In the last case, I may lay down a tangle of thoughts with such enormity that the tangle goes on forever never to quite touch the point that lay underneath it all.
In that case, I may then become the clutter that I so dislike. And yet with the right approach, this tangle can be used as a tool to dive in or to break open stuck places... to leave the land.
This reminds of two seemingly opposite ways that people go about diving into a meditative state.
This reminds of two seemingly opposite ways that people go about diving into a meditative state.
One... Every detail available to one's senses is noticed... like perhaps a hunter gatherer walking through the woods... scanning the periphery with wide angle vision, feeling the air, watching for movement, aligning the body with present reality... yet simultaneously, to enter into a meditative place that comes with being present... even when activated... to move and flow like an athlete in the zone.
Two... everything is let go of or removed from the senses as much as possible... eyes closed, to let things drift by until nothing drifts by (except a lighter aspect of self... and if this happens, make sure to reach out for high fives... to perhaps shoot rainbows through the chakras and make rain clouds & babies on other planets).
Someone might practice surrender by cutting all of his or her off. Another person may feel the same sense of surrender by allowing the hair to grow long. Both conform to the appearance of the classic wise elder archetype in so many storybooks... sitting patiently in lotus pose capturing snowflakes with chopsticks.
In one case, something is relinquished, and in the other it stays, but it is free to be what it is. Also interesting how one can be lifting or expansive and the other grounding, yet both are methods of connecting.
In one case, something is relinquished, and in the other it stays, but it is free to be what it is. Also interesting how one can be lifting or expansive and the other grounding, yet both are methods of connecting.
The point is that, despite being seemingly opposite, both are essentially the same. Though not really, because in one case, the hair can get gum caught in it and, in the case of a novice, this can distract one from meditation. The gum is attached and it will not let go... like people will not let go sometimes... often at our peril.
We are sometimes like Lenny from Mice and men. No body lets Lenny near the rabbits. We try to hold onto things but crush things (or we unknowingly interrupt the secret stop-motion-camera aspects of our in world, which are alive with plants twisting and people changing).
As a culture we have a habit of bringing everything under our thumb and we suddenly make ourselves responsible for the garden which was operating of its own accord... which is like voluntarily taking over one's own breathing.
Now one has the responsibility to remember to breath all the time and may wish to shout... holy f*ck... I have to take care of this garden and I don't even have enough time and patience to brush my teeth. And I forgot to pick up little Billy from soccer practice.
Meanwhile a hunter gatherer somewhere is beneath the stars telling stories by a fire. Not to say their lives are easy (see Jared Diamond's description of some groups), but there is that. On average they seem to have leisure time and know how to chill... like a lion knows how to chill, like a prairie dog knows how to chill... like a polar bear knows how to chill... presumably without guilt. I don't think a lion is yawning on the prairie thinking oh shit I never called Bob back, and I forgot to take out the recycling.
As far as our relationships with other people, we seem like children playing a game. Dynamics between people can be a world unto themselves, but when it is all taken too seriously, we may interrupt sometimes and say... hey hey! this isn't enjoyable anymore. Lets take a time out, change the rules or and find a different game play. The body is screaming for a reset. The tension is in the air. Stagnation is setting in. "Everybody out of the pool!"
Meanwhile a hunter gatherer somewhere is beneath the stars telling stories by a fire. Not to say their lives are easy (see Jared Diamond's description of some groups), but there is that. On average they seem to have leisure time and know how to chill... like a lion knows how to chill, like a prairie dog knows how to chill... like a polar bear knows how to chill... presumably without guilt. I don't think a lion is yawning on the prairie thinking oh shit I never called Bob back, and I forgot to take out the recycling.
As far as our relationships with other people, we seem like children playing a game. Dynamics between people can be a world unto themselves, but when it is all taken too seriously, we may interrupt sometimes and say... hey hey! this isn't enjoyable anymore. Lets take a time out, change the rules or and find a different game play. The body is screaming for a reset. The tension is in the air. Stagnation is setting in. "Everybody out of the pool!"
Imagine if we could, together as a society, came to the conclusion that we've had enough... stepping toward some magical threshold, whereupon we would simply get up from the table and start over... drop the names of countries, drop our titles and our debt and really get about the business of mindfully examining our assets & and our options for moving toward creation of an optimal latticework for personal and collective well being... all of this without holding one another captive.
All of our physical real world problems lie behind our mental frameworks, which keep us playing the particular game.
And this is quite the fantasy, as it does seem like we have quite the growing up to do and quite the untangling do. We very often still live with the residuals of the past... our fears, our biases, the legacy of our ancestor's displacement of native peoples, radical changes to being human... from the way we've postured our bodies at desks all day to radical alterations in diet and lifestyle since our hunter gatherer days... our activated genes... our responses to our environment and our selves.
What if we could slip out of all of it, as though it were loose clothing and view ourselves with that level of detachment.
We are adapting still to the social structure of our large population. There's this modern fantasy about living in little tribes again and not being so aware of our entanglement with the rest of the world... because, yes, on some level it may be natural to move through life with the liberating & purpose filled challenge of having one's immediate needs and one's tribe's immediate needs met...
