Break the shell

The path to maturity, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it is one of self-liberation.

I don’t know if this is scientific fact but never-the-less this image serves to illuminate the process I am talking about.

I think that the reason a chick breaks free of its egg is because the environment of the egg becomes intolerable for it.

Think about it. At first the chick is just a blastoma. It is barely visible on the surface of the yolk but it grows and it grows and it grows. Eventually the egg must become incredibly claustrophobic and as the yolk is consumed the chick is deprived of its sustenance.

So it nuts the wall in frustration and lo and behold light breaks through. It does it again and after a while the egg is destroyed and the chick stumbles around in the light of day.

For us in our lives the egg is the social construct we are born into. We suffer frustration largely due to how we think about things. This frustration causes us to seek, to go into fantasy, fiction, science, religion and drugs.

All the so called ills of society are nothing but people trying to break free from the egg in a manner that their society frowns upon.

The shell resists our efforts. It tries to make us insane.

We are born with desires and instincts. These desires and instincts determine how we react and develop in response to societal pressures the first of which would be our parents.

I think largely the effectiveness of the parental influence is in their actions of praise and blame. That is what they do. What determines how we react to that is our genetics.

Eventually though we get so pissed off that we are left with one of two options. Either we can go into a lonely state where we watch ourselves. Not from the good/bad dichotomy we are conditioned into but from a state akin to the scientist examining bacteria.

We can either do this or we go insane. That is we perpetuate our own and others suffering through ignorance. We see on some level that the shell is causing us pain but instead of nutting the shell we self-mutilate or self-lobotamise. Anything for the sake of the shell even if it’s at the expense of ourselves.

You see this in how people constantly complain about their lives and their woes but they never ever get beyond that. Like a child nutting the floor to hurt its parents they continue in cyclical patterns of behaviour and retort “You don’t know me, don’t judge me” when you offer a higher-order way of dealing with and looking at problems. This is insanity.

The suicidal liberation

You stand before the door

Of the beast behind the beasts

The fear behind all fears

Tear yourself away from this world

Full of its trivialities

that masquerade as significant.

You stand before the door

Of the true dragon

the fire in the breath

of the threat of the state

You’ve been given a clean slate

The filth purged by the blast

Of your desire to die.

You are now free

there is no axe hanging over your head

You’ve called the bluff of the man behind the skull

And he’s backed down by offering you palliatives

“Please don’t kill yourself” He says now

Trying to comfort you where he used to threaten you.

See who has the true power

For he is you!

Don’t take the pills

better to die with your eyes opened

Than live a life of mental castration.

The divine conspiracy

There is a divine conspiracy afoot.

One of the ways to express this conspiracy is “nothing is as it seems”.

God has set the world up in such a way that that which is most valuable appears valueless and that which is valueless appears valuable.

When we are born, when we are young we are in love with the world. We are enraptured by it.

Just look at how wide a babies eyes are. What those eyes are saying is:

Wow look at this what the hell is this I don’t know I can’t even speak to myself but this, this colour is intoxicating and me breathing in and out fucking hell that feels good and what did I just do I shat myself god that feels soooo relieving.

People have the same realization when they are told death is imminent. Dostoyevsky in “The Idiot” has the protagonist talk about what he felt and thought when he thought he was going to be executed before the firing line.

He said that in that moment he saw how valuable life was, that he would have done anything to just go on living even if that meant living in a square metre of land. He talked about how the most trivial of experiences (the sun glinting of a church spire) was the most precious thing he could conceive of.

The divine conspiracy has set it up so that the baby doesn’t know what it knows and by the time it is capable of reflection this glory has faded, become mundane and been replaced by the trash of imitation that is media and the spectacular.

That is the divine conspiracy has us throwing in the bin the most valuable thing and we spend most of our lifes seeking this lost treasure but never look in the last place we think of: the bin.

Eventually this has us throwing ourselves in the bin because it has us on the hamster-wheel. The goodie is always over the next hill, just one more cycle on this wheel and I’ll be there and this must be the way to the goodie because it’s so much effort. The goodie is never here and now always there and then.

Of course we ourselves can’t be the goodie because we’re oh so familiar and for the same reason we throw our experience of breathing and shitting in the bin we throw ourselves in the bin.

But this is not as it seems. This seems bad but it’s good because the treasure is there in the bin. It is breathing, shitting, talking, sleeping and, yes, even suffering.

Most of us spend our lifes desperately struggling up the sides of the bin trying to get out but always falling back in. This is the struggle of Sisyphus.

