Why is what we don’t see any less important than what we do see?

 

First, I want to thank all of you for  your birthday wishes.  I appreciate the cares and thoughts.

Here are some that have occurred to me.

 

“I  don’t deserve to die!”  he  cried.

“You deserved to live,” came the answer, “why short-change yourself?”

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What’s the difference between the idea of a table and the table itself?

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We are not our bodies.

‘We’ . . . are our experience of them.

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They say that I’ve got to believe in order to have faith, yet I can only believe if I can feel faith.

—

Can you see where we are going?

There’s a hardening, a stricture of boundaries and judgments

Set with evangelical fervor in an effort to control this helplessness that we are so avidly in denial of.

Of course it’s presumption to say that it is a “downward” spiral,

When it could just as easily be spewing our spinning energy out into an entirely new dimension.

That we can’t see.

I mean, we can see our host, our Mother Earth.

Being  used up by our exploding population.

War and disease continue to fail to cull the herd despite our ingenuity at killing and curing.

We see our oceans heave and our buildings fall.

We see our fellow man make the same mistakes over and over.

We see greed and fear have their way,

Till night overcomes the day.

We see our hopes dashed and drowned

Till we can’t hear the sound

Of our own heartbeat.

That’s the world without.

The world we’ve tried to own and control

With obsession and desire

And the pain of fire.

Isn’t there something else going on?

Someplace, some time, somewhere?

Something that we are as blind to as the tree

Now falling in a Russian forest?

 

Why is what we don’t see any less important than what we do see?

 

pmg

 

It ceases to exist?

Find your way home.

“Find your way home” doesn’t” is a process to remind  us that this is the only conscious choice  we have in this life we are living. A reminder.

Home is our truth, our reason for being. It is always there. We forget. It’s the human condition; to utilize our mind in order to survive, and at the same time struggle with the mind’s obsession to find a reason as to why it exists. It is possibly(?) the only thing it has no control over. The mind can’t know it, nor can the mind describe it.

We know it as a feeling.

The mind doesn’t feel. It thinks,  it identifies itself, its existence by what it can measure, do, quantify and qualify, judge, possess, destroy and believe. It has an insatiable need to control this existence it can’t explain.

The unknown, the ‘always-changing’ is an anathema to the mind because it cannot find an answer. That it continues to try is not it’s fault. It needs to believe it is powerful, that it will survive.

With power comes feelings of safety, elation, vitality, and dogged fear that it cannot last. Then there are all the manifestations of denying that fear of change, of death, and therein can we indulge our anger at ourselves and others. That anger is palpable.We are creating it, and we feel in control…almost. There’s always the opportunity to lose control…( our mind speaks of ‘loss of control’ in our society as if it is a bad thing and results in literally, no control. How ironic that if, in fact, we surrendered control, or rather the need to control, so much of our fear goes away – as well as the anger at ourselves for ultimately not being able to have control.)

Learning to recognize my fear of helplessness in all its manifestations; anger, depression, obsession, possession, and finding compassion for my self, forgiving my self for being helpless in the face of mortality, is a process. Not an objective to be accomplished, (herein is a whole conversation about ‘learning’ as not an acquiring of information to achieve control over an object, but a process, a stream with its leaves and flotsam floating among its riffs, ripples and backwater eddies.

I can float.

P.

This year’s end, next year’s beginning…

Let me share something with  you. A bit of an epiphany to me and at the same time, something that I’d heard or seen countless times, in so many ways.

I reminded myself in very real terms that I could relinquish my need to control. Put another way, I was exposed to a whole new level of acknowledging my helplessness and forgiving myself and others.

Or, simply put; there was nothing I could do or say to alter the outcome. It would be what it would be, and I had no control. I could only witness, and when in that witness, free myself of that bear trap; conditioning.

When you’re in it, it seems that it will never let  you go. Yet, if you can see yourself in it, non-judgmentally, dispassionately from your witnessing self, your consciousness self . . .see yourself suffering from anger, you can then make a choice to acknowledge all the pain, don’t try to make it go away . . . or do anything with it, or to it. Just let it know that your watching it, and identify the other part(s) of you that don’t feel that bad at all, and from your witness, know that you can choose to be, not to suffer.

I got to thinking about anger. What is anger?

We all know how it feels, hot and red, riddling our bellies, choking our chests, making us smaller, denser, tighter. There’s definitely a constriction that goes on, like when you disturb a sea anemone and all its tentacles retract  from a perceived threat. I say ‘perceived’ because the line that separates what’s real from what’s an illusion is invisible. (Is that where thought becomes matter?).

So there’s this part of us that is definitely animal. Eats, propagates, dies through the entire evolution of man. It constricts in the presence of danger: a threat to its existence. That’s a reaction that the animal in us knows. That is also the reaction that the mind employs when it perceives danger . . . real or imagined.

How about remembered? Not always consciously, sub-consciously mostly. Those things that happened as you grew from infancy, those things that scarred you, taught you to protect yourself from. Tighten a muscle often enough, it will become tight, hardened in order to protect.

I may not be able to recall those incidents, but my mind, my subconscious, and my body remember. They store those memories of yearning and helplessness in my physical being, weave them into secret histories, untold stories that evoke the feelings of love and security as well as those of yearning and helplessness.

The latter, yearning and helplessness are not only seemingly unbearable because when we’re in them, it feels that it will be forever – - – our minds, our perceptive abilities signal ‘danger,’ and when fear raises its head, we defend against it with anger. And as much as it feels as if we’re  being angry at someone or something else, what I believe we are truly angry with is ourselves and our perceived inability to affect our helplessness.

So, if I can accept that at the end of the day, or of my life; that I am helpless, why cannot I accept that now? I’m not saying I’m being helpless, I am saying that my true being has nothing to do with being helpless. My true being, my consciousness, my awareness and witness can acknowledge my feeling of helplessness, and in that act of acknowledgment, I am not helpless to make that choice – to acknowledge.

Not only am I not helpless to make that choice to acknowledge, witness, not judge or evaluate,   when I so choose, I experience the realization that not all of me is contracting and in fear, just my animal and all its conditioned and learned behavior inherited not just from my parents and their parents, but from the whole history of man.

What is the level of development of consciousness in the animal world? I don’t know. The yardstick we use to measure it is calibrated to our world, our human way of thinking, controlling, communicating. Whose to say, for instance, that the dolphin consciousness isn’t ‘beyond’ ours? Just because they don’t have arms and legs, don’t drive cars and aren’t rapaciously eating our planet and all its resources?

What I do know, is when I know, when I am. All the other behavior, learned and developed has only to do with my animal’s self’s procreation and survival, and to that end, ordering and controlling the world and the inhabitants of the world, usually by whom ever’s got the biggest stick.

My mind would have me measure, but my heart knows.

Have a conscious holiday. It’s the end of a year, of a cycle…a ‘death’ if  you will, and a rebirth of a new year. That cycle of death and life is mirrored in our breath, in the beat of our hearts, in each moment of night and day. If we can remember that, then we can see how much our ‘animal’ is evolving with the loving over-standing of the hu-man side of us that is reminding us that beyond everything, we are.

pmg

I forgot to give a title.

Someone asked not too long ago what it was that I am searching for in this life. I am searching for what we are all searching for; peace, connectivity, love. Have I found it? Occasionally. Have I found it more than any other? No. If there is anything ‘special’ I have been given in this life, it is the accumulation of my ancestry, for which I can take no credit for, the opportunity to distinguish between being a victim or being enlightened, a glimpse into the ‘why’ of my existence and gifts to communicate. Why do I communicate what I continue to study and learn? To share in the hope that what I experience will resonate and provide all of us with the same opportunity.

We are all teachers and students. We are all searching. I do not claim that what I share is ‘better’ than anyone else’s lessons in life, nor do I claim to have answers. I have only questions and the ongoing challenge of staying present in my life. Have I accomplished this ‘more’ than others? No. All things are relative. Fear, pain, loss are all relative and as such are as real and potentially devastating in their own context no matter to whom they happen or what they are. What happens to each of us, no matter how traumatic have within their ocurrance the opportunity to further our enlightenment and our experience of love. This is what I understand and what I try to accomplish.

Imagine my thoughts written by another who came into the public eye not as an adored character in a t.v. show and not as a celebrity whose travails in life were therefore so visible.  Would there be any inkling and resonance of truth in what I share if you didn’t have the preconception of knowing or believing ‘who’ I was? Perhaps this is an unrealistic expectation,  celebrity by it’s very nature cuts both ways.

We celebrate another human being in his or her shared humanity with us while we elevate them to the fantastical myth that they can overcome our fear of helplessness/death that is our universal condition. We need to do this because of our own fear of helplessness and our need to create or recognize  ‘immortality,’ or godliness in another human being so that we can experience it in ourselves. “We create our Gods in order to eat them.” I have made this comment many times and it is often and unfortunately misinterpreted. However, this is one way in which we as humans try to experience the ‘god’ in all of us. It isn’t the only way. We seek love. We seek peace and one-ness. We seek that defining moment of the ‘now’ in acts of danger, engaging our own fear in trying to attain what is perceived as unattainable.

