Ohmygoodness!  I can't believe that they asked me to do it and I DID IT!  I lead Meditation Class last night.  I got to learn how to ring the bell; one of those brass bowls that you ring with a special mallet.  It was great.  We always follow a certain format:

20 minute sit
20 minute walk
20 minute reading

So, the 20-minute sit was, of course, a no-brainer.  Heh-heh.  And I decided to throw a certain spin on the walk.  With each right step, inhale and imagine arriving at certainty - about whatever was up for you for that moment.  With the left step, exhale and imagine departing from certainty.  Right = I know.  Left = I don't know.  And this goes very, very slowly.  There were about 7 or 8 people there that night.  Usually there are only about 3 or 4.  So after the walk, which for me was really fun and illuminating.  It made me want to create a special garden or pathway somewhere where there are stepping stones with "Certainty" and "Uncertainty" imprinted on them and enough of them so you could walk without bumping into people for about a half-hour. 

Everyone has thoughts that come up during meditation.  It's part of the exercise to learn to welcome them and then say goodbye.  This is sometimes confusing for me, and I think, others.  I have a tendency to confuse that with repression.  I know this is common, because the reading I used spoke about it.  So, I used certainty as another way of shifting awareness.  Instead of trying to let the thought go, it created a shift in attitude towards it.  It became an epistemological exercise - which is also very fruitful.  "My bike" comes up as a thought.  "I am certain about my bike being there for me."  "I am no longer certain that I will have my bike."  "I know."  "I don't know."  Just shifting it back and forth created alot of emotion and also new awareness of how fragile I am and easily jerked around I can be because of the presence or lack of certainty.  Many issues became fodder for this and I became aware of forgiving myself for my fear.  One of the people at the meeting said he became aware of the cycle of certainty/no certainty becoming one experience.  This was another great thing that I got too.  I got alot of great feedback on it, and they all got alot out of it. 

For the Reading section of the session, I chose a portion out of Pema Chodron's "The Places That Scare You".  It was about containing emotional distress with meditation.  It advised to let the particulars of the story which is distressing to us just drop, but retaining the emotional energy.  Then leaning into that energy and making more room for it to abide.  She said straight out,

"Experiencing our emotional distress.  Many people, including longtime practitioners, use meditation as a means of escaping difficult emotions.  It is possible to misuse the label 'thinking' as a way of pushing negativity away.  No matter how many times we've been instructed to stay open to whatever arises, we still can use meditation as repression.  Transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience."

After the comments came in, I realized how confusing and troubling this is for many people.  One woman said it was exactly what she needed to hear.  Another woman said that this can be traumatizing so keep it contained in small bites - successfully negating the entire point.  There is a huge difference between the small self being subjectively dragged off by emotional turmoil and the larger Self intentionally opening up a space for it so that the small self can experience it with safety and compassion. 

The more I practice all this, the more I realize that God has presented Himself as a larger Holon or a place-holder for people who are not yet at a more advanced place in awareness or development.  For each level there is a higher level, so God is both at a level ahead and also where we are right now.  Now and then I hear Bible verses in my head that are saying what I've just learned but using this place-holder-for-the-next-larger-Holon kind of metaphor.  Here's a snippet about emotional distress:

"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to us all.  And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."
1 Corrinthians 10:13

I just get warm fuzzies when I think of how this was presented to a people in a time where expanded awareness was not on the menu, but it was tucked inside this caring metaphor to help them nevertheless.  It's really very compassionate and sweet. 

Gotta go.

~Ww

Oh, what a mess!

It's terribly traumatizing to talk about this, but I have to learn to integrate it.  It is a necessary perspective amongst many - however partial.  My life is marked by abuse from this perspective, so my nervous system is telling me that I am under attack.  I have to take that into consideration when I write about it.  It's necessarily going to be goey and confusing for me. 

Yes, I am awake to all that. 

I pray that you awaken to your own relationship to objectification as you read.

Ken Wilber's 'splanation of the 1-2-3 Process saved me from being forever trapped by my malinformed idea of what meditation and "enlightenment" was.  I have to continuously recall it when I am listening to/reading some people's ideas about it all, because so many people use meditation as a way to get away from various emotional situations and distress, and this "getting away" is what was done by my Primary Caretaker when I was having emotional distress as a small child.  She emotionally withdrew and didn't reflect my emotional responses to the world back to me.  I was left alone with my enormous feelings about things and had no idea whether or not the pain or fear would stop or whether anyone cared or thought I was okay while having those feelings.  It was just an emotional, infant me against this cruel and hard world.  As I got older, I repressed such feelings as terror, rage, pain and many forms of enjoyment - 1 to 2 - because whenever I experienced them, my Caretaker would emotionally withdraw from me.  So, those emotions and the accompanying impulses were projected - 2 to 3 -and acted out on unconsciously.  I developed personas to have those feelings in private moments when no one was around, and other personas to have only acceptable responses to my Caretaker. 

My Caretaker responded to my emotional life by pushing her own emotional reflection of my feelings away - 1 to 2 - so that she could talk to me about my feelings.  Then she pushed them away even further so that she talked about them to others - 2 to 3.  I distinctly remember being told that I was "pouting", even though my own memory of those times was of holding in and suppressing overwhelming rage and hurt.  I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.  There was no one who seemed to relate to my feelings and I became isolated and contracted into a very tight ball.  People around me talked about me, within my hearing, and I heard her tell them that I was a pouter.  This elicited sympathy for her, while I was set apart as having the problem.  I was prolly very small when it started, but I remember it well into my older childhood.

I've been accused by another family member of historical revision according to my contracted view.  But then I saw her respond to my own children.  And I knew. 

So, I'm clear about my own participation in the problem of not being this or that - 1-2-3 - but only after many years of being totally blind to it.  I'd say, it's only been in the last 4 or 5 years that I've seen my own identical impulse to push away the emotional responses/reactions of others when I could not handle it.  Up until that time, I had spent many, many years and tons of energy being righteously indignant towards people who do that, and who act indifferent to others' emotional distress.  My limbic system is totally programed for that.  It can be changed, and it is being changed, but I have over 30 years of strong programing and reinforcement to overcome. 

I hope you'll pardon me if I don't just "get over it".  If not, then ...  well, don't provoke me.  That's all I can say.  Just please don't.  If you feel the urge to poke me, which some do, well then you'd better check yourself.  You've got a problem too.

So, objectification was a huge problem for me in my young life.  But it didn't stop there.  As a teen and young adult, I got some attention from guys.  Something which many young people now might not understand is that this kind of attention was not welcome for most girls.  Sexual attraction was okay, but women were trying to have sexual experiences with healthy respect for their entire personality.  Women were trying to test guys to see if they were going to be respectful, and guys were trying to trick the girls into thinking they were respectful so they could get in their pants.  The sad game of predator and prey seemed intractable, especially since it was not talked about openly.  Polite people acted as if young people met and fell in love and dated and then got married, or it didn't "work out" so they "broke up".  That's not really what was happening, but since the prior generation didn't allow women to want sex in the first place, the reality was still taboo, regardless of our victimization.  If we were exploited, we were a slut to begin with.  There was no recourse. 

In the generation before me, it wasn't okay for women to want sexual experiences at all, so it was a real improvement for the guys that we put ourselves out there.  But most of the guys didn't seem to want to reciprocate value for value.  For the most part, they just took their trophy and ran.  So, considering that we wanted real respect, the attention that the guys were giving us girls was dripping with pretense and pathetically shallow and it was just really insulting to women's intelligence. Then when they were done with us and kicked us to the curb, there was no where to take the pain or rage without being outed to our parents as whores and such.  Plus, the guys took advantage of our need to be respected and talked trash about us just to silence us.  And so did the Alpha Females who wanted the attention of the Alpha Males.  This only reinforced the sense of threat for me.  Alone in a dangerous world. 

