2012: The End of Guilt and Punishment

Does the world seems to be spinning wildly out of control. Yet, how else will you learn you never had control if not through the experience of chaos?

All attempts to control the effects of delusion must fail, simply because effects can only be controlled at their cause and all delusion is a distortion of MIND. This is why your world continues to repeat the same effects, ad nauseam. As each individual mind refuses responsibility for what it "sees," what it sees must repeat because permission was granted simply by continued SEEING.

You believe what you see was there before you saw it. Yet, nothing is ever there UNTIL you look for it and you only look for what you expect to see.

Hence, your prayers are always answered, but by YOU. “Ask and ye shall receive” is YOUR truth, although you may NOT like what you give yourself. 

Guilt demands punishment and these are the building blocks of your suffering. If you SEE death and destruction then, make no mistake, you have asked and received in accordance with your wishes. It ALL belongs to you because NOTHING leaves your mind. All experience is of the mind and it can be true or deluded... but never both.

The egos existence is entirely contingent on GUILT and guilt ALWAYS demands punishment. The ego actualizes itself through seeking out the guilty for which to contrast AGAINST. Guilt divides you from your experience of a world by chopping up the wholeness of that experience into opposing parts and all opposition is entirely fueled by guilt. The ego cleaves the mind in two, demanding opposition between the parts. You hate the innocent for the guilt they make you feel, but love the guilty because through them your innocence is actualized. From day to day, moment to moment, such judgments are made "naturally" by the ego-self.

The dualism of your world is a product of guilt. Some parts are better, wiser, smarter, more courageous, more ignorant, more innocent, more guilty than others. In your mind, Hitler must oppose Mother Teresa, just as ugliness must oppose beauty. The ego seeks out differences for which to actualize itself in contrast. The darkness is guilty of hiding the light, while death is guilty of being lifeless. “Less” is guilty of not being “more” and “losing” is guilty of not “winning,” while “wrong” is guilty of not being “right.” This can change on a whim and sometimes less is more and losing is winning. It makes no difference to the egocentric. As long as opposition rules the mind, the ego is at home. As long as peace is absent, the ego is always present. As long as opposition severs the interconnected and interdependent wholeness of experience, all your separate and isolated experiences are underlined by the fear of guilt.

Governments, or the collusion of the egocentric, fuel your guilt as a means of greater control. Are you a Muslim or a Christian? A terrorist or a patriot? A socialist or a capitalist? The “enlightened” who see the unenlightened are as imprisoned as those they claim to save. Egocentricity must see a world of guilt and innocence and spend a "lifetime" sorting through those differences as a means of self-actualizing through contrast and comparison. The ego demands colliding particles and opposing forces. It cleaves and rips apart all experience of wholeness and claims parts of the world are at fault and must be punished for their guilt and so you alienate and estrange your ‘self’ from the indicted.

But what will become of "you" when ALL are guilty as charged?

It is becoming more difficult to tell the difference between guilt and innocence, causing you to experience a chaotic world spinning out of control. As the lines blur, the ego can no longer pit innocence against guilt and it must self-destruct because it NO longer has a purpose. But this requires a great deal of suffering, until the absurdity makes itself known, because the ego-self will fight to maintain its innocence by seeking out the guilty.

Someone must pay for your suffering.

Experience is a product of mind and nothing is apart from experience. To impose guilt upon your world is an indictment upon YOUR mind and you will not escape the punishment that all guilt requires. All defense of guilt supports egocentric suffering and, make no mistake, it’s NOT the world, but the HELL of your own mind that you seek to escape. There is NO world outside your mind.

There is NO “doom” scenario you need concern your ‘self’ with, because the ego will never willingly  disassociate itself from its NEED to suffer. The end of GUILT and PUNISHMENT will awaken you to the fact that you are not an ego-self, because only when you set them FREE in your own mind, will YOU experience FREEDOM for yourself.

Prepare now for the freedom of 2012, because the end of guilt and punishment will certainly change the world as you know it.


