Oh Dear...

I’m grading the final for the intro-level physics course I’ve been associated with. This is actually the highest-level intro course offered here at FSU. Dear oh dear.... this is not encouraging. Apparently, we haven’t taught the students much in the course.

Well, I guess it’s a learning experience... I will *NOT* be structuring my course in the same manner as this one. I must do better.

Sigh.

Be the way

And the days just slip on past. Welcome to the new faculty speedway. Yeah, it’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last entry, but there’s way too much that’s occurred to actually try and keep up with events. Probably best not to even try.

I had breakfast with the Dean of Arts and Sciences this morning. Apparently a thing that new faculty get to do. It was pleasant enough experience. I’m still new enough to this faculty gig that the novelty of being a grown up is fun. The Dean’s live on the other side of campus. The nice side of campus where all the old liberal arts buildings are. Quite lovely actually, particularly since the weather is cool today, so the walk was nice. I even got to keep the mug. Now I know why professors always have that coffee mug with college seals on their desks. They get it from having breakfast with the Dean, or some other such rites. Just one of the small rituals nobody ever talks about. But I’d guess here on campus, you’d be able to tell when the new faculty get their breakfast with the Dean by watching their desk for the appearance of a garnet colored coffee mug.

Garnet & Gold. The school colors of the FSU Seminoles, or ‘Noles’ as they are apparently referred to locally. It took us a while to figure out what noles meant. Just slow on the uptake I guess.

Anyway, finally settling into the swing of things. My office now has all it’s furniture, and even some books on the shelves. Getting into the rhythm of meetings and teaching and meetings. Still need to integrate some research into that somehow, but piece by piece it’s coming.

I’m actually quite enjoying my teaching duties. Thankfully, I’m relatively free of performance anxiety, which has always been a bit of a help. Talks and lectures are not a hurdle for me. Indeed, my current assignment is really quite pleasant, as I have almost no control over student grades, but work almost entirely as an enabler. I’m just there to help students learn the information, work their problems, pass exams, etc. I’m coordinating the labs, but the grad student TAs are running things there. Really I just have to herd the TAs and drop in to lab on Wednesdays and interact with the students a bit. Thankfully, I don’t have to grade the labs, or even stay for the entire lab session. Just enough to get a bit of interaction and then out again.

Ding... Time to wash my bowl.

Jumpy Little Black Dots What Bite the Boy!

So for those of you following the great spot mystery, here’s the update... After waiting for the ‘pox’ to develop, we discovered they weren’t. No blisters, no scabs. So we thought it might be hives, perhaps a reaction to raspberry jam. However, by this last weekend, the spots were multiplying again. A trip to the clinic led to the official diagnosis that they were unexplained red spots, “maybe some kind of viral infection”. Sigh.

However we’ve since discovered that we have a flea infestation, and that Laz seems to be particularly tasty to the little bastards. Unfortunately for the bugs, mom and dad’s Buddhist leanings toward non-violence end when the cheeky little buggers attack the boy. So last night we brought in the heavy weapons, (a vacuum cleaner built like a Russian tank, and chemical warfare in the form of a powder made of, amongst other things, peppermint and cinnamon oil.) Initial prognosis looks like we substantially reduced the population of the bouncy little buggers, though I suspect there will need to be a second wave to truly clear them out.

A Pox on Our House?

Egad! The boy’s got spots. Spots all over his legs and arms. Could it be the ‘pox? We’ll see... More news when we know... Meanwhile I’m off to bed, for I must away ere break of day to aid my students in their quest to conquer electrostatics.

My New Koan: Be the Fire Hose

When I was an undergraduate student at Caltech, a popular metaphor for the student experience there was that it was like drinking from a fire hose. I don’t know whether this image is related to the scene from the Weird Al movie UHF, or if it was unrelated but it was certainly an apt metaphor for the overwhelming wall of stuff that came at us.

Now I’m beginning to find myself feeling a bit in that mode again. The commitments and expectations from this new job are coming on strong and I’m beginning to get that old fire hose feeling again. The difference now is that the commitments are a great deal more creative than reactive. As a student, you’re primarily responding to the stimulus that is thrown at you. Now, many of my commitments are wanting something from me rather that wanting me to do something. I’m not drinking from the fire hose, so much as being liposuctioned by one.

Ah... there’s a pretty image.

Slurpy Little Widget What Gives Laptop Go Juice

The MacBook I ordered with my startup funds finally arrived today. Mostly it looks and acts just like the last one only a little lighter and quite a bit faster. But it’s got this weird power cord. It’s magnetic, so you just bring it in close and it sucks itself into place. Weird. I guess it’s supposed to reduce accidents from people tripping over power cords, or at least that’s what the mac commercials would have you believe.

Lot’s happening right now. Classes started this morning. I’ve moved into a new corner office. Sunshine and I are both attending new meditation groups, and Sunshine just joined a community choir tonight. Laz has developed a thing for fish. Actually, he’s probably had the fish thing for quite a while and we’ve only just noticed it. He also likes macaroni.

Much to cover but time is short, so tonight I will remain brief, and probably blunt. I must take up the quill again regularly though. My scribe is rusty.

The Other Side of the Desk

So here I am, sitting once again in a faculty office in a physics department of some university. In a way, faculty offices pretty much all look the same, and this one is not much different. Mind you, it’s a lot emptier than the usual faculty office as most of the books and papers and stuff hasn’t arrived. But it’s got that feel to it, institutional lighting, some nice, (but not too nice) furniture, and the inevitable smell of academia (probably a mixture of outgassing carpet, aging paper, baking electronics and chalk dust).

The big difference now, of course, is that I’m on the other side of the desk, sitting in the big roller chair and looking across my newly arrived desk (still sporting styrofoam dust from the packaging) at the two empty guest chairs and two nearly empty bookcases. This is my office, 617 Keen, complete with florescent lighting, cinderblock walls, and moderately dysfunctional A/C vents. This will be my new home from home, where new secrets of the universe will be discovered and shared with the dozen or so other people around the world who might care about it.

At the moment, it’s a room filled with potential. The walls are blank, the drawers and shelves empty, the seats untouched. Now it’s up to me to convert the possible into the actual. These chairs will soon be holding students who will look to me to launch careers and explain test scores. The ethernet wire descending from my tiled false ceiling like some lone vine in a sparse industrial jungle will soon be filling my in-box with countless faculty e-mails and other distractions. Up that wire must travel numerous papers and proposals and requests for money and the other things that university professors are expected to provide to the world.

The room is a vessel and the vessel is nearly complete. It’s up to me now to provide the creative spark that fills the space with gold. A daunting task to be sure, but the people here have placed their trust in me. They must feel that I will be able to work some magic here. Now I guess we will have to wait and see if they are right.

Shoe Event Horizon?

I don't know that it's a good thing when life reminds me of Douglas Adams. His worldview tends a bit toward the cynical. Unfortunately, he also seems to have been disturbingly prescient.

In this case, I was struck this morning by how bewildering I find so-called beauty products. I just don't really get it. Maybe it's a girl thing, but I just find the endless masses of bottles and tubes and tubs a bit on the far side of ridiculous. There's a strange fascination with foodstuffs as well. Everything is honey-oat this and cucumber-that. What about the combination of rose petals and yogurt says 'yes, I want to wash myself in that'? I can't imagine that those buying such flavored body wash would actually consider soaping themselves in foodstuffs as a way to get clean. Very odd.

Meanwhile, it is becoming really quite difficult to find just plain products without extra gratuitous extra stuff added. Try finding a hair conditioner that isn't heavily perfumed in the sea of fruit flavors. Or consider the reasoning behind vitamin fortified Coke. All of this, it seems to me, speaks of overactive product tinkering and marketing strategy, which has divorced the product makers from the needs of the product user. It smells of marketing for marketing sake. It seems to me that we have a lot more to buy, but a lot less that is useful. We seem to be heading toward a situation where we will only be able to buy what market analysis says will sell, but it will come in dozens of meaningless varieties.

Still Point

It's been a bit of a hectic day. Laz woke up at 5 AM this morning. His teeth had been hurting him during the night. So we got up for about 3 hours in the early morning until he could get back to sleep. Even then he was pretty fragile for much of the rest of the day as well. Easily distressed and just generally having a rough time of it. Sigh.

It's very quiet now. Everyone has gone to sleep and I'm just sitting on the bed in relative silence. It's good to find a still point. My attempt to meditate today was aborted pretty quickly. I was just too tired, so instead of drifting in and out of sleep on my cushion, I just crawled into bed and napped with Laz. In this case it was probably more productive.

It's a bit weird here surrounded by 'inlaws', those people who are family and yet I don't really know them all that well. I know them a bit, but not that much. Slowly I get integrated, but the process is certainly not fast. It's not helped by the fact that for many years I've had job commitments which have kept me from visiting when Sunshine did. Now, with Laz, it's a bit harder. Often I need to support Laz so Sunshine can get things done here. (Particularly this time with all this wedding stuff going on as well!). Ah well, patience. Meanwhile, I can continue being the polite alien.

The moon is pretty out the window.
Laz is stirring.
I should sleep.

Life as a Spore

Well here we are truly inside the nutshell now. No keys, no job, no home, no car. Living out of various suitcases in various locations as we make our way slowly to Tallahassee. We spent a bit over a week with my parents in Louisville, now we're in Casper with Sunshine's mom for Emily's wedding.

