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I have to give Trump credit for the singular time I think he was truthful.    For once, he actually spoke the truth when he said, “Women let you do it when you’re a star,” or something like that.    He could have just as well have said, “….when you have star power,” because I think that is what is happening.    Shared sex and shared power have gotten so mixed together that our culture is a real mess in gender relations.

Sadly, bartering for sex has become a coin of the realm in our culture.  Sex, and most forms of touch, are exchanged for shared power, resources, stability, safety, etc.    People, mostly men, who think they have power and resources to offer make a mistake.   They often  think they can easily make a deal for sex and touch.  And they have reasons for thinking so.

I think that both men and women have had a role in this unfortunate, painful confusion.  Men who assault women are blatantly wrong, but they have their reasons too.   Women who use sexual energy to get what they want may act unskillfully.

It has gotten very confusing when sex and touch are given similar currency as power and resources.   In our tradition, women have been schooled in the role of providers of progeny, sex and touch.    Men have been schooled in the role of  resource providers and power.   Since WWII those roles have become fluid, and it should not be a complete surprise that men misinterpret social signals, that they step over the line, that they misuse their learned roles of bringers of resources or power.

We humans got  ourselves in this situation beginning about 10,000 years ago.   With the introduction of agriculture, men and women began to say to one another, “Let’s make a deal.”     It was a one-to-one deal that we now call marriage.    In one dramatic move, men and women abandoned over 200,000 years of evolved stability and a communal hunter-gatherer society.    Power had been shared between the sexes as well as the role of provider of resources.    Exclusive coupling was an oddity.

At the introduction of agricultural settlements, goods and power became almost synonymous .  More significantly, men took that role to themselves.  Men agreed to provide resources and stability.    They would be the bringers of goods and power.    Women agreed to provide a hearth and yield to the power bringers.     Men would be assured of known progeny to whom they could pass their goods and power.    Women promised exclusive access to the wombs where those progeny would be produced.

This bartered arrangement was not in the genes that had guided human relationships for over 200,000 years.     It was a new deal, invented by humans attracted to power and stability.    It is the deal many people still make today.    Human contact, physical contact is something often bartered for.  The bringers of resources and power mostly have the upper hand in the deal.

As women share more power, the bartering gets confusing.    The football star may not now be as attractive because his star power now has a little less currency.  But he doesn’t always know that.

The stability of a hearth based on a resource-provider contracting for exclusive access to sex is a shaky model to younger people.    Men who attempt to use personal power in exchange for sex from less-powerful women are being correctly challenged.

I think it is a hopeful time, because the bartering model is losing its momentum.   The marriage model is fading, slipping, evolving.    I doubt our society will go back to a pre-agricultural model, but it is a good time to  allow for new models of how to relate to one another to develop.

I hope we can throw power out of the deal and, if bartering is to occur, I’d like it to be on equal-footing of power.  Whether the arrangement is exclusive or not will be up to the deal-makers.

 

 

For a little over two hours Friday evening, I felt what it is like to be a stranger in a large, closed-in gathering.

Close to 100 of us gathered for a sit and talk at the Common Ground Meditation Center, and the only exchange I had was with a person of whom I asked a question.    As I look back, I am aware that I was fine at the time with the experience, but this morning I am puzzled.

How is it that in a large community that cultivates awareness, no one acknowledged that I was odd, a stranger, a guest?

I arrived early, stood around quietly by myself.    At the end of the evening, I was not among the first wave to depart.   I am someone who easily and readily makes eye contact.   I can say that I was very attentive to a dozen individuals, not one of which  reciprocated that awareness in a manner I recognized.    None were moved to acknowledge my presence or strangeness.    I am amazed that no one acknowledged that I didn’t fit in.

This is more strange for me than a criticism.    However, it does raise the question of whether there is something in the practice that actually can cultivate separateness and distance rather than closeness?    Is closeness, awareness reserved for members only?   Are the illuminati a closed circle?

It is puzzling for me not just that that no one person spoke to me, but that there was little evidence that anyone was wiling to make eye contact, be overtly aware of me, share a moment of awareness.     And I was paying attention.

I recently went to performances at the Ordway and Gremlin theaters, and my experience was different.    I experienced more interaction, more conversations with those strangers than I experienced at Common Ground.   Maybe it is easier to share awareness with other strangers, who are strangers like me.

