I find two ways that I want to be right.

First, wanting my initial belief about something to be right. When I take a story as true, I identify with it and its perspective, and since it becomes an “I” I feel fuel other stories that prop it up, flesh it out, defend it, and make it look right to myself and sometimes others.

Then, wanting to find what is more true for me than the initial belief. What is the grain of truth in its reversals? What happens if I see all of those stories as just stories, with a limited practical value only?

So for instance, when I received the email from the Bernadette Roberts student, and he seemed to assign views to me that didn’t fit my familiar identity, the first impulse was to make me right and he wrong. I don’t have those views, and I’ll prove it to him.

But the signs of being caught up in beliefs are hard to notice (tension, wanting to protect and defend a position or identity), so it quickly shifted into wanting to find what is more true for me. How is he right? Can I find it, in a genuine way, right here?

What is the belief I got caught up in? (”He shouldn’t assign views to me I don’t have.”) What happens when I hold onto that belief? Who am I without it? What are the genuine truths in its reversals?

Now, having found - to some extent - what is more true for me around it, there is a release of that tension. There is less need to have to protect or defend a position or identity. I can find the truth in what he is saying, and also expand it so the fuller picture is more true for me than either of our initial positions. (As I tell myself those positions were.)

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She shouldn’t distort (the views of others). (Bernadette Roberts.)

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He shouldn’t assign views to me (that I don’t hold). (One of Bernadette Roberts’ students whom I had a somewhat strange email exchange with.)

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He should teach in a way that makes sense to me.

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Life is not fair.

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There are many connections between beliefs in stories and resistance to experience.

Both fuel and emerge from a sense of I with an Other.

Beliefs create an identity which doesn’t allow certain experiences. And resistance to experience in turn support and lends a sense of substance to those beliefs.

And yet another connection is distraction.

Whenever I want to resist experience, I find that a good way to do it is to go into and get caught up in stories. It doesn’t matter what type or flavor of story. Any will do. Stories of excitement, fascination, daydreams, judgment, blame, and so on.

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Setting aside the conventional meanings of altered state for a while, what comes up when I explore it for myself?

I find that everything is an altered state. Content of experience is always new, fresh and different, so always an altered state. Always different.

If I shift my eyes, even slightly, there is a different feeling. If I change my posture, a different experience. If I eat something, again different. If my body is not doing too well, another state. Any change within content of experience is a different state.

And I also find that each of these states resonate with and bring up particular groups of stories, emotions and actions in the world.

I am noticing this clearly now as my body is off due to some food I ate yesterday. Knots are coming up that I normally don’t notice when my body-mind is more functional, so I now have an opportunity to explore these in more detail. I can fully allow and be with the experience, inquire into the stories associated with these knots.

There are many gifts of states. They themselves is a different experience. They filter the world differently for us. And - maybe most importantly - they each invite in particular stories and emotions which we can then examine and allow.

When I explore space, I find two quite distinct ways space appears.

One is how the mental field creates a sense of space. When I close my eyes, the mental field can easily produce a visualization of space and its content. It can easily visualize this body, the various body parts and their relationships to each other, the room, the relationships between the objects in the room, how my body moved and was positioned in the past and may be in the future, and so on. And when I open the eyes again, I can get a quite clear sense of this mental field overlay on top of the visual field.

Space does not seem inherent in any field, and only appears through an overlay of the mental field. An overlay that helps map whatever happens in each field (visual, sound, sensation, smell, taste) in space. Even the mental field itself is mapped in space, giving a sense of thoughts happening in/around the head/body area.

This overlay of a visualized space is crucial for our human self navigating in the world. And also, it is crucial for creating a sense of a separate I. Without space, no I with an Other. A sense of a separate I is anchored here, in and around this body, and the rest of the world is out there, in the periphery.

The imagined separate I depends on visualized space to exist. And when I don’t notice how the mental field combines with the other fields to create a sense of space, space and the sense of a separate I seems solid, real and substantial. When I notice it, the sense of a separate I softens and fades.

The other seems to be free from an overlay from the mental field. This is just a sense of spaciousness absent of any end, inherent in awareness itself.

The first type is essential for mapping the sense fields in space. The second may be just an inherent property of awareness, existing independent of the first one.

Statement: They shouldn’t reject the Big Mind process. (CSS)

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When I explore sleepiness through the sense fields, and bring attention to the sensation part of it, it is no longer sleepiness or drowsiness or dullness. It is just a set of sensations, and parallel with it, a set of thoughts.

