“In Zen they say: ‘Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.’ What does that mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself.”
— Eckhart Tolle
This idea is one that I am still practicing, and it is of a zen-type origin.
The reality that we all are much more & less than the opinions we create & speak about ourselves & others.
The idea that our real self is an experience beyond words.
This is an idea & a reality that is difficult to comprehend & even more difficult to experience, yet it is liberating to practice.
It’a at least a meditation, and at most a way of life.
What opinions are you holding within yourself that weigh you down? Opinions that anger you? Opinions that limit your experience?
I went to an outdoors concert a few years ago & as I walked towards the front, I saw multiple groups of people literally just staring at each other, dumbfounded, & appearing to not hear any music. It was strange but I walked past those groups & enjoyed the music.
People aren’t just distracted at concerts. Many people live their entire lives going from one distraction to another – not knowing that that’s what they’re doing. And that’s okay.
But if you want a chance at breaking out of the matrix & living your dreams, you need to take time to think about your goals & dreams, and then brainstorms the first steps.
You might be outcasted or hated for sometime for choosing your dreams, but you will thank yourself later.
The good & real friends will still be there either way.
“For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.”
— Terence
There are a range of interpretations of what reality is – & often “reality” is what the powers that be say it is… that’s not reality, that’s just one interpretation that supports the oppressors, and so many people buy into it…
don’t listen to lying politicians. Don’t even listen to me if you don’t want to… figure reality out for yourself & don’t ever take someone’s word for it.
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” MLK Jr.
Do you ever lay awake at night wondering about things that are unknown or impossible to understand – like the universe & how it really began & how it works?
I personally have spent time questioning the universe & the way things are, but things are as they are & we don’t always need to know why or how.
If we see a change we’d like to make in the world, we can act towards making it happen, and have faith that it will – and by taking the first step in that direction.
We don’t need to understand everything that happens, who could ever do that?
But we can make some impact in an area of our life or the world that we would like to be better.
We can waste time worrying about things outside of our control, or we can cultivate a little more trust & faith in life & in ourselves.
“If you go to Paris you know more about reality than people who don’t. If you smoke DMT you know more about reality than people who don’t.”
— Terence McKenna
Would you listen to someone talk to you about Paris if they have never been there?
Same thing with psychedelics… so many people love having an opinion about psychedelics, but almost no one has actually gone on any deep & true psychedelic trips.
Why listen to people who have never lived? Have never experienced?
Choose who you listen to.
Truly this world is filled with liars & cheaters & schemers who live through an egoic awareness – ego breeds ego. So many people love having an opinion about things they know nothing at all about.
Learn to discern what you hear and who you listen to.
This world doesn’t need any more liars & criminals & thieves in high places.
This world needs some truth, some love…something real.
Learn who to ignore, and who you should actually listen to.
“The ego is always on guard against any kind of perceived diminishment. Automatic ego-repair mechanisms come into effect to restore the mental form of “me.” When someone blames or criticizes me, that to the ego is a diminishment of self, and it will immediately attempt to repair its diminished sense of self through self-justification, defense, or blaming.”
— Tolle
The ego can be fragile – easily offended, easily angered, feeling threatened easily, quick to blame others…
Is there anything beyond the human ego?
Obviously, yes, but most of us grow up in environments that enforce & reinforce individual egos – in both inferior & superior ways; artificial identities.
We learn to identify with our race & country – & to feel threatened by other races & countries… We are taught to identify with where we were born & to imagine that our country & race is superior to other countries.
Is anyone’s country or race superior to another? No, but people are not taught this. People learn egoic identities from an early age & egos are reinforced time & time again until people genuinely start believing in lies: that their race & country are superior to other races & countries .. politicians especially reinforce theirs & others egos by preaching supremacy, & then pastors in churches reinforce politics by preaching supremacy by supporting racism, sexism, egoic ways of thinking…
the blind flow of the ego has led us all here… will we continue with the fragile & easily threatened egoic ways that cause wars, hatred, violence?
“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say,–‘Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion…
…The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.”
—Emerson
Conspiracy.
Was Emerson right?
Do people actually go out of their way to bother others? – To try & bring emphatic trifles into another’s life?
I can’t imagine any decent person doing that to someone, but this world is filled with a whole range of people.
It’s filled with people seeking power, liars, manipulators, greed, ego .. all for what?
People don’t even know…
Some light would be nice. Some truth.
& some encouragement even maybe – rather than discouragement & bothering others… but if you want to be encouraged, begin by encouraging yourself.
Don’t enter the confusion of the masses & of the criminal “leaders” of today…beware of their greed & their shallow ways, and just go your own way.
Love yourself, & don’t ever expect love from a lying politician or any of the criminals in the “upper” class.
In the United States & places of the West, people are often, if not always, living from an outside-in perspective.
They experience life never within themselves, but always outside of themselves – reacting to environments & people rather than experiencing life. Most have literally become a product of their dead political environments, & not a part of the true living nature that is within us & all around us, at all times.
I have studied & practiced methods & techniques from both the East & the West, & I enjoy learning about all of them. I do prefer living life from the inside-out though – I prefer living empowered within myself – & not being a reactive machine conformist to nothing – to a dead society.
I choose life & non-conformity every time.
This doesn’t make me better than anyone – it just is me making a choice to choose what I believe & how I perceive life – rather than taking someone else’s word for it – rather than being manipulated by the criminal oppressors of this world…
Here’s Alan Watts with a short relative paragraph to this topic:
“Just try and see something from another point of view for a change. I’m not saying that we should do what the Hindus do, but just look at it in from another point of view. And they would smile at us and say, ‘You really think it’s as real as all that?’
‘Have you never experienced what’s on the inside of this game?’
See the trouble with you Westerners is you never experience first. You never got down to the root of reality. You don’t know that state of consciousness. And so you’re frantically trying to patch everything up, and pin it all together – Screw the universe up so that it’s fixed…
You can never do it. All you’ll be doing is wildly rushing around and creating trouble.” -Alan Watts
My question to you is, are you experiencing life?
Or merely existing?
Do you live as a reaction?
Or do you live alive & active?
Meditations are a great way to begin going within and trying the inside-out perspective — to at least try it for even a short time and see if it’s for you or not for you. It’s perfect either way!
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find eternity in each moment.”
— Thoreau
Do oceans wave in the past or future?
Or do you wave your hand in the past or future?
Waves happen now.
Life happens now.
You can spend your life in phantom fears – or living with ghosts & lifeless machine people, or you can break through & experience waves of the present.
With Ken Thompson 