First, I want to thank all of you for  your birthday wishes.  I appreciate the cares and thoughts.

Here are some that have occurred to me.

“I  don’t deserve to die!”  he  cried.

“You deserved to live,” came the answer, “why short-change yourself?”

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What’s the difference between the idea of a table and the table itself?

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We are not our bodies.

‘We’ . . . are our experience of them.

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They say that I’ve got to believe in order to have faith, yet I can only believe if I can feel faith.

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Can you see where we are going?

There’s a hardening, a stricture of boundaries and judgments

Set with evangelical fervor in an effort to control this helplessness that we are so avidly in denial of.

Of course it’s presumption to say that it is a “downward” spiral,

When it could just as easily be spewing our spinning energy out into an entirely new dimension.

That we can’t see.

I mean, we can see our host, our Mother Earth.

Being  used up by our exploding population.

War and disease continue to fail to cull the herd despite our ingenuity at killing and curing.

We see our oceans heave and our buildings fall.

We see our fellow man make the same mistakes over and over.

We see greed and fear have their way,

Till night overcomes the day.

We see our hopes dashed and drowned

Till we can’t hear the sound

Of our own heartbeat.

That’s the world without.

The world we’ve tried to own and control

With obsession and desire

And the pain of fire.

Isn’t there something else going on?

Someplace, some time, somewhere?

Something that we are as blind to as the tree

Now falling in a Russian forest?

Why is what we don’t see any less important than what we do see?

pmg

It ceases to exist?

Home is our truth, our reason for being. It is always there. We forget. It’s the human condition; to utilize our mind in order to survive, and at the same time struggle with the mind’s obsession to find a reason as to why it exists. It is possibly(?) the only thing it has no control over. The mind can’t know it, nor can the mind describe it.

We know it as a feeling.

The mind doesn’t feel. It thinks,  it identifies itself, its existence by what it can measure, do, quantify and qualify, judge, possess, destroy and believe. It has an insatiable need to control this existence it can’t explain.

The unknown, the ‘always-changing’ is an anathema to the mind because it cannot find an answer. That it continues to try is not it’s fault. It needs to believe it is powerful, that it will survive.

With power comes feelings of safety, elation, vitality, and dogged fear that it cannot last. Then there are all the manifestations of denying that fear of change, of death, and therein can we indulge our anger at ourselves and others. That anger is palpable.We are creating it, and we feel in control…almost. There’s always the opportunity to lose control…( our mind speaks of ‘loss of control’ in our society as if it is a bad thing and results in literally, no control. How ironic that if, in fact, we surrendered control, or rather the need to control, so much of our fear goes away – as well as the anger at ourselves for ultimately not being able to have control.)

Learning to recognize my fear of helplessness in all its manifestations; anger, depression, obsession, possession, and finding compassion for my self, forgiving my self for being helpless in the face of mortality, is a process. Not an objective to be accomplished, (herein is a whole conversation about ‘learning’ as not an acquiring of information to achieve control over an object, but a process, a stream with its leaves and flotsam floating among its riffs, ripples and backwater eddies.

I can float.

P.

I reminded myself in very real terms that I could relinquish my need to control. Put another way, I was exposed to a whole new level of acknowledging my helplessness and forgiving myself and others.

Or, simply put; there was nothing I could do or say to alter the outcome. It would be what it would be, and I had no control. I could only witness, and when in that witness, free myself of that bear trap; conditioning.

When you’re in it, it seems that it will never let  you go. Yet, if you can see yourself in it, non-judgmentally, dispassionately from your witnessing self, your consciousness self . . .see yourself suffering from anger, you can then make a choice to acknowledge all the pain, don’t try to make it go away . . . or do anything with it, or to it. Just let it know that your watching it, and identify the other part(s) of you that don’t feel that bad at all, and from your witness, know that you can choose to be, not to suffer.

I got to thinking about anger. What is anger?

We all know how it feels, hot and red, riddling our bellies, choking our chests, making us smaller, denser, tighter. There’s definitely a constriction that goes on, like when you disturb a sea anemone and all its tentacles retract  from a perceived threat. I say ‘perceived’ because the line that separates what’s real from what’s an illusion is invisible. (Is that where thought becomes matter?).

