Otis

I was thinking the same thing. To me, "mindful" means to allow the mind to be a conduit for awareness. The conscious mind stops being something which figures out, compares, categorizes, chooses, etc., but is merely the path through which awareness travels.

LOL!

Hi Manitou. Great subject and OP. I have a couple thoughts with regard to the question: how do we achieve the three treasures? One practice that I think is very worthwhile, is inspecting my own defensiveness. There IS a need to defend, when the physical body is under attack, but most of my defensiveness does not arise from that. It arises from having my opinion contradicted, or my idea criticized. Later, when I pay attention to what it is that I've been defensive about, I find no usefulness in my reaction. What good does it do me, to act like I'm under attack, when someone is just disagreeing with my thoughts? Another is to pay attention to the tiny little stories I tell myself, about why others are lesser than I am. Not as cool, not as smart, not as humble, blah blah blah. When I look closely at these stories, they wriggle and try to escape. They are based on very little, and are clearly justifications for making me special. How can I possibly love the rest of humanity (or even fully accept them as real), when I am constantly spinning stories to convince myself that I'm better than them? The flip side of my stories about being special are those about being lesser than. I think these stories are equal in their damage, and in reinforcing ego. Harsh stories about myself are still another way of making my self important. "Nobody loves me" is every bit as ego-enmeshed as "I'm so great!" Another is to pay attention to what it is, in my brain, that circumvents my ability to listen. Why do I tune out, get annoyed, distracted, self-centered? The source of my irritation is not the other person (because it also comes up when I'm standing in line, idling in bad traffic, or on hold on the phone). It is a grasping, agitated drive to change the situation, to find simple rewards and pleasure. It's like low-level panic, and it reveals my inability to be where I'm at. The practice for this, of course, is to be in the middle of the irritation and awkwardness, and do nothing to change it, just let it be. What is revealed by that practice of patience, is that whatever I was subconsciously fearing, did not actually occur. I didn't have to be driven by that panic, because it was entirely a false positive. No threat to my well-being existed. In general, I find it useful to doubt the stories I tell myself, particularly those about myself, and how I compare to others. Those stories are always intermeshed with my wishes and fears, are impossible to truly verify, and do little to help me find solutions. In fact, the stories, by being dualistic and definitive, actually block my view of solutions. And at the heart of many of these grasping qualities of mine, is panic. Defensiveness, needing to be superior, irritation all arise from this agitation within me, that seems to fear being destroyed. One of the best practices for panic, as I mentioned above, is systematically arousing that panic, while staying calm and centered. Another is to practice being unhurried. When I slow down, I recognize that a great deal of the push to move fast, is more panic. So taking my time allows the panic habits to go extinct, through repeated exposure of the false positives. That panic is anticipating some horrible event, presumably my death, and so passing through the experience without being swept up by it, softens the connection between that situation, and my primal fear.

I'm finally reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", and it's provoking me to face my emotional response to questions and lessons having to do with money. I was definitely born to a "poor dad", and we were taught in very anti-materialist ways. I appreciate the spiritual purpose of my parents' lessons, but what they communicated to us was: that money was bad, which of course left us ignorant of how money works, and could possibly work for us. I have shifted my relationship to money since then, but not much. Philosophically, I see money as a tool, as a source of freedom. But emotionally, I still see money as an enemy. While reading the book, I could feel how strongly my emotions wanted me to reject the author's arguments, even though they made perfect sense, intellectually. Those emotions exhibit my core beliefs about money, which I continue to avoid, to this day. Has anyone in the bums "woken up" to their deepest beliefs about money, and then shifted your relationship, thereby? Has anyone moved from dependence to independence, by letting go of old beliefs about money? If so, what woke you up? How has that process blossomed, and what was the fruit? What advice do you have for others, who are still just trying to face their beliefs about money?

Chicks dig ascended guys.

