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(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

Weblogs are meant to be personal. Hopefully readers will find something in mine that can help them to create a more fulfilling life. I offer this highly personal account so that it may benefit others.

 Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners, alive, dead, or divorced, are always our greatest teachers. <source: Byron Katie: I Need Your Love — Is That True?>

I have been trying to write a draft of this webpost on commitment since April 03, 2012. I am finding it especially difficult.

• I am not “the marrying kind”— But I do want emotional intimacy with those significant others who value it as much as I do, and who respect the preciousness of the vulnerability that this creates;

• I do not want to be part of a conventional “cozy couple”— I just want to be capable of loving in a non-ego way; and
  

• I do not want to live with my significant others-of-the-romantic-kind — But I cherish the time we spend together.
  

But that doesn’t mean that the idea of commitment is not important to me. It is. But I begin to realize that I don’t know what commitment really means.

May 14, 2012 …..I’m having supper with Alex (click here) at Remy’s in the Yorkville district of Toronto. I’ve been trying to work out what “authentic commitment” means. Or at least, what it means to me. I raise some of these questions during our discussion over supper.

• Are love and commitment inseparable?
  
• Can you love but not make a commitment?
•  Do we commit to a person?
  
• To a relationship?
  
• To a view about how to live?
  

I tell Alex that I begin to think deeply about the nature of commitment because of a message my life partner leaves for me just before he dies at age 61 in November 2004.

I just called to say I love you. I wish that I would have done more of that. I regret that I wasn’t more romantic. One of the regrets of my life is that I took you for granted. I spent a lot of my life running away from commitment, running away from anything that made me feel tied down. This was because I was frightened. I was afraid of getting it all right! Most people say they are  afraid of getting it all wrong. I was afraid of getting it all right. It was ingrained in me as a child that all family relationships and all family units fail. If I had got it all right I wouldn’t have known what to do with it! I realize that it was a disastrous thing I did by allowing my fears to run — and ruin — my life. I couldn’t break the cycle.

I had a lot of self-esteem issues. I never felt good enough or grand enough. I’m thinking right now of “Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” [1922 novella by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald], and the song “Putting on the Ritz.” I spent my life putting on appearances, trying to look successful. I was bitter. Even if I had had a diamond as big as the Ritz I would have been unhappy. You were my diamond as big as the Ritz, but nothing made me happy. I really missed the whole point.

I could have given you a multi-faceted joy — like the multi-faceted diamond that you are — if I hadn’t been so uptight and bitter. My life with you should have been an adventure. Just being together should have made me happy. I could have appreciated just sitting down eating a lovely meal with you. But nothing ever felt like it was enough.

Falling in love with you should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

There was nothing more you could have done. There was nothing more you could have given me. This was an unending cycle that I couldn’t seem to break from my childhood.

Put another way, I think my life partner is saying that he chose his habitual patterns over freedom from a negative karmic cycle, over a mature relationship. As a result, this kept his  karmic cycle going.

And the result for me?

I end up putting my own romantic nature on the back burner. That is, until I had a raw, intimate, erotic dream on February 03, 2012 that threw me into an identity crisis. (Please click here to review the dream.) That was one day after, i.e. on February 02, 2012, that I reviewed the message presented above from my life partner. It was as if he were speaking to me through the dream of February 03, 2012 to warn me not to hide from who I am like he hid from who he really was. Not to let habitual patterns obscure who we actually are on the relative plane.

May 20, 2012:  I attend a class on the Sadhana of Mahamudra (click here for more information on the sadhana). We are discussing the idea of  “the three confidences,” one of which is decisiveness. My vajra brother Fred Cohen suggests another word for decisiveness, namely commitment. Not waffling around. BINGO. Finally, things have started to fall into place around what commitment might be.

Being decisive about something. Not waffling around. Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

A head like “These two are inseparable” evokes the idea of lovers. In the case of this webpost, the pair of lovers are the two components that create karma, namely, intention and volitional action.

On May 06’12, I wrote a post that offered the view that, of  these two components, it is not the volitional action per se that causes the accumulation of karma. It is the intention behind the action. Please click here if you wish to review that webpost.

On May 10’12,  having received some e-mails around this topic after I published the webpost, I wrote to Jay Lippman, a senior dharma teacher to ask him about this. Please click here for a biography of Jay.

While we end up realizing that we are saying essentially the same thing, the way we come to that conclusion is interesting. Jay’s focus is slightly different than mine. He focuses on the fact that the intention and volitional action are inseparable. My focus is on the component of intention.

yes we are.  My only point is that there must be the actual slap as well as the intent {i.e. the volitional action and the intention are inseparable}.

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We want intimacy. In our culture, that word generally refers to physical intimacy.

Switching gears, we’ve often heard the phrase that “practice makes perfect.”

What’s the connection between intimacy and practice?

Not much. Why? We have learned an ironic truth: that the act of physical intimacy doesn’t necessarily lead to, or even involve, intimacy. (Please click here for past webpost entitled Is Sexual Attraction a Cosmic Joke?)

We also want a heart connection with others based on unconditional acceptance.  In this regard, I remember that my father told me as a young child “don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”

My father often had good advice. But not in this case. For me, wearing my heart on my sleeve is part of basic goodness! (Please click here for definitions of this term.) It requires a great deal of courage because I am vulnerable when I wear my heart on my sleeve. Because it requires that I don’t intellectualize my emotions. Because it requires that I tell the truth. Because it requires that I dissolve the barriers between me and my heart.

The title of this post is “Intimacy – practice makes perfect.” What’s the connection between intimacy based on the heart and practice? Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

We’re taught that we accumulate karma through volitional action. (Please click here for detailed description of what karma is, is not, and how it works.) This is  what I call the outer level of karma.

My understanding is that it’s not the action per se that creates karma. It’s the intention. The motivation. What the law calls mens res. That’s what I call the inner level of karma.

(Most of us are not necessarily aware of our real intentions. It takes a lot of honesty and conscious awareness and willingness to really explore.)

The purification process can only be successful if we understand that it is the intention we have to purify, not the action per se.

Specifically, two people can carry out the same action. One person accumulates negative karma. The other person does not. For example, if a fully evolved dharma teacher slaps a student, there is no negative karma because there is no anger. Wrath perhaps. But not anger. If we were to do the same thing, we would probably do so in anger and thus accumulate negative karma.

Why then is it taught that we accumulate karma by our volitional action? Because if we just have an intention, but don’t act on it, then we do not accumulate karma.

As my root guru used to say, “Got it, sweetheart?”