So yesterday while I was waiting in the car for Sophie to get groomed at Petsmart, I finished reading Adyashanti’s “The End of Your World.” On page 156 he writes, “If you read through the Tao Te Ching or look at some of the Taoist teachings, you start to get a feel for how willfulness is replaced by a sense of flow.

“When you get out of the driver’s seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver’s seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the ‘me’ is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.”

So maybe this year I’ll go through the process of discovering the unconscious drivers, become a conscious driver and then let life become the driver. And we’ll call that my new year’s resolution.

Here’s a personal situation: readers of my blog will possibly recall an entry in which I described a childhood trauma when I was five years old. I had an allergic reaction to penicillin and was hospitalized. I never knew the details of this incident until last year when I communicated with the student nurse who cared for me almost sixty years ago. My parents and I never discussed the illness and now they are both dead. Mary, the nurse, informed me that I had been wrapped in gauze and placed under a wire mesh so nothing could touch me. Visitors were required to wear sterilized gowns. And, worst of all, when the gauze had to be changed it pulled off some of my skin, fingernails and toenails. Without knowing these details I had simply disregarded the experience as insignificant until a counselor brought it to my attention this year.

For most of my adult life I have been rather reserved. I’m an introvert, a five on the enneagram, not very sociable, not too conversational, and I avoid basic human contact such as hugging. My counselor has been patiently trying to ease me into the world. A friend suggested that I get a massage as a way to overcome the aversion of being touched. Strangely enough the next day I received an ad for a half-price massage so I purchased it online. Now all I have to do is call and schedule it. Two months later I’m still procrastinating. Surely most people enjoy massages but, for me, I may as well be making a dentist appointment for a root canal. I promised I will do it and I will…eventually.

My conclusion is that most people say they want to do something or be something but sabotage themselves because a memory, or an experience, or even a conversation from their past is unconsciously “driving” their lives. I have no idea what the unconscious “driver” was for the father who endangered his daughter. I had no idea that for sixty years the five year-old me was the unconscious “driver” of my life.

Virtually every day I tell myself that I want to live a peaceful, calm life and spend my time reading and writing. But each day I find myself disturbed by the neighbor’s barking dogs or upset over some seemingly minor incident. Since I left the seclusion of the lake house I’ve done very little reading or writing. Why? Although I say I want to live my life in a certain way I allow unconscious thoughts or feelings to control my life.

In the Fourth Way Gurdjieff and Ouspensky would say that there are many “I’s” inside a person, comparing it to a mansion in which there is a master and many servants. When someone knocks on the door one of the many servants answers instead of the master. So the question becomes, who’s answering the door of my life?

The Buddhist version is the horse, cart and driver. The cart represents the body, the horse the emotions, and the driver equates to the master of the house. For me, apparently, the driver has fallen asleep and the emotions of the five year old are pulling the cart.

So…all this is to say that life is a process of discovering our own unconscious motivators. Am I living the life I want or am I unconsciously living the present through the lens of the past?

P xiii ‘All meaning is an angle.’ (possibly from ancient Egypt)

P 50 Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s essay titled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’: Peirce describes four steps which lead to action. We begin with sensations, of which we are immediately conscious. These, he maintains, occur in succession and create a thought, just as the succession of musical notes creates a melody. The goal of thought is belief; we continue the activity of thought until we reach a belief, the ‘demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.’ He goes on to say that belief establishes a rule for action, so that the final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition.
Thus we have the sequence: sensation to thought to belief to action.

P 58 This is why the Zen master, when asked the nature of the Buddha, strikes the student on the head with a stick. No words can convey participation or the realization to which participation can lead.

P 64 Somewhere within us there is an instinct for this abstract world—a world that is in some sense outside life, yet upon which all life pivots; that supports it like the pins of a great steel door to a bank vault, so that if one but had the key, all would be open to him. This abstract world is at the core of our existence.

P 69 …nuclear particles defy explanation by rational theory.
The reason, I believe, is that the realm of nuclear particles precedes form. It is the realm of raw substance: the possibility of form has not emerged, and will not emerge, until the atom exists.

P 74…we may now say the encounter with reality consists of steps that follow and build on one another:
The first step is awareness itself. The second is experience in time, a sequence of events accompanied by feelings.
The second level—threefold: past, present, future—presents memory of past feelings and their relation in time.
The third step occurs when a present and a past experience are compared and a concept is found which measures or identifies an experience or what is common to experience. These concepts permit laws or generalizations to be formed about events, and the distinction between internal and external (objective) becomes possible.
The knower can now test these generalizations or laws.

