POST 78

What a life and a very cruel saying when angry at someone 'oh get a life''. What is Life and how do we define it? Dear reader greetings and trust your life bode's well and I am so glad and honoured to greet you again. Although I do not know you, I trust you are a wonderful person experiencing your life in a way that fulfils you and those around you. In these troubled times, the beam of your smile, the love in your heart can uplift those less fortunate  and suffering. Something in the way we are is more important or has an effect more than words or deeds, although these are vitally important as well.

I was in meditation and it came across to me 'what is life'?  I have pondered this for many years and have blogged, posted, discussed done workshops, witnessed peoples lives in family, as a therapist, in forensics and so forth. Yet these were the experiences of life, the furniture in the room so to speak.

This new insight was deeper and nearer source so to speak.  Life Itself is basically an unknown 'force, energy,' yes it is that and yet still in the realms of the known, that is frequencies, vibrations, thoughts, concepts.  So Life is beyond all this and that, and it is a non definable whatever.  

Life is Life and because of this, this is what we are and am, we are trying to define the essence of ourselves which is mysterious. We know we are here because we experience ourselves and we know we came from out of  nowhere, like being dead asleep and waking up, and we know people die and disappear, and I will disappear as well.  

Then there are those that feel we live in another dimension as ourselves when we die and we are born from that dimension.

This is all experience as personality, a being of form albeit more subtle than our bodies. We also know from this Earthly experience we are only apparently solid.  SO before any personality trait was impressed on us by religion, culture, before babyhood, before and in the womb were we pristine, primordial, unformed?

Maybe emptiness?

Maybe the unknown may seem empty, devoid of shape, seemingly sterile and frightening to the known that we are.  And if one believes in reincarnation one merely comes back to reinvent the wheel, a modification of the old and perhaps being given a chance to break the mould. To be a new personality. However this can go on for a considerable while whilst we in form called time. So maybe the known is concerned with time and is time, that which we measure time by and the unknown is timeless.

By that then we might assume  that timelessness is formless, empty. 

The Road To Nowhere.

Maybe Nowhere is pure potential, invisible intelligence, the fount of creativity in which is the custodian of every possibility and probability, sounds a tad scientific, heaven forbid, then it is always spewing out from Itself, creative 'knowns'.  And perhaps this potential, this consciousness, this mind, this non local mind, is where Cosmic thoughts arise from and create through itself all that is.  And then reclaims it to Itself.
It would seem as form becomes aware of Itself, as a separate entity from the Unknown, it has no recollection of its intrinsic origin, it localises itself, a kind of solidification, it is compartmentalising itself, giving itself a local identity, which it clings to and clones itself by reincarnation. 

Who am I?

There seems to be a few types of self realisation. There are those who realise their bigotry or are in denial and become robotic, there are those in all modes of behaviour, some recognise or self realise their characteristics as some psychiatrists and therapists do and see in others, and depending on their training endeavour to insert one back to an accepted moral norm, a code of ethics designed for survival, a kind of handbook for survival, the manufacturer's instructions, and can be as we often find out like in flat pack assemble guide highly confusing, with parts missing, and not having the right tools. There are some who realise they are not who they thought they were.

Oy Veh 

What religion, what culture, what image, what politics, poor, rich, whatever.  You choose or are chosen to choose whatever your parents, mentors, whoever and however you /we are programmed, conditioned, brainwashed.  
So the local brain encased mind is formed and along with it solid, experienced reality, or so we think.  Someone comes along an upsets the apple cart, naughty quantum guys, solid neh, no way, and so panic to some, and then comes an experience perhaps a life threatening illness, an accident, a film, book, or just starting yoga, tai chi, meditation, suffering,  and or there must be more to life than this.  Just so many triggers.
Who am I? I am me,who is this Me?  Am I just a set of concepts, someone's hand me downs, a kind of old idea genetic disposition?  Am I more than this?  If so what is more than this and so on? One can go quiet bananas and definitely lose your mo jo. Distraction, distraction, help, alcohol, sport, sex(is that the number after five?)thrills, spills, you name it people pay millions for running away from that burning question.
I cannot lose my self programmed identity, I cannot die, I must be immortal.

Another Oy Veh.

Eventually we can come to contemplate the Universe, its vastness, its sheer incomprehensible size, yet this is a form explanation, because emptiness has no comprehensible size, definition and is outside the brain so to speak, it is non local.
So it is not definable, immeasurable, incomprehensible, dimensionless, unexplainable, it is in fact the unknown, HOWEVER it is the very fact that it is space, not the space of scientists in which particles still reside, dark matter and all That, it is in fact where all That arose from, it is from this unknown that the unknown is known, and from the known to the unknown the absence of light brings night, the appearance of light brings day.

This we see and understand, although a miracle.

However, the day, the hour, cometh the hour, cometh the man, when the impeccable timing is right, it dawns on the person, I am beyond thought, beyond anything I can see, hear, touch , smell or think I am indeed a ---------something --------words fail me, I desperately search my mind for an explanation, something to hang onto, I write blog /posts, I present workshops, lecture, pontificate, I become a guru, a philosopher, a scientist.  Yet it does not satisfy me, something urges me on, I must know, I must, I must, another theory, build a bigger CERN Collider, get a Nobel Prize, another PH.D, wear my funny gown and hat, be somebody, important, people look up to me, I have arrived.  OY VEH.

