The Peaceful Self.com

Grandma Guru Comforts Your Ego

2009-11-14T06:13:00.004-05:00

I like Byron Katies game "The Work" (although, like many, she denies being “awakened”). It seeks to throw the ego into a tailspin simply by thought switching and muddying up egoic concepts. This is fairly simple, straightforward, cognitive restructuring or reframing. We merely hone in on the concept that we suffer through by asking four questions:

Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?

After you get a grip on what concept you’re suffering through, you then simply reframe the concept in the reverse and Katie refers to this as the “turnaround.” For example “he should understand me” becomes “he shouldn’t understand me.” (actually any reverse will do in order for the game to continue, even “I should understand me”).

Byron Katie’s “The Work” has few terms or “awakening concepts” and thus relatively few rules. However, there must always be rules to the game... else, who would take the game seriously.

Katie is seeking to reduce personal suffering by redefining how your ego has come to understand suffering (which, of course, is also a game). She states, “The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues what is.”

“The Work doesn't say what anyone should or shouldn't do. We simply ask: What is the effect of arguing with reality? How does it feel? This Work explores the cause and effect of attaching to painful thoughts, and in that investigation we find our freedom. To simply say that we shouldn't argue with reality is just to add another story, another philosophy or religion. It hasn't ever worked.”

I like what Katie advocates since she is pointing to the ego’s need to be right and defend this righteousness (although Katies doesn’t specify an “ego” she simply calls it “mind.”)

However, I kept wondering why so many seem to consider this program as facilitating “awakening,” since all I could spot was simply another form, albeit lofty and poetic, of cognitive therapy. She does report in one of her brochures that

“Katie’s insight is consistent with leading edge research in cognitive psychology, and The Work has been compared to the Socratic dialogue, Buddhist teachings, and 12-step programs.”

Wow! Katie's a Socratic Buddhist psychologist. Yet, alas, here is the interesting rule in this game:

“I've been using the turnarounds whenever I make judgments, and somehow it doesn't do anything but make me depressed and confused. What's going on?

Katie response: "To simply turn thoughts around keeps the process intellectual and is of little value. The invitation is to go beyond the intellect. The questions are like probes that dive into the mind, bringing deeper knowledge to the surface. Ask the questions first, and then wait. Once the answers have risen, then do the turnarounds. The surface mind and the deeper mind (I call it the heart) meet, and the turnarounds feel like true discoveries.”

Katie’s “practice” consists of intellectual introspection, however, the intellect must eventually be negated as the means of performing this introspection, since she teaches that you need to “go beyond the intellect.”

Here we have the mystical component that must exist in all awakening games. Understanding must come from the egoic intellect, but then there is the demand that the intellect cancel itself by going beyond itself. The ego must essentially nullify itself.

Katie states that the intellectual process alone is of little value, so one must go beyond the intellect. Once again, egoic intellect is of little value in the game of awakening, although it’s needed to get you in the door.

If you finally do transcend your intellect you may wish to become a certified facilitator. To acquire that lofty title you must attend a certification training at “The School for the Work” (currently reduced to $4,245 from $4,995). If you choose not to attend the School, you could simply seek out a certified facilitator, who is “available to give you the pure experience of The Work."

Seems like all “awakening games” must have their priesthood or trained ego’s to proselytize the rules of the game. Byron Katie’s game is quite revolutionary, since she markets her rules to the common man/woman and thus, eschews the typical “enlightened master” paradigm with small groups of followers (however, her teaching model is similar to others in that the revered masters sits atop the raised platform while the adoring students in the audience sit at her feet).

Her marketing strategy is excellent as she’s enlisted many other postmodern masters to endorse her game, like Wayne Dyer, Lama Surya Dass and, of course, how far could you go without a good word from the master’s master, Eckhart Tolle.

This is called "The Awakening Mafia"

It’s interesting that Katie, like Eckhart Tolle, required a “dark night of the soul” in order to rise up from the personal fire of psychological hell. However, they seek to help you avoid that pit, through specified practices.

These ‘ego-enabling’ practices may actually do a disservice because, if ‘bottoming-out’ is the rule of the game, the practices obstruct you from entering the rings of fire for yourself.

In fact, the practices merely serve to keep your ego warm and comfy, while you avoid the real ‘work” that comes from recognizing that not only are the “painful thoughts” or concepts not real.....

....none of your concepts are "real."

But who's gonna teach that!

Image by Martina Hoffman - "The Muse of Conscious Awakening"

Other Byron Katie Probes:

Byron Katie & Janaki
Byron Katie's School for the Work
Guruphiliac

Pope Condemns Gays, But Extraterrestrials Have Blessing

2009-11-11T13:34:00.005-05:00

POPE ADMITS "ADAM AND EVE" A LIE!
MAN MOST LIKELY OF KLINGON AND VULCAN ANCESTRY

VATICAN CITY — E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.
"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said in that interview.

"Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom."
Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered "part of creation."

LINK

(Image by Jason Jacenko)

The Ego's Directly Experiencing "Direct Experience"

2009-11-10T19:00:00.006-05:00

Are there some experiences that are not interpreted by the ego-self construct?

How can that be when, in fact, the ego-self defines experience, because it defines the individual ‘self’ that has an experience. In fact, couldn't we say that to have an "experience" there must be a defining or "framing" of the experience by the 'self' claiming the experience for itself?

In other words, for you to have an experience, there needs be an egoic defining of 'self' before the experience occurred. "you" have set the parameters for every experience you encounter, otherwise, it would not be encountered. Kinda like, "ho hum, la dee da, looks like everything is as usual... oops, what was that! "I" seem to have had an 'experience' of some sort... wow!" (of course, this is a oversimplification).

It seems to me as long as there is a defined "you,” all experiences will be defined by that very same "you," regardless of the content of the experience. What is an experience but 'thought' framed as an 'experience'? Or could it be an ‘experience’ framed as ‘thought’?

You can never know truth without doubt, since the moment the interpretation of truth is made by an ego-self package, doubt is inherent to the interpretation because the ego-self must doubt it exists in order to maintain existence. This is because the moment the ego asserts an absolute existence, or a 'knowing' completely devoid of all doubt, it must cease to exist, since the ego-self is always a relative approximation of itself.

Without relativity, there could be no "you."

We are all nothing but vague and obscure relative concepts of 'self.' There can be no clarity, ever. But, we will seek it and we must forever "seek, but NOT find." Finding anything absolute would immediately spell "your" doom.

Yet, maybe the clarity is in the doubt. I'm not so quick to dismiss thinking, although I do realize at some point thinking will most likely become extremely nonsensical (just read some of the posts on all those non-duality blogs you love so much). However, I think insanity is bit too overly vilified and possibly we all could benefit from some brief swims into the depths of madness (been there and back a few times myself).

Many teach that you should surrender the intellect and the ego’s need to categorize experience. But “who” is surrendering “what”? Here again we have a splitting-off of the experiencer from the experience, through the abnegation of ego-self. I am not 'this,' but 'this,' is a finite game with an outcome, whereas, "not this, not that" (neti, neti) will always keep the game in play.

Your ego loves when you attempt to surrender it, since what you're really doing is surrendering TO it.

The intellect is the ego and the ego is mind and both are nothing more than experience. Seek to reject parts and how can you experience the whole? Can there be a compartmentalizing of experience as if to say, this is egoic intellect and this is "direct experience"? Can there be experience unadulterated by interpretive functions?

Or, can there be a before, during and after to your "direct experience" of “awakening” or "enlightenment"? Who or what determines that? If you say, "once I was ignorant, but now am enlightened" that very statement asserts your continued attachment to time and negates any experience unconditioned by time.

But then, let’s say that this is true and that you can have your “direct experience” separate from the ego-self ("you"). It will be the ego that informs you of that very differentiation you attest to as separate from ego-self. Again, assert a before and an after to your "direct experience" and you prove your attachment to an identity in time, because to be in-time, you must identify with an anchor point or a "you."

But the "enlightened ones" do this all the time and we eat it up, because it's truly the breakfast of champions.

You must first know the ego-self before you can differentiate an experience as ‘not ego.’ In fact, without an ego, how would you ever realize 'egolessness.' This makes the ego a very valuable experience, so why do you wish to transcend what has determined your wish to transcend? (seems kinda silly when you get down to it).

Desire “transcendence” and you inadvertently reinforce the opposite. When you experience anything, you will incorporate the wholeness of the experience employing the whole mind, including your ego.

The ego is not meant to be excluded and that’s because nothing can ever be excluded! In addition, the ego can never be asserted as subordinate to some other 'experience' because this merely asserts inequality, which is a condition of time.

The Tao excludes NOTHING!

If you wish to classify certain, ‘special’ experiences as “awakening,” or "enlightenment" then by all means do so. If you wish to have a “direct experience,” as differentiated, sequestered and partitioned off from other 'experiences,' please feel free to have it. But, allow your whole experiential 'self' to have the experience fully and do not deny your ego is a part of that experience, otherwise the whole truth might be missed.

Good grief man, it was your ego that brought you this far, seems a bit disingenuous to trash it after all that work it did for "you"!

Image by Andy Clarkson - "Soul Searching"

Let the Guru Bow to You

2009-10-30T21:15:00.012-04:00

Your words enthrall me, your thoughts are clean. You tell me everything is not as it seems.

Are you my teacher? Are you the wise master-guru that "I" seek?

The egoic self-construct will discard that which is not already there IN the student. The idea that there is something new to learn is a trick the student plays on the guru.

This way, the 'self' can be retained as not 'realized,' but forever seeking realization.

