A bigger self. An end to boundaries

Of all places to find a moment of clarity: Ugly Betty on Friday night!! She was criticised for not fighting and letting her man go, and she retorted that "maybe she was a bigger person".

If we are a small person clutching to a small world the tiniest breath of wind will fill our life with turbulence. If we are a large person we can consume even the biggest upset and not be overwhelmed.

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I am beginning to see how to overcome boundaries to find peace.

Peace is not a happy feeling. If we make the boundary "I am now happy" then we are no longer at peace because we will dread the passing of that feeling.

Instead it is the weakening of the boundaries.

Normally we try to identify things. We identify the objects around us. We identify feelings, emotions and characteristics of ourselves. We calculate things like "I am in love" and "I am happy".

The question is at what time did we fall in love and what did the boundary between not being in love and being in love look like? Was it like a marker on the road so we knew when we were travelling out of "non love" territory into "love" territory?

When we enter a room we think "I am outside the room" and then we think "I am in the room". But at what point did we make the transition? Was it with our first step into the room, or was it as our last step left the hall? or was it when we closed the door? Maybe with the door opened we might still be thinking about something in the hall and so we do not get around to entering the room for a while.

While it happens that we enter a room there is no exact boundary, no distinct being the hall and no distinct being in the room: there is no clear difference between them.

However when we think about it we like to think there is a complete difference between being in the hall and in the room. When we argue that the murder happening in the room and so the murderer had to have entered the room we like to draw a picture of the room and hall with distinct lines and exact situations. Its useful to think like this, but it missed the non-exactness of actual living.

In exactly the same way we like to think "I am in Love" and "I am not in Love" and if we like being in love then we start to amplify problems for ourself because when we identify in that exact kind of way that we have made the absolute transition into "not being in Love" we feel that "Everything" good is gone. When actually there was no exact total transition, and no exact total difference between the two.

The same with phobias. We think there is a spider in the room. Its an exact situation and completely difference from the safe one I had before. So I have a focused and exact response to the spider "being in the room". But how "in the room" does it need to be? and at what point does it trigger the phobia and at what point does it not. In reality there is no exact onset of a phobia, but in our exact minds the phobia is triggered very sharply. Weaken the boundary between triggering situation and non-triggering situation and then ask "when exactly do we respond?" There isn't such a time.

When we stop looking at the boundaries between things then the things blend together much more smoothly. Start painting without first drawing in the lines with a pencil. The colours can run together and smudge and one thing becomes another without the exactness that the mind pencils upon it.

This way we suddenly find that there is no important transition in life between one event and another and so the worst and the best can flow between one another with little mental drama.

We expect that we should pencil things in so we know what is going on exactly. But if we do this we will have just one pencil outline of things and will not be spontaneous to find other lines and divisions that we may need. We become narrow minded like the phobic who sees only the outline of their phobia in a situation and not the infinite other outlines.

Its a hard thing to realise but actually we should not pencil in so heavily and in such a fixed way all the time. The death of "my muse" is something true, but I should not pencil it into my life so strongly. This is life, and death and I should accept the fluidity between them and not fight them. She will not blame me for letting the outlines fade, there never was an exact one anyway. Her anniversary comes up on Friday I am wondering whether to make it such a big deal in my mind, or just to let the day come and go in quiet respect and fluidity.

I want therefore I am

I am caught between these two extreme views.

Either "I am" because I think, OR "I am" because I want.

With "my muse" I existed so profoundly. The world was Real because I had this profound passion that rooted me to this world.

Without the passion I am lost, adrift upon the ocean.

This is the doubt that still exists in me: unresolved. The body related to the world in many ways. Thought is only one sense, one way of expressing oneself. The body is diverse and we can express ourselves through physical means also. In the realm of sexuality and sensuality there is whole arena of expression. Why should thought be primary?

There is no central thing in this world. The mind is not characterised by thought, it is not characterised by emotion, desire, sensuality. All these are upon a level playing field. The mind has no character: why promote one over the other?

The long view

The only difference between the worldly path and the spiritual and between good and evil is the length of view we take.

The person who only has faith in today is trapped into grasping for everything they can get.

The person who has faith in a lifetime can chose and settle for life long acquiantances.

The person who has faith in the afterlife, or many lives or at least in something beyond death can sacrifice things in this life for benefits in the next.

The person who has faith in enlightenment can sacrifice endlessly lifetime after lifetime for attainment of that eternity.

Thus the person with long view builds their life on more secure and unchangeable foundations that the person who only believes in today.

Real is Not-real again

It is a fully recognised features of experience that to really feel acquainted with someone or something we need to get our hands on. We need first hand experience. This is what makes things Real to us.

However if things are not Real enough until we have first hand experience, then there is an irony that the very first-person nature of Real things means that they are only Real to us! In this sense they are Un-real is a larger sense!

This I argued that Real is really Un-real!

This is not to say that we take our experience as anything but fully Real. Afterall we have nothing but our experience. The point is that the very Realness is conditioned and so is Un-real in an absolute way.

I have experienced the death and also the birth of many people recently. It is most amazing that I have not see in this process the complete conditionality of human existence. We come and we go. I come and I go.

More through the Real/Un-Real window I have seen the boundary of myself. The limitation present in everything from my experiences, to the very nature of personal experience itself. Everything is limited and the true "Reality" is this.

There is a boundary around our existences. It does not have anything outside that boundary however, it is like a folded piece of paper which goes back to where it started. At the center things are both Real and Unreal and all the dualisms. And the self is nothing but the conditioned centre of this.

An impermanent romance

I found the box of letters and poems from my muse that I buried on April 2000. After 7 years in a plastic bag they have all survived altho soaking I was able to separate the pages and dry them. Her picture is completely clear and unfaded, her world still with the writing on it and the bottle of Eternity fragrance still as fresh as when I buried it.

