As it gets harder and less satisfying to compose for Smoking Mirrors, it gets easier to do the same here at Visible Origami. I want to talk about world conditions today and how to live with a greater ease in the midst of uncertainty and punishing confusion. Of course, what you do and where you live can have a lot to do with providing a greater peace of mind but these are considerations you have to sort out for yourself. Besides, we need something that’s going to work wherever you are. Also... it’s quite possible that the right frame of mind will naturally affect what you do and where you are.
It’s your choice whether you believe that there are entities and agencies involved in disrupting your balance for whatever their reasons may be. Let’s assume this is the case, both internally and externally. Let’s also assume that the one mirrors the other and that everything is in your mind and that everything is composed of mind stuff which, depending on your capacity to concentrate and to focus ‘the’ will, determines your capacity to shape the plastic mind stuff and the speed at which you can do it.
Probably everyone wishes they had the ability to cause instantaneous change in their circumstances and surrounding... and, one day you will. But does it matter if what you can do is more gradual as long as it occurs? I assure you that everyone does what masters do only they do it more slowly and less effectively. We don’t want to do the work that gradual transformation requires. That’s how it is in our instant, “I want it right now” world. So... there’s something we are lacking that we need to begin with or we’re not going to get very far. This thing is a little like ‘ease’.
I don’t know exactly what to call this thing but I can describe it for you. I had a friend visit recently and I noticed that he was fidgety, like there was somewhere he wanted to get off to or something he wanted to do. There wasn’t anything scheduled though. We were supposed to just continue sitting where we were and chatting for another hour or so.
I wasn’t fidgety at all. I had sunk into myself and I was pretty relaxed. This is something that has come to me over the last few years that I didn’t have before. I can sit somewhere and not have to do anything... just be. Most people might not know what I’m talking about but... there’s this delicious settling effect that you can acquire by removing your mind from the consideration of time. You have to cultivate it. You have to let go completely of the idea that there is anything more important anywhere else or that there is anything that has to be done and... it wouldn’t hurt to also let go of the idea that you actually do anything anyway.
This is a critical mindset to accomplish before you begin to engage in the gradual materialization of something. It’s important because otherwise, the usual operations of your mind will interfere with it. People can encounter this condition by being around a realized master and also just by being around anyone who has it to some degree. People can encounter it by consistent practice of meditation. You can encounter it by continuous surrender and also by rotating the mind around something like a prayer or a chant... though... you have to watch it with that because it can also busy you up and generate a certain tension unless it is conscious.
It’s right there in your mind right now, this ease thing... this relaxing and letting go of everything so that your center ‘emerges’ and swallows the rest of you. Now we’ve all heard about, ‘letting go’ and all the permutations of this thing that is hard to name. I may not be talking about what your mind may be telling you I am. After all... if it was one of those things we associate with the explanations and interpretations we’ve heard so many times in books or from new age practitioners then we would already have it and most of us don’t.
I tried many different things to get to this sense of ease but they didn’t do it so that I could just have it when I wanted it. How it worked for me was that I discovered it was there all along and I found I could ‘let it happen’. It seems to be aware of itself and it knows what to do. I don’t have to tell it anything, I just rest in it.
This ease thing is the key to being able to do a great many things that seemed difficult before. This ease thing also has the ability to communicate itself to others and so you find that you’ve got less difficulty with people than you had before. You might almost say it’s like ‘being cool’... that’s right, sunglasses and all but different than the posed variety. See... everyone has a heat envelope that they carry around with them. You could call it the desire body. People unconsciously react to each others heat bodies. And there are heat tunnels too, like highways and subways and traffic zones that push and pull us collectively. You can find it in a supermarket line or at the post office. It’s urgency and need along with some other things that you don’t need and which don’t serve you. See... either you are serving it or it is serving you.
Think of it as having a fire in your belly. You can adjust the flame just like a gas stove. You can dial it down. It gets itchy when you try to do this. It requires focus but not effort because it is already there. Cities are high heat areas. That’s what makes New York City what it is. The steam rising out of the grates on the sidewalk is a compelling image.
Timelessness is what you are after and these agencies and entities want you time conscious for whatever their reason may be. There’s a reason why there are few single income families any more. There’s a reason for economic uncertainty and the constant desire for things you don’t have and think you want. There’s a constant advertisement from the market place for stuff and there’s also a constant magnetic pulse for things to stick part of yourself into or to stick things into yourself so as to ease this discomfort of urgency. So... you could say that in some ways it has a lot to do with the sex force and how you channel it.
