| Subject: Re: The down transmission |
Author:
Kate
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Date Posted: 13:47:09 07/28/02 Sun
In reply to:
Cassandra
's message, "The down transmission" on 01:33:25 07/28/02 Sun
Cassandra, we've had one-on-one conversations about this, which will continue, but I find myself surprised by an impulse to say something more public on the subject. Understand that this is just Kate's take on these matters: what she thinks she knows, so far...
The diving down, down, down is a healthy-- exuberant, even-- expression of being 100% more ALIVE than we were. At the outset, there is such excitement and surprise to find all our capacities so vastly expanded, that-- partly by way of seeing JUST how big we are, and partly for sheer unchained APPETITE-- we have to take on EVERYTHING, all the heights, all the depths, the eccentricities, the serene transcendencies. Sheer, naked, stainless Awareness is equal to EVERYTHING; and the way we really comprehend this is by taking on everything that presents itself.
Then, I think, two things happen that raise the stakes and makes things more difficult: the first is, that we dispose of the more obvious tests, and get into the more personal, idiosyncatic material for which it is hard to find confirmation-- we really are out there on our own personal frontier, utterly (and necessarily) ALONE. At the same time, more of what IS is getting through to us, in its complexity and raw, unbridled, implacable, impersonal atomic ENERGY. And there are no guarantees we'll cope; there are no shining examples of someone having undergone our particular ordeal; there is no common language about what is happening that is precise enough.
I think maybe the animated discussion about up vs. down, embodied vs. dissociated-- painful as they wind up being-- are a default to an earlier, 'more comfortable' (because more familiar) set of concepts. That are wholly inadequate for where we've found ourselves, so whe get stuck in a kind of spin cycle. We want to be able to judge ourselves and others: it provides us with the consoling illusion of knowledge. We want to be able to tell exaggerated stories about our triumphs or sufferings: it provides us with a familiar sense of existing at the center of our experience.
There seems to be more common ground, sommon language for the negative emotional states, for the ways in which we suffer our experience here. There is very little confirmation available for being brought to ones knees in gratitude for the perfection of this 'sweer old world' (that is, yes, also imperfect, insane, lethal). Nobody telling us how to step off the dualistic teeter-totter. The 'resolution' of the paradox makes suffering/outrage the norm and ecstatic celebration the exception: that's for poets, that's a moment of Grace, that's for saints. That's not as real as this grind.
And yet, the most illuminated moment of our lives was the one in which ALL of that, of ourselves, disappeared in the Radiance of Being. And there's this intractable part of ourselves that will never allow us to settle for a new, more knowledgeable, more personally powerful, improved version of the same old same old. We know too much: 'Being shortens the leash.'
And THEN...? I don't know; I'n beginning to feel that NOT knowing can be the source of astonished delight. The Tibetans say "Emaho!" and it means something like "Amazing!" Amazing that things appear and disappear; amazing that we perceive such complex patterns and fine distinctions; amazing that we can stuggle so fiercely and surrender so deeply. There is no moment of this life that is not utterly amazing.
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