In the Evening

[Wei Shan Yang]

Two posts to make here. First one is about a movie I saw last night, second post will be abotu a related experience/realization afterwards.
The movie is called "The Woman in the Dunes" and its a Japanese film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_the_Dunes
Now I'm sure wiki will have one interpretation and mine will be a bit different. Mine more geared to CC understandings.
*spoiler alert so don't read if you don't want the whole movie spelled out.
Junpei (main character, male) is on an insect collecting expedition in some sand dunes. At night fall the local villagers recommend he stay with a widow who lives in a deep sandpit. He has to be lowered down by a rope ladder. He stays the night and the conditions are strange to say the least...sand falling through the roof constantly, everything gets soon covered in a layer of sand, needing to constantly be swept. The predicament the widow is in is rather insane..."She has been tasked by the villagers with digging sand to be sold to the
cities, mostly under the table (sand with salt should not be used for
construction purposes), and with preventing the sands from destroying
the house (if her house succumbs to the desert then the other houses in
the village will be threatened)." So she is pretty much captive there.
The next day Junpei goes to leave and finds out the ladder to climb out has been removed and the pit is at least 100 feet deep. He at one point tried to climb out by foot, but the sand walls just crumble at his feet. "The villagers inform him that he must help the widow in her endless task
of digging sand. Junpei initially tries to escape; upon failing he
takes the widow captive but is forced to release her in order to receive
water from the villagers." They lower the water and rations down by rope.
In time, "Junpei becomes the widow's lover. However, he still desperately wants to
leave. One morning, he escapes from the sand dune (by hoisting a rope with anchor point up to the top, climbing it once it catches) and starts running
while being chased by the villagers. Junpei is not familiar with the
geography of the area and eventually gets trapped in some quicksand. The villagers free him from the quicksand and then return him back to the widow."
Junpei begins to plead with the villagers as they stand over the ledge looking down at him. He asks them to allow him to come out 30 minutes to the surface and stand at the ocean's shore...just to look. He tells them they can stay the entire time to guard him...he just wants to see the ocean. They refuse his request.
Time goes on and Junpei, in his boredom, and glimmer of hope, designs a trap to catch a crow as a messenger. The trap consists of him putting a large barrel in the sand (digging a hole and placing the container down so the rim is at surface level). He then puts some bait for the crow. When he checks the trap next day, he discovers, not a crow in the bucket, but water. Remember, water is what he is dependent on the villagers to bring. So his is surprised and elated at his discovery. 
Meanwhile, the same day or near so the widow gets very sick. Junpei calls the doctor and he comes down on the ladder to examine her, determines she is pregnant and has been for some time. She is in pain and they decide to take her up to the surface. They raise her on a cot and then they climb up the ladder. In their haste it appears they forget to raise the ladder back up, so its still hanging. Junpei eventually discovers this as he is now alone in the house. He climbs up the ladder and heads to the ocean. The camera shot shows Junpei standing at the shore (ocean horizon in background)...just as he longed to do, but his back is to the ocean, he's facing camera. He seems in deep, strained thought. Soon he returns to the house in the pit. They show him checking out his trap/well of water. He is talking to himself as the movie ends, saying how "there is plenty of time to escape, no need to hurry. Right now I need to perfect my trap and I can't wait to tell the other villagers what I have discovered (how to get water out of sand)." The final scene of the movie shows a missing person's notice, looking for Junpei who has been missing for 7 years and of course we are to assume he remains at the house pit.
I had an understanding about this movie shortly after. It has to do with attention. Clearly Junpei was finally free, he finally got the freedom he had longed for since first becoming trapped. But in his freedom he chose to remain in a stasis situation, he turned his back on the expansive ocean. Why? Why was that small trap of water so important to him, so much that he would give up everything that was so clearly his to take?
This is the true meaning of obsession.The true meaning of being prisoner to one's thoughts. The promise of fortune and fame, of acceptance, of power and control. He felt in power becasue of his invention to make water, he felt god-like. He considered it magic and envisioned the other villagers would admire him, reward him. He chose to stay for recognition, that was so important to him, his obsession... that even the freedom open to him seemed uninteresting.
Oh how this is so, for so many people! And warriors face this too. Even as we know and treasure freedom's beckoning, we fight against this pit of sand that sinks and sinks into our psyche and tells us so many untrue things which we believe, we begin to become buried under the weight. When the ladder out is available to us, we are sluggish and dispassionate. So what needs to be fought for is not freedom so much as it is specifically against the inertia of obsessions and habitual expectations. We must see its incredible pull and then turn away from it. Like a deer in headlights, its not easy to pull away from such a force when it has a hold. hypnotic. We must turn away from fortune...
this is from the Led Zep thread, song, In the Evening
"Oh it's simple, All the pain that you go through

