Here in heaven

...and we're back!

I've noticed that for some people, the transition away from identifiying with false selves (i.e. the IS, OS, ego, etc.) is difficult because they think that this new belief structure requires doing away with a few key core beliefs they might have. Granted, if you are able to control your beliefs to the point where you can mix and match them or simply do away with them, that is helpful in developing yourself and it can accelerate the events that lead you to disidentify with your ego. On the other hand, most people have a tough time with this and attach themselves quite strongly to some core beliefs.

Particularly, there is one good example in this regard: the belief in heaven and hell. All this fuzzy stuff loosely based on Buddhist philosophy that I've been talking about is great and all, but if you want a real test to observe your own attachment to a belief, ask yourself if right now you could suddenly give up on the idea that after you die you will go to some puffy cloud haven in the sky, or some rocky firey pit if you were "bad". Some may laugh, but a lot of people who read this may not. Which one are you?

Seriously, try it. How revolted or defensive do you get when someone challenges this belief? The actual answer to whether or not there is a heaven or hell does not matter nearly as much as having you be able to monitor and observe your own reaction to this challenge. So how do you feel when you think about this? Do you get offended? Do you start trying to reason around it? Do you take up some other position about the subject?

Your heritage, upbringing, history, and background make up the things that constitute your belief system, to start out with at least.

As for heaven and hell, I will say one thing. There are even some Catholic bishops who even think that the fuzzy cloud vision of heaven is not true. For the rest of my personal answer on this, just read this whole blog and see. The answer is there.

In any case, the answer is not important. Again, your reaction is what's important. The thing that takes up a position, for or against the idea, is not you. That is your ego. The ego operates on the idea that if someone diminishes one of its theories or beliefs, then that thing is a threat. When the ego is threatened, it does all kinds of things to defend itself. It can get defensive. It can make arguments. It can get violent, or other things.

That WILL happen to you, and it's normal. If it doesn't happen when somebody challenges your belief in heaven/hell, it will happen when other beliefs get challenged. Do not worry about winning or losing the argument. Just watch. Know that you are not the argument, and be the knowing behind it. That is the Real You, and on that level of awareness, the actual arguments are not relevant to what you are.

Would you be any less if you were proven wrong? Would you be any more if you were proven right? Your emotions would go up or down, but what's the Real effect on the thing behind all that? Absolutely nothing.

Lego my ego

It feels like more needs to be said continuing on from that last post on functions in life. This time, however, I want to focus more on ego.

One of the major distortions that happens in religions and "spiritual systems" or paths is that they wind up thinking the ego needs to be subverted, destroyed, or denied in some fashion. Over the centuries, these distortions turn into bloated dharma on sex, morals, and all kinds of other things. Granted, some rules are good to have so that society can function. In this case I am mainly talking instead about rules that make personal life overly oppressive, when a person is not out in the real world. Aside from all the theological arguments for these rules, my point is that these rules are put in place to try and curb the ego. (Understand that I'm not trying to pass judgment on the rules either. I am just pointing out their existence as a fact.)

How useful are these rules for spiritual development? And what is the real deal with the ego as far as the old struggle of good and evil goes?

Well, I've made clear my views on good and evil, so the views on the existence of the ego go with them. The ego exists. It is. Like everything else, the ego is arising out of Consciousness, and like all other objects and concepts, the ego is another expression of Consciousness. Joseph Campbell points this out in his book "The Power of Myth" and even goes so far to point out that the ego and all the pain that it causes is just as divine as everything else.

So is the ego "good"? Is it "ok"? No. It's neither. It just is. The judgments you place on it are the ego trying to categorize itself. If you can be aware of that judgment and that desire to categorize, and then become aware that this is not the Real You, then you've discovered one path to the Present Moment. The thing that is judging is not you. The thing that is watching the judging is You.

Nevertheless, even if you are not aware of this, the ego is still an expression of Consciousness. The difference lies in the awareness, but the difference is whether or not Consciousness is aware of itself, not whether Consciousness exists or not.

So what do you do about the ego? Deny it? Stamp it out? No. You embrace it. You give it space to Be. The infinite space of Consciousness is infinitely more than enough space to contain your ego, and it does. No matter how much ego you can throw at it, it can be contained by the One. Again, the difference is whether you know this or not. Awakened people have egos, some larger than others. However, even the ones with the large egos are able to have egoic episodes and at the same time Be Present, i.e. they are able to rest as the silent witness to the ego while it is happening, and they are able to watch it happen from there.

