Maxine arrived at the tea house once again exactly at the hour.
Maxine Walden: hi, Pema
Pema Pera: Hi Maxine!
Maxine Walden: You must be getting ready to go to Japan
Maxine Walden: or your ‘other’ is…
Pema Pera: haha
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: Pema will stay here, he doesn’t care
Pema Pera: but his typist will fly on Sunday
Maxine Walden: right, I just thought that as I was writing…his typist! yes
Pema Pera: I’m so glad that you and the orther “guardians” will take over the tea house for the afternoons starting next week!
Maxine Walden: it will be pleasure, maybe a new and deepening experience.
Pema Pera: oh, yes, I’m sure!
Pema Pera: his animator would be another term than typist
Pema Pera: anima or soul, how would you express that in your field?
Maxine Walden: I am trying to think…the Jungian analysts I know surely say ‘anima’
Maxine Walden: and what do I currently think of? Interesting, I think currently I think of a deeper and deeper self slowly revealed with exploration. Not sure I have a specific term that I use…
Maxine Walden: though for the Sunday talk it seems that I am thinking of our deeper connectedness being linked with the products of a compassionate mind.
Maxine Walden: Long answer to a probably short question…
Maxine was refering to a talk she will give in Quaq’s WoK Forums this coming Sunday. While she was talking, Sky walked in. After that, Maxine asked about saving text chat logs, because she will be one of the `guardians’ who will lead the afternoon sessions while I am in Japan. Those session leaders will use the logs to provide their own narrative and quotations, to appear afterward in this blog.
Maxine Walden: my emotional self has no problem with the notion of ’soul’, no problem at all
Maxine Walden: so I guess in this paragraph of thought I am realizing I have different selves at work
Pema Pera: Hi Sky!
Pema Pera: Love that simple sounding sentence “Hi Sky!”
Maxine Walden: may I just ask a mudane question? How to preserve and send to you the transcripts?
Maxine Walden: Hi, sky
Sky Szimmer: hey there pmea
Pema Pera: ah, yes
Sky Szimmer: hi maxine
Pema Pera: go to edit->preferences
Maxine Walden: good to see you
Pema Pera: then click on Communication
Maxine Walden: right
Sky Szimmer: likewise :)
Pema Pera: and basically you can click all the white option boxes to show the little v-like tick mark, except the first one. That’s how I have done it, at least. I keep the top one blank (profile online status, no need to for me to hide) and I click all the other options.
Maxine Walden: ok, all the other options…
Sky Szimmer: then it records automatically?
Sky Szimmer: pema?
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: from the moment that you click those
Pema Pera: everything will be recorded
Pema Pera: and the files will grow
Pema Pera: with each session
Sky Szimmer: how do i retrieve it?
Pema Pera: one chatlog file
Pema Pera: and one file for each person with whom you’ve ever done IM
Pema Pera: Sky
Pema Pera: you find it in the path given on that page.
Pema Pera: There is a default, which I just keep, it is a good place
Sky Szimmer: Yes. ok.
Pema Pera: but if you want you can change the default
Sky and Maxine asked further about the details.
Maxine Walden: do we then just leave the chatlog as is, or send it to you after each session?
Pema Pera: So Maxine, when you want to send me a session, you can just cut and past the part that you want to send out of that chat.txt file, as it is called
Pema Pera: you may not want to send me the text of everything you’ve ever said to anyone in SL (^_^)
Sky Szimmer: you will then upload
Pema Pera: yes
Sky Szimmer: to your blog
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: at some point in the future I can show you all how to do that
Pema Pera: but for now
Pema Pera: let us take one step at a time ;>)
Sky Szimmer: via email. i presume
Maxine Walden: cut and paste and send it to you via your email or your blog?
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: via email
Pema Pera: Sky, thank you too for taking up the guardian role!
