Barry Garden Path

A couple of days ago, I read an article in the Washington Post that has been very troubling.                        (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/09/21/are-you-having-an-emotional-affair-its-hard-to-define-but-heres-how-to-figure-it-out/?utm_term=.7bb085e24347#comments )    It contradicts what I have come to see as the core of compassion and reminds me painfully of uninformed mistakes I have made for much of my life.

The article by Lisa Bonos raises the question of whether emotional intimacy with someone not your partner is an unfaithful, destructive affair.   She even audaciously proposes that same-sex emotional intimacies may be all right, but heterosexual emotional sharing may be questionable.

I have a point of view that is, as close as I can figure, the direct opposite of the presumptions Lisa seems to base her article on.    Our culture has doted on one simple kind of relationship, one in which another person is your one-and-only and your life revolves around that person.   For most people, that includes both physical intimacies and emotional intimacies.

“He / she is my best friend” is something I had heard too many times as an exclusive relationship and in support of why two people are married.   For many reasons, marriage has come to mean exclusivity and all-fulfilling in a person’s human relationships.   This is simply wrong, and so is Lisa Bonos.

If Lisa Bonds is correct, then I am having at least a dozen emotional affairs, as well as an affair with anyone who reads this Barry Garden Path site with any interest.   I am sharing my deep emotional life with many people, and I think that has become a treasure and gold mine in my life.   I have the good fortune to have many special friends with whom I share emotional openness, and that doesn’t seem either profligate or cheating on others with whom I share a similar friendship.

Being “in a relationship” is a wonderful life adventure and I think that a relationship is often built upon and protected by certain boundaries that the two people might agree upon.   I don’t think that agreement should ( yes, should ) ever include emotional bondage.   No two people who love one another can sustain that  love by agreeing to make the love exclusive.   It is a mistake to capture the winged compassionate energy of a “love affair”, put it in a cage, and tell it to sing.    The energy will either die locked up, or it will burst free if the individual is to survive.

It has become so clear to me that the love I have for other people, the compassionate experience of oneness, grows the more I practice it.   I am not being unfaithful or cheating on anyone if I open my heart to the people I meet getting on the bus or the woman I talk with leaving Trader Joe’s.

Intimacy is not exclusive, it is a practice of being able to connect on a deep level with other humans.   It means rising to the second level of awareness, which is unity.   I think that kind of connection must be spread around by anyone who can achieve it.  Actually, I think that happens naturally as a consequence of insight.

The emotional nature of intimacy is not something I will ever make the mistake again of trying to experience with one special person.     Each relationship I have is special in its own way and does not detract from other relationships or my ability to be emotionally connected.    In fact, I think it improves it.    All the people I “fall in love with” as they get on the bus or pass by in the parking lot increase my ability to be deeply in love with others.

In short, the kind of exclusive emotional relationship described by Lisa Bonos is both pathetic and  against the innate compassionate nature of humans.

 

 

Understanding the Four Noble Truths doesn’t come easy.   It has taken me months of reading, listening and reflecting to get even a small understanding of what seems so simple.   I have the benefit of over two thousand years of teachers, and I have the benefit of the insight of the Buddha himself.   Actually it did take him quite a few years and going down blind alleys before he figured out the Four Noble Truths.

The Four are the golden nuggets of enlightenment:

• There is suffering
• The origin of suffering is attachment / aversion
• There can be cessation of suffering
• The path is the middle way.

 

I prefer that my posts on Barry Garden Path be my slightly original work and personal reflection.    But when I heard this poem by Portia  Nelson, it felt so close to what I am feeling, experiencing these days.   So I am letting Portia say it all for me.   

 

Autobiography In Five Short Chapters

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

 Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit… but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

 Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

– Portia Nelson

For years, I’ve read and listened to discussions about whether humans have free will.   I don’t know if there is an answer, and for me it is a useless argument.   I am not sure whether I have a choice to act thus and thus.    But I am very aware that I am able to decide whether to experience such and such.   I think that  has more importance.

How I live my life is based on insight, and has little to do with free will.  It is insight that allows the energy to flow.

The choice is whether to yield to what is there.   The choice is whether to be open to what lies before me.   The choice is whether to allow my feet to fall on the path of awareness, not a choice whether to allow them to fall on the the path of action.   Action will naturally follow insight and awareness, without effort or direction.   My choice is where to direct my attention, where  to allow it to flow.

My choice is whether to listen to the morning news, whether to drop my barriers to attention and allow what is there to flow in.   I cannot will the news away, but I have a choice whether to experience it.   For me, it is so much more powerful not to think in terms of whether to walk through my garden, but whether to experience it.  I do get to decide whether to allow my garden to draw me into its midst.    I’m not sure I actually decide to put one foot in front of the other.   That action follows my attention.

