I = God =/= anything

When we say "I did this", "I did that", what we are actually saying is "I am God".  We attribute life's existence to God and the functioning of our life to 'I'.  We effectively say that I control myself and my life.  I = God.  Where both "I" and "God" are non-existent. 

Neither can be proven.  There is an assumption that because this exists (whatever 'this' is) then it must have been caused or made or created by something or someone.  It is assumed that 'this' is an effect of something else.... It's extrapolating a causer of existence.  That there is this existing and it must be caused by 'something' even though that something can't be seen or proven to exist.  

And it's entirely logical, because if we take a look at anything - for instance  this screen that you're looking at now - we attribute it's existence to it being made by somebody; it was put together out of component parts by a person, who got their instructions from a design, that was put together by another person, that was created by someone else etc., etc.  Therefore, there's a deduction that anything existing does so as a result of a previous action, and the mind needs to solve the equation, the conundrum, and come up with a definitive answer that puts a stop to the never-ending cycle of cause and effect.  It sees it in linear terms, rather than as a cycle of creation and destruction.

So, there is this experience, and it's assumed that there must be a creator.  A generator; which try as we might, can't be found.  To return to the example of this computer screen, we can endlessly trace back it's existence but can never find it.  

Try it now.  Break it down into its component parts; all put together by a factory operative somewhere; take each of those parts - trace each back to its manufacture; to the plastic and the silicone and the metal; even so early on in the backward chain you can already see that there is no single cause of the result that appears to be this screen.  And so the same with this existence.  

It's precisely because there can be no trace back to one singular causative agent that the human brain, in its confusion of being unable to make the equation work,  manufactures  a cause and gives it a name, attributes, qualities and so ........ God is made in our own image. But made so that it can't be seen, known or proven.  The cause (or God)  has to be bigger, more powerful and more knowing than us.  Because, we deduce - if God created this, then that God must surely be bigger, better, more powerful and more intelligent than that which it created.  So God becomes a story of such fantastical proportions that its qualities can never be apprehended by the creation it made.  And therefore, God becomes unknowable, and if God can't be known, neither can it be proved.  Because in order to prove something it has to be evident... otherwise it's just a theory.  

I hear you say: "Ah, but you can see the evidence of God.  The entire creation is evidence of God's."  No, it isn't.  The entire creation is evidence of the entire creation.  It doesn't need a Creator.  It doesn't need God for it to exist.  Similarly it doesn't need a big bang or a potentiality.  It is evidence in itself.  It is only evidenced by it's existence.

And to get personal, the very same mechanism that creates the story of a creator is the same process that conjures this thing called 'I/Me/You/Self'.  

There is seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and thinking and tasting, and a cause is overlayed onto the experiencing: Ha! becomes part of the experiencing.  There is a surmisation that there is a causative agent that is doing the things that are experienced, and is also having the experience.  And this surmising is called 'I'.  And this 'I' is given the credit for doing it all.

But just like God, if this 'I''s existence is asked to be proven, the person can't come up with a definitive, knowable thing that can be incontravertibly proven to be the 'I'.  All sorts of theories about what "I" is, are put forward: The body, the brain, a spirit, an animating force, awareness, conscioussness, the soul.  And then at some point, when all the possibilities of what this 'I' is are exhausted - when that which is labelled "I" can't be found to be an actual thing, the person questions the very existence of an 'I' in the first place.  And sees that it does not, has never, nor will ever exist.  It sees that its own existence is not caused by an 'I'.  And on further looking it sees that the very seeing itself is not as the result of a definable, explainable, describable originator. 

Belief in God is just a belief in a bigger 'I'.  It says that as there is an 'I' then that 'I' must have been created by something and that something must be more than what I am - so it conjures up an originator.  Questioning God or questioning 'I' is the same process - it's looking for the proof of something that is only a belief.  And when the proof can't be found, it's seen that there is no origin - no begin point. Only an assumption that there is a beginning point which set off a whole chain of events that can explain the what, how and why of existence, of life.

But take the belief of an Originating Doer out of the picture and what is left?  

Well, have a look - what is left?

"If you want to make applie pie, first create the universe."  Carl Sagan.

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!

That's You, That Is

I was discussing with someone a book they had been reading about how everyone is a product of their DNA programming.  They said it had made them more understanding towards people in general because it meant that no-one could help being the way they are.  Fair comment.

They  continued that this also explained why women can't read maps.  To whit I responded (and just look how I walked right into this one.... ) "Well, I can read maps".  They replied (cue fanfare ...):

"And that just proves another point outlined in this book.  That all women are self-centred."

Touche.

Actually, I think that my assertion that I can read maps doesn't actually prove that ALL women are self-centred... just... that I think I can read maps.  But I get his point.  That we relate everything to ourselves.  We put ourselves at the centre and then appraise, judge, compare and contrast whatever is happening or being said in direct relation to how we think it impacts us personally.

What he and the author of the book (also male) was saying is that it is only women that are self-centred.  For now, I 'm going to leave aside the misogynistic claims of the author and the person with whom I was having the discussion, through gritted teeth admittedly, and assert that all humans are self-centred.  It IS the way we're wired.

And we can't help it.  We live in a culture and a society that promotes and applauds personal success.  The survival of the fittest, slimmest, sleekest, richest.  It's the way we've evolved.  The human mechanism is propagated to ensure its survival as a species and to do that it puts itself at the centre and then each one of the members of the human race puts themselves at the centre of the species.  And entirely logically too, because it is impossible to experience life from any other viewpoint but this one.  You literally cannot be an other-self centre.  You can only be this one.  You can assume what it might be like to experience life as another person, but even if they explain what their experience is, you can't know with certainty that what you think they mean is what they actually mean.

So as a practical and survivalist mechanism, it's a useful one.

But... and there's always a but..... that mechanism to survive is becoming increasingly destructive In My Opinion (see, you can't get away from it). The functioning, being necessarily selfish, seeks to exalt itself above all others - and not just in obvious ways, but in every way.  Everything that this agency of self-centredness does is referrant to itself.  Even acts of charity, it could be argued, make the giver look good, both in their and other's eyes.  In comparison to others we want to be better, kinder, cleverer, thinner, richer, ..... ad nauseum.  We want to be the best, in some way, even if it's by being the best victim!

It's like a virus that's gone awry, run amok.

I grant that there are many who see that the human species is destructive, nihilistic and aggressive in the extreme due to its need to be right at any cost.  Due, essentially, to it's utter self-centredness.

And here's the ludicrousness of it all; if you look to find this 'self-centre' it's obvious that it doesn't actually exist.  The programme/mechanism/functioning/process does, but not an actual 'thing' that can be identified and found.

So where does that leave us?  Where does that leave you and me? If what you think you are is just a functioning of DNA programming, designed to ensure the overall survival of the species by advancing each member to compete against all other members, then does seeing that it IS just a functioning mean you see through the futility and destructiveness of trying to compete as an autonomous individual self?

I think it depends... not just on DNA, but on the particular culture, upbringing, influences, parenting, schooling - in other words the entire environment within which we all live.  All those things that dynamically impact and make up each person and their characteristics and personality.

In an absolute sense, it doesn't matter.  But in terms of the whole experience as living as a species, I'd say it does.

But I can't help it, I'm made that way, apparently.

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.