Chapter 12 - More Voices

The following is a collection of some of the other voices speaking during the first year of Play as Being on a variety of subjects.

Antonia Braveheart (at PaB session on January 19, 2009)

Antonia Braveheart: in Italian, we have different kinds of love :P
Antonia Braveheart: it depends on who's addressed
Antonia Braveheart: for example, the kind of love for friends
Antonia Braveheart: it's " bene"
Gaya Ethaniel: Good?
Antonia Braveheart: yes
Antonia Braveheart: when you say "ti voglio bene" it kinda means "I love you" but it is addressed to a friend
Antonia Braveheart: when we address to someone who love, or God as well....it is proper love..."amore"
Antonia Braveheart: "ti amo" means properly "I love you"

Arabella Ella (at PaB session on March 21, 2009 13:00)

Arabella Ella: if you are christian i think the two most important things are Love God and Love your neighbour
***
Arabella Ella: we as humans are social beings and we have an innate need to share our experiences
Arabella Ella: but sharing experiences does not imply either conflict or power

Artemisia Svoboda (at PaB session on January 27, 2009 01:00)

Artemisia Svoboda: It sometimes feels like my entire life is a series of experiences of being stuck
Artemisia Svoboda: and life-long discovery of how to get more and more unstuck
Artemisia Svoboda: but often falling back and forgetting
Artemisia Svoboda: that the "stuckness" is not my inevitable fate

Bertrum Quan Hana Hendrassen

Pema Pera: why is it that looking at a mirror left and right are reversed but not up and down
Bertrum Quan: It’s a matter of translation.
Pema Pera: ah, you have thought about this before?
Pema Pera: it baffles most people, the first time they hear it

Bertrum Quan: To the layman like myself, the exapmle of the mirror is important,
Bertrum Quan: a perfect metaphor of the “problem”
Pema Pera: can you say more?
Bertrum Quan: Well as I said earlier, the nature of the mirror is duality.
Bertrum Quan: Inherent in that is also illusion.
Pema Pera: yes
Bertrum Quan: But most important for me (in the PaB context) is this: I think we (humans) make a mistake to think we find ourselves (identity, spirituality, etc.) by looking in the mirror.
Bertrum Quan: The article, of course, makes the case for the higher level function in our brains that do a certain degree of translating for us–what is real and what it reflection.
Bertrum Quan: But it’s still a trick.
Bertrum Quan: You new PaB excercise–to see as Being sees–mean we cannot use a mirror!
Bertrum Quan: means
Bertrum Quan: We are in love with our own image! We believe we are in the image of God!
Bertrum Quan: But the mirror is a metaphor for a kind of blindness…
Bertrum Quan: Does that make any sense?

Chiaiu Chiung (at PaB session on March 11, 2009 01:00)[Chiaiu's First Session]

Chiaiu Chiung: i like that arising suggest the constant change of things, they come and go
***
Chiaiu Chiung: can we say arising is a kind of energy that manifests into appearances?
Tarmel Udimo: unless Chiaiu wants to kick off:-)
Tarmel Udimo: that's how I was meaning it espacially if we go Arising=Being
Chiaiu Chiung: it emphasizes movement, creation/destruction
Tarmel Udimo: the energy arising
Chiaiu Chiung: if being=arising, then being=energy
Tarmel Udimo: Buddhists use the word appearances linked to phenomena ie everything we see is empty phenomena
Tarmel Udimo: yes its just a preference on my part at the moment
Chiaiu Chiung: appearance seems static at first, but is not in fact
Chiaiu Chiung: this is how i understand empty..
Chiaiu Chiung: it is not a thing itself
Tarmel Udimo: appearance you mean Chiaiu ?
Chiaiu Chiung: appearance yes, which is empty

Delani Gabardini On the nine seconds (from June 6, 2008 13:00 session)

Delani Gabardini: well before that let me say that I like letting my mind go free to “dance” so to speak
Delani Gabardini: and of course, play

Delani Gabardini: my first thought was “No I ams - more what ifs”

Eliza Madrigal (3/27/09)

I am not sure what I expected to discover when signing on to Second Life, but it wasn't a thriving, beautiful, meditative community. And it wasn't the richly diverse, sometimes-overwhelming-but-always-welcoming environment of Play as Being. What is difficult to articulate, is how *at home* I feel here, and how natural it seems, that I am.