I am not faulting Common Ground or being critical of all those who shared that evening with me.    I am mostly puzzled by what I experienced.    I know it is not what I want others to experience in any group of which I am a member.   It is a experience I will take back with me to my home Blooming Heart Sangha.

It is also a reminder that it is my intention to live a way of active awareness. For me awareness is not sitting back and paying attention.    It is an engaged awareness that reaches out and connects.     It is my intention to allow unity, oneness to happen.    That doesn’t occur if I simply observe.   It doesn’t happen unless I allow the barriers, the separation to dissolve.

It will be bliss when there are no more strangers in my life.

 

 

I don’t try hard much anymore.   I realized this last evening when a woman in the audience of a lecture expressed her frustration at trying unsuccessfully to change.   I thought, “Try a little less hard.”   I too  would be tight, anxious, frustrated, constrained if I tried to change my habits, my way of doing things.

Instead, I have chosen a gentler, more relaxed path.   I pay attention to my habits, and I also embrace them, hold them close to my heart.   I tenderly examine them.   Some of them I notice are a source of kindness to myself or to others.    Some are a little less effective or skilled, and so I casually let them float on their way.

I don’t shoo them away, but I allow them to go.    Sometimes I smile when they assert themselves again and again.    I gently pat them dearly on their little behinds and softly let them pass on.   Gradually, they recognize they are less welcome, and they seem to show up less.

I know they are part of me, and there is no reason to be mean to them. I am patient.  There is no need to rush.

I don’t really try to change myself, but I do allow myself to change.  It is a dance, and I try to stay loose and fluid.   I am not so anxious to rearrange the chairs properly in my personal dining room.   I prefer to allow the chairs to find their own places.    I put less energy into defining my relationships with people, and my life seems so much more pleasant and richer.    Things seem to work out, especially if I am paying attention and being present.

I trust the learnings and leanings of my heart, and I allow it to guide me.   My heart  has grown a little wiser over the years, and has become more open, softer, less brittle.

My heart knows that I set my intentions a couple of times each day.    I remind my heart that I do not intend to dishonor it with hatred.    I also tell my heart that I commit it to be a guardian of nature, a healer of misery, a messenger of wonder, an architect of peace, and a fountain of loving kindness.    That seems to be enough, and then I relax.    My heart knows the way, and I allow it to lead.   I don’t even try to follow;  it just happens.

I don’t stray into much self-criticism.    There is no examination of conscience, detailing what I’ve done wrong.   There is no morning-after review.    I save that for the rigor of work meetings.     My heart is aware, I trust it will have adequate insight if I can keep  “me” out of the way.

I occasionally need to apologize to others if I think I have over-reached with excessive enthusiasm and perhaps given offense.    I hardly ever apologize to my heart.

I find that the notion of “trying harder” is almost  amusing.  It is awkwardly unskillful and often ineffective.   It is so self-defeating.    The natural current in my heart is so trust-worthy, all I have to do is keep my eyes open and my body awareness alert.   When I stay unclouded, the rest happens naturally.    I hardly ever have to try.

 

 

I’m feeling embarrassed.    This week, when some very dear friends were expressing gratitude for ancestors, I didn’t relate at all.    My parents are an exception, and I keep a photo of them before me.   At least twice a day I look at them, two young people, no children yet, and I am grateful for who they are.

I really don’t feel that way about the rest of my ancestors.   Gratitude for them comes with great difficulty and is specific for only part of the inheritance they gave me.    What they have left me is a social mess.   I look around at a human-stained world replete with broken societies and humans like me forced to live in a sub-human condition.

I’m lucky.    I have received an inheritance that allows me to eat, have shelter, be curious about the world from a position of safety.   My ancestors have left me a world highly populated by starving people living in fear.    This is not a natural inheritance but the legacy of greedy people who hoarded resources while people around them suffered.    It is not just my contemporaries who hoard, but generations of humans who grabbed more than they needed and so others went without bare necessities.

My ancestors, for thousands of years, have selectively chosen their own survival at the expense of others.    For me, human history for the past ten thousand years is a sad picture.    It is a story of survival of the fittest at the expense of the suffering of many.    I have adequate food and a home not just because my ancestors were frugal, but because many of them were cunning enough to suppress the needs of others.   Humans are very smart that way.

I live in a marvelous city in a supportive neighborhood, unrivaled by few.   Yet within this city are huddled thousands of impoverished people, all in “their” place.   This is not something I caused, but the generations before me were clever in how they required their contemporaries to live in sub-human conditions and in fear.    Less subtle were the generations before me who beat and tortured people to keep them in their separate, subservient place.

