The play of life

Play your part in the comedy, but don't identify yourself with your role. (Wei Wu Wei)

Just this..

The whole mind falls to bits and there is nothing to hold on to, that’s not to say that all the teachings that you had in the past weren't perfect – they couldn't have been any other way, that was how your story had to go but now the whole constructs of mind fall apart - nothing makes sense because it is now beginning to be seen as 'just is' – rather than somebody doing something, weather that be God or another human. Life is just happening without anybody doing anything and this baffles the mind cause and effect are just apparent really there has only ever been and only ever will be this and all the teachings become a bit senseless. Nothing is left to hold onto. Complete free fall in love. Although even that is just a thought and can't be held on to just this... which contains all of this...

The Storyteller is absolutely useless..

The question is, 'who' is the one writing the impulses into the body? That's the most amazing part. The storyteller always comes after. They can scan the body now and see that the activity is already happening to make a choice before you consciously think about making that choice. It's amazing that the thought is appearing after the action.

We are so convinced that that is who we are and that we are choosing, whereas the claiming is just a side product that has happened. Its like there is an over-excited activity of the brain or an energy that is claiming things. You never need to make boundaries, boundaries will happen. When you're sitting there thinking, "Should I tell him no or should I tell him yes”, it’s already been decided. It's already happening in the body. The answer is already coming. The personal activity is absolutely useless.

Spesialness

Spiritual life imposes many conditions on the ‘impure’ and ‘separate’ individual – special meditations, appropriate behaviours, ceremonies, diets, sexual conduct, destruction of the ego, cessation of thought, finding the stillness, surrendering to the guru, etc.

Consciousness, already being Consciousness in whatever form it appears, has no need of a vegetarian diet, celibacy, tantric sexuality, meditation or gurus. Consciousness is already all of these things. If there is a liking for chanting, meditation, eating vegetarian food or practising tantric sex, then that’s all fine. But it won’t help the recognition of this which You already are.

Habit

The mind is very habitual. If we do some thing daily to produce a state we develop a habit. It can be related to nearly anything. So if we follow our patterns because it feels ok or good in some way, look very closely at what is actually happening and ask is this habit or freedom in the moment. Here is a related story,

A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying copies, not the original books. So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there were an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies.
The head monk says “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.” So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original.
Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears a sobbing coming from the back of the cellar, and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books and crying. He asks what’s wrong. “The word is ‘celebrate’,” says the old monk...

Why?

Why would you need å reason for anything? There is no such ting. Reason are made up. You Never need them. Remember the sequence:

1) A desire arises from the void
2) An action take place and,
3) A reason is made up because no one wants to appear un-reasonable...

Usually this all happens within a very short time and can be observed with some diligence.

My thoughts

Thought believes that it can protect me. Thought believes that there is a safe place away from here. Thought imagines that tomorrow will be better, that somewhere, with someone else, will be perfect. If only I can figure it all out, then I will finally be able to relax....  
But in the meantime, whether we like it or not, Life is simply a wild unprotected, out-of-control, wondrously timeless mystery.

Is it lucky to be born?

Is liberation luck or is there something I can do? 

To say it is luck is to look at it upside down.

To ask what to do is to look at it upside down.

Asking what to do is like asking how to breath, or to be born, or to die.

It's a koan. 

Impossible to answer. 

Because the question makes no sense

Osho

not know

So it is always not knowing, but we have an illusion of the structure and its continuity: family structure, work, habits...if it is structured, familiar, and we know where we will be tomorrow and next week, we call it stability - stable life. Living "unstable" life for the past several years, when so many things unknown, I came to visceral understanding that the stability is only an illusion. The fear that most of us have without stability is fictional, just like stability is fictional too. Its more safe to lean on something that is always there, never changing in its nature: the Great Impermanence, the essence of all life. It will never let you down 

This is it..

It's about falling in love with whatever is here. This doesn't mean that you should always like, or approve of, whatever is here, but that you know that whether you like it or not, it is here anyway. There is no escape. This is the surrender of thinking you have any control, or that there is the need to make any effort. There is nowhere to move. Only whatever is here.