When the sex force is externalizing... that ages you and hollows you out. It burns you up and anger can enter the mix as well through frustration. When the sex force is internalized it feeds you and maintains your health and makes you vibrant. When you’re young you have a lot of this and that is why youth glows and is the object of such attraction. You get the idea that what you want is outside of you but actually it is inside you. This is the sole purpose of the world... to suck you out into it. It is a conscious personal choice not to go.
This is a warming engine when routed properly or otherwise you ‘might catch your death’ so to speak. I’m talking in riddles but there isn’t any other way. You have to catch the idea behind the words. This thing I’m talking about is listening to you right now. In some ways this is connected to what I said about going into Nature and speaking ‘into’ it. It’s all you but there are rituals that make it possible for you to talk to yourself and get results.
Once you find this thing I’m talking about you will realize that you don’t actually want anything else. It rounds sharp edges and it gives you a space cushion in the traffic of life. When you ‘really’ start to pay attention to what is going on around you, you can see that you have been being played. It’s possible to step outside of what is going on around you while you are inside of it and it deepens and deepens and widens as it goes. This is an actual road that moves like it had eyes toward those states that have been called Satori and enlightenment and the like. Enlightenment is not some instantaneous awakening though... no doubt... that has happened here and there. Generally it is a gradual thing that deepens and widens as it goes.
Well, we’ll give the impression, for now, that we are stopping here but you know that’s not the case.
'Imaginary Queen' is track no. 10 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)
12 comments:
thank you :)
love
k*
Timelessness. It always seems to come back to that. I know exactly what you mean with this indefineable sense of ease thing. The first few times it happens it kind of feels like you are in the Garden Of Eden or something. Within the mental noise that we pretty much all carry, pretty much all of the time, there’s a background unease or unsettledness that seems to always make this particular moment not quite right. The degree of this unsettledness varies from person to person based on any number of factors that I could only speculate on but it’s there for all of us. It’s constant.
This sense of ease you are talking about (as I understand it) is when this background un-ease disappears. Interestingly it also directly corresponds to the sense of timelessness. It’s like one minute you are going through life and the journey is uphill and you are carrying a 45 lb backpack (variable depending on the persons natural level of unease) and then the next minute, poof!...The extra weight is gone and you are no longer going uphill. A sense of lightness and freeness replaces the sense of struggle. It’s really an amazing thing.
I don’t quite live in that place yet. At times I’ve gotten the idea that I could and that I know exactly how to do it (or more accurately, how to allow it to happen because you can’t really “do” it) but here’s the weird thing that really ties in to the first part of your post today; there’s always something inside that fights it, that doesn’t want to allow it to happen. There’s some resistance or inertia that keeps from acting in my best interest in this regard. I don’t know if it’s environmental or karmic or what but as I get older and life naturally gets more complicated, shifting permanently into this indefineable ease seems to become a more difficult endeavor. The emphasis there is on “seems” because I don’t think that’s really the case; more likely just my perception and the tendency to get caught in the momentum of an insane world the longer you live there. Even with all the meditation and everything else, there’s only so much I can insulate myself from that.
Well I’m surpassing a reasonable word count for a blog comment here so I’ll stop rambling. Thank you for this Les.
Hi Les, thanks again for a very good article.
The subject is something I've given a certain amount of attention to, also.
Being able to just exist, to not have to "do" anything. To have the yammering internal mind not be the sole way of relating to life.
To see the connection between time and negative or unhelpful thoughts and emotions.
The subject of this article hasn't been taught in US schools to my knowlege, except maybe a sentence here or there.
It's always gratifying to see in print such things as you speak
Perhaps mirrors needs to happen to get origami to be understood—or to place ones self where the light can smile at the darkness. The darkness can’t exist in the presence of light—it’s just that simple—the light does not cover the darkness or eliminate the darkness—there is only light where light is.
Mr. Ying needs Mr. Yang.
Whenever I am driving or walking through the aisles of a store, it always seems like I am somehow disconnected (by choice and action/inaction) from everything around me-- but mostly from the people. It’s not a superiority thing, not “”I know more than you”. More of an unattached casual observer than a participant is as close as I can get to it.
It’s a pleasant thing to come across someone regardless of age/gender/etc. that just has what I call “Sparkle”. It is in the eyes and smile that are connected in some way to the heart/soul—it’s like a secret handshake even though the person I may be looking at doesn’t know that they have it. To them perhaps it’s just the way they, or things are—and have always been. I come from a more cynical past so for me, I have been where the rest of the world is—I just decided to get off the treadmill and walk—don’t know what the “extra” thing is, or where it comes from—but it’s here—and I like it.