So there’s this part of us that is definitely animal. Eats, propagates, dies through the entire evolution of man. It constricts in the presence of danger: a threat to its existence. That’s a reaction that the animal in us knows. That is also the reaction that the mind employs when it perceives danger . . . real or imagined.

How about remembered? Not always consciously, sub-consciously mostly. Those things that happened as you grew from infancy, those things that scarred you, taught you to protect yourself from. Tighten a muscle often enough, it will become tight, hardened in order to protect.

I may not be able to recall those incidents, but my mind, my subconscious, and my body remember. They store those memories of yearning and helplessness in my physical being, weave them into secret histories, untold stories that evoke the feelings of love and security as well as those of yearning and helplessness.

The latter, yearning and helplessness are not only seemingly unbearable because when we’re in them, it feels that it will be forever – - – our minds, our perceptive abilities signal ‘danger,’ and when fear raises its head, we defend against it with anger. And as much as it feels as if we’re  being angry at someone or something else, what I believe we are truly angry with is ourselves and our perceived inability to affect our helplessness.

So, if I can accept that at the end of the day, or of my life; that I am helpless, why cannot I accept that now? I’m not saying I’m being helpless, I am saying that my true being has nothing to do with being helpless. My true being, my consciousness, my awareness and witness can acknowledge my feeling of helplessness, and in that act of acknowledgment, I am not helpless to make that choice – to acknowledge.

Not only am I not helpless to make that choice to acknowledge, witness, not judge or evaluate,   when I so choose, I experience the realization that not all of me is contracting and in fear, just my animal and all its conditioned and learned behavior inherited not just from my parents and their parents, but from the whole history of man.

What is the level of development of consciousness in the animal world? I don’t know. The yardstick we use to measure it is calibrated to our world, our human way of thinking, controlling, communicating. Whose to say, for instance, that the dolphin consciousness isn’t ‘beyond’ ours? Just because they don’t have arms and legs, don’t drive cars and aren’t rapaciously eating our planet and all its resources?

What I do know, is when I know, when I am. All the other behavior, learned and developed has only to do with my animal’s self’s procreation and survival, and to that end, ordering and controlling the world and the inhabitants of the world, usually by whom ever’s got the biggest stick.

My mind would have me measure, but my heart knows.

Have a conscious holiday. It’s the end of a year, of a cycle…a ‘death’ if  you will, and a rebirth of a new year. That cycle of death and life is mirrored in our breath, in the beat of our hearts, in each moment of night and day. If we can remember that, then we can see how much our ‘animal’ is evolving with the loving over-standing of the hu-man side of us that is reminding us that beyond everything, we are.

pmg

We are all teachers and students. We are all searching. I do not claim that what I share is ‘better’ than anyone else’s lessons in life, nor do I claim to have answers. I have only questions and the ongoing challenge of staying present in my life. Have I accomplished this ‘more’ than others? No. All things are relative. Fear, pain, loss are all relative and as such are as real and potentially devastating in their own context no matter to whom they happen or what they are. What happens to each of us, no matter how traumatic have within their ocurrance the opportunity to further our enlightenment and our experience of love. This is what I understand and what I try to accomplish.

Imagine my thoughts written by another who came into the public eye not as an adored character in a t.v. show and not as a celebrity whose travails in life were therefore so visible.  Would there be any inkling and resonance of truth in what I share if you didn’t have the preconception of knowing or believing ‘who’ I was? Perhaps this is an unrealistic expectation,  celebrity by it’s very nature cuts both ways.

We celebrate another human being in his or her shared humanity with us while we elevate them to the fantastical myth that they can overcome our fear of helplessness/death that is our universal condition. We need to do this because of our own fear of helplessness and our need to create or recognize  ‘immortality,’ or godliness in another human being so that we can experience it in ourselves. “We create our Gods in order to eat them.” I have made this comment many times and it is often and unfortunately misinterpreted. However, this is one way in which we as humans try to experience the ‘god’ in all of us. It isn’t the only way. We seek love. We seek peace and one-ness. We seek that defining moment of the ‘now’ in acts of danger, engaging our own fear in trying to attain what is perceived as unattainable.

We also have the curse of ego/vanity which has us experience the lose/lose proposition that our own fear/pain is either worse than anyone else’s, or not as great. We respond to the journey’s of others that have experienced great loss and its inherent challenge with a combination of morbid curiosity and abbhorrance, comparing our lives to theirs,  and an outpouring of compassion and wonderment that those others can carry on at all. We elevate and celebrate them as a reminder that we, as humans can prevail in the face of our mortality.

