Living in Liminality?

    "I think there are probably more people who sort of think & suspect they might have had an awakening - then they actually have. And that’s good news if that’s you, because there’s something pretty amazing waiting. This is the birth of the awakening process or birth of the process of liberation, of realization."
    Angelo DiLullo "Stages of Awakening (57-minute Intro)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2oHMDfRhM

    Most readers of this blog, and many people in general, have had mystical experiences. HOWEVER you, dear readers, are probably aware that your experiences were mystical, AND are also curious about & motivated to go deeper into the mystery. You're in a transitional threshold, YET possibly uncertain about proceeding. 

     YOU will very likely find Angelo Dilullo's 7-minute "pointing" surprisingly valuable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEr5VLIf_eM 

     Notice the on-going tug-of-war between your brain's left hemisphere (Iain McGilchrist  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=iain+mcgilchrist+youtube#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bb7bff33,vid:C85Vyq-yQtk,st:1750 ) loudly, persistently ordering you to do something else, be somewhere else, and be someone else. Meanwhile your right hemisphere is whispering you are unconditionally loved as you are, so there's 'nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.' 

    Under stress, fear & anxiety, the left hemisphere is particularly loud, making us tremble to do something - no matter how irrelevant, and madly ride the gerbil-wheel of obsessive circular thoughts. So under stressful circumstances, the left hemisphere's shouting tends to drown out the right hemisphere's whispers. Similarly, during military & other conflicts right-wing dictators (bullies) tend to be elected to power; then they cling to power by starting & maintaining military & other conflicts. 

    So, instead of continuing to "rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic," a wiser practice might be to gently keep returning awareness back to the aspect of yourself that does not change. This aliveness within is recognizable intuitively, by a felt sense. It has qualities of stillness, peace, love, warmth, silence, stability. As we learn to rest & stabilize in this aliveness our behaviour increasingly becomes spontaneously nurturing, arising from the unconditional love of Oneness.

 The late, great Glen Hansard covering the late, great Leonard Cohen's

"Who by Fire"

 

False Certainty

Rick Archer : “There are so many people in this world who are so sure of their position, their beliefs, whatever, and of course so many wars have been fought over that mentality – many of them in the name of religion.”

Mooji : “It’s actually because they are not sure. They’re not sure, that’s why they try to appear so sure. They’re not sure.” 

Rick Archer : “They’re desperately defending their doubt.” 

Mooji : “Yeh, if you’re sure about something, there’s a great relaxation in you, a very great openness. When you really can say that you are clear and certain about it, you reach a place of stillness. And you cannot be moving in some line of aggression towards any being. There’s a stillness in that.” 

Rick Archer : “And in that stillness, you’re very comfortable with paradox. You don’t take a polar position and adhere to it, you can actually embrace two contradictory concepts or positions."

Mooji : “Of course, because ultimately you can only do this because you have transcended concepts. You see their limitations. You see their usefulness. And you know that what is, is not shaped by any concepts. The concept is secondary. Only one who is really moved beyond the dependency on any concept is free with all expressions and any concept.”

     More on "Certainty": http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/certainty.html

Above transcribed from the interview below:

Open Mindedness vs Certainty

     "Uncertainty is a profoundly important practice. ... I trained in a South Korean monastery ... where the practice was to learn how to rest in a state of perplexity - a state that is focused, in that tradition, around the idea of great doubt, of 'What is this?' was the question we asked. That was the only meditation we did for 3 months in the summer, 3 months in the winter, we sit on a cushion, stare at a wall, and ask 'What is this?' 
     That was the most powerful practice I think I ever did as a monk. It's not that you then become some kind of thorough-going skeptic. But it's the fact that you acknowledge that fundamentally, you do not know what is going on. That the world is fundamentally mysterious. I think it's very difficult for Westerners to valorize uncertainty. We always want to know the answer. We always want to be right. And this kind of practice, which has been enormously influential in my life, is about learning to not only live with uncertainty, but actually to cultivate uncertainty. To cultivate an ongoing sense of questioning, of curiosity, of astonishment, of perplexity. This is both an act of humility, it's also for me an act of devotion, which might sound a bit strange, and it really throws into question every kind of certitude or conviction or belief that you might have. And it touches something very deep.
     What brings us to Buddhism in the first place, is that kind of existential uncertainty. And yet so often, as in all religions, we prefer to substitute belief for actually the very living pulse that brought us to that place in the first instance. There's a wonderful aphorism that our teacher Kusan Sunim used to recite all the time: 
          'Great doubt, great awakening;
          Little doubt, little awakening;
          No doubt, no awakening.' "                    Stephen Batchelor

     Above transcribed from the YouTube video: "Stephen Batchelor and Ven Brahmali debate in Melbourne 2014" found on: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/americanbuddhist/

QTrung   www.dpreview.com

On Being Curious & Open-minded Towards All Phenomena

     In mindfulness training we encourage participants (& ourselves) to be nonjudgmental, have an open mind & be curious towards all arising phenomena, even those we would normally consider unpleasant. 

