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Om and I have been having a conversation that we want to bring to the blog, and this seems to tie in with Asher's excerpt too.

OM. Hey Noah, I was just reading this paragraph you sent and wanted to discuss it with the bloggers, You say:

“[Regarding my struggle right now to find direction] What I haven't understood is how the intellectual, narrative understanding of the origin of my affective experience can then be used to restructure my emotional, physical experience. It is easy to move concepts around and realign belief systems in a theoretical space, but it seems like real healing requires a more embodied practice. I could read endlessly about gardening techniques, but I
won't grow any food until I get my hands dirty, make some mistakes, deal with the problems and confront the challenges over time.”

Could you elaborate on this a bit more before I respond?

NOAH: I have the language, but its not always clear how to integrate the language with playing the game, or living in the world. There must be some transition between identification (introspective insight) and transformation (embodied living). I may be aware of the mechanisms and conflicts perpetuating the anxiety and confusion, and identify them functioning beneath my experience, but that alone has not been enough to feel my needs / ambitions with clarity.

What is the missing piece (process) that makes transformation possible? At first, I am so ignorant that I do not even know I'm trapped in a prison of mind. Then I do some investigation, spend some time in therapy, go to Peru, etc, and become very familiar with the shape of that prison and how it works. I watch as my reality forms between its walls and observe the way in which my constriction is a result of certain, ancient patterns of relating. It is clear that what I think of as my reality is an illusion of mind, yet the actual functioning of that illusion still seems very solid and has the energy of a freight train. Sitting and writing, I observe it more and
more, yet don't seem to be able to actually live outside its walls.

If I were to say, fuck it, I'm just not going to play the game, I'll go live in a cave and grow tomatoes because that way I wont have to deal with the acute reactivity of this prison of thinking, well that doesn't actually seem like really working the problem. So I think like you, I don't want to just drop out of the game; but I'm afraid that if I play I will not be able to keep myself (my spiritual center) from being buried.

Beautiful Noah,

To borrow from your beautiful phraseology, an intellectual and narrative understanding of an origin of our affective experience is always approximative.  It is a narrative (as you say), intellectual, and conceptual, but if it is of real value it resonates.  If it really connects and feels right, if it makes sense to you, you will feel the shimmer of alignment that is that embodiment you speak of.. it is feeling and awareness dropping the veils that hide us from ourselves.

That resonance speaks to a part of you that seeks truth, a deep and fundamental part of you, of me, that seeks to know ourselves. 

At the same time, because this narrative and intellectual understanding is approximative, it is not the origin of feeling itself.  It is like a guide or a map, a "go to" which is particularly useful in times we need a reminder.

And the journey, when we really get to use this map of understanding, is in our lived experience now, as we go seeking and uncovering layers of other narratives to find our true happiness, our freedom.

"It is easy to move concepts around and realign belief systems in a theoretical space, but it seems like real healing requires a more embodied practice." 

That embodied practice is you, in your life and seeking, in your relationships, how you feel stepping into the unknown, or into the familiar.  

Your understanding is contemplated but it is also communicated through relationship... one that you've been cultivating over a long time, and you've given yourself through relationships with others who have gone through this process as well.  Those relationships form as you, uniquely, and go with you as your unique voice wherever you go, whether into the cave to grow tomatoes or to the marketplace to experience the joy of sharing your harvest.

“I could read endlessly about gardening techniques, but I
won't grow any food until I get my hands dirty, make some mistakes, deal with the problems and confront the challenges over time.”
Exactly.

There is so much here, Noah, that I want to respond to.

The second part of your post here seems to revolve around the question of "living in the world."

My first response to this, if I've understood your gist, cave-tomato farmer man... and I think I have... is that you are already a part of this world, even your deepest introspection takes time and energy, and gives to this world, from a deeply creative source.  You are already gardening... you are both living in that sacred cave space of listening to yourself and to nature and interacting and seeking relationship with all that is.  So my first response really wants to say "there is no world" but that sounds foolish.  Of course there is a world, but the dynamics that shape your freedom in it, and your ability to transform, are inseparable from that world; they are already a part of what brought you to ask these questions and to share them with us here in this world, THIS world of unfolding potency, relationship, abundance and light.  