Together, they make up the appearance of sleepiness, and when attention is brought to the sensation aspect of it, it is revealed as something else. And I also notice how awareness itself is never sleepy or drowsy or dull or anything else. It is always and already clear and awake.

The thought aspect of sleepiness is still a little unclear to me, but there is a slow downward movement there, like a thick sticky fluid. And when it combines with the sensation aspects, the gestalt created is sensations with a slow viscous downward movement, which appears as sleepiness.

When this is seen, the gestalt of sleepiness falls into its components of sensations and thoughts, which may make the sleepiness go >poof<. Unless the movement is too strong, in which case it brings sleep. And awareness is either aware of itself through that process, or not.

It is better if they don’t project on me.

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It is better if I get what I want.

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It is better to be clear. (Rather than confused, deluded, mistaken.)

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It is better if they don’t think this is how/who I am. (When I am out of it due to illness, lack of sleep, or something else.)

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It would be better if Americans were less stupid. (Came up for me most recently in reading about Obama in Muslim outfit, which apparently - in the minds of some Americans - is supposed to incriminate him!)

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It is better without customer service/tech support hell.

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Life shouldn’t prevent me from doing what I want. (I have been sick for about a week now, and missed most of a sesshin I had been looking forward to, may miss a great Jungian workshop this weekend, and possibly - although unlikely - a Breema retreat the next, not to speak of the things I had hoped to do during the week.)

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Interesting quote posted at Indistinct Union:

John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: “God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves.” That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God’s presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ’s kingdom.

Is it only me that sees this as more creepy than attractive? If this is all there is to it, I am tempted to say count me out.

(It is also another example of someone entertaining themselves with their thinking, creating imaginations that gives some temporary comfort. Nothing wrong in that, but it is good to be honest about it.)

But as usual, we can also find it here now.

This timeless now that everything happens within is Christ’s Kingdom. And when I notice that, its content - this human self and its surroundings, or Kosmos if we want to be grand - is noticed as already and always fresh, new, stainless, pure.

So in that case, count me in.

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They are too tame. (The folks at CSS, and the approach of the center in general.)

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They should sit still. (Folks at CSS retreats, and also at the David Waldman satsang this morning.)

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He shouldn’t use the word “ego”. (Joel, in his new book and his teachings in general.)

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It is better to not filter Buddhism through New Age and Christianity. (Distorting it.)

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It is better to not rank teachers. (It is better not to rank teachers by attainment, this one too inspired by Dharma Overground.)

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When I revisit old inquiries, I sometimes notice how there is more receptivity of heart, mind and feelings.

It is as if the initial inquiry opened the door just a little, and this allowed, over time, the door to open more fully.

An example is this inquiry, which I just went back to because of a comment posted there, and realizing that there is more receptivity of heart, mind and feelings here now, around this topic.

This prompted me to explore one of the turnarounds again, from what is alive here now, finding it far richer this time, and feeling, loving and seeing it more fully and clearly.

I am not qualified. (To help, give advice, teach, contribute.)

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They shouldn’t present it as so difficult. (Finding clear, simple teachings, good teachers. From the Big Issues section of Dharma Overground.)

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If it is alive for them, they would use their own words.

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It is better if they differentiate history and teaching stories. (From a dinner conversation with friends yesterday, where they got into talking about some of the non-Biblical scriptures such as the gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene.)

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There are multiple benefits for me in going to CSS.

First, the clarity Joel brings from his Ground awakening and studies of the philosophy and practices of many traditions. (Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism/Advaita.)

Then, what gets triggered in me in different ways.

I often feel that the ways the teachers look at a particular topic is quite limited, so it encourages me to find what is more true for myself. What they say is great, but what else is also true? What are the other ways of looking at this topic? What does the larger landscape look like? And also, what are the truths in the reversals of these teachings?

And then the reactiveness, the hangups triggered in me, which is as valuable and as much a teacher as the above. (If not more of a teacher.) Whenever I go, believes are triggered, and there is something in the setting that allows these to come up more clearly and in more abundance than in any other setting. (I probably have higher expectations/hopes.)

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A series of three people show up on my doorstep, one after the other, thinking I can help them. (They have read my blog, for some reason thought I could help them, and figured out my address.) I tell them I can’t help them. I brush them off. I don’t acknowledge them beyond that. The last one is persistent and follows me and my wife as we are go to set up for a meditation session in the evening. When we arrive, a meditation is in progress and the person following me thinks I have lied to her. I take time to explain the situation to her, and as I do so, a shift happens for me. My heart opens.

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