Being unaware of thoughts helps you to remain ignorant of the rules you follow in conducting your life. The ego insists that thoughts are unimportant and what you DO, should be the chief focus of your thinking. What you DO is entirely contingent on the body and therefore, the body, more than the mind, defines “you.” This aids the ego in maintaining denial of the mind, thereby remaining transfixed on your body and other bodies.
When you really get down to it, you are an absurd belief system in which the chief priority is never looking too closely at just how unbelievable “you” really are.
Nonetheless, you believe in “you” and are vigilant in reinforcing that belief as often as possible and through every means at your disposal. The ego-self demands that every interior experience conform to the belief in an exterior world, through which to contrast your finite, self-containing exterior body.
From the moment you were born, you were taught to be a victim and, from moment to moment, your entire hopeless existence demonstrates this as you come that much closer to death. Death is a finite game everyone plays and the rules cannot be violated. You were born to lose, since the game was fixed from birth and your entire “life” is contingent on the rule that death can come at any moment.
Death is really the only absolute truth that escapes no one, but we spend a “lifetime” desperately seeking to escape IT.
If your spiritual path does not directly deal with death, then it directly denies the only absolute truth we know with universal certainty. The only truth we all agree as certain is that you MUST die. Yet, you spend each and every day ignoring, avoiding and denying its inevitability. The only FACT of existence and the ego will move heaven and earth to delete it from consciousness (because the ego controls consciousness).
The most expedient way of diminishing the controlling ego-self is to force it to confront the fact that it has NO control of death. Authentically engage your death, look fully and deeply at it and all your grand plans of wealth, fame, spiritual enlightenment, may just turn to fumes of utter nothingness. All your plans of attaining "spiritual enlightenment" can be instantly dashed to the wayside by one erratic drunk driver.
You may feel this morbid proclamation is a recipe for clinical depression, yet the only way to play infinitely is to engage your finality head on. Finite games may never seem the same again.
Every religious ideology, every spiritual belief system exists simply to aid in denying the only certainty you know without doubt. Best to give all that up, because it’s all ridiculous bullshit, while your death is the unadulterated perfect truth.
Embrace it…
Artwork by Lauri Lipton - "Death and the Maiden"
Mike -
ReplyDeleteDeath. It's amazing how little exposure I have had to death in my 60+ years of breathing in and out. I never saw my parent's dead bodies - I suppose I could have if it had been a matter of concern at the (separate, by years) times. My father was a lunatic who committed suicide in prison, and my mother died a protracted and excruciatingly painful death from various metastatic cancers that she heroically ignored until family members literally forced her to seek medical attention. I was relieved to receive the news of their deaths - their lives having become, in my estimation, full-time nightmares. It was easy to accept the fact that they were gone. Forever. I sincerely hope - I've got no use for them in any case.
My father-in-law was a great big bear of a man whose mother gave birth to him at home. He raised 13 children and was never sick a day in his life. Until the last day of his life, when he had a stroke in the shower and was dead within a few hours after his wife heard the "thud". I viewed the remains in the casket. There was a resemblance, but he was not there. Not "gone", as if he was somewhere else - just - not there.
No one lives. No one dies. There is nothing to figure out or discover. Whatever is - just is.
I guess thats what fear of no self means... fear that your whole life was a plain and unchallenged dicussion whit yourself, I mean that'S kinda hard to take in. OR am I the only one? If so I should go right now in a mental health facility!
ReplyDeletewow
ReplyDelete"No one lives. No one dies. There is nothing to figure out or discover. Whatever is - just is."
Dark, but by odd contrast, strangely illuminating. Like a Swinburne poem.
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow;
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
"No one lives. No one dies. There is nothing to figure out or discover. Whatever is - just is."
ReplyDeleteThat just about sums it up...
mikeS
"I guess thats what fear of no self means... fear that your whole life was a plain and unchallenged dicussion whit yourself, I mean that'S kinda hard to take in. OR am I the only one? If so I should go right now in a mental health facility! "
ReplyDeleteHey, maybe we can be room mates!
mikeS
"I am weary of days and hours,
ReplyDeleteBlown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep."
Hmmmm....I can relate to that.
mikeS
''Hey, maybe we can be room mates!''
ReplyDeleteI Don't think so... that would be bad news for my ego and I tend to bite when discovering I don't exist :(.
"Even such is time which takes in trust
ReplyDeleteour youth our joy and all we have
and pays us but with age and rust.
Who in the dark and silent grave,
when we have wandered all our ways,
shuts up the story of our days.
Yet, from this earth and grave and rust;
the Lord shall raise me up -- I trust."
Sir Walter Raleigh