Are you enlightened?

She said, "Do you think you are enlightened?"

I said, "Yes, but you don't see it because you have gotten to know me, you see the human side of me and think that means I am not.  As if being enlightened means one is no longer human!"

People always want to judge, but I do see it in myself, do you see it in yourself?

You see, I know that her ego sees me, and it has labeled me, good and bad.   Her ego tells her I am this and that according to her own experience.  Because I have known her a long time, I know her and her ego.   She does not know me, or my ego.

You see, I could see her smirk a bit when I said I was enlightened.  Most people do smirk when they hear something like that said out loud.  What she does not understand, is that part of being enlightened is being aware of one's humanness.  To be one's Self, one must recognize and be in harmony with one's humanness.  Think about it.  If D. T. Suzuki was sitting in front of us right now, he would look like any other human being.  Sir Suzuki happens to be one of the more respected authorities on Zen Buddhism.  Carl Jung does not write a forward for just anyone's book you know.  But doesn't Sir Suzuki have his own demeanor, personality, quirks, preferences, and funnies?  From the outside one cannot tell a difference between the one who meditates every day and the one who does not.  I doubt anyone could pick D. T. Suzuki out of a crowd simply because he is enlightened and understands reality.  Suzuki said something like, learning to meditate is not the miraculous cure everyone makes it out to be, but it will change your life forever after all the same.  The one who meditates knows something, a huge something that those who cannot meditate do not know anything about.  That is, how their own mind works.  It cannot be expressed, only known.

This is the reason the spiritual path requires a great deal of alone time.  To know one's Self one must be alone.  Understanding one's Self in regards to the universe is something that can only be experienced alone.  To become aware of the whole one must be fully aware of their own complete and unique individuality; there is no duality in reality.  No one can tell you who you are; you will only know that after being alone.  The power of spending time alone cannot be underestimated.  It can be sensed in those who have not made the journey. 

In the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, there are purports after the versus explaining them in great detail.  To sum it up, god is telling a warrior to kill his own family on the battle field.  The warrior and god are having a discussion about this because the warrior does not want to kill his family in battle, but god explains to him why he must.  Think about this.  God is telling this warrior to do what he was meant to do.  God does not have opinions about good and bad, only humans do.  God tells him to rise above his material attachments and act god-like in all things.

Expressing it this way might cause some to think this is justification for murder, as we have all seen religions do for thousands of years, but it is more subtle than that.  God explains to the warrior that his family is bringing about their own death because they will not let go of the fight.  That is the issue at hand.  The warrior’s family could turn and leave the battlefield, but because they refuse and maintain their pettiness, the warrior must fight them in battle.  The warrior must stand up for himself.  It is not love to turn the cheek in matters of injustice.  It is not love to allow wrong doing for the sake of non-violence.  For some reason, which seems to be cultural, when we read this kind of thing we think we should all be the same way, but that is the point of it; we are all supposed to be our own way.  We are not all warriors, which means we are not all supposed to kill those who oppose us.  We are not all supposed to be healers like Christ.  The problem is, for some reason, we all have this expectation that people should be some one certain way and all the same way at that.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The moral of the story is not to kill; the moral of the story is to fulfill one's purpose free of material attachment. 

For some reason, when it comes to spirituality, we think attaining enlightenment means we will all be the same peace loving hippies or something.   Christians seem to believe they will all be just like Christ if they can just figure out the god thing.  This is an unquestioned lie that we pick up before we were old enough to understand.  We are not all supposed to be just like Christ, or anyone else.

This has been a frustrating experience in my life.   When I talk to people about my ideas they often feel like it is "my" way that I am attempting to convert them over to.  People often think that I am trying to get them to be like me or something.  This is not the case.  The issue at hand regards us having the same understanding about reality.  If you did not know about gravity before you met me, and I explained gravity to you, would you be just like me all of a sudden?  I mean, explaining gravity is just a little smidgen of knowledge about the totality of the universe, especially considering the complexity of life here on earth.  So does new knowledge about morality mean you are just like me?  I hope not. 

I think the reason it seems like it is "my" way to people is because it is so far outside of what is "normal" to them that the uniqueness of what I say means it is somehow mine.  In reality, it is not my opinion, I simply did the research.  If we all did the same amount of research, if we were all actually educated, we would almost completely agree.  I know this because I do know a few people who have done the same amount of research and we come to the same conclusions, give or take some semantics. 

Understanding what is going on around us will not make us all the same.  No matter what we do our Self will be attempting to express itself in its own unique way. 

No matter what our opinions of reality are, it is happening all the same. 

