From Memoir Project Raw Material and From Stillness to the Five Rhythms

This is the beginning of a new writing project (7/16/01). I don’t know if it’s fact or fiction. It could be what I’m going to be teaching in a seminar, it could be the novel about the sixties, or it could be the story of how I’m transitioning to my new library job. Nothing is forbidden. I could list all the things that have struck me as “Yes, that’s what my mission has always been!” This is the writing where nobody is judging if it meets some standard or criterion. On one level I’m still trying to find my own voice. I am closing the gap between what I am and what I want to be. Maezumi Roshi asks, “How to close the gap between Yourself and yourself? Please take this seriously as your fundamental koan.” I may be dealing with the inner voice that keeps pushing forward because of a sense of incompleteness. Or I may be writing because I enjoy writing, or because I want to share the texture of my life. But the theme is somewhere around or in between “integrate” and “close the gap”.

I’d like to integrate the experiences of LSD and of living and studying with Maezumi Roshi for 22 years into the texture of my daily life. The need to integrate feels like a driving force. In fact, my Zen practice came from the need to integrate experiences during and after the hippie life, although it was also following up on a vision first seen reading Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen. I’m intensifying the focus on identity, who I am. Within a myth of crossing between worlds. Right now the school librarian is trying to emerge. But who am I below all the superficial layers and identities? That’s one way to state the quest. Return to the source. Relax into presence. Integrate the depths, the heights, and the daily moments.

The day after my first “Sweat Your Prayers” session this seems very doable. This ecstatic dance practice allows me to bring memories of any extreme experiences into the present and then flow, keep moving, allow them to integrate into a fuller, richer, presence, NOW. And with this overflowing of energy to blissfully serve the awakening of beings around me.

I feel a desire to make a difference in the world that really makes a difference. Sometimes I have a desire to be a “worldworker” in the sense Arnold Mindell uses it. It has the power that Bernie puts into the word Peacemaker: somebody who’s really out there and really making a difference, but at the same time thoroughly penetrating to the source, completely clarifying the essence, the self bumping into the self. How does being a teacher/librarian fit with this? Can I actualize this as a teacher/librarian– realization and actualization, penetrating through the roles? It seems possible dancing the Five Rhythms. To stand in the light and fully, joyously manifest what is needed.

I can use my library as a base from which to work and grow, give and express. I like the idea of grounding the free flow of this writing project in the place where I’m working all day– not split between what’s fun and how I spend my days making a living. Career as vocation as spiritual expression.

Reading Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, I’m enchanted by the idea of story, of quest, of children, of tapping into the great well of story. This prompted me to start reading The Healing Power of Stories by Daniel Taylor, and reminded me of The Stories We Live By, by Dan P. McAdams. Then I found “The Call of Story” by Robert Coles, and then Stephen Batchelor’s description of the “narrative self” in Tricycle. The primary theme of the “teaching” story is turning on a light, enriching their minds and lives. The secondary theme is how this contributes to the integration I’m working on here, the healing of myself and the healing of the world. Now that’s a story. Becoming a teacher as healer, including self-healing. In Hebrew the word is Tikkun.

So far this whole library thing pulls me like a calling. Just the way teaching pulled me like a calling. They work together. I’m being pulled into the path of least resistance. Teaching, teaching children to read, teaching love of reading and love of literature. And not just of books but of all the media around us. Breaking the code of the symbolic world we live in. Keeper of the treasure, keeper of the keys. The kind of transmission of the human treasure that I dreamed and fantasized about in reading Whitehead’s The Aims of Education the summer before starting Stanford, and about a year and a half later, sitting under a tree at UCLA reading the Gita and Upanishads. How the treasure of human knowledge is preserved and handed down from generation to generation. This is a calling, a vocation, a voice that calls me. To be the keeper and transmitter of the treasure. This is an example of what McAdams calls Generative Integration. There’s that integration theme again. Coupled with generativity, giving, the bodhisattva vision. Saving all beings. This is the story. It’s scary because it seems so grandiose. Bodhisattva/librarian/role-model/elder.

In the YA class I started reading Foundation by Asimov, which starts by being about preserving human knowledge before the disintegration of the Empire. The idea that we are entering a dark age and need to preserve the knowledge before it starts. But even if we are not entering a dark age, the heroic role of preserver and transmitter of the treasure has juice. This is an Imago. It has certainly captured my imagination. And of course on a deeper level the question is, “What is the treasure?” That’s the elusive point.

Today in the L.A. Times Book Review were two pieces, one on Kesey and one on Gandhi, depicting both as powerfully individualistic moral forces operating in the public sphere. I have resonated deeply with the possibilities of that model, inspired by both. (Gandhi we’re used to seeing in that way. Kesey is a bit of a surprise. But this is where integrating LSD connects with the quest, the treasure, and the heroic bodhisattva path.) Work out what it means to go deeply into one’s integrity, applied to this life. What did I see with LSD that reflects on my own integrity?

This is what emerges for me with the experience of independence, on the occasion of moving away from the Zen Center and buying our little condo: one’s inner depth expressed as intensely focused purposeful activity in the world. Bringing forth the moral and spiritual dimensions. The power of goodness. This in the context of a lifelong quest to bring together the energies of my own heart and mind. To apply the gifts I have been given to making a focused, significant contribution to this world. Healing oneself and the world.

Can we follow the development of this quest through the hippie lifestyle, the corporate life/management lifestyle, and into education?

One way is to see a transition
from Imitation to Intuition. That is, I’m emerging from imitation into developing my own vision, following my own intuition.

