May 24, 2012 Blog 11. Warning, this blog is lengthy; I got carried away. But, check it out, you may find it interesting, or you can skip to the end after you have read what interests you.

In Glasgow, I came to the end of my planned transition into the “not knowing” , unplanned beginning of new operating procedure, in which I strive to make or adhere to no advance mental planning of what I will do next. In search of spontaneity and what the spirit and soul within and without wants,
I am attempting to make conscious choices from what is here, now. After growing uneasiness about not planning or even having a clear idea of what I wanted,( travel to mystic isles of northern Scotland, to Glastonbury, Avebury, and Cornwall, southwest England, Chartes, the Dordognes or Lourdes, France etc?), for a week, suddenly in Glasgow, my body knew what it wanted. I wanted sun, heat, beach, for a month, didn’t much matter where, as long as it was free of crowds, clamor, or “have tos”.

The night before I flew south, I slept poorly, up at 4:30 AM to catch international flight. The flight was wearing, multi- hour layovers, in London and Athens, I had to go through security 3 times. Something I ate on the Aegean Air flight did not sit well. My first night in hotel near the airport, in Crete, I belched all night, felt slightly nauseated, and no appetite. The next morning, I boarded a bus for the winding trip over the mountains and along the beautiful coastline, through villages, and stops for Cretans going to market along the way.

When I arrived at my cottage, it was lovely, comfortable and adequately furnished. I was exhausted and stomach still upset.

Two of my key selection criteria were, near a swimming beach that I could walk to and WiFi Internet access in the room. Also, I wanted “self catering”‘ with minor cooking facilities in the room and reasonable access to grocery store and local taverna/restaurant. As I settled in, I discovered the beach was pebbly and gray iron shore, with moderate surf crashing onto the rocks. The wifi did not connect in my room. The cooks stove was shoddy, decrepit and something out of the 1940s. The local taverna/restaurant recommended was closed and no longer in existence, rusting sign.

I was angry inside. I obsessed about my mistake in selecting this place. I had failed in my due diligence, locked in for a month, such an important time for rest and invoking the muse, went my self-talk. I ruminated about how I might be able to get out of it, break the lease, argue false advertising, confronting the tough Cretan woman proprietor. I found myself thinking, “how would Pat handle this?” then how would “Pat chastise me for lack of due diligence:~>;;;)?”. I walked over to the beach and tried wading. The water was cool but clean, clear, and gorgeous. I bruised the bottom of my foot beneath the 4th metatarsal head on a ridge of water eroded stone, ouch!

I asked the proprietor about swimming beach and she assured me it was a fine place to swim. The WiFi not working in the room as described, she would look into it. That evening as I seethed and rejected the place internally, I suddenly noted my own negative, reactive thought process. I realized that things always look worse when I am sleep deprived, tired, and unwell. The next morning, after sleeping for 12 hours, I awoke to glistening sunlight on a turquoise sea, the shoddy stove was adequate for making coffee and cooking eggs. The evening before, the proprietress had volunteered to give me a ride into town to pick up main stock of groceries, and waited to bring me back to the cottage. So I had everything I needed. I walked down to a sandy beach about a quarter mile away, gray, but a few people were enjoying it. The WiFi did work from the public area down below, and later I discovered that it connected, barely, from my outside balcony. I wondered at my skewed reactivity.

As I meditated, I recentered on what is here, now, as opposed to what isn’t here, now. For me, an enneagram “type 4”, I am prone to “longing”, seeing what is missing, imperfect, and ceaselessly striving to fill the gap. This is an old, deeply engrained pattern, prone to lead to dissatisfaction and constant and endless work, nothing is ever enough, in this overlearned mind-set. This applies to both inner and outer worlds. I am troubled by the gap, the wounds and broken places within my self and also in the world around me. It looks that way everywhere I turn, because it is how I am looking through my own personal lense. We all have our own spin, or skewed way of looking at things, not as they are, but as we are.

For me, the point is [awareness]. How do I train and cultivate my inner observer? How do I disengage, disidentify from my ego patterns of reactivity? If I am caught in my reactive mode, I am living old patterns, and unconscious to what is really happening in the here and now. I am projecting. I am projecting my wounds onto the world and thinking that it is reality, when I am “asleep”, on autopilot, unaware of reality as it is, separate from my observation of it. In psychiatry we call it owning our own projections, noticing our counter transference. The physicists call it the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which postulates that the act of observing something changes it, so we can never know what something really is apart from our own perceptions of it.

