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ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM “THE DOUBTING SNAKE” NOVEL

June 25th, 2011No comments »

Kano tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a movement beneath some dead branches.  “That is a paca.  Go and get it.”

I walked over to the spot and discovered a paca which seemed to be full grown – about 25 pounds.   But as soon as I approached it, the little brown, creature ran away for a few yards and then froze.   Again and again I approached it and just as many times, it bounded away.

Finally I gave up and walked back to Kano.   “We have to set a trap first,” I said.

Kano merely walked over to the paca, reached down and picked it up.   He held its belly outwards with his arms under its front legs.  Then Kano put the creature down and it bounded under some nearby branches.

“Kano, why did you let it go?”

“So you could catch it.  I’m teaching you to catch paca.”

Again, I tried and failed.   I could hear Kano snickering.   I guess this was good for him to see.   He must feel mentally inferior to me and seeing that he does possess some skills which I do not, must make him feel better.

“What did I do wrong, Kano?”

“You didn’t catch the paca.”

“How were YOU able to catch it?”

“Because I know how”

“Then tell me how to catch it.”

“You just walk over and pick it up.”

“But when I walked over, it ran away.”

“You scared it.”

“How come YOU didn’t scare it?”

“Because I wanted to catch it.”

“So did I!”

“Then you shouldn’t have scared it.”

What a situation!  Kano knows a skill which I would like to learn.   Yet he doesn’t have the intelligence to explain it to me.  I tried once more.

“Kano, listen to me.  When you walk over to the paca, it doesn’t run away.   When I walk over, it does.   Obviously, we’re doing something different.  What?”

Kano thought for a moment and said, “You are scaring it away and I’m not scaring it away.  That is what is different.”

“O.K.   I understand that.   Now what can I do differently so it won’t get scared?”

“Don’t do anything differently.  You can just walk over and pick it up.   You can walk over any way you want, just don’t scare it.”

Kano walked over to the paca once more to demonstrate.   He skipped part of the way, jumped, twirled around and walked in various strange ways.   When he reached the paca, he bent down and picked it up as before.

I had heard that retarded people are good with animals.   The animals seem to be able to sense the retarded  person’s helplessness.  Perhaps Kano’s disability has actually helped him out in this case, although I don’t know how altruistic a paca can be.

The “empty one” insisted that I keep trying.   I wandered about, following the creature for almost an hour, but could never come within thirty feet of it.

Finally Kano picked the creature up and brought it to me.   He suggested we keep it as a pet and told me he thought it was cute.   It was a strange creature with a narrow face, a pudgy rear and slick fur.  I petted the creature and talked to it.

“Why are you so frightened of me?   I only want to eat you.”   I laughed yet I felt a tear come to my eyes.  It was certainly not because of sympathy for the paca.   I feel very comfortable with the idea of eating meat.   Perhaps my subconscious  remembered some painful event which was evoked by this situation. Kano released the paca and once again it bounded for the bushes.

“I thought you were going to keep it as a pet?”

“Do you really want to?”

“Sure!”

“Alright, you get it and bring it home.”  Apparently the paca had grown used to us as I had no trouble picking it up this time.

As we walked back to the hut, Kano said that we could really stuff ourselves on that much meat.

“What do you mean?  Are you going to eat it after all?”

“Of course.  I only said that stuff about keeping it as a pet so you would walk over to it with a friendly feeling.  I taught you how to catch it.”

“Kano!  How could you?  That’s not fair.”

“Not fair?   Why isn’t it fair?  I said I was going to teach you to catch a paca and I did.  That’s fair.”

“But there are morals here.  The only reason I was able to catch it was because I thought of it as a pet.  And now, in a way, I’m lying to the paca.  That’s not fair.”

“Lying to a paca?   I don’t know about such things.   I neither lie to paca nor tell them the truth.  I just eat them.”

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EXCERPT FROM “THE DOUBTING SNAKE”

June 25th, 2011No comments »

The next morning at breakfast Kano took a small portion of his meal and threw it away.   He did this at every meal.   I always assumed there was dirt on that portion.   But his persistence in this behavior finally caught my curiosity.

“Kano, why do you do that?”

