The great sea
Has sent me adrift

It moves me
As the weed
in a great river

Earth and the great weather
Move me

Have carried me away
And move my inward parts
with joy ...

The arch of sky
and mightiness of storms
Have moved the Spirit
within me

Till I am carried away
Trembling with joy ...

- Uvavnuk - Inuit shaman

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.

Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King.
When you lose yourself
before the King
you will become the King.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloudthat surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.
This is the surest wayto lose yourself...

What is your life about, anyway?
-Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.

- Rumi, from In the Arms of the Beloved,

"Some people said Taiji practitioners should not do weight lifting and should not use force. This is not true. Before we learn Taijiquan, our whole bodies are stiff and our force is not flexible. Once we have learned Taijiquan, we are very relaxed, our qi circulates and we can get rid of the stiffness but keep our force. Our rigid force has become resilient force. The rigid force usually comes from the shoulders and is not controlled by the waist and manisfested through the fingers. In business term, our rigid force is our capital, and relaxation is the method we use (know-how) to run a business. If we know how to run a business, with a small capital we can still do big business. If we do not not how, then even with a big capital, we cannot run any business. Therefore, after you have learned to do Taijiquan properly, there is nothing you cannot do, be it weight-lifting, wrestling, or running. Do not let the misception to worry you."

(Dong Ying-jie: Taijiquan Shi Yi.)

On nearing the surf
every footprint becomes
that of the sea

J. W. Hackett

When Japanese people are frustrated, they become silent, very, very silent.

Aside from our small training group everyone at the seminar was coming to Systema for the first time. The participants also included a few brave masters of other martial arts who had stepped out to come and join us. It was immediately obvious from their movements who they were and Alex did a wonderful job of putting them at ease and making them truly welcome. It is difficult to explain in a few words the cultural significance in Japan of an established teacher on another martial art coming with an open mind and an empty cup to learn something entirely new as a ‘beginner’. I take my hat off to these individuals and prey that their attitude and kindness prevails amongst us all.

- Andrew Cefai (writing about Systema Tokyo seminar, Sept 2005)

Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

That suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's to late, and...

Suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

The game of life is hard to play
I'm going to lose it anyway
the losing card I'll someday lay
so this is all I have to say

That suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

The only way to win is cheat
and lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat

Suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

The sword of time will pierce our skins
it doesn't hurt when it begins
but as it works its way on in
the pain grows stronger...watch it grin but...

Suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied "oh why ask me?"

'Cause suicide is painless
it brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.

...and you can do the same thing if you please.

Ki work

QZH: arm rotations
QZH: cat washes face
SYS: stick pressing
ZMQ: form (w/sokushin breathing?)
QZH: cat washes face
SYS: stick pressing
SYS: 5 min pushup top - hold
IAI: seiza sit
SYS: 10 halfway breathing pushups
QZH: cat washes face
QZH: dragon raises head

"Masochistic perseverance in the fulfillment of complex social obligations is a basic cultural trait of Japan."

Noel Burch, in a book on Japanese films

Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,
but by leaving it ungratified.
As long as you are laying logs on the fire,
the fire will burn.
When you withhold the wood, the fire dies,
and God carries the water.

- Rumi

Don't wish for union!
There's a closeness beyond that ...
Fall in love in such a way
that it frees you from any connecting.
Love is the soul's light, the taste of morning;
no me, no we, no claim of being...
As eyes in silence, tears, face:
love cannot be said.

-Rumi

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every force applied, there is an equal force applied back. The 'world', the universe, maya only exists because of resistance to it: you push against it, it pushes back.

The only way to freedom is surrender. You stop pushing, asserting yourself, and illusion stops pushing back, asserting itself. Stop pushing, putting energy into the system, and there is no energy in the system to push back.

Stop telling the story, and without that constant input of energy the story collapses.

-David Carse

Don't knock Monkey style kung fu !!!You can't kick the ass of a guy who is up a tree and throwing coconuts at you !!

Most of self defence has nothing to do with hand to hand combat, or any comabt at all. That much is true. However, the part of it that does deal with actual confrontations is simply not adressed by all of the scenario training and model muggings they advocate. Being able to fight requires a certain psychological characteristic, call it "toughness" that is simply not achieved by this type of training. Some people have it naturally, they are more or less born fighters. Others, like me, are softies, and no ammount of model mugging or low-contac sparring will ever get them to the point, where they will be able to stand up for themselves when push comes to shove. The only way you can become tough is formal or informal competition, or actual fighting experience. You have to go up against an opponent that is trying to actually take your head off, and not just simulate a mugger. This sort of fighting is a whole different kind of animal from friendly sparring. The agression, adrenalin, and fear for your safety change things a hell of a lot more than most people realize. This is why most of the reality self defence types will fold under real pressure, while most sports fighters will not.