I'm not really sure about this, but my intuition and some clues from Eckhart Tolle tell me that after enough witnessing of the ego in this fashion, it WILL start to diminish on its own, without any active doing on your part. So just know when the ego is acting, and be the knowing, not the acting.

There is another way. But it is extremely hard. Probably this way is the closest thing in real life to what you'd call the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars. Essentially, in this other way, instead of trying to let the ego be and then to disassociate from it in order to dissolve it slowly, you do the opposite. You associate with the ego. You feed it. You inflate it as much as possible, and you identify with it intensely. After a long time of doing this (perhaps lifetimes??) eventually the ego gets so incredibly large that it cannot sustain itself. There simply isn't enough energy in the body, or the world for that matter. The pain and suffering caused by the constant feeding and maintenance of the ego becomes too much, and the entire egoic structure comes crashing down. It shatters. Of course, what is left after that is the same thing that is left after doing it the easy way: little or no ego, and a sense of Consciousness.

There are systems that embrace this route, like The Church of Satan, for example. Their teachings lie exactly along this plane, but I'm not sure if they know about the positive ending. Their ultimate stated goal in their bible is to keep the ego around even after death, so it can go out and do stuff, i.e. as a spirit. (The Satanic Bible is an interesting read for this.)

However, again, this way is not easy. Human beings are inherently drawn towards the easy way, i.e. the Light Side of the Force, if you will. :) In order to follow the Dark Side, you would have to go out of your way to do unenjoyable things, and you would suffer all along the way, since the basic result of egoic episodes is suffering. So, unlike Star Wars, the Dark Side is NOT quicker and easier, but it is still more seductive. :)

I'll be out on a business trip for the next three days, so hang in there.

To those who are new here...

As I mentioned earlier, the posts on this blog build on each other at times. It's possible that if you start reading somewhere near the latest posts you'll be confused by the terms and concepts that I seem to breeze through. Thus, I recommend highly that you don't worry about reading up on the latest posts so much as starting near the beginning and working your way through the material like it was a book. Perhaps if I build up enough material, I'll actually publish, but I'm not too worried about that right now.

Enjoy.

Dawn

I just finished reading a novel by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight. It was your average angsty vampire novel (which I like sometimes when I'm in the mood), and it contains tons of crunchy and delicious bits for an Inner Self to chomp on, so it was quite pleasurable in that sense. The novel generally deals with vampires from the point of view of a high school girl, which was a bit tiresome in a 90210 sort of way, but as I was reading through it, I was struck by a question on the mental level... This novel makes it seem cool to be a vampire, and this girl wants nothing more than to be like the vampires she meets in the story. All throughout the book, these beings are glorified and they act as the protagonists, and naturally kids today will eat that stuff up. Where are the novels that cast the awakened beings as protagonists?

What if you had an equivalent novel to that, where instead of vampires, there was this group of kids that was Conscious? Just like the vampires, people would sort of stay away from them, yet not hate them because they couldn't quite figure them out well enough to make a decision either way. The antagonists in the story could be kids that are the opposite and instead were enticed into egoic fantasies and began playing with black magic and all kinds of other stuff.

What if this book made it seem cool to awaken?

Potentially, I know the answer, or at least part of it. Thousands of kids might read the book, and most will probably ignore it, which is fine. You'll probably also wind up with a few assholes (to use Draja's term) who thought they got it, and then maybe, just maybe, you'll inspire three or four kids who needed to hear it. In the end, I think it would be a game of statistics, but don't you think that might be worth it?

I wonder where these novels are. This is a genre that needs to be born, IMO. Dan Millman's The Journey's of Socrates is one novel that already exists along these lines but there should be more. If I was a better writer (and had time), I'd take a crack at that.

The Four Worlds

Before I go into this, one warning.... this is yet another tool. In terms of Reality, all this stuff below is wrong because it does not accurately describe what cannot be described in words. However, it is still useful information to be used as a pointer to the things that cannot be described. So read on.

Creation exists on four basic levels: the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. All four of these things make up everything that we can interact with. In actuality, these four levels are the product and the basis of our interaction with Consciousness. (I'll clarify that another time.)

One way to think about these levels is to describe them as separate existences. Borrowing a term from Kaballah, I call them the Four Worlds.

The physical world, for example, is the one we are all familiar with. It has solid objects, laws of physics, finite boundaries and rules, etc. It can also be described by scientific experiments, although the actual number crunching and logic of science takes place in the mental world.