I don’t think that I actually decided whether to be a biologist or a botanist.   I allowed my attention to follow one to the other, and that is the path I knew to follow.   It was as natural as brushing my hand across the flower when it captured my attention.    I see what is there, and I yield to what I allow to draw me into it.

There was a time to be a monk, my attention focused on no other path.   I simply moved forward on the path, drawn by where my insight drew me.    And as flawlessly, but not without fireworks, I yielded to the call that caused me to leave.   I did, finally, yield to what I knew felt normal and natural for me.   I spent so much time deliberating.   The fruitless debate in my head got me no where.   It was not a logical choice that lead me to finally yield to what I knew was there.

This yielding to awareness happens every day on the bus.   I see someone I know and the first thing I do is turn all my awareness to them, most of the time.   I see someone I do not know.   At once I sense a small flicker of awareness in me, perhaps in them.   I recognize the oneness, the connection between us.   My big decision is whether to open my awareness, to yield to their presence, to remove my instinct to deny connection, to allow what is so obvious to enter.    We are connected, and my decision revolves around how much I will allow my awareness to blossom and be felt.

I think I have a choice about how to experience that oneness.   Sometimes I avert my eyes because the oneness, the connection is so hard for me to accept.   Sometimes it is simply unpleasant.   It is easier for me to ignore their presence.   Sometimes it is pleasant to be aware and it is so much easier.   Sometimes the other person is weighing the same decision, whether to acknowledge my presence by allowing their attention to be directed at me, whether to experience what it feels like to be aware of me.

As I walk up Hennepin Avenue, I am aware of so many people who seem to choose to ignore me even while I am choosing to be aware of them.   Choosing to experience someone is often hard, even in close relationships.

I am slowly learning how to remove the barriers that keep me from experience.    I am constantly surprised how full of fear that choice can be when  time after time it is such a source of joy.    I know how my mental constructs may help me to organize experience, but they also are a serious barrier to open experience.   It is a joy to know that my son, Nathan, understands this.

It takes practice, but I am beginning to feel other humans as they are, to experience their presence.   Other people, including everyone on the bus or walking down the sidewalk, do not exist in my imagination or fantasy.   They are not what my reactions of aversion or desire might conjure up.   I am choosing to experience them as they are, and each of them makes the same choice whether to experience me as I am.

For many it is a quick decision not to experience me, for some it is a curious glance, for some it is the beginning of awareness.   All the while I am making similar choices on how to experience this human being.   Actions naturally flow from insight, from what I choose to experience.

 

I’m sitting in front of my computer and I just looked a little to my right and out the window.    A man was walking down the sidewalk across the street, perhaps more than a hundred feet away.   I glanced at him, and there was an instant experience of connection that went through my whole  body.

I know that when I sat down by my computer, I was beginning to think how I am connected to everything and everyone.  I know  that concept formed my experience.   But it happened without any effort, just an open pause.

This is starting to happen a lot.   I find that I experience falling “in love” many times a day, depending where my day takes me.    It is the same pause with an open attention and intention.

I know there is the concept of everything being in the One, but it is a whole different thing when I start to experience it.    Something inside just seems to reach out and I feel the connection.   Truly, it is a little unsettling and destabilizing.

In my head, I’ve started to form this concept how everything is connected, everything is part of the One.    Words and theories of physicists and philosophers have nudged me into this concept, and I admit that I am somewhat open to the idea.   It is a little disturbing to my world when I start experiencing it.

In my “rational” mind I think that the connection is there, but it is my experiencing it that is the big game-changer.   The reality has perhaps always been there, but it is my experience that has changed.   I have changed in how I experience what is there.   I meet people, I know the connection is there, maybe we are one.    Now I am beginning to feel, to actually experience that connection.

How we each experience the connection is very  unique and individual, but the connection might be  there even when I am not paying attention.      How we react or decide to respond to the experience is also an individual choice.   That too changes often during my day.

Some people want to control or dominate the connection.    Some want to use it as a helping moment, a teaching moment, or a learning moment.   Some use the moment to withdraw, others to throw themselves in to one another’s arms.

I like most of the connections, but I also resist and withdraw from those who offer me an experience of being controlled or dominated, who try to make the connection something it is not.

I try to remember that, in spite of all the messages I get from my culture, that we are not separate.    I’m still considering the One.  But I do think we all connected, and I choose to experience that as much as I can, as often as I can, as deep as I can.

