Teenage love & Meditation

 

Teenage Love & Meditation / Document 2

April 2000

 

 

TEENAGE LOVE

 

With calm, you should be able to see how much a person enjoys the food you prepare. Sometimes they comment, sometimes not. You have to hold yourself from asking: 'Do you like it?' Pay attention, then you know! And if they don't like it? Maybe they have an indigestion that had nothing to do with you. There should be a soul satisfaction from the effort itself, that doesn't require anyone to say anything. It's a delicate line. What 'everyone likes' is not necessarily useful. Everyone likes a compliment, everyone likes to hear 'thank you'. But when you reach a certain point of maturity, it's better that you don't even think in those terms. Deeper sensitivity shows you whether something is working. That's the point – is it working or not.

Anyway – three cheers for X and whoever helped her make this wonderful meal, and whoever helped her clean the house, and whoever helped do, whatever – because it's wonderful now!

I don't like the word 'kids' – it's a cheap word. I would love to hear from you Viola (14), you Sunnybell (13) and you Batya (12): what's it like to be a teenager. I bet you could each say something. Maybe a little embarrassing at first, but you could say something.

When I was your age, the music that was coming out was really to the point. For instance:

 

”Gee but it's great, after staying out late

walking my baby back home

arm in arm, over meadow and farm

walking my baby back home.

“we walk along, harmonizing a song

she wants to borrow my comb

one kiss then we continue again

walking my baby back home . . .”

 

That's one, do you want to hear a few more?

 

“I was dancing with my darling

to the Tennessee Waltz

when an old friend I happen to see

I introduced him to my loved one

and while they were dancing

my friend stole my sweetheart from me.

 

I remember the night

and the Tennessee Waltz

now I know just how much I have lost

yes i lost my little darling

the night they were playing

the beautiful Tennessee waltz.”

 

They call those 'love songs'.

 

“I'm going to get you

on a slow boat to China

all to myself alone,

get you and keep you

in my arms ever more . . .”

 

They were good songs, you know. They had heart in it, a little pain in it. But that was a long time ago. The songs were coming over the radio, we didn't have television then, we didn't have whole lot of stuff.

So, who's first? What is it like to be a girl teenager? Who's gutsy enough to tell?

Viola :  The three of us.

Alan : You got guts? Okay! 'eni mini mini moe . . . .' it's you, Sunnybell. Okay . . . you pass to Viola?

Sunnybell : Yes.

Alan : Say something.

Viola : Okay.

Alan : Just the effort you're making now is worth everything. Just the fact that you're ready to try. Let's see what happens.

Viola : I don't know how to explain it, because I wasn't 'big' before.

Alan : Yes, okay.

Viola : But you know how it is, later.

Alan : Yeah, right, but things do get different now, right?

Viola : Yeah.

Alan : How different?

Viola : Now it's all the things . . . are first time.

Alan : Yes, yes. You know, in a funny way, all things are for the 'first time'.

Viola : Yeah, but you're growing up. I have, in my bones, I have pain. Nobody . . .

Alan : Ah, yes.

Viola : Nobody has it – then they don't know how it is. Nobody knows how it is.

Alan : Don't worry about the laughing. Nobody that hasn't got it can understand, ah?

Viola : Yeah.

Alan : Oh, I'll tell you something. Something happens when you become more of a 'person' – never mind the pain in the bones. The biggest issue, I think, is this question of love. It's not that love is for the first time, because you know the love of animals, your brothers and sisters, whatnot. But something special happens, that is so pure, at your age. It's so simple and so pure. If you 'like' somebody – that's even harder to put it into words than the fact of the pain in your bones. There's an excitement that happens between people of the opposite sex. It also happens between people of the same sex, there are all kinds of combinations in this world, but generally speaking with the opposite sex. And it's as pure as the essence of perfume, the essence of flowers. Not something manufactured in a factory. It's a soul to soul contact, it's a heart beat, and it's physical in a way that's different from anything that you knew from before. It's simple, that's the point – it's simple.

Now I don't think there's so much to talk about there. The only reason I think of it now is, that for some strange reasons, that dynamic, in years that come, starts to get very complicated. From something very pure, it most often turns into some-thing very sick. And I'm wondering – what can one do to keep it straight? I don't know . . . words are very difficult.

I have hardly seen Danny in maybe four years. On the way here to Kadita, today, we dropped into his house, on the spur of the moment. Sat with Atalya, his wife. He was in Rosh Pina, she called him, he came, and now we are here.

Once I heard from him or her, about their first meeting in New York many years ago. How old were you Danny?

Danny : Thirty-five, thirty-six.

Alan : And she?

Danny : Twenty-six.

