Notes 2

September 1999. Awareness is ruthless. It will kill you if you let it. Thus we fight it tooth and nail. Part of us longs for this death; another part dreads it. [Infinite Spirit versus the finite being.]

To see everything from the point of view, not of the “I,” but of the ALL.

The I views suffering as terrible, to be avoided or minimized in any way possible. But to the ALL, what is suffering? Is it even anything at all? And the suffering of sitting — just a necessary learning, opening process, that could even be embraced as wonderful.

Sitting: like a lone tree on a high ridge we are exposed, utterly vulnerable, to the sun, wind, storm — and lightning. The exhilaration and terror come with the territory.

Pei Shui to Huang Po: “But there cannot just be nothing!” But there is indeed nothing for the “I,” and it recoils in horror, distracting itself with endless distraction to avoid the truth.

There is awareness, and then there is AWARENESS. Cultivating the former does not necessarily lead to the latter.

Why don’t you just finally die and get this whole thing over with?

The misunderstanding is: not that our sense of self doesn’t imply something of supreme importance, but that we identify self with the impulses of the genes. The true self is That Which Is.

Allowing the mind to empty of doing: so that it can fill with Being.

Allowing the Doer to disappear

Allowing the actor/reactor to atrophy.

Allowing Mind to Be, effortlessly.

Sitting: learning to not block the energy. Or divert, or misuse, or squander it.

Wanting: a tension of the mind/body that blocks out That Which Is.

Thinking my mind should be different, that it shouldn’t react, is itself a reaction.

Reacting to reaction to reaction.

There may be energy, but it is not “yours.”

Not trying to be aware, or aware of any thing. Just allowing awareness to reside, gently, amidst all the thoughts, feelings, etc.

Jesse Jackson: “White folks don’t want peace, they want quiet. But until blacks have fully equality there will be neither peace nor quiet.”

In sitting we want quiet, but true peace requires a sacrifice we don’t want to make.

The self we usually experience is just a shadow of what we really are. A two-dimensional silhouette of BEING.

Wanting, fearing, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., — investing in a shadow.

Interpersonal conflict: shadowboxing.

November, 1999. The complaint of “I can’t do it” implies I want to do it; I am trying to do it.

Bad habits (of thought, reaction, etc.) — just neuronal connections that can be changed if we do not react, etc. — very slow change.

Fundamentals

Quantum theory

Selfish gene theory

Changeable neuronal connections.

Our awareness is here to observe — there is no other purpose for it.

Most so-called spiritual people and all religions take a little understanding of Truth and paste it onto everything 

else they WANT to believe. The result is often ludicrous, pathetic, or even horrifying. How many know truth unadulterated? Huang Po, Bach, Beethoven . . .

The effects of catharsis don’t last because the mind is still reacting. [I.e., the mind has not learned not to react.]

The I that is afraid to “die” does not need to be convinced that it should “die” — it needs be ignored. This is non-action.

Your utter misery in your present condition is your second most important quality — after your understanding. Do not reject it.

If you want, then you suffer. (Unless you are quite unlucky.)

Allowing the knot of tension in the abdomen that is “I want” to relax.

Thinking of the tension as a spring that keeps getting wound up tight with every reaction to emotion and thought. This keeps happening automatically, habitually, but the mind, seeing how pernicious this is, can abstain, slowly learning to abstain from the winding that gives the “I want” its energy.

Wanting first, then fear of not getting what one wants. Manic — wanting; depressive — fearing.

When I start letting down my defenses, my mind yells, screams: Danger, DANGER!

Can that just simply be ignored, but seen?

Trying to stop wanting, trying not to try, always trying to do something.

I am 52 years old and I wish it was over, all over. [This of course is the I wanting . . . irrespective of the Truth.] What we are afraid of is analogous to a little kid in a Halloween suit who says, “B00!” — Oh, we jump, we cringe, we bemoan our terrible fate — and for what? There is nothing to fear, but one must be Aware of one’s fears, to be free of them. [But the finite being justly fears its devastation, thus all the difficulty of this work.]

Russian proverb under communism: Under capitalism, it’s man against man, but under communism it’s exactly the opposite.

Sitting is like having a cookie jar in front of you. We compulsively eat one cookie after another. Or can we just abstain altogether? [But the finite being wants to be distracted from distraction by distraction.] 

Using thought to defend oneself from a terrifying world.

Awareness with no motivation.

Awareness with no “no motivation.”

Awareness.

Awareness, for its own sake.

January, 2000. The will is the I, constantly wanting, trying to do something. We attach our awareness to this will and call it ME. But if the will is seen and allowed to atrophy, just Awareness remains. Free will — oxymoron.

Sitting here in my chair of electrocution, remembering 1968. The LSD electrocution. [Which led to, which was necessary for, UNDERSTANDING.]

People who believe in “Evil,”, the “devil,” or who believe that anything that hurts, or causes pain, is “bad” — they do so because they refuse to see that those same forces are in themselves, i.e., the selfish genes.

If you didn’t resist, it wouldn’t be so painful. [But we resist because not to means devastation for the finite being.] Wanting/fearing, the “I” is like a knot in the fabric of awareness, drastically limiting it to the concerns of the organism. For me, wanting, etc., is an observable tension — mental and physical.

Not trying to avoid the pain

Not trying to escape the fear

Not trying to find peace.

Just not trying to do anything at all

Not trying to meditate. 

You can trust your own mind.

What makes his work so difficult is that I don’t want to give up my deepest emotional reactions (e.g., the dog next door). Rational thinking is obscurely twisted, obliterated by this.

“You can observe a lot just by watching,” Yogi Berra.

By living through the utter futility of trying, over and over and over, perhaps then it is possible . . . to learn the utter futility of trying. But this is still describing things from the viewpoint of the self — a pointless exercise gratifying only to the self.

Open heart surgery — with no anesthetic.

The self, terrified of seeing. [Terrified of allowing the Infinite Spirit to devastate the finite being.]

It is now more clear that it is the reaction to the Terror that is the cause of all your tension and depression. Allow the terror to come up, and you will be free. Your choice.

Fall of 1998. [Presumably a recollection.] Several dreams of something absolutely, utterly terrifying. I had never known such fear. Then in the Adirondacks, sitting late, and awareness of something so vast, so profound, so beyond all comprehension that I dared not give IT a name. Something that DEMANDS to be known, for it is That Which Is.

Steven Weinberg: “The more we learn about the universe, the more pointless it seems.” Yes, pointless to the self.

All wanting implies a resistance to, a fear of the NOW.

The dog: I want quiet. This is ME — the one who wants quiet. Noise is an attack against ME. “I” have to do something about it . . . or else “I” will die.

A body-mind, clenched in a knot of wanting — due to FEAR.

We want to avoid what we are afraid of. We are afraid not to get what we want.

If one didn’t want anything, if the wanting were allowed to die, what could one be afraid of? But I want to want.

When one begins to understand that one’s own personal misery has no — absolutely zero — significance, then the wanting to be free of it can end, and freedom — LIFE — can begin. 

Feeling bad: tense, need sleep — I want to feel better. I want to keep wanting that. But IT doesn’t care how I feel — IT IS — here, now, always.

“Not wanting” might be described as “letting go,” but it is not an action (letting go of a rope implies activating muscles of the hand to release it), rather an abstention from action, countless of which constantly drive the body/mind. We must see, feel, all the thought, tension, etc., to stop being their slave.

IT keeps whipping me into line. I defy IT at my own peril, i.e., despair.

Your drive to do things — work, projects, piano — seems akin to manic and bipolar disease. Also attention deficit disorder. All seems driven by fear. [Likely had recently read Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Was sometime in the late 1990s.]

Just relax and enjoy the show. [Enjoy?! Ha! But sometimes I know that can be possible.]

“A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about an atom.” (Discover magazine, late 1990s.)

“A meditator is the universe’s way of knowing about the universe.” (Phil Grant.)

The problem is your own will — just let it atrophy.

We live in a deep dark dungeon, far, so far from the light of day that most of us recall not it’s brilliant clarity, habituated instead to blindly serving unknown, unseen masters and, incredibly thinking this is life!

It is not necessary or helpful that the mind be personally concerned, i.e. identified with, the resistance of the organism. It is only necessary that there be persistence [in sitting].

The Whole Thing is for ITs sake, and IT alone. “I” am just a figment of my own imagination. IT “needing” — I don’t know what that means, except I feel it — to know ITSELF, through the expedient of this organism.

Allowing the “interpreter” (The Mind’s Past, by Michael S. Gazzaniga) to atrophy. When the “interpreter” is absent, Awareness comes into awareness.

Sitting is the simplest thing in the world, but we don’t want it to be simple. [A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.]

Intensity of emotions selective and ancestral habitat (e.g., Jared Diamond’s New Guinean “murderers”) must be sublimated in modern society? Or internalized? [Steven Pinker’s: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.]

Imagine calming the mind. (Discover, Depression, April 2000, page 77.)

Or

Ignore the whole mess. [Ignore meaning not reacting to it. Imagining may be a reaction.]Trying to do something to get out of the trap? Doesn’t have to be trying, maybe.

May 19, 2000.you don’t have to do anything (except sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, etc.). Ditto 10,000 times. Times 10,000 times.

Open-heart surgery. Open mind surgery. Open gut surgery. No anesthetic.

Humans need to believe in free will since:  1. We need to believe we are in control, i.e. that the fictional “I” knows what it’s doing. 2. We want to hold others responsible, so we can punish those that hurt us. Literally, with prison, shunning, etc.; or with concepts such as hell, karma. [John Lennon’s Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You.]

If one truly realized how unfree one is: how utterly controlled, manipulated, directed every thought and action by unknown forces, ultimately the interaction of genes and the environment — then one could see the absolute necessity of just observing the whole thing.

To see there is no free will is the beginning of compassion: not wanting anyone, including oneself, to be any different. But also seeing the Whole.

You are IT. IT is you. Like Necker’s cube, can IT flip into prominence?

See the “I,” — “This putrid, stinking lump of self” (The Cloud of Unknowing) — in all its abject servility: here before your very eyes the source of all sorrow, misery, fear and despair — hell itself. Know it, feel it, understand it — only thus is freedom possible.

To IT: I’m yours — do with me what you will.”

“I” am not responsible for my situation. If “I” make myself tense, destroy openness, it is not “my” fault. There is no me. That Which Is is everything including my tension. What we have here is merely an organism with the potential for awareness. The process seems long and often impossible to the self, but that is of no significance. This universe has been evolving for 13.8 billion years, life on this planet for 4 billion, awareness in this organism for 52 years [now 72]. . . . 

Must it be? It must be!

Greet the fear as your friend. Let it in, shake its hand, invite it to sit down. It is really just energy — let it be.

Only the I cares how bad you feel: let it wither.

Without awareness, what’s the point? Who wants to be an automaton? (That’s why everyone believes in free will — so they won’t see they are automatons.)

Story of people in a boat paddling, but they haven’t untied the rope from the dock. Sitting, sitting, sitting, but holding onto ME, afraid to let go.

Awareness is Being. It is not trying to be aware.

I have two goals in life: a mundane one and a spiritual one. The mundane goal is to play The Art of the Fugue. The spiritual goal is to understand, live, experience fully, The Art of the Fugue.

The God-awful truth: the barking dog is IT.

All these words mean so little. This must be lived through to the end. Talk is cheap and lots of fun, but who is it that has the courage to walk to their own execution? The one who has no choice. Or, more accurately, the one who sees there is no choice. Choice itself is the big illusion.

 “Because I am so wonderful, there must be a God that cares about me and saves me from death.” (And if not, then despair.) This is all the religious and philosophical thinking of the ages.

Imagining something that can encompass all fear and pain and be undisturbed by it. Unmoved by it. The imagining needs to be free of wanting — i.e., wanting the fear and pain to go away.

