Notes 4
January 2, 2016. Despite or because of letting go before piano — utter, utter, utter, HELL and TORTURE.
Tormenting night of crazy dreams: playing tennis (as if I were forced by life against my will — my Real will — to compete). Neil (an anesthetist housecleaning client we had stopped working for) yelling at me. Feel like everything is leading toward a great catharsis. Great fear of that since it would require letting down all defenses and be total devastation of the finite being.
Piano hell, sitting hell, life hell. Time to die. After 47 years (since I began sitting) — time to die. Not next year. NOW. [But this is still the finite being trying to get out of its trap. Doesn’t work that way. Have to help God turn.]
Watched Bill Clinton’s speech for Hillary in New Hampshire. He was full of fear with a contorted face. High-pitched voice. Clamped down on his emotions. [Everyone, as far as I can tell, does everything they can to keep the Fear buried.]
Sitting: as desperately difficult as piano. Not fun. Get used to it. [Or not.]
Sitting is (can be) like listening to music: not trying to listen but the music is there, all around and through. Doing its work. What it — Mind —was designed for.
So many times coming to a point where it seems all downhill from there . . . only to find a vertical cliff ahead. Opening the Being too terrifying at piano… yields to lockdown tension.
Give in to everything, including the impossibility of giving in. The whole problem being we want our cake and eat it too. The finite being holds on to the bitter end. This is just part of the necessary process. But it feels like one step forward and 100 back. [Maybe it’s one step forward and 90 9/100 of a step backward.]
2 AM: Was opening during sitting and piano . . . but that allowed devastating fear up. Couldn’t play more than a line without a “stutter.” Stopped early from the torture. Hate piano. Hate sitting. Eight hours a day doing what I hate.
A taste of IT seeping in a few times after nap. It’s IT-ness rendering all else irrelevant to the nth.
I pride myself: If I go through this unbelievable suffering of sitting and piano, I will be able to. . . . IT will be able to. . . . Almost as inspiring as a good big cup of tea.
Give oneself over to the music. To the Now. To the process. To the IT. Opening during 7 PM sitting then: Reflux from unbelievable anxiety during piano (The Art of the Fugue, C. 14). Constant “stutter.” Never hated piano so much. Then a negative comment on the Prelude and Fugue in C Major — which I KNOW is the best out there. A fitting encore to the hell I go through. But it’s just the Infinite Spirit finding freedom from wanting and fearing. Then “dreamt” before sleep of bombs and explosions everywhere, but Mind — my Mind — unperturbed. Mind smiling. Suffer, suffer, suffer. Allow yourself to suffer. To be blown apart like Great Salt Desert Sunrise II.
Physicist John Wheeler: Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once. “Dream” before nap: The Art of the Fugue all at once. That Which Is.
Descent into hell. Sitting: allowing one to be drawn into the black hole of Being where time and space do not rule.
The Final Fugue: Complete irrelevance of the finite being. Like an empty cocoon. Not quite empty. Still afraid of swirling down into that Black Hole.
Carl Sagan: To make an apple pie from scratch you have to invent the universe.
2:50 AM. Only sat 50 minutes [usually it’s one hour] — unbearable resistance entire time after long nap. Hate exercise. 7 PM sitting had been fine. Next morning nap “dozing” at the end allowing in Being.
Kinda crazy to be terrified of what you really are [I’m referring to the Final Fugue of The Art of the Fugue; see chapters in Cabeza.] Just shows how fraught is the relationship between finite being and Infinite Spirit. They just don’t get along. Wonder why. Maybe they should see a counselor.
Final Fugue (left unfinished by Bach; see Cabeza) eating away at finite being. The last note: The last signal before crossing the event horizon of a black hole. [Cabeza, page 363: To repeat the quotes mentioned two chapters back, Tatiana Nikoleyeva related that a concertgoer told her The Art of the Fugue brought him a “closer understanding of life’s tragedies.” Why? Because there is no such thing as tragedy . . . in the realm of the IT. There is only the IT. And, “There is great secrecy in this music,” she concludes. “We shall never know Bach’s innermost thoughts—all we can do is try to discover the meaning.” Yes. The Meaning. Charles Rosen wrote, “Nevertheless if the work does not yield up its emotional secrets easily, it becomes in the end infinitely moving, with a grandeur and a pathos given to no other work.” And of the final page of the final fugue, the lines comprising the B A C H theme and those two following where all the themes combine, he writes: “There is no page in all music more disquieting . . . or more deeply moving.”
No page in music more disquieting . . . to what we think we are.
And no page more deeply moving, more meaningful . . . to what we really are.
But while Bach had done all he could—he had finished—still he knew that it had to appear unfinished, because the Final Fugue, the “Eternal Harmony conversing within ITSELF” . . . is never, nor can it ever be . . . finished. So maybe, just maybe . . . Bach left it that way . . . intentionally . . .
For us to finish . . .
Within ourselves . . .
With our very own lives . . .
With our very own Being . . .
The best we can.]
Descent into hell. Philip Kapleau: “You can’t fall out of the universe.” Untrue. You can fall into a black hole in be ripped apart. Or, rather, the finite being will be ripped apart as it enters a realm beyond time and space.
Being trilling in the heart after nap. Several times. [I’m certain Beethoven was describing this experience in Sonata 32 where the trills go on and on and on.]
Lockdown tension. Can the mind just not react to that?
March 30, 2016. Suffer, suffer, suffer. Allow, not your-self, but the finite being to suffer.
So many memories: I cringe at how I have been. How the finite being has been. The only consolation is to be devoted to the Infinite Spirit. The ALL. Childhood’s End [Science fiction novel by Arthur C Clarke. Aliens visit the earth and lead humans to a new spiritual level.] No point in following the finite being’s fiasco.
Would be happy to die — exhausted. Then couldn’t sleep. Next day devastated.
Infinite Spirit illuminates the finite being . . . and we cringe. [One reason, I think, people hate sitting is they just don’t like to see things about themselves, or, rather, their finite being.]
A little Heart of Creation Wednesday.
Crows “mourn” their dead in order to better learn of danger and how to avoid it. Humans also? [When I see a report online of someone who’s died I frequently want to find out how they died. So maybe I can avoid that.]
Those who live by the finite being shall die by the finite being.
Trilling vibrations in the heart – like Beethoven Sonata 32. Getting up the will cuts it off. Could be perpetual if free of wanting and fearing. Just a state of perpetual Being.
Trill in the heart after nap, dissolving the finite being. The fruits of suffering without complaining.
Necessary to cringe at the works of the finite being.
Time, time, time. Time to fulfill, to live, to BE your CALLING. Arise, shine, for thy light is come. [Messiah: “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion.”] To let IT reign, in IT’s awful, awe-full magnificence.
Devastating nap at midnight. Next day still devastated. Finite being purified, refined. [Messiah again.]
In a state of continuous devastation. Treat everything as if “you were to ill to bother” (Huang Po).
I keep coming back to being crucified like on LSD before Beethoven sonatas 30-32 showed me ALL. My life’s work.
April 20, 2016. 7 PM. Strong trill in heart, but resistance to it after nap.
Opening on on Wednesday/Thursday now long forgotten. Locked in a trap, trapped in a locked box. Can mind— MIND — just be with that? Sitting like piano: four tortuous hours daily; glacial progress if any. Daily grind — no guarantee of success. But no choice. Climbing an infinity of switchbacks, heavy pack digging into waist and shoulders.
Feel so bad today — devastated. Very depressed, then trill in the heart after nap. Lay listening for a half-hour. The trill that puts the finite being to sleep. Had been working on The Art of the Fugue C. 5 — going still in my mind, finite being forgotten.
Infinite Spirit must deal with the finite being — all finite beings — with infinite patience because no other way and no choice.
Manic after jury duty. Finite being such a virtually all-powerful force. Only Thou art holy. [Mozart Mass in C Minor: Quoniam tu solus . . ..]
The infinite levels and layers of fear. No way this finite being will let itself go pass the event horizon.
3 AM. Dozing: dream of the perfection under the surface of the “real” world. Sobbing with grief at being separate from IT.
Unbelievable tension and depression. Piano utter hell, shoulder bad, tension like crazy.
The development of the first movement of Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat: the mysterious Infinite Spirit is purifying the finite being of all its wanting and fearing. Not something Schubert — or any of us — WANT to go through. But some of us are “chosen.”
Trill in heart after nap — all that matters.
Finite being fighting my whole life — resistance to being in the moment. The suffering, feeling worthless — the only cure. Finite being always wanting.
Sky and clouds down our road incredibly beautiful and profound. Pregnant with meaning. Finite being less in the way. Also bushes and trees out the window in the rain.
May 8, 2016, 7 PM. Working on Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat, second movement: the end brings trill to my heart. Must have done the same for Schubert. It echoes in Mind during, and after nap.
Thoughts distract from suffering we need to feel. Give in — allow suffering — to everything, however much or little possible. But maybe should call it giving up — resignation. Like the end of Beethoven’s Sonata 32 first movement. [Give up. Just BE there.]
8 PM. Trill in heart. Just lay there, without will, welcoming it . . . for half an hour or more.
7 PM. Trill in heart. Another two-hour nap. Should plan for that. Felt terrible earlier — mind needing that nap even though not short on sleep?
Intense depression during the day — after focusing on relaxing at piano.
From embracing sitting to hating it. Thanks to finite being.
Another devastating day for finite being. Enervation and resistance. 8 AM: infinite depression yields to trill in heart when AM nap is prolonged.
Trill in heart after 9 AM nap. Exhaustion, depression, after 7 PM nap. Suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. The finite being HAS to suffer. Without complaining. Without reacting.
Allowing the mind ever so slowly, ever so tentatively, ever so intermittently, to sink into, towards, the event horizon of the deep well, the black hole, of Being.
But. Now infinite resistance to that. Like a mule on the Oregon Trail refusing to cross an expansion joint on a bridge [from book of someone who re-traveled the Oregon Trail recently]. Thought I was over the hump! I writhe in resistance. ALL resistance because finite being doesn’t want to suffer and die. Do you want freedom from the finite being? Well then, suffer and let it die.
Everything you try to do just gets in the way. But you keep doing it. BECAUSE trying gets in the way. And defends the finite being. Live through this. Die through this.
DEVASTATED. Sitting in chair. Can’t believe I have 30 more years of this. “Why should it trouble you to suffer for a little while . . .? “(Julian “hears” God saying to her.)
Let go, give in, and die into the NOW. It’s not so bad. It’s only torture and death of a finite being that is doomed to dissolution anyway. Let go, give in, give up — this is my first motto. Second motto: don’t have any mottos.
Birth control is the Pied Piper of today.
Imagine you are the only person. Or you are on your deathbed. Or dying in the desert with no hope for rescue. No one to think of talking to, raising one’s status, etc. Nothing.
June 19, 2016. Wanting relief from suffering is not only the drive of the finite being. It is denial of the process. Denial of the necessity of suffering.
Worst piano yet. Everything is like giving into the first movement of Schubert’s B-flat. Letting go, relax, slow. Dying, diving, into the NOW. No trying, no doing. Be worthless. “The intolerable shirt of flame/which human power cannot remove” — Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot.
So devastated, exhausted. I don’t care about anything — due to opening at piano: playing very slowly fourth movement of the B-flat; with the fear. Might as well die. Only sat 40 minutes.
Approaching lightspeed at piano. Massive finite being becomes infinite. Must jettison or else.
You are here only to be of service to the Infinite Spirit in whatever way you can. Don’t worry about — abstain from reacting to — the concerns of the finite being. [Schubert: “I am here only to compose.”]
Every night now sitting in chair exhausted, falling asleep, cutting sitting short.
Lives not our own. [See Cabeza]. But finite being being purified. Messiah. In service of Infinite Spirit. That is ALL. Anything I WANT is irrelevant. Difficulty is irrelevant.
2 AM: Writhing on the bench. Can’t wait for sitting to end.
Torture sitting. Torture piano. Sitting often in chair. Torture to the nth. But eventually — occasionally — the finite being gives up, allowing Infinite Spirit.
Van Gogh: “Indescribable mental anguish.” Myself in sitting and piano — but it allows Trilling in the heart.
Is Schubert’s misery in the B-flat the same — not fear of death? [But all fear is fear of death of the finite being, whether physically or mentally.] Trill in heart overrules finite being.
July 15, 2016, 8 AM. Becoming reconciled with death by sitting bench/chair, death by piano key? I.e., the finite being giving up?
“Encouraging” Being in bed for one half hour after nap. Continue in sitting? Finite being fights back.
If this work is inconceivably, unremittingly, difficult — that just shows how infinitely important it is.
Sit/live as if you had only 30 minutes left to live.
Much opening last night before piano encouraging letting go. Afterwards, piano lockdown tension at 2 AM in the morning. Because of forcing myself not to suffer in the fourth movement of Schubert’s B-flat? Given, give up, and suffer every instant. And die.
There’s a saying that the world is God’s dream. I would say the world — of the finite being — is God’s nightmare. But it’s the finite being’s nightmare. Time to wake up.
Leaning back in chair like sleep? Allowing finite being free reign? [Almost always I find it better not to lean back; leaning back actually hinders the loosening of the abdomen most of the time.]
Very open after trill in heart after 7 PM nap. Piano closed up. Infinite resistance. Could hardly get through Ricercare 6 [Musical Offering] one time hating every second.
Hanging from a branch over the abyss. Terrified of falling. Someone stomps on our hands. Eventually the pain becomes so great we’d rather let go and die. But we may grab another branch on the way down.
Lockdown tension after playing Ricercare 6 two and a half times. Third time lately, since starting Ricercare 6.
It should be noted that the finite being did not get through 3.8 billion years of evolution by being a wimp.
Since 7 PM nap, encouraging dissolving into Being. Even though extreme tension with Ricercare 6. A tiny bit of letting go, giving up. Giving in.
Not with Being — Ricercare 6 infinite resistance. To continue playing — give up, given, or else lockdown. [Comment at YouTube after I posted it (fixing it in my computer software): “What a piece, and so beautifully and powerfully played. Never rushed. I really can’t tell you how much this has moved me, listening again tonight. Superb performance. Complimenti.” My reply: My deepest thanks. In 1980 I had a dream — if you can call such an experience a dream — of this work. That it was nothing less than the highest, most unutterably profound Truth revealed, as expressed by the quotations, from ancient Egyptian sources, copied out by Beethoven and under glass on his worktable: “I am that which is. I am all that was, that is, that shall be. No mortal man has lifted my veil.” But a few, rare indeed, “immortal” artists — who did nothing less than give their lives for their art, for Truth — did give us mere mortals a glimpse behind that veil. Vincent van Gogh, at the time he cut off his ear and began making his greatest paintings, wrote: “So strange these last months do seem. Sometimes moods of indescribable mental anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and the fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant.”]
Being during night, until I had to change position. Shoulder pain. 7 AM. resistance. GIVE UP, GIVE IN, LET GO.
August 14, 2016, 7 PM. Descent into hell.
Seems so impossible, but the Great Wall of Self can’t be worn down in a day. But rain and wind and snow and ice (i.e., sitting, piano, etc.) eventually . . . will have their way . . .? Self doesn’t like the way it feels in the process, so wants it over. But that wanting reinforces the Wall. [Or rather reacting to the wanting reinforces it.]
Torture at piano absolutely necessary to BE with the music, with ALL.
No trill in heart for at least one week, but morning and evening today. Less resistance sitting.
Tortured into Being with What Is. No choice. Supremely tortured night — sleeping little. Purging out the finite being.
Sitting is allowing the finite being to be tortured to death. Thus . . . allowing the Infinite Spirit to know IT-self.
All trying — to relax, let go, give in, give up — is a defense from suffering. How many times do you have to relearn this? Zippity zillion it seems. At a bare minimum.
Masochism: The finite being intentionally causes itself pain to distract from distraction. [To distract from the Fear. Better pain than Fear.]
Two nights ago could have kept on sitting — opening — continued in bed. Now total resistance plus back worse.
To let go of abdomen knot is the most hateful, horrible thing imaginable. But no choice — at piano, with sitting.
Life like a school test where we have one hour to get the right answer. In life we don’t know how long we have, but the clock is ticking. Will we fritter away our time and therefore fail? But the test is not for “us” — as if there were an “us” — but for IT.
On my deathbed, my death cross. Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me? [So the finite being complains.]
Trill in heart, first in a while. Makes finite being irrelevant. All we can do is prepare the ground to allow that THAT to come. Piano afterwards “should” have been better. Started off so, but devolved into total torture to the nth.
September 27, 2016. Trill in heart at 7 PM. Continued through sitting. May be due to dealing with extreme back pain. 2 AM — all gone. Dry sobbing, convulsions after one hour of sleep. The beginning of the catharsis that must be.
Infinite resistance last night from piano and sitting and at 6 AM. But good nap and some opening. But resistance building again.
Trill in heart. Should be grateful, but it demands more letting go, giving up, giving in, dying, suffering . . . but what else can we do?
Overnight more dry catharsis. Unfulfilling. Just the tip of what needs to happen. Very open when going to bed — shows the “danger” of openness — why we resist it so.
On Call. In case the Call comes. Because there is nothing more important than the Call.
I sit in part because the suffering of not sitting is greater than the suffering of sitting. But there is a carrot and a stick. [So many seem lacking in these.]
More trill in heart at 7 PM. Now possible to just be with the knot, but finite being HATES that. Anything but that. . . .
Seemingly infinite number of levels of resistance, each requiring its own level of suffering.
Less resistance. Beginning to relish the purification. (Short-lived! Back to being tortured.) The subsidence of self.
Devastating night. Lay awake — most horrible feeling. Give in, give up, let finite being die.
October 28, 2016, 3 AM. We are IT. IT doesn’t complain. IT does not react to difficulty. IT is like water finding its way around all obstacles, one way or another, to the sea. [If we don’t resist. Those who resist too much may prefer to destroy the finite being, commit suicide.]
Give in, give up. Let go, allow the finite being to suffer — every minute, every second, every chance you get . . . and you’re on the road to “bliss,” to freedom from wanting and fearing, to Being the Infinite Spirit.
Dealing with mice. We complain so much, if only to the Universe — why do we have to do this, do that? To suffer the difficulty without complaining — this is the road to freedom and J-y.
A few days ago total despair — then a nap and an opening. Suffer, suffer, suffer. Countless levels of suffering as the finite being goes through its death throes.
Allow the evisceration of the abdominal knot, the final wall of the finite being.
Beethoven’s diary: “You must live not as a human being but for others … and your art.” Myself: You must live not for the finite being but for the IT, the Infinite Spirit.” Same thing.
Beginnings of freedom and joy . . . but devastating suffering still necessary in sitting.
Piano just like sitting: incredibly hard work — against the grain of the finite being. Sitting just like backpacking — same. Not fun. At ALL!
