It is with a sad heart that I report that my friend and well-known photographer Stanley Livingston, co-other of our recent book “Blues in Black and White: The Landmark Ann Arbor Blues festivals,” died yesterday of a heart attack. It was only last August 2010 that Stanley and I did our first (and it would seem only) book signing event in Ann Arbor for the new publication. Stanley was also scheduled to stop by my place for a visit on his way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula later this month, where for most of his life he kept a cabin on a plot of land at the “absolute uppermost point in Michigan’s north shore” called “Dan’s Point,” so my brother and co-author Tom Erlewine pointed out when he notified me of Stanley’s passing. The U.P. was Stanley’s favorite place in the whole world and he used to spend three months a year there. I met Stanley back in the mid-1960s and

I'd like to discuss how to tell if we are making progress in meditation or mind training. I am surprised that there is not more information available on this topic, but I find that in many spiritual disciplines there are few recognizable mile markers, no way to know where we are at, much less how far we have yet to go, and most of all where we are going to! Where is that?

One thing about Buddhism is that it is list-prolific, with endless lists of the exact steps for just about any spiritual experience we could imagine. There is only one problem with that, which is that lists are by nature condensed versions of more elaborate procedures. The upshot is that unless you have had the particular experience being described personally, simply reading a one-line description will give you no clue. So Buddhist slogans and lists are more confirmatory than anything else. I often can kind of figure out that I have had a particular experience (if I have had it) by looking at a list, but I am mostly clueless as to what it is about if I have not yet had the experience. It makes looking down the meditation road pretty much impossible. And this brings me to my point in this blog, clear transition points in our mind practice.

The Tibetan Buddhists make a big deal about what they call "gaps," chinks in the seemingly-seamless armor of our self, moments when we time-out from our incessant distractions and come up for air. Without gaps there would be no eventual realization or enlightenment.

Gaps are important because without them we are on an endless subway ride to nowhere – just going along in rapt ignorance of our own mind's actual nature. According to the Buddhists, we have managed to get it just backward and have frozen our gaze looking outward at a world of mostly our own projections. Somehow we have to flip this and learn to also look inward at the projector of all this, our own biases, rather than just outward. For this to happen there have to be breaks or intermissions in this incessant movie of life -- gaps.

I just returned from a three-day intensive dharma teaching, in this case the presentation

and commentary on a "doha," which is Tibetan for a song of spiritual experience. In

Tibet, folks have biographies just as we do here, but there is a difference. At least

Buddhist biographies are not concerned with your personal life, your hobbies, and all of

that. Instead they are all about your spiritual life, the inner changes you have been

through and what you have realized from them. They are called Namtars, and amount

to a spiritual biography, like what we might call a hagiography (of saints) here in the

west.

Yesterday, I mentioned something about realization. Today I want to look at its younger

brother "spiritual experiences." We all have them. The big difference between having

experiences and realization is that experiences come and go, like the tides, while

realization happens just once. When you get it, you got it, and it stays with you because

it is not an experience, but a realization.

As pointed out in the previous segment, realizations don't go away, and are much like

those figure-ground paintings we used to see, where one picture is embedded (and

hidden) in another, and you have to look and look until you see the embedded image.

However, once you see it, you can always see it again whenever you look. Realization

is like that, very practical. You realize once and you've got it.

My mind naturally wants some concentration-intensive spiritual work each day. By "spiritual" I mean a meditation-like workout. Obviously, the various kinds of basic meditation are custom designed for this kind of exercise, but that does not mean they are the only game in town. You may have already learned to use your mind in a way similar to meditation. Like a dull knife that wants to be sharpened, the mind once sharp seeks to remain sharp. We notice quickly when it gets dull and soon miss the clarity and insight that well-honed meditation practice produces and find ourselves seeking it out. Clarity (like all good things) tends to be addictive. And while any practice or situation will do for an expert meditator, for most of us we are lucky if we have even one kind of mental exercise that can get us in the right frame of clarity each day.

Today, astrologically speaking, the Sun conjuncts the planet Saturn. Since Saturn is considered very serious and even a depressive, forgive me if I share with you the chapter on alcohol from a book I wrote called “The Loss of Substance: Stories and Notes on Addiction,” which also goes into topics like nicotine, caffeine, sugar addiction, and so on. This is a long blog folks, so it is probably not for everyone. The whole book can be found here for those interested in my take on those substances.

We had some C-Class and M-Class flares last evening and then around 10:37 EDT we had a major X-Class solar flare (X1.7) just off the edge of the east limb of the sun. It caused a strong R3-Level radio blackout on the sunlit side of Earth. X-Class flares are the largest class of solar flares and we have not had one for quite a long time. This particular flare was not facing Earth and the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that it hurled into space will not hit us. Nevertheless, this is some very intense solar activity, and as this flare turns the corner and begins to be apparent from Earth, we may not have heard the last of it.

A number of you have messaged or emailed me about how I do my photography, so here are a few notes:

Photography is easy to do and hard to do. It is easy to take snapshots of this and that, but harder to take carefully composed and light-balanced shots. The learning curve is rather long to good photography and few would want to put in the hours necessary to climb that curve. Wanting to take ‘nice’ photos or a desire to show your friends what great photos we take is not the kind of motivation that will go the distance. It takes a little more than that.

A few of you have written with some questions on meditation, so I will try to answer those in a bit of a blog here. First, something about the difference between meditation practice and the results of that practice, realization. Many times when a building is built, it requires scaffolding to complete it, and when completed the scaffolding is removed. Meditation is a little like this. If we learn to play music, we practice playing scales and other complex finger and musical exercise. Yet the scales and finger exercises are not considered the final music. Meditation is also a little like this. As kid we learn to draw the alphabet, but we don’t write out the alphabet often once we have learned it. Meditation is like this.

Well this is Midsummer Night, the shortest night of the year and the longest day. From this day on the Sun moves southward toward autumn and winter. Of all the kinds of holidays, celebrating the solstices has always been my favorite, at least since I grew up. The inclination of the North Pole is inclined (as in “I am inclined”) toward the direction of the center of our galaxy and all of the deep cosmic matter at the galactic nucleus. The center of the galaxy (GC) has always fascinated me astrologically. For years I contemplated, analyzed, and even dreamed on what is the meaning of the galactic center? I couldn’t figure it out. Then one day it simply dawned on me. It had been right before my eyes all the time, locked in the traditional meaning of the two signs that define its direction, Sagittarius and Capricorn. If you combine the direct candor of Sagittarius with the practical qualities of Capricorn, you have the meaning of the galactic center. It has been there all the time embedded in plain sight in the traditional interpretations for these two signs. I finally got it and really began to study the galaxy center.

