The Spiritual Imagination

Looking to the East is something a lot of people from our generation has assumed, and identifying with Mother India is one endless avenue of study I keep asserting--probably more seriously because of its cultural presence than anything ascetically promulgating otherwise. I wonder about Deepak Chopra's discussion of Krishnamurti--we can be certain there is a surmise of his influence in Chopra's vast literary endeavors. I am currently reading "The Jews of Kerala" by Fernandes--that is in Cochin...a really ancient Jewish community, whose success and end is due to the open-ness on one hand in the Hindu presence, & unfortunately caste-dispersions otherwise. In a timely way, when I was coming back from Ontario a couple of yrs ago now, there at our hotel in Toledo we watched an interview on L. King w/ Chopra. I felt less homeward bound than actually a nurturing domicile in the bigger conscious map when listening to auspicious words always the good result when seeing some one mind crossing water, or in this case, the silent walls of a ubiquitous urban hotel. I like the fact I feel I owe leaden consciousness to imminent thinkers exacting ever new power spots, I otherwise may have missed in the frenetic rush of a life incomplete...
Does "meditation" elude you in the impact that only in brief glimpses (of that elusiveness) you would be sustained by--otherwise? Because, now I am back in a better place--yet the looming feeling that I can't maintain centeredness makes me sometimes opt for LESS of a reprieve. Say, the reprieve I imagine as in an auspicious read regarding, yes even, meditation...which is the mundane day begging at the scholarly self to lift up the veil dulling my spirit. So, just talking about as in intra-mantra slavery--a conversation with one's self, doesn't translate in moments when attentiveness would otherwise be attractive, and motivating. The plateau I am received upon is sometimes something my intellect propounds, yet meditation through my processing all the torpidity of a day, has this same illustrative wave crashing at the doors of wakefulness... And if I am already half-FULL of exacting just what interests demand of me, I can't see meditation as a goal unfortunately.
**Woe death, spare me on to another year!! And Death is used as a the reason why spirits should be conjured (ignorantly I might add). We have spirit as the motivator behind the equinox of the Minds, and then we have spirits as some ancestry event we think we get indicated by--which I don't agree with, other than Knowledge of self being the goal=no miracles. The definition for "spirit" is so broad, I tried to hone down just what we affect that makes continuity with community imminent.
Rumi says, "These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows that hold no capital." ***This is what I love--it goes to the head of those who persist that the promise in this life, is in fulfillment that something extra-sensory holds something fateful. "Shadows that hold NO Capital." That is an important statement: we are the currency of a temporal norm, & tho' we may have elevated thoughts, & presume all that glitter is gold - spirits?, in our folly, tho' we know, in reality, there is a material-void. Emptiness is an ascetic goal, because that is the condition in which we live--actually. Once we briefly match that, it is incumbent upon us to relinquish the control the gold had on us. That being "SHADOWS that hold no capital." IS not a provisional statement. IT means just that.
> The part about emptiness pertains to the Chopra
> Tribe. But in asking a relevant question as to this spirit imbiber's line of discussion, Does Memory Leave you
> in the past? via existant spirits--definitely
> pertains to his thread in Raw Wisdom Tribe. The
> memory part as to a communities' memory seems, in
> his mind, to validate belief in spirits: I'd say
> in terms of what Stevie Wonder
> sings, If You Believe In Things You Don't
> Understand, You Suffer. I got that RUMI quote
> from his poem (ghazzal) called Noone.
I think it is in everyone's capable hands to move around leaden consciousness to give substance to an otherwise Empty world. Knowledge is in the negation of what is--once we do that, we define things by that which it is not. This is epistemology: knowing WHY we know something. In asceticism, and what I get from Deepak, is that we need to address our striving/ our source of suffering. So, ego telling us that we deserve security because we can control the outward fact, is NOT looking at the inherent emptiness that the world defies us to understand & corral in our presumptive minds. Corral if we must, but it is an endless cycle around the mulberry bush unto weariness--then our Wakeful Attention begins to dull... which is harder to observe, and the vulnerable human condition with all our distractions will inevitably deter us from seeing our folly. Emptiness means we would have to answer for less, thereby seeing our insignificance in relationship with Higher Ground... THE goal!

