Month: May 2013

You know, the sun you see today is not the same sun you saw yesterday.  Both the sun and your eye have changed.

The opposite of an opposite is a continuum.  Non-duality does not preclude the existence of difference.

And the point I wanted to make here: all vices and virtues exist uniquely and in dynamic ways for all people.  The way I express vanity may differ in small but significant ways from how you express vanity.  The way I indulge anger may differ from how you do.

Practically, what this means is that it is easy to blind ourselves both to our virtues and our vices, because they do not exist in us precisely the way we seem them–or feel we see them–in others.

If I admire the courage, say, of Achilles, but do not express it in his way, does not mean I am not brave.

If I resent the egotism of another, that does not mean that it has not found a place in me, and nestled comfortably in some dark place in me I refuse to see.

I find the process of self discovery–which in many respects is also “other discovery”, because it facilitates deeper connection–endlessly fascinating.  Some may see this as self absorption.  Maybe they are right.  I don’t know.  Likely, the final answer is

Per the recommendations in the book Movie Yoga, I rewatched the Lord of the Rings over the last few days. I own the movies, and have watched them a number of time.  I will share a few thoughts.

First, it seems to me it would be useful to use the same practice I use in dream interpretation in Movie Yoga.  In what way does EVERY character represent some latent aspect in you?  Can you say you are fully without hunger for power?  That you have abandoned all slavishness in you?  That you always use moral reasoning and empathy in all your decisions?  Or, conversely, do you not have untapped potentials expressed by the elves and wizards?

Secondly, I have long wondered about the extent of the macabre in Tibetan Buddhism, such as the ritual use of human bones, and their practice of cutting the bodies of their dead into pieces and feeding them to vultures.

Like most people, I have long separated myself from evil.  Hell, I have a site dedicated to the exploration of Goodness.  Can we really say, though, that evil is out there, and not that it is a quality of energy which is always present to our experience in potentia?  It is always RIGHT THERE, waiting, as is Goodness.

When I watch movies, they start trains of images flowing, some from the movie, many completely spontaneous.  It is literally like watching movies my unconscious is creating as it goes.  Sometimes it is interesting, sometimes not, but I have learned to watch, as there is always something which some part of me is trying to make conscious.

In my meditation, I had images of cannibalizing Gimli.  Now, I like Gimli as well as anyone, so what was this?  It is rage.  Achilles, after he had wounded Hektor, told him he wanted to rip the flesh from his bones and eat it raw.  This imagery–and historically in practice–this has been an Ur-image of primal bestiality and anger.  This means I am tapping into some unrecognized spot of rage, primal rage.  This is a good thing.  Kum Nye literally means “massaging the emotional/spiritual body”, and what I found was a pocket of tension.

Immediately after this image, I had images of Saurumon laughing and smoking with Gandalf, in an open spirited and happy way, in a time long before his fall.  I had images of Gandalf showing a bad temper in his younger years.  We see him only after he has conquered that bad habit.  I saw that many of the soldiers for the Rohanese and Gondorians beat their wives and abused their children.  I thought of an imaginative book which radically rethought the Lord of the Rings, by telling it from an orc’s perspective: http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/

It seems to me that only by embracing our capacity for evil that we can see clearly, that we can finally purge ourselves of it; or, as I should put it, perfect the process of purging ourselves of it daily, by learning not to cling to ideas, habits, or emotions.

We can posit, I think, that the heart of existence is joy.  This is what the mystics teach us, and I believe it.  What prevents the emergence of this truth is a protective coating of habits, which the Buddhists and others have described in great detail.  One of these habits is rejecting experience, rather than diving into it, and bobbing back up.

Now, what I am describing can of course be abused, and is not suitable for people who are on the edge.  But for those with strong wills and solid reality testing, it is quite interesting.

During my cross country trip, I listened to the 12 hours of Greek philosophy, 6 hours on Buddhism, and 6 on the Iliad.  I am sensitive by nature, when I want to be, and wow many impressions were left. 

I will say that I used to want to catch ideas the way you catch a butterfly, to cage them on a page somewhere.  I decided recently to stop that, to watch them come and go, and if I miss a few, so be it.  Whatever is important remains within me and will come back at the appropriate time.  Many of the ideas I had on the trip in reaction to these lectures I have lost, but some keep reappearing.

One is that we could with justice point to our current social problems as grounded in mistakes made by the Greeks.  For one thing, they neglected the role of the body in perception.  There is no equivalent in the Greek tradition to sitting meditation, that I am aware of (some, say Pythagoras, may have had it, but if so, they did not speak of it).

For Aristotle and Plato, living–loving Truth–was synonymous with thinking, with thought, with the efforts of the brain.

But so much of life is NOT thought.  There is a passage in the Tao Te Ching where Lao Tzu says something like “how do I know this is so?  Because of THAT.”  That is him pointing to something real, which cannot be confined to the book.  What is a liger?  I could Google it, or, if one was in the room, I could say THAT.

