2010.11.26 06:00 - Love is Patient

The Guest Guardian for this meeting was Adams Rubble. The comments are by Adams Rubble.

The discussion this morning was inspired by Chapter 10 in which we explored three aspects of Being: Space, Time and Awareness.  I must confess that after sitting through the session, I had the idea it was about empitness and nothing. After re-reading it, the session felt much different to me and I could not help myself in borrowing a phrase from Paul in I Corinthians 13 for the title. I comment sparingly so as not to distract from the threads intertwined into the tapestry of the session.

At the beginning there was some confusing about the reports since a page for next week (12/3) had already appeared. Indeeed this guardian had mistakenly posted there before noticing the date.

Pema Pera: I guess somebody did now :)
Maxine Walden: hi, Pema...(trying to read the various reports...)
Yakuzza Lethecus: i am going to leave in the middle of the session so better if someone else will claim it
Pema Pera: I thought there were no reports?
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Adams.
Yakuzza Lethecus: hi adams
Avy Runner: hi Adams
Adams Rubble: Hello Everyone :)
Vector Marksman: hi All
Pema Pera: AHAHAH! I clicked on the latest reports -- but that is for next week -- that is tricky . . . . so I missed out on all the reports!
Pema Pera: the latest reports somehow is dated 12/3 . . . .
Adams Rubble: I posted mine there briefly :)
Pema Pera: no wonder there was no posting yet!
Pema Pera: that's very confusing
Pema Pera: until now we never have been a week ahead :)
Pema Pera: so I didn't post anything, not wanting to be the only one (I thought) :-)
Avy Runner: (just a 'tiny little' bit and I've got wet feet :) )
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Avy Runner: thanks Bruce, will keep my feet dry :)
Bruce Mowbray: OK-- Please let me know if you wish further adjustments.
Pema Pera: Avy, have you attended PaB sessions before?
Avy Runner: I will
Avy Runner: I think so :)
Pema Pera: okay, thanks!
Bruce Mowbray: (Liza/Darren)
Yakuzza Lethecus: :)
Pema Pera: another Liza?
Avy Runner: I'm Liza, or Darren
Pema Pera: proliferation of LIzas? ! ?
Maxine Walden: wonderful reports! Everyone of them. Bruce, loved your Wordsworth poem; Tinturn Abbey has always bee a favorite. And Adams, also love your various experiences of Sapce and Time...And Vector, that sense of fierceness....so interesting
Avy Runner: no, I'm avy, but sometimes Liza and sometimes Darren
Avy Runner: but they look slightly different :)
Pema Pera: (would anyone like to volunteer to post the chat look for this session?)
Avy Runner: I think Adams did

Space and Patience

Maxine Walden: My recurrent exploration re Space was toward the spaciousness of patience.......
Pema Pera: thanks a lot, Adams!
Adams Rubble: np
Maxine Walden: and Time, the engine of happening seemed to focus on mitochondria, those elements which seem to 'energize' cells..
Maxine Walden: but admittedly I did not have the time nor patience I guess to write up a report !!
Avy Runner: :)
Vector Marksman: :)
Adams Rubble: I was surprised to find how little I knew about time after all these sessions
Vector Marksman: Patience seems to create space in time.
--BELL--
Avy Runner: hi Zen
Zen Arado: hi all
Pema Pera: hi there, Zen!
Maxine Walden: interesting, Vector.
Adams Rubble: Hello Zen
Maxine Walden: Agree, patience does seem to create inner space in time.
Vector Marksman: Patience seems a bit like Pema's "resting in Being"
Bruce Mowbray: Does patience CREATE space, or merely ALLOW space that was already there?
Vector Marksman: No rush
Avy Runner: yes patience seems to ground also
Maxine Walden: For me, Bruce, patience clears away the noise, so agree that it more 'makes way' for the space to become apparent
Vector Marksman: I think Bruces' characterization is more accuratee
Avy Runner: so you are leaning back, it looks you are doing nothing, but you are making space
Bruce Mowbray: Like the 90-sec breaks (or the 9-sec breaks in RL) -- our "dropping" allows us to "hear" the silence that was already there.
Vector Marksman: yes
Avy Runner: yes

