Body Is The Tasty Testing Ground Proof Pt 6 — I Bow to A Bypass Arrow
Body Is The Tasty Testing Ground Proof Pt 6 — I Bow to A Bypass Arrow
It Ends in An Egoistic Rabbit Hole and Ganesha's Encounter with Lazy Gout
Okay, Where’s The Gout?
Here I begin by expressing my gratitude for the help of courageous true seeker Tereza Coraggio, who helped to deepen my exploration of my very recent discovery that my physical addictive practices are evidence of my spiritual by-passing journey. Specifically her comments to my last essay helped me look inwardly and more deeply into my own shadows around this. Doing that included my consultation with the I Ching — an experience with which I love to engage.
Continued from:
More Premature Elations and Raw Gout Subtleties
Thus this essay (etymology ‘test on the balance’ that was coined by essayist Michel de Montaigne, a favourite and inspirational writer of mine) begins with a u-turn. A sort-of (de)tour from my original thought-beginning which had been focused on the inevitable, even lazy, return of gout.
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I temporarily by-pass my somatic gout-tales to engage deeply the ethereal and mindful challenge of words and definitions. And even though some part of me knew enough to know that I didn’t know enough to define anything — especially a worded-concept — yet I was contented enough by my own delusion to think that my definition of ‘spiritual by-passing’ would be sufficient. As I hinted at when I boldly star-trekked where only fools would tread by using words to create that definition, I have extrapolated from Coraggio’s comment to consider, in a way, the challenge of worded-knowing and especially of knowing one’s lack of knowing, and the bounds of worded knowledge. It may be — although I’m not convinced — that in the beginning was the word. Yet that by-passes the questions: where did that word itself begin and when/where will it end, if it is to end?
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A Return to Fractals and Chaos? Once Again, Yet Again, the Same Idea with a Word of Differences!
Is it possible for those delimiting ‘bounds of worded knowledge’ to be equivalent to a mathematically chaotic system? (Chaos video here.) A chaotic system is one that has patterns that are recognisable within it and that are at the same time mathematically unpredictable. (Chomsky’s language-work examines this ‘problem’ of the predictable unpredictability of language and its inexplicable acquisition via a black box analogy.) A part of my question expresses my wonder (two meanings) if its unknowingness is bounded by fractalated/liminal edges of what is known and that within those bounds are ordered and yet unpredictable sets of words, phrases, ideas and truths. Or is everything unknown and language itself a bypass we use to pretend that there are pockets of bounded meaning? That might be a version of a soulless post-modern deconstructionism that seems without grounded validity whose viability applies only to those who have chosen not to touch or feel the experience of being somatically alive. Or, if some kind of unworded and unlimited synchronicity-giving life-force energy does exist outside of the word, then words as a chaotic system might be somewhat akin to Jung’s analogy that consciousness is little more than a wine bottle cork riding the waves of the oceans of the unconscious. (Will that be red or white?)
Or is it a form of the hierosgamos of the two? (Video here.)
I suspect, with some hesitation, that that is what it is. And that would bring it close to Jung’s observations of the various ways that the unconscious penetrates and/or thwarts consciousness via patterned and unpredictable dreams, synchronicities, and physical and/or psychological behaviours and/or symptoms — with the power to initiate change. (See Jung’s Symbols of Transformation: CW#5.) To me this parallels very well the ‘problem’ of worded knowledge: both have patterns that are recognisable and that are at the same time unpredictable to specifics beyond a very narrow range. And both are influenced by seepage from the unconscious through the liminal/fractalated edges into that within which resides our ideas as a form of the known or the knowable, ie of that which we are conscious, or perhaps even consciousness itself. (For Jung’s excellent discussion on the difference between a sign and symbol see his essay in the book Man and His Symbols, edited by Jung with various contributors.)
What? Am I Writing That Words are Symbols, and not Signs, and Hence Inherently Unpredictable?
Yes. This leads me to understand that words and their perceivable, not necessarily knowable, patterns, are within certain bounds and at the same time are inherently unpredictable. To continue the analogy words are something very much akin to the ordered bounds of floating corkdom because our words are constantly being jostled, twisted and upended chaotically on the surface of that which is boundless and unknowable. This is an insurmountable bane to rhetoricians and the various language-police, as evidenced by their having fruitlessly created boundless tomes to nail language to the cross across literate time. (For example, Edward de Vere, aka Shakespeare, openly and explicitly mocks the language police of his day in his play Love’s Labour’s Lost. I openly and explicitly mock the tome Being and Time that spends almost 600 pages failing to constrict the meaning of just two words.)
Beyond that, concomitantly, the cork-bounded chaos of words is being trespassed by those pesky unconscious ‘watery’ elements that know no bounds and, without ostensible mind-full purpose, intention or aim, effortlessly penetrate the boundaries of our truths in ways that often keep us anxiously and fitfully asleep, both day and night with or without closed eyes. And those effortless ingresses shift us uncomfortably while putting holes in our wordy pea green truth boats that ensure that we cannot quite keep ourselves afloat with the possibility that our existence is resting on an unstable cork island in a giant wordless-dream. Note: it is not insignificant that the convid oligarchs are passing language police laws to control the narrative. And that they will fail, as have all other language police forces before them, because words are not dead signs subject to transhumanistic algorithms. They are alive and effortlessly mock all efforts to restrict them.
And Despite That, We Are Able To Communicate, To A Significant And Powerful Extent! Isn’t That Amazing?
In recent essays Coraggio has been effectively arguing that the common understanding of some of the key Old and New Testament elements of the Bible are backwards to what those stories may actually mean. This is, for me, a humorously wonderful confirmation of my argument above! And, in that line something that might be fun to pursue in the future is to look at the story of Babel. Is its understood message also backwards? Perhaps Babel is a cautionary tale pointing to the inability of words, at the end of the day, to be even able to convey the experience of understanding which is outside the fractalated bounds of worded meaning.
