Page last modified 19:54, 27 Mar 2011 by Adams Rubble

Being Sessions

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Version as of 18:35, 18 Dec 2024

Note: This page is still in progress and not yet complete. I am rethinking the format and my methodology at the moment. - Adams

Pema announced four Being sessions to begin January 8 at the following days and times:

Saturdays, 7 pm SLT (Pema) <== three hours from now
Sundays, 1 pm SLT (Maxine)
Mondays, 7 am (Eden)
Tuesdays, 1 am (Wester)

Pre-Session:

Eden began a week early on January 3 following the format at the December Second Life retreat.

Bruce Mowbray: I literally live 50 miles from even the POSSIBILITY of finding something like PaB in RL.

Bruce Mowbray: So, PaB is first and foremost ACCESS to people who think, who care, who explore, who stay in the Open Questions about life.

Bruce Mowbray: and I am SO GRATEFUL for this.

Bruce Mowbray: To me, playing and loving are very close. . .

Bruce Mowbray: I cannot really PLAY without being myself and without being honest.

Bruce Mowbray: Nor can I love without being myself and without being honest.

Bruce Mowbray: So -- PaB is a place where I have access to Playing and to Loving - - - and at the bottom of it all, that's why I'm here:

Bruce Mowbray: to play to love to be played with and to be loved.

see two more exerpts on Adams' scribe entry

Session 1

The first official session was on January 8 and began with everyone having a chance to define what PaB meant to them. Bruce conjured up a wonderful image:

Bruce Mowbray: PaB is a campfire - one with unimaginably ancient roots - around which we gather, dance, and share our many diverse tales and ponderings.

Later in response to prodding Pema said a bit more:

Pema Pera: for me, my relationship with Being is deeply devotional

Pema Pera: but not in a way like with an external God
Pema Pera: it is very paradoxical
Pema Pera: but devotion can be without separation
Pema Pera: and without supplication
Pema Pera: or begging in any form as from a needy position
Pema Pera: I don't know whether that makes any sense at all
Pema Pera: does anyone like to respond or add their angles?

Maxine Walden: I resonate with a sense of reverence toward the vastness of being and the universe

Archmage Atlantis: For me there are degrees of the awareness of Being, and the fluctuation of that awareness is Being itself
Archmage Atlantis: An example is easiest......today I look at the sky and see the blueness of it, tomorrow I look at the sky and see the vastness of it, some other day I look at the sky and see the birds flying in it......yet in each awareness, I look at the sky

Session 2:

During the next Being session, Maxine was guardian. the question about what PaB meant to people was posed again.

Wol Euler: well, I came to it by chance, except that I tend to believe that there is no such thing as "by chance" :)
Wol Euler: in retrospect I was looking for a way to get back into meditation, and certainly found that here.
Wol Euler: the practices were a great help, and the discussion of mindfulness and appreciation and such were very interesting and ... mentally invigorating, can one say that?
Wol Euler: PaB is three things, a community, a set of practices, and a place where people meet to talk. It seems to me that the talking is drifting from the others, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this.

Eos Amaterasu: Re pratice, one interesting question I find is how to be authentically, not so much coming from "I" or what I think I want, but from giving up into how being is effulging... ((( )))) :-)

Eden Haiku: Play as Being now is sitting in a circle of friendly people
Eden Haiku: sharing the silence
Eden Haiku: in a virtual world
Eden Haiku: happy to be here with you all
Eden Haiku: so far away in RL
Eden Haiku: yet, I can feel your presence
Eden Haiku: like invisible threads through the fountain
Eden Haiku: and it's very nurturing
Eden Haiku: sometimes exhilarating
Eden Haiku: sometimes poetic
Eden Haiku: sometimes deep
Eden Haiku: always friendly :)

Zen Arado: I find Pab a place to discuss ideas about life and being, and ways of knowing and thinking about that by drawing on our collective experiences. I'm learning to open to all of life and not just little parts that fit my assumptions and preconceptions. I'm learning to be creative by facing my fears. And learning by creating with others and enjoying the richness and broadness of that, and feeling it opening and transforming my ideas and thoughts about life and allowing me to drop them.

