I If you do not practice for a day, then you are a ghost for a day; if you do practice for a single breath, then you are a realized immortal for a breath. - The Secret of the Golden Flower

Tranquility in disturbance...Who can be patient until life returns to the dance. - I' Ching 47

Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the courses of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. - St. Augustine

I wrote this many years ago and in these turbulent times and times of change and challenge it just seems appropriate still.

Stress-Restraint-Stillness

This famous photograph has always had a big impact on me. The world is full of these powerful waves of turbulence, cruelty, pain, suffering, setbacks of all kinds – the relentless pounding by waves large and small. Yet somehow there is this calmness, this peace that resides inside. It is hard to remember or find it sometimes when my mind reacts in fear or sadness or frustration or disappointment in the turbulence. But I haven’t lost it yet. On the contrary, as I stay with practice, as I live life as ceremony, the still mountain is more present than ever.

I found it amusing that the lighthouse keeper told in his story that he heard the sound of the helicopter from which this photo was taken and came outside. He realized a giant wave was about to engulf the structure, rushed back inside just in time to save his life. In an interview he said "If I had been a little further away from the door, I would not have made it back into the tower. And I would be dead today. You cannot play with the sea." 

How often have I been distracted by phenomena of the world and strayed too far from the door? Seduced by temptations of physical desires and distractions?  Pulled away by fear? 

The seas are not personal and they are not me.

I am reminded of this poem by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind, 

Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts 

Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves 

In the infinite ocean of samsara. 

Rest in natural great peace

QUESTIONS

You must question what you hold to be sacred and learn to let it go.  In a world of change, the idea of sacred holds little relevance.  (I' Ching Hexagram 50)

If assumptions are questioned deeply enough, they let go of themselves.  (Stephen Mitchell, Second Book of the Tao)

Your unquestioned thoughts about life lead you to believe that there is something out of order, and that can never be true. (Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy)

The most difficult thing in the world is to question an assumption you've never consciously made.  How do you even begin to question something that is so normal it's invisible? (Phillip Sheridan, Radical Wholeness)

When a person comes to a teacher with a question, he is actually aware of the two possible answers to it - one is generally the easy way out, with no growth or change involved, and the other is the uneasy answer, the one that causes us to evolve by letting go of some aspect of our habitual identity.  Most of the time, people who seek help do not want to change.  They expect to be taken care of, listened to, confirmed and pampered. (Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot)

Once again I am repurposing this ancient blog.  If you have come from my Gene Keys Guide page, welcome to the experiment.   Frankly, I have no idea what this blog will become as the experiment unfolds.  More than likely, more of the same.  In other words, just randomly posting when it feels right and, just as important, I feel I have something to say.

Feel free to browse through previous posts here - it may help to gain some insight into my world at the time of those posts years ago.  Once thing that will be noticeable to some is that there is a lot of Human Design languaging.   I don't know how much of that will carry through new writings.  But the knowledge still has a lot of validity and value even if I rarely talk or study Design.  A lot of it has been embodied and/or synthesized.  But the languaging is still the clearest for me to communicate certain concepts.  I can say the same for Gene Keys.  What will be most important is that whatever I have to say in the coming days, I don't want to get bogged down in or reflect the concepts in a mental framework.  

For those of you that may have read this work before, the experiment I am referring to above is that I have offered my services as a Gene Key Guide to answer questions.   I have found in my own journey that certain questions can create a stuck point in progress.  This might or might not be obvious.  In the early days of Design or Keys, this often was around a technical term.  In this case, I was aware of what was causing the stuckness.  But sometimes we aren't aware of what the stuck point is.  In these systems, it often revolved around interpreting a word or phrase in the way they are commonly used.  Often in my case it would be years before the meaning finally clicked to another perspective of the term.  

Perspective is another hinge point that can suddenly move you up the spiral.   In this case, a question can lead to a change in perspective, however slight, that triggers an avalanche of insight or a sudden dismantling of years of conditioned perspective when a foundational idea is questioned.

It is important to me though to point out that I am not coming into this from a Master or even a Teacher aspect.  I will only be able to give you a perspective on your questions, asked or not, that comes through my own design and my own experience in this grand experiment.

Seasons of Peace

Peace is who you are without a story, until the next stressful story appears.  (Byron Katie)

Peace is an outlook you can carry with you at all times by remembering cycles.    (I' Ching Hexagram 11)

There are plenty of escape routes but there is no realizing peace through any of them. They are all cul-de-sacs. (Michael Brown)

I have noticed how Peace continually surfaces in the conversations. Usually as some sort of goal – to be at peace with myself, etc. I would like to share briefly my current synthesis around Peace. In Design and Gene Keys, at the time of my birth, the Sun was in Key or Gate 6 – and thus a part of my Incarnation Cross - my Life's Work. In Gene Keys this is the Gate of Peace. But Life's Work as opposed to Vocation it is something that is, for me,shared through my aura, my beingness to the extent that I purify my heart. But in the I' Ching the hexagram is called Conflict. In Design, it is the Gate of Friction. Both denote aspects of growth. Growth requires friction and conflict. 

Again, in Gene Keys the spectrum is from the Shadow of Conflict to the Gift of Diplomacy to the Siddhi of Peace. I am directing this at the conflict within ourselves. At the shadow frequency our conditioned minds keeps us continuously focused on the conflict. We spend our time trying to heal the effects, which cannot be done. The analogy of a clogged artery comes to mind. The clog is seen as the cause of the failing heart. Surgery and stints and drugs are used to dissolve the clog. But the clog is the effect; until the cause of the clog is addressed, it will always return. Diplomacy at its broadest interpretation is the change of behavior to facilitate harmony between the conflicted parts. But, in our work, behavior is the effect. Unless we address the underlying wounding, the cause, the behavior will return, as with addictions. However, the beauty is that the behavior will naturally melt away with the integration of this unfinished business. To my mind, this is the dynamics of the breakdown/breakthrough process. Integration being the key. And once the breakthrough comes, we feel peace.  