Montaigne thought that too much knowledge could prove a burden, so he preferred to exert his own ‘natural judgment’ to displaying his erudition (on Michel de Montaigne from Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).
And so, with the opportunity and danger of my own unseeable and shadowy undogmatic ’natural judgment’, here goes nothing solid.
In her comment to my last essay Coraggio expressed some offence or, perhaps, perverse delight at my having included the Michael Stone audio transcription I did because she stated, unequivocally, that it ‘… confirms my belief that he's an egotistic asshole’. And, by inference, she is affirming that I am one too for liking him and, maybe, for having had the nerve or gall-cajones to define spiritual by-passing in such a manner as to infer that that definition of mine is the reality of experience for all humanity. After all, who am I to make such a global claim? Albeit it has been firmly and frequently stated that, unlike the infantile genderish language policers who attack everyone and their words they childishly don’t like, I am free to make any claim I want however disagreeable, without fear of improper rhetorical censure or gaslighting. Maybe that place of verbal safety mooted itself with having become a normie generaliser? And I was challenged to prove Stone (and me?) to be not an ‘asshole’. I think that that is a form of rhetorical device that is used to derail an argument — ‘argument’ in the ‘old’ definition of equanimously exchanging contradictory ideas. Although I’m not a rhetorician, to be sure. And what about that ad hominem outburst?
I’m laughing at this because I’m kind of in this reality at this time of my existence speculating about what is making reality work — wording my experience of this existence as a refugee in the time of convid. I grounded my definition of ‘spiritual by-pass’ as much as I could with my experiences in bodily life to provide some earth-weight to keep ‘spiritual’ speculations from ’New Age’ wordy-woo-woo. And as a gesture towards slowing the natural tendency for future mind-centric babel-worders to redefine words as fit for their time, place, experience and ostensible purposes be they the ‘good’ ones of simplifying veracity and clarification or the ‘bad’ ones of propagandised mendacity and confusion. And also to provide a point of clear discussion and equanimous argument. And so I’m laughing because having been gently nudged by TC into creating a definition, my having done so seems to have confirmed my antisocial hubristic arrogance.
And at the same time, even as I was creating such a definition, I saw clearly I was stepping into the Taoist double-bind because definitions by definition, perhaps, will go madly off in all directions and miss the mark. For example: how did ‘cleave,’ a perfectly good word, within itself come to mean the opposite of itself and effectively render its use useless? Scylla and Charybdis of my own making, of course, coloured nicely by Lao-Tsu’s observation that the definition that can be defined is not the true definition (my paraphrase).
The true Tao escapes Definition, Likewise, Tao is unburdened by Definitions. Heaven and Earth originated unburdened by Definitions, However, Definitions serve well to create All Definable Things. Unburdened by desire, the essence of Tao unfolds. With desire, its manifestations alone appear. The same source serves both essence and manifestation. While viewed differently, both are characterised by deep mystery. Deep mystery - wondrous mystery - A gateway to the very essence of existence. — Ch 1 The Tao Te Ching Translated by Alan B. Taplow, 1982 (my emphasis and slight adaptation).
Another translation:
Words and names are not the way They can’t define the absolute It’s better that you look within Hold your tongue and just be mute. — from Ch 1 of The Tao Te Ching Translated by Jim Clatfelter
LoL! As you can see, I am not one who has been able to remain mute this time! And why have I begun by ignoring that sage’s advice with this essay to explore words, and with outing myself as a mutedly proclaimed asshole, instead of jumping into the tangible reality of yet another re-appearance of gout as I had originally intended? I’m not sure to be honest. I’ll let that question rest for a while and see what comes up going forward in the writing. [Short pause and music break: Gowan — You’re a Strange Animal.]
Oh! Well, in part it seems to be because the humour that I see in the way Stone presented himself may have come to be the Tao of how he was castigated as ‘an egotistic asshole’. I thought how he put his point was actually funny, although my having heard the audio may be deluding me as to the impact of the written word. When I re-read it, though, the list of other things body-denial would give us suggests that he was poking fun at basic human spiritual foibles: ‘… you suddenly become one with everything; you can be a vegan forever; and menopause ends; and migraine headaches end…’. Surely that is a light approach to some silliness often found in we word-fixated stumbling and suffering two-legged-walking-thinkers? Especially when we are looking to ease our life by denying the reality of this existence-moment and/or deferring responsibility for it by praying to or blaming others or gods or heroes for its deplorable state or for its future edenic amelioration in some New Age tomorrow.
And the second part of my laughter is that last year I came to fundamentally disagree with Stone’s, and other psychologists’, claim for the absolute need for the ego. (I have a few other ideas that contradict or question Stone, too.) And that is not to deny either the ego’s existence or its absolute importance and place within human experience and growth. And so one of the reasons I’m laughing, here, is because Coraggio’s castigation about Stone arrogantly claiming something to be true gave me an opportunity to re-investigate my own flip-flopping about the ‘need’ for the ego which is 180° from Stone’s stand. (Think baby teeth!) And for me to explore that ‘need’ or ’not’ a bit more here under the theme of ‘spiritual by-passing’, which I see now is one of the biggest take away lessons for me having had 40+ years of a pouty ego and a gouty foot.
Am I saying that the ego, like gout, is a ‘health’ experience in that both express a form of spiritual by-passing, or lack of by-pass? That to me is an open question as I begin this essay. At this point of my exploration I’m unsure of what the answer to that will be. Hence it is indeed an actual essay! (And the question may not get answered. We’ll see.)
So a back-step to where I explored the ego, to be or to be not, in some depth:
An Exploration of Yes, No or Maybe, the Darkness Around us is Deep
And:
I Thought It Was A Goner and that Ego Came Back
Where To Look For Where Am I? Do I Lie Within The Meditation and I?