I started in the academic world, taking masters of the novel as role models, but the academic environment seemed too theoretical, sterile, and restrictive. Actually, Stanford provided a challenge I wasn’t able to meet at that time. I dropped out and swung over to a big extreme of rebellion, wild ecstatic freedom, idealism, still following role models. At the beginning of the process, my first LSD experiences exploded the boundaries of the ego, tore away the veil, but it was too much too soon, blowing apart the container needed to transport the treasure. I was at Esalen and dipped into Fritz Perls’ workshop, but was not enrolled and didn’t really have the support and context I needed to integrate the “pearl” of great price. Just the community of early experimenters in Palo Alto. I’ve been working ever since on reassembling proper boundaries and an identity for myself that are more inclusive than the narrow, self-centered models I knew before. My whole life as a rock drummer and hippie was a first attempt to integrate these powerful experiences into the world we live in, a first attempt to establish an adult identity, an ego identity and social role to handle the radical power and subtlety of the vision. The swing through the corporate world was the second. This excursion into education is the third. But it’s all one continuum.

Reading Gabrielle’s description of her first meetings with Fritz Perls I’m reminded of the strong influence he probably had on my life, certainly in the first phase. I’ve tried many times to unpack the message of the first LSD trip. (I think the first and second trip have collapsed into each other. I think there were two of us on the first and four on the second.) There was Fritz, facilitating the unmasking of his clients, being in the present. Powerfully urging them to be themselves from the core of their being. I must have imprinted strongly on his charismatic presence, the therapist as shamanic healer. German accent, white beard, chain smoking, huge presence, sense of humor, putting you on the spot.

I swung back to the other extreme on the freedom vs. structure spectrum as I moved toward being a manager in a big corporation. On the positive side, I learned a lot about functioning skillfully in this society, and it is where I met Riley and studied leadership and organizational theory. But values and heart were significantly missing from the environment.

Note that Kleiner’s “The Age of Heretics” talks abut how I approached corporate life as a venue for Bodhisattva expression, trying to integrate the hippie and business values. I found my next (and current) context for identity in the public school system: further integrating idealism and practicality, heart and mind. This is the phase of the quest happening in present time. It’s what I’ve been working within for the last four years, and what this piece of writing is struggling to bring meaning to, and to put into context.

And at this particular point, as I start to establish clarity in this realm, we leave the long-time support and scaffolding of the training community behind and begin to live as independent citizens for the first time. This writing replaces the ZCLA community, and now replaces therapy, as the meaning-making, context-making scaffolding for the ongoing endeavor of self-generating meaning, telling my own story. Emerging from Imitation to Intuition. Transitioning the answer to the question “What is my practice?”

And today I started to dance the story. Went to “movement class” for the first time. A lovely practice cauldron in which to work on the integration of energies. The drummer in me, physically, emotionally, psychologically, got to come out and work on integrating energetically with all the other parts. Identity becomes fluid, grounded in the body, rhythmically changing, as one dances one’s prayer, taps into a gusher of emotional juice.

Talking about integrating the drummer energy reminds me of this passage from the end of my “Night at the Fillmore” memoir fragment:
“Over the years I’ve tried to domesticate that indomitable character within me who played drums for Mount Rushmore, and integrate his voice. It’s a huge energy, breaking boundaries, thumbing its nose at convention, intensely idealistic, incredibly impractical. My life since then has included long courses of discipline that have somewhat helped with this integration: Zen training, therapy, years as a corporate manager, a very rich ongoing marriage, and raising two daughters. But dipping back in to tell these stories I sense for the first time an access to that raw energy in a way that is usable in the present, that empowers and enriches.”

Yes, but let’s untangle the anger, loneliness, and naiveté to allow the emotional energy to flow within a context of sensitivity and discrimination.
At the sixth Sweat Your Prayers I met/saw/observed/experienced that “caged animal” that Stephen used to say came out when I performed. But now it was just another powerful bubble in the mix. No trouble integrating at all. It simply arises, presences, and dissolves.
Notice that in Tenzin’s Dzogchen book, “integrating” is integrating the passions that arise into the presence of open awareness. Very similar to what happens in this dance practice. And it could be the theme for this particular writing exercise.

Saturday night, after the first full day of the Dzogchen workshop I had the following dreams. First, I woke up in the middle of the night having dreamed there was some gigantic puzzle to put together. Then I woke up a few hours later having dreamed that I had completed putting it together and all I needed to do was write it down. So I actually got up and wrote down the dream.
Then when I was finished writing, I inserted a title in the space I had left at the top of the page: The Saga of My 40-Year Identity Crisis. Here’s what I wrote:

Went away to Stanford working on an identity as a college literature professor. Didn’t realize had backup identities as jazz drummer or Kerouac-based writer/hitchhiker. When primary seemed to break down in spring quarter, drank and transitioned into Kerouac model. Recovering back into try literature professor again (shifting to philosophy or psychology). When that broke down in spring quarter – tried drummer, as jazz transitioned to rock. Went back one last time to try English professor, withdrew from Shakespeare class second time, embraced rock drummer, with Burroughs cut-up and emerging psychedelic “hero” models. Very fragile supports in material world/economy. Best connection was music business, second best was prospect of counterculture overturning the whole order. When music business styles changed, I was more committed to the style than the business – went to counterculture farm. When I rebelled at form of governance, that left me with no means of support – no identity. Went back to my parents ten years after leaving for college. Started work as stagehand, building identity as spiritual seeker—which had somehow emerged from threads of possible counterculture and possible professor. Have remained spiritual seeker through stagehand, possible psychotherapist, possible business executive, possible technology consultant, schoolteacher, possible librarian. Today I’m “really” a teacher, transitioning. Away from the economically viable, still a spiritual seeker, trying to transition that into writer.

