Picked up a surprising book written by Suzanne Segal, who’d been a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before becoming disillusioned with aspects of the TM organization. It is written in a matter-of-fact way for being, by the end, a quite revolutionary story about awakening and the ‘no-self’ insight, and uncannily, its arrival is perfectly timed with my contemplation of dropping of personal pronouns. She is perhaps an even better example than the one I gave in that post, of someone embodying such realization.
Yet, she didn’t seem attached to anyone else understanding her experience; I feel she truly wrote the book so that someone going through the traumatic phase she went through, might benefit. Mainly, she didn’t try to over-elaborate. She also contrasted her experience with what many doctors and teachers thought was going on with her along the way, sharing the pain of not being heard, and the fear she experienced when no diagnoses nor approach fit. Then, eventually, she brings the reader to the end of that fear.
Although my own experience(s) differ, I related to and understand what she was describing, which again, I think speaks to her intention.
I was excited to see what she was doing now, but sadly, my search revealed that she had died of a brain tumor in 1997, which reminded me of a conversation several years ago, when someone had mentioned (I thought at the time) Bernadette Roberts in a questioning way. They wondered whether in some cases dramatic no-self experiences and a physiological issue such as a brain tumor, might be related. I would guess the answer to be yes, which takes absolutely nothing away from the insight. Her book (or at least the second half) is wonderful, and she does an excellent job of describing what very few people are able to come close to articulating.
I took a few notes in the middle of the night, about personal pronouns and identity, and the way that the current generation more and more wishes to neutralize or change identification with, and at least conception of, gender.
I respect their plight and comprehend its meaning, but find my defaults so strong that even when alert and willing, classification norms assert themselves into conversation repeatedly. Still, I’m settled on doing my best to meet the challenge, starting with learning to use ‘they’ as a pronoun more often, and in the meantime asking for patience and affirming respect, which seems to be appreciated.
This dots connecting process took a little leap a few weeks ago, when I dreamed in another’s shoes. I dreamed that I was someone aware of appearing a certain way to those interacting with me. Yet “I” was submerged deep down. I knew the other couldn’t see/hear me through their apparent conceptions of what I and my life were supposed to mean in the world according to, in this case my gender, on the surface.
Who I actually was, was of value, but they would never know. It felt as though it wouldn’t matter at all to be soft and curious during the conversation, because there was a prepared script we were supposed to stay within for it to continue.
I’ve had dreams similar to this one before, but never so precise, so indisputable in conveyance as about gender. While recalling the feeling since then, life has brought many opportunities to put the understanding into practice, albeit with more errors than successes so far.
There is imperfect willingness, and a reaching toward a fully open heart.
One thing that makes it challenging is ‘my own’ gender identity. It has been somewhat invisible to me just how much I’ve tended to meet expectations of others in terms of gender. I’ve just always felt very “female”, and if anything, have wanted to be *more* so. I have mourned each seeming loss of femininity that has felt taken from me by age or illness, while still being drawn to and admiring of the fluid. I’m also more visually oriented than I realized, in that it is very easy for me to take in traditionally “female” appearance as “she”, whether the person projecting that appearance is male or female.
It would probably surprise some who know me to read of this struggle, because I’ve explored the loosening of gender-identity through virtual worlds and through the experiences of close friends who’ve shared deeply, and I’ve worked a lot with the subject of fluid identity generally. Still, you can’t learn what you think you already know. I believe you can make room for the ‘next’ shifts to happen, though.
I seem to be making the most lasting integrations in my sleep or on the edges. Last night, I woke at 1:30 AM and played (as I often do when woken in the middle of the night) an interview from Buddha at the Gas Pump. The host was questioning the guest on his hobby horse topic: a debate in the non duality movement about doing away with personal identification, with *I* and *you*, *he* and *she* – including in daily language and interactions.
And I wondered, might these questions be somewhat related, or at least, might one question open a pathway to the other?
a hidden little bamboo grove found while walking today
Societies have always run on double identities and secret languages, because it has never been fully safe not to, but it isn’t just about society. We all signal and filter with insider language and outsider language, with law and mercy. It is how we cultivate intimacy in many cases.
Still, I admire and enjoy the aspiration to go beyond labels, and imagine that when we converse with aliens, gender, and probably independent personhood itself, won’t make much sense. AI will also have something to say.
Maybe it is more a transition we are destined to make.
