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Below are 20 entries, after skipping 20 most recent ones in the "michaeldee" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries -- Next 20 entries >>]
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03:30 pm
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Harris and Dawkins
Rationalists, Duh!!
Books by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have been on the bestseller list for months. However, both of the authors are "rationalists" who miss the central point about religion. It is an answer to the question: "What are the fundamental conditions of human existence?", and that answer is non-rational, as in this comment by de Chardin:
"... I took the lamp, and leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came -- arising from I know not where -- the current which I dare to call my life."
which leads to the state of mind described by Shunryu Suzuki:
"Because you think you have body or mind, you have very lonely feelings. But when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, then you become very strong and your existence becomes very meaningful." [Zen Mind Beginner's Mind]
The problem with religions is that they were put together at a time when humans knew less than we know today. The ultimate question is still with us. We just have more direct ways to answer it now.
"The decline of religion in advanced industrial society is a natural and evolutionary process. It happens whether we comment on it or not. It stems from increased material security and information. With these resources, the self becomes stronger, and so it needs less myth and less sedative to deal with the pain stored in the unconscious. As the self becomes more mature, it needs less sedation and turns to purer and more direct techniques of contemplation. Thus, paternalism and ritual decline and meditation and equality increase. Religious systems that cling to hierarchy and hypnotic ritual lose constituency,
and so a social milieu arises that rejects religious authority. We call this milieu secularism." [The Secular Spirit]
Harris and Dawkins don't seem to get non-rational knowledge. Therefore, their discussions are all beside the point.
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09:27 pm
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Three Good Ones
Three Good Ones
If people ask me why I am not an Atheist, I tell them the position is just too simplistic. Here are three good observations about that:
ONE:
When in this world of birth and death,
We realize our imperturbable way-seeking mind, Bodhi is right at hand.
This very beginner's mind Bodhisattvas know
As immeasurably deep and wide.
Not even a Buddha can define it. [Zen Buddhist ritual]
TWO:
Because you think you have body or mind, you have very lonely feelings. But when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, then you become very strong and your existence becomes very meaningful. [Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind]
THREE:
... I took the lamp, and leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came -- arising from I know not where -- the current which I dare to call my life. [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu]:
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11:32 am
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Back on the Trail of Trauma
Back on the Trail
I had five months of repairing my body from the destruction of metabolic cholesterol (June-October 2006) by Lipitor. That was active cellular warfare marked by significant muscular weakness and gradually diminishing pain. In November I felt good enough to go back to work, but in January I had a bout of post-trauma depression, that didn't last too long (about 2 weeks).
And NOW I am getting back to what I was doing last May, except that my body-mind has had about seven months to let it incubate.
So I freshly observe that I now know of four therapies that are basically doing exactly the same thing about trauma imprints, and I think they can be brought together and simplified.
They are: (1) The Focussing of Gene Gendlin, (2) the Somatic Experiencing of Peter Levine, (3) the inner body sensing of Hakomi, and (4) the bodywork of The Rosen Method.
I really like The Rosen Method. [ http://www.rosenmethod.com/ ]. I attended a demo by their one practitioner in NYC and was delighted and amazed by what she does. She accesses a form, style, "wave length" of energy that moves under and behind all the turbulences created by trauma imprints, and supports that level of energy. The sensitivity of her listening does two things that are key to all these methods: slows down the clock and starts with a very little piece of the imprint (titration). She achieves a level of "relaxation" that I have not encountered anywhere else. Once you do that, trauma imprints unravel very easily.
So, now I am looking for people to play with in employing this kind of energy.
I think we live in a culture captured by the anxieties of trauma imprints. That is why we are so violent and so addicted to escapisms. This form of consciousness was functional in the early days of human consciousness, but it is no longer functional now.
It turns out, I think that getting beyond being confined by trauma imprints is not so difficult after all.
What if everybody relaxed?
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04:44 pm
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Trees
I wanted to get the redwoods in here at a size that might do them justice. Remember, Kitty and Frank planted these babies about 45 years ago.
