DO-OVER

Posted on April 18, 2012 by NerDharma

Several weeks have passed since I have subjected you to my fumbling consciousness.

Of course, that’s in chronological terms. In psyche terms, it felt like a geologic age. For I fell sick with a nasty strain of pneumonia which forced me to take quite an interior journey.

When one is practically unconscious for days on end, what else is one to do with one’s mind anyway?

One of the odd things from my mental walkabout were annoyingly persistent dreams of going to China again and again… and again. Now, I sport a particularly morose set of Norwegian genes, and the closest I ever got to China was this nifty iPad (yes, whom I’m going to marry, for all you who keep telling us to get a room) upon which I hunt and peck.

So China? WTF? Guess it’s a question for another time.

The next thing I will never forget is the blessing of sheer, physical pain.

See, I couldn’t read anything for the longest time, so listened to audiobooks… 3 Buddhist books, 1 guilty pleasure spy novel, 3 more Buddhist books, etc. But The Untethered Soul had a passage about how I’m not my pain… but rather how I am the one who observes my pain.

Oh sure, sounds like Mindfulness 101 to you guys, but for me, as nuclear coughs threatened to tear me limb from limb as surely as Torquemada’s Inquisition racks popped joints and rent sinew, focusing on the simple truth of me watching the pain helped more than all the expensive drugs.

And spending long stretches where it was about as easy to breathe as if I were being water-boarded, concentrating on the explosions of light in my brain was nearly blissful, albeit in perhaps a sadistic way, but what other choice did I have?

It’s odd, before being thus stricken, I would count a half-hour session as a job well done. But being laid out gave me the chance to drift in and out of mindfulness all day… so… kind of a luxury from a certain perspective.

I was able to see more clearly what a waste my life has been in advertising. What a total fucking waste. I might as well have spent it making those little plastic thingys on the end of shoelaces. No offense to the makers of little plastic shoelace tips, hey, someone’s gotta do it.

That, in turn, filled me with rage at myself for being so venal. Good thing Salzburg’s Metta writings were a rope tossed down to me in this hole. A rope which I’m climbing very carefully.

Additionally, one of my heroes is my long-suffering Buddhist therapist (kind of my own Tara Brach). After spending time with her, like Saul on the road to Damascus, I had the revelation that I really wanted to be a therapist like her — minus the dress — when I grew up.

Then I realized I was already grown up. Fine, way past.

Then I realized that the best I could hope for was a do-over. Don’t we get a certain number of do-overs to redeem during our time on this planet?

So I spent the last year-and-a-half trying to get accepted into a local masters program for counseling & development. And lo, it came to pass that I somehow actually did manage to squeak into said well-respected program, starting in June (just waiting for them to realize their mistake).

And now that I can read again, I’m voraciously devouring the first two textbooks for the first two classes, rolling in the words like a colt on spring grass.

So even though I’ve no idea how to pay for it yet, that thought alone – of being given a second chance to rewrite my future – gave me a star to steer by in the darkness of the past few weeks. I know I’m supposed to live in the present but I also love having a higher purpose for which to strive instead of doing another Super Bowl commercial.

Seriously, how much damned Pepsi am I supposed to sell, anyway?

I’m rambling. Hey, I’m still pretty doped up so I have an excuse.

Sorry if my wit may not be as rapier-like as some of you may hoped, but I just wanted to check in as the unpronounceable meds fade and ‘reality’ takes hold once again. Also, to provide a new entry for all those kind, patient and beautiful souls who have requested such — sorry to leave you hanging.

From now on, this illness has essentially given me asthma as a lovely parting gift to fondly remember it by, but at least I made it through the worst of the pain and the whole not breathing thing, which can seriously annoying.

So for my next post, which I’ll now have to squeeze in between studying Multicultural Counseling for one class and Psychological Appraisals for another, I hope to regain my snarky sea legs.

But in the meantime, perhaps just one more inexplicably random dream of a China I never knew…

 

Categories: Consciousness, Enlightenment, Mindfulness, Psyche | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

GASSY

Posted on March 22, 2012 by NerDharma

Wow, turns out there are a lot of things I don’t know.

Like how most depictions of Jesus were actually of Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander V.

