The Door Swings Both Ways

After a meeting with the Tatamagouche Shambhala Study Group which was a talking circle allowing folks to express how they are feeling about TCCS (The Current Current Situation) ... yes, this has happened before.  I am playing with the notion of finding a way to write blog posts that support those who are confused by the playing out of events; those who want to see what it feels like to approach the door; and those who want to exit but are hoping to preserve some value(s) gained whilst inside.

I have been near the doorway of Shambhala for almost 40 years.  I never went all the way in but was part of the Directors group for the Halifax Center for 7 years in the 90's.  In that role there was welcoming of those interested and nurturing along the path.  I felt like a kind of pastor during those years, effectively doing that kind of service. 

For me, I will probably leave the organization and remain loosely associated with the local group.  During my investigation of TCCS since late June, I have had a series of realizations about Shambhala that others may find useful or helpful. 

visual demonstration of postmodern perception

What i mean, what i meant, what you received …

 

 

 

 

I’m going to lose my Pollyanna credentials for this

How are the Japanese nuclear situation, BP oil spill and Wall street 08 crisis related?  The top 1% serves the top 1% and all else is irrelevant to them, says George Washington in Zero Hedge piece with ample quotes by Joseph Stiglitz Nobel laureate.  This quote is typical;

The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most...[House] representatives...are members of the top 1 percent....are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift--through legislation prohibiting the government...from bargaining over price--it should not come as cause for wonder....Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

So, from the view of Basic Goodness, how can this be workable?

When, we, the people, (think Egypt) begin to wake up to our responsibility to be more than sheep   …  once you could have said that that will never happen, but the communication potential of our time if harnessed beyond, “whatever!” could allow for ???  It has been said that Egypt happened due to Facebook. 

In 2 years Zero Hedge is a must read in the financially community and is not your father’s Wall Street Journal and Tyler Durden is still unknown.

Lifting of the veils you say?

Here is the link

All too often we assume, that apocalypse means destruction as told in the book of Revelation, when, as shown above, both words have to do with veils being lifted and then we see more …

The difference between the two kinds of mystics in the world is that pessimystics see the sky falling and optimystics say it only looks that way because we are ascending.  Thanks to Swami Beyondananda for that one.

What next?

… as time goes on, and I experience more as someone trying to communicate “how to meditate”, it has become obvious that there are obstacles on both sides of the communication.  This book boldly and directly approaches that.  Here is a link to the publisher’s page which allows you to browse in the book.

gotta keep up, maybe not, maybe ok

… who knows what’s happening anymore as the “world” shifts from being “real” or a “place” to being a quantum possibility or a new, consensus agreement.  What is making him go on like this? 

Look:

Just Change It

Are your pesky investors demanding that you beat earnings expectations?  Are those same investors expecting you to make a profit on your real estate portfolio?  Having difficulties in these trying times?  No need to worry friend; if something is hampering your success because of an “outdated” silly notion like honest accounting – just change it.

• GAAP accounting got you down?  Just change it – use non-GAAP accounting.
• Non-GAAP accounting got you down?  Just change it – use Pro Forma (aka, make-it-up-as-you-go-along) accounting.
• Mark-to-market accounting for housing hampering your bonus?  Just change it – get Congress to force FASB to suspend it in favor of “Mark-to-Unicorn” accounting.
• Going to report a huge EPS loss?  Just change it – turn all recurring losses into “one time charges.”
• Are you the Chairman of Federal Reserve and worried about the MASSIVE potential losses you may experience by guaranteeing everything on Fraud Street?  Just change it – change the accounting procedure and make the Treasury eat the losses.

In a recent report from Bank of America we read:

Accounting change prevents a Fed “insolvency” scenario

Mounting concerns about Fed “insolvency” post QE2

Set Your Chickens Free

In trying to present meditation without credentials and as a Way of Being, I have learned how to say the things that allow some of the habitual mental reactions to this teaching to relax.  When I heard that Dorje Denma Ling was presenting The Posture of Meditation, my research clicked on the words, alignment and relaxation and I stepped out of my shadow to attend.

