A BIT OF SELF-HONESTY ABOUT LYING

When I'm lying,
To myself or others,
I'm withholding the truth --
Which means that I must know
What the truth is.

HONESTY AND DISTANCE

We create varying amounts of distance,
Spatial and emotional,
Between our self and others;
As much distance as we need to feel comfortable.

Similarly we create varying amounts of distance
Between our self and feelings we have trouble handling.

So far, so good.
It's understandable.

But then we lie about the distancing
And/or the real reasons for it
And pretend we're right over there beside them.
Why would we bother to do that?
What are we afraid of?

What is it about telling the truth
That we couldn't live with ourselves
If we just out and did it?
Even although withholding the truth
Is insulting the person being distanced,
By creating him/her/me as "unable" to handle the truth.

ACKNOWLEDGING

Acknowledging cannot happen
While I am either agreeing or disagreeing.

Acknowledging is surrendering to the total Is-ness of the matter.

OBEDIENCE & SURRENDER

OBEDIENCE

Both Obedience and Disobedience
Are vastly overrated qualities.

Any dumb jerk can be obedient --
A primitive, knee-jerk survival reaction
To please and go along in order to get along,
With someone we've given away our power to.

Any dumb jerk can be disobedient --
A primitive, knee-jerk reaction
To resist and dis-please
Someone we've given away our power to.

Disobedience is a vain attempt to feel what we already are --
Free.
It never works.
By disobeying, we demand release
From whatever we're resisting
By tying ourselves to it.

Ruthless Rules of Reality

Whatever we resist, persists.

We become what we resist.

Blind obedience to general rules will always be problematical
Because each situation is unique,
Both in itself and within the surrounding circumstances at the time.
(We cannot step in the same river twice)
If obedience or disobedience is ever a question,
It will be about who and/or what we are being obedient or disobedient TO......
Individuals, self-held rules, values, concepts, beliefs, opinions and superstitions
That manipulate, dominate and control us.
Obedience and disobedience are also about an internal policeman called The Inner Critic/Judge
And his close colleague, Guilt --
The carnal coppers each of us has created for our selves
To drive us crazy.

"I was only following instructions....."
Obeisance is a refuge
Of those who have lost touch
With their one-ness with all that is,
With their in-tuition,
Their own internal guidance systems,
With their senses of empathy and appropriateness
And their sensitivity to the sovereign rights  of others.
"I haven't broken any laws..."

Blind obedience to anyone or anything
Is an abrogation of personal responsibility.
Obedience is for Victims --
Underdogs.
("Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full sir -- [sotto voce] -- I'll get you for this, sir.")
Underdogs in one environment
Become Topdogs in another.
Beware.
When an Underdog becomes a Topdog,
It becomes a worse Topdog than the previous incumbent.

In any environment where power over others is traded,
Whether it's across the floor of parliament, around a committee table, over the startline at a street drag race, or around the lounge room after a family funeral,
Underdogs and Topdogs warily jostle and jockey one another for position,
Like stray dogs on a Bangkok backstreet.

Obedience is the orig-anal, primitive Political Correctness.

SURRENDER

When we Surrender
We get to see more clearly What-Is;
We're freer to engage more creatively with What-Is, 
Just as it is.

There is no selling out
To obedience or disobedience,
To kowtowing or resistance.

In Surrender
We pass on our egos' glossy promise of Control
For the greater reality of Mastery.

Surrender is only possible
When the CEO of your life
Comes back from the world's longest lunch-hour,
Busts Ego back to the mailroom
And picks up responsibility once more.

RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility arises from a ground being
Of Spontaneity.
At the heart of successful Responsibility
Is our ability to respond freely to whatever,
Rather than kneejerk-react.

Without response-ability --
The power to see ourself as Cause in the matter
And as the author of our experience --
We are just robotic machines,
Variously intelligent
And profoundly stupid.
We are completely at the mercy of the tides of fortune
And the whims of anyone who pushes our emotional buttons...
We are Victims.

Responsibility requires intelligently honest self-knowing, an eager willingness to be accountable, and the welcome interplay of intuition.

Responsibility is the passcard to Integrity.

MEDITATION

Meditation is witnessing ---
Uninvolved ---
Within and without ---
Watching the thoughts and feelings that flow and ebb through
Watching existence expanding, contracting and curving in on itself,
Watching the heart and its embracements,
Watching the mind in its machinations,
Watching every selfish world rotating
Each on its own axis,

Witnessing the knee-jerk reactions
Of our negative egos
And feeling-memories
(For what is feeling, other than memory?)
Watching ..... Without getting caught up.
And when we do get caught up,
Watching that, too, with detached interest.

Adopting the perspective of an allowing Witnesser
Helps create emotional distance from whatever is being witnessed.
You are less involved.


With distance, identification lessens,
Suffering lessens.
The witnesser is no longer in the thrall
Of that which is being witnessed.

As we cease to identify with the thoughts and feelings that flow through us
We become less neurotically reactive
And more responsive......
More centred.

Our ability to respond rather than react
Lies at the the core of Response-ability.

ASSERTION -v- AGRESSION

Assertion sets boundaries
And delineates one's rights.

Agression crosses boundaries
And violates another's rights.

TIME

A blissful mockery of moments
In which Necessities appear
To be real.

WISDOM

Wisdom is wild and free
Knowledge is limited and tame.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Right from the moment I was born
I was crammed full of "answers".
Mum & Dad gave me all their Answers,
Long before I ever got to formulate my questions ---
"Who am I?" "Where do I come from?" "Why am I here?" "Where am I going to?" "What's best for me to do while I'm here?"
That's not their fault; that's the way the game of being human was set up
Long before they had a chance to have any say in it.

While this setup may not be ideal,
It reflects a truth that I didn't get until my fifth decade --

We already have The Answer;

Our only problem is

We've forgotten what The Question was.

This back-to-front set-up phase is also practical:
At least until we reach a stage
Where we can responsibly think and feel for ourselves.
"Answers-first" gives us a way of surviving and growing
Until we can discard our trainer wheels
And chart our own course.
A problem arises when we don't make that transition.

It seems to be this way for all of us.
Giving answers to life questions, asked and unasked, is what parents do:
It's part of their contribution to setting the game up for us.
The trick in good parenting is setting up the rules of the various games that are played concurrently --
Family, state, spiritual and cultural --
Teaching us how to creatively join in the play
And, as we mature,
How to find and express our individuality, satisfaction and freedom
Within the games.


Where I came unstuck with my Mum & Dad was
I asked questions they were quite sure I shouldn't be asking,
And to which they didn't have answers that sounded plausible, even to them.
That generated Confusion and Anger,
For them and for me.

Another problem with their unasked-for answers,
(And this they had in common with all parents)
Was that the ready-made answers they rolled off the training line
Weren't even theirs;
They had inherited them from their forbears.
Now, it you've ever played the game of Chinese Whisper,
You'll know how limited  and unreliable is the process of communicating by passing information verbally from one to another.TT
Yet children unquestioningly go along with what they're taught in word, thought, attitude, mood and deed by their "betters" as if it were "gospel".
I'm damned if I know why but, after a certain point, I just couldn't do that.
It made life very rough and rocky,
Especially with a father whose granite-set motto was
"I am right, and you are wrong."
T
Eventually I raked up enough nerve to tentatively ask some of my own questions,
But I asked them of others, not of myself.
So I launched into marriage and parenthood
Full of shaky answers, values, ideas, concepts, opinions and beliefs --
Most of them umpteenth-hand-me-downs
From people who were just as lost as I was.
I hadn't a clue about any difference between what I believed, and what I knew.
I was so full of  "shoulds" rammed into me by parents, relatives, teachers, preachers and, later, self-help gurus
About how I ought to be thinking and feeling
That there was no room in consciousness for real, actual thinking and feeling.
I was following instructions -- "Fake it until you make it."
Unfortunately much of my "knowledge" was at odds with my own experience,
But that remained unchallenged
Because I didn't yet either trust the validity of the trickle of real experience that was leaking through the defences,
Or had I ever met the "me" that was having the experience.

Looking back on it,
It's little wonder that my world and the reality I was living in
Had become so dysfunctional.

I felt like I was trapped in an off-beat orchestra
Where everyone was trying to play someone else's instrument,
To someone else's rhythm
And someone else's music,
Where none of the players were really listening to each other,
Where no-one was hearing their own music,
And no-one was even aware of a conductor.
It was a right cacophony!

