Point 1

What exists? Does yesterday exist now? Does tomorrow exist now?

Of course, not.

Our thoughts of yesterday may exist now if we are now thinking of yesterday.

Our thoughts of tomorrow may exist now if we are now thinking of tomorrow.

But now neither yesterday nor tomorrow exists.

What about the moment a second ago when you started reading this blog? What about a moment from now when you will have finished reading this blog? Do these moments exist?

Of course, not.

Our thoughts of these moments may exist if we are now thinking them…

What exists now but now?!

Point 2

What can be known?

Only that which exists.

Will you wake up tomorrow morning?

Who knows… But I am sure that you believe that you will.

We can know and we can believe.

We can only know that which we witness.

Will your car start when you head back home today after work?

You don’t know, of course, but you believe that it will.

When we don’t know we have no choice but to believe.

To believe is to act as if you know even though you don’t know.

What else can you do instead?!

After all, you can’t know that which doesn’t yet exist…

Point 3

Ignorance, they say, is bliss.

But there are two kinds of ignorance – ignorance out of lack of conscious awareness and ignorance by conscious choice, ignorance of not knowing and ignorance of consciously ignoring that which cannot be known…

Which one is bliss?

Will you wake up tomorrow?

Who knows?! Don’t you know that you can’t know that which doesn’t yet exist?!

Ignore the un-knowable…

And notice the Now that still exists…

Point 4

The Buddhist doctrine of Sunyata (the doctrine of emptiness) is often misunderstood as a nihilistic doctrine of nothingness.

Buddhist psychology negates that which doesn’t exist only to affirm that which still exists .

You’ve heard this before: the past has already happened, therefore it doesn’t exist; the future hasn’t happened, therefore it doesn’t exist. Thus, there’s nothing but Now…

So, here we stand, sandwiched between the Nothingness of the Past that’s already gone and doesn’t exist and the Future that hasn’t yet happened and therefore doesn’t exist…

Here we stand in this proverbial and pre-verbal here-and-now, in the middle of Nothingness…

This is …

I’d like to offer you a meditation (if you read and visualize) or an actual exercise that you can do if it’s sunny outside.  Imagine that you’re walking down the sidewalk (or a trail) with the sun right behind you.  As you walk, you’ll be able to see your shadow right in front of you. In a manner of speaking, you are following it—it beats you to every step.  This is a curious phenomenon. Try it when you have a chance.  And as you do this, meditate on the following: this shadow is a metaphor of your programming, a representation of your past.  You are constantly projecting your vision of what should be onto what is.  Your software, like your shadow when the sun’s at your back, is leading rather than following you.  All of us have the experience of not wanting to say something and then saying it, not wanting to react a certain way but then reacting that way.  Our reflexes, our programming, our past gets ahead of our present. As our past becomes our future, we keep repeating the same old patterns, eventually feeling out of control, by-passed by our rituals, witnessing our reactivity represent the worst in us.

            Now  imagine (or do, if possible) walking with the sun not right behind you but to your side.  Now the shadow is shorter: while your programming reflexes still get ahead of you, the actual you reaches the moment of your destination just soon enough to perhaps do some damage control.  With the sun to your side and the shadow only slightly ahead of you, perhaps you can apologize soon enough after you snap so that people around you sense that you’re almost self-aware enough to coexist with.  With the stride of your consciousness almost as long as the short shadow of your past ahead of you, you are stepping on fewer toes and kicking fewer brown bags with bricks inside.

            Now imagine walking towards the sun.  The sun is right ahead of you.  It’s blinding in its clarity.  You can barely see ahead of you.  There is no shadow ahead of you—there is …

Break some rules.  No, this is not a call for a rebellion.  We tend to be pretty rule bound, stuck in patterns of behaviors. I invite you to break some nominal rules that are really not all that important in the overall scheme of things.  Start the day on a different note.  Go off the autopilot. Upon waking in the morning and while still in bed, identify some small rule, convention, habit, or routine of yours that you’ll break today.  Maybe you’ll have a different breakfast or not check your e-mail before you head out the door.  And perhaps this little change will allow you to avoid wasting your precious morning time on spell-checking a meaningless e-mail.  Or maybe, on the way to work, you’ll let somebody cut in front of you without slamming on the horn.  This act of random kindness may serve as an opportunity to feel less stress, less frustration, and to feel better about yourself. You get the point: break the rules to update your patterns.  Once again, no rebellion—just self-care.  The “rules” here refer to your rules, not society’s. And since they are your rules, you’re free to break them.

