Following the Reactionary Paradigm

There are many internet spiritualists that claim that your mind, and its thoughts, must be sacrificed and denied if you wish to awaken from the "illusion." These paths inform that you must transcend the mind, which is cause of all your suffering.

But if it is cause for your suffering, might it not cause joy? Are we not first cause, deluded into acting as if second best?

Thoughts give great joy as well as suffering and this thinking is authentically honest and real. However, the teachers of transcendence would deny you your thoughts and the joy that allows you to extend and share that joy with others. Of course, they seek to eradicate your suffering and pain, yet thoughts of love and joy are equally discounted, unless they are the product of some enigmatic “enlightened” state of “no-mind.”

If the ‘self’ is a mental construct that you made up, shouldn’t it be constructed to provide the most peace and joy possible? Why should the peace and joy prescribed by the “enlightened master” be the only legitimate experience? Why is the joy of the 'common man' negated and marginalized while the austere joyful experience of so-called “pure awareness” or “direct experience” the only authentic joy? And just consider how much sacrifice and suffering are prescribed and promised before this bliss is available.

Transcendent joy has its price. No pain, no gain, right?

This is a theme of the world and will not serve to transcend it. The world will not be discarded because it demands you live through it as a construct of experience. But it can be seen differently within, thereby reconstructing experience causing radical changes to an "external" world. The "kingdom of heaven within" does not deny or eradicate the world, but magnifies it through the parameters you construct.

The problem with the world today is fundamental to a disengaged encounter with living in the world and in that disengagement you are estranged and alienated from the world, others and, most of all, your experience of 'self.'

Is the extension of loving joy from parent to child any different from the joy your master teaches you to seek? Is the joy between lovers less than the joy of these prescribed “enlightenment” or “awakening” experiences? Why are the normal joys of living contraindicated and illusory?

Throw it all away, they teach. It's merely a trick of the ego.

As long as you fear or hate the “illusion” of reality, and make this the basis of your “awakening,” you will remain bound to your perception of an illusory world and it can never be anything more than that.

This is the "reactionary paradigm," in which you react to suffering by seeking a means of escape, while the world continues to reflect back more of what you wish to escape from causing your meditative escape 'practices' to become that much more intense and even desperate.

What makes you think the masters "enlightened bliss" is any less an illusion than your suffering or fear? The choice is not transcending an illusory world, but a transformative engagement by deeply embracing the experience of living IN your world. The most profound spiritual exercise you will perform is deeply engaging the experience of your world and those whom you encounter in that world.

Reach out into it in a loving embrace and be awakened. There is no "I AM" separate and isolated from relationship. The I AM knows itself through relating to and extending into a world.

Stop hiding from your experience of living through spiritual and religious platitudes and austere mountain top practices. Come down from your mountain hermitage. The world cries out to become your home, if only you would engage deeply with your experience of a world and make it so.

You will know your truth by sharing it with me and I will know mine through you and that merely confirms the truth that we are ONE. You can encounter hell in your world, but only when you refuse to be part of it.

Being cannot be experienced without 'relationship.'

To BE is to extend outward to a world of your choosing and, make no mistake, you do choose. There is no such experience as "pure being" without an experience of a world for which to BE PURE FOR. God extends and experiences Being and therefore, you exist and will realize your Being through extension, not contracting into a world of religious and spiritual concealment and undisclosed meditative solitude. Tear down the monastery of your 'self'!

Disclose your 'self' to yourself by Being in your world with others experiencing the infinite game.

Love is an Infinite Feedback Loop

Love is a feedback loop that when extended, only comes back around to the mind extending, even when receipt of that extension is denied by the love object you are extending to.

This loop originates with extension TO another, but is not conditioned on extension FROM another.

To know love you must extend love, yet it makes no difference if love is extended back from another. In this way, one can BE love and this BEING is not conditioned on anything other than that BEING.

Nevertheless, according to your ego (the conditioned and socially trained part of your mind), for love to be experienced, all extension, or giving, must be conditioned on ‘getting’ in return. Therefore, your extension TO another is specifically conditioned on their extension TO you. If a return is not forthcoming, based on your extension, your egoic mind will purposely obstruct or even fully terminate the loop that originates from your mind.

Love requires extension to another in order to be experienced, but it is not contingent on another returning it. Mother Teresa was steeped in love for the sick and suffering in her care. Yet, the extent of their sickness may have made it impossible for a return extension. Nevertheless, her love to them magnified love within her experience of self and the loop was completed, and maintained, like an unbroken electrical circuit.