When we stop wanting/fearing anything from others, we realize the vast majority of people are really quite boring — automatons; as Huang Po says, “. . . lifeless corpses inhabited by demons.” Perhaps a tiny few have a small, intermittent spark of Awareness, which is not boring. But most of what people find interesting in people is due to their own wanting [to impress, raise their status, sex, and security, etc.]

Wanting enlightenment means one does not want to know what’s going on right now. Knowing fully what is going on right now IS enlightenment.

There is no free will. There is either: 1. Being driven by unseen forces, proximately neural circuits, ultimately genes. 2. NOT being driven by these forces.

Sitting is a Trojan horse: the “I” thinks it wants enlightenment, but enlightenment means death to the “I.” [But everyone wants their cake and eat it too. They pretend they are oh-so-enlightened, so much better than we mere mortals.] 

There is nothing you can do — but there is an infinity you can BE.

August 11, 2000. All your pain, misery, tension, etc., etc., means zero, Zero, ZERO. To think it matters is just another reaction, shutting out Awareness.

This work is not so terribly difficult in and of itself; it’s just that you don’t want to do it. [You meaning the finite being.]

A dream: I was supposed to meet an alien. I was utterly terrified: screaming, yelling, crying. But then I met him and he was absolutely beaming, happy that I would meet him. And I was so happy, too, like a child.

Do this, do that, do the other. What should I do now? What should I have done then? What will I do later? — What a stupid gene-driven mess. Snap out of it.

If you just wouldn’t resent the process.

The ultimate Catch-22: How do I do what can’t be done? How do I do non-doing?

To acknowledge that we are trapped in a ridiculous body-brain, and there’s nothing we can “do.” But we don’t have to act as its oh-so-willing slave. Just say, “NO, I’ve had enough.” [But the finite being knows this means the end of it.]

Non-doing is like a secret path in each of us, an alternative to the rat race of the genes, and needs to be discovered by each person for themselves.

To just sit there and allow the mind to see and be with all the struggles and torments of the organism: this is the manifestation of compassion.

All trying is motivated by wanting: wanting to be something different. To just allow the mind to be what it is, is the simplest thing possible, but we hate it, are terrified of it.

“You must endure the unendurable.” Better: “Can you be in different to what the body/mind calls unendurable?”

Death feels bad. Get used to it. Death to demons. Take no prisoners.

Mind imprisoned.

Wanting/fearing: analogous to a steering wheel in a car. Turning right or left can take us anywhere. [But we are stuck on the two dimensional landscape of reproductive success; sex, status, and security.]

Just as in a city the light obscures our view of the stars, all the reacting, in endless cycles of thought and emotion — neurons constantly firing causing other neurons to fire — prevents the mind from experiencing Being.

Oscar Wilde: “We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars.”[This is on a statue of him in London.]

When the organism doesn’t get what it wants (or is threatened to that effect) — it feels bad. Very, very simple. This is the reason for all human suffering. The mind free of wanting . . . is free of suffering.

Sitting, if we persist, can give us the opportunity to experience directly, fully, the effects of all our thoughts and reactions, all our wanting and fearing. This can feel like hell (as well as being downright boring over time), but how else can we learn that we are unremittingly hitting ourselves on the head with a hammer for no GOOD reason. We do not choose to stop; rather the stopping is just a natural consequence of seeing what we are doing. But the vast majority of people want not to see.

But we must open [give in, give up, let go] to feel the pain we cause ourselves; an intellectual “seeing” is not enough.

Sitting could be the simplest thing possible — but we’d rather stay stuck in our complex mess.

Sitting could be the most joyous thing possible — but we’d rather keep tormenting ourselves, and others.

Sitting could be the most unimaginably profound fulfillment of our Being — but we prefer our pathetically pitifully petty and trivial pursuits. [Otherwise the finite being would be devastated. The finite being has to suffer all its death throes for this to occur.]

Oh no, the mind cries: “It’s so very, very important that I get what I want area.” Right.

The “self” as a knot in the fabric of space-time. “We” keep energizing the knot, perpetuating it. Can the mind abstain from that? [Allow the knot to unravel on its own?]

The implications of no-self are so all-pervading: not wanting anything any different than it is. Thinking Al Gore good, George W. Bush bad, is a gross violation of this principle.

One can still vote for one or the other, just as one drives on the right side of the road to avoid an accident, or chooses to eat food that is nutritious — but free of wanting.

To just allow the mind, awareness, to gently be there, floating amidst all the turmoil and confusion, all the fear, wanting and tension— unconcerned, content within itself: This is the Way that is No-Way, the Way of Being.

Sitting: Starving the “demons” to death. Oh, how they howl!

Think of someone compulsively chain-smoking — they are hardly aware of each new cigarette they light. Thus our thoughts and impulses drive us. Freedom requires a process of awareness and abstention — the two of them are intertwined. Perhaps not really two. [Just free won’t.]

Who is it that complains about the difficulty? It must be the “demons” themselves! Ignore them.

The root of our ability to abstain lies in the utter perfection of the NOW.

All wanting comes ultimately from the genes. How it is directed is conditioned by the environment and genes interacting. But the “energy,” emotion, of wanting/fearing is biological/genetic.

If you are attached to anything in this world: helping people, making money, saving wilderness, preventing global warming — you are lost, lost, lost.

The problem is not the pain and fear that comes up. The problem is the resistance [reaction] to it. [The resistance is the pain and the fear. Ivan Ilyich, when he finally let go and knew bliss, said, “Where’s the pain? Oh, there it is. Let it be.” I.e., it was no longer of any significance.]

Sitting as the perfect experiment in quantum physics: Observing without interacting. Observing without measuring — does not collapse the wave form.

Mind is trapped in time because of wanting: wanting something for the future, wishing something had happened differently so the present wouldn’t be the way it is, etc., etc. But if no wanting, then no time, or all time — timeless.

To allow the self to be crucified, with no resistance — there could be no greater joy. But this is merely a metaphor (the use of which implies a belief in the self) for allowing the incessant firing of neurons to abate — a process which feels very painful when there is “resistance” (also a metaphor). The organism protests since it’s like turning off the current in an electrified fence — the defenses are gone. Plus not to strive for reproductive success means death; thus great fear.

Drawn in by the gravity of the “Sun,” driven off by the unbearable heat and radiation. The only hope or else despair: the funeral pyre. Allowing awareness means allowing death. The death of wanting.

“What do you do in a burning house with no escape? Die, what else.” The body/brain is the burning house. We want to want to the depths of our DNA. But Mind is now: no time, thus no wanting.

Trying, motivation, leads straight to hell. The only thing you can (cannot) do is rest in what you know is true, i.e., that regardless of how bad you feel, there is no need for concern.

Awareness, without being in touch with non-doing, is worse than useless — because we are trying to use it to feel better. [Trying to get out of the trap.]

Imagine every sitting that you are stuck here with yourself not for one or two hours, but forever. Which is in fact the truth. No exit.

Now or never.

The “will” (or self) is located in a structure in the brain (prefrontal cortex? Mapping the Mind, by Rita Carter). Can it be allowed to atrophy?

The will chooses how to respond to the emotions. No will, no response (and vice versa).

Wanting to be free of wanting obviously does not lead to freedom but to endless wanting.

When internal fear is not faced (i.e. the mind is reacting to it), then the wanting is expressed externally.

Awakening; wanting to return to, remember, a dream: in dreams the [conscious] will is absent [but the unfree will is still there]. Also, to a limited extent, in sexual orgasm, intensely pleasurable emotions, when in a trancelike state, and when using drugs and alcohol. We like these states of being free of will, and [willfully] pursue them, thus reinforcing the will. And entertainment: a good movie “takes us out of ourselves.” Also humor, laughter.

But only sitting, possibly, over time can bring true, lasting freedom from that neuron and gene created organ in the brain. Freedom from the most cruel, un-pitying slave driver on the planet.

Sitting, not doing anything, becoming aware of all the “garbage” in our brains . . . we don’t like that at all.

Whenever we say, “Things should be different,” we mean, “for our reproductive success.” Doing: a mental impulse originating in the organ of the will within the brain. [What I call the unfree will in Cabeza. Can be also called the finite being.]

Being “one with the present moment” does not mean trying to be content with our (very limited) experience of the moment, but rather allowing our great discontent to generate a silent, wordless, thought-free inquiry into what is really going on here. This is the true meaning of “doubt” in Zen and Toni’s “meditative inquiry.” Not trying to inquire, but allowing our pain to come up — the pain of being desperately trapped in a tiny brain. If we were dying of thirst in the desert, do we take Valium or Prozac or alcohol to “feel better,” or do we allow our thirst to drive us on, searching for life-giving water?

I have been denying this pain my whole life, using meditation to try to make it go away.

Awareness, without the [unfree] will [free won’t]. Abandonment of the will. Allowing its atrophy.

The will suppresses the pain and fear through tension and distraction. No will and they come up “unbearably.” The will responds to the emotions and acts as it sees fit. No response — the will atrophies.

What is called the ego or the “I” in Zen is in fact the will. But our sense of being is something different: “The one who asked the question is the Buddha.” [Huang Po.] To call the will the “I” is therefore misleading.

It is not incorrect to sense the supreme importance of this Being. What is incorrect is the way we do it: attaching supreme importance to what we want, or more accurately our wanting itself — i.e., the will.

Sitting is difficult because it is the exact 180 degree opposite of what we want to do.

The only true choice is to enter into the realm of no-choice. This is no more a paradox than a photon being a particle and a wave. Or both. Or neither.

If one wants something — anything — different from the way it is, one is at root no different from a fundamentalist Christian who believes in God and the devil, good versus evil battling it out on planet earth.

Replaying music in the mind means one wants the music to take one away from oneself. [But the most profound music reminds us of Truth, of IT, of That Which Is. To have such music playing in the mind is not necessarily a distraction.]

To allow the will to atrophy means in a literal, concrete way that one will not defend the organism at all costs, i.e., one is “willing” to die: willing here meaning allowing death to come without fighting back emotionally. This applies to everything “external” to us in life that we have to deal with. One can still avoid death when possible, but fighting it, emotionally, is contrary to what this work is all about. Therefore it is justly terrifying to the organism, as we really could physically [or emotionally] die.

To say this work is difficult implies a reference point: the “I” or will. No “I,” no willing — no difficulty.

Special theory of relativity: Einstein proved there is no preferred frame of reference, therefore no “I.”

Wanting to communicate with someone — instead of with my own Being. [Instead of being with my own Being, which is all there is, which is That Which Is.]

As science discovers more about the natural world it continuously overthrows our common sense preconceptions: the earth is round, it revolves around the sun (not vice versa), the universe is expanding, accelerating, etc., etc. Similarly, our preconceptions about what we are are ludicrous. 

“Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there.” [I believe this is a quote from Grand Central Winter, by Lee Stringer. Wikipedia: Lee Stringer is a writer who lived, homeless and crack-addicted, on the streets of New York City ... He is the author of Sleepaway School and Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street. African-American.]

Why does the “I” bother to exist? A feedback loop: I want, therefore I am, therefore I want, etc., until I die. Banging your head against a wall, then taking aspirin — for 53 years. Why bother?

A spiritually inclined person who saw clearly that there is no free will would, with utter naturalness, devote themselves to sitting and awareness. One might argue, why bother? But that applies even more so to everything else one might do. Sitting is the epitome of “why bother?” Just Be. [“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” — Carl Sagan.]

To see there is no free will — what a burden drops from the mind. [This is equivalent to Beethoven’s “feel his worthlessness.” And, “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything.)”]

Heaven, hell, religion, etc.: a way for parents, driven by the drive to nurture their children, to control their offspring’s behavior and help their reproductive success. These also help those in power to keep it. [But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.]

Thoughts come up in sitting due to the drive to do something. There may be fewer thoughts when we are actually doing something, since the drive has an outlet. No outlet in sitting so the pressure builds. [This is why high risk sports such as mountain climbing or racecar driving are appealing to some. You have to focus on the moment or you die. George Harrison felt this regarding his racecar driving. But ultimately such sports are an escape from the fear.]