But this Gate of Peace is an emotional gate. It operates in a wave from Conflict to Peace and back again. The wheel is always turning. We begin again in the next step of the cycle. Maturation is a step by step process. If you skip steps, inevitably you have to return back to begin again. So Peace is transitory yet real, like the seasons. Winter does not end because we don't like the cold. The other seasons will arrive in their own timing. I have found over time with my practice that as my true nature emerges from the veils of conditioning there does arrive what Rinpoche called a natural great peace. We don't seek peace; we allow peace to emerge and to retreat. The ceremony never ends.

I Have Always Been Here

Love the pitcher less and the water more.  (Rumi)

Someone asked Vernon Howard, "I try to believe in myself, but I find that I just can't do so."  His response:  "Instead of trying to believe in yourself, try to discover yourself.  Do this by seeing the difference between belief and discovery.  The captain of the Titanic believed his ship could not sink."

All of life will not change you; it unfolds as a way to unmask you….Like fruit that has fallen to the earth, the seed can only take root when its protective covering disintegrates. (Cafeausoul – Hexagram 23)

I know that there are a lot of people out there who have had the long experience of following this and that path, system, beliefs, etc – one after another.  I am sure there are both common reasons for that and individual reasons for it.  But it is hard to reconcile the idea of surrender to Life with thinking that all of those things that “came to naught” were mistakes.  We cannot possibly grasp what the long game is.  We are here to experience the mundane results of being consciousness in form.  How that fits into the cosmic consciousness is not up to us to understand.  One of the keynotes of the Open Head Center is thinking about things that don’t matter – that don’t matter to your own life.   Things that cannot be known or things you can know but don’t need to know. 

Occasionally I experience one of those moments where I can see the threads of my life and the interconnections in one frozen moment.   I can see all of those things, the beliefs, the practices, the rituals and ceremonies that I have walked through and I wonder which one held the key that enabled me to arrive at the consciousness that I am at this moment.   Or is it the quantum of all of that?  I prefer to see the driving force as the synthesis of all of it.   But as I settled down to simple practices, it has become apparent that whatever lies beneath all of these syntheses it seems to keep coming back to being present, to mindfulness.  Most of the practice that I have been drawn to, while it may be accompanied by varying complexities of the language presenting the practice or convincing us of the value of the practice, most of it has the ultimate value of just teaching me to be aware of what is, of what I am doing or thinking, or not doing or thinking.  Through that process comes the letting go of what doesn’t serve.  Through the letting go comes the revelation of the true self.  What is left after the water recedes is what is essential.  and it actually seems to become more and more effortless over time.

I am increasingly coming to see that whatever my expectations were when starting this journey about the nature of the transformed person was part of the problem.  Despite the efforts of my mind and its strategic conditioning, its adaptive strategies, the true nature of my Design has always made itself known.  I just never recognized that that part was the real me and it has been here all along.  That slow evolution that is sometimes so frustrating wasn’t really the slowness to change; it was the slowness to see and accept what was always here.

R.I.P John Perry Barlow

If you're not lost, you're not much of an explorer.

I'm a member of that half of the human race which is inclined to divide the human race into two kinds of people. My dividing line runs between the people who crave certainty and the people who trust chance.

We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

I have always felt that no matter how inscrutable its ways and means, the universe is working perfectly and working according to a greater plan than we can know.

--- John Perry Barlow

I suppose for many the name of John Barlow will not mean much.  For legions of Deadheads though the name is commonplace.  Barlow spent many years as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, working mainly with Bob Weir.  But Barlow also had many outside interests as a rancher, a politician and an activist, most notably in his work for a free internet.  As with most of the Dead, he was an independent thinker.  If you listen to any interview with him in Dead related videos, you were just as likely to hear a contrarian point of view of their history.   He will be missed.

I want to reproduce here something that he wrote when he discovered at a certain age that he was an adult now and pondered what that meant.  Here are his 25 Principles of Adult Behavior:

·        Be patient. No matter what.

·        Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.

·        Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.

·        Expand your sense of the possible.

·        Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.

·        Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.

·        Tolerate ambiguity.

·        Laugh at yourself frequently.

·        Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.

·        Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.

·        Give up blood sports.

·        Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.

·        Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)

·        Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.

·        Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.

·        Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.

·        Praise at least as often as you disparage.

·        Admit your errors freely and soon.

·        Become less suspicious of joy.

·        Understand humility.

·        Remember that love forgives everything.

·        Foster dignity.

·        Live memorably.

·        Love yourself.

·        Endure.

The only point at which I might have some contention is “Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.”  Now I assume I know what he meant by that.  In the context of overly focusing on your personal identity issues, I can agree.  But in another context, I do not.  

In the collective field, statements of universal truths are rampant.  These statements are often taken as axioms.  In the old paradigms, these are perfectly acceptable.  But are there really truths which are applicable to everyone?  Are we entering an evolutionary stage where personal truth is paramount?   I don’t really want to get deep into that but suffice to say that this isn’t the same as anarchy or relativism, where whatever I want or desire I can or should act on. 

In the Design world, we are essentially guided to what is correct for us by our unique Inner Authority.  This isn’t a mind function.  We don’t get to create, intend or guide what our Authority communicates to us.  We have no choice in that matter.  We can only surrender to that guidance.   This isn’t really much different from a lot of systems except for the aspect of unique personal Authority. 

But there is a price for this uniqueness.  First is that we must live in absolute integrity with that Authority.  We cannot use it as a strategy to get what we think we want.  It requires surrender to Life.   Another price is that we cannot know the motives and reality of others.  We have to ask the other to find that out.  It follows also then that we really can only speak from our own experiences.   When all participants live as their true selves then true communication can take place.  Thus it follows that indeed we do need to use the personal pronoun, the “I”.   Again, this is not the “I“ of ego or of identity.  But it does point to the experiential processes of the individual which must be authentic.  I can really only know truth as I experience it through my design, my limitations.  Through sharing in its myriad aspects, we can arrive at some conclusions of the wisdom of our past experiences and forge an experimental pattern to guide the collective to the future.  

I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream.
I can tell by the mark he left, you were in his dream.
Ah child of countless trees, ah child of boundless seas.

Flight of the seabirds
Scattered like lost words,
Wield to the storm and fly.
Fare thee well now, let your life proceed by it's own design.
Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.

