Ordinary Mind as the Path VII (Excess)

In the last post on discovering "The Way" in our experience of ordinary mind, I shared the idea of a "great dialectic" described as Expansion and Contraction by meditation teacher, Shinzen Young. In that post there was some description of how something as ordinary (and seemingly negative) as laziness could be experienced as an example of a Contractive force — "Nature exhaling", as it were.It makes sense that a follow-up would address the opposite (complementary) force of Expansion: in this case, exemplified by the experience of excess.What we might mean by the term excess in this instance is any example of "too much", and everyone has experienced this "too-much-ness" in life:

Too much effort (trying too hard);

Too much wanting (addictive desire);

Too much consumption (insatiable appetite);

Too much concern (obsessing).

When Too Much is Too Much...

Deconstructing the Experiences That Lead to Excess

What makes up the drive that propels excessive behavior and what can be done about it?One of the "bread and butter" meditation techniques of Unified Mindfulness (UM), the SeeHearFeel technique, is aimed toward untangling the different components of our sensory experience: unraveling all the pieces that make up everything our attention can be drawn to moment by moment. This process of sharpening the clarity with which we experience our surroundings (the "world") and ourselves (thoughts/emotions) can lead to an amazing freedom.Again, going with the UM model of mindfulness, an experience of "too much" can be said to be made up of some combination of visual experience (seeing physical sights or mental images), auditory experience (hearing physical sounds or mental talk), and somatic experience (feeling physical or emotional body sensations).This is good news.What this implies is that the flood of urge that can lead to excess or the overwhelming drive to relentlessly pursue can be broken down into its parts — it is easier to carry ten 100 lb weights than it is to carry one 1,000 lb weight.Deconstructing experience by steadily acknowledging its components moment by moment (in an open and interested way) allows us to fully experience the moment without losing ourselves to it.

Try it right now:

Notice what is happening around you and in your thoughts and emotions;

Every few seconds, note what is happening by using a mental label (See, Hear, or Feel) without getting caught up in what you notice.

[you can use label-aids if it helps: "there is See/Hear/Feel" or "See/Hear/Feel is like this"]

Do this again and again and again...

Letting your environment be what it is and letting thoughts and emotions come and go without fighting or following them is like practicing being the sky instead of being the clouds: letting the show of the sight and sound and thoughts and bodily feelings play itself out without being controlled by compulsion and habit.There is plenty of room in the sky for any weather, and the open sky is not damaged by any of its contents.

The Propensity of Things to be Perfectly What They Are

Excess is Excess

What is the experience of excess?We've already answered that, right? A combination of See, Hear, and Feel.This is true.It is also the case that excess is just excess... just like water is wet; just like rocks are solid.Things in our experience have the AMAZING tendency to be exactly what they are. Things do this so perfectly — there is no need for water to try to be wet and rocks to try to be solid: they just are (perfectly). Excess is the same.

The expansive flavor of reality arises just as particles collect to become a planet; just as the ground swells into a mountain; just as words of the deepest care are formed in the mouths of our loved ones.

Ok, this could seem a little out there or abstract (or just a stretch)...But, experimenting with this throughout the day (treating each moment of experience as though it were a taste of a perfect arriving) can lead to substantial change in one's relationship with even the compulsions of excess.Don't mishear me as saying that there is nothing to do or nothing to change — I am only saying that (in greeting the experience of a moment of excess) there is nothing to do and nothing to change... the next moment of action, however, may require significant behavior alteration.Enigma is not my naturally preferred way of describing things like this; but this seems to make the most sense to me: in treating the arrival of THIS moment as though there is nothing to add and nothing to omit gives us the space and patience (over time) to nurture and care for ourselves in an adaptive way in the next moment of action.

So... sounds nice — how do you do this?One of my favorite authors, Thomas Merton, has described contemplative prayer by saying that he doesn't "have a program for this [type of] seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.""Everywhere"?!In excess? Regret? Mistakes? Laziness? Irritation? Anger? Compulsively? Depression? Worry? Meaninglessness?"Everywhere".Happy practicing.