An intellectual thorn

Yes I can understand philosophers, scientists who need to know that they know and what they know is the truth and stable, safe, and many now are dipping their toes into the unknown and recognising this is the end of the trail and withdraw hastily, haemorrhoidal flaring and butt clenching, I could lose my lucrative job, my position, my credibility, I will go mad, be a vegetable,  vegetate, become a nobody, so I go deeper in my studies, there must be a plausible rational logical explanation.  Yet if one is an honest researcher and not shun the seemingly impossible, unusual, then the QUEST, THE SPIRITUAL THORN takes over, and one never rests until WHO AM I IS FOUND.  Ramana Maharishi was once asked is there an answer to who am I? He said' when you no longer need to ask it'.
So one slides out of the quest not into a way, a cult, write a book, become a somebody, wear a persona, cultivate a mask, an impressionist, one becomes to realise that the unknown, the emptiness is awareness, it is consciousness, is LIFE, it is all right to drop thought, and allow one to dwell in the unknown emptiness and there is an OK, OK about it, and thought arises of itself and usually to do something in daily life, it is more spontaneous than a deliberation, one seems more simple, yet wise, living at a slower pace within brain activity, whilst around it may feel one is less ambitious, less thrustful and yet gets surprisingly a considerable amount done with less huff and puff.  So one begins to realise that potential is life(Capable of being but not yet in existence; latent: 

 Having possibility, capability, or power, this is potential)  One Realises that emptiness is potential, like a bullet in a gun.  All power is there and so Life is emptiness and one is merely a witness to that Life which issues out of and back to Its origin. Be Empty be life. So trusting the letting go, being the witness without bias and prejudice, the unbiased observer ah la natural, a non trying natural relaxed but highly dynamic witness is Life. The very act of witnessing is Life in Action.  Can one define awareness?  It is experiencing the experience.  Experience is the act of an event issuing from emptiness, and explosion from birth, and returning to its source. 

Who is the dreamer?

Can one ever find emptiness?  After all how can one find that which is not definable, invisible, non dimensional?  The solution 'ONE FINDS ONESELF' and who is this self, only one in delusion can answer that. If one looks inside the mind with eyes turned inwards, like listening to your 'head brain', thoughts seem to arrive from nowhere, and if pursued and perused without attachment, one allows them to drift like clouds and they subside into nowhere.  Here again we see or experience this nowhere everywhere phenomena. So one sees that to let go to the emptiness is not a vegetative state, that indeed the state of awareness is emptiness and that means Life is the emptiness and that emptiness is the witness of awareness. Is it possible to be an Eternal Being?  To me the comings and goings, the hither and thither, from fullness to emptiness is Eternal Life and the fulcrum, the dividing line on this see saw is the Witness and from the centre, from the midpoint which is the witness all is born and becomes dead, and in one way there is no birth or death for they are just complimentary aspects of the whole.

The tip of the Triangle is symbolically the witness.

My Sifu said that from Wu 'emptiness' came duality and then it went to the four corners, the eight directions and so forth. All the explanation above does not mean a fig, it just allows me the experience, another slide, another letting go, my hand / brain loosening its grip on my perceived indoctrination and unlearning my education of what reality and illusion maybe. 

For me I am loosening the grip of my childhood.

I see the world peoples seemingly floundering as our whole reality is floundering, squirming and like a person in quicksands desperately trying to get out, only makes it worse by struggling. Our mind patterns are worn out, tired, not working are not efficacious. We need to stop struggling to let the stillness, the quiet, the peace saturate us, become empty of fear and worry, trust in who we are and honour that.

So many crying for help, scared and have no way out.

The beggars, the houses being repossessed, the despondent, the youth of today who are drug fuelled, laden with additives, wild images, electronic bombardment, all these are wake up calls to go back to WHAT?  History has shown we have repeats, reincarnations of slavery, the rich, the poor, the wars.  Many are looking for a new way--- but what is that way?  who is going to lead us, where is the Messiah, the knight in Shining White Armour? 
The Knight is inside our minds, transparency, care, sharing, respect, feeling grateful and so on. It is a matter of choice, forget the celebrities, the corrupt political hypocrites who say one thing and do another.  Be still, be quiet, be alone in your 'head' be not afraid,  watch your thoughts, breathe, let the itching body rest, let sleep go, stay alert, watch, watch, shun not, encourage not, watch the raging mind wanting to escape into distraction, stay with it, be a spiritual Samurai, this being a gentle but determined passively active watcher of yourself as you sit and look, listen and learn about yourself.  Sitting quietly there is an experience whereby the darkness of the mind is found, like a dark blank sheet, this is sometimes a precursor to a widening of the darkness like an iris opening, the shadows of the darkness recede like the sun evaporating the blackness and as the shadows withdraw, gradually creeping along the ground of consciousness, a beautiful dawn approaches, a quiet bubbling joy, like soft dew, there is an exquisite  joy, a radiance soft and pearly and shot through with mirth and yet a quiet assurance that all is very, very well indeed.  It is here that one learns of love, caring, agape, unconditional beingness, it is not taught or instilled, it is direct from source, and it this that all and everyone is bathed in that transforms the collective unconscious and the world ethos into a new era.  This is indeed could usher in the golden age.

Resistance is said to be that which opposes change? Maybe Starman would be better to fall into the unknown than to give in to that which will bind him to a false path.

Then, then, then, quietly and yet suddenly, a trap door opens, the mind seems to expand into a still dynamic inner and yet everywhere space and at last you have found emptiness, there is nothing there. However you are there a nameless witness, a watcher on the threshold, perched between form and no form and you are both and none at the same time. 

Be the emptiness we all are, for there is but one of us and in that emptiness we dissolve are just one. Your emptiness is the same experience as mine------the truth is my, ours, theirs, I, me us, yours all these fade away and there is only -------?

From the temporary form that is Geoff.  Be Well.