 "I may be aware of the mechanisms and conflicts perpetuating the anxiety and confusion, and identify them functioning beneath my experience, but that alone has not been enough to feel my needs / ambitions with clarity...
What is the missing piece (process) that makes transformation possible?"

I want to say... (it feels like you are speaking from a part of myself, you know? your questions feel so familiar, like I've asked myself this over and over)... there is nothing missing, just trust yourself.

And listen and become familiar with your needs.  Get messy with it.  

Messy, in this world, can be more precise, as you hone in on what really matters to you.  Your only spiritual "task" is to draw in closer to your needs, listen to them, answer to them.  This "world" is but a means to articulate more clearly (and again and again) what your needs are.. (and they become more clear with time and with your process of self-inquiry, and through experience).  What appears as illusion to you, as "world", is more of an illusion now than it will be when you break through this illusion to other ones where the illusoriness matters less, and is more a simple reflection, a call and response, a medium for deeper seeing and holding...  Deeper in we go, the less "illusory" the world is and the more close we get to seeing there is no world, just relationship, just you, me, our seeking, our finding and sharing, and this amazing gnarly wild abundance of churning life!

But for now, the density of world has a weight because you haven't yet penetrated (and risked losing and dissolving) that relationship which seems to hold the world in a grip that maybe it thinks it needs.  Or you think you need.  

But listen to your needs.  These are your tomatoes. 

One more thing comes to mind.  Risk.  

Where there is desire there is usually risk. 

In my messy embodied practice, I know I am seeking transformation and my truth when I find myself risking (a little, a lot, enough) to explore my desire.  It often results in a food fight with myself, and with those nearest to me at times! But I am alive and tomatoes are never in short supply. :) 

Thank you all for what you write....

I want to respond but I don’t know what to say, what to share, or where I want to travel. I am in need of deep quiet space, a retreat, a place to go inward to listen for my voice. I stopped writing a while ago, not just to the blog. I ended my attempts at stories. The voice that emerged when I sat down to write seemed like an unwelcome guest, a stranger. Instead of getting to know the voice that greeted me on the page, I rejected her – how could this voice come from me when I thought I was hearing and feeling something completely different? I hoped that I was creating new characters, living breathing characters that could exist in their own right without me – but really, I was recreating parts of myself – mostly the parts that I thought I had learned to live without – or better, I should say, live with, in a more gentle, accepting way. On the page I saw only the parts that I want to run from. I had little distance from the characters I was writing about. They seem to represent all the parts of myself that I thought I had dispelled with, that I thought had grown up, grown away, been transformed. What I encountered was a voice from down below, the deep past, and the shadow self – residing in a a dry landscape with little compassion blossoming. The worst of self always shows up on the page. The past lingers. And it is the present where I want to live, where I think most of the time I live, but my voice as a writer reaches back.. I hold those characters, those who embody the places where I come from at a distance, absent of the compassion that I feel as I walk the streets of my everyday life. I want to kill the voice and at the same time transform it. Does this mean that I still have so much unfinished business and it is only an illusion that I have transformed those parts of myself that lives with self rejection. I have been unwilling to just let the voice be, give it space, bow to it, accept it – that must be the case, since it never goes away. I am ashamed of it – yes, there is shame – the shame that others can see those parts of myself that I want to hide. This voice taunts me. It says, “See, nothing has changed. You don’t connect. You can’t see beyond the surface. You are running from, instead of running towards.

It is exhausting to write the same story year after year, clinging to it, letting myself be defined by it. I feel very much about writing as I feel right now during my workouts at the gym. I want to cry that I can’t do it (what am I 10 years old in gym class?) but if I don’t do it, I will collapse, run away, fail. It is about life and death. It is about health and dis-ease. What am I trying to prove? And to whom do I need to show proof? This has been a lifelong disease – writing, tossing it aside, having success, and then immediately giving up. Sometimes I wonder if I have the will to finish what I begin or if I just don’t want to try anymore because …. Well, maybe it just isn’t fun… or I am trying to invent myself as someone I am not?

