Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1
By Mid-November 2021 I had begun to feel like my rupa contemplations, spurred on by pandemic living, were gelling into a more comprehensive understanding. I reached-out to Mae Neecha to give her an update which I will share here. Given the length, I will divide my note to her, as well as her reply, into a few blogs for ease of reading.
Hey Mae Neecha– I sure do hope this email finds you and Mae Yo well. I really just wanted to keep you both in the loop and, of course, welcome any thoughts or suggestions you may have.
I also want to do the apologies upfront. First off, I am sorry if this is super long. Also, I am sorry that this is not super buttoned-up, this is kind of the first gelling of months of contemplations and it is hardly ‘wrapped and bow ready’. Still, I thought I would send it along.
Its a bit arbitrary, but I will start with an article in the NY Times I read the other day that really hit me hard: https://www.nytimes.com/
Per the article, there is apparently no formula that exists that will predict the behavior of sand even in a closed system, like an hourglass, where you know the shape and size of the particles encased; the variables of how exactly they will interact are too numerous. There is no way to know how long it will take sand to flow, or even if it will flow at all. All you can do is flip the glass and see.
Mind blown! One of my 2 main rupa wrong views I see come-up again and again in my practice is that rupa can predict /prepare me for/help me achieve the future outcome I desire. With enough insight, I can interpret rupa, learn its secrets and use it freely to stay on top of the world, to keep me in environments that are safe and comfy.
But how on earth do I hope to use rupa to shape a future when it is ultimately unpredictable? The truth is, continual shifting is the nature of rupa itself. This time is not ever ever ever going to be ‘just like last time’. Each rupa arrangement is a 4 e aggregation that arose based on its interaction with 4es in itself and in the environment and continually shifts –reaggregating, being consumed and disaggregating — all in response to 4es. Alana can’t ‘game the system’ with knowledge. Believing I can is a fundamental misunderstanding of what rupa actually is.
The other night, I decided to laydown, close my eyes and consider the sand issue more carefully. I got myself into another ‘state’, after I came out of it I wrote down what I could remember, but I wasn’t totally functioning with normal awake consciousness, so again, not so buttoned-up.
The truth is, I thought all this came out of nowhere, but when I went to review my notes over the last 2 months to figure out what I should write here I realized the state was really built on a bunch of recent contemplations. I also realize now that it addresses the 2nd major wrong view I have about rupa: that it reflects me/manifests me/embodies who I am/something about my identity.
Anyway, here is what I wrote post state. I should also note, I have been training to see how everything I do is really just an effort to solve problems that arise based on other past problems (i.e chain of causality). So not so surprisingly, my contemplation is structured as a progression of the problem chain of how I try and use rupa to do stuff it really can’t do.
1) The starting point, the first problem that I can sense deep in my heart, is that I am hungry. I want to become, I want to feel fulfilled, to feel safe, to have a future, to manifest a vision of myself and of a world that adheres to my standards. I want to prove me, to validate my sense of self. Because I so desperately want to be, I have a desire-borne hole in my heart.
2) Crazyass self feels an intangible hole and envisions filling it with a physical shit. How on earth I can ever fill an imaginary hole with rupa should already be a tip-off that this is utterly delusional, but on I press. In this example, let us say I have a house shaped hole (which btw really means I have a body shaped hole, but I am still refining and digging on body, so lets use house as an easier proxy): Because I want safety and a stable future and an expression of this self, I mold my hole — my gaping sense of emptiness and unfulfillment — into the shape of a house. I assign the meaning. House = valuable, safe, a guaranteed future, an identity for me, a canvas upon which I can manifest my vision of me through architecture and design.
3) But the imaginary house shaped hole is fixed. It doesn’t even take into account the changing samutti that is ‘house’. The hole’s only shape is fixed-up house, not roof-leaking or crumbling house. Of course I am going to be unfulfilled with these objects! In addition to trying to fulfill intangible desires with tangables. I will only be satisfied with one state of the tangible, not the continually shifting state that occurs with all rupa. I will spend my life, my energy, trying to achieve a thing of that perfect, shiny and new shape and then I will fight like hell to preserve that shape. I will be constantly burdened by the need to exert effort, effort that often fails, to achieve that particular shape, to damage control or reset expectations when it loses that shape. I will be devastated when that shape passes beyond the threshold I maintain as ‘house’ in my heart. This is clearly a major problem of relying on changeable things to fulfill desires that change at totally different rates, and based on totally different causes than 4eobjects. I foolishly believe these forms, that don’t regard me, are mindless of my holes, that I have to adjust to and can only sometimes temporarily ‘force’ to adjust to me (on rupa’s terms no less) are mine. Not so swift Alana…
4) What is more, is this house form really is just an ever shifting arrangement of rupa. It is like shifting sand, always moving. It is the stuff of all objects. I am trying to fill a hole in my heart, in a shape I have cut out all by myself, with sand. But I ignore that it is just elements. I ignore because to really believe that objects that are nothing more then 4es are going to manifest me, be the medium through which I satisfy my formless desires, it strains credulity. So I squint HARD at the world, trying to focus on difference, details, flourishes of shape — a bay window, a vaulted ceiling, a one of a kind carpet — instead of the uniformity that is their basic nature. Afterall, how could I ever get to becoming my special self with same same sand? I self dazzle and delude with my agenda to sell myself this lie.
I am the one who assigns the value to these objects, treasures them in the degree to which they satisfy the imaginary form that my nama has carved-out a shape of in my heart. In the real world, they have only utility that is defined by their shifting form in the shifting circumstances in which they are usable.
When I left my first house in Houston, I cried and cried. I thought I would never own a house again, I thought that I was leaving an object that proved I had ‘made it’, been successful, adulted, achieved, where would I be without this instrument of my future? This manifester of me? This object that was so obviously mine. But, if it were really mine, how come it so easily moved along to a new owner, still standing there, doing fine completely divorced from me? And more importantly, if that house proved me, portended my future, how come I am still here now cruising along without it? I have simple moved on to new objects to fill my heart holes, house shaped and otherwise.
The other day (before the above contemplation), as I was primping in front of the mirror, trying for the umpteenth time to consider the burden I assume for a body just because I think it represents me. I was getting nowhere. Suddenly, I shifted my take just a bit — I was doing the primping because beauty is who/what I am. That was the ticket! I was able to begin to consider whether or not this body and I are actually ‘intertwined’. Now, of course I see the chain of craziness, I imagine a me, assign it abstract characteristics, assign those characteristics a corresponding physical characteristic (enter Alana and her shit are definitionally beautiful), take possession of an object that comes close enough to my imaginary form (for 1 hot sec anyway), and then spend the majority of my time miserable when that object doesn’t conform to my imagination of what that object is /should do because, duh –why the hell should it? I mean, sure I can use a physical object to poke at, and cause a shift in, another physical object. But to pretend that being able to cause (sometimes) perceivable change means those objects obey me or prove my mastery is insane. The sands are always shifting, in response to all manner of ‘pokes’ from 4es (including this body) in their environment. On occasion their shifts correspond to what I desire. But to assume that that means they conform to my desire…lets just say even a broken clock is right twice a day ;).
