2008.08.06 19:00 - Who Knows?

That evening, when I (Pema) arrived in the pavilion, I find Adelene, Prosper, and Threedee already sitting in the circle around the central table.

Threedee Shepherd: Good evening (here) Pema
Pema Pera: Hi there, good evening!
Prosper Telling: Namaste
Pema Pera: Good seeing y'all, Prosper, Threedee, Adelene
Threedee Shepherd: Pema, I havce an "object" I would like to share with the group, but I cannot rez here.
Threedee Shepherd: That is, I can'tr "build"
Adelene Dawner: 'lo Pema ^.^
Pema Pera: ah, Threedee
Pema Pera: just a moment

I check our group membership.

  

Pema Pera: no, you should be able to rez Threedee
Pema Pera: you are a full member of playasbeinghere
Pema Pera: as I thought
Adelene Dawner: Try putting your group tag on?
Pema Pera: you may have to
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: exactly :)
Prosper Telling: That'ss do it.
Pema Pera: :)
Threedee Shepherd: Everyone is welcome to take a copy
Pema Pera: nice, Threedee :)

This is the text of the one-page notice that Threedee had just rezzed:

            Who Knows?

Romanticist - I know in my heart
Modernist - I know how to know
Post-Modernist - Nothing is knowable
Existentialist - There is nothing to know
Skepticist - I might know
Positivist - Of course I know
Pragmatist - I know well enough
Constructivist - The knower is part of the known
Marxist - The people know
Cognitivist - The brain is knowledge
Eastern Religionist - You have always known
Zen Buddhist - What is the sound of knowing?
Western Religionist - Only God knows
Modern Western Religionist - God knows, and he told me
Will Rogers -- All I know is what I read in the papers

Inspired by Threedee, I offer a few possible lines for PaB :).

Pema Pera: you made those all up? Sounds like a long-running joke !
Pema Pera: PaB -- Being knows
Pema Pera: but that's the simple version
Pema Pera: we can do better, I'm sure
Threedee Shepherd: Yes, I made this all up and formatted it.
Pema Pera: PaB -- Who Knows?
Pema Pera: is that better?
Threedee Shepherd: It has been developed over a few years, partly related to my teaching.
Pema Pera: PaB -- Knowing knows
Pema Pera: Well, those are three, any other suggestions :-)
Prosper Telling: Could you drop me a copy. Won;t let me take one for some reason
Threedee Shepherd: Being is Knowing
Adelene Dawner: Being knows through us
Pema Pera: hi Sky!
Sky Szimmer: hey Everyone!

Sky drops in.

Prosper Telling: In a sense I would agree but in the convential sense of understanding and putting things into words, I would lean to the view that Being is Reality-As-It beyond our thinking mind.
Threedee Shepherd: Perhaps we can start a second list just for the PaB varients?
Pema Pera: haha, might be a long list . . . .
Pema Pera: Prosper, I think Adelene's suggestion is an interesting one
Pema Pera: Being knowing through us
Pema Pera: Being as such is beyond words
Pema Pera: but words are part of All, of Being
Prosper Telling: Yes, I agree
Prosper Telling: It quickly gets to the point I need an aspirin in these matters.
Threedee Shepherd: aspirin, or, 9-sec
Pema Pera: :)
Prosper Telling: Touche
Adelene Dawner is, for the record, having a bad brain day. Pema has the concept, and she will be interested to see what others think of it, but will probably not be able to participate well.
Prosper Telling: There is a quote, which I will mangle but here goes:
Prosper Telling: Before I studied Buddhism mountains were mountains and streams and were streams. After I studied Buddhism a few years, mountains were n not mountains and streams were not streams, having reached enlightenment mountains are again mountains and streams are again streams.
Prosper Telling: When Being knows through us there is no us, only Being.
Pema Pera: yes, that's a nice one, strikingly correct too
Pema Pera: and on the relative level, there may seem to be us, too, that seeming is part of Being too
Pema Pera: Sky, how are things with you?