Meeting Will Johnson was so much more than expected.  He has a relatively large, long body that is not that often seen in meditation halls for obvious reasons.  The usual presentation leaves people with that physiology in considerable pain, quite quickly.  He sat in front of us revealing the gentle moans of both pleasure and pain, describing a way to work with ourselves through the felt experience of breath moving body.  Urging us to allow the inevitable movements to bring us to an inner stillness that can never be found by any kind of “holding against” or even “holding for” … no holding!

The content can be summarized by an interview with Will in Tricycle but the experience of spending time with him goes beyond any verbal description.  He asked for far more of us in terms of time and persistence than most modern meditation programs dare e.g. the evening sessions from 8 to 10 pm took us beyond the tiredness and resistance he compassionately acknowledged, but he did not indulge the escape artist inside.  This, in itself, showed the way to work with our habitual resistance, not just to meditation, but to change in how we relate – what we come for in the first place, but are often disappointed in somehow not achieving.  Reframing habitual struggle as a process of discovery, led to sessions that began to shift from, “how long until this is over” to “I could become so curious about where this is going, that I might get past longstanding evasions to doing it at all”

We talk about journey, even adventure, but are mostly stuck in our patterns of shutting out what is labelled uncomfortable.  For me he not only got me to encounter physical discomfort directly and properly, but in so doing, my relationship to emotional discomfort was exposed.  The cocoon was being rocked and gently rolled towards freedom.  Thank you Will.

The following was written as a short review for the program coordinator:  Having spent far too much time in meditation halls where people torture themselves, I came to hear Will because of the keywords alignment and relaxation.  He added so much more; an experiential description of what we label "not too tight, not too loose" he spoke of as an "amoeba-like pulsation" and the head on the shoulders is floating like a fisherman's cork.  Stillness is not holding against, but results from allowing the breath to move the body.  Our practice became a dynamic experience rather than a struggle to hold either a static posture or conform to some kind of static concept of what we should be doing.

A starting point for those who need to know

Last week I saw an item stating that George Soros was urging the Chinese to step up and become the leaders they are in the global money world, control the price of their currency in a way that helps all, etc.  This morning’s news had a piece on the Nobel Prize to a Chinese dissident which drew my mind back to Mr. Soros’ and I found this article that describes an interview he gave a couple of weeks ago.  There are enough links and references in this for anyone interested in the global economic outlook to pursue.  Mr. S is dubbed an eternal optimist, but we always need at least one of those at any time.

An Argument from Right Field that explains the root of confusion

I don’t know how I find these things … well, that’s not exactly true, since they are, apparently, revealed in a pretty timely manner. 

Exhibit A:    Richard Wetherill writes in 1952 The Tower of Babel (free download) a description of human behaviour independent of religion that suggests we are responsible for distortions in our view caused by rationalizing wrong choices … Alpha Publishing gives away his writings.  Irritating and enlightening, they remind me of the precepts and the 8-fold path, summarized splendidly by

Exhibit B:  U Pandita in another freely offered work, In This Very Life, The Liberation Teachings of the Buddha. (1992) He begins by stating that the rock bottom foundation of buddhism and practice is sila, morality and goes on to artfully label this, “A Basic Sense of Humanity”

Bottom line here is that lying (especially to oneself) is what confines us to an experience of confusion.  Our glimpses of the possibility of transforming various poisons often lead us to imagine that we can skip over this basic stuff and then wonder why our practice is often lost in a fog of distractions.  Oy vey!

The first reference gives a stepwise description of unwinding the distortions we have built into our view.  Mindfulness gives us a choice to operate such a process.

After sleeping on this I realize that I am making a judgment, but feel justified in doing so, a dangerous position, for sure … Exhibit A suggests there is an Absolute Right in terms of right/wrong (and that we know what it is) and we moderns/post-moderns recoil, but the buddha did describe a whole series of “rights” … the following paragraph illustrates CTR’s take on one of them:  (arrived just in time forwarded by Jan Watson)

RIGHT SPEECH:  In Sanskrit the word for speech is /vac/, which means /utterance/, /word/, or /logos/. It implies perfect communication, communication which says, "It is so," rather than, "I think it is so." "Fire is hot," rather than "I think fire is hot." Fire /is/ hot, automatically – the direct approach. Such communication is true speech, in Sanskrit /satya/, which means "being true." It is dark outside at this time. Nobody would disagree with that. Nobody would have to say, "I think it is dark outside," or "You must believe it is dark outside." You would just say, "It is dark outside." It is just the simple minimum of words we could use. It is true.

