In article <C12668AF.26662%alanb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
"Alan B. Mac Farlane" <alanb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ya Joe ... i have been around.
>
> the first few NDEs I had ... were not that great ... but it did keep my
> interest.
>
> as I got better (healed up my PTSD issues), stoped living in fear and
did
> the work of living in love.
>
> the NDEs got better.
>
> it is all a projection.
I guess it could be; how could we tell?
Here's a funny thing about "living in the now":
I used to think that meant making myself try harder
to *pay attention* to what was going on around me
instead of always being distracted by the circus of
noisy bull**** going on constantly in my head (like
most folks, I think, nothing special about that). I
recently ran into a guy who used to be the
meditation wrangler for some swami or other from
India but who's now living quietly on his own and
advising a small stream of clients on meditation
techniques, and damned if he didn't turn that
completely around for me so that dropping my
awareness deep inside my physical body and
staying there for a while turns off the noisy head
so I can hear myself not think, as it were. I find
that about 20 mins of that per day seems to set me
up for a calmer, more settled way of living, which
I badly needed; might go back and see him again
some time. The idea seems to be that Westerners
get all detached from their bodies, which they
hate because bodies suffer and die, and then the
head gets hyper-active and screws things up. If
you re-connect with the body and give it the
attention that it's due, then the head can relax,
and action arises cleanly out of the body's direct
connection with the world and is always the
appropriate action.
I like this idea; it fits with the Zen notions that
I've found to be the most sensible and attractive
notions of what living is about, and I find that I
actually am doing the meditation regularly, which
I could never manage before (when tuning to the
"outside" in an effort to shut the inside up).
Still, it *is* a form of "contemplating your navel",
which sounds really stupid -- until you remember
that your navel is "about" your birth as a physical
being, which is sort of im****tant, no? So maybe
connecting more with that belly-area (also the
home, according to many Eastern traditions, of
chi/qi, or life engery) is useful for making some
kind of better "connection" with the necessary death
of that physical vessel and survival of the energy-
part?
Ramblin' this morning . . .
C
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