The ‘sitting’, to just sit, is something of course. Although the degree to which the mindful effort is made to accomplish something in the sit — no thought, release stress, enlightenment, ego destruction or banishment, or whatever — the more wound up (wounded?) the mind often becomes when working to do as egoistically directed. Calming the mind cannot be done at the level of the mind, is how I heard it well put in 2014. Which is why things like the breath or drishti (soft-focused eye points) or even the discomfort in a joint becomes the directed mind-focus. The sit is to dislodge the mind’s self-sure awareness of its existence as the ego’s constructed all-knowing in control power centre that is stuck being spiritually debased in an uncomfortable, unholy, egregious, untrustworthy to be discarded body into that ‘undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns’.
And, when sitting, the mind has seemingly endless energy to chatter in words and sometimes images all its absolute remembered and unconscious past truths and falsehoods, body aches and distractions, and all possible future terrors and utopias. That is, when the body doesn’t actually disrespectfully and somewhat embarrassingly fall asleep when sitting — perhaps it has simply taken this opportunity to seize a long needed rest when it can and shows it has the power to humble the mind! [Today’s — 2024.03.17 — koan meditation, before I continued my edit of this essay, was about tiredness and included falling asleep during meditation.] Oopsy! In both cases, the body remains an uncomfortable other and wordless awareness of the breath a dream.
And it is convenient to blame the ego!
Did you smell it? That was the smell of mendacious delusion, the whiff of spiritual by-pass.
Since the ego can be loosely ‘blamed’ for the utopia-terrors of mind, it would seem like a great thing to kill the ego, which is a phrase I remember very well from my New Age besotted family. Now, with my having poked around more into something closer to some earth-truths of this physical existence than the pabulum of New Age fantasies, it strikes me that that is a catch-phrase that could very well have come out of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control programs as its creator and populariser. In recent years I have been assured that ‘New Agism’ is an MK-ULTRA construct to assist with the socially manufactured schismogenesis of the individual. And it is telling that Krishnamurti, a victim of sexual abuse and very likely advanced mind control methods by a prominent member of The Theosophical Society, is a prominent ego-death advocate. See my discussion of Krishnamurti here:
“I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”
And:
“Reality Is Not Truth”
So after having lived for years with that false-truth I now understand that killing the ego is putting the cart before the horse. Furthermore doing such a thing actually contradicts what Gautama did and taught his disciples to do about ego-mind distresses and distractions. ‘I see you’ he would calmly note the products of the egoist mind, after which they dissipated like fog with warm sunshine. There was no killing.
It has come to me that at their core ego-products are what have been called Mara. In some ‘religious schools’ Mara is entirely in the god-realms and has armies of (egotistic) mind-matter that are looking to distract us from the calm assertive stillness with those three words, free of all feeling of aversion or repulsion: ‘I see you’. In other words the ego is not I because the products of the ego are discerned from a perspective that is not from the ego. (For another discussion is the possibility of entity-possession as a source of Mara.)
It feels to me that this demand-purpose for a violent ego-death is at the core of many (most?) western-centric meditation practices — certainly most of the ones I’ve encountered. There are exceptions and with people like Stone the dominance of that ego death-wish may be retreating. A wonderful exception in my life is the amazing yogi Simon Borg-Olivier who makes this same point in his yogic practices and teachings when he cautions against anti-egoist and body-denying yogic-meditative, pranayama and moving practises. Nor I have come across Sri Sri Ravi Shankar advocating ego-death in his writings that I’ve read or talks that I’ve heard.
What Is The “I” Becomes A Curious Question That Words Are Very Unlikely To Unmask
And a lovely synchronicity came up in mid-essay after my having included the long quotation below about missing the mark in zen-archery! It connects Stone’s cited criticism of ego-death-demands and my look at spiritual by-passing within the problem of having a mindful purpose or aim. Recently I’ve realised in my body that aiming is an ego action. Perhaps it is more accurate to write that without words my body now knows what my mind-full mind had thought it knew for so many years: to strive for achievement had put me into a Sisyphean cycle of missing the mark.
Stone observed, as have many many others, that when we sit and meditate to a purpose, with a clearly targeted ‘aim’, that that meditation fails as a meditation. Yes we sit with the purpose of meditation and, at the same time, that purpose will derail the meditation if the purpose expands into mind-ful concentration or tight grippiness as a kind-of life or ego-death requirement. Ironically it is the ego that has the definite need to hit the mark. In the need for ego-death meditations it is the ego that is demanding its own death and thus the meditation cannot help but miss this so-called ‘spiritual’ target. Stone talks about that too — for example, in his look at the Heart Sutra in ‘The Walls of the Mind’ podcast.
This particular ego-based synchronicity was embodied by my meditation group last week because we were given the Heart Sutra as our meditation koan. (That was completely separate from and before finding the Stone reference to the Heart Sutra above.)
The koan-leader spoke:
You will not find god by looking for him, and if you do not look for him you will never find him.
You will never understand the Heart Sutra if you want to understand it. And if you don't want to understand it you will never understand it...or wake up [to your lack of understanding and from that into enlightenment] (my slight edit).
With my recent exploration I now understand, perhaps even know, that the premature ego-death by mind-centric execution is one of the best examples of my definition of spiritual by-pass. And so I have included the long by-pass quotation, below, before I get back the story of my encounter with my gout with very big hair in a cubic house built of stone in my mind.
The excerpt is from a favourite very short book, Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigal. Three stories in Herrigal’s experience with a Japanese bow, arrow, target and Zen archery master capture the entire arc of spiritual by-pass with great grace, beauty and elegance. And, what I realise now much more consciously than when even last I read ZitAoA a few years ago, is that this Zen practice is the practice of being soully embodied. That is what the egoless state is — full experience of being a soul-body. All the religious strictures I’d read around Zen in the 1980s had lost sight of that, it seems to me, and had like Christianity separated the body from the soul. Killing the ego is the same spiritual by-pass Herrigal attempted when he let his ego take aim at hitting the paper target as if that is true accomplishment. Enjoy.