But things are different now, aren't they?

In the WIE issue that I talked about yesterday, there was a special section under the Feminism heading called "Freedom & Choice in Pornutopia: Why Girls Are Going Wild". 

It was quite a feat to connect the dots all the way from First Generation Feminism to the current incarnation as Feminine Exhibitionism.  I confess; as a little girl, I was told that Feminism was really great because it meant that Women could do the same great things that men could do!  My Mother; always encouraging the "doing" and "accomplishment" aspects of life.  And all the other female role models in my life were pushing the same thing.  But as I grew older I began to hate Feminism for exactly that reason.  And sure enough, by the 80's women were expected to carry the same unreasonable work-load that men were carrying!  And the anger with which they defended this "right" seemed absurd to me.  Especially since the other "right" which they seemed so concerned with was the destruction of what looked to me like a very vulnerable little creature indeed: the unborn.  Wow.  Women have the right to kill themselves and their young.  Far out!  So, I took my hard-won birth-control pills and left them in the dust.

About the only thing that I could see that was really worth keeping around unchanged was the right to be viewed as a person worthy of respect, "just like a man".  I watched as this culture tried to integrate this fought-for "right" as a commonly shared value.  I watched as men suffered the humiliation that came from angry women during this struggle.  It was painful.  I hoped that the period of adjustment would come to an end and that we could all finally respect one another and get along.  But I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Instead of developing actual respect for women, many men seemed to be mainly hiding their disrespect just as always.  Then, eventually repressing it, as it became less and less okay to express it out loud, even in the company of other men.  And seemingly at the same time, women seemed to be caving in from the pressure to be like men in the workaday world and just fell back to the position of wanting to be taken care of.  Only, we had to repress that as well, because it became taboo to express that, even in the company of other women.  So, we started hiding our schemes to find men who would take care of us.  Some of us hid in the Church, and the Evangelical world swelled with women who wanted to have babies and be taken care of.  Other women totally gave up on men completely, and pushed their way out of the game as lesbians.  This pressure cooker had to pop eventually. 

Now, says the article in WIE?:

"Feminism wants you to be whoever you are - but with a political consciousness.  And, vice versa: You want to be a feminist because you want to be exactly who you are"

It goes on to explain:

"By being pro everything - pro-sex, pro-homemaker, pro-career, pro-motherhood, pro-trans-gender, pro-queer - Third Wavers managed to philosophically elevate the exercise of women's choice over the substance of women's choices themselves, avoiding the need for discrimination or morality altogether."

The article drips with sarcasm and disappointment in the choices women are making right now about porn and the objectification that it entails.  We've struggled against so many obstacles to go higher.  Why are we throwing it all away?  And, I would normally agree.  But reading it helped me see another dimension that I hadn't seen before. 

Over the last 100 years, humans - well, mostly the common, everyday man - have just not wanted to evolve.  Prior to that, the Industrial revolution and the myth of Progress and Manifest Destiny and all that sort of swept them up in this dream of Human-improvement.  Men especially seemed to be seduced by the idea that we could mechanize everything and make everything work better!  The Aquarian Age popped this overinflated dream and we awoke hungry for the Goddess and Her Organic Salvation.  But She couldn't operate while the machines left over from the previous age were still in place, and they continued to grind us all into meat.  Patriarchy and Welfare kept on making their expensive demands and we couldn't free ourselves no matter how much we tried.  With the Advent of AIDS, sex had to go back in the cage, and our government was suffering from senility as it forgot why it was taking care of us in the first place and tried to shrink itself back down. 

So we went back to exploiting one another.  And it was awful.  There was a new generation of Sex Objects and Security Objects as the Trumps became our Role Models by default.  We were literally beside ourselves with incredulity and self-loathing by how much we wanted what they had.  We tried to sweep our envy under the rug, but we couldn't.  We had driven our cars towards Yuppie-Utopia as far as we could, then when we ran out of gas, we set up camp out in the middle of no where.  Exposed and hollowed out.  There was nothing to be done but let it rip. 

Our own shame did this.  Our own humiliation at not being able to create the world we knew we wanted.  Our kids took our shame and created a sling-shot out of it - as they always do - and they shot themselves as deeply into conscious materialism and shallow objectification as they possibly could.  We are revolted. 

Precisely.

But the good thing that is coming out of this is the opportunity to integrate what has been Shadowed for such a long time: our lower instincts.  The primal ones.  By making themselves into commodities, these young men and women have generated a critical amount of awareness about exactly what our limbic systems are driving us to do.  They've gotten it down to a science.  Literally. 

Recently I've become aware that in the Quadrants, the stuff on the left side - the Interior - is totally connected to value and the personal.  The stuff on the right side - the Exterior - is totally disconnected from value or the personal.  A cell is just a cell.  It is a solid 3  It is a thing.  We have power over it because we put it in little boxes with labels and such.  But a feeling is much more.  It belongs to someone.  And that someone is inside the box with the feeling and becomes labeled along with it.  This is a solid 1.  When we label a cell, no one gets hurt.  When we label a feeling, it can be a disaster.  People who prefer to deal with the world from the right side, typically don't like involving themselves with all that "personal stuff".  They normally like things to be "Objective". 

So, now that sex has been ripped out of the left Quadrants and dragged off into the right side, it has lost it's personalness and the only value one can place on it is a dollar sign or the value it is to us as a commodity - it keeps us warm at night, turns us on, keeps us busy, amused, distracted, comfortable, whatever.  Paul the Apostle noted this phenomenon as "their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.", not because it had to do with sex (!GASP!! ) but because it had been totally taken out of the realm of human value and objectified. 

Our instincts and primal drives are just toys now.  To be played with like our genes and our brains.  I can give you a hard-on in 1.8 seconds.  I can make you squirt in 35 seconds flat.  You can bed her in 2 hours or less.  You can make him ask you out in 2 minutes or less.  I can handle being throat-fucked, butt-fucked and fisted all at once - AND - I can make it feel like you're really raping and hurting me.  I can look like I'm 11 years old.  How much are you willing to pay for that?  Apparently it's getting cheaper and cheaper.  And easier and easier to access. 

The science involved in triggering all the deep predatory and victim impulses that turn one another on at the cellular level is exact.  The mystery is gone.  This quaint website that I frequent describes how much of it works, and why many of us have a hard time trying to break away.  But it also describes how all the deep protective and nurturing impulses are triggered as well and suggests that as the sane and evolved alternative.  Isn't that just the same developmental level of evolution only less offensive to the shared value in the We-Space?  Is that really going forward, considering most of the foundational literature was written in the supposedly non-sexual Victorian era and earlier?

Okay, now take a deep breath.  The worst part is over.  To those of you who are Shadowing all that stuff, I'm sorry about that.  Be conscious of your reaction.  And be kind to yourself.  We are spiritual beings having an animal experience.  It's all very confusing.

So, speaking of the Spiritual stuff...! 

Apparently it is an important part of meditation to objectify what is arising.  Everything that is arising, and look at it instead of being it.  If we are conscious of something, we can objectify it.  In fact, we already have.  Putting value judgments on things tends to repack them in Anti-consciousness, both as individuals and collectively and then they slink back into the 1st Person position.  I think keeping everything on a constant cycle of 1-2-3, then 3-2-1, then back and forth will prevent us from submerging too deeply into it, staying asleep to our impulses and/or becoming slaves to them.  What seems to be of great value in this Third Wave of Feminism is choice.  And while being a slave to impulses doesn't sound like choice, being able to choose to or not indulge in them is.  I think these Wild Girls have given us all a gift of awareness whether we've followed their leads or just watched them with embarrassment.  And with more awareness comes more choice. 

