False realizations

[hagar]

How pure is our understanding of what happens during cultivation?

 

I for one have a tendency both to cling and grasp at new and higher states of being that I sometimes get a whiff at during practice. Many times during my years of practice, I generalize on life, universe and everything based on glimpses of something.

 

The crux is that my state for reflection, or Wu, oftentimes lags behind the actual process of cultivation. The time between my inital interpretation and a letting go of that immature reflection affects the quality of practice.

 

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Probably this is too top heavy, and I should stick to not worrying about it, but then what's the point of this forum?

 

h

Edited February 17, 2009 by hagar

[宁]

hi there hagar,

 

*like your posts*

 

i think you already know by now that the more complicated the question is, the simpler is the answer

but how can we get to that without being oversimplistic, that's another good question

 

if i was to make it into a sentence, it'd sound like: Hey, what if i'm wrong?..

 

so, what if?

if you are true to your heart, and take responsibility for your feelings, why doubt them?

in the end, All-Is-True, as someone here said.

 

i think our real quest is to see how far can we go, both in and out, we're always testing our limits

 

and they say there are no limits, so why worry...

 

*this is not a new-age statement*

 

 

L1

[Gerard]

How pure are our understanding of what happens during cultivation?

 

They are not permanent anyway so don't worry about them too much.

 

Keep going and be mindful ALL OF THE TIME.

 

Vipassana is the highest meditative practice. PERIOD.

 

Let go.

 

 

Good luck.

[Bruce]

I think you kinda answered your own question. Experiences are just experiences. Let them go and move on. If you have a true realization, you'll know it.

[Spectrum]

How pure are our understanding of what happens during cultivation?

I for one have a tendency both to cling and grasp at new and higher states of being that I sometimes get a whiff at during practice. Many times during my years of practice, I generalize on life, universe and everything based on glimpses of something.

The crux is that my state for reflection, or Wu, oftentimes lags behind the actual process of cultivation. The time between my inital interpretation and a letting go of that immature reflection affects the quality of practice.

I went back to reread this point and was qued to come back and add here that my teacher reminded me that each experience is unique to itself, and we never "achieve" these states rather we let go and the mind naturally balances w/ body to sync. Then whatever happens happens. Entrainment can suggest expansion (dialation) or contraction (focusing) of the mind through a variety of doorways, (frequencies?), but the ability to tune into the people around you will prove far more useful then spending time/energy tuning them out.

 

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

 

stories and songs store information. sooner or later there will be an external experience which reinforces your internal experience and your life "story" unfolds another layer. This is where spiritual practice coincides with destiny in my free opinion.

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

 

By breaking through the veil and merging with environment. Meditation in motion. In stillness drawing the senses inward.

 

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

 

If you don't say something now you might not have the chance to in the future. Use metaphor as layering, direct words when needed, lead by example, suggest common truths, don't forget the frosting and sprinkles. Ultimately wordless communication sets verbal tone.

 

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

 

Usually you get yourself into situtations blindly, then highnd sight is always 20/20. Then you remember to forget, then you fall into a rabbit hole and wonder if you'll remember how to get out. When you do get out, you want to fall in again, but you forgot that you had to chase a rabbit to find the whole to begin with.

 

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Of course. That is why it's important to consider life a "journey" ie you are walking a "path". the point of cultivation is to return safely home. You'll have some stories to share I'm sure.

Edited February 17, 2009 by Spectrum

[Ian]

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

Badly. Very badly. Only just started to work on this.

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

Trying to inhabit a spread-out physicality that just doesn't care.

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

Not careful enough. Verbalise a few times and I'm encouraging the commentator to be present in the process to collect the next batch of info...

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

All paradigms are unfruitful, at the moment.

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

Not yet.

 

Aaaaargh - I've said too much. (clasps hand over mouth)

[Spectrum]

good thread

Edited February 17, 2009 by Spectrum

[Bruce]

I do think that talking about your experience is helpful, but you should be careful about who you share it with. A while back, during a time of intense Shikantaza practice, I had what seemed to me an experience of non-duality. There was no longer a strong sense of me. It was just being. Total peace. When I got up I expected it to end, but it didn't. It lasted nearly 24 hours. I think I had a goofy grin on my face the entire time.