Reading her letters briefly in the cold light of a less passionate heart as I did the forensics, a clear pattern emerges. She never felt love. She didn't even believe in it. She was trying to escape this as much as I was. Within a few months a peom describes how her "picturesque orb" was smashed and her feelings and the words became hollow. The initial flurries of excitement and passion that had so enthralled her faded so quickly. The following two years we battled through poems and letters, me trying to keep it alive to create a lasting heart and she sceptical. The normal course of this would have been a sexual relationship but only as long as our feelings remained and both of us were profoundly aware of how short lived that would have been.

The rule I had created ages ago was the deferal of sexual pleasure builds a stronger heart. That has been the yoke around my neck. I knew that were this to become a sexual relationship it would become very ordinary and the special quality would be lost. I have deferred sex all these years and so kept the dream alive. I wonder if she ever understood and how far our hearts were pulled through the imperfect world of temporary meaningless liasons. I made myself precious by noit giving in, I made her even more precious by treating her as more than just an object of sexual gratification.

Well its undone now. I broke this most fundamental rule this morning. Everything is impermanent. Sex and female/male union is about childbirth and the vain attempt to set back the process of aging and death. What use is there for men and women after death? What is the use of love after death? How can there be people desiring each other after death? When Death strikes we have lost and our petty romances are shown to be what they are. With a photo of her recovered picture I had a short and pointless wank this morning in which she was simply an object of gratification and so broke the rule. She is not that pretty, she is not that special to the eye.

What does remain however is her poems and they still enthral as much today as when I met her. She had such an extraordinary talent. I always wanted to learn and match her writing but I never will, that was a talent unmatchable. In this sense and the sense of our friendship she was very special. It is such a shame that the body and the mind were never going to unite, that the temporary sexual boy-girlness and the joy that gave us had no place in the purer picture of our souls. I am more convinved now that such a unity is impossible that we much make our friends independent of sexuality and make our sex independent of our friends. Its a sad day for romantics and life long partners. In this sense she was right and my attempt to say otherwise has fallen into the void, just as she said it would.

An extraordinary bird has taken up residence in my mothers garden. It is a black bird with the yellow eye ring but a finer and redder beak, and has the behaviour of a thrush. It is clearly a Turdus sp. But it's song is loud and extraordinary. Like nothing that exists in the UK. From early morning to late evening it sits in the horse chestnut next to where I buried the poems and fills the garden with its simple motif. Horn Pipe, Horn Pipe then a falling note. I was looking at it on Sunday and wondered if it might show me where I had buried the memories. I have been looking for them for 3 years. Later I went to the spot and had a think. I realised that the path through the undergrowth may have moved in those years. I took a spade started to dig at one point but gave up quickly realising it was futile. I looked again and moved to a different spot. Within seconds I saw the plastic of the bag. i couldn't believe after all these years and all the trying to remember I had it. No emotion that has all gone, I just opened it all up and began the task of separating the pile of papers. All this really has and must come to its close.

My mother said later in the day that the bird must have a special affinity with me because whenever I am home it sings all day and doesn't leave the garden. i didn't know that. We have silly thoughts I wonder what it means?

Brain is not Human

There is a line of materialist thought which argues that brain chemitsry, structure and function is what unlies human experience and behaviour. This is wrong.

If for example we wish to investigate "Love" we would collect a sample of people and study their brain chemistry and structure for patterns. We would also need to ask them whether they were in love or not in order to make sense of our findings.

Love then is not something that we can "find" in the brain. It has an emotional and linguistic meaning that must be calibrated with brain patterns.

Once this calibration is made we can then quite accurately tell people from their brain chemitsry whether they are in love.

However - and this is the point - humans can tell they are in love independent of knowledge of brain analysis and further this other knowledge is of no real use to them. If we had to go to a researcher to find out if we were in love I can assure you no-one would bother because a piece of paper with a test result on it which distinguishes us from other people is meaningless. It is the experience and implications of being in love which makes it human, not the knowledge. And it is that human quality which the researches will always have to return to in order to make sense of their test results.

Thus test results and knowledge of brain function while true are not meaningful by themselves. They lack any human qualities.

UFO Sighting 1983

This is an old event that I have remembered and dug up the info.

Date: 13th July 1983
Time: 2.15 am
Place: 15minutes outside Chambery on Sorrento Sleeper Train: Route Nationale 6

On a school trip we had been playing around in the 6 person sleeper. Everyone had gone to bed and I had stayed up looking out of the window not wanting to sleep. I think I remember wishing that something would happen.

A dot of light like a plane appeared above the horizon. As it came closer I saw that it was disk shaped. I was stunned. It then dipped down out of sight. I turned around and yelled that i had seen a flying saucer. Everyone told me to shut up, but I insisted. Eventually someone got out of bed and looked while it was still down. I was wishing that it came back to prove what I had seen. Then it popped up again closer. When Mike saw it then he yelled and everyone came down to look.

It was a typical flying saucer composed from two white glowing plates together with a black strip between them and tiny glowing holes in the strip, like a ring of port holes. I could not tell if the saucer was spinning. A photo was taken after 5 minutes as it came toward the train and within a few minutes it went over the train - which was travelling around a valley wall - and over the mountains.

I missed the close approach because I was looking for my camera. As I got down I asked where it was and people said it had gone over the train and so I wondered why they had not gone to look out of the other windows.

I have written this event from my current perspective which is that it was a group hallucination. I had wanted something to exciting to happen and made others believe it.

I have just recovered the information from a school diary and this is the first time I am looking at this properly.

Route National 6 runs out of Chambery. This is the area i would later return to to go caving.