More choice would be good. 

Considering that an old family friend was just booked into the local jail in June on 4 different charges of child molestation.  He used to hang out with my ex-husband and kids.  We went to church with him and his family.  His wife went through hell trying to have babies before she finally adopted this adorable girl...   It went on for years.  I had a profound Spiritual Satori Experience at Church once because of this man.  I can feel the heart of the entire community breaking.  I don't know if my ex-husband knows yet, but when he finds out it will devastate him.  They were close. 

[A moment of silence for those who still suffer...]

~Ww

So, meditation practice on Monday was inneresting.  But before I talk about that, I should talk about what happened the week before. 

Last week, I came to understand that there is a difference between the awareness you might have by using your senses and awareness of the consciousness sort.  I hear the cars outside, I see the light coming in a certain way, I smell the air, and I feel the temperature on my skin.  All these things tell me that it is morning.  Okay.  But consciousness awareness is distinct from that.  For a very brief few seconds, I realized that I could be aware of  more than what my senses could take in, and that my senses were limitations of what I could be aware of as long as I only lived from inside of them.  Like a tin-can phone.  Once you put the can to your ear, the surrounding sounds are cut off, and you can hear only what comes through the phone wire.  That is what our sensory hearing is like compared to the consciousness awareness of sounds. 

After I went home and thought about this, I realized what that meant.  I could hear Obiwan saying to me, "Luke! Use the Force!" and see why he shut off the machinery in the cockpit and closed his eyes and nailed it.  That made me laugh. 

So, this week's lesson was more complicated.  I am still distracted by the religiosity of it.  I can feel my spiritual small self swelling with eagerness and pride about how talented she is at understanding the "Mindfulness Practices".  Holy crap!  I've been a Christian, for Christ's sake!  I get that stuff!  They may say that it isn't about Judging ourselves or others, but most people don't really get that.  I do.  And the only way to accomplish so much mindfulness is to have first expanded one's circle of care to include one's self and Shadow, otherwise, the ickiness of what we're becoming aware of overwhelms us and we contract over it.  Oh, blah, blah, blah!  I get this stuff.  More than most.  I could go on and on. 

But that is not enlightenment. 

The spiritual small self is not going to make the final journey so it doesn't really matter how much I understand this stuff or how skilled I am at groking mindfulness. 

There is a children's book by C.S. Lewis called, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader".  And in this story, there is a mouse.  I wonder, seriously, if Lewis really understood what this was saying in this context or if this theme really is shared equally in both camps.  Either way.  This mouse was part of the crew on this ship which was on a mission to explore to the edge of the world.  There were others on the crew - humans.  But this mouse was special.  He was very small, but actually had the most courage and understanding about what honor was.  He was always properly respectful and also properly offended at all the right things.  His deep love for beauty, truth and goodness kept him sane and safe from the corruption that any of the other crew-members may have fallen prey to.  He was very pure.  Except for a tad bit of vanity that naturally accompanies such purity.

So, as they got closer and closer to the edge, strange things began to happen.  When the Sun would rise or set (I forget which) it was HUGE.  Obviously, they were getting really close!  And the seawater became sweet instead of salty, and when everyone drank it, they became strong and healthy and calm and didn't need to eat food.  Everyone's character changed so that they had no more fear, and they stopped having arguments and didn't need to sleep.  Also, it became possible to look at the Sun without suffering injury. 

Finally, when the end of the world was reached, and they realized that the whole crew couldn't really approach it, but only one, and the ship would have to return with the rest to tell the tale; while they were discussing who it would be, the mouse was already over the side and on his way in a little tiny coracle. 

To him, it was obvious who had to do it.  It was the only reason he had been born.  So, with silence and tears of joy that are reserved only for those perfectly matched to their Ultimate Calling, he paddled his tiny coracle to the edge...   and tipped...    and went over.  Gone.  Bliss.

This is a children's book, remember.

That's what my small spiritual self is like.  Its the one who will get me to the edge.  But no one lives to tell the tale of what is over the edge.  That is reserved for another kind of Being altogether, that even the noblest small self cannot really sustain.  The small self can be transformed to the perfection of form all the way up to that point.  Then it must be allowed to fall. 

The one argument I have with people who are into "killing the ego" is that they are so vicious about it.  This body is not the enemy.  It has carried you all this way, and should be set aside with love, respect, honor and gratitude.  Like the ideal mindset one should have when one kills an animal so that one can eat and survive.  It has sacrificed everything for you.  Treat it with the appropriate respect.

St. Francis got this in the end.  I think its one of my favorite things about him.  His process was so fantastic.  In the end, after a long period of abusing his body as if it were the enemy containing all the forces which keep him from being with his Beloved, he realized that he had broken it, but not really freed himself of his resistance.  Then he was left with a body that had to be cared for by others, becoming a burden to them, and still had the same limitations to his inward freedom that he'd always had.  He repented mournfully. 


But all that is distraction.  The most valuable thing I got out of this weeks practice was the sense of what my limbic system is all about.  This week, our teacher had her dog there in the room with us.  A giant poodle, I believe.  That strange pink color that some dogs have.  He took an instant liking to me, and while we were doing the walking meditation, came up to me and nuzzled my hand.  It was so sweet. 

Our job as students that afternoon was to be mindful of the breath and the body as it walked.  So, I fought a little bit with my impulse to be mindful of the dog.  But after I got what I needed to get, I was very grateful.  The dog was aware too, in it's sensory and limited way.  His entire nervous system was alert to sounds and sights and smells which might indicate anything that was of interest or concern to him.  So was mine.  This is what we shared.  When he became alarmed about something he heard and got up and trotted out of the room I realized exactly what my limbic system was doing.  This was the part of me that was animal.  I too can become alerted to something outside and my awareness will dwell inside that sensory limitation and be carried out of the room.  This is what we all were struggling with.  And at that moment it became clear that there was something more that we could do, as humans, that the dog could not.  This is what I was here to learn about.

So, while I kept struggling, I could easily have been overwhelmed with frustration.  But I wasn't.  I knew there was something ahead of me on the road and that I wasn't there yet, and that I would know it when I got there, but that I couldn't describe it yet.  So, I was okay with letting myself take time to learn. 

For the rest of the session, I realize how much better I was at focusing on the breath than I was when I first walked in there.  A flood of gratitude came over me so that I wanted to cry out and hug my teacher and thank her with tears.  But I just smiled and restrained myself.  My heart opened wide. 

It is again, just remembering.  I'm so grateful.


But, I gotta tell ya!  The kicker was last night when I read an article in WIE? magazine for this month.  It just came in the mail yesterday.

Pages 72-76 are about Integral Feminism.  Pages 78-84 are about Andrew Cohen's group's experience with feminism.  The difference between the two are hugely important to me. 

While I occupy the body, I see it as my duty to dwell within form with integrity.  I do not see it as my duty to try and transcend/reject/leave behind/set aside or in any way not be respectful to form with all it's necessary limitations.  There is a very real distinction between the relationship to form from Wilber's crew and that relationship from Cohen's crew.  Cohen sees the solution to women's stuckness as involving some kind of non-identification with the form of "woman".  Wilber's crew is more fully embracing the entire package - both non-identification as well as identification. 