Oh, smell the people!' yelled Dean with his face out the window, sniffling. 'Ah, God! Life!'"
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road

"Love is all.'
-Jack Kerouac

"I went with him for no reason."-Jack Kerouac on Neal Cassady

"What's your road, man? -holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow."
-Neal Cassady as Dean Moriarty in On The Road

"Who are all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me?"
-Jack Kerouac, on the final gathering/Snyders going away party

"...Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH..."
J. Kerouac- Big Sur

"Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken."
-Jack Kerouac

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds."
-- "On The Road”

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
-- "On The Road”

Gurus I Have Known and Loved

My friend Peter has made a suggestion to me....that I write a bit about the effect that certain spiritual teachers have had on me. I said immediately that seemed like too big of a job, to review gurus."No," he replied, "just talk about the effect they had on you." And so I begin with Peter himself.

Peter came into my life a number of years ago. I had begun my website to write about my husband's multiple myeloma. It quickly turned into a place where I began posting spiritual essays that I wrote. I posted them on Jerry Katz's Nonduality Salon as well. One day Peter posted something there about spirituality and illness. I wrote him privately and thus began an instantaneous friendship. It was based on nothing but hands clicking away at their respective keyboards. And Peter apparently has a hard time with his, given that he has been ill for many years. He prefers that I not discuss that part of his life. He has overcome the illusion of having a separate self. As far as he is concerned, it is all the same...suffering or enlightenment are indistinguishable.

Peter's statements about life are inherently simple and therefore effective. When you can not do anything but sit in the sunlight with a cat on your lap, then that is what you do. Capice?
He once sent me a sound bite of himself playing the bagpipes in earlier days. I sat at my computer listening, tears winking in my eyes. I have seen his picture and he is an incredibly handsome man. I do not know his last name or where he lives. In that way he is a perfect mirror for what is beyond words and thoughts.

When my husband decided to die slowly, enduring chemo just to keep himself on the planet as long as he could, Peter would say, "For what it is worth, I hold your hand in this." Indeed. What verbiage printed in ink or online can match the clarity of caring. I knew that Peter's days were just like mine....hardly endurable. But we were both choiceless in the matter. My job was to care for my husband and his was to get through the day as best he could without falling. "Ho ho!" he would say, after confessing to aanother episode of crashing into tall grasses.

So Peter has come to be a guru for me. He lives in the moment as a matter of course. If coaxed, he will admit that at some point in time, he lost his "me." That should be a profound relief, but given that he also lost his balance, strength and career, etc., things have not been hunky dory for him. It does no good to try and figure it out.

I go long periods of time without hearing from Peter, understandably so. If I write about him, the love is activated as I click clack the letters on the keyboard. He vows his cat holds the key to enlightenment and I am not at all sure about that. Maybe it's even simpler and he is just using words to keep me from experiencing cosmic bliss. I mean, somebody is keeping me from it. I might as well blame Peter. That is how much I trust him.

People whose lives have been drug down to the baseline of existence and kept there for many years grow clear or crazy, one or the other. Having lost a child, I know what baseline feels like. It is forcing yourself to put your body through the motions while your heart is scattered all over the universe. You cannot call it home; it justwon't come. It is stubbornly holding out on you. Mine wanted a little girl named Laurie to come back. With Peter, it was his ability to use his body.

But Peter and I found each other serendipitously. Forget enlightenment, gurus and every word written about them. Loving what is does the trick. When you can love the lost things in your life and stumble forward knowing they will not return, good for you. Good for Peter and good for me. We know the essential truth of life. It will not change at our whim, but we can change in the moment of our suffering. It's called love.

Vicki Woodyard

Dear Aging Becomer
by Bob Cergol

A letter written by Bob to friends, many of whom have been "on the path" for 25 or more years, and read by him at the April 2005 TAT Spring Gathering:

You consider yourself more esoterically informed than most -- way, way ahead of the common masses and "Joe-six-pack." from animated postcard by Jeff Victor In the last 30 years, haven't you figured out yet -- how to become a reverse vector? Is it by more and more "doing" and "thinking" -- by running faster and faster, in ever decreasing concentric circles -- until ... you become like the "Do-Do Bird" Rose described. Is it through bodily action, or mental activity? Which of these follows which, and which is more substantial than Omar Khayam's "... snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, Lighting a little Hour or two -- [and] gone"?

If death equates to the absence of doing, thinking and experiencing, -- i.e. nothing, then aren't you on your way to becoming nothing -- with no effort required? Isn't that the direction of your life? Can you actually become something, fundamentally different, than what you are right now? Who or what is becoming? You used to be convinced that you could become, now you only hope that you can, that this leaden "YOU" that you know and love so well -- and hate -- can become a golden you, that will deserve your love forever -- and live forever -- PROVING ONCE AND FOR ALL WHAT IN YOUR HEART YOU DO NOT REALLY BELIEVE -- AND MOST FEAR. You the body-mind fantasize a vision of becoming something PERMANENT, and superior to yourself -- and that somehow YOU will remain anterior to everything -- intact as "you" -- containing God himself -- the timeless. WHERE DID YOU GET SUCH A DELUSION?!