Thanksgiving is my favorite legal Holiday, but you can have the rest of them. I am not much of an officially-declared holiday person, especially if we are talking about New Year’s Eve. My daughter May does a huge New Year’s Eve concert (usually sold out) that reaches beyond midnight, to which I am, of course, always invited, but I have never gone. Where I do go on New Year’s Eve is to bed, and early at that, way before Midnight. I just don’t care for calendar holidays. My family does its best to tolerate me; they like a good celebration, drag out the board games, and party it on up. I am sorry. But I am not completely holiday-less. I have my own idea of holidays, and the Solstices top the list. Those of you who read this blog know I love New and Full Moons, and especially eclipses. I am not sure that ‘love’ is the right word. Let’s just say I observe the lunar cycle. I take note. For example, we just had a rather tough New Moon last Thursday, so we are on an upswing by now or at least having a shift in emphasis. What does get my blood moving, however, are the solstices, especially the Summer Solstice, but the Winter Solstice is second on my list and just as important.

It's been a while since we had a large solar flare, one in the X-Class, much less one that is fully geoeffective and coming right at Earth as this one is, so hang on and don't lose your sense of humor. It has been confirmed that this recent solar flare generated a CME-event (Corona Mass Emission) that is directly aimed at Earth. In fact, there are two CME events heading here, one launched (slower one) on September 9th and the other (faster one) yesterday, September 10th. They should arrive fairly close together on Friday September 12th with a one-two punch, making auroras visible here on Earth perhaps even at mid-latitudes.

As usual I am not immediately that interested in the gross physical effects of sudden solar bursts, but rather the internal and psychological effects. I have written so often about the effect of these massive solar events that I have not much new to say.  here are many articles and some books at this link, not to mention three videos, here:

Scientists say that another even more powerful solar flare has emerged, but this one is not directed at Earth. Meanwhile the CME (coronal mass ejection) event from January 23rd is still working itself out. Some readers have asked me what are the internal signs we should look for in such an event. I can only share my own experiences with these “soul-ar” events. There is nothing quite like a strong solar event to shuffle my options and offer me at least the opportunity for a new deal. The deep imprinting of a solar flux has the ability to wipe out my short-term memory, at least as regards my current plans or direction, and leave me stranded in myself, standing there vacantly looking around for which way to go once again.

It has been relatively quiet on the Sun for a while, but yesterday we had a large M5.9 Class solar flare at 6:49 PM EDT (Friday June 7, 2013). I tend to forget that we are at the peak of the Sunspot cycle this year until one of these eruptions breaks out. I have written a lot of material earlier about solar flares and their effects on our mind, so I won't repeat all of that here. For those who have not tuned in to what solar flares are all about, I have free e-books, articles, and videos on this topic here, so feel free to have a look around the site: http://dharmagrooves.com/#&panel1-1 Not all solar flares are as strong as the M5.9 yesterday. What I would like to mention here is a common misunderstanding as to how solar flares work within our mind when we don't have really strong ones or are not at the peak of the eleven-year sunspot cycle as we are now. And I feel this is important to understand.

Odd as it sounds, but understandable enough, some of you appear to be still having difficulty focusing on how to identify inner change when it is present. I have pointed out that it does little good to look outside in the world for it. I suggested that you look within, but I see that even though you are now looking within, you still are looking for something OUTSIDE yourself. I fear you miss the point, so let me be more graphic. You may be looking for change as if change were something unusual or strange to find, when it is just the opposite. Remember that the wisdom of the ages declares that change is the only constant. Therefore, it is something you are only too familiar with, not something different from yourself. In other words, even when you are looking within, don't look outside yourself for change in there, but rather look at how you (yourself) are changing. I know, it is hard to see because it is you that is changing. It is difficult both to change and witness your own change at the same time. This is not news.

Well we did not have another X-Class solar flare overnight, so I am going to try to wrap this up for now. However, don't be surprised if one pops up. The solar influx (sunshine) each day on the quiet sun changes the self, but gradually. We never notice it. Intense solar change, like we get with these recent strong solar flares injects change into our mindstream in quantum leaps that cannot easily be assimilated. We tend to notice this level of change, but we may not have identified it properly. Some of your comments tell me that you are still looking for change outside yourself, when I keep pointing out that with solar flares it is our own self that is changing. And who is there to monitor that, Me, Myself, and I?

I see that these recent solar flares and their earthbound solar plasma made headlines on CNN, although scientists are only concerned with the exoteric or outer ramifications of the influx. What about their effect on our psyche and inner life? That is too esoteric for science, and for that matter astrologers as well. Until recently, intense solar activity has been, astrologically speaking, totally esoteric. Astrologers have mostly ignored it.

Traditionally the word "Esoteric" just means that only a few folks get it. Esoteric astrology is no different. Not many astrologers get it or to put another way, no one even seems very interested.

I am on the road and have crossed the 45th parallel, headed to the top of the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in hope of seeing the potentially-strong aurorae Saturday night caused by this current CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) event. The huge tide of geo-magnetically-charged solar plasma will sweep past Earth in the next couple of hours. It is 5:30 AM right now and I am near the top of the mitten, as we say in Michigan, and will soon cross the Mackinac Bridge into the U.P. From there I will travel up to the town of Brimley near the Canadian border, about as far north as I can get on the eastern side of Michigan. My daughter Anne, Emma, and her family are minding the home front and taking care of the dogs. I spent most of Friday at the Blissfest Music Festival near Bliss, Michigan where my daughter May and her husband Seth Bernard were performing. The temperature soared somewhere in the 90s, so it was hot. The Bliss Festival is one of the finest music festivals in the Midwest, and harkens back to the 1960s in quality and spirit. I heard a little of the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band, and some Corey Harris, not to mention my daughter and/or her husband Seth several times.

HUGE SOLAR ERUPTION The Sun erupted last Sunday spewing forth a huge burst of plasma into space, which is heading right toward Earth. It is a coronal mass ejection of particles which will funnel in through the north and south magnetic fields of the polar regions on Wednesday August 4th, 2010. Some have written me asking what this means. Here are some thoughts. This is the beginning (and a strong one) of the coming solar maximum, the peak of an 11-year cycle, the point where the Sun is communicating most with us. And what does it communicate? Can this streaming information from the Sun touch your brain, reach your heart, and connect? That would be thinking only physically. The Sun is way more than just a physical body, just as you are. If you consider yourself more than physical, consider what the Sun is. Just imagine!

Some of you have questions as to how this infusion of solar plasma into our innermost self will manifest or be detected. That’s a good question, so let’s go over it. First of all this is very, very subtle stuff. By subtle I don’t mean we are not smart enough to get it, but rather that we may not have enough awareness right now to be… AWARE of what has happened. Why? Because we are somewhat overwhelmed by the solar information. Remember this information remakes our sense of self, not just the northern lights or some radio interference. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on it is to think back a day or so and get a fix on what your mind was like then and where you thought you were headed, as in: where WERE you headed two days ago?

Solar flares continue to roll in, although only the three X-Class flares so far. Two MClass

flares (2nd highest class) occurred Wednesday, June 11th. Some of you have

written asking for a better understanding of how massive solar influx affects our sense

of self, so here are some comments.