 

 

On Wednesday, October 18, 2017, I had the privilege of giving the following talk to members of the Blooming Heart Sangha.   For me, this text expresses my best effort to explain how I regard my own sexuality and identifies a pathway of awareness that might be helpful for others.    It is the outcome of four months of focused reflection and a great amount of reading / listening.  I am grateful for my teachers and for the years of struggle that have brought my thinking this far.    May it continue.

Nutshell: True sexuality ( or mindful sexuality) is based on two things: insight, (in-the-moment awareness of our own sexuality), and causing no harm.

Not on rules.

Like many of you, I grew up in a world where things were either right or wrong.

To understand what I am about to say, I invite you to put aside everything you have learned about the right and wrong of sexuality for about seven minutes.

Remember that sexuality is much more than “having sex.”

 

When I joined the Sangha, I quickly ran into a stumbling block:  the third Mindfulness Training that deals with sexual misconduct.

Frankly, I cringed at Thay’s words that seemed to relate sexuality only to traditional marriage.

‘Here we go again, social custom trying to dictate spiritual practices.’

‘More Monk talk.’

‘Besides, what does sexuality have to do with mindfulness training!’

 

Two years later, my mindfulness training has a lot to do with my sexuality.

It has taken reading much of what Thay has said about love and sexuality.

It has taken listening to and reading other teachers, including words of the Buddha.

 

At this point, I think that, like the other 4 mindfulness trainings, training in mindful sexuality is about gaining insight and causing no harm.

 

Training on mindful sexuality is a training in mindfulness, in insight.

Mindful sexuality illumines how our mind works.

And that is what mindfulness training is about.

 

Sitting in meditation is a training in mindfulness.            It’s where I learn: This is what it feels like.

And such is so with the third mindfulness training.

I learn what mindful sexuality feels like to me.

I pay attention to what mindful sexuality feels like to me. And I get better.

 

The third mindfulness training is not a standard of right and wrong, but advice on how to become more mindful, more aware, more insightful, ultimately more enlightened.

This mindfulness training is my own personal sex education.

About my sexuality, no one else’s.

How I get more skillful.

 

This training means taking the practice of being mindful off the cushion and into my daily life.

Into the present moment.

 

It helps to think of what it is like to experience mindful eating.

Not a metaphor; there actually is a cross-over of skill.

 

Mindful eating is much more than stuffing food in my mouth

Mindful sexuality is much more than “having sex”

 

Just like practicing mindful eating, I think practicing mindful sexuality can have three aspects.

 

Restraint, the ideal, and the practice.

 

RESTRAINT

The most obvious one is restraint.

We all choose to be celibate at various times, and that restraint is an opportunity to grow in awareness of our sexuality.

We’re choosing to be celibate right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be mindful of our sexuality.

 

I walk past the case of pies at Cub and choosing not to eat deepens my awareness of what good eating is about.

 

I walk into class twice a week at the U of M, look around the room of 200 young students.

In the words once spoken by a monk in a similar situation, “I like but I do not want.”

 

Because of my chosen restraint, I experience and I am very aware of my sexuality in that moment.

I know very well what it feels like to be a sexual being.

It is practice. Practice in mindfulness.

 

IDEAL

A second aspect of training in mindful sexuality is being attentive to the ideal.

This means opening my mind to what is possible with mindful sexuality.

It also means being aware of the harm of unmindful, sexual misconduct.

It means paying attention to, becoming mindful of both favorable and unfavorable consequences.

 

No show of hands:

Maybe, after being sexual in a not very mindful way, you’ve felt ‘not so good’ afterwards, a little let down.

Maybe More sensual grabbing than giving

Like what it felt like after I know I ate too much, too fast, or the wrong food.

 

 

 

PRACTICE

And the third aspect of training in mindful sexuality is the practice.

It means practicing actually being fully present.

It means practice being present in my body.          It means practice being present with others.

It means practice feeling the oneness.

 

As Thay describes it, I take awareness from the first level of a sensory experience to the second level of unity, of oneness.

If I am mindfully present, sexuality can be much more than sense experience.

 

 

LIKE FOOD

Mindful Sexuality is like mindful eating of food.

Eating food, even thinking about it, can be primarily sensory, exciting, entertaining.

Sexuality can be primarily sensory, exciting and entertaining.

Eating mindfully increases insight

Mindful sexuality increases insight

 

 

Final Word

In spite of what society tells me, we are all joined, we are not separate.

Mindful sexuality reminds me that we actually are interdependent, connected.

Mindful sexuality can be a natural, concrete experience of that connectedness.

