Reflections

Every workshop or shorter session seems to me, to offer an opportunity to look at age old questions. Shasha`s being here for a music and stillness session with us has once again brought up the usual themes. Whatever you say and however you phrase them, those themes boil down to this: what do you want out of life and what do you want out of relationships? Yesterday evening, when I put those questions to Shasha, Ariela said that perhaps one could phrase the first question the other way round too. For example, "What does Life want from me" . Indeed!

When I thought about it, I saw that it was in fact a much better way of putting the same thing. "What I want out of life" seems like a typical consumer oriented attitude, as if life is some kind of commodity which I am trying to get something out of. The other way around is more "real" because I suddenly see, that what we call life, is a process of unimaginable dimensions and who and what we are is dictated by the way it flows around us and whether we are willing to be part of the whole movement.

At times when one is required to go deeper into such questions, even one`s evironment starts to acquire a kind of intensity which is lacking under normal circumstances. You become aware of sounds and noises, of the "feel" of the day (eg. Right now, I am aware somehow of the greyness of the sky which seeps into the atmosphere and even as I write this the sun has suddenly decided to peep out from behind the clouds.) You become aware of something underlying the whole process of thinking or seeing and hearing which is difficult to express and you then also become aware that THIS is the reality that very subtly guides us. If it is contaminated by anger or envy or competitiveness then this is what dictates our words and actions. So the main message as usual is very simply: be aware of it all.

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Flu seems to be doing the rounds. Feli was quite sick yesterday, burning with fever, which didn`t prevent him from now and then running around and playing football with Michael - Ariela`s cousin who visited us yesterday - and in the process spilling a glass of apple juice which someone had kept on the floor and forgotten about. Michael, among other things is also a musician and had brought over a CD which he has just put together of twelve songs. I liked the sound of it very much although the lyrics were in the Bavarian dialect which I could barely understand.

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Read Chandran`s mail just now (the dodomail) in which he writes about the difficulty of meditating and being still, without the help of a group. Well, I think a group definitely helps in being still but maybe one of the reasons that it is difficult to do on one`s own is that one of the underlying reasons for much of what we do is the approval we hope to get from others. When for example, you are able to meditate and give the impression of being still and you get feedback from others in some form, it encourages you simply, to go further with it. One solution might be to take the trouble to meet in a group even when the "official group" is not meeting until such time as you can make it on your own. And simultaneously it would be good to examine what the real gains for you are, of being still and in a meditative state. When you see the deeper gains you begin automatically, to want it for yourself, group or no group. It feels good to be still within, and not to be constantly enmeshed in a complicated thought process.