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Stephen Pickering

Author: Stephen Pickering

  • What Must You Do to Start Your Life?

    “Just as those ignorant of the spot might pass, time and time again, over a buried treasure of gold and not find it, so do all creatures go daily to that Brahma-world in sleep and not find it.” ~ Ch?ndogya Upanišad 8.4.2

    It has to do with awareness. This door to awareness is somehow closed, and what we’ve got to figure out is how to open it.
    I really think that’s all there is to it. If we can open or ‘cleanse’ the doors of perception as Blake and the Doors put it, I really get the sense
    that the rest would take care of itself automatically. Like that flushing effect would flush out the Ego, and then an inpouring of ‘Cosmic’ energy
    would carry you to the finish line, or the goal, or however you want to put it. It’s a bit like breathing when you are sleeping or digesting your food
    or any of the trillions of complex actions your body does automatically without you having to even try.

    So how do we open that door? I don’t know. It may be the same in all of us, or each of us may have a unique thing that’s blocking us. I think it’s something that
    we inherently know, at least down deep, but that the fact that awareness, or consciousness is closed, or at least very restricted, is keeping us blindsided from
    even that one thing. You know there’s so many parables, ancient stories, about the man living his whole life on some land that he’s unaware
    that underneath is buried a treasure chest full of gold and jewels. And he spends his whole life toiling away in poverty, just getting by. The metaphor
    in that really seems to be pointing to what I’m trying to say here. It was simply lack of ‘awareness’ keeping him from that ‘treasure.’

    It could be that the value in a daily meditation practice is simply to make you aware of the obvious thing, ‘just under your feet,’ so to speak, that is blocking your awareness itself.

    Then ancient Vedas of India say: Being -> Consciousness -> Bliss. So if they are right, if we could just figure out what “Being” meant, in an everyday, practical way, then that could be
    the ‘ticket’ or the path to a recovery, an answer. I wrote in my last article on this subject that “Surrender” was the ticket. Well, surrender and being feel very related. This whole thing feels very similar to how Claire Weekes wrote, preached “Face. Do not run. Accept. Do not fight.” She was talking in terms of Nervous Illness. Nervous Illness is a state in which the nervous system registers feelings in a magnified way. Perhaps Nervous Illness and Ego are virtually the same thing? In her teaching the exagerated sympathetic nervous system exagerated the inbuilt functions of the “Fight or Flight” response which created a feedback loop that kept the Illness alive. It didn’t matter what originally caused the Illness. It was this current feedback loop keeping it alive. So the answer in her teaching was that you had to change your mood: You had to face your feelings and not run from them, and once you faced them you had to accept them (surrender) and not try to fight them. The instinct is the opposite. But with time and practice, acceptance could be cultivated as a mood.

    Maybe “Being” means that: Stop running and stop fighting. And by that I mean psychologically from your own mood. I don’t mean that like, out there in life you accept when a company has overcharged you or accept that your air conditioning is broken and not have it fixed! hahahahahahahahahaha. But what I am saying is that even “Out There” in the daylight world of your doings and goings, the back of your mind can still be a field of cultivated acceptance. That actually is one of the main themes of the Bhagavad Gita. Detachment from the outcome is the same as a mood of acceptance.

    Editors note: This is Page 3 in the ongoing “Ego” series.

  • On Ego, Page 2, The Cure is Surrender

    To become a god requires complete, unconditional surrender to the all, sacrificing your self (ego) to your Self (nature, Atman). In Norse Mythology, Woton hung himself upon a tree for 9 days, sacrificing himself to himself (Since he was already a god). The sense you get out of that is the need, in order for the ‘god’ energy to come through, of sacrificing, of lancing, the individual self, the separate, narrowly contained self (Which sounds a whole lot like the ‘Ego’) in order to let the ‘All’ (The infinite, the eternal) come through.

    Now this doesn’t mean you literally go out and ‘crucify’ yourself or hurt yourself physically in any way. This is a psychological thing. These metaphors, these allegories, point to psychological, spiritual ‘quests.’ It’s tricky because what is Ego exactly in your day to day life? It may be something relatively benign like this: Am I do this activity (job, hobby, social, sport) because I, myself, my ‘inner’ self (That’s the one closer to the ‘Atman’) want to do it, or am I doing it for something or someone else (attention, money, to please someone else)?

    That’s one idea. That first paragraph was a big, mythopoetic phrase. It’s great. It feels good to sing! But then the second paragraph explores how to take that ‘Poetic’ language and actually apply it to your life right here and now. I hate to use the word ‘practical,’ but it seems one has to find a way to translate these ideas, written thousands of years ago, and also in big, broad, philosophical language, into a ‘real world’ application. I think that’s a good way to continue the exercise, quest, adventure, in a way that honors both sides of the equation: The Mythic, on one hand, which inspires but feels ‘out there’ + the “So, what do I actually do!?!?!?!” which is of the here and now, feels more mundane, but at the same time feels real.

