Resolutions

I am a planner.  I like to know what is going to happen, and I think I’ve got a pretty strong “work ethic”.  But something has changed, and it has been an incremental change, and an invisible one.  I’m probably more adept at what I do to “make a living” than ever before, and at a stage in my life where our culture tells me I should be making preparations for eventual retirement.  Storing away things like money, not taking too many chances.  This is starting to feel more and more wrong.  Even though I’m healthy and strong, my eventual dissolution is on the horizon, and there is nothing I can do about that.  So it seems strange to pretend I should be accumulating when I’m actually dissolving.  This is all conceptual stuff, but what’s happening in me is more than thoughts.

When I allow nothing to happen - no planning, no attempts to coerce the world around me to bend to my desires, no persuading people to do what I think is good for them and also good for me, I experience spaciousness.  It is as if the organs in my body relax.  When I begin to do what I’ve done pretty much my whole life - organize my reality to my own benefit - I experience an uncomfortable tension.  I realize now this tension was always there, and only because of its absence have I recognized it was there.  

I’ve used the same approach to people I’m attracted to.  To see them as some kind of resource that will add to my life.  Of course there are many layers of relationship and there have been many moments of spaciousness even within this way of relating, but it has been in spite of rather than because of it.  The model I have unconsciously been following has never really worked, probably attracted those that were motivated in the same way, and has always ended.

There is something more spacious, more comfortable and real than what I’ve been doing.  I know this in my heart, and I know I’m not the only one to yearn for something more expansive, a life that follows the rhythms of nature rather than a cultivation and control of my nature.  I don’t have an answer, or a philosophy, or a path for this, because all those things imply a final destination that just doesn’t seem to be there.

So for now I’ll try to stay in the spaciousness.  Not because it will get me what I want, not because others should do it to.  Just because it feels pretty good.

Counting things

How to count trees?  What is a tree?  If the definition of tree includes not just what we can see above ground but the soil, roots, relationships both linear and subtle, communication between one tree and another, then when we add another tree, it shares the sun, the water in the soil, the relationships - it does not exist separately.  The trees don’t have an external environment.  Even humans are part of the trees interconnectivity.  

We humans don’t generally feel this.  The source, unity, or heaven we are looking for and have placed in the heavens or somewhere geographically or theoretically away from us is in fact what we refer to as our environment.  However, very literally the earth I walk on is the earth you walk on.  The sun that shines on me shines on you.  Because of our procreative nature we would not exist without each other.  So, referring to what surrounds us as our “environment” says two things.  “My environment”. “My” - that which is not me, that I own or control.  “Environment” - That which surrounds me.  An abstraction.

So when we “count things”, when we quantify, we must first assume the things to be counted are fundamentally separate from one another, or counting would be impossible.    This assumes a separate environment from the counter, as well.  The counter is counting, the counter is not the counted.  In an abstraction like mathematics with clear logical boundaries, 1+1= 2.  In relationships between living beings, as Dr. Douglas Brooks so wonderfully points out, 1+1= 3 - the third element being the relationship between the two things counted. 

If a thing is separate from you, you can choose to relate or not to relate to it.  It is an external.  Relating to it may or may not be in your interest.  Your primary interest, the one that is unspoken and assumed, is in general, you want to continue to live.  So, a sandwich is seen as part of your environment, and so you eat it because it is in your interest.  If you buy the sandwich with money, it is “your” sandwich.  If you make the sandwich from the raw ingredients that surround you - wheat, cheese, tomatoes, possibly a pig -  then it too becomes “your” sandwich.  When you digest the sandwich completely and excrete the “waste” - it is also your waste.  Where is all your poo now?  It is back in "your environment".  It is in the oceans, it is in the soil.  It is becoming a tomato you might again call “yours”.  Is there then an external environment, or just an mental abstraction we agree on?

If a tiger eats you, he must see you as not him.  You also must do this to that which you’d like to eat.  You’d eat a sandwich and even salivate at the thought of eating a BLT, but you could not eat your own living hand, even if you tried to.  Your hand is different than your arm and far from your mouth, but the felt fundamental connection to the rest of you is undeniable.  Your feeling motivates your action, both in the eating of the BLT and in not eating your own hand.  Aron Ralston, the hiker who’s story of being trapped in a canyon, his arm pinned by a boulder, eventually freed himself by breaking off his own hand.  It took him 5 days to realize he could do this.  In his telling of the event, Ralston says that eventually he came to see his trapped hand as an impediment to his survival, something dying and “other” than him.  He was able then to summon the courage to break the radius and ulna bones of his arm and escape.  Ralston saw his trapped hand as separate, and that allowed him to continue to live.

We quantify and separate for good reasons.  This article is not a moral objection to this, simply an illustration of it.  But we often forget that quantification is just an abstraction -  just a tool to allow us to behave in ways that can be beneficial to our interests.  Now that there is almost nothing left of “environment” to make use of, and there are billions and billions of “me”, we may be forced to see the unity underlying the differences.

Keep the cow and add the cat.

When I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat.

My spine gets curved and then goes flat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

Cow, you sacred beast with eyes

Large and lumbering, and yes, the flies.

Opportunistic is the cat

Who’s just around for treats and pats

Cow so giving, cat so rude

One give milk, one just eats food.

To find a balance, tit for tat.

How to keep the cow, and add the cat?

One or the other’s not the way

A bit of both, but not a grey

Black and white contrasting...how?

Flowing, like the symbol of the Tao.