Lazarus loved my parents house, and particularly the outside. He spend many happy hours exploring the neighborhood and discovering all sorts of exciting things. He's particularly fascinated by mailboxes right now. We didn't really have mailboxes in London, usually just a slot in the door. But here in the US mailboxes are the norm. Plus they have numbers on them. Very, very exciting. When he woke up in the morning he'd go to the window and sing out the window to the parents mailbox. Up here in Casper he's done less exploring of the mailboxes, but he's made a game out of picking strawberries out of Grandma's garden. (At first real ones, and then quickly thereafter plastic ones, as they're considerably less messy!)

It's been very hot though, high 90's and 100's and we're all melting. At least up here in Casper there's some air conditioning, though even that hasn't been able to keep up with the triple digit temperatures. Ah well, just a part of the road to Tallahassee I suppose. Hopefully the gulf heat won't do us in.

My concentration's gone to hell in the past month or two though. It's difficult to maintain any sort of routine while traveling, particularly when we're staying with others and moving about quite a bit. So my sitting and my writing practices have been pretty neglected. Indeed, it's been just about all we can do to keep caught up on Doctor Who, the one weekly routine we seem to have managed to keep fairly regular. In any case, I've been missing these routines, so I think I'm going to try and make a bit more of an effort to keep at them. My contemplative brain has been a bit foggy of late, and I need to clear it out again. Time to try and be a bit more thoughtful.

It's interesting how easy it is to live without thinking. It's shockingly easy to just muddle along in a fog and not really notice life. I've been asleep, and it's very different to realize you're asleep. The sleep metaphor is a decent one too. Becoming aware really does feel rather like waking up. So I feel a bit groggy like waking up after snoozing in bed all morning.

Time to be aware.

Laz is awake.

Time to be a daddy. An awake daddy.

The sticky-wet wrenching end of the world.

The end of the world looks just like any other day. Today is a lovely day. The sun is out, the sky is blue, the clouds are white. And yet, in a way, I'm situated in the midst of an apocalypse of sorts. My life here in London is ending. This world's days are numbered. To be sure the city itself will still go on. Indeed it will hardly notice I've left. But the construction in which I live my daily existence is ever so surely coming apart at the seams. Every day I am confronted by unexpected last times and irrevokable changes.

Still the world looks the same as it ever does. And indeed what else could I expect? As Buddha noticed all those years ago, impermanence is the nature of everything. Still, it's a strange thing that the Mahayana tradition points this out, shows you the way out of that suffering, and then entices you to step back into the fire. Here's the exit door, but gee, isn't that burning room lovely? Boddhisattvas chose to stay because they love the world. That choice causes suffering, but isn't that always the cost of love?

So yes, the world continues to drop away. Our world here in London is closing down, collapsing into smaller and smaller pieces. It's like a tree growing in reverse, reverting back to a seed to await a rebirth in new soil. A month ago, our cats suddenly left us to fly across the ocean and sit out the upheaval from the relative safety of my parents' house. This was the event that seems to have truly shifted our perspective to the move. Before that it was abstract. Now it's here.

Last week I attended my last Thursday night zazen sitting with Manu & Sarita. They are in Vancouver for 2 weeks, so last week was the last session I would attend. Actually I was having a pretty miserable day anyway and I probably wouldn't have gone, but I'd feel bad just leaving without saying a proper farewell. I don't really do goodbyes very well. It's awkward and messy and uncomfortable. Still, I've been trying to be more accepting of the sticky bits of life, and it would be callous and selfish just to disappear.

It's funny, I don't really know them all that well, but they provided me with an important refuge at an important time. Inevitably my path is going to be a lot different that theirs, but I picked up a subtle and important experience there somewhere. Something about being able to drop definitions and expectations and simply enjoy breathing in the presence of others. I don't necessarily know where this path is going, but there is something important there and I'm grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to discover it. Hopefully, this new creature that was born in that world will survive the transition.

That's where the fear comes in. As with any fear of death, the end of this world brings forth the fear for the continuation of the self. The self that lives in this world is facing that death right now. Will the core survive, and if so, what is preserved and what is lost? This is the existential dilemma of the condemned. Indeed, its only the illusion of longevity which allows us to forget this question in our daily lives. Still, what can we do with it when the fear does arrive? I'm sure there are lots of answers. At the moment, I alternate between ignorance and melancholy. Ignorance for pragmatism, and melancholy when there is nothing to be done. Still, it's not a desperate kind of melancholy, more just a rainy afternoon. I've become more accepting of discomfort. One more observation from a new perspective.

This is a bit of a weird perspective I've been trying to adopt here. Trying to be both a scientist and a mystic is not a well-trodden path. At one level I can see a very clear synergy between the practice of science and the practice of zen. However, while the metaphor is apt and powerful, it is also incomplete. These ideas do not sit comfortably together. Like nearly matched overlays they can create a chaos of Moire-pattern turbulence, for these practices bring with them a host of competing and contradictory perspectives, dogmas, and ideals. One side's truth is the other's delusion. It's a tribute to plastic thinking that one can hold these contradictory views, but it always leaves one sitting in doubt. And perhaps that's a good thing. Doubt, after all, is the boogie man that keeps me probing. Not as comfortable as blind faith I suspect though.

Still, I've found that this path leaves me a bit uncomfortable in all camps. Chatting with more mainstream folks in both camps I've found that trying to forge this middle way is not terribly appreciated. Perhaps I'll expand on this topic more later, but I've found that both sides tend to have an overly reductionist view of the other. Both sides are quite attached to the literalist notions of fact, and truth. I've become aware that there is a pretty severe gap between the way science is taught and distributed to the masses and the way it is actually practiced. All of this is bubbling away while the world ends, but I don't think the subject is quite ripe yet. For the moment, suffice it to say that this path I'm on does look like it may be a bit lonely and rocky.

Still, it may be a path where I can do something important. Perhaps this discomfort is not for nothing. I was touched by a comment Manu made last Thursday in the discussion after the sitting. The subject of science had come up, and Manu said that he didn't understand what it was and used to dismiss it. But that through me, he had glimpsed that there is a sense of mystery to it. And perhaps that is the personal legacy I will leave behind here in London: to have given one fellow human being a glimpse that a scientific perspective is not necessarily a soulless one. A small victory I know, but it was well timed and provides some solace here at the end of things. Not meaning so much, for I think I'm tipping quite strongly toward nihilism these days. I'm not big on purpose or meaning, but this human connection does provide a comfort, and that too has value.

On Not Being a Dalek

It is a mistake to think that you can control people. Realize this, and you will have seen the fallacy underlying neo-conservative politics and countless unwise parenting and relationship choices.

It's not just a matter of having insufficient force, though that is the idea that baits the Dalek trap. The problem is that people are chaotic systems. They react non-linearly to stimulus. A small nudge here might produce a gigantic reaction there while a massive clampdown might produce a stubborn lack of any reaction at all. This is easiest to see in children but is true, I think, for all. It's just that as adults we grow used to the patterns of our embedded culture and we stop noticing because we too are reacting in similar strange patterns. Embed yourself in someone else's culture, however, and the chaos will become more obvious.

Still even chaotic systems can contain patterns. The best that we can hope for as parents or lovers or artists or diplomats is to act as a sort of attractor, providing little nudges toward the desired still point and applying tremendous patience. The art of parenting and the art of politics is the art of the soft touch. It is the art of nodding subtly to the door and waiting for the other to take a step in that direction.

It is usually impatience that drives us to control others directly. Efficiency and the dangerous idea that sufficient force (and/or the power of our obviously 'right' view) can eradicate free will leads us to try and cut corners, to enact a hard limit when a soft one would be wiser. The problem with taking the hard line and backing someone into a corner is that they may chose to hurt themselves just to spite you. In toddlers we call this a tantrum. In Iraq we call it an "insurgency". In Israel we call it a suicide bomb. The effect is the same. Give someone no options but to obey you and they may decide just to lash out insensibly instead. When we feel we have no choice, we get desperate, and desperate people are angry and have nothing to lose. Faith in this philosophy leads inevitably to frustration, violence, paranoia, and ultimately, if not checked, to the xenophobic need to exterminate all that is other.

While it may seem wasteful, patience and generosity generally seem to be more efficient in the long-term than direct blunt action, no matter how well intentioned. "Softly, softly" should be out motto. Borrowing from the Hippocratic Oath we should remember to "first do no harm" for that is the danger of rash action. This is the lesson I've been struggling to learn for the last year and I still don't always get it, but at least I can now articulate it.

Life as a Top

There is a zen metaphor that says that the mind is like a spinning top. When it is perfectly vertical there is no movement and all is still, but the slightest tilt and everything begins to wobble and wander. The thing is that the vertical position of a spinning top is an unstable equilibrium. It is only able to hold that position if it's perfectly aligned. Just the slightest misalignment and the whole thing starts to fall apart. If you want to keep that top spinning vertically, you have to continually adjust it and push it back to that still point. Sooner or later you spin out and have to start again.

I think the zen guys knew that.

Now not all tops are made equal. Some have quite a large area near the still point which will hold a nearly stable spin, and some are quite tricky to keep going. Some are more susceptible to passing air currents or ground vibrations.

Sometimes I think I'm a bit of a wobbly top and I just keep spinning out. Not so much in my sitting, but in my life in general distraction has been an issue for quite a while. Really probably most of my life, though it didn't start to really become an issue until I went to college. Before that I could get away with being a bit of a dilettante because school was pretty easy. Now though it can be a bit of a struggle to stay afloat.

Still as in zazen, so in life... I guess I just need to keep making adjustments and patiently set my self upright again. The past is insubstantial. Momentum is just the memory of action. It is action NOW! in the present that is the agent of creation. Drop it all and assume correct form.