Trust of Being, Acceptance

Bruce Mowbray thinKs: This underlying silence, space, and time is the basis of my Trust -- of Being itself.
Vector Marksman: This somehhow connects with awareness
Bruce Mowbray listens intently.
Maxine Walden: Yes, patience may be like 'dropping' or for me a 'clearing away' the various noises to allow awareness of the wider Space and Being
Maxine Walden: Vector, your thoughts about awareness?
Zen Arado: or putting up with annoying things in life
Vector Marksman: expanding awareness of the context ofBeoing that is our ground
Pema Pera: Trust for me is connected with unconditional confidence . . . but that is hard to explain -- confidence in what you ARE not in what you have
Zen Arado: there is an accepting part of patience I think
Vector Marksman: yes - acceptance is a kind of affect too
Vector Marksman: that is connected to trust for me
Avy Runner: you need trust in order to accept
Bruce Mowbray: Piling up and counting my "haves" is one of my ways of compensating for my lack of unconditional Trust.
Pema Pera: :-)
Maxine Walden: nicely said, Bruce
Vector Marksman: yes
Pema Pera: having your cake and being it :-)
Maxine Walden: :))
Bruce Mowbray: Dropping my "haves" is how I renew confidence . . . that Silence is trustworthy.
Avy Runner: I guess acceptance is not only about the bad parts

Emptiness

Maxine Walden: trusting that Silence is not emptiness or lostness
Avy Runner: I just realize it is also hard to trust on the good parts, accepting those
Avy Runner: to me it is close to emptiness but not empty
Avy Runner: or part of emptiness
Avy Runner: I actually think that Emptiness for me is Being, or close to it
Maxine Walden: Ah, yes, guess emptiness means different things to different people
Vector Marksman: How do you mean emptinesss?
--BELL--
Avy Runner: as in nothing being permanent, not excisting on its own, as an ocean which waves are coming in and going
Avy Runner: I think Bruce said that once
Bruce Mowbray: [can't remember. . . but maybe so. . . ]
Avy Runner: [at the shift]
Bruce Mowbray: Oh yes. . . OK, thanks.
Maxine Walden: Perhaps emptiness for some means the dropping of the noise, being open to the ebb and flow
Avy Runner: glympses in the sky :)
Bruce Mowbray: no resistance to the ebb and flow.
Vector Marksman: Yes, that changes my image of the "ground" Is it always shifting or the same or both :)
Bruce Mowbray: My perception (inward and outward) is that the Dance is on-going.
Avy Runner: how did you mean "ground"
Avy Runner: Dance, nice
Vector Marksman: the background matrix upon which the dance takes plcace maybee
Bruce Mowbray: from Ram Dass -- The Only Dance There Is.
Avy Runner is wondering if there is a background, don't know
Vector Marksman: like the ether - doesnt exist
Bruce Mowbray: Isn't this partly what Trust is about?
Avy Runner: ah right
Avy Runner: [I think somebody poofed]
Zen Arado: trust in what?
Bruce Mowbray: Well, Zen, this is almost entirely experiential for me -- and I can only speak for myself, of course. . .
Pema Pera: unconditional trust . . . .
Pema Pera: not placed in something
Bruce Mowbray: but I trust Basic Goodness -- in the Shambhala Warrior sense of that term.
Maxine Walden: For me currently trust involves confidence that benign Space, Time, Being 'are' beyond little me, my noises and preoccupations
Bruce Mowbray: It feels to me exactly the same as what Wordsworth wrote:
Bruce Mowbray: "a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused. . . "
Avy Runner: trust not placed in something......hmmmm
Avy Runner: then what is it you trust

Unconditional Love

Pema Pera: like unconditional love
Pema Pera: loving somebody not in order to get something back
Maxine Walden: love Wordsworth's depiction
Zen Arado: seems to me trust has to have an object?
Bruce Mowbray: Beyond that, I have no more explanation. . . only that my own experience of "dropping" or "resting" continually returns me to that "Ground."
Pema Pera: yes
Avy Runner: yes
Vector Marksman: trust + faith?
Pema Pera: and yes, Zen, it is inexplicable within our usual concepts and structures
Vector Marksman: Imeant trust = faith?
Zen Arado: letting go of trust?
Avy Runner is pondering about background and 'trust not placed in something'
Zen Arado: trust ha expectations
Zen Arado: has*
Maxine Walden: For me the trust implicit in patience is meaningful, does not 'want anything in return'
Avy Runner: trusting 'something' means it is worth trusting

Pema gives us a poem:

Pema Pera: it reminds me of the poem by Erich Fried:

What it is It is nonsense - says reason
It is what it is - says love

It is calamity - says calculation
It is nothing but pain - says fear
It is hopeless - says insight
It is what it is - says love

It is ludicrous - says pride
It is foolish - says caution
It is impossible - says experience
It is what it is - says love

Avy Runner: so it is giving us something
Adams Rubble: :)
Avy Runner: patience is different then trust
Maxine Walden: very nice, Pema
Zen Arado: it can happen - says trust?

