2009.08.11 19:00 - Releasing the Future

The Guardian for this meeting was Eos Amaterasu. The comments are by Eos Amaterasu.

Hana Furlough: hi everyone
Lingerer Xaris: hey hana
Eos Amaterasu: Hi Lingerer and Hana!
Lingerer Xaris: and people
Hana Furlough: hi eos
Lingerer Xaris: Hi Eos

--BELL--

Eos Amaterasu: Is this your first time here, Lingerer?
Lingerer Xaris: Yes, how did you know?
Hana Furlough: lingerer is my friend from real life
Eos Amaterasu: Just a wild guess :-)
Eos Amaterasu: I haven't seen you here before
Eos Amaterasu: but then I'm relatively new here as well
Hana Furlough: me too!
Eos Amaterasu: I can give you a notecard about what we do, about Play as Being,
Lingerer Xaris: please
Eos Amaterasu: We talk about Being and our experience of it, reality and presence, etc
Eos Amaterasu: Conversations here are recorded, with logs put on the wiki
Lingerer Xaris: right
Eos Amaterasu: Are you okay with having your words recorded?
Lingerer Xaris: Yes
Eos Amaterasu: http://playasbeing.wik.is/
Lingerer Xaris: I have talked with Hana a little about this and have read som conversations
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Lingerer Xaris: Is this sort of like a Quaker circle? Where we are quiet until we feel compelled to say something?
Eos Amaterasu: Hmm, you know, I've never been in a Quaker circle myself
Hana Furlough: me neither
Lingerer Xaris: :-)
Eos Amaterasu: Here we gather 4 times a day to talk aboiut our practice and understanding of appreciating the presence of appearance
Eos Amaterasu: (well, I have yet to actually be here 4 times in one day!)
Eos Amaterasu: every 15 minutes there is a 90 second gap, pause, in the conversation
Eos Amaterasu: which we can then discuss
Hana Furlough: eos can i ask if you're using any other kinds of practice besides the 9 seconds?
Eos Amaterasu: I think most people who play here have some kind of practice(s) they do - there are many buddhist practitioners, but also avatars of Islam, Xty, etc
Eos Amaterasu: as well as coming from things like phenomenology and taoism et al
Hana Furlough: right
Eos Amaterasu: all the world's traditions are available to us - we are lucky
Hana Furlough: this is true
Hana Furlough: confusing but true
Eos Amaterasu: and can take that as a starting point to investigate and experience in a first person, direct way
Eos Amaterasu: that's what I like about it
Lingerer Xaris: yes
Eos Amaterasu: Speaking from silence......
Eos Amaterasu: Appearing from being.....
Lingerer Xaris: exactly
Hana Furlough: so i was wondering today, what is the relationship between action and letting go when we are playing as Being
Hana Furlough: i was wondering what both of you thought about this?
Lingerer Xaris: I find that action arises
Eos Amaterasu: That's a great question, gets to the nature of play
Lingerer Xaris: naturally and intelligently
Lingerer Xaris: when i let go
Lingerer Xaris: but letting go must come first
Lingerer Xaris: To do without doing, as the Tao says

