thank you for sharing all of this! i love your words and i love your doodles!
this is particularly beautiful: "These days, for me, God is not an idea or a belief, but a palpable dimension of experiencing, a felt-sense of something ineffable but very real. I might call it aware presence, unconditional love, wholeness. God refers to a dimension that is open, free, unconditioned, awake, boundless. God is the intelligence-energy manifesting as this miraculous universe, the pure potentiality or germinal darkness out of which everything emerges, the very core of our being, the timeless eternal unicity, the freedom of groundlessness. God is a way of seeing, seeing the sacred everywhere, seeing the light in everything. God is the empty mirror that accepts everything and holds on to nothing, the zero on which all other numbers depend. The late Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, described God as “emptiness containing infinite possibilities” or “absolute Nothingness.”"
I was enjoying your post, Myq when I realized I recognize that name! You’re a comedian whose work I admire so much. I’m having one of those worlds colliding moments. You don’t know me, but I’m a fan. Particularly of your work with Micha Sherman (sp?). Anyway, great post and also I’m a fan. :)
What struck me when reading Toni's talks is that she would encourage feeling vulnerability, which I found unsettling because, I what I was always doing above all was trying to avoid feeling vulnerable.
Beautiful piece of writing today Joan....A Life "just" expressing endlessly into infinity. Everything included and nothing known...ahhh what freedom. Love your drawings too
Thank you Joan. I am in a real state at the moment - coming off Covid (first time) - lost my sense of smell and taste; felt on an emotional rollercoaster - angry, crying, depression, blah blah. The sense/feeling of fatigue is worse than I could various imagined. Kind of like chemotherapy was - except that didn't last as long ;-) Listening to various meditation teachers felt like it was beside the point....everything except metta. Maybe this is the feeling of letting go of the scaffolding (my father was a painter - we had scaffolding everywhere ;-) We lived at the bottom of a hill - the only way to get one or two channels on TV was that my dad put up a scaffold with an antenna in the middle.
It is VERY scary at the moment. I love your doodles.
This comment is an act of love for you. I’m pushing through my paralyzing perfectionism and the urge to give you the exact right “thank you.” I’ve recently discovered your writings and they have impacted me greatly. I’ve been wanting to pen a lengthy comment, but can never seem to find the suitable words. I fear if I keep procrastinating the day may never come. So here’s my imperfect thank you — I see you. I understand you. Your humility and willingness to keep exploring inspire me. You are deeply and sincerely appreciated.
Hi Joan: thank you for sharing such intimate thoughts and feelings with us. Your writing is beautiful. I also follow Robert Saltzman and agree with him that the ultimate questions have no answers. Seems that you are facing this reality and the changing nature of your inner landscape as a struggle, but you shouldn't since you will not win that struggle and that uncertainty and constant change will not go away. Peace.
Glad you liked it. However, regarding your assessment of my situation and your advice about what I shouldn't do, I think you may have missed the point. I wouldn't say that I'm currently facing some new reality, such as "ultimate questions have no answers," or that I am deliberately approaching anything in my life as a struggle. I do report honestly (as I did here) that inner struggles, conflicts and efforts can still show up unbidden.
And I'm not in some process of becoming more like Robert, which it sounds a bit like you think I am. If anything, I'd say I'm in some process of being more fully Joan--that's how this felt here.
And for sure, constant change is the nature of reality, but again, I report honestly that the desire for some final landing place can still arise (unbidden).
I'm not sure I would say that ultimate questions have no answers. Some of them certainly have no answers, and many of them are entirely meaningless, and some of them are unknowable. But what I was trying to express (and it wasn't exactly a new revelation) is that trying to pin down metaphysical certainties is not only epistemologically unwise but also misses the point. It's the scaffolding. The only real certainties are experiential, not conceptual or metaphysical.
Joan, just as I was about to read your latest post here, I drifted into a most relaxing sleep for a few moments. When I began reading, I was receiving your words of the ineffable in a deeply peaceful state. You point so well to this open, empty, birthplace of potential possibility and aliveness. And your last sentence brought a smile and something in me joined you in this mysterious ride toward our "eventual disappearance into that infinite sea from which [we] have never actually, even for one instant, ever been apart." Thank you.