Ordinary Mind as the Path VI (Laziness)

If you have ever listened to one of Shinzen Young's talks (which I would encourage anyone to do), you may have heard him describe what he considers something like the "great dialectical forces" of Expansion and Contraction...Very roughly speaking:Expansion is the principle of increase: growing more intense, larger, faster, wider, scattering, pushing out, an inhalation of Nature, etc. etc.AndContraction is the principle of decrease: growing less intense, smaller, slower, narrower, gathering, pulling in, and exhalation of Nature, etc. etc.Taken together at a deeper level, these two complementarities (disguised as opposites) are what he has described as, "Space dancing in space"... that which preceded, pervades, and follows all sensory experience.

I mention this idea because the topic of this and the next post will deal with what could be considered examples of Expansion and Contraction: laziness and excess (or, in other words, too much and too little effort or wanting)."Laziness" (as I am using it here) can mean something like an "under-efforting" or "under-wanting" -- not caring, trying, or reaching for. Having a lack of motivation can be a very serious problem: when feeling little to no motivation to try, why even try to try (to try...)???A reasonable question, really...

Preliminaries: Moving Toward Balanced Effort (Expansion)

Although the main purpose of this article is to point toward how an experience of laziness can actually point toward (or fully be) "The Way", it could also help to be able to mold something like too little effort into something active and productive.I (admittedly) have not found the key to change "under-wanting" into appropriate effort -- it can be a very difficult issue. There are, however, some good places to start...

Recollection

By "Recollection", I mean something like to re-member (as in "rebuild) and re-collect (as in gather together again) -- in addition to "bringing to mind" or "avoiding forgetting". What we are recollecting is our intention. More specifically, our "Great Intention" to live a life of Good: the deep and instinctive hope to make better and to limit distress for ourselves and for those around us.

I believe that some version of this "Great Intention" ultimately undergirds all human activity. This is debatable, of course; but, at the very least, it does seem evident that when individuals are treated as though they possess the deep intention to live a life of Good, they seem to be subtlety (or not-so-subtlety) healed in some incremental way. To treat someone this way is to validate them, and to live this way is to validate oneself.

How does an individual recollect their "Great Intention"? One thing that can help is to bring to mind one or more of the following ideas to contemplate:

  1. The wonder and fulfilling satisfaction of a life well-lived
  2. The distress and afflictive suffering of a life lived unskillfully
  3. The impermanence of life (can be scary, but can also contextualize our procrastinations)
  4. The fact that we are always practicing something: all that we do, say, and think influences how we act, speak, and think in the future (or, as Richard Rohr has said, "The way you do anything is the way you do everything")

 Let the Tail Wag the DogThis is another quotable "Shinzen-ism". He uses this phrase to describe (in part) the mechanism of change related to the Nurture Positive family of meditative focus exercises within the context of Unified Mindfulness. It is another way of saying "fake it until you make it". If contemplating all the encouraging reminders listed above does not help, reverse-engineering appropriate effort/wanting (motivation) might do the "trick": make a list of things that would be productive (even if only theoretically productive), and, when you feel motivation start to shrink and laziness start to grow, just get up and do the first thing on that list.Check your level of motivation after you complete the task -- scale it from 0-7 (none to a lot). If it is not where you think it should be, do the second thing on that list... you see where this is going.Eventually, you've either "tricked" your mind and body into feeling motivated, or you've "tricked" your mind and body into being productive.

The "just get up..." part is the tough portion... What you might do to prepare for that moment of depleted intention is to mentally practice through visualization: sit in a comfortable posture; bring to mind a productive task on the list; deeply invest your attention in imagining yourself carrying out the task in as much vivid detail as possible; do this for a pre-determined amount of time (use a timer), and you may try to do this several times soon after making the list.

