yoga in van

A condition must first be satisfied (says the slave-master) in order for me to enjoy myself again, and in order for me to allow myself to be free to be (free to enjoy) that which I truly am: pure Being. Being so comparatively vast, itself unbound to the billiard ball condition, but free also to be in and to enjoy the billiard ball condition for what (limitation) it is. There are no limits set on the capacity for Being to enjoy (itself) and this it does, to the extent it is aw...are of its own true nature. Only the billiard ball condition is (self) limited. While identified (giving the role the total power of I) as a billiard ball, I cannot be free. I am the role after all, so the role is playing me. I am not in charge. The role, and all I’ve heard, read and had repeated to me about it, is in charge. I’ve got things backwards. The real living Being is smothered under the weight of billiard ball expectations. (There’s even a very compelling document called a constitution enshrining the condition and its rights). Identifying as a billiard ball, even as one of a certain stripe and colour, here on a billiards table of a certain district, I fall under the local code of billiard balls. Only I can give consent to this condition and I forget that in such things I have a choice. It may be to my advantage to consent. The point is, am I aware that I have given my consent? Am I aware of what is doing the consenting, and to what? It is the prerogative of Being and not of billiard balls to be aware.

If billiard balls have a purpose, it’s to strike, to bump around, and to sink other billiard balls. I (self) am also a billiard ball. I am similarly wound. My love of my meaning-making and especially of my conclusions have wound me into a tight psychological ball. I’ve taken my lessons from a world of billiard balls and they themselves have taken lessons from me. But I am more than just a ball and it’s easy to forget this when balls are very intensely set on being balls. ...I say to myself that I cannot transcend this unfortunate state of being until I’ve first stopped getting bumped. (This is the hook). My freedom then becomes conditional, dependent on something else, (peace, freedom from pain and fears, etc., i.e. the bait). My freedom (to enjoy myself) becomes dependent on a condition first being met. This conditional freedom is not real freedom but is a dependency (slavery) on the condition itself. The slave-operator works the condition, dangles the condition, having set both the condition and the enemy which made the condition necessary.

Things occasionally pass by which distract me from the joy of forget-fullness. Distractions mostly of a human nature. People and their conversations. They draw me away from the spaces between things. They themselves become objects or things of fixation. Objects wound tight like billiard balls. Objects in which spaces do not dwell. They themselves fixated on me in return, also as object. Little do they know I am space. Giving off the impression of object-reality. But this i...s an illusion. I live in spaces. I am about, from, and forever drawing more intimate with space. Space and more specifically, the core of spacethat which emerges from out the middle of spaceBeing. Being is Real. This must be some miracle. Being which emanates, is surrounded by, or which is the expression of consciousness? I don’t know.

True Friends Long ago in China there were two friends, one who played the harp skillfully and one who listened skillfully. When one played or sang about a mountain the other would say I can see the mountain before us.... When one played about water, the listener would exclaim: Here is the running stream! But the listener fell sick and died. The first friend cut the strings of his harp and never played again. Since that time the cutting of harp strings has always been a sign of intimate friendship.

haunts of ancient peace

As a preparation for meditation.