Tell me what you want...

I was reading a blog today called: http://freshnessfactorfivethousand.blogspot.com by the inspiring and inspired singer/songwriter Jason Mraz.  The strapline for the blog is: "Fuck the Should.  Do the Want."

I think out of all the words in the English language, 'should' is the one I hate the most (apart from Inland Revenue, which is actually two, so probably doesn't count!)

'Should' is far from reality.  It says "what you need to do isn't happening, and it isn't what you want to do, but IF you do it things will be tidier. However, the only satisfaction you'll get is to tick something off on your 'to do' list." 

Eurgh - it's a smug, self-satisfied little word.

And if you listen to the conversations going on around you, and read newspapers and magazines, you'll encounter it a lot.  It's most often used in relation to other people.  As in "They SHOULD  do this" or "They SHOULD do that".  It's a real 'pointy-finger' word.  It lives in splendour in the Daily Mail.  In fact, I think that the editorial of the Daily Mail is probably based upon 'what should be happening.'  Or at least it .... should be... arf, arf.

Not only does it imply odious responsibility and life-draining burdens, it introduces the mysterious and omnipresent entity - 'They'.  Those unidentifiable experts who reign supreme in matters of the weather, child-rearing, fashion, diets, drinking habits, moral obligations... just about everything really.

But what really offends me about the word 'should', and all that it implies, is that it denies what is happening now.  It denies THIS experience.  It's a great big fat NO - and it doesn't even have the honesty to say 'Fuck Off'.  It's censorious, denying, limiting, restricting and very, very mean-minded.  It says that if you're having F.U.N. and doing what you want, then you bloody well shouldn't be!  

It's the teacher with a mouth like a cat's arse, it's the sour-faced shop assistant, it's the sign at the public swimming pool that says "No running, No jumping, No petting, NO FUCKING FUN!"

But the ridiculous thing about not doing what you want, only what you should ... is that eventually what you want will turn into what you should.  And on a very obvious level what you want IS what you should be doing, because it's what you're doing..... so it's the only thing that you could possibly BE doing.

Ooooh, it's the word at the very heart of human misery:  You should be content.  You should be good. You should try harder (that's got to be the most repeated comment on school reports).   It fences off the glorious extremes of human experience: misery, failure, anger, lasciviousness (I like THAT word), excess, rage, apathy, lust, abandonment, hysteria, hilarity, intoxication ... you get the picture. 

It engenders notions of dishonour, impropriety, disgrace - it's the creeping, red-cheeked, prickling sensation of shame.  Its purpose is to stop people from relishing the reality of the present experience, seeking something that isn't happening; the ultimate ignorance; i.e. ignoring what you really, really want.

Last word is: Do what you want, because that's what you SHOULD be doing..... wanna know why?  Because it's what you are doing!  And you can't argue with reality.  And if you do, then you bloody well shouldn't! ;-)

In the words of those camped up divas, The Spice Girls - "Yo, tell me what you want, what you really, really want!

So, "Fuck the Should, Do the Want."  What a philosophy!

Weaveworld

I was reading a blog this morning (Raptitude.com, which is worth a read, IMO) and in it  the writer said "We are always looking to transcend the human condition."

How?  How can humans transcend the human condition... because any transcendence would be a human condition!  Humans transcending being human.  There is no transcendence.  If you're human, you can only BE human.  The experience is of being human.  Human Being.  Being Human.

So, what is this 'human being'?  What is it made of?  What is its substance?

Imagine a tapestry.  A deeply woven, colourful, sumptuous, richly tactile tapestry.  This tapestry depicts the story of a person.  All its woes and triumphs, sadness and joy.  And imagine that you look at this tapestry starting at the beginning as it tells the tale of a baby being born, growing, crying, playing,... into toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood; being woven by the thread, constantly changing - the colours; bland beige, ruby red, verdant green, inky black.  Now imagine that the tapestry is alive, that it's not you moving along looking at the story it depicts, but that you stand there and the tapestry weaves itself in front of your eyes - you see the weaving as it happens.

Imagine further ... that you are the character in that tapestry, that you are being woven by the thread itself.  You're not watching the life of the character as it happens, you ARE the thread as it morphs - you are the warp and weft, the colour and the texture; what the tapestry is made of is what you are made of and you are being woven as the story that the tapestry is depicting.