A Deeper View: Under-Efforting as "The Way" (Contraction)

So, I've mentioned the ideas of Expansion and Contraction...Another way of treating laziness is kind of a deep dive, but it can be very interesting to work with.Taking the attitude that all of life is practice is one sure-fire way to deepen and improve your life. Turning our routine, average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill experiences into sacred objects of contemplative focus does something special: as Shinzen puts is, it "monastasizes life".There are those who decide to make their entire lives about contemplative practice -- these are monastics who would live in monasteries who we would typically call monks and nuns. One might say that their "job" is to see that everything is holy (as Thomas Merton might say). To us who live and work in the world of family, jobs, schedules, etc., there have to be alternative ways to bring some experience of the "monastery" within reach.There are natural swings from day to day (or week to week; month to month; etc.) -- during these oscillations, each of us may feel a rising and falling of motivation, effort, or caring (do you hear echoes of Expansive/Contractive change?...)There are some practical ways to attempt to bolster a sense of motivational charge when necessary (a couple are listed above), but there may also be some utility in meeting laziness with a different attitude...We have to get stuff done. So, being stuck in laziness is not recommended. However, it is interesting to discover that much of what gives laziness its "stickiness" is very often our resistance toward it. Opening up to the experience of a sinking effort is the way to affirm the contractive force of life through to completion.Quickly and deeply saying "YES" to the sensory experience of laziness (how laziness looks, sounds, and feels) is, on one hand, an active way to reframe the problem of laziness to be understood as exactly one half of the natural pull and push of daily experience. On the other hand, when treated experientially (when moved-into first hand), it is the way to cut through the "problem-ness" of motivational settling as an experience; of under-effort as an experience; of not-caring as an experience. It is from this position of fully taking in what is in front of you that the lowering tide of motivation can continue to recede until the expansive gravity of life fills us up again with momentum toward productive goals.This is something to experiment with...And, in the meantime, you can just recollect your efforts, go down your list, and love laziness to death (but without hating laziness or yourself for merely allowing Nature's breath to be gently exhaled). 

Ordinary Mind as the Path V (Shame)

Levels

The way I see it [and the way I see reflected in the UM framework], there are 2 levels on which to work with overpowering emotions like shame:

  1. The Semantic level (content): introspection, self-study, healing conversation, meaning-making — emotional states (made up of thoughts + sensations) are treated like guidance systems used to make sense of experience
  2. The Sensory level (contour): bare sensory experience is extracted from interpretation and "equanimized" — difficulty is presented by the semantic drivenness to make sense of emotional states (thoughts + sensations)

Semantic Level of Shame

On the semantic level, the deeply convicted sense that "I am bad" (shame, worthlessness, valuelessness, unexplainable guilt) can be dealt with by allowing it to transform into something informative and meaningful. At this level (basically a wide-lens shot of positive reappraisal), shame itself becomes that which guides one away from the prison of shame. The memories, thoughts, emotions, self-views, and compulsive actions that make up a "run-in" with shame are all picked apart, analyzed, explored, experimented with, and interpreted in order to discover that they might have some important meaning (despite the fact that can be very unpleasant).This approach is essential to cultivating a new relationship with one's self that involves adaptive emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. It grants an individual the ability to edit one's own life narrative: not by changing the facts of one's history, but by altering the meaning found in the memory of that history.As a therapist, this is bread and butter. Meaning-making conversation is important. It is healing. It is vital.Sensory Level of ShameThe other side of the coin, however, relates to working at the sensory level of our living experience. This is the contour rather than the content; this is the process rather than the particulars; this is just-sensing rather than making-sense of how one experiences the self and the world. Working with the sensory level of experience is aimed toward gradually allowing sensory experience to be fully and lovingly encountered as it unfolds naturally without interference. This is different that condoning negative thoughts or actions without any intention of improving them: there is a dialectical permission granted to one's experience that involves a "being-ok" with whatever is happening in thoughts and emotions while simultaneously maintaining an intention to improve.Interacting with one's self at this (sometimes) very subtle level refreshes one's relationship with presence itself — it can nurture a deep comfort moment by moment. Rather than reaching to meaning-making for comfort, one can rest in a suspension of the need to make meaning.

