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David.
An email I received the other day had a jarring effect on my mind. Why was this I wondered?
There was something in the tone, something in the whole feel of the thing that was not quite right. The content itself was not the issue, rather, it reminded me of a whole culture of thinking I had largely avoided for the last 2 or 3 years. And that is the culture of the “educated” rational mind.
The email had highlighted a number of “problems” or potential “problems” with an opportunity I had been enquiring about. Nothing wrong with that you might innocently think. And yet within the innocent reasonableness of this email, lay bare the insidiously destructive nature of the “educated” rational mind.
Was the person who wrote it to blame for this? Far from it, theirs is the all too common approach of educated and intelligent people, whose mantra could well be “I Solve Problems – Therefore I AM”.
We can observe this phenomena more broadly in everyday Western societies: The endless economic, cultural, societal, scientific, medical, environmental (I could go on) list of problems which rather than being “solved” just seem to multiply year on year. E.g The lists of laws get longer every year, the lists of medical diagnosis mutliply, we move from one economic crisis to another etc.
And yet the “elite”, the people at the top of the responsible organisations and involved in these activities, are prize problem solvers. They are usually the ones who have gone through more of education’s hoops than anyone else. They have proven time and time again their prowess as great memorisers and problem solvers.
These “educated, intelligent elite” are a proud product of an “educational” system which trains and rewards people for identifying and solving problems. The by-product of which is an uncanny ability to find more and more problems, and hence they spawn and un-ending cycle of problem creation.
Is there a class of people who do not suffer from this problem solving mind-set? Well yes, several, those fortunate enough to get out of “education” before its too late and, artisans and artists.
Artists and artisans look for opportunites, a chance to create something, something new maybe or maybe something better than before. Not necessarily to only solve a problem, but simply for the fun of it, just because they can. Focusing on problem solving has an inherent backward looking quality about it, creation, in its purest forms, builds on the past whilst leaping into a new future.
So, what to do with this emailer? A problem or an opportunity to be creative?
© David R. Durham
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Sea rolling, sweeping, flowing, bubbling onto a pebbled beach;
You remind me of my forgotten journeys.
A bright penetrating light moving down a corridor of brick archways;
You remind me of a forgotten life.
Black & white images of faces in a winter’s landscape;
You remind me of long lost loves.
The felt sense of my spinal column in alignment;
You remind me of a forgotten harmony.
My boundaries melt away and all thoughts stops;
You remind me of my forgotten home.
My awakened heart flows and flows;
You remind me that an awakened heart never closes.
Sound Scapes was inspired by Stuart Hampton’s amazing cymbals, drone, Tibetan bowls & gongs concert for the new year’s eve at Gaunts House in Dorset, England.
How often does our social conditioning and early childhood patterning limit our capacity to be truly inspired?
This was brought home to me very recently when I was working on some guided meditations to do with connecting with my divine self. And in one of the meditations there was a process of going into deep inner stillness and letting divine inspirational thoughts and ideas to simply come through.
Yet here I was busily pushing the thoughts that were arising aside, in the ‘belief’ that these could not be of divine origin. They were simply too ordinary and everyday life.
Well after a few rounds of several related meditations on this subject, the penny finally dropped, that these divine ideas do not have to fit in with my limited, preconceived ‘beliefs’ as to what is worthy of being a divine idea.
And that the divine manifesting into human expression can take many, many forms and that this manifesting is in no way limited to some preconceived socially conditioned beliefs about what is ‘holy’ or ‘good’ enough for the divine to express.
© David R. Durham
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Time and space may well be a given for humans, but we as living consciousness are not bound by the rules of time-space, unless we chose to be. And chosing to be bound by those rules is a part of our decision to become human.
I am no-thing in all of this; I am every-thing.
I am the beginning; The middle; The end.
I am creator; I am victim.
I am washed up on a shore of eternity; I am the eternal.
No words touch me; I am the voice.
I am the silence at the core of our being; I sing in endless joy.
Swift is my pained anger; Sweet the simple smile of understanding.
There is no death which can touch me; I am the continual creation of decay.
I am the dignity of truth; I am the vanity of lust.
My mark touches all that I see; I pass un-noticed in this world.
My love knows no beginning and hence no end; Loveless I fall at the feet of icons.
God whispers in my ear; Men shout to me from the TV ads.
I am contained in this body; My vastness dwarfs this universe.
Words cannot walk; I stride in the mountains of my dreams.