The dynamics of the 'enlightenment game' are cyclical, since you can dump all your ignorance on the exalted guru, who's job is to dump it back on you. This is how you maintain the 'cycle of ignorance' and your experience of the world never changes (Yet, you claim to be getting 'closer,' which, of course, only takes you farther away).

However, you can break from the 'cycle of ignorance' when you trust in the ignorant to teach you, because the ego will deny learning anything at all. In that denial, realize that you have learned more than could be learned from a million wise gurus.

But this is virtually impossible, because the ego-self seeks out what is useful based on its own requirements. Even before the teacher speaks, the ego-self knows what is said and so...

...listens intently.

If it resonates, then most likely it's what you've asked for... but not what you need, because you don't know what you need. (and if you don't know what you need, then it's best to trust in everything except what you've asked for).

The real teacher is the one that bows to you. But, most likely, "you" will have none of that, since that would negate the enlightened teacher and your goal to be 'one' (...of them).

Nevertheless, essentially, you teach yourself. The "teacher" only confirms what is already known by YOU. In that sense all teachers are useless and any enlightenment, realization, awakening, etc, etc, you give yourself, as there are no intermediaries for the contents of your mind since all intermediaries are content too. (although we tend to project it outward in the desire for an external reference point, but that's just Freudian "wishful thinking"). The "guru" always gives you what you ask for, although you may deny awareness of the asking.

Seems kinda silly when you really get down to it.

However, there are those who can give you what you do not want, nor ask for, but need. They are all around you. When will you bow to them in the realization that they are your teachers?

The real learning happens when you excuse yourself from the classroom.

Well the dawn was coming,
heard him ringing on my bell.
He said, "my name's the teacher,
that is what I call myself.
And I have a lesson
that I must impart to you.
It's an old expression
but I must insist it's true.

Jump up, look around,
find yourself some fun,
no sense in sitting there hating everyone.
No man's an island and his castle isn't home,
the nest is full of nothing when the bird has flown."

So I took a journey,
threw my world into the sea.
With me went the teacher
who found fun instead of me.

Hey man, what's the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed.
I try to socialize but I can't seem to find
what I was looking for, got something on my mind.

Then the teacher told me
it had been a lot of fun.
Thanked me for his ticket
and all that I had done.

Hey man, what's the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed.
I try to socialize but I can't seem to find
what I was looking for, got something on my mind.
(Jethro Tull - The Teacher)

(Image by Saturno Butto)

The Rewards of Silly Wisdom Games

2009-10-28T17:38:00.024-04:00

You struggle daily and work hard (working weekends!) to become "enlightened," because you believe that you have something to do with it. That's because you've been taught that you can make truth 'happen' and in some way 'manifest' the signs or symbols of an absolute truth.

This is essentially an unconscious hoax perpetrated by the "wise" seekers who have forced the "wise" teachers to play their silly games. If you didn't want it, they wouldn't teach it.

Problem is that this "ancient wisdom" is based in reality (learning paradigm, which demands you first be stupid and then get smart) and found in the world (it's 'ancient' and comes from the past). Yet, ironically, they claim that if you 'learn' what the world teaches from the 'past' you can transcend the world and "awaken" to timelessness.

Yea, right, in your dreams! (literally)

Nevertheless, this is what you demand they teach and they've had no choice in the matter. But, if "enlightenment" was not taught in the past, then how would you learn it? Yet, if it's past info, then what good is it anyway? It's the student that determines the curriculum and not the teacher.

Spiritual paths, no matter how ancient or austere, simply help you negotiate a very absurd reality and nothing more than that. Even calling the absurdity "all beautiful," instead of "completely absurd," is merely one way to cope with the absurdity. So, in that sense, you must follow the prescribed "Path" in order to minimize or mitigate your conceptual suffering. But recognize, it serves that purpose only and stop 'expecting' more, which only maintains your absurd suffering.

The world you experience 'exists' only for 'seeking'... not for 'finding.'

Or have you found something and now must teach the world? The problem is that if you 'found' the truth, then there would be no one to teach, because it would be known. Unless, of course, you think you're separate from everybody else and that you can get "The Truth," same as you got your high school diploma.

Enlightenment is a certainty. That is, until you attempt to learn it and, by doing so, put everything in doubt.

Spiritual concepts are convenient in allowing you brief, sporadic respite from guilt. Spiritual and religious ideologies have existed for centuries as the means of getting all "jiggy with it." The religions of the world serve no other purpose than helping you escape guilt (by making it more "real," through concepts like "karma" and "sin"). That's because if we all have to die, then we must be guilty of something, right?

So just keeping repeating your mantra, "I AM, I AM, I AM..." and the guilty ones can all go piss off.

For instance, if I slap the spit outa you and call you “a good for nothin’ butthead,” that’s okay, because my slapping the spit outa you and calling you "a good for nothing butthead" is a part of 'oneness.' HA!
Everything is a part of oneness and oneness is the essence of everything. Every choice is the only choice that could be made and therefore, we can define it as a “good” choice. It must be, since it was the only choice that could be made, based only on the fact that it was made.

Whew! Lucky you. Now you don’t have to experience guilt, remorse or regret, because... well... everything happens as it must and "everything is beautiful" (sing along with me brothers and sisters!).

However, the devout would argue that "I" just don't understand 'oneness' or "non-duality." I can only respond that if it is not understood by just one single separate mind, it's not true whatsoever, just more conceptual hogwash that you must eat with a spoon so you don't miss a drop.

Truth available to only a few, might be "real" just not true (but then, you really don't want the truth, just for your truth to be real). If you don't already know what they're teaching, then it ain't worth learning. And you thought that after all that hard work, it finally belonged to "you" (sorry, bro, we're all in this together, cause although "you" are certainly "real" you're just not true).

Let me put it to you in a different way:

Nothing “you” experience is a part of “oneness,” because "oneness" is not a 'part' of anything. You won't find the whole in the parts, but the parts are in the whole. See parts and, rest assured, you have missed the whole. Duh!

The ego is incredibly brilliant in the ways it seeks to avoid others in an attempt to find itself and the “I AM” is probably the most subtle.

"I AM not speaking to any 'body'.
I AM not speaking to any 'mind'.
I AM speaking to THAT I AM that I AM,
to that PRESENCE AWARENESS,
that expresses through the mind as the thought I AM.
Just THIS and NOTHING else."
(Sailor Bob)

In your egoic state, negate other bodies and you automatically negate other minds. But then, who will help you find "the promise land"? Do “you” know the way to enlightenment (or just the way to San Jose?) You are your own savior? Just “I AM” and nothing else?

How convenient!

Thank God you don’t have to rely on anyone else! Just think... what if your "awakening" was contingent on everybody else awakening with you? Now that would suck and make all your hard work and sacrifice a fools errand.

Good thing "you" know the way to San Jose, cause enlightenment ain't on the map.

"Do you know the way to San Jose
I’ve been away so long
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to San Jose
I’m goin’ back to find
Some peace of mind in San Jose"

"LA is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parkin’ cars and pumpin’ gas"

"You can really breathe in San Jose
They’ve got a lot of space
There’ll be a place where I can stay
I was born and raised in San Jose
I’m goin’ back to find
Some peace of mind in San Jose"

"Fame and fortune is a magnet
It can pull you far away from home
With a dream in your heart you’re never alone
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend
You pack your car and ride away"

"I’ve got lots of friends in San Jose
Do you know the way to San Jose"
(Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick)

(Image by 'Libby')

The Spazticity of Egoic "Love"

2009-10-28T07:42:00.002-04:00

The natural affinity for joining with others is your chief function and only purpose and little else is involved in your Being, (although you have added all manner of conditions to your “existing,” based on what the world teaches).

However, your most intense conditional engagements are 'ego-spaztic' and this is especially how “romantic love” can be characterized.

Psychologists refer to these ego-spaztic periods as the “infatuation stage” of romantic relationships. It's a time when orientation to reality becomes somewhat distorted and psychology tends to define it as essentially equivalent to a psychotic state.

READ FULL ARTICLE: Intimate Awakening. net

CONVERSATIONS WITH EGO: Transcending the Transcender

2009-10-26T18:09:00.003-04:00

ego: (sigh)…Mike, really…all this “ego dynamics” stuff is hard for people to click with. I mean, people want to develop the ‘self,’ not strip it away.

Mike: Well, maybe that’s the problem! Maybe if we had less ego involvement in the world, we wouldn’t be having all these problems in the world.

ego: Mike, Mike, Mike….You and I both know that I ain’t going anywhere. And that’s just as true for everybody else.

You can’t transcend the transcender…

Mike: Yea, I get that. But maybe we can have significantly less of you. Wouldn’t that be nice!

ego: So, then… if you had “less” of me... what would you be left with?

Mike: More of my “True Nature”!

ego: What’s that?

Mike: I like to think it’s my deeper self... minus you.

ego: But, how would you know it without me?

Mike: Good grief! It’s like I can’t do anything without you!

ego: Unfortunately, Mike, even trying to be without me... requires my assistance.

(Image by De Es Schwertberger - "Facing the Light")

Interlocking "Stories" Create Worlds

2009-10-25T10:49:00.015-04:00

Certainly we are always in relationship to everything in our experience of a world. Yet, the primacy of all self-defining is through others first, everything else is a sloppy second.

Who "you" are is contingent on others, because they have defined "you" and "you" have defined them (although "you" like to take all the credit).

The German philosopher Heidegger emphasized that there is no experience as "man" or "human being" as a separate isolated experience or 'story.' Of course, man and human being are separate ideas or concepts that can be strung together in numerous narratives. But the experience is only in relationship, or "Being-in-the -World," as unified

You experience your greatest joy and your most intense suffering through and with others. But "you" believe this is not to be trusted and so rely primarily, and often exclusively, on your 'self.'

