two core issues

I have two very core personal issues to share. I’ve seen these issues with more clarity and less clinging, so I want to record and share this struggle to clarify the conditioning in my life for myself and others. I can see this is a big place for me to be right now. I am learning due to truly practicing with the way my life is. That’s the way it is for every single human–the process of realizing our true being in actuality.

I’ll get on with it. Core Issue Two: I am not accepting all things to be as they are and working with everything as it is. I daydream about choosing something else for my life–some other job, some other profession, some other location, some other place, some other food, some other person, some other music, some other interest endeavor, or anything else than what and how I may be doing now in my life. I wish things were different with my father, with my brother, with my ex-fiancee. I am beginning to more clearly see the dreamy story of otherness that my conditioned mind repeatedly generates which makes me feel miserable. I feel miserable because I don’t have what my conditioned mind is thinking is better than what exists now in my life. So, I am seeing this mind running away from presence with dreams and desires of delusion. However, with this seeing of the habitual mind activity, I experience distance from the suffering because I am no longer just totally believing these dreamy thoughts of otherness. The story-esque otherness doesn’t actually exist and this conditioned mind is rambling on with gobbledygook that causes me to feel horrible and miserable and not accept what is actually happening in my life. This is the suffering of the illusion of separation which I am seeing happening more clearly. I am authentically practicing seeing deeply into how this egotistic-story-generating-conditioned-mind is a cause of suffering in my life. I am learning not to follow it’s grandiosity and to return to this very moment of present existence as it is. This is practicing deep acceptance of the greatness of the Way existence always and already is. Am I recognizing this Truth, this gentle brilliance of being OR am I infatuated by all sorts of ideas about how things could be if only things were different. I must return to acceptance in order to experience peace in living day-to-day life.

OK, that was issue Two; here’s the deeper Core Issue One. I want what I’ve felt I’ve never truly had–authentic deep human connection. I feel miserable just writing it here. This is very emotional for me, yet I remain focused to concentrate on seeing into this issue so that I may not suffer like this for the rest of my life. I can see that my suffering arises from the cloud of story surrounding what I may think of as “authentic deep human connection.” Let me put it this way, IF others’ and I connect only through the conditional framework of cultural worldliness and never seem to get to a synergy at the core and/or a miniscule moment of mutual aware recognition of our essential being beyond conditioning, THEN I think we failed to connect authentically. This may or may not be actually true. It is very important for me to see this way in which I view relationships with others. For example in my actual life, I have had moments of very deep mutual seeing into and beyond the typical culturally conditioned delusions of reality. This may or may not have been “authentic connection!” Which leads me to see that the way I am evaluating interpersonal activity and relations is wonky and conditional! If I think this way about life, then I am layering my thought-structure over what has happened, after the fact. This is dampening my experiences and creating suffering for myself and others. SO, I am seeing into my invovlement into part of the reason why I don’t seem to experience “deep authentic human connection” in life. I blame others’ all too often in their short-sightedness and clingings to their thoughts and dreamings, but I am doing this (too). Next steps in my practice with this issue is 1) more observing of my physical and mental activity in personal interaction, 2) softening my body, mind, and gaze particularly around others, 3) remembering that I am able to unlock this issue as a function of how I see into it and the directness with which I dispell the egotistic delusional beliefs, views, and thoughts that cause suffering for me and others.

wanted: relationship harmony

I awoke this morning to a disturbing dream of my father and me arguing. To describe briefly, I was living at home, my childhood home with my parents. We were sitting down to eat a simple breakfast together. I was rushing around getting my stuff together to visit a new client. As we were eating, I introduced a strange grater made from bamboo to add a condiment to the food we were eating. I asked if anyone else wanted to use it. My dad said sure. I wondered if I should ask if he knows how to use it, but decided not to. My dad proceeded to cut his food with the utensil, at which point I exclaimed in order for him to discontiue his action.  What ensued was an argument, the details of which I cannot remember well. The tone was not terribly harsh, though I felt very hurt as my father would not delve into deeper levels of talking and understanding in order to learn and bring forth mutual harmony in this difficult moment we were having. And, my highly emotional frustration grew in relation to deeply knowing that it is possible to bring relationship harmony into this situation, if we only both wanted to.

I feel I am at the point of isolation, due to the most intimate people in my life not wanting to bring harmony, communication, learning, and understanding into our relationships. This appears true not only with my father, but with a couple of my siblings, and even my ex-fiancee. Even though I too have gone through a period of my life where I ex-communicated someone I was dating, I do not understand why or how these very significant close people in my life continue to maintain their walls as if they are protected from something they fear. Do they fear learning, opening, changing, growing, harmony? No. They fear intimacy which erodes their beloved sense of ego-identification–whether they realize it or not. Thus, they close me out of their lives or parts of their lives. I’m left in my own awareness of the wall they are putting up in between us. Hence, suffering for both of us, though they believe it is beneficial for them to separate what is unseparable and live in maintained ignorance and dualistic thinking about this and that.

It doesn’t suffice for me that this exists as it does. This is suffering which doesn not need to exist, if we only just understood that healing and peace is possible in these relationships. I realize it, I continue practicing and nudging these people along, yet I seem to make very little progress in introducing non-dual awareness being with these people. I practice it myself to the best of my ability, but they don’t even seem to see the worthiness of my activity. I bring an interesting grater to the table, or concepts about the unseparated, impermanent, empty quality of reality, and what I receive is “get the fuck away from me,” stop talking about awareness,” or “I don’t want to work on us anymore.”