A dream

Everything is a dream. Every reality, every life, every existence is absolutely the same as the dreams we see at night. Short or long, pleasant or not, they are dreams. The only reality is this abstract dreaming power. If you get hooked to a dream, the sense of 'me' arises. This is what makes it 'feel' more real than the sleep dreams. The sense of doership arises along with the me. It is non-existent just like in our night dreams nobody decided to do anything, and nothing ever happened. But this is hard to accept once you feel like a 'me'. Along with 'me' also come emotional attachments, loving relationships, burning desires, etc. To understand that it's all a dream feels like tossing them aside, like killing them. So the dreamer is trapped in a strange condition. On one hand, this sense of 'me' gives rise to endless tribulations, worries and sufferings, but on the other hand to open our eyes to the reality of things seems like a huge suffering in itself. It seems like killing all you've ever loved. It's an unsettling predicament. The dreamer is stuck. The dreamer will be released anyway with the death of the body, but knowing this doesn't help, in fact it is another factor that makes this 'being stuck' state worse. Enlightenement is the built-in mechanism to help you move on, like a seat-ejection functionality. It is maturity for the dreamer, to learn how to deal with the reality that has been made real by the belief in it. How to finish the ongoing authoring of the story cleanly and then close the book permanently and move on.

 "In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever--for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"  Mark Twain - The Mysterious Stranger

Å miste gud

Når du våkner opp og realiserer hvem du er /ikke er så dør du mens kroppen forsatt er i livet. Den skal bevege seg rundt i verden uten lenger å ha et selv i seg. Da tar du også livet av gud, -alle du kjenner. -alle du har kjent, og elsket. ( Det betyr ikke at du skal ta livet av noen -vi snakker på det mentale planet...). Det å miste seg selv betyr at du mister alle andre- alt og alle for alltid, så om du er på denne veien bør du være over middels glad i ditt eget selskap-fordi du er alt som er.

Back to basics

Varied as it may be I am pretty darn sure you came here in seeking mode. Some of you seek enlightenment, Truth realization, non-duality, Buddha-hood..The key here doesn't lie in what you are seeking. They are just labels, pretty much worthless, but it gives us all something to talk about. Of course, what you seek can't be labeled. How could it possibly be as it is the source of all labels. To actually label 'it' would bring it down from 'Source' to just another dreamed object. Anything you can label is not 'It'. Think about that for a moment.

Now, back to basics, there is some invisible, amorphous, ineffable, intangible, in-anything-you-wantable, that is actually the source of this seeking you experience. Important point, it's not the sought and it's not the seeker. Both of those are just labeled dream characters that we have objectified, turned into 'things'. What you are truly seeking is It, it is the seeking itself (taken as a verb is the best we can do here). Please read that last sentence again.

Now, if you find it, THAT'S  NOT 'IT'! Things get very strange at this point. To repeat, the seeking is what you seek. Can you wrap you head around that. It's not a thought or a knowing that you end up with, it's more like a profound understanding, and that's not being expressed terribly well by me. Once again, the seeking itself, and a profound understanding of it, is all that enlightenment is. This seeking is 'It'. Ah, geez, I know I'm repeating myself. Let me try it another way.

You sit back and think, 'I want to get ... O.K. Then you go looking for it....all over the place. Everywhere that it isn't. It's no 'where' anyways and certainly not 'out there' where most folks look. It's really back at that first step, the 'I want to get ...' There was a moment what seeking occurred and THAT IS IT!  Can you be aware that your seeking is all there is to this.

Now, this can be expanded. You can say that the Source created the Objective world and now they are trying to rejoin, as it were. O.K. Got it. What happens when you take the positive and negative poles of a battery and connect them. The battery loses it's power, it drains to nothing. The power disappears. Please contemplate that in a similar manner understanding the Seeking and just being with it will eventually result in the illusion of a universe disappearing, the draining down of the source (of illusion), the battery. It is well represented in the Yin/Yang thing, but that's an explanation for another day.

Thank you for your time. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback. Keep in mind, theseeking is the sought thereof. Make it a temptra (a temporary mantra in Sanscrypt) then throw it away.

'So, what do you do when the universe disappears.' The answer is, 'You do what you have always done, you continue to pretend it exists and just get on with life.' This is the point where some sages say that nothing changes, and it is true that nothing changes, nothing gained or lost, other than......

Wanting

I want to know what you really want. To be like .....? To be like someone else? To be in a continuous state of something or other? To be in (insert whatever you want here)? Try my take on for size. You want to be free of wanting. But you go about it by wanting something. If it was easy this world would be a very different place. Head it off at the pass. Not by wanting more, but by wanting to know who it is that is consumed by all the wanting...tangentially.

The only possible avenue for you to want is for you to be something. Nothing wants for nothing. Something is always wanting for more and mostly in an effort to make it more of a something. Now, because your something is actually nothing, it's very insecure, hence the tendency to jump to anything that promises something. The highest teaching will only offer you nothing, hence, it's not an easy sell. Mental bangles, sparkles, excitement, change the world, yourself, your finances. IT IS ALL APPEARING IN A COMIC BOOK AND THAT INCLUDES THE YOU YOU THINK YOU ARE.

