Interbeing Bread Satori

Satori is a zen term for a moment of clarity, or a moment of no-doing, no-thinking, or no-self. In light of the tremendousness of these moments, I have made an agreement to myself to live my life for it. However, I cannot say that I live my life in pursuit of it, or seeking it, since these moments always come of themselves. The self allows them to happen, but they also are, in a sense, given to us. For it is only when the mind is completely relaxed, and the peripheral-vision open-consciousness of intuitive being is allowed to flow naturally, that satori "happens". Often this is communicated or realized through humor, which engenders levity.

Humor is the feeling of a breaking of solid forms or thoughts, shattering of self or convention. The masters of most arts don't just make something look easy, they just know how to not make things hard. For the "trick" in almost any discipline is not to try too hard at any certain point. Levity brings about solid practice.

Reading David Abram feels to me like eating a bar of dark chocolate. It is extremely pleasurable, and I could savor a taste of it for hours. His writing suggests a state of satori; is engineered to elicit a thinning of the imaginary boundaries of thought, and self, and body, allowing an osmosis of density from within to escape and breathe encompassing time and space freely. Abram's writing is a form of liberation, reminding the reader of the possibilities of more, not only in terms of consciousness and sense of Self, but in terms of a more integrated and active interaction with other beings in the world.

Today I made a loaf of bread intuitively. Frustrated with countless recipes and technicalities to stress over, I decided not to measure anything, to allow myself utter freedom from the sharp focus of step-by-step thinking, and specific quantities. It was a ritual. I didn't try to control the process, just to take part in it. The bread was a leap of faith, and sure enough, it was the best loaf of bread I've ever made. The freedom I allowed myself brought about more flexibility. I didn't know exactly what I was making at all, and I ended up filling the dough with fig preserves, raisins, cinnamon, and molasses. The end result looked, smelled, and tasted amazing, and complete. All of these sensory experiences pointed to a single entity/event--this ritual of allowing this bread-personality to manifest itself--to grow. It could have never happened from a recipe, being built from without. It grew out of me spontaneously, and impermanently. By grasping a particular bread, we loose every possible perfect and finite idiosyncratic loaf of bread.

Visual Journal; Week 2

Sweet gum blossoms have always held special significance for me. From the taste of the stems, to the haze of seeds you can bring about when the pods open, to the feeling of rolling them on your bare feet, These little spike balls have always captured my attention. They look like a hundred baby birds' beaks asking for food in all directions. Anyway, Doing a temporary installation in silence with them was as much a mantra as anything. The repetitive simple action of lining them up was very meditative. And the ease with which they allowed themselves to defy gravity, and hang from little cracks in the tree was encouraging. I am definitely getting some cues from Andy Goldsworthy, an intuitive nature artist.

Dawkins & Pinker

The readings for the second class presented the familiar picture of scientists quelling concerns that Darwinism and genetics make life less valid/genuine. My stance on the whole argument is that it is largely a moot point. For instance, that scientists argue that everything is physical and not ethereal is a moot point because there are kinds of matter that are very ethereal like electromagnetic force and light. Also, since they admitted that they know jack about what constitutes consciousness itself, the point stands that consciousness is ethereal. Now once science starts to grasp consciousness better, (I am optimistic that it will) they will probably identify some very subtle and invisible forces and functions, and claim to have proved consciousness is a physical entity. But what's the difference? Electromagnetic force is just one aspect of our energy field that we have conscious control over, and its invisible, and what we can do with it has been largely untested. This leads me into my main qualm with this sort of science. The evidence is not at all in conflict with a lot of beliefs about souls, for instance, Rick Strassman's study on the pineal glands secretions of dimethyltriptamine in the brain points strongly to a chanelling-center model of consciousness. But more to the point, observation from the outside, looking at genes and brains separated by a microscope or a functional MRI, we are separated from the reality of these things in active service of ourselves. We are always experiencing the brain, genetic encouragement to procreate, instinctual aversion to harm, etc. But the experiential element is so much more valid to human existance! I believe that we can alter our body chemistry in all sorts of ways not recognized by science. It doesn't mean that there isn't a scientific explanation out there somewhere, but they are way behind the active practice and experience of what we are capable of. We don't need to wait for a scientist to proove that we can consciously control bodty temperature, heart rate, and electrical currents in our bodies before it is true. People have been altering these things for thousands of years. I guess my point comes down to this. We don't need to start from scratch, we don't need to doubt the capabilities of consciousness to manifest miracles and transcendent experiences, because once science figures out that all these things are possible, we'll probably all be dead. Science is good and all, but too slow for me. Everything I experience is empirically true as experience, which is all we get in this world anyway, and the scientific practice of doubling back and dissecting with a scalple the verifyable and doubtful efficacy of experiential truth in their terms definitely "clips the wings of an angel" in the sense that you're missing the continuing flux of beauty going on at all times. I once had the thought that some image of a deity was observing humans with their obsessive need for certainty, which it did not share, and, being thoroughly perplexed by our ridiculous subatomic observations and mathematical scrutuiny, devised a hilarious trick, known as the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, which basically said, "you'll find whatever you want to find, but you're not pinning me down. Now go outside and look at a tree or something. My creation is really quite simple!"

Inception:

Butts got wet. In the first class, our butts got wet, which means we were experiencing evaporative heat loss--not ok. The overall tenor of the class was a sort of nervous awe combined with utter nostalgic comfort. For me especially, I was at home where we plunked twentyish butts in the flat bog down from the big tree. The nest-building birds under the tangled mass of bushes behind us bounced and fluttered in mud I crawled through one Serendipity with a dozen compatriots; the tire swing across the creek was a familiar resting place for my butt--safely a meter from the cold ground. A few years ago a friend and I were gazing across a deep section of woods, and I percieved three bright verticle sticks that appeared to be floating. Investigating the abberant form, we discovered a hand-carved xylophone-like instrument, left for nature spirits and itinerate woods adventurers like us. Years later, on that spot, I climbed a grape vine all the way up to the high-reaching beach branch it clung to, and down the beach herself. Another year later I strung the tire swing with a friend on a magical Spring afternoon where clouds and sun comingle into indistinguishable each-otherness.

The Guilford woods have always called me into them, Beech and Cedar and Sweet Gum fluctuating toward me from their common ground up through their uncountable leaves, beckoning me home into their Gian womb. The thoughts of thousands of thinkers have left their mark on these trees and rocks; and these loves and dreams and freedoms have reverberated backward and forward through time to just touch on every single leaf and breath and flicker within their whispering thunder, lightly touching.

What a crunchy class! I see the direction here. We're bound for real experience--to shake out the encrusted patterns of blindness and enclosure we build for ourselves and escape into and try to escape from on midnight journeys and frantic cigatette-flicking confessions. This will put our feet solidly on the ground. The focus on embodiment is evident from the start. We need to learn to stay alive, to protect our bodies in this cornucopia of endless inspiration we so brazenly distinguish as outdoors. This class takes me back to the Catoctin mountains, singing songs with Quaker weirdos and fully expressing and experiencing each other, nature-intoxicated and vibrantly alive. No fucking around; this is going to be awesome. Period.