It was Stuart Wilde who first alerted me to the similarities between Ego and Governments.
Governments and Egos both came into being when we sold out on our author-ity, and allowed surrogates to take over the running of our lives. They both get the job by making promises that our lives will somehow get more, better and different. Neither egos nor governments are equipped to deliver what they promise, but they do a good job of spin and camouflage, and it is often not until our lives have become something of a trainwreck that we even consider the possibility that perhaps we should step in and take over once again.
The knowledge of a direct relationship between ego and authority gives a whole new measure of meaning to the adage "We get the governments we deserve." As we are with "authority", so we are with aspects of our selves. What I think and feel about Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Mike Rann, Johnny Howard or even the local parking cop is very much a part of what I think and feel about myself.
Governments, just like egos, strengthen their grip on us by presenting to us trumped-up troubles and crises in such a way that we think we can't fix them on our own. We secretly dread that we're too insignificant, too inadequate, too under-resourced, and too ignorant to do it alone.. Governments (and egos) agree with our own deepest self-appraisal, and see to it that we individually remain small, inadequate, under-resourced and ignorant. Watch how they promote actual divisiveness, scarcity (except for themselves), reliance on external agencies, poverty and ignorance. They get away with it because we secretly already believe that we are insignificant and powerless, and we let them do it to us.
Governments struck a deal eons ago with religions -- "We'll keep them scared, ignorant and poor, you keep them guilty; that way we've always got them under control." In 60,000 years of human experience nothing much has changed, has it?
But we buy into these fictions. In order to survive, or maybe just out of apathy and laziness, we give away our power and endorse every government's/ego's unbridled control over our affairs. We did not do that in one apocalyptic moment; it happened in tiny, incremental, everyday moments when we let go of a small chip of our integrity and vision, thinking that "this little much won't matter". Over time we wandered further and further away from our chosen path, little by imperceptible little. Suddenly now we find ourselves in the mire, way out of sight of home, way out of our depth, and seemingly helpless Now, when we demand a right to know about things that affect our lives and destinies, we get from both ego and government a performance of ducking, weaving and obfuscating that would make Harry Houdini jealous. Either that, or we are told the information is somehow privileged, and we are not entitled to it; it would not be good for us to know. And we accept that as truth!
I remember a line from "Legends of the Fall" when landowner Antony Hopkins asks the sheriff what he's going to do. The sheriff hedges. Hopkins growls "That badge on your lapel -- that's a badge of public office. Well, I'm one of the public!"
We have allowed the servants to become the masters in our own house. and we have done so with hardly a whimper.
As we are with our egos, so we are with those we give authority to.
Revolution is not the answer. It is an understandable reaction, but ineffective. Humankind has tried resistance and revolt many, many times over, only to find that one tyrant gets replaced by another. The dynamics and the end results stay pretty much the same.
Evolution is the answer, if for no other reason that we know from the evidence that evolution -- a) does not go backwards; b) is not static; and c) works. If you want to change the system, change your mind. When your mind changes, the collective mind moves with it. That is evolution. Bust the servants (ego and government) back to the kitchen, and take up the responsibility for thinking for yourselves, making the choices, delivering the decisions and running the show. Hold your ego and your government respectfully and equally accountable. We might even find that the population of psychiatric institutions, hospitals, prisons and welfare junkets might actually decline. What would the purveyors of pills, potions, penance, tobacco, insurance, religion, psychobabble and other drugs do then?
Such visionary leadership is not likely to be found in parliament house, or in a cathedral, or in boardrooms or business schools, or in a fish'n'chip shop in Ipswich. Those people are not the problem: they are the products and the symptoms of the problem, and they are there because we said "Yes" to the system that puts them there. We create our gods in the image of our egos.
The problem lies over here with me, and with you. First and last. We have sold out our psychic integrity, our own sense of balance, and acuity to Laziness and Apathy. The result is this Collective Insanity that so scares, enrages and frustrates us. Yet we keep on selling our right to mental and spiritual stability, and to an alternate possibility -- handing them over to false gods -- Ego and Charisma.
And we have bought the notion of an impending Doomsday. Back in the '80's, when the bottom dropped out of the Australian stock market and we got the recession "we were meant to have", I was living in Western Australia. Those Sandgopers heard the news alright, but they took no notice. In their reality, Australia had just won the America's Cup, the yanks were coming, and everyone in WA had a project. The place was humming! Similarly at the end of the "noughties", someone on Wall Street sneezed, and the entire Western World went down with pneumonia. And while everyone lay stunned on the canvas, the banks backed their armoured carriers up to federal treasuries and got a nice little cash injection of more of our money so that they could keep paying themselves obscene bonuses. I happened to be in Thailand at the time. Thais heard the news too, but they took no notice. What recession? Not here thankyou. They got on with their lives, and there wasn't one -- because they chose not to have one.
During the height of last year's so-called Recession, I saw a photo taken on Wall Street. Mindful of the time in the late '20's when bankers started jumping out of windows to their death, somebody in 2009 was holding a placard saying "Jump you fuckers!".
Maybe that's the answer. Leave them to their own games..Take no notice. Walk away. The next time either your ego or a politician cranks up their stuff, do what the aborigines did to John Howard -- turn your back and walk away. Take no notice. It worked; Howard was gutted. For him, it was the beginning of the end.
Politicians and Egos want to be noticed. They NEED to be noticed. Ignore them. Do something constructive instead. Don't fight them.
Just walk away.
Then (covertly) watch what they do next.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
CAUSES
Causes can change the world. Causes are good, right? Well, that depends -- on why you take them up.
If you're not sure, here are some litmus questions that may help you to determine whether aligning with a Cause you're considering will be healthy or detrimental to your growth ----
If you're not sure, here are some litmus questions that may help you to determine whether aligning with a Cause you're considering will be healthy or detrimental to your growth ----
- What do you feel guilty about that makes this cause seem so attractive? What are you making up for?
- What in your life feels uncomfortable that you might be trying to move away from?
- What in your life is unsatisfying? What is the gap you may be trying to fill?
- In what areas of your life are you missing focus? How will this Cause give you what you're looking for? Is there some way you can first find the focus you're looking for, before you start on this Cause?
- What is the meaning of life for you? Is this Cause going to fill that need for you? Is it possible for you to find meaning for yourself outside of the limits of this Cause?
A Cause always connects with something inside of you. But it is outside of the Who-You-Are. An inner hunger will not be nourished for long by anything external. First take care of your guilts, discomforts, dissatisfactions, and needs for focus and meaning. Then take up any Cause that aligns with your realised values and is a natural expression of your whole self.
You will then bring power and energy to the enterprise, rather than depleting it to fill your own empty tanks.
TRANSFORMATION
Being transformed is being continuously reborn.
There is no need to struggle --
The contractions will take you there.
There is no need to struggle --
The contractions will take you there.
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CONSCIOUS AWARENESS
THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS
Thoughts and feelings fly through our awareness like butterflies and buzzards. They are not who we are; they are not even ours by birth. We live in a soup of all the thoughts and feelings that have ever been thought and felt, and we invite some that we've met home to meet the folks.
Then, in all innocence, we adopt and allow favourites we think might be good for us to have the run of our house???? It's not long before some of them turn out to be less than helpful and start trashing our serenity.Unfortunately by that time, we may have forgotten what they are, or even that they're there.
Thoughts and feelings have a life of their own; they are are self-propelled. They get their energy from us, but they have their own movement and purpose. With our permission -- express or tacit -- they use us to perpetuate themselves. They invite their friends into our home. It seems they somehow know where to come for a feed of energy, as if I have a sign over my head -- "Feelings of (Inadequacy) welcome here"? It sometimes seems like it.
Have you also noticed that whenever you are near someone who has a lot of "thoughting" and feeling going on, you can pick it up? I have an expression "You could pick him up on CB in Alaska!" I'm sure you know the kind of experience I'm talking about. Some people radiate a sizzle of static that fills the air, even without them uttering a word. Dogs start growling and cats get twitchy. Some people who are in a high state of mental and emotional arousal can actually be quite scary.
Thoughts and feelings are like sparks from a bushfire. they fall around us continuously, and we catch fire. But we are rarely aware that they are not actually our thoughts or feelings. We just presume that they are, and we identify with them. Mind is far more infectious than even the most virile flu epidemic. It was the Buddha who said "We will never be free of the wheel of birth and death until we realise that we are not the do-er."
Take some time one day to watch the thought circus. First watch it inside your own being. Don't judge it, just allow yourself to be curious about it. As you come to know it and how it behaves, you'll begin to spot it going on in other people, too. We are all in the same club here.
Be still, and know the What-I-Am-Not. One of the first things you might notice is that you are not actually the thinker. Thoughts and feelings just pop out of nowhere, all by themselves. You don't think them; they just pop up. Notice though, when you attach to any one in particular, how it will start thinking you! You succumb to becoming the effect of the thoughts and feelings you focus upon.
Notice also any similarities in the kind of thoughts that arrive in your awareness. That is because the stream of thoughts we live in is filtered by our prevailing mood of feelings at the time. Our "mood" admits mostly thoughts that fit and reinforce that mood. Become aware of that. Notice how you identify and become one with them. It happens with awesome speed -- less than the blink of an eye.
Relax, and watch.
Sooner (or later) the stream of thoughts will begin to slow down. When they do, you will become aware that there are minute gaps of no-thought between each thought. Relax. Let the traffic slow even more. Look in to those gaps of no-thought between each thought. Possibly for the first time in your life, pay more notice to the gaps than to the thoughts. When one gap ends, skip to the next gap. Enjoy a holiday from being caught on thoughts.
FOCUS ------- REALITY
The more time we spend in the gaps of no-thought than on the thoughts themselves, our experience of life begins to transform. Why is that? There's a Law of Transformation that goes something like this -- When we change what we focus our attention upon, we change our experience. When we change our experience, we change our life. I have noticed that, when I'm feeling less than happy with life, there's often a problem with the type of thoughts I'm giving most of my attention to. If that is the case, a re- balance is just a simple click "away".
The "click" I'm referring to is the one that happens when we "get" an optical illusion. We're all familiar with those clever optical tricks where you first see one image, then there is a "click" when you suddenly see something else quite different in the same picture. Once we get the illusion, we can then play with clicking back and forth between the two realities.
In order for you to get some real experience and practice in shifting focus, here are two quick exercises you could try now. Firstly, look at an object reasonably close to you. Got one? Good. Take in its shape, size, colour, texture, and anything else that comes to your attention. Now without turning your head away, just shift your focus to the wider background behind and surrounding what you were looking at. Notice the details of that bigger picture. Note how very different they are from the foreground object. Notice how your perceptions of the first object subtly change when it becomes just a part of the bigger picture. Now shift your focus back and forth between the two.... foreground ..... background ..... close-up ..... wide-angle. . Keep on doing that for a while, and do it as often as you think to wherever you are. .... close-up ..... wide-angle. Besides being a very good exercise for the eye muscles, it begins a healthy routine for your "seeing" muscles, too.
Secondly, imagine a very large picture window in front of you, looking out over your favourite panorama. Got that? Now a bird outside flies by and leaves a small dot of excrement on the outside surface of the otherwise pristine window. Got it? Good. Now, what do you see? Bird poo, right? All of a sudden, you no longer see the panorama. Your attention has zoomed in from a grand vista to a tiny splodge of excrement. The excrement now occupies 100% of your attention.
This is the fixation of the human mind (just one of many fixations). Mind loves to zoom in on the Poo. Mind loves to home in on some part of reality in line with its current thinking, at the expense of seeing the whole of it. Mind obsesses with What-Ain't and loses sight of a much grander What-Is. It dwells on a narrow spectrum of Content and ignores the whole Context.