I have a nice house and garden in a nice neighborhood.    It is nice because it has been socially fenced, protected from a whole group of people who are considered less suitable.     Some neighborhoods are unashamed to actually build walls to keep others out and separate.

I know that I have inherited a lot from my ancestors for which I am grateful.   Sadly, much of what they have made available to me was hoarded out of greed and self-indulgence.    Even my intellectual inheritance has been kept for the few.   As a consequence, many others have suffered.    Now I am puzzled over what to do with this rich, privileged and stolen inheritance.

I am grateful that I can experience something of what it means to be truly human.    I have been given safe refuge and opportunity.    I have had teachers who have pointed me toward rich experiences.

But what of all those who live sub-human lives because of the advantage seized by generations of my ancestors?     How do I sit beside people on the bus who are suffering while I am at peace, thanks to the efforts of our ancestors?   Somehow, it seems wrong to be grateful.

I once found it comforting and reassuring to pray.   It felt nice to think that someone was actually listening to what went through my mind.    I was not alone; I had a serious companion who heard me.   I  even thought that there might be some kind of effect from my praying.    It might actually change the course of natural events, make someone get well or have a safe trip.    Perhaps burglars would not break in because I had put in the proper request.    Maybe someone smiled because I acknowledged their greatness.

I don’t do much of that any more, even though I occasionally lapse back into reaching out with words to an unseen presence.    For me, to be aware is to pray.    I pray to the bus driver when I feel and acknowledge his presence.     I almost fall down on the floor of the bus and touch my worshiping forehead to the floor when someone passes by down the isle of the bus.

I pray to the hard, cold bathroom counter and honor its presence.    I greet the flowing shower water with praying reverence.    I pray to the carpet as I push my breathing face  against it while doing morning stretches.     My whole body is an act of prayer as my bell vibrates and bathes me in its sound.  My feet touch the pavement of Hennepin Avenue, and I pray to the whole world I feel below me.

I ask for nothing except to be able to be present.   I do not seek to change or affect how things turn out, only to be a reverent witness.   I do not try to make suffering go away or avoid it, only to absorb and become one with it.  I don’t aspire to remove the suffering of others, only to join them.

My relationship with praying has changed.    But if someone would ever ask me, “Do you pray?” I would most certainly say “Yes”.    My whole body would shout, “Of course.”

 

( Mindful Movements are described on the posts for September 28 and November 1.   I currently do the Movements described on September 28. )

 

Every morning I do two minutes of mindful movements.    For me this is a deliberate action I take at the same time as others in the world do the same.   I notice the flow of sensation and energy in my body, aware that others sometimes do the same.    We share a similar awareness of movement and, by attending to our body movements, link the consciousness we share.

Each day, some of us collectively recognize the common unity we share.   Whether we are paying attention or not, we are all sharing in a common consciousness.   For the two minutes of mindful movement, we pay attention to that consciousness.  We choose to focus our experience on that shared  consciousness.

Once a day, we deliberately enter into and experience that collective consciousness.    Through movement, we are able to open to an experience of a unity that links us all.

I become more convinced that I live in a collective consciousness.    I live in a world that my awareness has shaped and my reality is the result of the shared consciousness with other humans.    My immediate culture and the family I have come from have had the greatest impact on the shape of my world.    I continue to choose experiences that shape that world, moving into other realms that differ from my previous ones.

It is so apparent that advertising shapes and conditions my mind.   That is what makes it effective and successful.    Choosing experiences apart from advertising is one way of not living in a world of expectations shaped by ads.

All the rest is the same.   There is a consciousness that connects me with the rest of the hive, and it is shaped by what experiences humans choose.    My challenge is to recognize this connection with the vast consciousness and develop my own independent awareness.

Experience flows in to insight and insight shapes my actions.   I don’t think I can ever be completely disconnected from the collective consciousness, but I can shape the way in which I funnel my experiences into my own consciousness.

I have this notion that “want” is something other than “desire”.    When I say that I want something it feels different inside of me than if I say that I desire it.  However, I am still working it out.

For me to desire something is to feel the energy of attraction.    It is a  feeling response.   There is actually no decision involved except the decision to experience.   For me, desire is what I feel when I see anything around me that I choose to experience.    It happens when I drop boundaries, when I choose to allow something to possess me.  My heart opens to a flower, a person, a sound and they become part of the world that I feel.

