Stepping Aside (#109)

8. APAPB. I am appreciating sitting here on the very edge of the state of sleep. My eyes want to close, do close for a bit, I feel a heaviness in my arms but then I rouse a bit and lose it. Too much appreciation leads to excitement and I wake up. I close my eyes and think about what Being is and how I relate and I think back to the night I asked God to come through the door and he did. As Gen pointed out, God/Being has been with me but I have not stepped aside as Pema has suggested. I have an image of the holy spirit, sense it. And now time to sleep.

7. F. pause. I am finding it interesting that my mind seems to just turn off at the beginning of the week. This blog is my connection

6. F. Working and trying to remember to watch

5. pause. Working my way through another Tuesday. Good to pause. Nothing means to remember to keep watching

4. pause

3. pause

2. Gr.

1. TGT. It is a breautiful day today to be alive on this blue and white planet (green too, with golden sunshine, from this viewpoint!)

****************

This morning I reflected a bit about stepping aside, as Pema has suggested, and also that one of the three possibilities, mentioned by Pema in his email, is that Adams also is Being (along with z-self and “self” or ***). It is a little suggestive that *** has stepped aside a little for Adams to come through. The part that is coming through, the part that is not ***, could that be Being or a reflection of Being?

Never too Late to Start (#108)

14. F. Help me to see what I do not see and what I think I do not see. Help me to step aside, as Adams often asks “self” to do. Ah, so I have practiced this a wee bit.

13. F. Tonight for the first time I understand Nisaragadatta’s “There is no Who”. It is referring to “want” which comes from desire, attachments.

12. ZRM. Two Buddhist thoughts without comment from meditation tonight. One from Martie’s card: [Nothing/emptyness] is a reminder to keep watching. The second is from Dakini’s “benediction”: Dakini Rhode: “May all leave attachment to dear ones and aversion to others, and live believing in the equalness of all that lives”.

11. F. Still no thoughts

[long breakhere]

10. F. pause

9. F. pause.

8. F. pause

7. F. pause. Working as if bouncing across waves

6. F. pause

5. F. pause. …and work improves too

4. F. How quickly the clouds can disappear once one begins the PaB routine!

3. F. Pause. Little late getting started here and it is necessary. There seem to be clouds. What are they?

2. Gr.

1. TGT. A little late am I getting to remember I am alive and that is enough

**********

I had thoughts for here but I can’t find them now.

Watching Me (#107)

9. BrM. No thoughts now

8. F. pause. I had asked God to come through the door and he did. I haven’t thought to notice that he might have been with me all this time. Maybe I need to listen better as well as to watch myself.

7. F. At second of this mornings sessions, Gen suggesting Being has been helping me all along here. I have been thinking about this all day.

6. F. Since last entry I have been told/reminded that before I went to bed, one of the last things I heard was one end of a phone conversation, someone asking another how their red peppers were growing!!! Red peppers, heard by z-self, stored in memory by real “self” and then dreamed by Adams. And then taken away so cruelly from Adams.

5. PaB Sessions. Two sessions just posted. Wol helped me to see that my levels of dream were related to Pema’s email about the relationships between my levels of self: inner person (Z-self), RL “self” and my SL avatar with Being. It was Adams dreaming of the red peppers. Possibly Being watching me lie there (sleeping?). Much other watching on different levels of various selves by various selves.

4. F. pause. Rain much harder and there have been a few instances of distant thunder. As I walk around the house, I hear the rain from different directions, from different open windows. I still have #3 to complete.

3. BS. Same scene, same time as in #106, then with the bug, but this time, it is a different perspective, Being seeing (hmmm maybe):