We also have the curse of ego/vanity which has us experience the lose/lose proposition that our own fear/pain is either worse than anyone else’s, or not as great. We respond to the journey’s of others that have experienced great loss and its inherent challenge with a combination of morbid curiosity and abbhorrance, comparing our lives to theirs,  and an outpouring of compassion and wonderment that those others can carry on at all. We elevate and celebrate them as a reminder that we, as humans can prevail in the face of our mortality.

Yet, we all have the same struggle with the same issue. What causes us to experience our helplessness can be as varied as being caught in a traffic jam to losing someone we love. However, it’s the same experience of helplessness, though different in degree, and it is the same button that gets pushed in all of us. Who’s to say that a person having a panic attack is any more or less petrified than someone who has lost the use of their body? At that moment, its all relative. The lesson is the same though the degree may be different. The experience of fear, not judged, is equal to the opportunity.

Is a part of me afraid to die? Absolutely. Has a part of me glimpsed the communion with peace and one-ness in the act of dying, of letting go of my fear? Yes. Do I long to become so present in my life that I will in some part experience my dying as the Tibetan Masters purportedly do; with a greater witness and a sense of journeying into a greater whole? Yes. Is that what I practice and seek to practice? Yes. Does that differ from any other human being’s journey? No. Do I know any more than any other about this experience? No. Appearances are as deceiving as our minds. I am just like  you. My search is imperfect though my intention pure.

So, while it may seem impossible to separate yourself from your childhood perception/fantasy of ‘Starsky,’ please believe that you can witness that very phenomenon when it is at work in you, witness the feelings both good and bad that come up, and make the distinction between those feelings and who you are right now. Read what I share, when I have something to share not in terms of someone with an answer, but rather of someone with a rag and a dirty window that they’re trying to clean for a better view.

I was encouraged to create a blog by Ms Meserve as a way to connect and share my thoughts, something of me.It cannot be a matter of frequency. I’m sorry. We each find different ways and different times to share the experience of our existence. I’ve done it as an actor and as a director. Now I’ve written a book and shall most likely continue in that vein. I am not a particularly good correspondent nor am I by nature chatty. I am moved to write when I am moved to write. No more, no less. Please try not to connect my frequency of writing this blog with whatever value may be found in what I share that I see through my window.

On the book front:  We are at present printing an 11X14 ‘Manuscript Edition’ which will be used for marketing and possibly for sale. The 9×6  ‘for sale’ version will be out in Febuary, followed by a ‘coffee table’ version and then a graphic novel. It is a long process which requires a lot of patience, however we are doing everything we can to make sure that we do as good a job as possible. I think that those of you that are waiting to read ‘Chrystallia…’ will be pleased.

Lastly, I want to share my gratification that this blog has created what seems to be a valuable dialogue amongst its participants.

pmg

Patience…Hope…LIGHT…..

I have been informed that I need to contribute more to the blog.  For those of you who feel this way, my apologies. I forget that this too is a place where I get to meditate. Interesting. Having finished my first book, I’m now looking at my other projects waiting to see which will light a fire in me. In other words, I’m not writing allot right now. It’s easy to forget that it’s a cool place to hang out.

I’m meditating on drawing right now.

I’m glad the blog has created some helpful dialogue. I don’t want to answer each one, however in reading over your conversations, I hope that some of the questions and explanations will sink in and come out coherently.

I find the simplicity of what I have learned and study to be a great comfort because it makes it easier to remember.

Someone wrote questions about ‘detached.’ Without going back through my posts, and therefore leaving my self vulnerable to the possibility of contradicting myself, I relate to the word ‘detached’ in one of two ways. Either it has an emotional/judgmental dimension, or it is pure description of a simple action. Possibly the confusion comes from the former. By plugging into our awareness, we are able to observe/witness our sensory experience of existence. ‘Sensory’ includes emotions…the things that our mind attaches to events in our formative years. In those years we  feel fear, yearning, love. Fear that we are helpless, hungry for sustenance, and, love. Those are the feelings we first know as creatures. Primitive and simple and these three colors are then used by our minds to describe to itself, to  ‘know,’ and orchestrate the many complex scenarios that comprised our remembered and forgotten childhoods.

In observing/witnesssing our sensory experience of existence, we are still experiencing it because it is happening to a part of us. If it’s a good feeling, who’s going to questions that?

Puts me in mind of a documentary I saw on Bhuddist priests in Japan meditating  for great lengths of time. Periodically someone would come up behind them and hit their shoulders really hard with bamboo sticks. The point being, there are two extremes to which our minds go when confronted with hard feelings and easy feelings. They are aversion and attachment. When things are good, we wan’t to keep them that way.( Notice, the mind is talking about ‘control’ here…”want to keep them that way…”). When things feel bad, difficult…our mind goes full tilt into aversion. Get away. Run from that feeling, and if you can’t run, hide. There are many places to hide; anger, controlling, hating, jealousy, depression, sadness…but the BEST one is DENIAL.

When the young priest cracks the meditating priests on the shoulders, they’re saying ‘be here…be now.”

See, it’s a misconception, or rather the mind’s indulgence in giving some value to meditating by saying that if one meditates, then one arrives somewhere. Gets to peace…love, God….  The problem with thinking that is that the attendant question just will not go away; Are we there yet? And if we are, when are we leaving? How long are we staying. Are  you feeling anything yet?

Our ability to be present is inclusive of everything…all feelings, sensations, thoughts. Consciousness is our unique ability to be aware. Of everything that happens inside and outside of our bodies. From that place of awareness, we can experience our pain and fear AND we can also see it as just part of a larger experience which we are getting to watch…which we are choosing…to watch and glory in the experience of our oneness with everything that exists.

Definitions. Consider this: the dictionary is an edited/published book put together by a committee mentality that decides what best defines a word in terms of its history as well as its current use.  It’s interesting that ‘detached’ was reported to mean to disassociate from one’s feelings. I find that interesting, because it honors the mind’s need to know, measure, define the word, yet ironically includes consciousness and the ego; “disassociate from one’s feelings.” In a way, that definition and product of the mind is acknowledging that there is a ‘place’ from where one can see and execute disassociating from one’s feelings by choosing to be conscious. I bet if you put the mind on trial, it would completely deny the existence of anything so unmeasurable as consciousness.

Lastly, I want to re-visit my definition of ‘patience.’ I believe I have suggested that patience is the remembered experience of love. (I had said ‘hope,’ I think, but ‘love’ seems more inclusive).

I take issue with someone’s use of the word ‘remembered.’ Not because it doesn’t suit, but because if we’re not careful, when can look to one aspect of ‘remembered,’ and miss the other. The first aspect is remembered experiences. We can call up these remembered experiences, the one where we felt love, togetherness, joy, and that is one way to remember, albeit it comes with a whole world of experiences which our bodies remember but have been ‘un’remembered, suppressed as being too difficult. How do we selectively ‘turn on’ our memories and truly prevent them from visiting all those ‘subterranean’ places our more colorful religious figures describe as ‘hell?’

The second aspect of remembering is key; By exercising our ability to be aware, by meditating on the present with the help of all these sensations and feelings and thoughts that are there to remind us that we have a conscious place, we get to feel and nurture our sense of peace, love, oneness… and return to it whenever we want…and that, that is what we ‘remember.’ Our ability to experience the purest feeling of love gives us our understanding of faith…(that this ‘place,’ this one-ness exists), and that remembered feeling  give us patience and hope.

Wishing you every bit of all of it.

pmg

Hello everyone.

It occurs to me that I haven’t written on this blog for a while because I have been going to school on my studies and immersed in my own pursuit of awareness in order to navigate these shoals. For me, when I am in the midst of a lot of things going on at the same time, I become ‘student.’

I’m put in mind of going back to basics. The comfort and simplicity of basics. Knowing that is where you need to go when the noise gets noisy.

I can see myself clearer when I can watch and not judge myself. I can see when I’m coming from my heart or when I’m protecting my heart.

I can watch my body, my posture and find the truth in my feelings in how I hold myself.

I can see my mind wanting to run here…run there, run into circles and little knots of fear…I can watch my body respond.

I can sit apart, while being a part of, and witness the flow and change of sensation in this journey called existence.

I will feel all that I feel, and remember…yes remember to thank those feelings, those sensations which exist to remind me of my consciousness, my knowing-ness.

That is why I am here. To go there. Where? Here.

How quickly the clarity goes, vanishes in a forgotten twist, and I  notice how my mind and the rest of me is negotiating the change.  I am here again.

What about that great % of our mind that we ‘don’t use.’

Maybe we do use it. Maybe we use it when we sleep? Isn’t sleep our most ‘creative’ experience in our existence? Our awakened self exists only to thrive and procreate and goes to sleep when it gets tired. It raises a really interesting question about how we perceive ‘resting.’