‘The right art’, cried the Master, ‘is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too wilful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen. … For purposeful and violent people the rift becomes final, and they are left in the awful centre between heaven and earth.’
‘What am I to do, then?’ I asked thoughtfully.
‘You are to learn to wait properly.’
‘And how does one learn that?’
‘By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension.’
Another synchronicity. On that very point was my reading last week of Jasun Horsley’s interesting take on the ultimate moral of the challenging Book of Job:
Like the crucifixion story, the Book of Job says simply this: to be worthy of and ready for an encounter with Objective Reality, to serve God, requires an absolute and uncompromising willingness to give up everything, without any hope of ever being compensated. The path of no merit. … [And to face] what is happening now, and the only manly response is to deal with it. — “Job's Law: Nobodaddy, Haunted Universe, & the Ultimate Lesson of Job” 15 Nov 2023.)
Back to Zen in the Art of Archery:
‘So I must become purposeless—on purpose?’ I heard myself say.
‘No pupil has ever asked me that, so I don’t know the right answer.’
‘And when do we begin these new exercises?’
‘Wait until it is time’ (46-9).
…
‘Stay like that at the point of highest tension until the shot falls from you. So, indeed, it is: when the tension is fulfilled, the shot simply falls, it inevitably falls from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks ‘fall.’
In spite of everything I could do or did not do, I was unable to wait until the shot fell. As before, I had no alternative but to loose it on purpose. And this obstinate failure depressed me all the more since I had already passed my third year of instruction.
…
The Master must have felt what was going on in my mind. He had, so Mr. Komachiya told me later, tried to work through a Japanese introduction to philosophy in order to find out how he could help me from a side I already knew. But in the end he had laid the book down with a cross face, remarking that he could now understand that a person who interested himself in such things would naturally find the art of archery uncommonly difficult to learn.
We spent our summer holidays by the sea, in the solitude of a quiet, dreamy landscape distinguished for its delicate beauty. We had taken our bows with us as the most important part of our equipment. Day out and day in I concentrated on loosing the shot. This had become an
idée fixe, which caused me to forget more and more the Master’s warning that we are not to practise anything except self-detaching immersion. Turning all the possibilities over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the fault could not lie where the Master suspected it: in lack of purposelessness and egolessness, but in the fact that the fingers of the right hand gripped the thumb too tight. The longer I strained to wait for the shot, the more convulsively I pressed them together without thinking. It was at this point, I told myself, that I must set to work. And ere long I had found a simple and obvious solution to this problem. If, after drawing the bow, I cautiously eased the pressure of the fingers on the thumb, the moment came when the thumb, no longer held fast, was torn out of position as if spontaneously: in this way a lightning loose could be made and the shot would obviously ‘fall like snow from a bamboo leaf’. This discovery recommended itself to me not least on account of its beguiling affinity with the technique of rifle-shooting. There the index finger is slowly crooked until an ever diminishing pressure overcomes the last resistance.
I was able to convince myself very quickly that I must be on the right track. Almost every shot went off smoothly and unexpectedly, to my way of thinking. Naturally I did not overlook the reverse side of this triumph; the precision work of the right hand demanded my full attention. But I comforted myself with the hope that this technical solution would gradually become so habitual that it would require no further notice from me, and that the day would come when, thanks to it, I would be in a position to loose the shot, self obliviously and unconsciously, at the moment of highest tension, and that in this case the technical ability would spiritualise itself. Waxing more and more confident in this conviction I silenced the protest that rose up in me, ignored the contrary counsels from my wife, and went away with the satisfying feeling of having taken a decisive step forward.
The very first shot I let off after the recommencement of the lessons was, to my mind, a brilliant success. The loose was smooth, unexpected. The Master looked at me for a while and then said hesitantly, like one who can scarcely believe his eyes: ‘Once again, please!’ My second shot seemed to me even better than the first. The Master stepped up to me without a word, took the bow from my hand, and sat down on a cushion, his back towards me. I knew what that meant, and withdrew.
The next day Mr. Komachiya informed me that the Master declined to instruct me any further because I had tried to cheat him. Horrified beyond measure by this interpretation of my behaviour, I explained to Mr. Komachiya why, in order to avoid marking time forever, I had hit upon this method of loosing the shot. On his interceding for me, the Master was finally prepared to give in, but made the continuation of the lessons conditional upon my express promise never to offend again against the spirit of the ‘Great Doctrine’.
If profound shame had not cured me, the Master’s behaviour would certainly have done so. He did not mention the incident by so much as a word, but only said quite quietly: ‘You see what comes of not being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. You cannot even learn to do this without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, and see what comes—and how it comes!’
I pointed out to the Master that I was already in my fourth year and that my stay in Japan was limited.
‘The way to the goal is not to be measured! Of what importance are weeks, months, years?’
‘But what if I have to break off half way?’ I asked.
‘Once you have grown truly egoless you can break off at any time. Keep on practising that.’
And so we began again from the very beginning, as if everything I had learned hitherto had become useless. But the waiting at the point of highest tension was no more successful than before, as if it were impossible for me to get out of the rut.
One day I asked the Master: ‘How can the shot be loosed if “I” do not do it?’
‘“It” shoots,’ he replied.
‘I have heard you say that several times before, so let me put it another way: How can I wait self-obliviously for the shot if “I” am no longer there?’
‘“It” waits at the highest tension.’
‘And who or what is this “It”?’
‘Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of me. And if I tried to give you a clue at the cost of your own experience, I would be the worst of teachers and deserve to be sacked! So let’s stop talking about it and go on practising.’
Weeks went by without my advancing a step. At the same time I discovered that this did not disturb me in the least. Had I grown tired of the whole business? Whether I learned the art or not, whether I experienced what the Master meant by “It” or not, whether I found the way to Zen or not — all this suddenly seemed to have become so remote, so indifferent, that it no longer troubled me. Several times I made up my mind to confide in the Master, but when I stood before him I lost courage; I was convinced that I should never hear anything but the monotonous answer: ‘Don't ask, practise!’ So I stopped asking, and would have liked to stop practising, too, had not the Master held me inexorably in his grip. I lived from one day to the next, did my professional work as best I might, and in the end ceased to bemoan the fact that all my efforts of the last few years had become meaningless.
