2009.12.20 13:00 - Openness and dropping

The guardian for this session was Maxine Walden.  The comments are hers.

I have posted this chatlog from my own disc, not yet having received the autolog.  As I have access to the autolog and time allowing I will update the log.

This was an interesting discussion about various aspects of PaB practice. It began, with a nudge from me, about what makes it difficult for us to hold onto the clarity we gain from practice? (among our thoughts are the gravitational elements of familiarity and the resistances to change).  As we then meandered into intellectual considerations I tried to steer us toward the direct experience of practice, which we did do at the 45 min pause.  Many PaBers then responded to the several questions, comments, ways to think about the practice. 

  I have edited out some of the intros and preliminary chat. 

Maxine Walden: maybe we can turn to PaB issues, thoughts, concerns...?

Mickorod Renard: I notice that like a manic depresed person..I imagine..i get moments of great understandding,,followed by times of no understanding

Mickorod Renard: but as time goes on,,I am becoming more clear

Maxine Walden: very common, I think, Mick. ...ah, yes more clear with experience?

Mickorod Renard: yes

Maxine Walden: others find a similar experience as Mick describes?

Mickorod Renard: I am feeling much airier now...and am hoping I acan sustain long periods of a more lieberal seeing mind

Bell 

Maxine Walden: yes, hope that is so for you Mick. Do you have some thought, Mick or anyone,about why we might feel so unclear at times?

Liza Deischer: hi Lila

Mickorod Renard: Hi Lila

Lila Darkmatter: Hello :)

Play as Being 15 minute bell: Thank you.

Mickorod Renard: are u ok Lila,,have you been here before?

Lila Darkmatter: Thank you Mick, yes :)

Mickorod Renard: ahh great

Mickorod Renard: in answer to your question max..I am not sure why

Mickorod Renard: breaking the mould that one finds oneself in takes time

Maxine Walden: yes, so much familiar drawing us back...

Mickorod Renard: peeling off the layers of lenses

Calvino Rabeni: It is an excellent question

Mickorod Renard: I find there are several elements of this too

Liza Deischer: I try to give up hope

Liza Deischer: hi Wol

Wol Euler: hello everyone, sorry I'm late

Mickorod Renard: being relaxed is good Liza,,but having confidence is good too

Maxine Walden: hi, Wol

Liza Deischer: hope is something different than confidence to me

Mickorod Renard: yeaaaa

Maxine Walden: Wol, we are just wondering among other things about the elements that draw us away from the clarity we gain sometimes

Liza Deischer: welcom back Wol

Wol Euler: ah

Mickorod Renard: I think society today has , like a dent in the bed,,formed something that is so easy to roll back into

Wol Euler smiles.

Wol Euler: a nice image

Calvino Rabeni: :) metaphor

Calvino Rabeni: And society has buried some treasures

Maxine Walden: interesting image...almost like a gravitational pull

Mickorod Renard: its imposible to change the mattress..

Maxine Walden: buried treasures, Cal?

Mickorod Renard: but we may have to live/sleep on the edge

Calvino Rabeni: yes, you can dig them back up

Mickorod Renard: but the edge may be better for ones posture

Calvino Rabeni: with a little shovel work

Mickorod Renard: he he

Calvino Rabeni: buddha-mind is a buried treasure

Maxine Walden: :)

Liza Deischer: how do you shovel Cal?

Calvino Rabeni: or I might say, that which is symbolized by an infant jesus at this time of year

Calvino Rabeni: Innocence and potential

Calvino Rabeni: Buried under layers of cynicism and mistrust

Mickorod Renard: yea

Wol Euler: I infer that you meant "buried" in the sense of an avalanche, not intentionally?

