What if?

What if you saw life through the eyes of someone that doesn’t feel enough. Doesn’t think her life, what she do, what she are, is enough. What if she only saw the wonder of this world from a perspective of comparison? From a language based on duality, opposites and judgement. What a dull, boring world this would seem. Full of unfairness, disappointment and hate.

Thankfully - there is nobody. There is nobody looking at this world. There never has been, there never will be. There is just freedom, boundlessness – always not twoness.

Play

Life is so intelligent, it will always challenge you, put you into trouble and then solve it all for you. And as there is no 'you', life is just at play.

The play of life

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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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.

Tru -man

The movie is a basic parable of the journey of awakening from delusion. At the end of his journey, Truman Burbank escapes through the final door into freedom from the artificial environment - Seahaven - in which he was raised. He steps through the door into a broader reality that is essentially the same world he’s always known, but on a larger scale; same paradigm, same dynamics, same everything really, just one level up. Just like Neo in The Matrix, Truman doesn’t escape from Maya, he just leaps from one turtle to the next.

 “Your whole life has been moving toward this; you’ve undergone crisis after crisis, fought battle after battle, destroyed illusion after illusion. You’ve been living in a state of unrelenting emotional upheaval as your world collapsed around you, you’ve made a great journey, and now you’re about to discover the truth of your being. You’re about to leave the only reality you’ve ever known and step into a new, bigger reality you’ve never seen and only recently began to suspect.

In the movie-metaphor, Truman is just stepping out of a microcosm into the regular cosm we all know; it’s really the same paradigm he’s known in the vast soundstage of Seahaven, but on a different scale. 

(Jed) 

The process

For some, an awakening experience is easy and liberating. For others, it may not be liberating at all and stir up a whole lot of programming still to be cleared in order for ultimate freedom to eventually be lived in daily life as an wanted experience. Then, there are some for whom the awakening experience can be so disruptive and impossible to assimilate that they may become physically, emotionally or mentally non-functional. Some may actually die in the process or end up in a mental institution. Others may become so incapacitated to operate in the world that they may need to depend on others to care for them. They might possibly need to relearn how to do regular life again since the how to got obliterated in the enlightenment experience. Still others may not notice at all that something unusual happened until days or weeks later when it dawns on them that something has changed in their perception of the world. There are many more such variations I could list from ultimately great to ultimately not so great. As many people as there are on earth, that's how many possibilities exist as far as what enlightenment may or may not do for someone. To get hung up on one particular possibility creates a very one-sided view of the whole thing that does not serve anyone in the least. 

Months into my breaking-down, clearing-out, scrubbing-away process I was shown that what I had taken me to be was actually a mere compilation of concepts, beliefs, ideas, thoughts tangled up with feelings, piled up on top of one another, making up something like a scaffold... and nothing else.

Change your frequency

At each moment there is a thought, and the next thought depends on the previous thought. The string of thoughts is not chosen, but rather come together by momentum, based on the sameness frequencies of the thoughts. This magnetic pull of similar thoughts creates a unique story of "me" happy or sad, good or bad. At each moment there is also a possibility to start recieving different thoughts, but that requires an alchemy of the mind that we call mindfulness. Mindfulness is noticing without judgment. This noticing alone is so powerful that it can shift the magnetic gathering of the thoughts of the same frequencies, like changing the channels on TV.