 Here was I, looking for The Answer,
While my head was full of synthetic answers
For which I hadn't yet formed authentic questions.
The experiences I was having were the answers
To questions I hadn't  more than the vaguest notion of.
I was into my 50's before I got a handle on this stuff
And set out to discover my questions --
The questions for which I already had my answers,
And questions that could kick-start my life
Into a direction that would work better for me.

Answers that relate to conscious questions we're standing in
Ring with truth.
They resonate with our first-hand experience.
They become part of our knowing.
Knowledge gained from others
Can be formulated into a question
And tested in the light of ensuing experience
To see if they ring true for ourselves.

But until then any "truths" adopted from others
Remain just "maybe's", opinions, ideas or beliefs --
False klnowledge --
Until they're tested in personal experience.
Then they have juice.

If you're reading thus far,
It's high time, if you haven't already done so,
For you to wean yourself off being force-fed;
Time to take responsibility for yourself,
Push the trainer wheels to one side,
Ask your own questions
And walk the path of your own truth unfolding.

To accomplish this,
You don't need to reject or isolate yourself from anyone or anything.
There's no need to make yourself "right" and another "wrong".
In fact, that might be detrimental.
On the contrary,
You could grow like a young sapling,
Separate
And under the shade and protection of older trees.

There are no free lunches on this journey,
No cheap, short-cut solutions,
No cheat-sheets at the back of someone else's textbook book to look up
For a quick answer.
By all means, listen to and read about the experiences of others --
You'll always get new ideas and possibilities
To try for yourself.

Life is a do-it-to-yourself game.
The only knowing for "me"
Is what I dis-cover within and through myself;
Anything else is rumour, hearsay and superstition.
That applies, by the way, to this and anything else I write.
This is my stuff, and I'm not even attached to it.
For you, it is nothing more than hearsay,
Until you test it in your own experience.

Neither you nor I can see with somebody else's eyes;
We cannot hear with somebody else's ears.
We cannot feel through another's heart;
I cannot think through your mind.
We're not supposed to!
We cannot know truth anywhere
Save in our own awareful experience.

In the past, I have allowed myself
And, in some instances, even begged to be conditioned by others who seem to have "The Answer".
I was so out of it then,
I didn't realise I was wanting, yet again,
For others to go responsible for me --
To tell me what to do.
The wise ones said "No. Here's a mud-map from when I did the trip. Find out for yourself. If you want to, let me know how you're going."
That was true empathy and support.

Similarly, I will not go responsible for you.
I give you a map and some notes,
But it's up to you to find your way.
If you really insist you cannot do it on your own,
That is your choice.
I know differently,
But it's not my job to disagree with you, prove you wrong and change your mind for you.
You'd never be able to thank me for it anyway
And you would be right to resent me for it.

Anything someone else gives you can be taken away from you.
Anything you give to your self, is yours,
And you will never need from another.

Other people's truths are like the Sower's Seed
That fell on stony ground.
It may take root and flourish for a while,
But eventually it will fall prey
To the heat of the summer sun
And the ravages of birds and insects.

Answers you get for yourself, from your experience
Are YOUR answers,
And no-one can take them away from you.

Stand in your own questions,
And be available for the answers that come in experience.

Here's a question for you to stand in -----

If "Me" is the Answer --

What might the Questions have been?

When I ask that question right now, here's some of what pops for me ---

• What does it feel like to be writing, not knowing if anyone's going to read this stuff?  [It feels like "me"]
• What does it feel like to be a father? Grandfather? Uncle? [It feels like "me"]
• What does it feel like to be the product of Bill and Eira Barkla? (Note: My brother and sister will have differing answers to that question)
• What does it feel like to be a responsible, allowing, caring, courageous, playful adventurer?
• What does it feel like to be an open, innocent, intelligent explorer?
• What does it feel like to be a phoney, deluded, head-fucking bore?
• What does it feel like to be an irresponsible danger?
• What does it feel like to have an Operating Principle that says I have to feel Grief and Hurt to gain Validation and Honour?
• What is honesty/dishonesty, and what does it feel like, from both sides?
• What is integrity/disintegrity?
• What is wisdom/stupidity?

..... and so on, and so on........

What your life is about depends on the questions you ask of your self.
Experience is the universe's lesson.
The answers and the learning you get
Are up to you.

NECESSITY

Almost by default,
We regard Necessity as an impost
Rather than an opportunity.
That's our first mistake.
Our second mistake is to use "necessity" as an excuse, or code word
To avoid personal responsibility for choices we've made.

Stand in this for a while........at least until you get it........

Necessity,
Engaged with
IS Freedom.

Hint:- To see it, you'll have to get a bit closer than just thinking about it.

LIFELONG LEARNING

In chronological order......
Learning to crawl.
Learning to walk.
Learning to talk
(We already knew how to communicate).
Learning to think for ourselves,
Remembering to feel.
Learning to get self-honest.
Learning to surrender.
Discovering how to live
Without a "How-to" book of rules.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

"Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage".

Yes, well, there's more than one good reason that song is no longer on the hit parade!

Love is light,

Lighter than air,

Lighter than thought,

Lighter than feeling.

Love is not a feeling, or a thought....

Love is the atmosphere in which all thought and feeling

(Including the ones we call "love")

Draw breath.

It is the stuff that love contains that gets heavy;

That stuff includes the romantic thoughts and feelings we mistake for "love". The stuff includes relationship and marriage.

What is Love?

Love is..........

Period.

Love manifests itself as anything you add after "Love is....."

Relationshit and marriage are man-made

In the image of our own egos.

Love is like a refreshing breeze on a warm summer day

But when man encounters Love in his room

He/she suddenly wants to close all the doors and windows

And trap it inside 

For himself.

Trapped into relationships and marriages.

The breeze stagnates and grows stale.

Please don't misunderstand me --

Neither relationships nor marriages are wrong;

They seem to be a worthy part of being human.

I love relationships; I get off on them!

They are Love manifested.

And so are relationshits and divorces.

Love is so much more than just its appearances.

Try this experiment....

Hold your hands cupped until a gently running tap.

Notice how some water stays for a while in your cupped hands,

And some just over-flows on by.

Even the water that stays moves on

Making way for more water. Yes?

Now try to hang on to that water.

Clench you fists under the tap.

What happens to the water you had in your hands?

What happens to the water that falls onto your closed fists?

Let love go;

Let it flow.

Whatever stays with you,

Stays of its own willing accord.

Whatever flows on by

Was never yours in the first place.

"Because you're mine......."

Puh-leeeze!!

Love does not make anyone or anything your property.

If you harbour any notions of ownership or belonging,

That is not Love.

"....for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..."

Exodus 20:5

That's not God speaking; that's the froth of some storyteller's ego,

Picked up by a bunch of Levite priests around 500 BC looking for a monoply on worshiping rights.

To love is to let go.

We love in Freedom,

Or we do not love at all.

CONTEXT

Context is a state of Being.

When creating a Context for oneself
It's wise to use "being", rather than "doing" words --
e.g. "Watchfulness", rather than "Watchingness".
Adding the suffix "-ness" helps get the feel of it....
"Watchful" still has an air of "doing" about it,
While "watchfulness" is a space we can relax into.
Try the two for yourself now, one after the other.
Do it a couple of times,
And feel into the difference between the two.
A Context should not be stressful;
If it's stressing you, there's a Condition going on.
If that's happening, create a context to cradle the constricting condition.

Context has less influence on the kind of things that we do
Than on the WAY that we do.
Context is about the way we are Being.
Let's say, for example, that I am about to go on-air
To present a radio programme........
If I've had a stressful day and I'm feeling a bit on edge
And consequently I'm in a context of, say, "apprehensiveness"
My presentation is likely to be very different from the way it may be
If I'm in a context of, say, "empoweringness".
I'm coming from a different place;
Same music, same sponsor spots, same newsbreaks, but a subtly different show
With a different appeal and impact.....
Maybe even a different audience!

Another important thing I've found about Context ---
Something that may be useful in one context
May be less useful, or even harmful, in another context.
To cite an absurdly extreme example --
In a context state of "groundedness", given the skills I have,
Counselling might be a useful thing to do.
In a state of "confusedness", however, it might be a better idea to take a sickie and do something else
Because the static of confusion I'm coming from
Is going to confuse the communication.
And from the other side of the same fence, I'd rather not place my life in the hands of an airline pilot, a brain surgeon, or another driver on the freeway at a time when they're under the influence of a context of "furiousness". I've had my share of massages from people who've been running personal emotional stuff while they've been working on me --- not a good result: I've learned the hard way to trust my instincts and cancel the appointment.

