“The mind is like the wind.

You’re trying to stop the wind, dressed as a kite.

How are you going to do it?”

~ Mooji

I found myself crying with relief when 2011 was over. Today I’m weeping with deep sadness because 2012 started out just as difficult and challenging…

I’m sick and tired of being courageous.
My most heartfelt wish for 2012 is complete fearlessness and freedom.
♥

“The Buddha wasn’t touching the ground to confirm his awakening. He was tapping out!”
~ Benjamin Smythe

^ This is by far the best thing I’ve read all week! It had me laughing to tears :) It feels true to me too, in soo many ways… absolutely delicious, in the bittersweetest of ways ♥

Smythe later added an explanation, for those who aren’t familiar with the expression ‘tapping out’:

Tapping Out: In mixed martial arts, when someone is caught heavily in a submission hold, (which tends to mean great pressure is being applied to an ankle, knee, or elbow joint) they slap their hand three times on whatever they can reach to indicate to the referee that they surrender.

The Buddha was simply saying, “I give up! I give up! I don’t know anything!”

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant :)

Wales Millennium Centre

The Wales Millennium Centre (Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru) in Cardiff Bay was mentioned briefly on the telly the other night, and I instantly fell in love with the stained glass poetry inscription over the main entrance.

Creu Gwir
fel Gwydr
o Ffwrnais Awen

In These Stones
Horizons
Sing

The Welsh words translate as ’Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration’. I love it! :) It was written by poet Gwyneth Lewis.

She comments:

Creu Gwir fel Gwydr o Ffwrnais Awen
(Translation: ‘Creating truth like glass from inspiration’s furnace’.)

I wanted the words to reflect the architecture of the building. Its copper dome reminded me of the furnaces from Wales’s industrial heritage and also Ceridwen’s cauldron, from which the early poet Taliesin received his inspiration (‘awen’). ‘Awen’ suggests both poetic inspiration and the general creative vision by which people and societies form their aspirations.

The windows out of which the words are made suggest to me an ideal of poetry: that it should be clear enough to let light in and out of a building, offering enough a distinctively local view of the world; it should speak a truth which is transparent, beautifully crafted but also fragile and, therefore, doubly precious.

In these Stones Horizons Sing

It was important to me that the English words on the building should not simply be a translation of the Welsh, that they should have their own message. The strata of the slate frontage of the WMC reminded me of the horizons just beyond Penarth Head. The sea has, traditionally, been for Cardiff the means by which the Welsh export their best to the world and the route by which the world comes to Cardiff. The stones inside the theatre literally sing with opera, musicals and orchestral music, and I wanted to convey the sense of an international space created by the art of music.

Source

I’ve seen some pictures from inside the building too, and it looks absolutely amazing… I’d love to visit there someday.

Anyway, now I’m off to see if I can find some of Gwyneth Lewis’ poetry to read online. This made me very curious..!

‘So I says to Fevvers: “Nothing to it, my dear, but your Liz must shove you off the roof.”‘

‘To me,’ said Fevvers, ‘it seemed that Lizzie, by proposing thus to thrust me into the free embrace of the whirling air, was arranging my marriage to the wind itself.’

She swung round on her piano stool and presented Walser with a face of such bridal radiance that he blinked.

‘Yes! I must be the bride of that wild, sightless, fleshless rover, or else could not exist, sir.

~ From Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter

Photo by Mari L.

How far are you willing to stray away from Truth in order to get what you think you need to survive? Are you willing to bet your life on what you believe in?

So, I was listening to a satsang with Adyashanti the other night. (That’s starting to be a very common opening phrase for my blog posts, isn’t it? ;) In this particular dialogue a woman is talking to Adya about her difficulties dealing with what she calls the “mother instinct”, the deeply protective mother-child energy within her.

Lately I’ve been reflecting a lot on the “survival instinct” within myself, and I immediately realised that everything Adya said about the mother instinct is true for the survival instinct as well.

So, here’s where my confusion comes from: As you probably already know, I’m seriously ill and my life situation is immensely challenging on many levels. I have no way of supporting myself financially since I can’t work and my applications for sickness benefit keep getting denied, I’m not getting any medical care because all the doctors I’ve met are ignorant and nonchalant, and I’m in need of a lot more practical help than I’m getting at the moment.

