manitou

Too dual. We all need to be there.

I want to go and wear a beret and draw nekkid people on the left bank.

For some reason this reminds me of quantum physics. I know only as much as The Tao of Physics taught me. Speaking of the lack of restriction, this reminds me that the 'wave' phenomenon of the 'particle or wave' dichotemy - the wave isn't a wave of energy, as one might think. It's a wave of probability. This would explain the unrestrictive nature of self-awareness - the vast sensation one feels in the belly or the heart when it's in a place of consciousness and balance. It feels absolutely unrestrained, unbounded by anything. It's the thing that doesn't age or doesn't move. It doesn't care where in the world you are, it is always Home, here now. It is more Home than anything else I've ever felt. I have no qualms about traveling anymore. I just went to Iceland and now I want to go to Paris. But it doesn't care where I am; it is so very reliable. Yes, Mark, I think that says it perfectly, "the lack of restriction on the location of self-awareness". It rings a big brass gong for me

Watermelon

I don't think householders are precluded from this state of being. You don't have to physically move to a cave to be beyond the cares of the world. It's a state of beingness that includes all things right here, right now. It's the non-dual way of seeing things that we've been going on about for 80 pages. One possible door for entry is to think about money. What is money? What does it represent? It's nothing more than stuck energy. Takes energy to make it, takes energy to spend it - but while it's there in your wallet, it's stuck. It seems to be so counterintuitive, to look at money this way. I realize we need it for existence. But when it's treated more like the fluid thing that it is, it comes and goes with a flow that is undeniable, once initiated. It takes a leap of faith to be generous when we are needy and lack much money - but this is the very time to get it cycling. When you're bux up is also a good time to get it cycling. It's a method that works for me, just one way to get out of the grasp of the physical appearances. Another way is to look for your part in every single thing that happens to you, not shifting blame for anything, asking yourself why you manifested this condition? What is your exact part in this? This takes some ego diminishment, which is a good thing, if we are totally honest with ourselves. The less the ego interferes with our daily activities, the more we can live in a monastery of our own making, right where we stand.

Speaking on a layman's level, one who doesn't know about jnana, vijnana, citta, or manas, it appears to me that these are the product of the same thing. Removal of excessive ego. This very activity seems to produce the very thing that you are talking about. Mind-substance as Apech describes would be the active part of the mind that manifests ideas and form? The medium in which thoughts appear sounds right, and it wouldn't be the same thing as self, although perhaps connected. 'Self', as I see it, is a result of our conditioning, our make-up, our emotions, our memories, our dreams. But it dwells in the place where ego is dominant. The more that the egoic self is disregarded, the finer and more subtle mind becomes. As I see the Buddha mind, it is that mind that has discarded ego, and as such has infinite range of sight, and an infinite range of motion. There is no structure impeding the understanding, it is merely the choice of the subject to revert to the openness and 'let it happen', much like the moon door in Game of Thrones. It actually feels like that, an willful opening of an aperture that allows Seeing. All things are possible because ego doesn't impede the beingness. One doesn't get angry or sad, because there is no clinging to memory or conditioning. It is available at the drop of a hat. One can stay there all the time, if the mindfulness is acquired, the mental discipline needed to do so. There is distraction. There is always distraction. But there is also a pulling back from distraction, a skill at which one gets better and better the more it's practiced. The choice is there to be entrenched in the feelings and reaction because of conditioning, or to step out of feelings because the big picture is focused upon instead. If someone doesn't take the steps to diminish ego and conditioning, it will forever be a push/pull of emotions, no choice but to be tossed around like a stick in the ocean.

I see Awareness as the template for order, intrinsic, unchanging, and undying. I too think about this question, does Tao give rise to Awareness? I think Awareness is the Dao, that which underlies galaxies and the order of the universe, the default condition into which we appear and dissolve, as do universes. I think that the Awareness gives birth to the One, the Word. The distinction between one thing and the other. The beginning of Genesis and the beginning of the DDJ sort of allude to this same thing. Genesis says something like 'And in the beginning was the word, and the word was god', or something to that effect. The DDJ says 'The Dao that can be spoken of is not the true Dao.' So, that would be prior (to the instant manifestation) of the Word, the thing that differentiates and gives rise to the 10,000 things, within the framework of Time. Word = Ideation. It goes back to the point of self-realization happening outside the dimensions of time and space.

