Tracking down the soul Part.1

People get angry with "me" when I tell them that there is no doer, there is only life being done. But who is the "me" who perceives this anger? Certainly anger is perceived by "me", and that "me" is also a bundle of sensations in those moments. "I" usually feel the tension of the other, along with my body's own fight or flight response which creates sensations that flow through "me" in those moments. "My" body tightens, "my" heart pounds... surely these are all signs that "I" am an "I" that is a entity. "I" must exist, right...? If not as the body then as the soul in the body.

The problem with this line of reasoning is the root of perception (you could say "the seat of the soul") has never been found. We all agree that a corpse is no longer a person. The corpse was a person. Did the body that became a corpse house a soul? If so, then the soul is within the body, but where?

Think about this: where do you feel yourself to be when you move about the day. Not as the body, but as the sense of "I". Do you think through your toes? Do you identify with your fingernails? Probably not, unless you are some asshole guru running around telling people you perceive the life in every cell of your body. For most people the arms and the legs are tools that they use, and unless they are a source of pain they are easily forgotten. I think we can rule them out as the "seat of the soul" If you are like most people, you probably begin to perceive a solid sense of self in the genitals and anus. Most of us, even the most animalistic of us, would not identify ourselves with these regions. We know the jokes about what head men really think with. But all jokes aside its pretty obvious as a location for the "I" we can rule out the ass/cock/twat

 Disqualifying the arms, legs, genitals, and anus, where could the soul be? In aikido the hara (the spot behind the navel) is seen as the source of personal and spiritual power. Developing balance and power from the "core" becomes a lifelong pursuit. This power is not merely expressed through the  motion of the physical body, but also as living energy that radiates from the core, affecting the world around the person. Here we find the beginnings of our definiton of the "I" sense. And not just "I" in the sense of being alive, but "I" with meaning. The power to influence the world comes from this place. The term "gut instinct" finds an obvious basis here, in our native understanding that the hara is real in some sense. If we strip away the mystical extremes of eastern thought we still know the hara as part of the of "I" that we feel. If you told me you felt more life in your toes or genitals than in your stomach, I might start to back away from you. That sounds scary to me. The arms and legs provide fight or flight, the genitals and anus make the cycles of reproduction and cellular regeneration possible (no anus, no shit, no shit, no space for new cells) but the stomach region is the beginning of the sensation of "I" in humans. I don't know about animals... Im not a koala bear.

Power, sex and cellular cycles... do these things comprise the soul? Clearly not. I would argue we need to travel higher through the torso to come closer to the seat of the soul. I think it's funny that we are traveling along the same dierction as the Kundulini energy. Maybe the Hindus were aware of something... but how could we believe any group of people who don't know how delicious cow is?

Its impossible to deny the region of the heart gives us much of our moment by moment sense of identity. This is because of the incredible amount of sensation we receive from it each day. The energy can be overwhelming, swinging between polar ends.Whats amazing about this is, this area only exists in two emotional states: bliss or suffering. Everything else is a play on words. But am "I" my heart? Is the "I" housed in the chest? Personally I find my sense of "I" is weakest at the hara, grows stronger around the chest, and becomes most pronounced around the head.

Now we come to the top of the body, having followed the soul across the desert, over the mountains, and through the forest of the heart.Along the way our faithful trail of crumbs has been the feeling of "I" which grows stronger the farther we walk. What is left but the head? Once again we are reminder of those cow lovers the Hindus, and the map they created. On their map the X is a dot marked right between the eyes. But as we have already considered the sense of "I" is not localized to the head, it extends through the heart into the hara.

At first glance it seems the "I" must be a field that starts at the head (or above, we can't forgot the seventh chakra) and extends downward. But where is it? Or to make the question more personal to the reader? from exactly where in your head (or above) do you exist as the perceptual gateway between inside and outside? Does not the "I" sense extend downward into the flesh? There must be a location, if you believe the "I" exist.

Looney Tunes and Enlightenment

Hello folks... it's the Mighty Om signing in... Everyday that I wake up i look at the sky and yell at God... is it just me or is this life absolutely insane. I don't have a problem with my struggle. About ten years ago I decided to go for it. But I think about all the lost souls in the world and I wonder what God is thinking. I even know that I'm part of his plan to heal the world, or at least that's what I think... but I wonder what he's thinking. Is this right? Is the suffering people go through really worth it? People tell me I'm looking the wrong way, that the Devil is the cause of pain on Earth. Even if I believed in the Devil (which I'm on the fence about) I still have to wonder why? It's like this... there was a Looney Tune that was my favorite. Daffy Duck is in the cartoon world, but it keeps shifting on him. He jumps out of an airplane... and the parachute gets erased and turns into an anvil. He can't win for trying. Here's where it gets interesting. He wakes up to the lunacy of the situation, grabs the invisible fabric of the cartoon world around him (imagine in our world grabbing the sky) and begins to rip it to shreds, all the while screaming "who is drawing this cartoon?" In that moment Daffy Duck is on the brink of what the Buddha would call enlightenment. His suffering leads him to ask serious questions about the nature of reality. The camera pulls back and Bugs Bunny is at the artdesk drawing the cartoon. "Ain't I a stinker?" That is what life is like for a lot of people. God, The Higher Power, whatever you want to call it is involved with the drawing of the cartoon. Even if the Devil does exist and have power, he too is a character within the perception of God. The devil can only act... if time moves forward. And the only person I know who can control the motion of time, who in fact is beyond time, is God. The universe is a circle... within a circle... within a circle. But no matter how far back you go, there is no way to see the last circle. Being in time as we are, we will die before we get to the end. We are always a part of this cartoon. Just like in the Looney tune world, where the rainbow colored circle pops out at the beginning... and swallows the world at the end. Inside is where the action takes place. All worlds of beings from heaven to hell play within the circle. But only one being is outside the circle, and that is God. "Ain't he a stinker?" My prayer is that everyone in the world wakes up and demands an explanation...