June 9th, 2010 → 3:55 pm @ Tom
Breath lives loser to us than anything else. To breathe better is to live better.
Full and healthy breath cycles effortlessly through four phases: inhale / retain / exhale / rest. The profitable use of inner life information follows the same stages.
Reading, audio and video, classes and discussion are among the methods for inhaling information. Contemplation, experimentation and making lists of your connections, these are practical ways to retain the information for awhile.
Then, unlike conventional worldly information that gets mentally stored, inner life information has one purpose — to cleanse and open. Attempts to store the information lead to competitive comparison, top heaviness and rigid religious structures. This third stage, exhalation, is perhaps best described as an intelligent willingness to not know. Happiness is Beingness, the bubbling spring mentioned above. After all, no isolated self exists that can Know, since true Knowing flows freely without reference to apparent selves and boundaries.
The fourth stage of the cycle, rest, includes simply noticing the silence, and at other times it includes recreation. J. Krishnamurti, for example, surprised people when they heard he loved to read detective novels. Vernon Howard enjoyed reading history for recreation. Gurdjieff relished telling and listening to jokes while taking a Turkish bath.
By Tom Russell
June 9th, 2010 → 2:53 pm @ Tom
A glider carried aloft by a tow plane holds fascinating parallels to the spiritual path. The tow plane can only go so high. At a certain point the glider pilot pulls the lever and soars away on his or her own resources.
Books and classes represent the tow plane. It’s constructive and we feel gratitude for the boost, yet some if not most spiritual travelers never risk the separation! If we don’t reach down at some point and pull the level to soar on our own, we end up missing the point of it all.
Prolonged attachment to the tow plane can delay entrance to higher grades, where increasingly what others say about spirituality gets examined aside our own experiences and direct observations.
To soar higher, glider pilots look for vertically flowing currents of wind. They often find them on the edges of hills and mountains, since this typography redirects the wind upwards. Obstacles and challenges do the same for us. They channel the spiritual air flow upward, and the skilled life-pilot rides the currents to the top of the sky.
By Tom Russell