Sadly it takes imminent death to take the blinkers off most people. The fear of losing the true goodie shows the true goodie to be the true goodie.

This is why people with suicidal tendencies also have a greater chance of realizing this because they are fixated on death.

Wisdom lies in the house of mourning.

And yes I love Epica 😛

Why God does what He does!

Everything God does is for our benefit.

Sometimes he is silent, sometimes he is loud, sometimes he chastens us, and sometimes he rewards us.

Never is it because we have gone against his council.
It is because he is making us exactly like his Son. When he is done we will be able to say with Jesus “He who has seen me has seen the Father” John 14:9

“Consequently, then, to whom He will, He is merciful, yet whom He will, He is hardening.” You will be protesting to me, then, “Why, then, is He still blaming? for who has withstood His intention? O man! who are you, to be sure, who are answering again to God? That which is molded will not protest to the molder, “Why do you make me thus? Or has not the potter the right over the clay, out of the same kneading to make one vessel, indeed, for honor, yet one for dishonor? Now if God, wanting to display His indignation and to make His powerful doings known, carries, with much patience, the vessels of indignation, adapted for destruction, it is that He should also be making known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He makes ready before for glory -” us, whom He calls also, not only out of the Jews, but out of the nations also.” Romans 9:18-24 (concordant literal version is epic isn’t it!?)

If you look at the process by which raw clay is taken from the ground and turned into a beautiful vessel you would be forgiven for thinking that the craftsmen hated the clay at some points!

I mean the clay was happy in the ground! But God rips it out.

Then he squeezes it and whacks it and does all sorts of unspeakable horrors to it.

He even puts it into a furnace!!!!

But eventually it comes out a beautiful pot fit for what????

Well in our case fit for the fulness of God himself.

Also notice this bit: “out of the same kneading to make one vessel, indeed, for honor, yet one for dishonor?”

I am convinced that each person (or “same kneading”) is for a certain time in their life is a vessel for dishonour and then a vessel for honour.

Retributive Justice makes me sad.

“But what use is vengeance to me, what use to me is hell for torturers, what can hell put right again, when those children have been tortured to death?” Fyodor Dostoyevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

I don’t care for retributive justice!

What purpose does it serve?

Take for instance an extreme case:

A child has been brutally raped and then murdered.

I feel sickened at the thought of such a thing.

Imagine what it must have been like for that poor, innocent and powerless child to undergo such trauma.

If I was a witness to the event I would do all in my power to stop it.

I would kill the man if that was what it took to rescue that child, hold her in my arms and whisper in her ear:

“It’s OK. It’s over now. Don’t worry. You’re safe. Where do you live? I’ll carry you home.”

But let’s imagine the event is already over.

What is the use of retributive justice?

Let us even suppose that free-will is true; in the metaphysical “all things being the same you could have done differently” sense.

Still what purpose does retributive justice serve; what purpose does vengeance serve?

It won’t un-rape and un-murder the child!

I can understand the anger of the parents.

I can understand their desire to hurt the one who took their dear one away from them.

It comes from a strong urge to do something to bring their child back; but there’s nothing they can do to achieve that; but they feel they can’t just do nothing!

But all vengeance will do is give a brief fix to their grief and once their thirst for vengeance has been satisfied their grief will come back; screaming stronger than before because their grief can only be allayed by two things: getting their child back and time.

In a sense a parent in such a situation is at war with grief; by seeking and gaining vengeance they delay the inevitable.

The longer you delay facing your grief the stronger the hold it will have on you; it will drive you insane; it drove my aunt insane and ruined her life because she went to the bottle instead of facing the pain.

“There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy” Niccolo Machiavelli

The pain of the perpetrator is just a paltry, pale shadow compared to what the parents really want.

Doesn’t retributive justice in the end just mean an increase in suffering.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t punish the criminal; I’m saying we shouldn’t do so out of vengeance.

Thoughts cont…

In a very real sense we are addicted to thoughts and especially addicted to thoughts that cause suffering. In fact – and this may be very hard to admit and even harder to realize on a level deeper than merely intellectual, at a lived level – we are addicted to suffering itself.