However, the same way of being that perhaps served the hunter gatherer has the potential to lead even further into to the disorders of excess and deficiency... as civilizations tend to stratify themselves... and cultures of (our brand of) agriculture tend to
A) create surpluses (in many senses).... and these are hardly ever split as evenly as the yield from a day's hunting and gathering (I'm picturing a photo of an indigenous community sitting down to feast on sweet potatoes that had been gathered that day).
B) have rising populations that tend to further complicate collective ecological, economical, and other issues.
And other people not having their needs met comes back to haunt the population... Take for example a case of a person not eating well.. this translates to challenged psychology which translates to greater risk for instability and greater risk of violence on the population... perhaps, and while it is easy to say that someone's own health care, for example, is his/her responsibility, we can not fairly say this while pouring agents of change into the atmosphere and into the water and food...
We can't say this while spraying roundup on the ground and supporting gmo foods and foods sprayed with pesticides. We can't do this while our very foundation is essentially corrupt and full of radical farming methods.
We can't, for example, drive a hummer vehicle all over and not have some relationship to someone's asthma somewhere. Who lives near industry? and the places where we produce the relatively toxic products which we at present invite into our lives?
There is the idea of environmental justice. We are not simply cruising our local environments here and limiting ourselves and our impacts to that context.
There is the idea of environmental justice. We are not simply cruising our local environments here and limiting ourselves and our impacts to that context.
With that said, there are obvious problems with our current system... which hardly ever treats the root cause of dis-ease.
There is a fantasy, for example, that healthcare will one day crack much further open & all of us will really take a look holistically at what is out available to us.... in way of prevention & do no harm treatment... in way of acknowledging deficiency and toxicity... and so many cures and preventions just waiting to be snatched up... way off the board game of economics and well dressed interests.
There is a fantasy, for example, that healthcare will one day crack much further open & all of us will really take a look holistically at what is out available to us.... in way of prevention & do no harm treatment... in way of acknowledging deficiency and toxicity... and so many cures and preventions just waiting to be snatched up... way off the board game of economics and well dressed interests.
With all the above said, we could still, in theory, burn it all up one day... in other words, we could take a quantum leap, take a new name and look at the country's past as something removed from ourselves, and we could no longer, unconsciously, feed off either the glory or the hurt of it.
We could choose our heroes from that past still... if that were to suit a person. There's no reason an act of kindness or courage must get swallowed up in the shedding of one's past.
And yet, we may make a declaration of shortening our shadows... to take a new name, like a child that has matured to adulthood in an indigenous culture. Don't we have a right to grow up?
And yet, we may make a declaration of shortening our shadows... to take a new name, like a child that has matured to adulthood in an indigenous culture. Don't we have a right to grow up?
Still... what do we then do with the residual? We may go about the business of approaching it as the deficiency or toxicity that it is.
Perhaps mindfulness is to be cultivated and the understanding that we are not merely, on some level, these conditions, these automated reactions, these thoughts that arise, this timeline that runs through us... this flag, this country, these patterns.
Perhaps mindfulness is to be cultivated and the understanding that we are not merely, on some level, these conditions, these automated reactions, these thoughts that arise, this timeline that runs through us... this flag, this country, these patterns.
This can't be forced, but it can be, to varying degrees, demonstrated and space can be made for it.... And yet now, to take a look at the spaces we create... we have students in classrooms with artificial lights and poorly designed chairs... sitting still all day with a body that is meant to move.
Between the phones and stagnation and the curriculum, is there an emphasis on elements such as simplicity, emotional awareness, balance and moving?
Through grades and standardized tests and textbooks, are we getting the point? There are elders out there who would serve as interesting teachers. The fantasy is that we would have the wisdom to learn from those that have true information... information that works... pertaining to what is essential to survive and to thrive.
So the future, from this standpoint, isn't so much saying I am this country or I am this religion or this team or whatever, but I am this thing beneath or beyond the laticework of all of that.
Where can we meet, outside all the frameworks we've risen up through... beyond our team uniforms... to really look at what's going on, so we can live sustainably and happily in the future?
Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
Where can we meet, outside all the frameworks we've risen up through... beyond our team uniforms... to really look at what's going on, so we can live sustainably and happily in the future?
Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.”
-Rumi
There is a desire drop the whole ridiculous game and make a collective reset.... or perhaps to float above and observe all that is... using inclusion as a tool for the same letting go. And while these ideas may not be immediately practical, even to contemplate them is to drift above routine classification for a moment and have a sense of being more and, most importantly, of having other options.
In this sense, both of the two paths lead to the same place. We let everything rush in and we sense ourselves as a container for it or we cut through it, let it fade and reveal the stripped down, self. In either case, we are revealed to be more than a limited concept.
And one day we may be ready to transcend that which confines us.... Whether we grow our hair out or shave it off or leave it the same, matters not, so long as there is a surrender of that which binds us. One day we may be ready for a brand new name... and to see the roads before us.
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