Month: February 2017

There was a recent time when I was sure that mindfulness was a withdrawal away from the senses and into the mind.   What a mistake!  I am both surprised and thrilled that the senses are a natural gateway for me into the joys of meditation.    And it is a gate that swings both ways.

When I first learned to feel without touching anything, it was the beginning of the deep experience of letting go.   It was only a short while before I could stare without seeing anything, and I began to suspect that my mind was actually in charge of my senses.   Now I could choose to put myself in a state of mindlessness, immersed in a relaxed state with no imagination at work.  I often tell my imagination to take a break, sit this one out.

The paradox for me has been that my senses then seemed to come alive and vibrant, ready for action.    I soon could focus all my awareness on anything that I wanted to touch or gaze at.   For me, it was as if I was feeling more than the surface of my large maple or the coolness of the granite counter top.   The sidewalk suddenly leapt up to meet me when I walked on it, the road in front of my car took on a substance I had never seen before.

With this awareness came an immense feeling of joy.  It was like being swept away with a wave of open-hearted affection.    I realized that I had accidentally begun to learn how to look with a loving gaze, to touch with a loving touch.   The gate of my senses did in fact swing both ways.

Now, when I am paying attention, every action I take becomes sacred.   Touching the sidewalk  not only affects me.   That touch becomes my act of love, respect for what the sidewalk is, an acknowledgment of what it really is.

I can see more things as they actually are, and not as I imagine them.  I see the granite top in my bathroom as it emerged from a sleep of millions of years in the ground.   I touch my large maple and feel its massiveness and old age.   I watch people getting on the bus and see so much more than I use to be able to know.   To see and touch in this way is a warm gift I often receive.  My senses bring me great joy.

Once I tell my senses to touch or see this way, the outcome is inevitable.  Learning to be aware is not only a wake-up call to my senses.   It also awakens my heart.   My mindful act of respect is equally an act of love.   My sight and touch are so much more vibrant and my heart falls into love so often each day that it almost seems normal and commonplace.

I actually think  that what I am discovering is normal for humans.

I now realize that the world as I experience it is all part of a dream.   My imagination plays such a commanding role in my awareness.    As much as I attempt to go around my active memory of what things should be like, I think I am still in a world of dreams.

Having a relaxed mind and an open heart, frees me from a tyranny of my imagination.   I think I get closer to seeing things as they really are the closer I get to my sensory awareness.   The less my imagination plays an active role, the more relaxed I am in how I interact and become aware, the closer I am to filling my mind with the actual presence of my world.    I get outside of my head.   I am living less in my imagination and actually living in my world.

Knowing what that world is really like is another level of awareness.  My perception of the world as being solid is, of course, a fabrication of my own mind.   If I had eyes that could see the granular nature of the world, I would be even closer to knowing things as they really are.

For now, I will be satisfied to live in my senses and what they tell me about my world.   Even then, I am pretty sure that the people around me are characters in my own dream.   For me, they are truly my experience and real.   Even though my body doesn’t know it yet, I am aware that my companions are present because I am aware of them.   They are as real as I am.

Who knows.   Someday I may wake up and come to the realization that I am part of someone else’s dream, an entity of their dream.   I intend to say, “Dream on.”

I think I have an over-active memory.    I know that it occasionally doesn’t cooperate when I’m trying to remember someone’s name.    But most of the time my memory is in over-drive shaping my thoughts and what I feel.

I am learning more and more how to better connect my attention more directly to my senses.   My awareness of what my eyes see, what my ears hear and what my skin touches is frequently becoming a direct experience.   I am a little surprised to notice how much my imagination is active in shaping and giving meaning to what my senses pick up.   It is as if my imagination is a translator that explains and also shields me from what I am seeing or hearing.   From a practical aspect, this is a useful function.   My imagination gets me through the day.   However, it also reduces my level of discernment and enjoyment.

My imagination is heavily reliant on my memory.   Memory supplies the  content and context.   I remember my past experience with what I think I am seeing, and that allows my imagination to fill in any blanks.   I remember how I felt when I heard a certain sound in the past, and my imagination makes instant reuse of that past feeling.

This is probably a useful ability and can help me to react to situations that could possibly be harmful.   It is also very limiting because memory is limited to my past experiences, and can easily make associations that are not applicable or desirable in a current situation.   Fear and prejudice are blatant examples of where the memory of past experience can interfere with my awareness of what is going on right now.

When I dream, all those memories are given free reign to fill my imagination with fanciful images and feelings.    Without sensory input, my imagination relies totally on my stored experiences for content.

When I am awake, I want to encourage my imagination to take more of a break.  I want my memory to function more on an “as needed” basis and not have such an influence on what I imagine is real.

I’m working on more of a direct sensory experience that bases my awareness less and less on my imagination.    I want my imagination to enhance the energy and input of my senses, not filter them.

