Disturbance

Every sensation experienced in the heart of man has a purpose. We are every moment of our lives receiving information that is informing us of the course of our lives; we often have no idea what to do with this information. Why are we such a stranger to ourselves? Is it because we fail to realize the real source of the feelings and sensations that come to us? Are we so in the dark and so mentally confused about what is transpiring because we fail to acknowledge the source of our feelings and sensations is the Spirit of God? This may be nothing other than a failure to believe in the truth, otherwise known as a lack of faith.

However, there is little we can do to convince another to believe in anything, and in the end it isn’t really a question of believing, but a matter of experiencing what, in the light of experience, reveals itself to be reality, Reality. Still, everyone realizes in the span of their lives that what they experience - life - is disturbing, often very disturbing. So what do we do?

The obvious answer, observable in many people’s daily routines, is to escape. We see people in every class and walk of life running for the door that leads away from their suffering, the emotional and often mental burning and throbbing that beg understanding. Normally, rather than understand these signals at a fundamental level – where they are coming from and what they mean – fear takes control of the human organism and comfort becomes the standard for the value of our lives.

But, is comfort all it is cracked up to be? Could it be that suffering serves a purpose, pain has a point to it? It is possible, is it not, that these signals are the messages of an eternal and infinite intelligence, informing us of where we are erring and suggesting to us pathways permanently out of our mistakes and into the grand scheme of things. In other words, what we most avoid – suffering, pain, hardship, disapproval, rejection, and inferiority – are actually gateways to a transformed life and an elevated (from the norm) understanding of the purpose and meaning of life, in the grand sense and in the sense of the immediate experiences we have daily.

It is easy to speak of these matters in generalities. But, it is not easy to experience the direct pain that becomes such a huge disturbance in the individual life. One must enquire; one must seek to know; and one must endure the hardships that come so that a higher meaning might reveal itself. Disturbance offers us this golden opportunity. Whether we accept it or not certainly is up to each and every one of us.

What are the alternatives? Often we lash out. Often we self-medicate. Often we reach for the nearest distraction. But, what are we distracting ourselves from? The centered human being: where is she? What lies at the center of the human being, through and within the very core of disturbance that burns in us daily, even to a greater degree if we allow the higher energies to begin to work in us? This question amounts to asking the fundamental questions of existence: Who am I? At her heart, what is the human being? Is there a supreme intelligence in the Universe, and if so, where does it reside?

All good, worthwhile questions, I might add. Disturbance acts as an awakening fire. It goads us forward. It forbids us take our experience for granted. It drives us deeper into the mysteries of the fire within and around us. Rather than being shunned, would it be possible to embrace it and hold it within us in such a way that it shapes us, informs us of the necessary information it holds? What we learn might amaze and change us.

The World of Man and The Limitless

There are many people who honestly believe that they will never grow old and never die. They are the kind of people who disbelieve that there is anything wrong with them. Instead, they feel they know and that they are fine, however they may grope along in life without direction and without understanding how they react to circumstances, the life around them.

There are limits to what words can say. Obviously, pictures, images, count for something in the mind as well. Today, we are awash in images and sounds of all types, information overload from every possible direction, brought into being by an explosion of technology. On cell phones, on laptops, on personal messengers, on handheld devices, Twittering, Face-booking, Googling, YouTubing and looking everything up on Wikipedia, we are agents flooded with audial and visual information. We produce it because we believe in its value, even its necessity for our own life and the lives of others; we consume it because we are taught to consume early, very early. However, rarely do we consider the value of the content of the information we are receiving.

Who is receiving it? Of what value does it have? Doesn’t most of the information that is currently circulating in the world simply serve to fragment the mind to a greater and greater degree? If this is so, what does this mean for the future of man? What are we retaining and how are we growing if the content of what we are feeding ourselves in the mind is the equivalent of junk, “junk food.” Certainly we have little hope if we cannot find a way to sift through the morass of information we are subject to and find the pearls that, perhaps, lay occasionally at the bottom of the sea or lodged in between piles and piles of refuse.

To what extent is information only entertainment? Are we so bored, so chronically disinterested in our lives, that our only recourse becomes to lose ourselves in electronic stimulation, in sifting through gossip, data, sexy ads, and dirt to thrill the desire that has long ago lost interest in the banality of the normal life we lead? Has it gotten so bad, so boring and old, that the only thing we feel we can do is to make a B-line for the life of the rich and famous as advertised on the Internet? Our reliance on this infotainment may be part of our undoing.