Alan : Ah, ha, and now?

Danny : Now how old are we?

Alan : Obviously!

Danny : Forty-eight and fifty-eight.

Alan : When they met, Danny was thirty-five and she twenty-five, so they were not teenagers anymore. But when I heard the story of their meeting, it had the same kind of simple joy in it. She's a lovely person, a lovely girl, and he, in his real place, is also a good person, believe it or not (laugh).

“We got a smile on Danny's face

Danny's face, Danny's face

we got a smile on Danny's face

so early in the morning.”

Just to put the issue on the table.

 

(Enter Marva, 15) Whoever you are, I like you. Because you've got a nice smile. You came in with such a nice smile.

So, this is a big thing. Just to identify it! If we could go one little step further it might be nice. How can there be love without problems? Can there be love without agony?

The agony builds up to other things like disappointment and irritation and bitterness – all that kind of stuff. And it all started with love. We've got to put a stop to that. That's why I talk about it. There are mistakes being made. How can something that's so beautiful, turn into something that's ugly? Nobody has the feeling it should be that way, or that it's got to be that way.

See how quickly one forgets? Love is so real – do you understand? It starts when the mind, with clear eyes, and the heart and body are in a state of joy. The balance of those three, is magic. It's very unusual to be able to have the mind and heart and body feeling good at the same time. But does that have to be dependent on anybody else?

You see, there's the tricky part. Because when you get 'attached' to one particular person, then there comes in this business of fear. Because: 'they could go away.'  That brings up a real question: can there be love without fear? That already requires some mature development.

Our love should not be dependent on any one person. Nevertheless, there is something very special about relationships like that. But, does a mistake happen in teenage years that causes the problems later? That's a real question. Who's got a comment? Is it that people just get more stupid, the older they get? The more stupid, the more egoistic they get. They do get more egoistic. Has anyone a half intelligent comment to make on this very difficult subject?

You've seen things turn problematic. Well it's always a little problematic. Who's got a thought on the matter?

Everyone is in a different relationship to this issue because of age and because of other things. Maybe take yourself out of the picture and look at someone else. Where is the problem? Any idea – where does the problem start? Where's the mistake?

Danny : I feel that the mistakes are being made in the teenage years. And I do think that these thing have to do with s . . . . . . .

Alan : You can say the word, it's alright.

Danny : Suggestibility. We see other people do things, we catch a part of it, and we form some sort of picture as to what is right and wrong. And our aspirations seek that. Then we find some partner and lay those expectations on them, and then after a year or two it becomes something else.

Alan : Okay, you said it. Your key point was: what spoils it is 'expectations', right? There are expectations. Can there be love and freedom? That's a relevant question, no?

Carlos : I think you have to grow with it, from an early age.

Alan : You have to what?

Carlos : The question you're asking, you have to grow with that from early age. Know it at early age, and not just happen to think about it when you're grown up. When you grow with that from an early age, it doesn't come to you as bombastic.

Alan : Is that what happened to you? It came late in life?

Carlos : Yeah, I didn't grow with it.

Alan : Well, you see different people have different relationship to it.

Carlos : It has to do with confidence.

Alan : Again this statement comes up: 'as everything in the world is connected – there is no such thing as a small thing.' And davka (in particular), with this issue we're talking about now, no one would say it's 'small'. But nevertheless it's just a piece. Maturity, in this area of love is very dependent on maturity in other areas. It's not only the issue of love that changes as teenagers – all your thought processes, all kinds of things, everything changes. From the bones in your body to thinking how you are going to be independent, how you can support yourself, how you can, you know, get to do what you want.

Everything is changing, so you can't really separate one issue, from life in general. But love is very powerful and comes along with other things that are confusing – so it takes time to understand. We tend to exaggerate and run towards this one 'thing'. We don't have to run . . . we just go with it . . . it's such a pull. And even if it's got problems in it – it has such a special taste.

I said a long time ago, before puberty kids are usually interested in everything. The boys especially – they were interested in everything. But the moment they pass, say, thirteen years old, their eyes are 90% of the time on titszi (breasts). Now wait a minute!

As girls, you can realize how stupid that is. All of a sudden the boys almost go blind to everything else in the world. Just walk down the streets of Tel Aviv. I walk down Dizangoff St. and find myself looking at the girls, because all the energies are flowing that direction. I'm not so interested – I've seen enough titszis in my life. It's similar to when I drive into Tel Aviv, and fifteen kilometers outside of the city, I start to feel hungry. Everyone's thinking 'food, food, food', all the time.

Viola : Not just there!

Alan : Who said that?

Viola : I did . . .