As to 9 second practice, for me it is simply a lovely way to "check in" and re-set Intention to Be. Perhaps the most resonating PaB idea to my mind, is that of greeting each experience and person anew...of, as Pema might say, "bracketing" preconceptions and time.  

Hana Hendrassen(at PaB session on November 30, 2008 13:00)

Hana Hendrassen: "ignorance is bliss"... there also could be two kinds of ignorance: that which you don't want to know, and that which you are content to be unable to know

Mickorod Renard (at PaB session on March 23, 2009 13:00)

Mickorod Renard: I had to cut back lots of buches and tree's that were neglected in the garden.. I was rummaging around benieth the folliage and discovered a den,,or what could be one with imagination,,after a lil while it started to rain so rather than go indoors I decided to stay in my new den and peer out,,I soon became lost in the beauty of it all,,with the sound and presence of the rain,,took me back to that timeless zone as a kid

Myna Maven (at PaB session on February 21, 2009 07:00)

Myna Maven: The bottom rule for me, when moving through difficult phases, is keeping compassion in mind.

Myoko Fang (at PaB session on December 16, 2008 13:00)

Myoko Fhang: My sitting gives my daily awarness momentum so to speak.
Myoko Fhang: If I ssit three times a day, I am defenetly much more aware of things.
Wester Kiranov: for how long at a time do you sit, typically?
Myoko Fhang: About 45 to 60 min if times alow it.
Myoko Fhang: Oh...I try to take those short meditations as often as I can, typically when walking.
Myoko Fhang: To the kitchen, post office and so on...
Myoko Fhang: I think it is very personal how things work. Some people get lot from sitting long hours, personally I get more from trying to stay aware in everyday routines.

Neela Blaisdale (at PaB session on October 25, 2008 07:00)

Neela Blaisdale: yes. Seems easier to do that here, sometimes hard to do in RL when caught up in the day to day. the 9 sec helps
Pema Pera: yes, little breaks seem to make big differences . . . .
Corvuscorva Nightfire: any space makes a difference.
Pema Pera: can you give some examples, perhaps, Neela , of how the 9 sec has helped in RL?
Neela Blaisdale: well if feeling overwelmed, work, election, whatever makes me stop and change "heads", shuts off the "loop"
Neela Blaisdale: then after I find I'm feeling very diferently
Pema Pera: yes, opening the loop can be a great relief!
Neela Blaisdale: that's the immediate effect. In the long term I 've been feeling a much more intense "universal connection" for lack of a better word
Corvuscorva Nightfire looks at this with interest.
Pema Pera: can you say more, Neela ?
Neela Blaisdale: well I now think it is possible to feel conected to Being, although I always believed intellectually in the idea that we are all connected, now I feel it at times

Nostrum Forder (at PaB session on July 22, 2008 19:00)