When the futility of trying to meditate is seen, the lesson is the futility of trying, not the futility of meditating. Why did Krishnamurti not see this? [Because, ultimately, he didn’t care. He was content to be a “revered spiritual teacher.”]

The only valid Reason for sitting has nothing to do with what the individual wants.

March 3, 2001. [I had recently completed my Schubert essay and sent it to Toni and S.] The problem is you think you should be trying to solve a problem, but there’s really no problem. But that’s not really a problem.

Trying to solve the “problem” of S. [Around this time I had become disenchanted with our relationship and had mailed him a not so nice letter.] It’s a koan and the “answer” lies in seeing through my own wanting for him to be different. Thus Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat Andante sostenuto [second movement] shows us that when we stop wanting the world to be different, we can see that we are in fact immersed in utter perfection and all-pervading spotless beauty.

The clinging, wanting, fearing self: about as useful as an inflamed appendix. [No, it was necessary to bring us and civilization to the point it’s at now. But now it’s time for “Childhood’s End.”]

There is no free will; there is freedom from will. [I didn’t discover the term free won’t until 2008.]

April 2001. IT is banging on the door: “Let me in!” “No, no, no,” I cry, terrified. “I” cannot sleep. IT’s too loud.

Surrender. Unconditional surrender. No! Never!! Fight to the last!!! For the self, yes, the stupid, putrid, stinking lump of self. Yes, fight on, fight on for that self . . . [it’s now exactly 20 years later. Maybe I’m close to surrender. Maybe not.]

A new type of funeral (after Beethoven’s: “Applaud friends, the comedy is ended”): Applause, cheers, “Hey, that was great.” “You were really convincing. You played that role as if you really meant it. Wow! Encore!!!” [As if . . . one really was that finite being doomed to dissolution.]

My self-hatred, self-disgust, makes it possiblenecessary, to be free of self. If I liked myself, I’d likely hold onto it. Like Toni.

Are manic depressives/schizophrenics more “in touch” with IT? Is that the cause of the fear? And the creativity? [YES!]

Wanting/fearing: the genes way of applying a carrot and a stick, often simultaneously. 

Manic-depressives /schizophrenics fear — fear of IT, that’s why they are more creative. Their minds are more open to IT. Tibetan Book of the Dead: Fear of Truth makes us choose rebirth.

The sense of “I” results from our reacting to wanting/fearing. The I is the reaction. No reaction, no I, just awareness.

The Outsider: A Journey Into My Father’s Struggle With Madness, by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer. His father, Charles—his intense fears stimulate his mind to explain and “cope” with the fears. Also in Anne and myself. “Cope” meaning constantly trying to make the fear go away — an utterly futile endeavor. [We try to sweep it under the rug. But the lump is always there.]

I am afraid to go in. Therefore I want to go out. [The finite being is afraid of everything. Trying to go in is the biggest trap.]

Man doth not live by photons alone. [Might not be true. See Cabeza. Back]

Sitting: just don’t get in ITs way.

All disturbing sounds are so because we are afraid of what they signify; i.e., a threat to us. Barking dog, motorcycle, aggressive humans, planes, trucks, loud rock music . . . all likewise.

Who is afraid? What is fear? Just neurons firing like crazy to protect the organism. 

Engines may remind of an animal’s growl.

In ancestral environments all loud sounds were a potential threat. Thunder threatening lightning, falling rocks, animal threats. Wind also was a real threat.

So childish to be ruled by fear and emotion. Are you ashamed? Doesn’t it have to stop, regardless of the time, the difficulty? [Childhood’s End, by Arthur C Clarke. Aliens arrive to raise mankind to a higher spiritual level.]

The evolutionary purpose of reason: to give a “rational” explanation of one’s actions which are in fact motivated by our selfish genes. To convince, i.e., manipulate others, into believing we are acting selflessly, in their interest. [As mentioned in Cabeza research has shown we invent a rationale for our actions after the impulse to perform them has occurred.]

Slowly prying the steel-reinforced concrete lid off Pandora’s Box.

All this thinking up letters when the One you need to communicate with is right here before you.

Shadow Syndromes: The Mild Forms of Major Mental Disorders That Sabotage Us, by John J. Ratey [I must have read this about this time. Amazon.com Review: 

“Freud once said that nobody is “normal,” and after reading Shadow Syndromes, you may well be convinced of that. While more than 50 million Americans suffer from full-fledged mental illnesses such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, millions more suffer from milder forms — yet they likely don’t realize it. From chronic sadness to low self-esteem to shopping addiction to intermittent rage disorder, compassionate authors John J. Ratey, M.D. and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. chronicle the often-undiagnosed (yet definitely insidious) “shadow” disorders. One of the most eye-opening points the authors make is that men who “can’t commit” to a relationship may in fact be suffering from an unrecognized adult form of attention deficit disorder. . . . —Erica Jorgensen” [This just shows everyone has the Fear in them. Some people are better at keeping it buried, “gaining the world but losing their soul.”]

August 3, 2001. Is depression just the mind’s awareness that the only thing worth doing is going inward to find IT? [YES!]

The cause of depression is IT. ITs presence arousing the deepest fear.

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum mechanics has not understood it.” Niels Bohr (Discover Magazine).

Mania: the mind shifts gears to cope. 

Non-doing, non-reacting, not wanting, not fearing: equivalent to lessened brain activity, allowing Awareness to arise. [Allowing Being to arise.]

If one were free of emotional reactions, then one could respond to situations openly from the depths of Being.

People say they want peace but in fact they are addicted to conflict: e.g., sports. They also like to have something to be angry at. We are programmed for conflict and anger. Hitler wanted peace: he was enraged when, after invading Poland, France and England dared to declare war. We all “want” peace, but on our terms. [This certainly helped when hunter-gatherer bands were in conflict. Fox news: For years, researchers tried to prove that Christopher Columbus’ encounters with “cannibal marauders” during his trip to the Caribbean in 1492 were just myths. A new study, however, suggests that Columbus’ stories may have been the truth.

The research, published in Scientific Reports, notes that the “Caribs,” a group of South American people who were also rumored to be cannibals, invaded Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Bahamas in 800 A.D., hundreds of years before previously believed.

“I’ve spent years trying to prove Columbus wrong when he was right: There were Caribs in the northern Caribbean when he arrived,” said William Keegan, Florida Museum of Natural History curator of Caribbean archaeology, in a statement. “We’re going to have to reinterpret everything we thought we knew.” Columbus described the Carib raiders originally as “Caniba,” a group that terrorized the native Arawaks, abducting their women and eating their men.]

Depression: Simultaneously wanting something and feeling the futility of trying to get it. Sitting with that.

Day sitting versus late-night sitting: the drive to be doing something is more dominant in the former. Thoughts of things to do, etc.

Evolution of consciousness? Emotions, impulses, tendencies, etc., drive us in one way or another. This consciousness is what is called “free will,” but it is not free, but determined by the genetic drive for reproductive success. Consciousness is capable of taking in the whole in responding, overriding the emotions when necessary [: this is the Infinite Spirit]. But consciousness is connected to the will (wanting, fearing). Sitting can separate consciousness from will, allowing Awareness. [What I later learned to call free won’t.]

The roots of all the impulses that drive us are hidden from us. We act and say “this is me,” yet ironically there is no sense of Being, just constant impulses. When one abstains from acting on the impulses, then, and only then, can we BE.

We experience the impulse, and then the will directs the reaction. The way we react is what we call the self.

To the degree that the self or will is painful or unbearable to one, there is the potential for spirituality. Or perhaps this is the definition of a spiritual person: one who acutely feels the painful burden of the self. [In Beethoven’s words, one who “feels his worthlessness,” the worthlessness of the finite being — such a person is spiritual, i.e., the Infinite Spirit is present in some degree to their consciousness.]

Nowhere to go . . . . . .

The conundrum of life: What should one do? One knows not what to do. The Uncertainty Principle — allowing uncertainty (not knowing) to reign. [In this there is Being.]

In the mind there are: 1. Photons, 2. Awareness.

November 25, 2001. In the very same way that US oil consumption has funded the terrorists, our minds [our unfree will] fund, or energize, all our wanting and fearing.

“Bored to hell.” “Bored to death.” Doing nothing means reproductive failure. [Being bored means fear of the present moment.] 

Shadow Syndromes, by John Ratey, page 332 and following, and pages 365-366.

The impulses of reproductive success will always maintain control of the mind unless it connects with its Source.” This one Mind, the Source of everything . . .” Huang Po.

If one is just observing the mind, then one is not trying to do anything, i.e., not exercising the will. [The key word here is “just.”]

If one tries to observe, then one is just trying, willing, wanting, and not observing. Also, in trying to observe one has an idea of what there is to observe, and of what it means to observe, both of which are fallacious. Observing, in its profoundest sense, is a whole new means of perception, of a whole new Reality.

Belief: the idea that if one perform certain actions, obeys certain rules, then, through supernatural intervention, something “good” will happen to one. In other words, through an act of will, one will obtain “happiness.” [Which means reproductive success. See Cabeza.] This is in direct contrast to the meaning of sitting. If one “believes” that sitting will help one, then one is not truly sitting.

Most everyone believes in what they are doing. That belief is due to an impulse that, through evolution, has developed to help their reproductive success.

The self: a castle in the sand. If we refrain from constantly rebuilding it, it will, in time, crumble.

Obey the call.

“Uncertainty” is relative to the self. No self, no uncertainty. Just Being. Mind is uncertainty (what the self calls uncertainty — what is it really?) [Nietzsche: “One must have chaos in one sold to give birth to a dancing star.”]

Sex, status, and security = S3. RS = S to the third power. Un = the need to understand.

Dawkins: “We defy our selfish genes when we use birth control.” But we are not programmed to want RS, we are programmed to follow the impulses of S-cubed, which lead to reproductive success. Our genes did not foresee our inventing birth control, which in fact allows us to follow the impulse to have sex more often, without a bunch of demanding kids getting in our way. Perhaps it could be said we defy the ultimate “intentions” of our selfish genes, but we are still unwitting slaves to their impulses. [I go into this further in Cabeza.]

Not here, not here the darkness, in this twittering world [of my thoughts]— T.S. Eliot.

Every thought and idea we Homo sapiens have ever had is so blanket-blank trivial.

The Battle of the Callings

The call of reproductive success

The call of IT.

Allowing the neurons to straighten themselves out, under the guidance of the Almighty IT.

Winterreise: Three Suns (number 23). Maybe the first two are love and success. The third is life itself, which he wishes he didn’t still cling to. Schubert’s great flowering came when he saw death was imminent.

Humans may not consciously think they are driven by reproductive success. But they are driven by S-cubed, which pervades thought and emotions.

Adopting children — the same as sex using birth control. Obeying the impulses of reproductive success gives happiness. Plus society praises you for taking the burden off its hands.

Superposition (of two or more quantum states): e.g., the cat is both dead and alive. But this is another attempt by the brain to put a label, a certainty (dead or alive) on what is fundamentally uncertain, unknown. IT is not “dead and alive,” IT is another mystery. (That we separate ourselves from willfully, in the act of observation.) [As discussed in the chapter in Cabeza  “And the Stars,” sitting is a means of entering into the uncertainty before the measurement.]

Why separation of church and state is such a battle: Church is anti-democratic; favored persons have unrestricted power that they want to keep and expand. Greater personal power is possible in church hierarchy than democracy. The Dalai Lama and the Pope have unquestioned authority over millions.

As society gets wealthier, it can devote ever greater portions of that wealth to stimulating and satisfying S-cubed (food, sports, TV, etc.). But since S-cubed is never permanently satisfied, this is a permanent growth industry. There will always be a newer, better corn chip.

The only thing that works is to not believe (for it is a belief) that there are any other beings in this universe. If that belief is dropped, everything drops: i.e., S-cubed. S-cubed is the cause, the root of that belief. No S-cubed, no separation, just IT. [Except, the finite being, the unfree will, keeps plugging along like crazy until finally being totally undermined, uprooted, and devastated.]