Yet, we all have the same struggle with the same issue. What causes us to experience our helplessness can be as varied as being caught in a traffic jam to losing someone we love. However, it’s the same experience of helplessness, though different in degree, and it is the same button that gets pushed in all of us. Who’s to say that a person having a panic attack is any more or less petrified than someone who has lost the use of their body? At that moment, its all relative. The lesson is the same though the degree may be different. The experience of fear, not judged, is equal to the opportunity.

Is a part of me afraid to die? Absolutely. Has a part of me glimpsed the communion with peace and one-ness in the act of dying, of letting go of my fear? Yes. Do I long to become so present in my life that I will in some part experience my dying as the Tibetan Masters purportedly do; with a greater witness and a sense of journeying into a greater whole? Yes. Is that what I practice and seek to practice? Yes. Does that differ from any other human being’s journey? No. Do I know any more than any other about this experience? No. Appearances are as deceiving as our minds. I am just like  you. My search is imperfect though my intention pure.

So, while it may seem impossible to separate yourself from your childhood perception/fantasy of ‘Starsky,’ please believe that you can witness that very phenomenon when it is at work in you, witness the feelings both good and bad that come up, and make the distinction between those feelings and who you are right now. Read what I share, when I have something to share not in terms of someone with an answer, but rather of someone with a rag and a dirty window that they’re trying to clean for a better view.

I was encouraged to create a blog by Ms Meserve as a way to connect and share my thoughts, something of me.It cannot be a matter of frequency. I’m sorry. We each find different ways and different times to share the experience of our existence. I’ve done it as an actor and as a director. Now I’ve written a book and shall most likely continue in that vein. I am not a particularly good correspondent nor am I by nature chatty. I am moved to write when I am moved to write. No more, no less. Please try not to connect my frequency of writing this blog with whatever value may be found in what I share that I see through my window.

On the book front:  We are at present printing an 11X14 ‘Manuscript Edition’ which will be used for marketing and possibly for sale. The 9×6  ‘for sale’ version will be out in Febuary, followed by a ‘coffee table’ version and then a graphic novel. It is a long process which requires a lot of patience, however we are doing everything we can to make sure that we do as good a job as possible. I think that those of you that are waiting to read ‘Chrystallia…’ will be pleased.

Lastly, I want to share my gratification that this blog has created what seems to be a valuable dialogue amongst its participants.

pmg

I’m meditating on drawing right now.

I’m glad the blog has created some helpful dialogue. I don’t want to answer each one, however in reading over your conversations, I hope that some of the questions and explanations will sink in and come out coherently.

I find the simplicity of what I have learned and study to be a great comfort because it makes it easier to remember.

Someone wrote questions about ‘detached.’ Without going back through my posts, and therefore leaving my self vulnerable to the possibility of contradicting myself, I relate to the word ‘detached’ in one of two ways. Either it has an emotional/judgmental dimension, or it is pure description of a simple action. Possibly the confusion comes from the former. By plugging into our awareness, we are able to observe/witness our sensory experience of existence. ‘Sensory’ includes emotions…the things that our mind attaches to events in our formative years. In those years we  feel fear, yearning, love. Fear that we are helpless, hungry for sustenance, and, love. Those are the feelings we first know as creatures. Primitive and simple and these three colors are then used by our minds to describe to itself, to  ‘know,’ and orchestrate the many complex scenarios that comprised our remembered and forgotten childhoods.

In observing/witnesssing our sensory experience of existence, we are still experiencing it because it is happening to a part of us. If it’s a good feeling, who’s going to questions that?

Puts me in mind of a documentary I saw on Bhuddist priests in Japan meditating  for great lengths of time. Periodically someone would come up behind them and hit their shoulders really hard with bamboo sticks. The point being, there are two extremes to which our minds go when confronted with hard feelings and easy feelings. They are aversion and attachment. When things are good, we wan’t to keep them that way.( Notice, the mind is talking about ‘control’ here…”want to keep them that way…”). When things feel bad, difficult…our mind goes full tilt into aversion. Get away. Run from that feeling, and if you can’t run, hide. There are many places to hide; anger, controlling, hating, jealousy, depression, sadness…but the BEST one is DENIAL.

