tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76711545343491300982024-03-08T18:15:46.436-05:00The Existential Funk HoleI was sucked into the Existential Funk Hole many lifetimes ago. Its a strange and wonderful world - fun during the day and a little sinister at night. Like living at the circus.
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This blog is a chronicle of the echoes, murmurs and clandestine whispers I've often heard on my travels through this vast and silent landscape....Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-35031681469293445842016-03-17T00:50:00.001-05:002016-03-17T00:50:09.731-05:00The Dying Sun<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A blood red sun hangs just over the horizon, her light spilling copiously into the sky like a rupturing wound, as my car races along the country road to win me a clearer glimpse. Reaching a vantage point, I finally stop just in time to watch her slow, haunting descent into oblivion . With naked eyes, I behold her in her fullness, her light raw yet soothing to my gaze. And I am struck with a certain unwavering sentiment: that pain is the wavelength of life that reveals the totality of who we are in spirit. </div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-12651873520093599922013-05-02T11:26:00.002-05:002013-05-02T11:26:30.590-05:00SoulExplore : My Latest Venture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="userContent">Dear Readers,</span></div>
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<span class="userContent">After a year of blogging via the existential funk hole, I feel it is time for me to strike out in a new creative direction. </span></div>
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<span class="userContent">SoulExplore is my new venture which I invite each of you to partake in. Please check out the website, subscribe to my updates and forward it to anyone you feel may benefit from it. Thanks to all of you for your support and readership over the past year. I will be moving my blogging from the Existential Funk Hole to this new site from now on. See you there!<br /><br /><a href="http://soulexplore.com/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://soulexplore.com/</a></span></div>
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<span class="userContent">Sincerely,</span></div>
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<span class="userContent">Shiv Sengupta</span></div>
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-8701157433215420852013-04-12T11:49:00.000-05:002013-04-12T11:49:31.704-05:00Life is a House<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Your life is a house. You are the space in which it exists. <br />
At first the space has no name to go by. <br />
No one to claim, "this is mine."<br />
You are this space of infinite possibility. <br />
Empty of all but imagination. <br />
The dream of the whole world exists in this space.<br />
<br />
And then one day, the space is claimed. <br />
It is portioned and sectioned and marked : "private property". <br />
People will think twice before treading here now. <br />
All will know that they are only welcome with your consent. <br />
<br />
Here, in this space, you must build your house.<br />
Take the time to dig deep and lay your foundations well. <br />
It may seem slow and tedious work, <br />
But you will only know its value when <br />
The brutal storms of circumstance come knocking at your door. <br />
<br />
As you lay your foundation, <br />
The weather can be both a friend and a foe. <br />
Cracks in the earth may appear from the heat of the scorching sun. <br />
Or the ground may be softened by torrential rain. <br />
You cannot control the circumstances of your foundation years. <br />
You can only do your best to keep true to your purpose.<br />
<br />
As you erect the frame of your house,<br />
Ensure that the structure is sound,<br />
And aesthetically true to who you are.<br />
Don't worry about how big, small, grand or ordinary it is<br />
Nor what the neighbors might whisper and think<br />
This is your house and yours alone<br />
It does you no benefit to alter its designs to please the sensitivities of others<br />
<br />
Build your windows wide and in every direction<br />
These are the windows of your mind<br />
They will welcome the light of wisdom and patience on bleak winter days<br />
And the winds of fresh possibility when spring emerges<br />
Keep them open as often as you can<br />
So that you are never a stranger to the chirping of sparrows<br />
The laughter of children<br />
Or the aromas of freshly baked apple pie<br />
<br />
Keep the furnace of your heart always lit<br />
Even if you do not need its warmth in the moment<br />
Even if the matters of the world require your urgent attention<br />
Attend to your furnace often<br />
Watch the flames childishly play and dance about<br />
No matter how many years roll on by<br />
No matter how the world changes just as your body changes<br />
The flame in your furnace will never age<br />
It is just as it was the day your house was built<br />
<br />
Keep your basement free of clutter,<br />
This basement that is your subconscious mind<br />
Where the secret cracks and fissures of your childhood years<br />
Remain hidden and forgotten even to you<br />
Endeavour to spend time here often<br />
Attending to each crack, each fracture of your foundation<br />
You can only heal it with your own awareness<br />
Compassion is the only sealant which works after the fact<br />
<br />
Furnish your home sparsely yet tastefully<br />
Occupy it with the experiences and events you love<br />
Rather than those that you think you want or the world says you need<br />
Let space, not things, be your primary focus<br />
Because it will always be a reminder of your original self<br />
This space was here before anything else<br />
Treat it with consideration and above all respect<br />
<br />
Attend to your house diligently and often<br />
Make repairs when necessary and renovate once in a while<br />
This house is the deepest expression of yourself<br />
Have fun with it and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty!<br />
But don't get so fixated that it becomes your obsession<br />
Don't struggle to make it flawless or perfect<br />
The imperfections are half the charm<br />
It is what makes it recognizable to passersby on the street<br />
<br />
Above all, keep the door to your house always open<br />
Welcome friend and stranger alike to come share in its warmth<br />
This house is a living, breathing thing<br />
Not some inanimate structure of wood and stone<br />
The walls have ears and the windows have eyes<br />
Let the sound of laughter echo through them often<br />
And gestures of kindness be a commonplace sight<br />
Your house will learn from you and respond in kind<br />
Don't blame it for your misfortunes or credit it with your joys<br />
It is only a faithful companion that always follows your cue<br />
<br />
The day will come when this house must fall<br />
Either from the onset of a terrible storm<br />
Or from the natural consequence of wear and tear<br />
Great sadness will accompany this event<br />
As will joy at the memories that were created within its walls<br />
The neighbors will be reminded of what once was<br />
Each time they gaze at the empty space in which your house once stood<br />
<br />
And yet, from the little windows of their own perception<br />
They are unable to recognize what they see<br />
Only you are aware that nothing has happened<br />
Nothing has been lost and nothing gained<br />
You continue to exist unchanged, unaltered<br />
To remain as the space that you always were<br />
Free once again to dream and imagine <br />
You ponder upon the next house that you will build.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-25080310120981982392013-04-11T11:47:00.001-05:002013-04-11T11:47:32.052-05:00The Purpose of Your Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The purpose of your life is being satisfied already. You <i>are</i> the purpose of your Life. You grow up being taught to define yourself according to the various roles you play, the various functions you serve. Society values everything according to its usefulness. And this extends to human life as well. You are taught to value yourself based on your ability to contribute, to make a difference, to be of use. And for most people, the existential question of what the purpose of their existence is, really translates into questions : what value do I represent? What greater use am I to serve?<br />
<br />
Every child is born essentially worthless by these standards. However, each child represents a potential for future worth, an investment which, if properly fostered and attended to, may reap great benefit in the future. This is the mindset with which each one is raised. You are encouraged to accumulate knowledge, experience and build relationships with the single prerogative of becoming a fully functioning, continuing member of society. From a practical perspective there is nothing particularly wrong with this picture because in order for a society to function coherently it is important that each member contributes in an organized fashion in order to perpetuate and evolve its existence. However, the function you perform within society is just a small aspect of who you are. It is a role, a part you play in this drama that we have all agreed to participate in. By no means is it the whole of what you are. It barely scratches the surface.<br />
<br />
Each one of you plays a number of roles. You are simultaneously a father/mother, a son/ daughter, an employee, an employer, a citizen, a leader, a celebrity, an artist, a teacher, a friend, a guide, a student, an adviser a customer, a driver, a pedestrian, a philanthropist, a businessman, a husband/wife the roles that you play are layered and each connects to the other in a seamless web. This web is the costume of your identity that you have painstakingly fashioned for yourself over the years. And within each of these roles, there is a purpose you serve. Each of these roles is useful within the particular frame of experience that it operates within.<br />
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You experience your life as a ceaseless transition from one role to another. One minute you are a wife/husband, the next an employee, the next an adviser the next a citizen. Sometimes the roles make conflicting demands on your attention, sometimes playing the part seems overwhelming. Each one of you is essentially a juggler, juggling an increasing number of balls in the air until the act of juggling itself takes over and becomes the dominant essence of your whole experience of life. At a certain point, when this act of juggling becomes so painful and tiresome and the fruits of your labors begin to taste less sweet no matter what you do and what you achieve, you begin to ask yourself : is there more to life then all this? What is the purpose of my existence? Is it merely to be a good wife/husband, an inspiring teacher, a model employee, a responsible parent, a law abiding citizen, a devoted child?<br />
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You sense that there is a depth to you that you are unable to become cognizant of, that you have no language to express. You turn to your religion or your god for answers and for some of you these answers will satisfy you for a while. But for others they seem to fall short somehow, providing a lot of feel good recipes and reasons for your existence but ultimately failing to touch upon that most intimate experience of your self.<br />
<br />
You have fallen prey to the very mechanisms that you unwittingly adopted in your innocence. Unaware of what you were sacrificing you chose from one moment to the next to be told who you were by a world that hadn't the faintest clue to begin with. You placed your faith in others who in turn placed their faith in others who in turn placed their faith in others, in an endless loop of misunderstanding. You traded in the only certainty you ever had for an entire universe of doubt. That was your choice. And that is the choice each one makes from the perspective of innocence. It is the natural progression.<br />
<br />
But, having lived like this for so many years, having experienced the fruits of all your choices and having seen the inherent hollowness of it all, you are driven to frustration, suffering and even despair as you begin to sense that none of it holds any real value. That the value all have agreed to attribute to it is entirely a figment of the human imagination. That your life is, in its most fundamental sense, absolutely valueless, absolutely meaningless and absolutely purposeless. Here, as you stand on the brink of this giant void, you are more closely yourself that you ever have been.<br />
<br />
As you glimpse into this void, you experience the massive withdrawal of your mind recoiling from its own inevitable fate After an entire lifetime of being subject to its iron rule, you have received your first taste of a realm within yourself that the mind cannot enter. The void you are perceiving is only the image that the mind conjures up for what lies beyond the limits of what it is able to conceive. What the mind cannot comprehend it sees as void. Yet that void is your own most essential self.<br />
<br />
Your mind began in your innocence as the simple interpreter of experience. It did what it was constructed to do. To accumulate information, to analyze it and to reformat it. But there was no filter on what it accumulated and what it did not. Like a sponge it soaked up everything within its environment, wholeheartedly adopting everything it was told. Your name, your beliefs, your wants and desires, your pains and miseries, your roles and ambitions. Your mind became the voice of the world, instructing you every step of the way about who you are and what your purpose was. Like a regent that governs until the king comes of age, it perpetuated its own agendas on your behalf while you came to believe that its agendas were your own.<br />
<br />
The first glimpse into the void catalyzed by your own doubt and despair is the sign of your coming to age. the regent has served its purpose and now it is time for the king to rule. As you begin to see through the hollowness of all the roles you play, become aware of that aspect of yourself that remained constant through all the experiences and all the functions. That sense of "you", that has never changed, that has never aged even as your mind has changed and your body has aged. Become aware of that most essential 'you' that has witnessed it all, been privy to it all and yet remains whole, intact and unaffected.<br />
<br />
This is the real you. This is your most essential nature. This is the self that has no value because it is priceless. This is the you that is, and has always been, perfect. Realize the reality of yourself and you will simultaneously have discovered your purpose. Because the purpose of your Life is simply to live. It is your only true contribution and the greatest gift you could ever give to this world.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-23718946820908078922013-04-10T15:16:00.002-05:002013-04-10T15:16:44.962-05:00The Story of Empathy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Empathy is the capacity to understand the experience of another in a very visceral way. It is a capacity each person has. And yet it is a capacity that lies dormant to a great degree in most, expressed only in flashes here and there given an appropriate catalyst. For most people, empathy is a conditioned response to circumstances that their minds deem appropriate or worthy of such response. In other words, empathy is closely tied into your mind's most fundamental value systems. You are more likely to empathize with people and circumstances that mirror your own ideals than those that do not. As a result, your ability to express empathy becomes a function of how you tend to classify yourself. The limits and conditions you place on yourself translate into the selective manner in which you empathize with your environment. And so, empathy extends beyond just the capacity to understand another. It is more fundamentally a reflection of your capacity to understand yourself. As you deepen and expand your understanding of yourself, so also does your capacity to feel empathy deepen and expand.<o:p></o:p><br />
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We are empathetic beings by nature. As children, our capacity for empathy is vast and largely unconditioned. Children are sensitive to their environments and function primarily using intuition. They have an innate ability to connect with people, creatures and objects in a far more direct way than do adults. That is because the filter of their cognitive-interpretive mind has yet to be fully lodged into place. When a three year old navigates its environment, it does so instinctively, whereas an adult is conditioned to take a much more calculated and measured approach. Morality, ethics, facts, opinions, value judgments and other means of classification that we are taught to use in order to analyze and segregate our experiences, are as of yet unavailable to the three year old. The child simply operates according to what piques its curiosity in the moment and, as a result, has a much more direct experience of the elements within its environment. Its awareness is unburdened by mental processes. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Conditioned Empathy</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
As an adult, you empathize as a result of your mental and emotional conditioning. You draw comparisons between the objects of your empathy and yourself and the more common ground you are able to find, the more your capacity to empathize increases. For example, you may feel more connected to someone who has experienced a circumstance of tragedy that you yourself had experienced. You may feel moved to share your experience with them because you have this sense of feeling their pain. As a result, you may feel united, or brought together, by the similarities in your circumstances. However, the sense of feeling the other person's pain is simply a projection of your imagination. Your mind, recognizing some of the similarities in circumstances, merely triggers memories of your own experience of pain or grief and projects it onto the other. On the other end, the recipient of your empathy is doing something similar. This person's mind, having drawn a similar comparison, projects his/her own experience of grief and imagines it to be yours. This mutual projection between the two parties seals the illusion of a shared experience whereas in reality there has been no such experience. The illusion becomes more apparent through the passage of time when circumstances begin to change and the things you once shared in common begin to gradually become less relevant. As the common ground between you and the other begins to shrink, so does your empathy. No longer are you able to feel the other person the way you once did. No longer are they able to feel you as they once did. As the circumstances that unified you slowly begin to fade, so does the unity. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This mechanism of conditional empathy operates within all facets of human experience and relationships. Friendships are largely circumstantial, based on the commonalities people share. You often feel closer to friends that are going through the same experiences as you are than those that are not. Friends, who were once close in their youth, begin to drift apart when one gets married and has children while the other remains single and career driven. Marriages fall apart when the mutual interests and romantic drives that first created the sense of being united and in love, begin to fade into the mundane repetition of daily life, with each spouse finding the other increasingly incapable of satisfying their needs. Members of a community once united in a common political or religious ideology become polarized and conflicted when these ideologies or beliefs begin to change. Nations that were once faithful allies become sworn enemies when their interests begin to diverge. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The ways in which you empathize with other organisms is also subject to this mechanism. You have a greater empathy towards more complex life-forms than towards simpler ones, since intelligence is one of the parameters by which you are taught to value yourself. The killing of dolphin evokes greater emotion than the killing of tuna, because people identify dolphins as being of a higher order of sentience, in other words "more human like" in their ability to emote. Eating horse meat is more horrifying than eating beef, because the horse is an animal associated with strength, beauty and grace - all prized virtues within the human experience. People are far more likely to be in an uproar over the government euthanizing stray dogs than rats, because they feel a greater sense of kinship with dogs. Witnessing a rabbit being hit by a car causes more distress than watching a fly being mashed against the windshield. Your empathy extends to a greater extent towards those beings with which your mind can imagine some sort of bond of identification. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines empathy as "<em>the imaginative projection of a subjective state onto an object so that the object appears to be infused with it</em>". The more complex the organism, the more room your mind has for imagination <o:p></o:p><br />
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Within society, people find it easier to feel empathy for the poor, the unfortunate, the victim than they do for the greedy, the fortunate and the exploiter. The public hero's untimely demise is met with widespread grief and vigilance whereas that of the despised dictator is marked with celebration. It is far easier to feel empathy for the misfortunes of a law-abiding citizen than it is for those of a convicted felon. The same voice that demands for freedom for the oppressed, demands for the imprisonment of the oppressor. The empathy you feel for members within society is contingent on how closely they uphold the principles on which society is based. Because, the principles of society are to a large extent your own principles. You have acquired and assimilated them over the years. Your whole sense of identity is based upon it. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<strong>Unconditioned Empathy</strong> <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The empathy that an infant or toddler feels on the other hand is not yet subject to this mechanism and is, as a result, largely uncontrived. The child does not know the difference between a citizen and a convict, a Catholic and a Muslim, a democrat and a republican, a celebrity and a bum. The child experiences its environment spontaneously and responds with an equal spontaneity. Its mind has yet to fully develop the faculties of self-awareness. What the child experiences as "himself" is essentially different from what you identify as your Self. The child has no opinions to express, no ideologies to believe in, no facts to reference. Even its emotions are experienced more as energetic sensations and are as yet unclassified by the mind as happy, sad, angry, jealous etc. The child feels what it feels from one moment to the next. With little material with which to define itself, it experiences less of a separation from its environment. The boundary between where its own self ends and where the rest of the world begins is somewhat blurred. The result is that the child experiences itself more seamlessly in relation to its environment. The sense of ownership that most adults feel about their experiences is virtually non-existent. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As a result, the empathy a child feels is of a more constant and consistent nature. As long as its attention is directed outwards into its environment, its natural response to everything it interacts with is one of empathy. This is why infants tend to be so liberal with their affection. Unless it feels threatened in any way, a child will smile as easily for a stranger as it would for someone familiar. Children have an innate ability to form instinctive bonds with animals and even insects that most adults would find repulsive. They are far more eager to touch, taste or otherwise interact with the world they live in. They would much rather get dirty than stay clean, engage than retreat, roll around and absorb as much as they can of the world around them than attempt to stay removed and unaffected. All these are marks of empathy.<o:p></o:p><br />
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It is only in moments when fear or hunger strikes that the child becomes suddenly aware of itself as a needy, individual identity, and its attention shifts away from the world and onto itself. In this moment it is consumed with its own body's cravings and it becomes a separate isolated entity struggling to survive. And yet, the moment its needs are met it goes right back to immersing itself in the world again, unconcerned. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
And so even the child's empathy is not entirely unconditioned. Rather the conditions are basic and fundamental to its survival and in most cases easily met. However, as the child grows and its faculties of self-awareness develop and sophisticate, so to do the number of ways in which it chooses to identify itself. Previously, where hunger and fear were the only mechanisms by which it became aware of its own separate existence, it now begins to use its name, its gender, its family, its school, its religion, its nationality, its talents, its desires, its dislikes, its frustrations as means by which to define itself, all of which are inherited, none of which are inherent. Its capacity to lose itself or become absorbed into its environment gradually diminishes as its capacity to lose itself and become absorbed in its own mind gradually increases. Even in moments of distraction or daydreaming, it is reminded by the society that rears it, that there is greater value in concentration and focus. At a certain point, its capacity to become self-aware from time to time begins to take over until it finally becomes pathological. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The empathy it expresses as an adult is less consistent, greatly distorted by its belief systems and for the most part contrived by a need to perpetuate its own self-image. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<strong>Completing the Circle </strong><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
As adults many have experienced the disillusionment that results from the shattering of one's belief systems, yet few use this as an opportunity to embark on a journey of self-inquiry and investigation. The nature of life is such that no illusion can be sustained for long. Every mind-made ideology and institution must eventually collapse no matter how resilient it appears in the moment. This includes political, religious, scientific, social, moral, familial and individual ideology. No matter what you believe is true about yourself, the circumstances of your life will sooner or later bring it into question. The manner in which you choose to respond to this circumstance will determine how your understanding evolves. Most people are unable to let go of their definitions unless forced by circumstances to do so and even then most are likely to trade in one set of definitions for another, because the human mind craves and finds security in its own definitions. To live in a manner in which you use no parameters by which to define yourself is unfathomable to most people. And yet that is how each person was born. It is what comes most naturally to you.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Catalysed by the suffering which is an eventual and unavoidable aspect of any experience that the mind attempts to control, you move from one experience of life to the next growing increasingly disillusioned with the entire process. When you were younger the world seemed far more vibrant and full of possibility. Love, excitement, travel, adventure, family, friendships were the promises that spurred your journey forward. Yet as days turn into years, marriages fall apart or hold together by a thread, work becomes monotonous and stressful, friendships become dry and lacking sincerity, even religion and spirituality become a chore, you begin to question the point of it all, the reason why the whole journey happened in the first place. Far less than the capacity to empathize with another, you hardly have much empathy for yourself, so disconnected have you become from the image you have of yourself in your mind. There is an intense sense of living "someone else's life". That's because you are.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
When you begin to turn the mind's attention back onto itself, you have the opportunity, to witness all the mechanisms that have been operating behind the scenes. As you watch and begin to grow familiar with each of them, you are slowly able to recognize how each mechanism, each belief structure, distorts your experience in some way and creates a separation between yourself and your experience. The process begins with some of the more overarching belief structures like religious ideology, ethnic identity, political affiliations, career ambitions, social relationships etc. With each one you gradually begin to see the ways in which you inherited and adopted it and how it plays itself out in your experience of life and in your relationships with others. One by one, as you reveal each of these beliefs as false and gradually release them from your mind's grasp, you move into the subtler and more fundamental mechanisms that continue to remain in place. These may appear in the form of your own morality, your principles and ethics, your loyalties, your close and cherished relationships. These are more difficult to recognize and trace, yet with a keen enough perception you are able to see how even these most intimate of identities are all mechanisms that you inherited during your upbringing. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
At any stage during this journey of inquiry you may feel that you have endured enough, because inquiry is not a leisurely process. It is disruptive and grossly discomforting to the mind which is accustomed to relying on the security of its own beliefs. And yet, the inquiry is not complete until there is nothing left to inquire. Drilling down into the very depths of your existence you are compelled to question even the most fundamental assumptions you made about yourself - about your identity as a man or woman, as a human, about life and about death. The inquiry process is not a constructive one, it is wholly destructive. Its only purpose is to consume each and every mechanism that you have ever used in order to define yourself. When even the most basic of definitions is found to be baseless, you are left with nothing more than a barely structured thought that "I exist". And yet, even this basic sense creates a seeming separation with your environment. The subjection of this most fundamental thought to the power of your inquiry reveals that even this most basic and primal assumption is no more than an abstraction of the mind. Free of your mind's compulsive need to qualify your experience, you are now able to experience yourself as the totality that you are rather than simply the fragment you represent. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Compassion </strong><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The journey of empathy has effectively come a full circle. Unfettered by your mind and its identifications, you once again experience life in a seamless and spontaneous fashion. Your attention remains naturally resting and absorbed in the moment to moment transitions of your experience. And yet you have not lost the power for abstraction, analysis and imagination. In fact, your ability to use them in a much more focused and positive manner is enhanced. You no longer turn towards your mind to provide you with a sense of self. Your Self is what you know yourself to be in each moment as the total experience of that moment. Any mechanisms you continue to use to separate the experience are simply practical skills in your repertoire, rather than actualities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
