Dream, May 18

I was at the coast, and our house were up on top of an embankment of boulders and cement. The ocean swelled and the waves came higher, although not quite up to the house. My wife and brother were there. I was initially concerned for the house and ourselves, but then saw that the house seemed safe and that I was OK as well. My brother fell into the waves, and I jumped in and rescued him.

Immediate reflections

This dream may be about feeling overwhelmed - by all the hangups I see in myself, all the beliefs to inquire into, my situation and all decisions to make to untangle myself from this quagmire. The ocean swells, washing up to the foundation of my house. Someone almost drown. Although I was able to save him anyway.

Dreamwork

I went to the first of four afternoons on dreamwork with Arny Mindell at the Process Work center in Portland today, and had a chance to work on this dream using the vector technique.

I first walked the direction of myself in the dream (small me), then the direction of the most compelling dream image (the swelling ocean), and then the line from the starting point to the end point (which is the sum of the two initial lines - small me and the ocean together).

Walking the third line - from starting point to end point, the line of the sum of small me and the ocean, the line of big me (or rather Big Mind) - I saw…

First, how I - as small me - shrunk in the situation, into seeing myself as small, limited, a victim of the ocean, separate, alien from the ocean.

Then, seeing small me and the ocean together, I saw how there is the very real opportunity of opening up for both - for connection. I can find the ocean in myself, and thus not be afraid of its external manifestations - and know how to flow with it and respond to it. I can find the larger whole which embraces both (Big Mind and then Integrated Free Functioning Self). I can find the Dao, which is the larger whole expressing itself as small me and the ocean both - in one fluid seamless process.

And finally, I saw how the dream pushed me into this third line - this combination of small me and the swelling ocean - by having my brother fall into the waves and me jumping after him to save him. The patterns of holding back are just a ghost these days, just old habits not needed anymore, and this - the dream + this vector work - is what it took to have me see that, or at least have a glimpse of it.

Further notes

Now, a few days later (May 25), what stays with me from this dream is how I already know how to deal with the swelling and dramatic ocean - I know how it functions from the inside, there is no separation between us yet there is also room for distinction, I know how to flow and roll with it, yet also taking care of myself and others. I am fluid enough with it to even save others within it.

At the same time, I see how my habitual pattern is to stay back. To stay more passive being concerned about it. To not jump into it until I am nudged or pushed into it - although when this nudge comes, I do it without much or any hesitation.

The ocean is life - my life, human life, Earth life, this universe, Existence. It is the Dao. It is the form aspect of Big Mind. It is the dancing of emptiness.

And I am familiar enough with it now to dance with it, to flow and engage with the Dao, to jump into and find myself as the rolling and swelling ocean - and my human self at the same time, able to engage with others.

In any stressful experience, there is a gift - there are nutrients there, ready to nurture our life if we are available to them.

In my experience, if I just use a regular mindfulness practice - coming to my breath or the movements of the body when I notice getting caught up in a hangup - it works in the short term, giving me some relief and reminding me of who I would be without the story. But it also seems to miss something in the longer run. Until the nutrients are harvested, until the gift is received, it seems to just come up again - over and over. Something wants to be seen, and until it is - it will return.

I am sure there are innumerable very effective ways of harvesting these nutrients. Some that work for me are…

• The Big Mind process
  Exploring in detail the dynamic behind what is happening, including the polarities (complementary/opposite) voices at a personal level and the transcendent voices.

• Byron Katie’s inquiries
  Exploring in detail what the belief is behind the stress, what happens when I believe that thought, who I would be without it, and integrating projections and loosening up the belief through exploring the various turnarounds.

• Process Work
  Allowing the process behind the symptom (in this case stress) to unfold, revealing its message and gift, and absorbing this.

• Shikantaza (sitting practice)
  Allowing it all to unfold within awareness, living its own life as it does anyway. Allowing resistance to even resistance to fall away. Allowing even the fueling of thoughts to unfold within space as everything else.

• Can I be with what I am experiencing? (daily life)
  Again, allowing it all to unfold within awareness, living its own life.

Another topic that keeps coming up for me…

We can be driven. In Voice Dialogue, Process Work and other approaches, this is seen as something in us pushing us. There is a voice or a figure pushing us. And there is an element of compulsion, obsessiveness, and lack of freedom in this. It is somewhat contracted.

There can be an apparent absence drive. From the Byron Katie inquiries, it can be seen as coming from beliefs holding us back, draining us of energy and passion. In a way, this too is a drive although towards lack of engagement. Or, it can probably also happen in an awakening process where the drive has dropped away and something else has not yet taken its place.

And there can be an absence of drive in a conventional sense, and the presence of engagement and passion. In the awakening process, this deepens as (a) the neurotic drives are seen through and erode and (b) there is a new passion and engagement from the realization of selflessness, of it all as Ground manifesting, and of rehumanizing and deepening compassion.