Consciousness: from the all-pervading dark energy in the universe?
Deathbed sitting: Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Everything to BE.
2 AM. Inflamed gums from extraction for implant. If I die now, too bad. So much I — IT —could do. “For unto us . . .” fulfilled. . . .
Give in to the purification “that they may offer unto the Lord . . .” (“an offering in righteousness.” Messiah).
Tortured night — slept late. Opening, but still tortured to death. Tortured BECAUSE of opening more.
On TV at the Eastman Dental Center: soap opera. Man stabs man in abdomen. Why I tense. [The abdomen is the most vulnerable part of the body (even the eyes are protected by the eyebrows), other than perhaps the groin. Tension in the abdomen protects it.] No. That’s just the proximate cause. The ultimate purpose of life is to suffer — that Infinite Spirit finds freedom from finite being. “Knowledge and love are one and the measure is suffering.” (Woman of the Lightning.)
When going through hell, JUST keep going. Winston Churchill.
Keep thinking I’m getting close — then infinitely far.
Attempting to just allow the knife to twist in abdomen. Followed by dreams of war, attacks on abdomen. [As I dictate this in 2020 — same thing: knife in abdomen.]
2 AM: The cocoon begins to dissolve, disintegrate. Love and Being seeping in. 8 AM: Yet still the finite being resists. Must allow SUFFERING more and more and more.
So often asking why am I like this, why is life like this? The question arises because we don’t want to suffer. But, “The eternal necessity of suffering” (The Woman of the Lightning). We know why: finite being, reproductive success, Infinite Spirit etc. After all of this, still infinite piano torture.
Seem to be opening, but now just more, more, more resistance. Resistance means finite being doesn’t want to suffer.
Every problem due to not suffering without complaining. Allow suffering every breath, every note, every moment. Only then can the knot in abdomen, the knot of self dissolve.
December 24, 2016, 7 PM. Work on computer before nap to let the B-flat play itself . . . led to trill in heart after nap.
Trill in heart at 7 AM for the first time. [Most commonly it’s at 7 PM.] Feeling music more. Even when trill in heart leads to opening in sitting, I still hate it. Finite being hate sitting — means more suffering.
Have to give up what we are programmed by evolution to hold most dear: myself. More and more, I AM the music most profound. The self — who cares.
Horrific piano torture. No trill in heart lately. Plus and neck, arm pain, biting my cheek, piece of glass in my finger [from breaking a microwave tray; hand surgeon says he doesn’t think he could find it. Have to play differently], right calf cramp (from pedal). Sitting in chair, legs stretched out, last 23 weeks due to knees . . . feel like I’ve gone months backwards in resistance. When we say, “Help me, God” we mean, “Don’t let the finite being — which is me — suffer. PLEASE!!!” But it’s necessary. We ARE God. “God is the ground of our being” (Julian of Norwich). Suffer without complaining.
The thought “I am worthless” is a defense against the feeling of worthlessness. Feeling worthless means allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify, dissolve, irradiate the finite being.
Anxiety regarding calling doctor about the glass in the finger. Suffer without complaining.
To think “I am bad because I strive for status” is still striving for status. We know to appear not to strive for status will raise our status. To FEEL our worthlessness is in another realm altogether.
We are the Infinite Spirit stuck with a very imperfect finite being, with which we do the best we can.
Trill in heart strong last night and this morning, but still bit lip like crazy at piano, and intense reaction to Frontier tech “selling” me security bundle when the Internet was down. Knot in churning abdomen as it lets go. Finite being’s last stand is not quiet!
Finite being fights for its life, tries to bargain its war into the future. “I’ll be good,” it promises, “You need me!”
Suffer without resistance. Resignation of the finite being.
January 18, 2017, 7 PM. The irony of the matter — there is no one left. Trill in heart strong. No one, doing nothing, nowhere, know-how. Just BEING is. 2 AM. All blocked, all locked up, worthless finite being in CONTROL. Wait without hope . . . suffer without complaining.
Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. . . .”
Meryl Streep: “Fiction is something you can lie down and wrap yourself up in. In Reality you are alone on the mountaintop in the wind and the storm, and you don’t know if you’re going to be blown away. In the movies, I know the ending. It’s the first thing I read.” (December 1988, Interview Magazine.)
On the mountaintop the finite being is blown away . . . but the . . . Infinite Spirit is all around.
To fulfill your destiny as Christ, you must suffer as Christ. Like Julian of Norwich who regretted her request to experience Christ’s sufferings.
7 PM last night — strong trill in heart. Intense dry sobs during the night, on and on.
Overate cookies. Given to how bad you feel. Feel your worthlessness. Ever so slowly, glacially, letting go of the knot in sitting and piano.
Slowly opening Pandora’s box – attempting to be unmoved by what comes out. Nell, Van Gogh, Blakelock, etc., couldn’t take it.
Hate sitting, can’t stand it 95, 98% of the time. 99%, but not sitting is worse. Also piano finger exercises, the piano 98% of the time. But love — too weak a word — the end result. Like sitting. “There is nothing higher . . .” [Beethoven: “There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals, and by means of that contact, spread the rays of the Godhead throughout the human race.”]
January 27, 2017. 7 PM. Finite being drawn and quartered, branched, twisted, tortured. But trill in heart after nap. 2 AM. Was opening at piano, being with. Now slammed shut. Like Nell? [My cousin who committed suicide.]
Hate, hate, hate letting go of abdomen tension. Hate it. But it’s my life’s work.
Knife twisting in abdomen during piano. Deeper, deeper, deeper; twist, twist, twist. Right side and arm half paralyzed in tension. “Let go, let finite being die, drown, whatever — or else!” I say to myself. The thing is . . . I keep choosing the “or else.”
Piano: knife twisting. Skiing: I just let it in, not resisting (a little). 7 PM nap: strong trill in heart. 8 PM sitting: knife twist.
The constant inner dialogue with one’s self — just to distract from the flames.
Attempting to just be with the knife.
“So disgusted with myself I could hardly bear to live.” (Julian of Norwich.) Craving sleep, death.
Descent into hell. Anne depressed when nobody to fight —her mother (in her mind; John Lennon: “My mommy’s dead. I can’t get it through my head. Though it’s been so many years. My mommy’s dead). So much “fun” to fight — either other humans, animals (hunting), or nature (Everest), or even our own bodies (marathons, transgender sex conversions). Raises our status and reproductive success. Emotionally “fulfilling” (when your team wins the Super Bowl). Without all of that — what are we? [We evolved in hunter-gatherer bands which were constantly in conflict — for mates, food, resources — so the ones that survived were the best at fighting. Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon showed that males of the Yanomamo Indian tribe of the Amazon jungle who killed another male . . . had more children, and passed on their genes.]
Still can’t live The Last Sonata (Schubert Sonata in B-Flat; essay written in 2001; Chapter in Cabeza) 16 years later: “We don’t have to do anything about . . .” our pain and suffering.
On the seventh day God took a break. I need a break.
February 23, 2017, 2 AM. Descent into hell. Van Gogh killed himself to TRY to avoid that.
We spend every second, every instant of the day trying to avoid, evade, dodge the bullets of suffering. Sitting is an attempt to see if that trying can come to an end. For the suffering to purify the finite being so it can “offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness” (Messiah).
7 AM Abdomen opening, relaxing, letting go in sitting previous three days. 7 PM. Sheer utter hell at piano of resistance HATE piano, HATE sitting!!! When going through hell. . . . . . . . .
Being at 3 AM sitting. Should have stayed up, but went to bed. Being kept me awake, nagging. Sitting: the sacrifice of the finite being on the altar of the Infinite Spirit.
“Only the paranoid survive.” — Wall Street Journal editorial regarding tech businesses. The finite being knows this so well. So programmed. So hardwired, so hard to find freedom from.
Being in the NOW requires dying to the past, present, and future.
Very, very slowly letting go of abdomen in sitting and piano. But I hate it! Devastating.
I know why I’m here. I know why this Universe is. How could my compass not perennially point North, regardless of the external circumstances.
Meryl Streep: Fiction — you can curl yourself up in it. Reality — you’re on the top of a mountain and can be blown off at any time. Fiction equals thought. Reality equals Being.
“So disgusted with myself I could hardly bear to live.” So: “Die of the absolute paternal care” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).
There cannot be Seeing without Being. Being IS Seeing. [But Toni’s seeing feels like it’s in the head; separated from being and feeling.]
Give up . . . the finite being. Give in . . . to the Infinite Spirit. Let go, let the mind fall . . . into the black hole — beyond time and space — of That Which Is.
Finite being cannot See. It REACTS, for the sake of reproductive success. All trying is a reaction. Being IS. The eternal NOW.
March 19, 2017, 10:30 AM. A few seconds allowing the knot untie itself, then back in the merry-go-round of thought. Then back. And forth . . .
Our Beloved longs, longs, longs for us to come to her. To give ourselves over to her all-loving embrace. To give up our infatuations with the finite lovers who really aren’t. But this is no ordinary Beloved. No mere diamond ring demonstrating our financial status does she expect. No mere beautiful seducing serenade revealing both our sensitivity and our musical prowess. Not less than everything she demands. That we let go all our past, all our present, all our future, all our wanting, all our fearing, all our craving. For there is only NOW within her all-encompassing arms. “Millions be embraced. This kiss is for the entire world” (Ode to Joy, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony).
I cringe at all the finite being has done. My only consolation is to hope it leads me to devoting myself to the Infinite Spirit unreservedly. The suffering this entails is only a problem if we identify with that which suffers. The finite being.
Killed off openness — finite being was dissolving — with anger at the cell phone for trying to get weather links for our trip to Canyonlands National Park. Now just resistance. Anger feeds finite being. Lockdown tension. Worthless, worthless, worthless finite being.
All of Anne’s little worries — to distract from distraction from distraction from the ultimate: the death of the finite being.
May 5, 2017. After trip. Flaming rain squalls in the Maze all around the Chocolate Drops [see the discussion to the video on YouTube of my rendition of the Musical Offering, which has photos of the flaming rain]. Then the dream: I was in that rain and I knew lightning was coming . . . and it did — coursing through me, the finite being screaming, screaming, preparing to die. Woke up. Knowing I have to let that happen.
It is — is it? — possible to give in to the lightning little by little. Give up. Let go.
Sinking into Infinite Spirit, finite being totally depressed. Just wants to die. Finite being would rather die than give up.
Indescribable mental anguish the rule since Maze trip. But. 6:30 PM: Trill in heart — first since before trip. Give in, give up, let go.
A large, necessary part of sitting is seeing and feeling our worthlessness. All the actions we are ashamed of. The pathetic finite being. [Reading Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, by Paul Bloom. Even three-year-olds can feel and show remorse. Bloom writes that if you, the reader, don’t feel remorse for something, then you are either a much better person than he is, or much worse.]
Indescribable mental anguish. In the moment means indescribable mental anguish. No “master” tells you that because they’ve never done it. Except, especially, Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert (George Frederick Handel, Monteverdi, van Gogh, a few others). Finite being dying. But trill in heart at 6:30 PM.
Brahms wouldn’t go there. Mozart at the end: despair, anger, hopeless, self-pity all in his Requiem.
Maybe by the time the music (my renditions on YouTube of the greatest keyboard works of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert) is ready — three years? — the Infinite Spirit will be ready, the finite being deceased, and IT will take over. [Fat chance. Maybe next decade.]
Going into the cloud, the fear of which killed van Gogh. [See his Wheatfield and Crows, 1890; the road leads straight into the cloud, but through the flock of crows — the bird of death.]
Trill in heart . . . yields to indescribable mental anguish — because the finite being is undermined.
Woman of the Lightning: “In that moment the whole of my life passed before me, including each little meaningless piece of distress, and I understood them. This was what it all meant, this was the piece of work it had all been contributing to do. I did not see God’s purpose; I only saw his intentness and his entire relentlessness towards his means. . . .” BECAUSE, each little meaningless distress FORCED us to contemplate what was really going on. IF we don’t get angry and try to blame. IF we suffer without complaining.
Giving in means being without borders. Anne’s amoeba [Anne, do you remember this?]
So excited over Maze photos. Never imagined anything so “beautiful.” If the finite being latches onto that, mania results. The work is to allow the Infinite Spirit to do ITs work and embrace, suffused ALL.
Time to leave everything, everything, everything behind . . . and die . . . to it ALL. Allowing the finite being to dissolve, disperse, dissipate into the vast ocean of Infinite Spirit from whence it arose.
Peace on earth . . . when the sun turns into a red giant.
Compassion (equivalent to “lovingkindness”) arises spontaneously from Being that is free of wanting and fearing. It can’t be practiced, as so many “practitioners” preach [those that can’t do, preach]. Thus The Art of the Fugue C. 10 arises from C.8.
“Thy” “will” be done. We are here only for the Infinite Spirit. The finite being to be forgotten.
June 5, 2017, 8 AM. Finite being and Infinite Spirit are like Siamese twins, joined forever. Somehow the Infinite Spirit must entice the finite being — against its instincts — to follow along.
I played the piano to know Truth. Others?
Article on anxiety at the New York Times. No one ever heard of evolution. They think they will — or should — live forever. Anxiety is society’s fault. Technology’s fault. Etc.
Infinite anxiety, fear, at piano. Good I don’t have a gun. Wonder how van Gogh got it (no one knows, except there were teenage boys in the area who had one; no one found the gun van Gogh killed himself with). Rather die than DIE.
Totally devastated lately after midnight map. Tried to “sit” lying on couch. Couldn’t move.
Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross: his Christian heaven and physicists’ “many worlds” — anything to save the finite being.
Like giving up smoking. This is an effort to sit in your chair and not reach for a cigarette? One suffers from not smoking. Or, rather, finally being suffers.
“We live by the Spirit. All else belongs to death” (Albrecht Dürer). But Melancholia and the left half of his face in his final self-portrait looks angry (due to syphilis?).
The closer we descend to the event horizon of the black hole, the more the finite being screams and protests. Ignore it.
July 3, 2017, 7 AM. 7 PM last night opening: everything possible. Then closing . . . and a devastating night.
Most thoughts: fighting “enemies.”
To allow oneself to suffer means to allow the self to die. We — the finite being — fight with everything in our arsenal. Totally terrifying to the finite being. Vulnerable to extinction. But it will — regardless — go extinct.
Thoughts: driven by endless striving to feel better, not to suffer.
Ever so slowly, maybe, perhaps, the abdomen knot is letting go. It IS the finite being. The finite being’s death is the letting go.
Civilization made us internalize our wanting/fearing; repress it. [See Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Natures, which shows how we became more “civil” and less violent over the last 500 years. Western civilization, that is.] Hunter-gatherers have far less restraint. But entertainers who express far less restraint — in a controlled forum, of course — are greatly admired and venerated. Many long for that lack of control, the free reign of the finite being.]
Being with the knot. Allowing it to unravel, unwind, untie itself.
The dendrites and axons of wanting/fearing neurons spread through and permeate the nervous system. Abstaining from acting — unfree willing — allows them to lose their power. Just as if one stops playing piano: after a while everything is lost and forgotten.
Giving in, giving up, letting go — we hate it, we hate it, we hate it. So we suffer to the nth.
You can’t make it happen, but you can let it happen. Give it the opportunity to blossom. Feel our worthlessness — which we hate doing. Hate it!
“Why have You forsaken me?” (Christ on the cross.) Because the finite being has to feel utterly, totally, eternally forsaken. Without a hope or prayer or a lifeline of method to save it. Only then can the Infinite Spirit arise.
The whole purpose of the knot is to keep out the cloud of IT. [See Cabeza, The Supernatural Saguaro; Schubert Sonata in B-flat development (this is lacking in his Quintet in C).]
Give up caring about anything for one’s self, i.e., the finite being. Just allow Being. Driving home from Rochester: just Being the trees.
Finite being constantly planning: sit, nap, sit, piano, eat, shop, apply for Social Security, plan for trip, etc. This is part of humans’ great success on this planet. To give up that — at least for a little while — is frightening. Because the finite being may not survive. Relax too much driving . . . and you can die. [As I wrote in Cabeza, to somehow “be in the world, but not of it.”]
August 9, 2017. Whenever we ask why, it is because we WANT things different. I.e., we, the finite being, don’t want to suffer. Give up all cares. Being doesn’t care about anything. Being IS everything. [Except, Being is attempting to express IT-self through us finite beings. Beethoven: “We, finite beings who are the embodiment of an infinite spirit . . .”.]
Everything — individually – is boring. Only Being is not boring.
Dismantling the finite being bit by tiny bit — like the computer Hal in the movie 2001. Leaving only what’s necessary for Infinite Spirit. When it’s unendurable — take a break.
“Knowledge and love are one, and the measure is suffering” (The Woman of the Lightning “hears”; see Cabeza, The Final Fugue I). Knowledge and love are one because Knowledge IS knowing we are everything. Nothing to fear, “in all its fullness, utterly complete” (Huang Po).
Nightmare that I was at a client’s supposed to clean. Trying to leave note, I didn’t want to work there, wondering why I had come, couldn’t get out of the house, two other women in my way, finally screamed. The finite being stuck in its trap. Woke up calm.
Boring versus Being. Finite being versus Infinite Spirit.
Allowing the dam to crumble on its own so everything can flow. Schubert Sonata in B-flat, first and fourth movements. But the flow washes away the finite being so we fear it. Like Brahms, who said to compose Bach’s violin chaconne would have driven him mad.
Many days, a week, totally dry. Nothing but resistance. Sitting and piano, shoulders bad. Hate it all, says the finite being. But some profundity lying on back in bed. Being.
Letting go of abdomen . . . leads to sheer hell at piano. Being with the music is crucifying. But strong trill in heart at 6 PM nap.
Pianist Charles Rosen: to perform a piece in public you must be able to play it in one’s sleep. Giving up, giving in, letting go — the same. [If it can’t be done in sitting, how could it be done in daily life? So many have claimed they don’t need sitting, that daily life is their “practice.” Unfortunately a cursory observation of their daily lives undermines this.]
When it gets unbearable . . . let there be Being.
Meriwether Lewis committed suicide because he couldn’t write up the report of the Lewis and Clark expedition for Jefferson. Myself: suicide attempts because — proximately — I didn’t do my homework.
If you can’t pass the Final exam you fail the whole course. There is no makeup exam. As I wrote in Cabeza: “Be prepared.” [Cabeza: “but . . . you are going to die sometime, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Why not get it out of the way ahead of time? Or at least get your reactions to it out of the way? Like a good Boy Scout: Be Prepared. But I understand. Nobody but nobody really believes they’re going to die.”]
Dissolve into the arms of the One and Only perfect Lover. We know they exist — thus we project our “love” onto our latest infatuation — who is just another finite being like us. Maybe I seem wonderful – at first — to another. But not to myself for sure. [If there is anyone out there who thinks they themselves are wonderful — I’m certain I would not.]
