Desire creates mental habits!

It is certainly clearer that desire breeds existence.

When we want something all kinds of things start existing. Firstly the thing we want becomes big and solid. Secondly problems surrounding the getting of it start to exist. Thirdly the emotions and physiological responses involved with the action of winning/losing and the struggle start to come into existence.

Without the initial desire none of this exists. It is the fact that without desire nothing exists which is why things are called empty and the world described as having infinite potential. It is not the world that has changed over the centuries but human desire. No one desired mobile phones a century ago but now we do and as our desires expand so the mobile phone industry evolves hand in hand.

Its not quite Schopenhauer or Nietzsche that our desire physically makes the world like a magician. But it is not naive Materialism either where the world makes us like a magician. It is very subtle.

So the conclusion here and which i have been pursuing for a long time now is that we should check our desires and not feed them. But then we have this malaise because what is there to do in life if every desire is seen as the cause of imperfect existence and suffering?

This weekend I could see that socialising was often just the effort to escape that sense of bordeom and ill ease which we have with ourselves and our life. That sparkle of friends, of flirting or feeling wanted and belonging just a cover for the deep dissasatisfaction in life. When even making someone laugh is considered a cheap medication to their deep inner anxieties and needs ... what is the point?

And often people refer to the thought patterns that we learn in religion to make us good and positive as "habit". And I have always argued that this sounds very bad as it makes "goodness" sound like a robot action.

A more positive view I thought I was reminded this morning is that it is negativeness which is the robot habit. We develop fixed behaviour patterns and apply then wholesale to the world - that is badness. Goodness by contrast is flexible, sensitive and free and applies itself directly to each and ever person and situation.

That must be the liberation that they talk of. So there is a problem with the blanket appying of the observation that desire creates existence because it can become a mental habit which replaces the very freedom that it was designed to create!

Desire creates mental habits! So when we find a mental action then we need to see its creation by desire and see that as empty! Like i suppose this blog entry... what desire created this ?

Evolution of a poem

"My muse" had the Mozart gift of being able to write poems straight out in one draft. For me the process of writing comes in a sketch which becomes crafted through many versions toward a satisfactory form. It is as though my mind is not big enough, or my memory at least, to hold a complete work and it must be done in stages. This is true for music as well as poems.

First draft while sitting in a park. After a complete blank of inspiration a rough idea of what I wanted to say came and I needed to get a sketch down to see what it looked like.

In Early June I took my place upon a chequer floor [first lines are always right for me]
Away from the percussion of a busy street
In a city that sung to a worldly (rewritten: cosmopolitan) beat
Resting gently upon the swell of conversation
Illuminatin a room cut thrugh by panels of light
I'll be back in a moment the waiter said
and, she gave me her world and Eternity.
(notes: and she to me)
(notes: illuminated in the time of an arbitrary sun)
(notes: 2 worlds collide)

Looking at the sketch I could see where it was wrong and it gave new ideas. Second draft immediately after:
In Early June I took my place upon a chequer floor
Black & white 2 worlds collide
In what i saw before.
In a cafe away from a busy street
In a city that sung in a cosmopolitan beat
In a room illuminated by panels of light
Resting gently on a swell of conversation
Illuminatin a room cut thrugh by panels of light
I'll be back in a moment the waiter said
and she gave me a world and Eternity. [was worried she might take it too personally if I said her world]
(notes: sun symbolic of world/eternity ?moon)

That was the end of lunch break. The next evening I found the poem sketch on my desk and read it. With a clear fresh mind that was when the magic happened and the final 3 metred lines came together. Then I knew I almost had it.

In Early June I took my place upon a chequer floor
Black and white, 2 worlds collide in what I saw before
In a cafe away from a busy street
In a city that sings a cosmopolitan beat
In a room iluminatd by panels of light
(note: sundial/flooof time/time flowing in shadows on the sundial board)
from a ticking star that shines so bright
Resting gently on a swell of conversation
I'll be back in a minute the waiter said
And she
Daughter of the moon to me
Gave her world and eternity

Still dissatisfied that it was a mess had a final go.

