Listening With the Body

Listening intently is a state of quiet, alert receptivity. Imagine yourself walking in a deep, woodsy forest and you hear a twig snap in the near distance, suddenly your whole body is listening! This level of listening is a deep biological attunement with the environment and field of surrounding energy. It is not just a passive state of receiving, as is sometimes imagined, but a highly alert and reciprocal energetic relationship. It is akin to tuning an instrument, plucking a string then listening, then tightening or loosening the string, and doing it again and again until it is in tune.

What if we saw our whole body as that instrument which is continually in the process of being tuned by biological and cosmic forces. The fluctuating pull of gravity, the electro-magnetic solar flare, the expanding spiral of our galaxy, all tuning the cells of our body. I realized that I have been mostly listening to my body, but not listening with my body. When I listen to my body, I notice there is a subtle duality between my "body" and its "message to me". When I listen with my body, there are no parts that are separate from the bio-cosmic energy field. Then there is only listening!

Water as Boundary

Water is the boundary between form and formlessness. Since I am mostly water, I am also the boundary between form and formlessness!

Delicate Structure

This is an image from surf photographer, Clark Little. I am amazed at this delicate transparent structure, captured at the exact moment, and then returned to the ocean. How perfect!

Appreciation

A wave of appreciation has washed over me with a swelling of gratitude for our human bodies, a collection of cellular symphonies with a multi-million year history of design refinement to get to this moment! Appreciation arises for the liver, the intestines, the heart, the lungs, the brain, the tongue..... all undulating and pulsing with the rhythm of an unbroken beat, a continuous baseline metabolism, who's origin was birthed in the movement and tides of an ancient ocean.

Absorption

Total absorption, 

the sponge is full of water.

Immersion

If we understand the universe as a Vast Wave Medium, then we can realize our own bodies as condensed or congealed aspects of this pool of wave energy. Our immersion in this ever present creative wave medium is a given. Our own resonate "body of water" is the receiver and sender of wave energy, and in this view everything in the universe is alive with waves; electromagnetic, gravity, sound, light, breath, emotion, and movement, all are integral to the vast pool of wave energy. So the truth of our bodies, as Emilie Conrad says, is "we don't have to move, we are movement". This deep allowing to be enveloped and penetrated by the waves of life-as-it-is, to be moved, to be dissolved, and to be continually re-created, is for me the essence of the creative life. I think we should all follow the advice of my dissolved-into-love friend Jeannie Zandi, who says simply, "Let it have you".

Instant Enlightenment

"Instant Enlightenment"

Just add water

The House of Joy

My bags are flying open

I'm finally home 

in the house of Joy

Love is the Sea of Non-being

Love is the sea of not-being

and there the intellect drowns.

This is not the Oxus River

or some little creek

this is the shoreless sea;

here swimming ends

always in drowning.

A journey to the sea

is horses and fodder and contrivance

but at land's end

the footsteps vanish.

You lift up your robe

so as not to wet the hem;

come! drown in the sea 

a thousand times.

The moon passes over

the ocean of non-being.

Droplets of spray tear loose

and fall back on the cresting waves.

A million galaxies

are a little foam

on that shoreless sea.

RUMI - Fragments, Ecstasies

Translation by Daniel Liebert

The True Face of Water

Look at your reflection in a still pool

and see the true face of water.

Schwenk on Water and Renunciation

"What enables water to accomplish this? By renouncing every self-quality it becomes the creative substance for the generation of all forms. By renouncing every life of its own it becomes the primal substance of all life. By renouncing every fixed substance it becomes the carrier of all substance transformation. By renouncing every rhythm of its own it becomes the carrier of each and every rhythm"

Theodor Schwenk

Letting Love Make Me!

Instead of making love

I could let love make me

And dissolve me

Over and over

The Ego's Cell Service

The Ego is answering all calls!

 When we receive cellular (our living cells) information, the ego will answer the call and say something like, "Hello, ok, we've got a problem here, something is definitely wrong! Uh, we don't know exactly what it is yet, but it's going to require a lot of hard work and effort to fix" The ego hates to be unemployed and if it ever was, it might realize that it is actually a big nothing. So it's got to keep creating problems to be solved by... you know who!

Playing Dead

When an opossum is threatened it goes into a state of high activation, with a seemingly lifeless or "frozen" body, hence the term "playing dead". This usually is enough to cause a predator to lose interest in chasing and possibly eating them. When the threat passes and the opossum has saved its ass, it jumps up and resumes its opossum activities. When I studied trauma renegotiation with Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), this was the classic example of a temporary state in an animal that can become a more permanent state in a human being. This "frozen" activation state is the hallmark of unresolved trauma.