You can examine the poo, OR you can take in the panorama, but in the mind you cannot do both at once. If you want to see both, you do have to re-learn to let go of fixations with the poo and "click"to the panorama. You can switch your attention back and forth -- very rapidly if you want to. But eventually, if you persevere with remembering to check out the wider picture, you will just unbend, unwind and flex your tired and spasmed fixations, and take in the Whole Picture, knowing that whatever had you hooked a moment ago was just a minute part of the far richer, more abundant, whole picture
Out of sheer habit, mind will focus on the poo and forget the panorama. This is how you break the habit -- simply remember there is a panorama available, unexplored possibility waiting to be noticed and enjoyed in all its richness and splendour by wide-open conscious awareness. Life will remind you. Just Remember. Step back. Zoom out, and allow the grandness to reveal itself to you. Let it come to you.
Suffering can be seen as evidence of misplaced attention. Mind will lock onto a thought or feeling, and ignore the consciousness in which it arose. That is what minds do. We get the evidence of thought and feeling, but we miss getting to know the level of consciousness that attracts the experiences we're having. And that prevents us from learning. When that happens we lose all sense of perspective. After too much of it, we become chronically inappropriate to the reality of the situation. We fall out of a state of grace and into a state of Ego.
There is something compulsive about Ego. Ego demands to be the centre of attention. Ego is on a trip of Self-Importance. Ego says "I am far too special to feel this unimportant!!" Ego claims to be the centre of the universe, around which the rest of all God's creation must revolve once every 24 hours. The Ego creates God in its own image. How's that for Original Sin? Ego is a jealous god, demanding to be worshipped exclusively and constantly, and given attention totally. This is why ego gets hurt in the presence of a Master.
A Master is one who is simply adept at getting his ego out of the way. That skill enables him/her to look right through and beyond another's ego to the whole, grand state of being around it. Ego then gets miffed because it demands his whole attention -- "Hey!! Look at me! I'm the centre of the world!" It is a lie. Ego is not the centre of anything. Neither are you; neither am I. A Centre exists only in a reality that believes in boundaries and outer limits -- ergo, Ego. Inside a frame, there is a centre. When there is no frame, there is no centre.
Free of ego, you and I are something much more than that. We are the foreground AND the entire setting. We are the content AND the context. We are the Consciousness that holds all the thoughts and feelings that we choose to explore for a while. The quality of that Conscious Awareness depends on what we give our attention to.
And that is always OUR choice.
Why do we choose to suffer? To see what it feels like, that's all. When we've had enough......... Click. Click your fingers and shift your focus.
Monday, March 01, 2010
MIND MATTERS -- ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE
Try this on for size ----
The events and conditions that surround us in our lives are there because they are there. That is What-Is; everything else is mere speculation.
OK, let's speculate. Why are they there?
Just for the purpose of seeing how the view looks, let's suppose they're there because we attract them.
If this were true, why would anyone continue to get angry and fight them? We don't ever get upset because of what is: we get upset only when we RESIST what-is. If we wanted this What-Is, we would be happy. Right?
Having waited so long to get here, why would anyone in their right mind resist what they've come so far to experience?
We invite an experience. We attract an experience. Our desires are fulfilled. How's that for a reality to live in when you decide you've had enough of suffering? You don't have to change the world, just your mind.
It may be that the experience you're faced with is not what you remember putting out for. But what if the experience you've got is a necessary part of the journey towards the destination you put out for? It may not look like that is so, but that does not mean it isn't so. We always have a limited viewpoint in these matters because our minds cannot see more than one perspective at a time, and it will fight you vigorously if you attempt to move it off the view it has decided to be right about. That's why we resist and suffer. What-Is is never at fault. Our viewpoint is the problem. When we change our point of view, everything changes.
Whatever is happening around us is a flowering of something that once took root in our mind.. Our mind is the cause. May be we could all usefully spend less time IN our minds, and more time out of mind, observing them, getting to know them better.
Each mind is like a projector; around you is like a screen. You and I project a holographic image of our mind's programmes onto the screen around us. If you don't like what you experience, try taking that up with your mind, instead of with the screen. You cannot directly change the screen. Work with your mind for a change. Change your mind. Change its programme. Upload something else. You can do this. You change your mind about other things all the time. What is the problem this time? Is there something that your mind would rather be right about than be happy? Why? What is that? And who is in charge of your life -- you or your mind?
It is possible to change your mind because your mind is not who you are. You are beyond your mind. You outrank your mind. Your mind is the office gopher; you are the CEO. How about coming back from the world's longest lunch-break and taking charge once more?
Don't blame your mind. You quit on yourself, and put your eager, ambitious mind in charge -- a job it is spectacularly unqualified and under-resourced to effectively do. Let your mind go back to doing what it does best -- delivering the memos.
You are not your mind. I am not my mind. In every Now moment you notice, or when you meditate, or when you go under the influence of certain drugs that hit the Pause button on your mind, mind stops, but you are still there -- aware and overflowing with be-ing.
DESIRE
You have a mind, and you are not your mind. But you Identify yourself with your mind, and your mind is glad of that and you get a state of affairs called Ego. When you let go of the Identification, the mind drops of itself.
You can experience this for yourself. The next time a Desire comes, just watch it. Stay very still and observe. Watch where your mind moves and how it dances around the desire. Watch how your mind behaves when you decline to get embroiled in the desire. You will learn much about the addictive nature of your mind from this observing. And while you are watching, take a moment to notice yourself as the Watcher of your mind. Who is this Watcher?
Then we forget, and we identify again with a desire, a thought, a projection. Remember. Quietly let go of the identification and see how your desires, thoughts, feelings and projections move on their own, without you. They have a life of their own. The instant we disengage from mind and become un-identified, there is illumination.
Mind is a robotic machine that works on its own. Let it be. Just watch it churning through its games. You may use it, or not use it whenever you choose.
You are the master; mind is just a tool.
Whatever you have is needed. Whatever is needed, you have. Why do you get angry or sorrowful about it? You are succeeding! Your desires are being fulfilled. Now create some new ones,
And watch.
That is all. Don't interfere.
Just create -- and watch what happens.
The events and conditions that surround us in our lives are there because they are there. That is What-Is; everything else is mere speculation.
OK, let's speculate. Why are they there?
Just for the purpose of seeing how the view looks, let's suppose they're there because we attract them.
If this were true, why would anyone continue to get angry and fight them? We don't ever get upset because of what is: we get upset only when we RESIST what-is. If we wanted this What-Is, we would be happy. Right?
Resistance --------> Unhappiness.
Having waited so long to get here, why would anyone in their right mind resist what they've come so far to experience?
We invite an experience. We attract an experience. Our desires are fulfilled. How's that for a reality to live in when you decide you've had enough of suffering? You don't have to change the world, just your mind.
It may be that the experience you're faced with is not what you remember putting out for. But what if the experience you've got is a necessary part of the journey towards the destination you put out for? It may not look like that is so, but that does not mean it isn't so. We always have a limited viewpoint in these matters because our minds cannot see more than one perspective at a time, and it will fight you vigorously if you attempt to move it off the view it has decided to be right about. That's why we resist and suffer. What-Is is never at fault. Our viewpoint is the problem. When we change our point of view, everything changes.
Whatever is happening around us is a flowering of something that once took root in our mind.. Our mind is the cause. May be we could all usefully spend less time IN our minds, and more time out of mind, observing them, getting to know them better.
Each mind is like a projector; around you is like a screen. You and I project a holographic image of our mind's programmes onto the screen around us. If you don't like what you experience, try taking that up with your mind, instead of with the screen. You cannot directly change the screen. Work with your mind for a change. Change your mind. Change its programme. Upload something else. You can do this. You change your mind about other things all the time. What is the problem this time? Is there something that your mind would rather be right about than be happy? Why? What is that? And who is in charge of your life -- you or your mind?
It is possible to change your mind because your mind is not who you are. You are beyond your mind. You outrank your mind. Your mind is the office gopher; you are the CEO. How about coming back from the world's longest lunch-break and taking charge once more?
Don't blame your mind. You quit on yourself, and put your eager, ambitious mind in charge -- a job it is spectacularly unqualified and under-resourced to effectively do. Let your mind go back to doing what it does best -- delivering the memos.
You are not your mind. I am not my mind. In every Now moment you notice, or when you meditate, or when you go under the influence of certain drugs that hit the Pause button on your mind, mind stops, but you are still there -- aware and overflowing with be-ing.
DESIRE
You have a mind, and you are not your mind. But you Identify yourself with your mind, and your mind is glad of that and you get a state of affairs called Ego. When you let go of the Identification, the mind drops of itself.
You can experience this for yourself. The next time a Desire comes, just watch it. Stay very still and observe. Watch where your mind moves and how it dances around the desire. Watch how your mind behaves when you decline to get embroiled in the desire. You will learn much about the addictive nature of your mind from this observing. And while you are watching, take a moment to notice yourself as the Watcher of your mind. Who is this Watcher?
Then we forget, and we identify again with a desire, a thought, a projection. Remember. Quietly let go of the identification and see how your desires, thoughts, feelings and projections move on their own, without you. They have a life of their own. The instant we disengage from mind and become un-identified, there is illumination.
Mind is a robotic machine that works on its own. Let it be. Just watch it churning through its games. You may use it, or not use it whenever you choose.
You are the master; mind is just a tool.
Whatever you have is needed. Whatever is needed, you have. Why do you get angry or sorrowful about it? You are succeeding! Your desires are being fulfilled. Now create some new ones,
And watch.
That is all. Don't interfere.
Just create -- and watch what happens.
ABANDON THE SEARCH
When you are ready, give up the search and come home. If you cannot find what you're looking for, it's a fair bet that what you are looking for is here, now, waiting for you to return home.
So many of the things we say we want are really substitutes and symbols for actual values and qualities we feel we're lacking, intangible qualities like love, truth, honesty, security, loyalty, purpose. The qualities we hunger for are not reducible to physical or material things. Our problem may be that we don't know where to look or how to ask for intangibles
Perhaps without realising it, we are searching for something Sacred -- something we can feel as noble, precious, enduring and worthy of our being here. We are not going to find more than a trace of such no-things in things like houses, cars, better jobs, better relationships with others, goals, dreams -- even a vision of a better world. Material things materialise from divine qualities, not the other way around.
Where is the Sacred to be found? That question has been around since the day mankind got lost and went looking for symbols, icons and rituals to help him connect with his sense of the sacred. But it never occurred to him that the "sacred" he sensed and was looking for actually lay within him. He went looking around. That's when religion sprang up, waving its hands and calling "Over here! We've got what you're looking for, and if you're really good and give us money, power and authority, we might let you have a bit. If you're super-good, you can have the lot after you die. There's this place up in the sky called "heaven"......" The priests then riveted their position in place by inventing the concept of Original Sin, a neat and nasty fiction designed to stop us looking within. The argument is that being human is intrinsically "bad"; we are naturally "bad"; so there's no use looking for "good" in something that is "bad". The doctrine successfully persuaded us that we are all basically "sinners" through and through, and that anything sacred, including God, is separate and outside of our selves. The only reason, so it goes, that God bothers with us is because God is Love. and we are not.
That history has repeated itself down through the ages in the personal history of every one of us. We were born at one with our divine nature, but got separated from it when we bought the notion from our "betters" that there was something wrong with us for being the way that we are.
Divinity is, in a sense, a feeling-into, a kind of re-cognition directed towards something great and good and embracing enough to give our lives a sense of be-longing, purpose and meaning. Divinity perceived gives us life membership to an abundant universe of infinite possibility and meaning. It takes us out of the prison of our selfish selves and puts the grunt of daily living into a greater perspective. We become in-spired. Sacredness is a reverence for the universe of which we are an integral part. An acceptance of integral Sacredness allows us to re-evaluate our personal efforts and lives. A reverence for the universe, without and within, becomes a reverence for the nobility and worthwhile-ness of our selves, because we are a part of that.
The trick for finding meaning that works for me, is to give up the searching for it. First, I got that my life was as I perceive it to be -- meaningless, and that it didn't mean anything that it was meaningless. Then, out of the Nothingness that followed that discovery, I simply declared meaning to be so. What meaning? I made it up! Life for me became a daily experiment, trying out all kinds of new meanings that popped up, to see how they work out. I simply became aware of everything that comes knocking at the door of my attention. Meaning unmasked itself. That's the way it still is for me. It's a lot more fun nowadays.