Alan : Oh, of course. But it's more there than in Jerusalem, for instance ... it's really more there!

You see what happens? Wait until you see that the majority of the boys never get to grow up. They stop learning. Before, they were fixing cars, climbing trees, doing all kinds of things. All of a sudden life becomes very simple: two tits. That's all they want. I allow myself to exaggerate. How can you exaggerate? You can't exaggerate. So, there's something to be careful about there, I guess. Especially if you are a boy.

Now, if you are a girl, oh, if you're a girl you have to watch that you don't start 'wiggling'. Because you can get you a lot of attention. There are two places you're getting a lot of attention – the upper front, and the back bottom, right? It really makes you into 'somebody'!

Even if it's not an immediate problem, it might be a good idea to take advantage of the people we have around here. Talk to older girls, get their history. Not just the issue we're talking about now, about anything. Talk about it, open it up, don't leave it as a 'ha, ha, ha!'

How many times have I seen it – mothers, around the age of thirty, thirty-five or so. They're in a room, and one of the children, a four years old boy, say, drops his pants – and all the women go: 'hee, hee, hee.' Where's the maturity? We know what boys have between their legs. A four year old boy – 'hee, hee, hee'. I mean, really!

What are we talking about. 98% of the world, is thinking about it, 98% of the time. We are humans, on the face of this earth, and we want to know who we are, what we are, and what's going on! With this subject and other subjects.

There are older girls around – how do they deal with it? Don't expect perfect answers. Oh, it's quite an area. Just to know that everyone's turning that in themselves all the time. You don't have to be afraid, or get some fixed opinion.

I'm happy for this talk. I've done my best. I'm also available for discussion. And I have reasonable control over myself – I won't get lost in the subject, okay?

Tzvika : I expressed my observations, my dark life, and the differences in certain societies. I don't know if there's guidance there, but the tradition, heavily sitting in religious society, Arabic society. When you asked, I remembered Krishnamurti, he talks about this 'age of permissiveness', of escaping to television and drugs and sex.

Alan : You know the only comment I ever heard Krishnamurti make about sex? He was saying: "Why do people talk about it so much? Do it or don't do it, but don't go talking about it all the time." That's the only comment I've heard that he made.

Tzvika : There are probably times, I mean children today know so much just from watching television and listening to the 'wise guys' interviewing. I don't know, there was an interview with Chicholina, titillating with Dudu Topaz all the time. She's a member of parliament. She was a porno star, Chicholina, Italian. Never before was there such exposure. Yeah, that's what I'm saying – confusion comes.

Alan : It's sex without heart, it's sex without 'humanity'.

Tzvika : And who's most vulnerable to the exposure?

Alan : Mi yodea? (who knows?) That's all guess work. What did you (Lisa) just think of?

Lisa : Nothing.

Alan : Nothing for public, ah?

Lisa : No, it's nothing like that.

Alan :                                

“Is you is or is you ain't

my baby

the way you're acting lately

makes me doubt ...”

Where has Aviv gone? She remembers some of the songs.

Aviv : Yeah?

Alan : Noo!

Aviv : Song?

Alan : Songs, yeah, songs like . . .

Aviv : About love?

Alan : Betach (sure)

Tzvika : We have the Beatles : 'Love, love, love, all you need is love.'

 

Alan : How many horses are there out there?

Viola : We have two.

Alan : The same two from before.

Viola : Yes.

Alan : They got so big and strong, huh?

Viola : I got one and Yitzhaki also got one.

Alan : How often do you ride?

Viola : They are still too small, they're one year old.

Alan : Oh, they're not ready for riding yet.

Viola : No.

Alan : They're beautiful.

I'll share another thing with you. I don't want to go into detail but it's connected with some of the projects that I've been involved in. At the moment I'm thinking mainly about the written material. Things that I have worked on for years but weren't timely to pass out. Now I feel I'm sitting under an apple tree – all of a sudden the apples got ripe and they're 'raining' down. I don't know which one to grab first.

And that is also the feeling that I have relative to what is going on here at this place (Kadita). Sometimes everyone is so tired, so tired! Hardly enough energy even to pick one apple and cut it up into pieces and distribute it. So I know what it's like. But the situation here is even better than the best dream you had twenty-five years ago.

 

Alan : Who's girl (Marva) is this?

Viola : Kobi's. She's my girlfriend.

Alan : Her name is Kobi?

Viola : No.

Alan : Oh, her father is Kobi. Ah, Kobi – the man Lisa is working with?

X : No, that's Ya'ir.

Alan : Ah, that's Ya'ir. How is Ya'ir? You still working with him?

Lisa : I like it better . . .

Alan : You like what?

Lisa : Ya'ir, I like better.

