Bigger Picture Course Conversation

Welcome to THE BIGGER PICTURE AUDIO COURSE CONVERSATION.
This is where all of you who are taking this course are welcome to comment on the stories. Any comments regarding how you relate to the story, how it affects you, thoughts you have…….are open for discussion here. Only those taking the course may join in the converstaion. Please note: this conversation will be saved for future reference. Let the discussion begin on Nov. 28th 2011.

I enjoyed this story, the Cougarman. Reminds me a bit of someone I know in Portland………….. a bit. I’ll be th inking on this…..

Hello Rebecca, The Cougar brings to mind the story of my Aunt. No one in the family understands why she has done what she does in her life. She is 86. I know of her story from youth, what she has told herself about it and what I have figured out about her. While others ask why, I see the woman who was abused and discarded. She has always been good to me, in ways my favorite Aunt, but the black sheep of the family. Her choices teach me about choosing a curse or blessing in a situation. She chooses in the only way she knows and it informs me about critical choices that I make with people. Marylou

I think the whole concept of a “black sheep” in the family is really interesting. As are family alliances. Your aunt sounds like a great teacher! 86. Hmmm…… its nice that she has been good to you, and my guess is that she loves the connection with you.
I also think that many painful situations teach us compassion for others in a way that we might not otherwise have.

This is a beautifully told story. I like how it reminds me that there is a gift in accepting others for where they are in their life without judgment. My judgement of others only brings separation and it hurts both me and the person I’m judging. I also think what is well illustrated is that no matter where we are in ours lives we can be a gift to others; sometimes where we know it and other times we have no idea how we touch others or what lessons we have been a part of for others. Sometimes I wish that people in my family would see me for who I am instead of how I measure up to their expectations of who they think I should be. I feel this is a common thread in our society that people want to be seen and accepted for who they are without others stuff placed on their shoulders. I remember years ago when my aunts alcoholism re-ignighted that I felt like the family was ignoring it and enabling it. In frustration one day I was talking to my uncle about my frustrations and saying we needed to ‘do’ something about it. He looked at me and said, what would you do? It hit me that there was nothing for me to ‘do’, this was her path and she needed to walk it, not me. There was freedom in that lesson, a letting go of my fear and guilt for her and a feeling of responsibility for her that was not mine in the first place. My responsibility is me and only through being true to myself and taking responsibility for myself am I able to love and bless those around me.

I have been in love with deserts and have connected a number of times with unexpected personalities relating to the land. I have mostly been surprised by how much less in tune with the land these personalities were.
I have always imagined Rebecca to have slept in a sleeping bag or a pile of blankets on her land. She had told me about the trailer, but I never saw a trailer when I thought of her there. I always saw her as accepting vulnerability and not submitting to it. I wanted to have that same kind of courage, to face solitary places by myself. I’ve done the best I can with that. Maybe there is continuing opportunity. So hard to know. It comforts me to know that there is a way to be both solitary and accompanied. Rebecca taught me that and I have counted on it a number of times… But, the grief over having to return to an opposite reality has always made me retreat.
And, I don’t believe for one second that cougar Man was alone when he died.

An interesting memoir I have just finished reading, Memory Palace, gave me tons of reflection on responsibility to the people we love. Questions of the value of one’s own safety – or perhaps self-protection – are still swimming in my mind. This is a great, great conversation to be had,

I never thought he was alone either.
The trailor wasn’t on my land. It was in Christmas Valley. There were a few times I slept on my land in blankets, but mostly I slept in the trailor. And Liam often went with me to go exploring. The first time my teacher told me to go into the woods and stay the night out there sitting up and saying everything I was grateful for, I cried and told her NO NO its too scary for me alone in the woods. So she gave me a nice blanket and told me to go sit in her teepee and say what I was grateful for and she brought me cookies. I learned then from her that if the fear was too big, I wouldn’t be anywhere but in fear. So I started in a teepee in her back yard. Over the years I made my way into the desert, the rainforest, et. But only when the fear got small enough to pack it along!

MaryFlorence…theres a lot in this comment. A lot. I need to reread it several times. Thank you. I especially love the part about not knowing who or what we are to someone. I also just want to say that there is a difference between judgment and disernment, neither of which I can spell!

