If your mind is at war, how can you be at peace in your relationships? Minds at war with one another inadvertently create an illusory world, since this is not the purpose of the mind, nor is it the purpose of your world.
Make no mistake, the peace in your relationships will be experienced in direct proportion to the peace within your mind and the peace of deeply engaging others will magnify the mind's state of peace in a reinforcing loop.
Are you in the loop?
Do anxieties and fears consume your mental energy? Are you easily engaged by the outcomes and goals that the world prescribes as crucial to living? Does work and career demand most of your time and energy? Do you find yourself frequently moody and snapping at loved ones? Do you often feel bored and exhausted by the mundane chores of existence? Do you plod through the week in anticipation of the weekend? Do you find yourself feeling disillusioned when expected rewards, that the world provides, fail to satisfy?
Do you often find yourself wondering if this is all there is?
Peace of mind is easily transferable to those around you, but so is a conflicted mind. A mind in conflict is like a spinning vortex that sucks in those close to you. The conflicted seek the cause of conflict outside the mind and attempt to control others. The peaceful deeply engage with others in discovering the love “within” by recognizing that this is their purpose.
A conflicted mind seeks the cause of disturbance in others and swings blame like a sword of vengeance. You have chosen them to provide happiness, therefore, if happiness is absent, who else but they are to blame? If your mind is at war, you will bring that to your reality and find enemies were none existed before. War is waged by strangers and there is no love in battle.
Your only purpose in this world is to fully engage with others in the deep understanding that discovers love. Until it is discovered with another, it does not exist and this makes the world illusory, since the world then serves a purpose other than intended. You will see that unintended purpose instead of the truth and you will suffer accordingly.
Love does not exist until it is created by two or more and transposed upon the mutual experience of a ‘world’ and in that way it is discovered. Until then, your world is nothing more than an illusion because it serves a purpose other than intended. If you conduct your life in ways that do not allow for love to be discovered then you have denied your function and choose your goals from what the world determines is your purpose, thus maintaining the illusion. Look outward and see your world absent of love and clearly you have mistaken its purpose, thereby making an illusion of it.
However, there are pockets in the world where enlightened minds have learned their purpose and have attempted to teach it by learning to engage deeply. What other purpose could the world serve? What other purpose could your existence serve? What else is the reason for your Being?
Self-development? Yes, but only to disengage from self-absorbed egoic needs, thereby, dissolving the obstructions to self-discovery through others. Acquisition of wealth? Only if used as a conduit to deeply relating and not idolized as a means to an end. Improved health? Of course, since we can engage deeply when not thwarted by sickness and disease. Every goal the world teaches as useful and necessary can be used to learn your purpose and that purpose is to discover love by extending it and seeing it in the world.
Discover love and discover the real world.
Discovering love is the “enlightenment” that the ancient masters spoke of and it requires an unconflicted and quiet mind to be realized. A conflicted mind cannot possibly discover its purpose and will blame others for that failure.
The ego learns what the world teaches it and if you rely on that learning you will fail to learn your purpose and your experience will conform to the same patterns of war that the world believes is truth.
Make your experience of the world a pocket of peace and sink beyond the ego’s demands in realizing your purpose comes from a well much deeper than conditioned thoughts of finite outcomes and goals. Outcomes and goals may give fleeting pleasures, but not the deep and abiding joy generated by engaging with others in discovering love. Your purpose is with them, as theirs is with you. Enlightenment comes to the relationship that chooses a different path. Otherwise, it does not come at all.
Yet, you both have no idea what love is.
This is why it must be sought beyond appearances and it will be discovered through mutually realizing the obstructions, or walls, you constructed to protect the 'self.' Intimate Awakening demands you accept your vulnerability in surrendering your need for self-defense.
This is your purpose, which the ego self-construct (your belief in a 'self') has impeded by adopting goals that distract from that purpose. Now you remain victim to the past, since all goals and outcomes not established to actualize your purpose, come from the past and merely delay your truth, making the world an illusory place where, no matter how hard you try, you will never feel at home together. The past has no involvement in discovering truth, since love is experienced in the present and does not relate to a past or future.
Love is the "now" spoken of by the ancient enlightened master's and mystics.
A world that does not serve its purpose must be an illusion, until that purpose is discovered. Your experience of a world cannot be real if it serves the purpose of war. However, you can see it differently if love becomes the purpose that you share with others. Make this the purpose of everything you perceive in choosing to mutually discover love in your small microcosm of the world.
Change the world by changing your mind about your purpose. Realize why you are here. Until this occurs you will continue to perpetuate the same patterns of war that the world exhibits and those patterns have become very weary to your tired mind.