Alan : Uh ha, he's a good man, 'dash' (regards), if you think of it.

Lisa : What?

Alan : 'Dash' – I don't usually say that.

Tzvika : He wanted to come down to your place. We agreed to go together.

Alan : Yes, very good. I don't think I ever met this Kobi. Is that possible?

Tzvika : Could be.

Alan : She's (Marva) a fine girl, yes?

Tzvika : No mother.

Alan : She must have had!

X : She had a mother.

Alan : She died?

Tzvika : She died while giving birth to the youngest son.

Alan : How many years ago?

Tzvika : Twelve.

Viola : She was three years old.

 

We tend to exaggerate the things we feel, but what you (X) are sitting within, now, is a testimony to the reality of – I don't know what to call it – an 'Organically Positive Inclination' that you have. No need for any pride, but there should be energy in that. To go on from there.

X : As you said: 'understanding'.

Alan : A conversation like this brings up a lot. Can you see everybody is somehow dealing with it?

X : Positive energy. I'd like to open the space for those 'apples' we see ripen on the tree. To communicate with us, to visit as a flowing reality.

Alan : Don't get too flowery, because I didn't understand what you said. So, could you put that into 'simple German' please?

X : Alright.

Alan : What are you trying to say?

X : I tried to have open doors for all of those who are sitting here now.

Alan : You feel that you want to give people an opportunity to talk, is that it?

X : Yes, to communicate with us because we do feel that we arrived at a certain maturity. We do feel that, we're not blind to it; and we in a way don't quite know what to do with it now, what direction.

Alan : I think it's connected with this whole question of your interest in Krishnamurti and 'home education'. It has to do very much with the issue of education, and in a very simple way.

Phew – if all the children in this house could be teachers, for one year. There are enough younger kids around. If they could give over whatever they know. This one knows how to weave, this one how to play piano, this one knows how to cook. No matter what. To clean themselves of it. Give it to someone, to another kid. Then go off and do whatever else they have to. But, of course, that comes too close to the danger of, I don't know, imposing your ideas on someone else, in this case – me.

You know, in the end, you can only do what you can do at the moment you can do it. You just have to be careful not to do anything less than you know best.

Anybody got a pencil – we've got another card. Must be a pencil here. Can you write it down before we forget?

'You've got to be careful not to do less than you know best.'

When you really get down to it, you can't do anything more than that. Do what you know best, then you check the results. A person does what they can and the result is a combination of that, and everything else in the universe. So you have to be subtle – with the right vibration more than anything else. The more you Remember-Yourself the closer you are to not feeling that you 'have to do', anything. Right action doesn't come from 'have to'. It's the motivation that counts, rather than a specific tochnit (program). Unless you have, maybe, a list of three or four different things that you think might be appropriate now.

X : My total sense and understanding of this situation now is, that it's my turn to study. To study the Work material again, and I got back into it, and I'm glad for it. I'm absorbing new material now and I will continue slowly, in connection with the Work.

Alan : That makes so much sense at any level.

X : In a way, I was shown. I almost broke my arm in the tofu workshop, from lifting heavy stones, and it's probably going into a cast – my arm, my hand.

Alan : You fell out of a tree once – since then, right? A few years ago?

X : Yeah.

Alan : Better not to discuss it now. I understand they're going to be taking X-rays.

X : Yes.

Alan : That's the first thing you have to do. My guess is that it's more trauma than actual damage.

X : It's mechanical . . .

Alan : Whatever – even if the bone was broken, it's healed. So it's tension in the muscles and the memory of a trauma. Maybe it's also an indication that it's enough of that (tofu).

X : Exactly.

Alan : That's it, okay.

X : I brought it on myself, to understand it.

Alan : You have to create an excuse? It's not so simple, because one's 'sense of identity' is so tied-up with those kinds of things.

X : It's all so much responsibility once you start a little business. You can't just step out, you know, even if you want to be in 'Being'. If you want to be more in essence, but you have to continue, and then it's becoming . . .

Alan : That's more of a 'Germanic' view than a 'God' view, I once met a person, when I was something like thirty-five, someone in Vermont who was forty-five and form New York City. He said that nobody should work at the same job for more than  four months. What a thing to say.

X : That's great.

Alan : Well, in society, after twenty-five years they give you a medal. He said that after four months you already know it!

X : Absolutely.

Alan : So it's not exactly a high level of 'morality' – that you should stick to something, regardless. You have to find out what to stick to. You've got to find the one thing to stick to. They have a word for it, but people mess-up every real word. The word is matzpoon (conscience). It's a 'place' – it's not a morality. It's a place where something feels perfectly right. Regardless of what anybody else thinks. It's more than just feeling, there's also mind in it, also capacity. Use best what you've got, until it comes down to something clear. 'Feeling right' is too vague a term – a certain place of clarity.

