Joy of Being

From: Joy of Being - April 10

Foreword: just 10 days since the start of PaB. Pema was glad he already got a chance to elaborate the notion of Being.

. . .
Maxine Walden: It may be that I do not discern well between fatigue the natural product of concentrated effort and other inner quietness which might be experienced as loneliness.
Pema Pera: There can be many many reasons . . .
Pema Pera: but the best reaction may be to just watch
Pema Pera: as I’m sure you do
Pema Pera: taste the feelings and watch them and see what happens
Pema Pera: while being grateful for them all
Pema Pera: when we become more open and let our defenses down further, we sometimes feel kind of nostalgic for those defenses ;) that may be one reason to feel a bit lonely, but there can be many others
Pema Pera: we are trading in self for Being
Pema Pera: giving up something that you thought you had is certainly a good reason to feel some loneliness at first!
Pema Pera: yes, and then Being smiles at us and we notice it, and we smile about our own reactions . . .
Maxine Walden: yes, as if I have given up a familiar part of myself…and as you say we then see our reactions from a different perspective

Maxine Walden: I do like your sense of Being smiling, reacting (not a good choice of words) to us, but as a separate and interacting presence
Pema Pera: reacting, responding, sure, Being is dynamic!
Pema Pera: beyond static and dynamic, if we use our terms, a kind of deeper dynamic sense, impossible to put into words
Maxine Walden: Isn’t that a remarkable concept…would be easy to slip into a sense of a God, but may be more intriguing right now to think of an interaction in a kind of mirroring way, but that does not capture the sense of Being not being just a projection
Pema Pera: no words capture it!
Pema Pera: But it can capture us
Pema Pera: has already captured us
Pema Pera: it being Being

And we tried to use words to point to the joy of Being:

Maxine Walden: How do you envision that? Being being active or..and we aligning ourselves to receive or resonante with it (Being)?
Pema Pera: yes for the latter, as for the former, that is hard to picture for us in our usual conceptual ways . . .
Maxine Walden: Interested in that question, but also just noting perhaps in a musing way that lately when I have been practicing PaB and am also in my consultative role, that I have more available to provide my patients, by which I mean that my scope of presence and potential understanding seems more spacious…not finding satisfying ways to express what I think is enhanced inner space
Pema Pera: yes that is so important — an essential part!
Pema Pera: The point is that Being is playing us, already
Pema Pera: So the more we acknowledge that the less we step in the way
Pema Pera: and the more Being can let us be spontaneous and natural
Pema Pera: normally we think that we are in control and we try to reach, manipulate, “do” everything ourselves
Pema Pera: but when we realize that we can simply let Being be . . .
Pema Pera: .. . then everything changes.
Pema Pera: All religious utterances ultimately come from this
Maxine Walden: could it be that when we become more resonant with Being..oh, from your last statements I am thinking that the more we allow the potential Being in us to sculpt the inner experience…something like that?
Pema Pera: more than that
Pema Pera: difficult to use words
Pema Pera: Being sculpting something is already using a split between subject and object, Being as doer and what it sculpts as object
Pema Pera: But in fact Being is everything everywhere already always
Pema Pera: and it takes a while for us to come to terms with that
Pema Pera: but when we do
Pema Pera: a truly marvelous sense of realization begins to open
Pema Pera: and unfold
Pema Pera: and unfold
Pema Pera: and unfold . . . .

Maxine Walden: right, but maybe we are nudging toward our openning ourselves to the potential Being which resides dormant until/unless we open to it.. reminded of the Implicate Order (Bohm)
Pema Pera: more than that
Maxine Walden: more…?
Pema Pera: Being is never dormant ;>)
Pema Pera: Being is also playing us having the sense that Being may be dormant ;>)
Pema Pera: or think we become more open to it
Pema Pera: before we open to it
Pema Pera: IT is us already
Maxine Walden: so It is always here, us, and we may just be unaware of it, maybe fighting it unconsiously as if we feel we need to be in charge, not letting it clothe us, so to speak
Pema Pera: the truly shocking thing is: there is nothing to open to — we don’t have to open — we cannot open — we are hopeless and helpless . . . . . .
Pema Pera: . . . . no hope . . . no help . . . . because none of that is needed, it would only be a distraction, seducing us away from what we alreay Are!