I love to think of my garden as in constant motion.   I smile to remember all those times I was told that animals move, plants don’t.   My plants never have heard that, so they are free to ignore it.   So do I.

I walk through my garden at least once a day, visiting and greeting all its residents.   It can be a rowdy bunch.   Some of those perennials have no reserve about constantly venturing into their neighbors’ area.   That Lysimachia has no respect for personal space.

There is hardly a hosta in my garden that is not reaching out  for a better place in the light, no matter that they are shading their companions.    I am routinely corralling the roaming Tovara into one corner of the garden.  So much Wild Ginger has ended up in the compost bin that I’m surprised that it still is so obsessed with wanderlust.

I watch my garden twist and turn, without the help of the wind.    I think of all the activity in the cells and internal structure.   I watch them slowly stretch and change shape between my visits.   I see their leaves breathing in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen.    I join the circle and take a deep breath of their constant flow of oxygen.

I’m convinced that everything is likely in motion because of the energetic nature of things.   Everything around me is alive with activity, even if I don’t have the eyes that can see it.  This desk, this keyboard, this chair, my space;  all are vibrating with an enthusiasm I can only imagine.

My garden, however, makes no secret of its vibrant activity.    It is in constant and exuberant  motion, internally and before my eyes.   Some of its action is a slow-motion dance.    I love when I get invited to join in the dance.

I’v escaped into the realization that there really are no answers.  There is only the probability that something is ‘such and such’.    Dogmatism always did bother me anyhow, and it is such a relief to be convinced that certitude is probably a mistake. It’s at least an illusion.

Even being certain that there are no answers is probably a stretch and not true.   I can only say that is likely that there are no real answers.

So is the railing on my deck cold, or does it only give me the experience of coldness when I touch it?   In all likelihood, the railing is cold, but I only have my experience of coldness to rely on.   The railing is probably in a state of coldness, but there is a certain ambiguity about my touching it.

I can use some kind of instrument to mimic my senses and try to determine how cold the railing is.  Even then, my instrument cannot directly communicate its finding.   It can only give me an image, a read-out perhaps that relies on my sensory experience.   Again, what is the likelihood that I am correctly reading the instrument?   My reading the measurement can only tell me what I am likely to feel if I were to touch the railing.

All my instruments can only relate back to  me what I am likely to feel, see  or hear if I were to use those senses directly.    Even my sensory experience can only imply something about an object, and not much more.   My senses can only go so far to imply that something is likely present and it likely has certain properties.  That experience, uncertain as it is, is all I have to rely on.

All around me there are fields of surging energy, manifesting in so many ways that my senses experience.   I seem to be constantly living in the illusion that something is actually there, and my imagination fills in the gaps of information.   It is a marvelous creative world of no certitude, no answers.

 

It seems such a waste to move through the world unmoved and untouched.  Yet, that seems so common.   Like me, so many people seem shielded and protected from the world.   The fear of being moved and touched by the world has been with me as long as I can remember, and I see it all around me.

I remember very well that time when I was 20 years old and first realized that this was not the way I wanted to live.   The process of changing has been going on for over 50 years.   Some things take time.

For a long time, I was focused on making a large part of the connection through one individual.   One at a time.   That did not work well for me or for them.

I think that I have been helped by a continuing and subtle connection with the natural world.   I have always been amazed and moved by the living landscape.   I was not exactly swept away by it, but the wonder of it has kept my attention and a small part of my heart.

A lot of this has changed.  As time goes on, I feel so much more free to be moved and even absorbed by the world around me.   I lean into it and smile in wonder.   I am touched by the living and non-living landscape in ways I never before experienced.

My heart reaches out to the humans on that landscape`in a much more open and fearless way.   I am choosing to touch and be touched.   I enjoy waking up and seeing the same happen in others.

I have a deeply rooted fear of loss.   It is a scary place that I am reluctant to face and enter into.  This fear alone is reason for me to pay attention.

I want to be able to enter into and allow myself to steep in loss.   I want to be able to accept the sadness of loss, to feel the empty space, to allow it to envelop me.

I don’t think I can make room for whatever else might enter in unless I have burnished the empty space with sorrow.   I want to become friends with the emptiness, become familiar with its depth and breadth, accept it in all its unpleasantness.

I have seemed to go to great effort to avoid the pain of loss.   The loss might be for something that has been or even for what might be.  Perhaps this is because the taste of loss encompasses so many memories,  I must swallow again the bitterness of losses already felt.   I know this and yet I must swallow and go on.

I should never gamble or go to an auction.    The pain of possible loss could cause me to do things I would regret.

I want to become open to the sadness of loss.  Fearing it does not serve me well.

Maybe this is what happens when you get older, but I am deliberately choosing not to live by faith.   I think relying on faith is a royal “cop out.” It is a decision to live in a fantasy world, and that is not something I want to do.

