A thread on the Tea House made me think a little more about something I’ve been working on for a while, it’s a work in progress and will probably never stop.  I’ve been decluttering.

Now, that refers not only to my mental state, but also to my environment and even to my computer.  It’s very true that before we can learn, we need to clear out our old mental baggage, there’s a good Zen story to that very point; but it’s also true that we need to be equally choosy about what we let in.

I’ve found that a cluttered environment, both physical and virtual, can have a detrimental effect on mental focus.  Clearing it can be done a bit at a time, but I found it’s worthless unless I’m vigilant about what I let in.

In the physical and virtual realms, I always ask the question, do I really need this new item or download?  You’d be amazed once you start doing that how much time, effort and expense we simply waste,  it also helped wake me up a little more to the futility of the consumer culture we live in.  From the mental standpoint, I try to be more critical of what I’m told and check things out before accepting them; as the mental standpoint powers the other two areas, I think that’s far more important.

I was once advised to consider spiritual writings as a raft or coracle. Let’s imagine the challenges faced by someone starting out on a contemplative path as a wide river, in order to cross it the learner uses their chosen spiritual system to build a coracle; once across the river, they can start exploring. But, the important part is not to drag the coracle around with you, it’ll only slow you down.

It’s a good point, the teachings of a spiritual system are useful as a starting place for our own meditations and thoughts, but they are not the be all and end all. I personally feel that our daily experiences provide many valuable lessons, but the mindset the you approach it in is more important than the dogma you approach it from.

One of the things about Zazen meditation, is you’re not really supposed to do it for a reason, you do it for it’s own sake. When you actually stop and think about it, that’s a far more balanced approach. Imagine doing the taji from with the intent solely of completing the form, that’s to miss the point, the magic of the form is in doing it! Even with gym work, the treasures are found along the way, in each rep, not at the end of it.

I find it increasingly strange the way we do this, focus on the future and the destination, ignoring the moment, then we wonder where all the time has gone. As if we’re travelling our lives, but not living them. Does anyone else feel like this?

Just short one this time, I’ve update Sitquietly to V1.0.1. Nothing major, just the short list of changes below. You can find Sitquietly and the links to the latest version on the right hand side of the blog.

Well, I think I’ve earned a cup of tea!

V1.0.1
——-
Added contact details to readme.
Small code cleanups.
Changed contact details in about dialog.
Added contact details and changelog to the online help.

Change is a constant, however much we pretend, everything we know and love, everything we know and hate will come to and end. As it was once put to me; “that which we hate cannot endure forever, that which we love must eventually return” (and vice versa).

People don’t like change, neither do animals, if you own a cat, make a noticeable change to a room and see the reaction!

I’ve been going through a process of change recently, and I’ve noticed how easy it is to sabotage that process and slide back into comfortable old habits without realising it. I think it comes back to that old chestnut of non attachment, in this case it’s self image. We all have a view of ourselves, the ego attaches a lot of self worth to that image, if we’re not careful we put the cart before the horse and think that we are that image.

Anything that threatens that stability, even if positive, is a threat to the ego and it will be resisted. I’ve always found that I’ll easily wind up sabotaging my own efforts if I’m not careful, it’s an interesting lesson it is not? The ego can not only make you feel huge and important, it can humble you and frustrate your dreams.

I was having a nose round looking at Contemplative Spirituality the other day, this sounds pretty general, but is more used in Christian terms and was once known as “Christian Mysticism”.  To my eyes, it seems that it’s more about getting a direct experience with the eternal, or the divine if you’d prefer.  Meditation is a major tool, but the scriptures and the  general apparatus of the  mainstream church seem to have a less exalted place there,  the emphasis is on direct experience.

This sounds quite a lot like Zen and Taoism, which I find welcome, I’ve always considered it necessary to decide for yourself what you believe, scripture has it’s place, but your spiritual practice in the moment should have the emphasis and you should always examine everything you’re told critically.

I see that Contemplative Spirituality has been condemned by some as dangerous, as it takes the focus away from scripture and more to your own experience, well I suppose if you’ve got a lot invested in the idea of a spiritual middle man or you are the middle man then contemplative traditions of all kinds are a definite threat.

It seems to me that a lot of religion can be focussed to much on the ends, not the journey.  I think we lose a lot that way, the journey is enormously rewarding, and when you do spiritual practice with an aim in mind you lose something from it.

I like to go back and reread people’s old blog posts sometimes. Why? It’s always worth revisiting them with fresh eyes.

My friend Lewis at Barefootman wrote a few weeks ago about the flux of who we are. It’s a subject that has been in my thoughts a lot of late, I can’t agree strongly enough with his post, all we are is constant flux. We are the process, and yes, we should accept the awkwardness as well as the beauty. In fact, I’ll take it a step further, and say that we must also learn to see the beauty in the awkwardness.

Allow me to elaborate my thinking. When I started Tajiquan training, my movements were awkward, after my long absence, they are awkward again. Nobody wants to be awkward, we all want to move and live with beauty and grace, but like a butterfly from a caterpillar that grace is born from awkwardness.  I think the first step to seeing it is to accept ourselves as we are, to stop grasping after the beauty, that way lies metta (suffering).

But we should know that both beauty and awkwardness are parts of the same whole, two sides of the same coin.  I said above that beauty (or grace) is born of awkwardness, I also believe that awkwardness can be born of beauty.  Think about our beautiful  celebrities…. Unable to move without being photographed or stalked, unable to do anything without it winding up in gossip columns,  unable to move with security and minders, under constant pressure to perform.  Beautiful, but in a very real way, also very awkward.  I think that’s an interesting line of thought….

I wrote previously about going easy on yourself, I’m going to wander off in a different direction with this, and let off a little steam about something I’ve been thinking about recently: past and future roles.

We tend to straitjacket ourselves into roles, which when you get down to it are just concepts and conventions, roles which are really defined by our past. As long as we recognise this and don’t fall into the trap of reifying them, I can’t see anything wrong with this, we need to do this to a degree to operate in society.

But when considering our future, should we go with the roles again? Again, to a degree this is necessary to operate, subject to the same caveat as above, see the trap and avoid it.

I think it’s more important to be you performing the role, rather than the role performing you. Let me try and explain it better by example. I wrote SitQuietly not because of some idea about being a so called “great programmer”, I wrote it because of my interest in both meditation and programming. I was looking idly for a project and also couldn’t find the software I wanted, which led to a “That looks like a fun project” moment. My point is it should be a passion, an enjoyment, not an ego trip.

Which comes back to some thing I wrote previously about, not trying to exert ego. If your focus is on being the big “I am”, rather than doing a good job at something you enjoy doing, then you’re not bringing your full potential to bear and you also need to touch base as the role is starting to play you. I remember something Bono mentioned in the book “Bono on Bono”, when he came to particularly difficult record company exec, he worked with them by getting them to remind themselves why they got into the industry in the first place.

OK, let’s bring this one home, as well as going easy on ourselves, I think we need to go easy on the future. Are we doing our thing to be a certain something, because of some imaginary glorious future, like a restless cowboy always riding into the sunset? If that’s how we’re operating, how can we ever be happy, when we place our happiness constantly out of reach then shoot ourselves in the foot trying to get there?