I'm just coming to the end of your book Death The end of self improvement... I really don't want to it to end . Like your first two books which came along just at the right point to highlight just where I am. I could relate to every word, every idea every choice.... I have both laughed and cried and sometimes at the same time ! Thank you Joan for being you and sharing so generously in the way you do.
I do appreciate your love, generousity, kindness and that beautiful smile.
Kev Ceney (an old English guy walking the same pathless path)
Thanks Joan! As a child my parents used to take me and my siblings to the Catholic Church. As soon as I was old enough I started taking myself to my preferred 11.00 a.m. sung mass in Latin. It was an exquisite delight to hear and sing these nonsense Latin syllables with a group of others. I used to come back from the communion and close my eyes and go into what I later recognised as meditation. Often I would see/feel an image of a blue-white light that enveloped me and I thought of this as the presence of Jesus. When I was about 10 years old I joined a small cultic group within the church called "Legio Mareae", the Legion of Mary, where we would pray to Mary and repeat a small phrase with her name over and over. On the way to church I would pass by a small hall that was rented out to a Swaminaryan Hindu group and where I first heard the clash of cymbals and rhythmic repetitive chanting that was my first exposure to Indian bhajans. I remember the joy that was pouring out from that hall and my desire to be inside chanting with them. About age 12 or 13 I became aware of the intense hypocrisy and actual evil intent behind some of the representatives of this religion and started to distance myself from it. I took LSD at age 15 and after my second trip and dissolution in the Clear White Light of the Void, nothing was quite the same again! I quit Catholicism, but several years later, vegetarian, drug free and after shaktipat in a Hindu Ashram, I found myself once again singing nonsense syllables in a group with everyone intending to make the most beautiful vibration possible. Like children, we were simply making sound vibration for the sheer delight. I found myself leaving that group too, but the delight in sound-vibration-joy never left me. Alleluia!
Thanks for this, Joan. Once again, your writing speaks my mind. I woke this morning with similar thoughts in mind. I scribbled in my journal about faith being a bridge between the apparent dualistic functions we navigate in our daily lives, and the seamless ground from which it seems to arise. Faith, for me, in this context, means a support for the paradox of it all.
I am also struck by the words from Wood's novel: “Watching the women, I’m convinced that the words they’re singing are meaningless; that instead, this ritual is all about the body and the unconscious mind… I kept thinking of yoga." Yoga is exactly what it is.
Joan, thank you for this inspired and inspired writing. Wow! And thank you for the painting of the Christ. Above all, thank you so very much for presenting us with Pir Elias that I did not know at all. As he would say: "I am fed, not fed, nourished today". I also love Gregorian Chants. Happy Easter my friend, I send affection and gratitude!
Truth, or "the truth" isn't relative. Maybe, because we can think, we think that it is relative? In the back and forth of our thoughts on politics, or home economics, or anything else, we expend tremendous energy trying to pull truth into "our" sphere. Luckily, it just chugs along on its own path. All these words, trying to cozy up to truth, fall apart. We know truth innately; we are it, but we drift away; we surrender to love and then think we have some agency in the "business" of love. It is the season of wild flowers; silly explosions of color and delicacy dancing in the wind but also a life or death struggle to attract a pollinator now, so life can go on next year. (this word salad isn't inspired by your writing (but, of coarse it is), which I have appreciated for 20 years. it was generated by watching the push and pull of politics in our home country; wishing it was different)
I haven’t seen Conclave but the quote in your article is too beautiful to ignore —
“The sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity… the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end… Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”
Nobody writes about this subject better than you, but it only seems real while I am reading about it, like peeking in an interesting window at a lovely display of concepts. Then it's right back to thinking about the next chore, the grocery shopping list, worrying if my Social Security benefit will continue, what the hell is going on inside my 83-year-old body, etc. Spiritual thoughts come and go and have no more enduring reality than any other thought pattern. Yes, I get that what is being pointed to is prior to thought, sense perception or objective grasping and must be taken on faith. But a long life of no tangible verification has left me a an open-minded skeptic. I may well be a temporary wave on an infinite sea, but I still crave the experience on planting my feet on terra firma and knowing in my gut who and what I am and what, if anything, I came here to accomplish. At my age the life clock ticks ever louder. Perhaps your next book will do the trick!
