SILENCE (MEDITATION)

February 16, 2013

One of the things that can be rare in this world is being Silent.  It used to be more common, there were longer pauses between words in conversations and the movies of old had fewer words, more innuendos. 

Though drawn to things that are of a quieter nature, that doesn’t mean that there is internal quiet.  Many times there is such gratitude that will arise for having designated times for Meditation.  Without Meditation there would be few stops/pauses during the day to put the attention on Silence/Stillness.  It is not that it isn’t always there, it is, however; the attention will be on what is going on in the world, schoolwork, thoughts about everything and anything under the sun.  And then there is a stopping that comes with Meditation, things slow down and the attention is drawn towards what doesn’t move.  The things of the world, all the problems seem to fall to the side and are not important.  As one arises from Meditation, those things re-appear yet don’t have the energy or strong pull towards them that was there prior to Meditation.

Recently, things have gotten busier, especially this week.  Yesterday a neighbor offered up a ride on his dirt bike.  We left shortly before Meditation time and when we got to the back roads it was time to sit.  Mentioned that there would be no speaking during the next half hour.  Usually, it is looked at with a strange sort of “umm ok?”  Which it was and so off on the bike we went.  There is a gift in Silence that unless one checks it out, cannot be shared. 

A Red-Tailed (Chicken Hawk) Hawk flew directly over us; which was amazing and the trees were brilliant, and the smells of Spring were in the air, there was the sounds of water running from the creek and the sky was brilliantly blue.  There were moments of fear/excitement that would arise from the sense of not having control.  The bike slid on some ice and we fell and since we were going slow, there are just bruises, but there was no ability to complain and without outward complaining, inward complaining doesn’t last long.

We dust ourselves off and picked up the bike and sat and ate some lunch.  There was listening to the stories that were shared and watching as the food is eaten and there is a sense of ease with not speaking that is not there when one is thinking of what it is they would be saying.  It is just listening and experiencing what is actually going on.

Though the preference here is to sit Silently (to not be active during a designated Mediation time), one does not have to sit somewhere alone to be Silent, you can set aside a time, at anytime to do it.  Though I would suggest that one set aside the time to sit silently in Meditation as a way to begin quieting the mind and then move into a “walking or active” Meditation, only because the impetus to speak will be very strong in the beginning and so it is best for one to begin to sit quietly with eyes closed and allow all distractions to be there and to sit in spite of the distractions.

Many times when people are around during Meditation time, they think that they must be quiet, but that is not the case, the noise is welcome, because where the attention is … is Stillness/Silence and so all noises and activity around are welcomed in it.  If you demand that the world be a certain way for you to sit in Meditation, you will not ever sit in Meditation. 

You just sit, Silently, sit and watch until the thoughts and activities exhaust themselves.

Ultimately, one will find that all of their life is in Silence/Stillness/Meditation, yet this isn’t seen while the attention is on the thoughts, actions.  So first things first … one leads into the other.

ON MUSIC AND THE HEART...

Response to a question posed in Music Class...

Why would Europeans feel that Native American Music is Primitive?

Maybe they thought it was primitive because they use the intellect over feeling or inner-knowledge which cannot be learned but can be known and this leads one when they don't understand something to just categorize and stamp a label on it and call it "primitive" but if life is a timeless experience (which it actually is) "primitive" is a lie.  Yes music has become "fuller" but the energy is still the same.  What song and music comes out of ... does not change.  So it is always the same energy pushing forth what comes through, it may seem more advanced because it is more complex in technique, but it is still the same simple energy it has always been.  However, Thomas Edison was able to see and capture what others were attempt to change.  If it were primitive we wouldn't still desire to hear it ... it would be extinct like the dinosaurs.  However, since there is still a message to hear in it...it is still here.  What we don't understand we attempt to change or destroy.