When the young priest cracks the meditating priests on the shoulders, they’re saying ‘be here…be now.”

See, it’s a misconception, or rather the mind’s indulgence in giving some value to meditating by saying that if one meditates, then one arrives somewhere. Gets to peace…love, God….  The problem with thinking that is that the attendant question just will not go away; Are we there yet? And if we are, when are we leaving? How long are we staying. Are  you feeling anything yet?

Our ability to be present is inclusive of everything…all feelings, sensations, thoughts. Consciousness is our unique ability to be aware. Of everything that happens inside and outside of our bodies. From that place of awareness, we can experience our pain and fear AND we can also see it as just part of a larger experience which we are getting to watch…which we are choosing…to watch and glory in the experience of our oneness with everything that exists.

Definitions. Consider this: the dictionary is an edited/published book put together by a committee mentality that decides what best defines a word in terms of its history as well as its current use.  It’s interesting that ‘detached’ was reported to mean to disassociate from one’s feelings. I find that interesting, because it honors the mind’s need to know, measure, define the word, yet ironically includes consciousness and the ego; “disassociate from one’s feelings.” In a way, that definition and product of the mind is acknowledging that there is a ‘place’ from where one can see and execute disassociating from one’s feelings by choosing to be conscious. I bet if you put the mind on trial, it would completely deny the existence of anything so unmeasurable as consciousness.

Lastly, I want to re-visit my definition of ‘patience.’ I believe I have suggested that patience is the remembered experience of love. (I had said ‘hope,’ I think, but ‘love’ seems more inclusive).

I take issue with someone’s use of the word ‘remembered.’ Not because it doesn’t suit, but because if we’re not careful, when can look to one aspect of ‘remembered,’ and miss the other. The first aspect is remembered experiences. We can call up these remembered experiences, the one where we felt love, togetherness, joy, and that is one way to remember, albeit it comes with a whole world of experiences which our bodies remember but have been ‘un’remembered, suppressed as being too difficult. How do we selectively ‘turn on’ our memories and truly prevent them from visiting all those ‘subterranean’ places our more colorful religious figures describe as ‘hell?’

The second aspect of remembering is key; By exercising our ability to be aware, by meditating on the present with the help of all these sensations and feelings and thoughts that are there to remind us that we have a conscious place, we get to feel and nurture our sense of peace, love, oneness… and return to it whenever we want…and that, that is what we ‘remember.’ Our ability to experience the purest feeling of love gives us our understanding of faith…(that this ‘place,’ this one-ness exists), and that remembered feeling  give us patience and hope.

Wishing you every bit of all of it.

pmg

I’m put in mind of going back to basics. The comfort and simplicity of basics. Knowing that is where you need to go when the noise gets noisy.

I can see myself clearer when I can watch and not judge myself. I can see when I’m coming from my heart or when I’m protecting my heart.

I can watch my body, my posture and find the truth in my feelings in how I hold myself.

I can see my mind wanting to run here…run there, run into circles and little knots of fear…I can watch my body respond.

I can sit apart, while being a part of, and witness the flow and change of sensation in this journey called existence.

I will feel all that I feel, and remember…yes remember to thank those feelings, those sensations which exist to remind me of my consciousness, my knowing-ness.

That is why I am here. To go there. Where? Here.

How quickly the clarity goes, vanishes in a forgotten twist, and I  notice how my mind and the rest of me is negotiating the change.  I am here again.

What about that great % of our mind that we ‘don’t use.’

Maybe we do use it. Maybe we use it when we sleep? Isn’t sleep our most ‘creative’ experience in our existence? Our awakened self exists only to thrive and procreate and goes to sleep when it gets tired. It raises a really interesting question about how we perceive ‘resting.’

Resting.

What happens to the innermost place of ‘muscle’ and ‘rests.’  Something’s going on…an exchange of some kind, some kind of chemistry, mini explosions that grow into what we measure as ‘energy,’ power, aliveness.

What is the ‘event’ of resting?

Is it like a line of ants forever traipsing for distant concrete horizons while their returning ranks file past with their information of what they’ve encountered?

Do we plug into the source of energy in our sleep and while we dream, our mind, half wakened tries to make sense of sounds, smells, feelings of energies. That is our re-charge.