 

 

MEDITATION

 

Alan (to X): When you had connection with the Buddhists in London, at the time Tzvika met you, did you do any meditation?

X : Yeah, sure, a lot, daily. Not only once. For a period of at least a year and a half.

Alan : What they call 'za'zen'?

X : Er . . .

Alan : It's a long time ago, if you don't remember right away, it's alright.

X : I had two exposures to meditation. One, the one I most recall, was with Buddha, who had come from Japan to England to open a New Age Center for understanding Christianity and Buddhism as one religion. And he had renounced. He had been enlightened, and he renounced enlightenment, and gone on to study. And I met this Buddha in amazing circumstances, with a rainbow guiding me to this Ashram of his. Then as a main mantra, in a meditation room, was a round rainbow. So I was guided there already. We were there in the mornings from six; there was a group of fifteen people, maybe, in this Ashram. It was a work Ashram.

Alan : I'm going to stop you just for a moment because I'm hearing something from you, now, that I hear frequently from Tzvika. It's not meant as a criticism, it's more of an investigation, just looking at it. I asked you a specific question, about meditation. And you go into a whole room there, a whole history that brought up a lot of associations. The sense I get sometimes with Tzvika is that he starts to talk about something with the feeling that if he just talks, something will come out. Because he's got a lot of words, a lot of information, a lot of experience. Like the things that came up before, with the girls, on the teenage business. He didn't have anything so specific to say, that was my feeling, but my goodness, he's got a lot of years and memories, all kinds of thoughts around that subject. And he starts to speak about it, as if thinking: "I'll speak about it and if I'll just keep speaking, enough 'wisdom' will come out, or something will come out that's got some value. I'll just keep on talking." I may be exaggerating with what I'm saying, but maybe you can catch what I mean. And I felt this, with what you're saying now. If a person is going to open their mouth to start to speak about something, they should know what point they want to make before they start drooling-off at the mouth. Think about it first. Somehow we've got to collect our word business 'up here'. Meditation was the question. Meditation is a question of Being – deeper than the words.

We live in a society that lives in words. Words describe pictures, pictures are made of images. Between one and another 'actual' experiences – we fill-in with 'pictures' that, as if, connect them. That ends off in a package of what is called 'imagination'.

What a pain. It's the second time today I got into an inyan (issue), which is so deep, which is so gooey.

We've lost our mind in words. We start to 'think' – and every bloody thing goes on there. One of the aims of the Work is: 'developing driver in yourself'. Driver can turn to the left, turn to the right, stop, go forward. Driver has a destination, he's going some place. He's not getting into the car drunk and just cruising all the streets.

We were forced in our youth to speak with people whose minds were like what I'm describing now, full of everything – and we had to relate to them in some way. We had to pretend we understood them. At other times we wanted their agreement, we wanted them to like us. Our minds got 'developed' through speaking with people who had no 'driver'. Their mind was doing, whatever it was doing, with a lot of random data. It had prejudices, it had ideas about this, that and the other thing. That's where we started to think from. So how to get a clear space in this 'thinking mind' is of ultimate importance. Otherwise it drives us crazy. It makes us nervous, it creates anxiety, it continues, it doesn't stop. And it's got everything under the sun in it, from esoteric theory to the kind of conclusions that Carlos expressed before.

The issue of 'teenage love' and growth and excitement and sex. I may be exaggerating again, you have to forgive me. Carlos was saying that the important thing is, to go through it when you're young. It's like he puts a policy down there! So, I ask him: "how does he know?"

It was clear, he was expressing something of his own experience. He didn't get going with the girls, I guess, until he was older. And he feels that, that somehow, confused the issue. That's just one of a million people's experiences. We have explanation for mother and father and work and money and sex and love and children and the wife and the ex-wife and the girlfriend and the politics and this country and that country. I mean, we're full of ideas. The funny part of it is, that for the most part, they're not really our ideas. Gurdjieff used the expression: 'second-hand people'.

 

Here we go again (to X) – the pain, right? You see, the 'meditative place' is behind the pain and the words. It's not in thoughts of 'what I'm going to do next' – which is trying to jump above the pain. To get into some activity, trying to jump above the pain, is the same as taking a shot of liquor or shot of heroin. We've got to drop through it – below it!

