WHAT MATTERS MOST?

WHAT MATTERS MOST?

“With a little perspective you can live a life of Conscious Intent.”

I find that the secret to living a full life is to live it from as many differing perspectives as my mind will allow me. I stand in a single perspective for a while, as if it is the truth, for as long as it takes to get a feel for what realities I experience in that place. Every new perspective provides me with a different point of view, a different angle, a different slant, and I get to see different things around the same situation. From some angles I get to see things I could not see from other angles.

Each insight is in itself real and true, but not the whole shebang – each revelation is a slice of reality and a sliver of “the whole truth”. Now this wholistic quest for truth is not the road usually traveled. Most people can't be bothered. They habitually adopt one perspective, close one eye, and tell themselves “This is The Truth”, and they proclaim to the rest of the world “I'm right!” And we always get to be right because the positions we take are always self-proving. This is how the game works.

If you are one of these positional people, don't bother reading further. Move on to something else; this isn't for you. And if you think to read this then prove me “wrong”, you're wasting your time. What follows is neither right nor wrong. And I don't believe it; I don't disbelieve it either. It's neutral. So whatever you say to prove me “wrong”, I'll just agree with you – “You're right! Congratulations, and thank you for your perspective.” And I'll just move on to another perspective.

What I propose now is a game in which I will take you to two opposing ends of the same see-saw. At one end I place “Nothing Matters”; at the other end I put “Everything Matters”. I simply ask you to open your mind and sit with me at each end in turn and, for a few minutes, get a feel for it. At the end of the game, I will leave you quietly to make your own choices.

Deal? OK Here we go ----- What matters most?

Do you sometimes find yourself prioritising what you select to do by levels of Urgency? Or is Importance your primary motivator? For example, say there's a rush job at work that has to be out on the overnight flight, just when you're heading home to have tea with your family. Does what's Urgent get your priority, or what's Important? Which, for you, is which?

Similarly, do you find yourself evaluating the results of your actions by some personal hierarchy of importance? For example, the time you spend with friends is important, but maybe the time you spend with family, is more important to you. Or, you might rank 3 hours fishing as very important, thirty minutes visiting a sick friend in the hospital much more important than the fishing, and a sixty-second conversation with a shop assistant as not very important at all. Of course you do. We all do it. But just because we all do something by default doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. One day you may discover that the 60-second interchange with the checkout lady turned out to put all the other activities into the pale. You rarely know at the time.

It's imperative at this point to realise that your hierarchies of value and importance are indeed yours; they are personal. You may have picked them up from others – parents, family, friends, teachers, social and cultural norms and such, but you make them yours the minute you adopt them. But then something unforeseen happens. They turn on you and adopt you. Let me spell this out for you as clearly as I can – unless and until you become unusually aware, you do not have your principles, values and hierarchies of importance – no -- they have you. What we pride ourselves to be “our” principles and values are not “ours” at all. They existed before us, we picked some of them up and identified our “self” with them, keeping them alive and kicking. Ideas, concepts, beliefs, judgments and opinions use us for their own survival, and we die on the altar of upholding them.

There's nothing wrong with it – if you cannot find a better reason to live, then you might as well die for a principle. Many will call you noble and may even award you a medal for it. But that Principle isn't even yours, you're just fostering it. Well, you console yourself, it beats the hell out of dying for nothing, though. Or does it? I mean, after you die, what have you got? Nothing. What are you? Nothing. What good are "your" principles then? They're somebody else's now. 

So many people have died in the name of Principles – what good has it done? We still have the politicians we've got, the high priests we've got, the corruption we've got, the crime we've got, the war mongers we've got, the hypocrisies, the poverty, the injustices. Someone dying for their principles hasn't stopped any of that. So to the bloke who died on the cross I ask in all humility -- “Excuse me Jesus. Please tell me again why you did it?”

Hey, I got born for the experience of being born. I decide to go on living for the experience of this here and now, to see how it works out. And I'll die – you guessed it, to see what it's like. Nothing more. If there is something next – that's OK too. I'll say yes to that. If there isn't, then it won't matter, will it?

Until you become fully self-aware, you are utterly at the mercy of your own stuff (principles, values, beliefs, opinions, conclusions, fears, evaluations....) History and literature are choc-a-block with stories of people who actually died for their principles, and beliefs. The stuff of legends and  excellent fodder for operas – but what's the point? Once you're dead, there's no-one to care about them any more, except those who are still alive who have also been bitten by the same bug.