Ways of being (eg. believingness, certainness, faithfulness, dependentness) that may have served us well in the past, do not retain their usefulness as life moves on. At some point, everything -- yes, everything -- comes up for review. Whether you heed the warnings or not is up to you. Mid-life crisis, for example, is a tsunami of previously unheeded warnings.

Take charge of your life.
Willingly re-examine everything you've ever assumed.
And don't just do a spring-clean
(That's when we "tidy-up"; we open up the drawers and cupboards,
and move our stuff around to a new location)
Be prepared to chuck anything that is no longer useful.
Give it away.
Get rid of it.
Travel light.

PITY

Self-Pity sucks.
It is a ploy to wangle love out of an "other".
It doesn't work --
The best a self-pitier can hope for in return
Is Pity.
Giving Pity to a self-pitier
Is as good as giving blood to Dracula.

Pity sucks, too.
Pity is the false love of do-gooders,
Wet and sticky.
Pity doesn't nourish, or bring happiness to either party.
The pitier feels -- I don't know -- somehow sanctified,
While the Pitied one goes on drowning in even more ooze.
Out of Self-Pity we finish up back in self-pity,
Wallowing in a reality
In which we can feel so sorry for ourselves
That surely some saviour will notice we're drowning
And come to rescue us.
Self-Pity, and its bastard half-sibling, Self-Importance
Are Class-A Ir-responsibility.

A giver of Pity should be treated with the utmost suspicion.
Pity is sentiment
Bestowed by someone "higher" upon some poor unfortunate "lower" being.
There's nothing noble about Pity.
There is nothing of one's self given away in Pity,
And the person pitied is created as dis-abled.
And if you think they can't pick up on that, you're dreadfully mistaken.
People who pity often cop later resentment from the people they pity,
And wonder why.
Once or twice since my heart surgery,
I've been on the receiving end of someone's Pity.
I know it has been well-meant, but I've still felt abused,
And I emotionally withdraw from it.
My friends don't pity me, thank God;
They support me.
That's a very different thing.

When I find myself sinking in Pity for someone else's misfortune,
I find I'm reassuring myself that "I'm really a kind, caring person".
I'm pitying for my own self.
Why would I need that kind of reassurance?

Empathy is very different from Pity.
Empathy is Love invested;
There is evenness and engagement
One with the other.

If you can't avoid it in the moment,
Go ahead and pity your enemies,
But be aware;
Pity separates.

Never, ever pity your friends --
Love them;
Love unifies.

THE SEED UNSOWN

Did you hear the one about......
The seed that refused to leave the pod?
The baby who refused to leave the womb?
The 40-year-old who refused to leave kindergarten?
How many people do you know who've done 7 years of growing
And are just repeating that over and over again?
I know people like that, too;
In some ways, I'm one of them.
There are some things I do over and again,
Hoping that one day I'll get a different result.
The insanity of ego!

A seed that forgets its purpose
Refuses to drop to the ground and die
So that it might transform and grow into something far more beautiful
And flourish into its inherent destiny.
Dead seed is good only for chook food.

Our human mission, should we choose to accept it,
Is to find the right environment (starting from where we are is good),
Die to our seed-iness,
And be reborn.

I was once an observer at a protracted series of trials and hearings involving people I love dearly. Although it was a civil proceeding, I saw imprisonment all around; the litigants were all swathed in a protective coating of "rightness" that had become a prison of solitary confinement for each of them. Nobody won.

The seed that has come to love its seediness
Denies the possibility that it carries within its being;
It says "No" to life.
That is its "right".

Being human is being a seed
Whose purpose is to find the right soil,
(And if you're reading this, you've already found it!)
Cede its seed-ness,
Get on with the business of growing
And explore its potential. If you ain't growing, you're dying.

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

[Learned from observing a protracted civil court proceedings]

Guilt and Self-Pity
Go hand-in-hand to the altar
Of Self-Righteousness.

From Self-Righteousness,
Guilt goes on the offensive.
The viciousness of the assaults are directly proportional
To the depth of the Guilt they're covering up.

HERE NOW

Wanna get out of your mind?
Come here/now --
The only place mind cannot get to.
Be here/now,
For as long and as often as you wish.

Mind can only dwell on its own memories of what is past
Or its fantasies on what might yet come.
To be in Mind is to be walking around in a dream;
To be here Here and Now is to be wide awake.

When you catch yourself falling asleep
Into the dead past or the imagined future,
Simply bring yourself back to Here and Now.
Don't beat yourself up about it --
It may happen hundreds of times every day.
That's OK.
Simply come back.
There's no need to go off looking for what led you astray.
Every time we stop to ponder that which stops us
We're still stopped
In the past
Aren't we?

FROM INSIDE THE SIN-BIN

I was brought up in a sternly "Us -v- Them" protestant christian ethos. Sin was the ultimate pitfall and, from my view of my parents' words and attitudes, all human beings except they and their fellow-Christian friends seemed to be inescapably sunk in sin up to their eyeballs. Temptation to sin lurked behind every second tree and in every dark thought-corner. It seemed that feelings of any sort other than anger and guilt were "sinful", and then anger was only legally available to my parents, and guilt was to be entirely my province. And I needed plenty of it because I was - inside and out - such a bad and sinful person.

Any act or omission to act that violated THE moral rules was a sin. Murder, theft, lying, wanting to hit my sister, being Roman Catholic -- all carried the same weight of painful punishment and eternal damnation from a humourless divine entity who'd never heard of the Grey Scale. This all-seeing God even knew what I was thinking and feeling, so thoughts and feelings that I had no control over were enough to get me busted for all time. And once the deed was done, in thought or in deed, that was it. I was gone for all money -- for eternity. Just being awake and alive was a source of continual stress and anxiety.

The only remedy seemed to be to swathe myself in guilt until punishment brought an end to it. Asking for forgiveness was never offered as an option, except in church on Sunday, and that, frankly, didn't seem to help much. I got very good at holding my breath under-guilt for days on end, since God was often away working. I had to wait until he got home on Thursday. (Thursday has never been my favourite day).

A NEW SPIN ON "SIN"

"Sin" -- the word originates from at least two separate sources that I know of, neither of them having anything to do with "wrongdoing". In ancient middle-eastern languages, "sin" was a voiceless consonant corresponding to "sh-sh-sh". The Hebrew root word for "sin" meant literally "to miss" or "to be absent".

To the ancient Greeks, "sin" was an archery term describing the distance between where the arrow landed on a target and the bullseye -- the distance by which the archer "missed".

The only "sin" is "missing"......

• Missing awareness
• Missing truth
• Missing joy
• Missing power

We judge:
Judging separates us from our awareness of Godness.
In a lather of separation every day
We go looking for "missing",
And we manage to find it
Everywhere.
Judgment separates us from our self,
In judgment we miss the what-is of it;
Judgment is "missing" in action....
Mis-understanding
Mis-interpreting
Mis-fortune
Mis-matching
Mis-conduct
Mis-behaving
Mis- Be/Have-ing.

In the Book of Exodus, we hear about a Wilderness of Sin. It was a real place, just off the slopes of Mt.Sinai, where the Children of Israel got lost after leaving their slavery stint in Egypt. They missed a turnoff somewhere and found themselves in a desert. The food they'd brought with them ran out and water was scarce. But they survived on mannah, quail and an unseasonal heavy nigjhtly  dew that "miraculously" appeared after Moses had a quiet word to "I Am". But I, too digress.....

Sin is "missing".

There once was a wise man whose King thought so highly of that he gave the monk a begging bowl of pure gold.  

One evening the monk was engaged in his meditations, when a robber brandishing a sword burst in upon him and demanded the bowl. Without looking up. the monk said "It is in my cupboard over there. You are welcome to it." The robber, perplexed, retrieved the famous bowl and was about to leave when his curiosity got the better of him. He stopped, turned to the wise man and said, "Are you not going to lecture me on the evils of stealing? I am the best thief in the land; stealing has made me very rich." The monk paused his devotions long enough to say "That's fine. Keep stealing then. But be aware of what you're doing. Just be aware."

The robber shook his head incredulously and left.