I don’t expect any answers. Or hand holding. I am not looking for anything. Intellectually I know the answers. I am simply stating what is at this moment. I think I am in a spiritual crisis – for now, just at this moment. It is happening to me in subtle ways at the hospice – the smell of burn out, the slight turning away from suffering, not stopping to pause in the middle of things and just see what is there. It is happening to me at my home for people with Alzheimer ’s disease. For so long I felt at peace, full of acceptance, compassion, a willingness to see. Now, it all scares me again. The fragility of life. The decay of the body and mind. I feel so alive and once again so scared of loss and death. It plays out again and again. And again, and again, I must find a new door in my understanding to walk through.

I am aware that this feeling is only one side, one sliver of my life. Holding onto it turns it into a whole piece of pie. I am filled with joy at seeing the garden coming to life. I rush outside each day to see the subtle and not so subtle changes that have grown from the ground overnight. The miniature irises are up, the ferns are beginning to unfurl.. My dog, Blue sits on my bed, looking at the window, watching the birds, the racing, happy neighborhood dogs and cats….

I have begun to read and read and read again. I want to eat words. Perhaps, it is living with the awareness of the whole package that is challenging me right now. Can one live with multiple awareness, multiple realities side by side? I know the answer. But it is time to re-ask the question and recommit to what I know that I know. It is another passage. The work of deepening my life continues, but not without pain. It throws up obstacles. Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed – but the word here is sometimes. It is, what is. Right now. I must have: faith and patience. And practice.

 So my friends, it is not that I am not reading the blog. But I am stuck in my head, in my own cluttered way of seeing right now. I am struggling to give to myself, which makes it difficult to share and respond as I would like to others. Yet, I know if I can give and respond to others then I will relieve the disconnect from within.

Thanks for being here. Thank you for writing and sharing.  Thank you for listening. I am grateful.

Your posts are wonderful and really touch me. I'm so happy that you stopped by Cat! Its great hear your voice again, like the old days. Actually that voice feels more spacious and open than ever. You must be growing some amazing tomatoes.

I especially love "there is no world" and I think I understand what you mean, the no world of the no self of freedom, which seems to be what emerges, (non)paradoxically, from self trust and self-awareness.

And Om, I've been thinking about your two stores, about the social worker and Choegyal Rinpoche all day. I feel that I see you and know you in them. Maybe it's that in sharing not our suffering, but our healing, we are most intimate.

I'm not really sure what else to say at the moment, but I'll keep on playing in the dirt and asking with and through my life and my presence here with all of you.

 ENJOY!!!

CHECK THIS OUT!

:))

Round and round we go, where the when stops, no one will know. In this parallel flow of intellectual narrative, we ask what world is and how am I to live in it? Language turns tomato into soup and world into ambiguity.  Noah asks, “What is the missing piece (process) that makes transformation possible?"

And Caterina so beautifully responds: “there is nothing missing, just trust yourself.  And listen and become familiar with your needs.  Get messy with it.   Messy, in this world, can be more precise, as you hone in on what really matters to you.  Your only spiritual "task" is to draw in closer to your needs, listen to them, answer to them.  This "world" is but a means to articulate more clearly (and again and again) what your needs are.. (and they become more clear with time and with your process of self-inquiry, and through experience).  What appears as illusion to you, as "world", is more of an illusion now than it will be when you break through this illusion to other ones where the illusoriness matters less, and is more a simple reflection, a call and response, a medium for deeper seeing and holding...  Deeper in we go, the less "illusory" the world is and the more close we get to seeing there is no world, just relationship, just you, me, our seeking, our finding and sharing, and this amazing gnarly wild abundance of churning life!”