To be perceived as devoted to saving others gives one the highest status that humans can confer. Doctors, bodhisattvas, Christ, “caring” politicians are all venerated. But if there’s no one to save. . . . “But there cannot just be nothing.” [Pei Shu to Huang Po.] Hitler wanted to save the “Aryans.”

Is there an idea of a self working on itself with a particular goal in mind (external bliss, or just to feel a little bit better)? Or is there just IT manifesting Itself.

Culture is just another aspect of environment. [Richard Dawkins discusses this (regarding nonhumans) in his book The Extended Phenotype.] Humans still respond to it to maximize S-cubed. I.e., if culture dictates that, say, being altruistic gives status, then people will try to act altruistically. If violence, brute force, gives status, then that will be strived for. Culture is continuously evolving, changing the rules — humans are programmed to adapt. There is also great inertia to culture; individual efforts are usually of little avail. [Reading Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad suggests how one man, Mohammed (if he actually existed), initiated the great Muslim conquests, which through violence conquered much of the civilized world, and almost all of Europe.]

The Art of Fugue: If the self reacts to any particular melody line, it misses the others. Therefore to appreciate The Art of the Fugue requires an awareness of the whole, free of self. The same for the composer.

Definition of Islam: submission and obedience to God. Zen: submission to guru.

In cultures that do not reward individual initiative (such as Russia), i.e., the drive for status, people still maximize S-cubed by being “lazy,” or drown their unfulfilled drives in alcohol or drugs.

“Business is war.” Enron employee.

“Burn in hell.” Precisely what meditation is — the hell of the self burning up.

Those who live by the genes will die by the genes.

Allowing Uncertainty to rule: terrifying to self.

Are manic-depressives more in touch with Uncertainty?

Most religion is anti-spiritual — it consoles, soothes, ameliorates the fear. Like opium, and it lessens the need to understand. By raising the status of the consolers you pay for your religion, just as you pay for beer, cigarettes, etc.[By raising the status and success of the sellers and producers of the products. Silent Night: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”]

Religion: Gives you a set of values to follow (including Toni’s “questioning”). If followed (“follow Toni”) they prevent the mind from finding its own way.

Toni chose Kyle because: “Kyle was the only man who did not inflate my ego.” [Or, more accurately, did in the most subtle and appealing manner.]

People love flowers because (they would claim) of their intricate complex design and delightful colors. But since there are merely reproductive organs, this shows how far “Nature” will go to promote sex and reproductive success. “Nature” goes even further with human sexuality. [Making it almost infinitely pleasurable and desirable.]

Religion: People want either to be consoled, loved, fears ameliorated, etc., and or they want a strong charismatic leader with purported mystical powers to follow, e.g., Zen Masters, gurus, Krishnamurti, priests and popes.

Lovingness can be revealed or expressed through what is called love and compassion, but Lovingness has absolutely no idea of any separate entity to love or “save.”

When there is no fear, there is no wanting either, which allows the mind to savor the NOW.

He who lives by the emotions, dies by the emotions. This includes trying to relax. [But not just giving in to everything, the key word being “just.”]

“With what we know about matter today, it is impossible to remain a materialist.” (Physicist, Discover magazine April 2000?)

Without some sense, intuition, feeling, for IT, freedom from reproductive success/S-cubed is impossible. [Being with IT is the only freedom.]

S-cubed doesn’t like sitting.

S-cubed wants to play the piano well.

S-cubed is thatafraid of not playing the piano well.

May 6, 2002. During naps, falling into states of total absolute despair — indescribable feeling — the end of the world. [This seems to be the first of what I have called my descents into hell, coming usually at the beginning or end of a nap.] Is it the self apprehending its utter zero-ness? That there is only IT? Do manic-depressive know this more than others? [Yes.]

Schubert B-flat Sonata — trill first movement. Like a distant rumble of thunder.

Bodhisattva’s vow to save all beings — really just fear of going all the way? Why I want to help people? Also for status.

IT coming up while playing The Art of the Fugue — The Art of IT — extraordinary abdominally centered tension keeping IT down, for the next 36 hours and counting. . . . Just seeing if it’s possible to allow the mind to be aware of the Whole Thing.

Trying to play the piano for Anne — voices in my head screaming, Screaming, SCREAMING: “You’re going to SCREW IT UP!!!” Louder, louder, louder the more I played.

Everything “human” must go, i.e., everything reproductive success directed.

“You should always be nice to people. You never know when you’ll need their help.” Nepalese Buddhist woman in Love and Honor in the Himalayas, by Ernestine Louise McHugh. Honor is equivalent to reproductive success.

Does fear in men lead more often to anger because of societal pressures to succeed, while in women it more often leads to depression? After all, a woman only needs to be pretty to attract a man and have babies, whereas women are attracted to men who accomplish things. (I.e., men have to be good providers for reproductive success. Women, in this society, don’t have to do very much.)

Eliot Fintushel [someone at the Zen center I thought was “enlightened”] writing science fiction. There but for the [awful] grace of God. . . .

Black depression last week: the whole body-mind clenched in fear. Unable to play piano, or to sit for very long. Reading for six hours straight. Distracted from distraction by distraction. But I have learned just to let it happen (no choice anyway except suicide) and it passed in a few days. Probably necessary for IT. Probably because opening up allowed more fear in. If allowed to happen, IT will prevail.

Carol has sold her soul to deny her fear. [Not sure if this refers to my sister or a former girlfriend. Probably the former but it could be both.]

From The True Life of Bach, by Klaus Eidam, page 307: “Machiavelli, The Prince: There are three kinds of minds: first those that attain insight and understanding of things by their own means, then those that recognize what is right when others explain it to them, and finally those that are capable of neither one nor the other.”

Genes are like Congressman: They may cooperate with others of their kind, but if they don’t get reelected, they’re outta there.

There is very good reason for the self to fear IT: just as an ant should fear an elephant’s foot.

How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans. (Jewish joke.)

Schubert: “I am here only to compose.” 

(Last Sonata) “States of unalloyed misery.” When I start getting tense, with resistance to everything, reacting to everything with anger – I fear the tension, fear the fear, and the vicious cycle builds and builds. [Why manic-depressive illness tends to get worse over time?]

The fear is the stinking putrid lump of self.

The Tension is the unfree will’s response to fear.

The unfree will is the self. Directing the organism in response to inputs of wanting/fearing.

Schubert C minor Sonata, Adagio: A theme — no will, no wanting/fearing, peaceful joy. B theme — the unfree will, wanting/fearing, anger, violence. [Schubert shows us, as do Bach and Beethoven, how he is forced to live through the finite being and the Infinite Spirit battling it out. But he knows he is dying, that he has no choice.]                                 

Fear is always guiding us just as fear of an accident or ticket keeps us on the right side of the road at the proper speed. If we stay there we don’t feel afraid: that’s the whole point of fear, a very unpleasant emotion — we are afraid of feeling fear — fear of fear itself.

The N-body problem in physics: with three or more bodies the gravitational movement cannot be predicted or calculated. The effect of the genes is a capital N-body problem: N being an immensely huge number.

“He is of himself alone, and it is to this aloneness that all things owe their being.” — On Beethoven’s desk.

“Foul, putrid lump of self” may be unnecessarily judgmental, but that self is still the LAST thing in the universe I want to know or see. It is a paper tiger — that dissolves just as soon as it is seen [or rather felt; we must “feel our worthlessness]. But more accurately, “seeing” requires an abeyance of the unfree will, and this very abeyance is the dissolution of the self.

But the unfree will’s only utility is in relationship with other “wills” — to maximize S-cubed. When one knows ALONENESS — “Above the heavens and below the heavens, I (i.e., IT) am the only ONE” — the will has zero relevance.

WHO are you talking to??!!

Mania: the energy of IT hijacked by the self (-ish genes). The hijacker is armed and dangerous.

Mania? The “joy,” “exhilaration,” energy, of IT coming up, but appropriated by the self and thus perverted. Directed by wanting/fearing.

Tension at piano: all due to wanting. Do you want to keep wanting? [FourQuartets: “Desire itself is movement/Not in itself desirable.]

Re: Wheeler’s every interaction is an observation (Discover magazine, June 2002) versus Andrei Linde’s there has to be a “conscious” observer. Note that human Consciousness has a built-in sense of “time” — for reproductive success.

To say something is culturally conditioned — we do things that our culture deems important. But why? Because it is in our genes to want the status, acceptance, recognition, that the society will give us if we do those things. Native Americans working for Jessie Fremont could not understand why anyone would bother to iron clothes, but her need for status in the society demanded it. (Age of Gold, by H. W. Brands.) Note that people in her day were prone to wash very infrequently. It was thought to be unhealthy. [They didn’t worry about how much they smelled either. The soap, perfume, deodorant, etc., industry took care of that— brainwashing us all to think that not to shower every day and put on deodorant is uncivilized.]

No one teaches a child to walk. It learns because it has no choice. So it is with sitting.

The Flaming Gorge vignette, later part of Cabeza, which I had not yet conceived.

The only way the mind might cease its constant doing is if it senses Something more important.

November 2002. Interactive art exhibit: A gun is pointed at a target. A timer will fire the gun some time at random, in the next 50 years. Viewers, after signing a waiver, may sit in front of the target. [But we all are in front of the target, our whole lives. We try to erase that from our minds though.]

Playing Bach I put myself in front of the target. The more I relax and open up to the music, the more clearly I see the gun. This makes me either, 1. Forget the notes or, 2. Clamp down in tension. I am afraid of forgetting the notes; I want to play them well. I use tension to get me through but at the price of separating myself from the music [virtually all performers separate themselves in that manner; this can be observed on YouTube]. A good Zen koan: what do I do? Nothing. Play Bach and die. Just like sitting.

Quite Sufficiently Grand vignette.

Nothing to Do but Head up vignette. [Both before I’d conceived of writing a book.]

November 23, 2002. Benjamin Franklin (The First American, by H. W. Brands): very civic minded: organizing fire companies, militia to defend against Indians in the French and Indian war, union of colonies — all helps his reproductive success through the survival of his society, i.e., his genes. Also exhorting in Poor Richard for others to be industrious — helps his reproductive success indirectly.

Mayflower: 104 passengers led to 35,000,000 today.

Something in me is ashamed of being filled with wanting, and will not let me rest until I am fully free of it. The battle continues. . . .

The First American: Franklin asserts religion is good, even if false, because it makes men “virtuous,” (i.e., they help Franklin’s reproductive success by contributing to society. Letter to Tom Paine.)

Martin Rees, Cosmic Coincidences: “If we want to communicate with alien civilizations we should transmit Bach, all of Bach, nothing but Bach. But of course that would be bragging.”

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

Various psalms including Psalm 65:5, “By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea.” And, “Psalm 47:2, “For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.” Did Christians escape the conundrum of having a vengeful Jewish God and a compassionate Christ by jettisoning the former and creating the devil? Both are the apotheosis of Fear — fear of reproductive failure.

Ralph Albert Blakelock (Unknown Night): “The artist is nothing, his art is everything.” Page 251.

Schubert: “I am here only to compose.”

I am here only to sit.

Evolution: replication, variation, selection.

Second law of thermodynamics (entropy): because the universe started with very low entropy (the Big Bang), due to gravity’s organizing force it led to life. After the Big Bang there were many more possible states for disorder than order. But the second law could just be an artifact of the time we are in now. If Big Crunch, would entropy decrease? (Scientific American, February 2002, September 2002 issue on time.)

Entropy really an “emergent” phenomenon?

Art of Fugue: About how a person (Bach) can compose fugues (i.e., how to compose fugues).

The Art of the Fugue: The fugue is doing the composing — in music, and in the universe. (Or, what a fugue can reveal of art, i.e., truth.)

“Living things die.” If a single cell organism A divides into B and C by mitosis, is A dead? 

1. If yes, what about a fertilized human egg A? When it divides into B and C did it die? And every time B and C, etc., divide?