My forest is a stage, teeming with life. There are my trees, majestic tall trees, short trees, and trees spreading branches horizontally into what had been open spaces. Life seeks its space to be. Various shrubberies, flowers, and grasses fill the spaces on the first floor. A path through the forest, made by human and deer traffic, is clearly drawn in brown among all the green. It starts on the upper left and curves closer in front where there is a little bridge made by humans, and then curves again on the right toward the distance. A garter snake suns itself on a decaying log near the foreground in a small patch of sunshine arriving on the ground through the canopy. Squirrels are enjoying chasing after each other in the trees having finished feasting on black walnuts, now pursuing their other animal instincts. Chipmunks scurry around the ground looking for food. Some birds are feasting on a berry bush next to the trail. Other birds are preening in the tree tops trying to stay hidden from a red tailed hawk circling in the skies. Butterflies are drinking at various flowers along side bees. Caterpillars are munching on leaves. Ants are on the hunt for food on the forest floor. Spiders have woven their webs to catch unsuspecting flying insects. A lone hummingbird zooms in on some of the flowers. Small fish are swimming in the brook under the bridge. All of the sudden bluejays begin squawking a warning. The snake feels vibrations and slips off beside the log away from the path. The birds at the berry bush fly deeper into the brush. A human being is coming down the path, crushing leaves and occasional twigs beneath its feet. The human bends over a flower toward a butterfly resting there. The butterfly flits away and the human moves on to the bridge. Frogs leap from the side of the bank into the water.The fish seek safety under the bridge. The human stares at the water. Satisfied, it turns away and continues down the path. Birds, frogs, fish, snake and chipmunks listen as the steps fade into the distance before resuming their activities.

2. Gr. #1 would be enough but there is much, much more

1. TGT. Whatever time system is in effect, I am here, I am alive for another day, listening to the gentle rainfall on the leaves. It is enough.

**********

Last night I was very aware of levels of thought. I don’t remember much now but it was clear at the time. Much of it seemed to be due that I spent a good deal of time in second life yesterday and so was programmed for watching. One interesting thing that happened was that I was watching a red pepper growing (!!?!) and for some reason I opened my eyes. Even though it was dark, the very vivid image vanished immediately, and may I add, rudely. I was a bit shocked at the time although it makes perfect sense this would happen. I was also able to picture myself lying in bed, something I hadn’t done since I was a child.

Who is Impatient? (#106)

3. F. A day of warm conversation but little about time or Being after the 7 am session. But a f=good day to be alive

2. Gr.

1. TGT. A gentle rain and I am alive and I feel the freedom of the weekend on this planet earth circling around and around and around with no concern for time

**************

Here I am back to my first koan that Pema gave me at the end of my very first week in PaB. Pema told me at the time that there was more and I would understand better in the future. Who is impatient? Back then my answer was someone who had desire. Someone who had desire to “get it” quickly. Now I am beginning to understand a little better the time issue to that in the “quickly”.  Lifetime is short and there isn’t time to dilly-dally on one’s awakening. Now, as I realize the existence of different time frames, I begin to understand the absolute necessity of removing time from the equation.

Now the hard part, there is more that I feel and I don’t yet have the words. Can we latch on to eternity? We do this in one way by learning from others, whether gurus, masters, lamas, priests, wise men or women, or what people have left in literature. But is there an end point? Ah, another level of my koan. Someone who doesn’t understand that they are there already. I do know on a deep level there is no need to travel. I have found the person Nisaragadatta has said was there at birth and will be there at death. Having worked hard to find the person I was threatened by the time issue and the concept of illusion of birth and death. I am not now and I am seeing why. It is that person who must now live in the eternity and/or of the present. It is that person who must see, hear, taste, smell and feel Being more clearly. I AM here. Now Being!

I need to begin to listen more carefully. What is it that I am trying to do? Going back to the my goals when I arived at PaB last June: my goals were to live a better life, to be more compassionate, and unsaid at the time, to learn to deal with mortality, not necessarily my own, but of those close to me. By that standard, I have more to do. But I think I am learning that I can’t work on all those directly; these seem to grow out of the understanding of our relationship with Being/God. Maybe another koan, where does the compassion come from? How do we find our compassion? This morning I wonder if Buddhism might have more suggestions for me on that point.

Hmmm. It is all there but in a jumble as the thoughts came to me this morning. It could use a rewrite for clarity but I think I want to leave the process in which I wrote it down. Maybe sum it up later.

Free from Time (#105)

8.It just occurred to me that in the long APAPB passage I was remembering watching Being, but also watching myself watching as an appearance of Being. What happens if I look at myself as Being? I will try the forest where I have recently begun to feel that I belong with all the other creatures. This was a surprising sensation. So I am a bug on a leaf watching.

