Awarelist

Experiments in Presence

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, chapter 71

"You think I'm behaving like a cold-hearted ogre because I turn people away.  Quite the contrary.  I'm merely setting my pilgrims freebefore they become my disciples.  That's the best I can do."
     Sissy nodded in appreciation.  "That's fine;  that sincerely is fine.  The only problem is, your pilgrims don't know that."
     "Well, it's up to them to figure it out.  Otherwise I'd be dishing them the same precooked and packaged pap.  Everybody has got to figure out experience for himself.  I'm sorry.  I realize that most people require externalized, objective symbols to hang on to.  That's too bad.  Because what they are looking for, whether they know it or not, is internalized and subjective.  There are no group solutions!  Each individual must work it out for himself.  There are guides, all right, but even the wisest guides are blind in your section of the burrow.  No, all a person can do in this life is to gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality - and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.
     "Be your own master!
     "Be your own Jesus!
     "Be your own flying saucer!  Rescue yourself.
     "Be your own valentine!  Free the heart!"
     "Upon the sunny rock on which she sat in her semen-stained panties Sissy was very quiet.  She supposed she had been given a lot to think about.  There was, however, one more question on her mind, and eventually she asked it.  "You use the word 'freedom' fairly regularly," she began.  "Exactly what does freedom mean to you?"
     "The Chink's reply was swift.  "Why, the freedom to play freely in the universe, of course."
     With that, he reached out and grabbed the elastic band that moored Sissy's underpants to her hips.  She raised her legs and in one smooth motion, he pulled her panties off - and flung them over the edge of the cliff.  In the Dakota mouse world, it was quite a day for aerial phenomena.

Awareness Experiment 13

We can repress, reject, and resist things about ourselves all we want and still not actually be rid of them.  By burying, hiding, denying and then refusing to look we fool ourselves into believing that we've gotten rid of something when really all we've done is close our eyes.  Often getting rid of something is actually just our ego's way of handling what ego doesn't want to be associated with, doesn't like or want.  Ego assumes that it has control of the objectionable object and can get rid of it whenever it wants to. 

 The inward action of letting go allows us to see that we were never in control in the first place. This can be quite a terrifying realization for our identity.  If we're not in control then who is? If we can't control our life then what will become of us? What about freedom of choice?  What does it mean that we don't have control over our life? 

 In reality we CAN write the script of our life, but we'll need a lot of cooperation for the play to go the way we've written it.  That's a lot to expect, especially when you consider that everyone else has a script that doesn't read anything like yours.  You can make plans, decisions, choices but there are no guarentees that things will got the way you expect or want them to.  When we can see that, when we can act without attachment to the outcome, then we are acting out of the center that knows it does not control life, but rather is a part of life. 

******
"Don't compromise yourself.  You are all you've got." --Janis Joplin

Assignment:  Today, choose yourself in a situation when you would ordinarily abandon yourself.  Notice how that feels? Did it feel good? Did it feel selfsish? Why? Where did those values come from?

Awareness Experiment 12

We don't make life happen--we're a manifestation in form of Life.  We go in a certain natural direction. We have certain tendencies and predispositions, talents and gifts.  We have a physical being, mental capacities, conditioning and influences that form us and move us in certain directions...  We go in those directions, just as everything in life is going its direction.  We're a part of life.  

At some point I decide that I would like to be a pilot (or plumber or journalist).  I ask myself, "Do I have the capabilities? Are the circumstances right? In the same sense that everything must come together for a plant to grow and flourish from a seed, are they coming together for this to grow and flourish?"  I move in whatever direction I am drawn.  If I want to be a pilot I study, I take lessons, I learn to fly. I do whatever I need to do to reach my goal.  The place where I get into trouble would be in believing that because I'm going in a certain direction, it means I'm going to wind up in a certain place.  

The fact that I want to be pilot and that I study and train doesn't mean I'll ever become one.  And if I don't it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me or life or the universe or anything else.  It just means that it didn't happen, in the same way that a plant may never grow in the way that causes fullness.  

