The Book of NOT KNOWING

[tru3]

i am on holiday, but i wanted to take a few minutes to share this book!

it's exactly about what the title says: nuff said. i am giving it two thumbs way up. discover for your self here.

i am not going to even try to write about the book. it resonates with my own investigations and experience, but then "breaks down" the subject of not knowing into a, how shall i say, a greater degree of granularity and specificity.

the main thing i wanted to give an example of was one of the contemplative exercises, on emptiness, and then share what came up for me, in my own limited conveyance.

interestingly to me, the chapter heading is "the cultural matrix"

how bout that?

Emptiness

Put your attention on your most intimate sense of yourself. Can you find any feeling within your "internal state" that you might call empty or meaningless? What is that like for you? When you run into feelings like this, what do you usually call them? How do you explain them or deal with them? Do they feel located within the body somewhere? If so, where? When you isolate one of these feelings of emptiness, does it seem to have a specific cause, or is it always there? If it has a specific cause, somehitng that happened recantly, can you recall whether it was absent before that cause? Is uit possible that the feeling was present already, and that you felt some relief when the apparent cause arose and could be identified? What, if anything, seems to "fill" this emptiness?Look into the issue of emptiness and see what you can find in your own experience and life. Don't stop on the surface. Look deeper and ask yourself what's at the heart of this feeling. Sit for a moment with this meditation on emptiness and then come back to the book to continue.

page 58

so i sat, and here's what arose...

i fell into a whole in the pit of my stomach. i landed on a salt flat, like death valley. the very ground itself incapable of supporting life. whiteness stretched before me in every direction. mountains appeared in the distance, but even this bleak hope seemed desolate, snow-capped, devoid of any green.

im on a pay computer, so i have to re-run my debit....

[tru3]

i sat here for some time, starving of thirst and hunger. i was pretty sure i was just going to pass into the white-ness, but i heard a plane over head. a parachute opened, and a pallet floated down with a dusty thump.

i ran over to the pallet and tore off the tarp covering it. food! water!

i started happily gorging myself after days of not-eating, got a tummy ache and diarreha [sic], and when i recovered some balance, went over to look at the labels on the cans of food.



yep. ugh. full of preservatives and gmo. yikes! if i continued to eat this i would die. plus, no guarantees of re-supply. more of the same anyway. it made me sick, but it felt better than starving. sorta

i looked at the label on the water. "pure, unadulterated water, bottle at the source".



i somehow understood i had a choice, even in this inhospitable place.

1) walk out of the apparent safety of the food drop, into the desert, and be embraced by the whiteness.

2) continue to eat the vienna sausages, even though it had no nutritional value, and get scurvy or something. enter whiteness.

3) somehow, learn to live off sunlight and water, both of which flowed in abundance, giving up both the trek and... the drek.

no guarantees that i could actually learn to do this, but the possibility, the "what if", fascinated me, even though i most likely would end up in the whiteness anyway.

so, no answers, just an insight.

anyway, i'm so tired of theory, and this book is full of practise.

enjoy.

[tru3]

i wonder: should i even be putting this on a forum, or on a blog? as much as i am mindful of "shoulding" on myself, i still do. a major symptom of my self-doubt.

interestingly, ralston makes the comment that the self-image of a lone wolf is much more common than the self-image as a sheep. most everyone i'm sure considers themselves above sheepleness. i know i have considered myself as superior. but am i?

Self-Doubt

Now put your attention on any sense of self-doubt that you might have. Dig into it some. Is there anything about you that you feel is not fully genuine? Do you have any doubts about yourself? Are you the same on the inside as you appear to be to others? What would it feel like for you-- good or bad-- if suddenly everyone could see inside your heart and mind? Would they be surprised? What does that mean about you? Would you say that some aspects about yourself are fake? If so, is that all right for you, or would you feel better if your inside and outside more closely matched more closely? do you feel certain that you fully and deeply understand what life is all about, or what you are supposed to be? Can you find in your experience a background sense of uncertainty? What is that about? focus your attention on this experience of doubt or uncertainty and see what you can discover about it. Once again, don't' stop on the surface. Look deeper and ask yourself what's at the heart of this feeling. Sit for a while with this meditation and then come back to the book to continue.

p. 58-59

as i sit, i flashback past my childhood and the destructive criticism i experienced as a child and a youth, like little exhibits in a museum, walled off by velvet ropes, sacrosanct, inviolable. my da' told me this; he loves me therefore it may be true. i never stopped to consider that maybe he had his own museum and tried to make me an exhibit in his museum.

i fall through a constriction in my throat. i find myself petitioning for membership in a lodge of warriors, the lodge i always admired. the warriors prepare the gauntlet i must run before being accepted into the lodge.

