Beneath the Limbic, the happy cat, the hunting cat

I am in this glorious world now,
in training
in learning
in transforming,
the world of One Taste
see, if you want a buzz and thrill,
http://OneTaste.us

they are great
I am great
you are great

they have a practice
we have a practice
OMing,
with four cornerstones:
Desire
Attention
Connection
Simplicity

it's about the mammal in us
that wants to touch
and make love
and frolic
and have emotional connection
the wiring in our innards all primed and
glorious for being social
and sexual animals
on a big and beautiful planet

and this is called the limbic system

and the limbic system doesn't mean shit
if you are dead

so we have the lizard system,
the warrior system,
the hunger and hunter system
and it is about:
touching the ground, for real,
so you can move toward food,
away from danger,
having arms and fingers ready to reach out and create
or love
or defend
or kill food

having a neck free to look in all directions
and ears free to hear in the directions you can't see

and that sounds like a lot,
and it's why people climb ropes
or ski
or ice skate
or surf
or do tai chi
or dance

all the fun things that get us into our
feet
and unstable and mobile (the two go together,
inversely) on the planet, in gravity, in motion

a cat is always sensing,
not vigilant,
relaxed most of the time,
but she knows where all here paws and legs are, the shape of her spine,
what is in her visual field,
what she is hearing

this is the Gurdjieff meditation
:
wake up
sit up

sense your right leg, all the flesh blood bone muscle nerve
from toes, up up thru knee up to hip joint,
keep the full leg "lite up" with sensing
and then add on the right fingers to the right shoulder blade
hang out with these two "lite up"

then add on the left arm, shoulder down to fingers,
hang with the 3,
then add on the left leg, hip joint to toes,

then hang in there
full of sensing
as long as enjoyment allows
and add on listening to sounds
from outside your head

now you have inner and outer attention

and then open your eyes
and pay attention to reflected light coming in your eyes
and hang there:
two arms,
two legs
sound
light

I like to add, from the Feldenkrais idea of "5 lines" as our primary
self organizing image as a human being, the "line" of sensing pelvis-spine-head

this is a meditation that is done
all day,
not just in sitting

it is life being lived
from the relaxed and miraculous animal that we are

and hey:
add on the limbic when others are around,
but from real, not just bullshit saying "grounded" and not
knowing your relationship in all five lines to gravity,
nor worn out from so called "exercise"
but in your body as an ongoing "home base"
add on the sex and the heart and the lips
and the pulse of
you and another

then things
get full

I mean,
really full

More Landmark thoughts, with Osho, Katie, Gurdjieff and Moshe

One of the cool things about Landmark
is they talk and very directly about the enslaved positon
of "ordinary life."


They talk of being slave to our worldview.
The beliefs we might have about: "I'm not lovable."
"It's hard to make money in this economy."
"I can't do...."

All this they are good on.
And they are good on bringing up the idea of transformation vs change.
But, as of yet, I don't think they have the tools to create
that difference.
Since to transform, to my mind, deep here in the Feldie/ Anat Baniel worlds,
you need to rewire the brain,
and only when awareness combines with variation combines with loose attachment to goals combines with discovery combines with mindfulness,
which could be the same as awareness, or a little different,
only with all that,
sensing and feeling in the moment the difference,
say between reading this page with your back arched
and reading this page with your back rounded,
the difference between reading this page with
awareness of your breath
and reading this page without awareness of your breath,
reading this page aware of the other sources, all the sources,
of light
in whatever space you are in,
vs reading this just "focused" (more like hooked) on
the page:
that can transform who you go about reading
this lastest posting/ rant/ ramble/ exploration of
mine

So, what's that go to do with Landmark
well, not just them:
any system that has as its learning model:
A. Teacher gives a bunch of information
B. students listen
C. students "get it" or don't "get it"
D. So what, no action is taken

They have break out groups:
you admit to a partner this or that "resistance"
(confession, I've only been to a promotional meeting,
but did live with a guy I like a ton, and we had
back and forth great discussions,
so the meeting I wen to was discussion of "resistance"
to signing up for the cause),
and that could help
IF
the talking was in an awake,
mindful,
variation
mode

But it isn't
same old posture
same old voice
same old "oh wow this is me making a discovery act"

So, no real change,
kind of like a lesson where you don't work of the ankle
a bit
and they stand up, and the ankles habit pulls the lesson
back into habitual mode.