I have "smelled" this distinction for years now, and am EXTREMELY relieved to find that I am not alone, nor "wrong".  I see how and why Cohen is doing what he is doing.  But - to put it bluntly - he is using a certain aspect of form without acknowledging it and at the same time wishes he could help people escape from it, but can't as long as he's unconscious about this.  I can see why he doesn't want to acknowledge it, but he is necessarily trapping himself and his students in a vicious cycle of Shadow Boxing. 

The amusing irony is that he is a man and a teacher.  And his women students are going to respond instinctively to him in such a way that they will be trying to please him.  If he were to lead the way and stop denying that his male animalness triggers this deep response in the female animals around him, and that this is part of what his effectiveness as a teacher depends on, then they could all relax and stop struggling.  But no.  He needs to hang on to the power he has as a teacher - one of the aspects of form - and this is the natural toll you have to pay the piper for dancing to this tune.  In order to hang on to that kind of projection between student and teacher, everyone has to suffer though the fear involved in evoking that kind of people pleasing. 

Innerestingly the men students are at a disadvantage.  They don't get to see the distinction clearly between their projection and their own ability to transcend.  It's all mixed up together.  But for the women, the ability to transcend disappears as soon as Elvi - oops, I mean - Andrew leaves the building.  Those who have an Eye, let them see.

It's frustrating for me to watch this community keep sniffing around and around this thing, but never finding it.  But, I guess the truth is that it's my small, separate, "spiritual-self" that is frustrated.  Which is fine.  My goal is to make peace with form, and to inhabit it with integrity around issues such as this.  So, I'm okay with that.  It's a relief to finally see that I'm not crazy when it comes to this.  I may be crazy in other ways, but....

Blessings upon them.


So this article was basically 3 prominent women in the Integral community responding to the question of, "What would a new feminism created through the lens of integral theory look like, feel like, and be like, embodied by women?"  Excellent! 

Relief #1
Sophia Diaz:
"Right now, there is a preference for masculine forms of information, and we are trying to break into that with a feminine sensibility.  My personal motivation for this is actually suffering.  There is a certain level of unanswerable suffering, a bodily felt reality that there's something that hasn't been addressed, something that doesn't make the realization you once had present all the time.  It has to do with a prioritization of information over the emotional and psychic health of embodiment.  We want to help women cultivate a profound trust of the good, the true, and the beautiful that is inherent in a woman's heart, to bring out the vulnerable part of us from which all our energy comes...  So we're basically talking about something that is invisible because it is so present all the time..."

Hallelujah!  Fish are wet!  Hello!!  Imagine if all the fish in the world suddenly realized that!  LOL

Yes, we are Shadowing things and those things have a very strong gravitational pull as long as they are beneath the surface of ordinary consciousness.  Once they are above the surface, they lose that pull, and we are no longer stuck to them like we are to this planet body.  We can ascend or descend according to our choice.  The prioritizing of information necessitates that we put a judgment on absolutely everything.  It can be anything from a moral judgment to a simple categorization.  When we do that, we are doing a certain kind of violence to that thing.  It merely arose out of the depths, minding it's own business, and all of a sudden it's being told that it can go here but not there, and it can only be this but not that.  But the innocent mind responds to that kind of violence by forming a gate-keeper who pushes the thing back underground.  It doesn't respond by forming lines and obeying orders.  That gate-keeper becomes the Conscience.  The Shadow Master.  And the Innocent mind becomes passive, and forfeits it's power.  From that point on, the Gate-keeper takes over such moral jobs as telling the "truth".  That is counter to its real programing, but that is one of the demands we place upon it. 

And when Integral or Shadow Work comes along and requests it to answer to Sophia's "bodily felt reality", it is in quite a pickle.  If The conscience tells the real Truth, it puts itself in line for being laid off.  It must choose between pushing the impulses down below deck, or confessing that they are there and they are in pain.  If it chooses to confess, we will require it to allow them to emerge and speak for themselves.  That is the 3-2-1 process.  Then it is out of a job.  Unless, of course, we rewrite the job description as: telling the Truth, instead.

Paul the Apostle uses many words in the opening chapters to the Romans to describe why we cannot be free from problematic impulses by empowering the Conscience to push them below deck in the name of standards of behavior (Law).  Rather, it is the standards of behavior which make us aware that those impulses are down there because they are trying to come up and the conscience is always kept busy holding them back.  He maintains that a person is Good apart from constantly pushing the "Bad" impulses below deck.  It is Grace that makes this possible. 

So at that point, we bring the Innocent mind back online and allow it to help hold the space for new instructions.  It is this Innocent mind that floats free above the surface, not stuck, and is able to ascend or descend at will.  It is now informed by Good, Truth and Beauty, so it is not Ignorant, but neither is it is stuck like the conscience was.  It simply allows things to arise as they are.  Sophia describes it like this: "The Feminine Principle is being itself - literally the nourishment force of existence, because it is existence itself." 

Bless her.

Relief #2
Diane Musho Hamilton
"Enlightenment knows no gender, yet it manifests in the body and mind of this woman practitioner.  Enlightenment is empty of all particularity, and at the same time, it is the full unfolding of distinctions in the manifest realm, including feminine sensibilities.  Enlightenment is not bound by time and space but, paradoxically, is realized through consciousness occurring in our time and place, in this culture, and under these conditions in which the question "What is Integral Feminine?" comes up.

...You could say that she is a manifestation of evolutionary consciousness, embodying development with a particularly feminine flavor.  To the extent that she is aware, to the extent that she learns and unfolds, she has the innate capacity to expand and open into greater and greater identification with all things.  This unfolding requires her intention, devotion, and will, and she is ultimately an integral spiritual practitioner.  As an Integral practitioner, her most outstanding feature is the ability to take different perspectives on who and what she is, without being limited or constrained by them.  In other words, the Integral Feminine is aware of herself arising in four quadrants of experience - the individual interior, individual exterior, collective interior, and collective exterior.  Using the integral map, she is able to take perspectives easily and fluidly, without becoming fixed, dogmatic, or demanding in her viewpoint, realizing that all perspectives are inextricably related and partial..."

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, "greater and greater identification with all things".  Period.  Fuller and fuller, even though emptier and emptier.  Female represents all people, and that means no one is going to be enlightened while retaining pure non-identification with all things.  Sorry.  For thousands of years, in every religion, this has been the dream.  Time to wake up.

"Moreover, her loyalty is to both sexes and to supporting men and women in manifesting more beautifully who they are...  "

This and this next bit, more than anything, supports the strangeness of my experience of pursuing a Restraining Order on my Boyfriend whom I love and who loves me. 

Relief #3
Willow Pearson
"I am love, I am lovable, I am loved, and I love.
We are that Love.  Not just when we feel happy, not just when we're temporarily graced with health, not only when we find ourselves in relationship, or finally find ourselves by getting out of one.  That Love is the very ground of our being, even when we feel like a raging thunderstorm that will never end or an impenetrable fortress of fog where the sun won't shine through or a proverbial wet blanket.  Even then, we are that Love...

...Through the power of identification, valuation, and affirmation that comes from practicing among women, we are increasingly able to both deeply include and freely transcend our femaleness and other characteristics of our embodiment."

[sigh]
Yes, now I can relax so many muscles that have been so tense for so long, trying to wrestle with the illusion that I have been wrong.  The fight is over.  The solution is at a level above the problem.

"THE WAR IS OVER!  ZION, THE WAR IS OVER!  The machines, they're gone!"

Later on, I will engage the fight again as I lose consciousness again.  And then I will gain it back again.  The more I experience the losing and gaining and back and forth, the more I will know the pathway between those two worlds and be able to get myself back and forth at will. Even in the Dark.