The weaving of the tapestry is real; each colour and thread , as it is being woven; the intricacies, richness, texture and colour - and the story that it weaves is real whilst it's being woven, but the thread weaves on.

The three scenarios I have asked you to imagine (moving along the tapestry, having the tapestry weave in front of you and being the tapestry character as it is woven) are what I think people are trying to do when they talk about transcendence or being 'awareness' or the 'witness'.  As though you can somehow step outside the story of what you are.  If you stepped outside that story; if you transcended it, witnessed it, detached from it .... then that would be "the story of 'stepping outside, transcending, witnessing, detaching."  There's no getting out of it.

And why would you want to?  Transcendence is just another experience and it can only ever be experienced by this character that is being woven by life.  Bliss is just another experience.  Any state of transcendence or bliss or 'abiding as non-dual awareness' can only ever be experienced AS the movement that is the character, the person, the human.

Imagine how tedious it would be to be 'forever blissful'; to be stuck as a character in one colour, one hue, one tone. Isn't it the very fact that the entire richness of living is felt and experienced that makes the character and the story it lives so engrossing and deep, knowing that whatever the thread of life weaves us into, it will never keep us static.

When I was trying to hit on the metaphor I wanted for this post, I was reminded of the book 'Weaveworld' by Clive Barker, one of my favourite books and so I'll end with a quote from it, which I think sums it all up very nicely:

"Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making."
— Clive Barker (Weaveworld)

Alive and Kicking Off

Walking through town yesterday, there was an altercation outside a coffee shop.  A girl sitting with friends was shouting at another one standing (both app. 18 years old).  As I got nearer the standing female started threatening: "I'm gonna kick your fucking head in.  Come on, come round the corner and I'll smash your fucking head right in."

I wondered why she felt it neccesary to go round the corner to kick her head in; I would have thought it would have been a lot easier to just do it there and then, as the girl whose head she wished to kick in was sitting down and a prone target!

As I passed by, I looked at the face of the seated girl who was shouting back, and I could see the terror in her eyes.  Her mouth was shouting and her eyes were afraid.  And I don't blame her.  The threatening ... aherm.. 'lady', for want of a better word, was built like the proverbial brick shit-house and had it been me, I'd have been UNDER the table snivelling like a right woos.

This was a dramatic little scenario and when I walked back that way a little later, the aggressor had gone and there was just the girl still sitting with a couple of friends.

Are you disappointed?  Did you hope that I was going to carry on with an account about a bitch fight?  Sorry.

What was fascinating was watching the action play out.  The posturing and reactions of the two girls.  Attacking and retreating.  Snarling threats, but failing to carry them out.  A friend trying to pull back the aggressor and two young children looking bewildered and scared at their mum's behaviour.

And then the passers-by (myself included), watching with interest, not getting involved, but being slightly amused by this 'show' of aggression and threatened violence. 

And within this little scenario was a large gamut of human emotion: fear, aggression, amusement, horror, enjoyment, shock, disgust.  And it was all whipped up due to a perceived threat or insult by one or other, or both of those girls. A threat to their sense of self, which escalated into a need to inflict violence, to prove that that sense of self is so important that it might be worth kicking in someone's head over. And in lots of instances there isn't just a threat; the action gets carried out, and results in injury or death.  Humans will protect their sense of individual self to the death. At which point, paradoxically, that sense of self  that they are defending and protecting disappears anyway. 

It's amazing the lengths that people will go to to protect something that is only a feeling and a thought.  Amazing that someone else's perception of them is so important that they will risk annihilation, either of themselves or the other.  All because the sense of self has been riduculed or insulted. 

There's not many things more ridiculous than reacting to an insult about something that doesn't actually exist.  A bit like an actor kicking off because someone insulted his pretend character.  And I think that's why a lot of the onlookers were mildly amused.  They could see that it was just a little drama playing out with nothing real behind it.  A lot of noise and fury.

Just another pleasant afternoon in an English town shopping centre.

It's my life

People say that.

It's my life.  "I'm really happy with the way my life is going at the moment."  Particularly celebrities.  They like to portray this sense of control and satisfaction with how things are shaping up.

Like "my life" is something that is had.  A package.

So ... imagine you can go into the Life Store and buy a life.  I want the one with the cute dog and the kewl kids and the loving, attentive, sexy partner... oooh and add in a big house and 3 holidays a year, couple of high-end cars, a dash of charidee work. Hey - I already have that! (this manifesting stuff works huh, only took 25 years!)