You might like to give it a try. What have you got to lose?
You will discover that:-
So many of the things we say we want are really substitutes and symbols for actual values and qualities we feel we're lacking, intangible qualities like love, truth, honesty, security, loyalty, purpose. The qualities we hunger for are not reducible to physical or material things. Our problem may be that we don't know where to look or how to ask for intangibles
Perhaps without realising it, we are searching for something Sacred -- something we can feel as noble, precious, enduring and worthy of our being here. We are not going to find more than a trace of such no-things in things like houses, cars, better jobs, better relationships with others, goals, dreams -- even a vision of a better world. Material things materialise from divine qualities, not the other way around.
Where is the Sacred to be found? That question has been around since the day mankind got lost and went looking for symbols, icons and rituals to help him connect with his sense of the sacred. But it never occurred to him that the "sacred" he sensed and was looking for actually lay within him. He went looking around. That's when religion sprang up, waving its hands and calling "Over here! We've got what you're looking for, and if you're really good and give us money, power and authority, we might let you have a bit. If you're super-good, you can have the lot after you die. There's this place up in the sky called "heaven"......" The priests then riveted their position in place by inventing the concept of Original Sin, a neat and nasty fiction designed to stop us looking within. The argument is that being human is intrinsically "bad"; we are naturally "bad"; so there's no use looking for "good" in something that is "bad". The doctrine successfully persuaded us that we are all basically "sinners" through and through, and that anything sacred, including God, is separate and outside of our selves. The only reason, so it goes, that God bothers with us is because God is Love. and we are not.
That history has repeated itself down through the ages in the personal history of every one of us. We were born at one with our divine nature, but got separated from it when we bought the notion from our "betters" that there was something wrong with us for being the way that we are.
Divinity is, in a sense, a feeling-into, a kind of re-cognition directed towards something great and good and embracing enough to give our lives a sense of be-longing, purpose and meaning. Divinity perceived gives us life membership to an abundant universe of infinite possibility and meaning. It takes us out of the prison of our selfish selves and puts the grunt of daily living into a greater perspective. We become in-spired. Sacredness is a reverence for the universe of which we are an integral part. An acceptance of integral Sacredness allows us to re-evaluate our personal efforts and lives. A reverence for the universe, without and within, becomes a reverence for the nobility and worthwhile-ness of our selves, because we are a part of that.
The trick for finding meaning that works for me, is to give up the searching for it. First, I got that my life was as I perceive it to be -- meaningless, and that it didn't mean anything that it was meaningless. Then, out of the Nothingness that followed that discovery, I simply declared meaning to be so. What meaning? I made it up! Life for me became a daily experiment, trying out all kinds of new meanings that popped up, to see how they work out. I simply became aware of everything that comes knocking at the door of my attention. Meaning unmasked itself. That's the way it still is for me. It's a lot more fun nowadays.
You might like to give it a try. What have you got to lose?
You will discover that:-
- what you thought you sought was not really what you sought at all.
- what you truly sought, you already are.
- you can have what you are.
You are the meaning of your life.
ILLUSION & REALITY
Human beings have fundamentally parallel realities -- an Inner and an Outer, a Lower and a Higher, and a Spiritual and a Secular, to name but three. In situations where we experience any two lives as differing and possibly even unrelated (eg. Ï would/could NEVER be like that!"), Illusions are formed at the interface.
Illusion is a distortion of the relationship between connected realities. We form distorted illusions of reality when we remove certain qualities from one reality and superimpose them onto another reality and the people who live there.
For example, one element of my Inner self-image is Responsibility. To the extent that I reject the fact that I am also capable of Irresponsibility, I will pin that "Irresponsible" label on certain behaviour and people in my Outer life. The result is a twofold illusion -- a) that I am wholly responsible under all circumstances (an illusion not supported by the facts); and b) that the other behaviour or person is wholly Irresponsible in all circumstances (also not supportable by an objective observer.) The same opportunities for Illusion occur when any conflict happens between our Baser and Higher levels of consciousness, and between our Divine and our Secular natures.
Where there is no distortion between realities, where both realities mirror each other, Illusion ceases to exist. We see things in both realms as they are. In practice, of course, none of us is ever fully at one extreme or the other; we constantly move around on a sliding scale of "more"and "less". In the grey areas where we are out of balance, we are prone to delusion.
I just thought you'd like to know.
The physical world is just as true and real as the inner world. Reality at a low level of consciousness is just as vivid as reality on the higher planes. Our Divine and our Human natures are equally as valid. But we often experience them as NOT. We are prone, by default, to give more weight to one side than the other. In which direction the balance tips -- Inner or Outer, Lower or Higher, Sacred or Secular -- depends on our level of Awareness, and that is by no means constant either..
Either way, any imbalance leads to Distortion and Illusion. Neither the basest atheist nor the rarest ascetic can see the whole of reality as it is. Both extremes are deluded. All positionality involves self-delusion.
Illusion disappears at the mid-point, where each side of a continuum perfectly reflects the other.
Wisdom is always at the point of balance where everything is This AND That. When you reach that point, you are in for a surprise. When Illusion no longer exists, life is also "neither This NOR That". But don't worry about that now. When that moment comes, you will either laugh or go "Uh.........", then fall into silence..
For now, find your balance.
It's a bit like learning to walk. The notion of "failure"is just another illusion. Until you get "balance", you're likely to fall a few times. If you buy into the illusion of "failure", you'll give up and never learn to walk. If, on the other hand, you see every stumble as a learning experience, you're more likely to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, make an internal adjustment, and have another go until you "get it". It's part of the process of learning. Don't get bent out of shape by apparent setbacks. When you finally get balance, you'll have it for life, no matter how wobbly things get from time to time.
Just like riding a bike.
Illusion is a distortion of the relationship between connected realities. We form distorted illusions of reality when we remove certain qualities from one reality and superimpose them onto another reality and the people who live there.
For example, one element of my Inner self-image is Responsibility. To the extent that I reject the fact that I am also capable of Irresponsibility, I will pin that "Irresponsible" label on certain behaviour and people in my Outer life. The result is a twofold illusion -- a) that I am wholly responsible under all circumstances (an illusion not supported by the facts); and b) that the other behaviour or person is wholly Irresponsible in all circumstances (also not supportable by an objective observer.) The same opportunities for Illusion occur when any conflict happens between our Baser and Higher levels of consciousness, and between our Divine and our Secular natures.
Where there is no distortion between realities, where both realities mirror each other, Illusion ceases to exist. We see things in both realms as they are. In practice, of course, none of us is ever fully at one extreme or the other; we constantly move around on a sliding scale of "more"and "less". In the grey areas where we are out of balance, we are prone to delusion.
I just thought you'd like to know.
The physical world is just as true and real as the inner world. Reality at a low level of consciousness is just as vivid as reality on the higher planes. Our Divine and our Human natures are equally as valid. But we often experience them as NOT. We are prone, by default, to give more weight to one side than the other. In which direction the balance tips -- Inner or Outer, Lower or Higher, Sacred or Secular -- depends on our level of Awareness, and that is by no means constant either..
Either way, any imbalance leads to Distortion and Illusion. Neither the basest atheist nor the rarest ascetic can see the whole of reality as it is. Both extremes are deluded. All positionality involves self-delusion.
Illusion disappears at the mid-point, where each side of a continuum perfectly reflects the other.
Wisdom is always at the point of balance where everything is This AND That. When you reach that point, you are in for a surprise. When Illusion no longer exists, life is also "neither This NOR That". But don't worry about that now. When that moment comes, you will either laugh or go "Uh.........", then fall into silence..
For now, find your balance.
It's a bit like learning to walk. The notion of "failure"is just another illusion. Until you get "balance", you're likely to fall a few times. If you buy into the illusion of "failure", you'll give up and never learn to walk. If, on the other hand, you see every stumble as a learning experience, you're more likely to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, make an internal adjustment, and have another go until you "get it". It's part of the process of learning. Don't get bent out of shape by apparent setbacks. When you finally get balance, you'll have it for life, no matter how wobbly things get from time to time.
Just like riding a bike.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
IT'S TIME
Modern man has heard enough of Guilt and Sin. He has heard enough that he just isn't good enough -- good enough for whom? He doesn't need more holy irrelevance. Already he is beaten to a pulp by his own bad conscience. What he needs now is to become re-conciled with his own true nature.
Christ is reported to have said "Love your enemies." How? Love Thaksin Shinawatra? Love Al Quaeida? Love the Pope? Love George Dubbya? Love that guy who cut you off in the traffic? Love the guy who comes home late at night and starts drilling the concrete floor of the flat above me? "Love your enemies" may have sounded fine in a sermon one balmy afternoon on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, but how do we actually do it when the heat is on? And who is "The Enemy?" anyway? Doesn't that have a little bit to do with where we stand and what our prejudices are? From where I stand, it looks as if one man's saviour is another man's enemy, and vice versa. Who does God love more? Which one?
The more I think about the God I was taught about in Sunday School, the more he begins to look like an idealised version of my parents. Certainly the righteous anger and certain punishment bits ring some painful bells.
The enemies around us, however, pale to insignificance alongside the Real Enemy. Tell us, please, how can man begin to truly love the enemy within his own heart? How did that evil little monster get there in the first place? What is his purpose?
Wouldn't that be a good starting point?
Modern man has had enough of trying to imitate the life of Christ. I'm told he was sent to be a man like me, with the same weaknesses and shortcomings, to prove that salvation is possible, even for me. But the same people who proclaim that little gem also get uppity if I question why he would have been born of a virgin if the whole point was that he was to be a regular bloke? They get offended when I ask how many times a week Christ had a wank. They get very shifty when I ask what it was with him and Mary Magdalene. Any way, I distinctly remember reading somewhere in the Gospels that Christ turned on a particularly pathetic bunch of Victims one day saying "Heal yourselves!" May be I'm wrong. Maybe that was John Cleese
I'm exhausted from a lifetime of trying unsuccessfully to live up to other people's ideals of how I should be. And I don't think I am Robinson Crusoe here. I'm also beginning to notice that every form of imitation is imperfect, dead and sterile. But then I get a bit scared. I'm closer to death now than I am to birth, and what if I'm wrong, and those pompous pricks are right? Do I get busted to hell? And what is hell anyway? I went there after my wife walked out. Nothing could be worse than that, and I'm still here.
Modern man wants to know how he can deal with his anxiety, depression, and his teenage daughter who is so out of this world he doesn't know what to do any more. He wants to know what he can do about politicians he elects and pays to run the joint, who spend their days endlessly getting into the media to yap at each other like demented poodles while the country goes to the dogs.
Modern man wants to know how he can get back the serenity and sovereignty he sold out to family, state and religion on the promise that these sacred institutions would do it all for him, as long as he followed the rules. Well, to the best of our ability we followed both the letter and the spirit of those rules and it hasn't worked, and modern man has had a gutful of political hoop-la, religious fairy-floss, and yet another social experiment. This doesn't need another white paper, green paper, or any other kind of paper, except toilet paper.
Modern man just wants to experience a few moments of Authenticity and Aliveness, from himself, and from those who put themselves up to act on his behalf. Is that too much to ask?
Most of all, modern man is looking for a Ceasefire --
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, the backstreets of America, Europe, Asia and Australia
And a Ceasefire where peace really matters --
Where peace begins and ends --
In the civil battlefield of our own bi-polarity.
Enough already. The old ways don't work. It's time for another way.
Is that too much to ask?
Christ is reported to have said "Love your enemies." How? Love Thaksin Shinawatra? Love Al Quaeida? Love the Pope? Love George Dubbya? Love that guy who cut you off in the traffic? Love the guy who comes home late at night and starts drilling the concrete floor of the flat above me? "Love your enemies" may have sounded fine in a sermon one balmy afternoon on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, but how do we actually do it when the heat is on? And who is "The Enemy?" anyway? Doesn't that have a little bit to do with where we stand and what our prejudices are? From where I stand, it looks as if one man's saviour is another man's enemy, and vice versa. Who does God love more? Which one?