Make no mistake, sitting on your cushion meditating is not free of others, since who "you" are, or the concept you identify with as you "meditating," is an interdependent construction extracted from a world of others. Your 'world' provides you with everything you need and even your belief in transcending the world was given to you from your world. But if the world is "you," and there is no division, you give to yourself.

Your "story" is not about you, but about you in relationship to other stories that relate to other stories, which relate to other stories, on and on, ad infinitum (such are the tangled webs we weave). Yet, your desperate attempts to identify and isolate an individual 'story' against and in contrast to other individual stories is the root of your suffering.

Even in the relationships you claim as your most intimate, you barely touch the depths of intimacy even though you sense that all experience is unified. Unity frightens the poop out of the sociopathic ego, which revels in its separate individualism, but wouldn't know itself from spit if it were not for the shared experience which defined it. So it adopts complicated and austere 'spiritual' practices, which only reinforces its desire to revel in itself, denying that it would not even exist without 'others' to give it meaning.

Nothing wrong with meditation though, especially when used by ego to come out from its protective shell and engage with its experience of others. Only then will it know itself as engaged with a world in which its greatest joy is from shared consciousness.

Certainly engaging with a 'world' is crucial to the 'self' since without the experience of a world there could be no experience of 'self.' Nevertheless, all experiences are intensified when combined. This idea is so counter to the usual mode of your egoic relating that it's hard to grok and you become acclimated to separating your relationships from your spiritual practices in the belief that once your "spirituality" has sufficiently intensified (whatever that means), the trickle down theory will then insure that your relationships benefit accordingly.

Yet, this is counter to the fact that relationships are your spiritual practice and your only purpose.

I meditate fairly regularly (actually, I just call it 'sitting still for a spell') but for me this is nothing but prep for engaging in a world of others. It's the old parable, "seeking the face of Christ in another" is "awakening," since it's through others that such a maximal experience is attained. Intense solitary experiences are grand, but I contend this is multiplied exponentially when engaged in sharing with and through another. This is how we learn who we are in truth. Yet, it's also how we create a shared experience of reality that may not be true if our purpose is denied.

Stories...........

2009-10-24T13:08:00.003-04:00

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

The Interdependent Non-Dual Nature of Christ Consciousness

2009-10-23T07:52:00.007-04:00

Ego’s experience pain and suffering and because of that, we fear each other above all else. This is because nothing causes more pain and suffering than "man's inhumanity to man." In fact, it is often our most significant others that cause the most pain.

Yet, the inverse is that those you have joined with to experience “love” are often cause for the most joy (you may even have briefly touched this, but have long since forgotten due to the desensitizing angst of daily egoic existence).

To trust in your ability to heal yourself, you must trust in the healing ability of another, because the world is an interdependent unity of transference and counter transference and you cannot extract your ‘self’ from that experience, because it is inherent to your ‘Being.’

Not one concept of your ego-self was constructed in isolation from other self-concepts. Waking from the dream is an interdependent project, because we do not dream alone.

But then, why do we seek to ‘awake’ alone?

See everyone as facilitator to your awakening, even those whom you judge has having little or no value. Since, who are “you” to judge?

Nevertheless, the ego-self expects ‘healing’ on its own terms. It will seek out healing through conflict, because it was designed from conflict and in conflict, and it believes that it alone has the power to heal itself, because it alone made it what it is.

The ego seeks out conflict through which to define itself in opposition to the world. Therefore, the more actualized the ego, the more it believes it has transcended conflict. It believes that through actualizing itself in the world, the world will heal it, based on the world’s rewards (in other words, “if only this, than that”). Only by following the world’s prescribed ‘laws’ will you achieve your ‘reward’ and the world reflects that expectation in widespread discouragement and despair.

The law of the jungle is survival (everybody for himself) and the more "enlightened" and powerful the 'self,' the greater your reward and the more your chances of survival (in this life and after).

Your ‘self’ is an abstract concept developed purely to protect from fear and, through that function, actually manufactures the fear you seek to evade. The irony is that what you protect from is what you made “real.”

To replace the “real” with the truth you must let down your defenses. But, the world can be a very frightening ‘experience’ and you need a ‘self’ you can count on to protect “you” from what’s ‘out there,’ denying that what’s ‘out there’ is entirely experienced ‘within.’

Instead of seeking to protect from it, through your concepts, maybe it’s time to engage with it?

What was developed in the need for protection (ego-self) merely magnifies your alienation from others. Make no mistake, it’s not others that threaten you, but your inner experience of others. There is a very distinct difference that you will not realize alone through intellectualized ‘spiritual’ games. You need others to aid you in unifying what seems a distinct division of mind.

Unification of these two distinct and opposing perspectives is the non-duality of Christ Consciousness and it is an entirely interdependent experience.

Your world is your experience, both inside and out. Many spiritual paths emphasize that by changing the ‘inside,' the ‘outside’ cannot harm you and this alludes to the “kingdom within." Yet, what they fail to address is that you cannot change the inside alone, as this only reinforces that you are alone and separate from what is ‘outside.’

Healing is an absence of conflict in all experience and there are many you have chosen through which to encounter that perfect peace. Did you think that 'they' came into your life by coincidence? Is it all simply a matter of chance?

Take a long look at the one next to you. Extract from that “look” all past concepts, or expectations, superimposed upon them and then communicate to them what you see. When you superimpose your concepts upon physical “sight,” you lose vision, because your concepts are hinged on egoic self-preservation and, therefore, based in fear.

Fear obstructs vision through self-protective, seemingly impenetrable, veils. Healing is nothing more than seeing through the self constructed veils of fear and realizing perfect safety. Do you feel perfectly safe with everyone you have chosen to love? Can you reveal your ‘self’ to them with excruciating honesty? (or must parts be kept undisclosed). If not, then you have abdicated your function as healer by denying this function in them and this is because you believe that healing is impossible from them and this makes it unavailable to you.

If healing is impossible from them, this only means protection is still necessary, because only egos require protection. You believe you must heal your ‘self’ regardless of the fact that the self was not constructed in isolation from them and they are as much a part of you as you are of them.

Individual fixation on your ‘self’ does not change this equation. Every individual problem you experience is always in correspondence to others. It has been said, that we are like the walking wounded, numbed by fear and closed off from any depth of engagement and so we do not understand one another and have given up trying.

Relationships steeped in the depths of intimacy are healing “places” for all who enter and join. We all feel the pull toward healing, but deny the source could ever be with another, because the experience within you cannot be trusted and so, neither can they. The ego-self must engage and engage deeply.

The ego will contrive strategies to evoke conditioned love as a way to personal happiness, but this is an egoic ruse and is destined to fail. Your lacking the motivation to heal the ones you have chosen to love, means you have simply refused to be healed by them. Love is interdependent healing exchange and, if you are not healed, than there was no love, but only conditioned behaviors rigidly based in conventional self-protective duality.

There is no other way to spin this, although your ego will try.

The Know-Nothing Neutrality of Non-Duality

2009-10-21T15:33:00.010-04:00

One of the chief misinterpretations of non-duality (for those relying on interpretations) is that non-duality is an acceptance of all that is.

This is opposed to rejecting or invalidating all that is, because, as they claim, all that is emerges from “oneness” and, thus, to reject anything is to reject "oneness," so accept it all, because “everything is good and beautiful!”

Notice the duality here?

Acceptance is opposite rejection and both distinctions are nothing more than dualistic judgments, no different than good/bad, right/wrong, etc, etc. You Make judgments between two modes of conventional perception; reject or accept. Only you choose acceptance, because you were taught that this judgment is more advantageous to your spiritual evolution and is, incidentally, the way to non-duality or "enlightenment."

Therefore, from this choice you accept murder and war.

Ha! But that’s absurd. Why would anyone accept murder and war?

Well, based on the "acceptance" premise, you accept murder and war because non-duality demands acceptance of all that is.

But wouldn’t your acceptance of murder and war, thereby, assert murder and war as “real”? If murder and war is a part of your experience, whether directly or indirectly, doesn’t accepting murder and war continue to make it “real” and part of your experience?

But, wouldn’t you rather that murder and war weren’t “real”? Wouldn't you rather it were NOT part of your experience?

On the other hand, if you do not accept, or if you reject murder and war, does this not also make it “real," since you assert that it exists simply through your desire that it NOT exist. Why would you reject what is not a part of your experience of "reality." Therefore, to reject is to accept, just as to accept is a rejection.

Seems like either way you go, you’re caught in the web of duality. But then, some like it hot, while some like it cold.

Is there anything else besides this either/or perspective?

Maybe you just don’t know? Maybe you shouldn't apply meaning one way or the other, because you have NO idea what anything means? Maybe you need to detach from the egoic capacity to judge altogether, which means to neither accept nor reject (is your ego screaming yet?).

Maybe even your whole experience of “reality” was simply manufactured by filling that blank slate (consciousness) with rejection and acceptance?

'Knowing' is so over-rated. Maybe neutrality changes everything.

Can you return to that ‘blank slate,’ that neither accepts nor rejects? Maybe this is the "Know-Nothing Neutrality of Non-Duality" or the state of consciousness that neither rejects nor accepts.

Can you accept you know nothing by rejecting everything or can you reject what you know by accepting nothing?

Should you seek neutrality in the realization that you don’t know? Those who don’t know neither accept nor reject. How could they, in the realization that they don’t know. Maybe you should return to the blank slate that you were prior to judging your experiences as “real"?

More importantly, if you choose to believe you don’t know, then you will be open to learning, because, obviously, those who already ‘know’ have nothing to learn. In fact, when you know nothing, you immediately become vulnerable. Of course, even though your ego is deathly afraid of being vulnerable, it is probably the most spiritually advanced state you could attain prior to realizing your infinite invulnerability.