After third trip to Fumbling Toward Ecstasy yesterday the words swirling around are “close the gap, integrate, healing, wholeness”. Sitting today it expands into “close the gap, non-separation, not-two, nondual, healing the original separation”. And then as I continued to sit the mantra became “Surrender the Heart to the Beloved”. Nice place to sit. It is definitely enabled by whatever is happening in the movement class. In the sixth class it was “bring light into the heart”, which is part of the practice we learned from Tendzin.

Oh, by the way, the bio I put with my Ministry report on ZPO website says: “Ed Kenzan Levin recently moved to West Los Angeles (with his wife Mary Keion and daughter Rebecca Kyushin) after living and studying at the Zen Center of Los Angeles for over 28 years. Ed and Mary met, were married by Maezumi Roshi, and raised their two daughters there. He is currently working on a writing project to relate these experiences to his work as a rock drummer, corporate manager, and school teacher.”

I just went to the movement class for the 4th time. Sitting down in the café next door to write for the first time. What a beautiful experience! Totally in transformational flow. Her question today was, “What is your mission?” Take a journey. Identify your destination. Mine was full presence, in the room, in my body, right here and now, fully alive and awake. Spent much of the hour moving in that place. Even the side paths were interesting, and all ultimately grounded in the feet, in the scrotum, in the heart. I got to dance with the energy of integration. What is my vow or mission? One thing that came up is “to gather the light of all the faiths”. Then I remembered my current “Vision” in Geodex worksheet – to be grounded in a livelihood as a teacher/librarian. Both are true. And this is what I’m integrating.

The circle at the end each time is so sweet. Then after the circle I asked Lori (substituting for Jo) about bringing in Mary and Rebecca. She said ask Jo about a CD that has a full wave for dancing together at home. I need to coax them in very gently.

Lori offers various themes for various changes in the music – all working together in the flow of the morning’s program. At one point she asked, “Who will you bring with you [on your journey]?” On one level it’s Mary and Rebecca, and this dance was an opportunity to open energetically to how that works. On another level it’s all beings with whom I come in contact. And dancing this morning I was able to make the adjustments that would allow that to be possible too.

Opening to the ones I find ugly or scary or repugnant in one way or another. Not losing my rhythm to chase after the ones I find (sexually or otherwise) attractive. Dancing in between one of each and balancing out the energy by dancing in that field. A wonderful shift toward inclusiveness, felt in the body.

At one point the mantra for me was “lighten up”, which worked very well. It came from flipping into the opposite when I started feeling so heavy. Then dancing on the edge between light and heavy, allowing both, including both, but being held or trapped by neither.

All of this really helped with the experience of reading in the studio, which took place this last Tuesday-Friday. Wednesday I also started recording with Ryodo. That was the first day I ever spent recording in 2 different studios.
Finding Arthur Lessac, and then seeing Michael O’Keefe in his list of students was energizing in terms of working on the “voice”, as a spiritual and life practice, not just technical and professional. Converges with Gabrielle’s Dance work, especially in that Lessac has a second book called “Body Wisdom”. I’ll have to talk with Daigu about what he thinks of the Lessac work.

So the drumming, and voice work, and dancing are all swirling together as I start to look at re-entry into the classroom.

A few days ago I realized that one rather powerful answer to the question “What is my koan?” is “Classroom management”. How many times have I been told this is what I have to master, this is what I have to thoroughly penetrate, before I can move to the next level in my life. Sit with this koan: “Classroom management”, and allow my hyper-organized sub-personality to express itself fully in this area.

Just finished “Sweat Your Prayers” fifth time. Her theme was family, working with the parents, growth, separation, reintegration, etc. What kept coming up for me is my fear and apprehension anticipating going back to the classroom. What evolved was a sense of standing in the transition from 3rd grade to high school. Standing and moving in the light, aligned with all the forces of the universe, this is a context, or size of frame, that can be empowering. No excuses, no negativity. Just the ongoing growth, evolution, serious positive development. It’s where the story most transparently intersected with the joyous lightness of being present, without a story. Just absorbed by the sacred beauty, intensity, and openness of pure presence. The transition from third grade to high school is what I’m doing, in context, in a longer view than just struggling with classroom management. There is a shorter view that works and a longer view that works, but this one felt most empowering in the dance today, and it allows me to fully express how organized I am without compartmentalizing parts of life.

I’m starting to look at the Information Power logo as a mandala. Notice the ring that consists of Leadership, Collaboration, and Technology. Resonates with my long explorations into leadership with Riley, collaboration with Lotus Notes, and technology, since 1977.

Sixth movement class: The word I walk away with this morning is “inviting”. Inviting all the spirits to the dance. Inclusion. Dancing with the whole earth. Healing. Overcoming the false split between self and other.

More concretely, I feel and felt energy in my belly button. Very powerful each time I returned to center there. And in the heart. Bringing light to the heart. She was saying, “find your own mudra”, and one I would find after I followed the body/mind and guidance of her voice would be the welcoming mudra of the officiant in the Gate of Sweet Nectar. Knuckle of left hand grounding at the pelvic bone in the back. Right palm open, offering No Fear. At the end she played “Calling All Angels”, and I realized every spirit is invited. Not just the hungry and dispossessed, but also the ecstatically beautiful, the orgasmically, achingly beaming dakinis, the men overflowing with body knowledge/confidence.
The dance of the ritual of the GOSN is a gift I need to remember.