And if I do reach my goal it doesn't mean i was able to manipulate the flow of events and achieve a certain outcome through the force of my own will.  It just happened, influenced by all that proceeded it (including MY actions) since before the beginning of time.  I am not the cause of life.  But I certainly am a part of it.  

******
"My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope."  Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." ---Pablo Picasso

ASSIGNMENT:  Today, practice surrendering to being completely and thoroughly you.

Awareness Experiment 11

In truth we spend an inordinate amount of time maintaining our suffering. You can be insisting that you're not, in fact, you could be screaming at the top of your lungs that you're not.  But you probably are.  The thing that most of us are deeply afraid of, more than anything else is that we might even briefly see ourselves as we really are. 
 
We continue, daily, to make comfortable decisions that maintain our suffering--comfortable suffering--no-risk-suffering.  If we were to awaken, the game would be over.  So we don't try to figure out how this works.  We are trained to say one thing and do another.  And the moment that we learn a new "system" of thought which we use to cope through imitation, and conforming, and accepting, we place ourselves in conflict with reality. We feel we MUST do this thing because it's the new thing we're going for, but we hit a wall.  We have our own tendencies and pressures and inclinations which collide with the system we think we should follow.  So we start to lead a double life between the IDEA and our EXPERIENCE. In trying to conform to the idea, we suppress ourselves whereas what is actually true is not the IDEA but rather it is what you are.
 
Why do we hide from what is? Because we have been blinded by the illusion that we are not equal to life as it is. This is absolutely false.
******
 
"Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it." --Ella Williams
 
ASSIGNMENT: Remind yourself today that you are "equal to life as it is."
 

Experiment 10

It's both sad and funny--something happens to me and I get hurt.  I spend most of my life tensed against that experience...but it's already over.  It already happened, and it's never going to happen again.
But something else will.
I'm focused on the past and then something in the present snags me.  I shift my attention to that, which is now also fleeing into the past, and soon find myself bumping into something else in the present.
 
I'm always protecting myself from the experience I just had!
 
*Don't miss NOW for THEN
*Always do now for NOW
 
Get current. Make sure you're not still carrying around old ideas about yourself that aren't really applicable to your present life...and perhaps never were.
 
*****
"Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change."---Marcel Proust
 
ASSIGNMENT: Today, consider some of the things you wished for in youth that you no longer wish for. Try to pass no judgement on their fulfillment or unfulfillment. Allow them to be as they are. (Perhaps write them down)

 

Experiment 9

"What is ego? 
Ego is the illusion that I am seperate from everything else. The part of me who's always comparing, the part who feels superior, or inadequate, or deprived. It is the one who clings and resists, who sees me as subject and everything else as object. It is often the direct source of the process of suffering.
"What makes us do something we know will make us miserable? It seems that we choose to suffer."
We see ourselves going down the same roads over and over again. We begin to see that they lead to suffering, and yet we continue to choose them almost as if we didn't know how to do anything else. Every time I overeat, I feel sick and hate myself. Every time I get depressed I go on a buying binge and regret it later. 
It's important to know that the problem of suffering is not in the overeating, the feeling sick, or the depression. The trouble starts with beating myself up for those. The suffering is in my response to what is. I don't like what is. I would like it to change even though "what is" is now "what was" and can't change. 
Why do I torture myself like this?
I begin to suspect a pay-off. Would I find myself in the same fix over and over again if I didn't get something out of it? Probably not. So what is the pay-off? The pay-off is in knowing who I am as a familiar, seperate self. I am gluttonous. I am unlovable. I am self-indulgent. But most important of all, I am seperate. Ego is my identification with seperateness and I experience this seperateness when I resist what is. Ego is the process of suffering--it is a how, not a what...When we understand "how" we do something, we suddenly become free to make a change.
Cheri Huber
 
****
"Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world." --Eleanor Roosevelt.
 
ASSIGNMENT: Today, pay particular attention to the voices that speak to you dismissively, with disrespect.

