This blog hibernated through the winter as a concept.<\/p>\n
I set it free.<\/p>\n
![\"13183468_715458675262630_1983119294_n\"](\"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/13183468_715458675262630_1983119294_n.jpg\")
I intend to start writing two blogs from now (16-10-’16) on and both will start with the same sentence that I wrote in a note a week ago:<\/p>\n
This blog comes from following the impuls to just start expressing in words what is going on around my being overweight and the paradox that I think to know all it needs to make the step towards overcoming the observed eating too much food at meals and the intake of snacks in between meals, and theobserved fact that up till now this knowledge does not have effect in the obvious direction.
\nIt might take a while, probably a lot of words and we’ll see what happens.<\/p>\n
To begin with I feel like finding back something about a book on mathematics that was recently translated into Dutch and of which I happen to have attended the book\u00a0 presentation in Spui 25 about a month ago.<\/p>\n
That was easy, Spui 25 has a archive of the agenda.<\/p>\n
It was about a few Russian mathematicians who invented something new about the concept of Infinity. Those mathematicians, by the names of\u00a0Florenski, Egorov en Loezin, were also mystics and the idea was that this helped them to come up with those new and revolutionary ideas. I remember to have looked up what their practice was. (21-10-’16) And I find myself being stuck in overeating.<\/p>\n And since a few month now, I take\u00a0 daily Hindi lessons, five days per week for one hour over Skype with Ravi Kuliyali from Rishikesh.<\/p>\n And then a few remarkable things happened.<\/p>\n I started learning a language from scratch. It became cristal clear that meaning is given to certain sounds and certain forms. And slowly slowly, through the endless repeating of words and (very) short sentences sounds are becoming words and are becoming meaningfull in a way. A few things: *I found myself a few times speaking German to guests. I can speak German rather well, but my English is more fluent and switching to German included for me a kind of ritual. #####Suddenly it is a month later, 16-11-’16, and I was aware that writing here had stopped. Just thought about this again when the mind thought of making a cup of coffee. That’s my habit after my over Skype Hindi lesson and, again, it was observed that right away the thought came about making something sweet along with it. This are minute and almost etherical mini thoughts that seem to have such a naturalness, such a matter of course quality, that all the reflecting on it ends with eating something. A lot of thinking, a lot of sitting, a lot of reflecting and meditating upon this has happened. Last night someone on the web put this into words and I posted it on what’s called my facebook wall. Okay, one and a half hour later. Drank two cups of coffee and ate one pear, a ripe Doyenn\u00e9 du Comice. I mention this here, because it is also related to “delusions which are so subtle we don’t see them.” By now it is evening, I ate less sweet snacks, but instead another pear and a grapefruit and a evening meal that contained again too much calories. But there is a new beginning.<\/p>\n This afternoon I saw a short clip on facebook that I can’t find for to copy it here. So a description will do instead: a dog stand next to its water filled drinking bowl and on the bottom of the white vessel is painted in pitch black the outline of a bone. The dog tries to get the bone out of the water by biting it and by pushing it out with its paw.<\/p>\n This seems to me like a good metaphor of taking a thought for real, for taking an image for what it is an image of. In a more general sense, it touches to big parts of our cultural and social life. This confusion between reality and a representation thereof has grave and actual consequences, for instance when rebels that identify with confused religious thinking start destroying archeological sites based on their cultivated hatred toward ancient art that they pretend or serieusly think to be blasphemous. Examplarous for this has become the Buddhas of Bamiyan: Two women walk past the huge cavity where one of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, known to locals as the “Father Buddha,” used to stand, June 17, 2012. The monumental statues were built in A.D. 507 and 554 and were the largest statues of standing Buddha on Earth until the Taliban dynamited them in 2001.<\/p>\n Our current Western culture, a culture that has in a way spread all over the globe recently, is one of many many many many images and other representions of no matter what. We live, I play my fair part, behind all kinds of screens, we communicate over screens, we date over screens and what not.<\/p>\n The old art of making and collecting ‘erotic art’ has developped to what is called the porn industry. A multi billion dollar industry with by now billions of ‘consumers’. So, where were we? The dog, mistaking a form for a real bone, fiercely trying to get it consumable, struck by astonishment because it doesn’t understand what is happening. With this image came, on the page where I found it, this text, quite a prayer: And all this is related to my overeating? It’s Decmber 13 2016. After a short dip I’m back on the weight at the beginning of this writing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This blog hibernated through the winter as a concept. I set it free. (Unknown \u202a sculpture by David Altmejd) I intend to start writing two blogs from now (16-10-’16) on and both will start with the same sentence that I … Continue reading
\nLet me find it again: yes, they were Name Worshippers.
\n(See for background info this article<\/a>).
\nAnd here is, from the book in question in English, the thought that intrigued me:
\nFlorensky saw a relationship between the naming of \u201cGod\u201d and the naming of sets in set theory: both God and sets were made real by their naming. In fact, the \u201cset of all sets\u201d might be God Himself.<\/em>
\n(http:\/\/www.math.nsc.ru\/LBRT\/g2\/english\/ssk\/naming_infinity.pdf).<\/p>\n
\nThat was the sentence that was used in this book presentation, and it struck me in a way.
\nA week later my sister told me that she had strengened her will power by telling herself over and over again “I can do it”.
\nI myself have kind of the last decades had a kind of resistence against all this positive thinking stuff.