Resting.

What happens to the innermost place of ‘muscle’ and ‘rests.’  Something’s going on…an exchange of some kind, some kind of chemistry, mini explosions that grow into what we measure as ‘energy,’ power, aliveness.

What is the ‘event’ of resting?

Is it like a line of ants forever traipsing for distant concrete horizons while their returning ranks file past with their information of what they’ve encountered?

Do we plug into the source of energy in our sleep and while we dream, our mind, half wakened tries to make sense of sounds, smells, feelings of energies. That is our re-charge.

Then of course, there is our waking state, in which we have evolved to be able to go to that place of re-membering, that place that re-minds us of our connection to everything that is. Our experience of the feeling of one-ness, belonging.

When we choose our awareness, our mind quite efficiently takes care of everything else. We can hang out in awareness as long as we like. Relax…stay awhile. I guess we could call it ‘paradise.’

Our opportunity is to practice seeing our sensations, emotions, thoughts, as experiences that are there to re-mind us of our conscious and aware state. When we can remember that, and we re-member the sensation of being plugged into, a part of the phenomenon of existence.

Put on your other set of glasses.

I see there’s a bit of a battle being waged on this site. My question is; aren’t we all looking for the same thing? I mean, yes, there other different things different people are looking for at different times, but at the end of the day, (or night), aren’t we all looking for the same thing? My answer is ‘yes.’ That’s my answer. It doesn’t have to be yours. I’m not espousing some universal truth. I’m trying to describe…and it is myongoing process of learning and discovery….MY universal truth. What feels right to me. What makes me curious and awed by this phenomenon called existence. If it resonates with others, well and good. If it doesn’t, then it was fun telling and reminding myself about it.

I don’t propose to know anymore than anyone else. I only know what I know and what I’m learning. It doesn’t make me good or bad or right or wrong. It’s just another reality…my reality which I choose to share with any who want to partake.

What would be cool is if those of you finding yourselves embroiled in this flap would  take a giant step back. (Take another, they’re free.), And from this wider perspective, where you can still see the other person, can you also see yourself taking yours position? See your mind preparing all those definitions and judgments to defend against your fear.

Fear of what? I don’t know. It just occurred to me, but I’ll take a guess with the option to delete.

Fear of being wrong…of not knowing…fear of being uable to trust your heart, your senses, your experience of your existence which tells you what you KNOW with your being, not what you think/believe you know in your mind. Yes, they are seemingly two different realities constantly at war with one another.

( I was having an interesting conversation with a friend and we were trying to identify that huge part of the brain that we don’t use. I thought, maybe that’s the place where we all dream…a portal into this multi-dimensional universe in which we exist. Maybe in other incarnations…in other ‘versions’ of us in other dimensions, this is the evolved part that communes with the waft and flo of existence. Was it Shakespeare who suggested that we spend this life like squirrels scurrying after nuts to store for the winter and it is only in sleep that we experience our connection to all that is? Maybe not Shakespeare…but he was going in that direction).

So we defend against that fear by forming judgments, alliances with others with common beliefs, (it helps if they look like us in some comforting way or other), and of course, identification with those beliefs. This is the mind’s way of rationalizing its relevance to these ‘serious’ conflicts.

Well, they are serious, aren’t they? They’re about what  you believe is important, true, right, wrong….oops…there’s that ‘judgment thing’ again.

Question; Does a belief linger? Does it resonate in the senses? Having a belief definitely resonates in the senses; pride, security, loyalty, honor,…but the belief itself? Is its life entirely dependent on our minds ability to repeat, enthrone, solidify and litmus test its existence?

What about what we experience with/in our senses?  Those stay in the tissue longer. A lot longer. Muscle memory? What about that which feels so good, so true, so comforting and reassuring, even eternal: love? Do we feel love in our mind?

We feel it in/through our senses. Our mind interprets it, maybe even gets a little drunk on the endorphin rush, or suicidal from the percieved loss of, but ask your mind where to go to find it and like a good dog after a buried bone, it visits all past and recorded occasions of bliss in an attempt to feel it again.

It doesn’t work that way.

Ah! I’m opening that damn can of worms again.

This experience of our existence has absolutely nothing to do with right,wrong, good, bad. Granted, because we are such dangerous beings to one another, we need a moral cage of rules and regulations to keep us under control…and we  have invented all kinds of cages…

Our experience of our existence…maddening as it may be to our minds…is to be experienced...or in short;to be…as in felt. Not known, or catalogged, measured and weighed…but felt.

So I ask you. In your deepest sense of yourself, of your hearts, after our minds have had their day judging and defending and labeling things right or wrong, fair or unfair and whatever, after that, when we ask ourselves what we really know that we want…and in that knowledge we also know that everyone at their core wants,…it is love. To be loved, to love, to belong eternally, to know that part of ourselves that goes on long after our bodies have called it quits.

We all want the same thing, same store. You take the high road, I’ll take the low road. You take your car, I’ll hoof it through the woods. Different ways of getting to the same place.

So, I propose that we view each others different ways, beliefs, ideas with more curiosity. Not just curiosity in all the different ways, but curiosity in ourselves and our own process of holding on, attaching, afraid to let go of any or all of the beliefs that our minds would have us identify with.

I believe…yes I said it…that when, in the face of fear, we  identify with the fear, (and try to defend against it), we can also identify with  that part of us that sees us doing this and if we look closely, sees others doing it at the same time.

We all want the same thing. We all want to ‘get there.’ The journey of life is filled with so much that we bridle at the suggestion that we are already there…meaning ‘here.’ And we certainly don’t want anybody telling us how to get there. Although we never pass up the opportunity to share in the comfort of someone telling how they got there.

Sometimes.

Sometimes we settle for the distraction of anger, hate, because we’re afraid to acknolwedge the root presence of our fear (underneath our anger, impatience…etc.).for fear that the fear will destroy us. But hey, didn’t we just say we were already ‘afraid’ to go there? Where? To ‘afraid.’ We’re already there!

Where?

Here.

Home.

It strikes me that one of the difficult things about swimming in satsang, ( the reciprocal and simultaneous experience of teaching/learning/teaching/learning), is  that what I meditate and write about might not be understandable to others either because I can’t write it or they can’t hear/understand it. Or both. I say it is ‘difficult,’ when I really mean is an opportunity for me to accept both alternatives and not have to be burdened with which is right and which is wrong, true or false.

And maybe the notion of a world without right or wrong is offensive, even threatening to some, however, I believe that anything that we can identify as being beyond our comprehension is where we really want to go.That’s the place we speak of most often; heaven, eden, paradise, eternal peace, unending love. That’s the place that  our minds can’t know and can only try to describe with words in an effort to quantify and qualify the experience of feeling.
The mind doesn’t feel.

It thinks.

That’s how it experiences itself. By doing. Its existence is entirely comprised of doing, judging, evaluating, ordering, controlling….not being.

And because it cannot feel, the mind creates with its definitions of sensation/feeling words, scenarios that defend and enrage, sadden and yearn in their complex stories of what happened or didn’t happen in the course of our conditioning in this journey of life.

The  experience of feeling, experiencing the senses is an unknown to the mind. It is the unknown.

If the mind can’t ‘know’ something, (it being one of its favorite ways of ‘Doing’ in order to support its pursuit of immortality…or at least the illusion of immortality), it has a vast supply of weapons to deal with the unknown.  At any time it can see it as horrible and dark and deathfull, exotic and mysterious, sometimes benevolent, and an ethereal spirituality to be adorned with all the gilt of honor, tradition, belief, philosophy and magic. It can defend against it with rage; rage at one’s self (read: ‘helplessness’: most commonly experienced as depression), hate,anger, killing, owning, controlling, obsessing, forgetting, DENYING any experience of the fear that always creeps in from the unknown.

Yet, we don’t experience life with our minds. We see it, measure it, etc, however we experience life through our senses. Our physical and by extension, emotional feelings.  We experience, know—its existence and ours by feeling them.

Our minds can editorialize and spin the story any which way, but hold the presses: how did it/being/life feel?

So here’s a question; If there’s something that we feel that our minds can’t understand or control, (and we’re only using what small percentage of our brains(?), then what’s the point of having a brain? I mean besides the cars and medicines and exquisite war machines, (can’t say ‘nice music, good food, good sex…’ they’re feelings/sensations), the rule of law and the dollar, and the edifices of  belief; the cathedrals, temples, and shrines,…good pizza…

It’s what we use the mind to focus on. We honor our senses within and without, as we honor our brains.

We enjoy our ability to exercise the muscle of thinking.

However when confronted with our inability to affect the outcome of something, like our lives, when that degree of helplessness paralyzes you or simply tickles you with some indigestion or rage, while  our minds may be able to create a bandaid to deny that horrible feeling of helplessness… the fact is that our minds fear that they can’t help us out. How do we know this? With our feelings. Listen to them. That’s what they’ll tell you.

