Nothingness (this moment?) is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and the mountains, and rivers, and the good and bad, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and You Are IT” – Watts

We end where we began. In the circle without circumference and whose center is everywhere – each of us is the center, a center? Nothing and no one is separate and everyone belongs. The present moment is the circle, eternal. Nothing arises, nothing ends, there is nothing to attain as you are and have always been IT. (there is no you, only the circle) Having such a realization there is nothing to fear so no need to hope or worry, nothing to stop a person from engaging in the world? The experience of such a Self, as Dr Olds pointed out, connects the person to the 8 C’s of authentic Being – compassion, confidence, calmness, creativity, clarity, curiosity, courage, and connectedness. From such a center, again nothing to fear?

Well that was fun…. Something to ponder 😊

The monk on hearing the Buddha speak was instantly enlightened, in a state of bliss the monk walks home and steps in dog poo did the moment pass or does he laugh?

Hi Tee

I took TS Eliot’s words as a method of creating the space for beginner’s mind. To let go of what you think you know and how you feel things ought to be and instead – self-empty.

The first time I came across the passage I wondered what he could mean to hope for the wrong thing. Isn’t hope a good thing?

In hindsight on my experience hope I think I can say that more often than not hope for the wrong thing as it only amplified what it was that I wished to avoid.

Then Eliot makes the statement that hope is in the waiting or is waiting which I take as trusting, not knowing, the beginners mind) – a different kind of hope that isn’t hope for a outcome.

The poet Vaclav Havel noted “Hope is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizon. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” Hope that acknowledges Life as it is, is, good – transcends duality.

I was latter surprised to learn that there is a Buddhist practice of ‘Hopelessness’. (release of fear)

Pema Chodron spoke of Letting go of Hope. She noted the relationship of hope to fear. The opposite of hope is not hopelessness but fear. Where this is hope there is also fear, that in a world of hope and fear we are always looking for a way out of something that has started to feel uncomfortable.

“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present.”

Anytime we hope for a certain outcome, and work hard to make it happen we also introduce fear. The fear of failing, fear of loss…. Hopelessness on the other hand is free of fear and thus can be liberating. We no longer associate Hopelessness with despair and instead as a process of waiting – emptying –  Tao – the stillness (silence) from which all things arise and return  – Aum

Thomas Merton also talked of the journey into hopelessness. “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” – In the space created in such hopelessness the self observes the Self, the relationship with all – one might say the 8 C’s emerge:  compassion, confidence, calmness, creativity, clarity, curiosity, courage,  and connectedness.

Thanks Tee for the introduction to Dr. Tori Olds. Makes me feel more hopeful for the future when I discover persons like Dr. Tori Olds.

I’ve been exploring ‘contemplation’  which also evolves the notion of the compassionate observer as a path to the capital S Self experience.

I have also hoped that G_d cares… loves me… lately when that thought arises, the notion that ‘I am’ It… as everyone is It (the drop of water also contains the ocean – As above so below, as below so above – our person are “maps” to the above as the above reveals the person) Anyway when that hope arises I wonder if I’m asking if ‘I’ care and love ‘me’ in the moment when the thought arises.

When Jung was asked the question if he believed in G_d (G_d-Christ –  Brahman-Atman – capital S -Self) he replied that he did not believe because he knew. He was highly criticized for that answer and he didn’t explain himself as far as I know. But I think  that having had the experience of the capital S Self it isn’t something you believe or hope for its something you ‘know’ (To know not intellectually but from the source of the Self which is also what  Dr. Tori Olds hinds at when she talks of the Mind that is free.) Joseph Campbell also hints at the ‘knowing’ verses believing in his dialogs.  I’d go so far as to suggest that all the wisdom traditions, when not viewed as a set of rules, reveal the same truths.

Richard Wagamese – says it better

“From our very first breath, we are in relationship. With that indrawn draft of air, we become joined to everything that ever was, is and ever will be. When we exhale, we forge that relationship by virtue of the act of living. Our breath commingles with all breath, and we are a part of everything. That’s the simple fact of things. We are born into a state of relationship. Relationships never end; they just change. In believing that lies the freedom to carry compassion, empathy, love, kindness and respect into and through whatever changes. We are made more by that practice.”

