Habit energies & fear, yippee!

Fantasizing about a rectangle when looking at 5 free floating squares of different sizes again, are we?

I have a habit of gathering unrelated phenomena into some form and drawing conclusions--a very common mental process, actually.  Useful, and required for some (not all) forms of logical thought...
The issue is when labels are introduced from thousands upon tragillions of vantage points. Mixed, and are mingling in (practically) different languages in the public sphere.

*Labels = preliminary judgments from a single vantage point.

Excerpts from Voices of Freedom by H.W. Dresser (+ added ideas & discussion):

"Consider for a moment the habits of life into which we are born.  There are certain social conventions or customs . . . a theological bias, a general view of the world [universe].  There are [rigid] ideas in regard to our early training, our education, marriage, and occupation in life."
How we learn to label things, ideas, and ourselves--automatic judgments that constrict our views.


Now for a grounding exercise, playing with vantage points...  Empathize, see through eyes of a stranger.  The specific sights, smells, winds, physical sensations, mind-states, and pressures felt by the person.  Lay out your immediate visual environment as if you were that driver in the car who nearly ran you down in the crosswalk.
^^^ An experiment with empathy ^^^

The (not-entirely-necessary) stories we hold onto about our lives (present and past, any way we try to conceive of it) commonly contain a huge list of anticipations: growing old, losing faculties, diseases, and the chocolate on the grasshopper: DEATH.  Fear of death, that is. 

 "A list of fears dreads, worriments, anxieties, anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly train of fateful shapes which our fellow men especially physicians are ready to help us conjured up."

This immense pile of Fear is swelled by an unpredictable, foreign nature of the external world.  The sense of I , me, myself  VS. everyonefuckingelse.

But here's the thing:  we are all part of this environment.  I'm no more real than you, no?  Need I quote Tyler Durden's steaming pile of shit motivational speech....  I won't. (If you haven't seen Fight Club, well, I can't help you, Netflix, or I suppose Blockbuster, can).

This leads us to....the nameless dreads...
Henry Wood (Varieties of Religious Experience) describes a person suffering from The Nameless Dreads:     "The Man has fear stamped on him; he is reared in fear . . . all his life is passed in bondage to fear of disease and death . . . his whole mentality becomes cramped, limited and depressed, and his body follows its shrunken pattern and specification."

Fear in the brain puts the body in a state of chronic alarm.  The muscles take their shapes accordingly: shoulders tense and high, spine hunched, neck protruding forward (or something like that).  The body grows accustomed to this state, and begins exhibiting more reactive (vs. active, general) behaviors in response to external stimuli. 

The thoughts and ideas that go on in our heads prompt our bodies to twist and morph.  Fear-bearers, habitually pulsing with fear and quick on the defense, are more prone to seek out these familiar, cozy states of alarm, consciously and unconsciously (recreating trauma from the past in order to move past it).  The more practice the brain and body get at this energy, the easier it is for the nameless dreads to quietly lay roots.

Rick Perry: notice the hunched shoulders, forward neck--alarm pose.  This is an unrelated jab--I disagree with Rick Perry's political values.

"How can an idea, an ephemeral nothing, gnaw at my stomach and constrict my chest?"
"Polarizing and magnetizing us at they do--we turn towards them and from them, we seek them, hold them, hate them, bless them, etc.."  All action verbs.  (All require a do-er--who/what is this entity and is it necessary or limiting to our understanding and perception of the world?)

The real issue is the attachment and subsequent reaction to the crack-monkey brain.  By responding to such intrusive, messy, all-over-the-place, borderline schitzophrenic dialogue in ourselves, we play the game of anxieties, fears--by removing from the present moment.  Not the ideas you hold about the present moment, but _______________. This.  Hello.   

4 Pacmen and algebra alligator mouths, going for the larger sum.

Semi-copy/pasted and inspired by: Time, Space, and the Mind by Irving Oyle

die constantly

Ram Dass talks about the moment of death being a pinnacle of spiritual growth.  Because the deepest mystery of universe is revealed to us.  Be curious.  present.  not clinging to any particular path or stories.

I'd like to take this a step further, as one's inner-masochist might say: die constantly.  Every second, every breath is an opportunity to let go of who you think you are.  Who you think you should be.  You aren't your body.  All you have is the awareness of the air and energy flowing in and out of you.  This is something I meditate on when I focus on the breath.  It helps (when doing breathing meditation) to focus on one location where the breath has a noticeable exchange with the physical body: for example, the belly rising and falling, the pressure and feelings around the nostrils as air enters and exits, the expansion and retreat of the chest. 

Dass describes his fear and panic at the moment where his thoughts had given up.  "It's scary because you're not thinking anything."  A natural state of nonthought... has become scary to our minds, so used to constant stimulation and DOING.