The following evening, the old monk was just preparing for bed when the same robber burst in upon him, furious. "You have ruined me!" he yelled. "This evening I managed to break into the King's treasure chamber. There before me lay the wealth of the nation. I reached out to fill my bag when I remembered your words -- 'be aware'. I froze. I could not move. I used to be the best thief in the land, and now you have ruined me. I can no longer steal!" The monk looked at him a moment and gently repeated -- "Just be aware."

Sin is missing awareness, absent-mindedness.
Sin is simply not possible when we are present and aware.
To miss is to simply "not be here",
Being and acting without being present for it.
The only necessary virtue
Is to be fully alert.
There is nothing that needs to be changed;
All we need is to be here, now.

Guilt and repentance are part of the Sin Cycle --
Commit > Feel guilty > Repent > Feel "good" > Commit > Guilt >.....
Within that cycle no progress is possible.
Effort is not what is needed;
No need to be more, better or different.
Just be aware, and things simply start to drop away
All of their own accord.
Anything that doesn't drop
Still has value for you -- become aware of that.

In awareness, some possibilities are no longer required;
In awareness, other possibilities arise to take their place.

SOLVING PROBLEMS

Problems are created by Mind
To keep us entertained.
Like politicians, priests, and their functionaries,
Mind generates problems to make sure we stay focussed in Mind
And maintain Mind as supreme arbiter and authority of our life.
If we didn't Mind, there would be no problem.
Any time we "don't mind", we say "No problem."
Problems exist only in the Mind.
Outside of Mind there are no problems.

You might find it handy to re-member that

Whenever you need to create some space around your problems.

There is space available, always......

Infinite space.

For Mind to survive itself, it will continue to create problems for you
To ensure that you continue to rely on your Mind.
Just when things are going along well in your life,
Problems arise.
That's no accident.
Your mind got bored and fearful
Of how well you were getting along without it.
Mind's message to you is always --
"Thou shalt have no other gods but ME:
Without ME, you will not survive."

Because Problems exist only in Mind,
They can only be dealt with in Mind.

Because Mind is finite,
Problems are finite (good news!)
And solutions to problems are also finite,
Always leading to further problems (bad news!)

Whenever you're beset by problems,
Remember.......
You are not The Problem,
The problem is not who or what you are;
You are a person that has a problem.
Suffering ceases the moment you stop I-dentifying-with.
You are not the contents of a cup;
You are not even the cup;
Think of yourself as the quality of the space
That makes way for and defines the shape of the inside and the outside of the cup
And cradles it in existence.
(You are actually more than that, too, but that will do for now).

Mind, and its stuff, is not all there is.......
There is much, much, much more.
Create a place, a space, a Context in which to hold the problem,
(eg. workingness, enoughness, ease-ness) -----
Any Context -- it doesn't matter --
A way of being for your problem to be in .........
When you click into the Space,
You'll find that The Problem is no longer all that there is;
There is more.

Now you simply have a problem, 
Without getting emotionally caught up in it.
Identifying with your problem is blinding and binding you.
The view from inside a problem
Is too limited to get you out of it.
Click into the space outside,
Wait until you are free of the emotion,
Then engage with the what-is of the whole situation.
Do whatever needs to be done
Learn whatever is there to be learned,
And let the problem resolve itself.

SELF-PITY & COMPLAINT

The enemy
Is Self-Pity  --
The other face of Self-Importance,
And Complaint --
Fear with the volume turned up.

RESPONSIBILITY

Without blame,

I put myself
Wherever I am.
I am Cause in the matter.

I, and I alone am the author of my soul.

Here is Freedom
And Power in the matter.

SELFISHNESS AND GREED

Devoid of negative judgment,

Selfishness is going for what you want

And willingly paying the price;

Greed is going after a free lunch,

Looking to get something for nothing.

Both Selfishness and Greed

Stem from a fatal, unconscious choice,

Begun when we first felt the fear of Separation.

We reacted then, and still do now
By withhhoding our wellbeing,

And our Self.

Could such selfishness be the source of all crippling un-ease?
Is our greed for gratification depriving us of fulfilment"?
Surely we are much too grand to be solely our own.

To be exclusive.

FINDING FAULT

In mind --
First
We separate;
Then
We find fault,
To justify to ourself
Our dis-appointment, hurt and ignorance.

Then we go looking for agreement
Within and without our self
Fom other dis-illusioned minds.
Out of Self-importance,
We wallow in self-pity and
Sympathy.

It takes integrity to stand apart from that,
And offer true support --
Empathy.

Look not to the supposed "faults",
But trace through the self-importance, disappointment and hurt
Upstream to the first cause --
The Separation.

When the illusion of Separation is dissolved,

Fault disappears.

IMPECCABLE HONESTY

When you're faced with an intelligent question,
Impeccable honesty is your commitment
To open yourself to as much of the truth as you can stand
In humility and gratitude,
And from that space
Share a truth with others.

SOLITUDE

I used to call me "Gunner Barkla" ---
Always "gonna" do something, be somehwere
When I got a Round Tuit.
How about you?

We're always going-to ....... somewhere,
Other than here;
Sometime,
Other than now
Going-to Do ..... something else,
Going to Be ...... someone else.
What happened to here and now?

We're searching for Home,
But feel like we're moving away from it,
Until we stop searching for a moment,
And then we feel so close.

Home is within us,
Found when we stop searching for it
Else-where,
And simply Be
With ourselves,
Getting to know our selves
Alone.....

But not lonely.
Loneliness is self-imposed pain,
Dis-satisfaction with self.
Loneliness is rest-lessness, yearning for someone other
To fill a void
Of a not-knowing of our Self.

Loneliness is an emotional needy-ness.
When we come from neediness, we are headed for -- neediness.
Neediness creates its own emptiness
And withhold:
Interposed between Need and that which is needed
Lies a thought --"What-if I lose this?"
So just in case, we keep something in reserve.
Coming from Need, even when we get what we need,
We cannot fully receive it.

Solitude
Is mother's womb,
Silence, peace, tranquility,
Amidst clamour, turmoil and liveliness --
The whole of existence,
Vast, free, beautiful,
Filled with every available experience
To be felt, unfettered by the need to consider any "other".

When we surrender to solitude,
In our aloneness,
We find our self.

Aloneness is going out to meet adventure,
And Aloneness is coming home to rest.
Alone, we need no "other"
For all otherness lives within.
In solitude, "I am" is enough --
More than enough.
Alone in silence
We are home
At last!
Ah-h-h-h!
In pure solitude
I am, whole and complete.

The instant I reject any part of myself,
I switch from being al-one
To being lonely,
Incomplete,
Missing something,
Divided ---
Into myself, and the not-me I now yearn for from companionship.

In years gone by, not knowing any better,
I sought a return to one-ness through lovers;
Sometimes I got closeness.
Close, but still so far.
In closeness there was still separation.
She was still, and would always be
Ever a stranger.

Only with myself can I be
Not as a stranger.
In others I see parts of me reflected,
But only with myself
Can I be totally me.
Here I can relax,
Be at ease,
Be all at one
With all existence.
Only alone
Can I feel the heartbeat of the universe
Within.

If you do not yet feel at home with yourself,
If you are still going-to........ else-ness
You do not yet know who you are.

If you are not yet intimate with yourself,
How can you be intimate with the reflections of yourself
That show up as "others"?

If you cannot be with yourself,
And still need the distraction of otherness,
Do not be surprised to encounter loneliness and disappointment,
The consequences of separation from self.

If you cannot feel at home with yourself,
You are never going to be at home with any other,

While you can comfortably inhabit your skin
In solitude,
You will never be lonely.

EXPERIENCE

Our experiences are pre-determined,
Not by external events
But by the quality of our consciousness,
By the nature of our awareness and insight,
Which are both shaped by our point of view --
The point from which we choose to view......

A belief is a point of view,
An opinion is a point of view,
A concept is a point of view,
A value is a point of view,
A principle is a point of view.

We're never going to see anything differently,
Or experience anything differently,
Until we change our point of view....
Not because it's wrong,
But because it isn't the whole truth.

The whole truth begins to emerge
When we put together all the views,
From every point of view.

Then anything and everything
Becomes possible.

TRANSFORMING "SOCIAL" RELATIONSHIPS, INSTITUTIONS & BEHAVIOUR

A transformed individual is one who awarefully experiences his truth 
and is free of constraint to speak it.

A transformed environment is one where truth can be heard 
and willingly accommodated.