The more I think about the God I was taught about in Sunday School, the more he begins to look like an idealised version of my parents. Certainly the righteous anger and certain punishment bits ring some painful bells.
The enemies around us, however, pale to insignificance alongside the Real Enemy. Tell us, please, how can man begin to truly love the enemy within his own heart? How did that evil little monster get there in the first place? What is his purpose?
Wouldn't that be a good starting point?
Modern man has had enough of trying to imitate the life of Christ. I'm told he was sent to be a man like me, with the same weaknesses and shortcomings, to prove that salvation is possible, even for me. But the same people who proclaim that little gem also get uppity if I question why he would have been born of a virgin if the whole point was that he was to be a regular bloke? They get offended when I ask how many times a week Christ had a wank. They get very shifty when I ask what it was with him and Mary Magdalene. Any way, I distinctly remember reading somewhere in the Gospels that Christ turned on a particularly pathetic bunch of Victims one day saying "Heal yourselves!" May be I'm wrong. Maybe that was John Cleese
I'm exhausted from a lifetime of trying unsuccessfully to live up to other people's ideals of how I should be. And I don't think I am Robinson Crusoe here. I'm also beginning to notice that every form of imitation is imperfect, dead and sterile. But then I get a bit scared. I'm closer to death now than I am to birth, and what if I'm wrong, and those pompous pricks are right? Do I get busted to hell? And what is hell anyway? I went there after my wife walked out. Nothing could be worse than that, and I'm still here.
Modern man wants to know how he can deal with his anxiety, depression, and his teenage daughter who is so out of this world he doesn't know what to do any more. He wants to know what he can do about politicians he elects and pays to run the joint, who spend their days endlessly getting into the media to yap at each other like demented poodles while the country goes to the dogs.
Modern man wants to know how he can get back the serenity and sovereignty he sold out to family, state and religion on the promise that these sacred institutions would do it all for him, as long as he followed the rules. Well, to the best of our ability we followed both the letter and the spirit of those rules and it hasn't worked, and modern man has had a gutful of political hoop-la, religious fairy-floss, and yet another social experiment. This doesn't need another white paper, green paper, or any other kind of paper, except toilet paper.
Modern man just wants to experience a few moments of Authenticity and Aliveness, from himself, and from those who put themselves up to act on his behalf. Is that too much to ask?
Most of all, modern man is looking for a Ceasefire --
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, the backstreets of America, Europe, Asia and Australia
And a Ceasefire where peace really matters --
Where peace begins and ends --
In the civil battlefield of our own bi-polarity.
Enough already. The old ways don't work. It's time for another way.
Is that too much to ask?
COMPASSION
Warm and welcoming, Compassion is a hug from Existence. How often we long for its embrace!
Compassion, while not exclusive to human beings, is possibly the greatest and most ennobling gift we have. It blesses both the giver and the receiver. It acknowledges and honours the oneness of all being.
I see Compassion as a kind of respect for the facts of Life, and a sensitive connection with the differing realities affecting each of us. Compassion unifies us in a celebration of the riddles of being alive. Compassion is the antidote to insularity.
In a being of Compassion, we are able to receive another's reality unjudgmentally alongside our own. It is the art of knowing in experience what it means to be human. Where that knowing is not immediately available, Compassion produces a willingness to do whatever it takes to explore another's experience for oneself so that it can be known. Compassion offers emotional shelter to the storm-tossed, while knocking gently on the doorway of another's experience with the invitation "Can I come and play with you?"
Compassion is no kin to understanding. In understanding, the mind simply grabs an experience, sticks a standard label on it and files it away into a pre-existing pigeon-hole. There is no freshness or aliveness of the heart in understanding. I have encountered people who understand everything and have found them to be emotionally among the poorest on the planet. In fact, a lack of compassion is a symptom of serious psychic damage.
Compassion arises initially from a willingness and commitment to explore the parts of oneself that we see in others, and to receive that self-knowledge with indulgent warmth, humour and lightness. A life committed to compassion begins with embracing the whole of oneself with a deep and tolerant "Yes".
We cannot give away what we don't have. Without compassion for self, what is given away looks and feels more like sympathy than empathy, more like pardoning than forgiveness, and more like pity and patronising than something that is felt with (not for) the other. Try this, and be aware of the feeling that surrounds these two sentences --
Whether the trigger arises in oneself or from another, Compassion is a voluntary expansion of the heart to embrace yet another raw experience of being alive. Compassion knows that life is too short for each of us to formulate every available experience, so it willingly interacts with others to openly share feelings and thoughts.
If you experience your life as lacking in compassion from others, start by seeking it within yourself, for yourself. Let it grow there. It will expand and, in time, naturally overflow into the world around you. Don't push it; let it happen in its own good time. When you find yourself spontaneously giving compassion away to others, do so without any consideration or expectations of what you might get back in return. Give it away as anonymously as you can. Give it away as a simple expression of Who You Choose to Be. Give it away for its own sake.
Compassion is the deepest expression of Connection. In Compassion there is no separation. In a state of Compassion, the old adage "There but for the grace of God, go I" becomes ---
Compassion frees us to be more than we think we are.
Compassion, while not exclusive to human beings, is possibly the greatest and most ennobling gift we have. It blesses both the giver and the receiver. It acknowledges and honours the oneness of all being.
I see Compassion as a kind of respect for the facts of Life, and a sensitive connection with the differing realities affecting each of us. Compassion unifies us in a celebration of the riddles of being alive. Compassion is the antidote to insularity.
In a being of Compassion, we are able to receive another's reality unjudgmentally alongside our own. It is the art of knowing in experience what it means to be human. Where that knowing is not immediately available, Compassion produces a willingness to do whatever it takes to explore another's experience for oneself so that it can be known. Compassion offers emotional shelter to the storm-tossed, while knocking gently on the doorway of another's experience with the invitation "Can I come and play with you?"
Compassion is no kin to understanding. In understanding, the mind simply grabs an experience, sticks a standard label on it and files it away into a pre-existing pigeon-hole. There is no freshness or aliveness of the heart in understanding. I have encountered people who understand everything and have found them to be emotionally among the poorest on the planet. In fact, a lack of compassion is a symptom of serious psychic damage.
Compassion arises initially from a willingness and commitment to explore the parts of oneself that we see in others, and to receive that self-knowledge with indulgent warmth, humour and lightness. A life committed to compassion begins with embracing the whole of oneself with a deep and tolerant "Yes".
We cannot give away what we don't have. Without compassion for self, what is given away looks and feels more like sympathy than empathy, more like pardoning than forgiveness, and more like pity and patronising than something that is felt with (not for) the other. Try this, and be aware of the feeling that surrounds these two sentences --
- I feel for you.
- I feel with you.
Say each alternately a few times. Feel into the difference between the two. One feels more detached than the other; the other feels more inclusive; doesn't it?
Whether the trigger arises in oneself or from another, Compassion is a voluntary expansion of the heart to embrace yet another raw experience of being alive. Compassion knows that life is too short for each of us to formulate every available experience, so it willingly interacts with others to openly share feelings and thoughts.
If you experience your life as lacking in compassion from others, start by seeking it within yourself, for yourself. Let it grow there. It will expand and, in time, naturally overflow into the world around you. Don't push it; let it happen in its own good time. When you find yourself spontaneously giving compassion away to others, do so without any consideration or expectations of what you might get back in return. Give it away as anonymously as you can. Give it away as a simple expression of Who You Choose to Be. Give it away for its own sake.
Compassion is the deepest expression of Connection. In Compassion there is no separation. In a state of Compassion, the old adage "There but for the grace of God, go I" becomes ---
"There, thanks to the Grace of God, am I."
Compassion frees us to be more than we think we are.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
MIND
Mind is a state of being to walk out of. With Mind comes a whole range of Conditions -- default states of being that come about as a result of unexamined and out-of-date conclusions, opinions, beliefs, ideas and principles. Some examples of a Condition include chronic states of sadness, anger, anxiety, resentment, depression and confusion. Accompanying all default conditions there are chemical and hormonal imbalances, and perhaps even outright physical, mental, spiritual and social dis-ease. In my experience, these physical, emotional and mental manifestations are not the root cause of the condition, but symptoms of it and the consequential circumstances that perpetuate and possibly even worsen the condition.
I know that there is a lot of debate about this -- which is the cart and which is the horse? I don't think it matters. But it seems to me that if we accept some authorship of our own conditions, then we have some possibility beyond the bind we're in right now. We can make some changes to our self and the reality we create. If, on the other hand, we are totally the victims of our conditions, then we're fucked. The debate rages on, and will continue to do so until each of us finds for our self a synthesis of both truths. We are at once both victim and cause.
And this brings me to my point. Synthesis will not be found in the Mind. Mind is the arch proponent of Analysis and the source of all dissection and apparent separation. And I do know this. Synthesis is creative. Analysis, dissection and separation kills the very thing it seeks to understand.
The human mind is finite. It cannot contemplate the eternal. Trying to get the mind to wrap itself around eternity is like trying to park you car in its glovebox. The finity of the Mind is why it cannot be in the here/now, because the here/now is infinite. Here and now never ends. Here and Now is not a point in time. It is endless and simply is as it is.
What happened with the big bang was that Awareness lowered its frequency through thought, light, atoms, molecules, and eventually gross matter, organisms and environment. Everything got artificially and momentarily slowed down, giving us an opportunity to evolve an increasingly more sophisticated, albeit still clunky, ability to notice things and respond creatively with them. Time and distance are artifices we humans invented that help us to measure out this apparent continuum of "time"and "space", this slowed-down experience of Now. The slowing down allows us to experience moments, replay a recollection of them, and even make some predictions about their possible impact. The trade-off to this slowing-down, however, is a loss of clarity. The slower things get, the fuzzier and less accurate they become. My experience of death is of a speeding-up, where things get clearer and clearer, but increasingly more difficult to perceive because my mind is just not fast enough to keep up. Finally I have to give up. There is a "pop", and everything suddenly disappears into a dot that itself fades into blankness -- nothing -- oneness -- serenity that is no longer aware of its serenity. Pure Awareness, that can no longer be aware of itself because the illusion of separation is no longer available to it. The mirror has gone. Nothing happens here. Nothing can be done. Nothing needs to be done. There is no time any more. In the here/now nothing can, or needs to be reasoned out, thought about, felt about or compared...... Mind is no more.
Awareness is first. The advent of Separation gives rise to Consciousness -- Awareness with limitations. With the fall from Grace comes separation, so that Awareness can have a mirror in which to see itself, a way to experience itself and anything it considers itself to be, and a path to come back to itself at the end of the day and know itself for the first time.
The illusions of Time, Space and Separation are divine gifts of the condition of being human.
My mind is the creator of my world. Limited mind = limited world. The same is true for you. And our perceptions of our world reinforce the mindsets that shape them. I say the world is a certain way, the world agrees with me, revealing just enough of itself so that I can be "right" and have the experience of living in my kind of world. The same, again, is true for you. Every creation proves the rightness of its creator. The universe presents different limitations, depending on who is doing the creating. But the limitations are more apparent than real. The universe is so much more than any of us will ever know. This universe is both Heaven and Hell. Which one depends on the consciousness that is doing the creating and perceiving.
But outside of that there is that other reality I referred to a moment ago -- the real universe, the one uncreated by limited minds, is unlimited and infinitely resource-full. As it evolved from the Big Bang, every organism became part of the environment for other organisms. Every organism is inseparable from the environment that sustains it. There is no point where I end and my environment begins. Similarly, where is the dividing line between my environment and you? There is no separation: it is all one organism. Creation is indivisible. If you try to eliminate any part of creation, it no longer works.If you try to excise any part of yourself or your environment, as Mind wants you to do, your life no longer works, and neither does mine. All is in perfect balance. But in Mind, you and I cannot see that, because of our limited view. And we will never be able to see it until we first change our minds. That happens rarely because minds do not take kindly to change. It was a human mind that said "I'll believe it when I see it." That mind knew very well that it can only see what it believes. That's the way minds are. Minds do not see anything they don't first believe. Conversely, minds see everything they believe, no matter how true or false the belief is. Whatever the mind believes and sees is that mind's reality. Period. End of discussion.