It sounds like you are waiting for some special experience other than the ever-present experiencing of this one bottomless moment here and now. It may be that this very expectation of something "prior to thought, sense perception or objective grasping," and this looking for something that will maybe "do the trick," is the very movement of the mind that is in the way of simply noticing and appreciating the wonder of your everyday experience, just as it is. Preparing a grocery list is functional. Worrying about whether SS will continue or what will happen next in the aging body is unnecessary suffering. Of course, I can totally relate to both of these concerns, which I certainly share, but I don't waste time worrying about them. If the worst happens, it won't be as I've imagined, and one way or another, life will go on, until it doesn't, and even then, when Joan Tollifson is dead and gone, life itself will go on. I remember Mark Twain: I've been through some terrible things in my life, and some of them actually happened. So instead of worrying about what might befall me or chasing some imagined bigger and better enlightenment experience tomorrow, I find myself simply feeling grateful for and appreciating the life I actually have, the one that is right here, right now. Fwiw, my last post (https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/waking-up-from-suffering) had some practical suggestions. Spiritual concepts may open a door, but only you can walk through the door. And the "you" I'm speaking of is not the character or the narrator in the story you've just told, but something much closer to Home. ❤️🙏
My feeling is that being human is an always difficult and often an absolutely miserable experience and we all have a choice. The easy one is to be angry about it and mean, while the more challenging choice is to be gentle and kind. Charlotte Joko Beck noted that the root of the term religion is religar, (sic) meaning to bind back again. I prefer religion to spiritually because it does demand something of us while spirituality seems to imply being set free.
Hola ¡ no entenc l'anglès però quina màgia, Google traductor, i ressona.
L'article és llarg però sempre hi ha novetat en ell i es fa curt
l'enamorament, que és misteriós, fa referencia a lo que Es, nosaltres mateixos, però en la figura d'altri ens és més natural i, cantem l'amor que hi ha.
Tenim por a la soledat? en certa manera es natural, potser per la responsabilitat? es que som el Tot aquí així ara,, que fer com actuar? però sense dubte qui actua és aquesta Vida que soc com sóc i, ho fa sempre el millor possible segons la consciència social global haguda
I was raised Roman Catholic Irish Catholic no less. This post resonates with me in ways I can’t explain. Thank you Joan. Much love to all.
why ? right here right now ? could not have been more what i needed right here right now .
thank you Joan
just
Thank you Joan ..
I'm just coming to the end of your book Death The end of self improvement... I really don't want to it to end . Like your first two books which came along just at the right point to highlight just where I am. I could relate to every word, every idea every choice.... I have both laughed and cried and sometimes at the same time ! Thank you Joan for being you and sharing so generously in the way you do.
I do appreciate your love, generousity, kindness and that beautiful smile.
Kev Ceney (an old English guy walking the same pathless path)
❤️🙏x
Thanks Joan! As a child my parents used to take me and my siblings to the Catholic Church. As soon as I was old enough I started taking myself to my preferred 11.00 a.m. sung mass in Latin. It was an exquisite delight to hear and sing these nonsense Latin syllables with a group of others. I used to come back from the communion and close my eyes and go into what I later recognised as meditation. Often I would see/feel an image of a blue-white light that enveloped me and I thought of this as the presence of Jesus. When I was about 10 years old I joined a small cultic group within the church called "Legio Mareae", the Legion of Mary, where we would pray to Mary and repeat a small phrase with her name over and over. On the way to church I would pass by a small hall that was rented out to a Swaminaryan Hindu group and where I first heard the clash of cymbals and rhythmic repetitive chanting that was my first exposure to Indian bhajans. I remember the joy that was pouring out from that hall and my desire to be inside chanting with them. About age 12 or 13 I became aware of the intense hypocrisy and actual evil intent behind some of the representatives of this religion and started to distance myself from it. I took LSD at age 15 and after my second trip and dissolution in the Clear White Light of the Void, nothing was quite the same again! I quit Catholicism, but several years later, vegetarian, drug free and after shaktipat in a Hindu Ashram, I found myself once again singing nonsense syllables in a group with everyone intending to make the most beautiful vibration possible. Like children, we were simply making sound vibration for the sheer delight. I found myself leaving that group too, but the delight in sound-vibration-joy never left me. Alleluia!
One of her best writings.
Gracias 🙏🏼
I love the humility which seems to pervade church services, when all are equal before the eternal mystery.
Thanks for this, Joan. Once again, your writing speaks my mind. I woke this morning with similar thoughts in mind. I scribbled in my journal about faith being a bridge between the apparent dualistic functions we navigate in our daily lives, and the seamless ground from which it seems to arise. Faith, for me, in this context, means a support for the paradox of it all.