We are all just caricatures in a comic. The writer is One and the same ink is used for us all. But, he/she gives us different shapes and colors and story lines.The characters that we are hallucinate that we are the comic writer. Typical and understandable because we inherently know of our profound inability to change the comic book, only the writer can change the story. Try as we may, we can do nothing, other than realize we are the drafted up characters in a story written by 'other than ourselves'. Further, there is nothing substantial to us. Just try to change reality. Go for it. I'm not talking about changing the future, that's even more ridiculous. Watch that person crossing the street and condemn her, deny her, stop her from walking, make her more beautiful or homely, make her loveable or despicable.

You cannot change reality, only label it and play games with those labels, but ALL IN YOUR HEAD... nothing more or less. Set out to change something, let's say make it a sunny day tomorrow. It works, OMG it's sunny, YOU did it! What happened was your wish was aligned with the writer's, nothing more or less. Watch how your mind rebels against this, but rebel as it may, it cannot change anything other than the story that is stuck in it... your story... make it good or bad, I hate to tell you that not a single person in the world gives a damn because they are too busy making up and rearranging their own stories. What to do, well... nothing really. There is absolutely nothing you can do. In my opinion, just relaxing, sitting back, observing, and remembering to breathe is about the best you can do. Just be with what is, not what your story is, but what really is. It's simple, just let go of all wanting and all illusion of control. What could be simpler. Doesn't it make sense that if you actually have no control, why bother struggling for some. How about just bringing you attention to the story being revealed. Do you think the comic book writer is not competent? Could a comic character ever really hurt or be hurt by another character? Have you noticed how serious you and other characters can get?

The world

Supposedly, the world as we know it is just an illusion. All of our ordinary everyday life is nothing but an appearance in consciousness – not some special magical consciousness, but simply our ordinary everyday field of experience – and as such, it’s not only the substratum of that experience, but the ultimate reality of everything. In other words, there is no material objective universe. There is no time and space out there. There is only experience; only sense perceptions – just like in a dream. But unlike a dream, there’s no real reality outside. There’s nothing outside of these perceptions – there is no outside.

Since I knew that we could never verify what’s beyond our own experience, it seemed to me that this new alternative model was at least logically viable. One of the infinitely many possibilities, I thought, was that there’s absolutely nothing out there – but that would also be infinitely unlikely. But according to that same logic, our ordinary consensus model of reality—the universe-model—would then also be infinitely unlikely; it would just be another one of infinitely many possibilities.

Your mind and...you

Your mind can’t take a walk, but it can think while you are taking a walk. It can’t make love but it can chatter away while you are making love. Your mind can’t hold a job, but it has lots of opinions and judgments about what you do for a living.

Your mind can’t really influence what will happen or what has happened but continually acts as though it is in control of practically everything. Your mind seldom shuts up!

Your mind doesn’t really ever do anything!

Thoughts create your world

Watch your thoughts, not like a laser, just gentle watch them come and go for a minute or so and get an idea of how many there are, just a sense. Now, adopt an attitude that your are going to welcome them. Just gently imagine you are welcoming them as an empty space for them.  The reason I am suggesting this is it's pretty subtle. I think you will observe that a gentle opening and welcoming will, counter-intuitively, reduce the number of thoughts that come up. Thoughts only appear, or become evident, when there is some resistance. You might experiment by trying to resist/stop them and see what occurs. You create your world by resisting and the first thing you need in order to resist anything is to become a something/somebody. You have a developed sense  of a 'me' and use it to resist the world.

After you have welcomed everything, try welcoming what you think you are. It's is only and always just another thought, albeit a sticky one and all it wants is confirmation and recognition. So... give it what it wants. Loads of it, tons of it. You are the most recognized 'me' in existence. Anywhere people look, even in Readers Digest, all they see is you. Google 'you' and there you are. Everywhere in the world when a person says 'I' they are referring to you. 6.5 billion people are talking about you, all the time. Wow, your identity is overwhelmingly popular. Fake as it is, love it, cherish it, embrace it and be endlessly grateful for it. Why? why not?

Stairway to haven

You are climbing a stairway to heaven, however, it is very dark. All you can feel is the next step as you place your foot on it. It is foggy and you don't know where you are. You sometimes feel that the stairway is moving down for that next step, a little contrary to what you might expect. You have done many methods, techniques, yantras, mantras, tantras and cerebral laxative, Christ! you have done them all. You have read hundreds of books on walking up stairs, but that next step is always a mystery, because you don't know if it is there or not in that dark mist around your feet. 

