Early Morning Meditations Pt. 1

 Find the energy of the morning, internally or externally.  Is there something wanting to come in?  Something that wants focus?  Where is the physical sensation, is it in your body or outside?  Find the energy of the morning that wants to come in.  Find the thought--and specifically the belief that accompanies it.  

For example, the belief that something wants to come in and inhabit the body.  Something that wants to permeate it.  Then the belief that there should be relaxation and welcoming, not constriction and fear. Feel how the belief affects the energy.  Creates the energy.  Modifies the energy.  The subtle belief is highly probative.  

Can the subtle belief be subsumed into the perhaps more pervasive belief of turning the focus from the head to lower than the head.  Letting the experience of reality "come in" as opposed to radiating out with a thought form presumably from the mind. 

Can I find the core of this energy?  Then it becomes almost a practice of active imagination as the core of the sensation becomes a thought which becomes an energy moving to a different thought.  Perhaps a more expansive thought.  It opens up.   The belief opens up to experience.

I'm very interested in the early morning bike ride and the denzien of the house on 11th with the stobe light in the back upstairs window that I can see from my meditative perch high above and a half mile away.

Going back to mediation though, the belief of the trance is very powerful.  Finding the trance that allows the experience of the outside as opposed to the inside thought being projected out.

Picking and Choosing Ain't So Bad

So in Zen and Non-Dual circles I guess it is considered bad taste to "pick and choose." Like this in the Xin Xin Ming:

The Great Way is not extremely difficult
It only criticizes picking and choosing
But if you can neither hate nor love
This cave will certainly be unblemished and bright
But deviate the width of a hair
And heaven and earth are held apart
If you want it to appear before you
Do not be subservient or rebellious
To pit obedience and defiance against each other
Indeed causes the heart and mind to grow sick
Not understanding the profound purpose
The practitioner labors to silence thoughts
The Way is complete like vast emptiness
Without excess or lack
When you have a reason to accept or reject
There is no place for Suchness

(Interesting that the image of a cave is used.  They seem to be cropping up everywhere from Plato to Parmenides.  And I like them.  I wish I could sleep in them.  As long as they had a door with a lock on them:-).  But I guess where I live now is kinda-cave like for being on the 9th floor. )   

Anyway---my sense is that not picking and choosing can be just another way of picking and choosing.  And to support this, I rely on my favorite imaginary being, the Buddha himself.  When the Buddha was challenged by the so called demon Mara, he resisted her/it not by giving into or following her ministrations, but by pointing (in my view) and hence choosing the earth.  And of course there are many nuisances to this, but for my belief, he "picked and chose" the earth.  

What did he pick and choose from?  What were the alternatives?  Well ,he could have had the usual BS, wealth, fame, sex, power etc.  Or he could have chose confronting Mara and playing her game.  She was challenging him intellectually asking him to justify his authority.  In other words, she was tempting him with mind games.  He did not choose the mind.  The flickering candle.  Instead, he chose the earth.  The body.  The heart.

And each moment we face a similar choice.  We can pick and choose the body/heart/mind, or we can choose the life of the mind.

By the way, have a happy weekend everybody😄

There are more than two paths to go by in the long run (Both/And Divination)

 Ok, so of course I love all these community tarot nights I have been going to lately.  And yes, they are not so much divination, but rather more like therapy.  Its not so much about what is being said, but in the connections that are being formed.  Or not formed.  

Anyway, lets just assume that someone actually came with a question that asked for a yes or no answer.   "Should I get a new job, should I move, should I date that person. "  Asking the cards or the reader for a little divination, so to speak.  And I wish it could be that easy?  Or do I?  Do I really want a little nice authoritarian figure in my life telling me what to do? Well I suppose if the figure was all warm and fuzzy and looking out for my best interest I guess it wouldn't be that bad? Hmmm.  

Anyway, what i'm getting at is that trickster at the crossroads is likely at the intersection of a myriad of roads.  And you have a myriad of paths to choose from.  And even if you choose the new job or the new mate, it might just open up a different branch or network of possibilities for you.   Both/And not Either/Or.  Its not that simple.  You cannot abrogate your personal responsibility.  And its not that simple.  Sorry.  But in the grand scheme of things, do you really want somebody telling you what to do?  Maybe that's what human's are.  But if that's the case, I will long to be something different:-)  

The Darkest Dreams are the Most Healing

 The darkest dreams are the most healing--energetically that is.  Although the content can be a little disconcerting.  Especially when you are being tortured and your entire back side is splayed open and all you can feel is the dull hum and you are trying to speak and they either can't hear you, are ignoring you, or having fun at your expense or all of the above.  I'm not sure how I got mixed up with them to begin with.  I lived in the house across the field.  Or I was from there.  And although some people who lived with me did bad things to them, it wasn't me, and i hid.  But man, I had no idea how many of them there were coming from that house.  So many.  And I thought I could hide.  I thought they would be reasonable.  But things were going dark.

But when I woke up I felt great.  As if something had lifted.

Maybe something like Jesus on the cross, the crucifixion provoking ecstasy through ontological shock.

And maybe everything is like that.  You have to crack to let the light it.  And the bigger the crack, the more light.