[tru3]

throughout this whole contemplation, tears are streaming down my face.

so, i run the gauntlet. i have survived. i am not a survivor. i have simply survived. past perfect. the warriors invite me into the lodge.

but i am not satisfied. i judge myself during the process. NOT GOOD ENOUGH! i must run the gauntlet again, and i tell the warriors. they look at each other like i was nuts, shrug, and set the whole thing up again. i run it again. and again.

and again.

by this time, the lodge brothers are really bored and tired. they want to go home to their teepees. they lose interest and wander off. one says over his shoulder that when i tire of this game, to go into the lodge. or not.

i am alone. devasted, feeling utterly rejected, self to self. i stand in front of the flap to the lodge entrance, feeling absolutely unworthy to enter. if i enter, i know i will be found to be a fraud, and killed for entering under false pretenses, even though my body is bruised and battered from the incessant self-punishment that i set up for myself. the evidence of my member-ship are the purple welts all over my body. my standing evident to all except me.

and still, i stand in front of the lodge, hesitating to enter.

[tru3]

i am most grateful that in this forum there is a respect for not touching shares: iow, if i relate something authentic and intimate, nobody tries to "fix" me by offering advice i didn't ask for. just because something volatile or emotional comes up, doesn't mean that it's a negative thing. it might be just what i need to go through.

a moth coming out of its cocoon may appear to be struggling, but it is merely pumping blood into its wings. if i touch it, i may destroy the very thing i wish to "save".

that being said, if an insight or question comes up, please feel free to post. this type of insight meditation echoes long after the initial sitting, bringing up other choices, alternatives or perspectives i may not have initially considered.

for example, in the emptiness meditation, what if there was a fourth option: continue to eat the vienna sausages, and learn to transmute the toxins contained therein?

or with respect to self-doubt, what if i just walked away from the lodge? what would that say? is it my own unworthiness, or an indication of authenticity NOT to join?

an open-ended question, or similar experience shared from the "i" could be of great service. so, please, feel free to collaborate in my delusion!

[tru3]

How many forms of feeling trapped can you identify? If you like, you can begin by writing these down. Jot down what comes to mind without thinking about it too much. Afterward, look over what you've written and consider the nature of these "constraints" that you feel. Consider each separately at first, and see if you can get to the bottom of what these are. then consider them altogether. What is at the source of these feelings? Look into any feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and even feeluing of being stuck with your own behavior or reactivity. What do you think might happen if you moved from one of the positions that you feel stuck in? Would you be afraid, embarrassed, a failure? Would someone get hurt? would you lose something? What seems to keep you feeling trapped? Take some quiet time and focus on any feelings you can find that relate to being trapped or incapable. Once again, don't stop on the surface; plunge into the heart of these feelings. Sit for a while with this meditation and then come back to the book to continue.

p. 59

this one took a bit longer, because i have spent years dismantling my belief systems. after the usual "sentimental journey" and life review, i felt the constraint as a physical tension between the eyebrows, the ajna point.

no surprise, but what became apparent was ultimately i am trapped by the idea of who i think i am. that felt like ground zero. based on ignorance, i made agreements, contracts, express and implied, with the "world outside". wanting to live as a creditor and not a debtor, my intention was to honor these contracts until i had a better understanding of why i created them, i.e. accepting them for value, declaring that value to be meaningless, abandoning them, then making a new offer. this nebulous concept applied specifically to my life now: e.g. my biz, my marriage, my strawman. how am i trapped right now?

and standing in the terror of the unknown response.

but these are just words. this is after i dropped through the tension in the ajna...

it felt like looking into my own fovea, my own blindspot.



i danced all around it. what if i was trapped in my blindness?

Horse gets split into pieces - YouTube

Horse gets split into pieces - YouTube

sheer terror arose. remaining in the tension of the ajna, a new spaciousness opened up. i was the horse, and yet something more surrounding it. it felt like being in a tesseract, a 3d representation of a 4d object:



i was free of the feeling of being a lab specimen, and yet still trapped by...my relationship to some giant monolith of granite that i had to sculpt into a statue.



more stuckness. with one well-placed strike of the mallet and chisel, the whole entire mass of stone exploded into sand.

free of the graven idol, i then compulsively started a sand painting, a mandala.



i realized this could go on forever, in various forms and guises: i was trapped by my own compulsion to create meaning. the only way to stop playing the game, is to stop playing the game. so, i gratefully and happily swept up my little creation into a pile and scattered it to the winds.