So when I warm up on the mat

I do the cow, and then the cat

A little this, then more of that

I keep the cow and add the cat.

Flexibly yours

Flexibly Yours

I’m happy with tofu

I also like s’mores.

What’s not to like?

I’m flexibly yours

There are times when the kneeling

can become just a chore.

Unravelling dogma,

I’m flexibly yours

Banjo or Aum’in?

Lock or open the doors?

The playlist is empty,

I’m flexibly yours.

Inhale or exhale,

Sip slowly or pour?

Even rhyming gets tricky

I’m flexibly your(s).

Notes on notes

(Thanks to author and speaker Charles Eisenstein for all of his work, much of the following is based on his monumental book "Ascent of Humanity".

Money is a little like sex.  We think about it a lot, we plan to have more, it excites us and we are always thinking of innovative ways to use it.  It is also like sex in that we tend not to talk about it with acquaintances and we feel some shame in pursuing it.

Money is an agreement of value, we use it as an easy means to exchange, and in that way there is nothing inherently wrong with it.  However, the monetary systems of the world we have now are all debt-based.  The money is created by our agreement to repay it with interest, which requires all production - goods and services - to continue to “grow”, so that the money to pay the interest on money we borrowed into existence can be created.  Goods and services are created by taking something that is free - fish, trees, childcare, food preparation, laying claim to it in some way and then selling it back to those who now “need” it.  All modern growth-based economies are ponzi schemes.  When the natural bank account is empty, as it soon will be, the economy collapses.  This is why the U.S. Is spending billions of dollars per month to try to stimulate their economy.  It won’t work because:

 A)The economy is not economical - it does not frugally produce what is essential, it produces mostly crap. How many things do you own that have broken?  Is there anywhere to fix them instead of buying a new one?

B)You can’t have exponential growth on a limited planet.

The money we use sets us in competition against one another in a way that was unheard of in tribal cultures.  Tribal cultures didn’t use money, nor did they “barter”.  The relationship between humans was based on the gift.  If I’m lucky and I catch 6 fish in one day and can only eat one, I store the other 5 fish in the belly of my brothers.  When I’m unlucky my brothers (meaning anyone I know) will feed me.  The agricultural revolution that happened approximately 10,000 years ago created a surplus of food which then had to be stored, protected and traded.  This created the need to acquire and lay claim to land.  The ownership model extended to owning animals and even other people and eventually even ideas.  This surplus of food also allowed us to have many more offspring, who all also needed land....and 10,000 years later we are where we are today.  No land left that isn’t claimed, almost no fish in the sea.

So, when you look into your wallet at money, you are looking at a symbol of trade based on debt, not value.  It is also anonymous, and creates anonymity when it is used.  Your individual gifts become lost in the sea of commerce where everyone is concerned with making enough of this anonymous substance to pay the bills.  And almost everyone is in debt, and competing against one another for money.  This has been going on since the introduction of debt-based money, so many philosophers and economists see human behavior as intrinsically competitive  and self-centered.  They never studied what humans were like before money.

So how can you make this anonymous symbol of debt and competition somewhat sacred?  Is it possible in some small way to make these bills that move from hand to hand less anonymous?

Yes.  You can place an idea, a short poem, a drawing, onto the bill that you give someone when you pay for something of real value.  That could be paying to listen to a great street performer sing a song.  Or it could be giving it to your massage therapist, or your yoga teacher.  This isn’t going to change what our current monetary system does, and it will still eventually fail.  But it may be a message to another that we are not all in it for just the money.

Sound

Sound

I am sound of mind, body and heart.

I am in tune.

I am like the air or the water that carries vibration,

With clarity.

Sound, healthy, stable.

I am sound, which is a vibration moving through matter

So sound, so stable and solid,

I’m not really there.

Meaningless Sex

We’ve attached many things to the necessary interconnection of the male and female principles.  The complex and mysterious nature of male/female relationship and the desire to classify and capture the beauty within this union has created, at least in part, the culture, values and motivations we live with.

The male principle needs to be received, the female principle needs to receive.  I’m not speaking of gender.  Think of Velcro.  One side is made of tiny loops, one side tiny hooks.  The male “hook” principle cannot bind to another hook, nor can a loop bind with a loop.  It simply won’t stick.  This binary is presented of course physically, and on ever more subtle levels of our being.

When both sides know what they are (and of course there are always some loops in the hooks, some hooks in the loops, but let’s keep it simple here) they can bind to their counterpart.  This binding is innately pleasurable because it is fulfilling.  It is complete unto itself.  However, the recognized value and joy of this union creates, in fear-based animals able to project into the future, the desire to control access to this energetically and physically healing phenomenon.

Fast cars, silicone implants and promises made, broken and made again. There could be another way.  What we seek is right in front of us if we could only be honest, and act honestly.  What we are looking for is not “The One” in the form of another.  What we are seeking is the experience of Oneness hidden within the act of union with another - a profound meditation, a fractal circle of life, an unconditioned spontaneous act of humanity.

Language is a set of symbols representing real things.  The word cat is not a cat.  Numbers are useful symbols, but you can’t write poetry with them.  Words are useful, but cannot completely describe our experience of reality.

What is the meaning of a flower?

To try to attach meaning to the union of the male and female principles of life is to try to condition the unconditional, to reduce the irreducible, to attempt to understand the unknown by compressing it within the known.  This union we call sex is beyond meaning, therefore meaningless.  We should all aspire to have more meaningless sex in our lives.