I have often used the analogy of wet wood to account for why the joy and connectness we share doesn't spark the world alight. Wet wood symbolises the obstruction or blockage to the sharing of joy.
It is to identifying and releasing this in us all that I address such sketches of word or phrase as this article. I have spaced it so that each paragraph can be considered in spaciousness. There is so much that we are deterred from encompassing because we forget that we only need take one step at a time.
If enough people get stuck at the same point because of unconsciously shared mutual agreements, they call it reality. To speak outside accepted norms may seem initially un-understandable or provocative because it has a different foundation. One has to be accepting of not initially understanding, and feel or discern for any meaning that arises while reading. To merely filter all things within pre existing meanings is to stay within the confines of old maps without looking up to see the terrain.
Ideas can seem like philosophical twaddle - but I assert that by the ideas we accept, do we stand open or closed to life, and the time for change is at hand.
By this I mean that the old ideas are manifestly obstructive and obsolete and that fresh vision is called for by the very stuckness that is evident in self and world.
I hold that a separative self sense underlies and necessitates the core problems that humanity faces and yet also generates to use as distractions from the real issue. It is indicative that if such ‘territory’ is opened up to consideration, one inevitably meets blanking or denial, ridicule or extreme reaction. How could it be otherwise when the self and world we want to believe real is brought into question? We discover the same dynamic within ourself if we start to use our mind to uncover what we are using our mind for. There is that in us which does not want to open to question the mindset that we have become comfortable in - even if our life is not very ‘alive’ or really shared at all.
Fear is associated with change because our first experience of radical change was of separation. But locking down on change and attempting to minimise risk has not and will not lead to undoing of the basis for fear. The world seems to justify and necessitate fear but that is ultimately because we have adopted a posture of withheld presence and attention in which we do not see love because we do not see with love. We have become expert in seeing what is ‘wrong’ with everyone and everything and justifying our private view and its defences. But this is displacement of a fear and a judgement that what we ourselves in fact are ... is loveless or unworthy of love.
We can seem to use our mind lovelessly - this may be an idle curiosity or carelessness and not an intent to harm. But while we do so we misalign with the truth of what the mind is. We experience a sense of conflictedness that we then interpret within the terms of the thought we hold and see adversary, adversity and guilt. If we choose to stay in the thought we undertake the role and drama of overcoming the limitation as we misperceive it. But it is not there and every step to do so only excacerbates the belief that it is there to be overcome or defended against, magically healed or attoned for by punishment or penance.
Love waits on welcome - not on time.
In the story of Jesus he demonstrated very simply and persistently the truth of love and healing - not guilt - is within, and that death is transcended in rootedness in the Father’s Will - which again was found within - by trust - and not imposed from without. If this story isnt accorded historical validity then it still serves as symbol to activate any mind desiring to be free of - a separate self sense. The Truth that alone is true isnt definable or graspable - but it IS shareable.
To feel this is to let thinking serve the heart.
If what I say doesnt speak to you - so be it. But to read anything and feel your own knowings stirred is to have intimate experience within the mind. By this ordinary miracle are moments of communion. Communication isnt merely packets of information but a resonance of intention.
What do you (reader) want?
The answer to this determines how you read the world.
It is that simple - and at this level you are not victim to a past or a world beyond your control.
To wish for reality to be other than as it is, is to enact imaginative or experimental thinking. For Reality is as it is. To give preference to one's private judgement is to distract attention from what is, and invite an inherently conflicted state. For such a use of mind creates a choice between its making and the truth.
If one chooses mutually opposing outcomes then conflict is what is being chosen. To play within the realm of conflict is to become trapped or identified in reaction. The freedom to accept this is so is the freedom in which to make another choice. Freedom can be denied but only as you choose to do so.
To desist applying or imposing a seemingly separate will allows reality to be what it already is - AND for more of what that Is to register in our awareness - by which we are guided and grow in capacity to receive. When joy infills and arises we experience a glimpse of communion. Communion is not a sense of being separate, isolated, cut off or lost. It is joy.