APAPB. Something is approaching. From the the sound of footsteps on the leaves and twigs snapping, it is a big creature. Ah it is very big; It is walking on two legs. It has no antenna and its head is in two parts. The top part is gray with a flat protusion all the way around the head. Below is pinkish. It has two large eys and a mouth large enough to swallow hundreds of bugs at once.  The body is reddish on top with two appendages; the bottom is brownish with what appear to be very hard feet. Fearsome looking creature. The creature is looking very intently at a flower and probably will eat it. No the flower must not be good because the creature watches a butterfly on another flower. Watch out butterfly. But the person takes out a black rectangle thing and holds it close to the butterfly which flutters away. This is strange behavior. The person stops on a bridge and leans over the side. It must be thirsty. Hmmm it must have a long tongue. But it only looks. Perhaps it wants a fish. But fish swim by and the creature just stands there. Finally, it lifts its head and turns away and starts walking away from me. Soon all I hear are leaves and an occasional twig. Ah, the appearance of Being. This is such a mystery.

7. F. Like with many things I am looking at the time issue from a personal perspective. I need to remember to start with the cosmos and work down.

6. F. Tonight when I think about time I feel my head is going to explode which is an improvement over my reaction earlier this week. I can understand that trying to live in the future magnifies death. The future has an end point for each and every one of us. Death is less a threat living in the present. When it happens, it happens.

5. BrM. Our inner mind witnesses the world around.

4. F. pause

3. Last evening Pia noted that my earlier APAPB contained all sunny images. She wondered if I had noticed (I hadn’t). It got me wondering what if I tried the same thing with other types of images what would happen and the parallel experiment is below.

APAPB. I am arriving back at college after a summer for my second year and looking for one of my good friends. I learn that he had had a seizure while swimming and drowned in a lake over the summer in a tragic accident. He had been an eagle scout and a good swimmer. I think back to when I was six and my mother took me by the hand and led me up to the coffin of an uncle who had died leaving four young children and a wife. My mother quietly whispered to me that this was death and held my hand tightly. My uncle looked very peaceful like he was sleeping. Then six years later, the closing of my grandfather’s coffin. It had all seemed unreal until that moment. Then the awful lowering of the casket into the ground and he was gone from our lives. I then remember the young child at the farm on the squeaking brass bed in the attic of the old stone eighteenth century farmhouse. There was a curved staircase with a string down the stairs from a single light bulb at the top. From the top landing were three rooms. The brass bed was in the largest room, in the middle of the room, a good distance from the light. Down the far side of the room was a mass of old belongings including a dress dummy and hanging clothes. I would go very slowly up the stairs to the light and then dash to the bed. The grandparents waited down below until the young person got into bed and reluctantly said “OK” and then the light went out leaving the young person alone with the fears, the dress dummy, the shadow of the clothes and the animals scurrying around in the roof. The child pulled the covers over his head hoping to mercifully fall asleep as soon as possible awaiting the morning light. Shifting to the window of the house in the city, watching as the father of a classmate staggered home drunk, yelling insults and threats, leaning against the gas lamp and yelling into the house. My classmate told me that when his father came home drunk he beat his wife and the classmate. One day someone came and got the mother and the two children and I never saw the classmate again. Much later while teaching third grade, one of the pupils did not have his homework finished. When I asked why he told me in great detail that the night before some people broke into his home and held the whole family at gunpoint while they ransacked the premises (the story was confirmed). Another child, two years older than the rest, was habitually late. Nothing seemed to work so I wrote up a report as required. A case worker went to his house and then told me that the father was very apologetic but he had to leave for work at three in the morning and this young ten year old got himself and his younger brother up and ready for school every day and, most poignantly, that he liked being in school this year!!! All these appearances of Being too.

3. F. pause

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Another rainy day to dry out and explore the presentation of appearance

***************

It would seem the most important thing about our various times is not to be limited by imaginary constraints, including, maybe sometimes, “acting our age”. Sometimes we need to look at things as we did as a child and I am beginning to think that is because we need to look at things without our “self” clouding judgments about them or pretending we know something that we don’t. Being restrained from time includes worrying about what we have to get done for some imaginary future deadline.

Taking Stock (#104)

10. ZRM. Nisargadatta notes that one must sleep before one wakes up. I fell asleep during the meditation tonight. Is that symbolic I wonder?

9. F. Reading old blogs. In one of the old blog, Pema notes that when one is discouraged and feels like giving up, it is helpful to read old notes and try to feel the excitement one felt at the beginning when everything was new. I am seeing it in the old logs. I had almost forgotten how much fun it was.

