Mental Discipline For What? - #40

"A calm lake reflects the moon clearly."*

When I read this sentence, extracted from a paragraph written by Bob Klein,* an image easily appears in my mind.  

Did an image pop up in your mind?  Savor it.

While I yearn to appreciate and understand poetry and metaphorical language, I often struggle.  The next three sentences, taken from the same paragraph, tantalize, touch, and transfix me.
 
"You can also see to the bottom of the lake. In this way it reveals the worlds around you and within you and connects them. When consciousness flows like water it is powerful because all is connected within it."

I often rush through words like these, disappointed that meaning isn't instantly apparent to me. 

Tim Parks,** in his memoir Teach Us To Sit Still, writes there is no guidebook to explain meaning.  He discovers one way to find meaning is to create a special type of silence; silence Parks calls an "eye-closed" silence.  The type of silence where "mind meets flesh." 

Both meditation (eye-closed silence) and contemplation teach us to open into the silence for solutions rather than shut down or rehash ad nauseam our old dysfunctional patterns. 

Meditation and contemplation teach us  to explore and not solve. 

Meditation and contemplation teach us that continuing to rely on our intellect or on dictionaries to define these words won't lead us to the meaning we crave.

No matter how hard we try, we can't force the open receptive space to appear. Relaxation and understanding happen when we allow them to happen.  

It shocked Parks that without mental discipline he was unable to relax enough to ease his bodily pain.  Almost more shocking to him, as an author, was that the type of mental discipline he needed had virtually nothing to do with words. 

Next week, we will continue to ponder other ways of knowing. What other ways, besides your intellect, do you have of knowing? Please go to the blog www.NickyMendenhall.blogspot.com and leave a comment.

As always, thanks for exploring the mystery. Nicky Mendenhall

*You can learn more about Bob Klein by visiting his website: www.movementsofmagic.com.

**Used with written permission from Tim Parks who resides in Italy. Teach Us How To Sit Still, a book Tim says he never thought he would write - is a book about his body. "How indiscreet," he remarks in the forward. The New York Times Book Review says, "Parks is an aware, droll and intelligent guide to both his woe and to his salvation from it....vulnerable, winning, oddball and maniacal."
 

Water Is Like, Consciousness - #39

Clutching a Fiji water bottle, I enter Kauffman Park Shelter House. The occasion?  The fiftieth anniversary celebration of West Marshall Community School District. 

Before this hotly contested consolidation of six schools, my class consisted of five boys and two girls. Being an anxious and somewhat dehydrated seventeen-year-old-senior, knowing I had to memorize the names and remember the faces of sixty-seven new classmates made me sweat.

Fast forward fifty years: I mingle with the crowd, still perspiring, (this time because it's a very warm evening), while nursing my water bottle. I squint at name tags. I valiantly try to make my voice heard above the dull roar. I try to remember.

When I decide instead to simply keep moving physically when it feels good, to keep my body language open, to sit down when I'm tired, to eat when I'm hungry, the connections with others seem to happen more easily. My attention moves from trying to remember to being fully present in my body and fully present with the person in front of me.  Some of my neural connections begin wiring and firing, the process brain research says retrieves memories, which enhances my experience.

Bob Klein* wrote a thought provoking message, that I received after the reunion, in response to last week's post: 

Water is like consciousness. For most people consciousness (attention) is in the form of ice, cold and unmoving. When it thaws, it can flow. When it flows, it can connect. When it connects, it can dissolve and merge things together.

More from Bob's message next week. Is your attention cold and unmoving or flowing? What do you want to connect with? Do you drink enough water? (I usually don't!)

Be sure and go to the blog www.NickyMendenhall.blogspot.com and comment and see what others are saying.

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

*You can learn more about Bob Klein by visiting his website: www.movementsofmagic.com.

Best to Be Like Water - #38

Leaves swirl to the ground vacating their summer home in the trees: Nature demonstrates the letting go process. 

Letting go on the material level: Clean out a closet or drawer.