What we call our "self," while tenacious as hell in terms of its attachments, is still a

relatively fragile construct. The Buddhists point out that although what we call the "Self"

has no true existence and is but a useful fabrication, it is "permanent" in its function as a

control center or glorified personal secretary. If we did not have a self, we would have to

invent one, which is exactly what we have done. However, the self is a "persona

delicata," so to speak, and easily upset, as we all should well know.

If you resonate to this solar flare information I have been posting, if it makes sense to you and you feel like internalizing it a bit, there is one major step you can take, if you can realize it. Understanding it is not hard, experiencing it consciously is a little harder, and realizing it can be difficult. It is worth the effort, so I will describe it to you. To begin, I would like to share a few experiences and thoughts concerning the structure in space beyond our solar system and how it might be of value personally (or astrologically if you are an astrologer) for learning more about who we are and what on Earth we might be here for.

Of the many emotional states that are said to obscure our mind (what the Buddhists call ‘kleshas”), perhaps the most powerful is that of desire, and in particular sexual desire. One thing we all know is that sexual energy usually gets our attention, whether it is with our partner or being emanated by a stranger on the street. If it is definitely out there, often hard to ignore, and it can be difficult not have some response to it, sometimes even embarrassing when we fall into it and let it carry us away a bit. This same energy is what makes the world go round and insures that all the species continue to exist, so it is not a weak force.

I had heard of Seth Bernard but had not yet met him. As a father with three daughters and one son, I am always interested in who is dating my daughters. Isn’t this part of what it means to be a father? My daughter May, who was an up-and-coming singer and songwriter at the time, told me about a tiny festival or music event somewhere out in the woods where there were more mosquitoes than musicians. May had gone there to see a band she knew called “Bodega.” Anyway, at this event she heard a musician by the name of Seth Bernard. She was very enthused and I could not tell whether she liked his music, his person, or both. Obviously, in retrospect, it was both.

Since I seem to be giving up some of my secrets lately, I might as well share another, a few of the sensitive points in the body where energy collects. Not everyone knows of these very special points, but if you check them out, you will find that they are there. Not all body processes happen in clock time, time that we can see. Some happen in motion slower than we can mindfully monitor, but that does not mean that they are not there. Among the more interesting of these are the various sensitive contact points on our body. I have found that it is important to keep these sensitive bodily contact areas clean, just as we keep the contact points on the distributor caps in our autos clean.

Consciousness transference is not just an exotic spiritual concept that refers to some live-long event at the end of life. We can benefit from learning it now, and begin the process of transferring our conscious attachment from what makes up what we call our self to the mind itself, that which we will actually be taking with us when we die. We should all learn the difference. Putting all our eggs in the one basket of our personal self, thinking of our self as permanent thing is a recipe for despair, because the process of life (and certainly of death) will painstakingly remove our clinging fingers from each attachment to allow us to go free. And it will be heartbreakingly painful. We shall be released, like it or not, sooner or later.

I have heard for many years from Asians, astrologers from India in particular, who do not understand the western concern of the self. Why? Because they are somehow inoculated at an early age against what we call self-ishness. How can this possibly be so? Are not all humans just plain selfish? Well, the answer appears to be, yes, Asians are also selfish, but no, they are not selfish in the same way we are here in the west. Tibetans regard the "self" differently than we do. The Tibetan Buddhists learn at least two concepts early on in life that those of us here in the west apparently never know, and I will present them here so that we can all be on the same page. The Buddhists emphatically teach that the self is a pure composite, a personality that we pull around ourselves like a cloak made entirely of our likes and dislikes, our habits and experience. The self is our servant, not our master. After all, we created what it is composed of. How this master/servant order reverses itself in our mind would take a lot of looking at, so let's just agree for now that somehow it does. Like the old Marxist axiom, the master becomes dependent on the work of the servant and thus servants become masters in their own way.

The Buddhist teachings point out that we don’t have a truly-existing or permanent Self. What is that all about? They do not say that we don’t have a self; of course we all do. What they say is that the self that we do have has no true existence (as in: permanency), but rather is like a patchwork quilt made up of whatever we have drawn around us and are attached to. Here is an example. For most of us our self is the literal and figurative center of our existence – home base. Our self as center is inviolate and around that center most of us arrange our life. And while the center of our self is always with us, what that center is made up with is constantly changing. In other words, while the center is more or less permanent, what we consider central to us at any time in our life changes.

This week’s "Time Magazine" cover story for their February 3, 2014 issue is titled "The Mindful Revolution" and it is all about secular meditation and how mindfulness is finally taking hold in this country. Of course all of this is easy to foretell since mind training is such a valuable skill that I am certain some years from now proof of mind-training experience and expertise will be as important in your job resume as any college experience. You can do more with it, like: anything. As a former director of a largish company (650 employees), I have hired a lot of people and many college diplomas aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. They guarantee very little. For many jobs I would hire someone with real mind training expertise over college-paper any day.

of you have responded to the discussion. Now I would like to repeat something I blogged about recently that I feel didn't fully take, but is most helpful. Repetition in dharma concepts is not boring, but almost necessary for them to be absorbed. I want to go over those pith instructions of the great Mahasiddha Tilopa one more time, and I suggest you read it again as if for the first time. It is only a question of when they will sink in, not if. And when these very simple suggestions are incorporated (i.e. we actually do them), they are life-changing.

Back then, I also had a problem with the idea of the sacred. To my mind, the sacred was always outside myself, wrapped up in the “there” and the “then.” It was in my future and never now. It was there and never here. Of course, I wanted my life to be sacred, but I definitely identified more with the profane. It seemed I had no choice. The ‘sacred’ was something I wanted to get to, not somewhere I already was or even had been. I had not internalized it. As it turns out, the sacred is not a ‘thing’ at all, but more of a process, a way of living. I know, we label some “things” as sacred, but if you look into them, they are sacred because of their use, and the way they are used. Sacredness is an attitude, an approach to life.

Every college town probably has a local bookstore where everyone who is ‘anyone’ educated hangs out. In Ann Arbor in the late 1960s (pre-Borders), that was Centicore Books, originally on Maynard Street, but relocated to South University. Somewhere I read that the official title was “Paper Back Bookstore and Centicore Modern Poetry Shop.” It was the South University period I am writing about here. Sure there were other bookstores in Ann Arbor, but this particular one is where both the students and professors bought their books and hung out. Centicore was the place where you might run into Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, or John Cage when they were in town. Centicore was “the” place. And what made it that ‘place’ was a single individual, Russell Gregory. He didn’t own the store but he made the store what it was. He knew more about books and literature than any of us, professors included. And he was not simply a walking inventory of book names. He had read them all and could talk to you about them with real intelligence. Literally everyone who read knew Russell.

Taken at India and Nepal

THE STRIKE: RUNNING THE GAUNTLET [Here is a story from one of our trips to Tibet and India that is good for a chuckle or two. In 1997 I took my family to meet the Karmapa, a reincarnate lama who (like the Dalai Lama) is the head of an entire lineage. The young Karmapa was the poster child for the movie “The Golden Child.” This story has to do with trying to get out of India and back into Nepal.] Coming back from India into Nepal, we had a problem. The day we were to fly back to Kathmandu from Bhadrapur in Nepal there was scheduled another of the Nepalese nationwide strike days protesting the advent of VAT taxation. In fact this time they were striking for two consecutive days and the first day was declared to be what they called “very serious.” “Very serious” means they throw rocks at you. In order not to have our vehicle stoned we had to somehow get from India into Nepal early enough in the morning so that the strikers were not yet up and about. So far, OK.