Is's and Isn'ts

To be clear, the "suspension" described above is VERY different than nihilism: not believing in anything (or, more accurately, trying not to believe in anything) is categorically unhelpful. As humans, we have a psychologically instinctive need for meaning. We are the stuff-substance of a meaning-filled life, and a "good life" probably requires some type of container to pour ourselves into. This need is (one of probably many reasons) why we have the "containers" of culture, tradition, and family. This should not be forgotten, even if the attempt to abandon meaning is flirted with.

What is the suspension of the need to make meaning, then?

One primary principle in the Unified Mindfulness system of meditation that I have described is "Recycling the Reaction" (using all of one's sensory experience as "material" in contemplative practice: taking the Material as the Method). Another important principle is the notion of a "Complete Experience": Saying a quick and deep "YES" to the natural unfolding of sensory experience as it arises and allowing it to be totally affirmed through its own passing — an engaged consummation of sensory experience.

As we meet and variously interact with the experience of shame, what it wants is to direct our attention toward something important: it is an aspect of our emotional guidance system. That "something important" is discovered through semantic work -- either individually or with a trusted professional.

Having a "Complete Experience" of shame could be said to be the goal of working with it at the sensory level. When any instance of shame arises, it will necessarily involve some combination of thoughts and emotions. Tracking the bare experience of thoughts (that we see and hear in our mind) and emotions (that we feel in the body) related to shame can eventually lead to a cultivated skill of affirming them to completion...

Auto-Parenting

...as we do this "affirming to completion" (over and over), we can notice getting carried away less and less in inner commentary about shameful thoughts and emotions. Furthermore, at some point, when thoughts and emotions are allowed to roll along on their own (without our stopping them to stamp them with a label of "good" or "bad"), they are able to release themselves from the ruminating whirlpool of constant self-evaluation. Training ourselves to get out of the way like this involves a radical willingness to give ourselves and our thoughts+emotions full permission to be fully present together moment-by-moment.Allowing this self-release can be an effort that leads to effortlessness. The functional purpose of thoughts and emotions is to be fully seen, heard, and felt; and one must deeply observe the way that they naturally fulfill that purpose in order for them to self-release.When we are young, we are all each guided by an inner system of attachment bonding: an inherent motivational system that leads infants and children to be near, to communicate with, and to connect to the important adult figures in life (to be seen, heard, and felt by caregivers). When this happens, humans thrive. When it doesn't, humans require various degrees of repair.To truly deal with shame -- to fully heal from the potential damage of shameful thinking and feeling -- we must be the loving parent of our own thoughts and emotions. This may include deliberately checking them with some standard and guiding them to some end (much like we do at the semantic level). But preceding this is an opportunity to simply and elementally acknowledge: an opportunity that takes place purely at the sensory level. We are the seers, hearers, and feelers of our own thoughts and emotions, and one of the most important jobs we have in the task of "self-care" is to be a supportive and accepting attachment figure to ourselves.Phases and Pointing-to'sAs we begin to open up to something as powerful as shame, what will probably be noticed is the intensely solid quality that shame seems to have. Over time, however (and it can take some time), as we develop the skills of lovingly "affirming shame to completion" (through the UM lens, experiencing shame with a high degree of Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity), that solidness can soften. A liquidity and airiness can be discovered within the very experience of even painful shame. The thoughts and emotions of shame (and all other experience, incidentally) actually point us toward a wholeness that we desperately want and that we already are -- "Completely Experiencing" them gives them the radical permission to self-liberate right then and there: gracefully flowing and vanishing into the next receptive moment...

[Mid-point disclaimer: I am halfway through my list of 10 routinely problematic emotional qualities (working with "Ordinary Mind" as the "Path"). Just as a reminder, I am borrowing a LOT from the Unified Mindfulness system of meditation as organized by Shinzen Young. This is just as much a self-reminder as anything... I try to make sure I never forget that most everything I (think I) know consists of "borrowed ideas": the only thing I am the "expert" on is how these ideas apply to my own subjective experience.]