The major theme today was Transitions. How to move the energy to not get stuck anywhere, but to keep on moving, move it through. This practice is a great physical metaphor for doing that throughout the widest range of emotions and situations. Absolute freedom from being stuck. And sometime it’s important to hold your ground, hold your position. But always have the freedom to let it go if that’s the right thing to do.
I need to keep my energy open enough that I’m ready to go back to work and be interviewing for high school LMT jobs both at the same time. (Note inserted later: yesterday, 8/19/02, I got the LMT job and Najarian signed the permission to transfer).

How about the relationship between identity, voice, vocation, career, livelihood on the one hand and the Bodhisattva ideal, path, vow on the other. To what extent have my 40 years of study and 30 years of practice integrated these strands in my life? What is the Bodhisattva vow, path, ideal? How have I tried to work with it in the past, present, and future? How did Stephen’s understanding of the Bodhisattva influence my transition from the hippie life to re-entry into mainstream society, ending up in the corporate world? What are my current sources for understanding the way of the Bodhisattva? What does it mean to renew the vow on a daily basis? How does it fit with “the stories we tell”? A boundless way of being in the present.

Are there Western (non-Buddhist) archetypes or roles, or parallels to a Bodhisattva path? Are there ways to describe what it would mean to be a Bodhisattva without using any Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan words? It’s not just a “do-gooder”. It’s a whole heroic modality. What does Joseph Campbell say about the Bodhisattva?

Purpel on the “prophetic” vocation of teaching. Is that the Western myth I was looking for? But then Nash “talks back” to the liberationist view as being overly polemic. I should see what his “moral conversation” is. I have looked at the teacher role as heroic transformer of the system.

Another strand: my experience of elites – at Stanford, in Japanese Buddhism, and corporate America vs. my experience of suppressed classes since I started teaching, ref Mindell on rank and all the related concepts he uses around rank, elites, repression etc.

Memoir piece on saying goodbye to the man of no rank. Becoming the way, becoming the dirt of the path itself. Intersection of the Taoist sage and bodhisattva. Kesey’s “stand small and ooze”. What is the felt sense?

Imagoes. Voices in the Voice Dialog. Dan McAdams’ concept of Imagoes as characters in the story. Boy Genius, Rock Drummer, Teacher, Zen Priest, Technology Consultant, Entrepreneur, Spiritual Seeker, Homeowner, Son of Aging Parents. These are voices that need to dialog with each other. Some are sub-personalities, some are social roles.

Interesting hearing Ryodo talk about Genpo’s “Big Mind” seminar. Jikyo, Yoshin, Tenshin, Egyoku, etc. were all there. About 90 people. Based on Voice Dialog. Start by getting permission from the “controller” and the “skeptic”. Work through at the end to accessing the voice of “Big Mind”. Then allow them all to dialog with each other, achieve some equality so they’re all comfortable. Then they can drop off together, since nobody feels a need to hold on. That is the spacious presence, the so-called “Zen” state. Original Mind emerges, True Nature, Self-Fulfilling Samadhi, Diamond Presence. This metaphor of the “voices” is nice. Being able to play the parts consciously keeps you from being unconsciously “hijacked” by them. Comes from Hal Stone, which comes from Jung. Voices are sub-personas, what McAdams calls Imagoes. McAdams has it as a story told by a storyteller. Stone has it as a community of voices, able to be in dialog with each other. How does this fit with my ongoing investigations? McAdams says, “A personal myth may be seen as a complex set of imaginal dialogues involving different imagoes developing over narrative time.” Once again, see Batchelor in Tricycle.

McAdams says this in reference to Watkins’ Invisible Guests. He says she is not as much as he is into creating a coherent integration of the Imagoes but he does like the idea of Imaginal Dialogs. One way of looking at the development of one’s personal myth is as a complex set of these Imaginal Dialogs “developing over narrative time”. This may be a helpful way to look at the project I’m working on here. But I don’t know that I really have a format for practicing Imaginal Dialogs. Probably the closest to it is the ongoing Progoff Journal, which I haven’t used since moving, partially because of the storage problem, but also partly because I wanted to step away from the form for a while. I’m not sure to what extent that particular form dictates the nature and content of the resulting material. I like the idea of the freedom of the “non-form” I’m using here, where as soon as things start feeling like I’m in a rut I can just start totally fresh from wherever I want.
Interesting to think of these roles as “characters” and what all the issues are about character development in fiction. Also, that whole other range of issues around “character education” and “character” as the moral dimension of personhood.

And then at this point my father’s serious medical decline begins.

Sitting this morning I realized I have dozens of “story fragments” percolating, of varying length, intensity, complexity, vintage, etc. For example—the story of Janis and the T-shirt, backstage with Jim Morrison, hitching to New York, Big Sur with Dufford, stranded in Orlando. times on the Farm, times as a stagehand, meeting Mary, working at RPS, meeting Riley, to Kesey’s with Norman, Sky River Rock Festival, Shell Refinery with Zerzan, freshman Jolly-Up at Stanford, the Legends of Paly High, Kreutzman at the Institute, rooming with Tommy H., Tommy D. at Simi house, the commune next door to Schlomo, Holy Order of Man’s in Florida, Jimmy Hale Rescue Mission in Birmingham, driving Gary Snyder to UCLA, meeting Tarthang Tulku, sitting with Kobun Chino, Leslie and the two redheads, Sufi Sam at the Coffee House, Swami Satchitananda’s Christmas party, etc. Grist for the writing mill.

