Signpost
Not where I have been, not where I am going, a signpost only to show I passed this way
In the Buddhist tradition you constantly hear: “There is no Self, the Self is an illusion”. I have always pushed back: no, there is a Self. It is not an illusion.
For over twenty years I have been trying to find “The Self that isn’t”.
I did find a Self, yet it wasn’t what is commonly called the Self. The Self I found is not a noun, it is a verb: I am a constantly changing dynamically stable self-organizing bonded psycho-physical intentional process. I came into existence, I move through time, I will die.
And yes, the “Self that Isn’t” does exist. What is normally called Self is real and part of the process of us.
I can sum all I know about Buddhism in one word: relationship
I can sum all I know about Reality in one word: relationship
Relationship is key.
We walk our path; we wander our path. When we walk, we find what we need, when we wander, we use what we find. When walking or wandering our path we meet forks and dominoes. For the forks (choice), we rely on our desires and senses; for dominoes (action), we rely on our intelligence and experience.
On our path there are three things to be careful about:
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Interpretations
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Expectations
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Certainty
Susan, my dear soul sister Susan, once said to “just write”. So: here it is. I have done what I will do. I am being guided. By what, I don’t know. Me, of course, at least.
Signpost is a private, personal journey. Yet you may come along, the door is partly open. It begins with my time with Susan. We met on January 10, 2007 and instantly became friends. Eight years later we parted. Then we got together again, then parted again.
The first time was when the Fool was at the Cliff.
The second time was after the Realization on the River.
When my grandson, the Magnificent Caulder, was born I drove through raging fires to start a new life near my family.
In my journey to understand why I was so different from my peers I discovered something about human suffering. It is the same thing that the Buddha found. Unfortunately, his words became frozen, their meaning lost. Fortunately, most of what he said remained, remained to be found. One thing he said was to test his words in our life, to find the meaning for ourselves. I did that for 20 years and may have found the meaning.
The Signpost part of my path started with the Fool: I had just met Susan. Susan caused the fog to lift, and I saw how precarious my position was. I was heavily in debt and planning to buy a new Prias. The Fool was about to step off the cliff.
The Buddhist part of my path had begun eight years before. As I write this, I have the delusion that I am an Arhant. The Arhant, in the last part of their life, resolves their karma. When their karma is resolved, they reach Nirvana. I am an Arhant; I am a non-returner.
I have been walking the path of life for over 80 years. Signpost documents 20 of those years. Along the path I have learned many things. It has been a time, a place, of reflection, resolution, recovery – and insight.
Hang on to the path, not the direction. There needs to be a balance, and a balance is in-between. Isn’t that what the Buddha meant by the middle way? Not everything, not nothing, yet enough.
Our path is expansion (birth), breath (life), contraction (death). Stay with it. What appears, accept; what is needed, find.
I have become completely deluded, but it is a harmless delusion.
Poly Polar Processing
I am a Seeking Process that is Poly Polar Processing. I ask for what I want, I accept what I get. Everybody, unbeknownst to themselves, is guiding me. And I, unbeknownst to myself, am guiding them.
I see myself as a zipper: someone who recognizes patterns and trends, and resolves the duality. The Zipper resolves the duality.
I move into awareness and relax my expectations, interpretations, and certainty. Then accept what happens.
The road to clarity is paved with mistaken actions. Reality Intrudes.
Let go, and find something new; hang on, and create something new.
Zipper Resolving is what I do and Poly Polar Processing is my resolving way.
Often, when I do Poly Polar Processing, I get a lot done. It’s the action, you see, it’s the action that gets things done. It’s the action that solves the problems. It’s the action.
We are not in complete control, yet we do have control.
We are not completely free, yet we do have freedom.
We have a choice. Yet whatever we do, the Universe will have its way. Reality intrudes.
As I always think and say, I am a sail boater: I ride the current, I ride the wind. The current is the world, the wind is others in it.
I am ready (leaning into the future, as I found in sitting), I am acting. What I need to do, what I want to do. Now I am moving, standing still. Snapdragon and Red Palace, Signpost and Zipper, poem and prose.
It is all coming together, I am resolving, I am being guided.
What I will do is what I have done
The end begins in the middle. It is all coming together. The middle way: hang on, let go. The Other: good enough.
When I reach Good Enough, I return to Poly Polar Processing.
When I do, I find I am being guided:
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By me, from clues I left behind, from things I did before.
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By Her, from things She puts in front of me.
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By her, from things we do together.
You never get there: it is a process, it is an attitude change: what can I do now? All my life, the Goddess has been teaching me. One lesson I remember is my search for the “Middle Way” at Cal Poly: it never gets there.
