This past weekend I was happily able to attend a two day retreat given by Jigme Tromge Rinpoche. The retreat contained a series of meditations and contemplations based on an 18th century Tibetan text by Drimed Khakyod.  As the flyer advertising the retreat explains:

Broadly described as instruction on shamatha (‘calm abiding’ meditation), these practices have considerable range and profundity. Each technique, clearly and succinctly explained, focuses on a different aspect of practice – for example, one-pointed concentration, compassion, understanding of relative and absolute reality and so forth – and as we progress through the teachings, our foundation is strengthened and we learn which tools to apply to counteract specific pitfalls.

This was my first experience with this particular form of meditation. I found it profound and ritualized. The teachings were specific and detailed. I was surprised how different the methods involved in this retreat were from methods I’ve experienced before; there were many visualizations and exact techniques. However, I left the retreat feeling as if this was essentially touching on the same truths that other methods touch on. The forms may be different, but inherent reality isn’t.

I shall leave you with the Red Tara Dedication Prayer

Dedication

Throughout my many lives and until this moment, whatever virtue I have accomplished including the merit generated by this practice, and all that I will ever obtain, this I offer for the welfare of all sentient beings. May sickness, war, famine and suffereing be decreased, for every being while their wisdom and compassion increase in this and every future life. May I cleraly perceive all experiences to be as insubstantial as the dream fabric of the night and instantly awaken to perceive the pure wisdom display in the arising of every phenomenon. May I quickly attain enlightenment in order to work ceaselessly for the liberation of all sentient beings.

Prayer of Aspiration

Buddhas and bodhisattvas altogether:
whatever kind of motivation you have,
whatever kind of beneficial action,
whatever kind of wishing prayers,
whatever kind of omniscience,
whatever kind of life accomplishment,
whatever kind of benevolent power and
whatever kind of immense wisdom you have,
then similarly I, who have come in the same way to benefit beings,
pray to attain these qualities

The Auspicious Wish

At this very moment, for the peoples and the nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine, war and suffering be heard. Rather may their moral conduct, merit, wealth and proseperity increase, and may supreme good fortune and well-being always arise for them.

We often talk about meditation here at Considering the Universe, but what about other methods that connect us with our inner selves? My dad just sent me this documentary about using arousal or spontaneous movement as another means for spiritual transformation.

The complement to relaxation is arousal, or the arousal response. And heightened arousal – whether through wild movement, spontaneous jumping, or body shaking – is a valuable, healing and transformative practice

I encourage you to check out the 10 minute documentary here about using arousal and ancient shamanic techniques to transform your self.

So cold, so icy that one burns one’s fingers on him! Every hand is startled when touching him. And for that very reason some think he glows.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Jarrod Toombs, a friend of Emily and I just passed away. He was 25.

Jarrod introduced me to Modest Mouse and The Fiery Furnaces. I’ve always thought of him when I hear these bands. But I most often think of Jarrod when I am reading or talking about Nietzsche.

Jarrod loved all things Nietzsche. In his honor I have recreated part of an introduction to Nietzsche I previously wrote.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality-that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Nietzsche was a late 19th century German philosopher. His writings are basically a challenge to traditional morality and Christianity. He affirmed life and argued against waiting for life affirming realities until after death. He advocated questioning of all doctrines that drain life energies.

What destroys more quickly than to work, to think, to feel without inner necessity, without a deep personal choice, without joy? As an automaton of “duty”?

It is virtually a recipe for decadence, even for idiocy.

He can be considered one of the first existentialist philosophers. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth, raise cause problems when attempting to interpret him. There is much scholarly speculation about his work. Nietzsche’s later writings are comprehensive and coherent expressions of his philosophy.

Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows.