From "The Eightfold Path," in /The Myth of Freedom and the Way of
Meditation/, page 121 in the Shambhala Library edition.

What's Happening Here?

Why these dark rooms appearing on the light background?

Simplest explanation is that I have begun to do most of my writing in dark rooms ... a green room and an orange room that are how computer screens appeared into the 90's until the advent of Windows (I know; Macs never did) ... we are now so used to the clutter of 100 options, gadgets and tools that the flow of words to "paper" is subject to many distractions.

I am also teaching meditation in various ways and talking to myself about it as well.  So putting the tracks, opening up the dark rooms, here is a way for my dear readers to experience the contrast described in the piece below.

STOP for Being: A meditation instuction

This happens in another room; A present place with others learning meditation …

To see it completely, Click on it (Press Ctrl + to enlarge) … to return, Click the back arrow in your browser.

John Sherman cuts the crap out of Advaita

Advaita, often the headline name for non-dual philosophy these days  …  and while stating that our True nature is one with the infinite and that our imagined lives are, well, just that … this view often puts people’s backs up, or does not get enough traction to form a path out of the human maze …  check out this statement which is the intro quote in John’s recent ebook, available free on his website:

In spending our lives learning to tell our story, mostly to ourselves, we really only meet ourselves in terms of either reflections of our bodies in a mirror or in comparing concepts we have of our “self” with what we imagine other “selves” are or think, etc.  Self-definition  …  hard and frustrating work, that nobody really has to do.  Who cares?  John is talking about looking directly at our experience of being alive, of existing … without regard for what we find or not.

Video clip of John in action with a questioner …  doesn’t get much clearer than this  … part 2 if you’re interested.

… and finally a quote of direct pointing what to DO …

“Most important is to hold your attention on something that you believe to be your self. Since your self is everything whatsoever, it does not really matter! There is no way of determining, of defining, of pointing to some particular experience that is your self. Most important is to find some location in the mind that seems to be you, and to hold your attention there — without regard to all the Advaitic nonsense. I say nonsense because, in the context of one who is earnestly seeking for an end to their belief in the experience of separation, all of these ideas are nonsense.  For the one who believes oneself to be the doer, the thinker, the sufferer, all the ideas that deny the existence of the doer, the doing, the done, the sufferer, the suffering, all of these ideas are useless.

You must start where you are. Make this effort, just for
today. Find some thing that feels like “me”, and hold onto it. And
when your attention skitters away from it, hold onto it again.
Ramana promises that a) the actual entry into the core of ego is
the dissolution of ego, which does not mean that ego disappears;
and b) if you try for nothing other than this, with all your heart,
you will be successful, you will be unable to fail.”

… this is from another free ebook found on John’s site, “Meeting Ramana Maharshi”

In a pretty small nutshell

Pointing out the nature of human experience beyond the fantasized “self”  … This is Jean Klein in his 90’s at the time of this speaking.  I have stalled in his book, “Transmission of the Flame” on these opening paragraphs.  What further can be read?

Right Here, Right Now …. John Wheeler

"There is no ordinary life. Life is a grand display or flowering within the vast and clear presence of the divine intelligence. Every leaf and piece of dust is cradled in an expanse of light and presence. That presence-awareness that contains all things is also the deep presence of love and peace always. It is your own real being. The universe being revealed in each moment is aflame with the presence of exquisite love. In that, even the most ordinary thing is a unique and wonderful expression of the underlying oneness of all."

Poke around in here to find more ….  John is always pointing to direct experience, so if “you” think you need a “break” and can forget about “yourself” for a nanosecond or two … the fabled Kingdom may appear.

Catch you if I can …

It has been a moving experience for the last 3 months  …  settled into 3 times the area, room to breathe for both of us and the cats and a pretty decent space to work in … 2 months off “work” and out of sync with what used to be my world account for the gap here as well.  Worth it for sure and a lot of information has flooded my gates and will soon, I hope, appear here for those of you who can only keep up with me this way.