~Ww

"God!"

"What?"

"I used to eat there.  Really good noodles.  I have all these memories from my life.  But none of it happened.  What does that mean?"


I'm on a precipice.  I've been given the option by my Vocational Rehab counselor to consider opening a file at Mental Health and going on SSI.  My family is no longer willing to help me, and I cannot survive on my own with the difficulties that I have.  I have made huge improvement over the last 3 years, but not enough to impress the people who are helping me and not enough for me to make it.  As I've mentioned in other places, the size of the invisible boulder that my limbic system is trying to push uphill is just too big.  I am strong.  If you were trying to heft my boulder, I doubt you could do it as well as I have for as long as I have.  But I'm not strong enough. 

If it were just about me, then I think I would just let it all go.  So what if my family and friends have thought that I was just lazy or stubborn or stupid and now they are going to see a different projection.  I would just call "time of death" and wash my hands and walk away.  But there's way more at stake.  If all I wanted was to have my Disorder and be left alone, then I could cut my losses.  But I want more than that.  In fact, it's prolly partly the nature of my Disorder that makes me want more than that.  It's quite a trap.  And I think I see now that there is no way out.  Not, at least, in time to make enough money to pay for a roof over my head and food on my table.  Lets look at this as objectively as we can:

I have no We-space in my local life. 

Well, work has potential, but there's no actual yet. 

I don't have anything that holds me in the loving arms of it's awareness while I do things that risk failure.  I actually never have.  This has badly damaged my nervous system. 

For some reason I don't yet understand, I want it repaired.  I don't just want everything to feel better.  I won't take meds, and I don't self-medicate on a regular basis - only on occasion when it gets really bad.  Maybe that's because the nature of my Disorder causes me to want to be a good enough person to deserve to be here.  I don't know.  I can't shut it "off".  It's "on" and the handle's been broken off of the switch.  At any rate, it has lead me to some really beautiful, good and truthful places, so I'm not really complaining.

I think it's reparable, but the quickest means to do that is ridiculously costly and it seems to be only considered for children.  Adults are apparently closed off from that kind of healing.  I'll prolly never have that available to me.  If I ever do, then I will take it. 

The most likely way forward is to find my own way.  This means I will necessarily have to continue repressing the fear about taking Risks.  This will also mean that I won't respect people who don't take Risks in life, and that will keep the whole vortex of indifference and anger and hurt and fear that surrounds me spinning.  At least for a while.  Maybe I can find a way to heal. 

But I think the struggle to find a way to keep my limitations from wrecking the projections that my Tribe has for me in it's collective limbic system is over.  The show's over. 

Is there another kind of Tribe?  People who really understand that this is a drama that the limbic system is generating, and that there is more to being human than our deep triggers?  It's not that this projection isn't "real", it's that there is more about me that is real.  It cannot contain all of me.  Who am "I"? 

"The Matrix cannot tell you who you are."

Will I or won't I step over the edge?

~Ww

My friend Amadon wants to leave.  While I am learning to let things be what they are, I am also learning to let my not-okay-letting-things-be-what-they-are-yet be what it is.  Clear as mud?  Great.  Mine is a weird path. 

I have constructed an entire blog-post-in-response-to-his-blog-post in his honor.  Complete with quotes.  Behold:

"Arguably, the people presently at Zaadz are, for the most part, a bit deeper in their thinking than the public at large. But the people at Zaadz are not so different in their tendency to make many relatively superficial social contacts, and their tendency to choose breadth over depth in learning. Consequently, the skills that allow for social functionality are, in general, insufficiently developed. And those are basic spiritual skills, developmental skills."

I couldn't agree more!

"Another problem related to the flood of available information and trainings is a flood of misleading titles and credentials. I was surprised, at first, to find a young man who claimed to be a “Master Avatar.” Then I discovered, of course: he took a training that bestowed that title on him."

LOL  Again, so true!

"It’s tragic, folks! Titles which once meant something now mean virtually nothing. The problem is, we’re losing the functions the titles used to indicate."

Yup.  Baudrillard strikes again!  Oh, you're tickling my favorite pet peeve bones!  This is just too easy to get excited about, but its pulling me towards a more contracted place.  My dear, I could quote you for days.

"The drill is: exaggerate what it can do, make out like it’s very superior, delude people into a kind of a new superstition and dogma about that, and thereby popularize your technique and make money. The more outrageous claims you can make for your technique, the more money, potentially, you can earn in a competitive marketplace. That makes the whole spirituality bazaar completely bizarre. Claims are routinely distorted and almost cartoon-like because competition requires it. "

etc, etc, etc.  Just the other day someone displayed their "attachment-avoiding unlove" to me here.  Someone who will coach you for a fee over the phone or email, someone with years of experience teaching, someone with a degree, and someone who supposedly believes it's "all about love" - displayed blatant ignorance and shallowness towards me after I got overly excited by one of my favorite subjects and shared more about my life than was "normal".  Some healer!  But maybe this person would have responded differently if I had given them my credit card number!

Wow. 

In my work with the Mentally ill, I've figured out that people who come to this work often inwardly hate the very symptoms that their clients usually have.  It's a Shadow thing.  I was just talking with someone the other day about the same phenomenon in other fields - doctors and nurses who can't stand sick people, teachers who hate kids, Lawyers who hate victims, social workers who hate poverty and homelessness, Christians who hate sin, Buddhists who hate suffering, etc.  It goes on and on.  They are drawn by some hidden desire to eradicate the thing they hate by using the technology available in that field, but meanwhile their hidden hatred (eventually, hidden only to themselves) undoes any good that they have achieved through the use of that technology.  It's weird, but common.  Much of the energy that cranks out this non-love, non-sanity is, as you say, fear.

"So I say, it’s not only what you’re avoiding that you should fear. It’s what you’re actually embracing, what you’re doing instead of the things you’re avoiding, that you should fear. "

I totally applaud your intention to bring more consciousness to this HUGE problem, however I believe you've come up against Shadow at this point, and Shadow has an even more powerful intention towards Anti-consciousness.  Endless explanations and pleadings and reasoning will not prevail against it.  The Darkness, truly, has a mind of it's own.


"Basically, people fear A, and they are way too skeptical to believe that C — A’s (healthy) opposite — could really exist. They tend to think, skeptically, that if anything appears to be A’s opposite, it is really A in disguise. So they get stuck in B, a reactive alternative to A."

This is important!  This is the same thing as what happens between developmental and value meme levels.  Yes!  Yes!  Yes! 

I weigh about 135 pounds, give or take some water-weight during my cycle.  But to someone who is developmentally ahead of me, I am as emotionally heavy as the rock that God made too heavy for Him to lift.    I just cannot be dragged or lifted up.  No way, no how. 

I see it when I try and lift someone else who is below me.  Any Parent understands instinctively what this is about.  It's all well and good to give the young child special indulgence, but more is expected of the older child.  And when they can finally give it, they get special privaleges.  Eventually, if your child does not progress to a developmental level even with or above you, then you begin to think something is wrong. 

Adults who talk as if they understand advanced ideas often fool themselves and one another into believing that they are, in fact, advanced.  But their relational behavior - or their actions in the We-space - give them away.  It becomes obvious to those developmentally above them - or even just on the flip side of their Shadow perspective - that they are still operating at a sub- or pre-conscious level when their actions cancel out the effect of their stated values.  Their hypocrisy may be passed off as not "understanding" the ideas well enough, but that is not what is going on.   