Sartre famously said: "Self-Consciousness is hell." Personally, I find that nothing crashes me out of flow, like becoming self-conscious. It is an echo chamber, filled with noise and illusions. What about you? Where does self-awareness end and self-consciousness begin? How does the Eastern concept of self/ego relate to the Western concept of self-consciousness? Is it a separate form of consciousness, with its own perceptions, memories, and fears? Have you felt imprisoned or immobilized by it? If you have been able to surrender some of your self-consciousness, how did you do it? Is there such a thing as a useful amount? From Wikipedia:

+1

Excellent, Stigweard! We are not all the same, and we don't have the same motivations, thank God! Some puritans say you shouldn't be in front of others, showing your colors, but the truth is, somebody's got to do it. Most of us like to be entertained, so it's important that some of us are entertainers. The humility that I hear from Daoism is: "don't be above". That's it. Nothing wrong with being seen, if that is what your nature is about. Actual peacocks, after all, have it in their nature to show off; doesn't make them an un-Taoist bird!

Good stuff, Steve. Yeah, I think there's a purpose for social mores, like not picking my nose in public. But woe betide, if I think I'm never supposed to pick my nose at all (which, honestly, was one belief trap I fell into), and thus go around with a chronically clogged nose! The big problem that I see, is that children are taught dualistically, because adults don't think they can handle subtlety or contextual decision-making. And of course, kids aren't born with those abilities, but neither will they learn them, by being taught convenient lies!

Hi Everything. Thanks for indulging me in this conversation. Some thoughts about what you wrote: I agree that bottling up emotions, and negating one's internal state, because it's not the way we're supposed to be, is damaging. Social and behavioral "rules" are based upon a paradigm that suggests that adhering to concepts can shape a child's behavior towards health. But what I see in the world, is that health comes from the easy flow of emotions, from acceptance of conditions and change, and from exercise and stretch of the full organism, including its emotional capacity. I don't have a problem with "passiveness", per se. Sometimes, I think it's the best path. Patience is often a path of passiveness, for example. It is denial, that I think is a problem. Denial is intentional self-blindness. Not just denial about facts in the world, but also denial about what's going on, inside of me. Acceptance of what is, IMO, is not just about the rest of the universe, but also about who I am, and how I feel. It's a shame that "denial" and "avoidance" don't get more attention in the spiritual traditions. IME, denial is the mirror image of attachment, is every bit as severe, and causes every bit as much karma. Attachment is the clinging onto, whereas denial is the cringing away from. It is entirely possible that someone could spend years meditating away from their attachments, and yet never deal with their neurotic detachment from life, which is every bit as problematic. There's a lot of psych research about non-dual meditators who end up very unhappy, because they empty their concepts, but don't fill their hearts. Honestly, I'm not sure it's that easy to distinguish between "destructive" and "positive" desires. Many of us (via Puritanical upbringing) have been warned away from sexual desire, and it can cause lots of trouble, when out of balance, but I don't agree that it's a destructive desire. Even the desire to destroy is sometimes a necessary one (like getting out of a bad marriage, or taking down a bad politician). Contrarily, an obviously "positive" desire, like a mother nourishing and protecting her children, can absolutely go too far, and cause damage to the growth of those kids. What "emptiness" suggests to me is: forget what you know, and instead, re-learn by paying attention to what's here and now. If I look at desire in that light, then I just see a biological system, that is supposed to motivate me toward healthy activity. Evolution has patterned-in room for error, but it has not (as far as I can tell) endowed humans with any truly self-destructive qualities. There is no organ, that tries to do harm to the organism's health. Even cancer is cell growth, that has gone pathological; in other words, a good function gone awry. Likewise, I think that fear, jealousy, anger, pain, and even sadness are useful functions in the human organism, that sometimes get out of balance, and cause real suffering. Fear, for example, is a warning system, designed to keep the organism safe and healthy. It is only when the warnings get panicky, super-inflated and rife with false positives, that it becomes debilitating. Desire is just one more motivator built into us. It just means "a pull in a certain direction". I think one should have some pretty good reasons, before one starts to defy (and deny) one's own internal pulls. We have been taught to distrust our own inner guidance, and woe to all of us, because of that. How do I make my decisions as an adult, if I don't trust my own guidance? By sticking to the rules that my parents taught to me when I was a child? (Which I know are clearly incomplete, and were often designed to encourage obedience, being a "good boy", rather than to encourage me to find my own way). By reading about what is good for me, and doing that? That's fine, if you want boilerplate advice, but advice is often as contradictory as desire is; I still need to choose what advice to take. The only answer that makes sense to me is: be patient, be inquisitive, be open, pay attention, let the world and my system be complex, without the need to reduce any of it to dualistic conceptual extremes. Listen to what's happening "out there" and also to what's happening "in here", and allow that matrix of influences to shape my next step. No good vs. bad, no me vs. them. Just what makes the most sense, right now, and for the future. What is useful? In most cases, the desires that we see as "destructive" (e.g. sleeping with your friend's wife) are very non-useful. They present the possibility of short-term excitement, but at the cost of peace and trust with a friend. If we are willing to look, with as little bias as possible, at the effects of our actions, then we are much more likely to make a choice that benefits not only us, but those around us, and perhaps, the world at large. Excellent points! My path has led me toward practice of facing my fears, by putting myself into (moderately) dangerous situations, in which (pretty much) all I need to do to survive, is to stay present and aware. This includes parkour, riding a motorcycle, sport dance, some low-level stunts. Each of these have called me to them, and asked me to surrender the panic that I have held onto, thus far. I say "panic" rather than "fear", because again, I see fear as an alarm system, which is there for a reason. I do not want to deny my own alarms. But it is panic, which divorces me from a clear view of how real the threat is, and instead, hijacks my system, makes me into a purely reactive agent. So, in brief summary: Yes, to surrendering panic, and yes, to engaging fully in life. What I don't advocate, is trying to divide life conceptually into good vs. bad or positive vs. destructive. That's just unnecessary and self-blinding over-simplification. Instead, let the world (and me) be complex. Take my time, with most decisions that will ripple for awhile. And when I choose something that ends up creating karma, take responsibility for it, and do my best, to clean up my messes. The most important thing for me (i.e. what I desire), is not to get it right, but to grow. And that means, I have to be willing to fail, to be the jerk, to get injured, to do the wrong thing. And then, when I realize what I've done - don't deny, but focus on making it better again.

