Tag: playasbeing

You Seeing, Being Seeing

April 11th, 2023

Detritus from the past floated to the surface of consciousness upon my waking this morning and has been gathering since then. I’ve been watching, noticing how momentum builds quietly, noticing how the pull of my attention gets stronger, narratives more elaborate.

When I look for a contrast, something to counteract, what arises is You Seeing, Enlightened Seeing, Being Seeing—an idea P came up with in the insight group Play-as-Being, which some played with vigorously for several months back around 2009, logging observations along the way.

Enlightened Seeing wasn’t part of the original framework, a friend reminds. It was introduced to help make a logistical jump for the struggling, but was dropped swiftly. I’ll still include it here because it’s part of the exercise to see what remains of these ideas this much later, whether the framework is still useful or not.

I think it is. Useful today, anyway.

Image: Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami Florida

You Seeing

What is You Seeing? You Seeing is how one normally sees whatever, what’s in front of one filter through through preferences… regrets, plans. Or at least it’s a view that can be easily taken over by that kind of thing. It’s the conversations playing in my mind today running on their own… what I should have or could have said if I had been smarter, stronger, had more that people wanted from me, healthier, etc. It’s survival skills, I guess, fortressing, shoring up.

The effect isn’t hard to fall into, even if it isn’t as easily triggered as once was for me. This time, it popped up with a FB post, an in-law reaching out to a closer family member in a kind way. I saw this before going to bed, then found myself carrying on conversations with the person as I woke, propagating scripts and scenarios that eventually grew strong enough to propagate even more spin-offs.

Prolific! 🙂

A thing about “You Seeing”: it’s a fixer. It figures things out. It wants to go back or forward, even sees that as freedom. It’s not useless, just limited when it’s out of a wider context, like living in a bathroom when a whole house by the ocean is yours to enjoy. You Seeing isn’t what is before one exactly, but what one sees when projecting a glass darkly.

I don’t mean to demonize it, which can be a mistake of spiritual teachings. How amazing, how creative, that this so-called self sees at all!

Enlightened Seeing

Enlightened Seeing is a less personal view, but still a view. There’s far more spaciousness, outwardness. I want, but I want peace for you, love for you, resolution for everyone. Enlightened Seeing recognizes there is more to see than the seeing self sees, that there is richness and possibility accessible by questioning, exploring, looking up, out, testing. To see in an enlightened sense is not to be constricted by fear but rather expanded by love.

There is a you/me in Enlightened Seeing, though. One has gone from a Me at the center, to a YouMe at the center. Elevated view, but still view.

This might be represented well by a dream in which I tried to climb to the top of an overloaded vehicle in response to there not being a place saved for me inside. Rather than argue for my place, or sabotage the trip, the pain was accepted, folded in as part of the whole of human experience. It was pain, but not suffering. Suffering was right there, offering a sneaky-spiral energy, but I saw it, and that there were many possibilities other than being part of that trip.

Perhaps enlightened seeing is when the observer is prominent, confident and steady to be with what arises in a loving way. There’s some picture I have in mind when I consider this, where there is no barrier to seeing behind one and in front of one simultaneously, including seeing inside one–no barriers into eternity. Whatever comes up then greets so much openness.

Enlightened Seeing is more stable. It leaves space. Liu bai.

[P.S. I’ll write about the concept of liu bai soonish. For now, here is a lovely article: The Art of ‘Liu Bai’

I think Enlightened Seeing is the “better me” … the one who rolls with what’s happening and builds capacity to offer more and more ‘to the world’ — to indeed, even save and heal the world through higher and higher motivations and intentions. Certainly, better me is happier than constricted me, and actually, I live this much of the time. I feel when I slip and do what’s needed to get back. Not this doesn’t feel like ‘me’ to me.

The me-first view is ‘right there’ though, and there are times I don’t catch it for a long while… so there can be a lot of effort involved in not giving into the pull. This is why we call it spiritual ‘practice’.

Being Seeing

Being Seeing is not a view. These days there are many wonderful explorers and writers on non-duality, in part because there is just so much information flow via YouTube and other avenues. There is language that comes very close. There are also lots of people articulating ways in which teachers from different traditions overlap, or rest at the same points.

There are ways to describe what it is for non-self to ‘see’.

It might be argued that Enlightened Seeing is what non-duality is about, too… beyond you and me, and this perhaps is a bit why Enlightened Seeing was dropped back then. Some found it more of a hindrance than help, felt enlightenment was already the highest aspiration. Which of course it is. There is no thing higher.

The language has always been around, in phrases like Let be, or Let go and let God, or Be Here Now, etc. And guidance to ‘surrender’ has always been part of even mainstream Christianity. But so few have been able to surrender without disconnecting from human life. My sense is that we are more able to have friends and vocabulary and ways to spend time without having to merely You See, now, and are enjoying our time being able to Enlightened See. It already seems so much better, so unthinkable from earlier times.

