Barry Garden Path

Last night I dreamed of being in the workshop of my old school.    At one point, I was aware that I was constructing the situation out of past experiences.   For a moment, I was watching my dream.    I was  aware, in that moment, that I was making it all up.

I  once heard of such a thing, perhaps a year ago.    Someone described dream yoga, which taught one to manage and construct their dreams.   It springs from the practice of being aware that when we are awake, we are walking through situations that we are actually constructing.   It is possible to take this same awareness into sleep and apply it to dreams.

The awareness we have is shaped by our past experience.  We carry constructs in our mind and these shape our encounters.   Even when awake, we are walking through our own dream.   We have a role in creating our interactions, and it is at that juncture that reality occurs.

I am today wondering if this is what is happening to me, that as I become aware that reality is not what it seems, I am tuned in more to the dream world that I live in.   I understand it better as it actually is.  I am becoming aware that the ‘world’ that I see around me is constructed by me out of my past experiences and my mind.

Perhaps I am realizing that this is all a dream being played out my me, given meaning by my training, by my practice.   It is my reality.   Even while awake, I am part of creating it.   The deeper I enter into the dream, the more I understand it as it is.  And it feels like home.

For weeks now, I have been noticing the flow of energy grow through my whole body.    The strange thing is that I seem to be getting more and more skillful at turning it on and stepping into the flow.    Sometimes, I even turn it aside, just by deciding to do it.

This experience has caused me to wonder just where the center of my energy is.   For me, it is very much a physical experience.   I can feel the flow in my head, arms, legs, abdomen……all of it.   There was a time I could mainly become aware of the energy in my hands.   Now it seems to be flowing everywhere.

I am aware that my navel was once the source of energy for me in the form of nutrition and oxygen.    I was connected in multiple ways through my navel, and one of them the flow of energy.

I have  recently been reminded how breathing in and breathing out is not just felt in my air passages, but in the movement of my lower abdomen.   Like a bellows, my abdomen pumps air in and out of my body.   It is useful for me to pay attention to my abdomen as I strengthen and expand my awareness.   With my bellows I literally pull in the world around me and breathe into the vastness of which I am a part.

My voice teacher constantly insisted that I breathe in and out with my abdomen.    She more delicately referred to the proper use of my diaphragm.   Any singing still comes not from my throat but from the depths of my abdomen.    The column of air continues to be like a pedestal on which the sound is supported.  I am conscious of singing with my abdomen when I am singing.   It is a habit from training and I am reminded  where the sound is actually coming from.

Of course, the abdomen is an obvious seat of sexual energy.  Any energy of a sexual color clearly flows from my abdomen.   I think that what I call sexual energy is just one of the manifestations of the life energy stirring inside of me.   Like all the sources of energy it is not something that I would want to ignore or allow to go fallow.   It is my natural energy.

My life force has various manifestations, but the center of it all seems to be linked to my abdomen.   Its motion and flow is something I encourage and not restrain.   I want to be acutely aware of my energy when it is in motion.   It moves me, and it has its own intelligence.   My energy offers insight and when I remain aware of it, it is a source of joy and deep awareness.   When I am aware that my energy is in motion, I can skillfully decide if this is what I want to become.

My energy center can be the source of recklessness or unskillful behavior.   If I grasp it, the energy can burn and destroy me.    It can also be the source of great insight and joy.   I am happy, and I take that as a sign that I am in the flow of the strong forces of my nature.

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I’m not exactly sure how the expression “staring at your navel” fits in this, but I think it is something I will give thought to.   

 

The world around me has changed so much.   Actually, I think the way I approach it has evolved.   For me, the world has changed.

I feel like I am beginning to look through a kaleidoscope.    Nothing is distinct.    Everything is becoming an assemblage of ambiguous parts.  So much simply is, and the edges are blurry.

All my life I have been living with relatively clear constructs of reality, and I now think they exist mainly in my mind.   Many of those constructs are dissolving.

