The YIN MIND

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Dear Companions along the Way:

After a full day of accumulated errands, through heavy traffic,
with many excellent yields, I fell asleep on the couch early in the evening.
In the wee hours of the morning, I awakened, to find SJG had covered me,
but I was dry mouthed and still very tired, slightly bound by my clothing.
To bed and in a steady, but gradual deepening, I was off to sleep,
with the benefit of a couple of swallows of grape juice.

I dreamed. The prominent personality in my dream was Robin Williams.
We were touring an ecological farm.
Elliot Ness (of the untouchables) was operating the farm.
Many of the principles I had taught were being followed,
but with odd distortions, crowding, force feeding, etc.
Species were brought together to create a kind of ecological web,
but it was like a cartoon simplification.
The ecological points were made, but there were other points also made
which were about how the distortions enter our consciousness.

SJG and I have just had some pillow talk about how we circuit
to parts of ourselves through one another.
We do this because we cannot connect to parts of ourselves directly.
When we have connected long enough, well enough,
we get in touch with that part of ourself directly.
Then, the circuit no longer flows through the other person.
That means the other person becomes a circuit member for us
with another reason, with another function.

All of these insights combine with a general insight.
The general insight is into the way in which social forms
and institutions are generated.
They are generated from codified aversions.
It is as though a set of avoidances, evasions, shame, guilt and timidity,
is structured into a social form,
with cover codes of benevolence, piety, propriety,
ethics, professionalism, or other such designated counter pejorative terms.
To be a charity, a non-profit organization, conservationists,
some socially defined deviation, at the edge of a collective guilt,
aversion, avoidance and evasion, becomes an enforced holding and defining
of our own suppressions.

We certainly want to lead society back towards having a responsive
and tender conscience, but not at the cost of perpetuated denial
of who or what we are or have been, our explorations of life.
It becomes so important not to steer by disallowances.
We must not steer by avoiding the icebergs.
We must be in touch with subtle attractions
which lie in the direction of our aversions.
We must seek clear water.

The importance of the phrase,
“anything you have ever been or have ever done does not disqualify you,
instead it qualifies you, by showing you how things work”,
becomes more and more important.
The importance of the practice to forgive and to remember couples with that.

Tibetan Tantra Yoga speaks of mindfulness
which vanquishes discordant thought, displaces it with the effort of will,
but it suggests this technique is the least effective
for the issues of least consequence.
Ennoblement becomes a stronger measure.
This requires some elaborate explanation:

1) mind is the builder, as Cayce says,

2) mind doesn’t build large numbers of single structures
or forms only or mostly,

3) mind builds large, related, complex and interdependent structures,

4) there are inclusions in those structures which are more or less discontinuities,
disbalances, distortions, especially when we abdicate responsibility
for our thoughts or believe what we think doesn’t matter,

5) ennoblement is like remodelling, we replace segments
of major developmental structures, part by part,

6) sometimes it is finding the right design or pattern
which is the significant quest, questions, search or exploration,

7) sometimes it is holding the design or pattern, as a specific state, long enough, frequently enough, to allow the energy to flow into the pattern
or design we discover.

All of this sounds very general.
What SJG and I do, what we encompass in day to day life is quite specific.
Ennoblement works. We have each had significant successes.
The practice is rigorous and even ruthless.

I suggest that each of you carry a copy of these paragraphs
or this whole letter around with you.
Read it again and again.
Begin to explore the thoughts you have.
See where they lead.
Gain the cooperation of one or more other members of the group.
Work together.

Beyond ennoblement is yielding.
This is an even more elaborate, more diligent, more disciplined,
more effective method.
It requires mastering more principles. It benefits by more guidance.
Yielding is to disempower habituations, some very long standing.
Yielding is to disempower large, resonantly enforced structures.

Zen achieves all of these goals by alternative means.
I like combining them.

Zen has the start up advantage of stopping the generation of objective,
stand alone, isolated and defined structures.
The words in this preceding sentence are not a fluke.
They are carefully chosen. Those words do what they talk about doing.
Zen halts the distortions of the word made world.
What?
How can you have words which halt the distortion of the word made world? Answer: hum.

Just start humming.
You can notice the tendency to hum some tune you know
with accompanying lyrics (words).
Stop. Just hum. One tone? Stop!
Here is a question with wordish structure. Just hum. Feel hum.
Use silence breaks. Use long silence breaks.
Can you decide when you are using silence breaks
or when you have stopped humming?
What is the span of time over which you decide you are humming?
Why only days? Why the categorical boundary?
You have always been humming.
You just break it up with other things you have always been doing.
Those other things you have always been doing are broken up
by the humming you have always been doing (with breaks).

See?

Lets get into Zen holiness or Zen vulgarity. It doesn’t matter. See?

We seek liberation!
The more we put our minds on what it is we are to be liberated from,
the more attached we become.
So, no Thou Shalt Nots. “Not” doesn’t work.
ø doesn’t work either. So, O. That’s all, just O.

We practice a being and doing which acknowledges
as much of the universe as we can.
We submerge in functional participation.
The self is unbounded, undefined, open.

Overcome a self defined life that propels itself along
with worry, worry, sput, sput.
Just live and make alive.

There, you’re free. You’re free of me.
You’re free of my advice.
So be. Do some, if you must.

Your sister in liberation’s pursuit,

Eve

copyright 2011, 2014, ECOhealth / Eve Revere