Saturday, August 28, 2010

What Would "You" Be... Without "Them"?

The question persists…when will you realize that deeply engaging in relationship, with those who populate your personal experience of a ‘world,’ is the means to your awakening? When will it dawn on you that nothing else can suffice for the consistent joy and freedom you seek? The 'self' is not dissolved on its own, but in immersion with other selves.

Yet, you continue to wring drops of momentary “happiness” out of everything but the relationships that have defined you (as you define them). As always you are disillusioned and disappointed by what you find. But, you persist, nevertheless. Who (what 'ego-self) taught you this?

The ego self-construct (that you identify with) is nothing more than a package of concepts that you believe is definitively YOU. Nevertheless, it was your experiencing 'others' that showed you how to be “you,” (simply by their being “them") In fact, you required the experiences of a whole world of ‘others’ for which to determine the defining aspects of “you.”

“You” are an ego that you claim, without a doubt, is your ‘self’ and none other. But it was everyone else that allowed “you” to assume a reality separate from others (as you allow them), but always in contrast to the identities they assert and actualize and that you believe are as ‘real’ as you. You need to experience “them,” as they need to experience “you.”

But now you seem to no longer require their assistance. Now you travel alone.

Somewhere, while learning to be "you," through experiencing “them,” you suffered and often suffered deeply. From that suffering, the ego determined that it was “they” who were to blame, because without them, how could you have suffered.

Although we all suffer, suffering cannot be shared. It is an exclusive interior experience closed off from the world. We wish to share our joy, but suffering is intensely personal, causing the ego-self to fortify and insulate itself against the world. To the ego-self, if it is ‘they’ who are cause of your suffering, then it is ‘they’ who cannot be trusted to assist with your pain. Therefore, it will limit all connection.

This is unfortunate, because the mutual experience of joining together in Deep Spirit is the awakening you desire and there can be no other path out of suffering but through them. Suffering is nothing more than the interpretation that “they” cannot help you and, therefore, “you” are all alone.

This is often why we see others suffer, but deny assistance in the hopeless belief that suffering is an undeniable part of the human condition. When actually, it is alienation and estrangement from one another that is the human condition and that, and only that, is why we suffer.

To deeply understand one another, to dwell in the space between minds, is to eradicate all suffering forever, because it annihilates all fear. For centuries, we’ve traveled a million different roads as the way to salvation and the means to end our suffering. But each road brings us back to the pain that we started with. It’s not the road that need be changed, since all roads lead home. But you can't travel alone, because it is those around you who are the means to the end of suffering, no matter what road you travel.

Image by Susan Morrison Sims - "The Journey"

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

We Will ALL Transcend...But NOT Alone

Your investment in making a ‘self’ out of separateness is not at issue. However, your investment in protecting that self from others is, and this is what impedes the full and deep sharing of self with those who make up your experience of a ‘world.’ Such sharing is the only purpose of … "you.”

But because you fear “them,” depth eludes you and your 'self' remains a mystery.

Your purpose is fully engaged relating with other ‘selves’ as the means of dissolving all fear. As the French existential philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, explained, “hell is other people” and other people are what you seek to protect from. The postmodern 'self' withers on the vine of humanity exhausted and paralyzed by fear and this is the alienated and estranged world we now experience.

Yet, you will not dissolve fear alone because your fears were not constructed in isolation from other egos. Fear is a mutual construct formed through interaction with your experience of a ‘world.’ We live in a moment to moment mutual exchange of fear and joy and this is what shapes our world.

However, many seem to teach that fear is annihilated by dissolving the ‘self’ into nothingness, because…it’s not really "you." This position is nothing more than egocentric ruse, since it takes an ego-self to negate an ego-self (and what ego is really gonna do that).

Non-duality does not terminate “you,” since Spirit will manifest through infinite means and there's no reason why Spirit cannot partake of "you." However, the non-dual experience is transformative because it dissolves all conflict and opposition between experiences of self, others and world. It is the freedom of absolute equality which easily facilitates an exchange of unified joy, rather than fear. Absolute equality dissolves all fear, since nothing opposes or competes with anything else.