     "Curiosity is the predisposition to recognize & search for new knowledge and experiences. The psychological urge evoked by curiosity is accompanied by increased engagement with the world, including exploratory behavior, meaning making, and learning. For decades, scientists have narrowly focused on how curiosity is relevant to achievement in school, work, and sports, & an appreciation of art. Curiosity ... is relevant to any context where there is the potential for novelty, uncertainty, complexity, surprise, and conflict between the urges to approach or avoid stimuli. Several scientists have argued that a family of individual difference variables that conceptually overlap with curiosity (ie novelty seeking, uncertainty orientation, need for structure, need for closure, need for cognition, openness to experience) are relevant to healthy social interactions & relationship. The present research extends this work about the relevance of curiosity to social functioning.
     Results: A curious personality was linked to a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including tolerance of anxiety & uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, initiation of humor & playfulness, unconventional thinking, & a nondefensive, noncritical attitude.  

     Conclusions: This characterization of curious people provides insights into mechanisms underlying associated healthy social outcomes."

     Kashdan TB, Sherman RA, Yarbro J, Funder DC. How are curious people viewed and how do they behave in social situations? From the perspectives of self, friends, parents, and unacquainted observers. J Pers 2013; 81(2): 142-54. 

     Read "Creativity & The Brain Review": http://www.knowyourbrain.ca/Library/Library.html

Jett in deep contemplation - by Amanda Wintink PhD

Living the Question

     We're energized & motivated to control, fix, grab, run from, stabilize - anything but embrace - liminality, uncertainty, the unknown, randomness, any form of change. Instead, we do our best to make the external environment pleasant & stable, assuming that this will make our internal environment happy for the long run.
     This controlling impulse is so automatic, that we even try to control life with mindfulness practice - turn it into a simple tool to fix & control - at times, even long after we think we've transcended the initial "getting rid of stress" phase of our practice. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/intention-shifts.html
     Life IS liminal, uncertain, unknown, unpredictable, fluidly changing, shifting, flowing energy ... We are an integral part of - one with - this mysterious sacred process - NOT external to NOR victims of it. Mindfulness is waking up to this mysterious reality - who we are & how we're part of this - living this open question - a timeless opening process.
     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/liminality-insight-into-emptiness.html

Truth over Comfortable Delusions

      “as a spiritual seeker I (am) interested more in the unsettling nature of the truth than in the safe confines of doctrine.
     What matters is that we take the deadness of the soul seriously; that we pay attention to the contents of the heart; that we ask the hard questions, and fearlessly face the hidden parts of the self. What matters, Jung says, is that we shine the light of consciousness in the dark corners of our life. What is not brought to consciousness, he says, comes to us as fate.”

       Lesser E. “Broken open. How difficult times can help us grow.” Villard, NY, 2005.

mariomirabile   www.dpreview.com

Porousness, Heart Opening, Stepping into Emptiness ...

     "To the degree that you relax more into uncertainty and groundlessness, you find your heart opening. Your heart opens to the degree that you can allow difficult situations and step into them. ...
     Meditation is a process of transformation ... as we get older it's very common to become increasingly fixed in our habits. But ... some become more and more flexible and open as they age. Which kind of person do you want to be?
     Often the powerful moment of the spiritual journey is the moment when pain is getting very strong, and we feel we've met our edge and there's no way to pretty it up. ... So at that moment, we can do something different. And by doing something different we can liberate ourselves."

       Pema Chodron, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Summer 2013

Richard Lalonde   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

 

Don't Know Mind, Have No Opinions, See Things as They Are

     “Thinking we know costs us all we don’t know – which is nearly everything. Knowing is a veneer our minds create and lay over the landscape like a painter’s drop cloth set upon a forest floor. Its uniformity protects us from the pine needles and beetles, but it also obscures them, as well as the soft moss, fragrant soil, and teeming complexity of nature’s bed. Our knowing is nearly always tinged by the filter of our conditioned outlook, and what we see as ‘true’ is determined by our expectations, preconceptions, hopes, and fears. In short, the things that define the self stand between our awareness and our environment as such. In moments, however, we catch glints and feel the breezes of something more direct, something outside that self system. It may just be a clearer view of a mountain range … or it may be something with a strong impact on our lives.
     We can meet this world immediately, but … we sacrifice security.”

        Kramer G. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, Boston, 2007.

     Our sense of "being certain": http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/03/crisis-of-faith-limits-of-intellect.html

Tim A2   www.dpreview.com