I wanted down the cotton pine below.
It seemed the dream was calling from their root.
I had escaped the cocktail party show:
The empty voices blocking nature’s tune.
The recent summons in the field of time:
Our river’s bridge was rotting but still there.
Perhaps it was just merely warmth from wine,
I melted down that rickety old stair.
I wondered would your eyes still have that glow
If I could somehow reach across our lives;
And swim the river down our muddy soul
Where love forever dances in the night?
Our little eyes that swim the river’s floor:
Their secret depths open new love’s door.
“Yoga [meditation] is the (intentional) stopping of the spontaneous activity of the mind stuff.” – Yogasutras 1.2
“Throw open the gates, put self aside, bide in silence, and the radiance of the spirit shall come in and make its home.” – Kuan Tzu, P’ien 36
“When you enlarge your mind and let go of it,
When you relax your [qi ?] vital breath and expand it,
When your body is calm and unmoving:
And you can maintain the One and discard the myriad disturbances.
You will see profit and not be enticed by it,
You will see harm and not be frightened by it.
Relaxed and unwound, yet acutely sensitive,
In solitude you delight in your own person.
This is called “revolving the vital breath”:
Your thoughts and deeds seem heavenly.” Kuan Tzu (24, tr. Roth 1999:92)
To me it feels like every thought we have is blocking out our true nature. It’s also blocking out what would be a true life experience: both because the inner self can’t get out, and the outer life is blocked from showing forth its true nature and transcendence. “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth, yet men do not see it.” Thus every thought we have is distracting us from the ‘real show’ or ‘real adventure’ of our lives, which is our destiny. It’s like the Polynesian saying, “We spend our time fishing for minnows, all the while standing on a whale.” The “minnows” are thoughts, distractions, making us ignorant of the “whale” of our true nature, our true destiny, which is something much bigger than we ever imagined, and much more interesting than the sideshow of the mind trying to catch “little minnows.”
The sublimity of our essence is trying to make itself known both from within and from without. Thoughts are blocking that “knowingness.” This is the reason for the practice of yoga, or what we call meditation. To re “yoke” this awareness which would initiate a marriage of the eternal with the imminent.
“There’s something that wants to make itself known, a presence.”
My own insight happened while I was meditating last week: It was the insight that you’re not trying to get rid of your thoughts, or stop thinking, but rather stop the attachment to the thought. Don’t let it move you emotionally. That way the thought can come and go without you emotionally reacting to it. Think of the mythology of the Buddha: His victory came not from directly getting rid of thoughts, but by not being moved by them. Remember the story? First he was tempted by desire in the form of Lord Kama’s (a metaphor for Ego, Super-Ego, or even thought itself) beautiful, naked daughters (I believe there were three, which is an important mythological number) and he didn’t allow himself to be moved. So then, Lord Kama tried to use fear: He sent armies and weapons hurling at him. Again, the Buddha wasn’t moved, so the arrows dissolved into flowers.
Ah, but I almost forgot, there were three temptations, right? What was the third? It was the temptation of “Dharma” or in our lingo, what you should be doing out in the world. You might call it a “Political” temptation or a “Career” temptation. In the Buddha’s case, he was a King’s son. So, the temptation was political. The Lord Kama said, in effect, “What are you doing just sitting here? Can’t you see the world’s going to hell in a hand basket? You’re a prince. You should be leading your people!”
And still the Buddha did not allow himself to be moved. And that’s the moment he attained complete victory.
I just bought a book on Kindle called “Why Meditate?” and while I’ve just read the first 10 or so pages, he already confirmed my first insight: That you’re not trying to stop or get rid of your thoughts. At least not directly. Anymore than the Buddha tried to directly get rid of The Lord Kama. Instead, he wasn’t moved emotionally by the temptations of desire, fear, or duty. And that’s a good metaphor for what you’re trying to do in meditation: as the thoughts arise, you don’t try to fight them, but instead, lose your emotional attachment to them. Practice not letting them emotionally move you. So in that sense you really need thoughts during meditation, just like a marksman needs a target. You need them, so that you can practice not letting them control you psychologically or emotionally.
Here’s another good example. If you go to the 2:48 mark of this video, you’ll hear Deepak address this very issue:
“See, trying to silence a thought, is a thought. Ok? So, don’t try to silence the thought. But, you see, if you leave them alone, they start to say to themselves, ‘Nobody’s noticing me.’ Ok, so you don’t try to get out of the thought, because that is a thought by itself…The awareness of a thought is not a thought. It cannot be, right? So, just be aware of it. That’s all. Don’t try to [silence it].” – Deepak Chopra
I might rephrase it like this: “Trying to silence a thought, is an emotion. If you leave them alone, emotionally, they’ll leave the ‘party’ on their own volition. So, don’t try to get out of the thought, because, that, in itself, is an emotion. Instead, try to lose your emotional attachment to the thought.”
Play and practice with this idea. As the thoughts arise, practice not being emotionally moved by them.
Something’s going on that wants to be known, a presence.
It wants you to make your connection.
What do you think is really underneath the veil?
Something very deep.
Deeper than history, deeper than tomorrow, deeper than now.
That’s the secret, secret, secret voice
that never comes out during the day.
I’m with you: I don’t want it to ever go away.
“Connect your iPhone to iTunes, go to the Music tab and uncheck Sync Music and press Apply to resync.” – from “Randers4 on the Apple Support Forums. (This worked for me and took only a couple minutes, even with 2000 songs, to complete).
Man, iTunes is just crazy, and drives me crazy. But anyway, the reason I needed to do this: My old iPhone 4 was filled up to where I couldn’t update anything, and in this age of Spotify, I’m not listening to any of the music on my phone’s library. Now my photos and videos are taking up as much space, but my trust in iPhoto is just as weak, so I’m afraid to delete all photos at once, because I’m just sure there’ll be some in there that I have only one copy of. Ugh!
At first when I googled it said to “Uncheck” the unwanted songs and then Re-Sync. But you have to do that one by one! I’m not going to sit there and uncheck 2000 songs! Well actually I started to, and then realized the insanity and futility. Then something weird happened. I Googled some more to see if there was a way to Uncheck all the songs at once. One guy said to, within iTunes, click Edit>Select All, as if that was a way to mass uncheck all the songs. But that didn’t work. It scared me because, after I did that, and again started “re-unchecking” songs, the songs would disappear as I unchecked them. I thought, “OMG, am I deleting them from my computer or phone or both!?!?!?!?!”
Turns out, luckily, I wasn’t. For whatever reason the “Unchecked” songs, as I unchecked them were being moved to the bottom of the page, automatically. Phew! But still crazy. Now, I just went back and clicked Edit>Select All, clicked around the left side of the iTunes window, to the left of the check boxes, and the display seems returned to normal, with the Unchecked and Checked songs together in their normal order.
He simply states: “Connect your iPhone to iTunes, go to the Music tab and uncheck Sync Music and press Apply to resync.”
Boom! And that was it. Did the trick. They were all deleted in seconds, and I freed up space to do my iOS update as well as app updates.
Now, as to how to go in there and selectively add back songs, perhaps things I can’t get on Spotify, or for when I’m out of connectivity range, I don’t know what the best practice is. I saw somewhere that using Playlists was the best way, you add the things you want on the phone to a certain playlist, and when you connect your phone there’s an option to only Sync certain “selected” playlists.
But I’m not worried about that now. I just wanted to free up space so that I could update. And I really appreciate Randers4 plain English, one sentence response. Why can’t Apple explain things so that a human being can understand? I mean, do you know if you go into “Help” within iTunes that there is utterly no topic on deleting songs from your phone? The craziness stupefies me.