Polarity

My life has been one of extremes… polarizing extremes… emotional extremes of love and hate… faith and doubt… and so on. My observation today is that nature doesn’t work that way except in neutralizing and eliminating evolutionary progress. As one sage points out… “No tree can be planted on the North or South poles.” It is in the jungles… the rain forests of the tropics… where variety provides for most of the planet’s future. Ideals are fine but when they are rigid and unyielding there is little tolerance for compassion. It is in the temperate zones that civilizations rise where fields are plowed, planted and harvested.
    Can I moderate my extremes to allow compassion to reach fruition… or will I resort to formula set in stone to exclude and purge that which is contrary to my heart’s design?

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A Juke Box From Hell

What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumptuous in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas...

Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 97

~ 

Separating the creative modus from the spiritual has always been a difficult challenge. The muse I have followed has been to open the flood gates to the subconscious and to censor as little as possible… certainly not consciously at any rate. Following the muse was what I thought of as my spiritual path… the most important thing… and it was as far as I could fathom of conscious contact with God… the devil take the hindmost… or, to paraphrase the words of Johnny Boyo in the King Jimmy Big Book: “The wind blows where it leans, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell whence it comes, and where it goes: so is everyone born of the Spirit.” It doesn’t take much to see where this take on things doesn’t work very well off the page or canvas. If I behave as though I had God’s imprimatur on all my actions I would be locked up in jail or Shutter Island of my own making. The practice of spiritual principles follow this directive when I don’t know what to do; is it kind; is it necessary; is it true. Whenever I stray from this plum-line, and act rashly, I hurt myself or someone I care deeply about. It would be better to pause and ask; is it worth the price I pay for it? How much do I have to drop in this Juke Box from Hell to play my tune?

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Prior Contempt

Faith commissioned it/Science built it.

The Bible mentions the existence of an unforgivable sin, and this has greatly frightened innumerable Christians.

    Let us be absolutely clear upon one point. There is no sin that a human being can commit that God will not forgive but there is one sin that he cannot forgive until we make it possible. This sin consists in shutting ourselves off from fresh inspiration or guidance from God, if your mind is already made up about everything pertaining to God, if you decide that you now know all the truth, and that you could not be mistaken; then it will not be possible for the Holy Ghost to open your eyes to error and lead you into higher truth. Naturally, as long as this is your state of mind, no help or improvement can come to you, and in that sense only is your sin unforgivable --- unforgivable while it lasts. When you change your attitude, enlightenment will come, and the sin will be destroyed.

    Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come to him, and will sup with him and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

Around the Year with

Emmet Fox, p. 346

~

     We call it in AA, “Contempt prior to investigation.” To the scientific mind the idea of  God is a throwback to a time when so much was unanswered and what the Nuns told me was “a mystery”. There have been several inroads attempted to change the minds of scientists presented in theories like Creationism and so on. So much of it is the hammering of scientific facts to fit within a box of preconceived notions about the nature of God. I have come to believe, in a very basic manner that dismisses all this distortion and leaves me open minded to whatever the scientific method reveals. Science is mistakenly thought to be a set of answers and religionists scramble around to find facts that still remain mysteries. 

     I see science is a method and its conclusions are not set in stone. Answers from this method are organized from collections of facts that become theories. From this method of experimentation and the mathematics of logic, some theories hold more water than not because they are repeatable and these theories are the basis for all the industrial and technological miracles of the day. 

     All I know for sure, from personal experience is that; when I called on the Heart of Compassion… the Big Kahuna… from the depths of my heart, something happened to me that has happened to others down through the ages. I won’t call this experience consistently repeatable because the depths of the heart are unknown, but it was a sure thing that it put me on the path. It took a leap of faith, but once taken, there was no turning back.

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Delight in Concord

Abandoning malicious speech, he abstains from malicious speech; he does not repeat elsewhere what he has heard here in order to divide (those people) from these, nor does he repeat to these people what he has heard elsewhere in order to divide (these people) from those; thus he is one who reunites those who are divided, a promoter of friendships, who enjoys concord, rejoices in concord, delights in concord, a speaker of words that promote concord.

Majhima-Nakaya i 179

~

It seems to be the worst part of the internet: we no longer are able to give polite discord a chance because we think we now know things about other people that we have absolutely no conceivable knowledge of, or about, otherwise. We have access to what other people are thinking in places like Facebook that we never had before. On such formats we are bombarded with each others' contrary observations. Friendships of several years deteriorate because of how easy it is to pound out our thoughts and emotions on the keyboard before we have given careful consideration of each others' deeply felt opinions. These divisions are caused, not so much by the content of a disagreement, as much as it is that the discourse is usually embedded with a nasty tone. Sometimes we don’t even know how insulting a comment can be and we develop a thick skin about how our words affect others. I can admit that I have done this so many times myself and it is, more often than not, too late often for a frivolous apology. The best I can do now in most cases is to refrain from being so pig-headed and give wide berth to divisive topics. I made a commitment to myself a few months ago that I would only argue for harmony and, in doing so; the greatest benefit arising out of this resolution has been that I have come to delight in concord.

