Otis

For a few years after I started practicing, a scared voice inside of me would occasionally and suddenly freak out and yell: "I'm lost!" Of course that sensation was very off-putting, at first. But in time, I started embracing being "lost". My profile update was/is: "Otis is lost and loving it". Now it still, sometimes, creeps up on me and surprises me, how much "vertigo" can be created by feeling lost. But I do believe that sense of "falling" is actually the experience of freedom. That experience points directly to why people cling to ego, because the alternative is so unattached, so (seemingly) directionless. IME, it takes great patience, courage, humor, and love for the process, to weather the storms of "lost". There are also a few reminders that help me, when I'm feeling most groundless. One is: growth is not linear, but happens in spirals. I seem to move forward, and then back again, with old habits and forces reasserting themselves in the downturn. But then, if I stay calm through the trough, the cycle comes back around, and my head is above water, again. Over time, the spiral works its way upward, but only if I trust and love the process of surrender. (There are also spirals within spirals, so seemingly long-finished habits occasionally reappear). Secondly: I am not a slave to my habits and my beliefs, but neither am I totally free from them, either. Habits don't vanish upon realization; they just become malleable. So, rather than trying to be someone who is utterly different than I was before, I make sure that my practice always starts from accepting where I am, right now. After all, where I am, is just indicative of where I've been, not where I'm going. But I can't go forward, without being where I am at this moment. I've been writing a bit about the "inner parent" lately, and I think that particular cluster of conditioned parts of my brain, has the most trouble with surrendering into the unknown. The entire point of the "inner parent" is to be my own crossing guard, keeping an eye out for danger, and making sure I stay within safe boundaries. But lost is within no boundaries, so the "inner parent" cries foul, declares that this is the sign that something is wrong. My response to that inner parent: "I love you, and I love what you've been trying to do for me. It is time, however, for us to move on and embrace being groundless. How can we learn to fly, if we're always clinging to the ground of the known?" Slowly, my inner parent is letting go of its panic about lost, and learning to go with the flow, along with the rest of me. Best to you, Cat Pillar!

Great share, Sean, thanks! It's important to my body, to explore movement from as many different directions as possible. This definitely seems to focus on movement pathways that I have a hard time getting into, on my own.

Amen, Zhang! The huge revelation for me was pain. I had no idea how much I had tuned out from my pain. Once I decided to move toward awareness of physical sensation, it meant I had to live day in and day out, with all the pain that I had been ignoring previously. Over the last decade, that pain has been the roadmap I've needed to heal myself, but I'm still living with a great deal of near-constant pain. It's fine when I can pay attention to it, because that transforms the pain from suffering to something more like a glow. But when I have to focus on other things (like at work) the pain becomes a lot more of an irritant.

What I find interesting about animal siddhis is how they reflect 1. the senses that man probably has, but has forgotten about, and 2. just how much we've lost of our native abilities. For example, when the big tsunami hit a few years ago, there were many reports that all the animals fled inland well before the wave hit, whereas humans had no forewarning. Every other species but us, seems to have sensed the wave's approach. I don't think that makes them supernatural, of course. It just raises the question about what else in nature do we not understand? Also, how do we rediscover our own hidden senses/abilities?

Interesting topic. I've felt called to try DMT for awhile; just haven't had the chance. I tried Ayahuasca last year; it wasn't quite the earth-shaking experience that I was hoping for. Everyone else at the place seemed to be having the kind of journeys that I always hear about, but mine was probably what I needed, rather than what I wanted. I had plenty of visuals, etc., but the dominant theme was intense boredom and restlessness. I do think that I learned something important out of the night, but I haven't yet gone back (it's over $100 for a session). My friend who brought me has done several journeys, including a trip to Peru, and he swears by them. Mushrooms, on the other hand, have provided several life-changing experiences for me, usually when I go to Burning Man each year. I've been guided through a debunking of many of my biases and assumptions about the world and society. And, contrary to the popular myth, the revelations have stuck with me, thereafter.

Yeah, I live pretty close to there, in Koreatown. I never went to school around here, though. Came out after film school to work in the biz.