8. F. pause

7. F. pause

6. F. pause

5. pause. need to slow down a little and try to refocus

4. pause

3. F. pause. working away

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Alive again and ready to see what this day brings

*************

Thinking a bit more about time and the history of art, there are definite influences on a personal level and these result in a sequence of actions (“sequence” concept coming from Space, Time and Knowledge book). It is only the linear progression that is illusion or an “assumption”.

I am having doubts of the wisdom of my own experimentation with time when I am not sure I understand Being yet. It is only when I think in terms of God that I feel a connection. The whole concept of Being is just an abstract concept to me.

Mushrooms and Time (#103)

11. F. Spent time reading some old and new chat logs tonight. There is a limit to how many logs one can read in an hours or two. Looking forward to sleeping on all this tonight. Help me to see what I am not seeing. Hmmm. that is a “prayer” implying that I need to keep going. I wonder if that is the case. I am feeling calm on the surface with a slight touch of uneasiness down deep or is it the other way around?

10. F. And then there is heaven time, eternity, gazing on God

9. F. pause. My mind seems to be calming down a bit again. “Self” is content for now. Since hearing Corvuscorva jokingly tell Quilty “Not to worry your pretty head about it”, that phrase keeps popping up as the answer to any conundrum.

8. Gr. and a pause

7. F. TIME to go to a meeting now. Deep breath

6. F. pause. The office is another place where time creates a framework. What has to be done in the time frame? Do I have time for that? Can I go home now?

5. F. pause. It is interesting how threatened we feel when our assumptions are questioned. It seems it sometimes take a good bit of distress to force one off those assumptions. Wouldn’t life be easier if that wasn’t necessary?

4. BrM. taking TIME to pause

3. F. Thinking about art history (poking it with a stick) and time this morning testing the hypothesis that there is a fourth time. For convenience we build linear narratives that show progression of styles. This is done as a first step to learning about a period of art. The linear narratives are useful as an introduction but once we look further we find that these narratives are themselves an illusion. Artists look to what has been done already and it influences what they do in many different ways. Those artists who fit the narrative are kept, and those who do not, are forgotten. To fudge the obvious distortions, we sometimes build parallel narratives. Not all 19c French painters are “Impressionists” so we have an academic narrative so fewer artists are left out. The methodology itself becomes deeply ingrained in us and we apply it to all those periods in which we have less knowledge. But it is illusion. Instead of realizing these are assumptions which may help us get to see some of the ideas behind the art, we make the assumptions themselves the reality. This then reinforces our idea of linear time. But these artists lived years, and hundreds of years and even thousands of years ago so there is a past. But we can make assumptions about art that tie artists together.

2. Gr. I check everything and it is still good and add to the list what I have learned from being in PaB this past summer.

1, TGT. I am alive again for another day to observe mushrooms or go to a meeting necessitated by my weaknesses in the last one

************

As far as presentation of appearance goes, mushrooms are among the most spectacular and mysterious. This morning I was treated to a unusually display surrounding a tree stump on the front lawn. Where there had just been grass and dirt the last time I looked, there were layers and layers of brownish, white mushrooms, one on top of the other, all reaching our into the air. We don’t usually expect mushrooms; they are not part of what we see every day. Suddenly conditions are right and they are all over the place, and then they are just as quickly gone a few days later. Then the scene returns to the accustomed one and we are left with faded memories, that particular appearance never to happen again. The next one will be very different, in a different place.

What are the implications for time? For that particular mushroom there are the conditions, the seed (?), the nutrients, and then the proper dampness, which lead to the birth, the life, and the quick death. The tree was of a different time frame and the lawn itself even another, which includes the seasons. My relationship with the lawn is another time frame. Back to mushrooms, they have been coming and going for thousands of years as have trees, the grasses, flowers and humans and other beings, including those who may feast on the mushrooms. Beyond that time is earth time and cosmic time. But what is different is the scale, isn’t it? From our view, no individual mushroom usually warrants our attention.

Mushrooms are just a part of the landscape on those days when we are paying attention. So we do not deal in mushroom time; they are just a part of the landscape, eternity in our eyes (when we are not bulldozing and paving them over). We don’t take note of the coming and going of the mushrooms as affecting us in any way, unless we are among the few raising them or collecting them.