Then of course, there is our waking state, in which we have evolved to be able to go to that place of re-membering, that place that re-minds us of our connection to everything that is. Our experience of the feeling of one-ness, belonging.

When we choose our awareness, our mind quite efficiently takes care of everything else. We can hang out in awareness as long as we like. Relax…stay awhile. I guess we could call it ‘paradise.’

Our opportunity is to practice seeing our sensations, emotions, thoughts, as experiences that are there to re-mind us of our conscious and aware state. When we can remember that, and we re-member the sensation of being plugged into, a part of the phenomenon of existence.

I don’t propose to know anymore than anyone else. I only know what I know and what I’m learning. It doesn’t make me good or bad or right or wrong. It’s just another reality…my reality which I choose to share with any who want to partake.

What would be cool is if those of you finding yourselves embroiled in this flap would  take a giant step back. (Take another, they’re free.), And from this wider perspective, where you can still see the other person, can you also see yourself taking yours position? See your mind preparing all those definitions and judgments to defend against your fear.

Fear of what? I don’t know. It just occurred to me, but I’ll take a guess with the option to delete.

Fear of being wrong…of not knowing…fear of being uable to trust your heart, your senses, your experience of your existence which tells you what you KNOW with your being, not what you think/believe you know in your mind. Yes, they are seemingly two different realities constantly at war with one another.

( I was having an interesting conversation with a friend and we were trying to identify that huge part of the brain that we don’t use. I thought, maybe that’s the place where we all dream…a portal into this multi-dimensional universe in which we exist. Maybe in other incarnations…in other ‘versions’ of us in other dimensions, this is the evolved part that communes with the waft and flo of existence. Was it Shakespeare who suggested that we spend this life like squirrels scurrying after nuts to store for the winter and it is only in sleep that we experience our connection to all that is? Maybe not Shakespeare…but he was going in that direction).

So we defend against that fear by forming judgments, alliances with others with common beliefs, (it helps if they look like us in some comforting way or other), and of course, identification with those beliefs. This is the mind’s way of rationalizing its relevance to these ‘serious’ conflicts.

Well, they are serious, aren’t they? They’re about what  you believe is important, true, right, wrong….oops…there’s that ‘judgment thing’ again.

Question; Does a belief linger? Does it resonate in the senses? Having a belief definitely resonates in the senses; pride, security, loyalty, honor,…but the belief itself? Is its life entirely dependent on our minds ability to repeat, enthrone, solidify and litmus test its existence?

What about what we experience with/in our senses?  Those stay in the tissue longer. A lot longer. Muscle memory? What about that which feels so good, so true, so comforting and reassuring, even eternal: love? Do we feel love in our mind?

We feel it in/through our senses. Our mind interprets it, maybe even gets a little drunk on the endorphin rush, or suicidal from the percieved loss of, but ask your mind where to go to find it and like a good dog after a buried bone, it visits all past and recorded occasions of bliss in an attempt to feel it again.

It doesn’t work that way.

Ah! I’m opening that damn can of worms again.

This experience of our existence has absolutely nothing to do with right,wrong, good, bad. Granted, because we are such dangerous beings to one another, we need a moral cage of rules and regulations to keep us under control…and we  have invented all kinds of cages…

Our experience of our existence…maddening as it may be to our minds…is to be experienced...or in short;to be…as in felt. Not known, or catalogged, measured and weighed…but felt.

So I ask you. In your deepest sense of yourself, of your hearts, after our minds have had their day judging and defending and labeling things right or wrong, fair or unfair and whatever, after that, when we ask ourselves what we really know that we want…and in that knowledge we also know that everyone at their core wants,…it is love. To be loved, to love, to belong eternally, to know that part of ourselves that goes on long after our bodies have called it quits.

We all want the same thing, same store. You take the high road, I’ll take the low road. You take your car, I’ll hoof it through the woods. Different ways of getting to the same place.

So, I propose that we view each others different ways, beliefs, ideas with more curiosity. Not just curiosity in all the different ways, but curiosity in ourselves and our own process of holding on, attaching, afraid to let go of any or all of the beliefs that our minds would have us identify with.

I believe…yes I said it…that when, in the face of fear, we  identify with the fear, (and try to defend against it), we can also identify with  that part of us that sees us doing this and if we look closely, sees others doing it at the same time.

