In Taoism, realization is analogous to the occurence of return. Return to the origin, home.

This can mean many things; return to the original mind, original chi, original emptiness, or in more mundane terms, it can symbolize the return to a state of mind or nature that was present before the concepts, emotions, preferences and intellectualization emerged.

Being close to a little child that experiences everything for the first time, I am forced to re-experience this process of coming into the world, with the joys but also the lingering sadness that follows: The sadness of witnessing the unaware purity of mind becoming aware, becoming conditioned.

And at the same time, in myself, through my practice and life, I am experiencing an equally strong transformation where I cannot trust my intellectual filtering of life anymore. And I find myself living more directly through my emotions. I'm starting to experience how at a certain stage of practice life cannot but force itself on you and I can't help but feel. I find myself bursting into tears watching the news, or listening to someone talking from the heart, or seeing an old lady sleeping on the bus. It is as if I find myself safer and more vunerable at the same time. But mostly quite stupid and lost

During sittings, I experience this quite profoundly, and I wonder if anyone have gone through anything similar. It is as if the notion of witnessing is not really accurate while meditating. It is more like neutrally being part, expressing life. I get angry, sad, happy much faster, and it passes faster, and its almost like being in my teens again.

Anywayz, returning is also returning to a more direct experience of life, and also being forced to become more sincere, more honest and less intellectual, less in control, more ridiculous. It is more like when you were a child, being in the situation you were, with no preconceptions, just reacting, just feeling.

And, to explain what I mean:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...videoid=8560008

'So, life becomes more like this, what was once kitchy is now fresh, profound and...home

OR: I'm finally but slowly becoming aware that I was, all this time a fruitcake...

h

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Bh8z4Qr6M

you make me cry and laugh, and i get almost paranoid (clinging to "this is kitchy & reaksjonært") but seing that clip, you know, it was the first film i saw, our whole family together, i must have been 5 or 6, and i fell asleep for a while and was later convinced i had watched a movie for two whole days.
"salige er de saktmodige for de skal arve himlene"
As a kid i had a very personal translation of the holy spirit .....I was in church with my parents hearing the priest talk about the holy spirit, and i heard him say "den hellige and" = "the holy duck", because the word for spirit is very similar to the norwegian word for duck. So I still once in a while enjoy watching the slow and rocking ascent of the holy duck towards the ceiling.
childhood is as you say this tingling laughter AND these profound sobs of sorrow, all these clear feelings..
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday, about Assagioli and psychosynthesis, and the development of subpersonalities, their function and vast potential in integral development as adults. (and in art)
It is a sensible approach that includes the spiritual aspect. We also pondered upon how there seems to be a certain link between wuji in MA and integration-techniques...

hope i made at least some sense here...

Hagar,
I've had a very similar experience. In my case, it started with having children. My connection to them heightened my emotional experience dramatically. Now it's more pervasive. It feels to me to be a natural progression. I guess we're returning to our nature. This would seem to be more connected with physical, sensory, and emotional experience than with analytical thought. My teacher also tells me it is a normal stage in the progression. In fact, I've been actively cultivating the experience of sensory and emotional reception/awareness as a way of disconnecting from the thought train. It has reduced my daily anxiety quite a bit and has helped me connect more closely in relationships....
Steve

Hagar,

All my life I have been trying to avoid or fix my emotions. Now I am just falling into them and discovering that there is a richness and an inherent dignity to being a human being full on. It is touching to be in such a vulnerable space...sensitive like a child...I can be hurt easily. For me they seem to be the key to feeling fully alive and a natural part of the human experience.

I heard a teacher once say that the emotional body will stretch your capacity to allow the present moment. It is like it prepares you for the unpredictability of the infinite (where anything can arise).

Me too! My teacher said that this was an excellent opportunity to develop a genuine deeper compassion that will only benefit one's practice.

I love this thread. Hagar and everyone else sharing the experience of rediscovering the experience of unconditioned innocence.

Hagar "..........where I cannot trust my intelectual filtering of life anymore"

When I saw John De Ruiter in 2001, he said "you used to have the eyes of a litle boy. Let them come back"
Those words went deep.