In the lecture on Buddhism someone was asked if some thing or other was true or not true.  He did not answer, and was considered clever for it.  What is the sound of one hand clapping?  One accepted answer is apparently to clap with one hand without saying a word.  As far as I can tell, to the extent koans have ANY utility, they are to point to the incompleteness of language and thought.  You could do that equally by relaxing in a wonderful bath, taking it in fully, then pondering briefly the futility of attempting to render your experience in words.  You can either evoke from others imaginings, memories, or simple images.  Not even the most simple experience can be fully rendered (as animal fat is rendered) into language.

So what make language the measure of all things?  I am of course only one of many to ask this question.

There is something inherently reductive about the requirement that action be based on logic.  Logic is only a part of ourselves, and very much one of the least important aspects of our actual experience, of life as it is actually lived experientially.

How do intellectually deranged people like Richard Dawkins come into being?  By making the use of logic the ONLY means of approaching truth, and simultaneously making the apprehension of truth the only purpose of life.  Materialism is not a scientifically sound doctrine.  Matter, as far as we can tell, does not “exist” in any final way, and our best guess is that our own consciousness–or some supreme consciousness we may as well call God–is what causes the latent to manifest, for the world to exist.

But only within a materialistic, which is to say energetically static, standpoint, can we say all the questions have been answered, all the problems solved, the nature of human existence solved, using logic, and only logic.  You cannot perform logically sound operations upon fluctuating premises, such as the stipulation of a  connection between cause and effect within our own perceptual domain, in ways that can be measured.

My brain is tired.  I did not exhaust this theme, and am not quite sure I hit the points I wanted the way I wanted to, but I’m going to stop t

I recently listened to a 12 hour treatment of Greek philosophy.  I had many reactions, of course, most of which I will likely never post here (that is another topic), but did want to find that I found Socrates’ thoughts on writing his ideas down interesting.  Effectively, his position was that ideas live, and that writing them down calcified them in some way, such that they could no longer interact with others in a living way once he was dead.  Dialogue was no longer possible, and he preferred being forgotten to being misunderstood. 

This is an interesting perspective.

Is not all writing dead, and resurrected by the reader?  I was wondering about some of my own writing, and how I would respond to questions about it.   I would have to rethink myself to the place where I wrote it, which I hope would be regressive, since I would hope I have grown since then (yesterday; five minutes ago).

Each resurrects writing in their own way, even the author.  I myself can’t remember what I believed 5 years ago, not in detail.

Can there be an honest writing of the future?  I don’t know.

Talking out loud again.  May make sense, maybe not.  Gibberish is sometimes the idiom of the open.

I would like to define Spirituality as I understand it as “The perfection of normality.”  Is it normal to feel desire when a heterosexual man sees an attractive woman?  Of course.  My spirituality simply offers him the choice of using that normal, natural desire to further his own spiritual growth by chasing her around, or to let it go immediately as not compatible with his current goals.

Anger, sadness, jealousy, greed: none of these are foreign.  None of these are abnormal.  What I would submit, though, is that it is certainly useful to believe that happiness is our natural state, and in point of fact I think this is actually true, in an absolute sense we will be able to see when we pass on.

Our task is to follow a path laid down for us to happiness, which travels through, and attains familiarity with ALL, the side routes of all the normally unhelpful emotions.

I have more to say, but I feel it won’t quite come out right at this time, so I’m going to go watch some more of the Lord of the Rings, and keep testing out my Movie Yoga.  If it works out, I’m going to compete in the Regional Serenity Contest next month.  I think I may even be able to make Nationals. (h/t to the Onion.  That link is pretty funny.)

I just finished a very interesting book called “Movie Yoga”, by Tav Sparks, who more or less runs the official Holotropic Breathwork training.  The premise is that movies can act as triggers for deep latent nexuses of emotional tension, which if accepted and acknowledged, if allowed to flow freely, will loosen deep knots within our psyches, and allow the normal and natural flow towards wholeness with which we are all born.

I think he is right, but that he does not go far enough.  It seems to me that we all crave direction, and in the moral sphere the only directions can be away from or towards our moral goals.  A personality based on a chosen goal is characterized by a deep qualitative order I have called “Telearchy” which provides a sense of relief and freedom in and of itself from the burdens of confusion, self pity, and an unstable sense of what to do in life.

Within (W)holotropic Breathwork, the goal is definitionally Wholeness, and the means of moving towards it the liberation of what they term the Inner Healer.  For those who are hurt–pretty much all of us–release from the prison of self defeating, deeply imbedded, generally unconscious behavioral and emotive patterns is wholesome, invigorating, and useful.

Doing my meditation this morning, though, it occurred to me that if a wound is concave emotionally–if it represents the intrusion of the outside world in such a way that a permanent change has been affected–then there ought to be the emotional equivalent of a convex curve as well.  We can in fact intrude into the world, from the inside out.

Joy, as an example, can be infectious.  Optimism, love, excitement: all can be spread.  What you need to do this is a superabundance of these traits, such that you are not only not deficient in them, but so profoundly filled with them that you cannot but spread your abundance.