We live in a virtual reality. Brian Greene, in The Fabric of the Cosmos: “The reality we experience is but a glimmer of the reality that is.”
By abstaining from reacting to our virtual reality we may perchance taste a bit of the reality that is.
Staying with the knot, or, rather, not trying to escape it. Being with the trap.
September 23, 2017, 10 AM. We are aware. We don’t have to try. The trouble is, we — the finite being that is —don’t like, want to change, what we are aware of. But we need to feel our worthlessness without complaining, without fighting it. Feel “the intolerable shirt of flame / which human power cannot remove . . .” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).
When we truly suffer without complaining . . . magically the suffering is transformed into bliss. [Beethoven shows this in the first movement of Quartet 14. And the next four movements convey the joy of the freedom from the finite being.]
If we give in to everything, let the finite being dissolve into everything — then we ARE everything. No thing to fight, no thing to oppose us. We may wish things were different, but we just deal with it without struggle. Can’t help the cold rain, but can help fighting it as an enemy.
All spiritual “practices” are about escaping from what we are, not being That Which Is. That which the finite being hates so.
Dissolving into the Infinite Spirit requires infinite suffering of the finite being. But the Infinite Spirit can help the dropping of resistance which is the root of all suffering. IF there is no trying to drop resistance. Trying is the way the finite being attempts to perpetuate itself — for a while.
To woo the perfect Lover one must be persistent and not give up after a few (thousand, million, zillion) rejections. The perfect Lover is infinitely demanding of not less than everything. [But, “Lover and Beloved are One.”]
Old age (69 at the time this was written): I don’t feel old. It’s just that I may be less of a jerk than I used to be. At times. Perhaps my more recent memories are less cringe-worthy.
10 AM. Lockdown tension — from TRYING to dissolve? Still there at 8 PM. The intolerable shirt to flame. Piano hell to the nth.
[Disastrous waste of time and money ordering something from eBay to help Anne’s hearing.] Just as with a tree that has fallen across a path, climb over it without reacting.
Terribly depressed. “Melancholy beyond tears?” [How Wagner described the opening fugue of Quartet 14, which is really suffering without complaining.]
Descent into hell. Almost suicidal yesterday. Today . . . an opening. The necessity of suffering eternal.
Even with an opening the finite being fights to the nth. Gentle persuasion works best — or else lockdown tension may result —but even so requires endless suffering.
Opening at 2:30 AM — could/should have kept sitting. Then devastating night.
October 22, 2017. Finite being backed into a corner fights like a wolverine. How do you defeat that? You don’t. You just let it starve to death. But it does need to be kept — more or less — in the corner.
Opening in abdomen — but I still hate sitting. The path is clear: to “hell.” Hell for the finite being, heaven for the Infinite Spirit.
Descent into hell is equivalent to The Art of the Fugue C. 11. Leads into another, infinitely more meaningful, REALITY. My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: Memoir, by Mark Lukach Giulia— the same Fear as Nell. The same Fear as all of us.
2 AM. Giving up, giving in, letting go. Finite being hates it, hates it, hates it. Nothing to hold onto.
November 7, 2017, 7 AM. Jerking and shaking [possibly the first time; continuing into 2020 as I write]. Poisons trying to get out. So deep the resistance. Piano: my face screwed up like crazy. C. 11.
Nothing to look forward to. May as well give in, give up, let go. Let our ghosts catch up to us. [Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, architect of the Vietnam War, was described many years later as “running so fast his ghosts won’t catch up with him.”]Those ghosts could of course just be paper tigers, but the finite being doesn’t want to take the chance.
We are here ONLY to help God “turn,” which entails the suffering of the finite being. [See Cabeza, The Final Fugue I.]
Finite being reacts, blindly. Infinite Spirit IS.
My whole purpose in life is to let myself be crucified.
Dealing with Bernie [someone who contacted me online due to a YouTube video]. Just allow all the disturbing feelings up.
Descent into hell. A night of jerking to electric shocks, primarily when on back, but also on side.
One hour of sleep then shock treatment. Finally sleep and the cycle repeats. Fortunately having three good naps.
Shocks: an infinite immensity trying to get through, like at the Toronto Park. [The Supernatural Saguaro chapter of Cabeza.] Every night the “process” and now frequently starting after a nap instead of trill in heart.
On my deathbed [my niece Amy is dying of cancer]. Nowhere to go. Sitting, piano, even sleep— worse than the others. Devastating the finite being. But where is Infinite Spirit? So dark. All I have is tea.
My God, my God, why have I forsaken Thee? [the reverse of Christ’s “Why have You forsaken me.”]
Being with the knot. Writhing with the knot. Riding the knot like a wild bronco. Allowing it to exhaust itself. To un-knot itself. On its own. [Takes a few years, or decades, or more.]
Devastating night. Who wants to go into that hell? Who has to go into that . . .?
Strong trill in heart at 7 PM, then infinite piano hell. PLUS snowplow hell. Should do nothing after piano. So devastated. Lie on couch and drink 10 wine. If I had a gun I would do like van Gogh. What did he do besides paint and drink? Theo supported him. No house, truck, etc. to take care of. Never felt so bad as now. The veil of time pulled apart . . . then indescribable mental anguish.
Writhing on the mat. On waves of pain we ride. Resisting to the nth. What cannot be denied.
January 11, 2018. Slowly letting go of abdomen in piano. Letting in Terror. Learning slowly — maybe, maybe not — not to react to it. Not to care about how the finite being feels about the whole business. [Cognitive behavioral therapy is perhaps a little like this; sometimes it involves meditation.]
The less we try in sitting the better. All trying is the finite being’s attempt to avoid suffering and death. Just BE there. [“A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets.] Trying not to try is most assuredly TRYING. The finite being infiltrating, co-opting everything.
7 PM. Strong trill in heart for half an hour. Finally got up. Carried over a little to sitting. Working on Beethoven Sonata 30. Giving in, giving up, letting go — this is not a practice. Rather a way of being. Allowing Being. Infinite energy, “J-y” to flow through. Sweeping away the finite being.
“Leap with hands high in the air into the tremendous abyss of fire confronting you, into the ever-burning flame of your own primordial nature” — Zen Master Bassui. I’m sure he never did it himself. It’s just highfalutin “inspiring” bullshit. It’s not even possible — there are a million ropes binding one that must be, ever so painstakingly, “untied.” Rather, allowed to untie themselves. If one sits, without method, without trying to do anything, without trying to leap . . . the flames will come. The Refiner’s fire.
Besides, how does one leap? It’s an act of will. A doing, not a Being. This is the realm of the unfree will, the finite being.
Sitting . . . is equivalent to deathbed lite. Or not so light.
Jerks becoming more continuous. Lightning seeping through.
February 6, 2018, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish yesterday: piano in sitting. Total devastation to finite being. But today the eternal necessity of suffering so clear — to be free at last from the finite being.
“We have no idea” is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness. [We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe, by Daniel Whiteson and Jorge Cham. ‘This witty book reveals the humbling vastness of our ignorance about the universe, along with charming insights into what we actually do understand’ —Carlo Rovelli. ]
We are programmed to try, try, try, try, try, try, try. Try . . . until we die. Yes, we try . . . we try until we die. . . . Genuine spirituality sees if it’s possible to find freedom from that realm.
Only one aspect of sitting requires effort: not to get up. And to sit down in the first place.
Violent jerks . . . and the finite being is holding back much, much more. What will be left when the dam breaks? American Wolf [American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West, by Nate Blakeslee]: the greatest cause of wolf mortality is other wolves. [Cute, adorable wolves — think so many.] Same with humans. Thus our thoughts center on our relationships. To drop those thoughts means making ourselves vulnerable to death.
Have to keep sitting past where we can’t stand it. Finite being can’t stand it.
Jerks harder and faster — like electric shocks. Writhing on the mat . . . equivalent to jerks/shocks.
Strong trill in heart after nap 7 PM. Like a little child. Indescribable mental anguish after piano. Unbelievably tortured night. The eternal necessity of suffering. A little more deep inner calm. A little less finite being.
My calling: To finish Bach’s Final Fugue, and compose Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony in which he intended to create “a new gravitational force” — to draw us into the black hole that is beyond time and space.
Night: Violent jerks, then dream falling to certain death from a high cliff. Woke up when I hit the ground — heart pounding.
7 AM. Abdomen and shoulders heaving— allowing it all — IT ALL — to flow through.
Writhing on the mat/On waves of pain we ride/Resisting to the nth/What cannot be denied.
Writhing at the keys/On waves of pain we ride/Resisting to the nth/What cannot be denied.
Writhing through the night/On waves of pain we ride/Resisting to the nth / What cannot be denied.
Writhing through our lives/On waves of pain we ride/Flowing with the ALL/That cannot be denied.
Every sitting your deathbed. Every piano your cross to bear . . . to the final crucifixion. Jerks now near continuous. Violent twitching if I let it.
Descent into hell. Trill in heart during 7 PM nap. Stay with that when up? All there is, IS.
My resistance made clear by the shocks coursing through me at night.
We use thought to place our claim, to stake out a particular location in the space-time continuum. Comforts us — this is ME. I’m safe here. For now. [Like Kafka in his Burrow.]
Crucified over and over and over. Horrific mood today. Death by 10 zillion cuts — ever deeper and deeper . . . all so that — we will, maybe, see. . . .
Feel so bad lately. Sleep loss — nights of jerks. Remember deathbed.
Inculcate trill in heart when waking from nap — continue when up?
Giving up; giving in; letting go . . . equivalent to Beethoven Sonatas 31 and 32.
Riding a wild bronco. All I have to do is “hold on,” i.e., stay with it, roll with it, not fight it. And when thrown off, get back on again . . . and again . . . and again. . . .
April 3, 2018, 8 AM. Exhausted from night of violent jerks — would destroy me. Ready to die. Violent jerks destroy midnight nap.
No trill in heart lately. No Being. Just deeper and deeper knowledge of how devastating Infinite Spirit is. Like descent into hell. C. 11. “No mortal man has lifted my veil. . . .”
Incredible contortions at piano. [I made a short video of this, playing C. 11. Anne said it would give her nightmares.] Don’t know how I can continue playing. Gave up C. 11 — will fix it in the computer. C. 9 now. Finite being desperate to escape its fate, the Infinite Spirit of C. 11.
May 7, 2018. Back from trip to the Maze. Sensed more what this vehicle could Be. What its only PURPOSE IS. Home: constant jerk sitting. So impossible. Need 40 years. 50 years. More.
Next day: some letting go, inner calm. The depths beckon. Following day: back in full resistance mode. Day after: infinitely depressed. Can hardly move. Must be necessary. Abdomen more relaxed. Letting IT in? Piano hopeless.
Every day finite being tortured to the nth. Don’t know how I can continue with piano. Ready to die.
Being after morning nap. First in a long time. Some at 6:30 PM. Abdomen letting go? Finite beings says NO! Groin pain after 20 minutes of sitting. Sitting mostly on couch, floor. [I was later diagnosed with a hernia, either from lifting a heavy pack with three days worth of water in the Maze, or it started before the trip possibly from jumping jacks with weights. Had operation in August.] Awake most of night from jerks and shoulder pain.
1:30 AM. Couldn’t nap — jerks. Long to sleep but dread the jerks.
With any method, practice, there is wanting to avoid suffering. To attain a state free of suffering. Thus the finite being perpetuates itself.
Gentle massage helps groin pain. Massage for the brain to help it let go? Music, nature. . . .
Dream of red sun within the real sun. Pulsing with infinite beauty and truth. I realized this was the way the sun really was: “The reality that is.”
Opening up to Being with the knotted abdomen — but it’s still TORTURE.
3 AM. Jerking, swaying like crazy in the chair. Finite being flailing, flailing, flailing not to be drawn into Being. (Lately stayed in Being after 6 PM nap.)
Sitting quarter lotus 25 minutes [due to groin pain], exercise, then in chair: shaking, twisting off and on like crazy. Being misery. Incredible jerking in bed even in fetal.
Time to offer the finite being on the altar of the Infinite Spirit, every moment, every instant. Makes one vulnerable to the thunderstorm of IT.
No one from the Maze trip (that we talked to) watched my video [I told them it had photos of the maze; they had been impressed by the photos in Cabeza.]. No choice but to BE the new gravitational force.
June 16, 2018, 2 AM. Total resistance. I FEEL my worthlessness.
Even more violent jerks. How to open to THAT?! [Just keep sitting.]
2 AM, a week later. Finite being wants nothing, Nothing, NOTHING to do with the realm of the Infinite Spirit. But abdomen is slowly letting go — before I die? When I die?
Next day, 2 AM. Constant violent jerks after nap and sitting.
The constant internal dialogue defends against — pretends against — death. Of the finite being.
Trill in heart at 6 PM, then infinite tension at piano (Beethoven’s Sonata 31). Sitting impossible. Finite being would rather die.
10:30 AM. Shaking, jerking like crazy. Abdomen looser.
The Calling Calls. Heed the Call. Why else does the Universe bother to exist. [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: “But what is the fire behind the equations. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”]
Reflect on all the suffering of all living beings since life evolved. All the suffering of humans fighting, dying, struggling, to eventually create civilization. Your own suffering is just a tiny drop in all that. The difference is you have the chance, the understanding, not to react to it. Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert gave you that understanding. And all that previous suffering — of 3.5 billion years’ worth of life —GAVE you that chance. Don’t squander it.
Descent into hell. 2 AM. Would rather die than live what is required of me. So devastated 1-2 AM. No trill in heart lately. Just misery and jerks and groin pain.
Nothing, nothing, NOTHING anywhere, anyplace, anyhow for the finite being. Accept that “resignation” . . . and . . . no problem! [Just torture to the nth.]
Attention necessary to see how one defends oneself/the finite being — but one must allow suffering to let go of that. [Suffering without complaining comes first; attention comes along naturally with that.]that
July 22, 2018. Opening, starting to enjoy sitting. Sitting over one hour. But now lockdown tension. Suffer without complaining. [Van Gogh: “To suffer without complaining is the one lesson that has to be learned in this life.” But his suicide was the ultimate complaint.]
The supreme spiritual struggle is learning not to struggle. Learning to let the finite being be wiped out. “Accept your fate” (some Zen master). “. . . In reality there are no sentient beings to save” (the Buddha, in the Diamond Sutra).
Opening with abdomen. Then excruciating tension at piano. Finite being ultimately boring. Time to give it up. Everything boring but Being.
Lockdown tension, total resistance, barren, dry, cold, hard, hopeless. Suffer without complaining. Only finite being complains.
7 PM. Constant violent jerks. They come when the finite being is not defending. Finite being quickly tenses. Lets go, tenses again, etc. As I wrote regarding the Schubert B-flat Sonata, “. . . and so it flows through him.”
7 PM on porch. Little dog downhill constantly whining. Allow finite being to suffer. Hate it but it’s the only way.
Capt. Bonneville (explored the Northwest in the mid-1830s): Christianity made Indians more cooperative, less prone to theft, less violent — according to the Native Americans themselves.
3 AM. So bored with finite being. Stop feeding it, being its slave.
Is there the inner conversation during the greatest music? Sometimes penetrates more when driving — fewer neurons available for thought? [Pianist Krystian Zimerman said the same.]
Wayne same as Dharman (see Cabeza). The center: love it or leave it. Threw out the baby — sitting — and kept the bathwater (status for the teachers).
August 20, 2018 7 PM. Trill in heart (TH hereafter) — first in a while.
Allowing Mind to be — a bit — at piano and sitting. . . . Followed by night of extreme violent jerks.
Relax into everything. Don’t try to be attentive. Give in, give up, let go . . . and attention will follow along.
2 AM. Through with the jerks? [HARDLY!] Being with the knot. It would be a shame if I die on the operating table (for my hernia). So much to do, my Calling to fulfill. Violent jerks in bed. Slept little.
Before surgery: shaking like a terrified animal. Nurses asked me, “Are you cold?” No, I said. Can we do anything for you, they asked? Just get it over, with I replied. I wasn’t even consciously afraid; it just seemed like the fears were not repressed, causing the shaking.
So barren. No TH, no Being, not even jerks. Just resistance.
Anne didn’t know dinosaurs were so ugly. Mammals more spiritual? Due to nursing young? Ice cube of the knot melting in the sun — IF we learn not to keep putting it back in the freezer.
Giving in is not a doing but a Being.
Huang Po’s conceptual thought — it’s our reaction to emotions that makes us separate from ALL.
To remain in the present one must acquire a taste for its fullness. Feel it. Feel how worthless, empty, sterile, all the finite being gives is. And relish the present’s simple, joyous freedom: like Beethoven Sonata 31, first movement.
Writhing through my life: attempting not to clamp down with tension in everything I do. Let abdomen, shoulders go, writhe, jerk. But allowing this must be the priority — not getting things done.
Suffering without complaining is equivalent to Huang Po’s not reacting to external stimuli. [Except, he says, “restrain each single thought from arising,” and then you will react less. Exactly backwards. WONDER why.] We react because we don’t want to suffer. We fear suffering but if no reaction, no suffering. Beethoven in one sentence goes beyond all of Huang Po: “Man cannot avoid suffering . . . he must endure without complaining, feel his worthlessness, and then again achieve his perfection, that perfection which will be bestowed upon him by the Almighty.”
But external stimuli include how we, the finite being, feel. Not sure Huang Po understood that. We feel bad, want to feel good. Sitting feels bad, so we don’t. So suffering without complaining necessary.
September 12, 2018, 2 AM. Lockdown tension last two days due to piano. Will I ever know why I am put through this hell? [Yes, I sense the reason. The REASON.]There is lockdown tension BECAUSE IT is so devastating to the finite being.
Wayne at the Springwater Center, when I said fear was like an iceberg of which we only see the tip: “Why call it an iceberg?” A very Zen-like response, but just shows they didn’t want to know.
“I will by my Jesus watch . . . thus all our sins will fall asleep.”
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: “. . . the terror of nothing think about.” Thought keeps the terror buried. Thinking up ways to outrun our ghosts. [But they always catch up, eventually.]
So boring the finite being, same old stuff, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. . . .
No reaction, no duality. Just fullness. [“That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete”— Huang Po.]
Abdomen letting go. In, out, tense, relax, for an instant.
Opening before piano, then LOCKDOWN!
8 PM after day of shopping and driving home from Rochester: Fullness of Being. Clouds, sky, trees, even trucks. Sitting: still fullness of resistance.
Feel the worthlessness of the finite being. It can do zero spiritually. You keep trying to get out of the trap.
More opening . . . more lockdown. The More . . . . . . the more . . . . . .
So bored with finite being and its tortured tortuous world. Time to — FINALLY! — find freedom from it. To find what IS Real.
The choice: Boring, boring, boring finite being . . . or, allow finite being to be tortured to death. But it will be in time anyway. . . .