Let me draw a comparison with Chaim Potok, his value as an ascetic in Americana, & Deepak--another Man of Reality enthused transient Identity annihilator. Deepak depicts depth that is reasonably an Aside, we'd abide, had we observed we're only here for a little while. Potok, whose name means Gate--a name he assumed probably for iconographic reasons, expresses continuity of Ultimate Reality, say G-d as the Center of Awareness/ maybe Mind, then our conventions that represent G-d: In judaism, The High G-d is an early anthropomorphic understanding, In Christianity, the convention maybe Holy Ghost & Son...and all these over-lap, and only some make accessible the Ideal we may find self-realization therein. The point of Reference is relationship with mutually arising community, and his/her intercession on our behalf toward compassion. Deepak is a nod east, and uses Western language as worthy allegory for iconoclast sensibility... I imagine, reading elsewhere--yet he may have said himself, that had the intermediary space intra-atomically been eliminated, our mass in 5 or 6 foot frames would be smaller than a grain of sand...this may suggest, I'd think, that that is where the soul resides, in our cosmic now--enveloped as we are with the space of self.

THE VOIDANCE DENIZEN

Gandhi had a beautiful definition for RELIGION--and believer is not it, & SCience either--maybe?, you decide! HE said RELIGION is SELF REalization. What is wrong with that? Many folks are tending to lump literalist conventions with religion proponets. The propitiation one does, as long as it is not advancing miracles, allows then an imaginative narrative indicating ones' self making an ideal of self-actualization. THAT would be good, NOt BAD. In my opinion, there are a lot of folks running from traditionalist habit because they are afraid that THAT language is ALL used up... I have a shirt saying something case & point: IN Hebrew it says, The People Of Israel Are One. Now that sounds stupid in MY acts toward ascetic fulfillment. BUT, the definition of "Israel"--is He Who Struggles With G-d. And Not Just G-d, but THE HIGH G-d. So, now we see that a High G-d is in a distant pleroma. THat distance equals relationship is a concession we all have in the Human condition. G-d as Higher Ground?--Higher Ground is all of our intent where we would want to be received in a sense that thru our humility we might be identified with that THING that has Consciousness as a Goal. This is all very Rational, you see. So science may equal Religion.
There is a Talmudic anecdote that says, "entering the ocean from one of its corners, you take in the essense of its whole." This is from Pirkey Avoth, The Works of Our Fathers. **I brought that book up into the Catskills Mts, while on vacation, at about age 15--probably 1981. It is a Jewish environment. --It is a Moralist Tome. And the corner I want to look out from, back against the wall of hindsight, was the mood of the philo-air I would & could seek then all around me, consumated with a motive to look at this doctrine. I thought about identity (the INNER-SELF), like nothing could possibly affect the biologic reality that we are in a sea of cultures, in a paradoxy--(seemingly two very at-odd realities). Any one of those Ideals as important as the next. The apparent sense that I'd grow up in proximity to "this" version of the Human Condition--I thought, alright I'd concede (it is before me after all, Rt?), I'll look into it--with no guide in fact but drinking in One Drop of the Ocean at a time. Try to drink it all at once, and you get poisoned, as the Buddhists say. So, the fire of resolve to ME, speaking of my intent, has everything to do with not conceding to the Impute of Fidelity one assumes from "loyalties--I knew rather there were flaws, & thru those doctrinal realities would I be "subject" to the Deep, as the Ocean/Void is called in Bereshit (Genesis). Sometimes you can only take the path to the ocean's edge, but not get in--a commentary on the Compassionate Void, in Buddhist thought as Alan Watts related. And how ineffective it is to think we meet Ultimate Reality, think The Ineffable (do we get IN the Ocean?)--as in Job where G-d doesn't come to court EVER--is where we attempt to define relationship as if immediacy is detained. (immediacy = inner self)