You have come to realize you know nothing and desire to learn everything, because you’ve entered the neutral state of non-dual consciousness, which knows nothing. Of course, since you know nothing and are neutral about everything, then you cannot possibly judge who the best teacher is and, therefore, remain neutral about 'who' knows and does not know. This means you must be open to learning from everyone and everything, even those who claim not to know and are blank slates themselves.

In that way we all come upon truth together, since it can't be known any other way.

Obviously those who claim to ‘know’ merely fear being vulnerable. But then, what should you do upon meeting up with someone who claims to know and wants to teach you?

RUN!

(but then, don't accept what I say, but don't reject it either)

(Artwork by KH Blackwell "Pressures of the Non-Blinking Third Eye)

Does Adyashanti Cherish Illusions?

2009-10-18T12:28:00.011-04:00

Adyashanti is currently one of the most revered of the internet's neo-advaitist’s messengers. I enjoy reading and listening to his philosophical discussions. However, over time I’ve come to recognize that he is as deluded as any other postmodern Non-Dual/Zen "teacher" and this delusional mindset is contagious, since the message is passed from one idolized messenger to another.

The quotes used here can be found at Adyashanti.org, “The Quest”

“The quest for enlightenment is the quest for truth or reality. It’s not a quest for ideas about truth—that’s philosophy. And it’s not a quest to realize your fantasies about truth—that’s fundamentalized religion. It’s a quest for truth on truth’s terms. It’s a quest for the underlying principle of life, the unifying element of existence.”

The “quest for the underlying principle of life, the unifying element of existence” is not found in solitary excursions through the mind, since this only results in egoic conceptual “fantasies." It is encountered in the depth of relationship and that is "the underlying principle of life, the unifying element of existence" and the reason you're 'here.'

Truth is not available to separate individuals outside relationship, since this makes it 'proprietary truth,' which must belong to an 'individual' (just not you). The truth, simultaneously experienced by two or more who have encountered it together, is not relative to any individual ego-self. However, truth encountered together can be negated as truth, especially for those who believe 'truth' belongs only to the individuals we have designated as specialized "Wisdom Masters."

“In your quiet moments of honesty, you know that you are not who you present yourself as, or who you pretend to be. Although you have changed identities many times, and changed them even in the course of a single day, none of them fit for long. They are all in a process of constant decay. One moment you’re a loving person, the next an angry one. One day you’re an indulgent, worldly person; the next a pure, spiritual lover of God. One moment you love your image of yourself, and the next you loathe it. On it goes, identified with one self-image after another, each as separate and false as the last.”

Yes, however, this 'wise man' (with the Hindu name) fails to address the fact that all of these “identities” are manufactured in relation to engagement with the identity of others. The ‘self’ was not constructed in isolation, but immersed in relationship with a 'world' of other identities. Even the illusion is communal and was constructed in collaborative engagement. Unfortunately, this may make it “real,” just not true and it is truth that we must seek together.

Therefore, if the “real” was constructed in cooperative engagement, the truth will be discovered in the same way and this lends credence to the fact that we are powerful beyond belief (since it is belief which limits us). The illusion is that by seeking the truth as an individual, more illusion is what you will find. An individual must always discover illusion, because an “individual” is a concept that 'we' made "real." If your "quiet moments" were truly "honest," then a desire to engage the 'others' of your world will be the result, in the realization that this is the only way to encounter truth.

“When this game of delusion gets boring or painful enough, something within you begins to stir. Out of the unsatisfactoriness of separation arises the intuition that there is something more real than you are now conscious of. It is the intuition that there is truth, although you do not know what it is. But you know, you intuit, that truth exists, truth that has absolutely nothing to do with your ideas about it. But somehow you know that the truth about you and all of life exists.”

Therefore, from this "unsactisfactoriness of separation," seek out the ground of truth through relationship (why choose any other 'individual' path?). From a depth of engagement with the illusion, together we overcome it in realizing we united to make it “real.” Now we simply unite to make it true.

It’s not the space between thoughts that need be discovered, but the space between minds that need be converged because, from that space, ”individuals” emerged and, in that alone, illusion was made “real” and egoic compromises, or distinctions, were manufactured to define illusion as “real.” Unfortunately, we have yet to realize the true, simply because we seek to find it as 'individuals.'

“Once you receive this intuition, this revelation, you will be compelled to find it. You will have no choice in the matter. You will have consciously begun the authentic quest for enlightenment, and there is no turning back. Life as you’ve known it will never be quite the same.”

Although the revelation (or revealing) is through another, the ego will insist that you engage the "authentic quest for enlightenment” alone. This is because individual ego-self relies distinctly on distrust and, thus, alienation, from others in order to advance itself through delusional inequality.

This is why so many fail to realize truth undiluted by egoic constructions simply because they seek to attain it as an individual, while other minds remain in absentia of that truth. Unfortunately, “master teachers,” such as Adyashanti, perpetuate that same delusion and, therefore, become victims themselves, as the past is repeated, ad nauseam, from individual to individual.

“Seeking truth can be a game, complete with a new identity as a truth-seeker fueled by new ideas and beliefs. But ceasing to cherish illusions is no game; it’s a gritty and intimate form of deconstructing yourself down to nothing. Get rid of all of your illusions and what’s left is the truth. You don’t find truth as much as you stumble upon it when you have cast away your illusions.”

The one illusion you must cease to cherish is that you, alone are "truth-seeker" and can access truth, because that “game” is finite. Discard only this illusion and “what’s left is the truth.” We will certainly “stumble on it” together, but only in realizing it cannot be discovered alone. Until we all join in the infinite game, individuals will continue to access finite outcomes and call these individual rewards "enlightenment," "awakening," "revelation," etc, etc, etc.

“Truth can’t be found by seeking it, simply because truth is what you are. Seeking what you are is as silly as your shoes looking for their soles by walking in circles. What is the path that will lead your shoes to their soles? That’s why the Zen master said, “Do not seek the truth.” Instead, cease cherishing illusions.”

Which is exactly what we do, as the ‘ego-self’ travels in circles by following itself. All the self need do is realize that even its illusions are not manufactured in solitude. This halts the ego-self in its tracks, as it must now join with another to finally understand itself. It is this collaborative understanding that ceases to cherish illusions and discovers truth together as one.

“To cease cherishing illusions is a way of inverting the energy of seeking. The energy of seeking will be there in one form or another until you wake up from the dream state. You can’t just get rid of it. You need to learn how to invert it and use the energy to deconstruct the illusions that hold your consciousness in the dream state.”

Exactly. But that “energy” remains contained and limited because “you” seek to deconstruct “you.” Go ahead and deconstruct "me," as "I" simultaneously deconstruct “you,” and from that ground of relating the Truth-of-Being (hyphenated to denote unity) will be discovered together, because no one individual could possibly realize the absolute and unconditional, in which making such a discovery is conditioned solely on an ego-self. The idea that one must first become "enlightened," or experience the non-dual, and only then teach others, is absurd and makes suffering true for all but the 'enlightened masters' like Adyashanti.

“This sounds relatively simple, but the consequences can seem quite disorienting, even threatening. I’m not talking about a new spiritual technique here; I’m talking about a radically different orientation to the whole of your spiritual life. This is not a little thing. It is a very big thing, and your best chance of awakening depends on it. “Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions.” And if you’re like most spiritually oriented people, your spirituality is your most cherished illusion. Imagine that.”

There is nothing threatening about solitary seeking and the ego relishes the chance to be the ‘one’ to spend years "discovering truth" and all the paradigms of the ‘dream-world’ piggy-back off this basic delusion. But truth discovered by an individual can only be relative to that individual and therefore, NOT truth at all.

The most "threatening" ego endeavor is to discover truth through, and with, another, because in that discovery love is experienced unconditioned by egoic constructs. Yet, in that discovery “you” cease to be experienced as “you” now know your ‘self’ and “we” takes on a new perspective never before encountered.

There is nothing radical to Adyashanti’s teachings, only the same conventional wisdom pointing to the way that “you” can find truth. Unfortunately, what “you” find is what Adyashanti has found, only more illusion. Sadly, this distorted view continues to be the path of the neo-Zen, non-dualers and this individual “hero’s journey” will only continue to demand seeking truth by inadvertently excluding it.

However, the truth available in the depth of relationship was always the archetypal Christ/Buddha message until ego-self got a hold of it and made that message it’s own. Now we have lost the message, but have gained many messengers still cherishing illusions.

(Artwork: "Delusion Dwellers" by Laurie Lipton)

CONVERSATIONS WITH EGO: Our Never-Ending "Story"

2009-10-16T10:22:00.009-04:00

ego: Mike, we need to surrender the story of “who” we think we are.

Mike: Uh...what good will that do?

ego: Well, obviously, by surrendering the 'story' you become liberated from the suffering of the self. Besides, transcending the ‘story’ is all the rage in spiritual circles these days.

Mike: Ok, what ‘blog’ did you read that from?

ego: But it makes sense!

Mike: The problem is that “my” story is interdependently interfaced within the stories of everyone else. I can seek to transcend my story till the cows come home, but the moment I encounter a story in another, my story becomes fixed. In fact, the moment I perceive “someone else” a story automatically materializes.

ego: So what are you saying, we have to surrender everyone else's story too?

Mike: Actually, there are NO separate stories, only the "story” of separate stories and we’re all in that together because it's infinite. If I seek to surrender or transcend my separate story, I’m then caught in the "story of separate stories." The moment I assert liberation from my story, but then encounter the story of someone else, I can no longer assert being story-less and my advising another to surrender or detach from their story only makes our story more “real.”

ego: Good grief, Mike! We can't count on other people. We just need to focus on our self for now. Once we awaken to our True Self we can teach others.

