Black Mirror

I turned off the little tablet that someone gave me and then stared at the black rectangle in my lap, reflecting nothing.

Are goals important?

Why? I chose some, but it was more to give focus to thought, making it more pleasant, than for any other reason. My energy is low lately - still recovering from surgery and so on - so it does not make me follow through on my goals. But I know what they are. I decide not to add more, or to send my limited energy off in other directions. "Do these things, or rest." That is how goals are helping me, so I don't revisit the question endlessly. Goals help me not think. Very useful!

the All-Seeing I

Over a year ago I had an experience during a guided visualization that created a permanent change in perspective. I won't describe it, other than to say that it was about the Two Real Things: the Void, and Experience. This morning I had an interesting thought about how we perceive, and what our view means. Experience is seen in analogy by looking straight forward and noticing the round, seemingly edgeless window of sight. (Like what Douglas Harding describes in his book "On Having No Head") The Void is understood by analogy to the invisible realm "behind our heads" which is outside the field of view, all that we cannot be conscious of.

"With, not thro' the Eye"

This morning I was turning my head a bit to be aware of the inconspicuous boundary of my vision, and I felt that something within me was trying to stretch that edge as far back and around as possible. Could the Ego be wanting to see in all directions at once, to know and control everything? Maybe. But it is also true that the Third Eye is known as "the All-Seeing Eye". It is understood in the Astral Realm as including all forms of perception and thought itself: the "6 senses" described by the Buddha. At Enlightenment (or Liberation, or whatever the most exalted state is called) there is no unconscious, and all that can be perceived and known is present.

So maybe the pull I was feeling is the natural growth of the being? What do you think? Do the experiment, and become aware of what you see, and what you do not see.

less think then you smart

"Thought reveals alternatives. It was not meant to solve problems or decide things." - Zulaikha Mahmud

I have two perspectives for you:
1) you are not as smart as you think you are.
2) you are smarter than you realize. Ready?

This morning, while sitting on my porch, I reached to brush away a minute piece of fluff when it suddenly flew. It was an almost invisibly small pure white flying insect. This creature has a digestive system, legs, wings, eyes, other senses, a brain, and it can reproduce. Consider that next time you think of how great your iPhone is. But let's focus on the brain. How many neurons might it have? A few thousand at most? Clearly it does not engage in a thought process. This is a CPU that processes sensory input and runs pre-defined programs that find food and mates, and protect it from harm, whether a sudden downpour or a malicious child. It can learn.

No Story

If so few neurons can govern all of that, we have to pause and consider the nature of what we call "thought". After all, we have about 100 million times as many neurons, yet there is still sarcasm, gangs, obesity and genocidal war. We are not so far up the scale as we imagine. I would say that if we were even capable of being farther along in development, we would be. Nothing is holding back the tiny white moth, and nothing is holding us back either! A big brain does not make us smart. It might not even give us the capacity to understand ourselves, and without that, the cause is lost. We might as well accept that we are - largely - automata, carrying out programs. (and reading blogs and sites about Nonduality) (Filling out Tax forms... Designing tax forms...) (Shhhh, you'll ruin the story)

If this is the case, we have to deeply reflect on what day to day life is about. OK, I guess you are done with that now, so let's continue.

My idea is that neurons alone are not the thought-makers. The entire body has neurons and cells that produce and respond to neurotransmitters and hormones. The whole thing is one giant "second favorite organ". It is all response, all the time. Even while asleep, it is doing stuff, and managing without our "help" just fine, thank you! So expand your view of what constitutes awareness, response, planning or at least perspective. Reduce your worship of discursive thought within your mind. It is not so very important, or even useful.

Which brings us back to my porch. Last night I was watching the movie "God's Not Dead" with some friends and talking about it. The inevitable idea dominating all such discussions, of which I have learned not to blurt out my perspective, is: God is Over There and we are Over Here. There is a separateness that is not even worthy of noting. No one says: I am not God! (or, I Am God! except the Mystics) (mmm hmm) (and it would be redundant, as I Am and God are the same word) Why is this the unquestioned assumption? The entire basis of Religion and the despair of non-believers is due to that idea. It is just a thought. If we threw it out and started over with what we can observe, every person on Earth would see life differently, and it might just prevent all the above noted problems. So let's lead up to it with a more basic idea: I am my porch. My porch is me.