 

Maybe a week later, I spoke to my teacher about it. I found the experience very difficult to verbalize, and still do. Non-duality is just language. I think I said "oneness" at the time. I don't know. Anyway, he told me that it sounded like I had a real experience. Maybe a glimpse, but that was it. Just a glimpse. He said something like, that's good. Now forget it. He then told me not to try to recreate it. Not to get caught up in it. Just sit as usual. Don't look for anything. Don't try to accomplish anything. Just sit. If it happens again, it does. If it doesn't it doesn't.

 

I think the danger of sharing this stuff is in having false expectations reinforced by others who may be genuinely excited for you, but their excitement isn't based on wisdom.

[NeutralWire]

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

 

To me stories are not frozen but living and open-ended, in fact I base a great deal of my self-process on stories and storytelling.

 

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

 

I explore the state thoroughly and let it go using 'Thought Discipline'.

 

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

 

I almost never speak about my experiences, but I do verbalize them in detail to myself and explore them using various symbolic ideas.

 

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

 

Usually these days my interpretation has proven to be correct. In old times I use to jump to conclusions. Nowadays I will always explore my interpretation until I am sure it is correct, but oftentimes I have found initial intuition is unimproveable.

 

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Yes, every time. I always have some way to communicate to myself about the ongoing process that is happening. This is essential for me in order that it be a real experience and that the value of it be recognized and come right through all parts of my consciousness. Some of the most important things I've done in my practice have been about developing ways to understand the flow of things and get out of their way, also to do with embracing underlying meanings and movements vis-a-vis the energy of my life in general.

 

Interesting questions, thanks!

 

All best wishes,

 

~NeutralWire~

[三江源]

Hagar, I like your posts too, and it's a good conversation that you've started. I'm going to unravel some thoughts, so bear with me. Or skip this post if you feel particularly yang.

 

For myself, I am a naturally reticent person and not a thinking type. Therefore it is relatively easy for me to neither speak about what I experience nor intellectualise it.

 

Being naturally reticent is either because of my sun in the 12th house and my moon in pisces ( ie my fate) or because I have been habitually disheartened in childhood by the experience of my reality being met with derision or confusion. My regression experiences suggest that I knew from infancy to keep quiet if I wanted to pass muster.

 

One of the things I am aware of as a knock on effect of what I have described is that I lack self assessment skills. I dont know how much I know. I get feedback from the world on how much I know.. but it is received through a dark glassly as it were, because it is not a felt experience... I am not conscious of myself.

 

So.. what I am coming to, is that I think talking about one's experiences and mythologising them is part of Being In The World, part of contributing in a yang way, to our verbal tradition, our thinking tradition.Our tradition of consciousness. Of Logos. I always consider this issue, when I am around Michael Winn, who is masterly at describing experiences and extrapolating from them. And people benefit a lot from that.

 

The feminine is more secret, and yields up it's secrets as a process.. sometimes.

 

If we only had the Yang style, we might be lacking depth, lacking roots deep in the soil of our psyche and soil.

 

If we lived the Yin way... we would be how these traditions used to be : secret and hard won.

 

So I think we have to consider this issue of Self -Talk and Self -Think, fom the point of view of our fate/astrology (the placement of our mercury, for example), our gender, the yang culture in which we live, and of our own personal balance of yin/yang.

 

It would be a Yin practice, for a man, to sit with his experience in his belly and cook it inside.

[hagar]

Thank you all.

 

Your answers really opens up my understanding of this issue. Really great replies.

 

If I may gravitate back to the initial question, to elaborate more what I think I'm aiming at is that eventhough there is definately a difference between sharing experience to fellow cultivators, as a way of gaining support or "debriefing", there is also some form of innocent, raw-data-ish experience that is lost in the story making, being it elaborate or not.

 

This immediate experience, or being in the state is clouded with lightning speed with my commentary, or conceptual understanding.

 

I've been telling or re-telling stories about my experiences here, and have also resisted in telling about even more. What I came to understand during my bout with pain (still there) is that there is this raw, open, not-knowing state of being that I have such a craving and longing for. As if the kingdom of God is only open to the meek. Yet in the longing to re-experience such a state, there is also a trace of the moment that passed. Even just recalling it makes me taste its sweetness just a little bit.

 

This is a sidetrack. Aspiring to this immediacy is an expectation in itself.

 

I'd better go get myself a coffee.

 

h

[sheng zhen]

Here is a wonderful speach by my teatcher to introduce a stillness reatreat in January. http://www.amati.no

 

"Everything, and I mean everything, are your own creations", he say. "So how to go beyond it?"