As with my political post however, I am just not sure what is realistic to expect. If you want to understand the challenge and strangeness of transition more fully in the context of non-duality for instance, you can try to listen toTony Parsons, whose teachings center around taking the no I/ no self/ no beings [idea, revelation, insight] to its logical conclusion, enacting life beyond conceptions of personhood entirely.
“For me ‘teaching’ is helping someone to have a better dream.”
– Tony Parsons
Although it seems to me that to do what Parsons is doing means continually erasing, which instead of offering the central emptiness insight, may obscure it, since insisting upon this kind of treatment can feel intensely self-involved.
Shape-shifting
Another related idea/practice, is shape shifting, where transformation seems to require perception of self as not permanent or solid, but rather a conception that can be opened and explored, turned inside out, and can reflect other forms. What I had a few weeks ago, which acted like a vitamin to this ongoing endeavor, was indeed, a shape shifting dream.
Anyway these are beginning musings, an intention toward greater clarity in 2019.
I learned last night, due to not being able to sleep and turning on a Buddha at the Gas Pump interview, that there is a modern term for that experience of the gap between thoughts, for the resting place that interrupts the usual stream to such a degree that radical change is possible: a pure consciousness event. It isn’t that words do not already exist for this, but that they all have the baggage of familiarity, of thinking we understand what those words mean, so I’m all for a term decoupled from usual religious connotations.
In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō, “seeing into one’s true nature”. Ken means “seeing,” shō means “nature” or “essence”. Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood.
I’m moving into my third week of physical therapy – something that, even after a roller-coaster of treatments over almost twenty years, I’d never thought to try until my daughter had trouble with migraines and found it tremendously helpful.
It is usually the case that when you first begin a new thing, the payoff feels huge, but effects dwindle over time. I’m as guilty as anyone of running around thinking (and sometimes saying) I’ve found the answer during this phase, so I won’t do that. 😉
However, I’d like to sing the praises of Myofascial Release. Good research about this will come with time, but the bottom line is whether it helps. For me, so far, yes.
The therapy has some overlapping qualities with massage, but rather than kneading muscles or stroking them up and down, practitioners press into them – often very hard. When leaving sessions, for instance, Firestone says she feels energized, clear-headed – “and sore as hell.”
I wish I’d learned these techniques a long time ago, although indeed I am sore as hell. The apartment is filling up with balls and pool noodles and we’re all spending more time on the floor. Modern furniture is almost like having a house full of beds, encouraging way too much sitting.
Even without the MFR though, just the act of going to PT at all is a prayer and intention, even a cry for help. I want to learn to RELAX – not think that I’m relaxed, or be relaxed as compared with others, but to deeply relax in the way Elizabeth Gilbert talked about relaxing in a talk titled “Creative Living Without Fear” a few days ago here in Miami.
As though relaxing is a radical and powerful stance that gifts the relaxer with a profoundly wide view and ability to survey many possibilities, allowing a way of leadership which operates precisely by being and setting others at ease. As though relaxing is the crucial opening to “let Love in the room.” She talked about doing nothing until there is something to do. Doing not-doing. Suzuki Roshi called it, “effort without self”, the Tao’s wu wei.
This feels like something I know but had forgotten. Life is calling me to remember, showing what authenticity means in this context. For instance hearing in meditation the other night, “If you find yourself exhausted after an interaction, it is a good indication you have been performing/putting on a show.” It struck hard that it isn’t all about my being ‘introverted’ that social life is sometimes so draining.
Lastly, the message of today’s meditation: “Cry.”
My suspicion is that many of us think we cry, but really don’t. Crying in a burst of frustration is okay; momentary crying provoked by something touching or upsetting is okay; bawling one’s eyes out for no reason whatsoever (or, without any need to articulate the reason) is also okay. No, actually it is brilliant.
I keep crying for no reason, and without any thought whatsoever, while in physical therapy. The therapist hits a button and the tears flow. The stuff in the middle of ‘the button’ and the tears, like tracing back and identifying emotional pain, is 90% of the time unnecessary. 10% of the time it is necessary, and clear when it happens. (statistics mine :P)
But, there are of course, many reasons to cry, too. There are many things that should be cried over. I mean, try reading the NYT Kristof piece on Yemen this weekend. Unbearable.
It is important to cry, as humans. It may be a big part of how we stay human. Perhaps stopping ourselves from crying when and as long as we need to is a bit of a problem.
Maybe we need to stop the show every day.
Or I do. I did today. #Goals for 2019 are coming clearer.
