Fri 19 Apr 2002 09:29
and when I say nothing I mean nothing - to carmen, re weekend..
bizarre- where did that come from.
herbert mead's the I--
Issue with joanna- suggested tuesday but did not work out- problem with suggestion, because I count on it.
-->ask carmen when she's free

2002-04-19-0947
soy flake farts are sweet? like proust's asparagus perfuming his chamberpot?


2002-04-19-1454
popped, snapped, blew?
programming trance?
when done, leaves mind vacant
impatient for engagement at furious pace?

I hurry off with no place to go,
returning to sanctuary,
where, I am now sitting in a chair.
_not lying down, or otherwise on the floor._

I seem to remember I was reading a book and making notes. Perhaps I shall continue.

copying parts I find interesting, rather.

p305 chapter--8 Seeking the heart of wisdom- where jack kornfield and joseph goldstein parted ways. tony schwartz.
I read the dream chapter but don't feel compelled to save any of it here.

so instead of saying "don't just sit there; do something," we should say the opposite, "Don't just do something; sit there." -thich nhat hanh

carlos castaneda: does this path have a heart? if it does, the path is good. If it doesn't it is of no use.


p306 - insight meditation society
it was about sitting and closing your eyes and figuring out the truth for yourself.

vipassana emphasizes awareness or mindfulness-
in contrast to practices that focus on quieting the mind of all thought.

p307
we are dominated by everything with which our self becomes identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. robert assagioli - psychosynthesis.

p310
at the same time, Goldstein felt frustrated that his professors were teaching philosophy as "an academic discipline and not as a way to live."

p311
I could be watching my hunger... watching myself
watching my mind, my breath, my feelings, my pain, my pleasure, my hope, my bliss, my hunger, watching whatever rose into the field of his consciousness..
while everyone else passes through, sits for a day, a week, a month, maybe, and then went on.

interesting-- I enjoy the experience of eating-- but talking with joe, gets my focus off it, and now I'm done... or maybe I would have been anyways.

p312 the people I knew in scientific, intellectual circles were unhappy. It became very obvious to me even as a child that there was a difference between worldly success and happiness.

Dr. Wing Tsit Chan sat cross-legged on a desk at the front of the room and lectured on the Tao and other aspects of mysticism.

p312 relationships with women were still really awkward
this is all Kornfield

p313 I wanted to step way outside my culture in the hope that I'd have a more compelling vision about my life.

Achaan Chaa's practice had included sveral years as an ascetic, during which he begged for his food and slept under the trees.

His schedule began to revolve around meditating for long hours, walking five miles each day to collect food for his one midday meal--barefoot, regardless of the weather--and treating even the work of sweeping the paths around the monastery as part of his meditative practice.

Maybe _I_ should go.

go for it, _I_

no, I want to be famous! in an underhanded, unknown sort of way
!!!!
????

Kornfield also undertook an intensive silent retreat, living for a full year in a onr-room hut, meditating up to twenty hours a day, and leaing only to see his teacher or to pick up his daily allotment of food.

I had all kinds of difficulties in the beginning, including great physical pain, but I applied myself.

I was young, I had a bit of an ascetic temperament anyway.
Eventually, I became incredibly open and clear.
I felt intense openings of my senses and a really deep understanding of the Buddhist history and psychology that I'd been reading."

for some reason, I doubt he said "that"

after 5 years in asia, Kornfield decided to return to the U.S. !!!!????

He was intent on continuing to live in robes  and shaved head as a renunciate Budddhist monk (are there non-renunciate monks?)

p314
my meditation had helped me very little with relationships..
surprise!

only the horror was that now I was beginning to see these patterns more clearly.

at the same time, it seems fair to say that intimate relationships simply weren't as important to Goldstein as they were to Kornfield.

Kornfield by contrast, had always hoped and assumed that he would someday get married and have a family.

I'd like to given the right circumstances, but I don't know what those circumstances are. Poets should not be married?

If I really were doing something I was enjoying--
or --
the solution is to find things one really enjoys doing where one cannot eat (regarding the eating issue) or pick one's knows (regarding the nose-picking issue).... then I shall be perfect. But I need to learn to be with my mind and yet not eat or nose-pick, therin lies the challenge....
got it?