[Ya Mu]

 

If I may gravitate back to the initial question, to elaborate more what I think I'm aiming at is that eventhough there is definately a difference between sharing experience to fellow cultivators, as a way of gaining support or "debriefing", there is also some form of innocent, raw-data-ish experience that is lost in the story making, being it elaborate or not.

 

This immediate experience, or being in the state is clouded with lightning speed with my commentary, or conceptual understanding.

 

We are all a part of everything that we have experienced. Why try to separate the experience from your true self? But you are oh so correct, IMO, describing experiences that happen non-linear in linear terms never really describes the true core of the experience itself. But sometimes (I and I and I) can benefit from these experiences in the telling.

[三江源]

Hagar, yes. Your elaboration. I have a response!

 

When I was with Dirk Oellibrandt, I experienced that there was no wall in my head when I was communicating with him. words fell out in a jumble, straight from my feelings and experience. I literally had no idea if I was objectively quite coherent. He would receive what I said ( not just hear it ) and say "you transmit that very well."

I was told the other day by someone that when I spoke to Dirk in a wider group, others were non plussed by my irrelevance to what they believed to be the current topic. I felt I was utterly on topic and so did Dirk..

Others asked us "what is it with you two? were you together in a previous life?"

 

I dont know if you know Dirk. But you perhaps know that he is a very gifted healer who can feel and sense what most of us dont.

Therefore it is possible to convey all manner of things to him, with the total artwork that one can create through heart pulsations, throat openings, sexual arousal, shoulder tension... anythng and everything..

 

I do believe and know how much is usually lost in translation.

 

And I think that the example of Dirk is a light that points the way to a different kind of communication. A more whole person telling and receiving.

 

Perhaps it is a lost art amongst adults. Mothers have it with their babies, ideally.

 

I could, btw, also receive information from Dirk without him verbalising it.

 

So I think... I dont see any other thought is possible.. we are living with degraded communication habits.

 

We lose contact immediately, when we try to use our usual communication techniques.

 

We have the cheap scart leads.

[Sloppy Zhang]

There's only one person with whom I share the majority of my "revelations".... or really just "new simple understandings" through cultivation, and that's my best friend, who does the same thing.... but even then I don't always tell EVERYTHING. Maybe because I don't want to "jinx" anything, maybe just because I feel it's a private matter.... it's really a feeling by feeling.

 

Also, I understand what you mean by sometimes you just need to experience it, the feeling of gathering the raw data. All too often I'm about to say something, when I just stop and go, "no... nevermind...." as soon as you try and put it in words, you realize you can't hope to encapsulate the essence of the experience that you had. If you try, it sounds vague, stupid, incoherent, incorrect, etc.

 

As for our understanding being "correct".... I know exactly what you mean! How can we claim to understand stuff after really just one fleeting experience? Then again, there is the saying that if you know 1 thing you know 10,000 things.... but if it's a false assumption on our part, where are we to go?

 

I actually view cultivation kind of like how Bruce Lee viewed martial arts.... it's a constant refining process, and if you pay attention, maybe keep personal notes, you can see how some thought you have refines and changes over time. Like Lee said, you discard the excess, what doesn't work, refine it until you have something that works. If you find something new, add that on, then refine, discard the excess.... At least, that's how it works for me.

 

Maybe an idea I have at any given time isn't the right idea, or maybe it's just on the right track, but I am fully aware that, perhaps later rather than sooner, or sooner rather than later, or maybe not even ever, any idea that I have can change, any philosophy could be refined (a lot) more.

 

There's a quote from some famous author, I forget the exact quote and I forget the author, and it really bothers me, I haven't been able to remember it in months... but he said something along the lines that we should say what we believe to be true at that moment, and not be afraid of saying it, but if our stance changes, we shouldn't be afraid to say that we've changed our opinion, and we shouldn't care about what others think about our doing so.

 

So it's kinda like that.

Edited February 17, 2009 by Sloppy Zhang

[freeform]

The answer I have at this moment is: 'good natured teasing'!

 

You know how in a group of friends you light-heartedly tease each other - especially about stuff that you normally take very seriously...

 

There is a specific kinesthetic experience when something I've been holding as all-important, true and clever is being teased - the moment I lose that self-conscious "but that story/truth is my baby" feeling is the moment that it becomes funny, I let go of all the sentimentality and feel freed from its grasp.

 

This is one aspect...