--- Cassidy, lyrics by John Barlow

Sharing

We‘re here to filter the consciousness field. And we‘re here to filter it as purely as we can and share it. - Ra

Through simply understanding one’s own patterns of suffering at a higher level, one simultaneously activates the higher frequency of that pattern, which in turn transforms one’s environment. It is not that one actually changes one’s environment, but one perceives it at a higher frequency, which changes one’s attractor patterns and leads to quantum leaps, both spiritually and materially. - Richard Rudd

Where can I find someone who has penetrated beyond words?  That's whom I'd like to have a word with.  (Chuang-tzu)

Sharing is a concept that is unavoidable in many contexts.  In the more intentional environments it is a paramount and essential component.  At tea I was thinking about this topic.   It may be more an issue with me since I resist sharing circles - not that I refuse or I don't see their value.  Oh, I am sure I could come up with many reasons for this resistance.  But it was a Human Design perspective that led me down this path.  

First was in the study of circuitry, particularly the Collective Circuitry Group.  This is by far the largest circuit group in the BodyGraph. 

While it has two major circuits, Understanding and Sensing, the common keynote is Sharing – and this is true for every channel and gate that is part of those circuits.   Notice that the circuit runs around the outside like a cell membrane as if the boundary between us and the other is built upon sharing.  But the sharing is not a social function.  It is not an indiscriminate display of emotions or experiences.  In fact a lot of the BodyGraph expresses a limitation on indiscriminate, spontaneous sharing.  The timing of sharing is often predicated on some form of waiting or restraint. 

If we as Spirits incarnate in these forms as an experiment of consciousness in form, and if we are all uniquely designed to experience, in a limited, unique fashion, this creation in all of its infinite aspects, then there must be a way for the individual experience to be given to the collective, cosmic, consciousness.   This exchange is the purpose of sharing, whether it is experiential or logical.  It follows also that Collective sharing is not personal and not necessarily reciprocal.  This aspect alone can cause consternation in the context of traditional sharing.   A lot of Design is not personal and this is not acceptable to many people.  But the sharing of what has been learned through experience and experiment is what moves consciousness.

Sharing is usually limited to mental communication (and all the variations of speech, writing, Facebook, on and on).  But that is only one format in which sharing can take place.  It also seems to me to be the one most susceptible to conditioned, Not-Self distortion.    Two other methods of communication that are more direct are the electro-magnetic connections and the aura.   The EM connection, through the connection of harmonic gates, is quite impersonal; anyone, as well as the transits, can make that connection.   The information flowing through that connection though is only as free from conditioning as the people involved are.   The aura connection though seems to be the purest form of connection.   If the auras do the talking, then the mind is not involved.  But we have to be correct within ourselves and sensitive to what is happening. 

There is another form of sharing which, frankly, I know very little about.  According to Ra, when we are asleep (in the horizontal position), our experience of the creation is “uploaded” to humanity as a whole.  So the synarchy mind is constantly being fed the new “data”, logical, experiential and individual.  

On the more mundane level, sharing satisfies other more tribal functions as well.  Here is where the personal aspects of sharing obtain their preeminence.   Especially in the shared Maia that we have created.  We need it for the warmth of our relationships.  We need it sometimes to simply be able to live together.   We need it for our inherent drives for community and for attainment, to move forward.    Awareness is the key discriminatory element.  It is so easy to use sharing as a way to reinforce the bubble that we have created - circular feedback which reinforces the commonality and binds us to it.   This is where unaware, indiscriminate, sharing can be most dangerous.

We also share through our work and our art.  Often times, this can be a purer form.  When the artist or craftsman or the creator of conscious work of any kind, when their intentions are purified, focused, clarified and poured into their work, then we receive that frequency directly.  

Verbal sharing then is the most susceptible to Not-Self distortion, yet it is the most widely used and praised.  We are built for articulated speech.  The whole BodyGraph is focused on manifestation through the Throat.   But what is manifested is not necessarily true.  That is where we need to rely on inner authority and awareness and mindfulness.

A Formula

Either you are wrong or I am right – David Gilmour

What this knowledge offers you is nothing but fear. Understand that. Because if you have to wait for the response you can’t be half pregnant, you have to really be there waiting in your power. And it can be so frustrating because you think you may never be asked, and that when you are asked you will not be asked what you want to have asked. It takes courage to become yourself. And for you, you need the proof. And you can’t get the proof unless you just see for yourself that this is the way it truly works for you. You are here to respond, that’s your perfection.  - Ra Uru Hu

Whenever a new idea rushes into the mind, it smashes into a mass of distorting elements; like a ball tossed hard against the walls of a closet, the idea bounces against our fixed attitudes and opinions. – Vernon Howard

This is going to be a rather long post.  I have been organizing my computer files and archiving.  It has turned into an oracle experience.  I keep running into things I wrote or saved that tie into what I am experiencing or contemplating. 

Without going into details, I have been seeing more levels in the deep conditioning that was involved in the creation of the primacy of my mind in my life – especially the long years I spent in school.   I spent over 22 years in the academic world.   A lot of that was shed pretty quickly but not so much the underlying paradigm.  Deep in the logic world.   I keep circling back in my work to a point of doubt about all of this.  But these are basically logical doubts – definitely not strong enough for met to give up.  Then I am allowed to see where I am acting from the paradigm that there is always an explanation, an answer, to the phenomena of life if we just keep learning.  Along with this is an implied hierarchical model – that there are set paths to attainment.  I suspect it is tied rather intimately with the need for certainty that I discussed in an earlier post.  I cannot speak to the legitimacy of any of those approaches.  When I feel a strong resistance to a formula, I have learned to let it open up as cracks in my cosmic egg, my conceptual framework.   It is a paradox though.  Letting go of those frameworks and the idea that there is no universal path - that it is fluidic - conflicts with my intuitive belief that this is all an immaculate design.   I do not wish to go down that hole right now except to say that paradoxes don’t seem to bother me much anymore.  I am in an experiment with my life – one that involves surrendering to that design as my unique Self. 

So I found the following piece I wrote in a journal some time ago – obviously in one of my many melancholic moods as I was shedding the layers of what doesn’t serve me.  But it mirrored the idea of living in that world of formula.