You don’t need to dissolve yourself into some ‘spiritual’ nothingness (which may actually have the opposite effect of ‘spiritually’ magnifying the egocentric concept of "you"), but deeply engage and fully integrate your ‘self’ with your experience of a 'world.' The only way fear is fully “observed” and dissolved is in full engagement with the people that populate and give meaning to your experience of a world. Your only purpose is in relationship and that is how you will discover the fears that impede you and cause suffering.

The "Hero’s Journey" is never alone.

Fear is not experienced in isolation from the world. You cannot “enter” it alone. Your individualized treatment plan seeks to exclude all others from participation. Centuries of this very paradigm has resulted in a world of great visionary goals and plans, but little willingness to cooperate in implementing the plans simply because strangers don't work well together.

You were not constructed in exclusion from others and it will be others who will participate in your transformation as you engage with theirs, both as an infinite players in a world of finite games. Just as fear is a product of our mutual exchange, joy is also such a product and just as other people are hell…they are also "heaven"

Ask yourself this... if the entire global economic system collapses tomorrow WHO will you turn to? Your 'self'?

But, that’s why it collapsed…

Indeed, you will transcend fear by actively identifying with your experience of others, since they are what you fear. You may think that death is your greatest fear, but what about death is it that you fear? Even death is the fear of losing others, which merely emphasizes the joy others bring you. Unfortunately most spiritual ideologies have been co-opted by egocentricity and fail to integrate by promoting disengagement with the world, even though it was from the world that you constructed your ‘self.’

The solitary path only leads back to you, but together we can go all beyond the “I’ to a ‘place’ that has yet to be discovered.

No one transcends alone…  

Artwork by Naoto Hattori - "Ascension"

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Drive to Unify

Your desire to join with others is an existential fact. 

However, the ego-self works on a conscious level and although it senses this deeper desire, it must resist. To know that your ONLY purpose is to join with others is very frightening to an ego obsessed with itself (and an ego does not exist except through such an obsession).

But then... what other purpose could there be?

Change is an aspect of the conscious mind, while the subconscious has never changed and the desire to ‘join’ has never left you. (we call it "subconscious" simply because you don't consciously THINK of it) To relate to others from Deep Spirit is to engage from the unchanged subconscious, absent the chaotic egocentric conditions.

To engage others from Deep Spirit is to be absent fear and to be absent fear is to dissolve all conditions you impose on others, simply because imposing conditions is a fear response.

This will be an incredibly lucid experience for you and those you engage with because it will not seem as though either of you are cause of what each other experiences, but it will naturally draw you together.

It is an experience of unity, not available to individual minds obsessed with egocentric inequality leading to control dynamics. It is an experience that dissolves all opposition into non-dual equality.

This experience can be cultivated between two or more who are prepared to ignore conscious demands and engage from subconscious truth. However, no ‘individual’ can plan or prepare for it in any way, as this would only insure that individual conditions/limits be superimposed upon experience from egocentric beliefs.

The "Non-dualists"demand that, although the 'self' was NOT constructed in isolation from others, you must deconstruct it on your own. Conscious egocentricity fears joining except between bodies, because that can be controlled (sex). Subconscious impulses cannot be accessed by individuals because subconscious unity is not under any single individual’s control. But two or more have the potential to tap this unchanged and unchanging depth of information.

You have experienced this before. There have been moments in the past in which you have ignored conscious material and engaged another purely from the subconscious impulse to join. Unfortunately, this moment was brief as egocentric control needs quickly impeded any deeper impulses.

This is the experience that many spiritual/religious ideologies refer to as "enlightenment" or "awakening," but which has been stripped of its essence and made to conform to egocentric dictates that demand isolated individual experiences all conforming to the chaotic dictates of egocentric demands.

There are individuals who recount experiences (often referred to as “enlightenment” or “awakening”) in which the ego suddenly encounters the subconscious drive to engage deeply and join with others. However, this is immediately interpreted by egocentricity to conform to individual dictates and conditions. Although remnants and residue from such experiences tends to cling, the experience can only fade as all 'individual' experiences must.