I worked on a reservation in Arizona for 3 years for a telecommunications company that was separated into two companies, one that was run by the Tribe (Salt River Pima) and they owned the switch for the phone and internet to run off of and offered it to those that lived on the reservation and the other company was run by a group of men and women that built out the switch maintained it and sold it off the reservation (on U.S. soil ... which was always funny that I would leave the country ever day but still be in the Country :o).  

Sometimes it was challenging to get the two companies that were in the same building to function, the Reservation had their way of doing things and the other company had theirs.  The people from the Reservation tended to work much more slowly and took longer to learn things, but they did eventually, but it could be frustrating for the employees of the other company that were looking to progress and sell so they would have to slow down and pace themselves.  What I watched and learned while I was there (and I got frustrated sometimes too and I have Native blood but was not raised in it), I got to see that the people on the Reservation weren't trying to "get" anywhere.  There was no ultimate goal except to do what they were doing.  I really really appreciated this coming from a society where you were always trying to get to the next best thing.  

I also saw how the people on the reservation did start to learn and do things more rapidly and efficiently and had higher self-esteem from their workings with our company.  Everything Serves.  So there was a lot that went on in that company that wasn't so quickly seen, but in a way it was a small microcosm of Pilgrims coming to Native Land and the merging of the two.

I wrote the following journal entry yesterday and it seems related to what is being spoken about.  And although it may seem a bit far fetched (maybe not) at some other time it may not.  It is not edited so please excuse the typos and formatting and run on chatter :o)

2013 06.10 10:42am – So I am having flashbacks (which haven’t happened in a long time) while reading “An Introduction to America’s Music” for MUSIC class and it is speaking about “Fools Crow” who is a main character of Indian decent that is summoned by a realm to take a religious journey which flashes me to 1997, when I had the dream that said “YOU ARE GOING TO SCOTTSDALE ARIZONA” and I didn’t even know where that was and within 6 months was living in Arizona and within a year working in Scottsdale.  I have not ever thought of it as a religious (don’t like that word) journey.  I just thought I was a weirdo that had a dream that there was not option in listening to because I was told to.  It wasn’t an option … it was like an Earth Shattering event. 

So the book goes on to speak about this Indian who had visions of the future to come…which again flashed me to 1998, when I had the visions of the Earth Changes, and how everyone I love would die because New York would be underwater.  And how I wrote to Mom and was telling her to let people know and the only one that really took me with any seriousness about it was Pete, who moved to Colorado or at least I thought he heard me and Mom also.  That is when I found Gordon Michael Scallion (ha! I haven’t looked him up in 1000 years but his website is now called the Matrix Institute of all things my favorite movie  :o) 

I have not ever felt the need since then to spread the news, but I did have a very strong pull to leave AZ after a while as there was always an image that it would be ocean front property but that there wouldn’t be much water to drink for a long time and there would be flooding. 

Fool’s Crow goes on to teach people to make peace within themselves…sounds familiar on this experience I am having…since the only thing I am drawn to is Pointing to That.

Fool’s Crow goes on to say many things about being virtuous and next life stuff that I don’t have much interest in (ha that sounds badly too) but what does interest me is that he mentions that generations to come will know the way it was (which comes also to me in flash and in this music class and in all the Native people I keep coming across including Wayneji).  He speaks of the Below Ones, The Underwater People and the Above Ones and I have had flashes of all of them also and can almost recall living underwater and also eliminating the fear of Aliens in understand … the only ones I have not been in tune with is the Below Ones…I have read about the Lemurians at Mt. Shasta but have not felt a connection with it and have not ever wanted to go underground…don’t care for caves even though I love cave time.  Don’t mind the fear of drowning (though I don’t like it) but I really don’t like being buried alive and the pressure on the body and the lungs and the intensity of feeling cemented in which has come up a few times on Psychedelics.  Water I can handle and it is quick usually but earth is not as kind.

