1001: love and death, or emptiness and everything

Bark on Madrona tree on Orcas Island

Woody Allen had a movie love and death
his take off on War and Peace
and it was sort of funny
in the way Woody Allen movies
are sort of funny

and then again,
how many movies have I made,
sort of funny, or really funny,
or not funny at all

oh, well,
maybe this year
I'll make on

maybe not

at all rate

love is a death
a death of the usual way of living which
is that life is all about
"me, me, and me"

Now, the other side seems to
be:
obsessing about the other
as if abandonment will be the end
of me
or not being with the other is
agony
and
that's not love:
thet's "me, me and me" with the story
that "me, me, me" is okay, wonderful,
finally not a wretch
if I have "you, you, you" attached

nah, love
is annihilation,
it's the moth to the flame in
that,
I stop "thinking" about me
and just
enjoy
am fascinated by
want to understand, enjoy and be
with you

and being with you
means letting you alone
when you need time alone

it's all so simple
and we make it so complicated

.......

love is emptying the mind
of "what's in it for me"

it's emptying the mind of
"now I'm okay because someone wants/ loves me"

it's emptying the mind of
"I did this for you, so
you need to do that for me"

it's emptying the mind of
"I said 'I love you,' so now it's
your turn to say, 'I love you.' "

it's emptying the mind of
"I'm not okay unless you are loving me
as much as I love you"

it's forgetting the torment of
"if you really loved me you'd do....,
or feel...., or say....."

it's just coming to the moment
opening the eyes and heart
and from that emptiness
all that can really happen is love

it's only our stories that keep us
from love

and so the death of the story
is the birth of love

and is that true?
who knows.

empty your story around your friends
and your loved ones
and yourself

and find out

happy loving and dying

Chris

999: Soul Work

At a local Austin gathering, once a month people tell stories around a theme.
This is the first and hence, only, story telling evening I've attended but the
use of a catch all theme
reminds me of Sun Magazine's amazing section
called Readers Write.

In Readers Write topics like
Late at Night,
Second Chances,
Mothers,
the Beach
Blood,
the Office
Teenagers
Sunrise,
Close calls,
Taking Chances
and many more, bring an amazing array of responses from all over the world.

Sun magazine is worth subscribing to.
Zero advertisements.
Great photos.
And Readers Write.

And in Austin, talkers talk. They tell stories.
This month the theme was emptiness.

People came at it in all different directions,
usually some variety of finally giving up:

giving up and actually doing the 12 steps
giving up the image you were trying to hold up for your family
giving up the myth that "this love" will solve it all

The stories, coming from real people and their real lives,
all showed us all in the audience parts of ourselves that we might
not have publicly displayed as the brave story tellers did.

And there was emptiness, the theme, being danced around,
a tiptoed up next to,
but to my mind, never given the gold prize of freedom
it deserves.

Many of the essays in this blog have extolled the virtues of the Byron Katie work,
and some of the essays have shown how the 3rd question:
How do you react/ feel and live when you attach to the thought
and
the 4th:
Who or what would you be without the thought,

are
One: a crash course in Buddhism
Two: a brilliant use of the brain's major function: perceiving differences,
to get us out of the hell of our beliefs
Three: a chance to experience emptiness as ....

freedom,
bliss,
happiness
peace
peace that passes all understanding

you can't really name it,
but we can all feel it, one
belief/ story/ thought/ concept at a time.

Let's say you had a "bad Dad."
who:
Hit you. Yelled at you. Criticized you.
They come in different styles.

And you felt, and maybe still feel, "hurt, angry, cheated, defeated"
whatever when you attach to the story: My Dad should have been nice to me.

And then you look at your Dad without that thought,
without any thought of who or how he should be.

And what happens.

You are empty.

He is still a jerk/ asshole/ mean / whatever,
but what happens to you from the inner silence
of no thoughts to be saying he should be any different.

This is all we need to become free inside.

The present that spills out like an ocean
once the words we use in our head to define and shrink the world cease.

A thought here:  "a shrink" could be a stupid word for someone who tries
to expand our lives,
and then again,
if we shrink our belief  demand of the world down to nothing,
and are free,
then what.

Try it.
Find something bothering you,
and live without any words and thoughts about it.

See what happens from that emptiness.

You might discover who you really are.

