On Death

Consider for a bit the question:  What is death? 

As a human I say that it is death that matters to someone the most. We are told we die. We attend a funeral. We look upon a dead body. We read stories where death happens. We ask others and receive confirmation that we will die.  We recognize signs of aging in older people. We must wonder, at least a little, were we born to die? And then wonder what that question means and where from did it come to us to ask it. All these things mentioned so far can come to people who have no education formally and who never have read a book or written one. People who have no concept of who might be better than who nor think of themselves as smart have these experiences. Maybe this means these experiences are more trustworthy than all of that wordiness.

Now, suppose someone has experienced failure and its pain. Is that a form of death? Why not? It is a sharp experience of an ending of something important to that individual. It is certainly unwanted. It is at least kin to death. It is possible to turn a corner mentally here, at this point, and ask: Is death friendly? Does life have meaning if seen as separate from death? It is not that life is death but that it is inseparable from it. Truth is life-death. Could it be we are more than a little opposed to an ending. Not really opposed to either death or failure. Ending frightens because the unknown frightens. What is the cause of the fear of the unknown? It’s opposite…the known…is monotony. The unknown holds mystery and that is exciting. Why fear it?

 One who has been called a master has said, “The Way Out Is Within.” 

It caused me to think how it is with the computer explosion. The whole happening depends upon a tiny chip. The tinier the better…the more the power…the more can be discovered, uncovered, and understood. The deeper and wider go its influences. 

Where I live people worship the computer now more than any other resource by far. Surely it is so that we show our dedication openly by what it is that we most covet. By what we give most attention to. That is our god. How we see it as essential to our lives is astounding and growing, growing, growing. Who are we? We worship what was made by human hands. Ironically, it is going to lead us back home after much, much suffering just as has always been our destiny…unless… we see in time …less is more. Nothing is everything. The importance of every grain of sand. Beauty is found in the pointless. Unless we love.

Beauty occurs when there is no separate self around. Beauty is pointless. The pointless is beautiful. It is recommended that one do and do often as many pointless activities as one can manage. In that way can it be possible to discover the value in the beautiful. It probably is so that some scientists will see evidence to show the Universe is coming apart gradually but some think it is, actually, self -creative.

 

Beauty probably plays a big part in that aspect.

 

Thinking In Its Proper Place

When you see, instantly you know what action to take. There is no choice to make. It is certain. It is done. 

Thinking can build a telescope and a rocket ship to the stars and account for money earned, saved and spent. And it can serve all all other mechanical operations it invents. But if you use thinking to guide your life psychologically from within what your life was soon will become a mechanical process. It is to be walking dead. There will be no creativity. There will be no love. You will be nagged by a recurring worry that some important thing is missing and you will not know what is lost. Like a machine you will repeat the same behaviors expecting different results so long as you shall happen to live. You will buy insurance, for example, expecting good health. You will invest money expecting to enjoy your old age. You will court the opposite sex and expect to find love. But love and enjoyment will stay away. Thinking is quite limited. Science makes many technological advances but always leaves many more to be explored. Thinking is quite limited. Science solves problems but creates many more. The missing ingredient in societies today is something that puts thinking in its proper place and leads a free human being on a living journey filled with love and peace and enjoyment and true abundance. It requires no naming and no religion and only is found by free people not being controlled by thought. Thinking is over-rated and quite limited. What is beyond it is unlimited.

Follow a butterfly. Imagine what the caterpillar realized when its cocoon opened.

 If there is a profound change now

the future will be new.

 BEYOND THINKING

Perhaps something which is very complex can be spoken simply. Once upon a time people on Planet Earth acted immediately in the now. Almost exclusively. Then thinking was introduced. At first on a limited basis. It grew rapidly. Without knowing it, people crossed a line into a world where thinking dominates action. Life changed.

Thinking is built on two things. Memory of a past which anticipates a future. The past and the future are its foundation, in other words. “I have been this I will be that.” I ate strawberries in the past and I want to eat them again. Question that goes unasked is: who is it says I ate strawberries and desire to eat them again? That, whatever it is, is now in charge of your life and is going to run it from now on is why it is important to ask that question. What is it? From where did it come? How real is it? How reliable? It may seem that the one who thinks is who I am but is it so? “I am” just might be something that was here before thinking began to predominate.