"From the very beginning nothing has been kept from you, all that you wished to see has been there all the time before you, it was only yourself that closed the eye to the fact.  Therefore, there is in Zen nothing to explain, nothing to teach, that will add to your knowledge.  Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only a borrowed plumage."  D.T. Suzuki

There are not many things more powerful than consuming the lifetime of one man's work in a mere one hundred pages.  What took a single man a lifetime to develop can be consumed by another in a matter of hours; that is true power.

Crazy huh?

I have a friend whose life is a wreck.  I don't say this in a mean way; he will tell you the same.  He is fully aware that his life is a wreck.  He and I have discussed it at great length many times.  That his life is a wreck is a projection of his.  In his heart he believes he is essentially a loser so that is exactly what the universe gives him.  Nothing could be further from the truth though, he is not a loser; he just believes he is.  This belief of his means he is praying to be a loser.  He is always struggling, always just barely getting by, always calling himself a loser because he is struggling.  It is a vicious circle.  In reality his prayers are being answered by the universe. 

I tell him, "Mark, if you really wanted it, and you asked for it, you would get it."  I tell him, "If you really wanted to change your life it would happen instantly."  He just looks at me.  He doesn’t get it.  Last time we talked I told him I felt like I was a physicist attempting to explain the universe to him when he doesn’t understand gravity.  The gap seems to be that great.  I realize it is a failing on my part to say it such that he will understand, but at the end of the day, it is his to understand.  The truth is, he is not willing to pay the price.  The truth is he doesn't “feel” ready to change yet.  Essentially we are all praying all the time whether we know it or not.  The universe is always giving us exactly what we believe.

I cannot say there is an order to prayer, it must all happen at once, but because our minds have trouble grasping something complex as a single whole I will break it down a bit by putting an order to it.  Please know though, there is no linear order in reality. It all happens at once.  Maybe by the end of this you will see more clearly what I mean.

Understand too, that I use religious jargon because that is the culture I live in.  Whatever religion you choose they will all say similar things.  At least, all the ones I have ever read about do.

First, for a prayer to be answered, one must be willing to pay the price.  In spiritual matters, spiritual here means the unseen, spiritual here is all the stuff science has not yet figured out regarding physics, suffering is the most common term.  Religions have been describing physics for a long time in spiritual language.  They are actually the same exact thing.  Scientist, mystics, preachers, and priests are the same thing in different form.  In spiritual matters, to the mind of human beings, suffering is the price.  It actually isn’t suffering; that is simply how we perceive it in this culture of ours. 

I will use sports because it is such an easy metaphor to use.  Let's say I wanted to be a marathon runner.  The price for being a marathon runner is steep.  A marathon is 26.2 miles long.  One must be dedicated.  One must give up all kinds of things, parties, late nights, junk food, drinking.  One must run almost every day, eat right, sleep right.  One must be in tune with their body to prevent injuries.  One must have friends who run too; one must socialize with other runners.  One must study running, and do different trainings.  If one is not willing to pay this price, one will never become a marathon runner.

Another price that is easily overlooked is attachment to thoughts.  My friend Mark for instance, he is not willing to pay the price of giving up his current beliefs, especially about himself, to get what it is he says he wants.  He is afraid to lose the sense of himself that he has about himself.  He is holding onto those beliefs for all he is worth because he "thinks" those beliefs are actually him.  He is not willing to give up his own sense of himself, even though this sense he has of himself is a lie his ego repeats in his mind.  To be the thing he 'thinks' he wants to be he has to change.  So you see he is not willing to pay the price.  He says he wants to not struggle, but if that were really true, he would do whatever it took.  This generates a great deal of fear in people.  The sense of losing a sense of one’s self is terrifying to most people.  They don’t realize that the Self cannot be changed by our thoughts.  Our Self is eternal.  They don’t realize their belief about their self is really just that, a belief.  It is not grounded in reality at all.  The belief is simply reflected back towards us like light bouncing off a mirror.  My friend Mark is NOT a loser, he simply believes he is, and thus, he makes it true.

This “price” is the one thing that hangs up most of the world.

Second, one must "feel" it with all their heart.  I put quotes on the word feel here because I do not mean some feeling like the typical sensory perception feeling.  Take my brother, whom I love very much as an example.  My feeling of love for him is not because of him, it radiates from me to him.  When someone hurts my feelings though, that is from the outside, like touching something hot.   The sun, for instance, is hot whether I believe it or not.  That is a sensory feeling, which is a feeling I have because of something outside myself.  The sun is radiating to me like I radiate my love to my brother.  The sensory feeling is giving me information about my environment and I get to choose what I do with that information.  Can you see the difference between to two?  The “feeling” I speak of here is one in which I radiate myself, outwards into the universe.  When I feel that I am worthy of love, it radiates outwards from me, is reflected back to me, thus I see it when I look in the mirror.  When I truly "feel" I believe.  So when I say I love my brother, there is no doubt whatsoever; it is a fact.  It doesn’t depend on him; it just is.  Feelings coming from the outside do depend on him, because he is the one radiating that energy.  If I wished I could hide in a cave and never see the light of the sun.

