Sitting in the listening space around your writings, reactions and drawings for extended months now, I think it measures 2ish years, with some gaps. I’ve lost some things, and lost the sense of losing them. I plan to lose more. In losing, discarding, there is the present experience- colour, taste, feel of the dream. To be experienced. My thanks to you is expressed in a continued decision to accept the dream. It is not the same as being aloof, untouched. It is simply seeing that the pain is not to be missed out on. The hunger is not to be deified. The fear is not be dissociated from. Like an empty, quiet, eye in a red storm, is the teachings you’ve explained and the lineage of wisdom carried into this horrible third act.
this: "your illnesses may or may not be a symptom of you misconducting yourself. you may discover via trial and error, that you can conduct yourself PERFECTLY and still develop cancer for example. ...you may find that some people are not here to untangle their fate in a way that aligns with what modern culture says healing looks like."
This tracks with my experience. And I don't know how I would respond in that situation. To be totally honest, I was only able to complete this program because of money from the Dept of Rehabilitation, and have never actually made enough money to support myself. Beginning to practice as an LMT invites the possibility of charging more per hour than I ever have, and of course I feel the pressure to frame my work within the narrative that I can "help" people somehow. Help them have less pain, less shame, less physical or emotional or spiritual suffering. And to some extent, I do believe that. And I also see the limits of that and agree wit you.
I guess my best, honest answer to your question is that I think I have the potential to grow into a faithful nondual practitioner, and I also have the potential to 'play it safe' and not turn towards that potential.
I will also say that the deepest work of my life has revolved around shame and sexuality, and it's looking likely that I will pursue a sexological bodywork program (or something like it) after I graduate from zen, with the ultimate goal of working with cishet men in a much more intimate and profound way than is typically available. This aspiration doesn't directly address your question, but I mention it because I have observed, for myself, that when I do my best to listen and follow wherever it seems like I'm being led, then I tend to be at my best, in integrity, and doing my best work. And so a part of me trusts that if I continue to be faithful to my brokenness and my longing, I can trust the work that I will do from that place.
Point 7 is really sticking with me/rattling me! (All points are hitting!) I am constantly thinking about land/ being an owner in capitalism in terms of how to get out of landlord clutches with friends, reconciliation of owning land while also being land back etc. the discourse about this in communities is very purist at times, or at least in my youngerish years it was. In my 30s now, accepted a lot about leaving the nobility of being poor behind and seeing my luck as neutral to have stable housing but it’s still landlord controlled. Getting to a collective living situation has also always fallen apart, so so desperate for a compound esque place but watching people fall into couples housing or marriage housing. I get it also as someone who simply wants to live without much day to day interpersonal chaos. Achieved the dream of living in the same complex with my best friend but again we are mercy to landlords and raising rent prices. Anyway…thank you for these reflections!!
from my own research, the only way "out" is to BECOME A LANDLORD. This is the Devil's Bargain of Capitalism, and many people will not be able to avoid the addictions that come with this kind of colonial power. Money/Power is a helluva narcotic. But what other options are there? (I don't have better answers after 45 years of hardcore learning)
Exactly! It is the question of if this becomes true about me, what will it reveal about me? Do I know what it would reveal about me? Is it hubris to believe it’s something I could handle? Seen it ruin so many people! And the conditions presently demand that land owners actually house the homeless, which is seemingly so rare or simply intentionally gatekept, because most land owners have a dream of capital rather than a dream of connection (unless nuclear family) or land back etc.
yes its very complex, but in terms of power as a narcotic, part of why i developed the story state action model is because Intensity must be managed, and in many cases, you have to intentionally enjoy fasting or detoxing because the Intensity of power activates the dopaminergic hedonic treadmill so easily.
you have to WANT to discover your own demons, your own ancestral addictions, etc. This is why most ppl do it "backwards", they dont study nonduality until AFTER theyve made money/power in the dual world.
Huh. Thank you... I was only able to follow some of that; I don't have all the context you do. I'm about to graduate from Zen Shiatsu in Chicago and start practicing Shiatsu as a licensed LMT, so my interest in these questions is all related to people coming to see me for treatments and what level I'm engaging with them in that relationship. It's been helpful for me to think about supporting people in re-aligning with their Dao and connecting to their own nature.
I'm glad you're still going to be writing wishing you more resources, for whatever that's worth. 🐢
be sure to refresh the page because i revised and added.
when working with clients, regardless of you and their desire to "heal", you may find that some people are not here to untangle their fate in a way that aligns with what modern culture says healing looks like.
in this case, will you be able to truly be a nondual daoist/zen practitioner or will you merely be a pawn of the governmental institutions that have colonized nondual traditions?