2. If no, then logically if B “dies” but C “lives” then A is still “alive.” And it follows that if a multicelled organism X splits off one of its cells to be a sperm or egg, and that germ cell becomes a new organism Y, and X “dies,” then X is still “alive” as Y. 

Do humans bemoan the fact that their skin cells are constantly “dying.”

The conclusion is that there are no separate “living things,” just life. And life is just an organization of inanimate matter. In a way, the sun could be said to be “alive” — organized by gravity. Since the sun is essential for life, it could be called proto-life.

Mysteriously, awareness came to a highly organized life form. Is awareness life? Is it subject to death?[Similarly, there are not separate minds, rather just Mind, expressed through countless organisms — which are all ultimately the same life.]

Aristotle Onassis: “If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”

People who are not depressed are depressing — i.e., they mindlessly run the treadmill of reproductive success. Running so fast their ghosts can’t catch up with them? Or just running, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen’s race is an incident that appears in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and involves both the Red Queen, a representation of a Queen in chess, and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” See The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, by Matt Ridley exploring the evolutionary psychology of sexual selection.

Where women are repressed —Islam, etc. — 1. Men don’t compete as much for them and societies are “backward” technologically? [But see Philip Carl Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East.]

2. People don’t learn the reciprocal altruism of a love relationship — that lack also keeps societies backward.

Beethoven, regarding the first three movements of the Ninth Symphony: “This chaos reminds us of our despair.” The Way of the White Clouds by Lama Govinda, a monk says, “I could show you the truth right now, but I doubt that you are man enough to stand up to it.” [Was this plagiarized from Huang Po?]

Faster Than the Speed of Light, by João Magueijo, page 187: “[It would be] most displeasing if Newtonian mechanics explained an act of love.” Displeasing because “he” wants the credit, whoever “he” is.

Richard Rogers, composer of South Pacific, etc., writing such beautiful love songs. Wikipedia: “Rodgers was an atheist. He was prone to depression and alcohol abuse, and was at one time hospitalized. He was also well known as a serial womanizer.” Obviously manic-depressive. South Pacific, staged in 1949 (just before Nell’s birth) features Nellie  Forbush, the “cockeyed optimist.” Hubris in naming Nell? To ward off the FEAR? Her father, Dack, was an economics professor: security in numbers [Dack’s girlfriend Mary said the only thing she could talk to him about was baseball]. Made a big chart of all the peaks over 4000 feet in the Adirondacks and the White Mountains everyone in the family had climbed. Had suffered a breakdown in college and had had thoughts of throwing himself in front of the L train.

The Center of the Universe, the Heart of Creation.

Piano — the will and abeyance — no fear of failure, no revulsion at how bad it sounds. Just persistence. Until it sounds right.

Patience connotes an act of will. Persistence without judgment is an absence of will. 

Impulse from S-cubed yields to an act of will which yields to an action (including thought, planning, or rehearsing an action).

Thought is an action: of the neuronal circuits. The unfree will activates the circuits. [Driven by wanting/fearing.]

Performers are intrinsically incapable of playing The Art of the Fugue right — treating all parts, if not equally, at least with attention— because their strong sense of self would be threatened by taking in the All. They have to latch onto a particular part, usually the theme. This is what virtually all other music is: a melody plus harmony. But Bach requires dropping the clinging self, which no one wants to do. [The four string parts of the late Beethoven quartets require similar attention. But you have four performers.]

September 2003. [A few months earlier I conceived of writing Cabeza.] Compassion is not wanting a person be any different from what they are, but simultaneously seeing how they could be different, free of wanting and fearing.

Creativity: seeing the connections between things, at least glimpsing a bit of the whole, and expressing that somehow?

Creativity: just seeing and then finding a way to express what is There.

NPR: excerpt from movie “Luther.” A woman is crying with deep emotion: “I want a merciful God, one whom I can love. One who will love me!”

Humor: portrayal of the Infinite Spirit trapped in a finite being? [The best humor.]

“I’m free at last.” Oxymoron: “I” can never be free.

October 27, 2003. [Dream?] Floating down a river, hearing the sound of waterfalls ahead. Terrified, grasping onto rocks. (I.e., sitting — with tension building.) But maybe the river just flows gently into the sea? [Not for me!]

Becoming free from wanting and fearing entails suffering. (Julian of Norwich.) Sitting is suffering, is a crucifixion of the self. Thus no one wants to do it.

All my tension has been to prevent my experiencing suffering. Which creates more suffering in the process.

I am like a space probe searching for intelligent life. (Pritsky, Zahavi at Eastman Dental Center who did my implant.)

Anne: Toni got more out of meetings than Anne. Toni: “I missed you.”

Einstein: “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

Manic-depressive’s Fear: seeing the whole? Seeing how hostile the universe is to their poor feeble and frail finite being? Seeing their death all life long? Seeing the utter triviality of human endeavor? [Patty Duke woke up every morning filled with fear of dying . . . until she found lithium. And she died a terrible death of a ruptured intestine.]

Democracy: Channels man’s instinctive ambition for the good of society. NPR: Regarding long political careers — as opposed to term limits — politicians have to be responsive to the will of the people.

Apostle Peter denying Christ: denying his own soul to gain the world. Clinging to the finite being and rejecting the Infinite Spirit.

Sitting: Allowing the photon exchange to diminish. WHAT allows that to happen?

Good Morning Midnight: Life-And-Death in the Wild, by Chip Brown: Regarding Guy Waterman’s (who commits suicide in the White Mountains), “A mammal’s eye is more complex than a mountain.” Myself: On a mountain you see the whole and there’s huge space. Plus countless creatures evolving together on a mountain.

Sitting is Being like a mountain.

The many worlds theory shows the extent rational people are willing to go to avoid the irrational Reality of quantum mechanics.

Sheila and computer: So unnecessary to react to everything “like a dog barking at everything that moves.”

Guy Waterman chose mountains over politics and business. Some spiritual sensitivity there.

The Art of Just Sitting: “When sitting put aside all thought.” [See The Unfree Will chapter of Cabeza.]

Wanting/fearing: Say the stock market is crashing. You are afraid of losing money. You want to save it. You activate your computers — in your cranium and on your desktop — to sell. The brain’s computer keeps working to devise a plan to ease your wanting/fearing. Just like your PC. The PC is an extension of the brain regarding, say, analyzing the stock, but the impetus, the wanting/fearing lies in the brain. (This is why computers will never mimic humans, unless they are programmed with the drive for reproductive success. Ray Kurzweil doesn’t seem to have a clue about this.)

Right on the edge of IT last night but afraid to go in.

Playing The Art of the Fugue I forgot I was playing — just listening, being. [Seems I could never do that again.]

Wrist: took 3 to 4 years to figure out pain was due to tension, and be willing to let go of the fear behind it. [But it was exercise that cured it.]

Medications to make manic-depressive’s “function optimally” — like a computer? Better not to function optimally.

Zen: Enlightenment for ME!!!

Julian: For God’s will and glory. I.e., IT.

Profound music: A way to pray.

Piano: just seeing and letting go of all that blocks awareness. Not trying to be aware or to concentrate.

Debbie Kirsten’s daughter: it is Debbie’s genes smiling back at us.

World on Fire, by Amy Chua: market dominant minorities — only makes sense through understanding reproductive success.

Julian: The world is tiny compared with God. Translation: The world we are so attached to is of no significance compared to IT. [At least regarding the significance that we attach to it. This world is a necessary part of creation.]

Debbie: would have helped me “function optimally.” [Well, she would’ve tried to, but it wouldn’t have worked.]

“Free” will: like a country acting in “enlightened” self-interest. Not free but totally dependent on past history [and current events].

December 28, 2003. People with a spark of spirituality take their glimpses and make it “mine.” Anne’s mother and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

Island evolution: Ashkenazi Jews. (World on Fire — they were much more successful in Israel than the Sephardim.)

God, IT, Mind, etc.: like a file name in the computer. Just a way to access The Great MYSTERY.

William Butler Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Some skeptics (Scientific American’s  Michael Shermer) are not really so; they have a firm belief in their skepticism, and their superiority over others.

Max Schmidt: “This is my mommy and this is my daddy,” to himself at the dinner table at about three years old. Myself and others doing all sorts of things to make the fear go away: chanting, mantras, mandalas, books, cigarettes, rocking chair, talk, fidgeting, tea, etc.

When we look at the “beauty” of the natural world, would we say that it cares in the slightest about our well-being? Yet we (some of us) still find it of the highest importance.

Toni: “You have had an insight!” I.e., “I have helped you have an insight!!!”

Iraq war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome: is it that they now know, like manic depressives, that they are going to die? It would seem they enlisted thinking they would “never end up like this.” (New York Times Magazine, February 11, 2004.)

Soldiers feel that everyone is trying to kill them. Manic depressives (including myself) sense this innately, and it is the natural state of affairs. Everything is trying to “eat” or steal a portion of the reproductive success of everything else.

The Art of the Fugue: For all the parts to be played and heard requires a complete disbandment of the self. Bach must’ve known, even intended this. The performer must “swallow all the waters of the West River in one gulp.”

Like the difference between giving high fives because you made it to the top of a mountain . . . and just sitting there quietly taking it all in.

Anyone who wants to save all beings is infinitely far from Truth. This wanting reflects only a desire to be loved which in fact arises out of fear. If you love me, you won’t kill me. There is only One Being.

Tritone: just as unbearable as letting go of the self. Utterly unpalatable. The Art of the Fugue, the end of Contrapunctus 4.

The process is slow, painful by human standards, but by ITs standards absolutely necessary.

When the self is not in opposition to the world, then what could be Love, but is infinitely more profound than the common understanding of the term, is not prevented from manifesting ITSELF. “All Embracing Being” is more apt than Love. Or All-Encompassing Mind.

Art does not lie, as words can. And an artist who has no choice but to express Truth for Truth’s sake alone, stands head and shoulders above the spiritual teacher who is in it primarily for the status/security/sex.

Bach’s sorrow (violin chaconne) is total, complete, whole — like Schubert’s. [Note that Brahms said he would have gone mad to compose the chaconne.]

Depression is spiritual — if one doesn’t fight it. One can do nothing, just allow an inwardness. Depression can be called sorrow or sadness in that one is prevented from getting what one wants. A huge wall blocks all attempts at reproductive success.

Myself when painting my truck — my father was standing over me criticizing everything I did (in my mind). Just like my cousin Gordon and his paper and his father. [Gordon committed suicide.]

Richard Dawkins: fear prevents him from seeing all the implications of evolution. Performers’ fear prevents taking in all of The Art of the Fugue. My fear. . . .

Times of unbelievable, unbearable tension, frequently after opening to a “Buddha’s smile thusness.”

“None are so blind as those who will not see.”

May 8, 2004. Samuel Johnson: “Hanging in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

Victor Hugo: There is one spectacle grander than the sea – that is the sky. There is one spectacle grander than the sky — that is the interior of the soul.

When free of wanting/fearing, lovingness of ALL is the natural state of the mind. Compassion starts at home with one’s own mind; not wanting it to be any different from the way it is.

The Mind of God is music — Michio Kaku. Strings are condensation of space. Particles are notes on the string. The universe is a Symphony Orchestra? But is there a Composer, a Creator?

Let the book write itself.

Two kinds of people: Those who care about understanding the meaning of everything, and those who don’t.

Higgs field: God omnipresent.

Fear like electromagnetic force after symmetry broken in the Big Bang. Fear is equivalent to awe. Phase change: ice to water to steam. [I am suggesting that awe is a phase change from fear.]

Dream: living with Jews. Two seemingly nice neighbors murdered one. We found him bound with rope, body distended with decay. I was screaming and screaming.

Manic-depressive’s creative episodes: awe of IT? [Being one with IT?] Depressive episodes: fear of IT?

Science is Brian Greene’s religion: He believes in it and it gives him high status. The Fabric of the Cosmos, page 122: [He?] Won’t follow logic of quantum mechanics. [Discussed in the And the Stars chapter of Cabeza.]

