Duality
I live in a world of duality; it is the nature of life I guess. Hot and cold, light and dark, cause and effect. Nothing escapes its polarizing spectrum, nothing in this dimension anyway, nothing I’ve encountered on this physical plane. Lately I’ve been caught in a particular duality. I’m fluctuating between everything having meaning and a deeper level of reality to it compared to a view that floats along, living and enjoying life. I’ve always known about myself that I think too much and that sometimes a thing is just a thing that I don’t need to slather untold meanings atop. I’m ever analysing my every move, wanting to grow and evolve, wanting to get closer to God. It’s sometimes rather exhausting. So there’s that end of the spectrum. There’s also the haphazard end in me that flails around life (self-)destructively engaging in experience and not stopping to think. I don’t usually live in this end vey long though which causes me to question my very ability to live at all. For what is life if the present moment is not fully engaged in? Swinging from these polarities the conclusion that always comes back to me (yes always – I’ve been revelling in how my rare interactions with Swami Lalitananda have been teaching me so much. A pattern I’ve discovered is my use of broad, generalizing statements. Having swami’s mirror back at me is so much fun. But I digress, and there I go again, analyzing every interaction…) the conclusion is that I simply must continue to analyze. If I am to find any meaning in engaging in life I unequivocally must THINK.
In some ways this conclusion is so much more comforting than the thought that I must wake up every day and make it to hatha, or I must chant mantra every day. This conclusion allows space to include all practices in my days as I am naturally drawn to but, more specifically, fosters my natural inclination to simply reflect. Reflection is a yogic practice as is any other. Using my partiality to more cerebral modes of practice allows me to not be so hard on myself for my occasional lack of self-discipline (I mean really, who makes it to hatha *every* day? Oh wait….I did….from January to April…hmmmm) and gives me allowance to simply be. What comes naturally to me is thought. Specifically thoughts about my thoughts. Though this truth is sometimes exhausting I have come to accept it in myself. I find this much less energy-consuming than trying to convince myself I should be simply living life rather than thinking about it all. What a conundrum: I naturally turn to philosophizing about myself and my experiences yet a part of me sometimes feels I should give it a rest and just enjoy life. But if analyzing is me enjoying life than it makes sense to simply surrender to that, “should” be damned.
Fruit
I’ve been shoving cherries down my throat for a good number of weeks now. Issues with food aside, it’s spectacularly lovely to eat food grown right here at the ashram. Especially food so delicious as fresh cherries. As I hold one in my hand I think about how a tiny little stem provides all the nourishment needed to grow a delicious bulb of juicy red fruit. How is that even possible? It seems utterly and completely remarkable, especially after I rip away the flesh with my teeth and reveal a messy pit underneath. How is it that nourishment can simply flow through this tiny stem, connected to this hardened pit, and result in such a delicious treat?
I’m reminded of a picture I drew during the transition out of the YDC in April. It was of me, sweeping across a battlefield of broken arrows – battles I had won and battles I had lost over the previous three months and many of which culminated in that week of transition. I was desperately holding onto this rope, symbolizing the Divine, and yet somehow unaware that it was embedded into me. The rope is like the cherry stem, feeding nourishment into the fruit, me. I don’t know how it works but somehow there is this force beyond all rationality that transforms universal energy into another form and gradually folds it back into the cycle. Like making meringue pie, and a spatula relentlessly beating frothy goodness back into itself again and again I am a part of universe that displays itself to itself. In many different forms and manifestations I continue the second law of thermodynamics, ever altering the energy that feeds me and undulating through cosmic waves.
Guenevere Neufeld 
From Paul Scheel interview:
The guardian of an open mind is judgment. To open mind observe and sense.
The guardian of an open heart is the cynic. To open heart have gratitude and forgiveness.
The guardian of the will is fear. To open the will trust and surrender.
In the energetic field there is only amplitude and frequency–no time.
Everything is right now.
It’s unfolding in our awareness. But the future and the now are the same. It’s trying to express itself through us right now. And so we didn’t leave anything, we opened to the true source that’s trying to express.
When we allow ourselves to expand as opposed to contract with open mind, open heart and open will your highest good will take you each step of the way. That’s when trust and surrender happen.
Go with it.
LikeLike
The Mystic Law–Myoho-renge-kyo
Three meanings of the character myo: to open, to be fully endowed, and to revive. “To open” means to open up the darkness of illusion and reveal the Buddha nature. “To be fully endowed” means to possess all Ten Worlds and three thousand realms, while permeating and integrating the whole of the phenomenal world. It can also mean possessing the practices and resulting virtues of all Buddhas. “To revive” means enabling one to attain Buddhahood.
LikeLike
“To be fully integrated on the soul level, fully aware, masterful, as it were, of who you are, you are enlightened. For then there is the lightness of heart, the lightness of being, the wholeness of being. Discover the ecstatic feelings and be open and receptive to all there is to experience. That is the time that you are moving into. It is that fuller awareness of the spiritual beingness of self that is no longer limited linearly, and can bring forth and experience many things of great wonder, that brings about total acceptance, the ability to fully love the self. It is that which is fulfillment of heart, joy, peace.”— THEO
LikeLike
Well i just stumbled upon this article from a link in my inbox, and I must say that it is an entertaining self reflection at the least, yet even more a proprioceptively evolving carplioception of the human state.
LikeLike
You’re such a nut, broadowl. Google told me ‘carplioception’ might have been spelled wrong. I was surprised enough that proprioceptively was actually a word. Love and snuggles to you
LikeLike
well i guess “google” needs to check into their carpiloceptonic meter and make sure they’re going to be ok.
LikeLike
If i was really ready to be enlightened i would be ready to die. And the truth is sadder than death. I believe that I am real, when in fact I am not. Look at me typing this crap, it sure looks real, but it is not. It is truly sad, this lie I have pulled on myself. I strive for enlightenment and the closer i get the less of me there is to enjoy it. So it seems I enjoy, or at least choose, being ignorant, separate, analytical, moody, and everything else I do or am. Maybe enlightenment is really just getting bored of our current situation and then choosing to end the cycles that lead us “here” finally willing to be done with our own karma. Finally ready to fade back into the nothing/everything I really am.
LikeLike
This sounds pretty pessimistic. For me knowing it’s all a lie and illusion frees me from taking it all so seriously and really lets me enjoy it more. That’s when I’m feeling optimistic, of course. There are also days when my heart wails for home, knowing this shoddy version could never be enough to satiate my need for it. My question is, why strive for enlightenment? Why not just live this life with the most amount of love/peace/happiness humanly possible? Living as though this is Heaven on Earth (which of course it is) means feeling the vibration of the Divine in every moment and not getting bogged down by the illusion of separateness. One of my favourite exercises (which I don’t do nearly enough) is to simply sit and feel Presence. It lifts me up from the mundane and reminds me what this really is, a giant Light-fest that I willingly agreed to take part in – if only because I would always know the Universe is completely within me.
LikeLike