Chapter 4, Booby Du Jour
Posted: February 17th, 2010 | Author: Teresa Dietze | Filed under: UncategorizedSound file for Chapter 4:
(Approximately 90 min.)
Please leave comments comments below.
Sound file for Chapter 4:
(Approximately 90 min.)
Please leave comments comments below.
PWOs: “The effort which we expend in achieving some form of impartiality in the observation of the biological machine is much more important than anything in particular which we happen to observe in the course of events.”
Now what does it mean to give some consideration toward being impartial when making observations of the human biological machine? And why is this more important than anything in particular which we happen to observe in the course of undertaking a practice to make some observations of the HBM?
Sitting at a long red light yesterday, absent- mindedly the hand raises up and starts stroking the beard that I grew for the winter. I don’t notice this until the first couple of strokes. At this point I voluntarily took over the movement in order to duplicate the machine’s habit. It was not difficult to see that the energy of restlessness or impatience, until then unnoticed by my own presence, had activiated the movement of the hand.
I took this as the machine’s way of trying to help remind me that I was mainly nesting in the head rather than inhabiting the whole of the bodily apparatus with it’s three centers. The HBM can be ingeniously helpful in providing reminders that presence is needed to allow all the scattered energies to be food to feed the growing pool of presence. And presence is that subtle something that can defuse the bomb or change the machine from a pleasure-pain vehicle into a transformational apparatus.
Rumi: “Do you have someone to nag you?
If not, why aren’t you looking ?”
In our learned ignorance we will cast this one into the role of “I don’t need this; get away from me; give me some entertainment, preoccupation or even numbness so I can have as little to do with you as possible.”
I love your comment about sitting at the red light. I do the same thing, but since I have no beard, I notice that I stroke my eyebrows, from the corners inward, alternating. The point by the inner corner of the brow helps calm insecurity. I noticed by feeling inside that the project of my machine, when it habitually does this motion, is to soothe insecurity I am not in touch with. When I can feel it directly I can explore and soften that insecurity instead of leaving my machine on its own with the sensations.
Love also your comment about nagging. I have been the naggER much more than the naggEE and need more nagging. People hire coaches to nag them and then get mad when someone does it for free. 😉
Okay, as of yet I can’t awaken the machine at will but this need not discourage me.
On show dated 3-10-10 David: “We don’t yet have the foundation of the real but that doesn’t matter, we start where we are.”
What is that one something that I can always do regardless? I can sense the sleep of the machine. Or to elaborate: I can sense the sleep of the machine and with curiosity check out the over-all felt sense or sensation of the sleep of the machine as it is and as it is revealing itself to be moment by moment. Sure that’s the idea but how can I allow the machine to provide the needed rhythm to sustain the sensing? I don’t know but can I remember the question? Now what was it…oh yeah, how can I allow the machine to provide the needed rhythm to sustain the sensing of the HBM?
“Remember always that it is the machine which is asleep, and that we are not the machine…that we have been drawn down, seduced into the sleep of the machine.” p34 HBMTA This is where we find ourselves.
No problem, we simply take advantage of this fact: we open and allow the felt sense of the sleep of the machine, i.e., we allow the pulsing sensations of the HBM to intimately touch us. Now we are on the way toward awakening the machine. “Observation alone will act upon it to awaken it slowly and gently.” p 34 HBMTA
“Eventually, all rock is reduced to dust. Just by the gentle but unremitting action of water.” p98 HBMTA
What in my own experience corresponds to this gentle action of water? If we trust the rumor that we are not the machine and yet we need the machine to perform its function as a transformational apparatus, what prevents us from opening and allowing the sensations of the machine without falling into being seduced by some machine based habit pattern that is not conducive to awakening the HBM? Rumi: “Water inside the boat is the ruin of the boat; water outside the boat gives it buoyancy.”