A personal history revisioned

I had uncharacteristically felt a desire to know. This feeling wasn't part of my ordinary everyday sense of myself. As if a depth was rising amidst a mind of surface.

 I was unravelled all of a 'day' as many are over years, though time is not what it seems. That is, a dissonance of being rose as an awareness that I could not avoid. My attempt to evade it, was an enactmenting a wish for an independence of self. At a level kept beneath my focus of awareness, I was trying to manipulate attention so as to 'become' a something in my own right. I was uncovering truth, I was opening secret places. I was peeling away the layers of mind that constitute a state of ignorance as to the true nature of Mind itself. All was opening to me - except that at each revelation, did the dissonance rise again, (of which I was turning away), and so my attention was effectively shepherded in and up though the chakras of the structure of what body-mind appears through, without being able to rest or abide in anything found. As this consciousness approached its own root, time expanded immeasurably, worlds within worlds and lifetimes in an instant - for the seeds of mind contain and know all that comes forth thereof - and were revealed to me as infinite potential, though the nature of all seemed forever appearing and disappearing, as if each instant of experience is itself a birth or becoming.
 Such was the loss of time's continuity that there is no temporal order for what fragments can be intimated here.  For everything is happening at once and surely, none of it happened to me - but somehow in me - in a mind stripped of self reference.

 Everything is directly.

 Total Freedom seemed paralysis to any attempt to map or control.
 Eternal Mind suddenly revealed the memory and motion of my born existence.

 A force of will arose in blindness amidst an inseparability of Mind.
 And the dissonance 'outed itself' at its root.

 Within the grasp of life is fear of death.
 And in the clinging to such illusion is a fear of evil born, for truth is abandoned and all else trod underfoot, that Eternal Mind be forgot and my will be done.

 Yet beneath and somehow pervading this blind urge of a murderous terror was a stillness of a peace that simply revealed itself. Even amidst descent in oaths of pretence, lie and denial, was this quiet simply being - for though terror seemed total - and forcefully persuasive of being totally engaging - this calm and direct curiosity arose in a clear moment regardless of all attempt to collapse consciousness and regain a structure of solidity and boundary in which a world made solid and a partitioned mind in which I could think.

 But whatever had Opened, hadn't in fact been able to be shut again, for I could not accept the evil as my self - nor could I put it out onto the Life. It had to be a mistake in my mind. Yet one that I was so identified with as to be without practical responsibility of discernment.

 Whatever pervaded or Moved in the Immanence of Mind, was the Awakening of my heart - even though it was initially an awakening to a desecrated altar.

 What was the nature of this story but of a dream of a life that hid within itself, a fear of its own evil - from which it attempts to turn inside out to 'escape' itself into an indirectness of its own story-justifications - identified as safety and self, and defended against all and any real relationship?

 The seed of fear is a wish that patterns its shadow as denial, division and limitation. Identifying with disconnected thought, cuts off the heart's guiding and knowing of its own wholeness, and then 'acts' or pictures out as if it had been cut off and must survive and prevail against a now unrecognised Condition. For a thief sees its own mind in all and shrinks from the light of love as from threat of danger.

 So I got 'my life' back, only it was no longer mine alone - for it could not go back to sleep and its thoughts were like sand castles. For what rose in me now, directly, was undoing of the mind of the lie - as it found my acceptance, one step at a time.

 In a singular moment amidst the seed level of Mind had been a vision of the pattern of division and denial that was what I had accepted as 'my life in the world'. This pattern was symbolized to me as saying "No" to Life. In accepting that this had been my will and ceasing to hide it, had I been uncovered in a "Yes" to Life.

The "No" to Life was pictured out in time and space as event, relationship and situation, and my part in the undoing or healing of such a misalignment was simply to refuse or desist from enacting or accepting the "No". The "Yes" would be given as a Correction or uncovering of love, where a surface of form based meaning had seemed to enact a witness to a loss of love. It wasn't for me to do the "Yes" but simply to wake to the prompts that revealed my "No" to me, so that I could remember my purpose and function in truth - which is not an independent doing, but a shared awareness being. It may still look like doing, but all proceeds from a different motive than witnessing to independent will.