October 5, 2018 7 PM. Much opening, gentle Being. 10:30 PM: lockdown. Morning piano, letting go every note. Evening piano, impossible. Beethoven Sonata 31.
Lockdown: to defend against suffering you suffer more. Allow the devastation of finite being. Relax into the present. The Killer Now.
Sitting necessary to see how boring and worthless the finite being is.
Anne: lying awake for hours, fear of losing control, no finite being to protect her. Myself: just let the fear up, don’t react like Nell. [So I SAY to myself. Those that can’t do, preach.]
My calling: To remind everyone who they really are. If Jesus had really been holy would anyone close to him have betrayed him? For 30 pieces of silver? [Searched this online: it seems the Bible suggests Judas killed himself. There are some who believe that there is a missing Gnostic text — consider heretical — to the Bible which says Judas intentionally betrayed Jesus so that he could fulfill the Scriptures and be crucified and resurrected.]
Descent into hell: Dozing off at 3 AM, not a dream but a glimpse — 1/10, 100th of a second — of something infinitely devastating, horrifying. Like a nuclear explosion but far worse.
Next day, 6 PM, after working on C. 11: strong TH. ALL one wants is to BE with THAT.
2 AM. Let Mind ever so gently caress all it encounters. Being with, — not wanting any particular thing — That Which Is. But death to the finite being is the price.
2 AM. Opening in heart. Lying one hour with that. Being that. Next day closed.
You have to do everything. Single-handedly. “By means of that contact. . . .”
6:30 PM. TH. Next day driving to and from Rochester: with the fullness of the sky, the autumn’s trees. Home: sitting with that but then the resistance rises — jerks.
November 11, 2018 2 AM. First intimation of the profound Being-Peace-Love-Whole expressed in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, third movement. The Heart of Creation. Then such violent jerks forcing involuntary cries from my lungs. Finally slept.
Everything boring but Being.
Next day 6:30 PM. Strong TH. 7:10 PM sitting: immediate violent jerks and crucifixion. Give up the ghost. 2 AM at end of nap: violent vocal jerks.
Crucifixion at the keys. Crucifixion through my nap. Crucifixion all through sitting. Crucifixion through the night. 2 AM to 5 AM: Terrible jerks crushing my chest so I couldn’t breathe. Finally slept.
Have been reading Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World, by Brad S. Gregory. Luther had the same feeling of worthlessness as Beethoven, but says nothing about suffering without complaining. Very angry. Everyone wants others to suffer for our pain. Parents are the most handy, then society, or spouse. Or ourselves. [This is my favorite: if only my finite being wouldn’t do such stupid things, then my finite being wouldn’t suffer so much.]
But this applies to others too. Not blaming them, not even forgiving them — who would one forgive? The finite being blinded by reproductive success? Just seeing what they are, avoiding what might hurt us if possible. But also seeing how they could be free of that and why they aren’t. This is compassion. But seeing all that in ourselves comes first. [Julian of Norwich “heard” God say to her: “Do not dwell on other people’s faults.” Feeling our own worthlessness comes first.]
Last three days much less jerking, much less intense. Still resistance in abdomen but being with it more. Piano tension less.
Didn’t last long! Extreme tension at piano. Resistance to the nth. Will finite being ever resign?
Tiger Woods (reading biography) represses all fear — like Huang Po, et. al. Father taught him to block all feelings of insecurity.
Still violent jerks at 5 AM. But sitting: less abdomen tension.
Attention suggests, even presupposes, duality: the Mind, and that of which it is attentive. Being with, not reacting, allowing the finite being to suffer and die— no duality. Just Being.
If you are with yourself — your SELF — you are with everyone and everything. No problem. No effort. Because that’s what you ARE.
If you are not with yourself you are of necessity separated from ALL. Trying just reinforces that. Instead, feel one’s worthlessness. The only reason we want to help or be nice to others is to raise our status, or for them to like us (so they don’t kill us). Like meaning: to think they can get the same from us.
All there is to do is not to do anything — just keep sitting.
November 28, 7 AM. If it seems unbearable, it’s because the finite being is fighting IT. Resistance. Resign.
Toni’s “Loving attention.” Loving implies something separate as does attention. Being, being with (a redundancy) does not. Being is the Infinite Spirit. Being is devastating to the finite being. Allowing Infinite Spirit is to dissolve the finite being.
Utter crucifixion at piano. No choice but to let go of finite being. “The only hope or else despair . . .”
Writhing on the mat, on waves of pain I ride, resisting to the nth, what cannot be denied.
Thoughts screen our anxiety, making us think we can protect ourselves. Feeling that is suffering.
Exhausted with truck cabin [Toyota replaced the frame on our Tacoma but I had to remove the cabin and then reinstall it — an immense project]. Piano tension, night of violent jerks. Just not fight it. Let the devastation be.
Piano tension is complaining.
Night of jerks and little sleep. Morning nap later — a little sleep. But a half-hour of violent crazy vocal jerks. But some calm in the afternoon. Finite being gave up — some — after the onslaught.
Beethoven Sonata 31, second movement: “Do I have to go through this?” “Yes, you have to go through this!” “Please don’t make me go through this.” “But you have to go through this. You have no choice, no choice, no choice, no choice at all. . . . Just give in . . . and let IT . . . destroy . . . your will!” [These words go with the rhythm and the meaning of the music. See my notes to the Sonata online at my website and YouTube.]
Anxiety drives us to do something (or try to think of something), anything, regardless how trivial, to prop up the finite being.
Violent vocal jerks at night and naps now. “When I get through this” (my father said when he learned he had a brain tumor, intending to go out to Utah, rent a cabin and watch the clouds. He died long before that could happen). Myself: “I” will not get through this. IT will get through me. One way or another.
Imagine you are the only person, which in the sense is true as there is only ONE Consciousness. Then no problems. Perhaps obstacles, like fallen trees on a trail. But no need for a reaction.
When will you stop postponing your date with the executioner?
December 17, 2018, 7 PM. After nap the most intense jerks, moans, sobs squeezed out.
Next day 10 AM. Last night in bed at 3 AM, the beginning of Being bliss — in between jerks and moans. Now finite being refuses to let go of clenched abdomen. Being with it as best possible. Hate it!
Just as in The Truman Show, finite being/unfree will direct our lives. Can we escape their clutches?
3 AM. Obsessed with possibly failing implant (the previous one failed). Too tight? Finally being takes over with millions of thoughts. Die to it all.
2 AM. Unless you become like a little child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. A condition of complete simplicity . . .
A good hour and a half of violent vocal jerks before sleep. “The eternal necessity of suffering.” Stuffing myself, but may need more energy. At one point shaking like before surgery, but much more intense.
Otto Warmbier returned from North Korea (where he had been tortured for stealing a poster) making howls and jerks (he was only semi-conscious and died a few days later) — like mine? His sister ran screaming in terror. Anne said my video gave her nightmares. . . .
You must be ready and willing to die every instant. Every second.
Adam got zero from Cabeza. [Met him in Utah, gave him a copy, he read it and “enjoyed it thoroughly.” But.] I have to live my book. Maybe then people will take it seriously.
If not now, when?
December 30, 2018. Exhausted from jerks during nap and the night. Violent. Rooting out finite being for Infinite Spirit? “Too ill to bother?” But I just crave sleep.
Still dodging bullets. Become too ill to bother?
Just allow the Being behind the jerks — to BE.
Violent vocal jerks after nap. The eternal necessity of suffering. Not so bad. Better than being burned at the stake or crucified. Let Being BE.
Headache. Suffering necessary to feel our worthlessness. Otherwise — “I am so wonderful!” Lockdown tension from a tiny bit of trying to be one with the moment.
How could one possibly be one with the moment in daily life when the finite being is devoted to reproductive success and avoiding suffering. Just observe as best possible the whole thing. At the moment this finite being HATES the whole thing. Aeschylus: “And even in our sleep, the pain that does not forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God above.” Maybe. We will see.
2:30 AM. If we let ourselves — the finite being, that is – be crucified, then the Infinite Spirit will be resurrected. In sitting we are Christ on the cross. Just relax and enjoy the show. “Wherein if we do well we shall / Die of the absolute paternal care / That does not lead us / But prevents us everywhere.” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets.)
Religious “morals” keep society functioning and reproducing. [Religions that reproduce at a faster rate will always dominate in time. Early Christianity became successful in Roman times because of their “moral” strictures against infanticide, etc. See The Faith Instinct, by Nicholas Wade.] Without such “morals” such things as drag queen story hours for young children, males who identify as females competing against women in sports, etc. proliferate.
Extremely depressed for two days. Finite being’s last gasp? [Hardly!] Face contorted to the nth the piano. I persevered.
January 9, 2019 1:30 AM. Relaxing abdomen; barrier protecting the finite being opens to indescribable mental anguish. Robocalls, other distractions send me into a fury. Same thing with every note on the piano.
To relish giving up, giving in, not fighting it. Letting go of the poisons of resistance; allowing the necessary purification to take place.
Extreme vocal violent jerks 6 PM, 2 AM and 4-5 AM. I hate the process so because I know, I sense, deep down how devastating it will be — if it goes “all the way.” This is why I — the finite being, that is — get depressed, lock down with tension, etc. Keep the lid on Pandora’s box! Or else!!!
Abdomen loosening some. Fewer jerks, more writhing. Sitting in chair is better than the bench for this. [I continue sitting in a chair for this reason.]
Last few days abdomen like jelly quivering — but then tightens as resistance grows and the core of the finite being is threatened, and rebels.
2 AM. Ultra-extreme vocal violent jerks. Time to pay the price in full. The bill is very overdue.
7 PM. Ultra-ultra-violent vocal jerks after nap and during sitting. Bill has to be paid — NOW!
Descent into hell. 2 AM. More than a half hour of jerks after nap. Piano: seeing if every note can be an offering to the Refiner’s Fire. A purification.
Beethoven Ninth Symphony: first movement and maybe second is what’s waiting on the other side of descent into hell. Maybe — certainly — the third — what I call in Cabeza, The Supernatural Saguaro, the Heart of Creation — is waiting there also. Calling, calling, calling. . . .
We are here for a purpose, the Woman of the Lightning makes clear. Explained in Beethoven Sonata 31, third movement, and Ninth Symphony fourth movement.
Extreme vocal violent jerks after 9 AM nap. Continues to a degree in sitting. Beethoven Sonata 31, second movement: “Do I have to go through this?” “Yes! You have to go through this!” . . .
January 29, 2019, 7 PM. One hour nap, then 25 minutes of ultra vocal violent jerks. Continued into sitting.
Letting go of anxiety, fear, and anger . . . yields to allowing suffering . . . yields to devastating jerks, the jerks themselves preventing total devastation. Masters, everyone, subverts, redirects the fear by enhancing their power status, etc.
Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) is just people being reminded they are going to die. [Most people just don’t believe they are going to die. Everybody thinks they will live forever. Until life intervenes.]
Thoughts: feel the emotion behind them without reacting. More generally, “feel our worthlessness,” i.e., the emotions are of the finite being driving us to reproductive success, which is worthless to the Infinite Spirit. [EXCEPT, somehow, someway, civilization has to perpetuate itself. Catch-22 to the nth.]
Every thought we have boils down to, “How can the finite being get out of its trap?” Or, perhaps to distract us from the trap, i.e., pretending, briefly, we aren’t in a trap. But just Being with the trap. . . . Feeling one’s worthlessness, without reacting . . . this is equivalent to Being.
Einstein knew relativity was right, but it had to be proved by experiments. Thus I have to live my book. . . .
Nothing Was the Same, by Kay Redfield Jamison. When her husband’s cancer returned: “Cancer’s back. What to do? Pop some Valium, quite a few.” (I – can’t think of the right word. Being with the abdomen taking up all of my neurons. Got it! I paraphrase — sarcastically, but accurately.)
Beethoven’s Ninth: Everything irrelevant except to do ITs bidding. Obsessed with fixing dryer. [Failed; eventually bought a new one.] Cultivate indifference to the world of the finite being. But we are programmed to think every little obstacle can be the end of the world. If we hadn’t been programmed that way, do we wouldn’t be here.
Jerks to the nth. Somehow, stay with it, withIT.
Jamison’s husband, Richard Wyatt, supposedly didn’t worry about death [thanks to Valium; same with my cousin Dack, except it didn’t work quite long enough; he ended his life in a state of total panic]. Spoke about childhood nightmares of falling into a black hole. For myself, when young, I frequently had the dream that the ground was opening up like an earthquake and I was falling to the depths. Not far off from the truth.
“Imagine” the openness after nap in sitting, all the time. Maybe the jerks are necessary if IT is allowed to flow through. But finite being doesn’t like that. At ALL. To put it mildly.
Thought is a way for the finite being to think it is in control. Just feel. . . .
February 15, 2019, 1 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth that piano. Fell working in garage — hurt knee – didn’t play at 8:30 PM. Want to quit. [I did quit six months later.] Piano for me is equivalent to what drove Nell and van Gogh mad.
All problems with piano are because I WANT to play, instead of allowing the finite being to be devastated. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
Anxiety a reaction to fear. Fear reaction to being devastated/destroyed.
7 AM. Lockdown tension all night since 2 AM. Presumably from piano. We hate/suffer to just feel feelings and not react. Because the feelings are designed to make us react.
“Music is a higher Revelation than all wisdom and philosophy” — Beethoven. As was, I believe, the act composing itself for him.
Lockdown tension again . . . after unbearably open anxiety.
New Yorker cartoon of a young woman to friend: “I’m at the age where I don’t want my parents telling me what to do, but I still want to blame them for it.” How many stay there? Fun to blame someone, something, society, even one’s self or body [thus the transgender fad]. Suffer without complaining.
Thought, anger, hold the finite being together.
New Yorker cartoon of the head of a woman with a distressed look on her face. A movie projector is inside her head with the words: Now playing — everything you said at the party last night. Emotion powers the projector. The reaction, just feeling the anxiety — then no movie. But the finite being screams bloody murder. If we don’t say the right thing others won’t like us, won’t love us, might even kill us.
To be one with the moment every instant means to allow suffering every instant. Not easy to BE with that. THAT.
9:45 AM. TH after nap.
Despair: the fear of being devastated. But Being devastated . . . is not despair. It IS.
Toni: “There is no how.” Yes there is: to allow suffering without reacting.
We are desperate to stay in control, but we can’t control death.
As soon as I lay on my back at 3 AM, the most violent jerks yet — a power that kills. Kills the finite being, that is. No surprise I resist so.
To let the finite being die one must sense that what one is — really IS — is not subject to death. And to be disgusted with the finite being. Julian of Norwich went back and forth — “perhaps 20 times” — between “supreme spiritual pleasure” and “so disgusted with myself I could hardly bear to live.”
Dealing with the logger [having trees cut so we have a view]. Abdomen and jerks like crazy at piano and sitting. Should just sit forever.
“To be restored, our sickness must grow worse.” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets. “Sickness” is equivalent to Julian’s “so disgusted with myself.”
Conversation with our new neighbor: Movie now playing.
No other reason or purpose to our lives and to allow Infinite Spirit. “We live by the spirit; all else belongs to death.” — Albrecht Dürer.
Yesterday moved piano for our new view. Sound different. Unbearable. Finite being couldn’t stand it. Flying apart like Great Salt Desert Sunrise II. Rather die! Went running where there was a view — some better. Now lockdown tension. Repeat to the nth. Maybe each time opening a little more.
IF we don’t complain/resist, THEN there can be purification. This is giving up, giving in, feeling — not reacting.
Intense dry sobs and heaves and jerks after 9 AM nap. Continued in sitting, but I had enough!
Anne insight: “we don’t have to feel good” is equivalent to give in, give up, let go, feel worthless. But feeling bad — the tip of the iceberg.
Our final exam could be a surprise quiz.
Oh, how I hate this process: open abdomen surgery without anesthetic. The only thing I hate more is to not go through it.
71 years of desperately trying to placate and perpetuate the finite being. For what? Time for a change.
Planning the roof deck during sitting keeps the Fear, the devastating IT, at bay. Like Enrico Fermi and Jamison’s Richard Wyatt, while dying of cancer, occupying themselves with trivial observations.
April 8, 2019, 10 AM. What are all the exciting things you have to do after sitting? Print the same old boring news. Piano hell. Eat. Admire the view. Fix the book rack. Check the muffler. Clear the path around our property. Except for admiring the view what can compare with Being NOW in sitting. But — and here’s the rub — this makes the finite being “sorrowful unto death.” [Christ’s words, in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.]
Finite being and Infinite Spirit battle for the “soul.” Not fun. Do or die. No prisoners.
“Teacher” at Springwater Center idolizes pets: how nice they are and one with the moment — probably because they are neutered and fed by humans. Being neutered might make humans less violent also, but civilization wouldn’t last long.
TH. Letting go of abdomen . . . yields to most extreme depression. Piano impossible. Worst ever.
Morning sitting writhing, abdomen in and out immediately. Either I am destined for Something, or for dust. “I don’t want to go through this. . . .”
Strength training: for the full benefits, lift until exhausted. Sitting: sit until – past — where you can’t stand it.
Philip Kapleau: “You can’t fall out of the universe.” But you can fall into a black hole with the finite being ripped to shreds . . . as it must be for Mind to enter the realm beyond time and space. [Black holes are called a singularity, meaning the ordinary laws of time and space do not apply.]
The purpose of sitting is to suffer. Thoughts, tension, etc., defend against this. Letting go . . . equals death to the finite being.
Secretary of Housing And Urban Development Ben Carson: faith helps him feel his worthlessness (my interpretation, from his autobiography). If he’s not lying. . . .
On bench — lockdown. Chair allows writhing. [Maybe.]
Allow vulnerable suffering to all the tiny frustrations of the day. Being with the knot. Allow, imagine it dissolving.
TH often at 6:30 PM. But. 8 PM sitting: “I don’t want to go through this!”
Beethoven Sonata 32, second movement, fourth variation: Cascades of cleansing flowing through the mind. Allowing love. Leads into the unending trills.
May 5, 2019, 10 AM. Hate sitting SO much! No jerks but being with the abdomen knot is the last thing I want to do. Who would go through this . . .?
TH, then vocal violent jerks twisting.
Beethoven 32, second movement, fourth variation: dissolving, eroding the foundation of the finite being [working on this piece at the moment]. But . . . vocal violent jerks. I don’t want . . . to go through this. . . .
9 AM extreme vocal violent jerks after nap. 2 AM. Extreme vocal violent jerks after nap. Jerks making piano impossible. But the jerks are because the abdomen is loosening up. Earlier in a fury because YouTube screwed up my video of Beethoven 30. Had to redo it. Told Anne I never felt so crazy. Finite being threatened to the nth. Beethoven Ninth, first movement. Intensity of the jerks suggests the intensity of the Infinite Spirit. Not a game.