My friend Mark is at a perpetual fork in the road.  He is on that vicious circle, but the fork which would take him off of the circle is always there waiting for him.  For every step he takes, a new fork appears in the road just ahead of him waiting to be taken.  Doesn't this sound very similar to religious jargon?  Religious jargon is full of descriptions of this phenomenon.  Christians say that god knows what you want before one even asks.  Mystics say that the answer to your prayers is always right before you, all one needs to do is open their eyes to see it.  This phenomenon is not god, but is simply physics.  Historically people have attributed what they do not understand to some god or other.  Christ was merely explaining how it works in terms that the people of that time would understand much like I am doing here and now.  Christ had no choice but to use the religious language of the times he was in.  I believe Christ went to the churches of his day because that is where you find people in large groups who are seeking the truth.  It had nothing to do with a god.

Maybe a day will come and Mark will be so tired of suffering the vicious circle he is stuck in that he will say, "I cannot take it anymore.  I will do anything to make it different.  I will do whatever it takes."  When that day comes, his prayer will be answered immediately.  It will be instant.  Let’s pray for him!

That's it!  Crazy huh?  It is that simple.  There is nothing more to it.  It is not some complicated thing.  I can’t think of a simpler way to describe it.  If you pray, and your prayer is not answered, you must look deeper inside yourself.  It means you are not being honest with yourself regarding the price, it means you do not really 'feel' it. It means you do not really believe it.  If your prayer is not answered there is still fear in your heart.  Fear of the price.  Fear of the change.  Fear of any kind will stop the prayer from happening.  As they say, one cannot know god and be afraid at the same time.  If there is fear, then fear is the “feeling” being projected.  Your fear is the prayer. 

This is why so many hold to their beliefs in a god despite all evidence otherwise.  Having a connection with some god helps people deal with paying the price, and it also helps them "feel" as they should in order to get what it is they are seeking.  Belief in god also gives them a copout should they not get what they asked for.  They can just say, "Everything happens for a reason." or, "God must not want it to happen."  This belief in a god, in this way, inhibits one from taking full responsibility for one’s own beliefs.  

Speaking from personal experience as one raised Christian, it was difficult to relearn how to pray and no longer be talking to some imaginary being up in the sky.  It took a long time to realize the power is within me and not some guy in the sky.  This requires one to take responsibility for all that happens.  That is scary scary stuff if you have never done it before.  As human beings it is so much easier to 'feel' when it is directed towards another.  In reality though, it doesn't matter what you believe, it only matters that you do believe.  No matter what you believe; it will be.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have their own beliefs.

This is how one can realize what it is they really believe.  Open your eyes and see what is right before you.  See what it is that is being reflected back to you.  It is your beliefs that make it so.  This is why they say fear rules the world.  When breaking free of religious dogma the world suddenly seems a scary place indeed.  I have been there.  Most people just stay there safe and sound, so they think, tucked away in their church.  They never realize the truth.  Which one are you?

An intro to astrology

This is a taboo subject for many people. My hope is to clear the way a little bit before I go too deep into the matter, which I will be doing in upcoming posts.  I am one of those people who can be quite judgmental about certain things. For instance, if someone quotes Bible verses to me when I am trying to solve a problem I immediately put that person in a certain category. I only do this because the information regarding the authenticity of the Bible is overwhelmingly on the side of, "that shit is made up." So if a person quotes the Bible this means the person does not understand that they are quoting something made up. I think that most people see astrology the same way, if I say something about astrology, I am immediately seen as someone quoting made up information.

When I was taking philosophy courses in college I saw this phenomenon happen many times. I was quite alarmed at being so quickly placed in the category of "doesn't know what he is talking about." I have studied this subject at great length. I am not like the person quoting out of the Bible without ever having really looked into the making of the Bible. While having discussions regarding the nature and meaning of life I would bring up astrology and I could see the change in their eyes regarding their opinion of my own intellect immediately. Astrology is just like religion in this sense; people already have their minds made up before the conversation begins. This makes it terribly difficult to communicate.