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08:13 am
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SILENCE AND TALKING
For the past five months I have been physically unable to come to atheist meet-ups, and while I was sidelined I had time to think about whether I should return. I have decided not to.
I was originally attracted to meeting with atheists because I agreed with their objective of opposing authoritarian religion. And now I have come to the conclusion that "atheism" is not actually about "god" at all, but about the authoritarian use of the idea of god, i.e., conservative religion. And I have for a long time been convinced that the most effective way to oppose authoritarian religion is not rational argumentation, but promoting deep emotional stability.
If we ask what is the fundamental source of authoritarian theism -- a cognitive factor or something emotional -- I think we must conclude that it is something emotional. The fundamental problem of conservative religion is lack of positive self-regard. They are not friends with themselves, at all. It is difficult for them to manage their inner fears, and so they must suppress all different worldviews.
Therefore, the most powerful antidote to conservative religion is not rational argument but emotional healing. If you want to disarm the emotional harshness and intolerance of conservative religion, the most powerful tool is to support emotional groundedness. They key method for this is to "make friends with yourself; start sitting." this means shutting up for a minute and listening to your own inner voices. My own personal practice of this is a kind of westernized buddhism: inner attentiveness with an understanding of how to release trauma imprints.
And this approach, by the way, solves one of the most common and substantial objections to atheism, that it is merely negative. "If you are against "god", then what are you for?" In this approach, what you are for is precisely cultivating that connection with the ground of human existence that buddhists call "awakening".
Is this ground "god"? Ah, now that is an entirely different, and much less important, question.
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12:48 pm
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Why I Am Not Renewing My Membership in FIONS
FIONS, nyet
For me, the problem with FIONS is that it tends to view all reality from the point of view of intellectuality. This is of course the problem of the Institute of Noetic Sciences itself, and it naturally stems from its base in the human activity we call "science". Now science is of course a very good thing, but it is not the only thing, and I would also argue that for understanding the core of the human condition, it is not even the main thing.
I would argue that the main thing is wholeness. Clinically the term for over-intellectuality is dissociation. The discussion of dissociation in trauma treatment simply points out that there are five "core organizers" of human experience -- cognition, affect, the five senses, physical movement and inner body sensation -- and the healthy state of the psyche is to have complete and facile access to all of them. One of the reliable and telltale symptoms of unresolved trauma imprints is to go through life with an over-emphasis on some core organizers and an under-emphasis, or avoidance, of other core organizers. (That is why my personal mantra for spiritual process is: Holiness is wholeness. Wholeness is holiness. Wholeness is all there is.)
Buddhists are onto this aspect of existence. In fact the "buddhi" (wisdom) from which that eastern practice derives its name is continually counterposed to mere intellectual activity. Buddhi is that "imperturbable way-seeking mind . . . this beginner's mind . . . immeasurably deep and wide . . . not even a Buddha can define it."
The charm of the idea of "beginner's mind" is that it points to the fact that when a human being "fully" connects with the actual ground of human existence, when she or he comes into a state of communion with our essential nature, the result is a wry smile of recognition that our essential nature is unknowable.
There is great calmness and creativity in this recognition. It is in fact the basis of all the best of human achievements. Science is not our highest achievement. Compassion is our highest achievement.
The problem of over-intellectuality is accompanied by the problem of over-involvement in fantasy. The two go very much together. FIONS has a distressing fondness for all those fantasy-based, self-hypnotic new-age trips that are continually coming down the pike because they are such effective and charming little narcotics that alleviate the undercurrents of pain that we have failed to bring to the surface and truly neutralize.
So, over-intellectuality is a symptom of unresolved trauma imprints. That is, over-intellectuality is fundamentally escapist. Escape from what? Well, of course, escape from the garden-variety trauma imprints stamped on our psyches by the normal rigors of culturally approved child-rearing practices. As long as those imprints are unresolved, we will continue to be a violent, fearful, greedy and anxious phylum of primates. Science itself will not save us from this destiny.