My neices and nephews are aged 1, 7, 9 & 10 They havce no idea that, just by being themselves, they are great teachers. Affection, honesty, sincerity, wonder............they express all this and it opens it up in me.

Glad to hear you feel this way too. I use to be worried that I was "a bit strange" I felt that the only thing that separated me from someone with mental illness is that I can still pretend to be a normal person and interact with society the way normal people are expected to. I noticed this last week when I went to a big city (big for me)

Most people hurry through the streets. They are hiding in there own little world, not making any contact with the people around them. It's very noticeable now with the current fashion, I-pods and large sunglasses i.e. no hear, no look. The people themselves look a bit angry and they feel.... cold and prickly. It’s like they are afraid of everyone.

Now in every large group of people there is a “weirdo” like a homeless person, mentally ill etc. “Normal” people rarely talk to me but the “weirdo’s” approach me all the time. I’ve realised it’s because I walk the streets smiling, looking at people and trying to make eye contact. I don’t give off that “don’t touch me” vibe. More interesting is once I got over being worried / scared of these people talking to me (and it can be scary and it took a while) and made the effort to stop what I was doing and try and to understand them. They are much more interesting to talk to than “normal” people!! And more worrying is that I enjoy talking to them much more than the “normal” people who just go on about buying this and than and how person X is horrible etc……

So……… I am becoming that “weirdo” on the bus

Anyhow that was the good stuff. Obviously doing this I also give out a lot of money in handouts and am pretty sure I was taken in by a con artist. It was either somthing she had tried on me in a previous years visit or something I had dreamed about as I had a really strong dejarviu (SP) feeling. I really hope it was a con otherwise I might have shattered her belief in the “goodness” of people. Feel really bad about that, but after a while I just didn’t believe her story anymore.

My bad feeling is because I believe that I should just trust what people say, if they ask for help I should help as fully as I can. Not use my skills to take advantage of them for trying to take advantage of me.

I’m not as nice as I would like to be...

I had a professional tell me once that if you worry about being mentally ill, then you're probably not. People with real problems generally don't know it.



Same here.




I generally give out money when people ask for it unless I know for sure it's a scam (I've seen the same person in the same area doing the same thing). Last year my daughter was approached for the first time, and I let her give the person some money even though I was fairly sure it was a scam. I didn't want to crush her faith in the honesty of people (and yes - he was back in the same place the next day). However, I feel that if I've helped even one person then it's been worth it.

A good rule of thumb



Cheers. I just feel bad 'cause she had nowhere to stay the night and I could have called my kung fu school and got someone to look after her just as easly as giving her $20, which was not enough to help her and wasn't a strain on me. i.e. I took the easy option.

But I was scared to call my school incase she was lying and I then looked stupid for wasting everyones time on a "street person" In retrospect I should have just checked her story with the police, didn't think of that at the time.

go with your gut feeling. me and a friend met a bunch of alcoholics/bums in the subway. one guy was way younger and barefeet. it was winter. he was obviously ill, but no doubt soon woud have reached an even more sinister state of helplessness due to cold, so we invited him to stay with us. Conversation, we found him some shoes and clothes, a meal, a warm bed, and we all slept soundly. we thought. next morning he excused himself for not finishing the meal, his liver couldnt take much. he had slept a little, had peed in a beer bottle afraid of waking us up flushing the loo. Then he took my hand an stared me straight in the eye and said; "lady you are crazy to do things like this. I was awake most of the night and could easily have taken advantage of you in any way. promise me you won't do this again." I know he was sincere, but what resonated in me was a picture of sad angry and desperate person playing the bad guy.

if he had freaked me out though i think it would have been a different story..

When I noticed that my mind was not in control, I started opening up... between every thought is a space and even within thoughts there are holes of nothingness - we're used to having our attention on the stuff (thoughts) rather than on the holes and empty space. So I started directing my awareness on the holes and discovered something - the holes are where the magic comes from... The first thing that came up is emotion - a gushing torrent of emotion - the whole backlog of 'emotion for no reason' came through and it was a little unsettling -

emotion when you're looking at it from the point of view of 'stuff' is very different - it always seems like some external thing is causing it and there is all that mental anguish of trying to control those external things to stop some emotions and have more of other emotions... From the point of view of 'holes' emotions are felt - not seen or thought about but felt deeply - they arise as internal indicators - they're like trackers helping you on your journey through the wilderness of life.