P 101 Psychologists and teachers are discovering likewise that animals or children cannot learn without doing. They find that the learning process does not consist of filling a creature with information, as one would program a computer, but of active interaction with the environment.

P 129 Quantum physics, I believe, tells the same story. It tells us that behind the phenomenal objective world there is something we cannot in any objective sense know, something which can be characterized only as uncertainty, but something which is the cause. It is a quantum of action, a whole act.

P 148 We are thus brought to a rather drastic revision of our view of the universe. We cannot insist that it be exclusively objective. The universe is also projective (or even subjective). This is not idealism or solipsism. The projectivity is not in me, it is in the universe. The universe is thinking or feeling itself into existence.

As a unique form, no one or nothing has ever flowed as I am this moment. Each “now” I am doing something that has never been done before, which has never existed in the universe. Each moment I create my life, and love is helping others express it. When creativity or the flow is blocked suffering occurs. Compassion is seeing this in others. Skillful means is knowing how to be of assistance.

The Buddha said life is dukka. When energy is in the form of a human being there is birth, old age, decay and death. This is not suffering per se. It is what it is. Suffering comes from lack of understanding…ignorance. So we suffer because we do not accept that life is what it is; we suffer when we do not accept impermanence; and we suffer when we do not understand dependent origination which is the cycle of the pattern from nonphysical to physical until freedom from the cycle is attained.

As I’ve typed in many entries, I struggle with being in the human form and believe I would rather exist exclusively as the torus, the energy of the universe. I know that I am that energy but presently I also exhibit a nonphysical and physical form. Because I identify primarily with the physical form I cause my own suffering.

I have spent the last twenty-some years attempting to understand why the energy of the universe manifests forms, particularly the human form. I have discovered the answer many times but seem unable to grasp the idea that in order for the energy to reach its potential and self-realization it must flow outward in forms. And forms, particularly human forms, exist to create and feel love in the world. So, I’m trying to accept advice from a person I respect: stop analyzing, stop searching for a different answer, and just do it. Live, Love, Create!

I’m beginning to believe that when I stop searching and analyzing, and when I accept creativity and love as the functions of the universe, I will enjoy life. There’s a bubble of excitement rising, like water beginning to boil. I can feel it starting. It’s time to participate in life before it’s over.

Maybe it’s all delusions of grandeur but I feel I already lived that statement. I cannot recall the first time in this lifetime that I believed I was an individual liberation practitioner who actually sat in emptiness for eons, believing I had achieved complete liberation. Then, out of the emptiness came Kwan Yin who tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Do you not hear the world’s sounds?” At that moment I left emptiness and haltingly returned to the world. I have the sense of this being true, that I’m here in the world as a result of that encounter with Kwan Yin.

Consequently I have been a reluctant participant in the world, beginning with a breech birth. Doctors had to use forceps to capture me as I tried to escape. Those who know me well can easily picture me kicking and screaming to avoid entering the world.

So, what have I done? I’ve spent the last twenty-some years reading about a thousand books, listening to hundreds of hours of CDs, and watching many DVDs on spirituality. Why? Honestly? I believe I was trying to find an answer, any answer, other than the one I know to be true. The universe is oneness of energy which flows toward value fulfillment or potential. This we call love. When the flow is blocked there is suffering. All existence follows this pattern.

Recently I’ve been looking at two websites that I find helpful:

www.worldwidetippingpoint.com and www.thrivemovement.com

It’s been a long time coming but I’m starting to stick my toe into the world. I truly believe we are energy with many individual mind streams. Energy flows out towards its potential and returns. We are that flow…birth to death and beyond. The more I contemplate this realization, the more I come up with one question—how can I facilitate the flow with love and compassion?

On October 9, 2011, after sixteen months of living by myself, I moved out of the lake house in TN and back to Yellow Springs, OH. I’m still working on the adjustment. Although I don’t accomplish much in a day, there’s still a lot going on. I typed in my journal recently, “Life takes up a lot of reading time”.

In TN I read at least one book a week, but until today I had read only one-half of “The Four Noble Truths” by Geshe Tashi Tsering. This afternoon I actually finished a book and even took some notes.

The question I keep asking myself is, “Why am I not reading?” I can convince myself that I spend a lot of time with our Goldendoodle puppy Sophie…and that’s true. Why, I even mowed the grass and raked leaves…even ran the vacuum cleaner. So that accounts for about ten hours in forty-three days. That leaves a lot of reading time.