Desire is a statement of attraction.   I am involved only in as much as I am being very aware, open on more than a cursory level.

For me, if I want I am more actively involved.     My ego is front and center. My focus is on me and my role .   My self is part of the action and the experience is not neutral.    The choice is not to experience something as it is but to pursue it and make it part of me.    I am not attentive to making me part of it.    I am very aware of me and my edges, and I want to bring it inside those edges.    Desire has no edges;  it is an opening to experience, not to possess.

Desire acknowledges the oneness that already exists.    Want attempts to create a oneness, as though it did not already exist.    Want relies on my doing something.    Desire relies on deep observation.

All this musing is about understanding how I relate to the world and how I choose to experience it.   I would like to be a person of rich desires and meager wants.

All my life I have had the key and didn’t know it.   It’s beginning to make sense, and now I think I had the answer with me all my life.   Everything seems to fall into place if I reach for the key, something I’ve had with me all along.     My body is the key.    When I experience my mind and body joined, everything is joined.   Everything is also released.    I experience a freedom more than I could have imagined.

Learning to experience my breath has been so important.    It has put me in touch with my body in a most intimate manner.    Actually feeling the energy and sensation in my hands when doing Tai Chi Chih has also allowed me to form an intimate relationship with my body.   Realizing this connection has allowed me to go back to my body.

The irony is that so much of my culture has either encouraged me to fear my body or indulge it.   There truly has been a middle way.

While I am amazed at what I have discovered, I am not totally surprised.    All my life I have resisted those worriers who tried to teach me the dangers of the body.   I have instinctively pulled away from mindless excesses as well.   Now I am starting to understand why I was so wary.

I am also finding it interesting that I don’t have to “do” anything.   I just have to allow myself to experience what my body tells me.    There is no effort.   Breathing is not effective as an action.    It is effective for me only if it allows me to experience, to intimately feel my body.    It “works” only if it brings me back to my body, joins mind and body.

My body is actually an easy key to use, like using my fingerprint to unlock my iPhone.   I experience intimately what my body knows, and all barriers disappear.    My feet touch the asphalt of the parking lot, and I melt into what my body knows. I move my hands through the air like thru pudding, and the energy inside of me rises.   I feel my breath, and it is like placing my finger on my iPhone.   A whole universe is opened in an instant.   Tension disappears, freedom surges through all of me.

My body is a pretty amazing key.    I’m learning how to use it better.

It’s really quite simple.    So simple I am amazed I have not seen it before.  Squeeze / Release (Suffering / End of Suffering).     When I feel things out of sorts, when I feel tightness, when I feel the squeeze reaction in my stomach, that is something to notice.   It is time to pay attention to it, watch it, but only for a moment.  Then it is time to  allow release.    Give my mind something else to do.    Allow things to simply be and not change them.   I don’t cause the release.   The release simply happens.

My mind loves to solve problems.    It is drawn to disorder like a compass needle  pointing north.   My mind sets up the tension, wants the disorder to go away.   Maybe it even offers ways to make it go away.    My human mind has evolved to be very good at performing on demand.   It likes to solve problems and is constantly searching for problems.    Best to give it something useful to do.

Sometimes putting the mind to work actually does solve problems.   Mostly it simply quivers at distraught attention, the pointer dog who sees the bird, strikes a tense pose, and can do nothing.   It wants to act, and sometimes it unskillfully springs unbidden into action, solving problems without being released to solve them.   My mind wants the problem to go away, and tension arises.   I feel the tightness, I feel the squeeze.

For me it helps to give the mind something constructive to do, like paying attention to my breathing.    My mind is like an anxious puppy, wanting to spring into action.   Sometimes it is good to toss it a bone to gnaw on. I send it to my breath, the sensation in my fingers, the touch of the parking lot on my feet.   I don’t make the tension or suffering go away.   It simply ends.

I have lived with the tension of “getting my act together” long enough.   Wanting to act creates tension, the squeeze.    Most of the time it is about something I cannot have an effect on anyhow.   The tension and squeezed feeling is a sure sign it is time to allow the release.

My mind wants action, and most of the time that is wasted effort.   Allowing the mind to convince me that “I have to do something” causes me to suffer, to be tense, to be squeezed.   I don’t want the suffering, but it is what happens.

As soon as I unskillfully yield to my urge to “make it go away,” I know I am being squeezed by my mind.    It is simply a good time to skillfully give my mind something else to do.   It’s actually that simple.