You express empathy naturally and unconditionally through no effort on your part, but simply because to express empathy is what feels most natural to you. You are most wholly yourself and that is reason enough. Empathy unobstructed by conditions or limitations is Compassion. To feel compassion is to empathize with all of life without separation, bias or discrimination. It is only when the separation and bias within your own self has subsided that you can perceive from that same perspective. Only then can empathy can flow without restriction. Only then can the mirror reflect without distortion.<o:p></o:p></div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-2295655029677264322013-04-05T15:19:00.000-05:002013-04-05T15:32:57.108-05:00Transcending Conflict<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You cannot resolve conflict; you can only rise above it. Conflict has no resolution. Nor is it meant to. Conflict is an inherent and necessary mechanism by which this Universe evolves and expands. Without conflict, change would be impossible. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Most creatures thrive on conflict. They are compelled towards it and are strengthened by it. If you witness nature at work, conflict is evident everywhere. Trees are in conflict with one another for sun and soil. The grass in your lawn is in constant conflict with the weeds that threaten to overrun them. Animals conflict with one another over territory and food. Even the elements are in perpetual conflict as water erodes rock, as the sun vaporizes the sea, as fire devours forest, as the ocean floods the land, as the ground swallows life.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Conflict is at the very basis of your body's vital functioning. The cells in your body are in conflict with one another for nutrients, neurons are in conflict with one another to transmit information to your brain, your immune system is in conflict with external agents attempting to penetrate your body as we speak. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Even within the mechanics of physics, friction is the conflict by which these mechanics can even exist. Your arm is in conflict with the shopping bag as you carry it, your feet are in conflict with the ground as you move, your car is in conflict with the road as you accelerate, an airplane is in conflict with gravity as it ascends. Conflict is the mechanism by which movement can happen. Without conflict everything ceases to exist.<o:p></o:p><br />
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As a result, any talk about 'resolving' conflict is to misunderstand the purpose that conflict serves. Conflict is not a mistake, never a mistake. You can attempt to resolve the context in which the conflict exists, but it will just assume another context and the process perpetuates itself. For example, you may choose to end the conflict your feet have with the pavement by sitting down, but then you will experience the conflict of gravity preventing you from moving forward. You may choose to sit down instead in a moving train but then you will sense the conflict of the train rocking against the tracks. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Historically as well, human society has evolved from one context of conflict to another: from tribalism to monarchism, feudalism, imperialism, fascism, authoritarianism, communism, socialism, capitalism each with its own flavor of inherent conflict. Where socialism addresses the conflict of sharing of resources it creates the conflict of stunting individual growth, where capitalism addresses the conflict of individual expression it perpetuates the conflict of distribution of resources. Each endeavour to resolve one context of conflict gives rise to another context of conflict. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Just like cutting edge medication eradicates a disease causing virus, the same medication is also responsible for the virus's evolution and ability to mutate into a newer and more resistant strain. The resolution of one conflict creates the context for another. A rebel may succeed in overthrowing an oppressive regime and thus ending that particular flavor of conflict it brought with it, but the new system brings with it a whole host of new challenges and new conflicts.<o:p></o:p><br />
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When you speak about resolving conflict what you are really speaking about then is changing the context in which the conflict is happening. And changing the context is necessary when the conflict has exhausted its purpose. The purpose has only been exhausted when the environment ceases to thrive from the conflict any longer. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The first few billion years of our galaxy were those of great cosmic conflict. This conflict allowed for the creation of a higher order of organization within the solar system. Once this organization was achieved in the form of our sun and the planets, the conflict was no longer necessary. The barbaric cultures of the past once thrived on conflict. Wars, scourges, invasions, conquering and pillaging were the necessary means by which the various cultures of the world made contact and assimilated. Civilization grew and thrived on the blood of the innocent, for centuries. As we entered the 20th century however, the collective consciousness of our species began to realize that physical conflict was no longer a necessary experience for our evolution as a species. Now in the 21st century, the growing distaste for this sort of conflict has rendered war and bloodshed (although it still occurs) more and more irrelevant and collectively unbeneficial. The modern world is far too inter-related and interdependent to resort to physical conflict except as a last resort. Physical conflict has served its purpose in globally connecting our species. Now, the new context of conflict has become a technological and fiscal one. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Even within your own personal life, you will notice the context continuously changes. The conflict you experienced as a child within the playground was dropped for a higher order of conflict that you experienced as an adolescent rebelling against the world which you then traded in for the conflict of being an adult struggling to pay the mortgage. The conflict of being single and lonely gives way to the conflict of being married and in a relationship. The conflict of being a low level career nobody transforms into the pressures of being a high level power player. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As long as you continue to define yourself within the context in which the conflict is happening, you will remain caught within the dynamics of the conflict and will experience the full brunt of it. But the moment you elevate your perception, you will find that although the conflict continues to exist on one level you have the ability to gain a deeper perspective on this conflict and can remain somewhat unaffected by it. <o:p></o:p><br />
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For example, a kindergarten teacher was a child herself once. As two kids scrapping with one another approach her bawling to resolve their differences, she is only able to do so because she is not relating to them from the same level of perception that they are operating from. She is able to see through the drama and yet knows at the same time that this kind of conflict is essential for the children’s evolution. However, she herself would find no benefit in getting into a scrap with another child over which toy to play with. Her perception has transcended that level of conflict a long time ago. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Wisdom can only function from a perspective that has transcended the circumstance. As long as the perception is subject to and dictated by the circumstance, wisdom cannot operate and as a result of which no true resolution to the context of conflict can be found. When you are 19 and madly in love, you do not have the capacity to see all the ways in which you are deluding yourself. It is only when you have experienced enough of that sort of drama in your life and have no more time or energy for it anymore can you witness it from a perspective that has transcended that conflict. Thus when you are a parent and witness your own child experiencing that sort of drama, you may guide them with a little wisdom. And yet any wise parent simultaneously knows, that belittling their child for experiencing that conflict is not productive either. Since the conflict is the necessary catalyst for the child's perception to transcend the circumstance. <o:p></o:p><br />
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If you watch the close-up dynamics of the internal combustion engine of a luxury car, it feels like a tremendously violent experience. A camera lodged within the car's mechanics captures the explosion of fuel into flame, the deafening roar of the motor, the metallic screech of the brakes, the powerful hiss of the pistons, the frenzied movement of the tires, the stench of rubber burning against the asphalt. All this is a tremendously violent conflict happening as you drive and you are aware of it. And yet, from your elevated perception, the ride is the smoothest you have ever experienced. You have accepted that the conflict on the mechanical level is a necessary experience that facilitates the experience of pleasure from the human perspective. It’s all a choice.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Transcending conflict does not make you apathetic towards it, rather it makes you more effective in your ability to address it. No kindergarten child, no matter how enthusiastic, can resolve a kindergarten conflict as effectively as the teacher can. You can only dictate the conflict, when the conflict has lost its ability to dictate you. <o:p></o:p><br />
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If you are experiencing conflict right now, allow the experience to exist. Let go of the urge to resist it, because your resistance is what keeps it in place. Take a step back from your conflict and witness it. See all the ways in which it is necessary, all the ways in which it is not. Recognize that the conflict exists only for two reasons - the first is because you are able to thrive off it, the second is because you are meant to eventually transcend it. You cannot transcend until you have finished benefiting from it, you cannot benefit from it any longer when it’s time to transcend. Your own suffering is your indication of where you fall within that spectrum. When the experience of that conflict becomes so distasteful to you, you will begin to automatically reject it. Just like your body accepts water until its thirst is satiated. If you continue to feed it water it will begin to bloat and will finally vomit it up. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Ultimately, all human experience is an experience of conflict within one context or another. The context is ever changing but the conflict is constant. When you no longer sense the need to define yourself by any of these contexts then your perspective becomes free to transcend the experience itself. You are no longer motivated by human drama, personal or collective, and yet have the ability to perceive it in a whole new light. Even as you continue to be a part of, and to participate in its dynamics, you are not beholden to it. Free of the need to resolve anything, you have the capacity to channel the wisdom of a higher perspective into the conflict. Just like the kindergarten teacher is able guide the resolution of the child's conflict, you are able to more effectively guide a resolution to the human conflict. Rather than with passion, which is an effect of being caught within the drama, you are able to respond with compassion which can only result from having transcended it.<o:p></o:p></div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-49441731047793974352013-04-04T10:40:00.001-05:002013-04-04T10:40:50.650-05:00The Playground of Imagination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Close your eyes. Immerse yourself in the darkness surrounding you. Allow everything to fall away. Forget yourself, who you are, what you are doing. Gradually, fall further and further into this abyss that is everywhere. Let your thoughts become no more than echoes fading into the distance. Let your breath be the only thing guiding you deeper and deeper. Nothing exists. Everything is forgotten. Sink into the depths of this emptiness. Become aware of the silence that grows as you descend. Silence is the sound of emptiness. Allow the silence to draw you in. Allow it to envelope you. Lost in emptiness, enveloped in silence the moment becomes a timeless experience of peace. Sense it. Know it. Become familiar with it. Allow yourself to feel this peace. Now become aware that you are not separate from this peace. The darkness, the emptiness, the silence, the echoes, the descent, the breath and the peace are all one seamless experience. It is all a flux. One transforms into the other, from moment to moment to moment. Now you are the darkness, now you are the fear, now you are the shallow breath, now you are the rapid heartbeat. Now you are the echoes in the mind, now you are the silence that envelopes, now you are the emptiness that surrounds, now you are the peace which remains. Become aware of every incarnation you assume. Watch it be born, watch it live a lifetime, watch it pass away. Rest in this abyss.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Open your eyes. Allow yourself to witness the world around you without comprehending. Witness your mind's impulse to rush into defining it. Like a fond mother gently restrains an overzealous child as they approach the playground - gently, fondly, compassionately restrain your mind from engaging right away. There will be plenty of time for play. First, you must learn to see that a game is all this really is. Remain aware of the silence, aware of the emptiness, aware of the breath as it continues to guide. Even with your eyes open, continue to linger in this perspective just a little bit longer. You are the peace which remains. Without comprehending the world, see the world. What do you see? Without comprehending the world, hear the world. What do you hear? Without comprehending the world, feel the world. What do you feel? Can you see the emptiness all around you, the emptiness within everything? Can hear the silence, the silence within the sounds? Can you feel the peace existing, the peace within the chaos? Just like the mother witnesses the playground drama unfold, with all the camaraderie, intrigue, friendship and betrayal that only children are capable of, with the same undifferentiated perspective of compassion; can you also witness the events of your world - with all the triumph, tragedy, heartbreak and celebration that only we humans are capable of, with the same undifferentiated perspective of compassion?<o:p></o:p><br />
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The mind is eager to play, I know. No need to restrain it any longer. You have arrived. Be gentle but firm with it, not strict. It was born to play. And play it will. Watch it take off the moment you let go of its hand - and suddenly you are once again you - this character that is your mind's creation, its prize possession, its favorite superhero doll. Allow the mind to use its child-like imagination to create new stories and new adventures for your character to embark upon. Witness its inexhaustible creativity at weaving thread after thread, story after story, adventure after adventure into an endless tapestry of a lifetime. Even when the story takes a darker or painful twist, don't worry too much. Children at play will sometimes get hurt. A wise parent is simply a guide, not an authoritarian. Pain is often the result of irresponsible play. Allow your mind to learn the hard way - that drama breeds suffering. The more freedom and autonomy you allow it the more it will learn to play responsibly.<o:p></o:p><br />
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No matter what costume you are being dressed in. No matter what role you are being asked to play. No matter what drama you are being asked to engage in, humor the mind but don't humiliate it. Let it know that you are choosing to play along out of love, not out of necessity. It will love and respect you all the more for it. If you scoff at the naiveté of your own mind, it may learn to respect you out of fear, but it will not love you. It will find a way to rebel. When the time for play is done, the eager mind will always want to remain at the playground a bit longer. It is energetic and enthusiastic and sometimes fails to recognize that the play, for the moment, is done. Gently remind it, that it needs its rest. That tomorrow is another day, another adventure on which you, its prized protagonist, will embark. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As it slowly begins to rest, allow it to ease into your embrace. It may recount many of the adventures of the day: About the fantastical things it did and the not so great things that made it afraid. Give it your unconditional ear; listen to its every word as if it were the last. Trusting that it is safe in your embrace, allow it to gradually drift into silence. Slowly, surely let its rhythms become a more gentle flow. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Now, the mind is quiet again. Turn your attention inward. Close your eyes. Immerse yourself, once again into the darkness surrounding you. Allow everything to simply fall away. Forget yourself. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-42184492705667424822013-04-03T14:09:00.000-05:002013-04-03T14:09:08.430-05:00A Pilgrimage to the Past<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am sitting in the front passenger seat, as the car honks and swerves its way through the dusty and chaotic Calcutta streets. Traffic, I am told, is usually much worse<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. Its Good Friday today, a national holiday. The streets are nearly empty by Calcutta’s standards.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Empty, isn’t the first word that comes to my mind, while witnessing the bustle outside. It just goes to show how long I’ve been away…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The last time I was in this city was 20 years ago. Back then, Calcutta was the closest thing to what I could call home. Its where my fondest memories of childhood were made. It’s the last place I remember being innocent. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The circumstances that led to me to leave Calcutta were ones that would, in many ways, shape my quest for self-discovery over the next 20 years. Up until that time, I had had no reason to question the imperfection of the world. My life had been an effortless continuum of experience, filled with love and adventure. I had lived and laughed without any doubt: about myself, about people and about life. Yet, the fragility of one’s own perception must eventually cause it to shatter. It is one of those unavoidable inevitabilities of life…<br /><br />The chauffer exhibits a zen-like focus as he steers the car within inches of vehicles, humans and livestock. Blinking, in this kind of white knuckle traffic, is a luxury few drivers can afford. Cyclists, mini-buses, taxis, scooters, pedestrians, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rickshaw</i>-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wallas</i> and bullock carts, all compete for every inch of road available. In this city you don’t just move forward, you earn your way forward.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We are on our way to St. James’s: the all-boys school I attended as a child. Memories of weekly mass at the campus church, Monday morning inspection, buying treats at the tuck shop during lunch, goofing around with friends during class and getting regularly caned for forgetting to do my homework, are as alive in my mind today as if they had happened only yesterday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The car pulls up to the front gates of the school. They are closed. I tell the chauffer that there is a second entrance further up the road, through the cemetery, that is usually kept open. 20 years later, my mind is able to recall this little detail without effort. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The entrance through the cemetery is open as I predicted. I breeze by the perplexed watchman, with an air of authority that makes it appear as if I actually have some business being there. I have learnt that the only way to move forward in this city is by capitalizing on the hesitation of others. I know that if I falter even for a moment, he will ask me why I am there at which point any heart-warming story of revisiting my childhood would be met with an unsympathetic smirk followed by a request to abandon the premises. So instead, I stride forward with a stern sense of urgency which communicates to him that he had better have a darn good reason to waste my time. The ploy works and I leave him behind looking a little confused. From the corner of my eye I notice him follow me for a few steps before he changes his mind and decides to resume his post instead…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Within the grounds now, I find myself immersed in an infinite sequence of déjà vu. Returning here all these years later is surreal. The school grounds are quiet and eerily empty. So is my mind. I can hear my own breathing as I take one step at a time into my past. The presence surrounding me is palpable. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The air has a sacred quality - as if I have entered some ancient and holy ground. I feel a deep sense of reverence wash over me. Only now am I aware of why I had to come here. I have come to pay homage to myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This journey of the last twenty years has really been a pilgrimage. It began the moment I doubted my own existence and subsequently embarked on a quest to justify its purpose. That journey took me to places in the world I craved to experience, places in my mind I didn’t know existed and places in my heart I was too afraid to acknowledge. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">No pilgrimage is complete until the pilgrim returns home. It is always the journey forward, to meet our gods that we consider the most virtuous and filled with promise. But little mention is ever made of the journey home, which is often less glorious because it seems to serve no great purpose. And yet, the gods we find along the way are only figments of our minds, which keep us searching endlessly onwards. The truly divine is what you find awaits you when your path brings you back to where it first began.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As I walk through the school grounds as if in a trance I am able to see how much everything seems to change. And how little it really changes. The day I left this city, I had little idea that I would only return when my pilgrimage was complete. Standing in the great courtyard of the St. James’s school for boys, it becomes clear to me that I never really left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-77970661105275455012013-03-21T10:09:00.000-05:002013-03-21T10:09:01.280-05:00The Tyranny of the Mind<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">*The post below is my response to a question someone had about dealing with experiences of depression and PTSD. This person has already shown great insight in recognizing that there is far greater wisdom and benefit in 'allowing' the experience rather than suppressing or fighting it. But in attempting to allow the experience they feel trapped in an apparent dichotomy of how to deliberately allow an experience to happen. After all how does one control or contrive spontaneity? I have posted my response for any of my readers who may have experienced this dilemma or simply with the tyranny they have felt from their own minds, when immersed in depression or anxiety.*<br /><br />Hi _, <br /><br />This pointer of <i>"allowing"</i> can be a tricky one because you can misinterpret it as another technique to try and control your experience. It is important to recognize that <i>allowing</i> is not the opposite of repressing or identifying. It is really an attitude of surrendering control. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Try this simple exercise - become aware of the rhythm of your breathing. Watch it closely. You will notice that as soon as you become aware of your breath, its rhythm changes. Suddenly, it goes from a nice, natural rhythm to a sort of controlled artificial rhythm. No matter how natural you try to make it, as long as you are trying to control the experience of your breathing, it will seem unnatural and contrived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The process of allowing is similar to breathing. It happens naturally. It doesn't need your active involvement in order for it to happen. But if you try and make it into some sort of objective, then it can become a mechanical and artificial process too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Your Mind can never know how to allow. It is not built for that purpose. Its job is to identify or suppress, those are its functions. Just as it makes no sense to use a computer to vacuum a carpet, the Mind<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is not equipped to allow. At best it can do a sort of pseudo-allowing, kind of like you trying to force your breath to be as natural as possible. This is where a lot of people can get stuck, but it is exhausting and ultimately unfruitful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Realize this. Allowing is not something you can 'do', because allowing is already happening. Right now you are experiencing deep depression. Right now you are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. Ask yourself this question - how are you experiencing these? How could these experiences even be possible if it wasn't already being allowed?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">What the pointer of 'allowing' is really pointing to is not some new technique for your mind to gain dominion over life, but rather the very intelligence of Life itself, that lies at the heart of every experience. It is pointing to that dimension of your Consciousness that exists even prior to your Mind - prior to the your thoughts, emotions or any other mental events. That Consciousness is the foundation of your whole experience. And it here that the allowing happens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">While depression can feel debilitating, it is also a great opportunity to become aware of this deeper dimension within yourself. Depression and anxiety are tremendous tools for self-discovery, because they temporarily destabilize the mind. And it is in that window of opportunity, when your mind is still scrambling to regain its bearings, that the truth of your being can become even more apparent than ever before. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This is your own inner revolution against the tyranny of the Mind. The Mind has become an institution - like say a government - built on certain beliefs, principles and motivations. And like most government institutions it thrives on power and control. Yet this power and control is only apparent it is not real. The power of any government, no matter how oppressive, depends on the people that support it or fear it. The moment the people stop feeding it, the entire structure collapses like a house of cards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Instead, of trying to build a government that promises freedom to its citizens (this exactly what is happening when the Mind tries to make 'allowing' a practice), recognize that freedom is already inherent within each and every person's experience. Freedom is already the case, for you. It always has been. Just like you don't need any government to tell you that you are free, you don't need your Mind's permission to tell you that you are free.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Go to the source of where the true power lies. Turn to the Consciousness without which the Mind could not even operate. It is a simple state of awareness. It is silent and watchful. You are already very familiar with it. So familiar perhaps, that you do not even realize it. It is your natural state before even a thought arises, before any sense of who you are arises.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Take some time to become present. Just to simply watch your experience as it happens, without trying to get involved, without doing anything, without any agendas. Whether you are sipping a cup of tea, or brushing your teeth, or suffering some obsessive thought, or lying in a deep depressive funk. Whatever the experience is, be quietly aware of it. In doing so, you will find that your perspective has subtly shifted, from being within the Mind, to being the "Witness of your Mind". This witness position has no opinion, no judgment, no involvement. It is simply aware. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span>Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-18297472728054138222013-03-14T14:33:00.001-05:002013-03-14T14:33:13.690-05:00The Personality DisguiseYour personality is a scrapbook. It is an album of collective identities, arranged in a unique way which sets it apart from another's. However, apart from the unique orientation of these identities, very little else is unique about you. This may be a statement that causes some people chagrin. In today's day and age we prefer to think of ourselves as individuals, each definitively unique and markedly different than the other. We like to celebrate ourselves for that very uniqueness and we like to celebrate it in others. As a society we exalt originality and base the value of a person on their ability to "stand out" in a crowd. Effectively, the more unique you are the more you are likely to be noticed among the masses. However, this kind of uniqueness is not synonymous with the word 'original'. In fact, contrary to what you have been led to believe, very little of your personality and who you think you are is original at all. Instead, every aspect of you is an imitation, a version of something you have seen, heard, experienced or been influenced by. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Starting with your physical appearance - your genetics are derived from those before you. You "look like" different parts of other people. Your emotional being is likewise also a derivative of your genetic inheritance as well as circumstantial/cultural conditioning. As a child you witnessed the emotional expressions of those around you and learned to emote accordingly. You realized that certain emotions were considered to be more beneficial than others and adapted your behaviour to try and maximize those that were considered acceptable and learned to minimize those that weren't. A baby cries and laughs freely as it pleases because it has yet to learn the rules of emoting. Today most adults are far less likely to burst into tears on a crowded bus than to burst into laughter. Your ability to feel emotion is something entirely personal to you; however how you "think you should feel emotion" and how you actually express emotion are both a function of your conditioning. <o:p></o:p><br />