They say Indians were headed for extinction, but from what I can tell in myself you cannot extinct the DNA cause it flows in this blood and it is like having memory bank storage that reveals itself in perfect timing and all the culture is still there, it just isn’t tapped into until the moment arrives that it is … nothing can be lost.  All is recorded. 

When the History of All Time opened up on the back porch of MU in one instant … less than a millisecond (whatever that is) everything was seen and Known about life on Earth…it was so fast and instantaneous that the mind could do nothing…it was helpless to the information and it took a great deal of time (not really but in Earth years it was) to process. 

It is not that I can remember everything that has happened but I know the information is there and available for accessing.  Like I know I could fly a plane if I had to because the information is there.  Do I know how to tap into it…no.  But I don’t need to know… if I am supposed to know…then I will and that is the gift that was given in the History of All Time moment.  Doesn’t mean it will make me better at Math because if I am supposed to suck at it that is how it goes… but I do know that I already Know every bit of Math that could ever be thought up, because there is no such thing as time and so all of everything has already happened and simultaneously nothing ever has.

I am beginning to wonder if my Indian both American and India run much deeper than I can intellectually understand and why I have so many challenges with white men and an underlying anger.  Reminded again of last year when Wayneji said to look into this.  I had thought it was because of my father, but I am seeing now that it was not…it was a deeper line in history of White men doing things that at the time seemed cold and destructive.  I also am aware of the White in me…that on my mother’s side there is a long White line and they were not bad people, but had been immersed in many things that they may have had to turn their head away from or had done themselves for their own survival.  This would be the attraction of my mother to my Father who he seems to have much more of a lineage of Black, Indian both kinds and German keeps coming up (which would account for his background in Science and becoming a Scientist … which I only assume he was from stories he told of working at Bell Labs and seeing the video telephone back in the 70s that we couldn’t even imagine having in our homes and yet I spent the last 10 years video conferencing for QT with my Family all over the world.)

Also no wonder I am drawn to transcription, which is also in the Native and White, blood … Thomas Edison Invented it and used it in recording the Natives both with audio and video.  I imagine Thomas Edison was a user of psychedelics probably mushrooms and peyote.  Don’t take these substances lightly … they are not a party drug though they can be introduced that way…best to revere them as scared so that they can reveal to you the Gift that they are.  A white man like Thomas Edison would be necessary for the information to come through because his brain would have been prepared to formulate and use the information through his education…not just his but the education of his DNA.   That information could not be used on a Native American because they didn’t readily have that part of the brain activated to receive it.  It’s not a level of higher or lower…just information and the ability to access it.  Like you can some “apps” on an Android phone but not on an Iphone and visa versa.  This is what I got to see early on in the business world.  People didn’t get more money because of anything other than that they had information and Dave Chappelle said as you move along in the world you see that life is made up of only two things “Soup” and “Information” and that the more you move up the better the soup and information gets.  Yummers Dave Chappelle, Yummers!

So I would say they saw it as primitive because they did not understand it and maybe it has seemingly taken a long time for it to finally come around to be appreciated and seen for what it is ... a true Gift.

GIVING TO GET...

If you do something and think you should get something in return, what you will probably get is angry (see angry smilie...which is perfect because one who gives to get smiles but is seething with anger).

Doing to get, always leads to anger because you have an expectation of return and expectations usually lead to disappointment which also leads to anger.  

If you just begin to do things, just for the sake of doing them, not to get something, not for someone to owe you something, but just for the simplicity of doing/giving (which is all we truly do anyway, we just do what we do), without an expectation of return then we get the gift of giving without the return of disappointment and anger.  You give and let go.  You don't sit there with a sheet of paper that says "I did this for so and so and I did that for that," if you do...what will add up at the and of your tally will be  a lot of anger and disappointment for all the things you feel are owed to you that haven't been repaid.  

Anger and disappointment can be seen as a Gift, because anger and disappointment have led you to reading these words which will now lead you to watch yourself and see...