To be clear, it is the same phenomenon, but totally different subjects. It is well documented that the Bible is horse shit, but that is not the case with astrology. Astrology and religion share one thing in common and that is an absurd amount of people claiming they understand it when they really do not. Even though we all have our own opinions about these subjects, there is still a truth regarding them. Let's weigh those out a little shall we.

Are there spiritual people who know the meaning of life? I think that there are. Are there people who claim to know the meaning of life but do not? I think there are those types too. Now, because there are people who talk about spirituality and do not know what they are talking about, does this mean that all spirituality is bullshit? I do not think it does.

There are bad doctors, yes? Does this mean we should not listen to any information regarding medicine? There are bad scientists too; does this mean all science is wrong? I mean even Sir Isaac Newton has had many of his findings refuted, does that make all science bullshit? We still do not understand gravity fully, but yet we all believe in gravity, but suddenly because there are horrible astrologists, does that mean all astrology is bullshit?

Let’s be clear then about what I mean by astrology. Astrology is the study of the effects of massive objects in space that emit energy that has an effect on human consciousness. Daily horoscopes are not astrology. Those are like the evangelic preacher making a living off the donations of ignorant people. Neither of those have nothing to do with the reality of the situation.

I remember taking chemistry in college and we were made to buy a small, 35 pages maybe, explanation of science and the scientific method. In that small book it stated quite clearly that astrology is not a science. We are quickly running into yet another reason why public schools are such a harmful enterprise for children. They flat out teach lies. They flat out hide the truth. Science after all is the same as religion. Both are attempting to explain the meaning and nature of existence. And just like religion lies to uphold its previously believed doctrines, so does science.

I'll show you the contradiction that science creates in very simple terms.

Scientists can prove that electromagnetic waves, i.e. light, changes how one thinks and feels. Scientists can prove that electromagnetic waves can change DNA. Scientist can prove that the brain emits and receives electromagnetic waves. Scientist can prove that large masses emit their own energy, i.e. light. Scientist can prove that the earth has its own magnetic field and it also emits its own energy.

Scientists say that the universe is expanding because everything in the universe, that they can see anyways, is moving away from the Milky Way. They know this because the light appears differently when the object is moving away, than if it was approaching. Have you ever stood near the train tracks when a train is coming? Did you notice that when the train was approaching it sounds one way, but once it passes you and is moving away, the sound is different? Light is the same way. The wavelength of light and sound is different if they are moving away or approaching.

You see, this is why our consciousness changes whenever a planet goes into retrograde. When it is moving away from us, we feel/think one way, when it is moving towards us, we think/feel another way. It is that simple. Just because these differences are subtle and are not fully understood by scientists does not mean they do not exist.

The plain truth is; there is much more going on in reality than the typical public educated person could ever even dream of. Because simple physics is so obviously ignored, most live their lives not ever grasping the truth. For instance, if one completely rules out astrology because a science teacher said it was bullshit, then that individual is going to have a tough time ever discovering their true Self. The planets and stars are a major contributor to exactly who we are. We are made out of star stuff. The sun, a star, is the very thing that gives us life.

Scientifically, studying how the sun gives us life is astrology, but you will probably never hear a scientist call it that. Even the moon affects us every single day, and not just us, but everything living thing on the planet, just like sun, just like all the other planets and stars. Has this not been studied by scientists? So now you can see, when they want to study it, they call it something other than astrology, but it is still astrology. They are merely ignoring the affects those energies have on our consciousness. It is merely a trick of labeling and deceiving.

Just like the scientist who has spent all their life studying some one thing, like Darwin studied evolution. Like the spiritual being who studied the meaning of life all of their life; Buddha. There are astrologists who have spent most of their lives studying the effects of energy on human consciousness and through their hard work, just like the work of scientists and spiritual teachers one can use their information to navigate life.

I think the reason so many disregard astrology is because it is the most complicated of sciences. Being so complicated there is bound to be more than a few exceptions to the rule and this makes it all very difficult to grasp. This is what I find most interesting about the way in which science disregards astrology, ask any physicist about the rules of matter and they will have to tell you there are no rules; that is the first rule. So are astrologists correct 100% of the time? No. Does this mean it is completely bunk and invalid? No. It just means because science has so thoroughly ignored it, it is not yet understood fully. There are ancient cultures that had a much greater understanding of it than we do now and this is because it has been almost completely ignored.

The dogmatic attitude of religion is still extremely prevalent in our culture even among those who do not believe in god. A perfect example of this is a married atheist. Or an atheist who believes humans are flawed in nature; that is a teaching of the church and has nothing to do with reality.

I don't know yet.