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But perhaps, the level at which we most identify with our sense of individuality is in our thoughts. And it is at this level that we are paradoxically the most unoriginal. The vast majority of thoughts that you have on a daily basis are repetitive and imitative. Your opinions are rarely ever your own. Even if your opinion is something that stands in stark contrast to popular belief or consensus, even if it is something completely radical and unheard of, it is not something you have invented. Opinions are never invented. They are simply derived. You may have a particularly creative way of rearranging the words in a sentence, or rearranging a the sequence of thoughts in an idea and in that sense may present something that seems more fresh and original than what others have heard before. But here as well, the uniqueness of your expression lies in the creative ways you are able to redress the old. At the end of the day, we are all just regurgitating. No one ever creates anything new. But this isn't meant to be a negative statement but rather if read carefully and seen clearly into can offer great hope and optimism for our entire species. <o:p></o:p><br />
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We live in a Universe where nothing is ever created or destroyed. Just as the laws of physics state that neither matter nor energy can ever be created nor destroyed, so too within the realm of Conscious expression, including the emotional and the mental, nothing can ever be created or destroyed. No idea can ever be destroyed no matter how evil or destructive. No ideology can ever be suppressed forever. That is one of the most beautiful things about Conscious experience. There is no limit on what you can think. Similarly, no idea can ever be created. It can only be derived. Every idea that ever existed was based on an idea before it. Language itself arose from the need to express emotion and sensation in a more effective manner. Words themselves, were derived from the previously unintelligible grunts of our primitive ancestors. So regardless of which famous person said what in history, whether it was Socrates, Einstein, Marx or Thoreau - each one of their insights and realizations was based on a history of hundreds and thousands of years of insights and realizations before them. Similarly, their insights set the stage for the thousands of years of insights that came and are yet to come after them. It is all so intricately and beautifully connected that to try and claim some individual propriety over a thought is absolutely absurd. When you talk about intellectual property, what you are effectively claiming is ownership of a thought process or an idea as if you actually created it. But that is just as absurd as claiming ownership of land as if we have some control or dominion over the Earth. That we act in such a manner is more the result of our social contracts with one another rather than any absolute reality. In reality, you cannot own anything because truthfully none of it belongs to you. You did not create it, neither your body, nor your emotion nor your intelligence. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The very fact that we come in with nothing and leave with nothing is an indication that none of it really belongs to us. It’s kind of like a playpen at a daycare where you can come in and play with the toys, and within the game you can claim "temporary ownership" of whatever you lay your hands on, but when it’s time to go home you don't get to take any of it with you. You were only permitted to borrow it for a while. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Similarly, your personality, even your name, is simply a temporary alias, just a borrowed identity. This name that means so much to you and is your unique identifier was fished out of a rolodex of a million baby names that your parents studied over. Your personality, the words you use, the inflection in your voice, your accent, your beliefs, your ideas about yourself and others, your value systems, your morality - are all the toys in the playpen that you can claim for a while as long as you are willing to play nice. When it’s time to go home however, you don't even get to take that name with you. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This can be an immensely liberating revelation if seen with the right perspective. The very fact that you are not bound to your name, your personality, even your emotions and your body is something that has the potential to radically shift your whole perspective of life. No longer can you claim to be the victim of your circumstances, of other people's intentions, even of your own thoughts and emotions. When you realize that none of it really belongs to you, but rather you have only borrowed it for a while, just that recognition can be extremely freeing. This is particularly evident in patients who are suffering from a debilitating illness or severe pain. As long as the illness, disease or pain is seen as something that is "yours" that "you own", that defines you, it can seem insurmountable and overwhelming. But the moment it is seen instead as some borrowed experience that must be experienced for a while, then that part of you that is most essentially you, that most intimate essence, can never be touched.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Prisoners on death row have experienced this sort of disassociation from their circumstances and have reported feelings of deep peace, joy and gratitude which seem to completely contradict their circumstances. The fact of the matter is that peace is not the result of the absence of war, strife, suffering and heartache - but ironically exists in spite of them and sometimes especially within them. <o:p></o:p><br />
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But the realization of the unoriginality of this person that you think you are is vital for liberation, because it is this "person" that you are essentially becoming liberated from. And by "the person" I mean all of it: the ideas, the emotions, the appearance, the desires, the passions, the pains, and the sufferings - all of it. When you see that it is all just a costume that you don in order to participate in this great drama of life - then you have the freedom to set aside that costume if and when you choose.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This doesn't mean the costume is a shackle that needs to be discarded and done away with. In fact, this notion has been one of the greatest traps within the whole history of man's quest for spiritual realization. It has been a trait of every religion and every discipline - this denial of the flesh, of the human, in an attempt to realize the divine. And yet that very desire to do away with the costume is a shackles in itself, it is what makes it a bondage. But when you can see that the costume serves a purpose, that it is your greatest disguise and a thing of sheer genius, one that allows you to participate and express your true self at will, then it is no longer a shackle. To be truly liberated is to be able to wear and remove your costume at will. <o:p></o:p><br />
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When you can perceive this whole person that you are: your name, your physique, your drives and passions, your thoughts and beliefs as all different parts of a fabric that has been painstakingly crafted for your own enjoyment and expression then you may begin to perceive the whole experience of your life with some levity. Because a great production is all this is and is all it was ever meant to be.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-43694024343488689002013-03-13T10:25:00.003-05:002013-03-13T10:38:42.261-05:00The Journey of a LifetimeImagine you are sitting in a train, gazing out the window. This train is powering on through the vast and scenic countryside. Farm after farm passes you by; you catch a glimpse here and there of farmers hard at work in their fields. Yet, they vanish from your sight no sooner than your curiosity is aroused. The mountains in the distance stay with you for a while longer. Massive and majestic, they seem like permanent fixtures in this world of your perception. They seem to move with you. They seem reliable companions. You doze off for a while, not knowing how long. And when you wake, the mountains are gone. Your majestic companions who seemed so steadfast and reliable have vanished without a trace, like wisps of cloud over the horizon. In their place, an expanse of yellow plains as far as the eye can see, and the river that has been by your side from the moment you began your journey. This river, she will never forsake you. She has always been there, since the very beginning. And yet, an hour comes when you see her branch away, ever so slightly at first. Then further, and further. Now she is no longer parallel to your path but moves away at an angle, farther and farther. You strain to trace her with your eyes, but she fades mercilessly out of existence. Now, she too has gone. You are left with an unfamiliar terrain. Fields appear and fields pass, forests appear and forests pass. Mountains again, newer and more majestic, pass away as effortlessly as if they were a breeze. A new river appears and stays with you for a while. Waterfalls, villages, people, livestock, cities, canyons, plains and tunnels - all pass before your eyes. Each one is real only in this moment, but in the next merely a figment of your imagination.<o:p></o:p><br />
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But the whole world already exists in one moment. It is only you who are passing through it. You cannot help it. You are only a passenger on this train. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Time is the landscape through which you are traveling. It may seem, from your vantage point, that it is Time that is passing and you who are stationary. But just like the passenger on the train, you are only a passenger moving through the landscapes of time. Your body is the carriage in which you are sitting, your mind the train's engine propelling you through time. Moment after moment passes you by, you catch a glimpse here and there of humor or goodwill, but no sooner is your curiosity aroused that it vanishes from your sight. Your beliefs and your ambition loom majestically in your vision like permanent fixtures in your perception. They move with you, like reliable companions. But you awake one day to find they are gone, without a trace like wisps of cloud over the horizon. In their place, a vast empty landscape of uncertainty. At least, love will never forsake you: Love, that has been there since the moment you began your journey. But then a moment comes where it begins to branch away, ever so slightly at first and then further and further, it fades mercilessly out of your existence. You are all alone now and steeped in uncertainty. Yet the movement forward continues unceasing. Humor and goodwill appear and recede, joys and sorrows appear and pass. New beliefs and ambitions, newer and more majestic, pass away as effortlessly as if they were a breeze. New love appears and stays with you a while. Good fortune, camaraderie, regret, unhappiness, success, abundance, anger and insecurity - all pass before your eyes. Each one is real only in this moment, but in the next only a figment of your imagination.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Everything passes. Nothing remains. Only memory, but even that passes. Solidity is the appearance you have chosen to accept as your reality. But reality has no real solidity. It is the stuff of dreams, smoke and mirrors. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As you watch time flowing past you, become aware of yourself flowing through Time. Regardless, of what passes, has already passed or is about to pass; regardless, of the love, joy, sorrow, regret, successes and failures that appear, disappear and reappear relentlessly; become aware of the Eye of Perception that is witnessing it all happen. It is your Eye. Even as the world changes, it does not change. Even as the moments pass, it does not pass. Even as your body and mind age, it does not age.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is the world in which nothing remains, where everything appears and disappears relentlessly. Yet, the Eye of Perception, has always been present. It never appeared and can never disappear, it has no beginning nor an end. Because, it does not belong to this world. It is what has created it. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As with everything else, you too will pass one day. Your journey from childhood to adulthood and finally old age will be complete. The vehicle of your body will no longer be of service, the engine of your mind, decommissioned. An entire lifetime of love, ambition, joy, sorrow, success, failure, abundance and regret will be nothing more than a memory, the stuff of legend, the topic of a warm dinner conversation. <o:p></o:p><br />
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But the Eye of Perception, its journey complete, will disembark from the vehicle having arrived at its destination at last. With a deep breath and a single stride, it will return once again to that infinity of existence from where it came: that sea of possibility where all realities can simultaneously coexist; where every life it has lived is nothing more than a cherished dream. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This is the journey of a lifetime. And You are more than what meets the Eye.<o:p></o:p>Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-71552679421390872662013-03-08T12:18:00.002-05:002013-03-08T12:18:32.441-05:00The Power of the Feminine PrincipleThe gender divide is the oldest and arguably most prominent tool of discrimination that we have employed as a species to define who we are as people, to structure our societies and the values on which we base our lives. We have culturally entrained our minds to zero in on the differences that exist between the two sexes while losing sight of what the two have in common. Through religion, culture, tradition, art, social norm, behaviour, attitude and belief we have, over millennia, learned to magnify that fine line of separation into a solid, insurmountable wall of distinction. Even in our modern day societies, in which we proudly stand for each other’s rights and celebrate these differences, our attitudes ironically only serve to reinforce that wall of separation. After all, just because you have learned to become more friendly and accepting of your neighbor doesn't change the fact that a fence still exists between your land and theirs. Rather than simply celebrating our differences and leaving it at that, its time to take a closer look at the reality behind some of these perceived differences and shift our attention instead to what it is that makes us the same.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The classical view in science was that the female form was the default template during the stage of fetal formation. And it was thought that with the introduction of certain genes further development of the male sex organs as well as the hormone testosterone is what led to the development of the male form. This view was very much in keeping with traditional and cultural views of males being "so much more" than the female. As we developed as a species through competition and conquest, through invasion and violence, through dominance and subjugation, through aggression and brute force, it became increasingly evident that the male form was more useful in these regards than that of the female. Therefore, the value of the male form over the female became simply a function of power and use. <br /><br />This re-iteration of the ideal that the male is bigger, better, faster, stronger, more useful, more enduring, more intellectual, more innovative is something that continues to operate within our collective psyches even today. I do not refer simply to cultures that have yet to embrace women's rights, I am referring to our own culture here in the West. Even today, we value the person who has a greater ambition and competitiveness, is more aggressive, more dominant, more powerful physically, economically and socially, less yielding and more assertive. In other words, we value the person who is more "masculine". Except, now we have brought ourselves around to accepting that the women in our society can live up to these virtues just as well as the men can. And this is the ultimate double-standard: one that accepts equality of the sexes on the condition that we continue to uphold the <em>masculine principle</em> as the highest virtue in our society. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This is evident in our social attitudes. For example, it is acceptable, fashionable and even admirable for a heterosexual woman to dress like a man, whereas it is unacceptable for a heterosexual man to dress like a woman. Women who work in traditionally male professions are celebrated, while men who work in traditionally female professions are far less respected. A woman who chooses a career life over the home is held in higher regard than the man who chooses to stay at home and parent over pursuing a career. In our efforts to establish a gender equality, what we have really established is a society in which women are celebrated for their abilty to be more "male" in their outlooks, their desires and their attitudes.<o:p></o:p><br />
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But let's take a look at these apparent "differences" between the two sexes. The classical view in science is now being replaced with more progressive findings in modern genetics which reveal that the female form <em>is not</em> the basic template of the fetus. Instead, during fetal development there is a steady interaction between pro-male, anti-male, pro-female and anti-female genes. This flux of interactions keeps the balance delicately shifting from one side to the other in a genetic ballet that is so subtle that it could really go either way. At the end of it all, a single gene can make the difference, creating just enough of a skew to create the male or female form. The difference is so subtle and so trivial, that it makes you wonder what all the hoopla is really about.<o:p></o:p><br />
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There is no such thing as a pure male or female. We all contain within us genes and hormones that exhibit both characteristics. The male and female distinction then is not some black and white boundary line but rather a skew that places each one of us somewhere in the spectrum of greys. Our physicality ends up being the defining line on how we ultimately end up identifying. However, this desire to fix onto a single position within that spectrum and hold onto it for dear life is what ultimately stalls our ability to evolve and progress as both individuals and as a society. Your true identity is not some fixed point on this spectrum called "very male" or "very female" or "slightly male" or "slightly female". Your true identity lies in your ability to span the entire spectrum because that is the potential that lies within you. Your expression may ultimately be whatever you choose it to be, but your perspective need not be restricted.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The feminine principle is a powerful principle and lies at the very heart of creation itself. It is the principle of intuition rather than intellect, of harmony rather than aggression, of flexibility rather than rigidity, of collaboration rather than competition, of inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness, of compassion rather than ambition, of aesthetic rather than function, of yielding rather than controlling. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Both the masculine and feminine principles operate within each of you, regardless of your physical gender. You are not as male or female as you think you are. These two principles are the two symbiotic movements of Life that balance each other and rely on each other to operate, just like your in-breath and out-breath. Every day, you are masculine in one moment and feminine in the next. At times you are demanding and at others yielding, at times rigid and at others flexible. You can be compassionate and yet self-motivated, you can be motivated by function but then appreciative of aesthetics. You have the ability to display power but also demonstrate grace, you can be competitive but sometimes collaborative. It is in discovering the play of the two principles within yourself and in nature that you can truly come to an appreciation of the value each holds.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Yes, your body is physically only male or female. But as we our discovering, even that is not something unchangeable. But what are you besides just your body? What are you aside from your genitals? How much of your identity do you derive from them? What is your heart and your spirit? Does it have a gender identity?<br /><br />The cultures in the East have long valued the presence of both these principles. In martial arts, it is the art of yielding to the aggression of your opponent that allows you to turn their aggression against them. The philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism all celebrate the feminine principle as one of the highest virtues. It is the foundational principle, one that bases the birth of intelligence in the female principle of Intuition before it is translated to the male principle of the Intellect. It perceives the Unity beneath the separation, the harmony beneath the turmoil. <o:p></o:p><br />
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To re-connect with the feminine principle is to reconnect with the core of our spirit. For a long time now we have, as a species, been lost in our minds and our material ambitions and have gradually alienated ourselves from one another and from the very Earth that provides us sustenance. There is a reason why we call her Mother Earth, why we refer to it as Mother Nature. It is the movement of compassion and abundance for all creation regardless of distinction. There is a reason why some of the most oppressive regimes in the world were those most strongly based in the masculine principle. It is the principle that seeks to control, separate and subjugate.<o:p></o:p><br />
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What is necessary in the end is a balanced expression of the two: in which the masculine feeds the feminine and the feminine nourishes the masculine. Bruce Lee is his famous televised interview referred to it as the Art of bringing together Spontaneity and Control in a single unified expression, one that formed the basis of his martial art and life's work. It is the only purpose that we are here for. <o:p></o:p><br />
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We each have an opportunity, man and woman alike, to rediscover the value of the feminine principle that lies within all of us. It is a latent power with immense potential. Through rediscovering this principle we may begin to shift the masculine skew in our minds (that we are all equally responsible for, men and women) back towards a more harmonic and balanced perspective of the two, both internally within ourselves and externally in our society. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Recognize that it is not "man" and "woman" that defines who you are, but rather that indivisible human spirit which encompasses the two, that is the essence of your true identity. <o:p></o:p>Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-18043159636186273332013-03-07T11:31:00.000-05:002013-03-07T11:31:02.536-05:00Dealing with Obsessive Thoughts<em>This was a response I wrote to a query about obsessive negative thought patterns, that I felt would be worth sharing with a lot of people out there who have experienced something similar:<o:p></o:p></em><br />
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There is nothing wrong with obsessive thinking. Rather obsessive thoughts are the mind’s way of bringing to your attention that there is some energy suppression that has reached a pressurized state within your psyche and is demanding release. The body uses the same mechanism in the form of pain, to bring to your attention that there is a part of your body that may be in need of healing. From this perspective, neither physical pain, nor psychological suffering is something terrible that needs to be gotten rid of. Rather they are necessary mechanisms that allow you to be aware of what needs your attention. This is the first step, to accepting the obsessiveness of your thoughts.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The second is to recognize that your thoughts have very little to do with reality. Your thoughts are merely signposts that point your attention. The more obsessive the thought the more an indication that your compassionate attention, not fearful rejection, is what is necessary. Allow the thoughts to guide you to a deeper place within yourself that you normally would not have a chance to be aware of.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Become aware of those moments in which you are not obsessing about that thought. Even if they are few and far between, be aware of them. Moments of distraction when you are preoccupied in cooking or watching a TV show or in a joke someone is telling you. In that moment, if you are aware enough you will notice how that negative self-image you have of yourself simply drops away. Gradually, you will see the connection between your thoughts and self-image. You will see how you literally become this negative version of yourself the moment the thought arises. This is just a means of realizing that this image you have of yourself is not real – because it depends on your thinking to create it.<o:p></o:p><br />
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However, even this recognition will not arrest the momentum of the obsessive thought. The ultimate purpose of this, as I mentioned, is healing. Just like physical pain will continue to draw your attention to a wound in your body that needs your tender attention and care, the momentum of thinking is fueled by psychological pain which is similarly drawing your attention to something that needs healing. That healing can only happen through release of that energy. That release can only happen if you allow it to.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Allowing is not about trying to control your experience. It is not about trying to avoid your obsessive thoughts, nor is it about identifying with them. One is like the brake pedal of the car, the other is like the accelerator. Hitting the brake may momentarily pause the momentum, but as long as there is still fuel the car keeps running. Take your feet off both pedals and allow the fuel to naturally spend itself. These obsessive thoughts will come to a natural conclusion when you stop obsessing about how obsessive they are. Do you see the connection? Do you see how your fear or denial both serve to equally fuel the fire? <o:p></o:p><br />
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Be patient and compassionate with your mind, especially with its obsessions. It is all a part of a larger mechanism whose only purpose is to bring you to a more whole and complete version of yourself.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-15210755754205171402013-03-06T12:52:00.001-05:002013-03-06T13:04:15.916-05:00Conscious Density: The Real "Law of Attraction" (Part 2)(Continued from Part 1: <a href="http://theexistentialfunkhole.blogspot.ca/2013/02/conscious-resonance-real-law-of.html" target="_blank">Conscious Resonance: The Real "Law of Attraction")<o:p></o:p></a><br />
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You are all familiar how gravitation works. It is the universal principle of attraction within our cosmos. But not as many are aware just how the mechanics of gravitation work. Is it just some mysterious force that large objects exert on each other? Why is the Earth attracted to the Sun and the moon to the Earth and so on? The answer to this question lies in the Space between them.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Consider a soft King-size mattress with a perfectly even surface. If you were to place a ping pong ball somewhere on this mattress it would make a minor depression in the mattress but you will hardly notice it. Place a basketball somewhere in the vicinity and it makes a visible depression in the mattress, sufficient enough to cause the ping pong ball to roll towards it. Now place a 15lb bowling ball on the mattress and the depression is even more severe. The mattress appears to sink a good few inches under the bowling ball. The basketball and the ping pong ball are immediately affected and being to roll (gravitate) towards the bowling ball.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is, in fact, how gravitation works. Space-time as we know it is not an empty nothing but is more like a stretched fabric on which all the objects in the Universe are placed. Our Universe is nothing more than a giant trampoline sheet with objects and clusters of different mass and density rolling around on the trampoline sheet, causing other objects to gravitate in one single unending domino effect. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Principle of Energetic Gravitation</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The Law of Attraction works according to the same principles as the law of gravitation. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The Law of Attraction is really the Law of Gravitation seen from the perspective of Energetic Resonance. What Gravity is within Material reality, Attraction is within Consciousness. In fact, rather than using the phrase 'Law of Attraction' I prefer to refer to it as the principle of Energetic Gravitation. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Just as space-time is the fabric of the Physical Universe upon which the dynamics of material reality play out, Consciousness is the fabric of the Energetic Universe upon which the symphony of Energies takes place. In this Energetic Universe, each Conscious Mind is the equivalent of a planetary body in the Physical Universe. While simpler minds like that of bacteria may represent smaller planetary bodies like asteroids with relatively minor gravitational effects, the mind of a cat for example might represent a much heavier and more complex body like that of a planet. These comparisons are not meant to be taken literally but only give a sense of relative scales. What mass is within the Physical reality, Conscious Density is within Consciousness. The greater the mass of a body, the more it bends space-time and creates a gravitational pull. Similarly, the greater the Conscious Density of a Mind, the more it bends Consciousness and creates an Energetic-gravitational pull.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The density of a Conscious Mind is a function of the range of frequencies within the Conscious Spectrum it is able to access. Recall the analogy of the musical scales that I used in Part 1. The basic sub-spectrum or scale, which is accessible to most conscious organisms, is the Physical sub-spectrum. The physical sub-spectrum is the lowest scale whose notes represent the various sub-conscious instinctual drives all living beings share - the desires to procreate, to survive, to preserve, to nurture and to evolve. You can witness these dynamics in effect even in the most basic organisms. A mosquito's desire to survive is no different from your own. Within the spectrum of physical drives, all beings are remarkably alike and express themselves quite similarly. However, what sets a dog apart from a mosquito is that the dog, in addition to having physical drives, is able to experience a range of notes within the next sub-spectrum which is the Emotional scale. A dog has the capacity to feel anger, sadness, joy, envy, hatred and loneliness not very differently from a human. A dog's Mind is thus able to access a greater range within the Conscious Spectrum and as a result has a greater Conscious Density than the mosquito. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The human Mind on the other hand is able to access yet another sub-spectrum within consciousness which is the Mental scale. Just like the dog, the human can feel the emotion of anger, but unlike the dog it also has the capacity to create an abstract thought model based on that anger. What that allows the human to do is to manifest that emotion at will simply by conjuring a thought that mirrors the circumstances that trigger the emotion. Whereas a dog can only feel anger if a real life momentary circumstance, such as a menacing postman, appears before it, the human can feel anger simply by conjuring the image of a threat without there being a threat physically present. As a result, the dog's emotion comes and goes with the postman, whereas your own emotion lingers as long as you choose.<o:p></o:p><br />
