Meditation Question and Answer Session

Now is One

 

Words Are Maps

WORDS ARE MAPS of reality and dreams. Words are not reality, not dreams.

Better to stop now. Sit, walk around and breathe. Later, come back to the words. For words are the work of the world. Perhaps, the world would not exit without words; the "world" is a story we tell each other. Take away the story. What do you have left over? Just this, just that. Engaging directly what is; like a new born.

Of words, we don't need many. Just a phrase, a sound, can be enough to suggest reality.

Torches

We must pass down our wisdom. We must pass down our knowledge. We must tell our stories. Whether it's written, spoken, or typed, be the bard of your era. Light the torches for you have returned.

Unreleased Poem 8/14/2012

People often go to wild places to search for their True Nature
(but the Light is in your eyes each moment;
your home is in your heart always...)
So at such a moment, Honored One,
Where is your True Nature?

Oh Beloved,
Where have you been?

I went out following scented grasses,
to return chasing falling blossoms...

Being

   Thinking about being is not an everyday act for us. Instead, we tend to become absorbed in a wild chorus of events, appointments and emotional disturbances. 

   Contemplate being long enough and your life will be transformed into joy unattached to any particular experience. This is like being in love without a lover. The love is just there without dependence on the presence or absence of an external party. 

   The joy of being comes to us as we still the desiring aspects of mind. For so long as we are "ahead" or "behind" ourselves, we are not "here now" to experience the full intensity, wonder, and mystery of existence itself. The quality of our action in life depends on our day-to-day connection to our source, our being. The sense of "I am". 

   Terms such as "God", "infinity", "totality", and "existence" seem to refer to something in common. It is as if they commonly map a certain feeling area of the brain. But "brain" is itself an idea that is secondary to Being. Being contains "brain".

   We lose ourselves in what is "expected" of us in what we "must do". Eventually, even the very thought of being is lost to us. 

   Anyone who becomes committed to the attainment of self-knowledge has a journey to take back into their own heart. In part, it is the "downward path" from the head. In another part it's a "stepping back" from desire, frenzy and activity.

   Look at a wall and fall into wonder that it exists! This is the radical perspective. Our root experience is our deep felt sense of existence, being, or sense of "I am".

   Being is not passive, being is the stillness within all the process. Being is the eternal within the temporal. It is, in the words of T. S. Elliot, "the still point of the turning world". 

Living the truth (Happy Fathers Day Americ 21’)

"Jesus was going to speak at the Bank of America World Headquarters."
--Black Velvet Dreambook