In Early June I took my place upon a chequer floor
Black and white
2 worlds collide
In what I beheld before
In a cafe away from a busy street
In a city that sings to a cosmopolitan beat
In a room iluminatd in panels of light
Time flowing on shadows of/in sundial flight
Pausing/Resting gently on a swell of conversation (crossed out)
Resting gently in/on conversations (lively/pleasant/gentle/warmin/eager) eager swell
'I'll be back in a minute' the waiter said
And she
Daughter of the moon to me
Gave her world and eternity.

Final decisions were made at leasure and it was polished before sending, thus

In Early June I took my place upon a chequer floor
Black and white
Two worlds collide
In what I beheld before

In a cafe beside a busy street
In a city that sings to a cosmopolitan beat
In a room illumined in panels of light
Time flowing on shadows in sundial flight
Resting gently on conversations eager swell
'I'll be back in a moment' so the waiter said
And she
Daughter of the moon to me
Gave her world and eternity.


Unfortunately nothing good ever came simply for me. The best piece of music I ever wrote must have been through over 10 versions before I was happy. Even tho the central idea I had from the first draft! So the lesson is it doesn't have to be perfect before writing and if you don't write you don't start to process to perfection!!!

Social membership is a force by itself

An excerpt from a book of my fathers called "Hitler Youth" by Hans Siemen (1940).

"The next morning, however, when I tred to remember what Goring had acually said, I could think of nothing. Nothing but things at which I had had to laugh, his parodies of the party speakers, his mimichig of the Jews, and various jokes and witticisms. But once again I had heard nothing serious about Ntional-Socialism. I decided to wait a bit longer, and was ashamed of myself for having quickly joined in the shouts of "Heil!" p85

.... But I still knew as good as nothing of ational-Socalism, and quite innocently I asked one leader after another o give me some idea as to what to read on the subject.

A fine response I met with! None of them had any idea themselves. And what's more they didn't want to.

During the time I was in the Hitler-Youth I got to know at least fifty to sixty leaders, from the most junior to the most senior, young men who had been in the party for years. And I can honestly say that there was not a single one among them who would have been able to explain o himself or anyone else what National-Socialism really was. It was very rare for one of them ever to have read the Party programme." p86

I am interested by this because this has been my exact experience in Religion. Feeling very silly as a kid I once put my hand up in Sunday school and asked how Jesus dying on the cross had saved our sins. I thought I must have missed something or was just stupid and so wanted to get this clear as it seemed quite important. The teacher grew angry and I thought I was in trouble for being stupid. But it turned out that no one knew. That was one of the most extra-ordinary things I ever saw. People believing, even teaching something they didn't even know themselves! But actually this is the norm. I found the same thing in Buddhism would you believe!!

I have sort these answers ever since and really throughout religion no one actualy knows anywhere, and those who seem to know you find eventually are giving a simplified picture.

The truth is that people come together in groups for its own sake. And people don't like to know what they are doing most of the time, its just more comfortable following the herd. Thus group membership is to be completely scorned and avoided.

The joy of freedom

My lab partner said to me that i am not ready to be a monk because i still have strong attachment to people.

I thought about that.

Sex is not such an issue anymore. We go to theme park as children and are enthralled by the various cartoon characters walking about. When we grow up we have a choice whether to be taken in by it, or just see people standing around in costumes. Sex is exactly the same. We can either get taken in by fetishisation of body parts, or we can just see it all as flesh with no different between hands and breasts.

Now the energy of sexual desire may bring us to do sex and that will bring meaning to various body parts so their sexual fetishisation comes from what they do.

But sexual energy can be diverted into love and higher expressions and so we can lose those habits and so not get drawn into physical expression.