Letting go of psychological baggage: Express a feeling.

Letting go of prejudice: Interact with people who are different from you

Taoists instruct ordinary men and women to survive by crouching low and keeping out of the line of fire. Bob Klein,* the first Taoist I've known, responded to my request for more information on Taoism by recommending several books and the animation by Peter Beaggle, "The Last Unicorn."

The Tao Te Ching (pronounced "Dow Duh Jing"**) was first on his list. It is an ancient Chinese text that is said to have evolved from the school known as Taoism that dates from the first to third centuries C.E., however recently two older versions were discovered that date the first century B.C.E.** 

Composed in two parts and eighty-one numbered short sections, it has traditionally been attributed to a figure known as Lao-tzu.  One message from this ancient text is that to be in harmony with what is, we need to know when to let go of what isn't needed. 

Here's #8 for you to savor: 

Best to be like water,
Which benefits the ten thousand things
And does not contend.
It pools where humans disdain to dwell,
Close to the Tao.
    
     Live in a good place.
     Keep your mind deep.
     Treat others well.
     Stand by your word.
     Keep good order.
     Do the right thing.
     Work when it's time.

     Only do not contend,
And you will not go wrong.**

What happens when leaves fall into water? What do you need to let go of? In order for you to relax, do you need to crouch down or stand up straighter? Do you know how to stay out of the line of fire? What is the right thing for  you?

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Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall
 
*You can learn more about Bob Klein by visiting his website: www.movementsofmagic.com.

**Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao-Tzu(1993) translated by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo.
 

 

 

Attention Dividends -#37

I am strangely addicted to the frustration Bob Klein's* comments engender in me.

Bob, a Tai Chi Master and Taoist from Sound Beach, NY,  challenges me. Here's what he said about Post #36: 

Dear Nicky,

That sounds like a great experience. Can you have that Zen experience with the Zen priests in your garden? And see their smiles?

Bob

My mother was suspicious of fairy tales. My farm girl feet were grounded in rich black soil. Facts made up the bulk of our everyday language. Questions like Bob's elicited derision in our household and still have a place in my psyche: "No, I can't. I live in a town home, I don't have a garden."

Luckily this no-nonsense part of me is no longer all there is. Now there are other parts; parts that compare verses in three translations of the Tao Te Ching.** Granted, some of the old planted-in-facts parts still wrinkle up their noses when meaning isn't immediately apparent. 

When my intuition is allowed to morph into feelings, these parts can begin to express themselves with conviction: "Bob is pointing out my experience happened because I was paying attention, not because of the exotic location." 

Tuesday, while on my walk, my attention was captured by two pair of round deer eyes.  Both sets of brown eyes looked intently into my brown eyes. There was no blinking. There was only stillness.  Previous feelings of disappointment, in myself for not being fully present during a session with a very anxious client earlier that day, began to drain away.

Yesterday on my walk, my eyes were drawn to a particular tree. Did I see a Great Horned Owl perched there?  My eyes aren't the best so there was no way of knowing for sure. I stood there. Whatever it was blended into the tree bark. As if hearing my inquiry the creature opened its wings, swooped to the next tree, and in doing so, decisively identified as an owl.

Today my husband called my attention to a big lump on the front lawn - maybe a pile of leaves? As we silently inched closer, we observed movement. It was a Turkey Vulture! We watched it waddle around and as we stood watching, it opened its nearly six foot wings and swooped into the nearby trees. 

Paying attention in Nature provides many gifts.

Where are you paying attention? What are you seeing or hearing or smelling or touching that you would miss without the factor of paying attention being present? Does attention bring things to us? How important is the factor of attention in our lives? Please use the comment box to let me/us know of your findings.

If I continue to pay attention, tomorrow I may see smiling Zen Priests in my Zen Garden.

*You can learn more about Bob Klein by visiting his website: www.movementsofmagic.com.

**You will be hearing more about these translations in future posts.

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As always, thank you for being with me to explore the mystery.
- Nicky Mendenhall