Artwork by Laurie Lipton - "Tete a Tete"

GUILT: The Death of Intimacy

Of all your fear-induced symptoms (anxiety, depression, anger, etc, etc, etc) guilt is the most deep-seated and often the hardest to penetrate and SEE. As opposed to other undesired emotions, it is entirely interior with little exterior manifestation and, as such, it is very difficult to observe within oneself. In fact, many claim guilt to be the origin of all your negative emotions and many have also claimed that it is NOT an emotion at all, but more endemic and defining to the whole personality or ‘self.’

Guilt is the darkest shadow of all the shadow-zones you seek to eradicate in order to further your evolving consciousness. Therefore, a total all-encompassing ‘innocence’ is seen as the final point of all spiritual pathways. Yet, how many could claim such complete innocence or even claim it for another? Maybe, this is why “sorry, seems to be the hardest word” (Elton John). 

We hurriedly plod through our meaningful, but absurd, “lifestyles,” acutely aware of all the misfortune and suffering that surrounds us, feeling helpless to stem the tide of that suffering. But what can we do? Oh sure, we give to our favorite charities, maybe volunteer our time and even become activists. But, alas, suffering continues unabated and deep within the contours of your mind, beyond all your comforting rationalizations, how can you NOT experience guilt? So how do you minimize the guilt of your helplessness that leads to inaction and indifference? How do you accept that you can only provide so much; that you have only so much to give? What rationale do you think up to assuage your guilt and comfort your ‘self’ as you walk on by the pain of others arm-in-arm with your own suffering?

There is a poignant discomfort to our individual and collective guilt that sinks even deeper than our normal everyday lies, deceptions and self-protective strategies. On the deepest level, guilt pervades your very BEING simply because you realize (but deny) that you are NOT BEING as you were meant to BE. Whereas, you might cognitively extinguish your anger and medicate your depression, guilt is impervious to such methods due to its primordial nature.

It’s as if we were all impostors living in ways NOT reflective of our a deeper WILL. Deep down you recognize that, in some strange sense, you are not ‘real’ and all your  entertaining endeavors and productive projects only magnify this sense of unreality and fraud. This ‘unreality’ is exhibited more in your relationships with others than in any other function you assign your ‘self.’ (Thus, you have “small talk” to aid in remaining in the shallows of deep interpersonal understanding and intimacy, for fear of the 'exposure' that might reveal your guilt).

You can easily blame the world and others in dealing with your anxieties, what depresses you, and even all the things that make you angry. But guilt is completely intrinsic to the belief in an exclusive, autonomous 'self' and often makes you very, very 'bad' in your own eyes, more so than any attempts by others to devalue your ‘self.’ It may take you many years and much excruciatingly painful honesty, to even start the process of facing your guilt and this is primarily due to the layers of guilt that serve as foundation for future guilt-building.

From childhood lies to adult deceptions, you seem unable to shake free of this self-constructed mass of guilt that tends to weigh you down and make progress through life so difficult and often wrought with suffering. Each idea of progress you rejoice in often seems blunted by an inner core of pervasive guilt, in the realization that all your worldly and spiritual ‘successes” may never be enough to assuage your guilt.

With the oppressive weight of guilt bearing down on us all, is it any wonder that free-floating, non-situational depression is becoming the most diagnosed mental illness. But does the treatment only provide minimal comfort from our symptomatic inner suffering, while the disease of guilt only continues to fester, eating away at the core of ‘self,’ thereby impeding access to Deeper Spirit?

INTERPERSONAL GUILT PROJECTION 


In your conflicts, you are always prepared for my indictment because guilt is the one thing you must avoid at all costs, since it only activates your deeper self-guilt. In the name of self-protection, your defenses are sharpened to perfection, as you cut me to pieces before I have the chance to defend my ‘self.’ However, I am acutely aware, often even more than you, of your weaknesses or, more specifically, that for which you claim guilt (those parts of ‘self,’ which you would like to change, deny or are ashamed of).