You can turn away from fortune, fortune, Cause that's all that's left to you

It's lonely at the bottom, Man, it's dizzy at the top

But if you're standing in the middle, Ain't no way you're gonna stop



*Chorus: Oh, oh, I need your love, I need your love

Oh, I need your love, I just got to have


Oh whatever that your days may bring

No use hiding in a corner, Cause that won't change a thing

If you're dancing in the doldrums, One day soon, it's got to stop, it's got to stop

When you're the master of the off-chance, When you don't expect a lot"
'off chance'...cubic centimeter of chance
'When
you don't expect a lot' ...intend your future instead. To intend is not
to expect, its to KNOW...then wait for IT to arrive."
Junpei expects a better life, being admired and in control of his environment. He forgets to KNOW he is free, and there is much more out there in that expansive ocean to discover...he is not the master of a small plot of land, he is a journeyer, explorer of the universe. But he has forgotten and instead is lured in by petty, small gains that mean nothing. Traps. His trap for the crow has trapped HIM.
Junpei's off-chance was the ladder left in place after the widow was raised out and all villagers left the area to tend to her. Not expecting a lot is to release self-interest of tonal concerns and instead embrace the unknown with a mood of non-attachment and knowing the link to Spirit/Infinity is our true right and destiny,... so to Intend the journey forward, in knowing...in freedom. And every time the ladder lowers, we ascend it. Many ladders on the journey to higher and higher levels..."no use hiding in the corner (attention on obsessions and habits), cause that won't change a thing."

[Wei Shan Yang]

After the movie I went into the kitchen. I love that place since I found me a 'spot' sitting on the counter that faces the window over the sink. Sipping hot tea, with my ipod on, I look down upon the land below...my apartment is 22 flights up, so the scene is construction sites and the big rigs look like small caterpillars roaming about. Right now they are building the foundation of two high rises, so I see welders lights all dispersed over the land area, its a really neat/abstract vision and I like to meditate there.



So, I began thinking about positive/negative. I initially saw it as a dual counter-balance. Like black and white, up and down, north and south, hot and cold, etc. When thinking of such dual relationships its assumed they are in equal measure...that is...one is not more powerful than the other. Hot is not more powerful than cold for example. Its easy to conclude then that this is the case for positive/negative. But last night I was shown a different view. I was shown that 'positive' composes 99% of experiential phenomena and 'negative' is 1%.



How can this be?! Well, first I will say...there are a lot of dual comparisons that are inaccurate. Sun and Moon. The Sun is not the opposite of the Moon,it can be, in metaphor or poetic vision, but truly the Sun is a star among many and the moon is a satellite that orbits the earth and there are others that orbit other planets. So rather there has been made an association of opposites. Cat and Dog, another one. Cats are one species among many and dogs are another among many. They are not true opposites, just in poetic vision they are made that way.



I say that positive and negative have been made into poetic opposites. And this prevents us from realizing just how small negativity is, and how large positivity is. Last night I was shown how life is bursting with life at all times. Molecules exploding with potential and power. When something 'dies' it does not leave, rather it merges with the infinite, who know exactly what occurs but "all is life within life" as Poe said in Eureka. Life is bursting with life! So utter positive and indestructable! Yet humans have been trained to look away...to look away from that expansive 'ocean' of freedom.



Negative is a AP assemblance. Lets say I am rinsing some white rice out in a bowl. As I'm rinsing it with water, I notice a grey pebble in the rice. The bowl contains 99% rice, 1% pebble. My eyes direct to the pebble. "Oh there's a pebble, I must get it out, it will contaminate the rice, I must remove the unwanted thing." That's the negative, its small and insignificant, but draws attention to it like a funnel and makes itself appear bigger. This is also the power of the FI, its only power. Rem,ember DJ called it a gnat? Gnats are small pesky things. Infinitesimal but made large via attention and focus..in short OBSESSIONS. And obsessions can be overcome by focus, intent, discipline and practice...constantly turning away from it, constantly looking to the positive till it overwhelms us with its power, becasue it truly IS power, is now is here and always was here.



Junpei's container of water (how he perceived it) was the negative, everything else was the positive. "Everything else" was the potential. But only is that everything didn't become singled out like the water was. We have to make choices on where to focus our attention, this determines out course. We focus, and then learn to release. The only true unyielding embrace should be for the Spirit, the Nagual, for it is abounding Freedom, endless Power and continually manifesting positivity, bursting life. The Nagual is also the void. It is not lack...it is nothing. You can never name it, never!

[Wei Shan Yang]

"Junpei (main character, male) is on an insect collecting expedition in some sand dunes."



"That's the negative, its small and insignificant, but draws attention to it like a funnel and makes itself appear bigger. This is also the power of the FI, its only power. Rem,ember DJ called it a gnat? Gnats are small pesky things. Infinitesimal but made large via attention and focus..in short OBSESSIONS."



Ha! Spirit just told me there's a sweet omen right there

[Guest]