GOT IT!?

mildly amazed I still have nose that is not a bloody pulp and that I do not weigh 300 lbs.

p320
That very day he resolved to leave his privileged life and go in search of an answer to the problem of suffering.

I forget so quickly why I like to be with my new friends unless I see her quite often.

Frustrated by his failure to find answers, he determined to sit under a bodhi tree until enlightenment came to him. Just as the morning star appeared on that first night, he opened his eyes and realized he had found the answer within himself.

The first noble truth is that all life is characterized by suffering, or dhukka. No matter how many distractions, escapes, and pleasures we find for ourselves, we cannot avoid feelings such as anger, anxiety, ill will, and frustration.

Beyond that, as we grow older, the body inevitably gets diseased and eventually dies. NO!!!

The second noble truth is that the cause of all our suffering is desire and attachment: to pleasure, to our own opinions,

--I am a child-- you're fucking with a child--
(the thoughts of possibly copyright infrigement troubles cross my mind on occasion. Children do not worry about such things. they create with whatever they have on hand oblivious of legalities. Maintaining oblivion toward legalities could hurt me at some point, but as I have no motivation to be "responsible" in this regard, I think I would play the game to the end. I flatter myself, but would not want to be suprised by the success of something without having considered possible harm. Quite possibly, depending on my life at the time, I will bow out, seeking to preserve the measly capital I have accumulated-- to have the losers (er. upstanding citizens) leaving me alone. It would be nice to observe these thoughts, let them pass on and never have them cross my viewscope again. It really would suck to come up against a brick wall of power because of my attachment to publishing this on the web.--
but since I have yet to not get caught for anything I've tried to get away with (that's how it seems), these things bear some consideration...but it would really be nice to not have them flitting across consciousness--there is nothing I shall do with respect to them untill the time comes that there is an issue which quite possibly will never come!!, So be off, unhelpful thoughts, go back to the world that you came from.

The second noble truth is that the cause of all our suffering is desire and attachment: to pleasure, to our own opinions, to preconceptions that preventus from seeing things as they truly are, and most of all, to our belief that we have a solid and permanent self.

The third noble truth is the recognition that this sense of self is finally an illusion--and that no amount of striving or accumulation or willpower can change that.

the fourth noble truth came to be known as the eightfold path--a systematic map pointing the way toward truth and freedom or what is simply called the dharma.

p321
if we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible to become settled , collected and focused in meditation.

right speech
right action
right livelihood
right effort
to be persistent and persevering but with a relaxed and balanced mind, making the effort w...

every act of condemning the hindrances strengthens the enemy
mindfulness makes them all inoperative
oops.

they may continue to rise but they do not disturb the mind because we are not reacting to them.

p323 roger walsh-
the following year he started an annual tradition of sitting each fall for the full ninety-day silent retreat at IMS
That is truly a phenomenal thing to contemplate- a contemporary American spending a full three months of every year in silent retreat.

walsh's intial observation was that beyond a superficial level of integration, the mind operates chaotically.
I was lost in fantasy most of the time.
I was driven by desires, and doubts, and most of all by fears.
How much does it cost to go and sit there for 90 days? Perhaps when I finish this job I will go there.

2002-04-19-1815
p323 I learned more about the mind in those ten days than I'd learned about it in three years of psychiatric training.

when you go inside, it's like turning on a faucet that hasn't been used for a long time. What comes up first is gunk. Most people's immediate response is to turn the faucet off and say, 'Yeech, I don't want that stuff.'

You get a greater appreciation of the vastness of mind, a deeper level of insight, incredible subtlety of perceptions, a significant improvement in the capacity for focused attentention, and short-lived periods of intense peace and tranquillity that are immensely satisfying. But the real insight from the practice is that there is such a thing as liberation--that we can get a glimpse our true selfless nature."

p324 It was a novel experience to simply watch, without interference or judgement, the arising and passing of my thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Often, for example, I found myself observing not just a thought by my own inclination to judge that thought.

while I never experienced any of the deepest and subtlest understandings I'd read about--most notably, the direct, boundless experience of true emptiness--

observed pain more closely--transitory, shifty quality of pain

my first direct experience of both impermanence and nonattachment.
in the form of constantly changing sensations that I'd thought of as fixed.

try the motivation to eat or nose pick...
allergies.