My favorite story of Nietzsche, which Jarrod once told to me in the remote village in southwestern Georgia where he lived, was of the moment Nietzsche went insane. After distinguishing himself as a scholar and quickly becoming a professor, he spent ten years in his late thirties wandering around Europe with no real home. During his wanderings he found himself in Turin and witnessed a horse being whipped. He ran to the horse and threw his arms around the horse’s neck and collapsed. He never returned to sanity. There are many speculations about what happened; he had syphilis, he had a brain tumor, he reached a higher state of consciousness. My personal favorite is postulated by Colin Wilson in The Mind Parasites, Nietzsche was investigating his inner mind to such a degree the mind parasites feared he would learn of their existence so they drove him insane.

Incresucnt animi, virescit volnere virtus. The spirit grows, strength is restored by wounding.

Jarrod, we will miss you. R.I.P.

:: Jarrod, thanks for sitting next to me on hub day. Thanks for the talks about Nietzsche. Thanks for appreciating my art. Thanks for bonding with me over Mattafix. Thanks for keeping him company. Even though he would never admit it, I know it helped.  - Emily ::

We’ll all float on alright. 

So yesterday I attended an all day training at the Zen Hospice Center in San Francisco. The training introduced me to different ways of providing practical, emotional and spiritual support to people who need care. We learned about ways to be supportive of the person in need and about our own relationship to caring, suffering and service. It was an awesome training, and our teacher, Jennifer Block, was inspiring and unbelievably funny.

We were also introduced to the 5 precepts. The precepts were created by Frank Ostaseki, the founding director of Zen Hospice. They are designed as “companions on the journey of accompanying the dying.”  But they can also be helpful in our daily life. As Frank writes, “I think of these as five bottomless practices that can be continually explored and deepened. They are not linear and have no value as theories or concepts. To be understood and realized, they have to be lived into and communicated through action.”

Welcome Everything. Push Away Nothing: We don’t have to like what’s happening. We don’t have “to approve or dissaprove. It’s our task to trust, to listen, and to pay careful attention to the changing experience.”  Learn to cultivate “fearless receptivity.” We don’t know what is going to happen or how things will turn out.

Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience: This precept is encouraging us to be real, authentic people. We don’t have to be the expert or the one with all the answers. “In the process of healing others and ourselves we open to both our joy and fear. In the service of this healing we draw on our strength and helplessness, our wounds and passion to discover a meeting place with the other. Professional warmth doesn’t heal. It is not our expertise but the exploration of our own suffering that enables us to be of real assistance. That’s what allows us to touch another human being’s pain with compassion instead of with fear and pity. We have to invite it all in.”

Don’t wait: “Patience is different than waiting. When we wait, we are full of expectations. When we’re waiting, we miss what this moment has to offer. Worrying or strategizing about what the future holds for us, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. Don’t wait.”

Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things: This means learning to look for a place of rest right in the middle of chaos– not something that happens after all of our errands and chores have been completed. We can experience this type of rest when we bring, “our full attention, without distraction, to this moment, to this activity. This place of rest is always available. We need only turn toward it.”

Cultivate Don’t-Know Mind: Also known as “beginner’s mind” this describes a mind that is open and receptive– not one that is limited by agendas, roles and expectations.  As Frank writes, “We realized that ‘not knowing is most intimate.’ Understanding this we stay very close to the experience allowing the situation itself to inform our actions. We listen carefully to our own inner voice, sensing our urges, trusting our intuition. We learn to look with fresh eyes.”

Latsirk Eriam got me started on numerology recently. We thought it was quite interesting and intriguing. Both Emily and I found it to be surprisingly accurate.

Here are two recommended sites:

Decoz

12 house 

Here at ConsideringtheUniverse, we like to make sure we include practical advice or concrete examples to explain our ideas. We don’t want to get lost in lofty ideals, complicated theories or fantasy land (and we don’t want our readers to either). I have the tendency towards this much more than the ever practical/tactical Emily. I like to blame this penchant on my parents, who -despite being extremely interesting, creative, rather non- traditional and dare I say even almost perhaps maybe perfect (just like all parents of course!) — more than probably passed on this tendency to me.

Anyway all of this to say that this post shall attempt to give a brief outline of some of my father’s work on Sensemaking (especially now that it has become a bit more practical).