"What about a beautiful marriage between two people who are devoted (yet, not off-center)! What about a beautiful relationship between a teacher who is actually wise, and truly loves the student, and a student who truly loves the teacher (with a healthy love)?  Do either of those possibilities exist in your mind? No? How sad. "

Indeed. 

Those kinds of relationships generate a larger, more expanded field of potential for both individuals.  Together they can become more than the average of their parts.  Unfortunately, most people have not figured out how to relate to others in a healthy way yet.  Of course, the root of that problem is that they don't yet have healthy relationships with themselves, but that goes back to the issue of consciousness and distinguishing the difference between the idea of consciousness and the thing itself. 

My personal soap-box is that Higher Consciousness is not enough.  Lower Consciousness is also very important.  But convincing people here of that is pretty hard.  The New Age specifically campaigns against it.

The field of potential in relationship totally depends on Lower Consciousness: the deep triggers and NLP type things that are part of our makeup.  The solution to the problem of getting pulled off center and exploitation and such is not to avoid the triggers and patterns, but to bring Higher Consciousness down to it's level and invest ourselves in engaging those energies with benevolence and love.  This will both create acute vulnerability and solve the problems associated with it at the same time.  I just don't think there is any other way.  As you say, all other roads seem to lead to death.


"You know, hate to tell ya the truth but … every person who has ever learned anything in depth learned it from a true master. "

If by this you mean, someone other than yourself, then I'm afraid I'm gonna have to disagree.  I've learned important things from people who had no skill, much less intention, to teach what I learned from them.  That's because the Master is really me.  And by that, I don't mean my small egoic self.  I mean a part of me that really is a Master but I haven't yet fully integrated. 

I believe that the reason Teaching and Deep Loving works is because there is Shadow Hugging going on.  I trust a Teacher or fall in love because I see something wonderful in that person that I want for my own character.  But I wouldn't even recognize it if I didn't have it in some capacity somewhere - even hidden from myself.  Embracing the quality in the Other becomes an opportunity to recover and heal that quality within the self because, from what I've heard, there really is no "other".  Only mirrors.

But using the mirror of the "other" is important to begin the process for many.  There's no mistaking it.  And for most of human history, this has been the only way to begin.  I think that might be changing, but I'm not sure.  For some, that way will still be best.  I don't think anyone can make that call for someone else.  If a "Student" cannot learn from a "Teacher" who is an "other", then there's no use trying to force it.  Let them invent the wheel again.  There is value in understanding the entire process of discovery for the self, and not having the final product handed to you on a silver platter.

"It’s one thing to ignore a friend’s advice, but people also refuse to learn from, or even acknowledge, true elders and competent teachers, because they consider that would be a challenge to their sovereignty, an “invalidation” of their Divinity. That’s pretty nearly the deepest and most truly diabolical horseshit being produced on the planet at the present time. It rules out appropriate humility and appropriate respect all at once."

I think I understand your concern.  Refusing Truth from above is a risky business.  It can end up with alot of tossed babies with bathwater.  But this is by no means anything new.  The scientific revolution did the same thing.  There were plenty of disasters along with the improvements.  People who teach and who do it with integrity have valid complaints.  Nevertheless, time marches on and changes are inevitable.  If we look behind us and ask what could have been done better for the other "enlightenment", what kind of answers would we come up with?  Can those be applied here?

"Everywhere in modern society, we see individuals who really are very poor learners — people with enormous pride, and insane fear of acknowledging any sort of authority. And while there can be spiritually good aspects to this, it tends to produce generations of people who really know amazingly little after an amazingly long time."

This is very true.  As you hinted; after so many hundreds of years of exploiting one limited natural resouce after another to the point of economic and public health disasters on an international scale, why are auto-makers still wasting time designing and selling us new cars that use gasoline?  WTF? 

I love this:

"What is the right use of the truth of our Divinity? Accept personal power, but allow everyone to have their power — including people who are, in fact, particularly powerful, knowledgeable (and from whom we would be wise, therefore, to learn). "

Flat out, yeah!  And this:

"Then mutual consideration is impossible; deep conversation is impossible; meeting of minds and hearts is impossible. Debate becomes the way — and the debate isn’t on a level that makes its results particularly valuable."

LOL  I don't know how you feel about explatives, but flat out, FUCK YEAH!

"What is the right use of communication? Be more honest. Don’t just say what you think; pay attention how the exchange feels. And if, in all honestly, it doesn’t feel good, adjust. Listen more. Care more. Address what the other person says — and, more importantly, feels. "

Beautiful! 

"Now you see, friends, why I say, “fear well.” A lot depends on correcting our misplaced fears."

Indeed.  Fear is a deep trigger that generates all sorts of neurochemical transactions which strengthen us as well as weaken us.  I wrote about this before.  Your very next sentence is an example of what I mean:

"How bad do these problems have to get before people decide it’s time to rebel, to turn around, and to change things? Normally, things have to get very bad for most people to seriously object or to do anything about it. Only when a problem comes to a head do people finally wake up."

The thing that makes it hard for them to wake up is the exact same thing which is causing you to sound the alarm.  It's the same process.  Today's alarm becomes tomorrow's anti-consciousness.  After today's solution has been sucked dry of everything it has to offer, it then becomes tomorrow's problem, in need of a new solution.  That is the way of things.  The more tension we create around today's solution, the more our children and grandchildren will have to fight to bring about the next solution.  So, I would offer a question about what we unconsciously create when we create strong intention. 

"Once something is committed to being, a space and time where it is not, also emerges.  You cannot create something without also creating the non-existence of it."  Before you create the next thing, ask yourself what else you are creating alongside.

It is true that zaadz contains all that many of us think will solve the big problems now.  And consequently, it is also true that it contains tomorrow's problems.  Few see that.  It won't hurt anything to keep our eyes open to that.  And we still have to plot forward on the road we're on.  Divine frustration abounds!  And so:

"...more and more people will be inclined to rebel against the madness of it, and to take a path that is much truer to the real values of spirituality: ego transcendence; true love of real God; and true discernment."

Yay and amen!  Eros will continue to stretch the growing tip and invite the transcendence of our current limits.  Your frustration, my friend, is truly shared.  Make no mistake about it.  Clearly, there are many who care about the lame debates and arguments over terms and angels on pin-heads. 

But, if they all leave out of frustration, who will lead the way?  What else are you creating alongside of your place "where the living reflects your intuition of life well lived."  Please be mindful of that.  That is all I ask. 

Rest and be well, my visionary, wonderful friend.  I will miss you.

~Ww

But its prolly not you.  It may just be me.

I'm hearing that my life is exhausting.  I'm hearing that I sound crazy.  I'm hearing that I'm scary.  I'm hearing that I'm worth ignoring. 

That's very inneresting.  Someone inside of me experiences me that way, and I had long since stopped listening to them.  I'm sorry for that. 

Because since I stopped listening, they haven't had the benefit of my help in understanding.  They haven't had the opportunity to mature enough to hold space for such chaos and wildness.  They have stayed stuck in ignorance and - unfortunately - arrogance.  Yes, me.  That person is me.  There is really exhausting, crazy, scary stuff going on around me and in me that I arrogantly dismiss and ignore because at some point in my life I couldn't contain it - so I locked the person who sees it in the basement.  They operate down there without my supervision or consent.  They come out when my head is turned and act out.  They hurt people.  They're prolly just a scared child.  But they don't think they are.  They are wearing a Grown Up disguise and they've looked in the mirror and fooled themself. 