This big fish, little fish thing is freaking everywhere. It really is just like racism or sexism. The unaware outnumber the aware so greatly that the unaware actually start to think they are aware just because they are a little more aware than those around them. Being more aware than the person standing next to you does not mean that you are actually aware. This really is a serious issue because no one, that I have met anyways, is actually aware. I have only read books written by aware individuals and most of them are dead now.

As Carl Jung says in his book The Undiscovered Self, "Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them."

Can you see the dilemma here? Most people I know do not even become aware of their own ego!

In reality this means there are billions of unaware individuals, but they will tell you that they are aware because they are more aware than those around them, or at least they think they are. I think education is another great place to find this phenomenon. I have a friend that used to live in this town that I live in now and it has a horrible public school system. The people here are a special kind of ignorant. I say this because the people running the school are in the most denial about their own ego and education. Anyways, she moved to a place where they do not have a horrible public school system. Please keep in mind that in my opinion all public education is bad, but that is part of the point. Her child obviously improved in the better public school. Grades went up, social activity increased, etc.

Her child was smart compared to the kids in the old school. He would actually read books and around here that makes one a superstar nerd. Arriving at the new school though, it turned out, there are bigger fish. Obvious right? Suddenly he was not so smart. Her child naturally adapted to the new school. He became smarter at the new school in comparison to the old one, but remember he is still in a public school.  Maybe for you it is the college you went to, the job you have, the way you raise your child, or whatever it is you do that is better than those around you. 

You see it is just like the ego. Going to the better school is like becoming aware of one’s ego, so to speak, but the issue is the school is the ego. You see, it is very likely now, that this child will live its whole life thinking how great that new public school was, not realizing all the lies being consumed by simply going to a public school. The ego lies to us in this exact same way. From my perspective this is a perfect reflection. This child went to a better school, got better, and is now "educated." In his mind, he is a big fish when he comes back to this small town, but really he is still just a small fish. It should be obvious the negative connotation with thinking one is a big fish when one is not.

The proper perspective is, at any given moment millions of neurons are firing in your brain, and only a small fraction of those are conscious thought. This means that thought is just like all the other senses. My eyes see less than 1% of the light right in front of my face. My ears hear less than 1% of all the sound passing through my body. My sense of touch does not even begin to explain the physical matter that it comes into contact with. My thoughts are less than 1% of the totality of what is going on in my mind. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Critical to this is that just like sight is misleading, sound is misleading, and touch too, so is thought.

Many people get very defensive about this type of conversation. They have an emotional attachment to their public education, and we all have emotional attachment to our ego. Their ego cannot handle being labeled "uneducated." I dislike trying to make a list implying which learning experience is more important than another, we are all so different, and we are all in different places on the same journey so a list is useless. I do know this though, if one is ever going to become aware one must remove their emotional attachments to their own ideals. For instance, one will never become aware if they cannot even admit that their public education actually made them uneducated. Is it really that big of a deal? I find it quite easy to admit that I was born into this crazy society where I was taught a lot of lies, and because of that I have to relearn everything. The fact that as a child I was forced to go to public schools is no reflection on me, if anything it is a reflection on those who made me do it. If I were to maintain that my public education was actually an education, then that is a reflection on me. The only reason for the emotions at all is because the person is lying to his or her Self. This is how you see your ego. If you have an emotional response to your own thoughts, your ego is in play. If you have an emotional response to what someone else thinks, same thing. Emotions are a sense just like all the rest, incomplete more than not.

As I explained in my last post, living a lie is the cause of the worst suffering. One cannot ever become aware of their ego if they cannot even admit that their ego is wrong. Maybe that is the best way to say it. If you cannot admit that your whole life has been a lie, that in reality, you know next to nothing, you will always just be a small fish who thinks it’s big. Mystics call it humility; to me it is more like common sense. If my thinking is less than 1% of my totality, and all my life I thought my thinking was the totality….it’s probably time to admit that one doesn’t know much of anything.

Suffering

I personally believe it to be one of the big lies historically/culturally taught by Christianity.  There is this idea that if somehow one becomes "perfect" one will suffer no more.  It is an idea that implies if one is good enough somehow one will not have to suffer ever again.  They call it heaven. The concept of heaven is a lie in this context.  When one is in 'heaven' one is not disturbed by the physical world any longer, it does not mean one has gone to some other place physically.  In other words, heaven is a state of mind. It is a level of consciousness. One can go to heaven, be there for a minute, and come back to physical reality, and never go again their whole life.  Heaven is a state where suffering is no longer seen as suffering, although one will still be suffering. 

