5. ZRM. Most of thee time I keep my heart chained up. I look back over the past few hours and see I had numerous times when I could have seen with it. “Unchain my heart”
4. F. pause. No thoughts, just an overall good feeling
3. F. pause.
2. Gr. I am.
1. TGT. Getting started on a new day. I have had some moments in the past 24 hours in which things seem to be clear and then others where nothing is changed.
5. F. pause. I feel I have much to digest. With the voice stilled, I have pushed ahead to new ground. Now it is time to stop and let things settle. I am open and listening.
4. F. I am smiling. I just stopped from writing and erasing with #3 and a voice said “Shhhhhhhh ***. It is OK.”
I don’t have to try to explain this. I am grasping at Pema’s statement about Being being a resource because it connects with what I gave up. I am trying to twist his hint to fit my loss. Words probably are not the way to find what I feel is missing. I know the “heart” and Love are part of this. How were the heart and Love connected to what I saw as my relationship with God back then? How did I learn to mistrust looking with my heart? No, wrong question. Why did I begin to mistrust looking with my heart? Still wrong. Do I truly want to begin to trust looking with my heart? Am I ready? Maybe that is what I gave up back then.
3. I woke up thinking about my thoughts yesterday. I realized first that there my have been a dramatic moment, but it would have been limited to the career choice. Most of the change happened over a few years…a gradual realization of the identity/attachment without any knowledge about dropping. I did have support.
I did give up something that I miss. I gave up the belief that God was there for me as a resource. From that time on, I looked to myself, and to a few friends, when I needed a resource. I would depend on my own rational thought with the help occasionally from a few friends.
2. Gr. It is Monday so i start with my job
1. TGT. A beautiful morning to oversleep a bit and get to work just barely on time. I am alive…again….to see, wonder, and appreciate.
4. ZRM. I never followed this up today. I discussed it at PaB this morning and then never got back to the thought.
3. Gr.
2. TGT. It looks like the beginning of a glorious day, following a beautiful evening last night. Sun is shining, birds are singing, the humidity is low, and I have had what might be an important insight about my “story”, about who I AM.
1. I woke up this morning and through a crossing of thoughts from last night, remembered that I once felt that I had a calling from God to the ministry. Along the way, I lost my belief in the simple God of my youth but amazingly, and painfully at the time, the calling persisted for a few years afterwards. I now remember being advised by my spritual advisors of the time not to worry about it too much, that it might return to me. In fairness to their advice, at some point, I stopped looking. I could not accept continuing with the doubting and I could not find a more mature view of God. The dropping was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. I see now that part of it had become an identity/attachment. It took the help of someone who could help me see that there was a life beyond the calling. It was one of my first experiences with dropping something. I remember being surprised that family members did not express any disappointment in my decision to go secular.However, I was aware then, and have known since, that I gave up something important that day.
Was the calling related to what Pema calls using Being as a resource? The calling involved dedicating my life to God, of course, but more impirtantly to helping people. Once I lost that simple faith I know longer had the strength to continue that path. I thought faith was the key, perhaps misled by a certain 16c ex-monk, Martin Luther. Had I known then, what I know now, about Love being a resource, I might have continued. “If I have faith so that I may move mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” I had not learned the lesson from Paul that there is love beyond the faith. Love is more important to the faith. Love can stand alone. Love is sustaining!!! Or the corollary, from Pema, that Love is a resource.
To continue with another translation: “4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
So at the time, what I may have lost with the faith was the sustaining Love. I cannot help but wonder about my spiritual advisors of the time.Is this what they were trying to tell me or didn’t they see it either? Any possibility of the latter would be extremely sad, and that thought is Love working its way through me.
3. F. I feel weary as I begin to set up to work, opening files, arranging windows. I add a touch of Vivaldi to the background noise
2. Gr. a continuation of the appreciation
1. TGT. Another day on this wonderful planet of ours to use to appreciate. I decide to appreciate APAPB
8. F. pause. I have a headache and I am not writing very well. It was a productive day though.
7. F. pause. I stop and pull back a bit and look
6. F. pause. I hate these kind of meetings but at least i can get to choose when all hell breaks loose. The construction is coming to us.
5. F. pause. Working my way through the day. It is a day requiring some firmness; one more meeting to go. This is a long place from where I would like to be.