Or the fact that I never realized I’ve been walking around inside my own mobile gas chamber, like the boy in the bubble?

Again, why don’t you people tell me these things? Geeze.

But in an even bigger surprise, I never realized that I pump my bubble full of a lethal gas that I can’t smell or see.

I pump it. Not someone else.

At least this deadly agent acts more slowly than phosgene, chlorine, mustard gas or hyrdrogen cyanide.

But at this very moment, it’s seeping into my pores, slowly debilitating my spirit until, as the Irish songwriter of yore, F. E. Weatherly wrote, ‘dead I well may be.’ *

* “And if you come when all the flowers are dying, and I am dead — as dead I well may be.” F.E. Weatherly, Danny Boy, 1910.

I call this gas Self-Aversion Gas, although it has a million other names.

So the question is, what to do about it?

Is it a matter of fighting it? Of writhing around like a prisoner being executed, trying to not breathe it in by holding his breath for a few more precious heatbeats as his face turns blue, his veins pop out and his bowels let loose?

Is it a matter of donning a full-body haz-mat suit in order to prevent any exposure?

Well I tried not breathing and it didn’t work out very well.

And I tried putting on the haz-mat suit but it’s just too damn bulky — being inside the bubble and all.

So what other choice do I have? How about imagining what it would be like to be without anxiety about imperfection, as Tara Brach suggests?

Or is the answer to whip out a knife and cut my way out of the bubble?

Wait, let’s go back one to the thing about imagining not having anxiety about imperfection, as Tara cites Zen Master Dōgen suggested some 800 years ago.

In fact, he also asked that if humans are endowed with Dharma-nature and enlightenment by birth, why is it then necessary to seek enlightenment as well… if we already have it? Why search for something we already have?

The answer is above my head at this stage of my journey, but this line of questioning was brought on by the Tendai concept of Original Enlightenment, which I vastly prefer over the vile Christian concept of Original Sin.

The former assuming we are fundamentally enlightened while the latter assumes we are fundamentally flawed, a concept to which I no longer wish to subscribe.

A concept which I wish would take me off its mailing list and then be so kind as to go bugger itself.

So actually (and this is where I ramble back to the bubble) a concept which seems to be the stinky little thing somewhere in my psyche that is chugging out those noxious fumes, like a gas-powered generator running inside a closed garage.

Is this concept of being fundamentally flawed, of carrying around shame and self-aversion the actual cause for most of the pain and suffering going back to the beginning (you know, 6,142 years in The Garden of Eden) since some people will stop at nothing to not feel that shame of being ‘flawed?’

There is no one they won’t kill, nothing they won’t steal, no war they won’t wage, no hate they won’t spew, no injustice they won’t commit, no prejudice they won’t perpetrate, no blame they won’t ascribe, no inequity they won’t ignore, no pain they won’t inflict, no tragedy they won’t forget, no philosophy they won’t contort, no innocent they wont abuse, no fraud they won’t justify, no child they won’t starve and no inconvenient population they won’t cleanse in order to avoid feeling their own self-aversion.

As for myself, if I can live with myself, would this deadly self-aversion greenhouse gas go away?

Could I ever accept myself as I am?

Just. As. I. Am?

I know that Mister Rodger’s said he likes me just the way I am, but can I like me just the way I am?

With my less than Adonis-like body (I know, hard to believe, but true)?

With my less than Jedi-like skill level of behaviours?

With my less than Zuckerberg-like level of income?

I think the answer is ‘yes.’

(Dramatic pause goes here)

Whew, now there’s something for my To-Do list, along with popping this fucking bubble…

Categories: Consciousness, Ego, Enlightenment, Shame | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

GHOSTS

Posted on March 19, 2012 by NerDharma

A few years ago, okay more than a few, okay, 17, I was working in the Chrysler Building for about 6 years, pursuing my dream of big-time advertising, which is another story, or book, or movie…

Anyway, I’ve never loved a building more than the Chrysler. Steeped in history from the 30′s; Walter Chrysler and all the historic titans of industry puffing on stogies in the unbelievable Cloud Club behind the crown’s triangular windows, as they surveyed their kingdoms.

Hell, even the elevators were priceless, art-deco masterpieces of inlaid wood and chrome.

