Song Of The Day: No Control / Eddie Money
Word Of The Day: Vagitus / New-born child's cry

Life is weird. One day you wake up and all you wanna hear is Eddie Money. Your rational mind is like "I don't even like Eddie Money" and your ears are like "I don't fucking care. BUY IT. NOW." Pretty soon you're drinking coffee and blasting No Control throughout the studio. It's hot. Even I can't predict what I'm gonna like, and even when I know it it's wrong.

Hey girlz, what's up nad skwit?

I've made a decision. I'm going to begin a series, which may last a few days or a few weeks, whereby I will do my morning big mind dialogue in my blog. This, lucky reader, will not only make you privy to the myriad forms of bullshit generated in my cranium, but it will also give you a sense of what my dozens of aspects, perspectives, or "voices" are like, and most importantly it will give you a crude sense of what Big Mind practice looks / sounds like on a daily basis.

First, I am not a Big Mind teacher. I'm not being sarcastic here, it's important to note I'm just a student of Genpo Roshi, and Big Mind is his invention. My reason for putting some of my big mind work in blog form is not to facilitate YOU the reader, but rather to provide a sense of just what it is and why a Zen teacher would be
using it as a practice / teaching tool. Big Mind is meant to augment and compliment traditional Zen meditation practice, and Koan practice, etc. It is not a substitute for meditation practice. It is an accelerator or magnifier, or whatever analogy you want to use, but not a replacement for the practice of cultivating bare awareness.

I first encountered Genpo Roshi a few years ago at Ken Wilber's house. I'd been sitting Zen since about 1995, and Ken asked Roshi (in Zen, we refer to a teacher as Roshi or Sensei. Roshi is a more senior teacher. So, if you're not a student of the teacher you might be more likely to call him Genpo, or Genpo Roshi, if you are a student you're more likely to just use Roshi) to come and do Big Mind with a gathering of artists that included Saul Williams, Ottmar Leibert, Alex Gibson, myself, and many others (my wife was there as well). Ottmar Leibert has since gone on to become a student of Roshi, as have I, and Big Mind has also been an important presence in many other's lives (Ed Kowalczyck, lead singer of Live) in the art world. It's also been a powerful contemporary force in Zen in America. Those of us outside of the Japanese tradition of Soto or Rinzai Zen may have a hard time appreciating how controversial a decision it's been for Roshi to develop and implement this process into Zen practice here in the United States.

Why?

Simply put, from my view, Zen's approach to the Ego, or the many voices that constitute the relative (small) self has been to kill it, crush it, see through it, dissolve it, release it- that sort of thing, but not to engage it. Roshi has essentially flipped things 180 degrees, and instead of spending decades trying to burn down the house of "me", he's made a surprising discovery: If you go to the front door and knock, the ego will answer. If you ASK to be let in, it will let you in. If you ASK it for access to the all the various rooms in the mansion, and INCLUDE it, it will cooperate. 2500 years of trying to kill the ego hasn't worked yet. The ego is stronger than ever, and I would venture a guest that as its bio-materal apparatus has evolved and increasingly interfaced with ever more subtle forms of entertainment, communication, and various stimulus, it is the most inventive, slippery phantasms in the Kosmos. And that's cool.

To paraphrase Jesus in Gospel Of Thomas (#70) that which you withhold will kill you, that which you bring forth will save you. And so it is with the various aspects of ourselves, the dozens or hundreds of perspectives that make up a "me". If we include them, engage them, work with them, we can have great success and facility in healing and cohering the constellation. If we repress them, or dissociate from them, they get real pissed and they still have to do their job, but a denied voice is a desperate voice. It will resort to whatever means necessary to do what it was created to do, it has one purpose only: To fully, completely be THAT voice, THAT perspective. That's all it can do, that's all it was ever meant to do. Use it, it will serve you. Deny it, it will fuck you up.

Of course, the great beauty of this practice is the same as any in an Integral Transformative approach: It actually helps. If you do big mind as an complimentary module to your daily sitting meditation, AND you're doing a physical practice (swimming, yoga, golf, karate, whatever), AND some social praxis (family, Amnesty International, etc), plus you're stimulating cognitive lines, creative lines, watching diet, and so on- the potency in that assembly, that whole, is greater than the sum of its parts. Why would we do this?

Because our true role, our true role, like or fucking NOT (and there's plenty of NOT), is to awaken for the sake of all beings. Are we already awake? Yes. Are all beings always, already awake? Yes. So, it is done. And yet, we have to wake up. And once we wake up, we have to wake up again, cuz oops, that first little awakening was just a state, and we need to stabilize the Essentital Self's center in the point of all places, the stateless State. And once that's done, the Game actually begins, and we can actually get some Play done.

The Play is both the mysterious, bizarre joy of engaging what IS and striving for the awakening of all beings (oh, it's dire, but it's not serious) and also the drama of these phantoms fucking, fighting, fallling in love, failing, falling asleep, freaking out, finding God, faking God, fleeing God. Play. Divine Dramedy. A Game, with rules, with an infinitely morphing set of conditions, circumstances, and rules, and yet there are also relatively fixed features which are stable enough for Bodhisattva's like Ken Wilber to say "hey, notice this? there's Quadrants, Levels, Lines, States, and Types, there's eight native perspectives" and other Bodhisattva's like Genpo Roshi to say "hey, has anyone tried talking to the Ego, tried actually including it, engaging it?" and BOOM.

