Reflections in Samsara

Greetings to you, all my loving friends of life...

This is just a little blog that I am sending out to my cherrished ones. I have just returned to society after a 10 day silent retreat in a monastary in Chaiya called Suan Mok. Some of what you could expect is waking up at 4am, meditating A LOT, 2 hours of yoga every day, one small meal every day and one snack with tea, wooden pillows, concrete beds with a thin grass mat and sheet, cold water traditional bathing...hot springs, smiles, magic, seclusion, peace, calm, serenity, and loving kindness to such an extream it makes you want to cry for days...
I would highly recommend this to anyone. It has changed my life.

So I am going to tell you a little story about a portion of my past and how I came to Thailand...it will put these experiences in perspective. By doing this I hope to help encourage and inspire all of you to live and love and find
peace and truth in your life. I love you.

I have been in Thailand for one month today.
I am at the ripe young age of 23, when everything around you starts to collaps. All your thoughts, ideas, preconcieved notions of self, the world around you, and how you interact with it are under scrutiny.
You question everything, trust nothing, and are constantly searching for some truth, something real and solid to grasp ahold of. simply, you are trying to figure out who, and for that matter, What the hell you are!

I am pretty sure all of us have experienced this. I mean...we are friends (for my part anyway) and I can only imagin that we have delved deeply at some point in our lives, seeking to discover that seed of truth, that seed of knowledge...? right?

Well...I have experienced this many times...lost everything, everyone, my home, security...my "self".
I became homeless when I was barly 18, somewhat my own choice. (not because I was kicked out, or some foolish, immature "Rebbel Without a Cause" syndrome) simply because my family lived, at that time, in the most expensive city in the States...and by American standards, we were seriously struggling. So we were evicted...
My family went to go live with close relatives in a place I was too stubborn to go to. Which only left one other option really...a crash course in survival!!! (many exciting stories...and if any of you know me well, you have probably heard a few of them...)

Anyway, I started traveling. This took some time and effort of course; but I had no attachments at the time, and if I did I dropped them quickly and easily...however sloppy and painful it may have been. Being torn away or tearing yourself away from something you love is no easy task; not for the weak of heart. I am sure this is something we can all agree on. Traveling has taught me a lot about detachment...But not really about self, what I am, or why this body and mind exist.

So...five years later, here I am! Risen and fallen many times, and sure I will many more. My life is GREAT! difficult at times, yes...but GREAT! BLESSED! I live in a beautiful home, have a wonderful partner, make my own money, indipendently, create my own schedual, and answere to no one! (did I mention I am stubborn?)
And yet...
I still felt disease in my heart. I did not trust what I had, what I saw. I felt insecure...had terrible dreams...didn't have a clue what I was...what anything was! I couldn't bring peace to my mind, it was constanly in an uproar!
Thinking! Manifesting! Creating! Destroying! Analyzing! Insecure! Paranoid Dillusions! (well...all this may have had something to do with all the electro-magnetic frequency experimentation our government has been doing on SF... but we wont talk about that...)

Basically...once again, I had to drop everything. Relinquish all attachments to home, family, friends, possesions, even my partner of three years! (and since I also had some serious dental work to do as well) I came to THAILAND!

I came alone, whithout knowing where I was going, not knowing the language, the people or the culture.
(all the traveling I have done up until this point has been in central america...so you can imagin how foreign and extreamly alone I felt)

It has all been so magical! Timing, alignment! All exactly as it should be. I am so blessed to have found my way to Chaiya. Not knowing what I would find there...just knowing I wanted silence, peace, and space...
I got so much more.

(THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS TO GET GOOD......I PROMISE!)

The first week was rather difficult for me.
Sure! I was practicing and feeling "loving kindness"...that was easy. I even saw Dhamma for brief moments (dhamma is the buddhist idea of the reality of nature...to put it very simply)...I saw it in all it's magnificent glory, and wonderous simplicity...everything lost it's meaning; it all sort of blended in and became one pulsating life force.
I could see elementary particles flowing through the "emptiness", which in truth isn't empty at all! Some people call it black matter, raw energy...I call it pure consciousness. It makes up everything in the universe.
I saw my own insignificance; I saw my body and mind for what they truly were...realized who and what it is that I speak to. Do you ever speak to yourself, but not really speak to yourself, rather som other entity that is both within and without you? I guess some would call this God, or Dhamma...and many other names.
Anyway, I saw this. But I have seen this before. Everytime I learn more about it...

BUT STILL!!! ego comes back! crashing through the door! demanding to be recognized! Not wanting to let go of it's importance, it's ability to feel and have oppinions. I battled with this for a whole week! Wanting, BEGGING my mind to shut down, to find silence. Constantly finding myself on the verge of some profound realization of existance...but unable to let go...