Well, just like any other day, I’d taken the decidedly less glamourous subway to Grand Central (this was in the dark ages when we were still using tokens, for god’s sake) and schlumpped my way, half-asleep, through the warren of dingy tunnels, one of which takes you right up into the breathtaking lobby.

Of course, after seeing the same thing everyday for the 1000th time, your breath pretty much stays put, but there I was, just another worker bee, ducking for an elevator at the last second, before it closed. And believe me, these weren’t polite elevator doors. If you were a bit slow to get in, you paid for it dearly.

In the car were two people I’d recognized from work (our agency, Bates, took up two floors of the old lady). We nodded politely and I took up my stance in the corner, per Elevator Etiquette 101.

The button for my floor, 36, was already pressed, as was 28.

Up we went.

No big deal, listening to ancient iron gears wheezing and grinding away for yet another trip.

Ding.

The car stopped at 28.

The doors opened.

The doors closed.

No one got on or off.

Whatever.

But then the other two in the car started cracking up.

“Nice hat.” One said to the other.

Then they both cracked up more.

I thought for a moment, feeling like I’d missed a page in my script.

“What’s that?” I said.

They both looked at me. “That guy’s hat. A fedora? Kind of a throwback, is all.”

“Not to mention that old suit, holy crap” the other guy said.

Remember, we were all snarky 20-somethings at the time, certain that we were the chosen ones, as most 20-somethings have thought since ancient Greece, and anyone who didn’t fit into our jeans & t-shirt tribe was fair game.

I was non-plussed, at a total loss.

“Ummm, what guy?” I said.

They both looked at me like I was crazy, “the guy… who just got off… like 10 seconds ago.”

The hair on my neck stood up.

I won’t go into a blow-by-blow, but suffice to say, throughout the day, they swore there was a guy in a 50′s looking suit and fedora who was in the elevator when I got on.

Hat Guy was there when the other two got on, didn’t say anything to them, but did nod. Didn’t say anything on the ride up, and got off on 28.

They swore they weren’t pulling my leg and I tended to believe them since I didn’t really know them too well and didn’t think they had much of a motive.

Plus, I may be unskilled at a lot of things, but I’m a great judge of character, being in advertising, you have to be, and these guys seemed sincere.

Anyway, not much work was done that morning as they initially thought I was putting them on as much as I thought they were putting me on.

So at lunch we checked out the architectural firm on 28, asked the hot receptionist if she knew who was on that floor in the 50′s and discovered that she had no idea about that, or what a ‘fedora’ was. Although she was certain she didn’t want to get a drink later with one of the two guys who casually hit on her.

I suppose we could have looked into it more, but sometimes… better to let sleeping ghosts lie, I guess. And besides, I had beer commercials to make.

However, last Thursday I had a flashback when in a particular elevator for the first time, in a new building, where my therapist had just moved.

This time I was by myself.

The panels on the elevator walls are glass, overlooking the lobby and outside plaza.

Admiring the view, the doors closed behind me and the ultra-modern incarnation of vertical luxury discreetly whooshed me up with nary a wheeze.

After a couple seconds, having my fill of the view, I turned around and saw a guy standing there, glaring at me silently.

I hadn’t heard anyone get on.

Funny how much you can experience within the space of a second.

Imagine how you’d feel a moment before a head-on collision with another car going 60 miles per hour.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt — sheer, primitive, unthinking, ‘whoops I crapped my pants’ terror.

Then in the next moment, I realized that, of course, the doors were reflective and that I was looking at my reflection.

So the thing that bothers me about these two bookended events is not the possibility of a ghost in the Chrysler Building. Hell, if any building deserves to have ghosts, it’s that one. I don’t blame them for not wanting to leave.

No, the thing that rocked my world was the fact that I was so terrified of myself.

I could wax on about ego, samskaras, self-loathing, shame, unresolved this or that, etc. But I won’t. Again, I’ll just let sleeping ghosts lie.

Only… sometimes, when I meditate, I see that reflection stare back, full of hate – as if it would love nothing more than to cut my throat.

Yeah, that’s what sometimes scares me, because, you see, this ghost isn’t sleeping.