Then, one day, after a shot, the Master made a deep bow and broke off the lesson, ‘Just then “It” shot!’ he cried, as I stared at him bewildered. And when I at last understood what he meant I couldn’t suppress a sudden whoop of delight.
‘What I have said’, the Master told me severely, ‘was not praise, only a statement that ought not to touch you. Nor was my bow meant for you, for you are entirely innocent of this shot. You remained this time absolutely self-oblivious and without purpose in the highest tension, so that the shot fell from you like a ripe fruit. Now go on practising as if nothing had happened.’
Only after a considerable time did more right shots occasionally come off, which the Master signalised by a deep bow. How it happened that they loosed themselves without my doing anything, how it came about that my tightly closed right hand suddenly flew back wide open, I could not explain then and I cannot explain to-day. The fact remains that it did happen, and that alone is important. But at least I got to the point of being able to distinguish, on my own, the ‘right’ shots from the failures. The qualitative difference is so great that it cannot be overlooked once it has been experienced. Outwardly, for the observer, the right shot is distinguished by the cushioning of the right hand as it is jerked back, so that no tremor runs through the body. Again, after wrong shots the pent-up breath is expelled explosively, and the next breath cannot be drawn quickly enough. After right shots the breath glides effortlessly to its end, whereupon air is unhurriedly breathed in again. The heart continues to beat evenly and quietly, and with concentration undisturbed one can go straight on to the next shot. But inwardly for the archer himself, right shots have the effect of making him feel that the day has just begun. He feels in the mood for all right doing, and, what is perhaps even more important, for all right not-doing. Delectable indeed is this state. But he who has it, said the Master with a subtle smile, would do well to have it as though he did not have it. Only unbroken equanimity can accept it in such a way that it is not afraid to come back.
…
[Sometime after that the students were finally able to shoot at targets. Until then the ‘target’ had been a roll of straw a few feet in front of the wannabe Zen archers.]
…
[Having for weeks been even unable to hit the target I was compelled] to ask the Master why he had never yet explained to us how to take aim. There must, I supposed, be a relation of sorts between the target and the tip of the arrow, and hence an approved method of sighting which makes hitting possible.
‘Of course there is,’ answered the Master, ‘and you can easily find the required aim yourself. But if you hit the target with nearly every shot you are nothing more than a trick archer who likes to show off. For the professional who counts his hits, the target is only a miserable piece of paper which he shoots to bits. The ‘Great Doctrine’ holds this to be sheer devilry. It knows nothing of a target which is set up at a definite distance from the archer. It only knows of the goal, which cannot be aimed at technically, and it names this goal, if it names it at all, the Buddha.’ After these words, which he spoke as though they were self-evident, the Master told us to watch his eyes closely as he shot. … They were almost closed, and we did not have the impression that he was sighting.
…
‘I think I understand what you mean by the real, inner goal which ought to be hit. But how it happens that the outer goal, the disc of paper, is hit without the archer’s taking aim, and that the hits are only outward manifestations of inner events — that correspondence is beyond me.’
‘You are under an illusion’, said the Master after a while, ‘if you imagine that even a rough understanding of these dark connections would help you. These are processes which are beyond the reach of understanding. Do not forget that even in Nature there are correspondences which cannot be understood, and yet are so real that we have grown accustomed to them, just as if they could not be any different. I will give you an example which I have often puzzled over. The spider dances her web without knowing that there are flies who will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam, gets caught in the net without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them “It” dances, and inside and outside are united in this dance. So, too, the archer hits the target without having aimed — more I cannot say.’
[As the weeks passed another objection came to mind more and more forcibly. Eventually I asked] ‘Is it not at least conceivable that after all your years of practice you involuntarily raise the bow and arrow with the certainty of a sleepwalker, so that, although you do not consciously take aim when drawing it, you must hit the target — simply cannot fail to hit it?’
The Master, long accustomed to my tiresome questions, shook his head. ‘I do not deny’, he said after a short silence, ‘that there may be something in what you say. I do stand facing the goal in such a way that I am bound to see it, even if I do not intentionally turn my gaze in that direction. On the other hand I know that this seeing is not enough, decides nothing, explains nothing, for I see the goal as though I did not see it.’
‘Then you ought to be able to hit it blindfolded,’ I jerked out.
The Master turned on me a glance which made me fear that I had insulted him and then said: ‘Come to see me this evening.’
…
The Master told me to put a taper, long and thin as a knitting needle in the sand in front of the target, but not to switch on the light in the target sand. It was so dark that I could not even see its outlines, and if the tiny flame of the taper had not been there, I might perhaps have guessed the position of the target, though I could not have made it out with any precision. The Master ‘danced’ the ceremony. His first arrow shot out of dazzling brightness into deep night. I knew from the sound that it had hit the target. The second arrow was a hit, too. When I switched on the light in the target-stand, I discovered to my amazement that the first arrow was lodged full in the middle of the black, while the second arrow had splintered the butt of the first and ploughed through the shaft before embedding itself beside it. I did not dare to pull the arrows out separately, but carried them back together with the target.
The Master surveyed them critically. ‘The first shot’, he then said, ‘was no great feat, you will think, because after all these years I am so familiar with my target-stand that I must know even in pitch darkness where the target is. That may be, and I won’t try to pretend otherwise. But the second arrow which hit the first — what do you make of that? I at any rate know that it is not “I” who must be given credit for this shot, ‘‘It” shot and “It” made the hit. Let us bow to the goal as before the Buddha!’ (78-82, slightly edited, my emphasis.)
