The squirrel who comes for breakfast each day
At first, begging thrown nuts, but now he takes them from our hands. What courage!
I love his beautiful and expressive tail! He talks to me with it!

From end of log 3: Aaron: The label “neutrality which expresses its utmost radiance and clarity” is a mouthful.  I think this is no different than the shortened term, positive polarity.[1]  Think of positive polarity in terms of that magnet with a positive and negative pole. Positive polarity still has a negative pole.  It does not choose to express it.  Thus, it is the positive expression of the magnet, or of neutral.

K. noted that positive, neutral and negative are not on a linear continuum. The whole magnet is neutral and contains positive and negative poles, but even within the positive pole is some negativity and vice versa.

Continuing today, as log 4
Aaron: There was no duality within this infinite energy. Precisely because it had begun as neutral, it contained within it both positivity and negativity. One could debate philosophically whether or not negativity is contained in positivity. But certainly, both are contained in neutral. You have heard me talk of both light and relative absence of light; here all concept of duality is voided. When this energy has moved into perfect positive polarity, the expression of negative polarity merely manifests as a decrease in light.

This is an important point. Had this energy originally manifest as absolute light, one could then conceive of its essential nature as dualistic with darkness. Another important factor: because its first expression was as neutral, expansion, change and flexibility are part of its essence. The principles of giving and receiving not only are not contradictory; in a non-dual energy they must both exist.

We have here-in the core of the dilemma. If this energy contains all light and darkness, “good” and “evil”, positivity and negativity, giving and receiving, the human struggling to reflect only the positive becomes entrapped by its own humanness with arisings of greed, anger and various expressions of ego-based fear.

As Karen suggested, it comes to a question of responsibility. If my urges toward greed and hatred are “evil” and antithetical to God, then my work would be to smother those urges, perhaps through practices of austerity, or through strong focusing of the mind which instantly cuts off and denies fear-based arising. Doing so does not make me a more loving person nor awiser person, only more in control. Thus, control and power are viewed as the attributes of the Divine most highly regarded by persons of this bias. Judgment is predominant.

[1] The term “Positive polarity” will be taken to mean , “neutrality which expresses its utmost radiance and clarity”  through the remainder of this text.

On the other hand, we have the view of Divine as non-dual. Here one does not need to subdue the arisings of fear-based ego, but to draw those arisings more strongly into the heart of love. Just as this infinite Energy was drawn increasingly to express Itself as positive polarity until It became the perfect model of positive polarity, so is the human who embraces non-duality drawn along this path.

Next, we have the July 10 daily reflection from Aaron:
When you contract and you meet that contraction with spaciousness then there’s more spaciousness and your vibration increases. When you contract and you close down and contract around the contraction then there’s less spaciousness. However, if there’s spaciousness and the thought comes, “Ah, I should be spacious like this all the time,” it closes the spaciousness. That which is aware of negative thought is not negative. When you see the negative thought arising in the self and a closing in, and there’s a gentle mindfulness, not one that says, “I should do this or that,” but that just notes, “Present. This is unpleasant. I’m contracting. I have compassion for myself for contracting,” that’s where the spaciousness and the compassion come in. Not spaciousness versus contraction, but compassion that opens you to the innate spaciousness. You are not creating the spaciousness; you are opening to the innate spaciousness of being. Self-blame takes you away from that. Grasping takes you away from that. “Fix it” mind takes you away from that. But in blame, grasping and intention to fix, there is nothing to fix! It is all arising naturally and passing away as the conditions decay and pass, ownerless. Attending to, listening deeply, caring about what’s happening and holding it in your heart takes you into the spaciousness and into love and high vibration.

Barbara today: Hal was awake before 7. He heard me getting up and buzzed me (we have an alarm system with a strobe light and a disk that vibrates) , so I sat with him, (I can’t get him up from his bed) sharing some photos and talking and reading to him until 9 when the caregiver came. Mind moves from a preciousness of the shared time to resentment in a moment: I want my meditation time, hot tub; exercise, journaling, even another hour of sleep.… And the profound joy of this time together. Then the caregiver arrived, got him up and dressed, and we had breakfast together. After breakfast today, on the deck on this beautiful morning, we 3 played a game, one I enjoy and that Hal plays well. It was noon before he was brought inside to his recliner chair.

I see myself clinging to these days, knowing this may be our last summer here together and in our home of 55 years, as I pay for his care: $10,000 / month for the caregivers (part comes from SS, part from teaching/counseling dana, part from monthly donations given by generous friends for Hal, part from his retirement fund I’ve drawn from for these 9 years post stroke and which is running out). When money runs out, he’ll have to go to a nursing home where I can support him with money from selling the house. We won’t be able to see each other daily, even weekly….

I’m filled with grief. I know I cannot hold on to anything! How do I let go? I’m reminded of the story of Ajahn Chah and the delicate teacup gift. ”It’s already broken” he said, when asked how he could use it daily without worry. ”I know it’s already broken(will break any moment) so I enjoy it today.” I understand it in theory, but the practice is harder. In meditation this morning I’m led to the non-duality of grief and joy. With joy there is clinging. Aaron asks me:
A: what is the essence of that to which you cling?”
B: I know I’m mistaking the material expression for the infinite essence, but the human doesn’t know that essence.
A: But you do! Now please meditate.

B after 90 minutes of vipassana and pure awareness meditation under the giant spruces
A: Please tell me about Essence.

B: Fifty-five years ago, when we planted this spruce, it was 18 inches tall. Five years before that it was not even yet a seed. Yet it still existed. I drive past by the tree farm where we dug it. There are many baby and mature trees there. Now this is a massive and beautiful seventy-foot tree. In time it will fall and decay. I know it won’t cease to exist. Eighty-five years ago, I didn’t exist as Barbara; ninety-one years ago, Hal didn’t exist as Hal. This house was not here. There was a farm, and likely an old farmhouse that no longer stands. I know there was a spring, now underground. The orchard, now decaying, fed residents of the farm. The fields grew food.

Our younger two grandchildren will grow up with only a few memories of this house and of their grandparents, as I have a few of my grandmother (she died when I was 11)  and of their home. But I remember the love,  the huge cherry tree, all us cousins climbing to pick cherries each year, and Grandmother leading the aunts in the annual baking of pies, an act of love.

I do get it, Aaron; it’s love that survives and takes rebirth; and it cannot be destroyed. But how do we deal with the grief?

A: With an enormity of compassion and patience that is only found when your heart is open to pain, soft and tender…like the squirrel who took days to dare move enough past fear to come close for the offered nuts.

I’m attached to Hal and our game of Qwirkle this morning.
And all the trees you see, and that we planted back in 1971; the 2 acres was a barren farm field. At the very back of that field behind Hal is the now overgrown orchard, trees fallen and decaying into the earth. But deer still enjoy the remaining apples every year.