CHANGE THE WORLD
When I was younger, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to change the world because I was NOT going to changed my mind -- I was right! Well. guess what? ..... Oh, you guessed! You're right. I had no hope of changing the world without first changing my mind. Neither do you. But along the way I found out something remarkable and miraculous ---
I know that there is a lot of debate about this -- which is the cart and which is the horse? I don't think it matters. But it seems to me that if we accept some authorship of our own conditions, then we have some possibility beyond the bind we're in right now. We can make some changes to our self and the reality we create. If, on the other hand, we are totally the victims of our conditions, then we're fucked. The debate rages on, and will continue to do so until each of us finds for our self a synthesis of both truths. We are at once both victim and cause.
And this brings me to my point. Synthesis will not be found in the Mind. Mind is the arch proponent of Analysis and the source of all dissection and apparent separation. And I do know this. Synthesis is creative. Analysis, dissection and separation kills the very thing it seeks to understand.
The human mind is finite. It cannot contemplate the eternal. Trying to get the mind to wrap itself around eternity is like trying to park you car in its glovebox. The finity of the Mind is why it cannot be in the here/now, because the here/now is infinite. Here and now never ends. Here and Now is not a point in time. It is endless and simply is as it is.
What happened with the big bang was that Awareness lowered its frequency through thought, light, atoms, molecules, and eventually gross matter, organisms and environment. Everything got artificially and momentarily slowed down, giving us an opportunity to evolve an increasingly more sophisticated, albeit still clunky, ability to notice things and respond creatively with them. Time and distance are artifices we humans invented that help us to measure out this apparent continuum of "time"and "space", this slowed-down experience of Now. The slowing down allows us to experience moments, replay a recollection of them, and even make some predictions about their possible impact. The trade-off to this slowing-down, however, is a loss of clarity. The slower things get, the fuzzier and less accurate they become. My experience of death is of a speeding-up, where things get clearer and clearer, but increasingly more difficult to perceive because my mind is just not fast enough to keep up. Finally I have to give up. There is a "pop", and everything suddenly disappears into a dot that itself fades into blankness -- nothing -- oneness -- serenity that is no longer aware of its serenity. Pure Awareness, that can no longer be aware of itself because the illusion of separation is no longer available to it. The mirror has gone. Nothing happens here. Nothing can be done. Nothing needs to be done. There is no time any more. In the here/now nothing can, or needs to be reasoned out, thought about, felt about or compared...... Mind is no more.
Awareness is first. The advent of Separation gives rise to Consciousness -- Awareness with limitations. With the fall from Grace comes separation, so that Awareness can have a mirror in which to see itself, a way to experience itself and anything it considers itself to be, and a path to come back to itself at the end of the day and know itself for the first time.
The illusions of Time, Space and Separation are divine gifts of the condition of being human.
My mind is the creator of my world. Limited mind = limited world. The same is true for you. And our perceptions of our world reinforce the mindsets that shape them. I say the world is a certain way, the world agrees with me, revealing just enough of itself so that I can be "right" and have the experience of living in my kind of world. The same, again, is true for you. Every creation proves the rightness of its creator. The universe presents different limitations, depending on who is doing the creating. But the limitations are more apparent than real. The universe is so much more than any of us will ever know. This universe is both Heaven and Hell. Which one depends on the consciousness that is doing the creating and perceiving.
But outside of that there is that other reality I referred to a moment ago -- the real universe, the one uncreated by limited minds, is unlimited and infinitely resource-full. As it evolved from the Big Bang, every organism became part of the environment for other organisms. Every organism is inseparable from the environment that sustains it. There is no point where I end and my environment begins. Similarly, where is the dividing line between my environment and you? There is no separation: it is all one organism. Creation is indivisible. If you try to eliminate any part of creation, it no longer works.If you try to excise any part of yourself or your environment, as Mind wants you to do, your life no longer works, and neither does mine. All is in perfect balance. But in Mind, you and I cannot see that, because of our limited view. And we will never be able to see it until we first change our minds. That happens rarely because minds do not take kindly to change. It was a human mind that said "I'll believe it when I see it." That mind knew very well that it can only see what it believes. That's the way minds are. Minds do not see anything they don't first believe. Conversely, minds see everything they believe, no matter how true or false the belief is. Whatever the mind believes and sees is that mind's reality. Period. End of discussion.
CHANGE THE WORLD
When I was younger, I wanted to change the world. I wanted to change the world because I was NOT going to changed my mind -- I was right! Well. guess what? ..... Oh, you guessed! You're right. I had no hope of changing the world without first changing my mind. Neither do you. But along the way I found out something remarkable and miraculous ---
When I change my mind, the world changes -- for everyone.
When you change you mind, the world changes -- for everyone.
Changing the world lies over here with each one of us changing our world
By changing our minds.
We can each make a difference, by becoming the difference.
Regardless of intellectual, emotional or physical capacity
There isn't a person on this earth that does not have the ability to change their mind.
If you cannot live happily in a hovel, you will not live happily in a palace.
A palace is larger, more ornately decorated, and has hot and cold running everything.
So does heaven
And so does hell.
A larger, more ornately decorated and fitted-out hell does not a heaven make.
Even when we are forcibly thrown into Heaven (and we all have been), we manage to turn it into Hell and search frantically, looking for the nearest exit.
Mind is an appearance. There is no thing any surgeon can point to in the body and say "There's his mind." It is like electricity. You can't locate it, touch it, see it, smell it; but you can sure see the evidence of its passing through.
Mind is an interfering, futile effort at making what always was and is designed to work -- work. It is an ingenious, stupid survival mechanism in a game where survival was never the main issue. In trying to make it work, mind throws a spanner into the works. Mind goes on promising, hoping, negotiating and compromising for More, Better and Different. Mind just does not get that More, Better and Different are deserts where nothing much grows, certainly nothing of any beauty or with any nourishment value.
We cannot live without our minds; we have achieved a lot with our minds. But when we come to this point now and look at the bottom line, nothing much remains of enduring consequence. Certainly nothing worth the price of all the struggle, stress, pain and strain.
Now is the time to wake up. There is more, and it is available, but it all lies beyond the mind. Mind is only capable of short-term gratification which is a long way shy of replete satisfaction. Mind cannot create. It's promises are pipe dreams because it cannot be where all creation takes place -- in the here and now. Anything mind gets it has to steal from someone or something else. But please do not believe me on this. Like all knowing, you have to experience the futility of Mind for yourself.
The whole effort of the mind is to sell me a better dream. But a dream is a dream. I can dream of food and drink for a while and fool myself, but for how long? I may sleep all night long on such a dream, but if I am hungry or thirsty, I need real food and water. In the morning I awaken to hunger and thirst. My mind has deceived me, again.
What is your mind promising you that you're hanging in there for? Reality will keep bumping into you and shaking your delirium Wake up!
Living in mind is like living in a glass house. Reality keeps throwing stones, calling us to wake up. The glass shatters, but we keep picking up the pieces and try to put them back together again. Let it go. We have achieved nothing but a mess. It's time to start again with something more substantial than mind. Mind is fine for a certain kind of seeing, but it is not suitable building material for the whole edifice.
Enough is enough
STUCK?
When you get stuck, create something. Anything will do.
Begin by creating what already is. You can manage that, can't you?
If that proposal sounds silly to you, ask yourself which is sillier --- 1) for the first time in your life creating what is; or 2) trying to create what-is-not, something you have been straining at for decades without getting any traction? Which is sillier? There is no right or wrong Answer to this question, just an Indication of your present state of readiness to get un-stuck.
What you create does not really matter, as long as you create, and acknowledge that you are doing the creating. This is Drano for the spirit.
If you tell yourself "I cannot create", then acknowledge that "I can't" is what you have just created -- probably out of habit. Take a moment to experience the success of that. I mean it. I'm not being sarcastic. You are a very powerful creator, especially of your own experience. Whether you feel empowered or ineffectual, you are the creator of that. One extreme gives you the juice; the other keeps to bogged down in your own mire. The acceptance of both frees you from getting impaled on either end of the axis.
When you've mastered Creating #101, ie. choosing to be in What-Is, just as it is -- then try creating something different for a change. Just create it. You create all the time; you know how to do it.. Creating is not a question of Ability, but a question of Choosing WHAT you create.
To create something, simply declare it to be, on your own authority. Then leave the rest to life. If your intention is genuine, life will show you what to deal with next in order to get ready for the Delivery. If your intention is not genuine, Life will still present you with the opportunities to move on, but you probably won't see them as opportunities.
If you keep on doing what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always got. If you're stuck, and have finally realised there's no more juice in being stuck, then do something different. Anything will do, as long as the desire to do it comes from someplace other than where you've been lately.
Let me know how you go.
Begin by creating what already is. You can manage that, can't you?
If that proposal sounds silly to you, ask yourself which is sillier --- 1) for the first time in your life creating what is; or 2) trying to create what-is-not, something you have been straining at for decades without getting any traction? Which is sillier? There is no right or wrong Answer to this question, just an Indication of your present state of readiness to get un-stuck.
What you create does not really matter, as long as you create, and acknowledge that you are doing the creating. This is Drano for the spirit.
If you tell yourself "I cannot create", then acknowledge that "I can't" is what you have just created -- probably out of habit. Take a moment to experience the success of that. I mean it. I'm not being sarcastic. You are a very powerful creator, especially of your own experience. Whether you feel empowered or ineffectual, you are the creator of that. One extreme gives you the juice; the other keeps to bogged down in your own mire. The acceptance of both frees you from getting impaled on either end of the axis.
When you've mastered Creating #101, ie. choosing to be in What-Is, just as it is -- then try creating something different for a change. Just create it. You create all the time; you know how to do it.. Creating is not a question of Ability, but a question of Choosing WHAT you create.
To create something, simply declare it to be, on your own authority. Then leave the rest to life. If your intention is genuine, life will show you what to deal with next in order to get ready for the Delivery. If your intention is not genuine, Life will still present you with the opportunities to move on, but you probably won't see them as opportunities.
If you keep on doing what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always got. If you're stuck, and have finally realised there's no more juice in being stuck, then do something different. Anything will do, as long as the desire to do it comes from someplace other than where you've been lately.
Let me know how you go.
THE BIGGEST LIE
Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy-laden
And I will give you rest.
"I" and "Me" are both ego. Ego IS the burden.
Don't feel bad. We all fell for that one. We were meant to.
TRUTH
The story goes about Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor on assignment to a backwater but troublesome province in the Middle East who was interrupted one day by the posse of the local holy men. He called this bunch of arse-licking hypocrites The Jerusalem Jihad. Their noses had been poked out of joint by an itinerant preacher who'd only been on the road about three years, but had already just been hailed by the hoi-polloi as the promised Messiah. Behaving more like our federal parliamentary opposition than a parliament of holy men, the priests wanted this upstart rubbed out, but they wanted Pilate to do it for them. At first, Pilate was annoyed at having his morning coffee break interrupted, but the strange preacher began to interest him greatly. Despite his shabby appearance, the man had an amazing aura of authority about him that was distinctly different from the usual bunch of Judge Judy rejects he normally had to deal with.
Pilate took him aside for a while. Away from the carping scribes and pharisees, the conversation got decidedly deep and meaningful. At one point Pilate said to him in some petulance, "You talk about Truth! OK smartypants, if you know so much about Truth, tell me what it is." The guy didn't say a word. He just looked into Pilate's eyes. Ponty felt like he was looking into the clearest mirror he had even seen. He saw himself, and became profoundly disturbed, but he couldn't look away.
Ponty was saved from eternity by his wife who sidled up behind him and whispered, "This guy spooks the bejeezus out of me. Get him out of my house.!" Pilate gratefully took his cue and washed his hands of any further involvement. Not much is known about Pilate after that moment. Maybe he became a holy man.
Pilate was an educated man. He really yearned to know what Truth is. He got his answer. In experience.