David Wilcock has also been busy writing a book he had not planned and releasing a new video … he describes all of that in his blog.

Here is the workspace … I know, not much different from the point of view of 2 screens and some books …

And the view from the 10th floor window at night … main thing is still big sky, like at “home”  … both places deservedly called Grand View.

Daytime view … looking over the arm Cowie Hill and Fairview/Rockingham …

“Feature wall in living room”  …  plus the added feature of open space indoors ….

Dining set that sort of fell from the sky  …  Dakin place sold and Ethan had to get rid of a lot of stuff fast, so we “helped”

Most Important Post here thus far

Big claim, available for all readers to test in experience/understanding … this document represents as far as I can comprehend the unification of all the traditions and most significantly the inner, often secret facets of them i.e. Kabbalah. Christian mysticism, Sufism, Vedanta, Tantric schools, the high Masonic degrees etc.  I would think and hope that you will feel a thrill of recognition as you read this … with the dawning realization that none of us is separated from our sincere brothers and sisters, no matter the differences in symbols, myths and cultural stories.  I am experiencing a personal healing of conceptual pain from past, more shadowed judgements tossed out by those who taught us our traditions.  I know that as you read this, that ancient, habitual, cultural judgements will be stirred, but at the same time it is calling us to see the Unity we inhabit and we can read words that surprise us; power words that are common in origin and intent to remind us of our Unity (cf footnotes).  All of this, even the seeming differences, exist within each of us.  We can allow this co-existence and also allow peace to enter.

It seems to me, that the relative is honoured here, within a Song of Praise to the Absolute and both are seen as integral to our human source and experience.  The ultimate realization is that each of us is experiencing a call to allow for this larger understanding to play out in our own lives and experience as we learn to let go of separative judgements in order to bring our own disparate parts into harmony by our inner work.

It is long and deep and requires some patience to pursue this and my understanding is meagre … those of you like Ray and Scott who have much stronger connections to your respective traditions may be able to help the rest of us come to further insight and I encourage you in the most heartfelt way to attempt to do so.  I believe that this is what we are here for.

Link to Gerald O’Donnell’s New Year 2010 message

Please leave whatever comments might occur to you, so we might wrestle with this challenge together somehow.  A most cheerful and blessed New Year to all of you, David

________________________________________________

Footnotes in the headlights:

Gospel of Thomas

This all strikes me as the ultimate message of Basic Goodness

His use of Ra ”the one across”  and David Wilcock’s bedrock reference in The Law of One material which is spoken by Ra.  Also appearing as: The Egyptian Sun God.

While the Tantric schools are non-theistic and therefore do not speak of the One, Unity is the Absolute pointed to continually.

Could Zen be somehow associated with Zion?

I remain, full of concepts, while having mixed minds most thoroughly in this life with Rod (non-conceptual buddhist), Ray (non-conceptual Hebrew), Rainer (non-conceptual Shambhallian) and Scott (non-conceptual Christian), constantly encouraged to go forward, allowing everything by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

In some ways, this is all going too quickly and I am going to have to leave cookie crumb trails in public for some of you, in order to not have duplicate efforts.  Here is one for Scott, if interested in the Gospel of Thomas as a sermon topic.  (article by F. F. Bruce, who is)

What might be a multi-coloured herring showed up doing this work.  It certainly is part of the 2012 theme.

Interesting … Chinese … times … eh?

whether it is “true” or not, the following is a bit like smelling salts … pungent and awakening, an old friend used to say, “we sit here half-asleep and then all of a sudden both feet hit the floor and we experience full sobriety”

______________________________________________

GAME-CHANGING EVENTS NOW UNDERWAY -- THE DRAGON RISES

Benjamin Fulford gave additional insider detail on how this story of the tungsten forgeries fits into the 'big picture' on the November 17, 2009 entry on his website (emphasis added):

China quietly introduces new financial system

China has stealthily introduced a new financial system based on the renminbi, which is well on its way to becoming fully convertible -- according to a high-level Chinese source.

In addition, China is purchasing 10,000 tons of gold to back up a new fund designed to develop and market heretofore forbidden and suppressed [i.e. UFO-related free-energy] technologies.

The fund will be based outside of China, and will be controlled by prominent members of the Chinese overseas community.