What we can do, is to focus our minds on things that reaffirm and bring us to a more peacefull place. The more we do it, the better we remember to do it the next time. How do we focus the mind?

We ask it questions.

Questions such as; ‘what do you hear? what do you see? what do you smell? what do you feel on your skin,what are you thinking? RIGHT NOW. HERE in the Present? Which is ALL you can ever really know…

Can you see yourself thinking , feeling, smelling…? Can you see yourself sitting there reading this?

Get cooled out, you know, relaxed.

Be in a comfortable place.

Close your eyes so that it is just your space..

Ask these questions and simply watch. Watch yourself asking the questions and watch yourself as you are feeling all your sensations, watch your mind think its thoughts…

As you watch, you are plugging into the great ethernet of existence of which…(just contemplate this…don’t feel like you have to judge your feelings about this experience…) of which everything is thought, knowing.

Consider this experience of being with everything that exists, has ever existed, will continue to exist….forever, eternally, immortally…

You are experiencing the true meaning of ‘knowing;  ‘   Being one with. Belonging. Feeling a part of. Feeling as if when you leave this body behind, a part of  you keeps going…forever, (of course your mind wants to believe that it has a ‘structure’ to it, like  the Big Boss, and laws, and underlings, and people that deserve to be there and don’t.)

You don’t have to give it a name, because you already know it. It’s where you came from, it’s where you are going to, it’s where you are, right now, as you read this.

This is your truth.

You are everything that feels good and that doesn’t.

You are all of it.

You don’t have to judge it or identify it…that will not help control it or deny it.

Our experience of life is replete will all that we experience in pain and in pleasure.  We can choose to honor our consciousness, to honor this enormous and, yes sacred gift: our ability to be see ourselves exist, our awareness that allows us to honor that gift, for this is truly the only thing thing we want…to climb to our higher being, to find the chalice, the fountain of  youth, true love, God. You can call it what you will. This is home.

Just a thought..

J ust a thought.

A thought.

Take a little trip with me.

Does the mind feel?

It thinks.  That’s how it experiences itself.

So does it, the mind, interpret the physical reactions of the body and try to describe the experience with no first hand knowledge of what it’s like to feel?  The mind measures and identifies with words it creates from sounds made by those physical reactions,  and gives the words their meanings so they can be utilized at a moment’s notice. The mind even attaches stories to those meanings. Some are stories that make you feel good, and some make you feel bad. Some take you by the hand through a dark forest, and when you finally get to the other side, the sun is shining and all is well. All feels good. If your mind could feel, it would like that result. All systems are a.o.k..

The world of feelings must be so alien to the mind. So difficult to understand, and understanding…knowing is the mind’s compulsion, it’s reason to exist: to do. How can it not know? How can it not measure and control, judge, amass and assert power and ascribe the most elaborate rationalizations to justify its need to do.

Feelings? The mind finds more stories than exist, more permutations in an effort to find a way to control those feelings. If that’s the only way the mind can ‘know’ those feelings, then control it will be. Anything to avoid having to experience something that even approaches that feeling of ‘not knowing.’

Enter ‘belief’s.

Belief is the mind’s answer to controlling what it doesn’t understand. How do you believe? ‘You just do it.’ Like in the Nike ad. Do what? Believe!! How?I dunno, keep saying it over and over and maybe you’ll begin to believe it.

Belief systems are a compilation of our history of story-telling distilled into tenets, or truths that you must either accept at face value, or dedicate your life and will to studying them.  That is the only way to believe and experience faith.

Or is it?

What’s faith?

‘It’s that feeling you get….’

‘Wait a sec…hold on…you’re talking about a ‘feeling?”

‘Okay, I won’t use the word,’feeling,’ okay? See, you get this sensation…’

‘Wait a sec…hold on… Isn’t a ‘sensation’ just a ‘feeling…?”

‘Shut up, or I’ll shut down!’

That’s the mind’s ace in the hole; shutting down, then it’s a hop skip and a jump to hate, greed, sloth…murder…sound familiar?

The mind cannot explain or understand the experience of faith. I mean, it can. It can explain what faith is supposed to act like, what it’s supposed to do, as the mind sees it.  It’s just that merely ‘being’ is an anathema to the mind. If it just ‘is’ then what does it do? It don’t do.

I learned a great meditation: ‘There nothing to do, nothing to change, everything is perfect just as it is.’

So, you guessed it…that takes us around and back again in this spiralling ride of life. Full circle.

How does the mind access faith?

It doesn’t. We do.

We have our consciousness that can watch our minds think, watch our selves feel every sensation  and emotion.

We can take that huge part of our brain that remains unused and use it to focus our minds from its witness, from its consciousness. Observe, not judge…and resist the mind’s need to say everything is so or isn’t so, is right, or is wrong, good or bad…and just watch your feelings as they pass by like leaves on a stream.

At some point, from your conscious place of awareness that is joined with all awareness of which all matter is made, you will experience and know when you experience it. You will ‘become’ the stream with the leaves/feelings floating on and through you. At that point you will know that  you have experienced yourself as the recipient of the entire ancestry of man because at that point, at that moment…you will recognize yourself in everything, and everything in  you. You will experience, as you have already experienced the love and peace and warmth, the connection to all that is. Call it God, Love, Truth, Beauty, it doesn’t matter. Whatever your belief system or religion calls it…isn’t important. Only that you feel it and understand that that is the only way you can ‘know’ it. That’s what we are here to do.

Experience it, ride it like a surfer on the waves, or an Eagle on the wind, fall in love, be one with it. That is our purpose. To sound, vibrate in, be with the harmony of the heavens, to be where thought becomes matter. Yup…at that very place, or ‘space’ as a friend of mine says.

Hope you’re having a good Spring.

pmg

B’Day

Thank you for your birthday wishes. Here’s hoping we have a really good Spring. pmg

Clarification?

It is possible to witness without judging…just watch yourself when you’re judging.

We are not our feelings.

What makes us human is that we can ‘see’ ourselves thinking. To point: ‘I think because I am, or I am because I think: I am, because I am aware that I am. Thinking is something I, or rather, my mind does. What about that part of me that can see myseelf think, judge, feel? That part that can witness my existence, my judging.

Fear of helplessness is that fear that I,(this is the mind talking) am not. That I can’t know, or find, or do,  make, or change the course of the universe, or achieve stasis, (immortality). The only immortality I know is what I experience when I experience my connection to all that is.

All that is, is thought, consciousness.

What is a thought? It’s not an idea. Thought gives birth to ideas. If I accept that an ‘idea’ is a charge of electricity/energy,  is it then  measurable matter?What is the difference between a thought and an idea? We might say that ‘thought’ is  the whole of existence. It is beyond measurement in that it is seemless. It is not made up of even the smallest particles. Is it an energy? Could be. What is interesting is that our minds cannot define it or measure it…only experience it. The best our mind can do by way of definition is to use words like God, love, truth, paradise, nirvhana.

Interesting that the human mind has defined ‘hell’ as that place where we find ourselves when we have ‘sinned.’ When I look at the seven sins, they all share in common one thing; the mind’s attempt to quantify, qualify and control our existence in order to assert some sense of power, anything to avoid feeling helpless. Helplessness is an anathema to the mind. Just look at all the ways in which we resist even contemplating it. It makes us angry, fearful, covetous, jealous, slothful, greedy, along with the rest of the aforesaid sins. We suffer from them and our minds envision a ‘place’ called hell to which we may go, or heaven if we follow the ‘rules.’ However, just as the mind can’t define thought, only experience it, how is it that the mind comes  up with the ‘idea’ of hell. It comes up with it because it experiences it…here, now, in this life that we spend so much time trying to control. The notion that hell, or heaven is a place ‘beyond’ to which we go after we die is the minds’ way of dealing with defining heaven and hell as some vague place that we can only know through ‘faith.’ Do this, practice that, believe what is taught and you will have faith…or so we’re told and threatened with punishment if we don’t.

How does the mind define faith? Isn’t faith something we feel…we experience?  And when we experience it, our minds describe it as freedom, ecstacy, love…But those are only words, because they may evoke feelings, but the thing that saves us is the experience of faith. We can’t define it. Describe it, yes.  Define it, no.

So if the mind’s strong suit is its ability to define, measure, etc…and it can’t define faith, only describe it. If its definition of ‘hell’ is to describe roasting in hell forever and ever…which, by the way is the epitome of helplessness, and its definition of heaven is a place we go to ‘after,’ which, in all honesty is at best a guess, (unless we acquire that thing called ‘faith’), then maybe all this story-telling and hypothesizing is a vain, (read: narcissistic) and futile attempt of the mind to get some control over that which it has no control; the experience of being.

So we experience on two levels:

1) We experience our existence through our senses; feel, sound, smell, sight…and, yes,  thinking, or the interpretation, description and measurement of what our senses tell us.

