The lesson of a tiny creature

I was in the countryside during the weekend doing some labour around the house. I was shoveling some gravel which was to be used for building a new parking place for the cars. Close to ending when I was pretty tired and didn`t pay as much attention as before I unintentionally hit a frog which was hiding in the sand pile. Unfortunately the shovel cut down one of her legs.

It was a small to medium size light green frog. I took her and placed her on a pasture a bit further away. While doing so I couldn`t not notice how calm she was and how warm she was looking at me. Her eyes were watering, most likely because of the physical pain, but other than that she did nothing but to look at me and blink from time to time.

I was amazed by such peacefullness. Don`t think any human being could react this way when facing such a brutal vicissitude of life. However this tiny frog did nothing. Life is life and there`s not much we can do about it but live it and go with the flow. It doesn`t matter if you greet life with open arms or with clenched teeth. What is going to happen will happen whether you like it or not.

Somehow men didn`t learn this lesson. Animals and plants did. They live for the moment while men live for tomorrow with their silly dreams and expectations, fighting and waiting for something that will never come, destroying themselves and the planet we inhabit in their search.

All this time I was looking at this frog wondering what to do to make it better. I can`t really make a frog grow a leg back lol so there wasn`t much to do. However the time I took watching it meant something to me. I borrowed some of that peacefulness myself. Somehow a lesson in awareness has been thought and a frog was the teacher.

All the other beings we share this planet with have an important lesson to teach: to accept what it "is" and to abandon our mind programming and prejudice and everything that keeps us in the past or dreaming about a "better" future, and to live in the now - the only time that is certain.

I will close with a quote from the Bible even if "God" knows I`m one of the worst Christians walking the Earth. However this was quite appropriate:
"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin" (Matthew 6:28)

What is true?

A week or so ago I read a book by a guy who says he reached enlightenment. The method he was teaching his pupils was for them to simply discover "the truth" out of everything else.

"Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. That’s it. Ask yourself what’s true until you know."

So far so good. It didn`t help me that much but it was a good place to start.

"It`s about finding out what we know for c e r t a i n and everything else."

I wrote down a couple of things that resonated to what I hold to be true. Truth is that which was not created and what will never reach an ending. However there was no break through, no new discovery, no "Evrika!".

Until tonight, when a paragraph from Eckhart Tolle made some light. It is not the first time when life gave me some answers even if with a short delay and when I was nowhere waiting for it.

"If in your relationship you experience both love and the opposite of love - attack, emotional violence, and so on - then it is likely that you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love. [..] True love has no opposite. If your love has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of your self, a need that the other person cannot meet for you. It is the ego's substitute for salvation or God."

It is not something I never heard before. But somehow tonight it stroke a chord inside of me and suddenly there was light.
Eckhart is talking about love relationships. I`m talking about everything in life:

Whichever has an opposite is fake.

Simple as that, plus the answer to the question of "what is true". Whichever doesn`t have an opposite is the truth I have been waiting for.

This can be used in any situation life presents you with. If your happiness is "because" of something and in the absence of that thing you will start feeling miserable then the whole situation is not true - that for happiness vs. sadness but it`s the same for everything else which has an opposite.

All the opposite principles are representatives of duality, we live in a dual world after all. All those that do not have an opposite come from the world of non-duality and are those that will survive our mortal death.

Non-mind

The non-mind is a lightning, a current of energy that burns you inside out. It starts with the thought. It continues with observing the thought and with stepping outside the thought. It ends with a scent, a flavor that cannot be expressed in words. Which is understandable after all words are expressed thoughts. No thought can express the non-thought, the non-mind.

You feel both full and empty same time - full of being and empty of illusion. This emptiness cannot be regarded as something negative, like boredom or unhappiness. The negative can only exist in the presence of the positive. This emptiness contains none of it. It`s void of any kind of emotion.

This current sweeps away your entire body, bit by bit, and eventually you start to feel that it is not just inside but also outside. This current is connected with the outer world as well, the energy going in and out as it chooses, like a wave in the ocean. That is when you start doubting the existence of your own body. How can you have a material existence when you clearly feel the wave inside out. Your "static" body is actually a movement of energy, a wave of particles.

You are unlimited. You have no beginning and no ending. This wind can take you miles away and it is only for the consciousness to hold it together. In the absence of this consciousness, nothing holds this wave in place. You would dissipate into oblivion.