When you do something, do you expect that something good will happen to you because you did it?  Do you think that person owes you something because you did something for them?  If you look at these questions and see, be honest with yourself and see ... are you doing to get something in return?  Do you have a tally of what you think people and life owes you?  If you do...you will miss the many other ways that life comes and gives to you, maybe not how you wanted, but gives you exactly what you need, and that may very well be a lot of anger and disappointment until you see what you are holding against others.  

No one owes you anything, and you do not owe anyone.

MEDITATION IN THE UNCOMFORTABLENESS

The Prayer

Yesterday was a strange Meditation (pulled off the side of the road and headed towards where I usually sit when coming back from COS), this time instead of going back where I usually sit, something pulled me to the left … I actually stood there sort of undecided whether to move in that direction, but then did. 

It was a small enclave of greenery under and amazing Oak (I think) tree, there were birds and bugs everywhere … things flying about and I put Pete’s (the dog) blanket down, took off my shoes and sat. 

When I sat down I realized their were ants everywhere tons of them and momentarily got scared that they were red ones and would bite me. 

Something had me stay a bit longer … it said to “trust that all was ok” and since I know the only way to see if what is shared is True is to do it … well that’s what happened and the eyes closed and Meditation began.

It was very quiet at first, and then there were sounds of the insects appearing.  That was paid attention to for a bit and then the deep Silence appeared and was entered into.  Then there was a sound, a sharp sound and a sense of something shadowy or dark in the area.  Again, there was a silent request to not open the eyes and not move but to allow for it to be there. 

It was very scary.

The unknown can be very scary, the mind will come up with all kinds of things that it could be.  It kept sounding like it was coming closer and the thoughts were that it was an animal or a human, because it was very slow moving but felt rather large and there was a desire to know what it was, while at the same time such fear of what it was, because again, the energy was dark and large.

Minute or seconds can seem like hours when you are afraid and don’t know what something is or what is going on or what will happen.  Then the thought appeared that the only way to face fear, is to be willing to let it kill you.  And then flashes of an attack appeared, that it was human and it would attack me, rape me or cut my throat, and at the same time, there was a willingness (in that moment) that if it were so then it was so.  There was no movement away from that happening and yet it did not happen.  Then fear thoughts appeared that it could be an animal and start biting me and ripping the body apart and again there was just sitting through the fear (thoughts/feelings) and the willingness that if that is what is to happen, so be it. 

This may sound easy and simple to the one reading it, but go yourself into the forest, close your eyes with no one around to save you and allow the sounds and sensations to appear and see if you open your eyes, or move to get up.  No one can do these things for you, but when they appear, if you … sit through fear, thoughts, senstaions … a Gift is given that no one but the experience could give you.  Doesn’t make it easy.  And you don’t know what the Gift is so you can’t do it to receive something, you actually do it in a willingness to lose; to die.

Then an ant was on my chest and some kind of bug was crawling up the leg and since there is no movement in Meditation you truly get to feel what that feels like and it tickles; but it doesn’t hurt.  The sense was that if it had been swatted at … it’s buddies would have come and had a field day biting away.  But because it is allow to just wander…it doesn’t stay long and goes on it’s way… which it did. 

The one on the chest however, did eventually bite and it stung, it hurt a bit but not a lot and then it left.  When I had put the blanket down and plopped on the ground, unaware of the surroundings and then looked down and saw all the ants around me some information came through that if I had intended to hurt the ants (that I probably just killed when I plopped down on their world without looking) there would have been a full attack by the ants on this body, but since the energy was one of ignorant innocence, that didn’t happen.

I was also made aware that it is important to Tread Lightly on the sensitive environments that have entire worlds that I cannot understand because at this time there is not an open enough consciousness to know it.  However, becoming aware of other ways and states of being, will begin to open those up in anyone willing to be opened.  This was why there was not a fear of other ants biting, in fact there was a sense that the ant was sharing with me what it would feel like if I wasn’t aware or did attack with intent for harm … that it actually has a very strong bit and if there were many bites (like the one received) it would seriously hurt and they have that ability (right in that moment that it was happening) to hurt me.