I think part of the answer lies in the quotations from Charles Spezzano’s book “What to do between Birth and Death: The Art of Growing Up”. I haven’t sat with the information long enough to have definite answers, but I can feel lots of thoughts percolating.

What to do Between Birth and Death: The Art of Growing Up by Charles Spezzano, Ph.D.

P 75 The bottom line is that there are situations where the answer can only come from that place inside us where we know what tastes good or what we need, and no one else has access to that place even though we might like them to at moments when we don’t. So if we lose touch with it, we just have to wait it out until the connection is reestablished, and then we have that feeling that our Self, with a capital S, is back on line, and we can see, ‘Gee, I’m glad you’re back. I’ve been needing to ask you what we want to be when we grow up.’

Pp 92-4 To keep contented whichever woman we get in life’s first great lottery, however, all of us as children will willingly sacrifice our personal desires, feelings, thoughts, and actions….Having gradually lost contact with these pieces of ourselves, we emerge into adolescence and adulthood unable to set a clear and satisfying direction for our own lives.

If we discover that what makes us happy makes mother unhappy, then good and bad have been fundamentally and perversely redefined for us. Good is supposed to be that inner sense that tells us, ‘This is me, this is right for me, this satisfies me.’ But now we have a powerful reason to relabel all of that as bad. ‘What makes me happy is bad’ is the worst outcome of this conflict. A common version is simply that ‘what makes me happy might be good or bad for me or her,’ and I don’t have any idea how to know the difference, so I can never decide or move.

Out of this dilemma came the notions of the good self, the bad self, and the false self. Instead of our immediate experience leading to a feeling of this is good and right for me or this is bad and wrong for me, every experience has to be filtered first through some other person—real, or kept in our minds precisely for this purpose.

We are then saying, ‘Never mind how this feels to me. How does it feel to you?’ There is no way for anyone to win in this scenario. If I do what you want, I have kept in your favor, but I am angry and resentful at once again having been forced to sacrifice my own desires. If I do what I want, I am convinced that I have caused you to become less content. Then there is less of that happy you from which I draw my emotional supplies, and I am, therefore, deprived in the end anyway. I can never win. Nothing I do ever increases my sense of well-being.

Eventually, I may construct what many psychotherapists have come to call a false self…Overtly successful careers and marriages in which everything appears to be running smoothly can suddenly collapse when the false self runs out of energy and can’t keep up the pretense anymore. The more our ambitions, our attempts at loving in our own way, and our attempts at hating in the way we hated as children have been met with humiliation, attack, or emotional abandonment, the more of our life this false self is likely to be running. In place of the passion and the force of our own decisions and taking major actions, our false self uses a game plan for running the show—a script, as some psychologists have called it—so that there is the appearance of consistency and direction that other people expect.

But this false self is just a character I have created. From time to time the real self wakes up and is depressed to find that someone else is living my life. What happened to me? Where am I? How come I am not acting out there in the world? Why am I up here in the loft operating this puppet down in the world of other people?

The answer is always the same: because I believe that puppet has a better chance than I do of engaging other people and maintaining their love and interest. If during one of its awakenings the real self can drag itself and the puppet into therapy or can, through a monumental act of will, hang in and refuse to go back into hiding, the healing process may begin.

Some of us never come out of hiding, and entire lives are lost, without ever having been known to the rest of us. When I have lost patients like this, have been unable to keep them from returning to hiding, have watched them leave with mutual regret, not with anger, but with a resigned sense of ‘Thanks, Doc, but this is too much for me; it’s too late for me,’ I experience the deepest sadness I know in my work. It’s like watching someone bury himself or herself in a quiet ceremony for two.

P 113 ‘We rarely understand what the person next to us really wants, what kind of message he is addressing to us, what kind of confirmation we can give him of his self-worth. This is the problem of our most intimate lives—our friendships and our marriages: We are thrown against people who have very unique ways of deriving their self-esteem, and we never quite understand what they really want, what’s bothering them.’

The sociologist/anthropologist Ernest Becker made this observation in his book on The Birth and Death of Meaning, but we have all shared the experience. We rarely are completely aware of our own strategies for maintaining self-esteem, much less anyone else’s. And, as Becker observed, on the rare occasion that we do break through and actually understand someone else, we are usually shocked by what, to us, is that person’s peculiar way of looking at things: ‘Is that what’s bothering you? I never would have guessed.’

When I moved to the lake house on June 7, 2010, I was, as I’ve mentioned in previous entries, ready to disappear, to no longer exist. It wasn’t that I wanted to commit suicide; I just wanted to “flame out” as I had read about Buddhas doing when the “mind stream” had been emptied. Alas, mine was still quite full.