So, now, in this kind of talk, I've got you by the short hairs, as they say. The eye begins to hurt and also the pain in your arm. You know what you can do, now? What I had Lala do, when she burnt herself. Move your attention. You can't feel the pain in your arm and the pain in your eye at the same time. Now, if you can move your attention from one to the other, you'll begin to realize that it's just a vibration. It's not you. You don't get identified with it. Maybe there's a little bit of a headache as well, now. You can move the attention to the headache. Of course the headache is part of the pain in the eye. You got to go through that pain – it's a residue, it's a memory.

What you have to do is face the pain as vibration itself. No explanations. Not 'too much tofu workshop', and you got to finish the tofu, because when you start something you got to finish it, because that's 'responsibility', or maybe somebody else will do it, and why? "I did it all these years and maybe it's somebody else's time, and doesn't anybody see, and what do they expect of me." All that is useless. You're never going to figure it out that way. You can only go to the actual vibration. And that capacity in you, that can watch the vibration, is infinitely stronger than the vibration itself. Feel your arm until . . . . you think you're feeling it now, but you're blocking out at least 50% of it. Because you're objecting to it. Go to it until you feel the whole arm is going to fall off. It won't. Go to the pain – don't go to the explanation. There is no such thing as a clear explanation for pain – it's a combination of all kinds of things. Whether it's emotional pain, or mental pain, or physical pain – you must go to the vibration. And the place to start is in your body. It's the 'collector'. It collected all the twisted vibrations and it's also the mechanism that can transform it. All those twisted vibrations, all those things we call pain, are intense energies which are incredibly needed – for what is called 'transformation'. If you give it the 'light of attention', it straightens, it turns into something else. But not necessarily when you want it to – at it's limit.

Thinking about it doesn't help. If you go through the pain, then you sit in a place of peace – there you can think. There you think – the mind doesn't run you. That's the place where the mind becomes the servant, rather than the master. The mind that tells you you've got to 'stick with something' – that that's responsibility – that's the mind that is acting as 'master'. It's the devil.

You see, this is why you feel the pain most when you're with me. There's enough trust on your part, and enough directness on mine, so that when your head starts doing things that are not clear, I can step in immediately – because I see you're really running from the pain. So that leaves you with the pain. But you must stop resenting it – the pain, that is.

 

There's a lot of pain – because you've done a lot of things. The more effort a person makes in this twisted world, the more pain they're going to pick up. So the pain is not a sign of failure.

You're in an excellent position relative to this issue. But it's an issue for everybody. Most people live such lazy lives that they don't have enough pain in themselves in order to transform. We should be able to drop the word 'pain'. It's a dirty word for high energy. It's a dirty word for high energy calling for attention. And if you don't give it attention, it starts screaming for attention. Give it. You're strong enough to absorb the results. Now what you are suffering is 90% worry and 10% vibration. That's right. So many things we 'worry' about – that gets mixed with sensation. Attention my friend, attention.

The energies that get 'exaggerated', whether it's pain or pleasure – are an indication of imbalance. We didn't give sufficient attention to other areas, feelings in other parts of our body. We only give attention when something screams. It's a bit like the question: which came first the chicken or the egg? Because, the reason we don't have the energy to give attention to the pain, is because we're burning it up in this 'head' thinking. And the thinking started because we were in pain. Most of the thinking that we've done, started with pain. When did you start thinking about the 'Jew/German' issue? Pain starts it. When did you start thinking about sex? Confusion starts it. The young girls aren't thinking about it so much because it hasn't become a pain yet. When you get to Anati's age(19) – already it's a pain.

So all this thinking business starts on top of pain. It's inevitable. 'Life' is made of that, so we have to see how it functions. You have to know the confusion in this world, in order to survive in it – it's part of maturing. But most importantly it constitutes a tremendous reservoir of energy that we need, in order to transform our actual 'level of Being'.

I've been giving considerable thought recently to this issue of meditation. You can look at it – most of what we know as meditation, is 'mechanical'. That's what Krisnamurti talks against so much. He says: 'The only real meditation is when the mind comes to understand itself, and stops.'

I stop it for you (X) now, when I bring certain things to your attention. I could 'break-in' a million times, because of the vague way you use words. You were referring to this man as 'Buddha' before. I doubt whether he called himself 'Buddha'. Maybe 'Roshi'. 'Buddha' is not something people go around calling themselves. I asked, at the beginning whether you did any meditation. Then you went on: 'and he came here and he did this and I went . . . .' You 'allowed' yourself, and I say: Stop. That's not thinking, that's associating, that's all it is. So it stops. And there you are back, at this moment, below the pain. It's almost a meditative place; you're not feeling the pain at the moment, are you?