Been enjoying your writing for the past few months, and wishing you all the best as you wind down substack. 🙏 I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the perspective Lonny Jarrett espouses in "Nourishing Destiny?" I've only just begun the text, but here's a short synopsis of the thesis:
"...At the moment of conception, heaven plants, a seed of potential deep within each individual. Throughout life, heaven continually nourishes this seat so that it manifests fully in the world. The fulfillment of our destiny entails being able to acknowledge the nature of the seed. Heaven has planted, a seed synonymous with our deep nature and inborn Constitution. Upon acknowledging the seed, we must then take actions in the world to cultivate and manifest this inborn potential. In manifesting Destiny, we must accept all the events of our life as heaven's attempt to nourish the seed of potential. It has sowed. Already mindful of this, the sage aligns his own will with the will of heaven as it is expressed (within) as an inborn potential and (without) as life's events. He makes the most of Life by viewing external events, painful or pleasurable, as lessons to be learned in the path to mastering his Destiny. In fulfilling his Destiny, the sage becomes a channel for the creative flow of the Dao. Our contract with heaven is broken the moment we start closing doors to self-expression and obstructing the flow of Qi between heaven and Earth. Like a great flood, the Dao will overwhelm any obstacle placed in its path as it strives to assert its true nature. If an individual continues to resist the flow of the Dao, then symptomatology may develop in the inner Kingdom. These symptoms appear as obstructions in the rivers of the inner kingdom- the functions, officials, and meridians of the physical body."
...I feel like I am learning a lot by viewing my mental/emotional/physical health struggles as information telling me something about how I'm not living in alignment with my Dao. And vice versa. Just curious if you've encountered this perspective and how it may or may not fit in.
let me try and give this a comprehensive reply. i might have to take it in chunks.
1- I'm still going to Substack, I'm just going to heavily bias my limited energy due to my health condition on finding other ways to pay the bills. so, what that looks like is still unknown, it's just that i have to make this decision for my own survivance.
2- okay, so as to the text... it is true, but it leaves a lot out, due to the nature of our "hopium" and the generative cycle (also known as the chemistry/chemical cycle) of the 5 elements. this is the so-called linear progression/evolution fantasy that many ppl adhere to. it is also the realm of black or ascending shamans in the Daoist dream teaching i was taught. this ideology is one that aligns with what many evangelical traditions "believe", and it is incomplete...
because it only really acknowledges that there is one direction in which karma or fate is untangled. via a "positive" accumulation of merit, the "paying off" of ancestral debts, etc.
however, there is another pathway which is red, descending, backwards and alchemical... it is "via negativa". the untangling of fate via negative actions. these can be destructive (such as murder, etc) or just "the absence of ___". Negative has a few meanings after all.
Many ppl acknowledge this only in "clean" terms such as the alchemical poetics written in the dao de jing and yijing, etc. "developing the golden embryo" and "returning" to the dao/valley/mother/void etc.
but what is left out of these clean/poetic interpretations is the grit, grime and gristle of the animal reality.
hate, for example. a "red" practitioner actually knows that hate = power, and that hate is a path. a "black" practitioner seeks to ecclesiastically sanitize this kind of person and omits them from the sanitized scriptures.
what I'm saying is very complex (aka non-binary) but it is a simple way to notice how biased orthodoxy is.
Let me talk of Christ vs. Christianity as a final way to explain.
Christ was "red", he was a heterodox practitioner. There was no "Christianity" in the time of Christ's life. He was operating "without a net". Only after he was murdered by the establishment was there a concerted effort to steal his power by creating an "orthodox" Christianity, which is actually separate from Christ, yet uses Christ to weaponize and revise his life and teachings. The Christian Church is "black", or orthodox.
There are many corollary stories in almost all major religions. The founders or "heroes" of the churches are heterodox, and then only after much political bullshit, are absorbed into the orthodoxy and sanitized.
So, perhaps this seems tangential because I'm not debating or arguing with Jarret's point. I'm just saying its beginner establishment stuff. It's the kind of propaganda one uses to talk to someone in a "safe" way, so that one is not burned at the stake.
But real life, real fate and real karma exist at the site of the stake itself.
Not everyone will experience that fully, but to not see it as a path in itself is to colonize one's own perception.
so to finish up, your illnesses may or may not be a symptom of you misconducting yourself. you may discover via trial and error, that you can conduct yourself PERFECTLY and still develop cancer for example. If you discover this, you need to accept the wisdom of reality and not simply "believe" that you are still in misalignment with one's Dao. It may be that to untangle your (ancestral) fate you have to die via cancer.
To me, this is the true level of nonduality. It is ALL just WISDOM, not "wisdom only if i prefer it".