Therefore, our mutual attacks draw deep emotional blood. Each combative episode, like each puff of the cigarette slowly subtracting from the quantity of our lives,  dissolves away life-giving intimacy and deep understanding, never to return. I find it interesting that people are often more ‘intimate’ with their pets then with the people whom they profess to “love.” This clearly reflects the lack of guilt transference with animals and nature, since no matter how many times Fido soils the carpet, innocence is retained forever to that living ‘being’ that has no ‘self’ except that which we project onto it.

The problem is that guilt is so utterly inherent to egocentricity, that we tend NOT to engage with it, but simply deny, allowing it to fester and grow into the ‘stress’ that saps life and eventually results in all sorts of internal ailments, disorders and diseases. The medical establishment informs us that stress is the number one killer and this is because stress is nothing more than years of impacted guilt for every decision you ever made that impeded your desire for the perfection of that Deeper Spirit within. In every period of your life, what you did to impede evolution (and what you failed to do to consciously evolve) follows and defines your 'self.'

You seem unable to shake free of your guilt or that deep sense of somehow being wholly unworthy of your very ‘existence.’ The body is target to unending layers of guilt since it can never meet your concepts of perfection. You indict your body as easily as you indict the body of others. Too fat, too skinny, tall, short, ugly, deformed, defective, etc, etc, etc. Your demand for the perfection of Source/God (your choice) is erroneously transferred to the body in denial that Deeper Spirit or Infinite Mind is not limited by such form and that the body can never be more than a symbol of imperfection.

You sense an ‘ideal’ of perfection (Plato's "Forms"), and in contrast to that ideal you recognize how radically defective you really are, with all the body’s obscene functions, diseases, disorders and absurd self-constructed purposes and actions. You are virtually incarcerated in your concepts of imperfection and "guilty as charged." No matter how spiritually driven you are to offset such awareness through worldly distractions, deep meditation and continuing your absurd functional busyness, you live with your imperfection through a deep-seated guilt. Guilt rides piggy-back upon the ‘self’ and it seems your only option for shedding this heavy burden, that “old, rugged cross” of sin pressed into your mind, is to project that guilt onto others. In this way, by projecting your guilt onto me, you thereby enhance your innocence. Of course, this means you must deny your undifferentiated unity, oneness and almost absolute sameness with me. The world is a reflection of such collective denial.

There are spiritual "masters" who teach that your guilt is the origin of all your emotional suffering and since you indict your self as guilty, you indict others as "guilty by association." This is an aspect of our unified “oneness,” that does not escape you no matter how hard you judge others in order to reinforce your own innocence. If you are dripping with guilt, since you and I are the same in our humanity, I must be just as guilty. However, you delude yourself into belief that I am not aware of your guilt, since you keep it tucked up in the inner folds of your 'self,' and so even your own awareness of it is rare.

But, I am distinctly aware of your guilt because it is mine, although I too believe my indictment of your many transgressions allows me a facade of innocence. Thus, we can blast away at each other and demand justice for violations of ‘self,’ while claiming innocence through secrecy of mind. This is why the contents of your mind must remain sealed, for if I were to learn the full truth of all your guilt, you believe I could destroy you. We both MUST protect against such exposure and it would seem as though our very life depends upon it. Such is the often precarious 'dance of intimacy,’ which is really nothing but the dance of war.

Guilt is the death of intimacy.

Guilt impedes intimacy and demands your defenses be forever at the ready. I must NOT expose you, else your righteousness would be ineffective in offsetting your guilt. My identifying your guilt means you must face what I SEE and this you cannot allow. So you will crush me and I know you can, as you know I can wound you, and this locks us into the brutality and unpredictability of emotional combat. You may lose a round, but in recognition of the ongoing never-ending war, you will rejoin the battle with ever more destructive conceptual armaments.