2) Our innate ability as humans to witness/see ourselves doing all this.

And when we witness, when we go to that place of awareness and recognize that we are not what we are experiencing through our senses, but rather there is another part/place in or of us that can see us experiencing this sensation and thought, and when we recognize from that place that we have a choice as to how we’re going to react, nor not react, (witness), then we experience something that is beyond our senses, beyond our thoughts. Something that is free off all of that. Something bigger…a ‘body’ of thought?

And that feels good. For a while, then we wrestle with our minds until we remember to re-attache, (re-member, as in; my arm is a ‘member ‘of my body and when I remember, I re-attache my arm to the rest of my body), and when we re-attache to that place of awareness, we rediscover the experience of belonging to something greater and we feel good again…until…

The waves come in, they go out. The moon waxes and wanes, the universe expands and contracts, our breath comes and it goes, as does our existence in these bodies. The constant is ‘change,’ and we swing like a pendulum from heaven to hell, back and forth and back again;  from our experience of being part of something that never dies, to our mind’s obsession with finding some control, some ‘understanding,’ some way to know and in ‘knowing,’ maintain the illusion of power over our existence.

We are in that we can see that we are.

Isness  is.

If it’s all the same to you, let’s not split the difference.

Wow. Lots of interesting conversations, poetry,  new arrivals to the blog; Ms Hand and Ms Foot. Thanks for the birthday wishes. Doing a lot of meditating.

There’s one thing I find constantly interesting in reading these blogs and seeing how you respond to my ramblings, and I’m most impressed by all of our abilities to selectively read, or in plain words, see only what we want to see, hear what we want to hear.  When I am working on my book, I am amazed by what I don’t see when I read it. That is to say, unless I read it aloud and to someone, I know there are things I’ll miss time and again. Why is that? Part of it is because our pal the mind believes it’s already read it and there goes your focus and things gett passed over, etc.

Then, I ask; why can’t the all-talented brain, see something being said that is particularly uncomfortable for it, even threatening, and modify the offending idea so that it can be more comfortable. Editing, (‘read censoring’) on the fly by the subconscious.

Antidote? Reread aloud, preferably to someone else.

In this case, it is an interesting challenge to try to share something I have learned to experience that defies explanation. The mind can’t ‘grok’ it, plain and simple. And what’s also interesting is this ‘journey’ or meditation that I have learned that uses the power of the mind to do what it is best equipped to do, to focus on awareness, on that place of consciousness and from that place, experience the fear that lives in all our lives albeit damned and denied, and make the choice to be compassionate to ourselves in this amazing struggle called being human.

Here’s the trick: When we practice awareness of our existence in thoughts, feelings, sensations, try not to judge. Witness, but don’t judge. The minute you judge, your mind is having its way with you and you begin to identify with that judgement. Like that is ‘who’  you are. I hate this, love that, believe this, know that, own this, have power over that….all those become very vain efforts on behalf of your mind to quantify and qualify, define ‘who’ you are.

But are those things ‘who’  you are? No. They represent who parts of you are that have been conditioned by society, family, generational genetic disposition to react.

But they are no more ‘who’ you are than your screaming toe when you stub it on a doorsill.

The mind is equipped, using only a very small percentage of the brain to do two things: One is control, as in evaluating, knowing things, measuring, listing things to believe in…and the thing that’s so important to the mind is that it maintain this control, this power, because to be helpless is an anathema to the mind. It defines its very existance by what it can ‘do.’ To be helpless is death. (It is interesting to note here that even though I pointed out twice that our fear is not of death, but of our helplessness in the face of death, some bloggers continued to miss that distinction. A really important distinction, and missed I believe, because the mind wants no truck at all with even a discussion of ‘helplessness,’ unless it can reassert a belief or an action that proves that it is not, in fact…’in fact,’ helpless.

The only other  thing the mind is capable of doing (again, with only a small percentage of the brain), is to focus on what is, the present, the here and now. How focus? Simply by practicing awareness. What is happening right now? No judgement, or when there is you can actually note;’Look at that….I’m judging.’  And the reason you’re judging is that the mind doesn’t want to just be and observe its existence. It wants, needs to DO. And that’s how we’re trained.

So, what’s the point of this ‘consciousness?’ This ‘aware place and all this witnessing without judgement. Does it feed or clothe me? Can I taste, own, collect, buy and sell it?

Well, here’s the thing. When you are perceiving your existance: thoughts, feelings, sensations inside and outside of  your physical being, you are practicing your unique and god-like power of humanity, consciousness. And from that place,  you can see all these experiences as happening to part(s) of you and when you do that, you realize that you have the power of choice, you aren’t helpless, and you can choose to honor, have compassion for, yes, love youself in  your courageous journey through change and into death.

When we can acknowledge our mind’s fear of helplessness, we can choose to see it from our conscious place and remind us of our capacity for love.

On the other hand, if we don’t or are unable to acknowledge our mind’s fear of helplessness manifested in our daily lives any time we can’t control or know something, (knowing being another form of control), then we create patterns of behavior that defend against the fear of helplessness. So we have opinions, beliefs, biases, etc because our minds tell us that is how we are to know who we are…and in that knowledge there is power. How much power? Enough to find immortality?

I don’t spend the day asking what I’m afraid of, or looking under every nook and cranny for the old bugger. As my life has turned out, I’ve been introduced to a degree of helplessness that, in order to not self-destruct, I either was going to be a victim/bitter old man, or find my heart. When I learned about how to identify my fear of helplessness beneath my rage, sorrow, and pain, when I learned that I wasn’t those emotions or the thoughts that came with them, and that I could use their presence,( oftentimes so subtle as to be deniable) to find compassion for myself and by extension my fellow human, then I began to see all the ways in which the world around me was avoiding its fear and acting out its attempt to assert control. Most commonly  through denial.

“I am so angry I could…”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I’M NOT AFRAID, I’M ANGRY!!”     is an example of denial, because if you played ‘Twenty Questions’ with what’s making you angry, you’ll eventually arrive at ‘helpless.’

Another example of denial is seeing what we, (our minds) are comfortable with acknowledging. Reading what’s really there. All of it. (Assuming the person writing it is being clear enough – an ongoing challenge for me).I can do that maybe 20 % of the time.

As to the discussion of ‘same’ being more difficult to find than ‘different;’  What I”m trying to say here, is that while the mind finds its power, or illusion of power in its ability to quantify/qualify…judge…and maintains a fantasy, an ideal of sameness and always seeks it, (ergo our creation of the KEN and BARBY love fest), the mind holds that as a belief it can have control over only through judging. The irony is that only when the mind’s power is focused from that conscious place or awareness without judging, only then can we feel in our entire being the event of our sameness, that we’re all one. Not as an idea that the mind can romanticize about, write poetry, plays,songs, religions about, but rather as a known sensation that we feel when we are being love. (I have nothing against poetry, songs, etc…all story telling by the mind that glorifies in the best sense of the word our ability to love. The paradox is that while the mind can speak about it, paint it, sing of it, etc…it can’t, with its ‘power’ ever really know it…as in ‘define it,’ but can only experience it in the surrender to ‘being,’ and not the obsession of ‘doing.’)

In that our minds use such a small portion of our brain and ninety-nine percent of the time use it to create the illusion of power, it is therefore understandable that we would navigate our way though the crowd that is our fellow man and, while paying heed to the fantasy of sameness, seek difference as a way to establish sameness. As opposed to not going the ‘judgment’ route and experiencing sameness, one-ness, God, love….in the way in which we are all irrevocably similar, beneath all the differences.

pmg

Hello…

Well, first of all I want to thank all of you who have sent birthday wishes in advance of

my date of birth. I feel good about this birthday.  ‘Chrystallia is coming along. ‘Hope sooner than later. I hate to be vague, but the further along in this process I get, the further there is to go. Which isn’t bad at all when you consider that process is everything and while the result may be gratifying, (or not) for my ego, the true joy is in the creating. Therefore, I am giving myself as much time as I need to get it right. I believe it is that valuable a story for us to share. So, please be patient.

I have also heard rumblings of my blogging habits. While I would very much like to accomodate a schedule of frequency, that’s not who I am. I write as it moves me, but I’m here and I know your there and I don’t have any plans on going anywhere. I’ll  not forget, but there’s every possibility that’ll I’ll be late, (or early, depending on the person).

See that? Pretty fast, huh?

So I’m wondering about how living things communicate. There’s definitely an exchange in vibration that occurs, Then there are sounds created and languages formed of those sounds.

Different languages. The languages create sounds of their own as they’re interpreted in so many ways through so much emotion. The complexity of language is a mirror to the complexity of our emotions. It’s also the way in which we try to learn to listen to what we mean when we say  what we say.

In a room filled with English speaking people from a block on the street you grew up on, the appearance of communication on so many levels is, in truth, gratifying for a fleeting moment. Then your auditory senses immediately upload to the keenest level of their ability to read intention, fear, or seduction in a voice. Because one word can be said so, so many ways. You may not know what you’re hearing subconciously.