After years of working in a large organization, a conflict broke out between my inner self and life with my corporate career. I got good money as a database computer trainer in the corporate headquarters. I was unhappy with life in my "organization." I wanted my organization be an organism -- alive and interconnected. My daily experience, however, was more like the "night of the living dead."
On the bus to work I read a passage from Krishnamurti, "Live the truth." That phrase exploded in my mind. I must say "No!" to those aspects of life that are false or do not work. That same day I got up before my trainees and felt a pit growing in my stomach that gradually moved up to my mouth. After writing a sentence on the blackboard, I turned around and said, "I can no longer do this work. We are not real with each other in this company. We ignore each other. There is no love in this place. I quit." As I walked out, half the class looked stunned while the other half applauded.
Back at my desk, I felt a powerful stillness. I saw everything in a new light. The desk, the walls -- everything present was suddenly there. An emotional and spiritual fog had lifted. Gradually, people came by and wished me well. Some felt that I had contacted a deep need in themselves.
Socrates showed us that thinking the truth is not enough. Truth demands to be lived. He was tried and condemned to death by his community for his fearless inquiry into the truth. The decaying democratic society of his time would not hear the questions he had to ask. Partisanship won the day. His friends arranged to bribe the jailer -- Socrates could have walked out. But he argued that to do so at that moment would undermine the very principles for which he had lived.
Our living philosophy is in how we live life. The philosophy that we claim should pull us toward a new way of life. Too many words make talk cheap and eventually crowd out silent lived wisdom. Philosophy becomes hypocrisy when its labors are an avoidance of life's duties or a flaunting of mental ability. Wisdom comes from a humble acceptance of reality. The truth of our lives is stated in how we are rather than by what we say.
Truthful living begins with an enlightened view of life, immediately followed by enlightened action. For example, cultivation of the ability to see one's self in others. Skin, bones, temperament and social status do differ. Tolerance, patience, honesty, respect, and love allow us to recognize our "basic self" in everyone -- this leads to empathy and compassion. We become naturally concerned with fairness in our sexual, family, social, and cultural arrangements.
Just before leaving my corporate job, I would often sit on the 38th floor of my Market Street office building in San Francisco. I would look down from my sealed window. One day I realized that if that window could open, I would have been tempted to jump. I was having a crisis of meaning. My work paid the family bills, but did not tie into some greater sense of meaning other than economic security.
In my spare time, I attempted to create meaningful projects for myself and my friends. A serious conflict developed between the time and energy consumed by the company and my other more meaningful life. My best friend suggested the importance of "abandoning doing for being". This meant that to cultivate stillness and let action spring from the well of stillness rather than being driven from one blind activity to another.
In the months and years following my corporate resignation, I searched for my "basic self." I spent increasing amounts of time in the backyard with my friends contemplating being, truth, God, and the study of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time . I began to understand the power of stillness within myself.
One night I dreamed about a large audience gathered in the Auditorium at the World Headquarters of the Bank of America in San Francisco. The speaker was Jesus. He was dressed in pinstripe suit and was clean cut. The financial world was gathered to hear him talk.
The years have unfolded around that dream. I have imagined what Jesus might have said to that crowd. He spoke from the fullness of lived experience. Jesus put on a suit and tie to get a hearing. The message went beyond the appearances of clothes and social status. A finance of compassion would proceed from the spirituality of compassion. A strong ethic of sharing across all boundaries.
What does it mean to live the truth? If it is a mere matter of acquiring more knowledge, the place to find the most truthful living people would be behind the walls of universities. If it's being fearless, the ranks of the military infantry would be the best place to find the truthful. If a contemplative life is equated with living the truth, then monks would probably rank higher than the rest of us.
Corporations have shaped our world. Can we humanize ourselves to the point of humanizing our institutions -- rather than having ourselves institutionalized? Living the truth is almost impossible in this life. We are paid to lie to ourselves by "dressing for success" and pumping ourselves up with positive thinking sales lectures.
T. S. Elliot used the phrase "the timekept timekeepers." The exacting control of time can destroy a person's authentic sense of self-existence. There is a deep conflict between family time and working time. To advance in the corporate or institutional ladder, the price is our time, our life. Time is now controlled by institutional rather than organic life circumstances. Family life has become monetized. We pay baby-sitters and nursery schools for the job of fathering and mothering. We give our money over to junk food instead of cooking. "Time is money." The time of mothers and fathers is sold in the market place.
We manifest obsessive acquisitive behavior similar to mad gamblers mesmerized by slot machines. The more we attempt to acquire, the higher the costs of living. Consider what would happen if we dropped this acquisitive madness: The heart of humanity would become more concerned with quality, rather than quantity. Objects would be made and exchanged with a sense of the value of life all around. We would need fewer luxuries, since our contact with life itself would be more fulfilling. Saints and yogis need little, not because of self-denial, but because of a greater satisfaction level due to few trivial desires. Want less, and the economics of consumption would fail. GNP would drop. People would indeed produce less, but would feel more productive. Life would slow down. More attention would be paid to the direct production of food and shelter. People concerned with cornering markets with the intent of raising the prices would be considered antisocial rather than honored members of society. There would again be time for the great pleasures of conviviality, reading, music, and family growth.
The self is like a seed that grows in response to its environment. Maple seeds produce maple trees. Whether a tree is healthy or ill depends upon how the genetic material in that seed responds to its soil and climate. In the corporate world, I lost myself in a maze of daily entanglements. As I became still, I returned to the financial district after a seven year absence. Being in the world need not mean being lost in the world.
My resignation was needed so I could remove myself from the center of action -- out toward a quiet zone to recreate myself. One of my teachers suggested that in this life we are "either businessmen or employees." It may be possible, however, to find a way of life in terms of doing work as love and service.
Organizations can be organisms. They can and often do provide a sense of community. One of the keys is development of basic human trust rather than relying on the application of managerial control. This is true of families, institutions, and entire societies. Speaking the truth is easier when we trust each other. We are mirrors of one another. But when trust fails, we demand control. Our conversation becomes corrupted by a passion for mastery over each other through intellectual and physical display of power.
Trust grows from seeing our common basic needs for love, food, shelter, wisdom, enlightenment, joy, and freedom. We are often afraid to drop pretenses. Miracles occur when trust happens between people. The walls of our false personalities start to come down -- we begin to work together. Due to lack of trust, people often need drugs in social gatherings to help drop their personas. We have built psychological wall against psychological wall, showing to each other somewhat dull and gray faces. As the years pass, the laughter of childhood gets pushed down until it is gone.
There is something very impersonal about life -- at any moment our lives may be ended by forces completely beyond our control. But we can add a great deal of dignity to our fate by admitting and facing reality with a good heart and clear mind. We become stewards of the small acre of creation that is our very own individual life. As we respond, we are responsible and whole human beings. This is living the truth.
"Living the Truth". First published as an article in Footsteps. October 1992.