Love magnifies YOU and this magnification is contingent on nothing but extension. This is because the only way to experience love is to extend it.
Of course, you need not be a Mother Teresa, sacrificing your life for the sick, to experience such magnification within your own experience of “self.’ However, there must be another for which to extend. Those we extend to are often family or loved ones of our choosing. Unfortunately, the ego chooses primarily for what it can ‘get’ and less by what it can give. This impedes the feedback loop that is not contingent on receiving anything at all.

A feedback loop in the extension of love can have no interference for the impulses you send out to return to you in a magnified form. Love conditioned as contingent on return impulses from another only impedes what you extend from returning to you. Love is a state of mind and, although physical manifestations are available for observation, unconditioned love is an enlightened state of mind available to all minds.

Love is the nature of Being and extension is our natural predisposition. Demanding extension be contingent on return will cause the loop to eventually contract in upon itself. Many live their entire lives in the experience of a contracted and obstructed feedback loop and never experience the love that serves to magnify life itself.

The difference between this feedback loop and other forms of feedback is that your experience of love is contingent on the impulse you send out being returned in a magnified form, but that magnification requires nothing from anyone else and your only focus is extension. Therefore, you cannot obstruct this extension of mind through imposing conditions on that extension.

This requires a secure sense of ‘self’ in which your security is not contingent on a return of extended love. In this sense, your giving love to another is free and clear of the egoic imposition of any factors whatsoever. Love is not a dependent state and must be free of conditional dependencies that your ego defines.

Surprisingly, (and many have experienced this), what actually takes place through this feedback loop is that, because there is no dependency on a return extension, that return naturally occurs.

When the loved one you extend to experiences that you have no demand for the extension to be returned, the natural predisposition is to extend as well. To experience diminished egoic involvement in extending love is to be inspired through it, and touched by it, instilling a desire to replicate the experience for oneself.

If you extend to me and all my hatred of you does little to impede or terminate that extension, I can only marvel and seek to emulate the experience I reckon you must have encountered. This is because deep down I know this experience and have wanted, longed for it, all my life. We all long for the freedom of an extension of love that makes no demands. This is bound up in our Being and is a natural condition of Being, in fact, it is the only condition of your Being.

In a spiritual sense, there is only one way to experience your Being, free and unfettered from egoic attachment, and that is through the extension of your Being (defined as love) to another, with no condition on whether this is returned or not.

This is the nature of your existence. But a more important point relates to the magnification of the experience of love. This magnification within the feedback loop is infinite. Therefore, increase will continue to occur as much and as far as the mind will allow, based on increasingly diminished conditions. Thus, if another agrees to join the loop you have extended, this serves as an addition to the wholeness you magnify through your own mindful extension and magnifies them in their mind as extension is mutually engaged together.

Love is always an increase to 'self' regardless of who does or does not participate. Yet, make no mistake, participation is naturally compelled in the minds of those so touched by the experience you model through your own secure feedback loop. Take away egoic impositions and the circuit cannot be broken.

See for yourself.

The Guru Wears No Clothes!

Your ego-self is nothing more than a composite or package of beliefs you attribute to as “you.” Those beliefs that make up the 'self' are nothing more than associations to the past. Your ego-self has extracted from the past the information and experiences it has decided best assert itself into its experience of a ‘world.’

Because of this, the world is a mass of confused associations, all claiming to be the map to truth. But which one is true?
If you choose to rely on the great wisdom traditions, essentially you rely on the past. But can reliance on the past give you a present moment? Can information from the past give you NOW?

When you quote the revered ones, have you simply recreated the past in the moment? Do their words from the past, often quoted from centuries of interwoven interpretations piled one atop another, liberate you from the past? How can you experience the “now” based on what the past teaches?

They all claim to show the way to freedom from the past, but how often do you ever stop to consider that the teachings you have been following all came from the past? Are we not simply traveling in circles?

When will we finally proclaim that the guru wears no clothes?

The ego-self certainly loves the past and, let’s face it, without an experience of ‘memory’ who would “you” be? Therefore, the ego really isn’t interested in evolving or freeing itself, from the past. No, your ego’s sole objective is to develop the ‘self’ based on past instruction. In following the ancient maps to the “now,” the ego has merely made sacred its journey to NO WHERE.

Today, all the modern maps are simply the old man dressed up in the latest styles?

The ego-self certainly does desire change, but only if the road to change is charted from the comfort of the old maps.

Yet, from following those maps, has the world changed at all? Have the old maps taken us to a place where we no longer destroy each other any less than before? Have the old maps shown us how to preserve our home and hold all life sacred? Have the old maps shown us how to love one another?