We look for keys, we want to know things, but we have forgotten the doors of value we wish to open. There is embedded in each human being the species memory of love, a simple life of devotion to the promptings of life, which are not limited to the survival of the body but also include the survival of the heart, the invisible emotional center of the human, the mind, and the connection to the infinite. Too often, lost in information, most of which is of little value to our real nourishment, we forget this species memory that has only really recorded the needs that demand we meet them. For a life lived without love, without the challenge of the search and the joy of the discovery, is of scarcely any value at all. In fact, one can say that without love, life loses its value altogether. Daily we are able to witness the effects of the absence of love in the affairs of man.

Man makes a fundamental error in believing that he is able to meet the needs and calling of the species memory in him. He cannot do this. He is woefully under equipped to fabricate what will satisfy his greatest needs. All this that we have created is substitute material for the actual thing, the absence of which withers life, the presence of which divinates it. (Possibly this is not a word, “divinate,” but it is a useful one that I will coin now if it has not already been done.)

The world of man is the invention of man, and it is a central meaning of the Sanskrit term “maya,” or illusion. Living exclusively for the benefits it can provide, man becomes the master masturbator, supremely self-absorbed yet never entirely satisfied. The limitless, on the other hand, does not originate from the hand of man, but has a universal source in freedom. When man is connecting with it, his needs are being met and he is serving the purpose for which he was created. He travels in new spheres and emits a frequency of harmony, beauty, and love, which is total unity.

Peace

So, where do you think it will end? Do you honestly believe that anything is happening here? If I could put the world in a cup and write it I would, but something happens and the perfect expression becomes an element of the movement of forms, as opposed to the speaking of words. We have a simple concept, but rarely do we honor it: silence is more powerful than words; actions perform significance considerably more directly than words.

Words are of two types: those spoken by man, which are the product of his imagination and other brain-processes, and those uttered by the mouth of God, which are of a wholly different order (or, a “holy,” different order). Prophets spoke the latter; people the former. Because man often settled for the product of his or her imagination, rarely did they know the “peace which passeth understanding.” You can only get to the perfect appreciation of silence if your spoken words and performed actions are impeccable, integrative, and filled with healing energy. You must give, and only then will you know peace.

Man has energy; this is undeniable. That man has little idea how to rightly use this energy is also fairly evident to those with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the mind to enquire. The mind is the sixth sense, and combining it with the other five in multiples, combinations, and permutations, we get hundreds if not thousands of more senses. These are the elements, the tools, of peace. We can only know peace when we know love, and we will not know love until all of our actions are impeccable, integrative, and filled with the healing energy.

So where do we get this healing energy, this apparently miraculous cure-all? The answer to this cannot be known, for it does not lie in a place. If it does occupy a space, the space is the interior space of man, not the exterior space of things, distances, and illusion. We have been hoodwinked by a profound illusory sense of things as being apart from ourselves. Thus, we are divided objects in a hostile universe of dog-eat-dog attraction and repulsion (harmony and antimony). We will never know peace in this fatal Diaspora of the mind! We will only know peace when all of our actions are impeccable, integrative, and filled with healing energy. Where there is love there is peace.

"A Voice in the Wilderness"

We believe that we know so much, that, as we are, we are capable of so much. But, is this true? What do we know and what is the usefulness of that knowledge, other than to entertain and impress others with our “knowledge of the world”? It would be useful to distinguish what might be called “useful, practical, and necessary knowledge” from “uncertain, hypothetical, and abstract knowledge.” The former deals with the transfer of information to effect work: “The hammer is on the table. Please fetch it for me.” The latter has to do with probabilities, memories, and suppositions: “I am a good person. I was a poorer person yesterday, but with work I will be a better person tomorrow.” The first kind of knowledge, practical knowledge, more often than not deals with immediate, local realities that need to be acted upon. In these spheres knowledge (as well as communication) is indispensable for people to function. The second type of knowledge, psychological knowledge, is highly suspect in terms of its usefulness. In fact, it more often than not ends up depleting people of energy rather than satisfying any useful and good purpose.