Schubert essay: “Beethoven must deeply fear his own inner misery.” Contrast with Julian’s God: “Why should it grieve you to suffer, as it is for my will and glory.” [As mentioned in Cabeza, I oversimplified about Beethoven.]

When the mind is free of will, there is effectively no time — just a flow. Or, being free of will means being free of time.

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein together in Hollywood surrounded by adoring mobs. Einstein: “What does it mean?” Chaplin: “Nothing.”

We want not to sit. Plus we know we should sit. Therefore tension. [The finite being resists the Infinite Spirit.]

Quantum non-locality: How can a particle be here in yet spread over the entire universe? Implies how consciousness can be in an individual, all individuals and it be the same consciousness. Mind.

[End of second notebook, except for various notes regarding Toni which made it into Cabeza. I should check this more later.]

September 4, 2004. Regarding Schubert, Samuel Johnson’s: “Hanging in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully.” For some.

If you want “God” to help “you” get what “you” want, well, you probably have no business reading this insidiously designed subversive tome. But isn’t it normal to want reproductive success? Normal, shnormal; if you want to be normal you shouldn’t be reading this. (The quotation marks in the first line signify that “God” and “you” are merely concepts that the “you” believes in. Reproductive success programs us to believe in a separate self; otherwise that self could not have reproductive success.)

November 3, 2004. Day after the election: Bush defeated Kerry. We are not here to participate. We are here only to observe.

Sitting: just being available. On call. The call make or may not come [or we may not be aware of its coming], but we are there. Available.

Julian of Norwich: “Do not dwell on other people’s sins.” (We have plenty of our own.) [But not to dwell on even our own; just feel our worthlessness.]

Anne: Bach, Beethoven and Schubert go into the chaos, but not Mozart. [At least to the same degree.]

November 15, 2004. NPR: Muslim taxi driver in the Netherlands regarding Theo van Gogh (who made films of the subjugation — the submission — of Muslim women): “He was too extreme. He deserved to die.”

Henry David Thoreau (in Walden): “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” (Backpacker Magazine, September 2004.)

January 6, 2005. Anne: Two panic attacks in evening after painting — opening up to the “chaos.” A friend of hers said the most important thing was to have a secure sense of self. Anne did not and this disconcerted the friend. (Panic attacks: strange feeling (not bad) that there was no self to cling to (my interpretation of her words). In my view her lack of secure sense of self revealed to the friend that he was deep down the same way (though she called him very normal, he probably had to work hard at it).

Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer: page 83 — recognition was important to guide Scott Fischer. “He ached for it.” He worried that some of the top climbers didn’t respect him. It was his “vulnerable side” according to his publicist.

Writing is like sitting: observing, not participating.

Fear: Ordinary people stay to the right of the line. With manic depressives it’s like a tractor-trailer tailgating you in a construction zone in an ice storm.

Regarding people’s response to my playing: they know the soul — or rather the Infinite Spirit — when it is revealed.

“Marriage, in life, is like a battle within a war.” [Seems I saw this quote somewhere, but I can’t find it online. The war of reproductive success.]

Cabeza, “Beauty is Truth”: Huang Po, “That which before you is it, in all its fullness. There is naught beside.” We see that more clearly in the wilderness.

February 11, 2005. Mania: Anne’s artwork. IT trying to get out? But the finite being resisting.

The universe seems so terrifyingly huge only because our own minds are so small. Or, rather, that our perspective is so constricted by the blinders of reproductive success to a trillionth of a zillionth of the Whole.

Toni like Mozart: always in control. On top of things.

“Neocons are liberals mugged by reality.”

Debbie L.’s bumper sticker: “may all beings be free from suffering.” But she means: “Especially me!” Myself: “May all beings find their way free of reacting to of suffering.” [But only by learning the eternal necessity of suffering.]

Gnostic: Jesus inner guide not redeemer – John Lash. (Books: The Seekers Handbook, the Gnostic Legacy, etc.)

Newspaper: man spends 18 hours a day on eBay. Thoreau: the great mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. [By choice? To distract from distraction.]

Just as the body has not evolved receptors to detect oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide because they are normal and not harmful — hydrogen sulfide smells bad in contrast — so the drives for reproductive success are seen as so normal as to be unquestionable. Meditation is the weird guy staring at his navel. And why are such jokes — putdowns — made? To elevate the status of the jokester over the subject of the joke.

Notes regarding Peter Jennings which are in pages 245-6 of Cabeza. Poor human beings. Ignorance is bliss . . . until Fate knocks at the door.

“The closest thing to God is having a baby” — Britney Spears, while pregnant. 

Born like a dream

In this dream of a world,

How easy of mind am I.

I, who will pass away like the morning dew.[Zen poem.]

Bassui (letters, in The Three Pillars of Zen. I mistakenly attributed this to Dogen): “Mind, having no abode, should flow forth.” 

Someone who is happy might as well be an automaton. It is misery that makes consciousness.

May 27, 2005. Crushing weight of depression: because of letting go of tension in right arm at piano? Letting the root cause flow? Attempting not to fight the weight, but let it dissipate on its own?

T.S. Eliot: “. . . the sickness must grow worse.” We must feel and know intimately what binds us to find our way free of it. [Beethoven’s “feel our worthlessness.”]

Playing piano for Anne: the fear that comes up is like listening to the dog. Forces me to be aware. The point is not to reject or deny the fear — with tension, etc.

Genghis Khan: The Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford. His mother and wife were kidnapped, father poisoned. He killed his older half-brother who was limiting his chances for reproductive success. He had few immediate kin, therefore rewarded according to merit and not kinship. It was a cooperative society, but harsh against all who opposed him; it rewarded loyalty.

Theme and variations: static, like a fugue — suggestive of timelessness.

Playing piano for Anne, panicking: “There is nothing in this universe more unbearable than my own mind.” [I don’t know where this quote comes from; a Google search brings up Marcus Aurelius, but I don’t find that he said that specifically.] What better way could there be to be forced to find my way free of it? More clear than ever that the Fear is the reaction of the self to IT trying to get in. Remembering the retreat at Camp Onanda, opening up then — WHAM! in the extra sitting. Also, dream in Rochester about that time of an extraordinary world and then again — WHAM!

“Enlightenment doesn’t change anything.” [In a Buddhist magazine at a client’s. Because the experience, as Zen fosters it, doesn’t get to the root of things.]

June 24, 2005. Cannot sleep enough for five days. Is IT “requesting” I stop fighting IT and come HOME?

Those who can’t, preach.

Regarding Dan: what I want and what may need to occur are two separate things. [At this time I was trying to get the papers of my cousin Nell. I eventually did.]

One tension and resistance lesson, then huge depression like 1000 pound weight descends. Just continue as best possible. Understandable why I resist so much.

Brian Greene’s “[solving the mysteries of the universe would be] a testament to the human intellect.” His intellect, specifically. Fabric of the Cosmos, Page 21. Just like Bach specialist Angela Hewitt’s “Let your technique shine.” Not for the sake of Truth. But to show off.

How much “better” to “promote” consciousness in people however modestly, than to use them — like Toni, et al. — for one’s own ends.

Extreme weight after nap, could hardly move. Felt like suicide. Went into it in sitting — it largely dissipated. The weight is the resistance of the self to the IT.

Zen at War, by Brian Victoria. In Japan Zen was used for the reproductive success of the country: the “vigor” of it help to fight war against the Chinese. It was required by the culture that religion serve the state.

For myself, IT requires that I abdicate all drives for reproductive success: the finite being’s wanting of sex, status, and security. Then there is a gentleness incapable of killing.

Depression: pressure to relinquish the self. We fight it, making ourselves even more miserable.

Philip Kapleau: “Attachment to the body is the last to go.” Probably heard it from his “master.” The only “attachment” is to reproductive success.

The Woman of the Lightning: “Knowledge and love are one, and the measure is suffering.” Our capacity to suffer measures our capacity for Knowledge and Love. Also, “To suffer is to learn.”

Regarding the above: Note to D. L.: For myself, resistance to suffering — in my case a mental misery arising especially acutely in sitting but in fact always present — is the only spiritual “problem.” [I don’t remember the context of this or if I even gave her this note.]

The Woman of the Lightning saw, Bach saw . . . then he died.

D. (housecleaning client and Buddhist) wants a method that relates to her daily life more. Anne: “Why?” Good point. A method that relates to TV and video watching [obvious in their house] and not daily sitting as the priority? Debbie wants reproductive success first and foremost [in the vicarious modes of TV and video]. Then maybe a bit of spirituality. So she can call herself spiritual. 

Kyosaku: may temporarily break through resistance, but resistance is still there and needs to be addressed. Laughter, exercise, etc. do the same. 

Wondrous, Strange, Glenn Gould: I believe in God, the God of Bach.” Page 336. Page 449 regarding the final fugue: “The most extraordinary piece ever conceived by a human mind.” He had never played it before. [Never recorded The Art of the Fugue. Had never played the Final Fugue before. Not a very ardent “believer” in the God of Bach. Or, rather, he realized how terrifying it was and studiously avoided it.]

The Fear coming up playing . . . resistance . . . letting go only a tiny bit . . . yet . . . a deeper feeling for The Art of the Fugue. Julian, Woman of the Lightning: I search for the fundamental laws — Truths — underlying their statements. As a “scientist.” As an explorer of the “wilderness of mind.”

Example of working on wanting status: On my first virtual piano only one third of the control knobs showed. I told Nate (the online sales manager selling me equipment), then I figured it out. I want him to know so my status is raised. Just seeing and sitting with that. In turn, Nate’s status with me was raised by his suggestion of the Yamaha P90 keyboard and that particular virtual piano, but was lowered when he said I didn’t need a new sound card, when in fact I did. This lowers his reproductive success because I may trust him less regarding speakers. He will lose money. [I also discovered all the failings of that virtual piano.”

Giving up, or letting go of my wanting to raise my status with Nate, (or fearing that I had lowered it), is a death of sorts. The death of the unfree will.

Julian’s vision of Christ: “If I (Christ) could suffer more [for her] I would.” Really referring to herself, what she had to do?

November 15, 2005. Two choices in life: 1. Fight unending wars with the world, using our unfree will to choose our battles and our allies, or 2. Be with the whole thing. Without will, but with awareness. Undisturbed, undistracted, unlimited awareness.

Is the Misery of Depression (in sitting) the withering of the self? Crucifixion of the self. [The finite being is fighting for its life.]

Myself: dream of a perfect world, then IT; IT was there watching, waiting for me.

Does someone immersed in reproductive success worry about, obsess less over, death — as long as they have or probably will copy their genes? [Not necessarily: for one thing we can help those copies of our genes survive (as grandparents). For another, fear of death is hardwired, or very nearly so. But my uncle, dying of prostate cancer, was comforted by the presence of his great-grandchild.]

Depression: Something internal is making itself known, and that IT must be addressed. We want to do our own thing . . . but IT won’t let us.

Postcard to Dan: I connected with Dan just as I did with Nell in phone calls. And he, like her, killed himself [in a sense] afterward. [To protect the finite being.]

Lincoln’s wanting to be loved: Is this why he didn’t dismiss McClellan (and appointed his rivals to the cabinet) causing hundreds and thousands of deaths? Fremont was not obsessed with being loved; freed the slaves of Missouri before Lincoln.

Richard Dawkins: likes to fight “wars” like Brett Favre. Refuses to apply evolution theory to himself.

Thoughts round and round — working with Native Instruments [the company that created my first, fatally flawed, virtual piano; but the process gave me software and experience to perfect my fifth and final virtual piano.] — Makes me understand businessmen home from work. TV, cigarettes, bourbon — my father. And then have family problems to deal with.

The only antidote to fear is “Love.” But perhaps one really needs to be mired in fear for years to really know LOVE. [Or, rather, to be AWARE that we are mired in fear. Fear is our link to the infinite.]

Just sit with the misery. Why should it trouble you to suffer for a little while? (God to Julian.)