     

  • On Ego, What it Is, What it Does, and How to Cure It

    “Because the conscious mind has to be in control, even though it doesn’t know anything.” – Dolores Cannon [Youtube Link]

    I’ve heard Dolores say in other interviews that the Conscious Mind is the Ego. That makes the definition pretty simple. If that is the case then the cure would seem to be spending more time with the sub/unconscious parts of our psyches, paying it more respect, i.e., meditation, having the intent to remember and write down your dreams, and respecting the images and messages coming from that deep well. – Stephen

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. This post is definitely under construction. It may be so indefinitely. The main reason is: I have a strong sense that Ego is our main problem in life. Ego has hijacked our Consciousness, and it won’t let us be happy. It doesn’t want us to be happy.

    But here’s the rub and the reason I created this post: I don’t know why, nor do I know exactly what it is, or how to get rid of it.

    The few times in my life that I’ve really meditated, and carried on a sustained practice, it does seem like that exercise had a positive effect on reducing it, much like working out at the gym burns fat.

    But somehow the Ego itself, being still in control, seems to stop me in my tracks from doing such things as meditating, anything that would threaten it’s existence. Since it has hijacked and controls the brain it accomplishes this behaviourial control by releasing negative feelings around anything it doesn’t want you to do. Anything that would help you escape from it.

    Still, I don’t know what it, Ego, is, exactly. I’m hoping that writing itself, you know how writing is a way of learning, will help me arrive at an answer. If you have any thoughts on this subject, then I would love to hear them in comments.

    It occurred to me today that we weren’t born with Ego. It feels like Society somehow injects us with “Ego” little by little, as we grow older, and we don’t notice it, much like we don’t notice our day to day aging, until one day we wake up and our consciousness has changed. The wonderous feeling we had about life as children has disentegrated.

    The myths and fairytales, in their picture language, seem to be saying, in an over arching theme that the cosmic or natural energies can’t get through to our consciousness, that they’re being blocked by something. And that if we were to remove the obstruction, those energies would automatically carry us to our destiny. It certainly feels like the Ego is that blockage. So the question becomes, how do we in our modern lives remove that blockage? Certainly the picture language of Myth and Fairy-Tales seem to have a metaphorical answer. As time goes on and things come to me, either through my meditation practice, or reading Myths and Fairytales, themselves, or people like Joseph Campbell and Deepak Chopra, among others, I’ll add to this post. This post may get really long! So what? I do think the answer to this question is the central realization of our lives: To Be or Not to Be? It seems to almost come down to this binary, “Quantum” type answer: Either you’re living your destiny or you’re not.

    Ok, since this post is just about writing down the ideas that come to me, that feel true, I’ll start with this:

    • Ego is the sense, the feeling, the belief, that you are separate from the World, the Universe, Nature, everyone and everything around you.

    That statement came out of me a few months ago, seemed to come from my “archetypal” self. It felt true when it came out, and although I’m not “feeling” it now, I do remember it, and I want to write it down, so I can refer back to it. That’s good. That’s a start. But it still doesn’t tell me what to ‘do’ about it, how to cure myself from it. Well, I’m gonna ponder this, and hopefully I’ll come back to this post with some more ideas, if not answers.

    Update: June 1, 2013.

    • “It’s a mode of existing, it’s a way of existing that sets God apart from anything else”

    I just saw this in a lecture about Infinity that the World Science Festival produced last night. It’s talking about ‘Qualitative’ infinity as opposed to ‘Quantitative’ Infinity, an idea that apparently came from Aquinas. This idea of ‘Qualitative’ Infinity as a ‘Way’ of existing produces images in my brain of Purity which strikes me as the opposite or even the ‘Antidote’ to the problem mentioned above of some kind of blockage. A “Pure” connection is unblocked. So how does it relate to this article? It almost seems in this sense that ‘God’ is anyone or anything who is existing in ‘pure being.’ Ego is a psychological ‘impurity.’ So it could be that ‘God’ is simply any ‘being’ that is existing without Ego or any other kind of impurity. That’s a fascinating concept.

    http://new.livestream.com/WorldScienceFestival/InfinityEvent/videos/20260843 – (That quote and the talk of the Theologian where I heard it starts at about the 13:22 mark of the video on the page of this link.)

  • Chords and Lyrics for The Happiness Waltz by Josh Rouse

    “The Happiness Waltz” by Josh Rouse
    title track from the album “The Happiness Waltz”

    Eb
    Spring, spring, Winter’s sting

    Abmaj7
    Is gone.
    /                       Eb
    Tomorrow I’ll be new.

