Tagged: meaning of life
Appreciation and Enjoyment: The true doctrine of God
Observe that I have purposely used conditioned terminology: Truth, Doctrine and God.
Those 3 words have all the ingredients to enhance any “spiritual” message, to make it sound important. That is the conditioning!
Life is. We live it. We are conscious of it. That is the gift.
To be conscious of BEING, to BE conscious of the surroundings including our own bodies, that is a fantastic experience!
When we wake up in the morning from sleeping, the gift of a new experience is right there. However, our minds will add conditioned thoughts to define our current newness with the past, it will unwind the reel of past experiences to shape up our perspective on things… That is how Life becomes the “same old thing.”
The interesting aspect is that we want to hang onto the known. That which is known to us, secure, unchangeable which basically follows the pattern of our mind: The mind welcomes static things, lifeless things, something that could be labeled and classified as “good or bad.” Those labels will remain unchanged through centuries of conditioning.
“Snake.” Observe the feeling that this word brings, the imagery, the emotions. Whatever it is, the bottom line is: Is it “good or bad”?
We are so lifeless when living through words!
The effect of hanging onto the known brings fear. Our minds are masters in the art of infusing fear.
Then, we search for God, we look for truth, for a doctrine to “save us” to keep us safe, to mitigate fear.
Life becomes a task, a DOING to accomplish that safety, whether that is through possession of goods, the pursue of god or the attainment of what is good. Do you see how similar those words are?
“God, goods, good.” Observe your feelings for those words, your emotions, your conditioning.
Life is away from all those words and their connotation and conditioning.
Your experience of BEING is related with feelings and those feelings get distorted through words, concepts, definitions.
Life is not about static “TRUTH.” It is about appreciation of perspectives (realities not reality) and thus, enjoyment of them. To allow them to change as Life changes, as BEING changes without the need of the artificial DOCTRINE (religious, political) that keeps things under control, to bring the sensation of safety, to calm down fear.
Away from that Life of concepts, ideals and conditioning Life IS.
Appreciation and enjoyment of “what is” without further labels, is the key for change, for self-transformation, self-realization, enlightenment and all of those “good” but meaningless words.
Life is away from our mind driven life. 🙂
What is the point of living?
Rodney, the “daredevil” has a life path. His reckless driving comes from his nature expressed at a particular point in time.
Any outside force such as a belief system to make Rodney “good,” will only repress that daredevil nature.
Once the belief is over, the repression will go away and with that his daredevil nature will be unleashed.
That belief gave him “safety” by delaying the expression of his nature, which could get him into “trouble.”
However, as we know, every experience is beneficial, trouble or not, it is a game in the nature of immortality.
If that repression took place for 10 years, obviously his daredevil nature will be tamed out of age, (getting old) which will give Rodney a different consciousness.
Note how the particular path that will be experienced in Rodney’s life is completely “out of his hands.”
Rodney may go to jail for life. He may experience many accidents or he may not experience nothing at all but a few traffic tickets here and there.
It is all in his destiny… When we see this, we start trusting life and with that, a smile in the face appears. 🙂
Any “Life teaching” is just theory until someone has experienced that teaching in his life. Then he can understand the teaching and verbalize it. That is how there are different levels of “Life students” according to their consciousness, the beginning stage is duality. “This is good, that is bad. This is wrong, that is right.”
At the same time, do we see that nothing experienced is “good or bad” in itself, but just another tool that life has to change our consciousness? There are consequences, of course which are material for further lessons. Do we see that because we are inter-related, a change in a person will affect others as well, who are closely related with that person?
It is the domino effect.
Consciousness is eternal. The “soul” is eternal. Matter is eternal (cannot be destroyed neither created) then we may realize this:
Why some individuals put so much emphasis in destruction? The Armageddon is near…
Obviously because their consciousness does not allow them to see how everything is eternal. Everything changes but it is eternal.
To put emphasis in destruction is like living life with fear to die at any moment.
“Don’t enjoy now because you are going to die anyway and you should worry about your future, about what happens after you live this life.” “You will be in a better place than this world, Paradise… but you can lose it if you don’t do enough to deserve it.”
The fear of death is used as a powerful motivator for an ego to “do something” about it.
You need to get salvation and to save others as well… so you get a “golden star” in your chart of your ego-good-deeds…
However, that individual does not realize about his own immortality. That individual is unwilling to trust life and the experiences in it when is trapped in duality and the belief that “this is good and that is bad.” His ego wants a better ” heavenly job” in the “future.” A place near the CEO, God… That ego must survive for the future through repression now!