Then on day 7 it finally hit me! Like a tone of bricks! my first major insight into my own "middle way".
I understood why I am an artist, and how I could use creativity to further explore Samsara...this illusion we call reality. Art is now a meditation for me; not just some tool to vent out all my shyeet; but a tool for investigating Dhamma.
All of a sudden life made so much sense! My existance, the path this body is on in this life is clear now.
and through these explorations into Samsara, I hope I may, through the sharing, giving, and releasing of these "studies", help others to further explore and understand their own path through samsara...
We can all do this in our lives, by simply making your work, your art...your meditation. And by just living that way you can't help but influence those around you to live more mindfully. Not to mention it will make your work much more barable, interesting and insightful.

So then day 8...another insight. Simple, yet very important.
To Reflect back all the kindness and generousities bestowed upon me by my loved ones. And this doesn't mean simply buying them a present. But with a full heart, a pure mind, repay all my debts. Graciously and greatfully give thanks to all who have helped me on this path in life. Even those who helped in ways that may have been difficult to hear and caused a riff in the relationship...ESPECIALLY those ones.
For example...
let's say you haven't spoken to your parents in awhile, for some reason, probably some deep rooted resentment with how you were raised...Invite them to dinner. Don't just take them out to dinner, but cook them something, and put all your heart, all your love into it...then genuinly thank them for everything they gave you. They did everything they thought they could. And ask for nothing in return; no explanations, to appologies; just thank them.
You will soon find how much more free your spirit is, how much lighter your heart...

And now day 9...the most pleasurable day of them all...the most wonderous. Full of peace and awarness.
Feeling at one with nature, our hearts pulsing to the same rythm, flowing through the process of birth, evolution and passing...with every breath...without attachment. There was no difference between the earth and the soles of my feet. Perfect serenity. All pain and confusion vannished! I went to bed quite calm. Looking forward to the next morning.

Then BAM!!!! Chaos! Confussion! Frustration!
I wake up in a panic! Day 10! The final day! LOST! The sun is rising! I have alread missed the morning meditation and Dhamma talk! If I am lucky I'll get the last 10 minutes of yoga...my favorite part of the day.
A feeling of anger within myself for not hearing the morning bells (which ring loudly and profusly from 4am-4:30am);
anger that no one woke me up...but I knew that was foolish, so I let it go quickly. But why didn't I wake up?
I have woken up at the first bell everyother morning. Wide awake and ready to greet the sunrise...

Ahhhhh.....then it all flowed in on me, poured in like a flash flood...
horrid images of a very vivid and extreamly intense nightmare, the kind you only get in the deepest of sleep.
I was battling deamons...to put it lightly...but that wasn't the time to ponder it. I had to get to yoga.
But I couldn't calm down. These images haunted me throughout the whole morning. My heart couldn't calm down.
This knot in my intestines had formed and was growing denser every minute. I couldn't stop asking myself "Why?", "what does it mean?"...everything had been going so well....

Then throughout the day I slowly began to understand...to hear the message....

In doing this type of work, (this business of quieting the mind and exploring the nature of "self" and it's illusion)...
we begin to see ourselves more clearly...we start unraveling the many protective layers we have built up to protect ourselves from aspects of our psyche that we have pushed away and long forgotten.
We all experience this. Aspects of our mind that we fear, or find confusing, or distastful because of some dogmatic way that we were raised, or simply aspects of ourself that we just don't understand.
And so, we lock them up, we burry them deep within our subconscious, we ignore them and do our best to forget them.
Then we create these monsters in our heads, entities outside ourself...for many, we focus on our partents, or bosses, or partners...We create them so we have something else to blame as the cause for all our suffering. To release ourself from responsibility. This is an illusion. It only results in more pain and confusion.

Really what we should be doing in delving into ourselves and finding these aspects of our psyche...which, by now have been sitting in the dark, unloved, unknown, forgotten...they've begun to stagnate, rot, and turn perverted, twisted and basically completely unrecognizable as ever possibly having anything to do with self...
Very strong words, I know...but this is where our deamons come from. Really tho...they aren't deamons. They are sides of ourself that have been caged up.
What we need to do is LOVE them! Give them the full Compassion of our entire hearts. Hold them and care for them as any mother would do to their wounded child...
And soon, these "monsters" will start taking a recognizable form, and we will begin to know and love them for what they really are; then they can blossom and present us with gifts we could have never known...
After all every thing is meerly reflection...right?

So now I understand something about myself, which has been haunting me for as long as I can remember. I am free from it now. I have traveled many places looking for this. And now I have found it.

Thank you all so much for holding space and sharing this with me. I hope that it all wasn't just a selfindulgent rant; but that you took something from this and found it inspiring. You are a wonderous and beautiful spirit.

May your journey through Samsara be blessed, and lightfooted.

Thankyou....

wing