Two large X-Class solar flares in a row (like we had yesterday) is unusual, not to mention that we have had a pretty quiet sun for some time. [and a third one this morning]. This indeed is an event. Scientists concern themselves, and rightly so, with the effect of solar flares on various radio transmissions and the possibility that such a flare could bring down the communications or electric grids and cause damage that could take weeks or months to overcome. This happened in 1989, when a smallish flare took out Hydro Quebec's electric grid, leaving Canadians without power for an extended period.

The concept of marketing nostalgia (like the 1960s generation's nostalgia) to young people has got to be an oxymoron. You have to have been there to be nostalgic. This is why I am always a little embarrassed when young people think they know what the 1960s was like and try to emulate it. I don't know what it was like some days and I was there. God bless them, but my sincere comment is "as if." Time is not linear, it moves (it would seem) on an exponential curve, up and out of the reach of the next generation.

The Tibetan Mahasidda (great adept) Götsangpa Gönpo Dorje wrote: “The mind is not found through searching. It is not seen by looking. If examined, it is found to be non-existent. If grasped at, it cannot be held. If dismissed, it does not go. If placed, it does not stay. If mixed, it does not blend. It cannot be split through division. It cannot be parted by separation. It is not known through looking. It is not realized through explanations. It cannot be illustrated by any example. It cannot be arrived at through any means.”

Here is an excerpt from a Spirit Grooves video called “Minding the View,” which can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y96GLkUHX70&list=UU3cL8v4fkupc9lRtugPkkWQ&index=1

It took me many years to understand the when the meditation instructions said to let the mind rest, they meant the same kind of “rest” you and I mean when we use the term R&R, like actually rest and take it easy. In fact, the tradition has a wonderful analogy as to how you are supposed to sit and relax.

I am going to take a break from this series on the history of how I got into dharma-study to talk about an important topic: responsibility within a relationship, our sense of responsibility in relationships and how what is usually considered a virtue can instead become just another vice. This is probably a little abstract, but I hope that some of you will see what I am pointing at here and recognize it as the prevalent problem that it is. And I am speaking here about relationships, especially close relationships like love and marriage. Let me know if this connects please.

I am taking off my story-telling hat and putting on my didactic hat, because I keep running across folks in my life that have managed to paint themselves into one corner or another because they react instead of respond. It makes me want to comment, and I am. I have been counseling for something like 45 years now, and I want to share with you what I find to be a key factor in that experience. Much of what takes place in a counseling session boils down to how a person responds to what is happening to them in their life. We can’t control what others say and do to us personally, much less what happens in the outside world of news events. That is what dictators try to do and they all eventually fail.

Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending an empowerment by the Venerable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. This took place in Columbus, Ohio at the KTC (Karma Thegsum Chöling) dharma center. A Tibetan Buddhist empowerment (for those of you who may be unfamiliar with this term) is a ceremony in which the empowering master administers a particular quality directly to those present – an initiation. The Tibetan word for empowerment is “wang,” which literally means “power,” so that kind of says it all.

I grew into Buddhism with the idea that it was a graduated path, probably a linear continuum starting from where I am practicing now straight on to my eventual enlightenment -- something like that. I have since found out, in fact, that the actual path to enlightenment is more like an exponential curve, and that it has a very clear speed bump not far from the beginning, more like a dead stop. I wish I had understood earlier that there is this stepping stone (a full stop) between the dharma practice we are doing today and the eventual road to our enlightenment. There is what in esoteric studies is called a ring-pass-not, an event which must take place within us before we can proceed further. In other words, between practicing dharma as we now do and the road to actual enlightenment, there is an intermediate stage or major step that, while not enlightenment itself, we must negotiate before we can pass through and onward. It comes up as we get into Insight meditation.

Readers here know that I am all about solar flares and CME Events (Coronal Mass Ejection) as they affect us psychologically and perhaps spiritually. I monitor for intense solar activity daily and compare what I sense happening to me internally with the various intense solar phenomena charted by astrophysicists on the government sites. I often report here what is happening. However, it is clear to me that I sense deep inner changes at times when there is no registered solar activity. I have had no way to explain this to myself, but now there is a fascinating clue.

What is the difference between the two very popular terms often used by Buddhists: experience and realization. It is worth being clear about. Experience is what we are all having every day of our lives, and this includes our metaphysical or sacred experiences. When we are talking about spiritual experiences, the bottom line is that they are not permanent. What goes up comes down, sooner or later. That is the hallmark of all experience: it does not last. We all know this. Heaven knows, when I have some kind of epiphany (or the least spiritual insight) I hope it will last. I act as if it will last and certainly blab to others as if it is now a permanent state that I am living. The sad truth is that these experiences do not last. What is up one day (i.e. me) is almost certain to be down the next day or soon after that.

Like going to school for a single class or to church only on Sunday for an hour, with that amount of practice we get what we pay for. An hour or so a week gets us an hour or so a week of training, nothing more. Think it through. If we practiced an hour a week on guitar, we would not exactly be the musician we envisioned.

I don't intend this to sound too harsh, but even an hour a day of practice leaves 23 hours to unravel what we have done and generally accumulate karma. Part-time solutions seldom satisfy full-time needs.

Something I often write about is responsibility, literally: the ability to respond. We all have it in us somewhere, but not always at the ready. It is one of the byproducts of successful dharma practice to bring out our ability to respond. And an ability to respond can be contrasted with how we react to life. In fact, there is a case to be made that the difference between enlightened or skillful action and unenlightened or unskillful action is the difference between involuntarily reacting to an event and appropriately responding to it.

My Big Fat Self: Me, Myself, and I This is me doing an “Andy Rooney” or “George Carlin” type of monologue, just for fun. My serious friends can just skip this please. I want to tell you about myself, but I don’t want to offend you. I know that this whole ‘self’ thing is a sensitive issue and not always a popular topic, but I notice that myself seems to never be far from my thoughts. On the one hand I have been told not to be selfish, and at the same time, in another breath, I am told to be sure to always be myself. So which is it?

I imagine many readers are tired of these little dharma discussions. Why can't I write somethinga little lighter? Well, I probably could if I wanted to, but to be perfectly honest, I am fascinated with the mind, how it works, and how we can become more aware. It is that simple. It is unfortunate that mind training and meditation are not more valued in this society. They are so precious.

For example, we all know that we can lose a limb and still be present, but we also know that if we lose our mind, we are no longer really there. Well, I feel the same way about using the mind. The mind is not good-to-go just as it is. Most of us are severely obscured and don't even know it. If we don't learn to clarify and properly use the mind, we are at a great disadvantage.

