I am not that

07-10-12 20:21 I'm almost missing my appointment with you.

My mind has shut down, and this is an effort.

I've so far stayed true to the renunciations listed yesterday.

I'm in an empty classroom. There is some fear because a worker perhaps is walking back and forth.  Doors squeal as they close.

A challenge is my friend, my attachment at some level to wanting more from her.

I will leave that.

The day began fine. I walked across the highway and sat in Del Cerro park.

I noticed, watched the choice to stop sitting. It came from a sort of dissatisfaction/unease.

I got food at windmill farms. A supply of Kombu seaweed was the mission. I ate, a bit unconsciously, .25 lbs sunflower seeds, .35 lbs sesame. Walked back.

Sat, rested, in library. Returned home (12pm?), via guavas, old figs. Looked at paper. Went to visit/raid fig tree, a bit unconsciously.

My grandma was upset about my cutting of a shrub.

Then keyboard arrived for clie, and tech time was spent getting it working right with dvorak layout.

Palm Stowaway Dvorak keyboard layout

For the most part, the KB is working fine.

In many ways it is wonderful to be able to write like this, in silence, no fan, on battery power. And I think the weight is under one pound for KB + clie.

So I can go anywhere and write, provided the battery lasts. With good overhead lighting I do not need the backlight on.

--

So the space is opening. My life has changed with the adoption of those renunciations. And this practice.

Were I at home, I'd be eating and reading . Last night I was up late fiddling on the internet a bit. Not at resting place until 11.

And now?

Heat is an issue--the lack of it.

Ultimately, I'd like to help people.

I was considering why I'm not a part of Deer Park Monastery. Jennifer Joe had an article in Vision Mag I was reading about TNH, DPM.

"I am not that"

is the voice that comes in mind when considering DPM, anarchist houses, other possibilities.

"I am that" is what the yoga guru says. . .

DPM is doing the solar power, the gardening. . . Composting. TNH, the monks, nuns there, are being very eco.

I have to let my friend go.

That may have to be another renunciation--

may be.

21:01

There's not much escape now. I either be at peace as I am. There is no eating to escape with. And I could only keep myself reading by eating. . . So I've not been reading.

I sit. Focus on breath in abdomen, putting mind in body. Sometimes considering the wandering thoughts.

Sitting is more compelling than reading.

Sitting may be where new insight, next idea for action comes.

Oddness, being out of place--a lone walker--

a rough sleeper

doing what the others don't do.

"what do I want to become?" was a question that occurred today.

I want to help people.

So, I've made a first step. I'm no longer, at least for most of the day, escaping in harmful ways.

Being attached to my friend won't help her or others or me.

So, I walk by without stopping to visit--Visiting has been an escape from whatever it is.

I need to value this space, this time, and sitting time.

And there are others as dedicated to whatever it is I am doing--those are ones to work with.

I'm free, except for my desire to be different somehow.

Good night.

21:17

♥ ____x] I'LOVE'YOU'LOADS'__ii'lovve'yoous'forevverr'

http://priincess-perfectiion.blogspot.com/

I think she's in the Philippines.

https://www.blogger.com/start

If you're signed out, that page displays recently updated blog titles--a new one every second or so.

So you can get out of this odd world into another one.

stay where you are, and thought cycling

Today began not well because I did eat too much last night. I got out of  the house (after looking at paper) early and visited two fig trees on way to park where I sat. For a long time, and broke it up with some walking back and forth forest monk style.

After getting through bad feelings (physical), then got some insight.

The main thing is, I can stay where I am and practice the renunciation that is what I would be seeking by going elsewhere.

I can renounce:

Sleeping inside

Cooking  with microwave or  gas stove (only  cook with fire)

Using lights to read late at night at  home.

Those are the main things--and will help me renounce:

Reading newspaper (the reading/eating combo is the main issue--when not eating I don't dwell on the paper)

So--this was a wonderful, freeing realization, and I sat so long enjoying that peace, being serenaded by a nearby lawn crew performing with weedeater, lawnmower, leafblower, small chainsaw. Eventually, for a change, I left and wandered to a vista overlooking university ave traffic.

Later I moved to shaded sloped iceplant in a nearby canyon.

Partly because I knew I'd be writing later, my thoughts were cycling, stuck, about what I might say now, and thoughts were attempting to refine the idea more.

I began breath counting, to sixty, in sets of 3 x twenty.

Eventually I went to eat more figs and got back to the house around 1pm.

So, Following through,

I have my sleeping bag and will spend the night outside. I am under electric lights now, but I'm on campus, not at home.

My plan is to cook my main meal in the middle of the day--rice and lentils (and other things), tomorrow, over  my hobo stove, either in the back patio area or on a grill in a park.

So, if I keep this up, that will help me have the better eating habits I have had while in the forest while here in the city.

And, if needing things to do, I can work on getting rid of things I have at grandma ann's house.

That's the main news.

The other part was thought cycling, which I haven't totally learned to deal with well. Why does mind rehash something it does not really need to return to?


Good parts of the day: I swam and did weights in the evening. It's a good sign to be doing weights.

Effects of earlier immoderation are fading.

It will be curious to see what happens now.

And I have valued having my friend in the neighborhood to visit. And other friends I see on campus, however odd, however we misfit. I sort of still want to head off to La Jolla to be near the UCSD crowd for a change.

Sorry to be so general.

I'm feeling I'm finally learning to relax into retirement, into life.

I arrived in SD and eventually set out to accomplish something--that was school, academic.

Stopping that, I was into the garden.

Then I was working on "walking sangha".