(More soul thoughts over at Waking108.blogspot.com  )

thanks and so on

the universe:
first void
then....
light
the waters
the world

first the void
then
the big bang

first the void
then
the sensing ourselves
the awareness

later,
the word
the naming of Chris Elms, and you you, and tree tree
nice
for chatting
pointing
loving

and a way away
from all the sweetness
of empty
now
knowing

you are your experience
I am my experience

right now

from the emptiness:
love
ease
discovery

who knows what

thanks
to
?????

for all this
miracle
of
being

yes

Day 60: Life on its own terms, or Shut up and listen, or "Silence" as the path to....

What if we listened without an agenda?

In Quaker services, which I have never attended, people sit in silence until the “spirit” moves them, and then, from the “spirit” people say what needs to be said.

This seems like a good path to God., or to enlightenment, if there is such a thing.


A good path to speaking something worth saying.


So often when we speak, we are full, full of our previous ideas, full of our thoughts, full of ourselves in the this is me-me-me sense.

Not full of ourselves in the full of life sense.

Not full of life and gratitude and wonder, a wonder that is falling open to the next minute because this minute, this moment is so full with our present-ness.


And God: what if this is a fancy word for the state we reach when we come to something like an emptiness, something like a silence, and let the fullness of Life fill us up?


So, enough words. The experience is what we are after. Today, come back to the five lines, the arms, the legs, the spine.

Come back to light coming in our eyes.

Sounds coming in our ears. Can these include some sounds of nature, the birds, the waters, the trees in the breeze, our footsteps taking a walk outdoors?

Coming back to the world before we have words to capture and constrain it.

Just our experience of the present.

Can we feast on our life, and Life in general, in that silence and that fullness of the world as experience without words to wrap around it? Let’s give it a go.

How much silence can we feast on today?

Day 51: What's new under the sun?

cutting up magazines to make collage "soul" cards, one of many 'new' things we can create


What’s new under the sun?

There is a saying, that “There is nothing new under the sun,” a saying that was spoken before computers and airplanes and global warming and raw chocolate pies.

So maybe there are new things under the sun, but whatever the phrases validity, you and I can both find some new ways of doing what we usually do.

Say brushing our teeth, another hand, standing on one foot, eyes closed, one side of the mouth first, singing while we do it, if any of these are new ways.

Sitting down into a chair. Hmm. That’s harder to discover new ways, and good, hard is good, it just means we have to think and even more, to pay attention, as we sit down. Maybe put a hand down first, or the other hand, or sneak up to the chair sideways and sit, or stand directly in front and cross one leg in front of the other and swivel down.

Don’t listen to me, discover some ways yourself.

Ways to read a book, standing, sitting, holding in one hand, lying down and it’s hanging from the ceiling, who knows?


And what about pathways to get across town.

Ways of introducing yourself.

Ways of reacting to another person who isn’t doing things that you want.

Ways of cheering up yourself or others that you haven’t thought of before, or haven’t tried.

And then: what ways have you played with before, so they aren’t totally “new under the sun,” but you’ve forgotten for a long time to pull them out and use them as variations and explorations in your life?

So today, play and explore and enjoy and learn and smile.

Day Seventeen: Emotions minus the inner words

DAY SEVENTEEN
Emotional choosing, sense the feeling, leaving behind the words

Into all lives some rain must fall. Good for the garden. Good for the soil. Good for the soul.

Yesterday we played with the idea of sipping through the straw of sweetness and not the one of bitterness. This was either easy or hard or a little of both.

Let’s give this a little more help.

Later in the book, we will spend lots of time, playing in the fields of Waking Up from Emotional Suffering, via the “Work of Byron Katie.” This is an amazingly simple and powerful tool / gift / offering, sprung forth for humankind’s benefit in 1986.

For now though, today, we are going to play a slightly different game. We are going to notice our emotions.

Notice and name. Unhappy. Sad. Happy. Worried. Afraid.

We are going to notice the sensations involved with whatever emotion we are feeling. Often “feelings” will bring stuff to happening in our chest and stomach and torso area.

We are going to notice those sensations, AND LET GO OF THE WORDS THAT GO ON AND ON ABOUT WHY WE ARE HAVING THE FEELING.

Usually these words are of the “So and so should be different toward me” sort. Fine. That’s the way we suffer. For today, sensing legs all day and our breathing, when emotional “feelings” come up, we are going to:

A. Name them

B. Sense what they bring about

C. Skip the words

D. Sense our legs and gravity, and our breathing and air as the anchor into being alive in the moment, no matter what feeling we are having.

E. This is hard, huge, amazing, give it a try.

Us vs. Them

Us vs. Them

When we give someone we love one of our few last strawberries, or say even the last strawberry, we are happy. Their pleasure in the strawberry is our pleasure.