Science is still a key component of the solution, but only when it points away from itself. The science of trauma treatment (which borrows heavily from animal ethology as well as psychology) has, of late, radically simplified the release of trauma imprints, so that the rather long-winded practices of traditional Buddhism and other old systems of genius can now be abbreviated and brought to faster, fuller fruition. Yet, the essential beginning is still an old Buddhist maxim: "Make friends with yourself. Start sitting."
I engage in a practice of sitting that I describe on my web site http://www.thesecularspirit.com/thesittingroom.html. But as you may readily gather, hanging around with compulsive intellectualizing and fantasizing is, for me, extremely frustrating. So I have decided not to expose myself to it any more. Sorry about that.
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03:29 pm
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Ambient Energy
Ambient Energy Or What I Learned in California I'm not sure what this means, so I'm just going to report it. When I got to California I suddenly noticed that I have somehow acquired a heightened sensitivity to energy fields. I think the fundamental reason is the demylination of my nerve cells. This has made me physically weak, but also more sensitive, in the perception sense. I just notice things I wasn't noticing before. I once heard Dawna Markova describe her perception of auras in different places. In California, auras trail behind people, and that's why we call California "laid back". In the midwest, auras rise straight up. And in New York, people's auras thrust ahead of them. Now, this is ambient energy. It's socially derived, not individually. So, let me relate this to three energy fields. One is the palpably pleasing field I felt from (1) the redwoods in my sister's back yard, (2) chatting with my niece Hilary's friend Susan, a massage therapist, and (3) some art in the SFMOMA. Two is the conceptual clarity of my experience in Green Gulch Farm on Sunday. And three is the ambient energy of New York and of television. This third is an energy I love, but which I also have to protect myself from. If I let it in too easily, it "burns me out", causes mental-emotional-physical fatigue. Sitting in my sister's back yard Thursday afternoon was quite a rush. Whew! It took me a couple hours to digest it. For one thing, two 45-year-old redwoods that Kitty and Frank planted themselves. Pictures:   
Then, at the anniversary party I met a woman who was described to me as my niece Hilary's best friend, and when she told me she was a massage therapist I suddenly became aware of the receptivity of her energy field, and I mentioned this to her: "Your energy is very accessible and attractive." When I had an extra day in California on Monday with nothing scheduled, I wanted to drive up to Chico to have her work on me, but when I found out that it is a three-hour drive, that seemed a bit extreme, so I didn't do it. But, just chatting with her was this palpable, pleasant rush. Frank and his cousin Jack and I went to the SFMOMA instead, and I felt that peculiarly strongly too. Two short videos and the works of Anselm Kiefer got to me big time. In one video a lyric was, "Nature is a language. Ask me. Ask me.", and in the other one a young turkish guy created a lyrical percussion solo out of used cooking oil cans, a plastic bucket, a metal plate and two sticks (the human spirit, once again, giving life to the lifeless). And Kiefer's "pursuit of transcendence" proclaimed loudly the unbridgeable boundary between all material and all form on the one hand and the infinite unknowable ground of human existence on the other hand. Whew! Reminded me of Thomas Merton's great title for a book of his essays, Raids On the Unspeakable. (But it would have been great to get the bodywork from Susan.) I spent Sunday afternoon at Green Gulch Farm chatting with Steve Stucky and attending an ordination to the priesthood. The energy I picked up had a different wave length from the trees, Susan and the art. It was more thought energy, a certain clear reception of ideas. I came away with a peculiarly clear understanding of my relationship to the whole Soto Zen arrangement. I ended up saying,"Wow! This IS a path. It is a good path. It is not my path." I still have not sorted out all the whys and wherefores of this understanding, but I'm working on it. Then, getting back to New York, I realized that I am in constant danger here. Danger of being "eaten alive". In recent years I had fallen into the habit of watching television to dissipate tension, but I now realize that that is a lousy instrument for that. Just pisses away energy. Doesn't collect it. So now I have to do some daily za zen, and if I do, I will function quite well in New York. The pent-up, focussed harshness of New York energy is a HUGE component of "modern civilization". It cannot be "thrown out". One also must not surrender to it. It needs to be quietly and sharply engaged. So, I'm working on that too.
