Creation / Destruction

Holy wow.

I’ve been taken aback lately by how often – the rate at which - my thoughts and opinions, feelings and moods, fluctuate. I’m not talking about wild mood swings or dichotomous dissociative episodes or anything. I simply mean the day to day, moment to moment changes that weren’t noticed until I started a regular meditation practice not that many years ago.

Sometimes I wonder whether or not the arising and passing of phenomenal appearances actually moves more quickly for those with developed minds. That might be true. But, I also just how often these things fluctuate for others, based on what they communicate. What’s really intriguing is that rather than seeing these fluctuations for what they are, they are often taken (by my observation) as simply who one is – who they have always been.

For example, a person may begin to be dissatisfied with their romantic partner, whom they have been with for many years. The current dissatisfaction is so often interpreted as something that has been there all along. They might say they just didn’t recognize it (i.e. they were fooling themselves), or that they always knew, but they just couldn’t stand to leave for one or another reason. What goes unnoticed is really that there were moments in history where they really were satisfied with their partner. But somehow it’s too difficult to consider the fact that these things fluctuate. It’s too unsettling to see that the foundation for who we consider ourselves to be is more like shifting sand than solid rock.

I don’t want to belittle the unsettling nature of this understanding. It’s not any easy thing to adjust to. In fact, sometimes I seem to be well-adjusted to it, and other times I don’t – more fluctuation!

“Empty, empty, empty, empty, empty, empty, empty!” (The chant of creation and destruction.)

I think it was Shinzen Young who I once heard say that enlightenment is like falling off a cliff… and you acclimatize to the fall.

I am sparked to talk more about this, I’m not trying to
explain anything to you, I think I’m just kind of riffing on what you are
talking about from my point of view at the moment:

This is all about the illusion of solidity, permanence, etc,
right?

We know that everything and all of us are actually just a
rapid fire ever changing living and dying moving breathing bunch of sensations
that our brains constantly try to nail down into something solid.

So, huge but necessary illusions happen every time we decide
something, every time we figure ourselves, others, or the world out, every time
we buy into ideas and concepts from “out there” (people talking, books, movies,
articles, etc.) that things are a certain way. None of these conclusions, no
matter how enticing or convincing will EVER be true.

I think certain forces from genetics and environment can
sometimes shape our choices about how to look at things in ways that are a very
strong pattern and that can completely work for all or part or most of a
lifetime. But this is random as well and can vary and change based upon
changing circumstances. Lights turn on and then die out. Sometimes they are
bright and powerful and long and sometimes brief and weak – and, of course
everything in between.

Our practices, then, show us this and it can seem at times
like falling off a cliff and, I think, at times, it can create an awesome giddiness
just from the freedom of it all. Know what I mean? Acclimatizing to the fall is
a part of integration?

I know that right now I have this incredible relationship
with my present and third wife. And she has the same with me, her fourth
husband. I feel so grateful for it not just because it is so great but because
I know how random and rare it is that we’ve found ourselves here in this place together,
but also because I know that we are both gently riding along on the forces and
memories and inclinations and patterns that brought us both here with full
knowledge of both it’s unlikelihood and it’s precarious nature. Unknown forces could come at any time to end
the thing and bring us apart and break the nice bond and rare intimacy.

It’s the same thing with my job and my health and my
children. Through luck, grace, effort, everything – it is all good right now.
But it certainly hasn’t always been and it won’t be at some certain future
point – this is a guarantee.

Just starting to get the sense of the falling... The thing that feels like falling is illusions seem so real, so really real, and then they are gone, just illusions after all, and where was I during the looking and believing and then the waking up? Feels like falling and never landing anywhere. Appearances so apparent, appearances that pass so very gone.

"you breathe in, you breathe out; you breathe in, you breathe out..."-- Van Morrison, Astral Weeks.

"Say goodbye to Madame George."