I could just start telling some of these stories. This is the way it could be modular. Each coherent story is a module. Sub-modules are scenes within a longer story. Major categories are long arcs: like the whole time at home before going to college, the whole time at Stanford, the whole time in bands in the bay area, the whole time at the farm, the whole time as a stagehand, the whole time at the Zen center, the whole relationship with Mary, the whole time at RPS, the whole time at Avnet, the whole time unemployed, the whole time doing Essential Systems, the whole time as an elementary teacher. Stories and scenes fit within these chapters. So the “story fragments” are scenes. They are scenes within stories. And the stories are chapters that fit into major sections. The fragments from the Memoir class could each be fitted into one of the major sections above. Then I have scenes and other fragments from many of the sections in Progoff Journal, Independent Scholar journal, Antioch portfolio, and miscellaneous journals. Start the organization by placing the Memoir fragments into the major headings above. Then place story fragments in the paragraph above that into major headings.

I “had a little bit of trouble bridging universes”, Jo said about me as the dance class ended just a minute ago. I took the day off because of an exhausting day at work yesterday. It’s Thursday, June 6, 2002. I have 3 weeks left in the school year after tomorrow. Victor refused to leave the room when we were going to lunch yesterday. The principal, it seemed, was trying to blame me for Victor. I showed her the 3 letters I’ve written to her about him, starting last October. She tried to nail me for 2 things: First, I had only that day submitted SST paperwork and, second, I hadn’t yet called Victor’s grandmother, which she had told me to do 2 or 3 days earlier. It was so discouraging to have to battle him and what he produces and then her. I knew before the day was over that I needed a day off to rest, gather my energies, and work on perspective. Get clear enough to know what is the most positive, effective way to be when I go back.

Then this morning I was awakened by the phone ringing at 6:45. A false alarm, it was a beeping modem calling a wrong number. After going back to bed and trying to go back to sleep, I realized I could go to dance class. And now here I am sitting in the café afterwards.

First time I’ve seen Jo. She’s very good. Her theme today was Architecture. Building a house. Building structures, foundations, curves and lines. Many rich allusions to the body and relationships growing from the metaphor. A central episode involved gravitating to triangles. I was not able to connect. There were only 2 or 3 others who floated free. This is what she was referring to in saying I had “a little bit of trouble bridging universes”. There were a few times of connection. One was when I gave up trying, and lay down on my back looking at the ceiling. She was talking about opening up the spaces in your mind. I felt that, rather than being a moment of failure to connect, it could be a moment of deep awakening to presence. Then she started talking about “feel the support” in your triad and I felt the presence of Mary and Rebecca. It was reassuring to know we have that mutually supportive triangular structure.

A second moment of connection was when she had us make a big circle and asked one member from each of the triads to dance in the middle. This rotated through until she asked those that hadn’t come in yet to do so, including the floaters. I went in and connected with 2 of the women who were most energetic. I was drawn by the fullness of hips and buttocks. (This reminds me that the “soul card” I picked at the beginning had a huge, dark, oversized hara). Urged on by Jo’s words I became part of that triad, as she emphasized, “feel the support”, both of the others in the center and the support of the holding circle. Whether I knew it or not, I had come for the energetic support and I was being urged to take advantage of it. I knew this was right and ecstatically poured my self into my body through this frenetic dancing.

A third moment of connection was when the music shifted from slow and dreamy to an up-tempo “Well, You Needn’t” by Monk (played by Chet Baker I learned afterwards). As soon as it started I felt connected to the drummer’s ride cymbal and started running across the room perfectly in time with that fast beat. Very exhilarating.

A fourth moment of connection was during an African piece, which I learned later was from a new album called “Assembly” by Zawose and Brook. The bass tones and the big drums resonated very deeply. I felt my big drummer connection – full body fully alive to the pulse of the universe and myself as absolutely totally deeply connected. At this point one of the women I recognized from previous times came over and matched movements with me. I smiled kindly for the attention and support. I noticed as she mirrored me the facial expression was pained and the hand movements were mechanically angular. I tried to use this feedback to soften my movements while I deepened even further into the big pulse/sound.

A fifth moment of connection was just before the closing circle, when Jo read a poem from “Selected Poems” of Mary Oliver. It was about lying down in and/or being covered with flowers or petals. I’ll have to find the poem, because I felt it deeply in my soul, corpuscles, flesh, cells, and senses.

A sixth moment of connection was at the very end, when Jo called the circle. Instead of holding hands, she gently put her hand on my lower back, so I did the same to the lady on my right and it spread around the circle. Then Jo started talking about supporting each other, especially if anybody has been having a hard time, by putting the hand on the lower back of the neighbor so they can feel the warmth, and as she said it I said softly, “Thank you” like an “Amen”. As she continued to say something about supporting this energy, I don’t remember what she was saying, but I remember softly saying “Thank you” at least two more times in response to the deeply healing energy of the hands, the whole circle, the community, and the dance.

Surrender to your body. To your dance. Be intimate with yourself. This is your chance. Find your own heart.

My first time back I struggled self-consciously with issues of gender and attraction. That was Tuesday 7/9, with Michael leading for the first time since the very first time I went. I talked with him afterward about my koan about having the practice not be a wedge between Mary and I.
Then last night and this morning I was very much up in my head and scattered. I wrote myself a note: “I should try to sit 1 hour a day to go deeper when off-track”. Today is Thursday of the second week off. The first week included a Tuesday where I went to the Valley to take dad for his pre-op and a Thursday that was the Fourth of July. Every time I sat it felt extremely powerful cutting through layers of surface chatter to get deeper and closer to what’s important. No real content, just clearing the noise, becoming more one-pointed, more grounded. This is right. This is my primary practice. I have been doing this for over 30 years and more and more I feel it beginning to bear fruit.

The dancing feels like it clears a larger, more all-inclusive energetic space.