I also wish to add a disclaimer (or a bit of history): Since my youth– I have dreaded anyone asking my dad what he does. He never had some simple answer like, “I am a businessman” or “I am a teacher” or even the partially-true “I am a sign language interpreter” (his part time job and my insistent response -much to his chagrin- to the question). Instead, he always endeavored to provide the most truthful response to the question that he could– which invariably required what could be described as “a long-winded response.” His response usually evoked some eye rolling or audible groaning on my part. However now (in the infinite wisdom of my mid twenties) I shall in some small way attempt to rectify my sullen teenage reactions by telling the world about what my dad REALLY does.

Here’s the short version: He learned about, researched and studied Sensemaking (a type of communications theory). He created an interview methadology using Sensemaking framework. He then created a company that uses the interview methodology. He also is a sign language interpreter.

What is Sensemaking?

According to Gary Klein: It is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively”. That’s not so helpful. Wikipedia adds:

• Forming an awareness of key elements relevant to the situation. This entails knowing the who, what, when and where.

• Forming an understanding of what it all means in some bounded context, based upon past experiences, training, education and cognitive capabilities. This entails:
  • Forming hypotheses and making inferences, i.e. generalizations (predictions or anticipations) about future events.
  • Forming a sense of the implications for different courses of action.
• Making decisions by:
  • Generating alternative response actions to control the situation.
  • Identifying the objectives, constraints, and factors that influence the feasibility and desirability of each alternative.
  • Conducting an assessment of these alternatives.

Ok. So sensemaking is basically making sense of a situation.

What is the interview methodology and why is it awesome (or creepy)?

The interview methodology uses the conceptual framework of sensemaking– which just basically says that people are constantly consciously and unconsciously “making sense” of their environment (taking in input, organizing it, deciding on actions). The interview technique, using this framework, the elicits tacit knowledge, unconscious “sensemaking,” thought patterns, and/or “deep smarts” from its inteviewees. Basically the interview can reveal not only what is going on in your conscious mind but also some parts of your semiconscious and unconscious mind as well.

One guy who was interviewed using the techniques said, “They’re fantastic at coming up with what your experience was, then digging deeper to things you might not remember… Their process kind of unveils it all, like maybe discussing your dreams or something.”

I have been interviewed using the technique. It’s not something I particularly like doing with my dad- it works far too well and he learns way too much.

Sagis Corp - The Company and what they do.

So the company, Sagis Corp, was recently featured in the Star Tribune: here. Sagis Corp uses the interview technique, and their software, called SagisSense to preserve the experience and deep smarts of top level executives who are leaving or retiring.

Companies can use this deeper information to reduce training costs, minimize disruption from a departing employee, create repeatable and efficient processes, and improve sales success. The end result is that Sāgis can drastically increase your company’s performance by giving you the information needed to make better decisions. (Hmm, if that paragraph sounds markety, it’s cause I stole it from one of their marketing fliers).

From the Star Tribune: Frank Berdan spent more than three decades at a Fortune 500 company but after retirement had no way to pass on the knowledge he had gained to help train a successor…The depth of what Sagis was able to uncover about what Berdan did and why he did it was astonishing, Berdan said. “It’s a structured interview process, facilitated by some software that’s pretty clever,” Berdan said. “At the end of the process, the keys to my success were a lot more apparent. It was enlightening.”

Personally I am highly relieved my dad is using this technique on executives now and no longer on me. Can you imagine delving deeply into your unconscious thought processes every time you ate too many cookies and spoiled your dinner? Teehee, just kidding Dad.

So that’s the short answer to, “What does your dad do?”

What about my mom you wonder? Whole other ball of wax…

“The Fates lead those who will; those who won’t, they drag.”

Yesterday I spent some time with an old friend who just got back from an 11 day meditation retreat in Thailand. She learned about the Three Poisons and was explaining them to me. I found the metaphors of the three poisons an effective way to look at my behavior.