I want to say Noah that we are not talking about transformation here; we are talking about integration.  We are talking about a missing piece, for sure, but a missing piece that makes integration possible!  But, integrate what?  Catherine suggests that there is nothing missing, but this metaphysical truth, though absolutely true, is too high at this juncture of experience.  For this is the juncture of a split between ideality and reality at the level of conventional living: the level of selfhood.  This “nothing” missing is the nothing of everything, the emptiness of inclusivity.  The inclusivity of both conventional and ultimate reality.  Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.  Emptiness is not other than form!  Ultimate reality is not other than conventional reality!  We do not separate from the game; we churn and turn the game into no-game.  And we begin not with transformation but integration.  I agree with Daniel Siegel’s description of integration.  He says,

“integration creates coherence by enabling the mind’s flow of information and energy to achieve a balance in its movement toward maximizing complexity.  This movement of the flowing states of mind can involve activity both within the mind itself and interaction with other minds.” (`The Developing Mind,’ p. 320).  Italics mine.

Now, if we read closely here we find everything that Noah is seeking. He is seeking first and foremost a sense of self coherence, a coming together of the differing aspects of his experience in world.  What we often forget, particularly as spiritual seekers, is that “in mind” is in world.  `I’ is not separate from world; `I’ is not separate from no-I.  These are the three levels, if you will, reflecting the inclusivity of spiritual realization.  I am, I am in world; and there is no independent, permanent `I.’ What we call “I” is the constructed processes that organize the mental activity we call “mind.”  But, not mind in and of itself; no, it is mind in relationship (interactions) with the world.  This self-organization in-relation-to is how complex systems function.  Complex systems is basically what Buddhism calls “interconnectedness.” 

What we are integrating in this mental activity of self-organization is a set of “goal-directed processes” (life!) and what integrates these processes is emotion!  You see, once again, the keystone of integration and experience itself is emotion!  If there is a missing piece, it is the emotional integration of thought (ideality) and embodied experience (reality).  Dissociation of experience occurs when we are unable to assign emotional significance to an event (ie, feel an event).  In another words, we are not able to master world until we can emotionally integrate experience of ourselves in world.  Or, what Caterina describes as “get messy with it.”

Further, to “maximize complexity” suggests intricately arranging the myriad parts of our experience.   That is, emotionally ordering world within and without through perspective. 

And so, Noah, your missing piece is you or, more accurately, your emotional awareness.  Your fear of world is nothing other than your fear of your emotions (and, by the way, this is true for all of us).  That is, what you call world is nothing more than your not-yet-aware emotionally-charged projections into world and I am certain this is what Caterina refers to as “illusion,” “a simple reflection, a call and response, a medium for deeper seeing and holding.” 

Yes, world has nothing to do with it; world is nothing more than a game.  Use the game as “a simple reflection, a call and response, a medium for deeper seeing and holding.”  Ah, Caterina! 

What I love about Emily’s post is that I can find no entryway, no space in which to leave my shoes.  She is dwelling in a cave, she is inward and away from even our glance.  She says, “I am stuck in my head, in my own cluttered way of seeing right now. I am struggling to give to myself, which makes it difficult to share and respond as I would like to others.” 

“I am struggling to give to myself.”  Make no mistake; though she is inward, she is not in the light of interiority.  This inwardness is closed off from reflection, from feeling, from setting into (e)motion the desire to need and the need to desire.  Emily is in the realm of split-off parts, the shadowy, scattered pieces of consciousness that have been lost at various times of her life. “I am struggling to give to myself.”  Somewhere in there are the sense memories, which are now reified pieces, ironically boring, not filling, holes of obstruction in the road of spiritual realization.

But, something else strikes me here.  While Emily is flicking me off, the images themselves, these linguistic buoys etched in textual space, seem to be reaching me in a kind of hide-in-seek game.  There is purpose here in this double-pointed text: to both expand psychic space (in the act of writing), and then cohere to the dissociative elements of trauma, or repressed psychic content, and lift them up above the surface of the unconscious.  Through this process Emily is creating a unity of meaning that can now be felt and seen, like a galaxy of stars, each star contributing to a larger system.  Shrinking (psychoanalytic psychotherapy) partially means for me constructing an optical-like mechanism (that I call spiritual praxis: deeper psychological process and meditation), where I can now simultaneously see the complementarity of particulate (un)form(ulations) and the intuited unified whole.  This is called insight. 