Now their is nothing wrong with physical expression of sex. The problem is what happens if we don't get it? It creates suffering and that is because we are bound to it, and that means we are not liberated. Now just stopping having sex does little. The point is to investigate sex from the standpoint of liberation rather than the pursuit of desire.

Once the sexual desire and habit of viewing people as things to have sex with has weakened as I have started to find then their is a great cooling over all.

My lab partners question finally brought me to understand the full syndrome I have been in all my life.

As a child I used to get deeply unhappy when I parted with friends, especially girls but not always. A good day out where I had fun and excitement was always met by a sadness at home as I cooled down.

Now I don't get that with male friends, but I identify today that I get that especially strongly with girls I say I love.

Especially importantly, it is NOT the desire for sex which causes the problem. Rather it is a cocktail of other things which I analyse out next.

1) A guy at work turned a girl down once and now sees it as an opportunity lost. That is ego because he is viewing it as something to be gained or lost, which places him and his choice in the centre. Ego is the main issue. Looking at things from an ego perspective distorts them badly! Regarding "my muse" her fiancee has lost the most, and in a one way I have gained because no-one can have her now, but the other way i have lost a wonderful friend - its a bizarre situation when looked at in terms of gaining and losing.

2) The other important part is companionship. Often companionship between people of opposite sex is considered better than others because the sex is a binding force to bring people together. Bring up children must be the closest companionship there is, far ahead of socialising and working together. I never saw this before but sex is used to reinforce friendship. That was the reason for my jealousy and my leaving "my muse". It was not that others were having sex with her, so much as they must be having a closer friendship! She always ensured me we were best friends - but this is a complex situation I am trying again. Something in Platonic relationships i am sure.

These two things must be boiled out of the sexual desire and when that happens it is quite an easy cocktail to digest.

So the pointof this is that it is close companionship that I am attached too and not sex!! "My muse" being as beautiful and talented as she was was actually of interest because I believed we belong together! it is that bond of friendship that captured my heart and the confusion of sex and the loss of faith in that which broke it.

If she had married her fiancee, and this is the huge obstacle for normal thinking, it would not have weakened our friendship! Because marriage need not be the closest friendship. Love is the closest friendship and marriages are built around sex.

Its been a tough process of a lifetime to burst open the romantic images and illusions that have surrounded the female form and which have caused me to orientate my life in a particular way.

I hope this attachment to friendship which is in part a good thing can be fostered and the negative jealousies and desires that become caught up in it can be weakened.

The goal then is to form deep, changing and sensitive loving relationships with all people and not feel any negativity if they should move onto other people. Their choice and happiness must be first. To be happy and buoyant in the world regardless of outcomes. If I do form a sexual relationship then it will be within the scope of this larger picture. I do believe as I write that this is very much the view that "my muse" had. She was so loved by so many people, her funeral was packed, she harboured few negative feelings and was always so buoyant in the world. The first thing I ever noticed about her was how her feet seemed to not touch the floor. I see now that this was her, her buoyant and free abidance with the world her liberty and freedom from negative weighty emptions. She gave, and gave freely and those who could overcome jealous and competitive egotistical thoughts could take. I have learned my lesson. It will be a year tomorrow when she last closed her eyes upon this world but, it is we who have lost.

Time to drink the Wormwood

I am reminded that it is Wesak today. May all beings be well and happy. May all beings cross to the other shore, quickly.

It was yet another sleepless night awake at 4. I have discovered that "my muse" did find love, that she was speaking of getting married before she passed away. If I have difficulties with all this, it is nothing compared with her fiancee! He is in a terrible state still after a year and as the anniversary comes around. I am relieved and so happy that she did find a man to be happy with in life. He is a wonderful person apparently and someone she really deserved. It has important implications for me too.

It means that my illusions have been shown up. That we did have a simple friendship, that she never loved me as a partner. That what i was seeking and what she was seeking were at completely different levels, and i also understand now what she wanted from life. I have at last absorbed her mind and it shows me a very great deal. This oldest soul had much to teach this young one.