The three poisons are:

Greed (represented by the rooster)

Anger or Hatred (represented by the snake)

Ignorance or Delusion (represented by the pig)

These three concepts are thought of as the roots of unwholesome karma.

“In Buddhist teachings, greed, hatred, and delusion are known, for good reason, as the three poisons, the three unwholesome roots, and the three fires. These metaphors suggest how dangerous afflictive thoughts and emotions can be if they are not understood and transformed… The poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion are a byproduct of ignorance—ignorance of our true nature, the awakened heart of wisdom and compassion. Arising out of our ignorance, these poisonous states of mind then motivate nonvirtuous and unskillful thoughts, speech, and actions, which cause all manner of suffering and unhappiness for ourselves and others.” Naljor Dharma Service

1. Greed: Refers to selfishness, misplaced desire, attachment, and grasping for happiness and satisfaction outside of yourself. Greed is a burning desire, an unquenchable thirst, craving, and lust; you want the objects of our desire to provide you with lasting satisfaction in order to feel fulfilled, whole, and complete. The poison of greed creates an inner hunger so that you are always striving towards an unattainable goal. You mistakenly believe happiness is dependent upon that goal, but once you attain it, you get no lasting satisfaction.
2. Anger or Hatred: Refers to aversion and repulsion toward unpleasant people, circumstances, and even toward your own uncomfortable feelings. With aversion, you habitually resist, deny, and avoid unpleasant feelings, circumstances, and people you do not like. You want everything to be pleasant, comfortable, and satisfying all the time. This behavior simply reinforces the perception of duality and separation. Hatred or anger thrusts you into a vicious cycle of always finding conflict and enemies everywhere around you. You can also create conflict within yourself when you have an aversion to your own uncomfortable feelings. With hatred and aversion, you deny, resist, and push away your own inner feelings of fear, hurt, loneliness, and so forth, treating these feelings like an internal enemy.
3. Ignorance or Delusion: Refers to dullness, bewilderment, and misperception; your wrong views of reality.Delusion is the misperception of the way the world works; your inability to understand the nature of things exactly as they are, free of perceptual distortions. Influenced by delusion, you are not in harmony with yourself, others, or with life; you are not living in accordance with Dharma. Affected by the poison of delusion, which arises from ignorance of your true nature, you do not understand the interdependent and impermanent nature of life. Thus, you are constantly looking outside of ourselves for happiness, satisfaction, and solutions to our problems. This outward searching creates even more frustration, anger, and delusion. Naljor Dharma Service

It is generally understood that each of us has a tendency to practice one of the poisons more often than the others. Spend a minute to contemplate which of the poisions you have a tendency towards. It was relatively clear to me that I have a tendency towards anger or hatred. I have a rather inward directed version of this particular poison. I aver my uncomfortable feelings and direct my discontent inwards.

There are specific practices that are geared towards combating each of these poisons.

The practice to overcome greed: Learn to practice selflessness, generosity and detachment. If you are strongly experiencing the greed poison, contemplate the impermanence of the object you desire. Practice charitable giving; give your time and material possessions. You can practice giving away those things you would most like to hold onto. You can also practice acts of selfless service and charity, offering care and assistance to others in any way you can, free of all desire for recognition or compensation. The problems associated with greed and attachment only arise when you mistakenly believe and act as if the source of our happiness is outside of yourself.
The practice to overcome anger: Learn to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. Here you learn to openly embrace the entire spectrum of your experiences without hatred or aversion. Practice meeting unpleasant both experiences in the outer world with patience, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion and your own unpleasant feelings in the same way. Your feelings of loneliness, hurt, doubt, fear, insecurity, inadequacy, depression all require your openness and loving-kindness. Soften your defenses, open your heart, and let go of hatred, aversion, and denial.
Practice to overcome ignorance: Cultivate wisdom, insight, and right understanding. Learning to experience reality exactly as it is, without the distortions of your self-centered desires, fears, and expectations, you free yourself from delusion. Deeply sensing and acting in harmony with the ever-changing nature of this world—realizing that all living beings are inseparably related and that lasting happiness does not come from anything external—you free yourself from delusion. As you develop a clear understanding that positive, wholesome actions that bring happiness and the negative, unwholesome actions that bring suffering, you cultivate the wisdom that counteracts delusion and ignorance.

