What I Liken Progress With Releasing and Inquiry To

In a previous, rather long blog entry entitled Rating Progress, I attempted to make sense of how I could rate my progress with releasing and inquiry.  Recently, I came up with a rather simple analogy that I felt helped me to come to terms with my rate of progress in this area.  I have posted this to an updated version of Rating Progress – but I thought I would post this snippet here, in a separate entry.  Firstly, because the original post was such a long blog entry, and secondly, it is in the past.  So, without further a-do – here it is…

I think the best analogy I can provide in relation to progress with releasing and inquiry is that of the game Kerplunk. The plastic cylinder could be likened to the mind. The plastic rods called straws are like the thoughts that criss-cross through our minds. The marbles are like the “orbs” of negative emotional energy, which are held in place in the mind by the web created by the complexes of negative thoughts in our minds. If you’ve ever played Kerplunk before, you will no doubt be aware of what makes the game so much fun: you could withdraw one of the straws, expecting everything to come tumbling down – but nothing happens! Conversely, you could expect nothing to happen when you pull out one of the straws – to find that a whole lot of marbles come tumbling down into one of the four trays at the bottom of the cylinder. You could work on a particular thought with the expectation that when you are done with it, your entire life will change – but nothing happens! You could reach the point of question one “no” – only to discover a profound shift in your mental and emotion state.

Kerplunk image derived from the photo P1020279 courtesy of Jeff Sandquist.