However. 🙂

To attempt to distinguish Being Seeing, again I’ll resort to dream because it comes closest. On my first trip to Japan, after a long travel, whirlwind walk around Kyoto meeting my host in person for the first time, then finally arriving at the wonderful little place I would stay, I fell asleep deeply, in a way that didn’t feel like being asleep at all. Rather it was like being taken over, like being inhabited. There wasn’t any ‘me’ directing, nothing resisting a beautiful tour through streets and gardens and the whole of Kyoto.

It was it, an impartation–so much at once, yet easy. It took a long time, but also no time at all. Total welcome without difference between inside and out. Actually there was only Japan, not a me appreciating a place, and never any point in which to assert myself, nor any need.

To be on a deep awareness journey is to have dipped toes into this sensibility, I think; it’s what keeps us on the journey. We can’t forget. We are changed. We’re aware that’s there. We’ve tasted Rest.

Being Seeing.

Being Japan.

Script is flipped.

No me or you, but also no no me and no you – just experience without need for a self-in-control (an exhausting mode of being). The thought to ‘do’ something would not even show up, would not make sense. I think this is why P always tried to get at it by focusing on wu wei.

Wu wei is not a state of being that comes and goes, not a flow state, but flow states are effects of Wu Wei. Flow states are places where we are nudged into giving up, nudging toward surrender, toward Being Seeing.

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First Book of the New Year: Yuval Noah Harari’s “Lessons for the 21st Century”

January 4th, 2019

Yuval Noah Harari is among my very favorite public intellectuals, even though some of his prophesies are terrifying! Listening to a talk he gave in India ~~this~~ last year, about the capacity of future algorithms and reach of AI, I was struck by just how close the future he describes seems.

Indeed, it is already upon us.

Consider the phenomenon of New Years resolutions and self improvement in general, and the way our consumerist society is driven by the idea of ‘hacking ourselves’ to re-program and ‘get free’ from prior conditioning. Should a company like Amazon develop an Alexa type AI, that offers to monitor all our behaviors (input and output), over the course of a period of time, so that we can have all the information we need to “live our best life”, would we give permission?

Instead of taking that next marketing or time-management course, or hiring a life coach to help us, would we sign off on a ‘more perfect than a human could construct’ optimal life, which would then be aided by various products and services? Would it be like plastic surgery for the total ‘self’ and ‘life’?

Would we hand over that kind of information to a company (with all the “rights” of a human being)? We may think we wouldn’t, but we’ve moved forward pretty swiftly with new tech, regardless of disturbing revelations. My scenario posits permission asking, but companies like Facebook seem more about apologizing later. Mere humans are already lagging.

What Harari is describing is “3.0”, at least. One big question is, CAN you get a read on the inside of a human being, by a ‘full’ evaluation of the outside?

Will this shape up to be a new morality? What’s the template? Who’s is it? Is there any such thing as control over one’s destiny in a scenario where we’re so practically outmatched? Certainly, we don’t seem to be getting better at compromising and cooperating, if you look at our current methods.

One disturbing trend has been a bizarre equating of wealth with being responsible and good… a reasserting of caste system, in a way, and a failure of people to relate to those at the opposite ends of the resource spectrum. I like that Harari is thoughtful about these things too, and I like that he presents meditation and “seeing things as they are” as important in a tangible way, facing what we’re facing.

I believe that, too.

Some of the most interesting ideas Harari has, center around global identity (going beyond nationalism), which has the most practical ends imaginable: collaborative addressing of climate change, prevention of nuclear war, and management of disasters and planetary shortages.

We have no choice but to grapple with these questions together.

Here’s the talk:
“If We Started at the End” – a poem

April 22nd, 2018

Poem written with the Play-as-Being group in mind, for our 10th Anniversary.

If We Started at the End

If we started at the end

perhaps this is a beginning

Perhaps this very celebration

Is an Original Prayer

playing as culmination

Our shared ritual of

Avatarness

Flashing in, flashing out

Of existence

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Could you see,

the ‘true person of no rank’

always coming in and going out?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What about now?

.

His suitcase is full

of elaborate costumes

Sad mask, happy mask

Dragon tails

Sunshine and storm clouds

play across his face

.

Offering magic

to our time

Amazed am I

Am I?

.

The scene keeps changing

alterations happen,

Appreciation overwhelms

Wild open hearts suddenly

leap out

Let the stories lag

behind the Knowing.

(end)

**With thanks & apologies to Shodo Harada, Rinzai
Appreciation: Presenting what Presents

April 18th, 2018

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.

Tag: playasbeing

You Seeing, Being Seeing

Image: Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami Florida

First Book of the New Year: Yuval Noah Harari’s “Lessons for the 21st Century”

“If We Started at the End” – a poem

Appreciation: Presenting what Presents