Having read all her letters again things are moving into place and her picture of things was so simple and well expressed. She had two pieces of advice for me.

Firstly she explained in a poem that romance is like the ice upon a lake. Cold and without breaking the ice we cannot touch the reality.

Secondly she marvelled at the countless lives and heartbeat that beat side by side in this vast world. People living side by side but mostly in ignorance of one another.

She followed her senses. She was a "i feel therefore I am", while i was a "i think therefore I am".

Her path through life and boyfriends was a search for an organic unity one that both satisfied her heart but also her body and her mind. She felt her way to happiness and through the insights and energy of this had the power to open her third eye and to write her poetry.

This level and trust of the senses and the world was what I marvelled in her and sort to learn. For me however i have been at removal from the world because primarily I observe in advance of feel. Thus I am cautious and hindered in my path through the world. Where she would dive in and ask questions later, i do not move until i am sure.

There is one advantage to my path. On Ben Macdui in 2003 I noticed that by irony the one thing I was not going to see when I climbed the mountain was that mountain itself. You would have thought with all that work put into climbing the mountain it is that mountain you would see. Of course it is that mountain you experience, but it is everything else you see.

I have always sort perspective and vision on things, while she always sort experience. It is evident from this blog that i am positioned outside evrything that I talk about and that gives me the vision to see it. Analysis and observation liberate us from the world, while sense and feeling absorb us into the world. Both I suspect are valid ways to enlightenment. i wanted to absorb and sense the girl, but in the end I have gained perspective on her and removed myself.

I thought last night that analysis and perspective were the recourse of the coward. All these academics hiding themselves from the world behind their intense gaze. This is certainly true, but it is also the critical process to liberation to. We analyse our woes and sufferings so that they are before us and we are removed from them. The mystery of course is where are we when we have the whole world before us ;-)

So my greatest romance, the dream I have centred my life on for 10 years was an illusion, that the emotions that filled me for so long were of my own making. Thankfully I am a reserved and self controlled person and she never knew the turmoils and struggles that lay within me. That i was able to have a friendship with her even against the battle of my emotions and desires. Maybe I brought her some of the happiness that i wanted her to have, for that i can be happy, and spared her the rubbish that i could so easily have dumped on her. I failed to give her what we both originally wanted and maybe there is a great loss in that, but clearly I had these other things to learn and my future has been set.

Is there significance to the date 4/5/06? This was the day she saw the sunrise but never set. She was in love, she had a happy future before her, she had countless friends and was loved by all; the funeral was packed. Why did she pass away without explanation and hurt so many people. That now becomes the greatest mystery.

So if I lose my job which i got originally to get the money to try and hold down another relationship that I never bothered with, if that what have I got?

I have nothing! I am a failure in career, I am a failure in love, I am a failure in life. Now to most people that would be terrible, but to me that seems to be the greatest opportunity to fulfill myself.

After the last email: when exactly am I a success in a career? when exactly am I in love when exactly am I success in life? Its not that these things don't happen but that where is the border and the border controls between these lands and their opposite.

What makes a failure any different than a success? where is the boundary, where is the difference?

Now that is only the pencil marks of the watching mind. The United Nations of the head drawing boundaries and setting one bit of land apart from another.

If I call myself a failure it is as meaningless as calling myself a palestinian and living 10 miles from an Israeli and thinking there is any difference between us!

This is all very hard to really accept. If I am awake all night, night after night, things are clearly not peaceful within. But somehow I relish this journey more than the imagined bliss that I so desired and have lost. I only hope I know where I'm going.

It has brought into strong relief the problem that faces me in life. The world of sensual involvement, love, security:that bliss, and the world of mountain climbing and the vast views all around that I cannot touch but bear the soul just as high.

Do I follow "my muse" into the garden of sensory delights or do I remain outside Eden and turn that original sin into a virtue.

Either way I must become a far greater person that I am. I must develop strength and mastery of myself to follow either path.

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.

===

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?