With Clean Intentions I Go to a Seven Day Yoga-Meditation and My Gout Comes With Me
In late 2017 I’ve been clear of gout for almost a year! The special low oxalate acid high butter diet had worked their ‘magic.’ And in the fall of 2017 Sri Sri Ravi Shankar announced that he would be teaching something he called Sañyam in North America for the first and I had a very strong intuitive pull to go despite my rather tight financial situation. I ignored the little flip-flop of financial stress I felt and did in fact go and experienced, at the age of 56, my first commercial flight and first extended stay outside of Canada in the US at the Art of Living Ashram in what was once the TM Ashram in Boone, North Carolina.
As I packed I wondered if the gout would return! I did my best to dismiss that thought as a kind of preflight jitter, perhaps. And yet it simply would not go and led me to mentally wrestle about putting the gout medication in my bag or not. Lots of flip-flopping: would I be in denial if I didn’t or would I be giving into negative New Age thinking and so create my bad experience if I did? Well, the Universe, or whatever this “dancing It” is that is beyond words, has a wicked sense of humour because I did in fact pack the medication. And on the flight there was convinced I hadn’t packed it! I found the pill bottle, untouched, when I unpacked my bag after I got home nine days later.
On the flight there, which was to Toronto before going to Charlotte NC, I felt it. Not the dancing “It” of the Zen master archer. The it it, of the uric acid javelins. So so slight I again did the ego-mind New Age negativity-rejection dance to kind of hope that pretending it wasn’t what I felt would be enough to create my reality. After all, my ego boasted nicely, look at everything you have discovered and look at your nearly perfect daily practice since 2014. You are muscle testing food and that is creating your spiritually guided diet. So, no gout for you — me! Which? Whatever!
By the time I stepped into the shuttle from the Charlotte airport to the ashram there was no doubt about it: the gout was back and getting stronger. No pills — memory of them had been completely erased — and all the extra water and extra care I’d taken with my food during the journey to ward it off while pretending it couldn’t happen had been to no avail. And because of my unique diet and concerns I had about what would be the vegetarian food at the ashram for seven days, I’d brought a good supply of my needed butter, nut butter, avocados, lemons and the supplements I was taking at that time.
From the picture above you get an idea that walking from the residences could be a significant distance. I was housed about two-thirds of the way down the residence away from the main centre and the kitchen-cafeteria. So the walk was long, although not as long as it could have been. I woke to day one with significant discomfort disclosed by my inability to avoid limping.
And, just to be sure that I would be limping, the gout had expanded from just the toes of my right foot into my right knee. That was a first for me! I had seen a co-worker’s gout attack his right knee, not his feet, whenever he ate shellfish. It was almost impossible to bend my knee without eye-ball popping pain. And so it was I came to be sitting with 1100 other people the ashram’s large meditation hall. To get that many sitting meant that we were sitting two to a yoga mat without room to stretch our legs out front. Every move of my knee and foot were increasingly more painful than the ‘normal’ discomfort I felt sitting on the floor with bent knees and kyphotic back.
And I did my best to concentrate on the meditation and the psyche-spiritual yogic practices we were being given as mediated from Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra’s through Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s effective instruction of them.
Day two and day three the gout continued to slowly progress and I thought that by day four I would be unable to actually walk to the hall or the cafeteria. What to do?
Well, one thing I did was to kind of laugh at the humour or the Universe because in a series of lessons before day three had ended we had been instructed on and given exercises to help exorcise from ourselves Patañjali’s Nine Obstacle Of The Yogic Path. (Video here.)
1) Vyādhi – Physical illness or disease (dis-ease)
2) Styāna – Apathy, lack of interest and enthusiasm, boredom
3) Samśaya – Doubt of the self worth or ability
4) Pramādā – Distraction, negligence & carelessness
*5) Alasyā* – Burnout, heaviness often translated as laziness
6) Avirati – Desire and craving
7) Bhrāntidarśanā – Living under illusions and misunderstanding
8) Alabdhabhūmikatvā – Doubting progress and ability to succeed
9) Anavasthitatvā – Inability to maintain achievements
And so my experience of physical discomfort was front and centre! [Headshake.] Too funny. The other significant obstacle for me was #3, lack of self worth, which is one I may have put to rest only late last year. (Time and synchronicity will tell.) I’ve put an asterisk beside #5, laziness, because it was to become key on day four. Furthermore I wouldn’t understand the significance of Alasyā until two weeks after the course was completed.
Vyādhi Has Hobbled Me, Humbled Me And So I Turn to Ganesha For Help
On day four getting to the meditation hall almost didn’t happen. Sitting was excruciating. I do not remember what Shankar taught that morning. However his lessons of the previous days came forward, specifically his introduction of Ganesha as a part of our process to remove the nine obstacles to yoga. Ganesha is the creator and the remover of obstacles.
Ignoring Shankar’s talk completely that morning I realised that my gout was not really about diet. Today I would say that my focus on diet, while important, was a form of spiritual by-pass. Each success in ‘removing’ the gout after a change of diet was a truth-trap that allowed for, seeded in fact, the emotional and psychological deflation experienced with each successive premature elation. (Herrigal’s whoop of initial success, for example. His idée fixe that hitting the target was the real goal, rather than becoming embodied in the moment of highest tension without ego interference.)
Why a truth and a trap? Because each time I appropriately changed my diet I experienced improved health — the symptoms of gout went away. (Herrigal’s ‘trick’ shots.) The trap was that I thought that that truth of experience was a complete story when in fact it was only a part of it, at best. And perhaps not even the real story in reality. I was able to by-pass the truth because of the ostensible successes those changes in diet had given me.
So, gout is not about diet. Really? If not, what to do next? These were the somewhat confused thoughts passing through my mind in housed in a body throbbing with several powerfully painful discomforts of what was to be the beginning of that morning’s ‘meditation’.