I have often wondered what the difference is between a “conspiracy theorist” and the rest of the world—why certain people see things that others don’t, or choose not to? Being a conspiracy theorist doesn’t make one a seeker though. There is something else at work—trying to smile at you and wink-- that goes a bit further—it’s nice.
Knowing “stuff” doesn’t get you any closer to what is already here—wherever “here” is—it could be there—and is everywhere.
“Listening to you right now”---are you allowing yourself to listen to “it” right now?
When I used to go to church, I wondered if I would go to mosque or temple if I were born somewhere else—probably would have been the same result that I would be here now regardless of what building I had walked out of. The living where we live is like being a parent—but a mom is just different than a dad—if you choose to play those roles.
You can’t name it, you can’t think it because that would entail you using your mind—or your mind using you to divert you and remain El Jefe’—Your mind wants to stay in control and divert your attention all the time—when it does, and it ALWAYS does—just wrap up the thought it gives you and put it on the shelf for now—just smile at it. After a while there won’t be anywhere near as many packages to wrap---did you really miss any of them?
The “right frame of mind” means paying less and less attention to your mind—your thoughts—most of them are just meant as distractions—don’t worry, your lungs will continue to pump air, and your heart will continue to beat.
Timelessness does not mean endless time, but no time--perhaps?
Hopefully, you will be at a place at some point where it will be a surprise when you get a glimpse of the world-- as it is now a surprise when you get a glimpse of what else “IS”.
Look at your mind as a TV. It can play things from the past and it can show you movies of what it's interpretation of the future is--but it's just images created or retained--and that isn't your life--unless you let it be.
Jj
Dang, there's so much I want to say. But I go off on these things and I can write way too much. In fact I think I've already overwhelmed you all with what I posted. I won't apologize though. There's good stuff below, and some of it's dead useful/practical.
Lately I've been thinking about sex energy being like a column of blue light that courses up and down a vertical line along the other line of chakras from "community" (above the head) down through crown ... through root and down into the Earth chakras below. And yin and yang seem to me to be like white and red snakes that "caduceus" around this column. My partner seems to have the red energy, and I have the white.
It's interesting to pay attention to this energy, because at first it makes me more exquisitely distraught at some of the hatred out in the world. Especially the hatred that I experience just for being myself as a creative, witchy nonChristian, nonheterosexual man struggling with trying to live in this dying FIRE economy and praying to know how to transition into what C. Eisenstein calls the economy of reunion. I also find myself pained by the hatred I reflexively feel and the desire to vomit back my own rage toward these bile-spewers.
As I get to know the energy of sex a bit more, I sense that these other people out there who obsess about my supposedly promiscuous sex life (me, who was 5 years in the hell of sexual anorexia in a 300 pound frame), really are in some deep need of sexual potency themselves.
Bill O'Reilly and William Donohue and all those Mormons out there really need legions of folks to send them secret admirer cards, telling them how hot they are. And we need to do these sorts of things because it will increase our own divine light and help us to manifest outwards the divine beings we all really are. This need not be a "hold-one's-nose" sort of thing, though if it needs to start there, be that as it may.
But we all need to throw out these random acts of kindness, hopefully from this place of "indefinable ease" which I have heard in the halls of Freyja and Odin as being from "joyous obligation." This sort of thing amplifies this ease and counteracts some of the h8 out there. (And I normally avoid "cutesy" acronyms, but h8 seems to be pretty appropriate. Speaking of cutesy: hate-u. isn't that uetah spelled backwards?)
It's another synchronicity I should read your words today, Les. I was just out on my lunch hour musing about how I really don't even want to log into my usual sites. I kind of didn't want to come to Smoking Mirrors today, and I'm glad I came to V.O. therethrough. I find myself wanting to connect with others who have this light we're discussing in this thread. (I typed "threat" there, btw. Interesting, no???) Now I'm finding that some things I've been working for at a glacial pace are just now starting to bear some fruit.
The bricks-and-mortar approach to major transformation cannot be avoided. Though it feels like nothing, absolutely nothing is going on. But there are times of cascading change followed by plateaus. I became alert to this pattern in my own life in high school. Every once in awhile I will see a flash of brilliance course through me--it's not "Mine", I'm just the channel for its outpouring. Those are the best things I've ever created, and I know it. But it occurs within that day-to-day slog of just showing up, even though it's a drag 4 out of 5 times these days.