I am receiving various requests for historical documents, dates, posters, graphics, etc. on my old 1960’s band the “Prime Movers Blues Band,” The reason for the requests usually is because Iggy Pop was are drummer, and folks want to know more about Iggy, so here are some of what I could find easily. The posters I personally designed and silkscreen are marked as such, as well as the graphic designers of the other posters, where known. Flyers and what-not are just posted here. I may not know who designed them. The Prime Movers Blues Band formed in the summer of 1965, the same time as the Grateful Dead formed out in San Francisco.

Yesterday it was like Indian Summer here and today it is not. A little rain, some arctic air, and here we are right on the verge of frost. Winter will be a while yet, but the subpoena has been delivered. I got it. My first reaction today was to make a huge pot of vegetarian chili, with lots of celery in it. Being indoors all day is tough; closing the windows so air does not flow through the house is tougher. As they say, "The frost is on the pumpkin," well, almost anyway. We are bringing in the house plants. 

What follows is not an essay, but just some of my musings, so I hope they can be accepted for what they are. I have been thinking about this present moment.

Meditation requires practice and practice is kind of boring or can be whether it is practicing scales and fingering on a guitar or practicing meditation. Our practice is not the result or fruition of meditation practice but only the means of forming a habit that can bring us toward that fruition, call it realization, awareness, or whatever. The practice of meditation is like any other form of practice, preliminary by design. It is practice and not the real thing. That is why we call it meditation ‘practice’ as in “I am now going to do my practice.” That says it all.

Meditation and the practice of meditation, two different things. I have written here many times how meditation is first about building a habit and only later can it be said that we are “meditating,” much later for most of us. Like the scaffolding on a building, meditation “practice” is just that, practicing meditation, and not meditation itself. The practice or habit-building part of meditation has to eventually be let go of or removed, leaving room for the actual meditation itself. In order to learn to meditate, we must practice the process of meditating. We must learn it. It is a little like those molds that form Jell-O our moms had when we were kids. When the molds are taken away, the form remains. This is sometimes called muscle memory or just plain habit.

I have written here many times how meditation is first about building a habit and only later can it be said that we are “meditating,” like: much later for most of us. Like the scaffolding on a building, meditation “practice” is just that, practicing meditation, and not meditation itself. The practice or habit-building part of meditation has to eventually be let go of or removed, leaving room for the actual meditation itself. It is a little like those molds that form Jell-O our moms had when we were kids. When they are taken away, the form remains.

The following article is new and here is a link for a free download of a new book for those interested in learning meditation. It is the last book in this list: http://dharmagrooves.com/e-Books.aspx#Dharma In many Buddhist practices, in particular the yidam or deity practices, toward the end of the practice we rest for a moment in the nature of the mind or try to, but until we actually have recognized the true nature of the mind, we are just going through the motions. That's what practice is.

I want to hammer on this purity thing again. Purity is not a dirty word. For me, purification was as simple as wanting to be pure to the point of finally voluntarily shedding some of the trappings that I thought distinguished me from being just plainvanilla, only to find that plain vanilla, what is called "ordinary mind," is what I always thirsted for in the first place.

Many of you are interested in nature photographs and want to know a little more about my work. Perhaps most important to know is that I have been a naturalist since I was six years old, and very intense about it at that. Nature study is mostly what I did from an early age onward until my late teens, and I took my parents with me. My whole family learned probably more than they wanted to know about the natural world because my room and our house was soon filled with every kind of animal and collection you could imagine. I raised skunks, squirrels, boa constrictors, copperheads, rattlesnakes, rabbits, possums, raccoons, frogs, etc., and I had collections of insects, fossils, rocks, leaves, shells, and you-name-it.

What follows is a little abstract, for which I apologize, but I hope you will find it more than worth the effort to slowly read through it until at least understanding occurs. This is about Vipassana, what is called "Insight Meditation."

Thoughts and thinking are an integral part of meditation, but they are often looked down on by even good meditators, but this (or so the great meditators tell us) is a big mistake.

In other words, thoughts are too often thought of as distractions that need to be eliminated in meditation, when in reality thoughts are what pull us out of our distractions, and only thoughts. Without thoughts we would permanently remain in a closed loop – a hopeless catch-22. The Tibetan Buddhists teach that thoughts are not distractions, but rather they are opportunities for awareness itself to break through the cloister of our mental firewall and wake us up. In fact the great meditation master Phagmo Drupa, a disciple of Lord Gampopa, said this:

"Thoughts are awareness."

grew up in the folk-scene environment of the late 1950s and beyond. Even back then Pete Seeger was a landmark, a single person who perhaps best represented what the folk music scene was all about to me. So much of that world revolved around Seeger. Even when the younger players begin to emerge, Pete Seeger was always in there somewhere, just being himself. Seeger has passed on, but will never be gone. He is like a rock that has always been there. I was very much part of that folk scene, so perhaps a little history is in order.

This will probably be my last blog in this series on transferring one’s consciousness from focusing exclusively on one’s personality, to something more inclusive and (note this please) less impermanent. In the transference process, we don’t abandon our personality, but we do learn to manage it or, as I tell myself, I put my personality out to pasture, and perpetually (and gently) care for it as I would care for any other person, but I no longer let it exclusively “drive the car.” In the metaphor of astrology that I have been using, we discover our heliocentric chart, our Dharma Chart. In the process we loosen our death-grip (at least a bit) on our personality and ego. We simply transfer our consciousness.

I have had some fun of late poking at our concept of a self, pointing out that it is a collection of attachments and even those are ever changing. And although the Self is, as I put it, a case of “permanent impermanence,” this does not mean that our self is useless or not interesting. It is useful and can even be fascinating; this is perhaps best seen in the different types of persons around us, as in: our personalities. We each build our personality by the choices we make and the things we like and only time will tell if we have made the right choices or not. Most of us would like to have an attractive or interesting personality and the endless stream of popular magazines is testimony to the fact that imitating what is considered “cool” is the way many personalities are put together these days. We copy, big time. Monkey see, monkey do.

I want to write about my personal memories of that first Ann Arbor Blues Festival in early August of 1969. I already wrote the text for a whole (award-winning) book about the festival, but it was mostly the general history of the festival. You can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Black-White-Landmark-Festivals/dp/0472116959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386328730&sr=8-1&keywords=blues+in+black+and+white

I have yet to write my own personal story of that event, so I am working on this for a short video I am putting together. I thought I might post some thoughts here, if you don't mind. And I have to back up a bit and first talk about how it was for me way back then in the 1960s.

According to the Buddhist view, our personality and "Self" is nothing more than a composite image or montage of attachments, all our personal likes and dislikes. I mean, it's right there in the word "persona" if I would just read the dictionary, often defined as social facade or mask, but masking what? And what is behind the mask?

I sometimes think the mask of personality (self image) is like those old view cameras where the photographer holds up a little stuffed bird and calls out "watch the birdie" while he snaps away. Anyway, that's what we seem to do with the self, focus on the personality or self image surrounding a person (or ourselves), rather than what is inside or behind it. We see the cover and not the book. What is inside?