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09:59 am
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Attacked By Molecules
(Wrap-up of the Lipitor Side-Effect) Now it has been five months of physical disturbance since the onset of the Lipitor side-effect in June. Even though I am not quite fully healed yet, it is time to wrap up this episode and move on. The original muscle pain and tissue degeneration burned itself out in about 8 weeks, but that has been followed by demylination of nerve cells, which shows up as a degree of muscle weakness, lingering tingling in fingertips, and daily periods of all-over body pain (just a dull ache, really, a very subtle "just feeling lousy", or "being in a bad mood") that Vicodin relieves very nicely. The neurologist says there is no danger of my becoming addicted to hydrocodone ("Oxycontin, maybe, but not Hydrocodone."), and I am taking milk thistle for my liver, and senna for constipation, so Vicodin manages pain very well. And, if I had known about taking a laxative with Vicodin at the start of this episode, I would have avoided ALL that drama of getting emotionally destabilized by pain and going on suicide watch. It was interesting that some of my doctors (e.g., emergency room residents) knew about the constipation issue, and some didn't, and the person who gave me the key piece of information was my RN sister, who has experience with Fentanyl in hospice patients. She's the one who told me, "Oh, for constipation they just give a laxative. Works fine." But, regular doctors still don't know how to treat the "nerve pain". For that I have to depend on the common sense of HIV treatment pharmacists, and other alternative practitioners familiar with some of the subtleties of auto immune diseases. So, I am taking vitamins, some key amino acids, and enzymes. For me, the basic process here is that the statin suppressed metabolic cholesterol, which first zapped the cell walls of muscle tissue, and then zapped the myelin coating of nerve cells (since cholesterol is a component of myelin). But there is no established science about this. I consulted with some smart and ethical lawyers, and nobody wants to take my case, so I have given up that project. My theory is that the biochemistry of statins is still far from fully explored, so there's no way to make a clear case about it in court. So, I have been attacked by molecules. This is a very modern ailment. Once I got over the novelty of it all, it has normalized itself. One of the deep lessons here is that I have experienced the inherent fragility of the body in a peculiarly intimate way. If you break a leg or get cancer, that is one experience of fragility. But to have your physical existence challenged at the molecular level has an intimacy all its own. So, there it is. And I am 73 years old. This is like a dress rehearsal for death. What an interesting juncture! A sort of preview. But not "it". Gives a certain existential expansiveness. Hey, you always knew the body was going to give out. So, quit being surprised. Get the implications.
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10:40 pm
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Day 48
This is day 48 of the Lipitor Side Effect Episode. Body-wise I seem to be in the middle of a "middle period" of healing, where the pain surges are random in respect to time, usually an hour or so in duration, and only reaching about level 6 at their most intense. Level 6 is still enough for me to reach for the Vicodin, and so I'm taking 2-3 a day.
And the weakness continues unchanged. I walk with a walker, but I can make it to a cab, and the cab will, among other things, take me down the hill to the grocery store and back, for $12.
Today I am in day 3 of my 2nd try at the 7-day cleansing diet, and it looks like I will make it all the way through this time. I am convinced that my 3-day effort on July 6-7-8 paved the way for the July 9th shift, and so I have hopes for a big shift from this one.
The rheumatologist agreed that this is all Lipitor side effect, and that I am doing the right things to get through it.
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05:44 am
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side-effect
As of July 9th, the midnight pain surge diminished from 3-4 hours at level 10 to either no surge at all or 2 hrs at level 7, plus a half-hour level 10 surge at 8-9am (last 5 days, right on schedule, like a train; the body is amazing). Now the pain surges never go to 10, and there are2-4 of them a day. I'm a 2-4 Vicodin per day guy now.
This would indicate that the (cellular) garbage disposal image, while not exactly "scientific", is valid. The rheumatologist agrees.
My alternative medicine friends have been right on the mark all the way.
So I am still in a situation where pain management is my number one concern. I am significantly weak--no change there yet. And probably have another month before I can do things like drive a car.
This is the classic "Lipitor side effect" set of symptoms. The disease does not have a name. The only treatments are the "alternative medicine" ones of anti-oxidants (vitamins, enzymes), amino acids (Glutamine), and foods (kale, etc.), milk thistle for the liver (to counteract the Vicodin).