My second realisation was that despite all the books I had read about taking personal responsibility for everything, and the recent yoga practices with similar directives, I had only partially accepted my place in my life — my body was still a secondary excretion or obstacle to spirituality or spiritual truth. My awareness of that came with a surprising thought: in the thirty years of gout I hadn’t ever thought of simply introducing myself to my gout. Who or what was this ‘thing’ in that body over there? And how to introduce myself to ‘it’?
Fresh off the previous days’ lessons I asked Ganesha to help me. And immediately I experienced a energised masculinity like nothing in life I’d experienced before. It put the macho UFC/MMA and world strong men down into elementary school playground toughs. From that energy — not at all the kind of squishy purple elephant with big eyelashes you see most places! — I felt him kindly affirm his assistance. It was an incredible feeling outside of worded language.
With that I found myself inside a four story cube shaped dark stone building. It was very symmetrical with evenly spaced windows. Somehow I saw or knew what it looked like from the outside even as I was inside it. And I knew that that was my house.
On the first floor I saw a woman dressed in the exaggerated way of the women in the tv-show ‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ or Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in the movie Married to the Mob.) Very big hair, skin tight clothing, big make-up, crazy shoes and big jewellery.
‘Who are you’ I asked. ‘I am your gout,’ the woman responded. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘My name is Alicia.’ ‘Why are you here, in my house?’ ‘I am here to help you not step forward.’ She stood with a female power and look that seemed to be expecting me to be compliant. And of course, why wouldn’t she have that expectation after having had the run of my house for years?
After a pause, during which I felt Ganesha’s presence that was completely unaffected by the effort of the siren feminine wiles and energy being directed towards me, I calmly looked her in the eyes and said ‘Thank. Thank you for helping me with that. I no longer need that nor your assistance. You are free to go now. Please go.’
She looked at me for a moment. Then curtly nodded her head and began to move to the door. I interrupted her. ‘And please take all your belongings.’ With that we went through the house and collected her stuff — clothes, makeup, shoes, knick-knacks, health supplies, food, everything I could think of and saw that wasn’t mine. It took a while and filled a couple suitcases and some boxes. We walked to the door. I opened it. She looked at me and then left. I closed the door.
That was the end of that meditation and was timed perfectly for the breakfast break. The pain was still high. With a huge difference: I felt that small tickling feeling I’ve felt every time the gout has begun to retreat. The odd kind of building pressure of it had relaxed or reversed. No, I didn’t do a snoopy dance or whoop it up. I hobbled to the cafeteria whose staff and volunteers were challenged with 1100 people lining up for food and non-caffein infusions.
By the time I headed back to the large meditation centre to resume the lecture that I hadn’t listened to at all, I sat as comfortably as I could. No sooner had I closed my eyes than the image of Alicia came into my mind and a feeling of distrust. I didn’t trust her to have taken all her remnants out of my home. Once again I asked Ganesha for help. Once again that masculine energy came to me with the power of a mountain. I explained I would like to make sure that my house was clean, I mean really clean of Alicia. I felt Ganesha approving of the idea and agreeing to help. Again, it was without words. Together we went through my house with the tightest attention to detail. We looked behind and under everything in every drawer, cupboard, curtain, carpet. And together we found another medium sized boxed of items. These I put outside the door and used a phone to call a charity to come and take away.
This was a meticulous process for me and Ganesha. When we were done I was stunned that it had now become time for lunch. I thanked Ganesha and rose with a great deal more ease! I once again was able to walk without limping, even though I wasn’t totally pain free! As I write that I am so tempted to do the Snoopy Dance on behalf of the Guy who at that time remained equanimous with that change.
When lunch was done I returned to the meditation centre and instead of listening to Shankar I did a third meditation. This time I allowed myself to enjoy the cleanliness of my house as I moved through the rooms. And then I rejoined the Sañyam course with greater ease and completed it well a few days later and after a couple of great encounters and synchronicities.
Two Weeks Later A Thunderbolt of Laziness Called Alicia Hit Me in The Gut!
One afternoon I was doing the dishes and thinking about Alicia and gout. ‘Why,’ I wondered ‘and how, did Alicia find a comfortable home in me in the first place?’ She had said that she was there because she was helping me from ‘stepping forward’. ‘What a strange phrase,’ I thought. It was a kind of … what? And then it hit me that it was a kind of gateway to procrastination (a long time problem) and laziness. And then I laughed and laughed, because one of Patañjali’s nine obstacles (antarayas) to spiritual progression through yogic meditation practice is Alasyā! And that Sanskrit named obstacle is pronounced almost identically to my gout, Alicia.
A few days after that giant aha moment, when at my reiki-theta healing appointment, I explained that realisation to my healer. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘That doesn’t make sense at all. You are one of the least lazy people I know.’
‘Not necessarily least lazy,’ I countered. ‘What if much of my busy-ness is actually activity that is within a comfortable groove? That my busy-ness is a kind of mask or habit to help distract me for doing the really deep work? Making the real changes?’
‘I see,’ she replied after a moment.
Now I see that that form of busy-ness is also a form of addictive behaviour, and that means another manifestation of spiritual by-pass. Like taking a thousand courses that give the appearance of learning all the while by-passing that shadow dressed garishly or clownishly within our own house that our busy-ness allows us to give free room and board to. While talking to a friend last week about our shared experience of a lifetime of financial dearth it came to me that not having enough money to take all those ‘good-for-me’ to help others courses that kept calling to me like sirens was likely a very good thing by reducing the volume or depth of by-passing energy I could have fatted myself on.
Is that the end of the gout tale? LoL! Yes, although I have had hints of it a few times since then. The difference now is that it seems to have had very little strength or staying power and was associated with some kind of significant psyche-somatic change brought about with moving yoga or still meditation practices. Now I look to my self as the source and ask myself: is my house clean? As of this writing I now don’t remember the last time I have been attacked by those molecular javelins. Perhaps before the 2021 Canadian convidan jab or job jabberwankiness.