I had about 500 days basically all to myself. Other than a few hours a week of paperwork and necessities such as eating, I could do anything anytime. Eventually I gravitated toward watching Oprah most afternoons and movies in the evening. Okay, keep the groaning to a minimum because I’m trying to concentrate.

I did, however, have three hours of counseling each week for about ten months and, I believe, that made all the difference. Other entries relate how the revisiting of a serious illness which I had at the age of five affected my whole life. In a sense I remained emotionally, physically and socially stuck in the hospital bed. I know others have suffered much more but this for me was a form of PSTD. Understanding how this event permeated my existence was like lifting a huge weight off of me.

Then one day I walked into the living room of the lake house and felt the energy of the room dissipate. I looked at my hand-carved African giraffes and my statues of Chinese scholars and said to them, “It’s time to go”. Did I mention I was having therapy three hours a week?

Okay, so those are the preliminaries but where am I now other than Ohio? For twenty years I read books on spiritually, psychology, Eastern religions and anything that would help me understand why everything existed. What was the meaning of life…period! And, hoping to find out the meaning, my next goal was to find a way to make it stop…period!

I used two analogies (or maybe metaphors). Life was the equivalent of climbing a mountain. When I discovered a path to the top I could leave. The other visual was swimming laps in a swimming pool. At some point I could reach the end of the pool and get out for good. Just step out of the pool and disappear.

Yes, I also studied Buddhism, selfless service and the Bodhisattva ideal. There was a part of me that knew life was not about reaching the summit or getting out of the pool but about helping others who were suffering. Still, I rationalized, if everyone just stopped doing things we could all leave the pool and the world. It didn’t make sense to me that some people actually enjoyed life. Why?

So…right now I envision myself sitting on the mountain or at the end of the pool treading water. I know the world will not stop. Energy continues. There is so much suffering…how can I possibly help? I’m no Mother Teresa…nor was I even a good boy scout. Is it possible that I, one person living in Ohio, can make a difference in the world?

I think I can; I’m not certain how at this moment, but it seems possible. So where am I? Contemplating as I tread water. I’m not a strong swimmer, but I may be able to doggy paddle back into life.

First, I’ve had some realizations about how I interact with Sophie thanks to reading Patricia McConnell’s book “The Other End of the Leash”. Again, I know what you’re thinking. During my first year at the lake I read a book a week ranging from Ken Wilber to Chinese philosophy. Isn’t this going to be another entry about abstract reality? No.

What has happened to the Charles we knew? Well, he’s learning to stand erect with his shoulders squared to convey authority. When he wants Sophie to come he tries to appear interesting and not his usual “I don’t really care whether you come or not”. When he says “no” he means “no” to convey that he really does want Sophie to stop whatever she’s doing, be it chewing on the couch or walking off with his shoe. And to his surprise Sophie now sits, lies down, leaves it and stays on command. Walks are becoming fun activities for both Sophie and Charles instead of a tug-of-war. So…who says Charles doesn’t have an ounce of alpha energy?

My second realization has to do with weather. Try as I might I cannot change what it does. For instance, thanks to Hurricane Irene we had lots of rain and several times I stood outside in the heat, humidity and rain waiting for Sophie to pee and poop. And I got frustrated! Really frustrated! “What’s the matter with this spot?” I asked over and over again. (That wasn’t in McConnell’s book.) Then I would ask the weather gods why it can’t be 70 degrees with low humidity all the time. They just laughed.

Counseling has helped. My counselor has told me that the weather is a lot like our emotions which has led to a third realization. Just like Sophie used to pull me on our walks, my emotions pull me through the day. I’ve often been like the analogy of the horse (emotions), cart (body) and driver (higher self or consciousness) where the driver has fallen asleep and the horse runs freely as the cart bounces and bumps along.

Fourth realization: Sometimes I wonder if I was paying attention the last twenty years as I read a thousand books. There is an external world but how I respond to it is up to me. Between my ears I have the capacity to make the world into a heaven or hell. I’m the driver. I can exhibit and project alpha energy (maybe not a lot but I can). I can accept whatever weather appears before me instead of getting frustrated with it. I can have emotions but I don’t have to run after them and let them upset me.