What I'm writing now is not Truth. It's not a lie either. I write - from my Truth - some of my theories about Truth. That is the closest I can get to communicating the truth of my experience.Truth is only found in personal experience. Nothing is Truth until it is experienced. Your experiences produce your truth; my experiences give rise to mine. Whose truth is The Truth? Both. And neither. When we put our two truths together, we still do not have all of it. The Truth reveals itself when all truths are embraced. Then there is silence. The page is blank. There is nothing to say. There is nothing to write. Truth is a wholly personal experience. The Truth is universal. I cannot tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it sounds like --
Pilate took him aside for a while. Away from the carping scribes and pharisees, the conversation got decidedly deep and meaningful. At one point Pilate said to him in some petulance, "You talk about Truth! OK smartypants, if you know so much about Truth, tell me what it is." The guy didn't say a word. He just looked into Pilate's eyes. Ponty felt like he was looking into the clearest mirror he had even seen. He saw himself, and became profoundly disturbed, but he couldn't look away.
Ponty was saved from eternity by his wife who sidled up behind him and whispered, "This guy spooks the bejeezus out of me. Get him out of my house.!" Pilate gratefully took his cue and washed his hands of any further involvement. Not much is known about Pilate after that moment. Maybe he became a holy man.
Pilate was an educated man. He really yearned to know what Truth is. He got his answer. In experience.
What I'm writing now is not Truth. It's not a lie either. I write - from my Truth - some of my theories about Truth. That is the closest I can get to communicating the truth of my experience.Truth is only found in personal experience. Nothing is Truth until it is experienced. Your experiences produce your truth; my experiences give rise to mine. Whose truth is The Truth? Both. And neither. When we put our two truths together, we still do not have all of it. The Truth reveals itself when all truths are embraced. Then there is silence. The page is blank. There is nothing to say. There is nothing to write. Truth is a wholly personal experience. The Truth is universal. I cannot tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it sounds like --
"Sh--sh--shhshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshshsh....................................."
The more we think about truth, the more we miss it.
Now a deeper silence falls.
OPINION & CONSCIOUSNESS
We all have opinions. We have opinions on just about everything, and as far as we are concerned, our opinions rule.
Let's put that assumption to a simple test.
Pick a calm. clear moonlit night, and find a space out in the open, well out of earshot of neighbours -- you don't want potentially embarrassing attention from the constabulary.Don't worry, I'm not suggesting you do anything illegal......
Look up at the moon and stars above you. Then look around you at the trees, bushes and anything else natural that you can see in the vicinity. When you are ready, give everything around you your opinions on anything and everything you can think of. Don't hold back.Give it all the energy you've got. Keep going until you are completely exhausted -- of opinions, ideas, beliefs and energy. When you are finally finished, watch the moon, the stars, the trees and anything else around you very closely. ........
See if you can detect just how much the universe moves in response to your almighty opinions.
Get it?
Good. I get that you've got it.
Opinions and knowledge are constructs of the mind. Truth includes what's on your mind, but it is not from the mind. Truth is what you become aware of when the mind is still.
Opinions are what we're certain we know about. We treat them as Truth and expect everyone else to do likewise. We could hardly be more mistaken.
Truth lies inside what is not-known. When what we think we know subsides into silence, the unknown comes naturally. I love silence. I feel totally at home here in silence.
Consciousness is aware of opinions -- the judgments and prejudices of an over-active mind. Consciousness is a mirror.
THE MIRROR OF CONSCIOUSNESS
A mirror has no opinions. That's why we can rely on it. A mirror does not subvert what it sees. It is not selective. A mirror simply mirrors what-is. That is its nature.
Mind, on the other hand, is like a photographic print. It captures a fleeting glimpse only once and hangs on to its processed image. It carries dead information. Beautiful maybe, but limited and ossified. Dead memory, and the information never changes except to go brittle and fade over time.
A mirror reflects and then is empty, ready always to let go and receive something anew. There is no desire to cling onto anything. There are no concepts, ideas, opinions or beliefs to clutter its reflection. It comes to each moment clear and unattached to anything that has gone before.
How blissful to be a mirror!. But I also have a mind -- a thick soup of considerations.
And mind cannot be here/now because here/now is not part of time. A now moment is eternal and simply is as it is.... now. A mirror is always here now -- it cannot be anywhere else.
I am both mirror and mind. And I am that which is aware of that, and content for it to be so.
So, too are you.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
LIVING IN VISION
What do you want?
What is it about this question that so daunts us? In my counseling, no other question ever halts the flow of woes so dramatically and abruptly as this one. I can almost guarantee a stunned silence long enough to go out and brew a cup of tea, and even then there is unlikely to be a cohesive response. It's almost as if the caller is waiting for permission to phone a friend.
How is it that we do not know what we want? How is it that we seem reluctant to even ask? Why on earth do we openly and (sometimes) aggressively resist an invitation to look into it? What is that all about?
Is it because we believe that putting out for what we want is somehow wrong or inappropriate? Is the sky going to fall in, or are we suddenly vulnerable if we divulge what we want, even to ourselves? Do we believe we don't deserve it? Do we believe we have to forcefully take what we want? Why is the possibility of unconditionally being given and receiving what we want so difficult to embrace? Do we suffer from an underlying obsession with beliefs about Scarcity, Lack and Undeserving? What is it about NOT knowing what we want that we have to be so right about?
Or is it because we are so focussed on what we DON"T want, in the mistaken belief that planting what we resist will somehow get us a harvest of sugar and spice and everything nice? Where on earth did that idea come from? The universe is not so contrary: but we are!
What happened? When we were children at play we had no problems whatever in imagineering what we wanted from moment to moment. As children, we lived in a state of being called Vision. We played Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians, spacemen and pirates, all with a commitment and surrender to imagination that would have made Brando blanch!
Vision is a heightened form of reality, unbounded by considerations of "impossibility". In Vision we choose to take personal response-ability for the differences between What-Is and what is envisaged. We create a multi-sensory image of what could be, we catalyse it into becoming, we create a fertile space for it to show up, we drop any addictive demands about how or when it should show up, we commit ourself to learning the lessons and doing the work that must be done to bring it about, and we personally authorise and empower it to become our reality.
Now re-read that last paragraph from a Negative-conscious point of view. Isn't this essentially the same process we use to manifest what we DON"T want? When we are caught in catastrophising and creating a life of misery for ourselves, do we not sow multi-sensory images of what we don't want, cover them despairingly with resentments about the gap between what we've got and what we want, manure the ground with negative beliefs, ideas and opinions about how-things-should-be-but-aren't, water it with tears of woe, blanch it with the artificial sunlight of our addictive expectations, and nurture the weeds? We have not so much lost the way the process works, just its purpose. We have become engaged in a weird compulsion to throw a spanner into the works. It has become more important to us to have things be a certain way than to have our life working joyfully. We've got ourselves snagged on the rocks of Individualistic Me-ness. We have allowed our selves to slip into ways of being that are health hazards -- victimness and selfishness. We just need to make some different choices.
The first choice is to live in a state of Conscious Vision. Once be get divinely dissatisfied with the results of the passive Unconsciousness in which we presently find ourselves, the switch should not be too hard. Vision is, after all, the natural state of who and what we are -- we were born this way. Vision is our natural state of self-expression, and it is the First Expression of our be-ing.
It is easy to spot a person with Vision. Despite all their challenges, they exhibit marked traits of inspiration, natural potency and quiet enthusiasm. They have no quarrel with the rest of creation. Quite the contrary, they see their place in all of it, and all of it mirrored in them. They are firstly satisfied with their life as it is, a state which seems to connect them with the power to make a difference. They exude an aura of life-working. Most revealing of all, they have no unfinished business with anything from the past, and no dissatisfaction with the present, because they have decided long ago that it was - and is - perfect just as it is. Any urge to change anything comes not from a dissatisfaction with it, but from a confidence and an urge to join in with the natural process of evolution. They have learned that, rather than trying to make change happen (the human way), it is far more preferable and effective to envision something new and allow it to evolve -- the way God does it.
VISION IS SIMPLE
So much of our waking moments we spend longing and fossicking around -- for what, we do not know.
A ground being of Vision is the answer to the $64,000 question --
Given who you are, what do you want?
OK, there are some observations I'd like to add around this question that may shed some light on where we get derailed.....
There are four qualities you need to bring with you when you're ready to create an empowering Vision ---
R.S.V.P.
- Responsibility
- Serenity
- Veracity
- Power for All
These are the essential aspects of your self that are required for a life of effective, empowering Vision. Where can you find them? Within. You already have them deep within you. You'll find them where you left them last, when you opted to give up playing creatively with your dreams in order to "grow up"and start manipulating the "real" world
What do you want? This is more than a grab for quick information. Regard it instead as an invitation to step into a context that will trigger and engage you in an ongoing journey of discovery. Ideally, the answers that matter will come to you couched in challenges and experiences from which you learn.
What do you really want? -- Not what you think you should want, or what someone else may want for you. And if what you want is something concrete, you might like to dig deeper and find the quality of life that you suspect might be available in what you say you want. Go for that, and give up any fixed ideas you might have about how to get it. Life often has better ideas, because it knows you better than you do.
Who do you want it for? If it is only for yourself, your group, or your family, you may be digging into very infertile ground. True Vision is inclusive and requires and involves the co-operation of the whole of creation.
Even after you have found your answers to to what you want, stay in the question. There is real experience waiting to be had from that enquiry. You don't even have to go looking for it. The appropriate experiences will present themselves to you at exactly the right time, and some of them will surprise you. Whatever comes, keep asking "What do I want in this situation?" Like an eternal onion, there are always more layers to be peeled away.
What do you really want? -- Not what you think you should want, or what someone else may want for you. And if what you want is something concrete, you might like to dig deeper and find the quality of life that you suspect might be available in what you say you want. Go for that, and give up any fixed ideas you might have about how to get it. Life often has better ideas, because it knows you better than you do.
Who do you want it for? If it is only for yourself, your group, or your family, you may be digging into very infertile ground. True Vision is inclusive and requires and involves the co-operation of the whole of creation.
Even after you have found your answers to to what you want, stay in the question. There is real experience waiting to be had from that enquiry. You don't even have to go looking for it. The appropriate experiences will present themselves to you at exactly the right time, and some of them will surprise you. Whatever comes, keep asking "What do I want in this situation?" Like an eternal onion, there are always more layers to be peeled away.
How will you know you've got it? If you have any idea of what will constitute proof that you've got what you put out for, you are bound to miss it. What we're looking for rarely comes as we expect. Our perceptions are too limited. Our ideas about how what we want will look and feel will blind us from seeing the reality when it comes. There is more work and more surrendering to be done.
How will you know when you've got it? There is no pat answer, but here are two possibilities that I have experienced -- a) When a sublime peace -- a sense of Completion -- descends upon you; or b) When you experience Nothing. A profound silence falls. In both cases, separation disappears. There is no line dividing between desire and fulfillment, or between Vision and Completion. In both cases, the euphoria won't last; don't try and hang on to it. Let go. Allow the next phase of your journey to present itself. Let the process begin anew.
How will you know when you've got it? There is no pat answer, but here are two possibilities that I have experienced -- a) When a sublime peace -- a sense of Completion -- descends upon you; or b) When you experience Nothing. A profound silence falls. In both cases, separation disappears. There is no line dividing between desire and fulfillment, or between Vision and Completion. In both cases, the euphoria won't last; don't try and hang on to it. Let go. Allow the next phase of your journey to present itself. Let the process begin anew.
Given who you are.... OK, but who are you? Do you know?
Well, you are not defined by:-
Well, you are not defined by:-
- the circumstances of your life
- the world as you perceive it
- your doubts
- your fears
- your problems
- your values, beliefs, concepts or opinions
These are things we all have, but they are not who we are. I have depression, diabetes and house keys, and I carry them around with me, but they are not who I am. I am, and you are much, much more than our stuff.
But our stuff is the reality that we ordinarily live in, and from which confined space we usually pose and answer the question "What do I want?" We come from a limited definition of the word "I". That is why our Wish Lists rarely get to be much more than just that. Every question delivers answers at the level of consciousness from which the question arose. When our visions produce negative results, it's a fair bet that our visions are limited by the low-level consciousness in which they were created..
