Maxine Walden: hi, Pema
Maxine Walden: had an interesting thing to mention if there is time
Pema Pera: of course there is!
Pema Pera: I’m all ears
Maxine Walden: well, this morning I had a dream which spoke to some things
Pema Pera: don’t you want to sit down ;>)
Maxine Walden: that have been a quandry to me…there I am floating again
Pema Pera: yes?
Maxine Walden: yes, now that I am sitting
Maxine Walden: had this dream of my being at a meeting to give a paper
Maxine Walden: along with two colleagues of mine who were also to speak
Maxine Walden: each of them seemed very organized and I felt I was not
Maxine Walden: and then there was this hummingbird which seemed to be just in the middle of the scene, I could not relate it to anything else in the dream
Maxine Walden: I understood the dream a couple of ways: one is that since we met in Princeton I seem to have begun the PaB
Maxine Walden: even before April 1, and in so doing my thinking is evolveing
Maxine Walden: evolving all the time. So that recently I was to discuss a paper by a very traditional person in my field and my discussion kept changing in my mind so that what I spoke to was only a few hours old, and indeed I had not connected all the dots in my response to his paper. I felt a little odd, out of place, because I have been considered to have thought deeply and for a long time about the topic he was speaking about.
Maxine Walden: the others spoke from traditional positions. So there is that loneliness again. Oh, the hummingbird…
Maxine Walden: my husband who knows computers very well has been helping me to get a program which will coordinate files from the several computers I use and the most recent program uses a hummingbird as its logo: sugarsync is the name of it. I think that the hummingbird somehow fits into the dream as a king of link between these evolving points of view…something like that.
Pema Pera: I love the freshness of you coming up with a new interpretation, a new angle, for an established approach!
Maxine Walden: another interesting bit: having to do with time, perhaps: and the confusion of time for me recently. I cam on line at 10am this morning, having forgotten that this session was set for 1pm. I was midway between 7 and 1. But way off base in terms of our connection.
Maxine Walden: oh, thanks for the freshness comment. Sometimes I am not sure
Pema Pera: What we are doing here is very much about freshness, spontaneity. Both in the 9-sec intervals, in which we are invited and encouraged to utter words that are utterly spontaneous ;>) — and also during these meetings in thetea house.
Pema Pera: yes, time can be confusing, for me too, now in another time zone.
We then switched to the notion of time, which we had talked about earlier.
Pema Pera: Yesterday you talked about envelope of time
Pema Pera: Can you come back to that?
Maxine Walden: yes, I am very interested in that. For some time I have been aware
Maxine Walden: that time can be a kind of envelope, such as a way to orient, organize the events of the day. But more recently my experience of time has been different:
Maxine Walden: I have found that when my attention is focussed and I am deeply involved in something then I lost track of time and the hours just fly by; it is as there really is not time dimension
Maxine Walden: .It is interesting to think that the quality of attention may alt6er the experience of time and thus the ?existence? of time. This is not quite answering the envelope of time issue..at least yet
Pema Pera: oh, yes, time can be very fluid
Pema Pera: I think that our way of working with past-present-future time is just one out of many . . .
Pema Pera: . . . and we can learn to deal with time differently
Pema Pera: . . . or let it deal with us differently
Maxine Walden: I would be interested to hear more
Pema Pera: well . . .
Pema Pera: sometimes the traditions talk about a fourth time
Pema Pera: different from any of the three traditional ones
Pema Pera: If you drop past
Pema Pera: and future
Pema Pera: you can learn to live more in the present
Pema Pera: but then . . . .
Pema Pera: . . . surprise surprise . . . .
Pema Pera: . . . .you can learn to drop the present as well
Maxine Walden: oh, yes. I think I know about dropping the past (without memory) and the future (without desire [to make things occur a certain way[) but dropping the present is an interesting maybe new thought because I have considered that the only things we really have is the moment, this very moment and then the next etc. But you are suggesting something different about the present…does it become more universal?
Pema Pera: well, to talk about it is very tricky, since it means using words in different ways than we normally do
Pema Pera: so we have to recycle the wors
Pema Pera: *words
Pema Pera: letting them point to something quite different than they normally do
Maxine Walden: and I am aware that my question may be getting to intellectural
Pema Pera: no no no
Maxine Walden: away from direct experience
Pema Pera: it is essential to question
Pema Pera: but yes, experiential base is essential too
Pema Pera: both
Maxine Walden: it seems I am always questioning but trying more to privilege experiennce
Pema Pera: so one way to talk about what we are trying to do in those 9 seconds is to enter the fourth time
Pema Pera: or let the fourth time show itself, really
Pema Pera: questioning can lead to more experience and in turn to more questioning, etc.