I always mistrusted the abilities of my mind – not the concept of mind itself, but of my individual mind.  Outside of academics or other intellectual pursuits, I never knew how make decisions or even what questions to ask.  Whatever I did was in response, but in response through pressure – the fear of failing, of being humiliated in others’ eyes, the fear of not knowing what to do, of not really wanting to do anything.  As far back as I can remember I just wanted to play, to create worlds – first with my toys, then creating cities and lands outside in the sand, dirt or the creeks by which I lived.  Or to go off by myself in the woods and live imaginary adventures.   Everything else I did because that is the way of the world.  I may have appeared to be creating my decisions – I wouldn’t have been comfortable admitting that I didn’t have a clue about anything in this world.  So I bounced from one thing to the next.  I followed the stream as it was given to me and created a niche in every crack in those worlds.  For all intents and purpose, from the outside I did pretty well.  I was always well-liked but always an outsider.  In high school, I was friends with everyone in all the typical circles – from geek to jock to the socially popular.  But after school was out I wasn’t a part of those circles.  I was rarely invited to anything in the social realm.  I was an undercover loner.   Home was similar.  I didn’t cause problems.  I was a good kid but never felt like I really belonged there either.  I was always escaping – either moving around (walking or later driving in my car) by myself.  Or I was in my room, reading mostly.  Music and, later, drugs allowed me to stay in this mode of life for decades.

But even then almost every decision about my life was made because I was forced to make a decision and then making a decision between the alternatives that were given to me and then making the decision just to ease the pressure.   But then of course going through the next level of fear about how I was going to do it when I had no idea how.  I did well in school because I mainly stuck to things that were essentially formulaic.  Fortunately for me all education in the public realm is like that.   Science and math – all the problems were the same.  The formulas were known – all the equations that were needed.  In the problems, you just took the formulas that were appropriate, the variables were always in the problem, disguised in various ways (the so-called “word” problems).  So just put in the numbers and get the answers.  You could even check your answers. 

History, language, civics – these were primarily matters of memorization.  Even essays were just an extension of the formula idea.  I got good at knowing what the acceptable answers were.  How to play the system even if I didn’t think of it in those terms.   The gist of the answer was contained in the question - informed by the classroom work, the textbook and the lectures.  This gave a sort of equation.  Then just plug in the variables which have been memorized.  Take a position (i.e. pick one of the acceptable equations) and solve.  The effect though was all about survival and defense.

So now I see myself doing the same thing.  Creating my little worlds inside of cracks.  But as old age approaches and I find myself increasingly alone – after intentionally throwing away the old safety nets - I now sometimes face, especially at night, abject fears about my survival.  It was easier being the loner, the hermit, when I lived within a protective shield – whether it was supportive or healthy was not the issue.   

Decisions were made, in essence. for me, at least – the framework - in other words, the range of decisions that were possible.   I only had to do the work.  I became an embodiment of that process of problem solving.  I was one of the variables.  Now I am in the position of not having those safety nets and find myself still incompetent in creatively fashioning a life, a path, a direction.  And I am so afraid of failure.  Failure seems so much more real and dangerous now.  The stakes are basic things like health, a place to live, food to eat, etc.

So enter fear and still seeing through these lifelong lenses and doubting my decisions.  Right and wrong decisions are no longer in the realm of doing what fits, what relieves pressure, what makes my protectors happy so that I am safe.  I am the child thrown out into the world again, unprepared with the skills needed.  Not knowing the questions or the answers.  Alone – the orphan.  But still unable to express the fear.  Just do not appear weak, do not reveal the fear, the helplessness.  That will only make matters worse.  It is one thing to live in that reality – another to compound it by having others know that you are that helpless.

So, yes, I doubted the wisdom behind my actions.  Following dreams and concepts derived from others and then seeing them as if they were smoke - Increasingly hard to see and grasp.  Still just coninuing from the momentum after recognizing that I am no longer following something substantial.  No one can help me here.  My actions were a bridge-burning.  I am alone and afraid.  There are no more working equations and I don’t understand them anyway.

Well, I have come a long way from that nodal point in my life.  A lot of the fear has dissipated and a good chunk of the victim outlook.  It is still daunting to face the intensity of fully accepting and surrendering to the fullness of life without the comfort of all that conceptual dependence.  But when I hit those moments of pause, where I very briefly get to touch the reality of the sacred geometry of this existence, I see the fragility of that doubt and conflict and turbulence and the value of having gone through them so that I could open up to those moments.

Dandelion Wine

Experience never misleads; what you are misled by is only your judgment, and this misleads you by anticipating results from experience of a kind that is not produced by your experiments. — Leonardo Da Vinci

We need neither to paint like Picasso or write like Shakespeare to experience creation.  The simple act of breathing in and out is always our most powerful and enduring experience of creation.

I am a middle class home, I am a worn out banjo
I'll never dance in Swan Lake, I'll never play the cello
I am the Northern Lights, I am invisible
I am a dandelion, I am forever wild 

But you were looking for an orchid
And I will always be a dandelion
 ---  Antje Duvekot, Dandelion

I have decided to rename this work to Dandelion Wine.  The name Mobius Trip comes from a much earlier time and was more of a private reference at that time. 

In case you are not familiar with the reference, Dandelion Wine was the name of a 1957 novel from famed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.  In my early years I read a lot of Bradbury but I did not run across this one until much later.  I am not sure when I found it but it was probably over 40 years ago.  For some reason, the book had a profound effect on me.  I have re-read it many times and still keep a copy of it.  I had just finished reading it again when I wrote my first short story, The Crack.  Bradbury’s style influenced my own style immensely.  The book is, on the surface, a sort of autobiographical look at small town life in the Midwestern US.   It is not his usual style and is quite lyrical and populated with metaphors that probe deeply into the undercurrents of our experiential life.   It is essentially a collection of vignettes tied together as a summer of a twelve-year old boy.   That was also how I wrote my story.  In those days, I rode a transit bus to work and I decided to try writing a chapter on each 45 minute commute.  So it turned out to also be an episodic look at that crossroads in my path, tied together by the appearance of a mysterious crack in the wall of my room.