 

Also, I find it very useful to think of thoughts, ideas, stories, understanding as flowers... they start out as undifferentiated seeds... they grow, break through the ground and eventually bloom into a wonderful enjoyable spectacle... then they spread their own seeds, wither and die back into the formless... We as a society see the withering and dying part of the cycle as something to be avoided, so we construct mental illusions, beliefs and values to try and keep that flower permanent, and we effect the environment around us to uphold these illusions... all of this is in vain - because the flower always grows, then dies then another one grows... but we blindly stare at some kind of frozen illusion of its permanence.

 

Yet another way of looking at it involves summoning the power of the trickster/jester/fool... similar to the 'teasing'... it involves turning what seems important on its head... making it completely absurd, but doing it with full awareness. Bradford Keeney suggests taking your most sacred book, open a random page and select the most meaningful phrase you see - then, take an electric drill and make a hole right through the middle of the entire book... next, sing the meaningful phrase through the hole, put the book under your bed before sleep... repeat the singing of the phrase through the hole every night before bedtime for 3 nights and wait for a dream or an unusual thought in the day...

[Unconditioned]

How pure is our understanding of what happens during cultivation?

 

Depends on your definition of understanding, but to set context for the rest of the reply, understanding is different than knowledge. Knowledge is the accumulation of ideas and understanding is impossible to express with words, it's more of an experience than accumulation if that makes sense.

 

I for one have a tendency both to cling and grasp at new and higher states of being that I sometimes get a whiff at during practice. Many times during my years of practice, I generalize on life, universe and everything based on glimpses of something.

 

I do this constantly too, "OOOH! Now I get it! It works like....". Then I label my last 'theory' as petty in comparison. This cycle going on over and over. I don't see anything wrong with this unless we cling to what we think we know as Truth. It may be an aspect of Truth, but total/complete Truth cannot be pieced together like a Frankenstein, it has to be experienced in totality. For example, you can describe how a food tastes but the description will only be based on a comparison and the person hearing it will not experience what you have, only a comparison to other experiences.

 

The crux is that my state for reflection, or Wu, oftentimes lags behind the actual process of cultivation. The time between my inital interpretation and a letting go of that immature reflection affects the quality of practice.

 

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

 

I smile and move on. If another experience comes up great, if another one doesn't, great. Basically, I have no expectation of 'getting there' again.

 

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

 

To do this I've looked into what experience is and is not (and I'm still at it so take this with a grain of salt). Is an experience sensation? Like I feel light, heavy, happy, sad, etc. If experience is just a sensation then it is a product of our senses combined with an interpretation of those sensations. Both sensation and interpretation are limited. Sensation is limited by our physical conditions and interpretation is limited by our mental conditions.

 

SO, if we can see experiences for what they are then, for me at least, I do not become attached to them and just chalk it up to 'part of the process'.

 

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

 

It depends on who I'm talking to. But generally I don't verbalize them since it only helps to solidify something that has already past and is just a product of memory.

 

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

 

Every time. Interpretation of anything is based on our previous experiences and is limited by our conditioning.

 

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Recognizing them for what they are, just a flicker in our memory after the event, is a steppingstone in and of itself. Each time I have a 'deeper' experience it's an opportunity to examine what experience is, so in that sense it's very useful to examine but I personally don't verbalize with many people.

 

Just my long winded 2c

 

Great questions though, I like this topic.

 

 

Yet another way of looking at it involves summoning the power of the trickster/jester/fool... similar to the 'teasing'... it involves turning what seems important on its head... making it completely absurd, but doing it with full awareness.

 

 

Great!!! I do this especially when something upsets me or when I get angry. I exaggerate (in my head) my emotion. Like if I'm upset that the person in front of me is driving too slow I picture myself getting out of my car, jumping on the roof up and down flailing my arms like a madman. Then as I watch that mental image of myself I usually find it pretty funny and realize that the way I feel at that time is just as absurd as the madman I picture.

[三江源]

oops. the essential question of yours Hagar - how pure is our understanding of what happens in cultivation - my hunch is we dont have any understanding... we have no perspective. we are the characters on the page. we feel the feelings and the effects, is all.

[Ian]

I dont know if you know Dirk. But you perhaps know that he is a very gifted healer who can feel and sense what most of us dont.

Therefore it is possible to convey all manner of things to him, with the total artwork that one can create through heart pulsations, throat openings, sexual arousal, shoulder tension... anythng and everything..

 

I do believe and know how much is usually lost in translation.

 

And I think that the example of Dirk is a light that points the way to a different kind of communication. A more whole person telling and receiving.

 

 

I remember him saying he spent about five years not listening to what people were saying and just tuning in to the rest. People didn't like it, mostly, especially when he confirmed that that was what he was doing..

