Blinded by the Light?

Recently I’ve written several posts about Finding a Teacher. I’ve also commented on Descartes famous quote as an example of ego. “I think, therefore I am” Today, I ran into an interesting article, unexpectedly from Oprah magazine.

“Most people know Descartes’s famous statement “Cogito, ergo sum” (”I think, therefore I am”). But he actually wrote “Dubito…cogito, ergo sum.” “I doubt…I think, therefore I am.”"

That adds a twist to what I understood Descartes was saying. Perhaps its more people capture the part of the quote their ego can relate to. Hmmm. The author Martha Beck goes on to recommend:

- Embrace uncertainty. There is no absolute truth.
- Test every idea
- Ask if it unites or divides
- Do-Be-Do-Be
(see my post Do Be Do)

Davidya

Coming flick

Now this is intriguing. An interview with John Raatz, the man behind marketing “Transformational” films (his preference in terms) like What the BLEEP, Peaceful Warrior, The 11th Hour, MindWalk, Baraka, and A Brief History of Time.

“I’m producing a film with Eckhart Tolle based on a story written by Eckhart that Jim Carey will star in,…” No mention of title.

He’s been working with Eckhart for 6 or 7 years and indicates the Eckhart on Oprah event was entirely Oprah’s doing. He said the webcasts numbers were hard to come by but if you combine viewers, downloaders and streamers, the total was something over 15 million. Thats a pretty decent number. He suggests it was another milestone in transformation.

He’s also working on a project to do Deepak Chopra’s new book, The Third Jesus in a webcast with Unity Organization (the churches).

He mentions GATE, a new organization to network media pro’s involved in transformational media.

And… he’ s working on a film called “The Big Question“, with Deepak Chopra, Thich Nhat Hahn, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, scientists, and others. Its a flick about forgiveness. And its being produced by a company associated with the Catholic Church. Very interesting to see them involved with leaders of the consciousness movement.

More background:  http://www.thevisioneeringgroup.com/greetings.html

Sounds like some great new films on the way…

Davidya

Santa’s coming!

from Library of Congress via Pingnews

Santa’s Coming! OK now - be honest. What was your first response to that statement? Excitement? Surprise? Revulsion? This points to your story about Santa. What you do or don’t believe about that seasonal celebration.

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it” — Vincent Van Gogh

In modern society we like to think of ourselves as beyond myth. We live in a time of science. But that is a complete myth. Most people in North America believe in God, heaven (usually as another place), miracles, and angels. A majority also believe in hell and the devil. Thats not to say this is right or wrong. Only that they believe in something that most of them have not experienced. That is the basis of a myth.

Look at the stories we raise our children on. The Easter bunny. Halloween. I was raised with Grimm’s tales and they are that - grim. The grand-daddy of them all though is Christmas. Here’s a blend of a celebration of the birth of Jesus with excess and the Santa story. People who come to the west from other cultures find some of this quite bizarre and inconsistent.

Add in to the Santa story the “better be good” part where Santa’s giving is dependent on you being a good child, entirely based on your parents rules of right and wrong. Rules that may not be consistent or match your friends parents rules.

And then we dump it all when old enough to recognize its a story. Rather than being told what Santa represents, many kids are informed that “now you’re old enough to know the truth”. Or they discover from friends that it was all a lie for little kids. Being grow’d up meant rejecting kids stories. Only they shaped our stories at the deepest level.

We may suggest that we outgrow a believe in Santa, but children under the age of 5 or 6 are like sponges, absorbing everything, especially the unspoken messages and feelings around them. That never leaves us. Instead, we layer on stories about the stories. We have the Xmas morning story. Layered on with the ‘its not real’ story, then the ‘thats for kids’ story, then the ‘have to deal with family’ story, then the spending excess story. No wonder Christmas is messy for some people!

The same is true for our stories about work, money, the opposite sex, sex, cars, music, and on and on and on. We have stories about cigarettes, litter, driving habits, pretty much any subject you can imagine. Ask anyone their opinion about, say movies, and they will usually spout their story. An automatic programmed response. Each of us has some area or 2 in our lives where the stories create internal conflicts. The successful guy who can’t make relationships work. The well-paid woman who is always in debt.

People like Joseph Campbell have observed that we need myths, we need stories to explain our world and give us something to believe in. To give order to the world. The trick is to be aware there are stories that deeply influence our response to events in our lives. (Our response determines how we experience life, not the events themselves.) If we are aware of the stories, then we can ask ourselves if those stories serve us or do we serve them.

