smily tongue right back to you, you, you, you...
hmmm. Friend.

Thanks, Asher. And I am truly sorry there's not more interaction with you. Sometimes things slow down here . . . people contemplating, you know.

Phil and Asher,

I think the power of spiritual groups is in the storytelling. We all have beliefs and abstractions
and theoretical constructs"

"Depressed as he was, and disillusioned both about himself and the world that had rejected him so resoundingly, Watts began to think more about God and the God-filled person "wholly free from fear and attachment." Such a person was to be envied, he thought.

'We, too, would like to be one of those, but as we start to meditate and look into ourselves we find a quaking and palpitating mass of anxiety which lusts and loathes, needs love and attention, and lives in terror of death putting an end to it's misery. So we despise that mess, and put "how the true mystic feels" in it's place, not realizing that this ambition is simply one of the lusts of the quaking mess, and that this, in turn, is a natural form of the universe like rain and frost,
slugs and snails.'

The blessing that came to him in his distress was the realization that his own "quaking mess," as he called it, was natural, even a part of the divine.
What he needed to do was live it, not fight against it. Eleanor's departure had released him forever from the need to pretend to be something he wasn't, a "respectible person" as defined by the mores of his time. "I am a mystic in spite of myself," he wrote, "remaining as much of an irreducible rascal as I am, as a standing example of God's continuing compassion for sinners, or, if you will, of Buddha-nature in a dog, or light shining in darkness. Come to think of it, in what else could it shine."

-Zen Effects, The Life of Allan Watts by Monica Furlong, p.129

Another page I read late last night:

"Leo Johnson had been haunting the University of California in Berkeley as a voracious reader and auditor of courses without the slightest interest in credits, examinations or degrees....He was....
simply interested in knowledge; his material ambitions were minimal; he lived in extreme simplicity; such money as he had went mostly for books, which he gave away; he had a ribald, bawdy,
belly-laugh attitude toward life which came out at unexpected moments, and was so informed with intellectual expertise that it was a real risk to expose him to scholarly company....Leo impressed upon me the important idea that the ego was neither a spiritual, psychological or biological reality but a social institution of the same order
as the monogomous family, the calendar, the clock,
the metric system, and the agreement to drive on the right or left side of the road. He pointed out that at such times such social institutions became obsolete . . . and that the "Christian Ego" was now plainly inappropriate to the ecological situation into which we were moving."

Zen Effects, p. 38

"For men only" is the name of this thread. Although men are not the only ones afflicted with ego, it does seem to be very pronounced in males.

I had my thousanth discussion with a chap of a decidedly conservative point of view. We go round and round the "social institution" of the ego, and
much anger flares, we storm out of the room and
stay angry, we yell at each other and sometimes complain to mutual freinds about each other. Real hard core ego deflating stuff. It's a hard core twelve step group of the "old school," and has likely saved my life.

The only thing that holds us together is mutual survival needs and belief in Christ. The funny thing about it is that I have taught this man much of what he believes about religion, since he does not attend church, and he is my Frankenstein monster, since I taught him much of his politics as well. Once in awhile, we realize together and at the same time that 90% of what we argue about is pure BS, and we have a good laugh about it, this "social institution" of the ego.

He says that I probably pull the same thing on my liberal freinds. I do, I admit, and try to explain
the yellow meme, which is very Greek to him, and almost as evil as green in his eyes.

Nevertheless, the conversation is very important. C.S. Lewis said that the human condition is always with us, but very clear during times of war.

The conversation tends to shut down in time of war, which is when we need it the most. The President called on Helen Thomas for the first time in three years today, and the conversation is now resuming. It's been a very strained relationship. She attempted to interrupt him four times as he was answering her question. She has called him the worst president she has covered of the last nine. Hell hath no fury like a female reporter scorned for three years.

My ego is proud of a president who is beginning the conversation and stepping up to the plate. "Good for him!, says my ego.

I'm a "quaking mess" of conflicting emotion, will and desire. This is why I came to religion in the first place, why I entered recovery and why I got into meditation.

One of my biggest hang-ups is wanting everyone to like me. This is ridiculous to a large extent. Everyone has a need to be accepted, but mystics are typically despised, as are Christians.

"Learn to love persecution and ego deflation.", I tell myself.

You all have my permission to tell me if I'm full of it, but how can you know, if you are also full of it?

My ego believes that the Dalai Lama is less full of it, but he admits that he is learning from day to day and sometimes is a "quaking mess" himself.

Forgive my neurosis, although I accept resposibilty for it, God is not finished with me yet.


quaking_mass@social_ego_construct.net