I am Western, not Asian. Years ago I studied Western philosophy and psychology, and not just once-over-lightly. For example, I liked the author Dostoevsky so much that I read all 52 of his novels, and I then took the Russian language in school; that kind of study. I read almost of all of the philosopher Hegel, and so on. But there was something in Western literature and philosophy that I found to be confusing and this led me into Eastern philosophy and psychology, from which I have never returned. I want to tell you something about what that was. It has to do with myself. Here in the West, the Ego or Self is a big deal, the big tar baby, something to wrestle with, try to overcome, and not get stuck in. Good luck! On the one hand we are told from early on not to be self-centered or selfish, not to think of our self so much and to think only of others. Then, on the other hand, we are told to love ourselves, to find and discover our self, and above all to always “be’ ourselves. Do you see the ambiguity in these two approaches?

It occurred to me early on, shortly after meeting my main Tibetan dharma teacher (for the last 31 years) Khenpo Rinpoche, that the natural practice for Americans (and westerners in general) was a mind-training technique called Tong-Len. Perhaps even more essential than basic sitting meditation, Tong-Len, if presented properly, is instantly understandable to Americans. In fact, Tong-Len was the first practice that Rinpoche pointed out to Margaret and me on one of the coldest days of the year, those Limbo days between Christmas and New Year. It was 1983.

Now here is a touchy issue, my own emotional upheavals. When I discover (I don't always even know) that I am emotionally upset by something, I have learned I must be much more careful than usual. Years ago I had a little mantra that I whispered to myself, "We will withstand shocks out-breaking." I have no idea who I meant by "we," but I guess it was all of us. Anyway, back then (much like now) emotional shocks of one sort of another were always out-breaking. Let's face it; some things in life (even little things) are hard to take, especially if we are sensitive.

Way back at the beginning of my attempts to meditate, I used to wonder how silly I must look sitting there trying to meditate, much less saying prayers of any kind. I seemed like such a hypocrite for, after all, I am not particularly religious. At that time I was probably in full reaction to my Catholic upbringing, which was, spiritually speaking, rather brutal. Anything that smacked of religion or laying down the law was immediately off the menu.

My experience in Catholic school, catechism class, mass on Sundays, and being an altar boy left its mark. About the only good thing that came from my brush with Catholicism was a sense of mystery about life, and a flair for the mystical. Everything else was something to suppress in my memory. And I was so innocent, as this story will tell.

Once in a while my "self" falls off the wagon, like after a push of change from a large solar flare. When I am out-of-phase with myself, there are suddenly two of us, the uncomfortable me that feels at a loss and the other "me" that I used to be, which I know is now only a memory of what I recently was when I felt "non-dual." My very conservative "self" would prefer to be that way again. But synching the two of us together is not always an easy task, at least for me. You can't go home again, as they say, or even step in the same river twice (or even once some Zen Buddhists say).

Although today it seems like some far off dream, only a few short years ago I was high in the mountains of Tibet at Tsurphu Monastery (the seat of the Karma Kagyu Lineage), where I met His Holiness Urgyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa. All of this is even more remarkable since my friends know that I hate airplanes and seldom travel far from my home in mid-Michigan. Although I have been interested in Buddhism for many years, I never seriously considered going to Tibet. Then suddenly, in less than a month, I am in Tibet, along with my wife, two daughters, and young son. How does such an event happen to a middle-aged businessman? It happens when your lama tells you to go to Tibet as soon as we could manage it. Here is our story:

First, these are two different charts calculated for the same exact birth moment and the same planets, but each from a different perspective or view. So, what you have here are not different entities (you are the entity), but rather different views of the same entity and the same moment in time. We are talking astrology here. The one chart, let's call it your "Karma Chart," is the standard traditional astrology chart used for centuries and probably millennia. And there is nothing new here that I have added. This karma chart has always been a chart of the personality (how we appear, with ascendant and houses, etc.), you know, the particular Earth-centered circumstances in which each of us find ourselves embedded in and looking out through the lens of our particular personality, which some poets have referred to as that "terrible crystal." The personality eventually grows old and dies. That kind of thing.

Just to mix it up, back in the early days of home computers we all learned the saga of the CPU (central processing unit), the fact that inside a computer chip a myriad of events are taking place, but the microprocessor is so blindingly fast that in CPU time it seems like a long interval between each single event, like waiting all day for something to happen as measured in our time. That was before multiple-core CPUs were available. Today we have multiple processors all working together at once. And CPU tasking is just an analogy here.

In my own life I find it helpful to use what I call "organic multitasking," a term I made up which gives attention-priority to whatever task is needed from a teleological standpoint, kind of jumping around based on priority. However, factories don't do this. Instead it is more convenient to complete one short linear section at a time, rather than jump all over the place.

Every once in a while I have to write a little essay. Who knows why? I can’t explain it. I just do it. Here is one: Astrology is cultural astronomy, a simple reflection of the facts of astronomy, what those facts mean to us here on Earth. What does this statement mean? Astronomy is a fact-based science as in: this New Moon or that Full Moon takes place on a certain date, at a certain time, and that is a fact. It can’t be argued. This is astronomy, pure science.

Or I should say, one-night bloom. This photos is of a Night-Blooming Cereus (Cereus greggii), a plain-enough looking plant from South America that blooms for one night only. It opens at dusk and is gone by dawn. It is what I personally consider the most amazing flower I have ever seen, amazing not only in its size (7-inch blossom), but it also has THE most incredible scent of any flower I have known. The fragrance of this flower is not only better than the finest perfume, but it reaches beyond my ability to smell and somehow penetrates into the brain itself. It is pungent like smelling salts, but delightful and informative in its penetration, producing for me as much an insight as a sensation.

When I speak of post-meditation, meditating off the cushion, this bothers some folks, so let me be clear. I am not suggesting you give up meditating on the cushion, but I am suggesting that you might consider augmenting your cushion sitting by meditating on any other focused work you do, if you can. The cushion is a good place to build the habit (the mental muscle memory) of sitting. Sure, the cushion is home base or most familiar, but once you learn to meditate, you will find that you can meditate elsewhere, including almost anywhere. I wrote about this in the previous 3-part blog on “Mixing the Mind,” so scroll down if you want to revisit that.

number of you have written to me about seriously starting to look at your mind, call it dharma practice, mind training, or just wanting a clear mind. And many of you are actually doing something about it, at least some sitting meditation or, if not that, contemplating doing some. But most of you are not that happy with your progress and would like to improve it. The next blog or so addresses this issue.

Meditation should be enjoyable, at least if you are in it for the long haul. You can’t just grit your teeth and wade through it. It is a liberator, not some bitter medicine. That is why if you are having trouble sitting on a cushion to meditate, it can be helpful to find some activity in your life that you already enjoy, something that takes focus and concentration, to use as an object of meditation, and try that. For me it was close-up photography, computer programming, video editing, and writing. For others it could be fly-tying, jewelry-making, pottery, or what-have-you. More difficult might be watching sports or movies. Only you can know by trying. For example, it would be very hard for me to watch a movie and meditate, without being distracted by the content of the movie and just following that. That is a no-brainer, because the whole point of watching the movie is the content.