Mike: By surrendering the story of everyone we meet, we liberate the 'self' because the self does not exist without engagement with others. However, the moment I try to teach another to transcend their individual story, as if I had experienced transcending my own, I become a fixture of our never-ending story. Therefore, I must be liberated from their story, because their story is mine, as mine is theirs. We are all interdependently interconnected and no one transcends alone (even though many have become deeply mesmerized by the "individual transcendence story").

ego: Wait a minute! Surrendering your own story was taught by the Great Masters of the past, you can’t go trashing centuries of wisdom tradition!

Mike: Ah yes, the “Wisdom Tradition Story.” We certainly love that story! Which, of course, is predecessor to the “non-duality story” and “surrender your story,” stories. The very moment you attempt to detach from an individual story, the individual story becomes "real." Maybe it’s not about surrendering 'my' story, but about surrendering 'theirs' because every judgment I make about my ‘self’ is always and forever in relation to ‘them' and every judgment upon them defines 'me.'

ego: Damn, Mike! It would be so much easier if you could just do it all by your ‘self.’

Mike: Yes, that does seem to be the most convenient "story." No wonder so many faithfully follow it.

(artwork: "Buddha" by Octaviao Ocampo)

The Inconvenient Truth About non-Duality

2009-10-11T21:30:00.007-04:00

The non-dual identity is all the rage these days and many seek out the personalities that claim to have it. We know they have it because they take their non-seriousness very seriously.

They say there is no identity free of ‘self.’ I guess that’s why they are often some of the most self-absorbed personalities on the planet. We love the sound of their abstractions, “the presence of Being is annulled by the egoic dialogue of contemplative reverie.”

Whaaat! Good grief, how we eat this stuff up.

Nevertheless, it's all very simple. Free your ‘self’ of ‘my’ identity, and you free your ‘self.' Or continue to realize my ego and stay identified with your own. To liberate from the suffering of ‘self’ means to experience the liberation of another. See me free and free your 'self.'

Think of it this way: You constructed a dream that has many aspects, not the least of which is that it is populated by other 'selves.' So what is 'their' purpose? Why need ‘they’ be experienced at all? Why do others cause us the most problems? Why is most of our suffering always associated with other 'people'?

Answer these questions and "awaken."

But this is absurd to the ‘self’ weaned on individualism and, therefore, it is a voice in the wilderness.

Nevertheless, no ‘one’ can be liberated until ALL are.

‘Judgment’ is the ‘self’s’ tool of identification. To realize non-duality is to experience non-judgment of the ‘other,’ which can only dissolve your own ego-self identification. “You” exist in 'relationship' and that’s how being is experienced, in relationship with others and the world.

It's the significance of my "story" that need be dissociated and not your own, because without my "story" to who would you reveal your own?

The neo-Advaitists and post-modern Zeners inadvertently nullify relationships by informing you that there is something “you” can do, individually, to experience the non-dual. Sure, there’s something you can ‘do,’ but it doesn’t involve “you” at all. It involves ‘them.’ Ah, but the transcendental reductionism of the non-dual conception takes no note of ‘them’ as even worthy of consideration. Seeking non-duality is the epitome of egocentricity.

However, it is easy to understand how those, whose entire self-development was completely formulated through the paradigm of individualism (which covers just about everybody), can only teach non-duality as an individual phenomenon, or state, to be experienced separately and alone. They conveniently employ the same paradigm, or model of perceiving the world, that the ego-self was constructed from, in teaching ego transcendence into non-duality.

The idea that non-duality is a collective phenomenon of experiencing perfect unified equality through, and with, each other is considered absurd to the postmodern individual non-dualer identifying with individual outcomes and rewards. They find their conceptual word games highly exhilarating and, certainly, the games are very thought-provoking.

So how much thought is required to transcend thought? How much identity does it take to "drop" identity?

However, when you look closely, you’ll recognize a general disgust for humanity that the non-dual teacher fears facing. These ideologies are an attempt to escape the impurity of being human. This escape is very subtle indeed, because it appears to deeply engage while covertly disengaging.

For instance, here is a metaphysical manifesto of “reality.” Notice anything missing? Where within this metaphysical treatise do we find any indication of engaging with a world of ‘others’? Do “they” even exist? Do 'they' have value or should they simply be negated or nullified? This is the same conventional paradigmatic program of individual solitary awakening that most “non-dual” professors advocate.

The inconvenient truth that we resist is that the non-dual is experienced dually with others. We resist this because deep within the folds of the “unconscious” is the belief that we really don’t like each other very much. Humanity is a very messy state of being and must be discarded as impure. An impure humanity cannot be trusted to aid us in our search and so we seek alone.

You may continue to enjoy the convenience of abstract conceptual games (“what is the sound of one hand clapping” or "The reflection is not in the mirror but of the mirror"), but the long and winding road leads to all doors and not just your own. Therefore, “you” might want to consider “them” for a change because the door to truth does not open for an individual, simply because it doesn't belong to any separate 'individual.'

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to you door

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day
Why leave me standing here
Let me know the way

Many times I've been alone
And many times I've cried
Any way you'll never know
The many ways I've tried
But still they lead me back
To the long winding road

You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don't leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
(Beatles)

Existential "Love"

2009-10-10T13:31:00.001-04:00

YouTube: FutureShorts

Toxic Being or "Pure Being" is Pure Bullshit.

2009-10-08T14:17:00.001-04:00

Here is a typical non-dual quote: “Awakening is the experience of Pure Being.”

Abstractions such as this compel the non-dualer wannabes to consider "Pure Being" as individually attainable and then work to attain it.

“Hey, Joey, look at me! I’m Pure Being, bro!”

The problem is that "Pure Being" is another egoic delusion and, therefore, you will never access it, because it’ll never be “pure.”

So maybe you should accept the toxicity of Being?

If it’s relating to the world that you find ‘toxic,’ and thus seek to ‘purify,’ than count Being out of that equation (oh, it’s still there, you just don't realize it because you consider it 'impure').

Of course, you can conjure up all manner of meditative neurochemical imbalances, get some great whiz-bangs, and call that an experience of “Pure Being.” But then, you can also have an exhilarating bowel movement and call that an experience of Pure Being. What's the difference? (had one just this morning!).

Being is experienced in relationship and it is never “pure,” or free of engagement, although the depth of that engagement may be self-limiting. Pick and choose a "path" to Being and, make no mistake, your engagement with Being may Be significantly curtailed.

Being don’t need no stinkin “spiritual path” to Be.

You certainly experience a separate ‘self,’ but that self is always in relationship to other separate selves. Being knows it is Being through engagement with an experience of a ‘world.’

Hey, maybe that’s why the experience was conjured up in the first place! Ya think?

Your Being is never NOT in relationship. Being does NOT exist free of engagement and the fact that you believe it does, results in your failure to experience it (because you’re off on some mountain top seeking “Pure Being”). Being is always engaged and Being NOT in relationship, is just NOT Being and that’s impossible! (so furgetboutit).

Just because your not all comfy cozy with what you’re Being with, is not the fault of Being. Nope, that’s just ego-self informing you what you should and should not Be with (or ‘do’). But that’s Being too, only you think not and decide to meditate for 20 years to find it (lucky for you that too is Being, only stop complaining about needing to "awaken").

However, you may find that the deeper you engage the ‘world’ you are Being with, the more intense that relationship is experienced and the more Being is accentuated and 'known.' (so come down from your mental mountain top and engage with your experience of a 'world').

The “I AM” is another mirage of an ego-self relating to its own self-construction at the expense of Being.

There is no “I” separate from Being engaged with “them.” You will know your Being through Being with others, all Being in a ‘world.’ However, you’re gonna need to BE with all of it. Exclude parts and ego has taken over and you’ll just complain about it not Being the way you want.

BEING WITH OTHERS IN A 'WORLD'

However, one day your ‘self’ will choose another ‘self’ to deeply engage with and we all feel that pull eventually (although we erroneously attribute it to bodily drives and instincts). This can actually be a quick and easy way of experiencing Being. Unfortunately, the very nature of your ego-self (“I”) will impede and limit the depth of that engagement and you will come close to the opportunity to experience Being (as 'one,' with and through another), only to extinguish it with "your" conditions.

You may never forget the intensity of that experience, and how it caused you to fully and deeply engage WITH your ‘world,’ but you may fail to realize that it was “you” who chose to end it. Nevertheless, when this is finally realized, you can always choose again and this time make the right choice. Eventually the right choice will be made and that's certain, so don't sweat it.

(Artwork by Leo Plaw)

Who's Gonna Save My Soul Now

2009-10-08T10:43:00.001-04:00

YouTube: FutureShorts

The Reality of IT ALL is that IT's ALL a Lie and that's the Truth, so help me God

2009-10-05T13:14:00.017-04:00

“Yet I also sense a great fear of honesty, as if we don't really want to know how bad it is. On one level, this is understandable. Many of us sense something is terribly wrong, but like people who sense they might have cancer, we don't go to the doctor to receive the diagnosis: we react with denial and magical thinking, thus dooming our chances of recovery. I see plentiful evidence that honesty is extremely threatening to the status quo.”

Your ego-self is a liar by nature, but you like it that way because, as Jack Nicholson proclaimed, “You can’t handle the truth!” However, your world is certainly “real” and you count on that always being the case.

Yet, the question remains… is it true?

The above quote is from Charles Hugh Smith's article entitled When Honesty Becomes Threatening (OfTwoMinds) and addresses the dishonesty occurring with the current financial collapse and government’s deceit and misrepresentation. The article highlights the point that we all have a general fear of honesty. However, I would add that this fear is evident not only in the macro-world, but in our tiny personal micro-worlds as well.

