I get all that about enjoying life with eyes open. I don't do meditation much anymore, and when I do, it, it is to calm me down,or get a few minutes of deep rest. And yes, occasionally a deep transcending will occur.
But I will say the hours I spent dipping the cloth, sometimes days, weeks, or months at a time, have paid off for me. There is always the "story behind the story", which is what I think enlightenment, (or growing enlightenment) is all about. I also liked the comments a day or so, I think from Bharitu that "enlightenment" is something common in India. I came kinda late to that realization, and it has given me comfort, somehow. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote : Curtis writes (in part): I figure I am as enlightened as I need to be to pursue my own goals and the self chosen purpose for my life. Hard to get me excited with promises of more inside. Whatever internal state I have seems to do the job nicely, the bigger task of my life is actualizing it in creative work out here. That requires eyes open. I couldn't agree more. M: It does sound like this is how you are living these days Ann. Or maybe you went through MIU with more of this perspective than I did and it just took me a while to figure it out for myself. I don't know about that. I was a pretty naive twerp back at MIU. But I do know that what you wrote in that small but significant paragraph speaks completely into where I have found myself living my life, and not so much through choice but through a sort of natural inclination. I don't know if you read some of my posts with regard to this lately - about lack of guru, about my solitariness (by choice) as a young person taking long walks in the damp and the rain and the winter and through forests and finding myself happy there, breathing deeper there. There is so much in the world, from the dirt under my feet to the mutt or two lying at my side ready for some sign of love given or ready to give love back, that I feel I would be missing out with eyes closed. There is just so much goddam cool stuff everywhere and to miss even one hour of a chance to find out exactly how cool is reason for regret in my world. You know, we carry around this supposed infinite aspect of Being within us all the time, my philosophy is take that and combine it with what is going on in the world that we inhabit and see what results. For me, sitting with eyes closed is too much an indulgence in some way, too self centered. Take the awareness out there and take a chance, even if it means you fall on your face or crash through the sliding glass door. Propping oneself on one's derriere for hours at a time thinking about nothing is just not what this body was really created for, IMHO.