The current Dalai Lama has said, "Hardship, in forcing us to exercise greater patience and forbearance in daily life, actually makes us stronger and more robust. From the daily experience of hardship comes a greater capacity to accept difficulties without losing our sense of inner calm. Of course, I do not advocate seeking out hardship as a way of life, but merely wish to suggest that, if you relate to it constructively, it can bring greater inner strength and fortitude." Using this as a point of reference, suffering causes us to grow up, and eventually we grow up enough that even though we may still suffer, we embrace it, enjoy it even, and this is heaven. It is a play on words. Heaven cannot be conveyed, only experienced.

Suffering is to the soul what lifting weights are to the body, what reading a book is to the mind.  Avoiding suffering is to avoid growing up.   All of these people making decisions so that they will be safe are living a lie, they are keeping themselves from growing spiritually.  Safety in those terms is death spiritually speaking.  They are still alive, breathing, but they are not living.  As I have said before, perception is everything.  

Remember that these terms are metaphors for psyche experience. Remember that God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth, are all synonymous. They are the same thing being looked at from a different angle. 

"To pay attention to the unconscious does mean to deliberately make oneself miserable in order that the autonomous psyche will be able to function more freely" and according to Edinger, who is about as studied on Carl Jung as one can be, who wrote that what you just read, says the most important sentence Jung ever wrote was, "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." It can't be put any simpler than that, any experience of God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth will be a defeat to the ego. What is defeat? Suffering.

Using the story of Christ here seems somewhat appropriate.  Looking at it from this perspective, Christ's ability to affect others went hand in hand with his willingness to suffer.  The same could be said of Buddha; he was willing to pay the price in order to understand the meaning of life.  I've not personally met anyone in life willing to do what the Buddha did to acquire this knowledge. Imagine what it takes to want to do something so much so that you will pray half your life to make sure it happens.  That makes for loneliness for sure.  The Dalai Lama supposedly prays over six hours a day. According to any human I've ever met, that would amount to suffering, according to their ego.

Choosing to become sensitive to the environment creates a great deal of spiritual suffering, but what is really going on is that one is learning how to suffer and it not be suffering.  Every human being ever born on this planet can do what any great mystic has done, and more, but one must be willing to pay the price.  That is the only difference between you and Christ or Buddha; they were willing to suffer first in order to know the truth.

Back to reality shall we.  What does this mean in our lives? Obviously many of us are a long way from being able to heal others just by thinking it, or at least we think we are, so how do we bridge the gap?  Perspective is how.  One must change the way in which they perceive. 

Living a lie is one of the more painful forms of suffering because the person trapped in the lie typically must go through something serious in order to see the truth.  As Carl Jung once said, "There is no coming into consciousness without pain."  I am sure we have all seen this phenomenon.  A great many people avoid an issue until it piles up so high it falls on top of them. I have suffered a great deal in life because of lies.  Being stuck in this state is very painful and it is also a sure way of knowing that an individual has not recognized and understood their own ego.  The majority of the people on earth are locked into this state.

Please recognize the difference between suffering because of ones perception and actually suffering just from being alive.  There is a difference between actually being abused and being the source of ones own abuse.  A child has no choice, an adult does.  To be clear, a child's suffering is the absolute worst kind. Unfortunately, or so it seems, those who suffered the most as children tend to become the most aware adults.  Society however is against such individuals. Which causes even more suffering. 

Suffering, in this context though, is actually a 'healing' process.  Please understand, that the spiritual people, those few aware individuals, do not consider terms such as good or bad.  The person of a higher consciousness sees all existence as one thing, the person confused by their own ego sees things as good or bad, mine or yours, here or there, etc. The ego has preferences, likes and dislikes. The Universe does not. For instance, the death of a loved one is something all humans face at some point in life.  Christ had loved ones and they died too, but he, did not see it as suffering.  Learning to be lonely and not suffer is a terribly difficult thing to do.  Suffering is suffering, in the experience of it, it heals and teaches ones soul to grow, and once the lesson is learned it is suffering no more. So many lessons to learn.

Suffering is the lesson to be learned, just like a complex math problem, one must wrap their mind all the way around it for it to be known and truly understood.  It is an experience to be had that causes one to become a better person.  If we walked around all day in a state of contentment and happiness there would be no spiritual growth.  Think about it, whenever you have been content in life, did you really change and grow any at all?  Now compare that time of contentment with a time of great turmoil.  A lot of people resist change, because change is always hand in hand with suffering.  Again this is a play on words. It could be said that this culture has tricked people into experiencing change as suffering. These people are willfully choosing to remain ignorant.   To live on the edge seems dangerous indeed to one who resides safely in habit.  

Eventually one learns that safety is a lie. There is no such thing. It's just a word monkeys made up. It does not exist in the Universe.