If honesty is absent, then trust must also become extinct and this is how civilizations crumble, and individuals die alone.

A labyrinth of incomprehensible complexity allows you to hide your 'self' within the seemingly infinite folds of confusion and misunderstanding.

Come out, come out, wherever you are….

The truth may prove that it’s all very simple, but we’re not ready for the simple truth, because the ego-self is a composite of intricately complex lies and subterfuge. Perfect honesty would dissolve the self-construct, and then who would “you” be?

The fact is the collective ego must defend against honesty, otherwise the truth might be exposed and that'd ruin everything. Deception breeds conflict and conflict makes for war. Honesty dissolves conflict immediately, but this causes vulnerability and egos hate to be vulnerable (that's why they have bumper stickers on their pickups that say "No Fear")

So everything is beautiful and Walmart's prices are unbeatable! (what else do you need?!)

Your ego thrives on hiding from truth and consciousness is a perfect place to hide cause there’s nobody there but "you" (which seems "real" enough, but is it true). Actually, truth is your greatest fear and you will do anything to avoid it (why else would you watch "American Idol" if not to avoid truth?).

You feel cursed by truth, but proclaim it’s needed. You experience a world always in need of consistent truth that, ironically, changes incessantly. Has the world ever NOT conformed to this “truth”? So, what has been your reward for all the “truth” you’ve endured?

What you really desire are more lies. So, keep ‘em coming, yo!

The egoic self-construct does not provide you any consistency whatsoever and therefore, it cannot be trusted. You must always maintain a safe distance from your ‘self’ because, as much as you try, you cannot predict with any degree of accuracy how it will respond to what the next moment brings. As much as you seek to contain and regulate your ego-self, it often seems to break from your grasp and bring you discouragement and disappointment. Better to trust in the lies that everyone else believes, because there's safety in numbers.

You do not trust your "self" to deeply engage with your world and so the world must always be misrepresented because how can you know what you cannot engage? If your ‘world’ is experienced within “you," how can you trust the ‘world’ if you can’t trust yourself? Therefore, you wait for the world, while the world waits for you, and always, both demand truth and circumstances continue to demonstrate this fact by constantly changing.

When will “truth” meet your criteria? When will it bring the consistent happiness you so deeply desire?

In NOT accepting the “self," you define its “truth” and this defines your limits. Your ‘self' is a product of your mind and exists nowhere else IN time or space, but it was constructed to deceive you about time and space.

You have never truly felt welcome in the "me” you call home. Therefore, you have exiled your “self" to a place where growth eventually must end in death and where “happiness” is endlessly sought, but never found. You are a “stranger in a strange world” and this feeling of dissociation attends your every waking moment (even your dreams are not "true").

You will never trust your ‘self,’ simply because you do not trust others. You live in a complicated world of strangeness and this makes you a stranger to 'them' and your ‘self.’ With all your strength, you have resisted honestly asking “who is this beside me,” because when the question is asked, without the slightest doubt of an answer, the answer will be instantaneous and fill you with complete understanding. Until then, you cannot possibly KNOW your ‘self’ and therefore, you will continue to lie to yourself and the world must always reflect that inner experience, since dishonesty ‘within,' breeds deception ‘out there.’

Until then, lies and subterfuge will become even more complex, incomprehensible and common place and soon you won’t know what to believe, because everything is nothing more than a manufactured mirage.

But just think how happy you'll be... believing in nothing.

Closed Boxes in a Zombie World

2009-09-29T18:25:00.009-04:00

Time constructs, while at the same time stripping away. Over time, we meticulously construct concepts of one another that strip away the possibility of awakening together.

You have constructed egoic concepts of those you profess to ‘love' and they conform like clockwork and from these concepts you believe you ‘know’ them.

How could they be any different than what you think they are?

Even when they seek to escape your conceptual boxes, you find a way to box them in by determining which box their attempted escape conforms to.

There is always a box available. The problem is that the same boxes used to contain others are also used to define your ‘self.' You cannot transcend your 'self' and still keep 'them' in boxes.

We are all victim to our conceptual boxes and this perpetuates self-containment and stifles freedom. In order to free your ‘self’ you must free others from your constructs. This is what was meant by “thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.” By freeing them, you simultaneously free yourself.

The ‘world’ you experience is full of conceptual strangers, even those you do not ‘know,’ easily fit your boxes. You have determined that “happiness” is only available when the world conforms to your conception and you experience your world from that box.

All your concepts have been learned from the past so as to predict a future. This is why we compulsively repeat the past and why wars never end and peace is only a pipe dream.

Not to fit a box means it is unknown and the ego-self fears what it cannot predict. Sadly, this is why you have become predictable even to yourself, since fear of uncertainty has resulted in a neatly packaged self-concept that rarely sways from its original design (core beliefs).

The world is waiting for you to break free of your predictions and experience the infinite. How else can it be saved?

But, you believe that if you cannot ‘predict’ me, you cannot know me. Unfortunately, this is why you fail to know yourself and fear your own infinite capabilities. Once you find the right box for me (no matter how hard I might try to escape containment), my actions will confirm your judgments. If you cannot fit me into a box, something must be wrong with me.

But not to worry, there’s a box for that too.

Predicting my actions is paramount to our continued relationship, no matter how shallow and surface oriented we become. In this same way, "I" define “you” and the tangled webs we weave have been predicted long before we meet and are based solely on an egoic obsession with the past.

There is no intimacy in boxes.

Intimacy contained and stuffed into concepts obviously stifles Deep Spirit. Contained intimacy is NO intimacy, even though we may delude ourselves into thinking that “this is love.”

If your relationships are stifled, then find your boxes and open them. This not only frees your mind, but also the ones you have chosen to love. Love cannot be contained or limited and is impossible without intimacy, or the deep understanding that dissolves our strangeness and closes the gap between us.

The world is an infinite spectrum of experiences demanding to be shared.

If you box me into your concepts you suffer through your own self-containment and this not only disengages you from others, but from your world as well. Your world needs to experience the freedom of awakening through and with another, because your experience of a ‘world’ is entirely contingent on the experiences of others. “You" could not experience existence without "them." But you fear them and they fear you and therefore, all experiences are finite and limited.

Change is joyfully invigorating to an "existence" that realizes itself as infinite. But then, why do we seek to contain it in finite boxes? When will we choose to open our boxes and experience the infinite fields?

Your ego-self was constructed to anticipate events through inaccurate predictions so that preparations could be made (constructing boxes) to insure self-preservation. This capacity serves you well in preparing for things that might cause actual harm and we have learned effective means of insuring physical safety.

Yet, a problem occurs when insuring safety becomes an imperative for the egoic self-concept. Now you must predict my actions and behaviors to protect your own self-concept. Self-preservation demands fear and stifles intimacy. But, I must do the same, because in the past we have made mistakes in judgment resulting in attack. Although you extend an illusion of forgiveness, memory is impacted and you have now boxed me in for the sake of future self-preservation. And so continues the gradual erosion that affects all relationships and maintains a world of strangers bored with the mundane and tedious experience of ‘living’ from boxes.

In our mutual boxes, we have isolated ourselves and this is the ‘zombie world’ we experience; boxed in, frightened and disengaged. The world is an experience within you, don’t box it in by containing others. To free your mind you must extract from your experience the predictions you superimpose upon others, because living from boxes cannot set you free.

Open your conceptual boxes and prepare for the 'Surprise' that deep intimacy brings. It is a surprise that illuminates a shared world and is the only way we can save it.

The Two Gods We All Worship

2009-09-25T08:54:00.015-04:00

There are two “Gods” on your mind. The God of Crucifixion indicts you as guilty, while the God of Resurrection immediately acquits you of all guilt, forever.

The God of Crucifixion demands you suffer for your redemption. This God requires sacrifice and the only acceptable sacrifice… is you.

The God of Crucifixion requires that you sacrifice your life for “The Truth” and that you endure many years of suffering so you may finally ‘awaken’… before you 'die.'

However, the God of Resurrection demands no sacrifice in God’s name and teaches that there is NO “death” and thus, no suffering. This conflicts with the God of Crucifixion, because crucifixion claims that 'death' is a fact of 'life' that only a fool would deny.

The God of Crucifixion is the God of guilt and only the guilty feel called upon to sacrifice in order to meet God’s standards. This is why they must endlessly atone for their guilt. Yet, they can never be certain as to exactly what they are guilty of. Nevertheless, the God of Crucifixion assures them that they are all guilty and so they struggle mightily under this burden their entire 'life' (although, many do sometimes wonder if it is truly worth "living" this way).

The God of Resurrection pleads for your innocence in a meaningless world, because what you are guilty of cannot be ‘true.’ That’s because you made the world true, NOT God. All you need do is surrender your "truth" and claim innocence. Only those who know they are innocent are truly free.

The God of Crucifixion demands you be victim to time and so, you must struggle to make each moment count, before it’s too late. This makes ‘time’ an extremely valuable commodity that must be preserved at all costs. Otherwise, you merely waste your time.

The God of Resurrection is infinite and thus, a million years can be experienced in a moment and a moment in a million years. No sacrifice is necessary to what cannot suffer, because what does not suffer must have given up the belief in “death.” Life is lived infinitely by those unaware of time, but for all others, death makes time desperately meaningful.

The God of Crucifixion demands your guilt because you were born wrong (sin) and there’s little you can do to make that right (redemption) and so you must be guilty. In a world of right and wrong, some are punished so that others may be redeemed. A world of crucifixion is nothing more than a 'place' to separate the righteous from the damned.

Which are you?