As Buddhism tells us, time endlessly (re)turns all wheels and, as wheels go, in the end life is round.  Round could be a good thing (as in ritual, or mindful repetition), or unhealthy (habit).   As such, the human condition is not the accumulation of events, but rather the complementarity of both (e)motioning ascendance (transcending) and being subjected to time- and space-bound manifestations of human conditioning (karmic formations).  Simply, to heal, grow, and evolve, we must get off the wheel.  As Emily knows, this can only be achieved through interior work, where the illusoriness (believing it to be independently existent) of the external world becomes realized.

The Jungian is particularly fond of images, archetypes, symbols and myths provide as alternative linguistic features to internal landscapes.  There is something about honoring these ancestral bonds without having to become attached to them through animistic or totemistic identification.  To honor one’s collective and personal ancestral lineage serves as a stepping stone from which direction, guidance, reference, and even refuge can be found and assimilated.  Though older symbolic images might fade in terms of their truth claims, they remain privileged landmarks subsumed in the higher levels of conscious states and stages.  For example, in the rich and complex myth of Isis, Isis’ gathering of her murdered husband, Osiris’ body parts that his brother Sent had scattered across the world speak metaphorically to the mind’s dissociative and repressive tendencies, yet also its deep unceasing desire and need to reintegrate (gather) painful memories as psychic content in order to both heal and reunite with one’s true or higher nature.  In the Jungian (con)text, through the use of myth, psychological experience is universalized and reified in such a way as instruction and guidance.  The life process, rather than mired in habit and stagnation, more freely breathes, entirely, slowly, deeply, and mindfully as stillness and silence bathing it in light.  It keeps life (e)motioning so that, even at psychic troughs, instead of being completely paralyzed and utterly incapable of giving, “I am struggling to give to myself.”

 I was having a great conversation with Noah today on my bus ride upstate to our retreat.  I love buses and trains for travel.  Since I’m usually driving, on the bus I get to just relax and shift into contemplative mode.  It began with my meditation on self, how the very things self seeks undermine deeper spiritual awareness.  And yet, the very things self seeks are in fact necessary to properly subvert self’s immediate aims.  This, of course, is what we call paradox. The contradiction of this formulation is only apparent and can easily be resolved if we understand self not as an identity (a “thing”) but as process.  I realize how strange this sounds but that’s the point. It’s a completely new paradigmatic way of viewing reality, as process.  In the old, modern version, self seeks fixity, priority, certainty, and identity, what we experience as world.  Notice in these nouns there is stasis, permanence, and independence.  Sounds nice to most but these beliefs are the very cause of suffering we desire to be free from.  The good news is that self’s wants are contradictory to mind’s ultimate aim. 

Lately we’ve been talking about living in the world, playing the game.  Self’s goal is to adapt to world, to flourish and find happiness and comfort.  But, despite thousands of years of this goal rarely reached, self and the collective groups of selves called world still haven’t given up the sets of beliefs that prevent these goals from being reached.  And though these beliefs are erroneous, what will likely never change is that we live in world.  As Robert Frost says, “Earth’s the right place for love, I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”  So, what to do?

For me, the only reasonable and tested answer to this dilemma is to create or design a life that exposes the inherent repressiveness of law and order that defines world.  I call it spiritual praxis, a combination of psychoanalytic (not the doctrinal psychoanalysis) inquiry and meditation practice.  This process does not stipulate an alternative, a replacement ideology for dualism; but, rather its aim is to cultivate mind as a motioning path of critique that engages with the game, at every turn. 

Those of us living with uncertainty, fear, and doubt regarding “what to do with my life” tend to slip immediately into the wrong thinking.  They tend to lose sight of the fact that their emotions, not thoughts, are governing them.  Fear, anxiety, shame, and guilt drive the engine of confusion.  It’s that simple.  So, if emotions are driving us mad, then why are we focusing on the reified fictions of those emotions – the beliefs and “things”—rather then the emotions themselves? 