Sky tells us about some troubles in RL, which she call `this dream' because we have been talking about how our daily reality in some sense is a kind of dream, with Being the projector -- a metaphor of course, and only partially correct. It would take a while before we realized that she did not talk about an actual dream, but about the dream metaphor instead.

Sky Szimmer: ok. I have been all wrapped out in my relative reality and am troubled by this dream
Sky Szimmer: my husband keeps telling me to enjoy the dream but I just can't
Pema Pera: which dream?
Sky Szimmer: so i am reminded of Cal's roller coaster. My husband is having a thrilling ride
Prosper Telling: Can you tell us about the dream?
Sky Szimmer: and I am totally freaked out and holding on with my white knuckles
Sky Szimmer: the dream of my current reality.
Pema Pera: AH!
Pema Pera: not a dream in the usual sense?
Threedee Shepherd: ahh, here is another poster/picture you might like, then
Prosper Telling: Oh. that one :-)

Threedee puts up a second poster, this time of what looks like a group of Tibetan monks having a great time riding a roller coster.

Sky Szimmer: no. that'd be easy. I'd just fly away
Pema Pera: but you are troubled by your real life, which you see as a dream?
Pema Pera: (just trying to understand)
Sky Szimmer: obviously not as I am troubled by RL but part of me realize Being in all this
Sky Szimmer: I just keep telling myself, ah. this is just a dream....
Adelene Dawner: I know that one, Sky. My answer is that there's a reason behind the dream... and finding out that reason is part of the reason. I could be wrong, but it's worked so far. ^.^
Pema Pera: (still trying to understand, sorry Sky) -- so you experience RL as a roller coaster, and you would like to see it as a dream, but you have trouble doing so?
Sky Szimmer: Sorry Pema! I always have a hard time making myself clear..
Prosper Telling: Adelene, that's work for me too and oddly enough my Mom
Sky Szimmer: We always talk about RL here as like a dream.
Sky Szimmer: so that is why I refer my RL as a dream.
Pema Pera: well, a dream is one of the metaphors, but only one . . .
Pema Pera: I wouldn't take that too literally
Prosper Telling: It may lack inherent existence but it still contains meaning
Adelene Dawner nods at Prosper. "You can assume there's a point, or you can assume there's not a point... we can't know either way, but one works better than the other."
Sky Szimmer: Part of me can see that I should just enjoy the ride, but then, it is hard to see it right now.
Adelene Dawner: And yes, that's very LoR. I haven't figured it out in LoA terms yet.
Sky Szimmer: LoA?
Adelene Dawner looks at Pema... help?
Pema Pera: Hi Avastu!
Sky Szimmer: so I guess, part of PaB is to help us see and live better
Sky Szimmer: hi Avastu!
Avastu Maruti: hello my friend

Avastu drops by, and I translate the acronyms that Adelene used, shorthands that I had introduced in a previous session.

Pema Pera: Language of Absolute = LoA
Threedee Shepherd: hi Avastu
Pema Pera: Language of Relative = LoR
Avastu Maruti: hello Threedee
Sky Szimmer: I have been using Being as a resource as you suggested.
Pema Pera: yes?
Sky Szimmer: at first I didn't really understand what you meant Peam
Sky Szimmer: Pema and yet maybe I still don't but in my mind, I have made it to work for me.
Prosper Telling: I think part of living better is recognizing the impermenance of things, especially all the little things that annoy... what matters is Being. What abides in Being.
Sky Szimmer: I see Being as the Here and Now. So, using Being as a resource is to really lean on the here and now and maximize the moment to turn things around
Sky Szimmer: yes. I understand all this stuff Proper, but I don't truly see it, otherwise, why the heck am I still freaked out
Prosper Telling: How big is the Here and Now? When does the There and Then become the here and now?
Sky Szimmer: Here and now is just a point, tiny point, but then it is also the constant
Threedee Shepherd: are you afraid you will "wake up" to something...
Prosper Telling: I hope I am not coming across a antagonistisc. So much gets lost in translation in a medium such as this.
Adelene Dawner: If all you have is Here and Now, *how* can you turn? You'll still be Here no matter what you do.
Sky Szimmer: turn is just an idea
Sky Szimmer: I guess, I can see all your points, and I can talk the talk
Sky Szimmer: but then so what
Prosper Telling: I find my Here and Now to be very, very big.
Pema Pera: Hi Stargate!
Sky Szimmer: hi Stargate.
Threedee Shepherd: Hi Star and Steve
stevenaia Michinaga: hello
Prosper Telling: Hi
Stargate Tone: HI all
Pema Pera: Hi Steve!
stevenaia Michinaga: still rezzing
stevenaia Michinaga: almost sat on Prosper