--BELL--

Hana Furlough: but often times doing without doing can just be habit
Hana Furlough: sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart
Lingerer Xaris: maybe better put: to do through not doing
Eos Amaterasu: Yes, we can go on autopilot and more or less fall asleep
Hana Furlough: right
Lingerer Xaris: but i think your question, Hana, is very important and has many layers of answers
Lingerer Xaris: especially when life gets busy
Hana Furlough: exactly
Eos Amaterasu: then it gets to whether being is in stillness as opposed to action, or in both
Hana Furlough: right!
Hana Furlough: that is what i'm wondering
Eos Amaterasu: I guess the non-doing quality can be in stillness
Eos Amaterasu: but also in movement
Hana Furlough: since many buddhist traditions seem to lack a certain dynamism
Eos Amaterasu: and in action
Hana Furlough: right
Lingerer Xaris: I am reading A Course in Miracles, which is a nondual approach to spirituality. It is somewhat Christic, but not Christian, if you know what I mean. I have felt incredible joy the last couple of days just releasing my future to God/the universe.
Lingerer Xaris: And I find that action and really quality thought and work flow through me.
Lingerer Xaris: Not at all autopilot level stuff.
Lingerer Xaris: But I'm not TRYING.
Eos Amaterasu: CAn you say more about "releasing my future"?
Hana Furlough: right like work gets done the way it wants to
Lingerer Xaris: Becoming like a child unto the universe
Lingerer Xaris: Complete faith in goodness of life
Hana Furlough: would you say that this is a passive approach?
Lingerer Xaris: i don't like the word passive
Lingerer Xaris: mostly because i don't see the relationship between myself and the universe as dualistic
Hana Furlough: do you think there's something incompatible about non-dualism and passiveness?
Lingerer Xaris: passiveness in the context we were discussing connotes an active universe that I am passive to
Hana Furlough: nice
Lingerer Xaris: ;)
Hana Furlough: so more like the universe is active, you are the universe, therefore you are active too
Hana Furlough: ?
Lingerer Xaris: ahhhhhhhh
Lingerer Xaris: what is a me?
Lingerer Xaris: all i know is that my mind thinks it can control the future and gets all knotted up

--BELL--

Lingerer Xaris: How long have you been doing Play as Being, Eos?
Eos Amaterasu: I think maybe since April.
Eos Amaterasu: There are people here who have been doing this in SL for maybe two or more years
Eos Amaterasu: but I've been doing similar things for many years
Lingerer Xaris: there are similar things to this? LOL
Eos Amaterasu: :-)
Hana Furlough: lol
Eos Amaterasu: Being happens everywhere :-)
Lingerer Xaris: haha, true
Hana Furlough: what sort of things, Eos?
Eos Amaterasu: well, I've done some exploring through phenomenology, through some western philosophical and obsrvational practices, and through buddhist and similar mindfulness/awareness
Hana Furlough: interesting
Eos Amaterasu: playing as being, or "appreciating the presence of appearance" is a kind of recognition practice
Hana Furlough: can you tell me a little bit about your experience with phenomonology?
Eos Amaterasu: like remembering to appreciate
Eos Amaterasu: I was doing a kind of "intutition of Being" practice that comes through Thomas Aquinas' understanding of "esse", latin for "to be"
Eos Amaterasu: a kind of dynamic take on existence and actually experiencing it directly
Eos Amaterasu: and then studied Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau Ponty
Lingerer Xaris: this is fascinating. i used to study these philsophies, but i didn't know there were people actually creating practices around them
Eos Amaterasu: and the idea of observation without preconceptions, just paying attention to the structures of consciousness
Lingerer Xaris: sorry
Lingerer Xaris: still learning all the buttons
Hana Furlough: neither did i
Hana Furlough: what did you get out of this paying attention?
Eos Amaterasu: which was an intro to Dogen Zenji and awareness/mind-reocgnizing-mind/appearances
Hana Furlough: right
Lingerer Xaris: yes, paying attention to the structures of consciousness.
Eos Amaterasu: and to who/what is paying that attention
Eos Amaterasu: (that's the 1% tax, paying 9 secs attention every 900 secs (15 minutes))
Hana Furlough: right
Hana Furlough: so have you read a lot of dogen?
Eos Amaterasu: I think this is light-handed, so it's also fun
Eos Amaterasu: Not a lot, but more than enough :-)
Hana Furlough: nice
Eos Amaterasu: I take these walks through our nearby woods
Lingerer Xaris: that sounds incredible. i miss doing things like that
Eos Amaterasu: and they were somewhat inspired by the story of Dogen and his Chinese teacher
Eos Amaterasu: who said "body and mind are dropped?"
Eos Amaterasu: and Dogen said "body and mind are indeed dropped"
Eos Amaterasu: (or maybe it was the other way around)
Hana Furlough: how do you experience that?
Eos Amaterasu: somehow I try to walk like that
Hana Furlough: nice
Eos Amaterasu: appreciating body and mind, and also letting go of both