The doing or not-doing of actions appear in all kinds Buddhist teachings (as well as the Tao), and especially in Zen Buddhism, where there are many slogans and instructions, either hidden or right out front about the "doing of things." "Do Not Do a Thing" is a common one. And in the Tao, we are told to do by not-doing.

The Tibetans tend to phrase this as we are to use "Skillful Means" in our actions. Skillful means are actions without negative consequences that generate awareness. It sounds more complicated than it is.

The first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is “The Truth of Suffering," and I am often asked: "Where is the suffering? I am not really suffering? Life is good!" It is as though they are suggesting that Buddhism is a downer and that Buddhists believe we are supposed to be suffering. Daniel Brown, Clinical Professor of Psychology at the Harvard Medical School, who is also a skilled translator of Tibetan (and a Buddhist practitioner with a knowledge of Sanskrit) states that "suffering" is not a good translation of what the original Sanskrit word "dukkha" means as used in the First Noble Truth.

In this blog I will cover very briefly what was quite a long time, the period in Ann Arbor when the 1950s turned into what we now call The Sixties. Keep in mind that the 1960s hippie-thing did not start until the summer of 1965, so we are talking some seven or eight years here.

Even though we are in a time of potentially intense solar flares, the Sun has been relatively quiet these last days. Large solar flares draw attention to our connection with the Sun, and it is tempting to fall into thinking that when the Sun is quiet we are somehow less connected, but this does not seem to be the case. Because intense solar activity so obviously affects Earth, it is easy to assume that the Sun is the cause and we just a victim of its activity. It is more subtle than that. This would be like saying that when our heart palpitates (and we are affected by it), the heart is the subject and we the object. While this is true in one sense, our body and our heart are so much closer to each other than that. In fact they are one being. It is the same with the Sun and the effect of solar activity on us. The quiet Sun is quiet like a heartbeat is quiet, meaning it is still there and controlling the show. We are more intimately connected with solar activity than most of us are aware of.

PART 1: “SATURN, THE TIMEKEEPER”

January 23, 2012

“Never trust anyone over thirty.” Remember that old phase? Intuitively we know what it means and astrologically it makes perfect sense. What I am about to present here is very abridged and thus quite abstract, so those of you who are already having trouble staying in touch with the earth, read no further because this is subtle and not for everyone. See if it makes sense to you. It is about “time.” Here goes: Saturn is the great chronometer in astrology, the timekeeper. This has been so for… ever, I guess, and it appears both in the astrology of the East and the West. Saturn not only measures time; it is time, astrologically speaking. Which means the other planets are not.

I came across these pictures while rummaging through some stuff at the library, in particular the first Neo-astrology Conference held at our center here in Big Rapids, Michigan, a three-day conference from July 21-23, 1989. First of all, it was fun! It also included many distinguished astrologers, such as Michel Gauquelin, Thomas Shanks, Robert Donath, Lee Lehman, Doug Pierce, Dr. Suitbert Ertel, Rob Hand, Charles Harvey, John Townley, Mark Urban-Lurain, Ken McRitchie, Alois Triendle, Robert Schmidt, Robert Thibodeau, and others. One highlight of that conference was a mass tubing down the Muskegon River, a whole busload of us. It was great.

I want to say something about how natural dharma is, at least in my experience. To do this, I have to share a bit of my own history, a personal story of finding the dharma. It might be useful to some of you who love nature as I do. I was born and raised in Lancaster Pennsylvania until the 6th grade, at which time my family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where I then grew up. Those early years in Pennsylvania were idyllic. In Lancaster we lived out in the country where my parents built a house. It was the first house built in that area, and it was wedged between two very large farms. There was no one else around for many years. I grew up surrounded by nature. At the end of our back yard was a vast field in which, when fresh plowed, I would find arrowheads. Otherwise that field had corn, tobacco, wheat, or alfalfa. And beyond that field was a small water-filled quarry where my younger brothers and I built a raft, and there were also islands of woods in that sea of farmland in which we roamed. Lancaster is known as the "Garden Spot of the World," and it is that.

EQUIPMENT FOR CLOSE-UP NATURE PHOTOS

October 23, 2011 I get requests and messages from readers about photographing and photography equipment, especially from those of you who want to do macro and close-up nature work. This may well be more info than many of you want, so just skip over it. Here goes: You can take close-up photos with almost any camera, probably with the one you already have. All you do have to get in close. Sounds easy, right? Not so easy. Chances are that what you will get when you first start out are snapshots, quick photos of whatever you are pointing at. The journey from snapshots to real macro and close-up photos is an ever descending spiral into more and better equipment and it will cost you not only money but even more time. Macro photography has to be learned, but if you love nature, it is a fun learning curve and very good exercise.

I have written perhaps overmuch recently about reactions and their karmic consequence. I am trying to finish up here, but a number of you keep asking questions. I do want to go over one particular topic I find important about being mindful of our reactions. I am sure most of you already understand it, but going over it one more time can't hurt either, and it is a key point.

Reaction-training or "Reaction Tong-Len" as I call it is very easy to get into, especially if we are just starting out in dharma practice. Anyone can try it. All we do is begin to notice when we react (and we react all the time), so there should be no long waits. That bus comes through every minute or so.

Yesterday I visited a friend's house up in the Traverse City (Michigan) area. They live perched on a high hill above a tract of almost impenetrable forest. There are bears, wolves, and lately cougar tracks around their house, so trust me, this is a wild place.

I have written once before about the natural spring that sits below their house on the edge of the forest. The pure springs that feed this pool have been there for…. well, relatively probably forever. Unlike most woodland ponds, which tend to be muddy, this spring is crystal clear and fresh all the time. In winter it never freezes and animals come to drink there.

This is a long and specialized post, so please feel free to ignore it. I try to write on topics of general interest in these blogs, but I also tend to at times wear different hats, some of them more technical than others. One of these is photography. Of course I post photos I have taken, because they can be fun to look at, but I save the reader from all of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of a more technical nature. No one is really interested, except perhaps the few of you who also enjoy photography techniques. This post is an update from me for you on my photography.

I have been studying and practicing astrology for about fifty years. Although I was a professional astrologer in the 1960s, I did not make my entire livelihood from astrology until the summer of 1972. That is when I hung out my shingle, so to speak. That was also the year that my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. That sure put a practical hitch in my gitalong. I had to pull something together and fast.

Since I was the first person to create astrology programs on microcomputers (1977) and share them with my fellow astrologers, in my early years before they appeared I calculated astrology charts using log tables, time-change books, and printed ephemerides. That means pencil and paper folks. Remember, we didn't even have 4- function calculators until 1972-1973.

