Barry Garden Path

I want to make experience my primary teacher.   I may rely on the experience of others from time to time, but only as a secondary source of information.   I depend on my own experience for gathering data, and those are the reference points I rely on most, the sources I trust most.   The experience of others can be interesting, but I take most of it in with a huge dose of doubt, even suspicion.

I would like to be able to perceive the world with the open mind of a child and the mind skills of a 76-year old.   I want my own eyes and ears, all my senses, to be my channel of information.  Then I want my discerning mind to observe what I sense.

I am trying to slowly rid my life of all the unreliable, untrustworthy teachers I have had for so many years.   I reject certainty and embrace an open mind unclouded by fear of the unknown.    I am realizing that much of my life has been filled with false information masked as truth in order to take away fear or create fear.

Sometimes I feel like I have been living behind the lead bars of stained glass windows.   In this way, mostly filtered light has penetrated my inner world.   From my birth, my perception of the world has been shaped by my family, my culture, my ancestors, all humanity.   While some of this teaching has been useful and kept me safe, much of it has been an unreliable representation of the world.    The teaching has been contaminated by fear of the unknown, the unseen and the unpredictable.

My birthright has been hidden away.   The fears and suspicions of my fellow humans, past and present, have muted my innate tendency to search and explore the unknown, to understand the voice of my heart, to live in harmony with my one world.

My inheritance has been tainted by my teachers.    I have been misled and betrayed by those who continue to teach and encourage me to live in an imaginary world.  I do not want to be taught to avoid the very world that I need to embrace to find joy, harmony and peace.

I want to rely on my own experience above all and question the rest.

I remember what it was like to have each moment planned.   I liked to live my life at the edge of the headlights, in anticipation of what would happen next.  As  I climbed stairs, I was looking at the steps before me and hardly noticed the feeling of tread beneath my feet.

I am becoming a bit more reckless about planning my ‘future’ life.   I am doing less planning and more paying attention.   My body seems more alive and less anxious.  Maybe I’m reprogramming my Aspergers brain.

It is but a small change because I still plan much of my day.   I still think I know what is going to happen, especially what I am going to do.   I often decide what I am going to have for dinner a couple of times before the afternoon is spent.

However, I yield to the current a little more.    I let moments wash over me without attempting to control and guide them.    I find that I leave unsaid many comments I was about to insert into a conversation, and it is OK.

More of my life is recklessly out of my control.   I am still far from being able to surrender to the flow of time, but I am learning to enjoy the waves rolling over me.   Playing in the surf can sometimes upend me.    But I am less touched by my anticipations, less fettered by my view of how things ought to be.

It is a reckless way to live, and admittedly more full of peril.    It is also a life with less fear and full of more potential than I could ever imagine.

I don’t know why this happened to me, but for much of my life I have rebelled against any renunciation of the desire to know.    It has gone against my grain to come up against any lazy refusal to want to know more.   Something has mostly had to have a rational thread running through it before I could embrace a pattern of  thought.    I have not been able to be satisfied with dead-end conclusions.

So why did I get involved in a life that eschewed reason and relied on faith to explain the world.   I now listen to words coming out of that church tradition and it seems like another planet.   Worse, it sounds shallow and wimpy.

As I look  back, I think I made it an intellectual game to create a construct that at least made internal sense.  I remember learning church law and its details so I could run through the maze of the law with out being hurt.    I made the parts work together, even if the parts were imaginary and the whole made no sense.    It was like writing a novel and making all the parts make sense together, never mind if the story itself made sense.

I now realize how commonly this side road off the path of rationality has not just been unhelpful.    It has set back the development of western civilization by thousands of years.   People developed an intellectual malaise that allowed them to be satisfied with their own ignorance for thousands of years.   Religion played a prominent role in the subjugation of intellectual advancement as it was, at the same time, complicit in keeping certain groups of people in power.   The alliance between Church and State has been with us for centuries.

Long ago, the Greeks made great advances in pursuing an understanding of the world through observation and rational thought.   There were those who found joy in the pursuit of knowledge, never being content with  today’s answers.   Ignorance was a springboard to discovery.  They expressed a joy in rising from today’s unknown to better, but never complete knowledge.

Then the Romans came and disrupted the Greek culture.   They were the engineers who built arenas for people to take delight in the death of gladiators.   The works of the Greeks were also suppressed and hidden by new religion that preferred to  solve mystery by faith and allegiance to doctrine.  The middle east gave us  three great religions, all relying on a combination of suppressed reason, ignorance and faith to explain the world.