If not, then why follow them?

Shouldn't we be constructing a new map?

Non-Dual Me, Baby!

I’ve been checking out my bookmarked “non-duality” sites again and I’m always amazed at the self-absorbed and self-interested bloggers advocating that we all follow their lead and sink into ourselves in attaining the insight that we are not a ‘self.’

If you spend 10 to 20 years in self-absorbed meditation (and these are the authentic zenners and advaita jockeys, as I no longer read the 'instant-awakening' folks) you will eventually attain the insight that there is no subject/object division.(yet, in the meantime, your experience of a regressing and eroding world will continue to regress and erode as usual)

Here’s a quote from Ken Wilber’s "Spectrum of Consciousness":

"Similarly, the dualism of subject vs. object is as illusory as that of the past vs. future, and its illusory nature can be as easily demonstrated. For, at this moment, can you actually find a separate self, a separate “subject” apart from its “object”? When you hear a sound, can you ever hear yourself hearing? When you taste something, can you taste the taster? Smell the smeller? Feel the feeler? When you see a tree, can you at the same time see the seer? As you are now thinking about all of this, can you simultaneously find a thinker who is thinking about it? Is all this not the clearest demonstration that there exists no separate subject apart from objects? Invariably, the sensation called “yourself in here” and the sensation called “objects out there” are one and the same sensation. As we said in connection with Yogacara, at this moment you are this page reading itself!

This type of teaching ignores an existential aspect of living referred to as “facticity.”

In the works of Sartre, "facticity" signifies all of the concrete details against the background of which human freedom exists and is limited. For example, these may include the time and place of birth, a language, an environment, an individual's previous choices, as well as the inevitable prospect of their death. For example: currently, the situation of a person who is born without legs precludes their freedom to walk on the beach; if future medicine were to develop a method of growing new legs for that person, their facticity might no longer exclude this activity. Wiki.

Non-dualism denies the "facticity" of the human experience by deconstructing that diverse experience into an anonymous cauldron of homogeneity, in which experiencing the deep joy of intimately engaging with others is minimized against an anonymous subject/object clumping together of all experience.

Why do we hate the ‘self’ so much? Why do we so deeply wish to experience homogeneous anonymity?

Non-duality seeks to escape authentic existential experience by deconstructing that experience down to nothingness rather than reconstructing it in discovery of what it could be together in our diversity. The intimacy of two or more becomes nothing but a mere aspect of the dualistic "illusion," even though it gives us more joy than any other existential experience.

Non-duality is not so much an escape from self as it is more an escape from other selves. It is a way to offset guilt for the collective experience we all partake of and that the ego-collective constructs.

Non-duality seems to inform that since we have done such a lousy job of constructing our collective experience, best to just trash it all and seek anonymous bliss through an equally anonymous mass of subject/object merging. In other words, fuck the self and give me the bliss of anonymity. Now I can deny that I hate you for all that I’ve done wrong and completely disassociate from you as the vehicle I must seek to engage with in order for us both to know the ‘self' fully in an enlightened evolved state.

Meditation, with the goal of non-duality, is a defense mechanism against reality and attempts to deny our mutual "facticity."

Insight is available for experience, but only through others and the world.

However, these non-dual teachers and advocates are certainly an interesting lot. With all their non-dual principles, ideologies and practices, they still seem to get a big kick out of engaging with others in constantly discussing the theory of non-duality.

I just hope this type of consistent engagement with others doesn’t mess up their practices in achieving the non-dual state.

; )

mikeS

I Am "Spiritually Humble." Therefore, You Must Love ME

Everything another does is a direct reflection of your ‘self.’

Oh sure, we’d all like to detach from the context of our perception of others and, thereby, minimize guilt for past actions or inactions, but the fact is that the world is a reflection of the contents of your mind. Your experience of the world is a reflection of your belief system and the world reflects this system in flashing neon colors.

The concept of an individual “unconscious” simply makes it easy to detach from what we perceive by denying responsibility for our own perceptions, "I see hell, but it ain't part of me. Sorry I ain't taking no responsibility for making it real!"

It is so easy and comforting to know that it’s ‘others’ who cause all the havoc and chaos in the world, since your fear and hatred are quietly tucked away in a safe place (unconscious) and your "spirituality" aids in this denial of responsibility.

It’s their greed, insensitivity and ignorance that makes the world a truly despicable experience (notice I didn’t say “place” since space-coordinates make it easy to dissociate from experience). It’s their lack of love that creates a world of violence and cruelty. If they would just get their act together we could all live happily ever after. It’s not you, it’s them!