Timeless are the sorrows of men; Eternal is the joy of God.
© David R. Durham
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Its has been reportedly said that “It is all in the bow”.
To bow down before an icon, another being or maybe an ideal can seem a very cultural thing. An act steeped in tradition, a gesture to imagined enlightened ones, to one’s elders or maybe even to God.
Done out of duty, it can be an empty act.
Done with a sense of contrition, it can often be vain.
Done with all our humanity, it is an act of enlightenment.
When you no longer need to bow, it is possible to do so.
As long as you’re working it out, you cannot really do it fluently.
It is all in the bow.
© David R. Durham
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I often have the feeling that Life is our greatest teacher, that it has an almost infinite number of ways to make a point. And, if necessary, to keep bringing us back to share a lesson again and again if need be.
One of, for me, the unlikeliest learning opportunities I have recently had has come through my work with IT systems. Late last year I worked with a decommissioning of a system I’d been involved with off and on for some 12 years. It seemed a fitting end to a cycle, having been there in the early development of this particular system, and worked with it again during its maturing phase, here I was, now involved in its death; its passing away.
Yet here I am again, working on a new installation of this system. And within that new installation, I am coming face to face with parts of it that I helped to design over 12 years ago, and the memories keep coming back, of the people I worked with at the time, and the sometimes painful process we went through to design certain aspects of this system.
It is, for me, like a rebirth experience. And Life is saying, no, no, you must understand that death is not an end. Life, if Life is anything of substance at all, is full of endless intricate cycles of birth, growing, passing away and rebirth into new cycles of expression.
© David R. Durham
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How many levels of consciousness do we operate through simultaneously?
Classic psychology talks about conscious. sub-conscious and unconscious levels. To this we can then we can add present, past and future time in which we experience life.
I think this concept of levels, whilst tempting, is too broader brush stroke. The concept of a continuum of consciousness, rather like the spectrum of perceptual wave vibrational frequencies, is more appropriate.
And when we add to that personal metal constructs, social mental constructs, space, time and probability factors, we are left with a multi-dimensional model which allows our consciousness (the essence of what we are) to flow seamlessly across many dimensions.
What joy it can be to explore these many expressions of what we have the possibility of being or have been or might be.
© David R. Durham
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There is a simplicity about resting in spirit, it has a satisfying quality about it, in that it needs no embellishment and nothing taken away.
A desire-less state. Content in its own awareness.
Perhaps, also, it is a death-less state? For death only arises as a natural conclusion to the birth of a desire.
And so, resting in spirit can seem to be the opposite of human living. And desire can appear to be an un-welcome activity, and something to be suppressed or destroyed in the interests of being more spiritual.
This negative attitude to desire has some value as unbridled desire is not a pretty sight, but it is also a limited one, as it fails to acknowledge desire’s role in an ever growing consciousness.
Resting in spirit is more akin to being at the heart of the wheel of living, at the centre of the storm of desires which drive the ever unfolding growth of consciousness. And, as such, resting in spirit has a dynamic quality to it, a dynamic stillness that can be characterised by moving meditation activities, such as Tai Chi. Like a flow we embrace as a surfer riding a wave. Symbolically we can see this represented in the Ying-Yang diagram: with the active element embedded in the passive, and visa-versa.
Consciously resting in spirit gives us a breather, a pause which allows us to observe and evaluate our current state of being. It is not meant to be an escape or a solution or a superior state.
Resting in spirit is a temporary pause, before we dive once again into the second-by-second arising of multiple desire cycles, that weave the rich fabric of our human life. This pause also allows us to experience ourselves as the co-creators of our human drama.
And this is why, learning just to sit in pure stillness during meditation is so important to us: simply being without expectation; without judgement as to how we’re doing; without the craving to understand or to experience something else; without trying to modify whatever is arising.
There is a simplicity about resting in spirit.
© David R. Durham
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If you imagine for a moment a still, cold winter’s night. A few clouds are in the sky, the frost is just starting to form and there is no breeze. Then, as if by magic, tiny flakes of snow start to float gently in the dark night’s air. Dancing down to the earth.
There is an effortless beauty about them.
Herein lies a perfect metaphor for timeless meditation. There is an effortless beauty about it.
A letting go of technique, a letting go of effort and expectation, an acceptance of all that is arising in our mind, body and whole being.
A letting go of letting go.
Resting in the eternal embrace of our creator, dancing in the ground of our being.
© David R. Durham
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