Herein lies my isolation. The very concepts that bring my conscious awareness to the reality of human existence appears to separate me from the people I love and want deep natural harmony with in this short lifetime. I do not know what to do next, for my words and actions appear to fail miserably to bring about deeper “being with.” Very sadly, these key people in my life with whom I desire an ever evolving closer relationship with, prefer to put up walls in front of me. Their ignorance and fear is causing me great frustration, even as my intention is deep harmonic resonance of being alive as we are. Ahh, but this active being requires conscious letting go, open sensitivity, willing flexibility, and intentional attention on being one with one another.

I don’t want to leave these key people in my life as they have walled me out of their lives! This doesn’t seem to be an egotistic desire, as much as an authentic sense of harmonizing with my own father, brother, and significant other. I suppose even uttering “my own …” is too egotistic, attached, and wanton. Actually it is very important for me to realize that I WANT something that their egos do not want; harmony. What do they want? Well, they’re focused on their own desires. My desire is to be very deeply present with people and nature in life. Why can’t the people who say they love me, love me too? I understand neither of us are perfect in this endeavor, but please don’t put up walls. Or, if you do still need to put up a wall, make it temporary and don’t shut me out so rigidly. I love you too and want flowers to grow and water to flow along the paths of our being together. If there is a wall, there will be no light nor movement. You will have stopped us from being one.

Now, I sit in solitude; quite sad, and slightly hopeful still. I know, without thinking, that harmony is the way of all being. Refreshingly, I may look to earth’s elements for solace in this journey where humans want no harmony as we do. Oneness of being is always present, empty, forever.

Your wall, and my walls too, exist when we cling to self/ego and do not faithfully trust in the greatness of the Way that is.

story must be told

When I was young, I had a vision-like abstract nightmare. I do not recall exactly what age I had this frightening dream; I must have been older than 8, though not likely as old as 12. I’ll guess at 10 years of age, making me a 4th grader in a new school, the same time I shifted from being a rebellious and rambunctious kid to an introverted and intelligent guy.

In the middle of the night, I was half-awaken by a very memorable vision of colorful shapes approaching me from directly in front of me/beyond the foot of my bed. These shapes–triangle, square, and circle (I don’t recall other shapes) in yellow, red, and possibly blue or green or purple–were slowly approaching me as if in space from quite some distance. I was afraid, and as they got closer I know I got up and cowered at the head of my bed. As they reached the approximate edge of my room, I lept off my bed and headed to the closet, at which moment, they disappeared and it was over. I was awake and alarmed by this experience. It was obvious that it was a dream, yet the strange abstract quality and odd importance of this original experience remained in my mind. I’ve described this experience to a few people and written it in my journal as well. Now I share it here, as you will understand why as you read this post.

Mid-December of 2004, I was recently broken up from a significant relationship. It was getting harder to deal with the break up and understand why and how it could happen. I was doing OK, I had a good job and was living my life as well as possible. I had another vision that appeared in a dream. It was a symbol that I recalled as I awoke in the morning. I did not know what the symbol was  or could be symbolizing  at the time aside from it feeling incredibly significant and personally meaningful. Being a graphic designer, I was interested in this symbol revealing vision and quickly sketched the simple form in my journal.

Two and a half months of relationship woes and worries pass by over the winter, and at the end of February 2005, I had a very strong transformational experience lasting 3 days. I had finished a temporary job, recently gotten over a stress related cold, and spent an evening talking with my ex and crying. I walked home in the cold and the next three days were a flurry of explorative, meditative, singing, moving, and wakefulness thinking. I slept only as needed and not much at that. I was nearly high on and in my personal experience of gapping from typical habitual conditioned being to free and actualized brilliance in the reality of existence. This was a significant awakening experience that catapult me into living with awareness of the beauty of being alive in the present moment. The symbol which I envisioned months earlier became an abstract and infinite self-actualization symbol. Only a few days later, as I was visiting my brother in Seattle, I got tattooed with this personal symbol, or sigil, on my left arm. If you rotate the following group of three line-based characters 90 degrees clockwise, that’s what this symbol basically looks like. -)| This is a very powerful symbol of awakening that resists ego identification due to it’s abstractness and enables an ever-changing reintegration of the essential nature of reality.

I have been tattooed with this symbol and have been practicing with it’s significance in my life for nearly 4 years now. After my “gap” awakening experience, I opened greatly to the energy of reality and to many new things that continue to be amazing influences in my current life. And, in a similar way, as I was reading about the Tao of Philosophy today, I was immediately struck by the harmonizing quality of the two vision experiences I’ve had with Taoism. Until now, I had been trying to fit “my symbol” with essential Zen Buddhist philosophy. This has worked with some degree of sense and suitability, but not as immediately aligned as the shapes converge with the sigil symbol. Hence, simply, even though Taoist influences have been with me for years alongside Buddhist study, today, I perceive a significant shift toward the acceptance of the Taoist alignment as a course of activity that has been present in my most interesting and significant experiences in life. I also find this synergistic self-revelation poignant as it has occurred on the last day of this rocky year of 2008.

And I pray, may this path of movement, from the emptiness and relevance of my experience, bring forth goodness and harmony in the Way things are. Catholicism taught me conditioned discipline, Zen Buddhism opened my mind, and Taoism will harmonize the spirit with the body and mind in the Great Way of all existence.