Sat 06 Apr 2002 00:42
hate
fear
isolation
uncertainty

what really matters
p44
what actually seemed to die for patients was the ego or the "false" self--"a sense of general inadequacy, a need to be prepared for all possible dangers, a compulsion to prove things to oneself and others."
what died was the self-image that people had nurtured and defended throughout their lives--and wrongly assumed to be their true identities.
Grof insisted that these profound changes endured
the terror of confronting ego death ultimately gave way to visions of intense white light and a sense of joy and rebirth.
this led many subjects to a more loving and compassionate appreciation of their fellow human beings and of the universe.
"wordly amptions, competitive drives, and cravings for status, power, fame, prestige and possessions tend to fade away
ultimately anecdotal and inconclusive.

p45 grof's holotropic breathing lsd alternative

peter's message was sad and affects me, and how much I eat? etc.

pranayama

hoarding, collecting thoughts.

why compelled to suggest joanna change area code? why in email? why not wait?

were I to do it again, I would wait

I should be aware of the effect of that kind of action on myself and more cautious. Why did I forget and stop waiting? well- remember.

movement and touch vs. vision

p56
I was hopeful that meditating for so many concentrated hours would help me to experience more deeply the quiet calmness, ease, and wordless well-being that I'd felt intermittently during my 20 or 30 min of daily meditation over the previous year.

p57 studying a match with as much singular focus as possible.

counting breaths, noting breath as it entered and left the nostrils, repeating a word or sound.
contemplation- match- hands, picture at close range and far.

how much richness and detail I saw when I had no explicit agenda and really took the time to look

visualization- river from top of himalayas, sitting next to, as thoughts and distractions arose, put them one at a time inside a log, and send them down the river.
letting go of attachement to ones thoughts and emotions.
needing to let go of words/language to be able to visualize p58

content just to be sitting quietly
walking meditiation- watching each movement we made with deliberately attentive awareness.

conscious mind, my personality, balked at all this silence and giving up of conscious control.

p59
witness stance

resentment was my mind's invention.
the harder I soucht to reconjure the experience of letting go, ...

all this sustained meditation had begun to dissolve my usual ways of coping: relentless activity, constant talk, ruminating, regretting, rationalizing, and planning.

how much unconscious effort I expended each day just trying to feel safer, less conflicted, and more at home in the world.
blend of grief, freedom from fear, and boundless love that I felt during that run.

p60
the boundless love- a feeling of my heart[liver] opening to those around me, a rare instinct to reach out and experience the best in people, to let down my barriers and judgements.

deeply relaxed and very happy to be with the members of our group.

nonseparateness became not just a concept but something I was experiencing palpably and directly.

love meditation:
first conjured up image of someone very close to her.
then imagined herselv sending love to that person
then saw herself receiving love from the person
then imagined sending the message "I wish you well."
one person at a time
moving from family members, to friends, and co-workers, to people with whom she was having conflict.

p60
I focused on one of my daughters and tried to imagine a real-life situatino in which I'd felt great love for her, and then another in which I'd felt especially loved by her.
how sweet it is to be loved by you
the more vividly I recalled a scene, the more satisfying the experience.
harder to send love to some people or to receive love from them
because there was some conflict in the relationship that I hadn't articulated to myself before.
some, I just didn't want to send a person love, or felt it hard to accept love back.
all occurring in my mind, but seemed as if the person were right there with me.

a simple change in my own way of perceiving a situation could prompt such a powerful emotional shift (actively hostile individual).
how easy it is to get locked into habitual, defensive patterns that diminished my ability to remain open and compassionate.

p62 I accept whatever love you have to give me.

friends and colleagues sensed a glow in me that they found very inviting.

experience in Utah lived on mostly in memory- ordinary fears and habits began to resurface.

p65
'you don't have to go to India. Your teachings will be right here." vision during meditation.

joya santayana-- joyce green, a jewish housewife from Queens.
40's heavy makeup and long false eyelashes, decolletage

dÈcolletÈ
1. adj low-necked (dress)
wearing a low-necked dress
2. m noun low neckline

when joya finally emerged from trance, her first words were: "What the fuck do you want?"

p66
every time you struggle against something, you actually reinforce it.
I had to fully participate and delight in life, rather than rejecting it. I couldn't push anything away.

constructing problems to create issues needing resolution? creating adventure that way?

alan watts: you're too attached to emptiness p68

"the spiritual journey is a journey of continually falling on your face.
you take a step, blow it.
prostrations all the way.

each time I got back into meditation, I let go quicker.
each time I come out, I get stuck a little less thickly
or more subtly

difference between the Hardy Buoy Boux Boys and Wilber.
is there a difference? essentially? for the organism?

p68 complete life lived on several levels-
earning a living, raising children, assuming responsibilities, part fully in the world.

nobody doesn't die--
live as if being somebody makes a difference, even when you know it finally doesn't. You live passionately yet there is this other part of you that is absolutely empty and equanimous

I'm trying to become nobody being somebody. nobody training

p69 ramdass couldn't simply transcend all of the real-life suffering around him.
finding a way to reach out to others in distress--to act selflessly(??)
feed people
serve people
working to reduce his own suffering.
learning to deeply quiet his mind intensified his awareness of the paoin of those around him.
jewish and gay- trip to israel, rediscovering the role of judaism in his life.
help terminally ill come to terms with death
aids sufferers, cancer, etc.