Keeping the Silence - beyind comprehension but within my experience

Bruce Mowbray: My experience of "keeping the Silence" (a Quaker concept) is the prfound realization that in some sens - beyond my comprehension but well within my experience - that the Silence has been holding "me" all along.
Pema Pera: it has already happened -- says trust
Zen Arado: :)
Avy Runner: patience doesn't need an object
Avy Runner: is not giving something back
Avy Runner: or it should be space
Pema Pera: "beyond my conprehension but well within my experience --- that is really beautiful, Bruce!!!
--BELL--
Avy Runner: is trust based on space?
Zen Arado: Wonder what 'it' is - says doubt
Vector Marksman: I think trust come out of experience
Maxine Walden: All those 'protective' doubts in that Erich Fried poem entrap us away from love, trust, Being
Pema Pera: perhaps experience teaches us not to disregard our natural sense of trust notwithstanding what happens -- so experience teaches us not to take experience of non-trust seriously . . . .
Vector Marksman: maybe very early experience as a baby ins important
Pema Pera: yes
Adams Rubble: yes Pema :)
Pema Pera: we have to learn to become like babes again . . .
Avy Runner: I missed that experience Vector :(
Zen Arado: blind trust?
Vector Marksman: :9
Pema Pera: avoiding blind doubt !
Zen Arado: :)
Adams Rubble: :)
Maxine Walden: or moving beyond blind doubt
Vector Marksman: :0
Maxine Walden: For me blind doubt is due to my needing to 'know' and to 'control' things...and trust moves beyond that need to control
Pema Pera: yes

dream and life:

Pema Pera: seeing that a dream is but a dream, and that life is but life, and that neither lasts very long . . . .
Bruce Mowbray: It seems that in the lives of suicidal persons (myself, once) or in the lives of persons who have been addicted in one way or another. . . that when they "give it all up," they discover there has always been a Safety Net of cosmic proportions waiting to "catch" them. . .
Pema Pera: beautiful, Bruce!
Bruce Mowbray: I think this is the basis of the saying, Let go and let God" -- although I very seldom if ever use the word "God."
Zen Arado: you sure?
Zen Arado: hope I don't need it
Zen Arado: says fear
Avy Runner: I'm not suicidal anymore, nor addicted anymore, I know both, but never found that Safety Net
Avy Runner: though I need to say that something is changing
Avy Runner: but I think to me it is accepting there is no safety net
Bruce Mowbray: I had to let eh Net find me -- I could not find it.
Pema Pera: :-)
Avy Runner: so I don't need to look for it anymore
Pema Pera: Bruce and Avy may well be saying the same thing
Vector Marksman: I think much of what Pema writes as Being would be "God" in another system of thought
Avy Runner: yes :)
Bruce Mowbray: Then absolutely EVERYTHING became the Net -- Indra's Net.
Avy Runner: different words
Pema Pera: oh sure, Vector :)
Avy Runner: but it is interesting about hwo that feels :) and to see we use different symbolics
Pema Pera: but with the emphasis on "God" being not anthropomorphic
Zen Arado: easy to say ;let go' harder to actually do it - need to be driven to it maybe
Pema Pera: best to start with letting go of self -- rather than trying to let go of all your addictions, which is endless
Vector Marksman: yes -God is too loaded with such stuff
Avy Runner: addictions have a way of getting in between 'you' and letting 'go of yourself' :)
Bruce Mowbray: yes. . . For me. "God" is either absolutely everything, or nothing at all.
Avy Runner: whatever 'you' is
Zen Arado: Being is God in a person
Bruce Mowbray: That's why I call myself a "Pantheist" -- but only when pressed by someone for a label.
Zen Arado: or as a person
Zen Arado: I think anyway
Avy Runner: I'm afraid God and Emptiness don't go together, but whatever system, that is not really important

Not sure Avy...."Be Still and know that I am God"

Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Eden.
Maxine Walden: hi, Eden
Avy Runner: hi Eden
Pema Pera: Hi Eden and Arch!
Avy Runner: hi Arch
Adams Rubble: Hello Eden and Arch
Eden Haiku: Hi!
Bruce Mowbray: "God" os one of the fly-paper sort of words. . . too much stuff sticks to it.

With that we tranisition to the next session....

Bruce Mowbray: is*
Archmage Atlantis: Hello everybody :)
Pema Pera: :)
Bruce Mowbray: Hey, Arch.
--BELL--
Zen Arado: Hi Eden/Arch
Maxine Walden: Well, I should go. Nice discussion, great chapter, Pema
Pema Pera: thanks, Maxine!
Eden Haiku: Bye Maxine :)
Adams Rubble: bye Maxine
Avy Runner: bye MAxine
Zen Arado: bye Maxine
Vector Marksman: bye Maxine
Adams Rubble: we switch now?
Adams Rubble: do I stop it?
Pema Pera: just kill it, yes