Interesting notion; the sound(s) we do not hear…or don’t think we hear and most of the time don’t even listen for. Its  like ‘the tree falls in the forest…’…if you don’t see it happen, or hear it happen, then…did it happen at all?

I believe it happened, even if only as far as an idea happens. At least on this dimension, we know that an idea is energy that is manifested in an electrical pulse organized by your brain so that you can quantify the ‘reality’ of the ideas’ existence, or do everything in your power to deny it even exists.

In other words, all existence being composed of thought/consciousness, having a thought, or an idea is to even the smallest degree a cognisant manifestation of energy. It exists.

Anything the human mind can imagine exists on some dimension. Why? Because we’re all part of the whole of everything, which at our most primal level we know to be true, because everything is part of us and we are part of everything.

However, it’s easier to find difference than similarity. We covet that person, color, occassion, smell, addiction to power who best mirrors ours. She’s our dream girl, he’s our dream boy…Ken and Barb….

We spend the majority of our energy finding our differences. Why? Because first of all, our mind believes it is important. Very important. “I like to smell the leather before I buy it,” it says with heartfelt sincerity and believing every word of it, proud to be in control of everything everywhere, or at least proud to think that it could be in control….

It’s very comforting for the mind to apply differences. It’s right in its wheelhouse. And there’s so much to do! So many evaluations and definitions, likes, dislikes, do’s, don’ts,  this ‘type’ of person to love, that to hate. Learn as much as we can so we can someday bring Mother Nature to our knee,…I mean, there’s a lot and still more! The sky? The universe is the limit!

This is the way the mind thinks and does everything in it’s power to support and recreate that illusion that it can do anything, know anything…even when the fact that our bodies fail us and we leave this life still lurks in the shadows of our mind, always threatening to come out.

Difference to the mind isn’t candy. It’s heroin. To find similarity is, as far as the all powerful mind is concerned, is counter productive…(I’d say ‘counter-intuitive’ except the mind…yours and mine, has very strict rules regarding intuition, or sixth sense and quickly relegates all of that ‘unknowable’ stuff to the category of ‘what we’ll master some day, eventually’…control,control,control).

To find similarity, the mind must find how another mind is similar and the result is usually a perceived complete likeness, a la the love story of all time and the ensuing and all consuming drive to identify anything or anybody that threatens what the mind has interestingly identified as our ‘unique similarity,’ and either change them or own them and do what  you will with them.

Because the mind does not really like similarity, especialy similarity with seniority. the mind’s very existence, as far as it knows is entirely dependent on its ability to control, know,  be able to find, build, destroy, grow, and even approximate love is within its reach. There is no reason to ‘not know.’

Interesting that my mind would think of there being ‘no reason to not know.’ Interesting in that it seeks a ‘reason,’ as if knowing or not knowing is part of its kingdom.

Especially reading this, you get a good sense of how devious the mind can be. It can’t sit still. ‘Hates anthything it cannot sense, measure and control and therefore either subtley or overtly defends against it.

And how lucky are we that we have this thing called ‘consciousness?’ Where we can sit back and watch the show, take in a film.’This is your life__________________________  (Did you fill in  your name?)

We have this amazing ability to watch ourselves exist. See ourselves, hear ourselves, watch ourselves feel, and think. We have this clear, clear window into our mind that we can choose to look through or not. We can see and feel what feels good and what doesn’t, what is  our fear, to experience our courage and find compassion for ouerselves in our struggle and compassion for (yes, similarity) our selves in others.

There it is again: We’re all one.

To be conscious is, in truth to be with God, truth, love. It is our most sacred gift recieved from our own great power of consciousness and we have an obligation to pursue it, know it, and yes, love it. An obligation to our selves and everything that is a part of our selves, and all that is a part of everything that is.

pmg

Contemplate that. Everything is apart of me and I am a part of everything. (Don’t read any further. Just take a moment and contemplate that thought.  See where it takes you.)

————-

I like the act of contemplation, where you can allow yourself to let go of the where and when of it all and just sit with a thought and the endless broods of thoughts that come with it.

Another favorite contemplation is:  Find that place where thought becomes matter.

The only thing I can absolutely, positively and completely promise you is this; when you contemplate that place where thought becomes matter…you ARE in that place, you ARE the place.

On the other hand…

I read the discussion of “…can you hurt someone by helping too much,” and I marvel at the emotion in people’s words. Sometimes I think that our words and the way we say them are completely out of our control.

We say one thing, mean another, describe one thing, ask another. We rarely reread what we have said, or if we do our eyes play tricks on us and our minds, thinking that we have already read this fails to really see what it is we’re really saying…or in some cases, asking. The fact that we have chosen the words and say/write them as we do and this act creates a window into our person… conveniently escapes us.

But we’re visible.

The computer, the act of communicating by word through air doesn’t really remove our vulnerability or visibility. It just creates that illusion. An illusion that we mistakenly inerpret as strength. So ironic, that we try to experience ‘strength’ in the fantasy of a non-intrusive, non-intimate relationship.

So what are we looking for? When we say our ‘hellos’ and communicate our woes, write our headlines? What are we doing in this act of communication?

Trying o identify ourselves in terms of what we believe, know, have determined to be true?

However, we need someone there to communicate to and back with, someone in whom we can find ourselves, see ourselves mirrored beyond our standard humanoid features. Someone who is ‘like’ us. We like to memorialize our similarity by defining rules, rights, wrongs, what’s true, what isn’t, what’s acceptible, what isn’t. We take comfort in our similarity, we celebrate it by  flying flags, singing songs, worshipping agreed upon deities. We take care to teach our children to do the same.

In the name of what? Peace, Love, Contentment….Heaven? And the thing that’s going to get us there is what? Our ability to recreate that which we believe to be true? Our ability to control our lives and teach our children to control theirs? There are rules and they must be adhered to or else the ‘big bogeyman’…Mr. Fear, is going to eat you alive, forever…eternal damnation.

We know that adherence to the ‘rules’ is something we can control, so ‘control’ becomes the optimum condition, or status, and is equated with security, comfort, nurturing…no fear, no fear, no fear.

The problem occurs when things happen that we can’t control, when our minds/egos are submitted to the naked horror that there are things that we can’t control.

Our first reaction, either conscious or sub-conscious may be to rationalize that the ‘idea’ of controlling everything is absurd; obviously one can’t control everything we generously admit to ourselves while secretly harboring the believe that if we hold tight enough onto the illusion of power thru control, immortality will be ours.

There is one little thing, though.

Death.

Yup. We’re powerless over that. Big problem. Our minds’ first reaction is to try harder and so we hone our skills, (which are considerable) of denial. We become so good at denial that  we are even able to deny that we are in denial. Not everybody is in denial. Are they?Are they?

All of this thinking and over analying instead of just trusting what  you’ve been told.  Why complicate things? Not everybody has to see it your way. I don’t have to believe what you believe. Believe me, I know what I believe.

Remember that cousin to control; ‘belief?’  We seem to put more emphasis on ‘the act of believing,’ of commiting to ‘belief’  because we are told therein is our salvation, than to listening, really listening to our selves? Why?

Because  if we really listen to ourselves, there are some questions that have no answer…and our minds/egos abhor not having an answer….or at least the promise of an answer. (Call that ‘faith?).’

The fear that visits us in our dreams and our very private moments, or more dramatically in catachlism is to be avoided at all costs, even if you have to deny that fear is there at all?

Why do we go to horror films?  What is it that we are able to experience in the relative safety of a dark theatre that bears a striking resemblance to this  deep-down primal fear within us?

However, outside the theatre, it’s daylight and other people are walking around getting somewhere and there’s no place for fear out here. Not in a safe, comfortable society, right?

Before we know it, we’re in a traffic jam, we’re late, one of the kids is coming down with a nasty cold…you shouldn’t have even brought him to the movie and now you can’t control that he’s getting sick and will likely get everybody in the family sick….and doctor’s bills, missed work…nothing that we have control over. Why? What’s wrong with us? Are we weak? Stupid?

So we get angry with ourselves, but we can’t bear looking at what we’re angry about, (no control), so we get angry at others; for reminding us that we are feeling out of control. Or we become envious, or jealous, spiteful, hurtful, lose our feelings of insufficiency in eating, drinking to much, collecting and exercising power, …there are so, so many intricate and subtle ways our minds continue to glue together the experiences of our lives to help us avoid our fear. There are whole studies, schools of thought, phd’s, licenses provided to identify those that have become a mainspring in our society’s quest to better itself.

So, along comes someone who basically says what the very first caravans meeting in the Euphrates valley at the onset of worldly communication said after the necessary inspection that each was indeed human and not out to eat the other…tonight:  This is what I see, this is what I feel, this is what I think about, this is what my experience has meant to me, this is how I hurt, feel joy, feel pain and fear…what about you?