But if someone we “don’t like,” or even someone we profess to “love,” but have a kind of competitive/ I’m not getting enough attitude with, “takes” one of our last strawberries, we feel deprived.

Think about how this operates.

Think about what is the difference, really, between “us” and “them.”

building love, 10 minutes at a time

how get clearer with someone you love:

they talk,
you listen
no interruption
four minutes
listen, really listen, don't "plan" what to say

they stop
a timer goes off say

a minute or so:
silence

next talk,
you talk,
they listen,
you talk about you're important
places,
your loves and likes
and anything
but about what they said
anything
but about them

two people,
in their own business

building love

soft stomach, open heart, curiosity

loving what is:
the key to
changing
and to
being content,
change or no change


soft belly,
breathe easy,
be present:

in moving
and learning to be at ease
as we reach
and twist
and balance
and move in various directions:
keeping the head and neck free
keeping the stomach soft,
keeping the breathing easy,
being curious:
how could I make this a little easier,
how could I be a little more aware
how could I be a little more kind to myself
how could I allow the various parts of me to help with the whole of me

all this:
good

and when
a so called
"trouble" happens in our life

say
a beautiful partner
wishes to be on her own
and the "end" is what is
coming

again:
keeping the breathing
and the thinking soft:
no enemies
no blames
not even regrets

what has been wonderful:
good
what has been less than wonderful:
good, what can I learn from that

what mistakes have I made?
good:
softly examine,
no self hatred
how could I have been less about me
and more about her
curious:
what can I learn about
how to love
better

and when she was less than wonderful:
good,
what can I learn about being kind
to
a person
who is in a troubled place

as Jesus says,
anyone can love someone who's treating
you all peaches and cream
and
then
when you want to really learn about love,
love the one who is giving you a hard time

and now:
not to give me
a hard
time
or her

and the open heart:
how can I love
change
that my "mind"
"doesn't want"
how can I love
life
when it is
(as it always is)
out of my control

and the Neurological Upgrading Work?
ah,
soft belly,
stay in the present,
curious:
what can be just a little better
now
and
then
now
and
then
now


good,

lot's of learning
and loving possible

if I am to live happily
in what is supposed
to be an unhappy
time

Undoing Stress, and Undoing the Marlie/Chris thing

Undoing Stress, and Undoing the Marlie/Chris thing:


this is the subject
and the flow
and the learning
of the blog over
at TaiChiYogHealthWeightLoss blogspot

give it a look
if you want

love
and
learning
and
nowing
to you,
at
all
and every moment
you would
love
like
enjoy
and benefit
from this

love and not love

say your partner picks
at your food
when you are eating together
and it
"drives you crazy"

you could say:
this bothers me

you could say:
this is fun

you could say:
i love you doing something
that drives me crazy

you could ask:
could you stop
and then we then
don't
love
that

love
is something like this:
what you do
is so sweet and charming
to me

sometimes even
more
when you do things
"I" don't like

and is the "I" who
doesn't like
what other people
are up to
the real
me?

Losing Bets, hot day, ha ha

one of the great losing
bets is this:

that the past
"should have"
been different

maybe "should have"
can be clung to
as a concept with which
to torture ourselves

but what's the reality
of the past??


the past is stuck
finished
and complete

we can change its effects
we can imagine a different way
of reacting than we did
but
undoing
the past:

huge losing bet


and another
huge
losing bet:

that the weather
"should" be different

if
"it's"
hot,
as it appear to be
now
hot wind
hot night
hot day
la
la

wanting it different
complaining that it should be different
demanding to God
or each other that it "should" be different....

another grand
losing
bet

la
la

what is the meaning of life?

I just "lost" another tooth
today

but a big deal
look stupid
right down in the
lower middle
tooth

no dentist
willing
as yet
to learn my offerings
in exchange for her or his
work

so
i'm in that fat
and wonderful
space:

what am i
going to do?

i don't know....


i wish you could
know
how
sweet
and clear
and free
that

i don't know
space is

maybe you
do


i don't know


love,
chris

why not love this?

what this?

this blog

this chair on which
you sit

this breath
in and out

this thought
that if if leads to happiness:
nice story
go with it

this thought
if it leads to unhappiness
check
it out

and let the thought
be just a thought
that isn't real

and what is
real?

this breath
this chair
this string
of light
this sound
of bird
or song
or what
is coming into your ears
right now?

why
not love
this.....