Ordinary Mind as the Path IV (Depression)

What is it?

There are a set of somewhat standard symptoms that make up the constellation that is depression: sadness, apathy, inability to experience pleasure, concentration/sleep disturbance, low energy, flat-lined emotional experience, harmfully negative intrusive thoughts, feelings of guilt or emptiness, etc..More generally, however, depression can range from a ferocious self-contempt to a profoundly aimless vacuum.It can be sudden and shocking like being pushed off of a bridge into a rushing river;It can be like walking through a dense fog: you don't realize until you're well into it how drenched you are in the thick, clinging moisture of sadness.Whatever depression is like for you, it is likely that you know it when you see it (and, rather than "depression", you may know it as something like sadness, loneliness, worthlessness, pointlessness, numbness, etc.). It is also likely that you aren't always quite sure what to do about this nasty condition.I wonder what you have tried? Does forcing yourself to be busy help? Do you feel better when others are around? Will participating in acts of service turn your mood around? Whatever works for you, I'd suggest you continue doing it... assuming it is healthy and sustainable for you and others around you. But, what does it mean for something to "work" with depression?Most often, I think people feel like something "works" if it gets rid of whatever doesn't feel good. I think this makes a lot of sense -- if it hurts to keep touching a hot stove... stop touching it! Interestingly though (and somewhat cruelly), it seems to be the case that directly trying to rid ourselves of emotional experience often tends to embed it more deeply in our experience. Trying to "get rid of" something like depression is like trying to flatten the ripples of water with a hot iron: the more you try, the more stirred up the ripples become (do it with too hot an iron, and it may even boil).

What to do with it? [Part A: Letting-Be & Letting-Go]

For something to "work" in dealing with depression (and other "heavy" emotional states), it may require the paradoxical skill of letting-be. "Skills" are things (responses, behaviors, attitudes, patterns, habits) that can be learned and subsequently practiced and, ultimately, optimized. This is good news because letting things be just as they are when they hurt badly can often seem like an impossibility; so the fact that letting-be it is a skill gives us the chance to trust the incremental process of developing it.Letting-be means to give full permission for what is occurring to occur. What is there, is there; and you are affirming that fact. Sadness? There it is. Negative thoughts? There they are. Extreme heaviness in the body? There it is. In that hair's width of a moment between "Oh, I'm feeling sadness right now" and "I can't stand that I feel this way!!!" is the space where the skill of letting-be is strengthened. Stretch out the simple quality of "Oh, there it is..." and do your best to observe things as they are rather than focusing on the commentary that the mind gladly offers up as criticism of what "should" or "shouldn't" be felt.Another strange skill that depression may call us to explore is the skill of letting-go. While letting-be allows us to observe without automatic reaction and without launching off into a self-perpetuating story about how bad things are; Letting-go aims to allow all that is noticed to continue to roll right along unhindered after it is acknowledged. But, WHY WOULD I WANT IT TO "ROLL RIGHT ALONG"? I WANT IT TO STOP! I hear you, but think of how you might respond to a child who reeeeally wants to tell you something... if you scream "Be quiet!" over your shoulder, she may actually hush for a while; but she still has something to say. Instead, pausing to give her permission to be seen, heard, and felt can allow her to "roll right along" with her day... and you with yours.Letting-go does what it sounds like; it ungrasps. Once the ruminative commentary of depression begins, we typically do an amazingly effective (and typically unconscious) job of feeding and fueling the negative stories that keep depression fat and happy. Letting-go is the antidote to that incessant problem, and it, like letting-be, is a skill to be learned, practiced, and optimized through artful repetition.A favorite author of mine, Martin Laird describes the process of letting-be & letting-go (which he calls "Receiving-and-Releasing") as being like what the bank of a river does all the time: it welcomes the onrushing waters without resistance, and it simultaneously frees those same waters without clinging or pushing away. We are to be like the bottom of the river: fully affirming ourselves by quickly and deeply saying "YES" to the thoughts and feelings we notice (without giving them control of our actions).Taking on this attitude sets the stage for deeper self-understanding and requires less of a straining effort than fighting off all the negative feelings that sadness brings with it.