 

oops. the essential question of yours Hagar - how pure is our understanding of what happens in cultivation - my hunch is we dont have any understanding... we have no perspective. we are the characters on the page. we feel the feelings and the effects, is all.

For what it's worth, I've been specifically told to enter and leave meditation without seeking any understanding at all. And I'm not practiced enough to have understanding just happen. So I dunno.

[rookie]

How pure is our understanding of what happens during cultivation?

 

I for one have a tendency both to cling and grasp at new and higher states of being that I sometimes get a whiff at during practice. Many times during my years of practice, I generalize on life, universe and everything based on glimpses of something.

 

The crux is that my state for reflection, or Wu, oftentimes lags behind the actual process of cultivation. The time between my inital interpretation and a letting go of that immature reflection affects the quality of practice.

 

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Probably this is too top heavy, and I should stick to not worrying about it, but then what's the point of this forum?

 

h

 

I can share some experience with you for what it is worth.

 

Recognition is important, so some means of integrating and understanding what is happening during your process is needed. But it is a tricky process. Like a paradox. You can't try too hard because that will keep you in the trying or seeking mode. When what you want is the being mode.

So trying, cultivating, for me, is like a health habit. Like exercise for the body, healthy diet. rest, qigong for the body/energy system, some meditative practice for letting the noise die down. These are good things but not it. Can't be taken too seriously. they help but none are really necessary for attainment. Attainment is in conciousness.

 

When it comes to talking about experiences, the problem is identifying with them, which is more likely to happen when discussing them with anyone except a good teacher who can help with perspective. Otherwise they can be "my experiences" which the ego can use to define how special and advanced it is

 

If the experiences are just matter of fact, no big deal to you, then no big deal talking about them.

[freeform]

I remember how Taomeow picked up that Max in the kunlun seminars would ask his demonstration subjects after an obviously expansive, out of this world experience to describe it to everyone else. Taomeow, in her own wonderful style, concluded that this was a way of contracting, limiting that huge, expansive experience... a way of bringing the person back down to earth...

 

I really like Cat's yin/yang explanation!!

 

It's like the microcosmic orbit... a thought rises up the yang path, progressively contracting and becoming more and more limited until it can be expressed in words and thoughts and the proverbial light-bulb goes off in the head... then it must fall down the front, expanding, becoming more limitless, less defined as it goes down... passes the middle dan tien and is expressed as emotion and eventually gets all the way down, the thought becomes completely formless and the cycle starts again...

 

In our society the yang path is emphasised and admired, but the downwards path is seen as evil, madness, stupidity etc... The yin path is difficult for most of us because it literally entails death... it's the microcosmic version of the real death - a taboo in our culture that worships life and youth..

[Wayfarer64]

This is a great thread...

 

My 2 cents - I'm not sure an intellectual process is of great use in holding onto gains made in spiritual cultivation. It seems apt that "understanding" - is a term 1st used in Shakespearian theater- it pertained to those that stood under the stage - They got to hear the play- they "understood" and thus were able to relate the tale told by the actors...They could say -"Yes, I understood the play!" That seems relavent - in that the mind needs a translator to "grok" the activity of our cultivations...Our spiritual selves.

 

One - the attainment of spiritual awakening is a true knowledge gained in activity - the holding onto those insights and realms of consciousness are not stored in the brain per se but in the spirit... which is that which is aware on all levels of experience and all too often is just not being accessed by our minds in the day to day...

 

We just forget who/what we are and go about our bizness as beings who are sort of sleep walking thru our lives. It is the spiritual awakening we attempt to grasp that gives us glimpses of our awakened potential...

 

We have trouble staying aware and awake - without the practice of spiritual cultivation, and our minds just cant keep up in any case!

Edited February 17, 2009 by Wayfarer64

[goldisheavy]

How do you deal with the urge to grasp your experienecs, freeze them into stories?

 

First, I check to see if the story is good. If it's good, I leave it be. If not, I contemplate why not and what's at the root of the problem. Then my story gradually changes as the contemplation process moves forward.

 

One thing I don't do though is to create a story about having no stories. That's a spiritual lie. So if something sucks, instead of pretending I don't have it, or trying to divorce myself from it, I take responsibility for it and own it.

 

What are your techniques or approaches to detatching from your experieces during practice?