Well all’s fine as long as we stick to the rules. You can talk about all those other feelings with varying degrees of sensitivity as to who you show them to…however, fear …..we are very careful about how we even raise the issue. We have created whole mythologies built on belief that we can overcome fear. Our sports ethic is a test of how well we can maintain control, not succumb to your fear.

Talk about fear? Outside the accepted ways and means? Imply that because I feel fear that others must?

I’m not assuming that anybody has the same fears as I, except for one; fear of no control over mortality. That seems to be the human condition. A condition we all journey with.

And please know that I have no intention of claiming ‘the truth.’ I am claiming  A truth…that I have experienced, and upon examination seems to emanate from all humans.

Agree with me, or disagree…please. I’d only ask that you maintain your curiosity about the way that  you agree or disagree. It has nothing to do with how good or bad you or I may seem to the other. Even if we practice curiosity in the privacy of our minds, we may get a glimpse or two into how we really feel, or why we act as we do. Again, no judgment, because,whatever we find, we have the ability to remind ourselves that we are able to find it in others.

I am constantly astounded at the ways in which I go blind, in which denial has it’s way with me, or my mind’s protection against my fear of no control. Humbled beyond words.

pmg

On blogging and shared thoughts…

Perhaps I presume too much. I  sail along as I share my thoughts and assume that if I write it clearly enough, it will be understood. I know better than that. What is clear to one may not be clear to another. So I will try to be clearer.

In the meantime, consider this: Not all of what I study and share is ‘understandable’ in the traditional way of wrapping one’s mine around it. Some, if not all seems to fall into that netherworld of experiencing it. I say ‘netherworld,’ because it is the ‘un’-known and the only way to ‘know’ it is to experience it, feel it.

Our minds would have us demand proof, measure and qualification of these ‘netherworld’ things before giving it them the seal of worthiness of faith. Because the mind thinks it can do that. It believes it can, has to determine what is true, what is not. And it’s not a question of the mind defending itself against something new. The mind is reasonable, it offers the unrealistic rationale that it can find faith – providing the information passes muster.

So, unless you give the mind something that it can ‘know’…ie. relate to in its memory as an  identifiable  religion or philosophy…..it balks. If you give the mind a truth that is old as the hills but seen from a new perspective and that perspective is either unfamiliar, (or too familiar in that it brings up feelings you’ll do anything to avoid),the mind will disect and measure  it down to the last inch and then, ironically, invoke the ‘I don’t know.’

Is it that we don’t know, or that we resist letting ourselves know? (These are dangerous semantics so let me be clear that I think of two kinds of knowing: That which our mind labors to achieve, and that which our being senses, feels, experiences. Now I’m speaking of ‘knowing’ as a feeling experience as in ‘knowing it with our body….which also happens to include the mind. Does that mean the mind feels? Where’s the connection between thought and feeling? Does one come before the other? Or visa versa? (Try to contemplate this question and resist the need to define, come up with an answer, judge in any way the thoughts and feelings that come up. The mind wants to judge. It thinks that’s its job)

I think ‘thoughts’ are our mind’s attempt to understand, and by understanding, control our feelings. Of course, fear is the hardest of the feelings to ‘control.’ Often the best way is at every turn to deny that fear exists in you. Denial is our mind’s greatest weapon of self-defense.

So how do we know when we’re in denial, and not that river in Egypt? There’s only one way.

After all the medicines to relieve stress and/or the pain and disease that come from stress (virtually all), have had their day, no matter how numb or dumb the medicines, intoxicants, mountains of food or guns of power have made us, we are still nagged at by our fear. Sometimes quietly, but always there, eating at the foundations of our mind. If you get really quiet and look at yourself objectively, you can hear it, however faintly…eating.

i have talked repeatedly about our powerlessness to affect our mortality. Again, it’s interesting how many people read ‘fear of helplessness’ as ‘fear of death.’  There’s a difference.

What we fear about death is our inability to ‘know’ it, or understand it.The mind’s idea that ‘knowing’ it provides the fantasy that we can then do something about it. We can have power over it because we ‘know’ it; what it looks like, where it’s located, (Heaven or Hell).

It’s a fantasy because any way you look at it, your mind still doesn’t know anything about death except that it, (your mind) ceases to exist. Or so your mind thinks.

What does this thought of powerlessness to ‘know’ anything about death bring up? Fear. Fear of being helpless.

For that, the great masters, students and teachers throughout history have come up with an answer; a way to use that fear of helplessness to  achieve the peace and clarity of Heaven. However, there’s a catch: You have to be able to identify when this fear of helplessness is happening. This is not easy. Our mind has seen to that.

We get angry with ourselves for being helpless, (old examples: caught in a traffic jam and late for an appt….a loved one who is suffering.) and that becomes depression. We seek a sense of ‘power’ in food…have another cupcake. We find that the easiest way to feel powerful is to be more powerful than someone else, (this also translates into knowing more than them, having more than them, making them accept what we believe, controlling them by lying to them, threatening their security, judging them as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, week or strong, right or wrong.)

All of this just to avoid that feeling of helplessness and the fear it induces. We navigate the world with our minds, building, owning, killing, and controlling, but when it comes to an answer to the deepest unknown, the mind fails us. (So we immediately try to do more of the same….and more and more….and hello war, famine, greed, avarice….all those guys.)

Okay. So say that I can get in touch with my helplessness when some guy slams into my car or some phone robot hands up on me, then what?

And we’re right where we should be.

Seeing ourselves in that situation from that place of awareness, our human consciousness that is the same place from where we can choose to acknowledge or human struggle with helplessness. That placc of awareness from where we can  acknowledging it, finding compassion for ourselves for our courage and determination, for our yearning to be at peace…to truly ‘know’ in the biblical sense of the word. Then it’s a hop-skip- and a jump to our hearts, to our ability to love ourselves in our struggle, and by extension love others.

In that experience of love, we are feeling our connection to all that is and all that we belong to. It is an anthema to the mind that we have to surrender to being one with everything in order to ‘know’ it; the ‘answer.’………….

…to know,to  experience, to feel with your whole being that you are a continuation, not only of the light, sound, and all that exists around you including the air that envelops you, but a continuation of all matter, all thought, all sound that is always in motion, always changing…dying and being reborn eternally…changing.

We can use the ‘power’ of our mind to focus itself from its conscious place, to focus and witness without judging anything as right, wrong, good bad, true or untrue…and experience/feel and know ‘eternal change’ that we are a continuance of along with everything that exists.

Okay…I’ve gone off on this stuff again, but ‘all roads lead to Rome…and no matter how I slice it, bread is bread.

When you meditate on light with your third eye, it’s when  you don’t look for the light that the light comes. As does all the creativity and falling in love in our lives. It always comes from left field when you least expect it, or to be more accurate, when your mind least expects it.

pmg.

Ruminating on sound.

Consider sound; everything from music to noise, and how these sounds make us feel.

Noise makes us angry, music makes us fall in love. There are sounds that make us feel sad, irritable, scared, happy, young and old. How is that? How can sound evoke so many different feelings? Does it tap into all our memories and what we associate them with? Absolutely. Does it tap into something more, an even more basic experience of our existence that we have known from the moment of our conception, if not before?

Vibration is to sound what thought is to matter.

Contemplate where vibration becomes sound, or where thought becomes matter. The very act of contemplating this moment, of trying to imagine it puts us in that moment in that we are experiencing it and feeling it as it is happening. In our effort to contemplate where thought becomes matter, we become the ‘where’ because we are feeling it as we use our minds’ attention to witness how it manifests in our body. When our minds try to define or interpret the experience, we are no longer feeling it.  Interesting.

The mind creates concepts; of ‘infinity’ and ‘eternity’ as a way to understand and define that experience of change and becoming. It abhors witnessing without judging and seeks to define, quantify and qualify that experience because it needs to believe  it can. The mind needs to experience some power over this event of existence, this state of always becoming. It needs to see itself as ‘apart from’ and not’ a part of,’ because being ‘apart from’ implies some control, and acknowledging being  ‘a part of’ implies that the mind is in a state of change over which it has no power.

Everything vibrates. Every molecule, atom, every particle of energy that makes up thought which makes up everything that is, is in motion and at some moment in its transition to sound and matter, it experiences itself and that’s what we feel; the vibration of all existence coming into being and our belonging in its fabric.

As humans, we have the gift of consciousness and the ability to focus our minds on the act of witnessing our existence without judgement or the need to define or know. That’s when we feel God, truth, love…

Reactions.

I would like to thank those that have offered words of support and encouragement I would also like to thank those  who have found themselves reacting negatively, for I get to be reminded how difficult it is for all of us to acknowledge our fear and how we defend against it by judging and defining ourselves and others.  I don’t want to linger in the negative, I want to acknowledge how instructive it can be.