I mean, for crying out loud, can’t everyone see how spiritually humble you are? Geez!

The idea that you need simply detach from your perceptions of others, or the associative belief system that determines your judgments of others, and be free of their crap is an idea bordering on absurdity. As if that were even possible. Ha!

But this is your knee-jerk response and this type of spiritual bypassing is no different from the ‘I got mine’ consumeristic attitude which has resulted in our current economic collapse and quite possibly the end of the world as we know it.

If you see aspects of hell, then clearly you believe hell is possible and therefore, it is your experience, no matter who you perceive as manifesting a particular aspect of hell, thereby, permitting you to blame them for your experience and massage your humble innocent egoic self.

The ego’s need to insure and prove its innocence is downright nauseating and it's all over the damn place.

Time to get real.

TransRelational Awakening

IS THERE A WAY TO TRANSCEND THE EGO?

The ego-self, or separate individual identity seeking to transcend itself, is committed to a hoax. The 'self' cannot transcend it 'self.' Nevertheless, the self attaches to past teachings that continue to inform it that self-transcendence is the end of all suffering and the beginning of infinite bliss. This keeps the self on a treadmill of self-reinforcing through the 'spiritual' projects it attaches to in order to transcend itself.

However, there is a way to dissociate from an exclusive egoic identity by immersing in other egoic identities.

Through deep engagement with another ego-self, the individual egoic identity can be essentially extinguished and awakened to a reality no longer exclusive to itself. The evidence for this is clear, since your most blissful and “enlightening” moments have been in loving extension to, and with, others. However, as soon as the exclusive self-identity resumed control, in opposition to mutual depth, such bliss through self-extension was gradually dissolved as the ego-self agenda predominated.

WHAT ABOUT THE ANCIENT MASTERS WHO “AWAKENED” TO TRUTH ON THEIR OWN

Most authentic past “wisdom” teachers have reported intense experiences of love from individual practices. This may be a mistaken interpretation of the individual ego, which subsumes the entire shared experience for itself when, in fact, this love was a “direct experience" correlated with a yielding extension to others. Most biographers of authentic ancient masters focus entirely on the master’s individual enlightenment ‘episode’ and fail to recognize the relationships from which this episode is directly correlated with and emerged from. Even today the focus is on some linear transference of “truth,” while the deeply engaged teacher-student relationship is ignored or minimized as subordinate to the transmission of proprietary truth.

I suggest that nothing is ever transferred. However, truth is encountered simply because it is touched, or engaged with, through the intimate depth of relationship to one or more others. In other words, love or enlightenment is an emergent creative truth, solely contingent on the relationship between teacher student and having nothing to do with any linear transmission of truth. Truth is experienced IN the relationship. relationship is the content and the type of relationship, teacher-student, is merely another of many forms relationships take.

The deeply engaged and intimate relationship is not conduit to truth, but is the truth itself.

ARE YOU SAYING THAT I HAVE TO BE IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE TO BE ENLIGHTENED?

Love is unknown factor of 'reality' and only exists as a relative approximate interpretation based on the conditions determined by each separate mind (6 billion minds, to be more exact). Therefore, to seek love with another is merely an opportunity for the ego-self to apply its own conditions based on its own conceptual interpretation of love. This negates an absolute or non-conditional love or the Truth that we seek to awaken to.

Therefore, you cannot be “in love” with another, but you can seek to encounter love, with the understanding that you have no idea or accurate concept of absolute or unconditional love. Your only option is to seek to encounter an ‘experience’ of love by extracting your conditions from which this love can be encountered or “awakened” to and this would be an “enlightenment” episode from which insight, not of this world (truth), would be realized.

Keep in mind that the forms of expression are unimportant and confining love to specific forms only restricts the experience. However, you can employ the forms (parent-child, marriage, etc) that exist in your life presently to engage in the depth of intimacy through which you can be “awakened” to this truth. Nevertheless, romantic relationships are unnecessary and one could engage in the depth of intimate awakening through other relationship ‘forms’ such as parent-child, siblings, coworkers, friends, etc, etc, etc. The content is available through whatever form the deep engagement occurs. However, demanding that only certain forms are required to experience enlightenment (love) is to impede the experience and this is exactly what we do in seeking out the “teacher-student” relationship as the only means of awakening or enlightenment.

Therefore, as with the Christ message of "love thy neighbor as thyself," the reference to neighbor would include any relationship form you are currently involved with. This message is also presented in “A Course in Miracles” and the recommendation is to seek this intimate awakening, or “Holy Instant” experience through all relationships, no matter what form the relationship takes.