Human Life

Goal of Meditation?

You may find that you have some sort of "goal" in your mind, something to be attained, like thoughtlessness for instance. This is a concept that is foreign to most of us, not having thoughts.

I observed my move to joy when I let go of polarities; when I let go of thinking of money in this way, for instance, I find that it is not as much of a worry anymore. And that is a big change! That "not as much" is quite a lot in reality.

It is how I think of it: I don't think of it as something I either have a lot of or have absolutely none of, for that is not accurate. And since money is our man-made symbol, we can see how we treat it and how we live our lives. We must see this from an objective perspective.

From Diane, Americ's Partner: Video of Americ's Memorial Gathering

Dear Friends of Americ,

The video of the Celebration of Life for Americ, which took place last September, is (finally) available on youtube. It is unlisted, so you need this link:

https://youtu.be/51YUnD13inE

I hope you are staying well, in body and spirit, during this extremely difficult time. (Please excuse me if you get duplicates of this notice.)

Blessings,

Diane Shavelson

P.S. Americ's blog, https://philosopher-at-large.blogspot.com is being updated with material from Americ's archives, if you'd like to visit.

--

Americ Azevedo

americ.azevedo@gmail.com

philosopher-at-large.com

soundcloud.com/americ 

Don't Write

Moment by Moment

Recording 2018: 

True Wealth

True wealth is more than money. It is being fully alive here and now. To become more present is key. Money by itself is a form of death. It's abundant life that is true wealth. Make no mistake. Our society forgets this and encourages money making at the expense of Life. A case of mistaken identity.  

Power

It's not real

Your feelings are not real. Your feelings matter and they are certainly meaningful! They contribute insight into our interactions with others and our act of presencing, our experiences in the moment. Yet they ebb and flow. Like the tides, ever-changing, always moving, similar, never quite the same. You may sink into that horrible feeling because it is what you know, not because it is 'good' or helpful to you. Is the burning barn good? The horse's home is on fire, yet the horse runs home... the barn is the comfort it knows. Your feelings may be true, but they aren't the only truth. 

Greetings, I am so proud of you.

I am the Frederika of which Americ speaks. Yes, not spoke, speaks - due to his method of philosophy he lives on presently in sound. I go by Freda now (Frederika means peaceful ruler; Freda simply means peace.) 

I make up words all the time for fun. One day I was emailing Americ, he asked me how I was - I responded that I was doing fine... moving along... presencing more and more. We bonded over our study of philosophy, we knew how rare it was to find a true living philosopher. Now I see this word used by his students and it makes me happy.

We write on this blog in his honor. We sit in his honor. We are not lost in grief, for we know he is near. You can never lose yourself. We wash our dishes and we think of him, we remember. The veil feels thin! All I can do is grow and keep presencing more and more...  

remember who you are

take the form of the boddhisattva of compassion and help find shelter for the homeless.

you’ll make it

when I lived through the darkest night of the soul

I sought truth

now I only value what is sacred

☽

Life Well Lived - Virtue

What's a life well lived? There's the ancient Greek ideal of virtue -- an ethical standard derived as a ratio between aspects of life. We have life and we have the "goods" of life. How we use those goods determines our virtue.

Looking For Moment Of Stillness