Classroom Talk
Fall 2002 Archive
Like Ram Dass . . . I'm "still here." {with a big grin} Posted by John on January 02, 2003 at 16:31:16:
Happy New Year, Folks. I'm delighted to see a few conversations have been going on around here while I've been being away. Thanks for the good
wishes. I love to hear all your voices. I ought to be able to pick up with things here again by next week, and I'll have some responses to your postings
then.
Well, I am nearly through my long, long stint of steady days, and nights, working in the country and giving all the rest of the hands at the ranch
where I work a long and well-deserved holiday vacation, as "the back-up hand" out there. It's been my joy to be where I've been at, in a beautiful
place in the wilderness (chilly indeed before the sun comes up, and even before it goes down), where I can live the solitary life of a King.
The javelinas, the deer, the foxes, the hawks, the quail . . . the whole Kingdom is here with me and the displays of the winter desert and mountains
(Yes, I had a white Christmas on my birthday!) and the remarkable skies, it's been a wonderful retreat for me, and I've been hanging out with Ram
Dass' teachings in a new book he just put out, learning from it, little by little, as the days have been going along and practicing the exercises in them as I
did so many years ago with the exercises in "Remember Be Here Now." It's been a heavenly time for me, really. It seems to have been a time of
growth. Physically, I've gotten through it all, doing all the regular chores that everybody usually does out there. Mother Natures' rain helped me get
out of a lot of watering work over this time.
I slept on a cot in the Stable. It was snug in there, and I slept well every night, waking up before dawn when the javelinas started batting on the door
every morning with their snouts, demanding a handout, as if I would rush out into the freezing air with them and scatter some seeds. After so many
years, their herd has grown so large, and they are so demanding, that we've decided reluctantly to teach them that the ranch isn't a place for goodies
any more. A couple of weeks ago one of them bit my son. It wasn't a bad wound, but it woke us all up that they are still wild animals, after all. So,
starving out the javelinas has been one of my toughest chores over the holidays. I'm sorry to say they aren't being nice about it, either. But it looks
like it has to be that way, after all.
In the midst of all my celebrating, an event occurred that brought all my old neuroses to the fore—and threatened that I might spoil the whole holiday
retreat because of it. My van developed this wierd symptom of only starting some of the time. The battery was fully charged. For awhile, this was
"driving me crazy." People I called guessed it was the solenoid, or the starter going bad. And I was way off alone in the wilderness where it wasn't
going to be easy to get it fixed. I know less about cars than almost anything else, and I started getting really upset with the uncertainty of it. I could
wind up doing a chore way far off from the Stable, and . . . click, click, click, I couldn't drive back. So I'd walk. And then, after walking back there the
next day, it would start. With all that extra walking, I did get out of breath a number of times. But I trudged my way on through it all, taking the
experience of my labored breathing mindfully (one of Ram Dass's exercises), and by golly, ol' Frederic Nietzche was right, after all, "That which does
not kill me makes me stronger." Heh-heh. And I'm alive to tell about it here-now today.
Eventually, I got my van hauled into town on the back of a flatbed truck, and the cost of a new starter didn't hurt so much compared to knowing I
wouldn't have to be "going crazy" over that one any more. {Big sheepish smile.} "There's always the dog," as my old Teacher Mits used to say.
Anyway, I got a thousand dollar bonus for Christmas this year—much more than I've gotten in years past—only being a part-time employee at that!
So there are at least some businesses in the troubled American economy that *do* care about their workers these days. And I do feel, from my own
experience, that *love* is what would work the best in workplaces around the world. What a lucky man I seem to be, to have that job!
And . . . . . of all things, Kiddees, in the midst of it all, there's a new woman in my life. Believe it or not. I haven't dated in so many years. It's the first
time in fifteen years that I've gone out on New Year's Eve—my son driving, with his Old Lady. It was the first time ever that I've double-dated with
my now grown up son. We all went out for dinner and a movie, "My Fat Greek Wedding." What fun we had!