There are two choices you have for dealing with the uncontrollable.  You can try to control it, which is an anxiety-fraught delusion. Or you can try to control your reaction to the uncontrollable, which can be acceptance, courage, and possibly a sense of fun.  Our whole life is made of assumptions: that the alarm clock will work, that the car will start, that the coffee cup will be there when we reach for it without looking at it.  We already know how not to know.  And we’re damned good at it.

Case in point.  Do you know that you car will start tomorrow morning as you head out to work?  Of course not.  So how come you’re not worried?  If you car doesn’t start, it might throw off your whole day.  Heck, you might lose your job over it!  And yet, here you are, reading this, not worried at all.  What’s the trick?  When faced with the uncertainty of the unknown, we have a choice to drive blindly into the unknown or to turn on the halogen headlamp of our self-reassuring hypothesizing. Hypothesizing about what will happen is entirely natural.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having beliefs in the absence of knowledge.  Since we don’t know either way (if the car will start or not), we might as well assume that it will. 

An emotionally pragmatic assumption is a belief that you can live with, a belief that helps you survive the uncertainty with the minimum of distress.  In formulating an emotionally pragmatic assumption, it’s important not to let an assumption become an entitled presumption.  Both an assumption and a presumption are ways of dealing with the unknown. 

To assume is to suppose that something is, was, or will be the case without evidence or proof.  To presume is to take for granted that something is, was, or will be the case.  Thus, an assumption is a tentative hypothesis and a presumption is an inflexible expectation.  In the weeks to come, practice conscious assuming without presuming.  When faced with some crucial unknown, allow yourself to formulate an emotionally pragmatic assumption without letting it become an inflexible expectation.  Recognize …

1.
Lean into the sky with your stare.
See all of its black infinity behind the azure blue of the familiar.
Realize that all, all, all of that is you!
2.
I know, I know
You thought it was just you.
I know you thought it was all quite simple:
That there was you and not-you,
That there was this you here and all that not-you there.
It’s not.
All of it is you.
3.
Inhale all that you thought you were.
Exhale this self-limiting illusion.
You’ll have to get used to this new way of thinking of yourself sooner or later.
You have no choice.
4.
Not because this reality is undemocratic.
Heavens no!
Not because of that.
But because of this:
How can you have a choice to not be you?
5.
One is not two.
Unlike two, one has no choice
But to be one.
Advaita!

“we are all connected”/symphonyofscience.com

pavel somov, not two, nov. 15, 2009

Fasting as a means of celebrating is as old as the world.  Much has been written about fasting and health benefits associated with it.  I encourage you to develop some curiosity about it (Dr. Fuhrman’s writings are a good place to start).  My use of the term “fast” refers to a continuum of eating restrictions ranging from complete food-free, water-only fasting to various dietary restrictions (as you would find, for example, in the tradition of Lent). 

Before undertaking fasting a) read up on the health benefits of fasting, and b) consult your physician about whether fasting (of any degree) is safe for you.  Select a calendar, personal, anniversary-based or spiritual/religious holiday, commit to a fast (of whatever definition that would be appropriate for your level of health), prepare for the fast, and conduct it on the day in question.  If you find fasting on a holiday to be a more meaningful experience than feasting on a holiday, consider a yearly tradition of having at least one fast-not-feast holiday.  Get stuffed on the spirit of the occasion!  Notice how the fast leverages your overall mindfulness.

Have you noticed that we tend to celebrate with food?  Celebrations are a powerful, culturally-sanctioned trigger to eat, over-eat, and even binge-eat.  For many over-eaters, food-centered holidays are a dreaded challenge and a source of post-holiday rumination and self-dissatisfaction. 

Here’s a new paradigm to try: have a fiesta without having a feast.  The word “fiesta” originates from the word festus which is Latin for “joyous.”  The essence of a holiday is celebration.  Eating is but one way to celebrate.  Try to experiment with celebrating a single holiday in a way that is not food-centered, in a manner that is joyous but not necessarily gluttonous.  Pick one of the many calendar holidays or personal events, and make it a fiesta, not a feast.  For example, instead of going out to eat to celebrate your birthday, have a picnic.  Eat, commune with nature, throw a Frisbee.  This way you’ll have a celebration that will involve some eating but will not be primarily food-focused.  With Thanksgiving coming up you have a perfect opportunity to try out this kind of celebration mentality.

