"...strange times are these in which we live when the old and the young are taught falsehoods in the schools of learning. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and a fool..." PLATO Now It Begins And Now I Begin, To Live, For Me, A Deeper, Expanded Life, A Life of no Explanation of no Doubts of no Second-Guessing, Perhaps Alone But not Lonely. I am Born in two A bigger Space I cannot explain, Sense Me And you will Know, Measure Me And I am Not With you, I can take No one With me On This Walk Over the Chasm Will be (W)One by One, With Love Waiting The Other Side Is Good Bye inside of Time. Personal Love Melts into The Larger Water, Now it Begins. From 'Shackled Gods Uni Verse' by Tobias Lars ------------------------------------------- Hurrying to Our Deaths It seems one of the hardest things for western people today is simply to do nothing. Simply be, to be simply, in the space of emptiness. Even Zen retreats, courses, classes, are assertions, a push, they are still trying to do, to make happen the state of being still. This is still doing. I remember an instance when I was first recognizing this compulsion of "doingness" we seem to have created in the West. I had been sitting in the quiet, peace, empty, nothing space for a while (months). I went out to a friends house, someone there asked me "So, what do you do?" I said, "I don't do anything" and then I just sat in the empty, quiet, nothing space and looked at them. The other person's mind scrambled for something to hold onto, "Ha, Ha, but seriously, so what do you really do?". I could feel the fear, the uncomfortable ness that the mind felt in not being able to classify me, not being able to put me in a category. Is he smart/ dumb, cool/crazy, wealthy/ poor, nice/mean, potential boyfriend/not my type etc ad infinitum. This person actually said to me, "please, give me something to work with here." Their mind needed some information to go on. If we don't feed the mind information continually at first it will go "crazy" looking for information then it will give up and quiet down and we can start to feel our essence, God, the "peace that passeth all understanding". The Mind is about understanding, knowing, having it "figured out" as in "Oh, I've got you figured out". But this place of peace that "passeth all understanding" cannot be understood by our continually running minds, and the minds are terrified of being "put out of a job" of running us continually, so our minds desperately grab for information to feed us, judgments to categorize others by. The mind feels safe when it has everyone pigeonholed and categorized into boxes. We feel safe, but it bores us to death eventually. It is in non-doing, doing nothing where the western mind will find peace, what we most need to learn, which is really to un-learn, to allow this space of non-doing, empty nothingness to simply come and infuse our beings. Most of us in the West have been programmed since birth, and are continually being programmed every day that you "must do something, must be somebody" or you're nothing, and being nothing a "nobody" is to be a "loser" and this is the most terrifying thing for the western mind. Can you see how this fear of being "nobody", "nothing" makes us slaves to continually trying to assert that we are somebody? This terror of being a nobody, a loser, rules us, manically possesses us, makes us get up everyday with possessed eyes, pits us all against each other like pit bulls in the arena. (Interestingly, on the stock exchange where everyone is frantically vying to buy and sell, the actual area where the trading takes place is called "the pits".) And we do this day after torturous day, our life force slowly ebbing until we die and reach "peace". Except it isn't peace we reached because we re-fused (re-fused, once again we didn't open) to open to the Nothing and allow the Source of Life to nourish us. We still thought mistakenly that we must "work for our Living", when actually God the Father, God the Mother, long to give to us the Horn of Plenty, all that Life has to offer, unlimited energy, unlimited pleasure, play, love, experiences. But we are not open to receiving much of this and even though it passes right before our eyes everyday we can't see it because we are so busy hurrying to our deaths. The paradox is that in the Nothing, Everything is born. The Nothing can contain Everything, can give you everything. Once you are a Nobody you are Everybody. This is a real experience that you can have. It doesn't have to take lifetimes anymore of sitting in caves or monasteries. The time for mysteries and hidden knowledge is over. In 1990 I simply gave up and sat down in my room. I wasn't willing to assert anymore, to try to create through will power, pushing, stressing. I didn't want to "make things happen" anymore. If Life is meant to be easy, flowing, Tao, effortless creation, then I didn't want to live the old way of "shoulds", and "have to do this in order to get that". The world of cause and effect was over for me, I was tired of it, ready to learn, to wake up to something new, a different way of existing. I "Just said No" (thank you Nancy Reagan), no more old world models of expending my soul energy as a sacrifice, no more feeding my life force to death. It has been the most terrifying thing I've ever done and the most cosmic orgasm thing I've ever done. I ran out of money, felt many of my survival fears, I felt like a veteran of the psychic wars, paranoid. I felt omnipotent, I felt impotent, I saw spirits, I felt crazy, I cried (alot), I slept whenever I wanted, I ate whatever I wanted, only if I wanted, when I wanted. My body felt like lead, my body felt like air, my emotions, my hopelessness, my rage at God seemed like bottomless pits. Somehow I survived even though I stopped doing. I stopped doing many of the things that were "laws" about surviving in the western world. It does feel like God, the Nothing, the Everything, Mother Earth, is taking care of me. I'm not saying that everyone should stop "doing". There's a right time for everything, for every mode of being. Doing and being active, consumed by a goal is as much