And now I've found I don't need to go anywhere or do anything. . .

Eventually, if this works out, I will be at home anywhere, and I can just walk down the road to La Jolla or elsewhere, and my life may be more or less the same and good.

Peace,
Colin

Mindlessness, harmful variety, today and last night all was eating, maybe briefly newspaper, too. Today I ate more figs than would stay in me both times-- (but that is not such a bad thing, why? I won't elaborate on right now)

Mindfulness--exercising that much of the rest of the time.

Openness to (having an) organizing principle? Got focused on beginning to clean out and clean up my accumulated stuff at Gann's house. I realize I could turn getting rid of stuff into a long, drawn-out project. Just give it away or try to get money?

But while enjoying morning post-realization peace, thought I might be able to spend lots of time every day sitting, walking, being like that. There really may be no reason to focus excessively on removing stuff--

in the long run, having no stuff there or anywhere should make me more free to follow organizing whimsy/principle wherever.

I also thought maybe I could relax into planting more food plants--


I'll probably go visit the guava tree before finding a spot to
take rest.

+ organizing principle, follow focus

2007-10-10-1959
this is a time of day I often want to eat and read unconsciously.

the interesting development:

consider activities and situations when my mind is not wandering from body or questioning the current activity:

eating

nosepicking

reading (sometimes)

walking to check on fig trees

(all of those a problem in excess)

walking to and from places or just walking in interesting places

--

whenever that happens during a health-enhancing activity that is a great thing: such as with dance or exercising. Or creating something.

--

so if mind is wandering: go do something else. . .where mind doesn't wander. This is key to the intolerance of staying here. I can't deal with a daily routine where either mind questions all of it or I cope / seek focus in unhealthy ways.

--

This writing exercise is having effect. Providing a sort of extra space in every moment. . . "what would I write about this time?"

On waking this morning, I eventually got to posting the last blog post and writing two emails. I cleaned up and eventually left house and went to park and sat.

As an organizing principle, I continued to notice I don't have one beyond organizing for this next homeless trip.

My organizing principle can be: organize self so that I can be open for the possibility of having an organizing principle.

--

I also noticed how much having Grandma Ann around affects my behavior.


I do wish to be free of this I now realize--hence the homeless plan.

So I will be leaving here. On next return, perhaps, I will work on selling, getting rid of stuff and leaving. (going nowhere)

I also notice my lack of community/compatriots, but don't see that anything can be done. (beyond becoming homeless, posessionless and free to seek / follow / have time for friends anywhere)

And I am aware of how my suffering is different from suffering in other parts of world.

---

Fiddling on a larger scale: managed to process harvested beans, corn.

---

All that is left to do is pack for trip. I am on schedule to do this more gracefully.

---

A difficulty is a friend dealing with landlord issues. Another looking for a job.

Both problems I don't have now.

With one, I shared the system view of Oshry: tops, middles, bottom.

I did not suggest attachment was an issue.

A buddhist way may have been just to listen and breathe.

--

I think I may be learning a theory of action--not just the quieting of mind.

Because this issue of organizing principle for all behavior--well, the idea that mind seeks health-promoting activity on which it can retain focus.

Until found, prepare to be ready to act when it is found.

And practice having focused mind regardless?

Peace,
Colin

2038

Organizing Principle

2007-10-09-2158
The purpose of this is not more than . . . to help me be more mindful. (& to not cause others to suffer).

Areas of felt lack (of creativity?):

on rise, looked through paper. Reading paper almost always feels lacking--like I wish I weren't.

on leaving--found thing on thing to fiddle with.

I thought then, "lacking organizing principle, mind/I find(s) endless things to fiddle with before I leave."

Good news:

I walk to park, and begin by sitting (watching mind).

Lesson this time: Watching how in times of mindlessness, mind is not questioning. At harder times, mind seems to be questioning . . . such as, questioning purpose.

Reading can be that way (mindless, mind not questioning purpose).

Fiddling with computer.

Nose picking.

Rubbing eyes.

Mind just slips into silence and physical behavior continues

Raiding the fig tree.

Did kata, not with great focus.

Raided fig tree. And watched how mind didn't question or wander as it did when I was making self progress through kata, or just sit.

Returned home,


Much time fiddling with computer. . . / handheld.

Again, mind not questioning or wandering. Mind just jumps from next thing to next--as with figs--fig to fig, scanning for the next one.

Organizing principle at those moments: eat figs; carry out some particular computer task--while allowing self to follow, check, seek distraction along way.

Tasks (whimsy tasks?) on computer accomplished.

Then, motivated by grandma ann's impending arrival, took care of some yard-type work, enjoyed some focus.

Then returned to computer.

-----------------------------------
Organizing principle.

2. Commit Yourself Completely to Liberation in this Lifetime

I personally recommend that you commit yourself, one hundred percent, to complete liberation, the enlightened realization of fundamental truth, in this lifetime. Further, I recommend you dedicate all the fruits of your path to the greatest possible service for all beings.

From John P. Milton.


This staying up late--.


Peace,
Colin

(the next morning, 6 a.m.):
I want to add that I've also been focusing on "keeping the mind with the body, inside the body." Ajaan Sao teaches this. And I think in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's instructions, he suggests focusing on the breathing in the abdomen.

Thich Nhat Hanh also teaches keeping the mind with the body by focusing on the breathing.

Wilber and the integral group share a practice called "embodied reading" (something like that), which involves checking in with the effect of reading on one's whole being. I could do the same with all activities.

In meditation, and other times, I notice that mind wandering usually involves the mind leaving the body.

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