Stargate and Steve join us, and so there are eight of us. I feel deeply moved by the various sincere attempts from fellow guardians reaching out to Sky, and so does Sky, as she later would say.

Threedee Shepherd: Sky, I know what you mean by "talk the talk". I am finding that the 9-sec is developing the *walk* in ways I am just being/seeing, to my surprise
Prosper Telling: Sky, maybe you just need to Be, or Sit or Chant... Don't think so hard, don't look for answer, just try Don
Adelene Dawner: turn is push, turn is make waves, turn is fight Being. (And Adelene is sans grammar.)
Prosper Telling: 't Know Mind.
stevenaia Michinaga: hello Stargate
Prosper Telling: Hi
Prosper Telling: Someone almost sat on me? Yikes!
Stargate Tone: Hello my friend stevanaia
Stargate Tone: ....prosper is a caward :)****
Stargate Tone: ...is he ?
Stargate Tone: :)***
Prosper Telling: caward? what is that?
Sky Szimmer: the 9sec practice has helped me see. let me ask all of you, is your RL not scary at all?
Stargate Tone: hmmm....You fix the spelling and maybe somebody knows ***
Pema Pera: *, perhaps you can sit on the cushion to your left? You are sharing with Avastu :)
Adelene Dawner: What others call scary, or something that I'm afraid of? Big difference.
Prosper Telling: Very but so what. It is what it is. What matter is my response to it.
Sky Szimmer: I could see that my RL will be fine at some point, and that when I look back I will laugh
Threedee Shepherd: RL has built-in unpredictability, and hardship, and loss
Sky Szimmer: of course. I guess it is my response to it that still needs to be learned
Adelene Dawner: Why can't laugh-Now Be this-Now?
Prosper Telling: From another point of view, I am almost assured a painful and possibly messy death in my life, somewhere very close to the end of it.
Threedee Shepherd: A german proverb comes to mind that captures the dilemms: Too soon old, Too late smart!
Prosper Telling: perfect
Stargate Tone: stargate

Saying this, Stargate leaves in an expanding clouds of big red hearts.

Sky Szimmer: so all of you are enlightened or realized that there aren't moments where the puppet that is called self dominates
Threedee Shepherd: Not enlightened. Self is part of it, like everything else, that is to be "known"
Prosper Telling: Defintely not enlightened... but I am knocking off the dus here and there, trying to get an idea of what lies beneath
Prosper Telling: and thankful for the Grace that's got me this far
stevenaia Michinaga: wonders if all we seek, Being, enlightment, is already right here waiting to be revealed
Pema Pera: sure it is :)
Pema Pera: not even waiting :)
Sky Szimmer: all my troubles are all part of Being
Sky Szimmer: I know that
Sky Szimmer: I just want to have more fun with it
Sky Szimmer: the self wants to have more fun with it
Sky Szimmer: but then that is just a concept
stevenaia Michinaga: well, if you haven;t found it, it;s jsut a bit deeper than you've looked
Sky Szimmer: there is nothing to be found
Sky Szimmer: being is always here
Sky Szimmer: being is all
Threedee Shepherd: At this point I am not seeking enlightenment, rather I hope for Being along the Way
Sky Szimmer: self is being
Sky Szimmer: me being scared is just a thought and a fleeting thing
Sky Szimmer: no permanence
Pema Pera: do you want to say a bit more what you are scared about, Sky?
Sky Szimmer: i get caught up in time
Sky Szimmer: the future becomes real
Sky Szimmer: of course, there is no "time"
Pema Pera: just in ordinary terms -- without "absolute" considerations?
Sky Szimmer: I see that.
Pema Pera: we have to start where we are
Pema Pera: in relative terms
Pema Pera: can't deny that
Pema Pera: and then we can look around and explore further
Pema Pera: using ideas as guidance
Pema Pera: but can't use the ideas as floating devices
Pema Pera: that won't work
Sky Szimmer: i can see that I am creating a run on story that is probably alot scarier than the reality
Pema Pera: can you say more?
Sky Szimmer: sure. it is the usual worries about the future
Pema Pera: job?
Sky Szimmer: we are very tight financially and I am worried about it
Pema Pera: I would be too!
Pema Pera: as a human being, in the role I am playing in this world, I would definitely be worried in such a situation