--BELL--

Eos Amaterasu: "releasing my future" to being
Eos Amaterasu: that's a nice way to put it
Lingerer Xaris: the phrase 'no more theories' rang through my head one night, and i have been using it as a mantra
Lingerer Xaris: thank you, Eos
Lingerer Xaris: it is incredible, this experience of being. how the awareness moves to levels of consciousness, and then back to objects in the world
Lingerer Xaris: I find it really scary sometimes when I grasp that there is nothing to gain in life.
Lingerer Xaris: meaning, no way to accumulate
Eos Amaterasu: Ah! :-) Yikes!
Lingerer Xaris: ahhhhh...i'm having trouble articulating
Lingerer Xaris: to accumulate being, i guess
Lingerer Xaris: being just is, and time passes
Hana Furlough: yeah the more i practice the more i find that all we really want is to be fully in the now
Hana Furlough: that happiness is not what our minds think it is
Lingerer Xaris: right
Lingerer Xaris: but still, the more i appreciate my present moments, the more i sometimes feel a fleeting sadness and how quickly it all passes
Eos Amaterasu: there's a kind of paradoxical discipline of staying in that place without pushing or pulling yourself, over intending yourself
Hana Furlough: right but i find that, as in yoga, there is always a reaching, an expanding
Lingerer Xaris: over intending? i have never heard that. what does it mean?
Eos Amaterasu: oh, I just mean that we have our intentions, which can color the situation we're in
Hana Furlough: indeed
Lingerer Xaris: i see
Eos Amaterasu: so suspending that intention, or better still appreciating it as appearance as well
Eos Amaterasu: is part of the humor of being here :-)
Hana Furlough: but is appreciation fundamentally passive?
Eos Amaterasu: it can be keen and sharp, and as Hana was suggesting be not separate from the arising of action
Hana Furlough: how so?
Eos Amaterasu: well, to use the phrase we've been playing with lately, "appreciate the presence of appearance"
Eos Amaterasu: has all kinds of resonance
Eos Amaterasu: appearance is also the appearance of me
Eos Amaterasu: which arose anyway as me ,didn't it?
Eos Amaterasu: and includes my actions
Lingerer Xaris: right
Lingerer Xaris: exactly
Lingerer Xaris: the appearance of me
Lingerer Xaris: happened
Hana Furlough: but that also lacks all ethical imperatives, right?
Eos Amaterasu: which maybe can arise spontaneously, and in concert with appearance, so more accurate
Lingerer Xaris: without my mind-ego having anything to do with it
Lingerer Xaris: which is why i can trust that as a part of the universe, it will continue to appearance correctly. hence, releasing the future
--BELL--
Eos Amaterasu: I find myself here, so yes, I am a "child of the universe", child of being
Lingerer Xaris: it's delicious. i have felt absolutely delicious these last couple of days.
Hana Furlough: lol wow
Lingerer Xaris: but it requires constant returns to love over fear
Lingerer Xaris: and forgiveness
Eos Amaterasu: forgiving ourself?
Eos Amaterasu: yourself?
Lingerer Xaris: and others
Eos Amaterasu: letting them be?
Lingerer Xaris: anyway, it is my path right now. i needed to do some forgiveness work
Hana Furlough: who doesn't?
Lingerer Xaris: haha
Eos Amaterasu: Hana, you started asking about lack of ethical imperatives
Lingerer Xaris: I have been thinking about the idea of shared being
Hana Furlough: yeah
Hana Furlough: i'm kind of interested in that
Hana Furlough: like there is the vinaya in most schools of buddhism
Hana Furlough: but PaB lacks any such system
Hana Furlough: what do you think about that?
Eos Amaterasu: I cannot recommend highly enough Francisco Varela's very short, brilliant Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition
Hana Furlough: that question is for both of you btw
Hana Furlough: wow this looks incredible
Eos Amaterasu: I think that the heart of being embodies ethical know-how
Lingerer Xaris: i hear that
Eos Amaterasu: (like the buddhists find emptiness and compassion to be indivisible)
Hana Furlough: but to the untrained eye, such actions may appear to violate ethical precepts
Eos Amaterasu: suspending your own personal intention, or recognizing it, seems key
Hana Furlough: but is intention always bad?
Eos Amaterasu: not at all!
Hana Furlough: and are Being's dynamism and personal intention always mutually exclusive?
Eos Amaterasu: but I think it does need examination, through not just intellectual examination but also appreciation and letting be
Hana Furlough: i agree
Eos Amaterasu: ideally your personal intention and the "way" are not two (wu wei)
Hana Furlough: exactly
Eos Amaterasu: so every 15 minutes there can be a little blip of that :-)
Hana Furlough: wuwei is very interesting because it implies action without attachment
Eos Amaterasu: and then maybe you find yourself coming out of that blip
Eos Amaterasu: paradox, yes: when there's no attachment action can be decisive
Hana Furlough: right
Hana Furlough: i am finding that
Eos Amaterasu: you can "do the right thing"
Hana Furlough: i have no doubt
Hana Furlough: but do we need precepts at all?
Eos Amaterasu: in the space of being willing to let get of everything
Eos Amaterasu: Do the Quakers do this as a group practice?
Lingerer Xaris: They sit in a room in silence until the spirit takes someone