The gold purchase will take some time because of the logistics of transporting it -- and the Chinese wish to test it thoroughly. Both the Chinese government and MI6 now confirm reports that much of the gold sold by the Federal Reserve Board over the past decade is in fact gold-plated tungsten.

For its part, the renminbi is now convertible with South American currencies, the rouble, Middle-Eastern currencies, the yen, South East Asian currencies and African currencies.

“We will slowly introduce our new financial system in parallel with the old one and hope that people steadily migrate towards it,” the Chinese official says. 

Meanwhile, the latest G20 meeting ended in acrimony and chaos.

The leadership of the West is in total disarray, and will remain so until the Federal Reserve Board’s bankruptcy becomes visible even to the most brainwashed section of the Western public.

This is now expected by January or February.

Both MI6 and a senior Chinese government source now predict the collapse of the Federal Reserve dollar by that time.

We are also hearing various reports that many Pentagon and other US alphabet suit agency figures with both US and Israeli citizenship have recently fled to Israel. Things are coming to a head.

the above quote popped out of a massive David Wilcock transmission on Christmas eve … he knows how to give a timely gift … this takes time to read and may need some grains of salt, but your intuition will guide you and if you make it through, leave a comment here.  I’d like to see what we’re thinking.

How Ironic … well that’s a nice way of putting it.

They say Mohamed El-Erian was “having a heart attack” at the way Larry Summers, then Harvard president was handling the large cash element of the University’s finances.  He only lost 1.8B there … and it is less than reassuring that he is now the head of Obama’s Economic team.  I got a small kick out of the the Moslem gentleman’s distress over the mad American’s foolhardy fearlessness.  The cash part is usually what is not used for gambling, except by opportunistic males on their way to infamy either at home or elsewhere.

It’s ALWAYS a Question of Balance

This rock washed up on the Nova Scotian shore at Arisaig … an overnight appearance, balanced on less than 2 inches of space.

You really have to click on this to see it properly and in full perspective.

amazing, eh?

Primarily for Photos

Are these paragraphs intriguing?

A mathematical representation of an action at a distance effect is called a field, such as a gravitational or electric field. It was Albert Einstein’s foremost hope to find a single relation which would express the effect of both electric and gravitational phenomena; in fact, a theory which would unify the whole of physics, a unified field theory. Einstein believed that this was a creation of total order and that all physical phenomena were evolved from a single source.

This unified field theory, describing matter as pure field, has been
accomplished now. It seems that the entire situation was analogous to the solution of a ponderously complex Chinese puzzle. If you can find that the right key turns among so many wrong ones, the puzzle easily falls apart. Dewey B. Larson found the solution to this problem, and the puzzle not only fell apart, but revealed an elegantly adequate unified field theory rich in practical results; and, like a good Chinese puzzle, the solution was not complex, just unexpected. Instead of assuming five dimensions, Larson assumed six, and properly labelled them as the three dimensions of space and the three dimensions of time. He assumed that there is a three-dimensional coordinate time analogous to our observed three-dimensional space.

The result of this approach is that one can now calculate from the basic postulate of Larson’s theory any physical value within our physical universe, from sub-atomic to stellar. This long-sought-after unified field theory is different because we are accustomed to thinking of time as one-dimensional, as a stream moving in one direction. Yet once you get the hang of it, coordinate time is mathematically a more comfortable concept with which to deal. Professor Frank Meyer of the Department of Physics at
the University of Wisconsin presently distributes a quarterly newsletter to scientists interested in Larson’s new theory which explores perplexing questions in physical theory using Larson’s approach. I was interested in testing Larson’s theory and made extensive calculations using his postulate. I became convinced that his theory is indeed a workable unified field theory.

Here is Larson’s 3 volume, The Structure of the Physical Universe. (pdf can be downloaded, with a right click …), a reference to  Frank Meyer’s website and to the International Society of Unified Science, Inc.

(my apologies for dumping this on you like this …. after my shower this morning the command was, “get this to Photos” … I had many other thoughts about how to do it gradually and politely which might have ended up being, “never” … so it is what it is.)

Let me know if you get it here, otherwise I will put this link on Facebook for you.

burkhold@gmail.com