SO ARE YOU SAYING I SHOULD JUST GIVE UP MY MEDITATION AND ENGAGE INTIMATELY WITH OTHERS?

Absolutely not. However, you may wish to restructure the ideological premises of your meditative practices to take on a new role of facilitating shared extension as opposed to, or superior to, individual seeking or awakening. Now instead of facilitating self-awakening, meditation may serve as a means of clearing blocks that impede relationship depth. But it will be through relationships that impediments to love are realized and not solitary practices.

As such, meditative practices allow a calm, centered-self that facilitates a deeper engagement with others. A depth of engagement with others facilitates a depth of engagement with the world. Thus, nature no longer becomes a means of spiritual bypassing or escape from a world of others, but becomes a “spiritual” experience only to be shared with others and not to be simply engaged with alone. The more nature is a shared experience the more we no longer use it as means of escape to protect the psychological self, but as a means of enhancing a collective shared self.

The theory that mediation allows for the identification of self-defects or shadows is a flawed theory of egoic proportions. This presupposes that the self-concept was established separate from relationship and the constant flux of engaging with and fearing intimacy or deep understanding.

TransRelational awakening is an encounter with truth through understanding that your only purpose is to engage deeply with others in order to engage with your 'self' and the world since there is no division except in the egoic mind.

Collective Enlightenment

Recently I came across a very interesting thread “The Next Buddha Will Be Collective”. The essay is long and I would suggest that anyone who resonates with the quotes read the article in full.

“In this essay, we will claim that contemporary society is evolving towards a dominance of distributed networks, with peer to peer based social relations, and that this will affect spiritual expression in fundamental ways.”

“If we accept the new ontological and epistemological convictions that there are no absolute reference points or frameworks, no objective reality out there on their own, can we still accept fixed cosmologies and religions? If we accept that knowing is a matter of co-creation with other humans, holding different frameworks, and that approaching truth is a matter of confronting those differences in frameworks, and how they illuminate realities in different ways, can we still accept fixed methodologies and pathways, leading to inevitable conclusions about the truth? Or would we expect co-created truth to be open-ended? If we want to act and live according to the peer principle of equal worth of all persons, can we accept the deep-seated rankism that is part and parcel of traditional approaches to religion? The questions are suggesting the answer, and the answer is that in all likelihood, the forms of spirituality that we are striving will have the open and free, participatory, and commons-oriented aspects which the emerging p2p forms of consciousness are desiring to appear in the world.”

The important point elaborated is that peer-to-peer spirituality may not accept proprietary modes of knowledge transference. In other words, master to student transmission is abolished for student-to-student creation of enlightenment (he doesn’t employ the term “enlightenment” but I do). P2P refuses copyright restrictions impeding alteration of the ancient ‘bibles’ or great books. There is no secret knowledge as it’s all dumped into the pot and cooked up together.

“A commons-oriented approach would lead to co-created knowledge to be available in a common pool, for others to build on and to be confronted with.”

The master is demoted and now becomes part of a network of truth seekers none holding credentials above another in an equality of understanding in creation of truth. Everything is “communally validated.”

“Equipotentiality suggests that we should not judge a person according to one purported essence, say, as a spiritual master or an enlightened being, but as a wide mixture of different skills and abilities, none of which by itself elevates that person to a higher human status.”
"Individuals are free to explore this guidance, but the individual, and the communities, are still in charge of building collective spiritual freedom, without a priori fixed path."

“the spirituality of persons is developed and revealed primarily in their relations with other persons. If you regard spirituality primarily as the fruit of individual practices, such as meditative attainment, then you can have the gross anomaly of a “spiritual" person who is an interpersonal oppressor, and the possibility of “spiritual" traditions that are oppression-prone. If you regard spirituality as centrally about liberating relations between people, then a new era of participative religion opens up, and this calls for a radical restructuring and reappraisal of traditional spiritual maps and routes.”

This peer to peer sharing is already happening and the author identifies the elaborate sharing of knowledge through Wikipedia and other share-tools. Yet, it is also happening within spiritual forums scattered throughout the cyber world.

The last quote encapsulates my thoughts on this matter quite nicely and has even defined for me the reasoning behind my starting this blog, as well as defining my distrust of proprietary "masters" and their modern equivalent's resistance to sharing without a fee.

Enlightenment is not a linear extension of finite knowledge master to student, but an infinite relational creation requiring a high magnitude of collective participation for that sharing to build upon itself and create truth.

Therefore, the “Great Masters” are dead and we need bury them, since no more are needed. However, we can and will use the information, but it is no longer proprietary nor is it sacred.

Time to shatter some myths!