--BELL--

Eos Amaterasu: appreciate the presence in the room until it speaks?
Lingerer Xaris: i like the way you use 'appreciate'
Lingerer Xaris: I think it is a fair assessment, yes
Lingerer Xaris: they open themselves up to it
Hana Furlough: i like that last statement
Lingerer Xaris: In the book The Celestine Prophecy, people sit together at high levels of awareness
Lingerer Xaris: and the words that need to be said are said
Lingerer Xaris: by the right person at the right time
Hana Furlough: i can imagine
Eos Amaterasu: Finding such social forms for governance that live in the real world (& in SL :-) is a challenge
Lingerer Xaris: I think it probably needs to be in the real world
Lingerer Xaris: no offense to SL
Lingerer Xaris: but i could be wrong
Eos Amaterasu: in RL it has to relate with existing forms, such as democracy by voting, etc
Hana Furlough: right
Lingerer Xaris: i see
Lingerer Xaris: and in SL?
Eos Amaterasu: ditto, probably....
Lingerer Xaris: No dictators in Second Life? Lol
Eos Amaterasu: Play as Being here is an experiment with a kind of form
Eos Amaterasu: how people share experience and understanding
Lingerer Xaris: What are the other places in SL like?
Eos Amaterasu: SL has a lot, of which I've experienced a fraction
Eos Amaterasu: I am grateful for finding the Kira and PaB communities here
Lingerer Xaris: I can imagine.
Hana Furlough: me 2
Eos Amaterasu: there are many others, role playing, arts, clothing, personal get togethers, dramas...
Lingerer Xaris: Hana, you have a professor who started PaB?
Lingerer Xaris: or seomthing like that?
Hana Furlough: yeah i met pema in real life and that was how i found out about PaB
Hana Furlough: very lucky : )
Lingerer Xaris: I have some work to do, so I am going to get going. But I will come back again most likely.
Lingerer Xaris: It was very nice to meet you, Eos.
Lingerer Xaris: And great to hang with you, Hana!
Eos Amaterasu: That would be great - thanks for coming by!
Hana Furlough: thanks so much
Hana Furlough: i should get going too
Hana Furlough: good night to both of you!
Eos Amaterasu: I think I will also leave - past midnight here!
Lingerer Xaris: past midnight?
Eos Amaterasu: Bye Hana, Lingerer!
Lingerer Xaris: oh, you must be in Europe
Lingerer Xaris: ?
Eos Amaterasu: No, in Nova Scotia, Atlantic Time
Lingerer Xaris: AHA!
Lingerer Xaris: Cool.
Lingerer Xaris: Talk soon!
Eos Amaterasu: Ciao!