So there seem to be different time frames. In cosmic time, we are blips on the screen with less of an appearance than a mushroom to us. Yet at this moment we are.

Falling Out the Bottom (#102)

9. APAPB. I am lying here thinking about being in the music room at college and listening to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony for the very first time and transporting myself back to the child on my grandparent’s farm, sitting on a mulberry tree, picking off berries while watching the cows, chewing and chewing and chewing, watching me. I hear crows gathered in trees nearby and watch a caterpillar inching along a branch, looking for a leaf, appreciating the taste of the mulberries, the blue sky, fluffy clouds, and the warm summer sun, and the freedom of the moment. I drop from the tree and pull off a pod from a milkweed plant and explore its contents, blowing the seeds into the air and getting my fingers all sticky. I wipe my hands on my pants, put on my straw hat, and set off along the fence line where I come across a dead groundhog with its bloated body open on the side and hundreds of worms busy feasting on the decaying flesh. I watch, fascinated and repulsed, poke it a few times with a stick to see what happens, backing away as hundreds of flies and other flying insects emerge from the carcass, and then turn away. blow out the putrid odors from my nose and keep going, stopping to watch a butterfly and then a rabbit who is startled by my presence. My childhood self sits down and thinks about art class in the school in the inner city where I had been given a large piece of paper and the freedom to draw what I wanted and had made a mural of the farm. My mind wanders to another project, drawing the gray cityscape outside the windows, factories with water towers with ladders up the sides, church steeples, smoke rising from a myriad of chimneys, modest architectural decoration on the rooftops, and a sky gray from the smoke from all the coal burning furnaces in the houses. I shift on my bed and picture myself in the Catskills with my young children in two canoes, paddling around the edge of a lake, watching little fish dart in and out beneath us in the crystal clear water, enjoying the mountains rising all around us, the green darkened with the shadows of clouds, the tops of the mountains hidden in the same clouds, and the pleasure of sharing the moment with these young eyes. Sitting in the boat, I think of my own young eyes at the mountains and a lake in Western Pennsylvania, watching the fish from another boat in crystal clear water, the waves lapping up against the sides of the boat, the houses and mountains passing by the boat, the closer ones changing shape faster than those in the distance. A mosquito buzzes my ear again and I glance around the room, looking for my torturer, and then out the window where all is darkness. When I was a teenager at camp, I remember walking out of the cabin and looking at the thousands of stars above. At the farm too we say many stars too although not quite as many as in those clear Pocono skies. Sitting in the backseat of the car, coming home from the farm, my first lunar eclipse, a full eclipse, the moon being enveloped as we traveled along the road with farms on either side. The moon turning red about halfway home and the spectacle reversing itself as the moon emerged from behind the shadow. The home in the city, such a contrast to the farm, almost no trees at all on our street except for the occasional tree of heaven with its one stalk sticking up through the winter. Looking out the window watching the man come around to light the gas lamps with his little ladder. Running up and down the hot sidewalks, learning every little interesting spot. The old shoe scraper by marble steps, the water pipes by the steps to a factory where we sat and imagined ourselves sitting in a sheriff’s office in the old west. The tall wood fences made from scrap wood, every board different, some of the boards bulging or loose so we could peak behind them into a whole new world on the other side. Lying in bed hearing the whistle of the steam train on the main line. The black wrought iron fences. All these, the appearances of Being.

8. F. In a discussion on anger, Stim notes how instructive that anger can be. Doug also has mentioned how when he is agitated he learns more and I have found that in the past too. For the past 3 weeks I stayed calm while all was chaos around me and now the chaos is me. There may be more than just time festering here. I have realized that I feel I am losing touch with the group now that I am more busy. Ideas seem to have developed in my absence and I seem to have missed stuff

7. F. I was looking at some old logs and Pema mentioned then that I had a tiger by the tail and jokingly warned me I might be eaten. Hmmm. Bottom dropping out doesn’t seem so bad. I had a childish enthusiasm those first couple of weeks. I was fortunate to find PaB at the beginning of the summer

6. F. Who am I? In what time am I living?

5. F. It is certainly understandable why it is important to focus on the moment. Basically we are alive or we are not. There is alive time and that is all there is for us. The rest is history. Why does the rest have to be illusion? The hardest thing for us is not dealing with our own mortality but those of others. How does time help with that?