The trick to being aware of a story is to simply pay attention to how we are responding to life. When we notice, perhaps afterwards, that something has triggered an excess or inappropriate response, theres a flag to pay attention to. Why do we feel this way? What is our story about this? And thus begins our exploration of our storybook world that we have build for ourselves. The one that tells us if we should be happy or sad.

Does yours have a fairy tale ending? Is that ending now or always in the future? You can’t be happy now if your story tells you its wrong. When is happiness wrong?

Davidya

The Pout

Photo by ninjapoodles

Earlier I posted on Expectations and the root of suffering. As we begin to see through the illusion and see the stories playing out in our life, it can sometimes be a little surprising. As in How Could I Have Possibly Behaved Like That? Why Would I Be So Fooled? How Could I Be So Dense? Of course, we run into those little of life’s surprises periodically anyway, but they are rather enhanced as we begin to wake from the stories more completely.

One of the funnier, and more personally embarrassing things though is The Pout. That expression of resistance that might otherwise be associated with a petulant child. We may have long seen ourselves as having an adult tantrum, a round of grumpiness, a crying jag, or some other “adult” expression of annoyance at circumstances or another person. But when we see through the story, we realize we’ve been behaving like a spoiled child, stomping our feet in anger and frustration. Shouting No! No! No! Talk about resistance to what is, mainly from dashed expectations from the world not meeting our illusions.

We may express differently, but the inner dynamics are unchanged from that of a child. This idea of ‘adult’ is just another story we tell ourselves.

Its a curious aspect of the deeper reality. The cosmic joke. And its on us. And you thought you were all grow’d up.

Davidya

The Real Dream

photo by ancawonka Cloud Gate sculpture - Chicago

Whats a real dream, you may ask? Look around. Thats a real dream, a dream that seems real. If you have followed my posts here, you may find it a little confusing. On the one hand I talk about Living the Dream. Then I turn around and say that dreams lead to expectations lead to suffering.

Perhaps the whole thing doesn’t make sense. Think about a form of dreaming you know. Don’t your dreams in the night seem real while you’re having them? Then when you wake up, they often seem silly. Even if they seemed life threatening inside the dream. Awakening up from the ‘real’ dream of the supposed waking state is the same way. Thats why they call it that. Awakening to our true nature wakes us from the dream of the individual.

It is the not knowing its a dream, being lost in the dream that is the source of suffering. As I spoke about, the dreams led to expectations. Expectations lead mostly to disappointment and blame. But if we know its a dream, we avoid the attachment to results. We take the oft-quoted phrase “this or something better”. We are not stuck with a specific outcome. We can simply be with what is.

Perhaps you’re not quite in that place yet. It seems awfully real, not a dream. Thats fine. You don’t have to believe this. But if you allow for the idea that you may be living in a kind of group dream, your approach will gradually change. The stories will shift, the expectations will fall, and gradually it will be less of a chore and burden.

When we step out of the dream, what we step into is who we really are. Peace and happiness. Then we see the dream as a field of play. Lila, they call it in the east. The illusion becomes a ladder of understanding.

Have fun. Dream big dreams, castles in the sky. But found it on earth in knowing who you are.
Davidya

Expectations = Suffering

I’ve talked here about expectations. Also about being present, in the moment. Essentially, our mind has a tendency to be attached to certain results. We desire and crave certain things. Desiring is natural, it is our motivator to do. There is no being without doing. But desire deteriorates into craving when our expectations are not met. Craving leads to suffering.

Curiously, many people in our world consider suffering normal. When I say suffering, they might think starving children in Ethiopia. But the majority live lives of quiet desperation. Loosing themselves in mind numbing TV, seeking small pleasures in overeating, and otherwise doing their best to avoid pain. We live in a place of abundance, yet waste our moments in avoiding it. Such is the paradox of illusion. Pretending not to pretend, we unintentionally loose our birthright of happiness.

photo by Caruba

I was reminded of the lesson of expectation this week at work. I had a project with an easy deadline. Then the deadline was moved up, the newer technology choice didn’t work, and suddenly the deadline arrives with nothing ready. I was irritated by how it worked out and that I was not better prepared. But it only takes a moment to see that part of the issue was expectations. An idea of an ‘easy’ deadline. If I had not been invested in that idea, it would have lead to better prep and fewer consequences. In any case, what does the irritation serve but to distract me from what needs to get done? I could invest in the irritation and start complaining and making excuses. Or I can see it for what it is and step past it into solutions.