Excellent! I do a lot of handstands, and I have one piece of advice, when people ask me: Practice in some place where the landing is soft, and where you're by your self, so there's neither social nor physical fear in falling. Take away the fear of falling, make "failure" just part of the process of learning, and it makes it much easier to find balance.

I agree with you, Steve, and the Nazarene. The more I practice not judging others, the easier it gets to surrender my fear of judgment. I do think it's a deep issue for me (both the judgment and the fear of it), so it takes a whole lot of practice. Of course, practice being "Bubblicious" or "the Clumsy Old Man" also helps! That sounds like a great practice, Manitou. Kudos on being able to surrender the need to conform to others' judgment.

Very much agreed on the feelings of the "wrong tune" and "iron suit". Likewise on "fed-upness". That's fueling a lot of change for me this year, as well. Being attracted to a new woman helps to shake me up, as well, get a fresh look at my habits, see some things I've been clinging to. Good point. I think a lot of the "negative" mental states, like guilt, jealousy, shame, etc. are really just alarm systems, designed to focus my attention, but which get overly loud, or have too many false positives. I mentioned that self-consciousness feels like an echo chamber, and it's in that repetition and noisiness of the alarm, that it ends up keeping me from being into flow.

While in the midst of a crush on this new girl, I see all my old "other people" habits rushing back in: stories whipping up about how she feels, what her (re)actions meant. I have been seeking to surrender the stories (particularly the ones which make me feel special, because they're the most tempting ones), but it leaves a vacuum, that my desire wants to fill with dualistic stories (either she likes me or she doesn't), in order to allow me to make a decision, and control my reality better. The truth is: I don't know how she feels. Even if she tells me, I will only know "what she said she feels". And how she feels will change, possibly from moment to moment. So I am trying to allow this situation to be practice of remaining empty to stories, and yet to stay present to possibility. It's humbling, but useful, to be like a child again, toward someone else; to be vulnerable, and yet not take offense.