I have greater ability to focus on sensory awareness.    Things, including my own body, are striking assemblages of sensory engagement.  It seems, however, that the lines that define everything are getting more blurry.   As the lines dissolve, so do the distinctions that define and separate us fade away.

It’s actually quite exciting to watch my world curiously fade away.

Like layers of varnish on an old painting, my culture obscures the beauty of what is real.  The innate aspects of beauty fade away, hidden by the constructs that human culture, my culture have layered on my experience.

For me, religion has obscured more of the beauty of my world than any other aspect of my culture.   Rather than rely on my experience of ‘what is’, the role of a God has been layered over my experiences.   Images from someone’s imagination have put layer upon layer of unreality such that it has become difficult to be absorbed, to become one with what is natural, what is.

I have been urged and taught to look for the unseen hand of an imagined God when I have simply needed to see what is.

My culture, influenced by religious imagination, has taken sexual activity, physical contact, human closeness and covered it with all manner of rules that obscure the simple joy of people being wholly present to one another. Thanks to my teachers, I’ve missed the point for years.

The layers of my culture have become such a demanding distraction that I can scarcely see what is actually there.    In the Smokey Mountains, my culture builds a roller coaster on the side of a “natural” hill, turning a thing of beauty into a distracting entertainment.   I am surrounded by rules, norms and entertaining distraction.

Does a sculptor ever look at a block of raw stone and penetrate, absorb its natural beauty before chipping away to represent an image that until then only existed in her imagination?   Humans have made idols of gold and clay when it would have been more joyful and unifying to stare in wonder at the unshaped gold and mud.

I am daily removing more of the varnish that has kept me at a distance, kept me from the joy of being part of what is actually present.  I know that what I have created in my imagination has been keeping me from being at home in what is real.

 

 

I think that humans are social animals.    At least I think that I am.    We may not be sitting around like baboons grooming one another, picking off fleas.   However, we constantly meet one another with our eyes, and affirm one another presence.   With our eyes we say, “I see you.”    This can be a deep form of mindfulness, unity, affirmation .

Sometimes we do touch, and we take the opportunity to say “here I am, and I know you are there.”   Not exactly picking off fleas like baboons, but it is a social act.   How wonderful those times that we take the time to linger and experience one another’s presence in a deep way that recognizes the unity we share.

It is my nature to be social.   Why resist it?   Why not jump in with both feet, fleas or no fleas?

 

This is a first draft of a talk I plan to give at my sangha.    It is too long and needs editing;   I welcome any suggestions:

While I call this “True Sexuality”, I really mean “Good Sex.”

First of all, what is an old man doing talking about sex.    I want to remind you that while the body ages, diminishes and breaks down, the mind grows in understanding, strength and wisdom.    Sex is primarily in the domain of the mind.   It’s a mind thing.

When I joined the BH Sangha, I ran into an immediate stumbling block:  the third Mindfulness Training that deals with sexual misconduct.   I thought ‘here we go again, social custom trying to dictate spiritual practices.’   ‘Besides, what does sex have to do with mindfulness training!’

I’ve changed my mind, but it has taken over two years to change my attitude about the third Mindfulness Training.

I think that the training on sexuality, just like the other four mindfulness trainings, is a training in mindfulness just as sitting in meditation is a training in mindfulness.   This is what it feels like.  It is not a standard of right and wrong, but a suggestion of how to act to become more mindful, more aware, more insightful, more enlightened.   It is taking mindful practice, the practice of mindfulness off the cushion and into my daily life.  Into the present moment.

If I eat, I can perhaps grow in mindful eating, if I am in the present moment.    If I act sexually, I can perhaps grow in mindful sexuality, if I am in the present moment.    Acting in a mindful way is what I want to do, and by practicing mindful action I become more mindful.   Sitting on the cushion teaches me ‘this is what mindfulness feels like.’

Like mindful eating, mindful sex has more than one aspect.    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.  Walking past the case of pies at Cub and choosing not to eat deepens awareness of what eating is about.    I go to class twice a week at the U of M, look around the room of 240 young students and, in the words once spoken by a monk, “I like but I do not want.”   At that moment I am in touch with and very aware of my sexuality.   I know very well what it is to be alive.