As a result your human mind has an even greater Conscious Density and the Energetic-gravitation you create within Consciousness is much more profound.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Elemental Energies</strong> <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Now, that we have spoken about the Physical, Emotional and Mental sub-spectrums of Consciousness, it is necessary to understand what each note within each of these three scales represents and how they are different from one another. Every note has a different frequency, a different resonance. So let's for example consider the notes do-re-me-fa-so-la-te. Each note has a distinct vibration, a distinct resonance frequency. Within each scale the 'do' note has the lowest frequency, the most dense vibration, whereas the 'te' note has the highest frequency and the least dense vibration. Now this do-re-me-fa-so-la-te progression of notes exists within each sub-spectrum of Consciousness in exactly that order.<o:p></o:p><br />
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A 'do' note in the Physical sub-spectrum may denote the instinct for survival which becomes especially activated in the face of a threat. The survival instinct operates even in a bacterium which has a very limited capacity to feel emotion. That same 'do' note will be experienced in the Emotional sub-spectrum as the emotion of fear. And finally, the 'do' note struck within the Mental sub-spectrum may trigger some negative thought of doom or gloom. Now while it is possible to strike the same 'do' note on all three scales at the same time (much as you would on a piano) it is not necessary that they are always linked. For example, you can experience the 'do' note as both a mental thought and an emotional fear but you may not experience yourself moving into survival mode physically. Or you could have a random negative thought of doom which really just passes by without triggering much of an emotion. Or you could feel a random attack of fear for no apparent reason while thinking about something completely unrelated. The 'do' keys are not necessarily related yet they resonate with the same tone.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Similarly, at the higher end of the scale, the 'so' key may denote the instinct to procreate in the Physical sub-spectrum. The same 'so' note may be experienced as the emotion of love in the Emotional sub-spectrum and thoughts of Well-being in the Mental sub-spectrum. Again it is not necessary, that all three get triggered at once. For example, you are able to feel the Emotional 'so' note of love for your parents without triggering the Physical 'so' note which is the basic sexual drive. Yet, you may trigger both for your spouse but your relationship may not trigger thoughts of contentment and well-being on the Mental spectrum. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The range of notes, or Elemental Energies, is of course far greater in Consciousness than just the six mentioned in my analogy. What this musical scale provides is a simplified image representing the basic framework of Energies within Consciousness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Conscious Density of the Human Mind</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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Each human mind is identical in its basic potential to access the Conscious Spectrum, just like every Piano has the same number of keys. However, the Conscious Density of each mind differs based on what range of the spectrum that individual mind actively accesses. A piano on which only a small percentage of notes are struck produces a far more simplistic music than one on which a much larger range of notes are used. Similarly, a Mind which accesses only a limited number of keys may be said to have a lower Conscious Density than that of a Mind that can use a broader range.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Take an infant for example. A human infant is only able to access notes within the physical sub-spectrum, a handful of notes within the emotional sub-spectrum and almost nothing within the mental sub-spectrum at first. A human newborn seems just as helpless as a fawn. In fact, the fawn may even display a higher level of intelligence initially than a human baby, as it is able to walk and survive far quicker than the human child. We may go even as far as to say, that at that stage the Conscious Density of a fawn is higher than that of the human infant. However, the reality is that the human infant represents the potential of a much higher Density, just as a Grand Piano represents the potential of a wider range of notes than say a prehistoric flute. As the baby grows, it rapidly begins to access the notes within the Emotional Spectrum. By early childhood, most children are as capable emotionally as are adults. Yet, the development on the mental spectrum takes a bit longer as the child's capacity to abstract his/her reality begins to take shape. <o:p></o:p><br />
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There is a whole range of Conscious-energy capacities within the human race. The average human individual has potential access to the entire range of all three sub-spectrums but perhaps accesses only a small percentage. Within that percentage that we usually access, the range sub-spectrum we are able to access the most is the physical scale, the next is the emotional scale and the lowest access is the intellectual scale. Then there are individuals who fall in variation to the norm. There are those whose mental capacities remain relatively child-like even though they have fully developed emotional capacities. There are those who may display high mental capacities yet their emotional range is very limited (this can lead to psychopathic tendencies if they are only motivated by Physical drives and lack emotional ability to connect to others). There may even in the rare case be people who do not have the ability to connect to the basic desires to survive, to eat or to procreate but regularly access the emotional, mental sub-spectrums. This may be the case in mystics in the east who infamously had to be fed and bathed by their disciples or else they would have died of starvation out of the lack of ability to connect to their physical desires. <o:p></o:p><br />
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How each Conscious Mind accesses the Conscious Spectrum impacts the Conscious Density of that mind. This Conscious Density is what creates the Energy-gravitation. The greater the Density the greater the gravitational pull. <o:p></o:p><br />
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However, Conscious Density is not the only criteria for the force of Energetic-gravitation to exist in Consciousness, just like the masses of two planetary bodies is not the only criteria for the gravitational force between them. Physical gravitation is also dependant on the distance between the two planets. Similarly, the difference in energy-resonance frequencies between Conscious minds is a vital factor in understanding the principle of Energetic-Gravitation. I refer to this difference in frequencies as Energetic Distance.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Recall, the formula you used in high school physics where the force of Gravitation (F) was directly proportional to the product of the two masses (M1,M2) and inversely proportional to the square of the distance (R) between them. In the same way, the force of Energetic-Gravitation is directly proportional to the Conscious Densities of two minds and inversely proportional to the square of the Energetic Distance between them.<o:p></o:p><br />
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(to be continued …)<o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-31969379289225661212013-03-01T13:45:00.001-05:002013-03-01T13:45:18.732-05:00The Paradox of PerceptionWhen speaking about Consciousness it is important to draw a fine distinction between universal Consciousness and the experience of your own individual Consciousness. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Think of yourself as a laptop computer with a powerful battery, which is your brain. This battery has the potential to store Electrical charge for up to a certain amount of time before it needs to be recharged through sleep cycles. Now think of Consciousness as Electricity. Electricity itself has no form of individuality. Yet, when transmitted into a specific device, it is the animating energy that "brings it to life". <o:p></o:p><br />
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Now, compare two such laptops: they are different in size, design, memory, RAM, processor speeds, software, applications, video cards, sound cards. Even their batteries have different storage capacities and performance capabilities. But what is the difference between the Electricity each one stores? Is one laptop's electricity different from the other's? How the electricity manifests itself in terms of function and performance of course is completely different in each laptop. Yet, the Electricity itself is no different in one battery or the other, or from that in a mobile phone or an electronic shaver for that matter. The Electricity itself is single and undifferentiated.<o:p></o:p><br />
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So when speaking about individual Consciousness, it is important to understand that I don't mean <em>my consciousness</em> versus <em>your consciousness</em> versus someone else’s' consciousness versus Universal Consciousness. To speak about consciousness in this way is as absurd as comparing one battery's electricity to another's. What is <em>individual</em> is the unique expression that is a result of Consciousness interacting with the brain. It is only in the Material reality that such a separation appears. But within Consciousness itself, there is no such separation.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Illusion of an Independent Consciousness </strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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Your brain is programmed to perceive itself as a separate entity. In other words, it perceives itself according to its own design, power and capacity rather than by the Consciousness that is animating it. When it perceives other entities, human, animal, plant and inanimate it revalidates its separate identity by comparing these differences. So for example when you walk past a mirror on the street, it takes you a fraction of a second to separate your own image from that of other people walking past based on subtle differences in design, power and capacity. This programming of separative perception is partly biological and genetic but to a large extent also socio-cultural. Over many centuries of perceiving ourselves as individual entities, it has become ingrained within our evolutionary programming. <o:p></o:p><br />
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However, this is not how it always was. Many ancient cultures from all over the world including the Native peoples of North America, the Shinto traditions of Japan, the aboriginals of Australia, the various pagan cultures of Europe, just to mention a few, unanimously believed in a spiritual inter-connection of all beings within nature, including the elements; a single Consciousness that illuminated everything. In fact, a lot of their daily activities and healing techniques incorporated and cultivated awareness of and connection to this aspect of reality. While the sense of individuality did exist on one hand, it was balanced with a simultaneous awareness of the unity of Life.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Yet, as the more separation-driven cultures of the world began to dominate in power and influence, this balance between the two perspectives began to skew more and more in the direction that we now find ourselves in. Yet, the capacity for the modern human brain to re-establish this balance very much still exists. The ability of your brain to perceive itself not only as a separate entity but also as the Consciousness underlying the foundation of the Universe may be currently dormant but is not extinct. What is required then, in the words of J.Krishnamurthi, "is the kind of Insight that brings about a very mutation in the brain cells."<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Left Brain, the Right Brain</strong> <o:p></o:p><br />
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Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a prominent neuroanatomist, in her <a href="http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/12/jill_bolte_tayl/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">TED talk</span></a> speaks about her experience with having a stroke. I have attached the link here because it provides a unique insight into how we actually perceive ourselves differently through each of the brain's two hemispheres. <o:p></o:p><br />
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I won't go too much into how each hemisphere functions, as much of this is covered in the link and is widely accepted in our mainstream understanding of the brain. Stated briefly, the left brain (hemisphere) is the analytical, logic-driven part of your brain. It is what divides, compares, evaluates and judges in your experience of your life and of yourself. It experiences life in linear terms, creating a timeline of part, present and future. It's almost constant preoccupation is with estimating its own position with respect to various points on that timeline.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Imagine a number line, with Zero in the center and intervals going in the positive one, two, three till infinity to the right and negative one, two, three till negative infinity to the left. To the Left Brain, this abstract number line is what it believes represents the experience of Life: where Zero is the present moment and the negative numbers are moments in the past and positive numbers are moments in the future. And so to the Left brain, each moment is of equal value. The present is no more important or significant than a random moment in the past or future. And so it is constantly attempting to reposition and re-orient itself to create the "best possible trajectory" of moments in this experience of life.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Contrast this against the Right Brain. Now the Right hemisphere is the part that is rooted in spontaneity and present moment awareness. To the Right Brain this number line is purely nonsensical and imaginary. The experience of reality is only ever in the Present moment so the Zero is all there ever really is. With no past or future to consider, there is no notion of any movement, any sort of transition or any evolution. Everything is already as it is and its existence itself is proof of its perfection. This appears as a complete contradiction to the Left Brain.<o:p></o:p><br />
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And herein lies the divine irony, the great cosmic joke of the Universe. Because the brain that powers you contains two paradoxical capacities. And this paradox is evident in the way humanity functions. No person or culture is entirely left-brain oriented or right-brain oriented, but there are a variety of combination of left-brain right-brain skews. For example, most religions (I refer to their philosophies, not the institutions that follow) are largely Right-brain dominant. They believe in divine intelligence that creates and unites us all, they believe in the unity of all beings, they believe in a Divine Will that drives all beings, they believe in destiny and a master plan for the Universe. Of course, once you lay on all the mythology and ritual it starts to deviate. But the core of Faith is extremely present-moment centric.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Contrast this to Science, dominated by the Left-brain, which requires theory backed by analysis and empirically verifiable proofs to sustain its view of reality. The chronological aspect of time is absolutely critical to its approach. It is far from being centered in the present moment. Rather the scientific approach creates absolutely no distinction between the present moment and any other moment. A moment is a moment, more precisely - a specific interval of time. Without accepting the reality of Time, logic has no foundation to stand on.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In the past few hundred of centuries, we have witnessed an evolutionary dominance of the Left brain within the human species. This is evident from the way Left-Brain-dominant civilizations systematically colonized, enslaved and reconditioned the smaller and less aggressively oriented Right-brain-dominant cultures of the world. The aforementioned Natives of America, the Aboriginals of Australia, pagans of Europe, Ainu of Japan among thousands of others were all dominated, subjugated and reoriented. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Our technological evolution is a testament to the rapid dominance of Left-brain orientation within the human species. But despite all the progress we have made, the very attributes that caused the rise of the Left-brain skew are the very attributes that limit our evolution as a species. It is a double edged sword. This fact is also readily observable. We live on a planet with fast depleting resources, where global economic and social inequalities are stark, where the very eco-system that sustains our species is beginning to reject us, where power and acquisition takes priority over the existence of life-form.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Consciousness and the Two Brains</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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Depending on which hemisphere is dominant within your particular experience in any given moment, your perception of yourself and your world will shift its reality. This actually happens to you several times in any given day, but because we are a left-brain dominant species, these "pockets of time" are conveniently glossed over and swept under the rug by the left-brain processes.<o:p></o:p><br />
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For example, when you 'zone out' or 'stare-off' for a while, or when you become absorbed in meditation, or when you are lost in a beautiful scenery, or when you go into deep sleep, your Left-brain actually ceases to dominate. In these moments, the sense of being some separate individual self simply doesn't exist. Whether in deep meditation, caught up in an inspirational moment, lost in prayer, the experience in those moments is one of deep interconnectedness with everything. Those lines of separation between you and the world seem to blur if only for a short while. You cease to experience time in the traditional sense. You have experienced a glimpse of the Right-brain perspective.<o:p></o:p><br />
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But how do these two hemispheres interact with Consciousness? The left-brain and the right brain are actually the tools of two different aspects of reality and, in fact, are instrumental in perpetuating them. Earlier, we spoke about Consciousness being the Reality which underlies the Material plane that we call the physical Universe. Your brain with its two hemispheres is what creates and maintains the link between these two planes of reality.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The Right-brain is the instrument of Consciousness, the Left-brain is the instrument of Materiality. You can think of the whole brain as a prism: Where the Right-brain is one face of the prism through which the undifferentiated white light of Consciousness enters, and the Left-brain as the second face which projects a completely differentiated spectrum of colors - the material Universe. This is how your brain works. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The Right-brain is useless when dealing with material practicalities and theories. As Jill-Bolte Taylor described, when having her stroke which shut her entire Left-brain down, she had no idea what the numbers on her phone even were and couldn't identify where her own body began or ended with respect to the things around her. When the Right-brain perceives the environment it doesn't see a tree, a house, a street, a dog and other people; all it perceives is a single dynamic flux of energies. This is the first filter that Consciousness must pass through in order to generate the illusion of a Material Universe. A pure, undifferentiated, unchanging Consciousness is filtered through the Right-brain to generate the perception of a still unified but dynamic flux of energies.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Now this perception then passes through the second filter which is the Left-brain. Here is where, the unified fluz of energies is further distilled and crystallizes into the various separate elements that form our material realities. Through a process of double distillation, Pure Consciousness is translated by the Right-Brain into a Unified singular flux of energies which is then translated by the Left-brain into a differentiated Material Reality.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Shifting Self</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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The "Self", the way I define it, is simply the lens of perception. It is the Awareness of existence, whether Unified or Differentiated. And this is where my views "apparently" contradict Jill Bolte-Taylor's who considers the Self to be a Left-brain construct. I say "apparently", because what she refers to as the "self" is really what I call the <em>individual-self</em>, that sense of being a single isolated entity in a vast disconnected Universe. And from that perspective, yes, the individual-self <em>is</em> a Left-brain construct.<o:p></o:p><br />
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However, even a purely Right-brain perception of Unity and Oneness, while it not perceiving the separation of individual from Universe, is still perceiving <em>something. </em> There is an in-built acknowledgement in both the Left and Right perspectives of an existence, whether it is of a small individual or of a Oneness. In the second case, this image is still of a Self, but this is the Higher Self - the Unified Self or God as it is known in different theological traditions.<o:p></o:p><br />
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However, the way I define "Self" is not as the image being perceived (individual or Unity) but rather as a <strong><i>vector</i></strong><em> (the direction in which the perception is pointed)</em>. Depending on which direction the perception shifts a different image of the self becomes a reality. When a mystic is immersed in a deep trance state and rejoices in the Oneness of all things, the Self he perceives himself to be is "one with God" or "one with the Universe". As a result, he exclaims "I am the Universe, the Universe is me, we are one and the same." When the corporate-worker gets onto a packed train at the end of a long day and can't find a seat to sit down on he sees the world and everyone as distinctly separate and distant from him. He feels tired and isolated and laments his poor, pathetic individual existence in this cold and detached Universe. Both images of the Self exist, depending on which brain's perception is dominant. But which image is the real one? Which Self is the <em>true </em>Self?<o:p></o:p><br />
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The answer is neither. Since the Self is nothing more than a vector it has no properties within existence. Existence is literally configured based on the direction in which the vector points. Existence can either be a singularity or a multiplicity. But it cannot be neither. Therefore, the Self is what actually facilitates existence. The image of the Self literally shifts as we move from Left-brain to Right-brain perception and back. And yet, neither of them is anything more than an approximation. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This notion of Self, transcends both Scientific reason as well as the Metaphysical viewpoint. This is the notion that allows the paradox of the human mind, of the Left-brain and the Right-brain to rest at ease and in harmony. This is the notion that says the scientific view is potentially true AND the metaphysical view is potentially true, because <em>Truth</em> when seen from this perspective is shapeless, formless and fundamentally unknowable. <o:p></o:p>Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-48756537938043060212013-02-27T12:56:00.002-05:002013-02-27T12:56:24.778-05:00Conscious Resonance: The Real "Law of Attraction" (Part 1)There has been a lot of material published in recent years about the Law of Attraction. Films like the Secret brought it further into the mainstream and there has been a lot of buzz about the notion that we can attract the realities we want if we only learn to manipulate the way in which we think about them. The vast majority of this positive thinking propoganda is focused around generating wealth, good health, success, power, influence, fame and romance. It isn't difficult to see why it has garnered such a wide audience, especially in the Western hemisphere. In these times we live in, where the mechanisms of society continue gearing up the pace at which the social treadmill we are all standing on moves, any promise of reprieve or respite from the quiet desperation that is the new bottomline standard of our human existence, is something that might seduce even the most rational of people.<br />
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That is not to say that the Law of Attraction is bogus. But just as with any ancient tradition or philosophy that falls prey to our insatiable need for novelty, this wisdom too has had the meat and soul stripped out of it and has been dressed in a frilly digestible package ready for mass consumption. The end product promises a far too simplistic and unrealistic approach to life and circumstances, one which offers no insight into why and how it works. But regardless, of how it has been approached and marketed within our contemporary culture the Law of Attraction points to an aspect of reality that functions within each and everyone of our lives. Everyday we are moved by it, influenced by it, informed by it. In order to truly get a feel for this, it is necessary to cultivate an approach of inquiry into ourselves and our own experience of life. What the Law of Attraction is really pointing to is a phenomenon that occurs within Consciousness: the phenomenon of Energetic Resonance.<br />
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<strong>What is Energetic Resonance?</strong> <br />
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When you strike a tuning fork against the side of a table, it resonates with a certain frequency. This frequency of resonance generates a sound with a specific pitch. If you hold a second tuning fork up without making contact with the first, but in close proximity to it, soon the second tuning fork will begin to vibrate at the exact same frequency as the first fork. The resonance of one tuning fork induces the resonance in the other without contact. Now imagine, you were unable to see or hear the first tuning fork and all you had access to was the second fork. If the same process were repeated, it would seem to you as if the second fork had begun vibrating of its own accord and this would perplex you. However, your knowledge of the simple physics of sound resonance would lead you to make an educated guess that your tuning fork was most likely influenced by a resonance effect whose cause you couldn't perceive.<br />
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Your Conscious Mind is much like a tuning fork. And just like a tuning fork it has the capacity to resonate through a wide range of energetic frequencies. What do I mean by an 'energetic' frequency? When you perceive the tuning fork vibrating what gives you the feedback that it is in fact vibrating at all? The most obvious one is the sound it emits. The second is that it visually appears to vibrate and the third is the physical feel of it vibrating. All these three means of experiencing this phenomenon are only <em>side-effects</em>. The actual cause is not something we cannot detect directly. What is really happening is that the resonance causes the space around the tuning fork to begin expanding and compressing in a sort of ripple effect. As the space ripples outwards these ripples make contact with the second tuning fork in a very particular way which makes it reciprocate the same ripple pattern, thereby genrating sound. What has happened as a result is that the energy that the first tuning fork was expressing has influenced the second tuning fork to express the same energy.<br />