I used to get self-conscious even when alone, farting or picking my nose, and feeling shy about it, as if God or mom or the woman I liked, could somehow see me. I started thinking of it as "the invisible observer" - this sense that I was being watched. I never actually believed there was someone there, but I often acted as if they were. Maybe this is what Freud thought of as the super-ego, an internalized parent presence, that is there to shame us, when the actual parent can't be around. I've felt myself drawn to practicing in public, over the last several years. I do contact staff at the beach, and I was able to keep my self-consciousness at bay, by rationalizing that others would think that I was doing something "legitimate", as opposed to goofing off and dancing, which is closer to what my internal activity was. While playing with my staff, I would sometimes notice people who seemed to be watching me, and I would notice my head starting to spin stories about how I needed to be good or impressive or something. And immediately, the staff would become a stranger to me, dropping to the ground, or even smashing me in the face. After practicing for awhile, I realized that my sense of other people judging me, was identical to the sense of the "invisible observer". IME, it is the same function, doing both acts. I believed that it was other people who were judging, but of course, I didn't have access to the inside of their heads. A huge part of what "other people" has meant to me (as a chronically self-conscious person) was really my own inner judge, my invisible observer, being projected on to my model of these others. So I learned to fear and distrust others, based largely upon what my own paranoia was doing. In my early 40's, I am still trying to wake up from my previous model of "other people", which was hugely contaminated with my wishes and fears. So far, I don't have a new model of "other people" to replace it, which leaves a conspicuous and, at times, uncomfortable gap in my connection with the social world. Continued below...

Hi Angela. I was thinking recently about the concept of "jinxing" something. When a kid does something, and then goes to his mom and says: "hey mom, look what I can do", it becomes much harder to reproduce the act. My guess is that this is a form of self-consciousness. The activity has changed from doing something to proving myself. Proving myself involves a lot of self-reflection ("can I?" "will I look like a fool if I can't?" etc.), and it can quickly become a loud echo chamber, that drains energy away from the task at hand. It also tends to wake up memories of previous failures, and other attempts at proving myself, which leech my confidence. It can also kill the flexibility in my approach to the challenge, because now I'm trying to do what I said I would, instead of what makes sense, given the ongoing situation. That last sentence is an example of allowing the concept to overtake the action itself. The concept "shoot the ball through the hoop" is very different than the actual action. The concept is simple, but the reality is about grounding, focusing, weighing the ball in my hand, connecting to the hoop, and feeling the launch of the ball. Reality is always much more complex, so the concept can actually get in the way. Telling someone else your intentions may encapsulate them in the conceptual, whereas the real activity must be done, one micro-second at a time.

Hi Beoman, your practice sounds great. My practice began around spontaneous body scanning, as well, without a technique. I don't check things systematically, but allow my own body to lead my attention to where my body wants it. IME, the body has systems (like pain) that are designed to call the attention to it. As you say, all I need to do is listen, not alter, what's happening, and there is a great deal of release. In fact, my experience is that when I put my attention where my body calls it, then my body tends to start moving on its own. This first took the form of stretching, but not the kind of stretching that is taught in the West. Rather than me choosing some action, to put a stress across a muscle, I just pay attention, and my body re-arranges itself in a way that cools down the tension/spasm, and finds a path of ease through the muscle fiber. I like what you say about the "gaps". There is a great metaphor of the meat cutter "slicing between the tendons", that is: using the least effort to cut the meat, by using the anatomy as the guide. The same metaphor, IME, works for scanning and stretching: listen to how the muscles interact, and let that immediate information be your guide (rather than some concept). The gap may be pointing to the path of least resistance. IME, there is a different kind of "gap" in parts of my body that I have neglected. They are areas in which I don't have much coherent feedback, when I put my attention there. Just as some areas of my body are bound by habitual tension (yang neurosis), so also related areas are atrophied (yin neurosis), because the tense areas have thrown off the natural balance. Those "unintelligent" areas are well served, not only by scan and stretch, but also by activation of exercise. They need blood flow, nerve responsiveness, and tissue repair. The practice that has served me best (along with stretch) has been authentic dance. Dance (as I use the word) is not performance, or trying to accomplish something. Instead, it is purely an invitation to my body, to move exactly the way it wants to move. In particular, I was led by my body into hand-balancing, and then floor-work (like capoeira and breakdancing), as my body wanted to explore, stretch, and move in all the possible vectors. The 360 degree possibilities of dance are almost unmatched, in other activities. I find that my body is much more wise, about how to heal and unwind itself, than I (my ego) could ever be. So I let it take the lead, in scanning, dissolving and enervating tissue, and in the last 10 years, my body has changed dramatically for the better in its function, strength, healing, intercommunication, and flexibility.