In the absence of the mind and the thought, you experience a freedom you never did before. Life tastes sweeter, and not just metaphorically. However, even now you feel a bit caged. Why not stopping the consciousness all together? Why not dissipate completely into the Universe? Ultimate freedom - the end of everything.

Your body is not non-mind. Your body is mind. Your body is a cage. When you step outside the mind, your body feels liquid or even further less dense. This might explain how the American shamans were able to juggle with their own energy field, to transform themselves into whichever they desired and to completely leave the world when time came without leaving a corpse behind.

Or maybe the non-mind is not the ultimate answer. Maybe it`s just the opposite of the mind, just a creation to ensure duality on this plane. In this case none would be real except this dance of particles, held together by a thought. The ultimate answer is yet to be found, not in words at least.

The further you go down the lane the more questions you have and the less answers you are given. Life is here and now and not in these words you reading.

Nothingness Enthroned

 "The elephant is a distortion in space, its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure." - The Elephants, painting by Salvador Dali

 You look around and you see a room, a chamber full of objects. They form and define your space. To an extent they are part of your "persona". They speak about who and what you are, about what you stand for.

But what if instead of concentrating on the object, you loose yourself in the space between. What if, instead of seeing the end-of-the-road object, you see the void that supports the whole structure. Is an empty room really empty or is it full with substance? And if you fill your room with objects (and accordingly your mind with fleeting thoughts) doesn`t that take away some of your substance, some of your immortal nature? For objects come and go but there is something that is eternal.

There is a seed of creation that never dies or disappear. Unfortunately our kind is only interested in possessions, and I wonder if not, in a moment of solitude, we mirrored the emptiness inside of us and, scared of it we ran away and lost our awareness in this ocean of material illusions. What would happen if instead of running away we would embrace the emptiness and see where it takes us. Why be afraid? What do we have to loose?... Our minds probably, but maybe that is the whole point.

The emptiness is all around us. The emptiness is also inside. Going back to the quantum physics, they say that the solidity of the matter is an illusion. Even the apparent solidity of the human body is almost 100% empty space, this is how huge are the distances between the atoms comparing to their size. Even more than that, if you split an atom you will find the same substance - emptiness. What remains is more like a wave, a frequency (does that sound similar to our thoughts brainwaves by any chance?) - like the sounds of a unmanifested music. The whole matter is nothing but a wave of energy, a wave of thoughts, which we choose to see in a certain way and which gives birth to everything around us, our body, our chamber, our whole world. Our dream...

The Unmanifested is not present in this bipolar world but still it forms the substance from which this world was created. What does that mean but the fact that our true nature is in the void? We were born out of darkness and in darkness we shall return. This nothingness is our mother and our father. It gives us birth, it fills our space with "nothing", it nurtures us and helps us back on the right track for when we get trapped in the object.

So why fear the emptiness? Why go back to the mundane for fear of boredom and find things to do in order to pass the time? To continuously recreate dreams and illusions in the hope that this way we will be "something" or "somebody" when the truth is that we are nothing.

And if you taste this truth you might find out that this emptiness is more fulfilling than any object. Ironically, in the bosom of stillness you will find that which sets the world in motion.

Until next time have a day filled with emptiness and may the nothingness in one mirror the nothingness in the other.

Why so serious?

 
Nothing in life has a meaning deeper than the meaning you give it.
You first think you are "somebody", you build yourself an ego, a role to play. At a certain point in life (usually when you`re young) it actually makes sense. You are this or the other. You are a doctor or a student, a good person or a sinner, or a scientist, or somebody who is insecure. There`s billions of people and just as many egos. And you go on playing your part feeling happy and feeling sad at times.

When somebody reiterates your ego, you call him friend. When somebody makes you feel insecure, you call him enemy. But the same person can become your best friend a moment later for simply starting to feed into your ego. And right after that, an enemy again for he did something to offend you. The truth is, they are all the same. The one who applies labels is you. It`s not their deeds that made you choose. It`s your own projections and your own mind(less) programming that brought you in this situation in the first place. And nothing will change until you remove the veil off your self created illusions.

A while back I saw a movie, don`t remember all the details but it was about quantum physics. They say humans are bombarded every second with 14 million bits of information. From that huge quantity, with our 5 senses, we only bring in a few thousands. And even then, all that information is being filtrated by our expectations, our prejudice and our mind barriers. In conclusion, we are blind and deaf to what life really is. We acknowledge less than 1% of what happens around us. What we see is nothing but a dream... our own imagination.