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Similarly, you only experience your own Conscious Minds through certain <em>side-effects</em> that you are able to witness. But you may not be aware of the energy dynamics that cause these side-effects to happen. These side-effects appear in the form of your thoughts, your emotions and your sensations. Each of your minds is a tuning fork with the capacity to resonate not only to the energetic vibrations that occur within it, but more importantly is constantly in interaction with the energy vibrations that are present in other minds you come in contact with as well as with your environment itself. To begin to see how these dynamics works gives a whole new perspective on how connected everything really is.<br />
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<strong>Everything has a Resonance</strong><br />
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Everything is the Universe resonates energetically. From the subatomic level of electrons to molecules to cells. From the inanimate mediums of rock, water and air to the simplest of life-forms to the most complex. Everything that exists, only exists because it has an energetic resonance. The look, feel, sound, taste etc. are all the side-effects so to speak that allow us to experience their existence. But the cause that even allows these side-effects to exist is the dynamics of energies resonating within Consciousness.<br />
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In the <a href="http://theexistentialfunkhole.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-universe-out-of-nothing.html" target="_blank">Universe Out of Nothing</a> I discussed how recent findings in Quantumn Physics point to the possibility that even electrons possess Consciousness. Science is slowly coming to terms with the realization that what we thought we knew about Life is becoming grayer and grayer. The boundaries between what we consider "living" organisms and "non-living" things is gradually evaporating. Even the most skeptical among the scientific community would reluctantly admit that reality is not as easily definable as we previously thought.<br />
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If you think of the Universe as one giant Energetic symphony, then each of the instruments involved in this symphony represents an individual life-form, resonating within this symphony. Each instrument is unique and performs its harmonies with varying degrees of complexity. While a human being might represent a complex instrument, like say a Grand piano, capable of experiencing and expressing a wide array of energy frequencies - a bacteria may represent a much simpler instrument like a triangle which is capable of only a limited range of energetic expression. But regardless, of how simple or complex the life form, it is the larger movement of the symphony that influences the harmonies of the individual instruments performing.<br />
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<strong>The Conscious Spectrum</strong><br />
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There is a spectrum of energetic frequencies that form the entire experience of reality. This spectrum can be broadly subdivided into three sub-spectrums: the Physical, the Mental and the Emotional. If the Spectrum represents the entire range of possible musical sounds, you can think of each sub-spectrum as being something similar to a musical scale. Each scale contains a hierarchy of notes which form the individual frequencies that exist within that scale. While some musical instruments are limited in the number of scales they can express, more complex instruments can exhibit a variety of scales.<br />
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A simple organism such as a bacteria is only able to access and express itself in the Physical subspectrum but may have little access to the Emotional and Mental subspectrums. A more complex organism such as a dog has the capacity to express fully within the Physical, to a great extent within the Emotional, but to a far more limited extent within the Mental. A human being, the most complex life-form that we are currently aware of represents the broadest range of access and expression on all three scales.<br />
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Still, the same basic frequencies (notes) repeat themselves in each scale and in this way the three sub-spectrums are connected. How we experience events in our lives is a function of the different scales through which we are able to express. For example, when a cockaroach bumps his head it triggers a single energetic wave in Consciousness. Because the cockaroach's Mind can mostly only access the Physical sub-spectrum, the physical sensation of pain encapsulates its entire experience of this energetic event.<br />
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However, when <em>you</em> bump your head that same single Energetic wave in Consciousness triggers a pain sensation within the Material sub-spectrum, an emotion of frustration or anger perhaps within the Emotional sub-spectrum and a thought of "What's that damn thing doing there" within the Mental spectrum. One sound experienced simultaneously in three different scales - what in music would be refered to as a <strong>chord</strong>.<br />
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And this is in fact how we experience life. Every experience we have is a physical, mental and emotional trifecta of sensation, emotion and thought.<br />
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<strong>The Musicality of Experience </strong><br />
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All this creates an image of a Universe that runs quite contrary to the one we have accepted by general consensus. The world we believe we live in is one in which we are mostly separate entities who interact almost exclusively through physical action. In other words, we believe that what we think and feel has no impact on others and our environment unless we physically express ourselves through words or some action. However, understanding how Conscious Resonance works reveals that our minds are influencing and affecting others and the environement constantly (and vice versa being influenced and affected by them). Every thought, emotion and action is only the side-effect of an energy ripple that is already in movement. So when you have a thought, your consciousness is already interacting with the Consciosness of others without you even knowing it. And similarly with emotions.<br />
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To illustrate this further consider this example. You are sitting in a living room having a light-hearted conversation with a friend when a stranger enters it. They seem moody and quiet and immediately you feel the entire energy and dynamic of the conversation switch. You sense the "tension in the air" and it sets you on edge. Your thoughts begin to take on a more defensive and serious flavor and your lighter emotions are replaced by darker more guarded emotions. Nothing has physically happened per se, yet an entire mental-emotional event has been energetically induced in you. Your demeanour towards your friend and the subject of your conversation changes and your friend too responds alike.<br />
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Now, consider a second example. You are at a boring family event. The same relatives, the same conversations. You are standing quietly in a corner nursing your egg-nog, occassionally glancing up at the clock. Your mood is restless and your thoughts complaining about how you wish you didn't have to be here. At this point someone new enters the room. This is someone new who brings with them a certain air of positivity and a cheerful disposition. They immediately "light up the room". Many in the room begin to respond with enthusiasm and laughter and you feel the air lighten and your body language begins to shift. Your own enthusiasm is sparked and your attiude towards the situation transforms.<br />
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In both cases, Energetic resonances this person introduced within the environment caused a shift in the energetic resonances in all the individuals in the environment. This is experienced Physically as a tension and stiffness in the first case, relaxation and ease in the second. It is experienced Mentally as thoughts of suspicion in the first case, and those of curiosity in the next. It is experienced Emotionally as fear in the first case and enthusiasm in the next. <br />
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Now, realistically it would take a very magnetic individual with a powerful resonance to influence the energy of an entire room. The strength in numbers rule does tend to hold true more often than not. However, we have witnessed time and again in history how single individuals have held power and influence over millions for the sake of good or evil. What sets these men apart from the rest is not so much their words or actions, but rather the clarity of their purpose which is experienced as an amplification of their resonance fields. A single musical note expressed at a high enough volume has the capacity to arrest an entire musical movement. <br />
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At the end of the day it is not just a case of the frequency of energy resonance that influences these Conscious dynamics, but also the amplitude at which the energy is emitted. And this is where the philosophy of the Law of Attraction comes in.<br />
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(to be continued...)<br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-63729140621045804982013-02-22T13:02:00.000-05:002013-02-22T13:02:03.560-05:00The Art of Being FearlessFear, most fundamentally, is a programmed biological response to a perceived threat or danger. It is part of our animalistic brain, the simple fight or flight mechanism that ensures the survival response in every being. Fear is felt as an immediate and arresting surge of adrenaline like an internal siren that snaps the focus into the present moment and the circumstances at hand. Fear also has the powerful potential to catalyze immediate and spontaneous response, whether the response is to act, to flee or to freeze. The perception of threat, the surge of adrenalin and the spontaneous response all happen almost instantaneously, so well is the fear response programmed into the animal brain. In the ability to feel fear, all beings are equal, there is no hierarchy. A human feels fear no differently than an animal, a child feels fear no differently than an adult. Only the responses may differ based on experience and instinct. <o:p></o:p><br />
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There is another kind of fear that is unique to humans alone. And this kind of fear is a state of mind rather than a momentary biological impulse. It is a state perpetuated by the Mind and its thought processes. It is a state that is simulated rather than real, since it does not need a real and present danger in order for it to perpetuate. Instead, it uses thought to construct an artificial image of threat which it then uses to mimic the biological fear response. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Everyone experiences this kind of fear (which I will moving forward refer to as 'Fearfulness' to distinguish ir from the natural animalistic fear all creatures are programmed to feel). All of us have experienced Fearfulness. It exists in varying degrees in most people ranging from mild dissatisfaction and unease to anxiety and panic to paranoia and terror. In fact, all human beings fall somewhere within the spectrum and will experience a range of degrees in their lifetimes. In a nutshell this forms the very foundations of the human experience and what we are here to learn from.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Mechanism of Fearfulness</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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The mechanism of Fearfulness is a simple one. The human mind is a powerful tool and can be used to simulate any kind of perception, artificially. Just as it is possible to induce in yourself a temporary state of happiness and excitement by focusing on positive thoughts, it is equally easy for the mind induce an artificial state of unrest and unease by focusing excessively on negative thoughts. In the second case, all the mind is really doing is inducing the perception of a threat or of danger where one does not necessarily exist. The body which operates at a lower degree of intelligence than the mind is not programmed to be able to tell the difference. As long as the perception is one of fear, real or artificial, the body reacts the same to generate a Fear response and corresponding surge of adrenalin.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is why you may find yourself terrified at a horror movie. You know its fake, but your mind will allow you to suspend that knowledge just long enough for it to be believable in the moment. Your body may even respond by cringing or in extreme cases send you screaming out of the theater. The threat may be artificial but the Fear response is real.<o:p></o:p><br />
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There are a large number of people, especially today, who suffer from a variety of anxiety disorders ranging from mild anxiety to full blown panic attacks. There is research that shows that some of these symptoms could be triggered by chemical imbalances in the brain. A defective sort of triggering process where the Fear response misfires periodically catalyzed by some sort of external stimulus or the other. And while this may be the trigger for some people, what perpetuates the anxiety or panic is often a negative thinking pattern that then sets into place and feeds the momentum of Fearfulness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In fact, the negative thought pattern is the primary and predominant cause for the escalation of anxiety or panic. People who suffer from anxiety often complain of a particularly negative thought or set of thoughts that repeat themselves constantly. This may be thoughts of some impending doom, or thoughts of low self-esteem, thoughts of unworthiness, thoughts of failure, thoughts of suspicion and mistrust of others, thoughts of death or injury, thoughts of doing violent or terrible acts, thoughts of sabotage just to name a few. And each time this sort of thought occurs, it triggers the biological fear response and corresponding chemical surges. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Addiction to Negative Thinking<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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So why do we indulge in these negative thought patterns? Most of will agree, that the vast majority of people unwittingly accept their own thoughts to be true to a high degree. After all, most of what we know and experience of our lives is filtered through our thoughts. And so there is this blurry boundary between reality and the mind-induced simulated reality that is difficult to separate. When watching a horror movie it is easy to separate the true reality from the fictional one. But when living in our own "mind movies" as most of us do, it becomes increasingly difficult, the older and more complex we get, to distinguish between what is real and what has been generated by our thoughts.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In fact, most people live almost entirely within the artificial overlay created by their own minds, with only brief moments of clarity when the mind becomes stilled or dormant for some reason. A scenery that takes your breath away, a moment of quiet meditation, being in-the-zone during some sport or focussed activity - at these times the artificial reality fades into the background. But for the majority of our day, we are caught in our own heads thinking about this that and the other.<o:p></o:p><br />
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When a negative thought pattern begins to predominate within our mental experience, we are naturally geared to believe in whatever the thought process is proposing. If the thought repeats, "you are fat, you are fat," after listening to it long enough it will actually skew our perception enough to actually <em>see</em> ourselves as fat. This results in disorders like anorexia or bulimia. If the thought repeats, "you are no good" we might begin to develop issues of low self-esteem. It doesn't matter what the catalyst was, whether we were abandoned by our parents or dumped by our lovers. The catalyst was a single momentary event in the past. What perpetuates the feelings however, is the thought process that makes us relive that moment again and again and again. <o:p></o:p><br />
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These negative thought patterns are highly addictive for two reasons. The first is biological. Just as the body can become used to (even addicted to) any drug and after a while that drug experience becomes its 'normal state', so too can the body get used to a hormonal/neurochemical experience. It’s all the same really if seen from a biology perspective. Whether you take a hit of a drug externally or internally, it causes a distorting effect in the brain and its processes. Adrenalin, for example, is a highly addictive chemical. It’s the reason why extreme sport enthusiasts are so obsessive about what they do. They "need" the hit of adrenalin. Similarly, every negatively induced state of Fearfulness has an associated chemically/hormonally induced state associated with it. Each time the negative pattern arises a hormonal imbalance (low or high) occurs. After some time the body begins to believe that this is its natural resting state. It feels "normal".<o:p></o:p><br />
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The second reason is that believing in a negative thought pattern gives some continuity to reality. Most people would rather believe themselves to be something negative than to be unsure about who or what they are. It’s insane but is actually very common. We live in a society in which we tend to define who we are by the roles we play. Each one of us is a mother, father, brother or sister, a boss, an employee, an artist, a scientist, a jock, a nerd, a misfit, a rebel, a conformist, a socialist, a capitalist, an anarchist, a doctor, a lawyer, a truck driver, a drunk, a devotee, an atheist or whatever set of labels you have chosen to define yourself using. Its all made up. Even our social realities are mind-made artificial realities at the end of the day. Our political boundaries are nothing more that imaginary lines drawn out on a piece of paper, our laws no more than invented rules for relating to one another. Even the value we attribute to things is all made up. That land in the city costs ten times as much as land in the country is an arbitrary value that we have all agreed to set upon. Land existed long before we showed up on the planet and to believe it has an inherent monetary value is absurd. Still we have all agreed to participate in this consensus artificial reality, and it works to some degree from a practical perspective.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Our Mind-made Realities<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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The problem begins to come in when the artificial replaces the real in our frame of experience and we begin to derive our sense of who we are from the very roles we have conceded to play within this invented drama. For most people, who accept the consensus reality to be real, to suggest that it is all made up is blasphemous. No matter how obvious or rational an argument, the sense of Self is a fragile thing and to threaten its existence or reality is huge. Let's take high school for example. For most adults who are well past high school, looking back in hindsight will reveal how silly it all was with its cliquey social circles and labels, the jocks and popular kids, the nerds and the misfits, the rebels etc. It all seems like a fantasy even, yet the experience of actually being there at that age is something entirely different. Similarly the high school student looks back at kindergarten or elementary as a time of silliness and naiveté. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Even though we are able to look back and laugh at the unreality of it all, it doesn't mean the reality we are living in at the moment is any more real. It is only a different one yet just as artificial. To the high school student, elementary school was silly and childish. To the adult, high school and its drama was naive. But what about adult life, work life, life in society? Isn't wealth, social status, work politics and all the social drama that we engage in everyday just as naive and childish? And yet, the human mind is defiant when its reality is threatened. Trying to convince an adult that wealth, fame and social status doesn't matter is like trying to convince a high school kid that tests, popularity and acceptance into cliques don't really matter. The stage becomes grander but the drama remains the same. When governments and countries go to war we all shudder at the seriousness of it all and the devastation and the mayhem it propagates. Yet, from a different viewpoint it is no different than a bunch of high school hooligans getting into it with their rival school. Different scale, different degrees, same stupidity, same naiveté.<o:p></o:p><br />
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For people who experience regular anxiety and Fearfulness, the negative-thought pattern even though traumatic is actually validating. It reaffirms their belief in the artificial reality they live in and even assigns them a role within it. That role may be "loser", "low-life", "whore", "mooch", "fatty", "worthless", "evil", "selfish", "anti-social", "weirdo" or whatever. And yet, even those labels are better than not having one - of "N/A". <o:p></o:p><br />
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The mechanism of Fearfulness may be obvious within people who show overt signs of anxiety and low self-esteem but it is also and especially operating within others who don't. In fact, the majority of self-referential thinking that we all do has a component of Fearfulness embedded within it. It may not be so easy to identify but you'll see it if you observe it closely. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Fearfulness is built into our social psyches and the way we operate. The choices we make day to day, the paths we take in our lives are predominated by this Fearfulness. Our economic systems and justice systems are fashioned from this experience of Fearfulness. The way we relate to one another at work, the way we measure our words, the way we mistrust strangers, the way we worry for our security, the way we worry we will be lonely, the way we worry we will be abandoned, the way we worry we will become redundant or unemployed, the way we worry we will be perceived by others, the way we need to control how others perceive us, the way we need to control our circumstances - all this is rooted in and perpetuated by the state of Fearfulness. Nobody is immune - no matter how well they seem to have it all together. Some of the most "with it" people, the ones who exude the most confidence and control over their circumstances are also often people who are extremely dominated by the mechanism of Fearfulness. One of the most primary indications is any form of rigidity, aggression or exertion of power within the personality. Some of the greatest leaders of our times were also some of the greatest control freaks. Corporations, governments, banks and nations are nothing more than magnified super-structures constructed and fed by this same need for control, perpetuation and securtiy - in other words, Fearfulness. This is the world we live in, because it is the one we create for ourselves, in agreement with one another, day after day, because it is how we operate within ourselves.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Arriving at a Tipping Point<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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Like any addiction, habit or pattern that pushes the mind to a tipping point, so too can this experience of Fearfulness reach a critical mass within the human psyche. This tipping point can be experienced in a variety of ways. It can be instantaneous, sudden and dramatic. In my own case it felt like a fuse had blown within my mind. For months my brain and its thinking patterns were completely silenced. In others, it can be a more gradual process that happens periodically and in waves. But regardless of how this tipping point is experienced the purpose it serves is the same. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This tipping point is nothing more than a reality check. It is a momentary experience of the true reality that exists independently of our Minds and its perceptions. Whether the experience lasts a minute or a month, the effect is that it dislodges (even if temporarily) the faith we place in our own artificial realities. There are a number of mystical and spiritual traditions that sensationalize such an experience as something divine, but robbed of all its trappings it is nothing more than a simple and clear view into the reality underlying the one we compulsively project through our thoughts. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This experience can also be one of great relief both mentally and emotionally. It can feel like a huge burden has been lifted off you, and the response is often one of causeless joy and feelings of deep love and connection with the environment and others. Yet even this is only a reaction. Imagine having in a drunken stupor for most of your life to the point where you have no memory of what it was like to be sober. Imagine living in a haze and then suddenly one day sobering up and seeing what the sober reality is like. It can feel tremendously liberating.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Yet addiction works the same no matter what the drug, whether the drug is alcohol or the drug is thought. And just because you get sober once doesn't mean you will never relapse. In fact, most addicts do, because even though they have glimpsed what it feels like to be sober, there is a momentum of Fearfulness that continues to operate and propel them towards the drug. And so we do relapse again and again. But the only difference this time around is that we now KNOW what it means to be sober. And that is the knowledge that eventually comes through in the end.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The more you become aware of the existence of a reality beneath the mind-simulated one, the more unreal the mind-simulated reality becomes. But it is a process. The momentum of the mind uses not just thought but emotion as well to reinforce itself. It is one thing to believe something mentally, but to feel it reinforced in your body as an emotional response makes it all the more real. Its one thing to think you are fat, but to see yourself and feel yourself as fat gives a whole new dimension of realness to it. And so even though the thought is the disguise, the emotion and feeling it generates is the energetic component that completes the illusion. And it is this energetic component that fuels the momentum. It is literally like a car running on gas. As long as you continue to fuel the car it will keep running until it eventually breaks down. Rather than waiting for a breakdown, it is possible to recognize the mechanism at work and respond in a manner that doesn't continue to fuel the momentum.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Releasing the Mind’s Momentum<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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Until, you are willing to see that the reality your mind projects is nothing more than an invention, none of this will really apply. Because Fearfulness will continue to be the experience you actually desire in order to keep the charade going. But once you have had a taste of the sober reality underlying it all, you can make the conscious choice to stop feeding it. In a number of traditions, people respond to this rather extremely by taking severe measures and austerities in order to deny their minds. They meditate until they are blue in the face, attempting to use their will to supress their thoughts but all of it falls flat in the end. Because the very premise of wanting to suppress something is because you think that thing is undesirable or harmful. Believing thought to be undesirable or harmful immediately serves to reinforce its reality. And so whether we are believing the thought, or suppressing/denying it, we only reinforce it. <o:p></o:p><br />
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What is thought at the end of the day? Is it not just a random bunch of words strung together in some sort of sentence that passes through your mind? The thought "I am a loser" and the thought "a green bear has wings" are both equally meaningless. The only difference is that one triggers an emotional/bodily response and the other doesn't. But the thought in itself has no reality other than the language and alphabets it represents. So, thought itself is really harmless. What can be potentially harmful (and even this is only a relative perspective) is the emotion and energy that it triggers. A simple thought like, "he's an idiot" can trigger a flash of anger. Repeating that thought again and again can feed and inflate that feeling, building the momentum into rage. This when the internal experience can potentially transform into some sort of violent action.<o:p></o:p><br />
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If we see thoughts as harmless, then the energetic/emotional experience is ultimately what we are really dealing with. Without a thought to justify it, an emotion is simply an emotion. Anger is just anger. It is not "good anger" or "bad anger", "righteous anger" or "evil anger". That's where the thought label attached to it rationalizes the emotion as necessary. For example, if you get angry at your boss and start yelling at him this sort of anger is considered inappropriate. But if you get angry at a criminal this is considered acceptable. It’s only the way the Mind justifies it. If you see thought as unreal, your justifications, criticisms and judgments of how you feel will simply not seem all that relevant anymore.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Then whether you are happy, sad, personable or anti-social, the experience of the emotion in the moment is allowed to be experienced simply because that is what is happening at the moment. Even if there is a "should", "shouldn't", "this is good", "this is bad" thought trying to validate and feed that emotion, you cannot believe the thought for long. As a result, the emotion/energy isn't fed and perpetuated as before.<o:p></o:p><br />
