Ecology

I experimented with asking various AI's to review some recent posts. Here is a distillation of some of the observations:

The ecology - there is a conviction—not so much argued as repeatedly discovered—that reality is relational rather than made of isolated things.

Time isn't linear.

The past is not "back there."

The self isn't an object. It's an ongoing process.

The body becomes a way of knowing.

Desire isn't simply wanting. It is life's movement towards expression.

Fear constricts.

Desire flowers.

Fear isn't the enemy, it is part of the unfolding. It has developmental roots but also existential ones.

Practice isn't eliminating fear. It's learning not to organise one's life around it.

Relationship is central. Nothing important happens alone. Even enlightenment is relational.

Mirrors appear constantly. Reflection appears constantly.

Holding appears constantly.

Beauty is evidence of alignment. Beauty is where form expresses life well.

Ethics are not rule-based. Nor are they simply consequentialist. They seem to ask:

"What allows life to flower?"

The criterion isn't abstract morality. It's aliveness.

The Red Thread. This may actually be the organising principle.

Because it asks:

What keeps appearing?

The writing doesn't seem to be asking "What is enlightenment?"

Nor even "Who am I?"

The question that keeps reappearing underneath almost everything is:

How does life become more fully alive through this particular human being, in this particular moment?

I find this quite a lovely list. The interplay of 'what keeps appearing' and 'how does life become more fully alive through this particular human being, in this particular moment?' is intriguing. Patterns do repeat and this human being is sustaining. There is an intention towards what might be called expansion or at least not getting in the way. Broadly, the epistemology is Zen Buddhist of course, the blog takes its title from Case 5 Mumonkan, but it's equally important to include western psychology. Whilst each post is a function of the muse in the moment, the overarching inspiration is illustration of some of a response to the koan. This interplay is both the arising of and response to the koan. I'd not say the Red Thread koan was the organising principle although it's plain that there is no koan or anything outside of our embodied lives beyond speculation. And speculation is within our lives. Whichever way you cut it the cat is always One. But can we get out of our way and see a picture large enough to hold it? That is an ecological process.

 

Returning

Seen by the eye and felt by the root

Each line and curving plane, enlivened by animation

Eye to eye, eye to root, eye to eye

Mirrored the fire rises

The mind supplies fuel, the fire rises

Fast is the mind's desire, slow is the heart's

Quick now, first contact

The hands reach out to read the enlivened curving planes

Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, say not a word.

Root's firm stalk taken in hand winks

Slide the reading pressing hand round nape to draw the head closer

Then curved planes to each other full length and wrapped around

Fast heartbeat feeds the glowing shifting tangents

Pressed they shift to expand outwards and inwards

Smell and taste fuse the warm and shifting landscape

Each root pressed against the other, winks

The end beckons the journey be fast but breath fuels it

The wave passes, the mind's fuel dwindles

Motion signals, weight signals, the dance picks up pace

Fast they melt, slow they melt, rhythmic

The space between each body is electric

Cleaved open to and by this field they close

Close unto one shimmering field, then open

The shifting heat illuminates the liminal

Each pulse drives deeper the fluid planes

Mind's work done it rests

Each pulse melts the fluid planes

Liquid they drip into each other

Heat bathes the electric field and soothes the tension

Being savours the woven silken field

Then waves of their own depth surface

Rising and falling, rising and falling

Contract, open, contract open

Deeper the liquid liminal falling

Falling, falling, rising ever higher

The field's ear hears the small call of death

And answers, liquid

Pulses, liquid

Shimmering liquid light on the ocean, liquid

Liquid, slowly fades...

And the room returns, to hold the spent 

 

  

Flash!

In each spark the lark ascending

Flesh of stardust betwixt heaven and earth

Separation and Oneness pretend to be opposites

Child of the Tao and father of the mind yet seen only in its eye

Circle of becoming and maker of time

Expelled from the womb, briefest flash

Who is the dweller and who is the home?

Mind in body or body in mind?

Fed by the earth and the mind's penetration

With each thing this body-mind mingles, to reach for tomorrow, tomorrow, today

Desire's kaleidoscope throws out its colours: come, expand

Eros in his manifold ways mingles in our mind, mingles in our body

Come tomorrow be with me today

The path shapes the foot and the foot shapes the path

Come tomorrow be with me today

Flesh grants love's majesty through all its forms

Come, come be with me in so many ways

Spark! I hear thee calling, who is the dweller who is the home?