So I’m reading a book. Actually, since last writing about books here I’ve gone through around twenty, but this one seems fitting for the blog.
I’d never heard of Sophie Sabbage before this year, nor her first book about coming to terms with a terminal cancer diagnoses. Not to be flippant but I have always thought “I’ll seek out cancer comfort literature when and if I need to, thankyouverymuch.” Perhaps that has been a mistake. The descriptions of her diagnoses, and the treatments that come up occasionally in her second book, Lifeshocks, and how to love them (which isn’t focused on cancer specifically, but is sensitively informed by such), are some of the most fascinating. That she has the presence of mind to describe so specifically, what is happening to her, is weirdly empowering for someone like me, who finds it hard to stay looking into deep and heartbreaking problems that have no solutions. That’s precisely when I want to get busy with something else, move on to something I think I can affect.
Cancer is just one of the topics she presents to open in to the underlying topic of her life’s work, teaching the material of her menor, Dr. K. Bradford Brown. A friend who attended More to Life workshops twenty years ago has continued to integrate the message since then, which suggests something worth exploring.
About midway through, the title word itself >> lifeshocks << is beginning to replace another word in my mind: >> awakening <<. Lifeshocks may be a better word to describe what I’ve been personally studying for so long now, once the case is made. Awakening describes something that seems ‘good’ or ‘better’ than what was. It implies in itself, a judgement about what one didn’t know before, or about others. It IS meaningful, and close to what is meant, so I’ve embraced it until now.
It isn’t that it is wrong to use the word awakening when relating the stories of masters like Ramana Maharshi or Eckart Tolle, who were rendered ‘quite different’ upon enlightenment experiences, but lifeshocks describes what we all work with all the time, at varying degrees and scales, down to microseconds… each time an expectation is thwarted. In a sense, we are lifesthocks creatures, orienting and reorienting ourselves all the time, responding and redrawing anew.
This is what exposing lifeshocks give us: the chance to be fully authentic, to find our true path in life and to accumulate an inner wealth that no amount of material wealth can match. Whoever we are and whatever we are up to, they will hammer on our pretences and call us back to love….
– Sophie Sabbage
Many of the tools she shares from the course fall in line well with similar inquiry techniques taught by the likes of Byron Katie, but so far I like the gentleness of her approach more. It seeps in.
There are a few points in the book where I stopped relating to her very much, as the particular struggles of hiding her inherited privilege felt enviable rather than pitiable, but she was well aware of that when she chose to include those stories. In a way, they exactly illustrate the difference between what she is conveying and other like-messages, and form an intimate relationship with the reader.
A month between posts again, but with good reason. I’ve been on a book binge, have traveled a little for work, and have been participating in a focused practice with friends, called “99 Days” — a play on the song 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, but with a positive overall intention of seeing and potentially affecting long standing habits.
You may remember that years ago research came out suggesting that it would take roughly 100 days to undo an old habit or to install a new one. So basically what we do is check in with one another every day for 99 days, which keeps our focus pretty steady. We each choose something different at first, although as time goes on and we support and follow one another, the practices have a way of blending.
My focus? I started with one, but moved into another I titled Unlearning Isolation, after a phrase in Rebecca Campbell’s book Light is the New Black.
In Rebecca’s book, it was almost a throw-away line, but one that jumped out and seized me strongly, becoming an easy intention to hold and remember day to day. My idea was to see if I could undo some of the isolating patterns I’ve cultivated as part of my personality for longer than I remember, by first noticing, then stepping out of them in a systematic way. I’ve had fairly good results so far.
It hasn’t been predictable. My early ideas feel almost quaint now – things like reading at the pool instead of inside of my apartment, or occasionally answering the phone without fielding calls. Instead, invitations have come up, and challenges to do things differently while traveling, like not wearing my i-pod as much, actually engaging with those around me.
Honestly, it has been a lot of fun.
One of the first things that happened was that I seemed to become hyper-aware of micro-expressions people, including myself, cycle through when engaging with the world. For many of us, there is a polite openness followed by a sudden gear switching, that if you really see in action, is quite amazing. Getting to that closing point, then breathing to relax and stay open a little longer, can feel like ‘going lucid’ in a dream.
In fact I had one quite wonderful encounter alongside a quite stressful one that I don’t think would have occurred if I’d not been out of my comfort zone in the first place.
