Dreams, Living Your "Unlived" Life

In the culturing process, the many decisions of our parents and childhood caretakers become habits, and they become our own when adults. The mind has a terrific repertoire of past behavior accrued over time and stored until the precise moment when needed. These actions, memories or past, form a bulk of our coping skills in adult life.
For many they are trusty and reliable responses to ordinary life events, things like dealing with annoying people, completing tasks, organizing our schedules and taking advantage of "down time." We often think of them as "manners."

All these activities give the adult satisfaction and a sense of mastery over everyday events. one often gains a sense of security from these interactions; as a person matures, more experiences accrue and more strategies are learned, stored and used as needed.
For many if not most, there comes a point in time when we are no longer marking time as "from when I was born until the present," but rather time is more as "from the present moment to my death." This shift in perception is gradual, usually occurring in the 40's and becoming louder as the 50th decade and beyond approaches.

Those trusty old solutions, those experiences of the past may no longer suit. What once was a brilliant maneuver at age 25 is not so now. Life is more lived, and the past while possibly remembered fondly now is more nuanced, more characterized. Something new is often in order.
The goal is not the elimination of patterned views and responses; growing maturity may call for a re-examination of previously disregarded choices or pathways.

Yet this can lead to major disruption or even financial ruin of a lifetime of gain. So many busy themselves with other things, staving off the gnawing thought in the back of the mind, that a path once contemplated, such as travel, further study or a career move might, still, make sense.
Writing partly from personal experience and partly from a professional perspective authors R. Johnson and J. Ruhl write in their book, Living Your Unlived Life that loosening up on the reins of life, "give us more freedom of choice, to regain access to lost resources that are essential to a fulfilling life."
The paradox of identity is that identity is fluid over a lifetime, more than something rigid or habitual. Even so, we rely on the patterns of the previous to make our current experiences coherent.

And while these patterns and structures are necessary and in a large degree helpful, they are also, "over time becoming boundaries, restricting our freedom and narrowing our experience." Relying then on the familiar, we do feel often worn out, tired or stressed. As the saying, 'same old thing' kicks in, "by mid-life your identity is the institutionalization of your past," writes Johnson.
The antidote Johnson says may lie in several places, but one thing he assures the reader is that by this time in life whatever the solution, it indeed lies within.
Carl Jung, Johnson's mentor, wrote that it is "a mistake to fear that the truths and values of earlier adulthood are no longer relevant; they have just become relative-- they aren't universally true."

Becoming re-acquainted with your inner life, the who, how and whys of your existence may make you feel a bit of a teen again, but it will also give you new awareness and updated solutions to events in your life. The authors give much, much more detail and introduce the concept of "active imagination" as a real and effective tool for growth.
Johnson insists that it may effectively quell moods, mental stresses and other psychic disorders if practiced effectively and consistently. This technique as explained incorporates ones' dreams, imaginings and conscious thoughts as part of its method.

Living Awake and in the Truth, Part 2

Simple Mind is away from the computer. The following appeared here earlier this year, January 2, 2009.

Assumptions--are just that, assumptions.
To the Simple Mind, we are aware that things change, and in fact it is desirable because if they did not there would not be the opening for learning, for the new, a relief from what pains us, or hope. We would remain angry, fearful, resentful, confused. Pray for impermanence.
Working with this precept, we no longer try to escape the experience; rather like a scientist, we wait and observe our self, our reaction, our perceptions and what exists in this moment around us.
Reactions, like emotions, are automatic, they just happen. But what we choose to do isn't a happenstance. The will chooses and then we act. This is a freedom that we take so as to make best use and advantage of our circumstances.

What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of gossip? What about that?
Sometimes we want to feel part of a group or an event by talking ill of another person, or deliberately excluding others, to feel more special or bonded -- us against them. Gossip is when we say things about others that are potentially harmful or slanderous to that other person -- with full knowledge of this in our mind.
This is distinguished from speaking about others with the intention of sorting out our thoughts or feelings, or problem solving.

Then there are the instant reactions that lead us into hurtful speech or action. What about when we feel insulted? How about when an emotion demands our attention?
Before beginning earnest practice, maybe we just walked away or changed the subject to avoid what we judged distasteful. Maybe we excused ourselves with the thought that "they deserve it, anyway."