Maxine Walden: the 4th time being opening to the wider reality?
Pema Pera: in some sense . . .
Pema Pera: There are two ways to talk about it
Pema Pera: From our 3-time based side
Pema Pera: and from the 4th time side
Pema Pera: From our side it looks like reaching, finding, realizing, finding openings
Pema Pera: but from the other side it makes no difference:
Pema Pera: we are there already, and we are not we, not at all the we we think we are
Maxine Walden: you have been speaking about this regularly since PaB began…and I seem to circle around and glimpse it from different angles…then
Maxine Walden: maybe lose the 4th side as it were to come at it again.
Maxine Walden: Wonder whether the slight disorientation in time is linked with these explorations
Pema Pera: It is all connected. Play as Being can only really happen in fourth time — but then again, what we consider the three times is already part of the fourth time, from Being’s point of view — which is of course not a point and not a view, hahaha, words are silly here, and yet they can point (a bit).
Maxine Walden: as if my envolope of time is an envelope that I have ‘created’ around this 4th sense
We came back to the notion of flow.
Pema Pera: You mentioned “then I lost track of time and the hours just fly by; it is as there really is not time dimension”
Pema Pera: I think that may point to it
Pema Pera: when we are in a sense of flow
Pema Pera: there is not the point like sense of present as in between long stretching out past and future . . . it is more dynamic . . .
Pema Pera: More like where eternity can be felt, to use a big word (^^)
Maxine Walden: that makes sense to me…the notion of flow, of an ongoing dynamism…which must, however, be unusual to common sense as it keeps slipping from mind.. (but just see your last comment) and I do agree that when there is that sense of ‘flow’ a kind of enveloping flow
Maxine Walden: then a sense of being linked with eternity may be possilbe
Pema Pera: so the 9 seconds may surprise us . . . .
Pema Pera: may show eternity . . . .
Maxine Walden: isn’t that at interesting thought
Pema Pera: try it, you’ll like it (^_^)
Maxine Walden: it is also something we may be afraid of, however…
Maxine Walden: because it opens to the unknown and that is not always comfortable…
Maxine Walden: it may come back to what limits us, our need to feel in a familiar ‘environment’ you know ‘my tribe’ or ‘my truth’
Pema Pera: of course
Pema Pera: that’s one reason to have this support group
Pema Pera: to meet several times a day
Maxine Walden: yes, I can see the value of that and your remarkable dedication in meeting the several times
Pema Pera: and the remarkable involvement of you and other regulars!
Maxine Walden: when I came to Princeton to talk with you, I had not been really able to articulate
Maxine Walden: my hope or wish; to become involved in new ways of thinking…
Maxine Walden: beyond the ‘truths’ of my discipline. Hoping to link with other thoughtful minds…
Pema Pera: well, this is the place (^^)
Maxine Walden: and I must say I feel yes, there is more here than I had dreamed of…
Pema Pera: great timing from your side ^^
Pema Pera: especially since you announced your visit half a year in advance, haha
Pema Pera: and you’re dreaming quite well!
Maxine Walden: yes, I did, didn’t I; guess I was looking for awhile
Maxine Walden: you know, it is interesting about the dreams
Maxine Walden: I am aware of more informing dreams since we have been working at PaB
Maxine Walden: and while there is not way to really discern the truth about the dreaming process
Maxine Walden: my personal experience is that when I am truly involved in creative endeavors
Maxine Walden: that the dreaming comes alive as it were, as if there really is an active ‘agent’ in the unconscious regions
Pema Pera: the muses of the Greek . . .
Maxine Walden: fabricating the dreams which seem to bring in symbolic form the products of unconscious thought and mentation
Pema Pera: and other external influences in all cultures, except ours these days, it seems
Pema Pera: we now call in unconscious
Pema Pera: and try to locate it in the brain
Pema Pera: measuring it desperately ;>)
Pema Pera: trying to
Pema Pera: funny culture we live in
Maxine Walden: maybe so…I suppose my interest in the unconscious derives from my discipline which would like to ‘think’ of itself as studying the unconscious. But that may again
Maxine Walden: be a way to try to stake a claim, ‘my territory’. More recently it just feels important to experience the fruits of ‘that region’ wherever, whatever it may be…
Pema Pera: oh, the term “unconscious” is fine, and in its own way accurate, and studying it is fascinating — it is just the limiting interpretations (in the body, in the head, in the brain) that unnecessarily narrow it.
