Glimmerings (III) Don't Exist

I'd like to address the, "There are no such things as fairies," perspective. That idea is an impediment. Many people impede themselves without knowing that they are choosing, behaviorally if not intentionally, to impede themselves. Hui-neng, again, said that the substance of mind going and coming freely is prajna. Hasrat Inayat Khan said, "The more one knows reality, the less one uses the word 'real'." There is an interesting feeling of denial and exclusion that comes along with the perspective that there are no such things as fairies or that glimmerings don't exist if they don't have a boring scientific or Latin name. That feeling, like mental constipation, is the opposite of the "freely coming and going". Structurally, "freely coming and going" is not a bad description for playfulness or for subtle phenomena. What's the difference?

I don't know that we can say that there really is a really real difference. I like that Khan focused on the difference between talking about ideas about God as opposed to realizing the presence of God. In the debate, presence is often ignored; in the presence, the debate becomes meaningless. But God may not be really real. As we come to know reality, the mental constipation and the wavering of doubt become less interesting and we tend to go with gnosis over impediments to prajna. (From a Buddhist perspective, we might focus the language more on the form and emptiness of a "self" as present but not necessarily really real.) Trungpa talked about the existence of the "illusory body"; Chuang Tzu gave his famous butterfly dream remarks. In the Bible, in Ecclesiastes or Lamentations I believe, it says that nothing is really real but life is hard anyway.

But, as with many things involving attention and mental phenomena, we can say that if you pay attention to the glimmerings, you notice them more. The more you notice them, the more you increase your familiarity. The more you increase your familiarity, the less you doubt or deny their "reality". And the less you spend your mental time and energy in doubt or denial, the more vital you feel and the more life you bring out of your body and mind and into interaction with the world. The quickness involved is something--whether it is a real or formed something or more of an unreal or formless something is unimportant. Glimmerings don't exist. (Wink.) Derrida is laughing. Psssh, glimmerings. Whatever. The laughter is certainly one possible response to my original reactivity.

Want a Zen joke? This is just my style.

How do you split the ocean in two?
With a see-saw.

(Good one, Betty.)