The emotional world is a step above that. By "above" I mean it is closer to Consciousness, and therefore it can be seen as holier or more real, however you like to define it. Picture the source of Consciousness pouring itself into the world of form. As this liquid trickles down, it gets further and further away from the source. As it does that, it changes and becomes less and less like the source. The final destination is the physical level, and thus that level is least like the source. The emotional level is just before that, so it's a tiny bit more like the source.

This emotional world contains, well, your emotions. Everything that is emotional has its roots there. As a level by itself in isolation, it contains other things you may have heard of, like the Astral, the Ethereal, and other stuff. This is because even though I'm describing only four worlds here, in fact, each one of the four has subsets. As you go up in levels, you don't just tick suddenly from one to the next. Each level gradually blends into the next, like the different layers of earth's atmosphere do as you go up in a space craft.

Probably about half the "nasties" that you've heard about in myth exist on the emotional level, i.e. ghosts, demons, egos, etc. Most of the other half exists on the mental level. Humans are special because they exist on all four levels simultaneously, and not many other beings do that. In fact, I can't think of any right now. Angels come close, but I don't think they can do all four simultaneously. I think they pick one at a time. However, suffice it to say, most of this crap exists in the imagination, except that the imagination exists on the emotional and mental levels and in some senses is therefore closer to the source than your physical parts.

In any case, the mental level is where you do all your number crunching, like I mentioned before. This is the realm of logic and reason. However, it is also a very creative realm because you can think of lots of things that certainly aren't logical or reasonable, can't you? Most of the things that exist here are called "thought forms", and they are entities in and of themselves, sometimes created by us, i.e. by our thoughts. Thought forms will usually dissipate quickly, but they can be fed and nurtured and take on life of their own if given enough energy. People fall prey to these all the time when their persistent obsessive thoughts move them to do irrational or violent things.

Then finally there is the spiritual level. If going up the levels is like changing channels on a TV set, flipping from the physical channel, to the emotional, to the mental, then when you get to the spiritual channel, the channel disappears. The TV disappears too. Everything goes silent and still and just is. This is the level that is closest to Consciousness. When things first emanate out of Consciousness, they go through here.

So if you think about it, this lays out the process of creating something. First, Consciousness conceives of the thing. Then that conception filters down to the spiritual level and inspires you. Then, you have an idea. The light bulb goes off and a mental picture forms in your head of what you want to make. Then you get excited about it. You become enthusiastic and driven emotionally to create this thing. Then you do it. That's creation.

Function in life

I've had a couple days of computer problems, but we should be back in business.

So let's ask some questions. What's your function in life? What are life functions anyway, especially in the grand scheme of things?

Eckhart Tolle has a good explanation for these questions. Essentially, you have two kinds of functions: ones that stem from whatever you are doing outwardly, and the other kind, which there is only one, i.e. to realize your Oneness with Being. Being aware of your connection to all that there is is your primary function, and it is common to all human beings. On the other hand, outward functions vary from person to person, and even from moment to moment.

For example, right now, you are reading this post. At this point in time, that is your outward function. Nothing else exists right now except you, the screen, and any noises or other activities going on in the background. When you get up to walk away from the computer, or you click to the next website, that walking or clicking now becomes your outward purpose.

Perhaps in your mind right now you are protesting what I just wrote? Listen in on the protests if they are there. What do they say?

"Clearly I have another function. I am a _______." (Insert your own answer there.)

"Surely looking at this screen is not my entire purpose. I have all these things that I've done and all these things I have to do next week."

"There is no way that MY purpose is that insignificant. I am going to be a somebody. I am going to get somewhere, and reading a screen is a means to that end, but it is not the purpose itself."

Are any of your own protests similar? The reason for this is that the ego desires to be separate from the whole. It believes that by being separate it can preserve itself. Giving in to the Present and allowing itself to be dissolved into existence equates with death for it. All of those pitfalls I posed above deal either with asserting separateness or escaping the Present by attaching to the past or future. Every one of these things inhibits awareness of Consciousness.

One day, years ago, I was walking by myself on Busch Campus at Rutgers University. Most people who know me have heard that I suffer a minor case of agoraphobia, i.e. fear of open spaces, the opposite of claustrophobia. Thus, walking in some areas on Busch Campus is a bit hard for me because they are open fields, but one day I decided to push myself and I took a stroll across a wide open field of grass heading away from the stadium.