The Possible Functions of Depression

What points to the brokenness within ourselves that needs to be tended to?

What relativizes that which we usually find so important by forcing us to face the possibility of nihilistic emptiness?

What makes us stop... and be still (even if it is painful)?

These types of investigations are important to get a "pulse-check" on depression. They also point to something that is not obvious: depression might actually be trying to protect you.This is likely the catalyst for a profound eye-roll for anyone who has experienced the forlorn darkness that is found within deep sorrow.What if, however, depression was treated like a teacher? What would happen if grief were welcomed like a friend bringing invaluable (albeit tragic) news? How could you be transformed by fully saying "YES" to the emotional information that is stamped into us by the messages of apathy and sadness?To be clear, I DO NOT mean to imply that we should follow or even believe all that depression has to share with us... this is how the activity of negative thoughts ("I am no good and I never will be") turn to the thoughts of negative action (self-harm/sabotage or suicidal ideation). Our job is to learn from depression, not to be controlled by it.What you learn from depression about yourself and your world is not something I could comment on -- that will likely require your own experimentation with observing what happens when the skills of letting-be and letting-go are exercised. After all, your experience is what we are talking about here, not mine.

What to do with it? [Part B: Surrender & "Single Taste"]

So, as you attend to the signs and symptoms of depression without immediately hating them and while fully affirming them to completion, you may be faced with the uncomfortable realization that you are sometimes (maybe often) not at all in control of the content of your thinking and feeling. What I mean is that you likely notice that there are WAY more thoughts and feelings that you do not choose to think or feel than those that you do.This may be a familiar feeling: when racked with anxiety, you probably wouldn't intentionally heap on more worry if you could help it; you probably don't ever write "lose your temper and say a bunch of things you don't mean" in your calendar. Thoughts and emotions seem to have a will of their own. We get into trouble when we leave that fact unacknowledged as we get lost in the fruitless fight with ourselves over what thoughts or feelings we will allow to be present within our experience.There is a lot to be said for replacing negative thoughts with more positive ones (and this is another skill of its own), but when drowning in the flood of negativity, sometimes we just don't have that option.

"Surrender" is a tricky word. It may be heard to mean something like submission to the will of another. In this case, however, what I am suggesting is that we experiment with surrendering to our own humility rather than to the content of thought and feeling. (And it is worth noting at this point that Humility is typically... well... humiliating.)Surrendering to the content of our thoughts and feelings can lead us down a dark road. The path of surrendering to our own limitations, by contrast, can open us up to the Path of an empowering self-knowledge. Humility, after all, isn't just about recognizing our limits; it is also a clear honesty with our very selves about what we are made up of.And I think you and I and everyone else is capable of living in a harmonious way with all that make us up. We have a relationship with ourselves just like we do with others, after all; and you certainly can't hate someone else's pain away, so why try with your own? Surrendering (i.e. fully acknowledging and allowing) to the fact that a friend has a broken leg does not mean to kick him in the location of the fracture. It does not mean to scream at his leg in anger for having been broken. What it does mean is to accept and care for the state of your loved one including the entirety of what they are... brokenness and all.Seeing and taking our whole selves as including the entirety of what we are involves a loving of the unlovable parts of ourselves. Humility is the way we can clearly understand what those parts may be.As this wholeness of self-affirmation is deepened, one can begin to see the sameness of happy and horrible, honorable and onerous, deft and derelict, potent and pathetic, motivated and miserable, light and dark... all of these are parts of yourself; and your "Self" is what loves you (and all parts of you) into existence and into completion -- IF YOU ALLOW IT.
Letting-be and letting-go is good practice.

Knowing and acknowledging yourself is humility.

Learning and loving through depression is the Path.