At dinner she asked me what my favorite dish was, and I said "Satay." My son chimed in, raving about our favorite restaurant, run by an old
Indonesian couple who finally retired, closing the restaurant, where we used to go so often for Satay. And this Lady said, "Oh, I can make Satay."
She had lived in Indonesia. When I tried to show-off and look sophisticated, and made a remark in French, she replied with a sentence of perfect
French. She had graduated from college years ago in Paris. For my birthday, she gave me a comic license plate that she found, that says:
"Still Perfect
After all these years."
Aw, gee! Golly! Gosh. Hmmmmm. I don't know, Kiddies. We'll see.
I called up my lifelong friend Walter, the veterinarian, to tell him about this. He's exactly one day younger than me, and also an old bachelor—so
eligible, it seems to me, and yet also alone. He was happy for me. He knew that I recently had finally let go of my long attachment to that other
woman that I told the class about. In a flash, Walter said to me, "It's space-technology."
He was quoting a coaching of my own. It says that when we are attached to something very powerful in our lives, it absorbs our lives, and keeps
everything else out. And that when we become free and our Being is freed up from being in attachment to that powerful thing, that leaves an empty
space, a yawning space. And—so goes the coaching, anyway—in that yawning space, Great Nature will "replenish in abundance." I call that "space
technology."
So Walter realized, and so did I, that no sooner than I had become freed up from this many-years-long attachment to that woman I was carrying the
torch for in so many ways for so long, (that wonderful other woman way back in my past), and Great Nature has come along straight away, and up
pops another wonderful new interesting woman into my life. That's what the awareness game strategy of space technology is all about . . . *letting go*
and keeping awake to see what may come along next. Space technology goes with the "Diving for Space" exercise. And, after all these years on the
hook, I seemed to come up with a winner in practically no time, once I finally mindfully let myself off of that hook. By golly, I might have tried this a
long time ago!
I really, *really* can't say what this may lead to, Kiddies. It's outfront pure friendship so far (to be clear about that). But on its own merits, whatever
it may or may not turn out to be, it is *already* a truly remarkable change in a long-standing pattern in my life. It's already a blessing, *whatever* the
future may bring! Let's face it, Folks. Between living alone at home, and working alone at the ranch, I've been pretty much of a hermit for years now.
Being alone without doing anything about it, living in the past, had become a habit. As a general rule, change is good. Surely this sudden change in
the field is an omen of something that is good for me in the paths that lead farther now into the unknown future . . . wherever it is that they go.
And I've been being happier over this holiday season than I can remember being happy for my birthday before—number 68 this time. How about
that? I can hardly believe it, yet it's true.
Another twenty-five-year Tucson friend, once a long-time student, now a mindfulness professional on her own, gave me a wonderful book for my
birthday. Not only was it somehow even "magically" perfect for this point in my life, because it is about applying the practice and skills of mindfulness
to growing old, to changes that come in becoming old, and dying . . . . . but as I'm reading in it, I'm knowing that I'm glad to recommend this book to
anyone interested in my coachings in this class.
Sally, this might have some helpful sharings for you, in your situation with your ex-husband's illness. Eddie, this book has been teaching me things,
over these holiday weeks that are helping me to have understandings in some of the more advanced areas that I used to feel reluctant to discuss with
you in the past. Thanks to these teachings, I may be able to go farther with you in such discussions in the New Year.
And for other interested students around here as well, you don't have to be old and facing the coming of dying to appreciate this book I've been
talking about, "Still Here," by Ram Dass.
The title is a play on the title of the book that he published in the early 1970's, called "Remember, Be Here Now." So many years later, after suffering a
stroke, and being feared to be out of action by so many of us who have loved his teaching in the past, he has written a new book now of coaching
and exercises that can show any student how to live a mindful and loving life, up to and including the dying of it. This is truly the masterpiece of his
life's work.
