The Dog Trot Mind

 In the Southeastern United States there is a traditional style of house called the Dog Trot, or Breeze Way or (my favorite, though less metaphorically useful) the Possum Trot.  The house begins as a perfect square, divided in half -- one side for communal living, dining, visiting, Picking & Grinning, etc., and the other for private sleeping, etc. etc.  In between the halves, running from the centered front door to the centered back door is an alley, or the Dog Trot, which allows whatever breeze might show up, or the dogs hot in pursuit of, say, a 'possum, freedom to flow in either direction.

I was struck this morning by the similarity to the human brain, its construct as left-half (intellectual, computative, competitive and ego-driven) and right-half (creative, dreamy, intuitive, serene).  From the left half, we deal with worldly matters, come together with other beings, sometimes in peace and common purpose, sometimes in strife with accompanying pain, betrayal, loss.  Here is where our internal conflicts emerge, and here is where we find the least effective resources to handle those conflicts; the ego is happiest -- at least it is most comfortable -- in anger, and offers fear and grief to support its goals of supremacy.  Our left hemisphere tells us We're Right, They're Wrong and They must be fought vigorously, to the death if necessary.  Doors slam, access to the sleeping, resting, restorative, creative bedrooms is abruptly cut off.  Worst of all, the Dog Trot, where we can push that gunk out of the psycho/spiritual house, gets clogged up.  Dogs pile on each other, sluggish, inattentive, snarling.  God knows what new critters are threatening us with those dang dogs not taking care of business!

(I’m revisiting this draft from a year and a half ago; I haven’t figured out what to do about those dogs in the trot, but I’ll certainly let you know when I do.)

Jack Kerouac and me

(I have no idea what’s happened to the fonts, etc.  Could it be that Blogspot is no longer a useful, not to say FREE, forum?  Really hard to get consistency, but then I am not famous for my consistency, either, and all this is probably best explored in a whole ’nother blog.  End of excuses.) 

So, I recently re-posted on Facebook what I called the best thing Jack Kerouac wrote; for reference purposes, here it is:

The Dharma Bum

Concerning the message that was transmitted to me

under a pine tree in North Carolina

on a cold winter moonlit night.

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry.

It’s all like a dream.

Everything is ecstasy, inside.

We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds.

But in our true blissful essence of mind is known

that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

Close your eyes,

let your hands and nerve-ends drop,

stop breathing for 3 seconds,

listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,

and you will remember the lesson you forgot,

which was taught in immense milky ways

of cloudy innumerable worlds

long ago and not even at all.

It is all one vast awakened thing.

I call it the golden eternity.

It is perfect.

We were never really born,

we will never really die.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea

of a personal self,

other selves,

many selves everywhere,

or one universal self.

Self is only an idea, a mortal idea.

That which passes through everything, is one thing.

It’s a dream already ended.

There’s nothing from staring at mountains months on end.

They never show any expression,

they are like empty space.

Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?

Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space,

which is the one universal essence of mind,

the one vast awakenerhood,

empty and awake,

will never crumble away because it was never born.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.

   —Jack Kerouac

Cool, huh?  So far in my explorations of dot-connecting, I haven’t exactly nailed what this means to someone momentarily trapped in Earth’s web.  However, here’s what came to me while I was sucking up coffee and trying to get inside the chakra system’s system:

***

7 Brains? Not that, either.

The chakras (I’m informed) operate thus: it’s really more a question of focus than “thought” or “process”.  Each chakra has a point of view, and one’s power center (and each of us operates for good or ill mostly from a single chakra’s emphasis) determines most of the personality.  As one grows in alignment, beginning at Chakra 1, up the body/mind, around the bend, up again at the next master level, etc., the intensity and acuity of the object/thought/action increases. 

I’m surmising that one is handed an issue, like an arithmetic problem in elementary school, and one processes it from the point of view of one’s power center.  The product of the process reveals the driving interests of the solver.  The sophistication of the solution depends on the alignment status of the solver; the higher the frequency (one’s frequency rises with the increase in alignment), the more sophisticated the solution, yet still from the point of view of the power center.  (Imagine Obama, for example, dealing unobstructed with Netenyahu about West Bank/Gaza, rather than this jerk.  Viz.: the level of sophistication of the solution.)

Failure or even weakness in one chakra cannot be compensated for by “sharpening” another chakra — as we are apt to do with our local 5 senses (the blind hear better, the deaf observe visually more clearly, etc.)  Each chakra has its unique job, and only through alignment can integration of these points of focus take place.  Energy travels ever upward, its path a spiral.

That’s today’s, or rather yesterday’s, aha.