I remember when I was 13 I experimented with the sensations of having my hand in hot and cold water - I decided to really feel what's happening rather than think about it - I discovered that there was cold in hot and hot in cold - it was all sensation, only the mind sees the separateness. Similarly when I was young and getting bitten by mosquitos, I would scratch the bites hard and that would only satisfy me for a second and the itch would get worse - so I decided that instead of jumping to the conclusion that an itch is irritating, I would put all my awareness on the actual feeling and keep it there - as a result I noticed that I gravitated between irritation/pain and extreme pleasure - after a bit of time concentrating on it I couldn't tell the pleasure from the pain - it was just sensation - so guess what happens now that I put my awareness on the sensation of emotions?

After the initial torrent of emotions everything settled down - I feel emotions unguardedly - sometimes I catch myself in mental anguish, trying to control it all, this is a habit of a lifetime and I'm surrounded by it every day... so it's a little difficult to not go back into this habitual slumber... The gift that comes from the holes is that intuition follows the initial torrent of emotion... It's a simple sort of intuition - I dont see the future, or lizard people or lottery results... instead, when I'm really in the flow of this non-practice, I just watch where I move - I watch what my body decides - it involves courage and trust - one day I watched myself not go to work (is this my mind just playing tricks so that I can be lazy all day?) it turned out that the office watercooler was contaminated with salmonella - 80% of the office spent weeks puking (reminds me of Cam )... I also get strong emotions around some people so I either feel myself retreating or coming closer...

anyhoo enough for now - all the best and worst to you all!

.............

Thank you all for your replies!

Rain: I totally know what you mean. I've been stuck with that kind of filtering, and still is. Its why irony is so big (ex. "Lille Lørdag). Irony and sarcasm is actually based on fear of being a sucker. It often turns into cynicism. I remember sitting having an exam in philosophy at the university at an old church in Bergen. As I sat there writing about Nietzsche and how God is dead, I looked left, and there was a painting of Jesus and a little lamb, and a light coming from above. Below there was a text: "Saalige er de fattige i aanden" (blessed are the meek). It was a slap in the face. In my childhood I though God was a baker ( gi oss idag vårt daglige brød).

Xuesheng:
In my experience too the birth of my son forced my heart open.

ThirstyT:
Yes, the quality of life emerging as we dwell deeper in the pure sensory and emotional body is so much richer and worth the risk of being hurt. I remember Trungpa in "Shambala, path of the Warrior" said something about how you should in the end let your heart be like a raw lump of flesh, so sensitive that if a mosquito landed on it, you would cry.

Mat:
I never tought having children would be that tough. But they are great teachers in their openess. But it also triggers the memories that made that openness dissapear in myself. And also it is such sweet sadness in being together with them. They are small for only so short a time, and they will never be so small again. Its precious but sad.

Mal: I remember taking the subway to the "posh" part of town where I once lived. In each car there always was one "bad seed" or eccentric person. But it mad me aware of the inherent judgment we inhabit, and how norms of behaviour is based on fear of being judged. Everyone is always having the same emotions as a child inside somewhere, but we have succesfully supressed them to a point where we feel uncomfortable by being confronted by "crazy" people. People in big cities are basically cold and uncaring because they are vain, and up in their heads. If they were open and compassionate, I think they couldn't fuction. The shocks would be to numerous.

Freeform:
Great post. I know what you mean. In the same way, being receptive and just observing reveals, as Leonard Cohen wrote "there's a crack in everything so that the light can come in".
Its really simple, as you say. But being simple, its also difficult. Like going to the dentist. You can make it very complicated, postponing, worrying, thinking, anticipating pain. But if you just stay present, and do nothing, the whole thing is just what it is. Sometimes painful, somtimes boring, sometimes interesting, sometimes expensive. =)

Basically, what I was trying to say in my previous post was how intensly difficult life is. The most difficult is to open up towards ourselves and others, and realize that there is going to be suffering. That there is a paradise, but it will be lost. But that there also is an inherent grace in this. Like watching the birth of my son. Makes me remember this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=34...h&plindex=2

h


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Just wanted to say this thread is awesome, thanks Hagar.