Calvino Rabeni: and rules and recriminations

Calvino Rabeni: Well, in that metaphor, some people might do things that bury the treasure more

Calvino Rabeni: not just an act of nature

Calvino Rabeni: Or we bury it in ourself

Calvino Rabeni: LIke the psychological theory of ego-defenses

Calvino Rabeni: Trying to protext the treasure inside

Calvino Rabeni: From a world that appears hard

Maxine Walden: For me it feels useful to consider that there are states of mind we all know and at times inhabt which resist change, growth and the new...resort more to 'tradition' with perhaps cynicism for any change

Wol Euler nods.

Maxine Walden: the 'gravitational' pull toward the familiar

Wol Euler: and towards the norm. We are herd animals, we like to be like each other

Calvino Rabeni: Tradition can be a help and a support, as can ritual. I think of it as a distiniction between living intelligence and dead intelligence

Bell 

Calvino Rabeni: we have some choice about those states of mind

Calvino Rabeni: that you mentioned, max

Calvino Rabeni: somewhat limited choice though

Calvino Rabeni: some are available in the moment, but others through practice

Maxine Walden: agree, Cal, and sometimes more choice than other times, perhaps, depending upon how balanced (or not) we feel

Maxine Walden: or do you have another thought?

Calvino Rabeni: over time, practice can make more choice available

Calvino Rabeni: that is, I believe cultivation works

Mickorod Renard: I do too

Calvino Rabeni: but one is aways poised on the edge of what is possible

Calvino Rabeni: insignts are ephemeral

Calvino Rabeni: If clung to, they turn into something else

Maxine Walden: wondering as we talk if we can think of having a bit of a practice during the next pause...maybe around some aspect of these issues...

Calvino Rabeni: I will take any proposal :)

Liza Deischer: thats what i mean with letting go of hope

Mickorod Renard: I think that is why we sould remind ourselves that PaB is an exploration, as much as anything else

Mickorod Renard: not an indoctrination

Calvino Rabeni: Letting go of the hope for an insight to be permanent - that makes sense

Liza Deischer: yes, exactly

Calvino Rabeni: The risk is, when you change it to make it permanent, it loses is life and is no longer true

Calvino Rabeni: It gets attached to the hope, whereas, in the beginning, it was free

Maxine Walden: (trying to offer some focus for the next pause): wonder if we can try to observe during next pause, what we are aware of being able to let go of and what not, what seems to hang around .

Maxine Walden: Might be a little difficult, but I am trying to have us focus and bring to our discussion some direct experience...how does that sound?

Calvino Rabeni: sounds good

Liza Deischer: ok

Mickorod Renard: brb

It felt time to try to go toward direct experience 

Maxine Walden: My understanding of our PaB sessions is to try to draw upon our direct experience perhaps even more than our intellectual considerations...

Maxine Walden: we need to have some framework, something of a focus, but these exercises in direct experience help to balance the often very keen intellectual side...

Calvino Rabeni: Yes, an act of balance, to give it a chance

Maxine Walden: exactly, Cal

Calvino Rabeni: put it first for a while

Maxine Walden: right...

Lila Darkmatter: when i drop my role as a 'worker' or whatever, i don't stop working, so maybe while doing pab, ideas about pab sometimes need to be dropped and just play :)

Maxine Walden: interesting, Lila

Lila Darkmatter has obviously been here before

Lila Darkmatter: :)

Wol Euler: good to see you were taking notes.

Wol Euler: hello ara

Liza Deischer: hi Ara

Maxine Walden: hi, Ara

arabella Ella: Hiya!

Yakuzza Lethecus: hey ara :)

Lila Darkmatter: Hello arabella

Aubergine Mint: Hi Arabella

Mickorod Renard: hi ara

Maxine Walden: About to go into the pause, Ara, and try to observe what we can 'let go of' and what may seem more tenacious or 'hanging around'

arabella Ella: ah

Maxine Walden: trying to focus some on our direct experience

arabella Ella: yes

Bell 

Maxine Walden: So, what is sharable from the pause?

Maxine Walden: What experiences?