December 19, 2005. The very end of Beethoven’s Quartet #14: the three chords. Death? [I think now it’s referring to the three strokes of the bow at the end of the Scherzo and also at the beginning of the Adagio, of which I write, “. . . with three strokes of the bow the vision is gone, vanished, finished . . .” It’s an affirmation, and understanding of this whole cycle he needs to go through. But it is death to the finite being.]

Beethoven Ninth Symphony Finale: Beethoven recoils from the horror — the threat to reproductive success, to the finite being — of the first three movements. (He wrote as the original introduction by the tenor to the Ode to Joy, “This chaos reminds us of our despair.” He senses that the antidote to that horror is genuine joy (joy through pain, suffering without complaining, feeling our worthlessness — so that we may then again achieve our perfection, that perfection that will be bestowed upon us by the Almighty) which comes only from freedom from the finite being. Then one can know the IT without fear. [And, perhaps, he also felt that the Ode to Joy was necessary for his audience. Certainly it was the last movement that I appreciated first.]

Suffering in the 21st century United States — it’s so passé! [Everyone thinks they deserve never to suffer.]

Allowing the mind to feel/experience the intense, all-consuming drive of the organism. Being aware amidst that.

Anne: “Why do D. and R. want to integrate spirituality with daily life?” For reproductive success. My perspicacious wife saw through the façade.

January 23, 2006. My wanting to make contact with people mirrors my wanting to play the piano. It must needs atrophy. [Wanting to connect with someone at the virtual piano forum.]

Krishnamurti when he learned he had cancer: “What did I do wrong? He himself is so powerful he can give himself cancer by doing something “wrong.”

Ralph Albert Blakelock’s manic-depressive states began with the moonlights paintings. [The Unknown Night, by Glyn Vincent. I.e., the more profound the painting, the more profound the Fear. Same with van Gogh.]

Blakelock: Entering into IT without sitting to deal with the fear. What drove him mad was trying to serve two masters: reproductive success and the spiritual. And to allow the full meaning of the full moon into his not pure enough mind.

Cloud: we call it that when the vapor is dense enough to reflect light, but vapor is always there. Like Mind.

I want to play the piano without letting go. But it is not possible, for me.

Entering an inner stillness but it opens me to tremendous heaviness, pressure in the head/body — and depression if I react to it. My naps take me into it also and I wake in great lethargy with a headache of sorts.

Carl Sagan’s death: his wife was whispering she loved him as he died. Anne: “She robbed him of his death.”

We want to be in control of our spiritual experience.

The ads in Shambala magazine: everyone (including Toni) selling happiness.

March 4, 2006. Science News, February 25, 2006: Exercise stimulates neuron growth in mice (also Omega three and Curry). Fat, sugar, and sloth diminish neurons. People don’t like neurons. They prefer unconsciousness: alcohol, drugs, TV, movies, etc. We do not like our awareness.

Climber Dave Roberts: had to be number one at something. “Excitement,” “thrill,” in genes drives us to high status.

Extremely depressed after trip to Québec and the Adirondacks. Sitting at the Raquette River, sinking into silence and natural sounds. Then resistance grew . . . during the night, the morning sitting, and the hike. Human activities are meaningless, but the Reality of the Adirondacks is terrifying. Then, finally, sitting with that at home. Going from fear/depression to. . . .

We maintain status by anger/threats. People remember anger. Not to be angry means not to want reproductive success. Means death [to the finite being].

Ideal: Observe human activities as we do, say, ants in the forest. Interesting but no need to participate. And if they attack us, try to avoid them [or suffer without complaining].

Dave Roberts: always comparing himself (to his advantage) with peak baggers, climbers of “talus heaps.” A person is no good, or at least below him in status, unless they risk their life.

May 21, 2006 extremely depressed yesterday. The Art of the Fugue infinitely sad. Couldn’t play. Thoughts of suicide. Today better, but am I only more separate from IT?

Better last night but woke up extremely depressed. Heavy body, heavy  universe. It’s clear my lifelong tension is due to fighting that heaviness. Otherwise I’d collapse in a puddle on the floor. Trying not to fight or react to it.

I think my depression of the last four months is from letting go of tension playing. That exposes me to the raw, naked, terrifying IT.

Fear/terror yesterday. Ran from it all day. The more we run from the omnipresent monster, the worse it gets. Early morning sitting with it some. Now, later, better.

Woken to the fear/despair/futility state again. No choice but to go into it. But will I? [No, the finite being is incapable of that. But the Infinite Spirit?]

May 24, 2006. Despair: falling into infinite fear. Reading for four hours every evening soothes it some. Piano: hopeless tension. C. 11: unbelievable harmony. Ricercare 6: could hardly play. So sad or worse. [No, just devastating to the finite being.]

Pride: wanting others to know of “your” “accomplishments.” To raise one’s own status.

The Woman of the Lightning: the ether exposed her to the lightning. Sitting does the same for me, thus the Fear.

Computer hell drives me over the edge (can’t download the last update to the virtual piano, trying like crazy). Feel like Bernhard Bach maybe [Bach’s possibly most talented son (played so fiercely they feared for the instrument); unstable, may have committed suicide]. I have dismantled my defenses of tension.

Parallel: resistance coming up during sitting — more thoughts. Same playing piano — more tension. Stay with it.

After conversation with Neil (one of our clients) regarding getting Anne an appointment to see a gastroenterologist at his clinic. Feel bad because my status was lowered, no health insurance, no real job, etc. To the victor go the spoils. To the noncombatant goes the Truth?

Also, I want to have the respect of the others at the virtual piano forum: that I found the dropout problem. Just like Dave Roberts.

Robert Wright’s (The Moral Animal) goal: how to make our collective subservience to the genes as enjoyable, or at least tolerable, as possible.

All human emotion reacts to illusions: Dogs. Science fiction androids “loving” you. Et cetera.

Me so clever: Marcus (the moderator of the forum and developer of the virtual piano) to me: “You are a great tester!”

Opening to the IT playing The Art of the Fugue 11. Then great resistance and depression during the night. Ever more clear that’s the reaction of “me” to IT.

Infinitely depressed — but . . . deer munching by the window. Laughter and lovingness.

Sitting and piano are not things I cannot do. There are things that IT is working at.

July 16, 2006. Hard to know how I can go on. Unbearable weight. Simplest tasks fill me with fury. Reaction to IT? Must be but . . . I have never felt this bad.

With depression there is a relaxation of the tension I work so hard to let go of, especially at the piano. The tension held back the tsunami of Fear. Can I not fight it?

Concomitant to knowing IT is the FEAR.

Dimly and feebly . . . I offer what I can. [Zen master: dimly and feebly for 50 years . . . I pass my feces and humbly offer them to the Buddha.]

Charles Seife, Decoding the Universe: “The only thing scientists like more than formulating their own beautiful, elegant theory . . . is overthrowing someone else’s beautiful, elegant theory.”

Anne: Mark and Delia Owens [The Cry of the Kalahari] are boringly normal. But are they pretending? Is normal pretending to be normal? Pretending Niagara Falls is not dead ahead? [But surely they won’t end up like that.]

That species with promiscuous females have large testicles and smaller brains — each very demanding of resources. Similar in size to bowling balls on a human. Humans have smaller testicles — between chimpanzees and gorillas — but instead fight to keep their mates. [Instead of having sperm wars which favor large testicles.]

Technology filling up all peoples time: cell phones, Internet, etc. Einstein said if he’d been an academic in his early 20s he’d have been pressured to fit in with what everyone else was doing, and not come up with his great ideas. [Discover Magazine, June 2006 page 49, bottom of middle column.]

August 21, 2006. One in six workers at Ground Zero of the World Trade Center suffer major depression. I.e., fear — reproductive success is threatened.

People want to blame someone (parents), or something (society), do not want to see the whole thing. Seeing the whole does not help reproductive success. Blaming a proximate cause may make parents, society feel guilty and help you. And/or: revenge may discourage them from doing something to hurt you again.

Compassion: Not trying to make people feel better (so they’ll like you), but to help them see better. [Without trying to raise one’s own status in the process.]

Schubert’s way of visualizing his way free of wanting and fearing was through music. Singing at the end. [Should double check this.]

Visualization requires full awareness and letting go of fear. Helped in the Wind Rivers but home takes me more into greatest misery. Opening at the piano, then hit with extreme tension. Woman of the Lightning, Julian, the “Eternal necessity of suffering.”

George W. Bush: “The only time I look in the mirror is when I comb my hair.” Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Toni’s “intensity”: Trying to convince us, to make us followers and allies and protectors . . . of her. Out of fear. Same as Hitler.

September 27, 2006. The key to sitting is not trying. Visualization possibly can be not trying.

Anne is the only woman I’ve known who had something interesting to say.

Computer providing random numbers for lottery. What is the computer for quantum physics??? [The fire behind the equations.]

The Woman of the Lightning: “Knowledge and love are one, and the measure is suffering.” Because, Knowledge shows the insignificance of the self, the self that through wanting and fearing blocks Love.

Uncertainty principle: like what is the sex of a baby before it’s conceived. The question makes no sense. Koan: What was your face before your mother was born?

Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall: sitting is letting all the stars come out . . . without — quite— going mad.

My father and his siblings had huge egos. Which I inherited. [Everyone has equally huge “egos.” Egos are just the drive for reproductive success all life inherits or it won’t be around for very long. Some people seem nice, i.e. without a huge ego, because they want so badly for others to love them.]

Piano: clear — again! Why so much tension. To let go lets up the Fear.

Dream of the beautiful ocean: waves and whitecaps and a coming sunrise — all perfect blue. The quantum realm? That was last week. Then a week of stability. Now mind on fire for several days — unbearable.

Loud music from neighbor down the hill. Microphone doesn’t sell. Money lost by not keeping it in stocks. I want to feel better. I want. I want. Give it up.

Guests of the Ayatollah, by Mark Bowden. Student saying America is the cause of all their suffering. [See Cabeza.]

When Einstein finished General Relativity he said he could now die in peace. That’s how I feel about Cabeza. Or will feel when it’s done. [But it wasn’t true for either of us. The book was just the beginning. The first step.]

December 26, 2006. Easier to write of the False (Toni), than the True? Toni gained what understanding she had very quickly — she was not depressed. IT got clobbered by that.

Thursday after work felt there was almost hope for the piano.

Out of nowhere and immense tension in right shoulder making playing impossible. Then overnight hit by TOTAL physical depression — can hardly move. Have been working hard at letting go of right shoulder tension — HA! [But the roots of that tension are infinitely profound, requiring infinite persistence.]

“Artists are made of Fire; they do not weep” — Beethoven. [Not sure when he said that. But later he remarked that just remembering the fourth movement of the 13th quartet (composed two years before his death) brought a tear to his eye.]

Confirmed again:[allowing, through sitting] sinking straight into that most “horrible” depression . . . is precisely what needs to occur.

“Beethoven can write music, thank God. But he can do nothing else on earth.”

“Philip can do dishes, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.” (EXTREMELY depressed.)

Epigenetic RNA: If it is affected by the environment, this would only be in the same manner that DNA also mutates due primarily to cosmic rays (but also environmental toxins). It is random and still subject to the laws of natural selection.

March 1, 2007. A week ago, incredibly depressed, couldn’t play piano much, impossible tension, goofed off in the evening, overate, etc. This week much “better.” But this morning very “dry and barren.”

Back to the depression, but with the possibility of staying with it. A little calm in the heart. A terrible terrifying calm that needs to be gone into [or, more accurately, not avoided; and sitting is by far the best way to “not avoid”]. Less tension at piano. Played two hours despite depression. Then read for one hour.

Manic: when the “energy” of IT begins to fill the mind and the self wants to do something with it. [To defend the self, generally by battling the world.]

Depression: when the “energy” of IT begins to fill the mind and the self fears it, fears IT. 