And at some point, the knowledge is direct. When that happens, why go through an interpreter? The best knowledge we can all have is as seen through our own conditioning, in response to our own imprints. This is where truth is ultimately experienced. It can be known on an intellectual level by quoting others, but it is through the intermingling of that which the head has learned, and that which has been experienced in life, that the important realizations come. Head knowledge is learned in a time-linear fashion. But a sudden realization crunches time altogether, it is non-linear and non-spacial, non-dual. It is the inner gulp of sudden realization that can be equated to a kick in the gut. If we're all this far along on the path, we've all had those ah-ha! moments where it all comes together. The self realization moment, the big one, makes you sweat and renders you a bit dizzy.... when you fully realize that you are the man behind the curtain.

That would explain that flat monotone sound I hear when I randomly pick up the receiver. I've wondered about that for years.

And the words either resonate or they don't. Truth has a ring to it. Disregard that which doesn't ring.

So excellent. My point on reversion to the One is that it would go back from the 10,000 through the Three through the Two through the One to get to the ineffable, the backwards working of the production of the 10,000 things. It would get to the place prior to ideation, the void. The Dao. The place where time and space are not. How odd that our minds must understand things in a linear fashion. Our only dimension, I guess. Except the dream world! Maybe the dream world is realer than the physical one. I'm checking into going to South America and having an ayahuasca experience. If I get any answers, I'll report back here ..... I figure at the forgetful old age of 75, what the heck difference does it make? Probably my marbles will get rearranged. Thanks for posting that video, @CT! The bellows. The randomness and potential for so many zillions of scenarios at any given moment (specifically, prior to a "moment" where time is the measurement) this could well be the answer I'm always looking for about the buddhalands of the Sutras. Countless moments of ideations, all stemming from the void, pre-ideation. It's that pre-ideation that binds us, that is our "soul", the thing that pushes upwards in us to Understand. Understand what? We don't know. But somehow, it wants to know itself in physical form, perfected physical form. That same impetus that is within all of us, regardless of path; even the impetus in an atheist to reject the suggestion that there is a dual 'something' to deny.

It seems that expansion takes up space, reversion involves time. Maybe the two together are like a balloon being squeezed in one place and getting larger in another. It isn't lost on me that it used to take months for a letter to cross the Atlantic, and now we speak instantaneously with each other across the planet. It's like we've conquered time in some respect. Surely space/expansion is affected by this too, to the opposite, maybe. Maybe this is what black holes are all about, once a universe has returned to the One. Maybe the big bangs are the other side of that. Maybe it goes in and out like a bellows, as it says in the DDJ, in this very respect, like a needle in and out of fabric. I too see that there is a finality/ultimatum on this. And I think this underlay is the One, the broth which contains the vegetables. The 99.9999999999999% of matter, as with the atom metaphor. It's like the Native American concept of 'manitou' - two levels to it. One level is if you see a tree that is shaped like a bear (think kudzu), it is said that that tree has the manitou of a bear. But on the deepest level, manitou is the 'spirit which underlies everything'. This is the One, the invisible broth which contains all. The void where ideation forms. I think the broth of the soup is where the real intent is; matter is the temporary idea that comes and goes, the veggies.

The way I see it, is through the old question, 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?' The obvious answer is, 'Sure'. But on second thought, if there are no tympanic membranes around to interpret those sound waves, the moment will pass by uninterpreted by any entity.

If the action of the Dao is reversion, this would infer that the 10,000 things are always in a state of reverting back to the One, or to the underlying Void. This void is the thing inside that doesn't age or doesn't move. This is the 'oneness' that I'm talking about. It underlies, and only the experiential revelation of self realization will reveal it to the experiencer. The distance between the finger and the moon.

Didn't mean to infer that non-duality is all temporary, I was speaking of the play that we're in.