So instead of being angry about being bit, there was gratitude for the sharing and explanation of what had seemingly transpired.

STAYING A BIT LONGER IN THE UNCOMFORTABLENESS…

Theory cannot work in this regard, one has to do it and it can be done in any moment that uncomfortableness appears or arises.  Usually we want to move away from what is uncomfortable but like the above it has so much to reveal and share with the one that is willing to stay.  The more you stay in the uncomfortableness the less uncomfortable things become…funny huh :o)

FEAR OF FEAR ...

February 18, 2013

We have been trained to believe that what we “think” and “see” are real.  Not necessarily what we actually see, but what we see on TV or through the Internet.  But how often have you actually seen, what they say happens on TV … in your reality?  You can spend your whole life afraid of things that will not ever happen to you.  All that you are afraid of is a belief that it could happen to you.  But come on … take a look at your life … honestly … you’re alive right now somewhere reading this … didn’t everything work out?  Honestly, hasn’t your life worked out for you, everything has worked out and you are now in the moment you are in, with a whole day ahead of you to be surprised by what shows up.

The fear that arises from what we “think” and what we see on TV or read or hear on the Internet is not really fear.  

It is fear of fear.

Real fear is when something is actually happening.  Like a car is coming at you, that is real fear and the body will more than likely jump out of the way or freeze like a deer in headlights, but that would be an actual “feeling” of fear, experience of “fear.”

Fear of fear, is when you are afraid that something may or may not happen because of something you “think” or from something one-step removed from your realty (i.e., like TV or Internet news/talk).

One of many huge Gifts that has been received from reading the “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, is that he shows (since it was written over 100 years ago) that things do not really change. People are still scared of the same things that happened or were thought of 100 years ago. The newspaper stories from back then are not much different than now, there was still corruption, unemployment, murders, abuses, scandals, wars … everything that is happening now … was happening then … it just looks different because the faces and names have changed. This was/is a huge gift to see … because when one is willing to see to stop and take an honest look, you begin to see that things just happen.  There isn’t actually cause and effect, but life happens and people (you) comment on it.

This is a simple practice to begin to see that the above is so, just begin to watch and see if you could do something any other way than how it is done.  At first, it will seem like you can, that you can make your hand move or your mouth speak but if you are diligent in your watching/Witnessing of life and “you” in it … you will begin to see that action happens and then it is thought about and you will see the hand raise and see the thought as well “I raised my hand” but you will begin to intuitively know that the hand raised a split second before the thought to raise it or saying it was raised actually occur.  You have to want to know this but if you do, you will soon see that you are not the one moving the hand.  When this is seen then you begin to question, “If I am not moving the hand, who is?”  Which leads to the ultimate question, if I am not who I think I am:

“Who am I?”

You will begin to start worrying about it less and watching/Witnessing it more and more.  You begin to wait and see what happens, instead of saying what will happen. Life will reveal itself to you. It always is and has anyway, you just *thought* it was the other way around.

When you are honest … you see that everything has always worked out, this will continually reveal itself to you, as each problem (seeming) arises you will begin to relax more into watching how it resolves itself and you will watch your role in it rather than believing you are the role.

It doesn’t mean that you will or will not like how it works out, but it will work out and not just for you but for everyone.

Turn off the TV and Internet every once in awhile and go outside and breath the fresh air, look up at the sun, check out the stars and put your feet in the grass, the soil or the ocean.  You can take a break from all the drama of the world. It will still be there when you want it, when you want to be afraid or scare yourself, turn it back on or find that friend that always has all the bad news to give you. :o)

However, if you are starting to see the cracks in the stories of how bad it all is, then go out and look at the day and smile at it. It’s all for you.