The God of Resurrection makes no such distinctions, because a world of right and wrong could not possibly have been created by God. What was NOT created could NOT possibly exist, unless you invent it. Your world is full of inventors, but no creators.

The innocent cannot worship the God of Crucifixion. Therefore, to realize your guilt, you must see guilt in everyone else. The God of Crucifixion demands you seek vengeance for all the potential that was taken from you by those who sacrifice to the God of Crucifixion.

The God of Resurrection is aware only of innocence. To know the God of Resurrection you must realize your own innocence. The only way for you to realize your own innocence, is to be aware of the innocence in others. There is no other way.

The God of Crucifixion is only experienced through the body, because physical form is your highest, and only, calling (until death do you part). The God of Crucifixion demands that you learn what the body teaches, so that you too, can experience the pain and suffering sacrifice demands.

For the God of Resurrection, the body certainly ‘exists.’ That is, until you change what it means, which changes how it exists for you. Resurrection teaches that only the mind can create and the only purpose of the body is to facilitate that learning and nothing else.

The God of Crucifixion is above and beyond you and demands the ancient rights of sacrifice so that you may finally transcend your inadequacy and ignorance and 'know' God. The priests of crucifixion teach that you must sacrifice in order to obtain your just reward, because, "how can you have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat."

The God of Resurrection is unified with and indivisible from you. God is always right before your eyes (when you no longer seek sacrifice). You need do nothing to resurrect, because everything that could be ‘done’ only attests to the God of Crucifixion, who requires many sacred and profound acts be performed first.

Look around at your world, because what you 'see' determines the God you worship.

What do you see?

The Healed Moment of Vertical Time

2009-09-22T06:38:00.010-04:00

A healed moment is one in which you have escaped from the concepts of your mind, which imprison others and cause you to suffer because they fail to meet your criteria. The concepts are still there, but they cease to capture you based on what you demand from others and the 'world.'

We could say that in a healed moment the 'world' still exists. However, you no longer experience yourself as its victim because of how you now ‘see’ it and others in it.

When two or more share perfect equality, in a ‘world’ of confusing hierarchies, levels and degrees, time is experienced as vertical and not horizontal.

This does not negate ‘time’ just allows it to be realized from a Deep Spirit perspective. Vertical time takes up no space and everything needed is contained in one moment and experienced in one moment. But it cannot be experienced alone, since that continually reestablishes the incompletion of your autonomous egocentric identity, which continues to require time and space, or horizontal time, for which to achieve its completion.

A healed moment is entirely absent of all conflict, because there is no right or wrong for which to distinguish needs. A perspective that emphasizes lack or deficiency seeks to blame the world for what is lacking in the belief that what is needed must be found in the 'world.' This is always cause for conflict and is why all true 'awakenings' involve the world. No one awakens alone, because "it takes a village" to teach and learn fear.

Therefore, only a collective can awaken to its own unified completion in order to end all fear and conflict for its members. This literally alters the physical landscape because space/time is useless to those who need nothing because they experience NO lack or deficiency.

If you experience a world of lack and deficiency, make no mistake, that experience is entirely 'within' you and is not contingent on an external world and in no way related to anyone but your ‘self.’ However, dissolving that experience must involve another; otherwise, it only serves to reinforce your egoic construct of autonomous fear. The ego will always fear what it experiences as apart from itself and this is why you often experience the world as a very fearful ‘place’ to be.

Examine closely any problem you experience and you will understand the causal interdependency of collective consciousness. All conflict must involve another and every individual problem is intricately interrelated to your experience of a world full of other minds interacting with yours. This is because every problem you experience comes from a lack and the ego will always recognize what it lacks based on what it believes others HAVE.

Did you find the “soul mate” who will finally complete you? Did you seek your completion through another only to find that they could not give you what you lacked, even though you perceived them as having what you needed? Does someone you 'love' reinforce your lack by what they have? Are they withholding from you because they believe you withhold from them? Do you really have what they need?

The ego seeks to claim from others what it lacks in itself and this is often misinterpreted as complementarity. Unfortunately, the ego that fails to access Deep Spirit will fail to realize the futility of such a search and only continue searching more persistently.

You lack nothing. However, the ego-self is nothing more than a belief in lack and everyone who has what you need, also wants what you have, because lack and need is how an ego-self defines “love.”

A healed moment experiences no lack because, in desiring to see another as complete, you immediately experience your own completion. In fully trusting another, you trust yourself. In seeking to experience perfect peace with another, perfect peace becomes yours and an experience of perfect peace is a healed moment of vertical time.

Although a healed moment is an experience of perfect peace through unified equality, the commitment to time returns. Nevertheless, the desire for another breathe of infinity is irresistible and you will seek out others for which to share in it. This results in an increase that exponentially magnifies its effects in the world each and every time it is shared.

The only resistance encountered is by those who still wish to awaken alone and pursue a continuance of that autonomy.

But resistance to truth is a futile endeavor and merely delays time. The non-dualism of unified atonement is an unbreakable chain that grows with the linking of each 'individual' mind and this provides an experience of accelerating time. You cannot know what is rapidly approached, but you feel it is ultimately momentous and profound and this feeling is always available when experiencing from Deep Spirit.

Therefore, since it is only a matter of ‘time,’ why delay?

More Egoic 'Do-Do' from the Enlightened Master of Bullshit

2009-09-17T14:32:00.014-04:00

The question respectfully posed is “Out of curiosity, is there a goal attached to dispelling all indoctrinated conditioning and beliefs? What would the world be like, in your opinion?”

Obviously, to an ego-self writing these essays, a goal is assumed, no matter how mightily the writer may wish to assert being goal-free or egoless. Every post on this ‘blog’ has some degree of conditioned belief due to the very fact that “I” am conveying some sense of meaning to “you,” which must always rely on what was learned from the past, since that’s “where” I come from (as do you).

Therefore, I could never convey any sense of "The Unconditioned" (serious stuff), other than to say that it will be a delightful 'surprise' beyond anything you or I could possibly conceive (obviously, since all conceived is conditioned). But, alas, my friends, even that expression is conditioned from the past and should be blatantly ignored.

There have been many reports of breaks with reality or the “reality orientation model” that we seek to be free of. Unfortunately, these are conventionally interpreted (through that same model) as insanity or “enlightenment.” We disregard insanity, yet, you will find such "enlightenment" interpretations all throughout the internet, usually beginning with “because Buddha said….”

Most of the spiritual 'doers' teach you to “discipline” your thinking. Ha! Discipline?! As one who spent 6 years active, in the United States Marine Corps, discipline facilitates many types of thought processes, but “Awakening” is not one of them.

Nevertheless, notice how many modern masters rely on previous teachings, as if the past was in any way valuable. This is done in order to assert credibility (because only the credible can win finite “awakening” games), as if somebody named “Buddha” actually existed.

Buddha says: "Get down and give me twenty, maggot!”

So what would the world look like if there was no “truth”? This is because truth doesn’t exist until you make it up. It doesn’t ‘exist’ and has never existed and, therefore, it cannot be found and there’s nothing “you” can do to find it. Therefore, "truth" can be anything you want it to be...

... and it's always what you expect.

Whoa! I just lost 1000 readers! Damn, how will I ever make divine, superconscious, “master” grade, unless I can drum up the required credibility.

You demand techniques from ideologies and I come along to inform that it’s all friggin’ bullshit (which negates my credibility and any chances of attaining the coveted title of 'awakened"). All of it and, yes, even this, is bullshit. In fact, in contrast to your "Enlightened Master," I’m the "Master of Bullshit" so ignore all the 'do-do' I prescribe.

You (ego-self) need to ‘know’ the facts and so you seek out the proprietors of truth who specifically delineate a prescribed “path” or a ‘way’ that always involves ‘doing’ something and the ego must do-do all over the place in order to feel meaningful.

If you keep demanding this 'shit,' they will keep providing it.

This 'opinion' goes against the conventional pop-spirituality views and it is why this blog will soon be resigned to disintegration, simply because it deviates from the spiritual status-quo (I sense it is fading away even now). The ego demands a plan, but this blog asserts that there’s nothing “you” can do to find truth. Yet, only when “you” finish up all your ‘doing’ will you realize that nothing needed to be done. Isn’t it wonderful to “know” that “you” need do nothing to find truth, simply because there’s nothing you can do? But is that the “truth”?

Absolutely NOT!

Simply because that makes absolutely no sense to an ego-self determined to 'know.' So go ahead, homeboy, “crack that whip!” Make “truth” happen!

Crack that whip
Give the past the slip
Step on a crack
Break your mommas back

When a problem comes along
You must whip it
Before the cream sits out too long
You must whip it
When somethings going wrong
You must whip it

Now whip it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
Its not too late
To whip it
Whip it good

When a good time turns around
You must whip it
You will never live it down
Unless you whip it
No one gets away
Until they whip it

Now whip it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
Its not too late
To whip it
Whip it good
(Devo)

Hey You! Who Do You Think "You" Are, Anyway?

2009-09-16T09:34:00.012-04:00

You pride yourself on the delusion of being uniquely individual. Obviously, you get real angry at the suggestion that you’re nothing but a trained monkey in a cage and your core identity was manufactured in childhood through extensive conditioning that you had no choice in. But then, anger was learned as well.

Yet, you do believe you’ve made crucial choices in the sculpting of your 'self.' but this is also a delusion, since all choices were made from the same social menu we all choose from.

Nevertheless, any later additions to your self that you ‘chose,’ pale in comparison to the core personae, which was not your choice at all. In this sense, your “individuality” is an illusion and your 'uniqueness' nothing more than a fantasy, not even of your choosing.

So, can it really be "you" in there?