A most influential book in the field of psychology was published in the 1970’s. It definitely and brazenly declared a breakdown of the bi-cameral mind (brain) occurred centuries earlier and was the dawn of consciousness for human beings. People were at that time freed from being controlled by God. And yet, people who have had extreme  difficulty adjusting to the world of man in recent times, through serious psychic exploration, have become aware, at least to an extent, of a fact that all time is in the present moment and, therefore, effective action is always clear and instant. These ones claim their life has shifted from a difficult one to a thoroughly enjoyable one for which change they cannot find sufficient words to express extreme gratitude. And they uniformly declare for them “real” consciousness arose with the reduction in the value of a separate self rather than an elevation of its importance. The consciousness they speak of includes the whole world or the big picture. 

No attempt will be here made to go any further on the matter since the writer knows only those who are truly interested will go to the trouble to find for themselves what the author is discussing. All depends on you finally. If you find you will not bother to search for the psychology book and read it as a beginning you are not ready for the challenge. Perhaps at a later time you will be moved to dig for answers if the question sufficiently pressures you to do so. The problems associated with thinking as described here cannot, of course, be resolved by more thinking in the same dimension. Albert Einstein spoke that and realized that to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result is insanity. That is why this dialog ends here.

 WHEN A CHILD MET CHRISTIANITY

I was told as an innocent young child that Jesus, a very nice man, died willingly for my sins, my wrongdoings, my shortcomings and the thought of it made me feel a terrible guilt. The guilt made me consider joining the outfit that taught me that message to perhaps in that way assuage my guilt. But, truly, at a deeper level, inside me, I was wishing Jesus had not died for me at all; that He had instead allowed me to bear the consequences of my own failures since it was so obvious to me that He was so much more than I would ever be. As it turns out, He did just that for me and all others.

Many, many years later I listened to someone speak to a group concerning the truth of it all in the manner of Jesus dialoging with a gathering of friends. He concluded by saying when you see the terrible dilemma of the whole human population you must feel, not bad for “yourself”, but bad for the whole of humanity from which you are inseparable, you feel utterly responsible. And in that I felt the truth of the story of Jesus’s sacrificial death. Real action has no future. There is such a thing as vanishing as a separate self and not wanting ever to be found. That one leaves your salvation in your hands out of love. And I could no longer take the sacrifice of Jesus personally. 

Jesus may have told of what he had seen, to Mary Magdalene for one, and the story was told and retold for many generations before Christianity as it exists today arose.  It had by then become possible by pasting together selected pieces of gossip over centuries to present a tale wherein the leading character dies on a cross a bloody death to save all the rest of mankind. It was the Romans who saw its potential as an organized program around which to reunite its fallen empire. It is put together by thought to promise all troubled peoples a Heaven somewhere else after death by telling it that some other “perfect”person died for the forgiveness of all their sins and omissions.

In the telling it became a crucifixion and actual death of the body and resurrection for a reason. Made into a personal sacrifice one could tell it and keep hold of the old favorites of the  personal self, now saved for eternity, along with its connections to all its favorite traditions, with all its allegiances, desires, ambitions, greed, lust, plans, etc. It was adopted as the official religion of Rome in that form and continues down to the present age. Although the Romans could see the popular attraction of such a teaching, they failed to  see that selling God is never going to lead to anything good hence the falling of Rome. Christianity is passed off or justified as a tale of the killing of innocence, as if that is a good thing, a sacred thing, but face it, adults do not read it that way for they are too far from innocence, kids do. And Kids are struck in terror by the tale…I will get slaughtered if I remain like a child, therefore, I must adjust to a world that includes the killing off of the pure and innocent. And most of us do adjust and become adults. Strange it is that Jesus had admonished his listeners that they must become as children to enter the Kingdom of God. Adults accept the preaching of a personal savior which allows them to remain separate from “bad guys” who do not have the same savior and now we understand why Christians are so willing, eager even, to send armies of their own children to kill humans in droves who are seen as in conflict with their personal selfish interests as “Christians”. 

Jesus flew all right but not from one place to another place in space. His escape was within entirely. The true story of Jesus is decidedly not a guilt trip. It is a complete release. Heaven he taught about is not in some place…away from Earth…it is here now. And now contains the future. So, real action has no future. Eternity is not a long, long, long, long time. It is now and the future as one. There is such a thing as vanishing as a separate self and not wanting ever to be found. Thus a sudden realization cheats death of all its power.