[The Facts: We are once again experiencing a time of increased solar flares and CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) events. There was an M5.6 solar flare on July 2, 2012 at 7:52 AM EDT(and a CME) and this has been followed by another solar flare reaching M3.8 in magnitude since then. More and larger flares are predicted over the next few days. Since astrology is nothing other than cultural astronomy, let me remind you what these intense solar outbursts might mean. Hold on to your hats! ] As mentioned, we are experiencing massive solar flare eruptions on the surface of our Sun. And I did it again. I managed to forget about that lucky-old Sun and its intermittent messages to me in this peak time of the solar cycle. I was too busy arranging the deck chairs on my life and trying to get all my ducks in a row to remember that when the Sun speaks, I listen. We all do. And it is an inside listening and message, one that we can’t help but hear because it interrupts what we ignorantly think of as our life.

Since I see no reason to stretch this out for many days, when Seeger's passing is so fresh in our minds, I am just going to blog on this and let those we feel like reading it, read it. And of course there were the folk festivals, of which the one in Newport, Rhode Island is perhaps the most famous, if not the first. The Newport Folk Festival was established in 1959 by George Wein, the same man who in 1954 established the Newport Jazz Festival. The first Newport Folk Festival was held on July 11-12, 1959 and featured, among other acts, the Kingston Trio, a group that had exploded to national prominence only the year before. Flanking the Kingston Trio were classic folk singers like Odetta, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and of course, the ubiquitous Pete Seeger.

Since there is some interest in these Phase Charts, enclosed are a few graphics that will make learning and using Phase Charts easier. One of the attractions of Phase Charts is that it remedies one long-standing failing of modern astrology, that of interpreting mirror-aspects as the same. For example, take the 90-degree Square aspect. We all use it, but in the years when I came up in astrology, everyone interpreted a waxing square the same as they did a waning square. In other words, a square is a square is a square, and so on. This would be equivalent to saying that a First-Quarter Moon is the same as a Fourth-Quarter Moon. I doubt that any astrologer would make that mistake, but then we turn around and interpret planetary aspects  that are mirrors (Squares, Sextiles, etc.) the same. Go figure.

Many families today have two incomes. Both mom and dad work. In my family I have been able to be the provider and my wife Margaret has not had to take an outside job, although she takes care of the bills and has done many business-related tasks over the years, as well as being the majordomo for the household. And yes, walking point financially for the family can be worrisome and a major pain. You know the old refrain, the man is the hunter and the woman the gatherer. Of course, in these days that dichotomy has morphed into I don’t know what, but that is not my object here.

I have pointed out that one shortcut to practicing meditation is to piggyback on areas of your life where you already have achieved focus and concentration. I found it in computer programming, and video editing, but it could be anything: playing chess, tying flies, doing crossword puzzles, and so on, wherever you find yourself spending real time concentrating and focusing the mind. You already have some discipline. Some of you have messaged me asking how to convert this discipline into meditation practice. The best part is that you don’t have to add anything more to your schedule, but just approach where you are already concentrating a little differently. Aside from photography, I did this mostly with computer programming, so I will use that as my example.

Now, some notes. This is follow-up to a couple of recent blogs that invoked the analogy

of the self as a mirror.

In this analogy the self is a mirror that reflects our own image, an image that we

ourselves have formed and preened to our liking. When we look (or think of) our self, we

get caught up with our own reflection, making looking through the back of the mirror

(and beyond) difficult.

I get asked all the time what books I am reading. I invariably answer “I don’t read books, per se, anymore; I read some Buddhist texts, but that is about all.” That is a bit of a smug answer. I am perhaps deflecting the question rather than trying to explain what it is that I am doing about my reading habits. This is a topic I probably should take a pass on and not tackle. However, it fascinates me and has become an important part of my life, so here goes. Years ago my first teacher, a Rosicrucian initiator named Andrew Gunn McIver (who, born in Scotland, was in his eighties at the time I met him) often used to say to me when he saw me reading this or that book: “Michael, some day you must become the book.” Hmmm, thought I, now what does that mean?

If you are reading this you want more detail on how to actually do Shamata Meditation. The sales pitch is over. These are the details for those of you who cannot find an authentic local center. When to Meditate It is considered important to meditate daily or at least with uniform regularity and this is why: Regular meditation is like taking our daily temperature; each meditation session, no matter how brief, samples the state of our mind. You sample it. You see how it is. If there is no regularity, then we have no way to measure how calm or wild our mind is. If we sit a lot one day and none the next two days it is very difficult to gauge (remember) just how we are doing. And consistently watching your mind is very much a part of meditation. It is the whole point here: sampling and starting to know the mind.

Some of you have asked me what comes after we learn the basic meditation of allowing the mind to simply rest. The next step is what is called insight meditation or Vipassana. I don’t teach that, but I can give you a taste of what it might involve, should you be interested. I will just mention it here briefly. What I am about to share with you may sound very intellectual, as in something you do with your mind, like ‘think’, but it is not. Please don’t think about what I am going to say. Don’t intellectualize it or assume you ‘get it’ because you ‘think’ you understand what I am saying. Chances are you don’t, because I am explicitly asking you to not understand me, but to just try and do what I ask, to act.

SUMMARY: At first we sit on the cushion to learn some muscle memory by practicing Shamata meditation (with its focus on an object) and mindfulness training (to keep from straying from the object). This takes a while because at the same time we have to become familiar with how the mind works, plus the fact that we can’t just will or force the mind to rest. We each have to discover how to let the mind rest naturally. That’s the hard part.

The problem with great moments (or insights) is that I tend to naturally want to repeat them, to have them happen again, just as they were, or even better. That wish on my part is like a death sentence, a sure sign they will never come again, at least not like that. And it gets worse. Not only will those pure moments not reoccur, but my labeling them as "best" or desirable immediately puts a filter between me and that possibility, and every time after that, when I compare any decent moment to that "best" moment (and, of course, I do), the filter becomes more and more of an obscuration, until, top-heavy, it tumbles from my inner sky. What was a pole star in my life has become an anchor pulling me down.

I have blogged recently about the idea of sacred space and sacred places, and somewhere in there I promised to share my thoughts on what the fact means to me that Michigan's lower peninsula is surrounded by 21% of all the fresh water in the world, and sits on the largest deposit of salt on this planet (30,000 trillion tons). What follows is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of Michigan rock salt. And Michigan being musical does not mean other places are not, and so on.

I have been an astrologer for something like 50 years, so I have learned that water is connected to the planet Neptune, and that Neptune also rules music, so I end up connecting Michigan + Water (Neptune) + Salt (Yang) = Powerful Music in Michigan. If I then add the traditional concept from India that whatever land is enclosed within a peninsula is sacred, I end up with Michigan possibly being a special or spiritual place for music to appear in the world. Of course, I already believe this is so because I have seen it with my own eyes, and I am not the only observer.

Back in the 1960s the musicians I really loved and looked up to were players like Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Little Walter, Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, and the list goes on, mostly the great blues players. And I had the chance to meet these artists, interview and hang out with them, plus hear them playing live in clubs and other venues. I was a total fan of these folks. I am sometimes asked why I didn't spend more time listening to my own peers, groups like the Grateful Dead, Janice Joplin, The Band, and so on. My answer is simple. Their music didn't interest me.