Categories: Consciousness, Ego, Samskara | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

SMASHY!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by NerDharma

Back from hiatus and just returned from a few hundred feet underground, where there’s a 17-mile ring on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Uber-nerds refer to it as the LHC or the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accerlerator.

When fired up, this baby is helping us test the the predictions of various theories about the very fabric of the universe, not the least of which is the existence of the Higgs-Bosun, or God particle. If anything yet invented will help us quantify the deepest laws of nature, this big donut will.

Some fundamentalists may call it sacrilegious to look behind the curtain, so to speak, although I’m sure it was these same people who said it was equally offensive to leave the trees or caves in the first place.

Now, I’m not a physicist so I’m not fluent in how it actually, well, works.

Start looking under the hood and ticking off specs like, how its synchrotron is designed to collide opposing particle beams of protons at over 7 teraelectronvolts, and I’m left nodding my head, trying to look impressed.

Talk about how it over 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries and universities pulled together to make it happen, and I’d be really impressed, since we as a species can’t seem to pull together to do much of anything anymore, except to vote on American Idol, I guess.

But dumbed down to my level, it appears that the LHC basically smashes composite particles together in an attempt to break up the electromagnetic superglue holding said particles together. Then a bunch of smarty-pants in lab coats pull off their goggles, look at the pieces left over and see if they can make any sense of the quarks, protons, neutrons, mesons and kaons scattered around on the floor.

So, cool, right? What the hell does that have to do with the price of Darjeeling in Dhamsala? Why should you care, right? You’ve got bigger mindulness fish to fry. Well, that’s where my kooky mind made a link to the Super Collider in my body.

Er, my spirit.

My soul?

Whatever, okay, I don’t actually know where it is specifically, but I do know it’s there.

Did I neglect to mention I already had one of my own? My bad.

Yeah, you should see this thing.

In the physical universe it would stretch out to Alpha-Centurai and back.

I call it the Infinitely Large Super Dooper Collider.

And while it’s easy to overlook how basically useless it may appear to some people, I do enjoy an enormous sense of acheivement from getting it to work. Plus, I strive to ensure that any fundamental design flaws are hidden by even more glaring superficial design flaws… kind of like my Jeep.

I digress.

With my ILSDC, I have really started to mess with the very fabric of my being. Up until just recently, I never even realized I needed one, at least that’s what my Ego told me.

“Nah only pussies build ILSDC’s! If you’re feeling feeling fear or pain, just walk it off, have another beer, ignore it and stop thinking so much. God! What is it with you and all this thinking anyway? Really starting to piss me off!”

Everyone’s a critic, right? I just ignore him as much as I can. Meanwhile, I’ve got it fired up and starting to see all sorts of eye-popping results.

Take yesterday, for example. I sent a random, nasty Samskara, from my Relative Mind, hurtling in one direction, and a particle of consciousness, from my Ultimate Mind, rocketing in the other direction until they reached the speed of thought, raised to the power of guilt (C=TG2)

Then…

…holy crapola Batman (which I think Siddartha used to say), I aligned the two on a collision course and ducked.

A billionth of a second later, they smashed into each other.

The resultant explosion was like an eruption on the sun. You know, the ones that are a thousand times bigger than the earth?

Anyway, after I pulled off my goggles and wiped away my singed eyebrows, the only thing I saw left was the particle of consciousness, without a scratch on it.

The Samskara was no more.

But, like, that’s impossible isn’t it?

My Ego has whispered in my ear, my whole life, that Samskaras were impossible to destroy. That I just had to relive their pain over and over until they lowered me into the cold, cold ground.

He said I had to keep my Samskaras forever, like horrible luggage that never seems to get thrown out.

Like a flu you can never shake.

Like that weird gyro you ate in ’97 that’s still sitting in your large intestine.

But it looks like that is not actually the case… the thing about annihilating Samskaras, I mean.

So despite his protestations to contrary, I’m next going to try colliding a particle of consciousness with a big wad of shame that’s been sticking to my shoe for about 30 years now, and see what happens.

And if I can get rid of that shame just as easily, imagine the potential!

I could destroy all of my pain and guilt and fear and shame by merely smashing it into a bit of consciousness, which, in essence, is my God particle.

Son of a bitch! Why hasn’t anyone told me about this before? Why aren’t people dancing in the streets in sheer joy over this possibility in their own lives?