Family, friends and a well meaning waitress at Dennys are saying 'DON"T DO IT', but you feel compelled to take the next step. Phew! it's there, the support you continue to THINK you require is just underfoot.

ONE DAY, BANG, WTF... no step to support you and there is no way back. You tumble into everything and nothingness and mystery and knowingness.... it's all here....you look up, and order waffles with extra cream. Nothing special, but a strawberry on top would be nice. That's all folks, no... really..... that's all.

The secret ...

This is the same message as Jesus or Buddha or all the Zen Masters, but striped of any tradition, lineage, or dogmas. Once, this message used to be the secret mystical teaching that only those who had been practicing, or on the spiritual path for many years, and had attained certain spiritual qualifications to prove that he was ready, could have access to. It was greatly respected because it was understood to be truly dangerous to those who might misinterpret it. Now, in our modern age of technology this message is much more freely available (and more open to misinterpretation). However, this does not mean that it is not still mortally dangerous to what you think about yourself. If there is any kind of crack in your belief system, this message can really destroy your life as you think you know it. But if you already feel that the life you have been living, is only one pretence after another, then you are willing to risk it all, to wake up to what is true. This is the courage to stand alone.
I have no tradition. I have no lineage. I have no permission to speak from some nice old man. I stand naked with nothing to hold on to and no back-up. And yet, as Life itself, there is no way to prevent this pouring out of what is true.

How du you feel right now?

Often when you ask someone, 'How do you feel right now?', they will launch into a story ABOUT their feelings, a tale about the past and future, about who did what to whom and when, a personal narrative involving blame, justification and opinion.

A better question, perhaps, is, 'What's going on in your body right now?'. Feelings do not happen in the past and future - only stories do. Feelings, true feelings, always happen now, in the body. Feelings are alive, immediate, dynamic, and they ask for present-moment attention and exploration. The rest is a story about the past and future, and that story can so easily be a distraction from what's present...

It's helpful to distinguish between feelings (present, bodily, first-hand and alive) and abstract mental judgements, projections and opinions.

For healing can only truly begin when we dare to contact what is ALIVE.

Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost

--

We are all marked

 To enter into a person's difficulties is to enter into his family, to penetrate the psychological atmosphere of his domestic milieu. We are all marked, not to say contaminated, by the psychomental universe of our people.

 A number of people have associated with them a personality that is not theirs, one that is borrowed from one or more members of their emotional environment. To be born into a family is to be, if I may say it this way, possessed. This possession is transmitted from generation to generation: the enchanted becomes the enchanter in projecting onto his children what was projected onto him—unless an awakening comes to break the cycle.

For the awakening to become operable, I must make the person act, lead them to commit a very precise act, but I must do so without taking charge or assuming the role of guide regarding their life.

The very act of existence is consciousness

The universe spontaneously arises out of consciousness yet at the same time is itself consciousness. We must lose the idea of matter being observed by something we call consciousness, that is not true. Some teachers talk of the Witness, the ultimate passive mind that observes all things moment to moment. This implies some level of separation, a witness over here watching the universe over there. It's not like this, there is only the experience, universe. There is no observer. Even if there were no manifestation the feeling would be the same. Once again let me make this clear: consciousness is not aware "of" the universe, consciousness is aware "as" the universe.

Now don't mistake that last sentence. Don't think,- I get it now, consciousness is not aware of the universe from a vantage point separate from it, like a disembodied soul, consciousness is instead aware of the universe as one of the billions of beings in it, like man, or dog, or fish." No, Such thoughts are false. When I say consciousness is aware "as" the universe I mean the very act of existence is consciousness. A carrot is itself consciousness, is itself awareness. There is not carrot aware of itself as carrot nor disembodied invisible consciousness aware of carrot as carrot, there is only the experience "carrot" and that is consciousness and that is enlightenment. There is no observer.

There is no observer

The universe is perfect, no one exists, yet the experience "universe" persists. How can this be? Consciousness. Consciousness is aware. If it were not, then there would be no universe. The very nature of existence implies consciousness. One can not exist without the other.

There can never be a universe that does not involve consciousness. There are no universes or dimensions where there is no consciousness. Matter and form would never arise without consciousness. Universe/Consciousness, Mind/Matter, Wave/Particle, call it what you will, the reality is that the manifestation, the very appearance we call the universe, is consciousness.

Now don't mistake me here, there is no observer. There are no persons in existence experiencing the universe, but more than that there is no Ultimate Person, God, Mind, or anything else observing the universe. There is only the experience of the universe being there with no experiencer.