Session 3:

In the Monday morning session, eden suggested the group focus on their relationship with Being. A few examples of the replies:

Eden Haiku: And in order to do so I would ask you to do a very simple experiment: bring one of your hands close to your mouth and gently breathe into it, just once or twice.

Eden Haiku:What I feel when doing that, gently blowing into my hand, is what my relationship with Being is at the moment.

Lugh Fehr: its always their cant escape it unless mabey by deth so its a wierd one love hate relationship hehe

Kit Ciaco: For myself only - I do not have a relationship with being - I am, I "be." It is like saying I have a relationhips with my heart beat - it just does, and I just do. I just be.

Bleu Oleander: my relationship to Being to the extent that one can have a relationship with being is one of acceptance

Pema Pera: There are so many ways I could approach Being . . . . here is just one

Pema Pera: We normally identify with our body, as what we are, including brain

Pema Pera: and the body is located in space and time

Pema Pera: and we consider our consciousness to somehow come our of our brain

Pema Pera: so consciousness situated in brain in body in space and time

Pema Pera: very small sliver in all of that

Pema Pera: and in that picture we are very needy -- we need all kinds of things to live -- and then we die

Pema Pera: but an alternative view is to see ourselves as awareness expressing consciousness expressing this whole rich world

Pema Pera: and when we ask where awareness comes from you could say that Time is Playing in Space to express Awareness, with all three of those, Space and Time and Awareness seen as three aspects of Being

Pema Pera: Being expressing Being in Being for Being as the play of all that appears, all that we can appreciate in its appearance

Session 4:

The last of the first quartet was the 1 am session Monday morning guardianed by Wester.

Archmage Atlantis: I suppose there are really 2 elements of Being that most affect me when I am here in the circle.
Archmage Atlantis: One is the existence and being of the circle itself.
Archmage Atlantis: In an earlier session I shared that for me, sitting around the fountain is a safe place for me inside, whether one defines inside as emotionally or spiritually.
Archmage Atlantis: And it is that, as well as a place where the presence of other seekers, if I may use that term, creates a sense of connection to the search.
Archmage Atlantis: The second is, again if I might use the verb to seek,
Archmage Atlantis: where I share in seeking for the state that we refer to here as "Being"

Pema Pera: For me, too, the PaB community is important, and the way we gather here, in a mode that spans a wide range, depending on the mood, between a neighborhood cafe and a laboratory
Pema Pera: and Being itself is for me an invitation to live without points of view, without reference points
Pema Pera: that kind of challenge is something that enriches every day of my life.

Archmage Atlantis: In cooking, one of the more challenging actions is to leave something alone on the stove or in the oven, yet to remember to attend to it when it is at the point where turning or stirring are needed.

A brief impromptu Being session was held during the session hosted by Eos on January 11 at 19:00:

Paradise Tennant: smiles >>> PAB is a like a well .. you are going to a source .. of friendship .. perspective .. knowledge..creativity .. even poetic license ..

Paradise Tennant: it is about being with people.. getting to know them ..sharing their ups and downs and traveling down a path together with folks from all around the world
Paradise Tennant: that are sensitive ..to life's richest possibilities :)) to opening a door and living " in the fullness of life"

For the next round for Saturday, January 15 at 19:00, at Sunday, January 16 13:00, Monday, January 17 at 7:00 am, and Tuesday, January 18 at 1:00 am, Pema posed the following question in an email to the group:

Here is one way to pose a question we can grapple with: What does it mean for you, concretely, to try to briefly drop what you have (in terms of identifications, beliefs, whatever you normally rely on) and to be naked of any reference points, for at least a short while? How does that feel? Could that tell you anything about what you/we really are?

Each of the four sessions had their own unique flavor and seemed to sharpen until the reach the two person circle on Tuesday morning.

Being Sessions

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