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We all have a reservoir of unreleased emotions within our systems that have accumulated through our entire lifetimes. These relate back as far as our infancy, our feelings of fear and inadequacy, our upbringing and feelings of abandonment. Every thought that we ever believed became paired to an emotion and locked into our psyches. And there it continues to remain until it is released. There is a saying that goes, "if you believe yourself to be enlightened, go spend a weekend with your family." Some of our deepest fears are also some of our most earliest.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Perceiving the mind-made overlay reality as unreal is not enough. The only way to stop fueling its momentum and its believability is to allow an energetic release ie to spend the fuel. The momentum will keep going until the fuel is spent. This is where it becomes important to develop the Art of Being Fearless.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The State of Fearlessness<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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Fearlessness is simply the practice of acceptance. It is the practice of being rooted in your being. When thought is seen as unreality, then the emotion and energy momentum within the psyche is what is left to deal with. This practice is only centered in the present. Because the only emotions/energies you have to deal with are the ones you are experiencing right now. It doesn't matter what you experienced yesterday, nor the ones you are afraid will come tomorrow. The past and future experiences of emotion need thought to perpetuate it. In other words, you have to "think" about them to experience them. <br /><br />Fearlessness is a complete acceptance of yourself in this moment, exactly as you are. Not as you wish you could be. Not as you know you can be. Not as you are afraid you will be. Just as you are. Because what you are doesn't need you to think about it, the rest of them do. When you accept yourself in the moment, then you accept whatever energetic expression is happening within your being. Whether that is a feeling of rage, feelings of guilt, feelings of unworthiness or restlessness or boredom, or anxiety. They will come up and your acceptance will allow them to be experienced and released. <o:p></o:p><br />
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You may find a thought creeping in here and there trying to validate, suppress or deny the feeling. These are only old patterns and habits at work. If you have seen thoughts as harmless, you realize there is no reason to respond to them. In fact, when you do respond to them that can be your indicator that at some level somewhere you still believe that thought to be true. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Practicing this acceptance allows a slow and gradual rewiring and reconditioning of the Mind. As the momentum begins to dissipate your perspective becomes more and more clear, balanced and rooted in sobriety. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Fear, the momentary impulse of the animal brain, continues to operate of course as it does in all creatures. There is a practical benefit to this sort of impulse. It is what causes you to jump out of the way of an oncoming truck. Yet this kind of fear lasts only as long as the threat exists. Once the threat is gone, you return to your natural state of ease. Wouldn't it be strange if animals walked around constantly paranoid about predators. They continue to revisit and share the same waterholes because their fear response is only activated if there is an actual threat. They don't have the ability to think and so don't experience Fearfulness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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By glimpsing the sobering reality that lies beneath the drama we call our life, by seeing our thoughts as harmless mental phenomena with no reality and by cultivating an attitude of acceptance towards ourselves and all our emotional/energetic experiences in each moment, the momentum of Fearfulness gradually subsides. What is left in its place is a spacious, present and deeply rooted state of Fearlessness. In this state, everything is allowed, good and bad, enjoyable or painful and even fearful.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Fearlessness is not the opposite of fearfulness. It is not courage. Courage is nothing more than the desire to control fear. And in this sense, even Courage is just another face of Fearfulness. Because to want to combat or control fear, is to be fearful of it.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Fearlessness is the space in which you are allowed to be whoever you are and whatever you are in this moment. Whether you are a loser or a winner, a coward or a hero, a sinner or a saint. You are allowed to be whatever expression you take in that moment, because who you really are is much deeper than that, and for that there are no words. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-69721907512145226172013-02-21T13:43:00.001-05:002013-02-21T13:45:18.600-05:00Expression is the PurposeAs an infant, you are not entirely a clean slate to begin with. Every infant already contains, encoded within its DNA, a unique personality and karmic blueprint. No two infants are alike, even from the get go. Ask any new parent and they will testify to this. As a society, we tend to perceive infants from a very limited perspective. We see the infant as a brand new instance of life with no real history of its own. This is a fallacy. Encoded within the DNA of each child is the history of the entire Universe. This is not meant figuratively. It is literally true. <o:p></o:p><br />
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From the primary elements, metals and minerals that were formed in the first explosion that created the Universe, to the primitive cells that represented the earliest life forms, to the animal and reptilian instincts for survival that propagated life, to the primitive man who first discovered fire, to the early agrarian peoples that formed the roots of civilizations, to the ancient plunderers and barbarian hordes that swept across continents, to the civilizations that created mathematics, art and culture, to the medieval kingdoms and their struggles for power, to the imperial powers and colonization, to the industrialization and explosion of the human intellect - all this history of chaos, bloodlust, power and enslavement, of cooperation, creativity, symbiosis and progression is encoded within a single microscopic strand of every infant's DNA. In other words, rather than being a clean slate without a history, an infant is the cumulative expression of the entire Universe seen from a single unique perspective. Every newborn contains the same primordial soup of elements, influences and events. Just like all snowflakes are essentially comprised of the very same elements, yet each flake is unique in the patterns in which it crystallizes, so too is every infant absolutely unique in the crystallization of its expression - its karmic blueprint.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Purpose of Unique Expression</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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As human beings and as members of society, we all have some purpose to fulfill and this purpose is defined according to the various functions and uses we serve. It is the purpose to survive, to provide for ourselves and our families, to contribute to society, to collaborate with one another, to compete against each other, to find our partners, to create families and propagate our bloodlines, to maintain order and harmony, to find and develop an art, skill or trade, to be law-abiding and moral members of society, to work for the benefit of society, to aspire to personal and professional success, to contribute to progress and innovation, just to mention a few. <o:p></o:p><br />
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For most of us, this becomes the overarching purpose of our lives. We inherit our sense of who we are based on the values we derive from society. Even though, we pride ourselves on own individuality and believe that we are unique in our thoughts, opinions and actions, we are subconsciously programmed to perceive and value ourselves through the eyes of society. As a result, in searching for our own unique purpose we inadvertently end up searching for just another function or use that we might serve. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As an adolescent or young adult, you may have asked yourself the question: what is the purpose of my life? And in an effort to answer this question, you may have found yourself thinking about what career will fulfill you, what kind of mate might fulfill you, what greater ambition or path of altruism might fulfill you, what cause or belief system might fulfill you, what philosophy or spiritual path might fulfill you, what amount of wealth, power and influence might fulfill you, what journey of exploration and adventure might fulfill you. The only answers you can come up with are those that arise from the perspective of function and use. The only solutions your mind can think of are just versions of the statements: "how can I enhance my own value, how can I be perceived by others and what use can I be to society." This is how the human brain has been conditioned to think, to value itself and others. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Why is every snowflake unique? What is the purpose of this unique design? After all snow is snow and if snowflakes were identical to each other it would hardly make any difference. And yet, no two snowflakes are alike. This leads to another question: what is the individual snowflake's purpose? After all if it can be identified to be so unique it must have an equally unique purpose attached to it. And yet, the only apparent purpose of a snowflake is to be born, to descend to the ground and to eventually dissolve. This is a perspective that associates purpose with function or use. And from this perspective, since the individual snow flake seems to lack any unique function or use it cannot found to have a unique purpose that is separate from the purpose of snow in general. However, there is a deeper perspective that goes beyond the notions of function and use, which reveals an entirely different reality. And from this perspective: The expression<em> is</em> the purpose. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Influence of Outer Authority</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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The dictionary defines authority as: "the power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior". From a very young age we are encouraged to recognize and to obey authority. This authority comes in many forms as we evolve as individuals. In the beginning our own parents are the primary voices of authority in our lives. They lead us, inform us, influence and command us. They instill upon us their own sense of values, morals and beliefs. They project upon us their own perspectives of reality, of what is beneficial and what is harmful, of what is important and what is trivial, of what is worthy and of what is useless. <o:p></o:p><br />
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As we grow older, the range of authority figures increases to encompass our teachers, our friends, our peers, our superiors, our bosses, our law enforcers, our governments, our courts, our leaders and our state. Yet none of these figures of authority offers anything unique or original. They, just like us, have inherited all their value and ideals from the authority figures in their own lives, who in turn have inherited it from those in their lives and so on endlessly to the beginning of humanity. And while the values we live by evolve and transform from generation to generation, the process of how we derive our own sense of personal value stays the same. As a result, we become nothing more than derivatives of the times and circumstances in which we live. And though, there may be slight variations in how we express ourselves, it all fits in very nicely within the paradigm of function and use which is how society perceives the individual.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In the system in which we live, we are accustomed to attributing value to individuals based on their functions and contributions. As a result, someone like Einstein or Gandhi is perceived as being of greater value than your tax accountant or the postman, who in turn is of greater value than a homeless man or an unemployed bum. A beautiful model or talented celebrity is of greater value than a plain housewife or lowly insurance salesman, in turn of greater value than a prostitute or a drug addict. It always ties back to function and use. The greater the function and use the greater the value of the individual. And this is the approach we inadvertently take when attempting to discover our own unique purpose. We begin with the mistaken assumption that value is something you earn, rather than something that is inherent. The voice in our own heads is really the cumulative voice of all the authority figures in our lives, the voice of outer authority. We adopt this voice and make it our own, moving forwards with our lives believing that we are expressing our own unique purpose. Yet, as long as we continue to evaluate who we are based on what we <em>do</em>, we will not have begun to even scratch the surface.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Return to the case of the human infant, the newborn, once again. From the perspective of function and use, an infant is the most useless form of human on the planet. It literally is incapable of anything other than breathing, wailing and flailing its arms about. And yet it takes a very cynical perspective to look into the eyes of a newborn and to see anything less than a miracle of nature. One might argue that an infant represents a future potential for function and use within society, and this is where its value comes in. But this is a limited viewpoint. Look into the eyes of an infant and you will find yourself hypnotized by something only infants possess: The ability to be complete in their own uniqueness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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No infant has any concept of value or purpose. Yet it is expresses itself with utter uniqueness, effortlessly. The infant is not confused. When it is hungry it will let you know. Without regard of what anyone thinks about it, without a care of how it will be values by others, without concern about what purpose it must serve within society. When it is hungry it will let you know, when it is tired it will let you know, when it is happy it will let you know. Its expression is entirely unimpeded by any derived sense of value. And still, it displays an authority. The authority that demands to be fed, to be held to be recognized and attended to, to feel joy, to feel indignation, to feel love. What is this authority and where does it come from? What is the infant's purpose if it has no concept of function and use? <o:p></o:p><br />
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The expression <em>is</em> the purpose. And the authority that ensures the expression is an Inner Authority. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Voice of Inner Authority</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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The voice of Inner Authority is a silent one. It is silent in the sense that it does not make itself heard through any mental activity. It does not express itself through the intellectual or emotional mind. It is only sensed as Intuition. As we progress from infancy, our intellectual and emotional minds begin to dominate. We are sponges, soaking up everything from the environment; from the basics of how to walk and chew to how we come to perceive and value ourselves. Everything is soaked in, filtered and distilled to form our sense of self identity. And the primary tool we use to perpetuate this self-identity is our intellectual and emotional mind. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The mind expresses itself predominantly through thought and emotion. It perpetuates an incessant internal monologue (the voice in our heads) that is an amalgamation and derivative of the voices of Outer Authority. Early in our childhood, we are still tuned in somewhat to our deeper intuition, our unique expression, to the silent voice of Inner authority. This is why young kids still appear so unique, creative and unabashed in their expression of life. But slowly, over time the balance between the Inner Authority and Outer Authority begins to shift. More and more we find ourselves trapped in our own heads trying to sort right from wrong, trying to project future outcomes, trying to grasp for fulfilment. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Does a three year old worry about creating a secure future? Or about being of value to others? Or about finding happiness? Or about expressing itself more uniquely? Some might say the two year old is too stupid or ignorant to grasp such concepts, but this again is a limited and cynical view. The two year old expresses itself constantly and effortlessly because it is still grounded in its own nature, in its own Inner Authority. <o:p></o:p><br />
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And yet, its "fall from grace" is an inevitable one, because that is the nature of the process. The voice of Inner Authority never enforces, never commands, never explains, never cajoles or convinces. This is unlike the voice in our heads, which is forever explaining, rationalizing, comparing, evaluating, defending or blaming. The voice in our heads is nothing more than a power struggle, a hunger game between competing voices of authority - the voices of our spiritual beliefs, religious doctrines, political parties, moral police, justice system, family values, parental influences - all in flux all competing to control and dominate who we believe ourselves to be, how we will survive and how we will be of use. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Inner Authority does not control, it accepts. It does not command, it whispers. It does not condemn, it permits. It does not dominate, it acquiesces. Even as the balance shifts within our beings to an externally derived sense of self, it does nothing to obstruct the purpose. Because experience and expression <em>is</em> the purpose. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Reconnecting with Inner Authority</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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As long as you continue to determine the value of individual existence based on function and use you will remain estranged from your own Inner Authority. Because Inner Authority does not place any value on these attributes. Rather the existence of Life itself is the only value there can ever be. That you exist in this moment (your being) rather than the functions you satisfy (your doing) is what is of primary value. From the perspective of Inner Authority all individuals that exist are of equal value by simple virtue of the fact that they exist. Their own existence is the <em>only</em> thing of value, everything else is contrived.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is difficult for the intellectual-emotional mind to wrestle with because it is accustomed to differentiating between people and things based on their perceived value. After all if everything is of equal value how can there be anything unique about it? And so it is confronted with the same paradox of the snowflake and its purpose. As long as you turn to your own thought processes to provide you your sense of value you will inadvertently be misled, because your thought processes are not unique to you, they are derived from the voices of Outer authority. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Turn your attention inwards instead and catch a glimpse of the world that is inside. It is just as real, just as vital and just as ancient as the one outside. A single strand of your DNA contains the entire history of the Universe and still it is completely unique from any other. Contemplate this mystery. Meditate on yourself and try to delve deeper. Use your intuition to try and get a feel, a sense of your own unique reality, your own karmic blueprint. Your inner world needs and requires as much attention as does the outer. And in exploring this world you will fall prey to the same tendencies that you do in your outer reality. The voices of Outer Authority will influence you here as well. Your intellectual-emotional Mind will attempt to dominate this process too.<o:p></o:p><br />
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But you can and will revisit again and again to that place of Inner Authority, that waits patiently and unperturbed for your return. As you develop a deeper, more intuitive sense of yourself, one that does not rely on your thought processes and rationalizations to perpetuate it, you will begin to exhibit it more and more in your outer world as well. The balance begins to shift again and the pendulum begins its return journey.<br />
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As you grow in recognition of your own true nature and inherent self-worth, so will you perceive the same in others around you. It happens simultaneously in tandem. The one cannot happen without the other and if it does it is only another indication that you have been misled by your thought processes. Because the outer world and inner world are only reflections of each other. The voices of authority, of power, of aggression, of obedience, of morality and righteousness, of control and fear that you perceive in the world outside are none other than the thoughts and emotions fleeting through your Mind. And yet, in moments of great clarity, when the silent yet deeply grounded sense of your own Inner Authority becomes so very palpable, what you are simultaneously sensing is the beauty and infallibility of the spirit of Creation.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Your own unique existence is the only thing of value in this world. And to be here, exactly as you are in this moment, is the greatest purpose you can ever serve. <o:p></o:p>Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-27647146953622697492013-02-14T10:55:00.000-05:002013-02-14T10:58:09.418-05:00Rediscovering Love<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">From the moment we emerge into the world our experience of life becomes a desperate search to fulfill our needs. The experience of being in the womb is one of unconditional love. It is a place of warmth, comfort, silence and deep fulfilment. All our needs are met without question and we evolve and grow unimpeded by any lack of nourishment or fear. Yet the moment of birth, is the first and most traumatic moment of our lives. As we emerge from the quiet unconditional protection of the womb into a cold, vast and confusing world we experience that first gut-wrenching feeling of primal fear that will set the stage for the experience of the rest of our lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In our infancy we soon begin to realize that the reality of this world is very different from the one from which we have just emerged. In this world, lack is a reality we must all experience. Needs cannot always be met. As we cry for our mothers to feed us, to clean us, to soothe us we realize more and more that we must rely on another being to take care of our needs. It doesn't just happen on its own. More importantly we become aware of the distance both physical and emotional between ourselves and those around us. How the love and affection of others is not always and easily available. A deep sense of isolation and disconnect slowly begins to creep into the fabric of our self-identities and we begin to crave more and more what we find we cannot have. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>An Existence based on Need</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And so it continues into childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Some of us experience family lives full of laughter, love and acceptance. Some of us experience childhoods filled with drama, heartbreak and confusion. Still others have experiences of violence, hatred and abuse. While the upbringing we've had holds a strong bearing on how we evolve as individuals and with regards to our future relationships, our family experience is only a single slice of the pie. As we grow older our relationships within school, high school, college and further into society play a large part in influencing how we evolve in our self-perception, our perceptions of others and how we come to perceive Love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Each one of you will have experienced rejection, chastisement, humiliation, alienation, aggression, hatred and even violence. If you didn't experience it at home, you have at school or at camp or college or work or in a number of other societal interactions. And every one of those experiences is a harsh reminder of that singular moment of intense trauma you once experienced, that moment of birth when your entire world was taken away from you and you were delivered into the desolation that is this reality. And although those memories are locked away deep within your subconscious, you experience that trauma over and over again every day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And still we find ourselves motivated by a strange, even irrational drive. It is the hope that somewhere and somehow we will find completion; that we can become whole again. This drive also emerges from the subconscious need to return to that state of perfect contentment we once experienced while within the womb. After all if we had never experienced such wholeness before, how would we even know to look for it? We may not be completely conscious of it but that is the overarching need that drives us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This need is evident everywhere you look around you. It shows itself in the drive of the young salesman, in the ambition of the athlete, in the aspirations of the school girl, in the greed of the businessman, in the lust of the adulterer, in the practice of the disciple, in the actions of a thief, in the loneliness of the unwed 30-something yr. old, in the quiet desperation of the unhappy stay at home mom, in the perversion of the sex offender. Different degrees, different flavors, with different impacts and different consequences, some more destructive than others. Yet they all stem from the same one need - the deep subconscious need to be whole again. After all each one of these people started the same way as an infant that emerged from the womb. Not one of these individuals sat up all night plotting away within the placenta on how they were going to grow up to become a salesperson, an athlete, a drama queen or a mass murderer. Every life begins in pure innocence. Yet with the first shocking breath of oxygen and exposure to the elements, something fractures within the psyche. For some that fracture remains relatively small and more manageable, for a few it is severe and can become further aggravated by circumstance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yet, regardless of how large the fracture, it happens to all of us. And in that no one is unique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>The Quest for Completion</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The search for wholeness, to become complete, is really a search for the conditions we once experienced within the womb. It is the search for unconditional Love. What we perceive as love in our society today is that elusive image that is perpetuated by our driving need and feelings of lack. It doesn't help that this is constantly reiterated, revalidated and reflected back to us in the media. We as a species have misunderstood what Love is all about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Think for a moment on what your first experience of Love was. It was when you, as an infant, turned to your mother or father to feed you, to keep you warm, to protect you, to give you security. Love became immediately synonymous with Need at that point. You came to associate loving those whom you perceived as being attentive to what you needed. And even though those needs couldn’t be met a hundred per cent of the time, through perfecting the sophisticated art of crying, cooing and tantrums you learned how to sufficiently manipulate your environment and your caregivers into maximizing their attention, both physical and emotional.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fast-forward to adulthood and our perceptions of Love as a society are not very different. When searching for a mate or companion we have a tendency to approach people we meet with a preconceived list in mind of what we would want our perfect mate to look like: their physical appearance, their personality traits, their sense of humour, the sexual chemistry, the financial security, the potential for variety and adventure, the emotional maturity, the willingness to communicate or whatever criteria that we believe will fulfil us. And while we may be able to skillfully rationalize to ourselves that we are looking for an experience to "share" our lives with someone, what we are really looking for is someone who will take care of our needs. And in return we may even be willing to take care of some of theirs if necessary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In effect, what we are subconsciously striving for is that mate who will make us whole again, complete again - our soul mate, our white knight or princess who will give us that elusive ‘happily ever after’ that they always talk about in fairy tales. That happily ever after was what we experienced in the womb and even that didn’t last. It never does. Because there is no such thing as an "ever after", there is only ever this present moment and the reality that it brings with it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In actuality, that entire journey of Life is really one of a personal deconstruction followed by a reintegration. That initial fracture that occurred in our psyches at childbirth forms more cracks and fissures as we grow and evolve through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. Yet there comes a point in our lives, when the collective weight of all these cumulative traumas begins to weigh unbearably on us. We come to see little by little, how every hope, every dream, every fantasy we have ever had about Life, Love and Peace was just our mind's way of coping with the unbearable trauma that was too difficult to see, too difficult to expose to the light of day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hiding our wounds behind protective armor doesn't help them to heal rather it causes them to fester. And yet, we are convinced that we must walk about in each other's company wearing our masks and armors of protection hoping that no one else will ever perceive how vulnerable and naked we really are beneath it all. All of this posing and posturing, role playing and power games we play with ourselves and others are nothing more than coping mechanisms to distract us from taking a closer look at ourselves, at those primal wounds that still exist unhealed and deeply painful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><strong>Reintegrating Our Selves</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our quest to find Love in truth is nothing more than the quest to heal, to become whole again. That can only begin when we are willing to turn our attention away from the world and from other people and take a deep, penetrating look within ourselves at all the ways we feel hurt, unfairly treated, unloved and unworthy. That is where the healing begins - with sincerity. Only by exposing your wounds to the sun can the wounds being to heal in its unconditional warmth. Judging your wounds through blame or guilt only aggravates them and prevents healing. The only way you can begin to experience the joy of unconditional Love again is to realize that the capacity for it lies deep within you. You are your own first candidate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one else can give you what you crave because they do not have it to give it. They are all, just like you, craving the same experience. One starving man cannot satisfy the hunger of another starving man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t be afraid to show your wounds to the world. It may be unnerving, frightening even but it is the most courageous choice you can ever make. It is your choice to be authentically you, without a costume and without your armour. Rest assured no matter how invincible or powerful those around you look, they are hurting and suffering underneath just the same as you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Learn to look beneath the surface.