All of this insures the perpetuation of the collective order. Your values conform to that order and not to replicate conformity in the manufacture of personalities is to generate an eventual collapse of the collective order. This collective arrangement (which you agree to) insures that you stay put and any delusion of 'transcendence' reinforces that you are "here" and serves to keep you firmly in place (all warm and comfy, no doubt).

In other words, everything about “you” has been taught and learned and nothing is uniquely free of conditioning. And so continues the ancient hatreds and fears, as well as the ephemeral pleasures and joys, that you've inherited from your parents as they inherited from their parents and theirs before them and so on and so on, etc, etc, etc.

Deviance from this is frequently attempted, but only within the approved boundaries, simply because deviance is helpful in reinforcing collective order.

In fact, many cultures are adopting the western individualistic paradigm of competition, thereby, manufacturing a global cultural homogenization of conforming to the collective delusion of individual “uniqueness" or "me" before "us."

This is inevitable because the collective must remain joined in delusion in order to stay convinced of their separateness (even though we are all the same). So, go ahead have your “awakening” and your “enlightenment,” and continue playing the serious games that have always been played. Follow the rules like good boys and girls, because the games never end.

Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that what we seek to transcend, through the various religio-spiritual “enlightenment” ideologies (and their attached sacred paths of "peace and love") is nothing more than the social conditioning that we have been indoctrinated into and held captive by. But, make no mistake, your path to enlightenment comes from the same social menu from which all conventions are derived. These are the same old song and dance routines that have entertained us since time began.

It’s all the same shit, just a different day.

Yet, you were trained to take pride in who "you" are as a person and demand others recognize and applaud your unique ‘individuality, which, of course leads to higher ‘self-esteem.’ It is rather disappointing to consider that the self we take pride in, is nothing but a conditioned amalgamation, or composite, of the learned values of childhood social conditioning.

We can always expand the intellect, but the core egoic personality (belief system) is virtually unchangeable and the core self remains intact until death do you part. It seems that without a more intrinsic change the intellect will continue to fail us as it always has.

So how much of “you” is really you and how much is nothing more than conditioned responses based on early childhood socialization? It’s not just mom and dad, but all the institutions that shaped your personality or ‘self’ (who you ‘think’ you are) by indoctrinating you into the dominant system of values.

Are you even aware of who you really are, absent the indoctrinated beliefs that anchor you to social convention, demanding you take the games seriously by playing by the rules?

Essentially, we’re not seeking to awaken to some grandiose 'godhead,' or transcend into some whimsical nirvanic state of heavenly bliss. No, actually you’re simply trying to get free of collective hell by stripping away all the layers of delusional beliefs that collective indoctrination has burdened you with and that you have inadvertently passed onto your children in the belief that they can’t possibly thrive (or even survive) without them.

You live your “life” by perpetuating a “story” that you believe is uniquely your own. But this is delusional, since it was never “your” story to begin with.

Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?

Hey you, don’t help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.

Hey you, out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone
Would you touch me?
Hey you, with your ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out
Would you touch me?

Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I'm coming home.

But it was only fantasy.
The wall was too high,
As you can see.
No matter how he tried,
He could not break free.
And the worms ate into his brain.

Hey you, standing in the road always doing what you're told,
Can you help me?
Hey you, out there beyond the wall,
Breaking bottles in the hall,
Can you help me?

Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.
(Pink Floyd)

Invasion of the Truth Snatchers

2009-09-15T08:48:00.017-04:00

Whenever I'm informed that there's some important distinction that must be made, some profound idea that need be known, my first response is to minimize the importance. This is often seen as my being an unbelieving contrarian. Yet, for me, "important," "profound," "significant," "necessary," "must," "have to," etc, etc, merely signify serious rules somebody made up in order to win the game. In order to win, you must take the rules seriously, because if nobody takes the rules seriously, how can anybody win the game?

So what game are you seriously seeking to win through serious rules? "awakening," "non-duality," "enlightenment"?

Whatever you think you know, doubt it. Unless, of course, it's "important" that you know?

There is a freedom in doubting everything your ego informs you must be true. This does NOT have to interrupt your games and merely serves as a conduit to more deeply engaged play. This is not only helpful to the "awakening" or "enlightenment" games, but also in the numerous life games you engage in with the hope of injecting meaning into the meaningless or creating something out of nothing.

In playing life games, seriousness can lead to mental disorders. Just look at all the current economic-based suicides as the wealth game suddenly becomes meaningless (as if it ever was meaningful). But then, mental disorders are also a game that we think we must play because we have no choice. Therefore, like the wealth games, we take it very seriously.

How many games do you play in which you feel you must play and, therefore, must play seriously? As if I were to take this blog seriously (although there are alot of serious bloggers out there).

However, this does not mean that you can't seek truth (that's a game too!), only that doubt protects you from getting fixated on 'serious rules' that somebody, who has snatched up "truth," calls "The Truth."

You see, "truth" is the trap, not your doubt. Discovering an end to your doubt is like finding an end to infinity, as if truth were finite. Do you really believe there is something you can actually 'do' to get "The Truth," some path you can follow, some ideology you can memorize. Sure, all that leads to 'knowing' something, but probably not truth. However, feel free to doubt that, too.

You can certainly play with other theories of "truth" in the belief that they bring you closer to truth, but closer to truth is your only reward and, of course, that's not truth now is it? Accept anything as "The Truth" and you merely accept a delay, because eventually you will discard your acceptance and move on… and on and on and on....

Even though you'd like to see an end, there is no end in sight nor will there ever be. Truth is an infinite game. But not to worry, you won't be penalized for "delay of game," simply because time does not matter. Recognize that you WILL never stop playing and have fun playing infinitely.

You can’t get stuck in doubt. Your doubt simply keeps the game in play because your not fixated on this or that "truth." In some way, we all play the "Game of Awakening," simply because we doubt we “know,” and we deeply want to know and seek out the rules to 'get' it. This makes finding "truth" a finite game and all finite games have an outcome so that someone can be declared the winner.

Whenever somebody informs you that they 'know' the truth, or the 'way' to truth, I would advise you to head for the hills as fast as you can. Otherwise, you too, may become a 'Truth Snatcher' and they're everywhere these days. Turn over any rock and, sure enough, you'll find somebody preaching "The Truth"

Proclaim that you “know” and, in that serious moment, you have applied rules to the game, because to know is to assert a direction based on that “knowing.” Once you assert a particular direction, you then automatically cancel out other directions or outcomes (as if there were a specific direction to truth)

Actually, that's called “religion.”

I used to envy the ‘Truth Snatchers,’ who somehow have miraculously dug up truth from where it never was, but I realize I could never be one, because I'm a 'doubter.' Unfortunately, this doesn’t get me many friends and I’ve been asked to leave numerous groups of Truth Snatchers because of my incessant, confounding doubt (READ: "pain in the ass") and Truth Snatchers don't doubt. This is because, for most folks doubt perpetuates an unknown factor and that sucks, because we want, more than anything, to know the truth and thus, knowing is considered the only positive resolution to doubt. So we seek out the 'Truth Snatchers' in the desire to resolve our doubt.

Do you really think anyone in your world knows anything more than you? Ha!

But what if truth is merely infinite doubt? Seems to me the drive-to-question (hyphenated to signify unity) is the one thing that never ends and if truth is infinite, why should it?

The world has been invaded by Truth Snatchers. Feel free to play along with them, but only to further stimulate your drive-to-question and the glorious doubt that fuels it.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us!

2009-09-10T11:12:00.005-04:00

Do the “lightworkers” realize that the more entertaining life is, the more its opposite, death, is accentuated and advanced?

This is nothing more than the dualistic logic of contrasting opposites.

It stands to reason that the more you find your ‘self’ entertained by all the grandiose hoopla of living (however you define it), the more seeking to avoid death will become paramount?

But then, why else do we seek “enlightenment” if not to cheat death?

Obviously, the most effective means of avoiding death is denial and this seems to work well until the last breathe. Along the spectrum of denial, denying that we deny is crucial to continuing to deny.

Do you have good “healthcare,” eat healthy, exercise, take vitamins and get plenty of rest? Do you wear your seatbelt? Well then, statistically speaking, you may live 8.5 years longer but, make no mistake, death is still guaranteed.

Of course, there is no guarantee on living and, like the running guru, Jim Fixx (“The Complete Book of Running”), you could drop dead while on your daily jog around the park.

Yet, many claim it’s not quantity of life they seek to improve, but quality (entertainment).

Nevertheless, this inevitably means that the greater the entertainment factor, the less you will want the show to end. The more you embrace 'life," the more you will seek to extend it, quantitatively. This is why pervasively and deeply depressed people often entertain, and even commit, suicide, since they have finally surrendered any chance of quality entertainment, even though they’ve been taught that their purpose is to work hard finding it (more work than the ”lightworkers” could possibly imagine: "just think happy thoughts and create your reality").

This all begs the question, why make any such distinctions whatsoever? Why spend your entire life seeking out ‘meaningful’ entertainment, only to drop dead after a statistically specified time?

Because you’re an ego and that’s what egos happily learn to do, make entertaining distinctions in defining “happiness.” In fact, that’s all egos can do is make ‘relative’ conventional distinctions between contrasting opposites: this is good, that is bad, this is ugly, that is beautiful, I love this, I hate that, etc, etc, etc, (up and down we go, along the ‘relative’ spectrum of 'entertainment').

It’ll be a cold day in hell before you stop making distinctive judgments, because to do so would mean that “you” (identity) will cease to be entertained and without entertainment, the ego would perish, because egos must be entertained.

"With the lights out its less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now
Entertain us
A mulatto
An albino
A mosquito
My libido
Yea

Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello, how low?
Hello, hello, hello"
(Nirvana)