Whence comes the intuition, the guidance, the discernment, the inspiration? They come in secret while your truth is held secret.
They do not issue from self will and its little walled off mind. But by the forgetting or neglecting to apply self will and letting life in.
The life that is let in is the sanity and intelligence of the truth of what you remain but have forgotten amidst distraction. Initially it may be experienced as if a Spirit that touches or heals and guides because our belief in guilt is deeply held and we are not yet willing to release it. But as we recognise and accept the voice and the promptings and intuition of this mind as the guide instead of following the voice that arises out of selfwill we regain vision and weaken an addictive identification that inceasingly is revealed as unfulfilling and futile or meaningless.
Yet we are so enamoured of our self will that we equate it with freedom and independence.
To trust and be led by guidance from a source that is not of our ego’s making can seem insulting to our idea of independance for it suggests at some level being like a puppet.
This is not altogether untrue for the mind can only be a conduit for the ideas it accepts.
The ego illusion of an independent and private self feigns to make you temporarily free but this is a carrot. The stick should be familiar by now. It knows exactly where to hit you!
This puppet is strung up in fear and guilt and dances in clever ways such that joylessness can be presented as success!.
The alternate to fear is to be a puppet also - but to a creative living freedom that gives Identity, indivisibility, Joy, Peace, Meaning.
Because That which gifts us awareness is Giving all of Itself and holding nothing back.
In personal practical terms, if one discovered that what is truly desired, is not what you are actually aligning with or subscribing to, does it not express freedom to say yes to - and live from - your revealed truth? The desire of our heart is the ongoing prayer of our life. If it is covered over it waits while our ears are stuffed with our own thinking.
The only real choice is which purpose we serve. Hang on... The only real choice is the choiceless choice of being ‘moved by the Divine will. The apparent other choice is a state of indecision played out as if an alternate option were in fact possible. But while we believe the choice is real we have to really make it.
If releasing self will breaks a hypnotic dream and awakens a fresh experience it is because we let it. By acceptance. Not because we exert a will and achieve it.
Reality is already here but we are largely unconscious in our thinking.
Because we think we know, we do not even bother to look! If guidance doesnt answer problems within terms we insist on defining them as, we say it doesnt exist or is undependable.
Such a puffed up arrogance of self will is in the mind of man! When I notice this in myself - it is opportunity of awakening - and not a call for more judgement. (For judgement IS how we auto-hit the snooze button and slide back to sleep).
The mappings that we hold dear act as filters. They are beliefs that literally program the way we experience reality and thus how we react to what we perceive. (Is this man threatening you?
In exercising our personal powers of judgement and belief we tend to see ourselves as exercising our freedom. I hold that doing so is in fact (freely but unconsciously) denying freedom of our present participation in what life really is - in favour of a self made ‘world’ that convicts us with the very power of our convictions.
Individuality is rooted in the singularity of Being. Your individuality is inviolable as the expression of One Will.
It doesn't seem that there is One Will - it seems that there are billions of conflicting wills.
I hold that this is what One Will looks like when seen through an illusory and fragmented viewpoint.
(Tweedledum and tweedledee AGREED to have a quarrel).
And though many like to talk sweetly of oneness, it is this that the ego or separate self fears most because it believes it has cut its puppet strings and is independent. And thereby subject to being cut off from its life as it did unto Life.
Live by the scissors and ye shall die by the scissors!
Guilt and fear are inevitable companions to self will - for engaging self will is a wish that reality be as you alone would have it be. (I’m not saying we dont trade alliances or make relationships where we sacrifice in order to get what we are intent upon). This is by definition conflicted with reality and such a game is no game to one who believes it has defiled reality and IS a defiled reality.