I have been practicing loving-kindness regularly and am absolutely amazed at how well it works for me. I encourage you to contemplate the three poisons to see what insights you can personally glean from them.

Much of what I wrote was paraphrased from Naljor Dharma Service

In early December I went on a five day mindfulness- meditation retreat. It was a silent retreat at an idyllic retreat center. Because I was far way from from the noise and bustle of everyday life, I was able to relax deeply, confront anxiety and fear and reach some profound levels of awareness, bliss and peace. While I still plan to blog about this retreat, I don’t think it’s an experience that many people can relate to. “It’s great you got to sit on a cushion for 14 hours a day, I won’t be doing that any time soon,” is a common reaction. However, my recent trip from New Hampshire back home to San Francisco is just the kind of hassle-y nightmarish day we’ve all had and a perfect example of how to use mindfulness in your everyday life.

The day started off badly, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Then I had complications getting to the airport (that New Hampshire primary traffic really caused a back-up) and car sickness from all the windy roads and stop-and-go movement. Reeeealy late, I ran into the airport, filled with anxiety. Well my flight was three hours delayed (when are flights to O’Hare not delayed?) and I certainly would miss my connection. Luckily I got booked through Dulles and on to SF. I was scheduled to get back home at midnight (only an hour and half later than expected). Not surprisingly the six hour Dulles to SF flight was also delayed (they didn’t seem to have a reason). We finally boarded, but all was not well. Little “Caroline” sitting next to me was not amused with the delays. She started screeching, not in that baby-ish scared/sad way, but in the “I’m hella pissed and am going to shriek until my vocal cords are destroyed” way. It was loud. She has a promising career in the extreme metal scene. She also has stamina. I had several options at this point:

1. Try to ignore it and focus intensely on something else (which includes ignoring the frustration that accompanies the sound)
2. Feel frustrated, annoyed and angry. Feel (with the surging emotions, coursing through the body) why this has not been a good day and how airplanes are horrible.
3. Focus on thinking, try to forget about the negative feelings that accompany the sound. Remember why babies are horrible. Wonder why people have them. Go on a thought-tirade
4. Pay attention to the noise.

Option four is what I eventually chose and is simply another way of saying “practice mindfulness of sound.” The way this works is:

1. Stop what you are doing
2. Notice the sound.
3. Be interested in the sound
4. Listen fully to the sound.
5. Notice all the intricacies of the sound

After you have spent some time with the sound, then move on to noticing what reactions the sound is creating in you. Do you feel annoyed? Angry? Upset? Are you creating stories around the sound? Have your thoughts spun in a million directions? Perhaps you’ve decided that Caroline has a bad mother. The mother doesn’t know what she is doing. Maybe you have condemned her for bringing a child on board at all. (She should have known better!). Maybe you’re now thinking about your own parents and their foibles. Try to locate a spot or spots in your body where you feel the reaction to the sound. Are you clenching your jaw? Do you feel an overall tightness? Keep returning to the sound itself when you feel yourself distracted or overwhelmed. Caroline’s screeching is your home base (like the breath in meditation). Keep returning to that sound and noticing your reactions.

This worked quite well for me and the flight itself turned out to be fine. I was amazed at how much my annoyance at Caroline diminished when I practiced mindfulness of sound. However, you might not have that experience when practicing mindfulness of sound. It could happen where you actually feel more or worse when you pay attention– but this is part of the practice. What ever you pay attention to could feel stronger, weaker or stay the same. Try not to be attached to the outcome, but merely interested in what’s happening.

