IS: ayy lmao
Upcoming open events:
- Saturday, Feb 24th: Office Hours call
- Practice Series resumes on March 3rd
all start times 1pm Pacific Time (4pm Eastern, 9pm UTC)
Those Office Hours on Saturday precede a member meeting on Sunday, so they are both A) a way to get oriented for/about IS membership, and/or B) a place to ask any questions you like about IS from any vantage point. (Or even to inquire what the heck I'm on about in the following paragraphs...)
Epistemic status1: halfway between "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!"2 and "red string guy"3
It's one of those nights for me — heck, one of those weeks — where the veil thins tantalizingly, where the heavenly glory of the metaphorical moon hangs low in the sky, where the not-two-ness and not-one-ness of all ways-of-seeing seem close enough to kiss. The universal fractal of structure and nebulosity almost drifts into view, the non-paradox of paradox4, the pattern of non-pattern and pattern itself.
Taijitu5, all: Form and emptiness, complicated and complex, objective and subjective, rationality and meta-rationality, way-seeking mind and no-self, the emissary and the master, system 1 and system 2 cognition, the scientific and the spiritual, west and east, self-authoring and self-transforming, bodhicitta6 and śūnyatā7, outer work and inner work, ambition and acceptance, desire and perfection.
Each scope/layer of the fractal reflects the whole, a holon-archy of the deep patterns. Not either/or. Not simply both/and. Both both/and and either/or. Transcend and include is held (has been held, by me) too heavily on the transcend-seeing and too lightly on the include-embodying. Include, yes, but/and enter in — enter in deeply enough to be lost, indeed necessarily being lost, without losing completely the outer frame that holds the space of entering.
Remain grounded in the groundless ground. Stand in the complete stance of fluid mode. "Ayy lmao"8 indeed.
The heart of Circling, is the heart of IFS9, is the heart of Coaching, is the heart of God. Clinging is tanhā10 is suffering is protectors is stress response10. "Everything in the world is exactly the same."11 The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
Opening up to the abstract connectedness of everything, like tonight, feels like straddling the line between visionary and schizophrenic. It feels useful to get lost, indeed necessary, and also just as necessary to reconsolidate, integrate, interface with the concrete. How does one put to use the "construct awareness" layer of dissolving and patterning? This most precious of objects... unfold-able awareness?
Ah, and it's gone again, receding into the mists. Too big for one brain, calling for a collective to hold metastably that fractal-depth of consciousness. Dear reader, will you hold it with me? No, I don't know how either, sorry. Other than: fluidly, metarationally, dancing with the universe in each moment. Find the others and craft the culture.
Humbly,
James