habit

oil slicks on oceanic mind

268

Creativity cuts through a pattern of thought that has become habitual and reflexive.  Yesterday there was the freight train analogy; today – an oceanic oil slick comes to mind.

Habitual patterns of thought are like oil slicks on the surface of oceanic mind.

Oil slicks can be exquisitely patterned.  The patterns are complex and colorful; they can rearrange themselves in endless variations.  Attractive and seductive – yet how lethal when spread over the living, breathing, ecosystem of an earth ocean!

Mental oil slicks operate in the same suffocating manner.  They contain only one component – the output of the conditioned memory machine.

And in the manner of an earthly ocean, when oceanic mind stirs up a storm (with a few fearless questions), crashing waves and spray break up the oil slick.

Even if the break is only temporary, Creation will have had a say.

Creativity will have surfaced.

~

creativity and habit are mutually exclusive

267

Creativity is radical discontinuity in a pattern of thought.
~ David Bohm

 .

Continuity of thought creates tic-toc habitude, linear and time-bound, chugging along like a freight train.

It takes some stopping, and can never be derailed volitionally.

Why?

Because the person who imagines they ‘have’ volition is the freight train incarnate.

What stops it in its tracks?

When tic-toc activity is clearly apperceived, creativity creeps through the cracks of habitude, slams on the brakes and the thinker-thought train is derailed.

.

Genuine creativity is Creation’s non-personal Intelligence in action.

~

robotic rock-head stubbornness

207

As soon as the sweaty arms of daylight reach over the horizon, the hard-nosed kookaburra begins to attack a neighbor’s window.

It knows that food magically appeared from behind that glass in the past – perhaps in its genetic past, for certainly not since I’ve been living nearby.  He’s driven by his unconscious conditioning.

No food comes.

The only thing forthcoming is the unit owner’s abuse.  Yet the big grinning bird bashes on, head like a rock.

I feel for him.  I know that robotic rock-head stubbornness only too well.

~

Image source:  Wild Witch Graphics

great silence welcomes insomniacs

176

Habitual sleeping patterns are being trashed, like most other habit-bound activities. Initially there was anxiety about this.  All the usual fears around insomnia clamored to be heard.

When the penny dropped through the works and took with it the ‘wee-me’ that thought it was more than just a thought, it was no longer possible to be anxious about … well, anything really – not for long anyway.  This brings a new view on conditioned expectations and intentions about what ‘should’ be.  They are noticed for what they are and slip away under that scrutiny.

Sensitivity to what this energy mandala called body really needs – and it does have needs according to its unique configurations and evolution – sets conflicting mind-views at rest.

If this body doesn’t wish to sleep at night, as is the norm, so be it!  Let it sit.  Let it sink into its natural throbbing silence.  In deep sleep, with the ‘thinking’ button turned off by default, there is only this great silence.  In sitting as suchness, no stories spinning, that same great silence is all-embracing.  Beloved!
~

what is ‘right action’?

33

all the body-brain conditioning
acquired over a lifetime remains

it’s a myth that it’s somehow all
wiped away with a whiff of awakening

what does go, is the reflexive ‘me’ mirage
that habitually identified with that conditioning

when conditioned responses to Life
(re-actions) manifest,
Awareness lays them bare

some serve the survival needs of the organism;
these I associate with an intelligence
beyond comprehension

some serve the survival of the old illusory ‘self;’
these I associate with intellect
in its dualistic operation

so, what can be said about ‘right action?’

no action stands alone –
any action is an inevitable action
dependent upon and
interdependent with
the ceaseless activity
of non-personal, agenda-free
Life

‘right action’ is just another concept

~

intellect has little to do with intelligence

18

the intelligence of the spacious energy system called body-brain
is the unborn intelligence of Life;
it’s non-personal and unconditioned

intellect, however, is measurable, trainable and indispensable;
we need it to operate in the world: memory, habit, discernment …
and we like to think it’s ‘ours’

intellect has little to do with unborn intelligence
but it can spin concepts that might be useful pointers
towards that immeasurable, unknowable movement

(to what better purpose could an intellect be directed?)

~