We don`t see life as it is, we only see what we want to see. When you know this, life suddenly becomes unlimited. You see the unbounded potential in each and every situation. You stop making excuses and you go out living.

How can you say that X is your friend, and Y is your enemy when there is absolutely no certainty whatsoever. How can you ever be sad again when you know that sadness is nothing but a state of mind? Your mind. How can you be frustrated or angry with life and situations when you know it`s of your own making.

How can you be angry at a dream when you can simply wake up?

Well, tonight all my friends are my enemies and all my enemies are my friends. Enjoy the game.

Instead

I don`t believe in words and I have no faith in gods.
Their scriptures seem so cold and their clothes too old.
I have no trust in philosophy. It`s human mind atrophy.
I put no weight on thought. They are long lasting not.

Instead I love the site, the beauty of the night.
The white of the snows, the way in which wind blows.
The green of the tree where a wolf pack roams free.
The howl of its wolves who follow no rules.
Amazed by her hair curl and the smile of a girl,

A kiss on her lips and a touch on her hips,

The softness of her voice making my heart rejoice.
The blossom of a flower and a spring rain shower.
The scent of a rose which makes time froze.
The silky morning dew mirroring sky`s blue.
The play of a child who knows to live life wild.
Take the mindless set, I choose life instead.

An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will

Bide within the Law you must, in perfect Love and perfect Trust.
Live you must and let to live, fairly take and fairly give.
(The Wiccan Rede)

I have always tried to treat people the way I expected to be treated in return. Time ago I used to think that it was needed if you want to lead a "pleasant" life and to have people be nicer towards you. And they were. Life does indeed give you what you deserve. Treating others the way you would like to be treated does work. But... yes, there`s a but... it didn`t yesterday.

Details are unimportant. Somebody did to me something I wouldn`t do to that person or to anybody else before. Something which my system of "morals" would prevent me from doing. Why? Because I don`t do that. Because something in me stops it from happening.

And thinking about it, it might be that that "Mr. Morals" inside of me is my greatest enemy on the path towards freedom. That voice that says, "Don`t do that. It`s not nice. Don`t add to the world`s negativity. Think about your image. Think about what other people will think of you."
Of course, in a way it`s all right to live following a set of rules. That stops the whole world going crazy. But what if those rules keep you in slavery? Indeed, treating others how would you like to be treated helps you lead a more pleasant life. But you`re still chained to something even though your chain is made of gold and not iron. It`s still a chain.

So what to do in this situation? Start acting against your mindset and system of morals? Do exactly the opposite and be rude or straightforwardly hurt people? Of course that might crush your previous morality and... kindness. But fighting fire with fire would NOT give you freedom. It would simply change your system of rules, your mindset with another. So the answer here would be, rather than analyzing your current personality and find flaws and try to change, better just let it go. Just be aware. Just accept that the world is a crazy place and it can not be logically understood .

You can be a moral person all you like and one day somebody will treat you so unfairly that you will have a big problem dealing with the whole thing and not have a break down. Life indeed cannot be controlled. And given the fact that we use less than 10% of our brain capacity, and that with our limited physical senses we perceive less than 1% of what really happens around us... we can safely assume that we are blind and deaf to what life really is.

And even though I knew all that, there was still a battle inside my head, between the "me who felt hurt" (the ego) by that other person`s action  and the "observer" - the one who doesn`t get involved and who simply watches life unfolding any way it chooses to :). And this is what worries me or better said what is bothering me. It`s something I have to discover or to learn in order to move forward, to reach that freedom from mind control.

Takes me thinking to what Eckhart Tolle used to say about the pain body, about that negative energy which takes control over us if we let it. And it is precisely what startled me last night, that thing that "disrupted" my peaceful existence and begun to feed into my own negativity. I started to emit judgements and criticize another person because it wouldn`t live by my set of rules and morals. And this "pain body" would have grown even stronger if it wasnt for the "observer" - my awareness. If I kept on thinking that way then no good would came out of it.

So in the end, guess I have to be grateful. To give thanks to life for showing me one of the issues I have to go through in order to reach the other side. It showed me that there is a pain body inside which is still strong and to find a way to stop feeding into it.

Onwards...