Last night browsing through LeDoux’s Synaptic Self I could feel it internally as he described the massively parallel plasticity of the brain systems coordinating into an ever richer, more functional “self”. I could feel how fragile is the balance but how extravagantly, elegantly multi-layered the integrity of the wholeness can be. And dancing today I could feel myself repetitively grooving into patterns that energetically felt they enhanced the magnificence of the ongoing work of high art.

And as this self-building strengthens into a clarity it calls forth the need for bridges, for co-creating with those around you. At the same time I’m starting to read the Dalai Lama’s Ethic for a New Millennium. The primary point seems to be to find a mode larger than the self-centered mode. To be kind, caring, considerate of others. So, in the dance today, after Michael had worked so long on having us be thoroughly intimate with ourselves, deeply appreciating ourselves, he shifted to “have your dance be a bridge to one other person in the room”. The exquisite tentativeness and ambiguity of the play around that was very informative and freeing. How fiercely the bridge builders can flash their absolute autonomy, or their lack of interest in building a bridge. Nobody wants to be part of a mentally imposed, asymmetrical, stereotyped relationship. And then bring in more to make four. Another shift that explodes all forms while retaining the continuity of the inner flow, and establishing new shapes of external bridges.

And the other thing I’ve started reading at the same time is Exploring the Moral Heart of Teaching, by David T. Hansen. This speaks to what I want to accomplish during this off-track time. I want to deepen and clear the mind by sitting, open up my energy by dancing, and align this focused energetic openness to deeply and powerfully enhance who I am as a teacher and how I perform as a teacher in the coming year, which will be my fifth. At the level of implementation the first thing I want to do is develop classroom learning centers integrated into the Open Court Independent Work Time. In the background will be how to use this to enhance my classroom management behavior/discipline Achilles heel. To approach it by enriching the learning environment, so there’s less meaningless unpleasant work to rebel against. And also so there are more structures in place that allow for self-managed positive behavior by the kids.

There are a lot of other things to distract my attention from this during July and August: taking care of my parents, taking care of Rebecca, catching up on housework and finances at home, moving our storage, the Northern California vacation. But I think sitting an hour a day will keep my focus strong and deep and the dancing will keep my energy vibrant and open.

Now the question of the reader over my shoulder. I shared this writing with Mary for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it created a problem. What I had just finished writing was about my trip to dance class on June 6, when I took a day off from work. She became quite upset by the sense that I’m going there for sensual gratification that I don’t get in the marriage, and, that because of scheduling it’s virtually impossible for her to participate. This is what I talked about with Michael after class Tuesday. He was sensitive and sympathetic, helping me see that it’s just something Mary and I can work with. But with regard to this writing, there’s a shift that needs to take place. The initial premise was that this is the one place “where nobody is judging if it meets some standard or criterion.” But now I have shared it with her, and that wall is down. I don’t feel it makes sense to try to put it back up again. Also, Rebecca has asked me if I will ever share my “journal” with her. In this moment I feel comfortable with the sense that the circle of one has increased to a circle of three. I do want to be able to write for publication, which means sharing it with a lot of people. So it seems appropriate to start now sharing it with the 2 people closest to me. I’ll see what, if any, shifts this requires for me. As I type up these notes I’m writing in the café I’ll keep that question in mind.

Just went to the class (Tuesday July 16). Jo was the leader. The other thing going on is the Tony Robbins RPM System came in the mail yesterday. I listened to a lot of Day 1 yesterday and some more of it this morning before going to class.
The first exercise on the CD was to visualize a result you want somewhere in your life. What came up for me was a classroom buzzing with happy students working independently and in groups at their Centers. But at class this morning the area that came up was my marriage, my relationship with my wife. And sitting here in the café I want to close my eyes and visualize a result. But the outside conversation is too intrusive. And at that point Jo walks in with a couple of students. So I probably won’t write here today.

But I would like to use the RPM training to focus on our relationship starting with what I really want. And why. Maybe while I’m driving around doing my errands.

Five days later I’m up to day 3 of the training. The homework is to juice up the categories and roles. I think that’s going to be the homework for the time we’ll be on vacation. One possibility is to use this writing to generate some juicy roles and categories. Being a writer. A spiritual seeker. A family man. Having a beautiful home. Being a great teacher.

And now I’m on Day 10 of the CD’s. Yesterday I got the job at Downtown Business Magnet High School. Today my RPM Plan will begin the next stage of my unfolding career. (Noted later: Everything up to here was moving toward the library—from this point forward it’s from within the library).

And now I’m sitting in the DMHS library, during the quiet homeroom reading period. I have just finished the 2 months of working with RPM. The planning was swallowing up all of my time. My response to the demise of Geodex will now be to use Day-Timer and allow myself to be much more intuitive and improvisational. However, I must acknowledge Tony Robbins help in making this transition happen.

I didn’t write anything except the above paragraph during the whole time at DMHS so far. And now I have one more day left in the 3-week winter vacation before going back January 13, 2003. I went to dance class today. Notes below.

Just went to dance class for what might be the last time until school is out at the end of June (6 months!) I so really love the way it works. I went 3 times during this break. Can’t remember the first one right now. During the last one I got into doing the Vajra Guru mantra. That was Tuesday. Then yesterday I found the Sogyal Rinpoche book on Dzogchen and Padmasambhava. I read the chapter on Guru Yoga and about the mantra. Today in class that was in and out. Mostly letting the instructions, rhythms, and movement shake me out of my head. Like Roshi said, even with a very high spiritual mantra you still have something in your head. Drawn deeply to the feeling of the GROUND, I recognized the earth element.