As any of us, I have received through my life lessons an experience that has come to motivate much of what I do. It has inspired my creativity and made me see the importance of reaching out and sharing. That is what I am doing. I am sharing what has come through me and my life. I am not proslytizing. I am not preaching. I certainly don’t want to preach.

Perhaps what I have learned and what I study is not as easy to share as I had hoped. You will note that I did not say I was going to suspend all communication with my blogs, just that I found it impractical, given the amount of time in the day, to answer all. This is difficult, for it is in my nature, it is in all of our natures to want to communicate, to share. It’s part of experiencing ourselves as together in this journey of life. One of the recent blogs asks how we are to teach, or share and be of help to our children who are so innocent and open with their feelings. My first reaction is that we have more to learn from our children and being in their presence than we often admit. And while half of being a teacher is to acknowledge our desire to learn, the opposite is true. For what is teaching but a ‘sharing,’ a desire to communicate our life’s experience in an effort to help ourselves learn and recognize ourselves in each other, in order to experience/know our existence as ‘shared’…that we are not alone. So, as I share and teach, I study and learn. The best way to teach our children, (those inside of each of us as well), is to listen, hear and be taught by them in their yet to be inhibited ability to stay present. Then what we are teaching them mirrors the best in them and in ourselves, and gives them the reaffirming experience of being together. This experience, this ‘knowing’ of our one-ness constitutes hope and our faith that we can return to that knowing, that feeling.

I have to acknowledge that my innocence would have me believe that all will hear and understand what I share. The truth is that some will and some won’t. Some will feel what I share, not because of who they perceive I am or am not, but because what I share resonates in their own experience. For those that find my shared thoughts frustrating, confusing, pretentious, presumptuous or just plain negative, I would humbly ask you to try not to judge me or yourselves. Instead, you might witness your own reactions and words and the extent to which you need to define me.  It’s an interesting excersize, because as we witness our feelings and thoughts and don’t try to defend or justify them, but see them as something that is happening to us and something we are reacting to, we get to make the distinction between the part of us that is learned behavior/conditioning, and the part of us that transcends that behavior and allows us to recognize ourselves in each other.

I always find that I learn more from my negative reactions, (read: ‘expressions of fear’) and those of others when I am able to not personalize or judge them.

Someone wrote that this all seemed a defense on my part, a need to withdraw from people and from my feelings. This is not my intention, nor my need. On the contrary, it is to find and experience my connection to my humanity and the humanity of others. Celebrity is an odd experience in that the object of celebrity often becomes a canvas where others get to paint their needs, their fantasies.  We all have a need to ‘celebritize,’ to take someone we ‘connect’ with and see our own humanity in and make them more than human, make them more powerful than us. We make them our heroes who, we fantasize, don’t have to deal with the fear of powerlessness like we do. We then want to touch them, adore them, have something of them, an autograph, a ‘hello’ a photo. We need to put them there and we resent any effort or occurence that makes them  human. It’s as if we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want our ‘gods’ and at the same time we need them to be human, so we tear them down, or sacrifice them…(ie. the virgin thrown into the volcano), or take exception to their own human efforts to deal with powerlessness.

I remember when my t.v. series had taken off and I was being ‘celebrated,’ I was invited to a birthday bash where there happened to be a lot of celebrities. I was standing by the buffet, (there’s that ‘eating’ thing again), and I heard a voice that sounded really familiar, turned around and bumped into Cary Grant, one of my heroes.  I couldn’t speak. This man had come to represent so much to me as an actor, had become such a ‘god’ to me, that I could only look away. How is that different from someone idolizing Starsky and then trying to relate to me. They don’t really know me…any more than I ‘knew’ Cary Grant. Yet I had built a tremendous amount of fantasy about what Cary Grant was like because I had experienced a connection to him, something in him that I wanted to experience in myself. Had I ever met Cary Grant thereafter, I most likely would have been brought up short when I got close to him and saw the cracks, the foibles, his yearning, his humanity.

I do not find any strength in setting myself apart. I yearn for connection the same as any person. However I also have to take some  responsibility for this occurrence of celebrity and try to understand the nature of it and establish parameters that allow me to live my life and continue to learn. My life’s experience has accrued into these lessons that I seek to share through my ‘celebrity’ on this relatively new phenomenon, the internet. It does not mean that what I say is ‘gospel’ truth, only that it is my truth and has moved me to write two books, has inspired, I now realize so much of my creativity, and my celebrity or visibility gives me the opportunity to share what I am learning.

Perhaps this is too great an effort to answer the negativity I perceive while I try to understand it.

Okay, that’s my blog. Thank you for allowing me to share.

pmg.

On blogging.

I have to confess to something. I never thought answering these blogs would be so time consuming. To those that write of their anger and difficulties in accepting the possibility of what I’m sharing, I will still review the blogs and try to answer some, however I am going to limit myself to posting blogs and when I do, I’ll try to address some of the themes expressed in those questioning blogs.

Thanks for understanding. There’s only so many hours in a day. For now, I have nothing new to post except what is in my responses to today’s blogs.  pmg.

a distinction between fear of death and fear of powerlessness inthe face of death.

I have read, and answered a few blog entries and it is interesting to me that there is a common thread running through many of the reactions to my thoughts. Oftentimes, the ‘fear of powerlessness’ becomes the fear of ‘death’ in many of the blogs.

I believe it is an important distinction. Animal and human equally share/experience the fear of death. The ANIMAL’S reaction is all about survival. The HUMAN reaction involves both our ego/mind’s experience of being HELPLESS  in the face of death, no matter what we build, own, believe, destroy, and our experience of our consciousness of our own existence at any point, (like right now, your ability to see yourself reading this).

While the experience of being powerless is an anathema to our mind/ego that experiences itself in its ability to create the illusion of being power-full…by what it can do, judge…yes, even deny , our ability to be conscious, to be able see this reaction in ourselves and choose to honor our struggle and choose compassion for ourselves in the face of this seemingly irreconcilable predicament/threat to our existence, gives us the experience of being one with all that is.

If we considers that everything that is, is made up of thought, and that consciousness is also thought. Then, in the act of acknowledging our consciousness, we are experiencing our ‘one-ness’ with all thought, with all that is…call it God, truth, beauty….or love.

When we experience our primal fear of being helpless, there is the opportunity to choose to employ that consciousness, to identify it and from that place choose to love ourselves rather than condemn our selves or others for experiencing and/or denying our  helplessness.

pmg

We have a choice

A friend was talking to me today about how he is looking for something he can be passionate about at this point in his life, and he was concerned that he wouldn’t find it. I replied that his concern was his passion and that his act of searching was something not to be judged in terms of whether he found or didn’t find, but rather his creative process which he could embrace along with his fear of not finding anything. The two can co-exist. The trick is allowing them to co-exist.

Imagine you are standing on the top of a double black diamond ski run. Are you scared? You bet. Do  you ski down it? When you choose to do so, you are acknowledging your fear and your ability to co-exist with it.  Your mind would have you believe that  you have defeated your fear, over come it. Rather,  your choice to acknowledge it and choose to ski down that slope with that fear, is your integrity; your sense of worth. ‘Who’  you are.

I find fear to be a very allusive thing. Often we don’t want to acknowledge it. We call it anger, or depression, (anger at ourselves for being powerless), or boredom, (a form of depression), or obsession, ( a grasping at control with the subconscious belief that what if we’re in control there will be no fear). Our minds/egos go to great lengths to deny the existence of fear for fear that fear will destroy us. Why? Because there is a real fear: that we have no control over our mortality. We have no power over the fact that we are going to die, (read: change). Actually, this is the only fear and it is an anathema to our mind which believes it should and has to be avoided at all costs.

‘The only thing to fear is fear itself,’ we tell ourselves. There is another reality.

When we can acknowledge this primal fear and the fact that there is nothing we can do to get rid of it, we then are given the opportunity to discover its purpose. Why is it in our lives? What did we do to deserve this? Have we been ‘bad?’ Are we being punished with this hellish feeling? Is there something we can take(food, drugs, alcohol) ? Someone who can make it go away, (Daddy, Mommy, religion, a lot of money, success, fame, power)? Is there a mantra, a prayer that we can say over and over?

If we are able to acknowledge the existence of our fear in all its subtle and not so subtle manifestations, and acknowledge that we are powerless to affect our mortality…if we are able to see that a part of us is scared, but just as with the ski run, that there’s another part of us that can choose to act, not in spite of our fear but in recognition of it,then from that same place of ‘knowing,’ we can honor our struggle as human beings, honor our courage and find compassion for ourselves in this seemingly irreconcilable predicament. We can find compassion for ourselves in our fear and by extension, compassion for others. We can find our hearts. We can find our capacity for love.

The purpose of our fear is to lead us to our hearts. It gives us the power to love. It’s what makes us human. It is not the anathema that our minds/egos and our conditioning would have us believe. It won’t kill us. It makes us stronger in our act of acknowledgment and our ‘knowing’ that we are all afraid, we all have courage, we all want love, we all are love.