...and again.

Eyes Peeled for Weather Balloons

Well, it's official now. I've signed my acceptance letter at FSU and I've resigned my post here at Imperial College. No lightening flashes or goovy 60's music involved, but I did have to walk down a long dark corridor to the HR department. True to form there is a bunch of paperwork to sign. Ahh, you have to just smile at the Brittish infatuation with bureaucracy. Somewhere, I'm sure, my picture will be covered with a bunch of X's and dropped in someone's filing cabinet.

Meanwhile things are certainly 'hotting up' as they say here. Sunshine is making preparations to ship our cats back to Colorado. Sunshine's brothers will be here in a bit under 3 weeks and in a bit less than a month we will probably be leaving this jolly little island nation and returning to the states.

On the home front, it's a bit more like Logopolis than The Prisoner. Entropy is certainly having its way with us and there is a palatable sense of just trying to muddle through the great change which will (hopefully) be "prepared for". Certainly things are resting on critical electronic transmissions to keep our finances from collapsing. Heck, we're even about to acquire 3 new companions, though hopefully they will be a bit more useful than Adric, Tegan and Nyssa.

Speaking of entropy, our iPods have both suffered fatal disk crashes. I suppose a 3 year lifetime isn't unheard of for a laptop-style disk drive, particularly one that gets a fair bit of abuse. Still, always a bummer when a well-used tool dies. RIP Eardrum and Q.... Oh and welcome to Laz's toybox (and his mouth).

In other utterly random news, I managed to sleep through my tube stop for the first time in nearly 3 years today. Sigh, I really should make sleep I higher priority I suppose. I can't blame last night on Laz's schedule though. He went to bed on time, but I got distracted by the internet. Specifically, reading webpages supposedly from 15 years in the future. A so-called 'Alternate Reality Game'... Interesting, if disturbing stuff. Check it out if you're interested. (http://iamtryingtobelieve.com/, http://anotherversionofthetruth.com/ or http://www.ninwiki.com if you want to try and understand what's going on.)

Transcendental Gestalt Switches

Blogging on the met line back from Hampstead again. Tonight's revelation came in the BS session after the sitting. The topic of Big Mind came up and someone mentioned that the voice of "The Way" was a great embodiment of the entire teaching for him. The idea being that the phrase "I am the Way" is none other than full zen embodiment. Which was interesting, because I heard that phrase differently. In the Big Mind DVD Genpo Roshi leads the group through the dualistic Desire, The Seeking Mind, The Mind that Seeks the Way, and The Follower of the Way, and then to The Way. So to me, The Way was my entry to nondual, and the exit was the "Integrated Free-Functioning Human Being." But his point is just as valid, and indeed the phrase "I am the Way" can be heard as "I am nothing but the Way", but it can also be heard as "The Way is just me." It's like one of those Gestalt images where the faces turn into a vase or the other way round.

So then I mentioned that I had a disturbing reaction to The Master, and someone pointed out that it was intended to have the connotation of Zen Master. ie, Obi Wan Kenobi, not the guy with a whip, or the owner of the plantation, or some sort of supreme being, which is how I heard it. (Can we say shadow projection? Very good boys and girls.) Still... It's interesting to me that you can hear these things in different ways and they trigger entirely different experiences. Thus art to me is transcendent, but it could also be heard as the voice of delusion or deception. Hmmm....

Not really sure where this is going...

Do You Realize? by the Flaming Lips sounds very Zen to me tonight.

The Art of Observation

It’s a cool midsummer evening in my back yard in Colorado. I’m 12 years old, staring into the telescope that my parents gave me for my birthday. I’m still scared of the dark and the fear hangs in the background adding a slightly acid tang to the night. The air has made my face and hands cold. I can smell the dew on the grass and the pages of the star atlas in my hands have become soft with the damp.

Through the eyepiece of my telescope I am looking at a faint fuzzy smudge called M13, a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules. The books say that this object is a dense nest of tens of thousands of stars, but it is so far away that to me it’s just a faint patch of light. I wait and I stare. I can still hear the night around me and feel the cold and smell the air. I wait, and gradually the pupil in my eye relaxes and opens wide. The faint smudge becomes brighter and then, click! There it is! I can see them! The cloud resolves into thousands of tiny suns sprinkled like the finest salt on a black silk tablecloth. Mesmerized, I continue to stare, and after a while the yard and the cold and the damp are not there, I don’t really notice them any more. The telescope is not there, it’s just an extension of my eye. I am not there. There is just the majesty of ten-thousand suns hanging silently in space.

This is my opening.

I am 20 years old, an undergraduate at Caltech in Pasadena California. I came to school filled with (over)confidence and excitement, but physics has swiftly dealt with that. My ego is crushed by the weight of trying to take in 400 years of astonishing brilliance; the fruit of a great many minds, each of whom have walked this path with much greater clarity than I. I am learning humility and it hurts, but I have stepped onto the path.

It’s not a path that I really understand though. Not at the time. In retrospect, I can look back at this path and understand the where and the why, but at the time, it was lost in the flow. I had long since forgotten my 12-year-old self in the back yard with the Hercules cluster. On the path I was just driven by instinct and momentum. Such is the way I have lived this life and travelled this path.

Further along the path I have met my teacher. It’s a hot summer in New Hampshire and I am now a graduate student at Dartmouth College. I’ve come here to study cosmology. The big ideas and grand mystery of studying the evolution of the universe as a whole appeal to me, but this is not my fate. Instead, I fall into the study of exploding stars. I have come here intending to study the origins and beginnings of all things, and instead I find myself looking at endings. But of course in those endings, spectacular and terrible, are the seeds of new beginnings. Indeed the origin of our own flesh is in the ashes of these dying stars. We are the fruit of impermanence.

My teacher does not, primarily, fill my head with knowledge. Such book-learning is triviality. Instead, he instructs me in the practice of our art. There are the simple practices at first, learning to use our instruments. But there are other teachings too; the subtle skills of effort and patience; the art of coaxing insight from the chaos of noise balanced with the discerning wisdom to recognize delusion.

On a mountain top in Arizona he shows me the quiet art of observing. We live a strange monk-like existence, sleeping in the daylight and coming out at night to watch the sky. In a way we are cut off from the world. At night we listen to the radio broadcasts from the cities down below, but we don’t see or interact with that world. We are on an island between the world of man and the heavens. It is quiet and time is slow.

The universe is an enigma and our telescope the eye which we use to probe it. Our practice is a passive one: we cannot poke the universe with a stick and watch it move. It is out of our reach. Instead, we can only listen and watch. Every moment light from countless grand structures, which has travelled the depths of time and space for untold eons rains down upon our lives unnoticed. The grandeur that is our universe goes largely unmarked. M13 rains its majesty on my life every day, but I haven’t seen it for years. When we open our telescopes we record a tiny piece of that grandeur; a tiny fraction of that beauty is captured. It is transformed, of course. It is no longer the beautiful and weary light that crossed the void. That has been lost forever. But its journey has been noticed and lives frozen like a fly in the amber of our data.

We descend from the mountain to tell the story, but we are not the authors of this story. Our practice is not to tell the tale of our own desire. Rather our practice is to try and sweep all that away and simply to listen carefully. Our art is not the creative spark, but the way to make a space, an opening, where the quiet story of nature can be heard. Our earthly life is too loud and noisy to hear this story. We must leave that behind and travel to a distant mountain, or send our proxies out of the world entirely in order to find a quiet place to listen. And because the stories nature has to tell are alien to our human experience, we must be prepared to leave our expectation behind as well. We must also show patience. Often it is cloudy and we feel we are wasting our time, but we stay for those moments when the clouds break and the way is clear. This is the practice my teacher shows me.

Sometimes at night he tells me stories. Our practice, it seems, has an oral tradition as well. I listen to tales of the old masters, of their mistakes and their insights, of their human failings and their transcending wisdom. He tells me of his own teacher, and I discover that I am a part of a noble lineage. I begin to sense that the practice is alive, passed directly from teacher to student, and that I am becoming a part of that process. I am the latest vessel for the practice, and I’m being trained to be the embodiment of this art. Although I do not realize it at the time, my fate has led me to a good teacher, and he teaches me in that most effective of ways: by being the manifestation of his own teaching.

One day he shows a different kind of wisdom. No longer on our mountain, but back again in the noise of life on the ground he hands me a nugget of truth from outside our practice. Not a truth of the path of listening to the heavens, but a human truth about that path and how it lives in our world.

He tells me that this practice, this art, is rare. It is not practical. We serve no material goal, we further no political agenda, we make no patentable discoveries. We work solely to satisfy the whim of human curiosity. Our art exists only because human beings have a fascination with the universe they live in, but that fascination can only pay so many bills. The cold truth is that most of us who start on this path will leave it at some point, and often not out of a desire to do so, but because of the blunt hammer of pragmatism. To practice this art is a privilege, so we need to be grateful for it while it lasts, and let it go if it should leave us.

This has not been an easy lesson to embody, but it has been one I’ve tried to carry with me, bouncing from place to place as is the custom of young researchers in our practice. Walking this path does require its sacrifices, and not all of those are borne by me. Those costs are hard to count. How do you weigh the burden your path has placed on others? But these costs linger and it is not wise to ignore them. Blown by the winds of whim, luck, and fate it is not hard to see why one steps off of this path.

Now it seems that I may have found root. Soon I will be moving to Florida to join a colleague and build up a new community of practitioners. I have moved along the path and will soon become a teacher. I will have naive and brilliant and eager students and I will have to find the wisdom to show them our way. Hopefully I will have the wisdom to be grateful and enjoy it.