Well, if I ever reach the point where most of my suffering is obliterated, I might celebrate by loading up milk and cookies in the collider to see what happens to them at light speed.

Wish me luck.

(But don’t tell my Ego, he’s not invited).

Categories: Consciousness, Ego, Mindfulness, Samskara | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

iDharma

Posted on March 4, 2012 by NerDharma

This week, any self-respecting nerd is having a hard time being mindful in their peaceful seat of consciousness.

Better to be a Rebel Buddha or engage in Radical Acceptance, strive for an Untethered Soul or engage in Full Contact Enlightenment at the brilliant site of the same name.

Much better.

But this week, I pretty much have to just embrace Siri and my nerdiness and go with the enlightenement that also comes with the release of the new iPad3!

Wheee (happy dance goes here)!

I’ll pause while you yawn.

Okay, won’t bore you with why this thing is such a paradigm-shifter for early adopters such as myself — and eventually for everyone else. If you’re not an Apple disciple you just wouldn’t get it. Kind of like Battlestar Galactica or Dr. Who references you just wouldn’t get either if you weren’t, you know, one of us.

Whoa!

See what happened there?

I just put myself in an elitist, exclusionary clique — the old ‘us’ and ‘them’ thing.

This topic was spurred, courtesy of an entry form the good folks at Full Contact Enlightenment, to whom I owe everything.

Seems like some girl posted a shot of this alabaster Buddha, said she liked it, and then posited a question if the mere act of liking the little statue makes her a Buddhist.

Good for her. It’s smart to ask questions, dammit!

I don’t begrudge her asking the question, since it seems to be coming from a place of innocence. After all, all roads lead to Rome, so to speak.

http://fullcontactenlightenment.com/2012/02/ i-love-that-buddha-does-that-make-me-a-buddhist/.

Hey, Steve Jobs was himself quite the devout Buddhist, even though he could also be the biggest egomaniacal douche-bag asshole on the planet as he brow beat his people into cranking out the most zenfully perfect devices ever.

So on one end of the spectrum we have this girl asking a perfectly legitimate question (in her mind), even though it may seem painfully silly to ‘us’ (dang, there’s that word again).

And on the other end we have Svengali Steve, who was the personification of iDuality.

That leaves us with the question unanswered from FCE: what makes a Buddhist?

Is the answer that there is no answer?

Was the Buddha a Buddhist, per se? I don’t think so.

Was Jesus a Catholic?

Is a quad-core A6 processor light years better than a dual-core A5 one?

As I wrote to FCE, is there a secret handshake a monk teaches you after you memorize all the joys and sorrows? (I could teach you the secret Apple handshake but then I’d have to kill you, nothing personal).

Or is a Buddhist a Buddhist from Day 1? I know I’ve just started and don’t know much of anything compared to you guys, but I still consider myself worthy.

My point is that I disdain elitism, be it with Apple fanboys, food & wine snobs (whom I have to suffer for some odd reason), vegan snobs, redneck snobs, Rebublican snobs, Democrat snobs, LA writer hipsters who love to clique, and those religious types (in my case Catholics), who consider themselves the chosen ones — like literally, everyone else can go to hell, literally.

I have several priests and a cardinal in my family who enforce the party line without mercy. So if I wanted to retreat to their isolationist encampments, I could do so in a heartbeat.

But somewhere along the way, I think they forgot that ‘Catholic’ means ‘all-embracing’, and not ‘fuck you if you’re not Catholic,’ not only that, but ‘fuck you if you’re not my kind of Catholic.’

That’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to Buddhism and mindfulness, since it seems so inclusionary and non-judgemental — and more ‘catholic’ than lots of Catholics.

So are there elitist Buddhists? I’m sure there are, since people are people and it’s bound to happen anywhere when folks identify themselves strongly with something — someone wrote of ‘the stink of enlightenment’ — where those who consider themselves enlightened also consider themselves better.

But for the most part, no one I’ve met is like that. So I tell myself their percentages are lower.

I know this sounds like a rather elementary issue, but for me, sometimes the most elementary issues are the ones that cause Crusades and Inquisitions, wars and ethnic cleansing, institutionalized prejudice and 23 Tibetans burning themselves alive just since the first of the year, due to ‘elementary’ issues being enforced by their occupiers.

