Undazed ... for sure ...

23 December 2004

Howdy all and happy holidays,

I know that for some of you it’s better put … Happy Holi-daze … because this time of year really sets some people up for being dazed and confused for sure. The mere act of coming into proximity with so many others can be reason enough for some people to become unsettled in themselves.

Yet what’s more interesting can be the lack of awareness some people have with their “unsettledness� … how unaware they are of themselves in essence. The crux of where I’ve put my attention for the last fifteen years almost exclusively … and for the fifteen prior to that as I remembered to do so … has been on the awareness of my own ontological condition … or who I am being and becoming.

I became interested in this idea by accident … and then it became compelling for me. A singular idea that has compelled me along a trajectory leading endlessly back to myself … so that I could enter the world from the center of myself … a loop opening endlessly from myself into myself … referring my back again to the world. This journey holds me mesmerized … fascinated by the possibilities it contains and suggests. This form of consideration has led be to the consideration of the teleological form as well. The pull of the future that hasn’t happened yet as being more compelling than any push of the past could possibly be in organizing us to become ourselves.

What’s maybe becoming most interesting to me as I continue this journey myself has been the awareness of what shows up being the greatest reference of all to what is most true of me. If I extend this thinking beyond myself I find that those who show up in reference to me are the most telling of all of who I’ve become and who I’m becoming. I see this most evidentially in the relationships I see people having … the desire to pursue pleasure to satisfy the angst of their deep ontological longing … the lack of knowing themselves to be who they are referring them outwards to seek someone who will provide what they find most missing in themselves.

This is a dichotomy of the greatest proportions. To think that one can satisfy what is missing from oneself by finding something contained by other may be the greatest delusion we foist upon ourselves. Then of course we can find the form of who as a recurring pattern in the observation of ourselves and of other. For instance someone who chooses to pursue and to engage with someone who would let them overrule and control them tells much about the person who is controlling. A pattern of abuse designed to lead to self-satisfaction and pleasure that instead leaves only a greater urgency for satisfaction than was present before any such encounter. Then there would be the inverse of that, the person who opens themselves to being controlled, being overruled and what they receive for allowing this abuse of themselves. A sense of self-satisfaction that they are the victim, satisfying others while in fact being the more controlling, more manipulative of the pair. These observations pan out every time, without exception, without fail … don’t you think?

When you see this kind of interaction you know without exception that there must be something profound missing in the individual who allows themselves to become engaged in such an affair. A lack of self-esteem of significant proportions … significant enough to create an urgency of satisfying the impulse to be known by others as significant without the willingness or acceptance required to become who they are becoming before announcing themselves as being such. This will self-satisfying urgency only feeds the system to become every more dependent on this feedback loop of intermittent release … intermittent satisfaction … with the underlying pattern growing stronger in every revolution of the wheel. This pattern reminds me of the pattern of the wheel of karma … those who cannot or will not pay the dues now … of letting life unfold in reference to that which is greater than self … who demand an urgent satisfaction of their immediate desires … regardless of the cost to them or others … build an ever deepening karmic debt.

Yet there must be a way beyond this cycle of self-indulgence, the way of the warrior, as some paths refer to it. The warrior represents the individual who has taken up the challenge to arm themselves with awareness … without regard to the world’s opinion … or the seduction of the challenge of acceptance. Yet within this tradition the warrior also holds the position of lover as well. The warrior represents the greatest sacrifice of all … the sacrifice of self to that which is greater than self … to becoming transparent to all desire … especially the desire to reward oneself with the immediate pleasure at the price of the future quenching of all desire.

This season seems a time most appropriate to remind myself of the way of the warrior … the way of light … illuminating the path before myself with awareness … and a releasing of all obligation to the world … and most especially of the world to me. This season beckons to me to release my sense of demand … my sense of desire … my sense of being pleasured … to a greater sense of opening myself completely to the transparency of being present in all things. In this way as I continue letting go into this transparency … I find myself being swallowed whole by the deepest satisfaction imaginable of needing … or even wanting … nothing at all … nothing beyond this moment ... and then “like this� … finding myself ready to share this moment in fullness with other.

I will spend the next few days engaging with family and friends … some of who will be dazed by the suggestions and seductions of the season … from this position of transparency … and I will point again and again for them to themselves … referring to the center that contains the world.

My gift this year will be the undazing of these days at the end of this year for some of those who have already glazed over I'm sure.

I wish you all the very best during this holiday season … and in the upcoming New Year … may there be nothing you want … nor anything you can find lacking.

Joseph
2 Days Before Christmas … in NJ