Barry Garden Path

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.

It seems like it has been a long time arising, but I am beginning to think I have missed the point about my own sexuality for most of my life.   Of course, I have had the help of a multitude of crusty old misconceptions imposed on me by my culture.   The power and energy of sexuality has to do with so much more than sex.    Sexuality exists beyond the sensual.   Gender is but a peripheral factor.

I am noticing that I am immersed in the energy of my sexuality when I move beyond the sensory and when I realize how I am one with someone else.   Anyone else.   The energy of my sexuality is the innate magnetism that recognizes that we are already connected.   We are one.  We all share in the same energy.

There is no separation, and once I allow myself to be immersed in that insight, there is nothing that separates me from someone else.    Sensory awareness is not really that much of a factor, except perhaps as a gateway that invites me to awareness of unity.   The joy of immersion in this oneness is so much more expansive and beyond sensory.   Eyes, touch, sound can all be gates, but the real sexuality lies beyond the sensory.

Eyes can be a significant link for me.   When eyes meet openly, they speak to one another the fundamental realization that we are one.   Touch is another important communication that we are intimately present to one another, if we can but have that insight.

We carry a common inheritance because we share in the same oneness.    It is immense joy to recognize and be fully aware that we are true princes and princesses.    We are linked by common blood and a long linage of insight and consciousness.    We are one, and for years I have wandered the streets begging for what I already possessed.

How do we waken one another?    The consciousness we carry and possess is the actual spark of divinity, the oneness of our common inheritance.

I feel I have been disinherited by a society that attempts to segregate me, teach me we are all separate, tells me we are not and may not be joined.   I have been taught that we are not the royalty we truly are.

I now know that there is a deep energy in me and everyone I meet that naturally draws us together.   Ours is the oneness that becomes apparent in due course.

 

The experience was more than a little scary.    The fire was roaring behind the glass door of my wood-burning stove.   I slowly opened the door and came face to face with the heat, the sound, and the threat of a fire roaring out of control.    The fire stayed in the stove, of course, but I came face to face with all its fury and heat.  It had all the feeling of being about to leap out off control.

Actually, it didn’t exactly happen that way.    I was at a meeting of the neighborhood Board, and there was no wood-burning stove.   However, it came my time to speak about the resolution I had handed out to the members, and the glass door opened to the full fury of the fire inside of me.   I struggled to keep the energy under control as I spoke with a force I hardly knew had been inside me.

My mind was clear, my body was in motion, I hardly ever struggled for words.   The force and energy was certainly more than I had intended.   I had no plan to push so hard.   But push I did, on the course to the point I wanted to make.

I know this is part of what is happening to me as I become more accustomed to being present, in the moment.   I trust myself to be present, there is little fear, I don’t reach into the future to worry about what might happen.   I ride on a huge wave of freedom.    Last night it was like finding myself on a wild, galloping stallion.    There seemed to be no way of stopping, only racing forward and staying the course.   The  path seemed bright and clear.

I am surprised by the level of clarity and conviction that accompanies mindfulness.    It is like someone has turned on the bright lights, and all is apparent.   The broad illuminating light of my searching mind seems sometimes to narrow and focus all its energy on a small but suddenly radiant something.   It could focus on someone, on an object, or on something that exists only in my imagination.    The effect is often the same as my mind seems to tap into the energy of whatever is present with me.

Maybe this is what happens when I open to the fiery oneness that appears when I open my awareness.    With nothing separating me and whatever there is, the full fury and energy is exposed.   It leaps and consumes, but still is contained in the moment.

There are times the fire is overwhelming.   I think I want to be careful how much I expose others to it.

 

 

 

Each day I amble through my life, uncertain of the decisions I make.   These can be little decisions and big ones, but I really don’t know what the outcome will be.    The consequences are more conjectured than assured.   It sometimes has seemed that being a human is quite lacking in certainty.

I don’t remember begin given a page of directions when I was born.    I did have the benefit of two young, loving parents who themselves were unsure of what to do about many things.   They probably were uncertain what their lives were about, yet did their best.

My new and open mind soon absorbed directions from all around me and I learned in many small ways to make sense of it all.   No one was able to tell me where this all led.

My culture, of course, instructed me in how to live, how to behave, how to get along with others so that we might form a uniform society.    I shaped my every day on the expectations of my parents, of my school teachers, of my social leaders.

Nothing was more penetrating than the directions given me by my catholicism.    I relied on teachers, writers, ancient men and women to tell me how to live.    It was often a struggle to decipher their directions, to find meaning in what they left behind.    There were many voices who mumbled or shouted at me, and I strained to learn from them.   For a long time, I followed the example of Francis and his progeny, until I realized y humanity spoke to me of a different path.    That way also left little certainty.

I became more hesitant and cautious about the advice and direction I got from others.   No source seemed to give me reliable advice on how to live or make sense of the world.

As time has passed, I am finding that, like the label inside my jeans, the most reliable directions came inside and were there all the time.   “Machine wash cold, use no bleach, tumble dry warm”.

In side me are the simple directions:  “Pay attention, be amazed, love profusely.”    I may not be certain of the outcome, but that has become less important.   Now I think it is time for me to follow the directions that accompanied me.   That will be enough.

I am slowly unlearning all  the crusty advice and conditioning I’ve received from the moment I was born.    I’m learning to pay attention to the directions I brought with me when I entered this world.

It was a familiar visit to the Ordway theater.   I was there for a pre-performance reception and I was looking around for where the reception was taking place.   This was a unique event and I was looking around for where the special reception might be happening.   I noticed a wide open door between two walls and began walking into the next room.

I had walked perhaps five steps before I suddenly realized I was walking toward a wide, floor to ceiling mirror.   I saw, in a flash of realization, how the mirror reflected the complete contents of the room in which I was standing.

I had experienced all the sensation and perception of an open room beyond the imagined doorway.   Lights shined, color and shapes filled the space.   There were people and familiar objects that I had vaguely recognized.    It was like stepping out of a dream when I realized that all I had seen was a reflection of the room in which I stood.   Everything around me was as big and expansive, full of color and shapes, peopled by activity as the room I had been walking into.

Had I actually been walking into a room that existed only in my own mind!

Such is my experience of being in a bedroom that every day seems to surround me with walls and fabric, color and shapes.   I slowly move into a reality that exists only in my attention to them.

I hear the noise of passing cars, and I become aware of cars that my mind constructs from the waves of sound touching my ears.   I touch the sheets of my bed, and I know the impression of fabric and softness.   I glance at my stack of books, and they stir my notion of covers and pages.

Everything around me is a reflection of notions I carry within my consciousness.  The angles, color and firmness of the walls are all familiar to me.    With only a casual glance from me, they seem to correspond to the notion, the construct of lavender walls of my bedroom.

I live in a mirrored world, populated by images and notions I carry within me.   How can I be truly present in such a world.   How do I become not just aware off it but deeply, intimately involved with it.

When I stare into this mirror world, I often try to simply be present to myself.   I slowly become aware of my own body, my own presence.   Just as slowly, I observe that I am part of that mirror world, it is part of me.   I put one foot in front of the other and we walk together into my mirror world, into another day.