<br /><br />As this process of reintegration begins, you slowly begin to come together, piece by piece, healing one psychological fracture after the other. And as each fracture heals, simultaneously another lack is fulfilled. In its place instead is a feeling of abundance, of uncaused fulfillment. Yet in other areas, the lack persists and can and will disconcert you. You will experience fear many times as you go through this process and will relapse into old ways of thinking repeatedly. At times you will feel content and lacking nothing and at others you will feel desolate and needy. Each fissure must be sealed, each wound must be healed. But once the integration begins it cannot be stopped. It is a process that is beyond your control that will shape the very way you view yourself.<br /><br />This is a journey back to Love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the love of the fractured mind, the need based, conditional, contextual love that is here one day and gone the next when circumstances become less favorable. This is not the love that can be broken up, divorced, betrayed or forgotten. This is the Love that is whole and intact in and of itself because it emerges from a vast and infinite wellspring that is no one person’s property yet all of us are extensions of it. This is the Love of your own true Nature and it is unconditional and unsurpassable. <br /><br />As you heal layer by layer, from the more surface wounds to those deep and dark almost undetectable primal wounds within your being you will feel more and more connected to and moved by a sense of this place of Love. Slowly you will witness a transformation in your attitudes, your thoughts, your words, your actions and your relationships. As you being to experience this Love that lies in the core of your being, so will you begin to express it and bring it into your Life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There comes a point when the warmth of the love becomes so palpable and so present that it begins to dominate the experience of your Life. Then Love, not need, becomes the new backdrop of your story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Your relationship with others: family, friends, children and your mate will transform because this is not a Love that seeks anything outside itself. It is abundant and already fulfilled. This is a Love that gives to any and all that need. It is the Love of unconditional acceptance - of yourself and of others. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The journey back to wholeness is complete. We have found once again what we have craved from the moment of birth, what we experienced within the womb. And yet what has taken the place of that simple innocence of being is a deep wisdom. It is the wisdom that recognizes that the contentment we felt in the womb always lay within us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-46060894622977972742013-02-12T15:47:00.000-05:002013-02-12T15:47:50.216-05:00Conscious Creators of RealityBy observing a mundane phenomenon such as an apple falling from a tree, Newton discovered gravity, a fundamental property within the Universe that became the catalyst for a new era of scientific inquiry. Similarly, some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by individuals whose keen powers of observation, of the trivial and the ordinary, allowed them to draw back the veil of reality and peek behind the curtains into the inner workings of the Universe. Just as an apple falling towards the Earth is representative of the same fundamental principles that guide the entire material Universe, it is similarly possible, by observing the mundane phenomena at work within your own conscious mind, to intuit some of the deeper principles that operate within Consiousness as a whole.<br />
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In the <a href="http://theexistentialfunkhole.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-universe-out-of-nothing.html" target="_blank">Universe out of Nothing</a>, I discussed how the scientific approach has reached its limits in its understanding of Reality. The Big Bang theory is able to trace the history of the Universe all the way back to a time when the entire Universe and its contents were compacted into a single infinitely dense object about the size of an atom. Yet, how this single point of material reality came into existence out of Nothing , is something that continues to baffle scientists. This is because Science, in its quest to discover and define reality, made an erroneous assumption which limits it from providing a more holistic understanding of the nature of reality. The assumption Science makes is that reality is fundamentally <strong>objective</strong>. In other words, regardless of whether there is a conscious subject to observe it, the material Universe continues to exist. And so there seems to be a great divide between scientific reality and the personal realities we find ourselves living in. Because the personal realities we experience are primarily <strong>subjective</strong>.<br />
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<strong>The Dual Nature of Reality</strong><br />
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The universe thus appears a paradox. Reality itself seems dual in Nature. There is <strong>Material Reality</strong> which appears in the form of our Universe, galaxies and planets, the Earth, living organisms, elements and compounds, molecules, atoms and electrons. Our own bodies are part of this material reality, our bones, muscles, organs, tissues, cells and DNA. The brain itself is an organ made up of a highly complex network of synapses that fire electrical impulses that further trigger chemical reactions within it. But that is as far as our objective experience of reality goes. <br />
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There is another face of reality that is purely subjective and this is <strong>Conscious Reality</strong>. It is the reality of our minds, the one we find ourselves predominantly living in . This is the version of reality that feels intimate, real and extremely personal. It is the reality within which we exist as individuals rather than organisms and within which we create relationships that are guided by emotion rather than physical laws. <br />
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Science, in its attempts to understand Consciousness, divided Material existence into two categories: the living and the non-living. Living organisms fall within a spectrum ranging from the simplest bacteria to vastly more complex human beings. Living things are objects in the material world which are subject to all the physical laws of the Universe and yet have the capacity to display 'intelligence', to create new organisms of their kind, adapt within their own environments and evolve in design. Non-living objects however, are objects that display none of these capacities and are basically simple and elemental. <br />
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What this approach implies is that, Consciousness is <em>the product</em> of the biological structure of living organisms and intelligent life. Non-living things, because of the very fact that they do not demonstrate any intelligent qualities cannot possibly produce Consciousness. The second implication of this approach, is that if Consciousness is a product of only a subset of objects within material reality, it cannot possibly have any bearing on the laws and principles that guide material reality itself; instead, it should be subject to material laws and must obey them. Its a case of the chicken and the egg. Because the current scientific understanding is that reality is material and that this material Universe is what produced both non-living and living organisms, and that biology is responsible for consciousness, it follows that material reality is the source of all consciousness. <br />
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While this is the accepted assumption, ask any scientist how this "consciousness" suddenly came to be in a Universe that was unanimously non-living, billions of years ago, and very few may even attempt an answer. The fact is no one knows. And so whether you ask: how that single point of matter that caused the Big Bang appeared out of Nothing, or whether you ask: how Life and Consciousness suddenly appeared in a purely material and inanimate Universe, you will receive the same blank stare. But perhaps, this blank stare means something.<br />
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<strong>The Properties of Thought</strong><br />
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When observing your own consciousness and the various conscious phenomena that occur within your own mind, something becomes very obvious. The first is that <em>thought </em>has no material properties. It has no mass of its own and occupies no space whatsoever. It is capable of traveling at inifinite speeds (instantaneously) and is not restricted by distance. You can experience a thought of the street you live on and of the hotel you stayed at in the Dominican in the same amount of time, equally effortlessly. Your physical distance from each location is irrelevant to your ability to experience a thought about either of them. So, thoughts are not limited by the speed of light.<br />
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Thought is also unrestricted by time. You can experience a thought of the past and of the future, you can travel anywhere within time using thought. Thought is also unaffected by gravity or any material force. Whether you are standing on the Earth or on the moon, are sitting in a chair or on a roller coaster, thought occurs and can be experienced unimpeded by any of the forces at play. Therefore, Thought is not subject to any of the laws of the Material Universe. Now, you may argue that if someone were to take a sledgehammer to your skull, the blunt force may impede your ability to think. But what I am talking about right now is not the biological abilities of the human brain and how it ties into Consciousness. Yes, such a force may end <em>your</em> particular experience of thought, but the Thought itself remains unaffected. <br />
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Let me pause briefly to first define <em>Thought</em> and how I intend to use the word in this context. <strong>Though</strong>t is any event within Consciousness. Therefore, Thought events may come in various forms such as - Intention, Imagination, Abstraction, Perception, Emotion, Intuition and Reason. I will investigate each Thought form in greater detail in future articles. But for now, it will suffice to say, that any way in which we can experience ourselves consciously (as well as sub-consciously eg. dreams) would consitute Thought.<br />
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So in returning to the discussion on the properties of Thought, it becomes evident that it has no material reality and is not subject to any material laws. The reason why we can even imagine such concepts as time travel, unicorns, alternate dimensions and God is because Thought is not restricted by the physical laws of the Universe. But if the scientific perception of reality were true ie the physical Universe is all that exists, how can Thought operate independently of this reality?<br />
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<strong>Before the Bang</strong><br />
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This very simple observation is immediately accessible to anyone who considers it. And this simple observation points to a Reality that is much greater than the existence of our physical Universe. Whereas, science assumes that Consciousness emerged somewhere along the way from the physical Universe, the truth is in fact the opposite: Our entire physical Universe was born as a result of a single event within Consciousness - from a single Thought.<br />
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That vast abyss of Nothing before the Big Bang was Consciousness itself. What created that single infinitely dense point of matter that exploded to create our physical Universe, was<em> the Thought of a single infinitely dense point of matter</em>.<br />
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Viewing Consciousness in this way revolutionizes the way in which we see ourselves and our thoughts. No longer are we simply forms of intelligent matter experiencing a finite existence, at the whims of an inanimate Universe. Rather each one is an expression of Consciousness creating realities from moment to moment. Every Thought event we experience has the capacity to create and shape our Universe and our circumstances. Every one of us is a conscious Creator of reality.<br />
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<br />Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-60394429076192456492013-02-08T11:35:00.000-05:002013-02-08T12:30:15.739-05:00A Meditation<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Settling down into my office chair...there's no one here. I gaze through the window at the silent winter storm brewing outside... trees alone stand like lonely sentries, their branches dusted white by the frivolous wind. A flock of birds breaks formation. It’s every bird for himself. Disoriented ... they search blindly for a spot of refuge, their instincts numbed by the blistering cold. All this happens noiselessly. My eyes absorbed, my mind rendered dormant and uncomprehending, I slip into deep oblivion...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the distance, I hear a temple bell. The sound of water running over stones. A crow caws into the emptiness. And then another. And another. The temple bell rings again. It reverberates with a deeper tone and my feet tremble beneath me. My eyes open to a dark room bathed in the warm glow of a fireplace. Shadows dance across the stone walls of this small, cozy hut. I rise from my wooden chair, gathering my robes around me, my feet caressed by the warm rush mats as I walk towards the entrance of my home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A crisp morning breeze greets me. Dawn has just broken over the horizon. It is time for prayer. My hut sits atop a hill. From here I can see the entire expanse of this Monastery in the mountains. In the center, a great stone courtyard houses the main temple. On either side, two smaller temples and the temple building. An old monk, bare-shouldered, in maroon robes, ambles towards the temple. Weeping cherry trees in bloom rustle their swooping branches. The wind strews blossoms across the stone floor as an offering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Something feels different. My body - it feels changed; somehow leaner, somehow lighter, more flexible, more at ease. My mind too is silent. My attention is relaxed, open and invites in experience without favor, without judgment, without expectation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My age is unknown to me, but I sense I have lived a while. I am a simple monk, a peaceful man, an entirely different man. And yet I feel I am the same - The same as I have always been and the same as I will always be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My feet dressed in wooden slippers carefully descend the steep stone steps roughly hewn into the hill side. The sharp click-clack echoes eternally through the morning air. The temple bell rings again, rising me from my reverie...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My eyes open to the snow squalls outside the office window. The monk is no more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reflect on him fondly and his life that I lived. Now, here I am again, in the life of this man. I reflect on him fondly too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now falling still again, my gaze returns to the silent world outside, my heart brimming with the emptiness of it all...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-30415220265367760762013-02-07T12:23:00.001-05:002013-02-07T12:26:30.108-05:00Dreaming Up Reality<strong>The great sage Chuang Chou said, "Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."</strong> <o:p></o:p><br />
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This apparent paradox of realities is one we all have experienced. But because most of our dreams lack any real lucidity and fade soon after we awake, we often dismiss the realities they present us as fictitious or imaginary. Every once in a while you may have a powerfully vivid dream that even after waking lingers both in detail and emotional impact for a considerable amount of time. You may narrate the dream to others, commenting "how real" it felt and search for some hidden meaning or symbolism. This felt <em>real-ness</em> of the dream coupled with the clear lingering memories in your mind are what attribute the sense of reality to the dream. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Three Anomalies</strong><br />
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Patients under the influence of painkillers such as Morphine, regularly experience dreams and hallucinations of a highly detailed and logical nature. They sometimes report not being able to differentiate between reality and their dream states precisely because the two resemble each other so closely. In these cases, they often struggle to establish which reality is the real one, by attempting to identify which reality has more inconsistencies. In particularly traumatic events, the hallucinating or dreaming mind may create a reality which is more consistent than the reality that person actually lives in. An example is of a person I know who was in a car accident in which some of her family members perished and she alone survived. In the hospital for weeks under the influence of Morphine she lived in an alternate reality where her family was still alive and in fact were attempting to convince her that the accident had never happened and that she had made it all up in some paranoid hallucination. Oscillating between the two realities, it took a considerable amount of effort of will for her to finally stabilize within the reality in which the car crash did happen, her family did perish and she lay in a hospital bed recovering. But what of the other reality?<o:p></o:p><br />
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On the other hand consider a person who having suffered some form of injury has suffered a severe memory loss. You have often seen films in which this is the case. For this person the reality of the life that existed prior to the accident simply does not exist. Even if the events of the person's life are narrated back to them, even if they are shown photos or videos of their past, it seems to lack any feeling of real-ness and since there are no lingering memories of the events there is no sense of reality. So did that past reality exist?<o:p></o:p><br />
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The third example is that of an individual that may be diagnosed as schizophrenic. This person may experience sights, sounds, smells, objects, events and people that, within our consensus reality, simply don't exist. Our lack of understanding around the subject leads us to categorize such individuals as mentally insane and we medicate them. Yet that individual's experience of their own reality is that it feels just as real as yours. Even the memories they create are of people and events that have never actually occurred in your reality. What often accompanies the experience of schizophrenia is an attached sense of paranoia. It is this paranoia that the individual and those around them (family members, doctors) react to the most. The paranoia is often simply a reaction to the realization that the reality you are living in is out-of-synch with the one others are experiencing. There is an overwhelming feeling of panic that ensues followed by a sense of deep and utter isolation that very few can imagine. No matter how alone you feel in your life, the sense of sharing this same one reality with all those you know and love, provides a foundation of security and balance that we take for granted. Imagine waking up one day and finding out that the reality you live in is entirely your own and you cannot share this with anyone. You cannot experience a greater isolation than this. It is often thought that a schizophrenic mind is an irrational mind, yet some schizophrenics are highly rational people. A popular example is the one of John Nash, genius mathematician and Nobel prize laureate. He was portrayed by Russel Crowe in the film "A Beautiful Mind". For years, Nash had and maintained relationships that never existed in the consensus reality. And eventually his means of coping was the acceptance that the second reality was only his hallucination. The inconsistency that allowed him to anchor himself was that the people he "imagined" never aged. Similarly, many individuals diagnosed as schizophrenic regularly experience overlapping realities. So which reality is real?<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>Defining Reality</strong><br />
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In order to answer any of the questions posed above, it is first necessary to identify how we define reality. Is reality this disconnected and separate entity which exists independently of a person? That has been the general answer that we have, as a species, accepted as true. We have come to accept that reality is a steady state system in which the individual is only a part. This part can only interact with the whole in a very limited manner, through word and action. Yet, discoveries in quantum physics have revealed that reality is not as easy definable or identifiable as we previously thought. Rather than a fixed state, reality is more like a wave of potentiality. In fact, there is no such thing as a reality, <em>only</em> potentiality. What we call reality is a characteristic that is contributed by the observer. In other words, when an observer (a point of Consciousness) interacts with waves of Potentiality, they collapse into fixed particles - what we would refer to as Reality. (Read <a href="http://theexistentialfunkhole.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-universe-out-of-nothing.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">A Universe Out Of Nothing</span></a> for an elaboration).<br />
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And so in this version, Reality is no longer some static state that is independent of the individual, but instead is wholly dependant on the individual to create it. An analogy that may help to illustrate this further is to imagine a blank canvas. This canvas is Reality. It is completely blank. What this canvas contains is the <em>potential </em>for a line to appear here, a curve to appear there, an angle to appear somewhere else. There are an infinite number of dots, lines or pattern combinations that can be created on this canvas. And yet the canvas also presents certain limitations. No line can appear outside the canvas, no line can go through the canvas. The canvas presents the limitations yet does not actually create anything. It is the individual who must choose which potentiality to give Reality to, what wave to collapse into a particle - in other words what line to draw. You can think you are creating something new, but in fact you are only choosing which invisible path on the paper you want to make visible, using ink. The paths already potentially exist. Every line you can possibly draw already exists in potential form. Michelangelo is quoted to have said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." This is in effect how Reality works.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This perspective on Reality is a game changer. Because what this says is that each and every individual is creating and interacting with a completely unique and separate reality. Because in every moment no two peoples' Consciousness are the same. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Now imagine a group of artists in an art class painting their own picture. There is a nude model in the center of the room and each artist is attempting to paint as exact a rendition of the model as they possibly can. Once the paintings are complete, they all get together and compare. Because all their paintings are so nearly identical to each other (varying only in perspective but in 100% agreement of the details) they all agree that their paintings represent reality. This is what we mean by "consensus reality"- (a reality in which is perspective is unique but the details are uniform). It is the reality everyone 'agrees' exists. But then sitting alone in a corner of the room is an artist who seems unusually quiet. And so the rest of the group shuffles over to see what he has drawn and instead of a nude model they see the painting of a vase. When questioned on it, the artist claims that this is what is sitting in the center of the room. The group labels him insane and attempts to correct him. Or perhaps, the artist's canvas is blank and this is what he perceives in the center of the room. Or perhaps, the artist's canvas is the picture of a nude model standing with her dog. In each case, because the lone artist's view of reality is so completely out of synch with the consensus reality, the rest of the group labels the artist: in the first case as hallucinating/dreaming, in the second as an amnesiac, in the third as a schizophrenic. So what is really in the center of the room? Can this question even be answered? Given the information I have provided you, if you were to answer in accordance with the larger group, perhaps you also believe in reality being a consensus reality. However, if you were to allow that all the possibilities exist then what you are allowing is that reality itself has no <em>real-ness</em> to it. The real-ness is what the individual feels.<o:p></o:p><br />
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And so the only answer we can attempt to the above question is: <strong>none of them and all of them</strong>. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Source of Reality</strong><br />
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In working with this paradigm, we find that Reality is in fact the creation of an individual's consciousness. It then becomes evident that each person's reality is entirely their own and is completely disconnected from another person's reality. In fact, this Universe you live in and experience daily is not <em>the</em> Universe. It is <em>your</em> Universe. You are the sole creator of this entire infinite expanse of galaxies and solar systems, the Sun and the Earth, the Oceans and Continents, the Plants and Animals, all the people on the planet, your family and friends, all of it. Everything that exists is the creation of your own individual Consciousness. This may be too absurd to fathom but think of this instead:<o:p></o:p><br />
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Imagine you have a dream and in this dream you live an entire lifetime. In this lifetime you are a particular person, you grow and you age, you meet people, you have a family, some die, you experience joy and illness and eventually you perish. Waking up from this dream you realize that it was all a dream. But within the dream it all felt real. So what was it that felt real? What was that quality of real-ness and where did it come from?<o:p></o:p><br />
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Now, you will agree that you created the entire dream world. Each character and their story, each event, the details, the places and things you saw, it was all your creation. Yet simultaneously, you identified yourself as only one character in the dream, the main protagonist. You imagined yourself as one single person interacting with the environment and the other characters you experienced. But on waking you can see that it was all you. You were not that single character in a Universe of others, rather <em>were</em> the entire Universe, even though the <em>real </em>you doesn't exist in that Universe. The real-ness of the dream Universe that you felt was really your own sense of existence which you then projected into your dream world. What felt so real, what lent the whole experience of real-ness was your Consciousness. Real-ness (what we may also refer to as Existence or Presence) is a quality of Consciousness. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<em>(the Buddhists have a term for this that they call "suchness". It is the quality of the existence of everything. We often separate this sense of existence by separating this "suchness" from the experience of "am-ness" which is the sense of your own personal existence. However, this sense of am-ness and suchness are really one and the same. In fact, your sense of being is what imparts the sense of existence to the entire Universe)</em><o:p></o:p><br />
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Everything that Consciousness creates is experienced as real, just like everything water encounters is experienced as wet. Wetness is a quality that identifies the interaction of water, similarly Presence or Real-ness is a quality that identifies the interaction of Consciousness. In other words, everything that exists only exists because Consciousness that has created and permitted its existence. You literally create the Universe in each moment. By "you" in this case I am not referring to the "person" you identify yourself to be, but the Consciousness that is creating the whole experience, just like in the dream analogy above. While your point of view may for the moment be fixated in the reality of being this one person, your true identity is more linked to the Consciousness that is feeding that reality.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Chuang Chou was both the man dreaming of the butterfly and the butterfly dreaming of the man, and yet he was neither the butterfly nor the man.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<br />Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-44991737755981982982013-02-04T13:07:00.001-05:002013-02-04T13:07:23.848-05:00Creating a 'Science' of ConsciousnessUp until now, all conversation on the topic of Consciousness has been limited to the metaphysical, spiritual or philosophical realms of our lives. Science has focused its energy and efforts, instead, in the direction of the material Universe. The discovery of the Laws of Gravity, of Thermodynamics, of electromagnetism and of Relativity may have changed the context in which we live our lives, but the actual experience of <em>living, </em>of our experience of ourselves, our thoughts and emotions, how we relate to one another, how we relate to society, our happiness and peace of mind has been relatively less influenced by the discovery of these laws. Realizing that the Earth revolves around the Sun as opposed to the other way round has very little personal relevance to our experience of Life. And it is this impersonal nature of Science that keeps it cold, detached and disconnected from the inner realities we live in.<o:p></o:p><br />