 

 

In the middle way of the Buddha, true sexuality causes no harm; true sexuality is all about expanding insight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About a year ago, it seemed a mystery to me that the feeling of a “Lost Paradise” is so common.   It is a strong theme in Jewish and Christian literature, and appears elsewhere where people remember and long for a lost time when things were so much better.    Augustine of Hippo relied heavily on the idea of “original sin” to explain how humans had lost their place, their inheritance in an idyllic universe.

I think this feeling of my having lost paradise comes from the memory I have of when I was a baby.   My first conscious experiences were of being one with the world.   There was no sense of separation, no real sense of self.   I was part of the universal Glow, and that was all I knew.

Then I was born, and the first trauma of separation was in the expulsion from my mother’s body.    I was ejected forcibly from my own paradise.   I began in that moment to get the first hint that I was separate,  a  lesson first taught me by my mother.   My sense of being totally connected to the world began to weaken and fragment.   There was no going back.

In that moment of birth,  I began a long process of turning in and developed a growing sense of self distinct from the world.   My feeling of an intimate connection with everything began to dissolve.   Society continued to teach me that I was separate, and should keep it that way.  My senses began to send me information that was at first scrambled, but gradually my consciousness fashioned its own fragmented structure to make sense of things.    My mind developed constructs, and they became the organizing forms that my universe was squeezed into.

It has taken years for me to give definition and shape to my universe.   It is a process that, I think,  evolved in humans, and it allowed humans to survive and become strong.   Humans have built their own world out of the superior mental tools given their species over time by evolution.    Humans have risen to dominate the world to the point of smothering it.   They have chosen to exploit their mental inheritance and not  turn back.   Humans have done this in the name of progress, with varying levels of success.

For me it is time to turn my world around.   I am discovering that there is a chance to go back.   I am able to reenter the paradise I remember only faintly, the paradise of unity I began to lose when I was born.  As I grew, I began to lose sight of part of my inheritance.   I gradually forgot that I am rooted in a place of harmony, unity and great joy.    My reliance on my human way of thinking has developed a world of images, built out of my own imagination.

There is a way back.   There is a way to uncover the intimate connection I have with all that is.   That is the lost gold of my inheritance.   I have been paying my way through life with small change begged on the  street corners of society.    All this time, the treasure has been hidden in the basement.   It is such a pleasure, joy-filled path to go back, to find the treasure that seemed lost.   It is slowly being found.   It is good to find my way back home.

 

If anything actually “is”,  I think it is the Glow.   Everything I can see, touch, hear, smell, taste or imagine are but tiny glimpses of the Glow.   They are but small differentiations of the Glow.   They are facets on an all-encompassing diamond.   My notion of self is like one of those facets.

When I was born, all I was aware of was the Glow.   Time, space, self were all unknowns for me.   Gradually, I no longer saw the Glow as it was but began to distinguish various features as I learned to use my senses to put stall in some kind of order I could understand.    Concepts and names became the framework of my world based on my experience and the teaching of my parents.

Repeated experience gave my world texture, color, shape and meaning.  Shape and color combined to create images that I learned to associate with taste and touch.   The glow became dimmer as objects and people filled my consciousness.

Order imposed by my own mind replaced the all-embracing Glow, fragments appeared where there had been only unity and oneness.  My universe broke into manageable and useful pieces.

My notion of self grew as my process of individuation shaped my experience and concept of who I was.   My gaze that once only knew the Glow became more and more constricted.    It gradually turned inward for understanding and reference, learning to see only the sketchy countenance of people, places and things.   Eyes that once only saw sunlight soon looked through stained glass windows that defined my world.

I learned to see only the forms that I created, touch what I expected to touch, slowly restricting my awareness of what is.    My parents and culture guided me along on this odyssey.   My consciousness gradually learned to understand the Glow through the limits of my body and culture.

Like my fellow humans, my body had evolved to a point where the sense of self and separation dominated my consciousness.    The sense of self and separation had become more important than my unlimited awareness of my universe.  This probably helped survival.   Nevertheless, the Glow had been reduced to a mere glimmer.

I’m working to turn this process around, to unlearn much of what I have learned.   I am trying to recapture that awareness of the Glow that I first experienced when I was born, but now with a lifetime of experience to support it.   I am now so much more capable of allowing myself to be immersed and absorbed in the Glow.    First I have to rid myself of all the crusty growths that have shaped my consciousness.   They have been helpful in a sort of manner, and they are so familiar.

This does demand work, but it is mainly a kind of surrender.   Hello Glow, my old friend.