Maxine Walden: please say more
Pema Pera: the nice thing of considering muses or whatever outside influences is that it takes some of the burden off of our individual lives
Pema Pera: we don’t have to carry it all on our shoulders — on our brains these days :)
Maxine Walden: yes, the ancient Greeks and others with ‘outside
At this point Kiremimi joined us.
Pema Pera: Hi Kiremimi!
Maxine Walden: gods ‘ seemed to acknowledge that
Pema Pera: please make yourself comfortable here
Pema Pera: Maxine, this Kiremimi — my wife in RL
Maxine Walden: hello, kiremimi, nice to meet you
Maxine Walden: very nice to meet you
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: Hi, nice to see you too,
Pema Pera: One problem with this notion of it all being inside
Pema Pera: it the idea of “genius”
Pema Pera: I believed it was introduced in 19th century Germany
Pema Pera: Calling someone a genius is putting a terrible burden on her/his shoulders
Maxine Walden: oh, have not thought about that in awhile. You mean, what a genius, he knows so much…
Pema Pera: But letting the person be inspired by muses, well, much easier to deal with!
Pema Pera: And muses come and go
Pema Pera: no sweat
Pema Pera: expectations can easily kill creativity
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, the poets’ inspiration, etc…isn’t that the truth, the pressure of expectations
Pema Pera: Kiremimi, we talked about Genji Monogatari, and jealousy there, and how they portrayed it as spirits rather than unconsciousness
Pema Pera: how do you see the connection there with the modern western way of using the term unconsciousness?
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: Oh, i see. Maxine also read Genji?
Pema Pera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tale_of_genji
Maxine Walden: No, I am not well read in Eastern literature or philosophy, I am sorry, but would love to hear your thoughts. Oh, thanks I will look at that wikipedia article
Maxine Walden: I tend to think of passions in ways others may speak of spirits
Maxine Walden: jealousy is a very powerful experience in which one can feel gripped by something from outside…
Pema Pera: Perhaps Kiremimi is having difficulty with her computer connection . . .
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: sorry it is very slow
Maxine Walden: the spirits of the computer…
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: Do you study jealousy
Maxine Walden: yes, I study jealousy, envy, many states of mind, which grip us, some of which inform us. It seems that there are different mental realms, primitive feelings and then thought, which is much more recent in the course of human history. At least that is what my current way of seeing things…I practice and study in the field of psychoanalysis, which actually has many perspectives…it is such a treat to be able to come and learn what others think, how they think, and to try to learn…
Maxine Walden: I will need to go soon, and hope to learn more from you, Kiremimi.
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: emotion is highly culture specific
Maxine Walden: now that is something I would love to hear more about. Could you say more?
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: what we consider negative emotion can be understood as positive in a different culture
Maxine Walden: can you give an example?
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: Jelousy in a female culture in japan is not necessarily too negative.
Maxine Walden: please say more
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: or at least the expression of that can be considered attractive
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: In the literature of genji that pema talked about
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: it is written in two different ways.
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: the princess who could not express her strong love=jelousy to her husband
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: in the context of poligamy lost control of her self and her detached spirit possessed and killed
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: the other women
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: However, it was not necessarily all written in a moralistic way, but a natural consequence of
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: surpressions.
Maxine Walden: oh, my, this is so interesting. I believe you are talking about the value of expression of emotions, and the consequence of non expressions. Do I understand you correctly?
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: In western philosophical traditions, dualism between emotion and pure reasons
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: that the latter considered superior exists
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: Hence, at least, it seems that
Maxine Walden: Yes, such dualism is so unfortunate in terms of one being valued and the other un-valued…
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: the expression of a certain emtoion can be more controlled even though it exists anyway!
Maxine Walden: I am afraid I must go; so nice to meet you and hope we can talk some more. I would be very interested to hear more from you, as indeed my only perspective has been the western one.
Pema Pera: Maxine, if at some point you would like to get a few more different clothes, Kiremimi can help you point to stores here in SL, or you can go shopping together — one of the things people do here in SL.
Pema Pera: another opportunity to chat
Kiremimi Tigerpaw: I hope to see you soon!
Maxine Walden: That would be very interesting. I would like to do that.
Maxine Walden: Yes, hope to see you soon. Goodbye for now
Pema Pera: bye Maxine!
