A Framework for Inquiry and Reflection
A Preface for Living with Open Hands 2.0
The Context
I began blogging Living with Open Hands 1.0 on April Fool's Day, 2006... quite proverbial. Little did I know the total upheaval that I’d experience. Writing had become, unintentionally and surprisingly, a deeply disruptive transformative process of inquiry and introspection for me. And with this inner insurgency running parallel to the outer assault, the tsunami that life dealt me at that time, I will never be the same again. Actually, I don’t think I’d be alive if it weren’t for the process of writing. But after about 17 years of contemplative writing, challenging myself daily, deeply, and painfully, I started to see that I had only begun to clear the internal clutter and sort what is real from what is not.The Cliff and the Abyss
I found myself dangling at the edge of a cliff, waiting for the fog to clear, staring into the abyss wondering whether to cling for dear life trying to impulsively climb back up to where it is safe or to let go and let myself fall, plunging deeper and deeper into the sheer terror of the abyss, deeper into darkness, and yet, somehow, closer to the light. I knew there was nothing left for me up top in the safe terrain above the cliff and yet I hung on. For most of my life, I’ve been unintentionally getting closer and closer to that edge. Then, when I started writing, I found myself reflectively sitting above the fray without participation; observing, wondering, clinging to fear of the unknown, unwilling to take the plunge; just sitting, reflecting, expanding my understanding from a safe distance. Then life blindsided me, I lost my footing, went over the edge, clinging for dear life. All the while, life continued to batter and bruise me leaving me hanging there tattered and torn, wrecked, bashed and dashing against the rocks; waiting, watching, wondering. During those 12 years of writing 1.0, I did scramble desperately back to safety over and over. But 5 years ago, before starting writing 2.0, I had lost my footing one last time, never to return to safety and security, comfort and certainty. I knew these were but fictions, stories we tell ourselves, gods of the age. I was beginning to understand that there were two ways to live life; with clenched fists, clinging to fantasies and illusions that I had been fed all my life OR with open hands, letting go and allowing life to show me reality as it is. I knew I had to choose Living with Open Hands as an expression of an Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will. One time I had a spiritual teacher warn me, saying, don’t pray for wisdom unless you are willing to go through what it takes to get wisdom. This process is sort of like that. Purifying gold requires it going through the fire to burn off the dross.
By 2018, I could no longer keep writing and still be authentic, true to my heart, true to myself. All of my creativity seized up like an engine with a cracked block with this all encompassing impasse and decision point. I knew in my head that I had been believing the lies and I had been systematically identifying the myths and stories in my head that I’ve always believed and then sorting the trash from the treasures. Even the great American Dream of God, religion, family, career, home-ownership had all been wiped out, ripped from my grasp. But it was the internal values and beliefs that I was hoping to hold on to. I thought that writing Living with Open Hands 1.0 was making me a better Christian, a better human, and a better believer in God. It definitely did that for a time but the disruptive transformative process kept on going deeper and deeper, challenging every fiber in my being to live up to what I’ve been discovering and now believe in my head. The distance from the head to the heart seems short physically and intellectually, but spiritually and emotionally it was the greatest distance on earth. It was the difference between knowing in my head and knowing in my heart; between living with open hands expressed by an open mind, open heart, open will; and living with clenched fists, unwilling to let go of that which is not and let come what is, living what is real. No more illusions.
Conceptually, I thought I was living with open hands and following the truth wherever it led but realistically and contemplatively I could see that my clenched fist was hanging on for dear life. One finger at a time, I had to realize the extent of my grip and peel back each finger. Part of that process was getting to a state of “Freedom from the Known”, learning to listen deeply to all of that which I already know and have always known down deep in my bones, knowing that once I understand I must let go over and over and over. That is life’s process. I grasp. I let go. And I fall into the abyss. Nothing is mine to hang on to. Life is not mine to know or to have.
“And then came human beings; humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to.”
“Live to the point of tears.”
~ Albert Camus
I am not mine to have and to keep protectively out of the storm that is raging outside. And my final stronghold that I clung to during my last time of dangling over the edge, shockingly, was my belief in God. That one, I never expected. While writing 1.0, I was opening my mind and my heart and becoming more inclusive and compassionate, a better human being.
But as I followed the truth wherever it might lead, I unexpectedly found Christianity and God, dogma and doctrine, creeds and theology slipping away knowing they are nothing but human constructs that are exclusive rather than inclusive. Hanging on over the edge, those roots and vines I was clinging to snapped and I found myself falling, a forced letting go. If nothing is mine to cling to, then nothing means nothing. My kids are not mine. My family is not mine. My career is not mine. My house, my possessions, my American dream, everything I clung to and imagined to be mine; none of it is mine. My health is not mine. I am not mine. It is all temporal. It is not certain. It is fleeting, like dust in the wind. Then I could see that my concept and image of God is not mine, in fact, it is nothing more than a story that I imagine in my head. After all, all images are imagined fictions. They may point to something that is real but the question is, is there anything real to point to?
