Void

Just so I don't forget again.  And in case anybody reads these things and is interested.
Meditating with Hunter just before bedtime, I got back to a place I had discovered a couple years ago, but had forgotten.  OK, I didn't FORGET; I knew I had gotten to a place.  I remembered exactly where I was the last time I was there. I remember having the same, "Oh yeah this is reality and it is always here for me. This is really cool." But then I forgot what the magic steps are to get there.  I KNEW that it is not hidden, but yet it has eluded me for a couple years.
Meditating for me is usually about concentrating on breath and focusing awareness between the thoughts.  At least as a starting point.  But there is a way you can also turn your inward gaze around backwards. There is this void that is dark, yet at the same time has light that flows through it.  It's very good.
Let me explain.
It's as if I am usually sitting in my body somewhere in my mind behind my eyes.  Usually I'm focused on whatever is in front of me, or whatever is in front of my mind's eye-- you know, thought objects, stuff I'm planning, or worried about... things I need to do.  That sort of stuff.  There's usually so much of this, that I can barely hold on to any kind of inner space... so I have to kind of just move between the thoughts... the spaces in between.  That's about as good as it usually gets for me.  I'm not really that great of a meditation practitioner.
But if you accept that the thought objects and feelings in consciousness are kind of  "in front" of your point of awareness, or the place where that awareness comes from, then you can begin to imagine that there is a "behind" that point.
I think that this might be what they were talking about in that classical Chinese Taoist text, "The Golden Pill" where they talk about "turning the light around"  (i.e., the light of awareness) and "bathing in the infinite".  I think this might be what the Buddhist texts refer to as Void.

For me it was a place of stillness.  Dark, yet with light moving through it somehow. I had the feeling that it would be good to stay there for a good long while, and that this was indeed possible, although perhaps not a good choice at this exact moment, because it would take my body a bit of time to get used to sitting for that length of time.  Also, because I need to sleep and get ready for work tomorrow and that sort of thing.

It is like a place of non-being that is more real than being somehow.   And it's always available to us.  It is really big, yet it's also really small because it can fit in the little tiny silent space between two thoughts or a brief good-night meditation session with my child.

So anyway, I don't want to forget this so I'm writing it down.  Kind of like a map, so I can find my way back tomorrow.

Everything ends.

I was getting a massage.  The young woman who I go to was telling me how she was watching a show about bunkers on TV.  This show was about people who think the world is going to end, so they build bunkers.  It made me think of somebody I knew who had a trap door on  his walkway.  You pulled the trapdoor up, and there were stairs that went down to a room in his basement where he had all sorts of supplies.  He'd built it around the time of the whole Y2K thing.

I was going to tell her about this guy, so I said, "You're probably too young to remember how some people were really freaked out about the Y2K bug."

She said, "Oh no, I remember.  I was like ten years old.  My mom had jugs and jugs of water and crackers. Boxes and boxes of crackers. And buckets. She was convinced the world was going to end."

"What were the buckets for?"  I asked.  "Were they to collect rainwater or something?"

"I never knew.  But, man, she sure had a LOT of them.  I'll have to ask her sometime."

I don't know what I said after that.  I think I might have been falling asleep a little bit while she kneaded my shoulders.  I was a bit startled when she spoke again.

"But everything has to have an end.  It just makes sense.  Because everything ends."

I thought back to the day before.  I'd been looking at a website that showed abandoned buildings.  After a while, I had to go to the bathroom, so I cut through our bedroom to use the bathroom in there.  While walking through, it occurred to me that our bedroom might look like those abandoned rooms I'd been looking at on the website.  Maybe people would be walking around through our ruined house some day, wondering about the people who lived in this house.  Maybe they were in some future, standing right where I was, wondering about us, wondering what it was like.  Our house wouldn't survive forever.  What would it be?  Depopulation from some horrible pandemic? 

Something would come along.  Wouldn't matter how many buckets you had in the basement.

Morning Thought

Underneath the thin skin of appearances, everything is light.

Mountain fastness.

We are all remote as far-off mountain tops. At first I thought I should be grieving this, but it just wouldn't take. The sadness, I mean. We are all alone together. This is the seed of all melancholy, the blues, art. It works, somehow, if you don't try to cover it up or suppress it. If you can merge with it, then... Well done, you!

Ms Britty

Dear steve

Nice day!

We develop some new tablet PC, its brand is Freelander which sales well in China, and I introduce some adornment commodities, they bring you fresh and happiness,

Thank you for your attention,

Ms Britty

Tea cup mountains and bathtub tubas

Tonight I had finished taking a bath and was in the midst of draining the tub when I discovered an odd oscillation in the drain plug creating a low-pitched tone. By altering the pressure of the plug, I could change the sound. Somehow the emergency valve above the main valve created a resonance chamber.

The sound was reminiscent of a didgeridoo.

I asked Pilar if she quite enjoyed my concert, and she said that she did.

As if this discovery was not enough, the dreaming universe presented me with a perfect image of a mountain in the bottom of my tea cup. The image was left by the small amount of material left in ether bottom after most of the moisture had evaporated.

I said to Pilar, "A tuba in my bath tub and a mountain in my tea cup; what does it mean?"

"That you're very happy," was her reply.

Update

Sometimes I visit the old neighborhood in Google Earth's street view, trying to catch a glimpse of myself.

Last Friday, I saw five snails.  They were all heading south.