Sitting in the listening space around your writings, reactions and drawings for extended months now, I think it measures 2ish years, with some gaps. I’ve lost some things, and lost the sense of losing them. I plan to lose more. In losing, discarding, there is the present experience- colour, taste, feel of the dream. To be experienced. My thanks to you is expressed in a continued decision to accept the dream. It is not the same as being aloof, untouched. It is simply seeing that the pain is not to be missed out on. The hunger is not to be deified. The fear is not be dissociated from. Like an empty, quiet, eye in a red storm, is the teachings you’ve explained and the lineage of wisdom carried into this horrible third act.
Yes. The music of it all. Womp waaaaaa
this: "your illnesses may or may not be a symptom of you misconducting yourself. you may discover via trial and error, that you can conduct yourself PERFECTLY and still develop cancer for example. ...you may find that some people are not here to untangle their fate in a way that aligns with what modern culture says healing looks like."
This tracks with my experience. And I don't know how I would respond in that situation. To be totally honest, I was only able to complete this program because of money from the Dept of Rehabilitation, and have never actually made enough money to support myself. Beginning to practice as an LMT invites the possibility of charging more per hour than I ever have, and of course I feel the pressure to frame my work within the narrative that I can "help" people somehow. Help them have less pain, less shame, less physical or emotional or spiritual suffering. And to some extent, I do believe that. And I also see the limits of that and agree wit you.
I guess my best, honest answer to your question is that I think I have the potential to grow into a faithful nondual practitioner, and I also have the potential to 'play it safe' and not turn towards that potential.
I will also say that the deepest work of my life has revolved around shame and sexuality, and it's looking likely that I will pursue a sexological bodywork program (or something like it) after I graduate from zen, with the ultimate goal of working with cishet men in a much more intimate and profound way than is typically available. This aspiration doesn't directly address your question, but I mention it because I have observed, for myself, that when I do my best to listen and follow wherever it seems like I'm being led, then I tend to be at my best, in integrity, and doing my best work. And so a part of me trusts that if I continue to be faithful to my brokenness and my longing, I can trust the work that I will do from that place.
i think if you can see that choice clearly, you can practice within the terror and uncertainty of it!
Point 7 is really sticking with me/rattling me! (All points are hitting!) I am constantly thinking about land/ being an owner in capitalism in terms of how to get out of landlord clutches with friends, reconciliation of owning land while also being land back etc. the discourse about this in communities is very purist at times, or at least in my youngerish years it was. In my 30s now, accepted a lot about leaving the nobility of being poor behind and seeing my luck as neutral to have stable housing but it’s still landlord controlled. Getting to a collective living situation has also always fallen apart, so so desperate for a compound esque place but watching people fall into couples housing or marriage housing. I get it also as someone who simply wants to live without much day to day interpersonal chaos. Achieved the dream of living in the same complex with my best friend but again we are mercy to landlords and raising rent prices. Anyway…thank you for these reflections!!
from my own research, the only way "out" is to BECOME A LANDLORD. This is the Devil's Bargain of Capitalism, and many people will not be able to avoid the addictions that come with this kind of colonial power. Money/Power is a helluva narcotic. But what other options are there? (I don't have better answers after 45 years of hardcore learning)
Exactly! It is the question of if this becomes true about me, what will it reveal about me? Do I know what it would reveal about me? Is it hubris to believe it’s something I could handle? Seen it ruin so many people! And the conditions presently demand that land owners actually house the homeless, which is seemingly so rare or simply intentionally gatekept, because most land owners have a dream of capital rather than a dream of connection (unless nuclear family) or land back etc.
yes its very complex, but in terms of power as a narcotic, part of why i developed the story state action model is because Intensity must be managed, and in many cases, you have to intentionally enjoy fasting or detoxing because the Intensity of power activates the dopaminergic hedonic treadmill so easily.
you have to WANT to discover your own demons, your own ancestral addictions, etc. This is why most ppl do it "backwards", they dont study nonduality until AFTER theyve made money/power in the dual world.
Huh. Thank you... I was only able to follow some of that; I don't have all the context you do. I'm about to graduate from Zen Shiatsu in Chicago and start practicing Shiatsu as a licensed LMT, so my interest in these questions is all related to people coming to see me for treatments and what level I'm engaging with them in that relationship. It's been helpful for me to think about supporting people in re-aligning with their Dao and connecting to their own nature.
I'm glad you're still going to be writing wishing you more resources, for whatever that's worth. 🐢
be sure to refresh the page because i revised and added.
when working with clients, regardless of you and their desire to "heal", you may find that some people are not here to untangle their fate in a way that aligns with what modern culture says healing looks like.
in this case, will you be able to truly be a nondual daoist/zen practitioner or will you merely be a pawn of the governmental institutions that have colonized nondual traditions?