The truth though, is that there are things in life which must be learned which cannot be learned in any other way than through sheer suffering.  For this reason if one lives a lie suffering is inevitable. 

 

I was in a relationship once for all the wrong reasons.  Most people I talk to agree with me, our twenties are a nightmare compared to our thirties, and most agree that they too have had one of 'those' relationships.  As I like to say, growing up is a bitch.  It wouldn't matter who looked at the relationship I had back then, they would know it was a complete mess.  It was even obvious to me and I was living it.  I was trapped in a relationship with a woman because I was trapped by fear.  I did not know who I was; she did not know who she was.  I was scared to be alone.   I was scared no one would ever want to be with me.  I knew my life was a wreck, I knew I wasn't "me" and I knew if I didn't do something soon my life was going to be over; I was no longer going to be me if I didn't do something immediately. 

I had been living a lie, more than a few actually, for so long that the consequences had built up to such a state that I was in complete despair.  I would literally lie in bed and pray that somehow I would not wake up.  I was too much of a coward to take my own life, so I was asking God to do it for me. At any time in the journey of my life I could have realized the truth, but because I refused, massive suffering ensued.  I was locked in a toxic relationship with a woman, who had no respect for me, and I had none for her, but because of our fears we refused to do the right thing.  It was a living nightmare.  I had lost everything.  I was just lying in bed praying for it to all go away.

We fought every day.  Love hate, as they say.  The truth is, the opposite of love is fake love, that is, love that pretends to be love but is not.  I believed then, the same lie I had always believed.  It was a fundamental lie.  I believed I was not worthy of love, and so was acting it out in my relationships.  I believed that all I would ever know were screwed up women who would always cheat.  I believed I was flawed in some way and could not be fixed.  I believed I was broken.  I just wanted it to go away. 

It did go away.  Really quickly too.  We were separated within a couple of weeks after spending five years together in misery.  You see, up to that point in my life I had never really prayed with my whole being, to make it right.  Up until then my ego was always engaged with some personal desire, always afraid.  Prior to that point, I didn't even know what to pray for.  Up to that point, I had not ever really been ready to do absolutely whatever it took regardless of whatever price that might be asked of me.  That was the secret ingredient.  I had never been truly ready to take responsibility for my Self.  I did die in that room praying to God. The voice in my head said clear as day, "God will do nothing for you that you can do for yourself." It took losing it all, living a waking nightmare, some of the worst suffering of my life, reducing me to a pile of weeping helplessness, to realize that I am all that I need.  I grew up; instantly.

Because of the lie, because I believed that I deserved to be treated like crap by a woman, that is exactly what I got.  My belief was based on a lie and at the time it was literally killing me.

If you had asked me a couple weeks before that experience if I was a grown-up I would have said that of course I was.  Everyone and their dog was giving me relationship advice, life advice, telling me this or that, and none of it mattered, it was something I had to experience.  I lost all my friends because of this relationship.  Yet, I ‘thought’ I was a grown up.  The ego is such a terrible thing to taste. 

Looking back on it now, all that suffering saved my life.  I am not suggesting that I could not have avoided this traumatic event in my life; I am saying that living a lie creates the worst suffering.  Which incidentally creates the most growing up. Because I chose to live a lie, because I listened to my ego instead of the truth, I suffered tremendously.   The minute I admitted the truth the suffering ceased immediately.

After that I spent five years single. Five years to myself. I decided to get my thinking in order before tackling my feelings. Once I felt secure in myself I decided to get back into the thick of things.  I realized because of bad choices I didn't get the full range of experience out of my twenties, so I had to make up for it in my thirties.  Going to college was a very similar experience.  I didn't go to college to learn crap out of a text book, but for the social experience of growing up in America that I did not get when I was younger.  I wanted to fit in, and in order to do that I had to have similar experiences.  I trained up so to speak before going back to riding the edge.  I got my head right.  The edge is that place where every step you take could be off the edge of a cliff.  The edge is where one lives when pursuing true Self.  No time to think, just be!

I let myself fall in love again.  Or maybe it is better to say, that I allowed myself to be in proximity to someone who is a great deal like me.  The difference between 'love' and 'in love' is quite radical, and it is also quite dangerous to one who is idealistic.  Allowing oneself to be in love is very dangerous because of the consequences of it not being returned.  The energy is overwhelming. An idealist can hardly bear to not be loved.  But can you see in order to become spiritually strong enough to be in love and not care about the consequences requires one to actually do it.  No amount of dreaming enables one to run a marathon, or climb a mountain. I can fantasize all I want about writing a book, but if I never write, the book will never happen.  One does not sit down to write, and the first 40,000 words be a bestselling book either.  So many people think the next person they meet is going to be the one, not realizing they still have a great deal of training to do.  One can fantasize about love all one wants, but if you never go through the experiences of love, you will never know love.