Fifth realization: Yesterday as Sophie and I took our walk I saw an adult box turtle (he or she was big) and two baby box turtles (they were small) so I’m making an assumption about their age as well. Anyway, right there beside the road were three turtles and I thought to myself, “there’s a lesson in this”. They reminded me that going slowly is okay. I’m trying to make lots of changes in my life and how I live in the world. I can’t change overnight…well…realistically not in the last twenty years…but I’m working on it. I have the wherewithal; a lot of it is in my head but I know a lot is in my heart. Stay tuned…transformation in process.

Of course that put my thought machine in motion, although virtually anything can be a catalyst. For eight months at the lake house I have been working with a counselor/psychic who first envisioned me somewhat disconnected from my body with most of my energy floating above me in something like a balloon. I believe that’s a perfect description of me because I know and I’ve been told that I don’t fully, or even partially, inhabit my body. If there is anything uncomfortable or potentially upsetting I resort to my flight instinct which translates as “I’m out of here”.

My wife of seventeen years has had a difficult time. “It’s a challenge,” she says, “to have a relationship with someone who isn’t here most of the time and desires not to exist.” I’m certainly not the main character in the novel “The Time Travelers’ Wife” but that’s probably how it seems to her. In fact she says the title of my biography could be “The Man Who Was Not Here.”

Now, with the adoption of a rescue Goldendoodle, this is beginning to have even more complications. Our new girl Sophie is a mirror image of me. She’s afraid of people and runs away from them but then looks back with what I project as an incredulous look of “why didn’t they like me”. She and I also share what appear to be many other neuroses but that can wait for another entry. [Stay focused, Charles]

So, yesterday we took Sophie to her third training session. Jenny, Sophie, Jeff and I walked into the training area. Jeff is the alpha personality and there is no doubt about it. He looked at Sophie and in his commanding voice said, “Sit!” Sophie and I both sat down. He gave her a down command and she lay down. I restrained myself and remained sitting on the stool. He pointed a finger at her and said “Stay!” I’m certain he’s a superhero because energy shot from the finger and Sophie stayed.

Jenny looked at me and said, “Jeff has more energy in his index finger than you have in your body”. Unfortunately I had to agree. Jeff added, “Dogs are pack animals and they want a leader who will keep them safe and assure the survival of the species.” Of the three humans in the training area I knew if I were a dog I would choose Jeff first, Jenny second and Sophie third before me. I thought of watching the “Survivor” television show when Jeff Probst asks, “Can you outwit, outplay and outlast” and I always answer aloud, “NO! I couldn’t do it.”

So, later this week Sophie and I are going to the lake house for “boot camp”. She and I will have to survive on our own and, hopefully for her, I will step up to the challenge. By the time we return to Yellow Springs I will have learned to project energy so I’m not invisible to others, so that she feels that I’m the leader, so that she feels I will keep her safe and assure the survival of her species, and…hopefully she’ll even sit, lie down and stay on command.

I particularly like this section from the book “Conversations with Angels”*

Pp 108-9 ‘So what is heavenly joy? they asked the angel.
The angel gave this brief answer: ‘It’s the joy of doing something that’s of use to yourself and to other people. The joy of usefulness derives its essential quality from love and its outward expression from wisdom. The joy of use, arising from love, via wisdom, is the life and soul of all heavenly joys. They have fabulous parties in heaven that cheer the minds of angels, raise their spirits, delight their hearts, and refresh their bodies; but for them these parties come after they have been useful in their jobs or duties, which are what give life and soul to all their happiness and pleasure. But if that life and soul are missing, the accompanying joys gradually become joyless—quiet at first, then petty, and finally dreary and annoying.’”

And this:

P 138 “…The outward delights of Paradise are only delights for the body’s senses, but the inward delights of Paradise are delights of the feelings in your soul. The outward delights have no soul. So the life of heaven is not in them unless the inward delights are in them. And any delight without soul related to it gradually gets feeble and dull and is more tiring to the mind than work.”

This concept is explained in the introduction: “In the physical, natural world, we take the reality of what we see for granted. When we look around a room, we see various objects of particular shapes, colors, sizes, and textures. These things constitute our reality…Our so-called ‘objective reality,’ therefore, is conditioned by our perception. In the spiritual world, however, reality—the appearance of things—is a function of internal state: what one sees corresponds to what one is.”

I find Swedenborg’s conversations enlightening and uplifting because they correspond to my beliefs and expectations about the “other side”. Though as a Christian he encountered Angels and Heaven I expect to meet Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and hopefully take my place in the Jewel Tree.

*Conversations with Angels: What Swedenborg Heard in Heaven edited by Leonard Fox and Donald L. Rose Translated by David Gladish and Jonathan Rose