There are stubborn obstacles that remain however, like a drained feeling after talking on the phone, that if I don’t slow down to work with, turns into a dread I then want to avoid. I suppose becoming more sensitive, making it into a thing, is part of the process, though. It has helped to hear from others that what I think of as highly personal struggles, are not too uncommon, like wanting to avoid events, being happy one didn’t, and then being very thankful when said events are over. 🙂
Studyinghappiness seems counter-intuitive. My tendency is to think that the more time I spend on studying how to be happy, the less time I’m spending ‘just being’, which is a happy state, isn’t it? Yet, I was drawn by two respected sources (a Buddhist teacher and the less respected Very Bad Wizards podcast), to a popular Coursera class, taught by Yale professor Laurie Santos, called simply The Science of Well-Being, and thought, “Why not give it a try?”
Everything about our technological age tells me we have to learn to operate in ways that go beyond basic intuitions we trust in. Certainly everything until now has pointed to a belief that my own sense of myself is closest to correct, precisely because I do invest in knowing myself, do pay attention to examining deepest motivations. I’ve made daring, dramatic changes so as to line up authentically with the resulting realizations.
But what about operating in a world where data may have a better read on my core-motivations and ingrained habits than I do? Data has no motivation to look away from blind spots. What about functioning in a world that, I won’t say weaponizes but definitely capitalizes, on pushing all my high-school level comparative triggers, to get me to look away from what I might best benefit from seeing? Rather than rant about the effects of social media on our psyches and society we keep having strong and frightening glimpses of, why not try to learn more about what I’m contending with?
The course offers upgraded versions of familiar strategies such as gratitude & savoring.
Savoring might be as simple as taking time to write out a pleasurable experience or accomplishment… to go back and notice with better attention. It is conjuring something positive twice, stretching it out, lingering it longer (yes that’s an odd way to say that but it means what I mean). 🙂 The key point is bringing the sensation stronger to memory, so that as you come into the next moment/next opportunity, gratitude is the nearest frame at hand.
4.28.2018 Miami
Doing this intentionally over a few weeks, even though I thought I had a good gratitude game going already, has meant that in most transitions modes where I’m switching from one thing to another, I have found myself a tiny bit slower to reach for quick hits of emotion like frustration or judgment.
At first, the practices felt to me like magical thinking, but there is a very strong foundation, rooted in acceptance of human ‘hedonic adaptation’, rather than crediting happiness to the powers of self and will. Really, understanding this concept of hedonic adaptation is already worth taking the course. It basically means that what we think will make us happy, is not what actually makes us happy. Scientists have found various ways to test this idea and have come up with pretty useful tools to thwart or delay the tendency to follow our outdated intuitions on this, like increasing variety and interrupting consumption, and switching reference points.
I come from a background of nurturing greater awareness-in-general, or awareness-for-its-own-sake, as a kind of panacea. I’ve figured out that experiences are weightier than things, for instance, but it was still interesting to consider the studied reason behind that: that things more often stick around long enough for us to grow tired of them.
My daughter has issues with migraines recently, so we’ve been going from appointment to appointment and test to test, to get a sense of what might be going on. In the process we’ve learned a lot about how people have to live now when it comes to basic things like sitting and standing, not always looking forward. We may ‘know’ that “sitting is the new smoking” when it comes to health, that posture is crucial, that interrupting the flow of productivity to check on well-being is actually not optional, but it can still take something disruptive to make us actually DO THINGS (like savoring, gratitude) to change our ways.
Have returned from a trip – my first to Europe – and from writing elsewhere about the trip in a way that surprised me. The recounting poured through like sunshine first thing in the morning, and I could hardly leave my bed–where I’d started off writing just a few simple notes–for most of the day. :
By 6 pm I was hobbling in pain, my back loudly protesting what I’d done, but wasn’t sorry. In the community, there came genuine appreciation that I’d tried to bring into the experience those who had not been able to go, to include them in the adventure. Of course, it wasn’t that I could include anyone anywhere, but they appreciated that I took the time to show they were already included… something the dynamics of the group have taught me to see throughout ten years involvement.
This felt connected to my waking a few weeks ago with the thought loudly before my eyes: “I don’t want to teach. I (just) want to write!” Which seemed odd out of context of the many years in which I’ve worked to articulate knowledge I feel has empowered my life, with the idea of ‘helping’ others. I felt released from that burden.
Why have I done that anyway? In part, out of a desire to show appreciation, to ‘make good’, like a child who is well aware of what their parents have sacrificed to give them greater opportunities. But times have changed. There is a hierarchical way of sharing, of giving and receiving, that isn’t quite appropriate anymore, even if our institutions and formulas have not moved beyond that way of thinking. We’re walking funny lines.