How can we not become afraid when we're so trained to DO, to PRODUCE, to BE something other than ourselves.  to CREATE.   I'm always writing ideas.  I have journals of shit.  Because I feel a compulsion to keep producing, keep thinking.  And suddenly, empty, I stop and see myself as the little rat on the wheel that I am.  And I laugh at myself, how silly it is to get caught up in momentary feelings of loneliness, anger, guilt, etc.  All become I have some idea about who I think I am, my ideas about others, and how those two "ought to" coincide.  Too many damn "oughts." 

"The emptier my mind was, the more optimal my response was to every situation.  i don't have any plan for what i'm going to say to you.  what i was suppposed to talk about?  what we say is what we say, the result of this situation."  (Dass excerpt from lecture).

As long as you think that there is a do-er, you're still attached.  Right now you may feel prone to identify yourself as reader.  Detach and witness the action of reading.  Breathe and welcome the emptiness that makes you throw your head back and laugh at how stupid it is to get wrapped up in little dramas.   I am a witness to the actions of thinking, speaking, listening.  I am not a reader, speaker, listener, etc.  Why cling to any one action--the nature of actions is that they change.  reading is.  speaking is.  writing is.

Some other highlights of Ram Dass' talk from above:

"Go to a place inside where the flame doesn't flicker.. watch your drama goes by.  desire as well, lust.  fear.  there it goes.  personality is like clothing.  body is clothing.  behind all this shit, here i am.  here we are.  here.  it is.

"Actions don't fall away but attachment to actions fall away. 

"It takes someone willing to give up the framework of their lives sufficiently to experience another orientation towards the universe to be able to know what needs to be known.  must give it all up first.  surrender the western model of who you are and how it works.  Become aware of the notion that you are a product of your environment...(something like that).


"if the body belongs to god, show me the paperwork."

^^ clever

How to cool your jets

 "The best way to live life is as a soul, dancing in and out."

All you can do is dance.  The best way to spread joy is to lead by example.  Dance yourself, and slowly, surely, people will pick up on your energy.  Consciousness is contagious.

Dancing in sand.  with an orange. and an oil refinery...

Try it, someplace alone with a person.  Even alone with your ___ in bed.  Whatever you may call a significant other or just a person that happens to be laying next to you a random morning you don't quite recall...

Breathe mindfully, slowly.  The rhythm of your breath is contagious.  I've seen it.  I've made it happen myself.  I've allowed it to happen between myself and strangers, homeless, people who don't speak a lick of english but understand the higher language of energy. 

We can be present together.  And understand that we are sharing the air in this moment together, right now.  And that's all there is to it.  No need to be afraid of it.  No need to repress it, or run from it, asking ourselves, "I wonder what they're thinking." Or "I wonder where they got their hair done.  I don't like their shoes.  They are old lady librarian shoes.  I better pull out my phone.  This is weird.  Check email.  Oh, living social deal, wine and pizza, sweet.  Distraction distraction."

What a lovely little game we've fallen into.  This thinking in circles.  All we do is think, we deserve to pause for a bit and listen to the soundtrack.  Step out of it.

Ram Dass' core theme, Be Here Now...also the title of a lovely secular text embraced by free spirits all over.

Skills of redirection to the present is a  great tool.  When you're talking with so and so about blah blahblah often times you're living in the past, future, 70s, your mom's back porch, your bathtub...  Elsewhere talk.
Redirect the conversation to the here and now.  Ram Dass talks about making strawberry jam in the kitchen with his father, who was just rambling on and on with his miseries of past wives, his kids that don't call, loneliness, etc.  He had created a storyline and a leading role for himself as a miserable dude, and all RD said referred to making jam.  "Are bubbles supposed to rise to the top like this?"

Redirect the energy to the body.  The present.  What you are doing here and now.

I'll often run into people in the midst of errands downtown.  I really pay attention to how they're walking.  What they're carrying, in their hands, on the shoulders, on their bodies, in their heads--the eyes tell more than anything they could say.

a self portrait of sorts

I can tell this cat's stressed--neck forward, shoulders slumped.  Not really breathing in the stomach.  Tight belly and midsection.  Not alive in the hips, the feet, the toes. 
"Yo yo what's up," I say.
Spewing, "Oh my god...(exhales)....fje;ajea;fjelajfel;ajghresgjrsj" (Insert random errands, names, places, dogs, etc.)
"Me too, lets do it together.  Where you headed?"
And we walk together.
Breathing together.
Grabbing a coffee together.
Small talk, enjoying the sun, stopping for free samples of beer and wine at the beer shop.  Stopping for coffee.  All on the way to sign papers. 
Trudge through filling in blanks with dates, signatures.
Washing dishes, getting cat food, scooping cat shit, etc.

Nothing else to do but bask in each moment--each place we go, the sounds, smells, feelings of places, colours, energies of people, dogs, trees, cars, etc.  How lovely it is we are able to call things our responsibilities sometimes.  And then sometimes not.