The other feature of the book that I found so powerful was that it was, in many ways, just the stream of experience and consciousness of the boy.  A whole chapter often was not much more than a vibrant description of Presence in the experience of the ordinary life.  In later readings this aspect of the writing seemed to be highlighted by my experiment in surrendering to the flow of life and in cultivating presence and mindfulness.  My life has always been quite ordinary and simple.  But when not under the pressure of the world, I seemed to maintain the ability to be absorbed by the ordinary – particularly the backside of the world around me.  On walks I would go down the alleys – a totally different experience of a neighborhood than when experienced from the street level where an image was usually consciously projected by the homeowners.  I liked going down the stairwells at work rather than the elevators.  The bare concrete with all of the pipes, meters and other infrastructure was more nourishing.  Now my life seems to have reached a new level of ordinariness and simplicity.  Cultivation of awareness in these moments and letting go of the strong conceptual filters of my conditioning attenuates time.  When awareness was only triggered by the high

points or landmarks of the day, the intervening time between those highlights was lost to memory.  But when every moment starts to be experienced and recognized then the flow becomes more fluid.  Time then is experienced differently as it is not broken up by specific events.  Meaning is experienced differently as the influence of expectation recedes and a kind of equanimity of the felt perception takes over.  

I know that I am just touching on my ability to surrender to that level – to stay in a mindful state.  But that has been an unexpected result of this path, at least in the sense that it wasn’t something I set out to do.  Now I have a taste of what living at that level of awareness is like. 

Right now, that is what writing here is like for me.   In the book, the bottling of dandelion wine mirrored Douglas Spaulding’s experience of his summer.  The ordinary and mundane parts of life, the weeds can be magical and intoxicating from a different perspective, a distillation of life itself.    What is the connecting thread of these isolated vignettes?   I am not sure it matters anymore to me.  Everything rises and passes away.  It is only while it is here that it has any meaning but that meaning comes after the experience of it.  Later, after you uncork that bottle of Dandelion Wine.

Eye of the Storm

Just because of the mood I'm in
I know there's more to the weather than the western wind
And I feel like I'm gonna feel
Like a willow tree that's got some branches to bend

-        Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nothing of the Kind

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.  - Ram Dass

For as long as you opened your hearts to the frequencies of fear, you used your power to give credibility to fear’s illusions.  -  Ken Carey

I have been experiencing for the last four or five days a pretty deep melancholy which, at least for now, reached its zenith today.   The gradual loss of energy eventually resulted in a physical illness yesterday which extended into today.  The result of that is a particularly potent test to allow and release.  At some points it was particularly challenging but I still maintained, over the whole wave, a fair degree of surrender to it without letting the mind’s stories dominant and lead me.   The illness was a definite punctuation, an added level of difficulty. 

One thing I noticed though was I have been particularly unmotivated.  It was hard to focus on anything and I had to push myself to move into things which needed to be done – although sometimes I couldn’t even do that.   But the worst is when the mind starts making stories about all of that and creates the seeds for doubt.   Doubts about the path, the value of the things I have committed to, guiding principles, a bit of everything whenever I fell too deeply into it.

It is a bit like being in the eye of a hurricane.  The eye contains the lowest barometric pressure in the storm system but the edges of the eye are where the most powerful winds of the hurricane are.  Staying awake and aware helps to keep me in that center.  If I weaken I get drawn towards that eyewall and in danger of getting sucked into those stormy conditions.  Fortunately the winds themselves serve to shake me and awake me to turn back towards the center.

Understanding the mechanics of melancholy was very helpful.  That melancholy is an electro-magnetic-chemical phenomenon and it acts in a pulse – it is here and it is not.   It is a condition that has no content.  The knowledge helped to catch the emotions and stories and reactions towards their beginnings before they were able to get rooted.  But the ability, such as it is, to allow the melancholy to just be, to let it come in deeply, to keep an open heart and let it flow through, doesn’t come from the knowledge.  It is the practice of awareness that provided the conditions to be able to surrender to the process.   I obviously have a lot of work to do but looking back at previous winters and adverse conditions and punctuated melancholies and how I related to them shows me that I am on the spiral even though sometimes the doubts try to tell me I am going in circles or down dead-ends.  So I am grateful for all of the synchronicities that have led me to the place in space and time that allowed and supported this work.

Sitting here late at night, the work of the mind shows little signs of letting up on the pressure.  But just as I felt the glimmering of the melancholy in my tea meditations before it came on strong, I also feel the gentle wind hinting that it is now passing through.  As the experience reaches completion now perhaps I can see what it was all about and what shifted in my relationship with myself and rest of creation.

What Can You Do Without?

It takes so much tension and energy to hold on to anything, you don’t realize it until you let go. -  Ra Uru Hu

Your problem is you're... too busy holding onto your unworthiness. - Ram Dass

Eventually, you become wise enough to realize that you don't want that stuff inside of you.  It doesn’t matter who stimulates it.  It doesn’t matter what situation hits it.  It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense, or whether it seems fair or not.  Unfortunately, most of us are not that wise.  We’re really not trying to be free of our stuff; we’re trying to justify keeping it.  – Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

Today was a good day to work.  Comfortable temperatures, no wind, no rain.   I worked until it was too dark to see much.  Mostly I spent that time hauling windfall off the land.   The firs shed a lot of branches when the wind blows.  Almost as prolific as the old pecan trees I had in Richardson.   I always compared them to my cats.  They shed all day long yet there is no observable loss on them. 

That made me think about simplicity and letting go.   My finances are challenging right now which added a piquancy to the contemplation.  Essentially it boiled down to the question, “What can you do without?”   The first take on that was probably in the physical realm.  Possessions, luxuries, toxic pleasures.  Or mental, what concepts, views, expectations, or perspectives can I let go off?  That no longer serves me.   Beyond that it gets a little trickier. 

I have always been a frugal person.  Some of that conditioning came from family.  We were not poor but with five kids in a small town you did pick up on ways to consume conservatively.  For example, when we had baked potatoes we cleaned the aluminum foil wrapping for the next time.  It wasn’t driven by ecological conservation as you see in these times.  It came from the context of their lives but it was conservation nonetheless.  All of my grandparents lived through the Depression and you could still see some of the imprinting from that experience.   One way that may have manifested is my tendency to re-use and re-purpose things.  I use what I find.