“So you have noticed me sacrificing my food.   The food is what builds our bodies.   One day we will have to sacrifice our bodies.   So it is good to sacrifice a piece of each meal.  This way, we are always ready to sacrifice things.

“Why think in such negative ways – death and sacrifice?”

“I am a happy man, am I not?”  I had to agree that if Kano was nothing else, he was happy.

“And look what I have sacrificed.   Do you know what I have sacrificed?  I have sacrificed my understanding.”

“What do you mean you’ve sacrificed your understanding?   Did you, yourself do that?”

“Yes.  I sacrificed my understanding just as last night you gave up trying to figure out how to get home.   I once understood things, like you.  And yet, I couldn’t find my way home.  Then I gave up my understanding and now come home with ease.   And I am happy.

“I have a place to sleep, food to eat and friends with whom to pass my time.   When the mood strikes me, I sing and at times, I cry.  I don’t know enough to do otherwise and I am happy.

“I am happy whether I laugh or cry, for even in sadness there is joy.  I am happy to be a man, to be a living creature and when I call out to the forest, she gives me what I need.

“She sends me a butterfly to hold, but when it decides to leave, I let it go.  She gives me food, but when I am finished with it, I let it go in the outhouse.

“When I see her beautiful sunset, I let it go and night arrives.  When I have enjoyed the dry season for half the year, I let it go so the rains may come and the plants will grow.

“And when this life comes to a close I will look back at all the wonderful things that have happened to me. I will know that my joy in life would not have been possible without knowing how to let go of just those very things which brought me joy.   And so it will be with joy that I die.”

THE DOUBTING SNAKE by Bob Klein is now available on our “Online Store”.  Click onto the link in the  right hand area of this page.  You will then find the novel on the left side set of links on our online store home page (www.movementsofmagic.com).

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THE DOUBTING SNAKE – A NEW NOVEL

June 25th, 2011No comments »

The new novel, The Doubting Snake, by Bob Klein has just been finished.  It is based on the adventures of the author in the jungles of Central America and on his decades of training in healing by teachers of traditional healing.  While this book can be read as a light-hearted adventure novel, it also contains the full depth of Mr. Klein’s teachings you find here on the “Community” site. Following is a summary of The Doubting Snake.  It is available from the “Online Store”. A tab for the novel is on the left side of the home page.

An ecological adventure into the jungles of Central America.  The allegiance and sanity of Steve, an American scientist, are tested after he is lured into a conspiracy to destroy modern civilization.  Romance, martial arts and jungle survival all reveal the perspective of tribal cultures trying to survive in the modern world.

Steve’s perception of the world around him and of who he really is, turns inside out as he is initiated into the tribal world.  Now, armed with the knowledge of their power to destroy the modern world, does Steve help the tribe or destroy them?

The Doubting Snake explores how we have separated ourselves from nature, from each other and from our own hearts.  It teaches us how to recover our earliest hopes and dreams and bring them back into our lives to empower and heal ourselves and the planet.

