Meditation

The Two That Are None

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In the Taoist-based meditations I do I’ve begun to note an interesting thing about duality and voidness. I’m going to do my best to communicate it, albeit I may sound incoherent or just plain high. Which might be the best way to communicate it, but tolerate me.

So I’ve noticed a lot of dualism or “multiplicative dualism” in various Taoist writings. One reconciles Fire and Water, or uses Sense together with Energy, and so on. Sometimes there’s “dual dualism” like Sense and Energy and Conscious and Real Knowledge. A lot of practices are about combining these elements or reconciling them – and of course the classic Yin and Yang are used among all of these various dualities.

(Sometimes it goes farther like the Tripartate Vitality, Energy Spirit, but stick with me here).

In my Secret of the Golden Flower breathwork I’m working on refining breath and mind, the mind evening and slowing the breath, and the breath being a resting place of the mind. Breath and Mind are another duality and, yes that gets tied to other dualities, which happens in Taoism a lot.

Now in doing that breathwork I’ve found that the refining mind and resting breath are not just best done together, they’re best being done “equally.” You don’t focus more on quality of breath or the resting of the mind, you’re doing both at once, both with equal measure except the occasional course correction

Now if you’ve done any kind of meditation you know those moments where you get clarity, where your perspectives shift, where there’s less you and more reality. I find that the refined breath-and-mind at once are where that starts to happen. You’re doing two things at once, but they’re also one thing, and yet also there’s something about you lighter and emptier.

And yes, as per my respect for Taoism, I’m not going to talk it overmuch since thats when you screw it up (and I’m not that good at communicating it in symbols yet).

I think there’s something about having “two things at once” in meditative practice – two things to do together, two elements to contemplate, and so on – that helps you actually get beyond your mundane self. You get to zero starting with two, but it’s hard to get there from one.

My opinion is that in meditative practices and the symbols used for them, that if we have just one definite symbol or activity or concept, there’s a risk we identify it The self will cling to any one thing as a way to anchor itself. But when your concepts or meditative practices have a duality, it’s hard for the self to settle anywhere – and as you practice, the mundane self becomes thinner as a deeper self becomes apparent.

Is this the only way to do things? Obviously not. There’s focusing exercises, forms of deliberate overload, or round-robin type mental exercises that aren’t dualistic. But I think it’s a useful insight to understand some techniques.

Sometimes you get somewhere from two places.

(I don’t think I over-described, but I’m going to have to start working on how to communicate but not over-communicate more profound experiences).

-Xenofact

Very Verb Indeed

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“I Seem to be a Verb”

– Title of a book by Buckminster Fuller.

We want to think of ourselves as solid things and are eternally thwarted. Yes, we age, but that’s the easy example of how we are processes. We learn, we grow, put on muscle, cut our hair, go through puberty, and so on. We are objects perhaps in the physical sense, but really we’re actions – often unconscious ones.

Just reading the above your mind changed and altered and responded and contemplated.

However, we strive to be objects in many ways. We like sameness, we like things to be sure, we like solidity. We are of course never successful, albeit temporarily, and part of maturity is understanding we are actions. To be something definitive is to maintain intentionally.

I’ve come to realize just how meditative processes help us understand that – but also how understanding that helps us meditate.

As I’ve gone on about near-endlessly my meditative practice was initially informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower. The book has a lovely, simple summary of meditation – refine the breath to be slow and even while the mind rests on breath. Yes there’s more – Taoists being excellent and warning of the limits of words then using a lot of them – but it’s a useful, simple summation that one can build on.

In my own practices of course I’ve found that it is both that simple and infinitely more complex. But one thing I recently realized in my meditations is that meditation is action. Yes you’re sitting there, but it’s active.

You are there breathing, ever tuning your breath. Your mind is resting on your breath, ever directed onto the breath. You do these things, you do them together, and you sit there. You are engaging in action when you meditate.

What’s interesting is that there’s nothing to have there, nothing to be. You’re ever-refining breath and mind, but there’s no object to hold to. Slower. More even. Mind ever on the depths of breathing. You’re there just acting (albeit in a very quiet manner).

There are many benefits, insights, and signs in meditation – and I am cautious when talking about them as past writers have wisely warned. But I am comfortable in saying that my meditations have, among many things, helped me see how we really are actions. Sitting there doing is going to bring insights on doing – and when you are an action those insights have effects.

Of course that’s an obvious insight, but there’s having it intellectually then going and experiencing it – which I strongly recommend. But we’re actions. We don’t seem to be verbs, we are verbs.

-Xenofact

The Place Of Death

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In The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, there’s a line about people who’ve attained the Tao that translates as “they have no place of death to enter,” “they have no place of death in them” or “for them there is no place in the land of death.” I’d not thought much about this chapter or this line until recently until a mix of meditation and stressful events gave me a new understanding.

In analyzing my own fears and concerns, I saw how they would obsess me. I’d worry about things, and thus my fears, from death to petty things, were actually part of me. I’d carry my concerns with me constantly, and as you doubtlessly know that was a heavy burden.

But being isolated, worrying, etc. just cuts me off from myself. It keeps me from engaging with life – with the Tao. It keeps me from being truly alive, freezing me in place. Honestly we all know too well how fears and worries can lock us down and even lead to bad outcomes – sometimes the very ones we feared.

There in my head, is the Place of Death.

Life, I realized, is a dialogue. You’re constantly reacting and interacting with places, people, ideas, food, etc. You make judgements and evaluations, changing or maintaining your course. Being alive, really alive, really there in the Tao, is a conversation.

And you can’t really have a dialogue when you’re hiding away. Life has to be lived, engaged. You can’t freeze yourself in your head or loop with scenarios to “protect” yourself.

Before I had talked about what I call “The Escape Capsule” in psychology and psychoanatomy. We build a walled off part of ourselves, shoving our supposed “self” into a box inside of us to protect it. This produces tension, warps our concept of ourselves, creates physical discomfort, and is quite miserable.

The “Escape Capsule” and “The Place of Death” are close to or are the exact same thing. Trying to get away from a changing world means you carry the changes you fear with you.

Life is a dialogue, really embracing yourself and the universe means you’re engaging. You can’t hide away in that case, you have to be open and vulnerable – because that’s how you have the dialogue with the world. The attempts to escape just lead you to build a mausoleum in your head.

It might be hard, but we can’t run away or stew in our fears. Why have a place for Death in us? Death has its own place in the world. We might as well find our place as well.

-Xenofact