Like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, our conceptual combat is barely perceptible except to the most astute outside observer. In fact, we have become so adept and skillful in our psychic battles that, to the uninitiated, your attacks seem almost charitable. But you are conditioned to my subtle attacks and prepared to perpetuate your own, in awareness of my subterfuge. So utterly instantaneous and barely perceptible will be our mutual attacks, that often none but the actual combatants will perceive the parameters of “another battle in our dirty little war” (Springsteen). This does not matter though, because we are always prepared and ready simply because I know your past and you know mine. The past is that aspect of ‘self’ we seek desperately to escape and is the one thing you recognize could destroy me and reduce me to inadequacy and impotency. But, I know your past and in recognition of your attacks on my past, I make note of those aspects of your past ‘self’ that will deeply wound you.

In fact, many teach that our guilt holds us securely in the past, since guilt is always in reference to a past ‘self’ and is never NOW. They say that our little 'guilt trips' are nothing compared to the guilt we experience in our failure to correspond with Deeper Spirit which is always NOW and never THEN. Not to live from that unconditional awareness seems to make us very guilty indeed and we then simply add to it. 

If your declaration of war against me, made secretly to yourself, is based on my past attacks, will you recognize that my attack of you is no different than your emotional assaults on me? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, is an analogy relevant to our circular, "loving" warfare. This is because in your eyes I am the ‘original sin,’ which is my 'loss of grace' and is the origin of your need for self-protection. But, in my eyes, you are the origin of my suffering and make no mistake, you will pay, as "vengeance is mine sayeth the lord."

In fact, I’ve even met those who, after years of conflict and attack, in which each mutually pound blame upon the other, will actually reference perceived attacks that occurred even before the marriage vows were taken. The tally was begun long before the union was officially sanctioned. Was this preparation for battle in order to shake free of guilt, a lesson of childhood? Are we so afraid to look at our guilt that we learn from our parents the most effective means of guilt projection as the only way to achieve innocence and grace?

FORGIVE TO FORGET

There is only one way out of this virtual self-created hell and that is to NOT TO SEE IT, because it does NOT exist. However, as opposed to the world’s repetitive renditions of egocentric guilt and punishment, Deeper Spirit forgives… ONLY to forget. 

This is because, if you are NOT living from Spirit you are essentially NOT living or at the least, mimicking 'life.' Therefore, contrary to your experience of ‘real,’ how can what is NOT living be ‘real'? In such a world of ‘unreality,’ who is victim and who is victimizer? Who is guilty and who innocent? (Perfect non-dualism makes no such distinctions, but we do and punish those who are guilty, including and most especially our own‘self’).

In the ‘real’ world’s value system, your forgiving me my transgressions exalts you above me and clearly constructs a hierarchy of value between us. Although you may grant me reprieve from your judgment, neither you nor I have forgotten my guilt and therefore, it remains to eat at the core of intimacy. Thus, I will not lose sight of what your forgiveness really means. In fact, the moment I lose sight of the fact that YOU are the exalted one who has forgiven ME, you will immediately resume your indictment with all the vengeance at your disposal. In this sense, forgiveness is simply another subtle form of victimization.

Even those who profess to “love” one another, perform this mirage of forgiveness quite often, depending on how many years of living separately-together has transpired. However, if forgiveness does NOT forget, then, although your forgiveness seems authentic, based on what the world teaches, your progression to Deeper Spirit is significantly delayed and obstructed. Deep down, in our moments of clarity, we all realize this fact.

But egocentricity MUST resist even...WHAT IS NOT THERE.

Nevertheless, eventually, guilt is reestablished intrinsically in you and therefore, sooner or later, you will extrinsically indict them once again. Unless my transgression is completely absolved from memory, as yours is absolved from my mind, we cannot go further together and, although we may remain together as bodies, we will die apart in Spirit since the Union with Spirit was never realized.

Spirit is NOT offered alone and cannot be discovered in solitude. This is because only TWO or more, engaged in that pursuit together, can make such a profound discovery.