But so have my Primary Selves who don't have the burden of arrogance or fear to bear.  They have fooled themselves as well - the Benevolent and Non-Judgmental ones, the humble and fearless ones, the honest and spiritual ones.  They have been thinking that they own my character and that ability to see things as they are for a long time.  They've believed that they've been occasionally touched by some "spirit" from "the great beyond" when they are able to see clearly.  But really, it's just the Shadowed parts of myself that God gave to me to begin with - and I rejected - that are seeing things. 

What would happen if I invited that rejected Person back to the table to help with my life? 

Too scary.  Way too scary!  Big Black Hole there.  Lots of Anti-consciousness.  Something very bad happened there. 

So other people have had to take up that Voice to replace what I tried to purge from myself.  That's a heavy burden: arrogance and fear.  I'm sorry.  It'd be great if you were in a place where you could hear what is being said to you too.

It may take some time for me to get that Program back on line.  I know that God holds that space of Grace open for me to do what I have to do around this, but I don't know if others will.  ...I don't know if I will...  Lots of trial and error.  But I have to try.  It has been a deeply hated thing. 

Lord have Mercy on me.  And you too.

~Ww

Yesterday I went to my first Sangha.  And learned how to actually pronounce the word.  LOL  I've read it hundreds of times!  There's a little local group here.  I'll have to ask first before I add it to the zaadz list, they may prefer to remain private.  But they were very kind with me and another newcomer. 

I'm starting to see how the work with Higher Consciousness works together with Lower Consciousness.  I'm so grateful that I did my lower work first!!  I think I've relieved so much suffering already so that going Higher can now be free to work for a different agenda.  I really don't like the idea of going Higher in order to avoid suffering.  It really bothers me.  So many people remain unconscious of the dualistic agenda of that.  Even this month's Shambhala Sun magazine is putting it in those terms. 

"In Myths from around the world, men and women have searched for an elixir that will bring protection from suffering.  Buddhism's answer is mindfulness."

The opening pages of the article are supporting the agenda of the avoidance of pain/suffering - as if those were the same.  I get that the Axial age brought about great leaps in consciousness, but it used the developmental levels of the day to translate it.  And we're still using that. 

I am aware of being attached to feeling pain.  From what I understand, Higher Consciousness doesn't relieve one's pain.  It brings more expanded Consciousness to the pain, so that we're actually more present with the pain and avoiding it less!  But people don't typically talk about it that way.  People may rhapsodize about being more present with beauty or goodness, but pain?  Um...     no.  Anger?    Uh......      no.  Fear?     [shuffle, shuffle]  Trying to get a Buddhist to hold space for fear is like trying to get a Fundie-Christian to stop judging people. 

So, until I find some We-space that will be present with me, with my pain, I'll hold my own space, thankyouverymuch.  My pain has taught me so much.  Kept me sane.  Kept me on the Higher path.  Kept me close to Beauty, Truth and Goodness.  Kept me connected to others.  Kept me free from conformity.  Kept my Eros pointed in the right direction so that I would end up here:

Ready to expand past it's boundaries.   I don't think a person is really ready if they haven't made peace with their pain yet.  What they resist, will persist.  It will be an anchor for the soul, keeping them tied to the very thing they are trying to avoid.  I'm losing all such trying.  My chains are very loose now...

I embrace the previously Shadowed precociousness it takes to say such things.  There is no reason to push that away.  My Eros is still pointing upwards, stretching the growing tip.  The tip of that which will be expanded beyond...  towards...  All.  Fullness. 

I'm almost ready to say, "emptiness".  LOL  But not quite.  That word is loaded with associations of avoidance and attachment.  As a woman, that does no appeal to me.  I want to embrace and contain all that the Universe has to offer.  Conquer it all with love.  The article in Shambhala Sun contains a quote from George Washington Carver. 

"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough."

I am in love with the revealing of such secrets.  The secret of Evil is that it is not the Baddass it wishes it was.  To me, that is a much more worthwhile "Secret" to know than the popular one right now.  It really is weak and frail and totally vulnerable to undoing. 

"I want what you want, Mr. Anderson.  I want everything!"

Blessings and bliss to all.

~Ww

I've had some wonderful conversations over the past several days.  Really terrific.  Thank you, all.

It seems to be a constant process of bumping into people and seeing if we can have an awareness of our bumping.  Have you seen the movie, "CRASH" ?  Wow!  Can you contain it all?  All that pain?  All that hope?  All that desperation?  All that futility?  Can you really be present to it all and not recoil?  I'm warning you; it's excruciating.

The more I listen to people talk about our collective situation, the more I see how our stories are all the collective interior (LL) representation of something that goes on in our brains.  Don't worry, I know that works both ways.  I know that our collective brain chemicals (LR) are representations of what is going on in our collective experiences together in time.   Both cause the other.  There is no answer to the chicken and the egg.  My good friend today, answered someone's attempt to pidgeonhole her with a really good response.  Someone asked her, "Are you a hippie chick?"  And she said, "No, I'm a hippie chicken!"  I love her. 

Our brain chemicals, at this time, are used to supporting the learning patterns that we've been doing for millenia, but we're asking them to support another kind of learning now, and they're having a hard time.  Can anyone just give the human brain a little forgiveness here?  Can we stop with the polemic and Violent Communication towards our "ego's" and all that other crap?  Puleeeze! 

I know.  I'm just reinforcing the problem by saying it that way.  There is a chemical representation of frustration with the slowness of others.  Whatever it is, I'm having it right now. 

Derailing that and asking my brain to reinforce something totally new is asking alot.  For a few hours now I've been listening to the sound-loop to the CRASH website play over and over.  It's an OM.  There are no human voices, but that's what it is.  No doubt about it.  It contains all the sorrow and all the release.  It's good for me right now.  My brain chemicals are responding to it and imprinting.  They are associating meaning to this sound that will help me go forward.  However, eventually, those associations will become part of the problem, and the event of frustration will occur all over again. 

Last night I was strangely sensitive to music too.  As I drove through town, "I Put a Spell On You" by Creedence Clearwater Revival came on.  If you don't "get" that song, and that band and what is going on there, then forget this part.  But that is just straight audio-voodoo.  It is triggering all the right things that arouse the most primal jealousy and posessiveness.  It is profound.  Then again later "Too Rolling Stoned" by Robin Trower came on.  More amazingness.  Don't worry if you haven't made the same associations as I have.  But I had to just stop the car for a bit and listen even tho I had already arived at my destination.  I also drove really slow so I wouldn't get home too soon.  I opened the windows of the car and cruised down State Street real slow.  Listening.  Looking for cops in my rear view.  Transfixed.  To all outward appearances I was stoned. 

I'm so glad that I'm an animal.  The triggers in my nervous system are so powerful and there is so much pleasure there.  It amazes me how powerful we are. 

And equally weakened. 

Please take a moment today to sit in awe of your mobile consciousness unit. 

Then take the next moment to contemplate with humility how equally powerful and weak we all are.  How compelled.  How caught.  How frustrated. 

"We must forgive each other our arising, for our existance always torments others.  The Golden Rule in the midst of this mutual misery has always been, not to do no harm, but as little as possible; and not to love one another, but as much as you can."
~KW

~Ww

Yesterday was one of the most amazing days I can remember in a long time.  I watched the most extreme cases of human blindness happen all around me and at me.  I just watched.  And I tried not to contract down and satisfy myself with "ain't it aweful" kinds of thinking.  Not because it wasn't aweful, or that the victims didn't deserve an advocate, but because by doing so, I would be energizing the opposition instead of resolving any conflict.  (see previous entry)

I didn't merely hold in my anger.  I watched it.  It swelled within me.  I contained the same urge to punish according to how I saw it.  There's no doubt about it.  I am them.