You know, wholesale dickishness.

So if you consider yourself the paragon of Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Jainism, Wiccaism, or Appleism…

…if you’re a BSG (Battlestar Galactica) poseur or purist.

…Beatles or Stones fan.

… chocolate or carob expert

… a yin or a yang.

Or, most importantly of all, an Apple or a PC.

Do me a favor. Let go of your sense of being with an enlightened group while thinking everyone else are just fucktards.

Oh, the humanity!

I may not know much yet, but I do know there’s only one side, and we’re all on it.

I’d ponder this more but gearing up to stand in line for my iPad3 where I’m sure a barista behind me will give me the stink-eye because he doesn’t think I’m young enough or hip enough to be in his tribe.

And so it goes.

Can’t we all just iGet along?

Categories: Consciousness, Ego, Mindfulness | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

NINJAS!

Posted on February 29, 2012 by NerDharma

What, pray tell is the real, timeless 411 about thoughts?

Blokes since Mr. Plato have spouted one opinion or another on these ephemera of the mind.

In fact, he told Aristotle, who told Alexander the Great that the heart was the actual organ from whence thoughts originated, instead of the brain, as previously believed.

I’m sure even Thag the caveman had an opinion or two on the matter, even though his thoughts might have have been more focused on that damn wall of ice getting closer and closer.

Today, Jack Kornfield says to just let random thoughts float past like clouds. Pema Chodron says to simply duck below the storyline. Dzogchen Ponlop says to catch and release thoughts like fish you toss back into the water. Tara Brach just pops them like little random bubbles floating past.

Wheee!

Okay, see, that’s all well and good for enlightened Jedi-ninja-warriors like them, who leap psyches in a single bound, are faster than a speeding metta and can stop stinkin’ thinkin’ with their bare consciousness.

But down here in the minor leagues, it’s a whole different story.

Down here, for me at least, thoughts have never been so idyllic as a few little bubbles, scrappy fish or happy puffy clouds.

For me, with my traumatic history, thoughts are full-blown, rock-you-like-a-hurricane kind of thoughts. Huge, sucking vortexes that sweep me away before I have a chance to blink (more on that later).

Of course, everyone has trauma to process, but that doesn’t help me deal with mine any better.

And by the way, where did this prosaic notion of just a few thoughts drifting by come from anyway? The numbers just don’t add up.

To verify this, I asked a neurologist friend of mind, who snorted at the notion of a homo sapien only a having a few thoughts to process every day.

After I bought him some brain-killing alcohol (Man, I suck at this. S’pose it should have taken him to TeaVana) he grabbed some bar nuts and ticked off a few things I didn’t realize.

Like how every day, we have an average of 70,000 freaking thoughts.

As in 25,550,000 a year.

That’s a lot of fish to catch and release Dzogchen.

All these thoughts are churned out by 100 billion neurons with 10,000 synapses each that are fed by 100,000 miles of blood vessels.

That’s like, half-way to the moon, as I recall from David Bowie’s astronaut Major Tom who warned that he’d passed 100,000 miles.

Anyway, he (my friend, not David Bowie) delighted in saying that while I slept, my body produced a hormone that prevented me from acting out my dreams by leaving me virtually paralyzed. So then I wondered if that same hormone was made when I meditated…

I worry too much. Maybe I’m a cross between Woody Allen and Dave Barry mindfully having a love child together…

So back to the bar, where I was informed that the blob of goo between my ears was mostly just water, sure. But when he asked why my world didn’t go dark every time I blinked… I blinked and said I’d never thought about it.

He said that it’s because blinking powers down parts of the brain for a micro-second each time we blink, so we don’t notice the change. Basically, blinking reduces activity in the visual cortex, parietal cortex and prefrontal cortex so we can pretend to have an uninterrupted view of our surroundings.

After all, he said, it would suck, nay, be dangerous if we consciously noticed that the world went dark each time we blinked. Thankfully, our built-in blinker buffers keep us from noticing, as we go about our merry way popping bubbles.

Meanwhile, with all this happening under the dome of my freakishly large skull (which qualifies for its own zip code in some states), what hope do I have in attaining Korfieldian heights of enlightenment?