Is this the Fourth Turning of the Wheel? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's the FIRST turning of the Sphere.

At any rate, the basic way I orient my practice and life is through an AQAL approach to Zen. Part of that is Big Mind Process. And so, what you're going to experience in this blog for the next few days or weeks is me blogging in Big Mind Process. I will be acting as my own facilitator, as I do each day in life. Essentially you will just be reading the inner dialogue between my facilitator and my various voices. Let's rock.

Facilitator: Can I speak to the voice of the controller?

Controller: Yes.

Facilitator: Who am I speaking to?

C: The controller.

F: OK, contoller, can I ask you some questions?

C: Sure.

F: Who are you? Tell me about yourself, what is it that you do, what is your function?

C: I control.

F: Control what?

C: I control Stuart. I control impulses, the t.v. remote, the cleanliness of the house. I am the one who keeps shit in check. I control the car when we're driving, I keep the various parts of Stuart in their place, and also organize and manage the way we show up in the World, how our emotional, psyhcological resources get spent. I decide what we wear in the morning when Stuart wakes up, I water the plants, clean the floor.

F: What else?

C: I'm the one who keeps us from killing people.

F: What? Can you say more about that?

C: Stuart has a lot of passion, a lot of intense energy, and it works in all directions. If it weren't for me he would beat the shit out of someone, or kill someone, or really get out of line. I keep that from happening. I also keep him from fucking every hot girl he sees, or stealing shit he wants, or violating the basic codes of social convention. Well, sometimes I do. He's tough to control in that regard.

F: What else do you control besides Stuart? What else would you like to control?

C: Everything. Everyone. I would like to control Stuart's daughter. I would love to control Stuart's wife. I am so fucking sick of all the dust in Colorado. I really hate the dust and dirt, and I wish I could control all the messy dirt and grime that gets all over shit. I vacuum, I dust, I mop, I do the dishes, and then it's fucking dirty again in a day or two. Controlling dust is a bitch. But that's all small potatos. I would like control Stuart's friends, their romantic lives, I would like to control the government, people's perception of Stuart, people's interpretation of Stuart. I would love to control people's experience and interpretation of experience. The evolution of life on Earth, the morphological tendencies of the Kosmos, life on other planets, all the money, all the cultures, all the material in the Universe, time, space, the beginning, middle, and end of each occassion.

F: That sounds very tiring. You basically want to control everything and everyone that exists or will exist. Do you get tired?

C: I control my fatigue.

F: What's it like being Stuart's controller?

C: It's pretty good. I have a lot of power, actually. I see a lot of other controllers and what they deal with, and I think I have it pretty good. Stuart is a control freak, in a good way, he lets me have a lot of influence. Other controller's get stuffed way down, they get side lined, etc.

F: How do you respond when you see that, when you see other controller's... out of control?

C: I want to control them, and their stupid, fucking insipid body-mind hosts. Unbelievable. People out of control make me furious and naseaus.

F: What's your biggest fear?

C: Loss of control?

F: Do you know that song "No Control" by Eddie Money?

C: Hate it.

F: Is there anything you'd like to say to Stuart, or that you would like to communicate right now? What does the controller want to say?

C: If it weren't for me, shit would fall apart. Stuart is always so lit up about doing this Bodhisattva blah blah blah, this big Kosmic mission, but the truth is that if it weren't for me, he wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. If it weren't for me, he'd cheat on his wife three times a day, he'd go get drunk each night, he wouldn't pay his bills, he wouldn't pay his taxes, he would live beyond his means all the time, he would alienate himself from all people and organizations, he wouldn't floss, he would be convicted of assault, battery, and murder, and he wouldn't sit on a cushion and meditate, wouldnt' do or be shit. So fucking wise up, Stuart and everybody else. Without ME, it's utter fucking chaos. That is absolutely, literally the case: No Human Society Would Exist without the controller. I AM human society, I got us to the moon, and if you want to do anything, you'd better enlist me and rely on me, or shit will fall apart.

F: I agree. You're incredibly important. Not only that, you are the gate-keeper, right? If I want to speak to any other voices, I'm going to have to go through you. And that's what I want to talk to you about next. I would like to speak to some other voices, and I am asking your permission to have access to them. You are the controller, and you are going to be the one who grants or denies access to each voice. Would it be alright if I asked to speak to some other voices?

C: Yes.

F: What I would also like to ask is that, during this process, that you simply do your job. That means, of course, that you are in control. If you feel things getting to a place which is fundamentally not right, I want you step in and take control. But if things seem to be going OK, I would like you to allow me to have access to these voices. Does that sound OK?

C: Yes.

F: How do you feel about all this so far?

C: I'm alright with it.

F: Why?

C: Because you asked me. You are recognizing what I actually am, and instead of trying to get in through a window or a back door, like everyone else, you're just asking me. If you did try to break in or kill me, like everyone else has, I would have to keep you out. I would have to lock you out.

F: What do you mean by 'like everyone else has'?

C: As long as we've been around, all these spiritual types come and want to destroy me and what I control. It's really fucked up, but it's made me quite strong and ingenious when it comes to preserving and controlling.

F: But it doesn't have to be that way. I want to work WITH you.

C: OK. But if you fuck with me, I will kick your ass out, and you will never get back in.

F: Understood. So, would it be alright now, if I asked to speak to another voice?

C: Yes.

F: I would like to speak to the voice of....