Yeah, like.

If any of us 'had'  a 'life, then wouldn't we be able to dictate what happened in it?  Wouldn't you get up in the morning on the dot of 6.00, eat tofu flakes and yoghurt tea, and listen to vegetarian music.  Exercise for an hour, walk to work at a company that contributes to the well-being of the planet, interact meaningfully with your colleagues whilst giving your all in a self-deprecating but intelligent and meaningful way.  For lunch you'd all share a bowl of mung beans and sprouting shoots around the water cooler, leased from a company that donates 10% of its profits to a project that supplies wells in drought countries.  Then after an intense, but significantly contributive, day, you'll lightly jog home, meditate for an hour, before steaming some organic-delivered-by-a-local-co-0perative vegetables, drink some recycled hemp tea , before dropping off to sleep after sending some positive vibes and non-invasive and non-effort reiki to unfortunate friends.

(It's likely though, that Vivality woul'd lay in bed til 12, get up, scratch, eat a bacon sandwich, surf the internet, go to the theatre with friends, have a gourmet meal cooked by someone else, be driven home after 2 bottles of wine and some chasers, watch some crap tv, surf the internet some more and pass out at about 3.00 a.m.  Rinse, wash and repeat. But that's an entirely alternative reality!)

Neither is wrong.  Or right.

Point being... You never choose 'a' life.

For two simple reasons.

It ain't your life.

And there ain't you to choose it.

There's just life.

Cue vegetarian music......   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OipXkb6fOFc

I wanna tell you a story...

A story of seeking.

Tried a  range of things: Para-Psychology, Meditation, Buddhism, Yoga, Tai Chi, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Scientology, Power of Nowism, Advaita, Neo-Advaita, Non-duality.

An interesting ride, to be sure.  But there was always  certainty that what was being  looked for had to be absolutely simple and accessible. To everyone.  Otherwise it was exclusive, and couldn't be true.  If it was true it had to be true in all circumstances and for everyone and everything.   So I worked my way through the 'isms' one by one - rejecting them when their limitations and rules became apparent.  To whit:

The hypocrisy of namaste and bowing only to fellow Buddhists and watching the wallowing in suffering of some devotees!

The frustrations of trying to meditate; trying to watch the thoughts, still the thoughts, transcend the thoughts, be the gap between the bloody thoughts;  just to end up with cramp in the legs and again that feeling of not being able to DO IT RIGHT.

Trying to 'get' Zen koans - eh? What? Either they were obtuse or I was.

Taoism - The Tao Te Ching - that which is the Tao cannot be spoken: didn't stop the bugger going on about it interminably though, did it! And all that kidney rubbing - WTF!

Scientology - sheesh; that's some wacko, out-there, scary shit - Close-call that one....

Ole Eckhart's 'Be, Here, Now'.  All very well - until I realised that I couldn't be anything but here, now.  You can't be  last Saturday at midnight or May 5th in 2030.  So, that was a relief; I didn't have to try to be exactly where it appeared I already was!

Yoga - All those contortions and trying to get the Sun Salutation right, downward dog... crazy cat, hungry hippo (;-]) and the only benefit turned out to be the 10 minute nap at the end when the teacher said and . ... relaaaaaaaaaaax.

Tai Chi - Spending 2 years just to learn the 11 short form version and standing in tree pose for 10 minutes, hearing all the other students proclaim how amazing the energy was, rushing round their meridians.... and I just ended up with aching thighs.  More inadequacy.

I couldn't get it from any of the things I tried - Too complicated.  Too difficult.  Too many rules and regulations, conditions to be met, standards to live up to.

I'm not saying that all and any of these religions/cults/methods aren't useful for many people - but I felt like an outsider who was at the party, but didn't know how to dance.

Then one day I followed a link to a youtube vid by U.G. Krishnamurti - and he barked in his unequivocal way:  "There's no such thing as enlightment".

That was a wack in the face!  WHAT!! ......But I pulled myself together and thought "hmmm.... that's an interesting concept" and ....... off I went again.

