Essential Zen

What happens when you think about things? Seems to me, the harder you dig, the more things fall apart. Currently, I'm in a sort of discussion on another forum centering at the moment around the phrase, "the right way to live".

It is my contention, if you really examine this, there is no such thing...there IS no Right Way to do anything. There ARE, however, sets of rules provided to us that seek to define the Right Way. Invoking the Right Way as being an absolute, or being a Jungian archetype seems to me an act of faith and ultimately a defense for one's own choices. That is, I choose to do this and such because it is The Right Way, and being The Right Way, it is therefore beyond question.

Is it a Right Way to take a life? The answer, of course, will be dependent upon the life taken. Why is that? Because of a personal judgment that one kind of life has more value than another, when in reality, ALL life is the same. It's no problem to kill a mosquito, or a spider, or a snake...it IS a problem to kill another mammal....however, the problem varies depending upon the species. It's a bit more acceptable to kill birds and fish, and anything that might taste good. We DO have a ranking of relative importance.

~

"My head won't leave my head alone..."

Oh well oh well so here we stand
Still we stand for nothing
My heart calls to me in my sleep
How can I turn to it
'Cause I'm all locked up in this
Dark place -
And I do not know
I'm as good as dead
My head aches -
Warped and tied up
I need to kill this pain

My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm dead and gone
My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm six feet underground

How long I'm tied up
My mind in knots -
My stomach reels
In concern for what I might do or What I've done
It's got me living in fear
Well I know
These voices must be my soul
I've had enough I've had enough of being alone
But I've got no place to go

My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm dead and gone
My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm six feet under ground

In my grave
Lying wired shut and quiet in my grave
Leave me here
Leave me here to waste here

So young and here I am again
Talking to myself
A T.V. blares
Oh man
Oh how I wish I didn't smoke
Or drink to reason with my head

But sometimes this thick confusion
Grows until I cannot bear it at all
Needle to the vein
Needle to the vein
Take this needle from my vein my friend
I said

My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm dead and gone
My head won't leave my head alone
And I don't believe it will
Until I'm dead and gone

In my grave
Lying
Lying cold in my grave
The reason -
My reason
Take my head off this terror
The fearing won't come back
I can't see
My mind's all wiped clean
The needle
Make my great escape
I seem caught in time
My head leaves me behind
Body fall cold
And I see heaven

DMB
Rhyme & Reason

Good on ya, Dave - all valid, too, I think.

It is beyond doubt both a blessing and a curse to have a mind, especially, I think, one that won't shut the fuck up, that MUST be DOING something, dredging up the past, connecting mistakes, making judgments, on and on...it can get wearying as hell, and its a relief to if not shut it off, perhaps distract it a bit from time to time.

All things considered, however, I wouldn't change it for anything. If indeed, ignorance is bliss, I want nothing to do with bliss.

I've been working on lucid dreaming lately, and in the process, trying to become more aware of the transitions that occur as consciousness moves from awake to asleep, and to the intermediary states. At those times, usually around 2-3 in the morning, I've found it interesting to observe the mind, to pay attention to what it is doing, and sometimes even tricking it. What I've found is nothing new, described by LaBerge and others, the business of what they call hypnogogic imagery. That is, running a fantasy that the mind finds interesting and begins to go along with, rather like a distracted child whose attention is suddenly caught. This, as opposed to the mind doing its usual muckraking. Lately, when it has started that, I've mentally held up a sign saying, "NO REVIEWING" - you may do anything else, but you may not review the past, any of it, in any light. There's usually a moment of silence, hand in the cookie jar, then some fantasy will start. Where do those come from?

Twice I've managed to maintain awareness through the processes all the way to lucid dreaming. However, my last venture, perhaps the mind decided to pay me back and I got tricked by a dream within a dream. My plan of late has been to get lucid, then to spin, thereby changing the scene, and rather than change it to another fantasy, change it to the current scene, which ought to be in my bedroom with me asleep on the bed. In this last episode, I became lucid, remembered to spin, did so, the scene changed, and even though I couldn't find myself, I felt I was then looking at "reality". The trick was, it was another dream, of a house where I was living with my grandmother, not like any house I'd ever lived in nor had she. Oh well. At least I remembered to spin.

