Below is one of my "sermons" to a trikking group. I put a lot of TM's introductory lecture's concepts in it. At that group, I try to present spirituality "found lurking in the wild" and show how trikking can be a holy practice. For the most part, they react as if I'm telling them to eat locusts and honey, but, hey, I'm accustomed, as all here at FFlife are, to preaching to the deaf and hoping the silent response is, you know, actual silence in their minds and not merely slack-jawed gaping. ;-)
Let me say up front that trikking one's way to God is almost certainly impossible unless there was some sort of trikking ashram, Trikker Guru, and an ancient literature too would help, eh? Still, read my sermon, cuz, it pertains to the recent thread here about atheism and the mechanics of spirituality that even atheists use in daily life. The sermon tries to view this very mundane activity, trikking, with the same eyes that everyone here once used to look at lighting a candle, sprinkling water, and bowing -- lighting, sprinkling, bowing -- just meat robot actions, right? But how significant to us, eh?, when we looked "especially" at them. Just so, trikking can be veneer-peered into being a puja of sorts. Not unlike seeing Fido-in-the-ditch's teeth, it requires an "especiality" and mind control to delve into deeply enough to feel God's heart, but it can be done -- geeze, even evil can be thusly, and correctly, interpreted, eh? So cut me a break, or as I like to put it, "Eat shit, Shemp." Read this, and while you're at it, I'll start writing another post about why I believe in God and plans. If I haven't posted it by the time you've finished the below, well, read the below again -- it's that good. :-) Or, watch my latest video several times. http://youtube.com/watch?v=6PPtD_v4ezE Or, just sit there quietly thinking about me. See? I overflow you with great choices. SPIRITUAL TRIKKING I've written a ton of posts about trikking and consciousness and all things spiritual, and there's been speculations galore with many of us seemingly convinced that one can evolve into a better person by trikking. "Better person" -- try to define that phrase. But, yeah, I will....sigh.... Towards that goal, let me explain why I think carving is spiritual. It may take a bit to get around to making this a trikking essay, but bear with me. When I took my first religious instructions as a youth, my minister told my class that "if the mind wanders during prayer, try squeezing your prayerfully clasped hands together harder to maintain focus." Even at the age of 12, I thought that that advice fell short of being a solution of merit. If God was so, you know, boring? that one had to compress one's everything-scrunchable in order to muster keeping one's attention on God, well, sheesh, it sure seemed deeply hinky. And, oh did my mind wander during my youthful prayers. I wanted to be good at praying, I wanted to surrender to the Will of God, but I didn't have a disciplined mind. It is one thing, a beautiful thing, to BELIEVE that God exists, but it is quite another to have a mind that ACTS as if that were true. If one surveys the major religions to catalog their methods of praying, a spectrum of diverse offerings can initially confuse one, but as things get grasped, one dynamic that they all seem to support is "concentration." Concentration is defined as the ability to keep the mind attending to a specific mental process. The process might be a set of words being repeated, an outflowing of love for God, a mantra, staring at a candle or blank wall, reading a scripture over and over again to delve into its subtleties, whirling around in a circle, spinning a dreidel, singing a hymn, and on and on this listing goes, but they all require that one control one's mind from wandering to other mental experiences. How well the mind is "held in control" is seen as the yardstick for measuring one's spiritual ability. If your mind is wandering a lot, it is, more often than not, thought to be weaker than a mind that can resolutely stay on track. "Weaker" to me means "a mind that CHOOSES to ignore subtleties in the mental processes being focused upon." I had one spiritual teacher tell me, "You know, every newbie spiritualist wants to run to a cave somewhere, and get it all accomplished as fast as possible, but once they get inside that cave, they discover they haven't got what it takes to stay in there. There's got to be some inside you that keeps you in that cave." That something is "a subtle mind." A weak mind can be overcome and "redirected" by some slight desire, but a powerful mind will be able to constantly gain deeper insights into its objects of focus -- insights that delight one and naturally the mind stays where it is being delighted and thus focus is spontaneously and effortlessly maintained. The strong mind reaps delight when it attends to "more" than the weaker mind which CHOOSES to wander off to other gross experiences that don't require a deep spiritual intent. Okay, trikking, the subject was spiritual trikking, have I wandered? Nah.....! What does one do when one carves? Is not the mind called upon to focus -- to strengthen its ability to attend to the immediate surface ahead? Is not the falling sensation "spontaneously engrossing?" Does one find one's mind wandering off one's mental processing of the topic "carving?" Do any of us think that those 100 mile carver heros of ours were doing anything less difficult than staring at a candle in a Zen monastery for ten hours? Let's say that it takes a thousand carves to go a mile; well, that's 100,000 carves for our heros. 