I think it is your distorted seeing and hearing of the essential desire that comes to you from your true Self -- your Essence -- for even God does not have the power to split himself, and everything He touches was never separate from Him. (It is the INVISIBLE CURRENT from Rose's Jacob's Ladder diagram. This is pure metaphor, attempting to explain the mechanics of a creation that does not exist.) You the Shadow-Man cannot fail to act in accordance with your essence, your true source and fundamental nature. However, your actions are refracted according to the fixation of your attention on experience, refracted according to the resulting need for self-definition and personal survival, and refracted according to the resulting fears and desires generated by the experience. In other words, you the shadow man do not become or evolve or will your attention away from the false. You the shadow-man are watching two movies: one is the movie of your destruction, one is the movie of your denial and acceptance of this destruction. The theme of denial is depicted by the vision of becoming through acquisition. The theme of acceptance is depicted by one's own deconstruction through simple looking -- with acceptance.

Are you looking -- or acquiring? It is by virtue of your essence that your attention cannot be 100% glued to that which is separate. The desire and attempt to define your self, and to survive, is simply what manifests in the shadow of experience cast by the "Light of the body," that Christ said was "the eye." You, the Shadow-Man, are what manifests when Awareness reflects upon itself and finds no object to reflect upon. Your attempt to become is doomed to failure. This is beautifully stated in these thematic and climactic phrases from the poem The Hound of Heaven: All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.
Naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.
All things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Thou dravest love From thee, who dravest Me.

If your attempt to become transcendentally different is doomed to failure, what can and will you do about it? Can your actions lead to a change in anything other than your circumstances? You believe that it can because you mistake the after-the-fact reactive experience as you-the-doer. It is a wish of you-the-somatic-mind. Have you noticed that your actions have an effect upon your attention? What motivates your actions? The action of looking will further affect the focus of your attention. Becoming a reverse-vector is the opposite of external, worldly becoming. It is un-becoming.

It is your un-doing! It is the breaking of your fixation on all experience -- including the experience of identity -- until the attention collapses in upon itself and all experience either stops or is recognized as non-existent. Spiritual becoming is worldly and personal un-becoming through the reverse vector of the attention -- "that power of noticing" which is not your possession. The potential value in your activity aimed at becoming lies in the effect that it will have upon the direction of your attention -- not in becoming something other than what you already are or are not. Your desire to become was wisely exploited by your teacher, who coined the phrase: "milk from thorns." He also liked to recall the Radha Soami guru who answered his question about what can be done: "All that man can do is desire."

Rose knew full-well the ultimate Source of this desire, and how this desire manifested in the "mind realm" and in the "body realm." Your experience generates experience. Experience is to the identity as food is to the body. Your identity weaves itself in a self-perpetuating chain-reaction -- so long as the attention is glued to experience -- and so long as the body fuels the reactor. The "fabric" of identity unravels as the attention is turned to watching -- first experience itself, as an outside observer rather than a participant, and then when the attention is turned to watching the experience-er. Experience is binding.
Observing the process of experiencing is liberating. Good hunting, and may your life experience be decidedly disconcerting. As your faithful friend, I remain.... Bob

-------------------------


Only through the simple process of self-observation can this thing called the "self" be seen. We may need years of looking at it, seeing why it does what it does, thinks what it thinks, until we know it well enough to cease to believe in it. All of our energy, for all of our life, has been poured into this thing: our personality, the little self, the ego. A few moments of seeing, while of monumental importance, will not cause its complete demise. This demise is what we fear most; for it is seen by the thought-pattern we call "us" as death. At some point, the initial joy of seeing will turn to the pain of ego-death, as the Truth becomes known. It will not be pleasant. In fact, the pain and horror felt by the ego as it faces its own death, will be felt as yours. Hartmann's words again ring true: "Conquer the pains resulting therefrom." While all this may be just words to you for now, know that after you have gone beyond this realm of thought, beyond this self-surviving collection of reactions seeking nothing but its own continuity, "seeing" will still be there. You will then have no more need of thought or reaction to give you meaning and value, as the simple act of seeing will once again be enough. The world of thought will no longer be your home, having become a movie, a dream, as much a comedy as a drama, wherein the bit character you used to call your "self" is merely another player. Your interest will be only in a pure amazement at your own unknowable Being … and perhaps the need to help another find freedom from the trap of reaction, the world of "self."

It is the clinging to the false that makes

the true so difficult to see. Once you

understand that the false needs time and

what needs time is false, you are nearer

the Reality, which is timeless, ever in thenow.

Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness,

like the movement of a clock. It flows from

the past into the future endlessly, as empty

perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present

so vital, so different from the past and future,

which are merely mental. If you need time to

achieve something, it must be false. The realis always with you; you need not wait to be

what you are. Only you must not allow your

mind to go out of yourself in search. When you

want something, ask yourself: do I really needit? and if the answer is not, then just drop it.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That-

Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Acorn Press, 1973