What is it?

To set the scene; I was at work today and a colleague mentioned his proposed parachute jump, I commented that I was far too aware of the void to do that, I didn't need that to feel death nearby. He commented that it might light something in me. He thinks I am disappointed with the world. I don't think he has me right. It's not that I said, it is alight. What is it? he said. I'd tossed a few ideas about sub-personalities about (they have seen the inner terrier a few times) and I listed the classic inner child etc. 'What about the disappointed child?' he said.

What is it? Indeed! Does he have any idea of the size of the question? And the disappointed child? That's not the word I'd use. Frightened, sensitive, feeling that others were very different. Probably deeply in tune with many aspects of his world but not the presentation of his cultural surroundings. And to locate all that and find the child in question here in the now? And yes what about it? What comfort? The ego shell connected with all this is still tight. It's probably the subtle tension I can feel and can't let go of in zazen.

I've just finished reading what I thought a good book by David Guy on the Red thread koan. His thoughts match many of my own on this one. The little death of orgasm, the death of aspects of the ego in love and making love. The tension in the body how this is related to being closed, pain, loneliness and temporary release in orgasm. The need for softening and more lasting freeing up from ones ego shell. Big subject lots of related items-

sex(ual), spirit, (pre)sexual, nakedness, innocence, ego, death, orgasm, desire, life force, creativity, energy, void, form, emotion, communication, feeling, bonding, thought, head, heart, self, Self, love (four fold model), body, visual, attraction, evolutionary biology, yin, yang, gay, straight, bi, intimacy, same, other, power, control, personal, impersonal.

And I recall a post I made on vitality which attempts to start to look at desire, form, void, creativity, the Tao.

And my own ideas about part ego death whilst making love before orgasm so that the little death is less important than when that is not the case and one is just locked in the excitement of the head long race to the oblivion of pointed release. And to thoughts of those post orgasmic laughs that accompany the breaking of a modality, the absurdity of it (all).

And that all this flashes through my monkey mind with the thoughts of recent dabbles with colleagues talking about the hopelessness of continued economic growth, awareness practice, and other things that make them all think I am just strange, and the knowledge that I always fail to present stuff in an open relaxed manner and slip into ranting, which is no good and I tell myself it's all just fingers pointing at the moon...

All this, and my own recollected history, the struggle with the fear stemming from the all too evident fragility of each life in the face of life, not mention the ever nagging grief from the imagined loss of in particular the adolescence that never was. And he asks what about the disappointed child?! What the **** do you think you are looking at?

And I am supposed to give an answer? I told him - I picked my koan and I'm sticking with it, I am hanging in the tree, what more answer can I give?

And that will be just part of it and that's before getting any where near ideas about there not being any it, let alone any experience of no it, just being. I am still far too caught up in it for that.