That is the irony.
Destruction in Nature, is another way to re-create again. Suffering is another way to learn about the “I” and the extension of it in our lives. Suffering is how we realize about that “I.”
Everything is as it should be. That is the perfection of this experience, which we call life.
Someone may ask: “What is the point of life if we are going to die?”
A: To discover that there is no death when the “I” dies. Living life is the path to that discovery.
Q: If there is no death, what do we do, what is the “right thing to do “ in life?
To enjoy every moment of it as it “is.” That requires a different consciousness.
The virtue of Oneness
A virtuous life is the one lived with oneness.
Oneness in our personality. Oneness in our emotions. Oneness in our relationship with life.
Any sort of perceived separation and thus, rejection; will take us away from that Oneness.
The above is not a matter of belief. It is not a matter of being a “selected one,” it is not a matter of being an intellectual full of information.
It is a matter of being empty of all those things, which create a personality ready to reject, to separate, to analyze to live in duality, to live in the perception of a wall of insurmountable dichotomy.
Rejection of a religious group. Rejection of moral views. Rejection of people due to some belief. Rejection of any being, which we find “ugly,” “no good,” “despicable,” “abominable,” etc.
Rejection of any circumstance that is surrounding us at any moment in time.
When there is no rejection, then enjoyment is and in that enjoyment, oneness appears.
A collective consciousness which is fragmented, will see a set of virtuous living behaviors: Generosity, detachment, love, toleration, friendliness, compassion, contentment, joy, etc.
All of those dictionary words represent a fragment of Oneness. A particular person may exhibit what we call “generosity,” but that is a ray of Oneness in the vacuum of darkness of the fragmented self.
Love is a misunderstood feeling.
It is not a romantic trip to Disneyland where the lovers could love each other forever… A person exhibiting a fragmented personality cannot know what love is.
It doesn’t matter if the object of that love is the world, another person or God.
A fragmented personality is not able to become one… that means; to be empty of all beliefs, emotional traumas and fears.
How on earth a person could know about oneness, about love in that condition? 🙂
A typical person only knows about the “master and slave” relationship. It is “me” over you. It is “me” under you. That is all. There are no equals, because to be equal means to be empty.
Empty so we could listen. So we could provide emotional comfort to another, so we could harmonize… so we could be intimate.
Otherwise, our fragmented personality will not allow us to experience oneness with someone, with God or with the world, with life.
The above is not a religious belief. But it could be for those who are not looking to understand themselves, with honesty and with their whole hearts.
That is with passion.
When someone does not wish to understand himself, then to be lost in another is desirable. Whether that is God or another person, or a belief, the aim is for someone else to “drive” the car of our destiny.
The interesting thing is that nobody can do that for us. Not even God.
We live in fear.
Fear of tomorrow. Fear of the past. Fear of that person. Fear of God. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of pleasure. Fear of dying…. Fear of living life.
And then we wish to know love… 🙂
Isn’t that contradictory?
Love is Oneness.
The soul is the empty canvas of the painter
There is “cause and effect.” That is known as Karma. This is not a belief. It is something that we could observe in life. An action powered by our intentions will have a consequence in the Totality, in life because there is interdependence, interbeingness.
Because the return comes back to the “doer” then there is “someone” who receives the fruit. That someone is what is known as the soul. It is the essence, which goes beyond a simple lifetime, but could extend to several lifetimes. That is how “reincarnation” comes into being, not as another belief, but as a natural consequence of observing cause and effect and the understanding of the soul’s immortality.
What is the “reason” why Tom was born around unfit parents? How come Jerry was a silver spoon child?
Cause and effect.
Otherwise we could believe that God selected those scenarios for Tom and Jerry… and they only have one lifetime to “shape up” and become believers or, they could be “punished forever.” 🙂
There is no “good or bad” but just cause and effect, as everything is necessary in the Totality just as it is, however the consequences are experienced by the “doer.”
If my intentions are to enhance my ego and to forget about the common good, then the consequence will be an obvious separation from the totality of life which means greater ego colored by a sense of pride. That will cause suffering which in turn will allow the person to realize that it is time to change his ways.
That is why suffering is not “bad.”
This “process” could take many lifetimes. Nevertheless, just like the phases of the moon, every human being will enjoy a time of fullness and a time of emptiness.
Guaranteed or your money back… 🙂
The range of experiences is complete for everyone, but at different times.
The soul is eternal and so is consciousness and life.
