Thu 04 Apr 2002 16:12
A librarian at the humanities and social sciences research library
put my request for
'the life we are given'
and
'at a journal workshop' (1992 edition)
in the trash, saying something to the effect of we don't collect that kind of stuff.
Fortunately there are other librarians here, the life we are given is in the branch libraries, and at a journal workshop (1992) can be bought for $16 from John progoff, Ira's son- down at dialog house, on 13th st(?)
She's wrong of course--the library collects popular culture.

no, no one's staring at me...


Alex Grey's mindfold--


so many people I think would like to know about these things, but I might only tell a few. Amazing things, but I don't feel like telling the world about them? If they want to know, they could find them too? Most of my recent exciting finds have been by following Ken Wilber's trail, and I only got to him by searching for 'peak experience foucault.'

I'm not handling things well now, from librarians, to myself, to my reading, to my body, and social!

p 360 _What really matters_ The path to wisdom, in Wilber's model, is built around progressively broadening one's boundaries and thus enlarging one's sense of self.
to remember is simply to re-member and re-collect... to make whole that which was split and fragmented.

Perhaps if I saw that homeless/drugdealer man as part of myself I might act differently towards him? Or not.

p362
When I first started meditating, I sat for three to four hours a day. Once a week, I'd take a whole day and sit ten or twelve hours. I still sit every day for at least two hours. These are my two main practices: meditating and writing. They are very solitary, and what I do is very cognitive. My strong point is my mind, no question.
I just happen to believe that the main component of human growth and development is through consciousness, and that the main way to get these ideas across is trhough my writing.

p363 Ram Dass' call to higher consciousness "be here now"
Most people took 'be here now' to mean 'all that matters is what I'm feeling and experiencing now. I don't need to be worried about tomorrow or to feel guilty about anything I did in the past.

That misses the whole meaning of the higher stages of consciousness, which transcend rationality but also embrace it. Simply to 'Be here now' isn't beyond logic, it's beneath it. In the transpersonal realm, you are fully aware of the present but also of the past and the future. And you aren't attached to any of it."

p363
What you get is a miniature 'satori,' a little hit of a higher stage.
Your life gets jazzed around. You become more aware of new possibilities and of the limitations of the stage you're at.
If you get a glimpse of a higher stage, it tends to make you feel a little more unhappy with your present translation--the way you experience the world at whatever stage you're at.
when translation fails, transformation ensues--either up or down.

p364 Unless you take on the arduous work of an ongoing practice designed to sustain the glimpse you get from a peak experience, the effect will wear off.

transforming oneself is a long, laborious, painful process."

why then do people transform? (assuming they do)

p368 laetrile

p369 Treya:
"I needed people around who loved me as I was, not people who were trying to motivate me or change me or convince me of their favorite idea or theory,"

physical health is clearly not more important than emotional or spiritual health..

p370 from CA to north lake tahoe, nevada
physically and psychologically devastating for both of them.
A bizarre and still unexplained disease blew into North lake tahoe in 1985
debilitating more than 200 people
kw was one of them.
chronic fatigue syndrome - 2 years.
kw: depression

he could not write.
lost motivation to meditate
I no longer had easy access to the center of the cyclone,
only the cyclone.

when I lost access to pure open awareness tothe Witness, to my soul.

I was left only with my self-contraction, with Narcissus, hopelessly absorbed in hi own image.

Wilber began to drink from the time he went up until he went to sleep--vodka, beer, wine, and brandy--while sitting for hours in front of a television.

I had lost all control of my life
off and on for months I felt suicidal.

found himself blaming treya for his woes.
the feeling that he had no right to assert his own growing needs or to deal with the feeling that he'd lost his own center.

The relationship reached a nadir one day when Wilber got so anger that he hit tReya in frustration--the first and only time he's ever struck a woman.

Humiliated and at wit's end, he went to San Fran.

Went into therapy together in California.

closeness as a couple returned.

damn, they're closing--should I buy this book? this is ridiculous. perhaps something can be learned from this exercise? They always close 15min before closing time.
love,

.