Expectations arise because the mind likes to make stories about ‘how it is’. These are never about now, only future and past. When we don’t know our true natures, the mind steps up, feeling it needs to be in charge. But the mind is not grounded in reality so does not feel secure. It feels it must make a story to explain things and deal with the boogey man. Make the world less scary. Or justify why we feel scared. Oftentimes, that story is based on pretty shaky conclusions about others and the world. It latches on to certain events that appear to confirm its position, like the thing with the boss on a bad day. Then, add in the ego’s need to make things wrong so it can feel better in being right. In essence, we are building a dream to be happy, only to find the world is inexplicably not sharing our illusion. We are putting our happy eggs in a basket with no bottom.

If you don’t think this affects you, I can simply ask - are you always happy? Do you consider the world a warm and friendly place? Are you awake to your true nature? If you answer no to these questions, then I can guarantee you are under the sway of expectations based on an illusion. It is the simple nature of being an individual human. Not knowing who you are, a story is needed to explain it. I story we’ve been writing for decades.

When we don’t see this process or we forget it, the mind then goes conclusion jumping. You may have met someone who is a compulsive liar. Typically this develops as a protective mechanism. The problem with the lies is that they have to then be sustained, and further lies are built on top of previous lies. Soon it is a house of cards. Trouble is, thats reality for a lot more people than realize it. They may be unintentional lies, but they are stories nonetheless.

Because we then see the world a certain way, through the filter of our story, we develop expectations about how it will respond. And because we see the world incorrectly, those expectations lead directly to suffering. Our wishes appear dashed, we remain frustrated, life appears harsh. All of this because we had expectations of how its “supposed to” be. This is in direct contrast to ideas like Eckhart Tolle’s when he speaks about being with what is. Instead, we’ve been practicing being with what isn’t.

Being with what is allows us to see through the stories we tell. It also allows us to begin to see how it actually is. And how it is is the secret to peace and happiness, beyond expectation.

It really is very simple. But its not easy to learn, simply because our mind is so habituated to listen to the stories. Coincidentally (there are none), while I was drafting this my friend Tom Stine wrote a post on how Fear is Future. Fear arises in the expectation of a negative future outcome. This is exactly what I’m talking about. Our expectations are rooted in future concepts that are illusions.

Tom goes on to suggest techniques for moving past fear. Those same techniques can be used to move past any emotional barrier we are experiencing. Any sense of resistance. Fear however has deep roots and is the source of many other emotions we may judge as “negative”. When we look closely inside anger and sadness, we will find fear. Inside fear is a hurt we are still holding. Thus we have an expectation of the hurt recurring. We are planning a future of suffering.

As we loose the expectations of the future and regret of the past, we may feel a sense of loss of who we are. But what we’re loosing is the stories we have thought to be ‘us’. That is how closely we may be invested in our pain. What we’re really loosing is the stories that mask who we are and cover the happiness we all carry within, always. Seeing through the dream is seeing through suffering, into the light of peace.

Davidya

Maxwell not Maxwell?

James Clerk Maxwell wrote a series of equations that defined classical electromagnetism, establishing the properties of electricity and magnetism and that light was an electromagnetic wave. The individual equations bear the names of others, all familiar as electrical terms and laws nowadays - Gauss, Faraday, Ampere, Hertz, Ohm, and Lorentz. Maxwell did not actually originate the equations but rather derived them independently. They came to be know as a group as Maxwell’s.

The interesting part though is they’re not Maxwell’s at all. Maxwell made the overlapping discoveries based on a molecular model of a vortex of aether. (remember this is before all the nonsense of molecules being made up of little balls) The actual familiar equations were developed, or rather ’simplified’, by a fellow named Oliver Heaviside, after Maxwell’s death. Evidently, Heaviside considered Maxwell’s “quaternions” (referring to 4D space) a mystical abomination, so he removed the aspects for calculating the potentials of empty space. This removed the scalar aspect of the quaternions, eliminating the hyperspatial characteristics. Also ideas like aether. (ether, the 5th element) While the equations simplified calculations, this in effect set the study back 100 years.

