On Creation and Spiritual Awakening

Life and life’s pain is the teacher … for those who attempted to notice, almost to a person, they discovered that life and the ensuing pain acted like a fierce and loving teacher that reminded them again and again to go beyond themselves and their own preconceived notions into a deeper investigation of self, and to begin to let this moment be as it is … to simply observe what arises in the fullness of what’s next that needs to be addressed.

Life on Life’s terms

Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be

173 On Creation  and Spiritual Awakening and Acumen

EXPERIENCE has taught us that finally we can step out into the world and experience life on life’s terms. That seems to be what is called for at this juncture, and doing it knowing full well that we don’t know and that we can’t imagine all that is, even though we are intrinsically part of all that is. A part of things that we can’t even imagine, in places we could not conceive of, and in conditions that are beyond us.

But there it is, the answer, just sitting there, staring back at us. Not the one we expected, but an answer nonetheless.

You came to this world singularly and unclothed. That is your path. The others that you encounter are here on the path with you … are on the same journey … but they can only serve as guideposts for you, and they can only provide you the opportunity to find your own blind spots, that's all.

There is a vast world of difference between solitude and loneliness …

that is your discovery to make .

"It isn't just the pain in my body that really hurts, it's all the pains of my life that I have to pull away from; “that” which imprisons me in my impression of how I think life should be. Me beginning to see my feelings in me just as they are, brings me to a point of seeing just how little time have I ever given to me having real feelings in my life and those real feelings included initially my pain, both physical and psychological ."

Pain

Statement of Truth:

My pain brought me to the surface of my being, not out of my body, although that does happen to some, just to the surface of my being.

It is at the surface of our existence, the skin line so to speak, where the flesh meets the air that we find things along the surface like compassion and understanding, love and caring. If we allowed them to sink in, to be absorbed, then we could begin to give-over the hard driving perfectionist treadmill that we keep ourselves on just to survive.

We also might even notice others just like us at the surface trying to figure out what to do.

We may just very well awaken into a place where we can begin to appreciate that we are not alone on the face of this planet and God has not made a mistake.

That we really are here for a purpose, and that purpose might not have a darned thing to do with our logic and reason.

We might notice … if we are actually paying close attention … that there just might be a message in the fact that we are here in the midst of 6 or so billion other lost souls … that maybe we should try experimenting with what we might be able to do with at least some of those lost souls … those who seem at least to be aware of the predicament we are all in.

All our natural defenses of resistance are just devices we use to keep our focus off the job at hand; of exploring the universe we were born into.

So Here Is The Conundrum

We are left right in the middle of a life that has brought some of us to our knees … by the sharp fragments and shards of its circumstances. There does not seem to be an appetizing solution at hand, but There Is A Door, and that Door seems to go places that could be both scary and painful. As we stand where we stand in our life’s circumstance, the very pain of standing there … slowly … is becoming so overpowering that we either have to mood alter … or … pretend … or … simply get on with it and go through that doorway.

It is simply a decision of when ... not if.

It is the ramifications of that decision that are mind boggling when you stop and think about it.

Read this every day ... then write about where it takes you

I fell from the sky.

It was an accident.

The horses and the men were raiding the village.

They took most of the children and some of the women.

I was scooped up in the confusion.

But I was not one of them.

I fell from the sky.

Ask Yourself Whether You Are Happy?

Ask yourself whether you are happy? Then notice that when you do, you cease to be so The Laws of Paradox at work!

A long time ago long before I ever considered writing these lines, I made an interesting discovery. At the time it was more of an observation then discovery. It took all the intervening time for me to realize I had made a discovery, I suppose it was the slowest epiphany on record. What I also discovered was that most people in some way shape or form have been aware of it since the dawn of time. Yet, I think the word discovery is appropriate, because even though well known, I had never come across it described or theoretically explained by the relevant branch of higher learning, which in my case happens to be psychology.

So, directly and indirectly I spent the intervening 20 or so years, nearly a quarter century, investigating this elusive phenomenon, directly or indirectly in my practice of psychotherapy.

What I had noticed a long time ago was that happiness is not something that happens at random fault.