I think it is somewhat illuminating.
This idea my cousin conveyed about the randomness of our enduring mind, is in fact exactly how I'd describe, well w/o being dismissive of his resolute ideation, almost exactly, that is. But as we say, a young mind, green, creates these avenues which through our growing older, we no longer diverge into new paths. And the immediacy of knowledge, its alliterative potential, is in the eye of the beholder, wouldn't you agree? Our moral choices can be to a lesser extent poorly adhered toward, because to the effect that we think this is a choice, we wouldn't be able to see the forest for the trees. IT is these value statements that would make accessible OR not the open-ness to new wisdom or the subject under a new teacher. Does that make sense? Now make the leap: We are entering a dialogue about "thought." And thought is fear. If we fear it, we hate it--& if we hate, don't we in effect LOVE it? Because as Bob Marley says the thing we refuse, is the thing we can use. (the promise of the head cornerstone) So what of thought: if we refuse thought, then we use its catalyst i.e. the outward fact. But this means creating centers from without, not within. And within, if at all possible, is only a potential, a half-light, a question in our nerve that is lit, and lastly as a half thought while the answer is always outside the box. Which we had better get really used to, because there is nothing on top but a bucket & a mop & an illustrated book about birds. Lastly, again we are random, fragmented, so we fulfill this desire for constancy by projecting in the moment=process=impermanence.
"Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream." Edgar Allen POe ***sounds like Kerouac residing near Mt Hozomeen as a park ranger, fire-watcher. He says to the effect, Avalokiteshvara lay your diamond hand upon my brow--then something which now I only can claim as my reasoning in perspective over the illustration I conjure like I lay under the same midnight sky, which is, Avalokiteshvara when asked to get this dross materiality jettisoned so we can evade the prison of senses. "Is but a dream within a dream." as Poe relates, has us deliberate... The walk we walked on ice, the hell where a clarified bell was rung--reminding us it was not made for us, the foot in another's shoe, all not for nothing... WE dream, thereby we exist. It is the principal.

If there is thought, then there is the principal to thought, the simple beginnings. If there is intelligence in the world then there is its beginning, the intellect. For every condition there is its potential. This simplicity is known as G-d, according to the rationalists. If we dream, thereby we must exist. To exist then whence that energy promoted reflection upon the necessary condition, there is a principle to existence. Though it may be beyond a dualistic approach as our minds accord, still one may necessarily expect a principal behind that value.

This dharma stuff is, in my view, only to make us practical thinkers. This idea about he/she who goes away to find the light within, only to be received by the community to which they identify in an integral willingness to take on self-responsibility, is what we all can do when we sacrifice origination thinking. (meaning, thinking your beginnings IS answer, modifies all subsequent beginnings thus we languish in intra-mantra slavery!!) Had we the experiences that were lessons applied to every relationship, then no willingness to provide substance to our myriad path --the unfolding & dissolving our lives take, would be given. So, when do we jettison self-preservation, to otherwise don a new garment of self-expression in the language of our adversaries? To become objective about our fellows, leaving them so that renewing your experience with them makes the grasping ego no longer what we consent to, is Buddha's way, Jesus', Moses', Muhammed's, and any of us that sacrificed socially conventional blather for the alliterative bump in the road, we all must necessarily cross, are trying to chant down Babylon. **I just read last night in Karen Armstrong's The Bible, The Bible we inherited has more violence than the Quran--should be known considering the bad rap the West gives the 3rd of the 3 monotheisms.
"We're simply over-connected now and expect everything tomorrow." is this woman's feeling, somewhat adept I'd think, that I expand on. Do you mean we EXpect TOMoRRow's everything? Because it is an essential point. That we can look at cyber-communication as the same dynamic or attempt at bridging distances like letters used to, is also very interesting to me. The vast dispersion of the hangers-on in relationship with the 70 million killed from 1939 to 1945, when whole communities left neighbors behind thru immigration, it was letter writing that contained the thread to these relations had they cared for--to connect to pre-war reality. For most of us here, grandparents' scenarios is merely a stone's throw--my grandpa=Pap, was born in 1896. I knew I was seeing a 19th century connection my nieces & nephews would not know fully. Mom & Dad lived lives on the cusp of immense industrialization--the urban thing very real in their life time, yet urban sprawl hadn't come upon them as we saw quickly envelope us in our having received the reigns of the new day.
My sense of it, is really a developing thing (my friend and his last mention about his Mom is case & point.). I walked around the grocery store with Mom & Dad the other night & seeing the older generation around us, made me double take who I had assumed were the people giving context to my youthful remonstrations. Yet, now I am characterizing them as the Other--folks like I see aRoUnD us/ vulnerable, in fact... Nabakov deals with this: the shadow before we children came along as portending Mom's & Dad's vibrating-on in this temporal kingdom imprisoning us--then the voidance which is this world carrying-on after we receive the astral plane. So, today as any day, I trod with an image of loss & expectation on either side of me, like my parents (mind appearance) are coalescing with each step forward I take. I jump from this point like imagining the antediluvian images of Mom banging the grocery-basket down the aisles as if some image is still viewable of her eclipsing where I will yet be received... all very sad to imagine that I used to NOT be--and will NOT be again!!