To: K-list
Recieved: 2004/03/12 20:07
Subject: Re: [K-list] playing with body/mind
From: forrest curo
On 2004/03/12 20:07, forrest curo posted thus to the K-list:
>I understand about the "anxiety" - wanting to die instead. I have been
>suspicious of "getting stoned" even tho I am more apt to find some sorta
>solace in mundane and trivial matters - like housework - when i *am* (stoned).
The "psychedelics"/"hallucinogens" were definitely a two-edged blessing,
especially for people habitually disconnected from their visualization
faculties. (They probably should have been called "pattern-recognition
enhancers"-- perfectly capable of showing hidden realities but also
unrealities.) I still think they were an epidemic of grace, and regret the
loss of opportunity when the "psychedelic" movement was diverted into
partying, drug-worship, and self-destruction.
>Adjusting to the psychological and spiritual side of being in chronic pain
>has been a journey that I feel inadequate to positively relate. I can
>only say that I've been there too.
I live in chronic facial neuralgia, which is a far cry from "chronic pain."
I first noticed it while going through caffine withdrawals in the
mid-sixties, but it's mild enough and so much an element of my usual mode
of functioning that I'm usually oblivious of it, except when something
makes it unexpectedly vanish.
> I appreciate your attraction to the "Friends". I myself have thought
> they were simple enough to make the traumas go away. Unfortunately, there
> is no Quaker Church up here. And besides, my life is not simple enugh.
Although my best friend invited me to meeting about 1960, and I attended a
couple meetings in the following decades, it wasn't until 1991, when I got
dragged into homeless activism, that I saw any reason to come to meeting
rather than meditate at home. Sooner might have been better.
"Quaker Church" is the branch of the movement that "got religion from the
Methodists" in the 19th Century. All you're likely to find there is a
typical protestant church service, with an occasional "moment of silence."
Friends Meeting is more like group meditation (although some of us
indignantly insist that we we do is something else, ho hum.) I don't know
why your life would have to be "simple" before you could go. People have
odd ideas about us--So do we, but ours are different.
> I used to find, by my pride, that the Christian Church forefathers were
> assholes, liars, cheats, manipulative, and dense to opaque numbskulls.
> Well, actually, I still do. But that has nothing to do with the teachings
> of Christos. And you finding solace in Him as an avatar is a
> blessing indeed!
I first came to know God as the being who answered my I Ching questions and
appropriately distributed the fortune cookies, whom I imagined as an old
man messing my life around with a wicked sense of humor. And so my current
mental image still has some of that personality. I figure he knows me well
enough that I don't need to put on airs or grovel for him. Ain't nothing
really here but God.
My interest in Jesus has taken me through a great many books, many of which
"cleared it all up" only to be contradicted by the next book. One of the
old Gnostic gospels pointed out that we "eat his flesh and blood" by
absorbing his meaning, not by downing bread crumbs and fruit juice. And one
big part of that meaning is that we are all "avatars." (What else is there
for us to be?)
> I am worried though. You describe physical symptoms that need attending
> to by a sensitive doctor.
Any good yoga book will tell you to breathe properly, don't overdo, don't
practice soon after meals, and don't take up serious pranayama without a
teacher. If I bent those rules, temporary "physical symptoms" shouldn't
surprise anyone.
>We are not - any of us - immortal. I know that is hard for a poet to
>believe, but it is true.
What we really are is eternal. (I can't speak for the characters we think
of as ourselves, one way or the other.)
> I am also a Virgo, and my daughter has terminal constipation too.
>I have enough to worry about already, w/o you trying to find another
>spiritual reason for your malaise, besides good ol' fashioned, constipation,
[I do hope you're not being literal with that word "terminal"!] My mother
had terminal constipation, but it took 83 years to get her. Yoga would
probably have made the intervening years much more pleasant (It works on
me, if I do the work!) and wouldn't have addicted her to laxatives. My
observations (of many varied people) have persuaded me that concern for
one's health is more hazardous than most illnesses, and that you should
generally avoid your doctor if you're well enough to get there on your own
feet. (There are certainly exceptions!)
I'm not an example of raging kundalini symptoms, and I know that some
people suffer badly in the process. I'm courting greater awareness of that
kind of energy because 1) I believe there is Guidance at work and 2) It
seems worth some risk, in hopes of experiencing life at a deeper level.
Was this clearer?
Forrest Curo
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