Truth was never meant for individuals because individuality is a lie (note the discomfort in the ego as you read that). This is not to mean that your individuality should be discarded, but it is to affirm that it should be SHARED. Individuality has no other point than to be shared and shared without limit, because such sharing has no limits and is infinite. There are NO limits to what experiences can be shared through ‘relationship,' in realizing relationship is the only experience you're 'here' to share...

…but “you” have made sharing very limited indeed.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

A World Awaiting to Awaken

You have no idea whether your 'world' actually exists.

However, you certainly do have an experience of a 'world' from which you claim 'existence,' because in that experience "you" are very real to you (as is everyone else you come in contact with).

Yet, no matter how many 'others' populate your experience of a world, that experience can be a lonely one indeed.



Nevertheless, the more deeply your experience can be shared with another, the more likely two or more can experience entirely new worlds, not available to individual minds separately seeking fulfillment.

All relationships that seek the depth of unity, through dissolving estrangement, are valuable in creating new worlds, since a 'world' is nothing but an experience in consciousness.


This is the only transference that occurs. There is no proprietary linear transmission of truth from teacher to student (relative truth maybe, but who cares about that, since the world has numerous paths for the transmission of conventional information and that information has so far failed to redirect our present course).

The teacher who recognizes that truth is only encountered through an interdependent depth of understanding between minds is the genuine teacher.

The teaching of specialized concepts defining individual salvation merely provides the delusion of "wisdom," based on the world's acceptance of "truth" as available to separate individual minds and conforming to specific egocentric standards. "Wisdom," that merely perpetuates conventional ideas based on the paradigm of individualism, can only remain relative truth and will continue to keep your experience mired in the past and unalterable except on the past's terms.

Yet, a way to truth can be realized "when two join together as one."


However, it is not a physical joining, particularly in regard to bodies (or sex, which is not a joining at all, but merely the delusion of 'sacred' union defined by ancient edict - a rule). It is a joining of minds through seeking to deeply understand one another beyond normal everyday surface understandings that we all engage in with little depth and no understanding. Even in our so-called "love" relationships we remain virtual strangers to one another.

But who would take such a risk? Because, make no mistake, inherent in union is the fear of losing the self. Yet, this fear is unfounded and based on a faulty premise, since it is not loss of self, but an intensified enhancement between two or more minds.

Nevertheless, love is completely impossible in a world of strangers, in which individual and collective conflict (war) is the chief modus operandi of interaction, and as long as true joining is feared, "awakening" is denied to ALL.

And so, we remain a world awaiting to 'awaken' as we have been for centuries past. In our continued conventional attempts to awaken alone as separate minds, we merely perpetuate our existential loneliness and continued estrangement and the 'world' can't help but exhibit what we believe.

Therefore, if the teacher is seen as providing some form of salvational or enlightenment information that is unique to the teacher, and not available to the student except from the teacher, understand that this is inauthentic and denies 'relationship' as the vehicle to truth.

Individual minds have nothing to provide other individual minds except within the deep grounding of relational and interdependent truth.

Individuals will always inaccurately assess the "master" as a proprietor of truth, rather than the facilitator of a truth that he does not own, but that can be accessed only through the merging within the deepest realms of intimate relating between two or more. But a "guru" is not necessary to access this depth and anyone will do, as long as two or more agree to embark on seeking that interdependent truth without proprietary ideologies from the past .

In the deepest depths of relationship, 'love' is encountered simply because it is created where it did not exist before.

But for most, past failure at engaging with conditional love has created psychological obstacles to the dissolving of conditions with another. Such a failure then applies conditions upon another, thereby, creating nothing together, but more obstacles.

Yet, depth of relating facilitates an equality, that cannot be found outside the joining of two minds, in an intimacy of understanding. This is an encounter with "love" that is created from, and because of, the relationship, provided that neither party enters into the relating with any preconceived conditions of what "love" is or, at the least, is willing to discard all preconceptions as to the parameters of that 'joining.' The defining properties are found within the union and not anywhere else.

This is the infinite game, because there is no limit to how deeply two or more can engage in understanding one another and it has absolutely nothing to do with "wisdom" which are merely platitudes for how to negotiate a world that already exists as experienced, because one is conditioned to experience it as such.