As the usual panic started to grip me, I stepped back from it and observed. That didn't end the panic at all, but I was at least not associating with the panic. I was disidentifying from it and watching it like it was on a TV screen happening to someone else. As the fear and terror engulfed me even further, and the usual feelings of falling and dizziness swept by, I started to become even more aware of the silence and calmness behind all of the panic. Suddenly, I wasn't "me" anymore. In the middle of the field, I think I stopped walking. As I did that, I looked down at a single blade of grass in the wide open grassy expanse, and I realized that the blade of grass and I were one. I became the blade of grass.... small, insignificant.

Then the experience went further. Suddenly, I realized that that blade of grass was consciously connected to all of the blades of grass in the field. I expanded with that realization to include the whole field. I wasn't just one blade of grass anymore. I was all of them. Millions of them. There was a peace like none other when this feeling happened.

Then another realization came. That first blade of grass that I melded with seemed to point something out to me, wordlessly. It basically said, "How limiting is that? To think that you're just one blade of grass? When you could be ALL blades of grass in the field, or even the world?" I realized that this was a metaphor for me, as a human. How limiting is it to think that you are just this one individual? It all seemed comical in that instant, that I should cling to being a tiny blade of grass. I pictured a blade of grass waving around in the wind saying, "I am going to BE somebody! I am great! I have a bigger purpose!" I think I roared with laughter at that, and then the experience ended. For a few minutes after that, I was no longer scared of the open space and I was able to walk out of there fearlessly.

When you are conscious in the moment and not stressing about the future or regretting the past, you are whole. When you are Present, all those things become irrelevant and for that brief second, you are fulfilling your purpose. Doing everything in the Present to the best of your ability and to the highest quality is what we are here to do. The actual content of your work is not as important as whether you are doing it with awareness or not. When I was a child, before Draja had started to train me, another spiritual teacher once told me to prepare for what's coming by washing dishes. Naturally, I turned up my nose at that. What could washing dishes possibly have to do with spirituality or spiritual growth? However, now it is obvious. If you can wash dishes while being Present and accepting it as your purpose, you will go far. Anything you do to that effect is a spiritual exercise.

Can this stuff rub off on me?

A long time ago there were two students who were studying with a master. The only problem was that they never got to actually talk to the man. All the other students would get to sit in on these wonderful discussions and teaching sessions, and these two students were always left to do menial servile tasks. They would clean up after the master's dishes when he ate, and wash his clothes and linens before placing them out for him in the morning, etc.

One of the students really hoped that if he did enough he would eventually be allowed into the "inner circle" of students so he too could participate in all the cool discussions that were going on, and to actually LEARN something. The other student accepted his tasks and just did them.

This went on for a couple of years. Finally, the first student began to think that he would never be allowed to do the special stuff, so he left. The other student stayed.

20 years later, the first student returned from his journeys and found his old mate in charge of the whole place! He was astonished, and he asked, "What happened? How long did it take you to get into that inner circle of students and learn from the master directly?"

The new master answered, "I never got in there. One day, the master got ill and before he died he declared that I was now the teacher."

I always thought this was an interesting story because it demonstrates a principle. That is, Consciousness spreads a bit like fire going from one candle flame to another. The student who stayed with the teacher for 20 years and cleaned up his mess was able to develop more Presence than any of the other people in the school. Why? Because he was simply in the teacher's Presence. Simply by being there and doing his tasks he got somewhere. It really didn't matter what his tasks were, so long as he was there, and that he had the conscious intent to evolve.

This was a common occurrence in ancient schools, and it still works today.

When you are near someone who is Present, their Presence brings out your Presence. You are able to be more Present when you are in their Presence. That's what I mean by "Consciousness spreads a bit like fire." There really is no grand plan or schedule of things you must DO to become Present. You either do it or you don't, but being near others who are Present can accelerate it.

I think this is what Eckhart Tolle is getting at when he talks about people who are ready to awaken and people who are not. Let me explain.

Today is a little different than ancient times. There were relatively few awakened beings, so the process of spreading Consciousness by simply having awakened beings stand next to unawakened ones was extremely inefficient. It was done, but it was a slow process. Thus, maybe back then there were some things that people needed to do to push themselves towards the point where they would awaken without necessarily being around lots of other awakened individuals.

Nowadays, there are many individuals that are in touch with their true natures, and more every day. Therefore, it is much easier to enact this process today. Perhaps that is why Eckhart does not seem to advocate preparation for awakening via getting in touch with the emotions, i.e. that first method of training I explained. Perhaps most people don't need to do formal exercises anymore? Perhaps we've reached a critical mass where all they have to do is stick around on the planet and get there eventually on their own?

Whatever the case, one thing is clear. Awakened individuals have an obligation to be Present around others, so that Consciousness may continue to find itself.