The Tea Party. A feeling of rootlessness, no. A feeling of tired roots, roots at the end of their course, yes. Actually, when I travel (which is little) I get a disconnect from home only in that I must remind myself over and over that I am NOT home. I want to rush back to my people and tell them what I just saw and to come! come! see this; you won’t believe it! That’s when I feel distant. And distant in knowing that the experience of seeing these wonderful things elsewhere can ONLY be mine, that I will never be able to describe them to others AS experience. I hate to tell people what I saw and where I saw it because I am then a tourist, home from a tour where gosh you would have loved it… I hate that. The rootedness I seem to have is to ME wherever I go. This is my home. ME. And it is lonely there if I think of my experiences as show and tell. There’s a strong impulse toward sharing in order to give the experiences value and it’s lonely to think that ‘value’ is connected to other people, that I can share with only the mystery of my self, and entertain myself with experiences to the end of life. So, the sheepherder who looks down into the valley and sees another world is like me when I gaze at other people. Strange to admit this, but other people are distant and foreign to me. Even those I love. Self-centered of me, yes. A bad center from which to see life and things and people and places? Bad only in this foreign, distant language that people use to describe the self. Bad to me? Can’t be bad; it is what is.

My home is currently stuffed with stuff that I have felt were meaningful things – and none of them are honored especially in any way. I am seeking to revisit my definition of ‘meaningful’ so I can get rid of most of this ‘stuff’. My singing bowl and my butsadon are honored…touched only with precise and gentle care. I have a small ‘stuffed’ bear only touched when there is pain in my or my children or grandchildrens hearts. My Columbia rain jacket, the sandals and the wool cape I wore in Ireland – those too are held in reverence… My mother’s books (starving to be in a house where they’ll be read) and our wedding candle and prayer beads and Himalayan silk scarf (a scarf that took a trip to the summit of Everest) and the prayer wheel my close friend brought me home from Lhasa. I hardly see these, but when I do my heart is lifted. So soothing, magic. It seems I need to consider how I might honor them physically – where I can see them most regularly, lift my heart on a daily basis? Good plan.

The cat with the broken back.
Allow me to rant just a bit: It is so annoying to me what people suggest what people must feel or do around the ‘suffering’ of other – in particular non-human – beings. “You mean you let the cat SUFFER all that time…?” My answer would have been, It is a big responsibility to interfere with an animals’ natural process; it must be very, very clear that what you offer the animal is in tune with its nature and the nature of its environment and its processes of living and dying. I just get steamed how ignorant we are about animals, how we think we are in relation to them as their stewards. The overturned beetle on the forest log being righted and righted and righted – until it becomes clear that the beetle is in a mysterious process of dying. The baby terns flailing about on the beach, too young to fly and spinning about in erratic circles being taken home in a box to be SAVED and their knocking themselves endlessly against the walls of the box – until a wild bird specialist assures us that this is the way the tern population self-regulates and that it happens every year. Didn’t care for what I was hearing, but it was obvious to me that there are mysteries into which I am NOT invited.

When a dying cat comes to your door, should you kill it? Nature certainly would kill it if no humans were around. Well, maybe its death could be hurried along BUT – and this is the hugest caveat I can think of – some people (I for one) could not live with a creature’s death on their hands, either mine personally or any hand I’d summoned. Do you pick up a cat with a broken back? Do you think that the broken back will or can be healed, and so torment the by hauling it to a vet? Sure the cat wants freedom from pain. You know why? Because pain makes it weak and vulnerable to its predators. And that is it. That is what cat’s and dogs and tons of animals in nature make of pain. And animals deal with inevitable death in one of 3 ways, 1) die quickly by placing themselves in the path of predators, 2) seek out and digest something that naturally eases the pain WHILE they die, or 3) crawl out of the way of further harm – hide themselves – so they can take the ride out of here without further disruption .

Short version: That cat in Costa Rica would have yowled even if the pain had lessened, because it’s natural instinct to run when in pain or fear has been interfered with. It must simply lie there in the open in this case until death came.

It is a human reaction to pain that is being projected on the animal. Our responses are not a darn thing like an animals…trust me.