Pema Pera: I very much appreciate it
Sky Szimmer: i hope it works out
Pema Pera: I’m sure it will
Sky Szimmer: my time is no longer my own
Maxine Walden: seems to me it will work out in some way, we think we know, but it may take interesting turns, etc…’playing’ with us
Pema Pera: Sky, if something comes in between, say in the last half hour or so, it would be great if you could log into SL and send a few IMs to people who are most likely to be around
Sky Szimmer: how to im
I then showed them how to make “friends” with someone in SL.
Pema Pera: it would be good if all of us would befriend each other
Pema Pera: Sky, if you click on “contacts” in the “communicate” window
Pema Pera: you see a label “friends” on top
Pema Pera: click on that and you will see my name in the list
Pema Pera: left click on my name to highlight it
Sky Szimmer: only your name shows
Sky Szimmer: that will be a prob : )
Pema Pera: you need to make more friends, Sky ;>)
Sky Szimmer: : )
Pema Pera: then click on “IM/Call” to the top right in that window
Maxine Walden: yes…also if we have to go while others are still talking…do we have to ’save’ the chat before we leave the session or can we come back later to retrieve it?
Pema Pera: Do you want to try right now?
Sky Szimmer: how to add friends to that
Maxine Walden: Sky, I would like to send you friendship if Pema will tell me how to do it. I am new to this too.
Pema Pera: Sky, please click on Maxine’s avatar, right click and choose profile
Sky Szimmer: please
Pema Pera: yes, Maxine
Pema Pera: thanks!
Pema Pera: one of you clicks on the other’s profile
Pema Pera: than on “add friend”
Maxine Walden: just done
Pema Pera: when the other agrees
Pema Pera: you have a done deal ;>)
Sky Szimmer: ah
Maxine Walden: now Sky I will click on you and add you to my friend list
Maxine Walden: Pema, I went to ‘add friend’ after clicking on Sky’s avatar and could not get it to take.
Pema Pera: Did either of you offer friendship to the other yet?
Pema Pera: there may be lag
Maxine Walden: I think Sky offered friendship to me; how did you do that, Sky?
Sky Szimmer: i did
Sky Szimmer: it took
Sky Szimmer: you have to click on add friends
Maxine Walden: please tell me what you did…ok will try again
Maxine Walden: still having trouble, the ‘add friend’ button does not seem active when I go to ‘profile’
Sky Szimmer: i am not sure why it isn’t working for you maxine
Maxine Walden: well, I will try to look at that later, but now we are friends
Sky Szimmer: yes! : )
Pema Pera: wonderful!
I am including these parts of our conversation too, for various reasons. For one, it may help readers who are relatively new to SL. For another, it shows how we can all help each other to learn new tricks, on a daily basis. I know from experience that I can feel clumsy seemingly bumbling around while trying to find instructions, but I quickly learned that we all have that same experience, and we shouldn’t worry about that. Never hesitate to ask friends for help to get up to speed in SL, since that is the fastest way. And whatever you learn you can then teach others, helping them along in turn.
Maxine Walden: Pema, do we need to save and send the transcript before we leave the session, such as maybe while it is still going, and we have to leave before others are through, or can we come back and retrieve it later?
Pema Pera: no, Maxine, when you log out, the log stops.
Pema Pera: So there are three options:
Pema Pera: One is to leave your computer running, telling the others you will leave, so your avatar will still be there, but lifeless, so to speak, but still recording.
Pema Pera: Two is to leave but ask someone else to record and set the log to me
Pema Pera: Three is to just leave and not have the rest of the recording. I prefer 1 or 2, but if 3 happens it will not be the end of the world ;>)
Pema Pera: So, Sky, you now see two names in your friends list?
Maxine Walden: and if I have to go to another meeting which requires my computer, may I just minimize the Second Life and come back to it later?
Sky Szimmer: that seems like it’d work
Pema Pera: maxine, no need to save
Pema Pera: each time you type a sentence it will be added to the file automatically
Maxine Walden: a bit of uncertainty….maybe I will try to save and send the transcript before I go each time, just for security…
Maxine Walden: but I might try an experiment re minimizing and returning just to see if that works; you know a bit more ’science’
Pema Pera: great idea, Maxine!