The basic question we are considering here concerns the necessity and usefulness of knowledge. There are certain instances when knowledge is important and must be used. To do so requires the implementation of thought, or thinking. In all other conditions, however, we call into question the usefulness of knowledge (and thinking) at all. This in particular includes “self knowledge” and “the knowledge of others.” In short, we say “psychological knowledge.” We mean to say that we call into question the usefulness of a busy mind, an active mind, a thinking mind, in all conditions except those requiring the expenditure of thought-energy to effect some work in the material world (carpentry, for example, or farming). Other than for these purposes, isn’t a silent, observant mind of much greater value than an active, willful mind?
Psychological knowledge includes knowledge, or knowing, by the so-called ego, which is the individual’s sense of separateness, uniqueness, and specialness from the rest of life – the sense of superiority or inferiority when it comes to existence in the human community, coupled with ambition, pride, vanity, and greed. The observing mind is a mind active and alive in the here and now. The mind whose basis is activity, directivity, and willfulness is a mind principally centered on attaining a state qualitatively (and perhaps quantitatively also, i.e., money) different than the one it is currently in. The quality of such a striving mind is completely different than the quality of the mind that is quiet, silent, and at peace with the moment, thus seeking nothing outside of what it already has.

This is a key point. The difference between the mind that is restless and continually seeking something other than what it is or has, and the mind that is self-sufficient and non-striving. In the ancient science and art of development known as Yoga, the still, reflective, and observant mind was known as being in a state of sattva, or balanced, limpid, awake, and aware stillness; the active, thought-filled mind was in a state of rajas. Still another state, in which the mind functioned only poorly (according to authority, for example, or under the influence of drugs), practitioners termed tamas.

Today, we primarily live in a world dominated by thinking. Thought has conquered many domains and is continually active. Universities throughout the world are training minds to think along the lines of many specialties (disciplines), which in essence means dividing the mind and forcing it to function in very specific and limited capacities. All of this is the effortful, thinking mind. None of it has anything to do with the still, silent, and observant mind. The effects of thought (so many, many minds thinking) have created the “Wilderness.” The wilderness of thinking and of the activities of the mind: desire, greed, envy, invention, specialization, and endless chattering to take up time and remove awkward silences between people (friends and strangers alike). The “Voice in the Wilderness” is the awakening of the silent, observant mind, and with it a vast accompanying intelligence that is capable of responding perfectly to the moment (any moment) in the moment on the basis of an indefinite (non-defined) reservoir of information and energy that is part of the invisible process of seeing (the unifying factor in experience between so-called subject and so-called object). Silence and the invisible realm are filled with energy, information, and intelligence. Even present-day physics is acknowledging the existence of many, many fields and forms of matter that go far beyond what we can experience with our five senses: the specially named “dark matter” is a perfect example of this. Apparently, much of the universe is made of it, but we cannot even see it. It is a kind of “anti-matter.” Intelligence (perhaps infinite in nature and scope) is similar: it cannot be seen; however, its presence can be detected (vis-à-vis “synchronicity”) and inferred (more easily: how, for example, could the earth have been placed just the perfect distance away from the sun for life to exist without a great intelligence orchestrating it? “Chance?” The “chances” of chance or accident doing it are far less likely, that is, the odds are far more overwhelmingly against it happening by chance, than for it to have been the product of a supreme, infinite intelligence.) Intelligence, like light, is a quality that is sensed. In order to sense it, a certain amount of it must be present. That amount then grows as an accumulation, or at least the powers of perceiving intelligence are strengthened through practicing them. Intelligence may then come as an overwhelming force or insight, of its own accord. However it may occur, a voice is crying out in the wilderness for us to receive it.

On the Edge of Uncertainty, Hope Grows

We are moving toward a new way of expressing ourselves and hopefully this will outlive the old law that says we must die along with our lives, once they are spent. What will perhaps happen is a fundamental renewal in how we approach not only our lives, but also the way we treat others. Others form the foundation of our early existence, and we continually act and interact with them throughout the rest of our lives. In reality, the others are us. Each contains them, each, at core, represents everything the others are. We give and receive in such an impoverished fashion, for really there is only much to give and little if anything to lose. But how poor we are (or believe ourselves to be) and so remain in our giving. One might call it naïve to suggest that in giving we gain everything, the cosmos, but in reality, possessed of nothing, one is free. Everything we hold to fetters the limitless from expressing itself here and now. And these blocks have become the currency of our lives, what we know and rely on for what we are and what we wish to become.

Imagine a world without becoming, or rather without becoming a projected fiction of the mind. Can you? Have you any idea what becoming stripped of illusion might entail? There is no doubt “we are” just as there is little doubt we also “become.” What are we becoming, and where will we find this if we have no courage to venture into deep waters and test the edge life presents?

What edge? What waters? How little we know, and how much our fear prevents us from discovering. There may be a time when we have the courage to pierce the veils of our ancestral and inherited fears and so come upon a new field of experience entirely. Isn’t the earth waiting for such a birth? Is there not some inkling in all that this is where we are tending?

Let the truth be, and let the truth become, through us on the edge of becoming.

