ShadoworkS

01/22/2018

12/31/2017

THE WOMAN OF HIS DREAMS

One evening I found myself walking through the quiet and peaceful streets of the enchanted city where I spent so much of my time. As I strolled, I felt drawn by something indefinable but magnetic and exciting. I hardly saw any other people until the moment I turned a corner and came upon a crowd of happy strangers who stood before the window of a sequestered restaurant. They all beamed with delight and mirth at my arrival, and as I drew closer, one of them said to the others: "Here he is. Now we shall see."

"See what?" I asked as I reached the smiling young man who looked familiar but remained a stranger.

"We'll see how you do with the love of your life," he said, and with a theatrical wave of his hand, he gestured toward a figure within the restaurant.
I peered within, and immediately the most beautiful woman I had ever seen appeared before my eyes.
Her dark brown hair was long and lustrous. Her skin was perfect and radiant, the color of the first rose of spring. Her lips were soft and full and happy. The bones of her cheeks and the line of her jaw were at once both strong and ever-so-delicate. Her eyes were beyond any adequate description I could offer, but I thought that Narcissus himself would have drowned in them. And they were looking at me as if I were the only man in the world for her.

In an instant I found myself sitting next to her at the table. All the others were gone. We were alone.

I don't remember what I said to her, but her eyes embraced me and made me feel accepted, comfortable and confident. We seemed to float from the restaurant, and moments later found ourselves in a garden illuminated by multi-colored lights situated beneath the surging waters of a fountain. Our conversation was endearing, perfect in its rhythm and lovingly appropriate. Yet I cannot remember a word that each of us spoke.

I turned to her as we walked, and to my surprise, found that her eyes were closed. She was asleep.

This discovery shocked me and somehow upset me. I gently shook her shoulder until those loving eyes opened upon me. She muttered something that soothed and dispelled all my pained feelings. My heart surrendered to her again, as it would many times that night. We would walk or sit or stand, and each time I took my eyes from her for an instant , she would fall asleep. And each time it happened, I would awaken her with a gentle reproach. And each time she would soothe me with her eyes and some soft words which I cannot remember.

But I was becoming exasperated. When my eyes were off her,I thought of how disappointed I would be to find her asleep again, apart from me, leaving me alone in this strange world where I had been thrown to live out my life learning lessons of the heart that did everything but heal it of its deepest malady: its loneliness, its silently howling, unutterable despair over being abandoned in this vast, empty universe...without love...without the comfort and warmth of love.

Suddenly the Ancient One stood before us. I began to speak, but he approached and placed both his hands upon my shoulders For a moment I was silent, and then I said:
"She is asleep. She is elsewhere, dreaming of someone other than me. I cannot awaken her. What am I to do?"

He looked deeply into my eyes. Just as I realized that his eyes were her eyes, he spoke:
"But my dear young friend, this is your dream, for you are asleep."

10/09/2017

Someone recently asked me how I wanted to be remembered after I die. When I heard his question, I snorted a bit...Admittedly, I was taken a bit off guard, for the question displayed the unhappy fact that he never had understood what I had discussed with him many times.

But true to my calling as a habitual educator, I patiently told him that I would answer his question using many of the ideas he had come to accept and seemingly understand. I began by declaring my feelings in a straightforward statement.

"II won't care how I'll be remembered when I'm dead. I won't exist the way I do now or I may not exist at all. Let's assume for a moment that Epicurus was right about death. When he died, entire cities mourned him because he was so much loved by countless people who lauded him as extremely kind, generous and loving toward everyone he met..But according to him, when his body died all the many atoms constituting his soul would fly off in all directions and be reabsorbed in the vast material matrix. That would be the end of Epicurus ...and so too will it be my end.

"So say what you will about me when I;m dead. I will not hear it...for the small sense of identity that possesses me at this moment will have dissolved .If I am very fortunate I will release my fictional self into the Abyss ...Those who would lose their souls will save their souls...

"Contradictions? Maybe I could state it a different way. "Those who will lose the small-egoic-self will discover that consciousness is what they are, but no longer in an alienated condition of ontological conflict with others. Instead this grander sense of self will be unified with all other beings - awake and sleeping beings alike. Sometimes we use the term 'consciousness at large..