The sound of one hand clapping – Aum

A refreshing post

Reminded me of a high school moment. A Summer night I was with group of friends and girl friend who sometime during the night was making out with another close friend of mine. What I remember is my other friends being concerned as they assumed I knew and I remember thinking oh they need me to be upset. That night as I lay in bed that night I had this odd sensation wondering where emotions came from. It wasn’t that I wasn’t hurt, disappointed… mostly confused, emotions were present but not.

In that moment its possible I was in a kind of shock were I dissociated myself from the experience, only in bed that night I remember it more as a moment of clarity – we  experience emotions for many reasons, but we are not our emotions.

Begging the questions what are these things we call emotions and where and what was this thing I experienced as ‘self’ that experienced them.

Hi Jamie

Your posts are well written and articulate. It seems to me that within your writing are also your answers? “I enjoy writing” that could be a great place to explore?

Happiness, one of those words with so many associations, something we so badly want to grasp and cling to, where the grasping and clink transforms it into something else… usually not happiness.   The word certainly comes with a lot of baggage let alone when we add the word ‘BUT’.  I want to be happy, but….

I’ve often used that phrase in the past. I want to be happy… but… but I’m afraid to be… but I don’t think I deserve to… but life isn’t how it should be, could be, if only (ego, control)… but I don’t want to be disappointed when the moment of happiness passes….. Have you ever wondered about this one?  I want to be happy… but what if I’m happiest when I’m unhappy?

We are complex simple creatures.  Of course all these notions are stories, perhaps at some level illusions of our own creation. Stories we tell because at some time they are/were useful to us but perhaps now are habit. (A practice of meditation and contemplation can help detach from our habit of thought.)

The task, as you are engaged in, is to look past the stories and words to get to a place where you are (you are never not thier), and from that place find a way to say YES. Yes to yourself, your situation, your emotions, your thoughts, non of which are you. Those are just things you get to experience. The good and the bad, experiences with labels that don’t exist in a world that is non-dual and everything is connected.

If I may a comment on your statement: ” We don’t need to be kind and loving to toxic people, to people who abuse us and put us down. Instead, we need to set boundaries with them. Likewise, we don’t need to be kind to selfish, self-centered people, who only care about themselves. You can be kind and loving, but wisely, with boundaries.”

Just something I noticed  with your conclusion “You can be kind and loving, but wisely, with boundaries”.  Implies that creating healthy (wise) boundaries is a act of love and kindness for oneself and the other even those that have hurt us (the other is also ourselves) to which I agree and suggest a path  to become unstuck from your question? To set healthy boundaries with your thoughts, your past, your hopes… is a loving act you can gift yourself? ( Boundaries that don’t require labeling, if only’s , should of, could of… toxic, selfish…. One can set healthy boundaries without labeling)

Happiness I think, like Joy, isn’t something we create but a  something in a moment we get to sometimes experience and if we are wise express our gratitude for, breath in, breath out…

Happiness not something we want (desire) but create space for, no but’s… a extra place setting at the table if you will.

I hope you keep writing

“Passion makes most psychiatrists nervous” – Joseph Cmpbell

Hi William

My suspension is that like Joy, Passion isn’t something one seeks as if it can be grasped but a experience that one might be surprised by in the moment.

The metaphor of the crossroads suggests the duality of choice of either or and that one path would be better then the other. If only we could know which one. (leading to anxiety and fear)  Such measuring suggestive of the future moment when you will look back on the past and wonder if only or what might have been if I turned left instead of right, or maybe turned 180 or some other degree of a turn? It is in this moment that we imagine the future moment where we think back on the past moment where we pondered the notion of the crossroads through the eyes of a possible regret that we chose wrong.

The crossroads, I think implies a assumption that if we could just figure out all the angles and control them, bend them to our will (ego) as we imagine things could be ‘if only’ we make all the right choices… and then just maybe they will lead to this thing call passion. The crossroads were the past is always gone, the present never stays and the future never comes –   We are undone before we begin when what we are looking for is something we already have/are but do not see.

I like what Joseph Campbell had to say when you talked about Bliss (satcitananda) – “if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

Something I have learned over time is that whatever choices you make, nothing you learn is waisted and will most likely lead you down paths you never imagined. Follow your heart, your ‘satcitananda’ with passion as best you can and enjoy the ride. You are the answer to your question.  Dance

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. 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.” Alan Watts