For me, there is nothing to figure out. This right now is it and Robert is not making it be that way, so he's off the hook entirely. That is what I call freedom, although I understand that some people will not agree.
Freedom, in my vocabulary, does not mean never suffering physically and mentally. That is a pipe dream, in my view. To me, freedom means feeling what you feel when you feel it, thinking what you think when you think it, and understanding that what you are calling "awareness," is nothing to cultivate (even supposing one could), but simply the condition of being a living animal with a brain. From that perspective, most of so-called "spirituality" is a cul de sac in which one can be lost for day, a year, or a lifetime. Best, I say, to find your way out of that trap and be an ordinary human without the froo-froo or the pretense of having "understood" something deep. Naturally, my dear friend, this is just how I see it. <3
Your main message is "find your own mind," so I wouldn't think you'd want me to be more like you, although I imagine you might be happy if I suddenly came to my senses and stopped using the word God. 😊 It was a comment from someone else that seemed to suggest, as I heard it, that I was on my way to being more like you. ❤️
I resonate completely with much of what you say here, although as you know, I have found real value in spirituality of various kinds, so in my experience, it hasn't been (for the most part anyway) a cul de sac, although it can be (and sometimes has been for me). I feel there's a place for BOTH finding your own way at times AND also for having teachers at times and not having to reinvent the wheel.
The word awareness gets used in different ways, but certainly in one sense of it, it can be cultivated in meditation, psychotherapy, somatic work, yoga and other endeavors. And while I agree that pain and painful circumstances are an inevitable part of life, I do think suffering (by which I mean the less effective ways we respond to pain and painful circumstances and make them worse) can fall away more and more as we become more aware of all this.
I agree that understanding something intellectually or trying to "figure out" the nature of reality can be a huge waste of time, especially getting lost in metaphysical questions (and unverifiable certainties), although sometimes an intellectual understanding of something, such as impermanence for example, can help in being more aware of it, but it's the experiential realm, in my experience, that really transforms us. ❤️🙏
Thank you so much for your honest reflection of your process, a phrase came to mind from a book i read recently about such matters - 'we end up effing the ineffable!' It seems that ultimately there just aren't any answers where we can know for sure. I also really resonated with your explanation of why you like the word God. Having grown up in a household without formal religion, but a spiritual bent, it works on a deep level for me too. It does not come with all the baggage, but I completely get why others would loath the word.
Thank you for “Letting Go of the Scaffolding”. I profess to being a Christian but my concept of God was always beyond explanation and certainly bigger than any book or set of acceptable religious dogma.
Reading about your acceptance of the word God and the boundless meanings and concepts the word evoked fitted in so perfectly with my own understanding of it.
I was a sickly child and grew up with my own mental creations as friends and concepts of the world outside, so that when I finally grew up and learnt to meditate and read an eclectic mixture about thought, religion and metaphysical ideas, I had already lived it all in by own head, albeit with my own terminology, but it was the same stuff.
Like Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Land of Counterpane, I was the giant that sits on the hill and watches and controls the leaden soldiers that march on the bed clothes. I gave them their names and personalities and then became them in a world of my own choosing. So the idea of dropping the pretence and once again being the giant always interested me.
Your explorations was exactly what I needed to read and is helping me define my own boundaries and how, like the scaffolding, letting them drop away.
My first Hindu teacher's message was "God lives within you as you". Later, when I discovered Theravada Buddhism, Vipassana and Zen I thought I needed to let go of God and anything possibly related. Then I met Ramesh Balsekar, who sang bajans after all his satsangs and said that God is the supreme Source.I love listening to recordings of Ram Dass and I'm deeply moved by chanting.Thank you Joan for writing about your relationship with the mystery of God. You inspire me so much!
All your writing is great but this one really struck deeply.
Yes, letting go of the scaffolding, very powerful.
And, this incessant need to reconcile is so debilitating on multiple levels but also completely unnecessary and actually impossible to achieve anyway.
Thank you for sharing so intimately !!