To wit, were I sitting at Aristotle’s sandaled and smelly feet back in the day and I heard him pronounce that the ‘organ of thought is not the brain, but the heart’ I would have nodded along because what the hell do I know? ‘Sure, the heart, sounds good to me, Ari. Hey, pass that wineskin.’

I never would have known that Descartes got the laws of inertia wrong, that Kant misunderstood the primacy of Euclidian geometry, and of course, the grandaddy of them all, that almost everyone (except perhaps Aristarchus of Samos) prior to the discovery of the telescope, swore, on pain of death, that the sun and planets spun around the earth.

Sure, there’s no way I could have known otherwise at those times, but it makes me shake in my skin when I think of all the stuff I just accept as fact now. Stuff which future generations will slap their forehead at and say, ‘can you believe that big-headed goofball actually bought into that crap?’

But at least what the Buddha taught and what the above teachers (whom I actually love to pieces, btw) teach does seem to be true-true. You know, like Stephen Colbert says, it has a ring of truthiness to it.

Hmmm, maybe Aristotle was partially right. Maybe eternally true thoughts do come from the heart, instead of the head, after all.

That’s just one thought, though.

I’d love to chase my tail more but I’ve still got about 69,999 more thoughts to deal with right now.

Categories: Consciousness, Mindfulness, Psyche | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 Comments

McMindfulness

Posted on February 27, 2012 by NerDharma

Up until now, the light of my consciousness has not exactly been like a gloriously breaking sunrise at Big Sur or the heavenly shafts of light piercing through Ansel Adams clouds at Yosemite.

It’s more like that icky red food warmer light that keeps processed chicken slurry McNuggets warmish until they can block your gut — as my consciousness gently weeps.

I don’t think The Buddha had McNuggets in mind as he chatted about mindfulness: ”when cultivated and regularly practiced, [mindfulness] leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening.”

And as I become aware of feelings, emotions, and thoughts –

— as I open to the changing stream of sensations without grasping or resistance

– as I marvel at the sheer intensity of being, it’s thrilling to switch on full-spectrum enlightenment now and then.

I try not to engage in distanced witnessing but sometimes it’s easier to disassociate from what’s happening, like my life is like watching an episode of The Twilight Zone.

In other words, just because I’m witnessing something doesn’t mean I don’t have to address it as well… I think…

The Buddha spoke of “seeing the waterfall” of thoughts without getting washed away by it.

But I’m more of a ‘sit on the beach and listen to the waves kind of guy.’ So I get swept away by tidal waves of thoughts.

The damn things constantly take me away from the moment due to my fears and wants.

And each time, I see it as a failure.

I condemn myself for my weak character then extrapolate that into a bleak future which depresses me and spurs more obsessive thinking in an attempt to avoid feeling the pain and fear of those waves.

Sometimes, being tossed about on those waves defines my very existence. I’m Ahab on my Pequod — my ship of fear while the white whale of Fear…Flaw…Failure roars through my mind.

Of course, the more severe the situations, the bigger the waves, the bigger the whale, and the harder it is to just let it all be.

And when my old wounds/samskaras are prodded, the terror thriving in me can be triggered, even if there’s no clear and present danger. It doesn’t matter, I absolutely feel like my boat is about to sink and I have to row like mad to get away.

Oh, and riddle me this, Ishmael, where did this whole western notion of harpooning feelings ever come from anyway? These days, we’re supposed to mistrust pleasure and pain. We’re forced to strangle every single natural urge and murder certain feelings.

But now I’m trying to unharpoon to those parts I’ve killed.

Which is a neat trick after I dock the Pequod and go back to sit on the beach.

I try letting the waves crash into me — through me — regardless of their acidity or sweetness.

I let their energy roil and bubble and rage until it fizzles out on the beach behind me, which it always does.

Then it occurs to me how Rumplestiltskin knew nothing of alchemy.

I know, random, right? Sorry, that’s just how my mind works.

But turning straw into gold is a cheap trick compared to the alchemy I experience when turning my fears into enlightened awareness.

My layers of historic hurt are washed away as I start to grasp Rumi’s deceptively tricky observation that ‘the cure for the pain’s in the pain.’