An interesting learning experience whose full implications I have not digested yet.
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04:51 pm
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Emergency Room
I have been in the Montefiore emergency room three times in the last week. Last night I spent in its Psychiatric Observation Unit on suicide watch. I gotta tell ya--six hours at pain level 10 makes a person emotionally unstable.
I have continuous all-body muscle pain that now runs on a fairly regular 24-hour cycle, the most severe pain occurring from midnight to 4am, the least severe occurring from about 10am to 4pm. The high end of the scale is level 10, the low end is around 2. There is also serious muscle weakness, especially noticeable in the thighs, which makes walking difficult. I look "spastic" when I do.
This pain started quite suddenly mid-morning, June 6, 2006, six days before I stopped taking Lipitor (10 mg), and it started in all locations at the same time. I took my last Lipitor on June 12, 2006. I had been taking it for ten years; I was one of the first to use it. Previous to 6/6/2006 I had had no problems with the drug.
20 million people use Lipitor. Pfizer admits that "substantilly less then one percent" of them experience a side-effect called "muscle pain". In the prescribing information, the company says, "If you experience muscle pain, see your physician immediately and stop taking Lipitor." One percent of 20 million is 200,000. Thus, there are probably 175,000 cases of side-effect muscle pain each year. Most of them, apparently, end when going off the drug. But there are cases of the muscle pain continuiing after going off it. The company offers no information about that. So, let's guess that there are 20,000 cases of that.
It has taken me a while to form a response program. Now I know that I have to use narcotic pain killers (Vicodin, Percoset) to keep me from being "emotionally unstable" during the midnight-4am period, and be alert about anti-constipation treatment. This to just manage the pain, and for the short term. THEN, I have to find the services of a Pain Management specialist for the mid-term. Then I have to wait and see if the pain goes away. There is no known treatment for this muscle pain. We do know it is rooted in tissue damage caused by over-suppression of cholesterol, which is a key building block of ALL cell manufacture. So, my muscle tissue is full of dead cells and cell garbage, and no one knows how or when that is gotten out of one's system.
And finally, I have to scream bloody murder. I have found an interesting law firm in New Jersey.
"No rants; no complaints. Just work."
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10:43 am
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9 "Course of Study"
S.A. asked what kind of "course of study" I was thinking of. I answered:
Well, I was thinking of something here in New York where people would get together, talk about "sitting", or "meditation", or "mindfulness" and actually start experimenting with it to learn it.
I think of it as something like tennis or driving a car. It's a skill.
The basic dynamic is a kind of "drive" to cultivate one's waking interior. That is an intuitive "getting it" that my "inside" is my friend.
This "drive" is completely different from the "drive" to take "trips" -- whether "head trips" (more and more WOW! theories of how the universe works), or trance trips (I continually get invitations to trip-events that say things like, "As we live our lives consciously from a higher conscious perspective, we can truly take our rightful places as Angelics walking the Earth, helping to Bridge Heaven and Earth Here and Now." These are all self-hypnosis techniques.)
The basic method is to sit. When you sit, something happens. So, you talk about it with some one who's been sitting longer than you have. Sometimes sitting can be scarey. So sometimes it's nice to have some one around who knows about "scarey" and can walk you through it.
And, there are nice books to read that support the process.
Some people think it takes years to learn how to do this. I think that is the old theory from times and places when and where they did not know what we know. With a few tips from trauma theory and our general state of knowledge, I think learning takes maybe months, not years.
Anyhow, something like that.
So far, no takers in New York City.
But, my dear, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING!!!
The idea of releasing trauma imprints is "interesting".
The experience of releasing them is life-changing.
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10:02 am
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8 THE SITTING ROOM
I've added a page to my web site, thesecularspirit.com, entitled "The Sitting Room" [The Sitting Room].
In this age of spiritual searching, I find two basic approaches to reducing anxiety. One is to provide new methods of dissociation. These are "trance induction techniques", and they replace the dissociation techniques of traditional religion.