But there are also shadow aspects.  Part of it is fear driven.   Survival fears or the more basic fear of not really feeling safe in the world.  Watch how you spend your money because you don’t trust that the flow of money will always be there.  I could go on about different conditionings that could also feed into that.  But that it just speculation.  That is the dark side of frugality – the holding on out of fear.  Frugal is getting the most value out of your resources – it isn’t about being cheap or miserly.

In Gene Keys I have Key 23 in the Pearl Sphere of the Pearl Sequence – the Gift of Simplicity.   My tendency towards simplicity is much more than enforced limitations on resources.   It is reinforced throughout my design.  I don’t suppose there is anything wrong about complexity but simplicity is much more peaceful to me.  This path has led to a lot of letting go of things that were a part of the complexity of the Not-Self built up by conditioning for sixty years.  This emptying increasingly simplified my views and concepts actually to the point where it is rather scary at times. Seemingly down to just practice.  How far can I go?

What can I do without?

Are You Ready for the Country

The plant spirit told him “We can do nothing unless we are asked.”   Cavon remarked, “Leave it to a plant to come up with the understatement of the millennium.”  - Plant Spirit Medicine

Are you noisy with quiet times?  — Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

Looking back at the threads of your life can be interesting.  But it can also be used medicinally.   I have seen variations of using this energetic approach and I am sure that there are many more that I have never heard of.  EFT’s Peace Procedure does this through acupressure.  The Awareness Techniques essentially does that but goes beyond the constraints of just this lifetime.   Recapitulation must work similarly as your move through your past history and allow the emotional charge to be released.  The Presence Process is similar. 

But as I was sitting in the gardens late this evening I got a rush and then my life growing up in the country came to the forefront.  I grew up in the backwoods of Missouri (from about 4 until I went to high school) and Oklahoma (high school) for most of my early life.  I remember the first place we lived was in Skunk Holler.   Later we moved to a 70-acre farm.  The last place was a 10 acre plot of land.   In all cases, the land abutted stretches of woods that ran through all of the lands.  I used to have a lot of imaginary adventures walking out in those woods for hours.  So for me living in the middle of woods and streams was just natural (I didn’t intend that pun). 

I have to admit that I don’t have an experience of awe being on the land.  I think part of that is that it is imprinted in me as the way things are.  I have probably had more awe experiences with the constructed environment. At the same time, when I moved to larger towns and cities, I enjoyed walking through the streets with similar satisfaction.  I have always seemed to have some sort of equanimity running through me around my environment.   Actually living where I do surrounded by beautiful land and trees and water (although still inside the City of Portland) I do get to experience a vastly different energetic atmosphere than I did in Dallas, for example.  I don’t doubt that and if I had my preferences, I would always live surrounded trees, rocks, water. 

The peace that is inherent where the earth is allowed to be undoubtedly reinforced the peace, the Still Mountain, that predominates my Design. “You can take the boy out of the country, but it is hell getting all the country out of the boy.”  I can live with that.

A Certain Mind

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”   ― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

It is no surprise that foregone conclusions are revealed by data supplied by instruments designed to detect those conclusions. – Thunderbolts Project

“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity and that isn’t the way it ever is….it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance.”  - Tom Robbins

I wrote a little about certainty in an earlier post and since then little synchronicities have kept the concept percolating.  This morning I ventured onto Facebook for the first time in at least a week.  After perusing a few posts I was struck again by how certain people are.  I know that these are just snapshots but it served to trigger a contemplation on my walk this morning.   I easily got sidetracked into listing all the reasons not to draw any conclusions of such speculative evidence.   But it is still a curious thing for me these days.

As my Design and my openness to conditioning are attracted to certainty, I am well versed in the pursuit of certainty and the psychological (or electromagnetic) need for that certainty.  Or at the very least to appear that I am certain.  This path has obliterated any progress I might have made in that quest.   From this vantage point though I can see much more clearly how pervasive that desire is.  “I don’t know” might be the most accurate answer but it is not culturally acceptable and definitely not conversationally provocative.  

The pressure to rationalize an answer or come up with a formula or opinion is a part of our process.  But we also have a tendency to want there to be The Answer or The Correct Opinion.   Then some of us want to take the idea of the answer to the next level and on and in the pursuit of The Ultimate Answer.   Good luck.  I have no idea whether there is one or that it is obtainable in our form.  I am just letting that part go – I know I don’t have access to it.

We are culturally conditioned to be certain.  If you have ever worked in a corporate office, survival is often predicated as at least appearing that you know the answer or are capable of coming up an answer.  And it is the best damned answer in the group.   But on the more personal level as we dig deeper past the conditioning we encounter all kinds of answers that we settled on as certain – usually for protection, a lot of times unconsciously, and maybe some times just because it is too scary to live in a world that is constantly mutating, shape-shifting.   Coming up with answers and opinions is important in the mental process.  That is the way in which we deal with inspiration, with understanding our experiences and formulating a pattern out of the experiences so that we can move forward.

Having an Open Mind (in HD terminology), I have lived with the inability to consistently come up with an answer or settle on an opinion or formula.  I always assumed it was a limitation on my part and did the best I could to emulate the process.  And intimidated and influenced by the Certain Mind.  But once open to even the idea of the fluidity of all of this I began to see the preponderance of certainty all around me.   Slowly I am coming to the point where I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are absolutely correct and you somehow have been granted or earned a direct connection to truth but I just haven’t experienced it.  I will just have to wait and see what its value is to me.  I suppose though that there is still that part of me that wants to be as sure of those answers as everyone else seems to be.

Crossing the Line

When you're caught, the other side
Take a look and maybe start
To take up your life again
Crossing the line
Hear your heart, don't be afraid
Passing through time
Spinning around the axis of a dream
Possibilities aren't always what they seem
Reject them and all your choices will be free

Crossing the line

-        Stomu Yamashta's Go – Crossing The Line

I feel almost complete right now in this pulse.  So I just want to pose one question.  Do you remember the time or times in your life when you crossed the line?  Whatever that means to you.