Like Nell, time to “Get this business over with.” [Her suicide note.] My own usefulness — that of my finite being — is likewise done.
TH . . . then extreme vocal violent jerks.
Extreme vocal violent jerks during night, but slept some. Next night at 6:30 PM also. In sitting also at 7:30 PM. Next day also, during nap and sitting.
Thoughts: we thrash on the surface of the ocean to stay afloat. Stopped thrashing and finite being drowns.
S. and B. don’t want to know about this because then they’d have to face their Fear.
The neighbor’s booming music defends against fear. Makes them feel part of a tribe. [See The Faith Instinct, by Nicholas Wade.]
Extreme enervation, “depression,” after 12-2 AM nap lately. Whole night of resistance. Continues at 7 AM.
Abdomen letting go a little at 8:30 AM, then extreme vocal violent jerks after nap. Poor sleep. Exhausted.
Exhausted, miserable from resisting sleep and naps. Attempt to just be with it. Giving in to NOW every instant, even writing this. Is it possible? Everything else — so boring. But finite being must suffer.
The most terribly extreme vocal violent jerks after nap. 1 AM. Extreme to the nth vocal violent jerks. What will happen when the dam breaks? If it breaks?
Ditto, ditto, ditto. Finite being and abdomen still holding on.
“The bodhisattva of compassion . . . sundered the bonds that caused him suffering.” [From the Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra I chanted countless times at the Zen Center.] NOT suffering without complaining. Whoever wrote this and passed it down obviously never experienced it. Somehow, magically, the bodhisattva experiences “the depths of prajna wisdom.”
2 AM: extreme vocal violent jerks during nap and then sitting. Again all night.
June 6, 2019. Horrible jerk-filled nights — exhausted, on deathbed. No choice.
Extreme vocal violent jerks after nap — but then, walking outside I could see the trees, see everything, like van Gogh. “Pulsing” with an inner life: “the Reality that IS.”
2 AM. Finish Beethoven Sonata 32, then break through — allow IT to break through — or else everything you’ve done will be lost.
But . . . 7 AM incredibly exhausted, can’t move. The resistance is profound.
Awed by leafed out trees. Branches swaying in complex counterpoint.
10 AM. Some opening to relax into the knot . . . but after 40 minutes of sitting resistance rising. Slow and easy; can’t force this. But — piano sheer infinite hell.
7 AM. This way of Being is eminently physical as it entails letting go of the finite being which IS the physical. FEEL the worthless finite being. But this is eminently devastating, makes us eminently vulnerable.
Descent into hell. 7 PM. Just sinking into the abdomen knot. Nothing else I need do. 5 AM. Extreme vocal violent jerks. Exhausted.
No effort in sitting. The effort is to refrain from getting up. Abstain.
The last 24 hours exhausting. Came “too” close to sinking in. Devastated the finite being. It rebels: “No way will I go there.”
June 28, 2019. 8 AM. Completely drained, wouldn’t mind dying except I have to save the universe. Have to help God “turn.” [See Cabeza: The Final Fugue I, regarding The Woman of the Lightning.]
Chronically drained. Leaning back sitting. Sitting on porch admiring the view.
Today, Civil War: abdomen letting go . . . versus . . . NEVER! Never won. (Letting go is equivalent to abstain from clenching abdomen. 71 years — and counting — of clenching.)
Lockdown tension last two nights from piano — cut off opening. Should stop. [I did, very soon when Beethoven 32 was done.]
Toni’s “Loving attention, or bare-bones attention” is an act of will. Being with, feeling worthless, suffering without complaining, is not. It is abstention from willing. Free won’t. To quote Toni, “Can you see that?!” She WANTED us to see it because deep down she knew it wasn’t enough, wasn’t right, so she felt threatened and had to reinforce HER finite being. My own sitting so much was a threat to all of that, too. So she always discouraged me, albeit subtly.
Abdomen letting go, but I HATE IT to the nth! I only sit because “. . . all the forest below me is in flames.” [See Cabeza]
Feel so bad — but the cause is the finite being’s resistance. Give up. Huang Po: “How godlike your bodily rewards. . . .” Godlike meaning just free of the finite being’s resistance?
Letting go of abdomen all day — hateful, horrible, so vulnerable, through 3 PM. But 7 PM start to savor it, even at piano. 2 AM extreme vocal violent jerks.
3 AM. Writhing . . . Plenty of abdomen resistance.
Tremendous vocal violent jerks on porch at 10 AM. Then all clamped up, locked down.
When IT breaks through . . . then nothing the same.
IF IT breaks through . . . then nothing the same. [But will see. Or not.]
July 15, 2019, 10 AM. Horrific mood. Full of fury. Worked cutting trees — but the exercise didn’t help.
No longer a matter of giving myself over to ITs devastating power. As if finite being had some say! Rather, IT will have ITs way — no matter what! One way or the other.
Extreme vocal violent jerks frequent even while sitting.
TH. Sat on porch half hour, then basement — almost immediate extreme vocal violent jerks. I — the finite being — cannot survive.
Seeing like van Gogh: trees, view, porch and driveway with overhanging trees.
TH. Opening at 11 AM, then incredible depression after piano. “Complaint losing force” — a note put on the third movement by Beethoven of his Sonata 31.
“Will I EVER be through?” Thus the finite being holds on by complaining, reinforcing itself.
No meaning to life — or ANYTHING — but to give the finite being up to the Infinite Spirit’s devastating power. This organism is only a vehicle, a conduit.
“Exhausted complaint” — a later note on Beethoven Sonata 31, before the Infinite Spirit takes over in the fugue.
Giving in to IT means not trying to open to IT. Just allowing what is to BE.
But resistance to the nth in sitting: jerks — abdomen in and out.
If everything is for IT . . . then no problems.
Myself to my mother after our cat had caught the canary she allowed to fly freely around the kitchen: but the canary was much happier being free. She appreciated my saying this. Muslims and China stay caged. Too frightening, too threatening, to be free. [I can testify to that.]
The Christian church has likely declined in the West, in part, due to readily available news on radio, TV, Internet, and now social media. It provided a sense of community, connection to others, and information that is now longer needed.
Knife in abdomen sitting. Extreme vocal violent jerks.
“Exhausted complaint.” Incredible depression.
Extreme vocal violent jerks. Then TH. Then extreme vocal violent jerks.
Suffering while waiting for Anne to have a CAT scan. Just being with the situation. This seems the same but is not what is called in Buddhism’s six paramitas, the third — patience. Patience is a trying, a doing — the finite being trying to get itself out of the trap but digging an even deeper hole. All of the six paramitas are in that same realm: charity, selfless kindness, zeal and perseverance, humility and patience, tranquility, wisdom. People use these to pretend — to themselves and others — they are spiritual.
August 25, 2019, 3 AM. The Woman Lightning: Our understanding is dependent upon our capacity for suffering, i.e. how much Truth we let it flow through us. The more resistance, less Truth. No resistance, no us, just Truth.
Bliss: payment in kind for services rendered, i.e., suffering without complaining.
TH . . . then extreme vocal violent jerks and resistance. “I don’t want to go through this.” Stopped sitting.
The purpose of life is suffering. Woman of the Lightning. Lives are not our own.
Never hated sitting so much — straight into abdomen with suffering. Like dying of cancer. Every time you say Why? — It’s because you don’t want to suffer.
To live at the service of the IT. Nothing else matters. Not as hard, as impossible, as Beethoven Sonata 32.
Have faith in the Infinite Spirit and let IT take over.
Hui Neng: “Thinking of neither good nor evil, return to your original home.” Emotion drives thinking of good and evil. We WANT “good.” We FEAR “evil.”
To be free of wanting and fearing . . . suffer without complaining. No Zen “master” ever said a word about that.
Time to let Infinite Spirit take over. All else is vanity.
3 AM. Moaning, practically screaming with torture. Had listened to Bach, St. John Passion (beginning; see my webpage Music of Cabeza). Maybe getting close. Maybe not. 3:50 AM. Again in sitting. Same at 11 AM. I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS! Immense anxiety and misery.
Abdomen letting go, mind saying NO! Finite being saying NO! Moan forced from belly/clenching. The IT is beyond all comprehension.
Why is my life such a______ (fill in the blank)? Very simple. Because finite being is in control. Finite being: Beethoven Sonata 32, first movement. Infinite Spirit: Beethoven Sonata 32, second movement.
New Yorker cartoon: Two dinosaurs are reading the Dinosaur’s Almanac. One says, “Weird. Says we all die next year.” True for all of us.
Toni: “It doesn’t matter what you see, but that you see.” Implies Being but still walling off its devastating aspects. Protecting the finite being. [To me, seeing implies a duality between the one who sees and that which is seen. For Being — no duality. Just That Which Is.
TH often after a.m. nap.
Suffer without reacting. Every moment. Cabeza, The Last Sonata chapter, discussing Schubert’s B-flat Sonata: “Then, suddenly we are thrown into great anguish. But as I was learning these notes, playing them slowly over and over, it seemed clear what Schubert was saying: ‘Yes, we humans feel so much sorrow and pain, but see-you don’t have to struggle with it, resist it, or do anything about it. Yes, it seems unendurable, but only to the wanting, fearing, clinging self . . . do you really need that self?’ And soon the pain passes and we enter a passage of lightness and joy. . .”
D., D., J., J., W., S., et al. — too terrifying to see. My job is to help them see they have no choice. My life’s work cut out. Composing Beethoven’s 10th Symphony, in which he intended to “create a new gravitational force.” Draw them into the black hole of Being. Compassion: not wanting them any different, but seeing what is within, and what could be. What could BE.
October 15, 2019, 11:30 AM. Violent vocal jerks, knife in abdomen. Just want to lie on couch and eat popcorn and drink wine.
Sitting methods: Have your cake and eat it too. Doesn’t work with cakes. Doesn’t work with sitting either. [The method is just a way for the finite being to hold on.]
True sitting: Have your cake next you but abstain from eating it. Even when you want that cake more than anything in the world! [Besides, it will just make you sick. And fat.]
To be in awe, reverence, love, of everyone and everything. As in some great music.
Lover and Beloved are one. Allowing the finite being to be loved to death.
Can’t stand sitting. Hate it. Too devastating to finite being. Somehow made it through the hour by counting to hundreds. [This can be called a method; I rarely do this but sometimes just keeping the counting in the background — not connected to my breathing — seems to help. Help what? I don’t know. Help me stay on the chair, maybe.]
Don’t try to give in, give up, let go. Just BE. Driving to Rochester yesterday: extraordinary Being with trees, hills, sky. A new world. If trying, then finite being fights back. Everything boring but Being.
Just allow IT to take over.
2 AM. Worst one hour of extreme vocal violent jerks yet, after nap. ITs intentness and relentlessness unbound.
3 AM, three weeks later. Lately totally devastated — jerks, or hating cutting branches (from the trees that were cut to make our view). But: also open to “all-pervading spotless beauty” (Huang Po) and eternity NOW.
Jerks after nap ever more violent. “To be restored, our sickness must grow worse . . .” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets).
November 29, 2019 2 AM. Extreme vocal violent jerks at 2 am. But every round leaves me a tiny bit “lighter,” “freer,” “unbound.” Only five million more to go. Or billion.
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich: The “story” of his life that he holds onto (that he had led a good life) — his finite being — keeps him from falling into the black hole. Until . . . in the final pages . . . he gives in and knows bliss . . . and dies.
2 AM. Extreme vocal violent jerks in sitting. Also much of the night.
If I am Christ — and we will all be Christ on our deathbeds — it sure as hell wasn’t my idea. Extreme vocal violent jerks from 12:30 AM onward. Just started reading — and copying into the computer — the beginning of these notes: the infinite misery of 1968. As I wrote in Cabeza: I feel I’ve been assigned mission impossible, to scale a mountain that’s far too difficult to climb . . . except all the forest below me is in flames.
Online in the news, a baby giraffe and a dog nuzzling each other: showing how animals love to be “loved.”
Getting tie rod off seems like the end of the world. [Truck failed inspection. Have to replace the tie rod, the joints of which have rusted solid. Have to use the acetylene torch, which of course is out of fuel.] But logically it will all be resolved one way or another. But we are programmed this way — there are circumstances in which we could die. In the news an Arizona couple, car stuck in the snow, froze to death.
Stayed in TH long after morning and evening naps. Can it continue through the day, not wanting, just Being?
Notes 50 years ago: “Tune in tomorrow for When Will Phil Give Up.” Same today. Give in to the Infinite Spirit which is behind the extreme vocal violent jerks.
December 17, 2019, 2 AM. Extreme vocal violent jerk starting as soon as I closed my eyes for nap. Next morning: hard to concentrate. Time to give up.
Whenever I feel anxiety I think, “Stupid Jerk!” Blaming myself. Of course it is the finite being’s fault, but this is not the way to find freedom from it. Abdomen letting go the root of resistance. Letting Mind flow forth.
I am not Christ. This body/mind may have the opportunity to be a vehicle for Christ. If and when it gives in/up.
I am tense to keep the Infinite Spirit from overwhelming the finite being. Give in.
Shoulders and abdomen loosening but they are all that keeps the finite being from descending into “hell.”
Agnus Dei of B Minor Mass — feel our worthlessness. Leads to the timeless — yet terrifying — glorious, mysterious, and peaceful joy of the Dona Nobis Pacem. [But The Art of the Fugue goes further. Beyond what any “master” has spoken of.]
Why am I such a stupid jerk? So I will give up the stupid jerk.
Explosive vocal violent jerks during the night. Most extreme yet.
Dennis Prager’s column at PJ Media (he’s Jewish): Man is evil and needs God for salvation. Myself: the finite being drives us single-mindedly toward reproductive success, and we may at times call this “evil.” (If it goes against our own reproductive success, that is.) The Infinite Spirit is necessary for salvation. Thus Beethoven’s: “We finite beings, who are the embodiment of an Infinite Spirit, are born to know both joy and pain, and it may be that the most distinguished of us know joy through pain.” In other words, if the finite being didn’t cause us such misery, we would never be driven to find freedom from it.
I say “stupid jerk” instead of feeling the anxiety, etc. I react to it.
A little giving in this morning, a little bliss of not-wanting. A little bliss of NOW. But ultra-extreme violent vocal jerks at 6 PM nap, explosive and extreme.
Finite being: “Okay, you feel little bit better. Time to stop sitting”
Still trying to dodge the heart of the Matter, the guts of the Matter. Still trying to avoid Being with it. With IT.
Seeing without knowing (Toni), versus Being without reacting. Feeling without reacting.
January 14, 2020. Phil to IT: “Take me, I’m yours. Do with me what you will.”
Then . . . feeling infinitely bad after 11 AM sitting. Finite being devastated by Infinite Spirit.
Phil to IT: “No, no, no! Just joking!” Like Julian of Norwich saying that if she had known what misery she would have to go through she never would have asked to share Christ’s suffering.
Extreme to the nth, vocal to the nth, violent to the nth jerks at 1 AM. Shows just how great the resistance is even focusing on IT flowing through. Or BECAUSE of focusing on IT flowing through.
2:30 AM. The purpose is not to understand, know bliss, love, be free from suffering, etc. The PURPOSE is to be a vehicle for the IT. The above may or may not come with this. As the Woman of the Lightning “heard”: “Knowledge and love are one, and the measure is suffering.”
Since you stopped piano, your only purpose is to allow Beethoven’s 10th to play itself through you. The new gravitational force.
Beethoven Quartet 14 fugue (the first movement): The finite being reaches up, then let’s go without complaining. Let’s the Infinite Spirit take over. Similar to the theme of the Musical Offering. Gives into the bliss and freedom of the infinite spirit. At the very end it reaches up two times with greatest intensity . . . but the third time let’s go . . . leading into the joyful second movement.
Knowing for oneself a bit of that joy, and that it could be every instant, ever deepening.
But now back to the desperately difficult being with the knot. . . without reacting. Or rather just seeing if it’s possible not to react. Not fun.
The attention must first and foremost be on abstaining from reacting. To the knot in abdomen. To the tension in chest and shoulders. To focus on what one is doing is trying to get out of the trap, thus reinforcing it. To give one’s “joyous consent” (Rilke) to every devastating moment. Long ski yesterday attempting — failing? — that. But moments of being with my mind, the snow, the grass. Back . . .
Beethoven Quartet 14: first and especially the fourth movements in my mind — helping to let go, to let the finite being wither away.
January 27, 2020, 9 AM. 2 AM and now abdomen in and out, whole body writhing. Unbearable.
Dream I was dreaming and screaming like a madman. “Woke” up (in the dream) — my parents were there had heard me, and had called to have me taken to a mental hospital. I tried to convince them I was okay. Waking for real I really thought IT could drive me mad. Shows the necessity of giving in bit by bit. [As I wrote in Cabeza, all the stars came out at once for Nell, driving her off the deep end.]
Unbelievably miserable today: opening, then resisting. Thinking of Nell who wrote a note when she was going off the deep end: “Should have meditated.” I should keep sitting till it’s OVER. But finite being says NO! Rather die!!!
Time — so far past time — to let IT wash over, through, and drown the finite being. Sweep it away in the tide, forever gone. That is this organism’s only purpose.
If IT takes over — no complaints! It’s all ITs fault — but then there is nothing wrong. ALL IS RIGHT. ALL IS. If IT takes over, finite being will never say or do the wrong thing.
Being in bed at 3:30 AM on my back. THIS IS REALITY. Next day: sitting total torture. Whole day total torture. Can’t believe anyone else has gone through this. It’s only because I have no choice. Will die someday, and it will all be over.
But at 8 AM some letting go of abdomen, on its own. But finite being fights back no! No! STOP!!! Before it’s too late!
10:45 AM. Strong TH. 7:30 PM. Sheer misery . . . but abdomen looser. Attempting to be with that. Not tighten up.
Extreme to the nth vocal violent jerks almost every night. Always after one hour of sleep (naps and during the night).
If no free will, no blame of one’s self or others. Just suffering without complaining. Suffering without blaming. But we hate suffering. Want it to end. We strike out at whatever’s available. Nothing available and I strike it myself. “Stupid jerk!”
Dictating my notes regarding van Gogh’s “indescribable mental anguish.” Have to allow that for a glimpse through the veil of time. [Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo at the time he began making his greatest paintings: “so strange these last months do seem. Sometimes moods of indescribable mental anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and the fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant.”
February 5, 2020. Allow indescribable mental anguish every instant — that’s all there is that can/will free the Infinite Spirit from the finite being. Beethoven Quartet 14, sixth movement: indescribable mental anguish. Seventh: The reaction to that. But the final three chords show how Beethoven understands the necessity of the whole process.
Beethoven Quartet 16, transition from the third into the fourth movement: “Must it be?” Then answered: “It must be!” (But the 16th is not quite as profound as the 14th.) Tension in abdomen: a reaction to indescribable mental anguish.