I literally began to feel less identified with the pain--and less plagued by it. p326
whoops, that doesn't seem to help (sneezing) -- my usual strategy is to avoid focus on it--

p326 most of the time, there was not distance at all between me and my thoughts or my emotions.

p327 When I found myself able to cooly observe even a highly threatening emotion--the experience of a rejection, for example--other ways of dealing with the issue invariably occurred to me.

p328
metta is the Sanskrit word for love. focuses on conscious evoking feelings of love and compassion.

when I managed to connect feelings and images to the words I recited.
my capacity to freely extend love depended first on becoming more aware of these underlying negative emotions.

p329
I see a tendency to let go of that goal and instead become satisfied with something less: doing good in the world, having more harmonious relationships, seeking a happier life. That's all beautiful, but

p331
psychological work can reinforce a sense of self--me, my story, my problems--which I believe is a basic misconception.

p332
I've known dozens of meditators who can go completely empty in meditation, dissolve their bodies and mind into pure void and bliss--but then come back into the world and still act like emotional infants and sexual idiots in their relationships.

Mindfulness proved more valuable as a technique for allowing me to engage and explore my automatic behaviors and reactive emotions than as a means to rising above them or gaining a permanent detachment from them.

In the end spiritual life is not a process of seeking or gaining some extraordinary condition or special powers," "If we are not careful, we can find the great failures of our modern society--its ambition, materialism and individual isolation--repeated in our spiritual life."
-kornfield

as many as half of the students who attend each year's 90-day silent retreat at IMS, prove unable to do the traditional insight or mindfulness practice. Too many unresolved emotional issues arise that demand more direct attention, and often the supportive help of another person.

p334 all the retreats included a vow of celibacy.
Kornfield was chosen to fly to India and confront Munindra directly. The teacher acknowledged what had happened and agreed to apologize to the community as a whole.

the teachers adopted a set of ethical guidelines for themselves-
refraining from sexual misconduct
not abusing alcohol or drugs or misuising money
maintaining a commitment to open and honest exchange
community appointed its own ethics committee and charged it with evaluating and ruling on any serious accusations of misconduct against teachers.

p335 some three hundred people show up each Monday night for the talks that Kornfield has been giving for the past several years.
the pursuit of work that is consistent with one's deepest beliefs.

if
weeping or drawing or taking walks in the woods.

stay in touch with the feeling until it moves
at that point you might go back to watching without attachment.
the real challenge is to bring attention to every dimension of life.

p336 No matter how tremendous the openings and how strong the enlightening journey, one inevitably comes down and must re-enter the world with a caring heart. - kornfield

goldstein
sameen frank
but there are olso cycles of living actively in the world, developing generosity, morality, truthfulness, and compassion, qualities more easily expressed in daily life than in retreat.

nonetheless, Goldstein remains more passionately committed than ever to what he calls awakening or liberation, through traditional mindfulness practice of letting go of attachment and not iden....
to that end, he is spending longer periods than he has in many years pursuing intensive meditation practice.

?

p337
the dharma--the way things are--
so enmeshed in the personal level that one loses sight of the bigger perspective

attched to the concept of emptiness, and then wrongly assuming that because everything is ultimately empty, nothing really matters.
goldstein


2002-04-19-2154
I was just dancing etc. on the steps at columbia!

p375 what really matters tony schwartz ch10 Personality and Essence Helen Palmer, the Enneagram, and Hameed Ali

The goal of man is Truth. Truth is more than happiness. The man who has Truth can have whatever mood he wishes, or none.
happiness makes you its prisoner as does woe. -sufi teaching

p376
the everyday emotions that most stood in my way--a quickness to anger, an edgy mistrust, a reluctance to open my heart.

no amount of psychological insight--nor even an improved ability to function in the world--seemed to fully address the hunger for meaning that prompted my search.

febrile intensity p 378 - relating to fever
Cool and businesslike
she rarely met my gaze directly

p379 selling pickles
Institute for the Harmonius Development of Man

Most people, Gurdjieff theorized, become so identified with their personalities that they lose all connection to their true selves.

p380
Ichazo- cataleptic attacks--painful bouts that left him conscious but unable to move. by 18 he had learned sufficient skills of self-control to bring his attacks to an end.

p381 in 1970, 54 americans traveled to the small desert town of Arica, Chile to undertake ten months of intensive training under Ichazo.
are there teacher so incredible?