Been enjoying your writing for the past few months, and wishing you all the best as you wind down substack. 🙏 I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the perspective Lonny Jarrett espouses in "Nourishing Destiny?" I've only just begun the text, but here's a short synopsis of the thesis:
"...At the moment of conception, heaven plants, a seed of potential deep within each individual. Throughout life, heaven continually nourishes this seat so that it manifests fully in the world. The fulfillment of our destiny entails being able to acknowledge the nature of the seed. Heaven has planted, a seed synonymous with our deep nature and inborn Constitution. Upon acknowledging the seed, we must then take actions in the world to cultivate and manifest this inborn potential. In manifesting Destiny, we must accept all the events of our life as heaven's attempt to nourish the seed of potential. It has sowed. Already mindful of this, the sage aligns his own will with the will of heaven as it is expressed (within) as an inborn potential and (without) as life's events. He makes the most of Life by viewing external events, painful or pleasurable, as lessons to be learned in the path to mastering his Destiny. In fulfilling his Destiny, the sage becomes a channel for the creative flow of the Dao. Our contract with heaven is broken the moment we start closing doors to self-expression and obstructing the flow of Qi between heaven and Earth. Like a great flood, the Dao will overwhelm any obstacle placed in its path as it strives to assert its true nature. If an individual continues to resist the flow of the Dao, then symptomatology may develop in the inner Kingdom. These symptoms appear as obstructions in the rivers of the inner kingdom- the functions, officials, and meridians of the physical body."
...I feel like I am learning a lot by viewing my mental/emotional/physical health struggles as information telling me something about how I'm not living in alignment with my Dao. And vice versa. Just curious if you've encountered this perspective and how it may or may not fit in.
let me try and give this a comprehensive reply. i might have to take it in chunks.
1- I'm still going to Substack, I'm just going to heavily bias my limited energy due to my health condition on finding other ways to pay the bills. so, what that looks like is still unknown, it's just that i have to make this decision for my own survivance.
2- okay, so as to the text... it is true, but it leaves a lot out, due to the nature of our "hopium" and the generative cycle (also known as the chemistry/chemical cycle) of the 5 elements. this is the so-called linear progression/evolution fantasy that many ppl adhere to. it is also the realm of black or ascending shamans in the Daoist dream teaching i was taught. this ideology is one that aligns with what many evangelical traditions "believe", and it is incomplete...
because it only really acknowledges that there is one direction in which karma or fate is untangled. via a "positive" accumulation of merit, the "paying off" of ancestral debts, etc.
however, there is another pathway which is red, descending, backwards and alchemical... it is "via negativa". the untangling of fate via negative actions. these can be destructive (such as murder, etc) or just "the absence of ___". Negative has a few meanings after all.
Many ppl acknowledge this only in "clean" terms such as the alchemical poetics written in the dao de jing and yijing, etc. "developing the golden embryo" and "returning" to the dao/valley/mother/void etc.
but what is left out of these clean/poetic interpretations is the grit, grime and gristle of the animal reality.
hate, for example. a "red" practitioner actually knows that hate = power, and that hate is a path. a "black" practitioner seeks to ecclesiastically sanitize this kind of person and omits them from the sanitized scriptures.
what I'm saying is very complex (aka non-binary) but it is a simple way to notice how biased orthodoxy is.
Let me talk of Christ vs. Christianity as a final way to explain.
Christ was "red", he was a heterodox practitioner. There was no "Christianity" in the time of Christ's life. He was operating "without a net". Only after he was murdered by the establishment was there a concerted effort to steal his power by creating an "orthodox" Christianity, which is actually separate from Christ, yet uses Christ to weaponize and revise his life and teachings. The Christian Church is "black", or orthodox.
There are many corollary stories in almost all major religions. The founders or "heroes" of the churches are heterodox, and then only after much political bullshit, are absorbed into the orthodoxy and sanitized.
So, perhaps this seems tangential because I'm not debating or arguing with Jarret's point. I'm just saying its beginner establishment stuff. It's the kind of propaganda one uses to talk to someone in a "safe" way, so that one is not burned at the stake.
But real life, real fate and real karma exist at the site of the stake itself.
Not everyone will experience that fully, but to not see it as a path in itself is to colonize one's own perception.
so to finish up, your illnesses may or may not be a symptom of you misconducting yourself. you may discover via trial and error, that you can conduct yourself PERFECTLY and still develop cancer for example. If you discover this, you need to accept the wisdom of reality and not simply "believe" that you are still in misalignment with one's Dao. It may be that to untangle your (ancestral) fate you have to die via cancer.
To me, this is the true level of nonduality. It is ALL just WISDOM, not "wisdom only if i prefer it".
I really appreciate this, love your writing style and the message is important.
Thanks for saying so. It’s a grisly situation humanity is in right now.