Sometimes we counted to 10 or went for a walk before answering that insulting remark, that hurtful phrase. These tactics likely stopped or controlled our reactions, but to really move beyond, to move to a Simple Mind requires a different response. A response that perhaps to this point in our lives we are unfamiliar with.
We must through practice, in awareness, dismantle our habitual thoughts and patterns of behavior. These are habits which cause us to suffer; those perceived thoughts, the imagined self which keeps us in the dream.
When we gain in awareness, then our deepest beliefs and fears may be faced honestly and squarely. We respond to what is so, to reality as it is by experience, not driven by fear, anger or other passion. Our response is what is required, according to our will, our desire to be as we are.

With this precept, our practice becomes meeting life in all its possibilities, in its newness, and its sometimes strangeness.

And while certainty, feeling "sure" is seductive, and it can make us feel safe, prayers for change, for impermanence are part of the Way. As a Mahayana practitioner notes, 'when a flower dies, we don't cry, because we know flowers are impermanent.' Understanding this, we will suffer less and be joyful more. Impermanence is not negative!
Does it then, in the Way, mean that we have to lose all that we care for? Of course not; the community remains and is important. What is also important is that we not cling so tightly to persons or things, that we fail to recognize the nature of change.
So, to gain in skillfulness and practice of the precepts, we must turn to experience, the present moment as our guide, and not simply notions or intellectual ideas.

As Joko Beck has said, "when we experience for ourselves the transitory nature of beliefs, then it no longer has us in a strong hold. We can be freer from our requirements--freer to speak truthfully." Isn't it odd how those we care for most deeply, those who have meaning to us in our daily lives, are those for whom we most often hold deeply, and those whom we entrench in our faultfinding?

This is one of the ways in which we may avoid ourselves.
We are dishonest with ourselves first before the other. By focusing not on our own experience, but on what we think must be the experience of another, we criticize, nit-pick, fault. Sometimes, most often, those negative attributes are really our own.
Our own views may thus be frozen; we may not be acting from awareness of our selves-- what are we feeling, what is my perception/experience? If we do not take the critical self view, like that of a scientist, examining our own functioning, our own organism, faultfinding gains a hold. We react to something that may not even be real at all-- at least not real beyond our own mind, and then we suffer the consequences when the world rebuffs us, as it must.


Other ways of avoiding or not being truthful are several:

*Do I add to the story my own facts, interpretations or opinions as though they are true?

Try seeing yourself as the other person whom you spoke about. How do your words fit now? What is your experience?

*Do I keep silent? Do I comment when in a group about something I know, or do I allow it to pass by?

What is your intention in keeping silent? What is your experience? Do I take some advantage from not speaking?

As you practice, keep in mind that in the Simple Mind, speaking truthfully is neither better nor worse.

Precepts: Living Awake and in the Truth, Part 1

Simple Mind is away from the computer. The following is a favorite which appeared here last year, December 31, 2008.--SimplemindZen

Taking up the precept of the Way of Speaking Truthfully is often a first precept encountered and one of the most obvious, yet not always to ourselves. Many of us have finely developed defenses to what would otherwise intrude upon our dream of self. Some have referred to this as being fond of, or attached to our "favorite sins."

In truth we find the ability and power to break away from our usual thought habits and self destructive practices-- practices that act to keep us separated from our true selves, from our peace and our joy. Yet as practitioners of the Way, we see there is only just this moment, that it arises from other moments, and that this moment now leads the way to every other moment. In the Simple Mind, there then is awareness that "where ever you go, there you are now."

Truth is expressed as only just this. Truth turns us towards the realization that our assumptions of permanence are just that, assumptions. Thus living in awareness of truth causes us to look carefully, and to see that practice in this instance is to challenge those assumptions of what it is that makes the world real to us. What is truth, what is "such"?

Here our true self lies, and in the freedom of the truth is our strength.

Living Awake and in the Truth part 2

Assumptions--are just that, assumptions.
To the Simple Mind, we are aware that things change, and in fact it is desirable because if they did not there would not be the opening for learning, for the new, a relief from what pains us, or hope. We would remain angry, fearful, resentful, confused. Pray for impermanence.
Working with this precept, we no longer try to escape the experience; rather like a scientist, we wait and observe our self, our reaction, our perceptions and what exists in this moment around us.
Reactions, like emotions, are automatic, they just happen. But what we choose to do isn't a happenstance. The will chooses and then we act. This is a freedom that we take so as to make best use and advantage of our circumstances.

