2008 presents: a blog with some of my favorite posts from Lightmind

[mdpc]

Hi everyone,

I probably should have posted this on the just-ended Lightmind forums, but anyhow...

I am working on a blog in which I am posting some of my favorite posts from the forums from the past couple of years. As you may imagine, my selections are extremely subjective and biased and so forth, so I hope no one's feelings are hurt if their favorite poster's (i.e, themselves!) comments don't appear very often.The selection criteria was based more on topics that I'm particularly interested in, more than any other factors.

As I understand it, once someone posts something online, unless there is some sort of copyright associated with it, the text becomes more-or-less fair game for re-posting elsewhere. However, if anyone who has previously posted on the forums would prefer that I not include their contributions to the forum within the context of the blog, then I will remove their posts immediately.

Likewise, if Elias for whatever reason prefers that I not rehash the stuff from the site that he previously hosted/maintainted, etc., on the blog, then I will cancel the whole project. The whole idea behind doing this is probably more to enrich my own personal reflections more than anything else, but perhaps someone else out there will find some of the old postings to be helpful. I am trying to loosely categorize them as I go along (sample categories so far: Daism, Devotion, Grace, Ken Wilber, Zen Buddhism...)

Anyone wishing to contact me on this matter, please post here, or place a comment on the blogsite, or contact me via email at m u d d y p r a c t i c e at gmaildotcom (omit spaces, etc. when replying!)

Thanks.

Oh, almost forgot, the address for the blog is http://muddypractice.wordpress.com/

[crc]

New Year salutations, mdpc! I've just read your favorite Lightmind posts and am struck by how well they communicate your own perspective and concerns, which are quite near to my own. In particular, the importance of understanding where our spiritual ambitions are coming from and how they've been formed and weighted by certain subconsciously held beliefs, incomplete developmental trajectories and insalubrious factors such as shame, guilt/blame, and superego identification. It got me thinking again about the condition of the psyche and, in particular, the psychic consequences if there's been decade upon decade of frustrated spiritual endeavor. "Enlightenment" as it was originally conceived (oh, how long ago now!) was supposed to be the perfect panacea, the all-healing, in-one-go magic bullet. Now it's shrunk to something that may still hold out an abstract attenuated hope for some resolution, some end to suffering - but at a vastly reduced scale and in terms that make it almost meaningless relative to our original hopes. It makes me wonder what has happened to those original hopes? Where have they gone? Have they truly been 'grown out of', and been thrown on the junkpile as 'immature' where they no longer trouble us? Or have they rather consigned themselves to some psychological gulag, where they, like Job, 'shut their mouth', resign themselves to silence and cover themselves in dust and ashes, convinced that there now exists no mode of fulfillment? Does the proudly grown-up conscious mind, eschewing its former (now rather shameful) childishness, notice the gravid weight of them in the psyche? Notice a certain tell-tale dyspepsia, a jaundiced view, the tired feeling from having to drag around more and more weight everytime one tries to get-it-up and move towards something? In other words, has the post-modern notion of 'enlightenment' itself sidelined and perhaps aborted certain hoped-for possibilities? What has been its real effect on the heart and the life force?

[mdpc]

And Happy New Year to you, crc! I"m glad that you found the posts to be a (presumably) worthwhile read/re-read. I have a couple of dozen more or so "favorites" which I will be adding to the blog over the next day or so. I need to fiddle more with the blog software, as well, so that eventually everything is more readable and not such a mess of sorts.

I really like the thoughtful questions that you are asking here. I am going to take a stab at addressing some of them in a subsequent post after I think a little more on all of that. Great post...

[mdpc]

Gosh, so many provocative questions that you've posed there.

I guess it's fair to say that the attenuation of the idea of "enlightenment" was a running theme of discussion throughout the old forums. Some seemed to be of the opinion that the whole idea of enlightenment was nonsense. Others recognized certain figures as being "enlightened", while simultaneously acknowledging that many of said "enlightened" ones' all-too-human characteristics remained apparently intact. For some, such recognitions were liberating; for others, I think it led to a spirit of cynicism, or even defeatedness. For yet others, it led to a sense of groundedness and realism regarding the human condition.