On the verge of this change, I find myself stepping onto another path. My karma has led me to a new practice, one which is at once wholly alien and yet also familiar. On the cusp of becoming a master, I find myself compelled to take up a new art. One that challenges me to drop it all and begin again; to find another way to clear away my expectations and make a space to listen quietly. I have only just set my foot on this path, my eye is just beginning to open. I am in the back yard again. The cold and fear are still present but this returning home has reminded me of the fascination that I forgot somewhere along the way. This new path will be hard, but this time I’m seeing it through two eyes. If all paths are one path then I have been here before and I remember it this time. The sense of return is palpable and the poetry of this moment is hard to ignore. I have some maps. I will find a teacher. I will be unmade and remade again and I will always be returning to that moment in the back yard again. That moment when the cold and the night and my self dropped away leaving just the glittering light of ten-thousand suns.

A Path to a Revelation

More catchup...
Two weeks ago at my Thursday night zazen sitting I was suddenly overcome with a dramatic sense of not knowing why I was there. What was I doing? Why? I've never really shown much interest in this sort of thing. I'm not really facing any deep existential crisis. What the heck is driving me to sitting on a cushion in someone else's living room?

But the interesting thing was that there was a sense of something compelling me to do it. I just didn't know what. I could come up with all sorts of reasons why meditation was a good thing, but they all seemed like justifications for something I already wanted to do, not the compelling reason in itself. And then it occurred to me that I didn't really know why I was compelled to do a lot of what I do. Particularly when it came to my job. What was it about my job that really drives me to drag my family all over the world spending resources I don't really have?

Interesting questions, but no real answers.

Then, last Thursday, the reading at the start of the second sitting started something like "How do you answer people when they ask you why you sit on a cushion?", which certainly got my attention. I don't really remember much about the rest of the reading though because I was distracted by a newly triggered idea. The reading kept touching on the idea of the importance of the 'practice' itself, something which was heavily discussed in the book I had also just finished (On Zen Practice by Taizan Maizumi Roshi).

The reason this set me off is that I had been interviewing students all day long as part of the grading process for lab. And these being typical undergraduates, they had terrible lab books. So I ended up trying to explain to them that what we were really trying to teach them in lab was not physics, but rather the much more subtle art of good experimental practice. I was stressing the art of good lab practice.

During the reading, this idea crashed headlong into the question from the previous week and sparks flew. First, there suddenly seemed like there was a strong similarity between Zen practice and my own scientific practice, and so maybe the mysterious reason behind those two compulsions were one and the same. Second, science is an art, and so is Zen. Third, I suddenly realized that I was strongly attracted to Zen as an art form, both Zen inspired art and just the beauty and simplicity of the practice itself. Zen is art. Science is art. Was that it?

So I tried an experiment. Using the Big Mind technique I've been playing with, I asked to speak to the voice of Art. Low and behold, Art answered, and wouldn't you know it, it answered in a way that is rather similar to Big Heart, or The Way, or Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. Holy crap! Art is, to me at least, a transcendent voice. And one that speaks strongly to me! I sit because it is beautiful to do so.

I talked about this in the 'open sharing' and when the discussion came around again, the guy to my right made the comment that he too felt a kinship between the practice of Zen and his practice as an artist. But the interesting thing was that he felt like in both cases the practice was a method of making an opening and clearing a space for inspiration to happen, but not a method for making the inspiration, which comes forth spontaneously. More sparks went off, because that is a brilliant way of describing the practice of observational astronomy (and at some level, experimental science in general).

All in all, a very interesting session, and at the end, Manu suggested that I should write something about Zen and Astronomy for their Zen magazine Hazy Moon. I thought about this all the way home on the train, and the result bubbled up spontaneously almost whole when I got home. It took a few days for me to get back to it and finish it, but the resulting essay will be my next post.

Sundry Catchup

To begin with, some catch up: First, it appears that we are headed to Tallahassee. They are making me an offer for the assistant professorship, and I am going to take it. Whoo hoo! I have joined the landed gentry. Hooray! And that reminds me, Doctor Who starts on Saturday. Hooray! And spring is here! The light is back! Hooray! Celebrations all round.

I've also (perhaps foolishly), waded into the bizarre waters of the Integral Institute forums. You may or may not be able to find my posts here and here. The article referred to in the first forum is in the second issue of AQAL Journal, which you may or may not be able to access here. Mostly, I think I've discovered that Wilberites irritate my shadow. This may or may not be interesting to watch.

Back to Ground

The coin turns and the other face comes forward.

Started this entry on the Met line back to Harrow after an interesting sitting, but I left it overnight to simmer a bit. Much to ponder. I think I've learned something. Perhaps I already knew it, but the penny dropped last night. Manu and Sarita are not supposed to be teachers, and indeed they are not acting as mentors, but I do find their company very instructive. They are teachers simply by virtue of being living examples of what this practice looks like, and for that I am indeed grateful.

It's been an up and down week. After the second round of 'fireworks' last week, I think I let go of the surrender issue that was my early sticking point. What I found this week however, was the next sticking point, which (perhaps obviously) was expectation. Last week I was in the zone and everything was easy. Meditation was play and it was fun. However, over the weekend I took a break, (life stepped in) and come Monday I discovered there's a Monday Morning Effect in meditation as well. My skills were rusty. Worse, I discovered myself 'trying' for the first time. Arrgh! That's not good... stop it! etc...

So it's been fits and starts most of the week, though I was in the zone wednesday night for class with the crazy Kadampas. Tonight's sitting was hard though. Uncomfortable and constant adjustment. Just not clicking for the most part.

Except right at the beginning... Interesting bit that. When I started the first session, I was struck almost immediately with a strong resurrection of the emotional storm during that first week after Lazarus was born; one of the rawest times I can remember. Where this has been hiding for the last 14 months I have no idea, nor why it suddenly decided to surface last night, but there it was. Now perhaps the distance has helped to fade it, or perhaps it was the sitting, but I was able to, for the most part, just sit and observe this feeling. In a way, the stark openness and rawness of these emotions are quite beautiful, traumatic as they were to experience the first time around. In any event, it was an interesting experience to just sit with these feelings and not have to identify with them.

Manu says he is not interested in the nondual. Where he is at in his life, he just isn't interested in the absolute. He sits purely for the relative at the moment. hmmm.

This makes me wonder, what am I after? Why am I attracted to this practice? What am I trying to do this for? Is it the pure sensory experience? Probably not. That was perhaps the first hook that slipped it past my skeptic and suggested to me that there was something going on, but the weird sensory effects aren't that interesting.

Is it some sort of latent search for "spirituality?" (For lack of a better term.) I don't know. Perhaps. I've not really explored such issues much in the past, and indeed at certain points I've been somewhat antagonistic to the idea. Certainly there is (was?) some sort of shadow issue lurking given my rather asymmetric reaction to any sort of religious fundamentalism and to Christianity in particular. Perhaps the self doth protest too much? Is there, hidden in that shadow, a secret desire to surrender to such a belief? If so, then Zen is an interesting choice, seeing as it is a practice almost completely stripped of the trappings of religion. The surrender in Zen is not to a god, not to any particular metaphysical notion of reality (though these aspects can float about a bit in the background at times.) Really it's a surrender to the practice and a surrender of the need for notions. If you're looking for meaning, it seems to me that Zen is the last place you'll find it. To really sit zazen I think you need to leave that need for a reason at the door. The fact that Zen resonates with me leads me to suspect I'm not looking for The Meaning of Life.

I might be looking for a refuge from rationality. That idea does have some ring of truth to it. Why do I resonate so much more with Big Heart than with Big Mind? Perhaps I spend too much in mind already. There is certainly an aspect of my heart that yearns to break loose from the bonds of rationalism and pragmatism, and indulge in a sense of magic and wonder.

On the other hand, this is the aspect that most worries my skeptic, and that fear was the first sticking point that I had to navigate to even engage in the process in the first place. This is the still persistent, nagging kernel of doubt which digs at me. It's taken the better part of three years of reading the likes of Ken Wilber, and struggling with these ideas to get me to the point where I am now.

And I'm still not fully convinced. Far from it. Indeed, I waffle all over the map, but the arguments have been subtle and convincing enough that I can't dismiss them. The criticism that my 'rational' worldview is also based on metaphysical assumptions is troubling. Science doesn't do absolutes very well because, well frankly, you can't extrapolate. Any time you try to make a statement of ultimate truth, you are inherently extrapolating beyond the limits of your observations and nothing is really constrained. You can't just continue the curve off the edge of the page. If you do then you're so-called truth becomes a bridge that's only supported on one side. It will hold for a while, but it will never get you to the ultimate. The span is too large. (It's infinite after all).

So perhaps the Zen idea that ultimate truth is ungraspable is an appealing notion. It certainly ends lots of unpleasant arguments. Of course there is also the notion in Zen that one can actually be that ungraspable truth; in fact, one cannot NOT be that ungrapsable truth. Well... for the moment we will just file that under "food for the mind that seeks the way" and leave it at that. The nondual is an idea that teases my rational skeptic, but pleases my inner mage. Détente?

So, there is probably an element of seeking the nondual in my attraction to Zen. Still, if this was the only attraction I think my skeptic would be significantly more concerned. However, there is another reason which even my skeptic will pass whole-heartedly, and this is the reason that really came through last night. I'm finding that sitting is increasing my stability and emotional balance.