 

I notice a certain set of physiological phenomena within me when I indulge in miserable thoughts. There is a racing of the heart, a dropping sensation in the belly. In fact I believe the symptoms are similar to those that we experience in moments of panic or danger. It is the fight or flight response. When the body performs the fight or flight response a whole cascade of hormones and neuro-transmitters come into action. One of these is dopamine. Dopamine is the pleasure neuron-transmitter. (I am of course talking from the position of a highly uneducated laymen when it comes to biology in general and neuro-biology in particular. So this may not be highly accurate though I hope it is – in all relevant aspects – good enough). Is also the compound responsible for addiction.

 

Not only do painful thoughts cause these symptoms but intense situations. Have you ever wondered why arguments are so prevalent? Why people shout so much at one another despite the fact that raising your voice adds no information? (Well it may tell the other that you are unhappy but surely “I am unhappy” is a superior means of conveying the same information!) It’s because the fight or flight response is at the helm and you let it stay there because you’re loving the rush! You may not admit this to yourself… Indeed your conscious mind may be fully convinced that it doesn’t want to argue but if this were true why would you continue exhibiting such irrational and self-destructive behavior? Ask the drug-addict why he persists in taking a drug which he claims to want to stop and you’ll get the answer for why you think painful thoughts and have domestic arguments!

Why is pain painful?

Why do we find painful things painful?

 

Now this seems like a silly question but it really isn’t. A reformulation of it that may make more sense would be “Why do we not like pain?”

 

Now there are answers which aren’t really answers to what I’m attempting to get at. One of these would be “We do not like pain because not liking pain causes us to avoid that which causes pain. Over time natural selection has selected those that avoid pain because pain is a consequence of damage and those that do no avoid pain tend to die sooner and produce less off-spring.” All well and good.

 

Maybe to make getting to my point a bit easier I should be explicit about my agenda here. I am attempting to communicate a realization I had while walking my dogs today. The realization is that nothing is really painful in the really painful sense. By pain here I am not talking about the physical sensations we call pain but I’m talking about that which causes us to react in the way we do to pain. The psychological phenomena that characterizes all phenomena we label as un-desirable.

 

So maybe the question would be better articulated as “Why do we find pain undesirable?” (or maybe even “Why do we find undesirableness undesirable?”) See we can sit and watch the pain, we can even sit and watch the undesirableness of the pain and we can reach a state where the pain is neither desirable or undesirable. A state where the pain is just stuff happening. From this state it becomes clear that for pain to become undesirable – indeed for anything to become undesirable – there has to be an action taken on our part which we can not take if we choose.

 

OK evolution has conditioned how we react to things in a certain. Whether or not we label particular sensations as pleasurable or not. But now it seems that we can wrest control over this “system” from natural selection and reshape it as we see fit. The “Why” of what we feel is irrelevant in looking at this. Or rather yes it is wise to take into account the why. But having such powerful motivations – that are subconscious – determining our actions seems to be… undesirable!

Now I’m not saying that such a state of affairs – one in which we transcend desirable and undesirable is easy to attain. I am yet to find a simple on off switch for it. But it is desirable non-the-less and I believe attainable through a dedicated application of mindfulness. It’s not about avoiding pain and pleasure… in fact it’s not about changing any outward circumstance in your life… the practice is one where whenever you experience anything instead of reacting to it in terms of desire just watch it and slowly you will grow (well I hope you will I’ve noticed I have – in peaks and troughs) to transcend the demons of your life!

Meditation, Enlightenment and Letting Go

 

There are many things that meditation is good for. Calming the mind, dis-empowering the internal dialogue, and allowing oneself to see matters clearly without the baggage of emotions. One of the most beneficial effects of meditation is the ability to let go. It wouldn’t be a lie to say that the practice of meditation is the practice of letting go.

 

 

 

So as we all know in meditation – at least the meditation I practice – all that is done is that the attention is placed onto an object and whenever it is realized that the attention has wandered it is brought back to the object.

 

 

 

So where is the letting go? I hear you ask. Well when your attention has wandered it always clings to something. The more distracted you are the more your mind is clinging to something. That is why it is easier to bring your attention back to the anchor if it has only wandered onto something relatively boring like trying to remember what you ate yesterday. When it has wandered to a more appetizing realm like sex, food or how miserable you are then it is harder to bring back.

 

 

 

Often you can tell how much your mind is clinging to something by how long it takes you to realize it has been distracted (though this can also be caused by being full or eating sugary foods I have found).

 

 

 

What you call “difficulty” is really nothing other than the battle that takes place within you between two wants. On the one hand you want to do the practice but on the other hand you want to continue fondling those imaginary boobies. By bringing your attention back to anchor you are letting go of that desire.

