A Word from Wayne

“Why not try some­thing that works?”

The Web page is up for our new DVD and book set on Med­i­ta­tion and pain relief. We decided to pro­vide this to injured work­ers at our work­shop last week­end, and think you’ll like it, too.

Please, take the time to go have a look. I’ve put a small video on the page, which con­tains a short overview of the con­tents. I’ll likely send out a sep­a­rate mail­ing soon, describ­ing the set in more detail.

A New Series—The Body Speaks

(In the first in this series of arti­cles, I pro­vided you with a handy lit­tle chart that pro­vides the loca­tion, descrip­tion, and char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Chakras. Use the link if you want to refer to it.)

Today, we turn to the Brow (6^th) Chakra zone

The Sixth Chakra has sev­eral names—the Third Eye, the Insight Chakra.

To begin, notice that word — in–sight.

There is a ton of con­fu­sion about this—
about how we see what we see,
and what “what we see” means.

I don’t think I’d be exag­ger­at­ing say­ing that 100% or the issues in the world, and in us, come from miss­ing the fol­low­ing point:

Your rules, the ways in which you struc­ture your real­ity, are implanted by your cul­ture, and what’s ham­mered into you head is that these rules are right.
Even if you stomp your lit­tle feet and do things another way, as soon as you think your other way is “right,” you’re back in the soci­etal game of, “My view is right, yours is wrong, and I’m going to change you.”

The alter­na­tive, the actual alter­na­tive, is right in front of your eyes, if you would choose to see. Here are two hints about it.

1. The Uni­verse, and you, are the same. Every­thing is One thing. I don’t really care if you accept the big bang the­ory or not. (On the other hand, if you think Yah­weh invented the world 6,000 years ago, why are you read­ing this???)
   In the Tao, form arose from form­less­ness, and this fits the Big Bang The­ory. The uni­verse was empty, and sud­denly, it was every­thing.
   
   Now, the thing I like about this is that every­thing that is, from stars and plan­ets to microbes and you, are all made of the same stuff. Our atoms are the same as the atoms of, say, that moun­tain over there.
2. The Uni­verse does not care about you. The uni­verse has “Kept on Truckin’ ” for bil­lions of years, and will, likely, for bil­lions more, and you are, both in time and in size, a micron of a micron in all of this.

Sounds grim, right? Well, I think it’s actu­ally liberating.

Our cul­ture tells us we “should” strive to make a dif­fer­ence, be unique, and change the world. Now, on the sur­face, this sounds all noble and poetic.

The prob­lem, how­ever, is that such an approach often leads to “think­ing you are entitled.”

Spe­cial? Of course we’re special!

And yes, going out and actu­ally doing some­thing is very Zen.

The prob­lem with “fix the world,” how­ever, is this. It rein­forces our erro­neous belief that our prob­lems, the solu­tion, our sal­va­tion, etc. is “out there, some­where.” We waste our lives on “out-sight,” frus­trat­ing our­selves when the “outer” refuses to yield to our specialness.

This approach misses the point. Out there is and always will be, out there.

Noth­ing out there needs us the way we want to be needed. Indeed, out there exists with­out us. It just is.

Sec­ondly, what is is not “real” until we appre­hend it and label it.

In other words, noth­ing exists until it pen­e­trates us, and we label it.

For exam­ple, bring your atten­tion to the sounds around you. Did they exist before you heard them? Can you prove it? Of course you can’t, and this can be very, very scary. We think, “I just heard that fan motor, and it obvi­ously was “there” before I heard it.” But, you see, there is no “there before you heard it” that you can prove existed, because it’s already in the past, which does not exist, and can­not be proven.

We take it for granted that there is a past, but it’s just a social con­ve­nience. We tell sto­ries of the past, and we all wink and pre­tend that they are true.

Here’s a hint: they’re not. They are made up, and so are you.

Now, most peo­ple, read­ing this, want to fairly fly up into their heads, cre­ate a stun­ning argu­ment for why Wayne is off his rocker, and maybe even stop read­ing fur­ther. But again, that would be you, up in your head, hav­ing an imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tion with me, who has never even once vis­ited your head.

Every­thing you think I’m say­ing up there is you, in drag, play­ing me.
Or play­ing with me, if you pre­fer. Please, have fun!

Zen insight is see­ing that our minds are pre-programmed to invent the past and future, to label, judge, blame, and to cre­ate divisions.

The Tao tells us that from the “One” of exis­tence comes the “Two” of dual­ity (right/wrong, good/bad, desire/repulsion, me/others,) and the “Three” of the rela­tional “inter­ac­tion” that exists between the sep­a­rate things.

It appears that there is me, you, and our interaction.

Seems to be so, doesn’t it? Yet, if you can pull back a bit, insight will show you that there is noth­ing more than your judge­ments and division-making—your “role and rule making.”

In Zen, this under­stand­ing of Real­ity (cap­i­tal R) is para­mount for achiev­ing Free­dom (cap­i­tal F). Free­dom is free­dom from our own men­tal processes.

Med­i­ta­tion serves the pur­pose of let­ting us see how per­va­sive our labelling and think­ing is.

We sit, and observe, and sud­denly the back­ground men­tal chat­ter is right there, as plain and obvi­ous as can be. It’s largely crap, and con­sists of half-formed sto­ries that serve like the lit­tle images in a DVD index. We see the lit­tle image, get all intrigued, and push “PLAY.”

Lost in Thought

Except that we are the direc­tor, writer, and cin­e­matog­ra­pher, and all the work hap­pens as we push the PLAY button.

None of it exists until we make it up.

Then, it still isn’t real, as in True (cap­i­tal T), but it’s ours, and we’ll defend this men­tal cre­ation to our detri­ment, right up until we curl up our toes.

So, what’s the alter­na­tive, you ask?

Wak­ing up.

See­ing that what we see is all there is. Life con­tin­u­ally pro­vides raw data, and all of it is colour­ful and mean­ing­less. If we can stop our­selves from mak­ing the leap into our heads, to cat­e­go­rize, label, and judge, we have the oppor­tu­nity to just Be (cap­i­tal B) with what is.

This changes every­thing. Awake means liv­ing the present expe­ri­ence, savour­ing the present moment, doing what is required in the present moment.

Here are some ways:

Open Your Eyes

See with your “artist eyes.” We all have them. It’s about open­ing your senses to input, and hold­ing your rush to inter­pret at bay. You do this by con­tin­u­ally com­ing back to the object (sight, sound, feel­ing, etc.) at hand. Or eye. Or ear. Be present with the feeling.

In Body­work, “stuff” is com­ing up all the time. Some is judged painful, other stuff chargy, erotic, juicy. The feel­ing the comes from a bit of pres­sure on the body is quite huge, and “fun” to experience.

Yes­ter­day, at a Med­i­ta­tion Work­shop, I briefly did some Breath­work teach­ing, and one woman was grit­ting her teeth, hold­ing in a pile of emo­tion that was right on the sur­face. Later, I offered her some Body­work, and she said, “I’m not ready to let go of that stuff. It was gen­er­a­tions in the making!“

Well, no. She made it. Her par­ents, etc. taught her how, but she’s mak­ing it now, and hold­ing on to it because she fears let­ting go. Who will I be if I am not a mar­tyr for my imag­ined stories?

---

Open your eyes and be present for your life, and your expe­ri­ences.

Next week, the last in our Chakra series!