The Zen koan "be the immovable tree in a heavy wind" is speaking quite loudly to me now. This is an image that my heart leaps at like a desperate starved monkey. I've been an emotional tumbleweed for a long time. Perhaps a heavy tumbleweed at times, but a tumbleweed nontheless. Fifteen years ago I rooted myself to another tumbleweed, which has provided both some increased stability, but also some increased sensitivity to the wind. Now we are both tied to the lightest, most wayward of tumbleweeds. And for the last year and a half or so, the winds have been mighty gusty.

Sitting makes me heavy. It gives me a sense of balance and inertia. I'm still blown by the winds, but I feel like I'm rising less to the bait. It's as if, when I sit zazen, I'm literally rooting my ass to the ground. I'm beginning to feel a little bit more like a willow. Sarita read a short passage from a book by Taizan Maezumi Roshi last night which spoke of having faith in oneself. This is something I have difficulty with, but perhaps finding balance and ground will help.

In the Garden of Mystic Lovers

Manifesting a bit of bliss-mind again on the way to work this morning (well afternoon technically). Still at it even. Not really sure what to make of that. I'm not sure I should try. If the zen advice is "when sitting just sit", etc., should I just go with the flow? When Blissing Just Bliss? Perhaps. There is a question that floats around in the background which wonders if there is a danger of nondual joy slipping into a more dangerous dualistic phenomenon, and how to tell the difference. But I'm just aware of this thought. I'm not really doing much about it. Part of me wonders if I'm being a bit reckless. I really don't know what I'm doing here. But then I'm also aware of the idea that that lack of training and lack of seeking is the key to why this is working for me in the first place. This seems awfully easy, and came on remarkably suddenly. It's not always there of course, but it has never been the titanic struggle that some texts suggest it should be. Then again, zen is the school of sudden realization isn't it?

Some other observations.

I have apparently become the kind of person who finds Live celebratory. Now why do I hesitate to use the word "inspirational?" Hello my Shadow. There you are. I see you. But I'm not going to do anything about it because you're fine just the way you are. When blissing just bliss.

The clouds outside my window look just like the opening of The Simpsons.

The life of my Self is very much in flux at the moment. It's been a rather eventful week. As Ferris Beuller said: "Life moves pretty fast". Well indeed that is the case at the moment. It's very much a present-in-flow and a future of possibilities rather than likelihoods, with all the thrilling anticipation and fear and buzz that goes along with it. Definitely surfing the rapids here. It's been a long year of samsaric bliss and terror and perhaps I'm primed for the detonations which have been coming with increasing regularity since December, and are now piling on top of one another. How many gestalt switches and plot twists can you pile on the head of a pin?

Back a bit more in this world now, but in a gentle way with a tendril still floating back to the nondual like an umbilical tether. Perhaps that the metaphor. This body is the space suit the nondual uses to walk in the dualistic world. The weird thing is that it comes back in waves. I can pull myself back into it sill if I try. The beginning of states turning into stages? Perhaps... I don't know, and it doesn't really matter does it? (Or does it? Hmm...)

Anyway, back to the flow. I've been here before, but it's been a while. A long while. Long enough for me to forget the feeling. No that's not right. I still remember the feeling because I know it now, but I had forgotten that I remembered it. There was a moment many years ago when the world was in flux and there was the thrill of being on the verge of something. The world was abundant and I was in love for the first time. Perhaps I can call this Toevening Mind. It's a voice I forgot I had. There is a thing I forgot about falling in love. We don't just fall in love with someone. When we truly fall for someone, we fall in love with the world as well. Everything is bliss. Even things that suck are wonderful, at least for a while.

Perhaps I'm falling for the world once again.

She says I, We, You, She,
In the garden of mystic lovers these are not true distinctions.
-Francis Dunnery

A Rhapsanghady of Zensations

I was pondering on that title all the way home, which entailed taking a bus, then the tube, then another bus! I'm sure there's an even better title to be had, but that will do I guess.

So I joined a zen sitting group tonight. Very small affair, run by a couple of students of the Kanzeon tradition out of their flat in North London. I had to be a little brave to actually go, but I stuck my neck out of my shell and took the plunge. This lovely couple invite people into their home every Thursday night for group sittings, and an "open sharing" after. No hiding here, this is intimate (5 people tonight... I guess sometimes it might be only three, or even just the two of them!)

Still, I was brave and showed up. There was a little awkwardness at the beginning, particularly as these people have had some proper Zen training and I'm sorta making it up as I go along with some guidance from whatever sources I can find. The kindest description of my practice is probably "freestyle". Though it's beginning to get a bit "enthusiastic" as well. At some point I would need to get some real teaching though, and indeed, I may try to seek it out when I get somewhere. Actually, there's a Sesshin in Liverpool at the end of the month which would probably be a lovely experience, but it's probably just not practical. Still... sigh. No. Really not practical.

Still, I do seem to find this Kanzeon tradition rather attractive. If we lived in Salt Lake City I could totally see myself jumping in with both feet.

Yikes... lot's of thoughts. Not much organization. They all want to bubble out at once and they've been bubbling under for hours now. Practice in a group is different. Hard to really describe, but the experience is more communal. I found the Big Heart voice was much stronger in the communal sitting than it is alone.

We did two 30 minute sittings with a short break in between. When we started I found myself a but nervous, which then blossomed into a brief flash of full on fear. Can I really do this? Will I embarrass myself? What if...? Thankfully, it was brief and I was able to quickly settle into the breath. Then I shifted to The Controller and asked for Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. This is probably the quietest of the nondual voices I've found so far. It's a bit hard to tell it's there sometimes actually, but it's probably the best for Shikantaza (as Genpo Roshi says, "Just Sit"). So since I'm just sitting and not judging (or trying not to) it's a little hard to tell if I'm there at the beginning, but the shift back to The Controller if VERY obvious. The contraction literally feels like a clamp or metal band closes around my head.

So back to just sitting, and this works quite well. Indeed I was actually quite on during the first sitting. I just sat for quite a while, noticing thoughts, sounds (bodies are loud!). The other people in the room start to fade in my peripheral vision, taking on a semi-transparent look. I have a spontaneous memory of sitting in the back yard alone when I was 12 and looking through my telescope at the Hercules globular cluster on a cool summer night and just staring at it for ages. I was still a bit afraid of the dark, but the sky was so quiet and peaceful. That combination of thrill and peace back again. The carpet starts to get a wobbly look like a piece of paper in a breeze. (My eyes aren't moving much, so these may be effects of retinal nerves getting bored.) Then I notice the body feels stiff like stone. Hey cool, I'm a Stone Buddha!

Then I tried some other voices. The Way. Big Mind. Big Heart.... Woah! There's the buzz! It's an electric feeling like putting your tongue on a 9-volt battery. Suddenly I love these 5 complete strangers in the room with me. 5 strangers? Yes: who is this person who's eyes I'm using to see? Doesn't matter, he's lovely, as are all these other people just sitting here in the room, with their tummy burbles and transparent bodies. Oh and the carpet is lovely. And that car driving by outside is nice too. I notice my mouth is moving of its own accord. It's turning into that mysterious little smile that you see on Buddha statues. You know, the one that sits on Mona Lisa's face. Wow. That is unexpected. I am Mona Lisa's Enigmatic Smile!

etc... etc... etc...

The sharing was again scary, I now have to talk and share... So I express gratitude and joyousness. And I also explain that I am beginning to see the benefits of surrender, which does not come easy to me. I don't usually let go.

I did once though. Again, like tonight, under the influence of too little sleep I let go and took that backward step into surrender. Early one morning, really early... about 4AM or so... in an open field on another cool summer night nearly 15 years ago I uncharacteristically let go of reason and Stepped Off. And my heart sings with gratitude that I did.

And I'm Free.... Free Fallin'

Integral Asymmetry

One of the interesting things I'm discovering about trying to "think integral" is that it requires a certain acceptance of intellectual patience, for lack of a better word. The whole point is to try and look for and acknowledge and integrate the truth of as many different philosophies and disciplines as possible; to be as progressive and as inclusive and open-minded as possible. But the fact is that many (probably most) of the disciplines you try to integrate are unlikely to return the favor. More than likely you have to filter out a lot of intellectual snobbery, conservative exclusivity, xenophobic prejudice and the like to gather the nuggets of truth.

So case in point, the teacher of my meditation class has been a practicing Buddhist for 20+ years, but says he has essentially no knowledge of the teachings of any other tradition than his own. No other religions, no other flavours of Buddhism, not even any other Tibetan sects other than the Kadampa sect in which he studies. To me this seems like an astonishing lack of intellectual curiosity to say the least. As a side effect, while he sees his own tradition as very pure and "very white," (ouch! my inner green sure winced at that choice of wording!) he implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) casts dispersions on other practices. This tradition has worked for thousands of years, and it works for him. Great, but I'm amazed that its never occurred to him to wonder if there is any Dharma with a different pedigree. Plus there is a serious retro-romantic flavour to this sect as well. He started the class by discouraging the use of some of the 'new' meditative practices. (As I quietly ask The Controller to grant me access to Non-Seeking-Non-Grasping Mind. (: 0 ).

Anyway, it was an interesting class. We actually learned a meditation this week. Its a strange breathing exercise which, among other things, reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about the "man with a tape recorder up his nose." It's supposed to be useful for settling the mind when it's addled, which I can believe, as it's relatively complicated and requires a bit of concentration just to keep track of which nostril you're supposed to breathe through at which time and breaking your exhalation into three equal parts and visualizing three channels going over your head and down your back, etc...

Just plunk that down in the tool chest and roll on to zazen tomorrow night.