In other words, to partially answer some of your questions, it would seem that it depends on the individual. For someone who is disappointed in not being able to find an example of a being walking the planet who meets all of their idealized criteria/fantasies, such a disillusionment may send them into quite a funk. Meanwhile, another person might react by feeling relief that they need only live according to their human-ness, and can feel free to cast aside the burden of unrealistic ideals; with the result that their hearts become more open to their fellow human beings, and more of their life force is freed up. I guess one could say similar things about people's mindsets regarding prospective mates, friends, and for that matter, all manner of interactions with other people (not to mention their attitudes/expectations towards themselves!)

I feel like I am not doing such a good job at addressing these questions. It would be interesting to hear yours or others' take on them. At any rate I'll conclude briefly with some of my personal attitudes towards the idea of "enlightenment"--

In life I observe people who seem to have their hearts more open than I do, and who in general seem to be wiser. I try to accept myself as I am, and as I was, but at the same time I aspire to be more like those people, if possible. I don't know if there is anyone walking the planet who has it 100 percent together or who completely fulfills whatever ideas of enlightenment that people have, but it's not terribly relevant to me, in any case. If some otherwise reputable spiritual "personality" is found to be, say, cheating on their spouse, or doing something else "unenlightened", it doesn't follow automatically that such people have nothing to teach me. That being said, I would likely shy away from such a person if the behavior that they engaged in was egregious in the extreme. Each person draws their own lines in these areas, I suppose...while still others wait around forever for someone perfect-seeming, or perhaps sit at the feet of another, all the while lying in wait, hawk-like, for evidence of the slightest transgression.

For me personally, the ideal of an enlightened being in say, the classical Mahayana Buddhist sense remains very helpful for purposes of prayer, visualization, contemplation, etc.

I've digressed and skirted around here a bunch, but hey, those are some big questions to rassle with!

[crc]

Thank you mdpc for rassling with my questions! Of course the failure of various supposedly realized teachers to actually embody well-developed humanness (much less what we would hope would be essential to any enlightenment worth the name) has been a sobering education. For many, this experience has reduced or soured their expectations of finding an outward exemplar or teacher. But I was thinking of how the ideal itself has perhaps undergone a diminishment or sea-change and how that effects not so much our expectations regarding a possible teacher or exemplar, but our hopes regarding ourselves. In any case, you've addressed that quite well in saying that for you classical Mahayana Buddhism remains helpful (and therefore, it seems to follow, hopeful).

One of the sobering ideas I've been recently entertaining is that perhaps the very absence of realization has been necessary for certain important qualities (like subtlety of mind, humility, heart-wisdom, inward strength, friendly self-honesty) to develop. Qualities that, long ago, I had assumed would be automatically bestowed with realization - but apparently aren't. I'm not wildly happy with this notion but it is suggested by long observation. Hm, it reminds me how nasturtiums bloom profusely in a drought or that roses are made to bloom by partial starvation.

But long observation also tells me how widely different are people's trajectories. There's many a rose plant out there that would gladly forego blooming if it could root itself in a ground of decent nourishment!

Again, thanks for addressing my questions. As you can see, I'm still doing reconnaissance around them myself.

[mdpc]

Hi crc,

One of the sobering ideas I've been recently entertaining is that perhaps the very absence of realization has been necessary for certain important qualities (like subtlety of mind, humility, heart-wisdom, inward strength, friendly self-honesty) to develop. Qualities that, long ago, I had assumed would be automatically bestowed with realization - but apparently aren't. I'm not wildly happy with this notion but it is suggested by long observation. Hm, it reminds me how nasturtiums bloom profusely in a drought or that roses are made to bloom by partial starvation.

I reckon that I probably couldn't agree more with that paragraph; nicely put! I was unaware of those horticultural realities, but in any case, what a beautiful metaphor!

But long observation also tells me how widely different are people's trajectories. There's many a rose plant out there that would gladly forego blooming if it could root itself in a ground of decent nourishment!

Again, that's so well-put. That sort of thing occupies my mind all of the time these days, and I think that I owe the ol' Lightmind forums in no small part for helping me to appreciate such a perspective.

I tend to throw out quotes from Chogyam Trungpa to the point where I fear that they lose impact by dint of repetition, but his thing about the spiritual path from the perspective of the ego as being "one insult after another" I find to be a very penetrating insight. marmalade left a comment on m'blog which included the statement "You gotta work with what life offers you", and as obvious as that may sound, I think that is such a wonderfully profound encapsulation of the truth of any worthwhile path. We need to get rid of things in order to get to the gold, rather then adding more crap...so, it follows that disillusionment is a very essential part of the path, I think. (Along the way I think that we find that many of our unrealistic ideals are more burdensome then we ever could have possibly imagined, while, counter-intuitively, the "heavy" seeming stuff of everyday life as-it-is actually ends up affording us previously unimagined, profoundly refreshing spaciousness, once we jettison some of the hopes which we end up finding actually play a role of being oppressive burdens rather than "helpers"...)