What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of gossip? What about that?
Sometimes we want to feel part of a group or an event by talking ill of another person, or deliberately excluding others, to feel more special or bonded -- us against them. Gossip is when we say things about others that are potentially harmful or slanderous to that other person -- with full knowledge of this in our mind.
This is distinguished from speaking about others with the intention of sorting out our thoughts or feelings, or problem solving.

Then there are the instant reactions that lead us into hurtful speech or action. What about when we feel insulted? How about when an emotion demands our attention?
Before beginning earnest practice, maybe we just walked away or changed the subject to avoid what we judged distasteful. Maybe we excused ourselves with the thought that "they deserve it, anyway."

Sometimes we counted to 10 or went for a walk before answering that insulting remark, that hurtful phrase. These tactics likely stopped or controlled our reactions, but to really move beyond, to move to a Simple Mind requires a different response. A response that perhaps to this point in our lives we are unfamiliar with.
We must through practice, in awareness, dismantle our habitual thoughts and patterns of behavior. These are habits which cause us to suffer; those perceived thoughts, the imagined self which keeps us in the dream.
When we gain in awareness, then our deepest beliefs and fears may be faced honestly and squarely. We respond to what is so, to reality as it is by experience, not driven by fear, anger or other passion. Our response is what is required, according to our will, our desire to be as we are.

With this precept, our practice becomes meeting life in all its possibilities, in its newness, and its sometimes strangeness.

And while certainty, feeling "sure" is seductive, and it can make us feel safe, prayers for change, for impermanence are part of the Way. As a Mahayana practitioner notes, 'when a flower dies, we don't cry, because we know flowers are impermanent.' Understanding this, we will suffer less and be joyful more. Impermanence is not negative!
Does it then, in the Way, mean that we have to lose all that we care for? Of course not; the community remains and is important. What is also important is that we not cling so tightly to persons or things, that we fail to recognize the nature of change.
So, to gain in skillfulness and practice of the precepts, we must turn to experience, the present moment as our guide, and not simply notions or intellectual ideas.

As Joko Beck has said, "when we experience for ourselves the transitory nature of beliefs, then it no longer has us in a strong hold. We can be freer from our requirements--freer to speak truthfully." Isn't it odd how those we care for most deeply, those who have meaning to us in our daily lives, are those for whom we most often hold deeply, and those whom we entrench in our faultfinding?

This is one of the ways in which we may avoid ourselves.
We are dishonest with ourselves first before the other. By focusing not on our own experience, but on what we think must be the experience of another, we criticize, nit-pick, fault. Sometimes, most often, those negative attributes are really our own.
Our own views may thus be frozen; we may not be acting from awareness of our selves-- what are we feeling, what is my perception/experience? If we do not take the critical self view, like that of a scientist, examining our own functioning, our own organism, faultfinding gains a hold. We react to something that may not even be real at all-- at least not real beyond our own mind, and then we suffer the consequences when the world rebuffs us, as it must.


Other ways of avoiding or not being truthful are several:

*Do I add to the story my own facts, interpretations or opinions as though they are true?

Try seeing yourself as the other person whom you spoke about. How do your words fit now? What is your experience?

*Do I keep silent? Do I comment when in a group about something I know, or do I allow it to pass by?

What is your intention in keeping silent? What is your experience? Do I take some advantage from not speaking?

As you practice, keep in mind that in the Simple Mind, speaking truthfully is neither better nor worse.

Precepts: Living Awake and in the Truth, part 1

Taking up the precept of the Way of Speaking Truthfully is often a first precept encountered and one of the most obvious, yet not always to ourselves. Many of us have finely developed defenses to what would otherwise intrude upon our dream of self. Some have referred to this as being fond of, or attached to our "favorite sins."

In truth we find the ability and power to break away from our usual thought habits and self destructive practices-- practices that act to keep us separated from our true selves, from our peace and our joy. Yet as practitioners of the Way, we see there is only just this moment, that it arises from other moments, and that this moment now leads the way to every other moment. In the Simple Mind, there then is awareness that "where ever you go, there you are now."

Truth is expressed as only just this. Truth turns us towards the realization that our assumptions of permanence are just that, assumptions. Thus living in awareness of truth causes us to look carefully, and to see that practice in this instance is to challenge those assumptions of what it is that makes the world real to us. What is truth, what is "such"?

Here our true self lies, and in the freedom of the truth is our strength.