Going Neither Backward nor Forward

The ego believes that the guilty must suffer and this is reflected in the world it experiences. Guilt is the glue that seems to firmly hold together your existence. Punishment is the chief theme of your egocentric existence and the world is chock full of "offenses" and "violations" requiring the guilty be punished.

The ego’s guilt simply confirms that you MUST always be less than what YOU ARE and for that, you must consistently punish your 'self' by struggling and sacrificing to be MORE than the LESS you believe you ARE. This is why you are always your own worst enemy, since no one could ever punish you as comprehensively as “you.” As you know, sometimes you really are a royal butthead and you cannot deny this.

Therefore, the ego’s self-actualization (or what you refer to as "self-development," Ha!) through guilt only continues to diminish you. Yet, what would “you” be without guilt? The dynamic is simple. It demands you be guilty and hate yourself for what you are NOT NOW. Make no mistake, if you did not experience guilt, the ego could not exist, because guilt keeps the ego firmly fixated on the past so it can fabricate its ‘story’ of a future "you." Without a past, the ego could not inject itself into a future and without a conceptualized future why else would “you” exist (asks the ego)?

The egocentric world teaches that guilt is impure and you must suffer and sacrifice in order to achieve purity, not now, but IN THE FUTURE. But to make it ‘there,’ you must never forget your past, because “who” would get there without a past to identify with? Religious ideologies (churches) have been constructed almost entirely from the concept of guilt and sin, requiring you seek to “atone” for your past. But, make no mistake, "atonement" is an ego’s greatest fear, since without guilt to weave together its delusions, it would simply dissolve into nothingness.

Then “who” would you be?

Nevertheless, contrary to the ego’s need for your guilt, it also requires your innocence.  The ego is a “master of spin” and can rationalize and justify even the most horrendous knowledge to avoid guilt. The ego demands you be guilty, but only to reinforce its self-actualizing IN the world. Therefore, the ego will easily fabricate its experiences in order to achieve a fragile tension between guilt and innocence, so that you are never completely guilty nor completely innocent (an ego can only exist through incompletion seeking completion). In this way “you” can be PART of everything, but the WHOLE of nothing, demanding “you” seek to be ever more in the future.

You could never be completely innocent, since this would be perfection and the ego-self could NOT exist in complete perfection. Yet, you could never experience complete guilt either, since you might seek to destroy your ‘self’ (note how suicide is becoming a chief cause of death for U.S. combat soldiers).  Therefore, the ego solves this problem by superimposing guilt into its fabricated experience of an ‘outer’ world. Guilt is normal and there are always others more guilty than you (as well as those more innocent). One thing is certain to the ego, guilt is a part of you BECAUSE it is a part of your world. For the ego-self, “you” are the weakest link, because you are only a PART of the world and the WHOLE of nothing.

Guilt is always the chief aspect of the past, which means it can never be absent in your future and, therefore, never absent from “you.” You may argue for some degree of innocence. Yet, you do believe you are incomplete and, even though you seek for completion, this demands you suffer, since the incomplete must always be guilty of something, simply by nature of what you think you ARE.

“Self-development” is the ego’s attempt to keep you invested in the past by promising a future that is absent the suffering known to the past. But you must never forget what you are guilty OF, in the hope that it will NOT be repeated in the future. Now guilt is what you ARE, since the future has yet to be known and without guilt how will you know your ‘self’ when you arrive?

For the guilty who seek a better future free of self-punishment, that future must never arrive because...

... how can you ever be free of that which you CHOOSE to bring with you?

The infinite player has NO interest in the future and this mitigates ALL investment in the past. The infinite player realizes that it is NOT the past that need be surrendered… but the FUTURE. It is the future that demands you reference a past and guilt is always there, waiting to be remembered.

To play life’s games INFINITELY denies the future and thus, reformulates the past to extinguish guilt. To play infinitely is to be unconcerned with future outcomes based on past performance. Infinite play discovers NOW by simply denying the effects of the past because the future is NO longer contingent on it. Think about all the outcomes you desired for your future and how this often changed with the wind, only to be replaced by new goals and objectives when the old ones were seen as no longer viable.