Can I ever really know absolute reality, when all knowledge and information is known through our own limited brain’s perception? Isn’t everything inevitably subjective, since it can only be apprehended through my mind? Is there such a thing as “objective reality”? Is there any way I could know it, know the “truth” through my limited perceptions. And how much reality am I missing or distorting all of the time. There are vast arrays of light wave lengths that I cannot perceive, x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared etc. that I cannot see. Many vibrations of sound that I cannot hear, dog whistle, radio signal, etc. What of the millions of odors that I cannot smell? If I really pay attention, I realize that I am deaf and color blind, in a sense, like the blind men and the elephant, thinking I know what reality, the whole elephant is. And how do I know what I cannot perceive?, know what I don’t know? Perhaps, the nearest I can come to truth is acknowledging that I don’t, can’t know. So much of the violence in the world is done by people who think they KNOW and will fight to the death for their conviction.

I cannot know true reality with my mind and senses. I believe that truth and absolute reality exists in some ultimate way, but I don’t believe that I will ever really know what it is. Like everyone else, I will become unconscious and believe my own view of reality and react to it repeatedly.

However, if I practice awareness, mindfulness, contemplative, non-dual consciousness, I will draw closer, catch glimpses of the Real. Through spiritual practice throughout the ages, sages and holy ones have sought this holy grail, the truth, the real. The spiritual path is opening to and practicing awareness of a vast and unknowable domain of reality. It is a way of being present and open, watching and witnessing with ever greater freedom from the constraints and distortions of my mental, emotional, and sensory apparatus. As Ekhardt Tolle says, our mental apparatus is designed to label, separate, and categorize things. We grow up to learn something is this, and not that, and it is necessary to do so to function in our egoic world, to manipulate objects for our material survival in this flesh perceived life.

In meditation, contemplation, and moments of presence, of beauty, creativity, ecstasy, I become aware of the reality of oneness, of connectedness more fundamental than the mental labeling, categorization, and separateness. I am seeking to develop this capacity for realizing my basic connectedness by first becoming a good inner observer to my mental routines and default programs in daily life. Then, I am able to breathe and become aware of a deeper reality below and underlying my daily mental perceptions and reactions. It is interesting that mindfulness is now mainstream in psychology and medical healing. It is even entering Corporate America and the business community through workshops and employee relations training, etc.

Contemplative prayer from the western Christian monastic tradition, and Yoga and mindfulness practice from Buddhism in the east, each have sought to cultivate this garden of awareness.
In my understanding, God is the ground, essence, ultimate original and continually present and unfolding Being that pervades and underlies all. He/she(?) is awareness, the ultimate Truth of all possible created and uncreated realities, visible, invisible, manifest and unmanifest, The One.
Therefore as I practice mindfulness and try to live in awareness, I draw near to and sense the unitive presence, the non-dual level of being. Aside from the philosophical aspects of these musings, I experience a sense of peace, serenity, belonging and sense of being held, embraced and filled with the spirit of the divine. In the divine, all conflict and reactive dualities are reconciled.
Also, I am better able to recognize “my own shit”, and own it, not project it onto others.

Jesus said, “before Abraham, I am.” Paul says, ” In him we live, and move, and have our being”. Jesus said “I and the father are one.” John wrote ” In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the life of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not over come it.”

Buddha practiced pure awareness until he realized a state of oneness, non-duality, enlightenment, that is called “Buddha nature”. Zen students aspire to experience “suchness”, pure awareness. The Hindus know that the “atman is Brahman” and the ultimate truth is “neti neti”, not this, not that.
For 3 thousand years, the Jews have chanted, “Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One”.
“Allah” means “the one”, and in the Muslims call to prayer, they chant, “there is no God but Allah”.
The Christians have continued to struggle with the trinity, the Three in One and Jesus, the Christ, the God-Man perfect realization of oneness with God. Perhaps spirituality is only about my efforts to experience my relatedness to the One, through every possible avenue, nature, my neighbor, my loved ones, my enemies, my body, the cosmos, a child, the entire web of life.

Bottom line, it’s all about the One, and how we can approach, experience, taste, relate to this all pervasive, reconciling reality that upholds the universe. I believe they should teach mindfulness and/or contemplative prayer in Kindergarten. If we want love and peace, no more war, put it in the drinking water…..:~>;;;)

For Presence

Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

From: To Bless the space Between Us, John O’Donahue, page 42,