 Where something of the nature of "my will" and "my life" had seemed a thief or even a murderer, the Nature of the healing and replacement of such thoughts was felt as a Gift and a Grace of Being. A Re-cognition prior to the play of the mind - in which 'self and other' have never been born, or suffered, or died, and yet which is the Source, Nature and Condition of love, truth, peace, joy and freedom, that abides with us despite every convoluted imagination in which we otherwise become temporarily identified, and slips through our defences to reveal to us as we are willing to accept.

 In Peace

 Brian

 

 

 "You lose your grip, and then you slip, into the Masterpiece"

 Leonard Cohen ~ A Thousand Kisses Deep

Does evil exist?

Theological and philosophical questions are often asked about the Universe, Life, God or Creation, but what about if we ask this question only of our self presently?

Is there an oppositional force to our life or being?

I'm not interested in right or wrong answers - but just to invite the question and listen.

There can certainly seem to be such a sense of conflicted forces - that are the motions or intent of conflicting desires.

Some teach that there are bad thoughts and that they originate from or are embodiment of a devil, or fallen angel. Though this teaching may not be overtly subscribed to, its conditioning runs deep.

A part of God splits off and fights Him in order to replace or usurp God?

God is limited by opposition and therefore is not God - but a part of a cosmic conflict of two powers - forever embraced in struggle for domination?

But the Spirit of God is One - and so is His Son.

But our personal human perspective seems to see evil motive and intent in others - and does not want to discover it in ourselves - so this is fearfully minimised and swept under the carpet.

Bad thoughts - that actually are mean spirited, hateful and actively undermining of wellbeing, present themselves as in some way self serving - and yet suggest a sense of self that is lacking, guilty, inadequate and unjustly victim.

If we act on the basis of these thoughts and therefore accept our sense of self as suggested - we feed a habit that destroys our peace - and all that in peace is shared. And grow the density and compulsion of the 'voices' that 'protect and justify' or at least mitigate or salve our conflicted and painful sense of self.

A painful and conflicted self that we do not realize or recognise - because we displace and deny so as to not feel and know pain of fear and guilt directly. We use our brothers and our world and our body as the scapegoat - and put our guilt outside and hate it.

But having 'put our mind outside' we now fear it's 'return'.

Its as if an evil force is trying to penetrate my defences - some nameless and terrible mind that I fear to look within and see. So I draw my fences tighter - and use anything to keep my attention from the possibility of knowing what will surely damn me.

There is a war on and everyone and everything has been requisitioned to support me in my struggle.

If I can normalize everything and get it all to flow along nicely - I can adapt and accept a tiny life where for a while I can forget what I am running from - have defensiveness automatically deal with problems before they arise as well as as they are arising. And can make a life in which I can believe for a while that I am as I think and the world is as I think it - and yet hardly have any attention free enough to notice any but the most superficial of thoughts.

Is self deception evil?

Jesus said "Resist ye not evil"

But he was demonstrably active in embracing Good - yet not a good opposed to evil - but the Good that is the Will of God our One Spirit, and the appreciation and service of the Good in all.

He feared not evil though he did recognise temptation as deception.

I long had a sense that many seemingly religious people I met were in fact worshippers of evil - for that was their underlying conviction - and their faith was a shield and a weapon against what they feared and yet accepted as true and powerful - And hoping for a magical or otherworldly Force for Good to intervene on their hapless  sin condemned plight.

And to these there must needs be a devil - for to side against the devil is surely to be seen to stand among the righteous?

It matters little that the  shadows shift and change from one evil to another foe to yet another sign of impending doom - just as long as the mind is maintained in its presentation.

Be drawn into the stillness ...

Be drawn into the stillness in which the oneness of being lives you.
Be gentle in the way of discerning.
Be instantly forgiving of the false mind.
Be without self defining

Be with Movement, in Stillness.

There is not also a 'you' that is drawn, gentle, forgiving, accepting, beholding.
Such thought is a separation wish.
The not-knowing of self, is the Knowing itself, because the 'knowing of a self' is the act by which the Knowing is obscured.

Your understanding will keep you lonely.
Be without the need to understand; and abide herein.
Of ITSELF will revelation restore to You - as You abide in Me.
As I in You.

The 'experience' of self definition draws unto itself its own.
That call rings not for You.
Who is My Love.

The thief ran off with but a copy.
Run not after him!
Or you'll believe you're robbed of Me!

How can such an Impossible be?
Do not even begin to entertain the thought!
Put diversion aside and love as I love you.


As I love you.
So are You.