Ordinary Mind as the Path III (Anger)

When anger is, it seems as though that's all there is:no space, no negotiation, no flexibility...only inward or outward pressure (or both) explosively exposing themselves to the world of thought and action.Sometimes violent, sometimes seething; sometimes abrupt, sometimes gradual; sometimes fiery, sometimes frozen.The two poles of anger (one wild, loose, and explosive; one locked, stuck, and implosive) are expressed by the many, many shades of color that anger embodies. But they (and all their variations) also derive from an utterly reliable source of love and protection.

Just as Anxiety protects by planning, preparing, and problem-solving;

and Depression protects by giving up and going blind in the growing darkness;

Anger also protects by activating, animating, and (yes, even) assaulting...

These, like other roots of emotion, are gifts of our own inherited, instinctive, and impressionable selves.

Finding the Path As Anger

The "loving and protective" function of anger is not obvious.I know anger almost as well as it knows me (and anger literally knows the hell out of me), and one thing is certain: frustration's forceful movement, with all of its 10,000 arms and legs, can be experienced as a womb of fire -- it's consuming hate and heavy loathing can poison the space of thought and the air of breath when the long-forgotten gifts of its grace are distorted.To find this grace, recollect the ground (the essence of grace) from which anger arose; the sweet openness of release that is then inherited was never missing, just obscured.

  • Gently sweep through these obscurations just as wind whips around wind.
  • Notice the comings-and-goings of fury in the mind and body without succumbing to their influence.
  • Respond to frantic motion with stillness and to hatred with silent kindness.
  • Allow the waves of irritation to swell and shrink; cover and recede; expand and collapse... but maintain a stance of quiet.
  • Be the "stillness amidst movement".
  • Silently acknowledge from a place of stillness
  • Love to the point of disappearance

Do this again and again. When anger is upon you, remember the inverted power gained by gliding through anger's 10,000 arms and legs to reach its soft, open, receptive center. Continue this, and you will find that center everywhere.We must choose to hate anger to life or love anger to death. Either is a commitment and a practice.

"Single-Taste"...

Where does anger arise from? No, not "who made you mad"... what is the source of the experience of anger? Not the trigger of why you are made... the space that anger takes and the space that gives rise to it. Discover that (in fact, you are that), and rest in it.Practically speaking, this is impossible. Hatred is MUCH too powerful to overcome or control. This is an essential truth to recognize. It points to the futility of fighting against or alongside our rage.Affirming completely the un-nameable source of anger is something altogether different than riding yourself of anger's existence. It is a surrendering to the space that anger encompasses and that it is encompassed by -- this is the Way of love and protection so often obscured by our efforts to overpower it.You do not have to do anything with anger; nor do you have to let anger do anything with you...

  • Silently acknowledge from a place of stillness
  • Love to the point of disappearance

Do this again and again...

A central theological problem (from a layperson’s POV)

"Self" functions as the holder (possessor) of the grounding concept of "God" (in word) as opposed to a pattern of being that emerges from the groundless Ground of "God" (underlying experience)"Self" demands certainty, sometimes at the cost of authenticity -- thus, we live with the belief that God is someTHING to obtain or acquire or contact, or (at worst) win over.Dropping "self" means dropping the activity of the "self": proliferation -- this is a stopping of "doing" (intentional action, speech, thought), and an opening to the reception of presence.Abandon "knowledge": empty yourself of "self" and "God" by releasing the tendency to cling to either, and you will fully receive them both.Relinquish the "self" that holds "God" fixed in a place -- to "crucify" is to "fix" upon a "cross"... how much more does the devout Christian crucify the Living God by attributing fixity and "thing-ness" to ineffable, divine Nothing?!"Prayer is the letting go of concepts."-- Evagrius Ponticus, "Chapters on Prayer

A ray of light does not search for the sun; it carries the sun's warmth and brightness.

The branch of a vine does not search for the vine; it extends the vine's reach.

A wave does not search for the ocean; it is already full of ocean.

"Holy" Pitcher

The life of suffering and the Kingdom of Heaven are both pitchers of water;They both are broken with a constant and flowing leak.They both are the same, in fact;One pitcher: broken, leaking.