"Still Here" is really applicable for any serious students of learning mindfulness practice. Readers will find that he speaks in common language directly
to the reader, and invites responses from the reader, just as I have done, and others of you do, here in Classroom Talk. It is down-home mindfulness
coaching. It is like "a live coaching" in a book. And the exercises he proposes are applicable not only to the audience of us elderly people that he is
addressing it to, but to any of us.
All you have to do is substitute any actual difficult life situations that you are dealing with in your own younger lives, for the circumstances he is
describing in older people's lives, and do the same exercises he coaches you through, and they will be as appropriate for you younger Kiddies around
here as they have proven to be over the holiday season with yer ol' Coach. "Still Here" is Ram Dass' version of "the awareness game," and I kid you
not, Kiddees, this other old fellow's teaching is a *winner*!
I first knew of Ram Dass as Richard Alpert in 1967, before he had made his last major journeys to study with gurus in the East and changed his name.
He was then in the phase of his life when he was among American pioneers of exploration with psychedelics, in his friendship with Timothy Leary and
thereafter.
Strangely, I was involved in a story in my downtown life as a reporter at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, about the sudden emergence of a new,
laboratory-made psychedelic drug, called "STP," showing up at love-ins in the San Francisco area. People were staying high for three days. People
were freaking out. People weren't coming down at all. It seemed quite potentially dangerous. And there were rumors that the formula for this LSD-
like drug, although of much greater power than LSD, had been developed by the CIA for chemical warfare purposes, and had been leaked to some
underground hippie chemists, who were distributing it among the hippies.
I made the top of the front page on this topic a few times with full-page headlines like "New Hippie Drug: "I Saw my Baby in Hell." My efforts, of
course, were attempting to inform the public at large who were readers of the old Her-Ex with as much factual information as I could find out about
this phenomenon. The Editors made of my stories what they would, with some obvious tendancies towards "sensationalism."
Coincidentally, in the other side of my life in those days, living at the Log Cabin, Stan Russell, Editor of the Oracle of Southern California—that tabloid
being "the newspaper of record" for Los Angeles' 50,000 some hippies in that era—was as concerned about this phenomenon as my Editor at the
Herald-Examiner. And he asked me to do a piece for the Oracle's readership.
So I wound up writing the same story for both papers I was working for, although in somewhat different ways. The Herald-Examiner made as much
of it as a public scandal as they could. The Oracle story was attempting to inform hippies of what they were likely to be up-against if they took STP on
purpose or by accident (maybe mistaking it for LSD), and what were the best healing measures they could take for themselves or their friends in the
event that they were having a bad trip on STP. Of course, there were those who flowed on through it, even for three days, as they might have
flowed through acid trips of twelve hours. In either case, taking trips with drugs like these are *extremely heavy experiences*. And they are NOT
recommended in this class, either. They are not necessary for complete understanding of the whole course that is being taught in this school. And I
do not advise taking them.
Stan wrote to Dick Alpert (soon to be Ram Dass), and asked him what he knew of STP, and Dr. Alpert wrote Stan a long letter of comments, including
an account of his experiences during a three-day STP trip. And Stan gave me Ram Dass's letter, to include that information and his experiential
description of taking an STP trip in my Oracle story. Amusing to me, I was also able to use some bits of the information Ram Dass shared with the
Oracle in more fully informing readers of the Herald-Examiner in the writing I was doing over there. So that was one time, in those days, that the two
sides of my life did blend in a rather unusual way.
The next time Ram Dass came to my attention was some years later when I was living in the Hunnewell House and participating in Mits Aoki's class at
the University of Hawaii. All of a sudden there was a buzz. Everybody was talking about this book. It was Ram Dass' "Remember, Be Here Now,"
and it aided, so beautifully and powerfully, in transforming the lives of so many of the people around me. Both at school and in the Hunnewell House
Family, I participated in little groups that practiced exercises together that Ram Dass included there in a section called "Sacred Cookbook."