This thing has form and it follows rules and they seem to be:

o Happiness does not happen because of good luck or because the fickle finger of fate picks you out for some grand event. No one is special.

o Happiness is not something that can be purchased nor can it be controlled or for that matter caused to occur on command by some grand authority.

o Happiness particularly does not depend on the world about us, although conversely the world about us can affect some of the various outcomes of it.

o Happiness seems to be more an interpretation of the world both about us and within us, all taken in some sort of strange mix or recipe that is constantly changing and is difficult to replicate.

o Happiness, in fact, seems to be a condition that we must be prepared for, that we must cultivate, and then be prepared, if necessary to de¬fend, but not from a place of unity but rather from a place of deep privacyas an individual.

o It also seems that people who learn to work with inner experience(s) will in fact be able to determine the quality of their lives as it relates to having or not having happiness, which, it seems is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

o It also seems a given that we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. The very effort of trying to search for it seems to defeat our every effort to have or possess it.

o Happiness cannot be owned; it can only be experienced.

o Happiness seems to be the process of being fully involved with every detail of your life, subjectively not objectively.

o The key statement in describing the process of being involved in life seems to be as completely as possible, and completely as possible does not seem to depend on any opinion or definition of what is good or bad or how those cognitive markers are held in the mind of the beholder. Just because you are prepared to fight to the death for your beliefs doesn’t mean they are true.

o Happiness seems to occur because of the intensity of the involvement with life and not in the outcomes that intensity seems to want to provide so that it could be easily seen and judged by others.

o Degree of intensity of the involvement necessary to induce happiness will vary from individual to individual as well as situation-to-situation. Thus it follows that degrees of intensity i.e. very intense to mildly intense is not a marker that can determine the outcome of creating happiness. It is just a necessary factor that varies from time to time.

o The Laws Of Paradox seems to effect the outcome of having some or not; for instance: don't aim for it because the Laws Of Paradox will tend to cause you to increase the size and shape of the target you have set for yourself and then at the same time cause you to miss with greater frequency. Something like Chinese handcuffs, the harder you try the more difficult it becomes.

o Happiness and success cannot be pursued for their own sake.

o Happiness and success, to be most effective must sneak up from behind and envelop us ... It is something that happens to us while we are busy doing something else … as the inadvertent, unintentional after-effect of our efforts to simply get on with the business of being ourselves and by doing whatever is next simply because it is there and needs to be done. Then this seems to need to be taken into consideration with the effort made by the individual to be willing to work in the shadow of his or her spiritual self and then deliberately attempting to work with the spiritual forces of the Greater Way of Things.

o Again paradox. The Art of Trying Not to Try.

So how can we reach this elusive goal that cannot be attained by a direct route? My practice and practices of the past 20 or so years has convinced me that there is a way.

It is a circuitous path of going nowhere the long way in search of someone who was not lost and there all along … you, and it can only begin with a willingness by the participant to want to make the journey.

Happiness and Perception --- the Premise

How we see the world and what really happens in the world are often two different things.

Our perceptions about what and how we think we see and how and what we believe we experience are actually formed by a multitude of happens that most of us are totally unaware of:

(a) Our perception and interpretation of those perceptions seems to be result of or the outcome(s) of many minuscule forces interacting with each other and on each other in a myriad number of ways that can lead into forming what I call events-sequences. These event-sequences themselves act interact with each other to form perceptive imagery and eventually opinion and opinion can stack up and move us into action or a series of actions.

(b) There seems to be a hierarchy to this entire process and the sequencing aspects seems to be most important.

(c) It also seems to be a quadratic process and not (necessarily) a linear process although it can be in simple interchanges.

The vast majority of events happen at levels of awareness that William James’ work would suggest as other then normal waking consciousness perceptions or in the unconscious mind.

Small Events Cumulative Events and Effects

Small events happen, i.e. the blood/chemistry level shifts in the body because of the ingestion of some form of sugar, this process begins a process of cause and effect that has an impact on the individual and the individual’s environment. But small events can interact with other small events and create what I call cumulative events that have cumulative effects. It is often the cumulative event/effects that gets noticed by the conscious mind as a happening in real time. If I were to extrapolate from the sugar ingestion mentioned about, as that shifts thru the system eventually a mood shift will happen and the person begins to interact with other people in a way that is different then it was a moment ago, which the shift and mood swing can set into motion other small events that collect into cumulative events/effects and as they collect, one on top of the others so to speak, then their quantitative result begins the process of us defining how it is that we think we are feeling, good or bad, happy or sad, angry etc., and sets into motion our responses too what it is that we think at an unconscious level is happening to us.