Things go wrong, things go right. What is right? What is wrong? Existence is fundamentally dual. Saying that is a problem because duality is dual: the same thing viewed from different places, different things viewed from the same place.
After more than ten years of solitary meditation I came to the realization that “we are what we are in relationship”
I live in a fantasy world. “Reality is a nice place to visit, yet I wouldn’t want to live there”. I have a photo of Frances (a Calico cat) sitting on a couch. At a wall near the couch is a television. And on the television is a Calico cat sitting on a couch. The photo is a metaphor for my life: there are two scenes – one real, one imaginary. And I often confuse them.
I am beginning to understand Intention.
I am being guided (by me, by other, by Other)
Middle
I move with my intentions, watching, walking, wandering, in the Unity Forest. Crossing the Middle again and again.
There is place that I reach, a crossing, of what I am not sure. From infinity and back through infinity; or zero through zero; or all of the above and more.
Today, now, I find myself in the Middle. I couldn’t have come here sooner: not yesterday, not a year ago. Only today was it possible.
How can there be a middle way if there aren’t at least two ends? Two (or more) attractors? The river of life flows between two banks: rigidity and chaos.
I have always said I have trouble with the past, and it is true: I can’t change it.
I have always said I don’t have trouble with the past, and it is true: I let go.
There are an infinite number of things to do. Yet nothing pressing to do. Yet it seems sometimes as if I only do the most pressing, I do at the very last minute [about to walk off the cliff]. Of those too many things, many, if not most, have something that needs to be done prior to them being done [and so on so on so forth]. I found a way to handle that: act.
Am I emotional? I am sure I have a normal range of feelings. Yet emotions are mostly absent. I experience only happiness or sadness, a little anger now and then. There is something I call love, yet it seems to be more of a ‘flavor’ of happiness or sadness (yes, for me love can bring tears). I call it my “quiet love”
I am the whole of me, not any part. Each part comes, attaches for a time, then goes. And so of I. Like the red spot on Jupiter. Both a desire met and a fear avoided bring a sense of pleasure. My place is in motion, each choice is a letting go. Don’t do that, yet I do; Do that, yet I don’t. It doesn’t matter. We relate to nomena via phenomena.
Relationship
Once with Christi: I am glad I did, yet wish I hadn’t.
Once with Susan: I am glad I didn’t, yet wish I had.
Relationships: we are what we are in relationships. A friend of mine once said that relationships “are a complex dance”. I really don’t do well dancing, I have done a very poor job of being in relationships.
The Relationship dance: our assumptions, our expectations. our certainty. We travel our relationships carrying our assumptions, expectations, and certainty, and we can’t let them go.
We need to hold each other like the beach holds the ocean: the tide comes in and is held by the beach, the tide goes out, and the beach lets it go.
Reframing
Today we frame everything as a competition and cooperation is selling out.
Today we frame everything as an argument and we defend out view.
I would like see that change. I would like to change “agree” to “in my view”, “argue” to “discuss”, “truth” to “valid” (valid simply means: correlates with reality).
Pan Intentionalism
I have never been able to accept one of the many organized religions available, so I created my own: Pan Intentionalism.
Pan Intentionalism is:
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an Epistemology: my way of seeing.
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a Methodology: my way knowing.
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an Ontology: the Reality I see
Signpost is the story of what Pan Intentionalism is and how it came to be.
Who I Really Am
Recently I encountered Non-dual, and that is their favorite question.
They tell me that all this time I am spending trying to understand myself and my universe is just a waste of time, and worse, it is the cause of my suffering.
For the non-dual, there is no other.
For the non-dual, there are only drops of water in the ocean.
Their way leaves out half of the universe. They were a grain of sand; they became a drop of water. Then they became the ocean. And did not go back to being a grain of sand, they never became the beach.
I spent a lot of time trying to understand the three Buddhist characteristics. The one about no-self took the longest. It took a long time to see the logic fallacy: moving from three dimensions to one dimension. My thinking moved from “unfindable” to “unknowable”.
We are a process in time, a product in space. I am the Watcher, I am the Talker, I am the Actor. I am a bonded process. I am bonded, yet not separate. There is no paradox.
Today, now, I find myself in the Middle. And I couldn’t have come here sooner: not yesterday, not a year ago. Only today was it possible.
The Goddess in the forest
When I walk in the beautiful northwest woods, the Goddess is with me. She is real, I believe in Her.
Not what I expect, I let go of expectation.
Not certain, I let go certainty.
Not as I have interpreted, I let go interpretations.
A Grand Delusion, yet valid.