Your life begins to transform in a very profound way when you finally wake up to the possibility that, perhaps in the grand scheme of things, nothing matters, and in the here/now - everything matters. For now, let's explore the latter face of the coin that says every move counts as much as any other.

When everything matters, you will begin living a life of conscious intent, and that right there (conscious intent) is a basic ingredient of experiencing satisfaction and contentment. A life lived on intended purpose will make you a better parent, a better spouse, a more functional producer and a more valuable friend than one whose life is lived like windblown thistledown. Your productivity and success will sound out new heights and depths while the old days of flatline uncertainty, doubt, and depression fade into the past.

Any salesperson worth his/her salt will tell you that casual conversations in town matter just as much as an arranged meeting with a major prospect, because we cannot accurately predict where or who which ripples are going to reach. Successful game-players and game-changers see proof that one player's every action on and off the field, is as critical to the team’s successful season as everything done by the rest of the team. You can't sink or sail half a boat.

When a teenager has, in his early years, been given the opportunity to experience and understand that every choice made in leisure today will affect the choices that will be available to him in more pressing times ahead, I'll read a lot less despair in the morning papers about "the younger generation". This is a parental responsibility, by instruction and example.

When one lives a life of permanent purpose, sales figures soar, team alchemy thrives and teenage decisions become wiser and more aware of consequences. That makes for mature future parents and leaders, and elders that rate as national treasures, rather than geriatric idiots. And these are just a few examples of what will happen when we lay aside the silliness of self-importance…Simply put, when we live life as if every action matters equally, awareness is called in, and every result of our actions immediately improves!

The proof is in the implementation. If you wait for proof of success before you try a new idea, you could wind up waiting forever. Rodney Dangerfield quipped I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

Faced with a choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone insists on the proof and ignores the dire and obvious need.You ignore anything at your peril. You put off acting now at the price of a train-wreck later. I know from experience before and since awakening, that when you start doing what you mean, and meaning what you do, you give your life “significance”. You not only find hope and direction for yourself, but also equip yourself to lead others to their own life of permanent purpose! Every move we make and every action we take, matters -- for us, and for all of us…and for all time.

….....AND.....

Nothing matters, too.

But you're going to have to make a switch here. For the “Everything Matters” game, I've been engaging with your mind for the past few minutes. But your mind can't deal with “Nothing matters”; another tool is called for – your heart. Can I speak to that for a few minutes?

Thank you.

When you finally get that nothing matters, you are free. You are off the hooks and in Paradise. You are finally free of the only cause of suffering – identification. You're free of the only dis-ease – Self Importance.

Blogger John Herrman wrote: “You’re just an atom in a molecule in a grain of sand on a tiny beach on a vast continent in an infinte cosmos! You are small and the Universe is indifferent". God doesn't give a bugger. How do you feel about that? How do you adjust to that possibility? 

Surrender to it. Sit with it until the shock subsides and the last of the ripples dissolves into complete calm. No matter how long it takes. Just learn to do what your mind cannot abide – nothing. Be with the idea, and be with nothing. Your mind will go berserk for a while: let it. It is nothing – pay it no mind.

Don't get involved. Eventually you will then find who/what you are.

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OK. Game over. Did you get a different feel for each end? What resonates for you?

Or did you find that it depends on the situation and the people involved – “Everything matters – except sometimes” AND “Nothing matters – except sometimes”?

Whichever way, you have now thought around it and you are more aware than you were a few minutes ago. Now watch how your experience of the world changes! Don't interfere, just observe the differences.

So, returning to the original question – What matters most? For me, it's a no-brainer (in more ways than one) – When Nothing matters most, I'm free. Something, at best, can only ever give rise to something else. But Nothing always has, and still does produce anything you want out of the field of infinite possibility. While ever you hang on to something, you limit your possibilities. When you give it all up, you get some of it back and a lot of something-elses that you couldn't previously see out there.

When you finally wake up to nothing and can be at peace with that, then it's OK to get involved as a free agent, and find how powerful you are. But you will never be powerful until you firstly really get how powerless you are while ever you give a hoot. Angry, violent, manipulative, overbearing, sneaky, sly, or noisy maybe. How many times have you heard a pollie say "I'm passionate about this"? But powerful? No. Never.

When Everything matters most, I have integrity and I'm balanced. Nothing is discarded, nothing is missing. I get that I am the whole, and that if there's any thing in the universe that I need, I know where to go for it.

This is how I do “my” writing and “my” radio shows. I formulate a question, put it out there, then take dictation. The answers are always coming. The trick is to ask good questions, and remember what they were when the answers start rolling in.