Sometimes we settle for the distraction of anger, hate, because we’re afraid to acknolwedge the root presence of our fear (underneath our anger, impatience…etc.).for fear that the fear will destroy us. But hey, didn’t we just say we were already ‘afraid’ to go there? Where? To ‘afraid.’ We’re already there!

Where?

Here.

And maybe the notion of a world without right or wrong is offensive, even threatening to some, however, I believe that anything that we can identify as being beyond our comprehension is where we really want to go.That’s the place we speak of most often; heaven, eden, paradise, eternal peace, unending love. That’s the place that  our minds can’t know and can only try to describe with words in an effort to quantify and qualify the experience of feeling.
The mind doesn’t feel.

It thinks.

That’s how it experiences itself. By doing. Its existence is entirely comprised of doing, judging, evaluating, ordering, controlling….not being.

And because it cannot feel, the mind creates with its definitions of sensation/feeling words, scenarios that defend and enrage, sadden and yearn in their complex stories of what happened or didn’t happen in the course of our conditioning in this journey of life.

The  experience of feeling, experiencing the senses is an unknown to the mind. It is the unknown.

If the mind can’t ‘know’ something, (it being one of its favorite ways of ‘Doing’ in order to support its pursuit of immortality…or at least the illusion of immortality), it has a vast supply of weapons to deal with the unknown.  At any time it can see it as horrible and dark and deathfull, exotic and mysterious, sometimes benevolent, and an ethereal spirituality to be adorned with all the gilt of honor, tradition, belief, philosophy and magic. It can defend against it with rage; rage at one’s self (read: ‘helplessness’: most commonly experienced as depression), hate,anger, killing, owning, controlling, obsessing, forgetting, DENYING any experience of the fear that always creeps in from the unknown.

Yet, we don’t experience life with our minds. We see it, measure it, etc, however we experience life through our senses. Our physical and by extension, emotional feelings.  We experience, know—its existence and ours by feeling them.

Our minds can editorialize and spin the story any which way, but hold the presses: how did it/being/life feel?

So here’s a question; If there’s something that we feel that our minds can’t understand or control, (and we’re only using what small percentage of our brains(?), then what’s the point of having a brain? I mean besides the cars and medicines and exquisite war machines, (can’t say ‘nice music, good food, good sex…’ they’re feelings/sensations), the rule of law and the dollar, and the edifices of  belief; the cathedrals, temples, and shrines,…good pizza…

It’s what we use the mind to focus on. We honor our senses within and without, as we honor our brains.

We enjoy our ability to exercise the muscle of thinking.

However when confronted with our inability to affect the outcome of something, like our lives, when that degree of helplessness paralyzes you or simply tickles you with some indigestion or rage, while  our minds may be able to create a bandaid to deny that horrible feeling of helplessness… the fact is that our minds fear that they can’t help us out. How do we know this? With our feelings. Listen to them. That’s what they’ll tell you.

What we can do, is to focus our minds on things that reaffirm and bring us to a more peacefull place. The more we do it, the better we remember to do it the next time. How do we focus the mind?

We ask it questions.

Questions such as; ‘what do you hear? what do you see? what do you smell? what do you feel on your skin,what are you thinking? RIGHT NOW. HERE in the Present? Which is ALL you can ever really know…

Can you see yourself thinking , feeling, smelling…? Can you see yourself sitting there reading this?

Get cooled out, you know, relaxed.

Be in a comfortable place.

Close your eyes so that it is just your space..

Ask these questions and simply watch. Watch yourself asking the questions and watch yourself as you are feeling all your sensations, watch your mind think its thoughts…

As you watch, you are plugging into the great ethernet of existence of which…(just contemplate this…don’t feel like you have to judge your feelings about this experience…) of which everything is thought, knowing.

Consider this experience of being with everything that exists, has ever existed, will continue to exist….forever, eternally, immortally…

You are experiencing the true meaning of ‘knowing;  ‘   Being one with. Belonging. Feeling a part of. Feeling as if when you leave this body behind, a part of  you keeps going…forever, (of course your mind wants to believe that it has a ‘structure’ to it, like  the Big Boss, and laws, and underlings, and people that deserve to be there and don’t.)

You don’t have to give it a name, because you already know it. It’s where you came from, it’s where you are going to, it’s where you are, right now, as you read this.

This is your truth.

