A forest fire allows new shoots to grow.
Art is part of being
but has been separated off as if an 'add-on'. A meaningless existence
then makes its meaning as acquisition of things including wealth and
power or materialism, which curiously doesn't -value the material, but
only what can be got out of it for private or personal gain.
To
reconnect with our wholeness - with our Soul - might be served in part
by the arts, but if they are themselves subverted by the economy stupid,
then they become tools of medication for the suppression and control of
symptoms, like a kind of lubricant to allows what shouldnt be
tolerated, to be tolerable.
Economy needs radical change in its foundations - which are the ideas we have set in stone and yet are ideas none the less.
Art
needs also to get in touch with its roots - so as to communicate
something of a wholeness of being rather than merely reflect the disease
of our times.
I hold that art is of the verb 'to be'. Thou art Creativity in Heaven - but in artifice you are indebted to the deceiver!
I
don't see a shift coming that will restore the pockets of a Prodigal
Wastrel - but in the turning towards truth and wholeness of being, we
will find we are fulfilled and share in that fulfilment. This is the art
of living; a shared sense of what it is to be truly alive - and it
expresses in infinite ways that are organically alive and not as an
engineered society.
Does it need money to tell a story, to share a
poem, to sing a song, to paint a picture or create a sculpture? Yes,
sometimes. But mostly it needs inspiration, and the willingness to hang
in there with it to its fulfilment.
We live in a rather
monocultured society where we are increasingly managed and conformed to
the mentality of control. Even rebellion has been commoditized. Is it
any wonder it is bankrupt?
Our Father,
Who ART in Heaven,
Holy and Whole is your Nature.
Let it come into our own for we would remember
what we always forget,
when we make a different mind our own.
As if to use a Living Inheritance
to line our personal pockets,
until the bubble bursts.
Let forgiveness replace grievance
Your creative freedom rises
in works that speak of Life
to Life.
Let us not worship a forged copy of a life
that promises much yet only robs our Soul,
but let rip - so to speak
the cat of curiosity from the bag
of 'Thou Shalt Not!'
For what love would have us be
needs not authority of dead gods,
but the wellspring of Life ever anew.
The investment needs to be in the truly Life-affirming, whether in the arts or in economic activity.
Because you love, are impassioned, are moved, and transformed in the giving - not for pieces of silver.
But because shared value is uncovering of what we are in a world that tends to cover it over or squelch it.
(Written into Culture secretary Maria Miller to make 'economic case' to stave off further arts cuts)
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Is science inherently loveless?
50 Sultry Facts About Sex at livescience
Popular science-speak, is so out of touch with what it is to live life! That is - it is so loveless.
Sex is simply communication, and like other forms of communication can be a communion of loving intimacy, a tacit agreement to separate gratifications, a private fantasy, a weapon of coercive and manipulative intent, or a shield of distractive intent.
Human beings do not merely procreate babies with sexual intimacy, they can 'make love', - not that they make what love is - but that they can become so undefended in themselves with each other as to allow love to be the full movement and awareness of life itself.
Religious personalities often have a liability for guilt that denies and distorts the impulse to share as they are conditioned by moral belief sets that are rarely transcended.
Materialistic, scientific and separative human personalities are predisposed to a control mentality based on a disconnected and seemingly independent (but actually programmed) search for gratification - may also have guilt but buried in further layers of dissociation.
The freedom from guilt is not in the surrender to the instinctual so much as the full embrace of all that it is to be human - for to be less that what we are never feels whole and to give short change or use another for our private satisfaction never feels honest. Hence feeling, or love itself, is often suppressed in order to have a 'successful sex life'.
I am simply adding dimension into the subject that are somewhat missing from a popular science magazine. Truths may be socially or culturally accepted - but that doesn't make them true, and the most reductionist truths have the least meaning.
Sex is the interplay of apparently polarized qualities and energies whereby the whole of creation is expressed. The analysis of dismembered parts cannot account for that You Are and that you are Aware that existence Is.
Ideas worth 'spreading'
I just noticed the TED branding and felt to also note that Mind shares or extends what it accepts, and thus gives as it receives. What you accept into you mind is validated in you by sharing it.
There is a deep level of this that cant easily be talked of - but all our actions and words are expressing or extending the ideas that we have accepted as our self and indeed our reality - and so we teach what we are... to ourselves - and each other. But what we learn is not forced upon us for we are free to accept what is in our minds, as it is - or as it is presented.
