Toward a World that Works for Everyone
We read about nice, mild-mannered people suddenly killing their parents or spraying a supermarket with bullets. Their friends and neighbors might say they never suspected that that was in this person. They’re like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (1) What does that depiction actually point to? Well, as far as I’m aware, it refers to […]
I’ve reached the end of the road with an act of mine, a racket, a number. I’ve processed this number before. I’m processing it now at a much deeper level. Its presenting sign is that I wake up in the morning and I’m not cheerful. Nothing has happened that I be anything but cheerful, but […]
When I think of Ascension as a journey up a mountain, I weep. Because for me, that’s how it’s seemed. I could have said pulling myself out of a swamp. Or crossing a desert. These are just images, but I feel so tired looking at the journey from this vantage point. It’s been a long […]
Everything, it seems, is a confidence game. Not just as in a swindle. Let’s leave that meaning aside and look at the role of confidence in what we do in our everyday lives. I could never drive a bus. I don’t have the confidence. I could never fly an airplane, do heart surgery, or drive […]
The way things seem to go, it’s often only after a condition has departed that we learn what it was and what it did. For example, hostility having been recognized and left, I’m now beginning to see some things about it. Hostility has many poses. One of them, I’m now seeing, is “Don’t mess with […]
While my awareness having expanded beyond the limits of my body is a landmark event, the actual experience itself is quite neutral, almost imperceptible. It’s as if a storm has stopped and it’s the next morning. All is quiet and renewed. I feel more relaxed. I was describing my experience to a friend. I said […]
This insight keeps on unfolding. I’m trying to remake the world in my own image. (1) Yes. I have preferences. I try to see that the world is as I’d prefer it to be. Definitely. I certainly need to raise this one to awareness because very soon I’ll have ample money to impact a section […]
When tension increases, awareness decreases. The converse should also be true: When tension decreases, (1) awareness should increase. And so, in the midst of chaos, my awareness appears to be increasing. Having dropped Constant Comment, weathered the eruption of Humiliation that followed, (pant, pant) I notice that I have reached a place of … well, […]
All this personal cleansing that I’m doing – and we’re doing – what’s its significance and how effective is it? The significance of personal cleansing is that it removes the various obstacles to realization (enlightenment). I’ve talked about the obstacles as vasanas (or core issues), habitual behavior patterns, and … I now see … the […]
Seeing a vasana (or core issue) disappear for a time is not the end of the road. Vasanas can reappear and re-establish themselves if we fall back into living life by following what have become habitual behavior patterns. Habitual behavior patterns are one form of residue, precipitate, the fallout from our vasanas. They linger even […]
Triggers just seem to keep going off. I have to be supervigilant not to launch into extreme thoughts and behavior. And not to then swing out onto the other extreme and super-protect myself from them, until the guardian again becomes the guard. (1) How to stay in the middle and yet be strong, resolute, determined? […]
I was going through wave after wave of anger, experiencing it through to completion now that the vasana of father hatred was at last up. I resolved to be angry for as long as it took for the light to go on. And the light went on when I asked myself: What is the cost […]
Vesuvius is quietening down. Let me do a post-mortem. Father hatred leaves me flat, unresponsive, shallow in my compassion. Hindus call that state of mind thamasic, lethargic. In my everyday awareness, I can feel it only subtly, as a slightly negative attitude towards everything – not skeptical but pessimistic. Disbelief, despair, depression. As I said […]
So far the vasana with my Dad has manifested, as it did in 1986, as unbridled anger. But I seem to have left the anger phase now, and, even as the last fumes of father hatred dissipate, I’m beset by feelings of fear. This is a crystal-clear demonstration that anger sits on top of fear. […]
I seem to be in a process of emergence. As I move forward in it, I bump into major roadblocks again and again. I’m bumping into one now. I’m not surprised that it’s come up. The minute one takes a position, up comes the opposition. I’ve taken a position, “no more global small talk – […]