I'm down. I am nearly 100% aligned with the efforts of Wikileaks and their guardian angels, Anonymous. Modern day Robin Hoods, as I see it.

Hi Listener. I'm sorry that life is so trying, at the moment. Of course, you are not alone. There are many people in their 20s who have started one path, thinking it was what they were supposed to do, only to realize that it doesn't feed them. The question I have for you is: have you explored your own passions? Do you yet have a sense for what turns you on, fires you up, makes you want to learn and be active, etc.? If you have some sense of what engages you now, and you have the freedom to do so, may I recommend that you spend some time doing what you want to do, rather than what you think you should do? Even if it pays nothing, or doesn't sound immediately respectable, aiming toward your desire may very well help align other motivators in your system. As long as you're only looking for the right thing to do, as opposed to what suits your heart, then your heart will probably not find its own way. But if you engage your heart in your activity, you may find that a lot of questions will answer themselves.

That's awesome, Manitou! Great to hear it.

One of the great gifts that I think getting older teaches us, is how useful efficiency is. When we're young and vital, we don't notice or mind that we're wasting energy, or getting micro-trauma to our joints. But as we get older, we can't help but notice these things. That feels like a curse, at first, but the blessing comes in learning how to listen to the body, follow its authentic pathways, and surrender the offense of impact. If we were all taught efficiency and ease as children, I think we would all age in a very different way.

Since parents cannot always be watching, they do their best to inculcate their authoritative voices into the child, so the kid can thereafter defer to this "internal parent". Of course, this internal parent is merely a cluster of functions that most resemble the real parent. As such, it is not inherently more mature than any other part of the brain, even though it thinks it is. It is simply more trained. The internal parent has several limitations built into it. For one, it's raised dualistic, separating the world into good vs. bad, friendly vs. dangerous, should vs. shouldn't. Also, because of its conditioning, it displays certitude beyond its actual abilities; it insists that it knows, even though its experience of the world is no more thorough than any other parts of the brain. Probably the greatest limitation of the internal parent is that it terribly uncreative. Its dualism and shoulds collapse interpretations into overly simplistic heuristics. And it relies on a very few mechanisms for enforcing action, such as shaming or praising the self, or of course, through will power. What's wrong with will power? It is a useful tool for some things, but it is hardly a panacea. For example: what is the easiest way to effect a large change? Not by willing myself to do it, which is all uphill, but by falling in love with the task, so little effort is required to do it. When it comes to raising an immature part of myself, will power only knows one solution: push myself against my desire, and keep on pushing. Just try harder. But of course, as we learn every year as the New Year's resolutions fade, will power quickly tires. Unless the will is oriented in the same direction as my current desire, then its effects don't last long. The habits return to their previous state, just with more self-loathing and helplessness included. Clearly, some people have more effective will power than others, but even then, the effectiveness is dwarfed by what happens when we fall in love with a new activity or abstinence, since desire becomes our fuel, rather than our obstacle. If I want a houseplant to grow, I feed it with sun, water, and nutrients. If I try to use my willpower to force it to grow, I will only do damage to the plant. If I want a child to grow into new possibility, then I will try to find a fun way to engage them in practice of the new traits. If I rely on my willpower to get them to change, I will only breed resentment and alienation from the activity. If I want another grown-up to see my point of view, then I cannot force it on them, because they do not recognize me as a special authority. So I have to learn where they're coming from, and build a bridge of understanding from there to the point I'm trying to make. How different is it, then, when I try to grow the different parts of myself? If I want some part to grow, shouldn't I feed it, like I do the plant? Shouldn't I give it the opportunity to practice through play, like I do the child? Shouldn't I respect where that part is at, as I would another adult? Shouldn't I humble my "internal parent", my "self-critic", which acts as if it knows how to grow and fix the other parts of me, but which has never actually displayed real understanding of how an authentic organism grows? IME, every part of my organism desires balance, harmony and maturity. The knowledge of how to grow up is built into the entire system, from muscles to visual cortex to compassion. If unthreatened, and given enough support and opportunity, the function seeks, on its own, to unfold from its conditioned state, and emerge as its authentic, balanced self, at ease with its function, and with the other parts of my system. "I" do not need to know how each function grows, because the function can handle that on its own. In other words, if I want to grow, I need to stop trying to be my own boss, my own parent. I need, instead, to be my own therapist, ask questions and listen closely. I need to be my own uncle, who wants the best for all my parts, but doesn't take my "faults" personally. I need to be my own best friend, caring about what it is that I really desire, rather than just what one part of me thinks I should be doing. I need to be a gardener, who nourishes and prunes, but never tries to force the organism into a shape that doesn't naturally fit it. I need to be a child, because the "internal parent" is anything but humble.