April 25, 2007. Driving back from trip to Cabeza, insight: Just as Homo sapiens is dependent upon the entire web of life on earth extending back 3.8 billion years (not to mention entire evolution of the universe over the last 13.8 billion years), the genuinely spiritual depend on all of humanity and civilization for their existence. We may feel threatened by humans, but we need what they’ve done, to do our work. Work for IT. [Not much time for genuine spirituality in tribes or hunter gatherer bands in constant conflict. With all the riots of 2020 it looks like were headed back that way.]

The self must be allowed to feel forsaken, for the self to die.

Dack: Nell pounding on the table: “This is the sound of consciousness.” Dack: “She had clearly lost her mind.”

More days like the “three days ago unbearable tension, etc.”

November 30, 2007. Less devastatingly depressed, but have I only retreated from the abyss into which I must, someday, plunge? Or, rather, into which I must allow myself to be swept?

Anne insight/vision: obsessed with thoughts of her son, but sitting in chair and watching the light in the trees and the leaves and the branches, having a sense of individuals as knots or clusters of their wanting/fearing (my words), and still “seeing” a light passing freely through those knots: that the knots of misery were not substantial. And with the light was a joy of sorts.

If I allow myself to be 100 percent totally depressed without fighting it . . . then something new can arise from the ashes of the devastated self. The only problem with the depression is that the “I” is fighting its own death. This is what drains all the energy.

Something glimpsed just as slipping into a nap. Second time recently.  Something so utterly frightening, terrifying, despairing . . . no words can do it the slightest justice, except it was familiar. Part of me has known, always, that it was there, that I had “come” from there — trying to escape? But no escape is possible. And I was filled with the most profound grief. And, that this something is the root cause, or rather my reaction is the root cause, of all my fear, tension, etc. And everything else of this world is infinitesimally trivial compared. [This is about when my “descents into Hell” began regularly, before or after naps.]

December 30, 2007. Every Saturday night now: tossing and turning constantly, sleeping only intermittently. Oscar Wilde’s last words? “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.” JMW Turner, “The sun is God.”

First performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: violinist Joseph Böhm recalled that “Beethoven himself conducted, that is, he stood in front of a conductor’s stand and threw himself back and forth like a madman. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he wanted to play all the instruments and sing all the chorus parts. —The actual direction was in [Louis] Duport’s hands; we musicians followed his baton only.”

After running, the Despair came upon me before shower, centered in my heart. Felt I could faint. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Anne says she has had the same experience.

Was better for 10 days — no terrible depression — then hit yesterday with infinite, seemingly internal, Resistance. All day today and last night tossed and turned all night, writhing in resistance. Tonight playing despite it, remembering what I know of IT and ITs aims and ITS methods. Like getting near the top of Everest? Or, rather, nearer?

Another toss and turn night letting IT in? Like Krishnamurti’s process?

Dreamt I was in a helicopter and was about to be pushed out to fall to my death for some crime or punishment in a war. I felt immense fear and knew I would have to deal with that fear the entire fall. Close to stark fear before bed and after. Life is like that: we are “falling” to our inevitable deaths. [The finite being will be wiped out sooner or later.]

Several days of increasing tension, to unbearable. “Depression” hit like never before during nap. Could only lay there and let it happen. Then read, Ninth Symphony and sitting to 2:20 AM. “Our lives are not our own.” [“Never have they been, nor ever shall they be.” Quoting myself in Cabeza.]

Feeling good, relaxed for a while, but then resistance came up during sitting: piano tension Hell. Right shoulder and buttocks, depression deep.

Extreme depression again after nap: just wanted to lie there forever, but got up and sat . . . went into it . . . and found calm, peace and wholeness to a degree. Just keep sitting, abstaining from fighting it. Abstain from fighting IT.

March 2008. Feeling more and more horrible resistance at piano. Then sat until 1:20 AM: dream traveling to the darkest corner of the Universe. Distant lightning.

Perhaps not fighting as much how difficult sitting and piano are. Not hating the process. But next day — all in resistance. Tension and physical depression, hard to run, etc. weighed down by it.

Dream: Sitting and Bach Kyrie Eleison came up in immense intensity. That was my Kyrie.

Elyn Saks (The Center Cannot Hold): High IQ, overactive awareness and FEAR since young girl. Psychoanalysis “works” with her psychiatrist because it provides a safe place to let her fears come into consciousness. Like sitting. [But, according to the book Bedlam, she tells the author: “It’s really cool that some people can understand what they’re going through is something different and, maybe, an asset in some ways rather than just a terrible problem,” but “I tend to think of it as a terrible problem.” If there were a pill that could cure her once and for all she would take it without hesitation.]

Continuing on at piano for three hours last two nights (had been quitting due to extreme tension). Not as I will, rather as IT wills. Or, if I promise my soul to IT, I am allowed anything. Just continuing. No struggle. Then joy is possible.

Saks also disparages (it’s “romanticized”) the link between creativity and schizophrenia or other mental illness. She thinks she is bad because willpower is insufficient to overcome Fear. I think I am bad for the same reason: can’t let go of tension at piano and sitting, etc. Too much thought [not thought; too much reacting (which includes thought) to the tension]. But there are times of clarity when I see I’m doing “the best I can.”

Resistance drains all. Best sitting done in bed? [No, rarely. Or for the first hour lying on my back at 3 AM, after one hour of sitting.]

Mania at piano: The infinite drive of IT to get out and express IT-self in music— when “I” react to IT with trying, wanting, then tension inevitably ensues. Not to react means to allow it to express IT-self through endless hours of patient practice, sensitive to the weakness, etc., of the fingers. Intelligent awareness, without reaction, can find a slow, sure way for IT to BE. Then there is no mania. [Just keep at it for a lifetime or 20.]

Is it Christ’s “Turn the other cheek,” and “Love thy neighbor,” that is the cause of Islam’s successes? Was Christianity brutal during the Middle Ages only because it was fighting Islam? Had no choice or be conquered? [Yes, to a large degree.]

April 8, 2008. Drifting off to sleep in a nap at 11:45 PM. Into “Hell” — can hardly remember two hours later. Infinitely devastating. [Descent into hell.]

Experiencing Byron’s “The mind’s canker, in its savage mood” while installing Anne’s dimmer for her art light. Resistance to everything, but at root to IT — clear during nap.

Resistance/depression has led into a little letting go, a little more recognition that there is no choice but to let go, a little at a time, and that “our lives are not our own.”

  April 22, 2008. My younger cousin Dack has died of cancer. His partner Mary: he was at hospice since February, taking OxyContin for anxiety but having terrible nightmares at the end. Wanted them to go away. Mary wished she had helped him let go instead of encouraging him to battle it. She realized it was selfish of her; I would say it was her Fear of being alone. That’s why she cried so much. What Dack experienced, according to Mary: “Rampage on walker. Thought he saw Mary on TV (that may have been earlier; my recollection is he had some sort of terrifying hallucination which caused him to rampage into another patient’s room. He exhausted himself and as he was being returned to his bed, he died. The FEAR killed him.)

April 28, 2008. Mary: not nightmares; rather hallucinations. Great anxiety about dying (for the previous one and a half years). Rampage: two previous times in the previous two months. Due to lack of air? Breathing problems?

His father, Dack Senior: could only talk to him about economics or baseball. [I think this is Mary’s observation.]

Tuesday night piano: letting go but terrible tension comes up with pain in shoulders and buttocks. Terrible depression overnight; feels like death. Wednesday morning piano impossible. Wednesday evening more letting go — with the music. Death and suffering necessary.

My ability to just be with the music and allow it to play itself has, on the best nights, improved dramatically. [That was then.] In the past the I, with the greatest tension and effort, was playing; now [again, that was then] it’s just the music. The allowing has allowed everything up: anxiety, panic attacks every two seconds, etc., etc. But no choice and some freedom is being found. Instead of demanding that I be able to play the pieces — or else! — I am allowing myself to experience how unable I am . . . and thus learning becomes possible. [Beethoven: “Feel our worthlessness . . .”]

Lately time to time when lying down, a “vibration,” a peace, stillness, the state of Being, in my heart. Nothing finer than to be with that. Like the trio of the Schubert quintet: “Allowing mind to know Mind; Being to permeate being. [I began calling this trill in the heart.]

Piano: Instead of forcing my way through the difficulties, it is necessary to allow the fear to flow through the mind, just as in the Schubert Sonata.

May 20, 2008. Wanting so much to get the photos finished for the book. Problem after problem. Working long hours to get it done but it won’t. ITS way of telling me what I want is irrelevant. [There is no I, only IT.]

Working on dealing with photos for the book, letting go of the drive to “get it done.” So more relaxed the piano. But that just let up more fear, devastating my concentration. Panic attacks— Musical Offering especially. It did serve though, at one point, to make clear the absolute unavoidable necessity of letting go my reaction to fear. . . .

After work and nap a little warm vibration in my heart/mind — like the trills of Beethoven Sonata 32? [Yes.]

The artist does not rest. The artist is not allowed to rest.

Dreamt about Nell. Saw her in a gas station with a man. Wanted to leave a note for her to come home.

Manic-depressives are given the koan of their own lives which they must solve — or else.

The One reading Cabeza, and the one who wrote it . . . are the Same. Part of the Whole we call “Universe.”

Sunday night: Sat after piano reading Teresa of Ávila — with my mind. Again the next morning. That afternoon — Monday — hit with extreme depression. Went into it in sitting in the evening . . . and a peace and fullness came. So obvious that depression is the death of the self and one must stay with that death to die fully.

I often feel like The Woman of the Lightning in sitting: That I’m being tortured. Also in sleep.

Teresa of Ávila: Why was she so attached to St. John of the Cross?

John Charles Fremont from the top of “Fremont Peak”: “A stillness the most profound and a terrible solitude forced themselves constantly on the mind as the great features of this place.” (Travels in the Greater Yellowstone, by Jack Turner, page 145.)

September 6, 2008. Tortured like The Woman of the Lightning all night. Mostly let it happen. Piano better the next night. Letting it play itself some.

Give it to God. Give the book to God. Give the piano to God. “God is the only one who acts.” (Julian of Norwich.) Give sitting to God. Give everything to God. To IT.

Dropped into what I will call “Teresa’s hell” for a bit during nap. [Descent into hell; mentioned in Cabeza.] Now just staring like the “forever” Bach [Cabeza, page 318: “Bach seems to be staring far into the distance, or deep inside, in total absorption. Not just absorption but awe, wonder, astonishment, amazement. He sees . . . the Source. This is the Bach who, in Casals’ words, “is forever.”] Later: being tortured again.

Mirabai Starr (translator of Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross): She writes “Spirit of Evil” instead of the devil in translations. She believes in “evil” but not the devil. Wants her cake and eat it, too. Wants to believe “all shall be well” but wants to “curse George Bush”? [Yes.]

I keep forgetting The Woman of the Lightning’s “The inevitability of suffering and its eternal necessity.” And, that there is no purer — no surer —form of suffering than sitting.

IT demanding to get out during piano. A day of incredible physical depression. Although one piece was not too bad the others are far beyond the body’s capabilities, not to mention the right side’s complete resistance to fear. IT doesn’t care — has to get out. This is what drives people manic and mad. Just sitting with the resistance. Not fighting the misery.

Four days sitting [we were working only three days housecleaning at that time] and I’m hit with incredible physical depression: don’t want to move. Like I’m being tortured. Delete the like. [The finite being IS being tortured — to death.]

But didn’t fight it and piano better afterwards. Not demanding that I play the way I want. More open to the long hard effort of developing the necessary muscles, technique, etc. [But I never did! Was saved by computer technology.]

“Joy” (or J-Y) is a fundamental quality of the MIND that is free of wanting and fearing.

Letting IT take the Whole Thing of the piano, the book, life. Then and only then can there be J-Y.

Extraordinarily depressed after [visit to] Québec. Thoughts of suicide, etc. The futility of getting the book published. But it passed, for now. Depression may be due to greater openness. Allowing more fear in.

Wanting to help people (at my website) driving my incessant thoughts. Of fear of the depths of my own Mind.