Meditation? In certain way, there's no bigger issue. That is – what really is meditation. The meditations that are 'given' are institutionalized meditations: Zen meditation, Hindu mantra meditation etc. They're a taste of something. I think the reason Krishnamurti spoke so much about it is because people get hooked on the 'taste'. He doesn't say it in so many words, but it turns more into self-hypnosis than what meditation really is, in it's purity. What he says is: 'Meditation (in it's purity) – the Mind comes to understand itself and, as a result, stops.'

You see, this is what is happening in this conversation. You were talking about this 'Buddha' from London – I've already chopped that up a bit. Somehow the mind understands that it didn't know what it was talking about, particularly. It didn't know what it was aiming at – so it stops. At the moment, you're not being pulled back there to 'think'.

X : Thanks to you.

Alan : Well, yeah okay, but this is again just a taste of something. I want to go back to this question of meditation. My past led me into a number of situations that were, in fact, what would be called 'Initiations'. And some included a meditation. I hate to use the word – they were 'meditation exercises'. There are 'meditation exercise', and there is Meditation.

Nicoll talks of Self-Remembering. He says there are three ways you can think about it. The first is: the effort to remember-yourself. The second is: the degree of remembering oneself. And the third is: what is called full Self-Remembering.

Now I'm now using a similar approach in looking at meditation. Real Meditation would be equivalent of full Self-Remembering. There are lesser 'meditative exercises'. 

I don't compare one 'gift' to another, but, just to take two examples. What was the value of my experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, with initiation in zazen meditation, and what was the result of my encounter with the Lubovitche Rabbi and the Chabad community? To match one against the other? Somehow they and other exposures were all important.

But what I'm feeling very much, these days, is that somehow an 'exercise in meditation' might be most useful. Mainly because of the extreme extent of the current confusion – things are spinning to such a degree. It's so difficult, sometimes it's almost impossible to 'get a handle' on thought, so to speak – to hold a thought, to focus. More difficult than it's ever been. A meditative exercise will never be a replacement for 'understanding the mind' – but in this incredibly intense period it could be most useful place to rest.

It's a difficult subject, because I think 'meditation' has been more abused than used. People meditate for twenty-five years or more, they do a lot of things that they think are 'spiritual' – but it's too isolated.

I found myself in an Ashram in India, thirty years ago. I spent one week literally in a cold sweat, after being offered Initiation that included a meditation. I knew and understood Krishnamurti's position so clearly that I felt I was being offered 'poison'. That was my first emotional reaction. I paced my room in a cold sweat for a week. I was dead-set against it, and at the same time the conditions felt so right – the people around were fine, they were trustworthy, they were reliable. It was a soul dilemma – I was caught between, as they say, 'the hammer and a hard place'. Then, within that agonizing, something became clear to me, all of a sudden. If I 'learnt' meditation and it didn't 'fit', I could stop, right? It's not like someone's going to shoot me up with heroin and I'm hooked for the rest of my life. What's the problem? That became clear, just like that. No problem.

A number of years later, two people I knew went to India. I don't know how it came about, but I gave them the address of the Ashram. They got to the gate, but weren't allowed in. The Ashram was 'closed'. That's just a piece of information – because I thought to myself recently, maybe I ought to take ten or twenty people and make contact there. It's just another nice thought, because it's either in the cards or not. I'm talking about thirty years ago. Nothing stays the same for two seconds, let alone thirty years. But people face so many complexities in life these days – they can hold onto nothing.

Aviv picked up on something, that eventually got printed in the booklet on 'Guilt'. The four possible ways of dealing with negative emotions. It came out of the writings of Mrs. Pogson. The most extreme example was, when you can't do anything – the only thing you can do is 'pray'.

Aviv : Use the energy to remember yourself.

Alan : To remember yourself, or pray. Carlos told me that he went through something immensely traumatic recently and that the only thing he could do was to pray. It just stops all the 'nonsense'. That is sometimes the advantage in sickness. You realize you have no control over life and death and health – that the ego is really an ego-maniac. You don't know exactly what you pray to, but you 'know'. You feel that you are life, and life is larger than you, and it's ALL 'keeping you going'. You're praying to something real, without being a theologian.

You (Carlos) surprised yourself, because you don't think of yourself as a 'religious person'. More of a 'moral' person. Your best intentions were in trying to be a 'Humanist' rather than a God fearing something. Have I got you correct? Yeah. Then you begin to realize that there's something even more than that. There is a limit to so called 'human intelligence'. Human intelligence is very small, compared to the ALL that we are a part of.