No.  There has to be another way. 

I'm seeing some good help from The Center for Nonviolent Communication.  They have the Lower Right quadrant thing pretty much covered here.  Really good help for the We-Space.  And, it can inspire some transformation in the Lower Left, but it can't necessarily create or cause it.  The best our technology can do in these situations is inspire.  But like I said the other day, inspiration sometimes has a Shadow side of rejection which the subject is not necessarily conscious or aware of.  Our Awareness is key.  We can only see beyond choices that we understand.  If we understand them, then the consequences will be manageable. 

Today, I go to Court to lay down a restraining order on my boyfriend.  The Legal system really wants me to paint him as this Bad, Evil person.  I know better than to think that will solve anything.  So, I'm asking that the Court merely honor my requests to restrain him because I don't want his behavior in my face right now; it's making it too difficult for me to do the things I need to do to get well.  I don't hate him.  I love him.  But I need a safe, secure and supportive environment in which to do the vulnerable work of my own transformation.  He cannot control himself and I can't afford to spend all my time and energy trying to control him either.  I have urgent matters to take care of.  So, I'm working on my wording and trying to give the Court the quantifyable elements they need to do their part.  It's inneresting.  I have to negotiate with the Judge not to hurt him or humiliate him.  I just need him off me. 

Both my Punisher and my Savior/Rescuer/Worthy Self are working together in this excercize.  They are not fighting or competing.  They both understand that the only way to win is for everyone to win.  If anyone is sacrificed, then we all lose. 

My Mother is trying to oppose me.  She is working unconsciously out of terrible fear and anger, but she cannot wake up.  Not yet, anyway.  Maybe some other time.  But I need to not get caught up in her vortex either.  She still has some traction in me.  Traction that is not for my good or cannot help me. 

But what I really need to acknowledge is that I am doing this because I still lack something.  It's coming from a place of need and lack.  I somehow do not have what I need when he starts to go into Self-destruct mode and starts drawing me in.  I cannot keep myself from going down.  My own impulse to Self-destruct is still somewhat strong and I regress back there from time to time when I am deeply triggered.  I do not yet have freedom from that compusion, so when he is doing it in my face, mine is energized and I cannot save myself.  Not yet. 

In time, I hope to gain more freedom so that I can sow less turmoil into conflict and get to resolution quicker.  I have to do this without rejecting my Inner Fighter or Punisher.  Otherwise I will be creating more Shadow from which more shit will fly. 

I'm doing the right thing.  But it is like trying to remove someone's infected apendix with a shovel.  It would be great if we had better tools to do this with than shovels, but we really don't.  Not yet.  So, I want to be really careful.  Shovels don't cure apendicitis, people do.  I'm hoping that the Judge will see it my way, but if he insists that there must be a crime and there has to be a criminal, then I may have to call it off.  That just won't solve anything. 

There needs to be another way.

~Ww

I don't know if I'm intuiting something important or not, but I think I am. 

It seems to me now that everything that exists can be seen as a Contraction which creates Shadow.  Everything.  To exist means to be located in a place and time which means there is also a place and time where you do not exist.  Only that which is beyond existing and not existing can do both.  So, I guess I have to agree with the Atheists who say that God does not exist.  If we understand existence as a small sub-section of that which transcends existence, then I gotta hand it to 'em: God would, logically, include existing and not existing.  But I doubt that's what they're talking about.  When humans speak of God, we're mainly concerning ourselves with the part Who does Exist. 

Hence, my point. 

Once something is committed to being, a space and time where it is not, also emerges.  You cannot create something without also creating the non-existence of it.  Before a thing existed, it's non-existence didn't exist yet either.  Call it condensation or contraction or whatever.  First, there is a field of potential, then a thing emerges simultaneously alongside of it's opposite or non-thing. 

As humans, we have great power to create.  But we create without awareness of this Shadow creation.  I want my personal space to be beautiful, therefore I decorate and arrange my things artfully around me.  We do not usually acknowledge what happens when we do this - that we therefore also create space where, what we think of as beautiful, does not exist.  Without realizing what we've done, we've powerfully created a space of ugliness - which is prolly fairly large since we can't decorate the whole world. 

Another example: I want to generate kindness.  Therefore I adopt a manner of behavior and attitude which includes as much of what the majority of humans consider kind as I can.  This seems simple enough and a wonderful goal.  But without knowing it I've also generated the opposite of this kindness.  My desire has begun a process which chooses one thing over another, leaving behind the other, creating a pile of rejected others.  Others like being indiferent to the needs or sufferings of other people or causing pain to other people. 

I am only aware of the thing I have intended: kindness.  By rejecting the impulse to be indiferent or cruel within myself, I have also rejected that impulse in other people.  Those other people do not necessarily feel inspired by my rejection.  They may just feel rejected.  And that which exists but is rejected, will assert itself.  What you resist, shall persist.  And we're as sick as our secrets.  Those rejected other people will gather around the pile of rejected behaviors and attitudes and protect and assert it with or without our permission.  We have unwittingly created and strengthened our "enemy". 

Everything that exists has this Shadow.  Everything. 

God.  Me and you.  The earth.  The Universe.  An atom.  A beautiful painting.  A thought.  A drop of rain.

It seems to me that the Eastern Spiritual Traditions have recognised this and have tried to help us turn this thing around and disempower the suffering which comes as a result of the lack of existence of those things which we have intended.  Sort of, run the tape backwards and dissolve everything so that all we have left is that field of potential and there's no existence and no Shadow and no one gets hurt. 

Isn't that regressive?

I've been watching (as closely as I have time for) Andrew Cohen's Spiritual Community and reading his convos with Ken Wilber.  This morning I was perusing the Zaadzsters page and found a profile who looked inneresting to me so I followed it.  It lead me to a website for a Teacher named simply, Thomas.  Who knew that the Germans could achieve enlightenment?!  As I listened to a video of Thomas talking about  some of the problems inherent with Spiritual Communities, I started to see the problem very clearly.  Some individuals seem to be able to achieve the essence of enlightenment fairly well (others lose it when they must interact with the normal world), but communities get stuck in the idea of enlightenment.  How do we get communities to achieve the essense?  A teacher with a very Powerful Presence can sometimes generate enough Transmission to keep all the members of a Community in a sort of gelatinous state of enlightenment.  In order to function within that Community, an individual must reject a certain amount of their autonomy so they don't sow discord into the We-Space.  It's a fragile bond that breaks easily. 

What if that too is regressive?

What if there is another way?  A way forward.  A way that doesn't run into a glass ceiling and stay stuck in the idea of enlightenment.  A way that includes all that has come before us and achieves what is ahead of us - rejecting nothing.  A way that includes our autonomy, our desire, and everything that we have unintentionally generated as Shadow by creating what we wanted?   What emerges when we run the tape forward instead of backward?  Something besides entropy?  Is there another possibility?

There are alot of folks who are certain that I am asking the wrong questions.  That I don't really understand things correctly, and therefore am confused.  But I don't think that is right. 

Out of the field of possibility has emerged what Is - both what was intended as well as it's Shadow.  The mechanism of creation is, always has been and always will be - Contraction.  Reversing the mechanism of Contraction returns our awareness to that field of possibility - the only place with no Shadow.  But on the way to losing Shadow, we've also lost Existence.  Ramana saw this.  It was a price he was willing to pay.  Nietzsche saw it, but was not willing. 

Is that really the price we have to pay?  And when existence asserts itself and gets all up in our face and disrupts our serenity, is that a price we really can pay? 

I think there must be another way.

~Ww