And I mean that. It would be counterproductive to deny a human reaction like that, or to wish that reaction wouldn't be there. Only by accepting such a very reasonable reaction is it then possible to look through it, and to see Being in the heart of the problems that beings have.

Sky Szimmer: of course, it will all be alright one way or another
Sky Szimmer: i am just not having fun with it
Pema Pera: it would be surprising if you would!
Sky Szimmer: but then, someone like yourself would not be worried
Prosper Telling: Sounds like the first two rules of learning Ancient Greek apply here as well: 1. Remember to breathe 2. Surpress panic
Adelene Dawner: Would not be worried? What makes you say that?
Pema Pera: No Sky, I would be worried, as I said above -- as a human being I would be . . . .
Pema Pera: the question is whether worrying would lead to panic . . . .
Pema Pera: or to putting all your energy in looking around and searching for solutions and/or exit strategies
Sky Szimmer: not panic but fear anxiety, unhappiness
Pema Pera: first thing is acceptence of a given situation, and yes, as Prosper said, breathe in that situation
Adelene Dawner: Life involves some unhappiness. Removing that isn't any part of the goal. Nice side-effect, sometimes, but not the goal.
Pema Pera: then see whether you can avoid total identification
Prosper Telling: I think those are the things practices can deal with.
Pema Pera: totall identification can be smothering, does not leave you room to breathe
Prosper Telling: If you can fix a problem, no worrying is required, if you can't fix no worrying will help.

So true! And when we find ourselves worrying nonetheless, we can keep that in mind, in a gentle attempt to accept our worrying and to see it in a wider light.

Pema Pera: if you can "wear" your worrying lightly, like a shirt, not a skin, that will help -- you can even "wear" anxiety lightly
Pema Pera: trying to jump right into the absolute may be a bit too extreme in your situation . . . . .
Threedee Shepherd: Another saying captures part of the paradox: "Good decisions come from wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions."
Sky Szimmer: yes. i see that. that is what i was referring to earlier about using being as a resource. putting all energy into figuring out a solution
Pema Pera: yes
Pema Pera: Being can help you to wear lightly
Pema Pera: will puff up your clothes a bit :)
Sky Szimmer: nice saying threedee
Adelene Dawner: 'wear lightly' helps you relax while Being brings the solution to you, mostly. ^.^
Prego Zapatero: hello
Sky Szimmer: thx adelene
Pema Pera: Hi Prego!
Adelene Dawner: ^.^
Prego Zapatero: can i joint ?
Chrismiss Whybrow: hi
Pema Pera: sure!
Pema Pera: Hi Solo!
Solobill Laville: Hi all!
Sky Szimmer: i really appreciate all your thoughts and comments. I feel better already : )
Pema Pera: I'm afraid I have to run
Solobill Laville: Please have a seat Chrismiss
Pema Pera: glad to hear that, Sky!
Chrismiss Whybrow: i'm trying
Pema Pera: Great seeing you all again!
Pema Pera: Hi Chrismiss
Threedee Shepherd: goodnight Pema
Avastu Maruti: good bye my friend
Prosper Telling: thank you again
Prego Zapatero: bye
Solobill Laville: 'night, Pema
Adelene Dawner: 'night Pem
Pema Pera: Steve, if you stay for a while, can you send me the log?
stevenaia Michinaga: sure
Pema Pera: the rest of it (or all, whatever it easiest)?
Pema Pera: and looking forward to meeting in RL next week!