That is to say a conditioning can be observed and disregarded such as to accept a fresh appreciation of reality - and live out from there.
The undiscerning acceptance into our minds of thoughts and intentions and stories that undermine our integrity and our peace - perhaps for some short moment of personal thrill or satisfaction, or to maintain an imaginary facade we wish was true - leads to the undermining of true communication and culture.
Ideas worth sharing are not only the articulation of thinking that inspires or awakens a sense of life's value in wonder and appreciation - but the ideas that we live out from as our current sense of value.
The seeking of control over communication is part of the mentality of the wish to be special. We all can readily observe this in our own consciousness. Yet the valuing of the conditions in which true communication can occur is the willingness to enter into communication open-minded, listening attentive and in an extension of trust and shared value.
The egoic mind is reactive and obfuscates such as to disconnect or introduce distraction or noise - yet a persistence in listening will uncover our own resonances to such and enable us to move free of them in ourself - and thus be more aware and discerning and less easily baited or provoked.
Ideas worthy of sharing are those that share value rather than seek to own or control it; giving as we would ourselves receive.
There is a deep level of this that cant easily be talked of - but all our actions and words are expressing or extending the ideas that we have accepted as our self and indeed our reality - and so we teach what we are... to ourselves - and each other. But what we learn is not forced upon us for we are free to accept what is in our minds, as it is - or as it is presented.
That is to say a conditioning can be observed and disregarded such as to accept a fresh appreciation of reality - and live out from there.
The undiscerning acceptance into our minds of thoughts and intentions and stories that undermine our integrity and our peace - perhaps for some short moment of personal thrill or satisfaction, or to maintain an imaginary facade we wish was true - leads to the undermining of true communication and culture.
Ideas worth sharing are not only the articulation of thinking that inspires or awakens a sense of life's value in wonder and appreciation - but the ideas that we live out from as our current sense of value.
The seeking of control over communication is part of the mentality of the wish to be special. We all can readily observe this in our own consciousness. Yet the valuing of the conditions in which true communication can occur is the willingness to enter into communication open-minded, listening attentive and in an extension of trust and shared value.
The egoic mind is reactive and obfuscates such as to disconnect or introduce distraction or noise - yet a persistence in listening will uncover our own resonances to such and enable us to move free of them in ourself - and thus be more aware and discerning and less easily baited or provoked.
Ideas worthy of sharing are those that share value rather than seek to own or control it; giving as we would ourselves receive.
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Beauty - what is beauty?
TED Radio asked what is beauty?
The feeling of beauty – if not limited to an associated form, is one of recognition.
Science – or the mind of definitions – cannot deal with beauty – but only with the forms associated with it. However scientists are humanly beholding in living relationship and so can appreciate the beauty and wonder of That anything is – or indeed of a beautiful idea or solution.
Definitions of beauty substitute for recognition. Mutual agreement makes a ‘reality of consensus’. Narcissus became infatuated with his own image – but this seduction cost him his awareness of his true relation. So it is with man and his own thinking.
Consider the act or moment of true appreciation and then notice the mechanism of mind that quickly denies it – perhaps in the attempt to define or explain or possess it.
Yet the true beauty is a moment of thoughtlessness and directness of being that is itself associated with a sense of communion or connection with the Living Universe – even if one doesn’t apparently believe any such thing.
extra comment: to an appreciation of the last paragraph:
There is a saying ‘talk is cheap’, well I guess beliefs are talk – unless they are the fruit or realisation that cannot be defined. And maybe such believing isn’t woven into a mask or identity to present to the world – but is silently moving unspoken in us in our lives as a core sense of presence that breaks through our often busy and distracted lives with a moment of genuine helpfulness or shared purpose – for these too are beautiful, and are not the result of coercive intent or attempts to become loved, respected or valid – and yet embody these qualities unselfconsciously.
Though we cant define beauty, our current definitions limit how much we are able to let in.
The feeling of beauty – if not limited to an associated form, is one of recognition.
Science – or the mind of definitions – cannot deal with beauty – but only with the forms associated with it. However scientists are humanly beholding in living relationship and so can appreciate the beauty and wonder of That anything is – or indeed of a beautiful idea or solution.