Oops. Let me take a step back. At the beginning of the class I spoke briefly with a regular and told her, “I’m working on withdrawing my projections. I have too many projections out there.” Where this came from is a couple of things. First, I had been reading the book on Chakras and Archetypes. While Rebecca was taking her driving test yesterday I was reading the chapter on the solar plexus chakra. Oh, saying that reminds me that why I was reading about that particular chakra was because of my experience at the class Tuesday. What happened was as I continued to dance and to do the mantra silently (and sometime voicing it a little) the energy got so huge that I could feel my breathing very strongly at the diaphragm. By the end of the class I was doing huge, natural, powerful, aware, diaphragmatic breathing. It was very centering, natural, organic, satisfying. Head completely cleared out. Later in the day and the next day I found myself drawn to reading about the solar plexus center. She talks about it in terms of the servant vs. warrior archetypes. It’s the center of power and she talks about how to take back the power you have given away. This connected for me with the fact that for much of the class I was the only man there. I had a whole thought stream going in the background about possible fantasies of how I could manifest a dream of taking more advantage of the situation. Dakini flashes came in and out. Thinking about coming back today into a very similar situation I didn’t want to be wasting energy tripping on fantasies of lust or selfishness or control or any other kind of fantasies. That’s what I meant by letting go of projections. Taking them back.

(Last night I picked up and started reading from the beginning Dakini’s Warm Breath). And that gets into reclaiming the earth element. (Tibetan dakinis in Simmer-Brown’s book, reading about dakinis associated with the 5 elements in both Tenzin Wangyal and Ken McLeod’s books). Reclaiming my soul in my body.

Dancing today I felt the best mode is to be completely in the music and rhythm with no thought stream happening. Second best is to have a “spiritual practice” thought that’s steering me back to such a state. Examples are mantra, or bringing in elements. Third best is being in thought with the intention of finding my way back to rhythmic presence. Next best is being temporarily disengaged, taking a break, resting the body and mind in a neutral mode. Next best is being caught in a fixed idea but allowing the music to move me through it. Actually, even that is great growth.

I’ll really miss this regular practice. It’s a container within which I can test the viability of strands I’ve been gathering on not only a mental level, but throughout the whole energetic range of emotion, intimacy, intensity, channels, groundedness. If it works here I know I can dance it in life, dance with rather than just dance alone.
So without dancing I’m left with the Vajra Guru mantra. With the energies of the 5 elements. With the dakinis as explained by Simmer-Brown, Wangyal, and McLeod. With the non-substantiality of consciousness as examined by Daniel Dennett from a scientific point of view. How this overlaps with the studies in the Dalai Lama book I just read aloud. With all the cluster of energies around Padmasambhava: the mantra, dzogchen, the visualization at time of death, the dakini who was his consort, and the many western teachers who refer to him as a touchstone. The fact that when Maezumi Roshi died Padmasambhava came to comfort me for the first year. Knowing that I can learn to be real with all these energies by allowing them into the dance, where they nourish and support. The essentially empty dance. To raise the bodhi mind, train in absolute and relative bodhicitta. Keep working on the lojong slogans together with Mary. Read the dakini book she is reading. Continue to study the manifestations of Padmasambhava. Don’t forget the space element at the center of the mandala. The five rhythms and the five elements. The joy that comes from being in touch with the pulse of life. The oneness, differentiation, and harmony.

How do we support each other? What supports you? How do you support everything around you?
Tune in to the pulse.
I pray for the peace of mind of our leaders. May they hear the cries of the world.
Right at this point we connect with Arthur Hull. Here’s what I wrote the first night.

MISSION STATEMENT – ARTHUR HULL WORKSHOP – JUNE 6-8, 2003
I want to use this weekend to start a new stage of life. Most immediately, I hope to open up the drum club I started at my high school into being an ongoing community drum circle. If we can do that, I’d want it draw in other members of the school community, to help the healing and shared visioning that needs to happen there.

My wife and I lived together at the Zen Center for 22 years, studying with our teacher Maezumi Roshi, who married us. Our Zen practice and our work with this teacher formed the shared basis of our relationship. Five years after he died, we moved away, and for the last two years we’ve been both open for a practice to take us to the next level of maturity, service, and development in our lives. I think we want to be able to harness the years of work we have done on ourselves, and in our relationship together, in a way to serve more people, more directly. This practice is the teacher that presents itself in this moment. My mission is to be open enough to allow the spirit of the Drum Circle to offer itself as the vehicle of growth into the next phase of our life together.

6/24/03 – And now I’m back to dancing. First time since Arthur’s Playshop. I have a much bigger energy to work with.
In both practices the magic happens when the mental model falls away and you are totally one with the rhythmic flow, fully present, richly transcending all categories.

6/26 – That was spectacular. I think it’s the first time I went in with a mantra/koan/phrase and held it the whole time. “What Is My Vow?” Also, I was the only man there the whole time and I didn’t get into any head trips. It was very sensual a lot of the time, but no clinging. If I would start to drift into trshna I would recall the phrase (What is my vow?) and follow the flow away from the shallow water, run aground, gasping sense of lack, which would flutter away before it had a chance to get as bad as that sounds.