4. Gr. Good be grateful while facing some meetings today. I can even be grateful that at least I am included now.
3. TGT. It is enough to be alive.
2. I note that camp was supposed to be a solution; giving me a break from the awesome responsibility. Instead it is the supposed solution that leads to the disappearance; a procedure that was a distraction.
1. I just woke up from a dream and I am losing it quickly. I was me in RL and we had four daughters. They were very lively and very curious and it was hard to keep up with them. Well one was very small and I was able to carry her in a little zipper bag with firm sides. So that left three to worry about. Unfortunately this first part of the dream is gone, their early adventures. Eventually it was decided that they needed to go to summer camp and we were signing them up. For some strange reason the signup place was a distance from camp, maybe on the road in. There seemed to be extra things to do, forms to fill out, and I kept getting delayed. Meanwhile the girls were wandering off in all directions. When I finished the second youngest was missing. We looked everywhere including in the camp. There was a question about whether the camp or we were responsible. I surmised one thing that might have happened is that someone was watching and probably told the girl they were her ride to camp. That is the only way she would have gotten in. Naturally I was feeling all kinds of pain and anxiety. Then I told myself that this was a dream and I could drop it; there were no girls; gthere was no pain. That made me feel better at once, but I kept thinking about the dream. At one point I was counting and was thinking there were only three girls, not four so no one was missing but it really appears there were four. Thinking now, about 15 minutes after the dream ended, I think I dropped the girls on one level but there is another level on which they are not dropped. There seems to be something important in this one and I am bothered I am missing it.
4. F. About to begin an adventure. I stop and look at myself first. What is it that I expect to learn from this? I think about love and empathy.
3. F. pause. Listening to the rain
2. Gr.
1. TGT. Posting rather late today after a very packed morning. Still another bit to finish before knocking off. I remember it is enough to be alive and I stop and think a bit about what I am doing here.
5. ZRM. This morning at PaB Riddle and I talked about how we often can not reach the”presentation” of APAPB. We should not be thinking of getting there. I believe that is the wu wei part. Our glimpses just happen.
4. F. pause. This morning I dug hard into the work waiting for me and made really food progress today. I also managed to attend PaB. Near the end of the day I am starting to pick up some negative energy when I should be rejoicing. I put on some music with a bit of “presentation” in it and stop to appreciate the appearance.
I close my eyes to try to picture the emptiness and there before me is a big pit, a big hole in the ground. That just doesn;t seem to be right.
3. Gr. I start with having a job and then go down my list, thinking about each of my friends too.
2. TGT. A cool cloudy morning to be alive again on planet earth thinking about emptiness and love
1. Last night I was dreaming of looking for housing and also about squirrels digging up the potted plants on the porch and flowers in the garden. . On waking up I thought the squirrels seemed a bit like griefers in Second Life. Although the intention is different, there are simularities in the result.
5. F. pause. I just looked at the tabs open on my browser and it seemed like my cluttered mind. Maybe emptiness is the ability to close down all my tabs in my head for a while
4. F. pause. Carrying some anxieties with me but remembering the empty moment.
3. Gr. I am grateful that I am still able to bicycle into work
2. TGT. Alive another day with many chances to fill emptiness as the day unfolds.
1. I woke up from a dream in which they were digging up our backyard to branch gas lines to the apartments down the street. The branches were being made in our yard. Trenches every few feetdown the whole of the yard. I am afraid I reacted with a little bit of profanity. this is the second night in a row with anger in a dream. Yet I felt so peaceful yesterday.
3. TGT. Alive again, late at night. I learned about the emptiness of the moment today…waiting for us to fill it. I opened my heart from a number of different vantage points. Now I am half asleep.
2.I just wrote a good bit and lost it when I found my log in had timed out. Most nights I am careful but tonight I forgot.
1. I woke up from a very contentious dream. There were fierce arguments over what one calls things. The last was whether we were on coffee break or tea time. At one point I was warned not to use some word because someone in position of authority did not like it.
It is clear where my unconscious stands on questions about whether Buddhist compassion and Christian Love are the same thing.
2. Gr. That it is raindrops and not meteors dropping on my house
1. TGT. Another rainy day to be alive on this wet but beautifuil planet