I am also struck by the words from Wood's novel: “Watching the women, I’m convinced that the words they’re singing are meaningless; that instead, this ritual is all about the body and the unconscious mind… I kept thinking of yoga." Yoga is exactly what it is.
Looking forward to the new book. Thanks again.
Joan, thank you for this inspired and inspired writing. Wow! And thank you for the painting of the Christ. Above all, thank you so very much for presenting us with Pir Elias that I did not know at all. As he would say: "I am fed, not fed, nourished today". I also love Gregorian Chants. Happy Easter my friend, I send affection and gratitude!
Truth, or "the truth" isn't relative. Maybe, because we can think, we think that it is relative? In the back and forth of our thoughts on politics, or home economics, or anything else, we expend tremendous energy trying to pull truth into "our" sphere. Luckily, it just chugs along on its own path. All these words, trying to cozy up to truth, fall apart. We know truth innately; we are it, but we drift away; we surrender to love and then think we have some agency in the "business" of love. It is the season of wild flowers; silly explosions of color and delicacy dancing in the wind but also a life or death struggle to attract a pollinator now, so life can go on next year. (this word salad isn't inspired by your writing (but, of coarse it is), which I have appreciated for 20 years. it was generated by watching the push and pull of politics in our home country; wishing it was different)
I haven’t seen Conclave but the quote in your article is too beautiful to ignore —
“The sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity… the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end… Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”
The letters you string together always dance across the page💚.
Nobody writes about this subject better than you, but it only seems real while I am reading about it, like peeking in an interesting window at a lovely display of concepts. Then it's right back to thinking about the next chore, the grocery shopping list, worrying if my Social Security benefit will continue, what the hell is going on inside my 83-year-old body, etc. Spiritual thoughts come and go and have no more enduring reality than any other thought pattern. Yes, I get that what is being pointed to is prior to thought, sense perception or objective grasping and must be taken on faith. But a long life of no tangible verification has left me a an open-minded skeptic. I may well be a temporary wave on an infinite sea, but I still crave the experience on planting my feet on terra firma and knowing in my gut who and what I am and what, if anything, I came here to accomplish. At my age the life clock ticks ever louder. Perhaps your next book will do the trick!
It sounds like you are waiting for some special experience other than the ever-present experiencing of this one bottomless moment here and now. It may be that this very expectation of something "prior to thought, sense perception or objective grasping," and this looking for something that will maybe "do the trick," is the very movement of the mind that is in the way of simply noticing and appreciating the wonder of your everyday experience, just as it is. Preparing a grocery list is functional. Worrying about whether SS will continue or what will happen next in the aging body is unnecessary suffering. Of course, I can totally relate to both of these concerns, which I certainly share, but I don't waste time worrying about them. If the worst happens, it won't be as I've imagined, and one way or another, life will go on, until it doesn't, and even then, when Joan Tollifson is dead and gone, life itself will go on. I remember Mark Twain: I've been through some terrible things in my life, and some of them actually happened. So instead of worrying about what might befall me or chasing some imagined bigger and better enlightenment experience tomorrow, I find myself simply feeling grateful for and appreciating the life I actually have, the one that is right here, right now. Fwiw, my last post (https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/waking-up-from-suffering) had some practical suggestions. Spiritual concepts may open a door, but only you can walk through the door. And the "you" I'm speaking of is not the character or the narrator in the story you've just told, but something much closer to Home. ❤️🙏
‘Walking on water’ is how I would describe the leap of faith I’ve made in my own life recently. Wonderful post Joan ❤️
My feeling is that being human is an always difficult and often an absolutely miserable experience and we all have a choice. The easy one is to be angry about it and mean, while the more challenging choice is to be gentle and kind. Charlotte Joko Beck noted that the root of the term religion is religar, (sic) meaning to bind back again. I prefer religion to spiritually because it does demand something of us while spirituality seems to imply being set free.
Hola ¡ no entenc l'anglès però quina màgia, Google traductor, i ressona.
L'article és llarg però sempre hi ha novetat en ell i es fa curt
l'enamorament, que és misteriós, fa referencia a lo que Es, nosaltres mateixos, però en la figura d'altri ens és més natural i, cantem l'amor que hi ha.
Tenim por a la soledat? en certa manera es natural, potser per la responsabilitat? es que som el Tot aquí així ara,, que fer com actuar? però sense dubte qui actua és aquesta Vida que soc com sóc i, ho fa sempre el millor possible segons la consciència social global haguda