7/3 – Greed, anger, and ignorance. Moving it through. Moving the anger through a container strong enough and loving enough to allow the big stuck energies to flow through. The groundless ground really is peace, love, bliss. This dance is such a container, and the drum circle can be such a container, more accessible for more people.
Before going to dance this morning I was looking at Gabrielle’s Sweat Your Prayers. The grid of archetypes and rhythms started to make sense. I have talked here about wanting to integrate LSD. Note that I read Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces before the first trip, anticipating that it would give me access to all these stories, and be an instance of quest itself. In this writing I have been naming all the roles I’ve been through in life to try to make sense of them or find the story line. Roth talks about dancing all the roles, all the archetypes, at appropriate places in the rhythmic flow. Right now I’m reading through Michael Meade’s Men and the Water of Life. It includes stories, myths, and archetypes that we flow through and live through at various times. Buddhism says the self is no fixed thing. On one level all the archetypes, and stories are flowing through, limited only by where we are stuck and what we can handle. The dancing helps the stuck ones flow through. Below the level of fragments of self-image and identity is just energy flowing through, and below that is the stillness from which it all emerges and to which it returns. No fixed thing.

The energy of the dance allows the emotions to flow that fuel identity. Identification with roles and archetypes. Energy, emotion, and identity –a good summary of the cauldron I’m working with.
Notice the subtle interplay of sub personalities and social roles, either or both of which can partake of archetypes or stereotypes.

7/17/03 – Went to dance today with the mantra “What is my koan?” Spent most of the dance in “Give no fear.”

8/12/03 – Reading Meade’s book the other day I made the following notes: “Returning through the gate as a stagehand. Coming back from other world. Using a skill learned there. Losing a piece of the heel as door slams, just making it through gate. Doing first sesshin on crutches. Haven’t met the dwarf yet. Walking with a limp is a wound that’s a sign of having been to the other world.”

8/14 – She (Jo) was telling us “Be a bridge between worlds. Offer the bridge between the worlds. Be the bridge.” And I danced with that, moved with that. And isn’t that a metaphor for this whole writing project? Isn’t that the perspective I’ve been looking for from the beginning, a way to integrate, to make sense of the whole thing? When I was going to Avnet (or RPS) every day, living at the Zen Center, I felt I was serving as, acting as, a bridge between those two worlds. As a librarian one can be a bridge between many worlds. At Avnet I was a bridge between the worlds of the computer people and the senior managers.

What I had been working on when she brought this up was “basic trust”. Experiencing in the dance my own seamless contact with essence, being, original nature. Not looking outside for affirmation, confirmation. It is self-fulfilling samadhi. Dogen’s jijiyu zammai is the same as Almaas’ “basic trust”! – full-body awareness grounded in the pulse of life, the state we achieve in the dance. Almaas gives it the name Basic Trust – in Being, Essence, True Nature. The simple experience of pre-existing unity, and the ability to act spontaneously and naturally from that.
And then operating from there, be a bridge between the worlds – inner and outer, self and other, one social world and another.

8/21 – After class talking with Betty Jane, what came up was I should write a YA novel that takes place in a MAGICAL LIBRARY. Everything fell into place. Later at home I wrote, “They have a book club that becomes a Socratic dialog that asks questions that start unraveling the nature of reality. They stumble upon a common language that connects all humans.” The magical library is the setting for my book. It’s a bridge between worlds. The librarian may have had some experiences something like mine. The main characters are the kids. I’m not sure what they do, but that will come.

Note that the Pullman Trilogy involves moving back and forth between worlds – through an opening. This library is like a passageway, or way station.

Something about Dogen’s “One Bright Pearl”, and Almaas’ “Pearl Beyond Price”. Are they the same pearl? How do you experience it? How about the treasure the hero brings back from the other world? Three ways of looking at the prize as a single pearl.

Now a month later, having stepped away from these pearls, I have been following Ken’s line of thought around the formation of patterns, as he traces them back to their origin. And what do I find on p. 176? “The unreleased experience freezes, initiating the formation of a pattern, just as a grain of sand in an oyster initiates the formation of a pearl. Layers of nacre form to reduce the sensations caused by the grain of sand. In the same way, mechanisms form around the emotional core to smother the threatening feelings of the undischarged emotional core.”
In Dogen and Almaas the Pearl is a positive state, highly valued, the One Bright Pearl, the Pearl Beyond Price. Ken uses the metaphor for the development of patterns, which are the hindrances to be overcome. It’s the Negative Pearl. I don’t think Almaas or Dogen have anything like that. (That’s my first thought, but this will bear more careful inquiry).
Almaas’ pearl is located in the body, Dogen’s is the whole universe. So now a third spiritual teacher I am investigating deeply uses this metaphor of the pearl, albeit with a different twist. A different twist, yes, but the metaphor of the pearl is extremely central to Ken’s whole emphasis on dismantling reactive emotional patterns as the major prerequisite of the work of awakening.

The dance we do at class feels like the form Alan Watts envisions in the Epilog of The Joyous Cosmology, most specifically p. 87-88. Gabrielle’s form, for me, perfectly fulfills the need Watts describes. What are the qualities of that space? Clearing an open space for presence, for Being, and for Being-Together, that includes movement and stillness.

The world behind the world. Almaas’ pearl is formed around the energy of being, from the world behind the world. This is healthy integration, which allows presencing. Dogen’s “the whole universe is one bright pearl” is also positive. Ken’s patterns are the negative, downside. A structure built around a disruption in being. We have to dismantle them, melt these structures down, so the world behind the world can shine though. What we want to access is the radical realm of boundless energy, channeling into this world via practices that are aligned, relaxed, resilient. After the ecstasy the laundry. Michael Meade says the movement from level 1 superficial conventional life to level 3, mythic boundlessness, involves the journey through level 2, the realm of struggle, pain and darkness. That means that completing the journey involves getting unstuck and past the patterns, which allows you to live in this world with one foot in the world behind the world. The healing elixir is activated by entering the wound. The positive pearl is achieved by dismantling and dissolving the pattern that formed around the pain, like the pearl that protects the oyster from the pain of the grain of sand.