Pema Pera: I think it would work but always good to try!
Pema Pera: You see, we are all teachers
Maxine Walden: …testing the hypothesis, don’t you know
Pema Pera: you can teach me whether that would work
Pema Pera: since I don’t know ;>)
Maxine Walden: my experience may be the teacher…
Maxine Walden: for each of us…
Pema Pera: yes, and we share experiences here . . .
Maxine Walden: precisely
After these technical digressions, I went back to our earlier discussion.
Pema Pera: . . . if I could come back for a moment to the notion of soul that we talked about
Pema Pera: Sky, this was just before you came in
Maxine Walden: oh, yes, please do
Pema Pera: I see three levels of looking at reality
Pema Pera: the physical level of atoms and molecules and physics and biology and all that
Pema Pera: then another level, if we want to call that, which pertains to mind and soul and chi/prana/energy and all that is related to that
Pema Pera: and then an ultimate way of looking at reality, which I like to point to with the word Being
Sky Szimmer: pema
Pema Pera: This trinity is a natural division that can be found in most religions and spiritual contemplative approaches
Pema Pera: yes, Sky?
Sky Szimmer: how have you become seemingly so stablized in the 3rd view
Pema Pera: well . . . the short answer is:
Sky Szimmer: does your view stay in the 3rd realm or does it jump between the three?
Pema Pera: 37 years of longing, learning, lingering, loving, loathing at times, and finally leaving, leaving my objections and dropping them — how’s that (^_^)
Sky Szimmer: : )
Maxine Walden: Wow, a complex autobiography in a few significant words…
Sky Szimmer: so does your view stay in the 3rd realm or does it jump between the three?
Pema Pera: that’s what I like about dialogue! No time to come up with fancy constructs, just straight for the heart, gut, whatever
Pema Pera: all three Sky, but informed by and grounded in the third
Pema Pera: So in Christianity we talk about the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Son
Pema Pera: So in Buddhism we talk about Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya
Maxine Walden: yes…and it sounds like you feel something rather specific, 37 yrs ago, began the sojourn
Pema Pera: in a way, yes, Maxine, that’s when I started experimenting with meditation, at age 17 — oops 38 years ago, correction ;>)
Sky Szimmer: if you don’t mind, I like to ask about playing the being with more abandonment
Sky Szimmer: something you touched on the other day but didn’t elaborate
Sky Szimmer: why when we are playing a being, can we play it more fully?
Sky Szimmer: where is the freedom in that?
I was delighted to see the topic circling back to Being, the key notion in our Play as Being approach.
Pema Pera: Thanks, Sky, for asking!
Pema Pera: That is an essentail point
Pema Pera: So to get the terminology straight:
Sky Szimmer: by all means. i am a lousy recorder
Pema Pera: The capital B Being term I use to point, however clumsily with words, to what is way beyond words, way beyond the notion of individual beings, beyond individuality and collectiveness, beyond any and all polarities, dualities, dichotomies
Sky Szimmer: yes…
Pema Pera: and “being” I use in the ordinary ways
Pema Pera: so we are three human beings in RL
Pema Pera: and in a way we are beings here as avatars
Sky Szimmer: also in RL, I presume
Pema Pera: I would like to come back to the human being - avatar connection, but that’s an other conversation
Pema Pera: one thing at a time for now :>)
Sky Szimmer: please con’t
Pema Pera: So I can look at myself and say “I am a human being”
Pema Pera: and I can also say “I am” or even more accurately “am” or “be” or “is” but I would prefer to use capitals, Am, Be, Is (or for good measure AM, BE, IS :>)
Pema Pera: so the second option drops “human being” and “I’ leaving only the Being part
Pema Pera: this is the switch from the bottom to the top level, if you want — all in very rough terms, only as approximations, I’m giving the overview of reality 101 here (^_^)
Maxine Walden: dropping the ’subject’ and emphasizing the verb of continuity
Pema Pera: So about role playing and freedom and direct expressiveness and responsibilty — yes, Maxine indeed — let me take one metaphor
I thought about an analogy.