Sacred Art Tour, Sweeping the Mandala, Deconstruction - YouTube

Sacred Art Tour, Sweeping the Mandala, Deconstruction - YouTube

ralston says later in the book:

If you are aware of something in any way at all, it is a distinction. It is what something is. The mere "is-ness" of anything makes it a distinction. when we ask the question"What is the nature of distinction?" we're not asking for a definition or explanation, or even an example. We alreay have those. The question is "What is the true substance of everything that exists?" when we ask this question, we're also asking what is the true nature of anything, since it is only as a distinction that a thing can be experienced.

p. 532

what this says to me, is that i have spent a lifetime believing i am something, but in truth it seems i am really defined by what I AM NOT.

[torus]

thanks, I'll check that book out.

[tru3]

the following two contemplations were very different in nature from the first three.

specifically: the practice of one pointedness is very simple: pick one thing, and apply it without exception to everything.

Suffering

Suffering isn't hard to locate. What forms of suffering have you experienced in your life? Is there any sense of suffering that seems to drag on continuously or repeatedly-- hanging in the background like a cloud, or in the forefront as in some crises currently being endured? How do you meet this suffering, and what do you do about it? Beyond the obvious suffering, can you sense subtler from of this activity? As you locate these feelings, continue to ask yourself what generates them; what is at the core of your experience of emotional pain? Why does it exist? Notice suffering that you may have overlooked, that you don't usually call suffering but is still putting up with some unwanted experience. Why do you endure it? Does it always seem inevitable, or do you sometimes find that you may be generating some of it? Do you get anything out of maintaining this suffering? Dwell on any sense of suffering you can find in your life, dig into it, and see if you can discover its source. When you've spent some time on this, then come back to do the next meditation.

p. 60

my practical application of this was airline travel. i have always loathed airline travel for various reasons. as i went to bed the night before, i began asking, what about this? what about travel? what about it? what about it?

the next morning, same vein of enquiry. at some point on the way to the airport, i realized that, like me in my av, i put up a force field to create the illusion of safety. a character, like the little puppet on my hand, that not surprisingly magnetized a certain response to me, what i like to call the "4 R's":

Resistance
Resentment
Revenge
Regret

then, all i can say is, with a sigh, i just put it away. sunday, instead of seeing people of particles, i began to see them as waves. it was safe to inhabit the same space and let others' energy pass through me, instead of getting stuck in my soft points. this is something that i've been cultivating for a while, but "suddenly" after letting the meditation echo through me, it was as simple as turning a switch on and off.

what used to be like rolling in broken glass, just was. and i could re-engage the particularities of people believing themselves to be discrete separate entities, like i could be too at any time if forgot who i really was, from a different perspective. the ego speaks, the lips flap, but essence speaks too. eyes leer, but Source sees.

who i am speaks so loudly no one hears a word i'm saying.

[tru3]

i just started saying the word, over and over and over: struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. struggle. sounds comical in a very short time. yea right.

Struggling

Finally, focus on any sense that life is a struggle, that some form of turmoil, either within or as an outward activity, seems inevitable. Why can't things just work out? Do you experience a deep inner peace all the time? If not, what's there that's not peaceful? Would you call that a struggle? What are you struggling with? Locate any inner struggle and meditate it. Observe your relationships with others and see any struggle, perhaps "power struggles," going on. What are you trying to accomplish with theses? In contrast to having no conflict or resistance or worry at all, what can you find that has some element of struggle to it? Concentrate on any sense of personal struggle you experience and see if you can become clear on what this activity is and what it's for. What do you do it? Spend some time meditating this before you come back to the book.

p 60-61

cmon, right? what isn't struggle? working with this one for the last two days. in contrast to otherwise wonderful visionary excursions into my own "inception points" for three days, this is where the rubber meets the road.

today, i am right back to a scarecrow, choppin cotton for my tinman, and my lion to skeered to do a damn thing about it. struggle? struggle's my middle name. my wife calls me a "stoic martyr".

iow: attend now and mark ye well, the real meditation called "life".

i do all the bookkeeping for our business. all the tax stuff, licenses, permits, etc. been doing it for 15 years. week in week out. tote that barge, lift that bail. spent most of the time fuming about it. the walls in my old office were painted red, to match my mood.

chopping wood, carrying water, tending my garden, and my "4 r's", at the same time, right?

practical application, right?

see, there is no microwave spirituality. trust me, i've looked and it's a thought projection, a wish fulfillment.

but there can be a tipping point.

tending to my affairs, when resistance, or avoidance, or tension, or emotional energy began to arise, i simply started saying,

i don't know what this letter from the revenue cabinet is for.
i don't know what this bounced check is for.
i don't know what this feeling of annoyance is for.
i don't really know what any of this is for.

whatever might arise. this one is ongoing; i find contemplation to be of immense practical value for the day to day quality of my life.

these five meditations really are the heart of the book. i can really only recommend to work with them; if one gets insight, by all means the rest of the book is about "breaking down" each question within each meditation.

imho, the book without practical application of these five meditations is useless. good luck!