King Kong S2-AFW4 (session 2 assignment for week 4)

“Assignment for Week 4

TSK 139 says that we may try to break out of our sense of being trapped in ‘lower time’ by practicing meditation or other spiritual disciplines. You might have other ways of doing this as well: ways (as we discussed in the phone call) that help you contact the aliveness of time.

WIR 41 adds: “If you have background in a meditative or spiritual tradition, you may want to reflect on this claim. . . . Would a different understanding of time change the way you approach such teachings?”

Look into this question. Where does it lead you?”

 “We may try to break out.”

“Would a different understanding of time change [this]”

“Look into this”

The feeling of being trapped, of things not going 100%, of not living up to our potential is at the core of the motivation of most meditative and spiritual traditions. And many times I can relate to this feeling and the wish to break out. The wish to get rid of the muddy heaviness and enter a realm where every step is a light one. Next to my TSK study, I study and practice at a Buddhist center and also I study and practice a Chi Kung style that is partially based on understanding the Tao. So in a way I can say I do some serious striving to contact aliveness.

By doing so much my best to get rid of my old situation and create a new one I realize more and more that I will not succeed.

Because every time I do succeed, I have created a special occasion, a special experience. As long as I can keep the rest of (my) life out, I can stay in this situation. But doing so I make myself an escapee. King Kong on top of the world, but fighting of all annoying stickiness.

 By experiencing this I understand bit by bit how the specialness creates the being trapped. It can be the specialness of being here now, the specialness of being in the flow, the specialness of being trapped. Any kind of specialness can do, as long as it excludes.

However, this does not mean I have to accept everything as a given. Trapped with no way out. Because the looking into this is a way to break out without creating a dualism. Maybe it is still there in the wording, but the experience itself is an opening one which constantly also contacts its own borders. Breaking out by “breaking open”.

There is this small dutch poem by Kees Stip which always helps me to understand this better and smile at the same time. Probably the smiling and understanding are related. I translated it into English, hoping it still caries some of the spirit:

 Op een Luiaard / To a Sloth

Een luiaard streefde te Moeskroen  / A sloth strived at Moeskroen

naar niks te doen dan niks te doen  /  to do nothing but doing nothing

maar ach, eilaci, bij dit streven  / But “ach”, alas, with this strive

is het zijn hele leven lang gebleven  / he stayed for his whole live

omdat hij met al dit gestreef  / because he, with all this striving,

iets deed, en daarmee doende bleef  / did something, and so kept on doing