Great share, Steve. This has been my experience as well. When I started breakdancing at age 35, I was not going to "do it right". I didn't even try. I had a life-long bad back, and muscles that tended to go into spasm. Instead, I just got on the floor, and explored what was available, at that moment, to my body. With practice, and my willingness to look foolish, my body found its own way, and a good deal of floorwork is now available to me, without ever trying to learn how it's supposed to be done. (Of course, my interest was never in being a good B-Boy, but in freeing my body, so that helped).

Hi ejr1069, I don't know what's going on for you, but I wish you the best.

In my exploration of flow states, I've noticed my consciousness shifting through three distinct realms, in descending order of ease: 1. Presence/mindfulness: I am aware of what is going on, but without labeling actions or emotions. The present moment feels immediate and perfect, and no story arises about it. 2. Mindlessness/"driving mind": My thoughts are totally somewhere else, but my body continues on in the flow, without "me". When I "awake" back into the present moment, I actually tend to knock myself out of the flow, perhaps because my consciousness shift has changed what part of my brain is in charge. 3. Self-consciousness: when I am dancing, the easiest way to knock myself out of flow, is to see (or imagine I'm seeing) someone else watching me. Suddenly, I am trying to see myself, from their point of view. I feel myself trying to manage their perception of me, by being "cool" or whatever. ... and then there are some hybrid states, in which I am mostly present, but with some intrusion of "how, what, whom". I've had a crush on a new girl at dance lately, and so I've spent a lot more time lately, in self-consciousness, at the very place where I'm usually able to shed it the most. Having a pretty girl around tends to adrenalize my performance, so that I'm more active and alert, but in general, trying to fulfill some adjective kills my flow. > > > One of the skills I've been trying to learn, is to allow the "how am I seen?" (or even "what am I doing?") thoughts to arise, in the middle of flow, but not be distracted by them, just tune back in to my awareness of the present.

I just meant that new data can continue to inform my model of reality, so it's always a work-in-progress.

Then everything would become "the best explanation I have thus far", or "a useful model, for now". Certainty would be banished. "Knowledge" would be revealed as just opinion-with-extra-emphasis. And all conclusions would be deferred, allowing new information to continue to shade reality, without ever having to declare: "this is what is!"

Good share, Marblehead. I was just thinking what a misbegotten notion "fairness" was. That we are taught as children that the world is fair, and that we're supposed to be fair. But of course, when others do us wrong, our fairness doctrines justify our own poor choices. "Don't sh!t where you eat" makes sense to me, as does the Golden Rule. These are reflections of (what I see as) the natural flow of actions and consequences. But the universe being "fair" suggests some cosmic retribution scheme that just doesn't fit what I see in the world.

I've wrestled with self-aggrandized thoughts, here and there. But whenever I look at it directly on, it seems like a hall of mirrors. I see nothing objective to hold on to, to suggest a certain level of attainment. The only comparison that I feel makes any sense is that I am more awake then I used to be, but even that notion begs doubt. But I think there's a gift in that. If indeed, zen mind is beginner's mind, then what does it benefit me to believe in my own attainment?