In my view healing wounds is only half of what humans are capable of.  We are capable of becoming human dynamos, sources of light and healing energy.  I have at times felt strong currents flowing through me, and my goal is to build this flow as well as I can, which in my case will first consist in meeting my own emotional needs well enough that I am never an asshole (a counterfactual statement, regrettably, at the moment), and that I am able to achieve consistent congruence between thought, word and deed (also not currently a salient element in my own life).

I used the word guru in one sense a few posts ago. I will use it in another way.  Let us suppose that everyone is emotionally wounded, or at least incomplete in some way.  They are not sufficient unto themselves.  They cannot act as radiant lights without context, without emotional support, without people who understand them.

It seems to me there is a limit to what can be achieved within a mass of people, each of whom needs some section of the others for optimal functioning.  Do there not need to be those who are “self-born”, who regulate their own destinies, who can give without taking?  I feel there do, those who can move but not be moved.  We might follow Aristotle, and place their final reliance on God, however we define the referent of this word. I am fine with that.

Such people, though, I would also call “heavy” (guru), and certainly teachers.

I had a mild synchronicity with this word yesterday, which I will not discuss.  For reasons completely inscrutable even to me, I am sending it out here.

If I have any long time readers, you will have noticed I am sometimes almost completely self indulgent, as here.  It is needed sometimes, for all of us.

Somewhere in the Tao Te Ching it says, approximately, “the ten thousand things rise and fall without ceasing”.  This has long been my go-to quote for dealing with change, or really difficulty of any kind.  I recently taught it to my oldest, who found it interesting that something 2,500 years old would still be relevant, and in this case, helpful in dealing with constantly shifting high school social terrain.

I don’t know why, but I get this picture of this vast ocean, and countless things bobbing up and down.  In that vast space, my own ups and downs feel less important, and in any event it is in the nature of the world that what once was, will soon enough be no more, and what was not, will soon enough come into being.

You can shrink from this, or shine a bright light on it and welcome it.

I like this movement system.  It is a really good way to get going in the morning, and about the most efficient system I have found both for basic core work, and for stretching out the major muscle groups.

Here is one link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjtslbrFbLY

Here are verbal descriptions of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tibetan_Rites

For the spinning, I have found that I can separate myself from the dizziness.  You pick a point you return to while spinning–like figure skaters do–and when you have done the 20 or 21 rotations, what I find is that the point keeps moving, like there is a wind moving, but that if you simply let the wind move, that eventually the dizziness disappears entirely.  I have gotten to where I can do 20 spins fast with almost no recovery time.

For the second, I like to raise my arms, too, to touch my toes.  That is not in there, but I like it.

This is my most basic exercise system.  If I do nothing else, I do this.

Here’s another video.  She is quite easy on the eyes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJElLrpBetc

I liked this column: http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2013/04/29/how-abortion-has-changed-america-n1579604

She says: “Let’s be clear that pro-aborts and pro-lifers differ on far more than
technicalities about when life begins. They differ about what life is.”  I agree.

She says: “It takes a certain deadening of the heart, of the soul to read the
description of the little baby clasping his fingers and toes as the
doctor jams his scissors into his skull , and still believe this should
be permitted.”  I agree.

We need to be clear about the logic of the “pro-choice” movement (quotes, because one half of the people involved gets no choice): there is no difference in principle between removing a woman’s gall bladder or kidney, and removing and killing a viable child.  This is the logic of “My body, my choice”.  This is the logic of Kermit Gosnell and those who defend him.

She says: “Since Roe v Wade, we’ve given birth to a new materialistic culture of
narcissism where reverence for life itself is gone. Life has become a
commodity and people use each other as cavalierly as they destroy
innocent young life.” I agree.

What was the logic of abortion choice?  That women would fare better when allowed not to have children they did not want, and which they somehow “contracted” from consensual sex that was done unintelligently.

What has been the effect?  Are women empowered?  Given that the most abortions are performed in poor black ghettos, it would seem not.  Can we say that killing thousands of little black babies every year is somehow improving our communal life?  Yes, the statistical likelihood is that they would have become de facto wards of the State, but this is only true because Democrats prevent all economic policies from being enacted which would likely generate economic growth in the ghettos.

I think Star Parker is right that tolerating abortion requires a coursening of the spirit, a hardening of the heart, a chosen violation of natural human instincts to protect and defend the defenseless.

In all my moral/ethical writings I talk about looking at the effects over time and across populations of certain types of behavior.  As I see it, this is the only wise, the only true way to get at the heart of morality, which is about elevating the human spirit, and increasing feelings of peace, joy, and belonging.

Abortion clearly does none of these things.  All one can say about it is that it provides economic advantages to irresponsible and frivolous people.  That is not a sufficient defense to warrant not opposing it, at least in most cases.

And to reiterate what should be patently obvious, there is no Constitutional right to abortion.  It is nowhere to be found, or even hinted at in the Bill of Rights.  Roe v. Wade in important respects paved the way for the patently unConstitutional Supreme Court defense of Obamacare.

Mediocrity creates mediocrity.   Stupidity and lack of principle can become habits, particularly when reinforced by vigorous propaganda.