I’ve been watching piece by piece of my life as I knew it fall away, be unceremoniously stripped down or mercilessly ripped away after long tug-of-wars. It wasn’t always easy, but somehow I sort of found it within myself to accept it all. However, the stripping continues and now it has gotten down to such gritty levels as basic human rights, adequate rest, food and shelter… and I’m finding it incredily difficult to live from a perspective of complete surrender while at the same time doing what I can to stay alive…. to make the necessary effort and engage with the problem solving the situation calls for, without getting completely entangled in it… not buying into the fearful thinking that is lurking in the shadows…. It all just feels really really hard at this time, since the gravitational pull toward this old type of thought patterns is still very much potent on some level. It dawned on me that in situations like this, it doesn’t matter at all how awake you are – it’s actually the confused and deluded parts that matter the most, no matter how small of insignificant they might seem.

I admit I’m overreacting a bit, because I do realise that becoming homeless wouldn’t necessarily mean I’d drop dead. But it feels like I would. There’s no way to know what would happen. Because of the illness I’m suffering from, I’m super sensitive to a lot of things such as sensory input (light, sounds, smells, movement etc), stress, changes in temperature, physical and mental strain, orthostatic stress (keeping the body upright) etc etc etc… aspects that are so much easier to control in one’s own home than anywhere else. All these things, if not carefully adjusted to my needs at all times, affect my body in a very negative and harmful way. Besides that, I really really love my privacy.

These days I’m bed/couchbound about 95% of my waking hours… which leaves at the most about 10-15 minutes a day to take care of everything that has to be done: cooking and eating, bathroom activities, cleaning, washing up, making phone calls, opening the post, fetching and replacing things that aren’t next to the couch, watering flowers, taking out the rubbish etc… I have a wee bit of extra time, max 20-30 minutes or so a day depending on the tasks, for focused mental activity such as paying the bills, writing letters, planning grocery lists, reading medical research reports etc. (Needless to say, it doesn’t leave much space to do things just for fun…) Overexertion has devastating consequences, which can last many weeks or months; there’s always a risk for permanent damages and disease progression. This means that if my health deteriorates any further, I will no longer be able to feed myself, keep myself reasonably clean, or even go to the toilet without help… and the mere though of losing that freedom scares the hell out of me :(

So, the question I’ve been wrestling with is a bit unclear, but goes something like this: “At what point is even the survival instinct surrendered?” I mean, I’m not afraid to die but I also really want to live. (This line of questioning ties together with a few other posts I’ve made recently, about being absolutely vulnerable and completely intimate with the bodily expression of the human experience; from a perspective of absolute unity, where there’s no difference between pure Awareness and its manifestation.) I’ve found that there seems to be a slight gap between insight and experience here (for lack of better words), for me. Even though it’s clearly seen through as not ultimately true, there’s still this sense of an… immensely strong and primal desire for life running through the veins of this body… a will to survive, to live, no matter what.

What seems to create some dischord here is that this survival instinct sometimes acts in… let’s say ‘less than helpful’ ways; out of utter fear, rather than wisdom. For example, instead of being open to the possibility of finding another acceptable home somewhere down the line, it fiercely growls “MY. CAVE. HERE. NOT. LEAVING!!”. Or when doctors or social insurance clerks express themselves in abusive ways, give harmful advice, belittle, make unreasonable demands, discount the urgent needs and warning signals of the body-mind, or in any other way behave in a non-supportive manner, this instinct isn’t very interested in understanding that as something arising out of ignorance, but instead tends to get absolutely horror-struck, making every single nerve ring with a shrilling “THEY. WANT. ME. DEAD!!”

Unlike most other things; even though this is all clearly seen through as ultimately not true, the experience of this deep instinct is still very much the same. It’s tangiable, raw, dense, gritty, fierce, tense, unyielding and really really intimate. Actually, it’s so close that I can’t even seem to create space between it and the apparent knot of grasping and resistance that knows itself as “I” (the little me, which paradoxically is nowhere to be found).

Anyway, here’s a partial transcript of Adya’s talk (slightly edited):

Adya: Is the Truth gonna inform that instinct, or is the fear gonna inform that instinct? You’re not gonna get rid of that instinct. It’s in you and it’s a wonderful thing.

What’s going to be the fuel of it? Is it going to be the fear, insecurity, the doubts of what may happen, might happen, is happning? Or is what is going to use that beautiful instinct be your desire for Truth, honesty, integrity, openness? Because that urge is going to use something.