So when we are caught up in beliefs in ideas, including the idea of I, there can be drive or lack of drive - both with a lack of freedom and a sense of compulsiveness. When these beliefs are seen through, there is a renewed engagement and passion - free from compulsiveness, free from any sense of I and Other. It is just emptiness dancing, the divine mind naturally and effortlessly manifesting throgh and as our human life. There is a sense of ease and simplicity in this, far beyond any conventional ease and simplicity.

In real life, it is of course often more interwoven than this. Drives and awakening may well co-exist in different variations.

I facilitated a process work session with a friend tonight, around her sugar addiction.

Process work session

We followed a step-by-step Process Work framework to exploring addiction and addictive tendencies, starting with her imagining eating sugar and experiences the effects of it in her body and otherwise. She got very tired and heavy, and ended up face-down on the floor, feeling a weight on her. I added to the weight to amplify the experience. We then switched roles, I lying on the floor with a weight on me, and she was the weight - relaxed, not pushing down. Again, we switched and I was a relaxed weight on her and she noticed how comforting it was, and how it helped her connect with the body.

At this point, she experienced neck pain and got up abruptly, reporting that she experienced anger. I realized that this too was part of the process, although was not quite sure to do the final step of the framework or go with the anger. I tried to finish up by asking her if she could find a way to arrive at the same experience of comfort and connection with the body that eating sugar gives. She was obviously distracted, although tried to explore it. In a last ditch attempt at following the framework, I said that what came up for me when I explored it for myself was the comfort in just noticing the heaviness of my body.

She got in touch with her anger again, and poured out a quite amazing flow of insights, beginning with anger at how I want her to get rid of the sugar cravings and continuing into how much pressure it has been for her to feel that she has to get rid of it for so many years, how many plans and strategies she has tried to get rid of sugar cravings and/or stop eating sugar and how stressful it has been, how much guilt that comes from it, and so on.

Having to do it, and having to not do it

After this outpouring, she realized the battle between having to do it (the craving) and having to not do it (the should), the tremendous amount of energy she has spent in that dynamic, and that she want to be done with the whole thing completely.

She realized that the problem was never the sugar, but the struggle within her around having to do it, and having to not do it.

This has been her religion the whole time, since her teens, and she realized that she was finally ex-communicated from this religion.

Afterwards, she was glowing with exitement from realizing this, and the freedom it brought her. She said I cannot wait to be ex-communicated from another one of my religions.

She has been doing the Byron Katie inquiries for a while, and the outpouring was a natural and spontaneous explorations of the four questions and the turnarounds - which we both realized at the end.

For me, it was another reminder of how our struggles often (always?) are between two beliefs. There is a belief in what is (in this case the crawing) and a belief taking the form of the should (I shouldn’t eat sugar), and this creates a battle and suffering.

One of the common features of most (?) spiritual traditions is guidelines for how to be with experiences. Here are some I am aware of…

Zen

Allow experiences to come and go as guests. This shifts the center of gravity to the witness, and allows for deepening detachment and insight into the general processes and patterns of the content of mind.

Breema

See, accept and move on.

This allows for shifting the center of gravity to the witness, and release clutching of content.

Can I be with it?

A particularly elegant approach is that of Raphael Cushnir. Whenever there are strong experiences coming up, or any other time, ask yourself - can I be with what I am experiencing right now?

This also shifts the center of gravity to the witness (or at least expands it to include the witness), and it allows the processes of the content to unfold and unwind on their own.

Recognition yoga

This is from Waking Down and I don’t remember the steps here… But it is something along the lines of see it, feel it, become it, and live it (and something more I am sure).

Release to the divine

In our deeksha group, we use a process which is very similar to what came up spontaneously for me during the initial awakening. Fully feel it, and fully release it to the divine.

The difference between this approach and many others is the intention. In Zen, they rarely speak about intention. But here, intention is included to offer it to the divine, and allow the divine to take care of and resolve it.

My experience is that this is a remarkably effective process, and one that deepens with time.

Unfolding the process

Yet another approach is that of Process Work. Here, the immense wisdom in every process is acknowledged, and the profound gifts behind any experience - including or maybe especially the difficult ones, are recognized. Through following the bread crumbs, the process behind the symptom (which could be anything within the field of experience, including disturbing and difficult ones) is unraveled, leading to often surprising insights and gifts.

Dimensions

I am not familiar enough with all of these to say much of the various dimensions, or to compare the various approaches in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Each of them seem to have its place, its own valuable contributions.

Some dimensions which come to mind…

• Shifting center of gravity to the witness, or expanding it to include the witness.

  There is a subtle difference here, yet maybe important. The first encourages a slightly stronger sense of separation than the second.

• Emphasizing the release from content, insight into the processes, and/or digging into the content.

  All of these emphasize a certain release from content - either in the present (most of them) or after a certain process (Waking Down, Process Work). Some emphasize insight into the processes and others don’t. Among those focusing on insight, some emphasize a more general insights into the patterns of the content (Zen), and others emphasize insight into the particular process arising in the present (Process Work).

• No intention apart from the seeing of it, or intention of offering it (back) to the divine and have it more actively resolved.