Definitions of beauty substitute for recognition. Mutual agreement makes a ‘reality of consensus’. Narcissus became infatuated with his own image – but this seduction cost him his awareness of his true relation. So it is with man and his own thinking.
Consider the act or moment of true appreciation and then notice the mechanism of mind that quickly denies it – perhaps in the attempt to define or explain or possess it.
Yet the true beauty is a moment of thoughtlessness and directness of being that is itself associated with a sense of communion or connection with the Living Universe – even if one doesn’t apparently believe any such thing.
extra comment: to an appreciation of the last paragraph:
There is a saying ‘talk is cheap’, well I guess beliefs are talk – unless they are the fruit or realisation that cannot be defined. And maybe such believing isn’t woven into a mask or identity to present to the world – but is silently moving unspoken in us in our lives as a core sense of presence that breaks through our often busy and distracted lives with a moment of genuine helpfulness or shared purpose – for these too are beautiful, and are not the result of coercive intent or attempts to become loved, respected or valid – and yet embody these qualities unselfconsciously.
Though we cant define beauty, our current definitions limit how much we are able to let in.
Texting as a “miraculous thing”?
A TED Talk on the miracle of texting
Comment 1Well one can study anything that people do and find all the qualities of life in it - but are they there abundantly and in clear shared appreciation?
I meet LOL mostly in those who want to affect a mask of fun while actually being mean or perhaps just just no fun at all. But I don't use text except occasionally for a specific purpose. (So perhaps not qualified to speak on its usage there).
But perhaps the most important aspect of a communication is not the form it takes, but the consciousness of intent that is its context, both in the sender and in the receiver.
Communication is intimacy and words were invented to limit and block intimacy so as to de-localize or dissociate into one's private domain. Since Eden, there's been no going back, and the process of alienating ourselves from our actual living contextual being proceeds to an almost machine-like isolation - in which management and communication of stuff between its distanced parts becomes the new meaning of life!
And avoiding relationship allows much more scope for fantasy existence in virtual identity.
Though everyone can do this without texting and online activity, it is true that these devices extend our capacity to dislocate ourselves from those we may be in the room with.
- - -
Comment 2 - went onto the actual video page:
Language is a way to block or limit intimacy - and then became necessary to convey information and negotiate trading of emotional, psychic and physical exchange.
Of course the mind that withholds itself from intimacy will structure itself to be integrated with itself, insofar as it can maintain itself amidst a field of intimate relation. One doesn't become something different than one is by withdrawing into one's own story and making culture of it together, but the priority of the identification in story will effectively discard, distort or deny the Whole Cloth from which it cherry picks to serve its own interpretation.
The miracle is communication - AT ALL.
It fundamentally witnesses to that minds are NOT actually separate - though the cultural imperative is to deny and limit this Intimacy for a modus of personal authority and control - as if actually a self-separate entity. And so the experience will seem to reflect the validation of private thoughts - albeit within culturally shared beliefs or presumptions. And experience seems to be proof or self-evident and so we each act as if we 'know' - when what we know is our personal experience as a 'take' on something that we may not really be intimately or directly connecting with at all.
The fact that almost everyone goes through life like this and doesn't actually connect with themselves, each other or their world very much, is a kind of sleepwalking or collective mesmerism in which we are seduced by our own thinking and yet it tells us we are free agents, along with a whole load of other stuff.
Yet freedom is not free from intimacy - but is freedom to be intimate - to feel and know viscerally the energies and qualities of life as the full range and nuance of what Communication actually is.
Reality may be posited as a state of perfect communication in which nothing is withheld or rejected. And human consciousness tends to identify as a withholding of embrace or attention from that in itself that it rejects . CUL8r!
- - -
question:
"And human consciousness tends to identify as a withholding of embrace or attention from that in itself that it rejects." Say what?
- - -
reply:
The inwardness of thinking is a large part of a current split sense of human consciousness, and has symbolic and conceptual structure of thought and language with which to both define and identify its self and its 'not self'.
So the best answer to your question is what arises to your own experience when you ask innocently of yourself in simple curiosity and desire to know.
The activity of the mind is very fast and runs a bit like background processes on a computer, to serve up something of a user interface that one simply uses as if it were real in and of itself.