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Life/Death

Eternity & the Bardo of life

Life, as Buddha told us, is as brief  as a lightening flash; yet, as Wordsworth said: The world is too much with us: Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” It is that laying waste of our powers --- that betrayal of our essence, that abandonment of the miraculous chance that this life, the natural bardo, gives us a knowing and embodying our enlightened nature --- that is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing about human life. What the masters are essentially telling us is to stop fooling ourselves: What will we have learned, if at the moment of death we do not know who we really are?

Glimpse After Glimpse,

Sogyal Rinpoche

~

There was a time when I looked down my nose at the emphasis placed on death by all the spiritual disciplines. I believed that this was done because of its inevitability…the fear… the powerlessness that everyone breathing has over it. Most religions promise a life after death in one way or another: heaven or hell… reincarnation... or, in some Western faiths, life exclusively for the righteous. The very idea that one should deny life in order to prepare for death seems to be a morbid preoccupation.  In this regard I believe an atheist has a healthier respect for life because an atheist knows that this is it.... if there is a meaning it is in this life. The idea, that this bell rings, is about living life to the fullest, draws me. It compels me to desire life… life for the living… and it gives me a unique perspective on suffering. Fear of living loses its grip when I consider where I was before I was born… before the egg of life was fertilized and I began the grasping to have more of it. Isn’t that... that blank in consciousness... where I will go when the curtain closes? Now, this exciting prelude from non-existence is the motivation… I want to live life in its fullness in this moment… this eternity between breaths. In the words of Bob Dylan, we are either “busy being born are busy dying.” Between the past and the present is this place… this state of mind… this bardo… Om.

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Buoyant & Calm

… In any case, the meditative experience of awareness beyond the ordinary sense of self can produce a buoyancy and calm that spills over into the rest of your life. Something as humble as washing the dishes in a meditative state can bring the same buoyancy and calm. Rather than feeling yourself rushed, anxious to get the job over with, settle into the task of dish washing as if it were meditation. Check your posture. Relax your body. Let your belly expand with each breath. Do not hurry. Be aware and appreciate your every motion. Stay in the present moment. At the end of the task, you might be surprised to find that, by not hurrying, you finished considerably sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

The Way of Aikido,

Meditation in Action:

George Leonard

~

      When meditation is extended into the rest of my activities, I am able to conduct myself in a manner that is centered. Issues of morality are not considered but all of my actions become balanced and compassionate simply because I am paying attention what I do and am aware of the transfer of energy. Aikido is a martial art and I am hesitant to refer to meditation as a martial art but, in a very real sense, it is because the opponent is the ego and is to be respected as an equal on the mat. 

     Before I start I have to take command of my senses and focus my attention to the center of my body. This is important because the greatest mechanism of the ego rests between my ears and behind my eyes. While my brain is an important reasoning tool, my center is in the gut.  This, the gut, is where we put the usual functions of the brain into a place where it becomes a tool of The Mind.
 
     I’m not sure why, but I sometimes suffer the affects of what is often referred to as A.D.D. Confusion, crowds, and distractions, agitate me and sometimes I experience panic. However, if I stop… balanced and in charge of my body, responsible for my actions, aware of my own energy and the energy of the ego, I can enter into any room confident and at peace… open and helpful… no matter what kind of chaos is going on around me. This means that, although it is wonderful, I don’t need to sit in a quiet place with all the candles and bells in order to meditate. I can be in a meditative state of mind at a bus stop, in the line at the grocery store or anywhere else I go. Most importantly, I can be open to others, kind and compassionate.... free of fear.

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Letting Be

Chogyam Trungpa

There have been a number of misconceptions regarding meditation. Some people regard it as a trancelike state of mind. Others think of it in terms of training, in the sense of mental gymnastics. But meditation is neither of these, although it does involve dealing with neurotic states of mind. The neurotic state of mind is not difficult or impossible to deal with. It has energy, speed and a certain pattern. The practice of meditation involves letting be ---trying to go with the pattern, trying to go with the energy and speed. In this way we learn to deal with these factors, how to relate with them, not in the sense of causing them to mature in the way we would like, but in the sense of knowing them for what they are and working with their pattern.

From: Cutting Through

Spiritual Materialism;

by Chogyam Trungpa, p. 9

~

I consider meditation a heightened state of awareness that is expansive… and not at all expensive. So many rush from one teaching, exercise regimen, or spiritual practice, to another:…one day it is TM; another day it is Zen meditation;… another day they find Jesus;…yoga;… pilates;…a martial art;… an AA group;… a sponsor;… a guru;… a club;… and even a political movement. Each of these is fine. It is possible to excel in any of these and find something of value… but do I really get anything other than a salve for my ego if I don’t stick to one and sit with myself for a minute? Meditation is not a paper towel I discard after using it once. It is a continual practice that opens my mind wider only as I keep at it. I sit as though I’m watching. I’m not waiting for anything to happen because it is already happening. I am feeling, smelling, hearing as fully as I can… my breath… the breeze passing… the sound of an airplane overhead… seeing the brush move in the distance as a deer cautiously peeks through. My heart beats and I breathe… it becomes as simple as that. This is a good place to start and it certainly is where I finish.

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