The other approach is to cultivate integral awareness. There seems to be only one, universal technique for doing this, and that is to shut up for a minute and listen to yourself. Since one outcome of this stillness is to be overwhelmed by the re-enactment of trauma imprints, it is sometimes useful to have support in relaxation and going slowly.
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11:01 am
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7 "quick release" and history
Mark mentions a "quick release" method.
I note that history is a learning curve. In Western society we have a very specific learning curve in regard to the emotions. It took a while after the de-throning of religion in the 16th century for society to understand the depths of human nature, and there were many wild and crazy episodes along the way, and there continue to be. But, from Charcot et al. in Paris in the 1870s, through Freud, Carl Rogers, and recent trauma treatment studies, the progression is quite linear, and one of its results is that we can now heal deeper and faster than we could 150 years ago. But the learning curve is not finished. We still have things to discover.
I personally view this as evolutionary, healthy, and spiritually grounding. Moreover, this learning curve is not in conflict with the most authentic perspectives of great religious traditions, and it is a successor to them. It is only in conflict with those dumbed down forms of popular religion that attract mass audiences.
This also should not bother us. No point in "fighting" them. Just let them go and get involved with the central spiritual learning curve of western society.
The key to the present state of knowledge is that we now know about:
a) the pervasiveness of childhood trauma,
b) the biologically programmed basis of trauma imprints,
c) the elusive hiddenness of those imprints (access to them sometimes almost seems random),
d) the role of "mindfulness" in opening up that hiddenness,
and e) the need for certain "western" modifications of traditional eastern religious practices to create a new form of mindfulness.
I have written about all this. I have a practice that implements it. If anybody wants to organize a "course of study" around the matter, I would love to take part.
"No rants, no complaints; just work."
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07:02 am
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6 body and spirit
After wandering about in psychology-spirituality-religion for a while, I've come to the point where I'm convinced that there is a key to the next stage of development, and that is the sensate handling of trauma imprints.
Recent discussions in the blog have made me aware that there are some fine points to clear up, and so I am just starting this thread to pursue them.
Here is a helpful observation from recent comments:
"I've started to feel the pain and tightness of my core more intensely, and even some nausea as I am changing my postural habits. Sometimes I also get rough body jerks, or start to cry. I think the stomach pain and nausea has to do with emotional holding back, and I was on the couch just paying attention to it for over an hour."
My thought is that that sounds like progress. Stuff is coming up from deep within. I think those who get Rolfed (Rolfing is all about "alignment") have similar experiences. And it is also a question of energy level. When core energy is low, you don't exactly "notice" stomach pain and nausea, it's more like they capture you. As core energy level gets higher, then you start being in charge of that pain and nausea.
My "relax, notice, release" presumes good core energy.
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06:01 am
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5 by the way
By the way, folks, the idea of releasing trauma imprints is "interesting".
The experience of releasing them is life-changing.
:)
"No rants, no complaints; just work."
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12:35 pm
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4 A Place to Stand
The exchange in the comments to my last post illustrates the point that to use this process you have to have a place to stand. If, when you go inside, you are immediately overwhelmed, e.g., by a dull pain in the thorax that never goes away, then you have to go outside again and start over. One exercise that helps a lot is simple movement: esp. some free flowing, dance-like movement to classical music (Why do you think they call the parts of symphonies "movements"? They make wonderful accompaniments.) Movement raises the level of blood oxygen and makes the whole body more active.
So, this work is for persons with the degree of emotional stability that gives them a place to stand inside, when investigating the roots of disturbances and escapisms that constrict their life-space.
And the benefit of the work is not to need any escapisims. Since "inside" is perfectly enjoyable, even destiny, then "occupation, illusion and trance" become sillinesses that do not attract.
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02:31 pm
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3 NOTICE YOUR BODY
There's a convergence between Buddhist practice and the techniques of trauma treatment. Both of them tell us to notice our body. Trauma treatment is possibly even more rigorously somatic than Buddhism.
This might seem like something we can take for granted, but such is not the case. The mind is so automatically always "on" that when we sit down to sit, it is easy not to notice that it is still running.
