Its so Cool Sometimes

 Its so cool sometimes.  You kind of imagine something, and then "boom" or maybe a softer "bing" you experience it.  Just for a split second you think of something lofty like "divine" or transcendence, and for a split second you experience it   Are you creating it?  Was it already there? Is what you are doing harmonizing with something else so you can connect with it?  Let me know when you get that figured out.  This is the same kind of thing they talk about (I think) in Law of Attraction or Neville Goddard or all that stuff.  If you imagine it, it will happen.  Well sort of.  

The world doesn't really revolve around us though.  99.999999 percent or more it has nothing to do with us.  It doesn't cater to our whim.  But there is something there.

I wonder if the reverse is also true.  Rather than us "manifesting" this or that, we are really receiving it.  What are those "spirits" I can feel and sense arising in me.  Can I beckon them, call them to do my bidding.  Or am I just clearing space for them to enter?  

The thinking might seems to radiate energy.  And I know at some level, it is not separate from the more "body" mind, its interesting to note and distance myself from my thinking mind and just kinda watch it from a distance.  I'm not saying anything new here.  But when the thinking mind is watched from a distance, or separated from (same thing perhaps), then I become more aware of other things going on around me.  And I call them spirits.

There is a knowing "in" the world, that is when we are in our thinking mind and its energy, not separate.  And a knowing "of" the world, which is one of separation.  Although interestingly I may have those reversed.  

Do we have a choice to be like water?  Like earth?  Like the air?  Like love?  What does that look feel touch like? What is the experience of these?  Its so cool sometimes.

New Technique: Rhythm and trance to the four directions with subtle movement, complete with stretches to open up all the chakras.  By paying attention to them, we energize them.

Enlightenment like any other word, does not exist (but it sure is fun to connect with 😜😜)

Words don't really exist, but sometimes they point to something that actually does exist as a phenomena.  The word moon, for example, refers to the moon, like a finger pointing to the moon.  And the moon, as we all know, is very cool. So I approve of this message.  lol  

The word Enlightenment, on the other hand, does not exist.  So i'm not sure why I just capitalized it.  It's just a bullshit mental construct, like so many others.   And as bullshit mental constructs go, I suppose its not that bad.  I mean there are many mental constructs that give off good vibes like:  peace, love, understanding, etc.   And I suppose enlightenment would fit into that category.  It could be worse.

However, what I am really trying to say here that there is a better word to describe an actual phenomena that is more specific to what is going on than "enlightenment."  And that word is "connection."  Connection actually has a phenomenological existence.  It actually points to something.  And its visceral.  If you are connected to something, you can see it, feel it, touch it.  I'm not sure you can hear it or smell it, but 3 out of 5 ain't bad.  So if you are connected with something, you are "one" with it.  You have relationship.  And you aren't separate from it.  This is exactly what some people say the  experience of enlightenment is.   They are experiencing "connection."  

When we were in our mother's womb, we were connected to everything.  That was our visceral experience anyway.  And now we think we are not "connected" because there is alot of other shit going on around us.  But really, we are just in a bigger womb.  We are still connected with everything.  And when we meditate a whole bunch, we feel it even more.  And its interesting to experience the sensations of connection and lack of connection.  For me, that's where the rubber hits the road.  And all this talk about enlightenment is just a bunch of head games.  We are all connected.  Get over yourself.

Some people are naturally connected.  And some people are not so they have to write books or blogs about it.  50,000 words or zen talks about something that is right in front of us 24/7 that we can't escape.  In fact, when you read all those words you start to think you are not connected, and that is when the word enlightenment stops giving off the "good" vibes I referenced above.   Maybe if we altered the language of our discourse to more touchy feely terms that made us feel more connected we actually would be connected. So what's in the way being connected today?  I hope it wasn't reading this.  lol  

Joko Beck--part 2

 Continuing from the previous blog.  

When the Joko book was read aloud, its practice seemed to lack any heart or emotional connection.  I mean, sure its good to learn piano, but if you are so focused on technique and you can't appreciate the music, what good is it?  And when I used to go to sesshins at the Champaign Zen center, I remember looking around and seeing how lifeless the place was--everybody acting like mindless automatons.  It hurt.  And when I helped the teacher pack his possessions and saw how frightfully anal he was, it hurt.  

I'm not saying there isn't value to the process.  But the connection to something has to be there. That's what I find so enlivening about feeling connections with entities or spirits or whatever.  I'm sure this exists in zen at some level, and its all good, every practice, but this is what I must say now.

And last night I had a dream.  I was outside, I think near a river with a group of people.  And I was completely enmeshed with another woman--much younger woman.  Indeed, I think I was also much younger than I am now.   It wasn't really sexual, but it was comforting.   We were making out, and in doing so we were insulated from the activities around us.  Eventually we were traveling on a train, and I knew we didn't have tickets so we when into a storage space, still making out the whole time. Now that is a practice I can get into, making out with life.    lol

Joko Beck and Robert Anton Wilson

 So at the Zen Group yesterday they read one of the passages from Charlotte Joko Beck's work and I felt it viscerally.  It hurt.  It was suffocating.  But I'm sure that wasn't her intent.  And perhaps if she was relating Zen practice conversationally to me it might have had a different effect than the words that seemed to be nothing but rigid commands.  In the book, she related her zen practice to her childhood piano lessons, not really understanding the scales but necessary in the long run.  But it was more a formulaic series of commands that one "must" do to achieve "enlightenment" or whatever.  And it hurt.  It was interesting that my therapist friend L. felt the same way.  The rest of the room was still in the follower mode to Joko's lead.  In the conversation that followed, I related my experience and how it might be easier to make friends with something than to control it.  Especially when you are trying to control your mind through rigid zen practice.  Of course, most of them were then going to the Capital protests later in the day.   The best way to fight control is a different type of control, right?  lol

Then later in the day I was reading Robert Anton Wilson.  It was a delight.  So much more fun than Joko.  And especially his elucidation about general semantics and how he tries to avoid the word "is" in his writing.  Zen is this or that.  You should do this or that because that is what zen "is". 

I think what he was pointing to was  almost like explaining something in the negative.  Or to have a relationship with it instead of defining it.  For example, in quantum physics, matter "is" not a wave or a particle.  Sometimes it acts like a wave, and sometimes a particle. It exists as part of a relationship, not a concrete "this" or "that"  Then there was the synchronistic discussion in Wilson of the Zen koan where the Zen master is asked what is the most valuable thing (he could have asked was is the most valuable zen practice) and the master replied, "The head of a dead cat."  Again, there "is" not the most or the best this or that. Its a relationship, and open ended answer, an invitation to the journey to connect with the mystery of the cat head.  

Of course, the real mystery, and the real thing that is inviting me into "friendship" is all the pain I have been feeling in my legs and calves, and why I am sensitive to Joko's words to begin with.  I have an inner dictator I am rebelling against, I fear:-).