Before launching into the body of this enquiry, let me make one thing clear: I don't see "transformed/untransformed" or "aware/unaware" or "conscious/unconscious" as either "on" or "off"  states, but as extreme ends of a constantly shifting continuum. As individuals we all have moments of "got-it", and other moments of deep darkness, and the same goes for any structures or systems we join and identify with, either voluntarily or out of an accident of birth. We both know that real life ain't as simple as black or white, but I examplify the extremes for the sake of simplicity and clarity in the hope that you might, as I did, find some enlightenment from looking at our social behaviour from another perspective.......

Relationships and institutions, at any given moment, are either creating space or restricting it. Those that predominantly restrict have a limited life span; they carry within their nature the seeds of their own termination. If you are opposing one of these restrictive structures, however, you may have to be very patient. Nature isn't always in a hurry to re-balance itself. There are lessons available in imbalance and strife. If you go to war on structures and organisations that restrict your freedom, you will only reinforce their self-perceived validity and prolong their existence. For example, let's take the so-called "war on terror" -- a political device that keeps people afraid for their safety and sanctifies socially sanctioned murder. In the short term it may seem like the obvious solution. From a mid-term perspective it just creates more and better-resourced terrorists. In the long run, I suspect our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may look back at us and ask "How could they have been so blindly stupid?"

FUNCTIONING IN A STATE OF "MIND"

When individuals, relationships, families and other institutions are untransformed, they manifest themselves in the Mind state. They come from, and generate a Survival attitude, and they operate from Positions and Oppositions that they have to be right about. They restrict.

It is my experience, both as a trainee and as a trainer of others, that individuals who have experienced some transformation may well strike difficulty when returning from training to normal life. In the main, they will be returning to family, social, cultural, religious and work environments where open expressions of truth may not even be comfortably tolerated, let alone encouraged. The chrysalis may experience a restriction that can be deadly dangerous to his/her transforming.

All human social structures are created by people who share certain basic, predominant mindsets of ideas and attitudes. Wherever people get together for a purpose, no matter how well-defined or vague it might be, they are attracted by a thought, an idea, or a feeling that they are all contemplating. Mind being what it is, the social structure will do whatever it deems necessary to foster and protect its mind state, even to the extent of eliminating any of its members who transgress or threaten the validity of that mind state. At the first sign of threat, members will close ranks and attempt to "de-brief" the awakening individual. If that fails, the recalcitrant will be ostracised. The level of manipulation and control exercised over the breakaway, or anyone who may be tempted to support him, can escalate to levels of physical, mental and emotional cruelty and viciousness. I don't care how enlightened we think we are, neither your mind nor mine happily tolerates any ideas contrary to its own. Mind will do whatever it needs to kill those ideas including - if needs be - the person harbouring those ideas.

This is serious stuff. At a personal level, some of the things we have to be right about can seriously damage our own minds and bodies. Couples, families, cultures, religions and whole nations go to war for generations, just to protect the socially agreed mind sets that its members identify with.

This phenomenon, by the way, is not limited to human social structures. It is natural.

RELIGION, STATE AND FAMILY


In an untransformed state, societies and their members sell and trade Aliveness in return for a promise of basic Survival. Governments, religions, families and education systems ultimately fail to do what they were set up to do. This is not a criticism: it's an observation that, once untransformed individuals clot into a coalescence of like-minded individuals, the days of that grouping are numbered. They can buy additional time -- perhaps centuries of it (eg. the Roman empire) -- by becoming very skilled at hiding, justifying and perpetuating what they are not doing, and using Fear and outright coercion to maintain dominance.

Like the individuals who create and maintain "the system", social structures conspire with each other in the Mind state, pretending unity but fostering division; pretending openness but fostering secrecy in the name of "security"; pretending to champion independence and freedom but fostering acquiescence; pretending progress but entrenching fear of survival. Instead of being activities to generate healthy physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life, politics, religions, teaching institutions and family "values" become self-perpetuating ends within themselves.

Conscious individuals within restrictive and restricted social environments lose space to freely or fully express their individuality. The environment doesn't validate them; it's support is negative. For example, the Roman empire's persecution of the Christians actually reinforced their survival instincts. Now, it is true that we shouldn't NEED positive validation, but after a while chronic, persistent opposition can get to us -- we are only human!

It's a sad reality that less consciously aware people are not friendly to the idea that life works, and that, from another perspective, their lives actually are  working, and that they are within a whisker of experiencing relationships that are meaningful and nurturing. They're often not even receptive to the possibility that there is perspective other than the one they're stuck on. And there's very little you can do about that! It's far more popular to buy into a social reality of Scarcity and Lack -- ("Everyone knows that.........")

The same limiting social environment, grants plenty of space for being slick and clever, manipulative and successful. And if you're not, it will hook you onto the public teat for being socially incompetent, stupid, and a total victim.  It gives classes and awards for one; and rewards the other with "special-needs" status and support, debilitating themselves and the support system. If you're in the middle, you're expected to work hard, support the system, and cop whatever titbits the system throws your way.

Social consciousness is largely supportive of both extremes. Unfortunately, such an environment is not a very healthy place for transformation. Conscious Awareness is ultimately very threatening to any Mind state, including Social Un-consciousness. People who choose to think and feel for themselves tend to be freer, and less likely to be manipulated or controlled. They are a threat to the gossamer of social fabric.

So, if you bring your consciousness into conflict with an unconscious relationship, institution or environment, don't be surprised when it automatically generates survival behaviour from threatened members. We all identify with clubs we join -- and take it personally, to a greater or lesser extent, when someone doesn't play by the rules. If you find yourself under fire, it might be worth your while considering moving out of range. As I said before, restrictive social structures are  dinosaurs that just haven't laid down yet. Quantum leaps in evolution don't ever emanate from any safe centre; the best you can hope for from there is incremental change. Transformation origin-ates from the renegades -- those individuals who step outside the boundaries of social agreement (cf. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull) Moreover, the ultimate survivors in all of evolutionary history have been those who adapt best to change, not those who resist it. Existence is not kind to resistance (haven't you noticed?)

LIVING BEYOND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

We are a lot of things that need a "Yes" from us, and "social beings" is one of them. To be all that we are, we're looking for a way to incorporate our need for social interaction, without compromising our freedom. Strangely and ironically enough, saying "Yes" to our limitations is the way to go. Anything we deny being, and being part of, makes us less than what we are, and keeps us stuck there until we get that we are "this, too".

And then there is more.......

EFFECTING SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

 Social change is fine, as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn't go far. Change usually comes as cosmetic tinkering, another lean-to, more incremental addenda to the staus quo, often imposed as part of some political wheeler-dealing, without a groundswell of revolutionary energy to underpin it. The cover and the cast may alter, and the decor may look different, but the story turns out to be "more of pretty much the same."

Social transformation can be well described as "an idea whose time has come". An example of what I mean might be the appearance of "fire", or the "wheel". In the light of observations like "The Hundredth Monkey", it's highly unlikely that one single being "invented" the wheel; rather that wheel-like objects appeared in use more or less simoultaneously across the planet: "wheel" was an idea whose time had come. In more recent times, I'm reminded of the break- dancing phenomenon that swept through the ghettos of New York and Chicago in the 70's and 80's. Break-dancing had been around in a very minor way in mid- 60's Harlem, but at the height of nationwide deadly street-gang warfare a decade later, it suddenly appeared en masse to revolutionise life on the competitive ghetto streets of a whole nation. It was an idea whose time had come.

What needs to happen before social Transformation will take over from social change? Large-scale breakdown. Breakdown comes before break-through, I think the question could be --

How bad has this got to get

Before we'll open up,

Fire the caretakers, 

And allow the architects to take over

And let , first, the wreckers 

And then the builders to move in?

Sometimes we get lucky. Nature gets in ahead of us with some kind of "catastrophe", forcing us to creatively re-think the whole deal from the ground up (eg. a) Sicilian peasants living near Mt. Etna. b) My wife leaving me.) And sometimes our stupidity knows no bounds (eg. a) rebuilding New Orleans right where it just got drowned; or b) appointing someone to fix a problem who is actually part of the problem). We'd do well to re-think our attitude to "disasters". If it were not for cataclysmic earthquakes and volcanoes, you and I would be breathing with gills -- there wouldn't be a skerrick of land left above sea level by now.