\nAnd I found myself having a strong aversion against training. I know because that is how I feel about a tv program that’s called The Memory Trainer, in which elderly people train there memory by trying to memorize and reproduce lists of groceries.
\nAnd I have been hanging around in the satsang world for almost twenty years, mostly with Isaac Shapiro who also started out with “You don’t have to do anything”.<\/p>\n
\n((An here also the knowledge about this was already available).<\/p>\n
\nYet it is all meaning that is already known.
\nKnown from life as experience.
\nAnd known as other sounds and words in other languages.
\n[I will write a detailed report on all those small findings later].<\/p>\n
\n*Repeating all those sentences gives a strong awareness that you can say anything without any relation to ‘life’.
\nFor example: while sitting here, I can speak out loud statements like: I make coffee, I am making tea, I made coffee, I will make tea, I want to make coffee, I can make tea and I have to make coffee.
\nAnd there are sentences that, although they are just uttered in parroting the teacher, bring up feelings. Feelings of not wanting, feelings of resistence, feelings of ‘but that is not true’.
\nRemarkable happenings.<\/p>\n
\nLike saying things like: hang on, I can speak German too, but I have to turn the knob in my head and excuse me for having to slow down a bit. There we go. Wo war ich geblieben?
\nSo, suddenly, out of the blue, I switched to speaking German without even noticing.
\nAnd a bit later I found myself explain the above to guest from France in French!!<\/p>\n
\nThis whole mechanism keeps me in this overweight state and confronts me all the time with a high level of helplessness.
\nIt was all the time clearly seen as an ingenious and subtle procrastination project. Yet nothing seemed to be able to break the code.<\/p>\n
\nI have asked myself if there was an unseen layer of subtle beliefs that might have been sneakily building up after hanging out for almost two decades in Satsang Wonderland.<\/p>\n
\nFor some reason this made me shift from just going on, to now having picked up writing here.
\nTime for a coffee without the habitual sweet snack. Hang on, muje coffee banana hain.
\nOh, here is this text: “But the idea of non-duality mostly leads to delusions which are so subtle we don’t see them.”
\nJust what I was thinking about, was reflecting upon and also was wondering about, and still do.<\/p>\n
\nHave been watching a documentary about Boudewijn B\u00fcch. He was a man who made fantastic travel programs, he wrote books. One of them about the death of a child of his. Then later it became clear, not easily because when highly intelligent people suffer from pseudologia fantastica they can make up very convincing stories. So a dramatic report of the research of his life.
\nOne sentence of him resonated in me:
\n“I am an island. No one ever comes over. I like to be alone.”
\n(Ik ben een eiland. Er komt eigenlijk nooit iemand. Ik hou ervan om alleen te zijn).
\nThere is a a degree of lying in all this three sentences.
\nhttp:\/\/www.ntr.nl\/Het-Uur-van-de-Wolf\/6\/detail\/Het-Uur-van-de-Wolf\/VPWON_1245270#content<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThroughout my life, there there has been quite a number of discoverings of never expected shadow sides of people (and countries) that kind of played the role of model in my life and the life of many others.
\nBoudewijn B\u00fcch was one of them. (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boudewijn_B%C3%BCch<\/a>).
\nI remember the shocks caused by all those discoveries, that in fact were revealing an underlying kind of romantic childish belief: people are how they present themselves.
\nConsequence is: you expect people to be how you think they are.<\/p>\n
\nFor me now this relates to the at first sight totally transparant thoughts that hinder my freedom when it comes to leaving out nonsense when it comes to eating.<\/p>\n
\nIt is related for sure with the interdiction of making material representations of the divine and related topics like the prophet and saints.
\n(See https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aniconism<\/a>).
\n(I wrote a blog about this quite some time ago and in Dutch:
\nhttps:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/?p=3023<\/a>).<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Flickr_-_DVIDSHUB_-_Giant_standing_Buddhas_of_Bamiyan_still_cast_shadows_Image_2_of_8-1600x1062-1024x680.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nI did and do my fair share, like over eating, better not but …..?
\nIt’s the search for the dots, the ongoing search for the dots.<\/p>\n
\n![\"dog-bone-chalkboard-vinyl-peel-and-stick-black-wall-decal-sticker-20-inches_22569934\"](\"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/dog-bone-chalkboard-vinyl-peel-and-stick-black-wall-decal-sticker-20-inches_22569934-300x300.jpeg\")
\n![\"images\"](\"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/images.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"polls_begging_20dog_3535_859351_poll_xlarge\"](\"https:\/\/hansvandergugten.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/polls_begging_20dog_3535_859351_poll_xlarge.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\nDear Universe….<\/em>
\nCan ya throw me a bone?\u00a0 I’m drowning over here in a sea of despair, self-doubt and worry.\u00a0 I’m even dreaming about my teeth falling out (which is apparently a symbol of stress)!\u00a0 Come on, can’t you find it in your heart to give me SOME POSITIVES?\u00a0 Pretty please?\u00a0 With sugar on top?\u00a0 I’ll be your best friend…..<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFor sure it is. (Enough for today).<\/p>\n
\nFor sure another part of this story is the blog I wrote on the 8th weekend of the Taotraining that I follow: http:\/\/www.hansvandergugten.nl\/?p=4664<\/a>
\nTwo weeks from now I hope to be in India again. This will stay a consept for a while. Maybe this will be continued from\/in India. Who knows?<\/p>\n