There are so many powerful words we can borrow from various cultures: grace in Christianity, wu-wei in Taoism, openness or emptiness in Buddhism:

Maxine Walden: Your mentioning it helped me to see that I was getting twisted in a knot because I could not easily ‘envision’ this simple truth, perhaps because it is so simple
Pema Pera: whenever we are glad and greatful for what is called variously — grace in Christianity for example — our first reaction is . . . and let me put it in Christian terms just to translate it to our culture:
Pema Pera: “thank you, God, that is wonderful! Now let me help you!”
Pema Pera: and then our help tends to screw up everything (^_^)
Maxine Walden: yes, as if we can ‘help’ Being, rather than just receive and resonate…something like that?
Pema Pera: yes!
Pema Pera: the only way we can `help’ Being is to Be ourselves
Maxine Walden: And to recognize our being ourselves is sufficient, but as you say, more than that, as it then allows us to experience the unfolding, unfolding…
Pema Pera: and to Be ourselves is very very different from to be ourselves, the way we normally use that phrase — which is the reason to put the clumsy capital B in Be.
Pema Pera: We can Be in whatever we do
Pema Pera: and that way all our doing becomes a non-doing
Pema Pera: wu-wei in Chinese
Pema Pera: core point of Taoism
Maxine Walden: the non-doing of Being?
Pema Pera: non-doing as in non-friction
Pema Pera: non-forcing
Pema Pera: stopping
Maxine Walden: relating to doing not in a ‘get it done’ way but as part of the flow of Being?
Pema Pera: yes, no goal-oriented doing-in-order-to but simply doing
Pema Pera: all very very paradoxical
Pema Pera: and that way you can reach your goals much better
Pema Pera: just Being means just doing
Pema Pera: no future and no past
Pema Pera: AND NO PRESENCE
Pema Pera: *PRESENT
Pema Pera: oops
Pema Pera: presence, yes, but no present as a point in time
Pema Pera: I’d better learn to spell before YELLING lol
Maxine Walden: yes, I think I am getting it, presence but not in a pointed self-conscious way.
Pema Pera: yes, and it will grow on you
Pema Pera: at first it feels like a form of cultivation
Pema Pera: and then more and more just a flow
Pema Pera: just what is
Pema Pera: nothing needing to be done
Pema Pera: not even cultivating . . . .
Pema Pera: but I’m speaking about what is happening to myself as well as to you and to anyone; I don’t want to be presumptious in any way! Pema-the-avator or Piet-the-typist or Maxine or anyone, we all are playing these very limited roles, and in that sense I am terribly limited too — so don’t take anything Pema/Piet says for granted (^_^) ; but at the same time we all Are, we all Are already, already part of Being.
Maxine Walden: I think I understand, to be open to your experience and to learn from that but also open to my own experience and and being….I lose track of time in these meetings. I had better go, sort of like the trappings of schedule and RL, but very grateful for this time. I hope to be here tomorrow at this time, but will then have only 30 minutes due to an early appointment
Pema Pera: fine, Maxine, any time, and as long as you have time!

Pema Pera: I am also enjoying these meetings and exchanges tremendously
Pema Pera: It is this kind of conversation that I had hoped would present itself here
Pema Pera: and I’m delighted to see this coming out already so quickly, just a week after we got started!
Maxine Walden: these are wonderful experiences, Pema, very grateful for them and so glad that they are mutually enriching. Just to say this something I have also been looking for probably my whole life. Thanks for the opportunity.
Pema Pera: well, me too, seriously!
Maxine Walden: Wonderful! See you tomorrow
Pema Pera: I have started so many groups, in RL, or as email groups, etc etc
Pema Pera: This feels much more complete and workable than anything I’ve tried before.
Pema Pera: okay, thanks for stopping by, and c u !
Maxine Walden: how interesting, more dimensional in some way perhaps?
Pema Pera: I have many thoughts about that, at least half a dozen reasons!
Pema Pera: some other time we can discuss.
Pema Pera: bye!
Maxine Walden: Right, some other time…bye