Any state of being arrived at through transformation is naturally expressive and expansive. It demands transformed relationships between the people involved, and a transforming environment within which to thrive. Breakdancing broke upon an environment and a generation that was eager to open itself to anything that would break the tyranny of street warfare. Only in such freer conditions can a person adequately express his/her transforming individuality.

This is where the impetus for true social transformation arises -- from individuals, relationships, or families, who have first transformed themselves. That is the first requirement for social transformation.

The second requirement for social transformation is that the transforming individuals or groups must engage creatively with the society in which they exist. Skiving off into a cave for decades on end may help their personal progress and shield them from the adverse reactions I spoke of above; it may even be something beautiful to watch and experience, but it isn't going to produce social transformation. There's a helluva lot of wasted holiness tucked away in safe crevices all over the world. If you want to make a difference, you have to stick your neck out. If Mother Theresa had stayed in the nunnery, or Jesus had claimed his permanent parking spot in the temple, Calcutta and the world would be none the wiser.

There's a third requirement for any transformation, social or otherwise. A siege must be laid on Mind, both individually and collectively. An open space, a context must be created in which enlightening individuals can experiment and live fully. And it is up to the enlightening people to do it -- we are the ones with the awareness of what is required and what is against us. A basic prerequisite of all creating is to firstly create space for it. In the case of social re-formation, it must happen at all levels --- individual, family, in partner relationships, organisation-institutional, and cultural-societal.

What are the most significant areas where socially sanctioned restrictions manifest themselves, to the detriment of social evolution?

• Communication - mass and interpersonal
• Relation-shit
• Family openness and connection (lol)
• Education -- the process of exploring and discovering our inner intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources.
• Industrial relations
• Legal proceedings
• Spiritual expression
• Morality and ethics in all levels of endeavour
• Politics of all kinds
• The way we treat our less-advantaged, our minorities, and refugees

What are some of the innumerable symptoms of a positional, divisive, socially sanctioned Mind-state?

• An inability to communicate what we think and feel
• An inability to experience intimate heart-connection
• A social acceptance of pretence and deceit, sometimes in the name of "tact" or "diplomacy" or "pragmatism" -- socially sanctioned forms of lying
• A denial of the withholding of information as Dishonesty. (Trying to get the truth out of a politician can be like pulling teeth without anaesthetic!)
• The assumption in bureaucracies and corporations that their function is to  control or "massage" information, rather than provide it.
• A pathological fear of acknowledging mistakes.
• Avoidance of accountability
• A phony, soul-less facade of "correctness". (Have you ever attended an inter-departmental enquiry in a government, or quasi-governmental bureaucracy? The room drips with "polite niceness")
• A reliance on emotionally manipulative concepts like obligation, duty, moral imperatives, expectations and "shoulds" in order to control the behaviour of others.
• Rampant free-lunching -- all the way from the queue at your nearest Centrelink office to the Town Hall, to Parliament House and Government offices. There are now more people with their snouts in the trough than there are people replenishing it. To use another simile, the horse is riding the jockey!

THE BUREAUCRATIC MIND-SET

One result of a socially sanctioned Mind-set is a phenomenon we call "bureaucracy". When "social" creates a structure to assist its members and puts people living in Mind in charge of it, it will not be long before the structure, just like the egos that created it. will hijack the process. Everyone -- staff and clients included -- soon becomes required to serve the resulting bureaucracy, and woe betide those who don't toe every line.

A hallmark of bureaucracy is a lot of "ritual busy-ness", behaviour  which goes through the motions, but does not serve the purpose of the endeavour. I have a story to tell which nutshells why Change is not going to work -- why Transformation is desperately needed.........

I was tour-managing a theatrical show around Tasmania. At 9am one morning I fronted up as expected to the theatre in New Norfolk. This theatre happens to be on the campus of, and run by, a local university. I was there to set up the stage and lighting for the performance that evening. I was introduced to the caretaker who opened the lighting box and fly towers for me. No stage hands? No. And then he informed he was about to depart to take care of other duties, and that he would be going off-duty at 5.30pm and would return to lock up. I was taken aback. "But we have a show tonight," I protested. "Yes, I know," he replied. "You set your lighting, and I'll show you the switch backstage where you turn the lights on and off." I tried to explain to him that the show was actually quite complicated, with something over 150 lighting cues in the second half alone. I needed to use the lighting console during the show. He couldn't see why. Neither could his superior.


Bureaucracies were created to serve. In reality, they restrict and control, often in quite obscenely ludicrous ways (a camel is a horse, designed by a bureaucratic  committee). Bureaucrcies develop systems that, in turn, create busy-work (work that keeps people occupied but not productive), efforting, struggle, red-tape, complexity, and output that fails to generate satisfaction for anybody. People who cannot be significant settle for being "special" and get themselves into a bureaucracy where they can position themselves in such a way where nothing can move without their say-so. It has been noted that God created the world in 7 days, but he had the advantage of working alone.

The "care-taker" (a misnomer if ever I heard one!) at New Norfolk was "just doing his job", without any broad concept whatever of the Context and Purpose of his job. He had sole technical responsibility for a theatre, but  working office hours!? He was one prime example of someone way out of synch with the Context of his role. He was more intent on designing his job so that he could comfortably keep it, rather than DO it; he had no Intention in what he did every day, other than to fill time between 8.30am and 5.30 pm five days a week with as little input as possible. and in this university, he had found the ideal environment -- for him. He was not DOING what was required, only what his job description prescribed as the bare minimum. As we say in the acting game, he was not managing the theatre; he was playing AT managing a theatre. In a commercial venue, he would have been sacked on the spot. At this university, however, it was a "small matter" (his superior's word, not mine).

Over here in my space, small matters "matter"(and, yes, I'm being very positional about this!) When people claim they are "just doing their job", I have to ask "And how do you see your job in the light of the gap between what you're offering and what's actually required here? Who, have you decided, will fill that gap?'

The caretaker's superior was not interested in hearing about "my problem". The theatre had been hired "with lighting", and in his Code Book, lighting was being provided. The fact  that I wanted access to more than just an on/off switch to operate it was viewed as an unreasonable expectation on my part. I got all his justifications about overtime and penalty-rates -- his realities -- which I suspect he had not factored into his costings with the tour organisers. But what truly astounded me (silly, wet-behind-the-ears me!) was his bone-headed insistence that everything was working well, and as it should be: I was an unreasonable trouble-maker. (PS. He eventually got off his arse long enough to give me the name and contact number for an "approved" lighting operator to come down from Hobart for the performance -- at my expense).

Bureaucracies mirror the minds of the people who set them up and run them and, at their worst, provide havens for incompetent bovine morons and disillusioned minimalists.

Back in 1989 I was working with kids on a self-esteem awakening programme we called "I'm Special". One afternoon, after a presentation to 200-odd kids at Wanneroo High School, a teacher confided in me quite self-righteously that "From now on, I'm just going to go through the motions. At 3.30, that's it, I knock off." Then I got several minutes of reasons-why she felt totally justified. And her reasons were all very "reasonable", and emotionally very strong. She was hurting! I could have given her sympathy; I could have given her agreement. But I had recently learned a lesson about empathy: I listened in silence, thanked her for sharing her pain, and walked away.


When we, as individuals or in groups, act out of a state of Mind, we are vulnerable and, deep inside, we know it. That's why the urge to tell and justify our story, over and over again, is so strong. And no amount of social agreement will make that nagging go away. We are secretly afraid of being unmasked, exposed, and having to face the reality that, with the deeply entrenched attitudes we've got, everyone is going to lose -- especially our selves.

This dread of "losing" is one of the drives behind a lot of social ganging-up -- for the comfort of like-minded agreement (Oh, you're so right, dear. [Now please tell me I'm alright, too!]) A free-minded person who won't give agreement is set upon by the rest of the group in a version of the Right/Wrong Game that goes "You're wrong, therefore we must be right." But even when the group "wins", everyone knows within his/her secret soul that something is disturbingly wrong. If they're not aware of it yet, they will be -- it's called the Mid-Life Crisis.

[A mid-life crisis happens when the accumulated weight of years of being "right" and ignoring the creeping feelings of the "wrongness" of our rightness, tips us over the balance point. We capsize. Mid-life crises are not confined to individual people; they manifest in partnerships and larger groupings. Un-addressed, they can progress into mena/andropause]

For what it's worth to you, here's my Ruthless Rule of the Right/Wrong Game ---

If you win -- you lose.

If you're right -- you're wrong.

It's a manifestation of the reality of Polar Opposites.