We may be catching up with those Greeks in relying on reason to figure things out, only 2,500 years late.    I am convinced that I can know, and that sometimes it is hard work.   I reject the limp and feeble reliance on faith that may allow me to feel certain, but know it is not true.

I am pained by the satisfaction I see in the dim eyes of those who walk in ignorance, guided by faith.   How will they ever have compassion for what they are unable, or unwilling to understand.   I rebel against our social complacency with ignorance.

 

When I tell my two boys that I was a monk, it sounds like a thing of the past.    Actually, I am still a monk, and much of what I started years ago still continues.   My home and garden are my monastery.

To be sure, I have shed the trappings of a monk.   Most of the appearances of a monk are long gone, but much of the internal monk remains.   The monk is still a persistent part of me.    Situations and activities of a monk show up in my dreams, and the feelings, especially anxieties, of that life hover inside me when I wake.   Some things go on and on, and some of them my memory holds too well.

I notice that I have a certain affinity or soft spot for the images of monasteries.   I clearly have turned away from and have little connection with images of religion.   There is little of the idolatry left in me.   I cannot easily sing the words, even though I love the spirit of the music.   The sound of chant stirs a whole litany of sensory associations.   I easily move into the smell of beeswax and incense, the feel of cloth and wood, the sight of dimly lit walls.

I think that the inner energy of a monk is still part of me.    As much as I enjoy the company of my companions, I still seek the feeling of complete isolation.   Perhaps it is this part of me that I neglected for so many years and why I found it hard to live with someone else.

I still find myself constantly exploring my inner life.   I now recognize that I am someone who wants to live in and explore the unseen and unknown.   I am so grateful that I am learning to make friends with my body because it is such an integral part of my plunge into the inner me.   Who knew that my body would be a gateway into a world I have wanted to enter for so many years.   What I was seeking has not been outside me, but  inside and part of me.

It has been a struggle as I attempt to put aside much of what society has taught me and given me.    I am trying to be selective about the use of tools, inventions and technologies of my culture.   Some of them are quite useful, but I choose not to be attached to them.

I doubt so much of what I have simply accepted as true for many years.    The values I have embraced are no longer what they seemed.   So much is a product of someone’s imagination.  I am much happier now that I try to accept a life of uncertainty.    I am embracing a free-fall into the unknown.    That, for me, is the life of a monk.

I have developed a fully-functional planning mind.   As soon as I sit on the side of my bed in the morning, my mind jumps into thinking of “what’s happening today, what’s next.”   My planning mind has served me well.   It allowed me to function well in a work position that required that I anticipate the future and prepare for it.   I have the ability to design objects or actions in my mind.    I sometimes spend as much time planning a project as I do in executing the plan.

My planning habit has begun to seem strange.   I am aware how much I seem to run from the future as soon as it becomes the present.    The purchase of a model railroad car is not nearly as enjoyable as the anticipation of the purchase.  So much of my energy is put into a future that may never come.    I now know this, and the planning habit is now having less influence.

I know that the only reality I have is the one that is actually happening right now.   However, my planning mind has conspired with my active memory to lure me away from what is most real.   They constantly call me to venture into an imaginary world that has already vanished or is yet to appear.   It is a world that exists only in my imagination.

The present is where  I find the most ease, respite and joy.   However, my undisciplined mind resists the leash of staying in the present.

I find that even when my mind attention is focused on what is happening right now, there can be a tension to leap forward into what is yet to be or wallow in a past memory.    My attention often pulls me into the past or into what might happen next.  In that instant the present moment, with all its energetic reality vanishes, never to be repeated.

I think that is this planning mind with its great ability to fabricate a possible future and regurgitate a memory of the past that has allowed my human species to dominate the world.    Unfortunately, it often functions so well that people like me lose contact, awareness of what is going on right now.   We have learned well how to interact with an imaginary future or past world and sacrificed much of our ability to live in the present.

I love my planning mind.   I just want to keep it on a short leash so I can pay attention to what is happening and have a real life in a real world.

I am sometimes encouraged to develop a ‘beginners mind’, to put aside notions of reality I already have and to begin again.    For me this is like developing a fresh mind.   I want to develop a steady habit of keeping an open mind with minimal influence from the past or future.    I like to step away from my memories as much as I can and to avoid the planning function of my mind when it does not serve me well.