[I shouldn't be writing anything at all. I am tired and stressed and not thinking rationally. I would go to sleep except that I can not leave here now]

4. F. pause. Digging into work

3. F. pause. Will I be able to find time to think about time?

2. Gr. Most of the same things for which to be to be grateful

1. TGT. I am alive

***********

I have been pretty open on this blog so far but I am having trouble with this one possibly because, for the first time, I feel a conflict with my basic beliefs. I am sensing this may be unresolvable. If the answer to my query, about the seeming contradiction of who I am, is based on the question of time, and time is an illusion, then there is no person there at birth and at death. It can’t be both ways. One interesting sign, when I woke up this morning I felt at peace, tired from the exhaustion of facing this, but calm until I began to focus on the problem again. Judging from the despair and anger, “self” is very threatened by this.

One other point of note is that the contradictions I feel are based on my own observations; I have been thinking that the “time is illusion” issue requires a leap of faith equivalent to believing there is a heaven or we are reincarnated. Even on a cosmic level, stars are born and die, galaxies are moving away from one another. Mankind has been on this earth a short time and is working hard toward its own extinction. Time moves slowly on this scale but it seems to be moving. I can think in terms of this slow moving cosmic time and that my time is not significant in comparison. Even thinking in terms of my own DNA lines, I am only one over hundreds of generations. We come, we live, we go. Where is the illusion in that other than that we are important to the larger scheme of things?

This morning Pema suggested that it may require looking at the issue with a different hypothesis, that there is a fourth time. I can’t begin to fathom what that means or how that works, unless it is cosmic time. But I am willing to entertain the notion. In the meantime, I also am willing to consider the hypothesis that the conflict I am feeling is not unresolvable. But I am feeling uneasy about this.

Birth, Death, Time and Illusion (#101)

6. F. When I stop and meditate there seems to be nothing there. I can listen closely to, and appreciate the music, the appearance of Being, but it is not opening thoughts.

5. F. Gretchaninoff begins to bring me back reminding me that I don;t scare that easily. Too much has happened in the past three and a half months. OK, so where am I off? Would it help to go back to talking about God in place of being.

[This is a critical moment. here is the ultimate question, my ultimate reason for being here and the answer just does not seem not working for me. I feel this in my gut.]

4. F. Be the meditator rather than the object of meditation [follower of Nisargadatta]. That seems to fit here

3. F. pause. I went to the morning session where we discussed this. What I seem to be seeing differently is that my life as transitory [for all selves]. This is the very reason I began looking for a new spiritual presence in Second Life i.e. to deal with this ultimate question of this transitory existence. From that perspective the issue of birth and death and the concept of illusion is a bewildering one.

Pema is suggesting that if one becomes one with Being then time becomes an illusion and this dilemma goes away. The movie analogy is not working for me. What am I missing? There is the obvious next question. How does one do this? Who is at one with Being? Who is not at one with Being?

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Monday morning and alive again to witness the appearance of Being

***********

At yesterday morning’s guardian meeting, Pema said that birth and death are illusions. Nisargadatta has written that as well but also says that we should be seeking the person who was there at our birth and will be there at our death. There seems to be a contradiction between these statements or, at the very least, it creates some confusion in my mind. I hesitated at the guardian’s meeting but thought about this much of the day.

At last evening’s 19:00 session, in one of those PaB coincidences, Avastu appeared, so I asked him. This is his response:

Avastu Maruti: who is it that was born and will die? How do you know this existence?
Avastu Maruti: that knowing is beyond
Adams Rubble: S is it the knowing that is the illusion?
Avastu Maruti: illusion points to something that appears to be, yet isn’t what it seems
Avastu Maruti: the “***” is the illusion
Avastu Maruti: something knows that – THAT which knows the coming and going of *** is what you are

Avastu’s response points to this person who earlier was tabbed the “Z self”. I actually had missed Avastu’s last sentence and went to bed wondering just who I was. Was the “Z self” an illusion, a question I have been playing with in earlier posts. After all, our bodies are made up of molecules of atoms which are basically formed into an appearance of matter. These molecules and atoms were there before we were born and will continue to exist after we die. Besides that many of those molecules and atoms are changing on a regular basis. I woke up during the 1:00 am session and dispatched Adams to talk to Pema. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts she was unable to find him and instead had a pleasant conversation with Fael, Gaya and Claire. they suggested I contact him directly which I plan to do.