Intimate awakening can take one beyond this world, because through continued depth of understanding, sensation loses its appeal to truth. You cannot 'see,' or perceive, an intimate awakening but it can be a "direct experience" between two minds.

Love is not apparent in the world simply because minds refuse to join in the creation of love, but simply go off in search of that which meets the separate ego's conditions of love based on its own conceptualization. Love is nothing to a separate ego-self, but everything to a self construct joined with another in defining love.

This is the experience of a new world that cannot be discovered alone.


Artwork by Amanda Sage - "Chicago"

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Space Between Minds

The space between minds is 'where' your ego fears to go...

...because it involves ‘others.’

This fear always manifests as condemnation and distrust of others, as you avoid entering that 'space,' while becoming more estranged from your 'self.' Time can serve two purposes, to come closer together or to move farther apart.

On which path do you travel?

It is not the space between thoughts that must be explored in your meditative reveries or contemplative musings. It's the space between minds that is the final frontier yet to be explored. Consciousness is shared and all exploration must be a joint venture.

However, be forewarned, in that ‘space’ you will not find your ‘self,’ nor will you find the other. However, what you will find is beyond comprehension because it is does not conform to egocentric conditions.

It has been referred to as the unified non-duality of Christ Consciousness.

World change requires collective access to this ‘space.’ However, two minds engaged in the mutual goal of seeing each other differently can become immersed in a conceptually indefinable experience rarely encountered and impossible to describe in words.

Perceiving the other without the past literally alters space/time, simply because physical reality is an interior experience that the ego splits itself off from by superimposing exterior concepts. Joint minds create and this is the world we all experience together, because we make it "real."

Yet, because the ego fears and deeply distrusts others (more than any other experience) it attempts to go alone to some imagined netherworld of the 'self,' and this has always been defined as the individual “hero’s journey”.

Alone nothing will be found because nothing is created. We create together as components of the same composite consciousness. You can imagine yourself as alone, but you can never BE alone.

In misunderstanding our function we constructed the experience of an individual ‘self’ that is known only through relationship to other selves. The irony is that ‘we’ collectively constructed "individualism" and although we are transfixed by the individual ego-self, we cannot deny the force that pulls us together. But we can resist that force and it is this resistance that often makes us feel exhausted in the form of all our personal conflicts and mental ills.

To experience the space between minds is to dive in head first with whomever you are close to in the moment. There was no coincidence in those you chose and chance does not play a role in this infinite game. Free-will is at your disposal. Denying that choices were made does NOT deny free-will.

This time, instead of moving ever farther away, stare fear in the face…and jump in!

Artwork by Naoto Hattori - "Multiform"

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Riding the Wave of the Nothingness


Usually it comes in waves.

Emptiness announces its presence.

I used to shake it off, think positive thoughts, look forward to another moment, another day, the weekend, vacation, be constructive, productive, be grateful, exercise, love my kids, manifest my reality, watch TV, complain, fornicate, drink, drug, eat, sleep, breathe…

Now, however, I let it take me, sink me, overcome me, extract me.

Now, I ride the wave of the nothingness.

I used to think it could destroy me. Ruin everything. I used to fear it and spent all my waking moments in avoidance, fixated on my grand plans of “happiness.” I used to fill my life with things to ‘do',’ things to keep it away. I read about the universal truths and the ancient wisdoms and studied “The word.” I prayed and meditated.  I invented ‘thoughts’ to defend “me” and protect “me.”

But always…

...it came back.

Now I ask for it. I don’t allow it to leave without me. I keep my feet firmly planted in my “story” and ride the wave of nothingness to see where it’ll dump me and leave me story-less

Because I no longer fear it.

So many teaching how to avoid it.

How to trick it. How to punish or pamper it. How to redirect or control it. How to talk it down, talk it up, make it seem okay, it’s nothing, it’s something, it’s illusionary, maya, it’s bliss, it’s heaven, it’s hell, it’s what is, it’s what isn’t, it’s arising, it’s falling, it’s beautiful, it’s ugly…

I wanna shout “no! don’t you see, that’s what it wants!”

But who’d listen…

Ah….

here it comes now….

Hang ten, baby!!!

Artwork by Pauline Jones - "Edge"