We have to realize that there is no destination, that the process is the destination. There is no arriving.  Secondly on my mind was that this shift in thinking—unsurprisingly known as, from dual to nondual—is paradoxically, as such, a profound movement of ethicality.  It is not only philosophically (wisdom) based but also fundamentally value-centric.

This approach we might call an “ethical odyssey,” which is why we speak of wisdom AND compassion.  It interrogates all ways of life established within a codified moral system.  But, again, this process of practice is always IN the world—in body, senses, emotions, language, relationship!  And its aim is freedom.  Not freedom from or freedom to, it is freedom AS. Freedom as awareness.  But, as I’ve been suggesting, this awareness is ultimately superordinate to self-awareness and the deepest understanding of this obviates reification, the pathology of thought.  Awareness never separates E from motion; it stays integrated and, as such, sublates motive, fixity, priority, certainty, and identity.  Awareness uses recursivity, (re)turning, as an opening rather than as establishing.  There cannot be judgment in opening, for judgment is closed, it (fore)closes.  All emotional affliction and the paralysis that often accompanies it is based on self-judgment.  Judgment is a commitment to old, conditioned beliefs based on a codified (right/wrong) morality.   

The cover of a recent issue of the Economist is titled Gendercide: The War on Baby Girls.  I was reading that issue yesterday and as I stopped by the blog today I realized that the article, while covering the facts of widespread abortion of female fetuses, really only scratched the surface because it didn't even touch on what that means as far as women's voices being silenced.  And then I was drawn back to Emily's post and stopped to reflect for a moment that Om was the only one to respond.  Did we all brush aside your pain for fear of activating our own and in so doing silence you even more? 

Emily, you talked about the feeling of burn out and not being able to give to yourself right now.  I don't have all the technical jargon that Om does to deconstruct what you said in theoretical terms, but I really get the feeling of giving to everyone to the point you have given yourself away.  That's probably my own projection, but it does strike me that in moments when we have given generously and not received much in return it gets harder to keep giving.  And it's not because it's about keeping score, but rather because it seems to activate (in me at least) a larger question about the value of giving, of being kind, of practicing compassion, when it's not readily reciprocated by those from whom we would most enjoy receiving.  And that in turn triggers all the doubts and fears about our own worth and subsequently a desire to protect the tender soul.  What a dangerous downward spiral that is.

Maybe all we really need in those moments is a bit of kindness from any source to breat us out of the cycle.  So Emily, here's my hand outstretched to yours in a gesture of recognition.  You are not alone in your dark place.  Share your voice again when you are ready.  I would be glad to hear it.

Gardening is my favorite meditation practice because it allows me to see the fruits of mindfulness behaviors in a very beautiful and tangible way.  Yet for as much as I enjoy reaping the rewards of my effort, I confess it often challenges my patience and unearths my fears. 

When winter finally began to slip away a few weeks ago, and the sun shone strongly enough to make work outside possible again, I found myself inextricably drawn to the gardens in spite of many other chores requiring my attention.  I felt such urgency to clean away all the dead growth and debris, as if doing so would create an equivalent sense of order in my mind after a period of turmoil.  It did for a while.  But it also stirred up the seeds of all kinds of noxious weeds which soon began to grow in the wide open terrain that I had cleared.  Those weeds look so innocent when they first poke through the soil.  And pulling them can be tedious not because the roots are deep at that point, but rather because they are so small and easy to overlook, or dismiss as not such a big deal out of sheer laziness.  I find that is especially true in the interim days between clearing and planting when the ground is pretty bare. 

I like that metaphor because it's clear to me how vigilant I have to be about clearing out the weeds in my mind as soon as they start to sprout, otherwise they quickly spread into an unruly tangle capable of choking the life out of my nascent hopes and dreams.  And I am also reminded of how important it is to plant some new things capable of inspiring that daily attention to detail.  That seems to me to perfectly illustrate the balance between being and doing.  Meditation clears the mental weeds, but without some big ideas or dreams to motivate action once time on the cushion ends, the benefits of that discipline seem somewhat underrealized. 