Spark, you are the dweller you are the home

The wave in the water the light in the moon

Yet we are suspended, oh majesty in our firmament

Suspended yet rolling: each turn of the wheel

Sing lark, sing! Each turn of the wheel

Circle of becoming and maker of time

In each heart-mind bright moonlight dances on the ocean

Love

If Whitman sings the body electric

I might say smooth creamy vibrant

Grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast

Sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning

And a day full, all liminal in fullness

Then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass

The very breath feels heavy

As if to weigh down the too light body

Where it should float the vibrant smoothness

And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Bright mind where aligned is flowing

Like Whitman's choir singing

But here stalled and waiting

Fear drives each slow step, twilight

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Breathe

The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now

This is not the liminal of fullness

Past comes into present

Present orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness

Though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass

And so another turn around the spiral

Yet tomorrow

The very air sings the body electric

Liminal in fullness, bright mind dances

Joy as it turns the diamond, in Indra's net it sparkles

Sharpest thoughts, the fastest flowing

Liminal in fullness, body whiplash fast

Then earth and sea too sparkle

Gentle flowing as fire rises

The body breathes

The smoke of his once-ness lost in its embers

In each body our embers sparkle

Glow in each other's light and turn the diamond

And so another turn around the spiral

Incongruence

I have found myself considering those developmental years of late adolescence and early adulthood when it was far from obvious that the world had a place for the kind of man I seemed to be. There's definitely still a charge around those memories. Unpacking the charge into the beliefs, ascribed meanings and fears generating emotional charges at the time and understanding the emotional residue in the present and the unresolved trauma which can be triggered is quite a complex business. Most gay men of my generation will say something along the lines of '...it was like trying to put together a jigsaw without the picture on the box lid'. And of course that's true to a greater or lesser extent for all young people. But there's a key difference for gay men of my generation, we had no public script. In my own case although I had arrived (as a result of an early normal fast tempo puberty) at my final height of 5'6" by 16, I remained slight and young looking right through my twenties. Throw in a non-sporty observant temperament, and (initially repressed) homosexuality and it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to fit the culturally limited image of manhood. Early responsibilities as a care giver had added to this and the result was a lack of social embeddedness. Nothing especially new here then, territory I explored back in the coming out days one way or another. But I came a cross what I find to be a useful term- incongruent masculinity. And in the days when one doesn't see a viable script, is not mirrored and has limited emotional support or buffering it is all too easy to add meaning to what might otherwise be neutral facts and misinterpret incongruence as insufficiency. And so incongruence, compartmentalisation, lack of social embeddedness and early responsibilities resulted in what psychologists call asynchronous development. Such development has its costs - mainly grief for the unlived life but also its benefits, awareness being one, or to put it figuratively - straight men (ie congruent men) they're like fish in the sea, they don't see the water. And another element in this is that for men of my generation part of the limited script which was available was a perverse denial that the script existed. So for example it was very clear that small youthful looking men were regarded as insufficient yet at the same time there was denial that this was being policed and an expectation that such a man should 'man up' about his insufficiency and bear the 'shame' in silence. And so this too was to be put in a compartment. Masculinity was tightly policed. Whilst homosexuality had, in the year of my birth been partly decriminalised it remained socially taboo and for most gay men required a tight compartment to ensure safety. In this regard coming out was a process as much about generating safety as it was about internal acceptance. Finding a script wasn't easy. The dominant scripts and hierarchies of hegemonic masculinity affect everyone and whilst the toxicity of this is now much better understood it still remains muddy water for many. Incongruence seems to me to be a useful way to see any deviation from the hegemonic norm, and it becomes clear that this extends beyond physicality, gender and sexuality. In the workplace it's observable in what DC and I have previously termed 'The family guy thing'. Basically overt and covert power systems operate to ostensibly (the overt power system) provide fairness and psychological safety whilst in practice real power is covert and restricted to the congruent, all too often this group aligns heavily with congruent masculinity. But it's important here to recognise that congruence is multi-dimensional (culture, gender, race, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, etc.) and there are intersections. The ways in which the (ostensibly) incongruent adapt to this and and become congruent, depend I suppose, much on the extent and the nature of the mismatch between forms of congruence. Authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify those forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power.

I can expand this to consider the modern conflict averse workplace. Again overt and covert power systems and decision making play out both internally within the employer's business and in the external relationships with clients and subcontractors in my experience. The overt systems claim to aim for openness, collaboration, group and individual safety and seek to deescalate conflict. In practice this often delays decision making, 'takes things off-line' and feeds difficult problems and processes to a covert system. In this covert system power is held by the congruent and exercised over the incongruent who as a result have their safety reduced. In this way hegemonic power systems operate through covert systems.

Incongruency can generate better leadership and safety because it often creates conditions where awareness becomes essential, but the obstacles to manifesting such leadership are the added burden of managing the congruent and the displaced work in the covert system which should be handled in the overt system. Eventually in my experience as stated above, authenticity and the limits of one's ability to enact or modify forms of congruence place one inside or outside the boundary of covert power. Whilst the covet is still operational there is a limit on the leadership the incongruent can deliver. For me this becomes an inflection point for authenticity and ultimately defines how much I'm able to operate in any system. Competency in the field of required delivery is one of the the main antidotes to covert systems because they often form a hiding place for the incompetent, but to challenge the hegemony is not without risk and a constant balancing act is usually required. Competence is often a threat to those who benefit from the covert even if they try to deny it by withholding legitimacy, whilst still utilising it by appropriating the output of the incongruent. Further, because congruence generates ease, awareness can often be lacking (as the congruent seldom see the water). And so the congruent may not be fully aware of their subjugation of the incongruent, whereas, the incongruent often lack ease and have their awareness surreptitiously purloined.  