Pema Pera: Take a stage player playing the role of a Queen, say, in a stage play.
Pema Pera: The player may say “I am Maxine” if you would be the player, Maxine
Maxine Walden: OK
Pema Pera: The player may also say “I am the Queen”
Pema Pera: both would be fully true, but in a different context
Pema Pera: I am Pema here
Pema Pera: I am Piet in RL
Pema Pera: and I am also part of what Being presents and not different from Being
Pema Pera: but let us get back to Maxine playing Queen
Maxine Walden: (oh, yes, always wanted to play the Queen)
Maxine Walden accepted your inventory offer.
Pema Pera: oh, yesterday Storm gave me a crown, haha
Pema Pera: because I had become a land barron
Pema Pera: here is a copy of my crown Maxine
Maxine Walden: now that I have a crown, I must be a Queen! (I say in my imagination)
Pema Pera: do you know how to wear it?
Pema Pera: go into inventory
Maxine Walden: no, I don’t
Maxine Walden: oh, where is inventory”
Pema Pera: bottom down
Sky Szimmer: bottom right
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: sorry
Pema Pera: open it and type “crown” in the white bar on top
Pema Pera: then left click on the line with “crown” to highlight it
This turned out to be a bit more complex so I will skip some of the inventory details. While Maxine and I were struggling to get her coronated, Sky continued asking deep questions.
Sky Szimmer: you know I just realized that I may be interpreting PaB wrongly.
Sky Szimmer: I have been Pab
Sky Szimmer: sorry to digress
Sky Szimmer: but I have been Playing as being, little “b”
Maxine Walden: typed crown in the white space and searched and came up with about a zillion references to crown…
Pema Pera: really???
Pema Pera: are you in your inventory?
Pema Pera: I had no idea you had been secretly collecting crowns in between PaB sessions
Maxine Walden: no, I cannot find my inventory…maybe I am in a difference universe.
Pema Pera: yes, you must be
Pema Pera: bottom right blue button “Inventory”
Pema Pera: click on that
Pema Pera: Yes, Sky, I’m glad we now talk about that
Pema Pera: BIG difference between being and Being ;>)
Sky Szimmer: BIG.! Indeed!
Pema Pera: Nisargadatta talks about “I AM”
Pema Pera: and that is close to what I mean with “Being”
Maxine Walden: (need to leave in about 5 min)
Pema Pera: sure, we can continue next time
Sky Szimmer: I am trying to be Being playing being in our exercise
Pema Pera: yes, Sky
Pema Pera: how do you let Being play being?
Sky Szimmer: I have been watching my “b”eing and see how it functions and reacts in the world
Sky Szimmer: while staying connected to the Being
Pema Pera: how do you do that, Sky?
Pema Pera: staying connected?
Sky Szimmer: what do you mean? I have no choice
Pema Pera: indeed!
Pema Pera: can you say a bit more about that?
Sky Szimmer: I am Being
Pema Pera: yes, Sky, but “I am” here is a bit tricky . . . we have to be careful
Sky Szimmer: yes indeed.
Sky Szimmer: words are hard, how can one say more without tumbling.
Pema Pera: Sky, one main point is to let Being Be, and in doing so let you be . . . .
Pema Pera: . . . like looking through the other side of a telescope
Sky Szimmer: but the “Being” still gets lost in the being.
Pema Pera: But shall we continue this conversation next time?
Pema Pera: I’d love to have Maxine be present too.
Sky Szimmer: yes. ok.
Pema Pera: How about tomorrow morning, okay for both of you?
Sky Szimmer: sorry.
Pema Pera: no sorry, Sky
Pema Pera: all part of Being
Pema Pera: Being is not sorry
Pema Pera: Being just is, happily so
Pema Pera: Maxine, we’ll let you go!
Pema Pera: I have to run too
Sky Szimmer: Ciao!
Pema Pera: is tomorrow okay for both of you?
Maxine Walden: yes, I will be back tomorrow same time
Sky Szimmer: I will try.