The funny thing is, once new plants are in the ground new challenges seem to arise almost immediately.  In the case of my garden those new challenges have taken the form of slugs with their telltale slime trails and pock-marked flower petals.  As for my mind, well I admit it's playing similar tricks on itself.  My mental slug is fear which gives rise to doubt and procrastination which quickly erodes the beauty of my dreams.  Beer and some slug killer will fix the garden.  As for my mind, I wish I felt as confident about being able to wipe out the mental slugs.  I know part of the remedy is more meditation.  The other part has to be more focused action to help my dreams take root quickly. 

Ok then, off I go to see what more can be done before the sun goes down today and the slugs come out again.  Thanks for listening.  

"I felt such urgency to clean away all the dead growth and debris, as if doing so would create an equivalent sense of order in my mind after a period of turmoil. It did for a while. But it also stirred up the seeds of all kinds of noxious weeds which soon began to grow in the wide open terrain that I had cleared."

I love this observation. It is full of wisdom. There is the cyclical quality of mind and nature growing through each other. And the irony that clearing away the rotting detritus of the past year brings a few moments of order to the mind yet is a profoundly disordering act to the ecology of a garden.

I've spent a lot of time pulling weeds. No matter how many you pull up, more will come. There is something sort of sick about it to me. In intensively cultivated annual garden beds, it can be necessary, but it is endless and can eat away so much time. I appreciate the metaphor connecting pulling up weeds and penetrating afflicted thoughts, and meditative it can be for me, but if there is deep equanimity and wisdom in weeding, I have yet to experience it.

I actually feel some affection toward weeds, even though I've at times pulled them with abandon. Weeds get a bad rap and we tend to rip them out without considering what they might be able to teach us.

As you noticed Sasha, not all, but most aggressive weeds colonize bare, disturbed soil. In general, bare soil is sick soil, and the act of tilling, though it produces quick surges of available nutrients by oxygenating bacteria, decimates ridiculously complex soil ecologies and stimulates weed growth. Permaculturist Toby Hemenway refers to weeds as "pioneer plants" because they aggressively colonize bare depleted soils, building biomass and quickly covering naked ground. This is, in a sense, nature's way of dealing with a cut or sore, the first step in the natural succession. After a forest burns, the "weed" species begin the healing process.

I'm more and more oriented toward not how do I get rid of weeds (though this is still at times an unfortunate need) but instead, what are the conditions that stimulate weed growth in the first place, and how can I change my behavior accordingly?

The first thing I've realized is that permanently removing biomass from the garden is creating an energy deficit, which always must be replaced by some amendment. Life is constantly recycling itself via the process of decay. When I take a walk in the woods, I notice that the soil is almost never exposed; it is always covered by a deep layer of decaying leaves and bark, turning into soil and feeding countless processes. This also acts as a mulch, making if very difficult for most seeds to sprout. By removing this layer from the garden, I'm not only depleting resources for the next years growth, but also exposing the soil and allowing the weeds to burst through. So the focus turns from killing weeds to (naturally) building soil.

In a way, one of the greatest challenges I find is to allow things to be as they are, to flow with the river instead of swimming against it, to direct the forces of life and death in the garden toward my favor, to stop fighting their inevitability. I highly recommend the book "One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. I remember at one point he explains that it took him most of his life to learn the simplicity of doing less as a way of abundance.

Looking forward to more stories from you garden.

Noah, I loved your response and have been pondering it for days but haven't had time to write.  I had never really thought about bare soil being like a wound and that image has been rolling around in my mind since I read it.  Sometimes we are bare and wounded in ways we don't recognize until someone points it out.  Keeping with your metaphor, I am led to wonder what is the best recourse in that case?  To let a few weeds grow to cover the tender spot, or to purposely find a cover that will also nourish (like mulch).  A lot for me to continue pondering here both in the garden and in my life.