God as not doing. But I'm saying to first get in touch with the flow, your heart, the voice of God and then do and not do as feels right for you. Now I do more and more only what and when I want to. I still do some programmed in reflex things, but I catch myself and I'm patient with myself. I don't beat myself up that I'm still run by some automatic programs. I allow them to play out and they leave when they are finished, and I'm finished with them. More and more I do nothing, I simply sit and feel. My whole body fills up with energy. It starts in my solar plexus, my belly. It feels like molten metal, as if my bones and flesh are turning into liquid golden light. I like it. A lot of times I can't wait to get away from people and doingness to come home and sit and be filled up again. I'm not able to allow this state to stay with me that much "out there" in the world yet so I'm a bit protective of my new found Cauldron of Love in my belly. I'm patient with myself. I don't want to pretend spiritually that I'm somewhere I'm not yet. And eventually, I have a feeling, I'll be able to move around in the world and not lose touch with my Heart Fire. "Be still and Know that I Am God." Just stop, Just say No. No more manic running around while your Life, your Love is passing you by. What have you got to lose? Is your life happy and fulfilling the way it is going now? I had a cat come into my life while I was sitting in my chair in my room trying to learn to do nothing. I saw her in my mind before she arrived in the flesh. She has taught me a lot about doing simply what she feels like doing, and doing nothing for long stretches. She survives, she is filled with the energy of the Universe, she has no "shoulds", no "have to's", no guilt about relaxing and receiving. And then when inspired, bursts of energized doing. --------------------------- An Interview with God Here's a story I came across on the Internet: I dreamed I had an interview with God. "Come in", God said, "So, you would like to interview Me?" "If you have the time," I said. God smiled and said: "My time is eternity and is enough to do everything; what questions do you have in mind to ask me?" "What surprises you most about mankind?" God answered: "That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, so that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived." God's hands took mine and we were silent fo a while and then I asked, "As a parent, what are some of life's lessons you want your children to learn?" God replied with a smile: "To learn that they cannot make anyone love them. What they can do is to let themselves be loved. To learn that what is most valuable is not what they have in their lives, but who they have in their lives. To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others. All will be judged individually on their own merits, not as a group on a comparison basis. To learn that a rich person is not the one who has the most but who is the most in touch with their true Selves. To learn that money is a great servant and cold master. To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it completely differently. To learn that it is not enough to be forgiven by others but that they need to forgive themselves." I sat there for a while enjoying the moment. I thanked Him for his time and for all that He has done for me and my family, and He replied: "Anytime. I'm here 24 hrs a day. All you have to do is ask for me, and I'll answer." ----------------------------- "Authentic" Being "authentic", true, real, down to earth, honest, integrated, is the foundation of personal power and awakening. Without this foundation of alignment with your true self, your personal true experience, everything you will build will be doomed to fall. The building cannot be solid without a solid "authoring", a solid integrated foundation. Author,n. [ME. autour; OFr. autor; L. auctor, author from augere, to cause to grow, increase] 1. one who produces, creates, or brings into being; the beginner, creator or first mover of anything. Most of our academic "learning" today is simply memorization. Thousands of university students simply sit in lecture halls writing down, memorizing what the "professor" is professing to them. To measure intelligence by the ability to memorize is the wrong gauge. That's why so many "geniuses" can't function in the world. "Autism" causes unbelievable abilities to memorize or focus on details yet these people cannot relate to the world around them very well. American Mensa society (the high IQ society) offered me a membership simply because I could memorize better than 99% of others who took the Graduate Management Admissions Test to get into graduate business school. And learning from books what other "authors" have written is not your "authentic" knowledge. It is borrowed from another "author". It was not authored (born, created) by you. You simply read it in a book. This does not make us intelligent it simply makes us regurgitating machines. Computers are much better at this than any human. Parrott's can repeat sentences they hear us say. This does not make them understand what they are saying. College students can "parrot" information they read in their books or heard their professor say, this does not make them intelligent, functional, able to solve problems, able to respond to the world around them intelligently. When we stay with our "authentic" (authored by us) experience, it is real, it "rings" true. It becomes our life, our birth, our creation. And when authentically ours, this source of creative energy seems limitless. The rush of the life force through the inventor, the painter, the musician when performing, allowing the Creator to create through them, is one of the most powerful experiences available. When I play my music that I write, it is a whole different experience than trying to "cover" someone else's "authorization"/creation. We are not meant to try to copy others' creations, we are meant originally by the Creator to create Our dreams, our visions. That's why when we finally begin our real dreams the Universe conspires to help us. Is it a challenge, scary? Of course.. |