It’s either gonna draw from fear, anxiety and blame, or it’s going to draw from truth, integrity, wholeness. It’s going to draw from one of those two places.

Questioner: I guess I kept thinking that I somehow have to see through the mother energy, and now I’m hearing you say something different, which is just using that energy from the place of Truth.

Adya: Yeah, Truth uses that energy. I mean, you *can* see through it, but it’s still gonna be there. You see, there’s a Truth that is way beyond that…

There’s something about this conversation that really struck me. Right now, it seems like the survival instinct in me is completely tangled up with fear… and this opened up a new way of looking at it, created some space around it.

Hehe, actually… it’s a bit like that hilarious and wise story Mooji tells from time to time, about the man who tumbled down a hill and now hangs dangling over a big drop, precariously holding on to the roots of a tree… calling out for help, and God answers him from above by telling him to let go… (Do click the link above and listen to the story, it’s fantastic!)

Yeah, I don’t know… I don’t think this is something I can figure out. It smells like something that has to unravel itself, disentangle from the inside… like it isn’t something that can be fixed or lit up by that which is looking at it from the outside, no matter how intimately… that it can only be opened from the inside, and only if and when the confusion itself is truly willing to change…

It’s a difficult place to look from, to be… too afraid to give up, and too exhausted to keep fighting… dead scared of what you’re holding on to, and dead scared of letting go… to be terrified of death, and equally terrified of life… It would be so much easier to just pop up and out into the Absolute, but this is not the time for that. Flinching is painful. This one would rather die trying to survive, than relax for even a moment.

“If I don’t take care of this situation, no one else will. If I don’t keep crying for help, no one will realise that I need help and I won’t get any. If I stop fighting, I’ll be an even heavier burden for the people I care about the most; that will make them even unhappier. If I give up now, I’ll sink really deep down – or die – and I’ll never be able to climb back up again. I’ll lose all my freedom and there will be endless suffering. I don’t trust anyone or anything. The world is a dangerous, threatening place. I am alone; I need others to survive. My life is my responsibility, and if I don’t do something about it I’ll die; I can’t do anything about it, everything I’ve ever tried has failed. They don’t take anything I say seriously, they don’t believe me; I haven’t explained things clearly enough, it’s my fault that they don’t understand. There’s only one way to solve the problem; I know how to solve the problem, but I’m not able to do it. There’s always give and take, and since I don’t have anything to give, I can’t have anything either. Life is pain, fear and suffering. I have been kicked out of the group, and now everyone thinks there must be something wrong with me so they won’t let me back in.”

This voice has so much to say, so much fear and sadness… I truly feel for it. I wish I could just wrap it up in a snuggly blanket, hold it, whisper “everything is okay, don’t worry, it will be all right”, offer it a mug of hot chocolate and let it falls asleep in my arms… I can’t tell it that those things aren’t true, because in a way they sort of are (but only if seen from its own perspective). I can see through them of course, but that only brings me further away from the voice… I can’t talk down to the voice, it has to be met exactly where it is. It’s like slowdancing: you can’t lead if the other one isn’t willing to follow, and you have to stay really close together so you can both read each other’s intentions, even before the movement arises… step out empty… moving in tune with the cosmic rhythm… Building up trust, finding the connection. It’s all energy… it hates to be forced (=creates resistance), loves to be gently guided (=an invitation to relax). Can’t tell it what to do, can’t do it for it. Patience. Compassion. Acceptance. Knowing that it doesn’t have to change, that everything is perfect just as it is. ♥

“What does it mean to truly be no one? It means that you can be anyone. No one and someone are not two. Being no one really means I can be fully myself; I can be whatever is happening in this moment. If that is sadness or pain or fear or anything… it’s all embraced. To me that’s what non-duality is really about, I think. I’m not saying ‘this is the truth of non-duality’, I’m just saying in my own experience, I can only speak from my own experience. It seems to be what it’s all about. ‘Cause in the end I think it would have to be, a total embrace of life… it would have to be, because it is Life.”

~ Jeff Foster (Buddha at the Gas Pump interview)

“What you don’t know is how much you know without knowing you know it.”

~ Patrick Jane (The Mentalist)

♥

Photo by Ram Solanki

“Don’t forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across
the universe.”

~ Mirabai

Photo by Damien Roué

“Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.”

~ Chuang Tzu