Clearly,something is going on - but do we look at the apparatus of our mind as part of pur perception and observe both what is within at the same times as apparently looking out? Occasionally in moments of insight - but the default directive tends to be to relate to the world as Reality and one's thought, intent and belief as something not to observe so much as to have freedom to play in or control.
Another way of approaching this is to look at the mind and see that in normal terms, everyone - or as near as makes little difference, has active defence mechanisms at work - which run out from previous interpreted experience and indeed fit exactly the model of Darwinian thought, because they dump the past (interpreted experience) onto the present - so as not to actually connect in presence - but to re-enact the past, albeit in endlessly modified and evolving forms.
Yet you ARE present - at least there IS something here where there is awareness, that is present - only the acts of definition and identification are making exclusive assertion as a basis upon which to judge and effect control over one's own experience. And this inherently rejects aspects of what is intimate to its being in favour of a sense of becoming something in its own right. Yet without the actuality of awareness - there is no being to either reject or to exploit.
In truth we are not in control of life, yet are almost hardwired to seek it.Why?
- - -
Question:
: I believe Nietzsche called it "the Will to Power".
Sorry for the short answer to your long (and enjoyable) post. Some answers to your question might be hidden in the works of Freud, Heidegger, Deleuze and Metzinger.
- - -
Reply:
The question was an invitation to listen (in the remaining 4 character limit available ;-)
When we ask a question, if we ask it with the mind of the mind, we get or embellish what we already 'know', but if the question is of the movement of our being (also called the heart), we listen there for an answer without the noise of our thinking, and sometimes something comes immediately or sometimes the sense is that a real question HAS been asked and to wait on an answer in trust is the presage of more to come. A process of transformation occurs a step at a time.
The disconnection from presence is also the disconnection from an innate sense of guidance or innate intelligence that 'knows how to be appropriate' in any given situation. And so there is the substitution for and the overriding of the natural flow of the parts towards a healing or reintegrative wholeness, by a manually applied wilful intent to control.
Indeed the 'will to power' - yet this is embodied and enacted in every judgemental thought.
The wilful determination to assert a separate mind wielding power in its own right is fundamental to the dream by which the true nature of love is rendered un-recognizable and unwanted in favour of a self and world at war with itself. It is structured to prevent exposure - but there is nothing to prevent noticing its operation but that innate curiosity has become lost to self-certainties, backed by emotional or personal fears of invalidity.
The diversion into psychology or philosophy tends to be subverted by the mentality that seeks to control rather than be itself transformed. As if Life doesn't exist until we 'discover' it and articulate it into a language of separation - and control. When really it is our consciousness that is changing as new information insinuates itself into our awareness. Human consciousness is a conditioned and conditioning set of filters and distortions, upon a Consciousness that is unwithheld or unlimited. Our personal sense is a construct for...
The attempt to make the unknown known
I watched a very short TED on 'why x is the unknown?' and then read or skimmed most of 262 comments. Because I felt prompted to do so in a way I have learned to trust.
You may not want to watch the talk or read the comments but the gist relates to Arabic culture and its translation to European culture. The comments bring in a wide swathe of corrections, rebuttals, counter claims and a plethora of tangents that - in itself - offers a thumbnail example of human communication - of the human mentality or mind.
- - -
A short video talk, he believes he knows what he shares and is enjoying himself in humorous and relaxed ways. This seems to mean something and then I read 262 comments...
Where to find a ground in the flux of asserted facts and personal assertiveness?
Intelligence has agencies of expression, but these have their own agenda. Somewhere in the static is a signal?
How does the mind access intelligence? So many levels; so many branches and tangents. Is the purpose of the static, the intent to enjoy the personal sense? Pride. As if a competition to have the glory or to have the glory of being the one who knows or tells.
Intelligence itself is the glory! And the personal sense is a sport that can never come to rest because asserted action implicitly brings reaction. Yet despite or perhaps because of this dance of polarities in apparent conflict - intelligence grows channels of revelation; uncovering of its nature to Itself through its agencies - and this is Good - insofar as it is the moment of unalloyed appreciation free of conflicting self adulterations. The pride of man may take such inspiration as his own work and there you have the fuel for another game of war, under whatever names and forms.
In its curiosity, the mind is guided. This may be the filtering program of beliefs and conditioning - or it may be the discernment of an unfolding joy.
