"Nothing is ever too easy in life - thank goodness. It's not good to have an easy life you know, no matter what they tell you. Life isn't easy. It's not meant to be easy. It's not meant to have easy answers."According to my plan for moving here to Felton, I had hoped to spend the weekdays on retreat at home. I just spent the last three days doing just that.
- Christopher Titmuss
Overall, I'd say this experience was humbling and enlightening. Though, not enlightening in the majestic enlightened being sense... but more like it simply threw light on parts of my nature which were formerly in darkness. (And, perhaps they were in darkness for good reason.)
It was, as Christopher points out, not easy.
Being back in worldly life (job, home, etc.) I'm noticing old patterns of being that are coming back to life. Most namely is that old beast Stress. And with it comes Stress' seductive sidekick - Entertainment. This compulsive movement away from stress has come creeping back on the scene. All of this has made for quite an interesting unfolding drama.
On day 3 of my retreat, something unexpected happened. I started compulsively making art. Yes, quite compulsive. I couldn't stop myself, and I can't say it was all that pleasant either. It felt more like a desparate escape from the unknown that I was sinking into in meditation, rather than a bountiful expression of love. But, I must say that if I am going to have a compulsive vice - art is a pretty good one. Who would've thought!
I notice I've been inquiring lately into the nature of control. I must say that I quite enjoy the moments when I discover how truely out of control all of this is. Life, Me, etc. "Out of Control." - what a beautiful phrase. Even just the sound of those words seem to brighten my heart. What a full expression of what it means to be alive. Perhaps it could be said that to be alive is to be out of control. In fact, maybe that's why I seem to like mandalas so much lately. There's something so totally out of control about an intricate mandala, something that seems like it might never end. It could keep multiplying and multiplying with infinite variety.
And yet, there is also aspiration, intention, creativity, resolve... cause and effect. The patterns within the chaos. One thought can create endless heavens or endless rounds in hell (and boy, did I take a tour of some hell realms over the last couple days).
Technically speaking, my meditation remained mostly scattered for the three days. My mind didn't ever fully settle down. Likewise, there wasn't much "depth" to the exploration. But, on the flip side, I think I really got to explore some fields of experience which may have been absent over the last year of my homeless wandering - compulsion being just one of those.
Compulsion... hmmm... just a little conjecture here... it's nature is to capture us, take us away, break us of any choice or control. We become it's slave, utterly powerless. And, yet... it's whole motive is to impose control onto experience, to create and re-create the ordinary and the familiar, to keep us within the field of the known. We lose control to our own controling instinct. It kind of reminds me of operation Iraqi Freedom.
Anyway, judging by the way I'm writing, something must have opened up in me because I'm being all philosophical right now. But it definitely wasn't "how I wanted it to go" - Ha!
I'll put the rest of my compulsive art mandalas in another post.
Be well.
"The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two -- is gone."
- Omar Khayyam
12 comments:
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life. . . . If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing. . .
How exactly were you practicing Daniel? (technique-wise).
Anon - and is it the soul that remembers that the soul has a soul?
And if it's a remembrance, does that imply that there was some time in the past when it happened before? So, I remember I only have one death, because I can remember back to the last time I died and remember that there was only one then also?
Wouldn't that make at least two deaths? How can I remember anything about death unless I've done it before?
upekkha - uh.... I hope I'm not going to be graded on this. Day 1 - I was mostly just following my breath. Day 2 and 3 I wasn't doing much but going with the flow. However, no matter what technique I *think* I'm going to use, my mind seems to keep coming back to a very simple technique - just to be. Very simple. Just being. To directly experience human life itself as it's unfolding right now.
I guess sometimes people call it "choiceless awareness" - but that phrase doesn't mean much to me. Maybe it could be called mindfulness too, but it doesn't seem as serious as that.
Maybe I'll have to think about your question and write more about that soon, since I don't seem to have a good answer right now.
But thanks for reading and commenting
Be happy
Hi Daniel, you're not going to be graded :-)
I just think that if you give a cushion report you might as well tell us what exactly was going on, up to you ofcourse.
By the way, I think your art is wonderful.
I think it is the souls soul that remembers the soul has a souls soul to be remembered by...As far as the Soul's soul goes, the little soul is mine and the universal soul is a mob of zombies. Not sure I believe in the Transcendental Soul that has any more to offer (on this post) than my own soul, which I am CERTAIN exists, no doubts there.
Only the Cat knows anything about death, because the Cat gets to die 8 times and still remember! ;=)
Do you believe in reincarnation or did you just take the concept of remembrance to it's logical conclusion...?
If we can actually remember anything about the death, then, you made a good argument for reincarnation...Or, instead of remembrance, are we just being creative in imagining what the death would be like, in which case...?
So tell me about the quality of this remembering, can you prove it is distinguishable from an imagination...?
Ok...
On another note, Daniel, unless you come up with some sort of proof that you can remember dying a couple of times there is nothing that I have to say. I cannot remember the last time I died and no one else I have ever talked to about this topic can either so I guess the burden of proving the possibility is up to you.
I agree with Anon. If you recognize that all your conjectures about multiple deaths are no more than conjectures, that you cannot ultimately distinguish remembrance from imagination, that the principle of parsimony leads to the most logical assumption that you have only one life to live, and that the only thing you really know for certain is the phenomenology of your experience in the present moment, I too suspect that you will cut through a lot of mind-crap, care about a lot less, and find that life does, in fact, become easy. PS Anonymous: Would you be willing to reveal your identity? I like what you have to say. If you'd care to chat offline, feel free to email me at dmoskovitz (at gmail...).
By
Anon,
You're the one who said: "Remember... that you have only one death to die" How do you expect me to remember my "one death" if I haven't died it yet?
Anyway, I appreciate your contribution to my blog, though. So, thanks.
upekkha, thanks for calling me out on that. I was pretty vague in what I was actually doing - especially compared to some of my past reports. I think the truth is, it was all really a shambles and I don't really know what happened technique-wise. I'll try to pay more attention to this in the future.
Damian,
Thanks, you put it much better than I could've.
"If you recognize that... the only thing you really know for certain is the phenomenology of your experience in the present moment, I too suspect that you will cut through a lot of mind-crap, care about a lot less, and find that life does, in fact, become easy."
Well said. Well said.
But Damian... your forgetting something very important... that you only have one soul, and you only have one death, and you only have one life. Now, go remember that.
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