At once exhausting and endlessly fulfilling;Being emptied is pain and satisfaction;The pouring-out balanced with a pouring-in;An unseen deposit and an unknown Source.
Torturous attention clinging to the cleftIs the life of grasping and repulsion - suffering.Affectionate detachment broadens to the whole;The out-pouring is released; the in-pouring embraced;both seen and allowed, then vanishing.

Ducks and Russians

THE LITTLE DUCK

By Donald C. Babcock

Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No, it isn’t a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells. He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree. But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is. And neither do you.But he realizes it.And what does he do, I ask you. He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity—which it is.That is religion, and the duck has it.He has made himself a part of the boundless, by easing himself into it just where it touches him.

 I have heard this poem a few times by several speakers while listening to talks on meditation, stillness, compassion, etc., and it struck me each time. It was so notable to me not because it is a "duck" poem by a guy named "Donald" (although, that's good enough to enjoy), but because of how many instances of similarity I have noticed played out in themes of oceans-waves, knowing-unknowing, silence-raucousness, stillness-chaos... Some guy named "Babcock" seems to notice something about being-in-the-world that many others have too. Something about the stillness in motion and the silence in sound that is always there and yet always elusive. Knowing one's own experience comes in waves and depths like this, and finding ourselves in the middle of that oscillation can be bewildering - and it can be much easier to ignore... Settling into the wave - incessantly rocking and rhythmic. Knowing the expanse of the sea - making room for the dissolving of all things. These seem like two options of skill and wisdom; but how?

Rublev_Troitsa

Rublev_Troitsa

Here, Christ gazes into God; God and Spirit share a reciprocal receptivity and surrender; Christ's body turns toward Spirit as though in preparation for embrace; Spirit looks down, acknowledging and worshiping the chalice [the vessel of Being, the empty process of Life, the Way of existence, the Logos, Dao --- "Christ"] Spirit reminds us that it is "HERE" - touching the ground as a solid example of lived, breathed life ["pneuma"/"spiritus" = breath]; Christ is showing with his hand ["2"] the intimate nature that Christ shares with both the Divine and Matter - Spiritual and Physical - Universal and Particular. This "3" is non-dual: it is the way to live dynamically as wave and ocean; it is the means by which all phenomena can be known at once as "everything and no-thing" - "emptiness and fullness" - "everywhere and nowhere". The trinity is a blissful design of knowing by not-knowing and being fulfilled by self-emptying...

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery ["harpagmos": a thing to be clung to] to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation ["kenosis": self-emptying] and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men

Phil 2

Unless we practice self-emptying and release the "things to be clung to", the waves will desolate the us that we think is there swimming and the sea will swallow with merciless force the us that we think is so scared. The duck still floats and the Russian still paints, but this duck and this Russian seem to have understood what that means to some degree.

Let's Hear it for Thomas Merton...

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposed our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely… I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”

“All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered it's surface.”

New Seeds of Contemplation

"For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness... Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

New Seeds...

"When we rest in pure emptiness, the love of God swims into us out of the serene darkness of God's abyssal presence like tidal waves crashing into our consciousness in a vast, hushed surf of praise. As we fall back into the confusion of our own desires, judgements, and temptations, a scar is left on our hearts from the divine encounter with who we are and where we belong - this scar burns us and aches within us as we desperately await a moment of pure poverty so well-disposed to receiving gifts given in "rays of darkness". And these moments are rare."

New Seeds...

The abyss that separates the paradise of the Kingdom of Heaven and the hedonistic pleasure-seeking of the flesh must be crossed with a blind leap of ascetic detachmentThe mystical death (complete emptiness; transcendence of all satisfaction and experience to rest in the night of pure and naked faith) is the final mysterious liberation from attachment - from confusion and the multiplicity of needs and wants - where we will live each present moment in emptiness, in freedom, without being limited by the exclusive 'self' that distinguishes us so rigidly from others and from God; it is from here that God will give us unity in and with Himself.