Agreed, Everything, that the wrong word choice can make even people who would otherwise agree with me, miss my point. I am just using the most accurate possible words that I can, but I am well aware of the limitations. I also agree that "willpower" is not a problem, per se. It is sometimes the most useful thing we have, and its maturation is a very worthwhile practice. I don't have a place in my cosmology for "souls", so I do not see willpower as belonging to that, but rather just see it as one of my many functions, like vision or imagination. I do stand by my advice against "being a parent to one's self", because parenting (as I understand it) insists that one part is above, and the other part below. I do think that there is a fundamental error, whenever I start to believe that any specific part of me is somehow more wise, mature or "me" than any other part. Waking up/growing up, as I see it, is about bringing all parts of the organism into health, efficiency and cooperation with all the other parts. Since there are many parts of my brain that don't seem as "me" as the parts that speak in English and seem sure of themselves (like the inner parent), it is easy to ignore those parts and only follow the insistent parts. But I see no reason to believe that the non-English-speaking, non-conceptual parts of my brain are less wise and clear than the parts of me which speak like a parent. So it seems arbitrary at best, for my "parental parts" to lead the other parts, in stead of listening to them, and learning from them.

I am 42, but I was a lot older a decade ago. When I was 32, my body was a mass of spasm, especially my lower back. I was already curtailing life activities to avoid injury, and had lost out on some useful career paths that needed better health. In the last decade, however, I've reversed a lot of that premature aging, primarily by learning to love my body. I started paying attention to as much of sensation as I could connect to, most importantly including pain. Pain, I realized, was not an outside invader that sneaks into my body to plague me, but rather just one of my body's senses, designed to get me to pay attention to it. The loud "OUCH" is exactly the body's way of saying: "pay attention here", but unfortunately, our society has turned pain into the enemy, and its negation into our greatest task. In particular, authentic stretching and dance have led me towards a vigor, flexibility and capability that I never had in my youth. What I'm calling "authentic stretch" is: when I listen to the pain in my body, the attention that I give it somehow frees up and motivates my body to find its own delicious stretch. This is not my concept of what a stretch should be (and from outside, often looks like I'm just standing there), but allows the actual dysfunction to be my guide, find its own path out of contraction. The beautiful thing about authentic dance is that it has no boundaries. I spend a lot of time on the floor, upside-down balancing on my hands or head, etc. My body has the opportunity to grow and explore in 360 spherical degrees, without bias of what my mirror sees or what my concept of a work-out should entail, and of course, with the least self-consciousness possible. Nothing is neglected, because everything arises naturally from both the discomfort and the curiosity of my body.

I don't think that any of these are "fake" loves, and they all do illuminate our lives. The more light we have in our lives, the easier it is to love all the events and people in our lives. However, there is probably some limitation to how much benefit practice (or love of nature) will bring, if it doesn't include other people. It is important to love the world, and to love my life, but loving others is a whole other discovery path. I think this is because nature and meditation won't reject our offers of love, whereas the rejection by other people can be devastating. For me, at least, the practice of loving other people only happens when I am willing to allow myself to be vulnerable to others, to share without expectations, and to love unguardedly. That is something I am still just starting to learn about.

It's a little hard to know what "true" love is, but I can speak about the "truest" love I've experienced. What I felt for her is a lot like what I hear that old married couples feel. She was my best friend, the one I wanted to have no secrets from. Being around her made me want to be vulnerable, rather than protected. I did not find myself wishing that she would change, but was happy for her to be her. And perhaps the most clear sign: even when I was angriest with her, I never felt detached from my love for her. That was always alive and awake. Unfortunately, even a pure feeling does not mean that she and I were compatible as a couple. But we remain very good friends, dance partners, and confidantes, to this day, and probably forever.