Returning to the costs of (social) incongruency, often, hypervigilance, asynchronous development and associated non-normative experience (these two form an ongoing loop for some time), lack of social embeddedness, etc., it should be clear that the model is relevant not just to psychological development but career development too because what is at stake is access to power systems and psychological safety. Or put another way - in the presence of covert systems, legitimacy is granted by the congruent and usually to the congruent. This stifles cultural responsiveness and is why it can take so long for the incongruent to gain legitimacy.

At a personal level I would say that authenticity remains an ongoing work to integrate identity as an unfolding process within the constraints of available safety and awareness not just of (in)congruence but any frame of reference.

Desire in the beginning

A couple of evenings ago DC read out a description of 'the beginning' from one of the Vedas which noted that desire was present at the One becoming many. I've mused in past posts that the universe seems to have both the desire to make (and reabsorb) forms and through forms to know itself. And in humans through enquiry and knowledge systems, is gained understanding of the origin of the universe and in 'spiritual' practice to 'know' the unknowable. It is then, easy to associate 'the beginning' in different discourses with an historical event such as the 'big bang'. But this isn't my sense of what is being said in eastern spiritual texts. The beginning is each moment and each moment is both form and emptiness for all forms are interdependently arising and there is nothing behind them existing in time other than their is-ness in each moment. Blaha, blaha...

But another word has come to my attention recently- liminal. As part of my EMDR therapy taking a turn around the spiral of integration I came back to the liminal version of my body. Liminal in that whilst medically unremarkable it was in teens and early twenties socially salient for slightness. This generated an internal sense that I was neither medically suffering from 'something' nor socially what was expected. The degree of this salience is lost in mists of time and the psychological effect of it was doubtless amplified by both my compartmentalised sexuality and perception lag as I gradually gained mass. The liminality being a space of loose anchoring in perceived masculinity. All the while fighting an education system made to sort sheep! Blimey! And all the while each moment is the beginning, pregnant with desire to be. To be in my case, both liminal and wanting not to be so. What the moment / universe 'desires' and what each of us as selves desire don't always line up. Everything of course is liminal- being is a movement- an equipoise of change- perceived, perceiving and perceiver are One.  Blaha, blaha... And what of the felt sense of this desire and fear? If Whitman sings the body electric, I might say smooth creamy vibrant, grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning and a day full, all liminal in fullness, then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass, the very breath feels heavy as if to weight down the too light body where it should float the vibrant smoothness. And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension, cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Bright mind not aligned with education system filled with I'm behind... peers moved on to university and... like Whitman's choir singing... but here stalled and waiting fear drives each slow step in twilight... cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Breathe... The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now... this is not the liminal of fulness. And this is just the past coming into the present. The present is actually orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass. And so another turn around the spiral.

And today, a fit and healthy body of good proportions supports a mind still sharp and asking- desire...?  

Illumination

I saw in the news yesterday that the Sagrada Família in Barcelona is finished and the report showed the following picture:

It's such a beautiful image and I could feel the tears well up. It's decades since DC and I first visited the site and I was very impressed with the imaginative works. We toured the various Gaudí works in Barcelona and I loved them and the city. Then some years ago after the space shown in the above image was finished and accessible we returned. I remember the wonderful coloured light, the soring joyous space and thinking - what a place to dance this this would be if it were allowed! And what a place to pass through to then sit and meditate! For here, surely the highest in human kind is saying joy, we are here! And on seeing the above image I also recalled the image of the restored Notre Dame:

See Beauty post 30 Nov. 2024. The word illumination used in that post is again so relevant when we see what has been created at the Sagrada Família. So many skilled design, craft and trades people of all disciplines, funders and supporters have made these buildings sing in resonance with our hearts and minds. I'm reminded as I write of Walt Whitman's I sing the Body Electric.

And were it not for a telephone call last night from my mother I would be leaving this post at that, for it says enough. But, after only one night back home out of hospital she called to say she wasn't feeling right. And so I advised her to phone 999 and DC and I drove over to be with her and dad. I helped her out of bed into a dressing gown and travelled with her in the ambulance. And holding her frail body so she would feel safe and not fall I recalled how as teenager I'd done this (when she was seriously ill) and for a second I was holding him holding her. And we were tide and time as recent posts have illuminated and I thought - but how could I have ever not loved him in his fulness? But it is those times we wince at ourselves that let the light in, for everything is cracked. And yet it holds. I will go to the hospital now to see how she's doing. Bless.