Classroom Talk
Summer 2001 Archive
And this is supposed to be my "day off." Tsk. Tsk. Posted by John on August 27, 2001 at 15:04:04:
In Reply to: Re: Convertion or Just Another Option posted by Deirdre on August 26, 2001 at 20:50:13:
Golly, I always love it the most around Classroom Talk when the class is teaching itself, and I'm not even needed! This is great, Deirdre. I don't
disagree with any of it. This is as good a way of putting it as I put it in any of the ways I'm talking about it. It harmonizes, *absolutely* with my
concept of "the awareness game."
In fact, the very *basis* of my own strategy, in playing the awareness game with whatever it is that comes up in our midst here is . . . . . making space
for it, making space for it, making space for it . . . . . embracing it awarely, all the joys and the pains of it, leaving nothing out, and my own reactions
and responses to it, including it all IN to the Whole of it . . . . . keeping nothing of the totality of it out, and keeping my awareness turned on as much
as I can remember to while I'm going on doing this, acknowledging, acknowledging, acknowledging as I see. Could this be done without including-in
mindfulness to the Whole of it, awareness both within me and around? I don't see how.
If I can choose to embrace everything of it—the way it is!—thrilling times and embarrassing times, easy times and difficult times, including my own
foibles and the squabbles I generate that sometimes come up in it, if I can keep my awareness on enough not to have to over-react to it, but to just see
it . . . . . not to have to fight with it, not to deny it or exclude it, around me or *within*, experiencing it All the way it is (AND if I am still getting
some—what seems to me—quality coaching done at the same time along the way, heh-heh, which is my notion of what I'm supposed to be here for,
and even if I'm NOT!!!!! . . . . . then, from my point of view as a coach of this game, in those dear times when they come along, I am *winning* the
awareness game. ;-)
Yet, I think it's also fair to call what you lay out here, Deirdre, "converting." (I don't mean that you should change a word of the way that you explain
it!) In that view, it would be "converting" from not knowing we can have this choice of choosing the All in life, not understanding that, to knowing it
in one's own experience . . . . . converting this "ignorance" of it, to *catching on* to how practical and real it can be, if one learns to master any of the
spiritual or mystical or shamanistic, etc., etc. trainings that teach people how to have the freedom to do this . . . . . it would be converting to being able
to be freed up from one's conditioned beliefs and habits enough to just *try it out* and see what happens!
Fortunately, one *doesn't need to believe in this* to do it—as Jeff pointed out correctly the other day. One only has to catch on, in one's own
experience, that it *can be tried out* (which is what Burton said the other day, Rakesh)—realizing that this intentional switch into mindfulness really
can be done is the inspiration for doing it, and . . . . . if you care enough about it to learn by practice how to remember it more and more often (which
is what all the trainings are about), you can do it as the hours are passing by, you can just jump in, any time you feel like it, and try it out!
But to try any of this out, there are some things that have to be learned, some phenomenological guide-posts, you could say, for making objective
observations of life as it is. And these markers or guide-posts—such as those found here in the wheelbook—can be learned in any of the schools for
this kind of practice that are around.
As you point out, Deirdre, at the end of your post—somewhat strictly during those moments, it seems to me, in terms of the flavor or music of it (if
you look back at that game tape—i.e. engrained Judge there, I think), and one cannot say you aren't "right" about it either!!!—"no one else" is forcing
any of us to do anything around here.
Every one of us—if we come, if we go—makes our own decisions. Underneath the melodramas of our ego-driven personalities—which is what does
all of the "forcing" in *ordinary conditioned human life*—consciously and intentionally stepping aside from that, all of us are really free. All of us are
free to choose to live as masters with it All.
May I say, Deirdre, you do your own Teacher much credit!
And, yes! The ego doesn't have to die. This fixed identity keeps on tickin' right along with us, everywhere we go, giving us a "worthy adversary,"
year after year, to play the awareness game with.
Coach
Well . . . back to my "day off." But I was too inspired by this posting to sit still with it. By the way, for any of you newcomers who are around, I
typically work on weekends and holidays at a ranch in the country outside Tucson. And this year, I've been—most of the time—giving myself
Mondays as a day off.
So my postings here in Classroom Talk are usually made from Tuesday afternoon or evening through Friday evening, and sometimes Saturday
morning when I sleep on a Friday class before posting it here.
Monday's, like today, I usually sleep-in until noon—especially after this weekend with 100-year highs in the temperatures here. What an awesome
challenge that experience can be! Exciting, even at my age—thrilling even, when it's up to 110—working and sweating in the seering blast of Nature's
oven! But I'm living through it, like I always have so far. I hear the voice of my old friend don Coyotl saying, "Defy it!" And I do. Yet, I'm always
happy when I see this class teaching itself, like I know All of you can.
And, one more p.s. Monday after next weekend is Labor Day in the U.S. when *everybody's got the day off*! So I'll be working out in the country
then. Heh-heh. Contrary Rebel/Artist that I am, I always seem to find a way to "play it differently than everybody else."
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