Attendance at non-satsangs with non-dual, non-teachers  followed, and even more, that frustration of NOT BEING ABLE TO BLOODY GET IT!  Except now they were propounding that there was nothing to do because there was no-one there TO get it!  I thought they meant that nothing existed (they did and still do, some of them - and perhaps they're right).  All there is, is this,  but that doesn't include you.  And I'd look down and see this body and feel these sensations and thoughts and feel even more that they saw things in a different way to me.  (and perhaps they do.)  And slowly I thought that I got what they were saying... sometimes... Through a process of elimination it became obvious... sometimes.... that there IS only this and there can't be anything other than this, but I still couldn't get this no-me idea.  Because I was looking for my own non-existence*.  Like trying to see a ghost that you've been told doesn't exist. Crazy.

And those words! Consciousness, Awareness, Presence, Being.  A state to recognise, to 'be in'.  Perhaps there are people who DO abide in a state of blissful non-dual awareness.  But it just sets up the belief that there's something to be understood or 'got'.

To be fair, a lot of the non-duality crowd do stress that there's nothing to get which isn't already apparent.  But when they start bandying labels around, the frustrated seeker latches on and tries to make something extraordinary and other-worldly out of the total ordinariness and obviousness of life, living.  I know that they're trying to point.  But you can't point at something that isn't a thing.  It's like trying to herd cats.

The pointing, and seeking, and latching on, and being frustrated, is what's trying to be pointed to or described.  That interminable, unstoppable, morphing, unrepeatable movement.

And then one day (following a pretty brutal conversation) it was obvious that there's nothing doing this.  There never was, there is not, nor will there ever be.  What this is, what life is, isn't being done by anything.  There are no conditions or rules. And that means that nothing is excluded - the very fact that there IS  life (all this)  is  ordinary and astounding.  Obvious and unknowable.

WHAT is it?  Don't know.  HOW is it? Don't care.

I spent 15 years searching for an end to the search.

And it's a bloody relief to know that there IS nothing to find.

* when I was grammar and spellchecking this post the programme highlighted these words: "my own non-existence" as a redundant expression.  Just about sums it up!

Compassion

We say about someone:  'They're so compassionate.'  What we mean is they're kind or loving or giving or helpful or pitying, show mercy.  A definition is 'to be aware of someone's suffering'.

But real compassion is the willingness to be totally uncompromising.  To refuse to do what the other person is asking you to do unless it is pointing them in the way of reality. Just being aware of someone's suffering is pointless - it does nothing - for either party.

It's a totally stubborn refusal to support a story.  It's understanding what a story is, why it's there, how it's working and what it does for the person  - and then being willing to destroy it - constantly  loosening the threads, snipping away, until the story (whatever it is)  drops away - or sometimes just being brutal and yanking it away; giving them no opportunity to pull it back.

This applies to all sorts of scenarios - parents to children, adults to parents, teachers to pupils, managers to employees, friend to friend....  Ultimately it's about being willing to be honest. Because feeding someone a false story to either appease them or yourself is cowardice.  It's how society works generally.

Take Santa Claus - we tell little children that a big man - a stranger -  is going to come into their room and they must keep their eyes closed and pretend that he's not there.  In the next breath, we're saying don't trust anyone you don't know; if any man offers you something and you don't know him, run away - scream.  But we teach them that it's ok to let a stranger into their bedroom in the middle of the night, cos he's bringing them presents!  And we use this story to exert power over them for the rest of the year.  "If you're not good, Santa won't come" (poor love, he only comes once a year anyway!).  We lie to our children so that we can manipulate their behaviour to make things easier for ourselves.  And that's when the whole stinking story of make-believe begins: fairies, vampires, zombies, god, spirits, ghosts.  Imagine what it would be like if we didn't promote stuff that doesn't exist. And just said to kids "carry on playing  - enjoy the rain/sunshine/wind and forget about stuff that doesn't exist."  (they'd look at you strangely anyway - cos that's all they do!).

And to do that, we'd have to drop our own stories about 'stuff that's not happening' and be absolutely certain that what we're saying is unassailably true -  that the tales we tell and the things we say we believe  ARE  stories.  But OUR stories are the ultimate addiction.  In order to present truth,  it has to be demonstrated - with no shadow of a doubt.  And that means seeing your own story to begin with. And once you see that, it can only ever be a story.

And once you know something, you can't unknow it (I don't mean remembering something) I mean KNOWING.

Refusing to buy into a story and demonstrating to others what their stories are in a way that's obvious, is difficult - it flies in the face of how society is structured.  It's not popular, that's for sure! Whether  it's seen or not is out of your hands - it's not down to you and it's not down to them.  Being willing to point it out though,  is compassion.  Com-passion.   With Passion.  Total Conviction.