Experiment 8

Pain and suffering.  We often hear the words together--so often that, in common usage, their meanings have become synonymous.  Pain is inevitable, a fact of life.  We know we can count on it, and yet we spend most of our life trying to prevent it.  

But pain is NOT suffering.  Suffering is what often comes as we react to the pain.  Defensiveness, greed, anger, denial, repression, rejection, hatred, fear--to name a few--are all, at their source, reactions to pain--ego's reaction to pain.  Ego takes pain very personally--pain reinforces it's sense of separateness. Pain is "something" to be gotten rid of or prevented. " Ego takes pain and adds suffering to it until the two are intertwined--so much so that it's easy to think their the same thing. But the cause is very different than the effect.  

We suffer when we are not willing to experience pain. We close ourselves off. We dig trenches. We put up barricades. All because we don't want to feel pain. Ego is vulnerable in its presence--vulnerable to being found out.  Because when we stay with pain and don't add ego's suffering to it we see that we are in fact equal to the pain--that we can "take it"; we see through the illusion of inadequacy. We see the wholeness and truth of Being. And we see that, like everything else, no one pain lasts forever.  
Cheri Huber

****

"Re-examine all that you have been told in school, or church, or any book.  Dismiss whatever insults your soul." --Walt Whitman

ASSIGNMENT: Today as you dismiss any conditioning that "insults your soul" allow yourself to exist open to whatever may come; to be uplifted.

Experiment 7

It's easy to love ourselves when we're being good or are meeting our standards.  The practice is to love ourselves when we're not. Everytime you do something you dissaprove of, instead of beating yourself--"I SHOULDN'T have done that!" "I should change!" "I always say that"--open your heart to compassion.  This is the only "change" you need. After all, it's the parts of ourselves who are suffering who need our unconditional love.
 
But how can we become "good" people without disciplining ourselves? Remember, one process does not lead to another. Punishment does not lead to love. There is no "good person" outside of compassion. When we truly know this, when in the deepest part of our heart we find such compassion we won't continue to dissapoint ourselves.  One of the most basic beliefs we hold is that there is something wrong with us. We believe we're bad, inadequate, lacking. But the reality is that discipling ourselves, rejecting ourselves, beating ourselves leads us further away from that which we desire--not closer to it. If this were not true most of the world would exist in a state of enlightenment already.  Find compassion at all costs.
Cheri Huber
 
*****
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian." ---Dennis Wholey
 
ASSIGNMENT: Today, treat the world fairly, with a sense of balance... 

Experiment 6

We often approach ourselves with ideas about improving, changing, or getting rid of various aspects.  We are so conditioned to loss and deprivation that we automatically think of "disciplining" ourselves as "depriving" ourselves.

Let's not get rid of, let's add.  Instead of starving oneself by stopping eating, let's add exercise. --Cheri Huber

*****
"There is no duty we so underrate as that of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world." Robert Lewis Stevenson

ASSIGNMENT:  Today, ask what it means to be happy. Dare to live in that place, if even just for today. 

 

Experiment 5

"We are always willing.
We have all the willingness we need.
We just have to look at what we're willing for.

If we want to be free, we must be willing to be free of our beliefs, of our better ideas, of our self-rejection, of our resistance to what is.

For instance, if I have a better idea about how I SHOULD be (more compassionate towards others) and I go through a process of beating myself up, of rejecting myself, every time I don't meet my standards, I will NEVER find that compassion.  The essential thing I have forgotten here is:

ONE PROCESS DOES NOT LEAD TO ANOTHER.

Rejection does not lead to compassion.
Compassion leads to compassion.
Rejection leads to rejection.

If you see something you don't like about the way you are and you beat yourself up for it, pretty soon you will have trained yourself to stop looking.
Cheri Huber

****
"Paradise is where I am"--Voltaire

ASSIGNMENT:  Today, look around, take a breath, be here now, and notice your paradise.