FYI, about the cool-head thing. This whole post reminds me of the supreme African orisha is Obatala' (in Brazil, Oxala'), who is the master of all things white and the keeper of the cool head. When one prays to Obatala' (the single quote is meant to be the accent mark), one prays for coolheadedness and serenity. There are offerings that can be made, if individuals are so inclined. But I pray to Obatala' fairly frequently these days. And I see this beautiful black man dressed head to toe in white, with the hugest and brightest smile.
May you be blessed with the easy access to that blue sexual fire, Les. And may it radiate toward and from your awesome spirit.
Frostwolf T'Firerose
Would "Sensual" come a little closer than "Sexual"? More of a (semi)continuous orgasm of perhaps not the senses --but of the consciousness/life force--Freeing/Liberating.
Like something that at times can just be on the edge between two (or more) different sensations (sometimes at opposite ends of any spectrum) but on a spiritual level(that may include physical and emotional)--maybe you can come up with better words but hopefully this is a start.
Jj
Jj I like "sexual" myself. The sensual and the sexual overlap, but in the tradition for which I am training, life force is connected to sex/abundance/home/nature/Gaia-Sophia and the Divine Spark.
If you would like to come up with other words that's fine. I'm content with the word as it is.
vis - as you know I'm not very well-versed in matters, spiritual; but this one I get. This is what I refer to as the 'peace' I feel when I'm totally isolated. Nature (away from the power grid) and water seem to induce this effect upon me, quite strongly. I found it by accident as a teen in the isolated wilderness of Michigans Upper Peninsula, and later in various mountain ranges around the globe.(Always wanted to backpack through Mongolia :)
Please don't think I'm misinterpreting here... I'm not talking about quiet. I have experienced the divine in these places. I have felt the brush of GOD on the canvas of my soul, in these places - this has been part of the reason for my speculation of late, inre: possible emf interference. Anywho...I so long for that feeling that it pains me - how much I wish to return to those places. (By the by, the open sea has always done it for me, as well).
Yes notamobster... I had difficulty finding a word... wu wei... well being... settled... still mercury... heavy like a rock at the bottom of a lake... indifferently pleased... all things like these and more. It comes and goes. Sometimes I can't get there but often I can.
Off to work, just a point or 2 before I go out to get wet & freeze:
Les & Frostwolf T'Firerose -- GREAT COMBINATION! Unintended I'm sure, but great work, both!
The more traditions see-saw, the more productive they become. The more they mimic nature.
Nature works in spiral energy, back & forth, spinning and plunging, whirling and RISING.
Galaxies, whirlpools, cheap watches and ALL that lives.
So daily I react to dips around me, some people so self-absorbed, so dumb and conformist, that I want to knock them in the head.
THEN my spiral moves upwards and I say, NO. When it's right they will oscillate some other way. Unless they won't. But never alter your spin for those who are out of synch or IMMOBILE. You can't help them. You can kill yourself trying to help them if they can't be helped.
So many years ago... when initiated I was a young dummy in my teens in NYC. That was 1969. Back when we only THOUGHT things were bad. But 1969 was the halcyon riptide of freedom and creativity compared to now. As an old dummy I can see that part clearly.
Anyway it was '69 when I saw the first assault on mental/spiritual freedom here in the US. Paranoia was so thick the air was tarred with it. In the East Village people were terrified to admit they even smoked grass... in the sixties fer cryin' out loud!
Scrambling heads with fear was Job One, which I guess makes 69 Year One. CIA heroin was everywhere, so were spooks. It was so easy to avoid the heat BUT WHEN PEOPLE REACH THE FEAR CYCLE they can't see that.
That was 69 in the Village in NYC. Now it's the whole country, if not at least half the rest of the world.
It is good we know nature will balance in the end, and that this too will pass. The bad thing is that nature destroys in cycles too. Think hurricanes -- only the emotional ones, made by guys like Bush, Cheney and now I guess Obama.
Wheels of aether spin this way and that. Spinning with the fear may be a habit with Americans right now. But that might be prudent. They know that when it changes it will bring Marat and Bonaparte to town. It's not irrational to fear the downdraft you know comes next.
I wrote here once before about the idea that I read, that one could listen for the tone-vibration of equality and follow it back to its source, and that if one accomplished that it would activate certain source codes that were placed in us at our creation, and those codes being activated would collapse the separation of our soul from its incarnations.