You are, of course, all of the above ..... and also much, much more. You need to get to work and discover the rest of it -- your positive and negative self-image would be a good starting point. There is a process for discovering Positive and Negative self-image, but it's a little outside the scope of this article. What you can do in the meantime is start listening to your self-talk -- that incessant commentary going on inside your head. Note what it says about you, about others you admire, and those you don't like. Jot down all the negative and positive things you catch yourself saying about yourself and others. Why others? The judgments and critical assessments you lay on others are the same as ones you bring to bear on yourself. You're just more open about your crits of others than you are about what you really think of yourself. They're more easily accessible. Put them all together, and you will start to build up an idea of how you really see yourself. Prepare for a nasty surprise. You would not tolerate other people talking about you the way YOU talk about you!
And there is more. Complete the picture. Go through each of the evaluative words on your list and add its polar opposite. For example, in my negative self-image are words like "irresponsible", "selfish", and "callous". The opposites of those for me are "responsible", "allowing", and "caring". Add the opposites. We live in a universe of duality -- one cannot exist without the other. This is where you begin to discover some things you don't know that you know about yourself.
As very young children, we were as yet relatively unhindered by positive and negative self assessments, and we had no barriers to bringing our whole being to the process of playing. It was safe to be all and envision all. We were naturally aligned with the world and there was no need then to negotiate or compromise our dreams. But we learned very early that we should be careful who we shared it with. Other kids made fun of us when it suited them, and grown-ups either poured iced water over our enthusiasm, or hedged us in with dark comments like "Wait until you grow up". Their disillusionment was palpable and infectious. They weren't trying to sabotage us; they were trying to spare us their dis-appointment. We caught the disease. For most of us, growing up meant compromising our Self and finally giving up our high-flying visions and replacing them with poor, low-level substitutes. That was my experience. If yours was similar, do not despair. That's just the way your journey was taking you then. Now is the time when you can turn back and come home.
You can do that now...... E.T., it's time to phone home. Here's one way to do it.
Back before we sold out on playing with life is the time where we created the Vision for our life. There was an innocent knowing then of what we wanted our life to be all about. You may find it very healing to gently knock on the door of your early childhood and ask yourself "What did I want?" "What were my dreams?" If you have a photo or a memory image of yourself at an early age, even as a baby, look into the face of the child you once were for a few moments. Connect emotionally with that person. When you have established contact, ask "What do you want?" Putting the question in the present tense is important. Take any images, sounds, feelings and words that come and simply let them lie alongside your present reality, without further comment or evaluation. Continue the dialogue for as long as you can. Come back to it as often as you want.
As I grew older, I made the mistake of rejecting gifts that life handed me, labelling them as "misfit". If I had thought to called them "genius", I could have saved myself a lot of struggle. I'll bet the same is true for you. Everything that has happened in our past story led to the formation of our Now realisations. They were gifts. In the moments we are out of our Vision, our past no longer appears to co-operate with our present; it appears to dominate and restrict it. The ride gets bumpy. The domination is, however, an illusion that does not serve us well. Our past is a place to walk out of.
Don't lose heart. Keep zeroing in on The Question -- "What do I want?" As you persevere with the enquiry, your daily answers will broaden and become more universal in their appeal. Answers will become less about parts of you, less about your relationships, less about your social groups, your family and your country; they will broaden to embrace ALL of it.
There may be the inertia of years of negative programming to overcome. Stand in the possibility that Life asks your permission to help you become the kind of person who will attract what you want. When the question "Given what I am, what do I want?" is asked authentically for yourself, the answers will naturally be relevant for the whole world.
If quality of Vision is all that great, and there does seem to be a very real hunger for it, why isn't there more of it around?
- Living a life of Vision presents challenges and responsibilities that visionless mortals do not have to contend with. Humans are often given to taking the softer options. Every one of us is aware of a disparity between life as we see it, and life as we'd like it to be. Every one of us is challenged at some level or another to transform life as we see it now into life as we envisage it could be. But there is a softer option on offer -- to reduce our vision to fit inside our current reality of "how it is". We are allowed to do that, too. Fortunately, the consequences of the less challenging option are a long way short of satisfying, so there is always the possibility that we might later decide we've made a poor choice and change our mind.
- People with vision often speak a language that flies in the face of "common sense". From a Victim consciousness, for example, much of what they say may sound like non-sense. The truly dis-illusioned may even think they're barmy.
- We may confuse Charisma with Vision. The two qualities are not mutually exclusive, but they do differ in nature, quality and effectiveness. Charisma can inspire; Vision empowers. Problems arise when we expect visionary people to be charismatic (some are; some are not), or when we expect results from charismatic people that charisma alone cannot deliver.
- A lot of people simply do not know they are permitted to have a vision. The admonishments and jibes of their parents, relatives and teachers still echo eerily down the years. They explain the existence of the occasional visionaries by comforting themselves that these people are somehow "special". That, too, is a lie. There is no test of "worthiness" for Vision; it is freely available to everyone, even the brain-damaged. This ignorance of possibility would explain why so many look for "visionary leaders", surrogates and saviours to have visions for them. I counter with the possibility that, by the very fact of being human, each of us has a responsibility to align himself with creation and, willingly and consciously.create a vision and a life on purpose. A life of passivity is a waste of opportunity. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's no great virtue either.
- There is very little space given, either "in here" or "out there", to Vision. At times it is mistaken for something else, or actively discouraged. If that has been your experience, the space might have to be re-created. We might also have to be aware of the workings of Vision in ourselves before we can re-cognise them in anyone or anything else.
- Very few people actually exist in the possibility that life, at least in part, can be about what we want. It is my contention that life is very much about what we focus on. When we focus on what we want, we tend to get it. When we focus on what we DON'T want, we tend to get that instead.
- With Vision comes a Responsibility to do something with it. Perhaps people baulk at what they see as the domination of an onerous commitment. In a desperate bid for Freedom, they reject, or fail to recognise the Escape Hatch of Responsibility through which freedom is actually accessed.
- There is also a responsibility to share Vision around. Vision always involves alignment with the rest of creation. There is no vision in individualistic Me-ness. Vision turned inwards sours the soul and turns to poison. That is not the fault of Vision itself.
- When we see the disparity between our Vision and current reality, that disparity creates a tension that might be uncomfortable to tolerate. It sometimes takes boldness and trust to nurture a vision. It helps to remember that Vision itself offers enough motivation, inspiration and energy required to overcome a timid mind and dissolve the disparity.
- The blessing of Vision is bestowed. By its very nature, the vision is greater than the ego of the visualiser. But even good and well-meaning people mistakenly introject their vision (ie. let their egos "own" it) and thus dis-empower it.
Life is no less challenging for someone living in a Vision. But the nature of the challenges could hardly be more different. In vision, they are invigorating. On the other hand, the challenges of living without something larger to grow into are depressing and depleting.
Vision, as a quality of energy, is pretty much the same the world over. We give individual Visions different labels -- eg. Clean Up Australia, The World Hunger Project, Band Aid, Lifeline, The War on Terror, Holy Jihad etc. Outside of individual ego, no one example of Vision is any more or less important or valid than another. But the labels give focus to the activity and to the kind of people, values, principles and practices that will be drawn together by it. Participating in The World Hunger Project is a very different experience to participating in The War on Terror, and so are the type of people you are likely to meet and the events you're likely to experience.. How you judge the relative values of each depends entirely on your individual conditioning, values and perspective. But Vision is Vision. [You may feel very challenged at this moment to avoid getting sucked into snap judgments of what I've just said and feel an irresistible urge to play the "Right/Wrong"Game. If so, note it with interest as part of your journey of self-discovery]
Any problems that arise are due, at least in part, to the fact that many people who crawl under someone else's vision for cover have not bothered to create their own vision, or at the very least, to commit to a shared vision. They have, instead, adopted someone else's vision and turned it into a protective Position that they can feel good and right about. Well, Position creates Opposition, and will ultimately neuter and destroy itself. Meanwhile, the original vision is in danger of contracting and becoming tainted and polluted. Creative Vision feels neither right nor wrong: it allows ego, and is above ego, and too grand to succumb to the tyranny of petty notions.
Vision is vision -- a state of being in the world unbounded by considerations of impossibility, lack, undeservingness or IOU Everything outside of Vision is just a point of view, a bunch of opinions and beliefs that cloud, contract and obscure the purity of the process. When we recognise, acknowledge and share our own Visions, our lives automatically become about creating. Visions arising from our divine nature are naturally expansive and evolutionary.
Make a Declaration of Common, Aligned Vision that answers the question --
Without consideration, what do I truly want?
When you are in your Vision, you are not on a Position. You are both right and wrong; and neither right nor wrong. You live your Vision because it is the best expression of both your divine and your secular natures. When you are in Vision, you speak out of a commonly shared experience for the whole of mankind.
When you feel righteous, you are on a Position, and have lost touch with Vision.
In Vision. everything that enters that space expands it. In vision, differences contribute to create a greater reality.
When we recognise and acknowledge our Vision of some aspect of the human experience as it could be, we operate in a context that encapsulates and hallows the work we do within it.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
THE MEANING OF LIFE
What is the purpose of the whole play of existence?
Mind decides that meaning is found in the end. Where am I going? What do I hope to achieve by doing this? Where is the world going? What will happen next?
A sage named Sosan declared that, if there is meaning, it must lie at the beginning. The beginning is the end in potential; the end is the beginning, realised. Meaning may not be apparent right now, probably because we are looking everywhere but here and now. Meaning is inherent, he proposes, in the developing seed. Therefore, we do not have to wait until the end to understand. The mystery can be penetrated because here it is. The past has happened and it is here right now, carrying with it the flowering germ of meaning that gave rise to it.
We carry in us the seeds of all meaning and of all possibilities. There is no need to wait. While we wait with our gaze fixed on the future, the seed flowers at our feet and we miss it. Even if we look down at our feet, we don't recognise it because it doesn't look as we expect it to. The mistake is ours. Seeing and recognising the flower does not depend on the flower; it depends on us, and where we focus our gaze. While ever we wait for meaning to manifest itself some time in the imagined future, the present appears to be meaningless.
In Mind's eyes, it is absurd to look for meaning in either the beginning or the now, because Mind dwells on how it thinks the future ought to become, and moves and works through desire. Motivation, like a carrot on a stick, has to be somewhere out in front of the donkey. Mind seeks the meaning of Life in eventual Death. No wonder we bought the ideas of resurrection, reincarnation, heaven and hell. Ego cannot believe it is going to die.
The problem I have with the future is that it never arrives. As I write this, "today" is Thursday.When Friday finally comes, it will no longer be "tomorrow", it will be "today". Fridays tomorrow'(Saturday) will still be just as far out of reach. Tomorrow is an imagined fiction, an illusion harbouring hope and dread. It appears as if it is coming and it never does. There is no substance, flavour or aroma to it. Like the horizon, it is coming continually and never here. The future always remains un-arrived.
Waiting, waiting and waiting -- for the kettle to boil or for The Messiah -- we feel meaningless, impatient, despairing and trapped in a rut. The only solution seems to be to suicide.
Why wait for life to end? There is every chance that, in death -- the death of consciousness -- we will miss it anyway. That would be the cosmic joke of all time, but with no-one to laugh at it.
Is there another way of looking so that we can penetrate the seed now? While we can still get the joke? Is there another way of looking into it? Try this for yourself ..........
We belong to this existence. It preceded us and we arose out of it. The blueprint of existence is in every cell of our body, every thought that crosses our mind, and every feeling that washes over us. Existence in every moment now/here is fulfilling some part of its destiny through you and through me. My suggestion is to quit resisting it and, instead, engage with it. Get into a deep and intimate friendship with the whole of existence. You may find that what you've been looking and waiting for out there is already in you, waiting for you to notice it. Give up chasing shadows and dreams. Step into the shade and sit down. Meaning is flowering already. So are your deepest desires, especially the ones you have forgotten about. They have always been here. But we all listened to ideas about what Meaning should look like. Old ideas. Out-of-date ideas. Ideas irrelevant to you and your existence. Ideas about anything block our access to that thing.