~

Hey Gonz,

May I ask you what your purpose in Dreaming is? Or, the purpose behind watching the transitionatory phases?

I asked myself this question many months ago and found some interesting answers.

Zamurito wrote:~

Hey Gonz,

May I ask you what your purpose in Dreaming is? Or, the purpose behind watching the transitionatory phases?

I asked myself this question many months ago and found some interesting answers.

I remain intrigued by what Robert Monroe wrote about in "Far Journeys". In order to explore the regions he describes, I need to learn to get lucid more readily, and once lucid, to maintain it more properly. A major goal, as I said, is to somehow penetrate waking reality and see myself sleeping in the exact room where I've gone to sleep. I'm convinced that is possible.

Those are really elementary steps. Assuming I can learn to do those things, then I want to go looking for some of the iob's on the various levels that Monroe has described, because I do believe he provided an accurate road map.

Now, why would I want to go that? I don't have an answer for that, other than it seems like a good idea and I'm interested in doing it.

What were your answers?

~

To get my head out of my hearts way, for starters...

Until the tiller is released, the first step taken, Everything is just talking in our sleep.

We are often "caught" being tied to one way of seeing things. We call this "clinging" and the solution is always "letting go".

We say, "I had this experience", or "I understand this or that". And thus we think of spiritual development as the "I" becoming better or developing a more inclusive view in some way. But the whole point of the kind of training that we do is to see that there is no separation, no object and therefore no subject, to begin with.

The personal "I" wants to survive, no matter what. But it wants not just to survive, it also wants to survive while still looking good, the ultimate of "looking good" being spiritually developed! This, of course, is a disaster. Extensions of this delusion are such things as the development of personal powers, such as healing, controling others minds or body movements, or dominating and controlling certain aspects of nature, making a lot of money, etc. - all of these figured strongly in early presentation/projection, and still exist today as aspects of various popular personality based schools of practice. This is not to say that there is not, on extremely rare occasions, a something that looks like healing that takes place. It is simply that no "one" ever heals anyone else, as there is in fact no self or other to begin with. Chogyam Trumpa call this "spiritual materialism", as in his treatise, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. This comes from the Tibetan phrase "cutting through non-dharma", or "illiminating the view that is not so."

Of course it was questioned as to what is the astral body or energetic body. We talk about "my energy body", as if it is an object that s/he, the subject, possesses. If this is so, then I would have to ask, "who is it that has the energy body?" And if the whole point of spiritual training is to realize the delusion of self/non-self, then mightn't this be the critical question, not kibitzing about someone's opinion of whether he possesses this or that type of subtle body?

When I *see*, I can notice that there is an awareness that is aware of all energetic movements, but is not a part of them, and is not effected directly by them. This awareness I tend to call "I", but when I fall into this awareness, I find no "thing" there that could be identified as an "I" or a "person" or a "body". It is the direct experience of this causeless awareness experiencing itself that is the purpose of my practice.

So, to circle this wagon back around, the most effective and efficient method to accept and experience the last line in the previous paragraph, is to accept and experience the first line in this post.

So, you're saying several months ago when you asked yourself what your purpose in dreaming was, the answer was

Zamurito wrote:To get my head out of my hearts way, for starters...

?

~

Yes.

What if

What if everyone passes the eagle...what if, efforts at spiritual advancement have no value after death?...that they are only valid when in human form. What if...the notion of a select few only being the ones who manage coherence at death is wrong...correlating our evolution to that of salmon swimming upstream, that just a very small percentage of folk "make it", and all the rest dissolve, or disintegrate. What if its just the opposite? We ALL move on, to the next step...that we are indeed the otters of the universe?

The notion is just as valid as those who believe in The Eagle/Heaven versus disintegration/Hell. heh.