Following the mind that already thinks it knows, must limit and colour the result for what is sought is in effect already defined. To notice that one does not know, allows a shift from the existing definitions to an appreciation of a fresh perspective, in which one could say, one sees in a new light.
One may not have a capacity to communicate this conceptually, for there is an element of 'living God' that refers to the undefinable presence of Intelligence - of which one cannot separate out from in order to objectify or compare.
The attempt to make the unknown known is the attempt to define a reality Whose Nature is Self-Revealing
You may not want to watch the talk or read the comments but the gist relates to Arabic culture and its translation to European culture. The comments bring in a wide swathe of corrections, rebuttals, counter claims and a plethora of tangents that - in itself - offers a thumbnail example of human communication - of the human mentality or mind.
- - -
A short video talk, he believes he knows what he shares and is enjoying himself in humorous and relaxed ways. This seems to mean something and then I read 262 comments...
Where to find a ground in the flux of asserted facts and personal assertiveness?
Intelligence has agencies of expression, but these have their own agenda. Somewhere in the static is a signal?
How does the mind access intelligence? So many levels; so many branches and tangents. Is the purpose of the static, the intent to enjoy the personal sense? Pride. As if a competition to have the glory or to have the glory of being the one who knows or tells.
Intelligence itself is the glory! And the personal sense is a sport that can never come to rest because asserted action implicitly brings reaction. Yet despite or perhaps because of this dance of polarities in apparent conflict - intelligence grows channels of revelation; uncovering of its nature to Itself through its agencies - and this is Good - insofar as it is the moment of unalloyed appreciation free of conflicting self adulterations. The pride of man may take such inspiration as his own work and there you have the fuel for another game of war, under whatever names and forms.
In its curiosity, the mind is guided. This may be the filtering program of beliefs and conditioning - or it may be the discernment of an unfolding joy.
Following the mind that already thinks it knows, must limit and colour the result for what is sought is in effect already defined. To notice that one does not know, allows a shift from the existing definitions to an appreciation of a fresh perspective, in which one could say, one sees in a new light.
One may not have a capacity to communicate this conceptually, for there is an element of 'living God' that refers to the undefinable presence of Intelligence - of which one cannot separate out from in order to objectify or compare.
The attempt to make the unknown known is the attempt to define a reality Whose Nature is Self-Revealing
Monday, 22 April 2013
Coercive intent does not promote health!
Posted on a page at the Telegraph regarding the plans to make trainees have to pass a year as a health care assistant, looking after
patients’ basic needs, rather than giving medical treatment.
- - -
One does not improve the quality of care by adding more layers of onerousness but by recognizing the already onerous impositions upon the situation - and releasing the onerous element.
Kindness is not 'added' by training but lost to fearful conditions and perceptions. By cultivating conditions of so called accountability (blame), we cripple ourselves in every way.
To engineer human beings is an attempt to force them to be as human thinking would have them be, and such thinking as has become machine-like and indeed quite lacking in humanity.
Real relationships are the key to everything and this must begin or be founded upon a real relationship within ourself. While people seek to suffer a lie as if it were true and tacitly join in such mentality, they have no voice, offer no witness and sacrifice their essential kindness to a tyranny of imposed dictates - whose thinking is so conditioned into our mind that we do not see the false from the true and are easily kept in line with 'disincentives'.
Yet such a society becomes increasingly unable to operate in more of a wholeness, but only the part for which it is fitted, trained and paid. The fragmentation of our shared being into specialized machine parts is a violence upon us when it is motivated or held in place by fear.
Real relationship is the most subversive activity to the machine-mind and yet seeks not to overthrow or hurt, but to extend and grow trust and true communication - despite having to live within an empire in which 'Caesar' demands his dues.
Love is not a manipulation or trading of special favour - but the very heart and nature of existence - and this CAN be uncovered in any situation as either the truth of what is going on - or the essential aspect that is blocked, or denied and thus called for.
Love in action is a discernment arising from an actual connection of actually relating or listening or truly seeing, and is supported by training.
The desire to help and serve others is a calling in our hearts that may lead us to choose to be a nurse or a teacher or an anything that can serve a genuine need. There is no place for a 'Calling' in current thinking and sadly, when new thought 'discovers' it, it will be yet more 'good ideas' applied ignorantly.
Everything in our thinking is tending to divorce ourselves from our love and substitute it with a manual control. This is the world we create together, and it can only be a self-seeking that does not even truly fulfil the self.