 

Detachment is another form of attachment. I just don't do it. It's one thing to take things less seriously, but it's another thing to attempt to detach yourself from experience. Detachment is an experience in and of itself. How can you detach from an experience of detachment? Had you practiced contemplation, you'd never even post such a question as quoted above, because it would be painfully obvious to you that assumptions that your question is based on cannot hold up to analysis.

 

How careful or relaxed are you towards verbalizing your experiences, and telling others about them?

 

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say 5. Middle of the way careful. Not reckless, but not so careful that I stifle myself and am unable to share my story.

 

And finally

How often do you see that your initial interpretation of what happened was based on an erroneous or unfruitful paradigm?

 

Often enough.

 

Are there times when recognizing, and also verbalizing your experience is a steppingstone to integration of that experience?

 

Yes, because by doing this you socialize your experience, you make it a part of the convention, and this makes things easier, because constantly transcending convention for every little thing is hard. Convention is called "convention" because it does have some force/legitimacy, at least for anyone on this forum. So to try to go against it too much is too much work.

 

An approach I like is to introduce new experiences into a discussion. At first they might be unfamiliar. They might get criticized, or what's better, analyzed and critiqued, and this accomplishes two things. It allows your experience to enter into convention and to find its place there. And during this process you have a say in just how exactly this happen. You and other people get to test the story, to poke it, to pull it, to bite it, to try to fit it this or that way and see how it all works out, whether it is consistent or not, whether it contributes to life or makes life more of a chore, whether it simplifies life or makes it more complicated, and so on.

 

Then for you as a person who wants to transcend convention there is less work to be done if convention is already self-transcended to some extent. It's like jumping off a raised platform. If the platform is very high, you don't need to jump up that much to reach the clouds. If the platform is high enough, even if you don't jump at all, you are above the clouds. But if the platform is low, no matter how much you strain, you cannot jump up to the clouds. In this metaphor, jumping is contemplation+meditation, and raising the level of the platform is the work you do to raise the social consciousness of all around you through open two-way discussion.

 

Probably this is too top heavy, and I should stick to not worrying about it, but then what's the point of this forum?

 

If you have a sincere question, why do you ever have to apologize for it? Is it because it might insult or inconvenience someone? What's your own sincerity worth to ya?

Edited February 18, 2009 by goldisheavy

[hagar]

Thank you all for sharing your insights. Overwhelming resonse to my ambivalence.

 

I've got alot of follow up questions for ya'll, but since I'm at work, I'd settle for a general one for now:

 

Your replies seem to be roughly placed somewhere between these polarities:

 

1. Don't have any aspiration to actually understand the transformation process. Let the whole discriminatory urge be, and dwell in the experience, letting intuition and experience lead the way. Don't force understanding, and trust that real insight is never directly expressed.

 

2. Don't hold your reflections back, yet don't try to hold on either, but view it as part of who you are in the process of transformation. Don't disindentify with the urge to put things into perspective as this is just as attached as anything else.

 

Or am I leaving a third option out?

 

I think my self-doubt is an occupational hazard. Being educated in philosophy is really a curse. I'm doomed to forever be aware that there's always a meta-perspective to take, and another one and another one.

 

How to escape the meta-stuff; that's actually my real question.

 

If I may indulge you; this is what I'm getting at: There's an abyss between "meaning" or immediate experience, and language:

 

I remember so vividly on scene in a movie called "Hamam; the Turkish bath". Overworked architect and wife from Rome travel to Istambul to recharge as they are supposed to inherit a Hamam from his mother. In the scene, where he dines with his Turkish family, he falls asleep at the dinner table in the midts of the familys chatter. Finally he has found rest, found refuge in the "other".

 

I don't know, maybe you have to see the film to know what I mean. Or one scene in "The Big Blue" where Jaques Mayol, the diver gets lost in the ocean, and finally lets go of the sled and the light and follows the dolphin into the dark. I always find it profound.

 

Maybe this is also why I'm so captivated by the notion of death?

 

h

Edited February 18, 2009 by hagar

[NeutralWire]

2. Don't hold your reflections back, yet don't try to hold on either, but view it as part of who you are in the process of transformation. Don't disindentify with the urge to put things into perspective as this is just as attached as anything else.

 

Or am I leaving a third option out?

 

I think my self-doubt is an occupational hazard. Being educated in philosophy is really a curse. I'm doomed to forever be aware that there's always a meta-perspective to take, and another one and another one.

 

How to escape the meta-stuff; that's actually my real question.

 

To me this is really over-complicating matters. All of the 'perspectives' you are talking about are just thoughts! Simply observe them, get the juice out of their process, and then let them go.

 

NW