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THE CENTER OF THE DRUM

June 5th, 2011No comments »
American Indians use the drum as a form of meditation and as a metaphorical representation of the development of consciousness. Imagine a hand-held drum made out of a six-inch wide ring of wood. An animal skin forms the head of the drum. A long strip of leather winds in and out of holes drilled into the ring of wood. The leather strip crosses the inside of the drum at many points, weaving through the holes on the other side of the ring. The result is that on the inside of the drum, you have many strips of leather across the center. The drummer holds the place where the strips cross.
Imagine that the ring represents the world and that each strip across the inside of the drum represents one aspect of our being (one “element”). One may represent the body, another the thinking mind, emotions, will, memories, the senses, creativity, attention, etc. When you hold the drum at the center, you are “balancing the elements”. This means that you are controlling the relationship among all these aspects of your being.
The beating of the drum represents time. The sound that results represents how your individual spirit (individual Tao) creates the quality of your life, as you live your life through time. The drummer varies the tightness or looseness of the various leather strips as he or she drums, to vary the sound. This represents the way we can be creative with our spirit in the way we interact with the world (the wood ring of the drum).
Drumming then becomes a beautiful way to understand how we form our lives by creating a cohesive feeling of who we are (represented by the center of the strips that the drummer holds) based on the relationship of the elements. Each person usually emphasizes one element more than the others and uses that element as the center around which the others are balanced. For some, the thinking mind may be the most important element. For others, it is the emotions. The skill in balancing the elements in all ancient cultures is to keep all the elements balanced.
Yet I have found that in all the cultures I have studied, one element is considered the best to use as the balance point. Those of you who have followed these weekly lessons will not be surprised to read that this element is, attention. It is consciousness itself. Balancing the elements really means paying attention equally to all the aspects of our being. We need to pay attention to our physical health as well as our mental development as well as our emotional balance, etc. Within the body, we need to pay attention to all those muscles, joints and other parts, making sure that each is relaxed or flexible or whatever quality that part needs to have to function well. We too often neglect our bodies in general or, even if we exercise, we may not practice an exercise that works all parts of the body and relaxes as well as strengthens.
The drum analogy also points out another aspect of training that is important in Zookinesis and Tai-chi. Those strips across the back of the drum are constantly varying in their tightness and looseness. The drum wobbles back and forth to create interesting sounds. Too often we get stuck in one dynamic of how those elements behind the “drum” (behind our everyday lives) blend and play with each other. We become rigid in our thinking, in our emotional state and other qualities and loose our creativity. The “sound” that comes from our lives becomes a dreary beat of time leading to our sad deaths.
The alternative is to live our lives as if we were creating joyful music with each day. What can you do this day to be creative with your life? It may be something small, such as eating a different breakfast than usual. But if you get used to asking yourself how you can be creative each day, that will gradually bring creativity into your life. It will bring your attention to how you can use the elements to live a creative life. That hand that grabs the center of the leather strips and plays creatively with them, is you. It is the interaction of attention and creativity, the interaction of yin and yang. Attention centers. Creativity varies.
We may complain that the everyday problems of life make it hard to stay with our practice. We just don’t have the time or energy. Let’s go back to the drum. We have the drum and the hand holding the drum. Yet can it make a sound without being hit? The stick hitting the drum is the everyday problems and activities of life. The resulting sound comes from the interaction of how we “hold” our spirit and how the everyday activities of life resound on that spirit. In this way, drumming represents life itself. When you listen to a drummer or to any musician, you can tell whether he is playing from his spirit or if his music is just technical. He may be technically proficient but that alone will not stir an audience. You may have another musician who is not all that great technically but his spirit shines through the music. We can forgive the lack of technical proficiency. The lack of spirit is harder to forgive.
In the same way there are people who are very proficient at certain elements. They may be good at acquiring wealth or have great knowledge. But what is the quality of their spirit? Each of us has a great wealth. We have the wealth of our attention and creativity that is given to every person in the world. We can stay centered (not give in to anger, greed or jealousy) and be creative (love the challenge of doing the most with what we have). We can make every day of our lives an act of balancing the elements, of facing the problems of life with creativity. That stick will continue to hit our drum but we can determine what sound it will make.
When we practice our Tai-chi form or Zookinesis exercises, remember the interweaving strips that meet at the center behind the mechanics of the movements. Bring your attention to the center and from this center, be creative. At one moment your mind may kick in, the next moment, your emotions or your will or a memory. Allow this interplay with the elements but don’t shift your attention from the center.
The interplay of the elements should not be suppressed as long as your attention does not get pulled by any one of them. Sometimes an element may try to steal the attention from the center. A thought, for example, may try to convince you that you need to pay full attention to it and abandon the center. You can develop the ability to quietly be aware of the “antics” of the thinking mind without getting caught up in them. You are like the parent, watching the antics of a child and the thinking mind is usually very much like a child. It wants all of your attention and does anything it can to get that attention. It is jealous of any attention you give to any other part of you.
For many people, the elements of their being are very much like jealous children and there is chaos inside of them. The practices of Tai-chi, Zookinesis and drumming are designed to create harmony where there was chaos by keeping the attention centered and creativity active. I love studying how other cultures try to achieve the same results as the Taoist culture. The teaching techniques may vary but the goal is obviously the same. The external harmony of music not only reflects the internal harmony of the musician but also resonates a harmony in the listener. When you see a Tai-chi practitioner doing a Tai-chi form, that also resonates in the viewer. Harmony is the interplay of centeredness and creativity. If everyone in the world had such a practice in their lives, how the world could change for the better!
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