I miss Peter.......
dear joan,
thank you for sharing all of this! i love your words and i love your doodles!
this is particularly beautiful: "These days, for me, God is not an idea or a belief, but a palpable dimension of experiencing, a felt-sense of something ineffable but very real. I might call it aware presence, unconditional love, wholeness. God refers to a dimension that is open, free, unconditioned, awake, boundless. God is the intelligence-energy manifesting as this miraculous universe, the pure potentiality or germinal darkness out of which everything emerges, the very core of our being, the timeless eternal unicity, the freedom of groundlessness. God is a way of seeing, seeing the sacred everywhere, seeing the light in everything. God is the empty mirror that accepts everything and holds on to nothing, the zero on which all other numbers depend. The late Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, described God as “emptiness containing infinite possibilities” or “absolute Nothingness.”"
thank you for sharing!
much love
myq
I was enjoying your post, Myq when I realized I recognize that name! You’re a comedian whose work I admire so much. I’m having one of those worlds colliding moments. You don’t know me, but I’m a fan. Particularly of your work with Micha Sherman (sp?). Anyway, great post and also I’m a fan. :)
Thank you so much for the kind words! I really appreciate it! I'll let Micah know as well!
What struck me when reading Toni's talks is that she would encourage feeling vulnerability, which I found unsettling because, I what I was always doing above all was trying to avoid feeling vulnerable.
Beautiful piece of writing today Joan....A Life "just" expressing endlessly into infinity. Everything included and nothing known...ahhh what freedom. Love your drawings too
Thank you Joan. I am in a real state at the moment - coming off Covid (first time) - lost my sense of smell and taste; felt on an emotional rollercoaster - angry, crying, depression, blah blah. The sense/feeling of fatigue is worse than I could various imagined. Kind of like chemotherapy was - except that didn't last as long ;-) Listening to various meditation teachers felt like it was beside the point....everything except metta. Maybe this is the feeling of letting go of the scaffolding (my father was a painter - we had scaffolding everywhere ;-) We lived at the bottom of a hill - the only way to get one or two channels on TV was that my dad put up a scaffold with an antenna in the middle.
It is VERY scary at the moment. I love your doodles.
Joan,
This comment is an act of love for you. I’m pushing through my paralyzing perfectionism and the urge to give you the exact right “thank you.” I’ve recently discovered your writings and they have impacted me greatly. I’ve been wanting to pen a lengthy comment, but can never seem to find the suitable words. I fear if I keep procrastinating the day may never come. So here’s my imperfect thank you — I see you. I understand you. Your humility and willingness to keep exploring inspire me. You are deeply and sincerely appreciated.
Hi Joan: thank you for sharing such intimate thoughts and feelings with us. Your writing is beautiful. I also follow Robert Saltzman and agree with him that the ultimate questions have no answers. Seems that you are facing this reality and the changing nature of your inner landscape as a struggle, but you shouldn't since you will not win that struggle and that uncertainty and constant change will not go away. Peace.
Glad you liked it. However, regarding your assessment of my situation and your advice about what I shouldn't do, I think you may have missed the point. I wouldn't say that I'm currently facing some new reality, such as "ultimate questions have no answers," or that I am deliberately approaching anything in my life as a struggle. I do report honestly (as I did here) that inner struggles, conflicts and efforts can still show up unbidden.
And I'm not in some process of becoming more like Robert, which it sounds a bit like you think I am. If anything, I'd say I'm in some process of being more fully Joan--that's how this felt here.
And for sure, constant change is the nature of reality, but again, I report honestly that the desire for some final landing place can still arise (unbidden).
I'm not sure I would say that ultimate questions have no answers. Some of them certainly have no answers, and many of them are entirely meaningless, and some of them are unknowable. But what I was trying to express (and it wasn't exactly a new revelation) is that trying to pin down metaphysical certainties is not only epistemologically unwise but also misses the point. It's the scaffolding. The only real certainties are experiential, not conceptual or metaphysical.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Joan, just as I was about to read your latest post here, I drifted into a most relaxing sleep for a few moments. When I began reading, I was receiving your words of the ineffable in a deeply peaceful state. You point so well to this open, empty, birthplace of potential possibility and aliveness. And your last sentence brought a smile and something in me joined you in this mysterious ride toward our "eventual disappearance into that infinite sea from which [we] have never actually, even for one instant, ever been apart." Thank you.
Hi, Joan. I love you too.
For me, there is nothing to figure out. This right now is it and Robert is not making it be that way, so he's off the hook entirely. That is what I call freedom, although I understand that some people will not agree.