The essential idea is that electromagnetism and gravity were the result of the intruding geometry of 4D space in 3D “crumpled” geometry. Buckminster Fuller also made a lot of references to 4D in his all-space-filling geometry.

From my perspective, ideas of multi-dimensional space such as 4D and 11D models are applying physical principles to non-physical things like fields. This is misleading and tends to take one down rabbit holes. For example, subtle space is not ‘other’ but is rather concurrent. We see forces in 3D space. A better understanding is to think in terms of different resolutions. Different sets of laws function at different resolutions, impinging on other resolutions and thus creating effects.

Davidya

Aliens Are My Brother

So says Father Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory. The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.

…the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.

Not sure what to make of this. But the church is coming to Darwin a little late. That theory is on the way out. Or shall we say its evolved….

The article from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm

David Lynch on the creative flow

A short interview with the filmmaker David Lynch on enhancing the creative flow and the role of consciousness as the container and meditation as the tool. Lynch has recently been touring the world with Donovan to raise money for programs to bring meditation to any school kids who want to learn.

http://www.vimeo.com/959231

David Lynch Foundation

The One Truth

photo by orangejack

I talk a lot on this blog about perspective and reality. I harp a lot about what is true or real because a lot of people don’t quite grasp what these are. We are in a culture deeply rooted in the ego. A culture that makes wrong to make itself right. It sells newspapers and TV news. We are taught to think we must take a position for something and against other. We choose Darwin over Lamark, Christianity over Judaism, Democracy over Communism, Coke over Pepsi, Chocolate over Vanilla, and on and on ad infinitum.

Certainly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making choices. We have our tastes and preferences. We are unique. The error is in making unconsidered choices, then in excluding all others. We may not care if some people like Vanilla but a lot of people care about other choices. They care enough that they define their identity with their choices. I am an accountant who votes liberal and goes to a baptist church, for example. But is that who you are? We mistake the content for the container.

In some ways, our choices reflect who we are. But in a deeper sense, they have nothing to do with it. What happens if you quit accounting and become a realtor? Has who you are changed? Or was it simply a change in choice? What we give our attention to. When we associate our identity with our choices, it makes change much more difficult. And it makes a review of our choices a threat to who we are. No wonder life can seem scary and rootless.

The underlying nature of all things is a formless, unmanifest potential. Because it has no characteristics, it cannot be directly described. This is a conundrum for the mind as it needs ‘handles’, but it somehow manages to build concepts anyway. Concepts about truth that then tend to get in the way of truth.

People often differentiate individual reality from higher truths by capitalizing the second. self and Self, truth and Truth, reality and Reality. The trouble is, we forget to ask who it is thats perceiving this Reality. This is an issue in science, philosophy, and religion. Its an issue because even though the higher Truths may be constant, HOW WE PERCEIVE THEM is not. There is one One, one Totality, but there are a myriad of ways of perceiving the One. As we grow and change, our understanding and perspective changes. And that changes everything.

If we study an evolutionary chart of humans, it is remarkable how many different perspectives or “states of consciousness” we can step through. I have listed some 7 completely distinct realities between which there are complete reversals of position on some things. And there are many subsets and variations on the theme.

In other words, Reality may remain unchanged but our relationship with it can change completely. Even on a day to day basis. There may be one Truth, but what is true for us is dependent on how we perceive our reality. So truth is relative. As we evolve and open, we can come closer and closer to an approximation of the One Truth, but I’m not sure there is time in a human life to simply take it all in. The highest truths are very simple, but they have a vastness that is almost incomprehensible.

In essence, that is the entire function of all this differentiation we call the world. To create as many different ways of knowing as possible. If we understand this simple point, we will see the point of all the variety and we may begin to better allow for it. The One comes to know Itself not through a few illustrious souls but through the opening of all of us. In the One, there is no other.

Thats magic. It makes change and the evolutionary process much easier. It makes the world a lot more fun. Indeed, if we fully gasp this, we discover there is no wrong, no mistake, no problem. It is perfection.

When there is no longer wrong, where is conflict? Where is stress?

I guess we could say that the One Truth is that we’re in this together. We are all aspects of the whole. The One Truth is inclusive of all truth in a magnificent synergy of relationship. There is no right position or vantage. And no wrong. When musicians practice, each on their own, its called a cacophony. When they move together, its called a symphony. We live in a symphony. To who’s beat do you play?

Davidya