Just as a note, I didn’t merely get to go home after this… When I tried to get a shuttle home, a guy decided he didn’t like how the driver was handling his luggage and called the cops. Dealing with three cop cars and a lot of yelling took a while. Then I got stuck on a different shuttle and the folks didn’t know which hotel they were going to. So we drove all the way to San Francisco and then had to drive all the way back to the airport until we finally found their hotel. It was late, could even be called morning, when I crawled into bed. So, apologies if this post is a bit rambly.

Despite that Considering The Universe blog has had a marked lack of recent activity, it doesn’t follow that it’s creators have stopped “considering” recently– in fact we’ve done quite a lot of considering and are psyched to start blogging about it all.

During the holidays I had the pleasure of attending an Anthroposophy meeting where we practiced Goethean Conversation.

Anthroposophy is a spiritual philosophy (to quote Wikepedia) that is based on the writings and teachings of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner is a philosopher and spiritualist who describes an objective and intellectually knowable spirit realm. He wrote and taught methods (like inner cultivation and meditation) which allow a student to directly access and experience this spiritual world. We’re quite interested in Steiner here at CtU and recommend his teachings.

At the meeting I met several people who regularly interact in this realm and “see” spiritual beings and realms. While I didn’t get a chance to ask them much about their experiences, I did talk briefly to one woman. She said she found her connection to this higher realm quite beneficial but that her purpose in life was to learn other lessons, lessons unrrelated to her gift of spiritual “seeing.”

During the meeting we followed a procedure for speaking based on the article, The Art of Goethean Conversation, we had all read about the importance of ritualized speech.

In her article, Marjorie Spock (who is Dr. Spock’s sister) writes about the purpose of ritualized speech:

[Goethean conversation's purpose] is to call forth a fullness of spiritual life, not to stage displays of intellectual fireworks…Instead, they strive to enter the sunward realm of living thoughts where a thinker uses all of himself as a tool of knowledge, where, in the manner of his thinking, he takes part as a creative spirit in the ongoing process of the cosmos…

Lesser types of interchange never do this: they remain mere mentalizing, speculation, argument, a recounting of experience, an offering of opinion, a reporting. At their worst, a mindless associative rambling…While most of these lesser forms of exchange can be made to serve useful purposes, the fact that they remain on this side of the threshold condemns them to spiritual barrenness.

 

She describes how speech brings us closer to spiritual realms:

True conversations have another power. As the participants strive to enter the world of living thoughts together, each attunes his intuitive perception to the theme. He does so in the special atmosphere engendered by approaching the threshold of the spiritual world, a mood of supernatural attentive listening, of the most receptive openness to the life of thought into which he and his companions are now entering.

 

She goes on to describe more in depth reasons for why and how this use of speech is so powerful. While we had some success using ritualized speech during the Anthroposophy meeting and it certainly was an intriguing exercise, I don’t know that it “worked” as meaningfully as Majorie or Goethe envisioned during this particular meeting. However, the concepts around speech that Majorie touches on are particularly relevant and important and I have had experiences where ritualized speech creates a powerful atmosphere.

I could write many essays about the importance of speech, but for now briefly consider the following. “Right Speech” is regarded as the hardest part of the Buddhist Eight fold path, in fact the Buddha was said to have spent most of his past lives working on “Right Speech.” Just think about what you spend most of your waking hours doing, if not thinking. Probably speaking, or writing. Even when we are listening, we are evaluating what we hear and crafting our responses. Even thoughts can often be viewed as part of speech. I wrote an article about the importance of silence here, that just briefly describes an important spiritual practice found in almost all world religions. It makes sense to me then, that ritualized speech or using speech in a particular manner could powerfully influence our relationship to the spiritual world. Prayer, religious chants, benedictions, incantations and even singing are all methods of the major religions that use speech to bring us closer to God.

Even if we didn’t create a perfectly compelling spiritual atmosphere using the Goethean Converstation format during the Anthroposophy meeting, we did use speech in a different (a more sacred) manner. This practice became a powerful example to illustrate how often we use speech mindlessly, without noticing the power it actually has.