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If asked who we believe ourselves to be, we might try and use scientific jargon to define ourselves. From a physics perspectives, we are physical masses subject to the laws Inertia, Momentum, Electromagnetism, gravitation etc. like everything else. From a chemistry perspective, we are complex compositions of organic compounds, elements and minerals. From a biological perspective we are highly complex Organisms composed of trillions of cells with highly specialized functions. From a Neuroscience perspective we are body-mind systems powered by a highly complex processor called the brain which comprises a network of synapses that conduct information through the transfer of electrical charge. From a psychoanalytical perspective we may be a Myers -Briggs Personality type. But no matter what scientific explanation you use to define who you are, no matter how comprehensive or sophisticated, you are left with a sense that the real essence of <strong>You</strong> has been completely missed. And it is precisely because we have such limited means of defining ourselves that we end up experiencing our own lives as finite, incomprehensible and grossly limited. The <em>Science of Life</em> and the <em>Experience of Life</em> are felt to be two completely different things. <o:p></o:p><br />
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What is necessary then is to develop a new language, one that sheds light on the behind-the-scenes dynamics within the realm of Consciousness - a "Science of Consciousness". In the blog post: <a href="http://theexistentialfunkhole.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-universe-out-of-nothing.html%20" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">A Universe Out of Nothing</span></a> Consciousness was discovered to be the <em>Nothing from which Everything emerges</em>, it is the foundation of all material experience. Without Consciousness, the Material Universe has no reality. Now, having developed this basic premise, we can begin an exploration into the Nature of Consciousness itself and the principles that govern it. In exploring in this way, we will begin to discover how Consciousness is the foundation of Reality from which we ourselves emerge and to which we remain connected through our entire experience of Life. What you are is more than just a biological organism, a chemical compound, a physical matter, a network of synapses, a Myers-Briggs personality type. In fact these are only a few logic models in which you can choose to perceive yourself but they do not, by any means, contain the totality of the experience of who you are. Rather, who you are is not limited by any one perception or point-of-view but is the very foundation of all perceptions and points-of view. You are the Consciousness which is prior to perception. In exploring the Nature of Consciousness what we are really exploring is the Nature of who you are. <o:p></o:p><br />
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You might question how such an endeavor can be anything more than speculative. After all, how can we explore something as esoteric as Consciousness much less develop a <em>Science</em> of it?! Until now all talk of Consciousness had been the domain of poets, philosophers, seers, mystics, psychics and gurus. And most of the conversation surrounding Consciousness had been <strong>prescriptive</strong> rather than <strong>investigative</strong>. Most gurus and self-help teachers focus their ideas and teachings on how to become aware of your consciousness, how to work with your consciousness, how to shift your perspectives within consciousness. But few have ventured into the study of Consciousness itself other than the specific relevance it has to a particular person. As a result, the larger questions in Life about "Who we are", "Where we come from", "Where anything comes from", "What happens to us after we die", "How was the Universe Created" - the so called Big Questions of Life, the questions that every kid asks their parents, the questions that make every parent squirm when asked by their kids, still fall within the domain of ancient metaphysical texts and neo-spiritual jargon. This is not a knock against the ancients or contemporary spiritual teachers by any means. In fact, these two groups have provided a wealth of wisdom that must not be ignored. Where they have fallen short, however, is in developing a language that makes these deeper truths of life accessible to the modern intellectual mind; one that is naturally rational and fiercely skeptical. Criticizing the structured and highly organized Logic of the modern human's intellect, is something that many spiritual teachers tend to do, often seeing our intellects as an obstacle to a truer and fuller understanding of Consciousness. The effect that approach has is that it creates a further rift between the Analytical Mind and the Intuitive Mind, the Left Brain and the Right Brain, the Rational and the Esoteric. In society as well, this creates opposing intellectual factions, the scientific community and the metaphysical/philosophical/religious community, that are increasingly critical and mistrustful of each other's viewpoints. The problem is that they just don't speak the same language.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In developing a "Science of Consciousness" I propose to take a different approach. The Logics of Metaphysics have had a relatively slow evolution compared to that of Science whose evolution has been exponential. As a result the language that Science uses is current and relevant while that of Metaphysics/Spirituality is stale and outdated. Through my own spiritual journey and process of Inquiry, I have come to realize that these two aspects of Logic are really one and the same. In fact, each one is incomplete without the inclusion of the other and it is precisely because they exclude each other that each is unable to bridge the gap towards providing a more complete and holistic understanding of Reality. <o:p></o:p><br />
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In my exploration of Consciousness, I will attempt to demonstrate and further justify how Consciousness and Matter are inextricably linked; that in fact, matter is the "image in the mirror" and Consciousness is the reality projecting it. Just as you can witness the movements and dynamics of your body by looking in a mirror, it is possible to use Physical Reality as the Mirror in which to glimpse and study the dynamics of Consciousness. This is a highly personal study, because unlike matter which can be separated and studied in isolation under a microscope in an impersonal manner, Consciousness can only be studied through meditation (experientially) and through contemplation (introspecting or reflecting). Each person's own experience of Consciousness is their one and only portal to the study of Consciousness itself. The two are not separate but are essentially one and the same, just like the light that is emitted from a lamp is exactly the same and reveals the same properties as the light emitted from the Sun. <o:p></o:p><br />
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In this exploration I will investigate how the Laws of the physical Universe are reflections of corresponding Laws within Consciousness. How matter, force, space, time, energy are manifestations and counterparts of corresponding 'principles' within Consciousness. I will explore different States of Consciousness that correspond to various hierarchies of life-forms from elemental to microscopic to plant to animal to human and further to more refined levels of consciousness. I will investigate the nature and purpose of Birth, Death and provide a different perspective on Reincarnation. These investigations to name a few are just the preliminary ventures in a larger attempt to develop a whole new paradigm; one that presents a more holistic and integrated model of reality; one that places the most distant galaxies and your own personal emotions within the same single context; one in which unification (of understanding and experience) and not separation is the heart that powers the journey.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Stay tuned. <o:p></o:p><br />
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-23380530470069219052013-01-31T13:10:00.000-05:002013-01-31T13:10:02.906-05:00A Universe Out of NothingWe currently live in the "Big Bang" age; the era in which the Big Bang theory is the predominant scientific model for how our Universe was created. There are still a number of people who doubt this theory of the Universe, however, and these are often people who believe in a more Creationist approach based on religious faith - on a Genesis of some kind. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Each party ridicules the other for their notions. Scientists who base their reasoning on logic, mathematical theory and material evidence find the theory of some divine intelligence creating the Universe absolutely ludicrous. Those of faith on the other hand find it hard to accept that the entire Universe and its contents simply "popped" out of absolutely nowhere and so despite all the hard evidence they remain unconvinced. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The fact is, while the evidence that suggests that the Universe we live in expanded and evolved from a single point of space, is impossible to ignore, there are still certain incomplete aspects to this theory that even scientists admit they have absolutely no idea of how to explain. For example, according to the big bang theory the entire Universe began from a single compressed point of matter of immense density that suddenly exploded. The theory holds well as we trace back history from now all the way till the point when that dot of matter exploded. But ask any scientist where that point of matter originated from? No one can tell you. Why did it suddenly explode and create a Universe? Nobody knows. There are a lot of theories and conjecture of course but none that have any consensus or evidence to support them. The fact is according to Science everything originated from Nothing. But science has no practical means of defining what Nothing is. The only way science defines Nothing is as the 'absence of something'. But how can everything emerge from nothing? This is a paradox that even scientists cannot answer. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Factor of Consciousness</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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The truth is that science, through all its advancements, failed to recognize that there is a fundamental factor operating in the Universe that has been ignored over and over again in every formula, every theory and every principle. This factor is Consciousness. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Consciousness is not just some theory or idea but rather it is the most empirically verifiable aspect of reality. You know you are conscious. You have absolutely no doubt about this. I know I am conscious; I have no doubt about this. Consciousness is evident everywhere in different expressions. The trees in the city park are conscious, your pet poodle is conscious, your insufferable boss is conscious, the E.Coli bacteria in your intestines are conscious. Consciousness is everywhere and is operating through everything, yet it is missing from any law of physics in existence. A theory of the Universe governed only by the laws of physics implies that there cannot possibly be Freedom of Will, because to have Will means to have the choice to operate in a spontaneous and unpredictable manner. The very physicists who develop and support these theories are inadvertently admitting that they have no Will of their own. <o:p></o:p><br />
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And so here is the dichotomy that we as a society find ourselves plunged into. On one hand, we are intellectually adapted to believe that science is a water-tight approach to reality, yet on the other hand our intuition cannot but feel that there is some important piece of this whole puzzle missing. Yeah, the Earth revolves around the Sun and there are a gazillion galaxies receding from each other and Pluto is no longer a planet, but how does this have any personal relevance for me? This Universe I live in doesn't even factor in my own existence into it. It’s a valid question.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Quantum Problem</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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Up until a few decades ago this was a question that science always found some ingenious way to sidestep. But with the advent of quantum mechanics this changed. Just like a family may organize an intervention to confront Tommy with his drug addiction issues, Quantum mechanics confronted scientists in a way that avoidance was no longer an option. The discovery was simple - an electron when observed by an observer (the scientist) behaves differently than when it is not observed. This was arguably the biggest WTF moment in the history of science. When the scientist directly observed the electron it behaved as a particle, but when the electron wasn't being observed it behaved as a wave.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Here are the two implications of this experiment: <o:p></o:p><br />
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The first one is something that is now being whispered and gossiped about in the scientific community. It is that human Consciousness can impact the material Universe without any form of direct interaction. Simply looking at an electron i.e. becoming conscious of it, can alter its state. So if just looking at an electron can alter its behaviour what does that say about the rest of the known Universe? After all, aren't electrons the 'building blocks" of the Universe? Are you not, in this moment, 'looking at' trillions of electrons every nanosecond, even though that may not be how you tend to perceive it? And as you are looking at the trillions upon trillions of electrons that make up your t-shirt sleeve, the send button on your blackberry, the tip of your kitchen knife, are you not altering their behaviour? Isn’t your chair only becoming a chair (the electrons in it becoming particles) exactly because you are aware of it? Up until then it only exists as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possibility of a chair</i> (the electrons as waves of potentiality.) There is a reason why this is being spoken about so cautiously in the scientific community because the implications of it will flip our entire worldview upside down.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The second implication is far more profound. I haven't heard of anyone in the scientific community yet who has gone this far with the implication. To illustrate let me give you a scenario:<o:p></o:p><br />
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It is 6:00 am and you are in a subway car. It’s early and at this moment, you are the only person on the car. You are relaxed, your gut is hanging out ever so slightly, and you are slouched and unconcerned about what you look like. "Ping!" the doors open and someone walks in and sits opposite you. Suddenly you are aware of the presence of another human being. Your gut retracts ever so slightly, your posture stiffens and you become a little more wary. You are still relaxed and the change although extremely subtle, has nevertheless occurred. You can't help it. What has <em>really</em> happened? Your consciousness has interacted with the consciousness of another person and that dynamic has caused a change. The other person, upon seeing you, has responded with their own change. The other person's presence makes you "self-conscious". When you are by yourself, you may go through long periods of time when you aren't even aware of yourself, but in the company of others you naturally become aware. Consciousness induces consciousness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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When the scientist observes the electron, it is not simply a matter of the scientist's human consciousness altering the material state of the electron. Rather, the scientist's Consciousness <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">induces</i> the Consciousness of the Electron. The electron, becomes <em>Conscious</em> of the scientist observing it and <em>reacts</em> by altering its state. The electron becomes <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"self conscious".</b><o:p></o:p><br />
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<strong>The Nothing before the Something</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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In developing a theory of the origination of the Universe, science has reached the boundary wall of logic and now is beating its head against it. It has reduced everything into One thing. But it can’t penetrate any further, because the only thing that is prior to the One thing is the No-thing. But what is this Nothing? Let’s take a certain analogy.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Think of yourself lying on a mad scientist's table. The mad scientist says,<o:p></o:p><br />
"You are nothing more than a collection of bone, muscle, organ and tissue that emerged from one single cell!" And you respond defiantly, <o:p></o:p><br />
"No! I am so much more. I am a human being." (Cue emotional background music). To this the scientist responds by amputating your arms, and laughing maniacally says, "See I have made you only 70% of who you are!" And you respond courageously like William Wallace,<o:p></o:p><br />
"NO! I am still me and will always be!" At this point he chops off your legs and says,<o:p></o:p><br />
"And now? Aren't you only half the person you were?" Upon which you respond,<o:p></o:p><br />
"No! I am still the same!"<o:p></o:p><br />
He now proceeds to remove all your organs one by one substituting them for mechanical ones that he attaches instead just to keep you alive (for the sake of this analogy). There is nothing left of you but your brain, which he begins to chip away at keeping you conscious all the time.<o:p></o:p><br />
No matter how much of your 'material self' is removed or destroyed your consciousness, your sense of being, of existing, remains unaltered. Now the reality is that the moment he destroys your brain completely your consciousness will no longer be able to 'exist' in the material sense. But has the Consciousness really been destroyed or has it simply retreated from that particular expression of a person? After all without the brain, human consciousness cannot find expression in the physical Universe. It is the single <em>portal of expression</em> for human consciousness. Using this analogy, let’s extend it to the big bang concept. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The Nothing that exists prior to the bang <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> Consciousness. Consciousness is really <em>nothing</em> from a material perspective. It is a big fat zero as far as science is concerned. Yet, it is the big fat zero within every formula in physics that doesn't impact the formula from a mathematical (material) perspective, just like adding zero to any number doesn't change the number. Yet this Nothing is that <em>Something</em> that you feel yourself to be even as the mad-scientist chops you up piece by piece. It is the Nothing that is not affected when you are 70% of your material self (body), 30% of your material self or just a tiny fraction holding on by a thread. It is the Nothing that is always whole and undividable.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Similarly, that Nothing prior to the Big Bang is pure Consciousness and that single point of infinitely dense matter that appears is that single <em>portal of expression</em> of Consciousness. The entire Universe is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one giant brain</i>.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">An Act of Free Will<o:p></o:p></b><br />
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In fact, physicists nowadays are developing all kinds of theories of <em>Multiverses</em>. Theories which propound that our own Universe is not the only one of its kind and that, in fact, there are infinite Universes coming into existence with similar big bangs every moment, all emerging from this single Nothing. There are many Brains that emerge from Consciousness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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And here is where the two seemingly paradoxical trajectories of science and religion intersect. Because religion posits that there is some divine, superior, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient power that created the entire Universe. Science says that everything in existence emerged from the same Nothing. Call it Divine, call it God, call it Nothing, call it Susan. They all point to the same reality. That Consciousness is the landscape in which Space, Time and your Grandmother's garden are all allowed to exist.<o:p></o:p><br />
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If an electron has consciousness, then atoms, molecules, microbes, cells, elements, rocks, dirt, plants, animals, humans, bacteria, planets, oceans, solar systems, societies all exist, subsist and evolve as a result of Consciousness. Even the natural laws and the laws of physics are given life and existence to by Consciousness. <o:p></o:p><br />
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The infinite nature of the material Universe is born from the absolute Nothingness of Consciousness. All of Life as we know it is a single act of Free Will.<o:p></o:p><br />
Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7671154534349130098.post-53109239489490407562013-01-30T15:50:00.001-05:002013-01-30T15:50:58.460-05:00Demystifying Karma'Karma' is a word that has been around for a long time. For Hindus and Buddhist it is a heavy word, weighted with centuries of meaning and interpretation. It has a gravity similar to the kind that the Judeo-Christian word "Sin" has attached to it. In fact, if you compare the two concepts together they are remarkably similar in their philosophy and approach. The only significant difference being that Sin and Redemption is seen as this linear process with an end that precipitates in some kind of final judgment by a higher power, whereas karma is a cyclical process where judgment is built and automated into the fabric of the process itself and doesn't need a God to perpetuate it. Regardless, both approaches strongly suggest that there is a Right Way and there is a Wrong Way and you kind of want to follow the Right Way if you know what’s good for you. <o:p></o:p><br />
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This sort of paradigm may have been appropriate for the ancients but in 2013 it is atrociously out of synch with a more sophisticated and nuanced experience of life. And so here is an attempt to present karma in a more accessible language:<o:p></o:p><br />
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Karma, quite simply put, is Universal Law of Equilibrium. It is the balancing principle of Reality that always seeking to restore balance where there is imbalance, to restore harmony where there is disharmony. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Karma is the energetic component of Consciousness which generates phenomena in the Universe. In the Universe it is experienced as Natural Laws. Within Consciousness it is precipitated by the Movement of Will.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Everything in the known Universe is subject to the karmic principle of balance. Electrons are subject to karma, atoms are subject to karma, cells are subject to karma, humans and animals are subject to karma, organizations are subject to karma, nations are subject to karma, planets are subject to karma, solar systems are subject to karma, galaxies are subject to karma - from the microscopic to the macroscopic, karma operates on each and every level manifesting as Natural Laws in the Universe which originate from Movements of Will within Consciousness.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In your own life, each one of you experience the balancing principle (Karma) in a variety of flavors some that are unique to you and some that are collective:<o:p></o:p><br />
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As an individual, you experience certain imbalances within your own psychological makeup which eventually translate into your material reality. These imbalances reveal themselves in the form of negative thought patterns, anxiety, depression, over aggressiveness, anger issues, depression, listlessness, lack of fulfilment, lack of trust, over zealousness, fanaticism, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, neediness, low self-esteem, showmanship, dominance, over competitiveness just to name a few. These are the disharmonies which, through expression and interaction, generate an inducing effect on your Life and your circumstances. Your own inner psychological experience influences and induces your physical circumstances and vice versa. You will attract circumstances whose eventual goal is to restore balance to that area of experience of your psyche and similarly imbalances in your life circumstances can be smoothed and balanced by cultivating an inner psychological balance. This is essentially the "Law of Attraction" that many self-help gurus and books like 'The Secret' advertise in a dumbed down and narrowed perspective.<o:p></o:p><br />
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This is not just limited to the realm of action but goes all the way down to to the root of intention itself. Your inner and outer realities are not two disconnected Universes brought together simply by action. A negative thought impacts your outside reality well before it ever gets translated into an action. We tend to have a very simplistic sense of responsibility that only extends as far as our actions, yet responsibility goes all the way down into the roots of our inner experience, our thoughts, emotions and intentions. But whether we realize the magnitude and impact of our inner experience or not, the Balancing Principle (karma) operates regardless. Imbalances experienced within your inner experience will attract outer experiences that eventually balance them out.<br /><br />Trying to predict outcomes based on how this Balancing Principle works is beyond the scope of the human intellect. If the "what goes around, comes around" concept were true, there would be a very uniform experience of Life for each individual. However, what circumstances you attract in your life is based on the very specific requirements of your own psychological blueprint. If you and your friend are equally greedy, yet you never seem to have enough money and he just won the lottery, it seems completely inconsistent because the same psychological principle should, in theory, attract the same circumstances to balance them out. You may scream and curse the heavens for being unfair but it is you who has missed the point. It is not that simple. <o:p></o:p><br />
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A negative internal imbalance such as greed may for one person attract more poverty in order to temper that person's perspective on material wealth and therefore result in a more balanced perspective. The same greed in another person may attract a winning lottery ticket in order to highlight the experience of the greed and magnifying its uncomfortable side effects. It is impossible to judge what a person "should" be experiencing beforehand. And to suggest that any person deserves a fate other than what they are currently experiencing is to see things from a very narrow viewpoint of experience. In the larger scheme of things everything happens and operates according to the Balancing Principle. There is no "should", there is only what is.<o:p></o:p><br />
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In addition, to your own individual karma dynamics, you are simultaneously subject to endless layers of karmic principles that operate on every level of existence from the microscopic to the macroscopic. In addition to a person you are also a universe of electrons that are subject ot the karmic principle through quantum laws, the atoms in your body experience karma as do the molecules, the cells, the microbes and bacteria. You experience their collective karmas as an effect of their individual karmas. Every electron that reaches an excited level must return to a steady state, each cell that turns hostile needs to be neutralized, each bacteria that emits removes toxins is allowed to expand. There is an entire universe of birth and death, triumph and tragedy, sin and redemption, imbalance and balance happening within a single square millimetre of you index finger. It impacts you.<br /><br />On a collective level, you exist as part of a family that has its own unique familial karma, a school/organization/group which has its own institutional karma, a faith/religion/spiritual circle which has its own spiritual karma, a nation which has its own national karma, a species which has its own specific karma, a planet which has its own planetary karma. When a tsunami wipes out an entire chunk of a population it is the law of balancing which is happening on a macroscopic level which trumps the karmic implications of the individual human being. Just like when you scratch your head, your desire to restore the balance of comfort to your scalp trumps the individual karma of a skin follicle on your scalp.<o:p></o:p><br />
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The balancing is continuous and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> personal. Even and especially on the individual level, it is never personal. Your poverty is not the result of the neglect of some divine being in the sky, but an automatic prescription offered to you by your circumstances that address the symptoms of your psychological condition. Your psychological response to this prescription then lays the scaffolding to how the next circumstance will unfold. It is a truly organic process. You and your Life are not two separate entities, rather you form a symbiotic partnership where one follows the other and responds. Everything is guided whether consciously or unconsciously by the Principle of Balance. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Shi-Buhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06908835122349197988noreply@blogger.com0