Rant over. For me, the suffering of others is as painful as it is accepted. I become empathetic to the point of misery. At the same time, I sit with it, easing it as much as I can. I suffer with their suffering and mine without impatience of urgency. It is what it is.

I really like what your teacher said. I agree that all we can do in any given situation is our best at the moment and we need to accept that. Any other conjecture about a situation is meaningless, we can only grow from our experiences if we are open to it.

About the tea ceremony I perceived the message to be about fear. Fear of the unknown and how limiting it constructs our belief system to be. Of course this is something we each choose on our own paths I don’t think it’s good or bad, it’s our road and only the individual can walk that path.

I am listening to these comments, taking them in . I will respond in time, before the course is over. I believe each story is different for each person who listens…and there is no right or wrong here, only thoughts and reactions to share, which I love.

RE the bus rides:

So we are all actors on a great stage. Consciously manipulating others is interesting — people (society?) judge us harshly for mistreating someone thought to be blind, for example while harshly judging a biker chick or hitting on a foxy babe is all acceptable behaviour. Can we withstand the judgment of others? That is the price for going against a facade, where as treating everyone kindly will not draw reproach (maybe not true, treating someone kindly when others sit in judgment could conceivable draw judgment, too).

The point would seem to be, once more, use your intuition to determine the truth of a situation instead of surface appearances. And be ready to accept the condemnation of one’s fellow passengers who happen to disagree.

Richard

RE the cat:

Do we make an assumption that suffering serves no purpose: that it is a worthless gift? If it serves a purpose for people, would that same purpose be served for a cat?

If the roles were reversed, what would you have the cat do for you? Crush your skull? Wait for an injection?

Did you think to ask the spirit of the cat what it wanted? Why do you accept the judgments of others (even your teacher)?

When my sister’s cat came home with a broken back, her son nursed it back to health by keeping it immobile for many days.

What judgment did you hold for the neighbor’s method of dispatching the cat?

I make no assumption that suffering, generally, does or does not serve a purpose. It depends, for me, on the circumstance. If the roles were reversed, I have no idea what I would want. At the point where the cat and I are one, there is no pain or cat or “I”. It was clear to me the cat was in horrible pain. I was not living in a situation where any vet would have been able to do anything for the cat, in rural Monteverde. I don’t know what the spirit of the cat wanted. I don’t view my teacher’s saying as a judgement, but rather a compassionate guide which makes good sense to me.
The neighbor actually dispatched the cat on behalf of a person who did black magic in the area, who was upset with having a shaman in the area who worked with light. So I didn’t know who originally broke the cats back, but it was not accidentally left for me. I think anyone who would intentionally cause that kind of pain is not someone I respect or agree with.
I wonder about the under current of judgement in your post. I take the word judgement to mean discernment, and I see value in it.

Thats interesting, because I sensed no fear in the man, only a limited capacity to imagine leaving home.
His world revolved around the lives of his sheep. Cultural difference also. I do agree that fear is sometimes very limiting…and that different people have different capacity to overcome it, carry it, accept it and go on…..

I have led a life of following my heart and passion, and not caring much about most people’s judgments of opinions of me. That is still true. At the time I did that experiment, I was just learning the effects of appearance, and found it really fascinating. I still do.

I share your experience of feeling that Me is home. But I think this is a wonderful realization because it makes us mobile, flexible, and open. Knowing that my experiences in any foreign culture are only REALLY able to be interpreted in the moment (same is true of experiences in USA), I long ago stopped trying to communicate the essence of an experience . There are, however, moments and memories so finely etched in the mind that with concentration….its like they are still NOW.

That cat didn’t want to run, or if it wanted to, it couldn’t. It wanted to hide. Escape. I am sorry, it was yowling in pain. I was not projecting onto it. I have seen horses in pain and dogs in pain and cats in pain and my experience is they KNOW when they are being helped and they like it. Thats my experience. My belief is that no creature is best dying alone. Thats a belief I cannot back up. Its in my heart somewhere. (ALthough cougar man seemed OK with it, I would still ….had I been out at the desert when he was dying….I would have gone to sit with him if he would have had me.)
There is not one bone in my body that thinks that cat would have been better off crawling into the jungle and suffering till it died on its own. Not a one.