The ‘appreciating food’ practice a friend on the trip shared, consisted of taking a moment to contemplate how our meals, in all their myriad components, had reached our table. Each time we ate together she walked through some of the many factors and relationships required for any given meal, much less the innumerable factors necessary to gather such disparate people as we ourselves from all over the world, to appreciate that presentation. This practice, although simple, deeply affected my way of seeing during the trip. Perhaps the writing took on that flavor as a natural overflow.
It is far too easy to snap into a category and write ‘about that’, to try to line things up with calculations of what is wanted… what is most ‘useful’. However, the benefit of going with what pours out is that there is 0 pretending. There are too many factors, so you give up on capturing them all in advance, and go along with the momentum appreciatively.
This may be what Steve Jobs was getting at when he said that people don’t know what they want until you show them. Market research is useful, but incredibly limited. It matters to me that I’m clear and that what I write takes in mind the benefit of others, but I can’t be driven by that. I can’t be driven by a motive to ‘do good’. That’s an effect that in a way, I trust to happen from a deeper devotional intention.
There is a TED Talk that speaks to this beautifully, given by Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote Eat Pray Love. She gave this talk about genius and inspiration after the gigantic success of that novel, so it comes from a vulnerable place, asking, “What if my best work is behind me?” It isn’t a talk centralizing on fear. Rather, it draws upon the way genius moves, and what genius is… how much wider and free-er than can be contained by the will of a vessel trying to do well or be special.
If you haven’t seen it, it is worth the 20 minutes, and gets better and better as it goes on.
Wondering where the singing gecko part of the story is? You’ve arrived.
Many changes flowed from that ‘happening’, almost all of them subtle and light. I felt a breezy new energy and wanted to read more, meditate more, ‘just be’ more. But we’d bought an older house which needed constant repairs and improvements, which was taking up a lot of time.
Just outside our new bedroom window stood an old black olive tree grown too large for the space. Its branches scraped against the roof, leaving streaks and scars, and its roots endangered the foundation.
But the tree also provided shade from the intense Florida sunshine and a resting spot for lots of birds. And a gecko.
A loud gecko.
A loud gecko who, every night when I would crawl into bed, would make a horrible noise, something like >rwaaaaak< >rwaaaak< >rwaaaak<.
I saw it once, and couldn’t believe the giant sound came from such a tiny creature!
This went on for weeks. Some nights I was nearly in tears, pleading “Please, please stop…” to no avail. I would lean on friends’ sympathy so hard that the gecko became our daily news. I even wrote one night in my journal, “I’m sure he’s here to teach me something if I let him.”
Not realizing it was a prayer.
I don’t think it was that very night, but it might have been. I fell asleep early, deeply, and at some point began to stir, woken by the most Astoundingly Beautiful Music. It seemed to be playing both within and without me— a layered, heavenly sound I wished would go on and on forever.
Yet as I continued to wake, the song began to change, warping into a sound I thought I recognized. It was… sigh, yes, there it was: the >rwaaak< of the gecko.
I came to myself, realizing I was in my room, except that now, I couldn’t hear *just* the >rwaaak< alone. I could also hear, alongside, this deep and ethereal music.
After that, the gecko was gone. Or at least he was gone from the tree. I never heard from him (her?) again,
There’s a lot here to consider inspirationally, also to see about our minds and the wonders of consciousness. A fascinating link that showed up in my life later, helping to convey:
“Composer Jim Wilson has recorded the sound of crickets and then slowed down the recording, revealing something so amazing. The crickets sound like they are singing the most angelic chorus in perfect harmony. Though it sounds like human voices, everything you hear in the recording is the crickets themselves.”
Just, I mean, Wow.
One of the richest places for dream or meditative practices, is in what some traditions call the amrit vela (nectar veil). Sikhs call it the ‘hour of God’. It is around 3 or 4 am, when barriers are softer. before we’ve put on roles and agendas. This doesn’t seem to be a rule implemented, but rather to be based on discovery of natural ‘thin place’ openings.
Hypnopopia is specifically the boundary state on the edge of waking, whereas hypnogogia is the opposite. In my hynopopic state, the gecko transformed from a nuisance that didn’t fit in to my plans and didn’t seem to benefit my life, into a guide who taught me how to further lower my guard and trust (the groundlessness, openness, emptiness, vastness) what Life is doing.
And a gecko.
~ Singing Gecko 