This is lovely, a beautiful sentiment and concept well expressed. The love that is all, however, is all, whether it is apparently apprehended or not. Who is it that changes "their" mind? The love that is all is all, and accepts all; it cannot reject itself. It is itself. Everything is allowed, everything is available. It often seems that the love described, with the actions (deep engagement) recommended, unfolds if oneness is apprehended. Yet there are no guarantees. There are no goals, other than being itself; it shines and vibrates through every apparent action, feeling, thought, no matter what the appearance. In duality, there must be war for there to be peace; there must be resistance for there to be acceptance; there must be opposites for anything to exist. Being is beyond right and wrong, and the apparent individual balks at this; the loss of self is anathema to all that is taught in the appearance about good and evil; the loss of goals, of apparent volition, of apparent meaning, is frightening. Yet there is no one who chooses to go postal or to commit the most heinous crimes. This too is love, in a hard to recognise guise; this is beyond the heart and mind of man, as that Jesus dude apparently said; it is beyond all ideas and feelings of right and wrong, and of purpose. It is this, whatever this seems to be, whether that be calming the warring mind with love-purpose or languishing in prison for molesting innocents. There cannot be one without another, in the appearance. Yet what is described in this blog entry often manifests, if this is seen, no matter "how" it is seen. The defenses drop, no longer needed; the fear-driven ego concerns slip away, unnecessary; all is loved, indeed all is love. There is no method, no teaching, no approach that brings oneness any closer than it already is. Yet such approaches are perfection too, by the mere fact of their existence. This is paradise. There is no other.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words!
ReplyDeleteIt is self and not self, appearances and no appearances, arising and not arising, ego and no ego, oneness and individuality. It seems the paradox is not the one, over or above the many, but the one and the many. The ego is as much a part of truth as Being. Like a pendulum, swing to one side and the momentum will bring you back to the other. It is an infinite game and there are no rules but to continue playing. There is no end to this game, just as there is no oneness without the many.
Enjoy your 'self' and all its concerns!
mikeS
It's difficult to describe, whatever the hell it is we're trying to talk about. Whatever it is, there just doesn't seem to be much difference between duality and oneness. Duality is nonduality, quite obviously, but elusively. It seems there is not, i.e., ego and no ego, oneness and individuality, but oneness, ego-ing and oneness, individual-ing. The game toddles along, but often isn't hooked up into a story of cause and effect. A story can be applied, if the urge to do so arises, but isn't so necessary. Less and less so, although the time factor needed for cause and effect also seems diminished. The paradox of it, the mystery, seems a moot concern, and a blessed place, label it grace, label it consciousness, label it Jehosephat. There seems not to be so much a pendulum as an arising of this, an arising of that, an arising of the other, all equally fascinating and astounding. Or something like that. Oh hell, I give up! Ineffable, and effing great.
ReplyDeleteOneness is just a story that arises when all the interpretations are seen through. Seeing through all the interpretations is yet another story, it doesn't solve the mystery, it doesn't solve anything. It seems to make life more simpler, but simpler is just a story. Simpler is just a opinion that whatever this is can be said as an interpretation to be simpler, usually this arises as an idea that whatever this is can be compared to something else called difficult, but difficult is yet another interpretation about this, as if this can be something and as if this something can be compared to a so-called something else.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to make life less painful when interpretations drop, but life less painful is just a another story. Even the story that whatever this is, is a life; is a story. Even that what this is can be something painful, is just a concept being interpreted as pain. Even having less is an idea that whatever this is, can be less or more of whatever this is; is an interpretation by thought that whatever this is can be interpreted as something.
Therefore, the story that whatever this is, can't be said to be anything, other than whatever the hell this is; is just a story about whatever the hell this mystery is. Whatever story can be had about this, can't explain this.
All that can said about whatever this is, is that whatever this is seems to be aware (whatever this awareness is) of whatever this is. Whatever that this is that is aware, is aware of whatever this is. There is no difference between whatever is being aware of this and whatever this is because there is no way to know what either one is (or to know even if there is a deference between them or if there is a them or two things at all) and without knowing what anything is, it all seems to be one thing or no-thing, or all things, or both, or either, or whatever is arising is arising as this. This is it, whatever this is, whatever is arising without interpretation about what this is; this is said to be the concept/idea/story of enlightenment.
Knowing the mind of thoughts, the next thought that will arise is "How can I see what this is, without interpreting it?" and thought can't seem to see that interpreting this, is still 'part' whatever this is. Whatever this is seems to be interpreted and that is this too. Whatever arises in this, is this, as it is and whatever arises is this. So the story of thoughts go on, while it is seemly chasing after another story called enlightenment. The cosmic joke.
Wow! Some wonderfully poetic interpretations to roll around with in the mind.
ReplyDeleteGreat Stuff!
Thanks Guys,
mikeS