Tar Baby

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

–"The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear" from Dune, by Frank Herbert

Sigh.

The waiting continues and the tension thickens. Avoiding the sticky tar baby in the briar patch is becoming progressively more difficult and more and more effort is required to maintain focus. Thin envelopes have, not unexpectedly, started to trickle into my inbox. It's a measure of the relative situations of the astronomy job market in the UK and the US that I was shortlisted for three of the six UK positions I applied for, but so far only one of the 17 or so US positions.

Part of the problem is that I'm aware of the fact that much bigger tar creatures are potentially looming ahead, and indeed not necessarily avoidable. This is of course nothing new really. Suffering is always looming isn't it? Certainly without Right Thought and Right View and Right Action, etc... The Crunch is always lurking somewhere.

Meditation does help some. Indeed I've taken to using it quite a bit to try and maintain focus and stay productive. Still it doesn't always work, particularly when I get tired. (And of course tired doesn't always imply sleepiness. If only! Ah well, perhaps this would be easier if I was more practiced. Or perhaps not. I guess the "right view" would be who cares?

Anyway, I'm looking at trying to join a weekly Zazen group as well as the meditation classes Sunshine & I have been taking (which, among other things, are surprisingly light on the actual meditation). Supplement, supplement, supplement. Sunshine went to the evening mass at the local baptist church this weekend. She seemed to sorta enjoy it. My aren't we becoming quite the dabblers? All in the name of "getting integral" right? Plus, neither of us can manage to put together much of a "body module" at the moment, so we might as well push on "contemplation." I'm sure some shadow work would be in order too, but resources are tight at the moment in just about every way imaginable. So we take it a bit at a time.

Man, this is a rambling entry. I didn't have much of a focus in mind. It's really just an activity to keep my brain occupied on the train home. I'm not nearly good enough that I can meditate on the Tube yet, and I'm a little concerned about what my 'self' might get up to if I just let it wander aimlessly at the moment.

I think I may be developing a taste for dub reggae. I downloaded a reggae collection from iTunes the other day called Jonny Greenwood is the Controller, which is a collection of music from the Trojan music label compiled by Radiohead's creative "multi-instrumentalist" Jonny Greenwood, who has turned himself into a sort of musical jack-of-all-trades. Anyway, he seems to have pretty good musical tastes.

Rather rainy day today, Of course it's February in England, what do I expect?

Random, random, random....

My stop is approaching...

It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.

Karma at Pooh Corner

Blogging on the train again.
Class was moved at the last minute tonight to a venue around the corner: Pooh Corner Kindergarten. The room is actually quite surprisingly large for central London; it's a converted church basement. (The ground floor seems to have been converted to some sort of NHS clinic. Anyway, the whole session was running about a half hour late due to the switch.

A smaller group than last week, but including the more interesting regulars. There's a guy with a voice that sounds rather like Russel Crowe. He has a bit of that air of barely civilized violence that comes across with him as well. Then there is the quiet Peruvian lady with the Borders bag. And, most entertainingly, the two ladies who remind me of a somewhat more wholesome version of the Ab Fab women; with yoga and meditation replacing the booze and fashion.

Tonight was about Karma, and I'm afraid I have to agree with Sunshine that this is probably not a perfect fit for us. Certainly I'm beginning to see that they are a little too heavy on the metaphysical literalism for my taste. I don't know if it's just these teachers, or their Kadmpa order, or maybe Tibetan Buddhism in general. Still, it's an interesting experience, and I'm perhaps becoming a little more forgiving of the overtly religious, at least in certain settings. I'm a bit skeptical of "karmic action at a distance" which is certainly how they were discussing it tonight, but I can perhaps see how to integrate much of the idea of karma without having to invoke anything too magic. Something running more along the lines of unkind practice leaving you susceptible to suffering. I think I could see that, but sickness now caused by bad deeds in the past seems harder for me to accept.

Brian May

So apparently Brian May, better known as the guitarist for Queen, is back at Imperial College as a grad student to finish his PhD in Astrophysics. I'd heard this rumor a while ago, but now he's on the face board next to the staff mailboxes on the 10th floor. However I notice he's not listed in on department website nor do I think he's been assigned office space, and I somehow doubt he'll be doing much TA work. Still there are not many astrophysics groups/departments who get do count a genuine rock god amongst their number. I have no idea who he's working with as Peter says his old faculty advisor left years ago.

Dharma Train

Blogging on the tube again. Taking a late train back to Harrow after attending my second Buddhist meditation class. After each class there is a short informal chat over tea. Tonight, one of the topics of discussion was how to maintain these ideas in the harsh reality of the workplace, where people are much more likely to be harsh, angry, etc. Certainly I've had some experiences with this and hard as it is, I do think mindfulness helps. It's just not always easy to be mindful when the world is digging at you and goading you to contract.

My own source of contraction at the moment is fear. It continues to crop up as 'job season' moves from ripe to rot and I haven't yet been harvested. I really hate the process of applying for jobs. It really is exactly the sort of thing that is almost perfectly designed to shred the soul. First, there is the unavoidable statistical fact: most of the people in my position who have trained and worked for years to get a position in astronomy, don't. Most of us will run out at some point and run aground. There just aren't enough chairs and someone gets left behind. That leaving behind stings. It's hard not to take it personally. After all you are the product you were trying to sell and you were what they didn't want.

So you spend your time writing these applications, and spend your money to send them out, knowing that 90% won't even result in an interview. Then when you get shortlisted, it just ups the stakes. Now you feel like you have a shot, but you have to apply even harder. To succeed, you really have to see yourself in that position because if you don't, they won't either. But in that visualization attachment is so easy, which just makes it sting all the worse when they turn you down. It's the job that you thought you really might get that hurts the most when you don't.

Meanwhile the pressure is still there from all the other sources, and it's ever so easy to get lost in the craziness. It's so easy to contract into the fear, and the juggling act, and the rejection. And in that contraction come all the shadows projected from your fear into the world. You can see enemies and competition and missed opportunities everywhere. Staying positive and mindful in the midst of this is not easy.

I keep having to try and come back to probably the wisest thing that my thesis advisor Rob Fesen ever taught me (and he taught me quite a lot of really important things that I've only really come to appreciate many years later). Quite early in my career as a grad student at Dartmouth he told me that what we do is a privilege. It is a truly remarkable thing that we get supported to just look at the universe and think about it and tell people what we think we see. We don't produce anything pictures and the stories that go with those pictures. And that fascination with the cosmos is what pays my rent. But it's a privilege that doesn't come with any guarantees. So enjoy it while it lasts.

That's good advice. It's just hard to hold on to that wisdom when faced with the potential death of a lifestyle to which one has become accustomed. It hurts to lose something cherished. But focusing on the joy while it lasts for however long it lasts is really the only sensible answer. Anything else is just going to make you unhappy and won't change the outcome anyway. So keep the faith, where the faith is not hope for the future, but joy in the now. Enjoy it now, the future will come regardless. Enjoy that when it's the present.

Tallahassee Dreaming on Such a Winter's Day

So I've been interviewing for a faculty job here in Tallahassee, and the weather has been rather chilly. Apparently this is unusual as all the locals are complaining about it as well. It's not any warmer here than it was in London. But at least the day is longer. It's nice to at least get a little sunlight.

The interview seems to be going reasonably well. At least I don't think I've said anything too stupid, and my talk seemed to come off OK. Its nice to interview at a place where someone is actively pulling for me. In principle they were pulling for me at Liverpool, but I don't know how committed any of the Liverpool folks really were to the idea of getting me up there. Peter certainly seems to be actively gunning for me and its nice to feel like I might be a bit of a front runner. Time will tell I guess, and time is going to be a bit slow. I probably won't hear anything until the end of Feb at the earliest.

The department is interesting. It's a huge physics department here with several interdisciplinary splinters. They all seem quite upbeat about building an Astrophysics group. I've also had about 6 different people tell me that the department is very 'collegiate'. Apparently it has become a part of the group mythology and is probably therefore a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Even Peter has become a bit of an optimist. He'd probably be really happy if his wife wasn't making quite a bit of misery in his non-professional life.

Snow, Mist, Streams, Spirit and Shadow

It snowed in London last night! Or at least that's my perspective. Actually, looking out the window right now a bit after noon you can't really tell anymore, but when I left home at 7 AM this morning there was about an inch of slushy snow on the ground. Riding in on the tube this morning all the buildings had a lovely coat of snow. It snarled up the trains this morning though. I didn't get caught in it, but it's never a good sign when five or six lines are showing delays and partial closures!

Meanwhile, I finished reading Traleg Kyabgon's book The Essence of Buddhism last night. Yikes! I can't say that I'm all that much clearer on what the "essence" of Buddhism is. The book claims to be trying to present a historical overview of the various schools of (primarily Tibetan) Buddhism and it's practice and philosophy. I guess I got some sense of this, but an awful lot of the book seems like endless lists of various types or levels or stages of things, all labeled in sanskrit or tibetan (or both).

The book gives the impression that Buddhism is obsessed with counting things. We start, predictably enough with the "Four Noble Truths" and the "Eightfold Noble Path", but then we quickly get mired in lists of the 6 practices of this, and the seven limbs of that and the 10 stages of the other thing. Often these lists even break down into sublists. And very often there is no notion of meaning to any of this. It's just geography and place-names if you will.

The book is also very slippery on the distinction between 'reality' and 'metaphor', although it seems to make the point that there is a lot of disagreement about that in the various Buddhist schools. Apparently they all agree that 'Emptiness' is 'real'... whatever that means, but the rest seems to be a matter of discussion. Anyway, generally this book seems more confusing than helpful. My understanding of Buddhism is as misty as it was before I read the book... perhaps even more so.