 

 

 

Enlightenment can be seen as the complete letting go of everything. This doesn’t mean that nothing happens or that you no longer exist. It just means that you are totally passive in the face of everything. Whatever arises is fine.

 

 

 

See I believe that enlightenment is incredibly easy to grasp on an intellectual level. It is the cessation of suffering. That sentence is no harder to comprehend than the sentence “Peas are green”. The difficulty comes when we try to envisage what it would “feel” like to be enlightened. This is because we always place ourselves as we are into that picture and if we are suffering then suffering is so seemingly intrinsic to us that we cannot imagine it away. A blind person could understand on an intellectual level the sentence about peas but they couldn’t know what it felt like to see green peas.

 

 

 

Suffering is caused by clinging which is another way of saying wanting. The fundamental thing we cling to is our wants. We always hold out for our desires no matter how miserable not having them makes us or how unlikely it is that we we will get what we want. Even when we do get what we want and are satisfied for a bit but eventually return to Dukkha (suffering) we still hold out for that one want that when satiated will satisfy.

Buddhism, Mindfulness and Nirvana continued.

The popular idea put out about reaching this state of not wanting stuff is that it is hard. Instead of calling it “Not-wanting-stuff” big ominous words like enlightenment, nirvana and awakening have been used. The business of not wanting stuff is popularly portrayed as serious stuff.

One of the most popular images out there concerning the path to not-wanting-stuff is that of renunciation. Before one can become enlightened one must undergo serious privations. You cannot eat certain foods; in fact it’s best not to eat for most of the time. You have to sit and meditate for long hours every day. You have to undergo extreme physical regimens. Basically the whole idea that is put out in a lot of the kung-fu movies. What’s the most common image that comes to mind when you think of enlightenment? Isn’t it some Asiatic monk in yellow robes meditating in an uncomfortable position.

The problem with this way of attaining not-wanting is that it isn’t really not-wanting. You are acting on the desire to not desire. You engage the rational mind and it comes up with the instructions “To stop wanting things you must wean yourself off of things. Have no things. If you like it do not have it. If you do not like it have it”. The problem is that this is really the 1^st way (which is really no way) of stopping suffering. This is really a way that entails controlling phenomena so that you no longer experience happenings that you don’t want to experience. It’s subtle but once you see that this activity is no different to attempting to control your experience it is quite evident. I mean look at the life-style and the isolation that the monks have to set up for themselves in order to attain the end of this path.

Mindfulness is a much better way. With mindfulness we don’t seek to control experience at all. We just watch it. As one practices this things that bothered us stop bothering us. For example I had a migraine for 3 days a couple of days ago. In the past I would have tried to distract myself from it. Push it away from myself. But this time I just watched it and it became pleasant. It was still painful but the watching of the experience was satisfying and interesting. The same method is used with pleasant experiences. Instead of avoiding, of controlling WATCH!

Buddhism, Mindfulness and Nirvana

Mindfulness deals with anxiety effectively because it deals with thoughts. Though mindfulness can cause anxiety to stop it doesn’t always do so. The power of mindfulness doesn’t lie in its capacity to make bad sensations, thoughts or whatever stop. The power of it lies in the fact that it takes you beyond them, it gives you a lofty perspective from which you can watch the things that bother you. You can even watch the “Botheredness”.

When you have such a perspective things cease to be so dramatic, so in your face. As time goes on in the practice everything becomes stuff that is happening.

This is probably the reason why it is one of the main practices in Buddhism. Buddhism is all about suffering; or to be more exact it is all about the cessation of suffering. This is what nirvana is. Nirvana comes from the pali word that means “to extinguish” and the thing that is extinguished is the cause of suffering.

What is the cause of suffering? Desire.

Life is a long sequence of events, of happenings. People suffer when something they want to happen doesn’t happen and when something happens that they do not want to happen. You can quibble as much as you want but all suffering falls into one of those two categories. So how do we deal with suffering? What is the best way to deal with it? As I see it there are two ways of dealing with suffering.

One way is to control events, to make happen what we want to happen all the time. There are two problems with this approach. 1. It is not always possible for us to control events. 2. Even if we could make happen what we wanted to happen all the time we would get bored because it would be like cheating in a game. Have you ever cheated at a computer game and noticed how rapidly it lost interest?

The second way is to not want stuff. Some people may say “But that would be boring”. Well if you find not wanting stuff boring then you are wanting stuff. You are wanting stimulation so you don’t understand not wanting stuff (nirvana).

To be continued…