trying to become free-
letting go of one's attachement to life in this form

[my issue is the opposite, it seems]

holding people's hands as they die.p70

p71 it could be, that it's just been to painful
(to mourn for the emotional needs that were never met in his childhood and the pain he's suffered as a result(??))
-------
p73 Michael Murphy and the founding of esalen


'what are the limits of human ability, the boundaries of human experience?'

we fear our highest possibilities as well as our lowest ones.
afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments.

p75
the prospect of being among others who are genuinely committed to more complete lives.

murphy's home in san rafael.

experiential testing ground for new approaches to the search for wisdom in america.

p76 7yrs, 6days/week, eight hours /day-- future of the body.

for most of his 20s eight hours/day meditating avg.
an incisive, logical thinker, voracious reader.

p78
I had this feeling that we all had access to the ground of being, or G-d, or light
Our job was to get in touch with it and to bring it into the world
through meditation, prayer, friendship, music, even sports.

p79- at 15, sold on the idea that society's attempt to make people normal was doomed to vailutre if it didn't provide them with some deeper meaning or sense of satisfaction.

atheist phase

wandered accidentally into a lecture on comparative religions

-after maui, before seattle, my mystical time?, and early seattle? ugly, ugly

maugham razor's edge

alex grey and wife's copulation in a glass case in a museum.

sri aurobindo ghose

p80 Atman--the deepest self--is one with Brahman, the essence of all existence.

a rejection of limiting orthodoxies and fixed belief systems.

aurobindo believed hat through systematic practices--meditation and yoga, but also sports, interpersonal relationships, and social action--it was possible to embody one's higher potnetials in everyday experience.

aurobindo's main work, _the life divine_
p81 page's gurulike demands for unwavering loyalty and subservience.

I was sitting by a statue on the Stanford campus meditating
and suddenly the vows just rose up in me--a powerful sense of inner calling
p82
it was like I had to do something to confrim confirm this direction I felt myself heading. I quit the fraternity. and dropped out of school
I felt I was running toward something that was enormously exciting and worthwhile, and away from a social role that had largely been imposed on me.


p82
meditation
4hrs early am, 4 late afternoon. the rest of the time, he spent reading.
this intense discipline came easily.
exhilarating, joyous, a direct experience of something larger than himself.
if you sit in meditation as much as I did, by the law of averages, you're bound to have an ephiphany now and then

I was living a very simple life and it was very rewarding- a compelling logic to the whole vision
every experience heightened
serenity to evenness, to extreme delight.
sometimes the experiences were absolutely overwhelming.
i'd been almost totally acheivement-oriented and other-directed growing up
the practice suddenly gave me an enormous depth of confidence that didn't depend on anybody else.

--loving- willingness to embrace no response?

in 1951 one didn't...

p85
What they both longed for was a community of active seekers who resisted fixed answers.

p86
Both murphy's and price's parents were enthusiastic about the plan, relieved that their respective sons were finally planning to do something concrete with their lives. Murphy's grandmother Bunny agreed to give him a long-term, low-cost least on the Big Sur property, while Price's family released money to him from a trust fund.

gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson gonzo: idiosyncratically subjective, unconventional.

murphy's blend of charm and passion made him successful in attracting prominent thinkers to Bug Sur [sic] to give talks.

murphy attended every one of Big Sur's first 200 lectures and workshops.

p87 Maslow, b 1908, grew up in Brooklyn his childhood miserably unhappy
The whole thrust of my life-philosophy and all my research and theorizing has it's roots in a hatred and revulsion against everything [my mother] stood for."

book should have been better proofread.

p89 both of them were relentlessly optimistic, polite, kind, and nonconfrontational by nature.

p90, when these belongingness needs are satisfied, people have the security and serenity to move to a higher level.
such people begin to act on a higher, more selfless set of "needs," including generosity, loyalty, empathy, and public spritedness--values that give real depth and meaning to life (maslow).

pandering to the pols?

p90 able to function in all areas of their lives internally, externally, for themselves, and for others, near the peak of their potential
a broader sense of self emerges that effectively experiences no boundaries.


the capacity to transcend one's self in the service of others.

p92"what's a peak experience?" she asked Maslow.
"I wouldn't know," he replied, "because I never had one. It's the old philosopher's paradox. Those who theorize about it are often the last to do it."

p92
those who came to Esalen had a more primal and compelling agenda. For them, the first order of business was breaking down the conventions and rules they'd lived by. Self-actualization--much less moving beyond the concerns of the self--would have to wait.

the single quality that he and Price cared most about cultivating at Esalen was an openness to a wide array of ideas and practices.

an open system.

Esalen evolved in almost direct reaction to the values of the mainstream culture.

less inhibited

p93
murphy's and price's laissez-faire style had another unintended consequence.
it created a vaccum that was filled..

no teacher exemplified this better, or caused more grief to Michael Murphy, than Fritz Perls.
Murphy was polite, charming, and friendly to a fault. Perls was mercilessly blunt, uninterested in social niceties, and frequently nasty. Murphy a mystic, perls an atheist.
openly lecherous with younger women, without embarassment about his aging body.
murphy, tall, young, handsom, but never felt comfortable with the open nudity that characterized the institute he'd founded.

p94
among Wilhelm Reich's most controversial views was that the capacity to expereince in sex what he called "true orgasm" was the highest measure of mental health- the ultimate creative act of self-expression.

p95
it never occurred to them that Perls would end up staying at Esalen for nearly six years--or that he would come closer than any teacher to remaking Esalen in his own image.


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