I had a discussion with Sunshine last night about what sort of meaning, if any, I should be gleaning from this meditation business. It's quite a squishy question actually, particularly if you're trying to work from a post-metaphysical perspective.

It seems to me a rather dicy business to try and attach meaning to things in general, now that I think about it. In the physical sciences, we perform experiments (injunctions) and then try to fit the resulting data (experiences) into some sort of model for what is actually happening in "the real world." But "the real world" seems to be a somewhat naive and outdated concept, which is subject to some of the same kinds of metaphysical assertions that fill old-world religion, albeit working from a tenet of 'verification' rather than faith. The verification aspect is indeed an improvement on the truths of simple blind faith, but the metaphysical assertion slips in when we make a materialist claim about what it is that we've verified.

But from a post-metaphysical perspective, what we are doing in the physical sciences is not building models that explain what is happening in the real world. Rather, we are building models which describe the results of experiments and provide a framework for understanding the relationship between those experiments. But we're not actually describing the real world, because we have no access to it. Furthermore, quarks, (if they exist) no nothing of quantum field theory. Physics doesn't exist in the real world, it exists in our heads and in our textbooks, and in our culture. Newton and Einstein didn't change the way apples fell out of trees, they just invented new ways to think about apples and how they like to fall out of trees. The apple and the tree couldn't care less.

In fact, we can't even know for sure that they exist, or if they do what their 'true nature' is. We can take a group of physicists to an orchard and show them apples and trees, and then bring them together and have them discuss things. They will all likely agree that apples are red, or maybe green (depending on the orchard), that they grow on trees, that they can fall off the trees, etc. But what this means is that the experiment is repeatable. That the scientists are working from a sufficiently similar perspectives and that these injunctions do bring forth experiences that when coupled with the similar perspectives are coherent enough to build a common framework or story. But they might not all be able to agree that apples are tasty. If one is colorblind then he won't be able to say if the apples are red or green. And if you bring a bunch of zen monks and ask them what the true nature of the apples is they will agree that it's 'mu', or 'emptiness' or somesuch.

And thus we arrive at Wilber's Integral Post-Metaphysics. What is true are the perspective/injuction/experience combinations. That's what where we can have fruitful discussions. That's what is repeatable and testable. The 'reality' is that there are these injunctions that humans can perform to bring forth experiences and if these humans have sufficiently similar perspectives (in the full AQAL sense) then they can have a meaningful conversation.. They can build a framework in that shared perspective which places the injunction/experience in context with other such experiments, and they can even make predictions based on that framework. If the predictions prove true, (new injunctions performed, new experiences brought forth and found to be consistent with the framework of that perspective), then the framework (theory) is a good one (at least until a contradiction is found). He has integrated the postmodern observation that meaning or reality or perception is always context based. The meditators tell us that even the nature of our own true mind is hidden from us. "I think, I am" is still true, but "what I am" is a very different question and appears to be context dependent.

However, where we can get into trouble is trying to apply the framework outside the parameters that define it's existence. The framework is a creation of both the AQAL address of the injunction and those of it's creators. Where we cross the line is by using the framework to make assertions about the truth value of concepts which aren't subject to the same perspectives. Thus, Newtonian gravity predicts false things when applied to strong gravity fields, but that's just the simple case. Biology won't tell you anything about whether a dog has an eternal soul, and can't. The idea of a 'soul' doesn't exist in the worldspace of modern biology. It is entirely an entity of the mind, or at least it is as far as anyone can tell.

So if we get our sense of meaning for things and events from a complicated mess of culture, society, individual preference, developmental history, etc., this necessarily means that life on the leading edge of human development is going to be a fairly 'meaningless' existence. Or, at least, if you are going to study parts of the Kosmos from a sparsely populated perspective/subject combination, then you are going to have to do a lot of the hard work of supplying the meaning for yourself.

Frank Visser, in his "take on Wilber-5" complains that he liked the old ladder metaphor for transcendent evolution rather than the waves and streams metaphor what Wilber has adopted in his more recent writings. The reason is that he says that climbing a ladder is work and transcendence is hard work as well, and that the stream metaphor implies that you can just coast along and get to where you are. I think that maybe both metaphors are right, because I don't think transcendent growth is always hard. Lazarus is growing and developing by great leaps and bounds, and while it is physically hard, he isn't trying to grow up, he just is. I think at the beginning we really do get carried along in much of our transcendent evolution, at first by our physical body, by our genetic programming, and then by our culture and our environment.

For example, you have to be pretty divorced from society to grow up in a western culture and not at least have a partial cognitive understanding of the idea of biological evolution or Big Bang cosmology. Your religious beliefs may keep you from believing that these things are 'true', but you pretty much need to have been living under a rock not to have heard of them. Why do creationists want to abolish these ideas from schools? Because these ideas act to drag their children up the ladder of cognitive evolution into post-mythic regions, and then that sets up a potential internal conflict between their worldview and their religion.

To take a fundamentalist mythic-literal view on the Bible as God's absolute literal truth and still live in the modern world requires a sort of mental shell game. You have to rely on a carefully honed selective ignorance to ignore the fact that the same science that gives us evolution also gives us naval oranges and locust resistant corn. The same science that tells us the Earth is 4.6 billion years old also keeps our clocks running in sync. If you want to believe in a flat Earth, how do you explain jet-lag other than by pretending it doesn't exist? But this is just another example of misapplying frameworks isn't it? Christianity gets into trouble when in makes assertions about the reality of the physical universe, and particularly where those assertions are in conflict with right hand empirical science. And the reason is that verification is a fundamentally better methodology than pure faith and metaphysical assertion. You just have to be careful about what you are verifying.

So in that sense, Wilber's later metaphors of streams, and most recently a conveyer belt, seem fairly apt. However, once you reach the bulk-average level of your culture it stops pulling you up. In fact, then your cultural environment and background probably pull you down. Now transcendence is hard, because you have to start breaking ties with the very things that helped you up in the first place. Now your cultural truths become cultural baggage. You need to cut ties with your old culture and reach out to the new one at the next level. Worse, if you are relatively advanced, up at green or in the lower second-tier, then when you reach up to the next level, you find there's not much there to grab on to. As Wilber says, back at red and amber, the stream is like the grand canyon, but up at turquoise it's a trickle and not very far ahead people are drawing lines in the sand with sticks.

So, back to the conversation with Sunshine. Here I am, trying to operate on a second-tier turquoise-ish level, and understand what I'm doing with this meditation business. I'm trying to integrate it into my own framework. I have Ken Wilber's AQAL map, but as he himself would likely admit, it's a pretty empty map in itself. So where can I look for meaning? The ILP starter kit has lots of discussion of practice, but really not all that much of meaning. They tell me how to meditate, and indeed, it seems to work, or at least it's had interesting effects so far. But what am I to make of these effects, and where should I enquire?

(An observation: If nothing else, this meditation stuff seems to have kicked off a epistemological storm in my brain! Good grief these entries are getting long! And now back to our program... )

So, Sunshine told me last night that maybe I was asking the wrong person (her), and maybe I should be asking Big Mind, since I was so chummy with him. Well, there's a thought. Maybe some of the "meaning" comes from the experiences themselves. Certainly, at least in many of the so-called wisdom traditions Spirit is thought to have a consciousness that is Other and can be communed with. Maybe I'm confused because I haven't asked God what it's all about. But here I may run into difficulty, as I'm not really sure that I believe that God exists. In fact, I probably don't, and that tends to put a bit of a damper on the conversation.

When I wrote in my last entry that I asked questions of Big Mind and got the chatty answer "Nope", the answer was chatty because I was supplying both sides of the conversation. I had a first-person apprehension of Big Mind, emptiness, etc, but that was the point. It was first person. Spirit in the first person. I am Big Mind and so I just looked around, felt what Big Mind felt like, and decided that Big Mind didn't need anything. This was subjective, not intersubjective. It was a monologue with spirit.

It seems that I actually have a fair distrust of the idea of manifest second-person spirit. This idea of Deity is uncomfortable and even irritating and on many levels and for a variety of reasons. It is a much more difficult thing to accept than the idea of 3rd-person spirit. 3rd-person spirit is easy to accept, because it doesn't intrude on the ego. It's non-threatening. It's like The Force. "It surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the universe together" but it doesn't seem to mean much. It just becomes a name you give to acknowledge the beauty of the world.

And what about this notion of spirit in the first-person. Well, OK, now we are beginning to intrude on something potentially more alien. If you are going to start having apprehensions of 1st-person spirit then it is going to impinge on your reality more that 3rd-person spirit. If it's first-person then it must be directly accessible. But even that can be subsumed again by calling it metaphor mixed with altered states. Second-person spirit is the hardest to place into a materialist worldview, because it requires the sense of a conscious other. Still, one can potentially imagine psychological conditions that would produce such an illusion.

But see here where my thoughts habitually like to take me? Right to flatland. Straight to scientific materialism. My mind does not like to abide in the notion of Deity because it smacks too much of the amber level Christian mythos. Wilber's psychological model includes a spiritual developmental stream, and mine seems to be very orange, with perhaps a bit of green manifesting as poetic appreciation for spirit as an abstract idea. Worse, it seems like it's a somewhat pathological orange. The idea of spirituality is even embarrassing. It feels like gullibility.