Adams Rubble: Hold on a second
***: Adams?
Adams Rubble: Have you guys ever tried talking
***: You mean talk directly to Z self? No.
Z self: No
***: Z self, you are here too?
Z self: I am always here. You just forget about me and try to hide me, and try to speak for me
Adams Rubble: Z self and I have something in common. You are constantly taking over for me. Maybe you guys could start to figure out who is who
Z self: But no worries, we love you
Adams Rubble: Yes
***:
Adams Rubble: Nisargadtta says that *** is the memory and Z self is where consciousness resides. That reminds me of a computer with *** being the hard drive and Z self being the processing unit
***: Then who is the computer?
Adams Rubble: I would think that Z self is the computer but *** has much to do with the appearance of the case
Z self: We all are learning here. Adams, thanks for your analogy. The body is me. I need to dress for warmth but *** dresses in accordance with what you think I am
***: I was taught how to dress and it is I who hear any complaints about it. Society has rules you know
Adams Rubble: Yes! Don’t I know about that one.
Z self: We all appreciate the job you are doing ***. You could do with a little less craving of food though. Your culinary desires could kill us
Adams Rubble: I think that *** gets confused about which of you is which. It would seem to me that last week Z self was there during the meditation stops
***: I wasn’t able to supply thoughts to fill all that time
Z self: Yes, I was coming through
Adams Rubble: That is why you two became confused about Pema’s statement. You have been focused on Z self and then suddenly there is the suggestion that Z self too is an illusion
Z self: Yes we do need to be straightened on that one
***: Avastu says you are real, Z self, and I am the illusion
Z self: In the sense that memory can do the thinking. We have to be a team, you and I, ***
Adams Rubble: And we all need to better understand Z self’s connection with Being. I have something I have been wondering about.
Z self: yes?
Adams Rubble: Is Z self the absolute and *** the relative
Z self: I don’t have the information to answer that. ***?
***: I wasn’t paying attention because I did not understand it. We’ll have to look back on that one
Adams Rubble: And now Pema wants us to concentrate on the APAPB exercise. *** can you tell us more?
***: I forgot the details
Z self: It’s OK ***. Then we have to go back over that. We had done that not all that well.
Adams Rubble: Talking about permanence I always wonder how much longer you guys will need me
***: Your role as a spirit guide seems to have diminished now that I have found Z self. And the other questions we have seem to be beyond your capability
Z self: You spoke for me before *** understood I was there. I don’t think any of us have the answer to what comes next
***: I say let’s go on and not think about it too much
Z self and Adams Rubble: That’s our ***!
Z self: We have been doing much of looking at the world around us as the appearance of Being in this log for the past couple of weeks. We have just not done the exercises in a formal way
Adams Rubble: Even I have appreciated the stars over the crashing waves at the beach house

Century Mark (#100)

7. ZRM. Today I read a litle about space from Space, Time and Knowledge. I skipped to this section because I had done the eleventh exercise form the chapter and wondered about what preceded it. The exercise is to imagine a huge person big enough so I can enter its pores (I looked ahead). The exercise says that it may take a few days or weeks and I can see that it might.  am thinking I might have to draw it to see the scale but I am resisting that because this is a mind exercise. One of the difficulties is that the person obviously wold not fit into a room.

I also thought about the statement that birth and death are an illusion.  I don’t have any understaning of that. I ahve spent a long time finding the person who was there at my birth and will be there at my death. How can that be an illusion? Yes, the molecules will be here but are they me? I may leave a few imprints on the world but they will be transitory like me.

6. F. pause. Hmmm. It was a different sort of day. I had unusual conversations in SL about things important to me but not directly related to PaB. Who knows, maybe I will have some insights about them tonight, if I am lucky. I attended three PaB sessions today in celebration of the 100th log. I wonder if I can stay awake for a fourth.

5. F. pause

4. F. pause

3. F. pause

2. Gr.

1. TGT. Alive again and enjoying this beautiful day

**********

It is a bit surprising to see the blog has gone on for 100 posts. I had planned to quit if it ever got this far but I still find it useful to note where I have been and where I think I am going. I also expected that if I reached 100 posts, I would have something to say in summation. But I don’t seem to have the vocabulary for it now. Many days of no thoughts lately. Maybe later.