  Zen is a good example of a tradition where the active use of intention is not much emphasized. The other end of the spectrum is the way we do it in our deeksha group, actively offering the processes to the divine - with the intention of allowing the divine to work on it, allowing it to unravel and find a resolution. Most are somewhere in between these two.

I went to a Process Work session today, and it brought up the different ways Path shows up when filtered through the different levels.

No path

At the nondual (Big Mind) level, there is no path - the idea of path doesn’t make sense. Or we can say that it is impossible to not be on the path. Everything just is, manifestations of Buddha Mind, God’s play, emptiness dancing. Everything is path.

Paths

At our soul and human levels, there are indeed paths - and they are very real for us.

No path and paths together

As they say in Zen, everything is perfect as it is and there is room for improvement. There is the nondual beyond and including perfection and imperfection, and there is the real of perfection and imperfection.

In terms of our path, we are always on in and we are it at a nondual level. And as guided by our soul or wished for by our human self, we can definetely be more or less on it.

Withouth the pathlessness, we can easily get too caught up in the path - take it too seriously. We are stuck in the relative.

And without the path, we can aimlessly wander around - not caring about what is nurturing and what is not. Being stuck in absolute.

For me

For me, I was strongly on my path while living in Norway and Utah. There was a strong sense of everything unfolding beautifully, of strong and clear guidance, of maturing, of finding my way in the world in many ways. I was deeply on my path at my human and soul levels.

At the same time, I saw that at the nondual level there was no way anyone could be “off the path” - everything is an expression of God so there is no path to be off.

Then, during the dark night phase, there was an equally strong sense of being off the path - at least as I had experienced my path earlier. I was cut off - externally and internally, from everything that had provided such as deep sense of nourishment, meaning and fulfillment.

I felt completely derailed, which was true in many ways. At the same time, I knew I could learn from it - mature through it, see something I earlier didn’t want to see, and through all this deepen my sense of ordinariness and empathy.

Now

Now, there is the beginnings of a release from this dark night and the derailment. The bits and pieces are coming back, gradually - as a slow soul retrieval process. What came so effortlessly earlier, and also seemed so extraordinary, is now coming back in a different way. Through more of an intention and a more conscious process, and seeming very ordinary and simple.

It also seems clear that one of my tasks now is to nurture the soul level far more than I could during the dark night phase, and far more than I did by choice at the Zen center. To allow it back in, with its tremendous sense of guidance, fullness, richness, maturing, deepening, meaning, purpose, calling, and - yes - path. A unique path for me in this life, unveiled gradually.

And some of the simple ways to connect with this more deeply is through what is deeply nurturing for me, such as Breema, drawing, music, nature, good relationships and even planning for the future - exploring deeply nurturing and meaningful, and realistic, options.

As with so many things, it seems that trust too occurs at many levels.

In - or even after - an awakening to selflessness, a fundamental trust in existence arises on its own. It is all revealed as the ground forming itself into myriad of phenomena, as consciousness, or as God. There is no Other to distrust here.

But there is still the conditioning of our human self, which brings about a mix of trust and distrust. This is not a problem in the context of selflessness, the distrust and hangups and everything else is also emptiness dancing. At the same time, it is also something to work on, in the context of our development, maturing and evolution at human and soul levels.

Meditation is one way to allow this basic trust to sink in at our human level.

And it seems that the many forms of inquiry do the same.

Process Work unfolds the profound wisdom and healing behind what initially appears as a problem. Byron Katie’s inquiry into beliefs does the same, uncovering the gifts within what appeared as a stressful thought. The Big Mind process shows the profound wisdom behind all the ways the mind functions, on personal and transpersonal levels. And a more free-form inquiry, from innocent curiosity into what is happening, seems to unfold the same.

So in terms of the various levels, there seems to be…

Basic trust

A basic trust in Existence - as nondual, consciousness, the many forms of ground, waves on the ocean, the play of God, emptiness dancing.

A deepening trust in existence at our human level, seeing that there is healing within symptoms (Process Work), clarity within stress (Byron Katie), and wisdom within all the ways the mind functions (Big Mind). This is a process that deepens over time, through experience - over and over - with these and other forms of inquiries.

Both of these forms of trust - the transcendent and personal - are basic, not dependent of the specifics of the situation.

Conventional trust and distrust

And then there is the more conventional level of trust and distrust, the discernment, discriminating wisdom. This too deepens and matures over time, through experience. We learn to trust in certain ways and to be cautious in other ways. We learn to trust certain people in certain situations (maybe most), yet remain some caution in other situations.

Coexistence of basic and conventional trust

The conventional level can quite easily co-exist with the deeper level of trust.

It provides an overlay of conventional trust and distrust arising from the specific situation, on top of basic trust in existence which is there independent on the specifics of the situation.

Conditioned and unconditioned

The basic trust is unconditioned in the sense that it is independent of the specifics of the situation. But it is also conditioned - the transcendent trust on awakening, and the personal trust on inquiry and reconditioning (rewiring at our human level).

The conventional trust is always conditioned on the specific situation.