Aubergine Mint: what does it mean to "let go of" during such a short time?

arabella Ella: well i dont know how appropriate this is but here goes

arabella Ella: i had to deal with a small family health emergency tonite

arabella Ella: and during the pause i realised

arabella Ella: how easy it is to let go of practically everything ... drop literally everything ... when such emergencies occur

Wol Euler nods.

arabella Ella: everything else fades into obscurity however important it previously seemed to be

Liza Deischer: thats interesting

Lila Darkmatter: yes it is

Maxine Walden: hmmm, yes, ara.

Mickorod Renard: yes

arabella Ella: it is just a reflection now during the pause over my experience these past couple of hours

Maxine Walden: yes, and maybe Aubergiine your question may be answered by some of the responses...

Mickorod Renard: but also it can work visa versa,,over that particular crisis,,a sort of stepping back,,and a chance to viwe from a new perspective

Calvino Rabeni: For me "let go of" means I have an idea, "this is what I do, or am" and give it up. LIke, I will not need to continue with something. And I am still "I" without it.

Maxine Walden: Did that occur for you during the pause, Cal?

Calvino Rabeni: yes, that is what happens.

Calvino Rabeni: There is odd thing about it

Aubergine Mint: is it just that you stop thinking about who you are?

Calvino Rabeni: The things appear just before they can be dropped - so I barely see the things I "cannot drop"

Wol Euler: Aubergine, you'll probably get as many diferent answers as there are people here, of how the dropping actually gets done :)

Calvino Rabeni: it is a part of pheno also, that I don't really "get"

Lila Darkmatter: I'm an alt today, of regular 'pab-er' so I thought about identity within context and what others draw from a person v what one expects from themself.. what it means to shift gears/boundaries

Liza Deischer: The way you put it almost sounds like you are experiencing in toughs

Liza Deischer: thoughts

arabella Ella: for me Aubergine when someone needs my support urgently I just stop thinking who i am, yes

Aubergine Mint: nothing actually drops, you're still who you are

Wol Euler: that is a kind of flow state, isn't it, Ara?

Wol Euler: you become entirely one with what needs to happen *right now*

Lila Darkmatter: who you are isn't caught up in who you think you are then maybe

arabella Ella: yes Wol and it feels so strange to drop all work deadlines for example which seemed to be so pressing

Calvino Rabeni: Thoughts are ore can be, a direct experience too - it is not just "perception"

Maxine Walden: such a change of perspective, of what matters...all of a sudden

arabella Ella: @Lila ... not sure what you mean ... who you are ... who you think you are?

Calvino Rabeni: You ahve a direct experience of having thoughts

Maxine Walden: yes, Cal, that may be

Lila Darkmatter: well, you kind of stop thinking, in an emergency... out of 'your head' anyway... attention shifts outward

Liza Deischer: true Cal

Wol Euler: Aubergine, it probably sounds as though people go into the pause with something in mind, say an aspect of themselves that they have identified, and try to drop that one thing

Liza Deischer: but I would like to know what that experience is about (and maybe Im not very clear :))

Wol Euler: whereas at least for myself, I try to do nearly the opposite: I imagine literally letting go, opening my hands, breathing out, expelling all conscious thoughts

Maxine Walden: (I have about 2 min before I have to leave. Just to mention beforehand)

Wol Euler: and then I often notice that something I had thought was part of me is missing.

Mickorod Renard: yes, I try that too wol

Wol Euler: at least for me, the dropping is done in retrospect. I see that a piece has gone, and think "ah, I dropped the idea that it is uncomfortably cold today"

arabella Ella: i find pauses as both aspects of reflection and relaxation ... as a release in both cases

Mickorod Renard: I find I am able to make observations ,,just observations,,and listenings etc,,without attaching thoughts

Calvino Rabeni: could work either way apparently

Aubergine Mint: sounds like a shift in attention

Maxine Walden: (don't want to interrupt this wonderful conversation; will just go; see you all later)

Wol Euler: mmhmm

At this point I had to leave for another meeting.  When I can get the autolog I will post the rest of the session