No Subject

"Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.  All dualities come from ignorant inference.  They are like dreams or flowers in the air; foolish try to grasp them.  Gain and loss, right and wrong: such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.  If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease.  If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the  mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.  When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached.  No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state…" --Hsing Hsing Ming

So..the above text is my next meditation assignment.  The difficulty is finding my way in to a place of understanding…or being.  What Tim Piering is having us do is recite such texts, and then alternate with sparring or self-defense motion…then he will calm us down with a Chi Gung style motion, have us recite again, and then more intense work.

I’ve never trained like this before, and it’s simply fabulous, interesting enough to get me up at 5 in the morning (one day a week!) to play with these guys.  It is an honor.

But what do such words mean?  I have a few hints, based on experience.  During an exceptionally deep Yoga Nidra exercise years ago, I found myself in a place where my body was asleep and my mind was awake.  As Neo said, “whoa!”  I was lying there listening to myself snore.  Amazing, and I THINK I experienced that particular phenomenon one more time.

The point is that there are at least three different positions from which to view an action: the thing itself, the person doing the thing, and an outside observer watching the person doing the thing.  This third position is rarest, most evolved, and most enlightening.

During writing, for instance, I occasionally find myself in a position where I am watching myself sit and write.  This is strange—one of those “out of body” moments.   The curious thing is that my writing is rather mindless…but when I read it, it feels absolutely polished, highly creative, and sometimes mind-blowingly dead-on.

I suspect that we all have such moments, and if you can identify one or a series of them, you have the key to a level of excellence and conscious-subconscious integration that completely evades most human beings.  Give it a try!  Meditate, or walk, or wash dishes, or play with your dog, or write…but maintain conscious awareness of the fact that you are doing this.  Try to find the observer mode.  No, you don’t want to be there all the time (I think) but it can be extremely valuable in learning to get out of your own way, and let your trained instincts take over.