Receive the reminder of your true worth by a willingness to see it in others in place of the judgements that otherwise see a number or a client or a patient as something to process, which is to say, don't see them at all.
As we give so do we receive. The world we live in is reflected moment by moment, according to what thoughts we accept and therefore act out from. But addicted to our thinking, we are not willing to look honestly at what seems to give us control over life.
There is some serious accounting to be made - and money is the least of it - though wealth scarcity will be seen to be inherent in the value system to which we have subscribed.
Thanks for the opportunity to share here.
- - -
One does not improve the quality of care by adding more layers of onerousness but by recognizing the already onerous impositions upon the situation - and releasing the onerous element.
Kindness is not 'added' by training but lost to fearful conditions and perceptions. By cultivating conditions of so called accountability (blame), we cripple ourselves in every way.
To engineer human beings is an attempt to force them to be as human thinking would have them be, and such thinking as has become machine-like and indeed quite lacking in humanity.
Real relationships are the key to everything and this must begin or be founded upon a real relationship within ourself. While people seek to suffer a lie as if it were true and tacitly join in such mentality, they have no voice, offer no witness and sacrifice their essential kindness to a tyranny of imposed dictates - whose thinking is so conditioned into our mind that we do not see the false from the true and are easily kept in line with 'disincentives'.
Yet such a society becomes increasingly unable to operate in more of a wholeness, but only the part for which it is fitted, trained and paid. The fragmentation of our shared being into specialized machine parts is a violence upon us when it is motivated or held in place by fear.
Real relationship is the most subversive activity to the machine-mind and yet seeks not to overthrow or hurt, but to extend and grow trust and true communication - despite having to live within an empire in which 'Caesar' demands his dues.
Love is not a manipulation or trading of special favour - but the very heart and nature of existence - and this CAN be uncovered in any situation as either the truth of what is going on - or the essential aspect that is blocked, or denied and thus called for.
Love in action is a discernment arising from an actual connection of actually relating or listening or truly seeing, and is supported by training.
The desire to help and serve others is a calling in our hearts that may lead us to choose to be a nurse or a teacher or an anything that can serve a genuine need. There is no place for a 'Calling' in current thinking and sadly, when new thought 'discovers' it, it will be yet more 'good ideas' applied ignorantly.
Everything in our thinking is tending to divorce ourselves from our love and substitute it with a manual control. This is the world we create together, and it can only be a self-seeking that does not even truly fulfil the self.
Receive the reminder of your true worth by a willingness to see it in others in place of the judgements that otherwise see a number or a client or a patient as something to process, which is to say, don't see them at all.
As we give so do we receive. The world we live in is reflected moment by moment, according to what thoughts we accept and therefore act out from. But addicted to our thinking, we are not willing to look honestly at what seems to give us control over life.
There is some serious accounting to be made - and money is the least of it - though wealth scarcity will be seen to be inherent in the value system to which we have subscribed.
Thanks for the opportunity to share here.
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I feel that a scepticism of one’s own thinking is healthy – but a scepticism of Life itself is an absolute block to knowing anything real.
The extension of trust is not gullibility, but a willingness and capacity to put aside our own thinking and actually pay attention.
From such an act, an intelligence is accessed that communicates something of the nature of reality – not as a definition or analysis – but as and expression of integrity, helpfulness, or wholeness. Not because there is a communication from a God to a personal mind in fragmentation and dissociation from its Mind or true inherence in reality, but because an undefended appreciation of reality releases some of the distorting bias or filters that could be called a ‘war on Consciousness’ – excepting there is no battle but a mind at war with itself in identification with image and symbol and concept of reality or self.
The assertion and experience of the material basis for existence is a defence mechanism that is needed until there is a willingness to release it – whether its disintegration occurs via drugs or via a series of honest observations that are NOT censored but allowed to be held open despite the sense of threat to one’s established identification.
One could see the limitations as a womb or egg to be grown out from – or indeed as a straightjacket that cannot be undone until there is a fundamental trust restored.
Idea are the stuff of all else. Every culture is an exploration and embodiment of ideas, ad the world is an exploration of many and conflicting ideas – yet the term world there was used for an experience and not for the Actuality that is both beyond definition – and therefore cannot be experienced as any kind of object – and yet is the ONLY THING going on – right where ideas of self, of time and space and non-self, arise and form experience.