What have you been waiting for? Meaning is here, now, waiting for you to "get it". What you crane your neck so painfully to see coming is standing right in front of you. Your mind might object "Nah, that ain't it!" Take no notice. Whatever it looks like, enter whatever is in front of you; the door is open to you, and the journey beyond that will open up to you in due time. It always has: it always will. You can trust that.
The blessings and graces of life wait patiently for us to stop peering into the future and come back to the present. We have been distracted, engaged and occupied in other things while we waited for that which is already here.
Give What-Is your attention.
Turn and see.
Mind decides that meaning is found in the end. Where am I going? What do I hope to achieve by doing this? Where is the world going? What will happen next?
A sage named Sosan declared that, if there is meaning, it must lie at the beginning. The beginning is the end in potential; the end is the beginning, realised. Meaning may not be apparent right now, probably because we are looking everywhere but here and now. Meaning is inherent, he proposes, in the developing seed. Therefore, we do not have to wait until the end to understand. The mystery can be penetrated because here it is. The past has happened and it is here right now, carrying with it the flowering germ of meaning that gave rise to it.
We carry in us the seeds of all meaning and of all possibilities. There is no need to wait. While we wait with our gaze fixed on the future, the seed flowers at our feet and we miss it. Even if we look down at our feet, we don't recognise it because it doesn't look as we expect it to. The mistake is ours. Seeing and recognising the flower does not depend on the flower; it depends on us, and where we focus our gaze. While ever we wait for meaning to manifest itself some time in the imagined future, the present appears to be meaningless.
In Mind's eyes, it is absurd to look for meaning in either the beginning or the now, because Mind dwells on how it thinks the future ought to become, and moves and works through desire. Motivation, like a carrot on a stick, has to be somewhere out in front of the donkey. Mind seeks the meaning of Life in eventual Death. No wonder we bought the ideas of resurrection, reincarnation, heaven and hell. Ego cannot believe it is going to die.
The problem I have with the future is that it never arrives. As I write this, "today" is Thursday.When Friday finally comes, it will no longer be "tomorrow", it will be "today". Fridays tomorrow'(Saturday) will still be just as far out of reach. Tomorrow is an imagined fiction, an illusion harbouring hope and dread. It appears as if it is coming and it never does. There is no substance, flavour or aroma to it. Like the horizon, it is coming continually and never here. The future always remains un-arrived.
Waiting, waiting and waiting -- for the kettle to boil or for The Messiah -- we feel meaningless, impatient, despairing and trapped in a rut. The only solution seems to be to suicide.
Why wait for life to end? There is every chance that, in death -- the death of consciousness -- we will miss it anyway. That would be the cosmic joke of all time, but with no-one to laugh at it.
Is there another way of looking so that we can penetrate the seed now? While we can still get the joke? Is there another way of looking into it? Try this for yourself ..........
We belong to this existence. It preceded us and we arose out of it. The blueprint of existence is in every cell of our body, every thought that crosses our mind, and every feeling that washes over us. Existence in every moment now/here is fulfilling some part of its destiny through you and through me. My suggestion is to quit resisting it and, instead, engage with it. Get into a deep and intimate friendship with the whole of existence. You may find that what you've been looking and waiting for out there is already in you, waiting for you to notice it. Give up chasing shadows and dreams. Step into the shade and sit down. Meaning is flowering already. So are your deepest desires, especially the ones you have forgotten about. They have always been here. But we all listened to ideas about what Meaning should look like. Old ideas. Out-of-date ideas. Ideas irrelevant to you and your existence. Ideas about anything block our access to that thing.
What have you been waiting for? Meaning is here, now, waiting for you to "get it". What you crane your neck so painfully to see coming is standing right in front of you. Your mind might object "Nah, that ain't it!" Take no notice. Whatever it looks like, enter whatever is in front of you; the door is open to you, and the journey beyond that will open up to you in due time. It always has: it always will. You can trust that.
The blessings and graces of life wait patiently for us to stop peering into the future and come back to the present. We have been distracted, engaged and occupied in other things while we waited for that which is already here.
Give What-Is your attention.
Turn and see.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
FEAR
"A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."
Fear is an irrational, primitive, elevated state of emotional arousal that seems to be a fact of life. It is governed by the amygdala and the limbic system, that part of our brain that was the earliest to evolve And it is not confined to humans. It is an almost universal alert system that gets our pulses racing to pump hormones and energy to all parts of our system, fueling the freeze, fight or flight mechanisms that, at a very primitive level, keep us alive. In Fear we are in Survival mode, the most basic of all levels of consciousness.
Fear is a Claytons form of engaging with life -- the kind of engagement you're having when there's something else you desperately don't want to engage with. It is a negative substitute for engaging creatively with what's in your face. Fear is creative, but its creations include isolation, separation, disengagement, and all manner of physical and emotional diseases.
Fear is an irrational, primitive, elevated state of emotional arousal that seems to be a fact of life. It is governed by the amygdala and the limbic system, that part of our brain that was the earliest to evolve And it is not confined to humans. It is an almost universal alert system that gets our pulses racing to pump hormones and energy to all parts of our system, fueling the freeze, fight or flight mechanisms that, at a very primitive level, keep us alive. In Fear we are in Survival mode, the most basic of all levels of consciousness.
Fear is a Claytons form of engaging with life -- the kind of engagement you're having when there's something else you desperately don't want to engage with. It is a negative substitute for engaging creatively with what's in your face. Fear is creative, but its creations include isolation, separation, disengagement, and all manner of physical and emotional diseases.
We jump at shadows. We can manage to feel threatened by even the most imaginary and innocuous things. All at once we feel a cocktail of emotions that may include insecurity, fright, anxiety, superiority, inferiority, outrage, insult, self-importance, self-consciousness, self-righteousness, guilt, rage ....... it's all fear.
While we are living in fear, we are locked into a very primitive stimulus/ response existence, defending something we fear we might lose. Because Fear is entered emotionally, we are not likely to have much success trying to reason/rationalise our way out of it. But in the less hectic times when our level of emotional arousal may have abated for a few moments, a possibly enlightening line of self-enquiry might be "What am I afraid of losing here?" "What am I attached to here that I find myself to be so anxious about?"
Fear is a negative attachment to something we identify our self with, and Attachment is the chief cause of all manner of suffering. Any attachment, even to altruistic values like integrity, love, service and sacrifice, means we are not free. There is nothing noble about high-mindedness rooted in fear.
Fear gives rise to most of our actions. It comes to us in the feeling form of every negative emotion known to mankind.... including anger, jealousy, prejudice and guilt. Fear lurks behind the need to bully, manipulate, cajole, dominate and control. Fear hides inside the compulsive overkill of effusive friendliness and niceness. As we are with others in times of stress, so we are with what we fear from within.
Because we fear from others the very rejection we have meted out to ourselves, we're reluctant to give a true and whole picture of ourselves to others. We pretend. We hide behind masks. We fake honesty, reliability, integrity and spend enormous amounts of energy and mental sweat keeping the facades in place. Then we get outraged when others do to us, seemingly shamelessly, what we would "never"do to them!
Anything we see to be a source of our fear, we attack, and every attack intensifies our fear. You can almost pick it up on CB in Alaska! Fear attracts fearsome events, characters and consequences.
What does fear attract into your life? Now there's a question worth spending time in!
Fear is the polar opposite of love: the two go together. Little wonder we find it so hard to experience the love we have for one another when we are so wary of each other.
Why?
What is it about the "other" that is so daunting? Let's begin with the unacknowledged bogeymen from within our hidden selves that we project onto others. We pin feared and rejected aspects of our selves onto people we don't like: it momentarily helps us to feel better about what's left of ourselves.
There is also our fear of Judgment -- both of judging and of being judged. Many of us fear the judgment of others because we think -- a) that others are thinking about us all of the time and judging us as mercilessly as we judge ourselves; and b) we need the approval of significant others to survive. And we fear our judgments of others because, deep down, we know who is really being judged and that we are inexorably becoming what we judge. We all expect to be judged, whether by others now, or by God some time around 4pm on the day of Armageddon. We cannot imagine God and others not judging us! Because we are doing it to ourselves and we can hardly remember a time when we were not evaluating and criticising our self.
There is also our fear of Judgment -- both of judging and of being judged. Many of us fear the judgment of others because we think -- a) that others are thinking about us all of the time and judging us as mercilessly as we judge ourselves; and b) we need the approval of significant others to survive. And we fear our judgments of others because, deep down, we know who is really being judged and that we are inexorably becoming what we judge. We all expect to be judged, whether by others now, or by God some time around 4pm on the day of Armageddon. We cannot imagine God and others not judging us! Because we are doing it to ourselves and we can hardly remember a time when we were not evaluating and criticising our self.
It is all our own creation.
Can life be lived without fear? I doubt it, but maybe there are some for whom fear has ceased to exist. But for the rest of us for whom fear is a reality, here's my suggestion. Say "Yes" to your fears. They will then do one of two things; either they will disappear, or they won't. If they disappear, say "Yes"to their disappearance. If they do not disappear, say "Yes"to their non-disappearance.
Fear may well be the price and the spice of being alive. Otherwise, would it be such an adventure?
WORRY
Worry is a compulsive preoccupation of a mind without trust. Worry is an anxious mind's way of polluting the present by dredging up some imagined future nightmare fantasy, obscuring the perfect reality of here-and-now. Fueled by Fear, Worry fulfills its own prophecies by creating a false present from which to move into the next moment
Worry is the result of a gross misuse of two divinely inspired human abilities -- to predict possible outcomes, and to create whatever we give our attention to. The human mind cannot tell the difference between something vividly imagined and something that is real. We catastrophise, in order to prepare ourselves for a worst-case scenario we are certain will come. And we get to be right.
Worry is a synthetic substitute for a natural concern we never gave ourself the chance to experience or express. We worry to ennoble ourselves, but we succeed only in degrading our possibilities. Worry is a phony virtue. It takes us out of a real experience of what-is and paralyses our possibilities.
It is the action of a frightened mind in the deepest dark of its own shadow.
Oh, how we love to scare ourselves to death!
Monday, February 22, 2010
TO CHOOSE AND NOT TO CHOOSE
Now we come an even broader paradox......
When we wail woefully that we have "no choice", we can choose at least whether to accept that reality or resist it. And we now know the probable consequences of each choice. If we find our strident ego resisting and refusing to take direction from from our higher self, then we must choose "no choice" to be the way that it is. Any decision to Choose What-Is breaks its victimising stranglehold and hands power back to the Chooser.
But once we are back in the driver's seat, there must eventually come an end, too. to choosing It is an effective tactic for initiating a break for freedom, but it must be temporary only, because the very act of choosing creates divisiveness and incompletion by saying "Yes"to one thing and "No"to another. That, too, must be abandoned before it becomes yet another barrier to transforming our experience.
When we choose to accept or reject anything, we create countering ideas, opinions, principles and prejudices that colour everything and obscure the perfection of its entire nature.
A perfect mirror simply reflects accurately everything that comes before it. A mirror does not judge or select. There is no editing or choosing.
When our eyes have no mind behind -- intervening -- they simply mirror. There is no appreciation or condemnation, only the acceptance and knowing of the whole of what can be seen. Then everything is as clear as can be and we are enlightened. Living becomes a mystery to be enjoyed, a dance to be danced, a game to be played whole-heartedly. We are no longer in any conflict with any part of it.
There is nothing to be dropped, or let go of. I have found myself unable to drop or let go of anything that is incomplete or split; it comes back to be completed and re-united. Only the whole, when it is complete, can be let go. But that is then no longer necessary: the perfect and complete automatically drops itself.
There is nothing to do. No bliss to be attained. Bliss is here, obscured only by a doing of accepting or rejecting. There is nothing to be done. Nothing to be earned. Nothing to be chosen -- not even to choose not-choosing. When you give up the choosing and the not-choosing, bliss showers itself upon you.
Simply see it all, and in the next moment add whatever comes then, too.
Allow
And embrace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)