100,000 carves. Tell this to a Buddhist and you've got his attention. In Buddhism, one is often given a mantra and told to say it 10,000 times, and then, one is allowed to get another mantra of deeper subtlety. Tell this to a whirling Dervish. Tell this to a contemplative nun with her 109 rosary beads. 100,000 carves is 100,000 mental repetitions, 100,000 whole body actions responsively in tune with one's mentation, 100,000 actions of "the heart" also are evident -- heart is what's behind each intent, 100,000 perceptions-reported from the eyes, 100,000 perceptions-reported from the ears, 100,000 inputs from the body's proprioception, 100,000 instant analyses of the visual snapshots of the immediate surface ahead. That's at least 100,000 times 100,000 times 100,000 times 100,000 times 100,000 times 100,000 times 100,000 processes of the nervous system. Talk about a religious endeavor! The Buddhists are going to be jealous of our trikking saints! And if that's not enough, here's a kicker: all the other crappola thoughts, all the inputs begging for the mind's attention, all the other stuff the mind could attend to, has been, what?.....think about it....what?......NOT PROCESSED. Not allowed to influence the mind, the personality, the spirit of the trikker. That's a heap of avoiding temptations. That's a heap of practicing MIND POWER. I submit that carving is praying in the best sense of the word -- it strengthens the mind to practice the ability to keep one's focus, and this strength of mind is THEN universally available to be used for any other mental process, and that means that other-than-carving experiences too will be approached with this power......even, "legitimate prayer" to a "well established entity" will be improved by this CARVING MANTRA TECHNIQUE. All trikkers know how the world's cares can largely drop away during trikking. That's preventative medicine! I can think of dozens upon dozens of memories and become deeply emotional even to the point o tears. My whole body can get involved when some of these memories trigger their avalanches of ideation. THOUGHTS CAN STRESS ONE'S ENTIRETY. Well, you tell me, how much time today should I spend CHALLENGING my nervous system by attending to the woes of the world that I can do almost nothing about? How many experiences of frustration, out of power, tooth grinding, body tensing, triggering does one get from watching CNN? How much does it affect one as passersby on the street each instantly communicate a life of "not exactly perfection" etched on their faces? And on and on the world has its ways of what? -- getting you to attend to processes that harm the mind and the body with excessive stimulations and unnecessary repetitions of angst. Don't tell me that carving can't give one the peace that passeth all understanding. When the world drops away, I'm in a silence only punctuated by the most pleasing sensations and thoughts -- which is a pretty good "beginners definition" of atonement. Oh, yeah, the mind is still engrossed in thinking thoughts, and perceiving a thought is not perceiving God, and the inherent duality of the "seer and seen" is certainly not "perfect atonement," but it's a wholebunchalotta closer to spiritual refinement than, say, watching an MTV video wherein one's mind is almost never required to be alert, insightful, focused, interactive, etc. Carving is direct proof that one's mind can be absorbed by something quite deeply. And thus, complete absorption, is then seen as obtainable, doable, alluring. Carving strengthens the mind in a way that supports all religious intents. It's what's needed to keep one in that cave, ya see? In the cave, one needs to delve into the mind's depths until God is exposed as the thinker, the doer, the intender behind the Oz curtains of one's ego. When God's ruse is finally revealed, one's delight is to just "let go let God." That's the goal of the cave dwellers -- to stop the ego from taking credit for the contents of the mind, to be a witness only to the glories of creation. Oh, carving won't have you abandoning your life to become a recluse. No need for that cave, not really. Everything's saturated with the omnipresence of God, so watching MTV or seeing a dead dog in a ditch can be transmogrified into a Holy Event by an adroit enough mind. But, yeah, carve with a holy intent, carve with a sacred leaning, carve into a sweet harmony that endlessly delights. That'll develop a thirst for more of those traditional spiritual experiences, and to seek beyond the beyond for the Beyondness beyond all carvingness. It may be a long journey to "better person," but one carve at a time gets ya down the road, and ya just gotta love that! Edg