These smaller events when taken together with the cumulative nature of the events-sequences and their effects are the basis of the shaping tools of how we perceive things.

All of this happens outside our control. There is not much we can do about, our looks, our temperament, or our constitution and we do not have any input into how tall we will grow, or how smart we will be or who our parents will be or the time of our birth and it is not in your power or mine to decide whether there will be a war or an economic depression. This list goes on and on and on.

There are many who argue these points from a metaphysical point of view; that we do have all those controls and that we are just not aware of it or them in the here and now. So the problem seems to be; how can you argue with what cannot be argued about with any certainty.

When we arrived on the face of this planet we got a space suit to survive in. It is called a body and the instructions for its operation lay in the genetic structure of the suit not necessarily in the conscious aspect of the device. So it is predetermine how tall, hair colour, our predisposition to disease and this list is lengthening every day with more research being done.

Secondary to the genetic factor are forces that are at work in our lives such as the pull of gravity, the pollen in the air, the historical period into which we are born, and innumerable other conditions, socially, physically, emotionally and spiritually that will determine how it is that we see and what it is that we believe we see, and how it is that we should feel about what it is that we think we feel and see. Probability, more importantly, how and what it is that we might just do based on what it is that think we feel and see.

To look closer on the particular event at any given point in time one has to be able to begin to look into and see the event sequencing and the interplay of the outcomes of the various sequences.

A course example of event sequencing from history is the minor story of King Henry the 8th of England; he was riding horse back one day, fell and lost consciousness for several moments. From that point on in his life he pursed a frantic search for the perfect mate, and all that entailed.

What if he never fell, or what if he did and never hit his head, what would history say about him?

Would there be a Church of England? Would Elizabeth 1st even exist and this list can extrapolate all through history, and this is just one tangent.

My point is that what I do with something today even though it appears to be the same as the same thing yesterday, its not. It could be but the likely hood is that it is not because at the more subtle levels there very likely is a different event sequencing occurring and for the most part we and not necessarily privy to that daily ins and outs event sequencing because it is not part of what we perceive to be normal waking consciousness.

If it could be monitored in some fashion then it could be used as a shaping instrument for causing more desirable outcomes to occur via experiences that can be safely had and made optimal.

The Most Important Thing(s)

I Have Learned So Far

The most important thing I have learned in doing my life and paying attention as I did it is:

When I come to the edge of my known universe, when I come to the end of where the light shines for me. It is from this point on that I have to be a risk taker. It’s when I have to go blindly off into something or someplace I have never seen or been before. Of course the alternative is possible. I can shrink away from moving forward—I can shrink away from exploring God’s Gift.

What I have discovered is: when I step off into my darkness and it is the darkness of my unknown, it is then that I grow. It is then that I come to know. It is then that I notice the light.

This happened for me truly for the first time when I went to South Africa ... oh I thought I had other experiences that were risk taking ... but my experience with the kids, and Vivian, and Vissershok school opened me to a thing; an experience that truly placed me somewhere where I could see my world differently.

Once it is experienced ... seen ... differently ... then it all changes ... it can't be reset once you know ... this is not about what I am seeing ... this is about how I am looking... this is where I saw spirit at work ... Vivian ... Gisela ... The Teachers at Vissershok School ... Darla ... and her children ... Joanne and her Idea ... Cleone and her help and her ideas ... to all those people who just paused for a moment or a week or a life time to risk, to take the time and do what needs to be done ... really

I have been lucky in my life ... some who know my story, might not say so ... but I am ... everything I have experienced has coupled together to allow me to see life differently and here is the important part ... when I notice a "lack" I have the choice now to do something about it ... sometimes it does not seem like much ... and sometimes it seems mountainous ... but it is just what I can do to fill the "lack" ...  Neil