A second aspect of training in mindful sex is being attentive to the ideal.    This means opening my mind to what is possible with mindful sex.   It also means being aware of the harm of unmindful, unaware, unenlightened sexual conduct.  It means paying attention to both favorable and unfavorable consequences.    Have you ever been sexual with someone and felt ‘not so good’ afterwards.   Remember what it felt to eat too much.  I remember that I could expect a fight, a row with my partner after we were sexual.   I never learned from it.

And the third aspect of training in mindful sex is practice.   It means entering into physical contact with mindfulness, actually being fully present.    Take awareness from the first level of a sensory experience to the second level of unity.   Not just one flesh, but much more.   Mindfulness teaches us that there is more and allows us to experience it.

Mindful Sex is like mindful eating food.   Eating food can be primarily sensory, exciting, entertainment.   Sex can be primarily sensory, exciting and entertainment.   Food provides energy;   sex generates tremendous energy and allows me to feel the energy of my partner.   Eating mindfully increases insight.   Mindful sexual activity increases insight.    Both can be good practice or not-so-good practice.

We are all sexual beings, but that doesn’t mean we are monogamous by nature.   And being sexual beings is not the same as gender.   The culture of monogamy puts two aspects of our nature in conflict with one another:  our sexual nature and our nature to be true to our commitments, to tell the truth.   Not an easy conflict to resolve mindfully.

Loving, mindful, aware sex is good sex.   It reminds us that, in spite of what society tells us, we are all joined, we are not separate.  Physical contact reminds me that we actually  are interdependent, connected.  The rush of sexuality is a concrete experience of that connectedness.   It can nourish, comfort, inspire.   It can increase awareness.    Because it is a practice in awareness, the awareness can prevail, it can last.

 

 

I have to admit that I go back and forth on this.    I quibble about how important it is to do good things, take good actions.   Is it important to do the right thing?    Or is it more important to be aware, understand what is going on.    Today I think it is important to act properly so that I think properly.     Sounds like something behaviorists would like.

Maybe it is simply the unity of a circle.

I have been noticing that I can see things more and more clearly.   I am beginning to think that I see things, people, concepts as they really are.   There is more energy in my thinking, in my awareness.    I think I am becoming more aligned with what is.   Reality, in all its uncertainty, is becoming something I experience more frequently.    The more I practice, the more this is my experience.

I often feel my whole body just as it is.   This happens when I wake up, when I am sitting in my car, when I am walking into Trader Joes.    My mind, my awareness extends through my whole body.   I actually feel and see with my whole  body.     I hear my bell with my whole body.    My whole body seems to be aligning itself with whatever or whoever is present.   I remember why it felt like before and once again the energy flows.    I often feel it.    In the energy there is joy.

I practice awareness when I sit and meditate.    It is truly practicing.   I then remember how it was when I was practicing, and experience the same kind of awareness at other times.    I realize that I can also carry that same kind of practicing into my every day life.    I can act in a way that is aligning with what is, with reality.   I can act on my awareness, and my awareness increases as it is reinforced.   I know this is happening because I can feel the energy.

I now think that the more insight I have into what I am doing, the more I understand the consequences of what I a doing.    The insight I get by practicing then becomes the insight I bring to the next experience.    I can become aware of the way of no harm.     I can become aware of the harm of lying, eating, consuming, sexual misconduct, stealing, etc.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are simply a practicing.

It is the insight, the awareness that allows the energy to flow.   It is the awareness that opens me to enlightenment, and enlightened action.    I become more aligned with what is, and the energy can flow.

I think I want to practice “good” actions because I know they are a practice of enlightenment.    If I see things as they really are, with an enlightened mind, I will know how to act in a way that is aligned with reality.

I really don’t think there are any right or wrong actions.   Whatever I do, is somewhat neutral.  I can say that there are good or bad consequences, but the important thing for me is whether the actions are aligned with my awareness of reality.   I want my awareness to be correctly aligned with reality, with what is.