Tzvika suffers like the 'poor man' who has a safety deposit box with ten million dollars in gold in it – then forgot. Forgot where the key was. Because, you have experience in meditation. If you use it, you can go back to the Source of energy, and then come back and look at the 'idiot mind'. The only thing that's stopping you from going to the 'safety deposit box', is pride. False pride. Maybe you got hooked at the 'Festival of Fools' – got attached to the notion of being a 'fool'. What pride. Are you going to take that to Hollywood, get an Oscar for 'fool-ishness'? You could stop it just like that – but you don't want to. Because who would you be? A meditative person is not an 'important' person – certainly not to this world!

Were there a hundred people on the face of this earth, with it's six billion population, that respected Sheikh Hassan? They'd have to see 'it' first. Before you could see it, you'd have to be it. And when you saw it – you were it. You can't recognize anything that you don't know in yourself. That's not something the ego can get proud about. That's something 'Being' can live in – if it remembers.

You were 'up against it' that time in Rosh Pina when you took a job in a factory. In the middle of winter, freezing your balls off at six in the morning, under a bus-stop shelter, and not knowing what the hell was going on. It was worse than, or equal to the pain that X now has in her arm. There was nothing you could do – but meditate, huh. You remember?

Tzvika : Yes.

Alan : Me too, I remember.

 

Regardless of this 'Buddha bugger' in London, I don't believe that X got a real taste of meditation. That's why she has to stumble around the issue and talk about sixteen other things. She feels a little bit guilty about it. 'I did it for a year and a half'. Mazel tov!

X : No, that was a meditation exercise, actually.

 

Alan : And you know something more real than that?

X : Well, that was the first taste I got.

Alan : Okay, okay, I don't want to over do it. You're back to a little girl right now, and we never abuse 'little girls'. You may be suffering, but you've never looked more beautiful. Because you've never been more true. It's true – there's nothing more beautiful than the truth!

It's especially important for X to deal with the pain. Because of the shock that she got to her eye, as a child – and the resulting 'closing down' from not wanting to feel the pain. It had a very deep psychological effect. If she could go to that pain and the one in the arm, she would open up half of her brain.

X : That's what it feels like.

Alan : It's only vibration. The worse thing that could happen in feeling it, is that you would faint. You're more likely to pass through it, before you faint. Until you go to it, you are only feeling half of it. Most of your energy and 'intelligence' is being used in pushing it away. You don't want to feel it – you're using your psyche and your energy not to feel it! It's a wrong use of energy. It's not a very simple thing to reverse. That goes slowly – you feel more and then more and then more. Go to the end of it! 'God' is on the other side. The meditative place is there after you've passed through the pain.

I find myself repeating the same thing to you each time I see you.

What Krisnamurti calls 'mechanical meditation', I'm calling a 'meditation exercise'. It's a technique. I don't know what technique you (Tzvika) were given. All techniques drive at one thing! If the mind drifts on to something else – it is 'called back'. In za'zen, when the mind drifts away from counting your breath, you start again from 'one'. It's a 'trick' built in. The moment the mind wanders you bring it back. A mantra meditation has similar elements.

You used a meditation before, so you know something that works. But how deeply you went into it, I don't know. To go deeply you would have had to leave your 'self', your so called self, behind. With enough experience in life you begin to realize that that so called 'self' is nothing but a pasted-up image that you manage to sell. You already can't sell it anymore. Market dries up!

Anyway, to this question of self-remembering – you used the term. Full self-remembering would be the equivalent of meditation and more. It's more important, because in mechanical meditations, you're 'avoiding' thought, pushing thought away. In Self-Remembering you develop a separation between your 'Being' – and whatever your thought, sensation or emotion might be! You don't 'chop your head off'. Meditation exercises, in a way, is the equivalent of chopping your head off. You may open up a higher level of the mind but you fall back when you finish the exercise – back to the 'normal' confusion.

There are people around who are 'meditation teachers'. I don't think I want to know them at the moment. With Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, it was a piece of a larger teaching. You can't take it out of context.

Full Self-Remembering is another name for 'meditation'. It's got meditation in it, and more. If you're in a meditative place, you would be sensitive, first of all, to your body. This can happen in a  mechanical meditation, especially with Zen, sitting in, usually, not such a comfortable position. You go through the pain. Sometimes people's legs just freeze. But when the mind is not busy burning up all the energy, there's enough left for simple awareness in the body. With attention in the body, you find that you go through the pain – until it's forgotten, gone.

We've got to get behind the pain! You won't get behind the pain by 'figuring it out'. You get behind the pain by transforming it, by giving it attention. Not objecting to it – by taking it as 'pure' energy. Give your attention to that energy – don't even call it 'pain'. The moment you call it pain – you're resisting it!

The Work covers the whole spectrum of possibilities, with basic principles. Don't look for a 'new trick', don't look for a new circus, don't look for a new outer 'responsibility' – because that's, basically, avoidance!