The future is what you suffer from, NOT the past.

The infinite player has no future, since what plays infinitely is beyond time constraints and is most assuredly NOW. With NO future to press your ‘self’ into, the chains of the past have no meaning and life becomes a connecting string of surprising moments weaved into one infinite fabric. There is NO guilt in NOW, because there is no past nor future and without that, “who” or “what” is guilty? Who or what has ‘sinned’? Who or what has succeeded or failed or must be concerned with karma or is not awakened to truth?

Your identifying with a future makes all this necessary.

Surrender the future and the guilt of the past can only fade like a morning fog. Yet when the fog lifts be prepared for surprise, because there is little doubt you will see the world differently when you NO longer see guilt.

Besides, does it really matter what the future holds?

Maybe to "you"...


Artwork by Piercarlo Carella - "Evolution - A ticket to nowhere"

Charge of the Light Brigade!

Frequently, intense and somewhat heated exchanges occur in discussion forums focusing on spirituality. Usually, this is handled with civility, however, often it tends to create bad feelings amongst individuals and, although, this may rise up occasionally, most tend to seek out greater civility and make apologies as necessary.

But this is life, boys and girls! These discussions are microcosmic representations of life itself, merely abridged and abbreviated.

Yet, lo and behold, we have the charge of the Light Brigade! Because they refuse to enter into the often dark depths of engagement, and often are disengaged from most conflicts of life, the lightworkers come to our "emotional rescue." They seek to spread peace and light in the hopes of redirecting hostilities, but merely make the participants feel even more guilty for their conflictual engagement.

Who could not feel guilty when the interaction they recently engaged in was anything but "peace and light"?

Thank god for the lightworkers and their clichés of love and godliness; with their comfortable pithy quotes from the master teachers of light.

Sometimes I want to ask, are you real? But that would be too controversial and so, It would go unanswered.

I sense their presence always, out there in the margins, rarely engaging except to post a quote from the venerable in the hopes of saving the discussion from death by negativity. Disagree with their means and you instantly indict yourself as in league with the positivity sucking devils of darkness.

Conflict is anathema to the lightworkers who define life as merely the spreading of positive "vibrations." We must remain positive at all times. Philosophical negativity is shunned because, as their creed demands, negativity in all its forms can never have any value and can only lead to more negativity. Negative interactions can have no cathartic effect in aiding individuals in seeing more clearly the views they hold. Life is chock full of conflict and most is of our own doing, individually and collectively. Yet, we tend to grow through spasms of pain and suffering. We watch others struggle to make sense of anger and depression and we identify with them, because their struggle is ours.

Most of us, that is, but not the lightworkers. They seem unusually immune to the conflicts the rest of us poor folk plod through. But if only we would just seek the light, all our troubles would be gone, "come into the light, Caroleanne, come into the light!"

But we are!

For the lightworkers, dirty laundry stinks and so we must quickly wash away our issues and problems with lots of soap and water. Remember when you mother washed out your fowl mouth with soap? You continued to use the ‘F' word even more ferociously! ( well, maybe that was just me)

No, dear friends, we must always shed our light upon the world, because darkness has no value. Ahh... but without darkness to define your seeking the light, how would you define your "self" and the very project you are engaged in?

Forget the deep-seated ancient issues and the wounds crying out to be healed. Just pour pink paint over them and everything will be all better. I avoid lightworkers like the plague, since they deny us our struggle, and merely provide 'lip-service' the aphorisms of the ancient lightworkers.

They deny LIFE.

These frightened folks tend to rile me more than the complex exchanges between ideological opponents seeking common ground. It's almost as if there are no problems that their positive thinking can't solve.

I meet these individuals in my work on a daily basis and have come to see this as a feint, a delusion, a foil, because under all their peace and light is a boiling cauldron of emotion just waiting to come to the surface and murder everyone in their path.