If one is not willing to sacrifice greatly for love, one will never know love.  I finally learned that in order to truly learn what love is, I must allow it to happen, fearlessly.  This is growing up.  Doesn't matter that I was in my thirties, wouldn't matter if I was in my sixties.  Ever since I was a child I just wanted to know what real love is, not what my parents say, or church says, or what my wife says, but what is love really?  In my life, because I had already suffered so much as a child it seems quite easy for me to make decisions that others balk at because of the suffering involved.  If one has already suffered tremendously, what is a little more? Most people call you crazy or stupid if you do something that you know is going to cause suffering.  These people miss the main point of life, they are living a lie; safety is an illusion.  So many people will tell you to avoid the thing that will set you free because they are too afraid to face it themselves. 

The main point is that it takes suffering to learn life lessons and that it is only our perception that this suffering is negative, and that is what makes it suffering.  Like I said, it's a play on words. When I fell in love again in my thirties, after years of not having felt that feeling; I cried more that year than any year of my life.  I let it all go.  Everyone around me was labeling me this or that, telling me I was making a mistake, etc.  The truth was, I was growing up, and doing it quite rapidly.  I was willing to do what I knew I needed to do, despite what others said, and despite whatever seeming suffering may ensue.   I had already suffered so much because of my relationship with my ex-wife and I was tired of living with it.  I suffered horribly for so many years of my life, afraid of the hurt, afraid to let myself feel that love again.

If you really love someone you do not care what they do.  Being possessive of other people is just an immature reaction, like the three year old who doesn't wish to share a toy, since in the child's mind it really believes the toy is theirs. The lesson for me in life has been to believe in myself despite what other people do.  I'm sure this is everyone's lesson.  If I love someone, then I love them.  I walked away from that person that I was 'in love' with because I finally learned a truth about myself.  They were hurting me, so I had to walk away. 

We are only 'in love' with those who are just like us without us knowing it.  Being in love is the opposite of the shadow projection.  Realizing the projection immediately ends the sensation of being in love; on to the next lesson.  If you ever meet someone and are instantly in love, that person has qualities exactly like you do, but you just don't see it yet in your self.  Once you do, you won't be in love with that person anymore, you will simply love them.  The person I fell in love with had the same spirit as me, the same type of soul so to speak.  This is why you should always allow yourself to fall in love, even though you will suffer for it; you will learn more about yourself than in any other way I know of. 

Eventually though, we stop falling in love with people, or maybe it is better to say, we are in love with everyone.  This sounds alarming to the romantic, but in reality, once one knows themselves, they know only true love.  Being in love is for growing up, real love is for grown-ups.  To be honest it felt really good to go through all that drama even though I was in my thirties.  I do not see how I could have learned those lessons any other way.  Because I am so wild I am not sure I would have survived that experience in my twenties.  Maybe in my life, that is why it went down in my thirties.  Without those experiences though I cannot be growing up, I would just be stuck for the rest of my life at an immature stage.

The woman who I lived a nightmare with she would tell you too, how that time in our life was a great purging.  Even though her experiences of it are quite different, it purged her of some of her lies, purged her of some of her pain, the same as it did me.  There is a great deal of pain involved with coming to terms with the worst of what one believes; the worst of one's self.  That suffering cleaned us a bit, it saved our lives, and it was some of the darkest times of our lives.  Everyone says it was horrible, it certainly seemed so, but how can what saved us be horrible?  It is only our ego that gives things such labels as good or bad, horrible or wonderful. 

This has much to do with the people I know who had childhoods similar to mine. They like me, are quite bitter, and upset. They like me rail at the culture. We want to know why this happened to us. I tell them, look how those others are asleep at the wheel. That suffering you went through is the precise reason you are aware of these things. If that suffering had not happened to you more than likely you'd be sitting around watching TV, eating bullshit, wasting your life with stupid opinions. You'd be telling yourself lies to that you could avoid it. That suffering gave the experiences required for knowing. We know the darkness of this culture, while the rest are blind. It is a terrible burden for sure, but nothing in life is worth having that does not require suffering.  One of my favorite analogies goes like this; if it is good for you, you will have to work first, and then get your reward. If it is bad for you, your reward will come first; and then you have to pay. Childhood suffering is doing work first, while having an easy childhood is getting the reward first. It is incredibly difficult to see this though; a painful pill to swallow.