I want to learn to feel the energy, the joy in right actions.    Just as mindful movements can put me in touch with the energy in my body, so can right actions allow me to experience the energy, the joy in being aligned with what is, with reality.

So it is a circle, perhaps.    Being mindful is what I want, but it is both a cause and a result of right action.    Being mindful means being aligned with, being fully present with what is.    And that includes people.

 

I’m watching some of the winds and water rushing onto the Florida coasts.   My amazed eyes see the forces of nature reclaiming dominance over a land that people have been trying to alter for decades.   Humans have done surgery on an ecosystem that would not willingly support the lifestyle that has been imposed on it.   Now the winds and water are changing some of that.

There are many places that forests and fields have reclaimed land abandoned or neglected by humans.     Many human civilizations have been buried under the advance of sands and trees.   Nature has patiently reclaimed even those places spoiled by humans.   Time is on the side of nature.

Insects evolve to reclaim their interest in eating plants grown by humans. The poisons invented and used by humans have only for a brief time been able to block the advance of forces of nature interested in consuming food.      For humans working against nature, it is a losing battle.

So many humans have believed in the myth of “taming nature.”   Nature can be cooperative, but will not be controlled.   Nature is unyielding, uncompromising, untamed by whatever humans concoct.   We will eventually be subdued by nature and yield to the forces of which we are a part.

Our efforts to resist or go against nature will fail.   Nature will eventually reclaim dominance.   It always has.   It is in our own best interest to cooperate.   The time is now to blend our consciousness with that of nature.

 

I seem to know so little about the emotional life of most of my friends.  I’m not even sure that I have much of an idea what is going in their mind. There are a couple of exceptions, but there is a veil that keeps me from being aware of what many are feeling and thinking.

I have contact with friends, but my intuition is limited, my awareness is out of focus.  I think I talk about what moves me in the things I read, the talks I listen to, the experiences I have.  I don’t know how to summon the same transparency from them.   I want to know more what they are experiencing in life.   I want a deep and revealing answer when I ask “how are you?”

I would like our conversations to be punctuated by their recollections of how they felt when this or that happened.   I want to hear more about their uncertainties, their worries, their apprehensions, their joys.

I don’t know how to ask the right questions.   I’m not sure I am listening well.   Maybe I talk and share too much.   I want there to be fewer boundaries and greater transparency between us.  How can I know them unless I can see them?

What a difference a few moments make.   The change that took place this morning would scarcely have happened two years ago.   For the first few minutes, I stumbled across my bedroom, then grabbed for covers that offered some protection from the chilly room.   I was partly alive in my head, and only dimly aware that I had a body.    The only reminder that my body even existed was the chill that stabbed at my skin for attention.

I was only dimly alive in my head, a faint light on top of a dark, cold and silent body.  I felt chilly waves lapping at the edges of my awareness, splashing for attention, but not really rushing in.

I read a few lines from Rilke and Ellen Bass, and my inner world suddenly came alive.   Within seconds of my allowing Ellen’s words to sink in, everything changed.    I sank into my body again, awareness rushed to the tips of my fingers and toes.   The feeling of wholeness returned, like a balloon being  blown up again.   My edges stretched out until they suddenly disappeared.

In just a few moments, nothing concrete existed excepted the touch of sheets, the glare of a lamp through my eyelids, the sound of a passing car.  But I was aware of so much more, as everything became a part of me and my expanding body.

My mind relaxed its cautious and lonely vigil as it settled into the exuberance of  a body that wanted to extend to the margins of everything. I became focused on the lively welcome going out to everything inside and outside of my skin.

The initial tiny flame of my weak and feeble alertness had burst into a roaring blaze of awareness that consumed all of my body and reached out to embrace everything it could  experience or imagine.

Thank you, Ellen.  Once again, a few words from you have helped transform my morning.    I have emerged from an isolated, narrow corner of my mind into a throbbing body alert and aware of this new day.   My steps from my bedroom have been infused with life.   It had only been a few moments.   In that time, my sun and world had risen.