Start simple:  if a particular heavy-eating event has been a long-standing tradition (such as a family reunion), then it is best you leave it alone, as it is (at least, for now).  Practice this fiesta-not-feast mentality on a more personal occasion in which your wishes for the format of the celebration are fundamentally your prerogative.  Relational anniversaries and birthdays are perfect opportunities to experiment.  Aim to develop a standing tradition of celebrating some of the calendar and personal events in a non-food-focused manner.

People talk.  We listen.  We think about what they are saying.  As we consider the thoughts that other people verbalize, their thoughts stream through us and become our thoughts, at least, for the time being, while these thoughts remain under our consideration. 

Basic stuff, right?  Nothing to it.  It’s part of our day-to-day mind-flow.  But here’ s a puzzle for you.  Do we become our thoughts about others’ thoughts that are passing through us?  Are we carried away with all this daily mind-flow or do we remain?

To help you ponder this, here’s a set of three quotations on the matter.  These quotations – once you read them – will become your thoughts, at least, for the time being, while you are reading them.  Ponder if – upon having these thoughts – you, yourself, have become these thoughts.

“The Self is free from all qualities.  Qualities pertain to the mind only.” (1).

 “If all of your experiences, your various states of consciousness, were weather patterns – clouds, rain, rainbows, tornados, hurricanes, or summer breezes – your consciousness would be the sky in which they take place.  Your consciousness is the context in which all of your experiences, perceptions, thoughts, or feelings converge.” (2).  

“Consciousness is the essence of the self.” (3)

What have you concluded?  And, more importantly, what have you concluded it with?  Meditate on this.   Share your thoughts about this.  Read others’ thoughts about this.  Then, meditate on your thoughts about others’ thoughts about this.  Then meditate again.

References:

1.  Sri Ramana Maharshi

2. Maria Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten and Tina Amorok

3. S. Radhakrishnan & C. Moore

We all like smooth sailing, for things to go just right, without any friction. And, yet, friction can be a nice wake-up call. Gurdjieff encouraged his students to give up “something valuable” but “not forever,” in order to create a constant “friction between a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’” (1). So, create friction as a wake-up call to your mind and raise your tolerance for friction. Every day quit something that you like but can easily live without. Make entirely arbitrary choices: avoid any kind of logical rationalization. We are not talking about wellness, but about awareness. Commit to a timeline of no more than a couple of weeks. Here’s the key: feel free to break the commitment any time, as long as this is done via a conscious choice. This isn’t an exercise in self-mortification, but an opportunity to practice de-programming and re-programming yourself. Say, you decide not to use your favorite coffee mug for a couple of weeks. As you reach for it in the morning and experience a moment of friction, you’ll have a moment of what Gurdjieff called self-remembering. You’ll appreciate yourself as the programmer: “That’s right, I used to mindlessly reach for this cup and now I am mindfully resisting this urge in order to remind myself of the fact that I am in charge of my own programming. I am following my own “should” now!” Ponder how adding friction may facilitate whatever behavioral/change objective you are currently working on.

State (Static) View of Perfection

As a perfectionist, you think of perfection as a state.  As you clean your kitchen or your car or your desk, you fantasize about preserving the state of perfection that you have accomplished.  If you can only get it right, then it’ll remain perfect from then on.  You believe that by tinkering with what is, by tweaking the reality, you can engineer a perfect or near-perfect state of reality that will enable lasting happiness and well-being.  But remodeling reality is a frustrating prospect because reality isn’t a state.  Reality is change, a process, a constant flux.  As a perfectionist, you reject this impermanence and yearn for a perfect status quo.  This state view of perfection is an emotional set up: even when you achieve that momentary perfect state, the reality doesn’t pause to allow you to enjoy it – the moment of accomplishment evaporates as soon as it materializes.  What am I telling you?  You already know it.

Attachment to Permanence is Suffering

Buddhists call the impermanence of reality anitya.  Physicists call it entropy.  The former witness it, the latter try to control it.  Both accept it.  But not you.  You strive to shape and form reality into what it isn’t.  You see the natural flow of change as de-formation – as a frustrating loss of form rather than as a natural change of form.  You’d rather solidify the river of change into an immutable state of perfection and freeze it in time, than to flow with it.  In trying to fix the imperfections of reality, you are confusing fluidity with flaws and the natural rusting with decay.  You are, in a manner of speaking, a permanist.  Trying to cast an anchor of permanence in a bottomless ocean of change, trying to attach your well-being to what once was creates attachment.  Attachment isn’t only a loss of contentment, it’s also a loss of independence.  By making your well-being dependent on the perfect circumstance, you lose the sovereignty of your well-being.  Your inner life becomes dependent on the external, on that perfect state of affairs that you absolutely have to preserve. You become rigid …