Resolving My Karma
I seem to be on the path to resolving my Karma and I am finding many spiritual guides. Everyone is a teacher, a guide.
Resolving Karma means giving up delusions and letting in reality. It means breaking habits. One is the Voice Inside My Head. It gets re-enforced whenever I read or write. Also when I work on Technology and talk to myself as I do.
Resolving Karma has two parts:
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Seeing through delusion
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Accepting reality
The issues are clear.
Trust is number one: trusting myself, trusting others, being someone that can be trusted.
Connection is also number one: connecting with myself, connecting with others, connecting with my feelings.
I have hidden all my feelings under sadness/ Under sadness I have found anger. Under anger will I find shame?
Since I started Buddhist practice more than twenty years ago I have seen patterns in my practice, especially at retreats.
For me, seeing patterns has always been a doorway to both understanding and delusion. They are a doorway to delusion because my conditioning leads me to ponder the patterns and try to force the pieces to fit – even to the point of forcing myself to fit. Pondering is OK, just as desire is OK. However forcing the pieces to fit is taking the next step, the step that leads to suffering – just like moving from desire to craving leads to suffering.
The patterns are there, and I am learning just to observe them.
What are these patterns?
During the DPP, on the desert I saw the pattern of Dependent Origination, I saw how strong our conditioning is.
That is the primary pattern: the past conditions the present, our intentions determine the future. This pattern is universal.
My Teacher
Phillip Moffitt was the teacher at my first retreat. After the retreat I came up to him and asked if a teacher was necessary. His answer: not necessary, yet a teacher knows where you are on the path and can tailor his advice to fit. I asked where I could find a teacher, and he raised his hand. Phillip Moffitt is my teacher.
Phillip Moffitt taught me:
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The gift that protects is the gift that opens you.
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Paying attention to the intentions arising within you helps you to see your desires and fears. And allows you to know yourself.
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Your actions come out of your intentions. Judge your life by your intentions and not the outcomes.
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Shifting your view, reframing your world, you will see new possibilities and opportunities.
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Gratitude and open heartedness
Retreats
For over twenty years I have been following the Buddhist Vipassana path. During each of the many retreats there have been important insights and experiences. Experience and insight are different. Experiences are Vedana, Insights are concepts.
The retreat where I went back to the past
The retreat where I saw the Goddess
Experiences
Two experiences: (resolving is occurring) The experience of Totally Allowing and The experience of seeing in my mind.
When I focus on my breath, there seems to be a tug-of-war: the two breaths.
Resolve: The two breaths: one from the mind, one from the body. [no, three: conscious, unconscious, body].
And I think that will be resolved. When I get to a point where the breathing is just occurring, that is The Experience: Totally Allowing.
The other thing is the seeing in the mind: the hill with the deer, the hill without the deer, the river with the rocks coming up in the service porch. And there is something that I don’t want to see: the picture, the question: what is the secret this little boy carries. Pretty soon, that will be resolved.
The Meditative State
The meditative state: very connected, colors sharp, seeing things I don’t normally see (a bird in a tree). Quiet, an insect on my hand: Reality Intrudes. Center, the boundary between inside and outside. The sound that was in my head: Phillip’s group – the car was closer than Phillip. That retreat where Phillip became my teacher: “Beginner’s luck”. And later: surfing. Now: concept building.
Concept Building
See SOMETHING, just “visual sensation”, “visual experience”. The road sign, the Tug Boat Cruiser. The BART Illusion. Construction: construct a concept, test it. Reality Intrudes. Threat Circuit, Dukka: unsatisfactory.
The two views.
Expansion, tension.
The two breaths: one from the mind, one from the body. [no, three: conscious, unconscious, body]. Resolve: Strength must be across, movement must be through.