The soul even though is individual, it is not individuality; it is part of a totality, just like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The piece by itself is worthless unless it is in relationship with other pieces to make up a story, a reality… life.
The above is the paradox of the soul.
Nevertheless, the experience of “nothingness” or “emptiness” as Zen or Buddhism puts it… is nothing else but the experience of the soul.
The empty canvas.
Then we could make sense of some religions believing that we are “souls” and others not bothering about concepts and merely saying that we are “nothing,” “empty.”
For a person without experience, those 2 apparent belief systems are contradictory. But going beyond the words and definitions, we could see that it is the same thing.
Same talk different words.
Experience is everything.
A soul is an empty canvas. Many empty canvases will only reflect emptiness, silence, void, peace, etc.
When the painter known as “Life” for some and “God” for others, arrives to paint its colors and shapes over those canvases, then a personality appears. Every canvas has a different theme according to experiences in a lifetime.
That is the game.
The painter will paint. The canvases will let themselves be painted on… until it gets to be “blank” again… then we could call that death, debt or last breath… the canvas is meant to be painted again… and life will do so and “I” will be born out of the ashes again, but with different colors and a different theme….but the same old canvas.
I could put the above explanation, to be surrounded by religious beliefs. I could even say that if you don’t join my selective group, you will be lost forever… and punished in top of that!
But then, we wouldn’t be able to smile, to live life to the fullest and in fear of not being enough or doing enough… etc.
I wouldn’t do that to you ! 🙂 Life wouldn’t either. Games are meant to be fun, entertaining.
Smile.
That is the game… Enjoy it! 🙂
On God, atheists, devotional cliches and scriptures: Reality check for you and me.
For many people, God is just a definition. An idea. Something to fight for and to make parties. Something to differentiate people: Believers and non-believers; theists and atheists, etc.
If you are in the “theist,” group; then further division is needed; therefore, religions will appear with their different flags and symbols. Further division. “We have the truth. You don’t.” 🙂
God is not an idea. It is an experience and as such, it changes from every individual.
When we use language to define God, we will be “boxed in” the limits of our language and understanding provided by…our own experiences and perceptions. See the circle?
If a Guru thinks that God is everywhere, for God is being and not a being; then I would gently add that this experience is not according to “my” experience. Moreover, their definition does not match mine as well. See the problem?
Then, we have the group of those who have experienced something different, and a religion was made out of that experience, where believers were needed to maintain their “dogma” (for a dogma is needed when we try to “standardize” an experience, meaning everyone has to say and think the same way if you want to wear the” t-shirt” of this organization or church; that becomes then “sacred” and we forget about the experience in itself.)
And as mentioned before, the group of those who do not believe in anything because they have not experienced anything other than the “concrete,” material world which is given life by science. They have a neat label to differentiate then as well: “Atheists.” That becomes another belief.
Here comes my take on this seemingly conundrum.
Ready? Forget about concepts of God. Forget about religions. Forget about scriptures. Forget about science. Forget everything. : -)
Just look at you. The self.
That is it. Discover it.
How is that?
You will die. Death is unavoidable. Do you feel that in your, in your core? “that is it.” If so, what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of being an “ignited candle” ready to be blown away by the winds of destiny through a secure death in less than 150 years? What is the meaning of working at the office, in that cubicle for 30 or more years of your life? What is the meaning of being busy in meaningless things? You see at the end all of that is not important. Meaningless. Getting busy by marrying and having 2.5 kids and a cat, will not help either. You are stuck for whatever you do in this life. You will die and that is the end of it all.
The ignited candle is just waiting for the time to go away .. That is life. Moreover, anything that we do with the intention to preserve our selves, is futile. We have not control over destiny.
How about that for a reality check? 🙂
If believing in a God helps you to cope with the unavoidable, good for you. Keep that “handkerchief handy.” If believing in science keeps you “updated” with the latest geek device or facility; keep at it… At the end it is just another handy handkerchief to keep in case there is a need to cry in despair. Are your ready for the time when you will be gone? 🙂
That is why experience is important. For that is the only thing that will fulfill our hunger for “security” in a changing world. Experiencing the self, the true self, is the experience which will bring that “security” that we are eternal beings. Without that experience, I am afraid, we will be just dealing with more words, discussions and politicians with parties and dogmas. Emptiness.
More books to read. More CDs to purchase. More “ashrams” to visit. More Gurus to hear.
Emptiness.
“Know thyself.”
That is it folks! The rest will come when the time arrives, but there is no better time to know thyself than “now,” for it is the only “time” we have.
Exploring the Depth of Living 