 

 

 

Not all gifts come in boxes that clearly indicate the contents.    In fact, some boxes are confusing and deceptive.

Take my experience with aspergers syndrome.   Both my son and I have quipped that our aspergers has actually been a benefit, a kind of gift, even while it may have appeared to be something close to a disability to the human community.

I think that my aspergers condition may have actually helped me come to appreciate and value the connection, the interdependence I now recognize with other humans.   This is far from the common notion that aspergers is characterized by a feeling of alienation or disconnection from the human community.   This notion often gets reinforced by acquaintances who consider us nerds or a bit strange.   We don’t often fit in.

This certainly may not be true of all aspies, but my distrust of the social norms and loose connections society offers has encouraged me to reach deeper.   I seem not to get distracted as easily by the typical ways people interact, but look deeper and find more substantial bonds with other people.

I’ve ignored and not gotten caught up in the typical rules of social engagement most people seem to readily accept.    Integration with the rules of social engagement is usually considered part of normal development.    It is expected of anyone who apparently inherits the genetic framework that lays the basis for social bonds.   Humans are expected by their peers to behave in socially conforming ways.

I’ve not always felt compelled to live in socially conforming ways.   In fact, I have lived on the edge of the social framework.   I’ve had one foot in, allowing me to function mostly as “normal”, and one foot out, allowing me to feel a certain mistrust of what the other foot was doing.

This ambivalence has come with a certain amount of pain because of the isolation.   I’ve not felt compelled to be one of the guys, but I clearly felt the  strained ambivalence of the separation.   Though it came with a price, it has given me an independent vantage point from which to witness hollow  social customs with a critical, disengaged eye.   It has allowed me to see more readily that human connections are much more than those offered by social structure.   I can better see and feel the interdependence that links me to other humans.

I may be something of a genetic throwback, lacking part of that genetic mechanism that might otherwise compel me into social frameworks.   In my case, I think it has truly been a gift that has opened my mind to insights I might not have otherwise had, and it has set me free.   At least, it has allowed me to see the path to freedom and deep human connection, and that truly is a gift.

 

What if there never really was a Big Bang?   What if the Universe was always just as it is right now, this moment and totally independent of time?  Only our perception was changing.

It occurred to me that what might have happened is that the consciousness of the universe has actually expanded awareness inward, changing into many apparent but still united places.   This has created the impression that the universe has been expanding.   Actually, it has only been this changing self awareness that has created the impression of time and space.

In this way, space / time became an artifact of consciousness at a point that now seems to have occurred over “13 billion years” ago.   All this appears to have occurred at a small point of space that has since appeared to expand to the full extent of the universe.   What may actually have happened is the expansion was a creation of the changing consciousness.    This expansion appears to continue to happen.

All the sense “data” we collect is subject to the understanding of a consciousness that interprets it according to its evolving awareness.   We are not moving or being moved through space.   It is us, our awareness that creates the illusion of movement.   Like looking out the window of a moving car, the countryside appears to be whisking past us.

Microscopes, cameras, iPhones all have variable focus.    Objects appear to come closer or retreat, depending on the activity of the observer.   It is actually the perspective of the observer that is changing, not the object itself.   Of course, it is the observer that reports the observation, from their perspective.   Objects are said to move closer or farther away.

It seems likely that all sentient beings, humans included, experience time and space in different ways.   A fly’s awareness of time and space is probably different from the person attempting to swat it.   Even for individual humans, the awareness of time and space comes from a combination of unique genetics and learning.

I think that humans have evolved to experience time and space in a new ways over time.   My ancestors 200,000 years ago probably hosted a form of consciousness not exactly the same as mine.     The biology of humans has changed, and so has the relationship with consciousness.   My own awareness of time and space has changed over the years.   I walk through each day with a consciousness that continues to change from what I learned as a youth.

Sciences of the mind and the material  world seem to agree that no object is really “there”.    It only exists in the relationship between the object and the observer.   Quantum physics and buddhism seem to have very similar notions on this issue.    If the perspective of the observer, the consciousness shifts, the reality changes.    It too shifts.    It seems to me that as the awareness, the consciousness embodied in humans changes, so does the reality of space / time.

I look at the ‘now’ of the universe, and my perception of space / time, at this moment, projects the reality created by my subjective observation that reaches back to the ‘beginning of time’ 13 billion years ago.   My consciousness touches space / time and becomes aware of an infinitely small, compact origin of all matter that is.   That is what is real, to a large extent, because that is what I observe.   This is the relationship, the reality that my consciousness creates.

So was there a Big Bang?   Yes, and I am here to witness it, fashion it, and be part of it.