About 10 years ago I helped found a Toastmaster’s Club in my office. (Some of you may have to look that one up.)  The first speech you give is supposed to tell the audience something about yourself.   I had this idea of looking at all the nodes on my path that led me to that point in my life.  Sort of a recreational recaptitulation although I had not heard that word before.   I got drawn down that road and when I did my first trial run it ran over 20 minutes – for a 5 minute speech.  I tried and tried to condense it but it lost its essence and my own interest in it.  I ended up with a story about Elijah and a Halloween Park ride with an underlying message of creating our own realities.   It went over well as a speech but they didn’t know what to make of it in the context.  I never told anyone but I totally made the story up the night before.

But that was my first look at the incredible patterns that led each of us to where we are.   But what happens when you start looking at closer levels, it starts to change.  I thought of it like moving from the macro world to the quantum world and things start to lose their separateness, their suchness.   When I would look at what I saw as a nodal point in my life it lost its exactness.  There was no longer a specific point in time and space that the change happened.  A series of events led up to it.  And each event was not solid either.  And on and on.  It is sounds similar to mutation.  A mutation is not a single event although we conceptualize it like that.   The mutation begins long before it spreads.  And once it appears it takes as long to spread to the population if it is successful.

That is a long way of saying that personally I found that supposedly simple question quite hard to answer.  The answer would probably be along the lines of punctuated equilibrium that I talked about last time.  I am only aware of what has happened after the burst of change ripples through me.  

So, when did you cross the line?

Punctuated Equilibrium

Our attitude is what determines which information from the environment is allowed into the DNA to either reinforce its initial programming or to readjust that programming. Now, what I am not saying here is that the environment can actually physically change the sequences within our DNA. What I am suggesting however is that our attitude can activate hidden or dormant sequences already waiting inside our DNA. Through simply understanding one’s own patterns of suffering at a higher level, one simultaneously activates the higher frequency of that pattern, which in turn transforms one’s environment. It is not that one actually changes one’s environment, but one perceives it at a higher frequency, which changes one’s attractor patterns and leads to quantum leaps, both spiritually and materially.

-        Richard Rudd

                      

I used to get frustrated with the almost literal glacial pace of my personal evolution.  As I walk along this path I find that Turtle Medicine has been of great help.  I am much more relaxed about these things.   Whether it is the steady work, letting go of the conceptual and emotional basis for those reactions, or more than likely the synthesis of all of the work, really doesn’t matter.  But I was musing about something yesterday and I remembered a scientific hypothesis that I ran across years ago when I had a sudden interest in evolution – to know a bit more that I remembered from high school and a newer interest in genes.  (As a side note, I finally burned out on study but I found that for most the books I read the trail led back to a mutation.  Not only that but the mutations are random.  I couldn’t quite grasp that one but with HD and GK I have a different perspective on mutation).

Anyway, Punctuated Equilibrium was an explanation of a problem in evolution theory.   Darwin saw the slow and gradual process of evolution was a stepped process.  A species accumulated small variations over a long time period eventually resulting in a new species.  One of the problems was that the fossil record should have contained at a least a number of the intermediate forms but for the most part did not have the transitional forms.  (This is also often used as a case against evolution in general).   In the early Seventies an alternate explanation was suggested referred to as punctuated equilibrium.  Here a species stays generally stable over millions of years.  Then there is suddenly a rapid burst of change that results in a new species.  Few fossils would be found in that scenario.

I like that image for transformation.  The changes can be infinitely small – every breath.  But every once in while the accumulation suddenly alters consciousness.   Or at least it is brought to the point where we are aware of it.   Similar to a capacitor where the charges build up to a certain threshold and discharge.  Except I rarely have a surge of discharge.   In EFT the image sometimes used in treating an issue with many aspects is that of a table with a lot of legs.  You keep chopping away at the legs one at a time until the table topples.   Or the breakdown/breakthrough process.

Maybe one reason my “progress” is slow is that I don’t tend to do very specific work on issues.  For example, in my tea meditations, I rarely focus or contemplate on something that I want to resolve.  Yes, I do on occasion.  But I have found that I am led to where I need to go eventually.   For more focused work I have found that the ceremonial setting is more effective for me.  That is just my experience up to now.   But as I improve on watching my life I can see how those periods of nothing happening usually precede a new level of awareness.  As my awareness increases, I can also sense the changes happening underneath – portending something new coming. 

Punctuated equilibrium also reminded me of Design’s view of a tendency of Generators.  Once a Generator responds to an activity they have to go through the steps through every stage of development.  But without a motor connection to the Throat (where manifestation occurs) they hit plateaus of energy – they get energetically stuck.  They need to be initiated again by new input, insight or direction to respond to.    This process sounds like the same sort of wave form as punctuated equilibrium.

Of course none of that really matters except maybe to take away some unnecessary anxiety about it.  I for one do not seem to have much control over where I am being taken in this world.  Understanding the mechanics of the way we work doesn’t affect the content of our lives or our destinies.  Kind of helps ride the wave a little better though.

Blessings,

Charlie

All Things Must Pass

 There's nothing you can hold

For very long

And when you hear that song

Come crying like the wind

It seems like all this life

Was just a dream

-        Stella Blue, Grateful Dead

Been a strange couple of nights.  It is almost dawn and I am still awake.  No particular reason that I can tell.  I can remember a time when that would bother me but these days it is just one more thing to observe and not look for reasons.   

I was sitting outside watching the fog and mist roll across the wetlands and my thoughts turned to the concepts of impermanence and uncertainty.  Both of those things, when they moved from the conceptual plane and I faced what they really meant on the visceral level, were, well, rather scary.  It was inevitable though on this path that they must be faced and accepted.  I don’t intend to dive into that – there are mountains of literature from Buddhism and Hinduism to quantum theory.  

I remember that uncertainty, which I see as a result of impermanence as well as the nature of Mind, was one of the first things I had to face in this part of my path.   In Human Design, the open Mind Center is keynoted by the need for certainty in its Not-Self aspect.  The deep layers of conditioning tend to foster the need of certainty as the vehicle for security.  But that certainty, that security, is an illusion.  When I grasped that at the cellular level, it was one of the biggest releases that I got from HD in the beginning.  I am not designed for certainty even if it were theoretically possible.