Gonzo wrote:It is my contention, if you really examine this, there is no such thing...there IS no Right Way to do anything. There ARE, however, sets of rules provided to us that seek to define the Right Way. Invoking the Right Way as being an absolute, or being a Jungian archetype seems to me an act of faith and ultimately a defense for one's own choices. That is, I choose to do this and such because it is The Right Way, and being The Right Way, it is therefore beyond question.

Is it a Right Way to take a life? The answer, of course, will be dependent upon the life taken. Why is that? Because of a personal judgment that one kind of life has more value than another, when in reality, ALL life is the same. It's no problem to kill a mosquito, or a spider, or a snake...it IS a problem to kill another mammal....however, the problem varies depending upon the species. It's a bit more acceptable to kill birds and fish, and anything that might taste good. We DO have a ranking of relative importance.

Agreed.

Reading some Hermetics and one of the Principles seems to suggest that 'right and wrong' are actually the same thing, as are hot and cold, light and dark etc. Just varying degress of the same thing. Where is the line where right ends and wrong begins? Where the dark ends and now it's light?

It explains the old paradoxes, that have perplexed so many, which have been stated as follows: 'Thesis and antithesis are identical in nature, but different in degree'; 'opposites are the same, differing only in degree'; 'the pairs of opposites may be reconciled'; 'extremes meet'; 'everything is and isn't, at the same time';

Puts an interesting spin on just about everything looking at t this way.

rosewood wrote:

Gonzo wrote:It is my contention, if you really examine this, there is no such thing...there IS no Right Way to do anything. There ARE, however, sets of rules provided to us that seek to define the Right Way. Invoking the Right Way as being an absolute, or being a Jungian archetype seems to me an act of faith and ultimately a defense for one's own choices. That is, I choose to do this and such because it is The Right Way, and being The Right Way, it is therefore beyond question.

Is it a Right Way to take a life? The answer, of course, will be dependent upon the life taken. Why is that? Because of a personal judgment that one kind of life has more value than another, when in reality, ALL life is the same. It's no problem to kill a mosquito, or a spider, or a snake...it IS a problem to kill another mammal....however, the problem varies depending upon the species. It's a bit more acceptable to kill birds and fish, and anything that might taste good. We DO have a ranking of relative importance.

Agreed.

Reading some Hermetics and one of the Principles seems to suggest that 'right and wrong' are actually the same thing, as are hot and cold, light and dark etc. Just varying degress of the same thing. Where is the line where right ends and wrong begins? Where the dark ends and now it's light?

It explains the old paradoxes, that have perplexed so many, which have been stated as follows: 'Thesis and antithesis are identical in nature, but different in degree'; 'opposites are the same, differing only in degree'; 'the pairs of opposites may be reconciled'; 'extremes meet'; 'everything is and isn't, at the same time';

Puts an interesting spin on just about everything looking at t this way.

Been experiencing similar, RW. And the results are delightful, to say the least!

The lines are drawn by each culture and how they are programmed. In the US and similar cultures, our Puritanical upbringing exudes a 'better than thou', more 'civilized' tone of what we see as 'right and wrong'. I mean look what we did to the Native American population when our ancestors brought their ideals and 'civilization' to North America. Look at the Holy Wars and the decimation of spiritually intuitive peoples of the world. Fear incites destruction of the unknown, taking anything extraordinary and bringing it down to a level of mediocrity.

Who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'? Each culture will give you opposing answers. What I find most interesting is, in knowing what we know today, as a so-called advanced society, so often we are quick to judge and have public 'burnings'.

When we are open to All and educate ourselves towards one vision ... one world .. the Universe becomes our ultimate guide and teacher. The natural flow takes us to each island we 'need' to visit.

"Everything is and isn't at the same time" is too much of a chaotic concept for most, imo. It involves much peace and understanding of what and who we really Are, which is an extraordinary place to be ... away from 'struggle' and pain that most subscribe to.

Some 'pondering' on a beautiful warm sunny day here in the desert .... Catching another wave .....