Okay, but what's the drift on Osho, Katie, F and M:

Osho and G both say, and mabye O gets it from G:
O: the biggest fear, is the fear of disapproval of others,
and hence not "fitting in:

G: the biggest slavery of humanity is wanting approval from others

Katie: If I had a prayer, and I don't,
it would be : "God spare me from wanting love,
affection and approval from anyone outside myself....ever"

And our man, Moshe:
well, somewhere on my website
the always changing :
4BrainFitness.com
i've got that great quote from Awareness  thru movement
about:
most people keep busy enough to stay unaware
and hidden behind the Masks enough to avoid the
immense suffering that would come from asking their hearts
what they really wanted

And Potent Self is nothing if not a long
and sober view of human beings as conditioned animals,
and the huge burden of our long dependency
on more or less sleeping fools.

And so what's that got to do with Landmark:
who knows?

the herd thing:
you get approval by being in the club,
and joining up everyone you are vaguely related or associated with,
and then you are all in the club
and....

it's  a better club,
really

reminds me of something I read a long time ago:
about cults,
and how they are a substitute family,
especially useful for the young for whom army, school, marriage
can't/ wont' give the break from families:

and kids with strict families find strict cults,
and earthy families find earthy cults,
and spacy families find spacy cults
and no real harm done,
the kids get tired of it
and the only danger was those forcefully "deprogrammed."

Landmark more like a cult
of the mid-life crisis,
and the weariness of suffering and not "making it"
relationships and money,
and these are discussed at a hugely higher level
than "out there,"
and do people get tired of it and move
on:
seems so.

Anyway: back to approval or not:

Let's think about this:
our work as creating an opening
and huge and amazing opening
for people to discover how to
"be themselves."

Think about it:
what's the one thing you can do better than
anyone else in the world:
Be yourself

Ain't that sweet?

Awareness thru Movement


Potent Self
Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff understandable

Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson,
Gurdjieff trying to make it hard,
really, he set out to "bury the bone" deeper











A thousand names for Joy: katie plus da Tao    In search of the miraculous: Ouspensky's pesky amazing take on G








Courage: the joy of living dangerously

Moshe and Osho and Gurdjieff and me

Who am I?

Same as you, a miracle of learning and discovery.

My latest discovery is this book:
by Osho: Titled: Courage, the Joy of Living Dangerously














While I'm at Amazon links, this Title Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living Series)
 
reminds me of the Gurdjieff work I was involved in
for many years in Berkeley under the guidance
of a bad boy conscious fellow by the name of
David Daniels.

David was always boiling the work down to
this;
either you are yourself,
or you're trying to fit into what others
want you to be.





The first book, the top book, the one that I fell into by moving into
a new place where the old tenant let me borrow some of her books
(If you ever get a chance, this one
is amazing:
)
Anyway the Joy of Living Dangerous came to me
reading eyes heart and mind:
and it so reminded me of Moshe and his brutal and
fearless intelligence, lack of hesitation in calling the stupid
the stupid,
and their mutually blunt, and obvious, analysis of Society
as the mechanism for making drones out of one
and all.


Moshe has some marvelous quotes about the mask,
behind which we hide our lives,
and if we keep busy enough, we don't feel the pain
of not knowing who we really are or what our real heart's content is.

That's of course in
Awareness Through Movement
(what a new cover, eh?
but then again neither Moshe
nor Osho was one to hide from the
obvious joy, centrality and usefulness
of Good Sex
as a healing and nurturing aspect of life)

David used to talk about the human need for
warmth, and how sometimes you could satisfy that
within the usual codes, and sometimes you couldn't.

Maybe I "shouldn't" put that here.
Oh, well.

Life is good and long, and we all started like this story in the Osho book:
Two men are bragging about how far back they can remember.

One, quite huffed up, says: I remember playing with my kitten in my backyard
when I was just three years old.

The other nods, and then says: I remember going to a picnic with my parents.
When I went to the picnic I was in my father.
When I came home from the picnic, I was in my mother.

So be it.

The broad suggestion in Osho"s book
is to prepare for death by at all times
chose the unknown over the known.

The known is safe and what the mind wants.
The unknown is a risk and a thrill and what the heart wants.

Moshe was reputed to have a huge curiosity
and tolerance for ambiguity.

Katie, as in Byron Katie, sees herself as a woman
set free because she lives in and from,
"I don't know."

Our work, in the Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel method,
thrives from living and acting from the "I don't know,"
the discovering of just one little option for one little movement
in our client,
and linking that to a larger awareness,
and a bunch more of "I don't knows"
explored,
and connections found,
and all along brain cells and pathways are being created.

They come in for a lesson with one brain.
They go home with another.

This is the food of the new,
the food of the now,
the food of the unknown.

May we have happy eating today.