At this point I leave. The rest of the log was sent to me later by Stevenaia

Chrismiss Whybrow: hi please allow me to introduce myself... solobill told me about your group
Chrismiss Whybrow: it sounded interesting
Chrismiss Whybrow: my name is chris
Prosper Telling: welcome... I've bumped into you in a few places. I think your nose was bigger?
Prego Zapatero: its this like a spirituality group ?
Chrismiss Whybrow: yes prosper, i was modifying my nose
stevenaia Michinaga: we record these sessions if you don't mind, and post them on a blog, is that ok?
Chrismiss Whybrow: it was huge
Chrismiss Whybrow: okay
Prego Zapatero: sorry guys i am new here, its this like a private group ?
stevenaia Michinaga: not at all
stevenaia Michinaga: it is open to everyone
stevenaia Michinaga: do you mind if we post your comments Prego?
stevenaia Michinaga: comments
Prego Zapatero: not at all
Prosper Telling: Nah, we're a rather open bunch
Solobill Laville: http://playasbeing.wik.is/Information/Play_As_Being_in_a_Nutshell
Prego Zapatero: just dont know wats the group about ...
Avastu Maruti: good bye my friends
stevenaia Michinaga: thank you Solobill
Threedee Shepherd: good bye
Chrismiss Whybrow: bye bye
Solobill Laville: Bye Avastu
Prosper Telling: bye and Namaste
stevenaia Michinaga: we meet 4 times a day
Sky Szimmer: yes y'all again for reading me whine. got to run too
Solobill Laville: Goodbye, Sky, best
Prosper Telling: thank you for giving us the chance.
Chrismiss Whybrow: it's over?
Chrismiss Whybrow: the metting is over?
stevenaia Michinaga: yes, we meet at 7:00 am and pm, and 1:00 am and pm
Chrismiss Whybrow: oh darnit. i thought it was beginning.. that
explains a few things
Threedee Shepherd: night, Sky
Chrismiss Whybrow: haha
Prosper Telling: lol
Solobill Laville: "Officially" only 30 minutes, but often much longer
Prosper Telling: Wow, never seen one last under an hour
Solobill Laville: (note the time now) ;)
Chrismiss Whybrow: well i hope to join you again
Chrismiss Whybrow: oh
Chrismiss Whybrow: yeah.. late
Chrismiss Whybrow: so you go by.. eastern time?
stevenaia Michinaga: yes, please join us again
Solobill Laville: No, Chris, SLT
Chrismiss Whybrow: oh
Prego Zapatero: wats the topyc of the group ?
Chrismiss Whybrow: oh i see now
Prosper Telling: Top right corner of your screen
Solobill Laville: (or Pacific Time)
stevenaia Michinaga: see clock in the upper left of your screen
Chrismiss Whybrow: yes.
Prosper Telling: That one :-)
Chrismiss Whybrow: i understand
Solobill Laville: In a nut shell Prego, it is a group that is
interested in exploring what is reality, or Being
Solobill Laville: and we share our experiences and thoughts
Prego Zapatero: sound good
Solobill Laville: non-denominational, and very supportive
Chrismiss Whybrow: that is a nice feathery costume, adelene
Chrismiss Whybrow: i like that
Adelene Dawner: ^.^
Prego Zapatero: yes kool outfit
Chrismiss Whybrow: :D
Prego Zapatero: ok guy have agret time!!!
Prosper Telling: I must run as well.
Solobill Laville: Yes, it is late for me too
stevenaia Michinaga: night
Chrismiss Whybrow: can i sit here?
Chrismiss Whybrow: goodnight
stevenaia Michinaga: yes
Solobill Laville: sure!
Solobill Laville: goodnight all
Chrismiss Whybrow: i think i will like this group
Threedee Shepherd: come again. we are here every day.
stevenaia Michinaga: yes, read some of the blogs
Chrismiss Whybrow: okay
Chrismiss Whybrow: i don't know what to do now.. the meeting's over?
Chrismiss Whybrow: bye