"Let the dead bury the dead..."..

07/15/2017

SO, WHEN i TOLD THE GUY THAT NO ONE HAD OFFERED TO HELP WITH HIS PROBLEM, IN DESPAIR HE BOLTED TOWARD THE WINDOW TO JUMP THREE FLOORS TO THE PAVEMENT BELOW. I CAUGHT HIM JUST AS HE WAS ABOUT TO CLAMBER OVER THE WINDOW SILL. I GRABBED AND HELD ON TIGHT, BUT IN THE PROCESS TORE THE ROTATOR CUFF IN MY LEFT SHOULDER. I CRIED OUT IN PAIN BUT STILL MANAGED TO DRAG MY SUICIDAL PATIENT TO THE FLOOR WITH ME. i HUNG ON UNTIL HIS URGE TO JUMP HAD PASSED.
HOW IRONIC IT IS THAT, ALL MY CLEVER INTELLECTUAL STRATEGIES FAILED TO FREE HIM OF HIS SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, BUT INSTEAD IT WAS THE FACT THAT I PHYSICALLY TRIED TO KEEP HIM ALIVE THAT PRODUCED A STRONG EFFECT ON HIM.
NOW HE TELLS ME THAT HE WILL NOT KILL HIMSELF UNTIL MY SHOULDER INJURY HAS HEALED. AS A PROFESSIONAL PHYSICAL THERAPIST, HE FEELS OBLIGATED TO TAKE ME THROUGH THE MONTHS OF MANIPULATIONS AND EXERCISES REQUIRED TO MAKE MY SHOULDER AGAIN FUNCTIONAL. WHEN THAT IS ACCOMPLISHED, THEN HE WILL AGAIN PURSUE HIS GOAL OF ESCAPING ALL THOSE ACCUSATORY EYES WHO CONDEMN HIM FOR SOME CRIME HE CANNOT REMEMBER COMMITTING.,
SO, DEAR READERS, THANKS FOR YOUR INDIFFERENCE. SERENDIPITY HAS INTERVENED.😎

07/12/2017

So, a few days ago I asked for help with a patient whose sense of paranoia is so powerful that it causes him to hallucinate during the day, and to enter astonishing dreams at night. I mentioned that for several nights he saw an uncountable number of individual eyes, and it profoundly depressed him - for it evoked the loneliness and sense of separation plaguing the entire human race. It is only through use of imagination and trickery that I am able to convince him not to commit su***de each day.
What say you, experts of life? Help me out. What could I say to the guy you would say if you felt compelled to try to save his life. Come on. I'll share the fee with you if you help out. We have to save him in order to get paid.,
In my original agreement with the guy I told him that he need not pay me until he no longer needs me to convince him several times a week that he should not commit su***de. He must agree to remain alive until our next meeting. So far so good. But I'm running out of ways to convince him. Help me out, purveyors of life. If he pays me, I pay you.
Who prompted me to write something? Who is that masked man?

07/10/2017

So, this guy has been coming to me for counseling this past week. He is full of anxiety, and he claims that he feels himself being watched all the time.We talk it out, and just when he seemed to realize that the censorial watcher is himself, he was floored by a dream he had for three consecutive nights.In the dream he found himself sitting in a darkened room when suddenly the lights when on.What he saw then shattered all his rationality. Eyes - millions, billions, trillions...uncountable eyes filling every inch of his vision.
Now when he shows up for a session, he cannot look at me. He is shrunken husk buried beneath a mountain of self-recrimination. It's all I can do from day to day to convince him not to end himself.
So, I ask of anyone who reads this and cares: What should I do for this poor guy?/

07/08/2017

Someone scoffed and asked: "What do you know about the truth?. Do you think yourself wise?"
"Hardly," I replied. "The best I can do is see what is not the truth."
"And what is that?" she asked.
I responded as best I could: "Everything that has no substance,,,everything impermanent that arises in this mind and before these eyes...The closest we can come to the truth is to understand that it is that which sees the false...the seeing, the act of seeing...Gotta go.

