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Friendship 14 with Joelle Hendrick
Joelle is a natural. In Many ways she lives with a natural intelligence that comes before anything picked up by some teaching.
We all divide up our lives to the part that we're comfortable with and the part that we're not. That is our supposed "steering wheel" which hopefully functions once in a while to avoid pain and confusion.
Is it necessary?
Joelle calls for more women to share on Friendship.
Just before I posted this I wrote to Joelle, "I was listening to our talk later that afternoon on Wednesday the 23rd, and it was raining. Then the rain picked up quite strongly, and we started to take water in our basement studio.
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Peter: "And I have never met a full-blown Alzheimer's patient who felt badly or distressed about their "memory loss". (...) It's not problematic to the person who has ceased creating memories from the present moment."
Response: The alzheimer's patient is not capable of having memories (as you write - I don't know how it really feels to have this disease because I suppose I never had it).
Is Enlightenment and Alzheimer's disease the same? If not, what is the difference? Does the Enlightened also have no memory any more and is therefore happy? What is your understanding of this?
Marcus asks... "Is Enlightenment and Alzheimer's disease the same? If not, what is the difference? Does the Enlightened also have no memory any more and is therefore happy? What is your understanding of this?"
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Alzheimer's is the cessation of memory creation from the here ande now. When you cease to create memories, you extract yourself from the illusion of time... which is integrally dependant on memory creation.
As for Enlightenment with a capital E, ain't no such animal.
But since you mentioned happiness, it has not been my experience that happiness accompanies memory cessation. If anything, the attribute of EQUANIMITY accompanies memory cessation. A very different attribute than happiness.
Happiness, a feeling, is more often a by-produict of memory creation than its cessation.
Peter: "When you cease to create memories, you extract yourself from the illusion of time... which is dependant on memory creation."
Response: Is the illusion of time really dependent on memory creation? Does this mean that Enlightenment is only possible when there is no memory present at all?
Is Equanimity dependent on the cessation of memory? What exactly does it mean to you: "memory cessation"?
I'm befuddled by this question of yours, Marcus:
"Does this mean that Enlightenment is only possible when there is no memory present at all?"
Why do you pose this question to me after I affirmed, in the immediately preceding post, that there isn't such an animal as "Enlightenment"?
*scratches his shaved head*
Why pose a question that doesn't integrate someone's core premise?
My comments on memory involve its gluing effect on one's experience of time and space.
Memory creation, which always takes place in the here and now, is what solidifies our belief/experience of time and space.
Which, coiincidentally or not, is also the stuff of egos.
Peter: "Why do you pose this question to me after I affirmed, in the immediately preceding post, that there isn't such an animal as "Enlightenment"?"
Peter earlier this thread: "The creation of a memory... which always takes place in the here and now... is a highly effective tool to reinforce the belief/experience of time."
Response: How do call the "state of being free of using the "highly effective tool to reinforce the experience of time", how do you call this timeless being without the "experience of time", how do you call this being free of memory? I call it "Enlightenment" or "understanding of life". How do you call it?
And what is Equanimity to you? Is it dependent on the cessation of memory?
*thought of scratching his hairy head happens and is just seen as illusory by "no-one"*
And what is that "I" which scratches his shaved head?
Permit me to encourage you to ask your questions in other than a shotgun pellet format. You will receive a more directed response, from most respondants, if you address one query or two at a time. Shotgunn pellet-styled questions may be effective for shock and awe effect. But they're rarely helpful towards a focused response.
This comment of yours is particularly revealing, nevertheless:
"how do you call this being free of memory? I call it "Enlightenment" or "understanding of life". How do you call it?"
It's not a matter of being free from anything, including memory. Memory is something that most of us are creating... on automatic pilot mode... from the here and now.
Which is why I have specifically stated, on earlier occassions, that the cessation of memory creation will diminsh the solidity of our belief/experience of time/space.
You may call that "enlightenement, if you wish. I've described the experience for what it is, without needing to cloak it with a term like the one that you are enamored with.
By the way, I love the term "enlightenment" because it has been so much misused by the ego that its true meaning has to be reestablished. It does not help much to avoid such terms because their misunderstanding is exactly what prevents an understanding of life to happen to man.
Enlightenment is not happening to an individual.
Enlightenment is not an experience.
Enlightenment is not attained as an effect of any cause (practice or method).
Enlightenment is the nameless Here and timeless Now itself and nothing personal.
First of all. Thanks for taking my question for valid even though, as you have noticed, we are using different language. Now, what I am interested in is your "experience" as you call it. Here, by the way, is nobody who clings to words/terms. That Marcus is "enamored with" a certain term is obviously just your own mind's interpretation. I can't help it (and you can't either) - so I don't mind...
The point which has been tried to make was: What does Peter mean with the "cessation of memory"? Marcus calls "being free OF memory" "understanding" (or "Enlightenment"). This is not done by the mind, it just happens, if memory is understood to be illusory sound only instead of a real world in time and space.
Then there is of course no "enlightened individual" - no-body becomes "enlightened"! Life is the enlightened thoughtless Here and timeless Now. This enlightened Life is man's true nature. And it also projects through sound the "mind" which consists of memory and is the illusory world itself. No mind - no world.
If memory is clearly understood to be sound only and not a true story of "my life", Life becomes free of the individual story of "my world" which man takes to be "the world". But for this to happen and for it to be "maintained" it is not necessary that "memory ceases" as Peter has written.
Therefore Marcus wanted to know what Peter has meant exactly with the term "cessation of memory" before writing his understanding. Nevertheless here is what Marcus wants to say - Peter will probably explain what he wants to say after reading it.
