Posted on May 14th, 2008
by 
Clifton
Being there to watch my son grow up and florish.
Outside of that, making an authentic, soulful connection with another human being. Like I sometimes do when sharing my recovery with another teachable addict in the NA fellowship.
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Posted on May 14th, 2008
by Clifton
Words. And I am especially good at helping other people find the right words they need to express themselves.
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
The...terror that scarces us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
But why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you contradict yourself; what then?
It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarely even in acts of pure memory, but bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Diety; yet when the devout motions of soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color.
Leave your theory, and flee.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
"Going back," or "getting back," etc. This is a nostalgia trip. There is no such thing. You can't go back to the way things were in the beginning because things were in fact not the way you so fondly regard them now. This is ultimately a matter of imagination. You want to "go back" simply because "back then" is not "right now," and you are uncomfortable right now. Perhaps you don't want to bear the anxiety or complexity of this moment, of the particular-and I might also say peculiar-constellation of challenges before you.
Nevertheless, there is no going back to the way things never were. This is not necessarily an indication that you have stopped doing something vital to your recovery and, as such, an indiscriminate reversion to kindergarten remedies for graduate school problems is not wise. There may be wisdom in simplicity but there is also a sublety that perhaps wasn't there before. Explore what may be gained by looking at the simple and the subtle at the same time until perhaps a third way emerges, as Thomas Moore favors. Live the problems now, live the questions now, as Ranier Maria Rilke urges. It is precarious to straddle a bubble, to endure the tension of ambivalence, uncertainty, ambiguity, but that is what much of life is. That we exist despite is the enduring miracle; in fact we may even define ourselves by that which we exist despite. Any day above ground counts as a good day.
--Clifton
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
Ego has a vested interest in problems because it gives it something to do, a reason to exist, another reason to make us believe it is necessary. It's an endless loop, with ego creating problems, then convincing you that you need ego to solve them. Pretty soon, you are consumed with your problems and all your frentic, fruitless attempts to think your way out of them.
Ego's drug of choice is more, more of itself (never less). But as no less than Albert Einstein observed, we cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking with which we created them. Obsess and panic though we will, none of this touches the reality of anything. As is often observed, things tend to take care of themselves, water finds its own level, etc., but it is less commonly noted that maybe this is so because there never was an actual problem in the first place, that it was all perhaps a construction of the mind.
Meanwhile we have wasted countless hours and mounted heroic attempts responding to what amounts ultimately to nothing. This is not to bemoan and bewail the waste incurred, but more to point out the distraction from reality, the obstruction of a direct relationship to life. Per Andrew Cohen, we take ourselves seriously for the wrong reasons. A non-dual view would say that having a direct relation to life, our impact upon it is enormous, incalculable, vital, and that is a real reason to take ourselves seriously.
--Clifton
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
We can have a lot invested in who we think we are. Having said that, who is it that makes the investment? Some other part of us, some other part than identity itself. Fact is, we appropriate identity, we identify with.
Ego makes the investment. We live from ego, we think it is who we are. We are alienated from a direct experience of life, of simply being. Ego tells us we need to become something and seeks to do so by adding to: postures, affectations, second guessing, insecurities. Ego favors pat explanations, pet phrases, and frozen perceptions which keep us from having to move any further in reflection, anything to keep us from what liberation may be had in the "thousand-eyed present."
So when challenged about who we are, we may balk. Perhaps we're wrong! But the panic we feel is only ego screaming and shrinking like the Wicked Witch of the West; she was never really real and neither is ego. Whatever's left to watch her dissolve into a puddle of blackness is the authentic you.
--Clifton
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Posted on May 19th, 2008
by Clifton
We meditate to practice being, to be what we already are. We sit silently, perhaps with our eyes closed, relaxed and yet paying attention. We may try to concentrate or direct our thought, or we may not. We may be distracted, by our bodies, by our environment, by our obsessions, fears and insecurities. We may watch them. We may watch them arise and die their own death. Approach meditation without qualification, without conditions, without expectations, and you will come to know what has prevailed-what is, despite everything. And that "is" is what is prerequisite to everything, all creation, all awareness, all being, all assumption, all conception, all perception. You may imagine or see yourself being. Anything and everything that can happen in life can happen in meditation, because life is consciousness, consciousness is of the mind, of the imagination, and we seek to liberate it, we seek to de-qualify it. We seek pure being. We seek to settle into what we truly are, an entirely unfettered locus of perceptions. Certain mystical traditions hold that it is all ultimately the "play of the Lord."
--Clifton
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