(And don't bother to go to your mind for an "explanation" of this riddle -- you won't get it there. You'll only truly get it in real-life experiences of winning and losing -- awarefully.

I don't know many people who aren't wary of being found at fault, and I don't believe those who claim they don't care. We all live and function in environments of low tolerance to fault and/or telling the absolute truth. Look at all the posturing, the huffing and puffing, and the finger-pointing we've had to endure from politicians over the last couple of months. Half the people are right, and half are wrong, but which is which? If you can stand far enough back from it, it's ludicrously funny watching the clash of very stupid, mean, unimaginative, self-righteous minds trying to sound intelligent by sprouting catch-cries and slogans; each one insulting the intelligence of just about everyone within earshot, trying to be right by proving the others one wrong. It's absurdly infantile behaviour because, outside of Mind, right and wrong do not exist. If you're looking to any party hacks or factional leaders to lead us out of the mess we're in, forget it. They're just as lost and deluded as we fear we are.

The Transformation you and I desperately seek lies in a direction no-one seems prepared to publicly entertain..... Push the "systems" in the direction they're going, hell-bent for failure. Tell the pollies what a good job they're doing -- they'll believe you. They'll always listen to what they want to hear. Let them destroy what they've set up. Let the whole thing blow up in their faces. Out of the rubble and lava of destruction will emerge new life, a new vision, and new way of doing things that will represent a clear break from all that has gone before.

-*-*-*-*-*-

Everyone has stories like mine about falling foul of minimalist, inhibitive bureaucratic mindsets. My point is that, being mind-based, they mirror at a social level characteristics that we all harbour at an individual level. We exhibit similar characteristics towards our selves and/or others in our personal, relationship, family, work and social lives. To cite one simple example -- look at the penchant of social structures to limit and control access to information and wider truths and possibilities (Don't tell me what I don't want to hear!) We all have hidden personal values and traits that we simply will not put up for review (I don't want to talk about that!); we censor ourselves -- with ourselves and with others, sometimes protesting "too much information!". As that university bureaucracy and that disillusioned teacher were with me, so am I with myself and with others, except sometimes. (But that's just me, isn't it? You're not like me -- are you?)

 Social structures and behaviour are an extension of ourselves. To transform society, we only need to transform our self.

But we get caught in a vicious downward spiral. Our internal environment is reflected by the social environment we swim in; and the social environment reinforces our internal mood. When we find ourselves in a family or social environment, or a relationship that is failing to nurture us and our needs to connect, communicate, adjust, learn, expand and express our selves, we get tired; we get sick. We get sick and tired of it. But reacting to that by just going through the motions is not nurturing ourself; withdrawing emotionally and Going-Slow is slow suicide on a no-deposit instalment plan.

The problem I see is that social structures become a dropzone for people who have opted to dis-engage themselves. People who've decided to quit on living and, instead, go through the motions of living, will seek out employment and other protection from institutions that tend to tolerate a philosophy of going through the motions. And there seems to be no shortage of those. Under their fluffy protection, we can find plenty of like-minded teat-suckers who regard anyone who comes to work on-purpose as a "sucker".

The spiral doesn't end there, though. Because there's no gut satisfaction in living life down this road, the individuals keep demanding more and more in return for less and less. Every under-challenged, disillusioned piece of flotsam, from members of parliament downwards on the social scale, wants to get paid more for doing less, thinking "Then I'll be happy!".

But that doesn't work either. Finally, the level of productivity and morale gets so low, the institution itself stops working. It has long since ceased to function on purpose. It's purpose has become secondary to the selfish concerns of those who suckle and get fat and lazy from it. Eventually, the structure either implodes, or is exploded by a community that has become so fed-up with it that it is forced to make changes. Unfortunately, "change" isn't enough, and it's not long before the community is saddled with more of the same, just under a different name.

From the vantage point of life's thumb-suckers (and I know this because I spend time in that space), it's actually an achievement to just get by in the face of "unfair" obstacles. Any attempt to transform either them or the system is met with howls of protest. They will not entertain anything that threatens their "hard-won conditions". They see themselves as bullied, oppressed and victimised, even by people who are simply holding them to account for their (in)actions.

From my years as a theatrical and TV producer and events organiser, I know that any idiot can press the big buttons. The success of any endeavour lies in the focus and quality of attention given to details. The Details Principle applies just as much to transformation as it does to organising a major festival -- any overlooked or unfinished business can bring you unstuck and force you to start all over. And Murphy's Law of Enlightenment states that "If it can bring you undone, it will, and at the least convenient time." Enlightenment and transformation are both universally eruptive and exquisitely subtle.

HANDLING CORRECTION


So, social transformation begins with one's self......

For most of my life I've had a problem with being corrected. In the first 17 years of my life, correction equated with punishment -- there were no intermediate stages. It was always loud, painful, abusive and sometimes life-threatening, I have an instant, automatic, visceral terror of being bailed up for screwing up.

But in later adulthood I've luckily been blessed by some good mentors and teachers who understood me well enough to be patient with my slow progress through the defensive wall of horror.

From the day I got free and left home. here's how it used to be for me....... Can you relate to any of this.....?

Whenever I did anything wrong and failed to acknowledge it, I would dramatise it. I'd get tired and depressed (I still do at a serious threat to my equanimity). I'd get too busy, or get a headache. I might get bitchy with someone (still do - inside), and I'd have a long string of  stories, reasons and excuses why things didn't turn out the way they should have........ anything but simply admit that I blew it. Then I'd go on out of rampant defensiveness to make more and bigger mistakes, until I'd finally make one so dramatic that someone had to either haul me over the coals or, in some cases, fire me.

Similarly, social environments and structures are not normally ready to cop to responsibility for mistakes, nor do they encourage it (at least publicly) from the people who work within them.

I had a good boss at Channel Nine in Perth -- an ebullient bloke called Laurie Kiernan.  One day he patiently listened to my long list of reasons-why, justifications, mitigations and excuses for something I'd done. When the torrent finally stopped, he looked at me kindly for a moment, than said quietly, "Mr.Barkla, that's one helluva list of reasons. There's only one thing wrong with it; you ain't on it." I've never forgotten it.

Laurie taught me that when we fail to acknowledge our mistakes and our role of responsibility in them, we're doomed to repeat them, doing harm to ourselves and others. He was taking responsibility with his Board of Directors for having hired me; all he wanted from me was self-responsibility.

Social organisations are not normally conducive to that level of integrity. In hindsight, he was not  the first truly responsible man I'd ever met, but he was the first one I recognised. I guess that said something for my growing maturity. I am indeed fortunate and grateful for having known him.

Instant correction -- calling it straight -- is true support. Social-ites may call it disloyalty, negativity, abruptness, rudeness, and even abusiveness. But then, social consciousness would rather call a spade "A hard, metallic implement for cultivating or burying something...", rather than "a spade".

Correction is an application of the energy of Love. How you choose to experience being on the receiving end of correction says more about you and the breadth of your definition of "love", than the person who's sticking their neck out for you.

Going through the motions, withholding truth and ducking responsibility are debilitating and exhausting. Real work -- working on purpose and taking full responsibility -- is invigorating.

TOWARDS A CONSCIOUS SOCIETY


Individuals becoming personally aware and growing in consciousness are already having a transformative effect on their social milieu. Without proselytising, transforming individuals naturally transform relationships; transforming relationships naturally evolutionise families, organisations and institutions. The manner in which people relate to each other and to the universe they live in is being regrounded.  We may falter, get lost and make mistakes along the way, but the old ways are at last disappearing as the world undergoes radical renewal, from the bottom upwards.

That's the good news...

The bad news is that social structures and environments are still imposing influence from above and within, from mindsets of positionality and right-ness that ultimately do not produce anything more than compliance, conformity and occasional surface change. Revolutionary movements against totalitarianism, for example, have rarely - if ever - produced anything more than a differently flavoured totalitarian regime. Tsar Nicholas was replaced by Joseph Stalin. Chiang Kai Chek was replaced by Mao Tse Dung. The King of Thailand will be replaced by Thaksin Shinawatra, or one of his cronies. The "change" usually means even more rules, more restrictions, more limitations to freedom, more govern-ment. We change leaders, we change governments, but nothing gets appreciably better because neither the leaders nor the institutions through which they function know how to escape Mind. They may offer goals, and promise rewards, but they lack Purpose and Vision beyond their limited imaginings.