It was another mindful and experiential approach laid out, that fortified and broadened what I and other students were learning at school with Mits,
as it broadened what I and other Gestalt and Primal psychotherapists were learning about healing practice with awareness in the Hunnewell House.
Being able to relate with several such approaches, seeing, and *experiencing* that they are all fundamentally about the same teaching points, looked at
from the several experiential viewpoints of several awakened teachers . . . . . this is a high experience to know, and one that helps a student on the
path to have the descrimination to recognize the deeper teachings about reality in the many different forms in which true teachings exist.
To me . . . "Still Here" represents a new generation of literature about mindfulness. Ram Dass is not just talking to readers in general in this book. He
is talking to readers who are already familiar with the daily practice of mindfulness. It's a treat for me to be talked to that way. That's the way I am
trying to talk to you students in Classroom Talk (except for my sharings with newcomers here, of course!)
By far nearly everything that's written about mindfulness in books is *about mindfulness*. The many books about mindfulness talk *about it*, but stop
short of attempting to teach readers on the spot how to do it! . . . how to recognize *what mindfulness is*!!! . . . how to experience mindfulness in the
present moment . . . or how to practice practical exercises in life that depend on already knowing the experience of what it is to be mindful.
Ram Dass already did this once in the early '70's with "Remember Be Here Now." But this time he goes much farther. This book is a more mature
product of years of practice and teaching mindfulness. Dr. Charles Tart included excellent exercises for learning the experience of mindfulness in his
landmark book on being awake. But, among all the books that are around on this subject, there are very few places where you can go where they
give you, out front, instructions on *how to do it*. Practically always, you have to join their organization that the book is about, or go someplace else
in the world and study with them in the school where they are, for them to give you "the hidden secrets," the secrets of how to do the simple
exercises that will enable you to know first-hand the experience of being here-and-now and mindful . . . . . in there behind those eyes and awake. It is
because of this that I created this little website nearly five years ago, along with the help of my friend, our school architect and Webmaster, Brent, to
be one place in the world of the Web where people could come and, if they were interested, they could actually learn *how to do it*.
Ram Dass has added "Still Here" to the realm of published books, as one place in the world where people can come, and if they are interested, they can
learn how to do it. Between the Web and published books there will have to be more and more of the places where people can come and be provided
with the simple kinds of experiential exercises that are necessary, with no strings attached. That's what I wish for, at least. That is, if the human
population is ever to have the chance to be transformed, in the way that individual human students of enlightenment can become transformed,
somehow this simple how-to-do-it technology of experiencing mindfulness will have to be made more widely available.
This is the genre, or the field of writing that I've been suggesting for you, Eddie. It's still a brand new field. It could be in fiction or other prose
forms, some uninvented so far, yet the idea I'm thinking of here is of literary art that contributes to making learning and knowing the experience of
mindfulness more available to a reader or viewer in the present, writing that even wakes the reader up. I think you've shown a gift for that in certain
touches you've put-in during some of your writings in Classroom Talk last year, Eddie. Whatever form your future writings may take, I know that
you have it in you to give touches of light to it that are not yet common in the writing of so many, many wonderful writers that are around in our
society . . . so far.
Thich Nhat Hanh is there. Charles Tart is there. Jon Kabat-Zinn is there. Ram Dass is there. There are a handful of mindful writers around so far. I
could name a dozen others that I know of. Our own Perk is good at this. If there is one prayer that I have for the planet Earth and the Human Race
at this start of 2003, it is that there be more and more of these mindful artists around during this new century, and that mindfulness become more and
more openly available to those newcomers who are interested and who would like to have the chance to learn how to do it on their own.
Happy New Year to you All! It looks like a good start for me.
Love y'all,
Coach
I've got today off, but I'll be tied up with the ranch and other errands through next Monday. So . . . . . by next week, I think my regular schedule is
going to be beginning again, and I ought to be able to start paying more close attention again during the weekdays to whatever it is that's going to be
happening here in Classroom Talk in 2003.
So . . . on with it, I say! What'll it be?
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Archived 02/04/2003