Also, in one of Trungpa's books, which unfortunately, I don't have in front of me right now, he introduces an extended metaphor about how embarking upon the spiritual path is something like driving home to visit one's parents after being estranged from them for a long time (you can probably understand how such a metaphor was especially relevant to his students at the time who grew up as baby boomers, and as such, found themselves involved in an unprecedented generation gap situation)...anyhow, I am likely paraphrasing him in a clumsy fashion, but his point I think, was that it may not appear as being very glamorous in any sense, but nevertheless, it's a path that needs must be taken.

Most of the sources that most inspire me these days emphasize the necessity of confronting all of the messiness that is present in our psyches; the pain that resides in our unconscious and so forth. Such a task is not as "fun" as getting shakti blasts or lolling around in bliss-states, but it would seem to be a necessary part of any balanced, grounded realization. Mind you, I don't mean to promote a vision of the spiritual path which is constant drudgery and slogging through psychic muck; I think that the overall picture is vaster and more nuanced than that, but, nonetheless, I tend to believe that without attending to these difficult states of mind which we tend to resist, any subsequent realizations may be lacking in depth and grounding...

There may very well be "shortcuts" that can excuse us from delving into the "messy" feeling-tones which characterize our woundedness, but at this point I am skeptical of such approaches. Which is not to say that healing can't take place in dramatic leaps a

[mdpc]

[oops, looks like my post got cut off. I can't remember what exactly tied together that last paragraph, but I'll try it once more, anyhow]

There may very well be "shortcuts" that can excuse us from delving into the "messy" feeling-tones which characterize our woundedness, but at this point I am skeptical of such approaches. Which is not to say that healing can't take place in dramatic leaps and bounds, nor I am not advocating some grim version of the protestant work ethic in the service of spiritual practice; in fact, I think much of the sense of life being burdensome or oppressive comes from all of the energy that is accumulated in resisting approaching our woundedness...and additionally, when viewed from a more liberated vantage point, it becomes easy to see the desperate, frantic, grasping that characterizes most of our ideas of "happiness". Our conventional approaches to the pursuit of happiness, along with our spiritual materialistic approaches, play out as a grim, humorless affair, as we constantly battle against the conditioned-ness of the phenomena that appear before us (although we never even engage the appearances directly, but rather chase after them and clamp down on them and find ourselves engaged in push-and-pull with the subsequent mental fixations. How exhausting... )

I hope it doesn't seem like I am going on some preaching jag here. I'm just trying to sort out some musings here on paper, as it were...

[Elias]

I am fine with reposting stuff from the old forums. Quite a bit of it is worth saving for posterity, imho.

(The forum posts will probably be up for a couple days more, so there is still time to capture some of the better ones.)

regards,

Elias

[mdpc]

Okay, great, Elias. I obviously agree that there is a lot from the forums worth saving...

As I mentioned to crc above, I still have about a couple dozen or so more posts to add to the blog. Once I do that, I'm pretty sure that I will have grabbed a good deal of the stuff that I found particularly valuable. It's nice to know, though, that there are perhaps a couple more days left in which to sift through the forum.

As you mentioned yesterday, there are indeed a lot of funny posts/exchanges to be found therein. Had I more time, it would have been entertaining to compile the funniest, most "LOL" moments from the forum...

[marmalade]

I just visited your blog and left a bunch of comments. Its a very good selection of posts.

I'm glad to see some of the old lightmind living on in small sections...
...like little acorns that will one day grow to be mighty oaks...
...or something.LOL

[mdpc]

Hey, thanks, marmalade. I just responded in turn to the first couple of your comments...which were excellent, by the way! In fact, I heartily recommend that others check 'em out, if they feel so inspired. I want to respond to a few of your other comments, as well, and will do so tomorrow.

I'm glad to hear that you've enjoyed reading the stuff there. I can say with absolute sincerity that it's been a labor of love. The forums have been very good to me; to say the least, I feel like I owe quite a lot in turn!

Incidentally, to anyone else who happens to read this, there are 72 posts there now, currently...there are certainly more that I could add, but I may stop there for now. I would like to concentrate on experimenting with the look/overall readability of the blog, as well as adding some other content...