I said then that I pictured the soul as a dandelion flower when it has re-opened as a fluff with each little fluff spike leading out to another incarnation and all of them feeding back to the central soul simultaneously. What would it be like to consciously experience all of one's incarnations simultaneously?
Funny things happen when one listens for a tone that the ears can't hear and the body can't feel. When one begins to perceive it, it seems to have a location but not a source or direction. I perceive it as a hissing ringing in the general area of my ears. Or is that it? Well, it's something. Next question is how does one follow a tone without a source or direction back to its source?
I mentioned before that if one rolls their eyes upwards and focuses on the tone, it stops thought. Intent and will and visualization still exist, but the chatter stops. When the chatter stops is good, yes? Very handy and practical. The practice also induces the observer mode, and when one can remain in observer mode without chatter one can notice things such as who they are.
Who are you really? Hell of a good question, don't you think? When you stand up too fast and lose consciousness just enough that you lose language, reference, and orientation, who are you? Your senses are working but you don't have reference to your chemical memories in the brain. Who are you then? You are attracted to nothing that your senses are perceiving; you don't have a tag, name, reference for it, it's just a shape, a noise, a sensation, a symbol. Who is perceiving that? Note that curiosity still exists, but without tags or reasons or value judgments. Who is that perceiving? Perhaps it's you? What flavor is it?
I'm still working with this concept; can't say I've made a lot of progress as I'm still trying to figure out what direction source is, but the "ease" thing, to me, has a lot to do with slipping into that value, tag, and attraction-free observer zone. I work on using stress-filled situations as triggers to remind me to step back into that observer mode; that takes most of the stress away, and I can relax and watch, remaining interested and curious. Things work out much more smoothly that way. It's a great way to stay calmly entertained and notice a lot.
Hi Frank-
I like this:
"Nature works in spiral energy, back & forth, spinning and plunging, whirling and RISING."
Seems it does do that, at least that's what I've been told. Difficult to discern with the senses, and no physical way that I know of to measure it as a spiral. If one sticks a probe into a whirlpool, how does one know it's a whirlpool rather than a linear flow, or simply pressure on one side?
I too was in the Village in NYC, in the fall of 1969. Just a few months out of high school in a small Nebraska town, but I'd already hitchhiked around much of the central and western US, all up and down the west coast, stayed at Drop City, visited Boulder and Taos, Memphis and New Orleans, got dropped of at midnight in Hollywood the night of the Manson murders and walked down Wilshire Blvd 'til dawn in MacArthur park, lived in Berkeley a few months, drove an old Rambler most of the way to Guatemala. Back in Berkeley with my buddy and his Rambler we ran into a German girl I had roomed with months before; she and her boyfriend needed a ride to NYC and offered to pay for gas and food and give us a place to stay there.
We ended up in a fifth-floor cold-water walkup on second street between A and B. No electricity 'cause the bill hadn't been paid in months; the building always smelled of cabbage and garlic and old Italian ladies who didn't speak a word of English though they had lived there thirty years. The Jew landlord turned the heat off and left it off over Thanksgiving weekend. There was a garbage strike going, and the sidewalk was blocked with trash. That was OK, I wasn't paying rent and the little money I came up with I spent on big fresh loaves of rye bread, fresh butter, and pickled herring at a Jewish deli on Houston street. I worked one day as a day laborer, helping an old black guy rearrange enormously heavy rolls of linoleum in a tiny basement warehouse; I think the pay was $1 an hour.
Met some nice people. Ran into a crazy young lady named Pepper and got dragged up to Andy Warhol's studio in Times Square; the elevator doors opened into a hall of mirrors with taxidermied great danes flanking the doorway: the Anubis gates indeed.
Andy didn't pay any attention to us kids, but we got to watch the rushes of the day's filming, watching Joe Dallesandro and Holly Woodlawn while they sat in the audience with us and got ribbed mercilessly.
The cops came down on us a few days later as we were driving up second street in the old Rambler, slowing down for a red light when both back doors flew open and a couple of NYC's finest hopped in and pointed guns at our heads. They searched us and found a tiny bit of worthless grass that I had rolled up in tinfoil, and threatened to jail us unless we agreed to narc for them. Of course we agreed, and set up a meeting place for two days later. My buddy called his family and they wired him $50 via Western Union. Went to say goodbye to Pepper and her boyfriend gave us a joint of Colombian that we lit up as soon as we got into New Jersey. Good weed, real nice. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations was playing on the radio.
Hey, thanks for the memory, Frank. It's been a long strange road but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
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