07/06/2017

So this little dog - Lucy-the-Lunatic - jumps into my lap to keep close our mutual love, What do I do with it as a Zen practitioner? Do I grind on it, or wax poetic, or elaborate on it needlessly to myself...or do I just note it, and in this case delight in it? That is the way of radical zen, Krishnamurti's self observation, Socratic self-knowledge. If you want to intellectualize about, by all means, do so. Follow your inclinations as best you can without being outlandishly evil. Just be with yourself. Be here now. All the time. You would be amazed at how little this self-awareness interferes with good things. It never hurts real love, but it can expose the love limited to using the other as an instrument....It will sniff out the bu****it. So, if someone wants to conclude that this "work" is not worth it, not really anything at all, then he/she is invited to withdraw from this blog. But if you have the courage to keep your eye open, then you are most welcome.
Gotta go. Gotta take the dogs to the park.I am their obedient servant.

07/04/2017

A demanding realization has come to me. An ongoing problem in proposing that people attend to self-knowledge through self-investigation is the assumption on the part of the neophyte that one has to become a depressive, self-doubting, self-flagellating wallflower. None of that is true.

Let us make a distinction between self-consciousness and self-awareness. The distinction is arbitrary. That means that for many people, there is no real distinction, but the neophyte may assess self-consciousness as that withdrawn, hesitant energy-sucking evaluation of oneself as wrong, unworthy, insignificant, and unlovable... That kind of judgmental self-evaluation is not necessary to the work we propose. Call it instead, self-awareness, a light-handed, non-judgmental, presence to oneself. Keep in mind that we are already present to ourselves. The "Work" is merely a matter of centering ourselves in this fundamental self-awareness. That is the beginning, and ironically, that is the end of the work, the true purpose. Wake up!

A famous man chided his companions on the night before his cruel persecution: "Could you not remain awake with me for these hours...?

06/29/2017

Here's where I live at night, only to return to Rhode Island each morning. Walking the desert at night can be more educational than four years of college. Being alone with the cold wind and flitting figures in the dark will bring up all your childhood fears and fantasies. Doing so will save you many fruitless and expensive years on the psychiatrist's couch.

Being alone in your own personal desert can give you a better internal education than all the talk therapy you could never afford.

06/07/2017

Okay, stranger. Thanks for the invitation. In response I'll scatter a few brain droppings in the hope of provoking smiles. The first thing I should always express, however, in these posts is found in a quote from Krishnamurti:
"Don't make your teacher, for if you do, you'll destroy me and yourself as well."
Truer words were never spoken. The world of the authoritarian personality is populated in the billions. We can look down our noses at the North Koreans who deify their leaders - perfect examples of the cult of the personality - but we are hero worshipers as well, from sports to religion.
There is however, an evolution in the relation between the master and the submissive. In his secret mind,, the latter harbors the overthrow of the master, and when the inevitable flaw reveals itself, dethroning has begun.
I am nobody's master, not even to the two Chihuahuas who exploit my love for them by using me as their loyal and obedient servant. Speaking of them, another quote comes to mind. "YOUR MADNESS OUTSTRIPS MY WISDOM"
This afternoon I proclaimed those words to Lucy-the-Lunatic, five and a half pounds of Mexican canine,,draped in sleek black fur, lithe as a waterbug, a combination of madness incarnate and irresistible affection, a Jeckle and Hyde dressed in a little dog suit. Two different dogs - one so open-hearted and infant-like (emotionally so) and the other who belongs on the cold steppes of Frozen Russia fighting the other wolves for a piece of the elk they just killed. Wfhat a perfect pet for someone whose facebook site is called ShadoworkS.
Chew on that for a while. I'll try to say more. Gotta feed the dogs..

04/27/2017

Doing shadowork for our purposes is to practice the art of self-knowledge, and in doing so, we will unavoidably come upon our loves and hates. They will be the signposts to light our way to a deeper understanding of how much of the wold we co-create with the matrix in which we are immersed.

04/27/2017

04/27/2017