Go your own way, all else is straying' - mindfulness HOW, WHAT?

"I am sick of it!" everyone gives me a different explanation."
Orion looked at Arthur, refilled his cup and sipped hot cinnamon tea.
"Everyone is different," he said.
Arthur looked at the master in frustration.
"Yes, everyone is different," he repeated, and that's why everyone gives a different explanation for 'mindfulness?'"
"Yes," Orion watched his visitor.
They sat in his cave in the great Oriander cliff,   outside windriders circled in the breeze coming in from Umi-Jabour, the great desert, created by the technocrats over three thousand years ago.
"But they all say their definition is the only way."
Orion shrugged, sipped tea, and watched  the sea of sand, the circling windriders.
"Learning to walk, no one can do it for you. Once you can do it, it's easy and you are the expert."
Arthur chuckled, "yes, that's true, So what do I do ?"
"Keep learning."
Arthur took a deep breath, "How did you learn to walk ?"
Orion shook his head, smiled his upside down smile, "I tried and tried."
Orion glanced at the small picture of his teacher the back of the cave, "my master told me to feel the ground, to listen to the sounds around me ....and I listened and I followed. And I became more and more heavy and  focussed on the physical world. It didn't help me, didn't work for me.. I thought it was my fault."
He smiled, "but one day I saw. My master was teaching me what had worked for him. He needed that way, but it didn't work for me."
Orion drank from his cup, poured some more from his teapot and leaned back.
"So what worked for you master?"
Orion shook his head, "so you can copy my path ? Don't."
Arthur smiled, "I guess, yes, sort of, I want to hear your story,  I need to try something."
Orion nodded, "I to copy someone until I realized it wouldn't work for me.
Then  I tried something else."
"What ? "
Orion smiled, shrugged, "so you can walk my path ? Ok do it, if you like. But let it go one day and do YOUR thing, 'Go your own way, all else is straying'." 
Arthur nodded slowly, "Tell me more, please."
Orion sighed, smiled, " ..- you will tell your students the same thing one day.
I played with my awareness:  I realized how much I was focused out of myself.
I decided to feel, to become  aware of my feelings, my breath at the SAME time as I lived my daily life."
"Oh," Arthur looked disappointed.
Orion took a small rock from a pile on his right side, looked at it and threw it out of the open cave. It would fall three hundred yards. He listened for the impact, but the whistling of the windriders, and the  sounds of the wind rushing  from the Sea of Sand, smothered it.

He looked at Arthur: "as you listen to me, as you  look at me, at the SAME time, feel inside,  FEEL, -- what do you feel ?"
Arthur was silent for a while.
"Terror. It feels bad."
"Yes, that's the first gate."
"Oh."
Orion smiled.
"What's the second?"
A wry grin was the answer.
A keen cry from the outside brought their attention to the windrider soaring past their cave. The wings of her glider almost scraped the rock.
Arthur rushed to look up, watch and resumed his place on the cushion.
"She made it, only just."
Orion nodded.
"You knew?"
"No..." Orion stood up, walked to the very edge of the cave, looked down, the three hundred yards. "If you like to try something: imagine what your goal will be, feel it, let the images talk to you... " he turned and looked at Arthur with a crooked smile, "I've probably said to much already".

.....to be continued......->

awareness, not judging.... just aware of... what IS

For the first time  I see what they mean by 'observe, don't judge'. I heard all that so many many times.

       But the reality is: Usually I don't want to observe myself, or be too aware because I will see things I don't like. "not like" =equals= 'judge' as 'bad', or 'not nice', 'undesireable', 'not good enough' etc... . the logical next step is to change those things.
        HOw ? by trying not to do them, not to be them. this usually just leads to symptoms suppression and not any real change. After a while the effort of suppressing symptoms is too hard. I give up, and go into normal, unaware mode again.
        Why not play a 'game' for a week ? The game is: I promise myself to make NO effort whatsoever to change whatever I see in myself. In fact the games is now reversed: I'm NOT allowed to try and change anything, just 'see' it. That is all, only see it.
No effort to 'improve', to 'fix' to 'change' to 'be good' is allowed in this new game.
Anyone who has done meditation, will recognize this is a classic technique. For some reason it never hit home so clearly before.
Ok lets see how I go for the next 7 days. An experiment.

- walking around in Myanmar, was a different way of being. Not better or worse, - different.
It FEELS different, though it is hard to say in what way.  to illustrate: if someone steps in front of me, if a car squeezes into my path, or I get splashed with sludge from the street, that's ok, I just move around it, smile and get on with things. I genuinely don't feel annoyed, I don't even have to stop any annoyance. That's how it is. In a car, in a taxi the same applies.
        Back in Melbourne, or even in Singapore, people brush me carelessly, step into my path, I feel irritated.
I feel I have a right to move along in my path and others need to keep out of it. Evening today as I slowly ride my bike on the footpath slowly, a lady waves and stand in front of me, then discharges her store of frustration on me for that. Footpath rage. We call each other names, I move on, the atmosphere and mood of Myanmar still protects me and it does not penetrate deeply. 
       I'm sure such things exist everywhere, it is simply more or less visible, or hidden in different places. On the way to the Hotel in Yangon, I witnessed how one driver got out of a car and opened the door of another car, to hit the driver. Never ever seen this before. Road rage.
      I just read an article where an Indian lady gripes about her own country, a rather rude experience at Delhi airport her  story here. 
       As a child in Germany I used to observe adults, and how they related to us kids. I saw how some of the older adults would sit and lie in wait for someone to give them a legitimate reason to discharge themselves. The lawn of the high rise flats where we lived were no-walking zones. Any adult who wanted to vent some anger simply had to wait for a kid to come along and walk on the grass and then they discharged themselves, with 'legitimate reason'.
       It was easy to see they didn't care about the grass, they wanted an officially acceptable reason to be 'in the right' and then they'd pack in all the frustration inside themselves and fire off a salvo. They just needed an excuse. But firing off at someone at random would be too crazy, so they waited, to see someone break some rule. Then they'd fire off. Kind of like psychic landmines. I like the modern American term "pushing some one's buttons". Very apt.
       Us, kids of the blocThis was an excerpt of a post I wrote earlier http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2009/07/transition-thoughts-lasttravel-email.htmlk, treated it as a kind of game, we'd bait the adults and set them off, like the challenge of setting off a mousetrap without getting your fingers caught. In my mind it was understood, that these were our respective job descriptions. Oldies just did that, they grumbled and bitched, and put down the 'decadent' Youngies. And Youngies had to provoke them, they wouldn't be normal and healthy if they just said 'yes, Amen, of course, whatever you say I will do' what kind of kids would they be who did that ? Not normal ones.
        So if hair was usually short, then the young ones had to wear it long. Anything to set the adults off. Unpierced skin ? Pierce it. No tattoo is normal - Young ones->Tattoo it. etc... But it was all cosmetic in the end. The youngies turned into grumpy Oldies and so it contiuned.
        Yep, I've noticed grumpiness zones in myself too, of course. Some of my friends know exactly what & where they are too :-) somedays I feel like a regular hairball mine, touch any hair and off it goes.  

- Ah those grumpyness zones, those buttons... hm....

This was an excerpt of a post I wrote earlier http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2009/07/transition-thoughts-lasttravel-email.html