    Eb
    Salt wind
    /                          Abmaj7
    Blowin’ through the yard.

    /                                           Eb
    God knows, I’ve missed you.
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Happiness waltzed in the room
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Postcards of where she’s been too
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Smiling and singing a tune
    Bbm7
    A swansong
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Happiness waltzed out the room

    (A Musical Interlude over the Verse Chords)

    Bbm     Fm7          Abmaj7
    Let me into your      world
    Bbm7                 Fm7    Abmaj7     Bbsus2
    Show me your magic hear-            -eart!
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Happiness waltzed in the room
    Bbm7           Abmaj7                  Eb
    Postcards of where she’s been to.
    Bbm7           Abmaj7                 Eb
    Smiling with pearls on her shoes.
    /    Bbm7
    A swan song.
    Bbm7           Abmaj7             Eb
    Happiness waltzed out the room.

  • Song of the Day: A Song to Help You Sleep – Josh Rouse

    Man, chose a doosey today! Musically it’s easy. Just a lot of lyrics to memorize. That’s the irony: The hard ones musically tend to have easy lyrics and vice versa.

    Oh well. What was the spark that made me choose this one? I was sitting around last night watching TV, strumming some chords, and out of the blue, what I thought was an original, cool sounding riff came to my head, and I thought, “Oh, finally, this could be an original song!”

    But the more I strummed it, I realized it was this Josh Rouse song. Hate that when that happens. You think you’ve come up with not only something original, but also something that is actually good, and then you realize it’s someone else’s.

    At least it got me interested in this song, which really I’d only heard a few times before. If it weren’t for Spotify, I don’t think I would have ever heard it. I didn’t realize there was so much material both on “The Best of the Rykodisc Years” and “The Smooth Sounds of Josh Rouse” that wasn’t on any of his previous official “albums” or EPs.

    Anyway, like I said, musically it’s easy. Just four chords: Dmaj7 – Amaj7 – Gmaj – E7. It begins on a Dmaj7, and the dominant riff of the song, both verse and chorus, is a back and forth between the Dmaj7 and Amaj7. The G-E change comes in every so often as a sort of “turn around” as they call it in the business.

    These are the kinds of songs I really encourage for beginning guitarists who need encouragement. They are easy enough to learn, but they’re also good and fun. They keeps you motivated to play. I remember when I was a teenager, I was going to quit guitar altogether.

    And then I found Bob Dylan. Those songs were easy enough to learn, but I knew they were good, and I loved playing them. It was that spark of fun that kept me at it.

    Oh, well, I’m going to get at memorizing these lyrics. I’m sure it’ll take a couple or even few days for them to “sink in.” I’ll have to come back to this post, to official mark that I’ve got them down.

  • Song of the Day: “Imaginary Girl” by The Silver Seas

    Actually I’ve learned a couple others since the last “Song of the Day”, but they both took a couple or three days for the lyrics to really sink into  the “officially” memorized zone, and by that time, like the irony of life itself, I sort of lose interest in them, and end up not blogging about them. But I really do need to put them down in a blog post, or something that tells my subconscious that “This song is official. You can put it in the books. I know it by heart, and I can play it live.”

    Anyway there are a ton of songs that I’ve learned in the past and I know at the present moment, say 75%. But I sort of need a spark to get me to actually learn it 100%.

    Here’s an example of such a spark: I was watching the video of Daniel Tashian’s “I’m the One” song, and I was learning the chords, and writing down the lyrics. I was getting it down, but I was getting a little depressed because I actually couldn’t sing the Chorus. The high notes. That was discouraging. I’d always thought I could imitate Daniel’s voice pretty well. I hate to make excuses, but it could be that he just knows how to do “Falsetto” and I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know. Or maybe its just a bad day for my voice. Anyway that discouraged me from blogging about that song today at least. I will still learn that song and get it down 100% even if I can’t ever play it live, because it’s just such a good song.

    Oh, I forgot about the spark. When I was watching that video, I noticed in the recommended videos a video of the lyrics of the Silver Seas song, “Imaginary Girl” from their 2nd album. That was one of those “75%” songs for me. And I knew I could sing it pretty well. Also, I knew there was one or two little pieces of lyrics for that song, that I wasn’t sure about, and it looked like this video had them right. So that was all the spark I needed. I’ll post that video below. I’ve gone through the song 3 or 4 times now on the live P.A. system, and I feel like I’ve got it down now, that I can put it in the “100% Club.”

    I’ll probably post a video of me playing it live at some point. Until then, if you’re reading this and you would like to know the chords, let me know, and that might be the “Spark” I need to publish those.