Most of us constantly operate in this state of "playing dead". It is the culturally accepted "trance" state and considered normal. This is a flat screen version of life! Trying not to get too "activated" or too "low" we start living in a narrow bandwidth of life energy and then look for ways to escape the constraint. There is a lot of talk these days about not getting too "activated". But what if we were to get completely activated, totally dissolve into activation, in a fluid way.  Now that would be transformative! This is what happens in nature. The opossum is a rare example of trying to save itself by freezing instead of fleeing (running like hell!). I think we humans don't have too many examples of high activation with fluidity, maybe great tantric sex, wild dancing, or peak performance activities, which are mostly considered to be at the fringe of a normal life.

What I notice is that when I let myself completely activate in a fluid way, my being can then deeply relax. This was the idea behind the Osho technique of "dynamic meditation". It is high activation through wild dancing and movement followed by sitting meditation. It is interesting to note that our drugs of choice reflect this desire to bring back dynamism to a life of quiet desperation. We use caffeine to get us going and alcohol to slow us down. But it seems like these substances are just attempting to replace the natural dynamism of an energetic flux that dissolves and recreates our being every single moment, if we have the courage to truly dissolve and not just "play dead".

The now train

Get a ticket for the now train! 

It arrives and departs a trillion times per second.

The Sweetness of Sugar

The sweetness of sugar

is tasted

in the dissolving crystal!

The Thought Eraser

My thoughts form and dissolve

Like snowflakes landing on lake water

A Moment

This is not a day

It is a moment

With a trillion chances to transform

Fluid Fusion

My water brother, William E. Marks tells me that water forms and breaks its hydrogen bonds about one trillion times per second. That's amazing! This is the ultimate in short term relationships! Yet it is the exact property that is needed to allow water to flow and for us to enter into this liquid medium.

"We are but whirlpools in a river of ever flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message" -Robert Weiner, founder of Cybernetics

So water crystallizes and un-crystallizes one trillion times per second and this is what I'm calling "fluid fusion". All cellular transformation seems to occur in high energy, liquified states. For example, the almost complete metamorphosis from crawly catepillar to winged butterfly occurs as a dissolution of the old catepillar form into a semi-liquid goo within the pupa. Out of this cellular goo the beautiful butterfly is formed.

We humans have many names for high energy fluid states; ecstasy, bliss, orgasm, waves of pleasure....enlightenment, awakening, absorption, and so on. Perhaps this fluid fusion/dissolution is the creative engine of life.

What is the Body?

What is the body?
That shadow of a shadow of our love
which somehow contains the entire universe!

Rumi

On Embodying

What I have been calling embodying, as well as most others here in the body mecca of Boulder, Colorado, is mostly a mental concept. Does the body really need to embody? No way! Because our busy mind continually experiences lack of space, and time, it wants to take over the world of the body and set up territories under its control. What the body actually needs is for the small mind to release its hold and let it freely exchange energy between the inner life of the cells and the outer life of community, planet, and cosmos. Then there is no need to embody, all is just a flow of being!

The Water of the Unborn

Water is the element of the Unborn, the pre-formal and pre-existent state. Immersion in warm water, above the surface and even more below the surface, is a direct experience of the unborn state. Absorption in this state dissolves the form making mind and allows the unborn mind to emerge. This is the territory of undifferentiated love, bliss, and true potency. Unforming the mind/body is the necessary first step for any transformation to occur. How easy it is to forget this and keep "working" at transformation. What a giant cosmic joke! So, I say let's abide in the unformed moment and get into "no shape".

The Heart of Love

I am considering all activity to occur within my heart space. If who I am is the larger body of water, then the heart is the magnificent fluid pump for living water. From this perpective, water and love are inseparable. Since the heart is the engine for the flow of life, the flow of blood, and the flow of love, we are continually saturated and transformed by the water of love. So I say, when I am absorbed in the unified field of love water, there is no need to search for love, because it lives in every cell, animal, plant, cloud, ocean, and teardrop. I just need to open my watery eyes and see from the heart of water!

The Body of Water

When we enter water, we are entering a small portion of the vast body of water. This large body of water is a cohesive and intelligent, living, functioning being. It is the matrix of life for human beings as well as for the whole planet. Not only that, water is universal, found on distant planets, gas clouds, and other structures throughout the universe. So, water is our biocosmic body, existing both outside and inside the permeable border of our skin.

Timeless Beauty

"The Big Bang which initiated the expansion of the cosmos occurred some fifteen billion years ago, when there came into being all the matter and energy of the universe. Isn't it possible that the particles, the very cells of this embryonic universe were beautiful; that our mysterious world was intrinsically beautiful from its beginning? Beauty is timeless, universal and intrinsic; like the woof of a fabric it runs through every cell, every creature, every artist."
John Lane, "Timeless Beauty"

The Water of Dreams

I had a thought yesterday that dreams are a glimpse of water communicating with our subconcious. In a dream, reality is fluid and morphic. Faces, voices, personalities, and ego are all floated in the water of a dream and become something new and different, all swirling and floating to a deeper rhythm. Maybe this metamorphic process is the work of water and the quiet voice of water whispers to our sleeping senses, "be still while I do my work"