“When going through hell, just keep going” — Winston Churchill. The key word is just. To react perpetuates a necessary process.
Last descent into hell noted was June 21, 2019. Because all life is hell now?
Listening to profound music is “imagining” opening pathways? My dream of the Musical Offering 6 in 1980?
February 8, 2020 1 AM. Descent into hell, relatively mild, during nap. Indescribable mental anguish midday . . . but . . . the knot is looser . . . but sitting still leads to crucifixion in the chair.
A tiny sense of the extraordinary REALITY “behind” the glimmer we know. Far beyond what any “master” has spoken of. But extreme resistance after that.
Just give it over to IT. Don’t worry about resistance. That’s ITs problem.
Lockdown tension. Just from computer and reading. Sheer torture all night and morning sitting. Like Beethoven Quartet 14, movements six and seven? The beginning of Grosse Fuge?
Next day: indescribable mental anguish. Indescribable mental anguish . . . or . . . lockdown tension? That is the question. Have to allow the former.
Learning to live with indescribable mental anguish. Then it’s no longer indescribable mental anguish. Hate lockdown tension!
February 5, 2020 3 AM. No lockdown tension, abdomen looser, but still hate sitting!
Periodic TH, usually at 7 PM. Frequent extreme vocal violent jerks, especially at 1 AM and 5 AM.
Huang Po: “Where do you keep your ordinary mind and your enlightened mind?” And, “How many minds have you got?” This ignores the drives of the finite being. The finite being is not the Infinite Spirit. Because being driven by the finite being does not resemble the manifestation of Infinite Spirit. “Uproot endless blind passions?” (The second of the Four Vows.) How? Same with all of the vows. It’s an act of will. Digs the trap even deeper. It’s the opposite of free won’t, just abstaining from reacting.
Have to give up all control — become totally vulnerable. Hate it! Not just sitting. Rather, hate JUST suffering.
All my self-hatred — a reaction to suffering. I try not to direct it at others — often unsuccessfully — but blame myself for my misery. But no one to blame.
7 PM sitting: abdomen in and out, jerks, shakes, moans, each abdominal contraction forcing air out in sobs. Iceberg breaking up? 2 AM: fat chance! No signs of that now!
Approaching the summit of Everest? Air thinner, getting colder, big storm moving in. The finite being cries: “Go back! Are you crazy? We could die up here! Besides it’s probably only a false summit. Not worth the trouble.”
Anne after reading the first part of these notes: “How can this screwed up guy protect me?”
February 21, 2020 7 PM. TH at 7 PM. 2 AM, 7 AM: never seemed so impossible. Counting to hundreds [maybe this is sort of like a scaffolding for Mind to be. Sort of like looking at nature but with the inner work still taking precedence? I don’t know. Or like slow, meditative walks.]
Same old same old, same old same old,
Same old same old, same old same old,
Same old same old, same old same old,
Seems I’ve had ENUF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lockdown tension during night. TH at 9 AM.
If someone has a little understanding of genuine spirituality, then the only reason they don’t sit is Fear.
Sitting is 90% mental. The other half is physical. All methods are mental and anti-physical. I.e., they defend the body, the organism, the finite being.
Sitting is a whole body, whole mind enterprise. We must feel, know, experience the WHOLE thing.
Starting — briefly — to relish the jerks, help them along. Loosen the whole body all day and night. Now leading to even deeper suffering. Purification.
7 PM nap: back and forth between TH and jerks. Clear the ultimate cause is the same, but for jerks, the finite being reacts. During a nap the finite being has less power. TH could be constant, all day long. [This is why the profound meaning of the greatest music often only seeped into my mind when I was dozing off.]
Next day all blocked. Because finite being takes over again. Have to keep coming to the point where it exhausts itself. Like the end of Beethoven Sonata 32, first movement, and the end of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia — when the finite being finally, after a desperate struggle to the bitter end, gives up . . . and the Infinite Spirit takes over in the Fugue. Same thing in the third movement of Beethoven Sonata 31. Only then can the Infinite Spirit arise, on its own, of its own.
March 1, 2020. BE the new gravitational force or, rather, be a conduit for the new gravitational force.
Incredibly violent jerks, bouncing off the bed.
Carol and Tracy’s anger shows how threatened they are — because they know they are living a lie, but Truth is devastating.
March 9, 2020. Incredibly exhausting jerks the night to 2 AM. Thought — again! — I was almost through them. Had been opening abdomen in sitting — now hate it! Sat for longer. One hour walk and sat afterward outside — and got clobbered! 8 AM: weak from hunger — must be due to violent jerks.
“And even in our sleep, the pain that does not forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, against our will , comes wisdom by the awful grace of God above.” Against our will . . .
Not when will I get through this, but when will IT get through this.
IF not complaining, one is not wanting to be some way, somehow, somewhere, else. Thus no time. Just eternal presence.
March 13, 2020, 3 AM. Driving to Rochester: less separate, less battling with the world. Just all there. Sitting at 3 AM: healing the body, everything which leads — at 9 AM — straight back to suffering.
March 16, 7 AM. Two days ago so open. Seemed all downhill from here. Being every moment seemed possible. Now “so disgusted with myself I can hardly bear to live.” Hate sitting.
The most important, the only important, words of wisdom: Sit, sit, and sit more and more. Be, as best one can with Being. Sitting some more these days: outside, at the computer, meditative walks with my camp stool to sit on.
Beginning to relish [every ONCE in a while!] the purification (but this leads to writhing and involuntary moans and cries). Calmer nights — no extreme vocal violent jerks.
Day later: hate sitting! Hate it! But . . . strong trill in heart the next morning. Being.
Trill in heart can be allowed to override knot in abdomen [for short periods until the knot in abdomen takes over again].But it “costs not less than everything.”
Just let IT do ITS work. Nothing finite being can do. “T.S. Eliot: “The intolerable shirt of flame / Which human power cannot remove.”
Just keep sitting.
Driving to Rochester, losing myself in the clouds, Being in Wegmans — until anxiety rose.
April 11, 2020. Jerks are a complaint. Have to learn not to.
Time for mind to BE with Mind continuously. Then there is no time. Beginnings of a vibration/warmth in abdomen while sitting. Like trill in heart. Time to stay with that.
Very strong trill in heart after morning nap. Could have stayed forever but had to pee.
Two days later: that was then. So close — now lockdown tension and indescribable mental anguish.
April 25, 2020. Finite being dissolving, giving up, giving in, letting go? The Infinite Spirit in the shadows waiting its turn. ITS turn. Relishing it, resisting IT.
Let IT take over. That's all you don't have to do. Neighbors very noisy. Sitting outside, barking, banging, yelling. Very unpleasant. Attempting not to react.
Tension in the abdomen — because this is where one needs to protect the finite being, its physically most vulnerable part. Necessary to let that go.
Bone dry barren. Give in to it.
Time for the final crucifixion . . . every instant. NOW.
Have to keep reminding suffering without complaining as the mind so automatically closes off to that suffering.
Every moment in the service of the IT. No other meaning, no other purpose to this life, to this world, to this Universe.
Mild descent into hell.
May 26, 2020. Returning from San Rafael Swell in Utah, differential of truck self-destructs outside Davenport Iowa. The worthless finite being worries but still the problems have to be solved!
All you have to do is show up, i.e. sit. All trying is counterproductive. Just let IT do ITS work. But finite being must be allowed to suffer.
Let it happen. Let IT happen.
St. John Passion: Jesus to Peter: “Put your sword in its sheath.” [After Peter cut off the high priest's right ear.] A metaphor for suffering without complaining. Followed by the beautiful chorale: “O great love . . .”
Rabbit duels on the grass outside our motel window. Two rabbits stare at each other from about 4 feet away. Then one charges the other, who leaps two feet straight up — the first one running under it. Then one chasing the other all around. Grackle attacks a woodchuck, chasing it away. Baby grackles in nest under our window cry for food. The parent chooses which one gets it, presumably based on sensing which has the greatest chance of reproductive success. Anne's mother wanted boys because they had a higher chance for reproductive success. The policeman who responded to our breakdown complained he had three girls. Wanted a boy. The battle for reproductive success is everywhere.
June 3, 2020. Pushed to the utter limit of resistance — then a bit of letting go, giving up, finite being death. Totally bored with life. Have to let the finite being die. No point otherwise.
June 6, 2020. 7 AM: was opening — two trills in heart — sitting more. Then lockdown tension 2 AM. Feel so bad this morning. Like Nell’s “last” night (when she began running from the fear)? To end the incessant internal conversation it is necessary to allow indescribable mental anguish every instant. This is the HOW. Toni said “There is no how.” [In a way that is true in that there is no doing. But there is an allowing of suffering. Suffering without complaining or reacting. Which means she never really did it — lived it — herself.]
Incredibly physically/mentally depressed last two mornings. So far, so far to go. . . .
Two fawns stare at each other, then running in circles as fast as they can. “Having fun.” But this builds strength, agility, speed that will help them escape danger someday. We are programmed for fun — mostly competition. Ultimately helps our reproductive success.
June 15, 2020. Beethoven: “I must live not for myself but only for my art.” (In his diary.)
Myself: “I must live only for the IT.” Same thing.
June 19, 2020. 8 AM. When abdomen opens a little there is a sense of the Infinite Spirit just waiting to flood —deluge— through, sweeping away the finite being forever.
Schubert B-flat Sonata: the first half of the development is a purification which leads to the second half: “In the development however, the pain returns and builds to unbearable intensity . . . but what follows are some of the most beautiful bars ever composed. Softly repeated chords in one hand, like a heartbeat. A simple three-note questioning theme in the other. Here is revealed as nowhere else the extraordinary beauty of the mind that knows, despite and because of its most dire circumstances, that there is no choice but to find its way free of wanting and fearing.” The eternal necessity of suffering.
June 21, 2020. Strong Being after 9 AM nap. All there IS. That Which Is. I am that I am. IT trying to get through. Hard to sleep. Tired. The finite being reacts there is mania. If one doesn’t identify with the finite being, indescribable mental anguish is not a problem. Like Ivan Ilyich. IT’s just there.
Allow indescribable mental anguish every instant. This is true attention. The purpose of the the constant conversation is to avoid that. Somehow keep the finite being alive.
Allowing indescribable mental anguish to flow through allows Infinite Spirit to flow through.
July 1, 2 AM. I am a racist. I believe in the supremacy of the race of cooperative and intelligent human beings, of whatever color or national origin. This of necessity excludes those committed to the dogma of any religion or ideology.
Kurt Gödel: ”Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion [i.e., genuine spirituality] is not.”
Opening it 7-8:30 PM. Sat 70 minutes, then listened to the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, and Beethoven’s Ninth, first three movements. 2 AM: lockdown tension. 8 AM: lockdown tension. Should sit forever when open.
FEEL your worthlessness. The Infinite Spirit is ALL.
At his death Beethoven was working on his 10th Symphony in which he said he wished to “create a new gravitational force.” This force must be able to overcome the resistance of the finite being. Like the death star in Star Wars.
Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s Ninth, third movement: tears dripping down his face, yet still his shoulders are hunched defending the finite being. Likewise likely his huge abdomen.
Feel so incredibly bad since opening three days ago hate having to do anything: sit, exercise, work on house . . . anything.
July 11, 2020. Being: there is no separation because there IS no thing separate. There just is That Which Is.
So often so “depressed” lately. Just want to die. I know I, the finite being, has to go through this. Several mild descents into hell — which I almost relish. TRUTH is there.
Obsessed with solving problems during sitting: truck rust, the differential, photographic prints. They have to be solved, but when there are no more problems of reproductive success . . .?
8 AM: so devastated. Attempting to be with it. Abdomen resisting to the nth.
July 24, 2020. Less jerking but incredible knot in abdomen. Hate staying without reacting to that. But necessary to allow IT to take over.
All you have to do — or not “do” — is die. Very simple. A condition of complete simplicity. Just die. Time to die. For a worthy “Cause.”
There is just One Mind, expressed through 7,000,000,000 finite human beings (and to a lesser degree in other conscious organisms). One Infinite Spirit. True compassion is seeing, knowing, Being with That.
Christ: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
July 31, 2020. I have proved earlier there are no individual lives. Only LIFE. Likewise, no individual minds; only MIND.
August 6, 2020. After the initial meiosis a human embryo develops via mitosis until the neural organization reaches the point where Mind can enter. Age 3? Perhaps this is why no one remembers early childhood. Computers? [I don't know what I meant by this.] Roger Penrose: consciousness arises from interactions in the brain on the quantum level.
If I ever ever ever get through through this may be something of importance will come of it. Maybe not.
Being with abdomen knot. No way I'd go through this without everything else in life utterly “un-enticing” (to put it mildly).
Maybe a slowly growing sense of IT that is — that is ME — behind the finite being's façade. Profound jerks and moans during sitting and nap.
Allow the suffering/purification from the viewpoint of the Infinite Spirit, not the finite being. “Imagine” the Infinite Spirit taking in ALL.
August 23, 2020. If a hive of bees can be considered a single organism, so can all of life — which is interdependent. We need plants to make food for cows and deer etc. Likewise just Infinite Spirit.
8 PM Cabeza is just like sitting: it forces people to see what they don't want to see. So they stop reading.
August 26, 2020. 6 PM. Incredible jerks and cries for a half-hour after nap. Infinitely raw. Feel like going crazy, but if no reaction, just misery.
1 AM. Same after evening nap. Finite being devastated, chiseled to pieces. To be fully free of wanting and fearing we must thoroughly experience there is no thing separate.
Why am I such a stupid jerk? So I will have to feel my worthlessness.
September 1, 2020. Give up, give up, give up, give up, — but sit more and MORE.
September 13, 2020. Trill in the heart some during the day. During reading at 11 PM and before nap. Also after nap and then extreme vocal violent jerks. Whole body calm now at 2 AM but at 2:35 AM the torture has risen, the jerks, etc., resistance. “Horrible” time with the truck rear wheel bearing getting the bolts off.
Is depression just IT demanding attention, demanding that everything else is trivial. But IT is devastating so the finite being resists.
All complaining reinforces the finite being.
[I don't know what I meant by this.] Roger Penrose: consciousness arises from interactions in the brain on the quantum level.
If I ever ever ever get through through this maybe something of importance will come of it. Maybe not.
Being with abdomen knot. No way I'd go through this without everything else in life utterly “un-enticing” (to put it mildly).
Maybe a slowly growing sense of IT that is — that is ME — behind the finite being's façade. Profound jerks and moans during sitting and nap.
Allow the suffering/purification from the viewpoint of the Infinite Spirit, not the finite being. “Imagine” the Infinite Spirit taking in ALL.
September 21, 2020. Trill in the heart during the night, then nap and now the Infinite Spirit is drilling through, boring through, seeping through the ever so slowly dissolving wall of the finite being. Maybe collapse soon, maybe not. Very open in a.m. but probably work too long on Nell — tensed up.
September 29, 2020 10:30 AM. Toni used to speak of “loving attention.” But loving is an intention, a trying. When one is just with everything without reacting, a lovingness naturally arises, effortlessly. But this requires suffering without complaining.
September 30, 2020, 9 AM. Indescribable mental anguish then supreme spiritual pleasure. Like Beethoven 32. Permeates the body. Huang Po: godlike bodily rewards.
October 1, 2020. The dread is the purification of the finite being. Descent into hell. Trill in the heart in the background after going to Rochester — in the evening. But jerks after nap. But I essentially told Nell that on the phone: don't fight it. Be with it.
October 8, 2020, 8 AM. Huge anxiety working on the truck rear wheel bearing. Huge anxiety about everything. Attempting to let it flow through.
October 10, 2020 let go of all the intentionality of the finite being. Let let the Infinite Spirit take over, writing Nell, doing everything.
Feel the worthlessness of the finite being desperately trying to get out of the trap of its own making — digging its hole ever deeper. [The first thing to do when you've dug yourself into a hole is to put down the shovel.]
Feeling our worthlessness, just being with the whole thing. The latter is simple, “costing not less than everything.” Eyes roll like Nell when few jerks.
The reason not to resist and be with everything is because we ARE everything.
October 17, 2020, 3 AM. Joyous consent [Rilke quote] every instant, every moment. Then “the fire and the rose are one” [T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets] Nell's “I could die in ecstasy.” The finite being dies of ecstasy. Beethoven 32. But does Rilke understand the eternal necessity of suffering?
Nell's “witness” is equivalent to free won't. Just be witness to the death throes of the finite being. “Keeping focus”: requires suffering without complaining. [Nell, This Body]
I don’t know how long this
body can stay Witness
trying too hard to do right all levels
is now deranged on all all it
can do is stare stare and keep focused
sorry sorry to everyone love to
everyone that it was not the right time
place body for which these energies to
intersect
(as I type warmth Chi seeps somewhat,
maybe
will make it)
being Witness my only hope
above all, the people who supported me must not be
blamed sued
it is not ‘me’ they were supporting
*but the principles
yes the principles are
so real so real
Bioenergy Human Life the Mind
the spirit
this those words perhaps say nothing to some how can any adequate juxtaposition
be contrived? it can’t
because contriving is ego I must give
this witnessing more free reign or the
Chi will never save this body.
October 22, 2020, 2 AM. Huge moans/cries. Abdominal convulsions. Every night at 1 AM extreme vocal violent jerks.
October 25, 2020, 3 AM. Sense of IT waiting to get through. Should have kept sitting. All night sense of IT. But the finite being resists. Has to give over to ITs devastating power. “I must give this witnessing free reign.” Giving in to IT.
DESCENT INTO HELL
October 31, 2020. After the email from Tony that my view was childish are reflected on Christ's unless you become like little children… Helps to untie the knot. In bed opening, but 8 AM tighter.
November 3, 2020, 11 AM. Abdomen heaves and moans — giving in. 8 AM visualizing opening. 8 PM, less knot but HUGE anxiety.
Going into the realm of Nell; infinite anxiety of finite being — only stay witness, focus. Suffering without complaining. Don't try to witness. It will come. Suffering without complaining allows witness, focus, mind to BE.
November 9, 2020. On my deathbed. Nowhere to go. To be able to speak in words, or rather, express through words, through my whole being, through ITS BEING, what Beethoven meant by creating a new gravitational force in his 10th Symphony. And what Bach meant in the final fugue.
November 12, 2020, 2 AM. After a near-death experience someone was asked, “Did you see God?” The reply: “But what else is there?” [Don't know where I saw this.]
William James: “If this life be not a real fight…” [See sources in Cabeza] of the Infinite Spirit versus the finite being.
Feeling worthless — expecting the finite being will always screw up, especially with people. Letting go of that… To break free of that.
November 22, 2020. Nell: “Learning with eyes closed” is equivalent to feeling worthless not trying… But absorbing.
