not?

2007-10-08-1331

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/whyend.html

I'm not sure if writing will in the long run help or make things worse.

Here for the record is that at the moment, I'm not at all acting as if I were enlightened.

Here is something I composed last week,
and I was doing well then:

You look into what it means to be enlightened, and people tell you that:

you already are enlightened—there is nothing you need to do, and nowhere you need to go; but

you may not recognize that.

Let's act as if we are enlightened.

http://yailuminado.googlepages.com/

I even wrote in my facebook profile "We are enlightened Spirit" and I came to see how that can be.

But this week--I'm planning to leave on Friday for another two weeks--I'm falling apart.

I don't know what to focus on, so, I often just mindlessly eat. Sort of to escape thinking. If not eating--maybe I read--sort of for the same reason.

I suppose then, at the moment, writing is helping.

Initially I thought I'd just escape into the mindless silence when it finally comes time to leave on this next trip.

But one of my distractions was setting up my sony clié handheld with plucker books / ebooks to read. Some stuff by Italo Calvino, the whole access to insight website, and rudolf steiner's five important books.

And just now, I followed through on ordering a $20 portable keyboard for it.

So maybe I'll carry the clié, 5oz. Plus the adapter, 7oz. Plus the kb, perhaps 11oz (which I just went off for a minute or so trying to find out).

That kind of distraction and focus on devices strikes me as not enlightened.

And why?


Here's what may be happening: in absence of any compelling organizing principle for my life, in all domains I seek escape?

--mindless eating : bios level

--mindless reading : noos level

--total avoidance of spirit(?) : theos level

Enlightened behavior in each realm:

--mindful eating ("so I do not become lean and die")

--mindful reading and computer and device use (for what purpose?)

--some sort of spirit-level focus.


Now, in spite of my current madness, in a way things are better than they have been.

In the past I've had a voice in mind saying "I want to die."

I sometimes now try out that statement. Now I see it is "I (old self) want to die."

I seem to be solid in the awareness that the awareness of that voice does not say "I want to die."

What is going on: "I want to escape self."

And "What the hell is there to do?"

So I finished my pda project--and was somewhat mindlessly reading the access to insight website, plucker version.


and eventually came to Nyanaponika Thera's "Why end suffering?"

One argument he makes is that our suffering causes others to suffer.

If I'm a basket case, (which I just took the time to look up:

1. (offensive) a person who has had all four limbs amputated.
2. a person who is helpless or incapable of functioning normally, esp. due to overwhelming stress, anxiety, or the like.
3. anything that is impaired or incapable of functioning: Right after the war the conquered nation was considered an economic basket case.

)

Then I'm hardly inspiring or helpful to others.

1341 I'm feeling a little more freedom already. But it helps that I could not eat more if I wanted to.

Am I increasing anyone's suffering by writing this on the web?

At issue is partly my not full endorsement of the therevadin view, and my curiousity about some part of the Wilber/integral view.

They seem to say, the world is becoming something--to renounce is to renounce spirit becoming.

Second, I am not yet joining any monastery, who knows what the reason.

All I want is to escape this house where I live where I am so easily a slave of craving attachment.

I suppose I try to cure my eating disorder by going to where it is not a problem.

Here it is not always a problem, but I exacerbate it by trying to change and also trying to avoid change.

I don't know what will happen when I leave on Friday.

I can act as if it is my mission.

In the past, preparing for past trips, it has been the same.

I attempt to avoid preparing, then rush to prepare at the last minute.

I practice restraint, for the most part, when on the trip, because there is no other choice (I seem to have moved beyond dumpster diving unhealthy food, though that was a problem in the past. And many of my recent trips have been where there are no dumpsters. But it is possible to binge on or mindlessly eat figs and and stuff that grew in the garden too.). Then I come back to the house and sometimes manage to maintain more mindful habits for a while. But after the past three homecomings I backslid each time.

This past time (returning September 18), I backslid quickly. I was disturbed in some way by my experience. I think that same disturbance is at the root of all my mindless eating/reading/whatever escapist behavior.

The more I go out there, the more I see I have absolutely nothing to do?

Nothing to do other than get out there and stay out there. Nothing other to do than to leave where I'm living now.

I suppose I still think I can go away and come back to the resources I have here and use both experiences to develop the other.

I suppose that has been happening, but very ungracefully.

and I'm rotting my teeth and gums on the way, at least on the most regressive days, as this one may have been.

1357

Now if I were further along I could sit in meditation instead of write this??

That really is the confrontation with the nothing.

I've been drawn to Andrew Cohen's collective enlightenment work, and Senge and Scharmer et. al.'s theory U / presencing, because both describe processes for determining how to act in the world, beyond just sitting alone and meditating. (Theory U / presencing more than Andrew Cohen).

I don't know. I'm somehow totally lost and not going anywhere--except to a space where I am homeless, free of garden, house, personal indoor space and any property I cannot carry with me. (yet at this point still knowing I have an indoor space to return to).

I don't know how to choose what to do and what not to do.

I think the vision / organizing principle should be this:

o I leave gracefully, without a rush.

o I clean up garden a bit before I go, maybe put some seeds in the ground.

o I get rid of stuff I'm not using--in the trash if that's what it takes.

All that sounds nice, but after I post this, I will return to reading for a while, and maybe then start to act on that list.

I have been acting and progressing toward some goal but not in a graceful, healthy way.

I seem to not be able to deal with going out there with nothing (or even with having a book to read). So now I will take a computer I may be able to write on.

Now I will not go to the wilderness, but to a place where there are people around and a good library. And a beautiful place.


I half-think that if I can pull off this trip and value it and not get the odd restlessness/fear of my last trip, then I'll return the next time and go on alms rounds for food like some monks still do (bhikkhu approximately equals "beggar").


But the big challenge remains just getting out there, and, in this case, getting a bit more experience of being house-free in an urban area. I don't yet have a jardine backpack made, so will my frame backpack be a problem in terms of hanging out in the library??

If I continue to progress in this way, I may eventually be able to do a jardine-style preparation, involving construction of lightweight, unobtrusive clothing and gear. . .

So I guess I'll use this writing as a part of the action part of my "integral life practice."

Ideally, perhaps, I would be meditating. I would be caring for my body.

Here I will address the question, "How do I act?"

I have an odd tendency to want to write what I know others could read (hence the blog, hence my earlier web projects), but also to not care if anyone does.

I don't think what I'll do here will cause others to suffer.

Ideally you'll see a continual progression of some kind.

On carfreeuniverse (now purl.oclc.org/net/cfu/ ), I made a point of thinking more about how to write what others would read. On experienceart, I wrote for me--and didn't really concern myself with harm.

Here, I'm writing to help maintain creative space on the level of the mind--writing here, even like this, on the question of how to act, is a step above mindless reading, and definitely above mindless eating. It is not a substitute for meditation.

What I'm doing here also has elements of the collective enlightenment theory. . . others might read this, and it may help more than me progress in some way, to become, as Wilber writes, "more transparent to the divine."

I have been already enlightened Spirit mindlessly eating.

I have been enlightened Spirit more thoughtfully writing here.

How transparent can I be to the creative process, bringing conscious creativity to more areas of my life, and ultimately helping all other entities do the same?

Peace,
Colin