Good share!

Thanks, Jetsun. Yeah, I had a pretty messed-up relationship with my inner critic, as well. It was so loud and demanding about certain lapses of mine, that instead of growing to fix those lapses, I would actually turn further away from the awareness of them. Not the best strategy, but I guess it served to keep the critic quiet, by inventing a blind eye toward the very things that the critic despised. No surprise, of course, that nothing ever changed; I just had an ongoing cycle of freak out - forget - repeat. For a long time, I tried yelling back at the inner critic, but that certainly wasn't the answer, because my yelling was a sign that some voice of desperation was still in control. If I see the critic as an enemy, I'm still falling into self-hatred, because the critic itself is just part of me. Gradually, I'm learning to have a real sense of humor with my critic. Let it have its say, without either flinching, fighting back, denying or succumbing. Just let it carry on, and accept that it is just an (overly-loud) alarm, which is trying to call my attention towards real issues in my life, that really are worth my time. I have found that, as I accept my critic more and more, that it has also calmed down, and is now trying to be much more of a "good citizen" with all the other functions of my brain.

Absolutely agreed, Manitou! It is intimidating, to set out on my own, because there fewer sign posts to let me know that I'm on the right path. When things go wrong, it's tempting to give up, and seize onto someone else's system. But things going wrong is, of course, the very path of growth that teaches me the most! As you say, Life brings us what we need to grow, precisely because Life is the whole reason for growing!

Hi Mediman, thanks for the kind words. I'm glad the post resonated with you. In my experience, shutting up the voices only makes them more important. The more I try to keep something down, the more spring-loaded it becomes, popping up violently later on. That's why I try to invite every part of me to the table, let all the voices be heard and respected, even those that "I" don't agree with. Often, those voices just need to be heard, since they are, after all, alarm functions. I've been hitting 'snooze' on the alarms my whole life, but they just need to be heard, in order to be reset. For example my fear of being a loser has a predictable alarm call; it says: "I am such a loser"! So, when I hear this alarm going off, I try to shut it down, because I hate being called a loser, and even more, I hate the fear of it. But if I hear the alarm out, I realize that it is just trying to do its job, just trying to remind me not to fall asleep to my responsibilities. So the voice goes from being an enemy that assaults me when I'm at my lowest, to being a monitoring system, that keeps an eye out for when I start to slip.

From your quote: I think a big part of what the computer games offer is a sense of agency, the feeling of being in control. In games, you get to kill people; in real life, you have to sit in traffic.

This is very good advice, Manitou. I fully appreciate your view on "God is within us". I have seen the world with a very similar model, and it makes more sense to me than any hierarchical or alienated theology. I also appreciate the growing and suffering you've had to go through, in order to see things the way you do. I am an agnostic when it comes to matters of the actual world; it's too far removed from my immediate experiences, which is all of my inner world. But the theology that makes the most sense to me, is the view that you described above.

You've mentioned this before. Can you explain more what you mean by it?

double post

Yikes! I'm an atheist, but I would never make this claim. Epistemology alone keeps me from saying any "there is no" statements, because they're unknowable. How could anyone even have the experience of "there is no such thing as ____________". Of course the concept of "God" points to something! Billions of people, throughout history, have had the felt experience of God. This does not mean that they felt some old guy in the clouds, but I think it is foolish to utterly dismiss what much of humanity insists they have experienced. I don't see any easy answers to explain what God is, although I have my theories. Making categorical statements about God, however, just implies locked beliefs on the subject.

I often experience my path as a hole, although not necessarily black. If I "plug my attention in" to the hole, then I immediately disappear, and my body moves authentically without my interference. Usually I find my path in the contracted areas of my body, especially along my spine and near my sacrum. All I have to do is calm myself and tune in, and the path emerges from the sensory clutter. Does this sound even vaguely like what your experience was like? If so, maybe next time, you can try "plugging in" to the hole.