Back to the metaphor of the cliff and the abyss, I am now falling throughout life, not knowing what is around the next bend, but welcoming whatever comes, embracing life as it is, anticipating death as it is; without pretense, without agenda, without expectation, without knowing, without hope, without appeal.
For a description of what happened during that in-between-blogs writer’s block, feel free to check out this rough outline that this blog is based on, and of what I now call the inner insurgency that was happening in my head and in my heart. My Philosophical Evolution: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/p/my-philosophical-evolution.html
See also, Grounded in Groundlessness
After all, what is life but learning to fall;
letting go, clinging no more.
What is life but learning to fail;
embracing the heartbreak, then getting up.
Falling into the abyss, “we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” (Charles Bukowski)
I knew that if I were to ever write again, I would have to write about what Bukowski says above. I can't write fantasies. I have to be honest with myself and authentic in my writing. I could not hide the depth of my learning and transformation that went all the way down to the ground within. I have to live without faking it. I have to no longer seek comfort, security, and certainty. I have to suspend all assumptions, all conditioning, all of the stories I’ve been telling myself all of my life. I have to simplify life to the most basic, foundational essentials (Bedrock of Being). I had to follow truth wherever it leads. I have to live a life without any external conjured up meaning and purpose out there somewhere; because the meaning and purpose of life is within. TO LIVE! Here and now! My life must be a reflection of the shape of my heart if I am to live with integrity. No more philosophical suicide.
I felt that 1.0 had gone as far as it could in me and that I had to restart everything by creating 2.0 where I can speak freely, controversially, offensively if need be; speaking the truth in love, mostly to myself but also to those that have ears to hear. I needed to make sure that family and friends, people from my past would not come after me nipping at my heels trying to convert me back to the safety, fantasy, and fiction of the bubble.
“Only by exploring and sharing my autobiography can I witness my discoveries of the sacred. My story is not normative. I am under no illusions that I am a saint, a hero, or a model for anyone. I do not write in order to say: Here is the map for you to follow. I only share some of the twists and turns of my journey in order to encourage you to take your own story seriously. Examine the sacred text of your own experience, reconstruct the events and relationships that went into the creation of your being, re-collect memories, and form them into a narrative that makes your life a once-told tale.” (Sam Keen)
The Framework
Living with Open Hands 2.0 -- is a “way” for me to investigate my interior landscape. There are no answers here, only questions. This is a process of inquiry and introspection, deconstruction, deconversion, and total reconstruction of my essence and my world and life view .
A “way” is not a belief system, a creed, or a doctrine. It is a goad to prod us to continually rethink everything. Most of our beliefs and actions come from thought that is operating automatically. Thought is continually thinking it is running the place (YOU!). It can be called conditioning, habit, reactions, cultural downloads, media influences, memes, dogma, brainwashing, childhood teachings. These are all programs running just beneath the surface of our awareness, noticeable only in obscurity; for instance, in the middle of the night. We cannot be self-determined and take responsibility for our lives if we do not realize the subconscious forces at play, the myths that drive us.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” (Carl Jung)
"I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)
If you choose, it can cause internal insurgency: demise, deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction resulting in a transformation of one’s worldview or lens or perspective. If not, then it just may be a way to live an examined life. We learn to See and we learn to understand only if we seek understanding with our whole heart and mind that are open to follow the truth wherever it may lead. And that is only to the extent that you want it and allow it.
This is not meant to convince us to think differently. It is meant to help us think, period. And prodding us to thinking about our thinking and to understand how thought works. We lack a natural proprioception of thought, so often our thoughts take over without our awareness. Without this understanding, we may not know what perceptions of life that our subconscious thinking gives us.
“We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.” – David Bohm (Source: On Dialogue, 1996)
I needed a new way of seeing life, seeing everything; a new framework for understanding, a new worldview.
"The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust."
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot
It is not a matter of IF we are conditioned because we all are to one degree or another. The real questions are: Am I aware of my conditioning? Am I aware of the extent that it subconsciously drives and shapes me? Thought is conditioning. We are deeply conditioned and generally unaware of this conditioning. This conditioning permeates all our thought, emotion, and actions and creates immense confusion and incoherence. The lack of attention to this conditioning is what prevents it from being cleared up.
“It is imperative, absolutely essential for the future of humanity that we are concerned with the brain which is conditioned. If one is aware of that, then we can proceed to ask whether it is possible to free the brain.”