Again and again the ego crops up as afraid of spirituality. I dislike the notion of 2nd-person Deity and the inevitable surrender that must come with it. I distrust religion, particularly dogmatic religion for both it's conservative negation of the individual, and it's ceding of moral authority to the collective. My ego fears rejection from my peers should I admit to an interest in spirit. This smacks rather of a developmental line disorder. My response to the concept of Deity seems out of proportion to the stimulus, and suggests that there is shadow at work here.

The orange "pressure cooker" that Wilber describes in Integral Spirituality certainly seems to have stuck me well and truly with an orange spirituality, i.e. a scientific materialist atheism which seems to be valiantly trying to struggle to a pluralistic green agnosticism. I can see a way up to green spirit at least, in the notion of the perpetually sliding contexts of postmodernism. The fact that reality is context driven means that God could quite effectively hide from sight simply because I have no context for seeing him. Thus the question of whether spirit 'exists' becomes unanswerable in any universal sense because the meaning of 'exist' and 'spirit' are context driven. The thing is I don't see the path out of that deeply agnostic perspective, at least not yet.

Hmm... and maybe that is the context I've been searching for right there. I can bring forth the experiences, but the meaning thereof seems to elude me. But how is it that zen describes emptiness? It is ungraspable. In the foreword to The Eye of Spirit, which I was reading today, when Jack Crittenden is describing Wilber's methodology of integrating via orienting generalizations, he says:

In working with any field, Wilber simply backs up to a level of abstraction at which the various conflicting approaches actually agree with one another. Take, for example, the world's great religious traditions: Do they agree that Jesus is God? No. So we must jettison that. Do they all agree that there is a God? That depends on the meaning of "God." Do they all agree on God, if by "God" we mean a Spirit that is in many ways unqualifiable...
Yes, that works as a generalization.

So by this definition, the integral version of spirit is that mysterious something which we can get a hint of but can't really describe or know. Spirit is the mystery itself? Hmm... well... it is at least food for thought. The stuff of contemplation. Something to try.

And what is the harm? If I am to truly seek an integral version of spirituality, it must, by that very definition fit into framework that respects the rest of my worldview. Why worry so much about whether the experience is grounded in 'reality' or is simply a 'mental exercise'. Is meaning any less if it is metaphor? Why do I feed the fear of the ego? Am I afraid of being naive? What is that but simply egotism and vanity? Why cling desperately to the rational? What is this attachment to a 'reality' that is demonstrably illusory and contextual. What is this fear of faith and surrender? Let go Luke! Jump! Jump! Take the leap because it doesn't matter either way anyway! If the world is without spirit then all I have to lose is pride, and that is nothing worth clinging to.

And so, I guess I will try. I will try to abandon this attachment to what is 'real'. I will let go of logic in this respect and let meaning find it's own path. Jeez... it's so very Zen, but there you are. Time to step off.

New Adventures in Big Mind

Whoa!
(or however that is supposed to be spelled).

OK. Typing pretty fast as well... it seems I'm a bit inspired.

Just finished a highly successful meditation session, and I'm still a bit buzzed. I actually feel quite good, and seriously awake and aware. Anyway, I feel like I need to be journaling these meditative experiences, at least while I'm still discovering. It really does seem to make the experiences more solid, otherwise I think they would tend to fade.

After Sunshine & Laz went to sleep tonight, I read a bit and looked at the FSU physics department website. I really do hope the interview goes well this weekend and next week. Technically my interview is next week, but I'm meeting people for dinner on Sunday, so really the process starts soon after I get there. It's a huge physics department at FSU, and it's a little bit daunting. Still, I need to be brave and have confidence in myself. And not say anything too stupid and then just hope for the best. Confidence, clear minded-ness, openness, joyful, insightful... these are the things that people look for right...

Anyway, that wound me up a bit. I read a bit of this Buddhism book I've been reading, (very dense and confusing book, but more on that some other time). About 9:30 I decided to head toward bed, but before sleeping I decided to try and do a bit of breathing meditation.

Now I have been searching for a good position to meditate in. At work I can just use my chair, which is OK, but not great. Finding a good position at home has been less easy. (We don't have the most comfortable home). Last night I came across the technique of sitting at the edge of the bed and putting pillows on the floor and then sitting cross-legged with my butt on the bed and my knees on the pillow in a vaguely lotus-esque position (but a lazy one without the leg contortions which my knees aren't up too.) So that worked reasonably well last nifht, but I was too tired to meditate much without falling asleep.

Tonight worked better. I started counting breaths to 10. As I settled in there were lots of thoughts and sensations cropping up, but I just tried to keep at it. I lost count a few times, but just restarted. I couldn't tell if it was doing much, but at the very least it's a pretty relaxing exercise, and a decent way to settle the mind before going to sleep. I started to get distracted by bodily discomforts, mostly muscle pain in my back and chest and neck from sitting in this weird position, but I just kept on counting through them or starting over if I got distracted. Then after a while my concentration slipped down just slightly as if I was starting to nod off. Indeed, that may have been just what happened. (Jeez, I over use parentheses! I've taken about 4 or 5 sentences out of parentheses already in this post!)

Anyway, as I slipped, I caught myself and restarted my counting, pushing up on my awareness to try and counter the sleepiness. But then I noticed that the counting suddenly seemed very easy. In fact, the thoughts and sensations that my 'monkey-mind' usually tried to hold on to had gone quiet. Perhaps the monkeymind thought I was already asleep. In any case, the counting exercise was now trivial. Even the slightly sore sensations of the sitting position seemed faint and distant, and I felt like I could just sit there counting for hours and hours and not exert any effort.

Well, something in my mind intuited that I'd arrived at a pretty centered and open state and that it might be an opportune time to try something more adventurous than simply counting. So, as I remembered most of the bits of the simpler version of Big Mind meditation I gave it a shot.

I first asked for the Controller, which is a voice I have had a bit of difficulty resonating with at times. That probably means something, and sitting here now, I wonder if it might be related to some classic issues I have with focus and decision making, and impulse control. Hmm... food for thought. Anyway, I tried to find the Controller and then having decided I was there, I thought I should investigate my Desire voice which, not surprisingly, was chattering away about the Florida job. So, i sat listening to that voice for a bit, just absorbing the story and listening compassionately and patiently and starting to feel things settle. Then I decided to go back to the Controller, and then (though I hadn't been planning on going to the non-dual side) I followed an impulse to ask for the Master.

Whoa!

Damn if it didn't work again!

I asked for the Master, and all of a sudden, a tingling sensation runs down my spine and my forearms and I suddenly feel very confident and powerful, as if my hands were charged with Earth-shaking energy. I was the Master and I could do anything. I was the über-controller. Whoa! Now, I'm not terribly comfortable with the Master (though I felt quite comfortable with myself at the time), so I decided to ask for Big Mind instead, which is a non-dual voice I am less wary of. So I asked for Big Mind and Big Mind showed up.

Well.... What can you say about Big Mind. Well it's big. And it's Empty. Yep. There you go. It's a big open black space. A gigantic silent space. I can only assume that this is the Emptiness that Buddhism is always banging on about. There it is.

The thing about Big Mind, is there's not a lot to say about it. I asked it a couple of questions because I suddenly remembered I was supposed to do so. So: "Is there any limit to You?" (Nope.) "Do you need anything?" (Nope.) "Is there anything you lack?" (Nope). Not very chatty Big Mind, but a pleasant enough place to visit I suppose.

I then asked for Big Heart and shifted. Now the tingles came back big time. Now I was floating in that big empty space that was Big Mind, but I was now a buzzing body of energy in that space. There wasn't the sense of gushing that burst from my chest the first time, but instead it was as if my body were a perfectly equilateral tetrahedron and buzzing inside with tingly energy. A really really quite lovely sensation.

I found I didn't really have any questions for Big Heart, so I just sat with it at glowed for a while. Indeed, I think I probably quite like Big Heart and could spend rather a long time hanging out there. Perhaps this is a taste of what the Traleg Kyabgon book I'm reading (The Essence of Buddhism) calls sambhogakaya, a state of blissfulness which manifests in a place called Akanistha, which is apparently not anywhere. Hard to say for sure, as Buddhism seems awfully vague sometimes, but it could be a description that fits.

So I sat with Big Heart for a while, and then decided I should head for home. I probably could have stayed longer if I'd tried, but I did feel my concentration start to waver slightly toward the end with Big Heart. So I packed it in and asked for the Integrated Free-Functioning Human Being. Quite a mouthful I know, but the Big Mind folks are big on winding up that way and I can see why. The IFFHB feels like a bridge back to the samsaric world. It's a voice that is connected to that non-dual world, but exists in our world. It's centered and compassionate and confident... etc... Probably it's something like the idealized Bodhisattva of traditional Buddhism. Anyway, it feels like it lives with a foot in both 'realities' and that's probably why it's a good exit from the Big Mind ride.

After being the IFFHB for a while, I returned to the breath and counted (Noting that my breath was loud... as if it had become quiet and shallow during my non-dual journey). After a couple of repetitions, I ended the session, feeling buzzed and with a strong inclination to write the experience down. And so here I am.

Actually, the process of describing sort of cerebral-izes the experience. It fixes it in the mind as a sort of abstract memory, but the sense of excitement has died down. I must say the excitement is a little distracting during the meditation. When first starts to work, there is a part of my brain freaking out, going "Holy shit! It's really working! Wow! Check it out." This voice is of course terribly non-dual, indeed, it's even a bit of a distraction from the breath. It takes a bit of effort to focus past it. Perhaps as the experience becomes more 'normal' this voice (lets call it Enthusiastic Incredulity) will calm down. 'Till then, I guess I'll just have to try and be mindful and pay it no mind.