Schroedinger and his cat would argue about subject and object being independent of each other. the way I see it, each atom - whether it's an atom in a lampshade or an atom in our bodies, is made up of .00000000000001% "matter". (13 0's) By matter, I mean the quantifiable stuff that science is able to measure. The other 99.9999999999999% (13 9's) is space. And I don't doubt that the only reason we think we see the small amount of matter in the atom is because our instruments cannot yet measure that which is smaller than the components of the atom. I think most likely that there will turn out to be nothing there at all. Other than thought. Whose thought? The communal thought (call it god?) of all of us that were, are, and will be. The communal thought, the consciousness, of rocks, trees, dogs, cats, and lampshades. The thought that is all happening Now. When I learned that the only thing that distinguishes, in an embryo, what kind of cell the identical developing cells are going to turn into - a hair cell, a blood cell, etc - is how they line up next to each other. This kicked me in the gut, the realization of the intelligence manifesting from the inside to the outside, the intelligence contained within life. Within the cells. Within the intent! How does the hair on a dog's body know when to stop growing to make it a schnauzer? Sure, we can say "DNA" as the answer, but isn't DNA the very intelligence we're talking about? And that same intelligence is passed on to inanimate objects that we make, that we create, that we ideate. There's just so much intelligence happening around us at every passing moment that we take for granted. Even the lampshade knows to retain its form as a lampshade. Why don't the atoms just fly apart? Why do they remember that they're a lampshade and need to stay in that shape? We have a shelf life, so does a lampshade, so does a rock. It's the way of nature. It's all temporary and passing, dictated merely by the rotation of the earth around the sun. Life, apparently, is rotation. It is motion, always. This is the non-duality, this intelligence that is One, that people who realize the non-duality understand. They can't 'speak of it'. The Dao that can be spoken is not the real Dao. They understand it in their bones, the awareness is ever present and can be called up at any time. This 'living-ness of everything', this Intent, this Mutual Attraction, this Movement. To try and explain to someone who hasn't had the deep and moving experience of This is impossible unless the other person has this self-realization as well; the self-realization of who they really are and what they are a part of. There's a 12 story building, and some stand on the 11th floor insisting that it's only an 11 story building. As long as they insist that it's only an 11 story building, they will remain on the 11th floor. The people on the 12th, people with beginner's minds who are still teachable, are wondering how many stories are above the 12th.

2nd time today I've posted this on a thread: Four Agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz - Don't take anything personally - Don't make assumptions - Be impeccable with your word - Always do your best

Sez the DDJ!

Read the poem.

This is wonderful!!! Thank you so much for looking this up and posting it.

Thanks for the nice words, Steve. It seems to me that what we're talking about is attachments, all the way around. Having a deep connection to an inner refuge is one way of saying it, but that's not quite it either. It's like walking through life with a little detachment to everything - of course it's going to be much harder if you lose your child in a drive-by shooting. The attachment there is undeniable, in a human sense. But there is always the knowledge of that Presence within, the place that doesn't age or doesn't move; somehow it is separate from all this. I guess that's a refuge, but it really doesn't feel like one - not a place to withdraw to, as refuge would connotate. It's like climbing onto a different branch for a different vantage point. It happens in an instant, once the changing awareness is available for our use. This seems so cold. In a way, it is. But there's something that comes to the forefront that reminds me that we're all the same body, and does it really matter who dies when and where? And it reminds me that it's all happening now; in fact, it's already happened. I think this developed the most in me when Joe died - the pain was so extreme, the attachment so deep, that it was very close to being unbearable. But out of all this pain, something was born of it. It's like ever since then, I've had the option of managing the amount of pain I chose to be in. How much do I want to inhabit this body, or in the awareness of the communal body? The communal body hurts a lot less. It doesn't get as riled up about things, and it really accept people for who they are a whole lot easier. The communal body doesn't place blame, and it doesn't expect anything from anyone. But to inhabit the communal body is to jump off the emotional roller coaster. Most folks would see this as being cold, I imagine. I now see it as realistic.

It's good that you have this pride in your rebelliousness. So the price tag for this is accepting the Is-ness of the people around you. People may have a little fear to be around someone that isn't vaxxed - your mom, apparently. I always had pride in my rebelliousness too, until I realized one day that I was cutting off half of my options. When someone told me to go left, I had to go right - just to reinforce that rebelliousness and separateness, and in my case, it was just to be noticed, I think. If this tendency is eliminated, we have access to 100% of our options. We can go either left or right. It doesn't matter who tells us what.

One of the first things I heard when I went to my first AA meeting 40 years ago, was 'I don't give a shit how you feel about me....I'm going to love you anyway'. I've never forgotten this, and in remembering it through the years, the meaning to me has gotten deeper and deeper. If Gautama had this particular situation with him mom, I think he'd more likely think more about her and less about himself. He would see that it wasn't as important that his feelings were a little hurt, but that it was more important to ensure that his mom and her partner felt secure and safe. He would see that they're obviously afraid of bad health and dying, and that this isn't going to change any time soon. Gautama would probably accept the situation without taking it personally at all, and he might even remember the 4 Agreements of Don Carlos Ruiz: 1. Don't take anything personally 2. Be impeccable with your word 3. Don't make assumptions 4. Always do your best. Gautama would love her from a distance, if that's what it took. Gautama would know that he could always change the situation by getting vaccinated, but maybe mom is looking at his reluctance to do so, and maybe his mom is thinking that he doesn't love her enough to get vaccinated for god's sake. I thought I raised a good boy, she would think.