Hi 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.

Hi 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…

Hi 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.

Hi Helcat

I enjoy your ramblings 🙂 and happy that you tolerate mine.

I’m curious about your experience of joy, if you would like to describe it?

For me the experience of happiness is fleeting, a gift of a moment while Joy or Bliss goes deeper and is more durable. Its not lost when the sun sets.
Where I tend to try to cling to happiness for Joy that urge isn’t present…
I’ve been using the words ‘Bitter Sweet’ to describe it, for me, Joy has a taste…
Where happiness has a giddiness about it, joy has a somber yet content note. LOL Like a good wine…. Happiness is like a sweet wine easy to drink, enjoyed in the moment, but easily forgotten. Where Joy is a complex wine with body, various notes (emotions), presently lingers, where just a sip is enough for you to remember for a life. (I imagine that to be so as I’m not a fan of wine – but metaphor works, maybe…

“What happens to the moment when the sun sets?”

I tend to see language as metaphor….
There is for me a difference between Meditation on a sunset and when the sun has set.
Meditating on a sunset, feeling calm, content maybe even happy verses Meditating when the sun has set, and you find yourself in the dark – metaphorical dark – where the world and fears swirling around you. In “darkness” I imagine I might be able to maintain a calm stillness… maybe, but not happiness where if I succeed in remaining calm and still in all that motion, I may even experience as Joy.

I had a teacher say that its easy to be calm and happy sitting quietly by a lake with no one around, not so easy in the middle of rush hour and being honked at. Its good to practice by a lake but a point of the practice is learning to take the lake with you wherever you find yourself. Or something like that.

😊 As a parent you’re going to get a lot of practice

“Today my son learned to walk and with that came absolute chaos. Rolling with it is important. But sometimes you just need to stop and breathe for a bit.”

The image that created for me made me smile… and I image that this moment, when remembered years from now will bring a smile to your face. Joy and or happiness…

Hi Anita

That was a very thoughtful and helpful break down – thanks. I feel were on to something.
As I read through the dialog I’ve been asking if it possible to move past realizing a truth and living/being it. – ‘Joy, life living through you.”?
I feel the perspective on sorrow and discomfort is a important realization.

The following new journal entry was written before your breakdown

I’ve been thinking about the space between the thought and the thinker, the observer and the observed, the experience and the experience. How we fill the space with language, measurements, judgments… constructs unintentionally creating discomfort, then using language and measurement to relieve us from the discomfort. We contract ourselves in a seemingly endless loop.

I wonder if its in the filing of space between observer and the observed that the illusion of time is created?
The created time and space that can only be memory and so the past, or a future that imagines it can change the past or life to be other then it is. Perhaps the space become time may be better thought of as a playground if only, so I don’t become trapped in it….

In my early journal writings, there is a quote by Kierkegaard who argued that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you will never have. ” I realized that this is a truth and noted how most of the hurt in the stories arose from an imagined future that would or could not ever be… its not just sad morning the future that cannot be, it’s exhausting if you fail to let it go…

I note as Anita has shown from my past writings that what I have been seeking is an answer to what I now see as the ‘problem’ of the illusion of space between the observer and the observed. The exercise of removing measurements of labels and now I think language itself?
(“We seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society“. – Alan Watts)

How we love to fill that space with language. I recall now how many creation/beginning stories start with words being spoken? “in the beginning was the word”

Circling, always circling… to what end?

I recall the thought of the martial artist and dancer training and training until their reactions were responses were no thought (no space) was required…. that its when the dancers ‘forgets the rules that they are dancing, the seeing paradox that they had to learn first before they could forget.

A story told by Krishnamurti
In ancient China before an artist began to paint anything – a tree, for instance – he would sit down in front of it for days, months, years, it didn’t matter how long, until he was the tree. He did not identify himself with the tree, but he was the tree. This means that there was no space between him and the tree, no space between the observer and the observed, no experience experiencing the beauty, the movement, the shadow, the depth of a leaf, the quality of colour. He was totally the tree, and in that state only could he paint.

Days, months, years… measurements… My thought is that moving from words of understanding to being that which is sought will not be an act of will, of trying… it would be a happening?
As a type 5 my playground, my happy place, is the search for understanding… unintentionally creating days, months, years… but to be an artist… ?

Hi Anita

Grate break down and example

My mistake, I now realize (for the first time) is that I remained contracted, minimal in the face of pain for way, way longer than such strategy is effective….

“The hope that emerges from this process becomes the source of deep joy. Unlike shallow happiness, this joy is not easily shaken because it is rooted in the strength and character developed through enduring suffering. This joy does not disappoint because it is not dependent on external circumstances. It is a sustaining, inner strength that can endure even in the face of grief and sorrow.”

Love that

Hi Anita

That’s were I hope to get to with my stories, especially my old ones. I like that in such a space no justifications is needed, no explaining ourselves to ourselves or others.
I think that sometimes I heave held on to the hurt with a semi consensus hope that holding on to the hurt, hurts the one who hurt me. I’m good with releasing that.

Synchronicity happened across this quote yesterday and thought it applied why we might do this exercise with our stories. I’m curious as to how you would parse it.

“The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow.
Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain.
Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief.
Joy, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope.
The hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr

Hi HelCat

Thanks for the update. I also find the practice of writing the story with the emotional measuring labels and then re-writing with the non-labels as away to get clarification especially before I’m going to then engage in conversation.

I guess it just means taking the emotional intensity away? To me, as an ex-language teacher all of language is labelling. Every single word has unique definitions.

I read something about Buddha nature and it suggested that Buddha nature was to approach things with an open mind, curious, with compassion and non-judgmental. It seems to me that this is suited to a ‘non-labelling’ writing style.

I’m about to go full Type 5 so apologies 🙂

Your right all words are labels, symbols that point to, construct, describe…
I think the biggest error we make in life is to mistake the ‘map for the territory’ the words and language for the that which it can only point to.

I feel this is why the labeling of a emotion often creates a experience of the emotion. For example we experiencing dis-ease, label it as sadness and we become sad, and more often then not get get stuck in the experience sadness. Then their is a tendency to label that experience as bad and anyone associated with the event becomes bad and we get our victim villein stories. A self feeding cycle of dis-ease.

Language is also dependent on duality as is ego consciousness. When we speak, when we measure, when we label we create duality, consciousness, the constructs we live by. Buddha nature transcends duality and constructs…. returning to stillness, silence , Love, non-duality – the Eternal Now, the source from which the experience arose. By Non-labeling we create the space to return to the source.

As a exercise, re-writing old stories without the emotional labels and measurements such as bad and good, I feel it creates a space to un-stick ourselves. This does not mean blocking out the emotions or experience but paradoxically the space to honestly feel the experience. After I re-wrote some of my old stories I would sit with them and let my self feel. I found my self becoming still and silent… often I would noticed a heaviness somewhere. I’ve read that we often hold on to our experiences within our bodies. For now I’m just noticing.