And as I release self-judgment, I regard myself with tenderness and relax into full-spectrum awareness that lets life simply unfold.

Or, on second thought, is the light of my awakening more like carcinogenic rays emitted from a tanning bed (hey, was that mole there before)?

 

Categories: Consciousness, Ego, Mindfulness, Psyche, Samskara | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

SHARK!

Posted on February 23, 2012 by NerDharma

I really need to lose some wait.

I’m getting mentally obese from being too goal oriented. I feel trapped, my throat tightens, my heart thumps, my head hurts, all from wanting to accomplish something.

I’ve heard Type-A fuck nuggets (now on sale at McDonald’s) brag how they’re like a shark and always have to be moving forward, never sitting still. They’re usually doing this while sipping some single-malt scotch or flicking a piece of lint off their Armani suit.

Now, I’m no marine biologist (although seriously, how cool would that be), but I don’t think humans are, well, you know, sharks. Not the same Class, Order, Family, Genus or Species (my dad was a biologist, so I do know a couple things about that stuff).

Where was I? Oh yeah, when I feel like I’m not accomplishing something, I’d like to say that I take a deep breath and realize that checking off another to-do item wouldn’t make me a better person, but I’m not really there yet.

Sorry, Thich, there are times when I simply don’t want to ‘be here now,’ I just want to get X, Y and Z done and I won’t rest until I do and I won’t stop worrying about it until I do and I won’t stop resconstructing it after I do.

Sometimes I’d rather wallow in my story of falling short and being the waste of air that people have told me I am. There’s a sadistic part of me that enjoys that story. I like that pain. I know that story. Sometimes it feels like the world’s best Snuggie.

So no, Mr. Kornfield, I don’t like the feelings that well up when I’m simply forced to ‘wait.’

Talk about a 4-letter word!

Were a vote taken in today’s nano-second society, WAIT, would score as way more offensive than George Carlin’s dirty words.

But regardless, I wait all the time. Eleven days a year just standing in lines, not to mention waiting for every other mind-numbing, meaningless thing that stresses me out.

Then there’s waiting for the meaningful stuff too, of course: the next meal, the next sexual encounter, the next time I’ll be warm or cool, the next time I’ll be lauded for being such a genius, the next (or first time) there will be world peace, etc.

So how am I actually supposed to wait? And, creepier stiil, am I fighting some Kafka-esque system that, by its very nature, is designed to make me wait?

And am I being scored on how I wait? Thus being on trial by some nameless, faceless entity? It sure as hell feels like it sometimes. If not by a faceless entity, then by family, friends and ugh, society.

Meanwhile, the more I’m attached to my to-do list, the more pissed off I get at people who get in my way.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this. After all, just this week, a new, elegant To-Do list app, Clear, shot to #1 in one day in the iTunes App Store, getting somewhere around a skillion downloads, give or take a bajillion.

But these people, whom I’ll call walking speed bumps, destroy my clinging effort to be in total control at all times.

As a result, my impatience locks me in an struggle with most every moment.

It’s an impatience that is as harmful as smoking crack, drinking single-malt scotch all day, or pounding nails into the floor with my forehead (thanks for that one, Mr. Bogosian).

Apparently, the Buddha thought that patience was ‘perfection’ and a pillar of our deepest nature.

You guys already know that patience doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have strong emotions or that I tune out when things get nasty.

You already know that patience is the ability to feel at home and accepting while facing the hurricane gale of unpleasantness, like Al Roker reporting from the middle of some actual, um, hurricane.

To experience intense feelings without disassociating from them or feeling overwhelmed — to use patience as the ultimate water repellant to get us through the rain.

So these days I try, I swear I try, to let go of the restless thoughts contracting my mind.

I try to notice the aforementioned tightness, anxiety, short breath—but to try and revel in a moment-to-moment presence and realize that the anxiety is making my awakening even more possible.

Each moment is a miracle, yeah-yeah, got it.

Sometimes this sounds like another bumper sticker to me.

But sometimes I manage to let go of trying to make my life fit a predetermined pattern and bask in the cleansing light of awareness that’s always there anyway.

Sometimes, if it’s a really good day, I can actually open my eyes and get a glimpse of that light.

Categories: Clinging, Ego, Mindfulness, Seat of Consciousnesd | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

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