This, for me, is a habit of fresh mind.

I want to approach most situations without any pre-conceived notion of what is happening.   Maybe this is a matter of becoming totally situational.  This is something my old teachers warned me about.   I now think they were misguided and tried to misguide me.

I like to keep a discerning awareness of what has happened in the past and what is likely to happen as a consequence of what goes on right now.   This especially is true of actions I take.

But I do not want the past or the future to become the default position of my mind.    I want the default position to be what is going on right now.   I want to use the information I have of the past only as it helps, not obscures my awareness of what is happening right now.

I want my fears and my desires for the future to have minimal effect on what I see right now.   I don’t want to rid myself of all fear or all desire, I just want to be in control of how much I am dominated or heavily influenced by them.   I want my fresh mind to have priority in how I see what is happening right now.

As I look at my personal world, I am aware of how much my feelings about the past influence me.   I have absorbed the messages of my culture very well, and those too often guide me in how I see what is happening and how I feel about it.   There are many examples.   My view of being in a nuclear family and how I should feel come not just from my own past experience and what I have been taught.   They are rooted in hundreds of generations of my ancestors and what they learned.

My discernment and feeling about sexuality is likewise highly shaped by my past and all the lessons I have absorbed.   My culture tells me in great detail how I should feel, react and act.   It is hard to have a fresh mind about sex, influenced neither by feelings rooted in the past or desires based on the future.

The same can be applied to how I regard race, community, possessions, friends, property, parenting and so on.

It is a daily struggle to rid my mind of the barnacles of the past and future and to see the day with a fresh mind.   First I want to apply it to myself.   I want to be present to myself with no contamination from the past and with limited planning for the day.   I will then give myself permission, freedom to approach each moment with a fresh mind.   I want to question every notion I bring to my experience.

One of the first things I do in the morning is create moments of fresh mind. Then I am ready to launch freely into an adventure of exploring what happens next.

As I sit and watch the bumble bees bouncing from bloom to bloom on my Hydrangea, I wonder what time is like for them.    Do they have a sense of before and after anything like I experience?   Does time enter into their experience of being alive?   How do they have a sense of how fast they are moving relative to other objects?

Just by watching them, I know that they must have very efficient neural processing because they move so fast.   They change direction so quickly that they must have some way of absorbing and using information that allows such rapid movement.   They seem to avoid bumping into one another and parts of plants.    They would easily evade my hand if I tried to capture one of them.  Their movement, fast as it is, seems adequately and successfully directed.

What would it be for me to experience the passage of time like a bumble bee?   Because I would process information so fast, I think that my world would then seem, by comparison, to move more slowly.   Would I then have more time to react, catch myself from bumping into the door, duck under the branch, dodge the ball coming directly at me?

For the most part, time has seemed to speed up much faster for me.   Does this mean that because the days pass by more quickly that my thinking, my data processing has slowed down.   Has my day become like a movie reduced to half speed to make the characters seem to move faster.

On the other hand, the time I spend in mindfulness practice almost makes time stand still.    Time becomes less and less of a reference point.  I sometimes seem to step outside of time.    I think that this means that part of my mind has changed function.    Rather than slow down, I think that my brain has somehow slipped into overdrive, a place where there is little reference to past and future.   The energy of that place is palpable.

Maybe that is more what the bees experience.    Maybe bee time is focused on the here and now, no past and no future.   The bee reacts without reference to time.   It is only I, the observer, who is constantly referencing the passage of what I know of as time.   Maybe I am learning to live in bee time.

“I am here for you.”   This is the first of six mantras.   It is for me the root of a fountain of loving kindness and the source of deep intimacy.

First, it is a message that I offer to myself.  Before I can be present to anyone else, I had to know what it feels like to be present to myself.   My mind had to fully enter my body, and I had to learn the art of being present where I am.   No future, no  past.  I have learned what it means to be in love with myself, only because I have been able to let go and be with myself, mind and body, just as I am right now.

This has been a source of great joy because I have learned how to express, at a moment’s notice, the feeling of loving kindness to myself.   A wave of contentment flows over my whole self.   Know what it feels like to be present to myself.

The mantra is not a set of magical words but a reminder.    It is learned with practice.   I have had to learn it for myself.   I have in effect rewired my brain.  The words are a reminder of what it felt like when I was present to myself, for myself.   Perhaps the words have become kind of magical because they can summon instantly the feeling of what it felt like all those times I was present to myself and for myself.   I instantly become present.