My commitment is to a world that works. And it works when my world is working for me and your world is working for you. It works both ways. It cannot be that my world can work for me, and yours can lose out as a result of that. The world does not work that way.

A "world working" doesn't mean quite the same for me as it does for you. We each have a different view of what constitutes workingness, and that is as it should be. We don't have to agree, or to all be the same in order to get along. But we DO need to Allow the differences between us. Neither personal ego nor social consciousness are renowned for their ability to allow for differences.

A synthesis of diverseness is how the world works. It's complex, but maybe I can use a simplified example ...... take the co-existence of lions and impala. Lions don't eat grass. Impala eat grasses; lions eat impala. That's how it works. It could be said that the impala support the lions. But there is more..... the fitter, stronger and smarter impala tend to get away from the lions, who are quite happy to make do with the weaker, sick or older impala, thus culling "weak" strains out of the impala gene pool. That's healthy for the impala. So it can also be said that the lions are supporting the impala. The whole thing balances: it works.

I want to see the world actually DOING what it is designed to do -- nurturing and supporting the experience of all being. I want everyone to get that they are empowered and nurtured. What I want is not "revolutionary" in the normally accepted meaning of the word. Revolution is habitually equated with social change, revolting against something, resisting something. It predicates on something being "right", and something else being "wrong". My kind of revolution transcends conflict. It transcends change; it is not looking for change. Change is the transition from young caterpillar to fatter, smarter and older caterpillar; Transformation is the switch from caterpillar to butterfly. I seek to provoke and empower transformation.

Social change has some value. It is one aspect of evolution, just in ultra-slow-motion. But I'm impatient;  I like quantum surprises. I'm not going to live long enough for "change" to do it for me. Left on its own, change quickly loses impetus by chasing its own tail. Social change produces only incremental improvements. The world at large still doesn't work any better for all but a select few, just a bit differently.

My kind of transformation focuses on creating space for Possibility here and now. The past is for forensics. The future is for soothsayers. The only reality is here and now. Even while you're trawling around the remains of the past, or entrancing your way into a fantasised future you're doing it here and now -- always. There is no other time or place!

Mind-scientists tell us, quite rightly, that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. From within a mind perspective, that's very true. But we are much more than mere Mind, and outside of Mind a here-and-now moment of transformation can break that nexus between the past and the future -- forever.

That break can only happen, though, for individuals. Transformation happens socially when enough individuals get the transformative "a-hah!" to tip the balance of critical mass over in favour of the new paradigm. Australian politicians in the last few weeks, in the context of a hung parliament have coined the phrase "a new paradigm". We wish!! It isn't. What's happened is not a new paradigm. The pollies haven't transformed, and nothing much has even changed. There may be some cosmetic tinkering with existing policies and some debating rules, but basically we get the same old people sprouting the same old jingoistic slogans and doing the same old things the same obnoxious ways. If there had been a new paradigm, few - if any - of them would have been re-elected. We'd have an entirely different bunch of newbies in Canberra now experimenting for some new, more effective way to get the national housekeeping done.

A new paradigm is certainly what's needed, but before that can happen there's a lot of personal transforming to be done, and that can only be addressed in the here-and-now.

While I often sound warnings to others about the possible pitfalls of taking a certain direction in life, and recommend healthier alternatives, my responsibilities and rights end right there. I have no idea where you ought to be going or what your goals should be. That is no-one's business but yours. And I decline invitations from others to tell them what to do. On the contrary, my stand in life is one of "self-responsibility", and I create you as able and authorised to make your own choices, and go responsible for the consequences (It's your life; you live it.)

An idea that transformed me, and can transform you, is that it doesn't matter so much to know exactly where you're going, as it is to know where you're now coming from. Starting from where you are is a lot easier if you know where you actually are (as distinct from where you think you are or where you think you ought to be.) What opinions, beliefs and ideas are you carrying in your baggage, and how are you feeling about your present condition. What do you think is wrong with it? What's right with it? What have you learned from it so far? Is that learning going to expand, or contract your possibilities for the next moment? What is your model for survival? What do you agree with, what do you disagree with, what are you OK with, and what are you not OK with? Get your positionality, and know that whatever you resist from here onwards is going to show up in your face.

The first step in transforming where you are going to is to get straight on where you are and make peace with where you are coming from. Then drop every attachment to how you think the next moment ought to turn out. 

Know what you want, 

Put out for it, 

Release it to a creative force (whatever you consider that to be), 

Do whatever tilling needs to be done,

Then engage creatively with what you get. 

That's how it works. Individually and socially.

(I have tried other ways that do work -- goal-setting, time-managing, positive thinking, praying, affirming, chanting  etc., but found that they don't work for long, because all I got was small change -- no real transformation. I found that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But I'm sure you're going to find that out for yourself, and that is as it should be. All I ask on your behalf is that you be aware, and when you come to your next experience of "not-working", just remember what you've read today).

SELF AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Self is not the same as "selfishness"; in fact they are in some respects polar opposites. Self is the level of awareness we have of what we are at the deepest core of being. Self is infinitely allowing, which is more than can be said for "selfishness". Self has nothing whatsoever to do with accidents of lineage, biography, geography, culture, appearance, attitude, health, intelligence quotient, achievements or possessions -- anything that comes and goes. These, and more, are all available to Self for the purpose of human experiences, but they are NOT Self itself. 

Self has no opposite. It is the ultimate absolute. There is nothing that is not Self.

Selfishness -- in the negative sense of the word, is what results when we identify with any of the above artifices. Selfishness has opposites, which might sound something like "altruism" or "consideration". Selfishness arises from ego, which hijacked the term "self" unto itself in order to camouflage itself and guilt-trip us away from deeply exploring "Who am I?" When we really question our Am-ness, we eventually get to a point where our ego gets busted from the CEO's chair back to where it belongs -- in the mailroom. Ego, just like its offsprung social consciousness, has a vested interest in sabotaging any effort to access true Self.

Self is that which has created and is aware of and available to all experience. There is nothing narcissistic about creating and transcending the things that lead to narcissism. 

We are Self, loaded down with, and limited by all the things we add after "I am......." That includes being social animals. Social is selfish, for as long as the individual Selves that make it up continue to behave so that they can experience the giving and receiving of "selfishness". That will continue until each person-ality realises that he/she is short-changing himself, and gives it up. When enough people give it up, society will stop being selfish and become Itself; it will return to its original purpose.

What do you think were the original reasons our ancient ancestors socialised themselves inside their caves and trees? Make a list.


Now look at each item on that list. How well are each of our present social structures -- family, state and religious -- fulfilling those  purposes? 

What, do you think, are the causes of their failures? Make another list.

Now, looking at each item on that list in turn, how do those failures and causes show up in your being?

If you want to change your society, that's where you go to work right now.

MISSING ...... ME

Sometimes when I look inside me
I see negative-photo images of things I think I need --
Missings.
The matching positive images of those things I want appear to be outside of me --
In things, events,  relationships and expectations apparently being enjoyed by others.
Strewn all over the world are bits of me
Invested in things I think I need to have
Leaving identical, reverse-polarity holes inside of me -- "missings".

How did I get them?
I sure didn't start out on life with them,
Then, nothing was missing.
But there came a day when others started telling me in word and attitude
That there were certain "must-haves" that were missing from my makeup,
And I believed it.
They loved me, and I loved them, and needed their support.
I went along, to get along.
And as I grew older, the list grew longer,
As others found more faults
In my blossoming personality,
And got increasingly aggressive about it.

I fell for "missing", hook, line and sinker (puns intended).
"Smarten up"
"You've got to do more"
"You've got to do better"
"You've got to do different".
"You must get this..." (including, at the outset, spirituality and enlightenment).
Each admonition created new holes of "missing" in me.
I quickly got the hang of it and started creating my own miss-givings
And learned how to use them to manipulate others
Just so that I could get my way.

With every "missing" I went looking outside
For something and someone to plug the imagined holes,
And I found plenty more missing out there, too,
And plenty of other people parading their "missings" like sandwich boards.

Now, I have found
The only thing "missing" is me,
And it's way past teatime --
Time to call me home.

Nothing was ever missing,
Except in my imagination.
What I went out looking for
Was always within -- waiting for me to wake up.
I want to BE.....
Me.
I really want to BE me!

Every time another little bit of me comes home
Another hole of "missing" dis-appears.
I become alright,
And for the first time I can truly know
Who am I?