The instruction to "notice the body" equals: "notice only the body."
Silence the mind. Shut off the mind. Forget that you have a mind.
So, what then? What happens now? What is the body "doing"?
Well, the body is breathing.
So, notice breath.
And, notice it elaborately, exhastively, in meticulous detail -- as it pushes against your belt, expands and contracts the intercostal muscles, cools your wind pipe. . .
Take your time about this.
Then open yourself up to the possibility that the body has other things to tell you.
Consider that everything you have ever experienced since you had an intact nervous system--which is about the start of your second trimester in the womb--it all has registered on/in your body.
And, some of the things you have experienced disturbed your bodily homeostasis. They were intrusions, disturbances which you could not prevent, could not ward off, could not escape from.
Recent clinical work has revealed that all these imprints are simply incomplete efforts at defense.
They remain in your body as irritants, blockages, acute discomforts.
But long ago you have probably buried them all out of reach of attention.
But they are still there, throwing your life off kilter every step of the way.
Ah, but now you are sitting.
Now you are noticing your body.
And the law of nature is that when you notice THEM, they complete themselves. They are "spring-loaded" to release, and when they do, you experience a remarkable increase in freedom and inner clarity.
"No rants, no complaints; just work."
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10:43 am
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2 THE PRACTICE
DEMYSTIFYING IT
Alice Miller revealed the key to enlightenment when she observed that culturally approved child-rearing practices routinely traumatize. ["Alice Miller"]
This is big.
"Ah, so. Trauma imprints. . . .We know about trauma imprints: where they come from, how they behave, what to do about them."
So, many thanks to Alice Miller.
In ages past, they didn't know this, so they had to shroud the process of enlightenment in clouds of trance and mystery, and make it accessible to only a very few. But now we have this piece of clinical discovery, and so we can approach it much more simply and reliably, and make it much more widely accessible.
After all, enlightenment is just a piece of knowledge. (Not conceptual, "rational", neo-cortex knowledge, but embodied, complete, whole-brain knowledge.) It is is simply knowing how things are, which is of course (a) a constant, and (b) the same for everybody.
It is, also, a piece of knowledge most human beings seem to have been afraid of all these centuries.
Why is that?
Is it bad news?
Ummm, I don't think so. I think it's good news. Well, it's the only news there is.
The scarey thing has always been the trauma imprints that stand between us and the news. And we know how to deal with those.
THE PRACTICE
The key to the practice is to relax.
"Sounds crazy."
Ah, but it is not.
"But it is scarey."
Right. So, look away. Now, take a deep breath. Take another deep breath. Now look back, slo-o-o-owly, slowly, slowly. See? There isn't really much there. Just a thing that happened when you were little, that isn't happening now, and that in your body there are resources to repair it.
Think about it. (More later.)
"No rants, no complaints; just work."
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04:02 pm
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1 ROUND TWO
Starting Over
I've been surfing blogs for the past couple of months and have decided to enter a new phase for this one.
I notice that rants and complaints are very poopular in blog-land. I know they provide an emotional release for the ones posting them, but other than that, they do not provide any learning. The only kind of blog I'm interested in is one dedicated to learning and thinking. Buddhists have a function they call "dharma talk"; this will be "dharma conversation". We are not afraid of serious. We love serious. It produces such wonderful joyous discoveries.
So, no rants, no complaints, no weird off-the-top-of-your-head theories. Just queries, thinking, learning. And to insure that, I will screen all comments. I will make two or three entries a week.
So, let's talk about "enlightenment". I propose a definition for enlightenment. It is the state of mind when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe: you, the Superbowl, liberals, conservatives, Iraq, your pains, your joys, the mountains, the seas, the stars, the material universe. . . everything. So, when you realize that, and you realize that even so, here you are, "then you become very strong and your existence becomes very meaningful."
Then the question is: how does one obtain enlightenment? This blog will meander in and out of all the angles pertaining to that question. Short posts; little pieces; step by step. And for an opener: To start on the path, make friends with yourself; start sitting.
Next: the main obstacle to enlightenment: the Alice Miller Finding.
"No rants, no complaints; just work."
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