The human mind has defaulted to look ‘outside’ because its identity as an independent explorer of an unknown reality serves as a mask against the revealing of its foundationlessness as a power or entity in its own right. This it equates with death and its first drive is to prevail against the very Life that is its source of its sense of existence: survival of self within definition. Yet the laws of the nature of Mind cannot altogether be lost but are applied to that which self conficts and yet self protects both. This is a sort of riddle for trying to maintain incongruent and untenable conditions requires maximal ingenuity to keep inherent futility from awareness, as well as to create substitutions for a sense of Meaning of relation, connection and identity such as to keep a promise of fulfilment amidst what can never actually fulfil.
The Universe that our minds can understand – in the scientific sense, will be revealed to be our minds themselves – in ways that we don’t expect, because the mind works to deny and project out from itself that which it seeks to disown in order to prevail or survive (in its own terms) and yet all that is denied has become the matrix of its own experience… unrecognized, and remapped or redefined in terms of the drive to exploit it. All things and relationships are thus reduced to a means of validating a sense of self-separation or limited consciousness amidst One Mind.
Yet for any who come to look not out there as if it really is out there – but see their own non-existence or pseudo-identity, not as conceptual fodder but directly as an ultimate humiliation to any capacity to maintain their image and control over their experience – a transformation occurs; a shift in which something actual has replaced what was before conceptual.
The ‘mind’ habit usually ‘restores normal service, such that intuitive insight and revelation is as if a timelessness that get covered in time – yet it cannot be the ‘solid’ reality that it once took for granted and a process of metamorphosis now occurs because there is some part of the mind that is awake to that it is a direct expression of Actuality – no matter how much else is brought to bear.
The self of the ego personality tries to use all things to make its identification valid or solid- be they apparently material or apparently spiritual, and yet in the process reveals itself step by step in its strategies and intent. Once one knows, one cannot live as if one knows not except as a lie and with the cost to truth that defending a lie demands. So we are progressively undone of what once we thought real – and yet become more open to communicating or expressing a passion and a presence of life in whatever fields our movement uncovers and shares in – if we release the blocks of a false self-protectivism in embracing what we feel called to engage in.
Life Works, in that we cannot escape our ultimate self-inclusion – but from the posture of reactive self-interest in feigned relative innocence or feigned insignificance, it doesn’t work – even if warring is given sanction by its high priests, and psychological sickness is redefined as healthy, and the whole mess massed into the ‘human condition’ and given over as a problem to be endlessly engaged in distractive preoccupation.
Whatever the presumption of self is – or the presumption of reality is – the mind will extend out from in support of its premise.
Change the foundation and all else MUST shift.
There cannot really be a war in our mind, but only an interpretation that conflicts with itself and yet is maintained as if in compartmented thought.
Yet the identification with our thought should not be underestimated and the tragic misery and pain of fighting such war is an isolation of meaninglessness that really operates as if it is winning – or holding the fort – or being persecuted, betrayed or abandoned.
We do what we can with what we have. Both fear and the light of awareness are in our mind and much of the fear is hidden beneath layers of fear disguised as protection, for it is the fear of light that keeps our mind tiny and ineffectual.
Science is expanding our vision but it also feeds the mentality of control. To try to keep both is to re-enact stark insanity.
A true control is not imposed upon a wholeness – but operates within it as its own process of communication.
I read most all the commentary here and join with the willingness to reach for better ways of communicating. It is I feel a wholly worthy goal and a very relevant skill.
But it is true that the new foundation cannot ‘talk’ to the old and nor can the old ‘talk’ to the new. So no need to polarise in failure but simply be alert for all signs of life and join with willingness wherever it can be discerned.
My first experiences of opening consciousness were terrifying, because in simplest terms, the love of life was not expressing and the attempt to control was dominant.
Yet an honesty of not knowing is the condition in which true learning occurs, and that remains so no matter what we think we have learned or become. Not knowing is the resting in the emptiness of self definition or assertion such that it is full of the edgeless intelligence of being.
One doesn’t learn how to be – though one may have to learn to release the blocks to its native awareness.
(THis was written into comments on TED's blog regarding their reaction to Rupert Shedrake and Graham Hancock's respective TED lectures being 'disowned' and defamed and in some sense censored). See the TED Blog for more information).