We don't sit because we are good. We sit because the Infinite Spirit in us knows its necessity. Just allow it to operate but requires the eternal necessity of suffering.
December 5, 2020. Allowing the finite being to dissolve — but it doesn't want that.
December 8, 2020 as if on my deathbed. (Both my cousin Dack and my father had TVs blaring on their deathbeds.) For eternity.
December 19, 2020. All the tiny trivia of the day keeps the finite being desperately paddling to stay afloat. (Working on the furnace, fixing the piano.)
December 28, 2020, 8 AM. Abdomen letting go some but the finite being says, No More! Enough!
January 2, 2021. Attention is a byproduct of suffering without complaining. Trill in the abdomen. Strong trill in heart at 10 AM. Finite being crumbling? Attempting to be with the KNOT. Let it loosen.
All trying, effort — except to get oneself onto the chair to sit — defends the finite being. It's not the attention of the finite being, rather the Infinite Spirit. This is concentration versus undirected awareness. The former just doesn't work.
January 7, 2021, 3 AM trying to sit one and 1/2 hours after nap. Tiny opening to an immensity of “energy” (like Nell's electric currents through her hands?).
If fully allowed… 8 AM, all blocked. Being with the blocked.
January 17, 2021, 3 AM. Abdomen loosening but still extreme vocal violent jerks during 12 AM nap.
January 19, 3 AM. We want someone, something to blame for feeling bad. Capitalism, the United States of America, and now our sex — change it and we’ll feel better. Sure thing. But maybe it's normal to feel bad. The Infinite Spirit is driving us to freedom from the finite being. [New Yorker cartoon: teenage girl saying to her hapless mother, “Nature, nurture. Either way it's still your fault.” Another one: girl in her 20s saying, “I'm old enough to not want my parents telling me what to do, but still blame them for it.”
January 20, 2021. Why am I such a stupid jerk? Because I — the finite being — is unwilling to let the stupid jerk die. Have to come to Julian's “so disgusted with myself I could hardly bear to live.”
Working on oneself as an artist on a great work: no concern with time or difficulty. It must be done. (But breaks are still required.)
January 27, 2021, 8 AM. Feeling one's worthlessness is equivalent to being with oneself, not reacting. [But it's the opposite of castigating oneself.]
February 2, 2021. All these thoughts just keep us flailing about on the surface, to prevent the finite being from drowning. But the finite being will drown in time. Thoughts about telling others how to be free from thought… Ad infinitum. But I write these notes to let go of that — and show what one must go through. The whole body shaking in sitting lately: attempting to “let It flow through.” IT.
February 7, 2020 8 AM. Entering the realm that drove Nell mad?
February 22, 2020. Yasutani Roshi: “The whole universe is inside your bony head.” No recognition of the suffering the finite being has to go through to know that. Beethoven knew. Yasutani Roshi had probably heard that somewhere. Same with Philip Kapleau saying, “You can't fall out of the universe [it's so why are you afraid?].”
February 27, 2021, 9 PM. Huang Po: “Let the mental emptiness deepen.” No. Rather, “Let the emotional reactions weaken.” [Then the mental emptiness will deepen on its own.] This is very physical: a letting go of our tension, resistance, the abdomen knot. Attention arrives out of Being with, utterly on its own.
March 8, 2021. Angry at the IRS. Didn't get the stimulus $600. We loved to have something, somebody to be angry at. Instead of being with ourselves, suffering without complaining.
March 11, 2021. Trying to ramp up to 5 to 6 hours of sitting [2 years later I'm only at 4 1/2 maximum]. On my deathbed. To redeem the Universe.
March 17, 2021, 8 AM. To be relearned over and over: The secret to, the purpose of, sitting… Is to allow oneself to suffer. The secret to, the purpose of, life… Is to allow oneself to suffer.
March 19, 2020. The finite being cannot “redeem the Universe.” Only the Infinite Spirit. Give IT the chance.
Be God's instrument. Allow Him to play upon it as He/IT/Infinite Spirit wills. To just drop our resistance to the suffering that we can't avoid anyway.
Not as I will (i.e. the finite being) rather as You (the Infinite Spirit) WILL…
April 9, 2021 8 AM. During the night — for a few moments – the all-full immensity of IT. No other purpose of my life than to let IT in, through, this vehicle.
May 3, 2021, 3 AM. After the Maze trip [possibly our last trip]. Like a retreat. More sitting due to problems with knees and depression: why hike when we SHOULD sit. Sense of being with everything, especially on the drive home: the New York hills.
I will only be content with my interpersonal relationships when the Infinite Spirit takes over.
[MILD DESCENT INTO HELL]
May 12, 2021 Monday extreme depression. Tuesday the condition of complete simplicity. The joy of wanting nothing. Wednesday depression.
May 14, 2021 giving in means letting go of all physical tension that protects the finite being. Then Infinite Spirit has no boundary; nothing to oppose it. IT is ALL.
May 17, 2021. Meditation is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Or vice versa it is a physical letting go of all defenses of the finite being.
Why do we sit? To find out why we sit.
Why are we here? To find out why we are here.
Why am I a stupid jerk? To feel my worthlessness and find out what I really am.
May 25, 2021. Human: the Infinite Spirit is given a finite being to find freedom from — all to help God turn. [See Cabeza] no judgment. We do the best we can. Give in to the difficulty. Give up self concern. “Like a hero on to victory.” [Schiller’s Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s 9th.] The finite being dying in the process.
May 30, 2021. The Bell Jar [Sylvia Plath?]: Suffocating within, Devastating without. “Nothing so liberating as having your worst fears confirmed.” A Chinese dissident when he returned to china and was arrested.
June 3, 2021, 3 am. Miserere Nobis [from the mass: have mercy on us.] But the only enduring “mercy” as if we give ourselves over to IT, to the Infinite Spirit. Joy through pain. [Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.]
June 4, 2021. Incredibly depressed. Had to fix the rear wheel bearing — horrible mood. Just wanted to vegetate. Depression is equivalent to IT saying SIT. Nothing else matters.
June 7, 2021, 7 AM. Incredibly depressed. Cannot move.
June 13, 2021. Trill in the heart but more insistent — Let ME in! Indescribable mental anguish earlier… Unless I let IT flow through. Just relax and let IT BE.
June 15, 2021. Just relaxing into the NOW — devastates the finite being.
June 17, 2021. Alex says he is a nihilist. Steven Weinberg: “The more we learn about the universe the more pointless it seems.” Pointless for the finite being, that is. Thus, therefore, thereby… I sit.
June 19, 2021. No choice but to give into the total, complete dissolution of the finite being this IS depression. A conscious descent into hell.
June 30, 2021. Noise of traffic — let it devastate the finite being. The Infinite Spirit is indifferent to it.
July 4, 2021, 8 AM. Abdomen looser but unbelievably depressed. Can’t exercise, can hardly walk around the yard. Approaching lightspeed? Death?
July 9, 2021. Leonard Bernstein’s finite being tensing up to Truth in the Benedictus of the Missa Solemnis. But the Infinite Spirit in him understands how great it is.
July 12, 2021. Perpetual indescribable mental anguish. The slightest thing is the end of the world. Will never get the piano redone. Constant things to deal with. First movement of Beethoven Sonata 32 showed his finite being had no choice but to die. Have to die…
July 16, 2021. If one is free of wanting and fearing, free of the drives of sex, status, and security — then one is free of time.
August 8, 2021. Without suffering we would stay with the finite being till death does its part.
August 10, 2021. Unbelievably devastated by sitting. No way “I” can get through this. The “I” has to die… or else.
Devastating shotgun jerks at 12 AM — but in sitting the abdomen is slightly less of a knot. Declining IQ is equivalent to decline in “morality” i.e. cooperative. Free won’t — to abstain from destroying civilization. IQ is equivalent to the Infinite Spirit.
The Taoist wu wei (nonaction) is equivalent to free won’t.
August 20, 2021. Indescribable mental anguish at 11 AM.
August 22, 2021. Let the physical and the mental of the finite being dissolve. Die in ecstasy.
August 23, 2021. 2 AM never felt so devastated. Can hardly move or even think. Because I suffer I “hate” myself, i.e. the finite being. Anger at it. Same with the transgenders. The finite being tries to whip itself into shape… digging its hole ever deeper.
August 24, 2021. Let the anxiety flow through. Let it devastate the finite being; no, dissolve it. Sitting IS 90% physical — letting go of the abdomen’s defense. Feeling worthless is physical. Agnus Dei — have mercy on us — equals feeling our worthlessness. The finite being cannot get out of the trap of its own making. The end of the Bach B minor mass: in the Agnus Dei he feels his worthlessness. Which leads to the perfection of the Dona Nobis Pacem.
August 26, 2021. Condition of complete simplicity: because the infinite Spirit must be allowed to take over for ITS intentness and relentless ends. Finite being just in the way.
August 27, 2021. Only two options. One, fritter your time here away on useless thoughts and concerns. Two, give yourself over to the infinite IT.
August 30, 2021. Maybe it’s meant that I finish everything — the music, Nell, transcribing these notes, revised and updated Cabeza — before IT takes over. Or maybe I will die first.
September 16, 2021. Ever so slowly the knot dissolves. Trill in the heart strong sometimes after nap. Not just the heart. Beginnings of trill in abdomen in sitting. Must be what Beethoven felt and expressed in all the trills of the last sonatas and the 14th quartet.
Anne: says her knot is in her whole chest. Women it’s in chest, men’s it’s in abdomen?
September 22, 2021. Toni: “Oh, they sit and sit and sit.” [Referring to people at the Zen Center.] Zensen [one of the monks]: “Keep on sitting.” [To me at some time I can’t remember.] I didn’t need for him to say that but those words are far more apt than everything of Toni’s.
Attention is an effect, not a cause of being with, of suffering without reaction. Of free won’t.
September 28, 2021. Devastating night of extreme vocal violent jerks… after letting go of abdomen a little.
DESCENT INTO HELL
October 6, 2021. Free won’t is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness… which is equivalent to Julian’s “so disgusted she could hardly bear to live”… is equivalent to kyrie eleison… is equivalent to miserere. All the greatest composers understood.
October 18, 2021. The knot is loosening but the finite being still hates sitting: “Stop! Now! Before it’s too late!”
October 24, 2021, 8 AM. The fourth variation of Beethoven 32, second half: dissolving the finite being. [I was working on it at this time.]
Wanting and fearing are equivalent to Hui Neng’s good and evil. [“Not thinking of good or evil, return to your original home.” See Cabeza.]
October 31, 8 AM. From tensing up automatically to giving in automatically. Can that be allowed?
November 13, 8 AM. Feeling so good — free of the finite being — yesterday yields to feeling so bad now. Give in. Feel the feeling bad no reaction. Non-reaction. Just stand back and let the Infinite Spirit do ITS thing. No choice. Just watch the show.
November 17, 8 AM. Physically give in to everything.
November 23, 2021, 8 AM. “Dream” (actually half-awake dozing) of The Heart of Creation (exactly as expressed in Beethoven’s 9th third movement). Huang Po: “This Pure Mind shines on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.”
November 30, 3 AM. Strong trill in heart — Being — after a.m. nap. But then in sitting going deeper — I hate it! Now resistance. Anything but give in.
December 5, 2021. Physical letting go every instant. Exercise before every sitting and stretch [but I don’t always do this].
December 10, 2021, 2 AM. The finite being on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?”
December 11, 2021. Dreams — all the time — of struggle. Trying to get somewhere, do something, escape enemy soldiers, when tennis or ping-pong, etc. The finite being’s life. [But a recent explanation for these dreams I’ve read is that they prepare you for unusual situations that you may come across in waking life. Even if these are likely different, the dreams are preparing us for battle with the world. For reproductive success.]
December 14, 2021. Strong Being after nap. Just stayed with it. Words to the opening of the Schubert B-flat Sonata: “sing the sweetest song/I ever heard/I never heard/the song we need to know/the song that fills/the mind with joy and love/if we just give in/and let it in/our souls can soar and fly so high/even way beyond the sky/the song we all so need to know/the reason we are here/the song that helps us all to grow/and know the meaning of it all.
December 18, 2021 3 AM. Allow the knot, the resistance, to dissipate with every move, every breath. Letting go. Mild jerks.
8 AM. Couldn’t sleep 6-7 AM. Resisting IT.
Can we let the house of cards collapse? To physically let go makes us vulnerable to the nth degree.
December 22, 2021, 3 AM. Was physically letting go earlier; now resisting. Unfree will takes over.
December 29, 2021. Last night dozing into a being of lovingness later… Finite being says NOT ALLOWED. Dream of being chased by a caravan in the desert. Then terrifying bottomless canyons. Tonight dream I had murdered someone, fled to Mexico and then tried to turn myself in. Dreams in the period of 1975-80 of being a vicious wolf wanting to attack everyone. The raw and censored finite being.
January 7, 2022, 2:30 AM. So close, so far, so close, so far. Finite being to its last breath. Compassion: not reacting, just seeing someone as a finite being with a Infinite Spirit. They cannot help being thus but perhaps one can facilitate, encourage, the Infinite Spirit side.
January 9, 2022, 2 AM. 11 AM totally devastated. Extreme vocal violent jerks. Has anyone ever gone through this? (First movement of 9th shows Beethoven did. Feeling our worthlessness is the true prostration that “lowers the mast of ego.”) 4-5 AM: a little being the Mind that is That Which Is.
January 15, 2022, 8 AM. Like the ice breaking up on a frozen lake or river in spring as the sun’s warmth slowly breaks its bonds.
January 20, 2022, 8 AM Strong trill in the heart/Being. The finite being is irrelevant. Since then — zero.
January 23, 2022, 8 AM. Does the degree of difficulty, of the means, portend the degree of understanding of the END?
To proclaim, “May all beings be free from suffering (especially me!)” Means one sees all beings as separate entities. [But suffering is hardwired into the finite being through evolution and natural selection.]
January 27, 2022, 3 AM. Mission impossible. Total resistance.
January 30, 3 AM. Anger at Tim for not replying regarding the hiss [on my YouTube videos]. Reading Cabeza and Philip Kapleau’s “righteous anger.” If ALL is one, there is nothing to be angry at. Everyone should reread and reread that. When these emotions come up some intense, it is so crucial to let them just flow through us. For our own Infinite Spirit and so perhaps for the Infinite Spirit in the other.
February 5, 2022, 2 AM. The worst jerks yet. The last thing I want to do is sit and go into IT.
February 22, 2022. My jerks are like Tourette’s syndrome [“a familial neurological disorder of variable expression that is characterized by recurrent involuntary tics involving body movements and vocalizations — often has one or more associated conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder…”] — fear. Obsessive-compulsive disorder — fear.
March 17, 2022, 2 AM. Let the finite being be devastated every moment. This is the only freedom. The utterly devastating Contrapunctus 11 from The Art of the Fugue keeps going in my mind.
March 28, 2022. Severe back pain lower left. Slowly improving over four days from letting go of abdomen? Seems connected. Much worse after sitting. Massage helps.
May 8, 2022. Back bad regularly. Driving to Rochester: a lovingness emanating from trees, sky, fields, houses. Gradually lost due to the stress of driving (dealing with tractor-trailers especially going up the long hill).
May 13, 2022, 10 AM. A touch of the lovingness this mind could let flow through — but the process is devastating. “I” hate it! But the knot is ever so slowly loosening.
Extreme vocal violent jerks and screams at 12 AM. If Anne could hear or someone were near… They’d think I was being tortured to death. Which I am.
June 13, 2022, 3 AM. Working on piano again and my piece The Veil of Time: requires, demands letting go of the abdomen which carries over a little to everything. 7 am. But letting go means allowing it to torture the finite being to death. DEVASTATING NIGHT.
June 19, 2022, 3 AM. Feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to a True prostration.
June 22, 2022, 8 AM. Totally drained, total resistance to sitting. Indescribable mental anguish. Just keep going. [Winston Churchill: “When going through hell, just keep going.”]
July 5, 2022, 2 AM. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Finite being devastated, abdomen loosening, no lockdown at piano — yet. But playing only The Veil of Time and letting go. [I stopped playing not long after that.]
July 17, 2022, 7 PM. Unbelievable knot in the abdomen. If I give in it will kill me.
July 21, 2022, 3 AM. Allow up indescribable mental anguish. Everyone must have a buried. Fear of no reproductive success, i.e., death.
July 28, 2022, 2 AM. Everyone has obsessive-compulsive disorder — to keep the finite being going.
July 31, 2022, 8 AM. When we allow indescribable mental anguish, we allow the purification of the finite being. Indescribable mental anguish IS the purification. Jan Swafford in his biography of Beethoven: “none of the three possibilities for Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved makes sense. But life doesn’t make sense.” [At least someone else knows that.] Thus we sit. We KNOW there’s Something more.
August 31, 2022, 3 AM. Neck getting bad — from piano. Tense for my 2 AM-3 AM sitting. Lockdown. [I stopped playing about this time]
DESCENT INTO HELL
September 1, 2022, 3 am. Exercise and stretching before sitting at 1 am — some better. intense Being after 9 am nap.
September 3, 2022, 8 AM. Can I Be the “new gravitational force”? [That Beethoven wanted to create in his 10th Symphony.]
September 15, 2022, 3 AM. Sitting is a descent into hell. Likewise the coda of the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th.
8 AM. Knot breaking up — like ice on a long-frozen river in springtime?
September 18, 2022, 1 AM. Dream: the sky opened up devastatingly, destroying me. Lost consciousness but somehow regained it. I was still there worse than the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th even. October 11, 2022. Huang Po: “Mind is like the Sun in which there is no confusion or evil…” Tiny intimation of how that could spread ITS rays through this mind/body.
October 19, 2022, 2 AM. When it gets impossible remind yourself: you don’t have to DO anything. Just allow everything. First rule when you’ve dug yourself into a hole: put down the shovel.
Bored walking outside in the beautiful fall. Bored with my music. Bored with Beethoven’s 9th. Have to stay with what’s going on inside — Being. At times, a new way of seeing. Out of stillness. Out of time.
November 1, 2022, 3 AM. Toni: her words are like a recipe that neglects to say to turn on the oven. The oven being equivalent to suffering.
November 4, 2022, 3 AM. If the finite being is not in the way, Mind can flow forth. [Bassui: “Mind having no abode should flow forth.”] But the finite being WANTS to be in the way.
The Anthropic Principle proves MIND.
Dear Dr. Joseph [my urologist who did my biopsy for prostate cancer. I have a score of Gleason 6 which normally does not advance],
As you seemed especially interested in this, I will give you more information, some of which may make it into a revised and updated version of Cabeza (as endnotes) — either at my website or possibly in print. All of it is essentially in the chapter And the Stars, in more detail, without however mentioning The Anthropic Principle by name.
“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?……
However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe do exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.” — Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pages 174-175 [the bold quoted in Cabeza, pages 38, 177, etc.]