Love Me, Love My Porch

On the face of it, this is completely indisputable. The porch does not ever "happen" for me without "me" being there. I never get a text message from the porch about how the wind has overturned the plastic chairs or whatever. But the same is true for the porch: I don't exist except for it. (Ignore the use of "it" as the common term for "inanimate object".) The porch sits there all day, with wind blowing across it, just as the wind blows over my skin when I sit there. Sun shines on it. Rain falls, exactly as it patters on me before I head inside. In short, there is no real difference. The same things happen. Why do I think that I am different from the porch? If I was anesthetized to unconsciousness and lying out there, we would all agree that it is the same. So, I and the porch are one. I am not saying the porch has thoughts, any more than my ear has thoughts. I am just saying that a meaningful distinction would be hard to put in words. The tiny white moth is on the porch. It is on me. It is flying in search of food. It is resting...

So let us take one giant leap for mankind and say, as our Preceptor did: God and I are one. Can't be otherwise, right? "What more IS there than the universe, Spock?" Exactly. And what is it made of? God had nothing else to make it out of than God's Self. As Rumi said, "There is no reality but God. There is only God." Maybe we can all hold that thought once in a while and see what happens as a result. But I doubt it.

recruiting

I was leafing through this book I bought for my father, "Waking Up - a guide to spirituality without religion". (I have not read even most of it, I thought my father and I could discuss it.) It seemed to relate to what I have been studying in the last year.  One bit that caught my thinking was the investigation of how there can be multiple "consciousnesses" or points of view in the mind, and one is the one we identify with at the moment. The simplest view of that is the well-known split-brain research. But you can research this all by yourself right now by closing one eye. Look through a railing or past a nearby object at a more distant one. Close or cover one eye, then the other. In one case the nearby object will seem to move, and the opposite side of your brain is the one that is "me" at that moment. Usually the left side of the brain is in charge of daily thought. But what if you could get the other side to be the leader? What sorts of things does it consider important? Doing less linear and verbal things will get the right side going, like painting, dance, sports, relationships, and most of what we do most of the time. Which of these two people is "really you"? Yes.

The book suggests that there can be several small centers of awareness going on at once, but they are silent to the main thread of consciousness, usually. I am familiar with this feeling from my work with personality facets. Most people resist the idea that internally they have several points of view and that they could differ markedly. So here is another experiment: find your blind spots. Look at a wall or something about 10 feet away where there are two small clearly visible objects on a horizontal line. Cover your right eye, look at the object to the left, then slowly move your gaze a bit to the right until the left object vanishes. The blind spot is inward on your eyeball from the center of view. Normally, your two eyes work together to have the blind spots covered by at least one eye, so that you see everything. But how many times have you turned while driving to look and then next thing you knew, someone was there that you had not seen before? If when you looked you could get only one eye on the scene, then unknown to you a substantial part of reality was simply not visible for a moment, and you missed the pedestrian, motorcycle or car that was nearby. It is called a blind spot because we are entirely unaware of it. If the brain would not try to hide the lack of information from us, it might be better, but also more uncomfortable. Try it with your other eye also. Is one blind spot larger, or more confusing or hard to deal with? Remember, when you are driving, you really need both eyes when you look, because part of your view is lying to you.

If the brain can lie to us about two halves of visual awareness, then it can certainly suppress multiple points of view in our "unconscious" minds. I would say that there are parts of all of us active much of the time that are completely conscious of themselves, but not heard from in the main thought track. This has two drawbacks: we don't really know ourselves, and the more that we are split in to small factions the less useful we can be. Much energy is wasted reinforcing the illusion of a single view - dominant thought, blind spots and all (your ego) - that could go into being happy and effective. Nonduality is learning how to "recruit" larger and larger areas of the continual awareness (which you can think of as parts of the brain if it makes you happy) in to a single unitive state of consciousness. If this is not a new idea, it certainly has not been heard about enough.

To me, nonduality is no more mystical, religious, spiritual or otherwise non-ordinary than is walking. We are born to use our awareness for whatever we wish. They just forgot to include the owners manual. If you think there is more to realization than that, I am here to tell you: there is not.