They scare me...

"Don't you dare," they seem to say, in their desperate need to hide from their own emotional self.

Here ye, oh, lightworkers of the world:

You are not saving the world by spreading your light. The light comes from intimately understanding one another within our depths, not from deflecting that understanding through platitudes that seek to offset negativity. Face your fears through another. Intimacy demands discomfort in vacating all our pretty ideological boxes and packages. Your "light" merely prolongs the inevitable intimacy that our conflict has the potential to bring.

Throw away your pithy quotes and your scripts from the "masters."

I ask... WHAT SAY YOU! Will you give me honesty or just more of your "light."

Mature conflict is encouraged in the often painful search for the truth that is discovered by all differently. Even immature conflict is warranted as long as adults can apologize for their mistakes of the mouth. If you are afraid of conflict, you are asked to risk you plastic sense of peace and seek the intimacy that true depth of engagement brings. Real peace is not born of new age platitudes and clichés, but of engagement. Swim in my depths and I will join with yours in our own Intimate Awakening.

Spreading of light allowed, but only through depth of engagement.

The "Unconscious" Doesn't Exist

Is there really a nebulous lower domain or netherworld of impulses and drives outside conscious awareness that we refer to as the unconscious? If reality is nothing more than the flow of concepts within a ‘field’ of consciousness, where is this region of consciousness we call un-consciousness? (or subconscious) Seems to me it’s merely a perfect alibi for irresponsibility.

Psychology loves the unconscious, because it's used to make sense of absurd and irrational behaviors, while not making sense of anything at all. In fact, it may be this all-encompassing theory of the unconscious that perpetuates our collective mental illness and our failure to accept responsibility for our world.

The rule is that we can never really have full culpability with any of our actions due to unconscious impulses. The field of consciousness merely attaches coordinates to the objects of consciousness. The coordinates provide either personal ownership or locates some objects of consciousness as separate and external to you.

Yet, essentially, it’s ALL IN your consciousness and, hence, it’s all you, all the time.

Therefore, objects of consciousness, which includes all perceptions, conceptions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, images, everything you could consider as experience, are either allotted a personal coordinate in space/time (as belonging to you) or it's cut off and given to the world.

Yet these coordinates are delusional as nothing exists outside your consciousness.

The "evil" you repress is never really tucked away in some mental basement, it's merely projected outward and attached to objects or the people you see all around you everyday. However, since your ego has arranged that "evil-doers" be separate from a "you," now you can easily deflect responsibility for all the nasty stuff “out there," and easily ignore what you SEE as not your responsibility. Somebody else needs to take care of that. The entire science of psychology supports this basic premise of "personal responsibility" so how can I remedy what is not my fault?

The entire world seems to be crumbling before your very eyes, yet, of course, there's nothing you can do. It's "out there"! All you can do is take care of your own little world, or that within consciousness which your ego has allowed personal responsibility.

The ego determines what you own and what will be given to the world or, essentially, projected away from you while still in consciousness. Anything the ego does not wish to own, is merely given an external coordinate and thus, you perceive it as outside you, in the world. This becomes a 'knee-jerk' classification that merely requires acknowledgment in order to collapse. But who wants to acknowledge guilt for what the world has become? No, it's all become quite comfortable to let the ego do its magic.

Nothing is ever repressed into unawareness and no such unconscious, subconscious, preconscious, etc, levels of the mind exist. You are unconscious of nothing, since everything is in conscious awareness, but merely allocated 'external" coordinates. All your "primitive impulses" are available for full view. All your fears and nightmares are in consciousness and you view it daily in one form or another. War and destruction are in your mind. There is no need to forgive another, as you are both victim and victimizer.

The evil is NOT 'out-there,' it’s 'in-here.'