From The Anthropic Principle: Man As the Focal Point of Nature, by Reinhard Breuer [1st published in 1981 in German and somewhat out of date. The books mentioned in Cabeza may be better]: “We are here in this quite fantastic universe and have hardly an inkling of whether our existence has a real meaning.” — Fred Hoyle. (Hoyle also was said to have exclaimed, [as quoted in Cabeza, page 176], after reflecting on the “carbon resonance,” without which . . . we would not be here [see earlier on page 176], “The Universe is a put-up job!” Meaning, it is designed for life.)
“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” Freeman J Dyson
Page 8: Weak Anthropic Principle: because there are observers in our universe, the universe must possess properties which permit the existence of these observers.
[The implication is that there must be an infinite number of universes and we can only exist in the one that was just right. See Cabeza chapter, And the Stars. But this also implies there are an infinite number of me's writing this and an infinite number of you's reading, and the next instant there will be an infinite number of each of us just an infinitesimal different from that, etc. etc. Many respected, otherwise sane, physicists actually believe this. But I find it philosophically utterly unpalatable.]
Strong Anthropic Principle: the structure of the universe and the particulars of its construction are essentially fixed by the condition that at some point it inevitably produces an observer.
Zen master Huang Po: “This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.… Where do you keep your enlightened mind and your ordinary mind?… How many minds have you got?” Also, the strong anthropic principle proves Carl Sagan's “We are THE way for the universe to know itself.” Why should the Universe care about creating an observer unless for some reason it needs to understand itself? As Karen Armstrong writes, reflecting on English mystic Lady Julian of Norwich: “Julian stresses the paradox of God’s mysterious need for mankind.” [Page 275, Cabeza].
Similarly, the “father of American psychology,” William James, writes [Cabeza, page 392], “If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we . . . are needed to redeem.” I.e., isn't this life Something more than a game of reproductive success [discussed in depth in Cabeza], Something far beyond our comprehension, Something far beyond words (James’ use of “wild” and “redeem” being, I'm sure he knew, merely provisional) . . . but Something not beyond our finest intuitions? Please, dear reader, look again at the cover of Cabeza. Don't you too sense there's Something more?
Finally, Beethoven had copied out in capital letters, under glass on his work table, the following quotations from ancient Egyptian sources (which he likely learned from his first piano teacher, a Freemason).
I am that which is. I am all that was, that is, that shall be.
No mortal man has lifted my veil.
He is of himself alone, and it is to this Aloneness that all things owe their being.
Egyptologist Jan Assmann considers the above to have influenced the Old Testament where God says to Moses, “I Am That I Am.”
And this brings us to some of my final words to you: The Mind that breathes fire into the equations… IS… your, and my, very own mind. As I write in Cabeza “Thus, therefore, thereby … I sit” (meditate, four hours daily). To “allow mind to know Mind; Being to permeate being.”
Since you recognized this as being important, I do hope you read Cabeza (preferably straight through), as well as listen to all the music I’ve put on YouTube and put links to at my website. There is also more on the anthropic principle at Wikipedia. Your fellow observer, Phil
November 7, 2022, 2 AM. Lightning strike jerks after nap 12:30 AM.
November 8, 2022, 2 AM. So near, so far, so near, so far, so near…………
December 12, 2022, 12 AM. Extreme extreme extreme extreme extreme vocal violent jerks after wine. So near, so far……
December 28, 2022, 2 AM. John Blofeld (in the introduction to his translation of Huang Po): Namu Amida Butsu (recited by members of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism as a meditative practice) “is an excellent form of mind control.” Myself: finite beings drive for reproductive success IS the mind control. Being with the Infinite Spirit requires freedom from all control.
8 AM. Seems infinite layers/levels to the KNOT. I seemed through that but NO!
December 31, 2022, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.”
January 3, 2023, 2:30 AM. “So close to profound goodness.”
January 5, 2023, 3 AM. Would “sail away” with the Infinite Spirit, but the finite being wants it safe on the ground. (Nell: “Did not join the starry vastness. Did not sail away.” Indicating she had done so previously, but that now was blocked.)
January 10, 2023. Listening to the Vespers after wine: an intuition of how Mind can let go of all resistance and take in ALL. Be ALL. Strong Being at the end of 7 PM nap.
January 18, 2023. States of freedom from finite being — a gentle bliss — the knot letting go… Then falling back.
January 20, 2023. To just allow Mind is equivalent to free won’t. Ignore the screams of the finite being.
January 21, 2023, 3 AM. Ice jam abdomen starting to break up? Had to warm from -40°. Now almost 32°.
January 22, 2023, 3 AM. Back to -50°.
January 23-24 , 2023 3 AM. Back to -70°, -90°. Much back pain. Abdomen tensing to defend against the pain?
January 28, 2023, 3 AM. Feeling dry and barren is just the finite being’s way of defending the knot. [Julian of Norwich: “God wants us to pray even when we feel dry and barren.”] Dry and barren means we don’t want to suffer. I.e. the finite being doesn’t want to allow suffering.
DESCENT INTO HELL
February 13, 2023, 7 AM. Can Mind just Be… As the finite being goes through its death throes?
February 15, 2023, 3 AM. How boring is the finite being’s endless chain of thought.
March 1, 2023, 10 AM. Can one “die in ecstasy” (Nell)?
March 2, 2023, 7 AM. Not suffering without complaining. Just give in to the necessary purification. If I don’t then the “stupid jerk” I call myself endlessly is accurate.
March 5, 2023, 10 AM. World peace: If the lion and the lamb were to lie down together, what’s the lion going to eat? Tofu?
March 9, 2023 3 AM. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Everything boring but Being. Etc.
March 9, 2023, 3 AM. But the slightest intentionality is just a defense against suffering. Resistance.
March 20, 2023, 8 PM. Feeling like someone committing hara-kiri twisting the knife in the abdomen. When going through hell just keep going.
March 23, 2023. According to Jeffrey a Lieberman, in Malady of the Mind, chemistry in the brain causes schizophrenia. No. The reaction to one neurotransmitter triggers the others. If no reaction — free won't — and suffering without complaining, no trigger. He mentions glutamate, dopamine, and serotonin all interacting.
April 6, 2023. When the finite being gives in, gives up, let's go, the Infinite Spirit can take over. No other purpose for this person, this earth, this Universe than for MIND to BE. To understand this is to feel one's worthlessness and then again achieve one's perfection.
April 18, 2023 driving to Rochester before the expressway, moments of MIND Being with everything. Now, two days later, the finite being resists to the death.
April 30, 8 AM. Intimations of what Mind could be capable — if allowed to flow forth.
May 23 8 AM. Allow the Infinite Spirit to manifest ITSELF every instant.
May 31, 8 AM. Any method of meditation — the finite being takes over to defend itself from suffering. Does having eyes open defend the finite being? [I prefer them closed.]
June 2, 8 AM. If no wanting/fearing, no reaction, just free won't, then no flow of time. Just the eternal NOW. Zen koan: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China?” “The oak tree in the garden.” For myself, a glimpse of that walking in our yard. I would answer, “The huge white pine by our house.”
June 17. Someone said to Voltaire, “Life is hard.” Voltaire: “Compared to what?” Life is hard because the Infinite Spirit is determined to understand itself through our finite beings.
June 21. The finite being has to get to the point of just wanting to die, like my father and Anne’s brother but the Infinite Spirit keeps on. Then, and only then, can Mind take over.
June 22, 3 AM. Allow the purification every instant. No instants. Just NOW. Walking outside, a Vastness to everything. The trees, the flowers — even the log and brush pile. If the finite being is not in the way.
June 23. 8 PM. Driving down to Dansville: Profound Meaning/Being in everything. The trees, the houses, the expressway with cars in the distance. When the finite being let’s go — just One Being.
June 24, 11 AM. Sitting: like a knife is been twisted in the abdomen. But Mind can just Witness. And not react.
July 9. Rilke: “The springtime needed you.” Myself: “Every moment needs us.” Knife twists, twists, twists. Susan Sonntag: “Dying is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Myself: “sitting is impossible unless you can get beyond the me.” Sitting is dying.
July 18, 8 AM. While there is no “personal” God to answer our prayers, the act of prayer can be a way to “feel our worthlessness,” and help us enter a state of free won’t.
July 16, 2023, 3 AM: sit like the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue — the Finite Being gives up, gives in, and let’s go. The infinite Spirit arises. The eternal NOW, our only refuge.
July 18, 8 AM. Trying Not to Try [book by Edward Slingerland, which is fatally flawed because he doesn't recognize “the eternal necessity of suffering
“] — truly means allowing Everything to flow through. Allowing the Infinite Spirit to purify the finite being.
July 27, 8 PM. Prayer: is it — for most — really, “God, don’t make me suffer. Don’t let the finite being die?”
Knife keeps twisting and twisting and twisting.
July 29, 2:30 AM. Mind with relentless intent WILL fully manifest ITSELF through the finite being.
August 9, 2023. If one doesn't allow the Infinite Spirit to witness, observe — the finite being might well go mad. Nell, and Brahms who wrote that if he had to compose Bach's Chacon for solo violin it would've driven him mad.
August 10, 2023. Driving to Rochester: a profound meaning in everything. Like the end of Contrapunctus 6 of the Art of the fugue. Bach must have seen the same.
August 14. Being is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining.
August 16. The knife twists in the abdomen — like Contrapunctus 11 and. Bach must have gone through it.
August 20, 8 PM. If one understands that the Infinite Spirit/God is the ground of our being, there is no reason to fear death. But to put that understanding into practice means giving up our drives for reproductive success. To die before we die.
August 20, 3 AM. To give in to every moment, allow the purification of the finite being.
August 24, 8 AM. Physical letting go is equivalent to free won’t is equivalent to being one with the moment is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to the devastation of the finite being is equivalent to purification.
August 26, 10 AM. When tension lets go, so much anxiety about every little thing. Just be allowed to flow through? Physically uncoordinated with the finite being not controlling. Spilling tea, etc.
August 27, 8 PM. The whole purpose of the finite being is to defend and perpetuate the knot. The whole purpose of the Infinite Spirit is to allow it to die through free won't.
August 30, 8 AM. Body/mind is finite being MIND is the Infinite Spirit.
September 1, 8 PM. The essence of sitting is to “just” it. Everything we “do” reinforces the finite being.
September 4, 3 AM. Nell: “So close to profound goodness.” But it’s devastating to the finite being. Beethoven called the first three movements of the ninth Symphony chaos. But we have to go through the first and second movements for the profound goodness of the third movement. September 6, 3 AM. Allowing purification every instant is equivalent to free will not is equivalent to suffering without complaining is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness.
September 11. Only Mind can just observe the devastation of the finite being with equanimity. Bach, Nell: “stare and stare and stare.”
September 13 9 AM. Instead of trying to be attentive, let go of everything that obstruct it. Through free will not. And suffering without complaining, etc.
September 14, 9 AM. The purpose of emotions is to give us the chance to abstain through free will not. It is unlikely that primitive life has that. They act instinctively.
September 16, 1 AM. The finite being wants something to happen in sitting. One must let go of that and all wanting. Wanting something to happen is a way of defending the finite being from what needs to happen.
September 23, 3 AM. We “choose” free won't when we ever so painfully learned the futility of fulfilling the incessant demands of the finite being, of the drive for reproductive success.
September 28, 8 PM. Letting go of resistance to everything in the abdomen. Then and only then are we one with all. But the finite being must suffer and die.
Shakespeare: “The fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
October 2, 2 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the Infinite Spirit? See The One in Cabeza revisited. Like photons through the double slit hitting the screen — is this the finite being? Free will not is equivalent to know decoherence? Michio Kaku, Quantum Supremacy. without quantum mechanics no stable atom, molecules, life. Of string theory's infinite solutions perhaps ours is the only stable one.
Beethoven Ninth, first movement: from the coda to the end describes the “descent into hell” I experience.
October 3, 2024, 2 AM. A state not of seeing but as Being. Seeing alone is a separation and defends the finite being.
October 10, 1 AM. The most devastating nap yet. Explosions of Truth. Equivalent to Beethoven's Ninth, first movement. Presumably due to loosening of the abdomen.
October 28, 3 AM. All meditation practices put the cart before the horse. Attention only comes when we don't react to the finite being.
November 2, driving to Rochester. The Mind that sees the sky and trees is that very same sky and trees. But how can it BE? And WHY?
November 5, 7 PM. The reaction to suffering is stress. No reaction, no stress. This allows the purification of the finite being.
November 8, 3 AM. Is the finite being the decoherence of the wave function of the universe? Is The Infinite Spirit the entanglement of All That Is? Quantum mechanics shows that relativity, i.e. space and time, is not fundamental.
8 AM. Letting go, giving up, giving in at piano (otherwise there is lockdown tension), especially in the abdomen, shoulders, and forearm. This carries over to sitting, to everything. When there is resistance to sitting, doing finger exercises may help.
The motto of the Zen Bow newsletter was “The mind of a Zen adept is taut like a drawn bow.” I.e. it, it keeps down the fear.
November 17, 1 AM. Let every moment, every event, every action purify the finite being. Ignore its resistance. Allow freedom, joy, and purity. Let the finite being suffer and wither.
November 18, 8 AM. The four vows “for the sake of all beings” is just a way of saying we are good to raise our status.
November 26, 2 AM. Earlier the most devastating knife twist yet in God. Thought I was through all that!
December 1, 7 PM. The cost of not less than everything keeps inflating. Total devastation beginning in abdomen. Requires a complete physical giving in, letting go. But the finite being has HAD ENOUGH! But this body/mind has no choice.
December 10. “Endless blind passions we vow to uproot [the second of the Four Vows]” — not “uproot” but, quoting from the St. Matthew passion, “… And all our sins [blind passions] will go to sleep.”
December 21, 11 AM. No trying, just letting the Infinite Spirit take over.
December 28, 8 PM. Looking at my fruit [in a jar: frozen blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries]: Huang Po's “In all its fullness, utterly complete.” “All pervading spotless beauty”: the red, the blue, the reflection, the textures.
December 30, 2023, 7 PM. Allowing the finite being's knot to dissolve into the Infinite Spirit. Playing piano, hearing, and remembering [the piece I am composing] The Veil of Time helps.
On my run/walk: infinitely profound Being and everything: trees, snow on branches, sky… When I let it in. No separation.
Devastation is equivalent to feeling our worthlessness is equivalent to allowing Being.
January 1, 2024 8 AM. Everything is devastating if we drop our tension and anxiety. Human kind cannot bear very much reality. It's there, waiting.
January 3, 2024, 8 AM. Tricycle magazine [Buddhist]: a man needed physical pain to focus. Then everything was everything. But it did not happen to the author of the article. Devastation of the abdomen gives no choice but to allow Mind.
January 19, 2 AM. Toni: “infinite love and compassion is always available when the little me is not there.” Same as Beethoven's “worthlessness,” the Bach kyrie eleison, being born again in Christ, etc.
January 23, 7 AM Kafka's assistants in The Castle are equivalent to the finite being.
January 29, 10 AM. Not turn the other cheek, but roll with the punches.
February 1, 8 AM, allow the Mind that takes in everything to manifest itself.
February 9, 8 PM. Only Mind/The Infinite Spirit can observe with Dawn dispassion the dissolution of the finite being. For mind with a small m, it is infinitely devastating, thus infinite resistance.
February 22, 8 PM. You must be ready and willing to die, and abandon all hope. Only then does the Infinite Spirit have a chance.
Only MIND can bear the dissolution of the finite being with equanimity. No no choice but to allow MIND to BE.
February 23, 3 AM. Yesterday an intimation of MIND being allowed to Be. Mostly gone now.
February 26, 11 AM. “He [i.e., God]” will not relieve us of our cares [from a George Harrison song]. We will, on our own, if we just put down all the baggage of the finite being, be relieved of those cares. But we feel those cares as a part of us. Thus we must feel our ultimate worthlessness now. I have to be a stupid jerk — so I have no choice but to find freedom from it.
February 27, 2 AM. Indescribable mental anguish to the nth to the nth. If I had let all of this up to the surface earlier I could have committed mass murder. Berserkers help the band survive. [The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman].
March 3, 11 AM. The finite being: “May this cup pass from me.” The Infinite Spirit: “No way!”
March 3, 7:30 AM. Being one with the moment requires allowing the devastation of the finite being. Wonder why no one mentions that. Obviously they have never come close to doing it. We must be so sick of the finite being that we are ready and willing to die — to allow Being.
If we see something beautiful and we say/think, “That is beautiful,” this is a defense against its Reality. Beauty is equivalent to Truth, which devastates the finite being.
Free won't allows MIND. Free wont arises from MIND.
March 5, 2 AM. People do not want to know that fear is the root of most mental illness [referring to The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen] — because they do not want to know that fear is in themselves. Or if they do, like Dan, they will not see it is our link to the infinite. Thus all the medications, shock treatments, “therapy,” etc.
March 15. Every moment a crucifixion of the finite being.
2 AM. Only thus can the infinitely profound Eternal NOW dawn within the mind. Allow the crucifixion to proceed. This cup may not be passed.
March 17, 8 AM. Those who want socialism, communism, Marxism, etc. really want power without competing in the marketplace they care not that this results in countless deaths. Having power is the only way they feel safe.
March 20, 7 PM. Never felt such devastation. Opening up at piano today. This must be buried deeply in Anne also since she went into a fury that I dared to suggest she needed to exercise more or get Alzheimer's like others she knows, or be bedridden like Toni.
March 29, 9 AM. Every indescribable mental anguish raised to the nth degree yields to an opening, a loosening of the abdomen.
April 5, 7 PM shoulder pain at piano only bearable if I let go of all tension. But this is unbearable for the finite being, since it is devastated if it has let go of all its defenses.
April 13, 8 PM. Letting go of tension at piano yields to indescribable mental anguish to the nth degree. Who else has gone through this? No individual — only MIND.
April 19, 7 PM. All you have to do is allow yourself to be crucified or, more accurately, disemboweled. It will happen in time, regardless.
April 24, 2024, 5 PM. [Note to the reader: Toni Packer was designated as a teacher by Philip Kapleau of the Rochester Zen Center in the late 1970s. In 1980 she split with the Zen Center to form her own center that was later called The Springwater Center. I was on staff there for a few years which is where I met my wife, Anne, who had moved to Rochester from Montréal to join the center. For a while and I was living at the center and doing housecleaning in lieu of rent. One day, while cleaning Toni's room when Toni was there, she discovered a yoga pad under the bed. Toni said, “Oh, my doctor says I should do exercises for my back. But I do not do them.” For the last several years of her life Toni was bedridden due to spinal stenosis which likely would have been ameliorated by those exercises.] Toni does not do exercises because she does not want to suffer. This shows that she does not understand in the slightest what I write in Cabeza of “the eternal necessity of suffering.”
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