You are everything that feels good and that doesn’t.

You are all of it.

You don’t have to judge it or identify it…that will not help control it or deny it.

Our experience of life is replete will all that we experience in pain and in pleasure.  We can choose to honor our consciousness, to honor this enormous and, yes sacred gift: our ability to be see ourselves exist, our awareness that allows us to honor that gift, for this is truly the only thing thing we want…to climb to our higher being, to find the chalice, the fountain of  youth, true love, God. You can call it what you will. This is home.

Just a thought..

J ust a thought.

Does the mind feel?

It thinks.  That’s how it experiences itself.

So does it, the mind, interpret the physical reactions of the body and try to describe the experience with no first hand knowledge of what it’s like to feel?  The mind measures and identifies with words it creates from sounds made by those physical reactions,  and gives the words their meanings so they can be utilized at a moment’s notice. The mind even attaches stories to those meanings. Some are stories that make you feel good, and some make you feel bad. Some take you by the hand through a dark forest, and when you finally get to the other side, the sun is shining and all is well. All feels good. If your mind could feel, it would like that result. All systems are a.o.k..

The world of feelings must be so alien to the mind. So difficult to understand, and understanding…knowing is the mind’s compulsion, it’s reason to exist: to do. How can it not know? How can it not measure and control, judge, amass and assert power and ascribe the most elaborate rationalizations to justify its need to do.

Feelings? The mind finds more stories than exist, more permutations in an effort to find a way to control those feelings. If that’s the only way the mind can ‘know’ those feelings, then control it will be. Anything to avoid having to experience something that even approaches that feeling of ‘not knowing.’

Enter ‘belief’s.

Belief is the mind’s answer to controlling what it doesn’t understand. How do you believe? ‘You just do it.’ Like in the Nike ad. Do what? Believe!! How?I dunno, keep saying it over and over and maybe you’ll begin to believe it.

Belief systems are a compilation of our history of story-telling distilled into tenets, or truths that you must either accept at face value, or dedicate your life and will to studying them.  That is the only way to believe and experience faith.

Or is it?

What’s faith?

‘It’s that feeling you get….’

‘Wait a sec…hold on…you’re talking about a ‘feeling?”

‘Okay, I won’t use the word,’feeling,’ okay? See, you get this sensation…’

‘Wait a sec…hold on… Isn’t a ‘sensation’ just a ‘feeling…?”

‘Shut up, or I’ll shut down!’

That’s the mind’s ace in the hole; shutting down, then it’s a hop skip and a jump to hate, greed, sloth…murder…sound familiar?

The mind cannot explain or understand the experience of faith. I mean, it can. It can explain what faith is supposed to act like, what it’s supposed to do, as the mind sees it.  It’s just that merely ‘being’ is an anathema to the mind. If it just ‘is’ then what does it do? It don’t do.

I learned a great meditation: ‘There nothing to do, nothing to change, everything is perfect just as it is.’

So, you guessed it…that takes us around and back again in this spiralling ride of life. Full circle.

How does the mind access faith?

It doesn’t. We do.

We have our consciousness that can watch our minds think, watch our selves feel every sensation  and emotion.

We can take that huge part of our brain that remains unused and use it to focus our minds from its witness, from its consciousness. Observe, not judge…and resist the mind’s need to say everything is so or isn’t so, is right, or is wrong, good or bad…and just watch your feelings as they pass by like leaves on a stream.

At some point, from your conscious place of awareness that is joined with all awareness of which all matter is made, you will experience and know when you experience it. You will ‘become’ the stream with the leaves/feelings floating on and through you. At that point you will know that  you have experienced yourself as the recipient of the entire ancestry of man because at that point, at that moment…you will recognize yourself in everything, and everything in  you. You will experience, as you have already experienced the love and peace and warmth, the connection to all that is. Call it God, Love, Truth, Beauty, it doesn’t matter. Whatever your belief system or religion calls it…isn’t important. Only that you feel it and understand that that is the only way you can ‘know’ it. That’s what we are here to do.

Experience it, ride it like a surfer on the waves, or an Eagle on the wind, fall in love, be one with it. That is our purpose. To sound, vibrate in, be with the harmony of the heavens, to be where thought becomes matter. Yup…at that very place, or ‘space’ as a friend of mine says.

Hope you’re having a good Spring.

pmg