A thought on Culture as an Integral Part of the Conditions of Existence
by Norman Pilon
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My Comment to the theme:
One need not understand how life works to align in its movement and know the fruits thereof.
Indeed the attempt to understand life, may be usurped by the mind of define and control - upon a life, a world, a relationship - unseen, unfelt and unshared. Understanding in the heart does not deny or exclude the use of the understandings of the head, but knows itself an integrative movement of thought and feeling - and not a coercion operating the deceit of control over a denied sense of subjection - for the true of such being is invalidated, deprived, used, discarded, suppressed, denied.
I feel the nature of our conflict and suffering , arises from false currency accepted, identified and defended as true - and reinforced by acting forth from mutually held definitions of unconscious, subconscious and so-called waking or surface conscious assertions and defences. What we made - knowingly or not - is made upon (and depends on) that which truly moves us. The substitution of a truly felt life for a mind in story is to trade sovereignty of being for subjection under fear and division under the belief one is getting something better or that without one will be lesser, and so is getting away from something worse, in fear or belief of greater pain or loss. The conditioned and conditioning identity of getting, overlays and substitutes for what in words I can only call receiving and giving - which is the gift of the current through the focus or choice of our recognition of living in its terms... or getting in terms of a segregating self sense.
What happens is always only current. Even to say Now is to separate or collapse to a focus within an imaged reality. A seemingly possessed reality.
Happening is a totality, an instant, a knowing or wholeness prior to mind. To feel and know this is to release investment in a sense of possession or identity in getting - and fear of loss. Because life is never somewhere else - excepting to the mind that takes the bait of believing it has become something else and has such power - and suffers in the measure of its own making.
To make story is to subject Current... to a framing mind of accepted meanings, and open the consciousness of subjective differentiation.
This sense of self existence is the thought-feeling-knowing "I am". This is the First - unqualified acceptance and expression of self-awareness. Prior to time and space that operate within unfolding Idea-experience of the qualities of being. And beneath the coverings of conditionings arising from a sense of betrayal and loss of such intimacy of experience to a mind-capture that seems instead a subjection to unchallengable external power.
What happenED is story that arose as a getting and fear-conditioned pattern.
The living current is represented by currency of symbol, imagery and concept as a 'short-cut' to the actual intimacy of true currency. And the identification of love and self with what we thus make is like unto a cuckoo concept that kicks our true creations out of the nest. Our life functions become aligned to serve a parasitic, destructive - or un-creative deadness that grows self-illusion upon the living relations we no longer have time or permission or consciousness to recognize, live and share in as the knowing and being of our living.
Conditioning substitutes for living response and response-ability. A mechanism imposed upon life constructed by disconnect-thinking that would give it life in its own image. That would posses by consumption, domination, and usurpation, that which it feels denied and deprived of by a sense of life unworthy and treacherous, and which is thus defended against with rage and defiance to the very last.
The story can take every and any forms, and yet the core content is the same in all. Yet the story of self-struggle over and against a sense of loss is history-defined. And where history carries the charge of betrayal, rejection, abandonment and denial - its imposition upon the Current is the re-enactment of the past in terms of retribution and vengeance. History but repeats the original separation patterns of experience in ever new clothes. But at what point is the futility and fruitlessness of using life thus - and being so used - unavoidable?
Perception is selective. You see what you want to see and disregard the rest. That this happens so fast your 'waking mind' is unaware of its operation is part of the defence that made the masking off of what merits focus or disregard. Yet this reveals what we are believing to choose to see and experience as we do - and in reclaiming this awareness we can re-evaluate if it is true of who we Currently accept and feel and know to be. When formerly unconscious framing thought is released - a fresh perspective opens as a greater participation in the true Currency of life. Life more abundant - in terms of integrative aligning of self, and world in life. Ideas or core beliefs in fear and lack are no less abundant in their fruits - but are not recognized as fruits - but insults and failure amidst an abundance of fear and lack.
Everything I write is toward reclaiming - or being found - in true foundation that naturally aligns thought and feeling from which natural responsibility follows and indeed flows one with.
"The more acceptance that technology gets, the harder it is to change. If enough people are stuck at the same level, they think it's the truth." ~ (Bjarne Stroustrup).
I rephrase the above quote as the more acceptance the mind of defining, predicting and controlling life is given, the harder it seems to challenge it. If conditioning sticks, its symptoms or effects are accepted as the human condition.
In a love hate mind and world, everything is an alloy - and yet a willingness to know does not have to be perfect to align in and receive of what Is to be known and the desire to change a poor experience for a better one has roots deeper than a manipulating mind seeks to re-frame and harness for its own attempt to get for itself from what others are willing to give away - if tricked and conditioned to do so.
When the model or construct of self and reality - for these are two sides of one Current Event - no longer serves purpose - and operates destructively as a sacrifice of purpose to a fantasy played out upon a mechanical 'life' - then all basis for thought and be-life has to be redeemed in true Currency - as willingness allows and accepts.
It is conceptual - image or idol based thought that divides and rules out Sanity - in the self-illusion of ruling over. But its acceptance as true is its righteous defence against being challenged or exposed as a narrative control wearing the masks of power, prestige, learning, and any other culturally institutionalized idol.
To demonize the mask is to be baited and diverted by the mask - and so in that way the mask of life operates the denial of the living - while claiming righteousness against the perceived wrong of the other. Indeed even suggesting the disengagement from the mask is to trigger all sides of every conflict to reject, attack and invalidate the common 'threat' - because the masking belief is the identity of power and protection - without which is the belief reality will reject, attack and invalidate.
The nature of receiving/giving is made obscure by belief in the value of getting. But the measure we set in our giving is the only limit on our receiving. Everything else is a trick in the mind - but surely, you have noted, the mind is not the tiny thing that thinking has made it seem - and suffer real.