Absolutely. I do see that most people don’t rely on their hearts to determine the reality of situations, but rely on superficial evidence of appearance. It is interesting that we live in societies. Those societies are not trusted, nor are members of those societies, because we don’t learn to use discernment, just rules (“Don’t talk to strangers unless they wear uniforms!”).

True discernment by (members of) the society of the bus, would have understood you to be an actor. I don’t think you would be fooled by appearances, for example, as they were. I may or may not; I’m not sure. I have a tendency to avoid judgement in such situations, while observing.

The burden of the light-bearer in a society where members treat with darkness…subtle hints that some folks found your presence unwelcome.

The questions came to mind as I pondered the story. Once more, I’m not sure where I stand — I find crushing the skull of the cat to be unnecessarily violent, although I can see (objectively?) (the brain has no pain sensors) that it might actually be humane. Contrarily, I see that an injection is non-violent and likely to be humane. I suspect that it all comes down to intent since the same act performed with loving intent can also be performed with anger, violence and/or hatred. Once again, all one can rely upon is one’s feelings — there’s no intellect that can see through all of the nuances. However, the act performed with anger, violence or hatred does not hurt the victim any less, but it surely hurts the psyche (soul?) of the individual performing the task.

Indeed you have found what I was driving toward: the oneness of you and the cat (and the reader and the writer and…). I cannot say what I would have done in the situation the story described. If I were able to maintain my center during such an experience, I would hope that I could maintain awareness of one-ness with the wee beastie. I find such experiences to drive my heart into a strange state of anxiety or anguish.

I found the question of the value of suffering to be an interesting, if non-essential, part of the story. I watched my first wife suffer and die of cancer. Our society (that word again) deemed that she had to experience her slow death, that there was no hemlock for her. As a bit of an empath, that was difficult to experience. I have found that many (all?) experiences in life are gifts. Some of those gifts we do not want, but resisting them leads to personal imbalance (“You killed my child. I demand vengeance!”).
And I have heard and/or read that suffering can advance the spiritual awareness of an individual (hence asceticism, deprivation rituals and such-like). I do not know this to be true. Were I tortured, I would tell my torturer anything she/he wanted to hear. Positing a group soul for animals, I’m not sure what the experience of torture (or, in this case, suffering) would do to advance the spiritual awareness of a cat. I suspect that, as a society, we’ve made an agreement that critters do not have the same level of consciousness as people. Thanks to this story, I question that agreement (consider dolphins, for example). I see, in the last two stories at least, that I have made many assumptions that are quite fundamental, but have as a basis, only the teachings of our culture. I consider the Native American’s veneration for tree people, four-legged people and winged people along side Western culture’s idea that animals, plants, the Earth and other people are for exploitation. This speaks to me of a dis-connect with the one-ness principal and an ability to inflict torture and suffering on other beings as a fundamental principal of Western culture. Do I judge our society? I do. I find it morally shallow, espousing political correctness in place of growth and self-understanding: Too head-brained instead of heart-brained. I find it lacking a sense of community (a society without a sense of community? Can that be possible?), with two-leggeds, four-leggeds, wingeds, trees, Gaia…

These stories have been thought provoking. I see that in each we have been presented with the judgment of the society, relatives, friends or teachers. And that ultimately we must rely on our own judgment, because we do not live for them, we live for ourselves. When we are cautioned to “Judge not lest ye be judged,” the words speak to judgment of other’s intent. For we most certainly must consider and therefor judge what we might do if presented with similar situations.

Sorry about the length of the post. Sometimes I get carried away. Sometimes the understandings cannot be presented with out considerable back-story.

Please PLEASE no apologies. This is part of what I had hoped these stories would prompt…musings and openings in the mind.
Watching ones we love dearly suffer and die……I don’t know. It seems mysterious to me. Again, it seems to be an individual case by case what purpose the suffering is serving…..and then on matter how big we see THE BIGGER PICTURE, we never see ALL of it……I end up bowing to the mystery.
I think you will enjoy the extra story I am going to send as a gift along with the last story. Its The Spiders in the Outhouse
story.
Please make all the comments you like, and no matter the length. You make interesting and relevant points, and my guess is others are taking this in as well.