From: mw@ki.fht-mannheim.de (Marc Wachowitz)
Newsgroups: alt.support
Subject: Re: the hole within (was: life and work)
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:56:17 GMT
Organization: Fachhochschule fuer Technik Mannheim
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

Ben Williams <bew@brahms.udel.edu> wrote:
: To be able to feel alive, to be able to feel real joy.
: Which I think I am capable of but is locked up in me and I don't
: know the combination and I don't have the key.
Let's see ... we have "you" and "the bad feeling", and you don't like it,
and don't know what to do to change it.

Let's look closer ... are "the bad feeling" and "you don't like it"
really different things, or are that just two names for the same process?

You are feeling bad. A bad feeling. You don't know what to do. You feel bad
about this, too. A bad feeling about a bad feeling. And so on ...

Just be aware of the present feelings (there is only the presence),
without trying to judge them,
without trying to adjust them,
without expectations,
without "stepping aside" and away from the actual experience,
but neither worry whether you do all those things above -
let go the tension between "you" and "what is".

Without this tension, there is joy and bliss, freely available.
You don't need to do anything for it - only not look away.
Just awareness in this very moment, here and now.

: But as to what I was saying in my previous post, I am putting forward the
: claim that the people who go to the top, the people who are the big successes
: in life (in the way success is defined by the popular culture) are the ones
: who have a hole in their center.
: Just the way there is something very real missing from my life, but I think
: I am sophisticated enough to realize it is not gonna be solved by making a
: lot of money.
Maybe those attempts to "fill the hole" just make things worse later?
Could it be the "hole" is in fact a treasure?
Just like a window must be clear to allow perception, but must not have
previous views impressed.

: "Given these lists, what can you do today toward these goals?"  Sorry if
: this sounds like I am putting you down, but I think a real human being
: who is really living does not need to ask questions like this. Questions like
: "Why am I here", something I seem to be saying to myself over and
: over again whereever I go.
Asking questions is never and error - but how are we looking for answers?
Sometimes the question may tell you even more than any answer to it.
Maybe live with the question, being aware of it, but without seeking for
an answer - just open for what is.

: A person that has a goal in life, and then proceeds to try to acheive that
: goal, is a good American, but he is a slave to this idea that we are what we
: do.
Goals can create just another kind of tension between "what you are" and
"what you should be" (please note this is not meant to say you should be
apathic).
That's surely helpful when you want to get some food or the like, but in the
psychic realm this projection into the future (or clinging to the past) means
mental fragmentation, the cause of many problems.

Two quotes picked from another group:

To understand a problem obviously requires a certain intelligence, and that
intelligence cannot be derived from or cultivated through specialization. It
comes into being only when we are passively aware of the whole process of our
consciousness, which is to be aware of ourselves without choice, without
choosing what is right and what is wrong. When you are passively aware, you
will see that out of that passivity - which is not idleness, which is not
sleep, but extreme alertness - the problem has quite a different significance;
which means there is no longer identification with the problem and therefore
there is no judgement and hence the problem begins to reveal its content. If
you are able to do that constantly, continuously, then every problem can be
solved fundamentally, not superficially.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

The purpose of meditation, paradoxically, is to learn to be without purpose.
Since nearly everything we do in life is done with some goal in mind, most of
our actions are only means to an end, pointing us continually toward a future
that does not exist. But meditation, when no goal distracts it, allows us to
discover the richness and profundity of the present moment. We begin to realize
the miraculous power of our own lives - not as they will be, or as we might
imagine they once were at some golden time in the past, but as they actually
are. Meditation is one of the few things in life that is not about DOING but
about BEING.
                                      - Rick Fields in "Chop Wood, Carry Water"

All the best,

  Marc

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Marc Wachowitz, mw@gandalf.ki.fht-mannheim.de, 75742@novell1.rz.fht-mannheim.de
  *  wonder everyday    *    nothing in particular    *    all is special  *
Newsgroups: alt.support