Memory in form of sound will be present as long as man is alive, even though he may have the "experience" which Peter "describes for what it is instead of using the term enlightenment" and which Marcus calls "Enlightenment" or "understanding". So the comparison with the Alzheimer's patient was not clear for Marcus at all in this context. This was why all those questions were posed.
But before experiences or understandings could be discussed it is necessary to ask how the other uses words. Therefore those many "Shotgunn pellet-styled questions" which were not intended to shock the reader and if it did, this would be again the interpretation of his mind only.
Peter writes: "Memory is something that most of us are creating... on automatic pilot mode... from the here and now.
Which is why I have specifically stated, on earlier occassions, that the cessation of memory creation will diminsh the solidity of our belief/experience of time/space."
Response: So is it rightly understood to say that Peter explains that memory get's created automatically in the here and now and if a cessation of memory (whatever that means???) happens, then this will "diminish the solidity of our (whose???) belief/experience of time/space."?
There are no experiences without time and space. Experiences are thoughts which manifest the illusion of time and space. This is why "enlightenment" has nothing to do with an experience. ENLIGHTENMENT IS TO PERCEIVE EXPERIENCES AS ILLUSORY IN ILLUSORY TIME AND SPACE. The world which is nothing but memory will not cease to exist, it will be understood to be just thoughts which are sound projected by the nameless Here and the timeless Now. In this sense the term "enlightenment" is more adequate for me than "experience".
And that there will be memory as the illusory world present in the mind means to me that this is the difference between the Enlightened and the Alzheimer's patient. The Enlightened is aware of the illusoriness of the world in form of memory, whereas the Alzheimer's patient is not because his world has totally vanished so to speak. No thought/memory, no world.
The Enlightened's world does exist, but it is understood to be illusory and not real. "Illusory" does not mean that it does not exist, it exists but not in the manner the mind thinks. If this is not clearly understood or expressed every explanation or talk about "enlightenment" is bound to be misunderstood because the reader will try to get rid of his world of will believe that it does not exist at all.
Talking about enlightenment could only be rightly understood by the listener/reader if there is a clarity on both sides about what word mean to the other. Therefore a deep connection needs to happen between the master (or someone who is describing his "experience") and the listener. Otherwise the understanding will remain incomplete and leads to even more illusory confusion instead of real clarity.
When my daughter attended a government (AKA public) school, she became conditioned to give bouquets of flowers during government-established holidays (i.e. Easter, Mother's Day, someone's birthday, etc.)
Since she started homeschooling, however, she's changed the mode of that thoughtful act to giving someone a single flower on any given day of the week.
Using that analogy, which thought-form or two... of the bouguet that you offered... would you like me to place my attention on first?
P.S. Would you tell Marcus that I appreciate his feedback?
Dear Peter,
your "attention" is not placed by you. The content of consciousness does not depend on the intention of the mind. So see what happens.
But in order to assume that you were the the doer, I would like you to ask, if you want to post a topic on the new forum "Parenting" which Richard Miller has created yesterday. It would be interesting and perhaps helpful for other parents to read how your understanding of non-duality fits into your apparent life as a father.
Thanks, and much love to you and family! Marcus
I possess no "understanding" of nonduality to offer at a Parenting thread, Marcus. Nor do I play someone who does on the boob tube. And I won't pretend that I do, just to participate in such a thread. I appreciate your kind offer nonetheless.
If you ever thought about directly asking me whom I believe/experience I am, I'd probably resurface a statement that I earlier shared with another NNHer:
"I am no one (AKA emptiness) appearing as some one (AKA form)."
Having has swam in zen waters for some time, the non-cognitive apperception of "emptiness is form and form is emptiness" is a very real apperception to me.
Me being no-one-appearing-as-some-one, that is.
I think that Shakara apperceived the same apperception, too, when he mouthed these familiar words:
"Brahma satyaṃ jagat mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparah"
Peter: "I possess no "understanding" of nonduality to offer at a Parenting thread, Marcus.
Response: Thanks for sharing your understanding of nonduality and that it is offered on this thread in the sentence above, Peter. To say that "you don't posess an understanding" is understanding to me.
But nevertheless you may have an illusory understanding to offer. So I ask you: Would you like to write me, whether you also would say to your daughter that "I am no one (AKA emptiness) appearing as some one (AKA form)."? And what does she reply to that, if you do?
Marcus asks... "Would you like to write me, whether you also would say to your daughter that "I am no one (AKA emptiness) appearing as some one (AKA form)."? And what does she reply to that, if you do?"
LOL I have, Marcus. On more than one occasion.
And to paraphrase her most recent retort to that comment of mine, she said...
"The appearance of me LOVES how the appearance of you loves me, Papa"
Which is very adequate for a dream-figure to feel about another dream-figure in a dream, me thinks.
:)
Thank you Peter, the readers will surely enjoy this story.
Love to family, Marcus
This interview raises a subject that deserves more attention. I'm glad that the both of you briefly addressed it.
I'm speaking to our proclivity to create consistent memories from the present moment, of course.
AKA a personal history.
That proclivity evens exists here at NNH, I might add.
When the interviewees, and sometimes the interviewer, create memories of the path(s) which led them to where they are now.
The creation of a memory... which always takes place in the here and now... is a highly effective tool to reinforce the belief/experience of time.
And I have never met a full-blown alzheimer's patient who felt badly or distressed about their "memory loss". Their family and friends were another story.
But that's the family's and friends' problem, of course. It's not problematic to the person who has ceased creating memories from the present moment.
If anything, it is more freeing to them than not.