How many times have I heard “you have to have faith,” and obligingly handed over my mental acumen to an illusion.  For me, having faith means deciding to follow your imagination rather than make the effort to sort things out.    Substituting an imagined world for a real, experienced one does not seem like something I am willing to do.   Settling into perceived reality seems much more appealing than living in a world shaped by imagination.

In my experience, faith has usually meant living in a world created by someone else’s imagination.

I know this sounds like it is all about religion.    Actually most of it is, but it also goes beyond religion.    It equally applies to the mind-set I have when I pick up the newspaper.   The news is presented in a way that requires me to have faith in the writer’s grasp of reality.   I  am reading about the author’s experience of the “news” and reliably not much more.

If I make the jump to believe that what is reported is an accurate description of reality, I have to have faith.    All that I truly know is that I am reading the newspaper.   Believing in what the writer reports means entering into the world of their experience and their imagination.     Some reality, some non-reality.    I’m not sure I can easily make the distinction.

I’m not willing to have faith in religion or the morning paper.   However, both do provide some amusement and entertainment.

I am saddened and disappointed by the impoverished role religion has played in  the development of humans, including me.   While I am thinking primarily about ‘religious institutions’, I am aware that there are few religions without a religious institution.   Not only has religion neglected to promote healthy human development, it has actually opposed and destroyed the development achieved by others.   Humans have been served poorly by religion.

I acknowledge that religions often encourage and promote virtuous behavior and that is a significant contribution to individual and community growth.   A prime feature of religion, however, is to restrict behavior and thinking in a narrow, defining manner.  That is how a religion and its members maintain their separate, unique identity.

In a literal way, religion is about thought and behavior control.    It has been used in that way by many individuals who wanted to acquire or maintain power.   Inevitably, that has included stamping out any opposing views.   That often has involved torture, death and war.   It has also meant the loss of knowledge.

The success of any religion requires having members who are willing to live by a fantasy.   Faith requires putting reason and experience aside in favor of a hypothesis that is undemonstrated or unproven.   Having faith in something is part of belonging to a particular religion.   Religion requires a certain amount of living in ones imagination or the imagination of someone else.

Historically, that has meant the destruction of ancient learning about the natural world by Christians because what the pagan Greeks taught did not support what the Church taught.   It has taken humans more than two millennia to catch up with what the Greeks of the 5th century BCE had concluded about the essential nature of reality.   It took the work of free thinking people like Einstein to re-discover what the ancient Greeks knew and the Christian religion could not tolerate.

Thanks to religious thought-control, the western world had to go through intellectual dark ages.   Supporters of Christian religion wanted control of people, which meant controlling their thought.   They, unfortunately, were very successful, and most humans languished.   People lived in a fantasy world for many, many years.

While religion has exercised behavior control in beneficial ways, religion has also guided people in many misguided directions.  The list is lengthy and includes crusades, burnings, witch trials and intolerance.   But for me the real disappointing thing has been the dishonest way religion has encouraged faith and discouraged intellectual growth.

People like the mystics were attacked and pushed aside.    People who explored the natural sciences, such as Galileo, Darwin and Teilhard, were vilified and kept from inspiring others with their discoveries.

I’ve come to the conclusion that faith and religion are highly over-rated.  All my life I have struggled to reach outside the confines of religion, and have been seduced back inside so many times.    Now that I have finally stepped outside, I see what an impoverished edifice religion is.

For me, a large part of being vulnerable is giving up the illusion of control.    I am no longer in charge, or at least no longer think I am in charge.    Becoming vulnerable has a lot to do with relaxing, allowing things to happen without imposing my sphere of controlling involvement.

My being vulnerable means that I am no longer in charge, I let go, I no longer try to hold on to myself or someone else.   I put aside all my familiars and assurances.   I yield to the wonder of the moment.   I allow it to happen.

Mindfulness has become for me an exercise in vulnerability.  I give up the role of controller and allow reality to happen without my intentional involvement.   I totally yield to what is.

The gateway to this kind of vulnerability begins with my body.   Before anything else, I sink into a deep relaxation.   This is something that can now happen almost instantaneously.    I tell my body “It is time to let down.”    It is no longer time to be physically vigilant, not time to adjust, not time to move about.  All my senses seem to become both at ease, but vibrant at the same time.

This is also true of my mind, my attention.    When I let go of vigilance, my mind becomes suddenly hyper-vigilant.   This is similar to my other senses.    With nothing to do, no agenda, my mind becomes more aware.   If allowed, it goes willingly and compliantly where I nudge it.   But mostly it simply stays relaxed, alert, full of power and energy.

Again, this is a paradox.    By becoming more vulnerable I seem to tap into a storehouse of incredible ability.  I welcome the power of vulnerability.