A Buddhist teacher also provided another layer to that when he was talking about mindfulness.  He was discussing the aspect of observing and accepting “what is.”   He preferred a translation of the Pali term as “what is becoming” since it more fully enveloped the impermanent nature of things.  Things arise and they pass away.  Thoughts arise and pass away.  Emotions rise and pass away.  All constructions rise and pass away.  So to try and see what is by default impossible as it implies almost a stopping of the constantly mutating nature of the creation.  It implies a static reality that with diligence we can finally grasp.  But with the almost quantum theory view of an ever-changing and evolving matrix of “what is becoming” we have to practice that mindfulness constantly.   I only bring up this rather elementary explanation because it also has very real implications from the Human Design point of view.

In the Type of a Generator (70% of humanity) the Strategy is To Respond.  The only truth a Generator can know is through response.  But it is more than a number of discrete “things” entering our aura that we respond to.  The reality is that we are responding at some level to everything.  And in a quantum, mutative world we are in a responding field.  So to be truly and wholly in response we basically have to be Mindful, not of what our concepts of what we should be responding to, but the whole, mutating, evolving “what is becoming”.  It is a daunting realization.  And a tiring one to contemplate that to truly live by Strategy we have to open up completely and totally to Mindfulness in its basic form and at a level that we aren’t usually operating at.   Cognizant at least at some level of the energies and fluctuations operating in this creation.   I am not even close to that place yet.  But just the budding awareness of it has led me to deeper levels of surrender – there is no way it can be done on the mental plane.

As usual, I am not smart enough to put all of this into meaningful words – they live right below the surface and on a good day I grasp it intuitively.  It is making every day more of a stream of consciousness than a search for truth and meaning in the world.  It also has been a driving force in dismantling the mental conceptual framework that I have lived in for most of my life.  Makes normal conversation harder though.

Well, sunrise is about here so time for tea and then venture out to try and meet the world on its terms and not mine.  Thank you for your patience in these ramblings from an exhausted mind.

Blessings,  Charlie

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In the Garden

 As I was coming back from my meditation, I saw the pond on the Stewdios land.  My reaction was to laugh as I realized what I was trying to do and all I found was the simple reality of my waking world – the land on which I work.  Once again, seeking answers from the outside, seeking clarity where there may be none, working in a language that I don’t really speak that well.  So I go on a journey and find myself back where I began.  The pond may have mysteries that I cannot comprehend so it is not important to spend my time trying to understand that which cannot be understood.  But the expression of that mystery, the pond itself, just is – and all I have to do is sit by the pond.

-        From a tea meditation a couple of years ago

Today I want to share with you an early journal entry a few months after I moved to Portland from Texas.  I had been introduced to the Gene Keys (at that time the only thing we had was the book itself) a year or so prior.  Working on my own before becoming a part of this community, I had made only a little headway into even understanding how to incorporate this into my process.   Since this was before the sequences, et. al., there wasn’t even a hologenetic profile.  We had to go to the Human Design site, Jovian Archive, to get a full chart made.  It was curiosity about where the chart came from that led me to studying Human Design.  I resonated well with HD but I was entering a Gene Key world.   About three months after I moved here, OneDoorLand was embarking on an adventure – creating a multi-media art event centered around GK.  Richard Rudd was coming also which made the event even more precious.  The event, Emanation, was wildly successful even though Rudd was detained at the Canadian border and couldn’t make it (he joined by Skype).   My function at the community, besides living Life as Art, was Land Steward (Stewart in Binah language).   To be caretaker of our beautiful properties.  I was an IT professional by trade and a decades-long resident of Texas so I had no idea what I was doing.   That is the background for this essay I wrote on the relationship of my work and my budding understanding of the Gene Keys.

When I came here two months ago and started to work on this land I was rather at a loss on where to begin.   A major Gene Key event had been scheduled and I started cleaning up the land to spruce up its appearance.  I admit I was a bit intimidated by the unfamiliar plants and climate.  When I started cutting back some of the old growth I was very timid and I left a lot of it intact with just the worst of it cut out.  I guess the idea was to clean it up but leave the appearance of lushness.   You can speculate on what shadows those were.   But what I soon found was that by trying to maintain this appearance of vitality I was not only creating more work for myself but that appearance only worked from a distance.    So that was when I began the real shadow work and started clearing out all of the old stuff – the years of debris and dead wood and other flotsam.   Every day the enormity of the work ahead would overwhelm me. And where do I put all of this stuff?  But perseverance proved its worth.   

I faced the dilemma that Elijah talked about last night – what to cut back, even if healthy, that will help to preserve the whole – how to make those discernments.   Here the nature of working with my hands as well as the inner consciousness work paid off – everyday it seemed that my mind would recede into the background and those decisions were given to the flow.  It became obvious that the old growth had to go so that the new could thrive – and that would lead to authentic lushness as it naturally flowered. 

As the land was cleared, the gifts started to reveal themselves.  These beautiful old moss covered boulders over here, this path over there, this rock wall.   The trimmed trees brought in light to reveal its own beauty.   With this new spaciousness we could then bring it new plants, new gifts.

But the shadow work is in itself seemingly endless.  I found this especially in the invasive plants.  English ivy and Herb Robert, while beautiful in and of themselves, kept the delicate native plants from thriving.   This wonderfully shadow-named Japanese Knotweed which grows on the slope over there can grow two feet in a week, and if allowed to grow blocks the stream down below from our vision.    And the equally sinisterly named Bindweed is evocative of the shadow of Vanity.   You can dig out all of the roots you can find but turn your back and it starts winding itself up the stalks of the beautiful flowers and covering up the natural beauty with its own version.  As the Gene Keys say, Vanity is the first shadow to come and the last to leave.  Eternal vigilance will only mitigate its effect on our lives.

So now we can wait for the rain and sunshine to bring on the Siddhi of Spring and Summer and bring this work to full flowering – as long we keep up work.  And always accepting that the cycle will repeat itself but with our awareness and perseverance it will be a spiral and continue to create a place of awe.

Whatever path you are on, be it Design, Gene Keys, shamanism, or the myriad other avenues, this is the work.  To find your True Self.   But it isn’t something you have to do or add to your life, it is mostly what you can let go of and ultimately reveal what has been there all along.