What is Next?

We await the new year and the celebration of the nativity. We pause and we ask if it is possible to be without a shade or a hint of conflict in ourselves. If we really wanted peace, it might be with us in a moment, instantaneously. But do we want it?

Talking with a friend tonight, the thought occurred to me, what is it that we really want in this life -- security, stability, notoriety, wealth, pleasure? What? And do these things truly matter, or does obtaining them matter? Somehow it always seems to occur to us that the way to receive what we want is to get it, but rarely do we think all could be in us if we give it first and foremost. We live in scarcity consciousness, thinking and worrying that we will never have enough. With this vibration in us, we repel all the things that might fill us if we instead radiated strength, peace, joy, serenity, and love. First be, then give. Forget getting. Fore-get, go before getting, just like forego, go before going (refrain from it). In this season of giving and receiving, let us not look to what we can get from others, although that is probably what is on most people's minds. Let us instead look to what we can give.

You know, you understand people this way by what they do, not by what they say. Many will profess kindness and the desire to give, but then look at how they live, how they hoard and fear and then hoard more. Always they have the tacit thought of self and self's success and preservation in mind. That is where they really are. Search the heart, your own and others. The heart can be known by the acts, so watch.

It is just days before the celebrations of the season. Many are reflecting on the gifts they have and what the future may hold for them. What will the next year bring? Who will it see pass away, come into being, be fulfilled, and be dethroned? Events unfold according to a hidden purpose, a hidden and higher order. Take courage, therefore, and align yourself with this greater good and higher power, the truly awesome totality and order who wishes all well, all harmony, and all true peace on earth. Dedicate yourself to the best in all of us. Namaste: the light in each of us extols, exhorts, and works to recognize the light in all of us. Peace on earth, goodwill to all.

The Struggle to Evolve

Each day that goes by we take advantage of or lose the opportunity to evolve. This can also be reduced to each moment. Every waking moment is the chance to investigate the totality of our being in that moment, and to evaluate from among the endless choices we could make the one choice that will perfectly fit and perfectly complete that moment for its effortless transition into the next. This is the perfect existential choice: make it or break it; it’s up to you.

Don’t think this is so? Then what is happening? What are you making of your life if you’re not making it? Isn’t it just unconsciously unfolding then? The rock doesn’t determine itself, as far as we know; neither does the cat or the bird. They obey their nature without thought. We are the creatures who can question that nature, or, rather, our own. This is our power, and this is also our burden; from it we have crawled from the magma and primal soup to claim self-consciousness. Now, can we move beyond that self-consciousness to the NEXT consciousness? Which is?

That we don’t know, but how can it be accessed, attained, “created,” or allowed into our field of experience? Whence will it come? Where will it proceed and lead us? Will it open new faculties to this point unknown, or will it simply augment the experience of those we already possess? This is the last frontier, the new challenge, the next step. And it is as close as our own breath. How come, then, we don’t more readily recognize, accept, and undertake the challenge of change? Is it fear? Is it ignorance, not knowing its possibly or it being right in front of our face to do? Or, is it laziness? Maybe a combination of all of the above. Yes, “the banality of evil.”

We don’t question as much as we could. We accept, and then live out the nightmare we have tacitly allowed to overtake us in our sleep-state, our "eternal slumber." It will not end until we make our stand, and our stand awaits our learning and our willingness to overcome our ignorance. And let me tell you this also: “IT” requires the sacred other, loving something, someone, or some conscious force more than the very limited, very small quantity of “self.” Love opens the vastness. Love settles the petty quarrels. Love of the other annihilates the self in that greater Self, or “beyond self.” We don’t know that sacrifice much at all. We require the most absurd perfection for the most ridiculous reasons and then miss the point that was there all along. It only takes some time in the deep wilderness to understand this: “And the wilderness and solitary place will be a comfort to them.” What else did the prophet say? “And my house shall be a house of prayer for all people.” Put the two together and you have the reconciliation of very extreme opposites.

We need stillness. We need silence. We need time alone. But, we also need time with others. It will all coalesce with the right intention into a meaningful life lived in spite of the meaninglessness that surrounds us. Work is what is necessary, and this work will only bear the right fruit if we are willing to attach ourselves to an intelligence that is beyond us and beyond the confines of our rational four-walled jail cell that we live so complacently in until we die.

What is necessary is the death before actually dying, which might awaken us to a greater life. It is the creation that comes about only through destruction. It is the absolute negation that reveals the essence of the positive, obliquely, suggestively, and through the subtlest of implications.