Meditation

The Dialog

by

In my readings on Taoism, I often find them relaxing. Beautiful metaphors about flowing water. Kind advice on remaining calm. Plenty of (mostly) gentle humor. Above and below it all is the idea of the Tao, of the ever inflowing and outflowing reality.

Then of course real life hits. The car needs work. You’re having a panic attack over a sore tooth. A co-worker has suddenly quit and you get their work. All of American politics since 2016. The above lovely words are just words when stress kicks in – unless you put them into practices.

Yet at the same time, that idea of the Tao sits there. When we meditate or engage in internal alchemy or psychological investigation, there’s something there. We work to develop and refine ourselves, the walls come down just enough we’re there with something greater.

In my readings and meditations – and coping with stress – I found a concept that helps me better connect with the world, with the Tao, that I call The Dialog.

When speculating on a stressful situation, something stuck in my mind – that the situation was really a dialog. Yes, there were potential concerns, but those concerns prompted adjustment. In fact the concerns led to the very changes that would mitigate the concerns. It wasn’t a conflict, it was a harmony, like a discussion among people.

The more I thought about this I saw how much of life was a dialog, a constant interplay of information, a conversation. Driving a car. Adjusting your diet. Moderating difficult work situations. Talking people down – or talking people up. We’re always navigating.

Even we ourselves are a dialog. This idea adapts to that idea. This experience leads to new discoveries and adjustments. We’re not who we once were – because we’re a conversation. That conversation might be an annoying passive aggressive argument, but we can change the kind of conversation.

Thinking of life, even in stressful situations, as a dialog helped me feel more connected to life – and more alive. I was always in a dialog with life, with my life, with my environment. I was always adapting, always changing, never solid, just alive.

This also helped me understand the ever-elusive Tao of Taoism better. You can’t grasp it you, you can’t point at it, you can’t speak of it. But when you realize life is an ever-swirling dialog you’re a bit closer to it because you’re not trying to define, you’re being.

Life whirls and circles, alters and changes. You can’t settle on any one point or place and say “this is it” – and the concept of The Dialog helps you not settle down or try to claim one part of the world as permanent.

I’ve taken to asking myself each day how I’ve used this concept of The Dialog and it’s been extremely helpful. It’s a nice way to review how I use a useful idea – or when I could have.

So next time you feel off, feel a little “too solid,” feel a little conflicted, think of how you’re in a Dialog. You’re learning and reacting, the world changes and react, and if you’re open, you can navigate to places you want to go (even if you may not know you want to). You might not just feel better, but you may feel a little more connected to everything.

–Xenofact

Sexual Metaphors Across The Centuries

by

As a person interested in Taoism, it doesn’t take much to run into some practices and statements of a rather sexual nature. Sometimes it’s tame metaphors. Sometimes it’s hanging weights from your genitals to straighten your spine. Sometimes it’s someone writing a passive-aggressive dis about another Taoist being a huge pervert. Taoism’s diverse history has everything, including a lot of sex stuff.

One thing that I had noticed in my readings over the years was talk about “intimate union” in meditative practices – and ones that are clearly not sexual. Often it’s about joining forces, the various elements of one’s being together, sense and essence, spirit and energy, etc. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s elaborate.

(And yes, these sexual-but-not-sexual metaphors have clearly been taken as sexual in history. Taoism has also used mercury as a metaphor and it didn’t stop people from poisoning themselves.)

These sexual metaphors had often passed me by. Yes, perhaps I am “joining sense and essence” in an intimate embrace like a couple or something, but that’s just a metaphor, right? Perhaps the Metal Man takes his rightful place with his spouse. Sexual metaphors I just kind of passed by, probably because our own culture uses them.

But in time, I began to see how useful such metaphors were.

In my meditations, the “unity” of forces is a large part of the practice Breath meditation has mind resting on an ever-refining breath in partnership. My energy work is about mind resting on energy as it flows through the body. But such unities can easily be broken as any meditator knows – sometimes the mind doesn’t rest on breath (or energy) but rests on itself resting on breath (or energy). You know how it is when you’re doing the thing but also sort of knowing you’re doing the thing and it just falls apart.

I came to realize that meditating, the mind rests on something – for example, a slow and even breath. The mind sets its intent to be there with the breath, the breath ever slow and evening, and that’s its only priority. In many ways it surrenders itself completely to the breath by being there with it while the breath is there just being itself.

Then I got all those sexual metaphors because that’s perfect.

Intimate metaphors are a great metaphor for meditation practices. They capture the closeness, the surrender, the passion of connection. I’d written them off as trite and simplistic, but they were the opposite – the use of sexual or romantic metaphor fit meditation very well. I got it.

Meditation is an intimacy – as are other such practices. Sometimes you need to go to something visceral – like sex and romance – to communicate such things. Perhaps it has to be carefully phrased or used, perhaps people will get it wrong, but it fits.

I also think this is a good reminder that when reading metaphors and symbolism to remember they are oft written by people who are not you in times that are not your own. Our reactions to them are not the ones that the writers of the past expected or even considered. You have to learn to listen across the centuries.

–Xenofact

Head Full of Ghosts

by

If you’ve done any form of meditation or therapy you know about those complexes in your mind. The fears, the obsessions, the habits that take over so much of our life, probably more than we want to admit.

It’s like having a head full of ghosts.

These aren’t the cool ghosts either. There’s no dramatic revelations of the past or lineage. They aren’t some vital spirits directing us to a better life after three disparate visions. None of these ghosts is delivering useful advice. Not a single one resembles Patrick Swayze.

Honestly, these ghosts in our head, these habits and neuroses, are boring and pathetic.

They’re mechanical and repetitive. They run on tracks burrowed into our mind, clockwork-clicking along whatever path set out by our past experiences. They are powerful, they are annoying, but they’re also not that interesting or unique. The reruns of the soul.

They’re often quite pathetic. A bad experience here, a grudge there, something we didn’t acknowledge in the past. Even the horrible ones are sad, the results of our bad choices or the cruelty of others. There’s something invalid about them, and we fear, about ourselves.

They’re damaging. They hurt us, obsess us, misdirect us, but not in any cool way. They’re often stupidly self-destructive – of ourselves and even themselves. They negate themselves yet always resurrect.

But worse of all these Ghosts, these complexes and obsessions of the past are so empty.

There’s nothing to them. No acknowledgement of reality, even when reality triggers them. They don’t grow. They aren’t relevant even if perhaps they once had reason to exist. When we acknowledge them, their shallowness is stunning. Here we are, people, and we have to share our head with these phantoms.

It’s humiliating. These mechanical, harmful, phantasms drive so much of our life and don’t deserve to. I once read someone discussing the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and decided to translate what is usually interpreted as craving as humiliation, and I get that.

I find looking at this emptiness, this voidness of our complexes helps me deal with them. When you see their shallowness and pointlessness, you can overcome them. Not necessarily by great exertion or cultivation (though it may help) but by just seeing through them and deciding to move on.

They seem to shrink when you do that. Probably because your attention and ignorance was the only thing keeping them going.

–Xenofact