Why would ego desire some experiences of consciousness be externalized, while others be personally owned? Obviously, if hell is of your making, you would certainly seek to change it. Yet, extracting and externalizing parts of hell, as not your doing, works well in keeping the separation machine humming and keeping you apart from your own consciousness. Let's face it, if you were forced to take responsibility for the whole kit and Kaboodle, you’d fix it in a cosmic heartbeat since it really sucks. Unfortunately, this would fix your ego-self as well since, if there is no separation, then there could be no “you” to deny ownership, requiring full responsibility. But, if there's NO "you," what happens to the 'world'?

This poses a problem for many awakening programs, which rely on a “you” having an unconscious requiring you plumb your “unconscious” depths in order to finally realize the obstacles to "awakening." The exalted teachers claim it’s not the conscious mind that obstructs your progress but all the unconscious conditioning that you have repressed from consciousness. This Freudian perspective is really anathema to achieving a unified consciousness or that oneness we all tend to give lip-service.

Why would they seek to partition consciousness thereby allowing you to avoid your responsibility in saving the world? You can’t seek what is outside awareness. Therefore, to maintain the awakening game there must be some part of your mind inaccessible to you. Because if consciousness is all there is and you are not separate from any of it, how could you ever seek to realize this fact if there is a part of consciousness, or unconsciousness, that you have been taught is not available to you. It's time to deeply question the conventional wisdom of the "masters."

Nevertheless, we're all as guilty as "sin." So instead of spending everyday steeped in hours of meditative wandering with the intent of finally overcoming your unconscious impulses, just look outside your head and SEE it all in vivid technicolor. Once you take responsibility for what you see , then go back into your consciousness and change it.

It's as simple as that!

Defending Against Guilt

I find it interesting that some of the most hallowed spots on the planet are surrounded by starvation and abject poverty.
What does that mean?

When you completed the devouring of your stuffed turkey this holiday season (or whatever consumables you devoured), how did you rationalize the fact that your stomach was full while in 3rd world societies distended stomachs are indicative of the starvation and malnutrition of millions? We can't deny this as true, so how do we deny the guilt that most occur from such truth? How could we NOT feel guilt?

I'm just curious as to what rationalizations are used to offset guilt. I imagine, (from my own experience) just plain old denial or factual repression tends to work well for a time, but (also from my own experience) never entirely. Guilt seems to seep back into consciousness and of course, the "news" is not very helpful in repressing guilt when the images are right there in front of your face (just look at the situation unfolding in Gaza right now).

This has always been my difficulty with the concept of individual enlightenment as the Buddha and others proclaim. The prince left his palace to experience the suffering of the masses, only to sit under the Bodhi tree and become "enlightened." Unfortunately, that didn't seem to change conditions for the starving masses. They still kept on starving, even today. But I'm consistently told that I just don't understand Buddhism. Ok, so how do the Buddhists deal with guilt?

How do we dissolve the guilt that others starve, while we partake of abundance (or obesity)? Due to my particular field, I've always had an interest in the use of ego defense mechanisms (Freud) in order to cope with an absurd reality. So what do you use to defend yourself from this unfortunate aspect of reality? Do you absolve your guilt by "seeking enlightenment" or maybe by "being enlightened"? (so what the hell is that!?)

Suffering may be a part of this "oneness" we all love to speak about, but if we haven't fully worked to reduce suffering can we really say WE are part of "oneness"?

In fact, shouldn't we being doing everything we can? Shouldn't we ALL be selling our HDTVs or our Ipods and sending the money to the starving? LOL! Obviously, I'm as guilty as you, so the point is what should we do? Just accept that guilt is part of life?

Nah......

I would imagine that an enlightened or awakened mind would have no difficulty alleviating starvation, otherwise why call it "enlightened"? Therefore, seems like more of the same old blah, blah, blah, to me.

Or maybe NO separate person has yet achieved "enlightenment" (yet), because NO one separate mind CAN? Maybe, inevitably, we will all need to be starving first, (spiritually/physically?) causing an equalization of 'experience' and, from there we can ALL be enlightened together!

Thanks for listening....