Being able to conjure up my being present makes it possible for me to be present to anyone I choose.   The words come with the attitude:  I am present for you.   This for me has become an act of love.    Being present is what we offer as lovers.   It is the gateway to any kind of relationship of loving kindness.   It is the ‘giving’ that I am able to offer to anyone I choose.

This ‘being here’ is an invitation for reciprocity, for someone else to be truly present.    This is the exchange I gratefully enjoy with a small number of people.   It has been a discipline for me not to cling or become attached to this exchange.  The more I am ‘here’ for myself and for them, the less likely I am to cling.

Thay has said it well:  ” A true lover knows that the practice of mindfulness is the foundation of true love.”

 

Learning to be comfortable with being alone was just the beginning for me.   Before anything else, I had to quiet down and immerse myself in the feeling of being alone, something I mostly avoided in the past.    In many ways, I have been even anxious about it.   It seems now that I have come full circle, and are things really different!

I love being alone.    As much as I enjoy my time with many individuals, I look forward to being alone.   It is from that vantage point that I have observed that society is determined to keep us apart.    Even while it gives us many messages that stroke our fears of being alone, it sets up many expectations and structures that keep us separate and not really present to one another.

This is not about technology.    Technology is not to blame; it simply reflects our chosen life style.    The fabric of our connections with one another is woven by much more subtle social norms that technology simply supports and reinforces.

In our culture, we have our own space and materials.   We honor those who amass an abundance of space and goods.  Our attachment to the things that are “ours” serves as a barrier to many others.    We have fears that encourage us to protect our things, even if it means killing someone who threatens our space or possessions.

We live in nuclear families that are built on the illusion of exclusivity.  The nuclear family, most often defined as marriage, is to be not just a source of emotional and physical closeness.   It is usually seen as the only or primary source.    Relationships outside the nuclear family are suspect and must be handled with care.   Others are a threat to space and possessions  of the nuclear group.   The expectations on the nuclear family are set so high and exclusive that success is rare and the experience of most is abandonment,  disappointment or settling for less than is wanted.

Societal structure keeps each of us in our own space.   Rather than rush into one another’s presence we keep in the place we fear:  being alone and unconnected.   In spite of some occasional words of praise, hugs are suspect and not at all common.   Even when proffered, most hugs are weak and whimpy, a quick gesture and not a deep embrace.  It is no wonder we retreat to aloneness.   Social norms have succeeded in keeping relations on the surface, lacking energetic presence and with little warmth.   It is no wonder we are surprised when the social distance is transgressed.

I am much more comfortable being alone, and I design a good amount of time to being alone.    In a strange manner, I feel very connected even when I am  alone.   I am also much better at being present with people.   I no longer doubt my ability to carry my aloneness with me, and that seems to make for more opportunity to be deeply connected, more intimate.

It seems I’ve been uncertain about my five senses for a long time.   I grew up with so many cautionary remarks about the dangers of the senses, and I lingered in that caution for most of my life.   There were times I made adequate, even abundant use of my senses.   Even that had restrictions, cautions, limits.

It’s only been recent that I discovered that I actually have six senses.    The extra sense is not the ‘intuition’ often referred to as the sixth sense.    My mind is a sixth sense.  I am learning how to be aware that I am aware, just as I can be aware that I see, feel, taste, etc.    Maybe it is somewhat related to intuition.

I’ve always been able to see, feel, taste, hear and smell.   But I mostly stopped in the sensation and seldom knew more.    It has only been occasional that what I saw was so overwhelming, that I became aware that I was actually seeing it and my whole body would respond to the experience.   There have been times that I could listen to beautiful sounds, but only occasionally was I able to float in the awareness of what my ears were hearing and feel the sound with my whole body.

Now this happens a lot.    I  am learning to use my ‘mind’ sense as I know and recognize that I am aware of what I touch.   The tree I touch and see takes on a new reality.   The counter in my bathroom is more than cold, hard and colorful.   The data gathered by my five senses is brought together by my mind, and I know the counter in a new and exciting way.

The total experience is almost neutral, because the sensory experience can be pleasant or unpleasant.   But the mind experience is always full of energy, and that gives me joy, peace, contentment.

I have discovered a new reality in the realm of the senses.