Freedom, in my vocabulary, does not mean never suffering physically and mentally. That is a pipe dream, in my view. To me, freedom means feeling what you feel when you feel it, thinking what you think when you think it, and understanding that what you are calling "awareness," is nothing to cultivate (even supposing one could), but simply the condition of being a living animal with a brain. From that perspective, most of so-called "spirituality" is a cul de sac in which one can be lost for day, a year, or a lifetime. Best, I say, to find your way out of that trap and be an ordinary human without the froo-froo or the pretense of having "understood" something deep. Naturally, my dear friend, this is just how I see it. <3
I would never imagine that you would try to be more like me.
Your main message is "find your own mind," so I wouldn't think you'd want me to be more like you, although I imagine you might be happy if I suddenly came to my senses and stopped using the word God. 😊 It was a comment from someone else that seemed to suggest, as I heard it, that I was on my way to being more like you. ❤️
Anyone who wants to imitate me will have to approach that work with keen sense of the absurd and a deep well of sorrow. I don't recommend it.
I resonate completely with much of what you say here, although as you know, I have found real value in spirituality of various kinds, so in my experience, it hasn't been (for the most part anyway) a cul de sac, although it can be (and sometimes has been for me). I feel there's a place for BOTH finding your own way at times AND also for having teachers at times and not having to reinvent the wheel.
The word awareness gets used in different ways, but certainly in one sense of it, it can be cultivated in meditation, psychotherapy, somatic work, yoga and other endeavors. And while I agree that pain and painful circumstances are an inevitable part of life, I do think suffering (by which I mean the less effective ways we respond to pain and painful circumstances and make them worse) can fall away more and more as we become more aware of all this.
I agree that understanding something intellectually or trying to "figure out" the nature of reality can be a huge waste of time, especially getting lost in metaphysical questions (and unverifiable certainties), although sometimes an intellectual understanding of something, such as impermanence for example, can help in being more aware of it, but it's the experiential realm, in my experience, that really transforms us. ❤️🙏
Thank you for considering MHO
I practice with the idea of God, too, and your descriptions were exquisite
Thank you so much for your honest reflection of your process, a phrase came to mind from a book i read recently about such matters - 'we end up effing the ineffable!' It seems that ultimately there just aren't any answers where we can know for sure. I also really resonated with your explanation of why you like the word God. Having grown up in a household without formal religion, but a spiritual bent, it works on a deep level for me too. It does not come with all the baggage, but I completely get why others would loath the word.
This is really a very good and powerful article.
I also use God to describe it. When I attend my wife's church and read the Bible the teachings are understood in this pure light.
I think that religion gets a bad rap. It's only trying to convey the same realizations as spirituality. All of the language should be interchangeable.
I used to write a lot and yes people get triggered when certain language and words are used. Brahman, God, Christ, Allah, it's all the same to me!
Thank you for “Letting Go of the Scaffolding”. I profess to being a Christian but my concept of God was always beyond explanation and certainly bigger than any book or set of acceptable religious dogma.
Reading about your acceptance of the word God and the boundless meanings and concepts the word evoked fitted in so perfectly with my own understanding of it.
I was a sickly child and grew up with my own mental creations as friends and concepts of the world outside, so that when I finally grew up and learnt to meditate and read an eclectic mixture about thought, religion and metaphysical ideas, I had already lived it all in by own head, albeit with my own terminology, but it was the same stuff.
Like Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Land of Counterpane, I was the giant that sits on the hill and watches and controls the leaden soldiers that march on the bed clothes. I gave them their names and personalities and then became them in a world of my own choosing. So the idea of dropping the pretence and once again being the giant always interested me.
Your explorations was exactly what I needed to read and is helping me define my own boundaries and how, like the scaffolding, letting them drop away.
Thank you.
John Van Wageningen.
My first Hindu teacher's message was "God lives within you as you". Later, when I discovered Theravada Buddhism, Vipassana and Zen I thought I needed to let go of God and anything possibly related. Then I met Ramesh Balsekar, who sang bajans after all his satsangs and said that God is the supreme Source.I love listening to recordings of Ram Dass and I'm deeply moved by chanting.Thank you Joan for writing about your relationship with the mystery of God. You inspire me so much!
I deeply treasure these generously offered and personal messages, Joan.
Bows and blessings to you, and this day.