Did I Answer the Question? I Think So
With this it is clear to me that my physical distress was expressing the psychological shadows that were keeping me from ‘stepping forward’ into a fully embodied and responsible life. The addictive behaviours and the expressions of physical distress were messages in my body. And I wasn’t looking there. I was avoiding that because … well. As everyone knows, our spirit is stuck in a body that is debased and is lacking the true spirit that is the real me. Spiritual by-passing.
And as to words? Ganesha didn’t speak a single one and yet I was helped and embraced in the process of cleaning my house of a laziness named ‘Alicia/Alasyā’ dressed to kill and completely depotentiated when I saw her and said, equanimously, perhaps even lovingly, ‘I see you. Thank you and you are no longer needed here. Please leave.’
Thank you Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Ganesha. And, equally, thank you Alicia/Alasyā, for helping me see what I wasn’t seeing in all those molecular javelins across the years. That process of discovery was my journey out of the hyper-space by-pass of New Age woo-woo into my body as the physical expression of soul or spirit or… the “It” that dances the unaimed arrow to the shaft-butt, the fly to the spider, the owl to serenade the pussycat.
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Song of the Essay
Laurie Anderson — Beautiful Pea Green Boat
Lyrics: I'm lying in the shade of my family tree I'm a branch that broke off What will become of me? Dear Mom, I'm lying here In this queen-sized bed I'm thinking back To all the stories you read to me About the little animals who went to sea In their beautiful pea green boat But I can't remember now What happened then? Dear Mom, how does it end? The owl and the pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat They took some honey and lots of money Wrapped in a five pound note The owl looked up to the stars above And sang to a small guitar O lovely pussy! Pussy my love! What a wonderful pussy you are Let us be married Too long we've tarried But what shall we do for a ring? What shall we do for a ring? Hey! Hey They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the bong tree grows And there in a wood a piggy wig stood A ring at the end of his nose A ring at the end of his nose And hand in hand at the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the By the light of the, by the light of the moon And hand in hand at the edge of the sand They danced by the light of the By the light of the, by the light of the moon The moon, the moon Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey Lyrics inspired by The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear.
I'm treating myself to second coffee, to calm the Chihuahua attention span, and give myself the luxury of reading this article with full attention and comments in-the-moment.
The synchronicities! You already saw my piece mentioning Douglas Jack with the longhouse as the fractal of society, the part that contains the whole. And somewhere in a comment thread, we were talking about hieroglyphs and I asked about the other hiero words like hierarchy and hierophant, and I had a tab open on the hiero gamos, which was new to me, but forgot where it had come from. Eureka!
This is beautiful: "Or, if some kind of unworded and unlimited synchronicity-giving life-force energy does exist outside of the word ..." Kathleen will love this too.
Hah! I'm glad you amended that I was offended to perverse delight, which is much more in character. But my opinion that Michael Stone is an egotistical asshole in no way says that about you. In fact, the opposite! As I've said before, I think you're much too harsh on yourself. You look at times when you addressed a physical problem or belittling relationship or limiting life circumstance, and think you showed hubris in believing you'd solved it. But all I see is humility in the face of some very serious obstacles. You let Stone interpret your experience with his words--that include Oneness being a psychotic way to frame reality--rather than your own. I prefer your words rather than his frame. But yes, I did find his list of things that 'Oneness' would solve pretty funny.
I know you've read the comments on my thread about words as spells that bind us. Nef has an interesting analogy to the bicameral mind: "That which Governs (holds definition) in front has a Ruler (living meaning) in secret. Language is reflecting a bridge between hard analytical and intuitive Mind. To fully Re-Member Mind is to Mend the two together."
If the Ruler behind is nefarious and has twisted the living meaning then it seems like definition of that which Governs is the way to get it back. It isn't your definition of spiritual bypassing that I disagreed with. I disagree with the concept. Your definition gave me a way to show why and that it wasn't a dismissal of you but a challenge of a way you were ridiculing yourself.
In light of that, what I mean by the term 'ego' is superiority, not body consciousness. To believe in my superiority, I have to believe first that I'm separate from you. Likewise, a desire to see myself as superior precludes the possibility of Oneness. I don't think 'a belief in Oneness' is a worthwhile goal, it's as vapid as Stone describes. As my Course meditation said yesterday, "Only illusions require belief." So my job, as I see it, is to remove the obstacles to recognizing Oneness, if that is Reality, by weeding out my desire for superiority. I wouldn't call that 'killing the ego.'
I looked up the etymology of castigate, as how you twice describe my critique of Stone's superiority. It comes from 'caste' as an unmixed race that's pure, and the cutting off of what makes it impure. So to 'castigate' is done from a belief in superiority. It's interesting that you describe me as critiquing you for having the 'cajones' to define spiritual bypassing. Castigate and castrate seem very similar. And interesting also that Ganesh is a powerful feeling of masculinity and your gout is personified as a bossy, trashy woman. Hmmm...
No word better conveys superiority than 'master' and the one in the archery example is belittling and scolding of the four-year student, who he shames when he succeeds 'for his own good.' Many other stories have Zen masters hitting and even mutilating their students 'for their own good.' I just don't get it.
If you put the Master in a tight red dress with big hair, and had her speak the same way to the student, would you hear it differently? Would it be devouring rather than 'for his own good'?
What I suggest is that people define what words mean to them (and I took no offense that you were defining it for everyone, I don't think it's a useful term, myself). And then, the other person can translate into another term if that's not their definition. If I were to take spiritual-bypassing and New Age in your context, the word I'd substitute is superstition. They're both superstitions that if certain rituals--physical or mental--are performed, it will make good things happen or prevent bad. The proof that the mental construct is right is in what happens in the body or the world.
I think what you're describing with Ganesh is a different form of superstition, and I hesitate to say that because it's working for you! If you withdraw your belief in it, will the gout come back? I'd like to think no. But I don't know.
Thanks again for letting me into your very humble self-analysis. And don't think I missed the 'big hair in a cubic house' ;-)