“We think the crisis is outside of us; it is in us. The crisis is in our consciousness.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti (Source: Conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Jonas Salk in Ojai, California, March 1983) https://bohmkrishnamurti.com/essays-etc/there-is-no-activism-there-is-only-proprioception-of-thought/
“Thought creates the world and then says, ‘I didn’t do it!’” (David Bohm, physicist)
The Conditioned Self: J. Krishnamurti, David Bohm, and Saral Bohm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzcT-RKqnP0
I did not choose this upheaval or unraveling of my soul. It chose me. This process ended up being an incredibly hard and hurtful heartbreak. It robbed me of everything I thought I had. And yet I am so grateful for how it changed me; opening my eyes, my ears, my hands, my mind, my heart, and my will to go wherever truth leads me.
I did not want to change or see or understand. I just wanted to be left alone. My life was fine. Nothing needed to change. Then everything fell apart; and I couldn’t put it all back together. It was like a shattered mirror I was desperate to fix. Hands bloodied, I tried and tried and tried for several years and I could not heal. I felt like I was being kicked when I was down. A simple fall ended up tearing me to pieces, dashing me against the rocks, and breaking my heart wide open. The good is that it stayed open, finally.
My pain wouldn’t subside. My wounds wouldn’t heal. A few months before everything fell apart in 2006, I felt the need to begin to write. I didn’t know why. But there was a growing unrest, a dissonance that eventually penetrated to the bone like tinnitus ringing in the bones of my ears. This was the beginning of an inward insurgency that has continued to take root and grow. Then life blindsided me; divorce, foreclosure, downsized, loss of my kids half time, loss of my mental health via depression, and I turned 50 all that spring. And that was the beginning of an outward assault. Writing is what kept me alive… It was a defensive weapon that pierced my personal facade and the facade of this world. It was a shield and shelter during the storm that allowed me to retreat and seek understanding.
Paradigm Shifts
There are two major paradigm shifts that happened through the process of writing that have changed me and shaped me to the core. These have given me a new perspective, a new understanding, a new way of seeing myself, others, and this world. They were the beginning of a new framework for understanding, a new worldview. They are sort of like a litmus test for all of life encompassing my values, beliefs, actions, reactions, and interactions. They have proven themselves so powerful that they are also the plumb line against which I can measure my life, my politics, my religion, my testimony, my compassion, and my basic humanity. For the past 5 years, I see so few people and things meeting these tests of just simply being human. But still I knew this is how I must live.
For me, it is very simple. I just ask myself how I See, how I have lived, and if I am worthy of the life I have been given, although these are not so simple to live by. It takes constant awareness and discernment. While discerning trash from treasures, any of my values and beliefs that do not measure up fall into the trash heap to be discarded as unworthy of the human spirit.
Here are the two tests I use:
Do I live life with clenched fists? Or am I Living with Open Hands as an expression of an Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will?
Can I and Do I See the World Through the Eyes of the Brokenhearted and See this World Through My Own Eyes of Brokenheartedness? Bottom up? Or Top down? Most of the people in our present world and throughout history have been poor and downtrodden, longing for this world to become a world that works for all. But most of history has been written from the perspective of the winners, the oppressors, the conquerors, the powerful, those that are longing for this world not to change but to continue to shelter and sustain their own greed, power, and oppression.
This is how I live a life that is worthy of the space I consume.
This is how I give more than I take.
Am I a consumer or a contributor?
Am I a taker or a giver?
And what is the purpose of this one precious life that I have been given?
The purpose of life is not to achieve greatness because it is those that are the least that are the greatest, it is those that are meek that inherit the earth because within the brokenness of all people is a hidden wholeness.
The purpose of life is not some destination physically or figuratively because life is right here and right now. Don't miss it.
The purpose of life is not to accomplish anything except to live and to be worthy of the life that we have been given.
“The meaning of life is to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic
as if it was necessary to achieve
something beyond themselves.”
(Alan Watts)
Life is NOT a Journey - Alan Watts
When we look at life as a journey or a trip to somewhere, then we become like children asking constantly, "are we there yet?" In case you haven't noticed, we live in an are-we-there-yet culture. For the traveler the point of the journey is the destination. That's what we are excited about, not the actual process of getting there. What if the point of the journey is the journey?
When we dance, we do not dance in order to get to the end. An orchestra does not play in order to get to the last note. People don't come and listen so that they can only hear the last note. It is the process, the whole thing that matters. Life is like a dance or an orchestra. We live to live, not to die. The point of life is not the afterlife, it is living each and every moment to the fullest extent, in revolt against the Absurd.
"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is." (Marcel Proust)
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
I write not because I know.
I write because I don’t know.
Writing for me has become a
deeply transformative process
that is still going on 17 years later.
The beginning of all learning and wisdom
comes from an open heart and mind
that knows, "I don't know."
If I already know,
I can no longer learn.