Nostrum Forder: I was, for years, a compulsive journaler. I have written journals of daily events that go back for almost 40 years.
Pia Iger: wowo
Nostrum Forder: Recently, some circumstances in my life led me to abandon journalling entirely.
Nostrum Forder: Curiously, for about 6 months, I went through a kind of “withdrawal” where I felt I had to compulsively tell me daily stories to anyone who would listen.
Nostrum Forder: So for six months, I was essentially, excuse the expression, a royal pain in the ass to anyone within earshot when I needed to unload the days baggage.
Nostrum Forder: After that, though, I found that the need to talk through the day subsided. I also noticed something more basic.
Nostrum Forder: I was “in the moment” much more.
Nostrum Forder: I was “there” when things were happening, instead of stepping outside myself to collect data points for my daily report. :)
Nostrum Forder: So for me, the record was an obstacle. It forced me outside the moment, and I didn’t really live each moment fully.
Solobill Laville: That is true for me as well. Though it seems we are in the minority on that front, Nostrum , from what I’ve heard over the past few months ;)
Neela Blaisdale: What do you mean Solo?
Pia Iger: I would say there are different kinds of record.
Nostrum Forder: I’ve since gone back to journalling, btw. but I am far more terse and condensed now.
Solobill Laville: Many people like to write thoughts, or perceptions, or perhaps track effort and results
Solobill Laville: I just have seen that as a bit of a barrier, to my own practice
Solobill Laville: Perhaps I worry to much about how I should phrase something
Neela Blaisdale: Nostrum ’s story reminds me of doing a silent retreat- for 5 days-couldn’t speak or read or write at first feeling very
Neela Blaisdale: panicky- then thoughts became clearer
Neela Blaisdale: less writing, less words makes it easier to “be”
Nostrum Forder: My spiritual adivsor once said to me, “Make it an objective to do less and be more.”
***
Nostrum Forder: Do not allow your identity to become synonymous with your actions. If that happens, you are nothig but furniture.

Quilty Bookmite (at PaB session on October 9, 2008 13:00)

Quilty Bookmite: To my Buddhist perspective, all things have the Buddha nature, even the clinging.
Quilty Bookmite: i'm not sure I want to say very much about that. :-) Buddhism isn;t really the subject.
Quilty Bookmite: But the self that didn't trust yourself also has the Buddha nature. :-)
Vertigo Ethaniel: i believe its important to keep questioning ourselves and those things we hold sacred, else we run the risk of turning religious
Quilty Bookmite: Questioning is good. Not so sure about blaming. :-)

Rajah Yalin On the nine seconds (from May 28, 2008 19:00 session)

Rajah Yalin: seems short but seems like a large accomplishment when you take into consideration how much is being done daily
Rajah Yalin: keeps the positive energies going

Shilv Tigerauge(from March 5, 2009 13:00 session)

Shilv Tigerauge: sometimes when i look at things the wall beteem meits like the ocean and the waves

Sonic Moonites (from February 24, 2009 07:00 session)

Sonic Moonites: thats one of the reasons i find running so useful for meditations, the movement and sense of the body makes it harder not be aware of
Sonic Moonites: especially as SL makes us even further away from our RL bodies
Sonic Moonites: easy to disconnect

Sky Szimmer (from May 19, 2008 07:00 session)

Sky Szimmer: yes. it reminded me of our conversation in RL, last month
Sky Szimmer: i think I was talking about there is always going to be a connection with “Being” and the body
Sky Szimmer: anyway, the explanation is consciousness has an “I” and in awareness not
Sky Szimmer: ‘I” being a bundle of memories and experiences, the five senses, etc.
Sky Szimmer: so in death, those attribute fades
Sky Szimmer: finer states of consciousness remains
Sky Szimmer: awareness being not a form of consciousness

Susi Alcott
Vertigo Ethaniel (at PaB session on July 27, 2008)

Vertigo Ethaniel: adelene, i view conversation like a river... it has many components, and all contribute to a greater whole
Adelene Dawner: And there is a joy in being here.
Vertigo Ethaniel: there is joy wherever you want to see it
Vertigo Ethaniel: or feel it
Vertigo Ethaniel: or experience it in any way

Wester Kiranov (at PaB session on December 2, 2008)

Wester Kiranov: i was just thinking, if you keep on doing something like the 9 second practice, you punch tiny holes in Ego, until it starts falling apart automatically
Becka Finesmith: That hasn't happened for me so far. The 9 seconds has so far made me more aware of it. It looms large like I didn't know it was there
Wester Kiranov: very important first step
Wester Kiranov: first notice how much you are wrapped up in what you think is real
Becka Finesmith: COuldn't be more wrapped up unfortunately.
Becka Finesmith: at what point do we stop unwrapping
Wester Kiranov: You could be more wrapped up, otherwise you wouldn't be here
Wester Kiranov: You stop unwrapping when you get to the Present ;-P
Wester Kiranov: actually, you don't stop unwrapping at all