The fragmenting and disintegrating effect of guilt upon the mind is catastrophic. Just because it has become normal here doesn't make it less so. While one believes himself/herself unworthy of love it will NOT be allowed to register in awareness as our experience of world - each other, or ourselves. Of all that you could do to defy thralldom to the false, receiving love is the most liberating. For guilt MUST be abandoned to let love in.
Much of our mindset is enacting strategies of coping with a conflicted world - that is itself the displaced projection of conflicted mind. Which has little or no desire to accept responsibility for thought because it does not access joy’s vision and has given the power of decision over to the ‘world’ outside. This is the cost of blaming anyone or anything - including oneself. Guilt sucks (...the light, and uses it to make light seem darkness).
Joining with others in common inspiration is to Let Life In - and to EMBODY it. This communicates through us as individuals but is experienced as a shared present joy. This is spirituality as lived through us - not dressing up or applying special meanings to things.
None is forced to accept reality as it is, we are each free to experience our own privateor local take if we so desire. But whatever is the vibrational tone and quality of the movement of being that is occurring right now - it is experienceable as it is - as a universal knowing. It could be said that this is the essence of That you are, (or anything is), rather than any attempt to experience what you are, (or anything is).
The attempt to grasp or define or map or compare is itself a gesture of self will which is absenting oneself from awareness of the flow while distracted in the act of differentiation. The grasping control mind is like a sphincter that tries to close around experience. It tends to get in the way.
The channel of our consciousness functions well in being relaxed and calm, allowing us to join WITH or surrender into the flow as it moves us. Identifications may get shat out as light is welcomed in for these were an attempt to live in the dark. They become unnecessary and obstructive and so life works to release them step by step as we are willing to accept. In this process of waking is the world given the purpose of waking - which is to see all things in a new light.
Reality or Truth is shared as a movement of Be -ing that has definite qualities. It is the sharing of these that extends them and maintains them in our awareness - not theorising or theologising. The release of self willed reality allows a direct experience that is recognisable and relevant to whatever the current need is. It always restores joy and sanity and grounds us in a capacity for response rather than reaction.
But without a structure through and by which a more constant direction is held; joy, oneness, light and love - all can become momentary vacillations before fear takes the stage and calls them pretty delusions, comforting lies or sweet fixes.
There are two aspects to the world which prompt me to speak out. One is the fear driven world and its deepening joyless clutch on our hearts. How far does it go before we wake up? I dont mean wake up to unite against danger - that is for Chicken Licken and the Fox. I mean wake up to joy.
There isn't a widely known framework of thought for the realities of what I call the heart - our wholeness as feeling awareness.
The old religious and spiritual traditions tended to cater to the ignorances and issues of their day. God has been so misused as a word that few would associate God with eternal light in your heart.
The dominance of so called rational thinking mind has hardly heralded the most enlightened era - yet the scientific willingness to break out of dogma and superstitious delusion or manipulation is a real gain. But I would say that we used rationality to box ourselves in to a corner in which there is a stuckness and lack of vision or aspiration. This says only one thing to me - wake up! What is the truth here - in this situation - in this place? And remain receptive and willing for an answer to come in time and form of its choosing - not ours.
The world experience that we mostly equate with life takes on a different nature and quality when it is used as the means for healing (wholing) our mind rather than using the world to hide our mind from Mind.
When we use our bodies as a means of communication - as for example in dance rather than employing body as a private boundary around a thinking isolated me, we are being a channel of expression and extension.
Such joyful freedom cant be grasped or bought and sold. Nor owned, argued over or substituted for by spin or even sacred symbol. It cannot really be lost - because we do not create the channel that IS our reality. But such giving and receiving can be lost sight of in the drive to get.
Is anything I write new? I dont think so. But the ideas by which we map the world do fail us and we have to live raw enough to find fresh expression. It isnt the forms that are ultimately important - but the willingness to dance the qualities they hold as these flow through us - and move on anew.
To that which identifies only with form, life must mean death. Yet to that which expresses itself through form to its own channel of recognition, there is only life.
In Peace
Brian
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