Ichazo is an evil man - Arica Institute - suit against other Enneagram teachers.

p385 Palmer a newyorquena
Through the intense focus of attention prompted by my fear, I was accessing some other deeper level of knowing that was beyond thinking and logic.
smuggle draft resisters across the border into Canada.

self-hypnosis-
the technique was built around learning to detach from thoughts and sensations, and even from awareness of the immediate physical environment, in order to move into a deeply absorbed trance state.
she was able to enter this state while teaching in the classroom.

six months after she began conducting session at her home in 1972, palmer had a waiting list more than a year and a half long.

p387
I spent many hours a day in meditation practices. It was as if something in me craved it.

p388
fashion a test of her abilities.
first names of 6 people in my life one at a time- asked her to describe each.
no cues from facial expressions or body language-- but voice?
nor did I give her any feedback.

yikes- freaky stuff.

siddhis

p389 coping style.
We lose the essential childlike ability to respond to the world as it really is, and begin to become selectively sensitive to the information that supports our type's world view. we see what we need to see in order to survive and ignore the rest.

system summary p390
carmen - Enneagram?
1s - reacting to history of criticism, try to behave perfectly only to become own severest critics.
2s -
the tragic-romantic 4s, beset by a sense of early abandonment and loss, believe that intense, passionate relationships are the key to escaping depression and finding happiness--but forever feel unfulfilled and let down.
that was/is me? I know they're only part of the answer now--I can't say I forever feel unfulfilled and let down however.

the observer Fives, intruded upon or simply ignored as children (not), conclude that cultivating detachment and minimizing needs is the best way to avoid being overwhelmed either by their own feelings or by the demands of others.
I know cultivating detachment is a mistake--
seeking no to create emotional attachment...

dilettante Sevens con--
resisting deep commitments and focusing attention instead on all of the possibilities ahead.

You know, I feel unfulfilled and let down by this-- this is all? not the book of course...

the bigger question is why do people find type systems such as this, or for carmen, astrology useful/helpful/interesting?

none that I've encountered so far have stuck to me--perhaps this one might?
go to that skeptic web site.

p391
I have more access to .. than to the current of feeling in my heart--
like a fran $Iris..
many students expect that I should be strong and precisse and courageous and also peaceful and compassionate and loving.

well, maybe he doesn't have intellectual precision. But he has compassion. He does have something to offer. p392

p396
my passionate desire to write a book about wisdom grew out of a very personal hunger to overcome my chronic doubt and to find something that I could truly believe in.

this is ridiculous..
like seeing faces in a random texture.

p398
when I find myself feeling threatened or insecure, I so often become preoccupied with power, recognition, and external achievement--or envious of those who have it.

p399 we all see to fill externally what we feel is missing internally.

what is missing internally, colin?

no clue.
moderation?
not bad.

p405 all week, I had been playing my usual role as an aggressive, sardonic tough guy. sardonic- disdainfully mocking.

so Tony was being an unpleasant person, and found that others thought so.

I want you to try first to follow your breath down and in--to come inside. When you've done that, just say whatyou're feeling, simply and from your heart." -palmer
(something he has trouble with--heart)

sadness..
started crying

'just say what you're feeling' -palmer
I feel bad
I feel like I could have made a connectino with Richard, but I lost the opportunity. Somehow I got him angry, and now I've ended up with just the opposite of what I wanted.
I also realize this has happened to me a hundred times. and it just makes me very sad.

Had palmer permitted me to say what was on my mind when I first came out to confront richard, we would almost certainly have ended in an angry exchange.

p407 pen name a.h. almaas

p409 wilhelm reich bioenergetics Alexander Lowen's work.

p400 for the five - the capacity for deep connection

p411
if she had asked him if she might take him through the same meditation- wife to husband, wishing to share her experience-- that would have been phenomenal-- however I re read it and see that he asked her.


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