Saturday 7 January 2012

The Gift of the Universe


Before reading this post it would probably help if you read the mirror of consciousness post.
Many spiritual traditions talk of desire as something that needs to be controlled. It is seen as a problem but this problem may also become the solution. It is helpful to first change the word desire to want. One reason for this is just to detach from all the connotations that the word desire holds. The word want is simpler and more straightforward. All that appears in consciousness is what we ‘want’. This want may be the result of conditioning or millions of years of various forms of belief but even so it is what drives us. What we do is what we want to do, what we believe is what we want to believe and what we eat is what we want to eat. This list is endless it is all that we are. When we feel depressed it is because we want to feel depressed. We may have forgotten why we want this but the result is the same. This is not easy to accept because we live in a world where we all deny responsibility for what we are and what we want. We make excuses for our mistakes or we blame others for what we feel. None of this is true we are responsible for everything whether we know it or not. The result of all this is inevitable suffering and suffering that is self created. The first step then in ending suffering is to accept responsibility for everything. This is not to say that others do not harm us or the world does not hurt us. We are physically designed to experience pain and we would probably not survive without this ability. We are not however designed to suffer. Suffering is caused by believing something that is not true, it is also caused by wanting to suffer even though we may have forgotten why this is so. What we believe can only be what we want to believe; so believing something that is not true is also what we want to believe. To solve this problem we need to look very carefully at what we want and to begin to notice if we are in full agreement with what we want. Every day we do things or experience things that we are not in full agreement with. If you feel frustrated or angry then these are the clues to the things you are not in agreement with. Why do we do things we are not in agreement with? The reason is to do with the rules we construct about how life should be. We make these rules and then feel unhappy when the world does not conform to these rules. The world cannot conform to your rules because your rules are crazy or not true. That is, they do not conform with the rules of the universe. The rules of the universe are not written in any book they can only be known by consciousness itself; not by the knowledge or beliefs contained in consciousness. Consciousness itself can have no problem with the universe. Consciousness is the gift of the universe and is complete. It cannot be changed or improved and it cannot be diminished. Consciousness appears diminished because our minds are occupied with beliefs that are not true. When we want or expect something that is not in accord with the rules of the universe we experience suffering and rather than question deeply what it is we want or expect we usually just keep on with the same beliefs and expectations.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Ray,

    I'm sorry but I did not understand the aspect of your teaching that refers to the fact that we 'want what happens to us or that we want to believe what we believe. If it really is a culmination of million of years of evolutionary data that 'we' (which is also a bundle of beliefs) then where is the question of any personal choice of wanting what 'we want and subsequently accepting responsibility for that want and outcome?
    I don't know if this sounded clear but what I'm trying to convey is that there is no individual to have any say in the process and flow of life, so where is the question of bypassing the evolutionary process of the inevitable destruction of all beliefs?

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  2. Hi Kite, I agree that there is no real personal choice ever. However it is clear that most people behave as though there is. If we carefully observe what we want, which I define as what you have got then we begin looking at this paradox. We do not choose but we believe we do it is only the second part of this statement that causes suffering. Responsibility is not abstract it is actual. if we 'want' to cause 'ourselves' suffering then that is what we will experience. Even though there is no one really there to feel suffering our beliefs do a pretty convincing job of making us think there is. What we believe is the result of millions of years of evolution and these beliefs interlock with each other and create a sense of something actual existing which in fact does not exist. This is because most beliefs work together to self validate themselves. When we talk to each other this process is going on, most of what we say is not questioned it is accepted as being true. This is because what we say can only be what we believe but what we believe can never be true so what are we saying and what are we doing. I am only interested in disrupting belief so that 'you' no longer suffer.

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